 Welcome to Jules at News. My name is Rob and today I want to show you the best explanation I've ever heard as to what Bitcoin is, how it operates, and how it's going to perform in the future. And to do that, I'm going to need help from this is Peter von Balkenberg and he is a research director over at Coin Center. And Coin Center is based in Washington DC. It's the leading nonprofit research and advocacy center focused on the public policy issues based on crypto and decentralized computing. The mission is to defend the rights of individuals to build and use free and open crypto networks. They do this by producing and publishing policy research, educating policymakers, which they're going to show you how they do that, and the media about crypto advocating for sound public policy and by engaging in litigation to defend digital civil liberties. So if we take a look here, that right there is Peter on the right hand side. And he's testifying before Congress. And I want to make to make mention that he's sitting right next to Dr. Robini. And you may know him as Dr. Doom, who this guy is pretty negative on crypto, specifically Bitcoin, digital assets, and just all around negative guy about everything has to do with the with economies and digital assets and monetary policy and everything you can think of. This guy is right next to Peter. So I was very impressed with the way that Peter stated this explanation as to Bitcoin. And I'm going to show you this quick snippet. It's about six minutes long. And I encourage you to share this with your family and friends and the people who don't understand, like, what is Bitcoin? Is this a scam? Is this going to be around for quite some time? What really is it? What does it do? And it's perfectly laid out here by the gentleman here. So just take a listen and I'll be back after the video. Chairman Crapo, Ranking Member Brown, members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. My name is Peter Van Valkenburg, and I'm the director of research at Coin Center, an independent nonprofit focused on the public policy issues affecting cryptocurrency and public blockchain networks. What is Bitcoin? Bitcoin is the world's first cryptocurrency, and it works because of the world's first public blockchain network. What does Bitcoin do? It's simple. It lets you send and receive value to and from anyone in the world using nothing more than a computer and an internet connection. Now, why is it revolutionary? Because unlike every other tool for sending money over the internet, it works without the need to trust a middle man. The lack of any corporation in between means that Bitcoin is the world's first public digital payments infrastructure. And by public, I simply mean available to all and not owned by any single entity. Now, we have public infrastructure for information, for websites, for email. It's called the internet. But the only public payments infrastructure that we have is cash, as in paper money. And it only works in face to face transactions. Before Bitcoin, if you wanted to pay someone remotely over the phone or the internet, then you could not use public infrastructure. You would rely on a private bank to open their books and add a ledger entry that debits you and credits the person you're paying. And if you both don't use the same bank, well, then there'll be multiple banks and multiple ledger entries in between. With Bitcoin, the ledger is the public blockchain. And anyone can add an entry to that ledger transferring their bitcoins to someone else. And anyone, regardless of their nationality, race, religion, gender, sex, or credit worthiness, can for absolutely no cost create a Bitcoin address in order to receive payments digitally. Bitcoin is the world's first globally accessible public money. Is it perfect? No. Neither was email when it was invented in 1972. Bitcoin's not the best money on every margin. It's not yet accepted everywhere. It's not used often to quote prices, and it's not always a stable store of value. But it is working. And the mere fact that it works without trusted intermediaries is amazing. It's a computer science breakthrough. And it will be as significant for freedom, prosperity, and human flourishing as the birth of the internet. And Bitcoin is just the beginning. If we can replace private payments infrastructure, then we can replace other private choke points to human interaction as well. Now, why should we want to build more public infrastructure? Why should we embrace blockchains over corporate intermediaries? Why should we tolerate their inefficiencies and work to make them better? Why should we want the pioneers of this technology here in the United States and not fleeing overseas? A simple reason, because the corporate intermediaries providing today's critical but privately owned infrastructure are becoming fewer, larger, and more powerful. And their failures are increasingly grave. So roughly half of all Americans, 143 million people had their social security numbers exposed to hackers because of a breach at Equifax. The Swift network has relayed hundreds of millions of dollars in fraudulent transactions because of hacked member banks in Bangladesh, Vietnam, Ecuador, and Russia. The FBI suspects now that the largest of these hacks was perpetrated by North Korea. Corrupt low-level employees at an Indian Bank, Punjab National, were able to fraudulently certify Swift messages stealing $1.8 billion. It's the largest electronic bank robbery in history. In fact, it's the largest bank robbery in history. In October 2016, an estimated 1.2 million internet connected devices were hacked and turned into a botnet that for several hours made prominent websites unavailable across Europe and North America, including CNN and Fox News, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. Increasingly, physical machines are being connected to the internet to augment their capabilities. They're wired through servers that are owned and maintained by private and trusted intermediaries. The so-called Internet of Things. Pacemakers from St. Jude's Hospital have been hacked. Baby monitors from Trendnet have been hacked. And jeeps from Jeep have been hacked to the point where they can be remotely commandeered and driven off the road. Now those vulnerabilities are inescapable in systems that have single points of failure. It doesn't matter if the point of failure is a corporation or if it's a government. There shouldn't be a single point of failure. Similar choke points existed before the internet. If you wanted to deliver a message, you'd have to go through one of three television broadcasters or a handful of newspapers. Private corporations are essential, but no critical infrastructure should rely on one or two. The internet removed single points of failure in communications infrastructure and ushered in a wave of competition among new media corporations building on top of its public rails. Blockchains can similarly disintermediate critical payments and IoT infrastructure. The technology is not yet ready to answer all of those questions today, but it is our best hope. And as with the internet in the 1990s, we need a light touch pro innovation policy to ensure that these innovations flourish in America for the benefit and security of all Americans. Great. So I hope that made sense. I gotta tell you, I've probably listened to that about 10 times. Perfect way to explain what Bitcoin is, how it all works, and of course what's gonna happen in the future as we progress and move forward. And the last thing I will say is this. There was a good explanation as to, as far as like new technologies, specifically Bitcoin and moving into the next century. And I talked about in the early days of mankind, we discovered steel iron ore and all those things. And the first we, when we first discovered it, we didn't really know what to do with it. Then we figured out what we'll put it on. We'll make arrowheads, we'll make swords, we'll make shields, then moving forward. Okay, well, maybe we'll make this into siding and actually into buildings that we'll make into cars. Then moving forward, we figured out maybe we could make this into some fabric for space shuttles or other vehicles. And then moving forward, who knows what we're going to use steel with. So I think it's the same thing with crypto, Bitcoin, digital assets. It's a great technology. We're trying to figure out exactly where everything fits in. And it's going to look a lot different from today than as we move forward into the next 10, 20, 50 years. So that's it for today. So if you like today's video, give it a thumbs up. I'll consider subscribing. A lot of things we talk about on this channel and mostly news at its time sensitive and a couple of education pieces. And that's it. So thanks so much. I appreciate it. And I'll see you on the next one.