 It's such a huge pleasure to be here today. This is such a great community, and everyone here welcomed me with such warmth and open arms. So, thank you so much for having me here today. So, what I'd like to talk about is a couple of very important issues. I want to talk about regulatory legitimacy. I want to talk about how, within the cryptocurrency space, we can achieve compliance with PCI, the payment card industry standard, with Sarbanes-Oxley, the standard for publicly audited companies, with KYC, know-your-customer, and with AML, the anti-money laundering rules. And these things will allow us to achieve legitimacy with bankers and achieve our position on the world stage as a trusted, legitimate currency. I want to talk about that. Who wants to talk about that? That's ridiculous. We don't need any legitimacy. We're having fun, much more serious issues. You know, there's a lot of serious people in Wall Street. Dower-faced, boring, soulless, parasitic, serious people wearing ties and suit. And guess what? They stole trillions of dollars and they got away with it. So, who needs their legitimacy? So, I want to talk about things that are born to my heart. And some of you may have heard, some of the talks I've given recently about the currency as a language. Anyone here heard some of those talks? Not many people grade, so it will all sound brand new to you. That's a great opportunity for me to repeat myself. What I care about is charity. What I care about most is the other six billion. You see, there are a billion people in this world who have access to bank accounts, bank accounts without currency controls, bank accounts that can transmit money internationally, that can access international markets, that can access deep pools of liquid credit for their loans. Us, the rich people of the Western world. And then there's the other six billion. People all around the world who have limited bank accounts or no bank accounts at all. People who live on one dollar a day if they're lucky. People who have no access to international markets, no access to international finance, no access to loans, no access to opportunity. I'd like to think I'm a really smart guy and I got here because of the efforts that I made throughout my life, but we all know that's bullshit. I got here through an accident of birth that put me in a white middle-class society in Greece and a developed nation as a child of professionals, educated professionals. I was swimming with the current all the way. Right now, there are hundreds of thousands of people who are smarter than me, dying of tetheria somewhere in the world. I care about what we can do with cryptocurrencies to bring economic development, to bring economic inclusion, and to bring the other six billion online and into a world economy without borders, without political corruption, without massive theft, and without parasitic banks. It starts with charity. It starts with charity at a very basic level. This community says charity more than any other cryptocurrency community. So thank you so much for leading the way and showing as an example what we can do with cryptocurrency when we think of doing good, because that's what's amazing about this community. Bitcoin has a lot of charity, too, and we've achieved some amazing things in the Bitcoin space. A month and a half ago, a Newsweek magazine destroyed the life of an innocent old man called Dorian Nakamoto, by saying that he was the creator of this currency. I started a fundraiser within six hours. We raised more than 30 Bitcoin for Dorian Nakamoto, and now we've raised almost 50 Bitcoin to help this man put his life together. At the same time, major charities like Charles Outpost, which is one of my favorite charities, distributed over the last year 65,000 meals to the homeless in Pensacola, Florida, by tapping into Bitcoin and using it to raise money from all around the world from people who, if they care, they can now send money anywhere in the world to support the charity of their choice. Charity is like free food, which when there was a hurricane, a typhoon weather, the Philippines raised money and sent over $5,000 within a day and got it right on the ground where it mattered and where it could make a difference in people's lives instantly without having to worry about regulations and wire transfers and giving Western Union a 20% cut so they can make their profit line better. All of these charities are taking a currency and turning it into a force for good, but that's only the beginning. We have the opportunity now to subvert and improve some of the most exploitative markets in the world, and the first one, which I care about a lot, is the international remittances market. Every year, poor people in developed world who have jobs as migrants and itinerant workers, Mexicans here in the U.S., Indians from many different countries including places like Dubai doing construction, send money home to their families abroad. $500 billion going primarily to four countries, Mexico, the Philippines, Indonesia, and India. And that $500 is actually a lot more than we send as the developed world in terms of financial aid. Approximately $175 billion are sent by our governments to the developing world. And guess where that money goes? The money we send through our government goes to the top of their government and then trickles down. And only about 5% of it actually reaches the people in need because the rest is taken through corruption. Meanwhile, out of the $500 billion sent through remittances, $75 billion is collected as fees by companies like Western Union. They charge anywhere from 5% to more than 25% for people sending money home to their families. That's $75 billion out of the pockets of the poorest people on this planet. And we can change that. And we can change that right now. Cryptocurrencies have the ability to enable flows of money from the developed nations to the developing world to give back that $75 billion to the people who need it most. And if you take that money and you put it in the pockets of the poorest people in the world, specifically if you put it in the pockets of women who run the finances in these communities and get money from their husbands abroad and their family members abroad, they convert every single one of that dollars into water and sanitation and education and healthcare. And they have an immediate impact that reaches very far in their own communities. And that's how you change the world. That's what we can do with cryptocurrencies. And that's what I care about. So one of the questions that I've been thinking about for the last year or so is how altcoins behave against each other and whether they're in competition or not. And the underlying question is one of scarcity. A lot of people think that other coins compete directly with Bitcoin. And if there are too many coins, that dilutes the digital scarcity created by Bitcoin and it dilutes its value. I think that's a very old-fashioned way to look at currency. And the reason we think of currency that way is because throughout our lives, we've grown up in a world of national sovereign currencies that exist in a monopolistic zero-sum game, where winning from my currency and my nation is a zero-sum game against somebody else's currency. And that's because all of these currencies exhibit a monopoly. If I live in the United States, I am born into US dollars and I don't have a choice. I have to pay my taxes in US dollars, and that is the currency I will use. Well, that is no longer the case. Currency is now a choice. With these currencies, the digital currencies that are created by individuals, we can now choose any currency we want to interact with the whole world. And in making that choice, we also choose our community and we also choose our values. We choose the currency that best represents our values, and that's more powerful than any vote in the world. So, let's think a bit about what it means to choose a currency and how that currency derives value. We need to rethink the world, because currency used to be defined by the authority of the sovereign who created it. And if the sovereign created a currency, they put behind it the force of the state and the monopoly of the state to give it value. And that's what gives currency a value of the old world. And in this world, a currency with a funny dock printed on the cover has value. Why? Because it has value to you. And because you give it value by using that currency. So what happens in 10 or 15 years as cryptocurrencies become more widespread? How do you look at value in a world where anybody can create a currency? What does it mean if you go into a rural environment in Africa and they're using two currencies predominantly? And one of the currencies has a funny dog on its face. And the other currency has an old white woman called Elizabeth on its face. Well, I can tell you something. The people in that village don't know who Elizabeth is. And they certainly have no clue what the hell that dog is and why its eyes look like that. But what they do know is that you can use either one of these currencies to buy six eggs. And that's all that matters. If you have a currency that has value as a means of exchange, then that currency has value. You can have a thousand economists write a thousand papers and gain a thousand PhDs that tell you exactly why it's not a currency. But if you can buy six eggs, it's a currency. And nothing else matters. So what is the fundamental difference between currencies if they have monetary value at the point of purchase? If they can be used to be exchanged for goods and products and services by the people in the community who use that currency? Well, one of the currencies has a predictable, deterministic and fixed monetary supply. And the other currency has an old white lady on the cover. And that's the only difference. Because they sure as hell didn't pick that currency, and they don't know why Elizabeth is on it. Maybe she won a popularity contest. Well, so did the dog. The bottom line is that we now live in a world where currency requires values for its use. If you can transact internationally with a currency, the only thing that matters is how many people use that currency, and how they use that currency. And if they do use that currency, that gives it value by definition. So how do we survive in that kind of world? How do we live in a world where the value of currency is determined purely by adoption, not by the sovereign authority that created it, not by the regulations that back it, but by the algorithms that run it, not by trust in the central regulatory authority that has the ability to print as much money as it wants, and hand that money over at 0% interest rates to the biggest banks and trickle down economics, but by an algorithm that is predictable and deterministic and removes uncertainty, by algorithms that allow us to see how the currency is going to develop over time. And in that world, adoption is the only thing that matters. We don't really know how to live in that world, and that world hasn't come yet, but I think it's coming, and it's coming fast. I think the idea that we will have 194 currencies will seem quaint in a couple of decades. And in fact, up to recently, I thought we might have a couple of hundred altcoins, but I changed my mind. Guess what? I'm often wrong. When I get new facts, I form new opinions, because the old opinions don't fit the facts anymore. As I saw the explosion of alt currencies, which in itself is a somewhat patronizing name, right? As I saw the development of altcoins, I realized that we will not just have hundreds of currencies. So let's do a quick poll. How many of you think that in a decade we will have hundreds of altcoins? How about thousands? How about tens of thousands? How about hundreds of thousands? Millions? All right, now we're having a conversation. What does it mean to live in a world with hundreds of thousands or millions of currencies? Well, the key realization to me came when I saw a website that allowed you to build a currency by entering the name into a web form, choosing the monetary policy from a drop-down and hitting submit. And you had to pay about 50 bucks to do that, but I guarantee you that by the end of the year you'll be able to do that for free. And then I realized everybody's going to do it. And the reason everyone's going to do it is because at a very basic level, currency is a language. Currency is a means of expression. Currency is the language by which we communicate value to each other. Currency is an emergent artifact of a social species. Let me repeat that. Currency is an emergent artifact of a social species. And how do you know that? Observe five-year-olds. Go into a primary school and look at how five-year-olds behave. They don't have currency, so they invent it. They invent currency immediately as soon as they develop social bonds with an abroad social environment. They invent forms of currency. If you go into a primary school, you will see children trading cards, Pokemon, Tamaguchi, rubber bands, life-strong bands, candy, cafeteria credits, whatever. It's not something like prison, really. In many ways. The only difference is they don't allow them to have cigarettes, otherwise that would be the predominant currency. But they do allow them to have donuts, and in many schools that is the predominant currency. And the reason currency emerges in social environments is because it's used by individuals in order to express their value, to express their appreciation, to express popularity, to strengthen social bonds, to create society, to create social experience. That's what currency does. Trade is a social interaction, and currency is the language that allows us to have that social interaction. So when children are able to create currency, that means everyone creates currency. There will be a Joey coin competing with Maria coin in the primary school for the battle of popularity in grade six. Yes, there will be. There will be Beamer coin. There will be Metallica coin. You can see how old I am. There will be maybe Andreas coin on pre-mine the hell out of it. There will be coins of all types. There will be coins representing brands. There will be coins representing corporations. There will be coins representing your local mall and used as a loyalty card. There will be coins representing bands. There will be coins representing silly memes, and I'm at the conference of one of those. And it doesn't matter because all of these coins may have value, and all of these coins may not have value. But the key to realizing this is a big difference between monetary value and value. The vast majority of the tens of thousands of coins that will exist in the world will have no monetary value. But if we try telling Joey that his coin doesn't have value, it has value to Joey and his friends. Because it's used to express popularity and society and social bonds. And it has value to the followers of Beamer coin. Probably in some cases more than some of the national currencies out there, I would guess, if he ever watches it. So how do we live in a world where there are hundreds of thousands of coins and most of them have no value? We disassociate value from authority. We understand that value does not derive from who created it, but only from who is using it. And we already live in that world in terms of information. It used to be that we looked at published opinion and we looked at it as being authoritative if it came from a publisher with a giant printing press and a fancy name like The New York Times. And then we lived in a world where everyone on the street could publish an opinion. And we had to revise our understanding of authority because it no longer fit the facts. Because sometimes people in very esteemed institutions like The New York Times, say like journalist Judith Miller, lie about the fact that there are WMDs in Iraq and kill tens to hundreds of thousands of people through their lies. And sometimes an Egyptian blogger who's a nobody tells the truth about the regime of Qubar because they're right there. And now we live in a world where the authority comes from the content, not from the authority of the printing press. But we just did that to currency. Now currency gains its authority not by who created it, but by who uses it. And in a few decades you might be surprised about which currency is a rise to monetary value status. It's going to be a very great line. I think we're going to see currencies that suddenly erupt, say in 138 days, and capture the imagination of an entire community and then acquire value. I have some bad news. The other way to go too. Some of these currencies will go from having monetary value to fading into nothingness again. It will be like a bubbling cauldron full of currencies where some rise to the surface and then sink down quickly and some stay afloat. I think Bitcoin is going to be one of the powerful ones. I'm not sure about Doge yet, but it's looking pretty promising. I think it's very interesting how this community has demonstrated to the world what great marketing you could do by having a positive spirit and a charitable spirit. So that's the new world I think we're going to live in in a couple of decades, and it's going to be a very interesting world. And that's what I wanted to talk about today, the importance of currency as language and a form of societal contact. Thank you so much.