 So good morning everybody. I'm very honored to have these 10 minutes of introduction Usually in a conference you get sold some kind of promotion In this case we will try actually to stimulate some criticism and critical thinking and some skepticism even What my presentation is about is why everything they told you about Bitcoin is a lie Of course some of you in the audience are pretty expert in this matter, some of you may not be And it's important to clarify before we start getting into depth with this topic That there is not just a lot of lack of information, there is a lot of absolutely wrong information Basically there is not just a lot of noise but a lot of negative signal in Bitcoin So most of the things if you approach Bitcoin mostly from the point of view of reading some article on the mainstream media Probably everything you have been told is kind of a lie, let's call it a misconception So let's see if it works, yeah So I'm in Bitcoin, I'm a theoretical physicist as an education, I'm in Bitcoin since 2013 And what I do is mostly consultancy also to banks and institutions and recently especially education You can find me at Het Jakomuzuk on Twitter or whatever, Telegram So the press, the general press gets Bitcoin wrong mostly for these reasons Because the press generally gets wrong things that are too new, they need some time In order to understand what's going on if something is new Bitcoin may seem old story, like 10 years But actually if you think about that, I mean the first experiments with the interim protocol were in the 70s And in the 80s the general press did not have any clue about the internet, not even in the 90s actually And the press is generally wrong and bad with things that are too technical Bitcoin is technical not just in a technological sense but also in an economical sense Bitcoin is a very subtile game of cryptography, applied cryptography, information security, game theory Monetary economics and monetary history, so it's difficult to get it right It's also very multidisciplinary, if you are a great cryptographer but you don't understand money Probably you get Bitcoin way less than somebody who has a good understanding of the purpose of money And the history of money but maybe is clueless about cryptography Then the second guy will understand Bitcoin but will lose all his Bitcoin because he doesn't understand how to store a key So you have to stay somehow in between The general press is also kind of bad at explaining things that hurt too many interests Bitcoin is disruptive, not like we are disruptive start-up, we are creating a new PayPal It is disruptive in a way that if it works could play out as very, very disruptive So the kind of status quo, I mean, I know that this sounds a little bit like a paranoid, tinfoil-hattered conspiracy theory But in the real world there are established interests and there is a cognitive bias to try to not understand the new things If the new things are threatening your interest a lot Maybe individuals can understand things that threaten their business model But organizations, for example, tend not to understand, I mean, Kodak usually cannot understand digital pictures Even if the single Kodak researchers do Blockbuster will not understand video streaming online even if a single researcher can understand it inside Blockbuster So as organizations usually establish interests tend to get wrong things that can threaten their interest Also Bitcoin is a thing that can create too much economic interest, too much economic attention Because there is money to be made, some people got rich, some people got rekt, some people got billionaire So everybody wants to sell you something, everybody wants your money There is basically a gold rush and during a gold rush scammers are everywhere And of course if you read a newspaper article you are reading something from a journalist That was basically exposed to a lot of snake oil salements and a lot of fraudsters Also general press is wrong in general If you are an expert, you know, there is something called the Murel Gelman, like forgetting, Abnesia If you are an expert in anything and you read something about that You understand that the general press is terrible at explaining that and mostly it tells everything upside down And then you turn the page, you read something you are not a specific expert in And then you get back believing it, like after just one page This is a typical phenomenon, so in Bitcoin that's even worse So what can you do to mitigate the level of noise or even to not just to learn something about Bitcoin But to unlearn everything you learned so far which is wrong Basically you have to become a little bit an expert yourself Unfortunately in this kind, I mean delegation for knowledge is a good thing It's good to delegate experts, it's something that we have to do, it's division of labor, it's okay But with something which is so new, so disruptive, so complex You don't have these excuses anymore You have to try to verify claims You have to try to fact check directly So it's hard, you cannot easily delegate experts because you don't know who the experts are The definition of experts is still circular, like one expert will tell you that the other expert is a fraud And vice versa, and they're both right So it's kind of difficult to navigate One very good clue that I can give you is consider the long run Try to get back to ancient history like 2014 Try to verify claim also in the long run So everybody, I mean every kind of blockchain technology works in the demo phase None of them works basically except one in the long run So when you are facing a claim You should try not just to verify the technical side of it but also the historical side Which other claims like that has been made in 2011 How many claims did that person make before that one So usually time is a gentleman And if you look at the big picture in the long run You can start to tell fraudsters from real researchers This is all you can do basically I will try to list some FPM, Frequently Propagated Myths about Bitcoin I will not try to debunk them now So now you have to trust me But then during the day or not But then during the day you will basically verify The first myth I would like to... Well, I will just basically list them First myth which is the complete opposite of reality Blockchain as a technology is fast, cheap and encrypted So you can use it to protect your data Actually blockchain is a technology that Bitcoin has to use It's necessary for Bitcoin layer one But it is extremely slow, extremely expensive And it's not encrypted at all Basically everybody has all the data with zero data protection So blockchain is terrible for the efficiency of your banking track record It's terrible for privacy It's terrible for easiness and efficiency Also there is this meme going around blockchain validating information That's not the case Blockchains do not validate information Blockchain only creates a relative chronology of information That can be true or false, right or wrong So everybody using blockchain to validate supply chain in food I mean, that doesn't make any sense Blockchain is the real deal It's not 99% of our research in Bitcoin right now Is how to avoid using the blockchain So what Bitcoin researchers are trying to do now Is to use Bitcoin without using the blockchain Or using the blockchain only when it's strictly needed And stay out of the blockchain every time we can With something like Lightning Network, Master, Taproot, Script to Script All these technical buzzwords just mean one thing We shouldn't use the blockchain if we can avoid it So tokens are decentralized, trustless and anonymous So everything you couldn't do before when you do an IPO Or when you do your public offer Because it's maybe it's a regulatory It's restricted from a regulatory point of view Now with tokens you can Because tokens are unstoppable They are decentralized There is no single point of failure They are not With the exception of one single token Which is called Bitcoin Any other experiment out there is fairly centralized Around a single team of development Around a marketing team especially With their face around So it's totally centralized The typical website promoting Unstoppable application right now The Ethereum Foundation website Basically it's about technology where they did Stop server application when they wanted to stop them So it's not about tokens Also tokens add value to the platform This is a typical crypto mantra So we're doing a new We're doing it like a new Tinder application But with tokens Usually tokens when you put them in your application They reduce the efficiency of your application And they introduce new friction Because now you have to take real money You have to buy this useless token And you have to spend this token In order to use something that you could use In the first place without the token So tokens are not a magic powder To increase the business effectiveness Of your application Usually they are just a friction point That has one purpose Buying Lamborghini for the creator of the token Tokenization People clapping as a Lamborghini All of them I know that So another myth I can list Is Bitcoin is only for bad people Bitcoin is a dodgy thing For the dark markets And that's the only thing That's not the case Bitcoin is actually the first asset class Which is entirely independent From political risk If it works I've been told there are some skeptics And that's very good We have to be I'm also skeptical about Bitcoin I know that Bitcoin could fail What comforts me is that I know that everything else will fail But... So in comparison But still Bitcoin is still an experiment And it's not just for bad people For example it's a non-correlated asset You can try to do a scientific study Of correlation with Bitcoin And physical gold Bitcoin is a little bit like digital physical gold But it's also like a brand Because gold doesn't have a brand Like if they rob a gold deposit It's not that gold price goes down Because there is a brand image While in Bitcoin there is a brand situation It's a technology Gold cannot really evolve technologically You cannot say I mean gold will go up Because we have the lightning network In Bitcoin there is a technological advancement perception So it's a mix of very different things And it's behaving differently So if you want to... Basically when you compose a portfolio And you want to manage your risk Decorrelation is something useful Not just for the dark market criminals But also for investors and institutions Bitcoin is actually not really anti-banks For other reasons we will discuss it a bit later It's mostly unfortunately anti-central banks I mean if you are a banker You can still make a lot of business around Bitcoin If you are a central banker Learn to code, do something So Bitcoin is not only for bad people There are also... But Bitcoin is not even the opposite Like somebody wants to sell you Bitcoin As the transparent ledger That the word finance will use Because it's completely legal Completely compliance It's not Bitcoin is a beer instrument And as such Can facilitate legal arbitrage Or even illegal things That's a fact Whenever you see somebody Or hear somebody denying that fact Like oh no Everything is on the blockchain We can trace everything forever Is lying or omitting something Bitcoin can be used for regulatory arbitrage And for illegal things The good news is that Not only legal things are bad things Basically every single action you perform Since this morning waking up Is illegal in some place of the earth From drinking... I don't know if coffee is illegal But I'm sure it was illegal Sometimes somewhere So every action is illegal And especially many, many actions That we do are illegal So there are a lot of people That in the so-called grey market Which is people that are not doing anything strange They are not selling drugs They are not trying to organize terrorist attacks They maybe want to sell lemonade But they don't have the specific permission To do that in some kind of jurisdiction And to be more explicit There is the absolute majority of people On planet earth right now They don't have access to a KYC-like identity For international finance Or international commerce So when you use e-commerce or e-banking You have to know very well That the total majority of people On this planet cannot be compliant With this kind of requirement So it's like a privilege requirement Which is not accessible for most people Bitcoin is accessible to everybody If you are a woman in Afghanistan And you cannot have a bank account You can have a Bitcoin address And nobody can actually stop you So it's not for regulatory compliance It's a beer instrument It means that it can be, for example It also changes the security assumption Because when you are storing in your bank Some kind of financial derivatives They are not beer instruments So no single employee can steal A derivative contract easily And hid it in its pocket With Bitcoin it's a little bit like gold bars So people can get away with that Also there is this myth That everybody will be their own banks That's maybe something Approximable in the long run But for the short run Many people will use Bitcoin speculatively Without wanting to become hackers Or cryptography experts So there will be a lot of intermediation In Bitcoin Mostly on the financial investment side A little bit less in the direct use side People who want to use Bitcoin Directly to avoid some kind of regulation Or to arbitrage some kind of regulation They will mostly have to learn How to do that Because any counterparty Will be easily censored But people who want to speculate Which is not a bad word On this technology disruption They will mostly use a third party Which in my opinion will not be Bitcoin startups But they will be mostly traditional banks Also, so one myth is Everybody is its own bank Is own bank The opposite myth is These Chinese miners control Bitcoin They control everything Actually even just when you read the newspaper That miners validate Bitcoin So you search for You Google Bitcoin right now You get some video Where you have some guy Spending Bitcoin on a mobile phone And then a network of miners Validating it That's the myth That's not how it works Miners do not validate Most of the people running miners They just use the node Of a central pool to validate They don't validate themselves While every single Bitcoin user In order to be sure he has been paid He has to validate independently So validation in Bitcoin Is not something delegated to mining farms All the things that mining farms do Is to create an opportunity cost For reversing the history But they can only ordinate valid transaction The validation of transaction Is not something miners do Miners cannot change the rule of Bitcoin They are not in control Okay, I go faster One typical myth is Bitcoin is too scarce So it will work But there is not enough of them Like just 21 million Of course many people Are still scared They still don't get the visibility And they are still affected by unit bias Like they are not enough Bitcoin For everybody That's not the case And the opposite myth is Bitcoin is too niche Nobody really wants it So it will fail Because there is no interest Last two myths Bitcoin will be hacked And failed Like there is a lot of Let's say There is a lot of overestimation Of technical threat to Bitcoin And a lot of underestimation Of the level of security Of Bitcoin technically Or Bitcoin will work And boil the oceans So basically the world will be destroyed Because Bitcoin will work too much A very good heuristic is If somebody is telling you That Bitcoin cannot work Because it will simultaneously Boil the oceans Because it is too much effective And be hacked And become ineffective I mean He has to choose Either it doesn't work Or it works too much So this is just Well, I will skip this Because it's late And this is where You can find me on some Like Twitter or Telegram If you have some questions And have a nice day And to the moon