 What do you think about the fungibility of a Bitcoin? Yes, somebody suggested that in I should end my my talk with liberty, equality, fungibility That's an insider joke for us bit coiners Fungibility so first of all does anybody okay who does not understand the word fungibility or hasn't is not familiar with it Great. Let's talk about fungibility. So one euro is one euro is one euro If you receive a euro it doesn't matter where it came from it doesn't matter if Two people before you it was stolen. It doesn't matter if two people before you it was robbed from a bank It's a euro upon presentation That euro is the same as every other euro and no one can say I'll take this euro, but I won't take that euro and and that is not simply a matter of practice That is a matter of law and this law was settled in the 16th century Where someone said Actually, that's my euro and it was stolen and they took someone to court who was not the person who stole it It was person who received it several times later and said that is stolen property Okay, it wasn't a euro. It was a Frank or something like that. I think it was a pound sterling actually And it was taken to court and the court said you can't do that So money is the one type of property that cannot be stolen and then recovered by the original owner If you steal money, right, you can't say that's my money Give it back to people later. You can say it to the person who stole it But you can't just walk into a shop and say I'm gonna sue you because you have the money that was stolen from me That's fungibility the reason we have fungibility in the currency is very very simple Otherwise it wouldn't work if every time you received a euro You had to open a list or database and say, okay Serial number one three one three three seven seven two. Is that a good euro or a bad euro? Is it a medium euro a kind of naughty euro? Is it a bit cocaine II? Is it a bit terroristic? Because then it's not one euro It's 0.72 euros. It's 0.76 euros. Well, this one's a bit too cocaine It's 0.53 euros in value, right? Oh, this one was touched by Alton John. It's 1.6 euros We don't accept that as a model for using currency and the reason we don't accept it It's because it wouldn't work if you had to check the provenance of every system of money that you receive You couldn't make currency work And the reason you couldn't make it work is not just because you would have to track a database that had to Be perfect and always updated with every coin in it But the most important thing is that no euro would be worth one euro Every euro would be worth a different value weighted by how liquid it is how Circulable it is whether you can use it, right? So if you can use it, but some places and not use it other places Automatically its value drops and now you have to keep track of what the value of one euro is in euro, right? That's fungibility. It's the understanding by law understanding by practice and Technological fact that every unit of currency is Indistinguishable or is treated as indistinguishable from every other unit of currency Bitcoin is fungible-ish somewhat fungible In Bitcoin, you can trace the provenance of every coin by practice By custom we don't do that We are beginning to see some companies do that. That is a problem If you go to bit stamp Coinbase zappo and you say here's my Bitcoin and they say well three bitcoins ago Or three transactions ago. This came from Bitfinex and we're gonna freeze your account You have a problem, right? So that's fungibility being destroyed right now in Bitcoin However at the same time we're seeing a lot of technologies being developed to improve fungibility because fungibility also has to do with privacy and Anonymity which are really important characteristics that we're trying to strengthen and at the same time preserve Within Bitcoin and that means ensuring that transactions are private that you don't know who is who in a transaction That you don't know what value is being transmitted There's a number of technologies being developed for that which make Bitcoin Extremely private where you can't even see the value of the transactions being made You can't tell who is the sender and who is the recipient. You can't tell how much money is being paid and it really fixes fungibility because you simply can't track coins from one to another and And this is the point where most people go Criminals, but what about drug dealers, but what about terrorists? Aren't they going to use this to do that? Yes They're going to use this to do that and if you didn't do it in Bitcoin They're going to use another cryptocurrency that already does that there's half a dozen Available that already do that and if you say you can't use those I'll invent too. I'll write one this weekend that can do that The bottom line is that criminals will use technology even if it's illegal Incredible idea and so Banning technology only affects the people who aren't criminals Is this me? This is wild philosophy. I know So You can't actually ban technology especially open-source technology because the only people who will be affected by the ban are the innocent and the idiots The people who couldn't figure out how to use the technology that actually allow them to hide the sources of their money So fungibility is something we're fixing in Bitcoin because what it does is it helps? Everybody the innocent the well-meaning the people who pay their taxes and want to educate their children and feed their children and buy homes and cars and Operating society protect their privacy from predators from corporations from tyrannical governments from oppressive governments And so we need to do privacy for them and Criminals will also use it. That's my answer for fungibility. Thank you so much So it was a good last question. It's been a pleasure. Thank you everyone