 Welcome to Digital Asset News, like the top stories in cryptocurrencies and digital assets and break them down into bite-sized pieces. Today, we've got two big stories. First up, Bitcoin will have another major bull run, says Harvard financial historian, Dr. Neil Ferguson. This is actually on the Unchained podcast. And it was fascinating to look at what is actually going to happen right now in the weeks and months to come and over years as far as what's going to happen with Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. Also, PayPal taps Paxos for offering crypto services states a report. And there's a lot of rumors going around about what could potentially happen, but this one seems to have the most validity. And we could see an official announcement within the next couple of weeks. Before we get into that, I need to talk about something before we move on. And that is about scams. This was on, I was cruising through my Twitter account and I came across DaVinci, DaVinci Jeremy. As I know him, he is a Bitcoin cryptocurrency OG, one of the first ones out there. And he talks about these different scams. And it's great that he talks about the scams. And he says, hey, I just can't get through any of these YouTube videos without seeing all these scams everywhere. And again, it's great that people talk about it. There was a Cointelegraph article yesterday that we covered where they said, hey, there's a bunch of scams going on YouTube. But it's not enough that people are saying there's scams out there. I think there's something that more that we actually have to do. Now, if you're like me and you're sick and tired of seeing all these things, I mean, there's only so much that you can take, right? I mean, do you want to keep going through this day in, day out for the weeks, months and years to come of all these different scams going on? I mean, I sure as heck don't. So I think there's something that we all should really do. And that is we're doing our best in this channel, right? You're doing the best. I know you have probably reported these scams and you have actually tried to take them down. And I do that every day as well. And we're actually pretty successful. Usually when I find a scam, I just send it out in one of the community posts on YouTube. And it gets taken down pretty quickly or the scammers themselves take it down as well. Because on the last two that I did yesterday, they were taken down within 10 minutes. And what these scams are doing is that they're not taking them down, but they're making them not publicly available. So that is one little thing that we can do. However, I think all these different talks about people say, hey, watch out for these scams and watch what's going to happen. And you need to be aware of this. I think it's great that people do that. But it's almost like going, someone comes up to you and just takes a swing at you and tries to hit you right in the face. And you're like, oh, you know what? I'm glad I saw that one coming. I'm glad I didn't get hit in the face. So I was going about my merry way. That's a problem. That's a problem because we're sitting back and we're just sitting here and we're just taking it and we're going, oh, well, you know what? That's okay. You just keep showing these scams to me and all my friends and all the people that I know and all the people that are going to invest. No big deal. And I got to tell you, it's making me pretty angry about the whole situation. I mean, would you allow that to happen where someone just comes in and tries to steal from you day in and day out, tries to take the food out of your mouth, the money off your table, especially for you and everybody that you know? I don't think that's right. So I think what we should be doing is not just avoiding these scams. I mean, I think we need to actively get out there and start reporting them, downvoting them and making sure that these things get taken away because if not, they're just going to keep coming. So look, we can only do so much on this one channel. I mean, the channel has gotten pretty big in a short amount of time. I want to thank everybody for that. Went from zero subscribers last year in December. Now we're, whatever, seven, eight months or so later, we're sitting around almost 70,000. So great. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to call on not just you because you're already doing your part. So thanks. I mean, you know, for whatever you do and whatever you report these scams, but what we need to do to reach out to people like DaVinci, to people who I talk about in the description of every one of my videos, all the different big YouTubers out there that have the influence to tell people, hey, these scams are going on. It's not just enough to avoid them and be aware that they're there and to not get scammed. But the next step is to take aggressive action and make sure that we're downvoting and we're reporting every single scam that we get into. Now we can't do everything, right? We do what we can when we can, but I think it's best practice that we get everybody involved because look, YouTube's not coming to save us. All right. That's just how it is. It's really me, you and everybody else. So if we're a community, let's get together and do community stuff, which is protect everybody else who's going to come in during the next two years, three years, five years and get rid of this trash. So that's what I'm saying. Now look, I recommended numerous channels throughout the time that I've been doing my videos. And I love them all. I mean, my tastes have changed, you know, every so often. So right now I love crazy for cryptos and jungle link and coin bureau and crypto knobs and all those guys. Before, you know, I've talked about altcoin daily and I've talked about Ivan on tech and BitBoy and Chico Crypto and all those, I mean, I mean, YouTubers that are out there and they don't just have a lot of people. They have a lot of views. So they have a lot of range and, you know, getting their information out there. So what I'm trying to call on everybody today and I'm going to make sure that I pinpoint or target these YouTubers and say, look, this is what I would like for everybody to do. And I'm going to post it in the description of this video today. So hopefully, you know, they will get a, they should, I'm pretty sure they do, they get a notification that someone has mentioned them in a video. So if you are watching this video and you also watch any other YouTube channel and there's so many out there. I don't care if they have two views or two million views or a thousand subscribers or 10 million subscribers. I don't care. Just tell them say, hey, we're getting on bar with scams. I'd like you to talk about down voting and reporting all these scams to all your subscribers because that's what's going to help us all out. So how do we do that? We do that very simply such as this. So if you're unaware of this thing called scam of the day and I started this in January because I was just so sick of people getting screwed out of their money and I just, I just couldn't take it. So in the description of my videos, it's going to look something like this. You can click on and you can go to this handy-dandy spreadsheet. Screw all the way down. It's going to be a link and we've done pretty well over the last, you know, six, seven months or so. And the last one here is one that's just been sticking around. So we're going to click on that. And you're going to see this melon head and you're going to think to yourself, okay, what's going on? Well, what we're looking for are scams, right? Now this is just one that I have found. However, you can't trust me. You have to do your own research, right? So the first thing we do is we take a look at the comments and we see that people don't like it and they say, hey, this is a scam, whatever else, but not everybody. So maybe just all these people like Droplet here, Rob XRP, I contact the FBI. Maybe they're all just a bunch of haters. Who knows? So what you got to look for is what I call an asymmetrical giveaway. What does it look like? Well, let's fast forward this. And it looks like something like this where it says, to verify your payment, send us 1,000 to 10,000 XRP of the address below and get from 10,000 to 100,000 XRP back. Right? That's an asymmetrical giveaway. Nobody likes you that much. You are not special. You're not getting any money. So we just get it out of your head. Some people will ask me, well, how could anybody fall for that? That is so stupid, but you don't understand. Not everybody is as savvy as you and they don't really understand what's going on. This whole world is very different. And especially all the people that are going to come in or the next parabolic bullet run, I do not want them to get screwed out of their money so they can tell one person can tell 10, 10 can tell 100, 100 can tell 10,000. So it's just best practice to make sure that we clean up our community because no one's going to help us out. It's up to us and that's just usually how it is. So what do we do here? Well, first we're going to downvote it like I've already done. Then we're going to click on these three dots. On these three dots, it's going to say report. On report, we're going to take a look at spam misleading. We're going to choose one, scroll all the way down, scams and fraud. And if there are links, click that right there to help YouTube to investigate and we're going to click next. And we're just going to say, hey, this is a scam. And you can put every want to be respectful but say why it isn't everything else. So that is it for scams. Now, if you ever have a question, if this is a scam or not, send it to the official website. So on this one, it's XRP. Go to Ripple's website, send them an email and say, hey, are you guys giving away free XRP? They'll tell you no. If you think that Elon Musk is giving away, go to Tesla's website. Are you guys giving away free money? They'll tell you no. Binance, Coinbase, Gemini, it doesn't matter. Same thing. They're all going to tell you no. So always treat things as a scam until proven otherwise and you'll be a much happier person. So that is it. I just want to make sure that we started off on the right foot with this one because these scam ads are just out of control. This works pretty well. I think when I do that on top of, you know, when we actually report it, when I actually see it in my feed, those get taken down very quickly. So if anybody has any other suggestion, I'm welcome and I'm open to it. Oh, and one more thing. So when these types of ads pop up, whether that be before a video, in the middle of the video, or after the video that you're trying to watch, don't shy away from it. I mean, if you're going to, don't click on that Skip Ads button because if you do that, then you skip that and you get a prime opportunity to report this kind of nonsense. So what I would do, and only if you have time, if you have time because we just saw how long it takes to downvote and to report, it takes probably what, 20 seconds, 15 seconds? So go there because you know this is a scam. Click on the ad, go to the ad, downvote it, say it's a scam and then be on your merry way. I think that would be the easiest way to do because if you don't, if you let these scams pass, then the next person who isn't as savvy and as knowledgeable as you are will probably click on this ad, they will go to that ad, and they will lose their hard-earned money. So if you got the time, please help out. But let's get into today's stories. So first up, this one was really good. It says, Vick went out with another major bull run. It says, financial historian, Dr. Neal Ferguson. And at first when I saw this, I'm like, all right, well, you know, let's see what this guy's got to say. But I'd like to see, first of all, what smart money is doing. And we talked about Tim Draper yesterday. We also talked about Alex Machinsky from Celsius and where they see everything going as far as the history of the internet. And then, you know, today and then moving forward. So I'd also like to see about, you know, what as far as the historians talk about, about where we could potentially go. And this guy is extremely intelligent. I'll just say that. So Ferguson, who was named in 2004 as one of Time's magazine's 100 most influential people in the world. That's out of Cambridge, Oxford, and Harvard. Three places I have never studied. In 2008, he published a 2008 book, The Ascent of Money, a Financial History of the World. This later adopted for television as a five-part documentary and won an Emmy Award for Best Documentary. So great. This guy is super talented, super smart. Some people just are born like that. Fantastic. But it just lends credence to who this person is when he talks about these things, about what's going to happen with Bitcoin, cryptocurrency, and digital assets. So Ferguson spoke to Cryptojournalist and podcast producer Laura Shin for episode 1A1 of the Unchained Podcast. If you have not seen any of the Unchained Podcasts, they don't get a lot, I mean, a ton of views as far as, like, YouTube goes. I mean, 6,000 is paltry compared to the amount of content that is actually in here. It's just gold. And it's really fantastic. If you have a chance, I'm going to link this in the description. You can check it out. Definitely consider to subscribe to Laura and her great podcast. But what this all was about was she brought him and the gentleman from Coin Desk just to talk about, you know, what's happening with Bitcoin and the whole cryptocurrency market. And he states, hey, I'm a historian, and I spent my career working on a financial history, which is really my core competence. He told a story of how on 7th of October, 2014, amazing, he remember, you know, those specific dates, but he had made the worst investment decision of his life by ignoring the advice of his then 15-year-old son, his son's Lachlan Ferguson, to buy some Bitcoin. And you know what's funny is that around that same time, I am in the same mistake with my son. He came up to me and go, hey, I've got an opportunity. I have someone who wants to sell 500 Bitcoin. Actually, this is in 2012. It was 500 Bitcoin for $500 on a hard drive. And I was like, that's so stupid. Who is going to buy this fake nerd money that it's just not going to work out because you can double spend and I even talked about this. And he's like, well, I think it's going to be big. I just shut him down, which was so stupid. Now looking back, you know, who's the idiot, this guy? And the same thing here. So it doesn't matter like how smart you are or are not, you are and people have their little prejudices and their little biases. And even a person who is, you know, an academic and studies financial history for a living can still make the same mistake. And it's a great story. And I want you to actually listen to it because I thought it was fascinating how he says it. A brief anecdote of my then teenage son who's now 21 said to me one day, hey dad, I really think you should get into this Bitcoin thing. And I gave a very pompous response along the lines of my dear boy, if you had read the event of money, you would know that it is impossible for money to exist without the backing of a state. So do not waste my time with this obviously doomed innovation. Well, by 2016-17 he was having a laugh at me and I was admitting that I was wrong. I'm one of those academics who's capable of saying I was wrong. So around about 2016-17, he and I together began really seriously thinking about crypto and he helped me to really up my level of knowledge along with one of my former students, Maddie Rincon-Cruz, who's become a co-author. So over the last three years I've really been self-educating and I came to the conclusion on the 10th anniversary of the Ascent of Money that I'd been very, very wrong and that this is part of a really extraordinary financial revolution. So I updated the book, added a chapter on crypto and the new edition is available at all good bookstores. So that's my story. Fantastic story. The same type of thing that I had just not of a good as a response for what he said. So again, you got a person who is keenly aware and has deep knowledge of financial history, still making the same mistakes that I think maybe you or people who are actually watching this video may have made in the past. Maybe they just kind of dismissed some part of Bitcoin or Cryptocurrency assets, but hey, it's okay. You're here now and you're going to make big gains. It's going to happen. Just take some time. Anyhow, let's get back to the article. He's scrolling down and says, at that time, the price of Bitcoin was $334 and on 12th of October, when he created this blog post, it was $151. Same thing with me. He said, if I had listened to my son, I would have increased the dollar value of my investment by a factor of $45, or if you prefer, $4,000 plus percentage points. The moral of the story is clear. When it comes to technology, pay heed to teenagers and that's one of the things I actually learned about. Anyhow, another interesting observation that Frugus made in the article was that he should have taken American economist Dr. Paul Krugman's September 2014 dismissal of Bitcoin fever as the product of libertarian anti-government fantasies as a signal to buy Bitcoin. Since this was the same Krugman who in 1998 predicted that the growth of the internet would slow drastically as most people have nothing to say to each other. So there you go. The moral of the story here is stay in your lane. If you are so well adept at some certain part and you just don't really know what's going on, just say, hey, I don't really know what's going on, which would be refreshing in this day and age, right? How many people that you come across just say, I know it all, right? I know it all and that's it. I'm never wrong. That's me talking to different people throughout people I interact with. So when you have something like Krugman who's like, no, no, no, internet's not going to work like Warren Buffet who's like, you know what? Bitcoin will never work. Google will never work. It doesn't matter. It's all fake money. It's all rat poison squared. Stay in your lane. If you don't know, just say I don't know and you need no more information. That's just how it goes. So these are just wise sage words and it makes sense to me, especially about Krugman. Anyway, moving on. He states, the argument you're solving, the problem of inflation works much less well in the developed world because in truth, countries like the US, European countries, Japan cease to have a problem with inflation some time ago. So what is he talking about? Well, it's not deflation or inflation. It's obviously deflation. And this is what he talks about in this next piece. And so the obvious argument for something like Bitcoin is that you are creating at least a store of value, maybe not a particularly efficient means of payment, but a store of value that you'll be able to rely on even if the Argentine government or the Zimbabwean government decides to create the currency with extremely reckless time inconsistent monetary policies. The second point to notice, which is generally missed by the people I know in the crypto community, is that the argument you're solving, the problem of inflation works much less well in the developed world because in truth, countries like the United States, most European countries and Japan ceased to have a problem with inflation some time ago. The inflation spike was in the first decade of fiat money in most of those countries. Since the beginning of this century, the problem has in fact been deflation, not inflation. And the recurrent headache of central banks, first in Japan and then in the United States and Europe was that they couldn't in fact keep the inflation rate in positive territory. That became acutely scary after the 2008 failure of Lehman Brothers because it seemed as if the world was going to be plunged into a second great depression with debt deflation driving us into a dire tailspin as in the 1930s. And the central banks had to work extremely hard to avoid that by using all kinds of unconventional monetary policies of which quantitative easing is the best known, but there were others, two zero interest rates, forward guidance, a whole toolkit of new techniques, which have not been inflationary. In fact, they've underperformed in terms of inflation targets. So I think when one's thinking about the need for monetary innovation, it's really important to recognize that what Michael described in Argentina is a problem for only those parts of the world that we call emerging or developing. For the big economies of the Northern Hemisphere, this is not the problem that you're really trying to solve. So there it is, fascinating. I was listening to Anthony Pompliano and he talks about central bank digital coins and he said, you know, I'm not too concerned about the CBDCs. It doesn't matter which country does it. It doesn't matter if it's China, it doesn't matter if it's Spain, it doesn't matter if it's country in Africa, it doesn't matter if it's America. He says, in all honesty, if we take a look at the CBDCs, they're going to be created. They're going to be all over the place. And what's really going to win out is the monetary policy behind that central bank digital coin. He goes, the problem is, is that you have all these central banks and the monetary policy is awful. So the big thing is that if Bitcoin or any other digital asset or cryptocurrency can actually solve this issue, then people will use more of that. And that's why I have a big faith in this market. Anyhow, finishing up. This comes down to the whole crux of the actual article. Ferkstein discusses asset bubbles. He says, Laura, I think the idea of a world without bubbles is only plausible if you replace the human race with some other species that isn't susceptible to our many cognitive biases. And I always think about this. The reason why the bull run didn't happen immediately after the halving was because it usually never happens like that. And I think it just takes time for everything to really get into place. But I got to tell you, once things, especially with Bitcoin or any type of digital asset, that starts to hit its all-time high, I mean, we've already seen with Chainlink. Look what happened with Chainlink, you know, going over over time, or vChain. Once they start to hit a specific point, it's like it just kind of snowballs. So when you start to hear about Bitcoin, when Bitcoin hit $20,000, then it goes to $20,100, $20,500, you're going to hear people asking you you haven't heard of for a long time asking you, hey, what's up with this Bitcoin? What's going on with this? What's happened here? And before you know it, FOMO is going to say, and because they're going to say, wow, the last time this happened, it went from $2,000 to $3,000, to $20,000, and now it just happens to happening again, $20,000, so you're telling me that it could 10x, so we could see $200,000. So many people are going to get in, and that is just how it happens. That is the emotional aspect of an investor who does not have the rationality to figure out that this is not a good time to buy. Everybody wants to buy on the way up. I did the same thing myself in 2017, which is how it was. Thankfully, I got schooled, and here we all are. I think once this happens, and he talks about kind of biases, that is going to be the next bull run and potentially the next bubble. So to finish it all up, he says, now this brings us to the question of whether you can kind of create an instrument that is somehow immune to these fluctuations in sentiment, and the answer is you can't. Gold isn't a solution because gold has fluctuated tremendously in its dollar price over the past century, and you can never be entirely sure that gold would continue to be available as a store of value. The idea that Bitcoin can somehow solve a problem while it couldn't is just not plausible. And the volatility of Bitcoin as a financial security, which is how it sometimes appears to behave, is the proof of that. What you're seeing when Bitcoin's price fluctuates widely, as it's done in the last five years, is not variations in supply of US dollar. These are fluctuations and expectations of investors about the future of Bitcoin. And as we all know, as everybody listening to this podcast, those fluctuates have been enormous because there's great uncertainty about the future of Bitcoin. That's why we will have another bubble. At some point, I can totally guarantee it. And he talks about the more that Bitcoin stays around, the more it's going to behave like digital gold. Look, gold's been around for thousands of years. People can't wrap their head around Bitcoin right now, but every year that it sticks around, it becomes more of a store of value, and I can totally see that. And then the last part, I can totally agree because I don't see Bitcoin becoming a currency. I just don't. I just see a lot of issues with scalability. If you're around 2017, you saw the different price changes that happened. You saw the lag times. I mean, it was just impossible. Now you had the light and network and everything else. I just don't think it's going to happen. I could be wrong. Let me know in the comments section, but I don't see it as a currency. I see it more of a store of value. And even Ferguson said the same thing. He says, I take the view that Bitcoin isn't going to become money in the sense of the means of payment. I think Bitcoin is a peculiar kind of digital gold that people want to hold in their portfolios. And this is the question I have for you. And let me know in the comments section, do you spend Bitcoin regularly? Just a question. Do you spend it like how it's supposed to be as a currency? Because I can tell you right now, I sure as heck don't. I just hold it and it's like a store of value. And that's how I see it. Finally, its price will not go up gradually. It'll go up in steps. And each step will look like a bubble. Each time the bubble burst, Noriel Robini, who's also known as Dr. Doom, will say, you see, you see, I told you, I told you it was going to burst. And each time he's going to be wrong. And it's the same thing as, I got this friend who's always talking about the end of days. End of days are coming. End of days are coming. They're coming, they're coming, they're coming. I've been hearing this for a decade and it still hasn't been here. Now at some point, I mean, some catastrophe could happen. He's like, so yeah, I told you. Yeah, but you didn't tell me when. He just thought it was going to happen. Same thing with Robini. So you told you it was a bubble. Of course, there's multiple bubbles. It's the same thing as the dot-com. The dot-com bubble didn't happen in one year. It was multiple years. It was from like 95, 96 all the way to early 2000. So don't tell me that a bubble is going to pop and it doesn't happen again. That's what I see. And that's what I've got backed up by Ferguson. So let me just think of the comment section. Let's finish up with our last story. So last up, I'll make this quick because it's all rumors. PayPal taps Paxos for crypto services. Cryndesk reported that the partnership between the two could be officially announced as soon as this week. This came only days after Paxos launched its crypto brokered services to enable companies to offer crypto trading, holding, and sending. This platform highlights that it's handling regulatory, technological, and liquidity aspects of the crypto-related services. While the FinTech companies will only need to think about the front end part. So basically what Paxos is doing is like, look, you guys just do whatever you do great. You push it out there, your marketing, whatever else. We'll handle all the nuts and bolts behind it. We'll essentially make the sausage, which no one wants to see. And then you guys can just put it all out there. Like, cool, let's just do that. And they did this with Revolt. Paxos Crypto Brokers has onboarded Revolt U.S., which is the U.S. subsidiary of British Challenger Banking Giant to offer cryptocurrencies. And actually signed up for Revolt to be notified when they had it. And I just got this, I guess it was five days ago. And I said, hey, if you're in a Bitcoin, you can use that to actually trade and buy it. I think they have 0% trading fees until August. So if you want to look at that, go and check that out. Revolt, I'm actually using as a bank right now for my businesses. And so far, it's been pretty seamless. So if you're also looking for a bank account, take a look at Revolt. And yeah, with over 300 million global users, PayPal is the largest payment facilitator. The company also has close ties with Coinbase. As a crypto exchange, users can purchase digital currencies with their PayPal account. That is the idea. And I got to tell you, if this happens, it should be big. We will see. But it's still not clear whether PayPal will offer, will only offer services with Bitcoin or add other digital currencies as well. And the same thing here is I said, even if they just did Bitcoin, just by itself, that would be a huge win. And that's exactly what Cash App did. If you're not familiar with Cash App, they also offer you to buy Bitcoin. And they've done so well that they actually drove half of Square's Cash App revenue in the fourth quarter. So Bitcoin revenue of 178 million, which is between October 1st and December 31st. Non-Bitcoin revenue was a paltry 183, so roughly about half. And all they got to do is just sell Bitcoin. So good for them. I think that's the same reason why PayPal is getting in on the game. They're like, wait, all we got to do is just offer this cryptocurrency, which we may or may not believe in, but you guys believe in it and you want to buy it. And if it makes money, it makes sense. So let's offer that. So I don't see why they wouldn't offer it. And it would actually shock me if this all comes out to be smoke and mirrors. Hopefully we'll see something in the next one, week to two weeks, but I think it's great for mass adoption. And look, that is it. So look, it was a little bit longer, especially with the scam of the day and all those things. But I think it's super important to get rid of this nonsense. It's just, it's driving me crazy. I think it's driving a lot of people nuts. And let's not forget, a lot of people lost some money. So that's it for today. I want to say thanks for sticking with me through all the rants and everything. Really appreciate it. And I'll see you on the next one.