 Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Alex Tabscott. How are you today? I'm fine. Thanks. How are you? Alex is the author of Blockchain Revolution and the reason why we wanted to talk to you today and is honestly, first and foremost, the deal they made with PayPal. That seems significant. Can you tell us why? Yeah, sure. So PayPal recently announced that it was enabling Bitcoin buying and selling for its customer base, which is around 300 million people. That was last fall and then more recently, they announced that they were actually enabling Bitcoin as a way to pay for goods and services through their merchant network, which includes about 25 million merchants. So it's a big leap forward, certainly, for Bitcoin and makes it much more useful as a way to pay for goods and services. And I think that PayPal is probably not going to be the last company that takes a step in this direction. And forgive me, Alex, your background, I think you told me you're based in Toronto. Is that correct? Yeah, that's right. So you appreciate how Bay Street is really driven by the gold market. That's a major factor in our capital markets. You understand that, correct? Yeah. I used to work in investment banking on Bay Street for seven and a half years. So very familiar with the gold space, yeah. So you have an appreciation for the fact that our audience is looking at your sector and we want to trust someone. So can you tell me if I read your book, for instance? Will I then feel comfortable with crypto assets and Bitcoins? Is it a great introduction? Maybe you just tell us a little bit about what the Bitcoin revolution is about. We'd really appreciate that. Yeah, sure. So the book itself is a book I wrote with my father. It came out in 2016. It's called Blockchain Revolution. We cover Bitcoin in a variety of other topics. I think investors and people generally should think about this, you know, or should consider Bitcoin and think about it seriously. Because it represents a big leap forward in technology. The first era of the internet was the internet of information. And now we have an internet of value, basically a way to move money and other assets over the internet peer to peer. And that's really Bitcoin, all it was designed to do. It was designed to be cash for the internet. And what's been really remarkable about Bitcoin is that it's worked. And it's worked so well that it set off a spark that's captured a lot of people's imaginations. And, you know, today it's worth over a trillion dollars. So I think it's something that everyone needs to pay attention to. Of course, I think I mentioned to you, we've done a lot of coverage on Voyager, for instance, which is up 15,000% for the year. And while a lot of people are excited about companies like this that are run by significant entrepreneurs, they're also terrified about it. So can you tell me why we should kind of lose the fear and embrace it? Maybe you can, if that's, I think that's the question I'm really asking you, because you seem like someone who has the answer. Well, thanks for that. I appreciate it. Well, when it comes to Voyager, Steve Erlichman, the person who runs that firm, is an incredible entrepreneur who's done a great job. So I'm not surprised that your audience is taking a look at that company. I think it's a great business. Certainly, this is a new paradigm, as they say. And sometimes new paradigms are met with hostility or fear. And that's OK. But generally speaking, it's leaders of the old paradigm that try to fight against the new. And I think that in order to, what are the steps that people can take to feel more comfortable and to sort of reduce that fear? Well, the first thing is to do your research. Obviously, you're listening to this interview. That's a good first step. My book, you mentioned, is one place they could go. But there's a real rich body of work out there about this subject. The second thing would be personal use. This is not investment advice. But you can buy a small amount of Bitcoin. You can store it, send it, sort of get a feel for it. I think once you do that, you'll begin to sort of understand why people are so excited about it. And I would say the best thing to do would be to sort of start now. This is, as I said, we're in this period where Bitcoin is worth a trillion dollars, which may seem like a lot. But I still think we're relatively early in the blockchain revolution. So anybody who sort of starts now, and I'm not saying this isn't bet the farm, I'm saying learn about it, study it, use it, play around. That'll make you an early adopter. And I think that will put you in a good position relative to where we're headed. I interviewed a gold expert yesterday. He wanted to talk about Bitcoins because he was making it an adversarial issue. You either pick gold or Bitcoin. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I don't think it's a zero sum game. This is a pie that I think is going to grow. And the pie I'm referring to is the store of value pie. I think that a lot of the things that people are concerned about and why they buy gold, they're worried about inflation, first and foremost. And the risk to fiat money are the same things that drive a lot of Bitcoin investors too. And I think that as those trends, those macroeconomic trends play out that I think both assets could benefit. I do believe that at least right now, Bitcoin is benefiting more than gold or in this environment where inflation expectations are really high and gold has struggled to break out. Whereas with Bitcoin, it's performed a lot better. So from my experience and everyone's experience is different, what we're seeing is a lot of investors looking at that store of value part of their portfolio and saying, I still like gold, but maybe I'm going to add a little bit more Bitcoin to balance it out. And it doesn't mean that they're die hard Bitcoin fans. And they may not be die hard gold bugs. They just understand that it's reasonable to have these assets to diversify and to hedge against risk. And I think that's a smart way to think about it. I could not agree with you more and I don't see them as adversarial. But I do understand some individuals or some of our gold bugs concern is that the pressure that is building when people lose faith in currency, they go back into the gold standard. And some of the crypto asset argument is, well, you don't need to go back into the gold standard because we now have digital currency. Do you want to talk about this for a minute? Well, everybody's got a different opinion. I don't think we're going back to the gold standard. But I do think that there's a lot about the way the monetary system works today that leaves room for improvement. And I think that's one of the reasons that Bitcoin has received the traction that it has. I don't think that you need a gold standard based currency for gold to continue to be a sound investment. Lots of, we go through plenty of cycles, money changes. It's modeled every 75 years or so. And through and through, gold has over the long haul done really well, right? So having that as a hedge against those concerns is, I think, reasonable. And I think Bitcoin, one of the reasons why people own Bitcoin is for that reason. I will add though that when it comes to Bitcoin, there's plenty of other things that are really interesting about it, beyond the fact that it's similar to gold, that it could be a more widely used medium of exchange, which is kind of how we started this conversation around the PayPal news. And how there's demographic changes that maybe will act as a tailwind for digital assets like Bitcoin. So there's a lot of stuff that we certainly look at in our analysis. You know, I have enjoyed this interview so much, I plan on buying the book. It's Bitcoin Revolution, correct? It's called Blockchain Revolution. Okay, excuse me, Blockchain Revolution by Alex Tapscott. And not only will I read the book, I'm going to do a review of it. We'll send it to you. And if I like it, we'll buy some and give them away on Investor Intel. Thank you so much for joining us, Alex, and we hope you'll visit us again soon. Thanks for having me, take care.