 Hi, good evening and thank you for joining us for this session of the Vermont Institute of Community and International Involvement. And tonight we are discussing with an amateur, what I would call an amateur expert on Bitcoin. My guest tonight, please ask her lots of questions and she will attempt to answer them. This woman is named Amy Stevenson. She's really a microbiologist, but and she has a PhD from where? UBM. From UBM in microbiology. However, she has become a real kind of serve put it that way of Bitcoin. And more importantly, how Bitcoin effects or could have political, social and economic consequences for the whole world. She is more or less an amateur, but she's the person I know that has studied the situation of Bitcoin and knows more about it than anybody I know. And most of us, including me, are really puzzled by it and very interested in it at the same time. So the format this evening will be, I'll introduce Amy and she'll say a couple words, but then I hope to open this up for community discussion. And I will try to ask her questions also that occur to me, but please feel free and you would be free with interruptions also, right? If you want it. Yeah. Okay. So if anybody also wants to interrupt her and ask her questions as we go along, that's also perfectly fine. Most of us probably don't know much about Bitcoin. So ask all the questions you want and Amy will attempt to answer them. I'm not going to be able to answer them, but I certainly will be able to ask questions. Okay. So here's Amy. Are you gonna say? Well, I guess I just say how you got interested. Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. I started looking into Bitcoin because I guess it may be a year and a half ago, my two teenage boys told me that they bought Bitcoin and I'm like, how would you buy Bitcoin? And they're like, Oh, through this app called Coinbase. And Coinbase is one of the more popular exchanges out there, providing Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. And that's how I just, I got interested and I wanted to invest in it myself, but I really wanted to understand more about it and how it worked before I investigated or before I invested in it. And so I took a couple courses. I heard about Bitcoin on some podcasts, some other podcasts I've been listening to. And I took a cryptocurrency course, one on an online, you know, non-accredited situation called Renegade University. And then I took another course from this guy, John Bush, who lives in Texas and has been big time into cryptocurrency. And I actually feel like I need to go back and like review those courses again, because I probably understand so much more. But as they say in the Bitcoin world, I went down, you know, the proverbial rabbit hole. About Bitcoin. About Bitcoin. And I guess one of the other things that I realized is that Bitcoin is very different from other cryptocurrencies. Okay, let's stop there if you don't mind. Because now Amy's going to try to at least clear up for me. I don't even know what cryptocurrency really means. If any of the others do, that would be great. But I'm going to ask Amy to distinguish Bitcoin, cryptocurrency, and currency. Do any of us really know what currency is in the first place? We do because we have some of that and we use it. But we really don't know, I don't think, what money really is all about. So let's start, I guess, with you said, cryptocurrency. What is it? So ever since like the 70s, you know, beginning of computer science, there have been these ideas of creating a digital cash. Digital cash. But there are, there were always problems with that. And without getting into too much detail, there were several problems that needed to be solved. Like, you know, there's a double spending problem. So that, you know, you can guarantee that I didn't send it to you and send it to someone else and spend the same thing on Google to do two different people. And so, you know, it's been since then that, you know, from cryptography is a big part of it because, you know, if you're talking about a digital cash, a digital form of currency, you know, it has to be very secure. So that's why, you know, the cryptography portion of it, all Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies work on what's called a blockchain, which is just really a digital ledger system of transactions. Okay, but what's the difference in between that and real currency? Well, you want to call it real currency? Real currency like the USD, US dollar. Yeah, well, the US dollar is what, you know, a lot of Bitcoiners and cryptocurrency folks will refer to as a fiat currency. Fiat currency. Because since, you know, 1971, it has not been backed by gold. Okay, let's stop there again. Does everybody know what Amy means when she said it's not backed by gold? The US dollar used to be backed by gold, right? Everybody understand that? And why that's important? It's important because, you know, over the evolution of humans and, you know, ever since we started trading with one another, you know, when we were first trading, you know, it might be barter, like I have some apples and you have some oranges, it's a bad example. And I have to want your apples and you have to want my oranges, so we have to both, you know, want the same thing that the other person has. So that's how, you know, currency evolved where they were collectibles, things of value that were agreed upon that had value. And, you know, over you know, several hundreds, even thousands of years, I would say, you know, people settled on gold being one of these precious things that everybody felt had value for a number of different reasons that I brought actually a book with me because I always forget there are several different characteristics of what makes, you know, a good currency, good store of value. It's got to be durable, portable, fungible, fungible, meaning that, you know, one ounce of gold is just like another ounce of gold. It's got to be verifiable, you know, like you've got to be able to determine that's real gold, not fake gold. And it's got to be divisible, you know, gold you cut into coins and small portions. It's got to be scarce. That's really important. That's part of what differentiates both gold and Bitcoin from fiat currency. As fiat currency, as we know, is not scarce. They just print more of it when they need it. Okay, we stop. Okay. So everybody understands what Amy is saying, that the US dollar used to be based on gold. In other words, you could take your US dollars and take $35 and buy an ounce of gold. So that gold was the backing of the US dollar. That disappeared. The gold standard, the United States went off the gold standard. Anybody know when? In other words, the United States said, we're going to forget about this gold stock. We went off the gold standard in 1973, when President Richard Nixon decided that we couldn't finance the Vietnam War unless we had lots and lots of dollars. We didn't have that much gold, however. So he just said, we're going to just print all this money. We're going to forget about the gold, and we're going to print money as much as necessary in order to finance the war in Vietnam. So we no longer have gold backing the dollar, which means that when we were on the dollar, the amount of dollars that the government put out had to be backed up by an amount of gold that was stored at Fort Knox. Richard Nixon said, forget it. We can't do war that way. So we're going to eliminate the gold standard. After that, the government just took charge of printing money, and that is fiat money. That has no backing whatsoever, as far as I can tell. Is that true? I mean, that's why we needed the gold standard, right? Okay, gone. So now we're talking about fiat currency, and what Bitcoin is seems an alternative to that. It is, though. Some people would argue that Bitcoin's also fiat, because what's backing Bitcoin, right? Nothing. But similar to gold, and while that took millennia, in this digital age, things do move a lot faster, Bitcoin's been around since, I think, 2011. I think it was 2011, was it 2009? I'm sorry, I don't have the exact details, but it's been around for 10, 11 years now, and there is a growing consensus that Bitcoin has a similar value all into its own, which is really what we humans attribute to it. Is it purchasing power? Well, if we go back to all of these characteristics, the last two were established history and censorship resistance. Bitcoin probably fares the least well on the established history, because it has only been around for 10 years or so. But it is very durable. It's very portable, much more so than gold, because gold is heavy, and it's hard to transport it, and there's risks in transporting it, that someone will take it from you. So it's got issues that way. Bitcoin's fungible, it's verifiable, it's very divisible. In fact, there's a unit of one Bitcoin, I think, right now is worth somewhere of like $38,000, $40,000, and one Bitcoin, but it's divisible to nine decimal points. So actually, there's a smaller unit of the Bitcoin, like there is a cent to a dollar, there is a Satoshi, and it's named after Satoshi Nakamoto, who is the inventor of Bitcoin. So it has all of these properties, and it's scarce because there's only ever going to be 21 million Bitcoins mined by virtue of how it was programmed, how the software was programmed. And every four years, the number of Bitcoins that the miners are rewarded with is half. So actually, close to 19 million of those Bitcoins are already mined and in circulation, and the last Bitcoin is going to be, it's projected to be mined sometime in the year 2140. What is it, though? Exactly. It's not a commodity that you can put your hands on, correct? Right, I know, and I think that's what bugs people the most about it is because it's got this abstract aspect to it. So the way that- How do you acquire it? Okay, see, you can acquire it in a lot of different ways. I mean, the most common way is to go to one of these exchanges. What is an exchange? An exchange is a place where you can change your fiat dollars into Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency. Is it a physical? No, it's a digital thing. So it's like an app. You download on your phone or it's a website you go to on your computer and you set up an account with the exchanges and the current regulations in the United States. They're what is known as KYC, know your customer. So if you go and purchase it through the exchanges, what is it called? The exchange? Yeah. Well, the most popular one is called Coinbase. Okay, so what do you do? Google it or something? Yeah, I think it's just Coinbase.com and it's an app you can download on your smartphone too if you have a smartphone. And then, you know, whatever the going rate is, you pay that amount plus some fee and it depends, the fee depends on the exchange, how much that's going to be. And that's how you purchase Bitcoin. And the way that you own your Bitcoin, there's a saying in the Bitcoin world, you don't own your Bitcoin if you don't have your keys or something along that line, no keys, no ownership. So these private keys are the mechanism by which you access and trade your Bitcoin. And, you know, you can use your Bitcoin to buy things, but the biggest, you know, advantage I see in Bitcoin right now is to use it as a hedge against the fiat USD, because our dollars are, you know, becoming more and more worthless. Okay, that's a complicated idea. Because of inflation, right? So if you buy a certain amount of Bitcoin with your fiat dollars right now, you know, that $100 that I might pay for a certain portion of a Bitcoin, you know, in five years, that same $100 USD might be worth $50, right? Maybe nothing. And Bitcoin over the course of, you know, the past 10 years has, you know, it's very volatile, which anything you invested, you actually wanted to be volatile because you wanted to go up, right? You want to invest in something that's a flat line. But you don't want it to drop. But it will go up and down. But if you are investing in it for the longer term, you know, for five, 10-year horizon or even longer, it, you know, is, I mean, I'm not, I can't say what's going to happen in the future. But by what has happened in the past, it seems like it will continue. It's been running continuously for 10 years with no hacking, no issues whatsoever. Except it goes down. Well, yeah, it can go down in price, you know, and that has to do with how many Bitcoins are being bought and sold and traded out there in the digital world. Hi, everybody. Really interesting conversation. I'm learning some new things about the mechanics of Bitcoin. But I think to this point that you just made, that was just made about the volatility of the price and how it is trending up that goes up and down, up and down. You know, in my mind means it's not really a money. It's like an alternative to invest buying a stock. And so the money is still what, you know, the Federal Reserve, the United States supplies, not a competitor to Federal Reserve notes into my way of thinking. Wait a minute. Can I say something for a minute? A competitor? A competitor to money? I don't see it as a competitor to the Federal Reserve notes because if, you know, I'm very much a Keynesian economist and Keynes defines money as the riskless asset. And you need a capitalist system needs a riskless asset to kind of as the anchor of everything else. And Bitcoin is not that. Bitcoin is something else. So what was your question? I'm just making the, it's not a question. Oh, okay. Sorry. It's a point. Well, go ahead. I mean, to that, I would answer that, you know, the United States and the Federal Reserve is looking at doing, you know, a digital currency themselves. That would be very different from Bitcoin. That it would be controlled. It's not, it's not blockchain. It's just a theory. It's proof of stake. And the problem with that is that the consensus can be cheated. And so that means that it can be centrally controlled. One of the best things about Bitcoin and the Bitcoin blockchain is it's completely decentralized. It cannot be shut down. And it cannot be controlled by one party. And, you know, I would say that right now, a lot of governments, not just ours, are looking to get rid of cash. And, you know, with getting rid of cash, we get rid of privacy. We, you know, we get rid of, you know, our control over our own money, because, you know, moving to a central bank digital currency, if your government isn't happy with, you know, what you're doing or what you're buying or things that they're tracking through your spending of their central, you know, their cryptocurrency, they can just shut it off. And I don't think that's a good position to be in. And I think that's why people see Bitcoin as being really valuable, because I think at some point, if we do have enough central bank digital currencies, there are going to be certain things that you can only buy with Bitcoin. So I would also say to Jane's point, you know, whether it's a currency or not, I think it is a currency and that in some places in the world, and even in the United States, you can buy things with it, but it's more of a store of value, I'd say, than anything else. And the way that, you know, the big way that, like say, El Salvador adopted it as its currency. And so the thing that's making that possible is this thing called the lightning network, which runs on top of the Bitcoin blockchain and it allows for off-chain transactions, because when a block of transactions is added to the blockchain, it happens about every 10 minutes. And it's through additional blocks being added that really secure those transactions that happened before, because it's very, almost impossible to go back and then change that. So that takes too much time. So they have this lightning network that works through an app that you put money in and you can do all these exchanges, like to buy a cup of coffee or, you know, spend your Bitcoin on whatever grocery is anything that you normally spend on. And then it only settles when you close out that node on the lightning network. And you can continue to add, you know, money to your lightning wallet as needed from fiat to Bitcoin. So the very cool thing about that, I mean, one of the cool things, because I want to get to your point about, like, how is this helping people, like in countries where they don't have access to stable currencies or even where they're being sanctioned by the US? So with El Salvador, you know, it's a very high percentage of, like, 70 or 80% of their gross national practice remittances from the United States. Okay, so what's a remittance? A remittance is like someone in the United States sending money to a family member in El Salvador. Right, but that's in cash, US dollars. They usually do it, yes, through, like, Western Union. Right. And that's not even an option, Cuba anymore. No. So in that scenario, if I have my mom living in El Salvador and I want to send her $100, you know, I go to a Western Union, they take their cut out of it, which can be substantial, you know, it can be between 10 and 15%, at least. And I've heard even up to 30%. And then my mom has to go travel to wherever the closest Western Union is to her. And she's got to then take that cash out in, you know, whatever the El Salvador currency was. And she risks, you know, coming out of the Western Union, they know people coming out of the Western Union are carrying cash. So if you were someone wanting to take advantage of people, that's where you'd be waiting. Right. So it's a risk. So now with Bitcoin, I download the strike app on my phone, which is okay. I add my money in US dollars and it travels across the Bitcoin network and to the app on her smartphone, because a lot of people, you know, whereas accessing a Western Union can be difficult, a lot of people have smartphones and internet access. I mean, that's becoming more and more prevalent. So then she gets the Bitcoin in her app and her wallet. That's what it's called, her wallet. It's not an actual physical wallet. No, it's an app on the phone, but they call them wallets. And then she can take that out of the app and deposit it, take what out of the app? She can convert it to El Salvador money, except El Salvador is all Bitcoin. But no, they have to go back and forth, I think between the two. It's my understanding. So it's in other words, you're sending cash to somebody. I think it's US dollars. You're sending purchasing power to someone through the internet. So it makes it safer, right, because the mom didn't have to go to the Western Union. It makes it easier because they didn't have to go to the Western Union. And it puts, you know, between 15 and 30% more money in their pocket to spend, you know, on things they need. Okay. So, and, you know, that to me is a huge advantage. And like in Venezuela, I read a, you know, a story recently about Venezuela, which has been subject to embargoes and blockades by the United States government, right? And often if people try to leave, if they're carrying any kind of currency or valuables, it's stolen. So this is a way, you know, you can cross a border with your Bitcoin, even if you don't have a smartphone, because there are, you know, for your wallet, there's always a recovery phrase, a mnemonic of 12 or 24 words. And if you memorize those 12 or 24 words, you get to where you're going, you get by yourself a smartphone, download the app, and you, you know, put in your recovery phrase and there's your money. Okay. It didn't get stolen. All right. So how would you, if you wanted to use Bitcoin to purchase something, how do you do that? Oh, okay. So I was kind of getting there. And then we got all sidetracked. So the app, it's similar to the app accesses the camera on your smartphone and it scans a QR code from the merchant. I know that people will. It's this. I don't know that I have one that I could show someone right now. You know, it's one of those little squares that has a pattern in it. On your computer. Yeah. And your camera, most smartphones recognize them. And that's how the, the QR code represents the address for the wallet that you either transferring the money to or from. Okay. All right. You're going to, you are going to mention how you purchase stuff. Right. So the merchant displays the address for their wallet as a QR code, like right on the counter underneath where you're buying the coffee. And they tell you how much it is and you put in like $2 and you hit send, you scan the QR code and it goes to that person's wallet. It's as easy as using a credit card, maybe even easier. Okay. So, but then what is, what is that to the person who receives it? Dollars or Bitcoin or what? That's the thing that I haven't gotten into the details in a while. There's actually a really good podcast called What Bitpoint Did. And the host of that podcast, Peter McCormick interviews the president of El Salvador, as well as the guy who is behind the strike app, whose name I'm not remembering either, but anyhow, they explain exactly how it works. And there is a reserve of Bitcoin that the country owns that, that, you know, because in that two seconds that it took me to send that Bitcoin, the price might drop or go up just slightly, right? It's not going to, of course, fluctuate hugely in two seconds, but that reserve of Bitcoin is evens that out for then converting it to dollars. Okay. So, so that my $2 that I sent to him is the two dollars he receives. Yeah. So, dollars, USD. Yeah, because they can put it back into dollars. Yeah. Okay. It can, it actually allows you to transfer between, I mean, that's a big issue is transferring between currencies across the world. And this is a solution for being able to transfer US dollars to another currency. Do you have a question? Yeah. So, once you invest, can you get it back? Your fiat? No, you can get it back. How? You just have to sell your Bitcoin to someone for fiat. Oh, okay. Yeah. Which, you know, can happen over an exchange. You can also do peer-to-peer. There's also Bitcoin ATMs where you can exchange dollars. Where are these ATMs? Well, usually big cities. We don't have one ever. I checked. With all of these exchanges, there's usually some sort of fees. So, it's always good to look into what the fees are. I mean, I'm not crazy about Coinbase. In the Bitcoin world, they call it stacking sacks if you kind of, you know, you do a purchase like every week to kind of cost average. So, for that, I would, or even large purchases, I'd recommend that this outfit called swan Bitcoin. Like swan the bird. Yeah. Okay. So, this is, you put money into Bitcoin. In other words, you purchase it with USD. Yes. And it's like an investment into Bitcoin. Yes. And then through your computer, you can transfer those Bitcoins other places to other people's wallets. Is that correct? And then they can transfer that Bitcoin in their wallet to a national currency. Yes. Is that right? And the same thing happens when you purchase something in a way? I mean, you can away. Yeah. Okay. All right. But all of this is on your phone or on the internet. Okay. Are there other questions or thoughts? Yeah, I've got one. How does the constant variability of the price of Bitcoin affect its actual value as a currency? What? How does the variability affect it? Well, I think that's one of the things that makes it, you know, that's what I was just talking about in terms of El Salvador having, you know, a Bitcoin Treasury so they can make up for those little differences in the transactions because it is volatile. So, it is one of the drawbacks of using it as a currency. I mean, I think eventually it will stabilize, but there are, you know, a lot of institutional investors that haven't got into Bitcoin that are starting to get into Bitcoin now. And so I think it really has, you know, a lot of upward growth and potential. But Barry, does your question kind of assume that the US dollar is not variable? Maybe one or two percent a year, but Bitcoin lost half of its value recently, didn't it? I think about 60 to 40. Yeah. But I would, I mean, doesn't also, maybe Jane would have an answer to this, doesn't also the USD kind of lose value when there's inflation? Yeah. Is am I wrong about that, Jane? You are not wrong. It loses purchasing power. That's what I mean. That's what I mean. I guess that it's not considered variable, right? But I just say, I just say, it's also not true that the quantity of fiat money is just unlimited, right? It is, that's what central banks do is they control the rate of growth of the stock of bank reserves, which is tied loosely to the rate of growth of money. And I think that the fall in Bitcoin this week was linked to very clear signs that the Fed is going to get serious about inflation. So what do you mean? They're going to, what do you mean? They're going to try to set prices, fix what? No, no one can fix prices in this economy. Right. And so when, when Biden talks about they're going to take on inflation, he was like, what the hell do you think a president can do about inflation? No, they're going to bring about an increase in interest rates and they're going to stop buying government debt and agency mortgage backed securities. And that's going to put upward pressure on both short-term and long-term interest rates, which will slow down the economy. Right now we've got supply chain problems combined with very strong levels of aggregate demand. And the only way to slow down that economy, I think is to slow down the growth of aggregate demand. The supply chain problems are not going to resolve until we really get out of the pandemic. But anyway, so I think there's a link between Federal Reserve policy and Bitcoin prices. And I think that it's thinking of Bitcoin as an inflation hedge, is I think a really good way to think about it. As an inflation, a hedge against inflation. There's a goal. I mean, gold is a hedge against inflation. So in a way, Bitcoin is a, is a competitor with gold or it's like a gold 21st century version of gold. Right. Can you explain that some more that it's a hedge against gold? No, no, it's a hedge against inflation. Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I kind of get that. Like land is a hedge, land, well located land, houses are like a good hedge against inflation. It's something an asset whose value will keep going up even as like inflation is going up. Yeah. And so it preserves the purchasing power. So it wouldn't be wise to hold all of your savings just as Federal Reserve notes, because they will erode in value and you'll end up, you know, you'll end up like Germany. Germany, when you're in the 30s. Well, yeah, that means that's hyperinflation. That was, yeah, yeah, there's plenty of examples of fiat money that, you know, aren't hyperinflation. Well, that's what I mean. So that when somebody is thinking that the US dollar is not variable, it is in a way, right. It's purchasing power is terrible. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, when the thing is it's always going to be worth its face value. That's what it means to be riskless. Right. Exactly. Okay, thank you. Thanks. Okay, other questions? Yeah, Robin here. Yeah, I'm pretty much as confused as I was when I started, I think I missed the detail about the birth of the Bitcoin, that you say there's a certain total amount. And who's in charge of that? And how, how does that have legitimacy? I'm sorry, I'm in such a basic. No, that's okay. I was understanding all this. That's where anybody starts. It's built into the code, which is, you know, open and open source for anyone to see, but it's built into the code that only 21 million bitcoins will be minted by the software program, essentially through the why? Because that's how the values, that's how the inventor set it up. And there's, you know, the inventor could have been one person or many people. People don't know. Satoshi Nakamoto is, you know, a pseudonym. It's not a, not thought to be a real person name. Satoshi Nakamoto and nobody knows exactly who or what group of people that might have been. Might have been one person or many? It could have been many. There was a whole cyberpunk group that that was involved. It was like a rock band. They just call them cyberpunks because they're, you know, into punk cryptography and coding and that kind of thing. And again, I really recommend that What Bitcoin Did podcast because it has a whole beginner series where people can learn about Bitcoin. This guy, Andreas Antonopoulos, is one of the best people to explain it, unlike me. But you're the best you have. But it was, I'm sorry. And I mean, you know, happy if people are interested to form a group where we can all kind of learn more together. I would love to do that. And I, that's the other thing I want to say is that I very much encourage people to, you know, take anything I say critically and go look into it yourself. But yeah, it's built in and nobody's in charge. That's actually the best thing. How do you take it down and shut it down? Robin? I'm sorry. Go ahead. How do you know that no one's in charge? Because that's by design as well. So the Bitcoin blockchain exists on, you know, nodes, mining nodes that are distributed across the world will no longer in China. China made Bitcoin mining and Bitcoin illegal because of course they're trying to put in their own, they are starting their own, you know, one. Yeah. What does mining mean? Mining? Mining is the process by which new Bitcoins come into circulation by which they're minted. So remember I said that what the blockchain is, is it's a ledger. And it's a ledger of every transaction that has ever occurred with Bitcoin since the beginning of Bitcoin. And transactions are added to the blockchain in blocks and blocks are added every 10 minutes. And all of this is part of the program. And what a miner does is it is using computer power, computer programming power, essentially to solve a puzzle. And all of the miners, all of the computers, the nodes are competing to solve this puzzle. And the one that solves the puzzle and adds, then they are the one that adds the next block to the blockchain. And they were rewarded with a certain number of Bitcoins. And when, you know, Bitcoin started, it was a very large number that the miners were rewarded with. And as time goes on, remember I mentioned the having, well, the rewards become less and less. But the value of those rewards are more. And so it attracts, you know, more people into mining. So it can't be shut down because the ledger, the blockchain ledger is stored on thousands of computers across the world. You literally have to shut down every single one of those computers to extinguish blockchain. No, I don't think so. I mean, you know, if something happened and we no longer had any electricity worldwide, we got bigger problems. You know, the reason that that might happen that mining, you know, what's happening in China was because they have a surplus of hydroelectric power. And of course, Bitcoin miners, you know, this gets into the whole electricity thing, they're looking for the cheapest electricity they can get. And so they're looking for places where there's excess power being produced that, you know, excess electricity, but that would normally just be wasted. But they can buy it then at a very cheap price. And that's the way that, you know, you can keep the cost of the mining operation down. So it was outlawed in China? Yeah. Why? Because they have their own central digital currency that they're introducing. And I mean, I don't know for sure, but I think they want to have the controls with their central digital currency. Okay, that's important what you said, central, correct? Yeah, whereas Bitcoin is decentralized. That's why I also, not only was Bitcoin the first, so that really makes it different from other cryptocurrencies. But the other leading cryptocurrency you'll hear about is Ethereum. And Ethereum is without getting too technical. It's a different system. So that whole mining and being able to solve a puzzle, they call that proof of work. So they got to work? Well, that solving that puzzle was essentially how you know, you're validating the transactions that you're adding to the blockchain. Okay. Whereas Ethereum is called proof of stake. So it's a different method that I guess without getting too technical, which I don't even know that I have it all down yet. But the point is, is that that the proof of stake, it can be controlled by a group of, you know, state validators that get together and decide they want it to, you know, they want to manipulate the system. And frankly, I mean, it's, you know, I think part of the problem with capitalism is that it is so interfered with and, you know, controlled in many ways by the central bank. Monica, I noticed that you're here. Do you have some questions? No, but I was just wondering, I was thinking about what Jane said that, so even if you kind of thought of it as an investment, it's still a safer one because you're getting out of the US currency, right? Like as opposed to investing in a US corporation that's affected by the US dollar and the US market. Yeah. So I took a portion of my 401k or 403b or whatever it was, my retirement, and I rolled it over into a traditional IRA. And then I'm, you know, I'm just going to pay the taxes because then I further rolled it over into a Roth IRA. I'm paying the taxes now and then I bought Bitcoin with it. So now that whole Bitcoin as it grows and value, you know, will not be taxed or grow tax-free. Right. How can that go tax-free? Because you put it, you pay the tax on the money before you put it in. It's how Roth IRAs are set up. Jane, help me if you know, that's how they're set up. And there are, you know, now crypto IRAs where you can buy Bitcoin or any other ones. Has George Soros bought a lot of Bitcoins? I don't know. Dunno. Why do you think so? Because he's a manipulator of currency. That's how he got wealthy as I understand it back in the day of manipulating currencies in different countries or different corporations until they fell on their face. And so I'm just wondering whether, whether someone like him would be, should be involved with it or not. Who knows? Are there other questions? Because I want to ask Amy also about the long-term consequences of Bitcoin. Why? Okay. So let me explain how I got interested in Bitcoin. One of my favorite journalists is Glenn Greenwald, who is a journalist from Brazil. And he's also a lawyer and a constitutional scholar. And he is really a critic, I guess, and an analyst of U.S. militarism and U.S. abroad. He did an interview with a man who was a proponent of Bitcoin. And that man, he interviewed him. I don't know if Glenn Greenwald is a believer or not, but he interviewed a man who clearly was. And that man said that if Bitcoin became really usable and used widely, it would really be a threat to the hegemony of the American dollar and therefore could actually put a curb on militarism abroad. And this guy had, this guy was really interesting from that respect, that if American dollar had a serious competitor, perhaps it would mean a different world and maybe even a more peaceful one. But I wanted to at least ask Amy to comment on that, that Bitcoin could have serious social, political, and economic consequences, right? Yes. And anyway, so if anybody else has other questions, so well, I know that I know I'm just going to ask Amy to explain that first. And then if anybody like Barry has criticisms of that, that would be fine. But I have a question too after. And you have a question also, Monica. Okay, Amy. So I think the biggest one of the biggest things about that point is that Bitcoin takes out the middleman. There's no need for a trusted third party such as a bank. Such as a bank. Okay. Yeah. I mean, you have to, I think know what you're doing because you can't go to the bank and say, oh, I messed up that transaction. Can I get that back? So you really got to be able to have a grip on the tech and how to send and receive Bitcoin and how to exchange it. But it's not that difficult. But there's no, it's a trustless system peer to peer. And that is, it's peer to peer, that example I said, of sending money to a mom in El Salvador. And that's really what is allowing a large portion of the world's unbanked population. What's an unbanked population? An unbanked population is a population that, I mean, we in America, I think 30% of our population is unbanked, meaning they don't qualify for a check in person. They can't get one at a financial institution. And, you know, obviously, there's other countries where they don't even have, you know, stable currencies, or the currencies are highly like in Cuba, they're very much manipulated. And the government takes advantage of currency. Well, you know, welcome. Yes. Yeah. So I mean, they this new current, I brought a couple of these articles by Alex Gladstein. That's a guy. Yeah. Inside. He's written about eight articles that are on Bitcoin magazine.com. This one's called Inside Cuba's Bitcoin Revolution. And the other one's called Check Your Financial Privilege. And they, you know, give some really good examples. I think that people who don't have access to currencies like C, almost immediate value in Bitcoin, and what it can do in terms of, you know, being a sort of value and being able to have purchasing power. I mean, in Cuba, they are, people are using Bitcoin to purchase things. Really? Yes. And a lot of countries, you know, outside the United States. As long as they have a smartphone. Right. You do need a smartphone and be able to download a wallet. Okay, let me ask you one more question, particularly regarding Cuba. Of course, Cuba also has, suffers from the sanctions of the United States in the first place. And the United States has a blockade of Cuba and an embargo against Cuba. Cuba cannot, for instance, get credit, cannot use banks very well in the international market. So this is interesting to me beyond the remittances question. Right. In a way. Because this article talks about how this MLC currency from, you know, the Cuban government is the only way to officially top up your MLC account is with foreign hard currency, which makes it really hard, right? So how do you get foreign hard currency? You know, you may pay someone in Miami that knows someone in Panama that can, you know, bring you a duffel bag of cash to Havana, right? I know about that. It's very difficult. Yeah. So the coin solves that because it allows, it allows, you know, access to other currencies without having to go through banks and side stepping the government. Right. Right. Okay. So, okay. So anyway, Barry, you had a question. Yeah. The first question I have is these thousands of computers around the world that are keeping the ledger. Who's paying for that? Who pays for the ledger? Well, the miners pay fees for the electricity that it costs to do that. Okay. So the mining is not just solving a puzzle. It's also maintaining the ledger. Yeah. I mean, yes. Okay. And the second is the bigger issue is the CPU is required to solve the puzzle. All right. The second question is all it would take, okay, if Bitcoin threatens the United States ability to collect taxes, destroy privacy, and promote warfare around the world, don't you think they're going to, do you think they're going to take that, the United States government is going to take that sitting down? Or will they do something like take over the internet within the United States to destroy it? All it would take, all it would take is a verifiable threat from the United States government to start a panic. Right? I mean, I don't know. I'm just asking. Sorry. That has already happened a number of times. However, there was the interesting interview by Glenn Greenwald, which I found the title even rather interesting was why Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton both oppose Bitcoin because it does seem in some way that the United States government and the United States elites want to prevent people from using Bitcoin. And that's what I'm saying. And somehow it's a threat to the powers that be. And that's what I'm trying to get at. I'm not certain I understand it totally, but that was my question. But anyway, Monica had a question also, right? Yeah. So you're saying there's a set amount of Bitcoin. Does that mean only a set amount of people can use it? Or like what if all of a sudden all the Americans, we all went, Hey, wait a minute and tried to do it, could we? Or is or can only a set amount of people get in on it? I guess is what I'm saying. Yeah, I don't think it's limited at this time. No, I mean, anybody could can purchase at this point. Okay. There hasn't been liquidity issues that I know of. I mean, it could be in the future. I don't know. The scarcity piece of it is to create value. Just like US dollars, it's up to the Federal Reserve to decide I guess how many dollars to print, which right now seems unlimited. And because it is limited, it makes the right essentially inflation for this Eric. Yeah, I don't know if you guys can hear me, but when I look at Bitcoins, I think about the tulips in Poland. There's some kind of speculation because the scarcity also is something that maybe was done on purpose that at some point it comes rare and people rush again. There's no actual production of, for example, other currency, normal currencies, hard currencies are bad. Like nothing. At least with some production, if your country sells enough t-shirts or whatever, there's something tangible. But in this case, there's nothing tangible. And like a bunch of computer or peer to peer, I mean, would it be a Ponzi scale or how can we make sure that it's not a Ponzi scale? Oh, and by the way, there are a lot of multi-tier marketing Ponzi scheme things out there. So like beware, don't go near those. If anybody's trying to sell you on that sort of thing, that's probably not a legit way to buy Bitcoin. I think Eric's question, though, is Bitcoin a Ponzi scheme? I know. I mean, I don't think so. But do your own research. I mean, I guess I've been studying it and listening to people and reading articles and reading books. I brought like Bitcoin magazine. This book that I have is a really good one called the bullish case for Bitcoin by DJ Boyapati. It started out as a long form article and then he's made it into a book and it's a really good explanation. Another like classic is the book of Satoshi, which has all of the writings from Satoshi Nakamoto, who, by the way, is no longer around and has millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin in his wallet that is no longer accessible by anybody. So there's actually less than 19 million in circulation right now because people have lost the keys. They bought Bitcoin back when it was a $5 thing to buy a Bitcoin. And then a few years later, it's worth a thousand that's worth Bitcoin. And they're like, where's that hard drive? Where's that old computer? So I would say it's not a Ponzi scheme. I don't know what it is. I don't know even what you mean by that, Eric, but maybe it's too late in the evening to discuss that. Well, where there's nothing in there. The feeling that you're putting fiat currency into it, which is this tangible thing, and then it's this abstract digital currency, right? So it feels like what are you getting for it? But what you're getting is a Bitcoin that you can own sovereignly is that, you know, if you bought it the right way, the government doesn't know can't take it away. If you want to cross the border, you memorize 12 words and, you know, set up your phone on the other end. They can't confiscate it. So I think it has a lot of value. I mean, I think it's interesting. My portfolio is spread out. It's not all in Bitcoin. You know, I think it's good to have a diverse portfolio of your assets as much as possible. Yeah, when it comes to Ponzi scheme, the first ones are the ones who cash in most of it, and then boom, the last one's when it crashes. So yeah, when it crashes, to whom you go to ask for money? In the case of Maddox, you go to Maddox or, you know, the US government at least can pinpoint the source of your thing. But in the case of the Bitcoin, to whom you go, if by any chance, Bitcoins, you know, fall. I mean, but isn't it like any other investment? It just rises and falls, isn't it? I mean, speculation, because like, yeah, for example, the tulips in the boss in Poland, middle middle age, I think, it was just tulips. People gave like a bit like a high value to a simple tulip. It seems as good as gold. And then one day, you know, boom, I mean, so I mean, to your point, you know, I'm convinced Bitcoin will continue to rise in value and will, you know, remain as robust as it has been. But in 2017, you know, there was a whole lot of, you know, what they call forks. And, you know, forks in the coding where people would take a fork off of the blockchain and create, and with the Ethereum-based ones, Ethereum, I don't even know all the technical stuff, but the point is, is that people created all sorts of crypto currencies, all sorts of coins, and they would do these initial coin offerings. And it's exactly what you say, where, you know, the people would sell the coin and they wouldn't always be sincere about what the coin was for or what it was going to do. And it would be like a pun. So I think that that can be a reality with crypto currencies. And you want to be really, you know, that's why I feel Bitcoin is different than other crypto currencies. Because people get there with the, you know, the hope to get like a lot of coins. Yeah, that's what they do with any investment. Can the whole world get a lot of money? I mean, like being like in economics, I think like it's clear, you know, once I get money, the other one loses. And then it's called capitalism. Yeah, it's called capitalism. That's right. Even so. Capitalism, you know, the, I mean, the use of cheap labor and slave man, you know, rises, maybe the profit, but organically, can you make like an exponential profit? I don't know. I don't, I have no idea because I've never done it, frankly. But I'd say capitalism is pretty crippled by the involvement of, you know, a lot of power being centralized in a small portion of the, you know, the people on this planet and central banks. And, you know, so if Bitcoin can provide value and access and, you know, control to those folks that haven't had access to it, then I say, you know, more power to it. I think that might be, you know, and there's also other things that the blockchain technology can really help make very transparent like governance and voting. You know, there's also social media platforms being built on the Bitcoin network on blockchain. This social media app called Zion. And, you know, it will be decentralized so that, you know, if you say something that the head of Twitter doesn't like, they can't just shut your account or lock you out. You know, and I think the more we can have systems where the power is decentralized and, you know, among the people rather than just a few, I mean, it's, I think it's time for that. No kidding. Well, we wouldn't use that word in polite language. But more, yes, yes, I think what, yes, less government, less essential, less, put it this way, less centralized banks, less centralized government is probably not a bad idea. Okay, any questions? Robin, last, yeah. What is, two things, could you say again, the most basic website or something to read about to try to understand that? Yeah. Second, wait, and my second point is I have to leave because there's a Zoom conversation about airport expansion here in Burlington. Yeah. Yeah. Seven o'clock. So I will have to jump off, but what is the best? So the website, one of the websites I would go to is whatbitcoindid, like onephrase.com. And the other one is bitcoinmagazine, onephrase.com. Okay. And also, I mean, even though Coinbase isn't my favorite exchange, they had, and I assume that's Coinbase.com, they have a lot of very short articles that explain complex topics and really easy to digest ways. So I would recommend them to, I just won't recommend buying my fifth point. Thank you. Okay, bye, Robin, because I would like to zoom into that one to the airport. Thanks, by the way. But before we end, I might thank you all for coming, and I especially want to mention for Jane Nodell. Thank her for her economic expertise. Jane is a professor of economics at UVM, and she's agreed to do a session with us in March on whatever she wants to. But I've asked her to talk a little bit about inflation and what is inflation and what is going on with our present economy, which doesn't seem to be in such hot shape. Anyway, thanks, Jane. Thanks, Monica. And thank you all also for being here. Next week, we are going to do a report from a colleague of ours, a report from another American Republic from Costa Rica during this time of a pandemic, just to see another view on what's happening in other countries about the current status of the virus and the pandemic. So, but anyway, thank you all, and we'll see you next week and in March, when Jane will be back with us. Thank you all. See you later. Bye.