 Hello everybody and welcome to the Bitcoin show. This is a live CES consumer electronic show 2012 edition and we have an amazing opportunity to have the cast members from The Good Wife. You've heard of The Good Wife on CBS, everybody watches it and everybody in the Bitcoin world knows that there's going to be a Bitcoin episode this Sunday at 9 p.m. eastern time. So we have with us Nicholas Flower and Robert Taylor. So stay tuned. Welcome to the Bitcoin show. This is Bruce Wagner, you know. And I am live here at CES, Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. And I just arrived late last night. But we got the most incredible coup because everyone knows that, as I said, The Good Wife on CBS is doing a major episode all about Bitcoin. It's called Bitcoin for Dummies is the title of the episode. And they're going to talk about Satoshi and all kinds of stuff. But anyway, we got a major coup because we have with us some of the cast members from The Good Wife. And so with us are Nicholas Flower and Robert Taylor. They're in the studio in New York. I'm in Las Vegas. Hey, guys. Bruce, we're actually taking over. We're the hosts today. Yes. You're the host. That's great. And I'm the guest. So you can ask me questions. Go ahead. I also want to make clear, Nick is a cast member. I was standing in that day when we met. So I'm not a cast member. So you're not a regular cast member, but you're standing in. Well, you're in the cast that day. Is that it? No, no, no. Only Nick. He's the guy that's going to get the credits on the show. Oh, okay. You're in the cast. Cool. I'm sorry. Okay. I've already been told to ask, obviously, the obvious question. What is it like to work with Julietta Margielis? How do you say your last name? Well, it was really great. She was very nice when I got on set the very first moment. It was pretty funny. I didn't recognize her. You know, we went in for a rehearsal and we started it up. Jason Biggs and David Fur, and she interrupts the scene. So here she comes and she's not in costume yet. She hasn't done costume or makeup. She comes in and does her lines and I'm like, oh, I wonder why her stand-in is reading her lines. Then she introduces herself. It was the straight hair too. I grew up watching E.R. and so I have this idea of her with curly hair. It was kind of embarrassing, it really was. But she was very, very nice. She was very accessible and introduced herself and just was totally normal. Very, very relaxed, funny. That's how I like my stars to be hot and accessible. That's all you need to be. She was talking with people on set and just being really nice. She wasn't like she needed everyone to know that she was on set. She just kind of was on set. It was just living and doing her job. That's great. That's how people should be. People are just people anyway. People that are full of themselves are just full of themselves. We're going to come back to the gossip and dish the dirt. I want to know about Bitcoin. Had you ever heard of Bitcoin before you were headed this script? No, I had not. You guys? I had not. Robert, I had talked with you and I found out you were already a Bitcoin fan. When did you find out about it, Robert? I don't know specifically the date but I do remember being in California and I think it was either late 09 or early... No, I feel like it was somewhere mid or late 09 is when I first heard about it and I didn't get really into it until it got very close to reaching parity with the dollar. It's funny how we measure Bitcoin time by the value of Bitcoin. When it was $7, that's when I got $1.98. It was so funny. When it hit $30, I bought it at $30 and sold it at $1. Nicholas, how long ago were you headed? The first time you heard the word Bitcoin then? A few weeks ago? Yeah, we shot the episode maybe a month ago and I was handed the script maybe a week before we shot the episode and so I had very little time to do my research I did and kind of got the general overview of... It's obviously been around for a while now to pick up some speed but yeah, I found it really, really interesting. I was talking to Robert earlier. I find it so interesting that it's really hard to counterfeit. I think that's pretty cool. But yeah, I was handed the script a week before. I knew nothing about it. So I did my research and kind of just jumped in. I can ask him a couple of questions. Sure. How about Jason Biggs? I thought he was super down to earth. Jason Biggs was really cool. One of my favorite moments on set, well not on set just in the experience was my first interaction with Jason Biggs. I had to be at the van at 7.30 in the morning in like Midtown and we were just to be driven to the studio and no one's really around. It's kind of just the city's just kind of sleeping still and I see a van and it has the sign that says the good wife and there's just two people in the van. It's the driver and the passenger and the passenger, his window is down and I start walking up and the passenger is like, Nicholas Flower? And I'm like, yeah, it goes Jason, Biggs. My mind is blown. And so I got in the van and just the three of us kind of just rode to the studio together and it was funny. I didn't want to talk to him too much because it was 7.30 in the morning. We're all kind of groggy just having our morning coffee. But I mean, he dresses like in these casual homeboy jeans and I think he's got something with a backpack and a grungy jacket. He's just really chill. He's really, really cool. And I thought it was really interesting seeing him kind of, I mean, I don't want to say starstruck, but a little starstruck with Bob Balaban. I mean, you know, Bob Balaban, it's Bob Balaban. And they had never met before and so I thought that was really cool to see him being like, around someone who he really admired. Who does Bob play in the episode? Bob plays a, well, I don't want to give it away. He's a reoccurring character now. This is his second appearance on the show and he plays my boss. Nice. Yeah, I guess I just haven't seen it. Look at his character's name. I think we got him back. Hey. So Nicholas, when you were handed this script and it said Bitcoin in it, you had never heard of the word Bitcoin? Did you have any idea what it was? I had no idea. The only thing I really knew from the very beginning was my character, a federal agent from the Treasury, was very nervous about this strange online currency that had been created and my job was to basically nail the creator. And so from then I just kind of Googled it and did a little research and found a bunch of different topics on it, from Wikipedia to YouTube shows to everything and it was really clear to me that it's not just some passing trend, it seems. So you knew that it was actually something real, it wasn't completely fictional. Yes, I did. It was real, okay. And so Bitcoin, because somebody had said, like, oh no, that's a real thing. I mean, I literally just Googled it. I didn't really know what it was and actually the original... Did you hit it in the script and you Googled it? Is this real? The original title was different. It was called Finding Mr. Bitcoin. Kind of a play on Finding Mr. Goodyear. Right, exactly. So... So you play the role... I can't hear Robert, but... When you... It depends the phone back and forth. It's crazy. So you play the attorney who has the client, Satoshi, and you're protecting his identity. Is that right? No, I'm actually a federal agent from the Treasury who I'm one half of a pair of federal agents who's very nervous about Mr. Bitcoin himself. And they're basically after... We're kind of aware that Jason Big's character is an online lawyer, and we suspect that his client is Mr. Bitcoin. Mr. Bitcoin. Yeah, that's actually the original... I don't know if I'm supposed to say that, but that was the original title of the episode was... I don't think they're changing titles. Finding Mr. Bitcoin. That's funny. I like Bitcoin for dummies. I like that better, too. Our website is... They don't get sued by the For Dummies book series, but that's okay. It's all good. That's CBS's problem. So when you Googled it, and you already knew it was a real thing, what was your first impression about it? Does this seem like... Did it seem like this is a real thing? You know it's a real thing, but this is a growing movement, or did it seem like a real off-the-wall specialty kind of thing? Well, you know, that's really interesting, because when I Googled it, I definitely found a multitude of topics on it, and I would say the first three were Bitcoin and Ponzi scheme. Ponzi scheme, Ponzi scheme. And that was the first thing that entered my brain when I read about it, and so I definitely was approaching it, thinking like, okay, this is probably passing quickly, but then as I read on and kind of found out about all the investors and how many people were involved and how serious it is, could kind of see that it's going to be around. It looks like it's going to be around for a while. Yeah. And then it's not a Ponzi scheme, obviously, because by definition a Ponzi scheme is that the new investor's capital that they put in goes to the old investors, so obviously it's not a Ponzi scheme. But people like to throw those words around because they don't know what it is. It's brand new in the history of mankind. It's never existed before, so they try and put it in a box that already has a label, so they'll put it in Ponzi scheme or MLM or all kinds of crazy nonsense, but it is definitely not that. And people love to... Sorry to interrupt. I just was going to say people fear what they don't understand when it's new like that. It's scary. Yes, that's right. That's for sure. They do. I mean, like I always say, this is really new in the history of mankind. There's never been a currency that's completely decentralized and limited in quantity. It's not issued by any bank or government or corporation. This is really, really unique, so of course the good wife is very timely with its topics, everything from Occupy Wall Street to now Bitcoin because it's in the news. Initially, I didn't realize how big it was. It kind of seemed like your standard Internet bashers, your trolls just kind of lingering around. And as I did more research, I realized that the community was very large and as a new community, it's kind of amazing how fast it's grown and how much it's expanded and picked up speed. And yeah, so that was really, really interesting to me. Oh, I didn't say anything. Yeah, actually, that's what we were just talking about. I think that that probably will in some way help the market or help the community. That's for sure. Once this comes out, once the episode airs on Sunday, I think that you can expect something like that. I'm definitely not an investor, nor am I someone to share much of an opinion on the market itself. But I would say that if it's so popular right now, and then you take a show like The Good Wife, which is an Emmy and Golden Globe-winning show, which a lot of people watch, I think that it's going to really raise a lot of curiosity for the people that have no idea what it is. And what a great title for that, you know, Bitcoin for Dummies. What a great title to get people even more interested. And this is right after, yeah, that wouldn't surprise me at all. Who knows, you know, after all this, I might go out and get some Bitcoin. Yeah, please do. There's no telling, really. Bruce, I want to say that, you know, there's always the possibility there that there can be over-speculation because of this show and the people that are in the community can, I mean, there's always the foreseeable possibility that there's a kind of a confirmation loop, a confirmation bias, and they might over-speculate the value of Bitcoins. But likewise, there's always a possibility that such a popular show like The Good Wife is just going to open an entire new community of people that are going to get interested and start investing in Bitcoin. So it's interesting to... Yeah, ultimately it's going to explode. Oh, wow, I know. I think you've made some predictions, right? You've made some... Especially if you're trying to do some quick investing, yeah. It seems like that... If it goes up to 70, I'm definitely pulling out. And it's gone. Well, I was telling you when we met that I made the decision to pull out at 30. I was like, this is good. And I sent all my money... This is a true story. I sent my money to Mt. Gox. And Mt. Gox did not give me a confirmation that they had my money yet. So I had a birthday party to go to in Brooklyn, so I left my house and I just left my computer. And then the next day, it went from 30 to 20. And I was like... I thought it's going to go back up one more time. And then I went to Vegas, where you are now, Bruce, and the Mt. Gox scandal happened. The hacking scandal. That was a hacking scandal. It caused a lot of, like, uncertainty in the Bitcoin. Right. So I'm still holding onto my Bitcoins. But I actually... My show on YouTube, which is Prax Girl, P-R-A-X-G-I-R-L, where we talk about the science of praxeology, we only accept Bitcoin donations right now, although there's people that are really pushing us to accept PayPal donations and other things like that. But we only accept Bitcoin donations, so I haven't cashed in any of those donations. Right. There's reasons for us to want to only accept Bitcoin. I mean, a lot of it had to do with Prax Girl herself valuing anonymity. You know, she's like an attractive girl and she gets a lot of, like, trolls and stalkers and stuff. And so there's a value in that you can't really find out who's behind it, although, I mean, I'm here, I'm the creator and all that. But I was going to say that the important thing that I wanted to say out of this whole thing is that I think everybody that is either looking to invest in Bitcoin or believes in Bitcoin for ideological reasons or any reason why you're getting in Bitcoin, it's always in your best interest to know as much as possible about what you're getting involved in. And that's why you should definitely learn about the science of praxeology and understand what money is. I'm not claiming Bitcoins are money, but they are definitely a medium of exchange. So you have to understand why do Bitcoins have any value at all and why is it that Bitcoins work when all these people try to put it down and all that? And mostly it's because the creators of Bitcoin, if it's one person or a group of people, they figured out how to display property rights in Bitcoins. We can distinguish that a certain Bitcoin belongs to one person as opposed to another person. The fact that you can't counterfeit Bitcoins is the way to show that there is some sort of property right in the abstraction, because really it's just a bunch of information. But that's what's going to make or break Bitcoin. As long as you can enforce property rights, there's going to be a value for it, for anonymity, for ease of use, for avoiding taxes, for all these different things, and it varies with who wants to get involved. But I just think it's important for people to really, you can never know too much about what you're getting involved in. So it's definitely worth it for people. If you want to learn about praxeology, go to Prax Girl. That's what I say. Go to Prax Girl's channel on YouTube. Yeah. Right. P-R-A-X-G-I-R-L. Prax Girl, and that's where we teach the science of praxeology and it explains these kind of things. It's the parent science of economics. It's the logic of all human action, but from it is where you understand what money is and how it comes to be and why it's important and all that. Yeah, we just did our episode on money last month. We talk about how money comes to be and why it's important. Our last episode, which actually came out on Monday, we talked about economic calculation and what that is and money serves as a common denominator that allows you to really determine the state that you're in as to whether you're going to be able to achieve an end or not. That sounds a little complicated, but it's not. All it means is that if you're in a barter economy, you have to determine the value of something as opposed to what you want to trade for it. If someone has oranges and you have an apple, you have to value the orange more than the apple and you have to perform this type of valuation with every single thing that you want to trade. Money just removes that. So something like Bitcoin, if it were to be the predominant medium of exchange in a society, an online society, for example, it allows people to basically do accounting ledgers and you can add and subtract and multiply and divide one good, which is Bitcoin, against all the other goods you want to buy. It's very simple. We think in these terms all the time with money. We do this all the time. We say, well, how much money do I have in my pocket and what am I going to be able to do with that money? It allows a human being to think in a certain mode that is not possible under barter. That's what we try to talk about. Essentially, it's still barter. The only thing is that now there's this common good that we all trade every... We all agreed upon it, right? Well, it doesn't come about through a central planner. That's what's so interesting about Bitcoin. I meant USD. USD, well, yeah. But you have to understand the history of why USD still has value. This is a concept that we have called the money regression theory. We have to understand how is it that pieces of paper that aren't backed by anything, is that people still accept them for payment for real goods and services. What you find is that actually... I think I have one in my pocket here. You find that once upon a time they were backed by this. Every dollar was actually... The piece of paper was a representation of one of these in the US Treasury which is where you're supposed to be from in the show. At some point, they stopped redeeming the pieces of paper for this. But there's a reason why the piece of paper still has a value because people were trading it beforehand. This is the logic that you have to understand. I was going to say, Bruce, the only reason that we're not going to cover Bitcoin on our show is because if Bitcoin does turn out to be some sort of trend that dies off. Because even if Bitcoin has a real use, it's foreseeable that some technology could surpass and replace Bitcoins. And if Bitcoin loses value on a massive scale and goes down to one cent again, the reason that we don't want to talk about Bitcoin on our show is because this in terms of propaganda would be seen as a win for the people that talk badly about Bitcoin and a lose for everyone that supports Bitcoin. So we don't want to get into that kind of game and we don't talk about Bitcoin aside from accepting donations because it is possible that the market can go in another direction and people are going to try to use that as some sort of ad hominem attack to show that praxeology is not valid or something. So we don't talk about that. But nevertheless, you can use the... Right. Yes. What we try to say is as opposed to people that talk about Bitcoin and talk about they use loaded terms like intrinsic value and things like that because a lot of people that try to... People that try to say Bitcoin is worthless. What they say is Bitcoin has no intrinsic value. For example, silver has value as a good because it's used in industrial uses and computers and things like that. But they say Bitcoins are just pieces of data and they don't have any intrinsic value. What we say is nothing has intrinsic value. So in a sense when you say people agree on it both you, Bruce and Nick said people agree on it I think in a sense that it does apply what that means is that when you act to trade your dollars for Bitcoins you're acknowledging in your action that you value Bitcoins. Yes. So that's all that we're concerned with. People are appreciating the market value of Bitcoins through their actions. People are buying and trading Bitcoins and they're using it to buy market goods and services. I play poker with Bitcoins because I can't play poker online with real... I was going to say real money with dollars anymore because the Obama administration shut that down. I was really into it. I really liked playing. I was too. Are you an online poker full tilt? Back in the day, yeah. All of them full tilt, party poker, poker stars. Yeah, I love that. I love that so I can't do that anymore but I can do it with Bitcoin. It's interesting. Don't tell me that. Let me pass you to Nick though because I've talked too long. I do want to say one thing about that though. It's not as though Bitcoin could have been money because Satoshi decided that it was money. When something becomes money it's really up to historians to look back at because it's not easily definable. There's a lot of historians that try to say that there was no money in certain societies of the past but then historians that apply what I consider to be proper economic theory are able to identify that things that wither away that we can't find anymore must have been money because of the size of the markets that we can see existed in this society. What I mean to say is logically bitcoins must have had value to people for some other use before they became money if in fact they are money they must have had some other use and what I believe that use was is a facilitator of exchange through primarily anonymous means I think that was the real I think that's the real interest it becomes money once people once the society treats it like money because what happens is rather than being traded for one cent at some point the value gets appreciated in this snowball effect because even people that didn't want to use bitcoins before and saw no value in the anonymity start to value it simply because enough people are using it as a medium of exchange. So all I'm trying to say is that it's not money from the get-go and it's possible and I wouldn't say whether bitcoins are money now or not but it's possible that at some point they became money but I don't know but the point is in the last two years people have started to use this device in order to buy goods and services sometimes illegal services drugs and things like that but it's not really up it's not Satoshi's decision or our decision when it becomes money it becomes money when the society treats it like money and societies I mean that's kind of a difficult term to define as well but I don't really care whether it's money or not all I care about is will it help me achieve my end if my end is to buy acid from on Silk Road then I need bitcoins no seriously Silk Road is this website it's like the amazon.com of drugs and you can buy illegal drugs there using bitcoins it's on this secret internet or whatever but I was going to say but gold has the same qualities to it and I was going to say I can if I have an interface provided to me by some bank in a libertarian society where there's no government I can essentially do the same thing with gold I can do e-gold exchanges and things like that and that's why I put the qualification that this would have to happen in a world where there's no government as long as there's a government I see that something like Bitcoin technology will have some sort of value to people but I'm just saying that in an anarchist society I don't think Bitcoin would last very long I think it would start to lose its value pretty quickly because you can do the same thing with gold and gold's been money much longer than Bitcoin so people trust gold well it's not a central business a warehouse that holds your gold for you but look Bruce you kept your Bitcoins in my Bitcoin and you lost them all you were using a service to protect your Bitcoins just like people with gold use banks to protect their gold so there's definitely a value in having that it doesn't matter what society you're living in I'm just making the case that in a world without government that Bitcoins wouldn't have any value and that's just to let everybody that's an investor know that's really the way you can gauge what's the future of Bitcoin is how tyrannical is your government getting are they raising your taxes beyond the point of no return then Bitcoin will continuously go up but if the government's collapsing because of debt ceilings and stuff and they start to pull austerity measures and destroy big parts of the government and liberalize their society then maybe Bitcoins go down then if they remove regulations on gold then suddenly everyone will switch to gold I don't know it's the job of people like you Bruce who are entrepreneurs to put your money where your mouth is and show us by example what's going to be the thing that makes everybody money but let me pass you to Nick I'm talking too much Nick is the guy on the commercial he's the one that arrests Jason Biggs or detains him or whatever I just said Nick is the guy on the commercial that puts his hands on Jason Biggs and takes him away I think Bitcoin has opened the same vulnerability as gold let's say you print your Bitcoins out on a piece of paper and then put it in a safety deposit box or in a safe in your house it can be broken into just like if you put gold in that safe I hear what you're saying but you should ask Nick how they train him to be a government agent because that's the real question they kind of just trusted me to do my own thing they didn't really give me any training other than the costume the costume was pretty great I have this really long overcoat and a really nice tie and it really put me in the... I even had a badge it was great but I think that if I were a government agent I would look like that we even had pieces apparently apparently we were supposed to have guns but never got to use them I guess we were always wearing our overcoats so they just never really gave them to us we were armed supposed to be armed Federal Treasury not FBI though all if Mr. Bitcoin starts to show his face then we'll pop out yeah or they'll just give me a call too you know after Sunday hopefully people will realize we'll come to the census and just call me yeah a little bit I think that... actually I don't want to get too much into the episode I don't want to give anything away but I did a little bit but not a ton you know that it seems a little bit like the episode is inspired by the New Yorker article maybe I'm... maybe it's inspired by something else I'm trying to think of... there was a New Yorker article where this guy goes to a convention and tries to find Mr. Bitcoin a reporter yeah I think that it may be based on that a little bit the episode there is a scene where it's in a convention it's in Chicago and you actually may or may not see you may actually meet the guy that created it you may not though I'm not going to say leave it in the air right I guess in this world this slightly fictionalized world it's illegal yeah there was a senator that was calling to make it officially illegal Chuck Schumer yeah okay so you heard that yeah so you know they I don't know I've never met the writers but I know that they are basically always working I know that did they change the script? they did we got script changes every day you know I'm under the impression that that's just always happening the way it goes because they're constantly in need of adjustments whether it be just for a location situation or a line adjustment or the fact that this character is not in the scene anymore so they need to take out lines or whatever it is but they are always always working and yeah they don't get a break fascinating yeah absolutely yeah so I guess we got to wrap it up here Bruce thanks for having us I guess that science of praxeology thank you so much