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This isn't your average business podcast and he's not your average Host. This is the James altucher show today on the James altucher show Anthony pump Leon. Oh, author of the newsletter. The pump letter is a must read daily. Read if you're interested in anything at all in Bitcoin or crypto. It's getting larger every year the whole Bitcoin Krypto.
Ecosystem, like it's part of the economy people are doing transactions and there are literally thousands if not tens of thousands of potential business models that are going to be built on top of this. We're still in inning 0 of Bitcoin and crypto and Anthony pop. Liana's newsletter is right. Now. The premier newsletter about this, the guys are really smart. I wanted him to answer, questions. I had about Bitcoin, he did it. He was great. And part one talks about why Bitcoin that question about, what are the
The use of Bitcoin. And where's it going? Is answers, surprise me. And part two is all the other stuff. Like what are the next big milestone that are going to happen for crypto? That's going to make crypto potentially explode. We talk about all the other at a very high level. We talked about like, defy tokens. And if T tokens and he explains everything in a way that was very unique to me. Here we go. This is part one. Here's Anthony pump. Leon. Oh,
You know, if you look at the history of the internet started around, you know, 1970 1969 with email and the Internet Protocol, but it was until you know, 20 years later that the web was developed and people outside of just the academic community and the defense department knew what the internet was. And even then it was all, it's just a fad, it's going to go away. People were saying that until like 2002-2003. Oh, it's just a fad. And now we're here we are. It's part of a
Buddy's life all day long every day and I feel like the same thing is happening with Bitcoin, but we're still in that phase where people are not sure if this is a fad or not and I think they understand Bitcoins are digital currency and that and and you know, the benefits of a digital currency over other currency. Like you don't have a bank in the middle. You don't. There's no. It was less fraud. There's no forgery. There's nobody who's deciding the value of your dollar by printing up, more of it, because that's already.
Regulated by the code. So they understand that. But I kind of want to just I want to ask you some basic questions and you're the expert. So I'm going to explain who you are in the intro, but so we don't have to do that. But you're the expert on your newsletter is probably the one or two newsletters. I read religiously every single day because you're always on top of what the latest is happening with Bitcoin. Your, it doesn't seem like you're obviously you like Bitcoin and crypto, but it's not like you're biased. It's not like you're hiding negative news.
See, in some other newsletters. It's always like it's always a vacation in crypto World in some other newsletters and hardness hard to be on vacation when it goes down. 80%.
Yeah. No,
I mean, that's the reality. Like, you know, I I've been a fan of Bitcoin since 2013 and I was on CNBC then talking about it. And of course I was on a lot in 2017, 2018 and then people were like all over me because Bitcoin went from 20,000 to 3,000. And now of course that is
It's have 56,000. Nobody contacts me at all about any of that stuff, but that's par for the course, but I'm a Believer and but sometimes I wonder if I want to ask you the questions. I have. Um, I'm always a beginner beginner's mind. And so let me start off by saying, well, first off. How did you get involved in crypto?
Yeah. I got started off with mining. My literally, in 2016 started to mine extra sort of with ether. And then over time started to build.
Larger and larger mining facilities. And then eventually migrated from GPU mining to Asics and Bitcoin kind of got much more involved in that side of the
market.
Okay, great. And so and then when you decide to start a newsletter,
I didn't start the newsletter until May of 2017 and I'm sorry, May of 2018. And I started it after being on Twitter for about a year and a half and really trying to grow the Twitter audience and it was explicitly because I was nervous that one day. My Twitter account would get shut down. And so I said, I probably need to have a second platform and email seem to be the one that had the least amount of risk. And then, from there, it kind of grew.
It with an email audience, you control your audience, you choose yourself. Basically, you don't let Twitter choose whether you should live or not like speaking of which in the past day. Your YouTube channel was shut down for two hours. What the hell happened? Why would they shut you down
timely conversation? Short answer is we don't know for sure. They publicly told us that there was a human reviewer who made a mistake and accidentally.
Deleted the channel, D platform. Does what I'm going to call it, which is, you know, pretty crazy that one single employee at the company is able to essentially erase channels like that, but we got it back and you know, a lot of its frankly just due to the fact that we have large audiences. And other platforms could make enough noise to what's get their attention, but there's hundreds, if not thousands of people on a annual basis who get their accounts on various social media platforms, deleted and they have no other voice right? A bit.
You just get taken off the
internet. That's a serious thing. Like how many subscribers do you have on YouTube? 250,000 or so. So roughly with 250,000 subscribers and they're pretty loyal. They watch your stuff. What could you make per year with a YouTube channel? Like
that our YouTube. We basically it reinvest it all but I think so. I don't know the exact number. I thought my head, I bet you that we make
hundred eighty two hundred thousand dollars off of. It is just based on the cpms.
That could be like a living. So YouTube within one second. Could ruin someone's living, like, you don't get fired or anything. There's no, you know, that's horrible. So, but I'm glad you got. I'm glad it was a mistake and you got your platform back up and, and then your newsletter has become very popular people could find it, Well, will describe it the end and I'll describe in the intro, but you have a very successful newsletter how many subscribers you have the
newsletter?
The free list is almost 200,000. I think we're like a hundred ninety six hundred ninety seven thousand. So it's gotten gotten pretty big.
And then what about the give a paid version? I forget if I pay or not. I don't even
know. We have paid but we don't share that
number. Okay, good. Alright. So Bitcoin, here's the first question. I have, we've seen all the things like Jamie. Dimon says it's worthless. Other economists, say if it replaces gold, which is starting to do as a reserve currency.
Like if it's the flight to safety, when everyone's nervous, they used to go to gold. Now, if they go to bitcoin, if they completely replace gold, that's 400,000 dollars. And that's not even counting. It'll go to a price of $400,000 and that's not even counting its use as a as a currency. So I've questions about the whole crypto world, but let's start with Bitcoin, with Bitcoin white. What use does it have? Like, I like I was talking to Michael Dell. He said, okay, we don't know about Bitcoin but blockchain, we use for lots of things. I get the value of
Chain, but Bitcoin. So volatile who's going to use it as a currency and what actual utility does it have? And then we'll talk about ethereum, which is the
opposite. I think there's four main use cases of Bitcoin. There is a store value. There's a medium of exchange their speculation and then there's what I'll just call resistant technology or Freedom technology. The idea of it being a store value is I put value in or wealth in
and it appreciates over time and either stays flat and protects my purchasing power or depreciate by purchasing power over time. Bitcoin has been the single best asset at doing that over the last decade in the last 10 years. Bitcoin has appreciated more than 1.4 million percent and it is up, four hundred percent in the last 12 months. So, both on a short-term and a long-term basis Bitcoin has done very, very well at protecting. And
You're purchasing powers of global store value. The second thing is medium of exchange. So I exchange this value for a good or a service with another party. The Bitcoin Network in the last 24 hours, has settled 20 billion dollars worth of bitcoin transactions in a 24-hour period. Last week. It actually settled more than 30 billion dollars in a single 24-hour period for the first time in history, so
He billion dollars a day of transactions, settlement volume puts it on track on an annualized basis, to do more settlement volume than a Visa, or a MasterCard, to give you kind of something. To compare to
what what does Visa settle in a 24-hour? Period visas would come in
somewhere around 20 to 24 billion. I think it's like every time the numbers nobody actually breaks down on a per day or per hour basis. So you got to kind of back into the numbers and what you're really looking.
Being at is, what are they do on an annualized basis and on an annual basis, what the numbers? I believe, if I have them correctly is Visa does ten to twelve trillion dollars of annual settlement volume. And so you can kind of start backing into some of the numbers from
there.
What are people buying like I don't go to the restaurant or ubereats and say put it on my Bitcoin wallet, like what are people buying?
They can buy anything they want. That's the beauty of Bitcoin is with because it's an open public transparent Ledger. We can see that they're transferring it. Right. This is on chain settlement volume. This is not looking at exchange traded volume or anything like that, but they're buying goods and services or they're making peer-to-peer transactions, but part of the beauty of it is it doesn't matter what they're buying right? The market is ultimately going to decide. People are only going to spend their Bitcoin and specifically Bitcoin. Because if you think about fiat currency, you're financially in.
Antibodies to get rid of the fiat currency, right? You you literally holding onto cash is like the stupidest thing you could do in financial markets. It's guaranteed to lose value. You're going to lose your purchasing power of you, hold it. So your financial incentive is to do one of two things either, invest it get out of dollars and get into an investable assets, like an equity, a commodity real estate, Etc, or use it to consume. So literally sell the dollar and get a good or a service. So when you think of it that way Bitcoin is exact opposite, Bitcoin is
Going to appreciate over time because the finite Supply acid as long as demand increases and so you're actually disincentivized from spending it be if you believe it's going to go up in value. And so the fact that people are still sending twenty Thirty billion dollars of daily volume means that they're overcoming the belief of hey, this is going to appreciate the future and actually using it as a medium of exchange, which is really, really powerful when you start to think about something that will allow for not only
Store value but also medium of
exchange. I agree. Bunkers were I'm skeptical. I don't know any no one's ever come to me and said, hey, I just bought my car with Bitcoin. Like what? I still want to know. What are they? Are? They just buying, you know, there's the whole crypto Universe where you could buy things, like, n ftes and stuff like that. Are they buying things in the outside the crypto Universe? Are they, buying cars or houses, or, or go into a restaurant and spending Bitcoin? Like what? What do you think? People are actually buying and then 30 billion?
In a day,
my guess is that? It's much less buying non crypto assets, like cars, houses, dinner Etc. A lot of that is because actually, when you make those purchases, especially in the United States, the tax treatment is that you have to pay capital gains tax. So there's a regulatory kind of disincentive structure to do that. Instead. What is more likely happening is? There's a lot of peer-to-peer transactions that are occurring and so in those situations, I need to send you, you know, a hundred bucks and you send you a million dollars, five hundred thousand dollars, whatever.
Rather than use the Legacy rails instead. I'll send you some Bitcoin. And so I think that's really what most of that volume is is peer-to-peer transactions more so than it is. Let me go and just try to buy a car or
house. But for what peer-to-peer for what, where do they getting from their peer?
I don't know what it is. Right? Like that's almost part of the, the beauty of it is. I don't know what the answer is but I in some way don't care because what we do know is the only thing that you should care about is if people were actually spending Bitcoin for
Nefarious purposes. There would be a ton of risk to that a lot of questions. And what we've now seen is everyone from a former CIA director to various analytics, companies come out. And the estimations are about .4% about 40 basis, points of the transactions are actually for nefarious purposes compared to a legacy system where, you know, to push trillion dollars that's longer on an annual
basis. And so so, okay, but just give me an example. Like what, what might be something that people are doing this.
It appeared transactions for
trading trading could be a really easy one. You could also see remittances being another one. You could see all sorts of Global Payments in terms of not necessary a remittance. Like, I'm, I work in the United States and I send money back home to my family and let's say, a South American, or Central American country, but also, maybe I am actually going to try to transfer money to somebody from a business perspective, Etc, on the other side of the world.
And the whole idea of having this open monetary system is that anyone can plug into it and you can now transact with them without asking permission of anybody
else. Prevention meeting like, hey Bank, can you authorize this wire for me to for a million dollars to send to Anthony promptly on? Oh, not only
authorize it but actually execute it. Right? And so, you know, a simple thing is just if I want to send a wire at 8 p.m. At night, I can't do that. It won't settle till the morning. If I need to send the money now. Well, then I'm going to have to use these other rails to do it because open
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Do you think quietly the US government is using Bitcoin to, you know, send money the different, you know, armies or dictators, you know, get get things kind of under, you know, under the radar, get get things
done.
I definitely think the United States government is holding Bitcoin at some time. Only because it's usually when they've confiscated it from somebody. So there's a drug bust or some sort of action. And what they then do is usually they will go and they'll auction it off. I'm unaware of any time where they're actually holding it in terms of for investment purposes. I don't think that the u.s. Government is likely to be using it for you and I would say
Traditional payments. I have no doubt that there are law enforcement agencies that have Bitcoin on their balance sheets and they're using it to make drug purchases Etc as part of like Sting operations, but I don't think that's what most people think of it. When they think of like a government, you know, holding the asset. They're not thinking of law enforcement kind of making purchases and stuff like that. Instead. What I think they think of is you did somebody put it in the Central Bank Reserves to somebody, buy it from an investment
purpose. And okay. So you mentioned there are other uses for the two others.
He said store value.
The other two are speculation. Yes, it's you've got stored value. Got medium of exchange and got speculation. And then you've got what you can call like a freedom technology or a resistant technology. And so speculation is people are buying and selling it because they think it's gonna go up or down in value. And that's actually a really really important use case of Bitcoin because the price volatility, usually leads to some level of kind of user acquisition when the price goes up a lot with
Happens. The media starts to write about it. People start talking about it with their friends. It brings in a bunch of new people to say. Hey, what the hell is this? And then ultimately there's a boom and bust cycle. But every time that we go through one of those big draw Downs or one of those big bust Cycles. Some portion of people are left over. Think of it, kind of like a mobile app. If you, and I created a mobile app, we run a marketing campaign. A hundred people come in through that marketing campaign, 70 of them stick around 30, turn out. Okay, then we run another marketing campaign, right? Another hundred people come in send me stick around 30 churn out. Now we got
40, total people using it and you kind of continue to build this base of users will see things happening with Bitcoin in the sense of every time. The price rapidly appreciates a bunch of new people start paying attention to it. And so it has this positive feedback loop because price goes up, people pay attention, people start to allocate price, goes up further excetera. And so I think that is a key, use cases speculation and then the fourth one is this idea of freedom technology. There's a ton of people they don't give a shit about store value medium of Exchange.
Any of that stuff, they just care that their government, can't confiscate it from them right at. Nobody can actually when they go to the border to leave their country. Nobody can stop them. Nobody can say to them. Give me your asset. Nobody can say you're not allowed to transact because you live in a certain jurisdiction excetera. And so we can argue about the merits of who likes that, who doesn't. But I definitely think this idea of freedom technology is really, really crucial to understanding
Bitcoin. Yeah.
You know, I know you're in Miami. I was, I was in Miami last weekend and there was this conference of the Oslo Freedom Foundation, its human rights thing and there were a lot of people discuss. So this is an organization where they kind of present the stories of dissidents, and activists of authoritarian dictatorships, and some of these stories are horrifying and Bitcoin is the only way, these dissidents and activists can basically do their thing and raise awareness about.
What is going on in their country? Because they can't do it in the currency of their country and they can't accept. It's hard for them to accept donations and dollars because that still goes through the traditional banking system. So Bitcoin becomes the only way they can accept donations. In a sense. This is the only currency of Revolution like, this is how it's going to happen is through Bitcoin and and even nft is because a lot of these people are artists and if they create an mft that then creates ongoing royalties for them, that's a good way to raise money in the
Long
term, absolutely. I mean the whole idea of that freedom Technologies is incredibly important, especially as you leave. Kind of the Western World, you start going to other areas of the world where people really, really need the ability to operate without worrying about what their government may do.
And it's funny how like people someone just asked me actually about two hours ago. Well, the SEC is going to regulate this, but you look at like all the countries that have banned crypto transactions. I always find it interesting that the day like when Argentina band it, the day afterwards there was like two billion dollars worth of bitcoin transactions coming from Argentina Like You Can't Ban this technology. Really what's going to happen. Like do you think the SEC is gonna ban it or the u.s. Going to ban it?
Now? I think the United States is going to
To embrace it. We just saw that the country of China became super abrasive to it. They ended up kicking all the miners out. They made it illegal to transact in it. And so the United States has an opportunity to do. We want to replicate the views and actions of an authoritarian centralized kind of Communist dictatorship. Or do we want to embody all of the freedoms and Ethos of individual liberty and personal freedom that America has been built on? I think that ultimately America is going to realize that
Coins, good for business and we're going to do the best we can to embrace him become the global leader.
I hope you're right because there's so many potential business models coming out of the hole crypto ecosystem that if the US doesn't embrace it. There's very, there's could be economic trouble. The flip side is you re, you know, a government accepts their currency as taxes and taxes are the way government generates revenue and Bitcoin is always an issue. Like, how can we generate? How can the government?
It itself generate revenue from Bitcoin, even if they create their own digital currency, that's not Bitcoin. Some curious about Bitcoin specifically.
Yeah, I think Bitcoin can't be shut down its the most decentralized. It's the most secure. It's the one that's held by the largest amount of people. And ultimately what we're watching is in a free market. The people's will is that they want Bitcoin. And so ultimately, whether you're a politician, you're a corporation or a financial institution or you're an individual, you're going to realize that being able to plug into the Bitcoin.
Ecosystem is probably the single greatest thing you can do, right? If you literally just say to yourself. Okay. I have an energy source. Let me plug into the Bitcoin Network and start mining. You immediately have millions of entrepreneurs investors, Builder software Engineers marketers, Etc, all working to make you successful. If you've got a balance sheet, you plug it into the Bitcoin, ecosystem by putting Bitcoin on your balance sheet. Exact same thing, Millions tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people around the world now, on your team. All
Twerking to make you in a better position, if you're sitting there and you've got any sort of Technical Resources. If you've got a payment system, you plug it into the lightning Network Etc. Every single time, you plug a piece of your business or unplug it a piece of your life into the Bitcoin ecosystem. You immediately hired tens of millions. If not hundreds of millions of people around the world to now be on your team and it's from a cost or like a cost to the reward ratio. It's the single most efficient thing you can do you literally
Set up a lightning node. You can immediately plug into the lightning Network and then you onboard millions of people to start working for you and it costs you what a couple hundred bucks. No
problem. You know, it's interesting. Like I was talking to one hedge fund manager at one of the top Banks. And he was saying the fact that Bitcoin has no utility at least thing. Let's say comparison to a theory on which is used in hundreds or thousands of crypto related projects is actually what makes Bitcoin.
Able as a store of value. So what a store value means is. Okay. I'm nervous about the dollar. Maybe there's going to be inflation. I want to put my money somewhere where nobody could mess with it. There's not going to be trillions of dollars printed with it. So gold used to be that store of value. But I feel like that's an older generation. Like I once spoke at a gold conference and the youngest person there was 78 years old. And with the, I don't see like teenager saying, oh, I can't wait to put my money in gold and make it really safe. I think they think.
Of Bitcoin and end again. What do you think of that argument that if Bitcoin replaces gold has like a half a million dollar price, roughly.
I think that that's just a milestone on the way to a much, much higher price. Frankly being able to eclipse, the gold market cap is in my eyes somewhat inevitable. Some of that's because Bitcoin is going to grow some of that's because gold is going to contract, but I think that Bitcoin only becoming a kind of a gold equivalent would be very short of what is likely to be.
Abel.
What do you think? Is that what do you think is the endgame? The end goal?
I think that It ultimately is going to rise and become a global store value and be held by billions of people around the world. And folks are going to realize that having a currency that can't be debased is super super valuable. And so that Global store of value that is going to eat into tons and tons of other asset classes. It's going to eat into gold and can eat into real estate. It's going to eat into Fine Art. It's going to eat into the equity markets, Etc. This is the apex predator of financial
markets. I mean, this is where it gets really exciting.
Like the business models around crypto. I don't think people. I'm I mean, everybody is just beginning to grasp like we're in an inning zero of or any one of the the the basics of using crypto in a business model. Like how do you get exposure to the stock market with crypto? There are ways we will talk about defy in a second. How do you get exposure to real estate? There are ways the tokenization of the world which we can explain. The second is blows my mind every time I think of it, but now let's
Let me ask you like aetherium. So aetherium is solves a just like Bitcoin solves a problem that the at currencies couldn't do. I feel like a fairy mm solves a problem that Bitcoin couldn't do which is let's make these smart contracts that you know, use the blockchain technology in conjunction with the currency to really quickly build some of these ideas and some of these business models. So so what's your first take on aetherium?
Yeah, I think that just like Bitcoin is the winner when it comes to monetary assets. It is a monetary asset has a natural end state of monetary maximalism people. In the United States are u.s. Dollar maximums people in Mexico or peso maximalist etcetera. Bitcoin has achieved kind of monetary maximalism in this virtual world. I think that all of the other platforms are competing from a technology standpoint, meaning that etherium as a smart contract. Platform is
Specifically to allow for decentralized applications to be built on top. And now what we're watching is kind of a pretty Cutthroat competition frankly between etherium Solana Finance, smart chain, polka dot and then a bunch of layer tuzik cetera. And ultimately what monetary maximalism is competing on is one key aspect of security or decentralization. So you don't necessarily need to be the fastest. You want me to be the chief.
This, you just got to be the most secure, the thing that absolutely no one can change for monetary policy. Standpoint Bitcoin has one that these other platforms are competing on highest throughput and lowest fees. And so frankly, I don't know, yet what the end state is going to be. Is there one winner? Is there 10 winners? I don't think we know yet. That's kind of my view in terms of like how they're all competing to really be that building block.
What let me summarize or let me interpret a Lil Wayne you tell me if I'm right or wrong Bitcoin sort of reminds me of let's just say the internet but then the etherium reminds me of the web. So an easy way to kind of use the protocol of the internet to make useful things. Maybe that's a way to describe these ethereum like cryptocurrencies.
Yeah. I think that I would look at it as any smart contract platform for forget for a second which one just use them as.
Kind of a smart contract. Platform is specifically built for applications to be built on top of it. And what is an application, an application allows you to interact with technology and accomplish something. Sometimes it's for entertainment purposes. Sometimes it's for utility purposes. Sometimes it's for productivity purposes, Etc. And ultimately, what I think is going to play out here is these applications have a desire initially to be decentralized. So you hear a lot about
Gaps or decentralized applications Etc. You can't build a decentralized application on top of a centralized service because it kind of defeats the purpose of being decentralized that you still have a single point of failure.
So let me give you, let me give an example. So like Dropbox stores all the all or Google Drive, so stores everybody's files, pictures videos, whatever, but that's a centralized storage. They have a bunch of servers, the company, Dropbox controls those servers. And if the government says to you,
Give me all of Anthony's photos that he's taken this year. Dropbox would comply, decentralized might be something like a currency, like file coin. Where everybody who's got a file? Coin token on. Hundreds of thousands of computers around the world contains small pieces of all your photos. So it's completely decentralized all around the world. It's a, it's a foolproof algorithm that no one could break to get access to those. So file coin wouldn't even be able to comply if somebody wanted this, if someone hacked them to see,
All of Anthony's photos, there's no, it's decentralized all over the world. It can't be and then if you but if you need them, you have the public key to have the private key to have access to all of your files. If you want. You're the only one who has access. So that's an example of taking something that centralized which is cloud storage and
decentralizing it.
Correct. And I think the big question is one how much of those applications are actually decentralized. I don't think we really know yet. Right? We've got kind of the promise of the technology and the reason why I say that is if you go back to bitcoin Bitcoin, at one point started out centralized and a lot of people say, what do you mean? Well, there's one person or one group, that created the Bitcoin code. They wrote the code. They create a Bitcoin, they then.
Launched it to an email list and then people started to mind it and plug in and hold it and start to play with it. Use its end transactions by things and over time. It's now become this super decentralized thing. And so the economic incentive of Bitcoin was to become more decentralized, overtime, proof-of-work, mining the holders Etc. What we don't yet know is on these other platforms. Are they actually incentivised to become more?
Socialized over time. So one of like the concerns I have in the market is take ethereum as an example. If you are trying to pursue faster throughput and cheaper fees, the best way to become more efficient is to become more centralized, right? Remember the entire Industrial Revolution was all around the idea of centralization. Let's be able to essentially coordinate resources so that we can give the creators of the business. The most amount of Leverage through Labor and capital in order to
You be as efficient as possible and create the single most amount of productivity for their labor and capital possible. So centralization is actually been an amazing part of the story of humanity. And actually, if you are pursuing efficiency, you are going to end up being centralized because sexual identities are the most efficient what Bitcoin did was. Bitcoin said, we don't care about efficiency. We actually care about security, more than anything else. It's okay, if the block times are 10 minutes it,
It's okay. If he's go a little bit higher because security is our number one, Pursuit decentralization and security. And so ultimately what we think have is this idea that if you want efficiency, you just naturally. The incentive is to become more and more centralized. And so whereas aetherium or some of these other platforms start out super decentralized. They ultimately start to compete not on security and decentralisation. They actually start to compete on high throughput.
And cheap fees. Well, you're competing on high throughput, cheap fees in order for you to become faster, and cheaper yet to become more centralized. So, look at what etherium and by Nan, smart, chained, it by that smart chain just said, okay, there's a theorem and has a certain amount of kind of block times and it has a certain fee structure to it. In terms of what people are paying. What if we just take the same idea and we literally just centralize it and we just run it on like three or four nodes and all of a sudden they sped up the block times. These came down, throughput
It went up and it was like this amazing thing. But then all of a sudden, the theorem Community pointed and said, oh that's not decentralized that centralized and the Bitcoin is reeling at the etherium community. That's not decentralized that centralized. And so you basically get this like everyone pointing a finger down the line as to like do the the next person is less decentralized than me and ultimately what's happening though? Is if you're optimizing for security, you're going to be end up being decentralized of, you're optimizing for efficiency. You're going to end up
Being closer to centralized if not completely centralized. And so I think that's the big bifurcation that's happening in the market right now,
but this is, I mean, and not to get too much into the weeds with this but like aetherium 2.0, with proof of stake for it, keeps the decentralization going. Because it forces people to stake aetherium. So they're, they're basically they're basically staking 32 or 3. Mm. Let's say /. I don't know, transaction or whatever or just in general in order to do proof of stake Mining and earn more.
Aetherium. And the reason they're doing that is so that if they can approve transactions, much more quickly, but if a transaction is not a good one, they have to use their own ethereum to make up for it because there's and that's why they're staking some ethereum so that in a sense keeps a decentralization and puts miners more at risk, but they feel it's worth it.
Yeah, so that is the argument as to why it should work the counter argument of the critique that. And again, the markets going.
Decide which one of these is correct. And maybe some of them both have a hint of truth. I don't know. I don't pretend to be smart enough, you know, to be kind of no better than the market, but the critique of that is okay. The people with the largest Stakes will have the largest say and so, basically, rich people will now have an outsized say, in the network. And therefore ultimately the people at the top of the kind of pyramid, they control the system. Oh that sounds a lot like the Legacy system where the rich people control the system and so really what ends up happening.
Painting is the economic incentive to acquire assets is equivalent to acquiring more control and just over time you're going to get kind of this like wealth inequality, where the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. Now again, maybe that happens. Maybe that doesn't, I don't know, but I think that we've clearly articulated. Here's the pro argument and here's the critique. And now we've got to see, is what does the free market say, like, let's see what
happens.
Stay tuned for part 2 also available today where we talk about defy tokens and FTS securitized tokens. What's the next Milestones that are going to happen for Bitcoin that are going to drive the price higher? What are the other cryptocurrencies all about? Anthony explained, to me a very interesting concept about what is crypto really accomplishing in the world.
