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00:00:00Bitcoin is love, man.
00:00:26Come on, people, let's go, let's go.
00:00:27Act like you got somewhere to go, let's go.
00:00:30Okay.
00:00:36Hey Nestor, good morning.
00:00:38This is Mr. G.
00:00:39You can bring your stuff out to the curb.
00:00:41I'll be there in about 15 minutes.
00:00:43Bring them out, bring them out, bring them out, buddy.
00:00:45Let's do this.
00:00:57First stop, Elvis.
00:01:00Try to have your stuff out on the curb.
00:01:02That way it'll be like a quick pickup.
00:01:04You get your money on this one, two, three.
00:01:06Thank you so much.
00:01:16Good.
00:01:17Got it.
00:01:18All right, see you next week.
00:01:23Hello.
00:01:23What's up, man?
00:01:24What's up?
00:01:25Oh, my God.
00:01:27Yo, Lewis, check it out, man.
00:01:28Read the pamphlet.
00:01:29Very important.
00:01:31Next time I don't send you a paper, I send you a paper.
00:01:33Take care, bro.
00:01:35Hey, Big Nestor, what's up?
00:01:37Bring them out, bring them out.
00:01:38Hey, Mr. Lawrence, good morning.
00:01:40This is Mr. G, the recycling guy.
00:01:43I'm Mr. G.
00:01:44I pick up cans and bottles,
00:01:45and I facilitate the transport between people
00:01:49that want to sell their cans and bottles
00:01:50to recycling facilities around the city.
00:01:53And that way I get to spread out the signal
00:01:55by Bitcoin and its magical powers.
00:01:58Yo, Sylvester,
00:02:00I can give you one thing
00:02:02that's better than that.
00:02:03It's Bitcoin.
00:02:09What's up, Pitbull?
00:02:10All right, look, you got cash out?
00:02:12Yeah, I got cash, yeah.
00:02:13All right, look, check this out.
00:02:14I'm going to show you another wallet to download.
00:02:16It's a lot better than dealing with paper all day.
00:02:19You know what I mean?
00:02:19Okay.
00:02:20You want to send money and receive money,
00:02:22you just hit receive.
00:02:23One, two, send in a transaction.
00:02:26Three, done.
00:02:27So how this works is that
00:02:28this is outside the bank, bro.
00:02:30And it's much better.
00:02:31See you next time, bro.
00:02:32All right, bro.
00:02:33Y'all take care.
00:02:33You too.
00:02:34You already know.
00:02:35All right.
00:02:36Bitcoin is love, man.
00:02:38I believe that it can do a lot more for society
00:02:42than simple trading in dollars and stuff,
00:02:44because the dollars just,
00:02:45it creates all the worst incentives in people.
00:02:47This is a good pamphlet for you.
00:02:49Just check it out again.
00:02:50I'm not here to push people into Bitcoin.
00:02:53I'm just here to move the needle as best as I can.
00:02:56And the more people that come in,
00:02:57the more people can receive the benefits.
00:03:00Of having hard money.
00:03:03Bitcoin itself is a hyped up fraud.
00:03:05The asset itself is creating nothing.
00:03:07I would short it if there was an easy way to do it.
00:03:09I think it's a scumball activity.
00:03:11The signs were everywhere,
00:03:13but now it's official we are in a recession.
00:03:15When I think about the significance of Bitcoin,
00:03:18I liken it to the significance of fire and the role of Prometheus.
00:03:23We're trying to create something that's digital gold.
00:03:26Why the hell would you want to do that?
00:03:27Digital gold is no more gold than digital food is food.
00:03:31It's a Ponzi scheme.
00:03:31The Madoff scandal has given greater impetus to efforts to overhaul the laws that govern the financial market.
00:03:38I see the light.
00:03:39Huh? Avocado toast.
00:03:41And to me, a little bit, the cryptocurrencies are like that.
00:03:46That's good lighting.
00:03:47I think all lawyers and all politicians are frustrated actors.
00:03:52By and large, there is an extraordinary degree of ignorance about crypto and Bitcoin in Washington.
00:03:59The dark underbelly of crypto is its critical link to financing terrorism and human trafficking and drug dealing
00:04:08and helping rogue nations like North Korea and Iran.
00:04:12A lot of people are going to hear, you make 100 grand a year and you're living paycheck to paycheck.
00:04:15That seems, it seems like crazy talk.
00:04:18When you detach and decouple money from the state, incredible things can happen.
00:04:23You go to Central America, you go to South America, you go to Africa.
00:04:28These are markets and continents that see Bitcoin as necessity instead of desire.
00:04:33In tomorrow's world, we will tell our children, instead of buy real estate, we'll tell them buy Bitcoin.
00:04:39It brings economic justice.
00:04:41People of color are looking for alternative solutions because we know that we're not getting a fair shake.
00:04:47If you're starving, if you're rich, if you're this race, it doesn't matter.
00:04:51This thing is going to support and do its job no matter what.
00:04:58This thing is going to support and do its job no matter what.
00:05:03Okay, I'm a Bitcoin home miner.
00:05:06It's a hobby of mine.
00:05:08I actually also use my machines to dry clothes.
00:05:12I got my machines right there.
00:05:14I actually blow in a lot of heat on the clothes.
00:05:17It's part of my hobby.
00:05:18This is no different than the guy that tunes cars in his garage.
00:05:21It's a little far-fetched for a lot of people to understand right now, right?
00:05:25But maybe in like 2028, 2029, 2039, people will maybe look back and say, hmm, he was right.
00:05:36Cryptocurrency, blockchain technology allows decentralization.
00:05:41Is it a perfect process?
00:05:42No.
00:05:42Is it more perfect than our process?
00:05:44I'm not sure.
00:05:45But it's a process that allows more people to participate.
00:05:48It allows for the unbanked and underbanked to be able to participate in ways that they were not able to participate in.
00:05:54It expands the investor class.
00:05:57Bitcoin, from a philosophical point of view, it provides a sort of common ground for people,
00:06:14which is seldom seen in the world in general, politically speaking, whether you're left or right, all of that.
00:06:19For the first time, we have a common, I guess, initiative that binds people from all walks of life to actually work on this.
00:06:25For the first time, we all agree, financial freedom is important.
00:06:28So let's build towards that and have a brighter future.
00:06:30So I think a lot of young folks, they're in the best place possible to really push that effort.
00:06:38The payments and money, they have a long history.
00:06:40It's hard to imagine an economy that operates without money.
00:06:44And you talk money, you talk payments, you talk payments, you talk money.
00:06:47One form of money is this form.
00:06:51With this form, we don't know the history.
00:06:53What's important is that you can easily verify that this is a legitimate $5 bill.
00:06:59$2.98.
00:07:01That's how much money it will take to buy a gallon of paint.
00:07:04It's Friday morning and Tom Havens is to buy the paint after school today.
00:07:08To make the purchase, his father gives him a crisp new $5 bill that he received at the bank yesterday.
00:07:15Finance is typically not taught in schools, but it should be taught in schools because it's deeply connected to the real world.
00:07:21And we're not letting our kids, when they graduate from high school, having a sense of personal finance.
00:07:27Why is it not being taught?
00:07:28I don't know.
00:07:29You think about what you want?
00:07:37I didn't know about the stock market or stocks until I got to college.
00:07:46My mother didn't have stocks, the school system wasn't talking about stocks.
00:07:50Get in, get in.
00:07:51I realized that a lot of my teammates, kids that I'm going to school with, they're learning that from their parents.
00:07:58I got into Bitcoin end of 2019.
00:08:03That's when I started doing my research.
00:08:05You know, at first, I'm thinking, like, I'm not reading this.
00:08:08I'm not getting into this.
00:08:10And the first article I read, it was talking about generational wealth gaps in the U.S.
00:08:16It touched home because that's something that, you know, that I dealt with personally.
00:08:22I grew up in Springfield, Mass., inner city.
00:08:25Tough neighborhood.
00:08:26I had two brothers, four sisters, two-bedroom home.
00:08:29My mother was working a lot, so you had to survive on your own and kind of be more reliant on yourself.
00:08:36What I'm realizing now is that because she had all her kids and she gave us everything that she could,
00:08:42she doesn't even have, like, a retirement really set up for herself.
00:08:46Is there, like, boats in Miami?
00:08:50I realized that that's not a position that I wanted to put, you know, my kid in.
00:08:55I wanted to give something back.
00:08:57When she turns 18, I want to have the option of saying, you know, can I pay for college?
00:09:02You want to start a business, all right, here's some seed money for it.
00:09:05Just a little different from what was for me, kind of bootstrapping everything and digging.
00:09:12So you will live in a boat in Miami, that's what you want to do?
00:09:15Yes.
00:09:16What color would your boat be?
00:09:18Pink.
00:09:19A pink boat?
00:09:20Mm-hmm.
00:09:21You know, Miami's a Bitcoin city?
00:09:23No!
00:09:25It is.
00:09:25When I read that, a lot of people in Africa were adopting Bitcoin to try to help their family, you know, help themselves out.
00:09:34That's when I made my first, you know, investment in the Bitcoin.
00:09:37And then it kind of clicked for me and I got the fundamentals of Bitcoin and what it was about.
00:09:41Coming up.
00:09:41Same finish, though.
00:09:43Something coming up like that.
00:09:44I'm a coach at heart.
00:09:45I coached for 10 years straight.
00:09:47If I have some knowledge or if I feel like I can, you know, help you in any way, I'm going to try to do that.
00:09:53I was brought up to believe that it's your job to look after your own financial well-being, but I don't remember ever being given a good education in how the financial system works.
00:10:08There's this idea that we have these dollar bills in our pocket and that those things are, in some sense, backed by the government, and that's what money is.
00:10:19But that's really only what money's been since the 19-teens.
00:10:23We're not disrupting a system that's been around for 1,000 years.
00:10:26We're disrupting a system that's been around for, like, 50 years.
00:10:28It did pretty well for a pretty long time, but the cracks are now showing.
00:10:32And you see this in a bunch of different ways.
00:10:34As the central bank of the United States, the Federal Reserve is charged with promoting monetary and financial stability and the safety and efficiency of the payment system.
00:10:44The Federal Reserve is creating money out of thin air by buying U.S. debt and other, you know, financial assets.
00:10:51As a consequence, the money is worth less.
00:10:54Inflation is way too high, and it's really a big burden on American households.
00:10:59The purchasing power of the dollar has declined on a straight-line basis since the 60s.
00:11:05It never goes up.
00:11:06The dollar only goes down.
00:11:08The worry is that we've now gotten so addicted to easy money for so long.
00:11:12The system of central bank printed money is not necessarily any better in the United States than it is in a place like Venezuela or a place like Zimbabwe, places that have 1,000% inflation.
00:11:22If you think about money hard enough, you realize that for the past 25,000 years, the money's always been defective.
00:11:31It's just a question of when will it utterly fail.
00:11:34I think what you have is human civilization struggling with how to solve the problem and never quite getting it right.
00:11:42Whole systems fail.
00:11:43But at the same time, we're not living in caves anymore, and so we make continual progress.
00:11:47We figure stuff out because we are now the most important economy in the world.
00:11:52Most of the world relies on our systems.
00:11:54You have to have an element of flexibility in a currency system that tries to be all things to all people.
00:12:00And so a lot of the debate and the frustration around the fiat currency system is actually about who gets to set the rules and who gets to decide how it's flexible.
00:12:081989 may be the most important year in economic history since the signing of the Magna Carta.
00:12:15You had communism falling, symbolically with the fall of the Berlin Wall.
00:12:21The West won, the East lost in lots of ways.
00:12:24That created maybe the best 20 years we've ever seen on the planet in terms of trade as a percentage of GDP.
00:12:32You know, we had more trade going on than any time since the 30s between countries.
00:12:36That's all confidence.
00:12:37So a confidence revolution creates a credit bubble, because credit is confidence.
00:12:43But at 08, we really should have thought about something.
00:12:47Something happened.
00:12:47We're like, oh, there's a crisis.
00:12:50Boom.
00:12:51And it broke.
00:12:56People lost their houses.
00:12:57People lost their jobs.
00:12:59Globally.
00:12:59And I think Satoshi must have looked at that and said, this ain't fair.
00:13:07I think that's where the white paper came from.
00:13:10Satoshi did two amazing things for humanity.
00:13:12Create Bitcoin and disappear.
00:13:13Us not knowing who Satoshi Nakamoto is, I think, is a feature, not a bug.
00:13:19I had a lot of appreciation for Satoshi.
00:13:23I have a dog named Toshi.
00:13:24You don't have someone to drag in front of Congress to answer for how the software works.
00:13:31You don't have someone to sue.
00:13:32You don't have someone who's able to flip a switch and turn this thing off.
00:13:39No, I'm not Satoshi.
00:13:42In 2008, I got the, as far as I'm aware, the first email that anybody received from Satoshi.
00:13:49It was basically asking about the citation for Hashcash.
00:13:53I invented this thing called Hashcash in 1997.
00:13:57And it started a conversation about it being a bit like digital gold.
00:14:01There was a mining.
00:14:01There's a cost to mining.
00:14:03You produce something digital that you could verify was scarce.
00:14:06But people's sort of next question was, but won't everybody mine an enormous amount of it?
00:14:13Because you could throw more computers at it and create money.
00:14:15And if you had a machine for printing money, you know, converting electricity into money,
00:14:19people would go nuts and computers get faster and it would become hyperinflationary.
00:14:28This would be solved by Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoin white paper.
00:14:31It was a criticism of central bank monetary policy.
00:14:34And the Bitcoin revolution began.
00:14:36We had to find a way to issue money in a decentralized process so that governments would be removed
00:14:43from their ability to debase and to manipulate currency.
00:14:47We don't know who the person is.
00:14:49We don't know if it's one person or many.
00:14:50We have some ideas based on forum posts and time zones that they've been in.
00:14:54But it's all really ultimately just a guessing game.
00:14:57It's a little bit like those people who say that Shakespeare's plays are too good to have
00:15:01been written by one chap from Stratford.
00:15:04This white paper is pure poetry.
00:15:06Even if you can't read the 13 pages, just the first page says pretty much everything that
00:15:11you need to know.
00:15:12It's a religious event.
00:15:13It's a once in a lifetime thing.
00:15:16And I'm skeptical because I am one.
00:15:19I'm a founder that people lionize and they look up to and whatnot.
00:15:23But whoever this person is, like, truly gave us a gift.
00:15:26And it was a selfless gift.
00:15:28Bitcoin's supply is capped at roughly 21 million Bitcoin.
00:15:31And each Bitcoin can actually be subdivided into 100 million, what are now known as Satoshis,
00:15:35units, the smallest unit of Bitcoin.
00:15:37In a traditional banking system, the bank ensures that you don't spend your money twice
00:15:41because it debits your account as soon as you spend that money.
00:15:44With Bitcoin, there's no central party to trust.
00:15:47So we have this double spending problem.
00:15:49I could send my Bitcoin to my first friend and then I could go around and send that same
00:15:54Bitcoin to somebody else.
00:15:55Who's to say that I spent it or I didn't spend it?
00:15:57And Satoshi very cleverly solved it by introducing the concept of mining.
00:16:00Bitcoin is not complicated.
00:16:02The white flag is in the air.
00:16:04Two miles bending between Kyle Busch and the first time victory.
00:16:08President Trump starts to emanate from the class of the team.
00:16:11And he wants to show Daniel Gorin history.
00:16:17Bitcoin, uh, Bitcoin is, um, uh...
00:16:29I've heard of Bitcoin, but, you know, I'm kind of an older generation.
00:16:33I like to hang on to my cash.
00:16:35I don't use Bitcoin, but I support it because that's a new thing.
00:16:47It was impossible for man to fly up until the point where the Wright brothers took their
00:17:03rinky-dink plane and then flew it in the air.
00:17:05And thereafter, at every point in time, it was true that man could fly.
00:17:09So really, what is invention, right?
00:17:10With invention, you are invalidating some rule of the world, right?
00:17:14It was true that you needed a government, you needed some large entity to operate, a monetary
00:17:18system, and from the point where Bitcoin came into existence, it eradicated that.
00:17:23I'm not sure that you can imply sort of any negative emotion or intent to Bitcoin, right?
00:17:27Bitcoin made something better.
00:17:29It made something possible.
00:17:31The implications of that, I think, will unfold from there.
00:17:33But it's hard to say if they're going to be positive or negative.
00:17:36Bitcoin at its base layer is what's known as a broadcast system, a picture of a megaphone
00:17:45to the entire world.
00:17:47Anyone that wants to listen and take in the data that I'm broadcasting, according to the
00:17:54protocol, the world is to take that information in, verify it, ensure that it's valid, and
00:18:00then append it, eventually, to what's known as the blockchain.
00:18:03Blockchain is a ledger of transactions that is maintained by some kind of consensus mechanism.
00:18:11In a blockchain environment, there's no one person responsible for maintaining that ledger.
00:18:17The ledger is maintained by a consensus of computers working together.
00:18:21What is a bank?
00:18:22When you pull up your smartphone and you scroll through to your bank account, that's what a
00:18:27bank is.
00:18:27It's a ledger.
00:18:28All it is, is a deputized business that we've given the privilege of maintaining this ledger.
00:18:34It is a glorified bookkeeper.
00:18:37So blockchain solves that because what is blockchain?
00:18:41Bookkeeping.
00:18:42And there's a lot of banks who know that if we adopt blockchain, they're out of business.
00:18:47It exists in the open and nobody has any more right than the other to change it.
00:18:54And so you can opt in or opt out of it at any time, but it's a system that exists on its
00:19:00own.
00:19:01The significant thing about cryptocurrency turns out to be that it's not really secret.
00:19:07It is possible for a transaction on the blockchain precisely because it's indelibly recorded to
00:19:14be discovered by the authorities, should they wish to do so.
00:19:20In its three count complaint, the government says a man known as the Dread Pirate Roberts was
00:19:26able to rake in $80 million in two years through an illegal site.
00:19:31He created a secretive online marketplace for drugs, one so perfect that it could make the
00:19:38street corner dealer obsolete.
00:19:412011, 2012, many people speculated that the only reason that Bitcoin existed was to buy
00:19:47drugs on Silk Road.
00:19:48And no one really knew to what degree that was true.
00:19:51It got taken down in mid to late 2013 and Bitcoin crashed immediately after.
00:19:57But within a month, it had reached new all time highs.
00:20:00The cryptocurrency market has exploded over the past few years.
00:20:04Now, most of that growth has been driven by speculation and gambling, but we also know
00:20:09that crypto provides a new payment option for criminals and cheats.
00:20:14Do criminals use Bitcoin?
00:20:16Of course.
00:20:17All useful tools are used by criminals, including cars, cell phones, the internet, food and water,
00:20:25mathematics, language.
00:20:26It's not that bad actors, ransomware, et cetera, aren't focused on today, on using crypto to
00:20:33try to transfer value.
00:20:34But what criminals are finding, they are increasingly likely to get caught if they try to use Bitcoin.
00:20:41In 2021, at least $14 billion in digital assets went to criminals.
00:20:48Now, that's a lot of drugs and a lot of ransoms and a lot of bombs and a lot of nuclear materials.
00:20:55Dear Senator Warren, I'm a fan.
00:20:57I think you're very smart and you genuinely care about building a more equitable society.
00:21:03But respectfully, when you talk about Bitcoin, you sound silly.
00:21:07The crypto industry claims that it doesn't need to do all of the know your customer and
00:21:13other anti-money laundering checks because crypto is uniquely transparent.
00:21:19Bitcoin is a monetary instrument that does not require trust in governments to not inflate away
00:21:25the value of money or trust in banks to stay solvent.
00:21:29So then the question becomes, so what is it that the Bitcoin, what problem is it solving?
00:21:36Your voters are rejecting the legacy financial system because it fosters economic and racial
00:21:40injustice and perpetuates wealth inequality.
00:21:44Bitcoin is hope.
00:21:45Bitcoin's decentralized, transparent, democratic network will inevitably replace the failed
00:21:50and corrupt partnership between governments and large banks.
00:21:54Our children want to believe.
00:21:56They want to believe in something.
00:21:58In the past 22 years, we've destroyed almost all the institutions without recognizing the importance
00:22:03that they play in individuals' lives.
00:22:06And many of our children are unanchored in many ways.
00:22:09They don't know what to believe in.
00:22:11They're searching for something.
00:22:13If I buy Bitcoin, am I buying a share of stock?
00:22:16Or am I buying a pork belly?
00:22:19Or are you buying air?
00:22:21People can agree that Bitcoin has value and then they could decide it doesn't.
00:22:26I mean, because it doesn't have any actual value.
00:22:29I mean, people can agree on anything.
00:22:31I mean, that's how you have a bubble, right?
00:22:33At one point, people thought tulips had a lot of value in Holland, but then they didn't.
00:22:37I would accept Bitcoin now only because I could sell it.
00:22:40There is a market for it, but I would not want to hold onto it long term.
00:22:44There's not that many people who want to buy pet rocks right now.
00:22:47But in the long run, you know, the pet rock probably has more value because at least it's a rock.
00:22:52I think tulips are the original NFT.
00:22:57That was the first time, you know, at a global economy they decided,
00:23:00hey, here's something that might be worth a whole lot more than the strictly functional value of a flower.
00:23:06Value is in the eye of the beholder.
00:23:08And when we all convince ourselves that it's worth something and then all of a sudden we all decide that it isn't,
00:23:13that's kind of what happened with tulip mania.
00:23:14It's easy to dismiss something if you can just strap a label on it and then ignore it.
00:23:19The tulip mania that everyone likes to quote had one bubble and then went away.
00:23:24There's something different going on when an asset continues to appreciate over the long term,
00:23:29goes through multiple speculative cycles.
00:23:30As you can see, I am no longer 23. I used to be 23. So perhaps I'm speaking a generational voice.
00:23:38But to me it is an astounding thing that people impute value to this thing that no
00:23:44human eye has seen your human hand touched.
00:23:47Bitcoin is not tangible. You can't touch it, you know.
00:23:51But you also can't touch, you know, your share in a corporation.
00:23:55Prior to temporarily going off the gold standard, which it was supposed to be
00:24:00temporary. But here we are, you know, 50 plus years later and we haven't returned to the gold
00:24:05standard. Now eventually we will. Gold is money. If you're waiting for gold bars to show up before
00:24:11you release goods around the world, it doesn't work. It's much easier, more efficient, more flexible
00:24:18to have this digital transaction standard, this virtual ledger system.
00:24:222016, 17, 18, when you see the cycle play out, you started to realize that, you know, this actually
00:24:32has something very unique in it and it is truly anti-fragile. And it's taking on its own life,
00:24:40which is kind of interesting to observe.
00:24:51There is a new and exciting industry in the United States of cryptocurrency, whether bitcoin or otherwise,
00:24:59that are generating jobs, entrepreneurs who are creating new values, new hedges against inflation,
00:25:05new opportunities, and it is fast moving. It is dynamic.
00:25:13Texas? Texas is bitcoin country. You know, I'm reminded of an old line,
00:25:20which is that you never ask anyone if they're from Texas. And the reason is simple. If they're from
00:25:25Texas, they'll tell you. The reason Texas has been so attractive to bitcoin is its low cost, abundant
00:25:32energy. And there's a big debate about bitcoin and what is its impact on energy. And you have some
00:25:39environmentalists who hate bitcoin because they say it consumes all of this energy.
00:25:45I actually think bitcoin is incredibly pro-environment. One of the challenges you have is when you drill an
00:25:51oil well. Along with producing oil, it produces natural gas. The natural gas is burned on fire and
00:25:57the problem is that pollutes. Bitcoin is presenting an enormous opportunity to go into a producing oil
00:26:05well, to take that stranded gas and to put it into a generator right there on site. Use that gas to
00:26:12produce electricity and use that electricity to run bitcoin mining breaks.
00:26:16We're actually in the Giga mining manufacturing facility. This is the covered section. This is
00:26:25where we manufacture and fabricate the actual bitcoin mining data centers that we deploy to on and off
00:26:31grid solutions in harsh environments. Most of them we actually use for ourselves internally and mine
00:26:37bitcoin with them. Some of them we also sell to oil and gas companies or other people that need a data
00:26:44center or a generator for bitcoin mining. Made in Texas. The first premise is that there's value in
00:26:53bitcoin. Past that everything else makes sense. If you say hey there is value in bitcoin then you would
00:26:59say hey there's value in physically sweating in 100 degree heat to manufacture an engine to more
00:27:04efficiently mine bitcoin. We're going to pull in natural gas through this two-inch line. It's going to run
00:27:09through here all this natural gas and then we're going to bring it straight into the engine and we're going
00:27:13to start combusting it running these pistons and then getting the engine and all we're doing is
00:27:19trying to turn that big flat wheel to create electricity. So a bitcoin miner is a computer that
00:27:26can only do one simple math equation and that's an equation called SHA-256. So it's just a hashing
00:27:32function and this computer basically guesses every day all day long. Start off doing thousands of guesses
00:27:37a minute or a second. Now millions of guesses a minute or a second. Now trillions of guesses a minute
00:27:42or a second as they become better. There's energy that is utilized for every guest and they're just
00:27:47always constantly looking for new bitcoins. If they get one they get a brand new set of bitcoins or they
00:27:53mine a block of bitcoin. You have to do work to deter people from cheaply hacking the system, right?
00:27:59You're throwing up a barrier for security of the blockchain. And so when you're mining bitcoin what
00:28:03happens is the bitcoin software is throwing up a series of math problems to solve and over time
00:28:12the math problems get increasingly difficult. Now the math problems don't themselves relate at all to
00:28:17the underlying transactions. The transactions are what they are. But what the bitcoin network is doing is
00:28:22it's saying you're only going to get a bitcoin reward if you devote enough work to pass through
00:28:28the gateway and then be eligible. But beyond that it's basically a lottery. And so these computers
00:28:33they're running 24-7 and when you're running one of them they're a little loud. And then tens of
00:28:38thousands of them you know you need ear protection, you need massive industrial fans, you need massive
00:28:42electrical infrastructure. Bitcoin mining will happen until 2140 and now 99% of bitcoins will be mined over the
00:28:49next 20 years. And then after that it's kind of like okay what's going to happen with the last 1%?
00:28:53Where's the price going to be? But the reality is is I believe bitcoin mining is here to change the
00:28:58energy industry forever. Bitcoin uses more electricity per transaction than any other method known to
00:29:05mankind. Just one uses more energy than a million visa transactions. I mean cars are bad for the climate
00:29:13but at least they take you somewhere.
00:29:43So we're standing here it's July 1st. July 1st last year none of this was here. My dog ran straight
00:29:52through this facility all on dirt. I see this as opportunity. I see its jobs. I see its economic impact.
00:30:01Bitcoin mining is a game of scale. The bigger piece you are of the global pie,
00:30:06the bigger piece of that bitcoin pie that you're taking as a reward.
00:30:11Bitcoin is nuts. It's insane from a climate change standpoint. It uses all this power
00:30:18to create this fictional currency and it uses so much damn power. That's like why are we doing this?
00:30:27Everything we should be doing right now should be focusing on
00:30:31providing our existing needs not adding to existing needs. You know last year the total bitcoin consumption
00:30:38in the world was represented a five percent of the U.S. loan. Why would we add to this problem
00:30:46for what I view as a convenience item not a necessity. I'm talking about necessity here. People need to get
00:30:52to work. They need to eat. They need to warm cool their houses. They don't need bitcoin.
00:30:57So the usage of energy in bitcoin mining is there to secure the network. It's so that you have a
00:31:05fundamentally secure immutable ledger that can't be tampered with. Is that a good use of lots of energy?
00:31:12I think so but I understand if some people don't. Everyone has something called a utility function.
00:31:17So I may really value bitcoin but if you don't use bitcoin or you don't understand it or you don't think
00:31:24it's valuable you are going to think that spending energy on bitcoin is useless. If people find utility
00:31:30in it there will be demand for it and at the end of the day it's the subjectivity right that makes it
00:31:36so difficult to have logical arguments about energy consumption because we all have very different
00:31:41preferences and we all have very different perceptions of what is and is not valuable in a modern society.
00:32:00What makes Austin really unique right now is that not only is it the strongest community aspect but it's
00:32:06also the place where the builders on the bitcoin network are coming to build. What's happening here
00:32:14right now feels very early kind of like silicon valley. I'm optimistic that Austin is kind of going
00:32:20to represent for much of the rest of the world the kind of vision that we think bitcoin can create.
00:32:26even when I'm not working I'm always bitcoin. So it's like you don't really eat it you just swallow it.
00:32:36I've never had one of those. I mean no I like it.
00:32:41Ladies and gentlemen I love this community. Bitcoin's awesome. Thanks for coming out for this
00:32:46tonight enjoy. Good luck. Thank you. Cheers.
00:33:16You got me into it back in uh 2019 December 2019 I've been I've stuck with it ever since like
00:33:26naturally like a lot of acquisitions right now. I think yeah I think there's some companies
00:33:30that have cash definitely buying up there. It's the the bear market it's like everyone wants to buy
00:33:34a bitcoin in the bull market but no one wants to buy it when it's down.
00:33:39I was a freshman high school and I found out about bitcoin through an article on TechCrunch.
00:33:43I realized that this idea that money could be created and governed by math and energy
00:33:50and code and not controlled by the government was powerful. From there I started trading cryptos
00:33:56and buying bitcoins and eventually started mining. I started mining my parents' basement with a few
00:34:01graphics cards and from there we ended up building out a shed in my parents' backyard and started running
00:34:06miners there and then raised some capital from family and friends. So my goal is to make bitcoin
00:34:12mining accessible to anyone via an application or an app on your phone. We wanted to provide the
00:34:17opportunity for exposure to mine bitcoin at a discount without having to deal with the problems and
00:34:23hassles of getting into the space. It's my goal that anyone can promote this to their community
00:34:28and allow their community to mine bitcoin.
00:34:40be broken
00:34:50it's my goal that I can't believe in the world. I can't believe in it. I can't believe in it.
00:35:03Today we literally want exactly that shape. Wherever you see that shape in possession on the pitch that's
00:35:11what we want. Get everything up.
00:35:16Nice.
00:35:21This referee, I'm not sure he's refereeing his lines and yeah they're all over the place.
00:35:31Emma do you have a bitcoin wallet with bitcoin on it?
00:35:35This is the wallet he set you up with.
00:35:37It's been a long time ago. Are you joking?
00:35:39This is a long time ago.
00:35:39Okay, no. My name is Connor Rokas and my role on the team is director of bitcoin services.
00:35:45I feel like that's quite a new unique job title and I don't even know if that exists anywhere
00:35:50full stop and whether it exists at a football club. It's a role that's kind of emerged out of my passion
00:35:56for bitcoin and football. So right now you have to breathe. Now I'm just in charge of helping the club
00:36:03integrate bitcoin in different ways. Some initiatives are around just you know our fans
00:36:07being able to come into our bar and pay for their beers, their snacks with bitcoin. Helping educate
00:36:13the players. Some of the players may be taking parts of their salary in bitcoin as well. When there's
00:36:17no banks involved, there's no third parties involved. It's just peer-to-peer right. But the beauty of that
00:36:22is that like say someone comes from another country and they want to pay for something maybe they don't
00:36:26have pounds or they don't have whatever they can just download a bitcoin wallet instantly without needing
00:36:31a bank account. So that opens up like Royal Bedford to the whole world in terms of being able to accept payment.
00:36:48London is beautiful. It's full of culture and history and interesting people and art and
00:37:16what I think is perfect weather.
00:37:22I want every bitcoin user to understand that bitcoin works because the software works and the software
00:37:30works because there are people maintaining it and looking after it. I contribute to the open source
00:37:37software called Bitcoin Core. It is software that is able to connect to the bitcoin network. It is able to
00:37:44download the entire bitcoin history aka the blockchain. We are trying to look for all the ways in which
00:37:54something can go wrong.
00:37:59put like my blood, sweat and tears into some activity. I know that the labour that I've put into
00:38:09that can be preserved for the long term and there's like no one really that can take that away from me
00:38:14arbitrarily. We've seen countries now adopting bitcoin as legal tender whether it be El Salvador or the Central
00:38:20Africa Republic. And that represents hopefully a snowball effect that will see other countries adopt it and
00:38:26and people really start to see it as a use case for them to pay for goods and services.
00:38:40We were drawn to this place four years ago the first time. I was driving through Europe with a camper van. There was a small shed on the
00:38:56beach and started to drink my Bacardi Coke and then I said can I pay him bitcoin and bitcoin no it's a scam blah blah blah.
00:39:02It took me two three days and then he started to accept bitcoin payments and you know he saw bitcoin going up. He saw that I was paying the double price for a Bacardi cola.
00:39:06He was happy and that's when we fell in love with the place and that's when we fell in love with the place. In that bar I met a guy. We told each other if ever such a bar comes free we will take it.
00:39:22You know, he saw Bitcoin going up.
00:39:24He saw that I was paying the double price for a Bugatti Cola.
00:39:26He was happy.
00:39:27And that's when we fell in love with the place.
00:39:29In that bar, I met a guy.
00:39:31We told each other, if ever such a bar comes free, we will take it.
00:39:35Four years later, he calls me and he's like,
00:39:37Didi, there's a bar available.
00:39:38Investment and everything.
00:39:39I will if we make it a Bitcoin beach bar.
00:39:41And now I'm here and we have a Bitcoin beach bar.
00:39:52I grew up in the 90s as a normal guy, buying a huge house.
00:39:58Goal of becoming very rich, you know, becoming the millionaire,
00:40:01because that would lead into happiness.
00:40:03And then a few years later, my father got sick.
00:40:06I got a huge burnout when my father died a year later.
00:40:09The funeral, all that stuff.
00:40:10And I told my wife, let's do a trip.
00:40:12After two weeks, I felt energy and I felt this amazing feeling
00:40:16on being on the beach, building a sandcastle with my kids.
00:40:19And we just said to each other, let's say yes to everything in life.
00:40:21So, we embraced that venture.
00:40:27We were living on a campsite.
00:40:28We sold everything we had.
00:40:29There is no alternative.
00:40:30I am all in Bitcoin.
00:40:31There is no bank account.
00:40:32For me, it's a stupid question when people ask,
00:40:35why would you spend Bitcoin?
00:40:36Because that's the only thing we have.
00:40:38Payment coming in.
00:40:39High five!
00:40:40Bitcoin's coming in!
00:40:42I am a Bitcoin revolutionist.
00:40:43It means I want to support this network.
00:40:46I'm not in it for the millions.
00:40:47I'm in it for the real revolution.
00:40:49Let's change the world.
00:40:50I give everybody access to my beach bar.
00:40:53If they have a bank account or not, they can pay.
00:40:56And that's, for me, the most important part.
00:40:58And, you know, I don't mind when they pay with cash,
00:41:01but filthy cash will be exchanged into Bitcoin later that day.
00:41:04Cryptocurrency is just the next step in the evolution of money.
00:41:08We started with the shells from the beach and we're ending now after digital currencies like PayPal into cryptocurrencies that can be used by everyone and, you know, decentralized.
00:41:17There was this tweet from Jack Saucy and Jay-Z saying that they're setting up this Btrust, this 500 Bitcoin, to look at increasing the representation of developers and engineers in the Bitcoin open source ecosystem from Africa and India and the global south.
00:41:34If Bitcoin adoption is really going to fly from a necessity, that's where the money needs to flow and it needs to flow from the people that understand and live there and have a proven track record of doing right by their communities and doing right by Bitcoin.
00:41:51I was announced as one of the four people selected to be a board member for Btrust and we locate, educate and renumerate Bitcoin engineers, open source engineers, starting in Africa, but particularly in the global south.
00:42:21Welcome to Nigeria, welcome to Nigeria.
00:42:51I am Abubakar.
00:42:52I am CEO and CTO of Recursive Capital, which is a Bitcoin venture capital fund.
00:42:57So I invest in early stage Bitcoin companies such as Bitnob.
00:43:00I'm also on the board of Btrust, where the mandate there is to grow the Bitcoin development ecosystem in Africa initially, and then we can scale it out globally.
00:43:07This is Bitnob.
00:43:09It's a Bitcoin company.
00:43:10So essentially what we do is we build financial services on the Bitcoin layer.
00:43:14So what we're doing is we're imagining how banking works today, right?
00:43:19How do people get financial services and saying that what if the layer that they're doing that is part of the problem?
00:43:25How do we try this on a new layer, on a more global layer, right?
00:43:30So that's sort of how we're imagining everything and building.
00:43:32So what we do is we give people a chance to save in Bitcoins, stablecoins,
00:43:37or give people the chance to borrow money using their Bitcoin as collateral.
00:43:42Around the time I was born and a few years afterwards, one naira, which is the currency of Nigeria, was at parity with one US dollar.
00:43:54Now it's around 600 naira to the US dollar.
00:43:59So over my life, I've seen it lose a huge amount of value.
00:44:02In that sort of environment, it's very hard to maintain and hold wealth.
00:44:06If you can't hold and if you cannot save, then it's very hard to build a future for you and your family.
00:44:11You're constantly going up a downward escalator the wrong way.
00:44:17The biggest issue for a lot of Nigerians who don't use banks, there's perception, right?
00:44:23There's this perception that banks are not for them. Banks are for the rich.
00:44:27I do not have IDs. You know, all those things are required of me to open a bank account.
00:44:33They don't think it's worth the hassle of opening a bank account.
00:44:38So they prefer to always have easy access to their money.
00:44:42How do they do that for those who don't use banks?
00:44:44Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
00:44:49Some girls nowadays, they're gonna ask for some cryptocurrency.
00:44:53Uh-uh. You can't believe anything we do in the 21st century.
00:44:57Ordinarily in America, if you were to spin up a PayPal account, for example, it's gonna be a smooth process.
00:45:01Here in Nigeria, you spin it up, they request for more KYC, they ban the account, they think, you know, it's fraudulent.
00:45:07Because as soon as you open it, most folks just load a ton of money inside, like $1,000 plus.
00:45:12So then you end up getting blocked.
00:45:13We can't really get our governments to buy Bitcoin.
00:45:16So how do we ensure that we as Africans, as Nigerians, get the upside of this at the end of the day?
00:45:24One way of doing that is to make sure as many people as possible are holding Bitcoin, regardless of the amount.
00:45:31We're actually going to do a true wallet.
00:45:33From Blue Wallet.
00:45:34From Blue Wallet.
00:45:35From Blue Wallet.
00:45:36From Blue Wallet.
00:45:37From Blue Wallet.
00:45:38From Blue Wallet.
00:45:39From Blue Wallet.
00:45:40From Blue Wallet.
00:45:41From Blue Wallet.
00:45:42From Blue Wallet.
00:45:43From Blue Wallet.
00:45:44To White Wallet.
00:45:45Is that something that is paying you?
00:45:46Uh, percent.
00:45:47Speed of light.
00:45:48No lightning, it is...
00:45:49Bitcoin.
00:45:50We can build financial services.
00:45:51I think it brings a lot of freedom for us as well.
00:45:54And going into a digital world, at least levels the scale for us.
00:45:59I don't know.
00:46:29We officially start the Bitcoin tour to the walking street, Florida, where there are like people behaving as small ATMs, where you can exchange dollar for pesos because it's forbidden for us to buy more than 200 US dollars monthly.
00:46:58So, when you can't buy with the official rate, you have to move to the blue rate where you can get dollars.
00:47:05So, this is the free market.
00:47:06Campo, how much is the blue?
00:47:09The budget is $2.85.
00:47:14OK.
00:47:15Bueno.
00:47:16Gracias.
00:47:17So, this is how people get access to dollars through people on the street.
00:47:23They are like human ATMs.
00:47:25You give pesos, they give you dollars.
00:47:27Wow.
00:47:28Hyperinflation at more than 3,000% hit Argentina in 1989.
00:47:34Argentina is second in a World Bank ranking of countries with the highest inflation.
00:47:39Argentinians have turned out in their thousands demanding state aid to help cope with the country's surging cost of living.
00:47:46When you go from the stable to the volatile, you just gotta spend as fast as possible.
00:47:51You don't know if tomorrow we're gonna depreciate 20% or 100%, you just don't know.
00:47:57So, this is the central bank where actually there's a sign there that tells that they will keep our currency stabilized,
00:48:07that they will bring financial prosperity to our people.
00:48:11And it's fun because they do exactly the opposite of what they say.
00:48:16Our money lost 99% of its value in the last 20 years.
00:48:21The government confiscated my life savings two times.
00:48:25So, the big lesson here is that if you hold Bitcoin with your own wallet, your keys that you control,
00:48:32nobody can confiscate.
00:48:34And that's how I became a Bitcoiner.
00:48:39In Latin America, you don't have to explain why Bitcoin.
00:48:42Anywhere else, maybe in the first world, you have to explain why Bitcoin.
00:48:46Cryptocurrencies are solving a problem.
00:48:50For people here, it's a way to protect themselves from bad economic policies,
00:48:57protect from governments that troll, sanction people or control the financial system.
00:49:03In our community, many have taken different roads and different approaches,
00:49:09and that all of them are valuable because all of them are bringing decentralization and these tools to the world.
00:49:18Hey, welcome to La Crypto.
00:49:20This is a crypto house. We are building a lot of stuff. Like, it's a Bitcoin community.
00:49:25This is a place we work every day. Most of the things we build here are open source.
00:49:30So, most of the programs on development should be, like, open for the community. It should be free.
00:49:37This is a typical Argentinian local food. It's a local barbecue. We call it asado.
00:49:43We are in La Crypto, which is a nice place where Bitcoiners and people fighting for freedom connect.
00:49:53It's like we were ready to be able to understand or to find some solution that could be a tool against inflation.
00:50:01I talk about Bitcoin like a silent revolution. It's like evolution with a silent R.
00:50:06We are in a small neighborhood called Palermo Chico. When I was 13, I got kicked out of school.
00:50:17And I went to live here with my grandma. I was 14 years old and I met Bitcoin.
00:50:23Bitcoin.
00:50:33This room, we called it the prison cellar because it looks like a prison cellar.
00:50:38This is the graphic card with which I mined Bitcoin. And we always laughed because this was also even more full of things.
00:50:46We always say in my family, we joke that I was very lucky that it never fell on me.
00:50:52As you can see, this is very bent because of all the things. Then here, this is where Lemon started for me.
00:50:59This is the genesis of Lemon in this whiteboard. Argentines, we always like to find an idol or a passion.
00:51:06I reckon that this is one of the cities with the most active cryptocurrency users in the entire planet.
00:51:16And I said, you know what? I'm going to do something related to the finance part of this.
00:51:21And I wanted to do something massive.
00:51:24How are you going to play with Bitcoin? This is my Lemon card.
00:51:29Can I show it? Of course.
00:51:32So this beautiful card that it's the first card in the entire planet to have like a Bitcoin logo and an Ethereum logo right next to Visa.
00:51:42This for us is like the clash of the two worlds.
00:51:46The merchant might or might not know about Bitcoin, but regardless, I can use my Bitcoin directly in the transaction.
00:51:54So as soon as I put the card in the POS, the amount of Bitcoins get converted to local currency and are used for the payments.
00:52:04It's such a tangible solution that so many people are seeing that it's true.
00:52:10People have already understood what crypto can do.
00:52:14So once you get to that point, there is there is no way back.
00:52:19There is no way back.
00:52:28Martín de los Andes is the nicest city in Argentina.
00:52:31It's a micro region in Patagonia.
00:52:33It has the best mountains, the best lakes.
00:52:36I lead a project named Crypto Valley.
00:52:47It is the first region where people and merchants make daily transactions in Bitcoin.
00:52:53Muchachaka, do you pay for Bitcoin?
00:52:55Yes, of course.
00:52:56Yes, of course.
00:52:57Yes, of course.
00:52:59That's a good way.
00:53:00You don't have it.
00:53:02Lots of cities have tried to really make crypto transactions real and we have made it true here in San Martín de los Andes.
00:53:11I can go through the main avenue and with just a little Bitcoin in my wallet, I can buy a coffee, I can cut my hair, I can buy my dog's food.
00:53:21This future economy lives in a tiny town.
00:53:25We are speaking about a new technology that is directly relation with people where the power is in the hands of the people.
00:53:38Bitcoin.
00:53:39El primero.
00:53:40In Buenos Aires, you have poor areas and those are mostly neighbors that were built with migrants from the countryside of Argentina that, you know, they don't have a place to stay.
00:53:54So they basically settle with what they have.
00:53:57The first experiences I did were exactly with people from the Villa 31 and the Villa 21-24 where we invited them to the Bitcoin meetups in Buenos Aires to teach them about Bitcoin and to see how they experience and also to learn from them.
00:54:13Because I always said this is not about inclusion, this is about interconnection.
00:54:17Well, here we are working with everything that is the recovery and recycling of electronic information, which, after that electronic, is re-inserted or re-utilized, as Sebastian said, to make cryptocurrencies or some activity related to IT.
00:54:36David is repairing a monitor LCD.
00:54:40Sebastian is now mining cryptocurrencies through the processor.
00:54:46It is an opportunity for the kids to go out and then, with the time, they will grow up.
00:54:52They will put more important laptops, even though they will be able to have a mining farm.
00:54:59We saw Bitcoin as the beginning of an innovation cycle that would bring financial inclusion or financial empowerment for everybody.
00:55:27I think it's in the emerging markets where these technologies will really thrive.
00:55:32And that's why you see all these communities, because here it's an exponential value contribution, where in other places it's an incremental improvement.
00:55:42Man, crypto changed our lives.
00:55:45We need to allow everybody in this country and this region the opportunity that we have.
00:55:51I think it's about time.
00:55:52The only thing that Bitcoin needs is time.
00:55:56I've spent a lot of time in Nigeria and Ghana and Kenya, South Africa, and I've been living in Central America.
00:56:04So I've seen, like, this desire versus necessity dynamic.
00:56:09When you're in a place like this in Central America, when you're in a place in South America or Africa, people don't look at the price.
00:56:16They're looking at, like, I need to send this money. I need to receive this money. And this is a way to do it.
00:56:22It's a way to do it.
00:56:23It's a way to do it.
00:56:24It's a way to do it.
00:56:26It's a way to do it.
00:56:27It's a way to do it.
00:56:29It's a way to try and find the opportunity and find the opportunities that you can see.
00:56:32It's a way to do it.
00:56:34That's why you feel so good.
00:56:36It's a way to do it.
00:56:38Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
00:57:08An independent development cannot take place without an independent currency.
00:57:13Guyana is the sixth largest producer of gold in the world today.
00:57:18Our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents fought for our independence in various African countries as we know.
00:57:24It is important to acknowledge the economic effects of slavery
00:57:28if we are to truly understand the things I'll be talking about today.
00:57:38And you mommy ain't for the pay me, I don't know why they delay me
00:57:42For the fame I be waiting, I'm not crazy, but I'm from the city of mommy, I've been waiting
00:57:45Been a couple years in a car, but be a little power, it takes a fight
00:57:48Been sorry on the path and it's dry, and I feel this grind on my life, and I would like this life to be...
00:57:53Africa only wins with Bitcoin's help.
00:57:57And Bitcoin only wins with Africa's help.
00:58:02If everyone has access to Bitcoin and Lightning,
00:58:06then we don't need banks to actually settle these payments and interface with real people.
00:58:11Anybody can use Bitcoin and Lightning.
00:58:14It means that right now, somebody can send money from the US to Nigeria,
00:58:20and it actually settles, and they don't have to actually touch Bitcoin themselves.
00:58:26I think what needs to happen is for folks to realize that the Bitcoin community has to still be more general
00:58:32as opposed to like heavily technically focused.
00:58:34One of the things that I learned three years ago when I came to the continent
00:58:38is just how big an issue and a gap the remittance problem is
00:58:43and how well Bitcoin solves that problem
00:58:46that is so far detached from what we hear in the United States and a lot in Europe
00:58:51about the price and the digital gold and all this BS,
00:58:56which is not really solving anyone's real problem.
00:58:58So the real problem is sending money and the money transmission.
00:59:04Bitcoin means that one, people can participate in ways that previously there was a reason, right?
00:59:11So you can't work remotely because, oh, we can't pay you because we can't do transactions with Nigerian banks
00:59:16because they're blacklisted, whatever.
00:59:18So some of those barriers are being removed.
00:59:22The other barriers about perception and so on remain.
00:59:26But at least we're getting a foot in the door.
00:59:28And that represents freedom.
00:59:30And because we're resilient, because we're innovative,
00:59:32we have what it takes to create our own solutions that are based on Bitcoin.
00:59:38Bitcoin.
00:59:46Hey, how are you?
00:59:52Good.
00:59:52The problem is humans will naturally over time corrupt.
00:59:56So if you could be run by a non-human benevolent dictator.
01:00:00So if a program could manage you.
01:00:02And what is that program?
01:00:03That program is Bitcoin.
01:00:04I believe that democracy is failing and Bitcoin will help it.
01:00:08A lot of Bitcoiners believe that democracy is failing and we should scrap it.
01:00:11Unlike a human, with all that power, power corrupts, absolute power corrupts, absolutely.
01:00:15But with Bitcoin, we've seen, as its power increases, it's still following.
01:00:18It just actually solidifies and becomes more immutable.
01:00:21And that's interesting because that's the difference from a human
01:00:23who would become more corrupted with more power.
01:00:30It's more deceptive.
01:00:31When I stopped coaching, I was trying to find that peace.
01:00:47I think that's what Bitcoin is allowing me to do now.
01:00:52And still do it through basketball is allowing me to have that piece of, you know, giving.
01:00:58Or just, here's some knowledge.
01:01:00Here's a gem.
01:01:01I started a non-profit back in my hometown.
01:01:04Created the Bitcoin Classic, which was the first basketball tournament ever in the U.S.
01:01:10rewarding players in Bitcoin.
01:01:11We're going to Rucker, the most iconic sports facility venue in New York City.
01:01:19As a kid, I used to watch VHS tapes of the Rucker Park people playing Dr. J, Kobe Bryant,
01:01:26Allen Iverson.
01:01:27So to throw this type of tournament there, it's like a hit and a home run for me.
01:01:32I'm going to try to make it as big as possible.
01:01:34We're sitting in the middle of Harlem, where many of the people in this area are underbanked.
01:01:54The blessing about cryptocurrency and blockchain technology is that anybody can get into it.
01:01:58The danger is the same thing.
01:02:00You do have people that are swindlers.
01:02:02You have bad actors out there, and we need to be able to have the right amount of regulation
01:02:06to be able to address that.
01:02:08As Bernard Madoff emerged from house arrest for a court appearance,
01:02:13lawmakers from both parties criticized government regulators for dropping the ball.
01:02:18I want to know who is responsible for protecting the security investor,
01:02:24because I want to tell that person that they suck at it.
01:02:28Every, what, 7 to 11 years, there's a financial crisis.
01:02:31Usually what that means is some player got over-leveraged or over-extended,
01:02:34and then the government comes in, bails them out, prints a bunch of money.
01:02:37And usually there's a price to pay in terms of oversight,
01:02:41in terms of regulations that are hoisted on the industry to correct for that particular thing that went wrong.
01:02:47It takes a very long time for regulations to catch up with how business is actually done.
01:02:52This area has been called the new money, digital cash.
01:02:56Some have called it the way of the future.
01:02:59I have another name for it, reckless, predatory, foolish, and dangerous.
01:03:06Nobody should be surprised that governments generally do not like Bitcoin.
01:03:11They don't like it for one very simple reason, which is that they cannot control it.
01:03:15Individuals and markets need a money that is not controlled by any group of people,
01:03:20and Bitcoin provides that finely.
01:03:23One message that I've been trying to carry to the Bitcoin community is,
01:03:26there is one force on Earth strong enough to kill Bitcoin,
01:03:32and that's the United States government.
01:03:34By and large, there is an extraordinary degree of ignorance about crypto and Bitcoin in Washington.
01:03:41The president came out with an executive order in that he tried to organize the government
01:03:47to come up with a framework in which cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology
01:03:52would operate in a prudent and reasonable manner.
01:03:56That enthusiasm came in large part because you had so many Americans
01:04:01who were invested in this technology in one way or another,
01:04:04some exposure, some interest in it.
01:04:06I'm getting into crypto with FTX.
01:04:08You in?
01:04:09It's FTX.
01:04:10It's a safe and easy way to get into crypto.
01:04:12Yeah, I don't think so.
01:04:15In the fall came the mighty collapse of the exchange FTX.
01:04:21As you've had headline scandals, sometimes the prudence of the regulation
01:04:38is overshadowed by the story that's on the cover of the paper.
01:04:41The technology of Bitcoin, technology behind the blockchain,
01:04:45is not what caused the losses in the case of FTX.
01:04:49I think the fact that somebody who people had so much trust in and that trust was misplaced,
01:04:54that I think has had a hampering effect on the evolution of the markets.
01:04:58And regulation that's focused only on prudence is now focused on defensiveness.
01:05:03What we just saw was a massive collapse of a centralized exchange,
01:05:08which sort of resonates with the manifesto of the Bitcoin community,
01:05:11which is not your keys, not your coins.
01:05:13People really need to be focusing on self-custody.
01:05:15The revolution is to be your own bank.
01:05:17That doesn't work if you're moving your Bitcoin and keeping it on a place like FTX.
01:05:21I think it's ultimately about ownership of your assets.
01:05:26With that ownership comes also a higher level of responsibility and accountability.
01:05:32I mean, what's the point of Bitcoin if you don't have the freedom, frankly, to touch it?
01:05:37It becomes useless.
01:05:44Right now we're at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California,
01:05:48racing in the NASCAR Xfinity Series.
01:05:50And we've got a 300 miler up in front of me today. I'm starting seventh.
01:05:53I know that I'm the first NASCAR driver that has fully taken my entire sponsorship
01:06:03and salary in cryptocurrency, which includes Bitcoin.
01:06:06It's been better for me financially than anything else I've done.
01:06:09I've seen the power of Bitcoin. I've seen what this technology can do.
01:06:13It's liberated me from debt. It's liberated a lot of people.
01:06:23It's liberated me from the world.
01:06:37As a world, we throw away lots of tires every year.
01:06:39And all the years that tires have been made,
01:06:42they've never really been recycled in a way that is really economically viable.
01:06:46And so we've spent a lot of time trying to figure that out.
01:06:49We cook them.
01:06:50So we raise the temperature of those tires to the point
01:06:53that they become a gas stream.
01:06:54And then we're able to cool and condense that gas into oil.
01:06:58One of the elements of renewable energy in general
01:07:00is that you've got to figure out what is the use of that energy
01:07:03after you've generated it.
01:07:05And in our case, what we've launched and what we've been focused on
01:07:08for the last five, six years is taking that power
01:07:10and running our own blockchain Bitcoin data center.
01:07:15We want to make this a mass market solution
01:07:18to a problem that the world has created and never fixed before.
01:07:20One of the geniuses of why Bitcoin is so secure is because it uses energy, right?
01:07:29If we use no energy, it wouldn't be as secure.
01:07:32Bitcoin has the potential of being essentially venture capital
01:07:38for new development of renewable energy.
01:07:45We are about an hour and a half from Des Moines, the capital of Iowa.
01:07:49And this is a Bitcoin mining facility that I built in 2019.
01:07:53It all started off with one shipping container that was in California running at a solar farm
01:07:57that we ended up dropping off right behind us and started using energy to mine Bitcoin.
01:08:02Energy is the only commodity that cannot be stored easily.
01:08:05You can store oil, coal, but energy has to be used the second it's generated.
01:08:09So out here where there's tons of wind and there's not as many people,
01:08:13that energy is just going to be sitting there and evaporating via heat
01:08:16and effectively dissipating and no one gets to use it.
01:08:20We incentivize as a government and a society production of energy and not consumption of energy.
01:08:25So we deploy our Bitcoin mining facilities at these constrained areas
01:08:29to utilize and capture energy that would otherwise be wasted.
01:08:34People have done the math and Bitcoin accounts for something like 0.3% of global electricity consumption.
01:08:42When people worry about the climate emissions impact associated with Bitcoin mining,
01:08:46they forget that it's actually decaying, right? It's leveling off the issuance rate.
01:08:52And eventually Bitcoin mining will probably shrink as an industry because we will have
01:08:58emitted most of the Bitcoins. And so the economic incentive to mine will be less.
01:09:02We will eventually get to a point where Bitcoin is a net zero consumer of energy.
01:09:09And all these arguments about energy consumption will disappear.
01:09:13What you might hear is that there's an increase in the use of renewables to power Bitcoin mining.
01:09:19And the reality is the opposite. That as Bitcoin mining migrated from China to the United States
01:09:27and to other countries, the carbon intensity of Bitcoin has increased. The amount of climate pollution
01:09:33in Bitcoin has increased. You have these massive coal plants and massive gas plants
01:09:39that were hardly being used that were suddenly repurposed to power Bitcoin mining.
01:09:44Bitcoin has gotten dirtier over the last two years rather than cleaner.
01:09:49Sometimes I call it crypto crap-o and sometimes I call it, well, crypto .
01:09:54Now, if you told me you owned all of the Bitcoin in the world and you offered it to me for $25,
01:10:04I wouldn't take it because what would I do with it?
01:10:05Buffett and Munger, they're old guys. Old guys have a harder time getting it.
01:10:10They just do. And they don't need to get it. Buffett and Munger have been some of the great
01:10:14investors in history. You don't have to get everything right. You know, they miss Bitcoin.
01:10:19I don't think finance has ever been more accessible to people than it is today. I mean,
01:10:24you know, anyone with a pulse can open up a stock trading account. You know, banks bend over
01:10:30backwards to help the unbanked get in the door. To be sure, it's under the stern gaze of the federal
01:10:37authorities that regulate them. But I think never ever have things been quite so accessible.
01:10:45There is a small handful of very powerful people, institutions and countries that benefit
01:10:52from the way that monetary system works. They're not going to give that up. If I were them, why would
01:10:59I? I would not give that up. I have an infamous tweet that says hyperinflation is going to change
01:11:04everything. And it's coming. You look at Venezuela, you look at Argentina, it has changed everything for
01:11:11those people. And it's happening more and more countries. And it's not something that's out of reach.
01:11:16And we can't be trapped in our bubble of the United States. So like it'll never happen here.
01:11:20It could certainly happen here. Banking has a much more entrenched community of both lobbyists,
01:11:27but of people that have been there. Right. And so it's the devil, you know,
01:11:32not the devil you don't know. And crypto felt really weird to people. And everyone gets pissed,
01:11:40but other people are making money. Who are these people?
01:11:46Oh no.
01:11:51Got a bodega. This guy's going to take Bitcoin. Smoke shop is definitely going to take it.
01:11:56Eco green fall. I would like the wine shop around here to take Bitcoin. But we got to teach them.
01:12:02Jonathan Logan. I'm actually from Southeast Queens, born and raised. I've been a member of the fire
01:12:06service here for just over 20 years. And that's been a tremendous experience because I get the
01:12:12opportunity to show up on, quite frankly, the worst day of everyone's life. And I get to step in at
01:12:18that moment and help. It comes with a lot of responsibility, but it comes with a it comes with
01:12:25a desire to to want to change someone's position. And for me, when I came into Bitcoin, that was also
01:12:33a continuum to that. So right there, we want to take that sign. We want to add Bitcoin Boulevard.
01:12:38Exactly. We have to be the ones to tell the story.
01:12:40So my name is Daniel Modell, and I live in Harlem. We called the group Harlem Bitcoin.
01:12:46We had no grand visions of what this would become. We just wanted to basically be a resource
01:12:51to help people understand what Bitcoin is. We were inspired by what we saw happening in other parts
01:12:56of the world. Local communities get together to try to educate each other, to try to build this
01:13:01circular economy on Bitcoin. Bitcoin, it's not it's not intended for Wall Street guys,
01:13:08and a day traders and a DeFi guys. That's not what it was. It's basically intended for a daily
01:13:13consumption of a person that don't have a bank. There's people that I see here in this neighborhood
01:13:21every single day, people just like me, just normal people who have worked their whole entire lives
01:13:25and have basically no savings. I remember being 40 years old and having $200 and that being my entire
01:13:32life savings and thinking to myself, what is going on? You know, what, what, what's happening? Why?
01:13:38I think most people in America, maybe worldwide, but especially in America,
01:13:42we're, we're pretty much financially illiterate. I remember like this crazy aha moment when I first
01:13:47realized that really money is just an abstract idea. Why do I believe in this one particular system? And
01:13:54is there any other system? And if, is there a way to quantify it against the system I'm currently in?
01:14:01And for me, it's become very clear that like Bitcoin is just a better system, period.
01:14:05Russia invades Ukraine. In the capital, helicopter attacks capture the airports and Russian troops are
01:14:12reportedly inbound. Right now there is a war going on in Ukraine. Russia has invaded Ukraine and is
01:14:21attacking cities, including the city where I'm from, Kyiv. War is terrible, obviously, and there's war all over the
01:14:27world all the time. But this is the first time that it kind of strikes home for me because it is my
01:14:31hometown that's being bombed and people that I know who have family over there, they're now living in
01:14:37metro stations trying to survive. One of the ways that we've discovered to get money on the ground
01:14:41to people in Ukraine is by sending Bitcoin to Ukrainian exchanges. There's one called Kuna, for
01:14:46example. And then from there, you can actually convert that to local currency and send it out to people's
01:14:50debit cards. That's really interesting because you can do that in the middle of the night on a Sunday.
01:14:55And I think that's really, really important for giving people a way out.
01:14:58The Ukrainian government worked with a crypto exchange to set up a wallet address,
01:15:02and then people from all over the world who believe in freedom and democracy sent crypto.
01:15:07And the Ukrainian government was then able to use that to buy food, medical supplies,
01:15:13military equipment. For me, it was the same country that my parents, where my parents had been
01:15:19hiding so many years ago. You see Ukraine, Canada. In the most time of need, you put savings away for
01:15:27a rainy day, and it's taken away from you. And that's a big problem. We saw thousands of truckers in
01:15:32Canada protesting vaccine mandates that were destroying their livelihoods. And you saw, sadly,
01:15:39government willing to exercise its jackboot to stifle the freedom of its citizens. People began
01:15:46supporting the truckers with Bitcoin. That freedom is powerful.
01:15:56148 million Americans don't have $1,000 in savings. And so half our country is really poor. And so
01:16:05providing them services that don't cost a fortune, that they're not scared to use, is, I think, like a
01:16:14social mandate. Bitcoin is part of the arsenal of how we're going to have a more just society.
01:16:25Understanding the legacy effects of how we got to this point where people are unbanked is really an
01:16:29important piece of understanding money, finance, traditional banking, and how all that works. And
01:16:35so if we want to talk about whether it be redlining and how certain communities didn't have access to
01:16:40banking and financial services, then we begin to really understand where Bitcoin is going and how
01:16:45Bitcoin can really be implemented, right? Particularly here in the US, we've got first world problems. Our dollar
01:16:51works pretty good, right? For the most part, for mostly everyone, but not everyone has, believe it or not,
01:16:57equal access to finances. And so all of a sudden, in certain communities, you have payday lenders,
01:17:02you have check cashing places, the Western unions of the world. That's a real hardship for people
01:17:06who are getting a lot chopped off the top of their income.
01:17:15It is that social justice. It is that leveling of the playing field. It is that steadying of the goalposts.
01:17:21Bitcoin won't take away the legacy of the effects of redlining, right? But what it will do is,
01:17:26it gives people a starting point where they can go forward and say, you know what? You know,
01:17:30I'm good now.
01:17:35Bitcoin at the fucking pub.
01:17:38Yeah.
01:17:39So, right away. Here we go.
01:17:40Here we go.
01:17:42He's in the future. He's in the future.
01:17:44He's in the future.
01:17:46He's in the future.
01:17:48Damn it. Comes up with it. He's running the point. RL. Let's go, baby.
01:17:5234-27. There's a minute left and a half. RL with the ball.
01:17:56What you gonna do? I don't think you can go on. You don't think you can go on me.
01:17:59Here we go. What's it gonna do? As he goes up. Look at it. Throws up. Fuck it.
01:18:05You wanna get points in line?
01:18:06Come on.
01:18:09Big work. Big work. Big work.
01:18:13I'm gonna give you some Bitcoin, right? Don't spend it.
01:18:16We obviously try to lead people in with basketball. And then while they're there,
01:18:23giving them information on like the basics of Bitcoin and blockchain technology.
01:18:27It's over the long term, there will only ever be 21 million. And the reason why I love talking
01:18:33to our community is because usually this information don't get to us until it's too late.
01:18:37Whoever wins the tournament, we give them a Bitcoin reward. There's that one or two people
01:18:43that will say, you know, I'm just gonna save it and give it to my kid. And just hearing that one
01:18:47or two times, it's like, it's amazing. It's like, dang it. Bitcoin Classic is doing what
01:18:52it was built to do, you know, is get people in and have them understand the fundamentals of Bitcoin.
01:18:57One, two, three.
01:19:00Yes, sir.
01:19:01You know, but that's crazy, too. Just real quick.
01:19:03We learn math. We learn history. We learn all this in school, but you don't learn about the power
01:19:08of interest rates and continuous compounding. And I get this credit card and, you know what I mean,
01:19:13I buy, you know, a nice suitor, a Chanel handbag, but then it costs me much more than that in the
01:19:18future to pay it back. And we don't understand the math behind it. And I think it's a great
01:19:22disservice to most people because they get these tools, they misuse them, and then they spend years
01:19:27of their life trying to rectify these mistakes. This isn't something you've had to been in for 10
01:19:30years to benefit from. But Bitcoin's not a get-rich-quick scheme. It's not. Hopefully before you buy,
01:19:35you learn. And you should really invest your time in Bitcoin. And that's the most important thing is
01:19:39you educate yourself about it, what it is, how it's different from the current monetary system.
01:19:43Crypto is really challenging. There's a lot of misinformation because there is no center of
01:19:47authority. There is no Bitcoin entity that dictates what is true or what is false. There is data,
01:19:54and then there's the interpretation of the data. Crypto gets a bad rap for a number of different
01:20:00reasons. Part of the problem is the industry's fault also. The industry has to do a better job
01:20:05messaging, has to do a better job educating lawmakers, educating the community on this stuff.
01:20:11Because many people that come into the Bitcoin space will get a lot of their information from
01:20:15either mainstream media, newspapers, Twitter, and typically they're all very toxic environments
01:20:20to learn about Bitcoin. And so there's the component of like trying to educate people about what Bitcoin
01:20:27is. But then there's the experiences that show people what Bitcoin is.
01:20:32The reality is kids are growing up only knowing that they have a cell phone 24-7 connected to the
01:20:37world through the internet. So yes, there has to be more education. Yes, it has to be more approachable.
01:20:42And I think the most approachable education is always the education that you can feel.
01:20:47The only thing I can tell people to do is recognize what you do have control over.
01:20:51Raise the value of your human capital. Invest in yourself. Take education seriously. Get your kids
01:20:56to think that way. Get your society to think that way. Make investments in young people because they are
01:21:01the future. I think that a lot of politicians fear changing their minds on an issue. What I want to
01:21:08plead to her is that even though the Bitcoin community has probably come down on her
01:21:12a lot about what she said, if she were to come around, we would embrace her with open arms. Like
01:21:18we are so ready to have such a powerful politician on our team. Different countries are starting to
01:21:24adopt Bitcoin and they're prospering. And here at home, they're starting to lose faith in their
01:21:30government because things aren't getting done. Currency is being printed left and right. These things
01:21:34are happening and people will wise up to it. You can become your own bank effectively. We're actually
01:21:40building a non-custodial wallet that I brought with me. It's this little thing we're calling a
01:21:45Bitkey. This can be used by anyone. This is the wrong finger. It's flashing red. This is the right
01:21:51finger and it's flashing green. For me, it's not self-custodial versus custodial. It's that we have the
01:21:57choice in the first place. Bitcoin is an opportunity to reimagine how we want to live. You bring people
01:22:05closer together when you cut out the middleman and we're able to do it with 21st century technology.
01:22:11Everyone has a relationship with money, doesn't necessarily understand it. But now when you come
01:22:15to Bitcoin, you go down that rabbit hole, you're forced to change. I always say, once you have
01:22:20knowledge, what are you going to do with it? How are you going to change?
01:22:36Can't get out of this mood. Can't get over this feeling. Just can't get out of this mood.
01:22:54This afternoon, I'm laying out my plan to ensure that the United States will be the crypto capital
01:23:00of the planet and the Bitcoin superpower of the world. And we'll get it done.
01:23:07But it's only your arms I'm out of. Can't get out of this dream.
01:23:16Sometimes I do dream in code.
01:23:19Josie's a big Bitcoin believer. Her grandpa's a big Bitcoin believer.
01:23:22I bought Bitcoin at 9,000, 10,000, 11,000, 15,000, 19,000, 25,000, 30,000, 35,000, 40,000, 45,000,
01:23:3755,000, 60,000, 66,000. I will buy Bitcoin at the all time high forever because it's always going to be
01:23:45superior to the alternative thing. Oh, yeah. Okay. You got footage.
01:23:50This feeling. Just can't get out of this mood. Last night, your lips were too appealing.
01:24:00And the thrill should have been all gone by today. In the usual way.
01:24:08I will say I saw on Twitter about this thing they called Brooklyn barbecue and they had a picture
01:24:27of it and it really was pitiful. It was like a little piece of meat and a little pickle.
01:24:31What a fool to dream of you. It wasn't part of my scheme to sigh and tell you that I love you.
01:24:43But I'm saying it and I'm playing it dumb. Can't get out of this mood. Can't get out of this mood.
01:24:54Heartbreak. Here I come. Can't get out of this mood.
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