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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.
00:39:08He was happy 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.
00:39:20Four years later he calls me and he's like Didi there's a bar available.
00:39:24He was happy and that's when we fell in love with the place.
00:39:28In that bar I met a guy. We told each other if ever such a bar comes free we will take it.
00:39:32Four years later he calls me and he's like Didi there's a bar available. Investment and everything. I will if we make it a bitcoin beach bar.
00:39:40And now I'm here and we have a bitcoin bam bam beach bar.
00:39:54I grew up in the 90s as a normal guy buying a huge house. Goal of becoming very rich you know becoming the millionaire because that would lead into happiness.
00:40:01And then a few years later my father got sick. I got a huge burnout when my father died a year later.
00:40:08I had the funeral all that stuff and I told my wife let's let's do a trip.
00:40:11After two weeks I felt energy and I felt this amazing feeling on being on the beach building a sandcastle with my kids.
00:40:18And we just said to each other let's say yes to everything in life so we embraced the adventure.
00:40:23We were living on a campsite. We sold everything we had. There is no alternative. I am all in bitcoin. There is no bank account.
00:40:32For me it's a stupid question when people ask why would you spend bitcoin because that's the only thing we have.
00:40:37Payment coming in. High five. Bitcoin is coming in.
00:40:41I am a bitcoin revolutionist. It means I want to support this network. I am not in it for the millions. I am in it for the real revolution.
00:40:48Let's change the world and give everybody access to my beach bar. If they have a bank account or not they can pay.
00:40:55And that's for me the most important part. And you know I don't mind when they pay with cash but yeah filthy cash will be exchanged into bitcoin later that day.
00:41:04Cryptocurrency is just the next step in the evolution of money. We started with the shells from the beach and we ending now after digital currencies like PayPal into cryptocurrencies that can be used by everyone.
00:41:15And you know decentralized.
00:41:17We lost the bank. We got all you say.
00:41:19We saved the gold into bitcoin.
00:41:31There 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.
00:41:46If bitcoin adoption is really going to fly out of necessity, that's where the money needs to flow.
00:41:51And 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.
00:42:01I was announced as one of the four people selected to be a board member for Btrust.
00:42:07And we locate, educate and remunerate bitcoin engineers, open source engineers, starting in Africa but particularly in the global south.
00:42:17Welcome to Nigeria. Welcome to Nigeria.
00:42:33Welcome to Nigeria.
00:42:35Welcome to Nigeria.
00:42:38Welcome to Nigeria.
00:42:43Welcome to Nigeria.
00:42:45I'm Abubakar. I'm 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. I'm also on the board of B-Trust,
00:43:02where the mandate there is to grow the Bitcoin development ecosystem in Africa initially,
00:43:06and then we can scale it out globally. This is Bitnob. It's a Bitcoin company. So essentially
00:43:11what we do is we build financial services on the Bitcoin layer. So what we're doing is we're
00:43:16imagining how banking works today, right? How do people get financial services and saying that what
00:43:22if the layer that they're doing that is part of the problem? How do we try this on a new layer,
00:43:28on a more global layer, right? So that's sort of how we're imagining everything and building. So
00:43:33what we do is we give people a chance to save in Bitcoins, stablecoins, or give people the chance
00:43:40to, you know, borrow money using their Bitcoin as collateral.
00:43:46Around the time I was born and a few years afterwards, one naira, which is the currency of Nigeria,
00:43:52was at parity with one US dollar. Now it's around 600 naira to the US dollar. So over my life,
00:44:00I've seen it lose a huge amount of value. In that sort of environment, it's very hard to maintain
00:44:05and hold wealth. And if you can't hold, and if you cannot save, then it's very hard to build a future
00:44:11for you and your family. You're constantly going up a downward escalator the wrong way.
00:44:18The biggest issue for a lot of Nigerians who don't use banks, there's perception, right? There's this
00:44:24perception that banks are not for them. Banks are for the rich. I do not have IDs. You know, all those
00:44:30things that you require of me to open a bank account, they don't think it's worth the hassle of
00:44:37opening a bank account. So they prefer to always have easy access to their money. How do they do
00:44:43that for those who don't use banks?
00:44:47Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
00:44:49Ordinarily in America, if you were to spin up a PayPal account, for example, it's going to be a
00:45:01smooth process. Here in Nigeria, you spin it up, they request for more KYC, they ban the account,
00:45:06they think, you know, it's fraudulent because as soon as you open it, most folks just load a ton of
00:45:10money inside like $1,000 plus. So then you end up getting blocked. We can't really get our governments
00:45:15to buy Bitcoin. So how do we ensure that we as Africans, as Nigerians, get the upside of this
00:45:23at the end of the day? One way of doing that is to make sure as many people as possible are holding
00:45:29Bitcoin, regardless of the amount.
00:45:31There are actually blue wallets now.
00:45:33Yeah.
00:45:33From blue wallets.
00:45:34Blue wallets.
00:45:35I'm not paying you.
00:45:39I'm not paying you, but I'm not paying you, but I'm not paying you, but I'm not paying you.
00:45:49Bitcoin, we can build financial services. I 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.
00:46:09I'm not paying you, but you only can get the 57% of Fundraร then, however.
00:46:12The only priority has a total is worth borrowing.
00:46:15Let's go.
00:46:20Sun
00:46:24Sun
00:46:28Sun
00:46:30Sun
00:46:32Sun
00:46:33Sun
00:46:37Sun
00:46:39We officially start the Bitcoin tour to the Walking Street, Florida,
00:46:44where there are like people behaving as small ATMs,
00:46:48where you can exchange dollar for pesos
00:46:51because 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,
00:47:01you have to move to the blue rate where you can get dollars.
00:47:05So this is the free market.
00:47:08How much is the blue?
00:47:10The budget is $2.85.
00:47:14Okay, well, thank you.
00:47:17So this is how people get access to dollars,
00:47:21through people on the street.
00:47:23They are like human ATMs.
00:47:25You give pesos, they give you dollars.
00:47:27Wow.
00:47:30Hyperinflation at more than 3,000% hit Argentina in 1989.
00:47:35Argentina is second in a World Bank ranking of countries with the highest inflation.
00:47:39Argentinians have turned out in their thousands,
00:47:42demanding 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 it as fast as possible.
00:47:52You don't know if tomorrow we're gonna depreciate 20% or 100%, you just don't know.
00:47:58So 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.
00:48:37In 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
00:49:13and these tools to the world.
00:49:18Hey, welcome to La Crypto.
00:49:20This is a crypto house.
00:49:21We are building a lot of stuff like it's a Bitcoin community.
00:49:25This is the place we work every day.
00:49:27Most 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.
00:49:36It should be free.
00:49:38This is a typical Argentinian local food.
00:49:41It's a local barbecue.
00:49:43We call it asado.
00:49:46We 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.
00:50:13When I was 13, I got kicked out of school and I went to live here with my grandma.
00:50:20I was 14 years old and I met Bitcoin.
00:50:23Bitcoin.
00:50:24Bitcoin.
00:50:25Bitcoin.
00:50:26Bitcoin.
00:50:27Bitcoin.
00:50:28This 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.
00:50:43Bitcoin.
00:50:44And we always laughed because this was also even more full of things.
00:50:47We always say in my family, we joke that I was very lucky that it never fell on me.
00:50:53As you can see, this is very bent because of all the things.
00:50:57Then here, this is where Lemon started for me.
00:51:00This is the genesis of Lemon in this whiteboard.
00:51:03Argentines, we always like to find an idol or a passion.
00:51:07I 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?
00:51:18I'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?
00:51:27This is my Lemon card.
00:51:29Can I show it?
00:51:31Of 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.
00:51:47The merchant might or might not know about Bitcoin.
00:51:51But regardless, I can use my Bitcoin directly in the transaction.
00:51:55So 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.
00:52:15So once you get to that point, there is no way back.
00:52:25The Cardinal 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.
00:52:44I 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, ¿te puedes pagar en Bitcoin?
00:52:56Sí, por supuesto.
00:52:57Te vi, ¿no?
00:52:58Gracias.
00:52:59De buena manera.
00:53:00Aguante lo tenés, ¿no?
00:53:03Lots of cities have tried to really make crypto transactions real and we have made it true here in San Ardín 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.
00:53:39Bitcoin.
00:53:40El primero.
00:53:43In Buenos Aires, you have four 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 settled 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, like Sebastian said, to do criptomonedas or some activity related to IT.
00:54:36David is repairing a monitor LCD monitor.
00:54:41Sebastian is, at this moment, mining criptomonedas through the processor.
00:54:47It is an opportunity for the kids to go out and then, with the time, they will grow up.
00:54:53They are going to put more important laptops, even though they will be able to have a mining farm.
00:55:00I already have my land, my house.
00:55:02I've learned a lot of things through the cryptocurrency.
00:55:05I've learned a lot of things through the cryptocurrency.
00:55:09Now I have it as a payment method and I'm doing some more research to improve mining.
00:55:19We 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.
00:55:33And 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.
00:55:43Man, crypto changed our lives.
00:55:46We need to allow everybody in this country and this region the opportunity that we have.
00:55:52I think it's about time.
00:55:53The only thing that Bitcoin needs is time.
00:55:58I've spent a lot of time in Nigeria and Ghana and Kenya, South Africa, and I've been living in Central America.
00:56:05So I've seen like this desire versus necessity dynamic.
00:56:10When 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.
00:56:21And this is a way to do it.
00:56:22It's the way to do it.
00:56:23It's the way to do it.
00:56:25It's the way to do it.
00:56:26Oh
00:56:56An 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.
00:57:24So, it is important to acknowledge the economic effects of slavery if we are to truly understand the things I'll be talking about today.
00:57:31It is great on my life.
00:57:33Roll it tight and I'm daisy, but they make all come and pay me, cause life on the streets be so crazy, they get me high on the daily.
00:57:38And you mommy ain't for they pay me, I don't know why they delay me, for 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 crowd, but be any power, they take some fight.
00:57:48Been sorry on the bad and it's dry, and I feel this grind on my life, and I would like this life.
00:57:53Africa only wins with Bitcoin's help, and Bitcoin only wins with Africa's help.
00:58:02If everyone has access to Bitcoin and Lightning, then 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, and 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 as opposed to like heavily technically focused.
00:58:34One of the things that I learned three years ago when I came to the continent is just how big an issue and a gap the remittance problem is, and 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 about the price and the digital gold and all this BS, which is not really solving anyone's real problem.
00:58:59So the real problem is sending money and the money transmission.
00:59:03Bitcoin 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 because they're blacklisted, whatever.
00:59:19So some of those barriers are being removed.
00:59:22The other barriers about perception and so on remain, but at least we're getting a foot in the door.
00:59:27And that represents freedom and because we're resilient, because we're innovative, we have what it takes to create our own solutions that are based on Bitcoin.
00:59:38The problem is humans will naturally over time corrupt.
00:59:55So if you could be run by a non-human benevolent dictator, so if a program could manage you, and 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 who would become more corrupted with more power.
01:00:30It's more deceptive.
01:00:34I coached once I graduated for 10 years straight.
01:00:41There you go.
01:00:43When I stopped coaching, I was trying to find that peace.
01:00:48I think that's what Bitcoin is allowing me to do now and still do it through basketball is allowing me to have that piece of, you know, giving or just here's some knowledge.
01:01:00Here's a gem.
01:01:01I started a nonprofit back in my hometown, created the Bitcoin Classic, which was the first basketball tournament ever in the U.S. rewarding 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, Allen Iverson.
01:01:27So to throw this type of tournament there, it's like a hit in the 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.
01:01:52The 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 to be able to address that.
01:02:07As Bernard Madoff emerged from house arrest for a court appearance, lawmakers from both parties criticized government regulators for dropping the ball.
01:02:18I want to know who is responsible for protecting the security investor, because 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 overleveraged or overextended, and then the government comes in, bails them out, prints a bunch of money.
01:02:38And usually there's a price to pay in terms of oversight, in 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.
01:02:57Some have called it the way of the future.
01:02:59I have another name for it.
01:03:02Reckless, predatory, foolish, and dangerous.
01:03:07Nobody 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.
01:03:16Individuals and markets need a money that is not controlled by any group of people, and Bitcoin provides that finely.
01:03:23One message that I've been trying to carry to the Bitcoin community is there is one force on Earth strong enough to kill Bitcoin, and 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 to come up with a framework in which cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology would operate in a prudent and reasonable manner.
01:03:55That enthusiasm came in large part because you had so many Americans who were invested in this technology in one way or another, had some exposure or some interest in it.
01:04:05I'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.
01:04:13Yeah, I don't think so.
01:04:15In the fall came the mighty collapse of the exchange FTX.
01:04:21Breaking news overnight.
01:04:22FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried arrested in the Bahamas set to face a judge this morning after U.S. prosecutors filed criminal charges in connection with the multibillion-dollar collapse of his crypto company.
01:04:31As you've had headline scandals, sometimes the prudence of the regulation is overshadowed by the story that's on the cover of the paper.
01:04:42The technology of Bitcoin, technology behind the blockchain, is 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, that 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, which sort of resonates with the manifesto of the Bitcoin community, which 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.
01:05:38Right now, we're at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California, racing in the NASCAR Xfinity Series.
01:05:50And we've got a 300-miler up in front of me today.
01:05:53I'm starting seventh.
01:05:53I know that I'm the first NASCAR driver that has fully taken my entire sponsorship and 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.
01:06:11I've seen what this technology can do.
01:06:13It's liberated me from debt.
01:06:15It's liberated a lot of people.
01:06:17As a world, we throw away lots of tires every year.
01:06:40And all the years that tires have been made, they've never really been recycled in a way that is really economically viable.
01:06:45And so we've spent a lot of time trying to figure that out.
01:06:48We cook them.
01:06:50So we raise the temperature of those tires to the point that they become a gas stream.
01:06:55And then we're able to cool and condense that gas into oil.
01:06:58One of the elements of renewable energy in general is that you've got to figure out what is the use of that energy after you've generated it.
01:07:05And in our case, what we've launched and what we've been focused on for the last five, six years is taking that power and running our own blockchain Bitcoin data center.
01:07:13We want to make this a mass market solution to a problem that the world has created and never fixed before.
01:07:22One 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 for new development of renewable energy.
01:07:40We 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 that 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, that energy is just going to be sitting there and evaporating via heat and effectively dissipating.
01:08:18And 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 to utilize and capture energy that would otherwise be wasted.
01:08:32People 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, they forget that it's actually decaying, right?
01:08:49It's leveling off the issuance rate.
01:08:52And eventually Bitcoin mining will probably shrink as an industry because we will have emitted most of the Bitcoins.
01:09:00And 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 and to other countries, the carbon intensity of Bitcoin has increased.
01:09:32The amount of climate pollution in Bitcoin has increased.
01:09:35You have these massive coal plants and massive gas plants that 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.
01:09:48Sometimes I call it crypto crap-o and sometimes I call it, well, crypto sh**.
01:09:54Now, if you told me you owned all of the Bitcoin in the world and you offered it to me for $25, I wouldn't take it because what would I do with it?
01:10:06Buffett and Munger, they're old guys.
01:10:08Old guys have a harder time getting it.
01:10:10They just do.
01:10:11And they don't need to get it.
01:10:13Buffett and Munger have been some of the great investors in history.
01:10:15You don't have to get everything right, you know, they miss Bitcoin.
01:10:20I don't think finance has ever been more accessible to people than it is today.
01:10:24I mean, anyone with a pulse can open up a stock trading account.
01:10:29You know, banks bend over backwards to help the unbanked get in the door.
01:10:34To be sure, it's under the stern gaze of the federal authorities that regulate them.
01:10:39But I think never, never in the, ever have things been quite so accessible.
01:10:45There is a small handful of very powerful people, institutions and countries that benefit from the way that monetary system works.
01:10:55They're not going to give that up.
01:10:57If I were them, I wouldn't, why would I?
01:10:59I would not give that up.
01:11:01I have an infamous tweet that says hyperinflation is going to change everything.
01:11:05And it's coming.
01:11:07You look at Venezuela, you look at Argentina.
01:11:09It has changed everything for those people.
01:11:12And it's happening more and more countries.
01:11:14And it's not something that's out of reach.
01:11:16And we can't be trapped in our bubble of the United States like it'll never happen here.
01:11:20It could certainly happen here.
01:11:22Banking has a much more entrenched community of both lobbyists, but of people that have been there, right?
01:11:29And so it's the devil you know, not the devil you don't know.
01:11:34And crypto felt really weird to people.
01:11:37And everyone gets pissed when other people are making money.
01:11:42Who are these people?
01:11:44Got a bodega.
01:11:52This guy's going to take Bitcoin.
01:11:53Smoke shop is definitely going to take it.
01:11:55I'm trying to bikini if you can take that from the one.
01:11:56Eco green fall.
01:11:57I would like the wine shop around here to take Bitcoin.
01:12:00But we've got to teach them.
01:12:02Jonathan Logan.
01:12:03I'm actually from Southeast Queens, born and raised.
01:12:05I've been a member of the fire service here for just over 20 years.
01:12:09And that's been a tremendous experience because I get the opportunity to show up
01:12:13on, quite frankly, the worst day of everyone's life.
01:12:16And I get to step in at that moment and help.
01:12:19It comes with a lot of responsibility, but it comes with a desire to want to change someone's position.
01:12:30And for me, when I came into Bitcoin, that was also a continuum to that.
01:12:35So right there, we want to take that sign.
01:12:38We want to add Bitcoin Boulevard.
01:12:39Exactly.
01:12:39We have to be the ones to tell the story.
01:12:41So my name is Daniel Modell, and I live in Harlem.
01:12:44We called the group Harlem Bitcoin.
01:12:46We had no grand visions of what this would become.
01:12:49We just wanted to basically be a resource to help people understand what Bitcoin is.
01:12:53We were inspired by what we saw happening in other parts of the world.
01:12:56Local communities get together to try to educate each other, to try to build this circular economy
01:13:02on Bitcoin.
01:13:03Bitcoin, it's not intended for Wall Street guys and day traders and DeFi guys.
01:13:11That's not what it was.
01:13:12It's basically intended for a daily consumption of a person that don't have a bank.
01:13:16There's people that I see here in this neighborhood every single day, people just like me, just
01:13:22normal people who have worked their whole entire lives and have basically no savings.
01:13:27I remember being 40 years old and having $200 and that being my entire life savings and
01:13:33thinking to myself, what is going on?
01:13:35You know, what's happening?
01:13:37Why?
01:13:39I think most people in America, maybe worldwide, but especially in America, we're pretty much
01:13:43financially illiterate.
01:13:45I remember like this crazy aha moment when I first realized that really money is just
01:13:50an abstract idea.
01:13:51Why do I believe in this one particular system?
01:13:53And is there any other system?
01:13:56And is there a way to quantify it against the system I'm currently in?
01:14:00And for me, it's become very clear that like Bitcoin is just a better system, period.
01:14:06Russia invades Ukraine.
01:14:08In the capital, helicopter attacks capture the airports and Russian troops are reportedly
01:14:13inbound.
01:14:16Right now, there is a war going on in Ukraine.
01:14:19Russia has invaded Ukraine and is attacking cities, including the city where I'm from, Kiev.
01:14:25War is terrible, obviously, and there's war all over the world all the time.
01:14:28But this is the first time that it kind of strikes home for me because it is my hometown
01:14:32that's being bombed.
01:14:33And people that I know who have family over there, they're now living in metro stations
01:14:37trying to survive.
01:14:39One of the ways that we've discovered to get money on the ground to people in Ukraine
01:14:42is by sending Bitcoin to Ukrainian exchanges.
01:14:45There's one called Kuna, for example.
01:14:47And then from there, you can actually convert that to local currency and send it out to
01:14:50people's debit cards.
01:14:51That'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.
01:15:03And 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,
01:15:14military equipment.
01:15:14For me, it was the same country that my parents, where my parents had been hiding so many years
01:15:21ago.
01:15:21You see Ukraine, Canada.
01:15:25In the most time of need, you put savings away for a rainy day and it's taken away from you.
01:15:29And that's a big problem.
01:15:30We saw thousands of truckers in Canada protesting vaccine mandates that were destroying their
01:15:36livelihoods.
01:15:37And you saw, sadly, government willing to exercise its jackboot to stifle the freedom of its citizens.
01:15:45People began supporting the truckers with Bitcoin.
01:15:48That freedom is powerful.
01:15:50$148 million Americans don't have $1,000 in savings.
01:16:01And so half our country is really poor.
01:16:04And so providing them services that don't cost a fortune, that they're not scared to use,
01:16:11is, I think, like a social mandate.
01:16:17Bitcoin 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
01:16:29is really an important piece of understanding money, finance, traditional banking, and how
01:16:34all that works.
01:16:35And so if we want to talk about whether it be redlining and how certain communities didn't
01:16:39have access to banking and financial services, then we begin to really understand where Bitcoin
01:16:45is going and how Bitcoin can really be implemented, right?
01:16:47Particularly here in the U.S., we've got first world problems.
01:16:50Our dollar works pretty good, right?
01:16:52For the most part, for mostly everyone, but not everyone has, believe it or not, equal access
01:16:58to finances.
01:16:59And so all of a sudden in certain communities, you have payday lenders, you have check cashing
01:17:03places, the Western Unions of the world, that's a real hardship for people who are getting
01:17:06a lot chopped off the top of their income.
01:17:16It is that social justice, it is that leveling of the playing field, it is that steadying of
01:17:20the goalposts.
01:17:21Bitcoin won't take away the legacy of the effects of redlining, right?
01:17:25But what it will do is give people a starting point where they can go forward and say, you
01:17:29know what, you know, I'm good now.
01:17:33Yo, seriously.
01:17:35Bitcoin crisis at The Hookah Pub.
01:17:37Yeah.
01:17:38Wait, here we go.
01:17:39iez is in the future, you can change this, you can change this, you can change it.
01:17:42I got that.
01:17:43My voice, I got that.
01:17:44My voice, I got that.
01:17:46My voice, I got this.
01:17:47My voice, my voice, my voice, my voice, my voice, my voice.
01:17:51Damn man, he comes up with it, he's running the point.
01:17:52RL, let's go, baby.
01:17:5334-27, it's a minute left and a half.
01:17:56RL with the ball, which it's gonna do.
01:17:57I don't think you can go on, I don't think you can go on me, here we go, what's this gonna do?
01:18:01As he goes up, look at it, close up, fuck it, you wanna put his points in line?
01:18:14I'm gonna give you some Bitcoin, right? Don't spend it.
01:18:18We obviously try to lead people in with basketball, and then while they're there,
01:18:22giving 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 to our community
01:18:33is 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.
01:18:41There's that one or two people that will say, you know, I'm just gonna save it and give it to my kid.
01:18:46And just hearing that one or two times, it's like, it's amazing, it's like, dang it,
01:18:50Bitcoin Classic is doing what it was built to do, you know, is get people in and have them understand the fundamentals of Bitcoin.
01:18:57Bitcoin!
01:18:58Bitcoin!
01:19:00Yes, sir!
01:19:01You know, but that's crazy, too, but 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 of interest rates
01:19:09and continuous compounding, and I get this credit card, and you know what I mean, I buy, you know, a nice suitor,
01:19:14a Chanel handbag, but then it costs me much more than that in the future to pay it back,
01:19:18and we don't understand the math behind it.
01:19:20And I think it's a great disservice to most people because they get these tools, they misuse them,
01:19:25and then they spend years of their life trying to rectify these mistakes.
01:19:28This isn't something you've had to have been in for 10 years to benefit from.
01:19:31But Bitcoin's not a get-rich-quick scheme.
01:19:33It's not.
01:19:34Hopefully, before you buy, you learn, and you should really invest your time in Bitcoin,
01:19:37and that's the most important thing, is you educate yourself about it, what it is,
01:19:40how it's different from the current monetary system.
01:19:42Crypto's really challenging. There's a lot of misinformation because there is no center of authority.
01:19:47There is no Bitcoin entity that dictates what is true or what is false.
01:19:52There is data, and then there's the interpretation of the data.
01:19:56Crypto gets a bad rap for a number of different reasons.
01:20:00Part of the problem is the industry's fault also.
01:20:02The industry has to do a better job messaging, has to do a better job educating lawmakers,
01:20:08educating the community on this stuff.
01:20:10Because many people that come into the Bitcoin space will get a lot of their information
01:20:14from either mainstream media, newspapers, Twitter,
01:20:17and typically they're all very toxic environments to learn about Bitcoin.
01:20:21And so there's the component of, like, trying to educate people about what Bitcoin is,
01:20:26but then there's the experiences that show people what Bitcoin is.
01:20:31The reality is, kids are growing up only knowing that they have a cell phone,
01:20:3524-7 connected to the world through the internet.
01:20:37So, yes, there has to be more education. Yes, it has to be more approachable.
01:20:41And I think the most approachable education is always the education that you can feel.
01:20:46The only thing I can tell people to do is recognize what you do have control over.
01:20:50Raise the value of your human capital. Invest in yourself. Take education seriously.
01:20:55Get your kids to think that way. Get your society to think that way.
01:20:58Make investments in young people because they are the future.
01:21:01I think that a lot of politicians fear changing their minds on an issue.
01:21:06What I want to plead to her is that even though the Bitcoin community has probably come down on her a lot about what she said,
01:21:13if she were to come around, we would embrace her with open arms.
01:21:17Like, we are so ready to have such a powerful politician on our team.
01:21:21Different countries are starting to adopt Bitcoin and they are prospering.
01:21:26And here at home, they are starting to lose faith in their government because things aren't getting done.
01:21:31Currency is being printed left and right. These things are happening and people will wise up to it.
01:21:35You can become your own bank effectively. We're actually building a non-custodial wallet that I brought with me.
01:21:42It's this little thing we're calling a Bitkey. This can be used by anyone.
01:21:47This is the wrong finger. It's flashing red. This is the right finger and it's flashing green.
01:21:52For me, it's not self-custodial versus custodial. It's that we have the choice in the first place.
01:21:58Bitcoin is an opportunity to reimagine how we want to live.
01:22:02You bring people closer together when you cut out the middleman.
01:22:06And we're able to do it with 21st century technology.
01:22:09Everyone has a relationship with money. Doesn't necessarily understand it.
01:22:13But now when you come to Bitcoin, you go down that rabbit hole, you're forced to change.
01:22:18I always say, once you have knowledge, what are you going to do with it? How are you going to change?
01:22:32Can't get out of this mood. Can't get over this feeling. Just can't get out of this mood. Last night you're...
01:22:53This afternoon I'm laying out my plan to ensure that the United States will be the crypto capital of the planet and the Bitcoin superpower of the world.
01:23:03And we'll get it done.
01:23:06But it's only your arms I'm out of. Can't get out of this dream.
01:23:15Sometimes I do dream in code.
01:23:18Josie'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, $55,000, $60,000, $66,000.
01:23:39I will buy Bitcoin at the all time high forever because it's always going to be superior to the alternative thing.
01:23:47Oh yeah, okay. We got footage.
01:23:50This feeling. Just can't get out of this mood. Last night your lips were too appealing. And the thrill should have been all done by today. In the usual way.
01:24:08I will say I saw on Twitter about this thing they called Brooklyn barbecue.
01:24:25They had a picture of it and it really was pitiful. It was like a little piece of meat and a little pickle.
01:24:30What a fool to dream of you. Wasn't part of my scheme to sigh and tell you that I love you. But I'm saying it and I'm playing it dumb.
01:24:48Can't get out of this mood. Can't get out of this mood. Can't get out of this mood.
01:24:57Heartbreak here.
01:24:59Hearts, break here I come. Can't get out of this mood.
01:25:02Heartbreak here I come. Can't get out of this mood.
01:25:05Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh.
01:25:20Amen.
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