¶ Understanding Blockchain Technology
Welcome to a Wiser Retirement Podcast . Before we get started with the episode , I want to tell you about a new e-book available on our website called 'Buyer Beware, Why do they keep trying to sell you that annuity ? ' This e-book covers the various types of annuities , negatives to owning annuities and better investment alternatives to annuities .
To download this e-book , you can click the link in the episode notes or go to wiser investor . com and you'll find it at the bottom of the page . Now on to today's episode .
Welcome to a Wiser Retirement Podcast , where we the best believe financial should be should conflict-free . I'm your host , Casey Smith , guiding you to financial freedom . Today's my co-host , Robert Swarthout . Hey , Robert , hey , how's it going Good ?
Robert's the founder and CEO portfolio manager at Teton Crypto Capital , and we do an episode , an extra episode , every month on topics related to crypto . Today , we're taking a more education sidestep . Yeah , you know , just going to focus on blockchain .
Yeah , you know it's blockchain . You know is the underlying technology of all the crypto stuff we talk about . You know sometimes it's referred to as distributed ledger technology , but you know it's Pepsi or Coke , it's all soda .
So , so remember . Well , people still do this . They say it's in the cloud . Oh , where'd you say that ? I saved it in the cloud , but no one really knows what the cloud is , and I think we should start there before we go down our list of it's in the blockchain . But what does that mean ?
It's like you know people say hand me a Kleenex , but there's different brands of Kleenex and different boxes . Yep .
So at the very core of all this , a blockchain is just purely a form of a database . You have traditional databases that you may use within a business system to store , you know , financial data or customer data . You have more advanced database systems that you may actually use in the cloud , like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, or something like that .
That gets very techy very quickly there , but at the end of the day , you know , blockchain is just really a sequential recording of history where each block refers to the previous block and kind of goes back and you know it's uneditable .
So in the end you have a system that people can rely on that somebody is not in the database is kind of changing some values . You know , say , it's your bank account . Bank accounts are not yet in blockchain , but at some point, they will be and you don't want to have the bank to be able to come in and just twiddle with the numbers a little bit .
You can . You know , have , you know , the peace of mind to know that you know when you add money or subtract money from a bank account . It's going to be what it was before .
So , you know , you think about keeping all your passwords on a Microsoft Word document and you can easily terrible idea back . You can easily backspace and edit all that and then blockchain you . You can't go edit a chain . You can add to it correctly , but you can't go back and change a number .
Yeah , you can't go back and change something that happened in the past . What you would do in a blockchain world is say you had a value there that you know your bank account had a thousand dollars in it At that point .
It's more of a summation of all the history that had happened to that point , Yep , and then you would add a positive or negative entry to that to kind of affect your bank account .
And what makes it that secure ?
It is the way that the systems work , where it's a bunch of computers coming to a consensus or doing math to kind of prove that that transaction did what it said it was supposed to do , and they call them confirmations . In a lot of cases , where you know a block from the word blockchain is a base .
You think of it as a subset of time , some blockchains that measured in minutes , some that measured in seconds , some are even down to , you know , under a second , but it's a block of time and during that block of time, all the different things that happened get collected .
The computers agree upon that , do the quote , unquote , math on that , and then give it a fingerprint of sorts for that block it gets . It's called a hash , but it gets hashed and then it moves on to the next one and then that hash is referenced in the fall in the following one to kind of help you kind of .
You know if you wanted to kind of step back in time .
So, there are different databases that are doing this for different purposes . So you'd have one for the DMV or you could have one for real estate .
Exactly , yeah , you know in the past , you know the best blockchain obviously was Bitcoin . Its system was not focused on any particular use case .
It was more of like , in some ways , a proof of concept , for digital money is where the idea grew out of , you know , during the financial crisis and so supposedly came out of the financial crisis and the idea that it's you know , the fat Wall Street banks were getting all the things they shouldn't be getting .
So you have a world where , you know , the technology's evolved . You know it's been roughly around 14 years to this point . Bitcoin was by itself for a while .
Then XRP came , then Ethereum was really in 2017 came along and allowed smart contracts and smart contracts , you know , we'll get to in a few minutes here but like it really changed what a blockchain could do in a positive way . It kind of created a much bigger expanse of surface for applications and who are the ?
creators of these databases Is this Microsoft , Google , Amazon ?
Almost never . I mean they may be piloting projects , you know . It could be a software developer in the basement , it could be . You know , typically they're . They've had a lot of math , education , and cryptography kind of mixed in with that math .
You know , early on the problem they were trying to solve is that we know how to do a blockchain , but how do we make it where it can have more transactions per second , the throughput of it ? Or you know they're trying to solve for use case , like you're talking about , like okay , we want it to store car titles . You know that's probably just happening today .
That hasn't happened too much in the past . But , as you know there are special use cases that need to be solved for each one of those is will not to say every use case in the world needs a unique blockchain , but it's some level . It needs to have flexibility to be able to do different things .
So we kind of have the basis of how this is built . So now let's get to our topic how does this change the world ?
Yeah , very simply said in a lot of different ways , and this topic comes up frequently . When I talk to people about crypto , they're like oh , "Isn't blockchain and crypto all we already know it is , and I'm like to me .
No , we're like this is barely the tip of the iceberg that we're seeing here , and the analogy that I've been using lately is to kind of help people understand . The reference in time is I don't know if you've seen this , but back in the I think in 95 , 96 , the Today show was talking about email addresses and Katie Kirk was on there .
And they spent a minute or two discussing what we understand to be an email address today , the at sign right and they're like the A with a circle around it . I don't even know how to say that . It's just that awkward stage right , and they were .
Even when they were explaining what an email address was , they were leaving the periods out so you know , obviously a learning curve there . And that's the moment I feel like we're in crypto because when I talk to people about crypto there's there's just all this confusion . Maybe a smidge here and there they understand , but for the most part, people don't .
And to me, that feels like a decent analogy . But you know
¶ The Potential of Blockchain and Cryptocurrency
that's . You know a couple of that was saying we believe we know what blockchain , crypto , will do for the finance world , but we likely don't even know A majority of the use cases that are likely to be solved down the road .
Those will be uncovered , as you know pre , you know the next generation comes along with the technology , right , and that kind of stuff . So you know it's a , you know ever-evolving space . It's certainly .
You know , over the last two and a half , three years it has felt like the pace of change has extremely advanced , increased in how fast things are getting faster and you know , I really don't know if there were more teams doing projects . You know , I was telling somebody the other day summer of 21 .
I felt like I could keep up with all of the crypto news that was happening on a daily basis for all kinds of purposes . Not a chance anymore , like even six months after that . I couldn't do that Like now .
That's why I have certain markets I focus on and you know , for gaming for instance , I don't pay attention to it at all , but I know there's a lot happening there .
So , yeah , so starting with that cryptocurrency . Um , obviously that is built on blockchain . Yeah , and that is the original use for blockchain right , Is it ?
Yeah , I mean , that's the digital e-money , that's Bitcoin , grew out of , you know , and I think early on , like quickly , whether they admitted or not realized that it was not going to be an e-money replacement , just due to the restriction on how many transactions can happen in a particular or per-second a basis .
So you know , it's that's why other blockchains have come along that have been much more efficient to do what they do , that allow maybe for an e-money replacement type thing . But you know , in the notes here we talk briefly about what I kind of been discussing recently with people is anything-to-anything transactions .
First of all , they don't really understand how to wrap their head around that . People understand , like I take my dollars and I go and I buy groceries , the grocery store very simple , it's dollars to give me goods . In a world where you know cryptocurrency is more prevalent , you could potentially not be holding dollars .
You could be holding "Casey coins and you want to go buy stuff at the grocery store . I have "Robert coins and I want to buy stuff at the grocery store , but the grocery store doesn't want either one of our coins . In a cryptocurrency world , there would be liquid markets for KC coins and just something that they would care about , and vice versa .
It all can be happening behind the scenes . So you don't even have to care what they want and they don't care what you have , and you just go and you just pay .
It starts getting to a world where I think it makes sense to say , people that live in Europe , where they're always going across borders Americans were kind of spoiled in a sense that we don't really deal with other currencies all that much but you start getting into a world where it's, you know , anything-to- anything .
You know , your son may earn some kind of tokens in a video game he's playing , but he wants to go to the , you know , buy something at the gas station . In that kind of world, that thing could exist . So anything to anything . I think cryptocurrency kind of allows , amongst many other things .
So you know what I'm interested in is and it takes government involvement , but removing the middleman from transactions . The middleman also collects fees, right ? Typically, high fees . So, this could be very promising .
Yes , you know . The example I think that we can talk about here is if you're buying a house . You have an escrow agent or you have a title insurance . You know the attorneys make a lot of money off of title insurance .
Right , in a blockchain world where the house deed is recorded on a blockchain electronically, and your funds whether they're on the blockchain, or could be represented on the blockchain . Kind of tying technology together, allows a transaction to come together .
The only reason why you're buying title insurance is the off chance that the person selling the house doesn't really own it or have the rights to sell it . Correct , so you know that's 1% .
Sometimes I have no idea what it is these days you have to be a small percentage , you would think , but still thousands of dollars typically on a house transaction that you kind of don't need to be paying , in my opinion .
So if you could , on a blockchain , prove that you own the house that you're selling or you have your names on the deed , effectively all you know you don't need to with finality and 100% certainty , what ? What job does the attorney have there ? Probably nothing .
So you could have a transaction set up with a smart contract saying , okay , Robert's got his money , you've got your house deed , let's do this transaction . It checks all of it as part of the code and it basically gives us each what we're doing at the end of that transaction . So you know , so you can apply that to cars , car titles , house deeds .
You know anything about this environment . As some of you know , there's escrow agents just for sometimes we're doing a transaction . You know , like my wife just bought a horse . In the horse world it's kind of like pay me for the horse when the hauler picks it up . Well , that's harder to do than said , right ?
Right .
So typically they don't want wires because I don't know , they're probably trying to keep the money off the IRS radar . So , you know , I think that we eventually get to a world where that's more electronic . But you know , do we trust the person ? An escrow agent would make sense , I think , in that scenario .
There's not really .
I mean , I'm sure there's escrow agents for horse sales , but there's not all that common as far as I can tell . So it's a . It's a world that's . You know , blockchain is in an interesting place in time because it is a technology that helps you replace the need for trust in a transaction . This world has less and less trust each day , unfortunately .
Yeah .
But the technology comes along and allows you to have the requirement for zero trust as long as you trust in this system . Does that make sense ?
Yeah , it does I you know what's the incentive for governments and other organizations to allow that to happen , though , you know , typically government only makes changes if they screwed something up .
They screwed something up or they're . You know they're lobbied for , so you have that side of it too .
¶ Blockchain and Potential for Digital Voting
I would imagine that the change you know certainly the privacy laws that need to change around at , say , you know , escrow or title insurance and that kind of stuff , right ? But I think that would probably be more of a bottom-up type of thing . You know somebody needs it .
It happens in one state , starts snowballing into other states and maybe it comes to that .
Well , you , know some states don't even have closing attorneys . Correct . You know , I think Montana is one of those . We helped the client purchase a home out there and just worked with a transfer company , Exactly . Yeah , I could see in that space that being much more efficient and maybe groups like that pushing it .
Because everyone in Montana is honest . Is that what that's saying ? Yes , I have no idea . Yeah , I assume nobody's honest . Yeah , it's probably a safe assumption .
So tell me about that . You know we talked about this in podcast , probably over a year ago , but maybe two now . But think about , like food inventory or food safety . Like you know , we had the whole lettuce scare a few years ago . So if all that was in blockchain , we would know exactly where the lettuce came from .
Yeah , I mean potentially down to the row in the field . Yeah , there's certainly , but we know who bought it .
We wouldn't know who bought it , we would know which grocery store had it , though right In the world that we currently live in , we probably would not know who bought it I think it was at least a but there could be a world not too far from that that they know an identity , and it doesn't necessarily have to be your name , but they know an identity that
bought that lettuce from that supplier , from that row in the field , so they could warn you that you bought something with Salmonella or whatever that's on the lettuce .
I'm really intrigued by this , not because we need to more efficiently tell the people that have the lettuce that there's a problem , but more so not waste as much food , because we're trying to , because we understand the blast radius of the problem , because typically , it's okay , we know there's Salmonella .
Okay , we need to get rid of all lettuce in the Southeast . Probably not the right answer . Right .
But right now , I mean , they know where the problem came from , but we couldn't figure that out to specifically . We just assumed the whole batch is bad . Now Correct , when we could actually potentially not have to eliminate all the food source .
Right . I haven't followed this lettuce one as closely element , but it's just generally .
It's a very big hammer that they go to solve this problem with yeah Right , but it could be a more precise hammer if they was more easily tracked and shared amongst people , because it's one thing for , say , the growers to track it , but are they sharing that data with the shippers and then they're sharing that with the grocery stores .
Basically , zero chance yeah In a world where blockchain is public and they're all kind of contributing to that data along the way .
It's easier to kind of do that traceability and it may be that you know what Kroger doesn't care about telling their customers , but maybe Whole Foods does , or something like that , right Like where there's some stores that pick up on that data and do something because they have your identity . The other one doesn't Is all about blockchain public .
There could be private blockchain .
There are private they call them private permission blockchains , but yes , private blockchains . You can literally run Bitcoin by yourself in your own house . Obviously , it's worth zero , right ? You know it's functioning . Not Bitcoin , it's using the same code , but for all kinds of purposes they're public .
So this is a big one . It would solve a lot of problems . Digital voting yes . So there would be no voting fraud . You know , it would be more complicated voting fraud .
It would be more complicated voting fraud .
And everyone has to have a device to be able to vote .
Right . And we're getting close to that . We're all generations have some kind of technology . We're probably not q uite t here ye t immediately , but we're close .
And I even think that if we , you know , say tomorrow we decided as a country we wouldn't have electronic voting , there could be some allowances , because there's certainly there's people with disabilities that it probably would have trouble .
Unless you could vote into the blockchain from a device that's portable .
Portable or , you know , ADA compliant or whatever , the words are there but like it's . You know , I'm intrigued by this because you know partially I think it's a I don't like staying up late on election night to figure out who wins . But I want to know .
Right .
And lately it's taken a few days . Yes , right .
But in a blockchain world , you know , to me, tongue-tied here . Let me back up a little bit . I think that there's . They try to do all these things to prevent influence when you're voting . Right , it's certain times you can't have people there with signs so close to the voting polls , those kinds of things .
I also think that there's influence with the East Coast starts voting and then the West Coast kind of gets to see it in Hawaii and Alaska . In some ways , we don't only really care if they count , but like they're the extreme exam ples , like, in blockchain-enabled voting system , it could all be recorded digitally in the blockchain .
Nobody could see the results and it could be programmed to be like okay , it is now 1 am Eastern , because now we know the polls are closed in all places . Yeah , show all the results . Oh my gosh , it's 105 . We know the results . Everybody can go to bed . That is not good for TV revenue , right ?
Or TV ad revenue for those networks .
Right , they can still have their talking heads , I'm sure , but like it's .
Well , you still pull people , come out of the polls like yes and do all that .
But that's immediately . We have found that that is not statistically accurate .
Well , none of us is statistically accurate in recent history .
Yes .
The pollsters have gotten it wrong almost every time .
Yeah . But , to me both sides complain about the election in some form , right , and they're complaining about different things too .
I just it seems like , as a country , we would want an election that nobody complains about within reason , right , there's always gonna be somebody complain about small things , but like , yeah , but you know , they keep saying , oh , it should be a national holiday to vote . Well , it could be , or it could .
We don't necessarily need a holiday and you need to vote from your phone .
Yeah .
Like there's a lot of ways you could modernize that . Unfortunately , both sides would complain about something you probably would never . It would never happen .
But if you were starting a new , country .
Yeah , because that happens frequently .
Yeah , and you had the resources . This definitely seems to make sense , and it doesn't mean that you have to do it for a presidential election . You could start doing it . There are plenty of small towns across this country that would be , I'm sure , really anxious to implement something like this and to be the first .
Yeah , and I think that's where it starts . It starts at the bottom and goes up . It's not like , oh my gosh , we just wake up and say the next presidential election is gonna be on blockchain .
Right , right , but yeah , for your town mayor . Absolutely . Something not connected to a major election .
Or it doesn't even have to be politics . It could be like voting for I don't know something within a community .
Yeah .
Like it could start there, and then prove itself to go . Say a mayor race or something like that .
You could choose , like the concert series on the square , you could choose who you want to show up each week , and then you know yeah , that's fine . So , but something like that . That'd be a great testing ground because you could use technology and then , if it didn't work , who cares if you got the Mexican band and you got Jimmy Buffett instead , or whatever ?
You know it's a challenge with this digital voting outside of a small community race that doesn't ne cessarily need an identity, is identities being on the blockchain . It can't just be like I have an email address and a password and I log in to vote because that is right for a whole different set of fraud . Correct .
And I think we first need to get to where we have digital versions of our IDs . We're getting closer . In some states , Ge orgia is one of them , you can have your driver's license on an iPhone .
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Yeah , I think we're like Georgia being the first aid , or something like that , oh , I'll be doing that right after this podcast . So, it's a multi-step process step that takes .
Do you know how many times I forget my driver's license ?
Well , here I'm about to , maybe give you some .
Is that too soon ?
Potentially so . You can put it in your Apple wallet . It shows there after they mail you a piece of paper to verify your identity .
Okay .
They're trying to , yeah , prevent a problem . Prevent a problem there , right it's , but it's only good at the airport .
Well , that's when I need it .
The most Okay . So then you're set .
I have clear , so I don't need it any clear work but it's only good at the Atlantic airport right , oh , no , no , no .
Well , you might get to another airport that doesn't have clear , so you got to be careful there's no , no , I'm saying is about if I was just an Allentown Pennsylvania from an Allentown Pennsylvania .
I showed my ID on my driver's license . Is it still good there ?
I'm pretty sure it is because the new IDs that are federally back , that have the star on it , yeah , I believe , are all part of that same system . Okay , and this is Georgia had to pass . Each state has to pass a law to .
The big things . If you get pulled over , you don't have a driver's license . That's not exactly .
I mean , because it , it will show your photo . You have to kind of go deeper into the wall . It shows all the same data and actually a little bit more . Okay . I believe , but it's just different . Right . I mean , I look forward to the day that I don't have to carry my driver's license with me .
It's just on my phone because my phone is gonna be with me . R ight . And it's one less thing to have in my wallet . So , we're getting close . You know , so identities are on some kind of electronic form of a database . It's almost certainly not a blockchain at this point . So , how do we get it to where they're on a blockchain ?
Then you have privacy aspects that you really need to care about at that point correct , because I believe we talked about this podcast like , in a blockchain enabled world , you should be able to go somewhere and if they , you know , say , your restaurant , they want to know if you're 21 . They look at your ID , you're .
They're also seeing your home address , they're seeing your height , your weight , a bunch of other potentially other private data that they certainly don't need right . There are ways in blockchain, they call it zero-knowledge proofs where they functionally could have their system ask, "is Casey 21 ? " in his wallet and his ID would respond yes or no .
They don't need to know that you're 21 or if you're 70 , it doesn't matter , you're of age .
That sounds like something .
We get hacked by people and what right , but it could be done in a by the user , so they could be 21 . Well , I mean if your ID that is Sponsored on this blockchain by and I guess endorsed by the state . I mean there's , there's ways to kind of get around the potential for , I guess , editing or fraud there .
Yeah .
So interesting . Yeah , there's a lot of layers to this , but I think having identities on a blockchain really starts to unlock a lot of use cases that we're gonna be talking about here .
So we already covered a bit this , this a little bit ago , but basically titles , deeds and ownership tracking . Yeah , that makes total sense .
I mean it's you know , we're just talking about horses . Earlier horses have titles to yeah , right I mean .
So you know but even that could be on a blockchain and even being able to like verify Prior ownership for it for a transaction Right , you know yeah , I mean it's you know .
You can go on , you know , say you're looking at car , you go in car facts and see that oh , this is a three owner . You don't know who the other owners are not this you care who they are , but maybe you care about what states that cars been in .
Yeah , true .
I mean maybe , yeah , I mean I want to go back in the northeast .
Yeah , as you know , I'm in the horse world too . Well , my daughter is .
¶ Blockchain
We had a horse that was purchased that when he got to be registered to put to participate in the professional events , the ownership is not correct . Like , basically , there were three bill of sales missing . There was a bill of sale from them to us , but not prior to that .
And so in order to run FEI in the sport , you have to have it's like a title search for a house , you have to show that you have all the titles going all the way back .
Right , what happened was three people were angry at each other and so they were like the horse is basically repossessed at some point in his life , and then we come along about this repossessed horse , which was great horse , and so basically , you know , is that like a salvage title on a car .
Thankfully , my , my daughter is cute , so I was like here's this little girl , she wants to do her dream and because you three can't get along , right , she can no longer move up in the ranks . And so they all signed and we fixed it . Yeah , um , I was wondering why he was so cheap . I was like why ?
Is this horse discounted so much , it's because the person who owned him knew that but didn't tell us yeah , and it wasn't until we moved up the ranks we figured out that .
oh , that's why thanks for no thanks . Yeah , I know right .
So blockchain would have solved all that , because it would have known . Right, well , it wouldn't be able to complete the loop .
Exactly , and you ? You , that would have been visible , right yeah , versus kind of being a surprise .
So right , exactly Create verifiable portable data mechanisms . Explain mouthful .
So as long as I can remember the internet being around , they've always had this grand idea that Healthcare data would be portable . So going from doctor's office to doctor's office , yeah , having to have have them send the data back and forth and I don't know , I can't imagine their faxing into .
These days they're probably just emailing PDFs or something silly , but it's have these portals now Right , which is helpful but I can't imagine all portals are talking to each other or even doctors review the portals , but that's a different problem , right ?
Yeah , true , but just having data that is portable , that is on the blockchain , that is Private but yet can be detailed enough for the people that need to see it . So this is a slightly different problem than we were talking about before .
You want privacy to the data , but you want certain people that you verify or select to be able to see the data in whatever you know , I guess amounts whether it's full access or partial access . Yeah , you know , healthcare is the easy example . You know the education records . I think is another thing , as families move around .
Oh yeah , you know this is a bit of a hot topic in general , but , like , if you move across states , you could be getting different kinds of education . Like , do you need , do the quote-unquote , credits transfer or classes transfer , all that kind of stuff so you can make that more portable .
And I guess , just you know , you know when , in my opinion , when information can be more freely this is what the internet did . It opens up so many use cases and this is kind of the borderline of we don't quite know what blockchain could do , but if we unlock that part , you could end up with a flood of other possibilities that could .
You know , they're unimaginable right now .
So is that they kind of goes along with Markets being created around things that aren't easily sold today . So Correct , I think . Well , I mean you have concerts , sporting event tickets , yeah , and we're starting to I mean , it's not blockchain , but we're starting to do that now like we go to the Braves game .
If there's a noon game , which is four year usually would take , we go as a team .
Yeah .
And this year I couldn't take a snapshot of the ticket and pass it to everyone on their phones because it's now a move .
Send us all those yeah .
It has like this moving bar and there were so many people in line that had pictures of their tickets and they're like I'm sorry , we can't take that . That's so . I don't know what kind of fraud they're dealing with to have to move to that , but the blockchain chain could definitely solve it .
Yeah .
Probably through an app of some sort .
Yes , I mean . My understanding of at least the ticket situation you're referring to there's is somebody goes in with an electronic ticket and then screenshots it and then sends it to their buddy outside trying to reuse the ticket . Ah gotcha .
Even I still have a criminal mind . Yeah , check , um , I would assume that . I would assume that that went to scan . It says , hey , I've been used , yeah , and you can't exit and re-enter . So you think that would just solve the problem right there , but definitely not .
But with it being able to be moved , you potentially could exit and remove if they didn't want it to allow that .
Oh , I see Okay .
Versus , you know , just allowing somebody to have a screenshot , right , right . But you know there are obviously are marketplaces around tickets . You know , ticket master stub hub , those kind of things .
Yeah .
But they are high fees and they are the they're , you know , the master of their little kingdoms and you're kind of up to their rules . But what if I wanted to sell you my Braves tickets and transfer them ?
I mean , I can hand you cash or we could do something outside the system and then I can , at least in the braves ticket example , I know that we can come in and we can transfer them within the app , right , but it's not truly portable , right ? Um , making them more portable , making it where again , we could do it , anything to anything transaction .
I want Braves tickets and , uh , you have , you know , Casey coins" , but I don't want Casey coins .
So Well , that comes back down to and we don't have it on our list . I don't think . Well , we did . Uh , maybe the top at contracts . It comes back to the contract too , right Smart ?
contracts .
Yeah , you could . You could work compensation into um and into the , the ball chain Right Right Good was . Or you executed your deal , I paid we're , you know check .
Yeah , absolutely . I mean , smart contracts can be anything that code can functionally be written for .
Yeah , Is there any one place now you can do a smart contract ?
Yeah , I mean , Ethereum is that's basically all .
Ethereum is so you and I could probably figure out how to do a smart contract , but what about me and a 70 year old man ? Do you mean writing ? A smart contract , right yeah , and executing his . Who's not technically savvy ? Probably not .
Probably not . There may be some kind of website out there with like a gooey that you can go in a drag and drop things . Yeah , maybe not Um , but we need to get there . This is early days still , yeah , exactly .
They probably think you're trying to pull something along and I think at the end of the day .
You know , if we fast forward , it's not like you and I are . A 70 year old is going to need to know how to write a smart contract .
Yeah , it's going to be executing one Right .
But it's going to be so simple where you could be in some kind of website or interface where you're just basically saying , okay , I'm going to write a smart contract . You know , you're basically again dragging and dropping . This is this half the deal . That's this half the deal . These are the conditions . Whatever it may be , yeah and run , click a button .
And it's developed that I could tell us who they used for that .
Yeah , and I mean to me that world is coming . It's just regulations part of it , Not to drag regulations in on this again , but it's , you know , crypto only can do so much right now without it .
But think about that on top of like Venmo . So you already have the money payment platform . Why not add an agreement ?
Well , venmo , I would say , is a siloed payment provider , so you're requiring us both that Venmo accounts . Yeah , true , I figured you'd have to have some type of account , but potentially , but you have a wallet that maybe you don't want to keep at PayPal because you don't trust them . Oh true , which probably shouldn't trust PayPal .
So it needs , you need to be able to attach a third party Right .
Or you could have your own , literally self custody wallet that you attach to a transaction .
Yeah .
Or you could work , it'd be your bank account .
So PayPal , paypal could be the first . I guess they could More than that .
Just a couple of weeks ago , they announced they're working on a PayPal stablecoin that's going to be US dollar , backed by Paxos , I think , and everyone trumpets them as being really forward thinking , I'm like , but that already exists Right .
But not at PayPal Right , yes , and not , good marketing .
Not with the email campaigns that PayPal has . I think I get an email from them every day . That , and you know .
PayPal obviously has deep regulatory routes where they , like even the New York financial services department , came out and endorsed it , but also wasn't endorsing some cryptos that were even XRP . That has clarity from the court to money . This is such a zoo , so , anyways . So tell me about ad free tracking . Yeah , this is interesting to me .
So I , you know , you can use different browsers on your computers , your phones , you know . If you have an iPhone , you probably have Safari . You might have Chrome , right , you know ? Or Internet Explorer . If you're on a PC , there's Firefox as well . There's a version of Chrome that Google does not make , but since it's open source , this group is taken .
They call it . Brave is the browser . It works just like Chrome , but it has privacy blocking stuff in it , so you don't have all the tracking that happens normally . Is that like DuckDuckGo Um , DuckDuckGo is a search engine that actually they do plug Brave into .
Oh , okay .
But it's a , you know . It's a browser that is privacy focused and um blockchain enabled , if you want to call it that . You know it prevents all the tracking stuff pixel tracking , all that kind of the where your identity or your patterns get sold off . Yeah , without your um , you know really saying yes or no .
You know , in a world where everybody was using a browser that was enabled and I didn't have to be brave but say all the browsers were crypto enabled you could have a small wallet attached to it and when you went to go read an article , instead of seeing ads or feeling like your identity is being stolen , slash , sold out from underneath you , you're paying
fractions of a second to per . You know , fractions of a penny per second , effectively to read an article . You read as much as you want and then you leave and then that transaction is done .
So you're paying the ad revenue that would have gotten right . I mean , obviously it's not like all of a sudden the internet needs to be free because that's just not a thing right .
But it's a replacement because you are if you're not paying for something . you are the product where the people really processes it that way is or not ? And it's it's not like it has to be super expensive Like all these paywalls you may run into . Like I want to go read this article and I'm also on some random website and they show me the first paragraph .
I'm like thanks , but I'm not going to pay you your dollar for the month For to read this thing . Is it's not that , is there's not that much content there on this article for me . So there are some websites um , not tons that are supporting
¶ The Impact of Blockchain Technology
this whole . They detect that you have a blockchain enabled browser . They can tell a wall there and also you can see the whole article . You scroll , you scroll , scroll . If you get the bottom , you've paid for whatever you've . You know however long it took you to read , right ?
So maybe fast readers get a deal and you kind of get to move on and , uh , you don't , you don't become a product being sold .
So , yeah , that's most of the stuff you see on the internet at the bottom of the article you're reading and all the pictures and the crazy . Oh yes , that's exactly what that is . You're the product Absolutely .
And and I think that you know , this is an example of blockchain being used and people never realized .
And they're using blockchain Cause you could well , if the world evolves and a lot of people are doing it like I know that I'm doing it now because I can't put you on the US dollars in there and pay with US dollars Okay , you put crypto in there in whatever crypto you can hold , it automatically transfers to the crypto they want to receive .
Super simple , is that anything to anything ? Type transaction Right . The cool thing , though , is with crypto it's more than two decimal places deep .
They're mostly like six , eight , 10 decimal places deep , so they can do super small fractions which make this work and you're not paying the the fees to visa and mastercard and discover , which basically means the transaction can be no less than a dollar or people are losing money .
Oh yeah , you know , that's kind of the roughly the break even and you know , in a blockchain world they can be fractions of a penny .
So Last point for how blockchain will change the world combat corruption and government spending . Yeah , and when I made these notes , don't you need all ?
parties to be okay with that . Yeah . You know what and I probably should have spent in any kind of spending . You know whether it's nonprofits , anything like that , but you know there's with things on a blockchain is transparent , you can kind of see what's happening .
You may not have all the details , because if something goes off chain , obviously it's not there . But you know , when I was making these notes , I was reading about the Ukraine stuff and I know that's a super hot topic about money going to Ukraine . Is it being spent wisely , right Even from that standpoint , or is it you ? know where's it going after that .
But the ability to see , as a citizen , where the money's going , I think promotes trust and obviously there's less and less of that each day , but like there's something that government could do . And again , it's not like the government's going to immediately put all their transactions through a blockchain .
It may start in a small pocket national parks or who knows what it's going to start with , but , like I , it seems like it will end up there and you know there could be groups that advocate for , against different kinds of spending .
You know the whole RFP process to work with a government agency to do something that they need done is already a relatively public process . Is it free of corruption ? Probably not , right . So there's other layers there that I think this can help kind of start to tackle . Robert , that's a good question .
Robert , thanks for your insight on this . Certainly , you know , from an investment standpoint , you know there's there's limited ways to access this , but I think that , as as company surface , this is something that , um , you know , indexers like me will will will grab this very differently Now in any one specific company .
You know , but , but there's um , there's definitely a big future here and there's that's why we do these crypto , uh , special edition podcasts is is because I just want to help educate people about what's coming down . What's coming down the pike , right yeah ? I mean recently we just remodeled our our basement and I took out a ton of DVDs .
I don't watch movies over and over again , so I'm I love this digital age of just rent it for $3.99 and I'm just done and it's out . But when our kids were little , we have DVDs for the , for the car , which you don't have to do that anymore , right .
But as I was hauling it all to goodwill , thinking to myself going , I remember when we bought all these thinking that how , like , oh , we don't have VHS anymore , right ? So we went from VHS to DVD . Then we have a few Blu-rays .
But our kids were getting older then , yeah , and and we started streaming things more , and so Blu-ray just went yeah , blu-ray was very short-lived .
Yes , but it's a . You know , technology waves , in my opinion , are accelerating in how fast they happen , so it does maybe make sense that Blu-ray was quicker . I think it kind of got caught between , obviously , dvd and streaming .
For sure , yeah , and then streaming , and then we even with streaming . We were streaming , but now we're streaming in 4k , right , so it's , it's moving so fast . And for people to say , oh , this crypto stuff is is is fake , it's , someone made sense , it's a Ponzi scheme . Who doesn't know the true definition of the Ponzi ?
scheme .
Exactly , but it's , it's . It's definitely something coming down , and you have to be able to open your mind up and learn about this . Um , we have a few episodes . You might be interested in episode 172 , uh , tips to secure your password in cryptocurrency assets . I think that's even more important now than ever .
Um , smart people who do bad things seem to be in plethora these days . Um , we did have a special recently . Xrp gets clarity . You might want to listen in on that one . That's just more of um , some of the government rulings that have come down with uh , with XRP .
Um , but , yeah , uh , Robert , if they want to reach out to you directly , how are they reach out to you ?
Just shoot me an email at Robert@ Teton Crypto Capital . com .
And we'll make sure we add that to our show notes . Um , thanks for listening to today's episode . If you're interested in learning more about Wiser Wealth Management or Teton Crypto Capital , um , you can schedule a consultation with one of our Fiducius Financial Advisors or directly with Robert . Uh , you can do that at wisereinvestorcom .
Thanks for listening and , Robert , we'll see you next time .
Take care .
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