Ballet CEO Sees Bull Market for Bitcoin

He's also author of a book I've Got in my Hand, The Promise of Bitcoin, The Future of Money and how it can work for you. He joins us on the phone from Las Vegas. Bobby, nice to have you here on Bloomberg Business Week. How are you good? Thank you for having me. Well, it's great to have you here. It's been an interesting year on so many different levels. That's the understatement of the year as well. It's also been an interesting, uh start to one when it comes

to cryptocurrencies. What do you make of the recent cryptomania. We had some selling, we had to bounce back, we had all utility. We're down again on crypto bitcoin was down about ten per cent or so, what's the outlook in your view? Yes, So, first of all, the context is that this is the big bullmarket year from bitcoin. She looked back a year ago, a big Clinton was roughly just tent of where it was today. The bottom of that thirty dollars in March April two twenty and

now we're already over sat. In fact, we reached an all time high sixty thousand dollars that last month. So with this context of brought a cont into the bull market, we are seeing a a temperate pullback. Did pulled back quite ferociously, seld by almost sixty from its all time teeth just in the last few days. So does a run up just mean though, you know, putting it in contact, you said, this is a big bull market for bitcoin

this year. Does a run up in value just met Does that somehow give something significance and relevance for the longer term? It does because um, as my book I'm trying to position. The way I explain is bitcoin is really a global reserve asset class. It started out as a very small sort of digital currency invented by socially not Comoto, sort of very deep, very nerdy, kind of

cypherpunk kind of creation. But what we've come to see over the last twelve years is that pform really has a role in society in the sense that it truly is an independent into the asset class that has a strict limit on the issuance. So people may know Biquin has opened the camp of twenty one million units, and it was these two factors, the strict limit of twenty one million, and also its own sort of independence, you know,

decentralized nature. It's really a beast that cannot be controlled by by the government of the world, so it doesn't sec come itself to the inflation that we see with the US dollar and other currencies that's controlled by center page printing. So now you know, the coin has already reached one trillion dollars in total value. It's come back down a bit in the reasonable back, but I think

it's didn't go much much higher than that. You know, we are still, though, Bobby, trying to figure out is it a currency, is it a commodity, is it a collectible. I mean, we're still having these conversations. You do know to that the U. S. Treasury, the Federal reserve, are, you know, increasing their curiosity and wanting to know more about it and trying to figure out what needs to be there in terms of oversight. Could that drastically change

the dynamic of cryptocurrency as we see it today. Also Number one miss no more is people misunderstand that currency has to be something that you can spend with to be valuable. I take a more traditional of your currencies, really money and money even if it's sitting in my pocket, even if it's sitting in my bank account, it's useful to me even if it's not spent. So this is the the important piece the currency. Like bitcoin, it doesn't

have to be useful only for spending. It can be useful as an investment, as a head against installation, as a store of value, and in that sense, I think the bigpoint will be very successful. And with regards to regulation, yes, they are very concerned about it because of the digunner nature of its so called awesomeness where it can be sent across the wire in contaneously all around the world. So it really is different from the traditional money in

that sense. So that's why you have regulatory agencies all over the world trying to stand down on bitcoin. But fundamentally bitcoin as as its own sort of digital currency, it hasn't changed even even with the Basically no one can force to change it. What the regulatory agency can do is force people's behavior to change around it, rather than the bitcoin itself. Bobby, what do you do? I work with a lot of smart people. I run into a lot of smart people who are still like I

don't quite understand cryptocurrency. I don't understand it other than it's maybe you know a place, a risky asset that you can just make some money or lose a lot of money as well. What do you say to them that ultimately will be You say, it's going to transform the global economy? How so? Well, so a few things about those smart people. So a lot of smart people

in the world, a lot of successful investors. However, even today, the vast majority of them don't understand it, don't get And this is the reason why I wrote the book. Give an example ten years ago when I first gone in touch with bitcoin. Uh, this is my university being involved. I was decently smart person to have a college degree computer science and all that, but I was enormous, very newbie, if you will, in terms of understanding bitcoin the fundamentals, philosophy,

the economics, and also the technology. So today bitcoin is already twelve and a half years old. There's still a lot of smart people in the world, educated people who are very successful in their own right. But when they see bitoin for the first time, to them, it's strange and it's just not It doesn't. It doesn't rock. It doesn't only in terms of what makes it so special.

So that's fine, It's just that bitcoint is very, very complicated. Uh. You know, it took me a decade to really understand it's the level that I have so far, and I expect myself to really even learn more about it in the coming next decade. Uh, in terms of how it is going to change the world. What's amazing is that now, for the first time in the world, we have a unique asset class that is digital in nature that people can stand around anywhere in the world, from person to

person without any third party's intervention, without any third party oversight. Now, from the regular perspective, when something has no oversight and no intervention ability, they worry naturally. So they worry because they used to control things. They're used to controlling and seeing all the bank wire transfers. They're used to controlling how much among the people can withdraw from their accounts. They're used to having limits and all that stuff, including

treating hours or stock markets. They used to all that kind of control. The bitcoin is so new and radically different, there's no way to control it. And that's how it was invented. It was invented to be this wild sort of animal that is not domesticated. So that's why it's so hard to the people. So how does it become a bigger part of the mainstream financial global economy if it's expected to be this wild animal, which is fine,

but you got to know that going in. But how that sounds to me a bit problematic to fitting into kind of a stable system, especially if people are counting. First of all, yeah, absolutely, you're right. First of all, I'm not saying, nor are people saying that everyone has to use. Remember this not enforced sort of thing, in the sense that we are not forcing the world to use big point is to get involved in bigcoin. What

it is as big point as a choice. So prior to two thousand nine, prior to the invention a bigcoin, people have no choice. If you want to send money to someone abroad, you have to go through the banking system, which is a swift international wire transfer, and there's all sorts of limits, all sorts of delays, all sorts of just critical stuff. That's very complicated with the sift wire trust. For now, people have no choice, whereas today do you

have a choice. People who want to get involve qui differrency, they can choose to send the money in bigcoin. They can also choose to receive the money in bigcoins. And don't forget spending money. Traditionally we talked about the world is four dimensional, right when we talk about sending money, we think of it in the three dimensions, as in the phinsicality sending it from one they need to addict

to another country. But the fourth domaking, which is dimension with client, is very very important, and that's why we save money. The reason we have money in the bank account is because we chose to not spend it all on the doe earned it. That's an accumulation of the money in our individual bank accounts. So money, as you know it is really purposes to send it in time.

So let's say so is like if you're if you're making an investment in something rather than X amount of days to clear or something, and we can get into a big discussion about somebody else having access to your money for a few days and making a lot of money on it at your expense. Are you saying that the real value in cryptocurrencies is you can make that purchase of and maybe let's say another asset class and bitcoin and the transfer happens immediately. Well, I'm not. I'll

make sure instant question. So first of all, um, we're talking about bigcoin more specifically than the currency brought because scriptocurrency broadly has many of you what you call alternate points. Many of them have promoters, they have all these crazy values and I don't. I'm not a big supporter of those. My book is unashamingly about bitcoin. Right. Yeah, In terms of bitcoin, you talked about payments. This is one of

the misnomers people. People think bitcoin is not usedful. And again these are the people who are interacting for the first time. They challenge the question why bitcoin is useful when you can't pay for groceries, pay for your online shopping, you can't pay for your movie tickets in bitcoint right. Tesla just recently did a walk back on the Tesla in January firmly announced that you can buy Tesla cars with bitcoin, and then just last week you must said nope,

we're going to cancel that. And the reason is tactly speaking, nobody buys a Tesla with bitcoin, not not in the right mind. I mean, who hasn't been pointed buy a Tesla? So bigcoin should be much more viewed as money, as an investment, as a vehicle to holding value as opposed to the means of transaction as they I'm gonna buy my day to day spending. So like gold, like, what's what's Yeah, go ahead, So gold is is you know, despite what the bankers and people try to say, gold

is not valuable. But the reality is governments all around the world still very much support and believe in gold. That's why they have thousands and thousands of tons of gold in their reserves. So the bitcoin is known as digital goal. Well, we've only got about forty seconds, you know, left here. Unfortunately, you'll have to come back and talk some more because it's it's this is a great conversation.

I mean, so, how will it impact most of us or will it not impact most of us going forward, and again just got about forty seconds, so that's the main question. So it can impact most of us if we choose to smartly investing big one. If we choose to ignore it, then it's not going to impact you. On that hand, be gonna be on the losing side because whatever money you have in the bank account, that's

gonna loses purchasing for our over time. If you choose to invest bitcoin, and this is why the subtitle is how it can work for you, then it will impact your life because now you've engaged your investment into this asset class that can give an amazing return in the next ten to fifteen and twenty years for longer investment, I think bitcoin is the best thing that's happened. Alright, we're gonna have to leave it on that note, come back.

I'm sure this is going to continue to be a big conversation, certainly here at Bloomberg, and something that our listeners and viewers on YouTube definitely want to hear about. Bobby Lee. He is founder and CEO Ballet. It's a multi currency, non electronic crypto wallet, author of the promise of Bitcoin the Future Money and how it can work for you on the phone from Las Vegas. Folks, that's

going to do it for a wild week. Check out our Bloomberg Business Week podcast on Bloomberg Radio tomorrow d eight eight am, and go to Bloomberg dot com for all of our conversations