What's up everybody? How you're going? And you are hearing those cool tunes? You know, it's another episode of Nerdificent. I'm if you Waddy Way and sitting across from me, it's my good friend Danny Danny Fernandez. You said how what did you say? At the beginning of this It didn't make sense. I think you meant to say, how are you doing? But you said how are you going? A new wave? That's a new wave? You know. No, I feel like you just haven't had enough coffee today.
How y'all going? Yeah, that's what we say around these parts. How y'all going? How y'all going? And you don't say do you say y'all? I say y'all? Oh yeah, Apparently that's Australian slang. So you know I've been I've been a heavily in Texas. They say that they're fixing too, fixing. So today we're talking about bitcoins, and you know, I know a few of y'all y'all saw that title, y'all HiPE y'all like I've been thinking about getting in a bitcoin? Well, uh, you may not want to or you may do you
depending on what you take from this episode. It could go either way. I've I've been on that ledge, and every time I've been ready to jump the water, it was it's like trying to jump into the ocean on a rocky ledge that like the wave keeps pulling back, and every time I want to jump, I only see rocks. So I didn't sit back down. I definitely regretted that. I like it was something that I could have bought, and then I was like, oh, damn, I should have
because now it's worth so much. And then now I feel bad, like now that I saw that it isn't spoiler alert, um, I was like, well, good, you know. But that's that's what's so funny about it is if I would have gotten into it when I first heard of it, oh yeah, it was good, but we wouldn't be friends and I'd be you and yeah, i'd be smoking weed next to Elon Musk on Joe Rogan Show,
like yeah, bro. But no, since I've known about it for so long, I know that like the amount of that I would gain from it would never be as much, So it's always easier to just pass on it from here on out. You know, you still got those like magic the gathering cards, so that could be your retirement right there. Oh yeah, we'll see, we'll see. I definitely still have my rare sleeve, you know, get some stuff busting out of there. They have my beanie babies that
I have the Tag Protectors, that's my investment. They're worth seven nine. That's what's so funny is the influx of like collectible collectible things and me always having some weird hand in it. Like now Funco pops are starting to become this new collector's trend. The like the limited edition ones because most of them you can still get for ten dollars. Oh yeah, I think even some you can even get, like the the rare ones, the twenty ones, like the Dragon ball Z. I think they're forty, which
isn't a bad cop for me, like I said. But then you have things like sneakers. They've always been this constant because I think the sneakers are synonymous with like a quick turnaround gain. So it's always interesting to see during the super hyped release the people that gather to get it, Like when I wanted the Chinese New Year Jay's two years ago because I got the ones from this year, not two years ago. Last year because I
got the ones this year. I remember me and my buddy Echo, We're kind of like, we're both struck out online and we're like, let's go to the Glendale Galleria because they had a first come, first serve, which is always anytime. Let me give you a tip sneaker heads. You know we're getting close to the DBZ release, so a lot of you uh nerds and would be sneaker heads might be I'm gonna give you the first any
time something is first come, first serve. The time you think you're getting there, even if you think it's early, is never going to be early enough. I learned that the first time when I wanted these Bapadida en m d s. They were super clean, super nice, and they said that you can start lining up after the store closes at nine pm for the next day after the next day, So me and my sister we packed like a sleeping bag. We come through. I'm like, we're gonna
be good. We're gonna come at eight pm. Thinking I was real slick when I say that line was wrapped around the block multiple times, and when we got there, we were asking how long have people been here there? Like since this morning? So two days they waited two days in line because I feel I think you were able to cop this you for like one eight and you were able to flip it for a grand so so Crow, you think about that. If you say, like your day rate is to fifty, that's still more than
your day right, Oh my god. Yeah, there are the ones that you The new ones that you're talking about are the Dragon moll Z the Adidas line, which I'm pretty uh pretty they've I've been tagged in them quite a bit the last like two months, been sending it to us. I like the intention behind making sure I see it. But if you know my brand, you know I've seen like I am a nerd slash sneaker head, so like it is, it has been deep. I've before you've thought to send it to me. I've known about this.
I've known about this since August of last year. That's how long. Yeah, I've been tracking them ever since. But sometimes people do hit me with like some leaked images that I didn't see, Like someone tagged me in one where it was like the Gokus that we see now and that was the first time I seem like the close to finished product. But yeah, I never think that you're going to be the one. There's that's wow. Speaking of tangents, I feel like that is the deepest, longest,
and earliest tangent that we've had. But speaking of getting in early making money, let's talk about what is bitcoin? Some people might not even know what it is, and some people kind of heard of it and are wondering where it came from. What is it? What is that bitcoin? Bitcoin's I don't want to get in trouble this time. Bitcoin. What is bitcoin? It was invented in two thousand and nine by a person or a group. This is debated because there's no real person that's been credited necessarily um
who called himselves Satoshi Nakamoto. So his stated goal was to create a this isn't quote, a new electronic cash system that was completely decentralized with no server or central authority. Yeah. And then after cultivating it in two thousand life Nakamoto turned over the source code and the domains too pretty much everyone else in the bitcoin community, and subsequently vanished. Because we'll get into it. The bitcoin is stronger the more people who are who has their kind of tentacles
in it and keeps it going. Uh. And if you want more on that. The New Yorker did a great profile of Nakamoto from two thousand and eleven, so definitely peep that. If you got it'll be in them footnoice. So what exactly is bitcoin? So? Bitcoin, simply put is a digital currency, so there's no bills to print or coins to mint. It's decentralized, so there's no government institution like a bank or authority that controls it. Yeah, and and the owners are anonymous, which is kind of why
it grew so popular in the first place. So instead of using names, tax ideas or social security numbers, bitcoins connect buyers and sellers through encryption keys. It's very, very very secure, right, And it is an issue from top down like a traditional currency. Rather, bitcoin is mined by
powerful computers connected to the internet. Uh. And this we'll get into has affected many different economies, most certainly most affecting me and superproducer Dan just building PCs and well, like I said, we'll get into that later, I'm very salty about it. Still to this day, bitcoins have really done in the kind of build your own computer game and it's because of this, because they were minding it. But that's kind of when I first learned about bitcoin
and why I was hesitant to join into it. So bitcoin was We'll probably get into it later, but to talk about my experience now. Was popularized by a site called Silk Road, which was a deep web website where people were trading drugs, sex, sex, child pornography, just all types of legal guns. It was. It was basically a digital black market. Of course, what currency would you use in a digital black market? Then a untraceful encrypted currency
like bitcoin. So that's where I heard been. I was like, why would I want this currency that is used for all this illegal stuff? You know and hinties free anyway? Is that why you're on silk Silk Road? Not think that I'm like Devian Arts, just like change your settings to eighteen plus the record show. I've never logged in to silk Road, So I would one go on silk Road just for drugs. I want to specify that I don't use it for the other show. I've never used
it ever, but I listened to it. Listen, listen. No, I've listened to other podcasts on the House Stuff Works Network, and I think that um stuff you should know. They might have talked about it a little bit yeah so um. But the only anytime, like, oh, drugs, which I don't even do. I just do weed because I'm done. I do weed. Kids, Listen how I talk about you, But
I do weed. But no, now that now that I'm divorced and I have been the last day, he may not know, but I've turned the upper lamp and shined it in Danny's face, and I've been splashing water on her face. That's why she's been stuttering so much. You won't break me. Um uh no, I was gonna say that. Now that I'm in my thirties, I'm like, oh, yeah, I should try drugs about I didn't do it. I was such a nerd in college. My roommates would make fun of me for studying so much because I had to.
Like one of my roommates, I went to UT and that's actually a difficult school, Like they only took the top eight percent of their class to get the University of Texas and their business program is super hard. And my roommate would party all the time. I'm like, how do you go to school here? How do you go to school here? I was studying so much. I was completely afraid of marijuana because my dad said, and I quote the people that I knew back in Nigeria who
smoked weed. I did not. That is unrelated, unrelated to you didn't tell me that they were in the army and died in the war because people I know Nia so passed from old age. So I waited till I
was sixteen a smoke weed. I just want to say one word, tangent, is that so many of my friends and I that I've talked to, like millennials that don't do ecstasy is because one particular episode that I feel like everybody saw and everybody's parents saw, where somebody died from taking ecstasy is like one of the reasons why I still to this day of not taking X anyways. Yeah, also like that's the reason Electric Daisy Carnival isn't in l A anymore and I'm still mad about it. I
don't do don't do drugs. Yeah, yeah, you know, I don't do them, But um, I might, you might. Yeah, like Dave Chappelle said, I might, I might bust amount when I'm Maybee. You know, got nothing to lose. What is bitcoin? Um? So basically uh so, no, A bitcoin became like this new global payment network like MasterCard or pay Pallett allows money to be transmitted electronically. But Bitcoin is different from these conventional payment networks in two important ways. Yeah. First,
so bitcoin network is fully decentralized. So the MasterCard network is owned and operated by MasterCard, Inc. But there is no Bitcoin Inc. Instead, thousands of computers around the world process Bitcoin transactions in a peer to peer fashion, which is interesting because it's almost just like bit torrent. Oh does that make sense now, guys? If you just figured something out? Why? But yeah, it's if you're aware of how bittorrenting works. That's that's basically bitcoin. Can you explain
Torrantine to people? Hell? Yeah, so our pirates pull up your boats and conting. Yeah, so before things like Spotify, I just got it because you're pie reading. Yeah, oh you just thought I was doing a fun pirate voice. How do we have our own show? I don't know. This is definitely the most off the Rails episode. But you know what, it's bitcoin. It should be because bitcoin is boring unless also it's just insane as as a product.
But so, yeah, before we had Spotify, Apple Music and your Netflix and and movie Pass and Wild movie Pass was the short flash in the pan that movie pass was people felt the need to pirate movies. I've never pirate in a single thing. That's not true, you know, because you know it's not you know, because God's always watching. But certain scurvy dogs would go on the Internet and pirate. Now this I'm not talking about kaza or or Napster.
Eventually there became a more secure way to torrent called uh torrenting or bit torrenting, where instead of you downloading the file from a network or a server, the file is broken up across a bunch of different computers which are now seating parts of the file, and your computer leaches the file with other leechers and they download as one complete file. And it also spreads the workload and
also makes it harder to track. Until some buster gets busted than charters on your neck and they send you that weird letter in the mail that says, hey, please stop pirating or we'll cut off your internet. Can they literally do send you that, like they will send you a letter. I know people that have gotten it before. I think the my favorite pirating story was was the We're When I was working on a midnight a show
that is about the Internet and needs the Internet. The Internet went out for a solid like thirty forty five minutes, Uh, just gone, and we were freaking out. And it turns out that one of the crew it was downloading a movie and so the the Internet company cut it off. And the movie they're downloading was a Man from Uncle. And that was the funniest part about It's like, really a man from Uncle, that's the one that you were
about to get fired over. So yeah, we all they were so strict that you could not give the crew the Internet password. I think it was an inside job. I think the crew was getting blamed and it was like someone in HR going off a man from Uncle. Wow. Anyway, So, like Danny was saying, there is no single entity to kind of pool from. And also MasterCard and PayPal payments are based on conventional currency such as the US dollar. Bitcoin does not work like that. It has its own
unit of value, which is called the bitcoin. The value of one bitcoin fluctuates as other currencies, in the same way the euro's value fluctuates against the dollar or the end to the dollar. Worthy. Uh the paso and you
got you got your pound. Uh. But back back when this this kind of research article is written in November two thousand and fifteen, one bitcoin was worth about four hundred dollars and all bitcoins in existence were worth about six billions, I think, so yeah, so okay, So so one bitcoin is worth around four hundred and all bitcoins in existence are worth around okay, yeah, so because you can have a fraction of a bitcoin as well, So
we'll get we'll get into that. So the skyrocketing value of bitcoins from thirteen dollars in January to more than one thousand in early December, that's a huge leap for I mean, if you want to do the leap. So they said in uh, November of two thousand and fifteen, one bitcoin was worth about four hundred dollars. Right now one bitcoin is six thousand, three hundred and twenty eight dollars and forty three cents, and that's during a drop.
It is dropped, and that's where it's at. So that's what's interesting too, and why I kind of mentioned the when you jump in when you don't where it's like people who jumped in during the big boom a few months ago when all the news sites were going in. They might be hurting now. But if you jump came in up like this, you're still you're still on the come up. If you had bought one bitcoin for four hundred dollars, you're still looking sitting real pritty, which is
why it's like yeah, yeah. So back in venture capitalists invested ninety five million in bitcoin based startups uh and then three seven million and more than four fifty million in But there hasn't been much signed that bitcoin is revolutionizing the financial industry the way optimists hoped it would. So the use of the Bitcoin network has grown kind of slowly. Almost seven years after the network was created, there still aren't any good examples of bitcoin applications that
are accessible and useful to mainstream users. Well yeah, and it got like okay, I was circling the human to use shark terms, Me and my sharks be talking a circle in the human for a bit when it came came to this recent boom. And it's gotten more complicated to get into cryptocurrency because there because everyone, I think the way for a lot of people are the alt coins, because you know, people would rather like to have multiple
coin than fractions of coins. Even though you can buy in a fraction you like, you would rather have one a fraction of a bitcoin, but to get to a lot of these alt coins you have to buy in at bitcoin anyway. Then you would have to transfer the bitcoin to ethereum. And in the end it feels like one big pyramid scheme to get the people who own these all coins so they can get more bitcoins. That's what it feels like. I'm sure somebody's like, no, yeah, you know what, it's kind of cool is I saw
at a different like stores and stuff. I have seen bitcoin a t M s oh yeah, back before meltdown Comics before they closed had a big bitcoin a t M and they accepted bitcoin. And Heather and Campbell good friend who I think we've mentioned her on the pod before. She was when she would coach teams, she would accept bitcoin as well. Wow. Yeah. Heather and Campbell is a improv coach and also a writer for The Twilight Zone a new episode the new series with Jordan Peele. And
she's written on a bunch of stuff. She's written on. You know what was that? Key and Peel? Right, No, no, she wrote on She's written on a lot of she's written on SML for sure, I know. And what was that The awesome crew she wrote on that show. Uh, probably her least favorite credit for someone to mention, but you know, oh and she was on whose lines in anyways? Anyway, So what is blockchain? Huh? Well what is blockchain? When
you often hear bitcoin or any coin brob, you hear blockchain. Well, blockchain is an electronic database of transactions, and new deals are added to the chain and then stamped and protected with mathematical equation. That's why I'm like my hate math. I do hate math as well. Um. The database is shared among hundreds of other computers or nodes on the network to make it virtually impossible for one agent to change it. So these nodes use their computing power and
compete to verify and decode the latest transaction. So this is the nerdiest that our podcast has gotten. This is then appended as a block to the chain. Its ability to offer a verifiable, immutable, and public record is what attracts many advocates. And so this is a quote from Jonathan Johnson, who is an executive at overstock dot com, which is an online retailer that accepts payment in virtual currencies. I've also used I think I bought a rug from them.
He said, it can do for the nearly free and friction lists transfer of assets what the Internet did for the nearly free and friction list transfer of information. I still feel like they're acting like it's really simple and easy, and I don't think it's as simple and easy as there, you know what I mean, Like, I think that there's still a lot of shadiness to it at times, Like like you said, iffy um, So how is it being used?
Its chief use is as a system behind most of the hundreds upon hundreds of virtual coins that are being created, stored, and traded online, of which bitcoin is the best known, but it's not the only cryptocurrency. Estonia uses distributed ledgers for the public to follow court, legal and democratic procedures. That makes sense, Like there has to be as much as it's like, it's not untraceable. Yeah, there is some way to trace it. Yeah, I'd say there's there's some
way to trace it kind of yeah, exactly. M Yeah. And then what's interesting is like the fact that some countries like Russia and China are interested in creating their own virtual currencies. The reason that's interesting is because China recently band bitcoin, and it would be very interesting to see if within the next few months they launched their own coin, because that would be kind of a power
monopolistic thing to do. But also it is China. It's like Disney pulling out of a Netflix, like no, we're good, We're good. Mapp Oh my gosh. It's just the more people split buckle up for another tan, the more people split from a United streaming platform, the more it just becomes like regular TV. Yeah, but the United streaming platform could monopolize in certain ways. And anyways, I love Netflix and Disney. I love you guys so much. I hope you're listening and I have meetings with you. I love
you very much. So financial markets are among the most enthusiastic adopters. So equity into companies building the blockchain technology hit one billion last year across two fifteen deals, according to data from CB Insights, which is a research group. Yeah, even the bank back our three consortium has raised more than a hundred million. Credit Agricole, the French lender, took a small equity stake and Settle the UK blockchain technology developer.
Many institutions hope that a real time ledger could automate there. They're kind of expensive back office system and save them millions. Yeah, but how are people using bitcoin and how can you use it? We're going to get into that right after this break and we are back. So one of the things when you're using bitcoin is you have to have a bitcoin wallet. Yeah, yeah, that's I have the empty bitcorn. Like I said, I was starting. Yeah, I had a
loaded the app. I was ready to go. I was like, you got the tag protectors, you just didn't have the beanie baby protector. I love that there's always some extra accessory you need for collecting stuff, like what comic books he became bagging boards, sneakers there, you gotta you gotta keep the box, which has been a nightmare. Well, I need to talk to you about cleaning my sneakers because
I know that you've commented on my sneakers. Because I don't really care about them as much as you do, but I know that I know that I have some cool ones. You'll be like, oh, those are really nice, and oh take them to the dry cleaner. Well that's because I actually work out in my Mine aren't just for show, Okay, I have I have I have workout shoes, and the workout shoes are my under armor Rock deltas with the Brahmable on the back to let people know
I'm on team Rock. The only time is when like listeners and people on the internet asked me where it goes, because I know we won't show up to the same place with them on, but there I will never forget. Here's a quick story. In high school, I had this echo jacket. It was like that. It was like the good version of that episode of Atlanta where he gets the Foo boo. I found this echo jacket at Ross and everybody was like, damn, that jackets tight, and I
was like so cool, Like my cred went up. Everyone thought it was cool. I was rocking it. And a week later, this fool shows up to school. We're in the same jacket, and every time I would I would antagonize this kid every time where it's like, oh, you you know I had this jacket. You know I had this jacket, until finally he was like, my mom got me this. I can't. He's like I don't, and I was like, oh, yeah, we're kids. We have no choice
in what we really wear. We point at things on a on a rack and ask for it and maybe we'll get it. My thing with that is I have go my little gocum vegeta tattoos which I got specifically like made Romeo Acost, who does a lot of anime tattoos, did and he's also like how to show on one of those tattoo shows. But anyways, Romeo accosted at that. Yeah, okay, I got some off air stuff to say. Okay, um, but anyways, uh, I mean, I guess it's not too spicy. But he dated or hooked up. Yeah, he dated or
hooked up with my ex's best friend. Okay, and that's and so we we were like big kicking it for a minute, and I thought he was cool. And then they broke up and I was like kind of like Romeo more than you. Yeah, yeah Romeo. Somebody tagged I was wanted someone to do my tattoos, and someone tagged him, and I thought he was just like some kid that was like, hey, I heard you want to do tattoos. I'm like, yeah, sure kid, And then I looked and he had like four followers, was like, oh, sure you
can do him. Anyways, what I was going to say real quick is that a lot of people copy my tattoos like they're like, oh, I want to get those, or I'm going to get those that showed this to my tattoo or it is, which I guess is flattering. But now it kind of just seems like I went along this trend as opposed to like, no, I asked specifically for him to make them like this, and I've
seen people tweet like kind of versions of it. But anyways, uh, yeah, because it's on my body, so it's like something really personal to me. But it's I don't own the characters, so I guess if you're going to copy his design of them whatever, um movie not. No, It's just I don't want people to I want people to know that
I'm not copying someone else. I don't care people copying me, but I don't want people to be like, oh, because I've shown my tattoos and people have been like, oh, I've seen those before, I'm like, no, no, no, you've seen them from me. I got these done and then they got really popular by because a lot of anime
sides shared them. And then what is a bitcoin wallet if he well, unlike most traditional currencies, bitcoin is digital, as we've been saying multiple times, and so the approach to this kind of currency is completely different, particularly when it comes to where you're gonna store it, as bitcoins
don't exist in the physical shapes. They can't throw it in a physical wallet or put it in a card or I guess you can there they there were there were a few launches of bitcoin cards, but you can't like to get it out of the bank and hold it and like hand it and distribute it that way.
Uh So instead the private keys used to access your public bitcoin address and sign for transactions that need to be securely stored, you can use a digital wallet, and a combination of the recipient's public key and your private key is what makes the bitcoin transaction possible. So there are several forms of your wallet catering for different stuff and varying in terms of safety and security, convenience and accessibility then you know, so let's just go through some
of them. First up, we got the mobile wallet. Mobile wallets are basically what I have is a phone app, and they're handy because they can use them and uh with some if you have like like Apple pay, you can use them even in physical stores. All you need to do is just install the app, open an account, and you just go from there. It's pretty easy set up, probably the easiest one. Then it says here that it's
considered to be more safer than cloud wallets. Yeah, you know cloud gets it's not as safe as people think obviously, so all the nudes being leaked. Yeah, the Big Cloud has been trying to push their Jennifer Big Cloud. My mom to this day will not her phone runs so slow because she refuses to upload to the cloud. So she just has all of her phote like everything on there, and and she doesn't really understand about like upgrading her phone.
And anytime she goes into upgrade it, they're like, well, you need to back this up to the cloud, and she refuses to as she does know she can just plug it in and put some of those You just don't want to sit down with her and have to. You know, I pick and choose my battles, but I also want to be like on the government. I don't know if they care about all the pictures of your granddaughter and your rose garden, but you know, you to each of the news. You know, I tuned into the cloud.
So this Danny Fernanda and I I'm a big fan. I'm a big fan. I've been listening to nerd Uncles and I've been listening. I've been looking for the krill or the krill on it videos. I can't find them. Big fan of Danny Fernando Rails gonna follow her on the twitters and she's been posting those thirsty traps. I feel like it started as trump and then like turned into like some other. Desktop wallets are another popular choice, which is also safer than online wallets, So we're just
getting more and more safe here. They're downloaded and installed on PC or laptop and are accessible from an installation device. However, if your computer is infected with a virus, gets hacked, or experiences external damage, there's a chance to lose all your funds. What the hell? None of these are actually bullet proof, like fool proof. Well, yeah, that's technology, just isn't Like there are moments in your life when you've had things stolen from me. I was just talking about
this with our friend Paris the other day. Whereas like, I would rather be robbed than to have someone break in and take my stuff, because at least I can like either try and fight if I feel like it's worth it, or remember their eyes and track them down for the rest of their lives. But like when someone comes in and takes it, or or a situation like this where you get in virus and it's just gone. It's just gone. It just feels it is just the worst feeling back in. No, No, we got to move on. Yeah,
let's move on. So then we also have the hardware wallet. Hardware and wallet story uses private keys on a device typically like a USB drive and seem safe. Well, you can have it in your pocket, I got Yeah, that's that's very safe, carrying like all of your money and the USB drive on your pocket and just as safe as a regular wallet. Uh. But you know you're able to make the online transactions with the USB drive. However, most of the time they're offline, and that is one
of the strengths. Various manufacturers make hardware walllet's compatible with different web interfaces. Therefore, complete characteristics depend on the wallets personal integrations. And then the hardware storage is also convenient because of its ability to send and receive the currencies by merely plugging them into the internet. You jack in and you get your money. Okay. So there is one more way, and that is a paper wallet that just
seems very and I have actually heard of these. So paper wall is essentially a document which contains a public address that can be used to receive bitcoins and a private key which allows you to spend or transfer bitcoin stored at that address. So those are often printed in a form of QR codes so that you can quickly scan them and the keys to a software wallet to make a transaction. This all see, I mean, this is probably the worst because, like you're saying, you're like, all right,
about to go to this drug deal. Let me go to this kink goes print out my paper wallet. On the way, big old rott willers in the move for some paper, your your hands hanging low. You're walking just because you're really excited to make this, make this big drug deal. And then the rott Wiler comes up, eat your paper. What you're gonna do at the drug deal? Say the dog ate my big That was a lot of build up for that one bad joke. What're you gonna do? Say the dog ain't bitcoin? Actually that's a
good joke. I'll take it back. That was a very good joke. Basically, it's it's interesting because the you know, a lot of people's hang ups with bitcoin is because it's this new money that you don't know where it is, how can it go and all this stuff, But also we forget how wild and insane actual money is. Like he's a you know, green backs themselves are just wild, like they're based off of our gold stores question mark
question mark. Yeah, I mean, I understand people's concerns. It's kind of like it's out of thin air, but almost all of our U S dollars about are purely abstract. That's actually kind of terrifying and freeing if you. I did see a tweet that was like, all these hackers need to, you know, get on and delete our student loans, which I agree with. I mean, come on. So there's actually nothing stopping our banking system from creating more dollars
whenever the mood strikes. That's also crazy and something that they did do in the history of the U S um of the thirteen point seven trillion in the M two money supply as of October, thirteen point five trillion was created after nineteen fifty nine, or to put it another way, M two has expanded by almost fifty times. Yeah. So so it is interesting because I think that was kind of the lure of bitcoin for some people is do not have that kind of government backing attached to it.
You do get to create a almost universal form of money because there's no there's there's no no one can go in and sway bitcoin. Bitcoin is gonna ebb and flow as it naturally does, as there are more people using it and keeping it and spending it and cashing it out for money. So when you think about it, bitcoin is almost and now it sounds like the guy who's cornered you in the office, who's who heard you
over talk over talking Bitcoin. Yeah, he's cornered you, and he's like, hey, it's actually, you know, in a way safer than regular currency because you know, you know that no one can come in and change it, especially when you look at things like when the you have that huge crash and the amount of money you thought you had just wasn't or the the amount of money, especially because I feel like Europeans travel a lot more than than Americans, and they've traveled on the strength of how
strong their dollar is. So to be to use like the euro and then to have it sink in its price probably did affect certain people way more than you know us over here even though the euro is still stronger than the dollar. I appreciate that we should go to a break, all right, Yeah we should. We should because we we've talked about how people can use bitcoins. Yeah, I feel like we've been on team Bitcoin to this point.
Maybe we should switch sides. After the break, we are back, so we're going to talk about you know, why it might not be so great. One is fluctuation. Major that's happening to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have been identified as economic bubbles. So what is an economic bubble? And economic bubble is a trade in an asset at a price or price range that strongly exceeds the assets intrinsic value UM.
It could also be described as a situation which asset prices appear to be based on implausible or inconsistent views about the future. Basically, it's kind of dangerous to have a lot of your money. I think some people even had. Like during the break, if I was telling you about friends of ours that work at a different channel, who the owner of that channel, The guy that bought that channel.
He bought it because he got a lot of money in cryptocurrency, and then he started to offer them getting their paychecks in crypto like in bitcoin, and uh I was telling our friends, no, you need to get real money, not saying that bitcoin isn't, but now looking at some of the some of the how how it's fluctuating a little bit dangerous. Yeah, I mean, that's it's all. It's crazy.
You don't want to be paid with something where the baseline is constantly changing because because also how would that work. Would would you always get like your paychecks worth in crypto or would you get a crypto amount that doesn't change.
I don't know. Yeah, in two thousand seventeen, the prices were kind of starting at nine dollars and then rows thirteen thousand, four hundred twelve dollars and forty four cents on the first of January in two thousand and eight this year, on the first, Yeah, that's why everybody was talking. I mean people have been talking about it, but that's why it was really I felt like in the zeit
guys like the past around that time. Oh yeah. So even though it's a thirteen grand at the beginning of the year, it actually reaches peak in December when it had an all time high of nineteen thousand, six hundred and sixty six dollars. That's the devil's number. That's why that's the devil's number. Well it must have been, because it fell to five thousand, nine d and twenty dollars
on the sixth of February of this year. Now here's where you know you're gonna hear me say over and over again how you still would have been good if you got in early. Because if you got if you bought in for nine hundred ninety eight dollars, you're still on the come up, that's the thing. But you do have to live with the fact that you missed out on almost twenty k. Then something I mentioned a little
earlier happened. China ban the trading and bitcoin with the first steps taken in September and had a complete band start in that February. So then bitcoins prices fell from nine thousand and fifty two dollars to six thousand, nine hundred fourteen dollars on February five of two thousand and eighteen.
This year, the bitcoin percentage of bitcoin and trading fell from over in September two thousand seventeen to less than one percent in June yikes, And then throughout the rest of the first half of this year, bitcoin's price fluctuated between around eleven K and five K and on the jew I first of this year, bitcoins price was six thousand,
four hundred and sixty nine dollars. Bitcoins prices were negatively affected by several hacks and hats from cryptocurrency exchanges, yeah, including the thefts of the coin check in January two tho eight, coin rail and bit thumb in June, and
bangor and two lie. So that's a lot of thefts of people money, and that's and that's that's also kind of what that's crazy about bitcoin because at least what banks you have the f d i C, which is the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which was created after the Great Depression, which means basically, if your bank fails, you at least won't go completely broke you or you're insured for general amount like the insurance and that limit was
initially d dollars per ownership category, but as of the Dodd Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in two thousand eleven, they have d i C insurers deposit and member banks for up to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars per ownership category, So you have that if your banks fail or I guess get robbed or anything that would lead to you losing money. There's nothing like that in bitcoin. So if the people who are holding your money get robbed or jacked ors, you know, or
even if they fail, you're out of money. You're done, You're out. Yeah, it seems like this would be like a black mirror episode because in a in a perfect world, would be like, yeah, why wouldn't we just use bitcoin? Why wouldn't we just use cryptocurrency? But then it's like, oh, right, because it can be hacked, all right, because it's an electronic you know, entity, and those are susceptible to things
like that. Really quick, before we wrap up, I just wanted to mention a couple of other types of cryptocurrency. So there's ether, which is uh cryptocurrency whose blockchain is generated by the that's what you were talking about ethereum platform. So either can be transferred between accounts and used to compensate participant in mine notes for computations performed. What a nerdy sentence. Yeah he had light coin. I've heard of light coin as well, which was released via an open
source client in October seventh of two thousand eleven. Light Coin Network went live in October thirteenth, two thousand eleven, and it was a fork of the bitcoin core client, differing primarily by having a decreased block generation time two point five minutes, increased maximum number of coins, a different hashing algorithm. Yeah, it should be noted that it was made by Charlie Lee, who was a Google employee and former engineering director at coin base. Yeah, he kind of
knew what he was doing. He had the doge coin because of course the Internet made a meme coin. Yeah, so can you play explain to people with the what that meme is? Yeah, so the doge is a meme of one of arguably one of the cutest dog, shiba in New Dog, and is basically it's making like a goofy face. You know, we'll have to tweet it out. It's hard. And that was the coin based in the logo was that does. It was introduced as a joke currency on December six, but it quickly developed its own
online community. The Internet is so predictable and reached a capitalization of sixty million in January. Here's here's what is kind of what I mentioned earlier before we get out of here, I don't want to cut this off. So we touched on bitcoin mining, but we didn't really explain what it is. And what bitcoin mining is is you basically, uh, use your desktop CPU and GPU two kind of yes, Dan, you know the ins and outs of mining, right, yeah,
a little bit. The long story short is that you're basically using your computer to do complex calculations, calculations that haven't been pleaded yet, and each individual calculation that you do gets added to the blockchain, and that is one incredibly complex calculation. That then is that is kind of like taken care of, and it takes your whole GPU to even do these incredibly complicated calculations. I think that's all I have, but yeah, you might be here in
CPU and GPUs. CPU is basically your computer's brain, but your GPU is your graphics processing unit or your graphics card. The reason this is ruined building computers is now you have bitcoin miners who were buying up graphics cards just to use them for bitcoin mining, and lots of bitcoin
mining rigs don't use just one graphics cards. Those stuff three four five GPUs in a one box and just to have them running non stop so that there they could do these complex computations, and then some folks might try and flip that card, and then you get a card that been worked hard and it dies on you and you don't know why. Even though now it's a rumored that actually mining cards are better taken care of because the miners have to keep them up. It's a
it's a big debate on Reddit specifically. But because of that, it caused a supplied demand issue with graphics card raising the prices because it feels like graphics cards of the wild Wild West and if and if there's a demand for it, New Egg and all these sites seem to be okay with just raising the price instead of just distributing them and limiting how many people can buy. But you know, you know that's just common sense. But you know, when money is involved, we seem to lose it. And
it's true, it's true. I just wanted to add one more thing is Yeah, definitely if you want to know more about the creator, Satashi na Kamoto, definitely check it out because he's it's a very he's very elusive billionaire. Very few people outside of the Department of Land Security know his real name. Because I guess that's not his real name. Um and uh, the DHS will not publicly confirm that they even know the billionaire's identity. UM. As
of he was worth more than seven billion. Don't know if that's changed since the fluctuation of bitcoin, but um, very fascinating guy slash maybe not guy maybe a whole group of people. I don't know. Yeah, I imagine that is on purpose that they can't find this for sure. I mean also, if you're a billionaire, you kind of have the money to disappear to disappear. Well, that's it,
and then that is bitcoin. Sorry for the extra matter, I feel like extra Yeah, I stuffed a lot more tangents in here, but well, you know, we'll we'll just hell it back the next episode. Every episode is an experiment. We just well know, I mean, we we have different things that we need to talk about and discuss. Plus, like I have some tea on some upcoming episodes, so you know, you can come here for the facts, but also the behind the scenes of stuff that of people
that we actually know in the industry. That's spicy. It's all right. Well, now, do you have anything you want to plug or any shows coming up? Yes, I do. Um, I'm going to be on a show at Dynasty Typewriter. If you live in l A, come out. It's going to be Oh. Also, a friend of the show, Jamie Loftus, is on it. You know, she's part of the night gang. Uh here, we got to get her a part of the NERD fan for sure. But that's September. There we go at eight pm. Come out and see our show. Yeah.
And if you're listening and Washington d C, I was like, dang, I wish I can go to the show or see at least one half of Nerdificent. I will be up in there. Me and the White Women crew are coming to Washington, d C for the d C Improv Fast. So if you're listening to Danny's and you're like, I wish I can see one half of Nerdificent. But I'm on the way and watching the new CE, lucky you because Friday, September I will be touching down my feet and Washington, d C for the d C and Pro
Fest with my group White Women. Carl Tart, who was formerly on Culture Kings Lamar Woods, currently writing for Single Parents, wrote for New Girl. Zeke Nicholson, writing for a b bio Ishmael Sahid a dad on Cousins for Life, and Ronnie A Jurnien from that weird Gus van Zant movie that just came. Oh it won't get far on foot
and your boy. If you wide a wait from Nerdificent the feed a k A buzz feed and wherever else they pay me, check us out DC and pro fest will and check out Candy Dinner on on Monday's too, we were the Spice and What's Nice on Tuesdays? Which is this cast? I wanted to say, let us know your bitcoin stories. Oh yes, please, I'm very fascinated, or your cryptocurrency stories, like or if you have like some weird relative that I don't know, like got huge from bitcoin,
I want to know all the stories. Or if your boss try to pay you in bitcoin or whatever, I don't know. I'm very fascinated. Yeah, if you're just super hype on bitcoin, it's like, if you'm gonna send you a bitcoin, hit me up and I'll give you my bitcoin walad info and we'll go into this business together. As always. You can find me on if you wad I f y n w A D I two B on Twitter and Instagram and if he's on Twitch, lots of the nerd fan coming through. I'm gonna come through
with a harder schedule. I'm getting used to this buzz feed schedule. I had to do a lot of business eat stuff this month, so it was the harder to lock it down. But I have like a fun schedule plan. Uh. You know, we're gonna do throwback Thursdays where we're gonna be playing older games like Borderlands, maybe Diablo three. We're just gonna take it back. And then of course, mmo Monday's where we're playing Wow, I'm an Alliance fan. Let's let's run some raids. Uh, and I may, I might,
I might make a Hord character for y'all. And then we're definitely gonna have to have some some some weed Wednesdays when we play some some nice anime based games and some yeah, and do some League. We've got lots of league heads, so let's let's mix it up. Let's have some fun, come through, hang out, and thank you to everyone who has hit me with a prime sub and everyone who will in the future. If you're like getting ready to click that button while you're listening to
the pod, thank you. But you're probably gonna hear me say thank you if you're doing it while I'm on stream. I'll love I love you all all Danny needs to give her socials. I'm at Miss Danny bernand is it M S D A and I F E R N and y E z I um, I love you, we both love you. Staying there, Toy family