The Mark Moss Show Oct 14, 2022

is technology. It's always technology that changes the world, whether it's something as small and meaningless as a horse stirrup, h the gunpowder revolution. Uh, we can go all the back with the creation of fire, right. I mean, all these things change the course of humanity, and we're witnessing one right now, and that is the biggest catalyst to change the world. Now. The world is swinging from centralization to decentralization. This happens on a two and fifty year

political time frame. But it's interesting that on a fifty year time frame we have a technological revolution that's bringing us exactly what we need for the two and or fifty year political revolution cycle, which is a decentral technology. It's pretty interesting, and of course I believe that is bitcoin now. A lot of people want to challenge me on that. I go speak around the country and even

the world. As a matter of fact, that you've spoke in Mexico City like two weeks ago, and uh man at the end of my talk, uh, the people crowd around me and they want to ask me about all types of things cryptocurrency because I talked about bitcoin and I've heard all these things that but bitcoin is backed by nothing. This is what I had to deal with with someone who's a big fan and he and he

made this comment that it's not backed by anything. Um. You know, it's too volatile, it's too risky, it's outdated technology, it was started by the CIA. We don't know who's to do shooting acomotive is we're gonna poor bitcoin? Uh? People say, you know ethereum is better because it has this like so I hear all these things all the

time and so um. I bet if you tune in regularly, you probably have the same questions because I say, here talk about bitcoin, and I don't talk about all this other supposedly technologically advanced crypto currencies because they do smart contracts on layer one or something like that, and so or they have faster throughput, faster transaction times and all

these types of things. UM. And so you know what I thought coming back from this conference I was at last week in Mexico City, and I had to deal with a bunch of these questions. UM. I took I took down a bunch of these ones that I was asked, and I thought, you know what, UM, let me just answer some of these for you here, and uh maybe they'll be helpful. M hmm, it should be helpful. UM. I would highly recommend listen to him because if you don't, you could miss out on one of the biggest life

rapps that we have. All right, UM, so let's let's go through some of these. So the first one is, as I said, at this at the at this Nomadic Capitalist, someone came up to me and they said, but mark bitcoin is backed by nothing. It has no intrinsic value. It's not backed by anything. And I said, let's stop for a second and think about what that says. Right now, it's not backed by anything. What does that mean? Backed by anything? So I'm asking you the question. I'm asking

you to ask yourself that question. What does that mean to be backed by something? You probably haven't thought about it. You just recite that over and over. Well, let's let's break that down. So what does that mean to be backed by Well, the dollar was backed by gold, right, So I had gold. Gold was too slow, right, It was slow for me to move gold from you know, New York to Germany, for example, or from New York

to California. So the gold went into a bank. When I put the gold in the bank, the bank would give me a piece of paper, an IOU, a claim, a paper goal certificate that said I this paper is redeemable for the gold I have in there. It's like a claim check. And then what I could do is I could send you or I could hand you that piece of paper, and now you have that claim and you could go redeem that gold whenever you want. So that piece of paper that I handed you was backed

by gold. It was backed by it was debt. It was an IOU. This paper is backed by the gold that's in the bank. So debt is backed by the underlying asset. What was gold backed by nothing? Gold is gold. Gold isn't backed by anything. Gold is gold. Only the debt only, the claim on the asset has to be backed by something. So when you ask yourself what is big? What is bitcoin backed by? Bitcoin is backed by the same thing that gold is backed by. It's backed by gold.

It's backed by bitcoin the same thing that any other real world asset is backed by. It's backed by that asset. That's it. Now, if I have a gold coin in my hand or a silver coin in my hand, I have the silver coin, what is that backed by nothing? It's just the silver coin in my hand. If I hand it to you, you have the silver coin, only an ioure written on top of it. Now. Um, but gold has intrinsic value, right, That's what Peter Schiff would say, right,

because gold, you know, it has interns of value. You could use it for a filling in your tooth, and you could make cuff links out of it. And I'm here to say that there is no such thing as intrinsic value. So okay, sure you can take gold to make a cuff link out of it, and you can make you can take a gold and make a filling out of it, So there's there You're able to use it for something, So there's there's usefulness to gold, is probably what you're saying. So it's not intrinsic value, because

what's the value of a cuff link. I mean, I can make a cufflink out of aluminum, I can make it out of steel, I can make it out of anything. I mean most fillings aren't gold either. I can do filings with things as well, porcelain or whatever. Right, So what is the intrinsic value of gold? There there is no intrinsic value of gold. There's usefulness to gold, I'll give you that. So there is no such thing as intrinsic value. All value is subjective, and it's really broken

down by two factors. One is scarcity put off. Also also the need. So, for example, I use this story all the time. You've heard me say it. If I was on a desert island with a with a billion dollars of cash, billion dollars of gold, billion dollars of bitcoin, but I had no food, no no boat, no phone, nobody to get off the island, no way to eat or whatever. None of that. The billion dollars in gold, cash or bitcoin is all worthless because I have nothing to exchange for that. So all of that is worth

that gold is worth nothing. As a matter of fact, it is worth less than nothing, because it's probably dangerous for me because how what am I How am I going to secure it? I can't swim with it whatever? Right, so there's no value to that. Now, let's say scarcity drives value, not necessarily. What if there was one black rock on the whole island. It's the only one, but it's of no value to me, so who cares it? Scarce?

But so what, I don't need it. Now, Let's say that last night I had dinner and I didn't finish my dinner, and I threw my leftovers away, those leftovers, that little bit of water in my cup. I poured it out. That water had no value to me because there's just more water right there, so I just dump it out, no value. But if I was on that deserted island and there was a little bit of leftover food scraps and a little bit of water, I would probably give you the billion dollars I had in cash, gold,

or bitcoin for those leftovers. Now, those leftovers and the water were worth nothing last night because they weren't scarce, and they didn't have any utility or value to me at that point. But on that island, I would they were scarce and they have massive value and utility to me because I'm dying of food or thirst, of hunger or thirst. Right now, back to the usefulness of gold.

So I'm sure gold could be turned into a cuff link, and gold could be turned into a filling or gold gold works really well for connectivity, for like audio, video, things like that. Right, So gold does have usefulness. But bitcoin also has usefulness. So you may not think so living in your posh you know, um downtown apartment, drinking your twenty dollar cocktails at the bar. But if you're in if you're one of about four billion people in the world today living under a double digit inflation and

authoritarian regime, bitcoin has a lot of usefulness. As a matter of fact. Let's say that you live in uh, you know, so you live in a country that's in Lebanon. We were talking about Lebanon earlier. Let's say you live in Lebanon and they have such high inflation that you've lost all the purchasing power of your money and you can't even get out whatever money you have out of the bank. They're literally breaking into banks with weapons to

steal their own money back out. If you live there and you have the ability to move your money into bitcoin that the government cannot inflate away and cannot steal from you. There's massive value there. Let's say that I'm in North Korea and um, I need to get this good or service. I need to get this food the government hasn't given me enough food, or I need to pay someone to get me out of the country or whatever. But I don't have any way to pay for that

because they've blocked that. But now I have bitcoin and I can pay for that. There's massive usefulness there, massive utility. You may not see the utility being in New York, but they do in North Korea. Just like I don't see the value of cufflinks because I don't wear suits, but some people do. Hopefully that makes sense. Backed by nothing is only for debt, not for assets intrinsic value. There's no such thing is intrinsic value, and all value

is subjective. Now, once you understand those things, you can start to understand what money is, and you can start to understand the entire financial system and all the other assets that we have. Hopefully that it helps out. You're listening to the Markmas Show, we're talking about the decentralized revolution, the way the world is changing through the lens of politics, finance, and technology. The technology being of course a bitcoin, de

centralized technology for a decentralized world. And I'm covering some of the biggest objections I hear to bitcoin every day. Hopefully that helps. I'll be back with more in a minute. Don't go away, all right, welcome back. You are listening to the Mark Ma Show. We talk about the decentralized revolution. The world is changing through the land, and we look at through the lens of politics, finance, and technology, the

technology being bitcoin. In my opinion, that's the technical technological revolution. It's my opinion, but I believe I can back it up with factual data and I do all the time. But I know that when I talk about it, especially in terms of other cryptocurrencies and things like that, I hear lots of objections. And that's fine. It's brand new. It's very misunderstood. And um, I was just speaking at this conference in Mexico City nomad Capitalist, and it was a perfect Um it was a big one. Is a

perfect asset for a nomad capitalist? And what's the nomad capitalist? I mean, these are people who basically are trying to diversify internationally. You wouldn't put all your money in one count or I'm sorry, you wouldn't put all your money in one stock, would you. I mean, you shouldn't. Um, So why would you have your whole life in one country. It's a good idea. Why not diversified? Um. The United States, in my opinion, is still probably the best country to

live in in the world today. Best is a relative term, you know, best is different for different people. But I still think the US still the best country in the world.

The US passport has been one of the best passports to have in the world, but during the pandemic, the US passport became one of the worst passports you could have because the US, you know, with its uh high numbers of COVID and et cetera, most countries didn't want to allow Americans to come in and so all of a sudden, the US passport was was was a horrible and have um in addition, Um, In addition, a lot of places in the world don't allow Americans to open

bank accounts. So let's say that you did want to move to Bali or Thailand or Venezuela or Argentina or Brazil or Um, Turkey or whatever name the country. Um, there's a good chance that they may not allow you to open bank accounts. And the reason they don't allow you to help to bank accounts is because the I R. S is so crazy and so restrictive they don't want to deal with it. So no, sorry, you can't have it. Um.

There's a lot of places in the world. If you haven't traveled, this may come as surprise to you, but there's a lot of places in the world that don't really like Americans. It's a sad fact. Now, I mean, I'm not anti American, I'm I'm making the case. I still think it's the best place to live, which is why I still live in America. But I'm just saying

there's reasons why you might want to diversify. So these nomatter capitalist you know, they may want to move to another part of the world to lower their tax liability or to have a higher quality of life because it's cheaper. Um, they want to have multiple passports, just so if one of their passports doesn't work, they have other passports. Things like that, and then you can see opportunities. So for example, I did want to go live in Bali or Thailand

or whatever. But I can't open a bank acount. I could use my other passport, or I'm in a part of the world where they really don't like Americans. I could just travel on my other passport and things like that. So it gives me options. And so for somebody who's doing that, Bitcoin is a perfect asset for them, because the problem with our money in the bank is we've come to find out that the Trucker rally in Canada, We've come to find out with with Russia, money in

the banking system is not your money. It can be frozen and sees at any time period. Uh And And unfortunately many people around the world have to find this out all the time. And we talked about Lebanon. They're finding this out. They can't get their money on the bank. What about people in Ukraine? People in Ukraine and they're they're fleeing for their lives. What what do They can't take their real estate on their back, they can't carry

their gold, the banks are shut down. They their money at the bank, there's capital controls, like, what are they gonna do? Well, let's say in Russia there now they're trying to draft people into military I heard lots of people are trying to escape Russia because they don't want to go into the military, which I don't blame them. Um and uh, they're leaving Russia, but have to leave

all their all their assets. They have to leave all their real estate and their stocks and their money in the bank, and once they leave Russia, they'll probably never able to get that money back out of the bank again.

So for somebody who's in one of these regimes, you're in North Korea, you're trying to escape to South Korea where it's free, or you're escaping in Ukraine's you don't get blown up, or you're trying to escape Russia so you don't have to go into the draft, or you're in Lebanon trying to get your money out before the

bank sees it. All. Like, there's lots of situations happening in the world right now today that you may or you just want to be a nomad capitalist and just you know, I want to set up residents in the Caribbean and set up residents in in Brazil and Thailand, and I like to move around and that's cool too. So what you want is you want the ability to have of your assets with you all the time in a way that can't be seized or stolen or manipulated.

So with bitcoin, I can secure it cryptographically and I have a key. Now, the cryptographic key is very long. It's a long string of characters and numbers, and um, think about it like this, Like, UM, I'm sure most of you know what a locker is. You went to school. You have a locker, right, and your locker at school was like C. Nineteen and so, um, hey my locker C. Nineteen, Go put this envelope in there. So I give you my public address C. Nineteen and you can go there

and you could stick an envelope in my locker. That's my public address. But then I only have a key that I can open that locker and move stuff around. So I have the private key. So there's a public address in a private key. Now the private key, Um, for a locker might be a combination, right, I have to remember the combination. It might be a key. Um. Now, now for a bitcoin, is a is a cryptographic case. It's very long, very long string of numbers. You're not

gonna remember it, not like a three digit combination. Right, So what you typically do is you have a device we call it a wallet that that would sign that transaction for you. So you could download one on your phone, like from the app store, UM, and then when I use the app, I say send. The app basically works just like venmo. Right, it's just like Venmo. So I have a bitcoin I want to send it to you, just like if I have Venmo and I want to send you money. So I would need two things from you.

I need your address on venmo or cash ap. It might be your user name, UM, and I would say send, and I would plug in your user name and I'd put the amount in and I'd hit send simple. If I want to send to you a bitcoin app bitcoin wallet be the same thing. I'd put your address in there and I would put the amount and I say send simple. But that that app, that phone, all it does is hold my private key, so that's also it

signs the transaction for me. Now there's a way to back up that key, so I can back it up, and I can use twelve words to back it up. So there'd be twelve random words monkey, banana, ocean, ranch, uh, steak whatever, right, twelve random words, and so then I could I could delete that app I could destroy it, I could get rid of it whatever, and then I just no twelve words in my head. Now. The importance of this is that I don't need any physical device.

All I know is twelve words in my head. So let's just say that I'm in Russia or I'm in Ukraine and I'm trying to run for my life. So I don't get blown up. I don't need to run into my house and grab anything. I don't need to go get a device. I don't need to worry about losing my phone or not having access to my safe or carry something with me. I can literally just run.

I carry it with me in my head. I could literally walk through a border or swim to another island naked, and when I get there, I could get onto a computer. I could enter my backup and boom, have my entire key back with me right now. If that doesn't sound revolutionary, and then I don't know where you're from. It solves the oldest problem in humanity. It allows me to take my property in a way that can't be stolen, and I can take it with me everywhere with no cost.

Imagine if you had a million dollars or a billion dollars of gold. How do you move that? How how how hard is that to move a hunter million dollars of gold? How much does that cost you? How long does that take? But I can take a hundre million dollars a bitcoin with me. Nobody even know I know twelve words in my head. No border guard knows. I just have twelve words in my head. The government's gonna

make it illegal for you to custody your bitcoin. Really, they're gonna make it illegal for me to know twelve words. I know way more than twelve words right now, Like how they're gonna make that illegal? It doesn't make any sense. So think about this in get out of your US centric viewpoint and think about what's happening in Lebanon, in Ukraine, in Russia, in North Korea, think about what's happening in the world, and think about the massive demand that they

have for this right now. With the most amount of pain comes the most amount of action. With an addict, they typically don't take action until they reach rock bottom. When in the United States we may not be at rock bottom yet, but other parts of the world, I certainly are, And that's where the action, that's where the adoption of bitcoin is needed, and that's where it's happening.

You're listening to the Mark mo Show. We're talking about bitcoin and the decentralized revolution, talking about the way the world. It's the way that it's changing the world. To be back with more in a minute, don't go away, all right, welcome back. You are listening to the Mark ma Show and we're talking about the decentralized revolution that bitcoin, the

technology is pushing the adoption. We talked about from the lens of politics, finance, and technology, because they're all really connected, or I'd like to look at the intersection of those three things, but really it's the technology piece that moves the world. And of course that technology is bitcoin. Now when I say that, I automatically get a million questions, UM and challenges and and all these other things and

so UM, I just spoke at a conference. I got a whole bunch of them, and so I'm kind of running through some of the ones that UM that that keep coming up. And so again, politics, finance, and technology. So we talked about in these other nations where there's political systems and financial regimes that are that are very uh extreme authoritarian dictators and then we have failing financial systems.

Then we need a technology. All three come together. Now, one objection that I hear all the time is that bitcoin is too volatile or too risky, kind of the same thing. So bitcoin is way too volatile to be used as a medium exchange. And because it's volatile, because the price goes come down, it's too risky. It's too risky for me to put my money into bitcoin because the value could go down. It's volatile, risky. Okay, let's talk about that for a minute. Let's look at it

from two angles. So again, if you're in the United States, is it too volatile and risky, Well, you could buy it for forty thousand or um. Last November was sixty nine thousand, and today it's a twenty, So you could have bought some sixty today it's worth twenty. Is that too volatile? Is it too risky? Well, it depends. It depends. Now it depends on the US person. Let's talk about it from another standpoint. Let's talk about from the global standpoint.

If you're in North Korea where you're not allowed to have money, but of course people need money, and so the government doesn't give them enough food to survive, So they have all these black markets, and people trade in these black markets, and then they have to hide the money somewhere in their mattress or in their wall or something, and then the North Korean police come through, the military come through all the time and search people's homes, and

if they find anything, of course they steal it. So if you're there in North Korea where you're not even allowed to have money, and you're hiding it wherever you can, but anytime, anytime they any chance they get, they'll come and try and steal it from you. And if they steal all your money, then you're back to square one and you could die because you don't have enough food

if you're in North Korea. Is it too volatile? Is it too risky to put your money into bitcoin and asset that they can't find because it's digital and they can't steal. Is it too volatile or too risky? Then I would say that it's too risky not to try something like that. That's an extreme example. What about Lebanon? What about Turkey and the Turkish lera has dropped almost to the U. S. Dollar. They've lost almost nine of

their wealth and because of strict capital controls. They can't get out of their currencies, so they just lost the wealth. No big deal, right, well, worse than the six that bitcoins down. So is it too volatile and risky if you're in Turkey or Lebanon, where now they literally have to break into banks with weapons to steal their own money out, is it too risky or volatile to try it?

If you're in Lebanon, I would say the answer is no. If I was in North Korea, Turkey or Lebanon, I would be dying to get into bitcoin or anything that you could get into. Of course, it's hard to get into anything, which is why something like bitcoin works because it's completely anonymous and digital and there's no way to stop it. They can stop the flow of US dollars, right, they can stop gold, but they can't stop bitcoin. What about in the UK? The UK just had to get

bailed out by the Bank of England. They developed the pension funds and their pounds sterling crashed against the dollar and people are trying to get out of the bound pound sterling as fast they can. They went into gold. They bought all the gold out in UK. They've been buying lots of bitcoins, So is it too volatile and risky? If you're there? So, I think people that ask that question, we'd be asking it from a US centric viewpoint without understanding that the US only makes up about like four

percent of the world's population. I hate to tell you that if you're an American, I'm not sure if that's the exact data. Is that right down? Four percent? Three and thirty million people of about eight billion or nine billion? So, um, it's about four percent I think. So we have this US centric viewpoint, bitcoin has no use case. It's too volatile risky. Well, it is for you, but you make a four percent of the population. What about the other

of the population of the world? What about half of the world that live in these authoritarian regimes for double de guitiflation? Is it too risky for them? Now, let's talk about it from a US centric viewpoints. So it's two volatible, is too risky for what? For what? I would agree I'll agree that bitcoin is too volatile to put my rent money in that I have to pay in two weeks. I'll agree with that. Is it two volatile and two risky to put five cent of my

investible net worth in so there's are different questions. So bitcoin is volatile. The price goes up and down, and that's a good thing. How could bitcoin have gone from zero dollars to twenty dollars if it wasn't volatile. Volatile works both ways. It goes up and down. Um, so uh, you could buy bitcoin at right now if there's no volatility. That means it never goes up, never goes down ever again, which would be fine because then at least the network

still works. But back to the point, So, um, it's volatile. Could be a good thing, it could be a bad thing. Again, it depends on your viewpoints. So again, if I put my rent money into I need to pay in three weeks and all of a sudden the price crashes. Let's say it's a twenty day I put, I put my rent money in, and when I need to pay my rent in three weeks, it's at ten thousand. That's risky, it is. That's too risky. I would agree with you on that. So don't do that. Don't do that. Think

about it in a long term perspective. Now, I kind of got to benefit the world that really has a short term mentality today. But I benefited because when I started my career when I was eighteen years old, I started buying real estate, and at first I was fixing and flipping homes and that would be a six eight month process. But still that was six or eight months, So I was kind of looking at projects, you know, six eight months, sometimes a year out. But then I

started building from the ground up. I'd buy a piece of dirt, I have to resone it and build, and those who take five years, So I kind of look at the world in these like five year periods. I've started a bunch of businesses. Businesses to take three or four years to kind of really get up and stabilize. So I kind of had like this five year viewpoint on things. Uh. Hear Michael Saylor talked about bit when

he talks about in a ten year time frame. So he's like famous for like buying Apple in twelve and making all this money on Apple he called like this whole mobile revolution. So he looks at things in a ten year time frame. He's a billionaire. I'm not. I need to I need to get up to a ten year time frame, and you need to GetUp to a five year time frame. The further ahead, we can look the more money will make, the better will progress. So, um, in a five year time frame or let's go to

a three year time frame. There's never been a three year period where bitcoin has been down. So if you would have bought at the peak of December before it crashed, if you would have held three years, you would have gotten back to that value. So is it too volatile for my rent money in the next three weeks? Yes?

Is it too volatile for money I need in five years? Well, history says no. Now as to the too risky part, again, if you're in Lebanon, or you're in North Korea, or you're fleeing for your life in Russia, Um, it's not too risky. It's too risky not to try something else. If you're in the United States, is it too risky? Well, maybe would I put one of every single penny I have in it and I'm just gonna roll the dice and hell marry it. Well, it's probably too risky for that.

So I'm definitely not advising that. I think a five percent allocation is a is a good allocation. It gives you enough because of the volatility, because of the volatil to the upside, the way the bitcoin rises. If I have a five percent allocation, it allows me to capture all of the move But if I lose five percent, or let's say that, the cuts in half, so it goes from five. If I lose that, it doesn't really affect me that much. It doesn't really change my life.

Does that? Does that? Does that put too much risk on me? If I would potentially lose two percent of my net worth? No? Not really, So the too risky. You can manage that now, Like I said, if you're in North Korea or Russia, um, it's too risky, not too But in the United States we have a different situation. So it's too risky if you put all of it in and it's too volatile for your rent money in two weeks. It's not too volatile if you look at

over a three year, five year, ten year time frame. Now, as bitcoin continues to get more adoption and the market cap continues to go up, the volatility will inevitably go down. We've already seen it. So the bitcoin volatility has gone from drawdowns to draw downs, to eight percent draw downs to percent drawdowns. Now we're at seventy percent drawdowns, so it's already getting less volatile. We're seeing it and that will continue. So just because something is it that today

doesn't mean it won't be that in the future. So bitcoin could. I'm not saying guarantee it will. I think it will, but we don't. We don't have a guarantee. I think that over the next five and by the end of the decade, the bitcoin market cap will be big enough where the volatility will have slowed way down. Still probably not to put my rent money in for the next three weeks, but much much, much more slowed

down volatility. You're listening to the Market Mos show. We're talking about bitcoin and the decentralized revolution, talking about the way technology is changing the world, looking at through the lens of politics, finance, and technology. And I believe that technological revolution is bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, but bitcoin, and I'm talking about why. Of course, when I make that statement, I get lots of pushback, lots of objections, and so I'm

covering those big objections for you right now. I'm let me be back with more in a minute. Do not go away, you don't want to miss him. I'll be right back, all right, Welcome back. You are listening to the Mark Moa show. We're talking about the decentralized revolution, the way the world is changing, of course through the

lens of politics, finance, and technology. The technology being bitcoin, which is a d centralized technology, which is exactly what the world needs as it's leaving centralization, central planning and going to a world of decentralization. Now when I talk about this, when I speak about it, I was just speaking on a stage in Mexico City and m I talked about bitcoin, bitcoin, bitcoin, and everyone says, what about crypto,

what about a theory and what about the merge? What about Cardano and Salona and blah blah blah, And I have to go stand in the back for like an hour and answer and answer all these questions. And I thought, you know what, let me just answer them for you here. Um So, coming back from this conference and being fresh on some of this, I thought I'd talked about some of these big ones, and so let's let's talk about

a couple more. So, UM I love this one because this one just shows you have not been paying attention at all and you're like still pulling out arguments from six years ago. But I love this argument that bitcoin is too slow. Bitcoin is too slow Bitcoin is too slow for what. Well, it's too slow to be used for everyday transactions. So bitcoin is like gold. You know, gold is good for like big transactions, but then we

need like a silver. Silver is used for like smaller transactions. Right, So like bitcoin could be old, but then maybe ethereum could be silver, or x y z x RP could be silver or or whatever. Right, um, And so there's that argument bitcoin is too slow. Well let me let me talk about a couple of things there. So first of all, um, the world has a lot of problems and solutions are supposed to come to problems. Hopefully solutions

solve some of these problems. Now there's some problems that like you know, if they get solved or not, it's not a big deal, and some problems could change the world. Okay, the world does not have a problem because our money is too slow. It's not a problem. The world doesn't need faster money. It's a matter of fact. Papal venmo cash app like they're pretty dang fast. So the problem that the world is trying to solve is not faster money. So first of all, saying that bitcoin is too slow,

it's not the problem is here to solve. Okay, we can talk about the problems here to solve, but that's not it. So first of all, that argument I think is a little wrong. But the second all, let's let's let' let's take it. Let's take it, We'll take it. Come on, Bitcoin is too slow? Okay. So bitcoin on the base layer, on the blockchain, it takes about ten minutes for every block to go through, so it can take um time

for that to go through. So if I'm at the store and I want to buy my Starbucks, karmo makiato, Um, I don't want to sit there and wait for ten minutes for that transaction to get full confirmation. Now, typically you don't have to get you know, full confirmations. You could leave earlier. But let's just go with that. So I don't want to wait ten minutes. Okay. Well, um, what you may not have heard if you're making this argument is that bitcoin scales all technology skills in layers,

just like our financial system scales and layers. Remember on a gold system, gold was very slow to settle, and so we'd add a debt instrument on top of it, a paper certificate, and that was faster and easier to move, but it was a layer two, and then we added checks on top of it layer three, and then we had credit cards on top of it layer four, and then we put Vendom on top of layer five. So it's scales and layers. Each one of those has a trade off. So um, we can choose what we want

to do. Now Bitcoin has its base settlement layer, and then we can scale on top of it. Now here's why I wanna do that. Now, now you're listening to this, going yeah, but other base layers don't need a second layer to scale. So other base layers like Slona or Um, even Ethereum, they're faster than Bitcoin or bitcoin cash. Bitcoin

cash is the true uh so Totial's vision, it's faster. Well, the problem is that in order to get more of one thing, and this is a metallic beat in the founder of Ethereum came up with something he calls a try lemma, a dilemma as I have to choose to get more of one to give up more of another. Try limma is similar, but it's it's three. So to get more of one, I give up the other. And so we have um speed, decentralization, and security. So to get more of one to give up more of the other.

So bitcoin cash or ethereum or on the blank which everyone x RP, which everyone's faster. In order to get more of the speed, they've given up something from the other side of the two, security or decentralization. And here's the problem is that those trade offs should be made on layer two, not on layer one. The reason why is because I can make that trade off on layer two.

So if you're not aware, if you're making this argument that Bitcoin is too slow, you maybe don't know about lightning, which is a layer two application on top of Bitcoin. I can send Bitcoin faster and cheaper than any other cryptocurrency out there using lightning. But but that's that's lightning, and it doesn't matter. I'm still sending Bitcoin faster and cheaper than any other cup of currency, any other cyp of currency out of the whatever that are out there,

let's say, but they're faster or cheaper. Very irrelevant. Now now, um, yes, this works. It's worked for a long time. It's been working since abouteen I have used extensively. I've done a lot of work in else Salva or you can go to my YouTube channel search Mark Moss Mark Moss El Salvador. You can see some videos I put together. Um and you can walk around and you go to your coffee shop and that you can go to Starbucks or McDonald's

in El Salvador. It's a legal bitcoins, legal tender, and they'll ring up your you know, your McDonald's and they'll show you the little point of sales system with a QR code. You open up your bitcoin and wallet, you scan the QR code. It tells you, you know, whatever four dollars you hit send. Before your finger even comes off the button, they already have the transaction for for for like a penny less a fraction of a penny.

So it works. So if you're saying it's too slow, that's a that's a twenty seventeen argument that that that problem has been solved years ago. Uh, there's lots of transactions happening on it. A whole nation's running off of it. And I've personally used it many times. And go search Mark Moss on YouTube search Mark Moss El Salvador and you can see the videos of that working. So it's not too slow, and and and and remember this slow

wasn't the problem. Now back to the trade offs. So what what bitcoin cash and other ones have done is to get more speed. They've given up decentralization, but the revolution is decentralization, so they've given up on what the revolution is. So we make the trade off on the second layer. So let me explain this to you. So big using lightning is less, less decentralized, and less secure

because it's centralized the transaction. What it does is it batches them sort of like when you if you're a merchant and you accept visa or debit cards, it runs the transactions all day. At the end of the day, it batches them up and puts them all together at once. Right, So lightning does the same thing. It batches the transactions and puts them all at once, and that creates some centralization.

So there could be some manipulation there. Potentially, it gives a weak point maybe if somebody wanted to steal that and manipulate or change it. There's a there's a there's a small potential risk there. Okay, But I'm okay with that trade off. If I'm buying afford all or a cup of coffee, I don't need that to be censorship resistant and immutable for all of eternity sufford all a cup of coffee. So I'm happy to make the trade off and sacrifice security and decentralization for the speed for

the coffee. That's a good trade off. But if I'm um selling you a car, selling you a collector UH for GT that's worth a million dollars and you're gonna pay me on bitcoin, I want that to be on the main chain, and I'm more than happy to wait ten minutes for that to go through. So I get to decide do I want the security and I'll spend the time, or do I not need the security and

I won't have the time. I can make the trade off, and then we can make all types of trade offs on on other layers, second layers, there layers for and there's all types of trade offs we can make, but we don't sacrifice the base layer. The problem is if we sacrifice on the base layer, you can't go backwards. So if I make the base layer less decentralized and less secure to get the speed on layer two, three, or four or five, six, I can't reverse. I can't

make it go backwards. I can't make it more hard. And so that's why we don't sacrifice on the base layer. Big coin is not too slow. Anyone who says it's too slow hasn't paid attention for at least five years. Um. And anyone who says it doesn't work hasn't ever used it and has certainly hasn't gone out of the country to use it like I have. And again you can go watch those videos on YouTube search Mark moss El Salvador. UM. So yeah, so bitcoin is not too slow. You're listening

to the Mark Moa show. We're talking about the decentralized Revolution, talking about the way the world is changing. And I really believe it's bitcoin that changes the world. It is the It is the technological revolution, not a new technology. Technological revolutions are different. Technology is cool. It takes an iPhone, takes a computer on the phone, puts them together. Cool.

I got an iPhone. A technological revolution changes the way the world works, and it drives financial markets, industrial revolution, steam engines and railways, steel and electricity, oil and automobiles, microprocessors and telecommunications. And now we have bitcoin and the decentralized revolution. And I might just say, I mean maybe a shock to you. Not everything needs to be decentralized. The money needs to be decentralized. Um, but anyway, that's

what I got. You listened to the Mark Mos Show. Appreciate you listening. Hit me up on a message on social media at one Mark Moss let me know you're listening. Uh, ask me your questions and that's what I got. Thanks so much for listening.