Lol! Spot on

Wrong. It's Bruce Wayne. Everybody knows that.

I think it's actually Ash Bennington, and this video is ruse through clever editing.

There are already thousands of alternatives. But they all have to deal with the same problems; trilemma's and patents: - The trilemma represents the trade off between 3 facets; speed, security and decentralization. You cannot have more of 1 particular aspect, without sacrificing some on another. For example with XRP. It has a way higher Tx count, but it trades that against decentralization and because of that, security. XRP's ledger for example, is far too big to be on a normal person's node. It also is still far to dependent on Ripple Lab's contributions. Not to mention the fact that Garlinghouse (CEO Ripplelabs) indicated that XRP will follow monetary laws. That makes it susceptible to the whims of US politics (like sanctions). In effect, it is a hybrid of both Mastercard or Visa and Bitcoin. - The majority of the protocols are open source and a few have some unique patents to their founding groups. The result of this, is that most cryptocurrencies are simply a mix between open source protocols and less decentralization. Almost none of them offer anything new. Not to mention, there is a real risk of mixing these protocol ideas. The more are in play, the more complicated it is to keep track of flaws and issues in the system, the more exposed it is towards exploitative hacks. So as a result, those that try something entirely new and untested, often fail. Because their goal is to move fast and break things. But it costs them their earned trust. Their reliability. Like IOTA for example. This is why Bitcoin is still king. Because it doesn't innovate fast. This means is not exposed to liabilities in code. It is scrutinized heavily. This creates stability. Stability is good. If you want more proof. Have a look at the long list of Bitcoin forks that exist. There are close to a hundred in that graveyard. All claiming to offer an upgrade that provides better utility, a peg to gold, scalability, Satoshi's original vision (barf). Truth is, this is evolution at work. There are very few alternatives that can thrive. Ethereum, I think, is one of those. Because it did offer something unique. It wasn't a cheap derivative effort to scam people out of their money with lofty promises. This does not mean that Bitcoin cannot be overtaken. But the current ecosystem has no shortage of competitors and challengers. They have all failed so far. Brutally. Even Nano, which imo, has a pretty original technology setup. It is in many ways, technologically superior. But in lacks some other features, like smart contracts. Most importantly, it lacks the network effect. Every day Bitcoin lives longer, more developers work on it. Other currencies need to catch up to that, before they even stand a chance. This is unlikely to ever happen. And, like with Ethereum, even if their developer base starts to rival that of Bitcoin. They are two different beasts. With each their own purpose and development methods. Bitcoin is one of slow, conservative steps. Ethereum is one of bizarre exploration, where things can go wrong and that is accepted.

Derrick, Great question. There are, broadly, two positions on this issue. The first is that other protocols are needed to address the issues you've just raised. The second opinion, which is very much in the ascendancy right now, is called 'Bitcoin Maximalism' — which is the belief that bitcoin is the only cryptocurrency worth focusing on — and that bitcoin can, should, and will address those issues with so-called "layer 2 solutions", which are additional services that can be layered on top of bitcoin to solve the issues you just mentioned. It's a fascinating debate to watch — and one we will be following up on on RV soon...

@Berend, where did you get these "facts" on XRP? They are all wrong.

Thanks, Peter. Much appreciated.

Thanks, Steve. We've got a great team — and we're all jumping into the breach to cover this crisis.

Thanks, Ash! (I've always wanted to say that...)

Bitcoin is *not* a piece of open-source software. If it was, then there would be thousands of Bitcoin networks out there. But there aren't. It literally IS open source software, and there literally ARE copy cats like BCH, BSV. In addition, there already ARE alternative crypto with from-the-ground-up design and build distinctions as well as consensus methods that are superior. Bitcoin holders who hope it serves as digital gold want everyone else to buy bitcoin for obvious reasons. At the same time, miners, whose goal is to make as much money as possible off the transactions find themselves at odds with bitcoin investors and users goals. Guess which population actually gets to vote on what changes in bitcoin, even the 21m supply limit? To say there are not viable and strong alternatives to bitcoin is objectively false. This is like telling everyone during the dot com boom to invest in Lycos and ignore everything else.

a Thanks for sharing your thoughts Derrick. Some further comments from me: 1) You seem to have missed my point. There is only *one* Bitcoin project. That's factually true even though there are thousands of copies of the source code. So therefore Bitcoin must be much more than *just* the code (I agree that the code is part of the project obviously). 2) Everyone talk their own book, I'll agree to that :) Users, node operators, exchanges and other businesses that are building on top of Bitcoin want the project to succeed. None of them benefit from trying to sabotage the project. Miners are service providers that get paid *in bitcoin* for securing the chain. If they collude and try to sabotage the project they'll crash their only revenue stream. So everyone in the system is incentivized to make it work. When it comes to voting it's simple. Node operators (users, businesses, exchanges) chose which chain they want to follow. Miners are not in control of which chain that is valid (check the block size wars of 2016-2017 if you want to understand why this is the case). 3) There are many networks out there that *technically* is equal (or perhaps even better) than Bitcoin. So why are they not more valuable? Because Bitcoin is so much more than just the code. It's a network of different things that together create something that's extremely hard to displace. Also, when Bitcoin was a tiny network it was never congested, always cheap etc etc. Most other networks are simply too small to have started to see their limitations so it's very easy for these people to say (but also misleading) that their networks are X times better than Bitcoin *today*. Furthermore, comparing a cryptocurrency network to an application or a website is 100% irrelevant. A network is very very different compared to an application (the switching costs and their "stickyness" are on the opposite sides of the spectrum).

Petter, what I wrote might sound anti-bitcoin but in fact I do hold some, as I think cryptocurrency will be important in the future, and due to its first mover advantage and strong network, it will likely survive and maybe retain its #1 position among crypto. With that said, bitcoin has some issues that other projects have resolved. It's heresy in the bitcoin community to say that PoW is obsolete, but when the price hit $18,000 in 2017 and the network crashed, it became clear there is an existential risk to this whole thing working. At the same time, we have XRP that can settle in 4 seconds, and is secure without PoW. Again, I hold bitcoin, but I am diversified into other cryptocurrency. We don't know who wins, yet. With that in mind, and to address your comment that it is not an application I will use a network example, here are quotes from the founder of Friendster, a social network that existed prior to Facebook and was taken over: "The problem," he says, "was that Friendster was having a lot of technology problems." Friendster had raised an additional $13 million in funding in 2003 and, according to Abrams, investors weren't focused on patching up the service properly, let alone responding to the threats posed by upstarts like Facebook. "The fact that we didn't launch those products was a problem, but even more fundamentally, people could barely log into the website for two years," he says. "By the time Facebook and MySpace was doing those things, Friendster had lost a lot of market share in the U.S. for stability issues."

@Derrick: I agree that Bitcoin isn't perfect and that there are limitations as to what can be achieved on the base layer. But to say that the network crashed in 2017 is not true. It did exactly what it was supposed to do. The fees were outrageous because of high demand for block space, but the blocks kept coming through every 10 minute as always. Regarding PoW: Please let me know if you find another consensus algorithm that is equally secure and 100% permissionless. I'm not interested in XRP because it's got nothing to do with liberty or sound money (also not sure why anyone would be interested in a project where the founders are regularly dumping millions of tokens on their own unsuspecting community members). Thanks for the references. Interesting. But again, Bitcoin is not having technical issues. It's working as-is. The only other network with substantial network effects is Ethereum. But that network *do* however have technical issues and until those are resolved I'd recommend people to stay away from it.

Easy to look up on the web, but essentially it means a still theoretical take-over of more than 50% of the computer power necessary to run the BTC network. This is means that in theory you can determine what goes into the network/ledger. Note that the energy you need to muster this attack is probably similar to that of a small country. Rather expensive :-) Plus the network is set up so that it does not allow you to do a lot of things like creating new coins (because they need to be validated by other network actors and they wont support you). In fact the network will just startup around you, leaving you on a digital island as it were. Not sure I captured everything, but for BTC a 51% attack is not realistic. At least, that is the theory as we know it :-)

It's not simple to deflect the dangers of a 51% attack at all. Sure, it costs tremendous amounts of specialized hardware and quite some energy to perform it and that means it's very expensive - in regards to the hardware it might not be easy to obtain - but I hold it with James Rickards here: If we talk about Bitcoin getting a significant market share of the monetary system (via offering a vehicle to assure the store of value as well as a direct payment medium alike) the competition we are suddenly talking about is composed of countries, economic zones, central banks and, in essence, the global elite. What appears as very expensive within a certain marketplace can become negligible in another. What are we talking about here? 10 billion $? We just saw a 2.2 trillion $ injection into the US economy alone. And if the incentive of the attacker is not monetary gain but the destruction of the usability of the blockchain and the undermining of the trust of the people in this new form of currency, the argument that it is not worth the expenditure falls flat. It would not be a single attack either - in that case some damage would be done but it would be fixable - but a relentless series of attacks that would make bitcoins in it's worst case almost unusable. The Bitcoin blockchain does not discriminate against miners/ nodes, so you can't label nodes as hostile in any sense - thus any malevolent participant is invited to the party. And don't expect people to care. You can label bitcoin as tax-evasive, drug-related, dirty. People who don't hold bitcoin won't suffer financially and might even feel acknowledged in their skepticism. So far bitcoin did not find a very wide-spread adoption. That it is not controlled by any central point does not translate into the narrative that it's money of the people. Bitcoin ownership is very centralized. If bitcoin goes through the roof, it won't help towards a flattening of the global wealth distribution - quite the contrary. And isn't that the most essential criticism towards centralized monetary control, that it leads to an unfair situation in which too few end up with too much? Please tell me I'm wrong and why. @Tuur D., very interested in your thoughts on this as well.

re: Nobody can shut it down. it's entire existence is dependent upon the "grid". Electricity and internet; of which the integrity of those hardware/utility systems are completely out of your control.

I'm all in, but it's for speculative and meltdown purposes. I don't think we can call something this wild a reliable store of value.

A.H: You´re right but consider this - your point about "grid" shutting down is a theoretical risk. In normal circumstances Bitcoin works just fine. Johnny O - it is designed to be sound money. It has a fixed supply of coins, fantastic monetary policy. However, it is still very early on so it is a young market with a lot of speculators. As the adoption continues, bitcoin will become more robust. Also consider this - 1) zoom and appreciate in the past 10 years bitcoin held value much better than fiat cash (in fact it has been the best performing asset class in the world) and 2) the short-term volatility is normal in the new asset in an OPEN market. The 24/7 trading makes bitcoin anti-fragile and strong in the long-term.

I have the same issue!!!

tl;dr "my crypto better than your crypto" /s

Chris, INTERLEDGER means multiple ledgers supported, and ILP is an open protocol, not a “crypto”.

https://bankless.substack.com/p/ethereum-is-an-emergent-structure Maybe get thease guys on?

On its way... watch this space...

yeh Ryan from bankless is good and can speak in understandable way :)

Why scam talk? We already have the traditional financial system if we can scams. Vitalik the policy-changing preminer with the eternally delayed ETH 2.0 Rube Goldberg Machine. Focus on BTC. It's all about money, not pipe dreams and wishful thinking.

I thought BTC was “digital gold”, when people realized it could never scale to be money.

real interest rate = nominal interest rate - inflation

Wonder if bail-ins will still be a thing? Given in the last crisis, many banks were required to issue bail-in bonds (Total Loss Absorbing Capital - TLAC debt) which would be converted first before deposits.

The fact that it is even debated scares me. Bail-ins are obviously a measure of last resort and come with all sorts of issues. The problem is that they are formalized as part of the European banking rulebook (since 2016 I believe). If you have the will & patience to read a paper on this, check this link https://www.esrb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/wp/esrbwp7.en.pdf

This is not good. PlanB on twitter: "Yes, Cyprus was a trial run and a "template" for next crises"

Have you read PlanB's original article? https://medium.com/@100trillionUSD/modeling-bitcoins-value-with-scarcity-91fa0fc03e25 He does discuss challenges to this in various interviews including the question of does demand matter to this model. The model has been confirmed by independent reviewers and is cointegrated.

Yes sir, I have looked at it in detail. I have never seen so much enthusiasm for a two factor model since Markowitz.

@charles I agree the S2F model will break along the way. Doesn't mean its imperfection is worthless. " bitcoin needs to now get out there and boost demand" Well its not a company unlike most of the other altcoins. A few resources that might interest you History of Money https://nakamotoinstitute.org/shelling-out/ or Book: The Bitcoin Standard Bitcoins Social Contract Layer https://medium.com/s/story/bitcoins-social-contract-1f8b05ee24a9

Time will tell.

@chris R. thanks for your response. I've read lots about money over the years. I'd add Money by Felix Martin to the list. To your point on the Medium piece, Hasu writes "There will only be 21 million bitcoins, issued on a predictable schedule (inflation resistance)". That is precisely the point. Inflation resistance gives it stability, not necessarily gain. Adoption gives it gain - the stats prove it. There are several false narratives on bitcoin out there. It isn't gold and supply reduction doesnt create value. S2F model is weak technical analysis dressed up as fundamentals. Bitcoin is correlated to equities especially internet stocks. 2014 and 2018 were the bitcoin bear years, and were also down years for social media stocks (see SOCL US). Internet money is correlated with internet stocks. Shock horror. I find it staggering so many poeple called it a safe haven. From the demise of fiat, sure, but otherwise it's a risk on asset and always will be. I'm hugely bullish btw - on the demand story. Internet comes out of this virus crisis stronger. Bitcoin is an internet stock. Buy bitcoin. I just can't stand false narratives. More on my site if interested ByteTree.com.

On point Christopher. I felt Dan's comment on the absolute numbers was surprisingly naive. It's the second order consequences of a saturated health service that need to be accounted for. As a fellow medic I wish you all the best with what is potentially to come.

Please elaborate Crispim. Your soundbites are enlightening.

Like u loan it to someone for use? How do u get interest on it?

BlockFi is one place you can get interest on your Bitcoin.

that is not a free return, you are buying risks: exchange fail risk, political risk, loan default risk, etc.

Can you release these videos a bit quicker? As you know, right now the market changes so much in the span of one week.

Love it. You spoke last week about increasing your position in BTC "in time". Did you personally do that already? Were you waiting to watch it hold its price level over the past 2 weeks like it has?

Can you recommend ways to acquire Bitcoin investments?

Peter S: there are multiple ways to buy, but what is essential is how you store. There is a rule "not your keys not your bitcoin" so you want to be in control of your private keys and not have "your bitcoin" held in custody with some exchange (like coinbase)... get yourself a Trezor crypto hardware wallet or Nano Ledger S hardware wallet. details https://blog.trezor.io/why-you-need-a-hardware-wallet-eaf966c5c193 Then register account with a crypto exchange (e.g. US: Coinbase, EU: Kraken, Bitstamp, globally: BINANCE) but the bitcoins there and send them to your hardware wallet. Do some research before you do that. An easier version is: just create a coinbase account and store it there. But then you rely on Coinbase same as you rely on your bank. Not your keys not your bitcoin.

Mine was last Monday, March 23rd.

He mentions Italy 4000 death , which was last week 20th March

My interview was on Monday March 23rd (Tuur Demeester).

Bit of an error in the production of this video however: The Stock/Flow model chart thrown up on the screen at 46:02 (and the ones before that) are quite old, in fact they say that the halving is 9 months away when in fact it is only 46 days away at the date of this video release. Whoever did the posting must have just done a google image search on it lol. I've included here a link to his most recent one if anyone on the team wants to rectify it: https://twitter.com/100trillionUSD/status/1242068166454456322 https://twitter.com/100trillionUSD/status/1242068166454456322/photo/1