Comments
Transcript
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ZYI thought all video is previewed by both parties about the topic...or maybe RV could give guest option if they want to preview and better prepare. Anyway, this is how on-demand interview is, we cant expect all guest speak idea like Raul or others... At least he make his point straight...
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GFfeel like he has no idea of why gov control money
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MPThis interview was one of the worst seen on RV for two reasons: - Mike Green doesn’t seem to understand crypto or bitcoin well and takes an anti-crypto position without having a deep understanding - charlie lee seems to be winging the interview
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KvFantastic line of questioning by Mike Green. Somewhat unsatisfying answers by Charlie Lee. Can Real Vision please get Mike to interview one of the preeminent thought leaders in the Bitcoin space with this same line of questioning. Perhaps Andreas Antonopoulos. That would be amazing to watch.
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LKMike Green brings up good point about taxing cryptocurrency. You either tax it when you buy it or when you sell it. A wealth tax ie on the total amount just won't work since the price varies so much, and account holders can just off load their account instantly to an off line network storage. To spur fast adoption of crypto would be to tax it at the point of purchase. To have a regulatory mess would be to tax at time of spend. Which in theory is now, and thus no widespread adoption.
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DBMuch respect for Michael, he has provided us with some amazing interviews. I don't think it's appropriate to hate on Charlie. He understands the amazing potential for crypto. Just because Charlie does not accept the arguments that world governments must stop or heavily regulate crypto currencies in order to maintain power and control over money, does not make him a buffoon. Michael has been skeptical of crypto from the start. Charlie has been all-in since 2011 and is likely many times richer as a result. Crypto represents a tidal wave hitting the beaches of finance and governments are ill advised to stand in the way. As for investors / speculators, you can not find a space that has more asymmetric potential. Risk manage by the size of your position. Whether it is 1%, 2%, 5%...it is clearly worth have some part of my net worth invested here given the potential upside.
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SAMike Green is showing to the fight with a nuclear bomb, Charlie Lee with a plastic knife. This is simply hilarious, Charlie couldn't even comprehend the questions he was being asked. Look, Charlie saw early on that bitcoin transactions would eventually slow down a lot once the space go crowded and would require a lot of electricity so he made the first improvements to the core bitcoin code base so that reasonably fast transactions can be ensured. That's about it. Obviously since that Litecoin creation the field has exploded. Charlie obviously is very rich for what he has done with Litecoin and I think Litecoin's original purpose as a backup to Bitcoin is a valid use case. But please don't ask him questions about what money is. He is still stuck on gold and silver coins. It's kind of ironic - super smart crypto coder guy, but he is a total amateur when it comes to money. What a world. If you don't understand the connection between the ability to print money, government debt and the ability to field an army which protects the territory over which that money is accepted, just quit talking and go read a book about Abraham Lincoln and Samuel Chase.
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ABMike Green tried very hard to have a meaningful conversation with Charlie Lee. Unfortunately, Charlie was total unprepared. It is clear that he has not given any thought on these topics. Overall, a frustrating experience. Charlie needs to learn about all these aspects about crypto to be able to hold his own and come across as a credibe source of informtion and thought on this topic. He seems to be only paying attention to the technical side of things.
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TRRV please interview Roger Ver.
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OCplease add captioning to these videos. Some watching may be hearing impaired and need captioning assistance. Thanks.
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CMThe interview reminded me of skit from an episode of “the Benny Hill Show” were he is trying , unsuccessfully to extract more than a one word answer from the pipe smoking guest. Absolutely excruciating at times. Mike’s outstretched arms begging for a more elaborate dialogue. All kidding aside there was some good takeaways from the last few minutes. Mike , as always, stellar.
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RKDude thinks he is fighting Gold :) That's mother naturer's Bitcoin bro. Works also without Wi-Fi and even shepards in the mongolian desert recognize it.
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SSCan't wait for the day Mike Green interviews Satoshi Nakamoto
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SRCharlie's arguments and answers are extremely weak, especially on the legal, taxation, and ownership aspects discussed. He didn't even really understand Michael's questions a lot of the time and comes across as very naive. He didn't have any answers to the government control issue either- funny, none of them never do. He clearly needs to spend more time out in the real world and less time stuck in front of a laptop. Having watched all the crypto interviews this week, I personally found them mostly very disappointing. This was one great opportunity completely missed by the 'believers' and adopters to explain why crypto is the future. But the arguments are all very unconvincing, dodging the big important questions. Maybe crypto is the next big thing, maybe its not, but if it is its clearly got a very long way to go yet. Not going to hold my breath on this one. All IMHO of course. PS: Gold breaking higher alongside Bitcoin - I know which one I'd rather own.
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IDCharlie is really winging it here, huh?
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CHCharlie Lee doesn't disappoint... a brilliant and genuine man that is working to make the world a better place. Looking forward to the follow up interview as Digital Gold continues to gain adoption.
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CBCoinbase, today, is rubbish. This claim is supported by reviews and personal experiences. If it survives longer term they may hire competent customer service which is an analog to the decades long view that Lee is holding for potential adoption.
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AGOoph .. MG punching a little above Mr. Lee's weight. Definitely an expert in tech .. not in policy.
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JMIMO Mike green is by far one of the best people working at RV and an incredibly switched on guy. Charlie Lee seems to struggle to understand the questions and possible problems facing crypto. Clearly, the guy is an intelligent mathematician and maybe just struggles to articulate his responses. As a speculator in this space, a lot of my punts go on the individuals running the protocol and setting it up as i,m not like most a mathematician. You compare Lee to say a guy like Charles Hoskinson and you would conclude logically imo to punt on Cardano over LTC. Or maybe Charles is just a great salesman? Who knows!!!
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KLThanks RealVision for interviewing Charlie Lee. Very rare to see founders sit down for an hour and thoughtfully talk about the crypto space.
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SSI enjoyed this a lot. Michael and Charlie are brilliant. Just my opinion, but perhaps having the last section/question first would have improved the structure of the interview a little. I’ve really enjoyed RV’s Crypto Week, but feel it could have focussed more on the potential of decentralised currencies, dapps, dexs, censorship resistance, privacy and the other reasons BTC came into existence over ten years ago. These are relevant to anyone interested in freedom, economics and prosperity, and are sadly more relevant today than they were ten years ago. There’ll be no truly free markets as long as there isn’t a free market in money.
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MVStating the obvious: Background noise... Feel sorry for Charlie.
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PBI really enjoyed this! Thanks a lot!
CHARLIE LEE: I found out about Bitcoin in 2011 and kind of just went down that rabbit hole. Only recently do we have the concept of fiat currency where the state has control over it. Throughout history, we've always used things like gold and silver as real money. There will definitely be thousands of different cryptocurrencies but there will only be maybe a handful that actually have real value.
MICHAEL GREEN: Mike Green. I'm here in Las Vegas for Real Vision at the World Crypto Con Conference. Amidst all the noise of the conference, I'm going to get to sit down with Charlie Lee, who is the inventor of Litecoin, the first alternative to Bitcoin, really an extension of Bitcoin as we'll talk about. I'm excited to sit down and talk with Charlie about the history of how he became involved in crypto and his thoughts on how it develops on a forward-looking basis. I hope you find it as interesting as I know I will.
Charlie, I'm excited to sit down and talk with you. A lot of our viewers aren't going to know much about you. But you were the founder of Litecoin.
CHARLIE LEE: That's correct. Yeah.
MICHAEL GREEN: In Litecoin, you built off of Bitcoin, the general idea. And as I understand it, the primary differences are in block transaction size and frequency. And the idea behind Litecoin was to improve the efficiency for transactions, the actual utility of Bitcoin.
CHARLIE LEE: We made it faster. It's 2 and 1/2 minutes per block as opposed to 10 minutes for Bitcoin. The general idea was to kind of complement Bitcoin. I saw it as a kind of market as silver to Bitcoin's gold. I see Litecoin and Bitcoin working side by side.
MICHAEL GREEN: And so this is not a competing cryptocurrency, effectively. You actually really do see it as a symbiotic relationship.
CHARLIE LEE: I do. But in some sense, it's competing. Right? It's competing for my share differently. It's a different coin so if people using Litecoin, they may not use Bitcoin. So it does compete a little bit but I see it more as complementary.
MICHAEL GREEN: What got you interested? Because I mean, you have a very different background than most people. First of all, you were not born in the United States or even China as I understand it. You came from the Ivory Coast. How'd you end up there?
CHARLIE LEE: Well, my dad was there. He had a business. So I grew up in Ivory Coast and came to the US when I was a teenager.
MICHAEL GREEN: And did you come with your family at that point?
CHARLIE LEE: Actually, I came by myself. Boarding school in the east coast.
MICHAEL GREEN: So you went to boarding school on the east coast. Was this a choice of your family's or was this something that was interesting, important to you?
CHARLIE LEE: It was a choice of my family. I think the environment in Ivory Coast was getting a little bit crazy with overthrowing of the governments and just demonstration on the streets. So they decided to send me to boarding school. Also, for a better education. Yeah.
MICHAEL GREEN: And so from boarding school on the east coast, you then went to MIT where you focused on computer science. Correct?
CHARLIE LEE: Correct. Yeah.
MICHAEL GREEN: And from MIT, you went to the west coast to Silicon Valley.
CHARLIE LEE: Yeah. I went to Silicon Valley and been there ever since.
MICHAEL GREEN: And that was roughly 2000?
CHARLIE LEE: Yeah, at the peak of the dot-com boom.
MICHAEL GREEN: So you got to live through the peak of the dot-com boom. You began working for Google, when?
CHARLIE LEE: In 2006.
MICHAEL GREEN: So this would have been right after Google went public then.
CHARLIE LEE: A couple of years after, I think. Actually, 2007.
MICHAEL GREEN: 2007. OK. And when you think about that transition to Google, one of the things that Google has encouraged its employees to do is to take time to focus on personal projects. Is that where your interest in Bitcoin and Litecoin emerged? How did you move from working on Chrome, which was one of your projects as I understand it?
CHARLIE LEE: Chrome OS, actually. Yeah.
MICHAEL GREEN: To focusing on crypto?
CHARLIE LEE: Yeah, I was actually just spending all my time outside of work on cryptocurrencies. Yeah, I found out about Bitcoin in 2011 and kind of just went down that rabbit hole and been, I guess, in it ever since.
MICHAEL GREEN: What was the motivation? What got you interested? Other than the mathematical challenge of crypto, which I know can be exciting for some people?
CHARLIE LEE: Yeah, I saw Bitcoin as a better version of gold. Actually, a better form of money than we've ever seen and that just captured my attention. I've always understood how gold and silver were used throughout history as money and how we came to the fiat currencies we have today. And I just saw Bitcoin as just kind of very similar to gold, but better, and it could actually replace the current monetary system. And I also understood the math and the cryptography behind it. So this really captured my attention.
MICHAEL GREEN: A lot of people became interested in Bitcoin, the work of Satoshi was published in the immediate aftermath of the global financial crisis. Was that a motivating factor for you? Looking at the current system and saying this didn't work?
CHARLIE LEE: Yeah, definitely. I saw that for one thing, currently, we have a system of money that the government can inflate away. With quantitative easings and other things, they can just print more money and devalues everyone's currencies. And I also saw that because of that, it's not good to keep your money in the bank because your money will become less valuable over time. So it kind of forces people to essentially gamble with their money. They have to put in the stock market or some other asset class that doesn't get devalued or that has potential of making more money. Effectively, it just keeps the same purchasing power because of the devaluation of the US dollar. And if you make 3, 5, 10% on your investment, effectively, you're just keeping the same purchasing power. So I think it's just a broken system. And with something like gold or Bitcoin, it's a better form of money I would say.
MICHAEL GREEN: And so are you ambivalent between the idea of an alternative currency in the form of gold versus Bitcoin or Litecoin? Or do you see the need for an electronic version because of the challenges of gold?
CHARLIE LEE: Yeah, definitely.
MICHAEL GREEN: Transactions, et cetera.
CHARLIE LEE: I mean, gold is great. Government can't devaluate it, its fixed supply rate. But the problem is their storage cost and then if you want to transfer it, it's not easy to transfer gold across country, across borders. But something like Bitcoin and Litecoin, it has pretty much all the good properties of gold except it's not physical and then you can store it cheaply and you can transfer it cheaply. It's just a better form of gold.
MICHAEL GREEN: So one of the challenges that I always look at when I look at this idea that it's a better currency. Right? There's a school of thought that says currencies are about the efficiency or the ease of use which definitely crypto and even arguments behind things like electronic gold or gold script, et cetera, by and large attempt to address. Certainly, our credit based system is much more associated with the ease and facilitation of transactions. But there is a second role which is the role of the state which has a monopoly, at least under current constructs, on violence and the enforcement of contracts as it relates to those currencies. How do you think about crypto addressing those dynamics and the transition process in which the state will ultimately have to forfeit that monopoly?
CHARLIE LEE: From my point of view, I don't think the state needs control of money. Right? Money is just a way where people can transfer and store value. There's no reason why the state needs to have control of it. I mean, only recently do we have the concept of fiat currency where the state has control over it. I mean, throughout history, we've always used things like gold and silver as real money, as ways to transfer and store value, and I think Bitcoin will help us get back to that better kind of way of people using money.
MICHAEL GREEN: It's interesting because I struggle with that history. Right? The idea that fiat currencies are relatively recent. The idea of minting or re-minting coins, or seigniorage, is very simply an idea that a tax is effectively created on top of the metallic content. So the metallic content of currencies was a reference point but you could always debase it, literally add base metals, lead, to a gold coin, generating revenues for the state in the process. Again, facilitating the role of the state in providing enforcement, how does crypto allocate toward something like that? Or does it just believe there is no need for violence in the process?
CHARLIE LEE: I don't think there's a need for that.
MICHAEL GREEN: Interesting.
CHARLIE LEE: I guess the thing with cryptocurrencies is that you can't add that, you can't debase it. Yeah, so it potentially could cause some conflict with the current state of things.
MICHAEL GREEN: When you think about that conflict, how does it get resolved? Have you looked forward into that space, that transition?
CHARLIE LEE: Honestly, I don't know. Yeah. It'll be very interesting because the US government definitely has fought wars over keeping control of the reserve currency. So yeah, we'll see what happens. But I believe in decentralization. I believe that kind of like freedom of money. We should have control of our own money. One thing Bitcoin and cryptocurrency brings about is a censorship-resistant form of money, where I can send money to you or to whoever and no one else can stop me. Right? It's my money, I should be able to spend it however I want. The state can maybe say that whatever I'm purchasing is illegal and block me from buying something but they shouldn't be able to block me from actually sending money.
MICHAEL GREEN: When you think about that though, I mean, how do you think about the difference between buying something that is illegal and transferring money to somebody who then provides you with an illegal service?
CHARLIE LEE: What do you mean?
MICHAEL GREEN: I can execute a transaction that says I buy illegal drugs or I purchase prostitution or I label that a money transfer and those services are provided without any contractual trace. Right? Which is why the cash economy is typically useful.
CHARLIE LEE: It's why we have the AML, KYC laws. I personally don't believe governments should actually regulate money movement. They should actually do it other ways to block illegal things. Right?
MICHAEL GREEN: So when you say otherwise, what would be an example? How are you thinking about that?
CHARLIE LEE: Basically catch criminals in the act of doing illegal things. Right? And not the money movement part. I guess the money movement part is easy for them, easier for them to catch and that's why they're blocking it there. But that really clamps down on the freedom of your money.
MICHAEL GREEN: So I mean, that's a relatively recent innovation. We highlight Al Capone captured for tax evasion. Right? If we are unable to track the efficient movement of the money, it provides an avenue of enforcement that may not be open in other ways. When you think about foregoing that, are you concerned about potential rise in illegal or criminal activity as we saw this with obviously Silk Road? Right? Do you think about that framework or is that more of a user and an enforcement dynamic than the engineering challenges?
CHARLIE LEE: Yeah, I would say the latter. I'm more concerned about working on sound money, building something that is good money. So the reason why Silk Road would use something like Bitcoin is because it's a better form of money. I would just leave it at that. It's for the governments and the enforcement agencies to figure out how to catch the bad guys. But I think having sound money where people can spend it however they want or send money to whoever they want is something I think it's good for money.
MICHAEL GREEN: When you think about the technical challenges, let's turn to the technical challenges because you continue to work with the Litecoin Foundation. What do you see as the barriers to adoption?
CHARLIE LEE: Ease of use. Yeah, like right now, it's still not easy to use cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrencies is being speculated a lot but actually like spending it, buying things with it, transferring value, actually transferring value is still not easy to use. So I think building better UI and user experience on a better hardware wallets, better ways to secure the coins, is really important for adoption.
MICHAEL GREEN: When you think about the dynamics of ease of use, again, you kind of come back into this component of you're replacing the current alternative. If I want to purchase services for a haircut, I can use cash or I can use credit card. Part of that dynamic is that the accounting systems are in place that facilitate the government's capturing of its piece of the pie, the taxation. How do you think about a taxation layer on a global currency like Bitcoin or Litecoin?
CHARLIE LEE: What do you mean by that?
MICHAEL GREEN: Well, the underlying dynamics of US dollar transactions, for example, are that the vast majority of them are conducted on a geographically proximate basis. So I go to my local barber, he has a tax requirement that is auditable although the frequency of that has fallen with the increased cost of compliance, and he is collecting a local sales tax whether that's state, federal, local. If you're in Europe, it would be a value-added tax, which would be effectively a pure tax on that. If I'm using Bitcoin, it becomes a challenge how to identify what portion is a capital gain. Did I purchase the Bitcoin at a discounted price and therefore, when I sell that or I transact, a portion of that shows up as a capital gain? A portion of that has to be captured in the equivalent use tax, a sales tax or a value-added tax. But when you're operating a global currency, it becomes extraordinarily difficult for the tax enforcement mechanisms to track what is strictly a transfer, what is a use purchase, et cetera. How do you think about that in terms of the use component? Is that something that you guys are actively working on in Litecoin?
CHARLIE LEE: Well, for one, Litecoin transactions is more trackable than cash transactions. So if someone came with cash, they can evade taxes, sales tax and stuff, and we see that happening. So with the cryptocurrency transaction, it's actually even better because it's on a blockchain and so it's public, so it's harder to evade taxes that way. As far as capital gains on cryptocurrency, I actually believe that we shouldn't have capital gains on cryptocurrency payments because it's basically money. You're converting between US dollar to another form of money and then converting back. So for small purchases. I think there is some bill that's being pushed to make it so that for something below $600, that there won't be any capital gains. Because otherwise, if you're buying a cup of coffee and you have to calculate like when I get this Bitcoin or Litecoin, how much did I pay for it and what is it now? And then how much did I make off of it? It gets really burdensome and practically impossible for people to spend the coin. So I hope something like small purchases will be exempt from capital gains. It would be a good thing to have for cryptocurrency.
MICHAEL GREEN: So when I think about that dynamic and I understand that some form of legislation is actually in motion. I believe it's on a state, not a federal level though. Is that correct?