It's my understanding that BTC will be a huge driver of clean cheap energy - it's part of the solution and will be embraced by ESG investors worldwide. eg. flared gas emissions now being harnessed by BTC miners in west Texas.

Bitcoin is NOT for payment. It may have started that way, BUT in the current senario, there are various different coins to fill that role, and do it much better. Bitcoin is purely a digital asset. This class of asset has never existed before. You are wrong to assume only individuals are investing. Recent news flow clearly give evidence to the contrary. And when you come to think of it, even largest institutional money (retiremnt and penion) is actully individual money. So if people want that in their retirement account ETF, institutions will provide it.

Aditya, I agree in that I don't see how it is a payment system. But Dan Tapiero (who has been interviewed on RV) just posted this link on twitter: https://www.aier.org/article/why-does-bitcoin-have-value/ In that article, it states "Bitcoin managed to bundle its unit of account with a payment system that lives on the ledger. That’s its innovation and why it obtained a value and that value continues to rise. " It goes on to state "The currency is held and accepted by many thousands of institutions, both online and offline. Its payment system is very popular in poor countries without vast banking infrastructures but also in developed countries. And major institutions—including the Federal Reserve, the OECD, the World Bank, and major investment houses—are paying respectful attention and weaving blockchain technology into their operations." Quick point: owning bitcoin, I don't believe, gives you any equity or financial return in the commercialization of blockchain technology. So this article is pressing the point that it is a payment system. You say it is not a payment system. That is what I find interesting about bitcoin, people struggle/disagree/have different views on what its actual value is. And if I am correct on market cap, I may be correct on it only be any individual marketplace. I stated market caps above, you did not address my numbers, but the bitcoin market looks like it is a long way from being an institutional market and individuals can't get ownership via an institution if the market is too small for them to invest. I get that some name investors and some funds have bought a small amount of bitcoin. But when it comes to trading volume in equities and bonds, bitcoin does not provide enough float/liquidity to be a meaningful asset class in the institutional market if the number of coins is fixed at 21 million (such limitations are why the US left the gold standard in the 1970s). The value of each coin would have to exceed $1 million and why would an institution pay that amount for one bitcoin in a major developed market? Only reason would be to convert back to dollars/euros/pounds/yen in the hope that those currencies devalued relative to bitcoin at the time of that conversion. Which means they have to find a buyer willing to pay more than they paid for bitcoin on the same hope down the road, that buyer will also find another buyer willing to pay a higher price at time of conversion (since to your point is not used for transactions). Again, get the value in getting money out of third world countries, but in first world countries, you rely on the value every increasing into the future otherwise you lose dollars on the transaction fee and lack of interest paid on your holdings.

1) It's divisible down to 8 decimal points and the smallest unit of bitcoin is called a satoshi. 100m satoshis = 1 bitcoin 2/3) it has to start somewhere 4) They claim to have a little under 1% of total supply

1. Bitcoin is divisible to 8 decimal places. The smallest unit of a Bitcoin is divisible to 100 millionth of a Bitcoin called a Satoshi. Those who hold one whole Bitcoin could be like holding a million dollars. What percentage of the US population holds a million dollars? So your first concern is not an issue.

I couldn't agree more, Governments seizing the exchange funds is the biggest risk and they don't even talk about it.

I couldn't agree more. Raoul once said Bitcoin is a life raft. Imagine being on a ship in rough seas and there's not enough life jackets for everyone on board. Do you really think the government is going allow you to keep the Bitcoin you are not in possession of, or will they just take it for themselves?

Look into it again, gold really is a liability and not an asset. It is so inconvinient, not easily divisible, not fungible, hard to verify and even harder to transport (accross borders) and very hard to store/keep safe as well. Then i'm not even talking about the environmental impact of mining, or even mining when price goes up because then they will poison/plough up more and more rainforests/countries.. (p.s. this is a millenial's opinion)

You will be amaze the see how many poor countries have phones. Before owning gold.

What specific challenges do you have to their thesis?

Gemini’s philanthropic efforts are so generous, they just bring me to tears. Their next step is to promote BTC in the developed world were it can cost 5 dollars to send 15. Beautiful. Amazing. I can’t wait until these guys are either taking raw in some Thai prison or just simply annoying their private circle of friends.

Sam, try to truly understand bitcoin and it’s capabilities to affect absolutely everything and you will see that falls apart. They support and perpetuate ecosystems that are Ponzi schemes. Bitcoin will grow from its widespread usage. BTC cannot support this. Neither can Ethereum on a global scale. I couldn't care less about any tribalism, I just hate how there are so many story telling apes in this space making so much money from the very little liquidity they have to steal from.

Very hard to watch

@Alejandro - you're full of it. I recently sent about 7k USD for about a dollar, and the only reason it cost that much is I made it priority transaction, so I was willing to pay a higher fee. "5 USD to send 15" is a load of garbage -- really, anyone can check tx fees right now and its nowhere near the lies you are spouting. You just sound like most no-coiners I know, willfully ignorant and fundamentally flawed in your reasoning.

Timothy, I'm actually quite bullish on blockchain and bitcoin my friend. With regards to being able to send 7k for a dollar that's not innovative at all. What's going to be innovative is when bitcoin allows anyone to send cents for fractions of cents in seconds. Peer to peer electronic cash, I encourage you to read the bitcoin whitepaper. Don't let the SOV or "digital gold" narrative that's being jammed down our throats fool you brother.

Their broad bitcoin thesis is spot on, but I was similar, couldn't finish watching it. They're embarrassing ambassadors. Especially the argument against "not your keys, not your coins" - bitcoins utility is that it's a completely independent of the rest of finance; sovereignty is baked right in.

There is large amounts of Bitcoin now moving on Ethereum and EOS and a couple of others in a peer to peer way. And PayPal just entered the L2 space , Revolut have been there a while. Slowly then Suddenly.

Where do you think they buy their weed? It must be strong

Mining the Kuiper Belt isn't a pipe dream. If anyone can do it, its an assortment of Silicon Valley Billionaires concentrated on doing so. Gold supply doubles every generation, roughly. There has been a clear rotation out of gold into crypto in general. It isn't surprising, as crypto has enjoyed massive yields versus Gold. If Gold can't lift its head when debt-to-GDP is north of 130%, then what use is it? Massive devaluation is happening and this wonderful asset doesn't even provide a decent hedge. My guess is that its ring-fenced and regulated into passivity. Why else would govt's sell issued coins? If they were really afraid of "hard money" they wouldn't traffic in it, much less let the hoi polloi plunk down their garbage fiat for it. But there I go again, thinking differently, which enabled me to build massive wealth -- even though I get criticized for doing so. I'm fine with it - my revenge is living well and watching charts in shorts and a t-shirt, instead of having to go to an office making someone else rich.

Hey Fred, I have your answer. I think they buy it from Timothy P.

Exactly William. It has become an endless stream of bulls/shills with big stakes in BTC. can we please get both sides of the coin/arguement.

If you're looking for the other side, I would take a look at what Nouriel Roubini and Peter Schiff have said around bitcoin. You can find a lot of material on youtube or just check out their twitter feed to get deep in the weeds. Once you hear their arguments, you can make your own decision around how you view BTC. Personally, I did the same exercise and it became abundantly obvious that Bitcoin wins out but it's up to every individual to come to their own conclusion.

Why would BTC not follow Metcalfe's Law or at least some comparable version of it? That is like saying BTC sees no benefit from network effects. Given that a store of value becomes more stable and attractive the greater the number of investors who are using it (via added market depth and long-term holding base etc), and given that the number of storage solutions and intermediary payment rails (e.g. Fidelity and PayPal) will increase along with the user base in a two-way reflexive manner, to state that BTC does not benefit from Metcalfe's Law seems empirically false.

Re behaving as a basic commodity, imagine a commodity that is known to be in short supply relative to overwhelming demand at a given point in time. It will be hard to find a credible bear case for that commodity, because the supply vs demand picture is compelling. If all the chocolate makers need cocoa, and the cocoa crop just got devastated by flash floods, it wouldn't make sense to go around saying "someone give me the bear case on cocoa please." Either the bull case holds up well under stress testing or it does not. If it does, there you go. And even if BTC is in fact "just a commodity," that might not matter. Gold is "just a commodity" too, in a very real sense, but with a specific set of properties that increase the level of demand relative to supply against a certain macro backdrop.

Great post George. I agree with you, and fade Roubini all the time (I like Schiff but the one trick pony thing gets old after a while) ... but what do you think is their strongest argument for being anti-BTC? Thanks.

@ George F. If we are to troll youtube and twitter for meaningful and unbiassed news feeds then why pray tell should anyone subscribe here? Correct me if I am wrong but part of the appeal of RV is to gain access to all sides from a holistic macro view. May as well subscribe to Kitco to get advice on buying gold all day long.

@George The problem with Roubini and Schiff is I don't think they have a good grasp on the crypto world. I would like someone who understands this technology but is a bear on BTC or any other particular crypto assets. Maybe they don't exist. Maybe everyone who does a deep dive into it becomes a believer. Who knows. It is strange that there is no one on RV to take the other side of the argument though.

I hold BTC and don't mind all of this free (to me) marketing material.

I'm own gold and it's miners, but I stay away from Schiff. He's myopic and only sees things one way regardless of the circumstances. I'm not as familiar with Roubini, but he strikes me as the same way.

Roy Sebag has the best counter-arguments as to why Bitcoin won't work. He understands the space extremely well, used to run one of the largest mining operations. Here's a RV interview of him discussing some of the issues: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kim-6HGEc0w He basically points out that the durability of Bitcoin relies on the incentive structure of the network working to perpetuity. We would need mining to continue to be economical for decades, hundreds, or thousands of years in order for Bitcoin to survive in the long run. Compare this with Gold, which requires no human action in order for it to maintain it's durability. Humans could be wiped away and gold would still exist. I am a Bitcoin bull bull bull but I think these are some of the best counter arguments I have heard.

Agreed, need a fair, robust bull vs. bear debate to really test the thesis. Thanks

And yet, its persisted for these 10+ years, in spite of your thesis that it can't. I'd say it means your premise is fundamentally flawed. A lot of people who don't understand crypto think this way, and I suggest that you educate yourself outside of the MSM talking points of "this can't work". Honestly, I've never seen such a flood of ignorance in the comments on this topic -- what happened, did the Fed lay off a bunch of people and they're posting in between job searches?

Banks and institutions coming into the space may have a near term positive impact on the price of BTC, and after that it's just another investment and will be regulated. The fantastic BTC valuation will collapse around the point in time when central banks really get into the space themselves with their own digital currencies. They're not going to let you pay your taxes in BTC without conversion to their CBDC, so ultimately, even if they can't stamp out every rogue BTC trading network, its utility in the vast majority of day-to-day transactions is going to be regulated. This is not going to support the current or future fantastic valuations people are predicting for BTC. And right now, it seems BTC advocates have people continuing to buy on yesterday's news: the concept of the technology being a store of value, a hard and diminishing, trackable asset existing outside the fiat currency world. They see financial institutions moving into the BTC space as some sort of support for this point of view. What it might mean is that we are in the final phase of this "trade of the decade" bull market. Gold on the other hand is held by central banks around the world, with Russia and China especially buying it in the last decade. CBs and governments around the world will be more interested in protecting the value of gold than of BTC as we move into a digital currency world. BTC's value and place in that world has yet to be defined.

Also, thank you all very much for the great content!!!

If you sat there, listening for 67mins, and that's all you took away from this interview you really wasted your time.

You obviously don't understand what synchronous communication provides, and how people interact within it. What is this garbage, honestly. Its like some toss-off posting on a tabloid message board.

Oh my, the horror of someone who has devised a custody service and believes in it. What did you expect -- "here's our custody offering, but its a bit shit...." While I don't like storing coins with anyone, having some rube posting an emoticon-laden garbage opinion about how a massively successful CEO conducts his business is beyond the pale. If you're so insightful, what is your solution? Besides tossing off half-assed posts, that is.

And they will chance away huge amounts of wealth, as the market cap grows the BTC holders will reward the jurisdictions that welcome them and punish those that don’t

No because government jurisdictions compete with one another, and democratically elected governments are constrained by the voters. It is sort of like asking why governments don't just raise taxes sky high. They would see capital flight if they did, and jurisdictions that adopted lower tax rates would benefit.

China has banned Bitcoin about three different times now. The OTC markets for BTC are still thriving. If a totalitarian dictatorship with a country-wide firewall can't stop it, how can any other govt do it? It just isn't possible.

A poor craftsman blames his tools.

As I posted below, that is the only value I see. Some argue it is not the transaction system, so it is only the money flow and the ability to sell to someone else that pays a higher price.

Important question and there are long and detailed ways to answer that you can explore more deeply. But in short as long as *you* hold the private cryptographic keys to your Bitcoin they cannot be hacked. On an exchange like Gemini they hold the keys and you have an IOU. Hence the importance of the terms custodial vs non-custodial when talking about Bitcoin wallets. I remember Peter McCormack tackling this question in a very straightforward way on hit What Bitcoin Did podcast. Hope this helps.

The protocol hasn't been "hacked". In fact, the only reason funds were seized was because the idiot that had the coins stored them on a shady backwater exchange, which was coerced to turn over the funds. I could give you a BTC address right now, and you can't take my coins. The protocol is fine. If I'm stupid enough to store coins on a third-party service, then I'm at the whim of their custody. Blocking Bitcoin transactions would be difficult. Its similar to the efforts put into stopping digital file piracy, for instance. Millions of dollars have been put into these efforts, but they can't stop it. Frankly, short of shutting down the entire internet (and even then, the blockchain is transmitted from a satellite now - so good luck there) it isn't possible. Other methods for "off grid" solutions have been progressing, including 'mesh' networks and short-to-medium range RF methods. The cat is out of the bag, and no one is capable of stopping it.

Yes please bring back Mark Hart to RV. I have commented few times to bring him back.

Mining on the moon is not relevant for most peoples' investment time horizon, guessing 1-5 years. However, if you are really interested, so far: https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/28/20936315/nasa-mars-insight-lander-heat-probe-mole-digging-failure

Nvm. That was Dan held I tweeted at and he doesn't listen to anyone.