If you hear talk of cryptocurrency
and Bitcoin and think I really
have no idea how that works,
you're definitely not alone,
myself included.
Don't know anything about it,
but we are on a mission to equip
you with a basic working knowledge
so that you can feel more confident
as this technology becomes more
common in our world.
So all this week on to the point
we are diving deep into crypto
and tonight Becca Habegger breaks
down really two simple things.
What is cryptocurrency
and why should we care?
What is cryptocurrency?
Cryptocurrency is digital money
that can be used as a secure
form of payment, nice and easy.
So cryptocurrency is just a currency,
like a dollar or a peso or a euro.
And the difference between
cryptocurrency and the dollar
that you'd have in your wallet
is that it only exists digitally.
They don't make any paper copies,
and it's not issued by a government,
it's issued by the currency.
So if somebody's willing to accept
it to trade and barter for goods,
it works just like a dollar
or a euro. You're essentially purchasing
something that is completely digital.
And honestly, today most of us don't
transact in cash anymore, right?
We do have paper money that exists,
but most of us use credit cards or
we make transfers with our online
bank accounts or something like
Venmo and the financial world.
We actually think of cryptocurrency
as a new financial asset class,
so you might be familiar with other
asset classes like real estate,
stocks, and bonds.
What about all the different kinds,
like Bitcoin?
You think of crypto as the umbrella.
There are lots of pieces under that umbrella.
There's Bitcoin,
there's etherium,
there's Monero
in the same way that there are.
With sedans, Toyota makes Camrys
which is an example of a sedan.
But sedans are also still
motor vehicles and so Bitcoin
is a specific application,
a specific coin type,
whereas there are certainly
other types of cryptocurrencies.
So all of these cryptocurrencies are
separate and it's all technology based.
How do these cryptocurrencies work?
All of these, whether we're talking
about Bitcoin, etherium, Shiba,
coin, and you might have heard
about NFTS or non fungible tokens.
They all really use the same technology.
We call it a distributed Ledger.
We're used to like a centralized Ledger
where I can keep track of things.
So if I were to ask you how
much money do you have,
you could probably answer the question.
You'd have to call your bank and they would
tell you this is what's in your account.
With something like Bitcoin,
there's not one person who keeps
track of what your balance is.
There's a whole network of,
we call them miners log transactions
so you can keep track of your balance.
So there's not one source
that tracks it that broad.
Family is called a blockchain.
Distributed ledgers and blockchains,
they're like motor vehicles.
And then cryptocurrency is like
sedans and Bitcoin is like a Camry.
But it's all part of the same family
of things that will absolutely change
our world in the next 10 years.
So
why should I care? How
does this affect me?
Why would somebody care?
When we have these type
of distributed ledgers,
we can keep track of things that
we don't currently keep track of.
There is an interesting pilot that
AR was rolling out with their new.
SVS out of the UK to digitally keep
track of all the maintenance records.
So if you go to buy a used car,
you wouldn't just take the other
person's word for it that they've
done all their maintenance.
There would be an independently
verified record for all of the
upkeep and maintenance that that
Alfa Romeo had gone through.
And so when you bought the used
car you would also buy the history.
There's a lot of other types of
things that we don't really have big
systems to keep track of the data,
and something like a distributed Ledger
or a blockchain is an interesting
technology that will allow us to.
Do that in the future.
Futures here, we're in the,
we're in the cryptocurrency.
What are we talking about?
OK, but are there ethical issues with this?
For sure, you know that state professor said.
We'll start seeing that blockchain technology
used to track things like everything
from a driving records to house titles,
but even potentially things like
employee productivity, he says.
Now is the time to be asking the ethical
questions that we should be exploring,
like what types of information are
we as a society comfortable with
letting you know be tracked and then.
Bombarded with that online, you know.
Yeah. Cookies. Yeah, exactly.
With ads. Exactly.
And then, of course,
what kinds of decisions are we OK with
being made using that information?
Yeah.
And he says we in the past have
history of diving headlong into
technology without examining
these ethical questions first.
So we should be talking about
them now before we get into real
trouble down the line.
Yeah,
I agree with.