you know you confiscated a few billion
dollars out of private bank accounts and
you print a couple trillion dollars and
all of a sudden you know what happens
people start to worry so out of this
worry we have something called the
Bitcoin
bitcoin is an electronic online digital
currency was created about three years
ago kind of flew under the radar now
it's starting to actually gain some
traction you exchanged your dollars to
exchange your euros whatever you go on
to these networks and they it's an
accepted currency and it's zooming and
value lately just unbelievable at how
much this has taken off and and there
are places that are beginning to
actually accept this sort of universal
digital currency kind of operates in the
shadows not regulated but it's an it's a
total outgrowth of people getting start
starting to get worried about these
currency crisis debt crises where are
these things accepted still not a lot of
places I checked out online not a lot of
websites that you would recognize but
the places are kind of novelty clothing
gaming sites yeah wait for it porn some
of those places but you know there are a
lot of drawbacks are a lot of fears that
I'm sure that our guests are going to
talk about but this tells you how really
insecure people are in this age of debt
and currency crises and all the other
things that we have going on in the
world first I have to give Bitcoin
creators credit at least they they know
enough not to trust fiat money that's
controlled by our government but we
they're trying to reinvent the wheel and
they've come up with a flat tire we
already have a perfect real form of
money and it's called gold money has to
have four elements it has to be very
rare indestructible divisible without
losing its purchasing power and cannot
be increased by Fiat and and bitcoins
fail on the first two they are not rare
and they are very much destructible had
paypal invented Bitcoin we don't be
heralding it as the most important
financial revolution since the internet
isn't the credit card perhaps and I
guess I would say as for those first two
points as to it being destructible and
rare I guess I don't know if I agree
with that I mean gold is only rare
because it's physically scarce but
Bitcoin is rare because it counts on the
scarcity of CPU time and so I think it
like why is that so destructibility I
think that's also sort of in question
what are the chances of someone coming
up with a counterfeit Bitcoin and they
present that to an end user and they're
accepting this this phony Bitcoin
I guess the chances would be
astronomically low and that's the whole
design I mean the way that you the way
that you create a Bitcoin is that you
basically have to find a larger rare
number bigger than any of the other
Bitcoin out there and so every Bitcoin
the next Bitcoin is even harder to
create and so I'd say right now it
requires vast amounts of CPU is
generally through Amazon Cloud and
things like this to create the next
Bitcoin so be exceedingly impossible or
exceedingly difficult to create so hack
so hacking Bitcoin could be a problem
but what about someone coming up with a
counterfeit that end users don't
recognize as being counterfeit and then
of loading the purchasing power of all
just yeah you guys I guess one of my
concerns here is - is that you know
there's a lot of stories about drug
dealers using these kind of things and I
think it's just a matter of it's not
regulated it's not controlled the whole
the whole Bitcoin market is about a
billion dollars it's a novelty for the
Geek Squad I can assure you if these
became well promulgated then the US
government would shut it down and just
just to give alright just to give our
viewers some perspective there's about
four trillion dollars in currency
trading every day and as Michael said
it's about a billion dollars worth of
bitcoins it has quintupled in value over
the last year just just since the the
Cyprus thing came up it's up over 20
percent or over the last month or about
a couple months it's up over 40 percent
so it's actually getting some visibility
out there again you can go online and go
to places where bitcoins are accepted
and there are dozens of places no
websites that you would actually do that
you know if I said them oh yeah I know
that but it's just gonna be very
interesting to see just how much this
catches on it just sounds so silly but
maybe it's not David how much of your
wealth will you place in bitcoins what
percentage would you believe that a for
any sort of a highly diversified
portfolio something like Bitcoin is
going to play an increasing role if it
is widely promulgated and the
exponential increase of someone trying
to hack it because it'd be many more
people trying to hack it goes up well I
guess you're assuming that merely that
because you can theorize the possibility
that's going to happen I would say your
purchasing power can be wiped out in a
nanosecond and that's why it would never
be widely accepted in this I hear you
say that but that doesn't make it true
and I think that there are people who
spend a lot of time on this that might
know this topic maybe a bit more
and who believe