It's called a sliding door moment.
That moment where the tiniest decision or event in your life changes its course
forever in the film.
This moment was named after we got a chance to see how the characters life would
have differed. If she had caught the train on time for her,
it comes down to love. But in the world of cryptocurrency and investments,
it could mean billions.
And in case you've not followed the news for the last few weeks. Let's recap,
Bitcoin's getting bigger. After breaking records for its value.
Multiple times Bitcoin was sent sky high. When in early February,
Tesla announced in an SEC filing,
it had purchased no less than $1.5 billion of the
cryptocurrency. It's an exciting time for anyone that's invested in Bitcoin.
And for a few people it's left them reassessing whether they made the right
choice in their sliding doors moment, meet Stephen Thomas to some people.
He's the luckiest man in the world. You see in 2011,
while working in Switzerland,
he was paid in Bitcoin for making an explainer video about the cryptocurrency to
be uploaded to YouTube.
The video is one minute and 43 seconds long and involves some simple animation
and a bit of voiceover work.
Now how much was Stephan paid for this 7,002 Bitcoins,
10 years later, or as the day that I recorded this,
those Bitcoins are now worth, wait for it.
$326 million, not bad for a YouTuber,
except there's just one problem.
Stephen Thomas stored his Bitcoin in an iron key digital wallet.
He then wrote the password down for this ultra secure digital wallet on a piece
of paper and then promptly lost it.
And in that moment he became the world's unluckiest man,
because the iron key wallet only,
he allows up to 10 attempts to access to Wolin.
After that the contents are encrypted gone forever and well
Stephan's used eight attempts. The world of tech is full of these stories,
triumph and disasters,
whether it's blockbuster failing to buy Netflix for just $50 million for David
Cho the graffiti artists who decided to be paid in shares when he painted the
Facebook headquarters back in 2005, as of 2012,
those shares were worth around $200 million.
The difference is for the likes of Uber, Apple, Netflix, Facebook,
the doors have shut forever, but when it comes to Bitcoin,
is it too late to jump on the train? Well,
renowned economists neural Roubini seems to think so. In fact,
he doesn't just think it's too late to buy Bitcoin.
He thinks that it's inherently worthless. He takes the point of view of many.
The Bitcoin is merely just a bubble. Of course, he's right.
Bitcoin doesn't really have a value.
And although there's more and more headlines,
every single day of massive companies, for example,
like Tesla accepting Bitcoin for payment,
the reality is for small transactions, it's very, very inefficient.
Whilst visa can process up to 1,700 transactions per second.
Bitcoin can barely do five and it has no intrinsic value.
You can exchange one virtual Bitcoin for something physical,
but at the same time,
you can say that about pretty much any currency in the world.
At one point in history, those notes in your pocket,
or that balance displayed inside of your banking app actually stood for
something.
Every dollar was measured against the gold reserves of the government.
It meant that the dollar had an intrinsic value.
And whilst this didn't guard against inflation,
the government could still print more money.
It ensured a real intangible way of measuring the value of money.
Then in 1971,
president Richard Nixon announced that the American government would no longer
use the gold standard.
We must protect the position of the American dollar as a pillar of monetary
stability around the world.
And would instead switch to something known as FIA currency.
Only these aren't as exciting as the name suggest feud comes from the Latin
word. It shall be done, basically meaning that if the government says it's true,
it's true. And that's what FIA currency is.
The value of food currency is really whatever the government says it is.
It's not linked to anything. It's really just a make-believe number. Of course,
this makes it astonishingly prone to hyperinflation,
especially now as government borrowing to get through the crisis has hit record
highs. Bitcoin though,
it's kept and it's not done by a government or some massive corporation right
now, there are only around 19 million Bitcoins in existence and thanks to
increasingly complex equations, that must be solved in order to mine more,
there can only ever be a maximum of 21 million
Bitcoin is finite. So in a nutshell, if Bitcoin is a bubble,
then so is every other currency in existence.
And while it has a massive disadvantage in terms of just quite frankly,
being a bit useless when it comes to small transactions,
it's deflationary nature.
And the fact that there is a finite amount of it that cannot be manipulated by
outside sources, for example, the U S dollar or as another example,
the stock market.
And you only need to look at the whole GameStop fiasco to understand that the
stock market is nowhere near as much of a free market as people really think it
is. And when that being said,
Bitcoin really starts to rise above the other asset classes.
When you start looking at it from that perspective,
the fact is modern currencies are only as strong as the belief in them,
and there's more and more institutions,
corporations and investors choose Bitcoin. The more confidence grows in it.
I'll be upfront with you and say that I've invested heavily in Bitcoin and other
cryptocurrencies now,
because I think the train doors are still open because just like trains and cars
replaced horses and carriages.
I think that one day Bitcoin could take over the dollar as the world's reserve
currency or at a minimum exceed the market cap of gold because quite frankly,
it's better than it in every single way.
The truth is the train doors closed a long time ago.
I'm ready to jump on a spaceship and you know where I'm going. Hey, look,
if you enjoyed that video,
I went ahead and picked out another special video that I know you're going to
find it immensely valuable. You can find it right there.
I know you're going to love it. And I'll see you in the next one.
To the moon.