Latest / The Curve / RTC22: An introduction to cryptocurrency: part two.

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RTC22: An introduction to cryptocurrency: part two. · The Curve

• 0:00
  Welcome to season two of Raising the Curve, a conversation for women who want to
• 0:06
  learn more about money, via money. For the future they want to have. The pursuit
• 0:11
  for financial confidence and increasing your wealth should be a simple one. So
• 0:16
  this is a place for you to learn about investing in finance in a non-scary or
• 0:20
  intimidating way. Thank you for being here and for listening. Because together we
• 0:25
  really can raise the curve. Hello, hello, hello. Okay, we're back part two of
• 0:31
  cryptocurrency. Where did we get to on the last one? So we're going through the
• 0:35
  definitions. We got through a few, so we've got a lot more to go through. There's a
• 0:38
  lot of a lot of technical jargon when it comes to crypto. Could we maybe just do a
• 0:43
  quick recap before we move on? So cryptocurrency itself is just an alternative
• 0:50
  payment, an alternative form of payment. And it's not regulated by the government or
• 0:55
  any other party decentralized. Yeah. So it's and it's used uses encryption
• 1:00
  algorithms. So it's a digital currency and it's not controlled by the banks. And
• 1:05
  there was the power to the people thing where there's some kind of encryption
• 1:08
  everyone has access to it. So it's no one can kind of pull the wall over each
• 1:12
  other's eyes. Yes. Yeah. And then it can't be can't be hacked itself. And then
• 1:16
  Bitcoin. So this is the one that we refer to the most because it's the most
• 1:20
  popular and it's been around the longest, but there is over kind of 10,000
• 1:24
  types of cryptocurrency that you can actually invest in. When before we had a
• 1:28
  DM come through to our Instagram and it was like, make sure you tell people
• 1:32
  about Solana or some new coin. And I literally googled Solana Bitcoin, which is
• 1:37
  obviously not it. I should have been like Solana cryptocurrency. But it's just
• 1:41
  because Bitcoin's the most popular one. Totally. And you refer to, yeah,
• 1:45
  some people talk about Bitcoin in general. You may invest in a different type
• 1:49
  of crypto, but you refer to it as Bitcoin because, you know, it's just it's a
• 1:51
  bit. It's the over of taxis. It's the Netflix of online streaming. Exactly.
• 1:56
  Yeah. And then Ethereum. So we talked a bit about that about how it's
• 1:59
  some a little bit coin, but it is a bit slightly different. How is it different?
• 2:04
  Is it is there? Can we talk about that? No, I don't think we did. Okay, no,
• 2:08
  we didn't talk about Ethereum. Okay. So let's start there. And then we've
• 2:11
  got a few other definitions. And yeah, hopefully this is starting to make
• 2:15
  sense. We're a bit more understandable for a lot of people. I mean, I feel
• 2:18
  like the more I research crypto, the more I learn, and sometimes even even me
• 2:25
  the more confused I get sometimes. Yeah, I was about to say the more you know
• 2:30
  nothing. Totally. Like you talk about Bitcoin, but when you start
• 2:33
  looking and you start looking at all the other tips of different types of
• 2:35
  crypto and different types of uses of the blockchain, it's just it does
• 2:41
  become quite overwhelming. It's blockchain a word that's used outside of
• 2:47
  cryptocurrencies because for some reason I feel like blockchain is a word I've
• 2:51
  heard heaps, but I never I never related the two. Yeah, so blockchain is the
• 2:56
  digital form of the record keeping. So it's it's the technology that's that's
• 3:02
  behind cryptocurrencies. It's the sequence of blocks more almost the code behind
• 3:07
  the blockchain. Sorry, behind the cryptocurrency. And they they continually
• 3:12
  build build on one another creating this kind of permanent and unchangeable
• 3:17
  ledger of transactions or data. So that's why it's impossible for hackers to
• 3:21
  hack because it is you know continually build they build on one other. So it's
• 3:26
  kind of you can have anything it doesn't have to be cryptocurrency on the
• 3:31
  blockchain. So this is where Ethereum comes in is that Ethereum is effectively
• 3:34
  it's similar to Bitcoin, but it's slightly different. In terms of the
• 3:39
  actual encryption on the blockchain is slightly different. Like the blockchains
• 3:43
  the code. This is my understanding is the blockchains the code and then Bitcoin
• 3:48
  is kind of what that code represents. So yeah, Ethereum is similar to Bitcoin,
• 3:53
  but it's slightly different. So Bitcoin became it is becoming more and more
• 3:57
  popular and researchers began to see that there were applications there was
• 4:03
  more applications for this blockchain technology than just cryptocurrency. And
• 4:07
  so that's where Ethereum came in. And so it wasn't created just to exchange
• 4:13
  cryptocurrency. It was designed from the beginning to be something slightly
• 4:16
  different. So the core features of Ethereum is that are the smart contracts and
• 4:22
  what they call the ether if that makes sense. Oh no. It's a bit tough for a Sunday
• 4:28
  morning. This is just too much for my little brain. So you can create effectively
• 4:33
  you can create your own tokens to exchange value in many other forms on so
• 4:39
  Ethereum is just slightly different. It's not a Bitcoin. So it uses the same
• 4:43
  blockchain technology, but you effectively the tokens aren't coins, they're
• 4:48
  different. Okay, let's just leave it at that for now. And we'll try and push that
• 4:52
  out. So Ethereum defines ether as its cryptocurrency. I'm doing that at a
• 4:58
  bit. I need to break. I'm just saying this is so confusing. So, okay, so they're
• 5:02
  all made of blockchain. Every single cryptocurrency has its own blockchain.
• 5:08
  Yes. Which is it's kind of authenticity or it's it's it's it's code. Is it
• 5:15
  like it's serial number or something? Kind of. Yeah. Yeah. Which means that it
• 5:19
  it means it can't be hacked because it's unique to that coin. No, there's
• 5:24
  every transaction. Okay, so every transaction basically has a maybe add-on
• 5:29
  maybe it's to find kind of maybe we jumped ahead and defined Ethereum before
• 5:32
  blockchain. So maybe let's dig into what actually blockchain is itself. So this
• 5:37
  is the digital form of record keeping. So it's the digital ledger used to
• 5:42
  store all the cryptocurrency transactions. So maybe we did talk about this
• 5:46
  when I exchange, if I if you sell me a quarter of a coin, that's recorded on
• 5:51
  the blockchain, that transaction and now I own I own that quarter of that coin
• 5:55
  and that code of that transaction. Even I can say that. Yeah, and that's that's
• 6:02
  recorded on the blockchain. So it can't be it can't be hacked. So imagine a
• 6:07
  spreadsheet that is effectively duplicated thousands and thousands of times
• 6:11
  is sent to a network of a hundred thousand different computers. That's
• 6:15
  effectively what blockchain is. Wow. So cryptocurrency transactions take place
• 6:21
  as shared and continually reconcile against each other constantly. So it's quite
• 6:26
  hard to kind of copy. And there's no one like there's no
• 6:29
  thing in a little in a little office doing all the spreadsheets. So like that's
• 6:35
  just so wild. I think it's running it. There's no centralized database or, you
• 6:39
  know, warehouse or a computer that it's it's all stored on that a hacker can
• 6:44
  hack. The thing that hackers can hack is your password. So when we did the
• 6:49
  transaction, you get a password which is access to your to your bitcoin, which
• 6:54
  then you can go you can buy and sell or whatever. If a hacker gets that password,
• 6:59
  then they can log in and transact on your behalf. So that that password is
• 7:04
  kicked, but that password is like huge. It's like super super long. So that's why it's
• 7:09
  there's the only way someone can have. So if you lose that password, then you've
• 7:13
  you've lost your investment in bitcoin and it's and because that has happened to
• 7:17
  a lot of people, I remember we spoke about this in the last episode that there's
• 7:20
  some people that have been locked out of their accounts and lost millions of
• 7:22
  dollars. Yeah. Yeah. So that's that's where you need to be careful. But in terms of
• 7:28
  hacking into the actual ledger of transactions and blockchain, that's the
• 7:33
  appeal of it is that it's so safe from that standpoint. Which seems bizarre
• 7:38
  because so many people hack, you know, I mean Facebook's been a hit. Imagine the
• 7:44
  algorithms and imagine the security for someone to get through that. Yeah. But
• 7:48
  they can't get through cryptocurrency. And there's because it's
• 7:51
  disseminated. Oh, we had this issue last time really disseminated. I mean, you just
• 7:55
  keep using that word, babe. You keep using that word. It's spreading through the
• 7:58
  bottom everywhere. Whereas if yes, if it was in one centralized place, then you
• 8:03
  would just have hundreds of thousands of hackers trying to hack into that all day
• 8:06
  every day. And one would be bound to get through. But I think the fact that it is
• 8:09
  distributed everywhere amongst all users effectively and to all the public.
• 8:14
  That is so hard because it's continually reconciled. So if you hack into one, I mean,
• 8:19
  I don't know how hackers hack. I am not a computer nerd. I mean, hats off what
• 8:26
  they do. It seems bloody mind-boggling. But yeah, so it's because it's
• 8:30
  distributed everywhere that it's so hard to get into. I spoke to someone on
• 8:33
  the other day and they were saying NFT is actually really bad for the
• 8:36
  environment because the amount of energy that it takes to create an NFT is
• 8:41
  essentially like team computers plugged into the electricity for ever. So an NFT is
• 8:47
  we'll get to that. But what I guess what I mean is how is NFT? She was saying,
• 8:52
  you know, for example, the cloud, the cloud is actually not. It's not some
• 8:56
  fictional thing floating around the ether. It's actually there are millions of
• 9:01
  huge hard drive computers and warehouses that are plugged in that are the cloud.
• 9:05
  So there's all these bad things. So how just means it's off-premise. So how does
• 9:09
  it is cryptocurrency then not powered by? How is it not the same? It's just
• 9:15
  distributed everywhere. So it's still the same thing as the cloud where there
• 9:19
  will be heaps of different computers that have all the blockchains on it. So the
• 9:22
  cloud, so there's a lot of data centers like massive, massive data centers
• 9:26
  all over the world in every country. That's effectively the cloud. So the cloud
• 9:31
  just means instead of having my information stored on premise, so say here in
• 9:36
  the studio instead of having all the computer data stored on premise or on
• 9:42
  location here, it's stored off-site and therefore you can kind of work anywhere.
• 9:47
  So the cloud is, yeah, it's not an extra cloud. So there's still a need for a
• 9:53
  place to house that data. And is that the same with crypto? There's still a need to
• 9:57
  house the data. No, sorry, yes, but it's not in one place. So it's all over. So
• 10:01
  yeah, you're right. Mining the process of mining, which is where new cryptocurrency
• 10:07
  coins are made available. And they use a lot and a lot of power. So Bitcoin
• 10:12
  currently uses around 110 terawatt hours, which means nothing to me, per year,
• 10:19
  but on the scale of things, that's the same annual energy consumption of Malaysia
• 10:26
  or Sweden. Just for Bitcoin. Yeah. So it is, it is very unlikely.
• 10:31
  It's not sustainable. Yeah. So it's so this was when we were talking about
• 10:36
  Tesla and the price of Bitcoin skyrocketed skyrocketed because Elon Musk was
• 10:42
  like, oh, I'm going to we can now accept Bitcoin to purchase Tesla cars. But
• 10:46
  then such a conflict of interest. Totally. And then it was like, oh, he and
• 10:49
  then he reneged on that and said, actually, no, you can only purchase a car, a
• 10:54
  Tesla using Bitcoin if you've used at least 50% of renewable energy to source
• 10:59
  that. So kind of how do you even do that? It's like, yeah, it's just more like,
• 11:04
  yes, he realized that the conflict of interest. And this is probably one of the
• 11:08
  big kind of downfalls of Bitcoin is just how much power it takes to to mine.
• 11:15
  So is that essentially like the digital version of a physical piece of money
• 11:19
  being made as in this more Bitcoin being made for people to buy and sell? So
• 11:25
  it's where, yeah, new new bitcoins are entered into circulation. Okay. So
• 11:30
  are so they're actually so they're not physical, but they are still in a way.
• 11:34
  They're digital. Yeah, they did had to create it. To think about it in a physical way,
• 11:38
  yes, it's the production of a $5 note or a $10 note. And yeah, I know it's
• 11:44
  good. But imagine I was thinking about this the other day, I was like, imagine
• 11:48
  trying to explain the worldwide web to someone or the internet before the
• 11:53
  internet was around. It's such a good point. Yeah. Because if you're like,
• 11:58
  are you just Google it? And they're like, but where is that information going?
• 12:01
  And how does it get from me to you? And who's finding the answer? And then
• 12:05
  okay. I mean, maybe I don't know, but 10, 20 years time Bitcoin would just be so
• 12:10
  ingrained in society that we kind of won't even think about the mechanics of
• 12:13
  how it works and everything. But yeah, it's just kind of it's when such big
• 12:18
  changes happen. It is quite hard to be a head around. And when you've done
• 12:22
  things for a way and so long, done things in the same way for so long, then
• 12:28
  this change happened. It is quite hard to kind of comprehend. But I keep bringing
• 12:30
  it back to the internet. I was like, I remember when I first heard about the
• 12:32
  internet. And I kind of was like, what do you mean? There's a worldwide web?
• 12:36
  What do you mean? You know, even Facebook, I remember going on the home page and
• 12:39
  just being like, where's the home page gone? And now how do you make a profile?
• 12:43
  And like, this photo is here, but now I'm here. And like, you're just so hard to
• 12:46
  navigate and understand. And we're just full. And they were like, there's this new
• 12:50
  thing called Google. And I was like, what, you just type in anything and you get
• 12:52
  answers. And I was like, ask Jeves for kids. I remember was like, it's going
• 12:57
  you'd ask Jeves a question and you type it in. And Google was just like 10 times
• 13:01
  being in that. I was like, Oh my god, and the speed and the, you know, I mean,
• 13:05
  no. So I think that's a really good way to explain it. So cryptocurrency is, it
• 13:10
  feels super techy and hard to like pinpoint or yeah, or tangibly explain
• 13:15
  what it is or how it works because it is extremely complicated. But you're
• 13:19
  right. It's exactly the same. If someone wants to say to you, okay, you can use
• 13:22
  the internet to find out all your answers. You wouldn't sit there necessarily and
• 13:25
  be like, but, but how? Where's that going? Yeah. But you should be asking those
• 13:29
  questions when if you're investing in Bitcoin, because you do want to understand as
• 13:33
  much as you can about where it's coming from, the process, what drives it. You know,
• 13:37
  you want to understand those things. But yeah, it's sometimes it can be quite mind
• 13:43
  boggling. But it's amazing to start to even understand vaguely what it even is. I
• 13:50
  mean, it was kind of this really foreign concept that I couldn't even probably
• 13:54
  string a sentence or two together to explain to anybody. Yeah. But I'm starting
• 13:59
  like even just having these initial conversations around where it's stored and
• 14:02
  how it works. Yes. Yeah. And I think the more you have these conversations, the
• 14:06
  more things will start to click and the more things you'll think about in
• 14:10
  different ways or we will talk about them with different analogies. And it'll
• 14:14
  start to sink in and hopefully you'll start to understand it a bit better.
• 14:18
  The other thing just won't quickly, well, we're on here is there are things
• 14:22
  called crypto exchanges, which I think we touched on briefly. But it's like a
• 14:26
  stock exchange as we go to effectively buy and sell cryptocurrencies such as
• 14:30
  Bitcoin. So that's where you can convert your cash into a Bitcoin. So you can buy a
• 14:36
  whole Bitcoin. You can buy a part of a Bitcoin. So this is kind of like if you
• 14:40
  were gambling, really, and you're getting tokens and a kind of though, right?
• 14:44
  Like, yeah, we're not going to do it again, but yes, yeah. And that's yeah, that's
• 14:49
  easy. And so how does that then work? So would that all be online too?
• 14:52
  Yeah. So there's one called, I guess, one of the most common is coin,
• 14:55
  coin base. And so you effectively log and kind of like a, you're stuck
• 15:02
  like a year's stake or you kind of load money into a wallet, then you purchase
• 15:07
  Bitcoin through that. I actually woke up this morning thought,
• 15:10
  oh my god, Vick and I said that we'd get a wallet together and we didn't.
• 15:15
  I think we should do that today. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because I think maybe we just
• 15:19
  both put $500 in. Yeah. And just see what happens. Because it will be quite a
• 15:23
  cool learning experience, I think. Should we divert? What about we do that Solano
• 15:27
  one? Just for fun. We got a hot tip on our Instagram. Oh, I think it was a,
• 15:32
  is it a joke? I think so. Oh, really? I don't actually know. We'll do some research.
• 15:35
  Yes. We should just, Solano coin. We don't take hot tips. No, we don't.
• 15:38
  No, we don't. We don't. We don't. We don't. We don't, right?
• 15:41
  So it's a hot tip. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So we do Ethereum, but
• 15:48
  Coin will have a look in one other one. Yeah, just for fun. Yeah. Yeah.
• 15:52
  Fun. Okay. So, and then NFTs you mentioned before, for those people listening,
• 15:58
  and NFTs is what you call a non-fungible token. And not a non-what?
• 16:04
  Fungible. Fungible. I thought your mouth was doing a weird thing. Is there a thing?
• 16:08
  Non-fungible. I can't actually say this word. Non-fungible. Fung. Fung. There's a jage.
• 16:17
  Maybe we should do that Google thing where it pronounces it for you.
• 16:21
  What's it called? Non-fun jiggle. It's so slow. Non-fun.
• 16:30
  Fungible. It sounds like you go. How do you pronounce non-fungible?
• 16:35
  Here we go, ready? Non-fungible. Oh, non-fungible. Non-fungible. Wow. Oh, wow.
• 16:44
  What does that mean? So it's the units of value that are used to represent ownership
• 16:49
  of unique digital item. They very much used it like art in the collectibles world.
• 16:54
  Oh, so this is NFTs? Yeah, yeah. This is what you know she stands for. Oh, non-fungible.
• 17:00
  Sorry, I'm so sorry. I just was totally forgot. We're talking about Fungible. Non-fungible token.
• 17:05
  Wow. Yeah. Here's Sophie. This is running around talking about NFTs.
• 17:08
  I didn't even know what it meant. Yeah. So, NFTs are most often held on Ethereum blockchain.
• 17:18
  Because they're not a coin. They're not a Bitcoin. They're art, aren't they?
• 17:22
  It's a token of value for a certain digital asset. If you think about an artist,
• 17:27
  I mean, I think we should do a holy set on this because there's quite interesting
• 17:31
  and I think it's going to come more and more. Oh, I've been so keen to learn about non-fungibles.
• 17:36
  Non-fungible. But you know where the piece of art, if I was an upcoming artist and I don't think
• 17:43
  my art would suffer very much. I mean, even my mother didn't think my art was very good for
• 17:47
  us. Yeah, but it has this weird hang-up that she's not creative. I mean, we moved into this,
• 17:53
  well, we renovated our house when we were younger and Mum was like, had this big space on the wall
• 17:57
  and she turned to my sister and she was like, Sarah, can you do something some kind of art for the
• 18:01
  wall? And I was like, Mum, what about that piece of art that I bought home? And Mum was like,
• 18:06
  oh yeah, yeah, and it didn't get a feature. It never put it up. Oh,
• 18:11
  it really hit a spot. Oh, you would have been young as well. Oh, yeah. Oh, I reckon you just
• 18:16
  keep painting back. You know, you've got it and also not many of us can sell our art. I mean,
• 18:22
  if you saw the things that I do do, it was like quite scary, actually. I also used to, I mean,
• 18:27
  maybe I should give up on the art dream, but when I was younger and I sold pictures that I used to
• 18:33
  draw on the side of the road, no, we didn't sell one. Not one. But we lived on a very quiet street,
• 18:39
  which I think. Yeah, that was definitely it. Yes, the lack of cars and people. So cute, you just
• 18:45
  drew pictures. Oh, it's a biopitcher. Hey, little entrepreneurial Vic, you know. Yeah, she always
• 18:50
  wanted to be in business. Yes, so sorry. Yeah, so we'll do it. Yeah, we'll do a whole episode of this,
• 18:56
  but I think just quickly with the artist, so when you sell a, so if you're an upcoming artist and
• 19:03
  you sell a piece of art and say you sold it for a thousand dollars and then your work starts to
• 19:09
  get better and better, you become well-known. The price of your art goes up. On that first painting
• 19:17
  or whatever you just sold years ago, that might have gone through 10, 20 different owners. And now
• 19:23
  the 20th owner, that might be worth, they've just sold it for 10 million. You don't get credit for
• 19:27
  that at all as an artist. You only do that, that initial sale. So you don't get any, which is so
• 19:35
  which is yeah. So you, even though you, your brand, your art is appreciating and value over time,
• 19:41
  those initial artworks, you don't benefit from it's only when you start selling those more recent
• 19:45
  ones. And so this is where NFTs are really good because you could have the digital ownership
• 19:52
  of that initial artwork. And therefore whenever there's a sale, you get a piece of that in terms of
• 19:57
  you own that NFTs. So it's kind of, the artist still gets nothing though. So the artist owns the
• 20:02
  NFTs. So you own, yeah. So it's kind of like a traceable digital ownership code, I guess. And so
• 20:10
  it's, it'll be forever recognized as yours. Yeah. So it's kind of, this is mainly for the art
• 20:17
  industry and like collectibles and stuff. It's so interesting. Yeah. Like Emily Raditalski.
• 20:22
  She's an artist. No, but from her, there's a picture of herself that she bought the NFT too.
• 20:28
  So then whenever there's a transaction of that picture, she gets a cover of the ticket effectively.
• 20:34
  Yeah. Or it's kind of like royalties. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And like they're starting to set more
• 20:39
  on book publishers so that you can get the digital rights to a book. But I mean, with books,
• 20:45
  we never there sold the author, they're kind of structured a bit differently. So the authors do get
• 20:50
  a bit of the cut anyway, even if the book is sold 10 years time. But yeah, they're just becoming,
• 20:56
  it's just kind of like a digital, digital ownership, really. Yeah. And so that stopped in the
• 21:00
  blockchain too. Yes. They've got their own blockchain. Yes. Yeah. So we'll do more on that because it's
• 21:06
  and we can kind of tied a bit more into investing as well. Because it is a really interesting space.
• 21:10
  And it just shows the applications of blockchain. It doesn't have to be just for cryptocurrencies,
• 21:15
  like Bitcoin, it can be used for other kind of contracts or ownership or digital unique values,
• 21:23
  like Ethereum, like yeah, like NFTs. There's lots of other uses of blockchain. So the Ethereum is,
• 21:29
  but Ethereum is another coin. Ethereum is, it's similar to Bitcoin, but it's slightly different.
• 21:35
  You are creating a token to exchange value. So there's like the blockchain, which is the code
• 21:43
  for any kind of any, it supports anything. It can be cryptocurrency, it can be a contract,
• 21:49
  it can be an NFT. You don't like it, it's just a, it's just an instruction, I guess,
• 21:55
  a code for a contract. Okay. Maybe it's a good way to explain it. So we've talked about this
• 22:01
  blockchain for quite a while and I'm feeling blockchain down. Can we just for a second divert
• 22:07
  into the value of coins or the value of NFTs or the value of Ethereum? What determines its value
• 22:14
  and why is it going up and down so much? Yeah. Good, good, good question. So it's
• 22:19
  like with stocks, it's all about the future expectations is what moves the price. So say you're
• 22:25
  investing in Microsoft, you think that the outlook is improving getting better and better,
• 22:30
  that leads to more people wanting to buy the shares, the prices increasing, and the opposite,
• 22:34
  if you think that the outlook is deteriorating, there's more sellers, price decreases.
• 22:39
  The same is with Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies. So if you as an investor, you think that
• 22:48
  you know, Bitcoin's not going to be around in five years or there's increased risk,
• 22:53
  the government is going to not allow it to be used at all, then you would probably sell your
• 22:58
  Bitcoin and that and a lot of other people would as well, that would lead to the price falling.
• 23:01
  So it might be someone, so say just in dry do and came out and said, you know, Bitcoin will
• 23:07
  never be accepted in New Zealand. Anyone that uses the blockchain is going to be put in jail.
• 23:15
  You know, like I'm just trying to use extreme scenarios. Then people would be like, oh my god,
• 23:20
  and sell it. The opposite is true, if people are like, I can really see how this can be used on
• 23:24
  a day-to-day basis. It's going to be more ingrained in society. We're going to be transacting our
• 23:28
  coffees every day with Bitcoin in the future and more places are going to accept it as a payment
• 23:35
  method than people will be buying it because they want to get access to it and they can see that
• 23:40
  its value is increasing and increasing. And so this is what leads to the price of it increasing.
• 23:46
  So it's all about future expectations, just like the stock market, with a company,
• 23:50
  it's all about future expectations and that's what it's all about supply and demand.
• 23:55
  So if there's an increase in demand for something, the price increases. And this is what we've
• 23:59
  seen with Bitcoin, with Ethereum, lots of other cryptocurrencies as well. So I used in the last
• 24:07
  12 months, like Ether is up 700%, and Bitcoin's up 200%. So these are pretty ridiculous gains,
• 24:16
  to be honest. That amount of return in 12 months is pretty crazy.
• 24:21
  I'm getting on at a seller. No, I'm just like...
• 24:26
  I'm looking like a true speculative trader.
• 24:27
  Yeah, here I go, guys. Here I go.
• 24:29
  It's going up. Oh, by it. I'm just jumping right now.
• 24:32
  It's going up. I'll sell it.
• 24:33
  Yeah, yeah, here I go.
• 24:35
  I'm just joining the school of thirst.
• 24:37
  Yeah, I'm just going to be the little Nemo's, little Nemo's sidecapes with me.
• 24:41
  Yep, off I go. What's next, guys? We'll be on next.
• 24:46
  Yeah, so that's...
• 24:47
  You're also going to be a part of that account for soon.
• 24:50
  I'm being dragged along with the school of thirst as well.
• 24:53
  Yeah.
• 24:54
  Yeah, so this is why...
• 24:57
  You may read headlines of more and more companies accepting Bitcoin.
• 25:03
  So we had Tesla, which we're spoken about.
• 25:05
  You can also now top up your Microsoft account with Bitcoin,
• 25:09
  some European airlines, you can pay with pay flights using Bitcoin.
• 25:13
  Can you really?
• 25:14
  Yeah, some subway cabs in BK stores.
• 25:17
  Is it that kind of like a huge sign that things...
• 25:19
  It's pretty legit.
• 25:20
  Yeah, I guess the risk is there's also been huge amounts of regulation
• 25:27
  hindering it from gaining momentum as well.
• 25:32
  Because you can use it for...
• 25:33
  It's kind of dirty money that we were talking about before,
• 25:36
  then there's been a lot of backlash from governments and countries about its use.
• 25:44
  Like in China, I think it was back a few months ago
• 25:48
  that there's central banks, so that kind of the head bank,
• 25:52
  the head honcho bank that tells the other banks what to do,
• 25:55
  the Reserve Bank of New Zealand equivalent in China.
• 25:57
  They announced that all transactions of cryptocurrencies are illegal.
• 26:01
  So they effectively banned digital tokens.
• 26:04
  So this is what I mean when it's...
• 26:06
  Because it's still new and evolving,
• 26:08
  countries are still figuring out how to regulate it and how the best way is for it to be used
• 26:13
  in society, and so when you see headlines like that come out,
• 26:17
  that leads to a whole lot of people selling it because they're like,
• 26:19
  oh my god, if one of the biggest economies in the world is saying,
• 26:22
  no, does that mean that everyone else is going to fall?
• 26:24
  You know, people start thinking, okay, maybe this isn't going to be around in 10 or 20 years time.
• 26:29
  And then you hear other headlines that the likes of Tesla and the biggest companies in the world
• 26:34
  is accepting it, so it's kind of because it's such a new...
• 26:38
  There's no certainty around what's going to happen.
• 26:40
  Yeah, it's still evolving, it's still very early stage.
• 26:44
  This is why I would say it's really for sophisticated investors or people who know
• 26:49
  what they're doing.
• 26:50
  Should only be a smaller portion of your portfolio because there's still such an evolving beast
• 26:55
  and still like so much change going on around cryptocurrency at the moment that
• 27:00
  it's quite hard to know what it'll look like in 10 or 20 years time,
• 27:04
  which is the view you should be taking when investing.
• 27:06
  It is, you know, you need to take that long term view.
• 27:09
  That's a new concept I've ever had before.
• 27:12
  Take a long term view.
• 27:12
  Let's go more into that.
• 27:15
  Okay, this has been like a broken record.
• 27:17
  This has been a good episode, but I feel like we need to break.
• 27:20
  Yes, maybe we'll come such a party poover at the end of every episode.
• 27:23
  I'm like, okay, my party's over.
• 27:26
  Let's talk about something different in the episode and maybe we'll come back
• 27:30
  a little bit later.
• 27:31
  Should we answer some of the questions from the Q&A?
• 27:33
  We have throughout this.
• 27:35
  Yeah, yeah.
• 27:36
  But we also might dig into some more,
• 27:39
  I think try and think of some different ways of explaining things that might help
• 27:42
  people understand and kind of retouch on those in later episodes is probably good.
• 27:48
  But I think we should jump into, I mean, so many topics to talk about.
• 27:51
  I think we should jump into something non-crypto.
• 27:53
  Okay.
• 27:53
  Yeah.
• 27:54
  And we'll come back to NFTs later in the season.
• 27:57
  Yes, we will come back to NFTs.
• 27:58
  Thanks, Vic.
• 27:59
  Bye.
• 28:00
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• 28:04
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• 28:07
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• 28:12
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• 28:15
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