Latest / The Curve / RTC28: The inside scoop about cryptocurrencies from the queen of crypto.

Transcript

RTC28: The inside scoop about cryptocurrencies from the queen of crypto. · 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. So just before you start it, just want to jump in
• 0:29
  here and give you some exciting news. It's like our baby, it's like we've just
• 0:34
  birthed our first child. We have launched a masterclass. It's called the
• 0:39
  Foundations of Investing and we are first. And we've been working on this for so
• 0:44
  long and we're so excited to finally be able to release it to you guys. It's
• 0:47
  been a year in the making. It's longer and it's a lot of sweat and tears has gone
• 0:52
  into this. And it's great. It's going to take you from being a complete novice
• 0:56
  beginner investor to actually been able to trade and it takes you through
• 0:59
  everything and it's called the Foundations of Investing. So basically there's
• 1:04
  18 video lessons, there's 18 written lessons, there's quizzes, these templates,
• 1:08
  it's all of the key foundational principles that you need to know and
• 1:12
  understand to be able to trade with confidence. So being the person that's
• 1:16
  edited all the videos, I can tell you that I now understand that a whole lot
• 1:20
  more. So if it's something that you think you might be interested in, you can
• 1:23
  head to our website, the curve.co.nz. It's $149 and it starts on the 28th of
• 1:28
  February. So if you're interested then definitely check it out. And now
• 1:32
  today we're going to be talking to someone very exciting. We've actually
• 1:35
  got our first ever guest in studio. So Janine, welcome. We're really excited
• 1:40
  to have you here. Thank you so much for having me in. First guest ever is such an
• 1:44
  honour. Is this the first time you've been on a podcast? Or is this like your
• 1:47
  100th time? I'd love to like repay the honour and say it was my first time, but
• 1:51
  it's not. But I've only done a few, you guys, I think, a number three. Yeah.
• 1:56
  Okay, great. So I think maybe we should start by just giving you a bit of
• 2:00
  context as to who you are, what you do. So Kiora Koto, my name's Janine
• 2:05
  Granger, I'm the CEO and co-founder of Easy Crypto. And yeah, we're a cryptocurrency
• 2:09
  retailing platform started here in Little Old New Zealand and now going
• 2:13
  global to help people everywhere get their hands on some sweet, sweet
• 2:16
  crypto. So how does that actually work? Is it kind of like a
• 2:20
  stake of cryptocurrency? Yeah, pretty similar. Is that how you think of that?
• 2:24
  Yeah, the main difference between us and stake is that stakes are in exchange,
• 2:27
  right? So you top up your account and then you can trade. Whereas with Easy Crypto,
• 2:31
  we're more like a retail shop like you walk in, you say, Hey, I want some of
• 2:34
  that. You pay us your money, we give you the product and you walk out the door
• 2:37
  with your crypto and your pocket kind of deal. So do you hit and do log on and
• 2:41
  have your wallet with your crypto and with you guys or is it separate to
• 2:45
  that? It's kind of like once they've bought it, it's with them and they
• 2:48
  deal with it personally. Excellent question. So right now, we don't
• 2:52
  provide the wallet service. So if you come to us, we're really just the way to
• 2:55
  buy and sell cryptocurrency and you have your own wallet, you know, on an app
• 2:59
  on your phone or a desktop, you know, software hardware wallet, anything like
• 3:02
  that, you can bring any sort of wallet and we're just the way to buy and sell.
• 3:06
  But we are working on a wallet solution at the moment, which we should have
• 3:10
  out. Hopefully in April for everyone, you know, if you want to just make it easier
• 3:13
  and store your crypto with us, we will be offering that service too.
• 3:16
  Cool. So you're like the shop front. Yeah, exactly. So it's kind of like if you were doing,
• 3:22
  if you were like arriving at an airport and you went to change your
• 3:26
  dollars, like at an exchange, then they give you your dollars and you go and
• 3:30
  do your thing with the money. Exactly. And one of the great benefits, like while
• 3:33
  it's really awesome, you know, we will offer the wallet service in the future.
• 3:36
  Like one of the great things about cryptocurrency is that you are fully in control of your own
• 3:40
  funds. So they're totally held by you. They're not in anyone else's position. You can have
• 3:45
  complete autonomy over what you do with them. You know, even the money in your bank account,
• 3:49
  it's not actually your money. It's little IOU that the bank has with you. And at any point,
• 3:53
  you know, the bank could say, oh, actually, so free, we're not going to give you that money.
• 3:56
  A New Zealand, that's not a big problem, but in other countries, it really is. So that's one of
• 4:00
  the big, you know, the big selling points originally of cryptocurrency was just that complete
• 4:04
  control and freedom over your own money. So it's a pretty cool feature. Yeah, people kind of
• 4:09
  forget that. You give your money to the bank and you're like, oh, it's safe. It's safe there.
• 4:12
  And it's used to it as a New Zealand, but yeah, other countries. And that's why crypto
• 4:16
  creep me from wrong. There's been so successful overseas in like countries where there is a very
• 4:21
  unstable banking system or financial system because people don't, and there's such just trust in
• 4:25
  the banks. So therefore, people like having that control and then there's no authority kind of
• 4:30
  telling them what to do. I'm keen to kind of take a step back and talk a bit more about how you
• 4:35
  got into this space. Because it's so, so awesome to see a female leading a company like this and
• 4:42
  founding a company like this that, yeah, I was kind of keen to hear a bit more about your journey
• 4:47
  and how you got here. So my journey into crypto started around, I think, 2015 was when I first
• 4:52
  heard about Bitcoin and Bitcoin for many people is the gateway drag into cryptocurrency and actually
• 4:56
  back in 2015, it was the only cryptocurrency. And I remember coming across it on, I don't know,
• 5:01
  some random forum on the internet or something and thinking how it made complete sense. You
• 5:06
  know, with the internet, we had this global village where everyone could communicate digitally.
• 5:11
  Like anyone around the world doesn't matter. There's no barriers everyone can communicate, but there
• 5:14
  wasn't global payment system. There's a lot of barriers and complications to sending value around
• 5:19
  the world. So to me, Bitcoin was this total no brainer. I'm like, oh, that's awesome. I should
• 5:22
  figure out how it works. So I bought a little bit, a little bit of Bitcoin. Can I ask how much
• 5:27
  you bought? You can. Because it is not enough to make me a millionaire and the idea you already
• 5:31
  know is about it. I bought three Bitcoin. So it was about $1,000 at that time. Three Bitcoin. Yeah.
• 5:36
  So what you had, you bought three for $1,000. Yep. So each of them were worth $1,000.
• 5:42
  No, three in total, $1,000. So you bought them for like $350. Yeah. And now they're like 65,000.
• 5:50
  I did sell them in 2017, but you know, that's incredible though. How amazing. Congratulations.
• 5:56
  I think so forward thinking. Yeah. Well, I have to say for you guys, right? Like you guys put
• 6:00
  a thousand bucks into Bitcoin the other day, I think, right? So there is like, there's only
• 6:06
  ever going to be so many Bitcoin in the world. There's 21 million Bitcoin hardcap. You're never going
• 6:10
  to be any more than that. So you guys already own more than your fear share, if you call it that,
• 6:15
  if you talk all of Bitcoin in the world, divide it by all the people in the world, you guys already
• 6:18
  like a punch in above your weights with that. So go on. Can we backtrack for a second? Because I've
• 6:23
  thought that you that they could make more Bitcoin. Is that another thing? Yes or no? So this is one
• 6:30
  of the really interesting things about Bitcoin and all digital currencies, right? Is there,
• 6:34
  they're controlled by code. So whatever the code is written, you know, the computer code is
• 6:38
  written and whatever it says is what the program or what the software will do. With Bitcoin,
• 6:43
  that code is really democratic. It's developed, you know, by consensus, there's no one person who
• 6:48
  can change that code. So all of the people that the community of people that are using cryptocurrency
• 6:53
  or using Bitcoin, they can decide whether or not they want to make any changes. So technically,
• 6:59
  yes, there could be more than 21 million Bitcoin at some point in the future, but the way the code
• 7:03
  is written right now, there will only ever be 21 million. And I can't see that anyone has the
• 7:08
  incentive to change that. So I personally think it's really unlikely that that would change.
• 7:12
  But it could change and that ability for cryptocurrencies to adapt and evolve is really interesting
• 7:17
  when it comes to things like, for example, the environmental impact. It's not a hard and a fast
• 7:22
  rule that cryptocurrency has to be bad for the environment and a lot of the new protocols are
• 7:26
  moving to much more environmentally friendly ways of operating. Bitcoin potentially could as well.
• 7:31
  It could change its protocol to be less environmentally costly and it's just a matter of,
• 7:35
  you know, it's democracy really. If everyone votes for it and wants it to change,
• 7:38
  then that change can happen. Oh, there's so many things I want to ask,
• 7:41
  and I just want to know, I want to expand on the fact that it's not that eco-friendly now,
• 7:52
  and how that might change. The idea that there's new coins or currencies coming out,
• 7:58
  and how there are new ones of those being created, but coin there's a fixed cap on the amount
• 8:02
  that there is. Oh, there's, I have so many questions. So start with those too.
• 8:06
  Yes. So in terms of the environmental impact, this is a really big misnomer around cryptocurrency.
• 8:11
  And I think I'm, you guys talked about it on one of the previous ones, you know,
• 8:14
  more energy usage than Malaysia or Sweden. And while that's true, it's missing the key point,
• 8:19
  which is that cryptocurrency is so transparent. Like, how many activities in your daily life can
• 8:25
  you take and you actually know the environmental impact, like the energy usage of that activity?
• 8:29
  If you go to your bank and you make a transaction through your bank, you don't know the environmental
• 8:32
  impact, like the energy used by the bank in processing that transaction. It's no idea. But when
• 8:36
  you use Bitcoin, you know exactly to the kilowatt, you know, how much energy that is using it,
• 8:41
  and that drives a couple of things. One, is that transparency drives change in the underlying protocols?
• 8:47
  So, you know, we're talking about Bitcoin uses this relatively energy and energy in a
• 8:52
  efficient way of running, which is called mining. So proof of work is what Bitcoin runs on.
• 8:56
  I won't go into what proof of work is unless you guys want to, but it basically does use a lot of
• 9:00
  computer power. A lot of other protocols. That's like to check all the transactions.
• 9:04
  Yeah, exactly. So the example you gave on the other podcast about the Google Sheet,
• 9:10
  it's like validating that that is correct in checking it. So that uses a lot of computing power,
• 9:15
  but it's the first generation of cryptocurrency. That was the very first way that blockchain
• 9:20
  was ever designed. And you know, as humans, we love to innovate, we love to change. Things
• 9:24
  are always improving. Our smartphones today look very, very different from the first version of
• 9:28
  a mobile phone, which is a big giant. You know what? Even on what you're just saying in terms of
• 9:32
  not being aware of what impact you're having, even that, think about how many phones we've had in
• 9:37
  our life. Or the car that you drive, we don't have any this equals that. So if you're driving around
• 9:43
  your, you know, you use your car for an hour a week or 10 hours a week, we don't actually have
• 9:48
  data saying this is the impact that that is having on the environment. You're so ripe. So it's
• 9:53
  easy to be really critical of that coinhole cryptocurrencies using haps of power, but
• 9:58
  everything in our life is pick at something that's new and that's like heart and topical and,
• 10:04
  you know, everyone's kind of talking about. And then it's, if you're not on board with it,
• 10:07
  it's easy to be like, oh, well, it's because it's not environmentally friendly.
• 10:12
  Whereas using your car every day, you've done it forever. And that might be just as
• 10:17
  detrimental, but you've just done it like that for ever. So therefore interesting.
• 10:22
  And then the transparency drives change as well. So one of the great things that I've seen
• 10:26
  out of like, you know, a lot of the media attention on the energy use of cryptocurrency has driven
• 10:29
  a lot of change in the industry. So Bitcoin, I think the latest estimates I saw was that it's almost
• 10:34
  60% renewable energy used in the Bitcoin network. And that's massive. That's better than, yeah.
• 10:40
  So it's like, that's a real good news story. And it's not, I think it's going beyond the borders
• 10:44
  of just crypto as well. It's like it's driving more energy efficient computing systems. It's like
• 10:50
  creating, you know, spill over innovations into other industries. So it's a real, yeah,
• 10:54
  I see the transparency as a real positive. And I think the media just tends to get hang up on
• 10:58
  the like, ah, more energy than Sweden. Yeah, what sales, you know, bad headlines. It does sound
• 11:03
  terrible. I would agree. I would agree with that. I mean, the other thing that you touched on
• 11:09
  before, which I'd love to ask about is the idea of new currencies coming about and the fact that
• 11:15
  you were saying there's only a certain amount of how many was it? 21 million Bitcoin. So if that's
• 11:20
  capped, how does it then work in terms of other cryptocurrencies or coins being created? Because
• 11:26
  it's about 10,000 different types of crypto currencies. Cryptocurrencies are, they're a computer
• 11:33
  program, right? So you can create it to be anything you want. So the people, the pseudonymous
• 11:38
  creators of Bitcoin created it to have this cap of 21 million. With Ethereum, I'm going to expose
• 11:44
  some ignorance here. I cannot off the top of my head remember if Ethereum is capped on it,
• 11:47
  but Dogecoin is probably a good example. It's like Dogecoin has no cap. It's just every day more
• 11:52
  and more Dogecoin is generated and it's never going to stop. And that's just because the people
• 11:56
  who created Dogecoin just decided to build it that way. It's just how they constructed their
• 12:00
  their software effectively. So does that mean that Doge, by the way, it sounds like Doge a cat,
• 12:06
  you know that? Does that mean that it's less valuable because there's so much of it being
• 12:12
  poured into the ether? I actually thought it was called Dogecoin.
• 12:16
  I've seen it running down so many times and I've just always called it Dogecoin. So I'm like,
• 12:20
  it's a way dogecoin. Dogecoin, yeah, yeah, dogecoin. Just say it's how we pronounce it in New
• 12:27
  Zealand. How does it sound? Dogecoin. It's like DOGE. Oh, there's a lot of dogecoin. It's basically
• 12:36
  a coin built around a meme. So it has a very long-completed history. It was created as a joke based
• 12:41
  on a meme on the internet. So, you know, that's, there's just like, yeah, the meme is the value
• 12:46
  on crypto sometimes, which is like a whole other conversation. But what was our question?
• 12:51
  Just the, does Dogecoin is at least valuable because there's so much of it? The abundance of it
• 12:56
  doesn't make the coins less valuable? Yeah, wouldn't you, wouldn't you buy or invest in the ones with
• 13:00
  this scarcity because it's like price and supply and demand? Yeah, absolutely. So they have different
• 13:05
  functions, right? So for crypto, for Bitcoin, I see Bitcoin as being kind of akin to a gold, right?
• 13:10
  It's a store of value. It's something that's got scarcity. It's something that, you know,
• 13:14
  people want to hold on to because it has, you know, long-term value and sort of like the manner
• 13:19
  or the prestige of what that asset is. Yeah. Something like Dogecoin, maybe you want to use that
• 13:23
  more as a transactional currency. Dogecoin for a very long time was actually used as a form of
• 13:28
  tipping on the internet. So if you're seeing people who are creating cool content, you just like flip
• 13:32
  them a couple of Dogecoin to say it's like kind of like throwing a thumbs up on. Dogecoin sounds like
• 13:36
  my vibe. So from that point of view, it doesn't matter that it doesn't have very much value because it
• 13:41
  was more of a signal rather than an actual, you know, asset that you would hold for any particular reason.
• 13:46
  Until Elon must add a tweet in about it and then things just went a bit nuts. I mean,
• 13:49
  just flicking you a Dogecoin and then it's now worth like 65,000 or something. You know, thanks, man.
• 13:55
  Gosh, that would be amazing. Well, because I met someone who was telling me her dad, this is so,
• 13:59
  like, my brother's cousin son, blah, blah. But when Bitcoin first came out that lots of people
• 14:05
  used it for online payments, it was like, oh, I can't afford to pay you for this, you know,
• 14:10
  website you've built for me, but I'll give you a couple of Bitcoin. Is that okay? And then all
• 14:14
  these people now have millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin, where it was just worth nothing in
• 14:19
  the beginning. So it's kind of, I feel like we maybe should get amongst the Dogecoin.
• 14:24
  Dogecoin. Yeah, you know, not investment advice, but I'd say maybe not dogecoin.
• 14:29
  I don't know when you might have noticed it. Thank you so much. I really appreciate the
• 14:32
  transparency. Okay, so there's a lot of headlines about Bitcoin being bad. I'm keen to hear your thoughts
• 14:37
  about, you know, about that and what your view is. And I guess it's, you know, what the benefit
• 14:43
  is of Bitcoin is that it doesn't have a central authority and, you know, it's controlled by the
• 14:47
  people can also be to its detriment. So yeah, I was kind of keen to hear your thoughts on that.
• 14:54
  And so we're specifically talking here around sort of like the criminal aspects.
• 14:57
  And yeah, so this is another really interesting one like great question and one that definitely
• 15:02
  makes the headlines quite a bit of, you know, the two big myths are Bitcoin, crypto is bad for
• 15:06
  the environment and crypto is used by criminals. And the answer to both of those comes back to
• 15:09
  the thing of transparency. Yeah. So with, you know, use of Bitcoin for criminal activity,
• 15:15
  back in the day when Bitcoin first started, yeah, it definitely got a bad rap for being used on
• 15:19
  Silk Road. But it's like, I think people just, you know, sorry, what Silk Road?
• 15:22
  It's we used to be drag dodgy stuff. Like the dark web. Yeah, dark web.
• 15:27
  It's like you sell kidneys on Silk Road pretty much. Wow.
• 15:30
  Not anymore. Yeah. But and I think this was like, you know, what drew me to Bitcoin originally
• 15:35
  was like, here is a globe, you know, a universal global payment system. And so, you know, criminals
• 15:39
  are very innovative and good at adapting to new technology. And so they were pretty, you know,
• 15:43
  quick to catch on to that as well. And that's why Bitcoin got used on dark web in, you know,
• 15:48
  dodgy underground activities. But it's a really, really, really bad tool for many
• 15:53
  launders or criminals to use because it's fully transparent. Because you can track it all.
• 15:58
  Everything, yeah, every single transaction is publicly visible, traceable. You might have
• 16:03
  seen the news last week of those two American entrepreneurs who got caught for laundering,
• 16:09
  like literally, I think billions of dollars of Bitcoin that had been stolen in 2016. And,
• 16:13
  you know, you just cannot get away with hiding crime on the blockchain for long or at least as,
• 16:18
  you know, tools and law enforcement gets more actively involved. You can't use a fully traceable
• 16:23
  transparent value, you know, payment system to get away with crime. The only reason that it got
• 16:28
  used for criminal activity back in the days that no one was looking. But now people are looking,
• 16:32
  it's like, yeah, that makes so much sense. Yeah. That's so good. It's such a good point. Yeah.
• 16:37
  Most of them are really traceable, really transparent and really bad for use for crime. So if you
• 16:42
  want to do crime, use cash as my recommend notion. Use a suitcase. A suitcase full of cash.
• 16:49
  Because there's nothing suspicious about a suitcase. And so I guess it would be really cool
• 16:54
  to hear just generally what's been happening in the cryptocurrency movement lately. What you've
• 17:02
  seen, what kind of factors, you know, influence the coins going up and down, coins, other
• 17:07
  currencies. Gosh, I find myself really struggling to explain what I'm talking about. But I guess
• 17:13
  similar to the stock market would be really interesting to hear from you, like a holistic view.
• 17:18
  Yeah, as to where they go up and down. Because we're looking at crypto currencies from a kind of,
• 17:24
  I guess, a stock pickers background. We were kind of surprised to see the fluctuations in Bitcoin
• 17:30
  and the price of cryptos when the share market was fluctuating like last month. Because we kind
• 17:36
  of understood that it was more of a store of value and to kind of the scarcity and all that,
• 17:42
  you know, that it would move. It was a different asset to stocks and they forward move in a different
• 17:47
  way. So it was quite surprising to see, you know, the first kind of correction that we've had
• 17:51
  recently. Just after you guys invested. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry about life. I think, yeah, it was
• 17:58
  interesting to me as well. Because there's been a lot of rhetoric in the crypto community around,
• 18:01
  or at least, you know, the analysts and people looking at this as an asset class that this should,
• 18:06
  you know, because the fundamentals, the theory is that this will be an asset class that is
• 18:10
  D, what do you call D coupled to other assets? Like it shouldn't move in line with other assets
• 18:15
  because it has completely different underlying fundamentals. However, what you see is that,
• 18:19
  yeah, when the markets have a bit of a jitter, crypto takes a bit of a tumble. And I think the reason
• 18:24
  for that is that firstly is that Bitcoin and, you know, cryptocurrency in general super liquid,
• 18:30
  like you can trade them 24, 7 anywhere in the world, whereas with all of the stock markets,
• 18:34
  they have sort of set trading hours. So when something happens and news does happen,
• 18:38
  I've often over a weekend, like, you know, in China, there'll be some news out about Evergrande
• 18:42
  or there's something happening in, you know, on the border of Ukraine. And it's like the crypto
• 18:45
  markets can respond to that instantly because they're liquid in their 24, 7, whereas the stock
• 18:49
  markets can't. So you see a bit of an overreaction, but sometimes in the crypto markets, it's the only
• 18:54
  market that can move. But the other thing that's driving it, I think, which is probably having
• 18:58
  the biggest impact, is that over sort of 2020 and 2021, we saw a lot of institutional investment
• 19:04
  going into Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. And for those of us in the industry, we're like, great,
• 19:08
  this is a real, you know, marker of maturing that the industry is getting, you know, accepted as an
• 19:12
  asset class that the big players are coming in. What do you mean? Were people investing in cryptocurrency?
• 19:17
  Like companies are investing. Yeah. So like institutional like corporate companies.
• 19:23
  Wow. So like, like spying cryptocurrency to hold on. So it's not just like speculative or like
• 19:28
  mum and dad investors, it's like, yeah, it's so interesting. And how do you know who's buying it?
• 19:33
  How do you have sometimes they tweet about it? Yeah, yeah. You can kind of see, oh, I don't
• 19:38
  actually know with Bitcoin, but you can see when like an institution buys a, buys stocks in the stock
• 19:43
  market, you can see, because they have to just close it, because it's public. But is it the same
• 19:46
  with crypto? No, so it is really not transparent with crypto in that there, the markets themselves
• 19:51
  there's no requirement for disclosure. But a lot of companies would disclose on their balance
• 19:55
  sheets or in their financial statements. So, and then also, you know, there are some companies that
• 19:59
  will, you know, actually go out and tweet about it like there's a micro strategy in the US,
• 20:04
  made a strategy of buying a lot of Bitcoin and they made a huge amount of money off it and they
• 20:07
  made, you know, they're very public about it. And a lot of other companies have followed suit going,
• 20:12
  okay, we should diversify, you know, because companies have assets as well and they need to figure out
• 20:16
  where to park their money. And so a lot of them are diversifying into cryptocurrency as an asset.
• 20:21
  Oh my gosh. But going back to the market jitters, what that means. So it's like when those
• 20:25
  are happening over 2020 and 2021, we're like, this is awesome. It means that, you know, a lot of,
• 20:29
  you know, these institutional, big corporate players are getting involved. It's a real, you know,
• 20:33
  mark of, I don't know, what do you call it? Approval, approval industry. Yeah. So when I
• 20:38
  longer, this weird French criminal thing, like people are like, we're accepted. Yeah. It's like
• 20:42
  if I did into the cool group. But those institutional investors, because they're investing big amounts,
• 20:47
  and because they are, you know, they're really just playing their portfolio, they're not there for
• 20:51
  the long term fundamentals of, you know, freedom from, you know, freedom of money control,
• 20:55
  or here's the great new technology that you can work in. They're there for the financial returns,
• 20:59
  and they're very risk-averse. And so if things start to move, they'll exit quickly and that can
• 21:03
  have a big impact on the market. So that's what I think has been happening recently is just, you know,
• 21:08
  the markets can move very fast. And they're also being heavily influenced by institutional money,
• 21:12
  getting in and out, because they see it as a risk asset. So is just for, in layman's terms, does
• 21:17
  that mean that, because they're investing, say like a million dollars, or millions of dollars
• 21:22
  opposed to, if I can help, my thousand dollars each, is that because so much is coming out,
• 21:29
  it looks as though demand is dropping, and therefore the price of it goes down,
• 21:34
  is that the same as what's coming in and out, like constantly just leads to
• 21:38
  fluctuations in the market into that price. Because I think fundamentally it is a really
• 21:43
  speculative asset right now. You know, as, you know, I'm a sort of a believer in the technology,
• 21:48
  and I'm like, I just love the underlying, you know, the value that it adds and what it can do.
• 21:52
  So it's a little bit sad for me that it's still main sort of main driver of value in cryptocurrency
• 21:57
  is still speculation, but that's the truth at the moment, right? It's mainly speculative driven
• 22:01
  by people trying to make a buck on the exchange rate. So that does drive a lot of volatility,
• 22:06
  because people aren't just sitting there holding it, like they would with shares,
• 22:08
  it's very much a trading market, kind of like currency markets, right?
• 22:12
  I want to know your view on the future use, that we're seeing more and more companies accepting
• 22:18
  Bitcoin as a means of payment, and I just, like, do you think it's going to get to the point where
• 22:23
  I'm going to go to the coffee shop and be able to pay with 0.001 my Bitcoin?
• 22:27
  So probably not with Bitcoin, like, I personally don't think Bitcoin is a very good
• 22:31
  transactional currency. Oh, I shouldn't have brought it up, I'm so glad you did.
• 22:39
  But yeah, so not Bitcoin, let's imagine Bitcoin is like gold and you wouldn't go to a coffee shop
• 22:43
  and shave off a little bit of gold, because it's just not very practical for that purpose,
• 22:46
  but 100% I think that in the future we'll be making transactions using digital currencies,
• 22:51
  like it's just a no-brainer, like our world as a whole is going digital, money is stuck in the past,
• 22:56
  it's really analog, it's old school, and like an example of that, like, you know, think of your
• 23:00
  banking app, it's, you know, the numbers, you know, they look like digital numbers, it looks
• 23:04
  digital, but it's not, it's electronic, and that's different, because with your banking app,
• 23:08
  like, if you want to send money to me, it's not as fast as sending, you know, a message on
• 23:12
  signal or, you know, telegram rate, it'll take a couple of hours, or if it's a weekend,
• 23:17
  it's not going to happen, because that's because it's not a truly digital payment system,
• 23:20
  it's an old school payment system. And then I guess there's part of it as well,
• 23:24
  is that even though it's on my phone as a digit, it's still held at the bank.
• 23:27
  Exactly, whereas the difference between a digital currency and an electronic currency is that
• 23:33
  the digital is very much, but just between me and you. Exactly, it lives, you know, it's got that
• 23:37
  blockchain back in that you can just instantly send it anywhere in the world, it's fully controlled
• 23:41
  by you, it's 24-7, it's all of those good things, right? So it's a no-brainer to me that currencies,
• 23:46
  and actually I think all financial assets will go digital, they think of this sheer market as well,
• 23:51
  so, you know, with stake, you can trade during the US market, opening hours, but if it was truly,
• 23:56
  if it was a digital market, it could be a 24-7 market that people could trade on any time.
• 24:00
  Maybe you'd not be sleeping if that was the stock market, or I think goodness for stock market hours,
• 24:05
  gosh, I mean six o'clock comes around, I'm like, yes. Even if you think about the lack of
• 24:11
  place for money in the COVID world, I mean, we weren't even allowed to use it because it was unsafe,
• 24:17
  you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So even that's a really interesting thing to just notice that we
• 24:23
  weren't physically allowed to use it because we were going to infect people, so if it's like a
• 24:27
  risk to people's health, well, what's the alternative? Yeah. Digital currencies. How would that
• 24:33
  then work, would it be different places, would accept different currencies,
• 24:39
  maybe would they become like one centralized digital currency? How does that work?
• 24:44
  Yeah, it's going to be really interesting to see how it plays out, like I think one of the key
• 24:48
  things that I'm hoping to see is interoperability, right? Like what would be really great is,
• 24:52
  you know, you walk into a coffee shop, you know, one of the things that COVID's done that's been
• 24:55
  really good for the crypto industry is QR codes. We all use QR codes now, we're familiar with them.
• 25:00
  So imagine we'll get into a coffee shop, you've got a QR code for payment, you can just scan it with
• 25:04
  your digital wallet, you can pay in whatever currency you want to pay in, the merchant receives it,
• 25:07
  and whatever currency they want to receive in, and it just seamlessly interchanges in the middle.
• 25:11
  And again, that's the kind of stuff that you can do with digital currencies. That is just so
• 25:15
  easy to build into a digital system. It doesn't need to be fixed in this currency or that currency.
• 25:20
  The amount of times that I lose or forget my wallet, that would be the most.
• 25:24
  And your car keys and everything I own, how amazing if the only thing I use my phone,
• 25:29
  I'm just like, I'll flick you a coin here and I'll flick you a coin here.
• 25:32
  When you have your phone could be digital in your keys and your laptop and your
• 25:35
  phone. Oh, don't, it's too much for my brain right now.
• 25:37
  Get yourself a Tesla.
• 25:41
  Hey, can we talk about some of the top, I know we can't be giving advice, but what are the main coins?
• 25:48
  So there's Bitcoin, there's Ethereum, there's Dodgecoin, what are the other main ones?
• 25:53
  I'll just, I'm actually going to pull up right now our top selling coins at the moment to give you
• 25:57
  the real, you know, real-time live answer and the winner it's. Do you want to drum roll?
• 26:05
  Oh, so this is interesting. So for the first time since I've noticed, Ethereum has toped Bitcoin
• 26:10
  as the top selling coin on easy crypto. So at the moment our top five coins, if you
• 26:15
  exclude the stable coins, the stable coins are currencies that are just pegged to another coin.
• 26:20
  So typically the US dollar, right? So we've talked about how volatile Bitcoin are the currencies is,
• 26:25
  say if you wanted to use currency for a payment, you don't want it to be going wildly up and down
• 26:30
  every minute. So you can use something like a USDC or USDT that will always have one-to-one value
• 26:35
  with the US dollar. So that's called a stable coin. I didn't even know you could do that.
• 26:39
  So it's a cinch like you could get a New Zealand dollar coin that's a crypto coin.
• 26:43
  Yeah, there is a New Zealand dollar stable coin and actually this is a little bit of a segue
• 26:47
  from what we're talking about before, but I think you guys might be interested to talk about
• 26:51
  central bank digital currencies. Yes, please. Yeah, so what is that? That was my next question.
• 26:58
  Maybe so excited. No. So at the moment we've got the New Zealand dollar, right? But we've
• 27:03
  talked about how it's not really digital and that the New Zealand dollar that you guys hold in
• 27:07
  your banking apps, you're not actually holding it, it's held by your bank and it's a bit more of an
• 27:10
  IOU situation than you actually have the money. A lot of banks or central banks around the
• 27:16
  world, so in the New Zealand, that's the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, RBNZ, are looking at issuing
• 27:20
  digital stable coins, kind of. Yeah, digital money for the country. So if they're so
• 27:26
  busy like, she's like, oh my gosh, stop there. So if the RBNZ, if the New Zealand government
• 27:32
  issued a digital New Zealand dollar, you could have a little wallet app on your phone where you're
• 27:36
  holding that New Zealand dollar yourself and it's not held with your bank, it's held by you
• 27:40
  directly. So you actually have full control in ownership of that New Zealand dollar, you can use
• 27:44
  it to, you know, do all the normal stuff you do. Yeah. This is amazing. But then what happens to
• 27:50
  normal currency? It's gone. Yeah. But then different from like, you've got your cash and cash
• 27:56
  is fading out to for, you know, sort of like online money and then online money will just
• 28:00
  transfer to digital money, which is just a better version of online money because it's more.
• 28:05
  I'm just trying to think of like the economics of like controlling like money supply and all that,
• 28:09
  like the government, like the central bank's role and like everything, yeah. Yeah, that's a bit
• 28:14
  of a challenge. Yeah. It's kind of, yeah, wait and see, I guess. Would there maybe become like,
• 28:20
  you know, a wizard of ours of all of the cryptocurrencies? There's like a global bank of all of
• 28:27
  the currencies. The whole point is that there's no one controlling it. True. You know, you don't want
• 28:32
  anyone to control it or any authority to control it. I love this whole movement of like power to
• 28:37
  the people and like everything. It feels like it fits in with what's happening in the world.
• 28:41
  Yeah. It's just kind of taking back control and, you know, you can't tell me what to do. I want to
• 28:46
  control more of my life and my spending and my, I don't know, I think it's awesome. Yeah. Yeah.
• 28:51
  Yeah. I know. So yeah, I think, you know, you probably see three things, right? So you'll get those
• 28:57
  decentralized, you know, community owned cryptocurrencies. Like Bitcoin, you'll have central bank
• 29:03
  digital currencies. So, you know, the New Zealand government issues in New Zealand dollar,
• 29:06
  US government will issue US dollar. And then the third area that I think we'll see is corporate
• 29:12
  cryptocurrencies or corporate digital currencies. And you might remember Facebook tried to do this
• 29:17
  a wild back with the Libra point. Yeah. They they read the room really badly, kind of like they
• 29:21
  did with the change to meta, but yeah. But I think that's going to happen right. And like you saw
• 29:26
  the precursors to that with like, you know, loyalty cards like New Zealand Airpoints is kind of like
• 29:30
  a digital currency, right? And so I think companies will move more into that system, but you'll probably
• 29:35
  just, as they become digital assets, they'll be more interoperable, more, you can do more interesting
• 29:41
  things of them. You can sort of probably like, you know, tie NFTs into your corporate digital assets.
• 29:46
  Like the whole world's going to look super different. And I think we at the stage probably can't
• 29:50
  quite envisage all of the opportunities that will arise. But it's basically just taking value
• 29:55
  and putting it digitally. And that's going to have huge implications. What do you think would be
• 30:00
  some good tips for people wanting to evaluate different coins? So most crypto currencies are trying
• 30:07
  to solve a problem or do like a real world thing, right? Like Bitcoin is kind of, it sort of sits
• 30:13
  alone in that it's a bit of, you know, like I said before, it's kind of like gold. It's just like
• 30:16
  an asset that holds value because people think it has value. But everything below that is usually
• 30:21
  trying to solve some sort of problem. So maybe it's a token that is being used in an online
• 30:26
  gaming environment or maybe it's trying to create a, you know, a platform for other projects to
• 30:30
  build on. But whatever it's trying to do, I guess just like, you know, if you're interested, dig
• 30:34
  into that and learn about and try to understand what is this project actually? What's the problem
• 30:38
  it's solving for? Does it sound like a, you know, a real valuable problem that it's solving?
• 30:42
  And is this project likely to be able to deliver on that?
• 30:47
  Twitch, for example, which is, do you know what Twitch is? Twitch is, I mean, I don't know heaps
• 30:53
  about it, but it's kind of like a gaming platform where people earn millions of dollars from people
• 31:00
  watching, I'm sorry, from people watching you play online. It's the wildest thing. So people are
• 31:05
  watching other people play. They don't even play themselves. No, no, they're just watching. And
• 31:08
  they are invested in these personalities and these people. It's, it's so bizarre. But
• 31:12
  gosh, they're like, I know, oh my god, I took the word out of my mouth. But would that be
• 31:18
  an example of say, maybe it was like the currency that they develop to pay players?
• 31:23
  100% that would be an example. And like one of the things like, you know, maybe you guys have
• 31:27
  this tip for people investing in shares as well as like, if you're investing in communities and
• 31:30
  ecosystems that you're a part of, that's like for me, that's a really great way to get started
• 31:34
  because it's like, you know, say real word example. I don't know, like, I love this particular
• 31:38
  brand of ice cream. I'm going to buy some shares in that company because like, I love their ice cream.
• 31:41
  Similar with cryptocurrencies, right? If you're part of say, you know, a gaming community or some
• 31:47
  other online project, it's like, if that has a cryptocurrency or a token associated with it,
• 31:51
  that could be a good place to start or something, support something that you're already involved in.
• 31:54
  I love that segue that just goes straight into everything that we say about investing in terms
• 31:59
  of like investing in what you know, invest in your circle of competence, you know, invest in
• 32:04
  the products you use, your hobbies, your interests, you know, because it's such an easy way to start
• 32:09
  investing. Sorry, I love that. That's a really great advice, thank you. I would like to ask
• 32:14
  as a budding crypto, what do you call it, currency here? Crypto, crab. I'm keen to just
• 32:24
  cling on to the rock. What advice, not advice, but what tips or like words of wisdom would you
• 32:32
  give people who are thinking about investing in crypto, maybe still feeling a little bit hesitant,
• 32:37
  just yeah, I don't know, I guess coming from the queen of crypto, it'd be nice to get some.
• 32:41
  Is that you? No, no, no, I'm the crab, I'm the crab.
• 32:47
  Can I be the mermaid of crypto? Yeah, so I use the mermaid, yeah.
• 32:50
  My two tips, which are kind of contradictory, but I think they worked together, would be,
• 32:54
  firstly would be just get started, right? The hardest thing is just starting out, so like, you know,
• 32:59
  take a hundred bucks or take something you're okay to lose and just give it a try, because that's
• 33:03
  really the biggest, I think barrier is just getting in there. But then secondly, I'd say,
• 33:08
  be really, you know, do your research, don't invest more than you're willing to lose, and just be
• 33:13
  really aware of things that seem too good to be true, because one of the problems with crypto
• 33:17
  currency is that it's so new, it's all really unfamiliar. We hear all these stories of people
• 33:21
  making a lot of money, and so it's just really rife for like, you know, all sorts of kind of
• 33:25
  scams and crazy schemes and things that are, you know, just not good places to invest your money.
• 33:30
  So definitely get started, don't let anything hold you back from just dipping your toe in the water,
• 33:34
  but then once you've got your toes in, just be a little bit more careful as you paddle out there.
• 33:37
  Just do the toes, not the foot, not the whole foot. Okay, how much do you need to start trading on
• 33:43
  Easy Crypto? So with Easy Crypto, you can start with a hundred dollars, yeah, and then, you know,
• 33:48
  yeah. And if you don't have a hundred, you could team up with a friend and do 58 or something.
• 33:54
  I mean, Vick and I literally have a shared account, which is so cute. We're basically a married couple.
• 34:00
  Basically, yeah, we're going to be dropping, we're dropping our minimum by and soon, like,
• 34:04
  there's been a few reasons why we had to have them higher, but we'll be dropping them soon,
• 34:07
  hopefully, probably in the next few weeks. Maybe by the time it's goes to, yeah, we might be down to
• 34:11
  $50. And so is it an app that people can download? The app will be out really soon, like we're doing our
• 34:16
  beta, our alpha testing on the app this month, beta's coming out next month, so it's all going
• 34:21
  to be easy crypto. We're like, just throwing all of the great new products out there and we're
• 34:24
  moving pretty fast. But yeah, we're, so what we've got at the moment is, you know, Easy Crypto.com,
• 34:29
  you can come there and, you know, buy yourself a little bit of crypto. You can engage with our team,
• 34:32
  have a chat with us, like, learn a bit more. We're always loved to help keep us out, and there's
• 34:36
  also, for women in particular, there's quite a few, like, Facebook groups and kind of, like,
• 34:39
  woman and crypto groups that you can get involved with if you just want to say space to learn.
• 34:42
  Awesome. How do we solve this weekend? Thank you so much for coming in, honestly. It's been
• 34:48
  really lovely to have. Yeah, thank you. It has you on the show. It's so nice to have another
• 34:52
  expert, and for me to ask the questions. I know Paul Vic just gets annihilation. I'm like,
• 34:57
  but why? But why, but why? Now, I can be there annoying person, so yeah, no, it was really
• 35:02
  interesting. Thank you so much. No, thanks for having me on. It's been great to share
• 35:05
  a good fun, and yeah, welcome, you know, happy me back anytime if you got more questions.
• 35:09
  Don't say that. You're pretty sweet. Thank you so much for joining us, but today's
• 35:15
  episode of Raising the Curve. Please subscribe and leave a review on what ever platform you're
• 35:19
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• 35:23
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• 35:28
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