hello everyone and welcome to unchained capitals webinar series our goal is to provide educational content for clients exclusively on these live webinars to help you become sovereign in your bitcoin well my name is justine harper and i'm the vp of concierge at unchained capital and i'm joined by parker lewis our head of business development at unchained as well as author of the gradually then suddenly series today he will be sharing with you his bitcoin in one lesson a guide to help you not only understand the fundamentals of bitcoin in a simple and easy to understand way but also to become a resource that you can share with friends family and colleagues to help them fall down the bitcoin rabbit hole as well we are going to have a q a section after parker does his full guide so make sure you're using the q a section to drop those in and i will be monitoring those and feeding them to parker a little bit later so with that i'm going to go ahead and hand it over to parker lewis thanks justine and thank you everyone for joining um kind of before we dive right into the presentation i always find it helpful to to set some context this is really a presentation that i've developed over the last six to nine months just really on an ad hoc basis where i didn't actually have a presentation in front of me i gave it for the first time around bit block boom which is the bitcoin conference in dallas so this will be my second time giving this presentation the first time in this format and what i what i oftentimes find to be most helpful is i'm going to try to get through this presentation which is about 10 or 11 slides in 25 to 30 minutes and then it's what i've also found very helpful is is that we have a lot of q a that what this presentation is designed to do is to help people um who don't yet understand bitcoin um develop a fundamental understanding you're not going to get all the way down the bitcoin rabbit hole but what we try to establish here is the right framework to think about it um and to get somebody from zero to to understanding that bitcoin isn't just some magic digital internet money uh that there's a lot to it and that we build up the the economic framework to then go deeper down the rabbit hole so um when i generally start um i start with my story about how i came to bitcoin i and i really try to distill down um for folks is start with my story of how i started to understand bitcoin because i think that when a lot of people come into bitcoin for the first time uh there's a thousand different cryptocurrencies and they don't really know uh where to start and so really in 2016 when i was when i was in earnest for the first time trying to understand bitcoin i was really pursuing two different paths i was i was working at a hedge fund in dallas called haman capital run by an investor best known for shorting the subprime crisis kyle bass and i was trying to understand what would happen when the fed began to unwind its balance sheet over the course of 2009 to 2014 post the financial crisis the federal reserve visually created or printed 3.6 trillion new dollars in the 2016-2017 time frame they were starting to talk about how they were going to unwind the quantitative easing of the dollars that they had printed and put in the financial system and through that process i went down a a deep rabbit hole trying to understand the actual mechanics of quantitative easing and what i the conclusion i came to independent of bitcoin was that quantitative easing doesn't work in the context that the fed thinks it does it can't work and the future quantitative easing is inevitable a lot of people that have experienced the last 18 months and seeing that the fed will get into the to the size of magnitude they've printed another 4.7 trillion since since last march um they think that it has something to do with tobit and they think that that the government shutdown or the pandemic was the reason why this happened but realistically um it the the amount of money that the fed has to print was always due to the degrees of system leverage and that qe only can can function by creating more leverage uh not less as i was coming to that conclusion i started to understand why bitcoin was valuable and and i and i really try to focus people on this one point um and that i stared at bitcoin for a long time without it making sense um but i really had to learn for the first time what makes money money and that that if i was this is still for folks why bitcoin is valuable it all comes down to the fact that there are 21 million bitcoin and there will only ever be 21 million bitcoin and that all value derives from the fact that um bitcoin's true innovation it's zero to one innovation is that it was able to achieve finite scarcity in digital form and there's a reason why no other cryptocurrency or no other money will be able to achieve the same um but i go so far as to say and this is also to distill down for folks the real signal it's not to say that this is intended to be intuitive right away but that it's if bitcoin credibly enforces a fixed supply of 21 million that it will become a global reserve currency um whether it's alongside the dollar or entirely replacing the dollar or the dollar euro yen um that that that what i try to focus people on is that that is is the really that's the fulcrum the 21 million uh but i would also say you know or clarify when i say that if bitcoin credibly enforces a fixed supply of 21 million that it will become a global reserve currency the reverse is also true that if bitcoin cannot credibly enforce the fixed supply of 21 million that it won't that it's binary and that that the key to understanding bitcoin is the key to understanding how that's possible the 21 million and why it's relevant why if it were possible that it would be the foundation for a global monetary system and and really as i as i kind of came to these two conclusions on the one hand the qe is inevitable and future qe is inevitable in in the order of magnitude of trillions of dollars also pairing with the understanding of why bitcoin has fundamental value why people you know beyond speculative and fomo reasons why why the people that search for the signal ultimately find it and that it is 21 million i started to understand that bitcoin is the solution to quantitative easing um that prior to bitcoin's existence everyone was really forced to opt in to uh the government or the federal reserve even though the two distinct entities um functionally they are one and the same that everyone was forced to opt into the form of currency that coordinates its monetary system um to be debased against their will and that that bitcoin provides a pass to to voluntarily opt out and to opt in to a currency system that has a fixed supply and to to really distill this point down i i highlight the 13 weeks you know two weeks prior to the kovid shutdown which happened on march 12th um and then and then the 11 weeks thereafter and what i have here on this table is the amount of bitcoin that were issued each week and the amount of dollars that the fed digitally created and you know kind of to highlight uh you know there's a lot of things that to learn from this one slide when i started doing this presentation i would just sit on this one slide and then and then uh run off the cuff to explain the rest but what i highlight for folks is when i say that future qe is inevitable it's that uh prior to the the government shutdown the fed was already printing 82 billion and 70 billion a week and at the height of post-financial crisis quantitative easing they were printing 85 billion a month so the money printing had already started and has already started because the financial system had had displayed its fragility and its imbalance about six months prior in in september of 2019 but then what we see post covet is that the fed printed 356 billion in the next week 586 billion 557 billion the entire over the course of 2010 and 2011 which is generally referred to as quantitative easing two at second round the fed printed 600 billion over the course of about 18 months and in one week the fed printed 586 billion um that that ultimately uh there's a lot of macro investors that will you know talk about trends in the global supply chain and and m2 growth and m1 growth different ways to quantify the money supply in the united states base money drives everything what we should what we have here on the right side are actually new dollars being created in the system and ultimately this is what drives higher food prices at the grocery shelf higher gas prices at the gasoline station this is what this is the this is where all inflation derives from that it's man-made uh and that that everyone has this problem everyone in the united states has this problem they have this problem now it's acute most people don't understand it but everyone realistically has has this problem that they don't have a good form of money on the left side or the middle column we see the bitcoin issue and we can obviously see that the numbers are significantly smaller but but something critical happens in the towards the bottom of the page in during the week of may 20th it actually happened in the week prior but this is where you start to see the numbers that the rate of issuance gets cut in half and i'm not going to go into all the details as to how bitcoin credibly enforces its fixed supply but but this is core to it that every four years the rate of issuance gets cut in half you don't have to trust any central third party that that will happen it's not enforced by magic internet code it's enforced by economic incentives and enforced by the bitcoin network um going to the next slide this is where i where i just tried to to reinforce for for folks that the problem is massive um trillions of dollars are numbers that are realistically too hard for us to to quantify or understand um what i what i try to throw out for people to to ground it is on the prior slide when i showed that in in a course of three months the federal reserve printed three trillion dollars realistically since this latest round of quantitative easing started it's 4.7 trillion that's all that's more than than post financial crisis qe over five years federal reserve created 3.6 trillion since uh september of 2019 was 4.7 trillion over the course of those three months it was three but even this year when we're all seemingly quote not in an economic crisis the federal reserve has printed 1.1 trillion not only is that a lot of money but but if you think about just 1.1 trillion i usually use the analogy i'm generally speaking to an audience in texas but most people are familiar with the dallas cowboys and jerry world and that stadium cost a billion dollars to to build and that billion dollars coordinated economic activity over the course of six years it's one of the nicest football stages at the time it was the nicest football stadium existed in america and there's only a maximum of 32 football stadiums that exist well a trillion dollars equates to a thousand jerry worlds and that's what's been flooded into the system just in the first nine months of this year but on top of that the three trillion last year was three thousand jarrett will so there's massive economic consequences to these operations that the federal reserve affects and realistically that the actual insertion of qe only dictates that the fed is going to to do more q in the future and a lot of times when people start to learn about bitcoin they think if they're in the united states or europe or some other developed world that they don't have the same problem that people have in the developing world in terms of currency crisis they think uh venezuela has a hyperinflation that's not my problem this is different realistically it's the same and these numbers are what help articulate for people that they have a clear and present danger in terms of the currency that they hold and so when i when i say that we have a problem we have a massive problem we have trillion dollar problems but that that bitcoin is the solution to those problems there's a reality that most people have never consciously considered why dollars in the first place have value or retain value or why they lose value that is because most people have never actually consciously considered what money is and and the thing that i focus people on here is that in order to understand bitcoin you can't come at it from the top down you can't come at it from the perspective that there's a thousand cryptocurrencies and i'm going to try to understand you know one currency from the other the statement that i will repeat over and over during this presentation is if bitcoin credibly enforces a fixed supply of 21 million that it will become a global reserve currency but that has very little to do with bitcoin itself and everything to do with money and that's really why if you want to understand bitcoin you first have to spend time thinking about this question of what is money why do 325 million people in the united states accept dollars that the government can print as as in return for real goods and services um and and what i highlight here and this isn't for you to immediately have this make sense but it is it is to establish in my view what the key monetary properties are that that you should be thinking about because money never competes in a vacuum you're not just evaluating bitcoin as a standalone if i would try to understand bitcoin as a standalone not relative to other forms of money it would have never made sense and that's that's realistically not what's happening in the market people when they start to evaluate money they realize that money serves a very distinct function from every other economic good from from financial assets from real goods and services that money has a unique function of coordinating activity and specifically helping to intermediate and make trade more efficient and that when you get into this kind of evaluation of why is the dollar value why is money valuable you will start to to understand that the three key properties that make something a better or worse form of money are scarcity one uh that really is the foundation of store value it should be intuitive to folks that if they could be compensated for eight hours in the day and that their employer could just print more money um but that wouldn't that that would not be a good equation for you that's effectively what happens it just happens at the government level the second is the visibility and fungibility this is what allows you to to actually use a a scarce unit to measure but then aggregate and subdivide so that you could use in one medium to value and trade a bottle of water as well as the dallas cowboys but then the third if if the purpose of money is to affect trade you actually have to transfer that that common medium that people use as money but that it's not any one of these properties if you have something that's scarce it doesn't make it money if you have something that's scarce and divisible and fungible it doesn't make something viable or valuable as money you have to have the aggregate of all three and that when you get into this equation you're going to start to understand that no two things are remotely similar and that one money will not displace another money if it's just marginally better it has to be orders of magnitude better but but the key point that i make is and i think that if you practice this in your daily life if you ask people what makes the dollar valuable or what makes goal valuable um you know but but focusing on the dollar they will say that that it's either a collective hallucination or it's a belief system or it's because the government requires taxes or there's the military it's none of those things the value of money derives from specific properties that make it valuable in the context of trade and so when i distill down this equation it's there's really two things to consider uh and again this this is designed to simplify bitcoin for folks there's a lot more to it but this is really to open people up to the possibility of why people fundamentally value bitcoin and and in a world of a thousand cryptocurrencies how is it possible to know either which one wins or if there even is a way to know and so the the two key elements for this is that bitcoin's fixed supplies 21 million if it were to be true that that could happen uh and and it's timely because jamie dimon came out yesterday and said you know i just i i don't believe it the 21 million have you looked at the algorithm but the reality is there is a way to know you're not going to get that in a 30-minute presentation for me but but what we're trying to do here is distill down the decision points and and and there's a reality that when you start to evaluate money and coming back to that scarcity equation that there can be nothing better that something that doesn't change now sometimes people will jump to the pollution say well wouldn't it be better for me to have a currency that actually slightly declines in you know supply no the optimal pop monetary policy is one that actually cannot change because if you were to think about well what happens if the currency were to decline and supply you would have to answer the question well by what mechanism does that happen who's who which holder of the currency gets their money taken away from them and it becomes arbitrary that the neutral monetary supply the six months air supply is the optimal money supply and think about it in an individual case if i was to receive payment in the form of money what would i prefer would i prefer something that can't change or something that could be printed by a currency that's always rem or sorry printed by a government because always remember that money is an av test you're always every form of money competes with every other form of money for every exchange and and you're making this this conscious decision either truthfully consciously or subconsciously every day but that 21 million fixed supply is the optimal monetary policy and that when i said before that if that is true that bitcoin will become a global reserve currency it is because money converges to one based on its natural function now i i tend to stop people here before i go to the next slide and i say hey there's a lot that lots of unpackaged there's a lot that you're going to have to question about this and and really the questions that i laid out here um are the questions that that are most pertinent it is is bitcoin actually finitely scarce how um if so is that finite scarcity viable and valuable money why can't bitcoin be copied there's a thousand different cryptocurrencies do monetary systems converge to one that these are the questions to work through to distill down um and and also i try to frame for people that these are these questions are answerable questions by uh but by you know you don't have to be a rocket scientist in fact oftentimes rocket scientists can't figure this out but it's more questions of common sense than it is uh uh one of iq um here you know i kind of you know to answer this first question how does bitcoin force a fix supply this is the hardest question this is actually the question that if you're trying to understand why bitcoin is valuable this is the this is actually the second to come to because it's the hardest and and what i tell people is that it's like accept that it's value that it's difficult uh appreciate the context that a lot of people have come and stared at this equation there's there's a saying in bitcoin verify don't trust but but trust me as to the the the cadence of the questions to ask um except that it's not magic or voodoo or just simply by chance um and then you know at this level i really focus people on that it's a combination of energy computing cryptography distributed systems and economic incentives but that bitcoin the currency itself is the keystone that binds everything together it's really the glue that aligns all economic incentives ensures that uh that no one has to trust anyone else that this is enforced on trustless basis by the aggregate network um but then i come back to what i said at the beginning of this slide which is before question the how first understand the why um so it's essentially jump ahead ask yourself the questions or go through the rigor on the on the monetary side to say if bitcoin did have a fixed supply of 21 million would that be valuable because if you stare at that equation and come to the conclusion that it would not then the question about how becomes unreal irrelevant but if you come to the conclusion that if it were possible then the other questions become relevant to you to support this idea again because it's not particularly it's not particularly intuitive that money converges to one and there's a lot to unpackage there but but really where i focus people at the beginning to to try to understand that that actually is the case or that it's even a possibility oftentimes people will look at the dollar the euro the yen the boulevard the peso the pound um 3i lyra whatever currency and they say there's a lot of fiat currencies of course there's going to be a lot of cryptocurrencies but the reality is each one of those fiat currencies that i just listed off emerged off of the monetary property of gold or silver other some other commodity money but but more practically the world converged on the gold standard over the course of thousands of years and the question that you have to ask yourself is why was that the case and was it because was it by coincidence and i and i say that knowing that most people do not understand why gold is money or or why it emerged as as the global standard of value but it did and people have to accept that it wasn't just by mere coincidence of all the things in the world why did the entire world converge on gold as the monetary standards and that the the various different forms of fiat money that exist today only exist in large part because they leverage the monetary properties of commodity monies particularly that of gold that the dollar itself does not have any inherent monetary properties second because this is something too important to demystify that is the world of a thousand cryptocurrencies why only one well even if you don't understand the fundamentals of money just yet you can appreciate that if you think about your own individual life as well as the lives of everyone around the world that 99.9 of people in the world of the of the eight billion people they only interact with one form of money if they're lucky to interact with a form of money at all and then the question to ask is why and is it by coincidence it is it is not by coincidence it's inherent to the problem that money solves and that convergence doesn't happen by coincidence happens by necessity um but it's but it's particularly because of the of the problem that money solves and that in order to solve it it dictates uh that everyone converge on a consensus at least on a local level and then on a broader level beyond that but more but more realistically if everyone acts has access to a better form of money and bitcoin is global and permissionless and censorship resistance that the world will converge on it and that's what's happening as we speak um but now kind of to come back to a key idea so everything about this presentation is still down for you the ideas to think about as you're evaluating this thing bitcoin makes zero sense there's a world of cryptocurrencies there's a bunch of fanboys and and uh they're overly confident now the majority of those people have no idea what they're doing so we can we can agree on that but that there is signal to find through the noise and that to distill it down it's the 21 million it's that money converges to one but it's this recognition that money is an a b test that that you make this decision every day where you have dollars you know they're devaluing and you're choosing some other near store value and today it might be a financial asset or real estate but you're making certain decisions because you know that the money that you're holding isn't very good and that it's engineered to lose its value either understand that at the fed's level or you understand it in practice by seeing local prices increase over time but this in the a b test of money it really comes down to monetary issuance uh and that foundation of money which is scarcity and this is my fool me once i refer to this as fool me once shame on you fooled me four times shame on me that that if qe was effective and i understand the qe is a complicated subject but all it is is the government printing trillions of dollars that the qe1 qe2 and qa3 on this slide were post-financial crisis 2008 9 through 14. but if qe worked why do they always need another round and why is the next one always bigger um there is a reason is because quantitative easing for it to work in the fed context it has to take a situation where you have a credit problem an unsustainable credit system that qe is specifically designed to cause the expansion of credit and that will continue to be the case until the entire system actually collapses and that that part of that evidence is now and we can go back to a podcast that i did with uh marty bent and my former boss kyle bath that was that was prior to all of this that uh that that i forecasted that this round of qe would have to be larger than the last round of qe and it is because at the last round of qe the credit system in the united states was 53 trillion today it's 85 trillion that it's the size of the credit system that dictates that this money be printed because it's designed to keep that credit system propped up um i also highlight on this slide uh what paul tudor jones said because there's certain concepts in this slide in the slide deck that i'll continue to bring up there's the fact that it's 21 million that everything hinges on that 21 million fixed supply that money converges to one but that i like to show people that when people actually look at bitcoin on a fundamental level and when they ultimately find the signal that it is this this key idea of looking at bitcoin versus adults that the context is not bitcoin versus a thousand cryptocurrencies it is bitcoin vis-a-vis other forms of money that you previously owned and so what paul theater jones said was this is from may of 2020 when he announced that he had that he had allocated um to to bitcoin and his primary funds was and he's describing quantitative easing that first slide that i showed you the weekly amount of money that was printed he described it as it has happened globally with such speed that even a market veteran like myself was less speechless we are witnessing the great monetary inflation an unprecedented expansion of every form of money unlike anything the developed world has ever seen and then when he paul tudor jones again in the same letter when he's describing why he decided to allocate to bitcoin is i also made the case for owning bitcoin the quintessence of scarcity premium it is literally the only large tradable asset in the world that has a known fixed maximum supply by its design the total quantity of bitcoin including those not yet mined cannot exceed 21 million that that these are the two things that everyone in the united states plus the world has a problem and it derives from the fact that there is economic stability originating from printing money and there's no escaping it that quantitative easing is more like heroin than it is an antibiotic it actually can't cure the patient it's just giving the heroin addict more heroin bitcoin is the solution it's the solution because anyone in the world that has an internet connection and realistically you know it's easier for someone to adopt bitcoin in the united states or or a developed world but it will be the entire world and practically speaking anyone that wants to work for it can get it anywhere in the world but the value and this is a demonstration this blue line is the 21 million supply the uh the orange line that steps down is the rate of issuance um i think i originally took this chart from about a year ago and the bitcoin have any happen but recognizing that every four years approximately the rate of issuance gets cut in half there is no central committee that decides that the network enforces those rules and everyone can incredibly rely on it without the need for trust and that it really doesn't require a rocket science rocket scientist it requires someone to look at this equation the a be a test of money and understand that this is going to continue to happen and that and that this is credibly enforced it's credibly enforced every 10 minutes people particularly see it when the when the rate of issuance happens but but practically speaking bitcoin on a decentralized basis is credibly enforcing it's a fixed supply around the clock um ultimately though and i like to kind of bring these two together if money is an a b test that the the actual demonstration of that or or the best way to see what the consensus is is the price now while i envision a world where where bitcoin will likely replace all fiat currencies and this unit of account will be bitcoin and we'll be buying groceries probably in 10 years in bitcoin and gas and bitcoin that as we see bitcoin emerge as the consensus that was we see more people stare at this equation the amount of dollars being printed understanding of of the the supply curve of bitcoin and that it's finitely fixed that they come to the conclusion that they should own bitcoin that they should store value in bitcoin and that in the a b test of money monetary properties remember that fly where i had scarcity to visibility and fungibility and transferability those are the inputs and prices the output and there's a reason why every time that you see quote bitcoin crash that it doesn't dock because more people stare at this equation more people find the signal through the noise and that increase in perching purchasing power is the clearest signal of growing adoption there's a fixed supply if there's if there's a fixed supply and a fixed rate of issuance that when the the demand increases by 10x no it doesn't pull forward uh any additional supply you can't find more uh but that the existing supply has to get carved up by more and more people by that function is it is what causes the price to go up but but that price going up is the is the most clear demonstration it's the market test it's everyone has to evaluate these or at least the early adopters the the laggers the the next 90 i like to tell people that you don't have to understand how telecom works to use the telephone that would be the case for for the last 90 percent of people that adopt bitcoin in the world the first 10 percent or maybe even fewer than that maybe the first five percent they're the ones that if they're going to be the first adopters the early adopters they have to evaluate the monetary dilemma the monetary properties that are the input but but that as that price goes up it's that signal and the signal that you should take away from it as it's not a financial asset it's more people coming to the conclusion that bitcoin is the consensus as a new global standard of value um the quote that i always like to highlight on this for people from safety and moose's bitcoin standard which i recommend everyone read is history shows it is not possible to insulate yourself from the consequences of others holding money that is harder than yours so this is you know the the story i like to to analogize this to is the kid that plays hide and seek and covers up his eyes but everyone that's searching for him knows that the kid's in the corner he doesn't understand that in this context if you ignore this question everybody else who's finding the signal before you will benefit um and and that you will actually be penalized you will lose the game and and that's why i described you know bitcoin as the greatest asymmetry that has ever existed no one that's alive today and realistically no one that's ever been alive has experienced the monetization event that will occur as rapidly as bitcoin and so i show this chart on the right side and i would estimate i think if you you can pull different places you see estimates that maybe 150 million people have bitcoin but in terms of any material exposure to bitcoin which i generally refer to as five to ten percent of their savings or liquid assets um that that no no more than 10 million people have bitcoin in the future seven to eight billion people are going to have bitcoin and that that that creates a significant degree of positive asymmetry that are if you are if you are finding the signal before the herd that that your purchasing power will increase significantly that won't always be the case in bitcoin once bitcoin is adopted by probably a billion people it will likely be the the standard unit of account and that you won't be in a position where the incremental marginal demand for bitcoin can be more than a few percentage points than uh the existing base because the first billion to adopt bitcoin will also be those that have the most wealth um but the greatest asymmetry that's ever existed not just because it's the first time in rapid form that that a good is monetizing on the free market it's because there's massive negative asymmetry to holding a form of money that's being demonetized if money is an a b test and you're always evaluating one money versus the other and every exchange every form of money is competing for every exchange that when one money monetizes it's necessarily demonetizing another um and some people see that the price of bitcoin has gone up from 1 000 about four or five years ago to 57 000 ish today and see that bitcoin is appreciated in value but realistically the dollar buys more further buys less bitcoin that will continue to be the case as more and more people in the world demand what is a finitely scarce asset um so before i go into you know at the end i'll talk about what we do at unchained but i want to pause there ran a little bit long but want to open it up to questions absolutely and that was great thank you parker i think everybody's been holding and waiting for this q a section so you guys can drop those in the chat or in the q a it could be about specifically anything that parker talked about today preferably but if you have questions for parker as well i haven't seen you come in yet so we'll just kind of wait here for just a minute to see if any others come through looks good on mine that you guys should be able to chat in both the q a and the chat section specifically um so dylan and david have a few questions i'll just read those to you first as we wait on a few others dylan asks what is the catalyst for qa to stop working in your opinion so i think that the timing is impossible to predict um but that i would say there's a there's there's a dynamic relationship between um between bitcoin adoption and kiwi's effectiveness that once a critical mass of people are operating in the in the bitcoin monetary system and they're essentially free from the from the legacy system those people do not have to demand dollars the demand for dollars is what allows the demand from dollars in terms of like what holds the system together is the fact that there's 85 trillion dollars of credit and only about 7 trillion dollars but the system while a lot of central bankers will look at it in aggregate there's people that that don't really need dollars or they don't need a significant share because they're they're not uh wed to that credit system they're not in debt so as people figure out bitcoin and start to sell financial assets to buy bitcoin to basically move out of monetary substitutes into bitcoin or just transfer their dollars into bitcoin that that will actually cause an acceleration of it will impair the credit complex it will cause the acceleration of the um the demise of the credit system but through that the fed will have to print more and more money as the fed prints more and more money it becomes less effective now it becomes less effective because more people like paul tudor jones like myself like pretty much everyone that works at unchained capital as a as anybody who's figured out bitcoin uh sees that that it that it's not just a fool me once type scenario that it's going to keep happening and that it's their problem um and so i think that like what we've seen is in this round of qe it's far less effective but that there's also this idea that will continue to be far less effective until it just breaks one day and that's that's when hyperinflation occurs but what i would i you know point people to the hyperinflation which will be the sign that um that the dollar has failed and the qe's stopped working it doesn't just happen as a function of printing money it happens because the actual printing of money what it functionally does is it takes a system of imbalance which was i like to just simplify that for people imagine the housing market in 2007 and 8. the housing market hadn't bounced prices were too high as the price started to come down for housing generally the fed stepped in and bought over a trillion dollars of mortgage-backed securities to prop up the value of housing they actively worked against free market forces to allow imbalance to be sustained the function of allowing imbalance to be sustained is allowing supply chains to ultimately exist that couldn't otherwise be sustained and you will ultimately start and we're starting to see it now but this is ultimately what happens in currencies that hyperinflate it's that as more and more money becomes abundant the real goods and services that people need become actually scarce and the whole function of money breaks down um the example that i use for people is venezuela gm used to manufacture cars in venezuela they in 2014 or 2015 had to write down 500 million of venezuelan boulevards ultimately to zero and then they couldn't they could no longer import parts uh from their suppliers to build cars and and the system continues so it's not just a function of printing money it's that the printing of money allows imbalance to be sustained and then once something breaks in the supply chain it um it gets exacerbated so um the timing's impossible to predict but but we already are seeing qeb less effective today requiring that they need more and also seeing supply chains start to break down so i would probably forecast over the next 10 years that qe becomes totally inept and not functional awesome and we've got a lot of really good questions um coming in one that was specifically asked a little bit early and this is kind of very it's a very speculative question is do you have any opinion on what countries you may see adopting bitcoin in the future next is there one that you sort of have your eye on that you think would be doing so in the way that we've seen el salvador too yeah i'll um i'll jump into that and there's another question maybe we can handle next i just happened to see which was uh bitcoin numbers may be finite but there are thousands of cryptocurrencies and more being added this would be akin to the fed printing money maybe if we just could come back to that yeah absolutely yeah and also for folks that are on the call um i'm going to stay beyond the hour a lot of people have to jump that's kind of what we originally said but for folks that i want to join or stay and continue to ask questions i'm here as a resource but in terms of other countries that adopt bitcoin next like i'd say at the sovereign level um the ukraine has recently um signaled that that you know kind of made a forward statement that that bitcoin cryptocurrency is illegal it is a key nato ally so seeing what happens with with ukraine and seeing that they're taking that forward action it's beyond just um you know or it's not yet at the point of of making it legal tender but the fact that at the sovereign level they're substantiating hey no this this currency is good and legal here um or at least it's not illegal i think is the ukraine is one country to to look out for brazil is another country again i i find it a little bit futile to to predict which and when other than there will be others um just like you know in microstrategy's case they might have been the first corporate to publicly acknowledge they had bitcoin but then square falls in tesla others have that likely aren't public yet um but that they all inevitably will but i would expect to see over the next 12 months that you know at least another country or two will take a similar stance but that it will be a country that um that doesn't have a reserve currency um you know that that the countries that that need bitcoin most that can benefit from bitcoin most are uh countries that could opt in for the same reason as individuals do to a monetary system that isn't controlled by any of anyone else correct if you want to jump right into jim's question that you would read there and then yeah if you see one that you'd like to do first please go ahead yeah so on this one i would point people to and and we'll share some resources after the call but one of the articles that i wrote is um bitcoin cannot be copied and and what i what i try to focus people on here is that um bitcoin's open source code is open source that anybody i could go copy the open source code and ask people to take parker money but but nobody would because that code base would say that there will only ever be 21 million but it's coming back to this idea that bitcoin doesn't have a fixed supply of 21 million because software code says it does that anybody who you know whether it's ethereum or um you know cardano or and i hate even using those terms i find them to be useless uh mal investments but that but that each one of those are effectively me creating my coin and saying that it has value and and the key distinction is you can copy bitcoin's code base you can copy its design and it's engineering you can copy its idea but you can't copy its monetary properties that it's monetary properties that's that that fact that bitcoin has a credibly enforced 65 21 million it didn't the month after bitcoin was released it probably didn't six months after it was it probably didn't even a year that as the bitcoin network grows it actively becomes more decentralized and that decentralization of the network which there is no like there's not even within 1 1000th of a degree of decentralization that exists in any other currency in the world other than bitcoin that that decentralization not being static and that it gets more and more decentralized and more and more secure is critical to this question that that but then you have to you have to pair in the fact that money converges to one right that we all only really need one money and so you you can either opt into a decentralized money that is trustless or you can opt into a separate form of money and every other form of money not named bitcoin is dependent on trust and so as bitcoin grows it gets more and more secure money converges to one and if you're in that dilemma whether it's bitcoin visa v any other cryptocurrency you have to realize that each money is competing with every other money for every exchange and they're designed to fulfill the exact same purpose there's other cryptocurrencies that will say i'm not money i'm gas or i have this utility but if an asset is only a utility in exchange and it doesn't have a claim on a productive asset it has to compete as money and what you'll find is you only need one and that no two things are similar that when you when you start to evaluate scarcity and visibility transferability um fungibility that and that all that only exists in bitcoin because of decentralization decentralization and that the fact that bitcoin exists the fact that there is something with a credibly fixed supply of 21 million makes all other cryptocurrencies practically speaking all other currencies over the long term obsolete that you don't need a second form of money so you're uh you're you're always in that decision is bitcoin more secure to carry my value in the future or is you know some third rate two-bit you know 10th cryptocurrency so when you distill it down to that point of you can copy the code base but you can't copy the monetary properties the monetary properties are that 21 million the decentralization the censorship resistant they're all emergent but the monetary properties are also and the monetary network is also you know the infrastructure in place to support victory in the hardware walls the nodes the um all the code review that's gone into it uh and so i like to describe it as bitcoin if you can accept that money converges to one the bitcoin is running a race and it's a marathon and it's at the 13 mile marker and you're starting at zero if you form a new cryptocurrency and that if you develop a car to catch up to bitcoin bitcoin is is changeable difficult to change for a reason but it can look at your car and say oh i'll incorporate that and continue to speed ahead from you uh so that it's it's not like competition between any two monies and if you think about it like competition between any two monies like oh bitcoins myspace you'll you'll be evaluating the question on a fundamentally wrong plane but you have to evaluate the difference in competition between two forms of money and really i don't even consider other cryptocurrencies to be competition to bitcoin i consider gold in the dollar as the best benchmark so we had one question that kind of multiple versions of this question came up so it might be good to touch on pretty much uh the question is when sort of sharing um information about bitcoin with other individuals the most common objection that comes up is bitcoin is too volatile can you maybe talk about that and maybe discuss you know the different um different cycles of you know a new monetary um aspect kind of coming into the market itself that might be good to touch on for those who are wanting to learn how to share this information with others yeah so i would i would i would think about the volatility question as uh now versus future state and you know if i go back to that equation of 10 million people have bitcoin or realistically 150 million people have bitcoin but 10 million have any material exposure to it which i again you know quantifies five to ten percent of their assets that imagine the next 100 million people that adopt bitcoin so you've got 110 million people that own it but that for the first time 10x the number of people are valuing bitcoin for the first time and and that those people have very limited number amount of information that while i while i highlight the signal here that it is 21 million bitcoin and that is money converges to one most people when they're buying bitcoin for the first time they're they're fomoing in or they're buying it for speculation they're buying not knowing what the signal is and then people get sucked into the rabbit hole and figure out what the what the true signal is but just kind of thinking about the now the volatility question if if 10 million people have material exposure and that's to go to 100 million that the demand has to increase by 10x and those people who are valuing bitcoin for the first time have uh facebook or they don't have the same level of information and they are pricing a good that is digital for the first time and so the natural consequence of the supply doesn't change is that that will be volatile the bitcoin will have a dramatic rise but then the people who bought it for irrational reasons will sell but more and more people will find a signal through the noise and that's why when bitcoin corrects it always resets higher because more people you know in that equation if the demand increased by 10x if only 20 percent of those people find a signal then the base resets 3x higher because you have your embedded base plus 2x new people um and and so then i also connect in the idea that when a billion people have bitcoin the next 100 million will only represent 10 percent and so it's again that this stability you cannot take something that emerges on the free market and magically expect it to be stable and so people think about bitcoin i say it can't be money because of its volatility but they fail to recognize that the volatility is uh is a requirement for it to be adopted on a global scale and that when you get to that billion people mark 100 million people will not represent 10x will represent 10 and so it's not until bitcoin is adopted by so many people that the incremental demand or the marginal demand only represents a small percentage that it will not be evolved uh but that the volatility is natural now how do you deal with that volatility uh you deal with it the same way that everyone deals with all volatilities in markets and it's by sizing the portfolio correctly that uh if you're starting to get into bitcoin and you start to understand you don't understand how bitcoin incredibly enforces effect supply but you understand that that is the the decision point or that is what you know is really driving the fundamental value and is the signal to the noise if you have one percent of bitcoin and 99 of everything else is your portfolio volatile well if everyone approaches it that way and just allocates one percent of their portfolio to bitcoin they're not subject to its volatility but through that process it will become the standard value and everything will be volatile around it and so it's you know and i kind of summarize it as explaining why the volatility occurs when it will decline and it won't decline until the marginal demand is a small fraction of the embedded base and that in the interim we tolerate volatility based on our level of understanding of bitcoin but that generally when people are new getting in that it's allocating a percentage so that you know 20 percentage points of volatility or forty percent or even sixty percent is um is a small fraction doesn't impact someone's day-to-day so i always tell people when they're first getting into bitcoin that they should buy enough bitcoin such that the price doubles um they don't feel like they made money and they'd want to buy more and uh similarly if the price cut in half that they wouldn't feel like they lost money and they'd want to buy more i know they're doing the work on the fundamental level uh because the the problem that's in front of us both as individuals local communities state federal whole world that the the problem of printing money is too important to ignore there was one um from michael that had just a question about your personal take on this how do you envision the transition gradually then suddenly to the bitcoin standard unfolding more specifically how much pain and for how long will the global economy have to endure before bitcoin becomes the global reserve unit of account just curious on how you see the future unfolding yeah so i really tie this to and again i think it's a fool's errand to truly predict time but i'll lay out a framework um that i think about directionally it is that as a function of time knowledge distributes and it's going to extend that knowledge distribution is going to accelerate as more people understand bitcoin um there's more people to help other people uh understand bitcoin that comes through in in writings like my own um with graduate and suddenly the bitcoin standard layered money by nick bautia all the podcasts that are out there that as people as more people have adopted bitcoin not only have more people gone before them to contemplate these questions that it's actually an easier dilemma for the 100 million in one person than for the first hundred million um because a consensus has already emerged on the free market and now they're just taking with with greater access to information so i do expect the knowledge distribution to accelerate as well as the ease of adoption not just because better and more infrastructure will exist but that and it's actually a function of the people that have gone before you that the first thousand people that adopted bitcoin they were real crazy maybe the first million they were even crazy but once you get to a critical mass the the incremental adoption uh should should and will accelerate as we've seen historically bitcoin adoption through these um supply shocks are each happening that adoption generally increases by 10x in a way and that doesn't mean that 10x number of people all of a sudden understand bitcoin but if 10 million people today have have found the signal through the noise and have material exposure then through two cycles of bitcoin happenings that would get us to about a billion people in the next 10 years and that win a billion people because i'm also relying on assumption that the first billion will be those that have greatest access to information and greatest amount the greatest share of wealth in the world that that within the next ten years we'll get to a billion dollar or sorry a billion people having adopted bitcoin and that will be enough people to shift and make bitcoin the um standard unit of accounts global standard of value and displace other forms by it doesn't mean every other foreign money doesn't exist at that time but that bitcoin will be the predominant currency that's used for day-to-day transactions i do think and i i don't present like a world a dystopian world of doom and gloom that when people print money every single time the experience has happened it's ended in tears and so i try to be realistic that you cannot shift away from an 85 trillion dollar credit system in the united states or 300 trillion credit systems globally that's fueled by fiat currencies that can be easily printed to a sound monetary standard like bitcoin and expect that there's just this easy transition where there's no pain felt i i like to think about the analogy that with venezuela venezuela has turned into an abject disaster it used to be one of the wealthiest countries in the world uh but it would be far worse if there weren't other functional currencies around venezuela for people to continue to rely on to get aid to venezuela and to coordinate economic activity to try to reboot its system or effect when it exists so i think about that with the developed world where you have developed country fiat currencies if all of those went went away or hyper-inflated and bitcoin didn't exist the pain would be far great there will be a lot of people that place the blame on bitcoin but it will ultimately be because their government's printed trillions of dollars and and people that were solvent and and you know operating in a darwinian world that is you know kind of survival of the fittest it's really we are all going to survive because we have a form of money and that as that consensus emerges whatever would have happened when the dollar credit system fell apart will be far less painful because we actually have a form of money that can coordinate economic activity and it will accelerate when that occurs but but that's just generally how i think about it as a construct all right great there's a few more questions here i don't know how many more you want to go through but one that did pop up that i thought might be a good conversation and this is from anonymous here is how much of an impact will a bitcoin etf have on price and adoption in your opinion or what are your overall thoughts on that um so i discussed this in the press and fish podcast i think it's coming out today i personally don't get too excited about a bitcoin etf maybe this is a good place to transition to what we do at unchained and then for folks who want to stay on i'll continue to answer questions i view the i view the ets etf as a vastly superior or inferior way to hold bitcoin that that an etf is slightly better than what is currently in the market with gptc which is a trust where their shares are publicly traded but i think about it as an etf has the same problem as gbtc which is that it has multiple layers of counterparty risk and you know if i use gbtc as an example which is really the only public vehicle trust vehicle where people can buy and sell shares in a public market um gbcc uses coinbase custody but then on top of coinbase you've got the trust actual counterparty risk which is grayscale you've got um or at least you have the trust and then you have grayscale and then you have grayscale's parent and then you have whatever broker it is that you use that's actually holding those shares and so you basically have four or five different layers of counterparty risk on top of just coinbase and you could just go and own bitcoin and coinbase and um and half and eliminate those uh so when i think about the etf it is yes inevitably some additional flows will come in i because i view it as fundamentally slightly better than a gptc i i i think that the that the actual tidal wave is things like what our partner nydic is working on where they're working to light up all the the local and regional banks so that people don't have to go to coinbase but the more places there that are turned up to say easy to buy bitcoin that that that will really be what what changes the game and that the etf is just one part of that but but really kind of coming back to um kind of that dilemma of like do i buy it in etf it's like yes i'm recognizing i used to work and um you know work for a hedge fund i understand that that it will bring in more flows but what's going to bring in more flows is when google decides to buy bitcoin or apple decides to buy bitcoin or facebook because they need the money in its treasury uh so i i do think that it's kind of like one of those i don't even know what the saying is but it's like sell the news like buy the room or sell the news um that's that's probably how this one will go um but coming into that idea of of what we do uh for those folks who are on the call that aren't as familiar with it we help people secure their bitcoin without category risk you know i am a uh i'm a creation of the financial crisis i would say i i worked at deutsche bank in 2016 2009. most people you know there's a saying that is markets have no memory but anybody who lives the 2006 and 2009 even though it feels like in the distant past when they when they recall what happened there they figure out that counterparty risk was real and that the fed hadn't printed that money which is the express problem that that we're trying to solve here that practically speaking all investment banks and the vast majority of all the mega commercial banks would have filed for bankruptcy they would have been insolvent and that is because of the degree of leverage in the system and that the money printing was designed to solve that counterparty risk but they did it at the consequence of everybody's savings and you were forced to opt into that um that if you live in a world where counterparty risk is real and it is real because you either are exposed to it or you have dollar exposure to the to the government printing or the fed printing trillions of dollars that bitcoin the unique things about bitcoin is that it's permissionless censorship resistant and uh and available to anybody and so what we do at unchained really the foundation of our our company and the thing that differentiates us is our approach to custody we help people uh not only accelerate their path to understanding bitcoin and i and i view that as i do view that as something that is priceless like i can't put a fee on me helping people understand bitcoin but but that once they do they will understand how unique of an asset it is and how important to the equation both permissionless access to your money is censorship access to your money and the elimination of counterparty risk and so what we do is we help people hold their own keys in such a way that eliminates counterparty risk and preserves those properties of permissionless access and censorship resistance access and if you start to appreciate how important a fixed supply of 21 million is and that counterparty risk is real that we deliver a lot of value and power to people by giving them money in a way that they can hold where no financial institution can come between them and their money and their form of money can't be debated so we start with education we start with custody we do have a concierge service which i'll let justine talk to for just a minute or two we do help people buy and sell bitcoin today it's generally in larger amounts uh we lend against bitcoin so a lot of our the clients who use us have a lot of bitcoin they've held it for a long time rather than sell bitcoin uh they will take out a loan not not incur a tax event and use that either to fund investments or fair expenses then we also just brought a new head of retirement inheritance named jeff andrew and we're in the process of piloting an ira product so that people can hold their own keys with our costly solution and have tax advantaged uh access to to bitcoin um so maybe justine if you want to just talk about the concierge process for just a minute or two and this is really where the white glove service where we hold everyone's hands people are new to bitcoin we really accelerate that path to private key ownership yeah absolutely thank you parker yeah so with our concierge team we are essentially it's designed to help you become confident while taking the stress out of sovereign bitcoin custody as parker mentioned holding your own keys is the goal but how do you get there so we are here to help you with every step of the process um if you need hardware devices we can order those for for you straight from the manufacturer or you can bring your own and we actually are incorporated with cold card ledger and trezor and then you have a private video call with one of our specialists who will help you walk through every step so setting up those devices sometimes people have never worked with hardware devices or maybe don't even really quite understand what a bitcoin key is we walk you through every step of that help you create your multi-sig vault go over best practices operational security tips and then give you hands-on support um oftentimes on these calls we're helping clients make their first ever bitcoin transaction moving funds off exchanges and into addresses they hold the keys to which is extremely empowering and then we're here for you after onboarding with ongoing support from the team um exclusive continuing education webinars like this one as well as a team of experts available when needed so you'll have absolutely everything you need to take full control of your bitcoin because quite frankly myself and everyone on the team believes that everyone is capable of holding the wealth to you or i'm sorry they're holding the keys to your bitcoin wealth and we're here to help you and help empower you to do just that as well as of course being your partner in your bitcoin well to help you with all of your personal business and retirement needs so really the concierge team is here like parker said to walk you through every step so if it's something that you feel confident or don't feel confident in but want to get started with self-custody concierge may be for you it's really great service and yeah we can help you get started with every step of the way thanks justine and and the last thing i'll say before for people that want to hang out and and ask more questions i'll hang out and do that that following up on this we'll send out this presentation it will be on our website but we'll send it to everybody that participated in this call we'll also include a link for people to either sign up for a consultation or for concierge for our existing clients we really do view our role as as a partnership nothing about how we operate is transactional and so if you have family members or people in your network that you think would value that we'd also appreciate you not only forwarding the presentation along but also sharing the idea of concierge people that either have bitcoin on coinbase or gemini or people that are adopting bitcoin for the first time so uh with that um justin if there are still people kind of that are that are asking questions i'm happy to to dive back into the regularly scheduled program absolutely so let me go ahead and feel free to scan here too because we have quite a few used it depends on how deep you want to get into things um let's see there's a lot of kind of beginner questions there's some questions about inflation concerns and um loose policies concern do they concern you more or less and less on bitcoin adoption um one i thought was kind of interesting here that you may want to touch on i'd actually like to hear your opinion on this is how will the fed convert from dollar to bitcoin what does that look like and when will that become necessary so when will bitcoin become the global reserve of the the fed do you have thoughts on that um so there's a first rule of bitcoin that if the fed ever knocks in the door and asked to buy bitcoin you have to tell all your friends um so i mean i think realistically that uh what is more likely to happen is that that the u.s government is going to you know when it whether it's the colonial pipeline or or some other seizure or something legal activity that when they seize bitcoin for an actual crime that's been committed that they're going to continue to hold that bitcoin and that that will be the more logical way that uh that bitcoin ends up on the federal government's balance sheet now that wouldn't be the federal reserve but it might hold that bitcoin at the fed um i i do not see a world where a global central bank that has a reserve currency will be out in the open market buying bitcoin like that is the ultimate our currency is done move and it will also be something that's incredibly difficult to hide and and will only accelerate the the downfall of the currency by that news being in the market what what was the question on inflation let me go back to that um the question was from s coss and maybe they could give a little more details here if we don't answer it clearly but do you find that inflation concerns and government um loose policies concern you less and less as bitcoin adoption increases so i guess the question is does what's happening in the governmental world of financial assets of the dollar concern you less and less as bitcoin adoption increases or is that still a major concern for you i i think that there is a there's still a reality if you know bitcoin one trillion dollars is not a small amount you know that that's important uh which is approximately what bitcoin's total real purchasing power and and and practically speaking we still do need to compare it to the dollar for that kind of real purchasing power because the dollar is the unit of account is the global funding currency and it's our best direct connection into uh real purchasing power so there's a recognizing recommend uh we have to recognize that a trillion dollars is not small it is significant but global financial assets are 400 trillion dollars i think the global credit system is about 300 trillion and then the global stock market is about 100 so it's still very small now that that small kind of relative size is those are the flows of funds that are going to come into bitcoin but every time there is a global meltdown like whether it was caused by evergrand imagine like the global stock market or financial assets broadly going down by four percent that's 16 trillion of value if bitcoin's only worth one trillion that is what causes like when there's a liquid dollar liquidity crisis there's massive dollar shortage um and people sell liquid assets bitcoin is a liquid asset and there's a reality that certain people that are trading bitcoin are probably over leveraged uh but but what happens over time that impact as bitcoin gets larger as the people that are actually in the bitcoin uh network that that actually need that dollar liquidity less and less that those kind of uh snapbacks when there's a broader economic uh kind of liquidity issue in the global financial system um it will become less and less and also i operate with the perspective that each time that happens that is actually what causes the fed to need to print trillions of dollars so i kind of manage my own life i think about bitcoin this way is that you have to survive all weathers that there might be interim volatility um in the market but that there is a fundamental reason why bitcoin is held and why that won't always be the case and why the thing that is causing that liquidity crisis is also what dictates the fed prince trillions of dollars and that is at the direct consequence of you holding dollar denominated assets partly because it deflates each dollar but also because it disrupts the equity value or the impairs the credit that you're actually holding at a fundamental level um and so when i when i think about the question it's it's surviving all others it's recognizing that there will be still exposure to the legacy financial system but over time it will become muted and and that that bitcoin is the defense um and that i i always try to prepare myself as if hey tomorrow bitcoin can go down 50 would i survive that world yes you know then then i don't have enough bitcoin um and so um i think that until bitcoin is larger than the base money supply um of other markets like we'll continue to see that um one question i thought one question i saw here that i thought was interesting is that people don't spend when there is deflation would def would it deflationary bitcoin economy caused the economic engine to really slow down i would say that that the short answer is no and that is a a line that a lot of people deal with they say we have to be able to print money because what how else do we deal with prices they don't appreciate that it's actually the money printing that creates the crisis and essentially and eventually you have to get off and out of that vicious cycle but that there's also this flaw that a deflationary currency isn't spent now the way that i think about it is so long as people will accept my dollars which are a depres depreciating currency and i understand why the entire world is about to adopt bitcoin that so long as people accept my dollars i'm going to spend my depreciating asset i'm going to hold my appreciating asset but at some point somebody's going to come and say if you want my gas at the gasoline station you got to pay me a bitcoin because i'm no longer accepting the form of money that is losing its value uh and i need gasoline to drive my car or the same thing is going to happen at the grocery store so what i anchor to is imagine a world where seven to eight billion people have adopted bitcoin it's the global standard of value there's only 21 million of it that everybody has seven to eight billion people have demands every single day that they need to consume to survive and make their life you know enriched and happy uh that spending bitcoin in in a world where what you are effectively doing and i also kind of use the empirical data that when bitcoin goes to 57 000 people are selling a depreciating asset when it drops to 30 000 people are buying an asset that's devaluing that the idea that keynesians put out there that people won't spend an asset that's increasing in purchasing power functionally ignore economic realities that people have to consume things every day and it's actually money which causes those things to arrive it's recording its economic activity and the whole point of it is to spend it because you have to spend on things to survive either truly for survival like water and food and power or to go on a cruise or to take a vacation and when it's the only form of money that people accept you'll figure out that there's going to be no problem because it won't always be bitcoin going up by 10x or 100x that there will be a full monetization period where you won't notice that bitcoin is increasing in price day to day that that it's only increasing slightly because that it's likely tied to increases in productivity not in terms of a monetization event that's occurring so i don't know how deep you want to get into this but i thought this was a good question for people who are out there trying to educate their friends and colleagues right this is going to be a great resource for them to be able to tackle a lot of the questions that come up and one of the questions um that an anonymous attendee was asking was essentially a lot of people come back and ask about future regulations so do you think future regulations will shut down or just slow down the adoption of bitcoin how do you put a future holder's mind at ease over this topic i imagine it would take a lot for most of us to take the risk of adopting bitcoin in that environment of flood everywhere you turn so how do you address this when sort of orange killing someone yeah so i i think about it and also for that last question about the deflationary currency um the i wrote an article called bitcoin as the great definitionalization and i talk about that subject uh in that article the prior one on this one in the chat yeah i've got an article called bitcoin cannot be banned but to to summarize it it is that there's one thing that is absolutely certain and that is that your government is printing trillions of dollars and that the everything that's dollar denominated is impaired by a function of that money printing um and that might not be intuitive and i don't expect people to take my word for it but kind of in my series i think particularly in uh bitcoin is one for all and then also bitcoin does not waste any i talk about these ideas of linking money printing to actual economic instability that that what is unknown is how the government will deal with it what is known is or what is known as the government spending trillions of dollars and that's the problem what is unknown is can bitcoin credibly enforce the fix supply of 21 million and would that be a viable solution and that that when you start to understand and what i really focus people on here is figure out whether or not like first if it were true would that thing be valuable would the 21 million fixed flight be valuable as money then figure out do i believe can i can i form a mental construct as to how it happens and is it credible if you develop that you will recognize that bitcoin is in like money is a very basic necessity it is not a luxury it's not like a you know aston martin or a ferrari that that money is literally what allows clean water power healthcare food gas like without a functioning form of money you turn into venezuela so when i think about the government banning things i think about it at that level and i recognize that when the government banned gold private ownership gold in 1933 gold didn't cease to exist in the world the dollars devalued and gold became more valuable when the government tried to ban booze they weren't able to functionally ban booze that bitcoin is orders of magnitude harder to stop by by its design and it is fundamentally more important so when you put seven to eight billion people that all have the same problem uh and that that that money is a very basic necessity and the bitcoin is the best form of money that's ever existed that i that i anchored to that point when i worry about anything that the government might do that they weren't able to functionally do things of lesser value and significance and they're not going to be able to overcome greater uh and that you have a clear and present danger and that that's your government printing money and debasing your savings and destabilizing the economic structure so to me the answer on that level is obvious but that's really what i anchored to but i also highlight for people that at the decision tree is if bitcoin credibly enforces the fixed supply 21 million if you come to the conclusion that that's not possible then there's nothing for the government to ban and but if it is possible and it is valuable then there is something demanded so it's like before you start to contemplate the question of can the government ban it focus on how does it actually work and because you won't have a framework to evaluate whether or not it can be banned or what position do you want to be in uh but then when you take it to the next level if you say oh yes i i believe that i understand and have a framework for how bitcoin incredibly enforces a fixed supply of 21 million then you'll also start to realize well when do these actions come into place when when when when would the government try to ban bitcoin or put some regulatory action on it it will be when once it's clear that that bitcoin is threatening the government's monopoly on money and so you could have either been in the position of how's your purchasing power increase rather than be devalued holding dollars or the opposite and most rational economic actors would rather be in the position of holding that asset that has increased in purchasing power by multiples and and been in a position and been so successful that it's credibly threatening the the monopoly status of countries all over the world in terms of the control over the money supply um and that that they would want to own that asset and then be faced to the position just like anybody that was holding gold at that time well what do i do because the only other alternative is i was left holding the bag and i'm in the same position i don't have the asset i haven't seen my purchasing power increase and i made the decision for myself long ago and i'm not faced with a decision of what to do all right we've got a lot of really good questions here i like a lot of them that are really just trying to figure out like how do i how do i come back with some really informative answers to individuals who have these certain kind of common misconceptions or concerns um so another one of those which i know you wrote a really great box series on which i just linked um but the environmental argument and discussing you know proof of work versus proof of stake you know this is something that we hear a lot about uh it's the it's the fud dice that won't go away but how would you respond to someone when you're when you're in the middle of kind of sharing this information with them and they come back with maybe that issue what would be a good response in your opinion yeah so i think one a good response would be that um you can send them one of my articles um so that part of the reason why i wrote those articles was to help not only myself leverage my own time but other bitcoiners to be able to share them so they don't have to explain from scratch because i also find it to be that if someone doesn't want to invest 15 to 30 minutes to understand a subject that you explaining it to them it's it's not that um they don't want to know us that they're not listening um and so i would have them first read an article and then discuss their questions that derive from that um on the you know kind of the question about bitcoin does not waste energy i i always come back to this idea that um people for context bitcoin consumes about 14 extra hashes of compute power which translates to about 14 gigawatts probably translates to like 12 million homes or at least around that order of magnitude in the us based on how u.s averages average homes consume energy they look at that number they say huh well man if we could just take 14 gigawatts of power and repurpose the homes we could power a lot more homes but they don't question like where all these homes that are without power and just like in um in china when china banned bitcoin mining and it's in the process of shifting over to the united states other parts of the world particularly texas um that where all the chinese homes that are suddenly being powered now that the bitcoin energy supply is gone for isn't isn't being consumed for bitcoin mining but realistically that's not the way that energy works um that energy is developed based on end demand um and that the more you need the more you can get the more you can pay for the more you can coordinate with with a reliable form of money the more more you can go extract but more importantly someone will not understand the cost to secure the bitcoin network if they do not understand the value of it so whenever you see somebody that says bitcoin waste energy that it consumes too much energy you have to start with do you understand why bitcoin is valuable because somebody that does not understand these ideas that i talked about about 21 million how it's credibly enforced that it's only enforced by a function of energy and why it's a utility they don't have the benefit side of the equation so therefore they're they are ill-equipped to be able to do a benefit analysis if you don't understand the benefit you can't make any statement on the cost because if you did that you would say like i don't understand why people play xbox or why they get value from that like cut off xbox spending i don't understand why people drive cars because i live in new york city i can walk to all the places you know cars are a waste of energy um now realistically most people still understand cars but but that that's the type of thinking so i i always answer the point first understand why bitcoin's valuable and if you don't understand that then you can't comment on um on that at waste energy the other thing i highlight for people is that when they start to think about how economic systems actually work that money is really at the foundation that when i say it's a basic necessity um that like all things like cars boats anything you know pipes water and waste management systems telecom systems everything is an invention we're taking a resource and we're turning into something that can be used as a higher order but that kind of as the economics of the systems emerge from a barter system to when the tax refueled by money and that that's that that money is actually what allows econo economies to scale and for a division of labor and specialization of labor to to take shape uh to deliver more goods to market that the money is actually the foundation of the economy and and that at the second order it's energy inputs and energy outputs that for everything that you consume in your daily life it requires energy and i come back to this example of venezuela where venezuela is one of the most oil rich countries in the world they don't have a form of money so they can't extract the energy resource from underneath the ground and now they can't get water basic healthcare power to their center city centers so when i think about bitcoin's energy use because money is the foundation that the energy that's used to consume um and protect the bitcoin network is the highest and best use of energy because you won't be able to get out all the other energy resources that you need to turn into whatever you might consume plastic cups xboxes you know getting water to your house getting power to your house you know having access to an iphone and tele telephone services from atp or verizon if you don't have a form of money that the supply chains are incredibly complex the only way they're coordinated is through the function of money and so you know i use the analogy of when you're on an airplane they say um you know before you put your before you put the oxygen mass on the child next you put it on yourself it's first secure the monetary network because everything else the derivative of the monetary network and the the energy that bitcoin uses is actually what's ensuring that the rest of the world doesn't turn into venezuela um the other question was on proof mistake this is the hard one i haven't actually written about this one so i'll address it um the proof of state question is like you also have to understand why money converges to one always anchor back to the the reason why bitcoin is valuable is because it credibly enforces a fixed supply of 21 million and that obsoletes all of our money because money converges to one so you have to be anchored to to that thought process not to say you have to accept it those are the questions that you have to evaluate first if you can get there then this proof-of-stake versus proof-of-work concept kind of falls down in two areas one um that proof-of-work works if you understand the bitcoin credibly enforcement fix supply of 21 million you will understand that proof of work is part of that equation and that for proof of stake to work quote work it would have to it couldn't be better than bitcoin it could only do the job it could only deliver the same benefit you might say well it can do it with less cost but but for the utility that it actually provides what proof of work allows bitcoin to do is affect currency issuance and vital settlement on a trustless basis that is working and proof of work is what it's allowing to work some new technology if we were to call call proof of stake a technology which isn't and for people that don't have the context proof of stake is a mechanism that uh this um cryptocurrency called ethereum is contemplating shifting away from proof of work too based on this idea that bitcoin consumes too much energy but we already explain why it doesn't but that for proof-of-stake to work it would need to be able to affect final settlement and currency issuance on a decentralized basis first ethereum is centralized so it already doesn't work but second what proof of work allows for this consumption of energy by this consumption of energy and then the validation of nodes that aren't consuming energy basically the entire bitcoin network is validating all transactions and and the energy that's consumed is what makes it really costly to the point of impossible to write an invalid transaction to the bitcoin ledger and essentially prevents invalid transactions from occurring that that only exists because there's separation of powers in the network that um that you do not want the people who own the stake the owners of the network also setting the rules um because what you get in that world is senior and so proof of stake is effectively the system that we have today the owners of the network the jp morgan the citibanks the wells fargos they control the power they get to set the rules that's effectively what happens in proof of stake but more importantly proof of stake cannot display as proof of work because it can only match the actual utility that proof of work is is delivering and the way that the bitcoin system you also have to have some humility that bitcoin is like a massive puzzle and proof of work is a key column in that puzzle um and it exists in a way to split out enforcement of the rules from ownership of the network so somebody that has one bitcoin or point one bitcoin is treated within the bitcoin network the same as somebody that has a thousand bitcoin uh that can't be true um in in improved state but but more importantly um you know just think about bitcoin like bitcoin won't be wouldn't be displacing the dollar gold if it wasn't an order of magnitude if not orders of magnets do better as a form of money that new new technology is not adopted because something is nearly as good and in this case all proof of state could do is match what proof of work already has done and proved to work so it's really a fool there all right thank you for that there are some questions pertaining to just kind of unchained capital as a whole some questions about the infrabill um some questions about bitcoin in general from a very high level perspective i wasn't sure what you wanted to dig into specifically but i wanted to ask if there was any questions that you saw you wanted to make sure and hit um or otherwise i could pick one out as well um if there are if there's a particularly if there's a common question that's coming up on like bitcoin high level we can address it but then maybe after that we can address uh questions about unchained sure there was just one question specifically it was a little bit earlier from jim i'm not sure if he's still here um but jim was kind of asking from like a conception like what is bitcoin uh you hear about developers building on bitcoin i'm not sure like is bill is bitcoin a database um is there a way to store information on bitcoin so like that's a very very beginner level but it's here and i didn't know if you wanted to sort of give your very parker take on you know what is bitcoin when you're explaining to somebody how do you how can you conceptualize to an individual who maybe isn't used to the technology what bitcoin is in a easy to understand way maybe yeah well what i would say is i i definitely uh before you get into the middle level questions of like what is bitcoin because it's those are questions best answered further down the rabbit hole um of like where where are bitcoin where do they live like what is the blockchain um what is proof of work that those questions should really be um kind of asked or handled because any any explanation that i were to give like what is bitcoin like i i consider it a monetary system um it's a system that has a currency that's um that's um free from any government um that that is governed by no one um and that that actually includes not only a currency but a network to move that currency around and that it's permissionless unable to be censored because nobody controls it and that it serves as the foundation for the world's new monetary system but i would really really tell people because if you start to answer or ask questions below those of like what is a node and like when you say it's a monetary network like what does that mean that that you need more building blocks to have a conception of what the answer is and so i really focus people to start with anchor to the dollar what gives the dollar value anchored to what are you know are there certain properties that make something better or worse in trade and are those objectives are those the inputs that that people evaluate when they're considering which form of money to adopt then you know kind of dig into the question of 21 million assume that it was possible for it to have a fixed supply then get into the you know questions about okay could this be money if that were true and start to evaluate its monetary property the unit itself before even understanding the network then get into the how and the how is where you when you start to understand how bitcoin credibly enforces a 65 21 million you can't get to that point without starting to understand those questions that is it a database or you know what is it you know so um that really is the progression that i would lead someone down to even get to that point and i think what you said earlier is a great point too you know we don't all understand exactly how a car works but we see the use in it you know we don't understand how our laptop is doing what it's doing but we find it beneficial so i do think that's a really great point to to not always focus on the how but the why um so yes so the questions on unchained were more of a very general um where do you see unchained going what's the goal in the next five to ten years what would you like to see it grow into and just an overall sort of unchained capital future goals question [Music] yeah so i mean i think about it at the fundamental level we don't consider ourselves an exchange we don't think about ourselves as an individual product think about ourselves as a partner we approach everything that we do as for people that value our approach to custody we want to help them in their personal context their retirement needs their business context navigate their future bitcoin world but that when we add up the the really the focus on the individual relationships um that what we want to be is the most trusted brand in bitcoin we want to make collaborative custody the standard i think when a lot of people adopt bitcoin today they go over to coinbase we want it to be that that everyone is holding their own keys and that people understand not only by bitcoin as utility from a fundamental perspective but as they do that they're going to be in a position to understand why custody of bitcoin is so important and so realistically that goal of in order to become the most trusted brand of bitcoin we have to help more people understand why self-custody custody where you're holding your own keys and in a way where you have eliminated single points of failure eliminating counterparty risk but also done in a very fault tolerant way so you can't hurt yourself or that you would have to do four really really impractical or unlikely things to to be able to hurt yourself but that is the best way to secure your wealth into the future and that that it is through the means of bitcoin and then on top of that um kind of adding value to those financial relationships by tacking on additional services so we want to be a full suite we want to we think about ourselves as a financial institution form fit for the bitcoin world and the key distinction is we can't take our clients money and lend it um that that our form of custody is built built on permissionless security principles not permission security principles which are really the the core security principles in the legacy system which ultimately allowed us to get to this point where the where the government could print trillions of dollars and that that system could be co-opted um so that's our ultimate goal help commercialize bitcoin recognize that we're one small part in a in a much larger universe that is bitcoin and that everything is in bitcoin's control and we're working towards helping more people be able to access the benefits of holding and securing bitcoin and adding value on top awesome well that kind of covers most of the questions in the chat if you're okay with it are you good to sort of start to wrap up from here or did you want to scan through and see if there's any others you want to answer no i'm good to wrap up um i think just in summary we'll we'll be sharing these slides with folks and i would appreciate um you know if you're if you're someone who's a friend or a family member or colleague of of an existing client and you're interested uh to follow up with us you can you'll be able to email me directly but that will also share the presentation um and we're happy to invest you know kind of pointing you to additional resources um based on what questions that you might have in follow-up but also if you're curious about learning more about our our solutions that unchain and how we partner with clients uh we'll be sharing that um time to schedule a consultation with one of our client solutions team um but then we'll also be sending a link to a concierge onboarding so you can read more about that and consider uh signing up and going through that onboarding process so um we're here to be a partner and then also if you are an existing client we'd appreciate it if you share those resources with people that you think that that we could also similarly help absolutely and i did share the link in the chat but as parker mentioned you'll be receiving an email after this with a recording of this session but also the slides and then a link to share with anyone to get that free consultation if you have other questions so with that being said i want to thank everybody for coming to unchain capital's client exclusive webinar series really glad that you guys are here we do have a resource of youtube's from previous webinars but we also will continue to have these client exclusive webinars to sort of help you become confident and empowered in your bitcoin wealth as far as continuing education so please feel free to check those out on the youtube but also check your emails for upcoming invitations to the next one with that being said thanks so much for everybody's time and we will see you next time all right thanks justine thanks everyone