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Transcript
FutureMoneyTrends.com: Greetings and thank you for joining us at futuremoneytrends.com. I’m here to discuss Bitcoin with Max Wright. He wrote a book called “Bitcoin Revolution.” Thank you so much sir.
Max Wright: Thank you for having me.
FutureMoneyTrends.com: Alright, so let’s get on with it. Bitcoin. A lot of people, it’s a controversial issue for a lot of people, because it’s a new idea. And of course we had those violent swings over the last few weeks, or months now, but it’s actually been positive you know, to early on, or even last year this time. A lot of people are fearful that the government’s going to attack it. What makes you not fearful that the government isn’t just going to pump 500 million into it and hit the bid all the way down?
Max Wright: So, to hit the bid all the way down. The only way you can manipulate the price of Bitcoin is to buy it and then sell it. There is no derivatives market, there is no secondary market with Bitcoin as of yet. So it’s a very, very pure market. So you could cause a crash, I guess, by buying lots and dumping, and you can manipulate it that way. But in the buying of it you would send the price up as much as you do before you bring the price down. So that’s on that. With the regards to resisting government violence, I think Bitcoin is really, really unique. To me it’s the most unique currency in all of history. It’s never happened before. So in the analogy that Bitcoin advocates use is in regards to Napster. We all know Napster is a great file sharing tool, but it was run out of a central server and a company. There was a CEO to harass and a company to harass, and the government can send in men with guns and force them to unplug the server. Service is over. And I am a big gold bug, I own lots of gold and silver. It’s a cornerstone of my portfolio, but I’m aware of the fact that gold and silver and other precious metals are susceptible to violence. And we’ve seen that with e-gold being shut down we’ve seen that with goldmoney.com offering a great service where people can transact gold electronically, which, that could make gold and silver the currency of the future in a globalized world, but for the fact that it’s so easily susceptible to violence. Government sends in guys with guns to destroy those businesses, or at least harass them enough to turn of those features. Bitcoin, in the same way Bittorrent solved the same problem for Napster, it was decentralized and there was no one to harass. You would have to put a police man in every bedroom in every house in the country or on the planet to bring down Bittorrent. So too with Bitcoin. There is no one to harass, there is no CEO. It is a distributed peer to peer network that authorizes and guarantees the sanctity of the network. And so for that reason it is incredibly resilient to violence, and I find it incredibly interesting that at a time when we’re going to – my expectation is that we’re going to go through a currency crisis and currency wars that we’ve never seen before. There’s that something that has sprung forward in the free market world which is a currency resistant to violence, and to me that’s very exciting.
FutureMoneyTrends.com:The most important thing for a currency is that it’s a medium for exchange. Are we seeing that aspect or that role grow for Bitcoin?
Max Wright: Absolutely. So that’s a real interesting thing with regards to the uptake of Bitcoin. It’s going to follow that very smooth s-curve. You know, there’s the pioneers, and then the early adopters, then the masses and the laggers, and that’s a very smooth curve, and we’re witnessing that happen. More and more people are using Bitcoin every single day. We’re still in the very, very early stages of that now. What we’re seeing on the price side is very different. That’s going to be extremely volatile and I’m expecting it to stay very volatile. And the reason for that is, let’s see, when digital cameras, that revolution took five to ten years to replace all film cameras. When that revolution took place, there was no opportunity for greed or to make tremendous money for the consumer. You didn’t go, “oh, this is the greatest technology ever. I’m going to buy 20 digital cameras and I’m going to borrow money that I don’t have off people just to get some more ’cause it’s going up so fast.” And then at the first sign of a turn down you soil your pants and then you throw all your 20 digital cameras out the window. That doesn’t happen with those kinds of digital revolutions and technology revolutions, but with Bitcoin you have that. The value of Bitcoin is how often you can use it, how many places you can use it as money. So that’s that smooth s-curve like with that digital camera. But the value of Bitcoin is being – changes drastically depending on people’s fear and greed, and that is going to see Bitcoin have extremely high highs and extremely low lows. It’s going to be very volatile with lots of peaks and lots of troughs, but I think ultimately to 100000 dollars per Bitcoin valuation.
FutureMoneyTrends.com: People hear you say that, and they go “well how can that be?” How will somebody buy a piece of toast from Starbucks with a Bitcoin? So could you explain that to them.
Max Wright: Right, so, toast with Bitcoin is not available yet, but there are many pubs and bars and clubs and many physical stores right now that will accept Bitcoin for a beer, for your lunch, for all sorts of things. And, like I said, we’re very early on in that adoption stage, but more and more businesses are coming online all the time, so there’s not too many things you can’t buy. Like toast from a specific store like Starbucks, no you can’t, but you can get legal services, accounting services, you can get all kinds of products. In fact you can buy services that offer, “you give me Bitcoin and I’ll give you an Amazon store credit card, a gift card.” So you can buy anything on Amazon with Bitcoin by that secondary method. There are people who have set up digital stores, pretty much every digital device you’ve ever imagined. Digital cameras, computers, whatever. You can spend – buy them with Bitcoin directly. So there are literally millions of products that you can already buy with Bitcoin, but the number of vendors accepting them is very, very small.
FutureMoneyTrends.com: What’s your biggest downside risk of Bitcoin?
Max Wright: For me the biggest downside risk is other currencies. Other digital currencies or other cryptocurrencies specifically. So with Bitcoin it was the first to market, and it’s very very popular, and it cannot be inflated. It’s written, hardwired into the code that they cannot make more of them. So it’s inflation proof from a Bitcoin perspective. However, the biggest risk I see is that you can have other cryptocurrencies come along, so they can be limited or they can be unlimited in their nature, but there can be an unlimited number of competitive cryptocurrencies. And if people don’t perceive the value of the first to market and it’s accepted at more places, or whatever, over time there could be an instance where cryptocurrencies become so abundant that all cryptocurrencies are worthless. Or it could mean that the premiere ones, or the ones that were first to market, have prestige and have value and also have the network supporting it. You can go into a little bit more about that, it gets a little bit technical, but if you want I can. But the biggest competitor is other cryptocurrencies diluting Bitcoin.
FutureMoneyTrends.com: Do the other ones have founders? ‘Cause I’ve always kind of thought that the initial thing for myself, and a lot of people, they have a problem if it doesn’t have a founder. You know, if it was like I’ve explained to people that if Amazon had created it or Apple or Microsoft it would be much easier for – to purchase it, but this one doesn’t have a founder. You don’t know who did it.
Max Wright: Right, and that’s, to me, that’s actually one of the best things. Going back to that resistance to violence. If there was a founder, like any other competitor to fiat governments, to fiat currencies, they would have been harassed out of business. It’s the fact that it doesn’t have a founder that gives it so much strength.
FutureMoneyTrends.com: Do the other currencies have founders or are they anonymous as well?
Max Wright: I don’t know, and there will probably be a variation of both. Some will have founders and some won’t. It depends on whoever wants to take credit for it and acknowledge it.
FutureMoneyTrends.com: So tell us about your book.
Max Wright: Okay, it’s called “Bitcoin Revolution: Ending Tyranny for Fun and Profit,” and like I said earlier, I think the value of Bitcoin is going to rise significantly. And there’s, just as a little side note, there’s a tremendous amount of VC money available for Bitcoin businesses. There’s a lot of very wealthy people, very smart, very excited about the concept, desperate to put money into the Bitcoin world, and there aren’t enough entrepreneurs coming through. So if you are the type of person who has a great business idea and wants to chase VC money, this is the best sector right now, bar none. There’s more money being offered than there are entrepreneurs to accept it. So I’m very excited about the financial side of it, but I’m also a loyalist, I guess from the beginning, and the first principles and the fact that this is a money supply that cannot be inflated and cannot be used to steal money from others by the mechanism of inflation. I think if the consequences of that to me are no more central banks, to me it means no more wars. If people had to actually pay for wars, there would be very few of them. And the social consequences of a, let’s say a sound money system, is to me the greatest gift humanity can ever have. And as long as gold and silver won’t ever be allowed to be that, because the powers that be will point guns at it to destroy it to protect their profit. And they can’t do that with Bitcoin. And I can’t guarantee that it will be a success, but I’m certainly excited for it because it has something that no other competitive currency has ever had.
FutureMoneyTrends.com: Max, if somebody wants to reach out to you where can they go?
Max Wright: If they want the book they can jump on the Amazon Kindle store, “Bitcoin Revolution.” But we also have successcouncil.com, which deals in all manner of all different ways to protect your assets and profits during the coming economic collapse and Bitcoin is actually a very small portion of that. But that’s at successcouncil.com and you can reach me at support@successcouncil.com.
FutureMoneyTrends.com: Thank you so much Max.
Max Wright: Thank you.
