WBD300 Audio Transcription

The Ultimate Bitcoin 101 with Vijay Boyapati

Interview date: Sunday 17th January

Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with Vijay Boyapati. I have reviewed the transcription but if you find any mistakes, please feel free to email me. You can listen to the original recording here.

To help answer some of the most common questions and lay to bed some of the common misconceptions, I talk to software engineer and author, Vijay Boyapati for the ultimate Bitcoin 101.

“Go and buy some bitcoin, even if it’s a small amount. You don’t have to have a huge amount in your portfolio but you shouldn’t have zero, zero doesn’t make any sense. This is one of the most exciting innovations to money in 1000 years.”

— Vijay Boyapati

Interview Transcription

Peter McCormack: Vijay, man, how are you?

Vijay Boyapati: I'm doing great, Pete, it's great to be with you again.

Peter McCormack: Always good to be with you.  Right, we're at that time again where we've been telling our friends about Bitcoin for the last year, two years, three years and they've been ignoring us.  It's gone to $10,000 and they've ignored us; it's gone to $15,000 and they've ignored us; now it's up near $40,000 and I'm getting the phone calls, I'm getting the messages on Facebook, I'm getting the text messages, "Am I too late?  Is it too expensive?" all the same stuff.  And I thought, as I said to you, I reached out to you recently and I said, "Look, we need to make this ultimate 101" and I'm going to go, "Just go and listen to this show", and I thought the best person is Vijay.

I'll tell you why I thought you were the best person, is because when anyone asks what Bitcoin is, I keep stealing your line from when you were on, oh, what's his name's show; who's that guy?

Vijay Boyapati: Tom Woods?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, Tom Woods, and you're like, "It's like gold but with this magical property.  You can teleport it".  So I was like, there's no one better to get on than Vijay, so we're going to make the 101 Ultimate Bitcoin Guide; are you ready for this, man?

Vijay Boyapati: Awesome, I'm so ready.

Peter McCormack: Oh, man, let's do this.  Okay, let's kick this right off, because this is the perennial question, man, "What is Bitcoin?"

Vijay Boyapati: Okay, so Bitcoin is a new form of money that exists on the internet, and many people may not know that gold was money just 100 years ago.  And, the simplest way I like to describe Bitcoin is that it's digital gold, because it shares many of the properties that made gold fantastic as money for thousands of years except, like you said in the intro, it has this extra magical property that you can teleport it anywhere around the world; gold, you can't do that.

Peter McCormack: Okay, so why would I even care about gold?  Some of my friends would never have bought gold before, so why should they care about digital gold; what's the big deal with gold?

Vijay Boyapati: The big deal about gold is that you can hold your savings and never be afraid that they're going to be debased by a government.  That may not sound that interesting or relevant to people who live in the west, but if you've lived in a country like Zimbabwe or Venezuela or Argentina, then you really viscerally understand what it feels like to have your savings destroyed by a government mismanaging their monetary system.

The western monetary systems are not immune to this, and we are really in uncharted waters right now with the way central banks are managing monetary policy, so we don't know what the future is going to look like, and the ability to keep your savings free of debasement and confiscation is a very, very powerful thing that gold offered to people for thousands of years.

Peter McCormack: Okay, so one of the things about Bitcoin is right now, we've got to be honest, most people when they go and invest for the first time, a lot of people are going to find it difficult to be able to afford Bitcoin.  The last bull run, it wasn't so difficult, maybe around the $1,000, $2,000; that kind of time, people could it, even $5,000.  And the one before that, like $150; that's less challenging.  When we have something about $40,000, people are going to be looking at that thinking it's quite expensive.

We all know that they don't just need to think in terms of Bitcoin.  We know that there are eight decimal places and these things called sats.  So, just explain what Bitcoin and sats are and what the difference is and why that's important.

Vijay Boyapati: Yeah, absolutely.  So, the dollar and pound can be divided into smaller units, and the smallest unit is 1 cent, and there are 100 cents in a dollar.  Bitcoin is the same, and the smallest unit is called a satoshi.  The big difference is that a Bitcoin can be divided much more than a dollar or a pound, and there are 100 million satoshis per Bitcoin.  So if you wanted to, you could buy for instance 100 satoshis, or 100,000 satoshis, and only spend a few dollars to do that.

Peter McCormack: Right, so that's like an easier way for someone to get involved, not worrying about the fact they can't get a Bitcoin.  They could go and buy 1,000, 10,000, 50,000 satoshis, and are we saying that sats is now a term that people are starting to regularly use?

Vijay Boyapati: I think it's still a little uncommon.  I think it will become much more common because the price of Bitcoin has got so high, and a lot more people are not going to be able to afford a whole Bitcoin.  So, they're going to be thinking, "How much of a Bitcoin can I have?" and the unit that they'll be thinking of is satoshis.  So, I think within the next year or two, it's going to be much more common that it has been in the past.

Peter McCormack: Okay.  So, why should people actually care about Bitcoin, because for a lot of people, they're looking and they're going, "This is just some funny money on the internet"; why should they actually care?

Vijay Boyapati: So, money is the most important economic good in any developed society.  It's the foundation for all trade and savings.  And, Bitcoin is the most important, at least in my opinion, it's the most important innovation to money in 1,000 years.  Bitcoin makes it possible to do something that has literally never been possible to do in the history of the entire world, and that is to send value quickly and easily to anyone, anywhere on earth, without anyone's permission; as easily as sending an email.

One comparison I like to use is the printing press or the internet, and these are two things which in the early days, it wasn't obvious how important these things were going to be, or how big they would be.  But ultimately, they were transformational to society because they made something that is very important, which is the communication of information, much easier to do and it gave far more power to the individual.  Bitcoin is the same thing, except for the transmittal of value around the world.

Peter McCormack: Okay.  I just want to touch on that thing you say, "Without anyone's permission".  Vijay, if I wanted to send you some money, if I wanted to send you some dollars, I could send it through PayPal or send it through the bank; I don't have to get any permission to do that, do I?

Vijay Boyapati: Well, it depends on what your political views are!  I think more and more, people are realising that these large corporations have a tremendous amount of power to decide who is censored and who is not censored; and whether you agree or not with who they're censoring, it could be that at some point in the future, you're the person getting censoring.  And that's a really disturbing thing to happen, when your ability to communicate with others, or to send value to people you care about, is stopped by a corporation or by a government.

That's really something that Bitcoin disrupts and prevents.  No one has control and no one can prevent you from sending value to anyone that you want to send value to.

Peter McCormack: Okay, all right.  So, what else does Bitcoin fix?

Vijay Boyapati: So fundamentally, Bitcoin creates a foundation for a new financial system where individuals can keep their savings and transfer them without requiring anyone's permission.  And like we've talked about, for many people in the west, it's not immediately obvious why that's important.  But, anyone who grew up in a country where money was debased or where it was confiscated will know why that's really powerful.

Like I said, the monetary systems in the western nations are not immune from this.  We are wading into uncharted waters with central banks printing gigantic amounts of money.  We don't know how this experiment is going to end.  And, it could be that the western nations experience the same kinds of financial collapses that have been seen in places like Argentina; so it really is a great insurance policy against something like that.  And, it's just a very powerful feeling, if you've never experienced it before, to be able to hold your savings in your pocket and to go anywhere on earth without anyone stopping you.

So, you could cross a border with a USB drive holding $10 million, if you had $10 million, and no one would be the wiser.  It's a very, very powerful feeling, if you've ever experienced that; being able to keep your savings on you without anyone being able to interfere with that.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, it's interesting you should pick on Argentina, because I was in South America last year, and talking to people from Argentina, Bitcoin makes total sense to them.  When I try and explain it sometimes to my friends, it doesn't make total sense.  But, Argentina's been through multiple inflationary events, but also been through events where people haven't actually been able to go into the bank and get their money out.  They've actually been stopped from accessing their money, just due to incompetent central bank policy.

I think, what you're saying is, we're in unchartered territories with this COVID event, which has really sparked a situation whereby there are unprecedented levels of money printing; and, you're saying we could be heading towards those types of inflationary events; there is that risk?

Vijay Boyapati: Yeah, absolutely.  And, I think I would say we've been in unchartered waters since the Financial Crisis in 2007/2008, when central banks started printing money at unprecedented rates.  And really, the world has never been in a situation where interest rates have been zero for as long as they've been, so we don't know how this is going to end. 

It seems like everything is normal but we also, having experienced the Financial Crisis of 2008, we know how quickly things can turn and we know that things can go south very, very quickly.  Once confidence is lost in the financial system, it can disappear overnight.  So, I would say that the future is very, very uncertain.  Central bankers like to pretend that everything's okay, but we don't know. 

Having something that you can trust that doesn't rely on the whims of central bankers who really, honestly, I don't think know what they're doing, they're making this up as they go; having something that you can hold on to that no one else controls is a powerful thing.

Peter McCormack: Okay.  So, if anyone's listening and you want to take a little pause at this moment, I'd recommend you go and read The Bullish Case for Bitcoin.  It will be in the show notes; it is probably the best piece of writing about Bitcoin; it is done by our guest here, Vijay.  Go and check it out, because it's really important for this section now. 

I often send people to this.  I've often got it up in interviews as well, because I've got your chart.  But, what we're going to be talking about now is why Bitcoin is the best form of money, because Bitcoin is often compared to gold, fiat; some people don't even know the name "fiat", but fiat is the pounds and the dollars; it's often compared to both of them. 

Vijay and I as bitcoiners, we know that Bitcoin is the best form of money.  Trying to convince that to other people is quite a tricky thing, but this is what we're going to do in the next section.  So, Vijay, why is Bitcoin the best form of money?

Vijay Boyapati: Bitcoin is the best form of money because it has the properties that make for good money, and we've known what these properties are since the time of Aristotle, so we've known them for a very, very long time.  Divisibility: they can be divided into smaller units.  Durability: it can't be destroyed easily; so for instance, wheat is not a very good form of money.  Portability: so it's easier to transport; a cow is not very good money.  And, perhaps most importantly, is scarcity. 

Something that's super abundant, like sand, is not good as money because money fundamentally gets its value from its scarcity.  Anything that people perceive is very abundant is not going to very useful as money.

Peter McCormack: So, quite an interesting thing we can throw in there.  So always, I find, is a really good example is that cigarettes in prison are a great form of money?

Vijay Boyapati: Yeah, absolutely.  And part of that is because there is a perception of scarcity within the prison.  And, the thing that bootstraps the value of a cigarette in prison is that some people want to smoke and have an addiction to smoking, so it gives that sort of base demand.  Once there's that base demand, people realise, "Hey, this is useful for trade as well, because people will accept it".  Once they accept it, then you can use it for savings and you can use it for trade.

Peter McCormack: Another interesting one I found out recently was, in Africa, I think it's phone minutes, have become a form of currency.  And, I think that's because I think they're more stable as a form of currency as well than the local currency!

Vijay Boyapati: Yeah, I mean the phone companies probably don't print as many as the government prints money, so it wouldn't surprise me.  And again, there's that base demand that people have for wanting for make phone calls.  So, once you realise that that base demand is there, you can then sort of bootstrap value on top of that, which is the demand for savings and a demand for a medium of exchange.

Peter McCormack: Okay, so if we're comparing Bitcoin to fiat, which is the pounds, the dollars, etc, and gold, what are its advantages?

Vijay Boyapati: So, Bitcoin's primary advantage over gold is its portability.  It's really inconvenient to carry gold around, which is why most gold sits in a bank vault.  The problem with having gold in a bank vault is that you then have to trust the bank.

To give you an example of this, not at the individual level, but at the level of a nation state, Venezuela had a lot of its gold with The Bank of England and recently they said, "Hey, can we have our gold back?" and The Bank of England said, "No, we're not going to give you your gold back, because we don't like your government anymore".  And so, that's a real problem, that gold is inconvenient; and that inconvenience, its physicality, means that there's this tendency for storage being centralised in these institutions like banks, and then the banks have a lot of power and control over whether you can get your gold or not.

Bitcoin's primary advantage over fiat money is that you don't require the permission of governments or banks to use it, and all you really need is a connection to the internet to be able to use your Bitcoin.  The other big advantage over fiat money is that fiat money is debased over time by governments, and governments try and fund their operations through inflation, which means that anyone who's holding their money loses the value of that money over time.

So really, the twin pillars of Bitcoin's value proposition I see as, you can hold your money without anyone's permission; and, no one can debase the value of that money.

Peter McCormack: Let's focus on that debasing just for a moment, because I think for some people listening, they won't fully understand what that means.  I know for myself, before I got into Bitcoin, I didn't realise what inflation actually meant.  I knew it meant that price increases, but I thought that was a natural part of the economy; that was a natural growing economy, having an increase in prices.  I actually thought it was the sign of a successful economy.  That's a bit of a myth, right?

Vijay Boyapati: Yeah, absolutely right.  It's definitely a myth and it's a myth that governments try to foster, because they are the source of the inflation.  Governments have operations and they want to fund those operations and you can do that in two ways.  You can tax your citizens, go directly and say, "You're earning some money; I want to take a percentage of that", or you can inflate the money supply and tax them sort of insidiously so that they don't see that they're having their savings taken away from them.

The benefit, politically, of inflation is that people don't realise that their savings have been taken away.  It's very unpopular to tax people; it's very unpopular to go into someone's pocket and say, "I'm going to take 30% of what you just earned", so there's natural political pushback against that.  You can get much further with inflation and historically, governments wanted to fund wars with inflation; The Bank of England was created to fund a war.  And, it's very hard to get a population to get behind funding a war in another country, like France for instance in the 17th century, because, what good is that to me; why do I want to go over to that country and kill people; I don't want to pay for that?  So, you just inflate the money supply.

So, governments like inflation.  It lets them do things that otherwise would be politically much harder to do.  And, the losers are the people who are saving in the money of the nation.

Peter McCormack: All right.  What about its weaknesses; there must be some weaknesses to Bitcoin?

Vijay Boyapati: Yeah, I think because it's so new, it's still not easy enough to use.  And, people who are coming to Bitcoin with no experience in the space, maybe they're not computer scientists, they're not tech geeks, it might seem a little scary, rightly so.  I think there's still a lot of work that needs to be done to make Bitcoin much, much easier to use.

So, it's sort of similar to the internet in the early days.  My parents would have had no idea how to use the internet in the late 1990s, but now it's a very important part of their lives.  I think the same thing is going to be true for Bitcoin.  But, this also means that there's a huge opportunity for people who are willing to put in the effort and read about it and go figure it out and figure out how to go buy and own some Bitcoin and store it themselves; there's a huge, huge opportunity for those people to go ahead and put the work in.

Peter McCormack: So, is it a little bit like buying Amazon or Google one or two years after the launch of their business?

Vijay Boyapati: Yeah, but I think a better analogy would be to say, imagine that there was something which was a share of the internet; not a specific company, but a share of the internet in 1993, and you could buy a fraction of the internet.  That sounds like one of the greatest bets in history if you could have done that, and that's what I think Bitcoin is; it's buying a share of a new financial system, which I think is going to replace the global financial system in the next 20 years.

Peter McCormack: Well, I often talk about your percentage of the 21 million Bitcoin is your score; in some ways, it's a game.  You're saying it's a share; I'm saying it's a score.  But, what I see it as for me personally is, I'm stacking sats, I'm buying Bitcoin for that point whereby we do get to that kind of much wider adoption, and then I've got a much larger percentage of that and it gives me a much larger, like you say, share of that future financial system.  So, that's interesting.

Okay, could Bitcoin then end up destroying other currencies?

Vijay Boyapati: So, that's a great question.  I think first and foremost, I think people will no longer want to save in fiat currency, so when you think about saving in the future, you're going to think about Bitcoin.  And, when you think about spending, you might still think about using your nation's currency; and, that's not that crazy an idea.

In Argentina, for example, they've had several monetary crises over the last few decades.  People want to save in dollars; if they can, they'll save in dollars.  And, when they want to spend, they'll spend in pesos, because the peso loses value really quickly.  And I think that's pretty much a vision for what might happen in the future.  Nations are going to be very reluctant to get rid of their own money; but, even if their money exists, people won't want to use it for anything but that last minute spending.

When they're saying, "I went to work, I earned some money; I want to keep it in Bitcoin", I think that's going to be the mindset.

Peter McCormack: That's very interesting.  Okay, so this is a really important question, because I honestly, Vijay, for the last, I think, since -- well, the whole time I've done the podcasts, I've been telling people about Bitcoin, but I've really been on it since the start of COVID lockdowns back in March of last year, because we knew what was coming; we all saw the writing on the walls.  I've been trying to explain to people what inflation is, what the government printer means, why Bitcoin is a good investment; really struggled to convince people.  So, how do you convince the doubters?

Vijay Boyapati: Well, I don't want to sound too disappointing, or I don't want to disappoint you really, but I honestly don't think you can convince anyone.  I think everyone needs to feel like they've come to an understanding on their own.  And, for many people, that means they need to be exposed to an idea many times before they're willing to look into it themselves.

That's true for any new technology.  It was true for the internet; it's true for phones.  Some people are early adopters and they'll see a new thing and they want to try it straightaway and figure it out.  Other people will be sceptical and say, "That doesn't seem interesting or useful at all; I'm not going to even look at that". 

I have this idea that I've talked about a little bit on Twitter of touchpoints, and that's the number of times a person has to hear about something before they're willing to look into it.  And, each of Bitcoin's hype cycles, or market cycles, where it's gone through these huge booms and busts, is defined by a different cohort of people who are willing to look into Bitcoin.

So, the first cohort was the computer scientists and cryptographers, who already understood why Bitcoin was important.  The next cycle was early adopters and people who were willing to try new technology early on.  And then, after that, you got sort of early retail investors; and now, you're seeing a wider swathe of the community, people who are really interested in looking into Bitcoin because they've heard about it so many times.  They've heard about it in the past cycle; they've heard about it from their friend; they might have heard about it from their son or daughter; and they've received enough touchpoints that they've said, "Okay, this seems important.  I've heard about it from enough people I trust that I'm going to go look into it and maybe put a little bit of savings into Bitcoin".

Peter McCormack: One of the things I've been trying to do, because I've tried that explanation and I've also tried, when people ask me what Bitcoin is, to explain what it is.  One of the things I've been doing recently, Vijay, is I either say, "Download a wallet"; if I'm with somebody, I get them to download a wallet and I just send them $5 of Bitcoin.  That experience when they see it pop up on their screen, and then I say to them, "Is that was via the bank, the bank had to make that happen and have it sent to you.  If it was via PayPal, PayPal had to do that". 

I say, "What you've just seen happen, it went from my wallet on my phone to your wallet on your phone without any third party doing anything and nobody could stop it".  That's almost like a magical moment and once they've got a little bit of Bitcoin, you can usually get them to go that step further.  But, I appreciate what you're saying; it's just more of these touchpoints.

Okay, we're getting into some really important questions now.  This one, at the moment, keeps coming in; I've had it happen to me three times.  Only the other day, one of my friends, when Bitcoin was around $27,000, was thinking of investing and it went up to $40,000.  She said, "I can't do it; it's too expensive now".  But, Vijay, come on, are we too late; is Bitcoin too expensive?

Vijay Boyapati: No, I definitely don't think we're too late and I think anyone who's listening to your show is very, very early.  I think the question is like asking, am I late to the internet, in 1999; and, to give an example of that, if you'd bought Amazon at the absolute peak of the dotcom bubble and you'd held on to it, you'd be up 15,000% or some huge number now. 

So, locally in that period of time, it might have felt really hard and, "Oh, man, the value of my stocks have crashed"; but really, when you zoom out and you look back in time, you realise that we were really, really early in the internet in 1999 and much of the value creation was to come in the future.  This is sort of a lesson in history, that people tend to overestimate the importance of something in the short term, but they underestimate it in the long term; and, I think that's definitely true of Bitcoin.  I think people are underestimating how important this is going to be in the long term. 

So, when I talk about Bitcoin, a lot of people like to talk about, "The price is going to be so-and-so in the next month or in the next year"; I really have a time horizon of 20 to 50 years when I think Bitcoin will transform the world.  Whatever happens in the meantime before then, I could be wrong, I could be right about my predictions, but I have very, very high confidence this is going to transform the world for my children.

Peter McCormack: Well, we're going to get into some of the monetary policy soon, but I say to people, "There's no point investing if you're not willing to hold for a minimum of four years from any point you start investing".  I always say, "You've got to be patient and play the long game here, but the reality is probably a few tens of millions of people may own Bitcoin.  We're talking about billions of people on the planet, we're talking about only 21 million Bitcoin existing.  The fundamentals of supply and demand say, if demand continues to increase, which it has through its entire life cycle, then the price will continue to go up"; which takes me to another point, which is the volatility.

I think this is something else that puts some people off.  They think it can't be money because it's volatile; they're scared to invest because it's volatile; most people are scared.  I had it the other day.  Someone sent me a text.  They'd bought in at $36,000, it dropped to $33,000 and they panicked and sold.  So, let's talk about volatility.

Vijay Boyapati: Yeah, so I think you need to start by answering the question of, "Why is Bitcoin volatile?" and there is literally no way you can have an asset go from zero to being a world reserve currency, which is worth trillions of dollars, without volatility in between; it's not possible.  So, the volatility is really a function of more people deciding to save in Bitcoin, which raises its price.  And right now, just like you said, there's only a few percent of the world who own Bitcoin. 

When Bitcoin reaches widespread adoption, the volatility in its price is going to decrease significantly, because there are not going to be new savings flowing into Bitcoin.  It will have volatility which is comparable to gold, when gold was money, which is it might move a percent up or down over a year, but it's going to be very, very stable.

Until we get there though, you should expect volatility.  It's the volatility of massive amounts of new savings moving into Bitcoin and then, sometimes it gets ahead of itself and some people panic, and then it will pull back a little bit.  That's where the volatility is coming from.  It should be expected.  But, we should also expect that as it becomes globally adopted, that volatility is going to drop significantly.

Peter McCormack: Okay, so if I'm interested, I thinking, "Right, Vijay, you're talking a good game here, I think I want some Bitcoin.  I can't afford $40,000.  What do I do; where do I start?"

Vijay Boyapati: So, we talked about this earlier, the idea that Bitcoin can be divided and if you want, you don't need to buy a whole Bitcoin.  You can go out and buy a fraction of a Bitcoin.  You can buy, say, 10,000 satoshis, or 100,000 satoshis, which you can do for a few dollars today.  And, some people do that; they do this on a regular basis and it's called Dollar Cost Averaging, or if you're a Brit, Pound Cost Averaging.  It doesn't sound quite as good, but…!

Peter McCormack: No, it's not!  I actually did it today, I told my friend, "You have to Dollar Cost Average"!

Vijay Boyapati: Yeah, so you can dollar cost average, you can periodically buy small amounts of Bitcoin to accumulate your savings in Bitcoin, and some people do this through their paycheque.  They will take out a fraction of their paycheque, say 5% or 10%, and use that to save some Bitcoin every month.

Peter McCormack: Okay, well maybe I've gone a step further, Vijay.  Maybe I've been to Coinbase or Kraken and I've had a look and I'm thinking of buying, and I've seen that there's these other things.  There's Bitcoin Cash, there's Ethereum, there's all these other cryptocurrencies.  Some of them seem cheaper; maybe they can go up to $40,000.  Maybe I'll make a lot more money if I invest in them.  I know why we shouldn't, but you tell anyone listening why they need to focus on Bitcoin only?

Vijay Boyapati: Yeah, I think it's very dangerous to get fixated on the nominal price of something.  And, choosing to buy one of these altcoins versus Bitcoin, in my mind, is like saying, "Should I buy Enron at $1, or should I buy Amazon at $50?"  The vast majority of these altcoins are outright scams that were created to make the founders of these coins rich.  That's not true of all of them, but the vast majority, so you have to be very, very careful out there.

I don't think people who are new to this market should overthink it.  This is a winner-take-all market, as it is in any market where there's a strong network effect.  And, the safest thing to do is to put your money in the asset or the company, or whatever it is, that has the biggest lead, or has the lead.  In the case of cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin has a massive lead; it's not even close. 

So, you could have said the same thing about social networks in, say, 2010, "Do I put some money in Myspace, or do I put some money in Facebook?  Facebook seems really expensive; Myspace is much smaller".  But, it's a winner-take-all market and Facebook took the entire market, and Myspace is dead.  If you actually look at the history of altcoins, the vast majority of them die after a couple of years, because there really isn't anything to them except a means of making money for their founders.

Peter McCormack: Right, so it's a bit like, there's only one eBay really; there's only one Amazon; within technology you tend to get these kinds of monopolies because of the network effect and Bitcoin has the biggest network effect.  That makes sense and I'm in, you know that.

So, let's teach people a little bit about how Bitcoin works, because it is this unusual thing.  When you hear about it, you're like, "What?  It's a money that nobody controls; it's not backed by anyone; how does it work?"  Come on Vijay, how does Bitcoin work?

Vijay Boyapati: So, I think the way we should start is to understand how banks work.  When you have money in a bank, the bank just records your balance on a computer somewhere; and, when you transfer money, so when I'm transferring some money from me to you at the bank, the bank just decreases my balance on the computer and increases your balance.

Another way of explaining this is the bank has a ledger of all of the balance information of all of its customers; that is how much does each person own.  And, that's how a centralised system works; that's how a bank works internally.

With Bitcoin, the ledger isn't stored on a single computer; it's stored on thousands of computers around the internet.  And, the real trick of Bitcoin is how these computers coordinate to keep a consistent record of how many Bitcoins each person has without anyone cheating.  And, that was really the genius of Bitcoin's invention.  It's a system that has a perfect balance of economic incentives, coupled with the use of cryptography, that allows the ledger of balance information to be spread across the world without any centralised point of control.

I don't want to go into the specific details about how that decentralised system works, but just to say that I think Bitcoin is so revolutionary to both economics and computer science, that I think its inventor, Satoshi Nakamoto, should be given a Nobel Prize in Economics and the Turing Award for Computer Science, because it's just an incredible breakthrough in computer science and economics.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, so what I would say, if anyone is listening and they're thinking, "What?  What was all that about?"  The tech stuff you get, it takes some time.  I've got plenty of shows about it; you can go spend some time learning about it.  I think the first point is to understand the economics of it first and realise it's something you want to invest in, and then go and spend some time understanding the technology.  But, it really is a revolutionary system.

The thing I really like about it, Vijay, is this decentralisation concept we're going to come to, the fact that it is spread all over the world.  So, we'll do some more of that in a bit of detail later, but you just mentioned Satoshi Nakamoto; we know who that isn't, but who is it?

Vijay Boyapati: Well we don't know much about the person who created Bitcoin, except the pseudonym that they used to post to various mailing lists, announcing Bitcoin and explaining Bitcoin to people.  And amazingly, just a few years after he invented Bitcoin, he disappeared from the internet.  So, someone who created a system that will soon be worth over $1 trillion is completely unknown to us and I think it's literally the greatest mystery of the last century.

He mined a bunch of Bitcoin in the early days which have never been spent, never been transferred.  And, if this Bitcoin bull market goes up as high as the previous ones have gone, Satoshi Nakamoto is going to be the richest person on earth, based on the Bitcoins he mined, and that's an incredible thing.  The richest person on earth will be completely unknown to the world.

Peter McCormack: And may never even spend that money.

Vijay Boyapati: Yeah, he hasn't spent it in ten years and it's never moved, so it's highly unlikely that it's ever going to be spent.  Either he threw away the private keys which give him control of those Bitcoins, or he died, or we don't know what happened.  But, those Bitcoins are worth tens of billions of dollars.  So, there already has been a huge incentive to spend them and he hasn't spent them, so it's very unlikely that they're ever going to be spent.

Peter McCormack: I would also argue, it's actually one of the features of Bitcoin, one of the benefits, that we don't know who it is; that we don't actually have this leader to look towards to make decisions.  But, that puts us to another point; it's like, well, if we don't have a leader, who actually runs Bitcoin?

Vijay Boyapati: That's a great question and that's a great point that you make, that there's no central point of control.  And, having a founder for a cryptocurrency that's around is actually a big disadvantage, because they become a point of pressure that governments can sort of coerce and try to influence and say, "Well, could you add this back door in for us?"

So, with Bitcoin, anyone can participate on the Bitcoin Network by downloading the free software and running it on their computer, so no one controls Bitcoin; everyone can participate.  It's a completely free and open system.

Peter McCormack: Amazing.  Okay, I think that's another one I think it people want to find out a bit more about, they can go down the rabbit hole later.

Okay, how do we know this is going to work though, Vijay?  Could it fail; could I put some money in and it will all collapse and fail?

Vijay Boyapati: We don't know that it will work.  It's still an experiment, I think, but it's already very obvious that it's shown a huge amount of promise.  We didn't know that the internet would work when it was first created in the 1990s either, but because it dramatically improved on a fundamental human need, it turned into this massive thing that we all depend on today.  And, as long as humans have the desire to keep their savings safe and desire to have the freedom to take their savings wherever they want, Bitcoin will have demand.

So, I have a lot of confidence that this is going to work, because I think those human needs are very, very important and they're not going to go away.

Peter McCormack: And arguably, it just seems to get stronger and stronger with every cycle.  I've kind of been through two, but this is my second proper one, but it feels a lot stronger, both as a group of developers working on it, the competence of the technology, the tools available, the regulatory environment; it just feels like Bitcoin is getting stronger and stronger.  And, if it was going to die, it probably would have and should have in the early days.  That's a story for another day, all the things that Bitcoin has survived, but I would say Bitcoin is just getting stronger and stronger.

Okay, so people are listening, they're like, "Vijay, I'm in, man; I want to become a bitcoiner.  How do I do this; how do I get my hands on some Bitcoin?"

Vijay Boyapati: That's in the same way you'd buy a foreign currency.  So, if you have dollars and you want to buy British pounds, you'd go to a foreign currency exchange and you'd give them your dollars and get pounds back.  So, with Bitcoin, it's the same thing, but you have to find a Bitcoin exchange that takes your local currency and allows you to buy Bitcoin with it. 

Some of the big ones, if your listeners are interested in going and buying some Bitcoin, are Kraken, Binance and Coinbase, and there's a whole bunch of others that are specific to various nations around the world.  So, you would need to find out what's available in your country, and go there, deposit some of your nation's currency and go ahead and buy some Bitcoin.

Peter McCormack: And, is it easy to spend Bitcoin; should I spend it; how do I spend it?

Vijay Boyapati: Well, there are two ways.  You can either sell your Bitcoins back to your local currency and then, use your local currency to go and buy whatever you want; or, you can find a merchant that accepts Bitcoin and spend it that way directly. 

Right now, the number of merchants who are accepting Bitcoin directly is relatively small and that is a function of the fact that Bitcoin is still not widely adopted.  As Bitcoin's adoption grows and the number of people around the world that hold Bitcoin, the number of merchants that will accept Bitcoin will grow. 

So, some people have been very focussed on building out infrastructure for allowing people to spend Bitcoin and merchants to accept Bitcoin.  I think that's kind of a waste of time at this stage, because we're still at that point of adoption, where people are putting savings into Bitcoin.  When there is widespread adoption of Bitcoin as a savings tool, people will use it to spend, and that's when we should work on merchant adoption.

Peter McCormack: All right.  Vijay, I've been aware of Bitcoin for some time and every now and again, I'm hearing and seeing stories of people who've had their Bitcoin stolen or lost it, or lost passwords and that Bitcoin's worth millions of dollars.  I'm a bit worried about security; what do I do; where do I even start with my Bitcoin security?

Vijay Boyapati: So, for most people when they decide to buy Bitcoin, I think probably the safest thing to do is just keep it on the exchange where you buy the Bitcoin.  And, these exchanges act a little bit like banks, custodying your funds and keeping your funds for you.  Once you start to learn a little bit more about Bitcoin, you might want to figure out how to store your Bitcoins on a hardware wallet, which is kind of like a USB drive. 

The amazing thing about using a hardware wallet and storing your own Bitcoins, is that you can carry your wealth around wherever you go.  Once you experience it, it is a very, very powerful feeling to be able to carry your wealth in your pocket like that.  But, there is a learning curve and for people who are new to Bitcoin, it may take some time.  So I would say, when you first come to Bitcoin, it's okay to store them on an exchange until you've figured it out and figured out how to use a hardware wallet and some of the technical details involved.

For some people, maybe they'll never figure that out, so my parents may never be able to figure that out, and they'll keep their Bitcoins on an exchange.  That's okay.  A future where Bitcoin is widely adopted is still going to have financial institutions that help people out with keeping their savings.

Peter McCormack: I've had a few people get in touch recently and ask about hardware wallets and what should they do.  I say, "Look, if you're going to do it, here are a few steps.  Firstly, choose the one you want to buy and once you've ordered it, set it up and write down your seed phrase, which is your backup phrase".  And then I say, "Just put $10 worth in.  Once that's done, wipe the device and restore it from the seed phrase.  If the $10 are still there, you're set up and you've backed up.  But, that seed phrase is really important".  I think I took that from our mutual friend, Stephan Livera; I think that's his steps.

Right, I've got some, I'm interested, I've bought it, I've secured it; I want to learn a bit more about Bitcoin's monetary policy, because this is really important.  I always hear about this 21 million fixed cap.  Firstly, why is it 21 million; why is it fixed; why can't it be more?  I know my government prints more money as we need it.  Why is it fixed to 21 million and why is that important?

Vijay Boyapati: So, Bitcoin is unique as a monetary asset in that it has ultimate scarcity; there will never be more than 21 million Bitcoins ever produced.  And, the majority of them, a little less than 19 million, have already been produced.  We know that fiat money is not scarce.  The US Federal Reserve, for example, just created trillions of dollars in the last year; and even gold isn't scarce, because the supply of gold increases by about 2% every year.  And, if anyone figures out how to mine gold more efficiently, that number could go up a lot.

This is really the first time in history that we've had an asset which has ultimately scarcity and it's a really important property, because it makes it very desirable as a place to keep your savings.

Peter McCormack: Okay.  So, does that mean essentially, if there are only 21 million, the value or the price of Bitcoin could essentially, on a long enough timeframe, just continually go up?

Vijay Boyapati: No.  That would be nice!  It can go up to the point where Bitcoin represents all the savings on earth and at that point, it will go up at the same rate as the savings of the earth go up, which is how productive are people in their country at producing new goods. 

When Bitcoin becomes global money, it essentially is a representation of the value of all assets on earth.  And yes, the value of all assets on earth can go up as we produce new assets.  So, it won't go up at the speed it's going up now, but it will go up at the speed of human productivity, which is usually 5% to 7% per year of productivity growth.

Peter McCormack: So, that's a really important point, because you have two choices.  Well, you have a choice to ignore this all, but you really have a choice to get in now before it becomes global money; or, you get in when it is global money because that's all people will accept.  We're talking about it like it's inevitable!

Vijay Boyapati: Yeah, absolutely.  At least, I think it's inevitable on a long enough time horizon.  That's the great thing about Bitcoin.  It doesn't matter if you're the last one in line.  If you are the last one in line, well then you're not going to get 10,000% returns, but you can expect to get returns equal to the productivity of the human race.

Over time, the human race has been pretty ingenious at inventing new things, building new things and making our lifestyle improve, so I think as a foundation for the world monetary system, Bitcoin will make the world more productive.  It's an honest money, it can't be controlled or debased, and it's going to make people much more productive.  So, you will enjoy the fruits of that just by holding Bitcoin, even if you're the last one in line.

Peter McCormack: You mentioned mining earlier, and I've heard about this mining, but I don't really understand it.  How much about Bitcoin mining do I need to know right now?

Vijay Boyapati: So, miners are computers that participate on the Bitcoin Network, and their job is to verify transactions as being legitimate; for example, that you're not trying to send me more Bitcoins than you actually have.  Miners are rewarded for the work they do by being given Bitcoins every time they verify a batch of transactions.  The number of Bitcoins rewarded for each batch of transactions is fixed, but that fixed number gets reduced by half every four years. 

So, in the first four years, miners were given 50 Bitcoins for every batch of transactions they verified; then it became 25 after four years; and 12.5.  And, the Bitcoin halving happened last year; now the number of Bitcoins that are given to a miner when they verify a batch of transactions is 6.25 Bitcoins.  Eventually, the reward that miners get will go to zero and no new Bitcoins will be mined, and then miners will have to rely entirely on transaction fees to be compensated.

Peter McCormack: Okay.  Can we go back to this decentralisation thing, because we talked about it a little bit earlier and I know it's important and I keep hearing about it, but I don't fully understand what it means and why it's important?

Vijay Boyapati: Yeah.  So, decentralisation means that there's no central point of control, and it's important because it means that there's no way to shut Bitcoin down without really shutting down the entire internet, which is never going to happen.  There's no office that you can go to and stay, "Stop doing this or we'll throw you in jail".  So, it's a new monetary system that exists without the permission of any corporation or any government; and, it something that inherently increases human freedom, because you don't have to get permission from someone else to use it.

Peter McCormack: Also, I keep hearing about this blockchain thing everywhere; companies are blockchaining, people are blockchain consultants.  What is the blockchain; how important is it; do I need to care about it?

Vijay Boyapati: Well, it's a technical detail about how Bitcoin works, and whether you need to know about it or not depends on your level of curiosity.  But, Bitcoin's blockchain is the full financial history of all transactions that ever happened on the Bitcoin Network; and, a copy of the blockchain is kept by all computers that are running on the Bitcoin Network.

It's a completely open and transparent record that allows anyone, who's running a computer on the Bitcoin Network, to independently verify that all transactions are legitimate and that no one's cheating by trying to give themselves more Bitcoin, for instance.

Peter McCormack: Okay, I've also heard about this thing, censorship resistance.  I've heard this is really important; this is one of the base use cases of Bitcoin.  So, what is censorship resistance and how does this relate to Bitcoin?

Vijay Boyapati: Censorship resistance means that no one controls the Bitcoin Network, so no one can censor your ability to keep and to transfer your Bitcoins.  So, a government can't say, "Hey, we don't like your political views, so we're going to prevent you from receiving money to your account.  So, anyone can create a Bitcoin address, if they have a computer, and then they can receive Bitcoins from anyone, anywhere on earth, and that doesn't require anyone else's permission to do that.  So, that's what censorship resistance is.

Peter McCormack: Pretty fucking neat, man!  All right, we're going to have to talk about the Lightning Network now, because we're not going to get into the history of block size and block size wars; people have got other shows people can go and check out about that.  But, one of the things we need to talk about is the fact that Bitcoin is great for sending large amounts of money, but as those amounts of money get smaller, certainly sub-$100, definitely sub-$10, it's not the most efficient system to use.  Therefore, it's not an efficient payment system for small amounts of money.

Now, you and I know that the Lightning Network is something that offers this, but can you explain what the Lightning Network is and why that's important to Bitcoin?

Vijay Boyapati: Yeah, that's a great way to explain it, Pete.  Bitcoin is really good for large value transfers and, when you send Bitcoins, there's a transaction fee that the miners charge you to send Bitcoin.  And, for large value transfers, the transaction fee's negligible, but if you're sending small amounts of money, it can feel costly to send, say, $10 if you have a fee of 50 cents; that feels quite expensive.

So, the Lightning Network is a system that's built on top of Bitcoin that allows people to send Bitcoins more cheaply than using the regular Bitcoin network.  The analogy I like to use about this is gold.  You might be confused about why, but if you go back to the 19th century when gold was money, it was really cumbersome to move gold around; so, they invented this thing called "A promissory note", which said, "This note is worth 5 ounces of gold".  Then, you could easily transport the piece of paper around and take it to a bank, for instance, and say, "Now, I want to get my 5 ounces of gold", and it really improved the efficiency of transmitting gold around the world; you could just transmit the paper.

The Lightning Network is sort of a similar idea.  It makes it less costly to send Bitcoin around the world and send small amounts of Bitcoin around the world.  The Lightning Network is actually much, much more powerful than this example or analogy I give of promissory notes, because promissory notes have this element of trust where you have to trust the institution that gave you the promissory note.  The Lightning Network doesn't need trust in that same way, but it gives you a flavour for why it's useful.  It makes sending small amounts of Bitcoin much cheaper.

Peter McCormack: All right, okay.  Now we need to get into the risks before we cover some of the FUD.  But, is there any significant risk of a catastrophic bug that can destroy Bitcoin, or any technical issues that are a significant risk for Bitcoin?

Vijay Boyapati: Bitcoin is built on top of cryptography, which is the field of codes and codebreaking and in the beginning, it wasn't entirely clear whether the software was free of bugs.  Over the years, a lot of really brilliant minds have tried to break the Bitcoin protocol, and it's become more and more clear that the software is sound and doesn't have any bugs.

Of course, it could be possible that at some point, someone breaks the cryptography, or invents something like a quantum computer that breaks the cryptography, but I think at this point, these are outlier risks, and I sort of view it in the same vein as like a gold meteorite hitting the earth and reducing the value of all the gold on earth.  It's possible, sure it's possible, but I think at this stage, it's an outlier risk that I don't really worry about very much.

Peter McCormack: Okay.  Are there any regulatory risks?

Vijay Boyapati: Yeah, I mean governments can try to regulate Bitcoin, they could try to ban Bitcoin, and various governments have tried to ban Bitcoin over the years.  The Chinese government famously has tried to ban Bitcoin like ten times.  But ultimately, you can't stop Bitcoin without shutting down the whole internet, which no country is going to do because it would totally impoverish the population of that country.

Governments can, however, try to make it harder for you to buy and sell Bitcoins for your local currency by regulating the exchanges; but in the west at least, in the western countries, most governments haven't shown much of an interest in doing this, because the desire to foster innovation has been much greater than the desire to crackdown on monetary competition.  I think it's kind of an open question whether governments will be as friendly to Bitcoin in the future, and I think that basically comes down to whether Bitcoin grows a large enough base of users and advocates that will make it politically unfeasible to want to regulate Bitcoin in the future. 

An example of this that I like to give is the company, Uber.  Uber would go into cities around the world, and there were entrenched lobbies that were very antagonistic to Uber and who want Uber kicked out, and they would lobby their local government to get Uber banned or regulated.  But, because Uber would go in, very quickly get a base of users and drivers, they were natural advocates for Uber and it became very difficult, politically, to shut Uber down in a lot of these locations, because politicians trying to regulate Uber would have literally thousands of people showing up saying, "Hey, don't do that, we really want Uber, we user Uber all the time [or] I make money from Uber".

The same thing is going to be true for Bitcoin.  Once you have a population that has savings in Bitcoin, they're going to become natural advocates for Bitcoin.  And, I believe, in the next four years, when we see the first big wave of regular people getting savings in Bitcoin, there's going to be a shift in the kind of people who are elected to office in places like the UK and in America, and people will be much friendlier to Bitcoin.

An example of this is, there's a US Senator who was just elected who's very pro Bitcoin and is a long-time holder of Bitcoin.  She's the first of many, I think; her name's Cynthia Lummis.  And four years from now, I think there's going to be more than a handful of people just like her in Congress.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  Senator Lummis has been on the show; you can go and check out the previous ones and listen to my interview with her.  She's very pro-Bitcoin.  I think, is it Warren Davidson; I think maybe he's in Ohio?  He's quite pro-Bitcoin as well.  And, the other key point is, as certain markets become perhaps more, I don't know, put in stricter regulations, it creates opportunities for other jurisdictions.  We know that Malta is friendly; we know that Estonia's friendly; we know that in the States, Wyoming is friendly.  And, what that actually leads to is a brain drain from other certain regions into these regulatory-friendly areas, so I'm less worried.

Okay.  So, next: can I lose all my money in Bitcoin, Vijay?

Vijay Boyapati: I think the downside risk of investing in Bitcoin is much, much lower than it was, even just a few years ago.  In the first few years when Bitcoin was created, one of the refrains that you'd hear from people about investing in Bitcoin is that, "Just put 1% of your portfolio into Bitcoin and if it goes to zero, that's okay, because you're not going to even notice it".  Anyone who actually did that, put 1% of their portfolio in Bitcoin in 2012 or 2013 or 2014, made a lot of money.  But, I personally think that number could be much higher than that 1% now, depending on your risk tolerance and your age, because the risk profile of Bitcoin is much lower than it was in 2012.

In 2012, we had no idea what governments were going to do about Bitcoin.  We didn't completely know if the protocol was safe from bugs.  There was still the risk of, "What is Bitcoin?" and there was this fork that happened in 2017, where Bitcoin split into kind of two versions and one them is basically dead right now; and we just have the Bitcoin we know and love.  So, there were all of these risks and all of those risks are gone.

I think the vast majority of risk in Bitcoin is gone.  The only risk that's ahead of us in a nation state attack, and I view that as kind of an outlier risk; it still exists.  But, even that risk has been reduced substantially.

Peter McCormack: I say bring it on; we'll defeat it!  Okay, so I think they're really interesting points.  It's funny, I can even say for myself, personally, the most Bitcoin I've ever bought with cash from my bank account has been with Bitcoin over $10,000 and I've been in Bitcoin since, gosh, properly late 2016, early 2017.  My conviction goes up as the price goes up. 

My conviction goes up also with the amount of companies that have got involved this year, which we could talk about.  But also, on the regulatory side, we kind of have regulatory acceptance, rather than outright bannings.  I know it's banned in China, essentially, and I think Bolivia as well, and I think there's another country; but generally speaking, we have regulations which have restrictions around KYC and monitoring who's using it, but not outright bans, so I'm less worried about that now.

Okay.  I've heard Bitcoin is slow, it's expensive to use if I want to send money; we talked about it earlier.  It's great if I want to send -- basically, it becomes more efficient the more money you're sending on it.  But, if I want to send you $10 now, Vijay, it would be slow and expensive and I've heard that's a bad thing?

Vijay Boyapati: Yeah, so Bitcoin is actually much faster than the traditional banking system.  So, you're talking about small amounts, but let's say if you're sending millions of dollars to someone in another country, first of all you'd have to fill out a bunch of paperwork and provide ID, and then you'd have to wait three days for that transfer to actually be cleared.  With Bitcoin, you know your money has made it to the other person in less than an hour, so that's actually a huge win over the traditional financial system. 

When you're talking about small amounts of money, like sending me, say, $10 on PayPal, that's not quite the same thing, because you're not sending money to me, you're just transferring money on PayPal.  PayPal still has control over that, so it's a little bit of an apples and oranges comparison.

When you're talking about transfer, a real transfer from one person to the other where they completely control it, it's not in the hands of another institution, Bitcoin is orders of magnitude faster than any alternative.

Peter McCormack: Okay.  We're nearly there.  Okay, let's talk about the environment.  I've heard Bitcoin is killing the polar bears; it's melting the ice caps.  I think the latest country measure is, it uses more electricity than Pakistan.  Is this right; is Bitcoin killing the environment?

Vijay Boyapati: So, Bitcoin mining requires the expenditure of energy and some people are worried that if Bitcoin were to succeed and become global money, that the amount of power consumed would be bad for the environment.  There are two reasons, I think, not to worry about this.

The first is you have to compare Bitcoin to its direct competitors and the competitors that it would disrupt if it became global money.  The first competitor is gold.  Gold mining is far more destructive than Bitcoin mining.  It produces toxic chemicals that are dumped into the environment.  So, Bitcoin disrupting gold would actually be really great for the environment.

When you compare it to its other competitor, which is the fiat monetary system, you can't just measure the cost of running the banks, the electricity to run banks and ATMs and all that financial infrastructure; you have to recognise that fiat money has no value without the military might to back it.  A nation that can't defend itself will have worthless money and the cost of managing a military is actually pretty massive when you think about it.

The other thing that I think is really important to note about Bitcoin mining is, it tends to gravitate to places where there is an overcapacity of energy production; places like Sichuan in China where they massively overbuilt their hydroelectric dams, and they don't have enough people to use that energy.  Most of that energy just goes to waste; it's just thrown away.  It's places like that, which are usually green sources of energy and very low cost, that Bitcoin mining gravitates towards.  So, the carbon footprint of Bitcoin mining is actually very, very low.

Peter McCormack: All right.  What about the fact I've heard Bitcoin's only used by drug dealers and terrorists and for shutting down the computer systems of hospitals and used for ransom.  Is it just a criminal money?

Vijay Boyapati: So, Bitcoin is actually pretty terrible as a currency for criminals and for drug dealers, because the blockchain records all transactions that have ever been made; and, these remain public forever.  So, police can do a forensic analysis and trace transactions from years ago to figure out crimes that took place.

US dollars, in the form of cash, are actually much more anonymous than Bitcoin.  And, just looking at it empirically, drug dealers and terrorists much, much prefer US dollars to any other currency.  So, we should really be banning the US dollar.

Peter McCormack: Oh, Vijay!  Come on, man, you can't say that; you're going to scare people!  No, I agree with you, dude.  Fuck the US dollar!

All right, final question before we wrap up, man: nobody's using Bitcoin anyway, so why the hell should I buy it?

Vijay Boyapati: So, this comes up a little bit, and the confusion people have, I've found is, when they say Bitcoin is not being used, they think the purpose of money is just to buy things and to spend.  And this, in my opinion, is an unfortunate consequence of the failure of modern economics to explain that money serves more than one purpose.  And in fact, historically, money has not just been used to spend, but also to save.

Someone who's saving in Bitcoin and merely holding that Bitcoin, is actually using it for the purpose of saving.  By saving in Bitcoin, they're transporting the fruits of their labour into the future without fear of debasement or confiscation which is, to me, one of the most powerful uses that you can have for money.

Peter McCormack: Amazing.  Well listen, we've dumped a whole load of information on people here; I think it's a really good start.  Now, I know some people are going to feel overwhelmed; they're going to be like, "What?  What was all that?"  Look, the thing about Bitcoin is, it rewards investment; not of just money, but your time to go in and learn.

I would say, if you've got the remotest amount of interest right now, there are a few things you need to do.  Go and read Vijay's article, The Bullish Case for Bitcoin.  It accompanies this very well.  A couple of years ago, I think, it was written.  We also made a podcast about it.  I think it's a really good starting point.  I would recommend buying $50 of Bitcoin and just moving around and have a play.  Go and listen to some podcasts, not just mine; there are some other great shows.  But, just go and embed yourself in.

I don't know anybody really, I can't think of anybody I know, who's invested in Bitcoin and stuck around for a couple of years who regrets it.  I think almost every single person who's stuck around, hodled, not traded their way out, I think everybody is happy they made that decision.  You got any last comments, Vijay, anything you want to tell anyone?

Vijay Boyapati: Yeah, I completely agree with everything you said, and I think it's one of the greatest returns on investment and time that you can make.  So, now is a perfect time to learn about Bitcoin.  It's still so early.  This is a 50-year project at least, and we're in the earliest days of it.  It's going to transform the way the world works and it's going to make the world a better place, I think, for my kids.

So, it's a really exciting time.  I think you should go out and learn as much as you can about Bitcoin and I like the way you said it, Pete; go and buy some Bitcoin, even if it's a small amount.  You don't have to have a huge amount in your portfolio, but you shouldn't have zero.  Zero doesn't make any sense.  This is one of the most exciting innovations to money in 1,000 years.  So, be involved, get involved; it's an exciting time.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, get in there, stack sats, hodl that shit, get on Twitter, see what people are talking about, learn as much as you can; you won't regret it.  As long as you stick around for a few years, you won't regret it.

Vijay, man, listen, I appreciate you so much.  I love all the work you do.  It's good to get to know you.  Hopefully, once all this COVID shit's over, we can actually hang out and cook a steak up at some point.  But, look, I appreciate everything you do; I'm always here for you.  Anything you need, you give me a shout.

Vijay Boyapati: Cool.  Thanks, Pete, it's always awesome to chat with you and I do hope this year will be the year we can actually meet!

Peter McCormack: Yeah, all right, man.  You take care, brother.

Vijay Boyapati: Thanks, Pete.