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30:55 George Selgin: Yes, one thing that’s I think ironic about this development is that the more central banks move in the direction of getting rid of ordinary cash, paper money, into digitization of their currencies the more demand I think there will ultimately be for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. 33:20 George Selgin: Because the Venmo and other dollar-based, just to pick on the dollar-based digital payments media that we’ve seen are developing substantially in the last few years, the so-called real-time payments media, they do ultimately take advantage of an established infrastructure, payments infrastructure. 40:13 George Selgin: So it’s not that the dollar payment system is itself a clumsy system, it could be much improved and it probably will be, but we now have, for example, private real-time dollar payments arrangements where for a very, very small amount, you can have instantaneous dollar payments on a private network with some Fed involvement, yes, but relatively little. And this is similar because there’s not only the short-term volatility of crypto, in terms of its relationship to fiat currencies in various countries, but policy in the US and many other countries right now is such that you have to record its, it’s treated like property, and so it would be a bit like using bits of housing as a medium of payment that the tax authority will say, if in the time that you’ve held this you’ve earned some in terms of dollars, you have to declare that as tax.

I’ve already researched Bitcoin exchanges and compared their terms of use, privacy, security statements, and reviews by other customers. But before we delve right into the regulation bit, here is a refresher that states which key individuals are in charge in regard to these exchanges. And of course, we see in the world today the overwhelming tendency, not entirely driven by regulation and government, but to a significant extent spontaneous for particular currency standards to dominate whole economies and sometimes to dominate the world economy, as the dollar has been doing for some time. If it was worth less, then the currency wouldn’t be fungible, resulting in a monetary system that would be essentially unusable (just imagine checking to make sure every bill you ever receive was actually worth the value on its label). 28:04 Trevor Burrus: Gemini, it was like first the revolution then comes the rules or the regulations.

We like to embrace the new thing, and if a lot of cool new things are enabled by using this, we’ll end up using it not because we are digital gold bugs or not because we’re preppers who want an alternative to the dollar, but simply because it comes along with the cool, fun new social media tech. The irreversibility of bitcoin exchanges also comes as a danger. ₿980,000 have been stolen from cryptocurrency exchanges. Does it still have any hope of becoming the global currency, or www.youtube.com even seeing anything like widespread use? And on that point, don’t we even see that in some countries where currencies have failed, like Venezuela, or relatively failed, and more transactions have occurred in the crypto world because it just depends on how well the national currency is doing. So like they may even agree, they may be long-term bullish on crypto and say like by 2100, fiat currencies are going to… ” Your incentive system may be impeccable, but it’s all for nothing, for you no longer have a crowd. It’s a new source, a new means, relatively new means, by which people can secure and protect their liberties that without which, people would be much worse off, and I think it is important to consider that it remains relatively young, and we may see further gains in the potential of perhaps Bitcoin, but also of other cryptocurrencies to further enhance the degree to which this technology supplies a new means for preserving civil liberties and economic freedom.

Anybody who might have told you that .Com domains would go away, lose value, be replaced by other domain extensions or technologies was totally wrong, or worse. This led to a divergence in the history, as each group had a slightly different idea about who owned which Bitcoins. It uses a lot of electricity to encourage people, peers, to fulfill transactions on behalf of the people who want to exchange things. But he remains confident in Bitcoin’s viability: “There are things in Bitcoin that the world hasn’t seen yet. Whether it will prove to be a feasible currency and, if Bitcoin does carve out a role in our lives, whether it will maintain its cypherpunk roots as it moves mainstream, remains an open question. Bitcoin represented the potential realization of the cypherpunk dream. One, that some of the underlying technology is attractive and offers a lot of potential benefits and doesn’t have to be used wholesale. Now, one of the arguments I have been making is that for crypto to succeed, intermediaries will have to come in to help fulfill transactions.