The Bitcoin Group, the American original, for over the last ten seconds, the sharpest Satoshi's, the best Bitcoins, the hardest cryptocurrency talk. We have with us today Derek J Freeman from PLNU's now. Dauvey Barker from shinybatches.com. Hello again. And Megan Lourdes from Bitcoins, not bombs. Hello. The Bitcoin Group is sponsored by AlphaLion Technologies. AlphaLion Technologies. We don't make the altcoins. We make the altcoins of the future. Learn more at AlphaLionTechnologies.com. Issue 1. Bitcoin Gold. The price of Bitcoin on Mt. Gox briefly exceeded $1,242, topping the price of an ounce of gold for the first time. Investors are selling gold and buying Bitcoin as digital gold becomes the go-to investment of the 21st century. What is a better investment for the future? Bitcoin's or gold? I ask you, Derek J. Gold, are we moving towards digital or analog? Gold is old. It's not worthless. I think it's valuable, but is it a better investment than Bitcoin? No. You can do more with Bitcoin than you can with gold. You can't send gold across the internet. You can't divide it into a million pieces. People don't do business with gold, but they're already doing business with Bitcoin. Gold isn't a payment system that can work for everyone. Bitcoin is accessible to anyone with an internet connection. It's got a lot more room to grow and it's still a baby. Bitcoin is a better investment even at today's prices. Dovey Barker. Actually, don't think of gold as an investment. I think of gold as a hedge against inflation. In that sense, Bitcoin is the better investment. When a person is putting together a portfolio, it's important to mix both volatile long-term investment and relatively stable short-term investments. In that sense, I like to recommend and I do this myself that people hold some of their assets in both precious metals and in Bitcoin. At the same time, I don't think that gold has legs and I don't think that gold is going to have legs as a currency ever again until there is a place where the state will not intervene in the use of gold as a currency. Once the state stops intervening in the use of gold as a currency, we're going to see innovations in that department and we're going to see gold giving Bitcoin around for its money. But until then, no, Bitcoin is the stronger investment. Megan? Well, I guess I'm somewhere in the middle. I think it's partly a generational thing because while gold is a good hedge against inflation, it has been decreasing and price lately. But it's still relatively stable to get into. But Bitcoin, I think, has obvious advantages as far as the fractional nature of it where you can buy just a small amount at a time. Whereas with gold, the smallest amount you can buy is maybe a gram or you get into 10th of ounces and it can be, it's harder to divide up and not as many places. It has kind of outgrown its use as a currency, I think. It's still very good for other industrial purposes. But I think the older generation has invested heavily in gold and that may be something that they can still use in the future. It's something that they recognize and they might be hesitant to adopt Bitcoin because it's a little bit more complicated to understand. Whereas Bitcoin, for your younger people, I think it's a great investment. You can put a little bit into it at a time and you'd have full control over it. So I tend to look more future oriented. I think in the long run, you're going to see cryptocurrencies in general kind of outpace and gold and due to their utility, they're easier to use. I agree with Megan. It seems like gold has a lot of industrial usage and certainly we're not going to stop using it in computers or microprocessors or anything like that. But compared to Bitcoin, Bitcoin is so much more portable, so much more divisible and has so much more upside given the current price run and the current level of interest as well as the number of companies that are setting up on the sides of Bitcoin getting ready to allow us to trade and purchase and buy and sell things. People just doesn't have any of that going on right now. Exit question, what will the price of Bitcoin be next Friday? Derek J. I'm looking at a $1,400 bit stamp price. Dovey Barker. I'm still predicting stability. I think it'll float around $1,000 because the math is easy. Megan Lourdes. Yeah, I want to say somewhere on the lower side, I think we need some stability and I think the $1,000 mark is a psychological level and I think it coming up to gold is kind of a bit of a surprise. So I'm thinking maybe $1,100. Derek is correct. It'll be over 1,500. Last week I predicted $9.52 and we're over that. Issue 2, Bitcoin, Black Friday. More than 400 online retailers with electronic gift card and persario gift leading the way are offering online deals in Bitcoin at Bitcoin Black Friday dot com. Pop quiz. What have you bought with Bitcoin lately? What would you like to buy in Bitcoin but can't? Dovey Barker. So I just recently made a purchase of, we've speaking of gold, I bought a Vekombi gold bar, the ones that you can break into 51 gram components. So that's, this is state of the art and divisibility for gold and I'm happy with it. I see it as sort of some profit taking from the recent spike in Bitcoin. I can't think of anything that I can't buy with Bitcoin. So I'm not sure how to answer that question except maybe pay my rent. Megan Lord. I bought my thanks to him, Turkey with Bitcoin from my local farmer. In fact, he's been accepting Bitcoin. So I've been getting a lot of my grass fed beef and pastoray's pork and turkeys and chickens from him. So that's great. I love how, especially that local farmers seem to be pretty open to the idea. But I did recently get some gift cards through gift and did a little bit of shopping and I got a light. Hopefully the lighting's a little bit better than in recent videos. And like Dovey said, I mean, there's so many things you can buy with it. The potential is so great. I love to see how gift is just adding new businesses daily. I bought precious metals with it. Yeah, I mean, there's no limit just about to what you can buy with Bitcoin. Derek J. Yeah, I've bought precious metals, computer equipment, electronics, the audio equipment that I'm using to speak with you now. But my most recent Bitcoin purchase was actually cannabis. So in Philadelphia people will exchange Bitcoin for cannabis, my medicine and recreational drug of choice. But I would like to be able to buy coffee and cheese steaks with Bitcoin, but I can't do that yet. Brick and mortar stores are a lot slower to accept Bitcoin than web-based stores. And I want to be able to walk into a store, pay in Bitcoin and walk out without having it be some revolutionary conversation every time. That's a good wish, Derek. That's a good wish. I recently bought a book and a calendar on Amazon with gift. And I was surprised at how easy it was and seamless and absolutely awesome. I look forward to gift adding new merchants. I was looking for a pet shop, something like Pet Smart or something would be a nice addition. It's difficult to say what you can't buy in Bitcoin. You just have to imagine it and dream it up. Exit question. Little amazon.com offer Bitcoin deals directly on their website next year, allowing users to bypass gift and buy direct. Yes or no, dovey Barker. Within the next year, absolutely. And if they don't, they're going the way of Barnes and Noble. Megan Lords. Yeah, I think they'd be foolish not to. That's the direction things are heading and why not eliminate gift and just do it directly. It would be easy for them to do. And yeah, they would send a benefit greatly from it. Derek J. Yeah, this is an absolute certainty in my mind. Absolutely amazon.com will accept Bitcoin directly next year. They've already lost out on a couple of transactions thanks to gift. They lose out on about 3% of every sale because of credit cards. And gift has allowed those users to receive those 3% back in the form of rewards for paying in Bitcoin. Amazon seeing that now and they want to do that too. Also it was over a year ago that Bitcoin store.com wrote their famous open letter to Amazon Best Buy and a couple other major electronic stores saying you've missed out on half a million dollars in just one month. How many more months are going to go by with you allowing me to take your customers. You should just start accepting Bitcoin and we'll go out of business. Absolutely. Next year on the Bitcoin Black Friday page we'll see Amazon, Google, a variety of other large scale retailers who will have no choice over the next year but to accept Bitcoin. Biddylicious, biddylicious, biddylicious. Get your bitcoins in the UK, the biddylicious way at biddylicious.com. Issue 3, altcoin mania. There's a serious amount of money being pumped into Bitcoin and that money is being transferred into altcoins. Litecoin went from $10 to $40. Other altcoins have experienced similar growth. Is this just another bubble waiting to pop or are altcoins the real deal? I ask you, Megan Lourdes. I think coins are something I'm very excited about. I've been doing a lot of reading on them and I think the people who are making the case against things like Litecoin, I think they have some very valid points but I think if we're wanting to see cryptocurrency succeed as a whole we're going to need to see some competition. I'm always for diversification. I think Litecoins and other altcoins, purecoin, they offer a way for your average person to start investing in cryptocurrency without being afraid of the price you've seen Bitcoin go to. I've talked with a lot of people, even though you can buy in attractions, they're a little bit worried about investing in it and they're worried that they might lose money. Altcoins are another thing to invest in and diversify your cryptocurrencies. Also, one of the criticisms I've been hearing is, well, the merchants haven't widely accepted other coins. We need to make Bitcoin the de facto cryptocurrency that's being accepted. As we see technology improve, it's moving at such a rapid rate that implementation of other altcoins, I think it's going to be very easy. Why not be able to go to Amazon and choose what kind of coin you use and you have a variety of options? I don't think it's going to be too hard to incorporate. One of the things I don't like about the dollar is that it's a monopoly on currency. It's a world reserve currency. I don't really know if I'd want to see Bitcoin do something like that, even though I mean, I don't want to be wrong about this topic because I still love Bitcoin. I think it is more popular, but if something happens with it, I'd like there to be alternatives. I think it's going to be easy to incorporate. As far as people not using it that much, it actually isn't being used by some charities. Sean's outpost does Litecoin Thursdays where they feed a bunch of homeless people with just Litecoin donations. I'm all for competition. What are the best Litecoin, let the people choose? Derek J. I'm happy for anyone who's making gains in the days of these exploding altcoins, but almost all altcoins that I've come across are completely unoriginal, uninspired ripoffs of Bitcoin with a new catchy name. Almost all of them have some significant drawback like being pre-mind. Litecoins at least have some significant differences from Bitcoin. They use a different hashing algorithm, for example. For the most part, these altcoins offer an opportunity to speculate on wildly volatile exchanges. While Megan makes a great point about diversification, I don't see any safe places for people to go. I just see a wild speculation on these exchanges. Some altcoins are completely different and new and exciting. I'm actually excited about some altcoins and I'm keeping an eye out for something really special. Dabby Barker. I view the altcoin market as standard deviations or evolutionary mutations in the concept of Bitcoin. In that sense, we get to see very rapidly how a slightly different version of the Bitcoin protocol will succeed or fail. In that sense, one of them will come along and it will have some features that people gravitate toward and that one will succeed. Others will just be pump and dumps that show up and then disappear and some people make some quick money on it and rip some people off. The point is that a free market in currency is going to be a diversity of currencies. I have no problem letting the market decide, letting the individual market actors decide which of these that they want to accept. I agree with Derek that it doesn't seem like like coins or other altcoins have any kind of logical value. There's not a lot of them being bought or sold for purchases for goods or services but logic doesn't seem to rule investing. Investing seems to be more based upon news and whims and things that you don't even understand going up 500%. Megan's idea of diversification is quite a good one. It's tough to say where they're going to go. I think that generally the idea of cryptocurrency is taking off and the altcoins reinforce this idea because if we can have Bitcoin, why not have these other altcoins? We have pounds, sterling, euros, dollar bills, yuan, yen, a variety of normal currencies. Why not a variety of virtual currencies as well? Force prediction. Which altcoin will go through the roof next? Derek J. One of the altcoins that I'm interested in is called ProtoShares. It's a creation of Invictus, Innovations. It's a very interesting concept. I recommend your listeners investigate. Who knows if it'll be the next to a go to the moon but long term, I think it's got some interesting characteristics that make it worth looking into. Davy Barker. I'm predicting whichever cryptocurrency is the first to market as an in-game currency for massively multiplayer online role-playing game. That will be the next one to take off. Megan Lorde. Yeah, and I'm not too well versed with the differences between the different altcoins. Honestly, it's something I just kind of started investigating. So I don't know that I could name a specific currency that's going to take off next but I think whichever one is going to have good security features and maybe more stabilization too. I think the volatility kind of scares some people away from them. So if there's one that looks like it's kind of steadily increasing, I wouldn't know which coin that would be. The answer is with only three million coins in circulation, prime coin. Moving on. Issue four. Bitcoin charity. Tis the season of giving and Shire Sharing.org knows how to give. They raised money all year long in Bitcoin and are now giving away Thanksgiving meals to more than 1,000 families in New Hampshire. Two years ago, they only fed 200. Last year was 600. This year it's 1,300. Is Bitcoin the future of charitable giving? I ask you, Megan Horde. Absolutely. Absolutely. And the standard, these Bitcoin charities are raising the standard for charities. They're making everything transparent and they're kind of standing in opposition to larger charities that most people kind of know of where you send your money in for relief efforts and maybe say the Philippines. And none of that's really tracked. They're not taking pictures of what they're doing. They're not letting you know where your money goes. Whereas with Bitcoin-based currencies, you have more transparency and you have them documenting everything. And I think it's going to set a new standard. I think people want to know where their money goes when they help charities and the Bitcoin charities are ahead of that and they're doing a great job. They're changing thousands of lives in a very short time frame. And we're looking at Bitcoin's been around for five years and it's already changing. There's only thousands of people. That's amazing. So, yes. Derek J. In the future, everyone will accept Bitcoin. And so it's going to be a no-brainer for charities. But my guess is that it'll become more important for charities when governments begin mandating that people pay taxes on their Bitcoin gains. They're going to want to find a place to put them that is not the government and they will likely see some hefty donations to Bitcoin accepting charities as the years draw by. Dabby Barker. I think Shire sharing really came across the perfect model for Bitcoin donations in the charity space because they've been taking donations all year long. But their project is specifically for Thanksgiving and Christmas. So like for example, shinybagges.com, I sell Shire Society Declarations, which are these parchment documents from the Shire Society. And half of the sale of all of those has gone to Shire Sharing all year long. But they only accepted Bitcoin. Amanda said she didn't want the responsibility of holding people's dollars. That it was easier for her to just accept Bitcoin and leave it in the account and not look at it till the end of the year. So all of those like small transactions that happened at the beginning of the year when Bitcoin was $30 is now at the end of the year and Bitcoin is over $1,000. So it's like this exponential growth. And I think that those sort of successes are going to inspire other charities to begin to accept it and use it. Especially those that have an annual project. I agree. And I agree with what Megan said about FR338 and their donations to the Philippines. I donated a little bit and then I saw all the pictures and I really feel like I know where my money went. They went to the store. They bought supplies. They split it up and they put it on boats directly to the people. I'm not confused like if I donated to the Red Cross and really heard nothing from them. Another issue might be the idea of Bitcoin endowments for future charities. If you could donate say 10 Bitcoins to a charity with the idea that you would wait three years before you even started doing the charity, you could have an incredible amount of money set up for future potential charity. Well, that's actually how we're going to do the aggrist psychological experiment. We're going to begin doing fundraising in Bitcoin and we're going to leave that Bitcoin in that wallet until such a time as it appreciates enough to fund the whole thing. I think that's a great idea. Exit question, will traditional charities like the Red Cross and the Salvation Army wake up to Bitcoin or will they be replaced with Bitcoin centric charities? Megan? I hope they wake up to it. They reach a wider audience so it would be good. But I think they're also going to have to jump on board with the documentation a little bit more or they will be replaced by Bitcoin only charities. Derek J. They're going to be replaced by Bitcoin centric charities. They're two old world. They function in an old world system. They're reporting and their functions all depend on government regulation. That's all just nasty. It's old world. We're ready for the new Bitcoin based charities. Dovey Barker. There's this phenomenon that happens every time there's a new technological innovation where legacy institutions sort of come up with this hybrid version of their old business model and the new business model and they sort of survive for a little while that way. If you look at the New York Times or CNN or some of the legacy news organizations in the way they've attempted to react to new media, but you can tell. You can always tell this is just sort of like an updated version of the old institution. If they do adopt Bitcoin, I don't think they're going to be able to purge themselves of old habits because they've been around for too long. If they don't, then they are going to be replaced. They'll probably stick around until the people who have grown accustomed to them forget about them. But in the long run, no, they're not going to survive with the old. I think they're going to take Bitcoin donations, but not much more than that. When you look at FR338, the photos, the record keeping, the way the organization was set up on the fly is not something that I think these old world charities have in them. These new charities are going to be so much more flexible and fast at getting things there and taking care of things on the ground. I think that they might be able to supplant the old. Because they were born and raised in the new system. Absolutely. Internet, the crucible of fire. And also the older generations who were familiar with these charities, truth be told, they're dying out. I think a lot of institutions are going to go with them. I don't even think they've added credit card readers to those salvation army Santa clauses. So I think a lot of people just say, no, I don't have any cash because they don't have any cash. Yeah. Although I saw a clip of a homeless person who had a credit card reader. So there's always hope. We're out of time. So we're moving on to questions and answers. Let's see if we have any questions. We have a question from I-11. Feathercoin. Any observations or upside? Derek. From my understanding, Feathercoin was one of those which was pre-mined. I could be incorrect about that, but I'm not excited about Feathercoin. I actually have never heard of Feathercoin. Megan. I've heard of it, but I don't know enough to have an opinion on it. Well, I'm a fan of Feathercoin because they watch my show and they comment on it and stuff. I don't know much about it. It's from England. It has a developed design team from Oxford. And maybe it's kind of a local cryptocurrency that people believe in in the England type area. I don't know if that's going to catch on in the world. I mean, I believe it's definitely one of the lowest price cryptocurrencies as well as prime coin, but I don't know what that really says for the future. So looking for more questions, comment tracker. Stream. Oh, here we go. Ron Campbell asks about zero coin, preserving, preserve the fungibility of cryptocurrencies. Davy. Any ideas on zero coin? I heard it was recently turned into an altcoin. So this is not my thing. Like altcoins are not my thing, but here's what I would recommend. If altcoins is your thing and you're scouring the market for which one is going to be successful, decide on some manageable investment and buy that much of all of them by $10 of all of the altcoins that you can find and just sit on it because that's the same as diversifying stock portfolio. Some of them are going to succeed. Some of them are going to fail. If you're really interested in following altcoins, diversify. Megan. Yeah, I agree. I think the amount of altcoins is really promising and I think you're going to see stronger ones and weaker ones come out of that. I don't know enough about zero coin specifically, but I think diversification is a good thing. Derek J. Not excited about zero coin. It's a digital money laundering pool. I'm excited about the concept of it. I'm excited about the mixering of coin. Yes, the concept is great, but I think it can be easily applied to Bitcoin in a voluntary way that's more interested in applying it to Bitcoin. It seems to me they did try to apply it to Bitcoin, but the Bitcoin people probably don't want to touch the words digital money laundering pool with a 10-foot pool. But with blockchain.info, there's already shared sense. It's an option. You can already... I mean, there are mixing services. Whatever name you call them, I mean, that's what they are and you could do that with Bitcoin. I don't see any reason why you should go to a different coin for that. All right. Moving on. Matt Evans writes that it's technologically very cheap for merchants to accept several types of coins, but the bookkeeping and taxes could become exponentially harder and more expensive to deal with. What do you think, Megan? Yeah, I think you're going to see more gravel about the tax side of things. Technically, you're already supposed to pay taxes on your bitcoins. I think it might discourage some businesses from accepting a lot of different coins because of keeping up with that, but it also depends on where people are going in the long run in regards to even paying their taxes with all coins. It seems like it would be very difficult to enforce. It's already hard to enforce paying taxes on any gains that you get from any kind of investment. The whole thing is hard to enforce already. It depends. It does provide an opportunity for startup businesses and more alternatively minded businesses to get involved because they already have less of a concern about paying taxes to the man. Derek J. There are different types of business people. I can broadly classify the world as people who live free and those who are bootlickers. There are different strategies that business owners are going to have when they approach Bitcoin. Some people are going to say, I'm not taking a single step without getting permission. Then there are other people who are going to say, I'm going to do what's right for my business and my customers and we'll worry about the permission thing later. This is going to be a big split in businesses that accept Bitcoin. I've got all my money, energy and enthusiasm behind those who do what they think is right before asking permission. David. I say good. Make it as difficult and as cumbersome to pay taxes as possible because then maybe more people will debate whether or not it's the right thing to do. I think it would be simplest for a business that wanted to take a bunch of altcoins to use something like Cripsy where once you receive the altcoins you could auto trade them for Bitcoin. Then you could just solve your tax problem when you solve your Bitcoin tax problem. Ron Campbell writes, Camibar, pieces of eight, the new innovation in gold. So he enjoyed your breakable gold pieces there, Dolly. Maybe we could slice off a few pieces with a knife, get some rounded edges on there. It is pieces of eight. That's exactly what it is. Ron also agrees with Dolly saying that gold unlike stocks and bonds cannot be naked-shorted. If you want to play in the gold market you actually have to have the coin to be a player in the market. Dolly any thoughts on that? No, not in particular. I have thoughts on that. You absolutely don't have to have gold to be a player in the market. Look at all the central banks do hold gold. But there are other institutions that have no gold like HSBC and others who have been naked-shorting gold-free years. Yeah, I'm going to have to comment on that too. The reason we're seeing a lot of dipping in the price of silver is because it's a particularly manipulated metal and they do this through paper contracts. They have multiple paper contracts backing up, supposed physical silver. That's how they're able to manipulate the price down and to some degree with gold also. So no, you don't have to have physical gold for there to be manipulation involved. I think another option for buying gold is those ETFs, the exchange traded funds where you can purchase something like a stock that would then own gold for you. You could probably short sale those. Yeah. All right. Looking for more questions and answers. Here we go. Does anyone have any thoughts on Peter Schiff bashing Bitcoin? Derek? Yeah. I predict a Peter Schiff was wrong video as soon to be coming to the internet. Many people are familiar with the Peter Schiff was right videos, which were made popular because he called the collapse of the housing sector. But no, he's wrong. His best argument for why gold is better than Bitcoin is that you can make forks with it and I'm not joking. It's scary to see a man that I respect so dearly. And I look to for advice and financial matters and for analysis of what's going on in the world to be so wrong about this one issue. Dovey? There's a really great discussion between Peter Schiff and Stefan Mollanyu. Mollanyu I guess reached out to him to sort of try to educate him because it seems like Peter Schiff doesn't actually know what Bitcoin is exactly. And there's a lot of really great stuff in that interview. Peter Schiff walked back some of his statements. But one of the things that he said that I thought was valid was that the enthusiasm in the Bitcoin community looks a lot like a bubble, like not the economics of it, but the enthusiasm of it looks like the dot com bubble, looks like the housing bubble. Because of that, he counsels caution. And I think that that's wise. I think that there is always a potential for Bitcoin to go back and to decrease to deflate or whatever. I don't think that means it's going away. And I don't think that means that it's a tool of craze. But that is a possibility. So at the very least, I think counseling caution was the right move. Megan? Yeah, I'm going to agree with Dovey. I definitely understand why Peter Schiff believes that it's a bubble and is skeptical about it. It's a difficult for the same reasons when I first heard about it. But it does seem I didn't get a chance to watch the complete, I'm all a new interview with him. But it does seem like he's coming from a bit of an unformed perspective. And again, I do think it's a generational thing. I obviously he has a lot of reasons why he would want gold to succeed long term. I mean, you know, that definitely makes sense. But I think you're seeing with a lot of people, a lot of older people that, you know, they're not quite understanding it. And that makes them even more skeptical. But like I said, I understand why he would believe that. But I do think you are going to see kind of a Peter Schiff was wrong video. And again, with the many of it's kind of surrounding it. I definitely see why you believe that. But I, yeah, I think he's eventually going to turn out a few other people have too. A few other people that were coming out at the beginning saying, oh, well, you know, Bitcoin is just, it's just this passing fad. I've seen quite a few people reverse their position on it. One of us have said it yet, the word is in the term is intrinsic value. That's what Peter was harping on. And that's what I think we can all agree that he's so wrong about. It's this intrinsic value that he focuses on. And Jeffrey Tucker had what I think is the best rebuttal to this issue, which is, you know, value come, the value in Bitcoin comes from the same place that value anywhere does. Our minds. Right. This is I think an area where where Peter Schiff does not get to fall back on generation gaps or age or anything like that because he's schooled in the Austrian school of economics. And the Austrian school of economics does not accept the concept of intrinsic value. Like there is no such thing as an intrinsic value. All value is subjective. It may be intrinsic to the object, but if you stop valuing that feature, if we stop using forks to use Peter Schiff's example, then that intrinsic value evaporates. So yes, the things that make Bitcoin valuable to me are intrinsic to it. It's part of its program. It's part of its protocol, but that's subjective. That's what I value. So he doesn't get to write that one off. You don't get to talk about intrinsic value that way as an Austrian schooled economist. Yes. And with gold, you saw it used as a currency for years and years because people agreed that it had value. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. The intrinsic thing, it's not a huge factor for me with Bitcoin. Moving on, next question from Chris. He says, what would be the Bitcoin price point where the US government would be forced to get involved on a regulatory standpoint? Derek? Chris must be unaware that the US is already involved in a regulatory standpoint. They expect individuals who are making capital gains on their Bitcoins to pay taxes on that. I'm unfamiliar to a lot of new Bitcoin buyers because probably most people who are buying Bitcoin aren't investors and have never paid capital gains taxes. But that's exactly what the government's expecting you to know to do. Dovey? I don't think there is a price point. I think by the time the government becomes more explicitly hostile, it's not going to matter anymore because the price of Bitcoin that we're talking about is being measured against dollars and dollars is not a stable standard either. If we start to see hyperinflation and we start to see a cup of coffee costing $1,000, then the price of Bitcoin is going to skyrocket. But that doesn't mean that the value of Bitcoin is going to exchange for more cups of coffee or more. I mean like the amount of goods chasing Bitcoin might not change at all even if the price and dollars does. The government is not going to base its decision to implement more hostile regulations on what the price of Bitcoin is. It's going to base it on how much of a threat Bitcoin is to the dollar itself. Megan? Yes, absolutely. Like Derek said, they already expect you to pay taxes on Bitcoins. There's just not a whole lot of enforceability with it. But when you're going to see more aggressive action is when the dollar starts to really decrease in value because it is a dying currency and they at least know that much. When Bitcoin starts becoming even more apparent as a threat is when you'll start seeing more aggressive actions as to what those aggressive actions will be and how they'll enforce a lot of this. I think you could debate about that. I'm not really sure. But I think you are going to see people get more aggressive at the government get more aggressive as the dollar decreases in value relative to Bitcoin. You know what I think would be a red flag for them is if instead of dollar businesses saying, oh, and we also accept Bitcoin, they start to see Bitcoin businesses say, oh, and we don't accept dollars. That I think will be a pivotal moment for them. Yes. That's a good point, Davi. Moving on, Splatta writes, the economists did a piece recently and suggested that the Bitcoin network and the requirements of mining will run into serious problems as the network grows. Any thoughts? Derek? I'm not afraid of this. We've seen Asick miners be able to do the job. I think that so I've used the Asick miners myself in the past and I've found it really easy to become a Bitcoin miner and then I stopped it. You know, it's just it's easy to contribute to the network and I expect that if we're able to get these miners into a size about this big, then they just run on computers, then why wouldn't we be putting these things in toasters, refrigerators, anything that's on all the time and just have it contributing to the network? Davi? Yeah, you could use an Asick miner to hear your aquarium. I see that. Anything where, yeah, that's an interesting point. I'm not worried about this. I don't really know why I'm not worried about this. I think it's because I just trust the geeks to solve it before it's a major problem. We've seen a number of like crises in the Bitcoin network happen and they were solved within like a half an hour. So I'm just I'm not worried about it. Megan? Yeah, I'm not super worried about it. I agree with Davi. I think as you see technology improving a lot of these so-called problems that are coming out are going to be solved. I agree with Davi. We have so many brains on this problem that if there is a problem, it's going to be exposed like selfish mining was exposed in a paper by computer science researchers at a college. And the more Bitcoin grows, the more researchers we get, the more papers we get, the more smart people read them, the more they decide what the proper solution to the next problem will be. You also have to keep in mind that all of what is invested in Bitcoin right now becomes the financial incentive for people to solve the problem. So I mean, if you think about the amount of R&D that that purchases, people aren't going to just let it collapse over a technicality. I agree. I wish they'd put that much that kind of monetary incentive into stopping spyware or anoring dialogue boxes or any of the other problems I've had with Windows. No one ever seems to fix those things and they go on and on forever. Moving on, next question. When will the mainstream media stop referring to the two-lit bulbs anytime soon? Will it matter? Derek? No, they're not going to stop talking about that. How long did the internet craze last? There are people who read Wired Magazine. There are people who technically get it. There are people who are actually invested. Their lives are involved in Bitcoin. And then there's the sideline. The sidestides show these speculators, if people who know nothing about it who just are reacting emotionally to something new, you know, a lot of these mainstream media people are going to be bashing Bitcoin for a long time, bunker down, and do your own research. Dovy? I hate, I have to point this out every time we talk about tulips. You can still buy tulips from the florist. The florist never crashed to zero. And as long as Bitcoin doesn't crash to zero, it will continue to be a viable currency. So who cares? Megan? Right. The media is going to try to do everything they can to demonize Bitcoin because they're protecting the interests of the empire. But at the end of the day, the people who are reactive in the Bitcoin community who are using it for charity, who are using it to buy basic everyday items, it's not going to be relevant to them whether or not the media demonizes it. Well, I for one love the tulip example. As a historian, anytime I get to talk about the tulip craze is a good time. I once read Michael Paulins book, or I'm mispronouncing his name, and I don't remember the title, but he talked about the influence of four fruits, potatoes, apples, tulips, and then cannabis. And he told the story about each one and what happened. And I also enjoyed the apple story that initially apples were very difficult to eat and not tasty. So they would just convert them into whiskey. And that's why Johnny Appleseed went across the country, planting apple seed trees so that we could have more whiskey. And most people don't know that. Was that a book in defensive food by Michael Paulins? I don't recall the title. It was like four different. It was similar to him. That's one of his books, but it was four different things. And it was just kind of unconnected things brought together by this theme of how something like the potato could change the world. It is a great book if anyone could get it. Looking at the questions, we don't seem to have that many more questions. I'm going to look at the comments, streams. See how we're doing there? Looks about the same. We have a question. I'm going to mispronounce this. Mises Institute put out a video supporting Bitcoin. And they're associated with the Austrian school of economics. Dovey, what do you think about that? Have you heard of this new video supporting Bitcoin? I haven't seen the video, but that doesn't surprise me because the economists at the Mises Institute were some of the first high caliber economists to take Bitcoin seriously. So they have gone back to the drawing board. They have re-evaluated Mises regression theorem of currency, a theory of currency, and it doesn't surprise me at all that there would be some among them that would be proponents of Bitcoin now. So I'm going to go check out that video. Megan? Yeah, I'm going to check out the video too. And it doesn't surprise me that Mises would be interested in Bitcoin. A lot of the larger libertarian organizations have been jumping on board. Reason magazines started accepting Bitcoin. And I think you're going to see this as a trend. So yeah, that's great to hear that they put out a video. I'm going to have to check that out. Derek J. I've seen the Mises.org video on Bitcoin, and it makes me happy to see that the Mises Institute is not so dogmatic and relying on its old texts. It's more about taking a reasonable and sober look at reality. And if that means re-evaluating their past texts and modifying it to fit reality, that's great. I'm glad they're doing it. Excellent. Moving on to the predictions. This is the part of the show where I ask you to predict the future. Are you ready, Derek J? Yeah, I can predict the future. You want a specific prediction for what's coming in the world of Bitcoin? I see. I see in 2014, with the way things are going for online retail sales and Bitcoin Black Friday making such a big deal today, I think 2014 is the year we will see Bitcoin accepted directly in retail stores. Dovey Barker. I'm predicting that after the collapse of the dollar, the Marxists and socialists and communists of the world will adopt the term Bitcoin Air to describe wealthy Bitcoiners in their calls to tax the rich. Megan? I think you're going to see widespread adoption of Bitcoin with a lot of businesses taking it directly. I think all coins are going to be coming out in the future too. I think the dollar continues its descent. People are going to be looking to diversify more. You're going to see a bunch of people taking Bitcoin. I think it's going to change the way we do charity in this country. I think it's really going to make a great argument for a practical application of cryptocurrency philosophy because there's a lot you can argue with hypothetical situations using philosophy, but Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies adds a practical approach. I think people are going to respond to that practicality and you're going to see widespread adoption. I think 2014 might be the year of the Bitcoin. I'm in agreement with Derek here. Online retailers seeking to differentiate themselves from their competitors will seek to break through in the next few months by accepting Bitcoin. The first major online retailer to accept Bitcoin will reap major rewards. We're out of time. Until next time. Bye-bye. Gobble-gobble.