The Bitcoin Group, the American Original. For over the last 10 seconds, the Bitcoin, the hardest cryptocurrency talk. We'd like to welcome our panelists Simon Dixon from Bank to the Future. Hello, I mean from normally in Hong Kong Asia, you caught me in London, so the time zones worked and I'm here. Grateful to be here. Jeffrey Jones from the Bitcoin News Show. Hello everybody and it's great to see Simon on the Bitcoin Group for the first time. And I'm Thomas Hunt from the World Crypto Network. Moving on to issue one, Bitcoin price, correction and recovery. The price of Bitcoin declined from a high of 19,000 almost down to 9,222 dollars and incredible drop and it happened in only a week. The price then recovered to around 11 or 12,000 dollars if you call that recovery and if you think it's over. No one knows right now if the price will go up or down. Simon Dixon, what are your thoughts on the Bitcoin recent correction? Well, I think it was much needed and I'm quite happy for it. While it's always painful seeing something go down 50 percent. For those of us that have been around for a while, we've seen quite a few of these over the years. I mean, it's not the price of Bitcoin was approximately like I remember it was under a thousand dollars, was it just a year ago or something. And then we had this parabolic increase and this crazy year where it just seemed like it was going up and up and up and every time we had some news you get these major corrections like the China ban. But it continued to start with trend and that brought a lot of newbies which is great for the industry because we've got a lot of new people in over the last year. The price tends to attract the attention and the attention tends to drive new people in but none of them have experienced a bear market. So I think it's quite healthy for the ecosystem to experience what you know that you can actually, well, if you're traders you can certainly lose a load of money. If you're hotlers, this isn't really a problem. We're kind of used to it. So those are the new to the industry and new to the HODLING strategy. Then you're going to experience your first major correction and those that come out the other end, I'm sure will be rewarded. And it's kind of a healthy thing. The last time we had a bear market we had a lot of technological innovation. Bitcoin is ready for lots and lots of technical innovation and sometimes you need the price to stop getting the headlight, I mean, where it gets the headlines for the bear market whatever it does. But sometimes you need the price increase to kind of not derive the adoption as much as new technology. So it's perfectly healthy. It's perfectly normal. If you create a digital scarce asset which is a new asset class, a new technology, a new currency and many of the other things that is becoming now, then with the fixed supply you're going to get a lot of volatility along the way. So it's kind of good to see at the same time. I fully expect a full recovery in the highs. I don't know how long that will take. I don't care how long it takes, but I'm sure we'll get there. Jeffrey Jones, do you agree is this just babies first market correction or is something wrong with Bitcoin? Yes, it is time for new bees to be baptized in the fire into the flames of Bitcoin corrections. I think, yeah, there was a lot of Ponzi schemes out there. There was a lot of stuff that needed to be weeded out with a correction like this and that's exactly what happened. So this is very, very healthy, extremely healthy and it was expected. We were tone veys and a lot of other traders were really kind of expecting, have been expecting the correction from around 5K or so and then we just kind of shopped to 10 and then bam shopped to 20. So we went kind of parabolic there and so that correction was absolutely, absolutely expected. And again, extremely healthy for the long term of Bitcoin because again, if you look at on a logarithmic chart, I mean, you could see we're still in a bull run. We've never left the bull run. Bitcoin is one long, big bull run with like a few coffee breaks, I think in between. So we're, as Simon said, we're fully expecting this to recover and in almost no time. And remember, we're only crashed back down to what we had 11K, 11K, if you would have said six months ago that we're going to crash back down to 11K, holy smokes, I would have been, I would have been ecstatic, I'd have been sweet, bring on that crash. But look, people see these numbers like 20K, crash down to 10K and they're like, oh my god, 50% drop, but of course in reality, we went up thousands of percent. So in reality, it was a teeny little correction. It all depends on how far you look at the time tables and things like that. But at the end of the day, absolutely how happy to see this and we, you know, we're going to go sideways here for a little bit, but I fully expect us to before and maybe as early as February, even to see, to start seeing new all time highs again, if not for sure, sometime in Q1. Definitely like to ask all of our viewers to give us a thumbs up and a share that really helps other people find the show. If it's your first time here, please subscribe down below. Moving on to the exit question, is the correction over or will we see more red next week? Simon Dixon. We could do it when surprised me, but I think that this is the opportunity for a lot of people that miss the boat to accumulate some bitcoins. I think there's a lot of accumulators out there. I think the institutions have been waiting for their opportunities to accumulate. I'd expect more accumulation, a lot of support, and yeah, I don't expect it to go much lower. It could do, but there's so much buy volume out there. Jeffrey Jones. Yeah, anything as possible, of course, in Bitcoin, you have to be ready for this. But look, everybody was looking for, when we were at the 20K, everybody was looking for a dip, everybody was looking for an opportunity to buy. And everybody is always every time like, I'm going to buy on that dip. I'm definitely going to buy on that dip. And then the whole thing crashes, everybody gets super scared and they panic sell, right? And they don't wait to buy until we go back up to the 20K again. So, you know, very powerful, standard human psychological behavior here, but I'd say we're going to probably not, I'd say this is probably the bottom. Well, it's like a Kipling said in his epic poem, If, if you can keep your head when all those around you are losing theirs, and that's why it's so hard to buy the dip. You see it going down, you see it going red. A lot of times you'll buy the dip and you'll end up catching a falling knife, saying that you buy it 10,000 and it goes to seven and it goes to five and you're just holding on for the ride. But that's what risk is about. That's what this is about. Risk and reward and gambling. Moving on to issue two, BitConnect. BitConnect, which has been accused of running a Ponzi scheme, had some kind of a lending website where in the classic Ponzi method, the new money pays for the old money, old money invests and then is paid off allegedly from the investments, but actually from the new money. They're saying they're allegedly that BitConnect ran a Ponzi scheme causing the next day their price went down 90%. They lost 90% of their value and shut down their lending website. Jeffrey Jones, why does this keep happening? Why do we keep seeing alleged Ponzi schemes, alleged two-hip schemes, alleged bubble schemes, all these other schemes in Bitcoin? Well, we don't just see these Ponzi schemes in Bitcoin. We see them everywhere. We see them. In fact, we have been seeing them for thousands of years. The only difference here is that Fiat is the ultimate Ponzi scheme itself where at least in crypto we have some projects like Bitcoin that isn't a Ponzi scheme. So it's tail is all this time, a fool and his money will soon be parted. This is going to not stop anytime soon and with these huge bull market runs of all these ICOs and coins going up thousands of percent, you're absolutely going to see a few Ponzi schemes in there, which again is why both Simon and I stated that this was a healthy correction. We have to weed out these types of Ponzi schemes like BitConnect and many others. It's not going to stop. We're going to see a lot more before the end of it, but it's just really, really important to pay attention to intelligent people in the space, pay attention to the people that are doing things in the space, pay attention to people like Simon Dixon. These are the type of people that you want to get your information from, people who are in the space, people who have been in the space for years and years and have built provable profitable companies that are proven to not be Ponzi's or or scams. It all depends, it just makes all the difference in the world who you pay attention to, who you listen to, do your own research. It's going to be absolutely more and more important every second of every day as crypto continues to go higher and higher and higher. We will see a multi-trillion dollar market this year, market cap by the end of the year. There will be a lot more Ponzi schemes. Please educate yourself. If you know people that are new to the space, send them over here to Rome Crypto Network, make sure they follow people like us and Simon Dixon and many others and hopefully they'll still steer clear. Simon Dixon, same question, why does Bitcoin have all of these Ponzi schemes or alleged Ponzi schemes? What can we do about them? Well, I think it's because in Bitcoin's history, we have actually had an exponential return. So those have actually been involved in Bitcoin and accumulating Bitcoin. They have had subnormal returns just from holding Bitcoin. And so therefore, a lot of people take advantage of that. Because the other effect is that this is so new to so many people. And people can take advantage of the technical jargon, the financial jargon, the fact that Bitcoin and Ethereum and other things had produced those kinds of returns for people holding them. And then people can come along and just create some new technology, confuse people in jargon, confuse people in technical speak and blockchain this and all these different words. And it's all very confusing for all these new people because it takes a few years to really get to grips with some of the concepts behind what makes Bitcoin work. The Bitcoin Connect one is just a classic story. I think everyone's story coming. Bitcoin Connect to me was something that only came on the radar after Bitcoin Cash launched with the ticker BCC, which Bitcoin was using. And so I think it got everyone's attention. And I think I haven't looked at the history. I haven't looked at it too much. But from that moment on, once Bitcoin cash launched with the ticker BCC, the price had had a big huge spike. People started getting attention. And then they started going on a massive advertising campaign and all of a sudden all these retargeting ads were coming up. And wherever I went, it was 1% returns from lending this and 1% daily returns that is. And it is technical jargon, along with financial misunderstanding. 1% daily returns has never existed, will never exist, and will just never, ever can happen. So if you see these, and then you combine it with a load of people trying to earn affiliate incomes and multi-level marketing and everyone tweeting about it and YouTube comments and all that stuff. And you just seem to get this again and again. It's not the first. We will see more. But it's great to see that Bitcoin has a tumble and you get a 95% correction in scams and things like this. The interesting thing is probably people know that this is scam. Things never die and probably people are trying to call the bottom right now and trying to make some returns on the way off as well if it gets some kind of rebound. But as long as people know that, as long as people know their trading scams, as long as people know that these returns don't exist. And as long as people understand that they're investing into Ponzi schemes and then there's no different from gambling. You can play that. My fear is that most people don't know and they actually think the returns exist. One percent daily returns. That's a great deal. That's like a penny that doubles every day. And if something seems too good to be true, you have to assume it's not true. Another red flag is when they're advertising the percentage of return in advance. Nobody knows how well or how bad an investment is going to go. But if they're promising it to you, it's probably not a good sign. Jeffrey Jones, exit question. How can we prevent these Ponzi's? Is there anything Bitcoiners can do? Our friends get into them, our family get into them. People get excited to you a week ago. We probably could have found someone easily to pitch us a bit connect and tell us how good a service it was. Now we can't find anybody at all. Well, you know, these price corrections were huge and gouging to the most Ponziest of the coins, right? Like Ripple, like BitConnect. And I guess the biggest thing I can say is education is paramount, absolutely paramount in any space, but specifically financial types of spaces and specifically brand new financial types of spaces like crypto. So it's the risk is crazy. Like Simon said, there have been some people that have had legitimate thousand percent returns and such like that. So people get, it's really easy to confuse people because they know it's out there. So when somebody promises it to them, it's even an even stronger poll to what if, you know, what if I win the lottery? And these freaking ads, man, these BitConnect ads are everywhere. That's just a number one red flag. If you see a cryptocurrency or an ICO advertising all over the internet, that is your sign to never touch it, to not touch it with a 10 foot poll. Real projects don't advertise like that. I mean, at least not in the beginning, before they got any code written, Bitcoin has never advertised. A couple cool things like the Bitcoin bull, or the Bitcoin bull, right, that BitPay did back in the early days, a few things like that. But Bitcoin doesn't advertise because Bitcoin doesn't need to advertise. Bitcoin is the utility by itself is enough for the advertisement. If the utility is not the advertisement, then there's not a whole lot of legs to stand on for that token. Excellent points. Simon, anything we can do to stop these Ponzi schemes in the future? It's a really tricky question. It's a question of doing what you guys are already doing, educating people. People need to learn a lot. And sometimes the best education is actually investing into a Ponzi scheme and maybe finding Bitcoin at the other side. So my belief is that a lot of people would have got into BitConnect because someone had an affiliate income and some MLM or something. They've entered the market, unfortunately. Maybe they made returns and now he knows what's going to happen there. But my advice to people is just because you actually fall into one of these Ponzi schemes. Take that as your education. Take that as the school of hard knocks, learn the lesson. Maybe the best thing that could have happened is you enter the sector. You might have learned a few things. Maybe you start looking at more conservative strategies. When you start looking at some of the other things in this industry, and then you never know that if you continue along this line, you might be protected in the next financial crisis when you realize you're holding some Bitcoin and other people on and then pass the education on. So my only advice is that we all get scammed, I've been scammed. It happens to all of us, but it's kind of how you react from here and where you take it next. It could be the greatest thing that happened to you all the worst thing that happened to you. And if you did lose a lot of money from BitConnect or maybe you lost a lot of money in the Bitcoin downturn and you don't want to wait for the upturn, if you feel bad and you need help, please contact the Suicide Prevention hotline. There are people out there who can talk to you, who can help you understand that it'll get better. And even though you might have lost your nest egg or all of your investment or all of your savings, it's forgivable. We all make mistakes. There are ways out of this, not great ways, but they can help you pay that back over time and other solutions. And there are other investments, don't give up on investing because that can help too. We'd like to thank everybody for giving us a thumbs up and a share. We're up to 580 viewers. We almost doubled. Thanks to you giving those thumbs up. It really helps YouTube figure out which shows to promote, which shows are good shows. We're going to move on to issue 3, Blockstream Conspiracy. A lot of people have been curious about the Blockstream Company. Blockstream, one of the major developers in the Bitcoin ecosystem, also employs several Bitcoin core developers. They've said that Blockstream was founded and funded by an insurance company called AXA and that perhaps they're influencing the company with their evil insurance money. This theory is now up for grabs as Gregory Maxwell, one of the major Bitcoin developers to work at Blockstream, has announced that he's moving on. He's moving on to pure Bitcoin development, something we might see more of the future as more and more Bitcoin developers because of their Bitcoin investments are likely free from jobs and normal cares and can work on the project that they believe in. Jeffrey Jones, what are your thoughts about the Blockstream Conspiracy? Is it a good thing both for Blockstream and for Bitcoin that Gregory Maxwell is moving on to full-time Bitcoin development? Yeah, the AXA thing has been debunked so many times at this point. The B Cash people continue to bring it up even though it's been debunked over and over again for years. The AXA Insurance Company has a lot of companies that they ensure and I don't remember any other time where an insurance company had to say in what a regular company, the regular day going on. Going on, every major company, for example in Silicon Valley, has insurance to some degree. Do they dictate what code they could write? No, last time I checked, I didn't see Geico telling Google what to do. It's just a completely ludicrous type of theory and one only a B Cash supporter could get behind. And yeah, it's really crazy, like I said, just listen to smart people, listen to people like Tongue Vays and other people and they'll tell you. In fact, don't even listen to those people. Go right to the source. These people all have social media profiles like Gregory Maxwell and such. He's on Reddit. Many others are on Twitter. Follow these people and you can see their amazing, amazing work. If you already didn't know them from before because they're cited in a million Brazilian papers everywhere, but still follow their work and you'll see the amazing amount of stuff that these people have done and also shout out to, again, to Andrew DeSantis for the website, Bitcoin.Team. Everybody needs to check that out at Bitcoin.Team and you will be able to see exactly who worked on what with Bitcoin. And you can see, Gregory Maxwell did a good share. He's a pretty smart guy. There's a reason why he's absolutely looked up to him to the industry. There's a reason why every single intern under him will remember it for the rest of their life. This guy is an industry leader in his field. And so it's actually really a relief to see him not have to, you know, slave away at the days at block stream and being at CTO, right? Managing people, managing all these, this seemingly transient type of stuff, right? When the real thing that's important is Bitcoin, right? So I can just picture of now, like telling people one more time, no, we have to use spaces in our brackets, you know, in the code instead of like having to actually work on real cool stuff that gets them up in the morning, you know, stuff that you, first thing you think about when you wake up. And this is, you know, again, how many people who are enthusiastic about Bitcoin think about this is the first thing we think about when we get up. And I'm sure Gregory Maxwell is no different. So absolutely ecstatic and happy to see him be able to go on and do what he really wants to do, which is work on Bitcoin 24, seven, right? So absolutely great. Maybe I even hope that he appears at less conferences too, because you know, for block stream, he had to kind of go to a couple of conferences as well. And now that he doesn't have to work there, he can just really go at it all the time now on Bitcoin. And so we wish him the absolute best and look, look forward to seeing what he's going to create in the future. I just hope he employs some time management software to keep him off of Reddit and focused on his real problems. And Jeff rings up a great point of spaces versus tabs and the end list debate in programming a little joke from Silicon Valley recently. Simon, what are your thoughts? Is there a great block stream conspiracy? Is Gregory Maxwell leaving and the block stream conspiracy? I do actually feel a little bit of responsibility for this whole access. They say is a XA, but it's access a UK insurance company. And I remember it was, I think it was this show when people were talking Tony Vaze was on it. And everyone was discussing who are the investors behind block stream. Well, I happened to be invited by someone that was actually managing the round for the block stream funding round. And they were the ones that did the introduction that got AXA into the funding round. And then when Tony Vaze was asking about, because before people knew it was AXA, everyone was saying it was banks that were funding it. So then I tweeted Tony Vaze that it was AXA who's not actually a bank. It's an insurance company. And then from there, everything went a bit wild when I think Tony Vaze covered it or something. So a little bit of a responsibility for that one. But anyway, before they were talking about who the actual investors were, it was all being rumored to be different paying some financial institutions. It's pretty bad when you, they say, who started that rumor and you have to raise your hand. I started it. So what do you think about the rumor? It did AXA have 100% of the round? Did they have say, did they get a board seat? Was this the greatest purchase of all time? Well, AXA were a significant part of the round. And they got a decent position in the round, but the valuations were very high anyway, because the team that are behind block streamer are a very, very accomplished team. This thing about how we fund Bitcoin developers has just been a constant theme since the beginning really. And block stream weren't the first to do it. I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe BitPay were the first to actually hire core developers. Was it Jeff Garza? I can't remember if it was Jeff or... It certainly wasn't Coinbase. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, and back in the day, when, you know, there wasn't really much money in this sector and there wasn't really much going on. It was kind of like the company's duty to, you know, be a good Samaritan and try and hire a core developer. And that was kind of the culture that was taken through. But then obviously, you know, the market went into billions of dollars, a market cap, and tens of billions, and then hundreds of billions. And so, you know, I kind of see two sides of this story. I, you know, I really believe in the team. I'm grateful for the core team. But I do think that just like mining centralization is a bit of a problem. There is a problem when you have some, you know, too many of the core developers working for one company. And this not a problem in that it means that Bitcoins not decentralized because the scaling debate has proven for three years that Bitcoin absolutely is decentralized because, you know, the miners tried to gain control of it. They couldn't get their way. The developers tried to say this is a part forward. They couldn't get their way. And the developers had their internal challenges about what the part forward was. Then the businesses will try to, you know, collude together and get their way and they just couldn't get their way. So overall, Bitcoin is decentralized. But I see, I see that, you know, there's obviously improvements that can be made to make it more decentralized and more powerful in the future. And the fact that China might be, you know, having their crack down on mining is a good thing in order to push forward more decentralization in China. And the fact that the, you know, core developers are becoming wealthy because they back the same thing that they were developing means that they have more independence and they can, you know, and we can have less centralization in the mining process. They're not all a step forward. And I think that the fact that, you know, Greg Maxwell is doing this is, you know, everyone will create conspiracy theories if he stays or leaves. That's just the nature of this. It's a very skeptical audience. And I celebrate the fact that it is a skeptical audience because that's what's made this industry what it is today. The fact that, you know, whatever you do, whatever action you take, someone will call you your bullshit and hold you to our highest standards. And it's kind of the collective chaos that's made Bitcoin what it is today and so exciting to be involved with. But I think this is a good step forward. And you know, another, another step forward in the chapter of Bitcoin becoming more decentralized even though it already is the most decentralized thing that we have. But you know, we've got, we've got improvements of these pockets of semi centralization. And this is a good step forward. I think Simon brings up a good point about Bitcoin, the storage token, the token of value on the network. Previous projects like this have had a problem they call the tragedy of the comments. Everyone wants these open source development projects, but no one can pay the developers to work on them. So eventually they go out and they fail. What's neat about Bitcoin is like you're saying at first, it was the company's responsibility to try to improve these comments. But now we've seen it expand where presumably Greg Maxwell has enough money saved up that he doesn't have to worry about working and he can work on his own project and spend his time how he wants to and spend it improving Bitcoin. This solves the solution for now, but will it solve it long term? Jeffrey Jones, can we continue to count on Bitcoin riches leading to Bitcoin development? Or is there a second generation problem here? So yeah, no, I don't think there's a problem at all. I mean, this is, remember, Gregory specifically said in his exit letter on the mailing list basically that he now doesn't have to worry about good Bitcoin development being funded. That was the whole reason Lockstream started in the first place. So the whole idea behind Lockstream getting started was to be able to fund full time Bitcoin development, be able to fund it because somebody has to eat. You have to eat while at the same time that you work. So you have to be able to support good development. And that was just something that Gregory and many other people of Lockstream were absolutely worried about and with good reason. But now Gregory as he should be is absolutely comfortable with the space. He absolutely believes that there is plenty of funding now to go around to fund good developers. I mean, we got people everywhere, right? Like chain, chain code, a block stream, a bunch of other places have all contributed, even Coinbase have all contributed to to core development and to open source projects within Bitcoin. So I have to agree with Gregory. There is just, there's no shortage of funding right now for Bitcoin developers and with the price where it is, they almost don't even need funding anymore. And this is going to continue. So to answer your question, yeah, I don't, I think that both are going to allow the continued development of Bitcoin, both getting traditional means of funding like Lockstream did and the ever rising price of Bitcoin. The utility continues to rise. So the price will continue to rise. So it will create all these positive feedback loops. All these hamster wheels start spinning one after the other as we approach higher and higher prices. And yeah, I'm just extremely happy with the development in this space right now. All right, moving on to the exit question, I believe we've set the blocks, block stream conspiracy to rest. However, let's say something nice about them, which one of block streams projects excites you the most. They're planned to have satellite Bitcoin, allowing anyone in the world to check their balance and see if their transactions went through their plan for liquid and side chains, presumably ICO like tokens connected to the Bitcoin network or liquid, allowing banks and exchanges to transmit funds to each other or they're recently announced lightning app store, some kind of an app store type thing where you could develop lightning applications. Simon Dixon, what excites you the most about block streams, new projects? Well, the one that excites me the least would be the one that helps banks make transfers. So that's just something that does not excite me in the slightest. But hey, each of their own and Bitcoin is something that anyone can use and that means banks can use it and governments can use it and whoever wants to use it can use it. But the satellite one actually really does fascinate me because it's always been a constant, one of the goal bugs and all these people have always had these objections of the same old thing that we've always heard about Bitcoin, all the same old objections, it's just issues for crime, what if the internet goes down and the fact that if Bitcoin can still work through some kind of satellite system, then I think that is a really, really powerful interesting project and I don't know even who has the capabilities to do that. So I think block stream of the perfect team to be able to bring something like that to market. I think it's an important project and it's kind of like one of those long term projects that no one's probably going to actually achieve or work on. So you need some real, some really great minds and long-term thinkers to be able to pull something like that off. So that really excites me and of course a lot of the innovation that we could come from a lightning app store, that's all exciting, it's already good stuff. Jeffrey Jones. There's just so many exciting things in the space. I mean, that's satellite project. I still think people are underestimating how... It looks like I was frozen there, am I back? I think we're back, felt like disconnect. Yeah, I was disconnected there. I'll add my lower third in a second. I was disconnected. Thank you, Google. But yes, no, no. Sorry, what was the question Thomas? We're talking about good things from a block stream talking about the satellites. The satellites really, people are going to... My opinion is still underestimating how important these block stream satellites are because the whole point of it is that the central lie is centrosyp resistant part of it. That's the big, big thing that ties Bitcoin together and anything that can help that is what excites me. So these satellites are a testament to that. They really are... Obviously, they're still not, for example, 100% owned by a block stream, right? Or things like that. It's not the most best decentralized way I would have seen. I would have liked to see another technology instead of using other satellites and things like that that people rent and things. But hey, this is much better because now we don't have to worry about internet service providers kind of screwing us over, right? Or censoring our Bitcoin transactions. Also, remember that there's a lot of people in third world countries that could benefit from this who maybe don't have very good internet connection, but now can just be right from the satellites. And remember, their coverage is going to cover the whole planet once they're done with this. They've only just begun. They're just started on this. They've only have a little bit of coverage right now, but full coverage is coming. And if I had to take a guess, I'd say eventually the upstream is coming too. Because right now it's just a broadcast, just a downstream. But I believe that one day you'll be able to also have an upstream with that as well, be able to connect and send. You'll send and receive through those satellite connections. But you know, Bitcoin is going to continue. It's path to antifregility. I do agree. I worry about the satellites being rented. It seems pretty obvious that the people you rent it from could eventually say, oh, you're doing Bitcoin on there. You have to stop. But then there's a higher level of what if the Bitcoin satellites were just split out by themselves and an angry rogue government or rogue corporation could hunt them down and destroy them? There's an advantage to being on an existing communication satellite where they'd have to wreck their own satellite to take down your Bitcoin network. But again, we're into a lot of game theory and a lot of space theory at that point. I want to stick up for the other projects. I'm excited by the Lightning App Store. I think that's a good idea. It's again, there's a conspiracy theory, possibility. The Apple App Store has worked really well for Apple. They get a lot of funds from a lot of programmers. But again, they set up this App Store content or a concept and it led to a lot of apps. We have more apps than we used to have. If we have more Lightning apps than we used to have, it's a good thing for everyone, I think. Also, the liquid side chains, side chains in general, maybe even RSK smart contracts. A lot of people lament that Bitcoin can't directly compete with Ethereum and offer the ICOs and offer these questionable financial vehicles. Whether we like it or not, Bitcoin is probably going to directly compete with Ethereum too. I don't know if it would be the liquid side chain or with the RSK root stock smart contracts. Either way, like Jeff and Simon said, there's a lot of great development going on in Bitcoin, not just the Lightning network or the things that get the attention and it's more excitement with Gregory Maxwell, set loose and set free to work on what he wants to. We're going to move on to issue four, issue four, Asia wrap up. We keep seeing this. Joseph Young, the lone warrior from South Korea, fighting against the mainstream media. Reuters, news says that South Korea is considering shutting down their domestic cryptocurrency exchanges. Joseph argues against this saying that it's edging on cryptocurrency market manipulation, not just irresponsible reporting. According to Joseph's reporting from South Korea directly, okay, coin and who buy are launching in South Korea this year? The government is considering Bitcoin futures. There's 10 more exchanges launching in Korea and there's been a passionate debate about public blockchains versus permission blockchains on national television. It doesn't look like South Korea is banning Bitcoin anytime soon, although the mainstream media keeps reporting it. We've also had reports of China shutting down Bitcoin miners because of the electricity, shutting down and cracking down on the exchanges, closing the over the counter exchanges as a part of their previous efforts to close the ICOs and to close the local Chinese Bitcoin exchanges. Of course, the Chinese people are just getting around these exchange closers and perhaps trading in India, Japan, South Korea, other countries as the crackdown continues. Time-indiction, your thoughts on the China and South Korea situations? So two places I spent a lot of time. I was in South Korea recently meeting many of the community out there and living in Hong Kong, I spent a lot of time in China last year as well. So on the ground, I don't see any of this stuff. I know many of the CEOs of the exchanges out there and the government, of course, this is doing so much volume in Korea. It's a speculative frenzy in Korea. And it's kind of Korea is following a lot of the same path that China went through where it finds this new asset class. It's got a lot of speculators coming in. There's a lack of regulations and therefore there's probably a lot of wash trading. I guess this time you don't really need fake volume before you needed fake volume. But now there is so much real volume that probably don't even need the fake volume anymore. And then as these products get more sophisticated, you then start to get derivatives and then they start to look like more traditional financial products and then they merge into the regulated field and then you've got all the challenges that come along with that. And at the end of it, and I still believe the same will happen in China, you will end up with exchanges that when these two-tiered markets, you're going to have a two-tiered market. Bitcoin has its fully decentralized peer-to-peer, fairly complicated, bad user experience in order to use Bitcoin the way it was designed and intended. But most people go on the on-ramps through the regulated institution. So they have to do their KYC, they have to upload their documents, they have to take some fear, they then have to get on and board on Bitcoin and they probably first log in and realize that Ripple is a lot cheaper and they might make a load of money out of Ripple or lose load of money. But in the end, they end up with Bitcoin and then at some point the exchange starts to put all these nasty processes in board because the government's forcing them to put all these nasty processes that make the user experience a lot worse. And eventually, either the exchange gets hacked or shut down or something happens and then people actually take out their bitcoins and then they use it the way it was intended. They put it onto a treasor, they go through this natural learning path and this learning experience and eventually a percentage of them that were just here for the speculation just disappear or that the end of it after their speculation they end up putting some bitcoins on a treasor wallet, on a hardware wallet and that kind of drives adoption. It's just the same cycle that we're getting and nowhere is that greater in China and in South Korea. But I think people are following the path of Japan and I think Japan has led the way, Japan has shown the way, the Japanese government recognized that this asset class is not going away. We can either fight it or we can embrace it and if we embrace it we can charge tax on the regulated side and at least we won't get left behind and I think every country is going to eventually get there where they realize well we either just get rid of it and the market goes somewhere else or we embrace it and we're able to tax on the regulated side and it keeps governments and currencies more honest because they're now competing with the unregulated decentralized side and they have to create a better, better user experience in order to compete with the decentralized and unregulated side and consumers have more choice. So it's just a positive thing, whether it's bad or not, well that might create some short tone corrections, might take some Korean one out of the market but all I saw in China is everyone figuring out how they can continue in this market in a different way and the people that weren't believers and didn't get past the speculation left the market and they'll probably come back once they're financial institution or there's more systemic risk in their traditional money and they realize hold on that thing that I was doing with Bitcoin apparently there's a way of actually owning your own money, spending your own money and you know it's got some economic policy that makes it sound money over the long term. So we just see this cycle again and again and whether there's truth to this or not I haven't seen it but that's not saying that the government's can't just shut down those exchanges tomorrow and all the businesses move to the next place and go Singapore or Hong Kong or or it all miss the Japan in the end and Japan just dominates the world pays off their national debt because they supported this industry when no one else would. We'll see. Alright, Jeffrey Jones, do you agree with Simon Dixon? As the Asian regulation driven more people into hardware wallets and proper ownership as they realize that these exchanges are the points that can be shut down. So I think it has done that but in addition even more so and more importantly it has really driven attention to decentralized exchanges I think this is this I've been saying this since late last year pretty much that decentralized exchanges are going to be absolutely huge this year 2018. People are fed up with decentralized exchanges and being central failure points. There's been too many hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions, probably billions at this point lost and we know that that's not going to slow down and we know that that would only speed up if we kept this current model. And you know it's just it's a shame that the cycle the cycle exists like Simon described it. You know people first get into these all coins and these craziness and well they hear about Bitcoin but then instead of Bitcoin because it's too expensive they have unit bias and going by ripple and stuff instead and that's not going to stop but we just remember with each cycle we gain new hodlers. With each cycle there's more people that are now profitable and are now going to hold for the long term. So that's really cool and I guess man it really is Joseph against the world like this guy it's really him against all of Rooters all of mainstream Western media and he seems to be killing it. He seems to be really really keeping them to their toes like this is this is how journalism is supposed to be. If they if somebody gets something wrong you're supposed to be called out and then you're supposed to apologize and correct it right. So Rooters sort of put out some corrections right not exactly as much as we'd like but you know I'm just so glad that we have people on the ground like Joseph. This guy is awesome. I highly recommend everybody follow him his coverage has been absolutely amazing from both from China his coverage from China Japan and South Korea. I mean this guy covers it all I mean his not non he really is a true journalist and one of only about three journalists are so in the space really that I trust. So I definitely recommend everybody check that guy out and you know I said this last time that we because we talked about South Korea in the last episode as well and you know it really from all the the language I'm seeing it really looks like big one is too big to fail over there at this point you can't you don't want to regulate it because there's so many hundreds of thousands of people that want this thing that want cryptocurrency that see the value of it that see these profits being made that see that the jobs that can be created the see that you know the changes that can be made and so I don't see it going away anytime soon as you know Joseph continues to tweet I'm just more and more bullish on Bitcoin and South Korea as well as Japan and even in China I mean you know you can't ignore this thing forever what even if that means that China has to you know take over everything right like all the mining and the government has to take over all that subsidize all that stuff whatever there's still they still it's still good for Bitcoin because they can't stop Bitcoin but they can help secure Bitcoin so you know and again we've seen all of the the mining equipment move out of China over the past few months specifically over the past two months we've seen a lot of it move to Canada to you know to Alaska to to Antarctica to all sorts of different places and and it will continue and and people will continue to think of more and more intelligent ways more and more clever ways of getting electricity to be able to facilitate these miners and you know it's just I just hope that we can learn from from these every time these pumps come I hope that everybody learns and sees what happens because that's what I think is happening every with all these media cycles every time we go through we get a bunch new holders we learn a bunch new things we we see that we see the tide come out so we see all the all the Ponzi schemes we see how horrible the media covers things I mean the horrible media coverage is the whole reason why I started my show in the first place because just was just unbelievably not happy with the mainstream media coverage of Bitcoin and so you know I don't think that's kind of changed they're getting slightly better but it's it's really not getting a whole lot better but that's why we're here and we hope that you guys enjoy the coverage that the world crypto network brings to you all right let's move on to the exit questions Simon just defined the order with Japan in the lead South Korea in the middle and China falling behind I ask you is this order fixed and permanent will Japan always be the leader or is it still possible for South Korea and China to change their function to change their regulatory ideas and to catch up Simon Dixon nothing is ever fixed in Bitcoin and crypto currencies so I guarantee you within six months that what look like fix Japan South Korea China even even South Korea that came out of nowhere no one saw that coming you know China was there suddenly South Korea's there out of nowhere no one saw that and that happens in the water crypto that's why this is the most exciting industry to be involved with and that's why you guys every single week have new content because every single week you know everything changes Jeffrey Jones same question yeah education is paramount you know keep following people like us world crypto network and we'll all get through this craziness together well I had some interesting comments this week on the Bitcoin talk show I had said something like China will change their mind China will come back to cryptocurrency and people got upset they said what if a girl says she doesn't want to date you anymore she says she's moving on is she going to come back to you and I don't think those two things are exactly the same I would say that the China and Bitcoin situation is a lot more like Carthage and Rome Carthage and Hannibal with his elephants were marauding through Rome and Switzerland and they were taking over cities and when he rolled into the city the city would take down their Roman banners and they'd put up their Carthage banners and they'd say Hannibal is great and then Hannibal would roll on to the next city and everyone would take down their Carthage banners and put back up their Roman banners because they knew that Rome was going to be there forever that Rome was a considerable and constant problem to them it was a large institution and I think that's what Bitcoin is Bitcoin is this large institution of cryptocurrency and someone like China can say no today but cryptocurrency is going to be back at their gate tomorrow and that's why it really is it's a force it's a wave it's a huge huge event like the internet like the MP3 like exchanging data it's something you can try to ignore and you can try to put Pandora back and put all the things back in the box but you never really can but let's move on to predictions or a story of the week Jeffrey Jones are you ready with a prediction or a story of the week yeah a couple stories I'm just really happy again to see all this technology being coming forth for Bitcoin in 2018 so many papers being released so many things being worked on one in particular the Schnorr paper that was just released to help for scalability and optimization you know it was penned by of course all some of the great Bitcoin developers Gregory Maxwell Peter Wolley and you know super excited to what what Schnorr is going to be able to bring I mean man when you combine that with lightning you have some amazingly scalable technology there amazingly scalable technology and this is really really going to be huge coming going forward so unfortunately it's a little bit in the distance Schnorr is in the distance but hey these papers are being written now they're being talked about now technologies being built now so I'm very much looking forward to this to this to Schnorr signatures with combined with light with with lightning so very very amazing tech also the Sunday I will be interviewing Mr. Christian Decker on the Bitcoin News Show the Sunday at New and Pacific we will be demoing the new lightning charge technology from block stream that they just released today or sorry this week where we where we will actually demo live buying a purchasing a product from the block stream store with lightning so we're really excited about that to show everybody that and see how fast it is because I don't know if you guys have saw some of the Twitter videos out there maybe from people like Jack Mallorz and such but wow lightning is fast it is really really fast and it is almost zero fee it is incredible technology this is really what everybody wants right this is what this is the dream of Bitcoin and we're and we're now at the cusp of this becoming a reality and in my opinion a lightning really will by the end of the year being incorporated into almost everybody's technology stack and then so that next year I mean as soon as you start out if you just come to the space in January of 2019 I mean everything is going to support lightning or have decentralized exchanges or you know the having the year after I mean wow if you come into Bitcoin in 2019 you're going to be a happy happy camper great stuff Jeff and people have been asking for a lightning demonstration so be sure to check out that interview this weekend right here on the world crypto network you can subscribe down below also they have a little bell next to the subscriptions if you click that it will send you a notification when we're on the air it's great to do Simon any a story of the week or a prediction yeah I'm just super charged for 2018 I'm really excited about some of the things I should disclaim many of the projects I talk about I am an investor in so please take it as the self-interest there but we've had today Kim I put a tweet out there Kim.com who's been working on a project for several years that's been it's had several delays but he's now said that he's building Bitcoin Cash which was the name before Bitcoin Cash and I look forward to all the stories and and puns and everything that comes from that but you can still their name you can't steal the name of Bitcoin Cash that's not fair well it was his first they stole it from him but Bitcoin Cash is building on the lightning network so they've announced that today and what else do we got we'll have some announcements with RSK and Diego from RSK is on our advisory board and this year we're really excited that we're bringing tokenized securities to the market so we've got equity in over a hundred of the most valuable companies in this industry and we're launching our equity backs to tokenize securities market so we can have ICOs that are actually securities and they are actually equity and they do represent some ownership and it follows some of the rules so we're really excited to use some of the licenses that we've accumulated over the years to support the industry and and and hopefully bring a new product to market. Jeffrey Jones you have a question for Simon. Yeah just a quick question Simon you know you guys you said you announced that Bitcoin Cash is working with lightning and by that do you mean that they are working with the 1.0 specification that was released just recently end of last year so that all of the the three lightning teams could all kind of work together so does Bitcoin actually use that 1.0 lightning specification and that's what they've been working on and that's what they're building and say yeah they're looking to fully utilize the lightning network and it's kind of like but you know they had so many delays but now this this actually got released and they decided that you know this was something worth waiting for and it's I'm really excited to see what what someone like him.com and the traction he can bring to a product like this and his experience of building products that people use and lightning network was the piece of technology that they were missing that allowed them to do this. It's really exciting. It's great stuff and it's great to see them move from they were going to just do normal Bitcoin then people saying oh they could do light coin or they could do B Cash to see them take on the lightning network because that's really if you want to develop something long term that people are going to use you have to go to the top of the stack you have to use the best programming available if you want to send files around you better include BitTorrent. You can't just ignore it pretend it doesn't exist make your own version of BitTorrent it's not going to be as good it's all better if we work together and use the open source solutions that we have so that's great to hear my story of the week it was Wednesday I was running late for the today in Bitcoin show so I decided why not bring back Bitcoin talk show so I did the first day I just talked with the chat room and we just had a discussion back and forth in the second and third days I've been able to get Skype working and you can Skype us directly at world crypto network all one word and we've just had a great discussion this week with the audience people in South Africa Persian Gulf Finland Los Angeles Atlanta all over the world have been calling us and giving us their thoughts about Bitcoin we've been sharing it and having a discussion and I think that's been a lot of fun and we're going to try to keep that going next week we're hoping to have maybe some world crypto network repeats for you tomorrow just recapping the last couple weeks of shows as a Saturday type event we don't have another show on Saturday yet I think that might be kind of fun and we're just continually working in the world crypto network slack to bringing new shows to get new commentaries we have a lot of great interviews from Andy Hoffman he did an audio blog this week and then we have Jeffrey Jones with the Bitcoin news show coming up on Sunday so a lot of great new stuff from world crypto network be sure to subscribe down below give us a thumbs up in a share and that's about it for this episode of the Bitcoin group if you've got some extra Bitcoin jangling around your wallet you want to send us a donation you can scan the QR code right there on your screen it is a segwit address I've told and that's that makes it better so thanks so much for watching until next time bye bye