How Do You Know You Can Trust Bitcoin?

00:02 Hey everyone, how do you know you can 00:04 trust Bitcoin and what exactly are you 00:07 trusting when you do trust Bitcoin? 00:09 Okay, so a helpful analogy is the 00:12 internet. Anytime you use the internet, 00:14 there's actually a lot of trust there. 00:16 Especially if you uh process a financial 00:18 transaction on the internet, you're 00:20 trusting all of the different parties in 00:22 the process not to cheat you, not to 00:24 scam you, to do what's right. You're 00:26 trusting the code that runs the 00:28 internet. You're trusting that there's 00:30 not any massive bugs in the internet. 00:32 You're trusting all of those things. So, 00:34 it's helpful when people when people 00:36 look at Bitcoin, they have a hard time 00:38 looking at it through the lens of other 00:40 things they already trust like the 00:42 internet or their smartphone or the apps 00:44 on their smartphone. Um, so let's let's 00:46 go through some of the building blocks 00:48 of internet of uh of the same building 00:50 blocks of the internet that apply to 00:52 Bitcoin. Okay. So, the first all uh 00:54 first off is the computer code that runs 00:56 Bitcoin. When you are using Bitcoin, you 00:58 are trusting the code that runs Bitcoin 01:01 the same way you uh are trusting the 01:03 code when you use the internet. And as 01:06 with the internet, there are computer 01:07 programmers that write that code. The 01:09 big difference with the uh with Bitcoin, 01:12 unlike the internet as a whole, is that 01:14 Bitcoin is open source. Meaning the 01:17 entire code of the entire Bitcoin 01:19 network is open for the world to see for 01:21 literally anyone on the entire world to 01:24 audit the code of the Bitcoin network 01:26 and to audit every transaction of the 01:28 Bitcoin network. They can't tell who 01:30 sent money to who, but absolutely all of 01:32 the code that runs it is open sourced, 01:35 which means anyone can audit it. And it 01:37 is the most scrutinized code in the 01:41 entire world. So the uh the code that 01:43 runs on your bank's servers or on 01:46 Amazon, you know, maybe a dozen 01:48 programmers uh reviewed the code that 01:51 processes your bank payments or 01:53 something like that or even fewer, 01:54 maybe, you know, a handful of people 01:56 really scrutinized the code for your 01:58 financial institution. In the case of 01:60 Bitcoin, millions of people are looking 02:02 at that code, every single line of code 02:05 trying to predict what could go wrong, 02:07 you know, all of that. So with Bitcoin, 02:09 you are trusting the code of Bitcoin, 02:11 but it's open source. It's viewable by 02:14 anyone. And if you are not a computer 02:16 programmer, I presume almost none of the 02:17 people watching this video are computer 02:19 programmers. Uh you can get somebody to 02:21 go review the code of the uh of the 02:23 Bitcoin network. And a lot of the early 02:25 investors in Bitcoin did that. uh Wes 02:27 Casaceras and a lot of the others hired 02:30 armies of the very best computer 02:33 software developers they knew and said 02:35 please break this code because I'm about 02:37 to put a bunch of money in it and if it 02:39 can be broken I want to know and every 02:41 time the the programmers came back and 02:43 said this is amazing like this code is 02:46 really really really good. Um so Bitcoin 02:48 is the most trustworthy code that runs 02:51 in the world and you are already 02:53 trusting code every time that you use 02:55 anything in your life regardless. So 02:58 Bitcoin is the more trustworthy of the 02:60 code. Now as with the internet in the 03:02 very early days of the internet some 03:03 people said well I don't trust the 03:05 internet because what if there's a bug? 03:07 What if there's a bug in the internet 03:08 code? Well right now if somebody told 03:10 you that if they said well I don't feel 03:12 comfortable with the internet because 03:13 what if there's a bug in it? Your 03:15 response would be probably to look at 03:17 them funny. You'd think, "Wait, a bug in 03:20 the internet?" Like the internet's this 03:23 like ba massive network. It's not 03:25 there's not like a bug in the internet. 03:27 And secondly, do you think they wouldn't 03:29 fix it? Like the the whole point of the 03:31 internet is what's the probability that 03:33 there someone's going to discover a bug 03:36 in some of the code that runs the 03:37 internet and it's going to take the 03:39 internet down forever and the internet 03:41 will just never be a thing anymore. The 03:43 probability of that is zero. literally 03:45 zero. If there is a bug in something 03:47 related to the internet, the computer 03:49 programmers that manage the software of 03:51 the internet will fix the bug and get 03:53 the internet running as soon as 03:55 conceivably possible. It's the same with 03:57 Bitcoin. If there was some bug in the 03:58 code of Bitcoin, the same very diligent 04:01 programmers that are programming Bitcoin 04:03 would fix that bug as fast as 04:05 conceivably possible. So with Bitcoin, 04:07 you are trusting computer code, but it 04:10 is more audited and more secured and 04:12 open- source computer code and more 04:14 audited and more secured than any other 04:16 computer code that you trust anything 04:18 with in your life. Okay. Second, you're 04:21 trusting computer programmers, but 04:22 again, it's open source code and you 04:24 trust computer programmers with 04:26 everything else you do in your life as 04:28 well that's connected to anything with 04:30 regard to computer code. And that 04:31 includes everything from your oven and 04:34 you know all the electronic controls on 04:36 your washing machine, your dryer, your 04:37 refrigerator. Like all of that's got 04:39 computer code behind it. All right. 04:41 Well, with Bitcoin, you're also trusting 04:43 the incentives of the system. You're 04:45 trusting the people of the network not 04:48 to all of a sudden decide that we're all 04:50 going to use Bitcoin that has 22 million 04:53 coins instead of 21 million coins. Well, 04:56 the way Bitcoin works is Bitcoin is a 04:59 consensus of 100% of the participants, 05:02 which means if even a single person in 05:05 the entire Bitcoin network disagrees 05:07 with a change to the Bitcoin network, 05:09 then the the the change the protocol and 05:12 the change will break off into its own 05:15 network. So in the case of Bitcoin, if 05:17 somebody came along, one second, 05:21 if somebody came along and said, I think 05:23 there should be 42 million Bitcoin 05:25 instead of 21 million Bitcoin, then the 05:28 the only people that would follow that 05:31 network would be people who wanted there 05:33 to be twice as many Bitcoin, which makes 05:35 no sense because it would dilute the 05:37 number of Bitcoin everybody has. it 05:38 would make the entire uh all of the 05:41 Bitcoin that already exists would become 05:42 half as valuable if suddenly there was 05:45 twice as much Bitcoin and they got you 05:47 know distributed to who knows who. So 05:50 virtually none if not zero of the 05:53 current hundreds of millions of people 05:55 that own Bitcoin are going to agree to 05:58 change the total number of Bitcoin. And 06:00 if even one person disagrees then the 06:04 current version of Bitcoin keeps going 06:06 like it is. There might be another 06:08 version of Bitcoin that has 42 million 06:10 coins. Um, but uh that's already 06:12 happened 20,000 times. Uh, already 06:15 20,000 cryptocurrencies have tried to do 06:18 something like Bitcoin and change 06:20 something about it, including a bunch of 06:22 them who said, "Let's make 42 million 06:24 coins." And everybody was like, "Nope, 06:26 we'll just own the Bitcoin that has 21 06:28 million coins." So, um, so you're you're 06:31 trusting the consensus and the 06:33 incentives of humans, but anything that 06:36 would change the Bitcoin network that 06:38 would hurt you would hurt everyone else 06:40 on the Bitcoin network, such as diluting 06:43 the currency somehow or making more than 06:45 21 million. So, with Bitcoin, you're 06:46 trusting the code just like you do with 06:48 everything else in your life. You're 06:50 trusting the computer programmers behind 06:51 it. But again, in this case, with 06:53 Bitcoin, you don't even have to trust 06:54 the programmers because the the code is 06:57 open source. you can just audit it and 06:58 look at it yourself. Um, and the 07:00 computer programmers behind Bitcoin are, 07:02 I would argue, better computer 07:04 programmers than are behind virtually 07:06 anything else in the world. Like, I 07:07 mean, it's just incredibly incredibly 07:10 talented people that are very passionate 07:13 about Bitcoin and there is a huge 07:15 massive army of them. Um, and then 07:17 you're trusting the incentives. You're 07:18 entrusting people not to decide to 07:22 dilute and devalue their own money. And 07:24 again, if even one person disagrees, you 07:26 can't change the network unless you have 07:28 100% total consensus. Otherwise, it 07:31 forces everybody who wants to change the 07:33 network onto their own version. Uh, and 07:36 that actually happened with something 07:37 called Bitcoin Cash. There was a group 07:40 of people including Roger Ver who was on 07:42 a Tucker Carlson interview recently 07:44 who's he's become a bit of a pariah in 07:46 the Bitcoin community. He backed a 07:49 change to Bitcoin that the majority of 07:52 Bitcoiners did not agree with. It was 07:54 not a change in the amount of Bitcoin. 07:56 He still wanted there to be 21 million, 07:58 but it was uh it was a change in how 08:00 easy it is to secure and audit the 08:03 Bitcoin network, specifically audit the 08:05 Bitcoin network. And for a variety of 08:07 reasons I won't go into, uh there was a 08:09 massive fight about that back in 2017. 08:11 And ultimately all of the people that 08:13 agreed with Roger Ver uh decided to 08:16 launch their own network and that that 08:19 network which is called BCH instead of 08:22 BTC which is the real Bitcoin. Bitcoin 08:24 Cash is called BCH uh sometimes called 08:27 Bcash. Um and it's trading at 1200th of 08:32 the price of Bitcoin. So that token 08:35 which attempted to change something 08:37 about Bitcoin that not everyone agreed 08:39 with that token since its launch has 08:42 lost 99.5% 08:45 of its value. Literally 08:48 1992 2000s of its value have disappeared 08:51 because it was not a cons there was not 08:54 a consensus that that change should 08:56 happen to Bitcoin. So that is just the 08:59 the probability that something bad 09:00 happens to Bitcoin. the owners of 09:02 Bitcoin are absolutely positively not 09:05 going to agree to change something about 09:07 Bitcoin that changes, you know, the 09:10 value of Bitcoin to them, which means 09:12 there will never be more than 21 million 09:14 Bitcoin because you're never going to 09:16 get 100% of the Bitcoin owners to agree 09:19 to devalue their currency. So, um, and 09:22 again, also as it relates to everything 09:24 else you trust in life, it's the same 09:25 way. Um, in with your fiat currencies, 09:29 you're trusting your banks. um much more 09:32 so than you are trusting Bitcoin and 09:34 you're trusting a very small number of 09:35 people at the Federal Reserve to decide 09:37 how much money there is in the world. 09:39 And so instead of trusting everyone that 09:42 owns a US dollar not to debase the value 09:44 of the US dollar with US dollars, you're 09:47 trusting basically 12 people to decide 09:50 what your money's worth, which are the 09:52 uh the various uh you know Federal 09:54 Reserve the uh representatives of the 09:56 Federal Reserve, including especially 09:57 the chairman of the Federal Reserve. So, 10:00 uh, the current financial system 10:02 requires way more trust in way shakier 10:06 and untrustworthy things than Bitcoin. 10:09 Bitcoin really doesn't require any 10:11 trust. But if you want to say it does, 10:13 it's trust. It's trust in things you 10:15 already trust with all sorts of things 10:17 in your life like computer code and the 10:20 developers, the software developers 10:22 behind computer code and the incentives 10:24 that make sure that Amazon doesn't cheat 10:26 you. Um, you know, any company could 10:29 cheat you out of money somehow uh by 10:32 taking your credit card information and 10:34 not shipping a product and they don't 10:35 because they have an incentive not to. 10:37 And in the case of Bitcoin, hundreds of 10:39 millions of people have an incentive not 10:42 to change the rules. And that is the 10:44 case with all money. In the case of all 10:46 money, it's based on the consensus of 10:48 how money works and who's behind it. Um, 10:51 and that's just that that will always be 10:53 the case. So uh so to summarize with 10:56 Bitcoin, why can you trust Bitcoin? It 10:59 is more trustworthy than anything else 11:00 in the world. Um the the software is 11:03 more solid, the developers behind it are 11:05 more solid, the network is more 11:06 resilient than the entire internet. And 11:08 if you trust the internet with anything 11:11 in your life, Bitcoin is far more 11:14 trustworthy than the internet as a 11:15 whole. So, if you think it's okay to use 11:18 the internet and if you trust the 11:20 internet to carry your credit card 11:22 number over the wires or if you trust 11:24 the internet with private or personal 11:26 information or if you trust your 11:28 smartphone to have private or personal 11:30 information or your credit card numbers 11:32 or debit card numbers on it, uh that 11:35 level of trust to trust those things is 11:38 much more uh at risk than the trust you 11:42 put by investing in Bitcoin. uh the 11:44 cryptography, the math. With Bitcoin, 11:46 you're trusting cryptography just like 11:48 you are with your traditional banks. 11:50 You're trusting mathematics just like 11:52 you are with your traditional banks. 11:53 Except in all of those things, uh 11:55 Bitcoin is much more secure than your 11:57 bank. It is the cryptography that is 11:59 used to secure it is more secure than 12:01 whatever your bank is already using. And 12:03 so I look at it, some people say, I just 12:05 don't know if I can trust Bitcoin. My 12:07 answer is if you don't think you could 12:09 trust Bitcoin, how do you trust 12:10 anything? because Bitcoin is the most 12:12 trustworthy and absolute thing that 12:14 exists in the entire world. And uh last 12:17 thing I'll say, if you don't trust the 12:19 code and you don't trust the developers 12:20 and you don't trust the incentives, then 12:24 maybe you trust the fact that Black 12:25 Rockck and Fidelity and Franklin 12:27 Templeton and almost all of the largest 12:31 firms on uh on Wall Street are actively 12:34 marketing Bitcoin to their clients in 12:37 the form of Bitcoin ETFs, which are just 12:39 a an exchange traded fund is a wrapper 12:41 that goes around Bitcoin, but inside it, 12:43 the only thing in there is Bitcoin. and 12:46 um they are actively marketing. So if 12:48 you think well how do I know I can trust 12:50 this? The answer is do you trust the 12:52 largest Black Rockck manages $12 12:54 trillion of assets? They're the largest 12:57 money manager in the world. And they 12:59 came out yesterday $12 trillion Black 13:02 Rockck largest money manager in the 13:04 world and said you know everybody who 13:07 has a standardized portfolio ought to be 13:09 able to put at least 1 to 2% of that in 13:11 Bitcoin. Now they say Black Black Rockck 13:14 has also said the optimum number is 85%. 13:17 But they're saying look everybody it 13:19 it's reasonable to put a couple percent 13:22 at least of your portfolio in in 13:24 Bitcoin. Um and they run the largest 13:26 Bitcoin ETF. BlackRock does. They're the 13:28 largest uh firm on uh for asset manager 13:31 on Wall Street and they have the largest 13:32 Bitcoin ETF. So even even if you don't 13:35 are not sure you can trust everything 13:37 else, do you trust all of the financial 13:40 organizations that are actively selling 13:42 this? I promise you, Black Rockck 13:44 Fidelity, two of the largest financial 13:46 managers in the world, they did not go 13:48 start marketing Bitcoin to all of their 13:50 clients without doing their due 13:51 diligence. They did the work. They got 13:54 their software developers, their 13:56 hackers, they got all of those people to 13:58 go pound on Bitcoin to make sure it was 14:00 solid before they started marketing it 14:02 to their clients. And they, Black Rockck 14:04 would never never jeopardize their 14:08 reputation as a $12 trillion asset 14:11 manager to put their clients in 14:14 something, you know, risky or unsolid. 14:16 Um, they would never do that. It makes 14:18 no sense to risk 12 trillion just to put 14:23 50 billion 20th of one of those 14:26 trillion. I mean, it makes no sense to 14:28 put a, you know, to to risk those 14:31 clients on something that might blow up, 14:33 which tells you it's not going to blow 14:34 up. You know, Bitcoin is not going to 14:36 blow up. the largest asset managers in 14:38 the world and the many of the largest 14:40 investors in the world are actively 14:42 investing in Bitcoin because it's rock 14:45 solid and they have done the due 14:47 diligence and they have done the work. 14:48 So even if you don't have time to do the 14:51 due diligence and to do the work, look 14:53 at the world and say, "Hey, you didn't 14:55 audit the code that runs the internet 14:57 and you still use the internet. You 14:59 didn't audit the code that runs your 15:00 smartphone. You still use your 15:01 smartphone. You still transact on 15:03 Amazon. You still buy stuff online. you 15:05 still have your credit cards, you know, 15:08 you know, your credit cards. Every time 15:09 you swipe a credit card at a retailer, 15:12 um, you know, any sort of store, your 15:14 credit card number immediately hits the 15:16 internet. Even if you don't enter it on 15:18 the internet, that credit card number 15:20 immediately hits the internet every time 15:21 you use it at any store anywhere in the 15:24 world. It immediately hits the internet 15:26 uh to go get processed by Visa or 15:27 Mastercard or whatever. So, um, even if 15:30 you haven't personally, uh, audited all 15:32 those things, you trust Visa and 15:34 Mastercard not to mess you up. And it's 15:37 the same thing here. You trust Black 15:39 Rockck and Fidelity and all of the 15:40 largest money managers and some of the 15:43 most successful many of the most 15:45 successful investors in the world who 15:47 have done the research, who have done 15:49 the work, who have audited the code, who 15:52 have uh played out every single 15:54 conceivable scenario where something bad 15:56 could happen to Bitcoin and they decide 15:58 as a result of that we are going to re 16:00 recommend this to our clients. even 16:02 though it represents a tiny percent of 16:04 the assets uh that they manage, the 16:06 total reputational damage if something 16:09 bad happened to Bitcoin would be huge 16:11 and they're willing to take that risk 16:13 because they have evaluated as 16:15 essentially zero risk. They have they 16:17 have looked at it and said the 16:18 probability that something bad happens 16:19 to Bitcoin is effectively zero. And 16:22 because it's effectively zero, we can 16:24 confidently market this product to our 16:27 clients and customers just like we do 16:29 Tesla and Amazon and Apple and Google 16:32 and Facebook and uh all of those other 16:35 things. So, um anyway, uh Bitcoin is 16:38 just about the most trustworthy thing in 16:40 the entire world. And you don't have to 16:42 take my word for it. Go search the 16:44 internet. Go find go do your own 16:47 research and you'll find that all of the 16:49 smartest people have come to the same 16:51 conclusion of the rock solid nature of 16:55 Bitcoin. And um and and then and the 16:58 most beautiful part about Bitcoin is you 17:00 don't have to trust anybody. You're 17:02 there's no single entity that can mess 17:04 you up or change the money supply. It's 17:07 decentralized which means there's 17:09 there's nobody that can make the 17:11 decisions to derail everything. There's 17:13 a million people that can fix something 17:15 if no if something goes wrong, but 17:17 there's nobody that can single-handedly 17:19 mess it up or even a small group of 17:21 people that can single-handedly mess it 17:23 up because everybody's watching the 17:24 Bitcoin code and nobody upgrades to the 17:27 the next version of the Bitcoin code. Uh 17:30 unless, you know, a million people have 17:32 reviewed the code and everybody's 17:33 decided it's rock solid. Um so, uh 17:36 Bitcoin is just about the most certain 17:37 thing in the entire world. And that 17:39 stability is built on uh just an 17:42 incredible and an inordinate amount of 17:44 time and labor and reputation that 17:47 everyone has staked in it to make sure 17:49 Bitcoin is just the most rock solid 17:51 thing in the world. So um as far as 17:54 trust goes, I would put Bitcoin at 100 17:56 out of 100. And uh basically everything 17:60 else in the world I trust less than 18:02 Bitcoin. If you if you put an index of 18:05 all the things I trust in the world, you 18:07 know, I would say, you know, the love of 18:09 my family, God, and you know, the uh 18:13 credibility of Bitcoin's monetary 18:15 properties, you know, all of those are 18:17 in the uh you know, 100point index on a 18:20 100point scale. Virtually everything in 18:22 your life that you use or that you trust 18:25 is less trustworthy than Bitcoin. Have a 18:28 great night, everyone.