TAKEDOWN: 24 Reasons Why I Don’t Believe in Bitcoin & Crypto

00:01 Hey everyone, it is time for a takedown. Today we are going to take down the 24 00:08 most common arguments against Bitcoin and crypto. And this is from an article yesterday called that the 24 reasons I 00:15 don't believe in Bitcoin and crypto by Jesse Columbbo uh released December 18. I think that's yesterday. Uh anyway, uh 00:22 I was hoping when I saw this article, as I've told you before, anti- Bitcoin and anti-crypto articles are the very most 00:28 favorite thing I read. I've read every single anti- Bitcoin and anti-crypto book. I've read most of the anti-crypto 00:35 and anti-bitcoin articles, and I've talked about how usually they miss the mark. And I did a video on how to spot 00:41 misinformation, and if I remember, I will post it in the comments. Um, so I wanted to go uh item by item through all 00:48 24 of this guy's argu arguments and do a uh sort of a speed round reputation 00:54 of why this guy misses the mark. Uh, the first thing I was hoping he would come up with something I hadn't heard before, 00:60 but alas, every single argument he makes is one I've read about a dozen times over the last 10 years and or I should 01:06 say the last seven, eight years or so that I've been following this uh stuff. But anyway, so he doesn't come up with 01:13 anything original, but he has done a good job of uh listing all 24. Um, and so we're going to go one by one. Okay. 01:19 Item number one, the potential number of cryptocurrencies is unlimited. Well, this is a super lame argument because 01:25 this guy comes from gold. So his entire business is being an analyst and an investor in gold and silver. So you find 01:32 out later in the article that his entire purpose of writing the article is he is deathly afraid of the United States 01:38 adopting Bitcoin as a strategic reserve a uh asset and especially selling some 01:44 of the United States uh uh gold in Fort Knox to buy Bitcoin. So his whole 01:50 business is selling people gold and silver or at least being an analyst and an investor in those things. I'm not 01:55 sure if he's in the market of selling them. People like Peter Schiff are in the market of selling gold and silver to people. And so the people who are the 02:02 most anti- bitcoin are the people who are threatened by it because they are 02:07 people who are deep in gold and silver and they are afraid Bitcoin is going to replace gold and silver uh which it will 02:14 and it is as the preferred uh you know uh scarce money. So anyway, you find out 02:20 later in the article that this guy's an analyst for gold and silver and an investor in gold and silver. And the whole purpose of writing the argument, 02:26 the article is to encourage people to buy gold and silver and not Bitcoin, which is ridiculous, but we'll get to 02:32 that. Okay, so he says the potential number of cryptocurrencies is unlimited. Okay, this coming from a guy who is 02:37 invest in gold and silver. So saying that the number of cryptocurrencies is unlimited is like saying the number of 02:43 metals, the amount of metal is unlimited. Yes, I can buy tin. I can buy 02:48 a bunch of metal. I can buy scrap metal. I can buy metal really cheap, but that doesn't make gold not scarce. So, gold 02:56 is a kind of metal that is scarce because of its monetary properties. Um, scarcity being one of them, but it's 03:02 there there's others. Um, so cryptocurrencies are not scarce, but Bitcoin is scarce. There will only ever 03:08 be 21 million. Um, this is like saying anybody, you know, money, paper money is not scarce because we can all go buy up 03:15 Monopoly games, you know, write our names on the bills and each release our 03:21 own paper currency. And the answer is yes, you can, but that doesn't mean that the US dollars you can can't make US 03:27 dollars up that way. Now, some people can. The Federal Reserve can, but not you. But anyway, so the assertion that 03:32 the potential number of cryptocurrencies unlimited is ridiculous because everybody agrees the potential number of 03:39 cryptocurrencies is unlimited and everybody also agrees that they're virtually all worthless and the ones 03:44 that are not obviously worthless today uh are going to be discovered to be, you know, worthless when people realize they 03:50 have no utility. Um so anyway, so uh again, and then he goes on to say gold 03:55 and silver are scarce, but again by his argument, metal is not scarce. and he's 04:00 arguing, "Yeah, metal is not scarce, but gold and silver are." Well, I would make the same argument for cryptocurrencies. 04:06 Cryptocurrencies are not scarce. You and I could make our own cryptocurrency tomorrow, but it'd be worthless and nobody would use it. So, Bitcoin is 04:13 scarce. I don't care about crypto. Bitcoin is scarce and that's why it's so valuable and that's why it's worth more 04:19 than two trillion. So, it's a lame argument, but he makes it anyway. Uh number two, the risk of Bitcoin and 04:25 other cryptocurrencies being rendered obsolete by more advanced and modern cryptocurrencies is his number two. 04:31 We've talked about this in a separate video there. Bitcoin is not going to be obsoleted by, you know, by uh something 04:37 else. The same way uh MySpace got obsoleted by Facebook. I've done a whole separate video about that. So, um, you 04:44 know, if you want look up that video, the keyword, I think you can find that video if you search my, uh, my page for 04:50 out competed or the word MySpace, you can find a dedicated video on that. So, I'm not going to cover that here other 04:56 than to say that is not going to happen for all the reasons I've covered in numerous videos before now. Okay. Number 05:01 three, Bitcoin. Bitcoin is notoriously energy intensive and inefficient. Uh, 05:06 first of all, Bitcoin uses, let's call it, one on one10enth of 1% of the 05:11 world's electricity. So that's 1/ 1,000th of the world's electricity. Heating, air conditioning, and 05:16 refrigeration use like 30%. 300 times more electricity is used for heating, 05:22 air conditioning, and refrigeration than is used for Bitcoin mining. Also, the amount of electricity used for Bitcoin 05:29 mining does not scale with the usage of the network. It's used essentially the same amount of electricity is used 05:35 whether or not there's one transaction on the network or whether or not there's millions. It just it it's not related to 05:41 that. It's related to how much total security and auditing of the Bitcoin network is happening. So there's no 05:46 reason Bitcoin needs to use more than onetenth of 1% of the world's electricity. It just needs to use enough 05:53 that it's not easily uh that it's not easy to put that amount of electrical power all together in one place um uh 06:01 you know in a in an effort to compromise the network in some way. Um, so anyway, I have never met anyone who thought the 06:07 electricity usage of Bitcoin was a problem if they thought it was valuable, like if they thought it was bringing 06:13 value to the world. The only people that argue that Bitcoin is not uh that the electricity usage is a problem are 06:19 people that think it's worthless and we don't need a uh we don't need a a solid 06:24 um non-svereign money, meaning a government non-government issued money. So nobody argues that 30% of the world's 06:31 electricity should not be used for heating, air conditioning or refrigeration uh because they see value 06:36 in that. So the only people who think uh the energy usage of Bitcoin is a problem are people that do not see the value of 06:42 Bitcoin. Um a good way to put it is if we could find the world's most perfect money, is it worth onetenth of 1% of the 06:50 world's electricity to power the network of the world's most perfect money? And if you believe Bitcoin is the most 06:55 world's most perfect money, that is a fantastic use of electricity. So anyway, again, he just thinks it's not and 07:00 therefore he has a problem with it. Um, what he never mentions is that gold mining and silver mining are use huge 07:07 amounts of electricity and have a much more negative impact on the environment than Bitcoin. So if you've ever seen a 07:13 uh a gold mine or a silver mine, it they're like strip mining for precious metals. And of course, he never has a 07:19 problem with that because he's out there selling gold and silver and promoting those two things. Uh, but he never mentions the environmental impact of 07:25 gold and silver mining. Uh, because he thinks gold and silver are good money. So, if he thought good Bitcoin was good 07:31 money, he would not have a problem with it either. All right. Number four, Bitcoin might be in a massive bubble, 07:36 artificially inflated by Tether. I'm not going to go into what Tether is, but people have been complaining about Tether for, you know, 10 years now, or 07:43 whenever since it was invented, and Tether's never blown up. And I'm not going to even go into Tether. But 07:49 regardless, if Tether went away, it would force everybody to use Bitcoin instead of Tether uh for as their 07:55 primary trading pair, which in Frank frankly would probably be good for Bitcoin rather than bad for Bitcoin. So, he acts like that's, you know, somehow 08:02 inflating the price of Bitcoin, but it's kind of a ridiculous assert assertion. And if Tether went away, people would 08:07 just use Bitcoin uh as the sort of reserve currency for trading. And that 08:12 would actually, in my opinion, probably be better for Bitcoin. But uh anyway, he claims it's in a bubble. Well, I've refuted this already with my website, 08:19 bitcoinbubblemmyth.com. That's bitcoinbubble and the word mythm.com. 08:25 So, if you want to know why Bitcoin's not a bubble, uh go to bitcoinbubble myth.com and watch my entire 08:30 presentation about bit why Bitcoin is not a bubble. And he makes a really weak argument that it is. Uh which is really 08:37 again quite weak. But go watch the takedown at bitcoinbubble myth.com if 08:42 you're interested. Item number five, the real world usage remains minimal, primarily limited to speculation. Um, he 08:48 offers no good no good arguments for this. So, we've talked about this in a previous video where the vast majority 08:54 of pe of Bitcoin that is held is held because of its monetary properties as a store of value and holding Bitcoin as a 09:02 store of value is using Bitcoin. So, I did an entire video about how much time money is used is being used as a medium 09:10 of exchange versus a uh store of value. And the shortnake is a tiny fraction of 09:16 um of Bitcoin's usage is as a store of value or sorry is as a medium of exchange. The vast majority of any 09:23 money's usage is as a store of value. Um so he acts like uh you know it's not being used for that when the truth is 09:29 tons of stuff is being used uh you know bitcoin is being used for billions of dollars of transactions as a as a uh 09:36 medium of exchange every day um or every year or every quarter, every week, however long. um and that its store of 09:43 value properties are being used constantly by everyone who holds it. Um so again, it's a it's a weak argument 09:49 that uh presumes this is a common argument that people uh they argue that if it's not being used to buy cup of 09:55 cups of coffee on a daily basis, it's not working. Well, of course, nobody uses gold and silver. This guy's 10:00 promoting gold and silver and claims nobody's using Bitcoin to buy coffee. Nobody's using gold and silver to buy 10:06 coffee. Um that doesn't mean, you know, neither one of them is valuable. And again, in the future, every, you know, 10:12 more and more transactions happen on the bit on the Bitcoin network and the Bitcoin Lightning network for smaller payments every single day. And this guy 10:19 acts like nobody's using it. Uh anyway, which again is is kind of a a weak argument coming from a guy promoting 10:25 gold and silver, which, you know, nobody argues that nobody uses gold and silver to buy coffee. Uh people actually do use 10:31 Bitcoin to buy a cup of coffee. They just usually usually use Lightning Network or in my case something like the 10:37 uh the Coinbased debit card which I use to buy coffee and anything I want all day long everywhere I shop. All right. 10:44 Uh number six, um past gains don't prove that a cryptocurrency is a prudent 10:49 investment going forward. Well, first of all, I would agree with him for cryptocurrencies. You'll notice there he did not say the word Bitcoin. So, this 10:55 is a a favorite tactic of people criticizing Bitcoin is to switch back and forth between using the word Bitcoin 11:01 and the word cryptocurrency. So, they use the word cryptocurrency to uh complain about things that do not apply 11:08 to Bitcoin, and then they switch back to Bitcoin when they're making arguments that do apply to Bitcoin. Um, and so 11:15 they do that because they don't want you to notice that wait a second, the arguments that uh this person's using uh 11:21 you know do apply to crypto but don't apply to Bitcoin. So in this case, he's saying past gains don't prove that a 11:27 cryptocurrency is a prudent investment going forward. I agree and the the past gains of the vast majority of cryptocurrencies are completely bogus 11:34 and stupid like XRP and will probably eventually go to zero, but that does not apply to Bitcoin. Bitcoin has already 11:40 been through uh four price corrections greater than 75% in its lifetime. And I 11:46 cover all of that in the Bitcoinbubble myth.com uh the video that is posted on bitcoinbubble.com. 11:53 So again, go to bitcobbubblemmyth.com and you can watch it and you can see everything about that. All right, number 11:59 seven. Micro strategy is essentially a Ponzi scheme centered around Bitcoin. 12:04 First, that's a ridiculous assertion because a Ponzi scheme involves paying out uh old investors with new investors 12:12 money, which is not what Micro Strategy is doing. They're raising money from the marketplace in the form of selling stock 12:17 and raising debt, and they're using it to buy Bitcoin. and then that the people who own the stock own uh Bitcoin as a 12:23 percentage of what they own. So it's totally not a Ponzi scheme even by the you know literal dictionary definition 12:30 of a Ponzi scheme and that you know ridicul you know assessment is ridiculous. Now, um, Micro Strategy does 12:38 have some debt and they they will be required to pay that debt off in 6 or 7 12:43 years. And so, if Bitcoin is down in six or seven years, they're going to have to sell some Bitcoin in order to satisfy 12:50 that debt. But that is no non-reourse debt. It's like it's uh basically it's debt that, you know, there's uh no 12:57 consequence to them paying. It's not they have no assets encumbered by that debt. So again, the the econ the Ponzi 13:04 scheme, you know, assertion is just completely wrong on its face by a classic definition of Ponzi schemes. All 13:10 right. Um, number eight, Bitcoin is highly correlated to the NASDAQ, which is experiencing a massive bubble. One, 13:17 Bitcoin has become less and less correlated to the NA NASDAQ and to the stock market over time. He never points 13:24 out that that correlation has come way down over time. um or that at times when 13:29 the stock market was tottering like after the three banks failed last year that Bitcoin actually went up. So he 13:35 leaves that out and he leaves the you know the lowered co correlation over time. I don't know if the NASDAQ itself 13:41 is in a bubble. You know the stock market itself goes through bubbles uh as a result of the Fed's money printing. Uh 13:46 but that doesn't mean that um you know it doesn't mean it won't uh you know it 13:52 there won't go through a correction but there's no reason to believe that it's not like Bitcoin is doomed if the stock market goes through a uh you know goes 13:58 through a recession. It's not it's not like those two are correlated. Give me one second to get a drink. 14:04 Okay. So the next uh the next question this guy comes up with is he says 14:09 um Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are far too volatile. One second. 14:19 Okay, so we've covered this before. Uh I've done an entire video about volatility, so you can go look that up 14:24 and you will know everything you want to know about the volatility of Bitcoin. Um he says they're too volatile to be used 14:30 to its currencies. Well, the short take is anytime the growth in the value of something is growing rapidly, it's going 14:36 to be uh volatile during that growth phase. as the volatility comes down and Bitcoin's volatility has come way down 14:42 over time, but so do the returns. As the volatility comes down, the returns come down as well. So people claim that they 14:50 want Bitcoin to be less volatile without realizing that when it is less volatile, it will have less upside. So the greater 14:57 the volatility in the near term, the better because it means your investment in Bitcoin is still early. It means 15:03 there's a lot of upside before it sort of normalizes as world money and the purchasing power goes up one or sorry 2% 15:10 or 3% a year along with productivity growth and population growth. So eventually 20 30 40 years from now 15:16 Bitcoin's purchasing power will only go up two or 3% per year. Uh and it will go up as a result of human productivity 15:23 growth and you know the uh the population growth and things like that. Um, but until then it's volatile and uh 15:30 it it will it has gotten a lot less volatile over the course of 16 years and it will continue to get less volatile. 15:36 But that actually is a feature not a bug because in the near term it means it's a better investment uh if you want upside 15:42 in addition uh to u you know to all of its other as uh attributes. But I've 15:47 done an entire video on volatility. You can find that by going to my Facebook page and typing the word either volatile 15:53 or the word volatility and watching that video. Okay, next up we have unlike 15:59 genuine safe haven assets, Bitcoin sinks in response to geopolitical fears. Okay, 16:05 so he says unlike gold and silver, which of course he's promoting, that's his business, um is to promote gold and 16:11 silver. He says when there's geopolitical fears, Bitcoin goes down. So I've talked about this in in previous 16:17 videos that yes, when there are geopolitical fears and everybody freaks out, they sell what they have to or what 16:24 they can, not what they want to. So sometimes you get people who will sell Bitcoin when they freak out or when the 16:30 world freaks out somehow sometime that doesn't mean that they want to sell Bitcoin. That means you know on a 16:35 weekend it's the only thing they can sell because the stock market is closed. You know the Bitcoin market never 16:40 closes. It's 24/7. And so sometimes you see Bitcoin go down because people freak out and they want liquidity in US 16:47 dollars or some other currency and Bitcoin is the only thing they can sell that gives them that uh rapid liquidity 16:53 because the markets are closed. Um but again at other times he fails to mention that when the three different banks 16:60 failed in March of last year, Bitcoin actually went up uh because people were worried about the banking system. So it 17:07 depends on what the sort of global crisis of the day is. Um but he again he fails to point out the fact that at 17:14 times um you know risk and geopolitical fears result in Bitcoin actually going up not down. And again, he points this 17:21 out because he is continuing to promote throughout the article gold and silver. Um, which I own gold and silver left 17:28 over from years ago. It does not work as money. There is no way for me to know whether the gold and silver I own is 17:35 gold and silver, right? I mean, for all I know, the gold has tungsten on the inside and it's just a gold veneer. And 17:41 the only way to know for sure is to melt it down. Or I could buy a $50,000 spect 17:46 spectrometer that would probably tell me what is gold and what is silver. But even then, I have a hard time telling 17:53 purity. And so again, this guy acts like the magic solution is gold and silver 17:59 and ignores the fact that gold and silver do not work as money in a modern economy at all. He's just attached to 18:06 them and their monetary properties from the past, but they just do not work in a modern economy. Okay, the next up in 18:13 this guy's uh complaints about Bitcoin are 18:18 uh the Bitcoin and overall crypto culture turned him off. So, there's this concept of crypto bros. You know, people 18:26 running around trying to find the latest crypto that's going to get them rich and enable them to afford a Lamborghini. 18:31 That is much more of a problem in ridiculous cryptos that uh other than Bitcoin. So, if you go to a conference 18:39 that is exclusively focused on Bitcoin and only has Bitcoiners, you really don't get these kind of people. These 18:44 kind of people are just not Bitcoin people. Um, because they're looking for the they're looking for a scam. Bitcoin 18:51 is not a scam. So, I've met people like this. I just don't hang out with people like this. But, you know, if you go to a 18:56 crypto conference, you'll find everybody running around promoting their own token. you know, they're each of them 19:03 has some sort of ridiculous token that that they they're promoting that everybody ought to buy that of course 19:08 makes that person rich and everybody else poor. Anyway, they they get the term crypto bros. So, he lumps Bitcoin 19:14 and crypto together here, but what he's referring to sort of the culture of crypto bros are not Bitcoin bros. These 19:21 are crypto bros. And you know that I agree that culture turns me off too. But 19:26 that is not a Bitcoin culture. that is a sort of crypto grifter culture that tends to follow any new invention 19:32 whether it's artificial intelligence or crypto and they're never running around promoting Bitcoin. They're always 19:38 promoting the very latest scam coin that they got in early on and they're trying to pump and on everyone else and you 19:44 know anyway but he groups the two together uh there with Bitcoin and crypto and he should not. Uh number 12, 19:50 the proliferation and trading of altcoins and memes coins. Okay. Well, I would agree with your him on this one. 19:56 the again, but he doesn't mention Bitcoin, but who cares? You know, the the the meme coins and the altcoins are 20:03 almost all going to go to zero. It's a stupid game. You know, a bunch of people 20:08 are going to lose their money. What does that have to do with Bitcoin? It's just it is not Bitcoin's fault that a bunch 20:14 of people tried to mimic uh Bitcoin, create knockoffs, and are trying to get rich on stupid coins um that uh are, you 20:22 know, named after dogs. In fact, one of the stupid coins that's up the most is Fartcoin. Literally, Fartcoin. So, 20:30 somebody invented Fartcoin and then somehow it caught on and then a bunch a bunch of people started speculating on 20:35 it and now Fartcoin is up 1,500%. Which is super stupid. So, I would agree 20:41 with him. That's super stupid. But I have never advocated anybody buy anything other than Bitcoin BTC, the 20:47 real thing. The one that's trading in the ballpark of $100,000. Like, that's the real Bitcoin. Don't don't buy 20:54 anything else other than that because the other crypto is almost entirely crypto scams, junk, stupid, not going to 21:01 work, you know, grifting this and that. So, I do agree with him on altcoins and memecoins. That whole thing is stupid 21:08 and people are going to lose their money, but they're speculating on it the same way they speculate on, you know, the sports betting and stuff like that. 21:14 I don't sports bet either. I don't ever I've never bought a lottery ticket. Like, some people do, but that has 21:20 nothing to do with Bitcoin. Okay, next up, uh, crypto hacks and scandals. Once 21:25 again, you'll notice here he does not say Bitcoin hacks and scandals. He says crypto hacks and scandals. And then he goes on to list a litany of hacks as a 21:33 result of, you know, people with uh, poor security practices, mostly related to not Bitcoin. But even so, it's like, 21:40 look, we don't you don't blame the US dollar every time, you know, there's a bank, you know, somebody some bank 21:45 robber is successful. It's not the dollar's fault. It's they didn't secure it, right? So, same with Bitcoin. 21:51 Bitcoin is easier to secure than any other kind of money. Uh, which is why I promote all the time, you know, buy your 21:58 buy your Bitcoin on Coinbase, but then move it to Bitkey so it won't get hacked and you won't get scammed and you won't 22:03 get whatever else. Um, but anyway, some people don't, you know, a lot of people uh had Bitcoin back in 2014 that they 22:10 left on Mount Gaus, which was a badly run uh Japanese exchange run by a French 22:15 guy, I believe. And uh anyway, it had a security vulnerability and hackers were able to drain a lot of the Bitcoin out 22:22 of it. But again, that was bad security practices and but almost everything he's talking about is uh related to crypto 22:29 junk and not Bitcoin. But again, that's why I promote with anything with any sort of money, you got to be security 22:36 conscious and you got to secure it. Like it's the money does not secure itself. like you got to, you know, use some 22:41 effort and if something gets hacked or someone gets scammed, you got to ask yourself, you know, did you take the 22:47 precautions or not? Okay, next. Next up, number 14. Bitcoin and crypto haven't 22:52 been tested by a powerful bare market or financial crisis. Again, Bitcoin has 22:57 gone through four price draw downs of greater than 75%. No other asset in the 23:02 entire history of the world has gone through four price uh draw downs greater 23:08 than 75% and gone on to set a new all-time high. Literally, there's no asset in the entire world. So, he acts 23:13 like Bitcoin's never been battle tested. Seriously, was he not here in 2022 or in 23:19 2018 or, you know, March of 2020. Like, Bitcoin's been battle tested a zillion 23:24 times. Bitcoin has been declared dead by the media 500 times. 500 times. Some 23:30 idiot in the media has write written an article about how the very latest news event results in the death of Bitcoin 23:36 and it's never coming back. Seriously, come on. This guy acts like it's never been battle tested. Now, I agree it will 23:43 be healthy and helpful for Bitcoin when it does go through a massive worldwide 23:48 recession because then people like this are not going to keep saying that anymore. Um and and it will be helpful 23:54 for Bitcoin to experience that and be hardened by it. Uh my prediction is well 24:00 first of all we don't know. It depends on what causes a worldwide recession. Um there's a chance Bitcoin goes like crazy 24:06 high because the reason is you know in a worldwide recession everybody's bailing out of all the assets that are are dying 24:13 and looking for something that's still alive and Bitcoin will be that thing. So I think there's at least you know 50/50 24:18 chance in a global worldwide recession that Bitcoin actually goes up not down but even if it goes down for a period of 24:24 time uh as the past would predict it will recover faster than any other asset 24:29 because it takes less time than any other asset to figure out that wow Bitcoin's monetary properties and the 24:35 things that give it value are still there. they're still going strong and so you know people buy it back which is 24:41 what happens which is why the uh you know the the draw downs in price that Bitcoin has experienced have been 24:46 relatively short. They've been short because it didn't take people very long to figure out wait a second the the 24:52 death of FTX had nothing to do with Bitcoin and therefore if it had nothing to do with Bitcoin that means Bitcoin's 24:58 not dead as a result of FTX and then people buy it and it comes right back. Um of course it's never dead. every the 25:05 lowest point that Bitcoin has ever hit in each of the price draw downs is radically higher than the lowest it got 25:11 in the previous price draw down. And I go through all of that on bitcoinbubblemmyth.com. Again, bitcoin bubble and the word 25:17 mythm.com. You can watch I think it's about 16 minutes long. You can watch a 25:23 presentation that goes through why Bitcoin is not a bubble. Okay. Uh number 15. Give me one second here. Um Bitcoin 25:31 and crypto haven't stood the test of time. Okay, give me a break. Uh, Bitcoin's been here 16 years. 16 in the 25:38 technology world. When something lasts for 16 years, that is a very long time in the technology world. 16 years is a 25:45 very long time. Now, of course, he says, "Yeah, but we have gold and silver and they've been around for thousands of years." Well, great. But they gold and 25:53 silver do not work in a modern economy. Again, I got them and I tried to use them. I tried to figure out is there any 25:59 way I can use gold and silver back when I first bought bit uh B bit Bitcoin in 2017. I also bought some gold and silver 26:06 to try to figure out if there was any way the world would ever run on a gold or silver standard. And it's completely 26:12 impossible. It's ne it's not going to happen which is why it did not happen in the past. Uh in a modern economy uh it 26:17 got replaced with paper that represented gold and silver and then of course they printed too much of the paper which has happened 100% of the time that has 26:23 happened. So, um, Bitcoin's, you know, been as battle tested as anything can 26:28 be, and it's been 16 years. One six. That's a long time. All right. Um, number 16. Nobody truly knows that what 26:35 cryptocurrencies are worth or how to value them. Well, we know how to value them. They're based on their the value 26:40 is in the credibility of their monetary properties, how certain we are that Bitcoin has good monetary properties. 26:47 I've covered that in other videos. and um and how to value them is based on supply and demand, metastas law, and all 26:53 of that. So, in the Bitcoin bubble myth presentation, I specifically talk about how to value cryptocurrencies, and I 26:60 talk about the organizations that you can reference um when uh when valuing 27:05 cryptocurrencies. So, go watch bitcobubble myth.com. I answer uh both of those questions in there uh on 27:12 bitcoinbubble myth.com. Um, all right, number 17. And cryptocurrencies are heavily reliant 27:18 upon the internet and the electrical grid. Um, okay. Yes, that is true. But, 27:23 um, Bitcoin also runs on satellites. If there is any electrical pulse in the 27:29 world, Bitcoin can run. It doesn't matter if it's dumb phones or smartphones or satellites or ham radio 27:35 or EMPA or text message, you know, SMS, Bitcoin can run on any of those things. 27:41 And as long as there is one Bitcoin node anywhere in the world, the whole thing runs. And even if all the electricity in 27:47 the entire world got shut off, again, Bitcoin's running on satellites. And even if all the satellites got shut off, 27:53 it would take literally the the very moment that electricity came back on, Bitcoin would be the very first thing to 27:59 uh spring back to life based on how Bitcoin is uh designed to be built. So, um it is dependent on those things, but 28:05 I think in the year 2024, we've all agreed that we're going to use the internet and that the internet works. 28:11 And the internet's been through a lot of things. And we figured out even in the midst of a a war between Russia and 28:16 Ukraine how to make the internet work with Starlink. So at this point most of the world's entire surface area is 28:22 covered by Starlink. So there's um high-speed um uh Starlink is covering 28:27 the entire world with high speeded internet uh from satellites which means again you're not even re you know 28:33 reliant on uh the power grid. You can charge your phone with a um with a uh uh 28:38 what do you call it? a uh uh photosynthetis what whatever uh I'm 28:44 forgetting the name. Anyway, you you the power of the sun solar there. I guess a solar panel. You can charge your phone 28:50 with a solar panel and your phone can direct uplink to um to uh to Starlink. 28:57 Um so anyway, so all that to say, but again, anybody who says it's not going to work and we're going to go back to gold and silver, the problem is gold and 29:04 silver are not divisible. Nobody who holds gold, everybody who has gold has it in the form of coins or bullions. And 29:12 the coins are all like 1 ounce. So you're restricted to buying only things that cost about $2,600. 29:18 And again, it's just you cannot use gold and silver. It is not divisible functional money in a modern economy. 29:24 You can't do it again because I bought gold and silver back in 2017 and figured I'd see if I, you know, could envision a 29:30 world where that would ever work and it totally doesn't work. Okay. Um, number 29:36 18. Again, this is 18 out of 24. We're getting there. Cryptocurrencies are part of a broader dystopian trend that 29:42 encourages us to embrace the virtual over the physical, distancing us from tangible assets and realities. He goes 29:48 on a little rampage here where he says, "We're all sucked into our phones and gold and silver are physical and you can 29:53 hold them in your hand and you know, they're sort of part of nature and 29:58 Bitcoin's made up by humans." Anyway, he goes on a rant, but it's kind of a pathetic rant in my opinion, but I'm not 30:04 going to address it because it's I mean, what by this argument, we should not be using, you know, we should not be 30:09 refrigerating our food either, right? We should be eating only natural food that has not been refrigerated because that's 30:15 not natural. Even fire, humans invented fire, right? I mean, we cook our food. Is he going to argue that we shouldn't 30:21 cook our food because we're more natural? You know, the dystopian reality where we're cooking our food is, you 30:26 know, dystopian. It's It just doesn't make sense. Um, all right. Number 19. Cryptocurrencies are paving the way for 30:32 a central bank digital currency. All right, on this one, he's totally off the rails. Bitcoin is the opposite, literal 30:38 opposite of a central bank digital currency. It works the opposite of a central bank digital currency. And the 30:43 worst threat to a central bank digital currency is Bitcoin. Like, Bitcoin is the antidote to a central bank digital 30:51 currency. So, he goes on and on about how, you know, anyway, his arguments don't make any sense because literally 30:56 Bitcoin is the opposite. Um, so that's uh number 18. Number 19, Bitcoin lacks privacy and anonymity. Okay, so Bitcoin 31:05 is pseudonymous, which means when you transact on the Bitcoin network, all everybody sees is ones and zeros not 31:11 connected to your name. But it is true that if you get a court order uh to uh 31:17 you know if Coinbase gets a court order requiring them to disclose who sent specific bitcoin to somebody they will 31:24 have to disclose by you know to law enforcement who sent it. Um there are cryptocurrencies that are anonymous like 31:31 Monero but the problem with Monero is twofold. One if something is truly anonymous um what does he call it? He 31:39 calls it uh privacy. If something has total privacy and anonymity, it also means you can't audit it, which means 31:45 you don't know how much of it there is. So, a huge problem with Monero is you don't know how much Monero there is, and 31:51 there's no way to audit the Monero because the privacy and the secrecy uh 31:56 of the uh and anonymity of Monero means you never know how much there is. Well, nobody's going to trust Monero with a 32:03 huge amount of their personal wealth if you're not even sure how much Monero there is or whether there's been a 32:08 glitch or a bug that has enabled somebody to print more. Um, which can't happen in Bitcoin because Bitcoin the 32:14 entire ledger gets audited every 10 minutes. Uh, literally every transaction from the beginning of time gets audited 32:19 every 10 minutes. Um, so you can't have those problems. So, uh, additionally, privacy and anonymity result in 32:25 government bans. So the vast majority of cryptocurrency exchanges will not carry Monero because it is used too much for 32:33 moneyaundering. So I used to think early on that uh I wish Satoshi Nakamoto had 32:39 spent more time building uh uh privacy and anonymity into Bitcoin. Uh but 32:45 ultimately I came to the conclusion that that was impossible to do whilst unless you wanted it to get banned by 32:50 governments for moneyaundering. So, Bitcoin is as private and as anonymous as a cryptocurrency can be while still 32:58 not being a good tool for criminals. So, there is not a way to make Bitcoin more 33:04 anonymous or more private without it becoming a tool for criminals to do 33:10 money. You just there's I mean there's just not a way. So, if somebody let me go back to the very beginning of time 33:16 and redesign Bitcoin, I would not build anything. I would not build more anonymity, anonymity or privacy into 33:23 Bitcoin because Bitcoin would not be on the track it's on for global adoption. 33:28 Uh if governments around the world were banning it because you just can never figure out who transacted with who. 33:34 Again, if if that if you can do that, then you can do that for arms dealing, you can do that for uh drug smuggling, 33:40 you can do that for a bunch of stuff the government doesn't want you to do, and they're not going to allow a cryptocurrency to succeed if it can be 33:46 used in that way. Um, all right. So, next up, Bitcoin's mysterious and 33:52 possibly uh shady origins. And then I he goes into this uh where he I think he 33:59 talks about uh you know, security and like the video I just did earlier today 34:04 about Roger Ver. He's like, "Ooh, maybe the NSA was involved." Give me a break. The NSA was not involved in the creation 34:10 of Bitcoin. The security community was not. Bitcoin is the opposite of anything 34:15 the government would ever want or would ever create. So anyway, he kind of goes off the rails here. And I mean, if you 34:22 study the origins of Bitcoin, it's very clear. It was created by a one or more cipher punks. These are people. They are 34:28 computer coders that wanted freedom money. They were tired of the debasement 34:33 and constant money printing of the Federal Reserve. And they wanted they wanted to create a money that the government could not make more of. That 34:40 is what they wanted. I've read everything that Satoshi Nakamoto has ever written. Yeah. It's in the uh book 34:46 called The Book of Satoshi and it documents every single post that Satoshi Nakamoto has ever uh ever written. And 34:53 so I've read all of that. I've read a huge amount of his writings with other people. And again, as as a libertarian, 34:59 I know how he thinks. I know how he operates. You know, the the desire to have money the government can't corrupt. 35:05 Um, you know, Satoshi was way smarter than I am, but he was approaching the 35:10 world exactly like I do, which is, hey, this government money printing by these 35:15 sinful people is never going to stop unless we solve it with technology. The same way, you know, with the invention 35:22 of email, uh, which was invented for other reasons, but it's the same way it works as regard to the postal service. 35:27 If you were upset about the US Postal Service and how slow they were in delivering mail, you know, the government is not going to invent email 35:34 to obsolete the bo postal service. That's not how the government works. But anyway, this guy, you know, makes various accusations that make no sense. 35:40 All right, number 22. We're getting there. Cryptocurrencies are a diversion and a distraction from gold and silver. 35:47 So now he comes out and is like he actually explains that the reason he wrote this article is he thinks we ought to stay on gold and silver and that he's 35:54 a gold and silver analyst and he's a gold and silver investor and he's afraid that Bitcoin is going to replace gold 35:60 and silver. Uh and yes it will. Just to be clear, he should be worried about that because that's exactly what's happening. Uh first of all, I don't know 36:06 why he's hung up on silver. Silver got demonetized by gold a long time ago. So anybody that's investing in silver 36:13 thinking it's a precious metal or that it's scarce, it's just not. um the uh 36:18 there's about I think something like 30% more silver gets dug out of the ground every year as compared to all the silver 36:24 that has already been dug out of the ground. Anyway, silver is not at all scarce compared to gold. And even gold, 36:29 the total supply of gold doubles about every 36 years. So in your lifetime, the 36:35 amount of gold that humans have control over, meaning it's above ground, as in it's been dug out and mined, that amount 36:41 of gold in your lifetime is somewhere between quadruple and 8x increase because it doubles the amount of gold 36:47 that humans have access to doubles about every 36 years, which is a 2% inflation rate. Um, so anyway, he's he's arguing 36:54 that Bitcoin is a threat to gold and silver. Uh, yes, it is a it is a threat to gold and silver, but that is not our 37:01 problem. That is his problem. That is only a problem of someone who's decided to live in the past and not the future. 37:07 And he needs to embrace the future just like Peter Schiff needs to embrace the future. Okay, next up we have 37:14 um number 23. 37:20 Gold and silver are creations of God while cryptocurrencies are creations of man. Okay, this guy and then he goes on 37:25 a tangent and says gold and silver are better because God made them. Well, look, God I'm a Christian. God made 37:31 humans ability to invent things. Our ability to rub sticks together and make fire. God enabled us to do that. Um God 37:38 did not just make little piles of fire all over the world that we're supposed to roast our food over. God gave us brains to figure out how to make fire. 37:45 God made gave us brains to figure out how to invent the wheel so we can move things around easily. God in gave us 37:51 brains so we can invent the printing press so we could share information. God gave us the ability to harness 37:57 electricity. Um, so all of these things are things that humans figured out how 38:02 to harness. And so we did the same with money, with Bitcoin. So I don't know why he's hung up on this one. It it strikes 38:08 me as a very poor argument to say, well, gold and silver are on the periodic table, therefore God made them, 38:13 therefore they're inherently better. Uh, again, by that argument, we should not be heating our food because, you know, 38:19 did God make refrigeration? Well, or did God just give us brains that allowed humans to invent refrigeration? By his 38:25 argument, we shouldn't be using refrigeration. And by his argument, we shouldn't be using the internal combustion engine or the internet 38:31 because, you know, God didn't directly make all of those on the elemental table. Uh but anyway, it's a ridiculous 38:37 argument, but he makes it uh like a lot of these things here. All right. All right. Next up, he's got unlike gold 38:44 and silver, cryptocurrencies are not beautiful. Okay. Then he goes off the rails with uh how beautiful how 38:50 beautiful gold and silver is as compared to cryptocurrencies. Um, so first of all, I would say math is beautiful. Like 38:58 in all the thousands of hours I've spent uh studying Bitcoin, it it is beautiful. 39:04 Like it is beautiful when we use the brains that God has given us to invent 39:09 amazing things. And the abil the ability to invent digital scarcity is beautiful. 39:16 When you look, I mean, for somebody like me, when you look at a a Bitcoin address 39:21 and you realize, wow, Satoshi thought of everything. If I doubleclick this address, he left all the characters out 39:27 that would cause it to be split into multiple parts. So, if I double click this Bitcoin address, um, it's always 39:33 going to select the whole thing. That's beautiful. the fact that it's all the check sums are built in where if you 39:39 mistype a Bitcoin address, there's only a 1 in4.3 billion chance that you can 39:45 accidentally mistype a Bitcoin address and it will still let you send it. A 1 in4.3 billion chance. That's beautiful. 39:52 Like when humans make things, it is possible that humans can make beautiful things. And this guy argues that, you 39:59 know, that's not the case because, you know, gold and silver are beautiful because they're shiny. And frankly, 40:05 there's a lot of stuff that's prettier than gold and silver. It just doesn't have good monetary properties. And there's no reason that gold is 40:10 inherently beautiful. There's no reason that a yellow metal would have been the beautiful metal. It just so happens that 40:16 uh gold is more scarce than any other metal. If some other metal with some other color were more scarce than gold, 40:22 then we would view that metal as more beautiful. So again, he makes weak arguments here. So So here's the summary 40:28 from all of this. One, there are no original thoughts. Every single argument he makes in this entire thing is an 40:34 argument I've heard before. Number two, he often switches back and forth between the word crypto and the word Bitcoin 40:41 because a lot of his accusations do not apply to Bitcoin, but they do apply to crypto, meaning all the junk coins that 40:47 are not Bitcoin. So, he switches back and forth hoping that the reader will not realize that some of what he's 40:52 saying does not apply to Bitcoin at all. It just applies to crypto. And you know, for the things that he is complaining 40:58 about crypto that is not Bitcoin, I agree with him on a lot of those because, you know, almost almost nothing 41:04 in the crypto world is worth anything other than Bitcoin. Um, and whatever else might be worth it worth something 41:10 in the crypto world, we don't even know what it is. Um, so the only thing that's really valuable in my opinion is Bitcoin, but a lot of times he switches 41:17 to the word crypto because the accusation he's about to make does not apply to Bitcoin. So uh and then again 41:23 this guy is in in the business of promoting gold and silver and investing in gold and silver and so he has a 41:28 strong incentive to not like the direction the world is going and he will just like someone heavily invested in 41:35 the horse and buggy and buggy whips and stables and stable boys and you know that whole world that person is going to 41:42 object to the automobile because it undermines their entire line of business. if they uh are in the business 41:48 of breeding horses and everybody needs a horse for transportation and now everybody just buys an automobile, 41:53 somebody's going to be writing articles like this opposing the automobile as a form of transportation, highlighting how 41:59 dangerous it is. And every time there's been any new technological revolution, there's always been people like this guy 42:06 opposing forward progress and arguing that the the correct direction for 42:11 humanity is to stay where we are or go backwards. In the case of this guy, he's arguing we should go back to gold and 42:18 silver, which already failed as money for all the reasons I've talked about in other videos, um, rather than forwards 42:25 to Bitcoin. Um, which is where I think we ought to go. So, uh, and I started that quest and came to that conclusion 42:31 back in 2017 in early 2017 when I actually had about the same amount of gold and silver as I do bit as I did 42:38 Bitcoin. And then I came to the conclusion that gold was going to win that one and therefore bought uh way 42:44 more way more sorry I forget what I just said. I came to the conclusion that Bitcoin was going to win that standoff 42:49 and therefore I bought way more Bitcoin and I bought zero more gold and silver and as a result of that I've accumulated 42:55 way more Bitcoin and zero additional gold and silver because back when I did not have a dog in the hunt or I should 43:01 say when I had an equal dog in the hunt of gold, silver, and Bitcoin, I came to the conclusion that Bitcoin was going to 43:08 win and it has um so or it's not finished winning but it's uh appreciated 43:13 far in excess of gold or silver or anything else. So that is the takedown of this article, 24 reasons why I don't 43:21 believe in Bitcoin and crypto. And again, this guy did not have any 43:26 original thoughts. Has a huge dog in the hunt for uh gold and silver. And I just 43:31 disagree with all his conclusions. Happy to provide individual specific videos for each of the reasons if you're 43:36 interested. Thanks for watching everyone.