Bitcoin vs. The Federal Reserve – Andreas Antonopoulos and Stefan Molyneux

Dont watch this. It will slowly bore you to death

Andreas is an incredibly knowledgeable and educational guest.
Thanks for the video.

To protect their stake in their Bitcoin Stefan and Andreas are committing
one of the greatest sins known to the financial world, a Sin that would
cause them to face $10,000's in fines "if Bitcoin was recognized as a real
investment"!

That sin is Conflict of Interest.

If a person is recommending an Asset or Downplaying the Failure of an Asset
they OWN "On a Public Platform with the ability to influence", they cannot
be expected to give an fair and unbiased opinion about the asset.

By law they must admit their stake "I own X amount of Bitcoin, and if it's
prices drops I would lose money Or I own X amount of Bitcoin and if it
goes up I would make money". They must also admit they are not certified
financial planners and recommend you consult one before making any
decision.

That guy Andreas and a few other like him in the Bitcoin Economy "miner
equipment sales, pools, exchanges, websites, info products, etc" are
running around trying to spread Good PR about Bitcoin, in an attempt to
over cloud the Mt. Gox issue.

To avoid the possible run on all exchanges/floods as people try to get cash
for thier Bitcoins, they are running around the internet were ever they can
be heard.

To prevent losing their money in Bitcoin they are giving Financial advise
that would benefit them, at your expense.

First time hearing about Andreas, but i think he is a snake.
I just lost a little bit of respect for Stefan.

they bashed bitcoin on @midnight show on comedy central last night

Excellent talk!!! I really enjoyed all the ideas and the future of BitCoin
discussed.

And .. sorry Stef, but that would not be "Lola", but "Layla" … sorry
cannot help it 🙂 

Good stuff.

Andreas is a super eloquent guy… this upload made me into a definite fan.
He makes a good case for fairly rapid adoption. What he didn't address is
how more and more countries are making it outright illegal to use
crypto-currencies (CCs) at all. Because it is pretty much unenforceable to
stop people from using CCs, what they can enforce is that stores cannot
accept them anywhere in the country. If no stores accept them, then it does
become grey market. Ukraine may be largely grey market, but most countries,
even poor ones, aren't that way. It's easy for a government to send an
undercover into a store and bust them for accepting CCs.

How much this will slow adoption is probably related to how serious the
governments get about enforcement… that is the discussion that I'd like
to see covered more specifically… .not that there is much to say about
it, but, "what is the worst case for the realities of regulation and
illegalization?" seems the key question here. I'm not sure the answer here
is likely to be "full grey market" the reason is that many companies use
things like Microsoft Points, Amazon Coins, etc… are all of these
practical to make illegal? Interesting stuff!

Edit: I just looked it up, and, surprise!, Microsoft Points have been
discontinued… now, why would they do that? 😉 The pressure is already on.

Central banks suck, and fiat currency sucks. Money on a precious metal
standard without central bank interference is preferable. Bitcoin is a fad
and NOT a viable alternative.

Trumpeting the major security flaws of bitcoin as a good thing just makes
you sound desperate to defend a foolish position, although I'm not saying
Stefan is a fool. He clearly is not.

Bitcoin is fundamentally flawed for one primary purpose: It puts something
external to the individual in control of individual wealth preservation,
making the entire system susceptible to the will of others.

It's funny how bankers use "Free Market" dogma to enact crony capitalism
and protect them from the creative destruction of the market. They are like
buggy companies hiring the government to destroy the automotive industry.

Interesting. But ideology betrays credibility.

1. Currencies were originally valuable goods (sheep, horses, gold, etc) and
then people starting trading paper receipts on valuable goods (gold,
silver, etc) instead of the goods themselves, but the paper was redeemable
in the good. Bitcoin is redeemable in nothing; it has no intrinsic value
and represents no intrinsic value.

This is a big issue. A bubble is when people want to own something only
because they think someone else wants it. If no one in fact will ever want
it, you have a bubble by definition. Since bitcoin has no intrinsic
value…everyone who wants it wants it only for trading, it is by
definition a bubble. Bubbles work as long as people believe in them. But
they pop quickly if members lose belief and then race each other to sell
off the goods.

Is bitcoin better than fiat currencies? According to the above argument,
no. Fiat currencies have a true value because you have to pay taxes in
them. In addition, they are backed by military force. We can frown on the
ethics of this (and I do), but these are concrete things which give the
currency at least some tangible value (I hate fiat currency as much as
everyone else).

I think the concept of Bitcoin is awesome, and I hope this concept is
evolved so that the currency becomes redeemable in something of real value.

2. This stuff is entirely too complicated for 99.99% of people. If bitcoin
becomes more prolific (the demand goes up), the price will increase. As
the amount of "value" associated with bitcoin increases, there will be
tremendous incentives for people to cheat/hack/steal from others. You have
to be pretty tech savvy just to understand it, and seemingly smart and tech
savvy people (Stefan) have made mistakes and lost bitcoins. Most people
are not smart or tech savvy. Bitcoins are way over their heads.

For it to work, it seems we need a trusted organization to educate people
and help them acquire and trade bitcoins. But this effectively
re-centralizes the system and gives this organization power. If we're
going to have a centralized system anyway, why not have a centralized
entity issue a currency backed by gold, silver, oil…anything with
intrinsic value? If this entity holds and guards all these valuables, then
people with accounts at the entity can trade easily. It's just a matter of
changing numbers on a spreadsheet.

Just because fiat currencies are failing and will fail doesn't mean we
should adopt another fundamentally flawed system.

Bitcoin isn't a currency. It's a commodity. A currency needs a relatively
stable value to function as a medium of exchange. If it goes up too much,
everyone will hoard it. If it goes down too much, nobody will want it. In
2013, Bitcoin's annualized volatility has been 105 percent.

That's compared to 5.5 percent for the dollar and 8.5 percent for the euro.
Unless the hacker(s) behind it figures out a way to match the supply of
Bitcoins with the demand for Bitcoins — i.e., adding a central bank — it
won't be much more than a curio for people who don't think fiat is a
four-letter word.

This was very helpful and informative. Great work and a good conversation.

Andres should go on the Peter Schiff show and educate that schmuck.

where can you find MP3's of these?