Mike Brock has some thoughts on inflation.
Learn about Bitcoin at a trickle
BitcoinTrickle.com
Sponsor
Liberty Mugs
Keep in touch with us everywhere you are
Join our Telegram group
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter: @libertymugs (Rollo), @Slappy_Jones_2
Check us out on Patreon
Learn everything you need to know about Bitcoin in just 10 hours
10HoursofBitcoin.com
Podcast version
Big Eagles/Bitcoin news.
Learn about Bitcoin at a trickle
BitcoinTrickle.com
Sponsor
Liberty Mugs
Keep in touch with us everywhere you are
Join our Telegram group
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter: @libertymugs (Rollo), @Slappy_Jones_2
Check us out on Patreon
Learn everything you need to know about Bitcoin in just 10 hours
10HoursofBitcoin.com
Podcast version
Influence is a funny thing.
Learn about Bitcoin at a trickle
BitcoinTrickle.com
Sponsor
Liberty Mugs
Keep in touch with us everywhere you are
Join our Telegram group
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter: @libertymugs (Rollo), @Slappy_Jones_2
Check us out on Patreon
Learn everything you need to know about Bitcoin in just 10 hours
10HoursofBitcoin.com
Podcast version
It would be of no surprise to any libertarian that Gramercy Park is a beautiful place. Since its access is restricted to only the people who live nearby and pay a fee, it has been able to remain well-maintained over its long history.
If, however, the state came in and seized control of Gramercy Park from the rightful property owners, how should libertarians judge the further actions of the state? With the understanding that any libertarian would say that the state should return control back to the property owners, Smith argues that libertarians ought to support the state maintaining the rules already in place instead of considering the property unowned and removing restrictions on its use that don’t violate the Non-Aggression Principle. The latter would all but certainly lead to non-residents using the park—quite possibly bums and vagrants (to borrow some terms)—and with a little bit of imagination and an understanding of the tragedy of the commons, we can easily predict that the park would fall into a state of disrepair up to the point of being ruined.
Smith argues that because we can agree that it would be better for the state to maintain the restrictions on Gramercy Park, then it is reasonable for the state to maintain some restrictions on the public property currently with an illegitimate ownership claim by the state such as a restriction on immigration.
If we only consider the specific example of the Gramercy Park seizure by the state, Smith would be correct, but we need to first understand why that is the case. Why should the state maintain the rules? It is because nullifying the rules would be a further property rights violation of the paying members of the park. The state would have no authority to change the rules agreed upon by the rightful owners and users carte blanche. The state would likely have no authority to negotiate rule changes with the members either (e.g. eliminate membership fees).
Furthermore, the most practical reason for not changing the rules is because the state would be liable for any damages to Gramercy Park while it was under its control. We ought to judge the actions of the state as no different than the actions of any other person or group of people since the state is just a group of people. Consider an example where I stole your car. Obviously, I ought to give it back, but while the car is in my possession, if I wreck it, I will have to pay the damages as part of my restitution to you.
Smith is correct about Gramercy Park because the actions of the state that he rejects are criminal activities, i.e. definite violations of property rights. However, he doesn’t adequately then apply this to the question of immigration restrictions imposed by the state.
It certainly is true that many immigrants—legal or illegal—who come to the United States end up accepting some form of welfare and plenty of government services. Does that mean we’re justified to put restrictions on immigration? Immigration by itself doesn’t constitute an aggression or property rights violation, but the taxation and inflation used to fund welfare programs and other government services quite obviously are. In a just society, no immigrant ought to receive goods and services from ill-gained sources, but we’re not in that just society. We live in a world where the government steals from us and hands it out to others. If Smith wants to claim that under our current conditions that immigration is likely to increase or at least not lesson the theft committed by the state via the welfare system and so the next best thing to eliminating that theft (which is not likely to be achieved any time soon) is to restrict immigration, then that position should be able to be applied more broadly. Quitting your job makes you more likely to end up on welfare, so should the state put restrictions on being out of work? The use of drugs and alcohol make you more likely to have financial, social, etc. struggles, so should the state engage in more regulation of those substances? A poor diet will lead to health problems, putting a greater burden on taxpayers, so should the government regulate what we eat? Families or single parents already on welfare would undoubtedly require more government assistance if they had more children (not to mention the additional costs required to send their kids to public schools), so should the government prevent women from getting pregnant?
None of those examples of behavior were criminal although some involve destructive behavior. Those behaviors—whether normal and healthy or personally destructive—become incentivized by the state welfare programs. The solution is not to further regulate the behaviors given that we have countless examples of the state trying to solve problems like rising prices, drug use, terrorism, etc. only to make them much, much worse. Even if the state had the purist intentions, it’s not possible for its members to solve the economic calculation problem and operate without the incentives of profit and loss. Hans-Hermann Hoppe acknowledged this reality when discussing how to handle immigration in Democracy: The God That Failed with: “The best one may hope for, even if it goes against the ‘nature’ of a democracy and thus is not very likely to happen, is that the democratic rulers act as if they were the personal owners of the country and as if they had to decide who to include and who to exclude from their own personal property (into their very own houses).”
The only way to fix these problems is to attack the root. Fighting symptoms wastes energy and resources and at best may only make it briefly appear that things are getting better. The more likely outcome is that fighting symptoms takes attention away from the root of the problem and causes confusion and only makes the correct medicine that much harder to take down the road.
My argument here doesn’t even rely on a perfectly strict adherence to the Non-Aggression Principle. In The Problem of Political Authority, Michael Huemer makes the case that certain “lifeboat scenarios” would justify aggression against a “peaceful” individual under two conditions: the aggression is the only practical solution and the aggression has a reasonable chance of solving the problem. Using a literal lifeboat scenario as an example, imagine being on a lifeboat with one other person where neither of you are at fault for being on the lifeboat. It springs a leak and the only chance you have of survival is if you both bail water. If the other person decides he’d rather take a nap than bail, causing your death, you’d be justified in threatening him to get him to bail water with you even though his nap would be “peaceful.” If a third person were on the boat and only two were needed to bail or if the leak slowed down enough such that only you needed to bail, then you wouldn’t be justified in threatening violence. You also wouldn’t be justified in threatening violence for something unrelated to bailing such as forcing him to sing a rendition of “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” as you bailed.
Likewise, if other options existed to fix the welfare problem related to immigration, then resorting to additional aggression in trying to manage the border issues would not be justified. And for reasons already discussed, the aggression is not very likely to solve the problem anyway.
The other major problem with Smith’s application of the Gramercy Park example to the borders and immigration is that the situation doesn’t apply very well to the border land controlled by the state. Gramercy Park has a clear and undisputed rightful owner whose property was stolen. That’s not so obvious or even the case for a lot of land across the United States where the state has more or less claimed ownership and prevented people from homesteading it via legitimate means. As such, we have government parks, roads, schools, and all sorts of other public places to contend with. If you reject the notion that land with no legitimate owners must not restrict any activity that doesn’t violate the Non-Aggression Principle, certain pieces of public land can have pre-established uses, or easements, that prevent certain non-aggressive activities or behavior or allow people to continue certain uses of it. A government road, for example, is generally accepted by any reasonable person for driving cars on. It would be reasonable, therefore, to remove someone from a government road who decides they want to use it as a spot for a nice picnic lunch (the blacktop around noon is a good place to reheat pizza).
This is important because lots and lots of border land has the pre-established use of traveling between countries. If immigration restrictions were loosened, it would follow that more people would cross the border at these roads for the specific purpose of travel and less likely to make the much more difficult journey on foot through the wilderness on land with less obvious easements. If you want to make the case that public land ought to be used the way that the most approximate rightful owners would want to use it, then you have to contend with the awkwardness of it being happily used by people to cross between borders.
As libertarians, we should acknowledge that we don’t know what the optimal immigration and emigration rates and numbers are. Only the unfettered interactions of the market can determine that. While we don’t live in a libertarian society and don’t seem to be all that close, we should still always advocate that we move in the direction of free markets and free associations since that is the only way to get the outcomes that provide the most justice and most prosperity.
]]>Just rehashing why we did the Get On Zero thing.
Learn about Bitcoin at a trickle
BitcoinTrickle.com
Sponsor
Liberty Mugs
Keep in touch with us everywhere you are
Join our Telegram group
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter: @libertymugs (Rollo), @Slappy_Jones_2
Check us out on Patreon
Learn everything you need to know about Bitcoin in just 10 hours
10HoursofBitcoin.com
Podcast version
We got mad at some stuff.
Learn about Bitcoin at a trickle
BitcoinTrickle.com
Sponsor
Liberty Mugs
Keep in touch with us everywhere you are
Join our Telegram group
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter: @libertymugs (Rollo), @Slappy_Jones_2
Check us out on Patreon
Learn everything you need to know about Bitcoin in just 10 hours
10HoursofBitcoin.com
Podcast version
Car comes on to discuss his latest Bitcoin prediction.
Follow Car
@TLE_Car
Timeline Earth
Learn about Bitcoin at a trickle
BitcoinTrickle.com
Sponsor
Liberty Mugs
Keep in touch with us everywhere you are
Join our Telegram group
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter: @libertymugs (Rollo), @Slappy_Jones_2
Check us out on Patreon
Learn everything you need to know about Bitcoin in just 10 hours
10HoursofBitcoin.com
Podcast version
Going through lots of stuff this episode.
Learn about Bitcoin at a trickle
BitcoinTrickle.com
Sponsor
Liberty Mugs
Keep in touch with us everywhere you are
Join our Telegram group
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter: @libertymugs (Rollo), @Slappy_Jones_2
Check us out on Patreon
Learn everything you need to know about Bitcoin in just 10 hours
10HoursofBitcoin.com
Podcast version
Don’t trust other people’s math…
Learn about Bitcoin at a trickle
BitcoinTrickle.com
Sponsor
Liberty Mugs
Keep in touch with us everywhere you are
Join our Telegram group
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter: @libertymugs (Rollo), @Slappy_Jones_2
Check us out on Patreon
Learn everything you need to know about Bitcoin in just 10 hours
10HoursofBitcoin.com
Podcast version
Sorry.
Learn about Bitcoin at a trickle
BitcoinTrickle.com
Sponsor
Liberty Mugs
Keep in touch with us everywhere you are
Join our Telegram group
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter: @libertymugs (Rollo), @Slappy_Jones_2
Check us out on Patreon
Learn everything you need to know about Bitcoin in just 10 hours
10HoursofBitcoin.com
Podcast version
Rollo updates his #GetOnZero strategy. We also talk about infinite pizza.
Learn about Bitcoin at a trickle
BitcoinTrickle.com
Sponsor
Liberty Mugs
Keep in touch with us everywhere you are
Join our Telegram group
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter: @libertymugs (Rollo), @Slappy_Jones_2
Check us out on Patreon
Learn everything you need to know about Bitcoin in just 10 hours
10HoursofBitcoin.com
Podcast version
Get ready.
Learn about Bitcoin at a trickle
BitcoinTrickle.com
Sponsor
Liberty Mugs
Keep in touch with us everywhere you are
Join our Telegram group
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter: @libertymugs (Rollo), @Slappy_Jones_2
Check us out on Patreon
Learn everything you need to know about Bitcoin in just 10 hours
10HoursofBitcoin.com
Podcast version
In fairness to a lot of people, the user experience in Bitcoin is much different from the existing systems. Private and public keys, wallets, addresses, blocks, and everything else under the Bitcoin sun can be intimidating for the person trying to learn. Meanwhile, they’re used to using their banks and apps like Venmo to move money around. But that’s the thing—they’re just used to it. They don’t actually have anything to compare their experience to, so since they’ve really only used to it, they think it’s optimal.
But after a recent experience within the fiat system, my response to the above objection is:
“You think Bitcoin is hard to use? Have you ever tried using the fiat system?”
I am one of those “Get On Zero” guys who has decided to use Bitcoin as his money. I don’t hold any US dollars and I convert my paychecks to Bitcoin. Now I still have to exist in the current world, so I use a credit card and have fiat bills, but I float my monthly expenses on a few forms of credit and then convert some Bitcoin into fiat to pay those off each month.
The Bitcoin side of things is awesome. If I need to send Bitcoin, I get an address, check the fees, and send a transaction. Minutes later, my transaction has confirmed on chain. The experience on the Lightning Network is even better. My troubles come when I have to interface with the fiat systems (including the on and off ramps). The state puts all sorts of rules and restrictions on the services that I use to plug back into the fiat system and make things more painful than they otherwise would be.
A great example of this is when I got a bonus at work last month. I use Cash App to automatically convert my direct deposit paychecks into Bitcoin, but since there are withdrawal limits, the bonus check had the potential to make it very difficult to withdrawal my Bitcoin to my own wallet in a timely manner. What’s nice about my company’s payroll system is that I have some flexibility on direct deposits. I’m able to specify one bank for normal bimonthly paychecks, another for bonuses and, even another for expense reimbursements. Given my concerns about withdrawal limits, I set my bonus bank to Strike, which I had previously used for my day to day Get On Zero activities.
So let’s go through a timeline of what happened.
From start to finish, the ordeal took ten days. Had I done things my way and used Bitcoin for the entire transaction, none of this would have happened. Even if you wanted to blame me for the Strike account number issue, the situation wouldn’t have ever occurred using Bitcoin because there wouldn’t have been other parties canceling banking services on me. I would have just given them a Bitcoin address to send the bonus to. And by I, I mean they would have pinged my BTCPay Server for a new address, so I wouldn’t have needed to do anything.
The payment would have confirmed on chain in a matter of hours at most assuming they paid a reasonable fee (Remember that $20 wire transfer fee that no one would bat an eye at?). If their fee were too low, it would be easy for me to send a child pays for parent transaction to get it confirmed more quickly if I needed it. But while we’re in my Bitcoin fantasy world, I would probably have a fat Lightning channel open with my company, so my bonus payment would have settled instantly. The on chain payment would only be used as a backup in the event that there were routing or capacity issues on Lightning.
If we want to talk about comparisons between Bitcoin and fiat, let’s do it. People accept waiting for days upon days to move money around because that’s just what they’re used to. Well, I’ve used Bitcoin enough that I’m not used to it anymore. The fiat system is an old decrepit dinosaur that’s dying (thank goodness). Even without the scaling layers being remotely close to being finished, the Bitcoin experience isn’t comparable to fiat.
So the next time someone tells you Bitcoin is too hard to use, don’t be afraid to act like they’re the one who is crazy.
]]>Bitcoin seems to be ready to rip everyone’s faces off, but people largely seem pretty ignorant about it. This includes people who should know better.
Learn about Bitcoin at a trickle
BitcoinTrickle.com
Sponsor
Liberty Mugs
Keep in touch with us everywhere you are
Join our Telegram group
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter: @libertymugs (Rollo), @Slappy_Jones_2
Check us out on Patreon
Learn everything you need to know about Bitcoin in just 10 hours
10HoursofBitcoin.com
Podcast version
We talk about buying whole animals to eat and then neatly transition to discuss Slappy’s decision to homeschool his kids with period updates on the Flyers game. Merry Christmas!
Learn about Bitcoin at a trickle
BitcoinTrickle.com
Sponsor
Liberty Mugs
Keep in touch with us everywhere you are
Join our Telegram group
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter: @libertymugs (Rollo), @Slappy_Jones_2
Check us out on Patreon
Learn everything you need to know about Bitcoin in just 10 hours
10HoursofBitcoin.com
Podcast version
You think your Bitcoin private keys are cold…but are they?
Learn about Bitcoin at a trickle
BitcoinTrickle.com
Sponsor
Liberty Mugs
Keep in touch with us everywhere you are
Join our Telegram group
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter: @libertymugs (Rollo), @Slappy_Jones_2
Check us out on Patreon
Learn everything you need to know about Bitcoin in just 10 hours
10HoursofBitcoin.com
Podcast version
There have been some interesting anti-Bitcoin takes.
Learn about Bitcoin at a trickle
BitcoinTrickle.com
Sponsor
Liberty Mugs
Keep in touch with us everywhere you are
Join our Telegram group
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter: @libertymugs (Rollo), @Slappy_Jones_2
Check us out on Patreon
Learn everything you need to know about Bitcoin in just 10 hours
10HoursofBitcoin.com
Podcast version
We might be approaching another Bitcoin bull run, so what can we expect?
Learn about Bitcoin at a trickle
BitcoinTrickle.com
Sponsor
Liberty Mugs
Keep in touch with us everywhere you are
Join our Telegram group
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter: @libertymugs (Rollo), @Slappy_Jones_2
Check us out on Patreon
Learn everything you need to know about Bitcoin in just 10 hours
10HoursofBitcoin.com
Podcast version
The Eagles continue to rule and we have some examples of what can go wrong if you don’t take good steps to secure your Bitcoin.
Learn about Bitcoin at a trickle
BitcoinTrickle.com
Sponsor
Liberty Mugs
Keep in touch with us everywhere you are
Join our Telegram group
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter: @libertymugs (Rollo), @Slappy_Jones_2
Check us out on Patreon
Learn everything you need to know about Bitcoin in just 10 hours
10HoursofBitcoin.com
Podcast version
Apparently running Bitcoin Core is too hard, so people like to offer their own security practices for noobs…
Learn about Bitcoin at a trickle
BitcoinTrickle.com
Sponsor
Liberty Mugs
Keep in touch with us everywhere you are
Join our Telegram group
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter: @libertymugs (Rollo), @Slappy_Jones_2
Check us out on Patreon
Learn everything you need to know about Bitcoin in just 10 hours
10HoursofBitcoin.com
Podcast version
Freaking out about the definition of dollar cost averaging.
Learn about Bitcoin at a trickle
BitcoinTrickle.com
Sponsor
Liberty Mugs
Keep in touch with us everywhere you are
Join our Telegram group
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter: @libertymugs (Rollo), @Slappy_Jones_2
Check us out on Patreon
Learn everything you need to know about Bitcoin in just 10 hours
10HoursofBitcoin.com
Podcast version
Our Redditor friend spent a total of $1825 on his Bitcoin at $5 per day. He ended up with $2,585.75 at the end of the year, giving him a total of 0.07569918 BTC. His 40+% return was pretty good. But what if he took the $1825 and spent it all on Bitcoin on Day 1? Would he have ended up with more or less Bitcoin?
According to his Reddit post, his first purchase was on October 28, 2022. We don’t know when he purchased his Bitcoin that day, but if we assume he bought at the daily high of $20,988.39, then his lump sum purchase of $1825 would have netted him 0.08608331 BTC. This includes a 1% fee on the purchase since his numbers took fees of 0.5 to 1% into account. Fast forward a year later, his Bitcoin would have a USD value of $2925.70 (62% return) assuming the low daily price of Bitcoin price of $33,986.79.
If he had made that initial lump sum purchase, he would have 14% more Bitcoin. Once Bitcoin hits, let’s say $100,000, that would be a $14,000 difference. That’s several months of salary for a lot of people.
Some might point to periods of time where the price of Bitcoin goes down to show that a lump sum purchase isn’t optimal, but this sort of Monday morning quarterbacking is silly. This exercise was good because an arbitrary date and a reasonable period of time was chosen to run this comparison. If we expect Bitcoin to appreciate in value in the long run, it doesn’t make sense to delay purchasing it. The price may drop in the short term, but at any given moment we might never see Bitcoin at a price lower than it is right now. This must be true if it is to be adopted as the global monetary standard.
If you have money to spend on Bitcoin, don’t delay your purchase. Dollar cost averaging is a bear’s game.
]]>Riffing on some Bitcoin stuff.
Learn about Bitcoin at a trickle
BitcoinTrickle.com
Sponsor
Liberty Mugs
Keep in touch with us everywhere you are
Join our Telegram group
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter: @libertymugs (Rollo), @Slappy_Jones_2
Check us out on Patreon
Learn everything you need to know about Bitcoin in just 10 hours
10HoursofBitcoin.com
Podcast version
The Bitcoin companies are at it again.
Learn about Bitcoin at a trickle
BitcoinTrickle.com
Sponsor
Liberty Mugs
Keep in touch with us everywhere you are
Join our Telegram group
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter: @libertymugs (Rollo), @Slappy_Jones_2
Check us out on Patreon
Learn everything you need to know about Bitcoin in just 10 hours
10HoursofBitcoin.com
Podcast version
Trainwreck episode.
Learn about Bitcoin at a trickle
BitcoinTrickle.com
Sponsor
Liberty Mugs
Keep in touch with us everywhere you are
Join our Telegram group
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter: @libertymugs (Rollo), @Slappy_Jones_2
Check us out on Patreon
Learn everything you need to know about Bitcoin in just 10 hours
10HoursofBitcoin.com
Podcast version
Lots of people can’t think for themselves and it’s becoming obvious.
Learn about Bitcoin at a trickle
BitcoinTrickle.com
Sponsor
Liberty Mugs
Keep in touch with us everywhere you are
Join our Telegram group
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter: @libertymugs (Rollo), @Slappy_Jones_2
Check us out on Patreon
Learn everything you need to know about Bitcoin in just 10 hours
10HoursofBitcoin.com
Podcast version
People find it impossible to reasonably parse through the conflict in Israel.
Learn about Bitcoin at a trickle
BitcoinTrickle.com
Sponsor
Liberty Mugs
Keep in touch with us everywhere you are
Join our Telegram group
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter: @libertymugs (Rollo), @Slappy_Jones_2
Check us out on Patreon
Learn everything you need to know about Bitcoin in just 10 hours
10HoursofBitcoin.com
Podcast version
It feels like everything we ever talk about happens in cycles.
Edwin Lyngar of Salon.com has predictable (and lame) reasons for fleeing libertarianism
Learn about Bitcoin at a trickle
BitcoinTrickle.com
Sponsor
Liberty Mugs
Keep in touch with us everywhere you are
Join our Telegram group
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter: @libertymugs (Rollo), @Slappy_Jones_2
Check us out on Patreon
Learn everything you need to know about Bitcoin in just 10 hours
10HoursofBitcoin.com
Podcast version
This is basically an episode about nothing.
Learn about Bitcoin at a trickle
BitcoinTrickle.com
Sponsor
Liberty Mugs
Keep in touch with us everywhere you are
Join our Telegram group
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter: @libertymugs (Rollo), @Slappy_Jones_2
Check us out on Patreon
Learn everything you need to know about Bitcoin in just 10 hours
10HoursofBitcoin.com
Podcast version
Rollo flies solo tonight talking about the unintended consequences of replacing a component on his car and Louis CK engaging Bitcoiners on Twitter.
Learn about Bitcoin at a trickle
BitcoinTrickle.com
Sponsor
Liberty Mugs
Keep in touch with us everywhere you are
Join our Telegram group
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter: @libertymugs (Rollo), @Slappy_Jones_2
Check us out on Patreon
Learn everything you need to know about Bitcoin in just 10 hours
10HoursofBitcoin.com
Podcast version
Local cops can’t catch a 5-ft Brazilian and someone accidentally spent a lot of money on a Bitcoin transaction.
Learn about Bitcoin at a trickle
BitcoinTrickle.com
Sponsor
Liberty Mugs
Keep in touch with us everywhere you are
Join our Telegram group
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter: @libertymugs (Rollo), @Slappy_Jones_2
Check us out on Patreon
Learn everything you need to know about Bitcoin in just 10 hours
10HoursofBitcoin.com
Podcast version
We dive into the mechanics of hard forks and soft forks to explain why the so called “miner activated soft fork” probably won’t happen.
Learn about Bitcoin at a trickle
BitcoinTrickle.com
Sponsor
Liberty Mugs
Keep in touch with us everywhere you are
Join our Telegram group
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter: @libertymugs (Rollo), @Slappy_Jones_2
Check us out on Patreon
Learn everything you need to know about Bitcoin in just 10 hours
10HoursofBitcoin.com
Podcast version
Like an analysis of any other topic, it is critical to understand and apply the foundational principles of Austrian economics to properly develop conclusions about the monetization process of bitcoin. A study on the effects of minimum wage laws cannot be trusted without a firm grasp of the law of demand; likewise, the study of the recent law in El Salvador making bitcoin legal tender requires the proper application of Gresham’s law.
In a recent Mises Wire, Kristoffer Mousten Hansen applies Gresham’s law to bitcoin’s legal tender status in El Salvador to predict that the scheme would backfire for bitcoin and the citizens of the country. While it remains to be seen how all of this plays out, we can largely dismiss Hansen’s conclusions because he employs a faulty understanding of Gresham’s law. His analysis has two fatal flaws, the first being explicit and the second implicit:
Hansen does a good job of defining and explaining Gresham’s law, which does conclude that “bad money drives out good money.” It is important to briefly examine why that happens.
With a fixed exchange rate between the two legal tenders, people will be incentivized to hold onto the better money and sell their worse money. However, those beholden to these legal tender laws will have the incentive to transport the better money out of their jurisdiction and into ones without the fixed exchange rate where they enjoy a better exchange rate because an arbitrage opportunity will almost undoubtedly exist. As a result, the better money will be exported out until no one possesses it in the place where the legal tender law applies.
There’s something wrong here: El Salvador is explicitly not fixing the exchange rate between the dollar and bitcoin, a point that Hansen does in fact acknowledge. How does that affect our analysis? In his book “The Ethics of Money Production,” Jörg Guido Hülsmann writes:
“Legal tender laws would be a mere complication of exchanges were it not for an additional stipulation that is virtually always combined with them. Indeed, legal tender laws typically establish a legal or ‘fiat’ equivalence between the privileged money (the privileged money certificate) and the other monies and money certificates.”
How can we apply Gresham’s law to a situation where the fixed exchange rate does not exist? Hansen attempts to do so by saying, “However, while there is no fixed exchange rate, you still have two currencies that are equally serviceable in canceling obligations.This fiat equivalence means that their legal power, if only due to the intervention of the state, is the same.”
If we follow the link to the essay Hansen provides, we find another work by Hülsmann, who explains the concept of “fiat equivalence” as:
“It belongs to the very nature of legal tender laws that they establish an imposed equivalence (fiat equivalence) between the privileged medium of exchange — the legal tender — and other media of exchange.14 The legislator wishes to impose the use of his pet medium of exchange, but this presupposes that he define the rates at which the market participants have to accept it. For example, if most contracts have so far been denominated in silver and copper, whereas our legislator wishes to impose his own paper slips, he must determine the rates of equivalence between these slips and specific weights of silver and copper.”
Hülsmann further elucidates on the concept in footnote 14:
“The expression ‘fiat equivalence’ may sound somewhat awkward, but it is more precise than the more familiar term ‘price control,’ for it allows us to cover cases in which prices do not exist in the first place. For example, the introduction of U.S. greenbacks in 1862 was not based on price controls, because the greenbacks did not yet circulate, so there was no price that could have been controlled. Rather, the U.S. government ordered that creditors accept paper slips called ‘dollars’ on equal footing with the coins and banknotes that bore the same name. Thus, there existed a fiat equivalence of greenbacks and specie, but no price control.”
Put more simply, fiat equivalence is the act by a government to demonstrably choose the monetary value of some medium of exchange that is different from the monetary value that the market would assign it. Hansen conflates the legal requirement to accept both bitcoin and dollars as payment and Hülsmann’s definition of fixing their exchange rate (while providing Hülsmann’s definition as evidence that contradicts Hansen’s own point).
Given this understanding of both Gresham’s law and the legal tender laws of El Salvador, what can we expect will happen? In “What Has Government Done to Our Money?,” Murray Rothbard states that it is the interference of government decrees via price controls that keep the bad money from being driven from the market. If price controls do not exist, then the holders of the better money, in this case bitcoin, will not have an incentive to trade their bitcoin for dollars outside of El Salvador. Instead, they’ll do their best to hoard their bitcoin while opting to use dollars when they need to spend money, if they have any.
Their preference for holding bitcoin will even result in a premium for accepting dollars as payment. This increases the price of bitcoin in terms of dollars for the local exchange rate in El Salvador, which creates an incentive for people outside of El Salvador looking to exchange dollars for bitcoin at a better price. A pipeline of bitcoin into El Salvador and dollars out is the expected result — the opposite outcome of Gresham’s law. This is generally known as Thiers’ law, which states that good money drives out bad money when there is no enforcement of a fixed exchange rate. Theirs’ law is more or less the explanation as to why an emergent money would replace the existing relatively worse money.
The law in El Salvador making bitcoin legal tender will be interesting to watch. Legal tender laws almost always come with a fixed exchange rate and force a bad money into circulation. This is different. It goes without saying that legal tender laws are immoral and even unnecessary in a healthy society and economy, but after a period of potentially bumpy onboarding, will this law be moot because bitcoin is the money that would ultimately be chosen by the people of El Salvador in an unfettered market? Is this purely a case of government interference in the market or are we seeing a government clunkily deal with the realities of truly sound money? Austrians ought to keep a curious eye on El Salvador and bitcoin in general as we finally look poised to test our theories on how money works, and how a new money emerges.
]]>How many days of food do you have at your house? How much cash do you have on hand? Can you go out to try to buy up what’s left at the stores that still have their doors open? What else would you be worried about? What would you prioritize? What would you want to make sure you had on hand to survive indefinitely in a world without electricity and communications networks? What would you do if the world were suddenly knocked back hundreds of years?
Fortunately, this scenario that I have laid out is nearly impossible. It would require some suspension of disbelief — how could all electricity and communications networks be knocked offline at the same time without hope of rebooting them? The chances of such an event happening approach zero, but if such a world were to come to fruition, it would represent an indescribably massive step for the entire world’s way of life in the worst direction. So much of our lives is existentially tied to the internet and other communications networks. Bricking them would send the world into chaos.
Try to think of a business or organization that isn’t immensely dependent on access to electricity and the internet. You probably can’t. But is that a bad thing?
I would argue that it is not. Our standards of living have been massively improved by the development and continued increasing consumption of energy, all while the actual work exerted by the collection of human bodies on the physical world remains the same (holding aside population growth). We can manipulate nature around us to make our lives considerably easier and more enjoyable without changing anything in our physical forms. We can only claim to be just a little healthier and stronger than our ancestors because we have exploited our environments in such a way that we can use tools to save our backs and improve our health with better foods and medicine.
Primitive man kicked off this process by developing simple machines like ramps, wheels, levers, pulleys, etc. and putting energy sources like wood and waterways to work. Clever people with knacks for mechanics, who were willing to defer some consumption today in order to reap the benefits of future consumption, started to build more complicated systems with these simple tools and ideas. Suddenly, Mr. Caveman could kiss his wife goodbye in the morning and expect to be more productive in his workday by orders of magnitude, despite putting in the same number of hours and the same physical effort.
Imagine that you are Mr. Caveman and your caveman neighbor, Grum, observes your use of your grand complicated machinery made of pulleys, levers and wheels that you use to do whatever cavemen needed to do back then. One day, Grum says, “Your thingamajig seems great and all, but what happens when one of the ropes on your pulleys breaks? Or one of your wheels cracks? That whole setup is going to be a useless pile of junk.”
Would that convince you to stop what you’re doing and be more like Grum? Or would you say, “I’ve thought about what happens when stuff breaks, so I’ve stocked up on spare parts. In the worst-case scenario, if something serious goes wrong, I’ve been so productive with this machine, I could get by for a bit without it running while I do what I need to repair it.” And as you walk away from the conversation, you’ll probably mumble, “You’re such an idiot, Grum.”
When things go wrong, the capital and the fruits of its production that already exist in the world do not disappear. They can be repaired or broken down and repurposed. If some catastrophe like a tornado completely obliterates them, the knowledge to produce what has been destroyed still remains and what was lost can be rebuilt with all of the lessons learned from the previous iterations. In the many thousands of years of human existence, no event has been so bad that humanity was unable to recover and continue to build off what was previously built. The proof of this should be obvious.
Let’s return to today. Bitcoin continues to grow and pull more of the world’s wealth into its network, challenging the hegemony of government’s Cantillonism-powered fiat. It’s on a crash course for global monetization, returning the world to a hard money standard like it has never seen before.
More and more people are becoming aware of it — this includes the Grums of the world.
One of the criticisms you’ll hear a lot is the idea that Bitcoin has a critical flaw because it relies on the internet and electricity to be useful. Obviously, it is true that if you lose electricity or the ability to access the network, you would be unable to use Bitcoin (assuming physical manifestations of UTXOs wouldn’t exist). Once your utilities get back online, your node will ping the other nodes in the network to figure out how far behind it is and start catching back up. Given that an average internet connection and simple hardware like a Raspberry Pi and SSD hard drive can sync the entire blockchain in a few days, even being offline for a week wouldn’t require much time to catch back up (not to mention that there are ways to still use Bitcoin without the fully-synced, fully-validating node).
Bitcoin’s reliance on electricity creates an incentive for people to secure their access to electricity. It’s no different than any other tool or technology that relies on electricity. What grocery store manager, for example, would want to risk losing tens of thousands of dollars-worth of inventory due to a power outage? He would want to purchase insurance coverage for his store to protect himself against such loss. If he hadn’t already done so, the insurance company offering him a policy would inform him that he could get lower rates by installing emergency backup generators. This would lower the risk of spoilage and the benefits of doing so are shared by both the grocery store and the insurance company (not to mention the manufacturer of the generators).
Likewise, businesses and other entities that use Bitcoin would make sure that in the event of the disruption of their services, they would have the ability to continue operations. Gasoline or diesel-powered generators would be obvious choices, as many are designed to switch on as soon as an outage is detected. Coupled with an uninterruptible power supply (UPS), these backup systems are currently readily available at relatively low cost for anyone who wants to keep their node running and phones and other hardware with connected wallets charged during disruptions.
In the event that the USP is also down during the power outage, connectivity would still be available via cellular communications networks. WiFi hotspots would be useful for keeping local nodes connected.
Let’s consider the purpose of a full node. It keeps a copy of the ledger as it gets updated to check that the person claiming to send you Bitcoin actually sends it to you. If you do not run your own node, your wallet software is pinging someone else’s node, which may or may not be sending you truthful information. A well-coordinated attack against you could feature the sender working with the node operator that your wallet relies on to trick you into thinking you’ve received bitcoin and completing your side of a trade. The risk is only on the receiver of bitcoin, not the sender, so the loss of access to your node would not pose any risk if you’re just sending bitcoin. However, it is unlikely that anyone in a Bitcoin economy would only be spending, so there is a need to have access to a node without requiring trust.
It is important to remember that the wallet on your full node is not necessarily the wallet from which you’re going to be sending and receiving transactions. The node may only be checking the validity of transactions and updates to the ledger. Therefore, those with concerns about keeping their use of Bitcoin trustless can run multiple nodes in different locations to spread out their risk in the case of outages. As long as there is a way to connect to one of them, a person can easily create redundancy. Maybe they run a node at the place of his business and another in his home. Additional layers of protection can be added with a little bit of security tradeoff by adding more nodes from trusted business associates, friends or family (like Uncle Jim) and the use of cloud computing platforms to leverage their near-100 percent uptime. The more geographically distributed these nodes are, the more unlikely you’ll be left on an island having to trust a stranger’s node.
In the case of a wider outage of typical internet and cellular networks, Bitcoin’s low bandwidth requirements make it feasible to run via satellite, mesh networks and short wave radio. These services would also presumably be useful for any secondary layers built on top of the on-chain layer. Once again, the ability to create redundant systems and layers of protection against predictable problems helps to build a robust system for everyone.
So far we’ve only discussed issues related to the individual who is sending and receiving block and transaction data. These people typically are not responsible for updating the ledger, which falls on the miners who have their own set of challenges. Fortunately, the connectivity solutions already identified for individual users would be very similar for miners since they are sending and receiving the same types and amounts of data. The big difference for miners, however, is securing electricity.
They do a massive amount of computing and that computing requires a massive amount of electricity. A large chunk of miners’ ability to be profitable is access to cheap electricity, especially as ASICs continue to commoditize. As miners set up their facilities and soak up the available electricity supply, new miners entering the market can’t simply set up right next to an existing miner if doing so drives up the cost of electricity to make mining unprofitable. Miners must get creative in the ways they capture their competitive advantage.
We often take for granted that we can find a hole in the wall of our home and plug into it to get some electricity. But how did the electricity get there? There’s no electricity delivery man who drops off a box of electricity at your doorstep every week. The electricity needs to be produced from a power plant where it takes some energy source (such as stored energy in coal or the kinetic energy of a river), converts it to mechanical energy and then converts the mechanical energy into electrical energy.
That electrical energy is sent through a maze of cables and wires and other equipment to make its way to each of the customers serviced by that power plant. This network, or grid, often has a number of power plants feeding it, which provide varying amounts of inputs to produce a steady and reliable output based on demand.
That demand isn’t static — it can change drastically depending on the time of year and time of day. As businesses and residents move in and out of a geographical area, the electricity demands will change as well. But as a general rule, human progress is strongly correlated to energy consumption, so as we move forward in time, our energy consumption tends to increase. Power plants can and have improved efficiencies in electricity production to improve their outputs, but higher demand often means expansions of existing plants and the construction of new ones.
Yet, for a variety of reasons (some good and some bad) such as economic, political, social, environmental, legal, etc., projects to add supply aren’t always feasible. The real estate in proximity to the power market might just not be available and the best site available might be too far to make it economical when the costs of transmission are added in. Or maybe fluctuating demand would cause the plant to have to idle for extended periods of time.
Regardless of the reasons, all else being equal, fewer power plants (i.e., less electricity supply) means higher electricity costs. Likewise, high demand means higher prices. For this reason, you shouldn’t expect to see miners operating facilities on Main Street during normal business hours.
What you will see, however, is miners taking advantage of quirks in the supply and demand cycles. Since power plants don’t want to idle their equipment and prefer to keep things steadily humming along, but don’t have a convenient, easy way to silo excess electricity, miners can bid low prices during periods of low demand. Suddenly, the power plants have an additional revenue stream that fills the valleys when their regular customers aren’t consuming much. The incentives might line up so well that power plants can even install their own mining facilities like Greenidge Generation in upstate New York did recently.
As mentioned, miners tend to go where electricity is cheap and that includes places like hydroelectric power plants that by their nature often produce electricity above the capacity needed for the market they serve. But there is something even more interesting that happens with mining and electricity. Not only does Bitcoin mining add revenue to existing locations of energy production, but it also makes other previously unprofitable energy sources profitable. Transmission and distribution costs of electricity can be significant and great sources of energy are often in remote locations far enough away from existing infrastructure to make them unprofitable to tap. Bitcoin, on the other hand, doesn’t need all that infrastructure because it exists as digital information. Therefore, anyone can submit blocks to be added to Bitcoin’s ledger as long as they have connectivity to the network.
This is one of the reasons why keeping block sizes small is so critical. If miners not only had to submit blocks tens or hundreds of megabytes in size, but also had to receive new blocks every ten minutes, then it might be too much for the bandwidth of a satellite internet connection to handle. Or with all the competition for solving blocks, latency caused by their weak connection would result in them losing the race to saturate the network with their block first. Fortunately, the actual arrangement results in more energy being used to solve blocks, which increases Bitcoin’s hash rate, which makes the network more secure.
And for the purposes of this article, having mining facilities spread across the far reaches of the Earth makes the network more robust against electrical and communications outages. Mining operations are popping up in places like Iceland, where the plentiful geothermal heat is used to power mining rigs. Methane gas that was previously wasted by burning it with flares at remote oilfields because it was unprofitable to capture and sell is powering generators that create electricity to mine bitcoin, turning trash into treasure.
So, even an EMP blast taking out an entire region’s electrical equipment wouldn’t come close to spelling doom for Bitcoin. It would mean there would be a loss of hashing power until those affected could get their equipment back online. Maybe it means that difficulty gets adjusted downward for a time period or maybe other miners can switch on their rigs to fill some of the gap caused by less competition.
As more wealth is engulfed by the Bitcoin market, incentives to ensure that the output of capital is maximized are created. Better infrastructure would be built around the massive investments to make sure that profitability continues into the future to the benefit of everyone who touches Bitcoin. With deep pockets and clear vision, the industry leaders will take the reins away from governments and their crony corporate friends to build and maintain better electrical grids and communications networks since the inadequacies of the latter will be unceremoniously revealed by a wealth transfer this time driven by market forces.
The fiat world with its instant gratification will be no match for the hard money, low time-preference world ushered in by Bitcoin.
If there is one more “but what if…” to cover, let’s consider an incredible solar flare that engulfs the entire Earth and destroys all of the electrical infrastructure like we discussed in the beginning. Would that cause a failure of Bitcoin?
Maybe it would (unless someone was keeping paper copies of each block and then digitized them again). So you’ve got me — Bitcoin might get destroyed in a cataclysmic event that would end the world as we know it. But that sounds like an argument for Bitcoin, not against it. We can sit here and think up wondrous scenarios that would destroy any system or institution regardless of how fantastic and unlikely they may be. If that’s what it takes to defeat Bitcoin, then I’ll take it every single time.
What’s more robust than a form of money that will survive unless the Earth itself is destroyed along with it?
]]>As it stands, not everyone will be able to control their own private keys on the base layer or the Lightning Network when Bitcoin scales to global adoption. Will and/or should people be punished for that?
Learn about Bitcoin at a trickle
BitcoinTrickle.com
Sponsor
Liberty Mugs
Keep in touch with us everywhere you are
Join our Telegram group
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter: @libertymugs (Rollo), @Slappy_Jones_2
Check us out on Patreon
Learn everything you need to know about Bitcoin in just 10 hours
10HoursofBitcoin.com
Podcast version
Some venting.
Learn about Bitcoin at a trickle
BitcoinTrickle.com
Sponsor
Liberty Mugs
Keep in touch with us everywhere you are
Join our Telegram group
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter: @libertymugs (Rollo), @Slappy_Jones_2
Check us out on Patreon
Learn everything you need to know about Bitcoin in just 10 hours
10HoursofBitcoin.com
Podcast version
Stumbled upon a tweet that we’re going to talk about.
Learn about Bitcoin at a trickle
BitcoinTrickle.com
Sponsor
Liberty Mugs
Keep in touch with us everywhere you are
Join our Telegram group
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter: @libertymugs (Rollo), @Slappy_Jones_2
Check us out on Patreon
Learn everything you need to know about Bitcoin in just 10 hours
10HoursofBitcoin.com
Podcast version
We eventually figure out what we’re talking about.
Learn about Bitcoin at a trickle
BitcoinTrickle.com
Sponsor
Liberty Mugs
Keep in touch with us everywhere you are
Join our Telegram group
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter: @libertymugs (Rollo), @Slappy_Jones_2
Check us out on Patreon
Learn everything you need to know about Bitcoin in just 10 hours
10HoursofBitcoin.com
Podcast version
The manosphere and masculine frame are stupid and evil.
Learn about Bitcoin at a trickle
BitcoinTrickle.com
Sponsor
Liberty Mugs
Keep in touch with us everywhere you are
Join our Telegram group
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter: @libertymugs (Rollo), @Slappy_Jones_2
Check us out on Patreon
Learn everything you need to know about Bitcoin in just 10 hours
10HoursofBitcoin.com
Podcast version
We really messed this one up.
Learn about Bitcoin at a trickle
BitcoinTrickle.com
Sponsor
Liberty Mugs
Keep in touch with us everywhere you are
Join our Telegram group
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter: @libertymugs (Rollo), @Slappy_Jones_2
Check us out on Patreon
Learn everything you need to know about Bitcoin in just 10 hours
10HoursofBitcoin.com
Podcast version
A listener sent us some comments on our episode critiquing Shane Hazel that we wanted to discuss. Part 2.
Learn about Bitcoin at a trickle
BitcoinTrickle.com
Sponsor
Liberty Mugs
Keep in touch with us everywhere you are
Join our Telegram group
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter: @libertymugs (Rollo), @Slappy_Jones_2
Check us out on Patreon
Learn everything you need to know about Bitcoin in just 10 hours
10HoursofBitcoin.com
Podcast version
Thanks to Twitter, we feel like we need to explain what a heuristic is.
Learn about Bitcoin at a trickle
BitcoinTrickle.com
Sponsor
Liberty Mugs
Keep in touch with us everywhere you are
Join our Telegram group
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter: @libertymugs (Rollo), @Slappy_Jones_2
Check us out on Patreon
Learn everything you need to know about Bitcoin in just 10 hours
10HoursofBitcoin.com
Podcast version
A listener sent us some comments on our episode critiquing Shane Hazel that we wanted to discuss.
Learn about Bitcoin at a trickle
BitcoinTrickle.com
Sponsor
Liberty Mugs
Keep in touch with us everywhere you are
Join our Telegram group
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter: @libertymugs (Rollo), @Slappy_Jones_2
Check us out on Patreon
Learn everything you need to know about Bitcoin in just 10 hours
10HoursofBitcoin.com
Podcast version
JW Weatherman comes back to give his thoughts on the state of Get On Zero. We then talk about his saga with Start9 Labs and why open source software is so important.
Follow JW
Twitter: @JWWeatherman_
10HoursofBitcoin.com
Yeticold.com
Learn about Bitcoin at a trickle
BitcoinTrickle.com
Sponsor
Liberty Mugs
Keep in touch with us everywhere you are
Join our Telegram group
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter: @LibertyMugs @Slappy_Jones_2
Check us out on Patreon
Learn everything you need to know about Bitcoin in just 10 hours
10HoursofBitcoin.com
Podcast version
We use episode from the Clerically Speaking podcast to talk about some issues.
Clerically Speaking Podcast: E122: Squishy Blood / History / Mandalorian
Learn about Bitcoin at a trickle
BitcoinTrickle.com
Sponsor
Liberty Mugs
Keep in touch with us everywhere you are
Join our Telegram group
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter: @libertymugs (Rollo), @Slappy_Jones_2
Check us out on Patreon
Learn everything you need to know about Bitcoin in just 10 hours
10HoursofBitcoin.com
Podcast version
We told you so.
Learn about Bitcoin at a trickle
BitcoinTrickle.com
Sponsor
Liberty Mugs
Keep in touch with us everywhere you are
Join our Telegram group
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter: @libertymugs (Rollo), @Slappy_Jones_2
Check us out on Patreon
Learn everything you need to know about Bitcoin in just 10 hours
10HoursofBitcoin.com
Podcast version
Shane Hazel had a recent episode where he talked about religion and psychedelics. We think he got some stuff incorrect.
Shane Hazel Radical Podcast: Episode 281. Psychedelics and Bitcoins
Learn about Bitcoin at a trickle
BitcoinTrickle.com
Sponsor
Liberty Mugs
Keep in touch with us everywhere you are
Join our Telegram group
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter: @libertymugs (Rollo), @Slappy_Jones_2
Check us out on Patreon
Learn everything you need to know about Bitcoin in just 10 hours
10HoursofBitcoin.com
Podcast version
Slappy returns and Rollo talks about his adventures with the fruitcake at Chillderburg Go.
Learn about Bitcoin at a trickle
BitcoinTrickle.com
Sponsor
Liberty Mugs
Keep in touch with us everywhere you are
Join our Telegram group
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter: @libertymugs (Rollo), @Slappy_Jones_2
Check us out on Patreon
Learn everything you need to know about Bitcoin in just 10 hours
10HoursofBitcoin.com
Podcast version
What do I think about RFK, Jr. and his support of Bitcoin? And stop feeding the trolls.
Learn about Bitcoin at a trickle
BitcoinTrickle.com
Sponsor
Liberty Mugs
Keep in touch with us everywhere you are
Join our Telegram group
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter: @libertymugs (Rollo), @Slappy_Jones_2
Check us out on Patreon
Learn everything you need to know about Bitcoin in just 10 hours
10HoursofBitcoin.com
Podcast version
We continue to read through and comment on the Bitcoin chapter of the White House’s annual report. We’re finally done.
Economic Report of the President
Learn about Bitcoin at a trickle
BitcoinTrickle.com
Sponsor
Liberty Mugs
Keep in touch with us everywhere you are
Join our Telegram group
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter: @libertymugs (Rollo), @Slappy_Jones_2
Check us out on Patreon
Learn everything you need to know about Bitcoin in just 10 hours
10HoursofBitcoin.com
Podcast version