Speaker 1: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. Well, we
Speaker 1: did say earlier we had a wild run in cryptocurrencies
Speaker 1: this week. You know, if you've been listening to Bloomberg
Speaker 1: all week, sell off, bounce back back down again today.
Speaker 1: As Charlie just mentioned, Bobby Lee is an entrepreneur in
Speaker 1: the cryptocurrency space, recently founded Ballet, where he is CEO
Speaker 1: as well. It is a multi currency, non electronic crypto wallet.
Speaker 1: He's also author of a book I've Got in my Hand,
Speaker 1: The Promise of Bitcoin, The Future of Money and how
Speaker 1: it can work for you. He joins us on the
Speaker 1: phone from Las Vegas. Bobby, nice to have you here
Speaker 1: on Bloomberg Business Week. How are you good? Thank you
Speaker 1: for having me. Well, it's great to have you here.
Speaker 1: It's been an interesting year on so many different levels.
Speaker 1: That's the understatement of the year as well. It's also
Speaker 1: been an interesting, uh start to one when it comes
Speaker 1: to cryptocurrencies. What do you make of the recent cryptomania.
Speaker 1: We had some selling, we had to bounce back, we
Speaker 1: had all utility. We're down again on crypto bitcoin was
Speaker 1: down about ten per cent or so, what's the outlook
Speaker 1: in your view? Yes, So, first of all, the context
Speaker 1: is that this is the big bullmarket year from bitcoin.
Speaker 1: She looked back a year ago, a big Clinton was
Speaker 1: roughly just tent of where it was today. The bottom
Speaker 1: of that thirty dollars in March April two twenty and
Speaker 1: now we're already over sat. In fact, we reached an
Speaker 1: all time high sixty thousand dollars that last month. So
Speaker 1: with this context of brought a cont into the bull market,
Speaker 1: we are seeing a a temperate pullback. Did pulled back
Speaker 1: quite ferociously, seld by almost sixty from its all time
Speaker 1: teeth just in the last few days. So does a
Speaker 1: run up just mean though, you know, putting it in contact,
Speaker 1: you said, this is a big bull market for bitcoin
Speaker 1: this year. Does a run up in value just met
Speaker 1: Does that somehow give something significance and relevance for the
Speaker 1: longer term? It does because um, as my book I'm
Speaker 1: trying to position. The way I explain is bitcoin is
Speaker 1: really a global reserve asset class. It started out as
Speaker 1: a very small sort of digital currency invented by socially
Speaker 1: not Comoto, sort of very deep, very nerdy, kind of
Speaker 1: cypherpunk kind of creation. But what we've come to see
Speaker 1: over the last twelve years is that pform really has
Speaker 1: a role in society in the sense that it truly
Speaker 1: is an independent into the asset class that has a
Speaker 1: strict limit on the issuance. So people may know Biquin
Speaker 1: has opened the camp of twenty one million units, and
Speaker 1: it was these two factors, the strict limit of twenty
Speaker 1: one million, and also its own sort of independence, you know,
Speaker 1: decentralized nature. It's really a beast that cannot be controlled
Speaker 1: by by the government of the world, so it doesn't
Speaker 1: sec come itself to the inflation that we see with
Speaker 1: the US dollar and other currencies that's controlled by center
Speaker 1: page printing. So now you know, the coin has already
Speaker 1: reached one trillion dollars in total value. It's come back
Speaker 1: down a bit in the reasonable back, but I think
Speaker 1: it's didn't go much much higher than that. You know,
Speaker 1: we are still, though, Bobby, trying to figure out is
Speaker 1: it a currency, is it a commodity, is it a collectible.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're still having these conversations. You do know
Speaker 1: to that the U. S. Treasury, the Federal reserve, are,
Speaker 1: you know, increasing their curiosity and wanting to know more
Speaker 1: about it and trying to figure out what needs to
Speaker 1: be there in terms of oversight. Could that drastically change
Speaker 1: the dynamic of cryptocurrency as we see it today. Also
Speaker 1: Number one miss no more is people misunderstand that currency
Speaker 1: has to be something that you can spend with to
Speaker 1: be valuable. I take a more traditional of your currencies,
Speaker 1: really money and money even if it's sitting in my pocket,
Speaker 1: even if it's sitting in my bank account, it's useful
Speaker 1: to me even if it's not spent. So this is
Speaker 1: the the important piece the currency. Like bitcoin, it doesn't
Speaker 1: have to be useful only for spending. It can be
Speaker 1: useful as an investment, as a head against installation, as
Speaker 1: a store of value, and in that sense, I think
Speaker 1: the bigpoint will be very successful. And with regards to regulation, yes,
Speaker 1: they are very concerned about it because of the digunner
Speaker 1: nature of its so called awesomeness where it can be
Speaker 1: sent across the wire in contaneously all around the world.
Speaker 1: So it really is different from the traditional money in
Speaker 1: that sense. So that's why you have regulatory agencies all
Speaker 1: over the world trying to stand down on bitcoin. But
Speaker 1: fundamentally bitcoin as as its own sort of digital currency,
Speaker 1: it hasn't changed even even with the Basically no one
Speaker 1: can force to change it. What the regulatory agency can
Speaker 1: do is force people's behavior to change around it, rather
Speaker 1: than the bitcoin itself. Bobby, what do you do? I
Speaker 1: work with a lot of smart people. I run into
Speaker 1: a lot of smart people who are still like I
Speaker 1: don't quite understand cryptocurrency. I don't understand it other than
Speaker 1: it's maybe you know a place, a risky asset that
Speaker 1: you can just make some money or lose a lot
Speaker 1: of money as well. What do you say to them
Speaker 1: that ultimately will be You say, it's going to transform
Speaker 1: the global economy? How so? Well, so a few things
Speaker 1: about those smart people. So a lot of smart people
Speaker 1: in the world, a lot of successful investors. However, even today,
Speaker 1: the vast majority of them don't understand it, don't get
Speaker 1: And this is the reason why I wrote the book.
Speaker 1: Give an example ten years ago when I first gone
Speaker 1: in touch with bitcoin. Uh, this is my university being involved.
Speaker 1: I was decently smart person to have a college degree
Speaker 1: computer science and all that, but I was enormous, very newbie,
Speaker 1: if you will, in terms of understanding bitcoin the fundamentals, philosophy,
Speaker 1: the economics, and also the technology. So today bitcoin is
Speaker 1: already twelve and a half years old. There's still a
Speaker 1: lot of smart people in the world, educated people who
Speaker 1: are very successful in their own right. But when they
Speaker 1: see bitoin for the first time, to them, it's strange
Speaker 1: and it's just not It doesn't. It doesn't rock. It
Speaker 1: doesn't only in terms of what makes it so special.
Speaker 1: So that's fine, It's just that bitcoint is very, very complicated. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, it took me a decade to really understand
Speaker 1: it's the level that I have so far, and I
Speaker 1: expect myself to really even learn more about it in
Speaker 1: the coming next decade. Uh, in terms of how it
Speaker 1: is going to change the world. What's amazing is that now,
Speaker 1: for the first time in the world, we have a
Speaker 1: unique asset class that is digital in nature that people
Speaker 1: can stand around anywhere in the world, from person to
Speaker 1: person without any third party's intervention, without any third party oversight. Now,
Speaker 1: from the regular perspective, when something has no oversight and
Speaker 1: no intervention ability, they worry naturally. So they worry because
Speaker 1: they used to control things. They're used to controlling and
Speaker 1: seeing all the bank wire transfers. They're used to controlling
Speaker 1: how much among the people can withdraw from their accounts.
Speaker 1: They're used to having limits and all that stuff, including
Speaker 1: treating hours or stock markets. They used to all that
Speaker 1: kind of control. The bitcoin is so new and radically different,
Speaker 1: there's no way to control it. And that's how it
Speaker 1: was invented. It was invented to be this wild sort
Speaker 1: of animal that is not domesticated. So that's why it's
Speaker 1: so hard to the people. So how does it become
Speaker 1: a bigger part of the mainstream financial global economy if
Speaker 1: it's expected to be this wild animal, which is fine,
Speaker 1: but you got to know that going in. But how
Speaker 1: that sounds to me a bit problematic to fitting into
Speaker 1: kind of a stable system, especially if people are counting.
Speaker 1: First of all, yeah, absolutely, you're right. First of all,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying, nor are people saying that everyone has
Speaker 1: to use. Remember this not enforced sort of thing, in
Speaker 1: the sense that we are not forcing the world to
Speaker 1: use big point is to get involved in bigcoin. What
Speaker 1: it is as big point as a choice. So prior
Speaker 1: to two thousand nine, prior to the invention a bigcoin,
Speaker 1: people have no choice. If you want to send money
Speaker 1: to someone abroad, you have to go through the banking system,
Speaker 1: which is a swift international wire transfer, and there's all
Speaker 1: sorts of limits, all sorts of delays, all sorts of
Speaker 1: just critical stuff. That's very complicated with the sift wire trust.
Speaker 1: For now, people have no choice, whereas today do you
Speaker 1: have a choice. People who want to get involve qui differrency,
Speaker 1: they can choose to send the money in bigcoin. They
Speaker 1: can also choose to receive the money in bigcoins. And
Speaker 1: don't forget spending money. Traditionally we talked about the world
Speaker 1: is four dimensional, right when we talk about sending money,
Speaker 1: we think of it in the three dimensions, as in
Speaker 1: the phinsicality sending it from one they need to addict
Speaker 1: to another country. But the fourth domaking, which is dimension
Speaker 1: with client, is very very important, and that's why we
Speaker 1: save money. The reason we have money in the bank
Speaker 1: account is because we chose to not spend it all
Speaker 1: on the doe earned it. That's an accumulation of the
Speaker 1: money in our individual bank accounts. So money, as you
Speaker 1: know it is really purposes to send it in time.
Speaker 1: So let's say so is like if you're if you're
Speaker 1: making an investment in something rather than X amount of
Speaker 1: days to clear or something, and we can get into
Speaker 1: a big discussion about somebody else having access to your
Speaker 1: money for a few days and making a lot of
Speaker 1: money on it at your expense. Are you saying that
Speaker 1: the real value in cryptocurrencies is you can make that
Speaker 1: purchase of and maybe let's say another asset class and
Speaker 1: bitcoin and the transfer happens immediately. Well, I'm not. I'll
Speaker 1: make sure instant question. So first of all, um, we're
Speaker 1: talking about bigcoin more specifically than the currency brought because
Speaker 1: scriptocurrency broadly has many of you what you call alternate points.
Speaker 1: Many of them have promoters, they have all these crazy
Speaker 1: values and I don't. I'm not a big supporter of those.
Speaker 1: My book is unashamingly about bitcoin. Right. Yeah, In terms
Speaker 1: of bitcoin, you talked about payments. This is one of
Speaker 1: the misnomers people. People think bitcoin is not usedful. And
Speaker 1: again these are the people who are interacting for the
Speaker 1: first time. They challenge the question why bitcoin is useful
Speaker 1: when you can't pay for groceries, pay for your online shopping,
Speaker 1: you can't pay for your movie tickets in bitcoint right.
Speaker 1: Tesla just recently did a walk back on the Tesla
Speaker 1: in January firmly announced that you can buy Tesla cars
Speaker 1: with bitcoin, and then just last week you must said nope,
Speaker 1: we're going to cancel that. And the reason is tactly speaking,
Speaker 1: nobody buys a Tesla with bitcoin, not not in the
Speaker 1: right mind. I mean, who hasn't been pointed buy a Tesla?
Speaker 1: So bigcoin should be much more viewed as money, as
Speaker 1: an investment, as a vehicle to holding value as opposed
Speaker 1: to the means of transaction as they I'm gonna buy
Speaker 1: my day to day spending. So like gold, like, what's
Speaker 1: what's Yeah, go ahead, So gold is is you know,
Speaker 1: despite what the bankers and people try to say, gold
Speaker 1: is not valuable. But the reality is governments all around
Speaker 1: the world still very much support and believe in gold.
Speaker 1: That's why they have thousands and thousands of tons of
Speaker 1: gold in their reserves. So the bitcoin is known as
Speaker 1: digital goal. Well, we've only got about forty seconds, you know,
Speaker 1: left here. Unfortunately, you'll have to come back and talk
Speaker 1: some more because it's it's this is a great conversation.
Speaker 1: I mean, so, how will it impact most of us
Speaker 1: or will it not impact most of us going forward,
Speaker 1: and again just got about forty seconds, so that's the
Speaker 1: main question. So it can impact most of us if
Speaker 1: we choose to smartly investing big one. If we choose
Speaker 1: to ignore it, then it's not going to impact you.
Speaker 1: On that hand, be gonna be on the losing side
Speaker 1: because whatever money you have in the bank account, that's
Speaker 1: gonna loses purchasing for our over time. If you choose
Speaker 1: to invest bitcoin, and this is why the subtitle is
Speaker 1: how it can work for you, then it will impact
Speaker 1: your life because now you've engaged your investment into this
Speaker 1: asset class that can give an amazing return in the
Speaker 1: next ten to fifteen and twenty years for longer investment,
Speaker 1: I think bitcoin is the best thing that's happened. Alright,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to leave it on that note, come back.
Speaker 1: I'm sure this is going to continue to be a
Speaker 1: big conversation, certainly here at Bloomberg, and something that our
Speaker 1: listeners and viewers on YouTube definitely want to hear about.
Speaker 1: Bobby Lee. He is founder and CEO Ballet. It's a
Speaker 1: multi currency, non electronic crypto wallet, author of the promise
Speaker 1: of Bitcoin the Future Money and how it can work
Speaker 1: for you on the phone from Las Vegas. Folks, that's
Speaker 1: going to do it for a wild week. Check out
Speaker 1: our Bloomberg Business Week podcast on Bloomberg Radio tomorrow d
Speaker 1: eight eight am, and go to Bloomberg dot com for
Speaker 1: all of our conversations