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Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is

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Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or

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Speaker 1: learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A

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Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, welcome

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Speaker 1: back to the show. My name is Matt, my name

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Speaker 1: is Noel. They called me Ben. We are joined as

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Speaker 1: always with our super producer Paul Mission Controlled Decond. Most importantly,

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Speaker 1: you are you. You are here, and that makes this

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Speaker 1: stuff they don't want you to know. Shout out to

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Speaker 1: some of the big names listening. Joining our fellow listeners today,

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Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg, thanks for dropping by. Jeff Bezos, Hope things

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Speaker 1: go well for you with Amazon Prime Day. I guess

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Speaker 1: that's happening as we record this. Now. There's a strike

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Speaker 1: going on today with Amazon employees. They're very well should be.

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Speaker 1: Have you seen terrible things that happened to those employees.

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Speaker 1: But a lot of folks are calling for joining the

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Speaker 1: strike in the form of not going to Amazon or

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Speaker 1: any of its properties today for the next few days.

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Speaker 1: That's what I've done. But let's let's also point out

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Speaker 1: that the meme about storming Area fifty one, which now

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Speaker 1: has picked up with some celebrity recommendations. I think Nathan Phillion,

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Speaker 1: Jeff Goldbloom, Keanu Reeves and so on. We're posting about

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Speaker 1: it science fiction stars that has that has gained more

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Speaker 1: traction than any idea of, say, storming detention centers where

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Speaker 1: US children are dying or boycotting Amazon, because Amazon is

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Speaker 1: the new version of the Walmart conundrum. It's just so

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Speaker 1: gosh darn convenient for so many people. I've also used

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Speaker 1: Amazon regularly, full disclosure to get stuff for work, as

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Speaker 1: have I not to derail things too much. I've been

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Speaker 1: very shocked to see in New York one of like

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Speaker 1: this liberal bastion um with a lot of young folks

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Speaker 1: that work in like very kind of like woke kind

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Speaker 1: of industries or whatever. Everyone gets their groceries from Amazon.

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Speaker 1: It's crazy, Like you go to an apartment complex and

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Speaker 1: the doors are just stacked high with Amazon boxes. I

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Speaker 1: think people are able to be selectively uh kind of

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Speaker 1: you know, awake two problems if it doesn't like directly

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Speaker 1: inconvenience them. I think that's most people. Yeah, that's exactly

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Speaker 1: what I was gonna say. Yeah, I think we see

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Speaker 1: what's in front of us, and you know what we're

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Speaker 1: aware of because of the people that are around us.

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Speaker 1: And that's generally it unless you're fully plugged into your

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Speaker 1: social network. I would call it performatively performatively moral. So,

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Speaker 1: for instance, what happened to the child soldiers that everyone

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Speaker 1: was uh so concerned about in two thousand twelve. They're

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Speaker 1: still out there, many of them are no longer children,

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Speaker 1: but new children have been accepted into the ranks. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it really is just what is trending right now? And

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Speaker 1: do you remember the last couple of things. I had

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Speaker 1: something just as an example that I wanted to chime

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Speaker 1: in with earlier, and I've completely forgotten it now because

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Speaker 1: now I'm thinking about this, it'll come back to I

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Speaker 1: guarantee you. Unfortunately, there's there are no shortages of different examples.

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Speaker 1: And of course, I mean, if we want to be

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Speaker 1: optimistic about it, every little bit counts. Your actions do matter,

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Speaker 1: regardless of what some people will try to make you

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Speaker 1: think when they don't want you to take action. But

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Speaker 1: speaking of actions, how are how are the weekends for everyone?

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Speaker 1: Paul Mischion Control good weekend, thumbs up, thumbs up, Gotta

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Speaker 1: we've got a nice streak. When michig Control nowadays, it's

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Speaker 1: been pretty much thumbs up because he's living his best life.

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Speaker 1: What'd you know it? How about? You know? It was good?

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Speaker 1: I went and visit my mom in my hometown of Augusta,

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Speaker 1: g A. Uh. My kid was in a church choir camp.

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Speaker 1: So I went to a church service for my first

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Speaker 1: time in many, many many years. And there were some

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Speaker 1: things about it that I had forgotten about, like when

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Speaker 1: they passed the election plate and yeah, sure is at

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Speaker 1: the end you put the money in, you do put

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Speaker 1: the money out, you put it in. That's right, that's

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Speaker 1: definitely right. Then you've got me there. Um. But the

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Speaker 1: ushers at the end take the plates and hold them

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Speaker 1: aloft at the altar. Whoa, and is that a thing?

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Speaker 1: Are you aware of this? Yeah? I don't know. It's

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Speaker 1: it's a Methodist church, so maybe it's just a Methodist thing.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, they all convene down on the floor, three

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Speaker 1: of them, and they hold the plates up like as

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Speaker 1: an offering too, you know, the the deity. That's nice.

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Speaker 1: I was doing something similar. I was getting together my

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Speaker 1: my e coin wallet. I realized that I hadn't been

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Speaker 1: doing any kind of like I don't know what you'd

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Speaker 1: call maintenance on it, like figuring out exactly where all

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Speaker 1: my stuff is and my portfolios and all of that.

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Speaker 1: But um, over the weekend, just I'm ready to use

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Speaker 1: e cooin again. So they have what do you have?

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Speaker 1: It's just it's your standard wallet. Really, you know where

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Speaker 1: the income goes directly into that account. And I mean

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Speaker 1: you're talking about like lightcoin, bitcoin like you're talking about

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Speaker 1: different like coin. Yeah, you know, yeah, it's it's it's

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Speaker 1: e coin. It's just the one that uh ecorp is,

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Speaker 1: you know, introduced a while ago. I don't know, I

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Speaker 1: don't it's my favorite one. I wish you suck. I

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Speaker 1: wish you luck in your endeavors. Uh And this this

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Speaker 1: is a show that we personally love. I I've thought

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Speaker 1: about this before, and I would hazard the same case

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Speaker 1: goes for you, Matt. If you came into a financial windfall,

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Speaker 1: you'd probably still want to do this show. Huh oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: I would. Just I mean I would just put put

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Speaker 1: more money away in my coin. I quietly buy up

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Speaker 1: our company. I mean I have fantasized about that. Me too.

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Speaker 1: I've fantasized about quietly buying up the company. Going to

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Speaker 1: work every day without telling anyone, anyone the case until

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Speaker 1: there was an all hands meeting, and then just saying

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Speaker 1: talking out of my neck, as we say in the South,

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Speaker 1: making some crazy proclamation, and then when someone tells me

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Speaker 1: to calm down, say, you know, reveal that I own

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Speaker 1: I own the company, or some kind of I'm imagining

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Speaker 1: some kind of play where you just correct the CEO

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Speaker 1: or something, just just like a small correction, be like,

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Speaker 1: just do it openly and publicly, and to actually homepst

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Speaker 1: off because that's ridiculous, I would say from me now. Uh,

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Speaker 1: and maybe just shark tank it, you know, maybe just

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Speaker 1: fift that's all you need. We want to hear how

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Speaker 1: things have been going in your neck of the global woods.

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Speaker 1: So please don't feel like you have to wait until

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Speaker 1: the end to contact us. You can pause the podcast

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Speaker 1: right now. You can leave us a review that always

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Speaker 1: helps us get a little bit closer to the good

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Speaker 1: graces of our corporate overlords, a little bit further away

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Speaker 1: from being fired. Uh. And so until until we secretly

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Speaker 1: buy our company, we love some reviews from you when

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Speaker 1: your fellow listeners, how about you been, How was your weekend?

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Speaker 1: I had a lot of stuff happened. I was I

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Speaker 1: was actually in town for this weekend. I will not

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Speaker 1: be in town for the next weekend. There's a lot

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Speaker 1: of travel. But who worked I've I've been working on

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Speaker 1: some various projects. Um yeah, that'll that'll overall be checked

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Speaker 1: special checks. I love that transparency. I've been open booking

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Speaker 1: a meadow on a sunny day. Guys, But how are

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Speaker 1: your kids? My kids? The ones I know, the one

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Speaker 1: I know about this is good. She she did a

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Speaker 1: really good job in her choir performance. I don't want

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Speaker 1: to be a bummer. I saw something pretty crazy this weekend.

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Speaker 1: I saw a hit and run accident. I saw a

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Speaker 1: gentleman crossing the street in my hometown get hit by

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Speaker 1: a giant Ford F one truck and it was very upsetting.

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Speaker 1: And uh, I will say this, I always say this

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Speaker 1: about my hometown. There's so many cops just lurking around

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Speaker 1: trying to kind of nail people for the US and stuff.

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Speaker 1: This was one case where it was really I was

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Speaker 1: really glad they were around because they immediately chased the

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Speaker 1: guy down. They caught him, and the ambulance was there

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Speaker 1: and like a minute and a half cop was there

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Speaker 1: to talk to the guy and talk to witnesses, and uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, it was a good example of efficient policing

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Speaker 1: and first respondership. And I witnessed at first hand. Did

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Speaker 1: you report as a witness? I did not because there

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Speaker 1: was somebody that was directly with the guy. There were

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Speaker 1: several other people that were there. We was kind of

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Speaker 1: were passing by. We just moved on. But you know,

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Speaker 1: this strange thing is twenty years ago that may have

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Speaker 1: been perhaps a headline in the local newspaper, but may

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Speaker 1: have been forgotten pretty easily except for the people directly involved.

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Speaker 1: That's all changed nowadays. And I would argue for the

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Speaker 1: past decade at least, probably more probably closer to the

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Speaker 1: past fifteen twenty years. Social media has become the primary

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Speaker 1: currency and amusing netword, uh a little bit, a little

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Speaker 1: bit in a cavalier manner. Social media has become the

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Speaker 1: primary currency of communication for many, many people. And when

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Speaker 1: we say social media, we think of several things. One

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Speaker 1: of the most popular is Facebook. You might love it,

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Speaker 1: you might hate it, but there's no denying Facebook is

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Speaker 1: a huge, gargangel and tremendous business, and it seems set

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Speaker 1: to stay. It's just it's in us now, in our species.

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Speaker 1: If you would like to learn more about what Facebook

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Speaker 1: actually is, where it came from, and what it can do.

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Speaker 1: Check out our earlier deep dives on the subject in

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Speaker 1: previous episodes. You can also check out tech Stuff by

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Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland that has a great look at the nuts

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Speaker 1: and bolts of Facebook as it stood. Of course, every

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Speaker 1: Facebook episode needs to continually be updated because they are tricksy,

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Speaker 1: they are clever little varmints, and they will they work

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Speaker 1: to uh circumvent legislation, and two they would say address concerns,

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Speaker 1: So we'll always have to do an update. We'll probably

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Speaker 1: have to do an update on today's topic in a

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Speaker 1: few months. So let's just get a real quick recap

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Speaker 1: on Facebook and and all all this weird e currency

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Speaker 1: stuff before diving into the newest, strangest Facebook ambition and

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Speaker 1: why some people might tell you it is a conspiracy.

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Speaker 1: So Facebook, here here the facts. Yeah, that's right. Facebook,

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Speaker 1: primarily at its source is national multinational conglomerate. Now I'm

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Speaker 1: just kidding. It's a social media platform, and it's also

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Speaker 1: Instagram and a bunch of other things, all kinds of communication. Primarily,

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Speaker 1: let's talk about Facebook, the social media platform which you

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Speaker 1: know has seen a slow down in the number of users.

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Speaker 1: But when we say slow down, we just mean it

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Speaker 1: isn't at that extremely rapid rate that it was for

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Speaker 1: you know, years and years. They currently have two point

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Speaker 1: four billion billion monthly active users. And ben if it

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Speaker 1: were a country, it would be where does it lie

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Speaker 1: in our est there? Oh, it would be by far

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Speaker 1: the largest country in the world by population, almost double

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Speaker 1: the population of China, which is a little more than

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Speaker 1: one point three billion people. So this is two point

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Speaker 1: four billion, and it got to that number. It became

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Speaker 1: the largest thing in terms of population very very quickly

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Speaker 1: because it started originally restricted to college students in two

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Speaker 1: thousand and four. From two thousand four two thousand nineteen,

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Speaker 1: that's a that's a heck of a growth, even with

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Speaker 1: that slow down that we mentioned earlier. We have to

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Speaker 1: remember that the more people, the more access people in

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Speaker 1: emerging economies have to the internet, uh, the more Facebook

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Speaker 1: users are created. Yes, and it's a very important point

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Speaker 1: there that Facebook is global. It's not just a that's

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Speaker 1: what I was joking about, the multinational conglomerate thing, just

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Speaker 1: the concept that it exists in every country that has

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Speaker 1: access to the Internet, and people everywhere are using it. Now,

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Speaker 1: here's the big question. Let's say you've got a giant

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Speaker 1: social media platform like that. How do you leverage something

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Speaker 1: like that that's free for people to come on and

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Speaker 1: use however much they want? Yeah, how do you leverage

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Speaker 1: that into making money as a giant corporation with overhead

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Speaker 1: and employees and all the things you gotta pay for. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's the thing. That's We've said it before on this show.

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Speaker 1: Many other shows have said this. It's even at risk

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Speaker 1: of becoming a cliche because it is true. If you

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Speaker 1: do not pay for a service, you are the product.

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Speaker 1: That is absolutely true. Uh, and unfortunate. But that's how

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Speaker 1: Facebook makes a ton of cash. They sell the data

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Speaker 1: they aggregate about you, your friends or perhaps your ex

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Speaker 1: friends and your enemies and so on, and they package

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Speaker 1: this to advertisers. They package this to research firms, Cambridge

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Speaker 1: Analytica being one, and then they they sell this. You

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Speaker 1: do not get a cut of this. Then your data.

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Speaker 1: You can find different pundits estimating how much your data

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Speaker 1: as an individual as worth. Uh, it's not very much,

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Speaker 1: but it's still more than zero, and you get zero.

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Speaker 1: That's not the only way Facebook makes money, though, they

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Speaker 1: also have Facebook payments, so it's similar to like Venmo,

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Speaker 1: those kind of peer to peer things. And Ben kind

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Speaker 1: of mentioned this in that first go around with the

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Speaker 1: selling you the users data essentially and leveraging it for advertisers,

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Speaker 1: because that really is one of the primary ways that

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Speaker 1: Facebook made money for a long time, which was just

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Speaker 1: having ads essentially appear as posts within your feeds. Then

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Speaker 1: one of the biggest reasons advertisers will use that is

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Speaker 1: just like Ben said, because of the tremendous amount of

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Speaker 1: information they have on you and they can target stuff

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Speaker 1: to you so directly. And was this before they had

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Speaker 1: to identify them as sponsored posts or something like that,

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Speaker 1: or I think originally, Yeah, I think that's correct. So

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Speaker 1: if we did it, if we looked at how this

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Speaker 1: breaks down in six streams, we would say self serve

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Speaker 1: advertge rising. Let's say you have a great show, um, like,

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Speaker 1: let's say Paul makes an independent docuseries called the Age

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Speaker 1: of Applebee's and wants to promote it on Facebook. Then

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Speaker 1: you can give Facebook money and they will in their

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Speaker 1: ad manager they will attempt to show more people who

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Speaker 1: would be interested in the Age of Applebee's post about

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Speaker 1: the Age of Applebee's. By the way, Paul really enjoyed that.

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Speaker 1: He gave me a great smile. It's true. It's true.

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Speaker 1: You have to have you have to have a mission.

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Speaker 1: You gotta stand for something right. And then target advertisements,

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Speaker 1: which you mentioned, Matt that be the second Facebook Messenger

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Speaker 1: ads would be the third, video ads would be the fourth,

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Speaker 1: Facebook Mobile would be the fifth. Uh. Facebook's mobile app

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Speaker 1: in generated more than of their ad revenue, which surprising, right.

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Speaker 1: And the the idea of data generation is tricky because

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Speaker 1: they're not as far as we know, Facebook is not

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Speaker 1: purposely purchasing and selling specifically like Matthew Frederick's data or

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Speaker 1: Noel Brown's data. They're create their aggregating it in a

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Speaker 1: way that they would argue as anonymous. Yeah, it's all

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Speaker 1: nationalities or income brackets or all these you know, genders

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Speaker 1: wherever they need to do separating about so that you

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Speaker 1: can buy this swath of humanity. And as we record this,

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Speaker 1: if you if you're listening, you're saying, all right, guys,

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Speaker 1: to talk about this all the time. What does Facebook

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Speaker 1: actually have on me? What do they know about me?

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Speaker 1: You might be surprised, but you can still find out

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Speaker 1: if you go to the Facebook setting page, find the

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Speaker 1: tab for general or something like that. Eventually, the they'll

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Speaker 1: change the click through that you need on on a

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Speaker 1: pretty frequent basis. But eventually you will find an option

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Speaker 1: that allows you to download a copy of your Facebook

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Speaker 1: data and it will be everything. It will be more

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Speaker 1: than you thought. Yeah, so you can also nominally control

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Speaker 1: some of the ads that Facebook puts in your face.

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Speaker 1: But that's I mean, that's the nature of the game.

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Speaker 1: They're pretty clear about that. So, yeah, we know what

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Speaker 1: Facebook is. We know what Facebook is. But oddly enough,

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Speaker 1: and this this might be controversial, opinion, might be a

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Speaker 1: hot take. Some people don't trust Facebook? Wait what I know? Right?

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Speaker 1: They seems so friendly though, and they give you all

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Speaker 1: this free content, And why wouldn't you trust someone who's

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Speaker 1: giving you all this stuff? These games? Farm Bail, Farm Bail.

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Speaker 1: If you can't, um, sop up that sarcasm that's dripping

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Speaker 1: out of your headphones right now, I feel bad. I mean,

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Speaker 1: get some bread, maybe UH can make use of it. Um,

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Speaker 1: So Ben, why don't people trust Facebook? I'll play your

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Speaker 1: reindeer games, Matt Let's and Paul, you ll have to

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Speaker 1: edit me here, but this is the best way to

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Speaker 1: say it there too categories. Let's divide into accidental cups

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Speaker 1: and purposeful overs so it sounds good. The the accidental

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Speaker 1: stuff would be the stuff that happens to any big

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Speaker 1: company that is keeping so much stuff. Data leaks, right,

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Speaker 1: identification of people in a way that may stymy their

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Speaker 1: professional growth or literally endanger their lives. There's a story

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Speaker 1: of a therapist who learned that their their patients, we're

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Speaker 1: starting to show up in each other's people you May

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Speaker 1: Know list, you know, the thing that tries to sort

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Speaker 1: of nudge you into stalking folks. And then there was

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Speaker 1: another case where members of law enforcement would see people

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Speaker 1: they put in prison popping up on their people you

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Speaker 1: May Know list, and if they're on your list, you're

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Speaker 1: probably on their list. The abyss stairs back. Yeah. And

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Speaker 1: then the purposeful stuff would be complaints of using or

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Speaker 1: allegations of using aggregated data to target people who would

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Speaker 1: be vulnerable to misinformation and propaganda so on. And in

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Speaker 1: the age of deep fakes, that becomes more and more important. Right.

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Speaker 1: And then there are all kinds of scams that exist

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Speaker 1: online that sometimes use Facebook as a way to get

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Speaker 1: you to click on a link. That's one way, But

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Speaker 1: that's not necessarily Facebook of doing it, but it's Facebook

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Speaker 1: allowing it to happen. There you go, And then with

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Speaker 1: this goes into a conversation Nolan I had had briefly

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Speaker 1: off air before, which is, how do you decide and

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Speaker 1: we want to hear your take on this, two folks,

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Speaker 1: how do you decide who to accept or who to

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Speaker 1: ignore when it comes to friend request? M M. I typically,

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Speaker 1: I think we talked about this. This is exactly what

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Speaker 1: we talked about. Ben. If I have a few mutual

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Speaker 1: friends with that person, then I I'm more likely to

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Speaker 1: accept it if it's clearly someone that's just a fan

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Speaker 1: of the show had more rather than follow me on

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Speaker 1: Instagram than than on Facebook, because Facebook, to me, is

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Speaker 1: more like for people that I actually no no and

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Speaker 1: interact with, and that that's just to me seems like

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Speaker 1: the Facebook rules. So I'm less likely to accept a

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Speaker 1: Facebook friend request from somebody I don't know. But on

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Speaker 1: Instagram you don't have to accept, they just follow you.

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Speaker 1: So it's a little bit different game, you know. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you can only shut off everybody and make it private,

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Speaker 1: or you can just keep it public and block individuals.

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Speaker 1: You can block individuals yeah, yeah, I know exactly what

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Speaker 1: you guys are talking about. No, I'm yeah, I mean

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Speaker 1: I get it. Your fingers on the pulse, I can see. Yep,

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Speaker 1: that's what it sounds like. Ye. So, so what you're

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Speaker 1: saying an as you accept no outside friend requests or

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Speaker 1: you don't even have a Facebook page, I might you

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Speaker 1: neither confirm nor deny either, just kidding. I'm friends with

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Speaker 1: you guys, that's true. Taking the same tax that the

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Speaker 1: government in Israel it takes with nuclear weapons, right, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I yeah, I am to social media as Ben is

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Speaker 1: to everyday um, talking about what's occurring in his life.

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Speaker 1: Does that make sense? Transparent? You is shoe? It entirely

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Speaker 1: the kind of person who's like a m A, don't

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Speaker 1: say anything. Yes, Uh, let's let's ask each other about cryptocurrency.

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Speaker 1: We're promising we're going somewhere with this cryptocurrency. We did

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Speaker 1: an episode with Jonathan Strickland on this right, two parter.

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Speaker 1: It's two parter, that's right. Uh, And it's easy. It's

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Speaker 1: easy to do a two parter on cryptocurrency because there

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Speaker 1: are so many different and at times difficult angles to

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Speaker 1: take here. But what what is a cryptocurrency? It's a

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Speaker 1: cool name crypto, but why why do we call it that? Well,

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Speaker 1: if you want to go deep dive beyond the topics

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Speaker 1: that we discussed with Jonathan on so that I want

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Speaker 1: you to know, you can check out text stuff, which

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Speaker 1: has several fantastic episodes on the subject. But essentially, if

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Speaker 1: for our purposes here, cryptocurrency is a digital or virtual

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Speaker 1: currency that uses cryptography for security. And that's as simple

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Speaker 1: as that. A cryp toocurrency is very difficult to counterfeit

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Speaker 1: because of the fact that it is uh encrypted in

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Speaker 1: this way. And many of these cryptocurrencies are decentralized systems

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Speaker 1: based on something called blockchain technology. It's a little tough

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Speaker 1: to go into deeply in a quick, you know, bite

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Speaker 1: or two, but you really should check out that Strictlan

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Speaker 1: episode or the tech stuff series to get a deeper

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Speaker 1: understanding of what blockchain is. But essentially, it is a

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Speaker 1: distributed ledger. Um. Yeah, the ledger just like a written down,

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Speaker 1: you know and sell spreadsheet or just any kind of

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Speaker 1: list of figures that is enforced by a disparate network

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Speaker 1: of computers. Meaning that a defining feature of a cryptocurrency

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Speaker 1: and arguably one of its biggest most powerful features is

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Speaker 1: its organic nature. That it's not issued by any central authority,

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Speaker 1: and that fact renders it theoretically immune to government interference

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Speaker 1: or manipulation. But at the same time, as we know,

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Speaker 1: it's still very volatile despite any government interaction. Right, just

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Speaker 1: a simple by some of this stuff. This whole idea

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Speaker 1: of the ledger is very powerful for cryptocurrency because imagine

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Speaker 1: that if you've got a dollar in your wallet right now,

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Speaker 1: or wherever you keep your your money, your fiat currency,

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Speaker 1: you pull it out, and somehow by touching that dollar,

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Speaker 1: just by interacting with it, you could see every single

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Speaker 1: time this this piece of money has been spent since

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Speaker 1: it was minted, since it was printed out and cut

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Speaker 1: up right, right, That's how bitcoin works. We're using technology

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Speaker 1: to create what once would have been relegated to the

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Speaker 1: realm of psychic powers. One of my favorite psychic powers,

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Speaker 1: by the way, psychometry, the idea that one can learn

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Speaker 1: the history of an emotionally charged object through physically touching it.

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Speaker 1: This power is perhaps most famous in the excellent movie

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Speaker 1: Vibes starring Jeff Goldbloom and Cyndi Lauper, which I do

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Speaker 1: have on DVD. If anyone's interesting. I've not heard of

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Speaker 1: the masterpiece Vibes has okay, So in Vibes, Jeff Goldbloom

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Speaker 1: and Cyndi Lauper's characters have psychic powers and they work

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Speaker 1: at this research facility. They eventually go on on a

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Speaker 1: wild misadventure to a mysterious object in Peru. I believe

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Speaker 1: Jeff Goldbloom does catch Vibes and like he is in

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Speaker 1: every movie except for arguably The Fly, He's just Jeff Goldbloom.

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Speaker 1: Its smoldering with his with his powers, and so he

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Speaker 1: can touch things and he can know what happened to them. Vibes.

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Speaker 1: Can you may do a good Jeff Goldbloom impersonation? It's

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Speaker 1: really hard to nail. It's easy to get to like

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Speaker 1: an eight out of ten, but those extra two points

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Speaker 1: are very different, true, because it's like fifty, it's like

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Speaker 1: six stutter and then like the rest of the percent

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Speaker 1: is pure charisma cadence. So I don't want to sideline

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Speaker 1: us practicing my eight out of ten. It's not worth it.

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Speaker 1: I'll get it up to at least eight point five

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Speaker 1: and come back. But like like our Jeff gold Bloom impressions,

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Speaker 1: bitcoin and cryptocurrency as a concept, has a number of

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Speaker 1: pros and cons. One, as you mentioned Noll, it's decentralized.

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Speaker 1: This means theoretically, one injury to the system or malfunction

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Speaker 1: will not bring down the system and in its entirety.

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Speaker 1: There's also no government manipulation of currency in theory legally

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Speaker 1: because no government controls it. Right, So when we say

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Speaker 1: currency manipulation, it's something you hear a lot with maybe despots,

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Speaker 1: or people are in unstable times in the country and

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Speaker 1: they say, well, now everything is, We're just gonna chop

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Speaker 1: a zero off of everyone's bank accounts right to to

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Speaker 1: get right internationally here or this is no longer the

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Speaker 1: new currency, only this, but it also leads to cons

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Speaker 1: the same. Lack of government over site means there's outside

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Speaker 1: the self regulation in the way the system is built,

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Speaker 1: which is very clever. And by the way, no one

426
00:25:05,280 --> 00:25:09,160
Speaker 1: still no one knows who invented cryptocurrency. Uh, there's no oversight,

427
00:25:09,200 --> 00:25:13,280
Speaker 1: and this could lead to volatility because cryptocurrency, by and large,

428
00:25:13,720 --> 00:25:18,600
Speaker 1: like FII currency, has no basis intangible assets. It's none,

429
00:25:19,320 --> 00:25:24,640
Speaker 1: it's done if it if it changed value tomorrow, if

430
00:25:24,680 --> 00:25:28,120
Speaker 1: if every bitcoin, for example, the most famous cryptocurrency shot

431
00:25:28,200 --> 00:25:31,600
Speaker 1: up in value by ten dollars were shot down in

432
00:25:31,720 --> 00:25:36,480
Speaker 1: value to less than a penny per bitcoin. It would

433
00:25:37,000 --> 00:25:40,960
Speaker 1: it would not be because a tangible asset changed. There's

434
00:25:41,000 --> 00:25:45,440
Speaker 1: no gold in some sort of secret cryptocurrency Fort Knox,

435
00:25:45,880 --> 00:25:48,040
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. And yet it's it's funny

436
00:25:48,080 --> 00:25:54,119
Speaker 1: because it's been likened to the way gold miners essentially

437
00:25:54,160 --> 00:25:56,200
Speaker 1: would function. When you're talking about the people that are

438
00:25:56,200 --> 00:26:00,879
Speaker 1: actually doing the bitcoin mining and all of this, because

439
00:26:01,200 --> 00:26:05,240
Speaker 1: as the price rises, more people are I think it's

440
00:26:05,359 --> 00:26:08,240
Speaker 1: viable enough or they're going to make enough money doing

441
00:26:08,320 --> 00:26:11,679
Speaker 1: the mining, right, because it's worth enough. And then when

442
00:26:11,760 --> 00:26:15,040
Speaker 1: it falls, not many people will be mining them because

443
00:26:15,080 --> 00:26:17,920
Speaker 1: it's too costly to actually perform the function. You're not

444
00:26:17,920 --> 00:26:19,919
Speaker 1: going to make your money back. So it is this

445
00:26:20,040 --> 00:26:23,439
Speaker 1: and there's this interesting analogy there with a tangible asset,

446
00:26:23,520 --> 00:26:26,119
Speaker 1: even though it's literally, like you said, been attached to

447
00:26:26,240 --> 00:26:30,879
Speaker 1: nothing right. Right, And now we have to also mention

448
00:26:31,200 --> 00:26:34,920
Speaker 1: that cryptocurrency is very useful for crime. It's no one's opinion,

449
00:26:35,040 --> 00:26:37,960
Speaker 1: that's just the fact. The things that make it good

450
00:26:38,119 --> 00:26:40,639
Speaker 1: for some legal things also make it good for some

451
00:26:40,760 --> 00:26:45,080
Speaker 1: illegal things. Now let's smash them together. In today's episode

452
00:26:45,280 --> 00:26:49,040
Speaker 1: of What could go wrong. It's correct, folks. We didn't

453
00:26:49,080 --> 00:26:53,040
Speaker 1: just decide to switch the plot halfway through the beginning

454
00:26:53,080 --> 00:26:56,240
Speaker 1: of the show. Facebook, you see, wants to start its

455
00:26:56,240 --> 00:27:00,240
Speaker 1: own currency. Some people, mostly people who work for face Book,

456
00:27:00,240 --> 00:27:04,200
Speaker 1: where its corporate allies, think this is a fantastic idea.

457
00:27:04,640 --> 00:27:09,840
Speaker 1: Other people fear it's something more sinister, something dangerous, even

458
00:27:10,440 --> 00:27:13,800
Speaker 1: a conspiracy. And it's about to get crazy. Right after

459
00:27:13,840 --> 00:27:23,440
Speaker 1: this word from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy.

460
00:27:23,960 --> 00:27:31,240
Speaker 1: Enter libra libra, not the zoodiac sign. No libra libra.

461
00:27:32,160 --> 00:27:37,120
Speaker 1: It's like zebra within with lee libra or book in

462
00:27:37,160 --> 00:27:42,280
Speaker 1: some languages. Yeah, it reminds me of my favorite dead currency, Lira.

463
00:27:42,400 --> 00:27:44,800
Speaker 1: Remember when Lira was a thing in Italy, right, it

464
00:27:44,840 --> 00:27:49,160
Speaker 1: was a fun one. Now it's all boring euros. Well,

465
00:27:49,160 --> 00:27:52,080
Speaker 1: there you go. What is libra? Oh yeah, hey, Matt,

466
00:27:52,119 --> 00:27:56,879
Speaker 1: what's libra? It's uh, this is Facebook's cryptocurrency, or at

467
00:27:56,920 --> 00:27:59,400
Speaker 1: least it's their attempt to get into this, uh, this

468
00:27:59,520 --> 00:28:04,120
Speaker 1: game of cryptocurrenting. It's a it's a blockchain approach very

469
00:28:04,119 --> 00:28:06,840
Speaker 1: similar to what you know we discussed there with how

470
00:28:06,880 --> 00:28:12,720
Speaker 1: bitcoin functions or other cryptocurrencies. Uh. And again it's uh,

471
00:28:12,880 --> 00:28:16,120
Speaker 1: it's an idea. But here's the deal. It's not like

472
00:28:16,160 --> 00:28:20,960
Speaker 1: it's just you know, somebody pitching stuff around a boardroom anymore.

473
00:28:21,160 --> 00:28:25,880
Speaker 1: It's actually happening. It is. Facebook has partnered with twenty

474
00:28:25,960 --> 00:28:31,000
Speaker 1: eight different companies to create uh this, this proposed cryptocurrency network.

475
00:28:31,520 --> 00:28:35,359
Speaker 1: They call themselves the Libra Association, which sounds like a

476
00:28:35,440 --> 00:28:41,440
Speaker 1: real a real James Bond Roger Moore era name for

477
00:28:41,960 --> 00:28:46,080
Speaker 1: uh uh consortium of villains, you know, like Specter, the

478
00:28:46,200 --> 00:28:50,240
Speaker 1: Libra Association, and of course they have the scales emblazoned

479
00:28:50,240 --> 00:28:53,680
Speaker 1: on all their stuff. These companies conclude companies you may

480
00:28:53,720 --> 00:28:57,000
Speaker 1: have heard of, big big names, MasterCard Once In on

481
00:28:57,040 --> 00:29:00,200
Speaker 1: the Game because credit Card has been worried for a

482
00:29:00,240 --> 00:29:03,200
Speaker 1: while that they might lose those sweet sweet transaction fees,

483
00:29:03,720 --> 00:29:07,040
Speaker 1: PayPal Once In on the Game, Uber Lift, and more

484
00:29:07,360 --> 00:29:12,360
Speaker 1: like Vota, Phone Visa. It's there are no small players.

485
00:29:12,840 --> 00:29:17,360
Speaker 1: These companies, financial companies, e commerce and venture capitalists, telecoms

486
00:29:17,400 --> 00:29:20,520
Speaker 1: and so on are each gonna invest around ten million

487
00:29:20,560 --> 00:29:24,000
Speaker 1: dollars that into this association that will be in charge

488
00:29:24,120 --> 00:29:28,280
Speaker 1: of the Libra. The association wants to grow to a

489
00:29:28,360 --> 00:29:31,720
Speaker 1: hundred members with an equal vote over time, and Facebook

490
00:29:32,160 --> 00:29:37,080
Speaker 1: expects to quote maintain a leadership role through twenty nineteen.

491
00:29:37,640 --> 00:29:40,440
Speaker 1: But what what what is this? It's a secretive project.

492
00:29:40,640 --> 00:29:43,959
Speaker 1: It revolves around that digital coin, the Libra, and the

493
00:29:43,960 --> 00:29:47,760
Speaker 1: ideas that users on Facebook or any of the other

494
00:29:47,840 --> 00:29:51,400
Speaker 1: platforms like an uber app, for instance, could send Libra

495
00:29:51,560 --> 00:29:53,800
Speaker 1: to each other in place of dollars and use it

496
00:29:53,840 --> 00:29:57,960
Speaker 1: to make purchases on Facebook's platform and across the internet.

497
00:29:58,240 --> 00:30:01,640
Speaker 1: That's right, And um, I'm saying that the appeal here

498
00:30:01,840 --> 00:30:05,640
Speaker 1: is because of that decentralized approach and in this system.

499
00:30:05,640 --> 00:30:08,200
Speaker 1: In this system, they use something called nodes. Right, So

500
00:30:08,240 --> 00:30:12,280
Speaker 1: Facebook wouldn't directly control the coin, hence the decentralization, nor

501
00:30:12,360 --> 00:30:16,240
Speaker 1: would the individual members of this consortium, which is known

502
00:30:16,280 --> 00:30:19,200
Speaker 1: as the Libra Association. Some of the members could serve

503
00:30:19,200 --> 00:30:23,320
Speaker 1: as these things called nodes. UM a system that verifies

504
00:30:23,440 --> 00:30:27,520
Speaker 1: transactions and maintains records of them. That sounds familiar, creating

505
00:30:27,560 --> 00:30:30,120
Speaker 1: a brand new payment network. According to the people that

506
00:30:30,160 --> 00:30:32,600
Speaker 1: are familiar with the setup. Um, it's not a particularly

507
00:30:32,600 --> 00:30:35,320
Speaker 1: new idea. That goes back to seen when an exact

508
00:30:35,360 --> 00:30:40,920
Speaker 1: at Facebook named David Marcus had this kind of aha moment, right, yeah,

509
00:30:40,960 --> 00:30:46,640
Speaker 1: he said, what if we could also control the currency, surprise, surprising,

510
00:30:46,680 --> 00:30:50,240
Speaker 1: came from PayPal right right right before he worked on

511
00:30:50,280 --> 00:30:53,040
Speaker 1: this project. David Marcus was the head of Facebook Messenger,

512
00:30:53,080 --> 00:30:56,840
Speaker 1: which has been tremendously successful from their definition, and before

513
00:30:57,040 --> 00:31:00,400
Speaker 1: his Facebook days, he worked at PayPal, and he says

514
00:31:00,480 --> 00:31:03,000
Speaker 1: the idea came out of his early days over at

515
00:31:03,040 --> 00:31:06,600
Speaker 1: the Big PP, the idea of a financial network that

516
00:31:06,680 --> 00:31:10,880
Speaker 1: existed outside of the world of central banks, and central

517
00:31:10,880 --> 00:31:13,479
Speaker 1: banks are, by the way, in charge of pretty much everything. Well,

518
00:31:13,480 --> 00:31:16,440
Speaker 1: that's my question though, right, you can't generate this currency

519
00:31:16,520 --> 00:31:21,560
Speaker 1: from nothing. You have to exchange actual accepted currency into

520
00:31:21,560 --> 00:31:23,680
Speaker 1: the system and then you get it, you know, an

521
00:31:23,720 --> 00:31:26,960
Speaker 1: e currency or whatever. So what's the benefit here of

522
00:31:27,000 --> 00:31:29,760
Speaker 1: having a currency versus just having a platform like a

523
00:31:29,800 --> 00:31:33,200
Speaker 1: PayPal or a Venmo or something like that. There are

524
00:31:33,240 --> 00:31:39,160
Speaker 1: some for Facebook, right, So over the past two years,

525
00:31:39,200 --> 00:31:41,320
Speaker 1: again this plan is not super old. Over the past

526
00:31:41,360 --> 00:31:45,400
Speaker 1: two years, details of it gradually emerged. They bought Facebook,

527
00:31:45,840 --> 00:31:48,160
Speaker 1: that is, bought a company that was working to make

528
00:31:48,200 --> 00:31:52,440
Speaker 1: blockchain processes a lot faster. And the primary thought here

529
00:31:53,120 --> 00:31:56,680
Speaker 1: was that Facebook would do remittance payments that's where you

530
00:31:56,720 --> 00:32:00,960
Speaker 1: send money across borders overseas, and they would would on WhatsApp,

531
00:32:01,040 --> 00:32:04,840
Speaker 1: and they would pilot it in India because in the

532
00:32:05,200 --> 00:32:08,520
Speaker 1: subcond in the country of India, a lot of people

533
00:32:08,800 --> 00:32:11,800
Speaker 1: in the diaspora live abroad and they send money either

534
00:32:11,920 --> 00:32:14,920
Speaker 1: to their families like living in the UK or something,

535
00:32:14,960 --> 00:32:17,760
Speaker 1: or they send money back to families or businesses living

536
00:32:17,760 --> 00:32:20,920
Speaker 1: in India. So they thought this was a tremendous market.

537
00:32:21,240 --> 00:32:24,760
Speaker 1: You know, the timeline matches up interestingly with you remember

538
00:32:24,760 --> 00:32:28,360
Speaker 1: those stories coming out of India where certain currencies were outlawed,

539
00:32:28,440 --> 00:32:32,880
Speaker 1: the smaller or the bigger currencies. Yes, due to corruption. Yeah,

540
00:32:33,000 --> 00:32:36,560
Speaker 1: I don't know whatever happened to that. The explanation of

541
00:32:36,560 --> 00:32:39,520
Speaker 1: the etymology is that libra is an homage to the

542
00:32:39,560 --> 00:32:44,400
Speaker 1: French livra or that's French for pound. We should also

543
00:32:44,440 --> 00:32:47,560
Speaker 1: mention here that David Marcus is a native French speaker.

544
00:32:48,280 --> 00:32:51,720
Speaker 1: So why do it this way? Why partner with twenty

545
00:32:51,800 --> 00:32:56,000
Speaker 1: something other companies instead of just being Facebook money? Why

546
00:32:56,040 --> 00:32:59,520
Speaker 1: can't they just be facebooks? I mean, admittedly I'm typecasting

547
00:32:59,520 --> 00:33:01,320
Speaker 1: here because I in love with that kind of idea.

548
00:33:01,480 --> 00:33:04,840
Speaker 1: Go bend bucks the real alternative currency. How's it doing,

549
00:33:04,880 --> 00:33:07,479
Speaker 1: By the way, it's great. Actually, it's on the up

550
00:33:07,520 --> 00:33:12,960
Speaker 1: and up. So the simplest reason for Facebook to assemble

551
00:33:13,040 --> 00:33:16,640
Speaker 1: these avengers is that they are very, very interested in

552
00:33:16,720 --> 00:33:19,960
Speaker 1: not looking like Facebook to you too, why to anybody

553
00:33:20,160 --> 00:33:24,720
Speaker 1: using this. So the decentralized approach helps them function via proxies.

554
00:33:25,080 --> 00:33:28,720
Speaker 1: You may never have a Facebook page that you have created,

555
00:33:29,000 --> 00:33:31,920
Speaker 1: although Facebook almost certainly as a shadow profile. View by

556
00:33:31,960 --> 00:33:34,480
Speaker 1: now you might say, well, I've never messed with Facebook.

557
00:33:35,000 --> 00:33:39,880
Speaker 1: I do have to use Uber, and Uber takes Libra

558
00:33:40,120 --> 00:33:44,120
Speaker 1: or they offered me a deal, a discount in Libra

559
00:33:44,360 --> 00:33:47,000
Speaker 1: instead of dollars, So all I have to do is

560
00:33:47,040 --> 00:33:50,040
Speaker 1: sign up for a Libra account. So that sounds great,

561
00:33:50,200 --> 00:33:53,160
Speaker 1: and it's basically just my Uber payment system, and that's

562
00:33:53,200 --> 00:33:57,400
Speaker 1: all I'll use it for forevermore. But then secondly, there's

563
00:33:57,400 --> 00:34:00,760
Speaker 1: a practical approach you might not try is Facebook, but

564
00:34:00,840 --> 00:34:04,680
Speaker 1: you may trust Uber, right, and you do have to

565
00:34:04,720 --> 00:34:07,280
Speaker 1: trust one of the other partners involved in this for

566
00:34:07,360 --> 00:34:10,719
Speaker 1: this to work. Also, because they're restricting that network, they

567
00:34:10,760 --> 00:34:14,280
Speaker 1: can speed up interactions within the network and keep it secure.

568
00:34:15,200 --> 00:34:19,439
Speaker 1: They're big tech questions. Is this actually a blockchain? How

569
00:34:19,520 --> 00:34:22,320
Speaker 1: does it function in comparison to you know, Bitcoin or

570
00:34:22,360 --> 00:34:28,160
Speaker 1: ethereum or sending money on PayPal? Uh, it's faster, and

571
00:34:28,239 --> 00:34:32,040
Speaker 1: it's easier because it's a high cost transaction on Bitcoin,

572
00:34:32,080 --> 00:34:35,040
Speaker 1: You've got all this processing power you require to keep

573
00:34:35,040 --> 00:34:38,520
Speaker 1: it running and secure and just really quick too. Before

574
00:34:38,560 --> 00:34:41,879
Speaker 1: we get into fully into the block chain things, let's

575
00:34:41,920 --> 00:34:44,960
Speaker 1: not forget that that whole decentralization thing. You bring in

576
00:34:45,000 --> 00:34:48,640
Speaker 1: the twenty eight members and eventually one hundred members. Even

577
00:34:48,640 --> 00:34:52,680
Speaker 1: though Facebook has, as we said now in two point

578
00:34:52,800 --> 00:34:57,400
Speaker 1: four billion monthly active users, all of these other companies

579
00:34:57,440 --> 00:35:01,440
Speaker 1: bring in their own chunks of portions of billions of users.

580
00:35:02,000 --> 00:35:05,279
Speaker 1: And perhaps the people who use Uber who are a

581
00:35:05,360 --> 00:35:07,440
Speaker 1: little you know, more savvy about one thing, or the

582
00:35:07,440 --> 00:35:09,640
Speaker 1: people who have a certain credit card, or the people

583
00:35:09,680 --> 00:35:12,200
Speaker 1: who are using a Vota phone or whatever, maybe they

584
00:35:12,239 --> 00:35:17,479
Speaker 1: aren't Facebook users, and so it's literally pooling everybody. Right,

585
00:35:18,480 --> 00:35:24,799
Speaker 1: There's another there's another issue that differentiates them. Reliability, volatility.

586
00:35:24,920 --> 00:35:28,680
Speaker 1: To start with, the libra will be pegged one to

587
00:35:28,760 --> 00:35:32,319
Speaker 1: one with the US dollar, So one libra one U

588
00:35:32,440 --> 00:35:36,600
Speaker 1: S dollar. You'll open, uh, you open a happy Birthday

589
00:35:36,600 --> 00:35:41,160
Speaker 1: card from your aunt as moral dean or whatever, and

590
00:35:41,280 --> 00:35:44,200
Speaker 1: she gives you a gift card for twenty libra to

591
00:35:44,360 --> 00:35:48,600
Speaker 1: spend on Facebook marketplace, like, oh thanks, because that's basically

592
00:35:48,719 --> 00:35:51,879
Speaker 1: twenty dollars. So does it become an issue where it's

593
00:35:51,920 --> 00:35:54,400
Speaker 1: like only certain vendors will take this, so you can't

594
00:35:54,840 --> 00:35:58,440
Speaker 1: use it anywhere. So the idea is to centralize, like

595
00:35:58,640 --> 00:35:59,799
Speaker 1: do you use this as a in a in a

596
00:35:59,800 --> 00:36:03,160
Speaker 1: way where it forces people to shop, to narrow their

597
00:36:03,200 --> 00:36:06,239
Speaker 1: shopping choices as well. Right, Yeah, that's that's part of

598
00:36:06,440 --> 00:36:10,160
Speaker 1: That's definitely something that they would have to be discussing

599
00:36:10,239 --> 00:36:13,960
Speaker 1: in the back rooms and internal meetings. It's not there yet,

600
00:36:14,520 --> 00:36:16,680
Speaker 1: but we have to remember sesame credit used to be

601
00:36:16,760 --> 00:36:20,640
Speaker 1: opt in and would never be mandatory, and now it is.

602
00:36:20,960 --> 00:36:26,319
Speaker 1: So this is another slow boil situation. Eventually, Libra will

603
00:36:26,360 --> 00:36:29,960
Speaker 1: be tagged from what they call a basket of currencies,

604
00:36:30,400 --> 00:36:34,640
Speaker 1: which is how international economists talk about this pretty often.

605
00:36:35,400 --> 00:36:37,799
Speaker 1: Facebook is still figuring out how this is gonna work,

606
00:36:37,920 --> 00:36:40,320
Speaker 1: but their goal is to keep it keep the Libra

607
00:36:40,440 --> 00:36:43,880
Speaker 1: from being unreliable, and that's why it is fully backed

608
00:36:43,880 --> 00:36:48,200
Speaker 1: by a reserve of quote real assets named Libra reserved.

609
00:36:48,560 --> 00:36:51,560
Speaker 1: Of course, when you say real assets in the world

610
00:36:51,560 --> 00:36:57,600
Speaker 1: of economics, we're not necessarily talking like one horse for

611
00:36:57,680 --> 00:37:01,040
Speaker 1: every two libra or something like that. It's also very

612
00:37:01,120 --> 00:37:04,320
Speaker 1: very cheap price for a horse. We're talking about things

613
00:37:04,400 --> 00:37:10,040
Speaker 1: like um, things like bonds or some something that generates

614
00:37:10,040 --> 00:37:14,239
Speaker 1: this rate of return and debts and debts. So that

615
00:37:14,400 --> 00:37:17,280
Speaker 1: is the basic elevator pitch that they're using for Libra.

616
00:37:17,640 --> 00:37:21,800
Speaker 1: But how will they actually use this thing in the field?

617
00:37:21,840 --> 00:37:25,000
Speaker 1: What do they want? Why are people excited at Facebook

618
00:37:25,040 --> 00:37:28,080
Speaker 1: about it? Why are people worried pretty much everywhere else

619
00:37:28,239 --> 00:37:37,800
Speaker 1: about it? We'll tell you after a word from our sponsors.

620
00:37:37,800 --> 00:37:41,000
Speaker 1: All right, we're back. Let's get into this. Here we go.

621
00:37:41,400 --> 00:37:45,120
Speaker 1: So the Libra Association is the only party, the only

622
00:37:45,200 --> 00:37:47,879
Speaker 1: people involved in the whole process that we'll be able

623
00:37:47,920 --> 00:37:52,080
Speaker 1: to create and destroy Libra. The terms there are to

624
00:37:52,280 --> 00:37:55,440
Speaker 1: mint or to burn. Isn't that nice? Uh? And the

625
00:37:55,480 --> 00:37:59,560
Speaker 1: coins are only minted when authorized resellers have purchased the

626
00:37:59,600 --> 00:38:03,000
Speaker 1: coins from the association with those currencies that we've talked about,

627
00:38:03,000 --> 00:38:07,560
Speaker 1: the basket currencies, those FIAD assets, and uh, they they

628
00:38:07,600 --> 00:38:11,240
Speaker 1: actually back the coins fully. So this coin is backed

629
00:38:11,280 --> 00:38:15,440
Speaker 1: directly by this portion of the basket. Right, Okay, But

630
00:38:15,600 --> 00:38:18,840
Speaker 1: here's here's the issue. They're still trying to figure out

631
00:38:19,239 --> 00:38:24,960
Speaker 1: exactly how they use this stability, and they have a

632
00:38:25,000 --> 00:38:28,400
Speaker 1: troubling aim so we mentioned Originally this would be for

633
00:38:28,600 --> 00:38:35,400
Speaker 1: payments across international borders, right, instantaneous payments across international border,

634
00:38:35,640 --> 00:38:38,200
Speaker 1: and they would probably be cheaper than the fees levied

635
00:38:38,239 --> 00:38:42,080
Speaker 1: by wire transfers. However, they also want this to be

636
00:38:42,160 --> 00:38:44,840
Speaker 1: used in countries where the money supply and currency value

637
00:38:44,880 --> 00:38:50,160
Speaker 1: is volatile or unreliable, essentially functioning as a viable alternative

638
00:38:50,200 --> 00:38:54,920
Speaker 1: a parallel currency. Yes, so this means like Zimbabwe, for instance,

639
00:38:55,520 --> 00:38:59,040
Speaker 1: has been waging economic warfare on its own people has

640
00:38:59,080 --> 00:39:03,200
Speaker 1: been the subject of that economic warfare abroad, and the

641
00:39:03,239 --> 00:39:07,880
Speaker 1: currency as hyper inflated. But what if instead of going

642
00:39:07,960 --> 00:39:12,400
Speaker 1: through the government or going through um, another government's money,

643
00:39:12,719 --> 00:39:15,120
Speaker 1: you could just pull up your app. Isn't that like

644
00:39:15,360 --> 00:39:21,719
Speaker 1: almost like tantamount to like a financial coup? Yes? Right, yeah,

645
00:39:22,239 --> 00:39:24,160
Speaker 1: I mean so it's like but they could disguise it

646
00:39:24,239 --> 00:39:27,239
Speaker 1: as philanthropy, right and say, oh, no, we're doing a

647
00:39:27,320 --> 00:39:31,160
Speaker 1: good job helping stabilize these countries, but they're obviously not

648
00:39:31,239 --> 00:39:34,000
Speaker 1: doing it out of the goodness of their hearts, right right, right?

649
00:39:34,200 --> 00:39:37,239
Speaker 1: What happens if people in these local economies dump all

650
00:39:37,239 --> 00:39:40,160
Speaker 1: of their money into libra because it retains the same

651
00:39:40,239 --> 00:39:43,080
Speaker 1: value the next from one day to the next and

652
00:39:43,120 --> 00:39:47,319
Speaker 1: then no one uses the actual state currency. Wouldn't that

653
00:39:47,400 --> 00:39:52,279
Speaker 1: cause more economic chaos in that community while also profiting

654
00:39:52,400 --> 00:39:59,279
Speaker 1: Facebook and zizz Uck Mark Zuckerberg. It's jis Ck zizz

655
00:39:59,400 --> 00:40:01,719
Speaker 1: Ck that's like is that like his like demon name.

656
00:40:02,280 --> 00:40:06,520
Speaker 1: I love that he's like Malok and Ziska the Germans,

657
00:40:06,600 --> 00:40:13,080
Speaker 1: but Zizouck. So this, this idea, this danger is real

658
00:40:13,640 --> 00:40:19,120
Speaker 1: and the critics, the critics have differing varieties or degrees

659
00:40:19,160 --> 00:40:22,919
Speaker 1: of extremism here. You know, some critics are saying this

660
00:40:23,000 --> 00:40:25,319
Speaker 1: is a mistake that could happen, and other critics are

661
00:40:25,320 --> 00:40:29,200
Speaker 1: saying you, you people are doing this on purpose. You

662
00:40:29,320 --> 00:40:31,680
Speaker 1: know what's going to happen, and you just want your

663
00:40:31,719 --> 00:40:35,359
Speaker 1: bottom line, you want more power. It's true, as you said, Matt,

664
00:40:35,440 --> 00:40:39,000
Speaker 1: that the Association, members of the liber Association, the only

665
00:40:39,040 --> 00:40:43,880
Speaker 1: people are only entities rather that can create and destroy coins,

666
00:40:43,960 --> 00:40:47,719
Speaker 1: and the coins are only minted when people have purchased

667
00:40:47,719 --> 00:40:52,040
Speaker 1: the when authorized resellers have purchased the coin from the

668
00:40:52,080 --> 00:40:56,480
Speaker 1: association with assets that backed the coins fully, and the

669
00:40:56,520 --> 00:41:00,279
Speaker 1: coins are only destroyed or burned when those resellers sell

670
00:41:00,400 --> 00:41:05,120
Speaker 1: the coin to the Association in exchange for those underlying

671
00:41:05,160 --> 00:41:11,239
Speaker 1: assets so high Libra Association, here is a horse, give

672
00:41:11,320 --> 00:41:13,839
Speaker 1: me coins, and they'll create coins and they'll say, all right,

673
00:41:13,880 --> 00:41:16,840
Speaker 1: we'll hold the horse. And then in theory then someone

674
00:41:16,960 --> 00:41:19,440
Speaker 1: comes back and they say, okay, here are my coins,

675
00:41:20,719 --> 00:41:22,720
Speaker 1: give me that horse, and I'll be like, all right, boom,

676
00:41:22,760 --> 00:41:24,880
Speaker 1: and we'll destroy the coins because the asset for the

677
00:41:24,880 --> 00:41:28,799
Speaker 1: coin no longer exists. That's the idea, A little bit

678
00:41:28,840 --> 00:41:30,960
Speaker 1: like a shell game, you know what I mean, A

679
00:41:31,000 --> 00:41:34,440
Speaker 1: lot of stuff could get could get shuffled out. So

680
00:41:36,440 --> 00:41:40,080
Speaker 1: that's that's that's the concept. And here's an example. As

681
00:41:40,120 --> 00:41:42,680
Speaker 1: a normal user. Let's say you had let's say you're

682
00:41:42,760 --> 00:41:45,760
Speaker 1: Noel Brown. You have a hundred dollars worth of Libra

683
00:41:46,239 --> 00:41:50,480
Speaker 1: and you got it because you spent a hundred dollars

684
00:41:50,480 --> 00:41:53,799
Speaker 1: in cash. Now you can use this Libra on any

685
00:41:53,840 --> 00:41:57,239
Speaker 1: of these platforms that play these reindeer games, or you

686
00:41:57,239 --> 00:41:59,640
Speaker 1: can send it to a friend. You can say, you know,

687
00:41:59,680 --> 00:42:04,080
Speaker 1: I've on the Patreon for Mission Controls age of Applebee's documentary,

688
00:42:04,440 --> 00:42:07,640
Speaker 1: and I wanna I want to drop fifty Libra toward

689
00:42:07,719 --> 00:42:10,040
Speaker 1: this cause, because let's get it in festivals. Let's take

690
00:42:10,120 --> 00:42:14,160
Speaker 1: us on tour. People need to know about the bottomless

691
00:42:14,239 --> 00:42:19,120
Speaker 1: chicken fingers or whatever. So that's the idea. The big

692
00:42:19,200 --> 00:42:21,520
Speaker 1: question is how do these folks make money off of it?

693
00:42:21,560 --> 00:42:23,640
Speaker 1: Because they are not, as you said, doing this out

694
00:42:23,640 --> 00:42:27,880
Speaker 1: of the goodness of their hearts. The Libra Association, which

695
00:42:27,960 --> 00:42:31,720
Speaker 1: is legally speaking a Swiss nonprofit, put your one hundred

696
00:42:31,800 --> 00:42:35,560
Speaker 1: dollars into a bunch of low risk short term investments

697
00:42:35,840 --> 00:42:39,920
Speaker 1: treasury bills, etcetera, etcetera. So, for example, in July of

698
00:42:40,680 --> 00:42:45,400
Speaker 1: two thousand nineteen, a one month treasury bill was yielding

699
00:42:45,520 --> 00:42:49,400
Speaker 1: two point one to five on a year on a

700
00:42:49,480 --> 00:42:53,919
Speaker 1: yearly basis. So that means that since they bought those

701
00:42:53,920 --> 00:42:57,680
Speaker 1: treasury bills with your money, they will earn two dollars

702
00:42:57,680 --> 00:43:00,640
Speaker 1: and change on your one dollar per just but you're

703
00:43:00,680 --> 00:43:04,080
Speaker 1: not necessarily entitled to those profits. You get none of that.

704
00:43:05,080 --> 00:43:07,480
Speaker 1: And think about it this way. All of those member

705
00:43:07,480 --> 00:43:11,239
Speaker 1: corporations are putting in ten million dollars of their own

706
00:43:11,280 --> 00:43:14,000
Speaker 1: money as seed money for this thing, right, so that

707
00:43:14,160 --> 00:43:18,239
Speaker 1: the Libor Association begins with two eight million dollars in

708
00:43:18,320 --> 00:43:21,320
Speaker 1: that account, and then as they add in more members,

709
00:43:21,360 --> 00:43:24,480
Speaker 1: they're adding ten million dollars more. And then as people

710
00:43:24,520 --> 00:43:28,080
Speaker 1: are putting their money their actual fiat currency and exchanging

711
00:43:28,080 --> 00:43:31,440
Speaker 1: it into libre dollars. That pool gets bigger and bigger

712
00:43:31,440 --> 00:43:34,600
Speaker 1: and bigger that they're purchasing these things with, and that

713
00:43:34,719 --> 00:43:38,360
Speaker 1: interest becomes massive. So the appeal on the users on

714
00:43:38,400 --> 00:43:41,600
Speaker 1: the consumer side is the stability of the currency, whereas

715
00:43:41,640 --> 00:43:44,719
Speaker 1: like with like Bitcoin, for example, you know it it

716
00:43:44,840 --> 00:43:46,920
Speaker 1: tanked and then it went way high and it's really

717
00:43:46,960 --> 00:43:49,399
Speaker 1: all over the place. This would not be that same

718
00:43:49,480 --> 00:43:52,439
Speaker 1: kind of speculative gamble that people do with like other

719
00:43:52,520 --> 00:43:54,960
Speaker 1: e coin. Right, that's the idea. Yes, that's what they're

720
00:43:55,000 --> 00:43:59,000
Speaker 1: selling to the public, right, but what they're selling internally

721
00:43:59,400 --> 00:44:03,719
Speaker 1: is a massive amount of profit, a huge pile of

722
00:44:04,160 --> 00:44:07,680
Speaker 1: as you've said before, pony bones. To to size it up,

723
00:44:07,800 --> 00:44:11,480
Speaker 1: let's let's look at an example. So the Federal Reserve

724
00:44:12,040 --> 00:44:15,479
Speaker 1: tracks the u S money supply in a couple of ways. One,

725
00:44:15,960 --> 00:44:19,279
Speaker 1: let's just call that M one Money one. Money one

726
00:44:19,680 --> 00:44:23,720
Speaker 1: is what we would define the sum total of cash, coins, money,

727
00:44:23,719 --> 00:44:28,240
Speaker 1: and checking accounts right now, that's about three point seven

728
00:44:28,400 --> 00:44:34,160
Speaker 1: trillion dollars. M two would be everything in money one.

729
00:44:34,280 --> 00:44:37,160
Speaker 1: Money two is everything in money one plus savings accounts,

730
00:44:37,200 --> 00:44:40,719
Speaker 1: money market funds, co d s, other kinds of bank deposits.

731
00:44:41,920 --> 00:44:47,480
Speaker 1: That number is more than fourteen trillion. So let's assume

732
00:44:47,600 --> 00:44:49,640
Speaker 1: a few years go by, and this is a great

733
00:44:49,640 --> 00:44:53,319
Speaker 1: example I believe in wired or Investipedia. Let's assume that

734
00:44:53,360 --> 00:44:56,479
Speaker 1: after a couple of years have gone by, Libra has

735
00:44:56,520 --> 00:45:02,359
Speaker 1: achieved about ten percent of what we would call money one,

736
00:45:02,480 --> 00:45:04,759
Speaker 1: So about ten percent of the money and money one

737
00:45:05,120 --> 00:45:10,240
Speaker 1: has been somehow adopted or associate with the cryptocurrency Libra.

738
00:45:11,200 --> 00:45:13,359
Speaker 1: And let's also assume by this time Libra has sold

739
00:45:13,400 --> 00:45:17,480
Speaker 1: a billion dollars worth of the investment token. Oh, which

740
00:45:17,520 --> 00:45:21,759
Speaker 1: didn't mentioned. Libra is actually two currencies. Yeah, you've got

741
00:45:21,800 --> 00:45:24,359
Speaker 1: the one that everybody like that we're basically talking about

742
00:45:24,400 --> 00:45:26,960
Speaker 1: right now, the Libra, the one that you will eventually

743
00:45:27,000 --> 00:45:31,279
Speaker 1: be able to use. Unless you are, let's say, a

744
00:45:31,440 --> 00:45:33,600
Speaker 1: member of Facebook or you work with them or one

745
00:45:33,640 --> 00:45:38,080
Speaker 1: of the associations. You get these things called investment tokens.

746
00:45:38,120 --> 00:45:42,000
Speaker 1: And these investment tokens are much more expensive. You know,

747
00:45:42,120 --> 00:45:46,200
Speaker 1: your company twenty nine, you're you're not buying Libra, you're

748
00:45:46,200 --> 00:45:50,360
Speaker 1: buying at Libra investment tokens. And so let's let's assume

749
00:45:50,480 --> 00:45:52,600
Speaker 1: that they sold a billion worth of those tokens and

750
00:45:52,600 --> 00:45:55,400
Speaker 1: it cost a billion to run the network and manage

751
00:45:55,440 --> 00:45:59,840
Speaker 1: their investments. And let's say that the Treasury bill holds

752
00:45:59,880 --> 00:46:02,279
Speaker 1: the same little over two percent return over a year

753
00:46:02,719 --> 00:46:06,640
Speaker 1: after all those expenses. With that, with ten percent of

754
00:46:06,840 --> 00:46:11,319
Speaker 1: the US population using this libra would be generating just

755
00:46:11,520 --> 00:46:16,280
Speaker 1: an interest about seven billion dollars a year. That yearly

756
00:46:16,320 --> 00:46:19,640
Speaker 1: return on investment, just just to put that in perspective,

757
00:46:19,960 --> 00:46:25,200
Speaker 1: is six hundred eight point five one percent. So that's

758
00:46:25,520 --> 00:46:29,239
Speaker 1: ten the M one number, ten percent of the M

759
00:46:29,280 --> 00:46:33,000
Speaker 1: one number, right, which was three point seven trillion dollars.

760
00:46:33,040 --> 00:46:36,239
Speaker 1: That's that's I mean, that's a lot of money, but

761
00:46:36,400 --> 00:46:39,759
Speaker 1: it's only ten percent of the known dollars that are

762
00:46:39,760 --> 00:46:43,960
Speaker 1: going around almost a seven d percent return. Now that's

763
00:46:44,000 --> 00:46:49,000
Speaker 1: if all those conditions we just outlined go through. Sure, why,

764
00:46:49,440 --> 00:46:55,640
Speaker 1: how how can we allow this? That sounds just like

765
00:46:56,080 --> 00:47:01,200
Speaker 1: members of the Federal Reserve Congress, because there are some controversies,

766
00:47:01,239 --> 00:47:05,120
Speaker 1: like their hijacking the monetary system for their own personal games.

767
00:47:05,160 --> 00:47:07,680
Speaker 1: It's like the one it's one of the few things

768
00:47:07,719 --> 00:47:10,799
Speaker 1: that it seems people on the far right and the

769
00:47:10,800 --> 00:47:15,239
Speaker 1: far left agree is dangerous. Maybe it's because no one

770
00:47:15,280 --> 00:47:18,640
Speaker 1: in Congress has a sweet enough deal yet with it.

771
00:47:18,719 --> 00:47:22,000
Speaker 1: Maybe when they're getting some investment tokens, they'll be okay

772
00:47:22,040 --> 00:47:25,720
Speaker 1: with it. Oh, that is happening right now. So now,

773
00:47:27,080 --> 00:47:31,080
Speaker 1: just today as we were recording this, uh, members of

774
00:47:31,160 --> 00:47:34,400
Speaker 1: Facebook were testifying to Congress. They were speaking to Congress

775
00:47:34,440 --> 00:47:38,000
Speaker 1: about this, and their questions were things like, Okay, you

776
00:47:38,000 --> 00:47:41,359
Speaker 1: guys are essentially proposing to be a bank and call

777
00:47:41,400 --> 00:47:44,319
Speaker 1: it cryptocurrency if you want, but what you're describing is

778
00:47:44,320 --> 00:47:48,879
Speaker 1: not cryptocurrency. You're describing a bank. We have banks, and

779
00:47:48,920 --> 00:47:53,200
Speaker 1: they have rules that they are theoretically supposed to follow.

780
00:47:53,520 --> 00:47:57,319
Speaker 1: So you have to do regulations, right, Like, how are

781
00:47:57,360 --> 00:47:58,880
Speaker 1: we going to work this out? But this is this

782
00:47:58,920 --> 00:48:01,200
Speaker 1: one of those things where it's like a disruptive thing

783
00:48:01,320 --> 00:48:03,000
Speaker 1: in the same way that Uber doesn't have to go

784
00:48:03,000 --> 00:48:06,080
Speaker 1: into the same regulations as the taxi cab industry, etcetera.

785
00:48:06,280 --> 00:48:09,360
Speaker 1: Until the laws catch up. But you know, for a while,

786
00:48:09,440 --> 00:48:11,600
Speaker 1: it's like a feeding frenzy free for all. Right, So

787
00:48:11,640 --> 00:48:14,080
Speaker 1: if they like pass this, yeah, maybe eventually the laws

788
00:48:14,120 --> 00:48:15,640
Speaker 1: will catch up and they can, like you know, uncle

789
00:48:15,680 --> 00:48:17,759
Speaker 1: Sam can get his due. But right off, the rip

790
00:48:17,840 --> 00:48:19,640
Speaker 1: probably not gonna happen. It's gonna make a lot of

791
00:48:19,640 --> 00:48:22,000
Speaker 1: a few people and a lot of money. This is

792
00:48:22,040 --> 00:48:25,200
Speaker 1: also not a US based company. We have to remember's

793
00:48:25,239 --> 00:48:30,720
Speaker 1: basically an offshore account. If it's Swiss with nonprofit everything

794
00:48:30,800 --> 00:48:33,919
Speaker 1: about the stinks. I don't like it. Well, I mean

795
00:48:34,719 --> 00:48:38,040
Speaker 1: it's pretty smart. Imagine if you could get just imagine

796
00:48:38,080 --> 00:48:41,040
Speaker 1: if you could start a bank that's not a bank,

797
00:48:41,200 --> 00:48:44,600
Speaker 1: get in the market, take over of all the currency,

798
00:48:45,600 --> 00:48:47,799
Speaker 1: all before the regulations catch up to you, and then

799
00:48:47,840 --> 00:48:49,760
Speaker 1: by the time they do, you're too big to fail.

800
00:48:49,880 --> 00:48:53,399
Speaker 1: So it's just like, yeah, they got a play ball

801
00:48:53,440 --> 00:48:56,640
Speaker 1: with you because you now own the system. It's that old,

802
00:48:57,160 --> 00:48:59,920
Speaker 1: it's ill quote when you hear about very wealthy people

803
00:49:00,480 --> 00:49:04,960
Speaker 1: getting away with financial crimes or robbing banks. Essentially, I

804
00:49:05,040 --> 00:49:07,120
Speaker 1: heard a quote that I thought we would all enjoy,

805
00:49:07,239 --> 00:49:12,520
Speaker 1: which is, uh, if you owe the bank a thousand dollars,

806
00:49:12,560 --> 00:49:15,920
Speaker 1: that's your problem. If you owe the bank a hundred

807
00:49:15,960 --> 00:49:19,960
Speaker 1: million dollars, that's the bank's problem. What about fd I

808
00:49:20,000 --> 00:49:23,600
Speaker 1: C protection my my depositive wells Fargo is guaranteed up

809
00:49:23,600 --> 00:49:27,200
Speaker 1: to dollars, That's what we're saying. Yeah, but I'm saying, like,

810
00:49:27,280 --> 00:49:29,920
Speaker 1: does that apply here at all? No? Right, well it

811
00:49:29,960 --> 00:49:34,240
Speaker 1: would it would have to. Again, this proposed it Uh,

812
00:49:34,320 --> 00:49:37,200
Speaker 1: if it obeyed regulations. Yeah, one of those regulations would

813
00:49:37,239 --> 00:49:40,000
Speaker 1: be being fd I C and short. But that's just

814
00:49:40,040 --> 00:49:43,759
Speaker 1: one of the problems. Another problem is privacy. Given Facebook's

815
00:49:43,880 --> 00:49:48,680
Speaker 1: frankly hilarious track record with privacy, you can understand why people,

816
00:49:49,000 --> 00:49:52,840
Speaker 1: regardless of whatever their personal leanings are, might not trust

817
00:49:52,880 --> 00:49:56,000
Speaker 1: it to have a finger in their personal finances or

818
00:49:56,080 --> 00:50:00,720
Speaker 1: commercial finances. What happens when liber gets hacked? Oh seriously,

819
00:50:00,880 --> 00:50:04,680
Speaker 1: because it doesn't even matter if you've clicked the little

820
00:50:04,719 --> 00:50:08,000
Speaker 1: button that says share all of my Libra purchases on

821
00:50:08,080 --> 00:50:11,040
Speaker 1: my timeline, because that will be a thing. It doesn't

822
00:50:11,080 --> 00:50:14,040
Speaker 1: matter because people may find out, Like Ben said, if

823
00:50:14,120 --> 00:50:17,480
Speaker 1: if Facebook gets hacked, if that private information is then

824
00:50:17,560 --> 00:50:20,320
Speaker 1: sold to a third party at some time on determined

825
00:50:20,360 --> 00:50:24,360
Speaker 1: time down the road, like your entire purchase history could

826
00:50:24,480 --> 00:50:27,920
Speaker 1: and would very much be available right right. Uh, Facebook

827
00:50:27,960 --> 00:50:31,200
Speaker 1: has become or the Libra Association excuse me? Is Jeff

828
00:50:31,239 --> 00:50:34,239
Speaker 1: Goldblooman vibes they can touch a Libra and they can

829
00:50:34,239 --> 00:50:37,720
Speaker 1: see everywhere it has been and that that could help

830
00:50:38,280 --> 00:50:41,799
Speaker 1: to be fair, that could help combat some of the

831
00:50:41,920 --> 00:50:45,440
Speaker 1: crimes that this will inevitably be used for. Is this

832
00:50:45,560 --> 00:50:49,520
Speaker 1: also just another step towards moving us into a cashless economy. Yes,

833
00:50:49,719 --> 00:50:52,759
Speaker 1: very much. So my question is this too, Like, it's

834
00:50:52,800 --> 00:50:54,680
Speaker 1: a it's a balance, right, because on the one hand,

835
00:50:54,880 --> 00:50:58,200
Speaker 1: getting rid of cash certainly cripples like some of the

836
00:50:58,239 --> 00:51:01,759
Speaker 1: cartels and like illegal drug trade. Right, you can't buy

837
00:51:01,920 --> 00:51:05,480
Speaker 1: cocaine at a bar with libro yet, Mike. But but

838
00:51:05,560 --> 00:51:07,600
Speaker 1: that's my question. They're like, how how does this balance out?

839
00:51:07,640 --> 00:51:09,839
Speaker 1: Like obviously one of the issues here too is there's

840
00:51:09,880 --> 00:51:12,600
Speaker 1: a it's a haven for money laundering potentially, there's a

841
00:51:12,600 --> 00:51:17,640
Speaker 1: lot of problems there. But also removing cash, you could argue,

842
00:51:17,920 --> 00:51:21,960
Speaker 1: would cripple some of the very nefarious nastiness that comes in,

843
00:51:22,040 --> 00:51:24,759
Speaker 1: you know, with with drug smuggling and the ability to like,

844
00:51:24,840 --> 00:51:27,680
Speaker 1: you know, pay for that stuff with cash. That's true,

845
00:51:27,800 --> 00:51:31,319
Speaker 1: but we also have to consider our species thought the

846
00:51:31,360 --> 00:51:34,839
Speaker 1: same thing about bitcoin, and then bitcoin was used for

847
00:51:35,000 --> 00:51:40,239
Speaker 1: illicit arms deals with terrorist organizations because of that and

848
00:51:40,600 --> 00:51:43,400
Speaker 1: that difficulty tracing it. And let's just talk about you

849
00:51:43,440 --> 00:51:50,439
Speaker 1: can venmo somebody at a bar snacks, So why would

850
00:51:50,440 --> 00:51:53,000
Speaker 1: you not be able to libra something. You're totally right,

851
00:51:53,120 --> 00:51:56,200
Speaker 1: You're totally right, I mean, yeah, you can, just couldn't know.

852
00:51:56,239 --> 00:51:58,520
Speaker 1: I think what Matt's pointed, you can't call it anything. Yeah,

853
00:51:58,840 --> 00:52:00,680
Speaker 1: you just do a little cute emoji from you know,

854
00:52:00,760 --> 00:52:06,520
Speaker 1: like like thumbs up, you know, and in very much

855
00:52:06,560 --> 00:52:10,560
Speaker 1: like a social media perhaps the only things that Libro

856
00:52:10,760 --> 00:52:14,280
Speaker 1: would know is that this transaction occurred between these two

857
00:52:14,360 --> 00:52:17,120
Speaker 1: wallets or Libra accounts. Essentially, it's not going to know

858
00:52:17,160 --> 00:52:20,440
Speaker 1: what it was for because like a social media account,

859
00:52:20,440 --> 00:52:22,680
Speaker 1: it knows what you tell it. But what happens when

860
00:52:22,719 --> 00:52:25,759
Speaker 1: that person goes to jail for selling drugs and then

861
00:52:25,840 --> 00:52:29,960
Speaker 1: you're in their transaction record? Does that mean you get

862
00:52:30,360 --> 00:52:33,720
Speaker 1: in trouble for buying drugs? It's like the old Dangerous

863
00:52:33,719 --> 00:52:36,279
Speaker 1: It's it's like the old dangerous Kevin Bacon game or

864
00:52:36,320 --> 00:52:39,359
Speaker 1: the n s a leap frog surveillance, you know what

865
00:52:39,400 --> 00:52:43,160
Speaker 1: I mean. It's it's a question that hasn't been answered

866
00:52:43,239 --> 00:52:46,120
Speaker 1: yet and it could have found effects on global and

867
00:52:46,200 --> 00:52:50,960
Speaker 1: local economic stability. This is an ongoing story, that's the thing.

868
00:52:51,200 --> 00:52:54,280
Speaker 1: The details of this are going to change. President Donald

869
00:52:54,320 --> 00:52:58,160
Speaker 1: Trump or current president Donald Trump. FED Reserve Chairman Jerome

870
00:52:58,280 --> 00:53:02,600
Speaker 1: Powell and others have already been very concerned about this idea. Uh,

871
00:53:02,680 --> 00:53:06,920
Speaker 1: they're talking about money launching, They're talking about manipulative trading, right. Uh.

872
00:53:07,000 --> 00:53:10,200
Speaker 1: Some Democratic members of Congress called on Facebook to stop

873
00:53:10,239 --> 00:53:14,279
Speaker 1: working on Libra until Washington is satisfied that this is

874
00:53:14,280 --> 00:53:19,840
Speaker 1: not some sort of dystopian corporate ocracy replacing the state, right,

875
00:53:19,920 --> 00:53:22,719
Speaker 1: and to push pause, you know, just long enough for

876
00:53:22,760 --> 00:53:25,359
Speaker 1: them to buy all of those congressmen right, because there

877
00:53:25,440 --> 00:53:29,360
Speaker 1: is not an insider trading law that really applies to Congress.

878
00:53:29,400 --> 00:53:33,040
Speaker 1: So yeah, recently, as we said today, Marcus testified to

879
00:53:33,160 --> 00:53:36,880
Speaker 1: Congress to address concerns about this, and he said the

880
00:53:36,960 --> 00:53:40,040
Speaker 1: Libre Group will work with the Federal Reserve and other

881
00:53:40,120 --> 00:53:43,880
Speaker 1: central banks to make sure Libra doesn't compete with sovereign

882
00:53:43,920 --> 00:53:47,799
Speaker 1: currencies or interfere with monetary policy. How other what's the

883
00:53:47,840 --> 00:53:51,479
Speaker 1: point then otherwise? How But that's what I'm saying, Like literally,

884
00:53:51,520 --> 00:53:53,239
Speaker 1: I think he said they're not going to do is

885
00:53:53,280 --> 00:53:55,560
Speaker 1: the thing that makes it profitable is the fact that

886
00:53:55,600 --> 00:54:00,440
Speaker 1: it is doing that. Right. I don't understand the You

887
00:54:00,440 --> 00:54:02,719
Speaker 1: could just color as skeptical on this one, because it

888
00:54:02,760 --> 00:54:07,720
Speaker 1: does feel conspiratorial for him to be in Congress being like, look, guys,

889
00:54:08,719 --> 00:54:15,279
Speaker 1: we made the Giant Sea Killer death ray as a

890
00:54:15,400 --> 00:54:20,920
Speaker 1: safety measure because the oceans are being very polluted. We're

891
00:54:20,960 --> 00:54:23,640
Speaker 1: not going to use it on you, though, I promise

892
00:54:24,120 --> 00:54:27,880
Speaker 1: to insinuate that we would use the giant sea killer

893
00:54:28,040 --> 00:54:32,400
Speaker 1: death ray too in any way harm the ocean is

894
00:54:32,440 --> 00:54:37,160
Speaker 1: frankly offensive. This line of questioning. We're just we're just

895
00:54:37,200 --> 00:54:41,280
Speaker 1: building this giant death ray thing for our own benefits

896
00:54:41,320 --> 00:54:45,759
Speaker 1: because it generates us death ray interest. So check this out.

897
00:54:46,000 --> 00:54:48,440
Speaker 1: This is the other thing Mr Marcus said. And I

898
00:54:48,440 --> 00:54:49,920
Speaker 1: don't want to jump on this too hard, but I'm

899
00:54:49,960 --> 00:54:52,320
Speaker 1: gonna add a tiny little bit to this. Yeah. Um,

900
00:54:52,480 --> 00:54:57,560
Speaker 1: he's mentioning that Libra isn't necessarily an investment. He said, quote,

901
00:54:57,760 --> 00:55:00,000
Speaker 1: people will not buy it to hold like they would

902
00:55:00,000 --> 00:55:03,080
Speaker 1: a stock or a bond or another cryptocurrency. Will be

903
00:55:03,160 --> 00:55:09,040
Speaker 1: doing that, sorry, that will be doing so. If this

904
00:55:09,120 --> 00:55:13,279
Speaker 1: is important because if it isn't an investment, uh, the

905
00:55:13,520 --> 00:55:18,279
Speaker 1: security an Exchange Commissioner SEC would be less likely to

906
00:55:18,360 --> 00:55:23,759
Speaker 1: regulate it currently. As we recorded today, Facebook told Washington

907
00:55:24,080 --> 00:55:30,320
Speaker 1: the Libra cryptocurrency would be regulated by Switzerland's financial overseers,

908
00:55:30,640 --> 00:55:33,360
Speaker 1: and then it added that the digital money there would

909
00:55:33,400 --> 00:55:37,160
Speaker 1: never compete with national currencies, never undermined central banks, and

910
00:55:37,239 --> 00:55:40,160
Speaker 1: now we have to open it to you folks. What

911
00:55:40,239 --> 00:55:43,359
Speaker 1: do you think should a privately owned consortium like this

912
00:55:43,480 --> 00:55:46,840
Speaker 1: possess what could be the same powers as a government.

913
00:55:47,000 --> 00:55:50,239
Speaker 1: Are the critics being alarmist? Or are this are these

914
00:55:50,239 --> 00:55:56,279
Speaker 1: scary times? Are we? I mean, it hasn't happened yet.

915
00:55:56,680 --> 00:56:00,000
Speaker 1: That's true, it hasn't happened yet. But how strange will

916
00:56:00,040 --> 00:56:02,480
Speaker 1: it be for us to come back and record an

917
00:56:02,480 --> 00:56:07,080
Speaker 1: episode next year? And uh and and you know have

918
00:56:07,320 --> 00:56:10,480
Speaker 1: just walked in paying for lunch with Liebro. Yeah, I

919
00:56:10,520 --> 00:56:13,840
Speaker 1: know it's impossible. I'd love to talk to Switzerland and

920
00:56:13,880 --> 00:56:18,000
Speaker 1: their watchdog about whatever happened with HSBC, Like, what what

921
00:56:18,160 --> 00:56:20,320
Speaker 1: went wrong there? I thought you guys were the watch dogs,

922
00:56:20,320 --> 00:56:25,720
Speaker 1: remember that whole trug smuggling thing cartels? No, no, okay,

923
00:56:25,840 --> 00:56:29,720
Speaker 1: y'all are good. Cool, It's all good, guys. It really

924
00:56:29,760 --> 00:56:34,520
Speaker 1: does make notoriously non confrontational. Oh it's true. Yeah, you

925
00:56:34,560 --> 00:56:37,960
Speaker 1: know what part of it. Peter Falk is also in vibes.

926
00:56:38,600 --> 00:56:41,120
Speaker 1: I just want to add that Peter Falk that help.

927
00:56:41,480 --> 00:56:45,439
Speaker 1: I love some Peter Falk vibes, dude. So I'm really

928
00:56:45,480 --> 00:56:49,120
Speaker 1: really happy, honestly, Like, I can't tell you how happy

929
00:56:49,160 --> 00:56:51,359
Speaker 1: I am with all of this occurring right now over

930
00:56:51,400 --> 00:56:54,520
Speaker 1: the next few years. Like how excited I am that

931
00:56:54,600 --> 00:56:57,280
Speaker 1: I took the day and got my e coin wallet

932
00:56:57,320 --> 00:57:00,520
Speaker 1: in order, because I mean, gosh, it could have been chaos,

933
00:57:00,560 --> 00:57:03,800
Speaker 1: like so quickly. You're on the up and up, my friends.

934
00:57:03,800 --> 00:57:07,560
Speaker 1: So so tell us, tell us is this is this good?

935
00:57:07,800 --> 00:57:11,759
Speaker 1: Is this bad? Uh? Is this little column a little column? B?

936
00:57:12,000 --> 00:57:15,400
Speaker 1: If so? Why you can tell us this on the

937
00:57:15,440 --> 00:57:18,400
Speaker 1: phone directly. We have a phone number. You can call us.

938
00:57:19,320 --> 00:57:23,160
Speaker 1: We are one eight three three st d W y

939
00:57:23,360 --> 00:57:27,320
Speaker 1: t K. Leave a message and uh, you know, talk

940
00:57:27,360 --> 00:57:31,440
Speaker 1: to us about how corporations are becoming much much more

941
00:57:31,480 --> 00:57:34,320
Speaker 1: powerful than governments. To us your best Peter falk And

942
00:57:34,480 --> 00:57:37,439
Speaker 1: or Jeff Goldblum impersonation. How mash them up into one

943
00:57:37,520 --> 00:57:40,240
Speaker 1: cool hybrid impersonation. I'd love to hear that. See if

944
00:57:40,280 --> 00:57:42,760
Speaker 1: you get any vibes from hearing Ben when he does

945
00:57:42,800 --> 00:57:47,840
Speaker 1: the outgoing message. You can also find us on Facebook

946
00:57:48,040 --> 00:57:51,600
Speaker 1: and Twitter and Instagram. We're all over those places. Uh

947
00:57:51,800 --> 00:57:56,760
Speaker 1: we we'd like to recommend before before the Libra's Institute

948
00:57:56,800 --> 00:57:59,080
Speaker 1: did that you check out one of our favorite places

949
00:57:59,080 --> 00:58:01,560
Speaker 1: on the internet. Here is where it gets crazy, you guys.

950
00:58:01,560 --> 00:58:04,200
Speaker 1: I just thought of something. When liber comes through, we

951
00:58:04,280 --> 00:58:07,880
Speaker 1: can leverage our here's where it gets crazy page and

952
00:58:07,960 --> 00:58:10,360
Speaker 1: our stuff. They don't want you to know official show page,

953
00:58:10,560 --> 00:58:13,560
Speaker 1: to institute a version of Libra that we will call

954
00:58:13,920 --> 00:58:18,040
Speaker 1: ben Bucks. You know, it's its own thing, and we

955
00:58:18,040 --> 00:58:20,760
Speaker 1: we could call it. We should. We should call it

956
00:58:20,840 --> 00:58:25,680
Speaker 1: something more reflective of the show. Maybe, Okay, um, I

957
00:58:25,760 --> 00:58:28,320
Speaker 1: just I. I respect you guys immensely, but ben Bucks

958
00:58:28,360 --> 00:58:32,040
Speaker 1: is sort of my I don't want to split the pie.

959
00:58:32,160 --> 00:58:38,560
Speaker 1: Was Okay, we'll call it the Conspiracy Sure, that's perfect.

960
00:58:39,520 --> 00:58:43,720
Speaker 1: You can also find us in our individual lives and

961
00:58:44,000 --> 00:58:47,400
Speaker 1: doing various misadventures. You can catch me on Instagram. I'm

962
00:58:47,440 --> 00:58:49,560
Speaker 1: at ben Bulling. You can catch me as well. I

963
00:58:49,600 --> 00:58:52,360
Speaker 1: am at how Now Noel Brown, and I'm working very

964
00:58:52,400 --> 00:58:57,240
Speaker 1: hard to start a new account called Conspiracy Vibes. Really yeah,

965
00:58:57,400 --> 00:59:00,560
Speaker 1: I'm really hoping it hasn't been taken. Oh man, that's wonderful.

966
00:59:00,920 --> 00:59:04,000
Speaker 1: You cannot find me on Instagram. Actually, if you dig

967
00:59:04,040 --> 00:59:06,960
Speaker 1: hard enough you probably can. But it's a private account,

968
00:59:07,000 --> 00:59:08,720
Speaker 1: so I don't know. I'll have to look at your

969
00:59:08,720 --> 00:59:11,920
Speaker 1: picture and make sure you look trustworthy and have a

970
00:59:11,960 --> 00:59:14,080
Speaker 1: dog or a cat or something. Walk a walk, a walk.

971
00:59:14,480 --> 00:59:17,240
Speaker 1: I'm just kidding, all right. If you don't want to

972
00:59:17,240 --> 00:59:19,440
Speaker 1: do any of that stuff, you can still write to us,

973
00:59:19,520 --> 00:59:21,680
Speaker 1: give us suggestions for the show, anything you want to

974
00:59:21,720 --> 00:59:24,280
Speaker 1: talk to us about in the good old fashioned way.

975
00:59:24,360 --> 00:59:46,240
Speaker 1: We are conspiracy at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff they

976
00:59:46,280 --> 00:59:48,160
Speaker 1: Don't want you to Know is a production of iHeart

977
00:59:48,240 --> 00:59:51,320
Speaker 1: Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,

978
00:59:51,480 --> 00:59:54,480
Speaker 1: visit the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

979
00:59:54,520 --> 00:59:55,680
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.