Cryptosynchronicity!

[Music] [Music] Welcome to Synchronicity. Sorry for the day lateness. It's a weird way to say that I'm a day late with this podcast, but that's how I said it. This week, we're kind of in unprecedented uncharted waters. Last week, I did a solo cast because a lot of people have been asking about what I'm referring to. When I had a month-long sojourn into synchronicity land and everything was one giant synchronicity, so I covered that. Let's consider that part one of that story. Part two will come at a later date, and I'm sure I'll eat out drips and drabs throughout all of these other episodes. But today, we're again unprecedented, uncharted waters. I want to talk about cryptocurrency.

The reason I'm doing this is, man, a lot of you have written in asking about this. It is in the zeitgeist right now. Everyone is talking about Bitcoin. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you will, by the end of this. And a lot of people have questions, and a lot of those questions range from beginner questions to intermediate questions to advanced questions. And I'm probably not the best person for super advanced questions related to cryptocurrency, but I'm squarely in the intermediate to a little above average. And I only say that because I've been following Bitcoin from 2011, and I've had Bitcoin since 2013 in the middle of April.

So let's talk about what the hell this is. And there's a few different angles I want to approach. I'm just jumping right in, by the way. This is the intro. We're just going right to the episode. There's a few different angles I want to look at cryptocurrency from. Let's start with a basic explanation of what I'm talking about when I say cryptocurrency. So we're going to start with the first example, which is Bitcoin. This is what a lot of you have probably been reading about in the news. If you hadn't heard about it before, and if you had heard about it before, it's obviously having a very big moment.

The price is exponentially increasing, especially this year, which a lot of people maybe thought could happen back in the day. But I don't really think people knew to the extent, maybe an intuition, maybe like a seedling, like an acorn that turns into an oak tree or whatever it is. The acorn's growing to oak tree? I don't know. They're growing to something. So basically, let's talk about Bitcoin, right? So I actually made two YouTube videos. These are the only videos you will find of me. I had taken them off of YouTube and I put them back on. I republished them just because why not? I was embarrassed by them at the time.

I was talking about Bitcoin directly into a camera so earnestly, so hopeful and full of optimism, so young and baby faced. And I was basically explaining a very rudimentary overview of what Bitcoin and blockchain technology was. So I don't want to get too nerdy about blockchain technology and what Bitcoin is essentially predicated on. All you need to know is there is a system called the blockchain that allows for a few key principles. The first is that every transaction, anything that happens on this blockchain, it's like a record, like a ledger that is continuously added to, is independently verified by the other people who are participating on the blockchain.

So if I have an online wallet or address and I send that to somewhere else to buy something or just to send someone alone, or just not even alone, just to give them some money, that transaction is verified by every single person participating in that particular blockchain. Okay, so that doesn't mean anything if you don't know what I'm talking about. That's okay. What you need to understand is what the blockchain is, is it is a series of algorithms, codes that are essentially solved by computers, solving that particular equation, that particular algorithm. Every once in a while, when a computer solves that, your computer is sitting there, doing this, solving it, something is released. You are going to get a currency, in this case, a Bitcoin.

So this Bitcoin is then released after you've done hundreds of these, and then eventually you get a Bitcoin. Oh, there you go. So that is the currency. This is called mining for Bitcoin. Now, this, again, this podcast could take hours if I was going to recount the exact specifics and specificities of how all of this works. But I want to get some key principles of how this stuff is accumulated, why it potentially has value now, what this means for the future, and where we are. And then the most important thing, I'm hoping by the end of this episode, you have a better understanding of what cryptocurrency is.

You have a better understanding about how it could impact the world. You have a better understanding of how this could impact your life from a practical standpoint. And then probably the thing I'm most interested in is what the fuck is going on here? How is nothing money, digital fake money, really gaining value and turning people into millionaires? Or not even millionaires. Like in my case, I have a modest amount of cryptocurrency spread out over the place, but I've had Bitcoin for a long time. So I bought it when it was $130. They're hovering between $9,000 and $11,000 today. So my point is that something is happening. It's not just the technology and it's not just that.

There's some other metaphysical, if you want to call it, that mechanism at play. So I want to explore that as well. But I do want to give you a basic overview of what the fuck I'm talking about. So you don't just think I'm talking about a Ponzi scheme or a fraud or some bubble or some game system. Okay. Back to mining, in this case, Bitcoin. So these computers are solving these problems. Every once in a while, they solve a problem and in that block, a bunch of Bitcoin are released. Okay. So the other key mechanism, that's how you accumulate Bitcoin from nothing, so to speak. So the real equation there is you need electricity and computing power that you are going to convert into these digital coins, which then theoretically have value. So this started, I believe in 2009.

I first found out about in 2011, it was like, that's weird. Cool. And these things at that time were worth fractions of ascent. Satoshi's, as they're called. And Bitcoin was famously created by either a person or individuals called Satoshi Nakamoto. No one has been able to prove this person's identity or person's identity. Many have claimed to be this person, but a white paper was released with basically outlining what the key principles of Bitcoin would be in cryptocurrency in general. So again, that's how you get Bitcoin, you mine. Now another key principle of this is that it's a deflationary currency.

There are only ever going to be 21 million Bitcoins in existence ever. And that there's varying times when that number will be achieved. But because of that, as time goes on in linear fashion, it gets harder and harder to mine Bitcoins. You need more and more computing power. You need more and more time to mine these Bitcoins. So as time goes on, these become more precious. This is in stark contrast to how all of our financial systems work in the world for the most part with fiat currency. And if you hear me use that word fiat, the reason I'm using it, it just means a government or centrally backed currency.

So for instance, you've heard about inflation. You know that the dollar, if you live in the United States, is less valuable than it was in the 40s. When your grandparents or great-grandparents are talking about soda pops for a nickel or gum for a penny, that sounds insane to us because the value has decreased of our dollar. So what do governments do when dollars or when currency starts to change? They print more money. There's more of it. And we all know that this country has a debt. How is this debt backed? Who's keeping track of all this stuff, right? It's getting weird. If you ever dig into this stuff a little bit, you realize very quickly, this shit doesn't really add up.

And I don't want to say that being vague, let's go into it a little deeper. Theoretically, all of the money in this country is backed by a gold standard, right? We've heard the gold standard, the price of gold. Why it's backed in gold is it's a precious metal. It has a utilitarian, or especially back in the day, utilitarian value. Computer chips, a lot of mechanics were made out of it. So it really had two key pillars of being accepted as a backing of a currency. The other currency that was thought of, at least in this country, of being used as a standard was silver. There was a famous gold versus silver war and gold won.

Now, as technology has improved, many of us know, think of how many of us use cash to pay for things, right? Most of us are using our cards, right? We're using these ones and zeros that theoretically are linked to a ledger of how much money we owe, which is called debt, how much money we have, which is our assets, how much money we have in liquid assets, meaning things we can move and spend right away relative to a property, which you can't give someone a property to pay for 10 cars necessarily. They might not take that exchange. You'd have to sell it first. Anyway, this is all backed by fiat currency, right?

And as we all know, the system is very unfair, very, very unfair to the point where I don't know many people, and I come from a middle class surrounded by upper middle class areas in the suburbs of DC. I know wealthy people. I know people who aren't wealthy. Most of the people I know are not killing it. They're not just totally raking it in and everything is great. I'd have a few friends who are doing that, but regular people have regular jobs doing regular things are finding it harder and harder to make ends meet. They're living paycheck to paycheck. Trying to buy a home is harder and harder, especially with outside support.

So this is just something I've been noticing for years, and this isn't even a surprise. Some people say this is how Donald Trump won the election. So many people are feeling the strain of this global financial system, putting them in debt and not allowing them to achieve the American dream, whatever that is, that people are upset. Now, we could make the argument that we are far too consumeristic. Our ideas of what we need to be happy are wrong in the first place. That's a separate argument, and I think there's a lot of validity there, but what we're really trying to figure out is why are so many people stressed out about money?

That is a fact. I know very few people who aren't stressed out about money, regardless of their economic stratum, wherever they are. So a lot of people are. Keep that in mind as I'm talking about this. Okay, so back to Bitcoin being a deflationary currency. So there's only going to be so many of them. So fractions of Bitcoins begin to accumulate value if a whole Bitcoin is valued at $10,000 and a half one is $5,000. Okay. The other key part of Bitcoin, and now this is a little, it gets a little murky here, and I again don't want to get too technical, but in the beginning, and there are other currencies, cryptocurrencies that are far more on pace for this, is that it decentralized.

Like back to fiat currency. In any government, let's go back. There's a great book. Also, if you want to get kind of a nice lead up into how the global markets work and how the money systems have evolved, Douglas is Douglas Rushkoff's book throwing rocks at the Google bus is great. You're going to essentially take you right up to cryptocurrency, and then you got to go into a whole new world. So definitely I highly recommend that. But essentially, let's go back to how this global system of economy, this global economy emerged. In the day, way back in the day, there were these things called bizarre open marketplaces where let's say I made hats, and you made bread, and someone else made musical instruments, right?

There's no money at this point, but I have hats. This person has bread. This person has musical instruments. Let's say I want musical instruments. The person wants hats, who makes bread. The person who wants bread makes bread. Like I said, wants hats, and the person who makes musical instruments wants bread, right? There's a fair exchange that we can figure out for this. We can exchange our products for things that we want. And then people could hold products knowing that other people would want those, and so begins the bizarre. And this is an exchange of goods for other goods. Potentially services. Hey, you need something fixed at your house. I'm a big strong guy. I can come fix it for you. So this is kind of how everything works, bartering. There's no fixed prices necessarily.

We just try to ascertain and ascribe value to things that we need or want or could use, right? At a certain point, these systems were erased. And how were they erased by the coin of the realm? Kings, monarchs, elites, bourgeois, basically said, "Hey, listen, if this keeps happening, people are going to realize pretty quickly that they maybe don't even need us because we're accumulating all of the best of the best stuff, but they're able to kind of like figure out how to live for themselves." And this is the vast majority of people who are not elites, right? We know that. So they introduced what's called the coin of the realm. The coin would be like a gold, a balloon, or whatever it is. And now this is the only thing that you can use to pay for other things. And how is that rule enforced?

It's not really enforced that crazily now, but back then, you would be killed. There would be a very harsh penalty for you not using the coin of the realm, not using the centrally backed currency. The one issued by your nation, your government, your municipality, whatever it is. And what typically emerged is, let's say there's a parish or a hamlet and they want to use their own currency. That would be stamped out by the central big one. So that slowly, but surely, evolved into marketplaces that are backed by fiat currency, which is the coin of the realm. And we also get the advent of capitalism, and Adam Smith, and how do we create more wealth? How do we do this? Now, unfortunately, this is all back in the day, essentially tied to some pretty awful things, like slavery.

Really, just like the sugar trade in particular, how wealth was accumulated, was almost all backed by labor, non-paid for labor by slaves in the slave trade throughout the world. So there's a lot of really nasty, and it's going into our how our current global economy functions. The roots of it are not so great. They're really not so great. Okay. So going back to Bitcoin, this decentralized idea. Now, the reason I say it's murky with Bitcoin is because theoretically now, there are big, big groups of people who mind Bitcoin or have a lot of Bitcoin. People have dozens of thousands of these things that they've mined from way back in the day when it was really easy to do.

They theoretically could pool together, come together and say, "Hey, we control this currency. We're going to make it move. We're going to suppress this." So Bitcoin is because it's the biggest player in the crypto world is experiencing all these unprecedented trials and tribulations. And it's very interesting to see how it reacts. For people like me who bought in at a really low level, it's just kind of like, "Wow, what the hell is going to happen?" Now, when it's looking like some of us have some real money in these things, it gets a little more, "Oh, what's going to happen?" And people who are buying in now, just so you know, people are buying in now, it's very scary. You're investing a sizable amount of money or whatever you're investing.

It can be quite an uneasy feeling to do. Anyway, back to the idea that I'm going to get sidetracked so many times, just to be clear, there's so much to cover here, and it's fascinating. Okay, so back to the idea of being a decentralized currency. This means theoretically that Wall Street governments can't just change the rules overnight. And there have been some serious tests of governments clamping down on Bitcoin mining, Bitcoin exchanges, buying Bitcoin. Most recently, China stamped out what are known as initial coin offerings. And we'll get to those later, but it was essentially a way for people to buy into cryptocurrencies, cryptocurrencies, before they launch, using other cryptocurrencies.

So we'll get into those as well. But China clamped down on these, they're starting to clamp down on miners, and everyone's like, "Oh, no, Bitcoin's done." For those of us who have been around for a long time, we weren't too worried about that because what seems to happen whenever a government or some central agency tries to take control or suppress Bitcoin. There's a dip, it comes, but then it'll pop out somewhere else. And in this case, what ended up happening, a lot of the mining and a lot of the currencies and exchanges moved to other Asian markets. And of course, United States has a huge one too, but Japan in particular, and Korea became very active in Bitcoin.

Okay, so these are three core principles of how this stuff is happening. First of all, we're mining for this currency. It is digitally created via electricity by the power it takes for a computer to solve these equations. That's how these currencies are released. In most cases, there are many currencies, and a lot of them work very differently. But in Bitcoin's case, in many of the other popular cryptocurrencies we'll be covering today, that's how it works. Okay, that's the one thing. So it's mined. It's also deflationary. Now, again, not all cryptocurrencies are deflationary, but usually they are.

And there's a set number of them, and this is all that will be distributed and all that will be available. And then the last one is decentralization. Now, some cryptocurrencies are just blatantly not decentralized. So I don't want to give the impression that they all are, but for those that want to make that a feature, that is also a possibility for decentralization. And again, there's a spectrum of how many are good at this and how many are bad at this. Okay, then, and then the next thing I'd like to talk about with cryptocurrencies, there is some level of anonymity with these. I first found out about Bitcoin because of the Silk Road, which was an underground black marketplace for buying anything.

I never bought anything full disclosure. I've spoken about this on the podcast, but you were able to access it through Torbrowsers, which are anonymous web browsers. And it was nuts. I mean, there was everything. There was full grams of LSD for $16,000 insane, full grams. That doesn't make sense. So there was everything there. And it was fun to look at. And the way you paid was Bitcoin. Now, there was also another feature on the Silk Road where it was called PGP Encryption, where the anonymity really came from there. So these were these encrypted messages and emails that were sent back and forth.

But Bitcoin was also pretty good at being anonymous. Now, it's a little less anonymous. People have their wallets. All of these transactions, just to be clear, are visible at any point. The anonymity comes in because you might not necessarily know whose wallet is attached to who, but you better believe that, you know, governments who are going to want to be getting taxes on these things and other things. They're going to be able to come up with systems to ascribe, you know, with Bitcoin and other publicly available and viewable blockchains. They're going to want to know and be able to figure out who is doing what. So that anonymity for Bitcoin is less of a factor.

However, there are other cryptocurrencies where that is a 100% of thing and the anonymity is the selling point for that cryptocurrency. One, for instance, is Monero. We'll get into that in a little bit. Okay. So now we have a decent overview of what Bitcoin is as a cryptocurrency, kind of how you get it in terms of mining, kind of how it works, and, you know, this is what it is. So now you're caught up basically through 2011. Let's get to 2013-ish levels with cryptocurrency. So Bitcoin started out being valued, like I said, at fractions of a cent, denominations known as Satoshis, which are just fractions, fractions of a cent.

So essentially, there was no value to these. And Satoshis don't actually have monetary value until they're, you know, compared against a currency. So that's another distinction I'd like to point out. So the price of Bitcoin has steadily increased. And it's gone down. I don't want to give any pressure. It's only been up. But over time, it's been up significantly to the point where, when I bought in, like I mentioned in 2013, it had been around for four years, what had been worth fractions of a cent. Since we're now worth about 100-something dollars, $133. Then they went up to 500. Then they crashed at 300. Then they went up to 1,000. Then they went down to like 200.

So it's this very volatile market. And the value you say, well, how does this have value? Like, why is there any value ascribed to these tokens? Because just like everything in our world, we said there is value to it. If I'm willing to pay you $5 for something, that thing gained the value. At that point of $5, it's subjective. It's based on consensus. It's based on us saying this is what I'm willing to pay for something. So this is a very interesting mechanism that we typically do not think about when we're dealing with fiat currency, dollars, euros, whatever. We're just like, oh, this is how much it costs. This is how much I'm going to pay. Maybe I can get a better deal here.

We kind of know the value is subjective and malleable, but we don't really think about that very often. So that's a really key important thing to remember about the value of Bitcoin. Now, as time goes on, people started describing more value to it. So they'd be willing to pay more for a Bitcoin, more than a fraction of a cent, more than a few dollars, more than a few hundred dollars. To the point where we are today, where the last I checked, we were somewhere in the range of $9,000 to $11,000 for one Bitcoin. So now, I want you to think about a few different things here. It was really pretty easy back in 2009 to mine Bitcoin.

So it is very possible that people who are really into this stuff and saw potential in it or just liked the idea have thousands of Bitcoin, if not dozens of thousands of Bitcoin. There's only ever going to be 21 million, and the value right now is between $9,000 and $11,000. So you can do the math if you had 12,000 Bitcoins do that math, take out a calculator and see what their value in fiat dollars is or euros or whatever it is. It's in a astounding amount of wealth, essentially created out of thin air, right? So this is where things get really, really, really interesting, because now all of a sudden, we have people who have been mining or trading or accumulating these coins, and we're just talking about Bitcoin here, who are millionaires, who are potentially billionaires, who now have more wealth than most people would ever know what to do with.

Some of these people are just like you and me. We're not born into trust funds and huge amounts of money to spend, however we like, just legitimately, all of a sudden, now they don't have any debt. Now they can buy the house they want. Now they can do the things that free them from the shackles of society. And I just want you to think about this as a thing that is happening for sure. I'm not saying this can happen for you, of course it can, but I'm not saying it will happen to you. This is just something that is happening and continues to happen. So that is Bitcoin, that is what happens, that is how the value has risen, and now let's break off into a whole other set of things.

There are many other cryptocurrencies, and the reason they're called cryptocurrencies is because they're based off cryptography. And there's been amazing advances in cryptography over the past 20 years, and this is basically solving problems and security and essentially using the latest technology to advance the things that I was speaking about, whether it's anonymity, decentralization, all of those things, the key principles that are baked into a lot of these. So now what's interesting about blockchain technology is it can be used for many, many, many, many different things. It is a system that can be altered for any industry.

And I don't want to get into, there are, like I said, hundreds of coins, all saying they do different things, some of them seem to be very, very good. Some of them, who knows what they're doing, I, for instance, just invested in something that said it is going to be a currency for solar exchange, right? So people will buy these tokens and then they will be used to power solar energy in Europe. And these tokens will gain, as they gain in value, they'll be related to more and more wattage of solar. So there's a whole, I'm just bringing that up because there's so many of these things, but there are other main cryptocurrencies, let's call them, we'll call them altcoins, right?

That's what they're called, alternative coins. So I want to talk about two other alternative coins, and then I'm going to get into, this is all peaking your interest and you don't think I'm crazy, then I'm going to actually walk you through how to purchase Bitcoin on these other altcoins I'm talking about. And then I'm going to do a bit of speculation. I'm going to let you know about which altcoins I'm invested in, what I think the potential for them is, and this comes with a caveat, I am not an investor. I am an investor because I put my money into things, but I will explain to you where this money came from and that my initial investment in Bitcoin was money that I was 100% comfortable saying, "Buh-bye" to, right?

It was less than $500. I was totally happy, this is back in 2013, "Buh-bye" to, right? That's how I think, that's how I personally approach it, and I do not want to come off as, "I have the answers, I've got this, I've got that." But I think we're in the beginning stages of a revolution, this is akin to before the internet happened, and I think there's a lot more metaphysical principles to play here, and I would love if it's possible, if you have any ability to kind of think about it. To kind of figure this out and do research on your own, to figure out realistically what we can be doing here, like, what can we change the paradigm, can we free ourselves from the shackles of the global financial system, the debt-based system that is hurting so many people, we'll see.

Okay, so let's get back to the other two altcoins that I'm going to mention, and there's so many others, and I'll get into others there, and I know a lot of you who are already intermediates at this, and have been doing this, this is going to be a bit of recap, but I'm helping people who, I'm doing this in the hopes that I can help people who don't know what the fuck any of this shit is, to understand a little bit about what it is. Okay, let's talk about Ethereum and Litecoin, these are two altcoins. Now, Ethereum is an altcoin that essentially is very much like Bitcoin, but it has a few key differences. I don't want to specifically get into what those differences are. What I want you to understand is it's a platform.

The currency itself can be used to fund and basically create new currencies through those things I mentioned called ICOs before, initial coin offerings, you know, initial public offering if you're doing a stock. That is a way to fund things through Ethereum. Bitcoin also can be used for that typically, but it also creates a new platform for decentralized applications. So these are, this is where you can start building things on top of currencies. It's not necessarily even a currency. It is a token and a coin that really can allow you to do a lot of different things on that particular blockchain.

So each of these currencies has their own blockchain, or in some cases, something not, that's a blockchain, that's a whole new thing. We'll maybe get into that in Iota today. But, okay, so Ethereum. This is a coin that had another exponential rise in value in 2017, where at the beginning of 2017, I think even all the way up to March, it was like $9 for one Ethereum, and now it's somewhere in the range of $400 to $500. So again, you know, you bought $90 worth of these, you're making a good chunk of change if you had the foresight to do that. So Ethereum is also, like I said, the gateway for a lot of other coins and decentralized applications to use the Ethereum technology to basically build out new blockchains to do various different things from utilitarian things from market predictions to other predictive things to solving, you know, exceed exchange, anything you can imagine. And I really encourage you to look into this stuff a little bit deeper, and I'm going to provide some resources on how I've figured this stuff out.

And these things are constantly evolving, but all of this stuff, what I'm going to end with, as I always like to do, especially on this program, and I call it a program. What the fuck? On this podcast is basically due to your research, you know, I'll point you in some directions, but use your own intuition, use your own cognitive faculties to suss out what the best moves for you are. Okay, so Ethereum, that exists. We're going to call it Ether, too. Okay. The next one we want to talk about is Litecoin. Litecoin is very much like Bitcoin, but it's worth much less. Right now, we're looking at somewhere between $80 and $100. It used to be just a few cents.

But it has also seen exponential growth, like all of these cryptocurrencies, especially in 2017, but really since its inception. Now Litecoin, right now, is serving a completely different function that I never really anticipated. And one of the things that's happening with Bitcoin right now is it's taking, it used to be pretty instant in terms of a transaction. If I sent you something, if I sent a Bitcoin to your wallet, your online wallet, or your hardware wallet, wherever it is, it would be almost instant. Boom, boom, confirmed, awesome. Now, since so many people are using the blockchain and so many transactions are taking place, it can take days sometimes for a transaction to happen.

This is unprecedented and certainly not one of the things that was anticipated with Bitcoin. It was supposed to be kind of an instantaneous transfer. Also, in terms of fees, who uses PayPal? Who uses Venmo? Who uses credit cards? We're getting in charge of the wazoo with fees, right? With blockchain technology, for the most part, we shouldn't have to pay these types of fees. It should be fractions of a cent. So if you're sending, excuse me, like $1,000, you may be paying like a few cents, which relative to like 2.5% on a credit card or PayPal. It's just night and day in terms of how much money you're saying.

And that's a middleman. That's a bank right there saying, "Hey, we're going to take a cut or we're a payment gateway. We're going to take a cut." So currencies essentially peer to peer most of the time. Well, not most of the time. It can be peer to peer, but they can also be put in exchanges. They can also be exchanged into different currencies, and we'll get into that as well. Okay, Litecoin now, however, though, still is pretty damn fast. You can get transactions through really quickly for fractions of a cent. So it becomes a very interesting currency to buy into and then potentially change into other currencies.

And now we're going to get into something that really, the reason this podcast is a day late is for the past couple of weeks, I've really started to delve into a lot of other altcoins. And what I mean by that is I've been lucky enough to have Bitcoin for a while. And one of the things that has happened with Bitcoin is it's split into other coins. It's not quite like a stock splitting. It's like imagine if a stock split into a completely different stock, and you had both of those stocks, and that's happened a few times with Bitcoin. So the big one was in August of this year, 2017, where Bitcoin, a fork of it, it's called a fork, forked off into another currency called Bitcoin Cash.

Now, take what I'm saying, do your own research. I do not, I am not a Bitcoin Cash believer. Now, the reason it's split off wasn't just necessarily because they wanted to make new stuff. It's because some of the things I've been mentioning, like transactions taking a really long time with Bitcoin now, fees actually getting up into like serious, you know, like six to ten dollars, some really, you can pay some fees. It's nothing compared to credit cards and other things, but those things are starting to happen. And one of the reasons those happen is the block size on Bitcoin. Is it one or is it two?

It's one or two megabytes, right? I should know this off the top of my head, but you're doing so much things. My head is filled with altcoin stuff. Anyway, it's one or two megabytes. The Bitcoin Cash blockchain size is eight megabytes. And what this means is there's more room for processing transactions. It's theoretically supposed to be faster. My experience when moving money out of exchanges, you know, Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash, that has not been the case at all. I've had Bitcoin Cash take forever. Anyway, Bitcoin Cash has amassed a sizable amount of value itself. Today on a down day is worth about $1,300 per one.

So this, these forks, and like I said, I'm not a believer in Bitcoin Cash at all. And maybe I'll get into that in a later episode. But I've essentially said, listen, and there's another fork from Bitcoin Cash called Bitcoin Gold. And that's worth like 300 bucks. Anyway, I've taken those currencies and exchanged them back into Bitcoin. And the reason I did that is I took this essentially free money that I never expected to have happened from these forks. And I said, let me look at all of these other alternative currencies, cryptocurrencies that are out there right now. Which ones look like they're solid?

Which ones look like they actually have some utilitarian purpose? I can see them actually being used that they're helping in some way. They have a good team behind them. The people who are supporting them, their mining capabilities, all these things that they look good to me. And so you know what? Let me see what the price is at. Let me take some of that money that I have got from these forks. I think in total it was about $2,000, $2,500, up to $3,000. And let me see what I can do. Let me see, look around here. So I've really been delving into a lot of different altcoins. I'm lucky enough to know people who are plugged into the scene and have given me some really solid recommendations.

All right, well my recorder cut off and I'm not exactly sure where it did. Let me try to pick up where I think I left off. So essentially what I've been doing is investing the money from these forks that were created when Bitcoin went into created Bitcoin cash and Bitcoin gold. Taking that money and looking at other cryptocurrencies, other altcoins that I think are sound. Meaning they have communities that seem active and intelligent, that they have some utilitarian purpose, that they seem like they're not scams, that they seem like they have some ability to rise. So this is what I've been doing for the past two weeks.

And I also, I don't know if it recorded this, but I also am lucky enough to know some people who are plugged into these things. So I'm not out there on an island thinking I know better than everyone. I'm actually doing my research, interfacing with other people, and essentially at this point all I've invested are what I think are long-term investments. These are things that I plan to hold. I don't plan to day trade them. I am going to be looking into day trading cryptocurrencies in the future. I think it's a very bullish market. I think that we are at the beginning stages. And again, this is my personal opinion. We're in the beginning stages of a massive redistribution of wealth in the world.

I think we are in a paradigm shifting technological and metaphysical. Just it's what's happening here. I feel truthfully is a layer of reality is being stripped away. Some of us and those of us who want to kind of take this potentially have the ability to remove some of the crushing pressure that money can put on us. And those around us, I think this is going to have the ability potentially for us to focus on some of our deeper issues as people, as a society, as a collective, as a species, as souls, if you will. And I think that's a real opportunity. And that to me is why I'm so interested in cryptocurrency.

You could look at it like this all just the delusional thing and I'm trying to get rich quickly and so are a lot of other people. But I really don't believe that is what I'm doing. I have never been much of a money person my entire life. I've made decent amounts. I've not made decent amounts. But to me, this is kind of a freedom issue more than a financial issue. And if we can, like I said, just take off the shackles of the financial constraints that hurt a lot of people in this country. I'm interested in doing that. Okay, now let's talk about some of the cryptocurrencies, cryptocurrencies that I have been investing in.

And I'm not going to give you the exact amounts. But like I said, my total investments is somewhere between 2000 and 3000 all from earned money from Bitcoin, where I, you know, this is essentially free money for me. I'm not saying you shouldn't invest your money. I know people have invested sizable amounts of money recently into this stuff. I'm just saying that's how I did it. I don't want you to blame me if something doesn't go wrong. So here are, here's a list of cryptocurrencies that I am currently invested in between five. A lot of all of these ones I'm about to mention, I'm between like five and 10% of my holdings.

So I have Bitcoin, of course, that's my largest. I have 70% of my holdings in, you know, fiat value are in Bitcoin. About 10 to 15% are in Ethereum, then the rest are in Ripple, which is about 20 something cents right now. I have a very big chunk, I think 15% or so in Cardano, maybe even up to 20%. I have a good chunk in something called Salt, which I'm a big fan of their platform is launching in December 2017 this year. It's a lending platform. I was sold by it by a friend. I'm very interested in it and I think it's really sound. And I'm not, again, none of these I'm getting that I'm going to take these profits and flip them.

These are all things that I think over the next year, two years, three years are going to go up exponentially. And that's why I've invested, you know, whatever little money I had from this into them. What are some other ones that I owed? Something called modem, I'm big on. Vertcoin, VTC is the initial. That is one that I really like. And I'm also looking into potentially mining that one because they prevent what are known as ASIC miners, which specifically are designed to mine coins. This is something that's supposed to be resistant. This currency should not allow for one group of people to build really big expensive miners and dominate the market.

So I like Vertcoin for that reason. I like Mona Coin. I don't have the list right in front of me, so I'm going to say if I remember them, then those are the ones that are probably worth getting. Okay, so here is how you can get started. If you know what I'm talking about, then great. You can go and look at those coins, get them at an exchange. If you don't know what I'm talking about now, I'm going to give you a nice little overview of how to get started. So if you're in the United States, probably the easiest way to get Bitcoin is by going to Coinbase.com. And they also have a mobile app. Now, there are upsides and there are downsides to Coinbase.

The upside is it's really fucking easy. You'll figure out how to get Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ethereum very easily. You can use credit card. You can use bank accounts. It's really simple. And one thing to remember, there are taxes involved with these things as well. So if you invest and you pay for these things, when you pull the money out, you have to pay capital gains tax on it. So don't fuck around with the IRS. That's really important. There's no reason to, right? And we should be paying taxes on these regardless of what we think about the global system and central governments. Don't fuck around with the IRS. That goes without saying.

So coinbase.com is how you can get started in the United States. Now, there are other ways to get various currencies, cryptocurrencies. I actually purchased my cryptocurrencies back in the day on localbitcoins.com. This is a peer-to-peer exchange where people agree to pay a certain price for a cryptocurrency in fiat in dollars or whatever they're going to pay it in. And that is sent over then the cryptocurrency sent out. And it's done in escrow. So it's online escrow. You send the thing. They're held there. The other person sends their thing. And then they're released when they're both there. And it works. And there's no real... I was super nervous when I did it back in 2013.

It wasn't that big of a deal at all. So that's another way to get these currencies. Now, you're probably going to pay a premium from a person because they can set the price at whatever they want. But that's just what it is. Now, on Coinbase, you're going to pay fees as well. That's how they make their money. They're taking a cut. So let's say you're loving what I'm saying. Oh, my God. There's a potential way for me to invest in these things that could maybe exponentially grow. This sounds great. Okay. So you're there. That's cool. Temper your expectations, of course. But you're going to need to now figure out how to get some of these alternative coins.

If that's what you want. Personally, I think if you did nothing but just buy a little bit of Bitcoin, you don't have to buy one at once. You could buy fractions of these things. You just buy a little bit consistently over the next few months. You're probably going to be in good shape if you hold them. Right now, Bitcoin is worth, like I said, around $10,000. Personally, I'm pretty bullish on it. I expect sometime in 2018 for it to be well over $20,000, if not in the $40,000 to $50,000 range. Does that make me sound insane? Maybe. But I had these things when they were around $100 and they're $10,000 now.

And I don't know. And I do understand the principles of play, but I really didn't expect it to happen this soon. Okay. So let's say you went to Coinbase, you got all your coins. Now you're like, "Great, I got them." Now, you can leave them in Coinbase, right? If you want. Or you can store them on either an online wallet. You're going to need a place to store these things, right? It's just like a bank account. You put your money in the bank account, it goes somewhere. You're going to want to keep them somewhere secure. So you can keep them on the exchange, but I'm not super fond of keeping my coins on Coinbase.

They don't really do that. I move them out of there pretty quickly. And you can set up either, like I said, an online software wallet or a software wallet that lives on your desktop. We can actually get a hardware wallet where you actually port these things over to a thing, like a USB thumb drive. So how do you choose what to do? I will give full disclosure. I am a big fan of the online wallet solution. I am not going to give out specifically which wallet I use, because that would be reckless by me. But if you are interested, email me at Noah@syncpodcast.com and I will get you going with some basic ways to get started with all of this stuff.

And if you have any questions about this, seriously, feel free to email me about this. I am doing this not because I think I'm a genius and I'm going to make everyone rich. But if this in any way could help you or someone you know who wants to kind of demystify what cryptocurrency is all about, that'd be fucking awesome, because I really do think this is a world-changing paradigm-shifting thing that's happening now. And I think we're probably on like the third or fourth floor of a hundred storey building. We may go down a few floors before we get to the top, but this is still very early stages of this stuff.

So, okay, you got your coins, either on Coinbase, local Bitcoins. Now what do you do? Now let's say you want some altcoins. You want something maybe? Oh, and Iota. I didn't mention Iota. I already mentioned Iota for a few reasons. One of the reasons is every coin I had mentioned so far is based on the blockchain. Iota is based on something else called the Tangle. It's not a blockchain technology. It's actually quite different. Utilizes some of the same principles, but it's also Iota is designed to be kind of a machine economy for the Internet of Things. And if you don't know what that is, recognize that a lot of these machines that we're using have are connected to the Internet or connected to each other, and they're going to need ways to communicate with each other. Iota purports to do this.

Microsoft, a lot of other big companies are partnering up with them, and that is something else I am very bullish on. It's also kind of a hedge against blockchain technology. If this doesn't pan out, blockchain, Iota and the Tangle look like it could be a fill-in for that. So that's another thing I didn't mention. But let's say you want some of that. You just heard about this for me. Oh my God, I want some Iota. You are going to need to send your Bitcoin. Now, let's say you bought Litecoin or Ether. You can use Litecoin and Ether to buy some other altcoins. It's getting easier and easier to do that.

But if you definitely want to be able to buy other altcoins, you're going to want Bitcoin. That's the main player. You need Bitcoin typically to buy these other things. So, or exchange them for other things. So, let's say you want to buy some Iota. You are going to need to sign up for an exchange. I use a couple of exchanges. I use Binance and Bitrex. Those are the two that I feel comfortable using. I like things about them and I don't like other things about them. Always with all of this stuff, you are going to get what are known as seed phrases, which are like the root password, usually 12 words for all of your wallets and exchanges and all of these things that have address.

Save those. Write them down somewhere. Make sure you don't lose them. Tell your loved ones what those are. What those are. There are many stories. There supposedly are 4 million Bitcoins that are lost forever on either hardware wallets or those people died or whatever happened. Hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, that will never be recovered. So, make sure you are really smart about storing your security and passwords. Also, if you're doing anything on your phone or your computer, you're going to want to set up two-factor authentication. So, you're going to got to get a tool like Google Authenticator or Authy.

And I know if you're like, "Oh my god, he's saying so many things." This will all be explained when you're signing up for these things. But the reason I'm bringing it up now, you could be dealing with real money. You don't want to get your shit stolen. You don't want to be negligent and get locked out. You want to be smart about this stuff. So, I use Binance and Bitrex. Binance is really pretty simple. You go in, you sign up, you go in there, you find your deposits withdrawals. Let's say you want to send Bitcoin to your Binance account so you can buy some other things. You go into deposit withdrawals. There'll be a whole bunch of old coins.

You'll be like, "Holy shit, what's this?" You find Bitcoin or you find Litecoin or you find Ether, the ones that you have, and you click on deposit, then something will pop up. You'll have an address. That is the address you are going to send. You're going to copy that, send that from Coinbase or whatever wallet you have. You're going to send your coins over to that exchange. In this case, we're talking about Binance, B-I-N-A-N-C-E.com. You're going to send your coins over there, and then you are going to have your coins. Now, this is usually when I begin to freak out. I've just digitally sent fake money somewhere.

I don't understand where it is. I'm waiting for it to confirm. It can take sometimes a couple of hours even, and it's not a fun experience. You get used to it, though. But anyway, let's say, after a couple hours or even 10, 20 minutes, everything is there. You see it's in your exchange. Now, you're going to go to the marketplace. You're going to go to the actual exchange. Usually the basic one in Binance is what I use. You're essentially going to find the altcoin that you want to buy. In this case, let's say it's Iota. We're going to do control F or command F on our computers. We're going to find the BTC, which is the sign for Bitcoin, slash Iota.

It means I want to change my Bitcoin into Iota. I want to place an order to buy Iota with my Bitcoin. You can then allocate what price you want to buy it at, how much money of your Bitcoin you want to spend on it, and how many you'll be getting for that. Then you place your order, and if you're like me and have never used an exchange before this, it's going to be a little intimidating. You're going to feel like the wolf of Wall Street for a little bit, looking at these crazy screens, but it's actually not that complicated of a process. It's really easy. That's it, and you buy. Buy orders are typically filled very quickly, because people are usually putting up things to sell.

Then whatever you just purchased in Iota or whatever altcoin you have, you now have that. Like I said, everything I've mentioned on this podcast, every coin I've mentioned, and I will put together a guide with this. I'm working on that. You guys got to give me some time. I still take care of them every day, but I will put a guide to this that if you want more information about this, I will have it somewhere available on Syncpodcast.com. A lot of future episodes will also be related to cryptocurrency, because like I said, I don't think this is just a way to make money and get rich, and this is all it's about.

I really think this is just a layer of reality. We're entering Magic Dream World right before our eyes. The veil is being lifted in some way, and if everyone listening to this podcast made a modest amount of money by arising tied with this stuff and didn't lose their pants because they invested too much, that would be a good thing. I would love for that to happen, and one of the things I want to explore in future episodes of this is how do we use this to create a charitable and generous and altruistic society? Let's say everyone listening becomes millionaires because they invested in Iota or Cardano or whatever it is.

Let's say we're all rich all of a sudden. We don't have debt. Then what do we do? Then that's the time for us to start focusing on the things that are really important to us. Maybe we pursue our dream job, maybe we pursue living in a place that we've always wanted to live, or a relationship, or whatever it is, having kids, whatever it is. Imagine we didn't have to worry about the freedom stuff, and I do not want the financial freedom stuff. I do not want to present this as though we'd be living in a utopian society. There are going to be a lot of shitheads for lack of a better word getting really rich off this stuff, making the world the worst place, but there are going to be a lot of people who aren't, and a lot of the people who are early adopters of this stuff really do have an altruistic mindset.

Not everyone, but I want to talk about the interplay between cryptocurrency and what the fuck is going on with consciousness. Think of technology as a prism, like a crystal that you would hold up, and think of consciousness like this light that is going through this crystal. What comes out on the other side, this technicolor rainbow of colors, that's where I think we're headed. Again, technology is the prism, the crystal, the light is consciousness and us in other forms, and this is the reality it's being projected onto, and I think we're in a really cool place for this stuff. Again, with any of this stuff, if you have any questions, Noah@syncpodcast.com, please hit me up.

I am going to be putting up a place for you to donate, Bitcoin, Ether, any of these things will be creating a podcast wallet. Essentially, I'm going to be moving into cryptocurrency pretty heavily. Like I said, I'm very bullish on it. Don't take this as financial advice. I'm not offering this as do this, because then you're going to make this. This is just what I'm doing, because I believe in it. I've seen what's happened with Bitcoin. I know it's not a scam, even if everyone lost their money. It wouldn't be because this isn't a sound thing that's happening. It'd be likely due to outside influences.

But again, one of the beautiful things of this stuff is it's harder and harder for outside influences to affect these types of cryptocurrencies. Anyway, I've spoken for a really long time. As you can tell, I'm incredibly passionate about this. Email me, leave comments, reviews, Patreon. I wish Patreon accepted cryptocurrency, but they do not. But seriously, just let me know what you would like to know about cryptocurrency. I'd be happy to talk about it more. I don't want to bore people who aren't interested in it. We will have regularly regular programming very soon. I recorded an awesome episode of Synchronicity with Jen Soudini yesterday.

She came over. She's also a very big crypto person. We have some other cool things coming up soon. With that, thank you for listening, and I will see you next week. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ We all have had, and even a population of non psychedelic people, have had prophetic dreams, intimations, and unlikely strings of coincidence. This is all of these sort of things. These are experiences which cultures deny. Cultures put in place. I'm sure you've heard this word, a paradigm. And then what fits within the cultural paradigm is an accentuated stress. And what doesn't fit inside the cultural paradigm is denied, marginalized, argued against.

And we live at the end of a thousand year binge on the philosophical position known as materialism. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ every home.