Bitcoin is so vast.
This interviewer I guess calls himself "BitcoinRich", and they seem to be at a crypto convention. So presumably Rogers knew what to expect. But in general, I kind of shutter at putting people on the spot to talk about Bitcoin/crypto.
Being a great investor doesn't mean you necessarily have a really honed in perspective about Bitcoin. It's almost like if you're a chef, you don't necessarily know the grassroots of some new farming method. Or something like that.
It's tangential and up your alley, and you've heard people talking about it and are familiar with the range of opinions. But you as a chef don't really need to have a deep and dialed in understanding.
It reminds me of once when I took directions from a blind guy.
These people at a bus stop were kind of wishy-washy about which way to send me. And this blind guy stands up, and he's like "is this Flamingo? are we on Flamingo right now??", and he's like processing and situating himself; it was clear that he meant business; and he tells me where to go.
That was the answer. That was the guy who knew. Because he's not gonna (..well) be blinded by thinking he should know when he doesn't.
If he thinks he knows, he knows.
Bitcoin has enough to do with finances and investment where it piques the interest of people in that field, and it's easy to think they're the ones who should know. But they don't know.
(Jump to 5:57 for the Bitcoin stuff.)
Part 1
"well, Bitcoin and blockchain are two different things. I'm wildly bullish on blockchain, it's gonna change everything we know. Everything we know. It's gonna put a lot of people out of business."
Classic talking point of mine here: When people say something like this (Bitcoin bad, blockchain amaaaze-balls), someone -- one time -- plz stop them right there, and ask them why.
Very simple: Why is blockchain so good?
My theory: They'd have no idea.
None.
They're just saying things. Victim of the mythical buzzword, probably based on some sort of advice, like "yo dude, blockchain is big, don't dismiss it", or maybe even a gut feeling to that effect. So they incorporate it into their points without a real picture of what they're talking about and how it works and what specifically it will change.
What "blockchain" is useful for, is to pass information in a way that avoids a censorship or trust issue.
That's it, really.
That's huge, and that's radical. And that's every bit deserving of your gut feeling that a real game-changer is afoot.
But that's it.
It's slow and convoluted, and has absolutely zero utility wherever there isn't a counter-party trust issue that you want to work around. (i.e., it won't improve a company's shipping & handling algorithm, and things like this. AI might do those things, but not "blockchain".)
The cost and the underlying resource use is all for the sake of knowing it's authentic and that no one has control or special privileges.
And when you appreciate that, when you get that that's what this "blockchain" thing is, you realize how actually limited it is and how it's not going to disrupt everything under the sun.
Disrupting centrally managed money is basically the entirety of the show.
(Which is huge, of course. And new and different things will flow out of the new landscape. But it isn't like "blockchain" disrupts all sorts of different industries that exist now.)
So it's like people have this indirect, ethereal picture of "blockchain". But really you can crystallize it down to how it actually works and what specifically it might disrupt.
At the end of the day, to say it's all going to 0 and nothing-to-see-here while simultaneously being bullish on "blockchain".. just does not add up.
Which blockchain?
Lol.
Part 2
"there may be government cryptos.. the government is gonna end up in charge"
A "government crypto" in the sense of they have the ability to control and fiddle with it? This would no longer be a blockchain.
It would be just what we have now. Only worse, if there was a slow and costly and resource intensive mining process placed pointlessly on top of it.
The only point of the blockchain/mining process is to ensure trust and that no one has control of the parameters (that no one can add or subtract units or reverse payments etc).
If the government controls the parameters, there's nothing special or interesting or better about doing it as a blockchain. May as well just skip the cost and track it on a centralized database, like it is now.
If he means like: the government blesses or officially endorses a decentralized crypto, okay. But then he thinks at least one of the cryptos will be huge.
And if they do this, there's no reason to suspect they won't just pick Bitcoin.
Starting from scratch and trying to overcome the network effect and get people to use a different decentralized blockchain would be really hard. You can say that getting in on the ground level and stockpiling units is their motivation. But likely what would happen is different, rival governments would realize they can endorse Bitcoin to sweep the rug out.
So it makes more sense that they (world-class banksters and special intelligence, anyways) would just recognize what Bitcoin is ahead of time, and stockpile it (and probably have and are).
It's unlikely that anyone way up the totem poll was caught off guard by Bitcoin and that they're scrambling. They've always been aware that fiat currency has some window of time. That's not hard to know.
So this whole feeling of like the government will have some sort of hand in it, they have to right??..
maybe that's exactly what we're currently looking at. They called it Bitcoin. And maybe the million or so units that "Satoshi Nakamoto" has never bothered to move has a more worldly storyline rather than he's some wanderlust who rode off into the sunset and doesn't care about trillions of dollars.
Part 3
basically: the government has the guns and they'll just shut it down
I don't really share Jim's view that the government is a bunch of dummies. (Though, I appreciate him rating us higher than them. 😃)
It depends. Most people within government are either kind of dumb or corrupted to the point of appearing dumb.
But way up top, what it takes to win that kind of control and hold onto it is very sophisticated.
It's a careful balancing act more than boorishly pointing their guns at everything.
The government was able to legislate gold out of being used as a currency, because gold is an awful currency. (Sorry goldsters. It just is. Gold is awesome. But in a more modern, digital environment, its use as currency vanishes.)
So it was dying on its own, and their guns perhaps pushed it out.
That's different than legislating away the thing that has momentum and people are gravitating towards and is currently desirable and the coming paradigm of what works best.
People have been saying this since the beginning, that "oh if it catches on, the government will just crush it".
Bad read.
And now more than ever, now that it's talked about on CNBC (over-hyped on there if anything, lol), now that there's Wall Street trading and really no signal of any legislation against it..
There comes a point where you have to just accept that this is a bad read and probably not what's going to happen.
I think what's actually going on is that "they" were totally ready for Bitcoin. Whenever belief in fiat runs its course, they just like us are happy for a smooth transition rather than chaos (with chaos often comes revolution and unpredictability). And especially if they've already gotten their hands on enough btc units, they have absolutely no reason to want to stop it.
(And plus, more of a technical point: There isn't one monolithic "government". If the US banned it, they'd just look awful and be leaving their citizens in the dust and probably be shooting themselves in the foot relative to other countries who embraced it. Progress just happens, and doesn't get stopped by a gun.)
Jim Rogers is sick, and a gentleman, and is generally on point and rock solid. That's why they feed him to me on YouTube.
I rate Jim a solid 9.6.
He flagrantly admits that he might be wrong and that this would be just one of many mistakes. So hard to see much fault with him. This is all just meant to pick at some of the commonly floating ideas, not at him in particular.