On 26 Jun, 2019 Right-click here to download this episode to your computer.
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Intro: You’re listening to the DYOR Podcast where your host Tom Buonincontri helps simplify blockchain and cryptocurrency for investors and crypto enthusiasts. If you’re looking to learn about blockchain, bitcoin and cryptocurrency without all the hype, your in the right place, all opinions expressed by Tom or his guests on this podcast are their own and do not reflect the opinions of any organization they are associated with. This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not investment, legal or tax advice. Remember to always do your own research. Now here’s your host, Tom Bond and country.
TB: Hey, what’s going on guys? Welcome to episode three of DYOR. I’m your host Tom Buonincontri and in this episode I chat with Michael Nye. You might know Nye from Twitter. He has a big youtube following as well. Unfortunately, he has some controversial things happen with him on Twitter for very stupid reasons as far as his background in his life or whatnot. But he’s been involved in the crypto space for a few years now and he has some really unique insights as far as how he thinks about the cryptocurrency market. Overall and some of the advice that he gives to people. This episode we really kind of target talking about investing in different cryptocurrencies but targeted towards the elderly more so like the baby boomers and older than that just because we both kind of feel as though there’s a huge opportunity for those populations to join the crypto market and they’re also kind of hesitant about it as well. So Nye was really too able to break down some key things that he’s talked to you about those demographics before in the past and it was just really cool to hear him discussing that stuff. So I hope you guys enjoy the conversation as much as I did and let’s get into it. All right guys, today I am here with Mr. Michael Nye. Nye what’s going on brother?
Nye: My man Tom, glad to be here. Thanks for the invite.
TB: Of course. It’s a pleasure to have you on. I want to flip the script a little bit on you and you know, ask you to give the audience a little bit about your background, what you were doing before you got into crypto and how you fell down the bitcoin rabbit hole.
Nye: Definitely. I am Michael Nye and so I’ve really started in, in like middle of 2017 but I did buy my first bitcoin back in like 2012 2013 strictly just for use purposes. You know, like we were just buying shit on the Internet with bitcoin and it was the only way we could buy things. So we were, we were fucking around with bit coin a little bit back in 2012 2013 I learned about it back then. Spend a little bit at a time on it in 2014 but not enough to say I’m in this, you know, that’s enough for me to say, Oh yeah, I was a part of the community back then. But then in 2017 when, when it came back around under, into my radar, I went full time with it and just got really interested in it. And Yeah, just fell in love with the tech, fell in love with the really first fell in love with trading and then fell in love with the community and then was like, okay, well what’s the stuff really all about? And then spent lots of time as much as I could about the technology and, and about why it’s relevant and just found that it really aligned with my morals and my belief systems and what I wanted to create in the world. So I decided to move full force forward with it.
TB: Cool. So what was that like, Aha moment that made everything click for you?
Nye: So I, there was a few Aha moments. The first Aha moment was the Aha moment of, Oh wow, this is sound money, right? And this is, this is something that’s actually deflationary, not inflationary. And that Aha moment didn’t come with bitcoin. It actually came with understanding more of our economic system and how the Federal Reserve functions. And all of these things function. It wasn’t until that when I really understood the basis to that, that I understood, oh, this is why bitcoin’s relevant. This is why it’s important. This is why, yeah, this is why it’s going to be so big. And the second Aha moment, which was like arguably to meet and more relevant one was when I understood that, and it’s a little hard to explain, but it’s, it’s when I first understood the capacity that bitcoin had beyond just a financial currency and it was, it’s more of just the blockchain itself.
Nye: Bitcoin is more of a network than anything else. You know, it’s literally like all of these nodes, all of these miners working together across the globe to bring us, uh, and allow bitcoin to function. But that has a lot more capacity, that has the ability to do a lot more than, than just bring on new currency into the world. Like it actually could be. Uh, and, and some people were working on it. So I’ll say it is the, the, the next step in the Internet. It’s the web 3.0.
TB: So before we dive into things a little bit more, can you tell the listeners a little bit about the Evolvement podcast and some of the work that you’re doing with Titan ventures?
Nye: Yeah, definitely. So tighten ventures is a holding company. It pretty much owns all the different things that I’m working on, which include obviously my brand online. It’s just Kinda who I am. I shared your thoughts and opinions on, on Twitter and then on other social media platforms. But my major project right now, the thing that I love working on is, is the evolvement podcast. And um, it’s a podcast where I bring people on to talk about Bitcoin, cryptocurrency and the future of our financial systems. We sit down, we have a conversation for an hour or 30 minutes to an hour each time touching on different subjects. And it’s really cool. I’ve had some good guests on like Brock pierce, Roger Ver Max Kaiser, and a couple other big dogs that have come on so far to share their opinions.
TB: What’s been like the most interesting thing you’ve learned so far from interviewing all those guys?
Nye: Man. I mean we always touch on different topics, but I think the most interesting interview that I had was definitely with Max Kaiser. You know, we were just talking via Twitter and I was like, hey man, like can I interview you? And he was like, yeah Bro, I’m a, I mean I landed in LA and a few hours and I live pretty damn close to la. So I was like, all right, I’ll just come up and we’ll meet up and we’ll hang out. And so I literally drove up all the way to la, hung out with him for like, Eh, not even that long, 40 minutes or an hour, but the guy is just a really cool guy. He’s really laid back and we had a really deep conversation about where he believes our financial systems, our financial systems are going, our economic structures. Just a conversation about like what the next bubble will look like, what the next crash is going to look like economically. And yeah, he thinks it’s a lot sooner than a lot of people think. So it was really interesting conversation.
TB: Cool. I’ll definitely link to that episode in the show notes below so the listeners can go over there and hear that conversation that you guys had. I’m very interested to hear your perspective on what Bitcoin is. As far as a social standpoint. A lot of people have been talking about money is the greatest social network that’s ever been in existence and I think that’s coming more and more to light now that we have all, you know with bitcoin and all these cryptocurrencies, seeing all the different entities that are involved and how they’re working together. Would you agree with that?
Nye: Yeah, 100% yeah, that’s what I was talking about earlier with, it’s like bitcoins, more of a network than anything else. So you know, it’s really the first example of a fully decentralized network where like imagine if you like, you didn’t just send money across the bitcoin network, which is, or like what we do, what we do right now, you know, we send bitcoin back and forth to each other or we traded on exchanges or whatever. But imagine you could send messages, imagine you could send like files and data and other, other pieces of information because of the blockchain is just what it is, is it’s the network that is sharing data with other people and the currently the data comes in the form of a Bitcoin, which is a monetary value. But what if it came in other forms. But if it came in in file form, message form, ect, ect, you know, there’s a lot more to blockchain than uh, than just finance.
TB: What excites you the most about blockchains specifically? What are some of the use cases that get you the most excited?
Nye: There’s a lot of them. There’s a lot of them. I think my top three gaming’s number one just because I think that’s where we’re, the first realm of adoption is going to happen is in the gaming room, you know, and NFTs, um, and non fungible tokens. All those kinds of things are really, really interesting to me. Especially how it plays into like a virtual reality and augmented reality. I think there’s like a really big future there. Second. I’m really a big believer in one supply chain. I’ll put number number two is supply chain and spy. Yeah, supply chain management can definitely be evolved like with blockchain technology and I really think that that’s really relevant, but the big one, which I’m, I don’t know why I’m putting as number three, but I am his voting like I really believe like blockchain is going to play a massive role in voting specifically like for governments looking to elect a president or, or some member of the government, things like that. Even for private voting within companies as well, I think it’ll play a massive role.
TB: Yeah, definitely. I mean especially when you look back at the US election and all the claims that Russia may have hacked it, I think it’s inevitable that the blockchain assist and takes over in that world.
Nye: Exactly. I mean it’s kind of a freaky thought, but like imagine like, like you use your government id to like log in to a specific like portal that has your leg, like facially recognizes you or whatever it does and then kicks you out as, as the only person right. They would pick me out as the only Michael Nine that there is at least like with this government identification number. And from there I can literally like go in, I can place a vote and it gets stored on the blockchain and no one else can make that vote. And it’s very, very clear who’s voted, where they voted from all of these different things. I mean, I think it, it’s a lot better than our current paper ballot system, which is just ancient.
TB: Yeah. I’m really interested in the idea of digital certificates, especially around like the anti money laundering and know your customer space. I think within the next five years we’re gonna see a huge uptake with that and a lot of our credentials are just going to be stored on the blockchain for us to control ourselves, which is very cool to think about.
Nye: Yeah, very, very cool. And, and also a little trippy little freaky.
TB: Yeah. I mean it’s, it’s really a crazy world that we’re living in right now to think that all of our data is going to be stored up on to a network and we’re responsible for making sure that it’s safe in our own hands.
Nye: Yeah and I mean that’s like on more of the philosophical side of bitcoin and things like that. That’s why I like it so much as well, you know, um, being a millennial myself, like I’ve seen examples in my own life as well as my peers lives where I just don’t think we were taught personal responsibility. You know, I think it’s a really, really big issue. Uh, most, maybe not most, but a lot of millennials and that you could argue most millennials were raised in a fashion that that’s just like, they weren’t taught to take care of themselves. They had a lot of things that were just done for them. You know what I mean? And I think that that’s where bitcoin actually plays the biggest role is, uh, teaches, uh, people to take personal responsibility of their finances.
Nye: You know, for example, like he’s like in the old banking system, you know, if I get my card stolen or something like that, it’s not really that big of a deal. I can call the bank and be like, look, they stole my card. Those purchases are all fraudulent and my money is instantly refunded to the bank. I have to take bigger personal responsibility for my private keys are like in bitcoin and cryptocurrency because if that chicken stolen, there’s nobody I can call to fix that. I Dunno. I think that’s more reflective on how life actually works.
TB: Unfortunately I think that it’s going to be a rude awakening, whether it’s for millennials specifically or even some baby boomers when we see the next recession happen, and I think everyone’s just going to have, that’s going to be a huge Aha moment for the masses where they’re like, oh shit, this is what bitcoin and cryptocurrencies we’re all about in the first place.
Nye: Exactly. Yeah, and I think it’s a rude awakening for millennials, but it’s unnecessary awakening.
TB: What are some things that you think that people were kind of skeptical about bitcoin in this space right now? Or you know, they’re kind of on the fence whether they think they should invest or whatnot. What’s some advice that you would give them to go down that rabbit hole and just start learning a little bit?
Nye: Yeah, I mean I think first step is to learn, you know, I think there’s too many people that just dive right in and are like, hey, myself included, like I did this too. And then maybe that’s part of the learning curve for some. But I think that if you take a week, take two weeks or something to really like sit to really get the basics of what bitcoin is about and why it’s relevant and why it’s important, then you’re going to understand why you want to be investing in it and if you still want to be investing in it. Right. So I think there’s too many people that just dive right in and say, Oh, you know what? I don’t need to learn all this stuff. And then they get super deep into trading and things like that and they’re trading all these coins back and forth, but they don’t know what these coins do and they only have a very small perspective on what bitcoin does or the potential that bitcoin has. So my first step, just like take a week, take two weeks, like read as many articles as possible. It’s a really big subject. You’re never going to know everything. And in cryptocurrency things change so quickly. There’s so much fucking information all the time. But what you can do is you can get a base understanding of what this technology is about, why it’s relevant and just understand why you want to be involved. If you want to be involved specifically only because of trading and like the potential to make money, that’s okay. Just know that from the beginning if you want to be involved on a, on a deeper level, when you see the potential of this and this technology is inspiring to you and you want to start with trading, you want to start with investing, great. Keep learning about it. Keep putting yourself out there. Keep learning. Keep reading new articles about different areas in the space, things like that. So step one learned.
TB: Definitely. The only problem with that is that there’s so much information out there right now and it was easy for people to get lost in, just try and consume as much as possible without taking action. But the other aspect of it is there’s a lot of misinformation out there that kind of sways people to think one way when it’s not actually accurate. How can listeners decide for themselves what’s factual and what’s misleading were myths?
Nye: It’s a great question. I mean look for the reliable sources. And I know that’s kind of a ridiculous statement if you’re a beginner, cause you don’t really know what the reliable sources are, but look for information that is just, you can’t be altered, right? So if you read three or four different articles about what the coin is and they’re all pretty congruent, then you can say, okay, this is like, this is factual information. But if you read an article about one article about bitcoin that says one thing and then another article about Bitcoin, it says something completely different. And you understand that these may have been opinion pieces and you might have to articulate what information is fact and what information is not. Fact. It’s also kind of a, for lack of a better word, it’s a good life lesson to have this space. We’ll teach you very, very quickly what’s going on that’s fraudulent and what’s going on that’s not fraudulent and what’s going on. That’s true. And uh, which one matters? You know what I mean? So take everything with a grain of salt. Always remember that if someone’s online and you’re a, if you joined Twitter or something like that, and then someone’s online sharing their opinions on a specific coin or, or sharing a chart, sharing something that they think remembered that they’re always invested in it right there, they’re not just sharing that out of the goodwill of their heart. They’re invested in it. They want to make money on it and they want to sell it to someone else. And that’s how you’re gonna make money on it. So always take everything with a grain of salt. There’s a lot of good educational websites and by finance has an academy that’s like pretty sure 100% free. That’s all education based to teach people about the basics of cryptocurrency, the basics of how all this stuff works. Reliable sources such as that are what you need to find, what you need to start looking for.
TB: That’s something that really scares me. Those, like you were mentioning, like in the age of social media and influencer marketing right now, a lot of people are building these communities and followings and pushing out coins because they’re either getting paid for these tweets or biggest holding that they have in their bag and people aren’t taking the time to do that research to figure out what’s factual or not, and they’re just taking these people that they’re follow at their word and it could financially ruin a lot of people.
Nye: I agree, man. I agree and there’s two things. First are the three things. First off, that’s exactly the exact reason why I, in the last couple of months of said, look, I’m no longer talking about any coins. You know what I mean? Like, oh maybe maybe speak a little bit about the tall caps, the big caps that I have bitcoin litecoin, ethereum, Monero, things like that. I’ll speak about them from the tech perspective, why I liked them but I’m not speaking about my personal investments anymore and that’s one of the main reasons but I think it’s also another lesson, you know it’s a lesson to teach people how to be safe in the information era just like bitcoin is, is a, is partially a lesson of teaching people how to be safe financially with with their funds and how to take personal responsibility for it. Being in this community is also like taking like responsibility for the information that you absorb and how blindly you absorb that information. You have to be able to question whether this is true or what the interior motive for these people are to share with you. Something like this. You know, nobody’s just going to say, Hey, I’ve got a coin. This coin is going to go 20 and they’re not going to like just say that because they don’t own any of it. Or, like you said, they haven’t been paid for it. There’s no motive for them to do so. So yeah, that’s, that’s Kinda, that’s kind of my perspective on it as well, man. I know it’s a tough, it’s, it’s hard for beginners. People see these people talking about it. I had to happen to me, you know, you really want to Fomo in, you really want to jump in and make a purchase just based off of the chart or just based off of one person’s opinion. But you like, this is a lesson in formulating your own perspectives and your own opinions and you have to use the information around you to do so. It doesn’t mean that the other person’s wrong, it just means you have to decipher whether that’s information you want to absorb and you want to take in or whether it’s something that you don’t trust, you don’t believe it.
TB: Yeah, exactly. What is that the main thing that you wish you’d known? If you could go back in when you’re first starting out getting into this space or was there some other key lessons that you wish that you paid more focused on starting out?
Nye: I wish I kept it slow, man. I wish I kept it slower. I have no regrets to how quickly I took it because I’m here, you know, and I don’t regret anything in life, but if I had to give anyone a lesson for who’s coming into the space now, I just say take it slow, take it really slow. You know you’re going to invest money, invest a very small portion of money, play with it, traded around until you get like a little bit of a basis and an understanding of how these markets work and before we even throw any money in, learn, like learn the basics, like going back to the previous answer, just learn how bitcoin works, how it functions, what is a minor, what is a node, how do all of these things to play in and why is it relevant to the current state of what bitcoin is a cryptocurrency. I think the space has been doing a very good job over the past year or so during the crypto winter of putting out more and more content that’s easier for people to understand at a very high level and it’s just a matter of people taking the time before just jumping into the deep end because it could financially ruin them.
TB: I couldn’t agree more with that. The other thing I wanted to piggy back off of, you were saying, you know, there’s a lot of fraud in the space or whatnot. Do you have any thoughts on what’s going on with the bitcoins to Sitoshi vision?
Nye: It’s a tough situation. You know, we’ve got a guy who’s claiming to be Sitoshi who has been for lack, like, yeah, it’s just been beyond rude to the community and beyond aggressive with community members and been treating people with very little to no respect at all. It’s come to the point where he’s suing people and for talking about him on the Internet, which is pretty sad and pathetic, pathetic and petty in my opinion, and he got delisted from all the major exchanges. Now do I really have an opinion on it? Not really. You know, there’s only so many times you can hit that you can beat a dead horse. You know what I mean? Like this is something that while it did happen, like this is what lasts week. There’s just so many people talking about it and so many people tweeting about it. It’s like, okay, we get it, we get what happened. But it’s, it’s things like that. You just have to be careful of, you know, you have to be aware of, you have to decipher for yourself whether you believe him that he’s Sitoshi or whether you don’t, you know? And the fact of the matter is the guy has never been able to, to like send a any of the coins from the Sitoshi wallets to anyone, you know? And that’s one of the main ways that you can prove that he is Satoshi. But yeah, man, it’s interesting. It’s kind of cool. We see the community come together around an issue. And at the same time, I’m never really a big fan, no matter how bad or or, or perceived bad a person is. I’m never really a big fan of public humiliation and banter and things like that. Just not really my thing, but I can’t say that the guy didn’t have it come in for them.
TB: Unfortunately it comes down to people and having a degree of common sense, right? If someone’s promising you all these things and their claims seem a pretty outrageous, like it’s usually when something sounds too good to be true, it usually is. But the other end of that is common sense isn’t so common.
Nye: So that’s the thing that scares me about social media is that you can have someone like Dr. Craig Gregg come out and make all these claims and to the educated people that aren’t taking the time to actually look into his and understand what he’s saying and if it’s logical or not, they’re just going to follow him blindly. So it’s good to see the community come together in that regard.
TB: Definitely. So one thing I wanted to touch on is something that I don’t think a lot of people are talking about too much, but you’ve made this point on Twitter. There’s a lot of elderly people that are curious about what cryptocurrencies are, what investing in cryptocurrency even means, what bitcoin is and whatnot. And you’re kind of starting to go down that route a little bit, right?
Nye: Yeah. I actually went and visited my family and they live in a kind of like, it’s pretty much a country club community. They got a whole bunch of people together cause apparently whenever my mom is hanging out with her friends and my dad’s hanging out, playing golf with his friends, you know, they’re always asking how or what’s Michael Doing? Um, where’s he at, what’s he up to? And they’re always like, oh he’s working on this bitcoin thing. And they’re like, oh we know about bitcoin. We have no idea what it is. So my parents set up a whole pretty much a seminar and I spoke for two hours at this country club to like, I don’t know, 40 50 people or something like that. All about bitcoin. And then these people are all 65 and older.
TB: Did any of them have an idea of what bitcoin was before your talk on that or were they just trying to learn from ground zero?
Nye: I mean they’re still learning from ground zero but yes, some of them did. Some of them had a decent, decent basic understanding of what bitcoin is, what it does, things like that. But it’s still hard for them to understand it, you know like, and no offense to them. But these are people that like have very, like, it’s very challenging for them to use a computer. They have to call my dad all the time and they’re like, hey, can you come over? Like we don’t know how to do this thing on the computer. So explaining to them the difference between, for example, a public and private key was challenging. They didn’t understand that I could give someone my public key and they wouldn’t be able to access my funds. You know, they were like, Whoa, how does that work? I don’t, I don’t understand that. So it was very, very interesting.
Nye: It was very, it was challenging, but it was a lot of fun too. Cause I sat there for like two hours. It’s probably about 45 to an hour of me speaking and then an hour of question and answer. So I really sat with these people for about two hours and explained it and it was probably the most fun that I’ve had in the whole bitcoin space to be 100% honest with you.
TB: Well that’s really cool because it’s different for millennials. Like because we grew up with the Internet. We grew up with computers and even the younger generation, they don’t know what life was like before having a smartphone as babies, you know, they’re just consuming all this content right now. Whereas the older generation, you know, the technology might not click with them right away, but I think there are really key segment in the adoption of bitcoin because they have a lot of money right now, especially with like retirement funds and things like that. So if we’re able to help educate them, maybe that helps mass adoption to a degree.
Nye: Exactly. I mean I want to do more with the younger generation because I think that’s really where the keys live. But it was fun to do with the older generation too. I think it’s still relevant. I think it’s still important that I don’t think that we can just kick back and forget about them.
TB: What were some of the key takeaways that you gave them from that talk?
Nye: Oh Man. I mean everything from like teaching them the basics of how our financial system works and that the money in their bank account right now is worth less than it was worth yesterday. You know, it has less, has less purchasing power than, than it had yesterday. And then that’s why bitcoin was important. That’s why bitcoin was relevant and they were like, oh, okay, this is really interesting. And then when I had to explain to them, I think the key takeaway was analogies, metaphors on how to explain these things. So for example, with the private key public key round and having to explain to them the difference between a public and a private key, they were really confused. They were like, if I give you my public key, how can you not and access all my funds? And I was like, okay, think about it like this, like your public key. Think about a po box for example, like a mailbox. Your public key is the little flap in the door that opens up, I can slide mail in, but I can’t get mail out. Your private key is the thing that unlocks the mailbox and opens it up. You can go in, you can take all of your mail out. And when I explained it to them like that, they’re very familiar with po boxes and as soon as I explained it to them like that, they’re like, oh, okay, that’s relevant. That makes sense. I understand that.
TB: That’s a really awesome analogy. People need to keep making analogies like that. So it’s really easy to understand for people that aren’t so tech savvy.
Nye: Yeah, exactly. I think it’s really, really relevant and really important. And it wasn’t until like I understood that these analogies were important and that I kind of opened myself up to share that with them. They were way more receptive after they heard the analogy. Right. And, and that’s, that’s the whole goal. The goal isn’t to be like explain a really complex answer to someone. The goal is to fucking give them something that is going to be a basis for their understanding in terms of how to comprehend how this technology works. And you have to do it in layman’s terms to them. You can’t just like make an analogy that you would understand. You have to put yourself in their shoes and say where do would these people understand how this is relevant and how this is important. So that’s what I did. I put myself in their shoes. I was like, what is it? The thing that is going to teach these people this example the best. And then Po box was just immediately came to mind.
TB: No, that’s really awesome. Do you know if any of them actually took action and started learning a little bit more or even investing in this space?
Nye: Oh hell yeah. They are. One of my dad’s good friends, he not only bought the coin, but my dad owed him like $300 for like a golf round or something like that. They made some bet on the golf course and he was like, well, how about you just pay me in Bitcoin? So my dad bought $300 worth of bitcoin from Coinbase and figured out how to use a public key and sent it to him. It’s pretty fucking cool.
TB: Yeah, that’s really cool actually. It’s really encouraging to see that with a little bit of education, we can reach these people and help them, whether it’s achieve financial freedom or whatever it is, help them adapt to the changing times with blockchain technology and whatnot. That’s really awesome to hear.
Nye: Yeah, it’s super cool to witness to, man. It’s super cool to see just to kick it. And I go home very often, you know, I guess I go have dinner with my parents and hang out with them cause I fucking love my family and it’s cool to see their interest rising. The more that I get involved, you know, they can see how passionate I am about it. They’re like, why were you in Korea? It was there for bitcoin. Why were you in in Hong Kong? I would say for Bitcoin they’re like, oh wow, this is really cool and they they want to learn more. They get an inspired, they get passionate about it. It’s really just cool to witness. Fan School will be a part of here.
TB: Definitely, so what are you most excited about in the space? A lot of different things, man. I’m really excited about first about scalability, right?
Nye: I think that there’s a couple projects coming out right now that I’m really, really interested in the technology behind them to see how it scales. You know, Casper labs is one of them. I really think that what Vlad is built with the Casper labs team has the potential to solve the major problems that we see with a theory IOM that we see with EOS that we see with all of these different blockchains. A lot of them are trying to claim that they are scalable, like we haven’t really fully tested them. And then I think that what Casper labs is doing in terms of scalability is fucking massive and really, really cool. So I’m excited to see what they produce besides that. I’m really excited about VR man. I’m very excited about virtual reality and it’s kind of outside of Crypto, but it’s kind of not at the same time. These are both technologies that are very futuristic, that are probably going to lead the way into a whole new realm of things that we don’t really even understand or comprehend yet. So for example, tomorrow I’m hosting the first ever virtual reality Crypto meetup. So I’m getting in a group of people all from Twitter and other places. We’re all gonna throw a virtual reality headsets on and we’re all going to kick it in virtual reality for like an hour and we’re going to talk about crypto chill, shoot the shit, do whatever.
TB: Yeah, it’s really cool to be able to connect with people around the globe and it feels as though you guys are sitting in the same room. Well, unfortunately this episode’s going to be airing after that happens, but I’ll be sure to link to that in the show notes.
Nye: If anybody who’s listening is says, I wish I was there, which I missed out on. I mean, I’m going to host these every week or every other week. I haven’t decided yet. So there’ll be more. Just follow me on Twitter. You’ll see me tweeting about it. You’ll see me posting about and it’s going to be fucking cool. So yeah, I’m really excited to see how that turns out.
T: I also want to pick your brain a little bit about adoption of cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin in specific. Do you think that there’s any one thing that’s just going to be the trigger causes people do either Fomo in or to accumulate as much as possible or do you think this is going to continue to be a gradual thing?
Nye: It’s a good question. Um, I actually really, I sat down with a pretty big dog in a, in the tech space while I was in, in Thailand probably about a month and a half, two months ago now and we were talking about this exact thing. He said, you know, I think that the speculations over man, and I was like, I mean it might be, it might be. And he said, I think that the next time we see a large significant rise in bitcoin is when it’s necessary. I don’t disagree with him. I think there may be another run just based off a speculation. But I also do think the big, big impact rise will when there’s something in the economy that forces it to, when people become cornered into a position where they have to invest in Bitcoin or they have to learn about why bitcoin is relevant because it’s possibly the only way that they can store their value and keep it safe. It’s very similar to what’s going on in Venezuela right now. You know, right now I’m doing a podcast series on Venezuela that you guys can check out if you want on my website, evolvement.io, but it’s all about what is happening in Venezuela. Why are people turning to cryptocurrencies and how are cryptocurrencies helping people, and really the very basic way that I can put it is their currency is fluctuating so much because of inflation that could be up to 30 40 50% in a very, very short time spans that they are forced to look for other alternatives. They try to move it into the u s dollar, but sometimes it’s very challenging to get US dollars because we might look at the u s dollars as unstable. But to them it’s a very, very stable currency compared to their own. So they tried to get us dollars, but it’s, it’s hard to get US dollars in Venezuela, it’s just not that liquid there. But then they try to get bitcoin as well and dash and these sort of currencies because they are actually stores of value for these people, no matter if it fluctuates between 40,000 and $5,000 in a short time span, it’s still, it is still much more stable than their current currency.
Nye: And it stores the value much better than the boulevard. So I think when we see some relevant examples like that really occurring, people are gonna understand why bitcoin’s relevant and what’s important about it.
TB: And I think a lot of people don’t realize why bitcoin was created in the first place. Right, you started in 2008-2009 during the great recession here. And I think that once we see another hiccup in the economy like that happen over the next few years or so, people who are going to get very fearful and that emotion of fears just going to drive them to either understand or just take all of their money interesting first straight away because it’s more stable than potential hyperinflation. Like what’s going on and finish toilet right now.
Nye: Exactly. I think it’s going to be really, really challenging. It’s not a fucking light topic, you know what I mean? Every one of the interviews that I’ve done for this and I’ve done a four of them I believe so far has been heavy, heavy stuff. It’s not something to take lightly. It’s not something to joke around about it and the people who are losing their lives and they’re losing their livelihoods and their getting disconnected from their families. This is something that’s like actually really, really fucking serious, but the matter of fact is bitcoin and this technology is really, really helping people down there. Like it’s actually helping people beyond just going on finance and making a few trades and making half of a bitcoin and being like sweet and I don’t have to go to work for the next week or something like that. It’s actually following through with the proposed you use case with the reason that bitcoin was first brought about, which was to disrupt the monetary system.
Nye: It actually is doing that in Venezuela right now. So I think this is something really important. Something that people can’t ignore and shouldn’t be.
TB: They definitely shouldn’t. I mean especially when you see pictures of people walking around with barrels of money that are essentially useless. We could earn $100 down there and tomorrow it could be worth $10 with how rates are going. I mean maybe not to that degree, but still it’s crazy that money is getting devalued like that as such a rapid pace. And like you said, it’s very serious so people need to start understanding a little bit more about that. So I’m really looking forward to hearing your series about Venezuela.
Nye: Yeah, thanks. I’m excited to share. Um, I’ve done a couple of really good ones including with the dash team and, and I and a couple other economists from Venezuela. He lives there. He’s an economist there, so it’s going to be a really, really good series. I’m really stoked about it.
TB: Very cool man. Where do you see the market heading over the next few years?
Nye: Hopefully up man. Shit. Personally I think we saw the bottom in, in December. It’s definitely a very, very interesting place to be. I think there’s so much potential. Even though we’ve gone through many cycles already, I still believe that we’re early. I think we still have some growth to happen before the mainstream heads. You know, we’ve only seen like 1% adoption of this technology. If even that most speculative bubbles and when it hits like two to three to 4% adoption, I really think that the markets are going to be, hopefully very positive, but in terms of the whole industry as a whole, I think we’re going to start seeing more adoption, man.
Nye: I think we’re going to start seeing this technology actually being utilized for things. You know, we’re starting to see more and more people be open to it, whether it’s Samsung accepting this shit in their phones and then opening their phones up in the having a cryptocurrency, a engine wallet actually built in or, or whatever it might be. I think it’s really, really interesting to see what the stiff this stuff is doing and I’m excited to, to be a part of it, man.
T: Yeah, I’m really excited to see the development of cryptocurrency and bitcoin and whatnot, but I want to see how all of these other emerging technologies are gonna play into the blockchain as well. Like you said, you know with VR meetup. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with decentral land, but virtual reality like that and having a whole new world on VR where this entire ecosystem, it seems like a no brainer that it’s going to happen at some point.
Nye: I mean decentral land is fucking crazy man. Like it’s literally the fucking future. You know what I’m saying? It’s like super, super cool. That’s why I’m really interested in in non fungible tokens and things like that and the audience doesn’t know what that is. Like a nonfunctional tokens pretty much buying a digital piece of land. That’s an example. But yeah, I’m like really, really interested in that stuff because I recently bought a Vr headset and put it on and immediately I was like, holy fucking shit. This is the future. How have I not been a part of this yet? And ever since then I’ve just been on top of it.
TB: Yeah. The first experience I had with that was probably about like a year, year and a half ago. My buddy has his high tech VR set up and he puts me on it and he played the trailer to the movie IT and I thought I was going to s**t my pants to be honest with you, like it seems so realistic. Like it felt like the clown was literally right there and at one point it feels like you’re floating upwards and a balloon pops and then you literally feel like you’re dropping because all of your senses are being overtaken. So it’s just wild to see how quickly this technology really is developing.
Nye: Yeah, it’s awesome man. Yesterday I took like another day, but it took like half the day off, like a quarter of the day off and I literally just put my Vr headset on and I was like, I’m tired. I’ve been working super hard. I’m going to watch a fucking movie. So I watched like Hercules or something and it was like literally like I felt like I was like in the fucking movie. It was so cool. I love it.
TB: The only thing that scares me about that though world of Warcraft with people who are just living in their computers, eventually living in Vr and like not moving or interacting in the physical world, which is kind of scary to think about.
Nye: That will be more connected in one sense, but not really to another degree. It’s definitely questionable and that aspect. But I also think the matter of fact is like reality is still cool and it’s still cooler than virtual reality. Like I don’t give a shit if you fucking put me in an alien spaceship. And I’m like fighting people in space, like reality is still cooler to me than any virtual reality will ever fucking be. And I think there’s going to be people that disagree with that and they want to spend more time in virtual reality, but then it’s going to be a lot of people that also agree with that and say, you know what? Like spending time with my family and spending time with my girlfriend, my loved ones, whoever that might be. That’s more important to me than creating a whole virtual reality life. And I think that’ll always, always trump whatever is happening in any digital world.
TB: Yeah. It’s just scary because some people don’t want to cope with reality or particular situations that they’re going through and they look for escaped, whether it’s drugs or things like that. And I feel like the next step, it might be virtual reality because they’re kind of getting away from all their problems in the real world.
Nye: Maybe man, maybe, who knows? It brings up bigger underlying issues. You know, if people want to escape from reality, whether there’s virtual reality or not, they’re going to find a way to escape from it. It’s not necessarily about virtual reality itself, but more about the uh, emotional state of those human beings are on.
TB: So I know we’re running out of time here. So last question is, what’s one key takeaway that you hope listeners take from this interview and how can they better prepare themselves for the future?
Nye: If you’re new to crypto at all, just be patient with it. Just take it slow. Learn as much as you can and be fucking patient. If you’re investing as well. Be patient. There’s too many people joining into the industry who want to get rich overnight, who think buying bitcoin and then buying XYZ Shitcoin is gonna make them super fucking rich and next week they’ll have their Lamborghinis or whatever it is they want. Right? There’s too many people who think like that. I was one of those people that thought like that. At one point I was trading around coins trying to make money as quickly as possible. Uh, it’ll end up getting you wrecked. You’ll end up losing a lot of time. You won’t get that time back and you just gotta take it patiently. There’s rewards here for everyone. You’ve got to find out where you fit in the industry, where you can give the most value to the industry and how you want to be involved.
TB: Yeah, it’s a big degree of it is understanding like your individual risk tolerance and what you feel comfortable investing in. I always try and recommend people to dollar average cost into it to take it slow and kind of learned along the way as well. So I definitely agree with that.
Nye: Love it. Well, I appreciate you having me on, dude.
TB: Yeah, man, it’s been a pleasure. So how can listeners learn a little bit more about the podcast and if they want to get connected with you?
Nye: If you want to check out the podcast, go to evolvement.io. It’s evolvement.io. If you want to connect with me, head over to Twitter. I’m Mr. Michael Nye on Twitter and a, you can tweet me, send me a message, do whatever. I’m, usually pretty damn responsive as long as I see it. Yeah, that’s pretty much it.
TB: All right. Awesome, man. Thanks so much for taking the time. Uh, we’ll have to do this again some time to see what else are you working on.
Nye: Definitely, man, I appreciate you having me.
Outro: That’s all for this episode. If you haven’t already, please subscribe, share, and leave a five star review for the show. Visit www.dyorpodcast.com for access to previous episodes and other useful content that will help you along your cryptocurrency journey. See you in the next episode. Yeah.
