The Stories We Tell About Money

UNSCRYPTED
 
Episode 2: The Stories We Tell About Money
Andreas M. Antonopoulos is a best-selling author, speaker, educator, and one of the world’s foremost bitcoin and open blockchain experts.

Follow on Twitter: @aantonop
Website: https://aantonop.com/

In “The Stories We Tell About Money,” Andreas recounts the history of Bitcoin and what it represents, building upon all the stories we've been told over the centuries about what "money" is, how we perceive its value, and why the old answers have changed as we adjust to this new world of digital peer-to-peer currencies. In the previous episode, “Introduction to Bitcoin,” he talked about what Bitcoin is and why it is special. Now he also discusses global threats to economic stability and trust in the traditional financial system, including demonetisation and wealth destruction through inflation, which will be explored further in “The Currency Wars.”

This talk took place on March 26th, 2017 at the JW Marriott Sahar International Airport in Mumbai, India.

This series is called ‘Unscrypted’ for a reason: all of Andreas’ talks are performed without slides or notes. You can find any necessary corrections and clarifications in the podcast description.

Credits: The narration for this episode was done by Stephanie Murphy. Production support from Erica and Jessica. Video editing by Adrian Tano. Sound editing by Dimitris Angelidis of Sampi Media. Logo design by Davi Barker. The music is called “Unbounded” by Orfan.



iTUNES: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-stories-we-tell-about-money/id1482850426?i=1000454607620

CORRECTIONS:

At 1:44, Andreas says “this all started on January 3rd 2009 with the simultaneous publication of a paper,” referencing Bitcoin’s whitepaper. Bitcoin’s whitepaper, written by Satoshi Nakamoto, was actually published on October 31st (or November 1st, in some timezones) of 2008. January 3rd was the date of the genesis block being mined, the start of the Bitcoin blockchain.

At 38:26, Andreas talks about how a 2% inflation rate sounds innocuous to most people, because they can’t project the effect of that rate year-on-year in the long term. He says that a 2.2% inflation rate will result in 50% of the value or spending power of your savings being lost over a period of 10 years. The loss of spending power is actually closer to 25%.

At 43:45, he also says, “In 2000, [about] 90% of the companies were wiped out in a single stock market wash-out,” referring to the dot-com crash. However, according to professors from the University of Maryland and University of California, about “48 percent of dot-com companies founded since 1996 were still around in late 2004, more than four years after the Nasdaq’s peak in March 2000,” though at much lower valuations.

[Note from ANDREAS: In this talk I foolishly attempted to improvise math in my head while delivering the talk. I am not very good at math. Turns out I am even worse at improv-math. None of my bad math changes the point I was making. Ssssh! Don’t tell anyone I suck at improv-math.]

ORIGINAL VIDEO:
"The Stories We Tell About Money" - https://youtu.be/ONvg9SbauMg
PREVIOUS EPISODE:

"Introduction to Bitcoin" - https://aantonop.com/introduction-to-bitcoin/

NEXT EPISODE:
"Forkology: A Study of Forks for Newbies" - https://aantonop.com/forkology/
SUPPORT:

Want early-access to talks? Monthly live Q&As with Andreas? Become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/aantonop

BOOKS:

MASTERING BITCOIN, 2nd Edition: https://amzn.to/2xcdsY9

THE INTERNET OF MONEY, v1: https://amzn.to/2ykmXFs

Audiobook: https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Internet-of-Money-Audiobook/B071KXKQD7