What is Bitcoin?

Andrew Rappaport's Rapp Report

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Each CertiPro painter's business is independently owned and operated. Every person listening to this who is in ministry and responsible for the use of funds in ministry needs to be thinking about how to create an off -ramp, an exit door out of the system right now where you can be squeezed and choked and to be able to get out of that and take the wealth that you have, the funds that God has given to you and put them into a system that cannot be hacked, it cannot be stolen, it cannot be squeezed, it's anonymous, it's secretive.

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That's where the entire Christian community needs to be thinking in terms of protecting the wealth and protecting economically their ministry.

01:38

Wrap Report with your host, Andrew Rapoport, where we provide Biblical interpretation and application.

01:44

This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

01:53

All right, well, welcome to another edition of the Wrap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rapoport.

02:00

I'm joined with my friend here, Pastor Jim Osmond from Kootenai Community Church.

02:06

Jim, how are you? I'm doing well, Andrew. Thanks for having me on. Good. Thanks for giving me the privilege of being here and co -hosting with you.

02:11

I'm assuming that Bud is going to be back in the seat soon. I keep asking him, and he's like saying, but I like Jim.

02:18

I want to torture him more. You know, it hasn't been as difficult to replace him as I thought it would be. I asked him if he's heard some of the digs you give to him, and he said, no,

02:28

I skipped right over that. So I mentioned this on Paul Jack's Live, Jim, but I didn't mention it here.

02:36

But I had gotten a phone call at the ministry, and a lady called up, and she wanted some help with ordering something from the ministry.

02:44

And so she calls up, and then as we're talking, she says she listens to the podcast. And jokingly,

02:51

I said something about the podcast putting her to sleep. And she was like, oh, oh, because she said she listens to it at night.

02:56

And she didn't catch the coupon code when we were running a discount for the What Do We Believe book.

03:02

And so she called to find out what the code was. So I said, oh, I guess I put you to sleep.

03:07

And she says, oh, no, it's worse than that. I'm like, worse than putting you to sleep? She goes, oh, yeah. I have to put on either you or Matt Slick on a loop.

03:16

Otherwise, my dog doesn't go to sleep. My dog has to hear one of your voices to be able to sleep.

03:22

She goes, in fact, my dog's hearing you on the speakerphone and is wagging his tail and all excited right now. And I'm like, great.

03:27

I can put your dog to sleep. What wonderful news. That's good. Of course,

03:33

I waited until Matt was on with me on Paul Jack's Live to tell him that story. I figured that's better than calling his radio show and doing it.

03:39

That would be a little more embarrassing, probably. So in case you think that this podcast isn't good for anything, you now know it's good for putting people and dogs to sleep.

03:51

So there you go. But I don't think this episode is going to do that. Now, folks, to let you know, this episode is going to be different than what we usually do.

04:02

As you know, we've been going through a series on what do we believe. And as we've been doing that, we've been talking theology.

04:08

Sometimes we have people that we interview. This is going to be—we're going to be joined by another podcast.

04:14

And it's another group from the Christian Podcast Community. It's called Bitcoin and the Bible. And I'm going to have them introduce themselves so you get to know each of their voices.

04:23

But what we're doing is we want to talk about the issues of money, of Bitcoin, how do you set it up, things like that.

04:31

We plan to do two episodes, so this week and next week. And I think that what you'll find is that there's lots of talk of things of cryptocurrency and Bitcoin, and people have no clue what it is.

04:44

It just seems like this mystical thing that is out there that no one has any idea how it works, and that makes everyone nervous with it.

04:52

And therefore, everyone just kind of avoids it. Let's not talk about it. Let's not think about it. Because it's not that paper that I have in my hand that, well, is losing value day by day.

05:02

But, hey, don't worry. If you keep printing more of it, we've been told that if we keep printing more of it, that will prevent inflation.

05:10

Now, maybe it's me, Jim. I always thought it was when we print more of it that actually creates the inflation.

05:16

But, hey— It does, yes. Yeah, I mean, in 2022— It's not a bug, Andrew. It's a feature. Yeah. Look, 2022, it's just—did you ever have, like, opposite day when you went to school where everything was opposite?

05:32

Yeah. It's opposite year. Like, everything we hear from the media, the opposite is what's true. Yeah, it's been opposite day since 1984, and I use that term advisedly.

05:43

I was joking with Matt Slick once, and I sent him a text saying, let's make 1984 fiction again.

05:49

And he's like, I gotta get a t -shirt that says that. I'm like, can you picture just walking around town with a t -shirt? Let's make 1984 fiction again.

05:56

Yeah. Unfortunately, the liberals wouldn't even get the joke. They'd be like, what's 1984?

06:02

What was with that year? Were you born that year or something? So let's bring in the guys from Bitcoin in the

06:09

Bible. And folks, if you want to check out Bitcoin in the Bible, all you gotta do is, if you go to christianpodcastcommunity .org,

06:15

under the shows, you'll see Bitcoin in the Bible. They're in season three, which means you guys got some catching up to do.

06:22

And this is actually—let me say this before they start speaking—is their podcast is good content. Otherwise, we wouldn't have allowed them on.

06:28

But it's done in such a way where I really don't often tell you guys that there's a podcast you should binge, meaning you go back to the beginning and listen to all of them.

06:39

This is one of them. And the reason I suggest that is because so much of what they teach builds upon what they said in previous episodes.

06:47

And so they build a foundation and then work off of that foundation. So it's really good to start with episode one and go through all of them.

06:56

There's not that many right now, so you can catch up quickly. It's kind of like, you know, you can listen to all of theirs or one

07:03

James White's dividing line. You know, mega -dividing line, you know. So, Simon, I'll let you start off and you guys introduce yourselves.

07:11

Well, thanks, Andrew. It's really great to be here. And I really appreciate you and Jim and all that you do. And we're just really excited to be a part of the

07:17

Christian Podcast Community. We really enjoyed our first three seasons of Bitcoin in the Bible. We're looking forward to continuing to love

07:24

God's people by sharing what we know and what we've learned and what we're continually adding to our knowledge base to encourage them.

07:31

That God provides for his people. I was just thinking of that scripture passage when Abraham takes

07:37

Isaac out into the wilderness and offers the sacrifice. And Isaac's question for him is just kind of a natural question.

07:43

Like, well, where's the sacrifice, right? And Abraham's answer to him is, well, God will provide. And I think that that's the best way to think about Bitcoin right now is to look around and recognize that God has provided for us richly.

07:55

And that's the heart of our podcast is to encourage the Christians in our lives and around the world with the message that God has provided for them.

08:03

And just to give you a little counterpoint, I was just talking today with one of our newest listeners who just found the podcast last week.

08:10

He actually found it useful to keep him awake. He was binge listening on a drive, a three -hour drive that ended at two o 'clock in the morning.

08:18

And he told me he was really thankful that our content was so compelling that it kept him awake. Yeah, I guess you and I are in the same reading plan because I just read that this morning in my devotions, that passage.

08:30

So Dave, how about you? So people can know your voice. Yeah, Andrew and Jim, it's a pleasure to be on with you guys.

08:38

And I just have the opportunity to talk about what is money and how does it work? Why is

08:43

Bitcoin a superior money, particularly at this stage in world history when there is definitely a great reset happening?

08:51

It's no longer a conspiracy idea. It's mainstream. It's underway. So a lot of the conversations that we were having privately and offline a year ago or so, we said, hey, what do you think about the idea of trying to podcast and seeing if others might benefit from that?

09:09

And so we've been really gratified with the number of people who have responded affirmatively. And even around the world, it's been kind of amazing the responses that have come in from various parts of the world.

09:21

And so with this great reset underway, the transition that's happening, I think it's incumbent upon the church to really understand these things and put themselves in a position to thrive going forward.

09:33

And Will. Yeah, it's great to be here. Thanks for having us on. I think extending what

09:38

David was saying, just this podcast has been an amazing resource for myself as I talk to people and am able to refer them back to episodes where, hey, we actually spent an hour talking about that.

09:50

You can go check this episode out and listen, and that's been super helpful. And it's just been amazing to be able to have these conversations to cut through the fog.

09:58

As you were mentioning, Andrew, there's so many people who haven't the faintest idea about any of these things.

10:04

They've tried not to think about it. It's scary. They hear and fall for marketing hype all the time.

10:10

And to be able to sit down and have these clear, concise, cogent conversations and cut through that and help people really understand why, what is it, what differentiates it from other things has been,

10:22

I think, a blessing in my own life. And I know that I've heard from others that it has been a blessing in theirs as well.

10:28

Yeah. And so folks know the three of you are related to one another, right? So Dave, you've been a pastor for many years, retired.

10:37

You're kind of the Bible guy. You're the one with the background in the Bible. Your son here, Will, you're kind of the technical guy.

10:45

You have the good handle on how this all works. If I remember correctly, you've actually went through the blockchain yourself.

10:53

We'll have to explain what that is later, but actually went through and checked that on your own. So you got some computer skills.

10:58

And then Simon is, David, your son -in -law, and he's kind of the podcast guy. He's the one that you guys dump everything on.

11:05

You guys just talk about your expertise and you dump everything on him and let him go. That's how that works, right, Simon?

11:11

I'm the janitor. I just clean up after these guys. Everything they say wrong, they leave it to you to edit out.

11:17

And I do have to say, so this is really—I want to give you guys a quick opportunity. If there's anything you'd want to correct your pastor on,

11:25

I mean, anything you want to say negative about him. I mean, now would be a great time. By the way, who's your pastor?

11:32

Some guy by the name of Jim Osmond. I don't know if you've heard of him. Yeah, that name sounds familiar.

11:38

I think he wrote a book. Oh, that's right. He did write a book. He's written more than one, but he's always shilling them somewhere.

11:45

Let me ask you, does he stand up at the pulpit holding up God Doesn't Whisper while he preaches? No. No, he actually has it taped to the pulpit, so it's like he doesn't have to hold it up.

11:53

He goes out of his way to not shill. Yeah, I know. So for folks to know that you guys attend church up at Kootenai Community Church, and so you guys are blessed with having

12:06

Jim's preaching every week. And so I want to get into first—I'll direct this,

12:11

Dave, to you a bit. When we talk about currency, there's something you had said that the issue is most people don't even understand currency.

12:18

And before we started recording, I started sharing with you, I want to say fifth, maybe sixth grade, I remember a video that—it was like this extended view.

12:27

It was like one of these ones where the teacher didn't want to actually teach for two months and just played a video. But I still remember it.

12:32

It was trying to explain currency. And it was like, okay, barter system. Someone is a carpenter, someone's a farmer, a blacksmith.

12:40

How do they find equal value in something? They would start by sharing things, but a blacksmith isn't going to share a horseshoe because that's of no value.

12:48

And so they start sharing corn because that's something that everyone—it had some stability, and it could last for a little while, some durability, and then it could be shared, and X number of corns on the cob would be worth this work, that work.

13:02

But then they realized that corn was breaking down over time for those who tried to save it, so they had to move to something that would be based in corn to then be able to have that same value.

13:13

Of course, back then, I'm old enough where they still talked about a gold standard.

13:19

They talked about them moving to a gold standard, and I know the generation now probably doesn't even—there's not even talk of a gold standard.

13:26

But talked about moving to something that was durable, that could last, that had all these values or qualities, and then could be traded and have a value in it.

13:36

And that really was helpful in understanding, okay, how does currency work and things? But for most people, you're right, they have no concept of currency.

13:48

No biblical understanding of why do we even have money? What does money do for us? How should we view money?

13:54

Could you help us out with some of that, just with what—I'll ask the broad question, what is currency?

14:00

Sure, thank you. I think I would begin, actually, I would begin at the very beginning in Genesis, that God created

14:08

Adam and Eve, placed them in a garden, gave them a job to do, which was to tend his garden, and thus work is built into the human condition.

14:18

It is a good and noble thing given by God. And the fruit of our work, the fruit of our labor, we can trade with one another, because no one is self -sufficient.

14:28

And so a barter system is the trading of the product of one's labor, and it begins, but it has all kinds of limitations, as you mentioned with the horseshoe and so forth.

14:38

It's kind of hard to make change if you're a blacksmith, and if you need to find somebody who needs your product and wants your product now, rather than six months from now, and so forth.

14:47

So it didn't take, you know, the human population very long to figure out that they needed some sort of medium of exchange.

14:55

And I think that's what money begins with, is a medium of exchange. It's a way to facilitate trade with one another, and thus that increases the prosperity of a society.

15:07

It is a rising tide that goes with trade. And so overall, society prospers.

15:13

The more sound the money system is, the more easily it facilitates trade with one another.

15:19

And so from the very beginning, chapters of Genesis, we see that. They latched onto things like cattle and gold and silver and so forth, but that's long, that's hundreds and hundreds of years before coinage was developed.

15:34

So it was, and that's why the Bible talks about weights and measures. These things were weighed out. And the

15:39

Bible says that God cares about such things, that he wants honest weights and measures, that all the weights of the bag are his concern.

15:45

And so God has a concern for commerce. He wants, he's honest, he wants his people to be honest. That system operated worldwide for a very long time.

15:54

It was more formalized, and now we're fast forwarding thousands of years, but it was more formalized into a gold standard, whereby the world naturally migrated towards the best money, the hardest money, the money that had a very limited supply.

16:13

Because obviously, if you're trying to store your labor and money for future purchases, if somebody is creating more of it constantly, that dilutes the effects of your labor over time.

16:24

And that's really what inflation is. And so gold, it's indestructible, it's limited in supply, and thus it creates the idea of a store of value and so forth.

16:35

Its purity is reasonably easy to determine. And so gold became kind of a base layer money of the world economy.

16:44

And the technological advancement that layered on top of that, really was the paper money system that all of us have grown up in.

16:54

We haven't known anything else. We've not been alive when the dollar was exchangeable for gold coinage, which it was up until the 1930s.

17:04

So moving from gold, I mean, gold is heavy, it's hard to move, it's expensive, it's subject to confiscation or robbery or whatever.

17:12

And so the ability to move paper money, which were really just claim checks on gold, the gold was stored with the goldsmiths who became bankers and they would issue paper receipts.

17:24

And so you could carry a fistful of paper receipts in your pocket. You could exchange it for goods and services because people knew they could always go to the bank and hand in their piece of paper and then they could have the gold coinage anytime they wanted it.

17:37

Well, that was just too lucrative for anybody to let go for very long. And so they started printing more receipts for the gold than the actual gold existed.

17:44

And the basic idea was nobody's going to come all at the same time and ask for all the gold back. And that's how the system operated.

17:53

And probably the next advancement, I guess, would be beyond paper. Because paper money now is just really a small fraction of the world's money supplies.

18:03

So it's electronic, digital money. We're all using digital money. Every time you take a piece of plastic out of your wallet, you're creating digital money.

18:12

The money now, they've moved off of the gold standard. Money now is borrowed into creation.

18:18

So what backs the money is debt. And so money is really just a claim on a debt obligation from someone else.

18:25

So whenever the commercial banks make a loan, they create money. Whenever the government issues its treasury bonds and the

18:32

Federal Reserve buys them, that creates money. And so you have this edifice of growing debt and growing money.

18:39

And that's the predicament we find ourselves in now where the debt has spiraled out of control.

18:45

It cannot be repaid. And there's going to need to be some sort of a reset and a new monetary system.

18:50

And here's where we are. So, David, would you say concerning currency that in order for something to be a medium of exchange, the value of that medium has to be agreed upon by both parties?

19:03

So, for instance, if you and I, if I grow apples and you grow cows and I want to trade you apples for beef, but we decide to use something else other than a one -to -one, peer -to -peer trade of directly those commodities, we both have to agree that gold is valuable to both of us.

19:18

Otherwise, I would never give up my apples to somebody for gold and then turn around and try and give my gold to you if you don't value gold or if I don't value gold.

19:27

So, really, everybody has to value the medium of exchange in order for it to function as money, correct?

19:32

Yes, in a free market system, that's exactly right. And so that people will just naturally flow towards the thing that satisfies the principles of money, a store of value long term, right?

19:43

A medium of exchange and those kinds of ideas has to be divisible, has to be recognizable, just, you know, the basic characteristics of money.

19:52

And historically, lots of things have been used. And the problem with all of them is that they leaked too much.

19:59

They weren't a closed system. And so eventually gold was the best closed system that was available at the time, but people have figured out how to create leaks in that one too.

20:11

Even when you think about 1940s in Germany, and I don't know how much you guys had studied this, but when the

20:19

Jewish people were taken into the, before the concentration camps, they were first put into the ghettos. And in the ghettos, yeah, you had people that they were forced in, they took whatever valuables they could take.

20:29

And it was interesting. One of the things that came out of it is people took like gold and jewelry and things like that, but in the ghetto, that had no value.

20:40

Pots, pans, clothing, that's what mattered. All of a sudden the currency changed.

20:45

It changed from the German mark and the gold to being things that they needed that the

20:51

Germans weren't going to provide, that they needed to live. And all of a sudden the currency changed very quickly.

20:57

And those that had all the money and the gold and they thought that was the value suddenly found themselves on the poor end of things because they didn't have the stuff that people needed to trade with.

21:08

Sure, absolutely. Inside of a prison, gold is not the means of exchange. It's cigarettes or drugs.

21:16

I mean, if you were shipwrecked on a desert island in private coconuts, you can't eat gold.

21:22

So it's whatever the society agrees to. As Jim said, he's got apples,

21:28

I've got cattle. We've got to agree on something. It could be shoes. It could be really many kinds of things that would be able to do that.

21:37

Will, what are your thoughts? I think what we're driving at is that money does not have intrinsic value.

21:44

So money is an emergent property. It's a technology. And so in whatever circumstance, in whatever culture, in whatever society, in whatever time, that thing which best represents all of the characteristics of money is the best money.

21:57

So in the ghettos, if the gold and the jewelry is not desired, it's not fulfilling that medium of exchange, that store of value, there's a superior money at the time.

22:07

Now, I would say if those ghettos persisted for hundreds of years and you would probably see a revert to the main and you would see if gold had been reselected once things had stabilized.

22:16

So in the short term, it didn't work. But over the long term, it would have regained its prominence. But we need to recognize and clarify in our minds that money is not valuable because it has intrinsic value.

22:29

Money is the only good in the economy that you want more of, not for its own sake. You don't want money because you want money.

22:36

You want money because money is the flexibility to acquire other goods and services in the economy.

22:41

Yeah, for what it can do for you. Exactly. David talked about gold being a form of money.

22:46

We have obviously paper money now or paper currency now that everybody agrees is valuable, or at least we exchange this, and it has no intrinsic value, as Will was saying.

22:56

But gold has certain limitations that paper money or even digital money overcomes.

23:02

Gold has certain things that make it less desirable than other means in certain circumstances.

23:08

So can you guys maybe describe or speak to that? Go ahead, Simon. Yeah, you go back to Genesis, and you think about the relationship between money and work, and you remember that money is a way to transmit your energy, to take the energy that you put into your work and your productive output and to share it or to buy with it, right, to buy from someone else.

23:26

But the other function of money is to be the store of value, and the function of gold that gold does really well is that gold stores value over time really, really well.

23:36

It holds its purchasing power well over time because the supply of it is so difficult, right? Really, what money is showing you is that people choose the resource or the entity that produces the most work to create.

23:50

It takes a lot of work to mine gold out of the ground, and there are a lot of unsuccessful gold mines out there that add to that work.

23:57

And so you can rest assured that when you work hard and then exchange your time and energy for gold, that that gold will hold that purchasing power well over time.

24:08

But what gold does horribly well is transmit value over space, right?

24:13

It's really difficult to pay somebody on the East Coast with your gold bars in your pocket, and that's really that issue that gold ran into that fiat currencies, currencies that were decreed into existence by central banks and governments around the world solves, is the ability to basically offer paper -based or digital

24:33

IOUs that allow you to transmit value over time. The issue with those currencies becomes the reality that when the supply of the currency is not limited, not finite, controllable by a centralized entity or by the debt that can be used to back it, that you can't hold value over time any longer.

24:53

So you're left with this conundrum. My money is either really valuable over time, gold, or it's really valuable over space, fiat, but it's not both.

25:03

And that's really why we are so excited about Bitcoin is we finally have arrived at a money that can hold its value well over both space and time and preserve ultimately the work of the person who bought it rather than stealing it from him.

25:17

I would love to see you exchange a bar of gold that you have in your pocket. When we as Christians, we see in scripture, the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.

25:33

And so what I've noticed is that Christians have a certain view of money. One, like, money is evil.

25:40

And they forget that it's the love of money. But there's also a thing where what I find a lot is people who— what they end up doing is viewing, like, the televangelists and people like that that want money for themselves.

25:55

And then as Christians, it's like, oh, we shouldn't talk about money. We shouldn't look to—especially if you're in ministry.

26:03

I know this as someone who's in ministry. People are like, oh, well, you shouldn't have money. I actually was in a church where they said, we're bringing in a new pastor, and one of the deacons said, well, it's our job to keep him humble, so we shouldn't pay him very much.

26:18

No, no, that's the Holy Spirit's job. But this is a mindset that many Christians have. So let me ask you guys,

26:25

I mean, what should be the Christian's view toward money? Is it an evil? Is it good? Is it okay to seek to earn money?

26:34

Money is a morally neutral technology. It's a storage bucket, a mechanism to set aside your labor, right?

26:42

And so we know labor is good. We can deduce that very easily from the creation narrative.

26:47

And there's plenty of New Testament, you know, work heartily unto the Lord and so forth. So money is the means and mechanism of storing your labor, storing, as Simon referred to, your energy that you've plowed into your work.

27:01

And so it's the greed that causes one to love money. That is what the

27:06

Bible is criticizing, right? But the technology itself is merely the means to say, hey, I worked yesterday and that labor,

27:14

I don't need it until next year. And so how do I hang on to it so that I don't have to live hand to mouth day by day by day, trying to earn enough each day for whatever might come my way?

27:27

Money gives me that ability to store it. And think about the biblical precedents, right? Abraham, Genesis 13, verse 2, was very rich in livestock and silver and gold.

27:37

Isaac, Job, Solomon, right? You can go down the list, right? God calls some of those men very righteous, says that they walked with God, right?

27:45

So we are honestly compelled to believe that God has given us the capacity as intelligent human beings, exercising dominion over the earth that he has created us to rule over, that we can use the money that he has allowed us to choose freely in a way that honors and glorifies him, just like the patriarchs did.

28:04

So I want to go back to something you guys said earlier, because I think that a lot of people listening to this would have been tracking with you for a period of time as you talked about what money is, how it functions, and they understand store value over time, store value over space, all that's good, medium of exchange that we both agree upon.

28:19

And then you said that Bitcoin is money. And that's a leap that I think a lot of people are going to say, okay, what do you mean it's money?

28:26

I have never exchanged Bitcoin for anything, and you can't put Bitcoin in my hand.

28:32

I can't hand it to you. I can understand how gold is money. I can understand how fiat paper is money.

28:37

I can understand how corn and apples and beef and shoes and pearls and beads and rocks and seashells and coconuts can become money because I can hold all of those.

28:46

But how can you tell me that Bitcoin is money? Bitcoin is just zeros and ones in the ether, and I don't even agree on its value with anybody else.

28:54

How does that function as money, and how is it better money than fiat or gold? How does it function in that way when

29:01

I can't hold it in my hand? And also with that, if you could define some terms, like what is fiat?

29:07

What is, when people talk cryptocurrency, what's Bitcoin? Define those, because remember, some people, this is the first time they're hearing these terms where they might have heard the terms but have no idea what it is.

29:18

It went over their head, and they have no concept of it. And that's really the thing of what Jim's saying.

29:23

You can't put it in your hand, so people just want to ignore it and say we can't comprehend it. Maybe we can back our way into this.

29:29

So the present system that we operate under, we call it a fiat system, meaning that the money that is used is required by the various governments to be the means by which you pay your taxes.

29:42

So they require you to pay your taxes in this local currency. Therefore, they have decreed it to be the currency.

29:48

That's a mechanism and the force by which they execute their fiat. But it's all debt -based money.

29:55

In other words, if you go to buy a house, you go to the bank and you want to buy a house and you borrow half a million dollars to buy a house, the bank doesn't go to the vault and open it up and pull out paper totaling with ones and zeros totaling up to half a million dollars.

30:10

They make an entry on a computer, and half a million dollars springs into existence, and it is created as a loan that you owe, and it's transferred to the account of the guy with the house, and he hands you the house.

30:23

It's moved in the ether. It's merely ones and zeros, and if you look around, and the average bloke probably hasn't got 30 bucks in paper in his wallet.

30:34

What he's got is pieces of plastic, or he's got a bank statement. Even that's probably online that represents that he has money, but you can't touch any of it.

30:43

It doesn't exist. Go to the bank. Try to draw out. Tell them you want $10 ,000, and they'll tell you to go away and come back.

30:48

They don't have it. We're already in a world in which money has been dematerialized.

30:55

That happened a long time ago, and the reason it happened was to facilitate trade. It's virtually impossible to move around large quantities of gold, and so the technological improvement, of course, was the banking system and the ability to transact through that intermediary, and the computer improvement upon that used to be paper ledger.

31:17

The computer improvement now is that it's all ones and zeros, and the trade has moved around that way.

31:22

But the important thing, I think, to recognize is that with gold, and Simon referred to this, there's a lot of energy and effort and capital that has gone into the mining and coinage of gold, and that's all in the past.

31:37

It's all invested in the gold. It doesn't require anything new to happen in order for its value to be taken back out of it, but in the debt money system, all money now is backed up by a promise of future performance, and so what we've done is we are reaching into the future for the future's prosperity, and we are importing it into the present, and we're using that to secure our money, and that creates a spiraling problem, obviously, because you've got to reach deeper and deeper into the future as you continue to pull money into the present.

32:10

Bitcoin, the process by which Bitcoin springs into existence, and William can explain it very eloquently, but is likened unto gold in that all of the capital and all of the energy has been invested into it for it to be created.

32:26

Nothing new has to happen in order for its value to be able to be pulled back out of it, and so it very much is likened unto gold as a true, and what people would call sound or hard money.

32:39

Yeah, and before we get to, you know, because William, it'd be really good for you to explain really what, when we talk about Bitcoin and a blockchain and this technology, it's a lot for folks to try to understand.

32:51

I want to get into that, but, you know, Jim, there is something I kind of realize, though. I now know why Bitcoin and the

32:57

Bible, they don't have the sponsorship that we have here at, you know, Wrap Report, because obviously they don't need a sponsorship with MyPillow because they keep their people awake.

33:08

Maybe that's the problem. Maybe because we're sponsored by MyPillow, we're putting everyone to sleep with good pillows.

33:14

That must be what it is, Jim. No, that's not it. That's not it. They don't store gold bullion in their mattresses, so they don't need a pillow top mattress cover in order to sleep well at night.

33:24

That could be, that could be. But I bet if they did store the gold bullion in their mattress or in their pillow, if it's a

33:32

MyPillow, that they're putting it under on top of the gold, they probably could get a good night's sleep because that's how good

33:39

MyPillow pillows actually are. And so if you doubt it, my suggestion is go try one.

33:44

I actually reached out to MyPillow because I love their product so much. Well, I had to actually, I had their pillow.

33:50

Now I've tried their mattress topper, a lot of their other products. Their slippers are great. I love their products.

33:57

They're durable, kind of like what we're talking about with currency. Maybe we could trade pillows. But mine has got to be like 10, 12 years old now.

34:06

Still works as good. I had gotten a new one, and mine that's 10 years old is just as good, just as fluffy as the one

34:14

I got recently. So it's really an amazing product. Helps me get a good night of sleep.

34:20

If you want to get and try their products, go to MyPillow .com and use promo code

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34:35

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34:41

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34:48

And because you use that promo code, you're also supporting this ministry. So we thank you very much.

34:54

Now for people to wake back up, and go to William. So William, when we talk about Bitcoin, I mean, this is for many people.

35:03

It goes over the head. I have been talking in recent, say, six months to a year about cryptocurrency, what it is, and Bitcoin.

35:11

And the number one reaction I get is, I can't comprehend this. So could you break this down for us?

35:18

Is there an easy way to understand this? I hope so. I think let's circle back real quick, just to kind of frame the discussion a little bit.

35:27

Let's circle back to where Simon was taking us, where we have gold that is a great store of value over time.

35:34

And fiat currency was invented, which is a great medium of exchange over space. And each other have their fatal flaws, right?

35:42

Gold doesn't exchange well over space. Fiat doesn't exchange well over time. So the technological improvement of a fiat standard, moving on to the fiat standards, you can marry the two, right?

35:52

So if I can issue this fiat currency on top of gold, then I can gain paper currency and digital currencies, ability to move quickly.

36:01

But because gold is hard to produce, and I'm tying this fiat currency to gold,

36:06

I gain, I can inherit the gold's durability over time. It's store of value.

36:13

So what happened? What's the problem with that? Well, the problem with that is that that relationship, that marriage between the two is based on trust.

36:22

The trust is that they won't make more paper currency than there is gold, right? We have to trust that they're going to constrain themselves.

36:29

Well, they would never do that. I mean, Joe Biden would never think of doing something like that, would he?

36:34

And so that's the thing is that presuppositionally, as believers, we believe that men are sinful and wicked and depraved.

36:42

And then we turn around and say, let's construct a monetary system where we're going to trust that no one's going to ever turn around and do a sick, depraved thing like steal people's time by insulating the monetary supply.

36:53

It's obvious what's going to happen. Anyone with half a brain can look at it and say, this is horribly dangerous. And that's why the founding fathers worried about such and wrote about such a system being a horrible thing.

37:03

So hypothetically, let's say we could design a system that would retain the durability over time, the store of value aspects of gold, but would have the medium of exchange functionality of a modern fiat currency, the ability to move it over great distance with the stroke of a keyboard.

37:23

Okay, well, that would be cool. So then what would that imply? Well, if we try to base the durability on something physical, right?

37:33

We try to say, okay, let's back this digital currency with gold. Well, how can I verifiably for sure, trustlessly know that there's not more of these digital things than there is physical gold.

37:46

I can't. Digital things inherently can only talk to other digital things.

37:52

There is no interface between the digital world and the physical world that constrains things one -to -one. It's impossible to do.

37:59

So what we would need to do is we would need to design a money that is digital, that has scarcity digitally.

38:07

Okay, well, that's easy to do. We could just have a single computer that has entries in a database that records who has the money.

38:15

And we just, we set it up and we're not gonna make any more. Well, we're back to the same trust problem. Who controls that computer?

38:20

Whoever controls that computer can, they can add more entries. Well, we could let people audit it, right? We could let everybody see what's going on.

38:28

Well, that doesn't solve our problem, right? Because if we do that, people can see, but they can't stop somebody from cheating, right?

38:34

They can't stop the people who control the system. So, okay. So we need to distribute the control so that nobody is in control, right?

38:42

So if we were to design a system where we set up rules, we have rules, but not rulers. We have this predefined system that would specify this monetary policy at the beginning so that everybody could see how much currency would be issued and over what timeframe.

38:58

And then we figured out a way to make it really hard to make more so that nobody can just print more of the currency into existence.

39:06

And then we let everybody audit it to make sure that people don't have to trust any auditor. They don't have to trust a third party.

39:12

They can check for themselves to make sure the rules are being followed. Then we would have a system that would respect the store of value aspects of money while being digital.

39:22

And things that are digital gain some amazing improvements over analog things.

39:27

We see that when we look at music. The experience is so much better having digital music that can be streamed anywhere in the world instantly versus analog music that's clunky and cumbersome.

39:40

So then it's just a matter of engineering and design. Okay, how would we design such money? Well, the problem is how do we achieve consensus?

39:49

How do we get everyone in the world to agree? If I say, I'm gonna send Joel some money, how do we get everyone to agree that I actually sent

39:57

Joel money? Well, we can't trust a third party to do it for us.

40:02

We don't wanna trust anybody. So what we want to do is we want to use digital signatures.

40:09

Imagine if in the digital world there was a physical signature that couldn't be faked. So we'll use digital signatures to prove that I am the one who wanted to create this transaction.

40:19

And then we'll broadcast it out. And what we're gonna do is we're gonna design the system in such a way that it takes real world energy to kind of affix that into a transaction.

40:31

And we call them blocks on the Bitcoin blockchain. So every 10 minutes, a new block is mined.

40:37

There's a mathematic algorithm that is performed hundreds of trillions of times a second by miners all over the world, expending real world energy.

40:45

And the reason to do that is that all of that energy goes into proving that it was difficult to create that block.

40:51

Why? Because now as we bury that block in the chain, each block references the previous block, there is this security that once my transaction is 10 blocks back in the chain, the amount of work that it would take to change the transaction would be insurmountable.

41:08

So this is a way that we can trustlessly do this because we don't have to trust any third party.

41:15

We verifiably know that work was done. Lots of work was done to embed this. So it gives us a way to achieve a consensus on what has been done digitally with something that's intangible.

41:29

And Will explained that better than I could have ever done so. And he did so in the context of computers.

41:35

You cannot separate Bitcoins from the fact that it is computer technology, but you can try.

41:40

And Andrew, this is something I would commend to your listening audience, is that if you're struggling with what

41:45

Will just went through there and you understand why money needs to behave the way it does, but you don't understand how he got there from the computer aspect, check out our third episode of season one.

41:56

Will did a fantastic job and wrote this brilliant story, a little short story narrative, that separates the concept of Bitcoin as money from computers entirely.

42:05

He basically gives you the framework for how a small community could develop a money system that is purely based upon a transactional ledger, a community -based system that allowed for all of those things, trustless verification, finite money supply, everything that he just described for you that is a characteristic of really good money, without requiring you to understand a single piece of computer information.

42:30

And I do believe that this has been one of the things that we've challenged ourselves to do, is to think about our grandparents, think about our children, think about the extremes of Christianity, of people who love

42:42

God and want sound money, but may or may not want to become experts in computer technology.

42:47

And say, can we give you an accessible on -ramp to appreciating what God has provided for you in Bitcoin that gives you the capacity to understand as much as you want with or without computer knowledge.

42:59

And secondarily, there's a great book that we reference in that episode that's just called Bitcoin Money and has this fantastic YouTube video that goes with it.

43:06

And it was written for children, but surprisingly it's been one of the most powerful tools that we've used in helping our friends and family to understand that money doesn't have to be complex, even

43:15

Bitcoin. And once you wrap your mind around the reality that you want a money that you can trust, but that doesn't require you to trust anyone else, that you can then use that money in a way that secures your energy, your time, your value, and frees you up to go back to focusing your time and energy not on learning some computer technology, but on glorifying

43:35

God and enjoying Him forever. Yeah, because this is, I think, the biggest hindrance for many people, though, is what you just said there,

43:44

Simon. Is it, oh, I don't understand computers. That, I think, is the biggest problem we have when it comes to Bitcoin is people have trouble understanding it.

43:53

Dave, your thoughts? People don't understand how the Internet works, but they use it. Yeah, yeah.

44:00

That's a good point. And they use it for the most intimate of transactions. They put their entire life history on the

44:07

Internet. They purchase things online and they enter in all kinds of information and put it out there in the ether.

44:12

They have no idea where it's going. They don't know who has it, how it works. People use cell phones all the time.

44:18

They have no idea how they work. People text one another. So technological adoption happens.

44:24

You don't have to understand how it all works. You need to have a basic understanding and then you will develop confidence.

44:31

But I would say, and we're very early in the Bitcoin adoption cycle. And so, eventually, my conviction is that the entire world will be on a

44:40

Bitcoin standard because it satisfies all the requirements of sound money in a digital age.

44:46

And so people will eventually adopt it. We're trying to help people get on sooner, understand its implications, particularly for the believing community in a world in which, as this monetary system transitions, the entrenched parties in the old system want to hang on.

45:03

And they are squeezing and barricading the on and off ramps of that system.

45:09

And so the church will likely be squeezed. We know already of believers and churches and missionaries and so forth that are being squeezed.

45:18

And so Bitcoin, our passion is to say, okay, we're still really early. Here's an opportunity to move outside of that system to escape the governmental squeezing.

45:28

Because honestly, in the Western world, Christianity is persona non grata. And so we're going to have to learn one way or another.

45:35

Let's learn now. Yeah. So listening to this podcast, there are a lot of people who have ministries, some of them podcast ministries, some of them are podcasts for specific ministries in the

45:44

Christian community, podcast community. And we have an example, even this last week, with the person who's the sponsor of The Wrap Report, Mike Lindell.

45:53

His bank asked him to close down nine of his bank accounts. Three of them are nonprofits.

45:58

And right now, the financial institutions using the fiat system and the system that we're currently in are squeezing

46:04

Christianity and Christians and nonprofits and anybody that they disagree with politically. Every person listening to this who is in ministry and responsible for the use of funds in ministry needs to be thinking about how to create an off -ramp, an exit door, out of the system right now where you can be squeezed and choked.

46:24

And to be able to get out of that and take the wealth that you have, the funds that God has given to you, and put them into a system that cannot be hacked, it cannot be stolen, it cannot be squeezed, it's anonymous, it's secretive.

46:35

That's where the entire Christian community needs to be thinking in terms of protecting the wealth and protecting economically their ministry.

46:43

We've had conversations about getting stuff out on Rumble as opposed to YouTube and getting off of social media platforms that are banning us.

46:50

You need to be thinking in the same terms about economic platforms that are going to be banning us and that you need to create that off -ramp, get that exit door in place now so that you can exit that system and get into a digital form of currency that answers those issues.

47:04

Here's the thing. You're saying like Rumble, but see, I'm moving people to Odyssey. And this is more in line with what you guys are saying.

47:12

Odyssey uses the blockchain. We're looking at trying to move our website into the blockchain. And so where I'm going to ask a question is, why?

47:20

What's so special about this blockchain that kind of protects it? And Jim, I know you had another question you wanted to ask.

47:28

No, that was my question for Will. I had a couple of rapid -fire ones that I wanted to ask him about security. So you tell me now that Bitcoin is this digital currency.

47:36

Okay, what keeps it from being hacked? What keeps it from being seized? What keeps it from being changed?

47:42

What about that technology makes it secure? Why would I consider taking an entire ministry's finances and be willing to exit the legacy system that we have and put it into Bitcoin?

47:53

I need some assurance that that's not going to be itself seized or hacked or in some way changed, and I'm not going to lose everything.

47:59

Make the case. Sure. So there is nothing special about a blockchain.

48:05

People throw the term blockchain around a lot. And they'll say, oh, I'm going to put this on a blockchain and that's going to secure it.

48:11

And I think really that's an unfortunate side effect of marketing budgets.

48:17

People want to latch on to Bitcoin and ride on its coattails and try to pretend like they have some of the same security guarantees that Bitcoin does.

48:26

So what makes Bitcoin secure? What makes Bitcoin secure is the work that is put into it.

48:33

So the consensus mechanism of Bitcoin is called proof of work. Why? Because the miners who are mining Bitcoin and creating these transactions, these blocks, have put in tremendous amounts of real -world energy and work.

48:44

What gives Bitcoin security? What gives Bitcoin the security is, let's say that I want to send a transaction

48:52

I don't have authorization to do. If I want to do that, I have to be able to sign the transaction with a key that I do not have.

49:00

And the odds of me guessing that key are like picking a random grain of sand off of the seashore of a thousand earths and hoping that I get the same grain of sand that you randomly picked.

49:15

It's so astronomically small. It's incomprehensibly small. It's not going to happen. So you have that guarantee in the transaction level.

49:21

In the block level, if I want to undo a transaction that was done, say I send you money and then

49:27

I want to unsend it. Or I want to stop somebody from sending money. I want to keep them from using the chain.

49:34

Well then what I need to do is I need to go back in time to a previous point in history before the transaction and I need to create new blocks at a faster rate than the real network is creating them.

49:46

Which means that statistically speaking I need 51 % of the hash rate. 51 % of the total mining power that's real -world energy being put into this thing.

49:56

I can't do that. Why? Because as soon as the manufacturers who are making miners can produce the mining rigs, they're being bought up and deployed by people who are using them to mine

50:08

Bitcoin to earn money. So I can't just go, no matter how much money I have, I can't just snap my fingers and buy all of these miners to get all of this hash power.

50:17

That's not possible. And there's no rational actor that would do so because the entire time that I am spending the hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars to run these machines,

50:29

I'm not getting compensated. I would have to do all of that in the hopes that I could attack

50:34

Bitcoin. Which if I did attack Bitcoin and I was able to break it, then the value of Bitcoin would plummet, which would mean that there's no value in any of the transactions that I just did.

50:47

Which means I can't get money back out of it. There's nothing I can do that would make economic sense in order for me to disrupt the system.

50:53

It has these self -aligning incentives such that every actor in the system is expected to be dishonest, is expected to be greedy.

51:03

And that's how the system was engineered such that when every actor in the system is acting in their own best interest, that's how the system functions.

51:12

So the government can't just come in and seize my Bitcoin on my computer, my Bitcoin account. They can't come in and just hack the username and password from my

51:20

Bitcoin account and take all my money because the record that I own that Bitcoin is where?

51:25

It's on a computer in Indonesia and in Europe and in California and in everywhere? Is that how it works?

51:31

Yeah, so in terms of your specific Bitcoin, if you held them on an exchange, then the government can subpoena the exchange and they can force them to turn over your

51:40

Bitcoin because you don't actually own Bitcoin. You own an IOU for the exchange's

51:45

Bitcoin. But if you have custody of your own Bitcoin, and custody in this sense, what we really mean is that you personally hold the keys that were used to sign the transactions.

51:55

So not your keys, not your coins. If you hold the keys, then there is no one in the world who can move the funds without those keys.

52:04

Which the unintended or maybe intended side effect of that is that if you lose your own keys, you lose access to your

52:10

Bitcoin and there's no one who can help you. So it's this double -edged sword of sovereignty. You're sovereign over your money, which means that you have all of the liabilities that come along with that.

52:19

Just to answer your question further, Jim, because this was a question that I had. I know it was one that David had when we were still uncertain and Will was trying to get us onto the lifeboat and help us understand this.

52:29

In your head, you can invent a lot of scenarios for a government shutting it down. For China, for example, shutting down a large portion of the

52:38

Bitcoin network. And there's rumors right now that Russia is trying to do certain bans and so forth, right? So these are rumors and things that have persisted across the life of Bitcoin.

52:47

And in our heads, we can come up with a lot of different scenarios there. But the fun reality for me is to now see real -world evidence that Bitcoin is this resilient, almost an organism, right?

52:57

That basically when you try to kill it, you can't. Because it's based upon the core principle of the individuals being able to transact in a peer -to -peer way through a network that is spread across the world.

53:11

We use the term decentralized. There are no centralized points of failures. It's not like there's one

53:16

Amazon server sitting in Seattle that could be hacked and kind of all taken down and suddenly the

53:22

Bitcoin network would be completely defenseless, right? It's also not that there's some centralized body, a counterparty, that I have to go through to be able to send money to you or to Andrew or to Will.

53:33

It's a direct transaction that goes directly from one individual to another without a counterparty in the middle.

53:39

And so what Will is tying back for us here is the reality that functionally speaking,

53:45

Bitcoin has now existed for 13 years. And since it was designed 13 years ago with all of these core principles in mind, with the expectation that anyone and everyone would try to ban it, break it, do whatever they could to stop it, right?

54:00

It's emerged unscathed. In fact, it's emerged even stronger than when it has started because now the people who are understanding it are utilizing it in such ways that it cannot be stopped.

54:19

Folks, we're going to continue this in another episode because there's just, as you can see, there's so much here to cover.

54:26

But there's something you had mentioned. I just want to point this out. Some people say, well, someone coming in and,

54:32

I think Jim said, the government hacking in and getting my password. People say, well, government would never do that.

54:38

Let me tell you a little story about one of the people that used to work at Striving Fraternity. He lived in New York City and he had taken money out of it.

54:47

When he lost his job, he took his 401k out. Didn't know, no one, I guess, told him that there's a penalty.

54:54

You have to pay taxes on that money. So he ends up getting hit with the IRS with all of this money he's got to pay back in taxes.

55:01

Well, he spent several years paying that back. And then New York came after him and they said, oh, now that you paid the federal government, now you owe us taxes.

55:11

And so he was on a payment plan. He was paying it for months, actually years. But then realizing he can't really afford to have a family of four in New York City, he moves to Ohio.

55:24

Well, what happens? When he moves to Ohio one day, he goes to pay his rent and there's no money in the bank account.

55:30

Why? Because the U .S. government, well, actually New York government, was watching his bank account to see the highs and lows to know when he would hit a peak, which is just after he gets paid and before he pays his rent.

55:44

And they went into his account and withdrew everything. And now he's got no way to pay the rent because there was a law that if you move out of New York and you owe them tax money, they can access your bank account without your knowledge and take everything out.

56:00

Switching to a new bank account doesn't help because it's still tied to you. And so the thought that the government would never do such a thing is a fantasy.

56:10

They can come in and take whatever they want from your account if they deem that they are owed that.

56:16

And this is where, as we talk next episode, we're going to talk about how do you set this up?

56:22

How do we, as novices who know nothing about this, how can we set this up and get some of the protection that Bitcoin has?

56:31

And next episode, I'm going to ask these guys a challenging question. Why Bitcoin?

56:37

There's all these other cryptocurrencies. I mean, they get lots of, you know, they got fancy names sometimes.

56:43

I mean, there's even someone that's making a crypto house. He's turning his house into a cryptocurrency. Why shouldn't we take all those?

56:50

Why should it be just Bitcoin? That'll be for the next episode of The Wrap Report.

56:56

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