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Jan. 25, 2022 - Doug Collins Podcast

01:01:55

BITCOIN: What is it, and why should I care?

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	You want to listen to a podcast?
	By who?
	Georgia GOP Congressman Doug Collins.
	How is it?
	The greatest thing I have ever heard in my whole life.
	I could not believe my ears.
	This house, wherever the rules are disregarded, chaos and mob rule.
	It has been said today, where is bravery?
	I'll tell you where bravery is found and courage is found.
	It's found in this minority who has lived through the last year of nothing but rules being broken, people being put down, questions not being answered, and this majority say, be damned with anything else.
	We're going to impeach and do whatever we want to do.
	Why?
	Because we won an election.
	I guarantee you, one day you'll be back in the minority and it ain't going to be that fun.
	Hey everybody, this is Doug Collins.
	I've got some big news for you today.
	We've been going at the podcast now for about 90 days.
	We've had some great guests.
	I mean, we go back to Kevin McCarthy.
	We go back to John Ratcliffe.
	We've had Bart Herbison from the Nashville Songwriters.
	It's been a great journey.
	And a lot of times it's me and you talking.
	Well, I just want to start off the podcast today.
	We've got a great podcast today, one that I've been wanting to get on for a while, and it's going to be talking about Bitcoin.
	Something that I'm trying to learn about, I know that a lot of people learn about, you see it all over commercials, you see it all over TV during the NFL games.
	We've got Derek Kahana today on about that, and we're going to get to him in just a minute to talk about Bitcoin.
	It's a fascinating episode.
	You don't want to miss a part.
	But I want to let you know a little bit about what's going on with the Doug Collins Podcast.
	As we've been growing and getting started with the Salem Network and being a part of the Salem family, we're expanding our podcast series out to our website now.
	You can go to DougCollinsPodcast.com.
	And in addition to the website that we're going to have, you're going to have a blog starting from me.
	You can get emails from me.
	It's a thing called the Collins Collective.
	It's our insider look into the things that are going on, not only with the podcast, but just my insight into a lot of different things that will encourage you.
	If I'm speaking, things like that, we're going to get you the insider knowledge on the Collins Collective.
	So go and sign up.
	You'll want to be a part of that for some special gifts.
	We'll be giving away a few things here in the next few weeks.
	So I want you to go to the DougCollinsPodcast.com.
	It's also going to have a blog, and it'll be in between our times for dropping our podcast.
	I'm going to just put stuff on the blog.
	It'll be out there.
	It's going to be a real interactive site.
	We're going to have news sites on it.
	You're going to have a video.
	Legacy Precious Metals, who sponsors our podcast, a great friend of the show, is sponsoring our audio burst.
	So if you wanted to go back and look up something on the podcast from previous podcasts, you can do that.
	Say, I want to know about Bitcoin.
	Well, it's going to pull up quotes from today's Bitcoin.
	If you want to know about when we talked to the audience Matt Whitaker about the Department of Justice.
	We can go back and look at that.
	So, a lot of things on this podcast that are going to be reflective in our website, and it's going to be interactive.
	There's going to be a place where you can email me and ask questions.
	I already had some, actually.
	We've had to sign up for a little bit now, testing it.
	And I've had a lot of you go on the email and send me emails about the podcast, about me asking questions about what my political aspirations are and where I'm going to be.
	So continue to do that.
	We'll answer as many of those as we possibly can.
	But I wanted just to let you know this is an exciting day because today on YouTube, today on Rumble, you're going to be able to go and get these podcasts as well from not only listening to them, you're going to be able to get video content.
	We're going to have special video content on there as well that you can go and see as we go along.
	But it's been a joy to get this podcast up and running.
	It's amazing how many people are wanting to be a part of it, and you are a special part being one of the first here in the first 90 days of a podcast.
	It's become a family to me.
	I've enjoyed these, and from the reactions so far, I think you have as well.
	Maybe you have suggestions.
	This is where you use the email comment section for the Doug Collins podcast, DougCollinsPodcast.com, and you can be able to look at that.
	But again, great time today.
	We've got a lot of information coming on Bitcoin with Derek Kahana.
	But I wanted just to, before we got started, give you a little in-depth information on what we're doing to make not only this podcast experience better, but also give you more information.
	We'll be a one-stop shop as we grow together, giving you good information to grow a conservative lifestyle that encompasses not only politics, it encompasses your life, your family, your activities, your recreation, your finances.
	It's all a part of who we are.
	God made us whole.
	Not just in ones.
	And we're going to give you information that will help you every day live that life that you want to live.
	So here we go.
	Here's a great podcast with Derek Kahana on Bitcoin.
	Folks, all of you know that Legacy Precious Metals is a great sponsor of the Doug Collins Podcast, and I can't tell you right now a more important time to know Legacy Precious Metals.
	There right now, your investment portfolio, if you look at the stock market right now, you look at the inflation that's going on, you look at the uncertainty out there, I'm going to tell you, the investments that you're making need to have gold and silver to be a part of.
	You need the precious metals.
	Navigators are people who have been there, they know what to look out for, and they know how to come back and navigate you through the streams of your financial situation, whether it's for your retirement or whether it's just in your long-term investment strategies.
	Legacy Precious Metals folks are people who listen.
	They listen to you, they listen to your needs, and they help you navigate this uncertain financial times.
	When you're seeing the fluctuations back and forth, people will actually need to find a place where they have a portfolio that is balanced.
	Having gold and silver in that portfolio is something that you can have as part of yours.
	Just go find them at LegacyPMInvestments.com Alright, we're good.
	We're all here today.
	Folks, it's good to be back on the Doug Collins Podcast.
	I have a great episode.
	This is one I've been waiting for because sometimes I'm going to say I learn as much from the guest as anybody and this is one I'm hoping to learn a lot from today.
	We have Derek Kahana.
	He is the Executive Director for the Bitcoin Policy Institute.
	For those of you out there maybe wondering about Bitcoin, today is your day.
	You've made the right podcast choice.
	My first question is, for somebody my age, 55, talking about Bitcoin, I want to know, is that what I used to get out of my Cracker Jack box?
	Derek, we're glad to have you on the podcast today.
	Yeah, glad to be here.
	Really excited to chat about Bitcoin and answer your questions and get to learn more about what's going on.
	Well, that is great.
	Well, I would like to also know a little bit about how you got there, but you have an interesting, we have sort of a similar background.
	You were on the Hill for a while, Republican Study Committee, doing some things with them.
	Tell us how you went from the Hill to Bitcoin.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	I was a House staffer, a Senate staffer.
	I managed technology policy for the House Republican Study Committee when you were one of our members.
	You were on one of our task forces that I was involved with.
	So definitely appreciate your support there.
	And I had some initial conversations on Bitcoin back in 2011 and 2012 with policymakers.
	And then since then, I've been more involved teaching lawyers with the Federalist Society.
	And then founding this organization, which I'm excited to talk about.
	But I definitely had a lot of experience in some of the real battles back in the Obama administration and then afterwards.
	Well, yeah, one of the ones you had, and I remember even working on it later on in the Judiciary Committee, but also, I mean, it was still sort of hanging around even when I was a ranking member.
	And before we get to Bitcoin was this deal of phones unlocking, which was some of the earliest technology issues that we were dealing with about people being able to transfer their phones or buying a phone and then going to where they want to go.
	You know, nowadays people don't even think about that, but that was a real issue at one point, wasn't it, Derek?
	Oh my gosh, yeah.
	It was one of the kookiest issues.
	Am I allowed to say kooky on this podcast?
	You can say it.
	Yeah, customers weren't allowed to unlock their phones, which means taking your phone from AT&T to Verizon or T-Mobile or whoever, under copyright law.
	It was really a strange situation of what I thought was real corporatism, really just kind of lobbyists getting a special deal for themselves.
	And luckily we were able to turn it around by support from people like yourself.
	And it was a real battle at first, mainly to get people to even understand the issue, what was kind of going on there.
	But luckily that bill did get passed and signed into law and customers have a bit more options and they can choose now which carrier works best for them.
	Well, you know, and it's one of those things, Derek, too, we always talk about this opening up the phones, but I think this leads into this technology that we're going to talk about with Bitcoin because newness, and I'm trying to lay a foundation for my podcast listener here, you know, we go from phones that you couldn't transfer, we had to get, you know, legislation under copyright to unlock.
	Then we go into this idea that all of a sudden when something bad happens, you want the FBI, we have a lot of people all of a sudden saying, oh, the FBI and everybody ought to be able to get into everybody's phone and unlock, you know, I'm sitting there screaming from the top of my lungs, no, you do not want that.
	That's the reason you have it.
	And it was amazing.
	Maybe right after you left, we had the big hearing after one of the shootings.
	I think it was in California.
	And the FBI came forward and said, we need this technology.
	We've got to have it now.
	We've got all these phones.
	And like two weeks later, they cracked the phone.
	It's like, no, you just wanted it to be easy.
	Yeah, that's exactly right.
	That's actually another case I was involved with.
	I wrote an amicus brief on the San Bernardino case that you're speaking of, the Farooq's iPhone.
	And the funny thing there was is the FBI had wanted to do that for a while, and then they just felt like this was the issue to really go after on.
	But the absurdity of that case, from a legal perspective, was they were basically ordering Apple to have their engineers build software that they had a moral opposition to for a series of months.
	And so my anarchist brief was that it was akin to a form of indentured servitude or something, you know, to require people to do labor that they were morally opposed to, to break their own technology.
	It was really a crazy situation.
	Yeah, it was amazing.
	And to listen to the FBI, I remember sitting in that hearing.
	I was back when they were redoing our hearing room.
	And I remember sitting in that hearing asking these questions.
	And it was just like when you talk to them, it was like this was, you know, how could you be opposed to this?
	You're against, you know, American flag and ice cream and kissing babies for politicians.
	It was just amazing that they had to have this legal obligation from the Congress.
	But yet then two weeks later after they knew they weren't going to get it, they broke the code and went on.
	Exactly.
	And what should concern your listeners is bad cases make bad case law, because we always learn in law.
	So you have a situation of a terrorist, okay, we got to get that information.
	It's just so important.
	But then all of a sudden, once you open that Pandora's box, what is the demarcating factor for any serious crime?
	And then before long, it's just common law fraud they're going to break into your phone.
	So it's really a slippery slope created by these bad examples.
	Well, it is.
	And if you well knew from your time on the Hill and also in law school and going, you know, is that issue of bad facts make bad law or bad case make bad law?
	And it's that emotion that you play on that goes on.
	That leads us sort of into the discussion, you know, and without, you know...
	The grandiose about this, a lot of things are being said about Bitcoin.
	Bitcoin's been around now for several years.
	You now have professional athletes who are talking about it.
	They don't want to get left out on the next big thing.
	I mean, I was watching football yesterday and here's a commercial in the commercial break while Tom Brady's on the field.
	He's also pushing the fact that he's now trading Bitcoin for a company.
	Let's start off at the beginning, Derek, because folks like me, there's others out there who are intrigued by it.
	They see it.
	I mean, last night, another commercial.
	Again, this shows you how interesting this whole setup is to me.
	One commercial where he has a guy who's looking at his phone and he says, I'm a millionaire.
	The next minute he says, I'm not a millionaire.
	I'm a millionaire.
	I'm not a millionaire.
	I don't think that's what most people look as stability.
	So let's start off at the basics for those out there who are looking.
	If you're interested in Bitcoin, is Bitcoin a generic, like down from the south, if you want a Coke, you're getting Coca-Cola.
	It ain't a generic for Pepsi or anything else.
	Is Bitcoin a generic term or is there a Bitcoin and you got Ethereum, you got others out there as well?
	Let's start off with the basics.
	Sure.
	Those are fantastic questions and these are complicated topics.
	I think sometimes people are almost scared to ask these questions, but it's great to start from the basics.
	And so, for a while, people were trying to create a currency for the internet that would allow for commerce to be done particularly internationally, friction-free.
	And one of the innovations of Bitcoin by this guy named Satoshi Nakamoto, it's not his real name, but we call him that, was to create a decentralized system.
	So there's no entity in charge, there's no CEO, there's no bank, there's no Federal Reserve.
	But yet through math, we're able to have a system that has now become known as Bitcoin with millions of users and holders.
	And so that was really the first and the only entity that was operating and doing this.
	And they've been around the longest.
	They have the highest market cap, the highest number of users, the most number of transactions.
	I should add that the technology has grown and changed over time.
	It's not like it stayed static.
	But all the other names that you've heard as well, such as Ethereum or other silly names sometimes like Doshacoin, they're not all silly, but a lot of them are named after dogs.
	Some of those have interesting different ways of solving similar problems.
	Ethereum in particular has grown quite large, though not as large as Bitcoin.
	Now, those are more modern products in this ecosystem that generally have slightly different ways of solving a similar problem.
	But Bitcoin still remains the largest player, and we would argue that the number of users using this technology provides a bit more stability and concreteness to it having value for the future.
	I'm not trying to give investment advice.
	As you noted, this is somewhat of a speculative asset.
	The prices go up, the prices go down.
	But I would know that actually the fluctuations have become a bit more constant than in the past, even noting what's happened the past 48 hours.
	Exactly.
	And again, we're broadcasting today.
	It's the end of January in 2022. And there's been a big swing in Bitcoin by itself just in the last three weeks.
	And I get it.
	It's something that's growing and something that is going more and more.
	I'm going to use this as an interesting example.
	Maybe this will help explain.
	The new mayor of New York, Eric Adams, said that he would be paid or wanted to be paid in Bitcoin.
	Okay?
	If his salary, let's just give his salary $100,000, they would buy whatever percentage in Bitcoin, Ethereum, whichever one they'd use that would equal his one monthly salary.
	Now, a curious question.
	If he was paid $3,000 of Bitcoin today, And tomorrow, the value of a Bitcoin goes up.
	Would his, in essence, pay go up?
	Or is it similar to money?
	You get $3,000, you have to do something with it from there.
	That's a great question.
	I guess the best approximation is similar to stock.
	You know, some people will be given a certain amount of stock with their compensation.
	And they say, every year we're going to give you, let's say, $10,000 of our company stock.
	And so we're going to assess that money.
	Typically, it's at that exact day.
	So if the stock has gone up, it's gone down.
	At that day, we're giving you $10,000 of stock.
	So this is actually a very common problem.
	And that's basically how it's being dealt with here.
	In fact, in the Adams case, my particular understanding is I think they're actually paying him in dollars and then immediately that's being used to transact for Bitcoin.
	So they're actually paying him the same amount.
	Now, they could choose to pay him through Bitcoin directly.
	I don't think it's exactly what's going on.
	But if they did that, it would be whatever the price is of Bitcoin that exact day or that exact moment to be more particular because it does fluctuate throughout the day.
	So, for instance, if Bitcoin was worth, and I'll just use this as a hypothetical here, and like I said, I'm really hoping this podcast will open eyes, mine included, to how this actually works.
	So, for instance, if, and I'm not going to just stick to Bitcoin, I'm not, I don't think you are either, sort of publicizing one over the other, but let's just say that it was the choice of cryptocurrency, and is that a problem?
	Let me just write it right here.
	Is cryptocurrency a proper terminology?
	Well, you opened a Pandora's box.
	Historically, that has been the term.
	And so usually when people use the term cryptocurrency, they're referring to Bitcoin or Ethereum or any of the other names that you may have heard.
	But there is some debate about that because cryptographers say it's not true cryptography.
	But yes, that is a common phrase used to refer to these.
	So we will use it for now.
	I'm sure somebody on Twitter will have a different opinion.
	Okay, let's go back to it.
	Let's just say, for instance, Bitcoin or Ethereum, whichever one he makes is worth, according to the traded value right now, it's worth $10,000.
	One Bitcoin is worth $10,000.
	It's not, like we said, we're using this for illustrative purposes.
	One Bitcoin is worth $10,000.
	His pay is $10,000 for that month.
	So, if he were to get it, let's just say they did it straight Bitcoin instead of cash to Bitcoin.
	Alright?
	If it was Bitcoin to Bitcoin, they gave him one Bitcoin.
	And the next day, Bitcoin went to $20,000.
	So his one Bitcoin would then be worth $20,000 on the speculative market, correct?
	That's right, yeah.
	So in other words, he would gain, just like a stock transaction, he would have gained $10,000 on a $10,000 paycheck.
	Would that be a good way to put that?
	Absolutely, yes.
	And so the opposite is true as well.
	So if it went down $5,000, he lost $5,000 of his income, correct?
	That's correct, yes.
	Okay.
	Now, as all great things in life, and you're from the technological side, and I'm Gen X, so I'm not a digital native to a lot of this.
	My kids are, and a lot of people listen to this podcast.
	I get that.
	One of the things, though, that has always been I love to read, and some of the first...
	Evidences of new technology came from an author, Tom Clancy.
	Don't know if you've ever read any of Tom Clancy's books.
	I've read a lot, and I've watched all the movies.
	It's amazing.
	I mean, I've been in the military 20-plus years.
	The first real in-depth discussion of drones watching battlefield footage came in Tom Clancy's book.
	If you all forget, he also, a year before 9-11, he was the one who said they were going to fly a plane into the capital.
	So, I mean, this guy.
	And then the first time that I really...
	Started hearing about this technology.
	This sort of peer-to-peer money was in one of his novels.
	And it was by a former writer.
	And it was talking about, and again at this point, it was used more as an underworld kind of issue.
	Yep.
	Is that still a...
	Or are we coming out of that now?
	Is this technology not just for transactions you don't want to trace?
	And becoming...
	How does it break out of that?
	Because that's what it was used for in this Clancy, and it was also very captured to the individual and passcodes and everything else.
	Yeah, I mean, there's absolutely some truth to that, and that's one of the things that we focus on.
	But I will say, just with a note to your viewers, almost every technology, people come out and say, oh, it's being used for underground crime, you know?
	Before mobile phones, before pagers, then pagers come out mobile phones.
	Oh my God, this is completely untrackable.
	It's being used for crime.
	And the thing is, it's often they're right.
	You know, pagers were used by drug dealers.
	But so it's the double side of the coin.
	And so you're hearing that here a lot about, you know, ransom payments or organized crime using Bitcoin.
	And we've done a lot of research on it at the Bitcoin Policy Institute.
	But what I would say is, is the FBI actually loves it when criminals use Bitcoin.
	Because Bitcoin isn't truly anonymous.
	Bitcoin has an identifier.
	The technical community calls it a pseudonymous.
	I think I mispronounced that.
	But there's a number, right?
	There's an account.
	So everything exists on the ledger for perpetuity, for anybody to go back and see.
	So that's much worse for organized crime than suitcases of cash that are essentially untraceable.
	Or gold bars.
	There are other ways to do this.
	And so it is true, but a lot of criminals have found out the hard way that this is actually among the most tracked systems, right?
	If we go and we find that some terrorist group is using Bitcoin, we find the terrorist group, we squeeze one guy, we find their Bitcoin account, we see who sent them the money, then we get that guy, and it just never ends.
	Now, there are ways to be a bit more smart in this mechanism.
	I'm not going to train people on your podcasts.
	I'm not saying that criminals are always that dumb.
	But as a general matter, yeah, there's some organized crime elements using Bitcoin.
	And a lot of them are finding out the hard way that this is not the best way to conduct their business.
	Yeah, that sounds like, you know, some, you know, what was it?
	There was an old line in an old movie, I think, from the old TV show, West Wing, that the fictional president, Martin Sheen, said, he said, he'd always been proud that some of the dumbest criminals in the world resided in the United States.
	So it was, you know, it's that way.
	Well, let's take this out now.
	All right.
	As Machiavelli once said, there's never anything more perilous than the invention or the bringing forward of new ideas.
	And this has to be classified, even though it's been going on now for several years, it's still in its real infancy stages.
	For those out there trying to learn about this, where do we see this going as far as a practical matter?
	Do you see it more still as an investment?
	Or do you see it as some talk about it as a practical usage?
	How do you buy and sell stuff on the internet?
	Where do you see Bitcoin right now?
	I think that the bit of the humility of what you're saying is very true.
	The internet kind of started in 1965. It really took until the late 80s at the earliest to really see, oh wow, this is a big deal.
	And then the 90s to see, oh, this is transformative.
	So we're really early days in this technology, about 11 years since the first transaction.
	So there's still a lot to be kind of seen.
	I will say, you know, as a asset of value, there's still a lot of interest, you know, a lot of long term value here.
	So, you know, people buy gold to speculate on gold or as a safe asset or for other properties that gold can add to their portfolio is probably improving to put 100% of your dollars in gold.
	But, you know, investment managers may say put 2%, 5%.
	Well, I would argue that Bitcoin has some properties similar to gold, except unlike gold where you have to essentially hire armed guards to protect your gold, it's actually very expensive to transfer your gold from one place to another if you need to physically transfer the gold.
	Bitcoin is essentially nearly free to transfer and there's almost no cost to protect it.
	So it has some properties analogous to gold, but some properties that are arguably better than gold.
	But you are alluding to what is called commonly the blockchain.
	And you're seeing all sorts of technologies being built on top of this blockchain.
	And so that means that the one thing on the blockchain is Bitcoin.
	But you have other systems on this decentralized ledger that are, you know, you're hearing about NFTs and other ideas that are percolating.
	And many of these ideas may wash out.
	That's the nature of new ideas.
	But it also is going to lock a lot of new market models that are very exciting.
	Well, it is interesting because, you know, on this podcast, Legacy Precious Metals, you mentioned gold.
	They do gold and silver.
	They've been a big sponsor of ours, and it is very similar in this speculative nature.
	You know, especially when you see the environment that we're in right now with inflation and everything else, and, you know, they sponsor, especially, you know, people can go now back and see our audio bursts.
	They can see stuff.
	Legacy Precious Metals has sort of said that, you know, that is an alternative to some of the stocks.
	Bitcoin and these others are in a similar vein of that.
	Let's unpack what you just said about blockchain, okay?
	Because I think this is, when you get, do you see Bitcoin, and we're going back to maybe using some of these terms in a change.
	Bitcoin really becoming its own when it is more non-speculative?
	In the sense it is now and used in everyday transactions such as hotel rooms, plane tickets, things like that?
	Or do you see it sort of being a bifunctional aspect of this currency?
	That's a very interesting question.
	I guess part of what you're asking is when is it going to be better than credit cards or dollars for the average American citizen?
	And I don't know the answer to that question.
	But I also wouldn't say that that's the end line.
	Because countries around the world have hyperinflation, if you're in Venezuela or if you're in Kenya.
	And so you may be looking at Bitcoin and saying, hey, there's some real fluctuation here.
	But if you compare it to your currency in Venezuela or in Kenya or some of these other countries, wow, this looks really stable.
	And so it really solves a big problem.
	Secondarily, yeah, there's definitely some fluctuations here.
	But if you're using it as a transfer of value, If you are one of the 15-20 million immigrants to the United States who is sending money back to your family from Mexico or another country, you can send it back to your family via Bitcoin and then they can immediately change it back to whatever the local currency is.
	And it may not really matter if the currency fluctuates because you're not holding it for the long term.
	That itself is a real problem that is being solved through this system.
	But over time, I would expect it to become more stable with more asset holders throughout the world, with a bit more certainty on regulations and things.
	I mean, just keep in mind what's happened in the past year on Bitcoin.
	A good portion of the mining network was being done in China, and then China made it illegal to mine Bitcoin.
	And a number of other countries have followed suit around the world.
	They're talking about it in Russia today.
	India has taken some steps in that direction.
	So you've had really significant changes of how this network is operating.
	And so, of course, you would see the price fluctuate as a result.
	So I would definitely expect it to become more stable over time.
	But I would argue even if it doesn't become more stable, there are still real problems that it's solving if it's not necessarily as simple as your credit card.
	Derek, I can easily see this becoming a monthly feature with Doug and Derek discussing this because every time we get into this, and we've got a lot more time in this podcast, it brings up something different.
	This next question kind of comes from my youngest son, and we were discussing this.
	And you see this, and like I said, I'm glad you're with me today because I feel like if anybody wants to, they can always cast a spurs on Doug.
	Well, he's just slow.
	He don't get it.
	Do it to me because I know there's 20 million others who are listening who are wanting to ask the same questions but they don't have the platform to ask.
	You brought up something about date or mining.
	We're not even getting into blockchain yet.
	That's a whole different issue.
	But mining.
	I saw on one of the social media sites that was talking about income and where they said you bought these servers, you put them up running, and that if you run them 24 hours a day, they, in essence, mining, quote, Bitcoin or whatever they're mining.
	That you make $1,000 a day or $1,500 a day, the more you have.
	I'm also born many years ago, but I wasn't born completely stupid.
	If it's that easy, then everybody would be doing it.
	Explain to the listener, if you would, what is this Bitcoin mining?
	Is it something that anybody can do?
	And why would you do it?
	Great question.
	So one of the real innovations of Bitcoin that has been followed in some ways, I mean there's slight differences, but just as a general matter by the other currencies you mentioned on Ethereum, etc., is this idea of mining, which is that unlike the Federal Reserve, which decides how many dollars we're going to have, there is no Federal Reserve for Bitcoin.
	And so there's a structured system of when more Bitcoins are released, but then there's a limit of a certain number of Bitcoins that is basically the end.
	And so in order to facilitate this network, they have mining.
	And mining is essentially where your computer is solving simple cryptographic puzzles at a layman level.
	So any computer can be mining Bitcoin.
	And in the early days, it is somewhat true.
	When people were mining Bitcoin on their computer, and as Bitcoin went up in value, at first, you get a Bitcoin or two, but they were worth a thousandth of a cent, so it didn't really matter.
	Of course, the volume and the price of Bitcoin has gone up significantly.
	So a lot of people did make a significant amount of money mining Bitcoin.
	But I would advise your viewers, and I want to give investment advice, but over time, it's become a much more structured process.
	So people aren't usually Bitcoin mining on their computer.
	They're using custom GPUs or advanced GPU units, which the average person may not have.
	And so this is being done increasingly at an industrial scale.
	So the stories of people making thousands of dollars a day are increasingly rare because there are more people trying to do this at a professional level.
	Okay, so Derek and Doug are here on the podcast and we're now, I say, Derek, you know, it's after lunch, I'm bored before supper, let's set up a mining of Bitcoin.
	What exactly am I mining and am I, in essence, listening to you making the Bitcoin, so to speak?
	Is that what we're doing because you're providing another place to put An investment?
	I mean, help me out here.
	Sure.
	So basically, our computers would be solving these cryptographic puzzles that are relatively simple, but they have to be done at a large scale.
	And if we solve the puzzle first, then we unlock the Bitcoin.
	So we basically become the holder of those Bitcoins, which means that we can sell it, transact it.
	And so in order to do that at scale, we have to have increasingly custom equipment.
	Okay, who's designing the puzzle?
	The puzzle is kind of built...
	And maybe I'm missing it here, and I'm not trying to be funny, but at some point, it's like the beginning of the beginning.
	Somewhere there's a beginning, so if my computer's solving something, who's throwing the puzzle out there?
	Yeah, again, it's a mathematical puzzle.
	It's a relatively simple puzzle, but it's essentially created through the process that Satoshi outlined in his white paper.
	Okay.
	So if you wanted to go back, you've got to go back and do the reading or understanding what he sort of identified to start with.
	Yeah, it's basically baked into the cake, how these puzzles operate and what they look like.
	And it's basically random guesses by your computer in order to solve it.
	Okay, so let's take this a step further.
	I've got my computer set up to however that works.
	And my computer is a good computer.
	It solves it.
	And I unlock a Bitcoin.
	Is it worth...
	What the current value is, which I think going into today's podcast is somewhere between $35,000 and $40,000.
	Is that how much that is worth?
	Yep, exactly.
	Okay.
	I'll go back to my third part of that question.
	Then why is it that most people are not doing that?
	Or are they?
	I mean, I don't want to discourage people, but I also want to be precise, which is, it is difficult.
	It is increasingly difficult.
	It's a very competitive system today around the world of millions or at least hundreds of thousands of people doing this at once.
	And there are only a certain number of Bitcoins that are being released through this mechanism.
	So my point is, You may be mining it on your computer, but somebody else could be using it with a custom GPU rig.
	And somebody else could be doing it on a server farm with thousands of GPUs at scale.
	And so increasingly, it's difficult.
	I'm not saying it's impossible, but it is difficult to do this and make money.
	And there are people who have done this and have lost money.
	So I just wanted to be very clear on what that looks like.
	By losing money, you know, the cost of electricity that goes in, the cost of the components.
	But there are also a lot of people who made a significant amount of money.
	So it's just a bit more complicated is all I'm trying to convey.
	All right.
	Going on your own, you know, your conversation, and I'm following this out again, trying to lay just this very good foundation for people who are listening today.
	And I appreciate you so much answering these questions.
	You stated that there's only so many, and I'm assuming algorithms, mathematical equations, whatever, for Bitcoin being released.
	It's also said that this is a non-centralized mechanism, non-centralized currency.
	At some point, wherever and however these mathematical equations are coming out, how do we then know The amount of Bitcoin, you said they're limited.
	How do we know without a centralized location or centralized knowing, how do we know how many Bitcoin are there?
	And the only way I can look in my own head is to think of, if you're saying it's worth $35,000 on the open market, then my little coin right here in my hand is worth $30,000.
	How many of those one little coins, so to speak, are out there?
	Yeah, so you can see in real time the exact number of released bitcoins and there's a maximum that will ever be released and there is a cadence of every year we're going to have or not necessarily every year but on a special timetable when that release cycle is going to happen but the maximum ever that could ever exist is 21 million bitcoins.
	Okay.
	Is there any possibility of Someone tying up all of that.
	I mean, the amounts of that.
	Or is it just the cost prohibitive to where you would have a country or a rogue regime or a very wealthy individual tie up the vast amount of Bitcoin?
	I'm not sure exactly what you're referring to by tie up.
	Well, if you have 21 million total.
	Yeah.
	And you had a country that could either generate its own wealth, mine it, or however.
	If the $21 million is all that you would ever have, and somebody then began to purchase larger amounts, a million, two million, three million of Bitcoin, how would that work?
	Sure.
	I mean, I would say a similar thing for a company, for stock, which you see similar economics to.
	But the reality is if someone was to buy that amount of Bitcoin, the price would go up precipitously.
	And so already the value of Bitcoin today, I forgot the exact market cap, but it used to be nearing $800 billion.
	So at a nominal level, if you wanted to buy 50% of all Bitcoins outstanding, you would have to put up at least $400 billion.
	But of course, as you get anywhere near close to that, for your physics people, it's a bit like the speed of light.
	If you get anywhere close to that, you put an order for $10 billion in Bitcoin, the price is going to shoot up.
	You put an order for $50 billion in Bitcoin, the price is going to shoot up.
	So by the time that you were to get to half of the value of Bitcoin, You probably would be spending well over multiple trillions of dollars in order to do so.
	And even 50% of Bitcoin does not necessarily give you that much.
	It's not necessarily like a corporation.
	It's an oversimplification there, too.
	But it's not just a 50% game.
	It's actually a bit more complicated.
	So what you've talked about is referred to as a 50% attack.
	Or there's other terminology that goes with it.
	But it's perceived as relatively unlikely today given the market cap, given how difficult it would be in this large scale market.
	Okay.
	Are Ethereum, Dogecoin, others out there, are they under that same cap?
	They have their own systems, and some of them have caps.
	They're not the 21 million cap.
	They have different systems, particularly the differences are what's called proof of work versus proof of stake, which Bitcoin advocates would argue actually makes it more secure against what you're talking about.
	And those systems use what's called proof of stake, which has some advantages, but it arguably makes it more risky from this perspective of a 50% takeover.
	At the current existence of Bitcoin as it stands.
	And when I say that, I am using the sort of all-inclusive here as far as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin.
	Some of which have less than a cent worth.
	Is that not true?
	That's certainly true.
	I mean, there's thousands of cryptocurrencies.
	But I would say that the actual valuation of that individual currency is, again, like stock.
	You know, there may be a stock that's one cent.
	But if there aren't that much stock distributed, that actually could be a great valuation.
	The market cap matters more than what the actual cost is of an individual discrete unit.
	Alright, well, let's take this a step further now.
	Because I think we're sort of expanding this out, maybe even going back to blockchain a little bit.
	And I want to dive a little bit deeper, if you don't mind, into this area.
	Because you hear it, you know, used.
	And I heard about four or five years ago, this person said that they were going to travel the country and only use Bitcoin to pay for everything.
	Well, it ended up in a pretty well disastrous failure because not very many people took Bitcoin as they were going.
	So, from your conversation earlier, we're still in that sort of world of stock, speculation, investment, and having the real-world possibility of, through blockchain and other things, of actually using it in everyday life, so to speak.
	Envision me.
	Take me a step.
	Take our listeners on the podcast here a step further.
	Take me 15 years, if you can, in the future.
	Are we going to still be in that?
	Do you believe that we're going to still be in that sort of mixed balance?
	Or do you see it swinging one way or the other?
	Sure.
	First of all, I should caution that there are many Bitcoin holders of a diverse array of opinions on the topics I've already discussed and that I'm going to mention now.
	So my opinions do not reflect everybody in the Bitcoin community by far, just to be very clear on that.
	But I would say you're increasingly seeing more and more Americans adopt Bitcoin to be Bitcoin holders.
	And at a very simple level, many reviewers may be familiar with Apple Pay or the Cash App from Square and the ability to easily transact on their phone to make payments to buy a coffee or to check out at Whole Foods or whatever else.
	But, you know, Square is already incorporating Bitcoin into their Cash App.
	And so you may have your money in dollars or you may have your money in Bitcoin.
	And as long as everything's working properly, you could just use your phone with Apple Pay or Cash App or Venmo, whatever.
	I don't think Venmo is doing it today, but you could use it at any store that you wanted.
	It could be effortless.
	And so relatively quickly, Bitcoin could actually be accepted in a large number of places.
	Now, that being said, it would just be being used effectively to facilitate that transaction.
	On the back end, they'd be likely to change it back to dollars, which is today a number of companies do accept Bitcoin and they change it back to dollars.
	Now, Bitcoin people like myself would wish that those companies would keep it in Bitcoin.
	And so that's a bit further ahead going forward.
	But you're already starting to see some companies do that.
	So Tesla, for example, took a substantial portion of their balance sheet.
	And they bought Bitcoin with it.
	So they're holding their money in Bitcoin to essentially speculate or to hedge against the dollar.
	And so I would expect to see more companies start to do that.
	So the five-year horizon is customers are able to easily transact with Apple Pay or Square, etc., in vendors of their choosing.
	And then a 10, 15-year horizon, increasingly we're going to see vendors keep the Bitcoin on their balance sheet for reasons of their own benefit.
	And, you know, when you use a credit card, it costs about 2% of the transaction for that vendor.
	When you go to Whole Foods or Amazon or wherever, it costs them about 2%.
	Bitcoin, it's nearly free.
	So it's, you know, it's really to their benefit.
	And that's one reason why it's going to really drive this adoption.
	So, for instance, if I had...
	If I was wanting to use my Bitcoin, so to speak, more in a transactional method, okay?
	Instead of an investment method, if you would.
	Instead of I bought one Bitcoin at $30,000 and I'm just using...
	Or $50,000.
	Whatever to make it easy, okay?
	I have one Bitcoin in my purse, so to speak.
	And I wanted to go buy a...
	I wanted to go out to eat or go and get a hotel room.
	Let's just make it easy.
	And the hotel room was $150, whatever.
	The Bitcoin would take the, you would pay it out of, if it was at $30,000, $50,000, whatever, it would just remove enough of the Bitcoin percentage to pay the bill, leaving you with less than a full Bitcoin, but still in a savings account mode.
	Is that sort of the way you would look at it?
	Oh, I see what you're saying.
	Yes.
	I think it's a bit of a misnomer to think of everything in terms of one Bitcoin, right?
	Because a Bitcoin today is over $30,000.
	So it's better to think of it a bit like a currency in that there are many decimal places.
	And so one transaction for a hotel room, let's say you're there for a few days, it's $300, right?
	That's one hundredth of a Bitcoin, roughly.
	And so your Bitcoin is nominated like that.
	How many hundredths of a Bitcoin do you have?
	Most people aren't going to afford even one Bitcoin.
	So you may have You know, 0.95 of a Bitcoin.
	And so it just breaks it out like that.
	Very similar to if you're buying gasoline or something, and it breaks it down to the cents thereafter.
	All right.
	Well, that's beginning...
	I mean, look, if for anything else, that's beginning to make a lot of sense.
	For those who've never, you know, taken the moment to go into a platform to purchase or, you know, sell, if they already had some, to sell that one, at least makes it more understandable that you're not having to work up to the one, so to speak.
	It's broken up in pieces.
	You brought up an interesting subject just a few minutes ago, and I want to come back to it now.
	You said, because this is very, very true, Mexico's economy really could not exist without transfers of monetary dollars back from the United States.
	Their economy would crash.
	We know that from many Western Union, just the old sayings going back and forth.
	You had made a mention that if they sent it back in Bitcoin, that more than likely the family in Mexico would get the transaction through the computer, however they got it, and they would convert it, I'm assuming, into dollars or pesos, whichever one they wanted.
	Where would they do that at?
	If you, Derek, you sent me...
	By whatever means, through a server, however it is, you sent me a Bitcoin today.
	And I said, well, that's really nice.
	I want the money.
	Where would I go to, so to speak, get the money?
	Right.
	Sure.
	Well, first of all, I would say it depends on the country that you're in if you would want your local currency.
	If you're in Venezuela, you probably want to keep it in Bitcoin.
	Mexico, their currency has actually been quite strong, so that's a bit different.
	Colombia, the currency hasn't done so well.
	So not all of them want a local currency, but many do.
	Sri Lanka, for example, El Salvador just announced that Bitcoin is the official currency for El Salvador as one of several.
	So you may just keep it in Bitcoin.
	But to answer your specific question, there are more advanced ways to do this, but I'm just trying to explain the easiest way to solve some of these problems.
	And so you may use something like a Gemini or a similar product.
	And so that can help manage this operation and help you transfer it back to your fiat currency at your local bank.
	And so once the transaction is sent to you, you may immediately, you know, essentially send a wire.
	I mean, it's not actually a wire, you're not gonna pay a wire fee, but you have the Bitcoin in your Gemini account and you push a button to transfer it to your bank account so that way you have it in that local currency.
	Okay, so is that becoming more and more accessible?
	Let's keep it inside the United States.
	For someone in any major city or even outside a major city, is that becoming more and more accessible to everyday Joes and Janes of the world to actually do?
	Yes, absolutely.
	And I should mention, in addition to the Apple Pay and the Square app, there are Bitcoin specific apps that let you pay directly with your Bitcoin account.
	So it is becoming more and more popular and more and more Americans are becoming Bitcoin holders.
	And often they don't look like who you would assume.
	They happen to be minority majority, often Black people, often Hispanic people, increasingly young people.
	Well, I mean, it's making more and more of a sense.
	All right, we've sort of laid the foundation.
	We've laid the groundwork.
	We've sort of talked about the different aspects of this, and you have been wonderful in trying to help us out here.
	Not the last time you're going to be on the show, but the first time you were doing this really good.
	All right.
	Now, I am sitting here, and I have...
	Some extra money.
	I still think most people would at least begin to believe your step into this market is investment.
	I mean, we joked about the commercials earlier.
	We did that.
	So if I'm sitting here and let's just say it's me and my wife and we have $10,000 and we're saying, hey, you know, instead of going and buying XYZ stock, let's try Ethereum, let's try Bitcoin, let's try whatever.
	So we go out and we go to one of the, because there's now brokerage firms that basically, I mean, you see them advertised all along that this is what they do.
	I'll open an account with $10,000 in cash, which is the way they would do it.
	How would you say, Doug, here's what you need to be aware of, here's what you need to be cautious about, for someone doing the more investment side, who may get later on more involved in, and I'll use 30 so I can actually have a full Bitcoin, but anyway, $35,000, $50,000, whatever.
	I went out, my wife and I, we purchased a Bitcoin.
	We put enough money in to purchase a Bitcoin.
	How would you recommend we go about that?
	Is there certain ways?
	And what are the risks or non-risk involved in that?
	Sure.
	I mean, the easiest way is to sign up with a very customer-facing website like Gemini.
	Which will let you buy Bitcoin or other things of your choosing.
	And you transfer your money to your Gemini account.
	And then you can buy whatever you want.
	I mean, I don't want to make this comparison too strongly because there are definitely differences between cryptocurrency and in corporate stock.
	But in this regard, it looks similar.
	Or you could buy Ethereum or buy Bitcoin.
	And then you can hold it and see how it's appreciated or depreciated in value and even put, you know, advanced stuff like, you know, sell, hold, at this price, this price type of, you know, transaction information.
	Okay.
	And so then you got basically, and Gemini is not the only one, correct?
	That's right.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	I just wanted to make sure.
	I mean, you know, we're not selling anybody's product, so to speak, necessarily, unless they want to contact the Joe Collins Show, and then we can work on that.
	And for any of the crypto helpers out there who would like to be investing, come see me at the podcast.
	We'll talk about it as we go forward.
	So, now, is this just like the stock market?
	This is not guaranteed, correct?
	Absolutely not guaranteed.
	To be very clear, not guaranteed.
	But is it formed well enough now to where, is there any concern that you wake up one morning and it has no value?
	I mean, that's always a possibility.
	It's even a possibility with companies and with stocks.
	I agree with that.
	And that's why, man, everybody would understand that with a company.
	This is just a little bit different.
	So I'm not to be critical, but I'm just asking the question for people to understand.
	Now, there's a huge top end as well.
	Absolutely.
	Yeah, I mean, people would argue the chance of it going to zero is almost impossible.
	Bitcoin holders would argue that because as long as there are some people transacting in Bitcoin, it has some value, which is slightly different than a company where the liabilities can be more than the upside and then they have to declare bankruptcy and then everybody could get zero.
	But it has similar assets, similar properties, right?
	It can go up in value, it can go down in volume.
	I would say at a basic level, people would argue that there's a lot of upward potential here.
	If you look at how big of a market cap silver or gold or some of these other commodities have had, You're increasingly seeing investment managers say, we should have some portion of all of our customers have in Bitcoin or Ethereum or whatever it is, or a basket.
	And if that's how you're investing, then you would expect it to eventually go up in value.
	And that's not even including its increasing use cases and adoption for other things around the world.
	That's just as a holder of value akin to gold.
	Well, I mean, look, this is, I think, as I've said before, this is something new.
	It's something I've been wanting to get onto the podcast here because this podcast is more than politics.
	It's more than, you know, sports.
	It's about everyday life.
	And, Derek, I think what you've done is you've helped begin to lay the foundation for somebody.
	Hopefully, if you're listening to the podcast today and you've never...
	So many people, and if you notice this at the Policy Institute, I'm sure people can look on your website and everything to find out more, but it has to be interesting.
	For some of the folks who are watching NFL football, and every game has at least 10 to 15, this cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Ethereum, they have these advertisements going on to which probably 80 to 90% of the watchers have no idea or have not participated in.
	I'm not sure if it's that high.
	My dad and family over the holidays were asking me about Bitcoin.
	So I think people are starting to become a bit more curious and a bit more aware.
	But it's certainly true.
	There are definitely a lot of people who don't own Bitcoin, who are still learning about it for the first time.
	And there's definitely a lot to learn.
	It's a bit of a wormhole, actually.
	You keep going and learning new things.
	Every day.
	But if Tom Brady says it is good, you know, Tom Brady, you know, do you think...
	And look, you're in the industry.
	You're known.
	You're a face of it.
	Is it good to have...
	these players you know these mega actors and others being the face of this right now you don't typically see that I mean as much in the the old style old guard stock companies those kind of things it's generating a lot of interest is there a fear that it's generating some interest that is good and bad Sure.
	I mean, I think with more attention, it's good and bad, right?
	As Bitcoin has gone up in value, more people own Bitcoin across the world.
	You have people like Hillary Clinton and other serious policymakers saying that they should ban or seriously regulate Bitcoin to the point of very serious difficulty.
	And so you're getting more scrutiny as this is kicking up, as more people are adopting it, more people are advertising for crypto.
	So that's definitely a bad thing.
	But on the good side, I think it's great that more people are learning more about this emerging sector and have an opportunity to invest in it and share in the upside.
	Couldn't have asked for a better, as almost you read my script, couldn't have asked for a better lead into my sort of final set of questions here.
	That is the government involvement.
	Right now, one of the big selling features of Bitcoin is decentralized.
	It's not attached to any government.
	It's not attached to anything.
	But just like the internet, as the internet has grown through social media, through everything else, we've seen the rise of those who believe that the government is the answer for everything.
	For those listening to this podcast, you know I don't feel that way.
	But there is a sense that the government is almost like the jealous sibling I've got to have my hand in whatever hot is going on.
	What is the regulatory state right now?
	What are you concerned about?
	You brought up Hillary Clinton.
	I've heard it, frankly, from Republicans, unfortunately, and others, that there is this desire that we need to manage, and I've heard that euphemistic word, manage Bitcoin or this crypto to protect the public, which I just find completely hilarious.
	But it is a real issue.
	Where do you see it right now under the Biden administration or other administrations going forward?
	Where do you see this regulatory state looking like?
	Yeah, our concern is really bipartisan.
	As you mentioned, there are definitely some Democrats who are pretty bad on this issue and then there are Republicans who are also pretty bad on this issue.
	Often it's a misunderstanding though.
	I think it's mainly ignorance.
	I don't think it's necessarily malice.
	You know, when they talk about heavily regulating or managing A lot of that is misunderstanding this whole concept, as if this is a corporation that they can manage and regulate or arrest somebody.
	It isn't.
	Satoshi isn't a known person.
	There's very minimal tools in the toolkit to actually regulate Bitcoin.
	At the same time, there are very serious risks.
	So the infrastructure bill passed in the fall, the Biden infrastructure bill included language that was extremely harmful for overall cryptocurrencies and essentially unworkable.
	It basically just doesn't make any sense.
	And so we actually don't even know what's going to happen out of that.
	And so that's what I'm talking about is regulation or laws created by people who don't really understand what they're talking about here.
	And you have a lot of companies that want to follow the rules, but they actually don't know how to follow the rules because the rules weren't written for actually what's going on here.
	So the infrastructure bill was very bad for brokers and Bitcoin holders.
	They just had a hearing in the House on the environmental impact of Bitcoin mining.
	And we're hearing a lot of misinformation on that.
	It's just the amount of misinformation is staggering.
	And, you know, there's a real threat of states potentially banning Bitcoin mining.
	So those are things that we're watching very carefully that we're quite concerned about, that we just want policymaking to be informed by actual data and actual evidence.
	And, you know, there are a lot of American companies who are leading in this sector.
	You just need to know what the rules are to follow them.
	Right.
	Well, it's concerning to me, and this is, you know, a joke off the cuff.
	Maybe they're concerned in the House and part of the membership of the House is believing that we're actually out there in the backyard digging for this stuff.
	I mean, maybe they think there's fracking for Bitcoin.
	I don't know what's going on here.
	You know, but again, but it also goes to show that so many times This is a dangerous area for lawmakers, many of which are not from the industries such as this that they deal with.
	And this is where we've gotten into a lot of problems.
	One of the biggest issues, I mean, from technology when you were there, you know, and it's still to this day is a Section 230 out of, you know, from the code back in the 90s and how that's being applied now.
	It is a concern people need to be aware of that when you have Congress believing they have to, for the good of the public, do something, Even if they don't understand it, that's where I would see the real problem.
	Don't you, Derek?
	Yeah, you gotta read the bill to find out what's in it, right?
	You gotta...
	We know that'll happen very often.
	It has to pass before we find out what's in it, right?
	Isn't that the Pelosi quote?
	Yeah, I mean, we have to, this hearing they just had, they had almost no real people from the Bitcoin community to actually educate policymakers about Bitcoin mining.
	So we're really on first base here when some policymakers are really trying to shove through regulation.
	We expect new regulation to be put out by the Biden administration draft comment in the next 72 hours, for example.
	So, a lot of stuff is happening on this.
	We don't know exactly what's going to be in that, but our first advisement is bring in the right people.
	Let's have the right conversations.
	Let's actually know what's happening.
	Well, that is, I think, going to be the best thing.
	Derek, again, I'm glad to have you on today.
	Derek Conner is the Executive Director of the Bitcoin Policy Institute.
	It will not be the last time Doug Collins Show podcasters get to hear from Derek because we're going to keep this up.
	I believe it's something that, you know, there's a lot of people asking.
	But don't know who to ask.
	They don't know where to go.
	And I can come get you here on the podcast.
	I can ask the questions that nobody else wants to ask.
	And if people think that I don't have it all together, well, I've been in politics for a long time.
	I get that.
	So that's not a problem for me.
	But you've opened up a lot of eyes.
	You've opened up my eyes.
	Is this something I'm going to examine a little bit further now in looking at it?
	One last quick question, though, because there has been, even for advocates, A large amount of fluctuation, especially Bitcoin and some others over the last, say, 60 to 90 days.
	Do you see that reflective of the economy, the stock market, or is this just a Yeah, it's a great question.
	Again, I don't want to give formal investment advice for your listeners, but just my two cents on it is we're seeing all assets being increasingly correlated.
	So real estate is correlated with the stock market, and even crypto is increasingly correlated with the stock market.
	So it's not surprising to me to see the stock market go down and to see Bitcoin go down.
	There definitely was a bit of exuberance, and so some have said it's a correction.
	Another argument, however, is a lot of people may have made a lot of money in Bitcoin, have to pay capital gains taxes, don't have enough money to pay the capital gains taxes, so then they have to sell their assets.
	And you see this around the end of the year, you see this behavior in the stock market, you see it also arguably in Bitcoin.
	So there are a number of hypotheses of kind of what's going on in the real short term.
	We've seen a few of these kind of short term corrections, but then generally the next cycle continues upwards.
	It just depends on where you think things are going in the longer term, I would say.
	I wouldn't bet on it for a week or two.
	It's a longer term bet.
	So you're back.
	And what we've always seen, and again, we're not giving out here on Doug Collins medical information, financial information, or investment information, or legal advice.
	We're both lawyers, but we're not your lawyers.
	So we're not giving any of that out here as we go.
	But it is something the old saying is, if you're getting into investing, For the most part, the average investor out there needs to be long-term thinking, not short-term thinking.
	If you're doing it for a living, then maybe you can have the more shorter-term gains and losses and move from there.
	Derek, I can't tell you how much I appreciate you being here to start this conversation.
	And I'm truly serious about this.
	And for our podcast listeners, this won't be the last.
	I look forward to maybe taking some segments and we break this down as we go forward looking ahead.
	But thanks for being on the podcast today.
	Sounds good.
	Folks, I don't know about you, but I cannot stand a towel that simply moves water around me after my shower.
	I like a towel that grabs you, takes the water, gets it off of you, and does what a towel is supposed to do, dry you off.
	I've had so many towels I bought over time.
	Some are expensive, some were cheap, but again, when they just sort of moved the water around, I could have just stayed in the shower and stayed wet.
	I need a towel that gets me dry.
	That's where our friends at MyPillow come in.
	They have towels, and you're not going to believe the bargain that they have right now.
	Mike and the folks at MyPillow have offered a six-piece towel set.
	That's two bath towels, two hand towels, and two washcloths.
	Regularly $109.99 for $39.99.
	All you gotta do is have code word Collins.
	You can go to MyPillow.com or you can call them at 1-800-986-3994.
	If you want towels that actually do what they're supposed to do, dry you off.
	You know, that's what we do here on the Doug Collins Podcast.
	We talk about real answers and real solutions for a complicated world.
	Well, sometimes you may not think that getting water off of you is a complicated process, but undoubtedly it is for some tile companies.
	It's not for the folks at MyPillow who actually have a tile.
	The MyTileLage is a great investment for you, and right now you can get it on sale regularly $109.99 for only $39.99.
	And that is with code word Collins.
	Also, anything else that you want to go on there.
	You've still got the slippers.
	You've still got the MyPillars.
	You've still got everything that is on that wonderful website.
	You want to go check it out.
	Use code name Collins and get your discounts.

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