Alexander Lloyd clarifies Bitcoin is pseudo-anonymous, traceable by states yet vital for billions lacking banking access in dictatorships. Co-authoring a book with Alex Glasstein, he frames it as capital democratization, distinguishing it from other cryptos as the premier value storage tool verified by independent mining networks. Addressing environmental fears, Lloyd notes 70% of mining uses renewable desert energy, while warning users to safeguard private keys like bank passwords. Ultimately, Bitcoin serves not just as currency but as a critical human rights instrument for safe fund transfer against asset seizure and hyperinflation. [Automatically generated summary]
I think what it is, it's a democratization of capital.
If you think of the history of how individuals got more power in the world, it started with democracy.
There's a lot of steps here, but democracy as a political system, I think, you know, another step that you might think of is freedom of speech and the Internet, which let anybody be a publisher and a creator.
And I think Bitcoin is the next step, which is people can be their own banks and have their own individual freedom.
Whereas the Internet, in a way, was a way to let any two people exchange ideas and information.
And Bitcoin is going to be a way that any two people can exchange value.
So since most of my audience is pretty tech-savvy, but not everybody, for the person that's watching this right now that has no Bitcoin, they've heard the word Bitcoin, they're like, what the hell is Bitcoin, it's not backed by anything, what is this thing?
Give me the Q&A portion of this, because you guys end this, Chapter 6 is all Q&A about sort of the basics.
As Americans, a lot of people don't understand the privilege we have in terms of the amount of resources, financial resources, banks, credit card, Apple Pay, all these systems that, you know, PayPal, that let us exchange value between people.
But billions of people across the world don't have any such technology.
They probably will never have a bank account.
And Bitcoin is a way for them to, in a way, be their own bank.
And in an unstoppable way, exchange value with anybody across the whole world.
And I think that's the message that really makes Bitcoin not this crazy trading scheme or, you know, a lot of people think it's just like a Ponzi scheme.
But this is, if you think about it, it's a way for people, billions of people to exchange and store value without having any government or company involved in it.
It's possible, and that's maybe a bigger case for Bitcoin.
But Bitcoin is the first time that people... The Human Rights Foundation does give grants to human rights advocates throughout the world, and before it was a multi-step process that took days and was fraught with peril in terms of getting them capital and now through Bitcoin there's really a simple way
that we can send people capital and they can use it and store it in a safe
way and that's really never been possible. Right so basically Human Rights
I think there's a kind of a misconception that Bitcoin is completely anonymous. It's really pseudo-anonymous. If a
state actor or even a big corporation wants to find out who transferred
Bitcoin to whom, it can be done.
It's harder than just looking at someone's visa or bank account.
But I think there are new technologies built on top of Bitcoin, like the Lightning Network, that for very small amounts will keep it almost like cash, where it'll be much harder and won't be worth the effort to track stuff.
How's this all connected to just decentralizing everything?
You know the world I'm in, where everybody's worried that if you put a video up that YouTube doesn't like, you're going down, or if you put a tweet up that Twitter doesn't like, they're going to get rid of you.
I think this was the first technology that really proved it could work.
The designer or inventor of Bitcoin was really smart in terms of creating an amazing incentive network where hundreds of millions of dollars has been invested in the blockchain technology and the mining around it without really any investment from government or venture capitalists.
What about when Elon Musk is like, I'm into it, and it goes like this, and then he's like, I'm not into it, and it goes like this, and then that gets people all freaked out?
I feel like it's, you know, he's having fun, he's a very smart guy, he's created some really incredible technologies, but he's also someone who probably likes to troll a lot on You think?
On Twitter.
And he also runs a company that is, you know, very focused on green, which is Tesla.
And, you know, I'm sure he got pushed back saying Bitcoin isn't green, which I think it is, because a lot of the, a majority, 70% of the Bitcoin is mined from renewable sources, because people are really looking for the cheapest energy when they mine a Bitcoin, and that's typically renewable stuff.
Well, if you think about where Bitcoin mining takes place, it needs a power source.
And if you create a huge solar cell in the middle of the Sahara Desert, it's not really valuable energy because you have to then ship that energy to a city.
But if you created a huge green solar plant in the middle of the Sahara Desert and your output was new Bitcoin, that might be a financially viable situation because you can just email out the new Bitcoin that you create and the output is not a huge cable.
There's a lot of different ways, and I think the, everybody is going to have
You can go to a centrally stored wallet like Coinbase.
You can also have an app on your phone where you store stuff.
You could have a USB stick where you store stuff.
I think the major difference, and maybe a lot of people don't wrap their head around it, is that you're your own bank.
That gives you a lot of freedom, but then it gives you some responsibilities because You have to be the person who creates the wall around your privacy and you have responsibilities when you get that freedom.
Well, I have to admit the reason I took a meeting with you is because I was a fan of your work.
So I like the way you think and I was like, well, I mean, how bad can it be?
I can meet this guy and it'll be an interesting conversation.
But then what you described it in terms of like giving power back to the creator and having a system where it's I think unfortunately a lot of times in our society there's big tech companies that have gotten a little bit too much power and I really liked your kind of David versus Google, Goliath approach to things and you know when I make a decision to invest in a company it's really about the team and your team with Asaf was really impressive and the technology
We're building was right on what I thought could work and then it's proven really to be true and I've seen so many creators thrive on your platform.
You know, they can quit their day job and just be on Locals and have an amazing life and just continue to create and that's impossible on other platforms.
So, you know, I think I've been proven right that, you know, investing in you and your team has been a really good thing.
They take these crazy risks and it's really amazing to see it pay off.
No sane person wants to be an entrepreneur, but it's that good kind of crazy, like, you know, taking on these intractable problems and building something.
And to me, that's the most fun.
It's the human aspect.
And, you know, I'm kind of a computer geek.
I love all the technology aspects of it.
I mean, I'm a science fiction fan and I love the idea of, like, Kind of seeing how sci-fi will play out in the real world and you know, what are the trends that are gonna work on Have impact on society.
We're basically in a dystopian future right now Sometimes, you know, I think we live in the simulation because it's craziest stuff is happening.