Cryptocurrencies: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

Technology is what will eventually make television so high definition. I will no longer be allowed to appear on it and I want to approach this topic carefully because discussions about any new technology tend to age very poorly, as this report from less than five years ago shows that the first users of Google Glasses will almost certainly not be the

last

. I think it will end up changing our lifestyles. You know, changing the way we interact with each other and just changing the gesture instead. Yes, that's how it was. Although it wasn't like that, because for some reason people didn't mind doing this with their hands if the alternative was wearing a stupid robot on your face all day, the point is that it's dangerous to make predictions about where the technology is going. so he said that

tonight

we are going to talk about

cryptocurrencies

, everything you don't understand about money combined with everything you don't understand about computers.

The main currency you've probably heard of is Bitcoin. It's been all over the news because

last

year the value skyrocketed from around $1,000 at the beginning of the year to 9,000 in November and almost 20,000 in December. Bitcoin became such a hot topic that paparazzi began asking celebrities about Michael Keaton leaving a restaurant. Hey, would you recommend buying Bitcoin? Do you know what's funny? It was just that I have two different ones, one guy said yeah, you probably want another friend of I told him it's not a bad thing, they just don't know where he's going to go. I will say that you don't expect conversations with paparazzi to be so nuanced Hi Cardi B, what do you think about the idea of ​​universal basic income?

Well, it could go a long way toward reducing inequality, but I don't think the American people will support the tax increases needed to fund it. You can read all about it in my anomic book card s-- make Marnie a Buddhist for a new American century and this was a traumatic change just a few years ago you only heard about Bitcoin from that guy in your office who wouldn't shut up let's call him Dan and The reason we call him Dan is because Dan is exactly the guy in our office who has been bothering everyone with his you have to get into Bitcoin for years, that's why we hate dad, honestly, we don't.

The only reason, but it's the easiest one to mention right now, is that lately more and more normal or non-Dan people have been getting into

cryptocurrencies

, partly because they may have seen stories like this. Dylan Fein is living the dream of owning his Mitsubishi Eclipse. my windows didn't work my air conditioning didn't work right I had to open the doors just to get food at the drive thru. Everything changed when he met a friend who introduced him to Bitcoin. I turned 350 dollars into 12,000 and he became a millionaire. At 24 years old, by investing in Bitcoin, I can literally place a trade, wait a few hours, let the exchange rate fluctuate, and I can actually profit from the largest financial market in the world.

Yes, that guy is apparently a millionaire now, which is presumably why he's being interviewed at South Florida's most expensive open-air swamp registry and even though Bitcoin has nearly halved since the beginning of this year, there is still a fervor for cryptocurrencies with people seeing people like that guy get rich or hearing about others on Reddit or Twitter and feeling driven to invest in cryptocurrencies due to FOMO or fear of missing out now. FOMO is a term many of you probably already knew, but I'm 40, British, and I don't realize it or Theo BOE, sort of. With all this excitement and curiosity, we thought we'd try to explain a few things

tonight

.

Bitcoin blockchain, the technology that allows cryptocurrencies to exist in general, and I'm going to simplify things a lot here, so let's start with Bitcoin, which is a decentralized digital currency that basically means that Bitcoin only exists as computer code and there is no bank. or government that creates or controls it. I know this is already a little hard to understand so I'll let this man in a Bitcoin suit give you a surprisingly decent explanation I am a virtual currency worldwide that you can send for low or no fees open source not controlled by any government corporation or individual financial freedom bro thanks bro that is a nuanced and accurate explanation of a complex topic delivered with the help of a man in a stupid costume and I would love to make fun of that except it's literally the entire business model of this show of TV.

I know you may be thinking right now, but wait, how do you make money with Bitcoin? To which Dan would say that it's just traded on exchanges like any other currency and if you then asked how it has value, Dan would say how money has value, man, and then he would say, call my brain for later because I just blew your mind. . I would say you forget I asked Dan, you are absolutely disgusting, I hate you, but the problem is that Dan is right, like most currencies, the fundamental reason Bitcoin has value is because people agree that , in fact, has value at the time when it is actually being dealt with.

Rather it is a speculative investment than a currency. Think of it like baby hats. Why is this baby hat currently offered for sale on Etsy for $15,000? Well, because its owner thinks someone will pay that for it and you know who that owner was. absolutely true, I'm kidding, I'm kidding, I'm kidding, I just bought this at a flea market for ten thousand dollars. I'm not a complete idiot, look, that's great, Bitcoin is a very interesting concept, there are still some complicated technical aspects. Issues to resolve before it can become an everyday usable currency, just look at what happened in January.

Hundreds of people are in Miami this

week

for a Bitcoin conference, but it had to stop accepting Bitcoin as a means of payment last

week

, suggesting there are still some issues to resolve. with the currency, it is true that one Bitcoin conference stopped accepting Bitcoin, which is a red flag since that is the only place one would think it would be accepted. It's like when I tried to pay for admission to the Republican National Convention using Ronald Reagan's dusty skeleton ships. We agreed they had value, there just wasn't a suitable network to complete our transaction, but whether Bitcoin catches on or not, many people believe that what's really exciting is the potential of the innovative technology it's based on. and that is something that is now called blockchain.

Normally, if you wanted to send money to someone around the world, a bank would need to verify that transaction and it could take days, but with Bitcoin it is much faster because there is no bank involved and that is because blockchain technology allows it. a record or ledger of every Bitcoin transaction ever made to be stored not in one place but on a large number of computers, that's part of what people mean when they say that Bitcoin is decentralized and that decentralization It has many theoretical advantages, from speed to security. The key point here is that this is a distributed ledger, there is no central server, all the other legends that we have all the edges of all the banking Ledger companies, they all sit and reside within that company, which It means they have a point of attack and can be hacked.

JP Morgan was hacked by a cyber thief not long ago, the target of Home Depot. All of these companies were hacked. In reality, it is because there is a central repository of information, the Bitcoin ledger resides on thousands of computers. You can't hack it when you think. That sounds great and because of the complicated process the network uses to verify records, it is very secure. Now relax. I'm not going to go into what that process is or how it works, but I will share a really useful and really silly metaphor. The reason it's secure as I like to think of it is that a blockchain is a highly processed thing, kind of like a Chicken McNugget and if you wanted to hack it it would be like returning a Chicken McNugget with chickens in it, someday someone.

You'll be able to do that, but for now it's going to be difficult, wait, that's an absolutely horrible thought, so why is that journalist so happy with the idea? If someone ever figures out how to turn a Chicken McNugget back into a chicken, that chicken is going to be awake, spend the rest of his life suffering from PTSD, and writing disturbing poetry about the experience, the things I saw, buck-buck -buck o my body is complete, but what about my soul? Basically, that's blockchain. a database that is almost impossible to hack or manipulate and could possibly improve security efficiency and trust.

That's why big companies like Walmart, IBM, and JP Morgan haven't been experimenting with blockchain as a way to share and potentially secure the trend and translation of data. transactions in a reliable and easily accessible way, but it is still very early, no one yet knows what blockchain is really capable of. Honestly, don't worry if you don't understand it yet, most people don't think you do and you sure do. I'll throw around terms like supply chain management and it makes me want to punch him in the face. Stop leaving printouts of Reddit threads on my desk. Dan, you know I'm just throwing them away.

I am your. The problem is that there is not enough enthusiasm. the same word blockchain that has become a magnet for investment Reuters found that existing companies that simply added the word blockchain to their name saw their share price increase on average more than three times and one of them was particularly foolish . Long Island Iced Tea rebranded itself for a long time. blockchain and guess what happens, yes, its shares tripled. Wow, I'll just tell that to people who watch the markets. This seems so stupid that it's not even worth reporting. Yeah, well, I don't care how stupid it is, it clearly works, that's why from now on. on this show it will be called the latest moment tonight with blockchain, it will even triple the ratings, triple that too, so now at this point you know basically what bitcoin is, it's the future brother and why people are excited about blockchain, He will not allow the people to be cowed. your nugs, but you might still be wondering what's up with all the other cryptocurrencies I've heard about.

Well, the key software to create a coin is open source, meaning almost anyone can create one, so they've already done it. 1500 cryptocurrencies you can buy with names like boobs coin trump coin jesus coin crazy coin electro neum wax particle deep onion snow vo pluto new bits and clams a list so crazy you can't tell which ones are real and which ones are made up because they are all real. I didn't invent any. I tried to think of a silly name that wasn't deep onion and it just can't be done and look, not all of these coins are like Bitcoin, I just hope to be the next coin often.

Sometimes startups sell a coin to try to raise money as an alternative to issuing stock, and sometimes those coins are intended to be tokens to be used for services the startup could eventually provide, such as Chucky Cheese tokens. , only virtual and not redeemable. In a rat-based food emporium it has become incredibly easy to issue coins, so companies are doing it frequently. Initial coin offerings or ICOs raised over six billion dollars in 2017 and one company raised thirty-five million in less than 30 seconds, usually when someone makes that amount. money so fast they made it by walking up to Bill O'Reilly sitting silently for 26 seconds and then saying, "I recorded our phone calls," but the vast majority of people who buy these coins don't pay much attention to the details of the startups that We Are Attached to the Theater is responding to the great fervor and there is a lot of it, there was a whole online subculture of personalities and YouTube subreddits who have a cult-like devotion to purchasing these coins and if you stumble upon one you will find they have a complete shorthand , a key term is Hodel, based on a misspelling of holes, this is a fundamental principle, do not sell when prices go down, instead Hodel in front of food, fear uncertainty and hesitate, otherwise , you could get lost when the currency rises or skyrockets. will go up in value, which means you'll either get rekt or lose money and you'll never be able to afford the traders ultimate goal, a Lambo, which is short for Lamborghini because of course it is, and if you're thinking these terms belong to a rap video, some cryptocurrency traders Okay I ain't got time for the haters man we about to grow to a million tell me how you feel about cool and I gotta be honest it's hard not to see that and, deep down, one is in the Hodel gang Hodel gang Hodel gang Hodel gang the point is that many people are buying coins for no other reason thanthe fact that other people are buying them and this mania has gotten to the point where even a coin that started as a complete joke like dogecoin can shake it up. in value, it is named after an internet meme that was popular at the time, a photo of shiba inu with colorful comments written in broken English around it, as you can see now, the total market value of Dodge Coins has almost doubled since the beginning of this year to more than two. billion dollars, there seems to be no obvious reasons for this, yes that's because there were no obvious reasons, the point of the currency was to make fun of how people would buy anything and then people did exactly that, that's not less ridiculous than if you started. a joke band after the beatles called the waffles, that was all st.

Bernard's and went on to have 40 number one hits and one knighted by the Queen. This is clearly ridiculous, but for investors it is also potentially dangerous because right now this market is essentially the Wild West and ripe for exploitation, for example it can be easy to manipulate the value of certain currencies through things like pump and dump, regulators crack down on those when they happen to stocks, but they have been slower to act in the cryptocurrency market and that may explain why some groups have felt perfectly comfortable posting videos like this, welcome. to cryptocurrencies call a major cryptocurrency pump room where we skyrocket the value of coins for six hours straight to learn about our weekly pumps including the point we are pumping follow our Telegram channel once launched be sure to buy the coin as quickly as possible and all group members have purchased the coin.

We will start announcing it to other investors on social media within the last hour. Outside investors will fill our orders as they follow the coin whose value we have increased by 1000-2000 percent by the time the 4-6 hours are up, everyone in our group will do so. have been sold as accessories called crypto together we profit sacredly it's a little destabilizing just a blatant ad for something you could have sworn was illegal it's like watching a commercial and hearing hey, don't you have a kid? Do you want someone else's kidnappers' corner? the group for you here, a corner of kidnappers, we take children that are not ours and bring them home with us, it's easy for little children cz and look, the pumpkin dumps are just the beginning here, there are dodgy companies everywhere parts, some of which seem like old school frauds. with a little crypto sauce poured on top, take some connect, at one point it was worth around three billion dollars, now Big Connect told investors that if they handed over money they could earn returns of up to 40% a month and such a high rate of return.

It may seem suspicious to you right away, but remember that the market was skyrocketing and X's pick had excited investors like this guy who spoke at one of the conferences. Let me tell you, we are truly changing the world as we know it. The world is not like that anymore. It used to be no, not just because, the last time I saw someone so unreasonably exuberant about a major commitment, he was about seven years away from divorcing Katie Holmes, yeah, I don't blame him at all, he's got a good head on his shoulders. . Stay clear, Tommy, stay clear, boy, now that that man's passion has become famous in the cryptocurrency world, as well as his conviction that the business he got involved in was 100% legitimate, this was going to be a scam again, so I said to myself in a thousand.

Dossett ding, you're right, you know, Taylor. Oh ladies, I'm fine, I'm always bugging you not to get sucked into get-rich-quick schemes that leave your marriage in a state of financial ruin. Now, this won't surprise you. Collapsed regulators in two states issued cease and desist orders and bitten reporters who have been labeled a Ponzi scheme by many in the industry, something no one had any reason to suspect from their promotional material except that it featured this Actual illustration of their bonus system which appears to be just a picture of a man who has the idea of ​​a pyramid scheme.

I am NOT saying that every crypto point is a scam, just as I am not saying that every blockchain company is in a speculative mania. It can be incredibly difficult to tell which companies are real and if you want a good example of this, just look at block one: it's a startup whose coin offering has so far raised one and a half billion dollars that will go towards developing a new type. of software project called Yost now just for context Facebook took seven years to raise $1 billion from investors it took more than five years Yost surpassed that figure in about nine months and that's despite the Wall Street Journal describing the block one such as a The software startup that does not plan to sell any software and describes what is certainly a digital token serves no purpose and while the company's sister, Els, will be the most powerful infrastructure for decentralized applications that they say , they will be usable, you have not lost.

However, you just have to take their word for it and they talk a lot, everything will be better, faster and cheaper, everything will be more connected, everything will be more reliable, everything will be safer, everything that exists will no longer work. exists the way it does today everything in this world is about to get better oh please idiot everything that exists will no longer exist the way it does how is Yoast going to change this iguana how is it how is it going to be an operating system? both alter and improve Susan here Susan is enough now that sleepy, creepy cowboy from the future is called Brock Pierce, he started his career appearing on The Mighty Ducks and in it he sprouts a fizzy commercial when he was a kid who turns into a banana, well , that banana. then he got involved with some very unsavory figures only Google The Brock Pierce scandal is all I'm saying there and then he teamed up with yokes to help promote their product which isn't a product yet, he actually gave a speech at a tech conference last fall and I want you to remember as you listen to every word he's about to say the company he's describing has raised $1.5 billion this is a chest that would ruin the one I'm wearing what's the Eos logo the chest I'd wear It's the sacred geometry shape of the heart and if you're going to bring a technology into the world that has the potential to change everything, it's good when you do it with intention and it seems like a good place to start.

This was my wedding at Burning Man last year. entirely unicorn wedding all the groomsmen wear the pinkest rainbow color all the bridesmaids wear the pinkest rainbow color and my groomsman was a woman dressed in black laughing well, stop, Brock, stop because I was already in Chester, drew and I simply refuse to believe that a man who has the time to organize a unicorn wedding at Burning Man should be trusted with around one and a half billion dollars. If someone showed up to mow the lawn and gave you that exact speech, there would be no way he would tell them.

I don't trust you with my lawn, he's just going to organize a witch's quinceañera on it, look, look, this is what I said at the beginning of this article that I didn't want to make predictions and who knows, maybe eoqs is going to be the next Google I don't think it is and I certainly don't think it can be worth more than a billion dollars right now, but I could be wrong, I'm not wrong at all, but it could be, the point is if you choose to invest. In the cryptocurrency space you just have to know that you're not investing, you're gambling, which is fine, but you have to know that that's what you're doing and the prices are going down.

Bitcoin could eventually be worthless or it could be worth billions and be adopted as a new global currency, although if that happens, I won't experience it because I'll be in an underground bunker trying to avoid Dan's smug little face for the rest of time. I hate your belts more than anything else in that photo, the important thing to remember here is that this is a completely new and very complicated space and literally no one knows how it's going to play out, so you have to be careful and I know it sounds boring. Caution is a hard sell when you're faced with bit, plug and hold. or gap, that's why I've invited a special guest to help make that message a little more exciting.

I'm really amazed right now to say this super excited horn, don't imagine my moment with all of you because tonight we're going to be talking, okay, you have to tell me more about this responsibility, does this mean I shouldn't just invest everything I do I have cryptocurrencies? Now it's raion, that's right. You shouldn't know that the cryptocurrency market is extremely volatile and insufficiently regulated, they talk. They don't do it if they pump their company's puppet, they blow it up and they double it on the W and their permanent problem they have opened it and they pump it pulling, pulling a puff all the time and they don't, yeah, that's right. the belt yeah listen upbeat design laughs coins investing in cryptocurrencies could be like getting into Google from the beginning when you say that sounds absolutely great it could be like getting into Google Glass from the beginning and that's what you don't it should be and one story was one that was one story so let's look at this what's the big lesson: never again invest what you are willing to lose and if you do don't stay blindly okay, instead you should have be very careful, okay. how to betray us todd playful game okay