Blockchain: Trustworthy or a Scam?

Blockchain powered decentralization

has the potential to impact society
in a variety of ways, including around

how much power companies and governments
have.

Blockchains are immutable.

The record that's created
cannot be changed by anyone,

so whatever is put onto a blockchain
you can trust and rely

it's accuracy. That's pretty powerful
in a world of deep fakes,

in a world of exposure of corruption
and graft all over the world.

Blockchains
give us a financial infrastructure

that we can deploy worldwide. When certain
crises or things break out.

Sometimes it takes a while
to get that funding to people.

But with newer technologies, we can fund
entire regions and places more quickly

and overnight.

Oftentimes when we give our power away,
that power is actually used against us.

With blockchain technology,
it's all about giving the power

back to the user,
giving the control back to the user.

When you go on Instagram,
you are beholden to the Instagram's

algorithm of what they show you
how you discover

new content and how you engage
with the platform itself.

And I think that works for many reasons.

Moving forward, however,
I think decentralization has a role

to play in creating systems
where users can have more control

over their data, over their privacy,
and over how they interact

with any platform online.

One of the most interesting things about
cryptocurrencies is they're universal.

There's no Bitcoin central authority,
and so everybody can use it

without having to trust
some particular government

or some particular central authority.

There are good
reasons for having centralized entities.

For one, they can afford
certain kinds of protections

that a decentralized entity can’t.

If there's not the entity

that's in control or the entity
that is there to protect you from, say,

frauds and scams like banks can do, then
consumers, for instance, are vulnerable

because there's no central authority
to appeal to.

If you lose your money, it's final.

Hacks, thefts are

quite scary when you're holding bitcoin
and that's always going to be an issue.

It's actually an issue if with anything
in life, with any physical property.

Bitcoin itself is a a hyped up fraud.

So I think we're seeing lots of scams
and frauds for a variety of reasons.

One is that it's really complex.

It's difficult to understand
what's going on.

The government doesn't really have
a great grip on what's going on,

so you have government confusion
and therefore lack of oversight.

You have, frankly, some very intelligent
people operating cryptocurrency companies,

and you have lots of people
who want to make a lot of money

and lots of gullible people
you put all that into the mix.

You've got a recipe for disaster.

My biggest worry about the blockchain
space is that

we need to protect users and ensure
that their security comes first.

I think it's very clear that we need
government regulation.

We have seen the collapse of big
crypto firms.

We have seen all kinds of problems.

People are going to get their money
stolen.

At the end of the day,
you need the government

to regulate to sort of control
the direction of this.

In January alone,
Bitcoin is heading to a roughly 40% gain.

The always volatile cryptocurrency
market took a dive this week.

The reason there's so much volatility
in prices of crypto assets

is we don't quite know what the future is.

We don't know
what regulations are going to be.

We don't know all the uses.

It's very early days.

Nothing is guaranteed to go up forever
and nothing is guaranteed

that is going to continue
to go down forever.

Until really Bitcoin succeeds,
the price won't start to stabilize.

It will still be very volatile

but eventually become improve itself and
the price will become more stable

I believe. It's valuable on the condition
that people value it.

It's valuable on the condition that

there are enough people who will accept it
as a means of trade.

If no one wants to accept it
as a form of payment,

then no, it doesn't have any value.

Currency isn't the kind of thing
that has value independently.

What people think about it.