Shownotes
This weeks episode focus on the Algorand blockchain and the associated ALGO token. Touted as the "world's most decentralized, scalable, and secure blockchain infrastructure". Created by an MIT professor. Seems to have a lot going for it. So let's jump in!
news and links
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/stripe-and-opennode-to-release-app-for-bitcoin-payments
https://u.today/anthony-scaramucci-takes-large-position-in-algorand-algo
Podcasting 2.0 Apps Available at http://newpodcastapps.com/
I can be reached by email at mcintosh@genwealthcrypto.com and on twitter at @McIntoshFinTech. My mastodon handle is @mcintosh@podcastindex.social. Looking forward to hearing from you!
Website
Music Credits
Protofunk by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4247-protofunk
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
The following music was used for this media project:
Music: Ethernight Club by Kevin MacLeod
Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/7612-ethernight-club
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Artist website: https://incompetech.com
Transcripts
Hey everyone. No one on this podcast is a financial advisor and all information presented on this
Speaker:podcast is for informational purposes only. Now that we have the legal stuff out of the way,
Speaker:let's jump on in. Welcome to the Generational Wealth of Cryptocurrency Podcast. I'm your
Speaker:host McIntosh. Today we're going to talk about Algorand. I will admit that today's episode
Speaker:– really, I wasn't planning on doing this, but I got a nice email from a listener,
Speaker:Josh Curry. Shoutouts to Josh. And he was asking about Algorand. I've heard of Algorand in the past.
Speaker:The token is called Algo. And to be honest, I've never invested in it. I have no stake in it.
Speaker:But he wanted to hear about it. So I did some more research. Like I said, I have heard about it. I
Speaker:knew some about it. Found some very interesting things. We'll talk about those. And we'll talk
Speaker:about what we're going to do next week as well. I want to start off with the news this week,
Speaker:though. There has been a bit of news. For one thing, Stripe, who is a global payment processor.
Speaker:So they are basically a software company that allows people to very easily integrate
Speaker:payments – MasterCard, credit card payments, that kind of thing – with a website.
Speaker:They're very popular. I've used them in the past, actually. I don't think we use them currently.
Speaker:And actually, that's not true. I think we do on one of our websites. But they announced that
Speaker:they're going to add Bitcoin. Just another global payment processor adding Bitcoin.
Speaker:Kind of like the earlier announcements this year about the NFC – I can never – NCR.
Speaker:I think it's NCR, National Cash Register. Yes, it is. The super-giant, really physical terminal
Speaker:solution. They'll be adding some integration with Stripe in coordination with Stripe. That
Speaker:was announced at the Bitcoin conference, that kind of thing. And I actually posted a tweet on
Speaker:Twitter. I also post on Mastodon on the podcasting 2.0 – I don't know what they're called. Node,
Speaker:if you want to call it that. And one of the respondents to that – we were chatting a little
Speaker:bit. We were talking back and forth. And I said, in retrospect, this is not what I saw coming,
Speaker:to be honest. I said that 2022 was going to be, if you recall, back in December 2022, there'd be a
Speaker:lot of regulation. I believe I said there should be some more nation-states starting to use Bitcoin.
Speaker:So, I've got one nation-state already. And we certainly have a lot of regulation. So,
Speaker:I've been fairly accurate in those respects. But this – I missed, I'll be honest. I missed,
Speaker:although in retrospect, it's really obvious that this is kind of a next step that Bitcoin needs to
Speaker:make. And this goes along with what I've been talking about, right? We want to invest our – or
Speaker:we want to hold our – well, we want to invest in Bitcoin. I'll get this out in a minute. English
Speaker:is only my first language. It's okay. And I'm an expert. I've been doing this 49 times.
Speaker:But regardless, we want to invest in Bitcoin, but we also want to use Bitcoin where possible,
Speaker:right? And I'm not saying you take your money that you're investing and you use that
Speaker:to buy something. But if you have that choice, you should do that. I will give you an example.
Speaker:I've never talked about this before. But every week, and now twice a week when I record,
Speaker:I drink tea. It helps my voice. I don't have the best voice in the world and it tends to give out
Speaker:fairly easily. Maybe you don't want to hear the sounds of tea being drunk. I apologize if that's
Speaker:the case. I normally cut that out. And in my tea, typically, I put honey and I get my honey
Speaker:from a friend of mine who runs an apiary, which is a bee colony, or a number of bees. It's not
Speaker:really a bee colony, I guess. But anyways, she has a number of beehives. Her apiary is called
Speaker:Little Green Bees. I believe she's online, at least on Facebook. I'm not sure if she's on a website.
Speaker:But I get honey from her. And it's time to get more honey. And so, how are we going to do that?
Speaker:When she gets done setting up Strike, I'm going to send her Bitcoin. Now she can choose to keep
Speaker:that, turn that into dollars, whatever she wants to do. The point is, I'm using Strike for its
Speaker:purposes. I'm taking money out of my bank account as dollars. I'm sending it as Bitcoin. And it's a
Speaker:fabulous system. And the more we use this, the better it will be, and so on and so forth. So,
Speaker:just not to get off topic, but shout out to Little Green Bees. I apologize if I'm saying that wrong.
Speaker:I think it's bees, anyways. Great honey, if you're looking for some, and live in the
Speaker:northwest part of Florida, maybe. All right, we will move on from there. So, that was certainly
Speaker:one of our news items, big, big news items. And that really probably was it. There wasn't really
Speaker:a whole lot else going on this week. You know, it's interesting. I was listening, I will say this,
Speaker:and this is news related. I was listening to a podcast, or a YouTube show, whatever, this morning.
Speaker:And they were actually talking about some positive news articles. Now, I've not highlighted them,
Speaker:but one of the big wigs at MasterCard has come out very positively for Bitcoin.
Speaker:And was it JP Morgan? It's the largest bank in the world, which I didn't realize. I knew they were
Speaker:very big, but they said they were the largest bank in the world. They have come out now and said,
Speaker:you know, Bitcoin is actually a better investment than real estate, which I'm not sure I agree with
Speaker:that completely, but possibly. I think the real estate market, at least for now, is probably
Speaker:overbought in a lot of places. The point to all this was, watching this YouTube, they were talking
Speaker:about MasterCard is a good thing, JP Morgan, you know, crypto is a good thing. Unlike the last time
Speaker:that crypto was crashing, all right, 2018, early 2018, there's a lot of positive news articles
Speaker:out there. There's a lot of positive articles. There's things like Stripe going on. There's
Speaker:all of this stuff, and yet it's going down. So they were discussing it from the angle of,
Speaker:is it manipulation? I don't know. I don't. I don't. And I don't pretend to know, and I'm
Speaker:not going to speculate, at least not on this podcast. Catch me sometime, and maybe we'll
Speaker:talk about it, but not here. Anyways, it is interesting in that aspect. We're seeing mass
Speaker:adoption. We're seeing more market than ever, and yet we still see this drop. Now, I think it's,
Speaker:for the most part, because Bitcoin, well, crypto in general, Bitcoin specifically,
Speaker:they're all considered risk on assets, meaning, you know, we don't know what it's going to do
Speaker:in the long run. At least they don't think they know. And so, it's a risk thing. It's why a lot
Speaker:of these stocks are going down. They're risk on assets. We sell our stocks in bad times.
Speaker:Now, I will tell you this. You talk to somebody like Warren Buffett, and he says, you buy your
Speaker:stock in times like this, when there's, quote, blood on the streets. I don't even like to use
Speaker:that term, but that's actually the saying. When people are in fear, when people are in a panic,
Speaker:that is when you buy. Now, you buy quality things, and we've talked about that endlessly. I'm not
Speaker:going to go into that right now, okay? But I just bought some stocks this week, stock that I think
Speaker:will do well long-term, but right now, it's very low. Okay. Moving on. Algorand. Algorand. It's
Speaker:interesting. So, Algorand, the token came out in 2019. So, it hasn't been around that long. So,
Speaker:first of all, I would point that out. When I'm looking at an asset that I'm going to invest in,
Speaker:in the long run, this, to me, is a strike against it. It's not proven. Bitcoin certainly has been
Speaker:around a long time, at least in crypto terms. It's been around longer than anything else.
Speaker:Ethereum has been around a long time. ADA has been around a long time. Some of these other
Speaker:assets have been around quite a while. This one is still, in my opinion, on the young side.
Speaker:So, I'll throw that out there. And, you know, I'm just telling you my opinion,
Speaker:and you can agree or disagree, and that's fine. The founder of Algorand is clearly a very smart
Speaker:guy. He is a professor. He's literally a professor at MIT. Now, they don't hire slouches. In fact,
Speaker:he's actually, he's a computer science person there. He's actually won what's called the Turing
Speaker:Award, named after Alan Turing, one of the pioneers in computers, and that is a very
Speaker:prestigious award. So, clearly, this guy has chops, if you want to call it that. His name is Silvio
Speaker:Micali, and I apologize if I mispronounce that, but it was actually founded in 2017. The test
Speaker:network was launched in April of 2019. The main network was launched in June of 2019. So, three
Speaker:years ago. All right. There's two parts to Algorand. There's a company, Algorand, Inc. It's a private
Speaker:corporation, and I want to point that out. It is a private corporation, and it manages the core
Speaker:development of the Algorand protocol. There is a foundation, non-profit, in theory,
Speaker:that handles the blockchain research for the project. I'm just reading off Wikipedia,
Speaker:but I saw this in multiple spots. It's led by a cryptographer named Tal Rabin, which I don't
Speaker:know who he is. Okay. So, first of all, we've got a company. We've got a foundation. Now,
Speaker:I'm just, again, these are my opinions. I don't like the idea of a company being behind a token,
Speaker:which that eliminates, honestly, that eliminates a lot of tokens, and I get that.
Speaker:But, look, we saw this just recently with the LUNA token. Okay. And I've watched my hands. I
Speaker:had very little involvement in that. I'd never really bought any LUNA. I talked about it on one
Speaker:episode, but Do Kuan headed up. He was the guy behind this project, just like this Silvio. And
Speaker:I'm not casting any aspersions on Silvio. I have no reason to believe that he's doing anything
Speaker:with ill intent. But there is a person behind this. Now, you could say the same thing about Ethereum.
Speaker:There's an Ethereum foundation, similar to this Algorand foundation. There's not an Ethereum
Speaker:company. So, it is a little bit different. And to be honest, even though I respect Vitalik greatly,
Speaker:that's something that, to me, is kind of a strike against Ethereum, if you want to call it that.
Speaker:Doesn't mean I don't invest in it, but it is something that I keep in mind. Okay. Back to
Speaker:what's going on here. So, one of the things I found, and I'm going to look that back up real
Speaker:quick, unless I have some notes here, but it talks about how, so, they minted, so to speak, all the
Speaker:tokens to start with. And so, they're not mined. It's a proof of stake system. And that's actually
Speaker:one of their big claims. And we'll get into that in just a second. So, they minted everything
Speaker:up front. They say that they will never have more than 10 billion tokens. To give you a perspective,
Speaker:by the way, of where Algorand is at after three years, they're actually the 30th highest coin in
Speaker:terms of market cap. So, they're not doing too bad. Right now, that means they have $2.5 billion.
Speaker:$2.5 billion. Okay. So, to keep that in mind. Fairly small. Of course, everything's down right now,
Speaker:but if you compare that to Bitcoin, Bitcoin is $551 billion. So, a bit over a half a trillion.
Speaker:Ethereum is at $211 billion. And then it goes down from there. Tether's actually next, which
Speaker:are stable coins who have assets to back that. I don't know why they're in coin market cap.
Speaker:It doesn't matter. So, BNB is next at $48 billion. And then it actually drops down
Speaker:all the way to XRP. Number six, with Tether and USD as well, which I didn't talk about,
Speaker:$19 billion. So, it gets a lot smaller after that. All right. I want to talk about how these tokens
Speaker:are distributed. I think that's important to factor into this. They're sold on Coinbase,
Speaker:Kraken, wherever. As far as I can tell, they're distributed from, I guess, the foundation.
Speaker:And there was a breakdown of what they were going to do.
Speaker:So, this is actually on the Algorand.Foundation page. So, this is the Algorand Foundation website.
Speaker:And I'm just going to point out, and this is the problem. They claim to be decentralized. In fact,
Speaker:right on, they've got a good marketer. I'll tell them that. Right on their page, they talk about,
Speaker:we are the most secure. We are the most decentralized. We are the most secure.
Speaker:Most decentralized. We are the most, well, let me read it word for word. I don't want to misspeak.
Speaker:This is on Algorand.com. So, I assume this is the company website. So, this is the private company.
Speaker:We are the world's most decentralized, scalable, and secure blockchain infrastructure. And there's
Speaker:no link to give it. There's no way of proving that. Now, first of all, there's no way of proving that,
Speaker:really. But that's the claim. It's just pure marketing. Now, here's what they would say.
Speaker:Now, I would say, first of all, they're not decentralized. Why? They minted 10 million or
Speaker:10 billion tokens, and the foundation holds those. And apparently, I just came across the website
Speaker:or on the foundation. So, there was a plan to how they were going to be given out, essentially.
Speaker:And the foundation recently proposed a revive. This is on their fax page. Question four,
Speaker:what is the max supply cap for Algorand? 10 billion algo minted at Genesis. All right.
Speaker:Even though the entirety of the supply was minted at the launch of the network,
Speaker:thus giving Algorand a fixed outstanding supply, the liquid supply will increase
Speaker:as pre-minted tokens are unlocked and are distributed. Now, I don't know exactly what
Speaker:they mean by unlocked. It doesn't matter. They're held and they're given out at certain times.
Speaker:So, basically, they're mining them to an extent, right, but without all the equipment to do that.
Speaker:Now, they would think that's a good thing. The foundation, so the nonprofit, recently proposed
Speaker:a revised long-term algo dynamics model designed to run for greater than a 10-year period,
Speaker:that is up to 2030 and beyond. This new model will focus on programs around ecosystem, support,
Speaker:community incentives, and the decentralization of decision-making and governance on the Algorand
Speaker:blockchain. Apparently, they had one set of ways that they were going to distribute the token and
Speaker:utilize the token, and now they've changed that. Not a fan of that. Maybe if everybody's on board
Speaker:with that, but it's still that they can now, maybe or maybe they cannot, I do not know,
Speaker:arbitrarily make those decisions. I would argue that they probably could. Now, at least they're
Speaker:going to the community and asking, the foundation stake is 50 million algos. The stake participates
Speaker:in the consensus protocol contributing to the protocols integrity. We'll talk about security
Speaker:in a second. All right. Now, as of March 31st, so just recently, 2022, the circulating supply is
Speaker:more than 6.7 billion. So they've distributed most of them. They will get through the rest, I'm sure,
Speaker:fairly soon. And it talks about there's what's left is allocated for community and governance rewards,
Speaker:ecosystem support, and then foundation endowment. There's 363 million for the foundation endowment,
Speaker:which I don't know what that really means, but okay. I know what an endowment is. I assume that
Speaker:it's to run the foundation. Ecosystem support is 1176, 1176 million. I'm not sure. Is that a billion?
Speaker:I guess that's a billion. Is it a thousand? Yeah. 1.1 billion. I do know math. 1.7 billion
Speaker:for community and governance awards. Right. So that would add up to that remaining part. I don't
Speaker:know. Maybe this works, but this kind of stuff scares me. It's funny that this is even brought
Speaker:up now because next week for our 50th episode, I'm going to reveal an existential crisis to you
Speaker:in my thinking. And I've already discussed this a little bit. The whole Luna thing kind of brought
Speaker:this on, and I had already been thinking about it, honestly. But these are the kind of things,
Speaker:if you are investing in this token, you need to think through, and are you okay with this?
Speaker:And maybe you are, and that's okay. This is a young project. I haven't even got to the good points,
Speaker:and there are some, and maybe they do great. I don't know. I would certainly encourage anyone
Speaker:to not allocate a huge amount of their investing to this, but I would say the same thing to any
Speaker:token except possibly Bitcoin. In fact, I would say that to any token except Bitcoin. I would
Speaker:put it that way, actually. All right. And no, I'm not becoming a Bitcoin maxing. Let's just
Speaker:go ahead and head that off. All right. So anyways, back to basics here. One of the things that they
Speaker:say is that they have solved the trilemma. Now, I did an episode, I remember early on, about the
Speaker:trilemma of cryptocurrency. There are three things. Decentralization, scalability, and security. And
Speaker:what do they say? They're the most decentralized, scalable, and secure blockchain.
Speaker:They say they've solved the trilemma, and I'd say, give me a lot of proof. And there is none. Now,
Speaker:we can talk about kind of how they do some of this. I would argue there are certain
Speaker:not been enough time, and they believe that they have a very secure system.
Speaker:And I believe that there's a lot of people out there who wish to do harm to projects
Speaker:and that are very clever. Just talk to Terra Luna. I think that was coordinated. That's just my
Speaker:opinion. The whole Terra Luna meltdown. Now, what are the good things? Well,
Speaker:transactions are completed within four seconds. That's spectacular. Now, there are systems that
Speaker:are at least close to that, but it is a very good accomplishment. So, one of the things that they
Speaker:mean is that if I'm sending you Algo, if I'm sending you some Algorand Token, from my wallet
Speaker:to your wallet, if we're doing it that way, it's going to take four seconds. Terrific. That's good.
Speaker:I like speed. Now, with Bitcoin, with Ethereum, with these other systems, not to get off on a
Speaker:tangent, but there are other ways of solving this. Now, first of all, I think that there are
Speaker:ways of solving this. Now, first of all, I think most people in crypto have accepted that the
Speaker:Layer 1 protocols, which that's what this is, they create the backbone of that network. So,
Speaker:Ethereum is the backbone protocol, and you can build things on top of that, on Layer 2s.
Speaker:One of the things that you can do is roll-ups, and we've done episodes about this.
Speaker:It's a way to build in transaction speed into this. So, there are other ways of doing this,
Speaker:and there are reasons why Bitcoin, Ethereum, and some of these other tokens are slow in terms
Speaker:of transactions. But, hey, everybody likes to hear thousands of transactions per second. I get it.
Speaker:All right. But they believe that they can scale this system up
Speaker:to support levels like a Visa or MasterCard credit card network speeds, which is
Speaker:thousands of transactions per second. Okay, cool. Decentralize. Now,
Speaker:I may be confused about this. We're going to talk about, so, their proof of stake. It looks to me
Speaker:like anybody who holds Algo is participating, but I'm not sure how that works. So, with Ethereum,
Speaker:as an example, which I do have experience with their proof of stake testnet,
Speaker:you run a server that's a validator, you stake tokens, and they would argue, well, that's
Speaker:expensive, which that's true. 32 ETH tokens is not cheap, which is why I did it on the test network.
Speaker:But, regardless, you validate the transactions on the network, and in return, you get a cut. You get
Speaker:reward for that. Now, I don't understand, there doesn't seem to be that mechanism here. So,
Speaker:somehow, they're doing it on a much more granular level. So, basically, at least what they say is
Speaker:that everybody participates. That's probably something I need to look into more, and I don't
Speaker:want to cast dispersions or good things on something that's not going to be a good thing.
Speaker:You know, good things on something I don't understand. Now, what they say is that it
Speaker:enables everybody to participate, which that would certainly be a good thing.
Speaker:I don't understand that mechanism at this point. So, I don't want to go any further with that.
Speaker:But, they do say things like, there's no slashing. So, that's one of their big claims. There's no
Speaker:slashing with their validation. Okay. So, what that means is that if somebody participates in
Speaker:a harmful way as a validator, that there's no downside to that. Well, their argument is that
Speaker:why would you do that? Because you're only hurting yourself. And my argument against that is, well,
Speaker:you don't understand people because they're just bad people out there, and they will try and do
Speaker:things to hurt you. So, they're making an assumption that I'm not comfortable making.
Speaker:Now, one of the things they do that I think is clever is there's a randomness factor to all this.
Speaker:So, out of the pool of possible people, which I don't understand what that number is, and maybe
Speaker:it's really big, and that's why they're the most decentralized, but out of that pool of people,
Speaker:there's only a certain amount that are chosen and they're done at random by this random method,
Speaker:as long as that random method actually works. And there have been attacks in the past, not in crypto
Speaker:maybe necessarily, but computer attacks based on random functions not actually being random. So,
Speaker:I would point that out, but that's the argument. So, that to me is clever. That way you as a
Speaker:validator, as a staker in that system, so to speak, you can only benefit, you can only influence.
Speaker:Influence is a much better word. You can only influence things in whatever way very infrequently.
Speaker:So, that actually I think is a cool method. We don't know where it's coming from. So,
Speaker:that's cool. I like that. I may circle back to this at some point if Algo continues to
Speaker:stay around and whatever, because I'd like to know more about their proof of stake.
Speaker:They call it, if I remember correctly, it was pure proof of stake. So, they say they're different,
Speaker:which they certainly are, than the proof of stake, for example, that Ethereum is migrating to.
Speaker:And by the way, in terms of news, Vitalik has now come out and said, speaking of centralized figures,
Speaker:the merge will happen in August. And I've been following the test net trial, so to speak.
Speaker:They do seem to be going very well. There was actually a small bump today,
Speaker:a bug. It's clear to me that that actually could never occur on the main net and it has been resolved,
Speaker:but there's a little fomo around that, a little fear really. But they'll work through it and
Speaker:that's why they're doing this stuff on the test net. Anyways, it is looking like that will actually
Speaker:occur in August and that would be great. And very soon, I should probably, maybe I'll do this
Speaker:a week from now, maybe do another episode on Ethereum and talk about that because that's
Speaker:a really important thing coming up. Okay, moving on. So, they say that they're doing this proof
Speaker:of stake, but it's different than what other people are doing and that's okay. Maybe that'll
Speaker:work out. Scalable, well, I did say right now, at least, they're doing four transactions. The
Speaker:second, they say that that can scale. Okay, so regardless of the number of nodes in the system
Speaker:or whatever, that will scale. I'll take their word on that for now. Four transactions per second,
Speaker:that is, no, I apologize. It's not four transactions per second. I wonder how many
Speaker:times I've said that. I apologize. What I'm getting mixed up on, blocks are made about every four
Speaker:seconds. And so, like I said, if I send you money from my wallet to your wallet, you get it within
Speaker:four seconds. Those blocks can hold up to 5,000 transactions. So, they have a throughput of about
Speaker:a thousand transactions per second. So, I want to be precise in that because that actually means
Speaker:something. And then, so they say it's very scalable. They also say it's very secure.
Speaker:I'll give them the scalable. I will assume that they're very smart people and they've solved
Speaker:some scalability things. I've already mentioned some concerns about security. I would want that
Speaker:proven. So, this is where I would come in and say, okay, let's give this a few more years.
Speaker:Because they're not that big, $3.5 billion of market cap. Not a whole lot, honestly, in terms
Speaker:of DeFi, smart contracts. And they do have smart contracts. They have a layer two that they're
Speaker:building out, smart contracts and this kind of thing. But it's nothing like Ethereum
Speaker:specifically. And when we talk about layer two stuff, Ethereum kind of takes the cake in terms
Speaker:of what's going on on it. People complain about the Ethereum gas visas because so much is going on
Speaker:on it. Anyways, not a whole lot going on in this network. So, to me, it's not proven yet.
Speaker:So, if you're investing in it to an extent, you're speculating. Now, you may believe in all of this
Speaker:and that's okay. You can believe in that. Like I said, the guy clearly is very smart.
Speaker:He's just like the other people that started these other projects, right? People like Vitalik
Speaker:and Satoshi and the other people who are involved with these other – Charles – I apologize,
Speaker:Charles. I can never remember his last name or pronounce it right. The guy who's Cardano,
Speaker:who helped start Ethereum, as well as a number of people from Ethereum that have gone on to
Speaker:do other things. They're all very smart people. There's no doubt about that.
Speaker:But that doesn't mean that they're perfect. Actually, when I was thinking about this,
Speaker:I think in crypto, we tend to hero worship. We tend to probably do that in real life as well,
Speaker:or at least the online life, where we see this YouTube, TikTok, perfect world, so to speak,
Speaker:and you don't see what's really going on. We see people trading on YouTube, for example,
Speaker:and they seem to be making great amounts of money, and some of them are, but it can be a facade.
Speaker:I would not argue, certainly, that these people are not smart. They are. I know that, or they
Speaker:wouldn't have been able to come up with the things that they have. But that doesn't mean that they're
Speaker:infallible. That doesn't mean that they don't have blind spots. To me, Satoshi did one of the
Speaker:smartest things. To me, one of the most fascinating things about the Bitcoin project is that Satoshi
Speaker:quit. He quit. He left. He left and left it in other people's hands in a very decentralized
Speaker:manner. There's no person you can go to in Bitcoin and say, you're the guy, or girl, or person.
Speaker:There's not. In every other project that I'm aware of, there is. There's always a person.
Speaker:This person was the MIT professor, Silvio. I hope I got his name right.
Speaker:And I do apologize if I did, but regardless, he's a person and he's failable. All right.
Speaker:So, what are the other things? We got NFTs going on. One thing I will say for a project of their
Speaker:size, Algorand is getting a lot of press. Now, you can go to their blockchain. You can go to their
Speaker:webpage, Algorand.com, and you can tell very quickly they're playing the whole proof of stake
Speaker:as being green. Carbon neutral was mentioned in one place. I'm not going to get off onto that,
Speaker:but they're certainly drawing a group of people based on that discussion.
Speaker:And if that's important to you and you do not believe that people who mine Bitcoin
Speaker:or mine crypto, because there's more than just Bitcoin being mined, you think that that's
Speaker:just a silly waste, then this type of project is for you. So, they have teamed up, for example,
Speaker:and I actually remember, this wasn't too long ago, earlier this month, I saw this come across the news.
Speaker:But one of the... So, they're working on NFT stuff. One of the things they just came out with,
Speaker:the Australia Zoo, down in Australia, obviously, but this is the zoo that, if I'm not mistaken,
Speaker:Steve Irwin started, but he was at least associated with until his death. His family is still there.
Speaker:Apparently, his son, who's now grown up, is doing part of the programs or whatever. They are
Speaker:launching a wildlife-themed NFT project. So, that's cool. I love that. That's really neat.
Speaker:FIFA, for those who are into soccer or football, as they call it in Europe,
Speaker:they have made some type of sponsorship agreement, which is terrific for the blockchain
Speaker:in terms of the exposure. It's the official blockchain of FIFA. So, I guess Algorand is
Speaker:going to be on the jerseys or something. I don't know. Is it like NASCAR, where they have the little
Speaker:stickers all over? I'm just kidding. It's not quite that bad. I'm sure FIFA is paying Algorand
Speaker:for that. Actually, maybe it's the other way around. I don't know. I'm not sure I'm comfortable
Speaker:with that part of it, but okay. There is a lot of things going on. They are building out this
Speaker:layer, too, that I've already mentioned. Those are probably several of the biggest ones. One of the
Speaker:things that the listener mentioned… Let me bring it up real quickly. I recognized the guy's name.
Speaker:He's a very well-known investor. Right. He's a well-known investor. His name is Anthony Scaramucci.
Speaker:He was involved as the White House Director of Communications
Speaker:from July 21 to the 31st in 2017. So, a very short tenure. I do not remember that. Apparently,
Speaker:that was under Donald Trump. I don't know. I have no idea what that's all about. But he's an investor.
Speaker:He's a finance person. Very well-known. I had heard of him long before this. Josh was saying that
Speaker:Scaramucci had become involved with Algorand, which I did not know. So, I Googled it just now,
Speaker:actually. He has. Apparently, he's taken a very large position in Algorand just a couple of days
Speaker:ago. I'll just very briefly include this article in the notes, but he claims that he finds the
Speaker:project's technology impressive, which, just to be clear, on one level, yes, I do, too. I'm a little
Speaker:concerned about the newness of it. How can I put this? Smoke and mirrors, and I'm not saying that's
Speaker:what they're doing, but it concerns me when I don't exactly understand what's going on, especially if
Speaker:I were going to become an investor. So, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker:It concerns me when I don't exactly understand what's going on, especially if I were going to become
Speaker:a large investor in something. So, I'm going to read this. This is funny. The high-throughput
Speaker:blockchain, which we've already talked about, was created by Italian computer scientist Silvio
Speaker:Michali, who recently described Bitcoin, the first cryptocurrency, as a Neanderthal. Okay. I will talk
Speaker:about this for just a second, and maybe he's correct. Respectfully, I will completely disagree
Speaker:with this. I'm going to have to look this up. Certainly, at this current time, until proven
Speaker:otherwise, there's nothing Neanderthal about Bitcoin. I will say this. The decisions that are
Speaker:made about Bitcoin, in terms of how it's done and where it's going, they are very well thought out.
Speaker:They are not done quickly, and they are done for specific reasons. Now, you may not agree with them,
Speaker:but they're not Neanderthal. Actually, especially if I were a Bitcoin developer,
Speaker:I'd be a little insulted by that, to be honest. So, maybe that's not the smartest thing in the world.
Speaker:Maybe funny, but maybe not the smartest thing in the world to say. Actually, I'm going to go ahead
Speaker:and read the rest of this. Oh, well, see, I'm in good company, at least in this respect.
Speaker:Scaramucci, who has experienced a total of eight bear markets, so he's been around a while,
Speaker:believes that stock market traders are yet to capitulate. I agree. Since there's no extreme
Speaker:panic in the air, I do believe they will. We're not there yet. That's just my thoughts. Speaking of
Speaker:Bitcoin's price performance, he refrained from making a price prediction. He is a pretty smart
Speaker:guy this time around. Apparently, he's done so in the past, but the investor believes that anything
Speaker:could happen. All right. He added that people should not own Bitcoin or Ethereum if they don't
Speaker:believe in their technology. Absolutely. He says that the investor is certain that the blockchain
Speaker:is the most disruptive innovation since the internet. Preach it, brother. I've been saying
Speaker:that for a long time, and it's absolutely true. It's very messy, and it will continue to be so,
Speaker:unfortunately, but it is absolutely the most disruptive innovation since the internet.
Speaker:Maybe ever. We'll see. I'm still holding out for teleporters. That would be awesome.
Speaker:He advises investors to turn to the dollar cost averaging investment strategy.
Speaker:Yay! Right? This is exactly what I say. Don't try and time the top, the bottom, the whatever.
Speaker:DCI. So, at least on some things, I agree with Mr. Scaramucci, who probably has more money in
Speaker:his pinky finger than I have in my net worth, and that's okay. But apparently, he is a big believer
Speaker:in Algorand. Now, I don't know Mr. Scaramucci's pedigree. If he comes from a computer science
Speaker:background, I'm sure he's read a lot on Algorand. I would hope so. Clearly, he believes in that,
Speaker:but I'm not sure I would take him as investment advice for a technology, if that makes sense.
Speaker:And I'm not an expert on Algorand. I do not pretend to be one. I'm only talking about the
Speaker:things that I'm looking at and reading on their website and going through some articles here and
Speaker:there. Okay. So, I guess overall, and this has turned into a very long episode, I apologize.
Speaker:I told y'all when I started doing two episodes, I was going to cut them down. This one's not going
Speaker:to be that way. I apologize. I should probably split it into two episodes, but this will not
Speaker:be the 50th episode. No disrespect to Algorand. But anyways, I don't know. Like I told y'all
Speaker:earlier, I'm in a mood and I don't know. I'm having trouble focusing, I guess. Maybe I don't know.
Speaker:My mind's all over the place tonight. Some of y'all are probably screaming at your thing right now.
Speaker:Focus! All right. My point is, I'm not going to put any more weight to what this guy says about
Speaker:Algorand than any other major investor or really anybody, simply because he's not a technologist
Speaker:and he doesn't necessarily understand. Maybe he does. I may be mistaken. I don't know him that
Speaker:well. I had heard of them, certainly. But as far as I know, he doesn't know this stuff in depth.
Speaker:Maybe he does. I no longer buy things based on what other people do. I've made that mistake too
Speaker:many times. All right. For me personally, I will say this. I will not be buying Algorand. I'm not
Speaker:saying you should not buy it. If you do buy it, you should only buy a small position in it. It should
Speaker:not be the overwhelming part of your portfolio. If you come to me in five years and say, well,
Speaker:I bought 90% of my portfolio was Algo and it's 4x or 10x or 100x, I'm going to be like, well,
Speaker:you got lucky if it went up, but you still made a mistake. The problem with that is when you get
Speaker:lucky, that leads you to keep doing that strategy and eventually it fails.
Speaker:Even Bitcoin can fail as much as the Maxis might believe that that's not possible. Now,
Speaker:it does have the most proven track record, but it could fail. All right. That will be it for this
Speaker:week. I do apologize for the length. I apologize for the rabbit trails as we call them. I hope it
Speaker:was helpful. I hope you know a little bit more about Algorand. A very interesting
Speaker:and some very interesting aspects to it. I think the whole thing about the random
Speaker:validator stuff is fascinating. Maybe that would be something. I could see that as something that
Speaker:other proof of stake services build into their thing. It would actually, if I understand it
Speaker:correctly, not be that difficult. The whole thing about picking a random portion, that does
Speaker:alleviate some security concerns in some ways. All right. Generation Wealth Cryptocurrency
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Speaker:By the way, I don't point this out very often, but you can get the podcasting 2.0 app and
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Speaker:is evolving. In my mind, the podcasting 2.0 environment is the best environment that there
Speaker:is in terms of decentralization and things progressing, really. They're adding fascinating
Speaker:stuff all the time. All right. Thanks for being here. I hope this has been helpful.
Speaker:I would love to hear from you. I'm on Twitter at McIntosh Fintech, and you can reach me by email
Speaker:at mcintosh at genwealthcrypto.com. Of course, the generational wealth website is at genwealthcrypto.com.
Speaker:Now, go out and make it a great week. Next week, episode number 50. I don't know. I'm going to
Speaker:blow a party thing or something. We'll do something, and I will tell you about my existential crisis.