Shownotes
May the 22nd is "bitcoin pizza day". It should be a day we celebrate by spending bitcoin to purchase goods and services -- instead many times it's a joke about the poor guy who spent 10,000 bitcoin on a couple of Pappa John's pizza.
While bitcoin has become a store of value, it was created as digital currency. And the good news is that it can be both!! And using it for both will only accelerate the adoption of Bitcoin - and ultimately increase the price. So celebrate!
News
https://bitcoinist.com/bitcoin-pizza-day-celebrating-the-300m-pizza/
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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!
Speaker:No one on this podcast.
Speaker:As a financial advisor, all information presented on this podcast is for informational purposes
Speaker:only.
Speaker:And now that we have the legal stuff out of the way, let's jump on in.
Speaker:Welcome to the Generational Wealth of Cryptocurrency podcast.
Speaker:I'm your host, McIntosh.
Speaker:Today we're going to talk about Bitcoin Pizza Day.
Speaker:Now I've mentioned this day in passing, I've mentioned this event in passing, but May the
Speaker:22nd, today as I'm recording this, the episode will actually come out tomorrow morning, but
Speaker:May the 22nd is Bitcoin Pizza Day.
Speaker:12 years ago today, two large Papa John pizzas were ordered for a war.
Speaker:Wait for it, it's a lot.
Speaker:About 40 bucks at the time, a Bitcoin, $10,000 worth.
Speaker:This happened in 2010.
Speaker:The gentleman's name, his name was Laszlo, and I am not going to try and pronounce his
Speaker:last name.
Speaker:He's a programmer and a Bitcoin miner, lives in Florida, or at least he did at the time.
Speaker:And apparently the story is, according to, well, you can find this on the forums, those
Speaker:10,000 Bitcoins right now would be worth about $300 million.
Speaker:So it's a bit of a shame in that sense, but it's okay.
Speaker:The story actually is that it actually took a few days for him to get somebody to do the
Speaker:order for him.
Speaker:But it did happen, May the 22nd, and he made history.
Speaker:It was the first basically physical purchase of something for Bitcoin that had not happened
Speaker:apparently before this time.
Speaker:Now I think this is fascinating for a couple of reasons, and we all, we kind of snicker
Speaker:at it and think that it was something, it was a mistake, and maybe it was, but the reality
Speaker:is is that Satoshi created Bitcoin to be a digital currency, a digital dollar, if you
Speaker:want to put it that way, all right, not to replace the US dollar, dollar for dollar,
Speaker:but as a form of currency, as a standard for the world, because he did not like what was
Speaker:going on when governments controlled money.
Speaker:Bitcoin itself was a direct response to the 2007-2008 housing crisis.
Speaker:I don't know if he said this early on, but certainly the argument has become that Bitcoin
Speaker:has become a hedge against inflation, and realize that even though right now inflation
Speaker:is at a very high rate, it's probably higher than it's been at any time since the 1970s,
Speaker:possibly the early 80s here in the United States, inflation has been around for a long
Speaker:time.
Speaker:Essentially inflation of fiat printed centralized currency happens as soon as it's taken off
Speaker:of the standard, what's typically called the gold standard.
Speaker:Basically it used to be up until the 1970s, the early 1970s, that the dollars that were
Speaker:in circulation in the United States were backed by physical gold that was in Fort Knox.
Speaker:That's no longer the case.
Speaker:So these days, even though there's still gold in Fort Knox, the number, the amount of gold,
Speaker:it's nowhere close to the amount of dollar bills that are in circulation.
Speaker:The government prints, we basically use currency based on faith in the US government here in
Speaker:the United States.
Speaker:It has nothing to do with any kind of backing for it.
Speaker:One of the side effects of that is when they print more currency than there is value in
Speaker:the system, that causes inflation, in short, that causes inflation.
Speaker:Whether originally Bitcoin was a direct reaction to that or not, it certainly is one of the
Speaker:arguments for Bitcoin now.
Speaker:Bitcoin, of course, has a fixed supply, 21 million that will ever be mined, unlike, again,
Speaker:going back to the US currency, dollars.
Speaker:They print trillions of dollars a year.
Speaker:Some of them are to replace the dollars that are in circulation, they get removed.
Speaker:But there are dollars that are added.
Speaker:And so we can see this essentially in the amount of debt that the United States has.
Speaker:Right now, that number is hovering around $30 trillion, $30 trillion, a lot of money.
Speaker:So we talk about Bitcoin as digital gold, we talk about Bitcoin as programmable money.
Speaker:We have these different things that we use.
Speaker:But the funny thing is, I think a lot of people have lost sight of what we should be celebrating
Speaker:today.
Speaker:Not the fact that some dude sold or bought two large pizzas for 10,000 Bitcoin and boo
Speaker:hoo hoo, sorry for him, but that Bitcoin was used as a currency.
Speaker:And it's only gotten easier.
Speaker:See, now I can take a strike app, I can use a podcasting 2.0 app to support a podcaster.
Speaker:There are a cash app, there are a number of ways that I can interface with Bitcoin and
Speaker:use it as a currency.
Speaker:I can pull money straight out of my bank account and send it to somebody and they can receive
Speaker:it in Bitcoin.
Speaker:I can send somebody Bitcoin.
Speaker:They can send money back to me in dollars or Bitcoin.
Speaker:It's almost gotten to be this interchangeable system.
Speaker:But then people's argument is, well, I want to stack my sats.
Speaker:I don't want to spend my Bitcoin.
Speaker:And I'm sure that Laszlo at this point is wishing that he had not spent those Bitcoin.
Speaker:But I would point out, he was trying to set a standard.
Speaker:He was trying to do something that nobody else had done.
Speaker:He was also a miner and I'm sure he continued to mine Bitcoin after this.
Speaker:So if that 10,000 Bitcoin is all he ever made and he spent it and he never mined again,
Speaker:then that's on him.
Speaker:Now, I don't think that was the case.
Speaker:So even though he may regret selling those Bitcoin, he still has Bitcoin as it's gone
Speaker:up over the last 12 years.
Speaker:And I'm sure that he got a lot better about keeping his Bitcoin and he's doing okay.
Speaker:I would love to actually get him on the podcast.
Speaker:That would be fascinating.
Speaker:So all of that being said, and you hear me week after week, get on here and say, DCA,
Speaker:save your token, save your coin.
Speaker:Don't spend your, well, I don't say don't spend your Bitcoin, in fact, and I do that
Speaker:on purpose.
Speaker:We'll talk about that in just a second.
Speaker:But if you have Bitcoin or some other token, you can save that.
Speaker:Let's go back to, let's actually go back, say 100 years.
Speaker:And in the United States, we use something called a $20 gold piece.
Speaker:So you had a gold coin that weighed almost exactly one ounce.
Speaker:It apparently was not exactly that.
Speaker:And at the time that they were made, they were worth $20.
Speaker:Now these days, an ounce of gold is worth $2,000.
Speaker:And why is that?
Speaker:Because of inflation.
Speaker:But let's go back to that mindset.
Speaker:I've got gold here in my hand.
Speaker:I'm not going to take that down to the convenience store and use that to buy soft drink.
Speaker:Why?
Speaker:Because now it's worth $2,000.
Speaker:It's an investment.
Speaker:It's not currency anymore.
Speaker:Bitcoin, on the other hand, can be both.
Speaker:It would be the same as if the US dollar was not inflating.
Speaker:I could use the US dollar for currency, its current purpose, and I would take it to the
Speaker:bank and I would stick it in an account knowing that it's not going to diminish in value over
Speaker:the next 10, 20, 30, 50, 100 years.
Speaker:But that's not true.
Speaker:We know that the value of the US dollar is actually going down compared to what it used
Speaker:to be.
Speaker:And you can go back, well, the $20 gold piece is certainly an example of that, right?
Speaker:So it just depends on how far back you want to go or whatever.
Speaker:But if inflation is 8% roughly, that means that every year it is losing 8% of its value.
Speaker:And that's year after year after year after year.
Speaker:So the thing is that with Bitcoin, you can have both.
Speaker:You can use it as a currency.
Speaker:You can use it as this gentleman did 12 years ago.
Speaker:First time ever buying a physical product, basically.
Speaker:And you can use it as an investment.
Speaker:That's okay.
Speaker:We can use things like Lightning to provide virtually non-existent fees, extremely fast
Speaker:transactions over the Bitcoin network.
Speaker:And yet we can continue to invest.
Speaker:How do we do that?
Speaker:Well, it's really simple.
Speaker:It's just, I guess you could say it's a little bit of a pain if you want to put it that way.
Speaker:But we are in the early parts of this and the pain, well, we'll talk in just a minute
Speaker:about why we would do it even though it's more difficult.
Speaker:It's a good question.
Speaker:How do we do it?
Speaker:You keep your Bitcoin, your Ether, whatever.
Speaker:You're going to have that in your cold storage wallet or on a central exchange like Coinbase
Speaker:or Kraken or whatever.
Speaker:And we've talked about different ways you can manage that.
Speaker:And that's your investment.
Speaker:But then you can use an app like Strike.
Speaker:You could connect it to your bank account and you can pull out a little bit at a time.
Speaker:You don't have to pull out thousands of dollars worth of Bitcoin to be able to send somebody
Speaker:10 bucks.
Speaker:You can pull out $10 if you really want to.
Speaker:Now you might find it more convenient to maybe pull it out 50 or $100 at a time and then
Speaker:use it that way.
Speaker:But you certainly can even pull it out for very, very low amounts.
Speaker:There's no fees for it.
Speaker:Why would we do this?
Speaker:Bitcoin is going to make it long term.
Speaker:I think that's established at this point.
Speaker:We have nation states who are using them.
Speaker:We have millions of people around the world who are using Bitcoin.
Speaker:I think Bitcoin is going to make it.
Speaker:But one of the ways that we can encourage the adoption and acceptance of Bitcoin in
Speaker:particular is through using Bitcoin as a currency, through using Lightning, Satoshi's.
Speaker:So that's why we would go through any additional work, which it's really not that much.
Speaker:If you do it once or twice, you're like, hey, it's no big deal and you go on your way.
Speaker:But I can do my Satoshi's, I can do my Lightning set up separate.
Speaker:I want to reiterate that.
Speaker:I can buy with Strike and then send that off to eventually to some place that I store it
Speaker:for long term.
Speaker:But I choose to use Strike for my day-to-day stuff or if I want to buy some honey from
Speaker:my local honey person or if I want to support a podcasting 2.0 person like myself by streaming
Speaker:sats to them or buying something online.
Speaker:There are a growing number of websites that are accepting Bitcoin.
Speaker:And soon with the work that Strike is actually doing, is it Strike or Cash App?
Speaker:It's Block.
Speaker:I'm sorry.
Speaker:It's Block that's doing the work where you have terminals in shops.
Speaker:It's one of the Jacks.
Speaker:I'm sorry.
Speaker:I have no idea which one offhand and I don't have time to look it up.
Speaker:But you'll be able to go in a store and tap, use your app to buy something directly.
Speaker:Or even one of the items that's come across the news recently, there's a company, I think
Speaker:they're actually in England, but they create little debit-looking cards or credit-looking
Speaker:cards that are NFC enabled.
Speaker:So there's a little chip in there to work with the NFC systems so that you don't have
Speaker:to put it into the terminal.
Speaker:You just kind of tap it and it's lightning enabled and you can hook it up to your lightning
Speaker:account.
Speaker:I mean, that's clever.
Speaker:So now the merchant, they have to have the wiring on their end.
Speaker:But that's what I'm talking about.
Speaker:That stuff is coming.
Speaker:We will see that rollout and it will get easier and easier to do this over the coming years.
Speaker:But now we're pioneers, but that's okay.
Speaker:We can go out there and we can encourage the use of Bitcoin.
Speaker:So when you got something that you want to get to your friend, maybe you owe them some
Speaker:money or whatever, say, hey, would you take some Bitcoin?
Speaker:And if they say yes, send it to them.
Speaker:If they say, what's that, tell them about it.
Speaker:If they say, I don't know how to do that, send them somewhere like Strike.
Speaker:Strike, I harp on it because it's probably, in my opinion, one of the easiest ways to
Speaker:do it.
Speaker:Cash App is very similar.
Speaker:They both have pretty good systems for managing that and they are only getting better.
Speaker:So again, to summarize, look, you can juggle in your head Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies.
Speaker:They're certainly investments.
Speaker:But with Bitcoin in particular, we can celebrate pizza day, Bitcoin pizza day as it's called,
Speaker:every day of the year.
Speaker:We can go out and we can use Bitcoin as its original intended purpose as a currency that
Speaker:is not under control of a central government, that's not manipulated by governments for
Speaker:their advantage, that doesn't inflate, that has a fixed supply and that we can not only
Speaker:use as a currency, but we can create a store of value, a store of wealth that we can as
Speaker:our podcast title says.
Speaker:It's generational wealth.
Speaker:It's wealth that we can pass down from one family member to the next through the generations.
Speaker:So I hope that was helpful.
Speaker:It's kind of been on my mind and it intersected very neatly with the Bitcoin pizza day.
Speaker:I didn't actually realize that was coming up.
Speaker:I'll have a link in the show notes.
Speaker:There's articles all over the place about this, but I'll throw a link in the show notes
Speaker:to it.
Speaker:By the way, in case you didn't notice, I think it shows up in the players, but today this
Speaker:episode is number 48, which really isn't a milestone.
Speaker:But what it does mean is that episode 50 is coming up a week from today.
Speaker:So next Sunday, I'll be recording the 50th episode.
Speaker:And to me, that's a fairly significant milestone.
Speaker:Most podcasts don't get this far.
Speaker:Maybe it's just because I'm being stubborn, but here we are.
Speaker:So there's no real news this week.
Speaker:The only other thing, the conference did wrap up down in El Salvador.
Speaker:I mentioned this last Thursday.
Speaker:The people from 44 different countries show up in El Salvador learning how to create systems
Speaker:of value for the people who are unbanked, which is a lot of people in the world.
Speaker:And of course, they're getting a lot of Bitcoin information as part of that.
Speaker:My understanding is the group of them went to this place called Bitcoin Beach, which
Speaker:was kind of where Bitcoin, the Bitcoin usage started in El Salvador.
Speaker:It's on the Pacific coast, if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker:And there was a group there that started teaching the locals how to use Bitcoin.
Speaker:And it went on from there.
Speaker:So I think they had a very positive response to that conference overall.
Speaker:So there's 44 countries.
Speaker:I think it will be fascinating to see over the next several years how many of those countries
Speaker:go on to either adopt regulatory framework that's favorable towards Bitcoin and maybe
Speaker:other forms of crypto, or maybe like El Salvador, they make it a legal tender.
Speaker:Not all the countries that were there were countries that are pegged to other currencies
Speaker:like El Salvador with the US dollar, as an example, and the Central African Republic,
Speaker:which is recently kind of got on the Bitcoin bandwagon, so to speak.
Speaker:And they are pegged to the French franc for their currency, their national currency.
Speaker:And not every one of these countries is in that situation.
Speaker:But if you look through the list, I think it's safe to say that they are, you know,
Speaker:you don't see the United States and Canada, the United Kingdom, the countries of Western
Speaker:Europe.
Speaker:You don't see them in that list.
Speaker:And that's okay.
Speaker:Those countries will have their turn.
Speaker:They may be late to the party.
Speaker:Maybe some of them are already stacking sats.
Speaker:Maybe some of them are already stacking Bitcoin.
Speaker:It would not surprise me.
Speaker:In fact, I would find it not even shocking at all that China, for example, who officially
Speaker:is still banning Bitcoin is actually holding Bitcoin.
Speaker:And in fact, on a little side note, even though China officially is still banning Bitcoin,
Speaker:the amount of Bitcoin that's being mined in China is actually creeping back up.
Speaker:So it's been almost exactly a year, I think, since China banned Bitcoin mining.
Speaker:And yet, I think they're like 20% of the total world Bitcoin mining again.
Speaker:So that's kind of weird.
Speaker:We get all kinds of mixed messages coming out of China.
Speaker:So that's not really surprising.
Speaker:So that's it for the week.
Speaker:The Generational Wealth of Cryptocurrency podcast supports Podcasting 2.0.
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Speaker:Wealth of Cryptocurrency podcast.
Speaker:Thanks for being here.
Speaker:I hope this has been helpful.
Speaker:I would love to hear from you.
Speaker:I'm on Twitter at McIntosh Fintech, and you can reach me by email at mcintosh at genwealthcrypto.com.
Speaker:Of course, the Generational Wealth website is at genwealthcrypto.com.
Speaker:Now go out and make it a great week.
Speaker:I'll see you in the next one.
Speaker:Bye-bye.