Why Bitcoin is Better Than Gold, with Wences Casares
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Xapo CEO and founder Wences Casares explains why, after a 5,000 year reign, gold has been surpassed by bitcoin as the ideal ledger.
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WENCES CASARES:
Wences Casares is the founder and CEO of Xapo, bitcoin vault and wallet described by the Wall Street journal as the Fort Know of bitcoin storage.
Prior to founding Xapo, Casares launched Argentina's first Internet Service Provider, Internet Argentina S.A. in 1994, a company he would go on to sell in order to found the Argentine online brokerage Patagon in 1997. With Casares serving as Chairman and CEO, Patagon established itself as Latin America's first comprehensive Internet financial services portal and expanded its online banking services to the United States, Spain, and Germany. Patagon was acquired by the Spanish bank, Banco Santander for $750 million in 2000.
Casares founded Wanako Games, which developed the award winning game Assault Heroes honored as "Game of the Year" for Microsoft Xbox Live in 2006, and was later acquired by Activision.
In 2002 Casares along with his partners founded Banco Lemon, a retail bank for the underbanked in Brazil. Banco do Brasil, Brazil's largest bank, acquired Banco Lemon in June 2009.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Wences Casares: Bitcoin is a new digital currency that is perhaps the best form of money that we have ever seen. It’s important because most of us don’t understand money very well and perhaps the concept that is hardest for us to understand about money is that money is and has always been a ledger. And people often ask: "What is money backed with?" And the truth is money’s not backed with anything. It has never been backed with anything. The euro is not backed with anything in particular and neither is any other currency in the world. And gold, for example for that matter is not backed with anything either.
Some people think that gold has value because we use it for jewelry but it’s actually the other way around. Gold is valuable because it’s very scarce and because it’s very scarce it has been the best ledger we’ve found in 5,000 years. In bitcoin we have something that is as good a ledger as gold, meaning it’s incredibly scarce. There will never be more than 21 million bitcoin. It’s even more scarce than gold.But in history we have had this tradeoff between things that have been very, very good store of value like gold for example and things that have been good for payment like the Portuguese escudo, the U.S. dollar, American Airline miles, or Facebook credits. Those things are better for payment but they’re not so good as a store of value historically. And the things that are good for a store of value like gold are not good for payments.
In bitcoin we have something for the first time that is incredibly superior than anything we have seen before as a store value and also as a form of payment.It’s hard to have a rigorous discussion about bitcoin without understanding money. And the best way to understand money is to understand the history of money. Anthropologists agree that there’s no tribe, much less a civilization, that ever based its commerce on barter. There’s no evidence. Barter never happened. And that’s counterintuitive to most of us because we are taught in school that we first barter and then we made money because barter was too complicated.
Well, barter never happened and that’s one of the key myths about money. So then you would ask the anthropologists, "So how did we do commerce before money if there was no barter? There was no commerce." No, there was plenty of commerce and the way that commerce would happen is that let’s say that someone in our tribe killed a big buffalo and I would go up to a person and say hey, "Can I have a little bit of meat?" And that person would say "No" or "Yes, Wences, here’s your meat." And then you would go up to a person and say "Hey, can I have a little bit of meat?" and that person said "Yes, here’s your meat."And basically we all have to keep track in our heads of what we owed other people or what our people...
Read the full transcript at #best trading platform crypto #bitcoin synergy erfahrung
Why Bitcoin is Better Than Gold, with Wences Casares | Big Think [xY6C-WBjsuW]
Why Bitcoin is Better Than Gold, with Wences Casares
Watch the newest video from Big Think: Join Big Think Edge for exclusive videos: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Xapo CEO and founder Wences Casares explains why, after a 5,000 year reign, gold has been surpassed by bitcoin as the ideal ledger.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WENCES CASARES:
Wences Casares is the founder and CEO of Xapo, bitcoin vault and wallet described by the Wall Street journal as the Fort Know of bitcoin storage.
Prior to founding Xapo, Casares launched Argentina's first Internet Service Provider, Internet Argentina S.A. in 1994, a company he would go on to sell in order to found the Argentine online brokerage Patagon in 1997. With Casares serving as Chairman and CEO, Patagon established itself as Latin America's first comprehensive Internet financial services portal and expanded its online banking services to the United States, Spain, and Germany. Patagon was acquired by the Spanish bank, Banco Santander for $750 million in 2000.
Casares founded Wanako Games, which developed the award winning game Assault Heroes honored as "Game of the Year" for Microsoft Xbox Live in 2006, and was later acquired by Activision.
In 2002 Casares along with his partners founded Banco Lemon, a retail bank for the underbanked in Brazil. Banco do Brasil, Brazil's largest bank, acquired Banco Lemon in June 2009.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIPT:
Wences Casares: Bitcoin is a new digital currency that is perhaps the best form of money that we have ever seen. It’s important because most of us don’t understand money very well and perhaps the concept that is hardest for us to understand about money is that money is and has always been a ledger. And people often ask: "What is money backed with?" And the truth is money’s not backed with anything. It has never been backed with anything. The euro is not backed with anything in particular and neither is any other currency in the world. And gold, for example for that matter is not backed with anything either.
Some people think that gold has value because we use it for jewelry but it’s actually the other way around. Gold is valuable because it’s very scarce and because it’s very scarce it has been the best ledger we’ve found in 5,000 years. In bitcoin we have something that is as good a ledger as gold, meaning it’s incredibly scarce. There will never be more than 21 million bitcoin. It’s even more scarce than gold.But in history we have had this tradeoff between things that have been very, very good store of value like gold for example and things that have been good for payment like the Portuguese escudo, the U.S. dollar, American Airline miles, or Facebook credits. Those things are better for payment but they’re not so good as a store of value historically. And the things that are good for a store of value like gold are not good for payments.
In bitcoin we have something for the first time that is incredibly superior than anything we have seen before as a store value and also as a form of payment.It’s hard to have a rigorous discussion about bitcoin without understanding money. And the best way to understand money is to understand the history of money. Anthropologists agree that there’s no tribe, much less a civilization, that ever based its commerce on barter. There’s no evidence. Barter never happened. And that’s counterintuitive to most of us because we are taught in school that we first barter and then we made money because barter was too complicated.
Well, barter never happened and that’s one of the key myths about money. So then you would ask the anthropologists, "So how did we do commerce before money if there was no barter? There was no commerce." No, there was plenty of commerce and the way that commerce would happen is that let’s say that someone in our tribe killed a big buffalo and I would go up to a person and say hey, "Can I have a little bit of meat?" And that person would say "No" or "Yes, Wences, here’s your meat." And then you would go up to a person and say "Hey, can I have a little bit of meat?" and that person said "Yes, here’s your meat."And basically we all have to keep track in our heads of what we owed other people or what our people...
Read the full transcript at #best trading platform crypto #bitcoin synergy erfahrung