Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin Can Stop War

grarpamp grarpamp at gmail.com
Fri Mar 24 17:30:21 PDT 2023


How Bitcoin Can Stop War

https://original.antiwar.com/roger_ver/2014/07/21/how-bitcoin-can-stop-war/

by Roger Ver Posted on July 22, 2014	

Roger Ver gave this speech at Coin Congress in Singapore in May
entitled “Why Bitcoin is Important for the World.” It is a sort of
quick introduction into the world of Bitcoin and how Bitcoin can be a
powerful tool to promote global understanding and help stop nations
from conducting war.

Hi everyone, my name is Roger Ver. I have a feeling I’m going to be
preaching to the choir for the most part here, but can I see a real
quick show of hands? Who here has wondered and is kind of interested
in learning about Bitcoin, but doesn’t know a whole lot about it? Is
there anybody that fits into that category? Okay, that makes it real
easy for me. I see one guy that maybe was halfway raising a hand.
Okay, don’t be shy. But basically I’m going to be talking about
Bitcoin, as you may have guessed, and I’ve been saying it for years
and years now, and I’m saying it because I don’t think it’s an
exaggeration that Bitcoin is really one of the most important
inventions ever. It’s really that important.

Bitcoin: Getting Started

It’s easy. There are all sorts of free wallets. The one I recommend is
Blockchain.info. It’s easy to buy Bitcoins. There’s all sorts of
places you can do that. If you’re from the U.S. or live in the U.S. or
have a U.S. bank account, Coinbase.com, again, is fantastic. There are
all sorts of places that you can use to spend your Bitcoins. In fact,
I even bought my plane tickets to come here to Singapore with
Bitcoins. You can buy just about anything at this point. A real
question is what can’t you buy with Bitcoins at this point? And there
aren’t too many things on that list.

Why it’s so important

Bitcoin, is the first time in the entire history of the world in which
anyone can transact with anyone else anywhere in the world, and
without asking for permission from any bank or government or
politician or any other human being, for that matter. Two people can
interact with each other anywhere on the planet without requiring
permission from anybody else, and that’s really revolutionary. That’s
never existed before, ever.

And the way it works is through this revolutionary invention called
the Bitcoin Blockchain or the Blockchain in general, which is a public
ledger that allows anybody to see what’s going on and make sure that
people aren’t spending the same Bitcoins twice. It’s in an open,
decentralized network. Anybody with programming skills can read the
software code. If you can’t read it, you can read what all sorts of
other people who can have to say about it. So you don’t have to just
believe me or any one corporation or entity. It’s out there for the
entire world to look at and audit and check. And the same is true of
lots of the different Bitcoin clients as well.

I got so excited once I realized the characteristics of Bitcoin make
it the best form of money the world has ever seen. And the
characteristics of good money are that it’s harder – in Bitcoins’
case, basically impossible – to counterfeit. It’s scarce. There’s a
limited supply. We cannot say that about the U.S. dollar or Euros or
Yen. Governments can print them at will any time for any reason.
Bitcoins are easily divisible. Currently, they can be divided down to
a one hundred millionth of a Bitcoin. Homogeneous. All Bitcoins are
the same. Each one is tracked individually, but at this point no
Bitcoin is considered really to be worth more than any other Bitcoin,
which is a characteristic that’s shared with gold.

Durable. Bitcoins are, I guess, more durable than pieces of paper in
your wallet or even precious metals for that point. Bitcoins last
forever, as long as you keep the information stored somewhere. Talk
about easy to transport. You can send a million dollars worth of
Bitcoin from Singapore to Moscow or London or South America or
absolutely anywhere instantly for free, and it’s impossible for anyone
to block you from sending or receiving that payment. Try doing that
with a wire transfer or a suitcase full of pieces of paper or gold.
You can’t do it. But with Bitcoin, you absolutely can. And with
Bitcoin, it’s easy to store. You can keep any amount of Bitcoin right
there in your pocket or on any other computing device, or you can even
print them out onto pieces of paper. So all of those things together
just make Bitcoin really, it’s the best form of money the world has
ever seen.

But don’t lose your money

Be safe with your Bitcoins. All that’s required to spend a Bitcoin is
the private key. So when you have Bitcoins, make sure that you’re
storing that private key yourself. Don’t trust that to somebody else
to store for you, unless you feel that you are not capable of doing
that and you’re absolutely horrible at computer security, I suppose,
or even physical security with pieces of paper. But the big problem,
for those of you that are aware, with Mt. Gox recently was a Bitcoin
exchange that lost somewhere around 600,000 to 800,000 Bitcoins of
other people’s money. The reason that was possible is because other
people entrusted them to hold their Bitcoins for them. With wallets
like Blockchain.info – the one I recommend – nobody but you has access
to the private keys to spend your Bitcoins. So use a wallet like
Blockchain.info or Electrum or the Satoshi QT client or Armory or any
of these in which you’re storing the private key. If you have any
significant amount of Bitcoins, that’s definitely the way to go. Don’t
trust other people to hold your Bitcoins is the short version there.

Regulation is changing

I think we saw a real similar picture a presentation or two ago. We’ll
see what happens in the future, but at the end of the day, Bitcoin is
simply a peer-to-peer protocol. There’s no central office. There’s no
central server. There’s no central place that even if all of these
countries listed on the map here turn red and didn’t like Bitcoin at
all, that wouldn’t stop Bitcoin. The only way to stop Bitcoin would be
to shut down the entire internet in the entire world. And lots of
people, we hear speculating, “Oh, Bitcoin’s going to be $10,000 or
$100,000 or maybe even $1 million for one single Bitcoin. At the end
of the day, it doesn’t really matter what price Bitcoin is. You can
still use it to send money anywhere in the world instantly basically
for free, whether one Bitcoin is worth one penny or $1 million. It
still works the same.

The rate of growth of Bitcoin

Click to enlargeClick to enlarge

This is just the stats from one particular website. But you can see
just over two years ago there were basically no users of this website.
Today, there are over 1.6 million users, and just even a year ago,
there was less than half a million users. So we’ve added over a
million users in just the last year, and we’re adding new users at the
rate of somewhere between 5,000 and 20,000 new users per day,
depending on the day of the week.

The Bitcoin price

This is an interesting chart here. I remember back when last year
Bitcoin hit around $266. Everybody was saying, “It’s a bubble. It’s a
bubble. It’s a bubble.” They said it again when Bitcoin bumped up over
$1,000. They said, “It’s a bubble. It’s a bubble. It’s a bubble.” And
that makes the people that were saying, “Bitcoin’s a bubble at $260
something a Bitcoin,” seem a little bit silly. What unfortunately this
picture doesn’t show is if we go way back to 2011 when I first got
into Bitcoin, Bitcoins had a similar spike that looked similar to
this, but they went from $2 to $32 in the course of about two weeks.
And at that point everybody was saying, “It’s a bubble. It’s a bubble.
It’s a bubble.” And before that, Bitcoins jumped up from about 10
cents to $1, and everyone was saying, “It’s a bubble. It’s a bubble.
It’s a bubble.” And I wasn’t involved in Bitcoin even before that
though, but you can read the forum posts on the internet when Bitcoins
jumped up from around a penny a Bitcoin up to 10 cents a Bitcoin.
Everyone was saying, “It’s a bubble. It’s a bubble. It’s a bubble. It
can’t last.”

But the reason we see these price increases all the time are because
more and more people around the world are realizing just how
incredible of a currency Bitcoin is and how incredibly useful it is
for people all over the planet to use to conduct commerce. So I’m sure
in another few months or a few years from now, all the people that
were saying that Bitcoin was in a bubble when it hit $1,100 a Bitcoin
are going to look just as silly as the people who said Bitcoin was in
a bubble when it hit 10 cents a Bitcoin. And part of the reason for
that is because all of the merchants all over the world that are
starting to accept Bitcoin. Some of the most popular shopping websites
in the entire United States are accepting Bitcoins. Incredibly,
popular shopping websites in Europe are accepting Bitcoins, and
probably in Asia as well.

I hear there’s a number of restaurants and shops here in Singapore
that accept Bitcoin already. A real interesting website to find places
near you that accept Bitcoin is Coinmap.org. You can find physical
shops that are near you that’ll accept Bitcoin as well. This graph
really is starting to show that Bitcoin isn’t just kind of a curiosity
or a technological interesting thing for people to look at, but if we
look at it here, Bitcoin is starting to transfer a similar amount of
money to some major major payment companies that we’re all aware of.
You can see on the particular day that this picture was taken, Bitcoin
was between Western Union and Discover for the amount of money sent
that day. On some days, you’ll see Bitcoin transfer even more money
than PayPal or similar to Discover. And the number of transactions per
day too is just increasing, and this picture’s probably a month or so
old now since this was put together, but it’s growing over time. And
it’s just amazing to see how many more people around the world are
starting to use Bitcoin for real payments.

This is taken from Bitcoincharts.com. 1, 2, 3: a list of a number of
Bitcoin exchanges around the world. Just a few years ago, when I got
started in Bitcoin, when I first found this website, there were maybe
three or four exchanges listed on it. Now, we couldn’t even fit all
the exchanges in one slide. There’s literally hundreds of exchanges
listed here and more and more are coming online every week. So it’s
just becoming easier and easier to convert Bitcoins to and from
traditional government-issued Fiat currency. And here’s an example of
some additional ones. It’s really sad and horrible what happened with
Mt. Gox, but I think the whole world is using that as a learning
experience and better and more trustworthy and more reliable exchanges
are coming on board. And the Bitcoins Blockchain technology allows
them to prove that yes, they do actually have their customers’ money,
and hopefully people will pay attention.

And my other advice for you is if you’re using a Bitcoin exchange,
send your fiat in, get your Bitcoins out, or send your Bitcoins in and
take you fiat out. Do not use a Bitcoin exchange as a wallet. You’re
asking for trouble in the long term. The amazing part about Bitcoin is
that you don’t have to let anybody hold it for you. So if you have
Bitcoins, hold them yourself. And the ecosystem is just growing by
leaps and bounds. I do Bitcoin full-time every day for over three
years now, and every day I’m hearing about more and more new things,
and it would be absolutely impossible for any single human being to
keep up with all the amazing things that are going on. New clients are
coming out all the time. New block explorers, new exchanges, new
payment processors. It’s hard to even count – in fact, it’s impossible
to count – how many things are just happening all the time, and we’re
hearing about some of them here at this conference. And there’s an
entire internet filled with people doing additional exciting things
and really really exciting things.

Click to enlargeClick to enlarge

Mastercoin, ColorCoins, Ethereum are all based on Bitcoin technology.
Incredibly exciting, interesting stuff. If you have time, Google those
and read about those as well. And Bitcoin isn’t the only one. There’s
a whole slew of Blockchain based related currencies. Here’s a partial
list. Obviously, Bitcoin is by far and away the most popular one, but
there’s all sorts of interesting other things that people are doing
out there. At this point, Bitcoin has a huge, huge, huge lead over the
others, but we’ll see which one winds up winning over time. But at
this point, Bitcoin definitely seems to be the one with the most
momentum and developers and enthusiasm behind it, although the
Dogecoin people do have a lot of enthusiasm as well.

The number of start-ups related to Bitcoin

It’s just innumerable at this point. This one particular page lists
over 300 start-ups. To be honest, there probably over 3,000 and maybe
even more than 30,000. There’s just so many people getting so excited
about Bitcoin all over the world because it allows so many things that
were never possible previously. And you can see, there’s just a list
of all sorts of things. And it’s not just from the U.S. or Singapore
or any one country. It’s all the people from all over the world. When
they hear about Bitcoin and they understand the properties of Bitcoin,
they realize that this is a fundamental world-changing technology.
It’s going to change the way human beings interact with each other.

Previously, you needed to get permission from a government or from a
bank or some other payment processing company in order to be able to
send and receive money with somebody else. Bitcoin totally destroys
that system. Now you can send and receive any amount of money with
anyone else anywhere on the planet and you do not require permission
from somebody else. That’s a really, really fundamental change in the
nature of human relationships on the planet. And here’s another list
of more companies that you can shake a stick at that are getting
involved in Bitcoin. And we don’t know which ones are going to wind up
being popular or safe, but it’s pretty much guaranteed that with this
much activity, there’s going to be some real exciting things that are
going to come of it all including ATM machines are popping up all over
the world. I hear there’s quite a number already here in Singapore as
well.

Banks are starting to pay attention and actually work with some
Bitcoin companies. A number of banks still aren’t that friendly, but
Fidor bank in Germany seems to be very friendly towards Bitcoin
related things, and Coinbase makes it incredibly easy in the United
States. You just link your traditional bank account with Coinbase and
you can have Bitcoins right away. My advice is to transfer your
Bitcoins from coin base to a wallet in which you control the private
keys, but Coinbase is an absolutely fantastic way to buy or sell
Bitcoins.

Mobile wallets

It’s hard to imagine or even describe just how quickly things are
moving in the Bitcoin space. When I got involved three years ago,
there were no mobile wallets. There were none. You could only use it
in the core client on your computer. Today, there’s more wallets than
any one person could even study or learn about. And if you go on the
Android App Store, there are so many Bitcoin wallets there. Take a
pick. The most popular one is Blockchain, but Coinbase has wallets.
There’s the Andre Chauvin Beguin wallet. Mycelium is another
incredibly interesting one. There’s just so many fantastic wallets and
developers out there working on that sort of thing that makes it
really easy for people to use Bitcoin in their day-to-day lives.

And people are using Bitcoin to send and receive money all over the
world. I’m using a PowerPoint slide here, but for anybody who has your
computer open at some point, go over to Blockchain.info and it’s
mesmerizing. You can see the transactions on the Bitcoin Blockchain
happening in real time. And as they scroll by, you realize that these
are real people, real human beings, that are sending and receiving
money with people all over the world. And there’s a little bit more
than one Bitcoin transaction happening every single second to the tune
of tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars worth of value every
single day.

And people just absolutely love to use Bitcoin for philanthropy.
People are donating Bitcoins to all sorts of causes all over the
world, and it makes it incredibly easy to do so. It makes it
incredible safe to do so also. Lots of people in this room are
probably fans of organizations like WikiLeaks. Lots of government
agencies are not necessarily fans of WikiLeaks. Bitcoin makes it
incredibly safe to give to organizations like WikiLeaks without having
to be living in fear of a reprisal from whatever government you happen
to live under. And I think that’s another fantastic thing that we can
thank Bitcoin for allowing.

It allows micropayments

With previous forms of payment, you can’t send and receive small
amounts of money with other people. With Bitcoin, you can send very
small amounts of money, both on and off the Blockchain. And that sort
of thing wasn’t possible previously. Game companies. We’re here at a
game conference. Pretty much every single person I’ve talked to that
wasn’t here specifically for the Bitcoin conference already knows all
about Bitcoin, and they’re already actively considering implementing
it into their games, or already are actually implementing it into
their games. So it’s just such a natural fit for games, and people who
play these games are already used to dealing with online points and
credits so Bitcoin doesn’t necessarily feel like anything new to them,
even if they don’t understand the underlying technology behind
Bitcoin.

And people are placing bets for their Starcraft games in Bitcoin as to
who’s going to win. I think that’s really interesting, because you
sure can’t place bets as to who’s going to win a Starcraft game with
your credit card company or PayPal or any of these other things. But
with Bitcoin, anybody can engage in any sort of transaction they want,
and they don’t need to ask for permission from anybody. And if you
believe people own their own money and should be allowed to do what
they want with it, then you should think Bitcoin is great because of
that. And lots and lots of people apparently do. It’s getting lots of
attention in the media. There’s even a Bitcoin magazine now that’s
being sold. Lots of documentaries on Bitcoin. Just a huge amount of
attention.

The most important thing

And that leads me to I have just a couple of minutes left, but I want
to rant a little bit about the thing that has me the most excited
about how Bitcoin is going to change the world for the better. And I’m
pretty open about my philosophy. I consider myself a voluntaryist. And
that means that I think that human beings should be allowed to do
absolutely anything they want, so long as it’s peaceful, and they
shouldn’t be allowed to use aggressive violence against anybody else.
And I don’t make exceptions for groups of people, and especially not
for groups of people who get together and put on uniforms and work in
buildings that happen to have flags out in front of them.

And one of the things that really upsets me the most about the world
that I live in is I see governments and they have this thing called
fiat currency that they completely control. And not only do they
control it, but they can print as much of it as they want at any time.
And I would be annoyed by that in general if they were using it only
for building schools or roads and bridges and things like that. But
I’m someone who’s born in the United States and I see the United
States government printing money like crazy. And then they use that
money to build all sorts of tanks and bombs and airplanes and murder
people all over the world. And if you think about it, that’s what war
is. It’s a group of people who go and murder other people who they’ve
never met and don’t know anything about because another group of
strangers in Washington, D.C. or some other capitol told them to do
it.

And all that’s being paid for by printing money. And with Bitcoin,
because there’s a limited supply, that sort of thing can’t happen in
the world if the world is using Bitcoin. And that’s what has me so
incredibly excited about Bitcoin, is it’ll prevent governments from
being able to just print money at will and then use that to buy tanks
and guns and bombs to murder people around the world. And so I see a
world in which everybody is using Bitcoin and interacting with each
other on a voluntary basis as just a much, much, much happier and
peaceful and safer world for every single human being on the planet.
And when I realized that Bitcoin has the potential that to become the
currency used all around the world, and would have the ability to
basically undermine every government on the entire planet’s ability to
wage war, I knew I had to get involved and start promoting Bitcoin
full-time. And that’s what I’ve been doing for three years, and that’s
what has me so excited.

And I think maybe I have one or two minutes left. If anybody has any
questions, I’d be happy to answer questions about that. But that’s why
I think Bitcoin is going to change the world for the better.

[Applause]

Love Roger. Keep doing what you do. So Roger is also referred to as
Bitcoin Jesus for his evangelism, but also his gifting of Bitcoin.
When were you given that name?

To be honest, I don’t remember when it first started. I think it
happened, I was at a barbeque party and there were a whole bunch of
high school kids from the house next door that came over, and I was
telling them all about Bitcoin, and they were all excited. And kids
understand Bitcoin right away. And I was helping them all set up
Bitcoin wallets on their phone, and I gave each of them, I don’t know,
a dollar or two worth of Bitcoin. And another person looking on said,
“It’s like you’re a Bitcoin Jesus, and you have all your disciples
around you,” because these kids were so excited about Bitcoin. I think
that’s probably where it started. So thank you all.

Roger Ver has served as the full time CEO of MemoryDealers.com,
directly employing about 30 people, and serving happy customers around
the world. Over the last decade, under Roger’s leadership, Memory
Dealers has grown to become a world leader in the used Cisco memory
and networking equipment industry. In early 2011 Roger discovered
Bitcoin. MemoryDealers became the first mainstream business to accept
bitcoins as payment, and Roger has since become the most prolific
Bitcoin related startup investor. Roger has funded the seed rounds for
such Bitcoin startups as: Bitcoin Foundation, Coin Lab, Blockchain,
Ripple, Kraken.com, Coinapult, OGRR, BitcoinStore, Bitcoin Chipin, and
several more.


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