Coin Stories

Raoul Pal leads Real Vision to provide unparalleled access to the very best insights and analysis from the brightest financial minds. He prides himself on being a Business Cycle Economist, Investment Strategist, and Economic Historian. -- Real Vision is a disruptive financial media brand, created to help investors understand the complex world of finance, business and the global economy, with in-depth analysis from real experts. The video platform delivers exclusive, long-form interviews, research, live strategy calls, documentaries and analysis from impossible to access guests and the sharpest minds in global finance. There is also written research and a range of live events held all over the world. In addition, Real Vision is commissioned by leading financial services brands and fintech to create and distribute bespoke video content on their behalf. Uniquely, Real Vision has a young, wealthy and educated audience that engages with content at levels that are unprecedented in the industry.

Pierre Rochard has been involved with Bitcoin as a researcher, investor, and software developer since February 2013. He co-founded the Satoshi Nakamoto Institute to curate the best primary source literature on Bitcoin and cryptography. In addition to developing Bitcoin software, Pierre is an outspoken advocate for Bitcoin's decentralized governance. In 2017 he began co-hosting the Noded Bitcoin Podcast. Pierre is widely recognized as an authority on the investment case for Bitcoin. He has previously worked at Deloitte, BitPay, Hudson River Trading, and Axial.

Max Keiser is a financial broadcaster, filmmaker, podcaster and former stockbroker who hosts the popular Keiser Report on RT. He is the founder of Bitcoin Capital & Heisenberg Capital. Keiser's background is in brokerage, banking, and financial technology innovation. Keiser created the Hollywood Stock Exchange (HSX.com) and was awarded a US patent for his Virtual Specialist tech in 1996. In addition to powering HSX. The Virtual Specialist tech launched virtual currencies, virtual securities, and Prediction Markets. Keiser is a frequent speaker at international conferences, including the first ever Bitcoin conference in Prague in 2011.

Dan Held is the Director of Growth Marketing at Kraken. His former company Interchange, a portfolio reconciliation tool for crypto institutional traders, was acquired by Kraken in 7/2019. Prior to that, he was at Uber on Rider Growth/Global Data. Before Uber, Dan built some of the most popular early crypto products including ChangeTip (acquired by AirBnB), and ZeroBlock (acquired by Blockchain.com in the second ever all Bitcoin acquisition). He was part of the original 2013 crypto meetup group in San Francisco, which was comprised with the founders of Kraken, Coinbase, Litecoin, and others. Follow Dan on Twitter at @DanHeld.

Jason Williams (aka "Parabolic Guy") is an entrepreneur and Bitcoin investor with multiple investment exits in excess of $500 million. He is the founder of FastMed and also built the world's first waste-to-energy cryptocurrency mine, which ran mainly on car tires. Jason is also a founding partner of Morgan Creek Digital Assets, the crypto-focused investment arm of Morgan Creek Capital, which is involved with many of the top companies in the space and has significant holdings in Bitcoin. He is the author of the book Bitcoin: Hard Money You Can't F*ck With, which went on to become a bestseller on Amazon's macroeconomics list. The book introduces Bitcoin as an asset class to conventional investors and the general public.

Anthony Pompliano is an entrepreneur, investor and U.S. Army Veteran. He has built and sold numerous companies, ran Product & Growth teams at Facebook, and manages a portfolio valued at more than $500 million in early-stage tech companies. Anthony hosts the popular "Pomp Podcast," which has been downloaded more than 20 million times, and writes a Daily Newsletter that is read by more than 170,000 investors each morning. His interests lie at the intersection of finance, technology, entrepreneurship, and economics, which he tweets about extensively to his nearly 1 million Twitter followers. He recently launched a new business effort called "Bitcoin Pizza" to celebrate an important anniversary in the cryptocurrency world. Every order supports the Human Rights Foundation's Bitcoin Development Fund with 100% of the profits set to be donated. Visit eatbitcoinpizza.com. Learn more at AnthonyPompliano.com.

PlanB (@100trillionUSD) is a former Dutch institutional investor with 25 years of experiences in financial markets. He has a legal and quantitative finance background and has always been fascinated by modeling risk & return. In March 2019 he created the Bitcoin Stock-to-Flow (S2F) model where he uses scarcity to quantify Bitcoin value. A year later he introduced the Stock-to-Flow Cross Asset (S2FX) model, which includes gold, silver, diamond and real estates. He is now primarily focusing on Bitcoin valuation models, on-chain analysis and investment strategies. Follow him on Twitter at @100trillionUSD.

Robert Breedlove is the Founder and CEO of Parallax Digital, a global Bitcoin-focused hedge fund and consultancy firm. He is a freedom maximalist, a philosopher, writer, and podcaster who is eager to spread the message that Bitcoin is Honest Money. His essay on The Number Zero and Bitcoin is a must-read and is among dozens of his profound writings in the space. Robert believes Bitcoin will profoundly shift society in the same way the discovery of the number Zero did. Robert hosts the popular What is Money? podcast, exploring a question that Robert says is the rabbit that leads us down the proverbial rabbit hole. The podcast explores why this question is important for finding truth in the world and engages in a diversity of deep conversations with deep thinkers from all walks of life. Follow Robert on Twitter at @Breedlove22. ---- Robert Breedlove's Extended Biography: Robert is a digitally fluent finance and operations executive (CEO/CFO/COO/CIO) with broad spectrum leadership experience across the enterprise tech, consumer tech, corporate finance, international M&A, tax strategy, wealth management, Bitcoin, and cryptoasset domains. Robert holds a Bachelors of Science in Accounting and Finance and a Master's Degree in Accounting from the University of Tennessee Haslam College of Business. His mission in life is to maximize freedom for humanity. Asking yourself that all-important question "What is Money?" is the rabbit which will lead you down the proverbial rabbit hole of new inquiries, perspectives on socioeconomic reality, and worldview-shattering revelations. Undoubtedly, it is the single most significant question we can ask ourselves in a world drowning in deception. By engaging in deep conversations with a diversity of deep thinkers from all walks of life, we will doggedly pursue this "rabbit" in our relentless hunt for truth. Robert Breedlove is a freedom maximalist, ex-hedge fund manager, and philosopher in the Bitcoin space. To him, Bitcoin is fundamentally a humanitarian movement exposing the greatest con in human history: central banking. By learning about the connection between honest money, entrepreneurship, and civilization, we are renewing hope for the future of humanity. To this end, Robert's mission is to restore freedom, truth, and virtue in our world by tenaciously asking the question: "What is Money?"

Peter McCormack is a former advertising guru turned podcast presenter. In this episode of Coin Stories Peter shares his career back story, how he came to discover Bitcoin, his philosophy on the cryptocurrency and how he grew his popular show into a go-to source for Bitcoin news. The What Bitcoin Did Podcast is a twice-weekly podcast where Peter interviews experts in the world of Bitcoin development, privacy, investment and adoption. Launched in November of 2017, the podcast has grown to hundreds of episodes with a guest list that is a testament to the diversity of knowledge and opinions that represent the broader Bitcoin community. His podcast website is full of excellent resources to help you learn more about the space. I highly recommend his Beginner's Guide to Bitcoin.

The purpose of this episode is to go over the fundamental concepts and terms associated with Bitcoin and its network. Click here to download a PDF version of this audio glossary. If you want to learn more, I highly recommend reading Saifedean Ammous's book The Bitcoin Standard and visiting his website for more learning tools. ---------- Bitcoin is a scarce, digital currency that is decentralized. Satoshi Nakamoto is the name used by the pseudonymous person or group that conceived of Bitcoin and released the White Paper introducing Bitcoin as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system on October 31, 2008 at the peak of the U.S. Great Financial Crisis. A Satoshi is a division of a Bitcoin. One bitcoin is equal to 100 million satoshis also known as sats. Stacking Sats refers to accumulating the smallest unit of a Bitcoin. Blockchain is the technology that enables Bitcoin. It is a shared, digital ledger of transactions distributed across the computer systems in the peer-to-peer network. A Full Node a computer in Bitcoin's network that hosts and synchronizes a copy of the entire blockchain ledger. Bitcoin Mining is the process of verifying blocks of Bitcoin transactions. It's also the process by which new bitcoins are entered into circulation. Proof of Work (PoW) is the algorithm that secures Bitcoin. Miners deploy extremely large amounts of computing power to solve very complex cryptographic puzzles. These computer systems compete with each other to be the first to solve the puzzle and be able to validate the new block for the blockchain. Miners must reach a consensus to confirm the puzzle was solved, then the block can be accepted and permanently recorded onto the blockchain ledger. Proof of Work ensures the security of the blockchain and complete decentralization of the process. It prevents attacks and double spending. No person, entity or country controls Bitcoin, instead Bitcoin is controlled by verifiable software systems and processes. When a miner solves a puzzle, and that work and those transactions are confirmed, the miner is paid a reward in new Bitcoins according to a schedule. Every four years, the amount of Bitcoin the miners receive for each block of transactions is reduced by 50%. These events are referred to the Halvings. The next halving will occur in 2024. Proof of Stake (PoS) is a different process of validating transactions on the blockchain. It based on validators who stake their own currency in the mining process. It's more energy efficient but it can lead to centralization, because people who have more coins to stake can verify more transactions. Digital Scarcity refers to the limited availability of a virtual good that cannot be easily copied or recreated. Bitcoin has a hard supply cap of 21 million coins that will ever be mined and because of decentralization that can never be changed no matter how high the price per Bitcoin goes. No person, entity or government can create new coins that will dilute the value of existing coins. Fiat refers to currency that is established as money or legal tender by government decree or regulation. More simply, fiat is government-issued money and almost all currencies around the world are fiat currencies. Fiat money gives central banks greater control over the economy because they control how much money is printed. Fiat money is 100% centralized because it is entirely controlled by governments. The printing of new money to finance government debt dilutes existing money saved and introduces inflation. A Central Bank Digital Currency or CBDC is fiat money in the form of a digital coin. It is being considered or introduced by various Central Banks, including the US, China and Europe. Because it is digital it gives Central Banks new and powerful tools to monitor, tax, stimulate or influence society. As with today's fiat money, digital dollars, Yuan or Euros will be 100% centralized. Keynesian Economics is a school of thought that believes that government intervention in the form of increasing/decreasing the money supply can stabilize the economy. The theory advocates for government spending through public policies that aim to achieve full employment and price stability. Most Western Central Banks today practice Keynesian Economics and utilize increases to the money supply to theoretically smooth business cycles. Austrian Economics aligns more with Bitcoin philosophy and argues that government efforts to control the economic cycle invariably make it worse. Austrian economists believe that the less government interferes in free markets, the more soundly the economy grows. It argues the manipulation of money supply distorts the allocation of capital and causes boom bust cycles to be more frequent and severe. Michael Saylor is the CEO of MicroStrategy ($MSTR), the first publicly listed company to adopt the Bitcoin Standard and convert its entire treasury of capital into Bitcoin. MicroStrategy currently owns more than 90,000 Bitcoins. Saylor advocates for Bitcoin adoption by other institutions and helps guide CEOs and money managers through the process. A Bitcoin Maximalist is an individual who, like MicroStrategy, has adopted the Bitcoin Standard and converted their savings entirely into Bitcoin, shunning all other assets as a store of value. The Stock-to-Flow model is an econometric model discovered by Plan B, which predicts Bitcoin's price based on its scarcity, represented by the ratio of the existing supply of Bitcoin to how many new coins are being created. Because the supply of Bitcoin is absolute and reductions in the flow of new supply via the halvings are scheduled, the stock to flow ratio can be accurately predicted into the future. According to The Stock to Flow Model, the increasing price of Bitcoin since inception correlates strongly with the halving cycles and changes in the stock to flow ratio. The model predicts the likely price for Bitcoin after the last halving (2020) will reach approximately $100,000.