There are 4 comments.

1. Member
   Henry Racette

   @HenryRacette

   9:59 PM EST ⋅ Feb 14, 2022

   Congratulations, Rich. You’ve managed to launch your podcast with two terrific guests. You’ve also presented what I think is an unusually realistic and balanced assessment of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, something I honestly didn’t expect from a crypto-centric podcast.

   I think Michael Green makes a lot of sense — again, perhaps because I share his views. His opening comments at the six minute mark:

   [Bitcoin] is a speculative asset, it is not a currency. … Its use case so far is largely around criminality. … It is functionally a Ponzi-like dynamic.

   This Bitcoin skeptic agrees.

   I also appreciated this comment from your guest (at 26 minutes):

   What we saw with the coronavirus pandemic was not the response of functional governments. What we saw was the response of dysfunctional governments.

   Keep it up. You’ve got a regular listener here.

2. Member
   Richard Goldberg

   @richardgoldberg

   2:49 PM EST ⋅ Feb 15, 2022

   Henry Racette (View Comment):

   Congratulations, Rich. You’ve managed to launch your podcast with two terrific guests. You’ve also presented what I think is an unusually realistic and balanced assessment of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, something I honestly didn’t expect from a crypto-centric podcast.

   I think Michael Green makes a lot of sense — again, perhaps because I share his views. His opening comments at the six minute mark:

   [Bitcoin] is a speculative asset, it is not a currency. … Its use case so far is largely around criminality. … It is functionally a Ponzi-like dynamic.

   This Bitcoin skeptic agrees.

   I also appreciated this comment from your guest (at 26 minutes):

   What we saw with the coronavirus pandemic was not the response of functional governments. What we saw was the response of dysfunctional governments.

   Keep it up. You’ve got a regular listener here.

   Thank you! More great content to come.

3. Inactive
   captainpower

   @captainpower

   7:06 PM EST ⋅ Feb 17, 2022

   @richardgoldberg

   tldr/summary: This stuff’s confusing and I hope your podcast can help sort it out for listeners.

   longer version:

   I looked into acquiring cryptocurrency once or twice since I wanted to pay for a VPN with it.

   I was also interested in participating in the Brave web browser‘s attempt to upend the current model of paying for web sites by allowing me to block ads but also compensate sites I visit with microtransactions based on cryptocurrency (boldy going where others have tried and failed).

   Crytpocurrency turned out to be a huge pain to actually buy in.

   The legit way appeared to be to link your bank account and do an ACH transfer, and a shadier way I saw was to meet in person to exchange amazon gift cards for cryptocurrency.

   Now the various exchanges such as Coinbase/Uphold/Gemini appear to be obeying Know Your Customer laws instituted after 9/11 and will require you to disclose your personal information (social security number, photo id, address, phone number). (Privacy.com and its virtual credit card number service does this as well, which is a drag.)

   And there are so many coins out there I don’t even know which one to go with. Apparently some are designed to be less resource hungry (ecocoins? not sure the term, maybe PoS) and replace the proof-of-work model (like Bitcoin) with a proof-of-stake (PoS) model (like Ethereum? ). And some are more resistant to price volatility (stablecoins) like Tether? And some are privacy focused (privacycoins), like Monero?

   (question marks exist next to cryptocurrency names because I’m just putting search results here without actually knowing much about these various coins.)

   [edit] h/t to https://ricochet.com/1138949/a-use-case-for-cryptocurrency/ by @henryracette for pointing me to this podcast

4. Member
   Richard Goldberg

   @richardgoldberg

   4:51 AM EST ⋅ Feb 18, 2022

   captainpower (View Comment):

   @ richardgoldberg

   tldr/summary: This stuff’s confusing and I hope your podcast can help sort it out for listeners.

   longer version:

   I looked into acquiring cryptocurrency once or twice since I wanted to pay for a VPN with it.

   I was also interested in participating in the Brave web browser‘s attempt to upend the current model of paying for web sites by allowing me to block ads but also compensate sites I visit with microtransactions based on cryptocurrency (boldy going where others have tried and failed).

   Crytpocurrency turned out to be a huge pain to actually buy in.

   The legit way appeared to be to link your bank account and do an ACH transfer, and a shadier way I saw was to meet in person to exchange amazon gift cards for cryptocurrency.

   Now the various exchanges such as Coinbase/Uphold/Gemini appear to be obeying Know Your Customer laws instituted after 9/11 and will require you to disclose your personal information (social security number, photo id, address, phone number). (Privacy.com and its virtual credit card number service does this as well, which is a drag.)

   And there are so many coins out there I don’t even know which one to go with. Apparently some are designed to be less resource hungry (ecocoins? not sure the term, maybe PoS) and replace the proof-of-work model (like Bitcoin) with a proof-of-stake (PoS) model (like Ethereum? ). And some are more resistant to price volatility (stablecoins) like Tether? And some are privacy focused (privacycoins), like Monero?

   (question marks exist next to cryptocurrency names because I’m just putting search results here without actually knowing much about these various coins.)

   [edit] h/t to https://ricochet.com/1138949/a-use-case-for-cryptocurrency/ by @ henryracette for pointing me to this podcast

   It is confusing, and hopefully this podcast will help. We’ll be getting into KYC in an upcoming episode. Thanks for listening!