Dr James:
Fans of the Dennis who Invest podcast. If you feel like there was one particular episode in the back catalog in the anthology of Dennis who Invest podcast episodes that really, really really was massively valuable to you, feel free to share that with a fellow dental colleague who’s in a similar position, so their understanding of finance can be elevated and they can hit the next level of financial success in their life. Also, as well as that, if you could take two seconds to rate and review this podcast, it would mean the world. To me, what that would mean is that it drives this podcast further in terms of reach so that more dentists across the world can be able to benefit from the knowledge contained therein. Welcome, welcome to the Dennis who Invest podcast. Good afternoon everybody. Welcome back to another podcast with James Martin on Dennis who Invest. Once more, we’ve got a wonderful guest with us today Speaking on something that’s very much a hot topic at the minute in the world of investing. There’s plenty of buzz around it, not least because it’s shot up in price a whole load recently. It keeps defying expectations. I don’t think the monumental growth that it’s been lucky to benefit from will continue, at least at this rate, but I am optimistic forward in the long run, and this is why I thought I would. Who better to get on to speak about this particular topic Bitcoin, of course than somebody who is one of our own. She’s a dentist and she has, of course, written a book on Bitcoin as well, which I sadly have not got wrong to reading just yet, but I bought it. I bought it about two months ago and do you know what? Life just keeps getting in the way, and I do intend fully to read it. Truth Decay, which is a really great title, by the way, I must say I enjoyed it. In case you don’t know her, her name is Victoria Jones. Welcome to the show, victoria.
Victoria:
Hi, thank you. That’s a great introduction, James Brilliant.
Dr James:
You’re very welcome. No, I loved that intro. I was wondering how many people who would look at that book and think, oh dentist, oh Truth, decay people from the general public. They probably get it, don’t they?
Victoria:
Yeah, it’s not Well, actually, if you search yeah, if you search for it on Amazon, there are actually quite a few books with that title. One of them is by dentist about, and another one is about the Truth Decay of American politics and, strangely, earlier in this year there’s actually a clip on BBC News of Obama talking about Truth Decay. I was like he’s read my book.
Dr James:
That’s awesome. Yeah, catchy title. Hats off on that one. Really interesting one, and I do fully intend to read it. I’ve read a few books on the history of Bitcoin, and it’s next to my list. You know how it is life just keeps getting. I keep saying I’m going to do it, and then something else happens, new year’s happens, things like that but yes, we’re very excited to have you on the show. Very hot topic generated a lot of interest on the group. I’d just like to know for anybody who’s listening who hasn’t necessarily been introduced to you yet. Victoria, I was just wondering if you could do a quick little intro about yourself, your background in dentistry and maybe how you got into Bitcoin.
Victoria:
Sure, okay. So yes, I mean, I’ve been a dentist for 20 years. So I worked for 10 years as an associate, mainly in private practice. I worked for about three different corporates as well. Right from the beginning I was more interested in private dentistry than I was NHS dentistry, for reasons that I’m sure will crop up in conversation later. But yes, I spent 10 years as an associate and once I kind of exhausted all my options doing that, I you know I never particularly liked dentistry very much. I had nine before I became a dentist. I had an idea in my head of what I thought it would be like, and the reality, as I’m sure a lot of young dentists can attest to, is often not quite how you anticipated, and so anyway. So it was quite a journey to try and figure out. I really wanted to find a way of matching the idea I had in my head when I was 15 to what it should be, and so it was quite a convoluted journey of experimenting with different practices before I figured out what I wanted. And by then what I wanted was so unique no one else was delivering it. There was. I come to the conclusion no, I couldn’t really work for anyone else who could create the environment that I wanted. So my only option was to create that environment for myself. So in 2007, I decided to set up my own little boutique dental practice in in the Nostrum and it was above a hairdressing salon because I didn’t have much capital capital and I knew I didn’t know much about marketing. But it said, but it was a good way of starting because I felt by aligning with another business, I could tap into their, their client network. And you know, I could start off with just a small room and the idea was to kind of start it from scratch so I could have the environment just the way I wanted it, I can get my patients in, I could do the consultations the way I’d been taught, I could allow myself enough time and, because I’d worked for three other corporates in the private sector, I’d had experience of kind of building a list from scratch. So I didn’t feel intimidated doing it for myself. I knew that it would take time, but I knew it was possible for me to do it. So that was my plan. But the thing is I was completely naive in deciding how to do that Because, although I could convince myself I could do it, what I didn’t appreciate was quite how expensive that is. You know working for these corporates. So I worked for Boots Dentist for a while I don’t know if you were around when you heard about them so they had a chain of dental practices. For a while I’d worked for a couple of the other corporates. Boots ended up being bought out by Optical Express, a dental clinic, and so I’d experience working for these corporates. But what I hadn’t appreciated is the amount of capital that goes into them on the back end. So Boots, by the time they decided to turn down, decide not to do dentistry anymore. You know the whole project had cost them about 60 million. But of course these products you know they’re good at wasting money and finding it again. It’s not so easy for us as individuals or small practitioners. So I was completely naive about how much capital it would take. I was just like this is what I could do. I drew up my cash flow forecast for the bank and they went yep sales, reasonable, based on what most other dentists can achieve and what I’d been doing as an associate. So that was fine. So I set it up in December 2007. And you know I had a bit of savings in the bank. I’d got out a load of lease agreements for my equipment and just started working, and I also had a baby in February as well, february 2008, just after that. So you know, it was like everything was all at once, but I was like I’ll be fine, I could do it, and under normal circumstances normal being up until 2008,. Everything would have been fine. But, of course, by September, I was nine months in. I’d been having to draw my capital because I didn’t realise how much I’d have to invest in the business in order to get it started. All I’d really thought about was the equipment. I hadn’t thought about the fact that, in order to service those loans, I’d need a certain number of patients, and because I was starting from scratch, it took a while to build it. So I got to September 2009,. I desperately needed some more money. I’d run out of my own capital, so I went to the bank for a loan and, of course, september 2009,. No bank on the planet was lending money to anybody, because, of course, it was just after the financial crash, and so, anyway, the only way I managed to survive was I would pay for my business expenses on my credit cards and just kept going that way and I kind of got to the stage where I still haven’t made a profit and I was 60 grand in debt on my credit cards in order to keep it going. And I had weeks when I had weeks when I was almost bankrupt. You know, something had gone wrong with a particular treatment on a particular patient. I hadn’t been able to charge them and that money hadn’t come through. Like three days later I would have to declare bankruptcy because I literally had no other way. Oh my word.
Dr James:
Well, do you know what hats off to you? I’ll say that you’re certainly our braves lady.
Victoria:
Brave or foolish.
Dr James:
Hey, the line’s always been blurry between those two things, so you’re not alone there. Fair play, I’ll get out you know what hats off to you. There must have been some hard work and dedication that went into that, but anyway, sorry for barging in.
Victoria:
No, no, that’s okay, but it was incredibly stressful and so, you know, eventually I came out the other side of it, I managed to keep my business going and because I had that confidence from having been an associate, I knew I could still do it. But at the same time, you know, the only asset I had at that time was my house, and it took me, you know, but I need to sell it for a particular, for a particular amount of money. So it went on the market in 2007, didn’t quite catch the peak, and then it was seven years before I got the price I wanted for it. So the thing is, that’s the only asset I had. I couldn’t sell it in order to raise any cap. I couldn’t sell it to raise any capital from the business, and so, you know, I so I’d spent a long time literally having no money, and I did recently listen to the before we did this interview, I listened to one of your podcasts just to get an idea of what you know about stuff, and you and you were saying about reducing your expenses and basically I got to the stage where I was. I was operating a very high level professionally, having to run my own business a squat private practice but literally having no money. I mean my average salary for the 10 years I own my business was 20 grand a year, which is ridiculous really when you think about it. But it’s to do with the fact, I think, apart from anything else, I just got so burnt out with having to do everything without that kind of financial support that you know you can do, improve what you do with money with. You know consumer shops and that nationalism that you know that didn’t wear anything when you bought a whole serious amount of money guessing people were website 17,. Yeah, so I just I just didn’t, I just didn’t want to, I just couldn’t continue. Really, I mean I I never particularly enjoyed dentistry anyway, but even my, even my own project, although it had its, its benefits, it really did burn me out. It was really stressful.
Dr James:
So anyway, yeah yeah.
Victoria:
So anyway, by the time I got to the stage where it was fine, I was finally solvent, I was at least making a profit and I could cover my expenses. I’ve reduced my living expenses so low that, you know, I’ve moved into a rented flat, finally sold my house and for the first time ever, I had some money, and this was 2015. And so and that was really precious to me because I hadn’t had it for so long my quality of life had really diminished compared to when I was an associate, and so I was just like I have to figure out a way to what I need to do with this money. And so this is. And of course, by then you know the banks kind of offering like 0.001% interest, and it was just, I remember going to the post offices, kid, and you’d get 10% interest on your savings. Like there’s something not quite right here, you know. So that was. That was when I started to learn about money. I couldn’t really do it before because I was preoccupied by too many things, but once I’d kind of gone past the danger period, I was just like what the hell happened? I didn’t have time to look at it at the time, but as soon as I had some brain space and time to do it and I could take it easy, but I started to do a deep dive into the financial system. So that’s a long, convoluted explanation as to you know, that was really interesting. Yeah, but there are particular reasons and I often find, now that I’m you know, I’ve now been to a number of conferences, I’ve got a lot of friends who are in Bitcoin now, and what I tend to find the common thread between all of them is there’s been some kind of trauma or something that kind of kicked them into understanding what the problem was. Because I think, without understanding what the problem is, it’s really difficult to understand why Bitcoin is the solution, you know. Sorry, I didn’t want to interrupt you.
Dr James:
No, I was, I was listening to you, I was listening.
Victoria:
Yeah, so I mean, I was watching a CNN clip this morning where some you know talking heads are trying to explain Bitcoin. It’s just like they have no idea. They’ve lived such privileged lives for so long, you know. They, their lives just run like clockwork. They think that’s how everybody lives and they don’t realize that there’s a problem here that people have fixed with Bitcoin and and so this is the irony about the whole situation. It’s like the people who struggled the most are the ones who get it first, and so there’s going to be I think there’s. You know, we’re destined to have this huge wealth transfer that most of these people are just going to completely miss until it’s too late. So that’s what I find interesting about it.
Dr James:
Amazing. I read just out of what your point that you were saying earlier. I read a really interesting book called the psychology of money recently and have you read it?
Victoria:
No.
Dr James:
Brilliant book. So it basically one chapter in the book. It talks about how we project our past experiences on to money. So let’s say so. Obviously you’ve got the really obvious ones, like someone who is a millionaire to the point that you know they’re born into money, that never had to look for it and they just frivolously throw it at a wet, throw it away. And then you’ve got the opposite someone who’s come from real strife and hardship will almost certainly always be careful with their money. And it made me look at other people in a way, because if you meet somebody and I’m not by any means suggesting you’re like this Victoria or anybody who knows me, I’m not, I’m not meaning to do them down or anything like that but perhaps when you see someone who is tight fisted or a bit of a man with their money, perhaps where that comes from, and it made me step back and it made me think you know what? I’ve been middle class my whole life. I’ve never been, you know, minted, or I hope someday that I will be, you know. But that’s where I’ve come from and I’ve always had this relationship where I’m careful with it but I would never be frivolous with it and throw it away and maybe when you see someone who’s tight fisted, it just made me take a step back and think you know what? Maybe that’s why that person’s like that, because they’ve come from real strife and there that’s. Their relationship with money just made me really, really evaluate things and I think that it sounds like possibly you went through something similar through this or deal with the practice Interesting one.
Victoria:
Yeah, absolutely, and I think also, you know, from my family history I mean, my grandfather came from a grandfather and grandmother on my father’s side came from a history of coal miners. So they were very, you know, had they had real issues with money. And when I was growing up, you know my dad never had two pennies to rub together. So I, I mean we survived, and they joke about the fact they brought us up on credit cards. So I mean my mother is probably the more frivolous one, my dad was always the more careful one, so there was this constant battle between them, and so you know the attitudes you grew up with as well, you know, I mean that made me very curious about those sorts of things. I mean, I’d say my whole life, you know, there’ve been those issues that I really wanted to get my head around, and I think this was why, you know, when I went into dentistry and I had this idea of you know what dentistry should be like, when I couldn’t reconcile it all kind of built up on all those things that I’d experienced in the past, and I really wanted to understand it and conceptualize it. I think that’s quite rare actually. I don’t come across people who have been forced to think about it that deeply. So I think, certainly, you know, running my business was part of the puzzle, I think, when I grew up because you know I had been surrounded by people who were mean with money I consciously wanted to be someone who wasn’t like that, because I knew how difficult it was to be on the end of it, and for the years that I was an associate, it was great. It was really nice to have those 10 years where you know I could be more frivolous and I, you know, and do the things that I dreamed of. And you know, I bought the house, I did it the way I wanted it, I went on the nice holidays, so at least I knew what it could be like and you know what it was to have that freedom. And then the contrast, because, of course, you know, in 2008, when none of the banks were lending me any money and I had to go to the bank and go I’ve got no money, can you give me a loan? And then I just kind of sat there where not my problem, you know. You realize that’s how a large proportion of the population are living their life from day to day. You know these are the people who are having to go to the loan sharks. I mean, I drew the line and I think at some point someone was contacting me to say, oh, we can give you the loan on your future card payments and this will be the interest rate. And I was like I’d be better off going bankrupt than accepting that, because I will be bankrupt if I continue on those things. But these are the, these are the things you learn and of course you know being an associate working in a practice and kind of living that blissful life, and then the contrast to being a practitioner oh, my goodness, you know the shift in perspective that you have. I had no idea. You know all these associates are kind of going oh, you know, practice on is so mean, blah, blah, blah. I mean you have an idea of what it’s like until you actually do it, and until you actually do it, you have no idea what they’re dealing with. You know, and that was all part of my journey as well, to understanding that- true?
Dr James:
Yeah, I did have someone mention that very recently to me when we were talking. They had been through some unfortunate is sort of circumstances with the old practice owner and they. I was only too ready to kind of jump on the bandwagon and say, yeah, he or her, he they were, they were horrible, the sound like they were horrible to you. But then they kind of reframed it for me when they said but I suppose, when I think about it, I’ve never actually been a practice manager and I don’t know what it’s like to have these constant worries about money and staff and things like that. And again, it was another thing that made me step back and see it through their eyes. Every one of us has a unique relationship with money and that’s why I love that book so much. Really pointed that out to me because before that I was looking at it from my blinker perspective. Yeah, it definitely. I’m hearing you talk resonated me with me because of what I read from that particular book really good book. If anybody would like to delve deeper, am I right in saying, victoria, that you are still practicing as a dentist, or is that something that you’ve?
Victoria:
Only just I’m winding down. So the end of that story, I mean my, my original plan had been to start in this little room and then build it bigger. So that that was my plan when I was still planning on being a dentist, when I first opened it up. But, of course, when I first had that plan, I hadn’t anticipated anything like the financial crisis. You know, I hadn’t anticipated everything being a practice owner would teach me, and so, you know, eventually I mean partway through my journey I managed to hire a business consultant and they were so helpful. I mean I you know it was really helpful having that support system, because, especially when you’re doing something on your own, having someone to bounce ideas off and to help you narrow your focus because as a practice owner, there are so many things you can think about having people, having someone to help you focus on what’s the most important thing, was really was really valuable as well. So they helped me a lot and by the time I got to the stage where I could kind of breathe again and kind of write a care, feel like I’m making progress. Now, you know, it was time to revisit the original plan I had, which was to go from this small practice to a bigger location. And so, you know, my business coach got me to write a business plan for the next business practice and, of course, during this time, this is when I was learning about the financial system I’d taken on board. You know the realities of what it was like being a business owner doing everything yourself, and you know I wrote this business plan. I was just like it’s going to be 10 more years the same. You know the first three to four years, you know I’m going to be struggling with money. By then I understood how fragile the financial system was. You know I knew there was going to be some kind of crisis on the horizon. I was just I’m just not prepared to take that risk, and so you know so. But then I was like well, what else do I do? So you know. So by 2015, I was starting to learn about the financial system. I think by the beginning of 2016, I was starting to start to learn about gold and silver and their importance as a form of sound money. And I think there’d been a stock market crash at the end of 2015, and there was a lot of hullabaloo at the beginning, and then they announced that they were going to have a vote for Brexit. So then, of course, I was very interested in the whole political thing and I bought a bit of gold and I bought a bit of silver just before the Brexit vote. And then, just after the Brexit I think overnight with the Brexit vote, because the vote was so unexpected the price of gold shut off and I was like this is amazing. So that was just the beginning of my journey. And then I thought about it and I thought well, as a business owner, in reality I’m not going to want my customers coming in and bringing me gold and silver coins. I mean, it’s hard enough to get to the bank to deposit cash and things like that. You know, in a digital world, there has to be a digital solution. And I’d heard Bitcoin mentioned, but I’d never really looked into it and I thought, because people kept bringing it up, there must be something about this thing. And so when I started researching Bitcoin and learned that it was been essentially programmed as a form of digital gold, I was like that’s it, that’s solution, for I knew anything else about it. I was like, because I understood the problems in the financial system, because I’d learned about why gold and silver were the solution, but I realized they had the limitations. Once I understood Bitcoin, that was it. There was no stopping me, so you know. So I started learning about it and, of course, it’s quite a journey, you know. Once you go down the Bitcoin rabbit hole, there’s so much it teaches you in terms of finance, financial history, politics, political history. It’s fascinating.
Dr James:
It really is. I think the biggest thing that inspired me to go down the rabbit hole was inflation and how much they meddle with it to make it appear lower than what it is and how much we actually it were were, were sort of indoctrinated to think that money in the bank, cash cash in the bank, it’s safe. But it’s not. And they they fiddle with those figures so much you lose much of your effort every year. So to buy things like Bitcoin, to buy things like gold, even stocks and indexes, that’s hedging yourself against this system which is intended to well. There’s a whole host of reasons why the government use inflation. They do it to reduce their debt, mainly. All right. So if we can hedge ourselves again, it doesn’t. They’re not really our interests in. Their interests are not aligned on that one. And hence why it’s an amazing thing to think about this, but do it in a safe and sort of educated manner. That ties in really nicely with the next thing I wanted to ask. I want you to break it down really simple for me and for the people who are listening what is Bitcoin? Can you tell us a little?
Victoria:
bit. So, basically, software. Bitcoin is essentially a software program, so someone’s has basically sat well, someone supposedly called Satoshi Nakamoto. No one knows. Still to this day no one knows who they are, and that’s probably for a very deliberate reason because, you know, before Bitcoin was invented, there were a number of digital currencies that have been invented, but every single one of them got squashed by the government because there was someone to go after. But Satoshi Nakamoto deliberately kept himself anonymous, and I think it’s because he’d seen what else had happened in the system. So so, basically, the idea behind Bitcoin was presented in a white paper and, ironically, today is it’s meant to be Bitcoin’s third, 12th birthday.
Dr James:
Oh, of course, because January the 3rd 2009. Oh, I didn’t even realise that. And now? So we’re doing this podcast on Bitcoin’s birthday.
Victoria:
Oh, no way.
Dr James:
That was amazing time. Well done us. It must be a sign. That must be a sign. I did not even think of that. Yeah, january the 3rd 2009. There you go Was when it went live. I believe. Real quick guys. So I put together a special report for dentists entitled the seven costly and potentially disastrous mistakes that dentists make whenever it comes to their finances. Most of the time, dentists are going through these issues and they don’t even necessarily realise that they’re happening until they have their eyes opened, and that is the purpose of this report. You can go ahead and receive your free report by heading on over to wwwdentistoonvestcom. Forward slash podcast report or, alternatively, you can download it using the link in the description. This report details the seven most common issues. However, most importantly, it also shows you how to fix them. I’m really looking forward to hearing your thoughts.
Victoria:
Yeah, because that’s when the first. So I think the white paper was presented in the previous October and then I think the headline on the 3rd of January 2009 was Chancellor. On the second, the London Times was the Genesis Blonde. Yeah, the Chancellor, on the brink of second bailout for banks, and they actually wrote that into the software of the first block of Bitcoins that were mined. So yeah, the 3rd of January is a very special day in Bitcoin history and today is its 12th birthday and apparently, in Chinese astrology, this is going to be the year of the ox. So you know the bull market, so everything’s aligning.
Dr James:
Wow, the stars are aligning. Wow, they certainly are. They are yeah exactly so.
Victoria:
But yeah, going back to your question, it’s a software protocol and the original protocol was presented in this white paper to a group of cyberfunks, so a bit like we have WhatsApp groups now. You know people with similar interests kind of aligned together and they were in this Internet forum exchanging ideas, and one of them kind of wrote this white paper and said what do you think of this, boys? And that’s where it all began, and so basically they started playing with the ideas that have been presented in this white paper. There was an initial group of them that started operating the program and producing and producing the bitcoins. But the special thing about it was is that you know the thing had been the whole software program had been really well thought through. So there’ve been other digital cash ideas. You know they’d actually been talked about since the late 90s, but there have been a number of problems, specifically, you know, with whoever organized, because I think anyone who tries to create their own currency is in direct conflict with the government and so they’re immediately going to squash it. So the thing about Bitcoin is because there was no leader to squash, you know it had free reign, you know there was no way of stopping it. So and I know you’re into Ripple, james, you know obviously the contrast with Ripple at the moment is the SEC are all over Ripple trying to, trying to challenge its existence.
Dr James:
Fortunately, I saw my Ripple a while ago, really luckily. I’m actually let I believe now I know that there might be a lot of Ripple. Ripple is a bit of a controversial one in the crypto community.
Victoria:
It is yeah, but anyway, we’re still talking about Bitcoin. We should get the strategy.
Dr James:
Yeah, that was. That was a younger one to me who kind of got into Ripple. It certainly wouldn’t be it. I’d be less inclined to invest in it nowadays, knowing what I know about it and knowing about how much it is sort of centralized and how much it is controlled by one person, because it can’t a few select group of people, because that’s against the whole initiative of crypto in the first place. But yes, as you say, we digress, we digress.
Victoria:
But it’s all part of the journey. But you know this is so. When people say why is Bitcoin valuable and you know there are the people that claim whether the government are going to stop it is like if the government could stop it, they would have stopped it a long time ago. The truth is they can’t and that’s one of the things that makes it so powerful, because it’s decentralized. So the idea behind this Bitcoin was the first time a software program had been able to create something that couldn’t be repeated. So you know, with most software, you know how easy it is to copy and paste something. So this software program was set up in such a way that each individual transaction was unique and they had a way of recording each individual transaction and then each individual transaction gets authorized by the blockchain. So it’s like, so it kind of creates this automatic bank. At the moment, if you do a transaction so, for example, if you go to a shop and paste for something through your car machine, the car and I didn’t realize this until I was a business owner but the car machine is actually linked to an account that picks, collects the money and then transfers it to account. The car machine doesn’t instantly transfer to account, they need an intermediary, and the intermediary will take a percentage of the transactions that you take as well in order to pay for their services as an intermediary. And so, basically, what Bitcoin does is it kind of automates that process. Rather than needing the intermediary, it’s programmed into the software. The software itself is analyzing the blocks and authorizing them, and because these blocks are being authorized, the reward for authorizing these blocks. You get a reward in two main ways. One is the miners collect a fee for the transactions. So, rather than the shops paying the transaction fees to the intermediary, with Bitcoin, whoever makes the transaction actually pays the fee, and that’s what helps to fund the miners. It’s normally a small percentage of the transaction that you’re sending, but the other way in which the miners are paid at this stage is that’s how Bitcoins are created. So whenever a block of transactions are approved, the network automatically releases a certain number of Bitcoins into the network, and currently that reward is 6.25 Bitcoins, and that’s known as the block reward, and that halves every four years. And so these are all the things that are built into the software. The other thing that’s built into the software is that only 21 million Bitcoins will ever be created, but each Bitcoin can be divided infinitely. So, unlike the current Fiat currencies that we have, which are inflationary because governments can always create more of them, you can never create more Bitcoin, but, unlike gold, you can divide it infinitely. Now, at the moment, it’s set up to be divided only to eight decimal places, I think, but actually, with a software upgrade, you could divide it by more, by more decibel places. So the implication of that is, if 99% of the bitcoins in the world were lost, the entire currency of the world could still be run with just one bitcoin.
Dr James:
That’s amazing.
Victoria:
Exactly so. There’s never been anything like it before, you know. And, and the thing is, it completely changes the infrastructure of how money could work. Which is why it’s revolutionary.
Dr James:
I love how it’s programmed to the scarcity. The scarcity thing is one of the biggest selling points to me. It’s inherently programmed to go up in value. The only question is whether or not people what I think it gets. The interesting thing for me is it gets into a deeper question about why do we assign anything value in terms of monetary money, you know, in terms of how much it’s worth. So let’s say we have gold. Yes, gold has some very niche applications in terms of industry. You can make your dental crimes out of it. I believe it’s a conductor as well. Aside from that, people value gold because it’s pretty, it’s got luster, it tends not to tarnish with time and it’s just so diamonds, but we don’t use that as a currency. Well, yeah, there you go. So it’s all these things. All these things. It’s basically just because there’s consensus amongst other people that it does have some sort of valuing and that can be reached with Bitcoin as well, providing that it’s accepted, it becomes consensus. Will it continue to grow? I think it will, personally, and will there be more consensus? Ie, will there be more value? I think probably, but that’s the question for the time being, and this is why some people think it represents a good investment, hopefully. I’ve just summarized that nicely and added a little bit to what you’re saying, victoria. Anything you’d like to add on top of that?
Victoria:
Well, I mean, I think, the invention of Bitcoin, the timing was just perfect and given what’s going on in the rest of the financial world, I think I personally think that its adoption is inevitable Because and the reason for that is because most people don’t understand quite how screwed our financial, existing financial system is. The thing is, the problem for anyone our age is that we’ve grown up in a world where it’s always been like this, so we’ve never known it any different. But actually, if you look back in history, you know hyperinflations are classically what caused the end of civilizations. So it happened to the Roman Empire. It was when, you know, the Roman soldiers were no longer being paid, were being paid in diluted gold coins, that you know it started to fall apart, because if you can’t pay your soldiers, you can’t support the government. The French Revolution was also tied in with hyperinflation. That’s why, you know, marie Antoinette had that famous line let the meat cake. It’s because the peasants were starving. The currency had been devalued to such a degree that, you know it’s one of the reasons why the peasants were so angry, why the peasants were so upset, and that directly led to the rise of Napoleon. And then you’ve got Weimar, germany, where they were so overloaded with debt from the First World War that they ended up having to overprint their currency. And so the wheelbarrows of cash from Weimar, germany, are very common image, but actually that ended up leading to the rise of Hitler. So, you know, messing with people’s money is a very, very dangerous thing to do politically. And this, our current system of fiat currency, has been delayed for a long time. We’ve been able to delay it because of the power of computers, because computers can manipulate numbers. But actually this journey began in 1913, with the outbreak of World War One, because up until World War One, most people, you know, the pound notes that they were using represented a precise amount of gold that was in the bank, and so people had learned to trust these. But it was only with the expense of World War One that they had temporarily had to suspend that conversion in order to fund the war. And then, when the war was over, they found themselves in so much debt it was really difficult to reverse that process, and so we’ve been on the back foot ever since. You know, people argue that it was a Second World War that got out of the Great Depression. But you know, that’s a bit of a desperate argument really. I mean, one of the reasons for the Great Depression is because they didn’t revalue gold properly, and so, you know, everyone was kind of there was a real philosophical battle over how the money should continue, and so they ended up having to have a Bretton Woods meeting where they agreed how they were going to match all of the currencies. I think the agreement became that they’d all peg themselves to the US dollar, because by then the Americans had all the gold. But in 1971, richard Nixon took the Americans off the gold standard, and so that was the last tether to anything real that our money had. And it’s just been a downward spiral since then. And so a lot of people talk about hyperinflation. They say, well, it can’t come, because even though the banks are printing all this currency, it doesn’t actually get into the real economy. But if that was true, house prices wouldn’t have been going up so much. So you know and anyone who looks at the housing market knows how much you know house prices seem to be exponentially increasing, and what I say to my friends is that’s not because houses are becoming more valuable, it’s because the money’s bad, and so people are trying to find hard assets that they can invest in or to preserve their wealth.
Dr James:
You. There is also the theory Well, I don’t know if it’s the theory, so much as it’s grounded in fact that this is the reason why many risk assets are inherently biased to go up with value. So, if you look at the S&P 500, all right, so let’s say the stock market. Yeah, it’s with, it’s with anything. So you’ve got the commercial economy, the financial economy sorry, in the real economy. So within the financial economy you have these assets and there is a barrier between people withdrawing their money out of that and actually placing it into the real economy. Before it’ll become, it’ll increase actual shop prices that you see in shops. So if it’s constricted in here because people have tied it up in houses or they’ve tied it up in bonds or they’ve tied it up in assets such as stock, then what that means is you’re effectively inflating the prices of those and they’re inherently biased to go upwards. And this is another reason why you can hijack this, this phenomenon, by investing in various other assets. But this is just, of course you have to this is just my opinion on it, you know. Do your own research.
Victoria:
No, it’s absolutely true, by all means.
Dr James:
I believe it to be true. I think I’ve just read many books on finance and how it works, and when you go down the rabbit hole, it’s quite hard to come back out again, and I think that, yeah, it’s just really interesting and I think that everybody should devote some time to learning about this, because it affects every single one of us and it’s so powerful and interesting.
Victoria:
Yeah, no, absolutely.
Dr James:
Anyway, anyway, enough about that. Let’s come back up for air for a little bit. Shall we, Victoria? Ok, so we’ve already touched upon what we think the future is for Bitcoin. We think there’s going to be more adoption. We think the price is going to go up. We know that we’re fans of Bitcoin Everybody else out there hopefully that’s giving you some of an idea why so many people. There seems to be this cult or sort of niche of people who are so fascinated with it. It’s through learning some of those things that make you more interested in it. So hopefully we’ve given everybody a little bit of a taster as to why I think it’s super cool and Victoria does as well. What other cryptos are you interested in, Victoria? Do you? Are you one of these people? There is in this space you have the inverted common Bitcoin maximalist, and they’re the people that just they care about Bitcoin. They don’t care about anything else. Are there any other cryptos that you think are interesting or have potential could go somewhere?
Victoria:
Well, I think everyone who gets involved in crypto, it’s almost obligatory to kind of explore the altcoin space. You know, be rude not to, and also, you know it’s part of your learning journey. You know, learning, learning what they are all about. And so you know, as Bitcoin is a software protocol, all of these altcoins they’re just. They’re just different rules, that software, that the software operates under, so you know. So what happens is it kind of becomes the perfect democracy. You know people can vote with their money as to which one has the best set of rules that they think will last long term, and it becomes a spattle. And so in 2017, there was a lot of speculation over different altcoins and their potential for the future and lots of different ideas, and there are there are still some interesting ideas, and you know, what I would say is that you know Bitcoin is going to present us with a foundation or a framework for finance that has never existed before in history. So we’re going to be entering a whole new world, and there may be there may be lots of ways in which that could happen in the future, but again, if we look back at history, what tends to happen is all currency is kind of gravitate towards one because you need one. That’s the foundation, because, in order to have, in order to have trade between countries, people need a stable balance to measure something against in order to know how they’re trading. And so, up until you know 1913, that was that was gold. But of course, the arbitrage is very expensive because you had to move the gold around to whichever country was offering offering you the best interest rate. But, of course, with Bitcoin, you don’t have to do that because you can send Bitcoin to anyone anywhere in the world instantly, and so, basically, what that means is that Bitcoin is perfectly set up to be this foundation, and once you have a foundation, everything, everything else, unless it’s better, it’s going to be measured off Bitcoin. So you know this early stage in the game. I would say Bitcoin has the most promise as an investment. You might be able to do quite well betting on the peaks and troughs with the trading with some of the altcoins, but I think you need to be a trader to do that really.
Dr James:
For anybody who’s listening a lot of people who trade altcoins probably the majority they don’t trade them to increase their holdings in dollar value. They don’t care about that, they only increase. They only trade them to increase their holdings in Bitcoin because they believe that it’s the only one that actually has long term potential. The rest of them, just as Victoria says, they dip in and out of the market only as a means. To the end, they envelop themselves in learning about the coins and trading the coins, not because they believe they have potential, only because they believe Bitcoin has potential, and they use those gains from other coins just to buy more Bitcoin. That is a little bit of a misconception for other people outside the space who perhaps think that people believe in a lot of these coins. A lot of them. People fully acknowledge they might even go to zero with time. That is what makes it so risky for people who are not involved in the space. Again, we’re getting into a whole other kettle of fish and debate here. Not everybody would agree with me on that one who’s in the space, but certainly there are a lot who do. It’s just another way of looking at it. Some people are only interested if the coin goes up in its Bitcoin value versus if the coin going up in its dollar value. Just an interesting one. It just gives you a little bit of a window into the society and culture of people who do trade all coins, because it’s not all about for them actually believing in the project. In fact, lots of them are clearly not good projects at all. Look at Dogecoin. Dogecoin did it two times on Sunday and it’s fully outwardly acknowledges that it’s based on a meme. It’s a joke, it has no purpose, but people will still trade it just to make profit. It’s a really interesting one is that we’ve talked about the future of Bitcoin. We’ve talked about the future.
Victoria:
So it’s coming to an Ethereum. I could say something about it.
Dr James:
Well, yeah, I mean, people tend to put Bitcoin and Ethereum in their own little bubble together, don’t they? Not everybody because they think they’re the two main projects with value. People will disagree on that one as well. Some people are Bitcoin maximalists, some people are Ethereum maximalists. They think either, only either one of those things has an actual future. But yeah, let’s talk about Ethereum.
Victoria:
Well, I mean, there are philosophical differences between the two. So Bitcoin is designed to replace the financial foundation, but this idea behind the blockchain that you can create, that you can, you can have independently verifiable software that can’t be copied has a number of useful applications in other areas as well. So one example of that would be legal matters. So often they go hand in hand. If you’re going to run a business, you normally need an accountant and you need a lawyer. So the idea behind Ethereum is about smart contracts and it’s about how to set up contracts between entities that can be verifiable on a blockchain. And so a lot of these, a lot of these ERC 20 tokens are based on different ways in which you can structure a contract and have it validated through the altcoin with a base level of Ethereum in order to trans send the coin wherever you want it to go. So so there are different philosophical ideas behind some of the altcoins, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re valuable as a store of money. Also, the other thing is Ethereum doesn’t have a hard cap, like Bitcoin has a 21 million cap. So if you invest in Ethereum, you just never know when they’re going to create more Ethereum. So, from that perspective, it’s not necessarily as good an investment as.
Dr James:
Bitcoin? Yeah, not everybody is a bit. Coiner Inverticom is likes Ethereum. Because of that, the Ethereum maximalist argument against that would be that the emission rate is very low. So you invest much yourself then in Bitcoin and various other cryptos.
Victoria:
Yes, yes, I mean. I mean I didn’t approach it. I didn’t approach it from the perspective of wanting to be an investor or a trader necessarily. It was more a case of once I understood what the problems were in the financial system and the other problems that extend out from that. In many respects, it’s the damage that’s currently occurring in society as a result of our messed up financial system that interested me. Just the whole dynamic between NHS and private dentistry is due to how messed up our money is and how controlled it is by the government and the fact that we don’t have pure free markets whole other conversation and it’s those philosophical influences that prompted me to invest, not necessarily because I wanted to make money, which is nice, but it’s the way in which it’s going to change the world that interests me.
Dr James:
Awesome. And what about the altcoins, then, and other things, other coins in the space that they interest you, or mainly just Bitcoin?
Victoria:
Yeah, well, I played. I mean because I got interested in 2016,. I played with them in 2017. There was a huge altcoin bubble in 2017. Everyone was investing in everything. So we had a play I won with, some lost more. I won with some lost more with others. So you know, and that’s how you learn I mean, fortunately I didn’t. I didn’t, I didn’t do it massively. You know, it was only a few coins here and there just to see what it was like. I mean, one of the benefits of the Bitcoin space is that it’s so easy to trade yourself. It’s not like going to traditional markets where there’s so much paperwork involved. I mean, especially in 2016, you just had to sign up for an exchange. Even the KYC and AML restrictions weren’t that bad then, so it was dead easy, you know. So I learned about what candles were and what some of the shapes on the charts were, and you know, I bought there and I sold there, and if I made a little profit, it was great. But you know, if you’re going to do it professionally, you need to dedicate your time to it, and that was not my primary interest. I don’t want to spend my life in front of a computer screen looking at numbers.
Dr James:
It’s very true, and I’ll tell you what lots of people, who even do trade it professionally, they’ll struggle to beat the market, the market being Bitcoin. These last few months or these last this last month, I suppose and Bitcoin’s been going up so much in value, I don’t think many traders have actually beaten the market because it’s risen so exponentially. So that’s another thing you have to consider Will you be putting all this time into it and will it ultimately be fruitless because you could have just bought Bitcoin in the first place? Another way of looking at it Are you at Liberia, are you at Liberty to say in percentage terms, of course, because I would never ask anybody to give me figures in percentage terms, of course what your investment portfolio looks like in terms of Bitcoin, ethereum and other all coins? So, let’s say, 50% Bitcoin, 30% Ethereum, or would you prefer to keep that to yourself, completely understandable? Either way?
Victoria:
It’s difficult to say. I mean, the thing is, when I first got into it, I would say, of the savings that I had, I probably went half and half because I wasn’t sure at the time.
Dr James:
Half Bitcoin, half Ethereum.
Victoria:
No half Bitcoin, half Gold and Silver.
Dr James:
Oh, I see, oh right, no problem.
Victoria:
Because I wasn’t sure Bitcoin was new to me and I wasn’t completely convinced where I did buy into the idea behind Gold and Silver. But, considering I did that in 2016, obviously my Bitcoin profits have massively outperformed the Gold and Silver, so that percentage is different now. It fluctuates, no problem, but that’s purely by virtue of the decisions that I made then. But I’m not someone who kind of I mean there are people now who are talking about sell Gold and Silver and buy Bitcoin, because the thing is, anything could happen, as we know, and if anything happened to the Bitcoin network, we’re back to Gold and Silver, so they could be worth a tonne. So I think it’s still worth having some of that on hand.
Dr James:
You and I can say what we like about Bitcoin, but the fact is no one knows what will ever happen. If Warren Buffett can get stung in airlines and with his investments, then any one of us can, any one of us. So it’s always best to hedge, maybe put a little bit in if you believe in the project. Some people say no more than 5% of your total invested capital in Bitcoin, but that’s only if you believe in it. There was a very good saying that I heard not so long ago that you can only trade your beliefs trade and invest in your beliefs in the market because you don’t have the resolve to trade others. So what that means is that if you hear something from somebody you don’t really believe in it and you make an investment off their advice. As soon as that thing starts to fluctuate and go up and down, you’ll panic, you’ll take your money out. It won’t be pretty and you won’t necessarily. It won’t necessarily be a good long term investment for you. So, as I say, by all means, of course, do your own research. This is just a conversation between two professionals who are interested in this space. How do you think, victoria, the coming bull market? Fingers crossed, there will be a bull market. How do you think the coming bull market this year will differ from the bull market in 2017 in nature? In 2017, we saw basically any old random altcoin just went through the roof in value. Do you think it’s going to be the same this year, if people think it’s going to be a lot more diluted because there’s too many altcoins?
Victoria:
Well, I mean it’s interesting because, of course, I was following the story very closely in 2017. So I can give you a very comprehensive summary of how things played out. To answer your first point, we’re definitely in a bull market, and that’s partly because of the dynamics of the Bitcoin software protocol. So every four years, I have this halving which creates a supply decrease, and so what tends to happen is you get this feedback loop for the following 18 months which tends to result. If you look back in Bitcoin’s history, you often see these peaks and the price and it’s partly this dynamic. After the halving, the momentum builds and then you get to this stage where it just never seems to go down and you get this frenzy and then, towards the end, everyone believes Bitcoin’s about to take over the world and everyone’s buying it at the top, when their friends and family were telling them to buy it three years ago. And that’s the point when some whale who’s had a ton of Bitcoin since the beginning just kind of go. Right now it’s time to sell, and that’s what crashes the market again for the next two to three years. So if you understand the dynamics of the software, you know how this works out. So I would say we’re definitely in a bull market. One of the WhatsApp groups I’m in at the moment recently took a poll of all of our bets as to where the price was going in the next year and we had to give a price prediction for June and December. So I said I thought it would be 50 grand by end of June and then it would be 300 grand by the end of December.
Dr James:
Oh, 300 grand. Is that in dollars or points?
Victoria:
Dollars.
Dr James:
Yeah, possibly. I thought maybe 100 to 200 mark, but you know what? It could be 300. Last time it broke it all the time high, it did it 20 times. If it does it 20 times this time from its previous all-time high, it’ll be 400. So, yeah, ultimately hard to say yeah, 300 mightn’t be far off the mark.
Victoria:
Yeah, but I think in 2013 it went from $13 to $1,150. So, on that basis, if it did the same kind of move, it’d be going from $13,000 to $1.1 million. But what I will tell you is that in the beginning of 2017, no one imagined that it would be 20 grand by the end of the year Nobody, I mean. There were some crazy predictions out there, but it always tends to override people’s expectations, because that’s how the euphoria builds. So if it’s anything like last time also, the other thing about 2017, there was a huge debate about what was going to happen with the software protocol with Bitcoin. So there was a hard fork in August, which is what created Bitcoin Cash. So the thing is about the software. You can repeat the software and create another coin. That’s how a lot of these coins have been made. But there was this huge. They wanted to adopt a protocol called Segwit in order to help make it easier for transactions, because this is one of the things that held Bitcoin back for a long time and because there was such tension in the space about this, one set of people went off and created Bitcoin Cash and the people who wanted to adopt Segwit carried on with Bitcoin, and then what happened was everyone who owned Bitcoin at that time got an equal amount of Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash, and so everyone who thought Bitcoin Cash was DUD project does sold all their Bitcoin Cash and bought Bitcoin, and that’s partly what contributed to the run up in 2017 and partly what fueled the debate in the altcoins as well. Whereas now Segwit’s been established, there are lots of different projects working on transactions. So it’s reality as a payment method grows more likely by the day, and once that’s a really strong proposition and the institutions are getting in, there could be no stopping it.
Dr James:
That was the next thing I was going to say. In addition to that, what’s really unique about this one is how much interest there’s been from institutions, people with big money, banks and investment companies. The guy who owns Twitter. He also owns an investment company called Square and they have heavily went in on buying Bitcoin. There’s another company called Greyscale, who are a finance company. They are buying Bitcoin so that they can offer an exchange traded fund based on Bitcoin and based on other cryptos. They’ve bought correct me if I’m wrong, victoria might have heard another stat They’ve bought every single, more than every single Bitcoin that’s become available in the last two months, I believe we’ve seen. Will all this come together and make it go even higher? Who’s to say, really, really difficult to say. Will it change the dynamics of the boom market this time and make it go beyond what even Victoria and I have predicted? It’ll be interesting to see. Nobody quite knows for sure. Just another layer of confusion to throw into the ring. Bitcoin price prediction. We’ve already done that 300K.
Victoria:
By December, October, November, possibly more. I think all of the prediction. What I would say historically, having watched it is most of the predictions are an underestimate, especially given all the macro factors involved.
Dr James:
Totally, I think 300 is very much possible. Well, yeah, beyond that, well, getting beyond that would be very high indeed, but you never know.
Victoria:
And there’s a danger you’ll buy it there and then have to wait another four years before it gets back to that price again.
Dr James:
Yeah, that’s the trouble. I heard a good turn the other day. If you see it on the news, it’s already time to sell with regards to Bitcoin.
Victoria:
Not with Bitcoin, it isn’t no.
Dr James:
Well, I mean, there was a point where it got. I mean, you’re quite right, it has. I did see it on BBC News app the other day when it broke its 20K. But when I recall back to 2017, when it was going really crazy towards the end, I remember seeing it on the news every week and that was when I got into it. I think at that point then it might be nice to apply that logic. But you’re quite right, it has been on here and there just for the time being, but when we hit full on euphoria, it’ll be basically the you know everything.
Victoria:
We’re not there yet. Yeah, far from there yet.
Dr James:
It’ll be on the news. Maybe every single broadcast something like that.
Victoria:
Oh, that’s definitely talking about it. By the end of the year, I can guarantee.
Dr James:
That’s when yeah, that’s when you want to think twice. Another good saying when you hear your taxi driver talking about a stock or a share in an investment in Wall Street, it’s time to sell up. But, like I say, take it with a pinch of salt. These are just rule of thumb, Just interesting ways of looking at it. What about investing in Bitcoin right now? Do you think that that is suggestible? Do you think people should hold fire? Do you think people should wait until the end of the billmark, until it comes back down? A whole host of different investment strategies and possibilities. What are your thoughts? If you were just getting into the space now and knowing what you’d know, what would you do?
Victoria:
Yeah Well, I mean, I was in this position four years ago because, again, it was the same place in Bitcoin’s price cycle. I was explaining this to my dad the other day because I got into Bitcoin. I think my first Bitcoin I bought at £500. And then, after I started to understand it a bit more, I decided that my daughter needed one, so I bought her one. So I bought hers when it was £800.
Dr James:
And, of course, you know, investment wow.
Victoria:
I know, and I told my parents about it when they were £400. I remember telling my mum around at the Christian table and she said well, how much is it for one? I said £400. That’s expensive. So you know, it’s a classic thing and the thing is that that time it was. You know, up until then the previous high had been $1,000. I mean, you know, it was really hard to predict how well it would do. If you understood the logic behind it, it was easier to have more confidence in it. But price wise, it always seems expensive. But you know a lot of technologies. They have what’s called nest curve adoption and if you think about it, you know the first part of the S is still quite low and it is for a while. But when it gets to that bit where it goes vertical, no one can predict where that will be. Is it going to be this year or is it going to be 2025? You know, I think hedging is better and also, given what’s going on in the macro economic environment, that could speed things up. I suspect the big move will probably be 2025. I think we’ve probably got another four years of things being relatively stable before it goes a bit crazy. But even then, even when it’s relatively stable, it’s possible for Bitcoin to do all sorts of dramatic things.
Dr James:
Right. So just to you, suspect that the current bull market won’t end to 2025? Or do you think there’ll be a few cycles before then?
Victoria:
No, I think the current bull market probably end towards the end of this year now, but it will probably get really crazy and then we’ll probably have a breather for a couple of years where it goes down again. How dramatic it goes down probably depends on how dramatically it goes up until it takes off. But that all depends on the macroeconomic environment. If things start to break down in the larger economy, then I wouldn’t necessarily bank on that. If you’re in a position to hold it, just hold it, because if you sell it you’ve got a tax liability with that. So if you can just hold it for the next five years, if you can buy some now and you know you can hold it for the next five, 10 years, do it, and there’s best decision you ever make.
Dr James:
Definitely. What I would say, just as a slight caveat, is that never, ever, go all in. It’s a nice poll, just try to stick if you can. What I would always suggest is, if you’re going to invest in it, please accept that it is something that is inherently risky, or a lot of people view it as something inherently risky. Certainly is a better thing to say, and what you can do if you want to play it safe is just put a little bit in every month until you feel comfortable and competent with it. Okay, because the last one, yeah. While you’re learning, the last thing I’d want anybody to do is go all in on it and to not believe in the project you have to believe in the project yourself. Okay, this is not financial advice by any stretch of the imagination. It’s just a helpful conversation to get people thinking along the lines of the reasons why people out there are so passionate about it. Victoria, you have, of course, written a book on Bitcoin yes Triptych, as we touched earlier. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? I’m interested to hear.
Victoria:
Well, yeah, the title of the book is Truth Decay how Bitcoin Fixes this, unveiling the Path to Financial Freedom. So it’s broken down into three parts. The idea behind it was to just give people. It’s quite difficult when you’re getting into Bitcoin to condense all of the stories because there are so many aspects to it, and so I wanted to bring it all together so that someone who’s just starting from the beginning it gives them an overview, and it’s written as a story from the perspective of someone who owned their own business. You know how I got into Bitcoin, how I became interested in it, what I learned about money, what I learned about the financial system, what I learned about Bitcoin. It sounds a lot, but actually you can read the book in three hours, but it’s in three parts called Past, the Present and the Future. So the past is basically my story of how I got into it, how money works, history of money. The middle bit is about using Bitcoin in a business, because I think that’s where my passion lies now. It’s helping small businesses use it as a payment method, and the book will explain why. And then the third bit is the future and where Bitcoin is going and why I think it’s really important to understand the technology, because I think there are very important issues surrounding this that’s going to influence how things play out in the future in terms of other blockchain technologies. Governments are very interested in blockchain technology. It kind of makes their control structures easier to manage, and they implement them by making you believe that they’re doing you a favour, but actually, ultimately, they may not be doing yourself a favour at all, and so I’ve got a whole section of the book that kind of explores those ideas a little bit as well, just to give you something different and interesting.
Dr James:
Wonderful. Thank you so much. So if anything that Victoria and I said today caused you to feel inspired to learn more about Bitcoin to learn more about crypto, maybe before investing, or maybe just because you have an interest in the technology and you’re not so keen on putting some money into it both completely fine then Victoria’s book is, of course, available if you’d like to purchase it, and it just flashes out a little bit more about what we were talking about today. Victoria, thank you ever so much. You’re welcome. It’s been really wonderful and really interesting, and I’ve actually learned a few things as well. I must say we have some questions on the group that people have been so kind as to pop on the original post, so I actually Shall I just say before you do that All my social media links and details about the book are on my website, so toshishusepagecom. Yep, without the comma Awesome. Feel free to check it out everyone. Victoria is, of course, in my group as well, actually. So if you do feel like you’d like anything explain further or you have anything you’d like to know, feel free to ask her get in touch with her. She is in the group Victoria Jones Smashing right. So, moving on to the questions from the group, I actually had a little flick through these last night and I think that we may have inadvertently covered a lot of them already, but we’ll see how we go. So Massadique shout out to Massadique and said long-term price goal of Bitcoin. We touched upon that already a little bit Bitcoin versus Ethereum, as a hodl did so as a hodl. Hodl is the word for a hodl to people uninitiated in the crypto space. There’s a whole story behind that as well, which you might like to read into. It’s about a drunken misspelling of the word hodl and it’s now a meme. I suppose, yeah, hodl is now a meme, I suppose in the crypto space we talked about Bitcoin versus ETH as a hodl. You said you were not really so much of a believer in ETH as a hodl because of the emissions.
Victoria:
It has some interest. It’s a different philosophical concept, so I own a little bit just out of interest, but I wouldn’t say I’m wedded to it at all. I think there are a number of issues with it philosophically and technologically that people need to be aware of. A lot of these altcoins are very much experimental, based on an absolutely new experimental foundation for the whole concept of money. So if Bitcoin is a speculation, anything beyond Bitcoin is a speculation times 100.
Dr James:
That’s a nice answer. I’m looking at it.
Victoria:
Yeah, it’s literally a penny stock, so good luck. But you might get some mileage out of the movements if you know how to play the markets. If you’re just an investor, start with Bitcoin, stay there and maybe a little bit of the others if you really want to.
Dr James:
Fair enough. Good point Chances of Bitcoin becoming a usable currency. So we do believe that it’s going to be adopted, but do you think it’s going to be a usable currency? That’s actually a different argument. What are your thoughts on that?
Victoria:
There are a lot of people working on that, because there are a lot of people who realize that if Bitcoin’s going to fulfill its potential, it needs to be a currency. Because the problem is, if it isn’t a currency and it is just another way, a digital way of implementing a gold standard, then that has limitations. So one of the reasons why we’ve got this ever-inflating currency from the governments is because they’re able to control the gold price and everything else is a derivative of that. But that actually causes a lot of problems that people probably need to do more research into. My book explains it in a bit of detail as well. So it needs to be fixed if Bitcoin’s going to fulfill its potential as a world currency, and people are working on that and there are different implementations. So Segwit, which you talked about earlier, allowed people to start working on the Lightning Network, which is another way of doing transactions off-chain, which makes them a bit cheaper. There are also people talking about side chains, which is another. So there are lots of people who are working on different technological ways of solving that problem and they’re very keen to solve that problem because they realize that it’s a crucial aspect of it, and I believe that if, where there’s a will, there’s a way, if people really want to figure out a solution, they will do so. I would say yes, I think it will be. It might not be there now, but I think eventually it will.
Dr James:
Mars would also like to know if conservative estimates suggest that Bitcoin hitting 100K in terms of dollars in 12 months, then the current charts are on track and a significant correction doesn’t seem likely. What are your thoughts on that, victoria? So what he said is that, basically, if we’re going to hit 100K, the charts will need to continue going at the rate that it’s going at.
Victoria:
What do you think? Well, I mean, if I think back to what it was like in 2017, there were a few corrections and there were some Bitcoin traders that I was following on YouTube and it’s quite funny actually. I mean, there’s one in particular I can think of, who I won’t name, but he always overestimated the downward targets and underestimated the upward targets. So you know, just be just be careful who you listen to. I would say the way in which Bitcoin has been programmed, I think, is very powerful. It really feeds into human psychology. I think if there is a dip, there will be people who will be on a momentum to get in as quickly as possible.
Dr James:
I think you’d be surprised on that one. Mas I mean, if we look at Bitcoin is 30K at the minute just over 30K actually and when was it 10K? About three, four months ago. So if we do that’s a three times. If we do another three times, that’ll only take three, four months without correction or no correction. So I think you’d be surprised on that one Mas.
Victoria:
And 300K is only 10X from here.
Dr James:
There you go. Yeah, but I do get your logic, my friend, I do get your logic, but, as I say, just going on past trends, it’s very much possible. I would believe Siobhan Devani has asked what altcoins do you recommend? That is there we go with that one.
Victoria:
Just let’s just roll back on that one a little bit. Don’t go there.
Dr James:
Recommend is perhaps the word we wouldn’t use, but maybe what we could do is suggest some ones that you might be, we think are possibly solid projects and you might like to do some further reading on. Would you like to do that, Victoria?
Victoria:
Could do Well. Obviously, ethereum’s the next big one that people talk about. I think Theta’s quite interesting because that’s about trying to decentralise the internet, Although it’s not really decentralised. A lot of people make that argument, but if you actually go onto their homepage, it talks about the fact that these are our rules for operating on a platform. It’s like, well, it’s decentralised, about that, but it’s done very well price-wise and I know there are quite a few people on YouTube who recommend it. Did you buy it? And Litecoin are derivatives of the original Bitcoin blockchain, so they’ve taken the original Bitcoin blockchain. They’re trying to do different things with them. I know, did you buy it? In particular, their payment networks very fast. Litecoin is meant to be silver to Bitcoin’s goal, but actually, if you look at the historical precedence of Bitcoin and of gold and silver as money, silver eventually lost that ability once they figured out how to establish the paper value of gold. So I don’t necessarily buy that argument as a monetary principle. So they’re just a few names. But in the Bitcoin circles that I move in, if anyone talks about altcoins, their immediate, very rude responses have fun staying poor.
Dr James:
Yeah, there are some ones out there you might like to look into, but I think that a lot of them are total speculation. What I like, siobhan, is Binance Coin, link and Dot, but they are. You might want to do your own research into those. Just as I say, I think three projects that I think have potential their current prices at the minute. Link in particular, has just had a massive pump. I don’t know whether, at the moment, it is a good time to buy Link. If we’re thinking about short term profits. I do believe in the project in the long run but, as I say, might be something. There’s a good sort of foundation work that you might like to do. Look into these sorts of things further. I can recommend a great book on trading altcoins If you’d like to get into them a little further. It’s called An Altcoin Traders Handbook by Nick Patel. Give that a look. It’s a great foundation or springboard before you begin to immerse yourself in that world. It is, of course, very speculative and potentially risky. Parag Patel shout out to Parag. Parag would like to know do we think that Bitcoin and PayPal are going to have a fruitful relationship in the long run? Does that look good?
Victoria:
Well, I mean, everyone’s very excited about PayPal getting involved, but PayPal basically becomes the intermediary that Bitcoin’s, which is the problem that Bitcoin is meant to solve. So, in the long run, I think the answer is no. In the short run, it’s certainly generated a lot of interest. It might be an intermediate way of encouraging businesses to accept Bitcoin payments. I think it’s only available to US customers so far, anyway. It’s not available to British customers yet, and there’s some debate over whether or not you can buy Bitcoin on PayPal. You can actually withdraw it into your own wallet. So there’s one of the important features of Bitcoin is that you don’t have, you know, keeping it on exchanges, like keeping it in a bank, but ideally want to withdraw it from the bank and put it in your own hardware wallet. That’s like your own personal safe, and so you know whether or not PayPal allows you to actually do that. I think there’s been some debate about that, so it remains to be seen. But long term, no, because you know Bitcoin is not meant to have an intermediary. That’s the whole point of it. And although you can accept, a business can accept payments in Bitcoin over their, over their website. I mean, if you go onto my website. I’ve got a payment button on there through a Bitcoin server that I set up myself that allows you to buy my book, and so, ultimately, that’s what businesses want to be able to do themselves. They want to set up their own server and accept payments in Bitcoin directly. You don’t want to have to use PayPal or depend on them for that.
Dr James:
Parag would also like to know. He’s concerned about the risk of quantum computing and its effect on the Bitcoin network. What are your thoughts on that? That’s a chestnut, isn’t it, in the Bitcoin?
Victoria:
Well, they talk about that, but I think the answers I’ve seen so far is that if it got to the stage where Bitcoin was threatened by quantum computing, the software would upgrade to overcome that. You know, there would be a quantum solution for Bitcoin.
Dr James:
If that’s what was needed and apparently it’s quite a long the issue is quite a long way in the future anyway, Could I just add to that and say that I watched a video created by the guy who created Ethereum, which was specifically on this, not so long ago, so Vitalik Buterin. He talked about this matter. He says that the algorithms, so the technology and the software that are required to make the network secure to quantum computers, already exist, even though we don’t have quantum computers, and then it would just require a soft fork. So that is just an update to the firmware or the software to overcome that. Should it? Should it be an issue? But if a quantum computer was to somehow materialize into existence tomorrow, then yes, that could affect the network, but that’s not going to happen, so it’s unlikely that that will be an issue. But it is something that I have heard other people bandy about beforehand, and there’s a little bit of a chestnut in the crypto community, as I just said. Shadi Ed has said do you expect to be there to be a correction soon? The answer is yes, shadi Guy, we can sort that one out, and I’m kidding, I’m kidding, I’m throwing it over to you.
Victoria:
I’d say no. I said get him what you can, Really Okay.
Dr James:
Fair enough. Yeah, you could be right. Yeah, I mean, bitcoin is inherently programmed to increase in value. Putting my trader’s hat on. If I’m just looking at the asset from a trader’s point of view, I think that three times growth well, sorry, maybe closer to about one and a half times growth in about two weeks would mean that they’re likely to be a correction soon. However, if we’re taking a step back and we’re using our conscious, what we know about the technology behind Bitcoin and throwing that into the ring as well, then Victoria, where she’ll be coming from, is she’s considering it from that point of view? Am I right in saying that Victoria Pretty?
Victoria:
much. I mean I think in this stage of Bitcoin’s price cycle, people always expect, they constantly expect. I mean, if you look at the charts at the moment, you can measure how many people are long in the market and how many people are short in the market, and it’s like all bets are off right now because it’s just moving so fast. And the thing is even in trading the trend is your friend and the trend is still up until the end. So you just don’t know.
Dr James:
The trend is your friend until the end of the end they say yeah, it depends on your.
Victoria:
You haven’t seen that yet. We haven’t.
Dr James:
We haven’t just yet. It’s still trending up. You’re quite right. It’s really hard to cut, notoriously hard to call tops in trading. I think that, unless if you were thinking about it as an investment shatty, it might just be best to buy a little bit every month and average your way in, rather than wait for trading signals, because at that point when you’re looking for trading signals, it becomes a million times more complicated and also it’s not possible to do. Even the best traders in the world struggle to do it accurately. So this is why I’m always on a bite, averaging your way into most assets to gain a good entry. Hopefully that helps my friend Victoria. This is being really, really, really interesting today. I think that you’ve broken it right down and you’ve explained much of these quite complicated things in very simple terms. Thank you so much for coming on the show.
Victoria:
Oh, I think you’re having me. I was delighted to see us.
Dr James:
Thank you, no absolutely my pleasure, 100%. I’m super pertinent thing to talk about, especially the way things are going at the minute. A lot of people really, really, really excited to see where this next bit coin cycle might end up and it marries up with a very ethos of the group, which is, of course, safe investing and not going all in. And when you know a little bit more about something, it becomes exponentially more safe to invest in because you’ll know the ins and outs of how it works and what to expect, and blah, blah, blah things like that. We’re going to wrap up now, Victoria. Thank you so much. Anything you’d like to say? Just to close.
Victoria:
No, just thank you for having me. I think we’ve covered a lot today.
Dr James:
We have covered a lot of ground. Yeah, an hour and a half. I hope everybody’s still listening at this point.
Victoria:
I’m going to let Victoria to get off.
Dr James:
You’d be amazed. Yeah, I’m sure. Yeah, I would be, particularly when it’s me. I’ll let you get off. I hope you have a wonderful Sunday and we’ll hopefully speak again very soon.
Victoria:
All right, bye, bye-bye.
Dr James:
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