I believe that Bitcoin can easily
surpass the market cap of gold.
I think one of the big thing is going to
just blow it out of the $#% for cryptocurrencies
is going to be gaming.
I see a huge potential for Bitcoin
to become the new form of money.
I have no sympathy for Facebook or for Libra.
I think it's an Orwellian nightmare coin.
If you are deliberately deceitful and you actually
try to make people believe that it's
decentralized, while it's not, it's a scam.
Hi, everyone, I'm Giovanni
and welcome to Blockshow.
Today, I have a pleasure to be here with
Carl Martin, a famous YouTuber aka The Moon.
On my right I have the pleasure to
introduce you, Lark Davis aka Crypto Lark.
Everyone is talking about this next mythical
legendary killer app, which should actually
bring Bitcoin and cryptocurrency
into mass adoption.
So what do you think?
How should this killer app
look like, according to you?
There's been a lot of talk about what's
going to make crypto go mainstream, right.
Security talk and it's going
to be decentralized finance.
That stuff's all great. I think one of the big
things is going to blow it out of the #$%
for cryptocurrencies is going to be gaming.
It's going to be in a big way because we've
got a whole new generation of kids who are
going to grow up earning crypto tokens, using
in-game assets, swapping them for cash and
for Bitcoin, buying themselves phones, using Bitcoin
online, growing up, knowing how to
use this in the same way that we grew
up, knowing how to use a bank account.
So that is gonna be really, really powerful.
And the ability for blockchain and gaming
to come together, crypto in gaming, more
importantly, to come together, I think that's going
to be a really, really big catalyst.
So when we get that big game a Fortnite-like
kind of game that's virally popular that has
in-game crypto assets - huge.
Do you agree? Sure.
But I like to put
the attention back to Bitcoin.
I used to try to just focus on Bitcoin
because I think Bitcoin is a killer app.
Bitcoin is a new form of money and money
is that app that is going to kill Fiat.
So it is a killer app already.
And there are still things that needs to be
sorted out for Bitcoin to become a medium of
exchange. I think it's already
very good store of value.
It has done nothing but go up in value for
the past 11 years and the inflation rate will
be halved further down to an inflation rate
of zero percent, which makes Bitcoin unique.
There is no other asset in the world
that has a predictable inflation rate like that.
Gold has a high market cap
because of its low inflation.
Bitcoin will have even low inflation.
I believe that people can easily surpass the market
cap of gold and deserves to do that,
especially in this current Fiat monetary
environments with government abusing the power
to print money and
manipulating interest rates.
So I see a huge potential for Bitcoin
to become the new form of money.
So the next question is
regarding Libra, Facebook's controversial cryptocurrency.
Are you sympathizing towards this project and do
you think it will ever become reality?
I have no sympathy for Facebook or for Libra.
I think it's an Orwellian nightmare coin.
I mean, I barely trust Facebook with
my photos, let alone with my money.
We know that Facebook is
going to be censored.
We know it's going to be permissioned.
We know that they're going to be totally laying
down and getting on their knees for big,
big money corporations, for governments.
I mean, it's PayPal on the blockchain,
but even worse because it's Facebook.
So I'm not excited about it all now.
The only thing you might get excited about is
that it might introduce more people to the
idea of cryptocurrencies, might have some kind
of carry on effect of bringing more
liquidity into Bitcoin.
But man, are we that desperate that we have
to get Libra into the party just to pump
Bitcoin? No, Bitcoin is going to be fine.
We don't need Libra, but it's coming anyway.
So like it or hate it.
Here it comes. So you definitely think it
will come, it will become a reality?
100% it will, it may
not become a reality everywhere.
You may see it shut down in America, but you'll
see it take off in Thailand and in India
and a whole bunch of other countries, in
America again will find themselves left in the
dust technologically as they overregulate
and push industry away.
All right. What do you
think about Facebook's Libra?
I have a very, very similar view.
I think that Facebook are using words
like decentralized and all the same catchphrases
that was used for Bitcoin.
And to me, that makes Libra a scam, because
if you are actually, if you are deliberately
deceiving people and lying, then,
yeah, you're scamming people.
And I think Libra's a scam because they
are openly promoting it as something that is
decentralized and is supposed to be
a decentralized form of money.
It is anything but.
It is actually backed up by
assets that are very centralized.
It's Fiat's policy that is backed
up that is backing up Libra.
So something that is centralized can
never back up something decentralized.
It makes no sense at all. So to
me, it's a scam and it might happen.
It probably will.
But like Lark said, it will
not be happening in some places.
It will actually be accepted.
So for Bitcoin, it might actually
be a good thing short term.
It will create a tension and yeah.
Okay, you use the term
"scam" to define Libra.
I think these are pretty strong words.
Would you call it the same way?
I think there's a spectrum of the word scam.
I mean, it's kind of scammy.
Yeah, but is it a scam?
No, obviously it's not an actual scam.
And in that meaningful sense.
But I think in the same way that the Fiat
Ponzi scheme that we're in is basically a scam,
but we all accept it because
it's our day to day life.
We will see that kind of
transpire onto Libra as well.
Thank you. Well, so I agree there.
However, you said
something interesting there.
So the Fiat monetary system is
basically a Ponzi scheme, right?
So if we compare with like Bitconnect, well, let's
say I created token and I back it up
by Bitconnect like maybe my token isn't a
scam, but it's backed up by a scam.
So somehow it is a scam.
Like I understand that the actual word might
not be perfectly appropriate here, but in my
opinion, if you are deliberately deceitful and
you actually try to make people believe
that it's decentralized while it's
not, it is a scam.
All right. So what's your favorite altcoin?
My favorite altcoins would
be Ethereum and Cardano.
I love them both. I've
holded a few different coins.
Few of them have different purposes.
Ethereum, and let's get into the whole of
Ethereum ecosystem, and Cardano, I think it can
be very promising platform in the long term.
I like Monero as well.
It's got amazing privacy use case.
But I honestly understand people who don't trade
altcoins, people who do not buy altcoins
because of what has
happened to altcoin markets.
I'm a little more bullish on the altcoin.
That being said, the majority of
my portfolio is in Bitcoin.
So these are smaller holdings I'm talking about, but
I am quite bullish long term on the
prospects of some of those altcoins.
But I definitely understand people
who only trade Bitcoin.
Bitcoin for dollars using margin
platforms or something like that.
It's liquid.
It keeps your mind focused.
You don't have to run around
look and analyze different charts.
You just look at the Bitcoin
chart, you play on that.
So make sense to me.
Right, but you said Ethereum and Cardano.
So why, for example, you wouldn't touch
Ethereum and Cardano, despite all these positive
elements that Crypto Lark just mentioned.
So personally, I'm in Bitcoin and I like to
keep it that way, at least for now.
I still believe that there will probably be
time for altcoins again, maybe in the mid
term, maybe someday in the future.
However, I feel like the risk/reward in altcoins
is not as appealing to me as the
risk/reward in Bitcoin.
To me, it's just so obvious how Bitcoin
has the fundamentals, has the momentum going
forward for 11 years.
And like me, the fundamentals are so
strong and the risk/reward is extremely appealing.
I do understand that in the short term an
altcoin can do 20x, it can go 100x.
We've seen it before. But the downside risk is
also there and it has to be calculated
into your portfolio and it's
just a matter of risk/reward.
And also research.
If I'm going to go into altcoins, there's a
lot of research that goes into it and the
people that do, I mean,
that's very good for them.
And they probably have done a lot of work.
But I just I tend to look at the
risk/reward and just go with Bitcoin, the safe bet.
All right, play safe.
Next question would be
regarding the Bitcoin halving.
So most people are discussing about it and
they are wondering whether it will cause
Bitcoin to spike again.
Other people are saying that the
value is already priced in.
What's your opinion about it? I don't think
we're priced in for the halving quite yet.
That being said, I don't think we're gonna
hit the new all-time high before halving I
mean, look, a historical context here.
We haven't hit that new
all-time high before halvings before.
So, anything can happen, right.
Market's crazy place. But what I'm looking at
is actually there is going to be hype
leading into the Bitcoin halving.
And I think what we're going to see is
basically ranging, you know, we might even get
back to $15K or something like that, $14K.
But I'm looking at that
long term picture, host halving.
Because what we're gonna have,
we're gonna have halving.
We're gonna have disappointment that the price didn't
10x overnight by a lot of people
and then we'll probably have some more chill
time before we actually start to take off.
Historically, we've looked at 12-18 months for
those big price peaks to come post
halving. Do you see the dynamics
happening in the same way?
I think also historically it seems like Bitcoin
tends to breach its all-time high after
the halving and there was some speculation that
Bitcoin could breach the $20K before the
halving this time. And that might be the reason
why we've got that big initial surge from
$4K to $14,000, some sort of an
attempt to front run the halving.
But it kind of resulted in maybe a
premature breakout and that's why we're seeing this
correction. But I do believe that in the
long term, the halving has to be significant,
both because the stock to flow ratio is
very, very important for an asset and especially
for a money. When it comes
to money, inflation is crucial.
And a decentralized money like Bitcoin that
has in very, very predictable inflation rates
will be very, very appealing for people
around the world that cannot trust their
governments, trust the central banks,
trust the commercial banks.
So I think the fact that the Bitcoin
halving is happening and that will give more
attention to the fact that we will see more
halvings in the future that will create so
much hype around Bitcoin.
And yeah, especially for the people that
really, really need Bitcoin right now.
Okay, we are looking forward to it.
Some experts are saying that Bitcoin was a
good start for cryptocurrency, that it was a
great innovation.
But now there are technologies that are
appearing which will eventually overcome it in
terms of better usability, which are technologies
which are going to be faster,
technologies which are going
to be more scalable.
So what would be the usage
of Bitcoin if these technologies appear?
Do you think they will
ever appear and replace Bitcoin?
There's a few different things
really come into play there.
Gold was a good start to money, wasn't it?
It hasn't gone anywhere in 6000 years.
So we're still looking at scarce
hard money as being incredibly valuable.
Bitcoin has digitized hard money, so it's
not going anywhere in that term.
Now, will we see something that comes in
as a more robust form of payment?
Very possible.
But what we see happening right now
at different solutions for Bitcoin with Lightning
Network and sidechains, things like this.
Bitcoin could see potential for more
payments, but it doesn't need to.
This is the thing. You can use
Bitcoin right now to buy stuff.
It only costs a few cents to
send it anywhere in the world.
That's pretty effective. As Bitcoin moves on over
time, we'll see upgrades to the network
come into play. You know, Lightning that will get
more robust, and all fun kind of stuff.
But the thing I always think is Bitcoin
doesn't need to do all the heavy lifting.
We have a giant cryptocurrency ecosystem
of stablecoins running on different blockchains
and stuff like this and different
cryptocurrency can use as money today.
Not everything has to go to Bitcoin.
That doesn't diminish the value of Bitcoin.
That adds to the value of
the entire cryptocurrency ecosystem, including Bitcoin.
Thanks. What's your opinion?
So personally, I believe that, okay, so
if we don't care about decentralization, then
sure, there will be technologies that are
much better than Bitcoin in terms of
transactions, speed, transaction
costs and whatever.
However, if decentralization is a key issue here, which
to me it is when it comes to
money, I think all agree on that.
When we are trying to get a new
form of money, then decentralization is just too
important to just try to
look for the next altcoin.
Do you have the follow up on that?
Totally agree to everything you said, Carl.
I think it's like the
"eight minute abs" conversation.
You know, it's like you ever
seen "There's something about Mary"?
"There's something about Mary".
Basically, you've got eight minute abs while the
eight minute man has seven minute abs.
I think that's what you see
with a lot of these cryptocurrencies.
It's a little bit
faster, it's little cheaper.
But you know what? If I had to send
you a million dollars, I would choose Bitcoin every
single day of the week as it is
the most damn secure network out there.
Absolutely agree on what you said.
People are praising Bitcoin because it's a great
sort of value and hopefully it will
become also a way of payment,
the widespread way of payment.
But if people see Bitcoin as a great store
of value, then probably they would be less
willing to use it as a way of
payment, since they will rather keep Bitcoin with
themselves. So how can you respond to these
kind of statements, these kind of concerns?
My thought with that would be,
why do you store value ?
So you can die with a lot of value?
At some point you're going to want
to release that value for something else.
Now, you might hold out for a long time.
You're gonna buy yourself a land or maybe an
island somewhere or a freaking fancy car or
something. But that store of
value is a wealth preserver.
That doesn't mean that you can't spend it.
I think that's where that kinda
gets lost in conversation somehow.
Yeah, I store my value so I
can use that value in the future.
So that's something I think some people might get a
bit caught up on is that you have to
hold onto it forever. I mean I've got a lot
of Bitcoin that I'm holding onto for a long
term hold. But at some point I will be happy
to use those to trade with someone else who
wants to hold that Bitcoin for
a piece of land, for example.
So you made this comparison with
gold as a store of value.
I think that's nobody is using
gold for their current transaction.
So if you compare Bitcoin to gold, then Bitcoin
is not going to be used for everyday
transactions. So what we need to do in
order to answer this question is actually just
travel back in time and
look at the monetary history.
And what has previously been money
and how it became money.
And when you look at the monetary history,
you see that seashells, salt, gold has been
money, but it never just instantly
becomes a medium of exchange.
It has to go through stages first, become
a form of collectible that people collect, and
then it becomes a store of value because
people collect it and then they like it.
And when it has served, gone through these two
stages, that's when it can serve as a
medium of exchange, just like Lark says.
When you have already stored it as value, that's
when you exchange a little bit of your
value into something that you need.
So, for example, salt has been serving a
store of value previously in the history.
That's where we got the
world salary, for example.
And when people had a big bunch of salt in
their home, of course you can trade limit of
the salt for eggs or whatever you need.
So exactly what you said.
I think it's true that whenever Bitcoin has
successfully become a store of value, that's
when we will see people use
it as a medium of exchange.
But 10 years down the line
maybe, it's not gonna happen tomorrow.
It was a very
interesting historical perspective.
So right now I'm gonna
ask you a last question.
So what's your price prediction for 2020?
In 2020, I think we might cross back
over $20,000, but not before halving, post halving.
I think we could
see that definitely happening.
Are we going to go up
to a million dollars next year?
No, but I could definitely see
us move back over $20K.
I agree. I actually think that Bitcoin will
most probably go about $20,000 somewhere in
between the halving and the end of 2020.
So basically exactly what you said.
And I think that prices of $30,000-$40,000 are
possible, but what I'm pretty sure about
is the $20,000, but we see that when
Bitcoin breaks the previous all-time high, Bitcoin
tends to do huge moves so
we can definitely see things happen.
But it's very unpredictable,
these big large moves.
So there's no way to try
to pinpoint the exact number there.
All right, so quite cautious prediction for both of
them, but I kind of think that they
are more realistic. So it was an amazing
debate, guys, thank you for being with us.
