The Tom Woods Show, episode 798.

Prepare to set fire to the index card of allowable opinion.

Your daily dose of liberty education starts here, the Tom Woods Show.

Hey, everybody, if you don't yet have my free ebook, Five Paths to an Online Income, you are missing out.

This is a how-to guide, how to podcast,

how to self-publish a book, how to monetize a blog, and so much more. So it's a how-to-guide, and it's also a how-to-monetize guide. It's both. Check it out at paths to income.com. Hi everybody, Tom Woods here. A bit of an unusual topic for today.

It's a topic that I learned about by reading an article by our guest, and that is how the

situation in Venezuela, which is not an enviable situation for the poor people who suffer there, but has opened doors unexpectedly for Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency and payment system that a lot of libertarians have been interested in.

And it's not only or even primarily libertarians who are showing interest in it in Venezuela.

It's solving a lot of problems that you can't

get solved otherwise in Venezuela under the current system. And moreover, so-called Bitcoin mining

is turning out to be quite rather a profitable venture under the unusual and unique circumstances

in Venezuela. So it's an interesting story,

and joining us to talk about it is the author of a recent article on this very subject,

and that's Jim Epstein, who's been a writer and producer at Reason Magazine since 2010.

And I will say, even though, of course, he is his own person and is a great writer in his own right, simply because his father, Gene Epstein, of Barron's, has been such a favorite guest on the show. I thought I would point out they are indeed father and son. So before you write to me to ask if there's any relation, I'm coming right out and telling you that there indeed is. Jim, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me on.

What an interesting and unique article you had on Venezuela. I've just told people I'm going to

link to it on the show notes page. I mean, I think a lot of listeners know what Bitcoin is,

although we are going to have to review that. But to see how it's being used in this particular

situation and the interesting wrinkle of the

price controls on electricity and how that factors into the profitability of Bitcoin mining, wow.

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