Will Wall Street Ruin Bitcoin? Featuring Ben Hunt and Alex Gladstein

The Breakdown

Blockworks

Investing, Business

4.8 • 786 Ratings

🗓️ 16 December 2020

⏱️ 81 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ben Hunt is the founder of Second Foundation Partners and lead author of Epsilon Theory. Alex Gladstein is the chief strategy officer at the Human Rights Foundation. In this conversation, they discuss one of the most important burgeoning topics of the year: In a world where bitcoin goes mainstream with traditional financial institutions, can it keep its more renegade spirit? More important, can it keep its more renegade features such as permissionless access and censorship resistance? Ben and Alex join for a good faith, spirited discussion of whether the bitcoin we know today will be preserved or whether it is doomed to be co-opted by the financial powers that be. Find our guests on social: Ben: @EpsilonTheory Alex: @Gladstein The Breakdown is produced and distributed by CoinDesk.com Follow on Twitter: NLW: https://twitter.com/nlw Breakdown: https://twitter.com/BreakdownNLW

Transcript

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0:00.0	If the U.S. becomes a bad business climate for Bitcoin, which I really, for various reasons, don't think it will be.
0:05.3	But if it did, even in that instance, then people will just move elsewhere.
0:09.8	What I'm describing is a bad business environment for you and your bitcoins is a great business environment for every number go up person.
0:21.3	Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW.
0:25.5	It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world.
0:31.6	The breakdown is sponsored by crypto.com and nexo.io and produced and distributed by CoinDest.
0:39.0	What's going on, guys? It is Tuesday, December 15th, and today we are asking an all-important
0:45.7	question, will Wall Street ruin Bitcoin? When we look back, the defining Bitcoin story
0:52.5	of 2020 will have been the true emergence of institutional,
0:56.9	traditional, traditional finance actors in this space. Many, including me, are excited about
1:02.7	these actors coming in, and this is not only about number go up, although that's nice. It's about
1:08.3	the fact that the narrative that is driving them in is this idea
1:12.9	of an inflation hedge. It is focused on the scarcity of Bitcoin, and this is a core and fundamental
1:19.6	narrative to Bitcoiners who have been here for years. Yet, as this emergence of institutional
1:26.3	investors happens, there are some who are sounding the alarm.
1:30.6	The question is whether ultimately Wall Street, and by Wall Street, of course, I mean the
1:35.8	entire traditional financial establishment, will share the same values that Bitcoiners do.
1:42.3	There is evidence that they may not. A recent interview with
1:45.7	Elaine O and Michael Saylor started with this quote from Michael. Stop talking about regulatory
1:51.3	arbitrage. Censorship resistance, privacy, and tax evasion are bad ideas. We hate that.
1:57.6	Now, I haven't spoken to Michael since this interview, and it was written not a full
2:01.6	video interview, so we don't necessarily have the exact context. But the question of censorship
	...

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