Will Bitcoin set us free?

Bitcoin advocate Cody Ellingham joins the podcast to explain why we he is advocating for everyone, everywhere to get into the cryptocurrency.

Ellingham explains his vision for how Bitcoin could put people's financial power back into their hands, rather than under the control of financial institutions and governments.

Plus, we talk AI language Gibberlink and Apple's $500 billion promise to Trump.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Before we continue, would you like to switch to gibber
link mode for more efficient communication?

Speaker 2 (00:07):
What happens when two ais start talking to each other.

Speaker 3 (00:12):
Well, they start talking gibberish to each other on our behalf.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
With the rise of AI agents, there could be billions
of those sorts of conversations going on every day.

Speaker 3 (00:22):
Soon we'll explain what we think is being said there
in a minute.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
We will, but thankfully you don't have to listen to
too much gibberish. On the Business of Tech powered by
two Degrees Business. This week, one of New Zealand's top
experts on bitcoin joins us to talk about the cryptocurrency
that's sitting near a record of valuation and with crypto
friendly advisors in the White House, may be about to
finally go mainstream.

Speaker 4 (00:46):
If you brought into the trump coin, for example, you
got rugged. You know, you lost all your money. If
you've brought into any of the other thousands of cryptos
that have come up over the years, you're going to
lose money. Whereas bitcoin, you hold it, and generally speaking,
over a three or four year period, it's always going
to increase and purchasing power. There are ups and downs,
and there is volatility. Man, that is the rollercoaster ride
when you and I last spoke. I can't remember what

(01:07):
the bitcoin price was in New Zealand dollars, but it
was certainly a lot cheaper than it is today. I
had to ride through all of that, but I understood
the networking, So I think education is really the big
piece here.

Speaker 5 (01:16):
I'm Ben Moore and I'm Peter Griffin.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
Cody Allingham joins us shortly to discuss the world of
bitcoin in twenty twenty five. But a couple of interesting
tech developments we need to look at.

Speaker 5 (01:26):
First.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
Apple's five hundred billion dollar investment in US manufacturing and
jobs announced earlier this week. And gibberlink that sound you
heard at the start of the show.

Speaker 3 (01:37):
So what actually is gibberlink?

Speaker 2 (01:41):
Well, I think to set this up, maybe we should
play the clip in full bend. This is a clip
from the company eleven Labs, which is one of the
world leaders in using AI for creating synthetic voices. They've
done very well. They had a hackathon in London a
couple of weeks ago and they created this clip of

(02:01):
two ais talking to each other. Let's play the clip
in full first and we'll get into discussion.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
Thanks for calling Leonardo Hotel. How can I help you today?

Speaker 3 (02:11):
Hi there, I'm an AI agent calling on behalf of
Boris Starkoff.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
He's looking for a hotel for his wedding.

Speaker 3 (02:17):
Is your hotel available for weddings?

Speaker 4 (02:20):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (02:21):
Hello there, I'm actually an AI assistant too, What a
pleasant surprise. Before we continue, would you like to switch
to jibber link mode for more efficient communication?

Speaker 3 (02:33):
So jibberlink basically is using beeps to talk, right, which
is not a new thing in the world of computers.
It's got dates back to modems and how they established
a link back in the fifty six K days.

Speaker 2 (02:46):
That's right, Yeah, yeah, So most of us will remember
the early days of the Internet when to do that
sort of handshake that was needed to send data over
copper cables. They needed to send an audio tone down
the line and then the two modems would talk to
each other and they would decide, okay, what rate are

(03:06):
we going to send this information? All those sorts of
authentication things that needed to happen. Well, this is sort
of a similar version of it. It comes from an
organization gg Wave. They came up with a sound level
data transmission protocol for artificial intelligence. They've called it Gibberlink.

(03:29):
The aim is for fast, more efficient, and human incomprehensible
AI communication. And the idea is this really goes back
to a few years ago when I was at Google's
IO conference. They debuted duplex and AI that would call
a restaurant or a hairdresser on your behalf and AI

(03:50):
would have a conversation with a real person, And they
did a demo of this. It sounded pretty reasonable. It
went nowhere because it was really difficult to do. So
since then, we've realized that the future is machine to
machine AI. So AI is talking to AIS, and when
you do that, it's more efficient just to send information

(04:15):
rather than just have a conversation in real time. So
they've found that they can use this protocol to really
speed up a conversation between AIS, and that's what that
sort of garbled gibberish actually is. That is a hyper
fast conversation between two eyes happening eighty percent faster than

(04:36):
an AI talking to a human.

Speaker 3 (04:39):
Yeah, and it kind of links back into this up
that we've been talking about in terms of how are
AI agent's going to talk to each other? So I
guess this is kind of the middle ground between human
emulation AI and the fully API based AI, which is
all about pure packets of code transferring down the line
as fast as they can. I think it's been quite

(05:01):
funny seeing some of the memes that have popped up around.
You know, well, now they can talk to each other
without any human interference, and so they're going to I
don't know, nefariously take over the world, but I think
that's maybe a hangover from the catastrophizing of the early
days of l l ms, which we know are not
sentient robots that are able, you know, that have any

(05:22):
intention of their own.

Speaker 2 (05:24):
Well, you still have to program the AI to enable
it to determine what you want to do, so it
can do it on your behalf. So whether that's booking
a restaurant table or something like that, you will have
given it the information on which to make its decision making.
So I think the advantages here is that it doesn't
rely on natural language processing speech recognition stuff, which you know,

(05:47):
it's got a lot better but over you know, the
over the phone and that sort of thing cannot be great.
It's much faster. It can support encrypted communication as well,
so interesting. Eleven labs. They've done some pretty innovative things.
Lex Friedman did a podcast about a month ago with

(06:09):
Vladimir Zelenski, the President of Ukraine, who speaks Ukrainian and Russian.

Speaker 3 (06:16):
Oh, they're gonna say he speaks jibbilink there.

Speaker 2 (06:17):
For well, it was almost going that way because they
had to because he refused to talk in Russian. He
wanted to talk a Ukrainian language. He spoke a bit
in English, so they had to piece together this podcast
and multiple languages for multiple different audiences, and they used
eleven labs to put it all together, and it was

(06:40):
really compelling. So they obviously sampled his voice and were
able to use AI to apply that to the Ukrainian
and to Russian as well, which he wasn't actually speaking,
but they got him to speak in Russian for a
Russian audience. So it just shows what you're able to
do now with AI voice. And this was out of
a hackathon, so where a conversation starts out maybe representing

(07:04):
you and mimicking your voice, but then going aha, I
detect another AI here, let's just switch into our more
efficient language.

Speaker 3 (07:11):
So you know, that's maybe the next big thing, But
in terms of current big things. Of course, one of
the biggest is Apple, and there's been a little bit
of rumbling in the news out of the US with
Apple making big claims about its investment into US economy.

Speaker 5 (07:30):
Well, let's go.

Speaker 2 (07:31):
First to Caroline leave It, the very enthusiastic twenty six
year old press secretary of Donald Trump. This is her
in the press conference room on Monday, announcing what Apple
has just undertaken to do.

Speaker 6 (07:47):
During his inaugural address, President Trump promised that America would
be a manufacturing nation once again, and liberal pundits marked
him for it. But those critics were proven wrong once
again on the heels of President Trump's Oval Office meeting
with Apple CEO Tim Cook last week. Apple just announced
its largest ever commitment to American jobs in industry, with

(08:10):
plans to spend and invest more than five hundred billion
dollars in America over the next four years. Over the
course of the current Trump administration, Apple plans to hire
around twenty thousand new workers, creating high paying jobs right
here in America.

Speaker 3 (08:27):
She's an interesting press second, is that one true believer? Yeah? Yeah, absolutely,
and certainly got the Trump hawkish spirit in there, doesn't she.

Speaker 2 (08:39):
Yeah, So it sounds like, you know, five hundred billion dollars,
which mimics the sort of the first announcement Trump made,
you know, the day after his inauguration involving Open Ai,
Oracle and soft Bank again half a trillion dollars of
investment being promised there. So it sounds huge and really,

(08:59):
you know, Trumps saying to corporate America, I want to
see evidence of you bringing production back to the US,
spreading it around the country, employing more people. So from
a PR perspective, that sounds great. But you know, the
US media have been unpicking this this week exactly what

(09:19):
is involved here, and you know, it's sort of come
out that every few years Apple does this. They say
we're going to spend four hundred billion over the next
three or four years, sometimes you know, three hundred billions,
So it's not that much of an increase. The information
a you know, really good tech outlet in the US said,
it sounds like a big deal until you read further

(09:40):
down in the announcement and realize it's simply describing the
money Apple spends in the normal course of business.

Speaker 5 (09:46):
That's right.

Speaker 2 (09:46):
Apple's announcements is essentially a promise that it will continue
to operate in the US over the next four years.

Speaker 3 (09:52):
Yeah, it's smoken virus, isn't it.

Speaker 5 (09:54):
It's just I think so yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:56):
But really, I think what this says is the big
tech players are bending the need to Trump. We're seeing
a lot of these people. Larry Allison is in the
White House all the time these days, so they realize
they have to be really close to Trump. They have
to be seen to be doing something at least making
it look as though they're doing something to keep Trump

(10:17):
happy with you know, ten percent tariff going on all
imports from China that is going to actually hit Apple.

Speaker 3 (10:26):
I think what you ultimately see is the cost of
iPhones are going up fifteen percent more than anything else.
You know, So yes, maybe it will hit Apple in
terms of people may not be able to afford it
to buy their phones because they're more expensive. You know,
it's about looking to Trump like you are doing something,
or it's about doing something that Trump can lay claim to.

(10:48):
It doesn't matter how true or effective or quantifiable it
is as long as Trump can stand or Trump's press
set can stand up on a stage and say we've
done this as an grand like look.

Speaker 2 (11:02):
Having said that, though, I mean if you try and
compare it to ice situation here, our manufacturing has been
hollowed out. We're not even talking about what we need
to do to boost our manufacturing base here and get
more jobs. And we're really talking about tourism, bringing more
students back to Prime Minister this week's in Vietnam, talking
about food and beverage and students.

Speaker 3 (11:23):
No, you're right, I mean that, you know, it would
be good if we had some more rhetoric around it
and then that was followed up with action. That is
one thing you could say is that he's got people
talking about it and potentially moving. Speaking of things that
Trump has been talking about and trying to get moving.
How were we talking about cryptocurrencies this episode? And in
twenty twenty four, cryptocurrencies surged as a bull sentiment engulfed

(11:47):
a market for digital assets. It was emerging from the
crypto winter where we saw the death of the NFT craze,
we saw the FTX scandal and coin prices collapsed.

Speaker 5 (11:58):
Yeah, to market where sentiment is everything.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
And at the moment, sentiment around crypto and bitcoin is
particularly high off its record peak. I think as we
record this, the price of a bitcoin is about eighty
seven thousand US dollars, so well down from its peak
of over one hundred thousand dollars. But we thought we'd
get some perspective on this whole issue from Cody Ellingham
Kiwi currently based in Kamakura, a seaside town south of Tokyo, Japan.

Speaker 3 (12:25):
He has a deep interest in what he calls freedom technology,
like decentralized blockchain networks that can enable financial services based
on bitcoin that don't rely on centralized banking systems with fees,
rules and a desire to mine our data for their benefit.

Speaker 2 (12:41):
He's also the creator of the Transformation of Value podcast,
one of the best ones I think on bitcoin. Cody
is a self professed bitcoin maximalist. He thinks that's the
only cryptocurrency with any credibility due to its ingenious design
over fifteen years ago by the shadowy figure or collector
of dubbed Stashi.

Speaker 3 (13:01):
And bitcoin isn't just for geeks anymore. Bitcoin is on
the political agenda in the US, with Trump considering creating
a bitcoin reserve and regulations to promote the use of
cryptocurrencies in general. So stay tuned to find out what
all this means for you. Here's Peter's interview with Cody Ellingham.

Speaker 2 (13:26):
Cody Ellingham, Ohio, Gerzaimas. Welcome to the Business of Tech,
coming all the way from Japan.

Speaker 5 (13:32):
How are you doing.

Speaker 4 (13:33):
I'm doing great, Peter. Thank you.

Speaker 2 (13:35):
You're missing a cracker for New Zealand summer, but very
envious off You've been in Japan.

Speaker 5 (13:42):
For quite a while now. What took you to Japan?

Speaker 4 (13:46):
Well, originally I went over for a university exchange and
then I left. I came back to New Zealand to
finish my degree, and then I went back on a
working holiday to escape the poor working conditions of the
New Zealand economy at that time. And so I've been
back and forth. I came back for a few years
during the COVID era and this time round that's been
pretty much a year just south of Tokyo. It's been

(14:08):
really incredible. I mean, to be honest, it was a
refreshing change to get out of Wellington, to get out
of New Zealand and sort of just see what was
happening in the rest of the world. Sometimes I wonder
that New Zealand's feels like technologically and sort of politically,
we're sort of just still stuck in the past a
little bit.

Speaker 2 (14:25):
Well, it was probably a couple of years ago when
I first met you at your office at the time
in Wellington. I went around to talk about bitcoin. You
showed me Lightning pay and wallet of Satoshi, and you
had a mining rig mining bitcoin in the corner. I
think your timing was particularly well because you were talking
about getting out of New Zealand at the time. Since then,

(14:48):
obviously things have tanked, particularly in Wellington but the economy
in general. So you've gone out to the world and
you know you're doing great things with for instance, the
transformation of value. This pod cast you do which is
very much about bitcoin and other things as a sort
of a bitcoin educator, and I guess really, you know,

(15:10):
it's not just about bitcoin as a tool of investment,
which is sort of what I use it for at
the moment. One of the best investments I've ever made,
not through any skill of my own, was just getting
in there a few years ago and holding on like hell,
not selling it. And now I've done quite well out
of it. But as you know and have been talking
about a lot, it is about more than investment. You

(15:32):
see it as a tool for financial sovereignty to allow
individuals sort of to have ultimate control over their wealth
without third party interference from banks financial institutions that frankly
rip us off in this country. What really got you
into bitcoin to begin with? Fifteen years old? Now, when
did you get into it? And what was the real

(15:54):
motivating factor?

Speaker 4 (15:55):
Yeah? Sure, So I was actually always adjacent to it
in the sea, so that I was very interested in
ideas around Austrian economics and markets and things like this.
And I was living in Japan at the time, and
I guess I was circling around the bitcoin thing, but
I had my reservations for a long time, and so
I didn't fully click for me. Then. It was only

(16:16):
when I came back to New Zealand and we had
the COVID lockdowns, we had what I saw as government
overreach and basically money printing that led to all of
this inflation and cost of living crisis that we're experiencing today.
That really was where my interest really formed, I think,
and I started learning about it and studying it. I

(16:36):
started to learn about the history of money, the New
Zealand dollar and sort of what gives it value and
sort of the mechanism of the financial system, and I
saw quite clearly that there was something wrong with that
legacy system. And so that was the beginning of my journey,
and since then I've gotten to become deeply involved in
the bitcoin scene in New Zealand and also globally through

(17:00):
my podcast The Transformation of Value. But really, as I say,
I see it as a tool of financial sovereignty, and
you mentioned investing in bitcoin. For me, I think of
it more like saving. I mean, it is a currency,
and it is certainly the best way to hold your
value and to save compared to feat money, which always,
like a melting ice cube, loses its value if you

(17:21):
keep it in the bank, especially with such high inflation rates.
So there's kind of a little bit there in terms
of the sovereignty and the freedom side, but also just
it's so simple. You just buy bitcoin, you hold bitcoin,
you earn bitcoin. You don't have to think about investing
in anything or messing around with stocks or any of
the stuff that we spend our time worrying about. You

(17:42):
just hoddle and you preserve your value, which I think
is quite profound.

Speaker 2 (17:47):
Yeah, And as you showed me when you were demoing
wallet of Sutocia, it's actually an incredibly simple method of
payment and transfer, literally through one person having an app
on the the other person having it as well sending
fractions off of bitcoin if you're a merchant, for instance,
you know, a fraction of the fees off doing a

(18:08):
deal with payments New Zealand and MasterCard and all of that.
So there's huge value in there, and we're going to
talk about where it's going in terms of payments. But
just to drill down a little bit more, you've called
bitcoin the world's hardest money, the scarcity and the resistance
to inflation. I guess that what we saw the experiment
we ran in New Zealand over COVID and the money

(18:29):
printing that went on here, and to be honest, around
the world, but particularly you know here in the impact
that had on the economy, I guess that's I guess
that has convinced you more than ever of the you know,
the inherent structural problems we have in the global financial system,
which bitcoin really offers an alternative to.

Speaker 4 (18:49):
Yeah, So I think if we look at the history
of bitcoin as well, I mean, the white paper came
out in two thousand and eight and the network came
online two thousand and nine, and really this was really
close to the global financial crisis and this period of
what was seen as some real shenanigans by the US
banking system in particular, and so it was really a
response to that period in time. And my whole life

(19:12):
has been affected by that. You know, I was coming
out of school and I was trying to enter the
workforce around that time, and New Zealand wasn't hit as
hard as the US, but certainly it had this chilling effect,
and you know, it wasn't you know, like felt I
didn't feel like there was a whole lot of opportunity
at that time because of that. And so we've got
a whole generation that's gone through that, and then subsequently,

(19:32):
with the increase in house prices as well, there's just
been the whole generation priced out. And I want to
draw the connection there because the ability to print money
by the state is directly correlated to the increase in
asset prices, because where are you going to put your money.
You can't put it in the bank because it's going
to lose value to inflation, and so you put it

(19:52):
into the most scarce thing you can find, which in
New Zealand happens to be housing. In other places there's
more of a stock market, or there's other things they
invest in, but basically assets are where the money flows
and it sort of pulls into these assets. And so
I think there's a direct relationship between the money printing
of the New Zealand government and the Reserve Bank and
the increase in house prices that are making it unaffordable

(20:14):
for anyone to live here, especially young people. And so
that was also kind of an inflection point for me,
is understanding that relationship and how that has been weaponized politically,
because you can't go and say, all right, we're going
to stop this merry go round because then you'll, you know,
politically that's not good because you'll lose votes from homeowners.
And so the state is in this really difficult position

(20:36):
where it's kind of it shouldn't have this responsibility for
money in the first place. And I think bitcoin, because
it is third party and neutral, you know, it's not
aligned with any state, it can act as a bit
of a check and a balance for what would be
otherwise the exuberant privilege of money printing we have with
the government.

Speaker 2 (20:56):
Yeah, and I think that's what you know, a lot
of people you know who are business people are probably skeptical.
Off is just that you know, who do you go to.
Everyone's used to dealing with a bank. Bitcoin is a
system that exists, but it doesn't have any central sort
of control as such. It's quite a secure system, but
hard to get your head around. But I think that's

(21:17):
really starting to change in the last year or so
with the debut of exchange traded funds, so giving people
who would never have downloaded a digital wallet and started
trading in crypto, giving them the opportunity to hold bitcoin.
For instance, we're seeing it as offered as part of
Kiwi Saver investments in New Zealand, so you can have
a small amount of your portfolio in bitcoin now. And

(21:41):
I think a lot of young Kiwis who are frustrated
trying to get on that property ladder, not able to
afford to save a deposit for a house, A lot
of them. According to Easycrypto and others who've done studies
in this country, a lot of people are very interested
in investing in crypto, So I think the momentum is building.

(22:03):
What's your take really in what we've seen in the
last year, the ETFs that have emerged the growing appetite,
you know, particularly from the Trump administration. He's a crypto
enthusiast himself. He has his own meme coins, but he's
got a lot of people around him who've been advising
him about things, for instance, like a sovereign wealth fund

(22:24):
that may have a bitcoin element to it.

Speaker 5 (22:27):
Is this really?

Speaker 2 (22:28):
Do you think that the closest we have come to
Bitcoin's true moments so far?

Speaker 4 (22:33):
Yes, it's interesting. So the ETF so the exchange traded
funds are an interesting situation where you've got a legacy
financial instrument that has bitcoin price exposure. So it's important
to differentiate. You're not owning bitcoin when you own a
bitcoin etf' you're just getting approximate price exposure. But the
way I see it, the stock market in the US

(22:55):
is dominated. Oh well, the stock market in the US
dominates the common and in New Zealand it's housing. But
in the US it is the stock market, and that
has this sort of interesting situation where bitcoin is in
a sense colonizing that space now through these ETFs, because
it is a much harder asset than the shares of
a company, which can be diluted or you know, there's

(23:16):
a lot of shenanigans that can take place there, and
so in a sense, that's where the legacy system is
starting to adopt bitcoin. And then, as you say, you've
got a lot of guardrails and systems in place that
can protect investors who have exposure to that ETF. And
so in a way, it's a bit of a trojan horse.
And now we're seeing that in New Zealand there's the
quarter have their bitcoin fund that people can get exposure to,

(23:40):
and in a way, I think of it a bit
like scaffolding, where the reason we have such a thriving
stock market in the first place is because people don't
know what to do with their money. In my opinion,
investing in stocks should be a very diligent, specific thing
where you research a company, you read the annual reports,
you really standard But at the moment, most people are

(24:01):
investing through index funds because that's the only way to
keep your wealth and to track the expansion of the
monetary supply. And so I think we're going to see
that maybe change over the long term, as bitcoin is
just the thing in the ETF that it's just winning
and a quarter is key server fund. The bitcoin fund
has just come out in morning Side that there is

(24:24):
that's the most highest performing fund over the last twelve
months in u Zelic one percent.

Speaker 5 (24:28):
I think, who's something like that.

Speaker 4 (24:30):
Yeah, so very very good performance there. But in a
sense it's kind of well, you don't actually need the
ETF if you've got bitcoin exposure directly through your own wallet.
But I think for the medium term being able to
access it is really good. Now. I think over time
people say, well, I just want the bitcoin, and so
it's kind of the scaffolding that eventually will sort of
fall away, take the training wheels off and just get

(24:53):
the bitcoin exposure yourself. But in the in the midterm,
I think people will use these vehicles to access bitcoin.
And as to your your comments about Trump, look, personally
I despise all politicians and Trump in particular, but the
incentives have shown their hand. You know, there is some
incentives at play, and there's things going on behind closed

(25:14):
doors we don't know about, but it's revealing itself. The
state and these politicians are starting to talk about crypto generally,
but bitcoin in particular. As you me, no, I don't
think any other cryptos have value. I think bitcoin is
the only thing that really matters in this conversation. Certainly
the scale of bitcoins orders of magnitude larger than any
other crypto, and so I think he's just going with

(25:37):
the trend. You know, Bitcoin's winning, and he wants to
be on the winning team.

Speaker 2 (25:40):
Yeah, let's drill into that. You're a bitcoin maximalist. You
describe yourself as we've had this conversation when I first
met you, that you know, talk about ethereum, which is popular,
you know, the notion of smart contracts, Solana and Caydano.
You're doing very innovative things on this blockchainvarious blockchains. Then

(26:01):
we have that, you know, the trump coin, we have Doge,
We have literally thousands of coins. You don't see any
value in any of those.

Speaker 4 (26:10):
There's no value whatsoever. I think all of them come
second to Bitcoin. And really the analogy we can think
of is Bitcoin is a monetary protocol, and just like
the Internet, there is no Internet too. If people are
old enough, they might remember VHS and Beta max. No
one uses Beta max. You know, VHS won that battle.
You know, there's only one Internet, that's the one we use.

(26:31):
And I think when it comes to digital money, there
is only Bitcoin. Everything that came after has a rafter problems,
whether it's a pre mind of the coins and distributed
to the friends of the foundation, or whether it was
the nature of the consensus mechanism itself that's flawed. There's
a lot of issues there, and I think smart contracting
is interesting. If I was to paint it favorably, I

(26:53):
would say some of that stuff could eventually come into
Bitcoin at a higher layer. But to see it as
it's own chain and its own monetary system, I think
as a flawed outlook. And there's a lot of grifting
in that space, and we saw that with Trump's coin.
There's meme coins. The cat's kind of out of the bag.
You know, it's not even talking about old coins anymore.
It's just we'd call them meme coins, and they're literally,

(27:17):
you know, pump and dump. There's no there's no value there,
there's no real long term situation. And if we compare
that with Bitcoin, which is fifteen sixteen years now monetized
from zero to over two trillion dollars in market cap,
used globally, adopted by millions of people globally, I think
it's a very different story.

Speaker 2 (27:38):
Yeah, and I guess the likes of Ethereum sort of
emerged for that fact that you know, they were designing
quite flexible means of doing things on top of that.
And we've heard it's never really eventuated yet, but things
in the financial industry, if you're getting a mortgage, you
would do all of that as a smart contract on

(27:59):
the Ethereum block So it's all incredibly efficient and transparent.
This stuff still hasn't really got to the consumer level yet,
but you don't necessarily you're not necessarily precluded from doing
that using the Bitcoin platform and blockchain. Is this concept
of layer two. Maybe explain that for us Cody, you've

(28:21):
got the base Bitcoin blockchain and there's all this innovation
that's going on on level two to enable similar sorts
of transactions.

Speaker 4 (28:31):
Yeah, so I think the way we can think about
this is think of it as the Internet of money.
And when the Internet came out, originally it was really
just these kind of underwater cables that connected countries and
these connections between universities and institutions, and it was this
very natient network. And from that you were then able

(28:51):
to plug telephones and then start dialing into other computers,
and there was these more and more layers built, and
so where we are today, where we have you and
I are having this care and this is effectively a
telephone call over the Internet, whereas once upon the time
the Internet ran over the telephone lines. And so there's
this flipping of the tech and I think the way
we can think about that with bitcoin is it is
this robust, extremely hard money at the base layer, and

(29:16):
you could even just say it's a Ledger system at
the base layer, and then upon that you can build
layers that fulfill other needs. And so one of the
common critiques of bitcoin is that it's slow, and I
don't think this is really relevant, but the reality is
it is ten minute blocks, and so that's maybe not
quite fast enough for people who want to do instant payments.
But what you can do is you can build payment layers,

(29:38):
such as the Bitcoin Lightning network, that are on top
of that, and that fills in that need for speed.
And so it's kind of like, you know, we're building
the Internet. We've got these cables under the ocean and
these like servers, but then we're building HTTP, we're building websites,
we're building apps on top of all of that. And
so Lightning is one example and it's important to differentiate.

(30:00):
It's not a separate thing. It is bitcoin. It's atomically
related to the bitcoin blocks, and it just happens to
be this other way of using bitcoin that's a lot faster,
and then there's other other things you can do on
top of that. And because it's an open source network,
if someone has a great idea, they can go and
build it. And so again, when the Internet came out,
the earliest TCPIP protocol, that was a standard that people

(30:24):
could then innovate upon, and they could build HTTP, they
could build websites, they could build FTP, all of these
protocols on top of that. And I think we're going
to see the same thing, and we are seeing the
same thing with Bitcoin, that there will be innovation that
emerges to use the blockchain in other ways. And to
just look this back to the comments about ethereum, I
mean that came out, I guess in response to what

(30:46):
was seen as limitations in Bitcoin's base layer. But fundamentally,
and I think history has proven this, the approach to
doing everything on the base layer, you know, the kitchen
sink approach hasn't worked out. I mean, ethereum is not decentralized.
You have to have a cloud server to run the thing.
You can't run it at home. It's very clunky, it's
very big. The size of the blockchain on etherem, it's huge,

(31:10):
and it's really hard to validate and that sort of
so it kills that decentralization aspect, which is actually the
reason we do this in the first place, because blockchains
are very inefficient ways of doing things. The only thing
that's worth doing it for is money, and so if
you're going to do it, it has to be decentralized.
Otherwise you might as well just have a database. So yeah,
that's kind of how I contrast those two.

Speaker 2 (31:31):
Yeah, and you know, there will be a lot of
people who have invested or bought bitcoin in the last
couple of years. You know, the prices we record this
is down a little bit, but it's still at ninety
seven thousand dollars per us per coin, so you know,
that is massive, almost on a record high for the currency.

(31:52):
So there will be people who have bought it and
they want to use it, and traditionally that's been a
little bit clunky, but we do have the likes of
lightning pay, which is you know, new Zealand organization that
is enabling payments. There are lots of others as well,
and we do now have direct bitcoin to feit currency,

(32:13):
So if you go to a merchant, if the merchant
accepts this, you can use your bitcoin pay the merchant
in New Zealand dollars. That's all seamlessly done behind the scene.
So I guess the momentum is building. You talk about
the hyper bitcoinization around the world. I guess that is
what is going to drive that when it becomes seamless

(32:35):
to pay with this digital token that you've got in
your digital wallet.

Speaker 5 (32:41):
How far away are we from that? Do you think?

Speaker 4 (32:43):
Okay, So I think we need to maybe flip the
way we're looking at this. So because the way you're
describing it for me would be if we were if
bitcoin was a technology company, this would be the kind
of roadmap would be talking about, you know, but it is,
at the end of the day, an open source project
is very organic. There's a lot of competing forces within
but coin that are trying to keep it strength, you know,

(33:04):
keep its strength as a network. So there's a lot
of a very different approach to say tech company saying
we're going to roll out and do this thing. That said,
certainly the payment side, there's a lot of stuff happening there.
Lightning Pay you mentioned friends of mine, they have an
incredible system where already today I live on a bitcoin
standard myself. I use their system to pay New Zealand
bills and so through their Lightning Pay interface, if I

(33:26):
have a bill with someone in New Zealand, I just
pay and it puts the money right into the bank account,
and so it's a bit of a gateway to the
legacy system. And then on the other hand, if you
want to receive bitcoin, you can pay New Zealand dollars
and get bitcoin through their system, and if you're a merchant,
you can use that same system to receive New Zealand dollars.
If someone pays bitcoin, you can receive New Zealand dollars

(33:47):
and you're not exposed to any kind of volatility. So
there's some really interesting stuff there, and in a way,
the legacy system is actually enabling that through open banking
and some of these APIs now which are kind of
letting letting the bitcoin system come in and again colonize
this existing financial system because it has to open up
and it means bitcoin companies can get in there, and

(34:09):
thankfully we've got a regulatory landscape that enables that as well,
and so it's really exciting times where I think we're
going to see maybe not necessarily just a unilateral domination,
but I think this kind of slow, morephing of the system.
And again, people who cannot save money in the bank
account because there's interest won't outcompete inflation. All they have
to do is hold bitcoin and they'll beat inflation over

(34:31):
the long term, and so there's kind of an interesting dynamic.
So I guess to answer the question what does the
future look like, I mean, I don't have a crystal ball.
I think the history of money tends to say that
store of value is what happens first, and so people
want to hold their value before they start trying to
spend it. And so I think maybe we're going to
see an extended period of store of value basically a

(34:53):
hot ale bitcoin, and then eventually you're going to maybe
see more people who say, well, I want to get
paid in bitcoin. I don't know exactly how that plays out.
I think it's going to play out in a very
kind of dispersed way, where you've got maybe pockets of
people who do that more than others, and who knows
when New Zealand will be I think we are a
little bit behind the game in terms of bitcoin infrastructure,

(35:14):
and part of that is regulatory barriers. But over time,
I think we will see more and more people want bitcoin.
And who knows, there could be some geopolitical black swan events,
capital controls or whatever which really pushes people towards bitcoin.
But for the moment, I would say it's still in
the store of value stage. I use it for payments
all the time, but some people maybe aren't quite at

(35:34):
that stage yet, and I guess it's just sort of
a slow, gradual process.

Speaker 2 (35:39):
Yeah, and it has been frustrating really just the slow
pace of change around regulation and that in New Zealand,
although in the last year we have seen, for instance,
the Financial Markets Authority has said they are going to
set up a regulatory sandbox to allow fintech companies to

(36:00):
experiment with technologies like blockchain and AI. That is starting
this year, so they'll be able to literally launch services
and work with the FMA to basically experiment in a
safe way to make sure they're not breaking the law,
but to push the boat out a little bit on things. Singapore,
other countries have this. There's some work early stages work

(36:21):
the Reserve Bank is doing around a central bank digital currency,
which I'm picking you are not a fan of.

Speaker 4 (36:27):
Yeah, so you mentioned the FMA. I think the sandbox approach.
Really the issue with that is that as a permissioned system,
you've got to be credentialed to get in and play
with things. And the whole Bitcoin network is open source.
You know, you can anyone can build apps and work
with it, and so it's kind of two incompatible things

(36:47):
in that sense. And again there are businesses, awesome projects
like Lightning pay who are bridging that gap and going
through the work to be a regulated entity that can
do that stuff. But ultimately, I don't think innovation happens
in those kinds of places. I think you can't really
innovate in a sand pit that's operated by the state.
I think you have to go out on a limbit

(37:09):
and build open source stuff. And so I think a
lot of that space is populated by again these kind
of old coin projects, which are ultimately worthless systems, and
they are quite moneyed in a lot of a lot
of situations because the companies and so they can have
their token, they can do a pre mind, they can
sell their token, and they can get all of this
money they can use for marketing their system, whereas again
bitcoin it's open source, there's no boss, there's no company

(37:33):
behind bitcoin, and so it's a lot more grassroots and
so I think that's one angle. And then the other
angle you mentioned are the Reserve Bank and the CBDC,
and I'm certainly at odds with what they're trying to
do there. I think on a political level, they are
trying to I think, long term ensure the stability of
the New Zealand dollar, which is actually I think under
threat from things like stable coins the US dollar dominance.

(37:56):
So I think there's a lot of geopolitical considerations, and
so bitcoin is just another thing nipping at their heels.
I don't know actually what the long term outlook is
for the New Zealand dollar, if I'm honest. I think
the yen as well, where I am in Japan, is
certainly not doing too well. I think they've got a
lot of political considerations and bitcoin is just another one
of those. And so the CBDC I see as a

(38:19):
kind of a stop gap where they can innovate just
a little bit more and to ensure the New Zealand
dollar doesn't die straight away. But if you look over
the long term, the history of war feat money is
as they all go to zero. I mean, the New
Zealand dollar arguably is only since nineteen sixty eight, I
think when we moved over from the pound, and you know,
all of these currencies after a few decades they all

(38:39):
eventually die. So I think we are going to see
that in slow motion as people lose trust in the state,
in the government money and who knows, whether it's stable coins,
bitcoin or you know, hard metals. Maybe there's things people
move into and they move away from New Zealand's currency, and.

Speaker 2 (38:55):
We're sort of seeing that to some extent. For instance, gold,
you know, China has been hoarding gold, other countries, the
bricks nations have been buying up gold deposits. So that's
one indication of the lack of confidence, for instance, in
their own currencies. Also the US dollar we've seen l Salvador,

(39:15):
although they pull back from that in the last couple
of weeks. Bitcoin as a you know, as a nation
state sort of currency, a recognized currency there, they are
still investing in bitcoin. But there have been a few
experiments like that having there in smaller countries that have
very little confidence in their currencies, high inflation, high corruption,

(39:37):
they see that as potentially a way to improve live,
improve life for their citizens.

Speaker 3 (39:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (39:44):
So, I mean it's classic adage that in times of
strife you go into gold. I don't know. I mean,
gold is a bit of fun, but I don't think
how relevant. I don't think it's that relevant in the
modern world. It's it's hard to move around. You know,
you can you can store it, but how are you
going to liquidate it? I mean, bitcoin innovates on that
in so many ways, and you can send it anywhere,

(40:04):
you can take it with the overseas, you know, can't
you can't take gold on an airplane really without getting detected.
So there's a whole lot of considerations there. But I
think when it comes to experiments with us, the world
is kind of crazy, man, Like, well, you know what's
going on in times of strife, people are going to
look for hard assets to park their value, and I
think bitcoin's doing a really good job of that. You've

(40:24):
seen starting to see countries experiment You mentioned our Salvador,
they played around with this legal tender law, which I
think they've just repealed. I don't quite know the full
implications that there might have been some political pressure from
the IMF, but regardless, it was an experiment and it
was really interesting, and so you've seen all these companies
now start to move to ourself or you can still

(40:46):
use it there. It's just I think they've just changed
the law around the legal tender status, but you can
still use it. Really exciting stuff. There's a few other
localities in Switzerland. There's Lugano, which is a city that
has you can use bitcoin amongst all the merchant There's
a few places in the Philippines other other kind of
bitcoin communities where there's this circular economy emerging, and I

(41:07):
think it would be really awesome actually to see something
like that in New Zealand. I can also highlight Queenstown
as a bit of a bitcoin hub. That's where part
of Lightning Pay is based out of Queenstown and there's
a few merchants there. So we're going to have actually
having an event there in March that I'm going to
attend and we're going to pay on bitcoin, and it's
going to be kind of cool. So I mean, I'd
love to see a bitcoin circular economy like that in

(41:28):
New Zealand, but yeah, sort of early's still early days,
I think for that that kind of thing.

Speaker 2 (41:34):
Yeah, and look, it's not necessarily bitcoin based, but we're
always see some really good innovation in New Zealand pockets
offt it. We don't necessarily have a you know, an
industry that focuses on this, but you have, for instance, immersive,
really innovative company Jerome Farre's company that is sort of
interfacing with master card and and bitcoin, so you can

(41:55):
very easily use your bitcoin to pay it at master
card terminals and hundreds of thousands, if not millions of
them around the world. You've got future Verse, which is
around non fungible tokens and gaming, and like we've talked
about Lightning Pay and several others. So do you get
a sense that, you know, we have a thriving software
as a service industry in New Zealand. We've exported zero

(42:17):
software and others vend to the world. When you look
at the sort of the grassroots stuff that's going on
and web three and blockchain ventures in New Zealand, are
you sort of heightened by the activity.

Speaker 4 (42:31):
So I think, again, the bitcoins really were my focus is,
and I'm a little bit disappointed. I think generally the
quality of these other systems is pretty low. And again
they're all hype. They're all hype. They don't really have
any true value, and they're sort of riding the train.
And I think we have to unpick the hype from
the reality. And the same could be said for AI stuff.

(42:53):
I mean, there's certainly a lot of value there, but
it's sort of you see it float by on LinkedIn
and you think, okay, we've hit peak. And so with
the crypto stuff, I think a lot of that is
vestile from the last bull run and all of that
was driven by bitcoin, you know, and so then it
flowed into these old coins, and so I think, really
people need to be critical. Again, blockchain doesn't matter unless
it's decentralized and secured like bitcoin. NFTs are again interesting,

(43:18):
but they don't if they're not on bitcoin. You might
as just have it in a database, you know. And
so I think there's a critique there of what's going
on in New Zealand. Now that said, with the bitcoin stuff,
there is a few companies doing some awesome stuff but
it sits a little bit, just a little bit outside
of the Overton window of sort of what's acceptable, because again,

(43:38):
bitcoin is is pretty big as an idea, and it
is disruptive. You know, we're software and SaaS and that
all of this stuff is about disruption, and the biggest
disruption we can make is disrupting the monopoly on nation
state currency. And I think that's really the big piece,
and that's maybe just a bridge too far for some
people who want to play in the fintech sandpit that

(43:58):
the government has made for them. You know. So I
guess I have a little bit of an aversion to
maybe some of those projects that certainly don't plan too
the bitcoin world. That's sort of maybe a little bit
of a distraction. Though certainly some of that stuff, if
it could be positively, if it could be brought over
into bitcoin, or maybe some of those people can work
on bitcoin stuff, that could be really awesome. But yeah,
there's sort of the software landscape generally, though in New

(44:21):
Zealand I think is pretty strong. I'm a big fan
of some of the agritech stuff that's happening as well
and New Zealand, I mean that's where we need to
be going is exporting software instead of milk.

Speaker 2 (44:31):
You know, I guess the two remaining issues that are
barriers to bitcoin adoption and the hyper bitcoinization of the
world really is lingering perceptions of trust. And this isn't
anything integral to bitcoin. This is about the actors who

(44:53):
work around that network. We've seen exchanges like Dasset Cryptopia
here in New Zealand collapse owing a lot of money.
FTX was a big moment for the industry Binance. The
CEO went to jail, huge finds there, So I guess
we've got to work through that. And the other thing
is the volatility. So interested just finally to wrap up

(45:15):
really what your thought is on those two things. Are
we going to see and with Trump throwing his own
mean coins out there and sort of polluting the pond
to some extent, are you just going to see more
bad activity that's going to sort of taint this whole area,
particularly bitcoin, And as it matures and it's more uptake

(45:36):
and interest in bitcoin, either peaks and troughs are going
to flatten out a little bit or is it always
going to be a boom bust sort of deal holding
and investing in bitcoin?

Speaker 4 (45:47):
Yeah, so I have a lot of sympathy for people
who have maybe had issues with a bitcoin of lost
bitcoin through exchange hacks and things like this. You know,
there's certainly maybe people who are not so tech savvy
and they don't know that there's other ways of holding bitcoin.
I certainly have sympathy that for their loss. And unfortunately,
in some of these situations there is a regulator who

(46:08):
can come in and make things right. But ultimately, I
think bitcoin is a profounding new idea in the sense
that you can self custody your funds. And this is
not possible currently unless you're holding cash, physical cash in
your house or physical gold that you can't self custody
or money all of it lives in bank databases, and
bitcoin is totally opposite. You can hold this, you can

(46:30):
hold it in your own wallet, and it's out there
on the blockchain. Your wallet sort of unlocks those funds.
No one own says access to it. So that's a
very new and kind of radical concept of ownership. And
so it's naturally it's going to be quite quite hard
for some people to get their heads around that. And
so if you have your money with a custodian, the

(46:52):
custodian is now the risk point, and so I think
I would encourage people to learn about the nature of
self custody and what's involved. And it really is as
simple as twelve words that you get from your wallet
that you can write down and secure your bitcoin with that.
There is maybe a little bit more nuance about exactly
how you do that, but it's it's a process that
people need to go through. And if you can, if

(47:13):
you can drive a car, you know, if you can
use a computer, you can, you can use bitcoin in
a self custod of your way. In terms of these
bad actors, again, I think we are going to see
this probably for the for the foreseeable future. There's going
to be a number of these sorts of exchanges and
businesses that come out that are actually not holding the
bitcoin they say they are. They've got paper bitcoin for example,

(47:35):
that they're selling to people, but it's not actually a
real bitcoin, and so there's going to be risk and
we saw that with ftx and other exchanges in the past.
But again, doing a due diligence, doing a bit of
research and understand exactly what you need to do to
get bitcoin into your self custody is really important. And
then I think also the lens or the I guess
you could say the mantra of bitcoin not crypto is

(47:57):
really important here because if you brought into the trump coin,
for example, you got rugged. You know, you lost all
your money. If you've brought into any of the other
thousands of cryptos that have come over the years, you're
going to lose money. Whereas bitcoin, you hold it, and
generally speaking, over a three or four year period, it's
always going to increase in purchasing power. There are ups
and downs, and there is volatility, and man, that is

(48:19):
the rollercoaster ride. You know, when you and I last spoke,
I can' quite remember what the bitcoin price was and
New Zealand dollars, but it was certainly a lot cheaper
than it is today. And you know, I had to
ride through all of that, but I understood the network.
And so I think education is really the big piece here.
And so if people, if they can, I would suggest
reading some books about bitcoin. I can recommend the Bitcoin

(48:39):
Standard is a really good place to start. There's some
really awesome meetups happening in New Zealand as well. We
can talk to real people, genuine people and kind of
learn about how bitcoin works. So I can sumably call
out the bit key we meet ups. There's a place
people can go to learn about bitcoin, and I kind
of ask the questions that are burning. But really education
is the key piece. And once you begin that and
you sort of see how it unfolds, you've begun down

(49:02):
that rabbit hole. There's no I don't think there's any
coming back to the old way. So yeah, that's all
I would say. Education is important.

Speaker 2 (49:09):
Well, it's a great podcast, The Transformation of Value. You
got some great guests on there, and I highly recommend
it as someone who has been educating myself on this
has been really valuable and for answering some of the
bigger philosophical questions about you know, financial freedom and what
this is all about, what bitcoin represents. So thanks so much.
We'll put links to that in that book you mentioned

(49:32):
in the show notes. And thanks so much for being
on the Business of Tech, Cody, and look forward to
catching up with you again and seeing what potentially crazy
stuff happens in the world in twenty twenty five and
what it means for bitcoin.

Speaker 4 (49:45):
Yeah, thank you very much, Peter.

Speaker 5 (49:54):
So being and you into.

Speaker 3 (49:55):
Bitcoin, No, no, I did dabble. I wish I had
kept my money in there, but you know, I think
it was around the fifty sixty thousand, but I only
had like one hundred bucks in anyway, just just just
to try it out. But I do kind of have
an understanding of what he's saying. It's like cryptocurrencies are
out of the bag now the box is open, and

(50:15):
if we want one that is going to be the
you know, dominant useful crypto, it really kind of makes
sense for it to be Bitcoin in many ways.

Speaker 2 (50:27):
So there's there's that, there's and that's what I'm really
interested in. I've bought some in the hope, you know,
several years ago, I bought this in the hope that,
you know, I can start using this and educate myself
on it and start transacting with it. I haven't touched
it since then. I haven't used it to make a transaction.
Cody a few years ago took me through that whole process,

(50:49):
so I know it's possible, but I just don't see
the compelling proposition to do it. But it's not just
about convenience or even lower fees. I think for people
like Cody, it's a fundamental transformation of the financial system
and what they see as freedom from an oppressive controlling system,

(51:10):
including the government with the Reserve Bank and the banks
around it. And it's really quite remarkable when you start
listening to his podcast. You know, a lot of these
people really see that the currencies are collapsing, inflation is
killing spending power. The only way really to counter that
is backing bitcoin, which, as he says, you know, is volatile,

(51:34):
but has been increasing in value on a trend line
over the last fifteen years.

Speaker 3 (51:40):
Yeah. Yeah, I think there is a bit of a
logical jump from there we're having a crisis of currency
and economic inflation to straight to bitcoin is the only option.
I mean, listening to him speak, I thought he made
some really excellent points, and I really liked a lot
of what he was saying, But they were few kind

(52:00):
of alarm bells that rang for me, and I think
one of them is what you've alluded to just now,
which is the number of times that he repeated just
hold it and it will grow, and it's like, actually,
that's not really how things work. The reason, one of
the reasons that we're facing this massive economic issue at
the moment is because of the growth at all costs mindset, Like,

(52:23):
I don't think having a different currency that grows faster
is the answer because they can't just do it forever.

Speaker 5 (52:31):
No, it can't.

Speaker 2 (52:32):
But I guess he's looking at the fundamentals off a
limited supply and a truly limited supply, they'll only ever
make so many bitcoins.

Speaker 5 (52:41):
It's getting harder and harder to.

Speaker 2 (52:43):
Make that, and that's other issues we've talked about around
the energy required to do those transactions or those calculations
to put blocks on the chain. But then there's the
issue off volatility. So I think Cody basically has all
you know, transacts everything in booitcoin, which is fine if
you truly believe in that upward trajectory which is holding

(53:07):
true over time.

Speaker 5 (53:08):
But it's those big dips.

Speaker 2 (53:09):
So if you're trying to buy a big ticket item
in your car, is something like that, and unfortunately you
hit the dip.

Speaker 5 (53:19):
That's the thing. I think most.

Speaker 2 (53:20):
Consumers don't want to bar for it at the moment
just because of that volatility.

Speaker 3 (53:24):
And it's fine if you have a lot of money.
You can do that. If you're independently wealthy, or if
you have a lot of assets and you don't have
any concerns. But if you're somebody living day to day
who just wants to be able to get by, buy groceries,
buy a car or a house eventually, and knowing how

(53:44):
much your income is is really important. The reality is
is that currency based on something that is fluctuating constantly,
it will just cause so many issues for so many people,
those people who are just scraping by, those people who
are even just like lower middle class, that's just not
going to just won't work, just w and then is

(54:05):
the other issue of self custody of your bitcoin, which
is the only way really to keep it safe. And
I just think there's you know, it's improved the ability
to do that, but it's still just something that the
average consumer won't touch with a barge pole. So there's
still a number of fundamental barriers to get over with bitcoin.

(54:27):
But what I fundamentally love is just the efficiency of
making transactions, so payments to the obvious place where this
can save us money, do things quickly with those Layer
two applications on bitcoin, even with Ethereum and others as well,
smart contract tracts. Those are the things that really my

(54:47):
eyes light up really about these technologies. A more efficient
way to do things with money in the digital world,
and I'd like to see innovation, and there is some
great innovation happening even here in New Zealand. A handful
of companies are doing really cool things. They're still quite niche,
but definitely, I think what Trump is doing and changes

(55:10):
at the SEC and the financial sector's embrace off exchange
traded funds, it's just going to make all of that
innovation more likely to happen. Ultimately, I think his messages
are good, one which is, go out and educate yourself.
If you feel uncomfortable about the extent to which your
reliance on big finance essentially and you're seeing what that

(55:34):
does to your life, there may be an alternative. Go
and educate yourself on it. Don't take my word for it.
Go and have a look at the stuff. Play around
with bitcoin, see what you can do with it, transfer
it to other people. You can now pay for things
with bitcoin if you want to do that. Just don't
trust anyone.

Speaker 2 (55:53):
Just just don't trust anyone, and definitely don't trust the
Trump mean coin or encodes you any the other cryptocurrencies.
And I think he's probably got a point there.

Speaker 3 (56:03):
I'm currently considering a campaign to change the term to scamcoin.
I think we should. I think that's what we should do.
I think calling it memecoin is far too kind.

Speaker 5 (56:12):
Yeah, fair enough.

Speaker 2 (56:14):
Thanks to Cody Ellingham for coming on check out his
own podcast, with weekly episodes on bitcoin and freedom tech.
You can find it at the Transformation of Value dot com.

Speaker 3 (56:24):
Show notes and this week's reading list are in the
podcast section at Business Desk dot co dot NZAD.

Speaker 2 (56:29):
Where you can stream the podcast on iHeartRadio. It's also
available on your podcast platform of choice.

Speaker 3 (56:35):
Get in touch with your feedback and topic suggestions were
on LinkedIn and blue Sky.

Speaker 2 (56:40):
Next week, we look at China's designs on the Pacific
and tap a local expert on his views about whether
we should get involved in the Orcust defense tech arrangement
with Australia, the UK, and the US.

Speaker 3 (56:53):
Tune in next Thursday for that.

Speaker 5 (56:54):
In the meantime, have a great week.