Ben McKenzie

They all said yes.

Every single one.

So we're really talking about beliefs rather than like technology or financial markets or anything like that.

Yeah, I can try.

So crypto started in 2008 with a paper that was released on the Internet, which was it was the height of the financial crisis.

And it said, wouldn't it be great if there's a currency that you could send directly person to person and avoid the banks?

And it was using cryptography and a particular kind of dated technology called blockchain technology, which is just like a ledger, just a way of storing information.

And what's neat about it is that you can send stuff back and forth over the blockchain, like payment, things of value, different cryptocurrencies.

But your identity is obscured.

It's a pseudonymous blockchain.

So you don't know who's interacting with what.

So the aspirations may have been good, but like it kind of floundered for a while because like why would you give this thing any value unless you can actually do something with it?

And it pretty much, I mean, its first use case was the Silk Road, which was a dark web drug marketplace and weapons and assassination attempts and things like that.

So it was very quickly co-opted by criminals.

Very quickly, the thing that it was good, because it was, again, why would you want to send something to someone that can't be traced and that was outside of the banking system?

It could be for a good purpose, but it's probably for bad things, right?

I mean, most likely, right?

Just being honest, being real.

And so it very quickly became this element of a way of being paid for crime.

And then it just exploded, you know, and it's interesting.