.jpg)
Finance BROs Network (FBN)
Economic Empowerment & Self Development Strategies For All
Finance BROs Network (FBN)
S2 E7 “Digital Currency - WHAT IS IT”? - Demystifying Digital Money
Unravel the mysteries of cryptocurrency and digital currency with us, as we promise to transform your understanding from vague to vivid. Get ready to grasp how the intricate dance of market belief swirls around the value of digital currencies, similar to shares in a thriving business. Our journey through this episode takes you from the concept of Bitcoin's limited supply to the wilder side of crypto regulation. Plus, we've got some electrifying news! We're expanding our horizons to FBN-TV, ensuring our insights reach every corner of the financial universe while keeping our dedicated podcast community close to our hearts.
Venture further into the digital realm with our deep dive into cryptocurrency platforms like Coinbase and the essential lessons from the FTX cautionary tale. Join us, as we at FBN continue making the complex relatable, highlighting the significance of tangible, authentic experiences in our increasingly digital age. We'll leave you equipped with a fresh perspective on the autonomy of digital transactions and their growing acceptance in mainstream commerce. As we wrap up, our sincere thanks go out to you, our Wealthians, for embarking on this financially enlightening journey with us, and who knows? Maybe our next meet-up will be at the top, sharing tales of success!
Learn more about the FBN initiative and get access to all social media platforms at https://linktr.ee/fbnlinks
First and foremost, we want to be clear that what we are sharing with you are strategies and concepts that can be implemented by individuals who understand the logistics of how these techniques work. We are not giving you specific tax or financial advice. We are simply giving you three key elements of how to approach such platforms, as far as the literal, the mental and spiritual format needed to be successful with your aspirations.
Speaker 3:Hello world. You're tuning into another episode of FBN. This is Finance Bros Network, and I am the one half of Finance Anton Lefwich, and this is Michael.
Speaker 4:DePote the other half.
Speaker 3:Yes, sir.
Speaker 4:Hey, we are coming to you for finance for everybody, every people. We are honored to be here and to be able to serve diverse communities as usual.
Speaker 3:Yes, indeed, we are here to serve the S&D. Hey, we decided to be back with you guys. So much going on right now.
Speaker 4:Oh my God, we made that announcement last week.
Speaker 2:The transition to TV and it's moving, it's moving.
Speaker 4:It's moving, so keep a lookout. We don't have a specific date when our first episode is going to be on our television show, but it will be out Again. It's H-H-N-T-V. If you don't have it on your phone, on your television, you can download it on your television. Download it on your game console. It works with LG TV with.
Speaker 4:Samsung, apple TV, roku, all those different platforms. You can just go and type in the H-H-N-T-V Download the app, sign up. It's for free. There is a premium, but this is for free. But guess what we're going to give you?
Speaker 3:We're going to give you our TV audience for free.
Speaker 4:We might do some paid stuff later, but for now you're going to get some of F-B-N-TV. That's what we're calling it. F-b-n-tv Absolutely, because the podcast is the podcast. You guys get to hear this. We want to stay loyal to our podcast customers, especially the people who are driving in taking a listen to our podcast.
Speaker 3:Most definitely, most definitely. We're going to be out for that. We obviously were excited to bring it to you. What are we talking about today? Mike, I think we said something. I heard a little birdie say something about some crypto. Yeah, I know you hit me up the other day about it.
Speaker 4:Talk about. We need to talk about crypto.
Speaker 3:Mike, we got to do it, man, we got to do it because it's out there and people got to know. Man, I want to take the privilege of interviewing you on this one. Oh, okay, Because you've been we haven't done that in a while.
Speaker 2:We haven't done any other episodes we haven't done any other episodes, but we haven't done that in a while.
Speaker 4:This is a 30-minute joint.
Speaker 3:Oh, that's right, we got to give them the work we got.
Speaker 2:We got to give them the work we got, so we're going to dive into it.
Speaker 3:So, Mike, tell the people what is crypto.
Speaker 4:Well, a lot of people look at crypto thinking it's a scam or it's something illegal. I've heard that, but it's real People. It's real If we look at. Just to look at what is crypto it's a digital currency. Got it, got it, okay. So what does that mean? It's just like any other country who creates a currency.
Speaker 3:I like the analogy already.
Speaker 4:So let's say you go to China and you have a dollar right. And then they say well, your dollar value is, let's say, 50 cents at China or in China when you go to China. So for every dollar they'll give you $2, or for the yen, whatever they get.
Speaker 4:Yeah, for whatever the name of their currency is. So some places are higher, some places are lower. So if you go to Dubai, you have to give them $3.54 cents for one a day at Denar. That's what they call it, denar. So this is the same principle, cryptocurrency or digital currency works on.
Speaker 3:That is perhaps the best analogy I have ever heard when it comes to defining crypto. That really makes it digestible.
Speaker 4:But now? So here's the caveat throughout this whole thing the digital currency is not regulated. This came from and I forgot, I think Salasaki Kawasaki or something like that, who created one of the first currencies called Bitcoin. So everybody has heard of Bitcoin and what he did. Just like any other currency, he says, ok, I am going to put a certain amount of currencies out there that people can buy and this works, just like. I'm going to give you another analogy how it works, like if you own a business. If you own a business, you have a C corporation, you can deviate your shares or deviate the business to say, ok, the business I'm going to give a low number, the business is worth $100,000,. Right, the whole business, all its assets, people, everything. If I were to sell this business today, I would want $100,000 for it. So now you say, ok, if I'm going to get $100,000, maybe I could give employees and other people shares at a value of $10. Okay, Okay, so that would be 10,000 shares, right?
Speaker 4:Which is at a value of 10 bucks each. So now the shares is worth 10 bucks. But let's say the business grows to 200. A value right Then. Now the shares are worth more because the company is worth more.
Speaker 3:So the he didn't give more shares the company has more value.
Speaker 4:So now the $10 has become $20 because he didn't sell any more shares. I like it. So let's let's look at currency. It works a little different. So they say I'm only going to offer well in Bitcoin, 664 billion bitcoins. That's all that's out, that's all that's out there, okay, so come to find out with the bitcoins. All right, it's 664 billion Each person now looking at it. Today, it's worth $70,000 per Bitcoin. One Bitcoin 70 Gs and at one time it was only worth a penny.
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh.
Speaker 4:Can you imagine if you have bought it for a penny?
Speaker 3:Oh, Michael, wish I had.
Speaker 4:And guess what that was like sure.
Speaker 3:A lot of us wish we had.
Speaker 4:That was about 20 years ago.
Speaker 3:So it's been that long ago, yeah.
Speaker 4:Okay, but think about this with digital currency, and that's what started the process and so what people decided to do. Because it's not regulated and it's not backed by anything, people started creating digital currency for things, or for concepts, or for things that they're doing. That's why you have all these digital currencies out there Either own coin. They own coin or they're token, okay Okay, and we'll get into that, because the coin I mean, I get that though.
Speaker 3:Right, that makes sense to me. It's almost like they were starting or own coin or company, whatever you want to call it. Right, but if the logistics of the coin, ie business, were bad or the methodologies of the coin or business were bad and people invested into it, these things could fall. Right, that's typical, that's capital, what not?
Speaker 4:I mean, it's a business fall all the time, but that capitalism, yeah, I was gonna say I didn't know if I could call it that Does that make sense.
Speaker 4:Okay, it is because now we're making clear for our, for our wealthings. Yeah, because our wealthings. He said so this digital coin was created by somebody and you have all these alt coins they call them alternative coins out there that somebody created and they say I'm offering a million of them, I'm offering 10 million of, and anybody can make and anybody can create an alternate coin or a digital currency or digital token or digital coin.
Speaker 4:There is a slight difference. I'll explain to you quickly. You guys really don't have to know the difference right now because it's not prevalent to what I think our wealthings would is going to use this for. But, just FYI, a coin is backed by blockchain and I'll explain what's a blockchain and token is back. Is is on top of an existing platform. So somebody who already has a blockchain now they created a token which is the easiest thing to create to say, hey, I'm going to jump on your blockchain.
Speaker 4:Now you want to say well, what is a blockchain and I'll give you the dictionary definition is an advanced database mechanism that allows trans transmission of information sharing with a business network. So a blockchain is pretty much this. Let's say you have a storage room. You put all information in the storage room, but you're allowing people to go in and out of that storage room to take stuff in and out. That's a blockchain, okay, okay, okay, okay. That's that's like bare minimum, the information. So what happens when you purchase or you create a digital coin or digital token? You create this thing that you put in this storage room, right, okay?
Speaker 4:and you say, has value. So for you to come into the storage room to get this particular stuff with value, you have to pay me a certain amount of money, that's a pretty good analogy, I think we can all make it the simplify it Right, right. So I'm really dumbing it down, Right hey hey, hey, I don't know who else needed it.
Speaker 3:I was not dabbing into Bitcoin in this way, right, I just shied away from it for a long time. So, and a lot of people did- because, right, they didn't understand it.
Speaker 4:But the reason why we're talking about it and it's being so prevalent now they're looking. It's gotten so big, they're looking to regulate it.
Speaker 3:Okay, so what's going to happen if it gets regulated?
Speaker 4:So once it gets regulated just like the dollars regulated, just like these other the denar, the denar, the other countries money are regulated, they're back either by gold or they're backed by assets or they're backed by something. Once it gets regulated somebody because digital currency it's backed by you know who knows, depending on the currency, what they're creating that currency for. It could be for a project, a software project, it could be for anything. So as long as they show that there's value in the currency, people can invest into it, then they can make money off of it, depending on how much they offer Remember going back to the shares, or how much they offer Just like any product or service or company.
Speaker 3:Sounds like it sounds the same thing to me, right?
Speaker 4:So when you look at the currency and you're like, okay, how does this work, how does this make sense? How do I invest in it where I don't get my shirt taken from me, right? And that's where the government decided to come in and regulate cryptocurrency, and now it's going to give people the security to invest in the currency and be able to feel safe that there is some law governing there's something that's governing the process, because, yes, in the past, there's been a lot of stuff that's happened with the crypto.
Speaker 4:It's been going crazy and people have done a lot of different things, and that's one of the reasons why Bitcoin if you had watched Bitcoin it fluctuates so hard. There's really no regulation and it's like, okay, I'm going to invest. Somebody's going to say I'm going to invest $10 million into it today and somebody else says, oh, he's invested, there must be something going on. I'm going to invest another million dollars into it.
Speaker 3:And so tell me this, mike, because this is the thing that I always had the question about, because I never understood this it always seems so easy to put your money in. How do you get your money out? Okay?
Speaker 4:That's what I want to know.
Speaker 3:I put real dollars into Bitcoin. How do I get real dollars back?
Speaker 4:So I know of one platform that has created a reputation and I was going to explain this. So there are several places you could take that. What you invest in, you purchase it. Like you said, you purchased this currency digital currency with real dollars, yes, and now it's growing and people save it several ways. Sometimes they'll save it in a hard drive on a computer. They'll save it on the thumb drive For real, yeah. But now you have platform, and the biggest platform in the most trusted platform right now you have Coinbase.
Speaker 3:Coinbase.
Speaker 4:I've heard through the great right, so think of these platforms as banks Noexisting, to make some amount of money is on the right. If you want to match that to what coins are coming out, you can go to Coinbase. It's you put the coin in there, they hold it for you, but because they have a good reputation, they're not gonna go down. You had another company, fx, the guy who took all the money that people invested their crypto into, and I think it was FTX, and he got arrested.
Speaker 2:Oh man, and there was a big push with stars millions made off all over again.
Speaker 4:Yes, it was me and he cashed it out. Oh my gosh. And people lost all their crypto.
Speaker 2:Oh man, so that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 4:So they it's. That's why, right now, they just said they're about to regulate this. Okay, so by the government saying we're gonna regulate it now, there's value, because now there's a form of security, exactly, and people gonna Right Right. Yeah, I got you Right. Okay, but people like the autonomy of digital currency.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's what I was hearing. So much through the, through the sound waves.
Speaker 4:You put your money in there, nobody needs to know. There's no. First of all, this instant you put it in there is digital. It'll pop up somewhere else. There's no transfer fees. There's no. This. There's some countries, that's what they're trying to transfer over to, just complete digital currency digital. So you have third world countries in a hut and they got this little, this little device that's taking Bitcoin or taking whatever currency there. They decided to promote.
Speaker 3:And whatever value people place on it.
Speaker 1:That's what it's worth basically right based
Speaker 3:on what's going on with the coin, or whatever right is that? Does that sound right?
Speaker 4:so more people invest into it because of whatever, let's say whatever the coin is backed by or whatever is doing, then the value of the coin goes up, okay and I heard.
Speaker 3:I heard there was this whole thing with NFTs and Tom Brady getting NFTs and we probably don't have enough time to get to all that, but we'll have to make that for another episode?
Speaker 3:I do want to. I do want to clarify this. So what you're telling me is that if I'm someone who knows nothing about crypto, right, coinbase is a platform where, if I wanted one of the platforms, okay, where I can invest money into crypto, that's correct, and then, essentially, I can go to Coinbase like I'm going to a bank or any other, like like I was going to Dubai and converting, converting my dollars into the DARS right, I can, I can converting my crypto into American dollars, exactly, and I can get real money back, real money back and go buy whatever right and real money.
Speaker 4:You're saying real money, but it's relative right, because US dollar has established himself as real money.
Speaker 3:It's true, yeah this is real money at one point. They were just like crypto right they created it right is real money cuz McDonald's takes it. That's a way, that's what we, that's I guess what a lot of businesses are starting to take Bitcoin right. I had a friend tell me he bought a car with crypto is that real?
Speaker 4:man that's real real, real I didn't I like.
Speaker 3:How does that happen?
Speaker 4:it's very simple. It's again, it's a we have to. Um, we're dumbing it down for our finance Bros network people. We're gonna make this simple. Okay, it's simple as going to another country and changing it for their currency. Okay, that's how simple it is. If you ever travel, they say this is the currency we're gonna use, this is what we're gonna use. Here's the beauty of this. You don't have to travel, you just sit out a laptop, you send them the money and they'll send you the Bitcoin or they'll send you the altcoin, whatever different type of their theory.
Speaker 4:I'm the, you know. Bitcoin cash. This is she boo. You knew there's a. There's a whole bunch of all she boo she boo she boo, boo she boo, this chain link. So there's all these different other types of currency that you can invest.
Speaker 3:It okay, and you had mentioned, and I understand for me, right, right and it's just I could put my money in Apple stock and put it in Google stock. Right, I mean, these are, these are. To me they just sounds like a stock and that's all it. In a sense, right, in a sense that's what it is, and people do trade currency. That is a known strategic thing in the market.
Speaker 4:People trade currency so that's where it's for X, for X is one of the biggest trade trading currencies okay, okay, got it for a for.
Speaker 4:X all over, right, right. So if you put in, if you put in an American dollar in there, and then let's say you purchase you, you buy against the euro dollar because that's one of the biggest trading platform for 4x. So the American dollar, you bought it, your Eurodoll for dollar 26 and it goes down. It goes down, you know you lose money or you gain money on it and you make money off of the difference. Okay, that makes sense, simple. So digital currency, that's what it is. But a lot of people are afraid of it because, again, most of these countries you go to your. You have something tangible. My word have the tangible. You have something tangible make it real you go to the country.
Speaker 4:They give you the currency. They say go to the store, give them this currency, you could buy this product. Simple mm-hmm. Digital currency is not like that. They are starting to get into. So Bitcoin, since Bitcoin is the most popular currency, a lot of people are using Bitcoin to purchase stuff, to allow stuff to be purchased.
Speaker 3:Are you saying I'll be able to walk into McDonald's someday, possibly with a dollar?
Speaker 4:It's not Sunday, it's today.
Speaker 3:It's today with a dollar like a dollar, but it's not a dollar. It says Bitcoin and pay for my amper no the Bitcoin is all digital, it's all just. Oh, just tap it with my phone, just tap it with your phone, that's it.
Speaker 1:Oh man.
Speaker 4:You could go buy a house I heard people buy houses with that as long as the person who's selling the product is accepting of the currency. There's value, wow Okay that makes sense, and that's what we need to know.
Speaker 3:That makes sense, that's true, that's right and that's really it right there. As long as the person is accepting of the currency, it has value and that's simple. I love it.
Speaker 2:Hey, man, hey, you're breaking this down into pieces.
Speaker 4:Right right and I just want to mention a couple of things. So, with this digital currency and digital thing, when you mention NFTs, it's a non-fungible token. What does that mean? That means somebody took a digital product and put a price on it and then now, if you want it, you have to either purchase it from them or figure out how to get it from that person, from a digital product. So NFTs started being a big thing because people would sit there and create millions of these designs and put a price on it or put a product on it Almost like someone painting a portrait or something like that.
Speaker 4:But here's the thing. This is how it works. It's called mining. So what happens when mining? Is when you say, okay, here's the value, here's a code. Now there are like three, 40, 50 different computers that are verifying that to be as so Remember the storage room, so the way this works, which makes it secure and people feel confidence in putting their money in it, because it's like 30 to 40 different people verifying. That's what it's called mining. Yes, this is the product, it is true. So that gives it a security. Right, right, right.
Speaker 4:And it's not one person that's verifying. It's a person in China and a person in London and it's a person in Australia. So it's impossible, almost impossible. I haven't heard for somebody to come in and say it's not true. It's credibility.
Speaker 3:It's credibility to the coin or whatever it is Right, right to the token, all coin, token, whatever it is so that's the credit, so that might give you a peace of mind.
Speaker 4:So wealthy is out there If you decide to go into it. There are a lot of things in the past 20 years that's made this a little better, a little more worthy to jump into it. A lot of people are not jumping into it, but if you're jumping into it, there might be an investment opportunity in there. We're not saying for you to go out and buy a crypto yeah, we're not saying that we already got the disclaimer before the video.
Speaker 3:But I'm really glad we did this, mike, because I wanted people to have something like we do Fundamentals create some awareness, so you guys have a perspective to go. We want to do that Give them our wealthings, a perspective to go into things with Right.
Speaker 4:And we kept it simple. Oh yeah, that, Absolutely those analogies weren't great. I don't know what it is.
Speaker 3:I love analogies, right, storage room analogy, yeah yeah. And the currency analogy with going to other countries, that was great.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's great so, but we're going to break it down as we do. Got to give them the breakdown, okay. So, literal digital currency can be held by digital hardware, a thumb drive, or by a digital currency trade platform, mm, hmm, you know, like a bank that makes it tangible. My work, exactly, exactly Tangible. That's literal, got you? Okay, all right, here's the mental. Don't go into any digital product currency without research or understanding what you're getting into. I like that. I like that. You can't just say, oh oh, johnny said to go into it. Don't do that. That's not smart. No, I mean, mentally, that's stupid. Do your due diligence. So do your due diligence before jumping into it. Yeah, I like it, I like it. And the last is spiritual.
Speaker 4:Give them the champ legacy money, believe that this will grow, just like any other investment, because it's too big for it not to grow. Just believe that. So you just, if you decide to go into this digital currency, this digital world of investing, just make sure you're going in it with all the information, just like we said in a mental research. So research can have that peace of mind Right, so you can have that peace of mind and believe that it's gonna grow, that you did the right thing, because it's too big right now for it to be stopped. If the government is gonna regulate, put laws behind it, that means it's going somewhere.
Speaker 3:I love it, man. And by doing that literal and doing that mental, that's what gives you the spiritual. There you go, that's something you can touch Right, something you can feel Right, so you can believe that's right. Man, can we get that on? Can we just make that a thing or something?
Speaker 2:Like we put that on a T-shirt. Well, I got a T-shirt, you got a T-shirt, I got a T-shirt, I had a T-shirt.
Speaker 4:And look the funny thing about this research on this T-shirt the reason why I took this for this T-shirt because it is a risky thing, Okay.
Speaker 2:Okay, it is risky.
Speaker 4:Because not the masses are not doing it. Only the ones in the know are doing it. That's why it's important you do the research, of course, and you find out, or even if you're mimicking somebody else, make sure they've been doing it for a while and they know what they're doing. You can see their profitability from this. So here's the T-shirt. My crypto wallet is like an onion. When you open it, you want to cry Because you don't know when it goes up, you don't know when it goes down.
Speaker 3:Very volatile, very volatile. I have noticed it is volatile. That's for some like.
Speaker 4:So I put that on a T-shirt. I'm pretty sure somebody would enjoy that if they saw that about crypto.
Speaker 3:That's what's up. It's like people who know they know Right. Mine was way worse than what it was like just a little bit, Just a little bit, Just a little bit. Yep, there you go. I like that. I like that's what's up. I love you, but hey, something you can touch, something you can feel, so you can believe.
Speaker 4:There you go.
Speaker 3:Amen, so this is a good episode, mike. Thanks for letting me interview you.
Speaker 2:No worries, no worries. Give us the 411 to break down all of that.
Speaker 3:Breaking thing down in real simple, compact comps concepts. That's definitely one of your superpowers. Thank you, man. So we're gonna keep coming with it. You guys, don't forget to check us out on HHNTV and, of course, check us out on all your social media podcast platforms. Apple Podcasts, our heart radio, spotify, google Podcasts might be up down. Left or right Matters, just depends on which social media platform you're watching on. And don't forget to come check us out. And, as usual, mike, I appreciate you and we'll see you at the bank. Peace y'all, take care world.
Speaker 2:Oh oh, oh oh oh, oh, oh, oh, thank you.