Cybersecurity with Craig Petronella - CMMC, NIST, DFARS, HIPAA, GDPR, ISO27001

What will happen to my Ethereum after Ethereum's Merge - Blockchain - Zero Trust Solutions - PTG-Podcast-September-7-2022

September 07, 2022 Petronella Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity with Craig Petronella - CMMC, NIST, DFARS, HIPAA, GDPR, ISO27001
What will happen to my Ethereum after Ethereum's Merge - Blockchain - Zero Trust Solutions - PTG-Podcast-September-7-2022
Cybersecurity with Craig Petronella - CMMC, NIST
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Show Notes Transcript

What will happen to my Ethereum after Ethereum's Merge? Blockchain Solutions and use cases - Zero Trust Solutions - PTG-Podcast-September-7-2022

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Craig:

welcome to another podcast today. September 7th, 2022. It's been a while we've been on hiatus. For a while and welcome back. I wanted to talk about The upcoming Ethereum merge. Next week we've got Blake Ray online.

Zoom:

Hello. Long

Craig:

Yes. Yes. We're going to get back on schedule. Don't

Zoom:

Yup. And we will. So what'd you think when you read the news about the, Emerge, unless you're play on it.

Craig:

The first thing I thought about was Do we need to do anything, cause I don't know about you but I hold some Ethereum. I'm sure that there are many listeners that hold some Ethereum. Whether it be on an exchange or in a cold wallet. And the first thing I was wondering was, do I need to do anything? And the short answer is no, you don't need to do anything at all. There are a lot of scams and that's why I wanted to do this episode today because there's a lot of scammers. That are preying on people that are wondering the same thing and trying to send social engineering and phishing emails. To trick you into thinking that you do need to do something with your theories. You do not. There's nothing that you need to do. The merge is going to happen. It's proposed on the 15th of September, which is next week. The research that I did was basically, you don't have to do anything if you're holding it on an exchange or in a cold wallet. You don't have to sell it. You don't have to transfer it. You don't have to convert it. There's nothing that you need to do or that you should do. The only thing that they advise is while the merge is happening. Like I said, proposed on the 15th. They just advise, not doing any transactions or anything during that conversion period.

Zoom:

Sorry, My dog. It was going crazy with a bottle. Yeah, no I I think it's going to be huge. I have been reading about it here And I was nervous at first as well, but apparently they did that. Also in 2014.

Craig:

Yeah, I have to research the date, but I think that you're referencing when it went from a theorem classic to eith right.

Zoom:

I think so. Yeah. I'm trying to catch up on

Craig:

Yeah. So basically what happens just for the listeners is when cryptocurrencies get an upgrade like this, a major upgrade. Typically there's, what's called a fork or a hard fork. And what that means, like what you were just referencing when Ethereum classic got upgraded to the ERC 20, which is That's what a lot of the NFTs are based on. Oh. And by the way, if you own any NFTs, you don't have to do anything with those either. So don't fall victim to any scams that say, oh, you need to do something with your NFT. There's nothing that you need to do. So the only thing I recommend is if you don't have your crypto or your NFTs on a cold wallet, I would recommend doing that. And going through that process If you need help with any of that, we do have some training on compliance, armor.com. That can help you with that. But that's really my only recommendation at this time. Don't fall victim to any social engineering or phishing emails that tell you otherwise, there's absolutely nothing that you need to do there. But the hard fork that I was mentioning is there, there is a possibility that a new Ethereum. Like name it was etc. Now it's E T H there might be a new one, maybe ETH two or some version to be traded in the future. They, I don't know what they're going to really do after this happens, we'll find out. But that, that What happens, or that is what happened in the past with the ERC at E T H.

Zoom:

The reason why, If you look back at theory, I'm like five days or a month. Has gone down almost 8.6%. Do you think people are getting scared because of the More to think.

Craig:

Yeah. So there's a lot of speculation, obviously. We're in very uncertain times right now. I think people that are bullish and optimistic on the merge or probably buying Ethereum and hope that it will rise bedding maybe on a successful merge. Of the future. Obviously nothing that we say on our podcast is financial information and not to be construed as such, we're not financial advisors, not responsible, not condoning or saying that you need to do anything at all. Just put that out there, but yeah, I do think that people are either on the bedding bullish sides of buying it and accumulation. And I do think that there are others that are betting against, just like on the stock market.

Zoom:

Yeah, I'm looking here at the chart.

Craig:

Yeah.

Zoom:

58. Five 7%. Which is down$2,213 and year to date. So from January 1st to September 7th and then six months. It's down 37.63%. Obviously that brings in. obviously, but$937 and 63 cents. And then the past month is down 8%, which is$146 and 38 cents. Obviously this has some to do with with the crypto. I guess the crypto. The scare that's happening. A lot of people are scared. A lot of people. A lot of commercial investors. Retail investors, people like me and you and normal people. I think the market's getting shook, But

Craig:

I think the problem though is or much of the problem. Is that there's just so much misinformation out there even by major news outlets that are popular. There's still a lot of misinformation around. Around cryptocurrency around Bitcoin, around a theory. And other derivatives, there's a lot of, Celebrity sometimes that endorse and then there's repercussions from that people. Believe that it might be a good thing to do. So then they follow suit. The reality is that Bitcoin and Ethereum, especially are game changers. They are changing how we transact and how we handle certain things like smart contracts with Ethereum. They're still active. Efforts going on in the communities they're still active. Efforts around financial institutions, adding or considering adding Bitcoin to help their clients get into Bitcoin. There's still a huge amount of accumulation. By large investors at wa. Which otherwise known as whales. Happening right now. So with with Bitcoin being a true supply and demand cryptocurrency with a finite supply that seems to dwindle more and more each day because people lose their passwords or have bad hygiene. So the real finite supply is still very unknown, but the reality is it's very scarce and scarce things go up typically in value and. I do think that Bitcoin is here to stay and might not have much utility or real world usage. Like something like Ethereum. That's why I like both of them. But I, if you look at, projects around Ethereum and how to use smart contracts and how to fuel smart contracts, one of the big thing, the adoption rate is still increasing, which is good. And that's a lot of the stuff that the news doesn't really tell you about. The other thing that's interesting as well as is the burn rate. They introduce the burn rate at, with Ethereum where so much is burning. And you could look up the exactly, but the point is that the S that's what they did to. Combat or better aligned with Bitcoin. It is not the same though. There still is a Ethereum being mined in produced, and there is it's not the same in re in regards to a finite amount. So what Ethereum did was they started burning so much Ethereum to reduce the supply and keep the demand high.

Zoom:

Yeah. it makes sense. I think also obviously crypto people went crazy and crypto mining and then. He may be more complex, to mine. I asked the proof of work got harder. Right or proof of stake or whatever.

Craig:

Yeah, that's correct. So proof of work is the current algorithm for both Bitcoin and Ethereum. And basically that is the big news around that is it's so horrible for the environment, but that's in my opinion, some misinformation too, because if you think about it, most of our power. At least in our country. And at least where I live, especially is nuclear power. It's not coal power. I know that there are places in the world that still use coal And that's obviously bad for the environment and I don't support But the reality is most of our electricity in modern. Places is nuclear and nuclear is a clean power. Some argue that it's not clean because this nuclear waste, but it is cleaner than things like the alternatives of fossil fuels. So my point is You know, there's a lot of documentaries and a lot of information around oh that, proof of work, it uses so much electricity and it's really bad for the environment. And There's also the big push with cars and automobiles, moving from gas powered engines to electric vehicles and all this stuff. And, the reality is that the carbon footprint is it can be greatly or. Or exponentially reduced if we had more More vegetables and farms, opposed to reducing greenhouse gases and methane gases. And I'm not a scientist or anything like that. But my point is, if you do the research and you look at what affects our environment, My point here is that it's not so much the big move from. Proof of work. And this. Huge amount of electricity required to do mining of Bitcoin. That's not the, if you look at the group, the big picture of everything, that's not the biggest thing that's causing the global problem with climate change. It's it has more to do with other things that are way outside of that circle. The same for vehicles There's so much marketing around, oh, we need to all move to electric vehicles and we need to on the Bitcoin side of things, we need to move from proof of work to proof of stake or a different algorithm. That's more efficient. It doesn't draw so much power. And yes, those are good things that we do probably should consider for the future. But those are not the. In my opinion and based on the facts that I've read. They're not. Mainly the biggest areas to focus.

Zoom:

Are you bear bearish or bullish? I'm assuming you're probably bullish.

Craig:

Yeah, I'm bullish on at least on the two points that we're talking about today with Bitcoin and Ethereum. I do agree with a lot of other investors and a lot of other influencers in the space that. I would say, and I speculate. When I say this, but I would say over 90%. Of the alt coins. Coins or anything different than Bitcoin. I would say that almost all of them will get wiped out. And the reason why I say that, and I don't like to be a pessimist. I like to be more of an optimist, but the reason why I The reality is they're all experimental projects and the likelihood of even starting a business. It's hard and it's harder than ever that we're in a different climate. We have different challenges that we're all dealing with. And the reality is most new alt coins will not survive. There may be a handful that survive. But most of them will not. I think that Bitcoin and Ethereum. Are both going to survive. There's probably going to be some changes and evolutions around, What's the best use for some of those things, maybe as a utility or a store of value. But I think for. There's a lot of critics around, oh you can't use Bitcoin to do X, Y, or Z. What was never really designed for that? The same as, people think that, oh, I'm going to buy coffee with Bitcoin. And you could do that, but it's just not really the best. Way to use the token. In my opinion. It's Bitcoin specifically, it's more of a store of value. It's a long term, a longterm play. Ethereum, however, I think has more utility. Like I said, you have to use the gas and the. The fuel, so to speak from a theorem to power things like smart contracts and automation and different things that are on the Ethereum network. So that's why you. Based into the protocol. You have to have a theorem, you have to burn a Ethereum to power those things. So I think that there, that is built into the cryptocurrency where you have the need to always require it. Another coin that I like is an alt coin. I do not know if it'll survive or not, but I do the project it's called CYA coin. CYA coin is storage, so as you need more storage on the blockchain, you have to use the CYA coins to power it. So I like projects like that kind of Always have a need for the coin in the future.

Zoom:

Yeah. I'm starting to become more of a pastor. CryptoWall. And the reason why. A lot of the users and developers. These are the reason why people are. Losing their trust in crypto. And what I mean, when I say that is. If you think about some of these. These rug poles, where like somebody will make a crypto. And then they'll get all their social influencer friends. And then. They'll just pull money away from the liquidity pool. And then they'll still Millions of dollars. There's nothing that anybody can really do about You can look at. Endless Examples of this happening. And so a lot of people are just starting to believe that crypto. And.

Craig:

Yeah. I think that's a good point. I think that A lot of that comes with the complexity, people. It's just human nature that I would say most people. By default are probably not very technology savvy. Obviously you've got the enthusiasts and those are probably the early adopters that are tech savvy and they are starting, or have, from inception, they started dabbling in projects around Bitcoin, either from an investor perspective or maybe from a mining and a research perspective or a programming perspective. But for the masses, right? Like the mass populations. I would speculate to say that most are not. Tech savvy and most probably don't even care to know about the inner workings of how the cryptocurrency works. I think for most people it's a new shiny object that could have. The potential to help them with a store of value and, alternatively to maybe the stock market or investing in individual companies, It may be interesting to them to look But I think like you just said, Blake, I think that. There's the scammers and the hackers. The bad actors that are out there. They are tech savvy and they're using this as a vehicle to prey upon the weak, So I think that with the amount of scams out there that are just new ones coming out every day, like you said, with pump and dump and just so much. Social interweaving around, I'll get this new shiny object, new altcoin. It's going to be better than XYZ or whatever. And like you said, they put all this marketing behind it and then there's no substance around it. So I think that. That, that's a problem. I think that the. The problem with regulation is a huge one. I think that The. SCC is continuing to regulate things. And I think that overall regulation could be a good thing to protect people and protect the masses. But yeah, you just have to be really sharp right now and you have to rely on the security awareness training that we talk about to educate yourself and make sure that you. You're able to quickly. Determine what's real and what's not.

Zoom:

Something I've seen a lot of. Pretty recently is obviously with the rise. I think a lot of people don't care The utility. The nerds like us do care about the utility side of crypto, but. The normal people. I don't think that they really care so much. Oh, yeah. Like I know a friend who, who did this, or, you They're looking at it from an investment perspective or trying to make money or Like a quick cash grab. But, obviously with. Scams and pumping. And with people making money, there's always going to be people trying to steal it. You know what? There's a new opportunity to make money. There's gonna be people trying to reverse it and flip And I don't know. I know you're not on social media, but I see a lot of people like. DME on Instagram or Facebook or whatever saying, oh if you want to. Learn how to trade Forex. It's just visit my website here. We'll trade you or we'll promise you. 250% return on your money. And then, you go to the website. And it has updated their four eggs. Foreign exchange. Is crypto they're there. They're apparently supposed to be trading crypto and obviously there's no regulation. Behind trading crypto, like There's no professional institution. Regulators, crypto. So therefore people can do whatever they want. The second you send them your money. It's gone.

Craig:

Yeah. And I think one thing that comes to mind is that since there's not much regulation right now There's not a lot of, even the big companies that are in the crypto space. They're saying they're doing something. Whether it's that they're. Like have so much Bitcoin in reserves or have so much. Ethereum and reserves like, resources, to back up their company. Since there's not much regulation, there's not a lot of. Third party audits or process and regulation around. How do you prove that XYZ exchange has the resources to sustain? If. So many people withdraw their money like right now, like with banks, and I'm not a bank expert, back in the day, Banks would have the, the dollar was backed by gold, right? And now the dollar is no longer backed by gold. The mint, the us mint that prints the money. They can print money, but they don't have to have the gold reserves to basically back it up. So what that creates is inflation, right? And we're in like the worst inflation crisis at the moment. It's because. And again, I don't want to be one sided or her. All I'm going to say is that with the ability to print money on demand, without having to have the collateral behind it, that creates an imbalance is how I'll put it. If you had regulation around a certain exchange, for example, maybe the regulation says you have to have X, not X dollars in collateral. At the same thing, I'll use the analogy of buying a house. You can't typically buy a house. Unless you put up some collateral, to get money from the bank in the form of a mortgage. And if you don't have enough collateral, you don't have enough assets. They're probably not going to approve you for the mortgage. Or if they do approve you, you're going to pay a much, much higher rates. But you still have to prove to in this case, the bank, that you're going to be able to uphold your promise and your promises to pay that mortgage back, that you're signing off on. So my point with regulation, I think there is good things that can come about with regulation around that topic where it will help weed out. Basically right now, it's the wild west and anyone can hang their shingle and say, oh, I'm going to create a new cryptocurrency. Or like you said, I'm going to create this Forex thing, or we're going to create a training program. There's just all this stuff that you can take advantage of the quote unquote buzz or the marketing around it right now. Because there's not a lot of barriers legally or from regulation that can stop people from doing that. And I think that's part of the problem of where we are right now. And that's why I'm referencing, it's like the wild west.

Zoom:

That's why I feel like the future I don't know. I hold cryptocurrency. So I don't want to be hypocrite. And obviously I'm not here to promote or demote. Crypto, but I have my my doubts. You know about the future. Crypto and even some of the crypto. Geniuses like. The founder of Ethereum, for example, I remember him talking about how he is. I think, I don't know if these are his words. Exactly. But her, my context, you He was disappointed. With the direction that crypto's going, because here you are having these. He was mostly talking about some of the the NFTs. Like the board apes and all that. And. These millionaires that are playing with these little pictures of monkeys and stuff like that. And that wasn't what crypto was, made for. And I'm not super bullish as I was, but I'll hold crypto. I'll see what, what happened. I'm not. Pump. Everything I have into it, but obviously. But but yeah, I think things are becoming to. I don't know is becoming too saturated. It's not becoming very desirable. As it was in my opinion.

Craig:

Yeah. I don't have a crystal ball either, but the only thing that I'll say is this, like with something like Bitcoin, for example, Bitcoin gives the unbanked, the people that don't have bank accounts. Ability to trade. And Basically do banking functions without a third party or a bank. And I think worldwide. That's a good thing. I don't think that, and this is my opinion, my belief, my perspective. I don't think that individuals in the world should have to use a third party such as a bank. I do think there's a place for a bank. I think a bank could be a good thing in the event that you need to borrow money, for example, to buy a car or things, or like a house or whatever, you obviously couldn't go to a bank, shell collateral, but I see a future where. The bank. As it is today. I'll give you another example. If I want to send you money for a debt. Blake. I can send it to you via PayPal or the banking partnerships or whatever. ACH and there's all these things, but if I send you money through traditional financial, Methods. You're going to have to wait several days for that money to quote unquote clear through all those third-party hands. And I think that middleman approach is a dead dinosaur. I think it's unnecessary. I think that is vastly eliminated by. New disruptors, like something like Bitcoin or cryptocurrency. Now, as far as the founder of Bitcoin or Ethereum, rather being. A pessimist now as far? Here's the thing, a lot of these creators of different things, including like Facebook, for example, They had all, they can't, they don't have a crystal ball either. You don't know what their intentions were when they created it. And you don't know if you. How it would be used in the future. That's impossible to predict, but if you look at. How certain things like Facebook or social media. Are now the cause of, or a big factor in the cause of depression and children and how there's a lot of bullying and all these things. I don't think that the creators of the social platforms really thought that something like that would escalate to the level that it has or. Or could have predicted something I think my point here is that when you unleash certain types of technology, that potentially is a disruptor. The iPhone, I feel was a big disruptor when the iPhone came out and a lot of other companies Samsung and all the companies were all kind of fighting the mobile. War, so to speak, but I don't think that all of the creators there ever predicted how mobile or device addiction and all these things, these negative effects, could happen. My point here is that if you look at and you focus back on Bitcoin. And you look at the good of it and you look at the facts. The facts are, people are trying to hack it every day. Nobody's been able to take it down. It's the most resilient. Crypto or could arguably be the most secure, most resilient type of instrument. That we've ever had. It gives virtually anyone the ability to exchange wealth in seconds. I think those are all good things without a middleman. And that's the thing. I think the move towards a trustless ecosystem in. Pretty much everything that we do. I think that's the future. I think it's the future in cybersecurity. It's the future in finance? I like the work that's being done around blockchain and around trustless healthcare identification and medical records. My opinion is I don't think that. My doctor or Mo or the hospitals that I go to or specialists that I see should be in control of my medical records. I think that I should be in control of that. And I think that I should pick and choose who and when and why I should share a certain personal details. I think the, my point here is. The consumer you and I. In the future should be the holder of, and the protector of a lot of this. Personal identifiable information. And the controller of it. It shouldn't be a third party.

Zoom:

Sorry, lost my windows. But yeah, no, I I totally agree. Your data is your IP is your data

Craig:

yeah, but you can probably only count on one hand though. Where or how you control your own data? You're trusting. When you make data and create data, most likely you're trusting some third party to secure the data. Or have it in their ecosystem and in their, ultimately their control, unless you were given certain security controls. Dials or knobs to adjust yourself. My point here is that. We're still not in a zero trust or a trustless. Day-to-day operation. We're still trusting big corporations. We're still trusting Microsoft and apple. We're generating data every day on their platforms. We're trusting them to keep that data safe and secure and there, and, without getting into the legal and The technicalities of it, there's a lot of. Security that they, those companies give us, but it's in the power of the user to enable the security. And it's also in the fine print that the company that created the, that security is pretty much held harmless and it's on the user protect their data. So it's my point though, is that. There's a lot of education, security awareness training that the user has to have and continue to take to properly know what options they have on security and how to properly secure their stuff. But then they have to do that in over a dozen different systems. Maybe use Microsoft, maybe use Facebook, maybe you use Instagram, all these different ecosystems all now have different security controls that need to be properly adjusted to properly safeguard your data.

Zoom:

Yeah, we probably should talk about that one in the next. How to control. Your data, especially with the the internet.

Craig:

how cool would it be? That if one day, and this is going off topic, or we're going over time But how cool would it be? That in one day in the future, all your data is on a blockchain that only you control, and then maybe all these platforms connecting to your data, blockchain with your permission and authorization. But then when you're done and you don't like that media platform anymore, or Like that software package anymore, you just click a button and you've terminated that connection and they no longer have access to your data. It never left your premise or it never left your blockchain.

Zoom:

That'd

Craig:

How cool would that be? Like you'd like you would be the sole. Creator of that data, the holder of that data and the here's the best part. Since it's on a blockchain, it's secure by default. So you can use. Encryption and different technologies like blockchain to reduce the burden. Of the security of that data. I'm not saying it does everything. Obviously there's responsibility in different safeguards that you have to do. But my point is that it's much less than it is now. Look at it. Now, every ecosystem you go into, you have to adjust security. According to best practices on what they give you that you're allowed to adjust. But the reality is certain things you can adjust and they're not in your control. They're in Microsoft's control or Apple's control or some other big companies control and you're trusting them. To do their part. And as you've seen with the headlines, most aren't doing their part. And as you've seen it our business our, what pays the bills. I think it's fair to say that most don't do enough.

Zoom:

Oh, yeah, for sure. I think the most cool I just thought about when you said that as obviously with blockchain, there's a ledger. Having access to that. With your information. So you'd be able to see. The X company or Y company. Through the ledger was able to request your data,

Craig:

yeah, it's kinda

Zoom:

how often they were.

Craig:

Like like API, right? Like API technology and how to hook different things together. Like Zapier is a popular platform for connecting API APIs of different systems. What if we had in the future? A Zapier, like approach to connect various blockchains together. And you have to realize that. Ethereum and Bitcoin, these are all blockchain solutions, right? Bitcoin is like the first real world use case of a blockchain. It's the longest chains currently the most secure. Ethereum is also a blockchain solution. So these are different blockchain solutions that were created, but there's going to be so many other new blockchain solutions that are created. And I hope that one of them becomes mainstream. That gives the user the power. Like I just said, to store all of their information securely by pretty much as close to default as possible. And. Like you just said, knowing, Hey, I'm going to go to this social media website or I'm going to, I'm going to install this application. And it prompts you whether on your phone or your device and says, look, this application wants permission to use your blockchain to access this data. And it defines exactly the data that it wants and you as the user, get to pick and choose how long, what they get access to for how long and. And all that stuff. And you get a log on the blockchain because remember the blockchain typically is append only. So you get a constant stream, a unit and it's transparent. You see everything that, that application appended to your blockchain. And if you have any concerns around it, you can in one click terminate that connection. And they're gone now. They have no control of your, they have no access to your data anymore. So everything's at your fingertips.

Zoom:

Whenever you said that, like I thought about is You know how, when you use apple pay. And, you're going through the checkout process. You have the option to mask your email

Craig:

Yeah.

Zoom:

pay. So something that popped in my mind is when you talked about that as Giving these companies permission. But through some type of proxy as well. Like how you can mask you. They can go find your data as being accurate through the block chain. But, using like a routing.

Craig:

that, Yeah. That's where the hashing comes in. So the blockchain, everything has a unique block ID. And, you've got the encryption that protects it, but if you look at it, it's just a really long string of characters. So it's pretty, I'm not going to say Different blockchains have different security, but. It's more anonymized than it is now.

Zoom:

Oh, for sure.

Craig:

You can create new wallet addresses that have never been used before based on the algorithm of your blockchain. And then if you've never used that address before you can treat it the same way as like a onetime or like a. Re newly created credit card, for example, that only that person can use and you give them that address and you don't. So my point is, how cool would it be that in the future? You had. I think I talked about this in a previous episode where I was purchasing some NFTs for domain names. I have so many of them that, which is, named dot Eve, right? So I'm, I've purchased certain names that Eve that I like. And in the future with this approach that we're just discussing Blake, it could be that, maybe your blockchain addresses. Your name dot E or whatever you want it to be. And then everything that we just said is all controlled by you. The user. And you can get finance. You can have somebody send money to that. You can use that blockchain for all the references and use cases that we just discussed. How cool would that be? It. Like at a user level, how simple or much more simple it would be.

Zoom:

That'd be amazing.

Craig:

And then all these companies like Facebook or Metta and Instagram and all these companies that you want as a user, you may want to use. Instead of you signing up and. Going through the whole process. You go to their website, you pop in your blockchain ID and then you get to pick and choose what you're going to share with them and why, and for how long.

Zoom:

Yeah, that'd be

Craig:

Eliminates all of the sign-up process because you've already got your blockchain already. It eliminates a lot of. Responsibility because now the users responsible for store. In this case. You're responsible for securing your. Your part and then it takes the, a lot of the responsibility away from all these individual companies that are now currently housing and holding and accessing data. Now you've got all this comp compliance regulation around that. I see a future where. We give the users the power to protect and store their information on a blockchain. And it's all like publicly verified ledger that everyone in the world is verifying the blocks much. Like how Bitcoin is working.

Zoom:

Yeah, that'd be awesome.

Craig:

And in the future you could use, maybe there's a way there's, there is a way now, like we have pancakes swap and some different types of services. There were. Now. In the future, it doesn't have to be, oh, we're only going to do Bitcoin or, oh, we're only going to do with Ethereum for, you could pick whatever you want as your store of value. And then in the future, it could be used with pancake swap or a similar approach and who, You might be a fan of Ethereum and the other might be a fan of CYA coin. It doesn't really matter. My point is that. It would flip to what your. What you want as far as currency goes. So like right now in the world, we have all these different currencies. We've got Canadian currency and the wan and the, everything, all these different currencies there could be a global currency in the world that it could be your native currency, or it could be something different that you prefer, but it's your choice. Not. You know what I mean? Like it's not. it's not. forced upon you is my point

Zoom:

Yeah, no, I can already hear all the conspiracy theorists coming out of the woodworks about global. Like takeovers. one.

Craig:

That that's why I think. Maybe this is the closing argument or whatever. That's why I think if you look at Bitcoin as a store of value, a store of money that it's not controlled by a single entity, you person or a company or a corporation. If you look at it from that perspective, as it being a trustless. Vehicle right to exchange. Money. If you look at it through that lens You don't necessarily need an exchange, right? Like I can send you Bitcoin or cryptocurrency without going through a popular exchange. I could send it to you directly. The reason why people use an exchange is convenience. Much like people use the bank. People use an exchange because it gives the user the ability to exchange it to What's normal or common for them and Fiat, or if you're a us citizen, maybe you want it to be in us dollars because you can't go to the grocery store. Not yet anyway, and exchange your crypto directly to buy milk. So maybe you want to exchange it to dollars. That exchange process is why people use an exchange. Okay. And my point here is that if you zero in on giving the users the power. Two. Basically bank themselves and control their own finances. That's a huge disruptor and that's why we're going through what we're going through right now, because. There's this big fight in this big struggle between the old school way of finance versus the future. And in that fight or that process there's mass elimination. Think about it. Do we really need like all of the different financial institutions that we have.

Zoom:

Probably not. Obviously

Craig:

do they have a purpose? Absolutely. Are people always going to need to borrow money? Absolutely. Two people need credit. Absolutely. So there's different things that I'm not saying that all of them get eliminated. I think that what they need to be doing though is looking ahead of the future of maybe we won't be doing these functions anymore because they're old school, but if they're smart and they're able to adapt quickly. Their financial strategy. Maybe they embrace something like Bitcoin and instead of it, looking at it as the enemy, They look at it through an opportunity. In what I mean by that is if banking. Embraced something like Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies and made it so that, Hey, you can walk into a bank and swap a Bitcoin for, as a down payment on a car or a house. If that was more of a welcome. Process. I think that would be, that would do more good than Prohibiting

Zoom:

That'd be cool. I think hopefully.

Craig:

My point though, I guess in this episode is it's really about the embracing of zero trust and trustless technologies. The putting the power in the consumer and in the user, opposed to the corporation or the business and leveraging new solutions like blockchain technologies and encryption to better our future for all of us and reduce fees and the middleman.

Zoom:

Great way to summarize it.

Craig:

Sounds good to me. Thanks. I appreciate it.