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Unlocking the Secrets of Blockchain: CodePlay Culture Cracks the Crypto Code!
88 Plays1 year ago
Dive into the fascinating world of blockchain and cryptocurrency in this thrilling episode of Codeplay Culture! Join hosts Rui and Logan Dunning as they explore the intersection of coding, video games, entertainment, health, and science with their esteemed guest, Carl. In "Unlocking the Secrets of Blockchain: CodePlay Culture Cracks the Crypto Code!", our hosts demystify the complexities of blockchain technology, discuss its impact on various industries, and uncover the secrets behind some of the most popular cryptocurrencies. From the role of blockchain in gaming to its potential in revolutionizing healthcare, Rui, Logan, and Carl embark on a captivating journey that will leave you enlightened and hungry for more. So, plug in and prepare to have your mind blown as Codeplay Culture unravels the cryptic world of blockchain and crypto!
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Transcript
Introduction to Codeplay Culture
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the Codeplay Culture Podcast, where we discuss tech, gaming, health, and the world around us. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another exciting, amazing episode. Codeplay Culture Podcast, Rui and Logan.
Guest Introduction: Carl on Blockchain
00:00:19
Speaker
We are joined by our first guest ever, and what a guest to have. Carl, nice to have you on the show.
00:00:29
Speaker
Thanks for having me, guys. Appreciate it. Hi, Carl.
Understanding Blockchain Complexity
00:00:34
Speaker
Carl is a resident enthusiast, evangelist, hobbyist of all things blockchain and crypto. I myself know not too much about it other than the Azure stuff. Rui, you've dabbled in a little bit here and there. That's a little bit, yeah.
00:00:54
Speaker
Do you know anything about how deep people can get in that kind of stuff? Well, I know how people can get financially deep in holes because of that stuff. And I know all about that. Yeah. That's the extent of my blockchain knowledge. Fair enough. Yeah. So Carl, blockchain as a concept, it has nothing to do with crypto. Is that correct? I would say
00:01:22
Speaker
Yes and no, right? It's not such a cut and dry technology.
00:01:30
Speaker
that you can just look at it and understand it very quickly. And the terminology, I think a lot of things in IT and tech, the terminologies are ambiguous. Like I'll give you an example, cloud can mean a lot of different things. And virtualization is probably even more of a, call it an abused term where everything's virtualized, right? And so what does that mean? What does it mean to have a virtual network or virtual servers?
00:02:00
Speaker
So, you know, the way I look at blockchain and the actual currencies, the cryptocurrency, like the monetary, the trading, the investment aspect of it, is break it down and look at how blockchain is consumed in like Azure or AWS. And then there's other projects.
00:02:24
Speaker
which honestly I haven't looked in in quite a while, but Hedera and ICP, which is the internet computing protocol, and those projects, the last time I looked at it, you could purchase their compute and storage on their blockchains without using cryptocurrency. You could use a credit card. And just like in Azure or AWS, you can purchase blockchain services using a credit card, or if you're buying,
00:02:52
Speaker
through a reseller, then you do it on net 30 terms. So the actual yeah, the crypto currency is it's still in play. So the companies that are allowing you to purchase with a credit card, they're using the crypto tokens in the back end. Right. And then that gets in that space. So what's what is a cryptocurrency and what's a crypto token? Well, they're all called crypto currencies, because as an example, Hedera or ICP have crypto currencies. But
00:03:22
Speaker
that currency is not used, their currency is not used as a currency, it's used as a token. So this is where like the terminology starts to confuse a lot of people when they're still new to blockchain and crypto. And unfortunately, I think it's just the nature of any new tech when people might read a few articles,
00:03:42
Speaker
or listen to a few podcasts of people talking about it. People are talking about cryptocurrency. There's the assumption that that's all it is. It's cryptocurrency. And then when you try and educate those people, some of them are used as tokens, very similar to the way AirMiles rewards are a token. And AirMiles rewards are not currencies. But you hear a lot of like, but why do they call it a currency?
00:04:12
Speaker
You can explain that, but some people, they're not ready for that early adopter stage of the technology.
Early Adoption of Blockchain by Companies
00:04:25
Speaker
You know, the ease of use of using dApps and wallets and, you know, MetaMask tech wallets that are browser extensions or ledger hardware wallets, that ease of use is very, very low. It takes a lot of time and effort to figure out what you're doing and how it all works. And, you know, you've got to watch a pile of YouTube videos and maybe talk to some friends, read some articles. So there's a lot of time invested in
00:04:50
Speaker
with I think most people that are in crypto. And if it's not them putting the time in, they have access to someone else that did put the time in. So I'm sitting with a friend, which I've done, and I've shown him how it all works, whether it's a hardware wallet or a centralized exchange and the difference between crypto and tokens. And he's going to forget it in two or three days or a week.
00:05:18
Speaker
But I'm always there. He can just call me up as someone to help guide him along. People that don't have that, they don't have the time, then I think it's just not for them as whether it's an investor or an enthusiast. As a developer, because you guys are developers,
00:05:39
Speaker
I think it's like any new tech, right? How much time do you have to put into it? What's the use case for you? What's the demand for you? If you've got customers or your employer doesn't want or need blockchain, you're super busy working whatever hours you're working, just trying to figure out how to keep on top of the existing code and libraries that you're working with, then until something
00:06:08
Speaker
comes out of the blue or that demand for blockchain is presented to you or uncovered as an absolute requirement.
00:06:19
Speaker
then it's an R&D project at that point. But my interest in blockchain is that the companies that are adopting blockchain today or that are basically blockchain first companies, they're maybe like the Cardano's or the Hedera's, Polkadot's, even Ethereum, whether you call them a company or an organization or foundation depends on how they're structured.
00:06:44
Speaker
But those companies and organizations, foundations, the DAOs, I mean, again, a lot of acronyms, those guys that are going 100% blockchain first, they're going to beat competition for the most part that are late to the game. Now, that's not always the case, right? There's a lot of companies like Apple or Microsoft that were late to the game for
00:07:10
Speaker
I mean, Apple wasn't the first company to make phones or iPods, MP3 players and Microsoft were late to the game on virtualization, but they found a way to wedge themselves in there and now they're doing their cloud.
00:07:26
Speaker
So I'm going to start getting really passionate about it. But yeah, I hope that gives you a bit of a background. Yeah, for sure. That's great. Yeah. So I want
Blockchain Privacy: Public vs Private Transactions
00:07:40
Speaker
to ask you something. How does blockchain ensure our privacy? Because I know it deals with a lot of currency and everything's kind of captured in a ledger. And it's obviously not with cash. You can do whatever you want. Because I look at
00:07:56
Speaker
crypto, like it's a currency. I don't look at it from a token or usage perspective because I have money invested in it. But how can it like ensure our privacy?
00:08:07
Speaker
or can it even, is that even possible? Yeah. Like the difference between like a public blockchain or a private blockchain and, and, um, that kind of stuff. Like, uh, I know a little bit about that, but yeah, like, you know, as a public registry that's decentralized and essentially replicated to many different people, how does it work for the private part? You know, like, uh, you know, as you know, people are using this all over the place for nefarious and non nefarious purposes, dark web.
00:08:35
Speaker
onion router level of stuff. And why would, if they pick privacy as a standard for that, how does the privacy versus the public work for decentralized? It seems like, oh, here's the data, but oh, you can't see the data. How is it private, but also public kind of thing? Well, that's a good question. In terms of the Bitcoin blockchain,
00:09:02
Speaker
and you guys are probably aware, the transactions are public, right? So they're transparent. And if you make your Bitcoin addresses, you can have more than one address public, like if you're maybe you're a whatever, like what is it, Patreon, you put on your Bitcoin address or something to get donations or a nonprofit, then anyone can see those transactions to your,
00:09:30
Speaker
to that Bitcoin address, right? They can see what you have moved in and out. In terms of privacy, that's your, I think, you know, you can pick 24 or 12 word passphrase. That private phrase, that's your privacy. Okay. Right? That's on a public blockchain. If it's a private blockchain, like, does it have to be centralized?
Fragmentation in Blockchain and Learning Paths
00:10:03
Speaker
This is where I'm still trying to wrap my head around, because I think you can have private blockchains that are still decentralized, like Hedera had that model, and I believe they're changing it to go more open source, where the node validators and the stakers are corporations like Google or Boeing or on the Hedera, they're involved in Hedera at some level. And so all the transactions there are a little bit more
00:10:32
Speaker
I don't want to say they're hidden because any one that has access to the blockchain that's distributed is going to be able to see the transactions on it. Does anybody potentially know if I send Logan some money or any developer can get access to that?
00:10:57
Speaker
that information, right? Well, yeah. So if someone knows that that address is related to you, then maybe you publish your address on Twitter at looking for donations or whatever, and then they can see that you sent a certain amount of crypto to another address. Now, they're not going to know that that other address was Logan's address unless Logan already published his address.
00:11:21
Speaker
Okay, so they just see is it just like a wallet code? So like you have your wallet, you know hash or whatever and it's like this much Bitcoin sent to this wallet code Is it just like an exchange is a ledger just an exchange between wallets like external wallets? Yeah, okay So they see the transaction of the wallets, but they don't know that this wallet belongs to Rui and this one belongs to Carl. Oh
00:11:43
Speaker
Right. So part of that privacy is in your hands. Yeah, don't publish your addresses. And a lot of blockchains, when there's transactions, they suggest using a new address for each new transaction. I see. I recall recently, I can't remember when, but there was a certain political leader that was freezing people's crypto wallets. I can't remember his name.
00:12:09
Speaker
Um, but yeah, that happened somewhere in some country. I can't remember the country, but it was, it was something, something like it's vague enough that like, like you can't say anymore. And then there's a knock at your door and your camera goes off. Sorry, we lost Ruby for some reason. Uh, you know, like she's already said too much. So if, if, if, if anyone nefarious or not knows your Bitcoin address, they can't seize your Bitcoin.
00:12:36
Speaker
Is it stored locally? No, it's stored on the blockchain. The only thing that would be stored locally if you chose to store it locally would be your passphrase, which is your passphrase is basically your private key. With blockchain encryption, there's public keys and private keys. And I may be butchering this a little bit, but your address, your Bitcoin address, look at that as being the public key.
00:13:04
Speaker
Right? With encryption, you need a private key to be able to allow transactions
00:13:13
Speaker
from that address so that you can send money. You can receive money without using your public key or your private key, but to actually go in there and send any crypto out, any Bitcoin, excuse me, Bitcoin out, you need to unlock that with your private key, right? So your private key, if you have a hardware wallet like a ledger or a Trezor, your private key is stored on that hardware wallet, which it looks like a little USB key.
00:13:40
Speaker
In some cases, it's a large USB looking key with a little LED screen on it. It's not a USB key. Like a UB key? Yeah, except it's running an OS on there. So it's not just flash storage. It's got an operating system on there.
00:13:58
Speaker
Your private key is stored on the hardware wallet. If you're using a wallet like in a browser extension wallet, like with Cardano, they have the URI wallet, like every blockchain, most of them have their own wallet. Then your key is stored encrypted in that wallet, in your browser extension, stored locally on your machine and it's encrypted.
00:14:22
Speaker
So yeah, this is where it starts to get like, there's a lot of moving pieces in terms of how, how, you know, privacy data pass phrases.
00:14:32
Speaker
addresses are all kind of like moved around. And then for anyone that is still new to blockchain and crypto, then they need to understand the difference between centralized exchanges where you don't have your private key, you just have a password to get into the exchange. So that you can see the transactions you've done, you can see how much you have in your account for each cryptocurrency, but you don't own the private key, the crypto exchange does. And that's the problem with
00:15:02
Speaker
you know, like FTX and Mt. Gox when people they all the crypto that was lost or stolen, whatever you want to call it, that crypto was if if it was actually purchased on the blockchain or transacted on the blockchain, then the crypto stays on the blockchain. But FTX owns your owns the key. So they have access to the crypto. I mean, there's other levels of, you know,
00:15:32
Speaker
shenanigans that went on where they actually didn't even, you gave them whatever, a hundred bucks to buy Bitcoin and they never actually bought Bitcoin. They just took your cash and made it look like you bought Bitcoin and they used your cash or something else. So that's centralized exchanges. And that's the same issues that are going on. Not the same, but similar kind of problems that you're seeing with like these Silicon Valley bank or these
00:15:59
Speaker
where you think the bank is, is, you know, they call it solvent, where they have enough money to do what they're supposed to be able to honor. And it turns out they don't. And then the fear in the bank runs. So, yeah, but I was gonna say with Azure, with Azure and AWS, I don't know, but I think that
00:16:27
Speaker
I think those are all private blockchains. So if I knew your address, I still couldn't see it. I would have to have your actual Azure credentials to log in to see the transactions on that.
00:16:37
Speaker
But to go back to your other question, so like if it's a blockchain like Ethereum, there's actually data and smart contracts on there. Can I see that data? And I don't think you can, but I'm not 100% sure because it depends on how that data is stored, right? Is that data stored in such a way that you can only see it if you have the private key?
00:17:01
Speaker
or is that data stored like on, there's a crypto called Filecoin, which people can use for web hosting. So you don't have to use like a GoDaddy, you can store your web, your HTML and JavaScript right on the Filecoin.
Balanced Regulation in Cryptocurrency
00:17:14
Speaker
That would have to be publicly available. So anyone wrote your website. So does it depend on the implementation or it almost seems like in your opinion, would it be like accurate to say that it's very fragmented, depending on the
00:17:29
Speaker
the technology, the coin, the implementers, and the parties using it, and whether they adopt a certain practices or not, or would you say the complete opposite of like, no, it's, you know, it's pretty much standard, everyone's complying with X, Y, and Z? Or, you know, are you finding, you know, and secondly, like, are you finding that a lot of people are reaching out to
00:17:51
Speaker
you know, resident expert, you know, enthusiasts, evangelists like yourself and saying, Hey, you know, I'll, you know, pay you by the hour. I just don't understand this stuff. And I really need someone to guide me through that. So like, what, like, because it seems, uh, is it fragmented or is it kind of easy?
00:18:09
Speaker
And what I'm hearing, I think it's fragmented, right? Yeah. So it's definitely fragmented. And these are problems that certain companies, again, company project are working on. Look at it. Metaphors or analogies are usually pretty good. Back in the old day, if you had a VM running on VMware, you couldn't simply bring that VM into another virtualization platform.
00:18:38
Speaker
And then they had converters to convert VMDK to whatever that Hyper-B format is. Another good example might be you can't compile Pascal with a C compiler.
00:18:59
Speaker
Right. There's that level of compatibility. You can't that level of compatibility with with blockchains. It has to be. It has to be just like you can't run a while you can, but not easily. You can't run a Mac app on a Windows desktop. Right. Right.
00:19:16
Speaker
So these are problems with cross-chain interoperability that Cardano is working on, Polkadot's working on, and there's a few others so that you can have this ability to move resources, which are essentially either tokens or smart contracts between blockchains, or at least access them from one chain to another. So if you're writing a DAP, DAP stands for distributed application, which is just an app running on the blockchain.
00:19:51
Speaker
When I say the blockchain, a lot of people think there is only one blockchain, just like there's only one internet. I think there's a lot of people out there that think there's only one email, right? They don't understand that there's email servers for centralized email.
00:20:10
Speaker
ignore the word centralized, but like Roger's email or Bell or Google, they have email servers, but corporations can have their own unique distinct email servers. So you guys and me, understanding networking and how data centers work, because I think everyone's coming at blockchain and crypto from a different viewpoint.
00:20:34
Speaker
And my understanding of already a virtualization data centers, storage networks, it's allowed me to look at blockchain. Once I understood blockchain, it woke me up to like, wow, there's something really, really interesting going on here. Carl, I have a very spicy question for you.
00:21:03
Speaker
Are you a proponent of government regulation in crypto? Be careful. I think it's like a rubber band. I think it was the Dalai Lama that used the rubber band analogy that if a rubber band is too loose or too tight, it doesn't do its job, right? Right. I see. The middle ground. Yeah, there's got to be a middle ground, right?
Corporate Adoption of Bitcoin
00:21:32
Speaker
I agree.
00:21:33
Speaker
I think, you know, kind of going back to the usability issues, these are being worked out. The blockchain, you know, the developers working on these blockchain projects, I think they're they're realizing that in order to get the average person that uses the internet or email to use blockchain and crypto, they've got to make it significantly easier to use. Right. And I've told friends that, you know, man, like, you know,
00:22:02
Speaker
Don't mind me, I talk like I'm a Bitcoin or a crypto sales guy sometimes when I get going, and I've toned it down a lot because I realized that, look, when I get caught up in it, in the discussion, it's easy to just go off on tangents. And when I'm talking to people that don't understand technology and
00:22:24
Speaker
And I take it for granted that I'm explaining it in a way that's not full of acronyms because I'll break it down, but I talk fast and I'm just going on all these like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, when I get going. And what I realized is that
00:22:41
Speaker
It's like the average person doesn't know what they're buying for their investments. They're trusting an advisor to give them a basket of funds, usually in mutual funds, maybe ETFs, and there's that level of trust with their financial advisor.
00:22:58
Speaker
And I look at blockchain, well, Bitcoin, like Tesla owns Bitcoin on their balance sheet, Square does. There's a few others, maybe like two to five companies in the Fortune 500 that own blockchain on their balance sheets. So most people that have some kind of
00:23:19
Speaker
S&P 500 or retirement plan and has exposure to the US S&P 500, they already own Bitcoin by proxy. They just don't know it. And if you believe Michael Saylor, who is the CEO of MicroStrategy, if you buy into what his philosophy and thesis is with Bitcoin, that more and more companies are going to keep putting Bitcoin on their balance sheet.
00:23:49
Speaker
Does the average person need to own Bitcoin? I don't think so. I don't think it hurts either.
00:23:57
Speaker
I might be messing his name up, but Chamath Happy Bitalia, you know, yeah, from the podcast. Yeah. That's like the not top five or number one for a while. Like, yeah, listen to that nonstop. Like he's a ex Facebook, I guess just tech billionaire, but they're all like, I'd say I think almost all of them, except the one, the one host guys.
00:24:20
Speaker
you know, they're like stinking rich entrepreneurs that are super smart. But yeah, Chamoff, Papa Latia, or I can't pronounce his last name, but yeah.
00:24:30
Speaker
Yeah, so I mean, not just him, but I think Kevin O'Leary and a bunch of other guys, they suggest people hold between 1% and 5% of their savings in Bitcoin as a hedge, just in case. And that's still risky, right, to a lot of people. And financial advisors are
00:24:51
Speaker
if they're not incented, because you can buy Bitcoin through an ETF in Canada and like as a spot Bitcoin in the US, they do not yet have a spot Bitcoin. And then, you know- What is that? A spot Bitcoin, is that like wealth simple or? No, a spot Bitcoin means that the ETF actually holds the underlying Bitcoin asset. Would you happen to know which ETF it is? Purpose is the biggest one in Canada.
00:25:18
Speaker
Interesting. But for the average person, then, you know, there's the do you buy the unhedged or the hedge ETF? Right. I think there's two or three other Bitcoin ETFs in Canada. There were some there are Bitcoin trusts. So there's like, if you don't know what you're doing, you're just going to go, this is just too much to wrap my head around. Like, do I buy unhedged or hedged?
00:25:43
Speaker
Do I buy the trust or the ETF? And in the U.S., there's no spot ETF yet. They're still on a futures ETF, which is not they don't own Bitcoin in the futures ETF. They're speculating on speculating on the future price of Bitcoin. Yeah. So you know what I mean? Yeah, I was going to say when in doubt, buy the trust. I mean, you can trust it, right?
00:26:07
Speaker
That's my philosophy. I mean, that's not financial advice by any means. Please don't take it. You can trust the trust because it's called trust. I don't know enough about the trust. There's a grayscale Bitcoin trust or crypto trust in the US. And I think they have a basket of funds where you can pick and choose which crypto you want to be investing in. But you're paying a premium, for my understanding, you're paying a premium for Bitcoin and a trust.
00:26:34
Speaker
So if Bitcoin's trading at $20,000 and the trust you may be paying, I think up to 20, 10 to 30% more. So you're paying a premium for it. And then I think a lot of these trusts are starting to wrap things down. And I believe partly because there's the ETF, the futures Bitcoin that is starting to take more capital from people. But I think they're pushing hard to try and get the SEC to regulate a proper spot ETF in the US.
00:27:06
Speaker
I know there's companies pushing hard for that, but I think that's why the trusts are starting to lose a bit of popularity.
00:27:21
Speaker
My nose isn't really to the street on that stuff. So my information is a little, little laggard. I'll tell you the guys this though, there's some really good podcasts that I are, sorry, YouTube videos or YouTubers, YouTube channels that are talking about Bitcoin and crypto.
Advice for New Crypto Investors
00:27:36
Speaker
If you're, if you're willing to, you know, listen to that kind of stuff, um, coin bureau, coin bureau, yeah. Digital asset news and invest answers.
00:27:50
Speaker
There's a few others, but those are the top three that come to mind. We'll put those three in the links in the show notes for the viewers so they can check it out. For people that are listening up to this point, you could probably tell already it's such a depth of knowledge. If you don't know
00:28:12
Speaker
It's so hard to get into. The elevator pitch for banking is, give me a hundred bucks. I'll keep it at the bank and then maybe I'll invest or whatever. I'll give you back $105 in a couple of years, whatever it is, for 2.5, whatever, non-compounding, just annual boom. I'm like, okay, that sounds like a good elevator pitch, but the elevator pitch for
00:28:35
Speaker
it's so hard. And like you said, Carl, whoever can find a way to simplify this for Granny and Grandpa that don't even know about Facebook yet and they want to put some money into this and you can explain it faster than a bank is probably going to end up
00:28:54
Speaker
super ahead, but it's hard. You have to mask a lot of that stuff because right now, because of the infancy of the technology and as it's getting more standardized and progressing forward, it's not simplified as much as it can be in 10 years from now. But if you have the time, the energy, or you know someone like yourself, Carl, that can
00:29:17
Speaker
help someone wrap their head around. Getting in early is good. Really, people, and I do too, that were able to put some in and get a lot out. Sometimes without that depth of knowledge or research or that passion that you have, Carl, it's very difficult for someone that's just
00:29:39
Speaker
starting out. So those probably the three YouTubers, would you say those are good for getting started? Or where would you say for newcomers to try and understand blockchain crypto? Where's the Hello World app for crypto, getting started page? Yeah. So those three YouTube channels I watch, I would say they're beyond the beginner level.
00:30:08
Speaker
But if beginners are willing to listen and be patient to listen to, a lot of their videos are 15, 20 minutes. So there's a time commitment. I listen to these videos when I'm driving to work, driving home. If I'm going for a hike, I listen to them on the drive to the hike. I don't listen to stuff when I'm out hiking. I just want to be clear.
00:30:32
Speaker
like clear of, you know, that, yeah, yeah. If I'm doing the dishes, I'll turn the volume up and listen to it while I'm doing the dishes. Sometimes if it's interesting, because you know, you're going to miss stuff when you're, when you're cleaning the house and listening to a podcast, it's just, at least I do. So sometimes I'll go back and I'll rewind stuff or I'll listen to the same podcast.
00:30:58
Speaker
I'm calling it a podcast. These are like 15, 20 minute videos. Some of the videos are a little shorter. But to answer your question, there are other people out there doing more basic videos that are more geared to people that are just getting their feet wet.
00:31:14
Speaker
So, I mean, like, you know, there's there's exchanges out there. And one of my friends is telling me, like, you know, Kevin O'Leary and his wonderful company owns Bitbuy in Canada. They own Coin Bury in Canada. But you have to upload your your I.D. to these companies. Like, you can upload.
00:31:33
Speaker
Not on exchanges. Yeah, you've got to give an exchange of private company, your driver's license, if you don't have a driver's license and your passport and your social, I think they need your social insurance number and a photograph. So a lot of people are just concerned about that level of security. The information out, they're not a bank, right? Like I think with banks, you can just go up to the teller and give them whatever ID. You don't have to upload it to some mythical
00:32:04
Speaker
cloud, internet, wherever it goes after that. The other thing, they call it KYC, right? So KYC, a lot of the companies, the crypto exchanges that require KYC, they send your private data to a third party company to validate it. So now you've got your data going between all these different places. And it's scary, right? You read about data. And it's slightly offshore too.
00:32:29
Speaker
Yeah. Where is your data going? I think some of these KYC companies are in Ireland or offshore. If they're in Ireland, where do they send it to? So your data could be going anywhere. I mean, I think everybody knows someone that's had their bank account or their debit card or their credit card hacked.
00:32:50
Speaker
You know, once you hit a certain age, you tend to, you're exposed to more stories and stuff. So that's a big, that's a big issue too. You know, again, you know, the banks, if and when the banks allow people to buy crypto,
00:33:09
Speaker
in their retirement plans, so you can buy crypto directly, not an ETF, or even if it's outside of your retirement plan. But when the banks allow people to buy crypto, I say when, I mean if and when, then it's gonna be a more safe environment for the average person that wants to invest. The other thing with crypto, as I mentioned to Logan, is that, you know,
00:33:37
Speaker
It's not just about the investment, it's about the actual technology, right? Like if you care about what crypto is going to do to change and improve the world, then you have to, in my mind, you have to separate that from any potential investments or monetary gains. If that's something that you're interested in, which I find very interesting because
00:34:04
Speaker
And I think you have to also do that or trust other people to do it for you. These crypto guys are saying, these are the tokens I buy, these are the tokens I talk about because they're the ones I'm interested in. Like they'll say, I don't talk about tokens that I'm not interested in. Then there's other guys that'll talk about the top tokens that are in the news.
00:34:26
Speaker
There's I think 10,000 crypto tokens. So how do you know which ones to buy? Even as a developer, if you're not interested in the investment, how do you know which one to write a DAP for? Like I know when you guys are, we're talking about, we talk about React. I mean, I was looking at, do I use React? We're talking now web application development, nothing to do with blockchain. So web front ends, do I use React, Angular, Meteor, JS? Do I just...
00:34:56
Speaker
Do I do it in, what is it, PHP? Like, what do I do? So let's time and effort resources. If you don't have like a network of friends to guide you and let you know their success and failure stories about certain platforms, and all you're doing is reading Hacker News and these reviews,
00:35:17
Speaker
That's what I went through and it was like, oh, it was just so much information to digest. And then you just kind of just dig in head first and learn as you go. I think that's a lot of, a lot, a lot of people do, right? Like, you know, if, if you're investing, put in 50 bucks or a hundred bucks going small so that you have skin in the game.
00:35:41
Speaker
and learn it. There's a lot of these projects, as you learn more about them, whether you're developing or investing, a lot of the great marketing, the great website, the great papers, the user numbers, all of a sudden, you find out there's new information and these are going down. I've invested in crypto.
00:36:09
Speaker
Um, yeah, I don't know why. I mean, I suppose I love losing money. That's why it seems to be a trend, but, uh, yeah, that's my only brush with, with, uh, the whole blockchain and crypto is just direct investing in, uh, an exchange, a centralized exchange. Um, which scares me because, you know, their native coin could just vanish and they're finished. And there goes my money, but, uh, that's the world crypto lives in. It's very uncertain.
00:36:39
Speaker
And just like that, it can disappear. Well, yeah, like FTX, the top one of the top exchanges just completely wiped, right? If you if you have money that you don't want to lose in a crypto exchange, a centralized exchange, whether it's Coinbase or BitBuy or whatever, get yourself through yourself a favor, get a hardware wallet or at the very least use like a browser extension wallet. Right.
00:37:06
Speaker
But their native token will still, like if they go down, their native token's done, even if you keep it in full storage. No, no, no. Oh, yeah, but just don't buy the native tokens. If you're buying native tokens for, I don't know if KuCoin has a native token, KuCoin or Binance, yeah, you're definitely at risk of
00:37:29
Speaker
them going into the toilet like FTX did. Even if Binance as a company is fine, their tokens can still lose favor, right? The utility of the Binance token is, yes, there's utility, right? But it's not as useful, excuse me, as say Ethereum.
00:37:52
Speaker
Right. Cardano is one of my favorites. If you're inclined, learn how to use decentralized exchanges, DEXs.
00:38:05
Speaker
So you could buy your tokens in a centralized exchange, whatever you buy, like say you buy Ethereum or Cardano, move that over to your URI wallet or your MetaMask or whatever wallet you use, and then you can use like MinSwap for Cardano or you can use Uniswap for your Ethereum tokens, and then you're off the grid at that point. Right, but then you have those fees, right? Those sometimes astronomical gas fees.
00:38:35
Speaker
which you don't have in exchanges. That's another problem for people that are trading in small amounts and just experimenting. I don't know what the fees are now with Ethereum. I think the last time I luck was a few months, but it was like
00:38:52
Speaker
I think it was 16 bucks a trade. It doesn't matter if you're trading $10 or $100, but you're still 10% on $100. But if you're trading $1,000 or $100,000, then those fees are negligible. Negligible.
00:39:10
Speaker
And if you look at the dollar values that are transacted on some of these exchanges, I mean, there's the big guns, the whales, they're pushing 100K, 200K, a couple of million here and there. So the fees to them don't even hit their radar. All right. That's one of the reasons I love exchanges, the fees are extremely low, and the more you track it, the lower the fees get, right?
00:39:36
Speaker
And the fact that you can get in there and snipe something for super low and then, you know, just kind of off it for a little higher than what you pay for it. And now they have bots on a lot of these exchanges, right? That do it for you, which is pretty cool.
00:39:49
Speaker
Yeah, you're right.
Investment Diversification and Liquidity Pools
00:39:51
Speaker
And again, if you have $20 of this token, $100 of that token, getting those tokens off the exchange, especially if they're Ethereum-based tokens, you're losing all... It's almost... Not worth it. Just leave it on there and take some risk if that exchange goes in the toilet. You're taking risk. That's part of...
00:40:15
Speaker
Use multiple exchanges. Don't just use one exchange. Try and diversify your exchanges. There's an article today I read, Kevin O'Leary is recommending all of his startup companies that he invests in to put no more than 20% of their cash in any one single bank.
00:40:34
Speaker
His investment philosophy that he announces publicly, maybe he does things differently in private knows, but he says, don't put any more of 5% of your net worth in one single asset. That makes sense. He's not talking about asset class, I believe. He's just talking about an asset, right? You could have 20% in real estate, but don't have more than 5%. Again, obviously, it depends where you're starting out. If you just have one house.
00:41:00
Speaker
If you have enough money, then be smart and diversify. My point is, diversify on the exchanges you use. If you get into decentralized exchanges and then contributing to liquidity pools,
00:41:25
Speaker
and then staking on a decentralized exchange, that's a whole other head spin. That took me quite a while to understand that. And I still don't fully understand it, but I've been dabbling with that to understand it. It's very interesting where that goes. I remember going on the wall and seeing 800% return, thinking to myself, what? This is too good to be true. This is insane. But sure enough, yeah.
00:41:53
Speaker
Yeah, there's tons and tons of them out there that are short term gains. Like Radio Shack has an exchange, which I don't know if they're shutting it down. I think they're on the verge of another bankruptcy from what I was reading, but I think so. Among many, many other, many other exchanges where, you know, they're offering these crazy returns of like 800, 700%, but then
00:42:16
Speaker
Those returns only last for a certain amount of time, depending on how many people get into that pool, and then the returns start to dwindle down. And look, diminishing returns. If you have crypto locked into a liquidity pool on a decentralized exchange, and that exchange gets hacked, or they go belly up, then you lose that too. Done. So there's a lot of risks involved.
SQL Queries on Blockchain Data
00:42:46
Speaker
Yeah, I see there's a certain amount of complexity. And there's just a lot of information that wrap your head around. So it's certainly not for everyone. But what interested me, because I've never thought about it or heard about it, is Logan was talking about being able to use SQL queries on the blockchain. And I'm like, that's a game changer.
00:43:09
Speaker
Yeah, the blockchain part of it, which is kind of really fascinating in the private and public parts. And when I was doing my research, apparently Azure SQL Ledger or Azure SQL both have
00:43:26
Speaker
ledger capabilities, whether it's right once, unmodified after, or you can modify, but then it has a centralized private or public history table, which is the ledger, is free. If you have Azure SQL, let's say you don't have Azure SQL ledger,
00:43:45
Speaker
You can just now, with like, you know, in SQL or T-SQL, you can say create table, you know, this GUID for ID, first name, varchar, whatever, and then you say at the end when you create table, ledger equals on.
00:44:01
Speaker
And then you have to provide a switch that says, hey, do you want this for write once, read only after, or what kind of variant of the blockchain ledger table you want. But yeah, it's free to everyone. I guess what happened was Microsoft got, they were providing some,
00:44:19
Speaker
I guess blockchain level of software development kits for various, like they were in it pretty deep and then they got out. And then other companies like Oracle, IBM and AWS, for example, I guess has like 25% of some kind of a
00:44:35
Speaker
and Ethereum node push, you know, I'm not sure too much like the AWS is like, they looked at pretty good for SDK level blockchain stuff. And Azure or Microsoft, they're just like, you know what, we'll get out of that a bit, we'll pull back and we'll deprecate those blockchain services. But then what we'll do is we'll introduce more of a blockchain level of product that you can just opt into or it's, you know, free if you have
00:45:03
Speaker
whatever minimum tier of Azure SQL and then you can have some ledger blockchain tables and they read and write just like SQL tables. However, all of that public private centralized decentralized part is kind of
00:45:19
Speaker
software as a service or PaaS, platform as a service. So you don't have to worry about any of that stuff. What you do have to worry about is things like performance. Companies probably don't want to shut up Azure SQL Leisure right away because it is slower, but by design and by consensus, because you do want to have security, privacy, and validity over performance.
00:45:46
Speaker
and Azure SQL and SQL 2022 starting I think eight months ago, have a stored procedure that can be called to validate the whole blockchain.
00:45:58
Speaker
because I guess when you insert a row into the ledger, it has some kind of hash, right? But that hash was computed and created by the previous. So if you don't validate the entire blockchain, that's the whole chain of it, it's completely invalid. And you could actually, people can say,
00:46:18
Speaker
you know, because that part is potentially public or private. When other people are having a copy of that part of the data, they can actually run, is this transaction valid? And if it's not, they can say, hey, I'm not transacting on that or whatever it is, whatever.
00:46:34
Speaker
it's up to the application, you know, like you said, Carl, like React, Angular View, Blazor, you know, Meteor, JS, whatever frontend you have to show, hey, we were trying to transact that, however, this particular
00:46:50
Speaker
um, source or destination has an invalid, um, all of that stuff. So they're trying to like make it more like, all right, you want to store your history here? Cause at the end of the day, like blockchain is just a validated history, right? There's no way that they can, if there was a way that the people would alter it or muck with it, there's ways to validate it. So that's part of the,
00:47:16
Speaker
I guess when I was looking into it, they were talking about how a malicious DBA or database administrator could just have access to tables in a bank and just increase their own revenue with an update statement, whatever it is. So this kind of technology allows for no one malicious to be able to, regardless of access.
00:47:40
Speaker
But yeah, like, do you have, do you have like people in your, like when people reach out to you, Carl, or like consulting and whatnot? What would you say they're, you know, people that are looking to get help with, are they more on the business side, the consumer side, or would you say it's like a mix? And are they looking at software solutions or are they just looking at investment advice or, you know, the platforms and understanding A to Z?
00:48:07
Speaker
I'm
00:48:21
Speaker
At work, I'm selling IT gear to smaller mid-sized companies and we're selling a little bit of everything. But blockchain, some people are interested in it, but it's not there yet. And it's not just me. I look at blockchain.
00:48:42
Speaker
The way you like, if you look at virtual servers, you know, VMware and like to the, like literally like within the first two years of VMware came out, it was, I don't know, like whatever, like one in a hundred companies were using it. Right now, like it's almost every company uses VMware and let's start a cloud first company. There are a few that are using Hyper-B, but
00:49:04
Speaker
I think we're probably, I'm just guessing, and it seems to be kind of like what everyone's saying that knows more than I do. We're looking at like five to 10 years out before blockchain becomes to the extent that
00:49:25
Speaker
Like the way it's like Netflix. Everyone's using Netflix, right? Everyone's using email. Everyone's using virtual servers. Almost everyone's using the cloud. We're probably a good five to 10 years away. It's basically going to hit its pinnacle at the same time. Chat GPT is going to hit its pinnacle and it's pretty much the end for everything.
00:49:47
Speaker
Ah, right. So chatGPT makes a baby with crypto.
Predictions for Blockchain's Future Impact
00:49:52
Speaker
And then it's like a chatGPT and Bitcoin baby that is the AI that just eats us and spits out like coordinate. What are people saying? It's Skynet. Yeah, Skynet. Oh, we're not supposed to talk about Skynet. Oh, shoot. I forgot. Can you edit that out? Sorry, man. Yeah, I will edit that out. Hopefully, I don't forget. Oh, yeah, please don't. I won't. What are you guys doing for time? How are you guys doing for time here?
00:50:15
Speaker
Yeah, good. We have 50, so I'm just going to write down at the 50-minute mark. We'll cut this part out. But generally, we can go for another five minutes if we want to wrap it up, and we could just maybe just bring it back and
00:50:32
Speaker
And then, okay. All right. So at, um, at 50 and then 40, you guys see a clock at the top. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, so at 50, 50, I'll kick it off again. All right. Let's go to the same positions.
00:50:48
Speaker
So, I guess, Carl, if someone's looking to get into this space, like, this is my blind opinion and tell me, like, this is stupid, Logan, or maybe it's a good idea, what I'm hearing, because I'm not, like, super good like you guys are, like, you guys talk the whole time, I'm like, oh, man, I'm, like, I'm learning so much, so thank you so much, like, all the different terminology and stuff, but what I'm hearing in my, like,
00:51:12
Speaker
You know, if invitancy, can't pronounce that, is I should just buy, you know, $100 Bitcoin, 100 Cardano, and Ethereum, and maybe do that maybe three times in three different exchanges. Would that be like a safe bet? Like as I'm looking for the five or the 22nd elevator pitch to tell to my grandma. Hold on. Before Carl gives his way more wise opinion than me,
00:51:40
Speaker
Invest stupidly and you'll be stupidly rich. Sorry, Carl. It depends what your goals are, right? What are you trying to achieve? Are you trying to learn how to understand?
00:51:56
Speaker
Yeah, so for the seeds for a larger investment or like if you also let's say that average person that just they're like, Oh my gosh, if I don't get my money into Apple or Blackberry or whatever it was that boomed, but you know what I mean? They're like, it's cause it's on the rise.
00:52:11
Speaker
Um, what do people just like blindly, it's like the GIC, right? Guaranteed, whatever you're going to get a guaranteed, you know, 2% over five years. What's the GIC level of I'm going to put in X amount into these three coins or like, I just want to like not miss out on the spike. I expect everything you put in the crypto to go to zero. That's the safest expectation. Absolutely. You know, you know, there's different, you have to have different levels of expectation to answer your question though.
00:52:42
Speaker
Anyone starting out just use one exchange and learn how to use a cold wallet and get it off the exchange. Once you hit that threshold, whether your threshold is 100 bucks, 500 bucks, 1,000, 5,000, whatever it is, once you hit that threshold, learn how to get your crypto off the exchange.
00:53:03
Speaker
Some exchanges will be fine, but you just don't know. Kevin O'Leary in that article I mentioned, he said, you never know when some black swan idiot manager is going to direct things regardless of whether it's a big bank or a small bank. You just don't know. That's why he's saying 20% of your company's money max in each bank. So five banks, 20%. Which tokens to pick?
Choosing Cryptocurrencies to Invest In
00:53:30
Speaker
If you're just a beginner, just go with Bitcoin.
00:53:33
Speaker
You know, if you want to know which e-commerce, like back in the day, it's like, do you go with the chapters or Amazon or, you know, which one do you pick? Amazon was kind of like the leader, but now there's so many out there. There's so many crypto projects. I think a lot of people are just going with the top 10 or top 20. And then you have to decide how you want to play that game because
00:54:03
Speaker
When you're investing in these projects, they change. There's new features. Ethereum went from proof of work to proof of stake.
00:54:13
Speaker
And then the people kind of run in the show, whether it's Charles Hoskinson from Cardano or whoever is leading that charge, they they're going to come into play in terms of the people behind it, like the leadership of that project, the human leadership with Bitcoin. There's really the leadership is it's very different because of the way it's the leadership is focused on on just maintaining that open source code base versus adding new features so that
00:54:45
Speaker
I don't know if Bitcoin and crypto should be for everybody. I think you have to want it. You have to be willing to put the time and effort into it or find someone that can guide you like I've been guiding one of my friends along. And I've had another friend guide me to a certain extent.
00:55:05
Speaker
Because I had a better understanding of networking and technology, I just went in deep. My one friend that got me back into crypto is he's looking at it from an investment standpoint.
00:55:20
Speaker
So he still looks at Ripple and lawsuits and the features that are coming out. But I'm going deeper. I'm looking at the network layer. And it's been a while, but about last summer, I was writing smart contracts on Cardano and Solano just to understand it and get a feel for how actually very difficult
00:55:42
Speaker
And that's why I was interested when you mentioned that Microsoft has, um, you can use SQL.
Writing Smart Contracts on Cardano and Solano
00:55:48
Speaker
I'm not sure I want to dig a little bit deeper into this, but, um, as you guys are, I'm sure you're aware of writing SQL queries. You've got to write a lot of code to make sure you're writing, uh, queries that are. They're going to do what you want them to do, that you're not losing data or people can delete data inadvertently. And the blockchain is just.
00:56:08
Speaker
It's an extra layer of security and protection on databases if you need it. If you don't need it, then don't use it.
00:56:16
Speaker
Yeah, with Azure SQL Azure, some companies are just offloading, logging, audit logging to the blockchain so they can ensure that if a transaction happened in the application, let's say it's a baseball application with teams and games and scores that no one can alter it once it's written. It's just a way of ensuring that data integrity. But yeah, it's a good solution.
00:56:44
Speaker
you know, for that, but yeah, there's a lot that you can go pretty deep, you know? So, you know, for those that don't know, blockchain, you know, and crypto very tightly coupled, but individual things. And yeah, the other thing, I didn't know if I told you this, Carl, but I'm interested in, I'm writing some, when I say I'm writing it, chat GPT is writing it because as we know, it does a majority of our work, everyone's work these days. And if it isn't, then it should be for anyone that is unaware of chat GPT, you know, download it.
00:57:13
Speaker
and ask it to do whatever you want. So you can be work, work super smart. But, you know, an API integration layer in C sharp with Stripe, which is like online payments, because I believe Stripe offers pay with Bitcoin. So you know how you can check out with Apple, PayPal, whatever credit card you want. And then I guess it like adjudicates or like, you know, hits a credit card through Stripe and then they take a fee kind of like the square when you run your credit card through the adapter. But they have pay with Bitcoin.
00:57:43
Speaker
So it'd be kind of cool to offer that as a solution for some of the micro sass that you know, we develop But yeah, imagine that like yeah, I'd like to buy this skateboard, you know, I would like to pay with 0.0000 whatever one Bitcoin but
00:58:01
Speaker
Yeah, pretty cool integrations on that part on the C sharp side.
Integrating Blockchain with Front-end Technologies
00:58:06
Speaker
And the only thing else I have Carl from like an app dev perspective that we didn't get to is, you know, how you talked about the front ends with all the spa frameworks for people that are just kind of in that like, where do I start? Yeah. React is huge. Like if you search, indeed, like what's the most popular how many job postings are for front end developer react is like probably number one.
00:58:28
Speaker
But I would say that people that are unsure, play and try them out, see which one you like. However, another good tip is if you write everything in HTML, for the most part, you can plug and play that to all five of the spa frameworks. So start with the raw, and then you can move it around. Because at the end of the day, you don't want to write it twice or lose any code when you port between them. And if you ever say, if you ever have HTML, or actually, if you ever have
00:58:53
Speaker
React, you can probably paste that code into chat GPT and say, convert this React code to Angular code. I watched a video right before hopping on this call where Nick Chapsis, who's one of the most awesome dotnet podcasts, he's like pretty good. He went from, I'd say two years ago, from
00:59:14
Speaker
10,000 subscribers on YouTube to now 150. He just went crazy. But he took a bunch of code from a legacy app in C Sharp, plopped it into chat GPT, and this released four hours ago, and he said refactor this to be more performant in these ways. It all compiled, it all worked. We're talking about paying consultants big money to refactor and migrate from one system to another.
00:59:43
Speaker
Um, but yeah. Um, and if you guys are unsure about what to do, you know, take Carl and Ruiz advice and also maybe ask a third party like chat GPT, what do you think you can do? But again, don't trust the robot trusted humans. You know, uh, that, that thing's not fully baked. Um, but yeah, that's the only tips I got from a app dev side. Um, anything else we didn't cover today, Carl, that you want to, you want to mention before, uh,
01:00:13
Speaker
No, but I mean, there's a lot, these conversations can go on for hours and hours. And if you guys wanna do a follow-up, we can do a part two. Yeah, we'd love to have you back and maybe we can go a little bit deeper into a specific part that's like the most, even more passionate. Carl, when you were talking about how you can keep on going and going and you gotta remember to un-acronym
01:00:42
Speaker
for all audiences and stuff. And first off, you did a great job with that today because you did explain all that like you normally do. And I would say that's a very amazing feature that you have, because when you get passionate and you just start going down those rabbit holes, people love that and people love to listen to that and learn. So that passion is is definitely good to anyone getting into it. So, yeah, that would be great. Rui, what about you? Anything else?
01:01:11
Speaker
No, I think everything's been said. It was a lot of information. That was great information. Carl, thank you for being here with us. And yeah, we can do a follow up for sure. We can probably dive into the more technical side of it. It'd be nice to talk about like Solidity and all the smart contracts and how they kind of talk to each other. Because I have no idea about that stuff. Although I'm a developer, I haven't delved into Solidity too much in smart contracts. But yeah, it'd be nice to talk about that.
01:01:42
Speaker
It's a great idea. Yeah. Well, chat GPTs, I played with it to do some DSP code in C++ for audio plugins, FX plugins.
Enhancing Development Efficiency with Chat GPT
01:01:54
Speaker
And what would have probably taken me 20 or 30 hours, I didn't like just a couple hours. It's incredible. Yeah, it is. It's pretty scary.
01:02:04
Speaker
I really feel that there's a bunch of devs out there or a bunch of people out there with the sky's falling approach to developers jobs are gone. I just want to make it very clear to everyone out there because I'm not like a, you know, a catastrophist like I would say a lot of people are about developer jobs.
01:02:21
Speaker
even though there's layoffs. I will say, even though WordPress came out with the administration where you go and add your pages and stuff, they still hire WordPress consultants. It's one of the highest demanded jobs out there. Because at the end of the day, if you think the market's fried and stuff, you're biased because you're a smart developer out there looking at the market.
01:02:44
Speaker
like there are people that have no clue about like oh like what is this at all and they will hire these people it's just now and really we said this last time instead of like them hiring three developers at 100k a year they've now hire you at maybe
01:03:01
Speaker
or the aspiring developer at 160K, but then not the two other people because they know you'll work the job of three people with the tools of chat GPT and stuff. You're now just more efficient and effective. People still need you. The job market's going to thrive because catastrophe is not here. It's just going to make everyone better and more efficient and productive. Yeah. It may reduce the workforce, but honestly, that's all speculation. We don't know. We don't know.
01:03:31
Speaker
So don't worry, everyone. All right, Carl, thank you so much. Appreciate it, Rui. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you, guys.