#3 QUICK TAKE: Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey & Cathy Wood Discuss Bitcoin and Economic Empowerment
Conversation Bites from the B-Word: Bitcoin As A Tool For Economic Empowerment
Welcome back friends,
This morning, Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey & Cathy Wood had an open discussion on Bitcoin and how it can be used as economic empowerment across the world. A few of the topics explored were Bitcoin and renewable energy, the importance of decentralization, and corporations on Bitcoin. Below is a quick summary of the discussion hosted by The B-Word: How Institutions Can Embrace Bitcoin. This is in no way financial advice.
Thanks for reading and have a fantastic day!
â BJ
Notes from The B-Word: Bitcoin As A Tool For Economic Empowerment
Live Discussion with Cathie Wood (CEO of Ark Invest), Elon Musk (CEO of Tesla Motors) & Jack Dorsey (CEO of Tesla Motors) and moderated by Steve Lee (Square Crypto).
What's influenced your views on Bitcoin?
CW: Focussed on disruptive innovation. More interested in Bitcoin knowing she can bring an economics view to BTC. It's a rules based monetary system. Huge misunderstanding as to what Bitcoin is, launched their research efforts.
EM: The vast majority of the systems are batch processing (reconciliation may take 1-5 business days, sometimes longer). Thereâs an opportunity for information theory: data on a network - most throughput, least errors (Error ex. fraud). Support something that improves quality information in which we conduct the economy, Bitcoin is a candidate for that. Solving for decentralization. Confirms Tesla and SpaceX own BTC and he personally owns BTC, ETH & Doge.
JD: The network & community are always evolving. Saw BTC in 2008/09, realized it's an opportunity to replace the monetary foundation. If the internet has a chance to get native currency, it's most likely going to be Bitcoin (community driven - like the early internet, resilience, tested).Â
"The internet gets a chance to have a native currency, to me that's Bitcoin because of the principles, creation story, and resilience. But what inspires me the most, is the community driving it." - Jack Dorsey
Can you say more to âBitcoin changes everythingâ?
JD: Our current systems cause so much distraction and cost. When you find a system for the people to truly own it (verifiable) and it's decentralized, it can change the future of the system. It's not controlled by anyone.Â
CW: Roles of Money - store of value (primary use), means of exchange (apps built on top) & unit of account (reserve currency of asset ecosystem). Purchase power will go up overtime if demand steadily goes up with supply (w/ 21 mil cap). Some ways itâs a hedge against deflation - counterparty risk.Â
Native currency of the internet?
JD: Bitcoin solves the remittance problem around the world. Having sound money separate from the state and verifiable by everyone (state, individual, orgs etc.). Ex. Sending money from Ghana to Ethiopia, gov takes 10%-30% off top, Bitcoin solves this.Â
Importance of throughput around Bitcoin. Can Bitcoin become P2P?
EM: Bitcoin canât scale at the base layer, but with L2 it's possible (depending on implementation).Â
âI might pump, but I donât dumpâ - Elon MuskÂ
Debates around L2 would sacrifice decentralized properties of Bitcoin, Thoughts?
EM: If scaling up doesnât make sense, why not scale down (Joke). Not many improvements since 2008/09. I believe decentralization wonât suffer scaling up.Â
Elonâs off-the-wall Idea: Instead of instead of only a personal space heater, create a personal space heater and node combination (lol). Now one can mine crypto while running a space heater.Â
What draws you to Dogecoin?
EM: The community has great memes and loves dogs. Doesn't take itself too serious.Â
JD: The irreverence draws him to Bitcoin and the community. The resilience is there for Bitcoin and its important to have fun (doge).Â
State of Tesla on BTC?
EM:Â Bitcoin appears to be showing a positive trend in energy. Makes it VERY clear he owns more BTC than ETH & DOGE. Looks like Bitcoin is shifting toward renewables. Trend of increasing renewable energy above 50% before resuming accepting BTC by Tesla.Â
CW: Asks Elonâs thoughts on paper written by Ark & Square on making Bitcoin mining a part of a utility ecosystem whereby the overage from sun or wind powers Bitcoin mining machine thereby enabling the proliferation of renewables to a faster rate.Â
EM: We would need to use multiple ways to create energy. As a base load, it's very possible to make safe renewable energy w/ solar, wind & stored energy.Â
JD: It incentivizes innovation in the renewable energy/crypto space. Imagine unused energy wasted everyday and converting it into sound money for the planet. How do we reuse what's being wasted at scale?
Tesla or Starlinkâs role in expediting renewable energy?
EM: currently we have solar, battery packs (power wall for houses/small business), and utility scale. Mostly for load leveling the grid. Helps to stabilize the grid by reacting fast. Tesla is doing a lot to enable renewables. A limiting factor is cell production - internally producing and externally providing the sales (in ethically and environmentally sound way). Existing hydro and geothermal is good for mining as well as nuclear.Â
Bitcoin's relationship with ESG?
CW: Environmental, Social, Governance. Massive movement in the institutional world to embrace ESG. Environmentally - Bitcoin will be much more environmentally friendly than traditional gold mining and the current financial sector. Social - many institutions think of equity. From our (disruptive) POV, social is saving lives, autonomous tech etc. Places importance on the access to payment technology everywhere around the world w/o friction. Certain governmentâs are dependent on remittances for GDP. Globally $700 billion/year.Â
âA huge part of governance in the Bitcoin ecosystem are the core developersâŠmany of them know economic monetary history better than most and they are on a mission with a noble goal.â - Cathie Wood
Square on Bitcoin and advice for other corps?
JD: Corps are great vessels for what we need to do and our ideas, but Bitcoin is not that. How can square promote what's amazing about it without disrupting the industry negatively. Hardware wallets on their way by Square. Contribution back to the community is important.
Why is it important to have your private keys for a wallet?
EM: If you own crypto in an exchange but they dont give you the private keys, you donât own any crypto. It can be sized, hacked etc. For decentralization, you must own your private keys. Believe in empowering the people, they must own their private keys.
BTC community defends its core principles, what role can you (companyâs) play without the negative drawbacks?
CW: Ark stands for democratization and transparency. Our mission is to educate. Encourage the support of the Bitcoin core developer community. Strong sense of purpose and Ark wants to help make that happen.Â
JD: Personal role is to push for decentralization. Having non custodial solutions. Main focus is a decentralized social media protocol. Continue to push on that thread and show with actions.Â
EM: What about twitter advertisers being able to pay in crypto?
JD: We should be able to take any form of payment, but focus now is to decentralize the network.Â
Thoughts on role w/ company and in Bitcoin?
EM: Its self-evident Bitcoin (and some cryptocurrencies) will make the future good. It can increase the power of the individual relative to the government. If you donât like corporations then you should really hate the government.Â
Advice for others putting BTC on the balance sheet?
CW: Bitcoin is classed as an intangible asset. Needs to change given what we believe Bitcoin is. Take away the boundaries, think about how explosive growth could be. Will serve as hedge against inflation. Those dealing with hyper inflation will migrate. There will be good deflation caused by innovation, bad deflation by companies who leverage and failed in crypto.Â
EM: Teslaâs balance in Europe is showing negative interest rates. We pay the bank to hold our money lol. Definitely switching that to Bitcoin.Â
What is your hope for Bitcoin and how it can impact the world?
EM: Hope for crypto, it can improve efficiency of the information system we call money. Less error will lead to a better standard of living.Â
CW: Money has powerful network effect qualities. Having this money be the best from an ESG POV. From a tech POV, we canât imagine what will happen. Convergence between blockchain tech and AI to change the world, solving problems and creating opportunities.Â
JD: Create world peace. The amount of cost & distraction from our monetary system is a problem.Â