EPISODE 4

Joel Comm Intro: Hey this is Joel Comm, you know what you’re doing? You’re listening Curious with Calvin Wayman

 Joel Comm: some people estimate a single bitcoin you know in just a few years will be worth half a million dollars.

Calvin Wayman: Wow! like all the way up to 500 K?

Joel Comm: There are some that are predicting eventually it will land at a million dollars a bitcoin but think about this…

 

 (Intro Music Plays)

 Calvin Wayman Ladies and gents Happy Monday. I am so excited to come on the podcast this morning. First of all real quick if you want to join the conversation then and see all the stuff that we do with the show with the podcast where everything’s up to connect with other listeners, go to calwayman.com/podcastgroup go to calwayman.com/podcastgroup  (I can’t talk today) go to calwayman.com/podcastgroup and that will forward you to the Facebook group. That’s private where all the episodes are where you can have conversations with other people also, again Im giving away something every single episode. So if you want to get a raffle ticket to win something for this episode then give a review for the podcast and you’re entered to win again. I think I have it up right now if you go to Calvinwayman.com/podcastreview. You can review it there or just go to itunes search Curious with Calvin Wayman send a review and within two days I will be doing a drawing to give something away free. So enter to win there by giving a review. And now we’re here with the eternal 12 year old, my buddy we bump into one another at different events here and there ,he’s also the host of the bad crypto podcast my man, Joel Comm.

Calvin Wayman: How are you doing buddy?

Joel Comm: what’s up Calvin,how are you?

Calvin Wayman: I’m doing super well how are things out in the land of Denver you guys finally getting some snow and stuff like that?

Joel Comm: little bit you know they need some more on the mounds I think we’ve got a little bit of the Front Range ball while the rest of the country has been suffering through brutal cold and snow it’s been super light here really.

Calvin Wayman:  Yes same thing! Im from Salt Lake City originally. I’m in Arizona now but my family there been a little bit of snow on the mountains from what I understand but it’s just been kind of dry so Im wondering if being close to Denver if it’s gone over there and maybe been kind of dry there too.

Joel Comm: Yeah! it has been it’s sunny today, and I just stepped out to get a package from my doorstep you know in a tshirt and shorts and it wasn’t really cold so I’m good.

Calvin Wayman: (laughing) It’s almost like San Diego and Denver in the middle of January. That’s awesome!

Joel Comm: People know it,they think that living in Denver that you know you’re covered in snow all year round. You know they don’t realize that you know from late spring to late fall it is just incredible here, I mean our summers are amazing you know when he gets into the 80s and it’s sunny. We have over 300 days of sunshine here.

Calvin Wayman: And how you’ve been there now? you’ve been around for a while right?

Joel Comm: I’ve been in Northern Colorado since 2007. Yeah and it’s not uncommon to have you know a week during January or February where it’s 70 degrees and sunny.

Calvin Wayman: It just in the middle of January that awesome!

Joel Comm: Yeah it snows and then it melts in the cold frontal blow in and it snows and then it melts and you know so it’s I love it here.

Calvin Wayman: It’s almost been a day over it decades so something must be right if you’ve been there that long and is ahm! Is it kind of like that joke where at least it is in Salt Lake City like if you don’t like the weather just wait five minutes kind of thing?

Joel Comm: Yeah! it does change pretty quickly here but I mean the sunshine is pretty constant if we get a you know a couple of days in a row of cloudy im like hey what’s going on what happened in the sunshine yeah it’s not you know I grew up in the Midwest and Chicago suburbs Ferris Bueller Bill

Calvin Wayman: (laughing)

Joel Comm: That was basically my high school, John Hughes went to my high school and before me and you know murky gray days, weeks you know at a time sometimes you don’t see the sun and humidity so getting away from that to where the sun is shining now almost every day is just really good for me.

Calvin Wayman: You could never do Seattle then it sounds like?

Joel Comm: No! I could visit but I could leave.

Calvin Wayman: Speaking of visiting so I understand you’re going to be hitting the road here in just a second with some of your travels coming up end of february march I know I’ll see you at social media marking World we sure seem to see past one another every year and they’re like what’s what’s on the agenda where you travel into what’s where can people see if they if they wanted to hit the road with you or see you somewhere?

Joel Comm: Well if they’re going to Switzerland to Davos.

Calvin Wayman: Wow! I saw that.

Joel Comm: Yeah! I’m heading to Davos and going to crypto HQ its a block chain at Davos conference taking place at the same time as the World Economic Forum so I’m sure that behind.

Calvin Wayman: I imagine that’s nothing crypto like that has ever happened right?

Joel Comm: Not during the WEF as far as I know. I know they’ll be covering some block chain at the World Economic Forum but this is like the World Economic Forum is the big international event you know the president’s going world leaders from all over the world show up you know billionaires show up in this crypto conferences happening you know on its own in the same town at the same time and so we’re going to probably be running into all kinds of people at this event i don’t know what to expect i just know bad crypto the podcasts I co- hosts with Travis right were the only podcast that’s going to be on hand for this crypto show we’re going to be conducting all kinds of interviews with you know whoever and we’re actually going to we’re speaking and by speaking I mean we’re going to get an hour on stage to do bad crypto live.

Calvin Wayman: oh really you’re going to set it up there to interview people record it for your show and all that stuff.

Joel Comm: Right! Right! in front of in front of an audience and then I’m off to Chile. A few days later after I get back there two keynote for NL energy they’re one of the biggest multibillion dollar energy companies in the world and they want to learn about block chain and how it’s going to impact the energy industry and so this is just the beginning you know i’ll be in San Diego for bold social media marketing world and for traffic and conversion.

Calvin Wayman: Are those are the same time by the way?

Joel Comm: No! no! they almost overlap, TNC is first and then it ends in social media marketing world stars.

Calvin Wayman: OK! Very cool, well speaking of the bad crypto podcast what did you like. That’s been one of those things that kind of just blew out of the water you and I were chatting. Where was Los Angeles an event where like this was something that you just wanted to get into You started the bad crypto podcast really when this crypto currency thing was barely coming to be a thing like to become a mainstream like the talk of block chain was coming around and he like started at the perfect moment where in like the perfect time in humanity where it’s like a conversation in mainstream and that’s kind of blowing up your podcast right.

Joel Comm: Yeah! This really has it’s a unicorn Calvin that’s one of those, I haven’t had one of those since about 2009 since I had my first app hit number one the world have a number of unicorns before that this is the first one in a while you had let it get to.

Calvin Wayman: What did you get up to on the podcast charts?

Joel Comm:  We hit as high as number 140 in all of iTunes and we had less so today actually I don’t know when you got to this is today OK. So it’s just you we’re doing their view and that is the six month anniversary of the day you went live with the show in December. Over 500,000 downloads which is just crazy for a show that’s only been around six months and this month we may approach 700,000 it’s growing.

Calvin Wayman: That is so awesome! Good for you brother.

Joel Comm: I’m so grateful it’s just it’s been such a fun ride. And you know Travis and I think you know when we talk about the timing the thing that you know when the other shows that were out there before we came along you’d listened to those and most of them were one of a few categories. They were either highly technical yes or you know people couldn’t understand them or they were touting you know different only which we don’t do.

Calvin Wayman: Totally!

Joel Comm: We make no recommendations ever you know financial advisers were very clear about that in Travis and I you know basically we were just having conversations on messenger about crypto has started going down the rabbit hole and one day it was actually July 16 2017 he messaged me with a winky you know with a laughing face saying “what’s next?” that you know because we’re talking about crypto so much what are we going to do the Joel and TW crypto.

Calvin Wayman: why not just hit record right?

Joel Comm: And he was joking he was being sarcastic and landed for me and I said dude I have an idea, two days later Calvin we had the website up not just registered up and running it’s badcryptopodcast.com we had our Libsyn account set up because I had already done podcasting before I knew how to do it. We had our Facebook social profile Twitter social profile Instagram and our two days later the first episode went live so it was an idea like 48 hours later the show went and live and you know 200 downloads and 500 like hey people liked us a thousand totally are, our download chart looks like a bitcoin chart.

Calvin Wayman: I’ve seen this. I’ve seen this you show this to me like no joke so like when when you and I saw each other last in person you were showing me the chart and I was like Can you send that to me just because I want to like visualize i have it on my phone so I have like this visual of like charts going up like I mean congratulations! that is such an awesome curve like literally looks just like a hockey stick literally like a hockey stick with the with the growth on there. And why is the name bad like why that on there?

Joel Comm: Well first of all we’re not financial advisers and we’re new to this space we don’t claim to be experts I’m still not an expert which is really ironic because I’m getting asked to come in keynote. You know these major events now because I guess I have learned a little something but I was my I’m a Christian by faith and there is a podcast out there that is a really Irreverent Spiritual podcast called “The Bad Christian podcast and it’s a pastor and two guys from a Christian rock band” and they’re not afraid to take a look at spirituality and the Bible and the Christian world actually question it and stuff like that through the lens of skepticism asking questions you know not being anti you know religious but asking real questions and they call it the bad Christian because those in the mainstream religious community would say all these guys curious and you know they’re questioning doctrine is good and I like this show I think it’s good to question things. And I was inspired by the one of these days I’m going to get to meet one of these guys and tell them Hey you guys inspired the name I told Travis let’s call ourselves the bad crypto podcast because we’re putting right out there that hey we really don’t know if what we’re saying is right and we also have no attitude and show highlighting that bright we’re telling people right out hey don’t listen us we’re bad you know the first episode when we were recording it i didn’t know how to end it, and so I just spontaneously said stay bad, well it’s a catch phrase now every show ends with one of us saying stay bad and people they when they write us an email and post on our Facebook page or leave us voicemails on the bad crypto hotline, they say stay bad all the time it’s like wow this thing that just popped out of nowhere is now a thing.

Calvin Wayman: Isn’t that awesome?

Joel Comm: It’s crazy.

Calvin Wayman: I just love that! you’re seeking out on it, i love how you’re kind of your line is like your true self as an eternal 12 year old boy and I just see it I’ve been seen like you like create this thing and it’s like this cool thing and I just love it, it’s also cool about highlighting it like we’re amateurs on this stuff like that is so freakin refreshing in this space of like experts, and the entrepreneurial world that both you and I are a part of where everybody is trying to show like how they’re just so awesome all the time it’s just really cool to see like no I don’t know what I’m talking about but let’s be curious and talk about it anyway.

Joel Comm: yeah I mean who’s got time for posers you know just keep it real and let’s go down the rabbit hole together. And I think that’s one of the things people like is they understand that we’re learning as we go and so we’re all kind of learning together You know just the other day crypto had a really really bad day.

Calvin Wayman: Yeah, it’s like pounding like 10 to 10000 right?

Joel Comm: Under Under 9000, but the whole market collapse 40 50 percent every coin it went from a high of 820 billion dollar market cap to about 450.

Calvin Wayman: Not just bitcoin everything?

Joel Comm: Oh yes! everything just about everything ahead and of course it’s bouncing back and those of us who have been in for a little while understand the volatility and how this works but you can really it out by that. No not at all because block chain is revolutionary technology Colvard just on that on the block chain.

Calvin Wayman: So yeah! So we’ve said a couple of terms again crypto block chain and all this stuff so I am complete amateur in this whole world to which one of the main reasons I wanted to have this conversation because I’m so curious about it because honestly it’s like headlines everywhere i can’t remember if I saw a Facebook post from you or somebody else on this but it was something like when your cabdriver starts recommending something that’s when you really need to be cautious you know and that’s how far it’s gone so I want to just take a step back like it being a complete novice if you wouldn’t mind like explain what the f is crypto why is it better to have crypto when there’s nothing backed by it like everybody like threw a fit back in the day when the gold standard was no longer a thing when the actual currency was no longer backed by gold cryptos backed by nothing from what I understand so I would love to just kind of like in layman’s terms like how you mentioned your shows not very technical just what is it For those of us still.

Joel Comm:  Well! Well! let me correct something saying that cryptos backed by nothing is actually incorrect in all spline. Why in a moment ctually what we do know since the fiat dollar or our paper currency is not backed by gold but by the Federal Reserve right it’s actually real fake money because they just roll the printing presses Do you know most people don’t know that the Federal Reserve is not a government institution.

Calvin Wayman: Right!

Joel Comm: Because it says Federal Reserve you’d think well this is the government bank.

Calvin Waymn: No it’s not government goes to them.

Joel Comm: Right! Ticket like directly Yeah! yeah exactly but it’s the big banks that are the Federal Reserve, and in basically they control the money supply, they decide what is going to be in the economy and they just print more if you’ll just imagine the printing press is just choking out more and more money and wonder why whatever you know you would be able to buy for $100, ten years ago you know cost you 200 now it’s because of inflation because the value of the dollar is collapsing you are all the currency is collapsing around the world look at Venezuela you know when their currency is gone down 95 percent under their Socialist leadership they’ve had there it’s collapsing and so when you think of the supply of it they keep putting more into supply and so every dollar every day dollars are worth less and less.

Calvin Wayman: I imagine since crypto you’ve really noticed that are dug into like other currencies U.S currency other currencies and noticed that how they’re actually going down.

Joel Comm: Yeah! Everything is you know inflated from what it was you know years ago and then if you jump back in 100 years memory used to be able to you know buy a house you know when I was a little boy I think my parents paid maybe three thousand dollars for my thirty five hundred square foot home or something and you know it’s it’s 20 times that or more depending upon where you are today. Same dollar. Why is it so expensive? Because of inflation because it’s this big scam. It’s a flimflam. It is. And we bought into it because it’s how things are so the dollar continues to go down in value in fact if you’re not investing in something that is bringing you, you know a return of four or five percent a year your money.

Calvin Wayman: you’re losing money?

Joel Comm: Yep! just keeping it in your account and then paying you half a percent in your savings account it’s costing you money for them to hold your money It’s being worth less and less. And so back in 2009 a man who nobody knows who he is went by the name Satoshi Nakamoto proposes

Calvin Wayman:  And people don’t know if that’s a person or a group right?

Joel Comm:  Nobody knows there’s just that name.

Calvin Wayman:  How do we know that name popped up somewhere online?

Joel Comm:  It’s I know it’s a white paper that that came out in 2009 proposing a new type of digital currency that would be based on cryptography digital money you know not like PayPal where we’re sending dollars from one account or another that’s just transference of Fiat talking about a new currency that would be decentralized that is that it would not be owned or run maintained by any organization or institution. So no company no government controlling it and it would be anonymous.

Calvin Wayman: So it’s almost like the Internet right? there’s not one organization that owns the whole web we all are right? Is that would that be a fair comparison?

Joel Comm: Yeah! Kind of close to that although you could you know debate that governments do kind of control and regulate just as they will with crypto currency and you could say that well you know the telcos really own the internet because without their bandwidth you know

Calvin Wayman: Gotchaa!

Joel Comm: We don’t have a pipeline so there’s always you know somebody that has a little more power than somebody else. But the idea here is that this Bitcoin this coin would be anonymous and that it would be decentralized. And here’s the think It would be a limited supply a finite.

Calvin Wayman: So how is that possible not the part that I don’t get. I’ve I’ve heard people say that like you can mine it and I like how the FTA mine zeros and ones like how is it. Is it because the guy like just foresaw things that need to be limit for for value and you like the computer program makes so that it only a certain amount of digital zeroes and ones can be released like What does that even mean.

Joel Comm: Yeah! So great question I’m going to try and explain it in the simplest way possible because once I understood mining because I’m like What does this mean a guy with a little pic’s going ding! ding! ding! ding! ding! is already out.

Calvin Wayman: tapping on the keyboard? (Laughing)

Calvin Wayman: Right! Right!

Joel Comm: Once I understood how mining works what’s actually happening that’s when the light went on because listen Calvin I heard from friends years ago hey Bitcoin! Bitcoin! and I was like I don’t get it it doesn’t make sense and I’m a futurist you know I’m usually on the front lines and I am as far as the show but I could have been from der you know if I had paid attention a couple of years ago I’m glad I got it when I did but once I understood how block chain works so first of all that’s totally different is that a separate upwelling

that’s what I’m going explain here. BLOCK chain is the technology that underpins the operation of any crypto currency such as bitcoin. At the time that the White Paper came out by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009 that the block chain is the technology that would be used to execute bitcoin transactions. So here’s how it works. It’s a code, the code is open source so anybody can see what’s written into the code that functions Bitcoin so nobody can go in and just change the code and in the code it’s written that there will only ever between 20 million of these making it so that it can’t be inflationary on its own the only way that it would increase in value or decreases based on supply and demand pure market forces no external force. OK. So the way it works is all there’s no bitcoin mind at the very beginning. Now what we do is you know when we send a transaction from one person to another there’s a lot of different ways we do it. We write a check, we use pay pal and we have addresses or we have e-mails or we have bank accounts and we send from one to another. Well the way it works with bitcoin or any crypto is you have an address in this case it’s a law, String of alphanumeric acts that are letters and numbers and in none no one addresses anywhere near like any other there is just infinite possibilities for addresses because there are like 30 characters long. Okay!

Joel Comm: So you don’t set out per individual partner account account It is not individual based. You can have as many addresses as you want again there’s a seemingly infinite number of them because of how many permutations I don’t know how many addresses are possible but we’ll never use them all so I want to send you a bitcoin so I get your address and using my bitcoin wallet. I send it from my address to your address. Now here’s what happens and this is where that word gets a little techie but I’m going to try and explain it in a real simple way. The moment I send from my address to yours just like on the Internet we have all these nodes right all these different computers that are passing information around all over the world millions of computers that are connected to the Internet passing information there are people that set up their computers to mine bitcoin And what that means by mining is they are in charge of trying to confirm that transaction to validate it. OK. So I send you bitcoin for my address to yours It goes out to these nodes of computers that are searching the the the Internet for these transactions and it’s a very complex mathematical cryptographic computation that needs to take place without getting too in-depth of it imagine that in order for the transaction to be complete I’m sending out a mathematical equation that you can’t solve with a pen and paper you’d need a computer to crunch a way to solve it. And when the computer solves that calculation and comes up with the right answer it says this is the answer. Now you have computers all over the world trying to solve these problems at the same time and they don’t know each other they don’t know who they are, they just know that all their computers are trying to solve it. So if I sent a calculation to somebody in China and I sent that same you know mathematical problem to somebody in Sweden and I send it to somebody in California and somebody in Mexico they don’t know who each other are but they’re all trying to solve this problem Wolf they solve it right. What’s going to happen they’re going to come up with the same answer they’re going to come up with consensus and with a Bitcoin transaction consensus means 66 miners have validated that transaction said godan this was sent from person to person B and when that confirmation didn’t work. you write that when that confirmation that consensus takes place it’s written on to what we call the block chain it is a ledger so imagine it’s a checkbook, Right? And in that checkbook it’s written into this cheque book as this transaction happened this account sent x amount of currency to this account it’s written on it forever. It’s immutable it’s unchangeable it’s an hackable it’s indisputable it’s on the block chain ledger so block chain is this incredibly long ledger of every transaction that’s ever taken place you could go on to block chain and look up with the transaction ID every single transaction that’s ever been sent in bitcoin from anywhere from any person to any other wallet. All the way back to number one.

Calvin Wayman: So how do you track the how is it how do you balance that with an anemone like how is it anonymous but you could still track it?

Joel Comm: Well nobody knows who’s behind the addresses unless you know got to address it.

Calvin Wayman: Got it!

Joel Comm: Now let me let me finish up by bringing it together with the mining those six computers those six that validated the transaction they pull from from the supply of Bitcoin into their possession as a reward for successfully confirming that transaction. So are we now. Now here’s where we are after eight years of bitcoin is there are over 17 million of the 21 million in circulation now 4 million to go. Now on the block chain information goes out in blocks and there is a preset amount in the code and I hope people are sticking with me and I hope you are going on rather than being confused because I’m trying to explain in simple terms because that’s how I understand what happens is with an increment of blocks on the block chain the difficulty mind them to solve the problems. Increases in it slows the amount of bitcoin pulling into supply the difficulty trusting and because of the difficulty double Calvin. It is estimated that the last bitcoin will not be fully mined out of the twenty one million until the year 21 40 and we will all be dead and gone. Twenty one 40 not 21 we know 21 40 because that’s the difficulty will increase so this is the brilliance in the code that was written it was proposed and because there’s only twenty one million. So 17 million have been mined. OK. Of that seventeen million it is estimated that up to a third of those that were mined early because they were they seemed worthless at the time they were lost they’re lost on people’s hard drives. There are you know there that people have lost the key the password to be able to get them. So that leaves about twelve million in circulation. Of those it’s estimated that Wale’s big investors are holding onto it touts  66 million of them. That leaves five to six million of this digital currency that is in circulation amongst seven billion people now if you want to understand why Bitcoin has gone from completely worthless to hitting $20000  last year it’s around 11 to 12 right now and it might be getting ready to go on another run. You know we’re not sure but we’re we’re waiting to see it some people estimate a single bitcoin you know in just a few years will be worth half a million dollars.

Calvin Wayman: Wow! like from more like all the way up to 500 K?

Joel Comm: There are some that are predicting eventually it will land at a million dollars a bitcoin but think about this all right. So Bitcoin right now has a market capitalization of approximately $200 billion now that sounds like a lot of money right. But in terms of the world money supply it’s nothing. There’s eight point four trillion dollars estimated in the gold supply. There’s $84 trillion in the currency. All money supply of the war right. So 200 billion if if it becomes the new mode of transacting then we’ve yet to see any substantial movement even though people are hearing about the hype and what what I’d like to understand is that this is not about get rich quick total this.

Calvin Wayman: Totally!

Joel Comm: This is about a fundamental transformational way in and in the way that we operate with our banking with our payments with contracts with just about every industry known to mankind is going to be disrupted and up ended by block chain technology because there are now over 14 hundred different crypto currencies with all kinds of different functions that are geared up to replace the way we do things now. So they good segue question.

Calvin Wayman: I wanted to ask I said you said 4900 crypto currencies so to the 21 million that are available that one currency that out of all of them Right ? That’s one of the Just Bitcoin itself just Bitcoin itself has 21 million is that right.?

Joel Comm: Yes.

Calvin Wayman: So there are a lot of possibilities. Every one of these crypto currencies are all part of the same block chain technology is that right? [00:00:17][17.2]

Joel Comm: No! no! there’s multiple block chain so Bitcoin has its own block chain which its little brother like coin also runs on the same block chain but then the number two token in cryptocurrency market cap is called Ethereum you may have heard of ethereally. Yes. So whereas bitcoin is purely transactional it’s the only thing it’s good for is sending or storing money. So kind of think it was Bitcoin as digital gold. Right. You’re not going to. You don’t walk into that department store and they say that will be $120 for this clothing and you hand them an ounce of gold. Right that that doesn’t happen now paying with bitcoin is becoming more common but if we think of bitcoin is the grandfather that this is simply a store of wealth that has no other application other than purely transactional that theory is a different code that has smart contracts built into it. If then statements so that now you can program the block chain to do certain things. For example there is a a company called Muze economy that we encountered recently and interviewed on the podcast I’m not sure how they’re doing right now but their intent was to transform and disrupt the music world you know right now Spotify radio Pandora they kind of own you know the music streaming world. ITunes if you want music you have to go through one of these centralized gatekeepers now. Who loses out in that world can sa?

Calvin Wayman: oh! the artist right? [00:01:58][1:40.1]

Joel Comm: Yeah! the artists they don’t get paid squat. I my understanding is that you have to have a million streams on Spotify to make $400. So this is like one reason why Taylor Swift says no I’m not you’re not going to put my music on Spotify it’s not going to happen I’m not gonna take you know Pamela that it’s not going to happen then there’s others that are doing that too. And these models are having a hard time monetizing for the consumer it’s great. I pay ten bucks a month i get all I can eat right. I don’t buy CDs anymore but the musician gets screwed. So what if there was a platform that you could put your music on that if I wanted to stream and download your music I would pay you in these tokens that go with this platform.

Calvin Wayman:  And it goes directly to you and no intermediate person,Right?

Joel Comm:  Right! Not only that but because of the smart contracts aspect of Ethereum I can it’s coded in where I can say oh I want 10 percent of every stream you know revenue that I received to go to my drummer I want 15 percent to go to my guitarist I want 5 percent to go to my mother I told him I had a call at the fly the moment that so you want to buy your music. I go by the moment that happens that transaction takes place in the coins are distributed to all the accounts I designate right then here’s another example for you Calvin there’s a company in Australia called Power ledger a lot of people in Australia are using solar power just like they are in the US only some people have a surplus of solar power with that surplus.

Calvin Wayman: Right now will be gone back to the grid?

Joel Comm: So here’s what they do here’s what they’re doing and what they’re beginning to roll out if you have a surplus of solar power you can sell it to somebody else on power Ledger now can lie directly peer to peer no middle man and instantly the transaction takes place the energy is sent.

Calvin Wayman: So the grid literally that grid is like powered by this power Ledger block chain esque type of technology?

Joel Comm:  Exactly! You got it! now apply this same type of thinking to any industry. Think health care right? you know how do we disrupt a broken health care system. How do we you know? how do we apply this to to video? how do we disrupt you know YouTube? How do we disrupt like Horizon state is doing voting? You want to solve voter fraud without worrying about voter ID put it on block chain

everything it’s public documented one vote one person impossible to impossible to fraud it’s the solution to the problem and this is why it’s not about bitcoin When you hear that points drop 50 percent or it’s gone up a hundred if you’re thinking this is about money you’re missing completely this is about a technology that is the single most disruptive technology of our lifetime and it’s going to change your industry whoever’s listening it’s going to change your industry.

Calvin Wayman: It’s going to personally change your life and centralize everything?

Joel Comm: That’s the goal if governments don’t come in with a heavy hand and try to squash it like you know they are you know in some places but so far you know I think what’s probably going to happen is that the governments are going to want to tax you know the crypto currencies your gains and your losses those are taxable events and the IRS in the United States as you know can say hey we want our piece and that’s fine they’re going to get it you should pay your taxes be a good citizen.

Calvin Wayman: So what is make like, Is there a crypto currency competition right now like with fit with 14 hunred and counting crusade to stop somebody else from making an infinite amount. Here in the United States at least we have one major currency usd. Life is like is there is there a competition happening like why? Besides the like, What’s going to make me choose one currency over another is it going to be the cool feature like how I can do contracts with Ethereum like what makes me want to go deeper into that versus big coiner or RIPL is another word that I’ve heard and like all these other things?

Joel Comm: Will ripple is actually designed for banks to do fast settlements. You know if you’ve ever tried to wire money from one bank to another it could take days sometimes. And there’s high transaction fees, ripple is designed by the banking system so that they can have instant fast settlements. There are some of these cryptos like another one’s called Stellar lumens it’s number nine in market cap right now it’s worth about nine billion dollars and it’s fast I can think about this, there’s 2 billion people in the world that are on banked right they just they don’t have a way to send money they don’t have a way to store their wealth you know a lot of them are in third world countries and let’s take the case for example of somebody that’s immigrated you know from a poor African country OK and now they’re in America and they’re working and they’re making a little bit of money and they want to send $5 back to their family you know in Nigeria right now the world the wealthy princes live right? they want to send five dollars well if you try to send a wire transfer five dollars it’s going to cost you five times that just to send the wire transfer totally 100 percent if you send it via PayPal PayPal is going to take of there so steller is a crypto that I send from my wallet to yours if I just want to send five dollars it’s not only is it take like 60 seconds to send it in it’s there but the transaction fee is sub penny because it’s all blocked chain so let me go back to something you said at the beginning so we don’t miss this call that you said Bitcoin is backed by nothing  here’s what I want you understand bitcoin in crypto currency let’s just say Bitcoin is backed by the technology and by the proof of work that the computers have to do in order to validate the transactions on the block chain. It takes power a lot of power now because it’s difficult to block to mine bitcoin because the difficulty level has increased so much now there’s almost 17 million in circulation it takes a super powerful computer and a lot of energy. The power costs for people running these computers it’s backed by that and it’s real and so it’s not a joke and we call it on the Web on the podcast we call it magical internet money but it is backed by something and why choose one currency over another well there’s a few reasons, Adoption right? Who. Who’s using i could have you know the best product in the world but if nobody’s using it then it’s not worth anything but because bitcoin is so well-known established it has a brand name now. Right?

Calvin Wayman: Right!

Joel Comm: So that’s why what in the value that it brings to the market will decide and there are other competitors that are just pure currency that do nothing more than trade currency but you know it’s marketing it’s deciding what the public will say yes we want to use this currency you know what did people do before we as a people had an actual current rate would just drive it right they traded they bartered I’ll give you you know five you know skins for you know your sack of whatever it is and so we are kind of in a way going back to this type of economy where there’s a lot of different modes of being able to transact, but what is most important is it empowers the individual Greensleeves the middle man edit increases trust.

Calvin Wayman:  That’s what I was going to say what it what it feels like this like just hearing you talk about it this is again my first real conversation I’ve ever had with it at this point but it sounds like it’s actually in so many ways actually backed by like something way bigger and better than the Federal Reserve because that there’s a small number of people and with it being like a system that like like how it has to like unlock and be validated by like six computers at least right ,it’s like the power is in the hands of the of the many not like in a limited few would that be like a correct assessment? [00:10:41][31.9]

Joel Comm: It is, now to some degree the you know the miners are the ones that you know there is some centralization.

Calvin Wayman: How many miners are there and they’re like a bunch of them?

Joel Comm:  There’s thousands, but here’s here’s the deal let’s say they want to upgrade the code so that it gets faster because there’s actually some issues with bitcoin  right now that it’s been slow to transact that the fees are getting unreasonable and so there are people that are saying well we should make it faster by increasing block size there’s others that say we should make it faster by including this piece of code and the goal is for them to come to a consensus and agree on this is what the next iteration of the code is going to be now sometimes they don’t come to consensus and a group of people will say well we’re going to do this and what they do is something called a fork of the currency have you ever heard of Bitcoin cash.

Calvin Wayman: I’ve seen it floating around somewhere.

So Bitcoin cash is a recent fork that some people hate because of what they’ve implemented.

Calvin Wayman: And people said we’re going to do this.

Joel Comm: We’re going to do this and so basically what they do is they copy the entire block chain so imagine taking the entire history of bitcoin including how many have been mined and how many are left to be mined make going control C and then control X and then at that point that they copy it the code changes going forward and so now it’s a completely new and separate currency that functions differently than its parent currency and so bitcoin cash is one of those and it’s currently the number for currency in market cap you know where Bitcoin is trading at about eleven thousand seven hundred at the moment bitcoin cash is about 18 hundred and it’s it’s different functions differently in terms of the code and so there’s a number of forks of different currencies out there and there’ll be more coming some will be improvements some will just be money grabs and that’s why you know anybody getting into crypto you need to understand what you’re doing and you know from my point of view personally and I’m not a financial adviser I’m I’m banking on the technology that’s in that it’s fair to say.

Calvin Wayman: Like the one of the biggest things that I’ve gotten from this conversation I think you mentioned earlier is this is so much bigger than money that to me is like after this conversation like the set point it’s really cool actually I feel like that what we’re doing right now is I feel like it’s 1992 1993 and you and I are having a conversation about this thing called the Internet and trying to explain this thing and how it’s going to change everything and I feel like we’re on like this is the front of something like the very beginning of something like I am so excited to see like how this unfolds in the next year five years ten years like it’s something like I can I can see why you would geek out on it.

Joel Comm: It’s the Wild West all over again this for me is you know I was in the internet early I was dialing in in 1980 and my tears Three hundred bits per second OK, so I’ve been you know online forever and in 1995 I built my first site and I remember that ride from 1995 to you know when the first bubble burst around 2000 thinking this is a brave new world nobody knows what they’re doing lots of money is being thrown at it and we’re just figuring this out, Bitcoin and cryptocurrency right now feels like Internet world worldwide web 1997.

Calvin Wayman: Yeah that’s actually really cool! and I bet like in 2000 when the bubble burst a lot of people thought all that Internet thing was a fad right because it got so big and then they thought it was a fad.

Joel Comm: Well everyone didn’t think that some of us were like you know when we read articles about how crazy this Jeff Bezos guy was to sell books out of his garage We know there were those of us who were going this dude is crazy like a fox this is the future, this is the worldwide web is words going in if you think the Internet is a fad that’s going away you have no vision well I will tell you right now if you think Bitcoin might eventually be overtaken by another currency right nothing everything goes up and down nothing sticks around forever there’s no promises you know once you know Chrysler was wasn’t Chrysler the world’s biggest company at one point or I don’t remember who Apple is now and things change and Apple won’t always be on top there will be disruptions Facebook won’t always be the top social site i know it looks like they will be but they won’t there are. And I can tell you block chain technology is here to stay it is not going away it is being adopted more and more every day by different industries more solutions are coming out the human spirit and spirit of innovation is full throttle it is not going away it is going to change your life I promise you it is going to change whatever industry you’re in.

Calvin Wayman:  Whether you want it to or not?

Joel Comm:  Yes! whether you can sleep through it you can be that guy in the year 2000 they don’t need a website. Guess what. Hello. You’re blockbuster right. BARNES And Noble right. You’re tired from your Woolworths your Sears because all of your industries have been scrubbed your taxicabs. Hello Uber!, Hello! and guess what? Uber and Lyft are going to get disrupted get interrupted not only by self driving cars but they’re going to get disrupted by block chain solutions.

Calvin Wayman: I love that man, you know what, the thing that I just know more than anything is this is the very beginning of the conversation and so I’m going to wrap it up here for time but man I would love to like you come back on like some other point like maybe we’ll get together in San Diego after your talk, social media marking World or something like that if it looks right but would love to like a lot can change it three months

Joel Comm: And so it can and it will and of course I want to you know pimp the show badcryptopodcast.com go check that out we’re on iTunes Spotify, iheart radio soundcloud, youTube, tunein, Google Play and Stitcher Radio so you can find is just about everywhere. And we also have a great private group on Facebook.

Calvin Wayman: How to find that?

Joel Comm: I’m going to give you a short URL, badcoin.in. It actually spells bad coin which is our own little crypto currency we developed a free token of the show but badcoin.in/mastermind and that will take you the group on facebook.

Calvin Wayman: And what if somebody wants to get close., Did my audio just go away? By the way can you hear me all right?

Joel Comm: Yeah you’re fine!

Calvin Wayman: If somebody wanted to connect deeper with you personally or just follow you like facebook, instragram, snapchat or anything like that what’s the best place to?

Joel Comm:  I’m at Joel Comm everywhere so wherever a platform you prefer and if you had a badcryptopodcast.com you’ll see we have a contact link on there where you can reach out to myself and Travis on the show.

Calvin Wayman: Perfect! All right brother, well Joe it’s been a treat, Thank you so much for coming on and giving us some info and yeah excited to be on this ride and to to go deeper and to learn more so thank you so much for coming in starting the conversation.

Joel Comm: My pleasure. Stay bad!