Bitcoin Hurdles Coronavirus On Way to Halving | Beer & Bitcoin

There's no chance that I'm gonna give you coronavirus if I send you bitcoin.

A lot of talking, but very little actual acting. At the end of the day, like.

In the words of Tim Draper, when I asked him what advice you would give to someone looking to invest in crypto. Just do it, do it. Spread that honey all over and send some bitcoin to your past.

Now, guys, I wanted to make sure everybody understand when I say Satoshi Nakamoto, I don't mean Craig Wright. Hi, everyone. I am Giovanni.

And I'm Jackson.

And here we are at Beer and Bitcoin, where we drink beer and we talk about bitcoin and all things crypto. Cheers to bitcoin and beer.

So Cointelegraph recently came out with their first ever top 100 list. This list is, in Cointelegraph's opinion, the most 100 important, influential people in blockchain and crypto. So we're going to take a moment to break it down a little bit. The top three were CZ CEO of Binance, David Marcus, who is the head of the Calibra association at Facebook, and Kelly Loeffler, who is a former CEO of Bakkt and is now US Senator of Georgia.

Me and Jackson didn't make this list. It was our editorial team. So that doesn't necessarily mean that we agree with that.

Unfortunately, we don't have the authority to rank the top 100 people in crypto.

Yeah, we will make our little ranking today.

We'll make our own list. There were two main questions that our editorial team asked themselves. So the first, who have been the most important people in crypto and blockchain in 2019? And the second, who do we expect will be the most important to development of this industry in 2020?

As we said, the first one was CZ CEO at Binance for rather obvious reasons, according to me. What about the second? Jackson? Why David Marcus?

The fact that the name of Libra made so much impact in 2019 without having existed kind of guarantees him a spot at least in the top five. You know, I mean, just the potential for this thing to exist sparked so much conversation, got regulators all in a tangle, and it just turned the whole crypto sphere upside down. It was all everyone was talking about for months. So in terms of that impact, I think he definitely deserves a spot up there.

Right. But it was mainly a kind of media impact. A lot of talking, but very little actual acting at the end of the day, because Libra is stalled, is stuck, the regulator managed to kind of clamp down on this project. So I don't agree that this guy should. Should be in the second place. So let's talk about the third in this ranking. Her name is Kelly Loeffler, and she used to be the CEO at Bakkt. Then she stepped down from the company and she entered politics. Now she's a US Senator for Georgia and she's expected to promote crypto friendly regulation.

To me, it seems like a very US centric kind of view in terms of like, okay, she can create more consistent and clear crypto regulation within the US Government. And as a result, the US Government will lead the way in terms of establishing clear regulation for crypto.

What I noticed is that in these three spots, the first three spots in this ranking, out of the three, two are people that are not native of the crypto space. So the only native crypto entrepreneur is cz. Like the other two come from, I would say the legacy financial world.

Who would you put in the top three that you think deserves a spot there?

To me, in this list, the top three of the most influential people in crypto2020, I think the one missing is Satoshi Nakamoto.

You mean Craig Wright?

No, no, no, man. Why we go back again and again to this guy? It's like satoshi, don't you know? Now, guys, I wanted to make sure everybody understand when I say Satoshi Nakamoto, I don't mean Craig Wright. No, Craig Wright. In the first top three in the ranking, I just mentioned Satoshi Nakamoto because he is the one who not only created bitcoin, but he put into bitcoin one very special feature which we're gonna talk about later in this video. And what about you, Jackson?

You know, if I knew a little bit more about what was going on in Jack Dorsey's head, I would probably say Jack Dorsey.

I think that Jack Dorsey, another guy who actually never did anything in crypto.

He has the following. He has the following. He has Twitter.

He has the following with a capital.

F. Yeah, he does know with the capital following, it's all capitalized. Like, you know, if he does something drastic or very crypto friendly, you know, he's spoken before about Africa being the next big economic boom and that cryptocurrency could lead the way for people in Africa to come into the financial world. If he can create some sort of access through Twitter for crypto, I think, you know, the impact would be unbelievably enormous.

Let's hope he accepts an interview with cointelegraph. Soon we can find out.

Yeah. If you're watching this, Jack, I want.

To talk to you guys. We just told you about who we think should make it in the top three most influential people in the crypto space. Now it's your turn. Do you agree with Cointelegraph ranking? And if not, who would you like to be in this ranking? Please let us know in the comments.

Who did we miss? Yeah, this is one of the most important topics of the year. Tim Draper certainly thought so in our 2019 end of year video.

So we're going to talk about the bitcoin halving, of course, or some people.

Call it the halvening.

Yes. Still not sure which one is the most correct.

You got to choose, man. Are you a haver or are you a havener?

I'm sure I will jump back and forth from the two, like Carl, the moon did in your video. Okay, so basically, the bitcoin halving is the major event of the year. And it's going to happen in between the 14th and 18th May. It's not clear yet exactly the date because there might be some slight variation. Basically what will happen is that the mining reward after the halving will be cut by a half.

And that's why it's called the halving.

Currently, the reward for miners is 12.5 bitcoin per block mined.

So if you mine a block, you get 12.5 Bitcoin.

Exactly. After the halving, or when the halving will happen, the reward for mining a block will be cut in half and it will be reduced to 6.25 bitcoin per block. Just to get the numbers right, the inflation rate will also drop by a half. So right now, the inflation rate for Bitcoin is around 3.59, 3.86%. After the halving, it will drop to around 1.8%. So what I was saying before about Satoshi Nakamoto, why is it so important and what is this feature that he put into bitcoin? I was actually meaning the halving because I think that one of the most important thing about this about bitcoin is that it's a deflationary asset. So the halving is what makes bitcoin a deflationary asset. What does it mean? It means that the supply of bitcoin is capped and basically it will become scarcer and scarcer. It's not going to be like fiat currency which is controlled by a central bank. And that's why central banks can just increase the amount of liquidity at will. And that's basically the cause of inflation. So while fiat currency is an inflationary asset, Bitcoin is deflationary thanks to this mechanism, which is the halving. The halving is a phenomenon which happens one time every four years. There will be 32 halving in total. The last halving is supposed to occur in the year 2040.

So I'm sure we'll still be around.

Hopefully if our brains will be transplanted into some kind of artificial intelligence.

Thanks to Roger Ver stem cell research.

With the last halving, Bitcoin will reach its maximum supply of 21 million Bitcoin. So the cool thing about bitcoin is that there is a capped amount, 21 million and no more than 21 million can be mined. So that will be the last halving. Everybody is asking how is this halving of course impacting the price of bitcoin? Everybody just think about the price, the price of bitcoin of course. I found the opinion of Spencer Bogart very interesting. Spencer Bogart is the general partner at Blockchain Capital. He basically said that the bitcoin halving is absolutely priced in.

There is no risk free return to be had from buying bitcoin a few months before the halving and selling it a few months after the halving. It's not that nobody's expecting the decreased selling pressure from miners.

Very convinced opinion. What it means is also that the halving is serving as a catalyst which will bring a lot of capital that is on the sidelines into the market.

The halving acts as a shelling point or a catalyst or a spark for a lot of capital that's sitting on the sidelines.

What a lot of people are saying is that the halving is actually a self fulfilling prophecy. So that there is so much media hype talking about how good this halving will be for bitcoin. That will push a lot of people into the market and that will be raising the price automatically. Data Dash said that bitcoin halving is not priced in.

Even though we may know until we finally reach that point where there's 900 apples in the market and there's a demand for 1800 apples, then the price starts going up, right? It only can happen at the moment when there's the supply shock.

Basically what he said is that the halving is going to boost the price of bitcoin, but not immediately. So what he said is that the price will probably increase a few months later after the halving. If you look at the charts of the previous halving, like for Example in the Last one in 2016, the price of bitcoin actually dropped significantly after the halving. So if you decided to buy before and sell after, that wouldn't have been a good idea. By the way, what do you think? Is the bitcoin halving going to be priced in or not?

You know, if you're looking to make money off the halving, off the halvening, buy before and just wait and eventually the fundamentals should lead to a price increase. As a simple man with some bitcoin, that is how I'm approaching it. Like in the words of Tim Draper, when I asked him what advice you would give to someone looking to invest in crypto. Just do it, do it, just do it, do it, do it. It's the future.

Now it's your turn. Guys. Do you think that the bitcoin halving is or is not priced in? Let us know in the comments, please.

Giovanni, what kind of beer are we drinking right now?

Well, as you can see from the shape of the bottle is clearly a Corona beer.

Do you know what rhymes with corona coronavirus? Well, it is the biggest crisis this world is facing at the moment.

It's one of those global events that even Cointelegraph covers because it's so big that even a cryptocurrency focused outlet is obliged to talk about it.

How do you think it would impact the cryptocurrency industry?

I don't know, Jackson. I feel that probably the crypto industry is not doing that bad compared to other sectors of the economy. I'm declaring a public health emergency of international concern over the global outbreak of novel coronavirus. Coronavirus.

Since the announcement of the coronavirus from the Chinese government, which came in late January, bitcoin's price, if anything, has gone up. We've seen an increase in bitcoin's price since then. And throughout the month of February, which is when the narrative of the coronavirus was really taking off, Bitcoin hit all time highs for the year and multiple other cryptocurrencies were doing well. You know, bitcoin, cash, bitcoin, sv, ethereum, all of the top cryptos were riding on that wave. You know, this can happen for many reasons. I think primarily this is because of the global decentralized nature of bitcoin. Now there are some potential risks, right? 66% of Bitcoin's hash power comes from mining farms in China. And we saw in early February that a mining farm owned by BTC Top was actually shut down and quarantined by Chinese Authorities.

So the government in China has actually the power to shut down and put in quarantine whole companies just because there are someone who are infected by the.

Virus, that is a serious threat. You know, they can just shut down the whole company.

Yeah, I can imagine, like having all this hash power completely cut down. It would have massive impact on the whole crypto space, I guess. Yeah, but, but I mean, sometimes when I think about these farming facilities, I think about this bunch of pieces of hardware that are just, you know, working almost automatically. Like, I don't know how many people actually living people that can be potentially affected by the virus need to be there.

No, it's a good point and it's true as well. These mining rigs, they don't actually require a lot of human labor. You know, it's mostly just a bunch of computers in a room that every once in a while need maintenance. So it shouldn't take more than one or two experts or whoever is maintaining the facility to just go around and make repairs as needed and whatnot. Face to face is the best way for this virus to be transmitted. And even though the crypto industry is largely digital, there are still many, many, many gatherings of people in order to, you know, spread the word, show new investments and stuff like that.

Like crypto parties, for example, like Block.

Show, Cointelegraph's favorite crypto event. But a lot of these events are being impacted. You know, Nitro 2020 in Seoul got postponed. Korea, for those of you who don't know, has the second most infections behind China. Hong Kong, Blockchain week postponed. Token 2049 postponed. And a crypto lending startup called Definer was supposed to tour through 10 cities in China and they just canceled it.

I think that this is affecting everything. Like, of course we are talking about crypto, but of course, like even in Italy, where now the coronavirus is spreading very fast, and I think together with Iran and I think Japan, we are at the same level of contagiousness. So they cancelled very important events, like, for example, the Milan Fashion Week and also the Carnival in Venice. They were all canceled because of this. And these are kind of events that are like very, very big, probably bigger than the average crypto event. So no wonder the crypto events also get affected. I personally feel that as part of the crypto community, we still should consider ourselves lucky in terms of how this virus is impacting our business.

Definitely the crypto industry is better situated than most, given its digital nature, to endure this kind of event. Absolutely. And I think that this is very Aptly shown by something recently that happened in China, where the Chinese government, realizing that the coronavirus could be transmitted across physical objects, has started quarantining cash. Quarantining banknotes. How absurd is that? You know, like, you go to pay with something from the. Like, someone just took all your dollars and was like, okay, I'm gonna go wipe these down. Like, it's insane. So, and that's literally what they're doing. They're taking banknotes, they're disinfecting them, and they're quarantining those banknotes for two weeks and then redistributing them back into the market. This shows an outdated system. This is a situation where digital currency could thrive. There is no chance that I'm going to give you coronavirus if I send you bitcoin.

Well, I still hope this is not the only chance for cryptocurrency to thrive. Otherwise, we need to hope for a future, an apocalyptic future where people are not able to exchange physical contact for being afraid of being infected by some virus.

Definitely dystopian, but it provides a use case at least.

Do you think that this coronavirus outbreak could actually speed up the development of this digital yuan?

It definitely provides motivation for the creation of this technology. Whether or not we'll speed up the development is a different story. Most of the people that I've talked to believe that the energy the Chinese government is spending on fighting the virus is being taken away from the energy being spent developing the dcep. So how do you guys feel about the coronavirus? Are you worried? Do you think that in the long run, this could have a significant impact on the crypto industry? Have we just not seen it yet? You know, is bitcoin or another crypto, a safe haven in an economy that could be potentially decimated by the coronavirus, you know, taking away the labor force? Thank you, everyone, for watching. My name is Jackson.

And my name is Giovanni.

And this has been beer and bitcoin.

So, guys, if you want to watch us drinking beer and talking about bitcoin some more, don't forget to subscribe to our channel, cointelegraph. Like subscribe and Hodl.