Is the Next “Killer App” Actually Bitcoin? | The Crypto Lark & The Moon

I believe that bitcoin can easily surpass the market cap of gold.

I think one of the big things that's going to just blow it out of the arc for cryptocurrencies is going to be gaming.

I see a huge potential for bitcoin to become the new form of money.

I have no sympathy for Facebook or for lira. I think it's an Orwellian nightmare coin.

If you are deliberately deceitful and you actually try to make people believe that it's decentralized while it's not, it is a scam.

Hi everyone, I'm Giovanni and welcome to blog show. Today I have a pleasure to be here with Karl Eric Martin, a famous YouTuber, aka the Moon on my right. I have the pleasure to introduce you, Lark Davies, AKA cryptolark. Everyone is talking about this next mythical legendary killer app which should actually bring bitcoin and cryptocurrency into mass adoption. So what do you think? How should this killer app look like according to you?

There's been a lot of talk about what's going to make crypto go mainstream, right? Security tokens, going to be decentralized finance. That stuff's all great. I think one of the big things is going to just blow it out of the park for cryptocurrencies is going to be gaming. And it's going to be in a big way because we've got a whole new generation of kids who are going to grow up earning crypto tokens, using in game assets, swapping them for cash and for bitcoin, buying themselves phones using bitcoin online, growing up knowing how to use this in the same way that we grew up knowing how to use a bank account. So that is going to be really, really powerful. And the ability for blockchain and gaming to come together create crypto and gaming more importantly to come together, I think that's going to be a really, really big catalyst. So when we get that, that big game, a fortnite like kind of game that's that virally popular, that has in game crypto assets huge.

Do you agree?

Sure. But I like to put the attention back to bitcoin. I usually try to just focus on bitcoin because I think bitcoin is a killer app. Bitcoin is a new form of money and money is that app that is going to kill fiat. So it is a killer app already. And there are still things that need to be sorted out for bitcoin to become a medium of exchange. I think it's already very good store of value. It has done nothing but go up in value for the past 11 years and the inflation rate will be halved further down to an inflation rate of 0%, which makes Bitcoin unique there. There is no other asset in the world that has a predictable inflation rate like that. Gold has a high market cap. Because of its low inflation, Bitcoin will have even lower inflation. I believe that bitcoin can easily surpass the market cap of gold and deserves to do that, especially in this current fiat monetary environment with government abusing the power to print money and manipulating interest rates. So I see a huge potential for bitcoin to become the new form of money.

So the next question is regarding Libra, Facebook's controversial cryptocurrency. Are you sympathizing towards this project and do you think it will ever become reality?

I have no sympathy for Facebook or for lira. I think it's an Orwellian nightmare coin. I mean, I barely trust Facebook with my photos, let alone with my money. We know that Facebook's going to be censored. We know it's going to be permissioned. We know that they're going to be totally laying down and getting on their knees for big, big money corporations, for governments. I mean, it's paypal on the blockchain, but even worse because it's Facebook. So I'm not excited about it all now. The only thing that you might get excited about is that it might introduce more people to the idea of cryptocurrencies. Might have some kind of carry on effect of bringing more liquidity into bitcoin. But man, are we that desperate that we have to get Libra into the party just to pump bitcoin? No, bitcoin's gonna be fine. We don't need Libra. But it's coming anyway. So like it or hate it, here it comes.

So you definitely think it will come. It will become reality?

100% it will. It may not become a reality everywhere. You may see it shut down in America, but you'll see it take off in Thailand and in India and a whole bunch of other countries. And America again will find themselves left in the dust technologically as they over regulate and push industry away.

All right, what do you think about Facebook's Libra?

I have a very, very similar view. I think that Facebook, they are using words like decentralized and all the same catchphrases that was used for bitcoin. And to me, that makes Libra a scam. Because if you are actually, if you are deliberately deceiving people and lying, then yeah, you're scamming people. And I think Libre is a scam because they are openly promoting it as something that is decentralized. And it's supposed to be a decentralized form of money. It is anything but. It is actually backed up by assets that are very centralized. It's fiat, partly that is backed up, that is backing up Libra. So something that is centralized can never back up something decentralized. It makes no sense at all. So to me it's a scam. And it might happen. It probably will. Like Lark said, it might be places it will not be happening. In some places it will actually be accepted, but for Bitcoin it might actually be a good thing. Short term it will create attention and.

Yeah, okay, but. Okay, you use the term scam to define Libra. I think this is a pretty strong word. Would you call it in the same way?

I think there's a spectrum of the word scam. I mean, is it kind of scammed? Scammy? Yeah, but is it a scam? No, obviously it's not an actual scam in that meaningful sense. But I think in the same way that the fiat Ponzi scheme that we're in is basically a scam, but we all accept it because it's our day to day life, we will see that kind of transpire out of Libra as well.

Thank you.

Well, so I, I agree there. However, you said something interesting there. So the fiat monetary system is basically a Ponzi scheme.

Right?

So if we compare with like bitconnect, let's say I create a token and I back it up by bitconnect. Like maybe my token isn't a scam, but it's backed up by a scam. So somehow it is a scam. Like, I understand that the actual word might not be perfectly appropriate here, but in my opinion, if you are deliberately deceitful and you actually try to make people believe that it's decentralized while it's not, it is a scam.

All right, so what's your favorite altcoin?

My favorite altcoins would be Ethereum and Cardano. I love them both. I hold a few different altcoins. A few of them have different purposes. Ethereum lets you get into the Ethereum ecosystem. And Cardano I think is going to be a very promising platform in the long term. I like Monero as well. It's got amazing privacy use case. But I honestly understand people who don't trade altcoins, people who do not Buy altcoins. Because of what has happened to the altcoin markets, I'm a little more bullish on the altcoins. That being said, the majority of my portfolio is in bitcoin, so these are smaller holdings I'm talking about. But I am quite bullish long term on the prospects of some of those altcoins. But I definitely understand people who only trade bitcoin, Bitcoin for dollars using margin platforms like Bybit or something like that. It's liquid, it keeps your mind focused. You don't have to run around looking at all these different charts. You just, you look at the bitcoin chart, you play on that. So makes sense to me, right?

But you said Ethereum and Cardano, so why for example, you wouldn't touch Ethereum and Cardano despite all these positive elements that crypto Lark just mentioned.

So personally I'm in bitcoin and I like to keep it that way, at least for now. I still believe that there will probably be time for altcoins again, maybe in the mid term, maybe somewhere in the future. However, I feel like the risk reward in altcoins is not as appealing to me as the risk reward in bitcoin. To me it's just so obvious how bitcoin has the fundamentals, has the momentum going for it for 11 years. And like to me the fundamentals are so strong and the risk reward is extremely appealing. I do understand that in the short term an altcoin can do 20x, it can go 100x, we've seen it before. But the downside risk is also there and it has to be calculated into your portfolio and it's just a matter of risk reward and also research. If I'm gonna go into altcoins, there's a lot of research that goes into it and the people that do, I mean that's very good for them and they probably have done a lot of work. But I just, I tend to look at the risk reward and just go with bitcoin, the safe bet.

All right, play safe. Next question would be regarding the bitcoin halving. So most people are discussing about it and they are wondering whether it will cause bitcoin to spike again. Other people are saying that the price is already, the value is already priced in. What's your opinion about it?

I don't think we're priced in for the having quite yet. That being said, I don't think we're going to hit the new all time high before the having. I mean, look, historical context here, we haven't hit that new all time high before havings before. So we could anything can happen. Right. Market's crazy place. But what I'm looking at is actually there is going to be hype leading into the bitcoin halving. And I think what we're going to see is basically ranging, you know, we might even get back up to 15k or something like that, 14k. But I'm looking at that long term picture host halving because what we're going to have, we're going to have the halving, we're going to have disappointment that the price didn't 10x overnight by a lot of people and then we're probably going to have some more chill time before we actually start to take off. Historically we've looked at 12 to 18 months for those big price peaks to come post halving.

Do you see the dynamics happening in the same way?

I think also historically it seems like bitcoin tends to breach its all time high after the halving. And there was some speculation that bitcoin could breach the 20k before the halving this time. And that might be the reason why we got that big initial surge from 4K to 14,000. Some sort of an attempt to front run the halving. But it kind of resulted in maybe a premature breakout and that's why we're seeing this correction. But I do believe that in the long term the halving has to be significant because the stock to flow ratio is very, very important for an asset, especially for money. When it comes to money, inflation is crucial. And a decentralized money like bitcoin that has a very, very predictable inflation rate will be very, very appealing for people around the world that cannot trust their governments, trust the central banks, trust the commercial banks. So I think the fact that the bitcoin halving is happening and that will give more attention to the fact that we will see more halvings in the future. That will create so much hype around bitcoin and yeah, especially for the people that really, really need bitcoin right now.

Okay, we are looking forward to it. Some experts are saying that bitcoin was a good start for cryptocurrency, that it was a great innovation. But now there are technologies that are appearing which will eventually overcome it in terms of better usability, which are technologies which are going to be faster, technologies which are going to be more scalable. So what would be the usage of bitcoin if these technologies appear? Do you think they will ever appear and replace bitcoin?

There's a few different things really coming to play there. Gold was a good start to money, wasn't it? It hasn't gone anywhere in 6,000 years. So we're still, we're still looking at scarce hard money as being incredibly valuable. Bitcoin has digitized hard money, so it's not going anywhere in that term. Now will we see something that comes in as a more robust form of payment? Very possible. Right? But what we see happening right now with different solutions for bitcoin, with the Lightning network and side chains and things like this, Bitcoin could see potential for more payments, but it doesn't need to. This is the thing. You can use bitcoin right now to buy stuff. It only costs a few cents to send it anywhere in the world. That's pretty effective. As bitcoin moves on, over time, we'll see upgrades to the network come into play. You know, Lightning network get more robust and all that fun kind of stuff. But the thing I always think is bitcoin doesn't need to do all the heavy lifting. We have a giant cryptocurrency ecosystem of stablecoins running on different blockchains and stuff like this and different cryptocurrencies that you can use as money today. Not everything has to go to bitcoin. That doesn't diminish the value of bitcoin. That adds to the value of the entire cryptocurrency ecosystem, including bitcoin. Thanks.

What's your opinion?

So personally I believe that, okay, so if we don't care about decentralization, then sure there will be technologies that are much better than bitcoin in terms of transactions speed, transaction costs and whatever. However, if decentralization is a key issue here, which to me it is when it comes to money, I think all agree on that. When we are trying to get a new form of money, then decentralization is just too important to just try to look for the next altcoin.

All right, you had a follow up on that.

Totally agree to everything you said, Carl. I think it's the eight minute AB conversation. You know, it's like you ever seen There's Something about Mary. There's Something about Mary. Basically you got eight minute abs. Why eight minute abs? Why not seven minute abs? Right? I think that's what you see with a lot of these different cryptocurrencies where yeah, it's a little bit faster, it's a little bit cheaper. But you know what, if I had to send you a million dollars, I would choose bitcoin every single day of the week because it is the most damn secure network out there going. So yeah, absolutely agree with you on what you said.

People are praising Bitcoin because it's a great store of value and hopefully it will become also a way of payment, a widespread way of payment. But if people see Bitcoin as a great store of value, then probably they would be less willing to use it as a way of payment since they would rather keep bitcoin with themselves. So how can you respond to these kind of statements, these kind of concerns?

My thought to that would be why do you store value? So you can take, so you can die with a lot of value. At some point you're going to want to release that value for something else. Now you might hold that for a long time and you're going to buy yourself a land or maybe an island somewhere or I don't know, a freaking fancy car or something. But that store of value is a wealth preserver. That doesn't mean that you can't spend it. I think that's where the kind of gets lost in conversation sometimes. Oh, store of value? Yeah, I store my value so I can use that value in the future. So that's something I think some people might get a bit caught up on, is that you have to hold onto it forever. And I've got a lot of bitcoin that I'm holding on to for a long term hold. But at some point I will be happy to use those to trade with someone else who wants to hold that Bitcoin for a piece of land, for example.

So you made this comparison with gold as a store of value. I think that nobody is using gold for their current transactions. So if you compare Bitcoin to gold, then Bitcoin is not going to be used for everyday transactions.

So what we need to do in order to answer this question is actually just travel back in time and look at the monetary history and what has previously been money and how it became money. And when you look at the monetary history, you see that seashells, salt, gold has been money. But it never just instantly becomes a medium of exchange. It, it has to go through stages. First become a form of collectible that people collect and then it becomes a store of value because people collect it and they like it. And when it has gone through these two stages, that's when it can serve as a medium of exchange. Just like Lark says, when you have already stored it as value, that's when you exchange a little bit of your value into something that you need. So for example, Salt has been serving a store value previously in the history. That's where we got the word salary for example. And whenever, when people had a big bunch of salt in their home, of course you can trade a little bit of the salt for eggs or whatever you need. So exactly what you said I think is true that whenever Bitcoin has successfully become a store value, that's when we will see people use it as a medium of exchange. But 10 years down the line, maybe it's not going to happen tomorrow.

Okay, that was a very interesting historical perspective. So right now I'm gonna ask you last question. So what's your price prediction for 2020?

2020. I think we might cross back over $20,000. But not before the halving post having. I think we can see it definitely happening. Are we gonna go up to million dollars next year? No, but I could definitely see us moving back over 20k.

Okay, I agree. I actually think that bitcoin will most probably go about 20,000 somewhere in between the halving and the end of 2020. So basically exactly what you said. And I think that prices of 30,000, 40,000 are possible. But what I'm pretty sure about is the 20,000. But we see that when bitcoin breaks the previous all time high. Bitcoin tends to do huge moves. So we can definitely see things happen. But it's very unpredictable these big large moves. So there's no way to try to pinpoint an exact number there.

All right, so quite cautious prediction for both of them, but I kind of think that they are more realistic. So it was an amazing debate guys. Thank you for being with us. Cointelegraph like subscribe and Hodl.

Sam.