Ep. 310 Dr. Reichental | Cryptocurrency Quickstart Guide

Good morning, all. Welcome back to another episode of Block Hash, exploring The Blockchain, episode 310. Today we have the author of the Cryptocurrency quick start guide, Dr. Jonathan Reichental, here on the show to talk more about it. Talk about crypto, talk about getting started in crypto and everything that kind of, you know, falls into that category. Jonathan, welcome in. Pleasure to have you.

Hey, Brandon, good to join you from New Zealand, the capital of Wellington here. I'm in my hotel room with a little mock up studio here for you guys. So it's great to spend a bit of time with you.

Jonathan's out and about right now, bouncing around and traveling, doing the old MacGyver makeshift setup from the hotel room. I think we've all been there at one point or another with these virtual calls and virtual meetings and podcasts we do these days. From Germany. Right. And you were in Dubai recently. Now you're in New Zealand. You've been around quite a bit.

I do, I get to travel all over the world. I'm based in San Francisco actually. And this is, you're catching me in the starting of a very long trip. I'll be here in New Zealand for over a month. I'm a visiting scholar at the Victoria University of Wellington. And then my journey will take me up to Singapore where I'll spend a bit of time there. I work with the, with the government there. Then I'll head into Europe, into Eastern Europe, spending some time in Hungary, then back, my goodness, for a little while before I head back, in fact, to, to London and to Europe again.

Wow, he bounced around a lot, huh? What keeps you moving around so much?

Well, part of it is my own interest. Part of it is my own, you know, love of being out in the field, if you like. I always struggled a little bit with, you know, an office job. I mean, I loved the jobs I've had and the organizations I've worked for, you know, from government to private sector to academia. But there's a part of me which gets a little restless. I actually like to be on the road and, and, and be with people and to observe things and be in the action. You know, there's, there's only so much satisfaction I get, you know, with telephone calls and email and zooms. I, I like to be hands on in the field. So, so that's, that's what gets me out. I, I have a lot of different clients and, and different things I do like here in, in New Zealand. I'm, I'm working with the university. I'M doing some very traditional lecturing for undergraduates and graduates and doing some public talks, working a little bit with the local government and hope to even interact a little bit with the federal government here. And that means, you know, some advice, some advisory work and some, you know, maybe assessment of some work they're doing. Very progressive here in New Zealand, in new, in Singapore. I'm, I'm an advisor to the Prime Minister's office on the future of Singapore. So I, I have a responsibility there as part of an advisory group. So there's lots of different things. The theme is a lot about education and it's about emerging technologies, it's about strategy very much through the lens of technology, and that's how I get pulled in. And so I could probably even do more, but I have to kind of manage it to some degree.

Right, Absolutely. That's really cool. Are you mostly advising and educating here in New Zealand and Singapore on crypto or merging tech more broadly, or what does that kind of look like?

Yeah, yeah, no, a lot more broadly. One of my core areas is the future cities. So that's what, you know, I'm quite known for. People who are familiar with my work will know that I've spent a long time helping with city leaders and all sorts of stakeholders in the, in the, in the urban movement to, to try to figure out, first of all, how do we solve problems completely differently using technology and, and no specific tech, but everything from data to the Internet of things, of course, blockchains in there, artificial intelligence now, because it's about the hottest thing. So, yeah, no, there, there's, there's a lot of tech that relates to cities. And then, you know, just because of my background as an IT leader in, in, in different industries, but also as a head of technology innovation for professional services firm a few years ago, I'm, I'm able to work with and talk with all types of industry. And on, on any given day I might be advising an energy company or a telecom company or a luxury brand. You know, every business today is a technology business. Every business. And, and that's at the heart and it's, you know, technology runs a business. It's at the core of supporting operations and then delivering to the marketplace. But technology is also about competitive advantage. And that's hard when everybody has access to the same tech. You gotta be quite skilled and deliberate in how you innovate and create new value using new technologies and new solutions to service your clients and to grow your market. So, yeah, no, I, I'm, I'm I got a pretty broad portfolio ranging, again, block. Blockchain is clearly in there, crypto's in there, but Internet of things is strong, AI is strong, cyber security is strong, data in general. I just had a new book come out on data, Data Governance for Dummies. I just published that in December. It's doing really well. And, you know, Metaverse comes up and Autonomous Vehicles and the Future of Energy, for example. So pretty, you know, pretty broad portfolio of things that I, I'm passionate about personally, but also love helping my clients.

With which of these technologies are you the most passionate about, you think? I mean, we're kind of living in a golden age of tech right now, where you got everything from blockchain to AI to smart cities and Iot to cybersecurity. Like you mentioned, there's so many different areas. Is there one in particular that's maybe more exciting to you?

We do live in this remarkable time and, you know, I thought it was interesting 10 years ago, but wow, it's off the charts now. You know, in some ways, I've got two different ways of answering this question. You know, I try to look at solutions more than anything. You know, we, we tend to get a little obsessed with a type of tech, but a type of tech doesn't matter to, you know, a, a energy company. What an energy company is interested in is, for example, supporting the migration to, to renewables or to remain competitive, you know, in a, in a, in a more, In a world where they have disruptions that they didn't anticipate or, you know, a telecom company that has been successful for a long, long time with traditional telecom services like mobile connectivity and landlines, you know, an Internet connectivity and all of that is becoming commodity, be commodity. It's been driven to sort of almost a zero. And so they, they're very interested in how can they reinvent themselves and be relevant. So I, I tend to think of tech from the solutions perspective. You know, what, what can we deliver differently? When I think of cities, for example, you know, I'm not talking about a tech. I'm talking about how can we make our road safer or how can we make it? What can we do in our cities that helps there be less bicycle accidents for kids when more and more people are riding bicycles in our urban environments. So I'm really, you know, that's the lens by which I look at things and, you know, there's nothing better than a juicy problem to try to solve and to bring to bear skills and tech and new ideas and just, you know, bringing to bear whatever is necessary to get the job done. That's how I look at things. I do think in terms of sort of being more, you know, in the spirit of your question, no doubt today I'm, I'm most blown away by artificial intelligence and, and its potential. But again, it's like, you know, what's fascinating is if you apply AI to, to transportation and you get a, you know, autonomous vehicles, that changes our cities, that changes how we design our cities, which is the central human experience of the 21st century. So it's not just AI alone, but it's what it actually translates to ultimately that is the most fascinating to me. And, and you know, my final thought would be it's, it's the surprises along the way. You know, we kind of enter into a, into a field, you know, with a, with a new series of mature tech, we apply them in a context and suddenly you have a totally different outcome than you could ever anticipate. And while I do my best as a somewhat of a futurist, I guess I don't really use that term often, but for simplicity, it's useful. Kind of trying to predict where things are going and in reality what happens is they go in a completely different direction than anyone anticipated. And that's the biggest surprise of all.

Yeah, AI is very fascinating. Starting off this year alone, I really do think 2023 is going to be the year of consumer based AI like we saw with Chat GPT. And it's not going to be the last thing to come out. Every other company's working on it, whether it's Google or Microsoft, Nvidia, Meta, you name it. So it's going to be interesting to see how kind of that shapes up. But also the potential drawbacks, I think of unleashing a technology like this onto the public and maybe potential repercussions of that, like in the workforce and job displacement, plagiarism. You know, there's a lot of things cropping up now. Words like everyone's trying to implement it into their job or into their business, but you know, not enough people are saying, hold on a second, you know, is what it's saying correct? Is what it's saying, you know, being done properly? Should this, you know, be a consumer based technology immediately, even though it's been around for what, like two decades at this point has been fine tuned and altered. What are your thoughts on that? Like, do you feel like some of these technologies, like AI for example, if we just focus on that, maybe it's innovating Too quickly. Maybe it's getting pushed out to market too fast. Do you think there's going to be some drawbacks to that or should repercussions or what are your thoughts?

Well, those are all good questions you ask. The reality is, in a way, they don't matter because the train has left the station. This is unleashed. Nobody's regulating it, nobody's holding it back. Innovation is going to drive, and the open marketplace is going to drive all the new tech and new ideas that emerge in the days and months ahead. And it's going to happen fast. I, I think of generative AI, the broader category, as maybe, maybe one of those periods in history that changed the trajectory of humanity, you know, the same way as Steam did or electricity or the Internet and other big moments in, in the, in the, you know, thousands of years of modern humanity. It does feel like this is, is a very important point. And, and, you know, we will probably in all likelihood, given our history, move faster than policy and regulation can keep up with. So the damage will be done, you know, well before we, we actually respond, particularly given the speed, the speed of adoption here, you know, reaching, you know, 100 million users in just a few, literally in a few weeks and, and growing and growing rapidly. And you know, the thing about tech is, you know, you make a leap like this and all we can do now is build on that leap. There's no sort of like regression. We don't go back and, and sort of like, you know, have to redo anything. Once you've got to a certain point in tech, all you're doing now is building on it and, you know, AI is going to build better AI. That's going to be the, the most phenomenal part of this. So the, the rate at which this improves is going to increase now. So, so what do I, what do I think about all this? I think the impacts will be much greater than anyone's thinking about. So, you know, you mentioned things like plagiarism. I'm a professor, you know, I think about Chat GPT as a, you know, something now I have to deal with, you know, if, if all my students are going to use, you know, chat GPT down to the, my essay questions and tests or in home, you know, home assignments, it's worthless. It's not a learning tool. It's, you know, that's not a learning experience anymore. It's just a task. So we're going to have to maybe do exams differently or, you know, test people's skills differently. But that's such a Small part of this, to be honest with you. You know, there will be transformational components. Can you imagine, for example, you know, within 24 to 36 months, you'll just come up with sort of two or three sentences that describes a movie with the characters you want and the actors you want. And a system will generate a two hour movie with a plot line for you. So we go from you know, movies for everybody to movies for one. You know, of course, then you can share them and. Okay, so what are we, what am I saying? I'm saying that this has the potential to completely redefine and uproot the entire entertainment industry, you know, and how big is that? Yeah, that's hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars and many, many millions of jobs. And the impact will be vast. That's just one thing. And, but look, I'm also an optimist. So the question is, what does it enable? Well, it's going to enable and create completely new jobs, jobs that you and I couldn't even think of the titles for right now. Right. There's going to be completely new opportunities for humans. I think, you know, when I think of AI, I also think of not artificial intelligence, but augmented intelligence. I like to think that, you know, we can and we are and have been, you know, augmenting our experiences as humans with tools, you know, like a search. At the end of the day, you know, is, is sort of a, an AI tool. But we don't think of it like that. We think of, you know, it's easier for Google to look up something that is for us to go to a library. Right. It augments us. AI will, will drive cars for us because we're very bad at driving cars. And it's better to have the computers drive the cars. They're safer. Right. And maybe it helps towards, you know, with our congestion issues. So look, I think the, my bottom line on this is however you're thinking about chat GPT, you're thinking too small.

Yeah, I, I don't think we can fully comprehend what it'll be able to do for us in the near future because it's just, you know, scratching the surface and already it's blowing our minds. And I use it for a lot of stuff too. It really helps me with productivity and workflow and you know, prepping out episodes or creating content. You know, it's, it's a really helpful tool. It's just going to be interesting to see how that continues to evolve and how we use it or abuse it or apply it to, you know, our everyday life. So that'll be kind of exciting to see pan out. And you do a lot of writings too. So you got some books. One of them is a Quick Start Guide for Crypto. You said you had one on Data for Dummies or something like that too, right?

Yeah. In December, I released Data Governance for Dummies, part of the famous Dummy series, you know, the most popular reference series ever produced, over 250 million books. So I'm happy to be part of that. I also wrote Smart Cities for Dummies, which was, which continues to be a bestseller in that category. The data governance book is doing well. But I know we want to talk about my brand new book, which will be out around about the time that this podcast is published, and it's called Cryptocurrency Quick Start Guide. It's available on Amazon and online everywhere, electronic and physical, and there'll be an audio version soon too. And you know what this is, is this is an educational book. It's not an advocacy book. I don't come to it from the perspective of someone who says you need to be involved and, you know, you need to buy crypto and you need to invest and trade and all. I come to the table saying, you know, there's, there's a lot of us who want to know more, want to understand, first of all, how does it work? What is it? How does it have value? And then you want to understand all the different parts of it. I need everything from, you know, Bitcoin to Ethereum to Altcoins, you know, across the tokens and NFTs and DEFY and, and more. What are all those things? And I, I write about them in a, in a, in a way that is easy to understand. You know, there was a time when I was learning this stuff and, you know, I wasn't particularly happy with the, with the content online or the books that were available. A little bit too techy, a little bit too jargonish, you know, I don't know if that's a word actually, but a bit heavy on the jargon. So I wanted to write the, the 400 page book that kind of gives you everything you need, but makes it accessible and sort of just to kind of also bring a little bit more context to, you know, why did I write this book now? Well, I was fortunate enough to be asked to Write videos for LinkedIn learning, you know, the, the, the, the learning arm of LinkedIn that's now part of Microsoft. I've been doing it now for about eight or nine years. I think. And I, I wrote a few courses on, on blockchain and on crypto, blockchain basics, blockchain beyond the basics, and some courses on NFTs. And I was really humbled by the fact that, that over a million people took these courses, took these videos, and that's, you know, really gratifying. And the feedback I've received was really wonderful and supportive. So I thought, let's build on that. Let's make sure the education on this topic is solid and accessible so that more people can understand it and make, you know, their own informed decisions about what they want to do, whether it's blockchain or in this case, a little bit more focused on, on the cryptocurrency ecosystem.

Nice. Yeah. So this is designed more or less for someone that's new to crypto, that wants to get kind of like an educational understanding of what all these different elements are and, you know, how they kind of fit together to make this industry. Right.

I think that's, I think that's right. I, I don't want to exclude anybody. And as in, you know, if you're, if you're kind of intermediate level and, you know, you want to fill in some gaps, you want to understand the different consensus mechanisms, you want to understand the pros and cons of different altcoins, or maybe you just don't get NFTs, you know, you know, even, even intermediate level people will probably benefit if you're pretty good, you know, if you, if you're an expert at blockchain and crypto, probably not the right book, you know, so, so I'm saying, you know, level, the expert level, this is, this is probably not for you, but the vast majority of people are either beginner, you know, curious or intermediate. And those are really my target. You know, numbers are pretty impressive. Right now we're looking at about 425 million people in the world, you know, have own, own some, some form of crypto. You know, they may or may not fully understand it and more want to get involved. And so I think that the audience is massive for new education, good, quality education on this topic.

Yeah, I think for the amount of people that actually own some portion of crypto out there, whether it's like a dollar's worth and they forgot about it because they bought it once or they actually have some kind of investment or they use it and spend it every day, somehow it's surprising that that many people have it across the world thus far and it's only been around for like a decade. More or less, which is really cool, but it's also the future in a lot of ways, right? I mean this is the future of what money's going to be. And beyond cryptocurrency, you know, blockchain can touch almost every major industry and solve so many different problems with middlemen and intermediaries and supply chain and verification obfuscation, whatever it may be.

So this is possibly where you and I may, may diverge a little bit. I haven't come to the conclusion yet that this is the future of money. What I have seen in my own research is this is a, an extraordinary technology and the emergence of, you know, of cryptocurrency is, I've described it as sort of like a kind of technical elegance. You know, it's, it's simple but it's powerful. And, and, and you know, as you point out, you know, we're just over a little over 10 years into this and it, it's already made an impact. Whether you, you know, in my conclusion of the book I say look, there's a lot of people who are just don't get it. A lot of people are totally against, you know, they're really, really angry or something for some reason about crypto perhaps, but then you've got a, you know, a heck of a lot of people who are supporters and advocates. So you know, there's people on, on both sides. No, so my conclusion is no matter, you know, what side you're on, this has been fascinating and it'll be even more fascinating to see where it goes. So I, I don't know yet is, is my answer to, to that comment. You know, I don't know if this is the future of money. I, I, I do feel that certainly blockchain is going to be around that, that seems to be a sort of a, a back end technology that, that has some very neat possibilities for, for providing solutions. Crypto is a function of blockchain. I feel like a, application of it is, is, you know, wonderfully compelling and, and, and, but we've yet to see, I've yet to see. I'll be convinced that it's the future, but I, but it could be so I'm very open minded about it.

Yeah, let's dive into that a bit more. I'm curious what you think maybe the future of money will look like. I mean you got one half the world, you know, in support of crypto and a decentralized type of digital finance which we have with Bitcoin and Ethereum and every other crypto out there. And then you have the other half of the table that wants to create some kind of centralized version of it, like a CBDC for example, or a state backed sovereign currency or digital version of fiat. And they're pushing very hard for that pretty broadly and globally. That could potentially be the direction things go and maybe it will be. But what do you think the future of money looks like? Is it something in one of these two directions? Is it something completely different in your mind? What are your thoughts?

No, thanks for that. Well, look, I'm in New Zealand right now. A small country, successful economy, you know, successful democracy. They don't really use cashier anymore. This is very much, you know, a card based or app based. Everything is sort of, you know, tap, you know, your, your card when you're, when you're buying things. People don't carry cash really. There are some store, a lot of stores that I passed walking around the downtown area that, you know, the signs that say outside they're cashless, you know. So I think we're moving increasingly rapidly all around the world to, you know, societies without physical cash. So like notes and coins, I think those are, are, they've always, they've been on a sort of a trend out, but I think they are, that's going to accelerate and, and some countries are, it's going to be very, very unusual and rare to say see people with, with actual notes and coins. I do think that central bank digital currency, so CBDCs are, are coming. I, I don't think there's any doubt about that. And in a way that's kind of just an extension of what I just said, sort of the cashless society, you know, CBDCs are not creating a new type of money or anything. They're creating a digital form of fiat currency. And the reality is, you know, the, if you look at your bank account online, you know, no matter how much you have, if you have a little or a lot, whatever you have, you know, that's not cash that's sitting in notes in a safe somewhere. It's only on a computer. Most of the world's money is digital today, right? It doesn't exist in any form. And this might shock and surprise some people, maybe not your listeners, because listeners tend to be, you know, much more up to date and informed about this topic. So I do see CBDCs becoming mainstream and probably the dominant form of currency within 10 years for most economies in the world. Now the question is, what about cryptos? Crypto is different, right? It's not fiat currency. It's exactly what fiat currency is not right. A lot more speculative, I think a lot more, a lot of questions to be answered. I mean, the big part, to me that has to happen and you know, I pinch myself a little bit as I say this is we do have to have regulation. I mean, although it kind of goes against the spirit, you know, of sort of the, you know, there's a whole, you know, eco. There's a whole part of crypto that's about freedom and about independence and, and kind of separation from government. All that stuff I get. And that's really important. But could it, living in that space, it, it could remain a niche and not move to being more broadly adopted in the economy. So we, it feels to me that, you know, while regulation already exists, it's going to, it's going to pick a pace and for example, the United States, I think we're going to see much more robust crypto regulation. I think the other part, in order for crypto to become a legitimate currency, it can't fluctuate the way it's fluctuating. You know, that just makes it impossible to use. I mean, it's just not, that's not usable. What makes, you know, sterling and the euro and the yen and the dollar work is that, you know, tomorrow when you wake up, they're kind of be kind of the same value maybe moving tiny directions either way. And you know, over a long period of time they change. But, you know, there's this predictability and sort of, yeah, basically you have comfort that, you know, your money's still worth what it's worth in a week or a month from now. Generally, crypto doesn't have that. And I, I think that's a significant showstopper. People will definitely use crypto as an investment and they'll, you know, they'll, they'll do their hodling and, and hold on to it and they'll, they'll trade it and do all those things to make money. That's, that's, you know, crypto as a, as a, as an investment asset, I think will, will continue. But crypto as a currency, that's the big, that's the big question. Final point is, you know, today Bitcoin, you know, by far is the most important of the cryptos. There's, you know, I haven't looked for a couple of weeks, but a few weeks ago there were well over 20,000 cryptocurrencies. And you know, Bitcoin was 40% of the market. Ethereum was about 20%. So just two, cryptos are 60% of the entire marketplace, even though there's another 20,000 others. What I think might happen is a new crypto might emerge that surprises us. I mean, this is going back to one of my earlier points in our chat today, that the future is often surprising, that we think, you know, bitcoin is going to be the global currency or Ethereum, when there's probably maybe you're ready, you know, a small team working on a cool new crypto that's going to take the world by storm, or maybe it's still to happen. There's a group will get together, you know, a year or two from now or whenever it happens, you know what I mean? And so it may be that, you know, Bitcoin is MySpace, you know, and the. And the actual crypto that becomes a reliable global currency is, you know, the Facebook of crypto.

Right. There's so many questions, I think, that crop up here with this conversation we're having. I concur with you and I agree with the regulations. I think that's something that's vitally important for this industry if it's actually going to become an industry that has some kind of legs to run forward. There's billions and billions of dollars on the sideline all over the world, and some of the wealthiest hedge funds and sovereign wealth and, you know, royal families and oil and at the government level just sitting there. That goes into a lot of industries that doesn't go into this one because there's no way to formally regulate it. And up to about a month and a half ago, banks were given, for the first time ever, the right to hold up to 1 and a half to 2% on their balance sheet in crypto. So we're just kind of getting started, I think, in my own personal opinion, finding out what direction this officially goes. Because crypto's weird. It's not big enough to be one of the most important industries in the world, but it is big enough to say that it's one of the top Fortune 500 companies in the world. It's like in this weird space right now where either it's going to settle and it's not going to amount to much more other than an investment type space, or it's going to do something incredibly tremendous at some point, given the right guidance and people stepping in. And final point, what's interesting about Bitcoin is it has like this symbolic value. And also, in my opinion, it's like the first time, I think, in history that we've had something that's like a financial protest almost, or like a individualistic protest against, whether it's centralization or government or the banks or whatever you want to look at. I think people have been frustrated for so long, they finally have some way out that can't be touched. And it's almost like the perfect story, right? The founder is anonymous and no one knows who he is. The network is super simple, but has never been down, has never been hacked, is truly globalized in so many ways and anyone can use it. It's fair and it's equal and equitable. And will that turn into something great in the future? That's, you know, I think, you know, the biggest question and will that continue to pull this space or are we going to divulge and emerge as an industry? So it's, it's very fun times. It's exciting to live in today's world where that's happening, where you have that divergence.

Yeah, yeah. Some great points you made. I think the key one there was we're so early. You know, there's such, we have such high expectations for, you know, massive change in such a little amount of time. And yet we're, we're only, you know, well, 15 years or so now into this, now that I do the math. But I, so I, I think that's a, that's a, that's a key part of it. But I also like the second part, another part of what you said, which is, you know, we're lucky to experience this and, and you know, look, people have got hurt from crypto. Part of it is, you know, their own risk taking and, and people have to take responsibility for that. But there's a lot of folks who, you know, you know, they're, their exchange was hacked or something and they, they lost some crypto. You know, maybe they saw the, they, they unfortunately got, got hurt in that, in that way too. And, but I think overall, on balance it, you know, there, there's an awful lot of people who are sort of not only against it, but sort of outright angry about crypto and blockchain. I'm not highly that there's a lot of those people too. There's a lot of students. I'm not sure why that is. Rather than you can be opposed to it or you. Oh, actually, you, I mean, look, I've been doing tech for almost 30 years, so I've seen all types of new tech emerge and lots of technology actually fail. It just didn't amount to anything. Seen a lot succeed too, so you could be against it. You can say tech, this tech has no, you know, basis, or I just don't see the market for this tech, or, you know, it just won't be adopted. You can, but to be angry at a tech is very unusual. And it just shows you the degree to which this is a topic that people are really passionate about on both sides.

Yeah, there's always going to be those people. And you mentioned earlier in the show something very important too, and that's, you know, innovation is something that's going to continue no matter what. I mean, you're not going to stop it. And I don't know how many times we've seen it happen in history, you know, before we learned that lesson. You know, whatever crypto becomes, it's not going to stop evolving. Same thing with blockchain some. Same thing with AI, Same thing with every other technology out there. It's going to keep progressing. Fun story we can know wrap up on is, you know, when the automobile first came out, the horseshoe business was huge, huge in the United States. And they did everything possible to completely smear the Ford Motor Company, to smear the auto industry, the ability to build roads, to adapt, not use horses anymore. And within a decade, the horsing shoe business, which is one of the largest in the US Was completely evaporated, just gone because the car was just a better means of transportation. Same thing happened with electrical lines. Same thing happened with TV and radio. You know, the list goes on and on and on. And now we're at a point where it's happening again. It's just in a different industry and in a different type of level. And digitally, even with the Internet, I mean, I've seen a billion memes on, like email and people, you know, saying email was going to fail. The Internet was just a fad. And now, now it's the basis of society today. So again, you know, we've touched on it a couple of times, but such a cool point in time to live in where we're seeing this transition and we're seeing these things happen. And it's very exciting. And it must be really cool for you to, you know, educate people on this stuff and talk about it and kind of be on the front lines of understanding it. That's, you know, very cool, I think, career to be in and to kind of have that insight.

Yeah, yeah. I love your, love your points. And clearly your position is very clear. You know, how you think about this. Yeah. As an educator, it's very gratifying. And people who teach, like myself, you know, all Sorts of audiences at every level, all over the world. There's, there's a, just a joy in that moment when a person gets something, you know, they're struggling, struggling, struggling. And then you, you say something or you give an example that finally it helps them click. Right, right. You know, it's funny. I'll just tell you maybe my last story on this education. So I'm, you know, I'm a professor at a number of universities and I'm, I, I do teach a, a blockchain and crypto course at a, an undergraduate level class. And yeah, a lot of the students come in either already having traded crypto and knowing a little bit about it, you know, that's really impressive already. And you know, we go through eight or 12 weeks of the semester and you know, it turned out, you know, we're coming towards the end of the semester and you know, I'm asking, are you all comfortable with proof of work? You know, do you understand the consensus mechanism in Bitcoin? And there's sort of like, you know, hesitant nods like yes, we kind of get it. And you know, upon a little bit of testing, it turns out they didn't get it. And I said, look, I am going to spend the next, you know, several hours of this, you know, one of these last classes just going into this and we're going to go over and over again until you get it because I can't have you graduating my class without understanding proof of work. And you know, we worked hard and I made sure that every student understand the basis of how that works. And once they did and they, they then I asked, you get it now, can I feel that I've been successful as a, as a teacher and you know, there's a good, there was a good warm sort of affirm, affirmation of that. And I said, well, great that that is good for all of us. That's a win win that you, you conclude the class knowing that I couldn't have that on my conscious that you didn't understand that. So yeah, yeah, great, great, great role to be in.

Absolutely. Before we wrap up, where can people find you online? Where can they find your book? Where do you want to direct them?

Well, I'm pretty easy to find fortunately. You know, that's just the nature of the beast these days. You can, I'm pretty active on Twitter actually, so you can see my handle there on the screen or if you're listening to this, it's just my last name at Reichental R E I C H E N T A l pretty active on Instagram, particularly around my travels. So if you want to see exotic places and you know, I do a lot of photography in the different cities and countries I go to. So that's, that's a good place. LinkedIn, you know, that's an easy one. Just look for me on my full name, Jonathan Reichental. And and then finally I have my, my own website, you know, one sort of one, a one stop shop which is www.reichental.com. so very easy for people to go there and find all my social media links, a lot of my articles, ton of videos and it's all free by the way. I've just huge amount of content that anyone can consume for free. Of course my books, you can get all my books on Amazon or any online bookstore and in many, many small little physical bookstores in your town too. So please do look out for those as well.

Awesome. Are you on TikTok? We gotta get you on TikTok, doing some videos, educating.

I might have an account there but I've done nothing with it. No, I'm not, I'm not active on TikTok.

I feel like everything these days is about short form content. It's like the attention span of the individual just keeps shrinking every year.

Well, we've been talking for about 40 minutes so we're not in alignment with the demand. Right, I know.

So that's going to mean four or five separate videos all broken down and then there's gonna be like 30 videos of short form.

Whatever works. Yeah, go for it.

Exactly. Anyways, Jonathan, thank you for taking the time, really appreciate it. It's been a super fun conversation. Learned a lot from you. Thank you for sharing everything that you're doing, what you're working on and I think people will take a lot of value out of this.

Thank you, Brandon. I'm glad you're doing this too. And what a pleasure to be on your show. So thanks for the privilege.

Ah, the pleasure is all mine. Take care man, we'll talk soon. Have a good time.