Why We Need Both Gold and Bitcoin (w/ Roy Sebag)

Goldmoney founder and CEO Roy Sebag takes the other side when it comes to Grayscale Bitcoin Trust’s recent ‘Drop Gold’ campaign. In this conversation with Stephan Spears of McEwen Mining, Sebag argues that gold is not an enemy that bitcoin needs to dethrone, but rather an accomplice in shaking up the fiat currency system as we know it. Filmed on June 26, 2019 in New York and published on Real Vision on July 3, 2019.

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About The Interview:
The smartest minds in finance sit down for incredibly deep-diving discussions. Peer-to-peer conversations between the rock stars of the financial world.

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Why We Need Both Gold and Bitcoin (w/ Roy Sebag)
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Transcript:
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STEPHAN SPEARS: Okay, so we can get back to the real differences between gold mining and Bitcoin
mining in a moment, and I think we should also touch on the decay aspect of Bitcoin, I think that’s a very
important topic. First, maybe let’s address some of the claims that are made in the ‘Drop Gold’ campaign
that gold is heavy, that it occupies a lot of space, it doesn’t have the value density that Bitcoin because
Bitcoin is weightless, and so forth. I think you’ve proven that those are verifiably false, can you just go
through a couple of those, and then we’ll get into decay?
ROY SEBAG: Yeah, very quickly. So, in the advertorial campaign, you see people holding gold, which
essentially misrepresents the weight of the gold. Now, this is very important, because those Legos that I
mentioned earlier, those corporeal elements, they have immutable properties that are accessible to us
through time that never change. And so, we know that of the 90 natural elements that occur naturally, gold
has the highest specific gravity, which means that it condenses into a volumetric space, and becomes heavier
and heavier and heavier relative to everything else.
So, in the advertorial, you see a guy essentially carrying two bars of gold, but those bars of gold would
weigh 220 pounds, and he’s effortlessly walking around with them. That’s impossible. No one could actually
carry gold that way. Moreover, we’re talking about 10, $20 million of gold that this person would be
holding. So, the misrepresentation begins by saying, it’s this shiny metal, that’s heavy. But in reality, that
value density, the amount of energy embodiment that went into producing the gold, is why it’s worth so
much. And in fact, no other piece of Lego in the system could do that. No other corporeal element could
store so much energy in such a small amount of volumetric space. So, that’s one.
And then when I actually try to figure out how much volumetric space does Bitcoin take up, I discovered that
it takes up an incredible amount of volumetric space when you consider the mining rigs, when you consider
the transformers, the physical space that’s required to actually run these servers that are constantly solving
the mathematical puzzles. You end up with a difference in ratio of 500 to 5000 times depending on how
you look at it. And that’s when you’re comparing all the gold in the world worth $8 trillion to all the Bitcoin
in the world today, which is worth about $200 billion.
So, the idea that this Bitcoin that you’re using on your smartphone has no impact or footprint in the physical
corporeal world, that it’s purely digital is false. It’s cognitive dissonance. In fact, it’s taking up an incredible
amount of energy, physical footprints, resources, and ecological opportunity costs because it’s requiring a
continued investment in the reification of this abstraction, so that the bits of Bitcoin, which are just symbols,
are worth any more or act any different than any other bits of symbols that I could just write with my pen
and paper.
STEPHAN SPEARS: So, what are we talking about on an annual basis, what does it cost to actually run
the Bitcoin network?

Why We Need Both Gold and Bitcoin (w/ Roy Sebag)

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About The Author

Kane Dane