Beta explained finance
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You can even bypass the banks and their fees. The underlying technology could revolutionise our financial system, but is this unregulated innovation worth the risk? I can hear a lot of noise coming from upstairs. The room is teeming with people.
They meet here every month to chat about Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. As I look around, I see men and women, young and old, huddled around laptops, looking at complicated graphs and spreadsheets. Others are sharing stories and having a laugh. It's as if they're all in on a secret. I've been avoiding it like the plague for eighteen months because I didn't know what it was all about and I thought it was some big scam and I thought it was network marketing and I ran away.
But that all changed when a friend encouraged Maggie to take a closer look. And she took me to a meeting on Monday night and I went, 'A-ha, eureka! Just because I got my head around it. Someone explained it to me and I took my blinkers off and I saw such huge potential. Maggie's friend Tina, who's also here tonight, is a Bitcoin success story.
She wasn't sure about it at first, but then the value of the cryptocurrency kept going up and up. Tina was afraid she was missing out on a great opportunity. So a few months ago, she sold her silver and gold bullions and put her money into Bitcoin. Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are digital money. There's no actual cash involved. The money is stored in a virtual wallet, which is kind of like an online banking account. Anyone with a mobile phone or computer can open one.
You don't even need ID. That may be a red flag for some, but cryptocurrencies are slowly becoming mainstream. You mostly spend them online, but even bricks and mortar businesses are showing interest.
At the pub tonight, people are shouting each other beers using Bitcoin. They tap and go using their phones in much the same way you would a debit card. I thought I was being really modern by paying with a smartwatch, and then these guys come up paying with Bitcoin, it was kind of unreal. As cryptocurrencies become more popular, they're also becoming more valuable. I don't have to drive for Uber anymore. I only drove for Uber to feed the machine, the Bitcoin machine.
Her husband is very ill, very ill. And he's in New Zealand at the moment having treatment. She couldn't have afforded that except for her understanding and her investment in cryptocurrency, and that stuff warms my heart, that she's been able to afford that and look after him, which she couldn't have done if she'd stuck in it a bank. She regrets ever doubting Tina's enthusiasm for cryptocurrencies. Oh, Godfather, I wish I'd listened to her eighteen months ago, yes.
After hearing this story, I decide to conduct an experiment, albeit on a much smaller scale. On my mobile phone, I download a digital wallet, which is used to store cryptocurrencies. I then withdraw a hundred bucks from a regular ATM at the pub. I put that money into a Bitcoin ATM, which converts my dollars to the cryptocurrency. The machine then scans my mobile phone and the cryptocurrency appears in my digital wallet.
The process is super easy and fast. I'll let you know whether my very modest investment pays off a little later. But the true believers at the pub are sure it will. Tina reckons the price of Bitcoin will keep rising for a while yet.
For at least five years and beyond, because it's new, no one knows about it. I work in a law firm and no one knows about it. There's a couple of reasons why many people don't know much about it. Cryptocurrencies can be hard to explain. Even those who live and breathe this stuff struggle to break it down for me. Simon, have you got a really quick and simple analogy because this is something that I've…. We've been fighting for three years to try to figure out how to explain this because it's very hard to get past all the jargon and move through all the weeds.
Another potential barrier to some people getting involved in cryptocurrencies is the fear of the unknown. Cryptocurrencies exist outside of our traditional financial system. And that can be scary for the uninitiated. But for advocates, the complete absence of banks is a big part of its appeal. If you want to pay a friend using Bitcoin, for example, you can send it to them directly.
There are no financial institutions processing transactions and getting in the way. Instead, a global network of computers does the job.
That noise you can hear is the sound of two of these computers at work. And when I say computers, I don't mean your typical laptop or desktop. They look more like a row of hard drives linked together. These ones belong to Chris Freeman, who lives in Sydney's south-west. The IT worker has installed them on shelves in his garage.
The machines, as Chris calls them, are busy processing cryptocurrency transactions. So people are sending Bitcoin, Ethereum, all cryptocurrencies to one another and instead of a bank processing those transactions, you have machines like this.
Each time the machines complete this task, Chris is paid a small amount in cryptocurrency. Although he's making money, Chris says you won't find many people doing this in Australia. The machines aren't easy to set up or run and they consume heaps of power. The machines also generate a lot of heat, which is why Chris moved them to the garage after initially installing them in his house.
During wintertime where it got to nearly one degree, the temperature inside my office was about 30 degrees, so it is quite hot to run inside the house and it's also quite noisy. Most of these machines are kept in huge warehouses in places like northern China, Mongolia, and Iceland, where electricity is cheaper and the weather is much cooler.
Although the conditions in Australia are far from ideal, Chris Freeman says he'll continue pursuing this hobby for as long as his partner lets him.
The missus thinks the house is going to blow up one day because of obviously the heat and the electricity usage but I think once she understands what the technology is around it and the benefits of what this technology is about, she understands it. Every transaction processed by Chris's machines is logged on what's called a blockchain. A blockchain is a record of every payment involving a particular cryptocurrency.
It's public so you can go online and take a look. It's almost as if everybody's bank statements were rolled into one and put on display. The key difference being the identities of those involved are hidden.
But other details like the amount being transferred and the time are shown. Blockchains are updated every few minutes, so you can refresh the page to see the latest transactions.
The technology is very secure. Blockchains are even being trialled by some of the major banks and the Australian Stock Exchange. The underlying technology is really quite clever and works extremely well. That's Dr PJ Radcliffe. He says the blockchain technology is robust. It is incredibly hard to forge and nobody's managed to do it as yet. Dr Radcliffe thinks blockchains are a wonderful innovation. But he warns some people use it for the wrong reasons.
The technology is there but like most systems, humanity is the weak point, the way humans work. While transactions on a blockchain are public, the names of the buyers and sellers are private. That means Bitcoin users can exchange funds anonymously. This is what allowed the infamous online black market Silk Road to flourish.
The platform was hugely popular with criminals who bought and sold illegal drugs using Bitcoin. Dr Radcliffe says the job of police and law enforcement agencies is made so much harder because of this secrecy. I'm not in favour of it at all and that makes me somewhat unpopular in the cryptocurrency world because here I am saying this is a problem, criminals can take advantage of this, and it's not a message which a lot of the cryptocurrency advocates really want to hear.
The anonymity of blockchains increases the potential for money laundering and even financing of terrorism. In , Jared Taggart from the Australian Federal Police appeared before a Senate inquiry, warning this could become a significant problem. The main challenge for the AFP operationally is the anonymity associated with Bitcoins and the lack of regulation.
Operationally whilst they may not be something that is a significant issue for us at the moment, it's more in the future space that could become an issue if there wasn't an ability for us to understand the true ownership behind Bitcoins.