You've been covering this very closely For for for a long time you know that There are you know even more skeptics Than supporters it's more dramatic than The fight over you know Tesla on on Twitter what do you make of the Incredible rise of Bitcoin yeah it Really is stark when you take a look at That chart you pull it out all the way Back to the beginning which you know It's really time compresses you're only Talking about less than 10 years of time History at this point but you can see That really start performance where you Start basically from zero and you know If you got in at the very first Transaction for Bitcoin it was ten Thousand Bitcoin for two pizzas which You know when you go to where it was at Speak twenty thousand dollars for one Bitcoin yeah that is a really impressive Return nine million percents as you say But as you point out along the way Bitcoins picked up a lot of skeptics There's a lot of skepticism out there a Lot more institutional scrutiny Certainly regulatory scrutiny so Obviously the question is if you buy now Are you gonna get another nine million Percent and that seems unlikely but hey Crazier things have happened over the Last 10 years with Bitcoin yeah I I'm Sure you know that I lived on Bitcoin For two weeks as a part of a report
Special report that we did here at Bloomberg in 2012 at the time I could Buy Bitcoin for only $600 it was Difficult to find groceries and gas Stations that would take it but it it Worked to some extent still it's never Really picked up as a way to do Transactions you mentioned the pizza There's famous stories of people buying You know a Lamborghini with a bit with Bitcoin but it still doesn't work as a Daily currency is there any expectation That someday Eric I'm going to be able To walk down to Dunkin Donuts and pick Up a box of trollers with with my Bitcoin on my phone it's interesting you Talk about the actual use case for Bitcoin because I think the narrative on What bitcoin is and what Supposed to do has shifted over the last 10 years when it first was invented at The very beginning of Bitcoin time in Crypto time you know there was an Argument that hey it was supposed to Replace the US dollar it's supposed to Be the next future medium of exchange But that narrative I think has shifted Over the last 10 years now a lot of People who are Bitcoin evangelist when You talk about Bitcoin a lot of people Are owning Bitcoin because they think It's gonna rise in value that it's Digital gold which you know I don't use Gold to buying you know stuff at the
Dollar store I don't think you do either Which is different from the original Intention of what big home was for and When you talk about you know Cryptocurrency is even that could be Used for transactions like what you're Describing you know there are other Options and there are also other Competitors that are being developed Over the last few years and in fact when You take a look at some of the countries Where they're really on the forefront of Digital transactions for instance Someplace like China You might actually see and we're Actually seeing the Chinese government Is working on cryptocurrencies of their Own which you know it's more likely that You'll end up seeing someone buying Something in using one of those Cryptocurrencies than Bitcoin but you Make the argument that the people who Are Bitcoin maximalist don't even really See Bitcoin as being used to buy you Know pack of smokes anymore
