and I’ve traveled here from a very
faraway land called Sarasota Florida to
tell you about the most important
invention of the last three thousand
years
hell even five thousand years this
invention is not the telephone this
invention is not the internet’s
this invention is not even the wheel
this is the printing press now you’re
all saying yourself what let me explain
to you guys something before the
printing press was invented people never
needed to learn to read and write no one
read in write the literacy rate was only
two and ten people actually knew how to
read and write and I doubt even if it
was that many it was the elite it was
the church it was the kings and queens
and the bourgeois and all of the people
on the top there was no equality there
was no information there was no
University of Tampa
there was no TED Talks it was impossible
because all information came from the
church and from the King and the church
and the King would take information and
they wouldn’t even let you own your own
Bible if you had your own Bible in your
house you can be burned at the stake for
being a heretic people never needed to
learn to read and write because all
information came from a very select few
people and these people basically told
you something and you believed it
information information is power and
then one day well not one day but over
the course of a few months in a few
years the printing press was invented
and all of a sudden one person who knew
how to read and write can take
information write it down and instead of
having the church have scribes
painstakingly copy it over you can have
thousands of copies printed overnight
and you could disseminate you can pass
this information to people over and over
and if you said this I said that
information almost overnight went from
centralized to decentralized and this is
the big buzzword you guys have been
hearing about in the last few months if
not few
years on the news Bitcoin blockchain
decentralized money but what the hell is
decentralized money what does that even
mean taken in the context of information
information before the printing press
was centralized there was no people me
saying this you saying that there was no
reason to even have a debate because we
all agreed on the same thing we all got
our information from one place and we
couldn’t even read a Bible to tell us
that that information was wrong now we
have a different situation where you
have multiple people telling us multiple
things and all the sudden people started
asking questions we talked earlier about
the ages to who what where why and one
they never even asked those questions
before now all of a sudden a few
thousand years ago people were asking
information they were asking questions
and getting information and then we had
multiple different religions we had
different churches we had the founding
of this country because the Protestants
in Europe couldn’t even own their own
Bibles and they couldn’t preach their
own version of what they saw religion
was they couldn’t be their own spiritual
people they couldn’t have any self
development for lack of a better term us
human beings we were sheep we would get
information and we wouldn’t question it
and then we started getting information
and passing information and we would we
would print information and people were
still burned at the stake for the
printing press and the Netherlands which
was the only country at the time that
even allowed people to print their own
information allow printing presses was
in a civil war against Spain and and
people would flock to the Netherlands
and Belgium and now those those
countries were known as where you can be
free and then people came to this
country to start to be free and to have
their own religions and then we had
books and the literacy rate today is you
flipped that maybe 2 and 10 people don’t
know how to read and write and that’s
rapidly changing but the advent of
things like the internet and the
telephone and the telegraph and pigeon
carriers and the ability to send
but we talked earlier about fake news
who controls that when I read
information on the Internet how do I
know it’s real it comes from one central
person Facebook it’s centralized
information has went from decentralized
to a lot more centralized we believe
what we read on the internet we believe
all these things we believe it
furthermore have you’re in a war-torn
country like Syria or if you’re in
somewhere in South southern Africa you
can’t even get information out because
the first thing when a revolution comes
they do is they turn off the main media
and in most of these countries all the
media is owned by the government so
people don’t even know they don’t even
have information like North Korea and
sometime in 2010-2011 I don’t remember I
was really young living in my parents
basement I was in an Internet chat room
like the most healthy young social
people hanging out and it was a very non
social person and someone just popped up
on this chatroom now no one is Satoshi
and Satoshi started saying and and his
little disciples the four or five people
that knew what cryptocurrency was said
hey check this thing out download this
software so I download it and then he
says and the other people say let me
send you 10,000 Bitcoin just for fun so
all of a sudden some Bitcoin shows up on
my on my computer my software and I said
okay what’s the big deal it’s just uh
it’s just another version of PayPal that
I could download it doesn’t really it
doesn’t really what’s what’s so good
about this and everyone who were
defensive about this brand-new
technology back then explained to me
that unlike people that PayPal that
maintains this centralized ledger and
database so when you send me money or in
the context of the printing press you
send me information all of a sudden
instead of that ledger being maintained
by one company or one centralized party
this ledger is now being maintained
across everyone’s computers that are
using the software in real time so if
you send me money or if you send me
information you can’t take it back you
can’t reverse it you can’t freeze it you
can’t alter it you can’t counterfeit it
you can’t change the information change
the time and the date stamp of when that
information was Center that money was
sent all of a sudden we had
decentralized money because the only way
that I can go and reverse that ledger
is if a majority over 51% of all the
people using the system decide to hey
we’re going to change something and if
they were to actually do that the
integrity of the system would collapse
as a whole so imagine if all of us in
this room took our laptops and travel to
we were spread all over the world
we were just thrown into all these
different directions and we were only
connected through the internet and the
traffic going between our computers was
indecipherable from any other traffic
from Facebook Twitter or whatever it was
traffic going from our computers my
computer to your computer and we decided
to take Wikipedia or the encyclopedia
and put it on our local hard drives on
our computers and imagine if one of us
said hey I want to make an update I want
to add something to that
in real time instead of that updating on
my computer it’s now updating on all
your computers in real time impossible
for me to go back and change that now so
I can be sitting in my house in Syria
where the government is not allowing me
to post information or videos or data
about what’s going on in my in my
hometown because they control all the
information and as soon as I get it up
on a server they’ve shut it down they
take the information they put it down
countries are doing this around the
world when you control the information
when you control money when you control
finance you control us so if you take
all that information and that
information was in real time sprite to
millions of computers around the world
that anyone can read or see a video of
what’s happening in your war-torn
country no one could shut it down and
that’s freedom
that is taking the power of information
and the power of money back out of the
hands of the few the government’s and a
corporation and back in our hands
blockchain technology Bitcoin aetherium
all these other projects that are in the
blockchain technology space today are
doing to information finance medical
supply change management all these
different industries voting it’s doing
to that what the printing press did for
information imagine a world where you
don’t wake up in the morning and read
about this country trying to do their
democratic elections and of course the
elections are mired in conflict and they
have voter recounts and this guy’s
contesting this guy and this guy claimed
he won and then there’s a war and
millions of people die we’re all not
even reacting right now why because it
happens every week we hear about it all
the time
we’re desensitized to it it doesn’t
matter to us anymore or if it does we’re
just so used to hearing about it and
imagine a world where that didn’t happen
anymore with blockchain technology you
take the corruption and you take the
inability for anyone to claim
superiority over another person away
that goes away it’s impossible because
in order for someone to actually do that
they’d have to collapse the whole system
and if they collapse the whole system
and no one would use it or trust it
anymore let’s talk about the financial
systems in North Korea or in Cuba there
are thriving black markets these black
markets are actually super deregulated
because no one can control them the
reason the black markets exist is
because people said to hell with the
laws and to hell with our crazy
governments we’re gonna have our own
2014 I served a year and a half in
federal prison in federal prison the
administration runs the whole economy
they tell you that your family and
friends can send you money
they’re only enough to send you up to a
certain amount of money and you could
only spend up to 360 dollars a month in
our commissary this is the list of
things you can buy this is the prices
that you’re gonna pay this is how many
you can buy you can’t buy more than 10
packs of tuna fish because god help me
ten more tuna fish is bad and they tell
you you know what we don’t like you
today you can’t go to commissary today
we’re gonna close commissary I was in I
was sleeping one day and as a as a
person who studied economics in college
I looked at this and I said you know
this is a perfect example of a black
market economy here we have a group of
people that are all pretty much the same
any place that they can’t leave that
need a market place need the ability to
exchange value between each other now if
we take the administration at the
government the government controls our
bank accounts by the way when you guys
put mine in your bank you don’t actually
own that money anymore you’re lending
that money to the bank at an extremely
low interest rate but don’t make it run
on the banks because that’s not good for
anyone but my point is that everything
is controlled they can wake up and print
as much money as they want whenever they
want the money sitting in our pockets in
our bank account if they print more
money that makes the value of our money
much less so when the various
governments and corporations decide to
be irresponsible were the ones paying
for it that’s not fair that’s not equal
if we had a better financial system like
Bitcoin gives us or some derivative of
that down the road or decentralized and
not one corporation or not one
government can control it will have a
lot freer money
so anyways I’m sitting in prison is
reading a book and I notice that I’d
like a cold soda but it’s not my
commissary day so I know that there’s a
guy of course like any system there’s a
gentleman who has his own little store
and this is all for educational purposes
I go to him and I say hey man can I get
a cold soda from you
so you’re thinking yourself well how are
you gonna pay this guy well what had
happened was over time the economy
inside of prison decided to buy
themselves no one person no no
figurehead no one said this but the
market itself we trust the market the
market itself said that we all want to
use the hacks of mackerel fish as
currency now you save yourself packs of
mackerel fish as currency well you ever
go to the supermarket or they sell tuna
fish and they’ll single packets you
could buy for like a dollar fifty that
tuna fish we had a mackerel we have tuna
as well but tuna fish personally it
doesn’t have any texture mackerel it’s
like a taste like state doesn’t taste
like steak but it has like a texture of
something not tuna fish so the the
marketplace decided we’re gonna use
mackerel fillets in pouches as currency
the price is stable doesn’t change it’s
scarce there’s only a finite supply the
inflation rate of mackerel is 500
inmates multiplied by 52 weeks per year
every inmate can only go to the
commissary once a week and they can only
buy 14 mackerels per week so you have
500 times 14 times 52 the inflation rate
of mackerel it’s stable the printing
press is on autopilot and can never be
changed it’s scarce utility you could
eat mackeral mackeral was the highest
source of protein in the prison
system if you were to work out if you
want to eat some food if you can make
anything with mackerel
you can make soup you can make mackerel
and cheese it tastes terrible you can do
all these different things with mackerel
so macro became the currency of choice
it became a transactional currency no
one told us this was what’s gonna happen
it just happened the market made it
happen
we trust markets if we trust markets and
they are efficient when we allow them to
be free markets free the world free us
so anyways I got my cold soda and the
gentleman said you can give me either
one eating Mac or one money Mac I said
wait I have a mackerel what’s a
money-back and why is sorry it was one
eating Mac or one-and-a-half money Mac’s
or two money Macs and I said what’s a
money Mac and why is it cost more to buy
a soda with two money Mac’s and he had
no answer for me he’s like listen I just
run the store so I went back to my
economic laboratory basically in my
little cubicle and I sat on I thought
what the hell is a money mac so I went
to go ask my my bunky
and he said charlie a money Mac is
essentially expired mackerel that was
never eat because basically what
happened is and this is something that I
figured out over time is that people are
prison for a long time and that’s
another conversation social justice
which I can talk about for hours but
people are unfairly in prison for a very
long time I had bunkies are in there for
20 30 years for selling a pound of
though these guys are now transacting
with mackerel but they need a savings
account they need a way to save their
money if a guy’s giving haircuts and
he’s charging to max
how was he gonna actually save that for
when he wants to buy a new pair of
headphones for 10 max and a month from
now what are you safe you saved macros
you keep them in your locker they stack
nicely it’s perfect what happens when
you’re in jail for 20 years these macros
don’t have a shelf life of longer than
about two so over time the market
created another currency called the
money max the money Mac was had no
utility you couldn’t eat it the only
reason this bag of oily mesh had value
because the other 500 inmates in the
prison system believed it had value
isn’t that why we all use the dollar
today because we all believe it has
value there’s nothing backing our dollar
we all believe thia by federal decree we
are sheep we all believe so anyways
people have their life savings in these
money max I’m telling you I knew guys
who had like hundreds of these things
and they were currency you can give it
to a guy and he could potentially send
it outside to your family for you there
was a whole like Western Union of prison
going on it was crazy stuff
hypothetically speaking
so of course one day I wake up and
there’s a there’s something’s going on
in the cafeteria everyone’s going crazy
you know running around like like like
like Nutella is on sale in France crazy
stuff crazy stuff they’re running
they’re ripping each other’s heads off
and I run to the cafeteria and what
happened we never knew what happened to
the inmate but there was an inmate who
had hundreds of money max and the prison
administration confiscated it from him
and instead of just getting rid of it
they decided here anyone can have it
within seconds they did based the
currency the currents I saw people’s
life savings go away immediately people
who had hundreds of dollars lost their
value overnight because now if I go to
the guy and say I want to buy the soda
he says I don’t take money max anymore
because I have too many they’re not
they’re worthless now this is what
happens when we allow a few people to
control our lives though I got involved
in Bitcoin and blockchain technology to
potentially try to help and create a
better financial system and I’m not an
anarchist I’m not about in the Fed or
you know I’m pragmatic I’m a realist
the financial system works somewhat
because we have no better option I have
a bank account
I have credit cards I take loans I have
real I’m the same as everyone else in
that respect I use it full fledge we use
the financial system just like all of
you guys but it doesn’t mean I have to
like it that doesn’t mean in a
collaborative age
I can’t collaborate with other people
around the world regardless of your
gender the color of your skin your
religion doesn’t matter who you are we
can all work together to create a better
global financial system and so instead
of ending the Fed let’s transcend the
Fed let’s create a better system a
financial system a better medical system
a better supply chain system a better
system of voting where there’s no
corruption and instead of forcing people
to use our system because when you have
these elections all it is is one trader
one one not sure it will he’s the
traitor too but one dictator going and
replacing another one let’s create a
better system that’s controlled by us
that prevents any one of us for having
too much power
but unlike communism and all that other
stuff that doesn’t work and it
centralizes us financially incentivizes
us to work harder because we get paid
more by the system proof of brain your
brain is Capital guys you’re in college
you
université you’re working your brain is
your money use your brain to make the
world better you make more money you’ll
enjoy your life we live in a beautiful
place we have the beautiful weather we
are so fortunate so let’s all work
together to build a better system and
transcend the corruption and the greed
thank you very much I’m Charlie Shrem have a great day guys