it appeared the currency has been around since 2009, but is really just now starting to take off. so what is it? first of all, no central authority issues the money or tracks transactions. the system was invented by a person named nakamoto, very little is nope about him. bitcoins can be bought and sold on various online exchanges and traded for various products. if you buy one, you won t get something tangible, but rather a lengthy encrypted neweric address. that you store in your computer or on your smartphone. joining us now to help us make sense of all of what i just said is david waxman, ceo of max wan and a bitcoin and digital coin expert. thank you for being with us. thank you for having me. so help us understand why 2017 was the year we saw bitcoin
this astronomical growth in 2017, should the bubble burst, would there be collateral damage? i mean, what is your take on that? you said it s as high as 16,000 in 2017. what happens if the market slumps or plummets? bitcoin hit almost 20,000 in 2017. but it s not tied to the existing financial system, so you re not going to see a cataclysmic effect that you saw with the real estate bubble in the late 2000s. but i don t think it will stop at 20,000. it will go far beyond that. why do you think that? this is basically the underpinnings of the new internet. people for the first time have the ability to invest in what is essentially an entirely revolutionary type of technology that s going to be everywhere. bitcoin is just the first of them. is bitcoin itself going to be
overinflation of the currency. but interestingly enough, the technology, that block chain is now being used by central banks all over the world, who are piloting their own versions of crypto currency. so it may be in the near future, you see a u.s. dollar that s like a bitcoin or perhaps from the bank of china. you brought up the question of global take-up. is there part of the world that are adopting crypto currencies faster than others? i mean, what are you seeing as you look across the world? absolutely. i see this every day with my clients. in southeast asia, africa, and south america most. extraordinary adoption of bitcoin. if you live in a country where there s extraordinary inflation for your regular currency, bitcoin is a much better alternative. it means you don t have to get paid in the morning and spend it on groceries in the afternoon. you can store your wealth. and that s something bitcoin can
we re only ten years since its invention. i would say that we are equivalent to the internet in 1991, and if you remember, it took years until the internet took off. you mentioned the block chain a couple of times as a fundamental technology, the bedrock to bitcoin, if you will. i guess my question, as you talk about the technology being really, really, you know, advanced, if you will, is this issue of security that i keep coming up with, as i read about bitcoin. this truth, if you will, that having several high profile hacks. so i guess how secure is it? bitcoin is incredible secure. so to send value from a to b, bitcoin can t be beat. it s the equivalent of wiring money from one bank to another or a bank to you. bitcoin cannot be beat. the problem is the edges. for instance, your wallet could be hacked if someone got ahold
seemingly become ubiquitous, at least shoot up in value. well, the thing is, bitcoin has been around for a longime. it was invented in 2007-2008 in some white papers. and in 2009 it started trading. not many people knew about it, and it was almost worthless for white a long time. around 2011, 2012, it started taking off. in 2013, it hit a record peak, and cnn was reporting about it when it hit near $1200 per bitcoin in 2013. it then took a bit of a dive, but the technology has caught up. and enough people now know about it and understand and trust the underlying technology called block chain, where bitcoin this year went from about $950 another the beginning of the year to more than $16,500 today. wow. so i guess my question is, as you talk about its birth back in