Stephen Diehl: The Case Against Crypto | RR: Understanding Crypto 5

Welcome back to another limited series of Rational Reminder Podcast, focused on learning about cryptocurrencies. Our journey about cryptocurrencies has led us to speak to various experts on the subject, all of whom see some benefits to cryptocurrencies and the underlying blockchain technology. However, what does a skeptic think about cryptocurrencies and the benefits to the current financial system? In today’s episode, we speak to Stephen Diehl, a software engineer who works with financial technology within the finance sector and is an outspoken cryptocurrency skeptic. His engineering background, coupled with his experience working with financial technology, provides a unique perspective on the future of cryptocurrencies. We move through the episode learning about public blockchain technology, different consensus mechanisms, what potential problems blockchain technology can solve, whether crypto can improve the current financial system, if Bitcoin really is decentralized, what drives crypto prices, reasons why crypto will not work, what makes it similar to gambling, and more. Tune in today to hear a unique opposing view of cryptocurrencies and DeFi technology with expert and skeptic, Stephen Diehl!
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[@fib6156]

If you invited and interviewed this guy why didn't you invite and interview Saifedean? Reading Diehl's article 'the case again crypto' Saifedean could be a natural and interesting counterpart. Diehl seems a Keynesian Clown and forgets to make the distinction between securities and commodities. Crypto is not crypto. Diehl writes 'Under a gold standard, inflation, growth and the financial system were all less stable due to trade imbalances. This led to frequent recessions, larger swings in consumer prices and perpetual banking crises.' This is 100% a different view from what Saifedean wrote in his books about the gold standards. Diehl didn't get challenged.

[@JakeyMan]

First time a guy was capable of explaining it to lay people What a relief

[@MARKCRASTO]

Diehl's the real deal!

[@johnclukosereloaded]

To simplify, our current transactions are executed by a trusted third party, bound by legal terms, for a fee. Blockchain - a system were pseudo random set of people/computers govern this transaction in a very inefficient manner for a fee/token. Do we really want it? Absolutely not. Financial transactions are critical in nature, no form of inefficiency can be tolerated while developing such system. An blockchain in its current state is more of a problem in itself than a solution to anything. If the aim of this podcast series to find if bitcoin/blockchain have any utility either as currency or as an technology, i dont think there is any reason to investigate further. Curiosity however is a different beast. So keep it rolling.

[@martinlutherkingjr.5582]

The problem is the only alternative to crypto for electronic transfer of value is ludicrously inefficient due to regulatory burden in many countries. It’s regulatory inefficiency vs computing inefficiency. Computing power increases, regulators don’t become more efficient.

[@TaspatsLV]

Don't use it - problem solved

[@bahmak2003]

Lol it takes days to clear big amount of money transferring between countries! Is that efficient? 😂😂😂😂

[@_Digitalguy]

Great video and great guest. While he may have exaggerated some data a bit, his points are absolutely valid. Unfortauntely the crypto world is often fuelled by FOMO and infested by conspiracy theorists supporting crypto as a sort of nuclear shelter against the death of the dollar or even of the modern financial system... Having said that over the past year or so, FOMO has created a demand many institutional investors have been trying to cater to, but the recent volatility might actually push some to reconsider the position of crypto in portfolios

[@anonymous1432341]

Great Episode. Stephen Diehl is the real deal!

[@arnoldmarcus3634]

Bitcoin doesn’t solve the problems of government fiat because it can’t sustain the required transaction volume, and requires conversion back to FIAT to do business. Like he says, cryptos strongest use case is for activity not sanctioned by banks or governments.

[@martinlutherkingjr.5582]

From what I listened to, I didn’t hear any new arguments here against bitcoin. Did anyone hear anything new and credible?

[@MccZerk]

Well I just listened to the whole thing and if you didn't hear anything credible then I take it that you're a silly BTC investor lmao

[@martinlutherkingjr.5582]

@@MccZerk I didn’t listen to the whole thing. So that means that the rest of the world that hasn’t listened to this video and everyone who died before it was released, is silly?

[@darnold1984]

@@MccZerk silly shitcoin cope

[@herrabanani]

The mic quality is so bad that it actually hurts me to listen

[@alexchis1610]

Doesn’t Solana overcome the speed problem at 40000 transactions per second

[@danOH112]

Ya but not the Byzantine fault tolerant part which was kinda the point of bitcoin in the first place

[@tanmedia]

Stephen is awkward, unconvincing, and repeats arguments you can see all over Twitter. His criticisms seem to be reasonable but often half baked. For ex, he talks about a teenager being able to create a cryptocurrency in a basement that could be worth "millions." Of course this is nonsense. You can create something but it doesn't necessarily have any value. Given that Stephen has a cosci background, it would be good to see home debate someone on that level. I think he would wilt in that situation. However, I get the feeling that he's intimidated by innovation and change, regardless if it ultimately if fails.

[@darnold1984]

He'd get absolutely smoked by multiple prominent Bitcoin advocates...Booth/Ammous/Saylor etc

[@leonidmorozovskii454]

Stephen is definitely biased and missing the whole picture, when talking about blockchain. Current existing payment rails are slow and inefficient, not censorship resistant, not permissionless. To move money from Vietnam to Turkey, then to Netherlands and then to USA would consume enormous amount of electricity, enormous number of people involved, tons of computers, banks, licences, compliance checks with huge fees in the end. Full stop. Money is very expensive to move. Countries don't trust each other, don't have unified KYC/AML procedures. Full nightmare. Public blockchains elegantly solve this, as their infrastructure works in every single country with access to Internet. And it's comparably cheaper to use The only problem with crypto is that it cannot be easily spent on goods and services, because Governments around the world forbid that, protecting their national currencies. This kind of protectionism actually hurts global citizens. As for speculations, Stephen should take notice Forex market. Its a huge gambling market, with up to 1000x leverage. But gambling is great for fin markets, it brings liquidity in, so that professional actors can easily exchange huge amounts of currency one to other.

[@tobychenderson]

Ok, when someone talks about bitcoin as a payment rail and compares it to visa, I know he's biased and or has no clue, particularly about bitcoin. At that point, I gave up trusting in his viewpoints. Although, I did agree with one thing he did say. Proof of stake systems is a like-for-like Oligarch banking system. It adds no additional benefits to the world. He also doesn't understand international payment systems and how and what the euro systems are used as the intermediary between nation states. There is so many things I could rabbit on about with regards to what makes bitcoin better than central banks, but I'd need to write my own book.

[@austingonzalez1148]

Do it and get on the podcast. As far as the comparison to Visa, how is it not fair. Bitcoin is a crypto currency, Visa hands most folks day to day currency interactions. Crypto would be a poor choice to replace visa.

[@brybryBillions]

@@austingonzalez1148 I think bitcoin with Layer 2 Lightening network can replace Visa. Or even Apple Pay can replace Visa. Haha.

[@syllo137]

@@brybryBillions until you fall for phishing link and go broke lmao

[@KeyTeachings]

So many things are incorrect on these crypto episodes.

[@EmperorOfMan]

you should invest more. teach em a lesson

[@KeyTeachings]

@@akqj9 have actually thought about getting on a episode with them to do just that. Have unfortunately been too busy. Would take way too long to comment all the reasons here.

[@bhambhomoto4457]

blockchain is not the future technology it is 30 year old crap technology , due to Pademic and lots of people unncessary raising computer hype they keep it circultating in media due to vested interests Also there are lots of computer graduates who thinks that they will get excellent packages in USA / Canada due to the computer science degrees and hence their counsellor keep this hype live.

[@billionaire7781]

The right questions were asked but the wrong person was answering them.

[@mustavogaia2655]

The "proof or not work" is the crypto fail to overtake the remittances market. Even the poorest of the immigrants and their relatives is tech-literate enough to use a practical app. Just look at the general cellphone adoption in LatAm/Africa. If there were an incentive in the form of a simpler process and/or cheaper fees, the adoption would be almost instantaneous. At least, by now, we would have see some crypto exchange biting on Western union market and apparently they didint.

[@martinlutherkingjr.5582]

There is huge crypto adoption in Latin America and Africa, not sure what you’re getting at. If people are trading peer to peer in crypto they don’t need an exchange for doing that.

[@mustavogaia2655]

@@martinlutherkingjr.5582I agree that there is adoption. but they way they talk about it, it should mean the majority of remmitance business shouldve migrated to crypto.

[@alexchis1610]

You can buy a house with a smart contract no need for any lawyers real estate and other middlemen. Just buyer sells house to seller in seconds through a smart contract Stephen seems to be lacking much knowledge of smart contracts

[@alexchis1610]

Stephen puts an argument across that ignores major benefits of bitcoin If he had an interview with Richard Heart. All his lack of knowledge would be highlighted

[@fzigunov]

Looking forward to hear the "thoughtful" comments from the Blockchain supporters. I agree with the speaker. This crypto thing is a collective dream.

[@dustofself]

Stephen Diehl seems to be such a nice person. I really liked this episode! And I always thought there is something wrong with my understanding of cryptos because I have not been able to figure out where the value is coming from. So the answer seems to be that there is no value.

[@CG-uy6nk]

the value comes from bitcoin, its property to work as money and secured fixed supply, and from the loss of belief in the devaluing fiat debt system we're currently in. people like him hate the idea of bitcoin, constantly try to downplay it, obsessed by it, and don't see a problem with the ideology of our current system. his arguments are extreme and purposefully deceiving, deceptive. you can tell that his unhealthy obsession with something he hates, or anti-passion, is already something weird. take care

[@dustofself]

@@CG-uy6nk I know just a one person who is losing his belief to current financial system. And this same guy believes to all kind of conspiracy theories. Bitcoin will never work as a money because it is simply way too volatile. If I was running a business I would never accept bitcoin as a payment because it can lose like 80% its value in days. Funny tnat you blame Diehl for exactly same things that crypto community is doing. In psychology this is called projection. But yeah, I prefer to put my money in index funds . These companies at least produce goods we need. You can not say the same about cryptocurrencies, at least for now.

[@Jennn]

22:10 is the cold hard truth and something I Never heard Anyone talk about Ever even 6 months after the fact.

[@BlockheadLabs]

Great channel, great topic, poor choice of guest. He was so dismissive that he is unable to entertain the nuances.

[@CarlosGonzalez-ok6be]

This geek hasn't heard of the derivative timebomb in tradfi

[@marcorodriguezhenry9858]

This channel should speak about BSV. The real deal

[@marcorodriguezhenry9858]

nChain and patents

[@vimarshpadha472]

Was looking forward to it!!!!

[@sr8677]

the 8-bit animation of you two at the open - 🙌🙌🙌

[@foju9365]

This was a good discussion. I don't know how the cryptocurrency market became so popular, and how so many companies and startups were able to come up and become so overvalued, if this is the reality of the blockchain and cryptocurrency technologies.

[@cbj8994]

This should have been episode 1

[@alexchis1610]

As far as I know most Bitcoin is mined in America by Americans primarily in Texas. Some mining in Kazakhstan by chinese miners kicked out of China. Also Iceland snd El Salvador mine bitcoin

[@GrantLeeEdwards]

Guys, this series was fantastic. Dr. Nick Weaver interview was excellent, too. Thx.

[@conw_y]

Cameron always looks mildly amused / bemused when crypto is discussed 😂

[@cameronpassmore1561]

Busted

[@darnold1984]

The sniveling Tradfi cope is difficult to hide!

[@mikael3201]

Why is it deflationary?

[@mrpower33]

I listened to the entire thing but I didn’t hear a real argument against Bitcoin as a store of value. It clearly has a store of value. It has value because it’s scarce and people think it has value. I’m not sure it’s wise for Diehl to pit himself against millions of people putting billions of dollars where their mouth is. The market is always always always smarter than any one individual. Diehl may ultimately be right, but we won’t ever know until after the fact. That is just how markets work. It’s been 15 years and Bitcoin hasn’t died. In fact, every effort to kill it has only made it stronger. Blackrock and Larry Fink are not some small aberration. How many trillions does Diehl manage? The hubris is truly astounding.

[@chillpengeru]

It's a number that goes up and down, because people think they can make money off of it going up at the expense of people who buy it when the number is up and sell when the number is down. Doesn't mean don't invest in it, it just means it's not fundamentally useful necessarily, and if that becomes apparent to enough people (not saying that will happen soon, or necessarily at all) then the whole thing falls apart. I've made some half decent money on it and I do find the store of value argument fairly compelling, but I just can't rule out the possibility that it'll literally be worthless in 5, 10, or 15 years. Maybe I'm wrong and it'll be 1 million though, who knows.

[@mrpower33]

⁠@@chillpengeruI’m reading all these other comments and it just blows my mind. I seem to have listened to another interview. Again, the market, which is over $1 trillion now, has said Bitcoin has value. But apparently this random dude who is much poorer than Larry Fink says it’s worthless. But for some reason, his opinion, which doesn’t seem to address any of the Bitcoin maximalist arguments, is compelling. What I’m sensing is that people are faced with a new technology and it’s scary and they’re not sure how to think about it. So they default to their preconceived notions. This is normal. Capital markets are forward looking and aggregate information from a myriad of sources. It is itself a powerful technology. We have learned through history that markets will humble even the most brilliant of investors. I don’t see any humility here, I see resistance to what powerful market forces are signaling. Markets aren’t perfect, and the further out in time you go the less perfect they are. But this video absolutely hasn’t aged well and I stand by it.

[@SergioMiletto8]

@@mrpower33 I think that to give value to something is nearly a philosophical question, because value is relative to people. For some it has value because it has a long existing market and a rising price, for others it doesn't have value as it doesn't contain productivity or usefulness in the real economy as it is inefficient and useless for most people(we are not smugglers nor dissidents), but it feels like it's a mean of freedom in case in the future banks or government try to rob you of your money, but this is an apocalyptic impractical view and i feel bitcoin doesn't add anything to the average consumer and real data confirms it has become only a speculative asset not a widely used currency as blueprinted originally

[@mrpower33]

@@SergioMiletto8 you're right, value is subjective, it's what the free market assigns to things. The free market says Bitcoin is worth something around $65,000 a coin. The Bitcoin ETFs are the most successful ETFs in history. The Wisconsin state pension fund bought the Bitcoin ETF. Donald Trump is running as the first crypto president. His VP pick, JD Vance, owns Bitcoin directly. A handful of corporations are starting to put Bitcoin on their balance sheet. Larry Fink, CEO of the largest asset management firm in the world is out there every day pitching Bitcoin. If Bitcoin was going to get widespread adoption as a new asset class, this is exactly what it would look like. I'm curious what you think is really happening regarding these facts? Bitcoin doesn't needs to function as a currency to have value, I think the best use case is digital gold. Larry Fink made this exactly point last week. Gold has a market cap of over $16 trillion, which implies a possible 10X for the price of Bitcoin. I ask you to take a poll of millennials and zoomers, a large percentage of them will tell you they own crypto. There is probably zero who own gold. As the boomers (who own gold) die and leave their massive savings to zoomers, where do you think some of that is going to go? It's going to Bitcoin. I'll say it again, Bitcoin is likely the best asymmetric financial investment you can make right now.

[@ckangas5674]

There's heavy cognitive bias in technology areas even past the normal hedgehog effect/bias. For example, the last person that should be asked about the viability of NoSQL is a SQL DBA. You're actually better off asking a software engineer with limited but roughly equal exposure to all competing technologies involved. I don't necessarily disagree with most of the concluding points. But this is one of the worst choices for a guest on the topic that could have been made concerning accurate information. On nearly any other episode I can point to several pieces which viewers/listeners will be better off knowing. This episode, however, is pure entertainment which does nothing more than support existing biases and beliefs. Many (most?) statements from the guest were based purely on his personal opinions; anything approaching the slightest academic rigor was absent. Hopefully this was a one-off exception and there's a return to the podcast's normally high standards next episode.

[@rationalreminder]

Good feedback. Thank you. -Ben

[@antonskundrotspravieniskis1188]

Yeah, inviting crypto pumpers like Paolo or Pomp would be better indeed.

[@mcneelynorman1]

Fantastic piece. Will the Rational Reminder be bringing on a proponent of blockchain technology?

[@rationalreminder]

We plan to have Ari Jules from Cornell who is a proponent of blockchain but not of Bitcoin.

[@alwaystoyou123]

@@rationalreminder yass. Bring him. That would be lovely. Ask him about oracles more

[@basics129]

@@rationalreminder Would love his thoughts on how Blockchain aligns with CAP Theorem. Also, in which field/business/domain, will blockchain will be clearly (no ifs and buts) more efficient system than the current tech stack.

[@rationalreminder]

@Basics Thanks for the questions for Ari. He is now booked for recording in early September.

[@martinlutherkingjr.5582]

@@rationalreminder The blockchain not Bitcoin argument is circa 2017. I would be surprised if he has anything new to say.

[@johnclukosereloaded]

As a software engineer, i agree with every word he said. Bitcoin/Blockchain has no technical use-case Period!

[@martinlutherkingjr.5582]

If you didn’t have a bank account you would beg to differ.

[@TaspatsLV]

How about a monetary/ financial use case?

[@martinlutherkingjr.5582]

@@TaspatsLV It’s irrelevant because he’s a boomer politican

[@alexchis1610]

Tesco hasn’t been a supermarket selling food only for 30 years It’s a hypermarket selling all goods

[@Bakershem]

"he's not necessarily an expert on the economics or the social aspects". Well said Ben - there seem to be so many outspoken software engineers that have strong opinions about bitcoin for very good reasons, but it does seem more difficult for these people to separate the problems presented by cryptocurrency technology from other areas

[@justinrander229]

If you read Diehl and can't tell that he is quite well read on economics then I would suspect you are ignorant of the subject yourself.

[@bahmak2003]

@@justinrander229lol no he’s not!😂😂😂 How do you solve the double spend problem? His answer: by using a central authority! Lol that central authority will more likely double spend!😂😂😂😂

[@muffemod]

I WAS HERE

[@sevi4088]

9:49 Proof of Work is not "slow". It doesn't matter if you're using PoW or PoS consensus mechanism for scalability of a blockchain. Bitcoin could easily scale to 1000s of tx/s on a first layer. What you'd have to do would not be changing consensus to PoS. You'd need to lift off the blocksize limit which would let you to perform more transactions on a 1st layer. From that point you could have nodes more powerful than a raspberry PI to process transactions. But that would decrease network's decentralization which is something that is crucial for Bitcoin. That's why instead of centralizing layer 1 with big blocks community decided to scale Bitcoin on a 2nd Layer with Lightning Network. Today's Bitcoin doesn't want to compete with Visa and other scalable solutions. It's got a different use case which I would call "decentralized asset" which libretarians see as valuable for them. Most scalable blockchains are on PoS because it's seen as superior in the altcoin community. But there are also scalable PoW blockchains like Kadena.

[@alwaystoyou123]

In my view, your best guest was Eswad Prasad on how banking works and the role of Bitcoin in financial system. This guy seem not to see the problem with current financial system

[@rationalreminder]

The problems I remember him highlighting were heavy regulations and monopolies, making innovation difficult. Where those the same problems you are referring to? -Ben

[@infocasuhal1817]

He's right until he's wrong "Rome wasn't built in a day"