Ofir Beigel氏によるビットコイン入門講座

In this episode of Cryptonews Podcast, Matt Zahab interviews Ofir Beigel, Founder of 99Bitcoins.

They talk about Bitcoin, the Lightning Network, his journey into crypto, and much more.

Episode timestamps:

0:00 Intro 
0:51 Air Force Pilot stories 
3:40 Journey into crypto 
7:52 What is Bitcoin? 
11:38 How Bitcoin solves inflation 
18:02 Lightning network 
27:38 Poker and sports betting 
28:07 99Bitcoins and Bitcoin Obituaries 
31:53 Rapid fire questions 
36:51 Outro

The episode premiered on June 2, 2021.

Listen to it on other platforms here or explore the latest episodes of Cryptonews Podcast.

Episode transcript:

Matt Zahab: 0:09

Ladies and gentlemen, I am very excited to have today's guests on the show. This gentleman is a former Air Force pilot turned Bitcoin guru. He started stacking SATs and teaching the public about Bitcoin well before the masses and was way ahead of the curve. Present day, he's the founder of 99 bitcoins, which started out as a personal blog about Bitcoin and today is now one of the largest online sources for cryptocurrency tutorials, reviews, guides, which millions of readers follow every single month. I'm very pleased to welcome to the crypto news podcast Ofir Beigel. Ofir, Welcome to the show.

Ofir Beigel:

 0:49

Hey, Matt. Very nice to be here. Very excited.

Matt Zahab:

 0:51

Very fired up to have you on as well. You're definitely the first pilot on the show. I want to kick off by, you gotta have some crazy stories about that. Like how cool is that flying jets? Come on.

Ofir Beigel:

 1:01

Yeah, so actually, I don't fly jets, I fly helicopters, which is way more cool. Because instead of flying at 30,000 feet flat, like 25 feet, which is just like, you know, having like an ATV but just 25 feet above the ground. And it's pretty crazy, you know, just flying so low level and it's probably one of the best things I enjoy is flying helicopters.

Matt Zahab:

 1:24

You still do that?

Ofir Beigel:

 1:25

Not as an active pilot in the military. I stopped doing that a few years ago but I do it as a civilian. So I started flying also small airplanes and basically I'm still flying small helicopters as well.

Matt Zahab:

 1:38

Wow, that is absolutely bananas. I've always loved to fly like a fighter jet like you know being Tom Cruise kind of thing. Flying a helicopter that's pretty darn cool too.

Ofir Beigel:

 1:48

Flying a jet by the way flying it looks pretty cool but once you do it, it's very nauseating. Yeah the one or two times i did it, I have to say all of that g force and stuff like that. It's it's really tummy turning

Matt Zahab:

 2:03

I bet yeah, well you're ripping through altitude so quickly there Yeah. But again, very very cool. Any any crazy stories for us from you know, rescuing people or anything like that?

Ofir Beigel:

 2:12

Well, it's pretty hectic in here as always, you know, I'm located in Israel right now and it's pretty hectic the whole Israel situation always, so I do have some you know some combat stories back into the off you know, flying while people are you know, firing around you but in general at the end there's not a lot right home about. Sometimes you have, first of all because the whole situation is very sensitive and it's not like you've seen in the movies. There's not like good guys and bad guys. In the end war sucks and you know, it isn't as glamorous as it looks. But I will say that it is something very very fulfilling in being a part of a mission that's goal is to save someone life. I flew Blackhawks so basically we did search and rescue missions. We didn't do any bombing or stuff like that. We did, when somebody got hurt we basically on either side, but we also there were also times when we were called on to evacuate Palestinians people from Lebanon who got hurt stuff like that. So basically we get call them whenever someone gets hurt, we get to called to go in and get them outside of the fireline and into the hospital where that will be. So there's something very fulfilling about that being kind of like part of the link of the people who create that mission to save lives. So that's kind of the best I can tell. It's not a really glamorous combat story, but that's kind of like at least the feeling that I came out of after I finished my service.

Matt Zahab:

 3:40

That is incredible. Wish there are more people like youn in this world. That's very admirable and just really, really cool. I would love to be able to do something like that and hopefully I still can in this lifetime. Let's jump right into it though and 99 bitcoins that is your baby that is your company started out as a blog now gets millions of readers every single month. I guess before we jump into that, you started making YouTube videos on Bitcoin using like the sketch technology that everyone sees today. You started this back in 2013. Like what's going on in your noggin that said, I should start making YouTube videos and I should get into bitcoin in 2013 well before everyone else and I should dumb it down and explain it to you know, five year olds or grandma's grandpa's or whoever it may be like, what what's going on up there?

Ofir Beigel:

 4:29

Yeah, so that's a pretty interesting story. Because back in 2013, I was out of a job, basically sitting at home playing online poker. That's what I was doing most of the time. And then I stumbled upon this article on TechCrunch saying this anonymous currency called Bitcoin just hit a billion market, a billion dollars market cap. And I come from an internet marketing background. So immediately said, okay, this is interesting. Maybe there's some sort of business model I can set up around this and I started looking into bitcoin and I always knew that my forte was taking complex stuff and dumbing it down into plain words. In this case, I took Bitcoin and tried to explain it plain English. And initially I had no idea what I was doing, it was basically an experiment. 99 Bitcoin started out as an experiment, totally just saying, let's just put something out there. I had no idea what Bitcoin was, I wasn't mainly for the money, I wasn't the Bitcoin evangelist, I am today. Back then it was just trying to make a few quick bucks. And I used this I think the software called Pelton, I don't even know if it's still around, that you can do your own sketch technology things. And, you know, I just started reading from a lot of sources, back then even Coindisk was just starting out, it was very, very early days later on April 2013, when it when it first started. And because there wasn't a lot of competition, because there were no blogs back then from definitely not for marketers. There were a lot of tech blogs, you know, a lot of of Geek jargon. But because there wasn't a lot of competition, relatively quickly, I managed to make it to the first pages on Google on a lot of like major search terms. You know, like how to buy bitcoin, what is Bitcoin? What is Bitcoin mining, stuff like that. And, again, this was very early days, this was before the 2013 bubble even happened. And ever since then, the site kind of like, basically rode the Bitcoin wave. So in 2014, late 2014 was a very big Bitcoin bubble where, you know, it went from around $50 to, to $1200 then crashed back to $50. And at that time, the site basically exploded, the first time I saw that, like the site explode becasue visitors, people were actively searching for it. And then I knew that I was actually onto something, because up until then, the first six months, I was just playing, you know, around with my spare time. And I said, Okay, there's something here, I better look into this, I start learning a lot more about Bitcoin I got very excited about because it's the first time it was actually, once I started learning about it. Initially, I learned about it because I wanted, you know, just make more money from the site. It was funny, but once I actually start learning about it, and I understand that I need to also understand what money is and how money is created. I got like, super excited. I said, Oh my god, this is this is life changing. So for me, Bitcoin wasn't life changing from day one. I knew about Bitcoin, when it was $70. But I didn't invest in it until it was $1,000 something like that.

Matt Zahab:

 7:28

I read that you didn't get in till 2016. Right.

Ofir Beigel:

 7:31

Exactly, exactly. 2014 is where I saw it first, but only 2016 I actually invested my money into it. Because up until that I didn't really understand it. And it was a lot of like, you know, and until I didn't really understand it, I was afraid to put my own money at risk. But once something clicked and it was like an aha moment for me. It was life changing.

Matt Zahab:

 7:52

The rest is history. I absolutely love that. Yeah, you are probably the perfect guest to give almost the intro of Bitcoin lecture for our listeners and we've had a ton of listeners who do want this intro to Bitcoin so I'd love to focus for the next 10 or 15 minutes or so into that. Before we get into the history of it because I do think that is a very important part, obviously when you're talking about the history of Bitcoin, you probably have to talk about the history of fiat and you know, just history in general and monetary policy so on and so forth. But before we get into the nitty gritty Can you just talk about you know, what is Bitcoin? Its main properties and why it can become such a powerful tool in today's day and age?

Ofir Beigel:

 8:31

Well, that's a bit of a trick question because it's really hard to do that without explaining what you just talked about, you know, without explaining the whole history without explaining what is the problem? If you take a look at any of our tutorials, what is Bitcoin? What is Ethereum and what is monero? Doesn't matter what we're talking about, the first thing I tried to explain to someone is, let's see, what's the problem we're addressing here and if we talk about Bitcoin, we need to talk about a problem of you know, fiat money of centralized currencies of the fact that our money isn't owned by us. It's owned by the banks, It's owned by the governments, created by the government. And we have to give that intro in order to understand why Bitcoin is such a game changer. What I am very happy that's happening today inn these days, at least it's happening here where I live, is that people are starting to realize that without needing to explain it, because cryptocurrency is getting so major, and everybody's trying to invest in it. And the banks here, at least where I live, they start blocking transactions to bitstamp and to Coinbase. They don't allow you to send money out and moreover, they don't allow you to receive money that came from crypto. And then people start saying like, Hey, what do you mean, I can't send this money out, this is my money. And then they started understand that It's not their money. It's money that they gave to the bank for safekeeping, and that there is no other form of money today aside from money that isn't controlled by us. You know, there is cash but cash all throughout the world is being you know, moving outside of circulation, right? And this cuts the explanation I need to do in half because I can just you know, people come come to me say hey, I tried to move money to bitstamp and the bank won't let me, how annoying. And I say yeah, that's exactly why I need Bitcoin. You need money that isn't controlled by anyone. That's exactly what Bitcoin gives you the opportunity to like, you know, like people say be your own bank or have full control of your money. There's no other type of currency in the world aside from gold, you know, when gold also or metals, but, you know, you have to carry them around. Here you have just a piece of 24 words, which is basically your own bank. So going back to what you asked initially, it's hard to explain exactly what Bitcoin is without giving this intro. But to me, you know, there's a part of me that's saying the old cliche that Bitcoin is money that I fully control. And to me, Bitcoin is also a part of me sticking the finger back to the banks. So that's kind like the way I see it. One of the reasons I like to explain to people about Bitcoin, because I feel that I'm doing my small part in this, you know, monetary revolution that's happening. And I can see it happening in a lot of countries. It started in 20, I don't remember when it was, I think it was 2016 in India, when they started banning the large notes, the large cash notes, I don't know, if you remember that.

Matt Zahab:

 11:31

Yeah, they made people come in and exchange them. And there were these massive lines at the banks and stuff.

Ofir Beigel:

 11:37

Exactly, yeah, exactly. So when I was talking

Matt Zahab:

 11:38

It's tough for people to really understand the about that back then people were saying, Yeah, but that's an India that doesn't happen here. And then you see it happen in another place in another place, and even here, you know, they started banning large cash transactions, and you see them shutting down bank, you know, ATMs and you know, when all of these bank branches, one after the other. There's no way to actually access any actual cash these days. So now, it's much, uch easier. There's not much of a need to do the explaining f the problem. And the solutio of what Bitcoin is basically m ney that you control, th t you have complete control over. That's the one liner th t I use. Some people don't unde stand why you need mon y I control, why not use the ank, but then we go back to he actual intro, what we talked bout importance of Bitcoin until you've been impacted by it. A lot of Indians are understanding this due to the again, the large $500 and I believe $1,000 banknotes, obviously, and rupees that are now gone, you have the Venezuelan currency that is, you know, absolutely toast, you have the Lebanese currency, absolutely toasts, and then there's a currency that most people can relate to. And that is the US dollar, where I believe something like 25% of all US dollars in circulation have been printed in the last like 16 to 18 months, you know, Janet Yellen and the crew, Joe B den, before it was Trump doesn t matter who it was, but they ust went over to the money print r, cranked the on button and sta ted cranking, you know, obv ously virtual dollar bills, but you get the point. The next poi t in the Bitcoin narrative tha a lot of people should know abo t is the inflation aspect. I'd love if you could touch on how Bitcoin solves that problem.

Ofir Beigel:

 13:19

Yeah, so you just talked about how the US dollar is massively being printed since the corona virus basically spread out and, you know, all these stimulus checks that, you know, it's not just the US, it's also here in Israel, and probably, you know, across the globe, all these countries trying to deal with the unemployment and all of the things that the COVID brought to us. But Bitcoin is amazing, because basically, you know, it doesn't care. It has a fixed supply. Every four years that supply basically the new supply of the currency cuts in half. You know, we just have the last halving in 2020 So do you want me to really kind of go into the actual details of it or you want to be kind of like, what do you want to focus on here?

Matt Zahab:

 13:59

Give me a high level, I'm tough, I'm asking for a high level but low level like give it the necessary amount of details to paint the picture, but I don't want you to like make a van Gogh.

Ofir Beigel:

 14:10

So I'm gonna do it as basic as as I can. So Bitcoin has, you know, a total mass supply of 21 million bitcoins. That's all of the Bitcoins are ever going to be generated. Now, new Bitcoins are generated roughly every 10 minutes when a new block of transactions is being generated, new bitcoins come into the system. We call that Bitcoin mining, I can go talk a lot about Bitcoin mining, but that's a really interesting subject, but I won't go into it. The reason it's called mining because actually, I do want to touch about this. Bitcoin mining is one of the most confusing terms there is because the action of mining bitcoins is only the after effect of the actual action being done. Let me explain. The main issue with Bitcoin is that you don't have a central bank to authorize transactions. So you don't have a central authority to actually tell you which transactions came before the other transaction. You need to find a way to have someone who actually authorizes transactions but not give him the actual power to be, like a central banker. So how do you do that? You kind of like randomize, each time, we'll pick another person to be a banker, to do through some sort of like a lottery test, this is a very rough generalization of how you know,

Matt Zahab:

 15:24

No you're killing it. Keep going.

Ofir Beigel:

 15:26

So just imagine, so we say, let's just do a lottery. Every 10 minutes, let's pick someone else randomly to be the banker. And now we have each time someone who can actually be the banker and decide on you know, the order of transactions, which transaction is approved and not. And on the other hand, without giving him too much of the power, because each time we're going to pick someone else, depeds some sorts of criteria, which I won't go into right now. This is the actual action being done in Bitcoin mining. I call it the who wants to be a banker contest. This is Bitcoin mining. The thing is, that the name Bitcoin mining is a bit misleading, because once we chose the banker in some sort of random way, so to speak, he gets also a reward for being kind of like the designated banker for the next 10 minutes, and that reward is the new bitcoins that are being generated by the system. And this we're kind of like mining them outside, out of the network. That's why it's called Bitcoin mining, like you mine gold out of the ground. So even though Bitcoin mining is the name given for the act of the reward, the actual action being done is this randomization of b nkers, that choosing a differ nt banker every time to con rol the blockchain which s basically the whole trans ction book of Bitcoin. So this was a bit of a, you know, m ybe a messy explanation but can I try and talk about bit about Bitcoin mining. So ircling back to what we talked about inflation, we have 21 m llion bitcoins in total, an every 10 minutes, you know, ano her banker was chosen, and a cer ain amount of bitcoins is being iven to him as a reward. N w, this amount that is bein given to him is being cut ever four years. So it's gradually eing reduced until in 2140, ll of the bitcoins will be mi ed out of the system, all the 21 will be mined, but there won't be 21 million bitcoins becaus a lot of bitcoins have b en lost and can't be recovered, ou know, people lost their wa lets, or send them to invalid address, or whatever. So it is b sically much less than 21 mi lion Bitcoins. And this i amazing, because this is buil in hardcore in the system. Yo can't change this without a f ll consensus of everybody runn ng the network, which is basic lly impossible by now to create because so many people are unning Bitcoin, and have a say in this network. So this is something that doesn't matte what pandemic you will have, hat war you'll have, this ill stay fixed. And this is basi ally something that's, for e, truly amazing. It's an un hangeable, or an immutable as

Matt Zahab:

 18:02

That's a very good explanation of that, that was you'd say, financial s stem. bang on. Bitcoin is, I always looked at, I'm a sports guy,

Ofir Beigel:

 18:13

It's funny, you're asking me very tough questions. just a very easy analogy that I use to my friends who are also sports guys, or gals, it's like a professional sports team. You can't just make a team and plop it in the English Premier League or the NBA or the NFL, it doesn't work, there's only so many of them, and people spend a lot of money for them. And that is similar to Bitcoin, it is a scarce asset that is not growing on trees. It's not like the US dollar that can be printed. And again, that is one of the reasons why Bitcoin is so powerful. That's more sort of on the store of value side. And on the asset side. Can you just give a very, you know, quick explanation of the lightning network and how that can be used to transform the sort of cross border and just payment infrastructure that the world currently uses? At the moment? I want to explain it with how I go into every topic that I break down. So I'm a very regular guy so to speak. I'm not this tech genius, you know, I'm coming from a marketing background. I didn't know even what a hash was and all of these, you know, confusing terms in Bitcoin, that sometimes you people have. And whenever I take a new topic, for example, mining, lightning network, whatever you want, atomic swaps. What I do in the first like, two weeks, I just sit down and I try to read and I try to find analogies or I try to find the best explainer I can to make it as simple as I can. And this process of actually diving deep into a topic is a process of like, let's say it takes me one month to build like this very good script of explaining stuffing. And sometimes it's funny, because if it's a very complex topic, for that month I get really deep into it, let's say uniswap. We just wrote a script about uniswap, was very interesting, you know all the DeFi

Matt Zahab:

 20:11

Great company by the way, we can do a whole or we can do a day long pod on uniswap, incredible. Folks at uniswap, we love you. Sorry, keep going.

Ofir Beigel:

 20:19

So it took me like a whole month to kind of dig deep into, you know, DeFi indexes. And what's the difference between the dex and traditional exchange, and how recently changes uses order books and uniswap uses, you know, the amm algorithm, stuff like that. So and it's really interesting. But sometimes what happens because this is not my day to day, you know. Today, by the way, currently, I don't have any position. I'm the owner of a company, but the company is run by very talented people, which I just can't, you know, have like a board meeting once every a month or two. And aside from doing these scripts, unless I'm involved in the day to day. So what can happen is sometimes I tend to forget what I wrote after like, you know, like 2 3 6 months, and I just go back to my videos and watch them to understand it again. So that's kinda like just an interesting, you know? Your claim is to explain stuff, we sometimes need to kind of remember, okay, what was it that I wrote back then? So let's go back to the lightning network. So coming back to lightning, Bitcoin has... there's an issue with doing a decentralized currency that is also very secure, I'm not going to go into that. But basically, what we talked about the banker being able to approve transactions, so to speak every 10 minutes, that's very slow, if you want to kind of like stop. And also Bitcoin has also some sort of like, let's talk about the scalability issue. So there's a limited amount of transactions, you can approve each time. So if you want to do very small, very, you know, day to day transactions, like buying a cup of coffee, and paying back your friend for buying you lunch, using Bitcoin isn't really a very good infrastructure for that. It's good for store of value, it's good for large, large transaction, which you don't do very, very frequently. But if you want to do these, like small cash payments, you know, paying for coffee and stuff like that, they need some other solution. So basically, the lightning network, if I'm trying to put it in layman's terms, and I'm making this up as I go, you know, it's like you and your friends sitting in watching an NBA match and you're starting to do side bets on, I don't know how many shots is Steph Curry going to put in, for example, or how many fouls are going to be given to the team. And instead of, you know, well, let's say you bet on $10, and you win, and then you get another thing and you lose instead of just each time it's exchanging the money, you just write down on a piece of paper, you know, how much who won and who lost. And at the end, you just calculate the tab and you say, okay, in the end, calculating everything here, I owe you like, $20. So this is kind of like the lightning network, it's kinda like a side bet. It's called side chain, right? It's like kind of like a side bet. You don't actually send the transactions on the Bitcoin network, you kind of like, calculate with whoever you're transacting with of the transactions and the total, whatever comes up to the total, you just send that to the network. And you both agree on that because you know, you have a set of rules that you agreed on beforehand. And it makes it much more easier to do very small transaction, because all these small transactions, they don't go onto the network, they're calculated only by you two on that side bet that you have on that piece of paper. And once you finish doing all this calculation, just send that subtotal to the network itself. So that's kind of how I look at the lightning.

Matt Zahab:

 23:33

I like that. Tell me about sending Bitcoin to a friend. Let's say I fly to Israel, and you take me out for dinner and I want to repay you and I want to send you some Bitcoin. Walk me through that process with the Bitcoin address and everything else.

Ofir Beigel:

 23:50

Sure. So when I usually explain that I usually do the equivalent of home carry to email. So when you want to send or receive Bitcoin, it's basically very similar to email. The first thing when you, let's say, you're going to explain to your grandma how to use email, the first thing you want to do is get her some sort of software to be able to send and receive emails. Could be Gmail, it could be outlook, whatever you want to use, but you need that software, you need that thing that kind of like, can talk with emails. So the same thing here is the Bitcoin wallet, that's what's going to talk with the bitcoins, that's what's gonna, you know, you can send bitcoins from it, you can receive bitcoins to it. So the first thing you need to do is to get a bitcoin wallet. You can either download that as an app to your to your mobile phone, or you know download to computer or you can use a web wallet. There's a lot of different types of the same way. There's a lot of different email apps you can use. Once you download your Bitcoin wallet, you're going to need your Bitcoin address. Now if again, I'm going to email analogy.

Matt Zahab:

 24:53

I love it by the way, that's one of the best analogies I've heard. So keep going. This is awesome.

Ofir Beigel:

 24:57

Yeah I think it's very simple. So If I want to send you an email, I'm gonna need your email address. So for example, your email address can be Matt at crypto news.com. The same thing if I want to send you bitcoins, I'm gonna need your Bitcoin address and the only difference here is that you don't choose your Bitcoin address, the wallet gives you that for you. So you're just going to your wallets, its a very ugly string of letters and numbers. You get your Bitcoin address, and then you tell me, hey, this is my Bitcoin address, please send it to me here. And then I can just send you bitcoins for my wallet. So we talked about the kind of like the, you know, the software, which is the Bitcoin wallet, we talked about the address, which is the Bitcoin address, the only thing we're missing here, if we're comparing this email is your password. What's the password to actually access your email account, and in this case, it's a private key. So every wallet has a private key, or in most modern wallets, we're talking about a seed, which is basically 12 or 24 words, which this is the password to actually accessing your bitcoins. Now again, this is very overly simplifying things, you know, because it's not as as simple as it sounds. But that's kind of how explain people I tell them look, this is your email software, this bitcoin wallet, you have, this is your email address, your Bitcoin address, and this 24 words, this is your password, you can't show this to anyone. Whoever sees this basically can, even without your wallet, it's even you know it's worse than an email password. Even without having your wallet, they can access your bitcoins from wherever. So that's the simplest analogy I use, about explaining people how to send bitcoins.

Matt Zahab:

 26:26

That is a great one. And like I said, I've never heard the email analogy before. That you definitely don't want to take a gamble on that. And speaking of gambling, just want to give a quick shout out to our sponsors at coin poker.com. You guys have heard me talk about coinpoker. Many times in this podcast, we absolutely love them. They are the revolutionary blockchain technology based platform that offers incredible quick, fast transactions instant and secure transactions on the blockchain for online poker and online sports betting. I personally love the mobile app with my phone out on the go. And I can bet on some sports I can play a couple hands of Texas Hold'em five card stud you name it, they have it great team like I said quick, fast, instant and secure transactions. The in game currency is USDT they also have the fuel currency which is $CHP that is $CHP token. And they also offer Bitcoin Ethereum. You name it, it is there. We love these guys coin poker appreciate you and head on over to coinpoker.com to check them out. Ofir, are you a poker player at all?

Ofir Beigel:

 27:38

Yes, I'm an aspiring poker player. You know I play with my friends. Once a week, you know physically we meet and play. It's a very close group that meet. I also used to play like I talked about online poker in my past, but I stopped that somewhere around where I started 99 Bitcoins. But I love that game. it has so many so many analogies to real life in a sense which is amazing. It goes so deep. So I really love that game.

Matt Zahab:

 28:07

Are there any other points you'd like to talk about on our sort of intro to Bitcoin that we haven't already touched on?

Ofir Beigel:

 28:13

No, I think what I want to say, it kind of like connects to what you were saying. If you want to get into bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency before you even put your first dollar in just go and study. Now the basic things we need to understand, what is this currency for example, what is Bitcoin? And understanding how do I actually you know, what is its X Factor? Why would I even use it? And the other two things which I would go into is the Bitcoin mining like we talked about and the wallets. So if you're new if you're hearing this and you're new to cryptocurrency, just make sure to you know, even go to our channel 99 bitcoins and watch these three videos, what is Bitcoin, what is Bitcoin mining? And what is a bitcoin wallet? That's the basics I would hope everybody would cover before even getting you know the first dollar into cryptocurrency. So that's kind of what I want to say about that.

Matt Zahab:

 28:59

Nice kind, again, 99 bitcoins, it's a free resource, it'll literally have everything you could ever imagine on the topic. When I first got into it, that was a great resource for me. I know a lot of people love them as well, and I highly recommend checking them out. One of my favorite sort of domains and aspects or products, if you will, it's not really a product, but you get what I'm talking about on 99 bitcoins is the Bitcoin obituaries and it is so funny how you guys do that? I'd love if you could just just give me, the floor is yours. Tell me about Bitcoin obituaries and how did you think of that?

Ofir Beigel:

 29:34

Yeah, so actually, I have to give the credit here. It's not to me because I didn't think about it. The story is very interesting. Back in 2014. I met a guy named Jordan tweener. I don't know if you know him. He's actually the owner of buy bitcoin worldwide, which is also a very popular site. And he was just starting out back then. And he was the guy who actually came up with this idea of Bitcoin obituaries. But he was still starting out and I saw this and I was like, oh my god, this is a very good resource, and I actually bought it from him back then. And back then there was like 70 or 80, obituaries? I think we're talking about 2015 2014 i don't remember the exact year. And I started curating them from from that day on. So he kinda like passed the torch to me and I started receiving, you know, this is completely community based, we don't go and actively look for obituaries, this is completely community based. The community sends them to us, we just read through the articles and try to make sure that you know, they're actual obituaries, and not just clickbait in the title, because that happens a lot. But it's so satisfying when you actually find an obituary because you know that this thing is already, is a very credible resource in the community, this is going to be here, stay here forever. You know, it's the same people who said that the internet is a place for criminals, and money launderers, these are the same people that are announcing that Bitcoin is basically going to fail, and you know, this money is going to be worthless, and this is going to stay here for the next I don't know how long, how many decades. So that's kind of the story of Bitcoin obituaries. I'm very happy that we have some sort of contribution to the community in a sense that, you know, people recognize that, you know, if they see some sort of obituary, they immediately tag us on Twitter, or just go to the site and send it over. And it's also very fun, you know, reading your stuff and seeing how people actually resist change. Doesn't matter if it hits you in the face, they won't understand that this change is here, it's going to happen and it's amazing how history repeats itself each time with something else. So you know, back then was the internet now it's Bitcoin. You had the same thing going on with the personal computer. People thought that you know, there won't be a need for a personal computer, in every home. Cars. Just repeat itself every time.

Matt Zahab:

 31:53

The show goes on as it always does. This has been awesome. I do have a couple more questions before we wrap up here. A couple rapid fire questions. Tell our guests who Satoshi is and who's your guess. Who's your best guess on Satoshi? Who do you think he is?

Ofir Beigel:

 32:08

Um, I didn't do that much of a research on it. The one thing I saw, I don't remember where I saw that, I think it was very sociable could be. I think he did an episode on who is Satoshi and he talked about how Adam Beck, he thinks he is. That was pretty convincing but I can't really say cuz you know, I read a lot of the of the history about you know, satoshis writing and all of that, but I never tried. I actually played around with the idea of doing Bitcoin whiteboard Tuesday about digging deep into trying to drill into the identity of him. But right now that was pretty convincing to me the one that he did, hopefully I really hope that nobody will ever find out who Satoshi is. I think I don't know if will matter that much at this point. But I think this is probably bitcoins greatest achievement that it managed to reach where it is today without actually knowing whoever invented it.

Matt Zahab:

 33:06

Who do you think some of the most important stakeholders and not influencers. I hate the word influencer. But who do you think are some of the most important people and organizations within the Bitcoin community at the moment?

Ofir Beigel:

 33:17

Well, define to me what you consider as important

Matt Zahab:

 33:17

Well said, very well said. A couple quick rapid fire because, you know, it can go either way. I really, really, I think Andreas, you know, it goes without saying, but I think the job that Andreas did for Bitcoin is you know, it can't be exaggerated enough. First of all, the patience he has to go and explain everything from the beginning each time without being very arrogant about it, without being impatient. It's just you know, it's so inspiring to me as someone who's also trying to educate people. He's been one of my role models for a long, long time. Aside from that, you know, we can talk about important stuff and like I said, influencers but you know, I think we can talk about the coinbase's and the bitstamp and ll of these people and Bria Armstrong and the Winklevoss tw ns and all that, but I think, o me, the people who I really et inspiration from, are the youtubers. The YouTubers who ay to day, go and put out these hows, and I'm talking about ltcoin daily and I'm talking ab ut Bitboy crypto, and all hese people who in BTC sessions, and crypto zero so you have all these YouTubers who just g out and do the work, you know. hey're down during the ditches w th bringing people information, breaking down explaining to hem, giving them credible inf rmation, not hype, which is ve y, very important to me. o these are the people who I ook up to when I try to measur myself up against. questions here before we wrap up, Bitcoin at 100k. When and if will this happen?

Ofir Beigel:

 34:58

This will definitely happen. It's not question of if it's a question of when. I think we'll see that either by the end of this year or the beginning of 2022. I'm going to take a risk here and say by the end of 2021.

Matt Zahab:

 35:16

I completely agree. Especially with the recent setback completely agree 100%

Ofir Beigel:

 35:21

Yeah, exactly. Now I actually actually tweeted something very interesting today. This is the first correction that happened that I have more people asking me how can I buy than telling me oh, Bitcoin is dead.

Matt Zahab:

 35:34

Exact same. People are asking me did you buy the dip? Should I buy the dip? Normally it was hey I told you so, bitcoins gonna take a shit and now it is what can I buy? And is it a good time? So you're bang on there its crazy

Ofir Beigel:

 35:49

Exactly.

Matt Zahab:

 35:49

Every time we go through one of these huge setbacks, it only makes the community stronger and takes out the bad actors and stakeholders that were not wanted there in the first place. Ofir this has been incredible. I really did learn a lot and I know our guests are going to absolutely love this episode. Are there any other resources or any other youtubers besides yourself? The 99 Bitcoin fam that you would recommend for a guest to check out?

Ofir Beigel:

 36:14

Yeah, so I said I think altcoin daily is a great resource for news. Um, other than that, I forgot the guy's name but let me check that for a second cuz I think he should receive some credit here. Finematics.

Matt Zahab:

 36:34

Yes, he's great. He does the sketches.

Ofir Beigel:

 36:36

Yeah, so he does a lot of the DeFi videos. He's very good at breaking down the DeFi videos. That's also someone I think i'd really you know, recommended. Of course, you know, Andreas, I talked about it. There's not much more to say about that.

Matt Zahab:

 36:51

And last question, where can our guests find you and 99 bitcoins on socials?

Ofir Beigel:

 36:56

So yeah, we have 99 bitcoins.com which is our main website, which we have all of the text tutorials and we have our Twitter which we're not that active on Twitter, I have to say, but we're also there but our main channels, our website and our YouTube. So that's kind of like where you can find us.

Matt Zahab:

 37:15

You got it. Ofir, thank you so much for jumping on. It was an absolute pleasure having you on the show. I learned a ton, like I said, our guests learned a ton too. We just had a quick little disruption, looks like you got a little baby in there. No worries about. Don't be sorry. Perfect time to wrap up. Really appreciate having you on and thanks again for coming on. Hopefully we can do round two in the future.

Ofir Beigel:

 37:38

Thanks, Matt. I really appreciate it. I really enjoyed the time.

Matt Zahab:

 37:40

Thank you. Thank you. Folks, this was the cryptonews podcast with Ofir from 99 Bitcoins. A true Bitcoin veteran and crypto veteran. It was a treat speaking with him. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please give us a subscribe we would absolutely adore that. Again we release episodes on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays every morning. Open up Apple, Spotify, Google Stitcher, overcast you name it and you will find the new episode locked and loaded in your account. We love you all hope you have a great day phenomenal weekend and we will keep in touch all the best and have a good one. ByeBeginner's Guide to Bitcoin with Ofir Beigel