Market News

On this week's show, our host Brian McGleenon is joined by bitcoin pioneers Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert. Bitcoin was born in January 2009 when the 'genesis block' was mined by pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto. This event happened in the wake of the last global financial crisis when the declining value of a small set of assets spread rapidly and caused cascading failures among interlinked financial institutions across the globe.

Now the world's foremost cryptocurrency could be about to taste a new financial crisis. But this time it will face the storm as a mature asset that has been embraced by institutional as well as retail investors.

Stacy Herbert and Max Keiser are renowned for their conviction that bitcoin will supersede fiat currencies, including the all-dominant US dollar. They see its target addressable market as the total sum of global finance and forecast the digital asset will eat the incumbent financial system until it creates a new paradigm and become the reserve asset of the globe, so forming, a 'Bitcoin Standard', following in the footsteps of gold.

But, what is their response to Ethereum's transition to a low energy consumption 'proof of stake' method for validating transactions?

Will this not place pressure on bitcoin to quit its high-energy use 'proof of work' consensus mechanism?

Also, it is now one year since El Salvador adopted bitcoin as legal tender within the country.

Mass media and leading economists around the world are unanimous in their belief that El Salvador's experiment with bitcoin has been a failure. Bitcoin has fallen almost 70% in value from its all-time high in November 2021 of $68,000 per coin. Stacy and Max have spent long periods in El Salvador, we ask them how bitcoin adoption is progressing from their first-hand experience on the ground.