Bitcoin: Ownership and Custody - TOKEN2049 Singapore 2023

good afternoon how's everyone doing very good very good so I have this private stage here and we paid extra money for this special booth at ballet I'll tell you about the goodies after this so I'm here to talk about Bitcoin ownership and custody okay I'm going to give you some Secrets secret insights into this amazing thing called Bitcoin and cryptocurrency that I've gained over the last 12 years that I've I've been involved in Bitcoin so who here owns Bitcoin let's get a raise of hands all right people out there wow a lot of people in the back excellent uh so I'm gonna challenge you and really ask you to see if you really own Bitcoin okay and the reason is there are different ways to own Bitcoin and do truly owner do you truly own it okay you can only own it if you really have control and custody of it so what is ownership the topic of ownership is not often talked about in crypto conferences but this is a very very key subject if you want to understand the significance of Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency revolution the reason I'm going to give you a short history okay about ownership and the reason is that money actually started with physical ownership okay we all know that centuries of gold centuries ago for Millennials people used to hold gold gold and silver and physical precious metals so historically value was in the physical good itself where this gold silver where this jewelry where there's commodities like rice grain corn or livestock and that's how people valued wealth how many cattles do you have right how much land you have everything in physical form but today money is actually tied to Identity it's titled ownership what is title ownership title ownership is when you own something in your name and by definition the way you can prove you own it is you are who you are by showing your identity so whether it's a passport whether it's a national ID or it's a driver's license you own the money in your bank account you own the money in your payment system you own the stocks in your brokerage account by virtue of Who You Are right all of us have IDs we bring it sometimes passwords sometimes again state issued government ID well what's the problem with this there are risks there are many problems and risks with title ownership okay this is why Bitcoin and crypto cryptocurrency came around because first of all when you own money and you put in the bank the question is is your money really in the bank that's the number one fear and this earlier this year and this slide is brand new for this year because just earlier this year we've seen some significant Bank Run issues in the United States and I'm sure it's either already happened on the other countries or it will soon happen in other countries and by the way this is this kind of stuff has been going on for decades okay is your bank is your money really in the bank Silicon Valley Bank Signature Bank Credit Suisse they all had to be bailed out and foreclosed and secondly if your money is at the bank when it comes to time of Crisis can you get your money out that's why every so often you see people lining up 18 at the ATM trying to get their cash out this happened 10 years ago in a small country Cyprus in 2013 and it's happening again this year in 2023 it's a repeating pattern okay so when identity involved is involved when you have money and this is a secret right when you have title ownership of money or stocks it turns out you don't really have ownership because the control is held by someone else someone else has to be the judge if you are who you are whether it's going to the airport you have your airline ticket and they have to match your ID to make sure you are the person that has declared the name on the airline ticket when you go to the bank when you get money at the teller they check your ID a lot of times you check your ID so that person behind the counter is actually the judge in control of who you are and they can deny you access to your own funds and this is terrible now people say what about cash what about cash you can control cash right yes and no it's cash you can control it but you do not control the value of the money because over time we've seen Cash go out of go out of go out of money right go go become worthless whether that's the Deutsche Mark pre-World War II whether it's Venezuela the Bolivar where there's very famous in Zimbabwe Africa hyperinflation the money in your hand is not even worth its weight it's not even worth you know like toilet paper and of course in India we saw the government ban the 1500 rupee notes this is almost 10 years ago same thing so the question now is back to cryptocurrency do you control your Bitcoin it's a legitimate question for all of you who raise your hand you say you own your Bitcoin do you actually control it and this is why we created ballet we really want to emphasize self-custody so let's talk about exchanges for example if you hold your Bitcoin on exchanges if you store your Bitcoin in exchanges don't forget they can get hacked that's happened time and time again over the last 12 years I've been in crypto I got first gone through Bitcoin in 2011. there has been dozens dozens of hacks exchanges going away and you know there's so many exchanges with big booths out there today right but the reality is in five years and ten years when you come back to the Token 2049 conference many of the exchanges you see here will have been hacked and some of them will have gone bankrupt just like FTX did last year okay so think about that this is for real and I've run an exchange and I know this firsthand this is very very risky and tough business your account can get hacked so even if it is of the exchange does not get hacked you have a user account on the exchange you log in with your username password and two-factor authentication your account can get hacked your money can get stolen because you're leaving it on a platform even if it doesn't get hacked even if your account doesn't get hacked they can still get go bankrupt because of mismanagement if the CEO decides to spend money buying a house or giving money to a politician the platform can be insolvent or they make bad investment decisions okay it can become insolvent so the lesson here is you need to self-custody self-custody means you take ownership and control of your digital assets I don't care if it's Bitcoin ethereum all the tokens or even nfts always always self-custody how many of you how many of you have nfts yeah a few of you you got a self-custody it don't leave it on a platform okay put it on cold storage and there are many ways to store your Bitcoin in cryptocurrency here are some of the popular wallets and platforms on the top we have exchange custodial platforms so the first decision is do you want to store on the custodial platform or do you want a self-custody and I've already given you the answer you should self-custody the second thing is do you want to put it on hot wallets or cold wallets so hot wallets are softer products where you store it there it's running on a live device such as your mobile phone or your PC that's connected to the internet where you don't you don't want to do that you want to put on the cold storage so that your assets are safe and not online allowing hackers to go at it okay over the last 12 years I've seen a lot of friends and acquaintances and people I meet at conferences tell me they lost all their crypto through a hack because they stored it on a hot wallet or they stole it on a platform the platform went bankrupt okay so we want to offer a solution and most people know it already which is to store your crypto on a hardware device something like this have you seen this device some of you have some of you use it yes I use it myself um but the question is are you using it effectively is your solution Cold Storage simple enough to use safely because we know complexity is the enemy of safety in reality what's happening is most people's solution is not like this but rather if you zoom out it's a mess like this it's a mess because it's too complex it leads to complete failure you mismanage your recovery seeds you don't write it down nicely you cannot read it you put into three different pieces you lose track of it right and also you update the firmware for the device that's something can go wrong you have to restore from backup it's a complete mess worse of all some people put the recovery seed right where they put their Hardware wallet in the same box in the same drawer seriously people do that terrible terrible okay complete failure okay so rather what is the solution the solution is to come up with a safe and easy Cold Storage emphasize easy because if it's not easy enough either people won't use it or people will screw up and both are terrible outcomes okay you got to be safe but you got to be easy and ballet is what we created we created a world first solution that is completely non-electronic okay zero setup this cold storage Cod here has zero setup and it means there's nothing you need to do to set it up you can use it right out of the box it's completely safe 100 cold storage and best of all because it's a physical Bearer asset you could use it to send gifts to other people put crypto on here nfts and other tokens and you can gift it to other people so it comes with a very nice ecosystem we have the ballet crypto app and you can view balances manage your accounts manage your assets and you can have multiple cars and all that it's called ballet crypto you could download it on the IOS app store or Google Play and so on Okay so save an easy code storage has been my mission for the last four and a half years I'm the founder and CEO of ballet we've been creating this for the last four and a half years we announced this in fact four years ago in Singapore when the product debuted and over the last four years I'm proud to say that we're probably one of the only wallet providers out there Cold Storage where none of our users have ever been hacked we've never been hacked self-custody none of our users have ever lost any coins and especially important they don't lose coins due to user mistakes because the social contract is as long as you don't lose this card you would not get hacked you would not lose your assets and this is the only wallet Cold Storage that's designed for more than 10 years 20 years design think about that there's no firmware updates nothing to maintain very easy to use okay so you want to avoid this mess and use something simple and elegant like ballet keep it keep it simple right true safety is keeping it simple self-custody physical bear asset durable and long lasting no electronics no cables no firmware updates at all and best of all you want to prevent user mistakes so this is a secret to investing wisely in Bitcoin and cryptocurrency okay Bitcoin is the future of money so you really really want to custody this your own Bitcoin self-custody and have the Bitcoin when Bitcoin hits a million dollars how many of you believe that Bitcoin will actually hit a million dollars in the next few years some of you yes absolutely I believe it too I I know it it's not just a man I believe I know it and here's why Bitcoin is scheduled to go through having when you guys know when is the next Bitcoin block reward having you guys know next year right about six months from now and what's amazing is in the in the next 10 years we're gonna see three different block havings think about that three block havings for Bitcoin today the block reward is 6.25 after next spring it's gonna be 3.125 and then it's gonna be one point 1.55 and then it's gonna be 0.

76 or so per block okay it's come down from 50 BTC to only 0.7 BTC within 10 years so by then Bitcoin will be hundreds of thousands of dollars each if not over a million dollars so I'm the author of this Wall Street Journal best-selling book called the promise of Bitcoin I encourage you all if you want to learn more about Bitcoin about the history and my involvement uh go buy this on Amazon it's available in print ebook as well as the audible book that's read by me okay thank you very much the ballet Booth is right there come over and you can come get your free sample of the hardware Cold Storage wallet special edition okay thank you very much