really you have to look at the whole class of crypto assets right now and you're looking at last i checked about three hundred fifty billion want to include all the various tokenized block chan's that are out there all the various the ferry m applications the various all coins and we're just beginning to see things we're going to see things coming up within the next year like these lightning networks that are going to be used for small transactions that are going to fix the prevailing problems that exist in decline which is that the networks are vastly clogged right now and it's very expensive to send and receive. it's going so hard so fast as almost become unusable just by itself for regular small transactions that. are looking for things like oh yeah that's the reason why i never really got into it because it's not easy to move around lease i'm not adept at doing those kind of things or you know mitch another the other people are saying that this whole thing with

a big point it's really just an investment it's not really. a mechanism to buy and sell it is to park your money somewhere and leave it there because you don't trust the banks i mean it for it to be really universal you have to be able to be able to use your wallet as they call it and buy things and sell things it's not that easy to do it's not widely accepted you know many more innovative people do say they accept the go ahead midge. it's part of you know it's part of a diversification strategy where you'd have some big going to just sit on it not worry about what your basis was and whatever losses are you're going to eat the losses and if you get a profit out of it fine but you know it when you have that much volatility you know i disagree that the big hedge funds will get involved in this when you have a thirty percent volatility swing each direction so from peak to trough and back up again down and up again i mean no investor wants to tolerate that kind of volatility and how can you manage that kind of volatility becomes very difficult so

are the hedge funds and the banks going to jump in head first up at these levels probably not if we get a more bit a bit more stability into these markets you'll see more investment but also from that risk reward perspective you've also got to keep in mind that this is a non regulated market that's the attractiveness from people but governments have overreach like we're seeing in the media right now the deep state runs america they're trying to rewrite history here with these statue wars and that's always a dangerous time so if too many people get on the bitcoin train and get on the crypto train the government could come in one day and say it's illegal in this country we're cracking down on everybody because right now when you open up an account they they demand the k.-y. see know your customer information and they they will when it becomes bigger they will try to regulate it and they will try to control it it's difficult for the government to let anything come out of it's you know come out of its grasp the federal reserve prints willy nilly trillions and trillions of dollars since we went off the gold standard backed by nothing now that this is

a ponzi scheme the government that's what my book is about the government debt globally is a ponzi scheme the governments can never repay this debt and we're about to hit a wall so should people invest in alternative asset classes absolutely is a leonardo da vinci painting we're painting worth half a billion dollars is an apartment in midtown midtown manhattan worth six hundred million dollars i would argue no it's not and i would agree we should prices from when i went to university have gone up to. thousand percent yeah where real wages since the one nine hundred eighty s. are flat so how does that work out when i go to school i could've bought an i.q. better let me let me jump in here fifty thousand men gentlemen i have to go to a break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on bitcoin staying with our. biggest goal this periodic album number seventy nine it has unique attributes that

make it great for money they think a big point it with not more than a vacuum it has got forty years of history to it and it's evolved through all these technologies it's a unique protocol and it like gold it is attracting a huge amount of capital for for the for this achievement and you can't say that you can simply go out there and create another one there are competitors of course just like there are competing species on planet earth for energy and survival but there is only one the apex predator that is at the moment before he dies from all the garbage. do so any of luxury and free but also an alarming number of people living in the streets. the simple fact in l.a. use there's just not enough shelter even if people on the streets right now decided to come in there's nowhere to come in and it's been a struggle. running into this man's bone his own response to the problem and

constructed dozens of tiny homes for people in need of shelter when you have nothing in order to go. you know having something like this may as well be a castle but do the authorities accept such solution to tiny house on a city parking space is not a solution your craft or someone monitoring the site. otherwise it will be a free for all and this is there a better alternative to end the homelessness crisis. welcome back to crossfire where all things are considered remind you we're discussing bitcoin.

here let me go back to you in cambridge while it is a fascinating concept these crypto currencies there is the concern of accountability illegal drugs arms and other kinds of illegal activity can stay under the radar of the authorities i mean i think that's a kind of a downside also you know when people talk about it is being a new fear currency one day i mean you know people are buying big ticket items because they are avoiding taxation and things like that so i mean in a kind of cuts both ways here i guess really the most important question will be if this kind of crypto currencies are successful what is the temptation of governments to step in to regulate it and would regulation kill it go ahead. right now it's been very interesting to watch the migration of regulatory interest across this space mean first we had law enforcement with the rise of the so-called road in the

online dark web so use of big coin take an interest in the sector more recently securities regulators and with the up swing in prices i'm sure tax authorities are kind of next in line to to start getting involved with regards to law enforcement question you know it's a it's a double edged sword for law enforcement because on the one hand you know you know these these currencies do enable privacy on dark web transactions but on the other hand law enforcement when they catch a criminal who's been using big quiet and they get a hold of their wallet software they get effectively their books and they may have a good chance of recovering some of the funds and that's not something you get with the cash criminal where there isn't record keeping so you can use the block chain to prosecute cases and that has been done and law enforcement i think at least in some jurisdictions is steadily becoming more open to seeing crime committed with with law change technology does give them advantage over cash crime ok it's a very transparent technology that's sort of amazing plus for jeffrey earlier this

week there was a san francisco judge putting pressure on a company that trades in these commodities in these currencies here they want to see their books they want to see names they want to see transactions here what kind of threat is that tube it going or can big calling evolve with this kind of supervision and regulation from the outside because my sense is or maybe you can correct me over on the people that started this whole thing don't like the state they don't like authority they they really want to be on their own here we're going to see encroachment on this kinds of currencies and you know alternative financial mechanisms go ahead you know the regulation of the exchanges began in the spring of two thousand and thirteen so far as i'm concerned it was a disaster. we would have been much further along without there is a regulation so this is the main way the government can control because it's not actually controlling because what they're doing is controlling the traffic between

national monies and crypto assets coming and going they can control that and the u.s. has some of the worst regulations in the world. crypto assets right now on these exchanges well you know but why is that you know jeffrey why is that markets are global why is that what a lot why is that situation exists in the u.s. well because the regulators are trying to force a modern digital technology into an analog old world style regulatory framework and it's not working and all this is doing is driving the innovation out of this country and other places you know you can buy big climb much easier and a place like israel then you can united states or in brazil you know i've i've i've been to exchanges all over the world most of them are very free and easy and there's a lot of entrepreneurship there in the u.s. it's all about command and control it's a huge mistake for american regulators to be taking this direction because they're

just going to drive the innovation and the capital outside the borders but he went and crypto assets in general are global technology if they don't care about the nation state ok mitch you know address that issue there because i mean the all mighty dollar it's a threat to a bit calling it all these other things are a threat to the the global domination of the dollar and it's obviously something the u.s. doesn't want to have happen i mean you're. right we're talking about u.s. dollar germany and you know my view is us the days of u.s. dollar germany are our very limited look before the united states became the reserve currency i think in one nine hundred thirteen when they created the federal reserve which is a disaster that should be shuttered. we had the british sterling was the reserve currency of the world for three hundred years now was the united states responsible with the petro dollar and going off the gold standard in the nixon era i would argue no i would argue that this is caused market distortion i would argue that the

central bank policies in the last ten years have been more destructive than the good that they've provided because i don't see that we've created a growth for the trillions of dollars in debt that we've created now the as we saw in the last administration in washington big government is in right now so are our government is gargantuan and they want overreach with everything in every part of people's lives in america and to do that if you get an iron fist on the banking system and make people take away cash like one of the professors at harvard wrote a book to get rid of all cash make people put their money into the bank this is this is a very dangerous thing that's why people are migrating to other platforms so we're at a point in time in history that could be very pivotal pivotal as to how we move forward with this but you know the media is controlled and if you look at regulation they don't regulate companies like amazon that dips their fingers into everything and every different business or facebook or google they have become oligarchies

oligarchies and basically these are they're controlling the content the everybody sees and this is where the regulatory agency should be looking not to control people's currency movements or whether they want to buy gold or invest a bit in bitcoin they should look at controlling the facebook's the googles and looking at news the news and it is because news in this country has become opinion and political advantage see and this is a way for the liberal left to read. history which is extremely dangerous if we look mark thompson who ran b.b.c. during the jimmy seville pedophile scandal snuck out of london and came to run the new york times and people have forget about history and where people are and how they move around but the same establishment figures are running things well one hundred sixty companies used to control the media now it's down to six in can one of the things that can cambridge one of the things i find appealing about bitcoin and i'm i can't say that i'm an expert on it by a long shot it seems to promote entrepreneurial ship which i think is

a really good thing again you know people that want to get out of the system away from the system the way from regulation is it fair to say that this is crypto currencies would be good for innovation. i think absolutely i don't think anyone doubts and i think actually you know it's is you know i think people can argue about how bad the regulation is but in certain markets there's been a very pro cryptocurrency attitude because of the innovative aspects of it and people are taking a much lighter touch in switzerland in the u.k. even in elsewhere because of the amount of investment that's coming in because of the you know faster cheaper better ways we can do things with this technology and not just the technology itself but also the new funding channels that are opening up i mean the i.c.a.o. phenomenon which we have really talked about is on the one hand scary because there are some projects out there that you know clearly are fraudulent but out at the same time you're also opening up access to early stage technology to seed stage

technology to anyone around the world with an internet connection this used to be something you had to be a rich p.c. be able to do now if you have a computer have a little crypto currency you can invest in early stage technology that has a lot of risks and it also has a lot of opportunities it's personally for me i think an exciting part of the story in an image you know. ok ok geoffrey go ahead jump in yeah no i just i'm glad you brought up this point about the i.c.a.o. because they've been kind of smeared in the financial press as being. that it's true there are some there's some rackets out there but the truth is that this is an amazing innovation yeah that allows people to raise any business to raise raise money from anybody without using any financial intermediaries that mean that they're the amount of innovation that capital that's going to unleash on the planet earth is beyond belief i mean it's inconceivable what the i.c.l. market could do to transform the nature of capital markets themselves over the next ten years mitch go ahead jump in. the issue the issue with the i.c.a.o.

market as i see it it's an exciting market but it's the wild wild west in early days and what's going to happen is that the the propaganda bullhorns of the media and advocates for the j.p. morgans and the goldmans who are being infringed upon when these offerings come out and they're not going to get their fees so what will happen is they'll make an example out of one that fails like the media the have you know blow it up into a epic proportion this is bad you're going to get ripped off don't do this give us your money only invest through something that we vet for you so there will be winners and losers and you have to keep the perspective like i said at the beginning there's perspective and risk and reward and don't you know don't go out mortgage your house and put everything in into bitcoin or i.c.a.o. but look you look at this is as a portion of your portfolio and have a diversification in your portfolio and when you when you go into a high risk thing like an i.c.a.o. do your due diligence do your own homework and like i say in my book don't ever

invest in anything that you don't fully understand if you don't fully understand it and you invest in it then you deserve to lose what you lose but you know if you give it your best don't put all your money into it don't put all your eggs in one basket diversify put a little bit into it and if you take a loss on that and you make a profit somewhere else then you can balance out but your payout with some of these is going to be exponential as we we've witnessed before the problem comes in when you try to harness the volatility ok gary as we go back to you came in to give you the last word here what does bitcoin and similar currencies what do they have to do to create confidence in people that just see it is too risky what may be one or two steps they need to install. well i think you know similar to the mid to late ninety's story in the dot com kind of right up we're in the infrastructure building phase for crypto currency crypto assets i mean yesterday we had three major exchanges experienced significant problems two of those exchanges are going to be relied upon by c.m.e. for their futures market that simply can't happen you know on

a regular basis like it does for this market to be taken seriously by institutions trusted by a broader class of individuals so more capital markets infrastructure is needed the right balance or regulation is needed and i think people absolutely need to understand that this is still very early stage very volatile i agree with you know the comments that have made about only put into this what you can afford to lose because it is still very high risk ok well it's been an interesting ride i'm sure we're going to see a lot more ahead that's all the all the time we have gentlemen many thanks to my guests a new york atlanta and in cambridge and thanks to our viewers for watching us here in our d.c. you next time and remember. hello my name's peter and i've been living in russia for about seven years and this is

a film about just some of the crazy things i've got full time. when you're going to get. along you've got to just run those or do it because you're going to say i stood in the hot seat for the because. it was the perfect oh.

i had a great education a good job and a family that loved me. i never had to worry about how i would eat somewhere i would sleep. but i'm facing christmas alone out on the streets of london. i thought of the glory like going to school you know to slip into the still give up food for the. past you don't really feel like me in the big you know. and then. the guy just came over to me saw me and gave me a job in this book. i

. mean this is my. son. we have applied to tremendous courage of dealing in people. washington throws its support behind the violent antigovernment protests in iran threatening sanctions over attempts to suppress the unrest. of muslims across the middle east over jerusalem status the u.s. president considers cutting aid to the palestinians for not wanting to talk peace.

slanging match between donald trump of the north korean leader now into barbs about the size and power of the nuclear buttons just to south korea tries to calm the situation with upcoming talks with pyongyang. they just turned two pm this wednesday afternoon in moscow welcome for me kevin thanks for watching first of those thirty minute news update them from r.t. thousands of pro-government supporters of rallies across around to denounce the violent protests the been erupting since the end of december at least twenty one people have died in clashes thus far after six consecutive days of unrest the demonstrations started in protest over the sluggish economy and a jump in prices but then transformed into a political uprising with some chanting anti-government slogans the unrest turned violent in several towns too with. police posts attacked by some of the protesters

in the last three days there's been more than four hundred fifty arrests into a low the trumpet ministration meantime is now threatening to impose sanctions if it's not satisfied with iran's response to the arrest don't get ahead of sanctions but that is one tool kit we are watching reports very carefully of any potential human rights abuses of these protesters who are protesting peacefully we are now seeing an organic popular uprising organized organized by brave iranian citizens on the largest scale since two thousand and nine the united states supports the iranian people and we call on the regime to respect its citizens basic right to peacefully express their desire for change we asked people in to run what they thought about the protests and the encouragement coming from abroad. given that i feel that if people's economic problems were addressed these accidents

would never happen again so if someone from the government came and spoke to them these incidents would not escalate. the cost of living unemployment a lack of attention to people authorities say that this problem started with the surge in the prices of basic food supplies. they need to pass on who says time for change should think and be worried about their own country and the ring and should think about their country everybody should stop by trying to make progress at home. i don't think trump should interfere in our country's issues i don't think our issues are any of his business well meantime the us is also calling for international response to the rest of the country so america has got more on the. the u.s. has firmly voiced its support for the anti government movement basser nikki haley has even called for an emergency meeting of the u.n. security council to discuss the ongoing situation it takes great bravery for the

iranian people to use the power of their voice against their government if the iranian dictatorships history is any guide we can expect more outrageous abuses in the days to come the u.n. must speak out iran's president has come out in defense of peaceful protests but the supreme leader believes the foreign powers are to blame let's check out what was said to the enemy is waiting for an opportunity for a crack it can infiltrate president trump kicked off the new year unleashing a stream of tweets on the issue accusing iran of corruption human rights violations and spending its wealth on terrorism and of course the israeli government has followed suit even going on to say that the iranians and israelis will be friends once the regime falls but what's even more surprising is that israel faces the same discontent some anti-government protests and some over trump's recognition of jerusalem as its capital but what did nikki haley have to say about this now you

saw strong when it comes to the freedom and dignity of very union people you have but you have a different meaning of freedom and dignity when it comes to the palestinian people will be because we've been brutalized for over fifty years of occupation the palestinians now have to show their world they want to come to the table as of now they're not coming to the table but they ask for aid we're not giving aid we're going to make sure that they come to the table and we want to move forward with the peace process ok so you just heard that the u.s. ambassador to the u.n. has revealed plans to stop funding a u.n. agency giving aid to palestinian refugees shortly after the u.s. leader himself suggested cutting donations to the palestinian administrator should it tweety claims that despite giving them hundreds of millions of dollars a year he said they show no appreciation or respect for the u.s. there's a tweet. trouble also suggested cutting aid because according to him the palestinians weren't willing to talk peace with israel however that's something the palestinian ministration doesn't at all agree with the president's office says that jerusalem

is not for sale and that they are not backing away from the go see asians but went on to stress that they should be based on international law last year the palestinian authority received around three hundred million dollars in aid from the us that's quite a sum you'll agree but of course it pales into comparison when you realize that three billion dollars were given to israel from washington ramsey broods an editor of the palestinian chronicle and believes the u.s. move to cut now is nothing short of bullying. i don't think it is i think it is part of the forest policy that has been followed by the trump administration for months now and it's a policy that is called immediate sort very well with the israeli government the tweet was also joined by a statement made by the the us ambassador to the united nations that she says forthright that we will not be giving money to the u.n.

and refugee agency that is dedicated to helping millions of palestinian refugees in palestine and in refugee camps across the middle east if this is not a form or bullying it's not a form of intimidation then what is there or palestine or north korea president made twitter his go to platform to get his message across but as r.t.c. goes down off explains next all too often his posts lead to some very real and violent consequences christmas that new year even the seasonal holidays haven't put the brakes on trump's twitter train in twenty eight in pakistan got it first. the united states has foolishly given pakistan moving thirty three billion dollars in aid over the last fifteen years and they have given us nothing but lies and deceit thinking of our leaders as fools they give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in afghanistan with little help no more no love lost their trumps administration has been walloping pakistan for months but it's not like anything in particular

happened on monday to trigger the backlash but to say this tweet got a slam about an age would be an understatement three ministers including the prime minister the army the navy and air force chiefs all converged for an emergency security meeting following trump's post the u.s. ambassador was summoned for an explanation as protesters burned american flags in the streets then it was the turn of iran one of the. biggest thorns in donald trump side. iran is failing at every level despite the terrible deal made with them by the bammer ministration the great iranian people have been repressed for many years they are hungry for food and for freedom along with human rights the wealth of iran is being looted time for change these lawmakers public has been erupting in rallies and bryant says people have been swarming the streets both again stand in support of the government people died the tweet hasn't gone unnoticed in iran urging

against the violence president rouhani denied to trump the right to sympathize with the nation well when done with the middle east trump couldn't help but pay the classic twitter tribute to his one and only rocket man. sanctions and other pressures are beginning to have an impact on north korea soldiers are dangerously fleeing to south korea rocket man now wants to talk to south korea for the first time perhaps that's good news perhaps not we will see well apparently this was donald trump's knee jerk reaction to south korea offering to hold high level talks with the north after pyongyang suggested the countries should meet to discuss the next olympics it's not government policy it's the. ravings of a person who speaks before thinking tweets before thinking you know one would hope that the people on the receiving end of these things would take them with

a grain of salt because. you know trump may say those things but he can't act on them because he's got a whole bureaucracy behind him that doesn't agree with them so. it's very destabilizing and i think it's undermining u.s. ability to negotiate solutions to problems so whatever policy donald trump is concocting stirring trouble. twitter is something that is going to stay if it is done of r.t. . of all the world leaders that north korea's kim jong un is perhaps the most targeted by trump's tweets this development on that of one of his most recent posts the battle of words between the two said in two insults about the size and power of the nuclear weapons. the entire us mainland is within the range of our nuclear strike and the button is always on the table in my office space you clearly know that this is certainly not a threat but rather a reality we'll see.