Yousif Nur on Bitcoin outlook and recession impacts in 2020

0:00I'm Ashton Addison from event chain for investmentpitch media and FinTech news network and today on blockchain interviews who have youssef nor the founder of blockchain blueprint Youssef welcome with the show it's a pleasure to have you here today thank you for having me Ashton's nice to be it you're very welcome I'd love to kick off the interview with

0:19a little bit of background on your story how did you first get into cryptocurrency and then how did that lead into founding blockchain blueprint well to give you the very short version because this is a story that's about six or seven years in the making so basically I started up as a journalist wanted to find different routes because I cut my teeth as being a music

0:44journalist predominantly but I figured I wanted to do something else and I started watching all these finance TV shows and suddenly I kept hearing the words Bitcoin and blockchain but I'm thinking they were one of the same but after all that's kind of how we thought it was to begin with right I think I'm sure everyone thought that but I started going to invent it started

1:08writing about it and the more I got intrigued and that level kind of picked up more and more and more I found myself getting far more immersed into it going down that rabbit hole of what real money was and how about how the financial system works and suddenly I kind of found Bitcoin at the price it was I thinking and when I first heard of it consciously I think it was at about 40

1:35pounds which would be about I don't know how much there would be in Canadian dollars but about $60 or stung us I'm but I bought it in a little bit and I subsequently lost it and watched it go all the way to the moon and like that's one of my very biggest regrets and yeah I think that with other old coins they kind of came into the fray the more I kind of went into the space and there

2:06were all sorts such as dogecoin and better coin world coin blah blah blah Rand you know as a lots changed in that space since then and I think that you know it mores gonna happen because we're still in really early days yeah definitely early days and it's interesting how your story goes from finding out the difference between Bitcoin and the blockchain to now going into all these

2:33alt coins which there's such a rabbit hole that's so deep that you could go forever because there's thousands of coins you know some of them have more value than others but and that's really interesting we can get into that a little bit later but I just want to talk a little bit more about Bitcoin and how you started and being a journalist you're the portrayal

2:49that you're seeing in the media first of all you were a journalist before cryptocurrency and being a journalist in the blockchain industry must be a little bit different have you noticed a change in pace or the way that you're portraying your content by now shifting into this super fast-paced industry a little bit a little bit but like but like it with anything in time things

3:15change and you can't really you know force anyone to think and act a certain way it's like that old saying you could lead a horse to water B can't make it drink so I said so with that in mind you know I was exactly the same way it was the you know Bitcoin back in the day if we want to kind of put it like that was you know associated with you know hackers and you know unscrupulous types

3:42but I think winters aren't answer your question with journalism I think it has changed I think there are far more people especially because of the 2017 bull run people think about it differently and there has I believe I believe that there has been a shift in people's perception and largely down to that I think it the way it's been presented to people it's kind of thought

4:12of differently largely because of that but I also think the amount of adoption that there's been since then not just with Bitcoin essa' sorry but blockchain projects I mean for example you're starting to see a lot more corporations and companies get much more involved with different use cases in like verification security and you know keeping assets safe whether they're you

4:41know large scale blue chip or you know small medium size business so as I say the way that that's been portrayed by the media and not not just necessarily mainstream media you're starting to see far more media outlets such as yourselves and many other YouTube channels and you know you know um sites dedicated to crypto such as in a

5:10quintella graph that produce solely on cryptocurrency in blockchain and that you wouldn't have thought that would happen maybe five six years ago so going back to what I was saying in your previous question is still really early days yeah and the more people such as myself just kind of and as well as you I guess the more we can keep that forward momentum going in terms of people

5:37understanding what it is and not getting past you know well rather getting past that perception of what blockchain and Bitcoin and etherium are then you know we're also a good thing definitely I agree and it seems that although we're still only 10 or 11 years in there's definitely been a shift in the way that enterprises are starting to adopt the technology or at least become interested

6:06in it and bring awareness to it and I'm curious on your thoughts on the recent economic craziness and the pandemic and do you think that that's bringing a positive step towards the adoption of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies right now or possibly more negative I think it depends what side of the fence you're on largely because there are still people as I say that are wanting to kind of get

6:32involved at this book because they know everyone can see right now that you know the markets inflated and you know um there's gonna be no recovery as you know I don't want to be all doom and gloom oh man I'm a natural realist at the same time that you know things are not looking good things they're shaping up to be the the worst it's been since 1929

6:54and having said that there are also massive opportunities to be and I think what will happen is that people are going to catch on to this eventually and think that their money is not safe in a bank it's not safe in bonds where they first go to as a kind of safe haven or sanctuary for their money and find out that they're getting negative interest rates so with that for people rather to

7:23pay to hold their money in a bond they're going to look for other alternatives appreciating us and matter-of-factly bitcoin this year in 2020 has been higher the best-performing aspect of any asset class and that e-fit includes precious metals like gold and silver i can't remember where that source came from but I'm pretty sure it's Dara there abouts but I think that

7:50the difference now between you know you know other recessions and now is that number one back into 1929 it was just a stock market and crash this time everything unlike 2008 where we feel that we didn't lend the lessons we just kept the can being kicked down the road now everything is in a bubble or should that be almost everything is in a bubble

8:18with the exception of cryptocurrency and precious metals and commodities so people are going to gravitate towards that and catch on saying hey let's put everything we have all the equity into crypto because you know that seems to be the you know the money of the future and when you have webinars being hosted by the Bank of England and how to manage cryptocurrency

8:44you know if that's not telling you something then I don't know what is so who make of that what you will and this is not gonna go away not whatsoever it's like um everyone's who's a you know in the know essentially and telling you that this is all rather this is representative of being the greatest wealth transfer since world war two but I'd go one further saying it's the

9:11greatest wealth transfer history yeah when I say things like that I get so much grief on social media saying oh you're sheeple you don't know what you're talking about I've even had people block me for saying if you could believe that yeah so but you know you can do you can only do mm-hmm yeah well it's really interesting you covered a lot of topics there and one

9:34that I want to point out was about the bubble and I've seen this news come out saying that bitcoins a bubble and it's gonna pop partially because it goes up really quickly and it also goes down really quickly but if you take a look at the market cap comparison between Bitcoin around you know a few hundred billion and gold being eight trillion and then

9:54the markets being ten times bigger than that I believe it was calculated out that if Bitcoin had a similar market cap to gold it would be around $250,000 which is what Tim Draper's one of Tim Draper's goals you know his predictions for the price of Bitcoin in the coming years so it's interesting and I guess my next question relating to that is do you

10:16think that for the adoption of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies it's going to take a Great Depression like you said and it's really interesting because you know people have been saying that but it seems the last three months the stock market's doesn't even know what down is you know it only knows up so do you think that the stock market crashing will be a

10:37major trigger for adoption of cryptocurrencies or is it actually more so the integration of the actual technology into businesses and showing the value behind that in the business world I think it'll be a little bit of both my business partner in a previous interview mentioned that something like a Libra is needed um you know regardless of what you might think of it people

11:02need a gateway points people need an entry way to get into something like a cryptocurrency because the thing for me all the components are there the only thing missing right now and it's a very very important one is that there are not enough people that can not talk down to but talk on a level that's easy to understand mm-hm for me there are too many developers and

11:27technicians who are getting up on stage at events and talking about their projects and for someone who's not a developer I haven't the foggiest I couldn't put a blockchain together for you I'm not that and I'm sure many others wouldn't either so I think that's where we're you know missing that vital piece of the puzzle but relating back to where people can

11:54use it in a time of a Great Depression I think for me wallets are easy to download onto your phone where as gold and silver any crisis may not be and the damning evidence of that is go and find a jeweler that's open right now buy me one or find me a jeweler online that will deliver your gold or silver in less

12:23than a week I mean like very cool for crying out loud I bought some cheese curds and that took me two weeks to get here how long would it take for gold to get you know remains yeah I think in all seriousness that with gold and silver we're sorry like cryptocurrencies to kind of get be both benefit in a crisis I think there has to be first of all the amount of people

12:52that can use them or accept them but I think that's also important to definitely and the education part that you mentioned is obviously super important and I've noticed a little bit of that trend as well where there's a lot of great technology and the developers that build it are geniuses but conveying that to somebody who doesn't understand technology is very

13:16tough I mean really you really need to get to the core value proposition and the core benefits and you know let the technology sit on the back end where it does its work but focusing on that you know and I guess that's part of where blockchain blueprint comes in you know can you talk a little bit about as a consultancy how are you helping blockchain and crypto companies get the

13:38word out there in a more non-technical way sure so basically we started out as an online course but I felt like it didn't make sense so we decided to give away our content for free everything on it you know we thought that was much better value and just could've just given away a lot on YouTube but and turn into a consultancy but the question we asked ourselves was what kind of

14:03consultancy should we be so we narrowed down a few sectors that we felt made sense and the one that came up the most was Kentucky so we decided to approach SME businesses that small medium sized businesses because if we started to go to you know the big corpse if you adopted it and didn't know who we were you know they'd laugh us out of the building so you know to make our lives

14:28easier we decided to approach you know just startup businesses that either are able with VIN Tech or have some sort of tenuous indirect link with it so what we did was that we began to like do our research into companies of people you know who might not necessarily have entered their first funding round in

14:56vain' so they're very much an MC they're just the very very beginning and from there we you know got into conversations and you know we're still really this is all from a relatively kind of I'm talking the last few months this has happened this is very very new and we're still in very it's still very early doors for us so we're learning ourselves how um consultancy works within

15:24blockchain and you just I feel kind of learn as you go along and then valuable lessons along the way in a very short space of time so I've enjoyed doing this and just as much as that I've enjoyed doing the YouTube thing as well as that's really opened my eyes unexpectedly as well because suddenly you know you get a video that does well or a few that do well and think hey

15:48there might be something in this so we can use this in adjacent to the consultancy and perhaps even you know you know this works absolutely in our favor and it's absolutely beneficial so it also built more than anything else right now social proof and you know when people start knowing who you are you eventually get messages out of the blue saying you know we'd like to you know

16:15work with you you did such a great job with the interview and that's happened a couple of times based off an interview we did we've had discoveries calls off that so you know I like to think my journalism did the trick and yeah it's just what I do so I like to think I'm good at what I do and I've done my job well definitely and I cheated a little bit yeah your content is is professional

16:39and it looks really great and we're running out of time but for the viewers how can they find the block shant blockchain blueprint podcast and also learn more about your services and get involved with your community so how our youtube just its blockchain blueprint on youtube on twitter we're blockchain bloopy instagram of lakshmi blueprint and a facebook as well and linked it if

17:02we're pretty much know other social so yeah very simple we're also building our website at the moment it's still there but we're restructuring so it's been more in line with what we do in terms of a consultancy rather than an on my course awesome thanks Youssef I will leave the links in the description box below for the viewers that's all the time that we have but I really

17:22appreciate you coming on to speak about Bitcoin and blockchain blueprint let's follow up in the near future absolutely thanks for having me Ashton you