Location: Skype Date: Tuesday, 4th February Project: Ikigai Asset Management Role: Chief Investment Officer

Welcome to the Beginner's Guide to Bitcoin.

Bitcoin can be intimidating for beginners. The protocol is complicated, the community can be aggressive and unforgiving, silly mistakes can lose you money, and it is easy to succumb to altcoin marketing. 

Bitcoin does though, offer you the opportunity to hold a new type of monetary asset, one which can't be seized by the government and is censorship resistance and It has the potential to change the way the world. 

The goal of What Bitcoin Did has always been about making things simple; there are no stupid questions, and the show is here to help beginners navigate this new world. To kick off 2020, we are launching a special series to help beginners understand Bitcoin. We will be looking at the basics from breaking down the protocol to explaining the economics and discussing the potential societal shift. 

Beginners Guide Part 11 -Bitcoin and the Macroeconomy with Travis Kling

Bitcoin was born in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, the worst economic disaster since the great depression. A bubble born out of years of cheap credit and poor government oversight, Satoshi recognised this.

In 2009 as the UK's Chancellor of the Exchequer was preparing to bail out the UK's failing banks, for the second time, Satoshi Nakamoto was releasing Bitcoin to the world. 

Bitcoin's monetary policy is the antithesis of the central banks, by removing centralised decisions and forcing the market to fix itself. Further, It is a non-sovereign, global, immutable, digital, decentralised, hard money.

Twelve years on from the global financial crisis, some economists believe we may be heading towards a global recession. If this is correct, can Bitcoin become a hedge or insurance? Could it even emerge as the global reserve currency?

In Part 11 of the Beginner's Guide to Bitcoin, I talk to Travis Kling, Chief Investment Officer at Ikigai. We discuss the great big fiat experiment, monetary and fiscal policy, social unrest and where Bitcoin fits into all of this.