Byte Battles: From Apple's Courtroom to Bitcoin's Boom

[00:00:06] All right, happy to have you along my fellow tech enthusiasts. I am Sam Bushman. I've got Jay Harrison with me. Welcome sir.

[00:00:26] Sam, how are you?

[00:00:27] Absolutely fantastic. It's spring and spring around here buddy.

[00:00:31] It is. It is unfortunately. Winter is my favorite season so I like the winter.

[00:00:36] I love the spring, fall and winter. And I don't like the summer. I've got three great seasons. Personally I'd love a blend between spring's a little bit bipolar. It's like hot and cold.

[00:00:51] I'd prefer the cooler side of the spring but stable.

[00:00:55] Fall is my second favorite. Then follow by spring and summer the least. I guess you got that with Tech Guys though. They're all indoors.

[00:01:03] I mean I like the beach at time and stuff like that but just my favorite season would be winter.

[00:01:09] I love it when it's just not hot though. That's what I just, you know, I like fires at night.

[00:01:13] My favorite seasons in this row are like this. It's fall, winter, spring.

[00:01:17] Yeah. I like the fall.

[00:01:19] I'm very close to that. It would be winter, fall, spring, summer.

[00:01:23] There you go. To me summer just needs to be out as long as I can get winter.

[00:01:27] The problem with winter, fall, winter, spring.

[00:01:31] If I could get that consistently. I'd just take that. Four months each would be great.

[00:01:37] The problem where I live in Florida is we only have three seasons and those are January, February and summer.

[00:01:43] Oh good point. All right. Is there a big difference between January and February?

[00:01:47] It's January and February. It's kind of like winter. I mean it's a Florida winter so, you know, highs in the low 60s maybe.

[00:01:54] So it's kind of like you have spring and summer. Yeah. And then you just have brutal summer.

[00:01:59] Because spring is where it's getting hotter. The reason I like fall not only is it Christmas and Thanksgiving and awesome stuff like that but

[00:02:06] I love the, it's going to be cooler feeling and view rather than it's going to get hotter feeling it.

[00:02:13] Anyway, there you go. For tech guys that love air conditioning we're doing pretty good aren't we?

[00:02:18] I do like air conditioning.

[00:02:20] Amen to that. Absolutely. By the way that is a tech marvel.

[00:02:24] One of my favorite techs. Don't you think that's a tech marvel? Absolutely.

[00:02:28] Yeah I mean. It's incredible. Imagine in the days when the only place you could go to see air conditioning or experience was like the movie theater.

[00:02:37] What a draw that would have been to the movie theater.

[00:02:40] People would go to that. Just imagine those people that lived for thousands of years and they had none of it.

[00:02:45] Yeah. Jade Zero. And you're not going to go anywhere except for maybe what the shade is the best you get.

[00:02:50] You hear stories of people that would go to the movie theater by a ticket and they would just sleep through the movie just to sleep in the air conditioning.

[00:02:56] I couldn't associate with that. Amen to that.

[00:03:01] Alright there you have it. Speaking of that it's a little different on the Apple front these days.

[00:03:05] The Apple corporation whatever you want to call it.

[00:03:08] Cupertino, California whatever it is. Those guys I guess are in a big bunch of trouble.

[00:03:13] Whether you like it or not agree that or not technology wise or not.

[00:03:16] I want to focus on the tech aspects of this but it's interesting this lawsuit.

[00:03:20] The Apple iPhone antitrust lawsuit.

[00:03:24] DOJ Tech Crunch so the Department of Justice suing Apple and they say the DOJ's case against Apple adds to the growing pile

[00:03:34] of antitrust problems for Cupertino is what they say about Apple.

[00:03:38] Then the app anyway it's a massive case led by the United States but other countries have similar type concerns already Jay.

[00:03:47] Yeah that's right the European Union has already made them go to USBC for example so the new iPhone 15 is going to be USBC

[00:03:55] you know it already is it's available now they're going to standardize on that and it was really legislation like this that kind of pushed them into it.

[00:04:02] But they also have in the European Union pushed them into being able to have like a compatible store.

[00:04:10] They can't have a sole Apple run store with you know their cut or 30% of whatever and people were saying hey is that going to roll out to America.

[00:04:20] I think that's what this bid is with really with the DOJ is they want to make sure that that happens at least here in America but also globally that Apple is going to have alternative to their store.

[00:04:30] And there's pros and cons for this because especially with the store related things.

[00:04:34] Yes you know you do want to be able to get apps in without having a jailbreaker unit or side load things or whatever but it also is going to decrease the security in the closed walled garden that for all of its negatives also makes IOS probably the most secure operating system in the world right now.

[00:04:54] So you know I see both sides of that issue.

[00:04:57] Yeah and that's what I mean by I want to address this from a tech point of view on it kind of help people understand a little bit what the lawsuit is about and then kind of put perspectives to it not to form your opinion but to provide you details where you can make an informed tech based understanding

[00:05:10] opinion on this. And I agree with J.I.C. both sides you know on one hand you don't want a company to become so big that it's like a monopoly on the other hand hey you don't want to stifle growth.

[00:05:19] What I would say is this you know how much has the government contributed or helped fund fuel the growth of Apple or any of these companies. That is what they ought to stop doing. Yeah so they could just basically be on their own.

[00:05:30] You don't need a push from government and then a slowdown from government to push from there. You just need to let it do its thing and if it then gets too out of control for a justifiable reason then that's case by case up for discussion.

[00:05:41] No doubt but from a tech point of view what I'm getting at is it has to do with the Apple store and then take them 30% it has to do with a pile of antitrust problems. For example the FaceTime app versus nobody else can communicate with anybody you know FaceTime wise or you

[00:06:02] take sending photos and videos and hey it's incompatible and is that intentional and can that be resolved. There's all kinds of pieces to this discussion. It's not just distribution of phones because if you go look at the distribution of phones in the country meaning in the U.S.

[00:06:18] and in the world I don't know that it's 100% in favor of Apple not even close. No not at all especially globally. This is about operating system control. This is about payment control. This is about all kinds of ecosystem details J that surround the core of Apple having say hardware

[00:06:36] computers and phones and such. It's all the surrounding details of communication and working with other companies. It's like the Chargers are a great example that you brought up or that they're going to switch to the different connector because they have to. It's all these different details around not necessarily even the core of the phone at this point J.

[00:06:55] No it's not. To say that overnight all of a sudden the Department of Justice has just discovered that Apple is a monopoly. I don't buy into that that much. I mean Apple's been around they're doing their thing. They're not a monopoly on phones. There is another alternative and it's a viable alternative. It's not even like oh just this little thing that has no market share.

[00:07:16] If you look at global distribution of phones by and large especially in other countries iPhone Reigns King or not iPhone I mean Android Google's phone.

[00:07:26] Yeah it's like 6040 at best or something like that 7030 or something pretty extreme. Yeah in some countries I think it's even over 80% but in America certainly iPhone is very prevalent because it's seen as a status symbol and it's very expensive and it's you know people are worried about security and they have a little extra disposable

[00:07:44] income and so there's a lot of factors for that but I don't know that I would call them a monopoly. I think the rubber stamping Apple is a monopoly. I don't know that maybe they're they're a monopoly in their own ecosystem but why shouldn't they be I mean what can't they be

[00:07:57] Right so and that really speaks to both sides of it like you're talking about it's like hey how much independence and ability to make their own choices and and you know push towards or direct towards their own destiny without interference and that's the other side of the question.

[00:08:13] They say this though and I find this interesting in the in the story and the reason after mentioning that it's all these different surrounding the phone issues. You know sending of pictures the connector of this that that okay.

[00:08:25] The next one says the DO the DOJ's anti trust case against Apple though neatly aligns with the EU on one key point that is NFC and mobile payments J. That's quite interesting because now you've got the two governments kind of in line with one another

[00:08:46] they're going to force an agenda item relating to NFC in other words that's the short connectivity thing. Yeah. The charge of your kind of stuff. Yep. And then the other piece of this is the mobile payments. There's some controls being put in place by government here which I do not like.

[00:09:03] Yeah. It's under the guise of claiming that it's Apple and yes maybe Apple is going too far I don't have the internal details to know everything about that what I know is this who's going to go too far Apple or the government or company a or the government.

[00:09:18] I'm not really a fan of either I'd like to make sure that it's transparent that there's clarity that there's understanding and there's accountability that's what I'd talk about Jane I hope that's not even a political statement really right.

[00:09:31] Well yeah and I think that it possibly has ties to Fed now a digital currency being able to tie in with Apple pay and being able to control that stuff. There's a lot of other reasons and I don't necessarily think that they have the best interest of the consumer or the the average person in mind on this.

[00:09:51] I think there are possibly other agendas. No doubt about it and I again I bring it up because it's so huge though it's going to affect all of us day in and day out because all the things surrounding the phone that I mentioned are ways that you live your life.

[00:10:05] In other words if you use a certain charger now you got to buy a new one if you're going to use NFC well OK you got to you know then comply what to use standards now I guess. Well no because the United States is now it's OK so you got to comply with that you got to comply with the payments issues

[00:10:19] and all the downstream details the devil or the devil's in the details a lot of times it's the details they're going to affect your life is the point right. And if it's a payment issue just take the communication of videos right now videos can become grainy between you know iPhones and

[00:10:34] Android and they're trying to you know get together and fix that well are they going to fix it but by some weird court of the law or something else a yeah we've got it fixed everybody gets the low res one now there's already fixes for

[00:10:46] We've gone backwards right but I'm just saying those are the kind of things that are spawning these lawsuits and these and these compromises and these controls being brought out to the corporate world right. Well I think you let the free market fix that stuff

[00:10:59] I'll give you an example I use Telegram it's cross platform it doesn't matter whether you're on iOS or Android or even Windows for that matter you can send it all the video that you want between things in full resolution you don't have that problem

[00:11:11] let the market figure these things out I don't I don't think that Apple is the is the walled garden as far as a monopoly that they're kind of making it out to be you can't come to somebody I don't think anyway I mean it's opinion only but

[00:11:24] I think they will you have to work with my software you don't have to know right and that's my whole point of bringing this up is I want people to understand this from a practical live ability kind of day to day thing

[00:11:35] you know there are solutions things do take care of themselves and oftentimes I think patience is the way to go leaving the ingenuity of the American mind or the mind of the world for that matter

[00:11:47] and their ability to resolve problems think about it that way to which is basically what you said but in kind of a different focus individuals can solve problems whenever there's pain points people find solutions Jay

[00:11:59] yeah necessities the mother invention and in tech this is really important to understand when I go into a tech job as a consultant oftentimes Jay I'll go into there and I learn and hear what they have to say and I care about the points they're making

[00:12:14] and I do my very best to truly understand but I try to understand more than just the problem they claim not that what they're claiming isn't true but if I listen and then backtrack to their pain points I find sometimes the problem isn't what they think it is right

[00:12:29] and I also find oftentimes that the fix might be simpler than they think it is like tiny adjustments to things have big input a big impact when it when it comes to downstream especially day to day day in and day out living habits like you know executing processes in tech and this kind of stuff

[00:12:48] yeah you know the butterfly automations great but it's right anyway I really want to kind of highlight that and that's part of the reason that I focus on all these external details of the iPhone we'll see what happens but bitcoins picking a digital currencies

[00:13:01] is really rocking it it's all time high stuff right now Jay they are overtake right are you dipping your toes Sam in no sir I don't get my tone.

[00:13:10] I don't believe in it.

[00:13:12] That's funny.

[00:13:13] Yeah I understand it.

[00:13:14] I just don't believe in it right.

[00:13:16] Yeah I understand it.

[00:13:17] What did it break 79000 per coin recently was that there all time.

[00:13:22] I understand how to have this discussion and I cannot imagine what that means right.

[00:13:26] It is crazy.

[00:13:27] The coins when this first kind of we heard about it what were they worth Jay like five bucks.

[00:13:31] Oh no you could buy a coin for a dollar.

[00:13:33] I mean I really miss the boat on that because I had a chance to buy 100 coins for 100 bucks.

[00:13:39] This point is very clear.

[00:13:40] This is not a political point but I'm going to make this fact very clear when you could have

[00:13:45] bought something for a dollar and now it's worth how much $70,000.

[00:13:48] Yeah 79000 what goes up must come down.

[00:13:54] All I'm telling you is if it can fluctuate that wildly that pendulum can be that extreme.

[00:14:00] They could know that it's not stability when it comes to assets Jay hold on when it comes to assets you want stability in assets if they become

[00:14:08] slowly more valuable over time or Wayne with the markets that's fine but you want your assets to have stability day in and day out.

[00:14:16] Don't you.

[00:14:17] Well yeah but I don't I don't agree necessarily with what you say what goes up must come down because I mean look at do you buy a house

[00:14:23] in Cape Coral for example I just saw this example.

[00:14:26] You in the 50s or 60s you could buy it for 15,000 that's never coming down to that rate it's never going to get back to that number.

[00:14:33] I don't think so.

[00:14:34] What about when the market completely busts.

[00:14:36] I just don't think it'll get there.

[00:14:38] I don't I don't think that it'll devalue that much and the same thing with a with a coin that's being minted and nobody knows about it at first.

[00:14:46] I don't think you I don't ever see Bitcoin now I do think if there's a break in the system for example let's say quantum cryptography or quantum computing somehow breaks the algorithm and now anybody can you know just break the blockchain and

[00:15:01] it destroys Bitcoin it could become worthless in that scenario but as long as the math holds out what if you break the algorithm that forced it to go up mathematically.

[00:15:12] In other words if you put there's things in place that mathematically make that change right right but then you could take those away and it could be back where it once was nice to meet you with with you know home loans

[00:15:24] corporate loans everywhere you can get a loan really easy and it's all based on your credit life but if that were yanked out from under us.

[00:15:30] And if they didn't have you know fake you know currency and this kind of stuff this inflate this would not be happening and you would pull the road over time you don't see inflation going backwards I mean you might see very small periods of deflation

[00:15:45] overall since but at some point at some point if you look at history in societies it blows up and eventually it goes backwards and has to reset itself if it keeps going up it can't go up forever.

[00:15:55] Maybe you're right it's going to crash or or go down because at what point I mean what number would you use I mean pretty soon as your paycheck going to be 66 trillion.

[00:16:04] And your house payments going to be 49 billion and stuff now you probably switch currencies before then like you said.

[00:16:10] Okay so that's what I'm talking about so then what it did is it failed it went down it crashed and we went to a different one.

[00:16:16] Now you could say well I got parody along my way well you're lucky that time.

[00:16:20] Great I'm glad you did but wealth and assets are something that is stable.

[00:16:30] Now I agree there's a little bit of market fluctuation but it doesn't go to the wild extreme hard assets don't go to the wild extremes like they're making this happen.

[00:16:42] I think and I bring it up because it's important to understand money right.

[00:16:45] I think the value of Bitcoin though is loosely inversely proportional to the value of the dollar.

[00:16:51] And so as people see weakness in the dollar and they see potential problems on the rise or too much inflation for example you'll see people starting to diversify and get into things like Bitcoin and that drives the value of Bitcoin up and I think that those have a relationship somewhere.

[00:17:07] They do for sure because you every time you put together any currency or any median of exchange you're going to compare it to what's kind of the predominant of the world and or the place you live depending on how much you're restricted

[00:17:20] or whatever.

[00:17:21] Right but as long as the dollar is a world currency that'll be true if the dollar loses world currency status and the more that happens the less true that will become.

[00:17:28] Yeah and everything else would become you know worth more whether it's gold or other currencies as long as the government those governments will stay the same it'll still buy whatever it bought forever ago that won't really change.

[00:17:38] I know I mean in perspective to the dollar but the other thing that you got to know about Bitcoin is they're not making so much of it and it caps out and eventually there will be no more.

[00:17:48] And it's already getting less and less and harder and harder to mine.

[00:17:51] Right and so and once you get to where there's no more you've reached one end of its life if you will.

[00:17:58] The second end of its life is now we say okay it's worth this value this many coins exist and it's this dollar amount.

[00:18:06] What's going to fluctuate that overall dollar amount the answer is the only thing that will is the confidence in it.

[00:18:11] Right.

[00:18:12] The electricity goes out it's worth zero and the confidence in it of the confidence plummets the amount plummets and there'll be nothing they can do about it because now that's the second factor.

[00:18:21] You know the confidence game and the finality or infinity of lack of infinite it's not infinite right it's finite right that again will create eventually a cap and then accept comes can you keep enough confidence to keep that balance with the cap in place

[00:18:38] another supply and demand yes or no right right another interesting thing though of Bitcoin is that is divisible where we see the dollar divisible down to one one hundred it's divisible down to eight decimal places and so it's been said that you got another caveat to grow way way way way way bigger in the mathematical model but it still ends.

[00:18:56] Yeah but you could run like an entire world economy on a single Bitcoin if you wanted to maybe just like we ran the whole world on 64 K computers right that's right back in the day Sam.

[00:19:07] I'm just saying see that's the point that I'm getting at is these things change and it's very hard to predict or understand but what you can understand is this whenever something is made valuable that didn't have value in other words it kind of comes out of thin air in terms of its value.

[00:19:20] You know that there's a problem with with dishonesty being able to manipulate that.

[00:19:25] You think there's dishonesty in Bitcoin.

[00:19:28] Yeah absolutely.

[00:19:30] See I think there are things that got put into value to make it.

[00:19:33] There's a lot of energy and a lot of computing power that went into.

[00:19:39] It's all true but if you turn off the electricity it's worth nothing.

[00:19:44] I know what you're saying is that we're something if you if the electricity is gone if all electricity in the whole world stops well no just for maybe related to you or to whoever I mean I guess if you can't access it but if you put all your money in a bank and it

[00:19:58] or all your gold or whatever and you can't access it anymore than yeah I guess it's gone.

[00:20:03] That's right.

[00:20:04] It's all risk and whether you think that say gold in either a vault that's insured or gold that's somewhere you know stored secretly somewhere or whatever if you think you know preventing me from getting to that is the same as say turning off electricity then I guess you're right.

[00:20:19] I would submit to you that the hard asset though has value because it's local it's present it's in your hands it's portable it's all those things that without electricity Bitcoin is not right.

[00:20:29] Right.

[00:20:30] It's all those intrinsic value factors that we're looking at now right.

[00:20:33] Yeah.

[00:20:35] Anyway it's an interesting conversation and the reason I spend so much time on it is because I want people to understand.

[00:20:40] You can be three kinds of people that deal with crypto.

[00:20:43] You can be one like Sam Bushman against it all and think it's a waste of time and know that people got rich on it but it's like the gold rush of yesterday year and I'm not chasing after it.

[00:20:52] And so you could be a no don't dip your toe in the crypto kind of guy and say no I'm not doing digital currencies.

[00:20:57] You can be this and I guess unless the government changed the currency and forced us to that's a different topic.

[00:21:02] Yeah which you might be in whether you like it or not.

[00:21:04] Right.

[00:21:05] And I hope that I hope we have choice and agency.

[00:21:08] But you can be the second kind of person that says I'm going to play with cryptocurrency just a little bit for fun to learn about it and it's kind of a hobby and if I make your break it's a little bit like gambling.

[00:21:17] I'm not going to put so much into lose towards not a big problem.

[00:21:20] And you can just do that and dabble in it.

[00:21:22] That's where you dip your toe in the crypto right.

[00:21:25] Right.

[00:21:26] I say don't dip your toe in the crypto.

[00:21:27] The third person just embraces that 100% says man I'm not even gonna if it doesn't do Apple Pay and if it doesn't you know tie to my Bitcoin or my whatever digital currency I use now.

[00:21:36] That I'm not going to touch it.

[00:21:37] I won't even deal in the real world anymore in terms of currency.

[00:21:40] I don't have any debit cards or anything else.

[00:21:41] I just got my phone wallet and it's connected to all my services and boom.

[00:21:45] You know you can be that kind of an all in person.

[00:21:48] But I submit to you that when electricity is so finicky then to me it's not something that I would put my day to day dependencies on Jay.

[00:21:59] Right.

[00:22:00] Anyway a little bit philosophical in this show but it's really interesting.

[00:22:07] Interesting topics when people are getting sued left and right over this intellectual property.

[00:22:12] When we look at you know the Bitcoin scenario.

[00:22:17] Right.

[00:22:18] Anyway.

[00:22:19] All right.

[00:22:20] You think TikTok speaking of the same kind of a topic Jay is ticked talking to be banned.

[00:22:24] It's looking more and more likely.

[00:22:26] I'll give you my opinion in a second.

[00:22:27] What do you think I don't think it would get banned.

[00:22:29] Okay.

[00:22:30] I think that they may force it to be some pseudo American company.

[00:22:34] I think they're wrong on a lot of fronts.

[00:22:36] I think a lot of legislators don't understand it.

[00:22:39] I think that they don't like the freedom of speech that there is on TikTok.

[00:22:43] I think that there is some aspect of control that foreign governments have but again it's I lean toward let the market kind of figure it out and if the market is doing well with that.

[00:22:57] I mean people I've seen arguments on both sides and they all have valid points.

[00:23:01] Do I think legislators should be trying to tell you what app you can or can't put on your phone.

[00:23:06] No, I don't and I don't think that they should be trying to ban TikTok and I don't think they even effectively will it'll be a neutered bill even if it gets through.

[00:23:13] I think you're right but the idea that they think they can do this at that level concerns me greatly.

[00:23:20] It does.

[00:23:21] I think you're right on the fact.

[00:23:22] Freedom of speech issue I think.

[00:23:23] But the fact that they're even thinking about this in real terms is frightening to me.

[00:23:28] It's like are you kidding me?

[00:23:29] Now do I think the commonest Chinese are my friends?

[00:23:31] No.

[00:23:32] But you know what if we're going to do that and I'm not making this political but let's not be their most favorite nation trading partner if the average American can't put one of their apps on our phones.

[00:23:41] Yeah.

[00:23:42] Then we shouldn't be having them as most favorite nation trading partner should we?

[00:23:47] No.

[00:23:48] So the problem with this is they make every nuance of this political and I don't mean it to be from a tech point of view I'm saying hey people should be able to choose the applications they use.

[00:23:58] That's a tech point Jay.

[00:24:00] If there's a better one you know build a better mousetrap if Silicon Valley or anybody else wants to do this.

[00:24:04] I mean YouTube has YouTube shorts Facebook has reels that you know they all have these other things are just not competing.

[00:24:10] Why because there are things about TikTok that make it better than everybody else in that sector that's on there.

[00:24:15] A lot of things and you know they're I think they're just mad.

[00:24:20] They're just mad as somebody else got it and they don't have control over it.

[00:24:24] That's a wrap if you want to learn more about us npi tech guys dot com for the podcast and more network providers Inc.com for our website for it services thanks so much make it a great tech day will you.