Dark Net (2016) s02e03 Episode Script
My Money
1 [Knox.]
In the mornings, I get on and I cam.
Show me what you've got, Jake.
You can do a $6 a minute where it's just you and I, but other people can watch.
Oh, nice, Jake.
Oh, keep it up.
Or you can pay $8 a minute and just be the two of us.
Thank you for playing.
I say, "Goodbye" I hear the click I immediately go and check to see how much I've made.
I get back in character [Sighs.]
refresh button, let's do this again.
[narrator.]
Our lives revolve around money.
We earn it spend it lose it.
The government takes its cut while credit cards keep score.
Banks keep it safe or so we trust.
Our finances are supposed to be within our control, but are they? Money is control and whoever controls the money controls us.
[Knox.]
You know, I'm actually shocked about the amount of men that work all day and watch cam girls.
The pervs out there.
A lot of my day regulars are working.
So they kind of have me on mute or they have me in the background, and so I just chit chat.
[chuckles.]
I'm working, too.
[narrator.]
This is Allie Knox.
For the past two years, she's turned to the Internet to make a living.
[Knox.]
In the beginning, I was just camming.
And when I started to see that not match up with where I wanted to be I went to other sources.
It became my business.
You want to buy dirty things? How much? Fine.
I got all kinds of shit.
What would you like to have? I'll sell shoes, socks bras, underwear, hair, Kleenexes foot dust.
They can also order customs from me where they direct.
They tell me what they want me to say, what they want me to wear.
I sold one for $450 last week.
They send me gift cards as payment.
A lot of people, they don't want to have MyFreeCams on their credit-card statement, but if they have Amazon, it's not weird.
It's not drawing a red flag for their wife or their company credit card.
I started using PayPal when Amazon started to limit me.
You know, there's only so many pans you can have or KIND bars you can have.
I need to pay my light bill, I need to pay my phone bill.
And I need to pay it with cash.
For the very short time that I used PayPal, it was very important.
If I would have been allowed to have it open, it would be a very large portion of my income.
I don't know how PayPal found out that I was offering them as a payment system but I got an e-mail from PayPal saying that I had violated their terms of service because I was selling sexual-oriented content and I would not be able to access the money in my account or no longer be able to have an account with PayPal.
It was kind of a slap in the face.
Like I'm not good enough for you to make money off of? I was discriminated against because I am "a sex worker" in the adult world.
I feel targeted.
I do so many low-level fun things and you're still going to put this scarlet letter on me and, like, deem me inappropriate or wrong? You're a payment processor! Who gave you this right? [narrator.]
A solution to Allie's money troubles may exist thousands of miles away.
It's here that the idea of money was first invented.
Instead of bartering one thing for another, you could use an object of abstract value seashells, copper pieces, dollar bills.
Then, as now, cost is dictated by desire.
In the remote regions of Sichuan Province in China, a new resource is being mined one that may reinvent or destroy money as we know it.
[cellphone rings.]
This is Dang Jil Yong.
He's a miner, stuck in the mountains for weeks at a time to provide for his family.
[cellphone rings.]
[conversing in Chinese.]
This is a new kind of mining, not for gold or silver, but for Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is a form of digital cash used on the Internet.
It appeared online as a monetary manifesto, a complex algorithm uploaded during the 2008 financial crisis, a time that dominated headlines.
Prices on Wall Street inflation, rising unemployment No one knows for sure who created it, an invisible hand that wanted to disrupt a system rife with corruption and human error.
One that puts the minting and distribution of money in the hands of the people and their computers.
[Conover.]
Bitcoin is decentralized digital cash, basically.
It's not physical you can never touch it.
[narrator.]
This is Dan Conover.
He's a programming entrepreneur who traded a cushy job with benefits for the brave new world of Bitcoin.
[narrator.]
He's in it not just to make money, but to remake money.
[Conover.]
I used to work at Amazon, and I had someone there show me a Bitcoin mining rig, essentially.
I didn't know what it was, and I went home and I researched and researched and researched all about this.
It was just some of, like, the most perfect, beautiful code I've ever seen.
[narrator.]
Bitcoin's beautiful code is just a series of ones and zeros, code that for a time didn't have any meaning or reason for existence.
Until someone ordered two large pizzas with all the toppings.
[Conover.]
It didn't have a value until the pizza transaction.
A guy was convinced to deliver pizza for 10,000 Bitcoin.
That was the first transaction that involved something that had value, and that's when the price of Bitcoin started going up.
[narrator.]
And it's been going up ever since, with a few dips along the way, eventually reaching a global worth of over $10 billion.
[Conover.]
I actually ended up leaving Amazon, and I kind of just dove headfirst into it.
That's where I met my business partner, Sean.
This is stuff I put there that stuff's bad.
All right, where are the good hash boards? It's the love for the Bitcoin, or the love for the technology, that we decided to merge our forces and become Hash the Planet and try to take over the Bitcoin-mining world.
Is that 34? [narrator.]
They run a mining and hosting facility where digital prospectors can hook up their machines to stake a claim in the Bitcoin boom.
Since its world debut, Bitcoin has emerged as a rival to the central banks.
Or maybe it's a solution in a time when global financial disruption splashes across headlines.
China continue to devalue its currency, the Yuan.
[reporter.]
The British pound is falling for a fourth day since the Brexit vote.
[reporter.]
Protestors blocked the proposed austerity measures in this debt-ridden country.
I think a lot of people don't trust their governments around the world, and I think people are looking for an alternative.
It's money for the people, by the people, and the people own it.
Obviously, there's going to be a lot of people that fucking don't like it because of that, but that's why it's disrupting.
Bad board, can't fix, bad board, won't ever work.
[Laughs.]
It's probably burnt.
I do think there's some hardcore junkies that really want a world where it's all digital currency, but the majority of people use Bitcoin as a way to make capital gains.
Making money.
But there's a few that are using it for illegal activities.
[narrator.]
This is an admin for HANSA, a marketplace where you can buy anything from drugs to stolen credit cards an Amazon for the underworld.
Encrypted or "crypto" currencies like Bitcoin are the coin of the realm here.
[admin.]
A buyer browses the market.
He selects the amount he wants to buy, enters shipping information, and gets directed to the payment page, which displays the exact Bitcoin amount he has to pay.
The buyer can then optionally give feedback positive, neutral or negative.
The wider philosophy of HANSA Market is creating a safe environment to buy drugs.
We understand why governments do not allow drugs, but as with anything that is not allowed period.
[narrator.]
The banks have the Fed, but Bitcoin answers only to an algorithm.
It has no CEO to arrest, no code of ethics and there are no terms of service.
My student loans were always the number-one factor for me getting into camming and staying in camming.
I went to a liberal-arts school.
I got a BA, and then immediately, I got a Master's Degree.
- Are you ready to check out? - I am.
When I graduated, I was over $100,000 in debt.
- $8.
19.
- Thank you.
I started working in the real world, and it was enough to pay my mortgage and to pay my car, but it wasn't enough to pay my loans.
And it was just, like, a lot of sleepless nights of, "Is this what my life is gonna be like? I got to figure something out.
" [keyboard clacking.]
When I was in college, I actually posed for Playboy, and they had a website at the time, which was a camming website.
So I started camming, and then started making money Good morning! and realized, "This is my answer.
" I do make customs.
I was in a cam room.
One guy said, "Can I pay you in Bitcoin?" Well, I thought it was bullshit, "Fine whatever, let's, like, walk me through.
" So he walked me through and literally, three minutes later, he's sending me cash.
And then for you to send me money all of your money I can just show you my QR code.
You can just scan it from your coin-based account and send it to me just like this.
[narrator.]
This is where Allie's world collides with miners around the world.
Imagine that a customer wanted to buy a video from her using Bitcoin.
That transaction gets sent along to miners like Dan in Washington, to rigs in China overseen by Dang a global network of computers that verify the buyer has Bitcoins and that Allie wants them.
Once the transaction is legitimized, she ends up with Bitcoins in a Bitcoin wallet.
These can be traded online for US dollars.
[Conover.]
So basically, everyone is running the exact same code.
The miners are validating transactions that are happening within a 10-minute period, and the first ones to validate all the transactions essentially receive a reward of 25 Bitcoin, which is called a block.
[narrator.]
In other words, the Bitcoin economy depends on tens of thousands of processors around the world to run its algorithm.
The operators of these processors are paid by the same algorithm in newly minted Bitcoin.
Someone dubbed the term "mining" because there's only 21 million coins that will ever be released, so it's essentially like precious metal in the earth.
So you have to mine that to get it out.
There's only so much of it.
Power works fails to boot, so this is most likely just the BeagleBoard controller.
[Sighs.]
Heavy motherfuckers.
It definitely out as some kind of a passion for me.
Now it's just driving the business forward, more money, more employees, growth, growth, growth.
[narrator.]
But this enterprise comes with a potentially massive cost one that impacts more than just the wallet.
[Conover.]
These machines consume an incredible amount of power.
[Sean.]
Right now, we're the equivalent of 80 to 100 houses running full power.
When we're done with our current buildout, we could be between 1,500 and 2,000 houses.
I mean, that's a whole town.
So, putting us here in Washington, the hydroelectric definitely gives us very cheap power.
[Conover.]
We're turning water into money.
The water's converted to electricity, the electricity is converted into Bitcoin, which is money.
[narrator.]
Miners are staking claims around the world, competing for the cheapest power to run as many machines as they can for greater profit.
[Conover.]
Our biggest competitor is 100% China.
Their regulations are are almost nil, if there are any regulations.
[narrator.]
This is Eric of HaoBTC.
He makes regular visits to this mine and is always looking for cheaper power sources to fuel these massive centers and hopefully expand.
[Keypad beeps.]
While China may be supersized compared to their American counterparts, there's one thing that they can't control the weather.
No water means no energy, which means these machines won't run.
They'll have to move over 400 units several hours away to another facility.
While HaoBTC's rigs are offline, some other Bitcoin miner somewhere is cashing in, processing Allie's latest transaction in her new enterprise as a financial dominatrix.
[Knox.]
I think my clients are interested in using Bitcoin because it's safe for them, specifically in financial domination.
I'm expecting everything out of you.
Every last drop.
Findom is actually financial domination.
It's a fetish, all being driven by your money, your loyalty.
Now, be a good little slave.
It's complete control over your life, your thought process.
Fucking payment.
They want to be crippled, they want to be controlled.
That's all I want from you is your money and your gifts.
And they're tipping me as I'm doing this interview.
Because they want me to think about them.
I'm going to crush you.
It feels really amazing to have that kind of control over someone, specifically financially, and I can say that because something has had a control of me, specifically my finances, and it's been my debt.
I feel like I certainly have more control with Bitcoin.
Bitcoin doesn't discriminate.
Bitcoin doesn't call me "high risk.
" [Sean.]
With Bitcoin, I don't want to say I feel any more secure than the fact that I have, you know, cash in my pocket.
If you take a dollar and you hold a lighter up to it and catch it on fire and you burn it, it's gone.
If you lose the ability to get into your Bitcoin wallet or send your Bitcoin to the wrong person, well, it's pretty much gone.
[narrator.]
Whatever the intentions of its creator and adopters, Bitcoin is high-risk and high-stakes.
But deep in its code are several unbreakable rules one, that only 21 million coins will ever be mined, and two, that the amount of coins that can be mined at a time will be halved roughly every four years.
[Sean.]
The halving could totally affect our business operations because our customers are getting 25 Bitcoin per block at this moment in time, and it's going to be 12 1/2.
If the price of Bitcoin doesn't rise, then they're going to be making half of what they were making before.
[Conover.]
I see there's gonna be three options after the halving, basically.
Option one is the best option speculation drives the price way up.
Option two is woohoo, nothing happened.
Option three is the scary one what happens when a ton of machines become non-profitable and they just bulk unplug and trigger huge selloffs? And so that could just drive the price way, way down.
I liken it to Y2K.
There's a lot of thought into what you could potentially do to prepare for it, but there's really nothing to do.
You're just gonna wait for that to happen.
[Conover.]
Everyone's known about this since the day that they started.
[narrator.]
The Bitcoin network has grown in ways nobody could anticipate or regulate, an algorithm running on tens of thousands of machines and counting, mutating into an uncertain future.
[Conover.]
What was the last difficulty change? I'm not sure.
I'm just curious how many people are gonna unplug.
Everything's being hammered right now.
Bitcoin's code is supposed to make the currency stable, predictable, but what happens next is anybody's guess.
Yeah, it's still about the same.
- Is it? - Yeah.
It's currently trending at $1,000.
If miners unplug from the network en masse, transactions could freeze, users could panic, and the value of Bitcoin could plunge.
There's definitely a massive selloff right now, look at that.
Where you think it's going to hit? [Sean.]
I think it's going to tank down to the fives and change and stay there.
That's my thought.
I'm concerned because our business is 100% directly reflected on the price of coin and the profitability of our customers.
If they can grow, we can grow.
That's all there is to it.
Well, that's it, man.
[narrator.]
As the clock strikes zero, it ushers in a new era for Bitcoin.
[Conover.]
Newly generated coins, look.
12.
5.
We're good.
- And the price did not go up.
- Okay, so, one No, it didn't go up.
- It didn't crash.
- It kind of crashed.
It was trending at like 660, and now we're at 630.
So it's not the end of the world, but we'll see.
Even if Bitcoin passes this test of its own making, it faces greater challenges beyond its control to win the trust of the people or become crushed under the weight of its own algorithm.
[Knox.]
I do learn a lot by getting screwed, and I think that I'm gonna have to be screwed to learn more about this.
And I don't even know that it's possible to screw or be screwed with a Bitcoin, because when somebody asks me, "Has your name gotten out?" "Has your bank account failed?" "Did you lose money?" Answers to those kinds of questions are gonna be what propels people to use this.
But I do know that Bitcoin is making things better for me.
Hi, Steve.
I started with over $100,000 in student loans, and next month will be my two-year anniversary of camming.
I have 6K left.
[narrator.]
For the last century, governments and the central banks regulated money.
Today, it's an algorithm, a code that has no known creator and cannot be cancelled.
Tomorrow, dollars and coins will go the way of seashells.
And in the network we'll trust.
In the mornings, I get on and I cam.
Show me what you've got, Jake.
You can do a $6 a minute where it's just you and I, but other people can watch.
Oh, nice, Jake.
Oh, keep it up.
Or you can pay $8 a minute and just be the two of us.
Thank you for playing.
I say, "Goodbye" I hear the click I immediately go and check to see how much I've made.
I get back in character [Sighs.]
refresh button, let's do this again.
[narrator.]
Our lives revolve around money.
We earn it spend it lose it.
The government takes its cut while credit cards keep score.
Banks keep it safe or so we trust.
Our finances are supposed to be within our control, but are they? Money is control and whoever controls the money controls us.
[Knox.]
You know, I'm actually shocked about the amount of men that work all day and watch cam girls.
The pervs out there.
A lot of my day regulars are working.
So they kind of have me on mute or they have me in the background, and so I just chit chat.
[chuckles.]
I'm working, too.
[narrator.]
This is Allie Knox.
For the past two years, she's turned to the Internet to make a living.
[Knox.]
In the beginning, I was just camming.
And when I started to see that not match up with where I wanted to be I went to other sources.
It became my business.
You want to buy dirty things? How much? Fine.
I got all kinds of shit.
What would you like to have? I'll sell shoes, socks bras, underwear, hair, Kleenexes foot dust.
They can also order customs from me where they direct.
They tell me what they want me to say, what they want me to wear.
I sold one for $450 last week.
They send me gift cards as payment.
A lot of people, they don't want to have MyFreeCams on their credit-card statement, but if they have Amazon, it's not weird.
It's not drawing a red flag for their wife or their company credit card.
I started using PayPal when Amazon started to limit me.
You know, there's only so many pans you can have or KIND bars you can have.
I need to pay my light bill, I need to pay my phone bill.
And I need to pay it with cash.
For the very short time that I used PayPal, it was very important.
If I would have been allowed to have it open, it would be a very large portion of my income.
I don't know how PayPal found out that I was offering them as a payment system but I got an e-mail from PayPal saying that I had violated their terms of service because I was selling sexual-oriented content and I would not be able to access the money in my account or no longer be able to have an account with PayPal.
It was kind of a slap in the face.
Like I'm not good enough for you to make money off of? I was discriminated against because I am "a sex worker" in the adult world.
I feel targeted.
I do so many low-level fun things and you're still going to put this scarlet letter on me and, like, deem me inappropriate or wrong? You're a payment processor! Who gave you this right? [narrator.]
A solution to Allie's money troubles may exist thousands of miles away.
It's here that the idea of money was first invented.
Instead of bartering one thing for another, you could use an object of abstract value seashells, copper pieces, dollar bills.
Then, as now, cost is dictated by desire.
In the remote regions of Sichuan Province in China, a new resource is being mined one that may reinvent or destroy money as we know it.
[cellphone rings.]
This is Dang Jil Yong.
He's a miner, stuck in the mountains for weeks at a time to provide for his family.
[cellphone rings.]
[conversing in Chinese.]
This is a new kind of mining, not for gold or silver, but for Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is a form of digital cash used on the Internet.
It appeared online as a monetary manifesto, a complex algorithm uploaded during the 2008 financial crisis, a time that dominated headlines.
Prices on Wall Street inflation, rising unemployment No one knows for sure who created it, an invisible hand that wanted to disrupt a system rife with corruption and human error.
One that puts the minting and distribution of money in the hands of the people and their computers.
[Conover.]
Bitcoin is decentralized digital cash, basically.
It's not physical you can never touch it.
[narrator.]
This is Dan Conover.
He's a programming entrepreneur who traded a cushy job with benefits for the brave new world of Bitcoin.
[narrator.]
He's in it not just to make money, but to remake money.
[Conover.]
I used to work at Amazon, and I had someone there show me a Bitcoin mining rig, essentially.
I didn't know what it was, and I went home and I researched and researched and researched all about this.
It was just some of, like, the most perfect, beautiful code I've ever seen.
[narrator.]
Bitcoin's beautiful code is just a series of ones and zeros, code that for a time didn't have any meaning or reason for existence.
Until someone ordered two large pizzas with all the toppings.
[Conover.]
It didn't have a value until the pizza transaction.
A guy was convinced to deliver pizza for 10,000 Bitcoin.
That was the first transaction that involved something that had value, and that's when the price of Bitcoin started going up.
[narrator.]
And it's been going up ever since, with a few dips along the way, eventually reaching a global worth of over $10 billion.
[Conover.]
I actually ended up leaving Amazon, and I kind of just dove headfirst into it.
That's where I met my business partner, Sean.
This is stuff I put there that stuff's bad.
All right, where are the good hash boards? It's the love for the Bitcoin, or the love for the technology, that we decided to merge our forces and become Hash the Planet and try to take over the Bitcoin-mining world.
Is that 34? [narrator.]
They run a mining and hosting facility where digital prospectors can hook up their machines to stake a claim in the Bitcoin boom.
Since its world debut, Bitcoin has emerged as a rival to the central banks.
Or maybe it's a solution in a time when global financial disruption splashes across headlines.
China continue to devalue its currency, the Yuan.
[reporter.]
The British pound is falling for a fourth day since the Brexit vote.
[reporter.]
Protestors blocked the proposed austerity measures in this debt-ridden country.
I think a lot of people don't trust their governments around the world, and I think people are looking for an alternative.
It's money for the people, by the people, and the people own it.
Obviously, there's going to be a lot of people that fucking don't like it because of that, but that's why it's disrupting.
Bad board, can't fix, bad board, won't ever work.
[Laughs.]
It's probably burnt.
I do think there's some hardcore junkies that really want a world where it's all digital currency, but the majority of people use Bitcoin as a way to make capital gains.
Making money.
But there's a few that are using it for illegal activities.
[narrator.]
This is an admin for HANSA, a marketplace where you can buy anything from drugs to stolen credit cards an Amazon for the underworld.
Encrypted or "crypto" currencies like Bitcoin are the coin of the realm here.
[admin.]
A buyer browses the market.
He selects the amount he wants to buy, enters shipping information, and gets directed to the payment page, which displays the exact Bitcoin amount he has to pay.
The buyer can then optionally give feedback positive, neutral or negative.
The wider philosophy of HANSA Market is creating a safe environment to buy drugs.
We understand why governments do not allow drugs, but as with anything that is not allowed period.
[narrator.]
The banks have the Fed, but Bitcoin answers only to an algorithm.
It has no CEO to arrest, no code of ethics and there are no terms of service.
My student loans were always the number-one factor for me getting into camming and staying in camming.
I went to a liberal-arts school.
I got a BA, and then immediately, I got a Master's Degree.
- Are you ready to check out? - I am.
When I graduated, I was over $100,000 in debt.
- $8.
19.
- Thank you.
I started working in the real world, and it was enough to pay my mortgage and to pay my car, but it wasn't enough to pay my loans.
And it was just, like, a lot of sleepless nights of, "Is this what my life is gonna be like? I got to figure something out.
" [keyboard clacking.]
When I was in college, I actually posed for Playboy, and they had a website at the time, which was a camming website.
So I started camming, and then started making money Good morning! and realized, "This is my answer.
" I do make customs.
I was in a cam room.
One guy said, "Can I pay you in Bitcoin?" Well, I thought it was bullshit, "Fine whatever, let's, like, walk me through.
" So he walked me through and literally, three minutes later, he's sending me cash.
And then for you to send me money all of your money I can just show you my QR code.
You can just scan it from your coin-based account and send it to me just like this.
[narrator.]
This is where Allie's world collides with miners around the world.
Imagine that a customer wanted to buy a video from her using Bitcoin.
That transaction gets sent along to miners like Dan in Washington, to rigs in China overseen by Dang a global network of computers that verify the buyer has Bitcoins and that Allie wants them.
Once the transaction is legitimized, she ends up with Bitcoins in a Bitcoin wallet.
These can be traded online for US dollars.
[Conover.]
So basically, everyone is running the exact same code.
The miners are validating transactions that are happening within a 10-minute period, and the first ones to validate all the transactions essentially receive a reward of 25 Bitcoin, which is called a block.
[narrator.]
In other words, the Bitcoin economy depends on tens of thousands of processors around the world to run its algorithm.
The operators of these processors are paid by the same algorithm in newly minted Bitcoin.
Someone dubbed the term "mining" because there's only 21 million coins that will ever be released, so it's essentially like precious metal in the earth.
So you have to mine that to get it out.
There's only so much of it.
Power works fails to boot, so this is most likely just the BeagleBoard controller.
[Sighs.]
Heavy motherfuckers.
It definitely out as some kind of a passion for me.
Now it's just driving the business forward, more money, more employees, growth, growth, growth.
[narrator.]
But this enterprise comes with a potentially massive cost one that impacts more than just the wallet.
[Conover.]
These machines consume an incredible amount of power.
[Sean.]
Right now, we're the equivalent of 80 to 100 houses running full power.
When we're done with our current buildout, we could be between 1,500 and 2,000 houses.
I mean, that's a whole town.
So, putting us here in Washington, the hydroelectric definitely gives us very cheap power.
[Conover.]
We're turning water into money.
The water's converted to electricity, the electricity is converted into Bitcoin, which is money.
[narrator.]
Miners are staking claims around the world, competing for the cheapest power to run as many machines as they can for greater profit.
[Conover.]
Our biggest competitor is 100% China.
Their regulations are are almost nil, if there are any regulations.
[narrator.]
This is Eric of HaoBTC.
He makes regular visits to this mine and is always looking for cheaper power sources to fuel these massive centers and hopefully expand.
[Keypad beeps.]
While China may be supersized compared to their American counterparts, there's one thing that they can't control the weather.
No water means no energy, which means these machines won't run.
They'll have to move over 400 units several hours away to another facility.
While HaoBTC's rigs are offline, some other Bitcoin miner somewhere is cashing in, processing Allie's latest transaction in her new enterprise as a financial dominatrix.
[Knox.]
I think my clients are interested in using Bitcoin because it's safe for them, specifically in financial domination.
I'm expecting everything out of you.
Every last drop.
Findom is actually financial domination.
It's a fetish, all being driven by your money, your loyalty.
Now, be a good little slave.
It's complete control over your life, your thought process.
Fucking payment.
They want to be crippled, they want to be controlled.
That's all I want from you is your money and your gifts.
And they're tipping me as I'm doing this interview.
Because they want me to think about them.
I'm going to crush you.
It feels really amazing to have that kind of control over someone, specifically financially, and I can say that because something has had a control of me, specifically my finances, and it's been my debt.
I feel like I certainly have more control with Bitcoin.
Bitcoin doesn't discriminate.
Bitcoin doesn't call me "high risk.
" [Sean.]
With Bitcoin, I don't want to say I feel any more secure than the fact that I have, you know, cash in my pocket.
If you take a dollar and you hold a lighter up to it and catch it on fire and you burn it, it's gone.
If you lose the ability to get into your Bitcoin wallet or send your Bitcoin to the wrong person, well, it's pretty much gone.
[narrator.]
Whatever the intentions of its creator and adopters, Bitcoin is high-risk and high-stakes.
But deep in its code are several unbreakable rules one, that only 21 million coins will ever be mined, and two, that the amount of coins that can be mined at a time will be halved roughly every four years.
[Sean.]
The halving could totally affect our business operations because our customers are getting 25 Bitcoin per block at this moment in time, and it's going to be 12 1/2.
If the price of Bitcoin doesn't rise, then they're going to be making half of what they were making before.
[Conover.]
I see there's gonna be three options after the halving, basically.
Option one is the best option speculation drives the price way up.
Option two is woohoo, nothing happened.
Option three is the scary one what happens when a ton of machines become non-profitable and they just bulk unplug and trigger huge selloffs? And so that could just drive the price way, way down.
I liken it to Y2K.
There's a lot of thought into what you could potentially do to prepare for it, but there's really nothing to do.
You're just gonna wait for that to happen.
[Conover.]
Everyone's known about this since the day that they started.
[narrator.]
The Bitcoin network has grown in ways nobody could anticipate or regulate, an algorithm running on tens of thousands of machines and counting, mutating into an uncertain future.
[Conover.]
What was the last difficulty change? I'm not sure.
I'm just curious how many people are gonna unplug.
Everything's being hammered right now.
Bitcoin's code is supposed to make the currency stable, predictable, but what happens next is anybody's guess.
Yeah, it's still about the same.
- Is it? - Yeah.
It's currently trending at $1,000.
If miners unplug from the network en masse, transactions could freeze, users could panic, and the value of Bitcoin could plunge.
There's definitely a massive selloff right now, look at that.
Where you think it's going to hit? [Sean.]
I think it's going to tank down to the fives and change and stay there.
That's my thought.
I'm concerned because our business is 100% directly reflected on the price of coin and the profitability of our customers.
If they can grow, we can grow.
That's all there is to it.
Well, that's it, man.
[narrator.]
As the clock strikes zero, it ushers in a new era for Bitcoin.
[Conover.]
Newly generated coins, look.
12.
5.
We're good.
- And the price did not go up.
- Okay, so, one No, it didn't go up.
- It didn't crash.
- It kind of crashed.
It was trending at like 660, and now we're at 630.
So it's not the end of the world, but we'll see.
Even if Bitcoin passes this test of its own making, it faces greater challenges beyond its control to win the trust of the people or become crushed under the weight of its own algorithm.
[Knox.]
I do learn a lot by getting screwed, and I think that I'm gonna have to be screwed to learn more about this.
And I don't even know that it's possible to screw or be screwed with a Bitcoin, because when somebody asks me, "Has your name gotten out?" "Has your bank account failed?" "Did you lose money?" Answers to those kinds of questions are gonna be what propels people to use this.
But I do know that Bitcoin is making things better for me.
Hi, Steve.
I started with over $100,000 in student loans, and next month will be my two-year anniversary of camming.
I have 6K left.
[narrator.]
For the last century, governments and the central banks regulated money.
Today, it's an algorithm, a code that has no known creator and cannot be cancelled.
Tomorrow, dollars and coins will go the way of seashells.
And in the network we'll trust.