Brad Templeton: How Bitcoin Disrupts the Finance Industry | Big Think
How Bitcoin Disrupts the Finance Industry
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Should you invest in Bitcoin? Maybe not, says Brad Templeton, but that doesn’t mean the digital currency isn’t amazing in and of itself. Templeton explains what Bitcoin achieves and how it’s set to spur further innovation.
Brad Templeton is one of many ahead-of-the-curve speakers at 2015’s Exponential Finance conference, June 2-3 in New York City. Co-produced by Singularity University and CNBC, Exponential Finance provides insight into new technologies that leaders need to understand in order to make the most of the accelerating change happening across business sectors.
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BRAD TEMPLETON:
Brad Templeton is the Track Chair for Computing at Singularity University, developer of and commentator on self-driving cars, software architect, board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, internet entrepreneur, futurist lecturer, writer and observer of cyberspace issues, hobby photographer, and an artist.
Templeton has been a consultant on Google’s team designing a driverless car and lectures and blogs about the emerging technology of automated transportation. He is also noted as a speaker and writer covering copyright law and political and social issues related to computing and networks. He is a director of the futurist Foresight Nanotech Institute, a think tank and public interest organization focused on transformative future technologies.
Templeton was founder, publisher and software architect at ClariNet Communications Corp., which in the 1990s became the first internet-based business, creating an electronic newspaper. He has been active in the computer network community since 1979, participated in the building and growth of USENET from its earliest days, and in 1987 founded and edited a special USENET conference devoted to comedy.
Templeton has been involved in the development of important pieces of software including VisiCalc, the world’s first computer spreadsheet, and Stuffit for archiving and compressing computer files.
In 1996, ClariNet joined the ACLU and others in opposing the Communications Decency Act, part of the Telecom bill passed during Clinton Administration. The U.S. Supreme Court sided with the plaintiffs and ruled that the Act violated the First Amendment in seeking to impose anti-indecency standards on the internet.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Brad Templeton: So there are a couple of things to tell people about Bitcoins. I actually try to help them explain how it works because that does actually have value, but we won’t do that in this short thing. But, should you invest in Bitcoins? I tell people no. I tell people that the value that people are applying to Bitcoins today is definitely speculative. And so that doesn’t mean you can’t make a lot of money, everyone knows what’s called the greater fool theory that you make money from greater fools and you hope you’re the lesser fool. But obviously there are just as many people who fail on that that is who win on it. So, not necessarily something to invest in today, but the technology, the idea, this is very interesting. This is worth looking at.
So what Bitcoin creates is a ledger that needs no bank. And that’s actually pretty important because if you think about what is a bank, at least as far as the money transfer and the checking and savings, not the loan part, but the financial, the moving money part of a bank, it’s really — it’s a secure ledger. The bank does not just have a little file that says your account has $3,000 in it. They insist that when you write something, they make a note in their ledger that $1,000 is transferred from your account into someone else’s account and so on and that’s important to make it secure. Well, what the designers of Bitcoin created was a way to make a ledger that’s secure and that everyone can trust, but that no one owns or controls. And this allows people to have money that can be free of the influence of governments, which is both bad if you’re a government and great if you don’t like what governments do with their monetary policies. It lets the policy be set by consensus and software. So Bitcoin basically has found a way to always know what the majority thinks, and by always knowing what the majority thinks, you get something you hope you can trust. In theory if someone controlled more than half of the computers in the world they could take over Bitcoin, but that’s pretty unlikely.
So, why is that exciting? Well, I grew up with the internet and I’m old because the …..
To read the transcript, please go to https://bigthink.com/videos/brad-templeton-on-the-advantages-of-bitcoin
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@YD-uq5fi
October 31, 2025 at 6:57 am
Brad Templeton has no expertise in this area. He just has connections with Big Think. He is merely regurgitating what he read elsewhere.
@Elliot_Pizzaguy
October 31, 2025 at 6:57 am
Remember the ONLY ones that hate BITCOIN are the ones that don't OWN ANY , FACT . The naysayers ….. I say GO….. BITCOIN ….GO .
@IzludeTingel
October 31, 2025 at 6:57 am
check out hugclub, a scratch website sustained on bitcoin :3
@EvanderSmart
October 31, 2025 at 6:57 am
People who are truly ignorant of how Bitcoin works think you can separate the currency from the technology, or they are two separate values. Like separating blood from the human body.
@williamwilson6499
October 31, 2025 at 6:57 am
Bitcoin, and every other digital money, will never be completely money until the government accepts it for taxes.
I think some form of digital money will be standard eventually, but not necessarily bitcoin.
One positive aspect of a digital currency…maybe it will shut up the goldbugs.
@mughat
October 31, 2025 at 6:57 am
Apple technology is great but the stock is pure speculation… /sarcasm
@JohnSmithSafe
October 31, 2025 at 6:57 am
Bitcoin это будущее! Bitcoin is future!
@enmanuelepericles1800
October 31, 2025 at 6:57 am
Literally every single critic of Bitcoin in Youtube comment sections are always clueless retarded bullshit.
@leerman22
October 31, 2025 at 6:57 am
I think bitcoin needs even greater units to be globally accepted, but it is a great experiment for a minority of people to test and innovate with. Since bitcoins are created slower as time progresses and people keep "losing" their bitcoins, there may be huge deflation of value.
I'd suggest tweaking the variables a bit and put a linear threshold in there somewhere. This would call for a new cryptocurrency though.
@kleinbottled79
October 31, 2025 at 6:57 am
You can't have a 'secure' ledger without value in the currency. If the miners aren't paid to secure the network, which is what mining does, they stop. Bitcoins intrinsic value is the security of it's network. Of course, there is almost definitely speculation on top of that. So the question to ask before investing would be: Do you think the value of the scaling security this network provides will grow.? And will that value exceed any current speculative value by the time you need to see a return? (That is if, you're attempting to value invest, not count on a 'greater fool.' )
Personally, I bought a little. Not so much that I'll really miss it if bitcoin fails or never grows for some reason. But if it does disrupt, as it may; the value will follow, as it must.
It's hard to look deeply at the tech and not feel that block-chains will change the world. Still, no one knows how. Which is why the risk reward balance gives us the jumpy crazy Bitcoin prices we see today. (My 2 mBTC)
@sawcery587
October 31, 2025 at 6:57 am
Tired of these dumbshits who think the blockchain can work without a valuable cryptocurrency or a computing arms race of electricity.
@NATHANTHEPIMP
October 31, 2025 at 6:57 am
I love this shit there is nothing there. No gold no drama just promissory notes. Fuck um ya.
@doggydeeds
October 31, 2025 at 6:57 am
" How Bitcoin Disrupts the Finance Industry" Fucking good!!!! that's the point. Sociopathic scum bags run the world through central banks. They put countries into never ending debt thus enslaving it's people. Every country on the planet has shit loads of debt, that doesn't even make fucking sense, debts should be owed to other countries, not it's self. Countries are completely indebted to it's self. It's time for change!!!
@Ramezml
October 31, 2025 at 6:57 am
wtf missleading title with confuse guy talkin
@SirAmicVarze
October 31, 2025 at 6:57 am
He presupposes that Bitcoin is going to lead to innovation, which I'm highly sceptical of.
@weltraumprasidentsuperstar5871
October 31, 2025 at 6:57 am
1) If I had half of the computational power in the world, I could take over a LOT more hen just bitcoin.
2) The part about contracts is bullshit. I can already do this anonymously by paying in cash, exchanging goods or services. A real contract is always enforceable, as long as it is legal. I would be a legally void contract if I buy goods which are also illegal to begin with. However I can total write a contract to buy Deli Sandwich in exchange for homemade cookies. There would be no banks involved and still that contract would be enforceable.
This video seriously lacks substance.
@Shogero
October 31, 2025 at 6:57 am
Brad Templeton was on the internet before it became mainstream.
@Supermanohman
October 31, 2025 at 6:57 am
I hate bitcoin because you don't have to produce a good or service to get bitcoins like you do with real money. All you have to do is get a graphics card running for a month. That does nothing for society.
@webkilla
October 31, 2025 at 6:57 am
the title is a tad misleading – but I liked the message of the vid
@DarkerDuck
October 31, 2025 at 6:57 am
Such this $1
*****
@marklarkento2043
October 31, 2025 at 6:57 am
Tyvm for the clean transcript.
@devwreck192
October 31, 2025 at 6:57 am
This guy again. Another "Big Thinker" telling us things we already know and offering us no new information on the subject whatsoever. Just regurgitating Bitcoin information he found on the front page of any Bitcoin site or from any YouTube video about Bitcoin. There goes another 4 minutes of my life I won't get back.
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