Lark Davis, better on as The Crypto Lark is a Content creator, Youtuber and a influencer. He is New Zealand’s most popular crypto personality. He grew up on a small organic homestead, reading and dreaming of space travel and pretending to be Indiana Jones. Known for his fun and articulate, entertaining style, Lark combines his political science background, critical thinking skills and bright sense of humor to produce content that explores blockchain solutions for the corrupted world.
Interview Date :15th April 2020
Thank you for your Sacrifice
We thank the holder of the account for their sacrifice by having lost their keys. Lost Bitcoin provides a floor for the price. It is not that we stop counting the value of those assets because no one knows for certain if the keys are lost. We continue to count them as part of the overall market cap in cryptocurrency. Let’s say someone lost the keys to 10,000 Bitcoin, and that is simply gone. That’s not on the market anymore so it provides more scarcity on the spot markets for Bitcoin while still being part of the network.
It creates a base value and is still counted in the ledger. Certainly, it is bad for the person it happens to, but not for the network as a whole. Right now, we see that around a quarter of the Bitcoin has been lost by users. I think we have much better wallets, security and recoverability of assets than before. Especially because back in the early days people didn’t recognize the value of it. Let’s say you held 10000 Bitcoin on your computer and then just forgot about it because it was not worth anything at the beginning. 10000 Bitcoin mined on your laptop and you let it sit on their computer never touching it. Several years later, Bitcoin has become a couple of thousand dollars worth, and if you have 10000 Bitcoin, that is suddenly a lot of money. That has really happened to people.
The Crypto Queen
Scamming in cryptocurrency is very unfortunate, like for example the crypto queen scam is one of the most horrific scams. We have new technology and anytime there is new technology, there will be those people who try to exploit others’ lack of understanding of that new technology. It has happened time and time again. We have seen multiple scams such as OneCoin, and Plustoken in China that last year got over 1 million dollars. Then there is Bitconnect; Bitconnect wallets had over a billion dollars by the time that they finished.
It simply comes down to very few factors. One is greed because people want to make lots of money very fast. Even if it seems too good to be true, they will look the other way ignoring the red flags, and think “I am going to get in there and make all that money” . Moreover, people just being naive about the markets is a huge factor. Not understanding how the markets are and work, and not understanding that you are not going to make 2 or 3 % interest guaranteed everyday. That’s unrealistic and no one is going to give you that kind of money.
Don’t be Too Naive
People don’t understand that if you haven’t been investing, or if you are not familiar with investing, or if you are totally green, you will eventually end up losing all your money. Especially if you are just coming to invest thinking “I’m going to get in and buy 1000 dollars of Bitcoin, and I just got approached by this guy on Facebook saying that he is doing magical Bitcoin mining promising a trading offer of being able to profit 40% interest a day! Wow, that’s going to get me so much money” and then your money is all gone! These are some hard lessons for people to learn.
I understand why people fall for these traps. There is no or very little financial education around being able to identify these kinds of scams. The scammers use a lot of tactics that help make them seem believable. A lot of social proofing goes into this to make it seem like all this is legitimate when it is nothing more than just a scam. If you have been scammed I just want to say don’t give up. I know it’s frustrating and it’s painful to lose your money. I imagine you might be really angry, but it has happened to a lot of other people, and you can build back up.
For many people, it might be harder to build up your wealth if you are over 60 or so, but you just take it as a really hard lesson. Get back into investing, and just try again but don’t stop investing. What we have seen throughout history is that being in the market is what pays off over time. I would say just buy 50 bucks with Bitcoin and just leave it sitting in the wallet. That’s all you need to do. If you are going to invest in the stock market, it’s also the same thing. Being in the market for the long term is where the winning is done.
I primarily do cryptocurrency. But I invest a lot in my business outside of cryptocurrency. I am open to investing in stock and in gold etc. but in terms of cryptocurrency, I talk a lot about Bitcoin and I focus on it because I see it as the tip of the spear. It is what’s pushing everything forward, and it’s what’s popping the bubble of the financial revolution.
And everything that coming behind that is really building on top of that initial vision of Bitcoin, so I have invested in Ethereum, and a few other cryptocurrencies and I think there is some incredible potential in the outgoing markets, and I know that a lot of the really die-heart Bitcoin types will say well there is nothing going on there, there is nothing important. I definitely disagree there, there is some really amazing innovation happening now in the cryptocurrency industry as a whole, you see things that are being built up on Ethereum that are just really crazy stuff, and this can be really revolutionary technology for the coming decade.
Beside Crypto, It’s the Nut and Cheese Industry
I have actually been thinking about getting into gold investing recently. I have been thinking about it for a while but I haven’t actually pulled the trigger yet. I will get some gold, I have been trying to find out what gold cryptocurrency I can redeem for actual gold here in New Zealand, but it doesn’t seem like there is any possibility to do that here. Thus, I have to get on a plane and go overseas if I want to do it. Beside that, I am mostly investing in my business which is a food business here in New Zealand together with my partner. We are operating a nut and cheese business. Another thing I would like to go is to gobble up some stocks in local New Zealand energy companies but I have not had the chance to do it yet.
New Zealand Has To Put It’s Mind To It!
There is a cryptocurrency community here in New Zealand as well, but New Zealand is a small country so we have much smaller impact on the crypto markets compared to somewhere like Singapore or Hong Kong which have similar sized populations. Singapore and Hong Kong are among those places that have become but global hubs of business and there is a big thriving cryptocurrency community there as well as many cryptocurrency businesses. There are some cryptocurrency businesses here in New Zealand, but I think that the New Zealand regulators could do a lot more to try and attract businesses to come here and start companies in New Zealand. We see that places like Switzerland, Singapore, Hong Kong etc. have taken all the business because they have really favorable regulations to invite people in.
Also, retail adoption is quite low in New Zealand, for example in my town there is only one place where you could use Bitcoin to pay for things. It’s not like New Zealand’s government can’t. They absolutely can and sometime I look around realizing that we have done really good things. There is a lot of innovative thinking and progress happening in this country, but then when I see how cryptocurrency is handled here I think “Why? Come on, New Zealand! What are we doing? We are behind here!”
The French are Leading
I think that New Zealand could easily be a leader in the industry if we were to really focus on bringing companies in. We have seen France do it; they recently passed laws giving cryptocurrency entrepreneur visas. This means that, if you want to start a cryptocurrency company in France, they will give you a visa and guarantee you rights to banking access which has been a problem in a lot of countries. Even in places like Singapore which is very crypto friendly. Banks individually say “we are not sure about the crypto companies” when the government clearly has announced it not being illegal and even states that banks “should do it”. However in France, they are guaranteed access to banks, you will be able to do financial services. Some banks and people still ask “you’re a cryptocurrency company, why do you need banks?” Because they still pay taxes, people’s salaries, electricity bills and to buy lunch for people etc. The French government has surpassed everybody by this implementation by doing so, and by giving security to the people.
We haven’t had a lot of discussions about a central bank digital currency. I think with that here in New Zealand, we are going to wait and see what other countries do. Right now we have seen that it is mostly the really big economies who are focusing on the idea, so we see its being tested already. In France, there are illustrations of it, and the US is definitely going to be doing it soon. China is probably going to be the first major economy to deploy a central bank digital currency. The Marshall Island has already introduced it and are on the way of developing their own digital currency based on Algorand technology. But again this is a very small case. We need to focus on the big economies as they will have the most influence. This includes Europe, China, Russia and the United States and that is what is really going to define where the rest of the countries are headed. I can easily imagine New Zealand issuing a central bank digital currency, but it will have to be after the USA and the other countries have done it.
Long term Economic Resolution with Bitcoin
In this economic crisis right now, the crazy printing that the central banks are executing will have a good effect on crypto. We are quickly moving to a situation globally where the world’s major economies don’t work anymore, and there will be a meltdown. I don’t think we are quite there yet, and I think that is some years away. However, this current crisis has underlined once again how deeply sick the economy is. Nothing was fixed after 2008 and no one went to jail. No one really got into trouble for crashing the economy. In fact, a lot of the people who were responsible for 2008 got rewarded and got bonuses for this.
Now, fast forward 2020, we still have the same structural problems except for that now it is so much worse. What we have seen now is again the exposing of the priorities of governments; it’s about giving as much as possible bail-out money as possible to corporations, as little as possible to the average people to keep from riding on the street, infinite money for Wall-street and infinite liquidity for the stock-market. The governments are buying junk bonds now. These are bonds that no one else wants from companies that are potentially going to get bankrupt or cannot meet their debt repayments. Here, the central banks are stepping in and state “ we will take that stuff that nobody else wants, and we will be the buyer of last resort, take things that are not market viable”. This is not capitalism! Capitalism is “if your company cannot survive and fails, somebody else steps into that picture” This system is socialism for the rich, and capitalism for the poor. It is a broken system and all this money printing is going to have a very negative effect in the long run.
For a very short term period, it is not a big problem, but if we think long term, like 10 years or at least by the end of the decade, how much inflation will have happened? I can’t even keep track of the trillions but I would say 15-20 trillion dollars in the last month has been committed to the global economy. Not all of that is printed new money. Some of that is different movement around the books, but at the end of the day it’s new debt, more money printing, more dysfunction in the economy, and all that has a net negative effect for the future of fiat currencies. This also has a net negative effect for the future of central banks who are now so in debt that there will come a point in the next decade potentially where the interest payments under debts will exceed the country’s tax revenue. This is especially true for the US. It is an apocalypse situation and it all speaks very well for Bitcoin; as this inflation kicks off and dollars become less valuable, the only 21 million Bitcoin available is a long term hold. Anybody who is getting shaken out after a week or a couple of months of being in Bitcoin, you have to see the big picture. The guys who bought Bitcoin back then for ~100 dollars, they never thought that we would get here today. It is a long term game, and so the long term hurdlers are the ones who will get rewarded the most.
The Crypto Lark : YouTube Channel
Cryptocurrency Explained Beginner Course
Interviewer , Editor : Lina Kamada
【Disclaimer】
The Article published on this our Homepage are only for the purpose of providing information. This is not intended as a solicitation for cryptocurrency trading. Also, this article is the author’s personal opinions, and this does not represent opinion for the Company BTCBOX co.,Ltd.