If you’re concerned about the overreach of government in juicing asset prices to dangerous levels, picking economic winner and losers, and constraining our personal freedoms — you have very good right to be.

So says lifelong champion of free markets, sound money and civil liberty, former US Congressman Dr Ron Paul.

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Whether you understand it or not, Bitcoin and other ‘distributed ledger’ technologies are spreading at an accelerating rate across the world.

Odds are very high they will disrupt and transform nearly every business model in today’s economy, much in the same way the advent of the Internet did.

But most people are still unfamiliar with this new technology, and concerned that their lack of understanding may leave them obsolete dinosaurs in the coming future should crypto indeed change the nature of money and commerce.

This is why we’ve brought on this week’s guest expert, Alex Saunders, respected Bitcoin/blockchain/crypto maven to demystify the topic and explain it all to us in plain layman’s English.

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• Connecticut’s S.O.S.
• The idea that everything from spoons to stones are conscious is gaining academic credibility
• Jeremy Corbyn announces Labour will buy every homeless person in the country a house
• How Will AI Change Work? Here Are 5 Schools of Thought
• Stockton Gets Ready to Experiment With Universal Basic Income
• Most unhappy people are unhappy for the exact same reason
• Let The Sun Power Your Portfolio
• Camel beauty pageant bans a dozen animals over Botox injections
• The flu can kill tens of millions of people. In 1918, that’s exactly what it did.

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• Retirement crisis: 37% of Gen X say they won't be able to afford to retire
• Losing Faith in the State, Some Mexican Towns Quietly Break Away
• The Fed, worrying about the next recession, considers changes
• Party While You Can – Central Bank Ready To Pop The 'Everything' Bubble
• 2018: The Year of Living Dangerously
• Many happy returns: new data reveal long-term investment trends
• A plague of million-dollar homes haunts real estate
• What's The Difference Between Children's Books In China And The U.S.?
• California's Brown Raises Prospect of Pension Cuts in Downturn
• Exercise Alters Our Microbiome. Is That One Reason It’s So Good for Us?

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• The Science Of Loneliness
• The dark side of your $5 Footlong: Business owners say it could bite them
• These Will Be the Big Stories of 2018
• Stop reading what Facebook tells you to read
• Too much screening has misled us about real cancer risk factors, experts say
• Why American doctors keep doing expensive procedures that don’t work
• It's Time For Innovators To Take Responsibility For Their Creations
• Americans Will Eat a Record Amount of Meat in 2018

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Bitcoin's price has gone 'beyond exponential' this week.

Just yesterday, while I was working on this article, it shot up 22% — from $14,000 to $17,000 (hitting an intraday high of $19,000). And that's after a mind-blowing upwards rocket ride over the past several months. I think it's safe to say that the vicious melt-up in price over such a short timeframe has surpassed the expectations of even the starriest-eyed Bitcoin fanboys.

The whole world, especially the 99.99% of us that own zero cryptocurrency, is asking: What happens next? And, What should I do?

Is this insane trajectory going to continue for a lot longer? Do I need to get in now to avoid missing this once-in-lifetime fortune-making opportunity?

Or is this a classic bubble blow-off top? Is this the deadliest time to enter, right before the price implodes?

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This week we talk with Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock.com, and rare courageous voice within corporate America raising concern that powerful interests on Wall Street are destroying US companies for profit, robbing investors and destabilizing our financial system in the process. 

Byrne has been an early advocate for digital currencies and their potential to protect financial wealth from the massive policy missteps being undertaken by the Federal Reserve. (In 2014, Overstock.com became the first major retailer to accept Bitcoin payments.) 

In this week's podcast, Byrne details out the promising potential of cryptocurrencies and the blockchain, as well as his thoughts as to whether they will be able or not to evade subversion by the world central authorities.

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Have you moved a material percentage of your financial portfolio to cash? Have you become so concerned about the meteoric ramp upwards in asset prices that you find it wiser instead to move to the sidelines, build "dry powder", and wait to re-enter the markets at saner valuations?

If so, you have my sympathies.

The past 5+ years have been brutal for savers pursuing this strategy. I know this well, as I'm one of those folks, too.

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Executive Summary

• The critical value of scarcity
• Understanding the utility of the blockchain
• Will (can?) governments ban cryptocurrencies?
• A coming geometric explosion in the price of cryptocurrency?

If you have not yet read Part 1: Understanding The Cryptocurrency Boom available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.

In Part 1, we surveyed the exciting but confusing speculative boom phase of cryptocurrencies. Here in Part 2, we will contextualize this mad swirl by running it through two filters: scarcity and utility.

What’s Scarce? Scarcity Creates Value

Regardless of one’s economic ideology or system, scarcity creates value and abundance destroys value.  When we say supply and demand, we’re really talking about scarcity and abundance and the rise or fall of demand for the commodity, good or service.

In classical economic theory, scarcity is met with substitution: ground beef too expensive due to relative scarcity? Buy ground turkey instead.

But this model has weaknesses.  There aren’t always substitutes, or the substitutes are more expensive or problematic than what is now scarce.

As a general rule, profits flow to any scarcity of goods and services with high utility value.  We value what’s scarce and useful, and place little value on what’s abundant and of limited utility.

Currency has three basic functions: a store of value (it will retain its purchasing power over time), means of exchange (we can use it to trade goods and services, pay debts, etc.) and as an accounting mechanism to track assets, debts, income, expenses and exchanges/trades.

We assume all currency has this function, but only currency that is easily divisible and easily tradable enables easy accounting.  If a notched stick is a unit of currency, and one stick buys a pig, what do I use for purchases smaller than a pig?

In today’s world, a currency must be….

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