Off the Blockchain with Dr. Sandra Johnson

What the funge is up with crypto? On this episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Marcia Belsky talk about the science behind cryptocurrency, NFTs, bitcoin, and the blockchain with electrical engineer Dr. Sandra Johnson.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist, and it's a Cosmic Queries edition on a subject that I don't know a damn thing about. Blockchain, cryptocurrency, we've heard about it, we've seen it, and I count myself among the profound ignorant in that subject. So, we had to do a show on it. I have a new co-host. Oh my gosh, Marcia Belsky. Marcia, welcome to StarTalk.

• 0:44Marcia Belsky?

  Woo, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. I am also very ignorant of cryptocurrency, and when people have tried to explain it, I mean, I'm not even good at the basic finance stuff. So, this is like next level. This is, I'm in PhD and I haven't gotten my undergrad, but I'm gonna try.

• 1:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent. So, you're a stand-up comedian, a musician, a writer, and you had a hit song recently that's just completely crazy. Just completely, it's called "100 Tampons." We'll get you to explain it later, but with a title song like that, you know, we need, we're gonna need an explanation.

• 1:24Marcia Belsky?

  Yes, you got it. And it's space-related.

• 1:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And space-related. That's what makes it even better. So, let me introduce our expert here, since neither you nor I, Marcia, carry that expertise. We have got Dr. Sandra Johnson. Sandra is the founder, let me check out my notes, it's founder and CEO of multiple companies. One, her day job currently is Global Mobile Finance, Inc., which is a fintech startup company. She's got multiple degrees in electrical engineering and has 40 patents. Is that more than 40 patents pending? Is that right?

• 2:04Speaker 02

  Issued and pending, yes.

• 2:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Issued and pending. Okay, thanks for that. And you're also a visiting scholar at North Carolina A&T. Sandra Johnson, welcome to StarTalk.

• 2:15Speaker 02

  Oh, thank you very much, Neil. It is certainly a pleasure to be here. I look forward to having some fun.

• 2:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent. And part of your background takes you through IBM in Africa. So what was that about?

• 2:27Speaker 02

  That is correct.

• 2:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What happened there?

• 2:29Speaker 02

  That is correct. Well, you know, 26 plus years at IBM, and after about, I don't know, 22, 23 years, and I was thinking about what I wanted to do next, I actually went on a trip to Africa and had a eureka moment when I visited a slave castle in Ghana. And it was through that experience that, you know, I found my purpose and destiny, and that is to focus on leveraging my technical skills to help the people in Africa. So I then went looking for opportunities to do that with IBM.

• 3:08Speaker 02

  Ended up spending three years in the Middle East and Africa, two years in Dubai, and one year in Nairobi, Kenya. But all three years traveling throughout the Middle East and Africa, primarily Africa, visiting more than 22 countries, many of them several times.

• 3:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 3:25Speaker 02

  Wow. And so I was the CTO of IBM Central, East, and West Africa.

• 3:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It sounds like we can create four other shows based on your life experience. But we have to like be selective. And so right now, we're going to be thinking about cryptocurrency. We solicited questions from our eager fanbase, our patrons, Patreon members. And just tell me, Sandra, what got you into cryptocurrency?

• 3:56Speaker 02

  Well, I'm always want to always be aware of and try to learn about emerging or leading edge or bleeding edge technologies.

• 4:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, bleeding edge. That's the one.

• 4:07Speaker 02

  Right. So, so a few years ago, when blockchain was just starting out, I started, you know, talking to people about it, reading up about it, learning about the technical details, and then it just really took off in terms of hype. Right, and so I sort of rolled the wave in terms of keeping myself abreast from a knowledge perspective of what blockchain is all about, what cryptocurrency is all about. I even thought about leveraging it in my fintech startup as well.

• 4:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So is the first question we ought to, Marsha and I ought to be asking is, what is blockchain? Like, we just

• 4:46Marcia Belsky?

  Yes.

• 4:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that, is that the entry level, like kindergarten, preschool question?

• 4:52Marcia Belsky?

  Since you were in, since the old stuff, you've been listening to them since the old records. Like you were in before everybody knew it was cool.

• 4:59Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, yeah. So what is blockchain? What is cryptocurrency? What's the difference between the two?

• 5:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, let's start there, please.

• 5:07Speaker 02

  Okay, so, so blockchain, I, I think of it as the foundation, the technology foundation to get things done.

• 5:18Speaker 02

  It is really, I'm sure all of us are familiar with, well, maybe not all of us, all of us older folks are familiar with what's called a ledger. You think about a black bank ledger where you put entries in the ledger and the ledger. What, what blockchain is, is you can view it as a distributed ledger. It's an electronic ledger, but it's a distributed ledger. And each entry is what's considered a block, if you will.

• 5:48Speaker 02

  And that block essentially contains a list of transactions. Okay, and so blockchain is essentially a chain of blocks, which is essentially a distributed ledger that if it's public, anyone can read, anyone can read anything that was ever written on that blockchain, that, that link of ledgers. And once it's placed on the blockchain, it's immutable, it cannot be changed.

• 6:18Speaker 02

  And so, in the essence, that's what a blockchain is.

• 6:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, compared to a ledger, so it seems so far, from what you described, the only difference is, uh, everyone can see it, it's unchangeable, as most ledgers really should be, really.

• 6:35Speaker 02

  Right.

• 6:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, and, uh, and it's distributed, okay, so, so now what?

• 6:42Speaker 02

  Anyone in the world can see it, there's no centralized mechanism for it, so that's what I mean by distributed.

• 6:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, okay, so you're removing the, the, the banker?

• 6:55Speaker 02

  Right, right, right, in fact, you know, step back just a little bit of the history behind this. Uh, the first blockchain was the Bitcoin blockchain, which is, Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, and I'll talk about that in a minute. But it was the brainchild of this individual or group of individuals, uh, uh, that we don't know. Uh, they wrote this white paper, the author is, uh, Sakoshi Nakamoto. We don't know who he or she is at this point, but he wrote this white paper. That is this paper describing this idea of having a currency that's independent of companies, you know?

• 7:39Speaker 02

  And it came right after the recession in two thousand eight, right? So, you know, it was a financially based recession, so he came up with this idea. How can we come up with this currency that's independent of, let's say, a, a, a central bank? And so that's-

• 7:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not only independent of a central bank, independent of a country?

• 8:01Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, yes. Uh, and so that was the basis for the Bitcoin blockchain that was then created.

• 8:11Speaker 02

  In January two thousand nine, so it's been thirteen years, right? But again, it's the foundation. It's a distributed ledger where you put information about transactions that anyone can access and it's unchangeable.

• 8:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have to check, I gotta check with Marcia at intermittent moments here. So Marcia, have you heard enough yet to be paid in Bitcoin for your stand-up act?

• 8:37Marcia Belsky?

  I mean, absolutely not, but not because I don't trust it. Only because I I'm fascinated, first of all, but also have like never felt more stupid in my life. Because I'm realizing, I think I'm at almost, and not, there are other people in my generation where this is probably different. But I'm realizing that I'm in, I'm a millennial, you know, I'm thirty-two. So I'm in the exact age where I don't actually really know what a ledger is. They didn't really teach us any financial literacy in school. I don't really know how banking works. It's always mostly been like when I was a kid, you know, I remember they taught us how to write checks. But like, they didn't teach us any of the deeper stuff. And I'm also not Gen Z and younger who knows all about the internet. You know what I mean?

• 9:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're just dangling there and you're dangling over the crevasse.

• 9:23Marcia Belsky?

  I'm dangling in the cosmos. I'm like, but it's so fascinating to me because I can see now, because people have been long. What I have heard, talking about cryptocurrency as a way, like you said, to work outside these establishments. And I, that never made any sense to me, but that's, I'm starting to see how and why that is.

• 9:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, we're getting there, but just to alert Sandra, what it means is some people are not being helped by your analogy to a ledger.

• 9:50Marcia Belsky?

  No, but most people probably are because people my age are probably listening, thinking like, no, I know what it is. She's just an idiot, but.

• 9:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 9:59Speaker 02

  Okay, so.

• 10:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I was checking in, I was checking with Marcia, make sure we're, we're on the same page.

• 10:03Marcia Belsky?

  I'm like the person that should put in the Olympics next to Michael Phelps to show how fast he's actually swimming. I'm how dumb people actually can be on this.

• 10:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 10:12Marcia Belsky?

  Yeah.

• 10:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so Sandra, continue.

• 10:15Speaker 02

  So, so, so, so I've discussed at a high level what blockchain is, like, which is the foundation, right? Now, let's, let's talk about crypto, right? And, and I'll use an example, the most, uh, uh, successful, uh, the most popular cryptocurrency, which is Bitcoin. All right, and so, uh, essentially, without getting into a whole lot of gory detail, uh, Bitcoin was created to incentivize people to add blocks to the blockchain.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  It's a global chain of blocks. The first one was created in January of two thousand nine. So, so, um, every few minutes, a new block is created. So how is it created? Well, you have people that are called miners, uh, all over the world, all competing to be the next, to, to have the next block to be added to the blockchain. So they all have their own.

• 11:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, these are miners, not young people underage, these are miners, like. Like coal miners.

• 11:25Speaker 02

  People who are mining for, mining for gold, for example.

• 11:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like the Seven Dwarfs, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, they're all miners, yeah.

• 11:31Speaker 02

  Right, right. And so around the world, they all have their own blocks that they have locally, and they all compete to be the next block in the global chain of blocks, okay? And how do they compete? Well, they work, that is very complex cryptographic algorithm that they use. I liken it to rolling the dice, right? And they're all rolling the dice, and, and, and, and one of them is looking for the double six. Well, they're all looking for the double six, but the first one to get it is the winner, okay? And the prize is you get your block to be added to the blockchain, but you also get Bitcoin.

• 12:15Speaker 02

  And that's how Bitcoin is created.

• 12:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So.

• 12:20Speaker 02

  Uh, you get twelve and a half Bitcoin, initially it was twenty-five Bitcoin, so now it's twelve and a half. You get twelve and a half Bitcoin if you get the double six.

• 12:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How do you know who, how, who, how?

• 12:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Marsha, help me here.

• 12:37Marcia Belsky?

  I saw it's all, is it all luck? It's all?

• 12:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, how do you know? I mean, dice, when we think, yes, when we think of dice, we think of luck. So, so, so I don't have this algorithm. Can I make my own algorithm? And how do I know if I've landed on the double six?

• 12:51Marcia Belsky?

  Right.

• 12:52Speaker 02

  They all, they all use the same cryptographic algorithm. It's a very detailed computation. It's an algorithm that's programmed and they all are looking for a certain result. They all know what that result is, right?

• 13:11Speaker 02

  But only, it's very difficult to get that, that result. You know, it's double six is a lot easier than the, it's a number that they're looking for. It's a binary number. Two hundred fifty-six bit binary number. And they're all calculating this algorithm that will give them a two hundred fifty-six bit result.

• 13:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How do you know if you hit the number?

• 13:37Speaker 02

  Because you know what the, you know what the number is.

• 13:39Marcia Belsky?

  Hmm, and then they give you that.

• 13:41Speaker 02

  Just like you know what the double six is.

• 13:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, and so they're trying to find a way to get to that number using this algorithm?

• 13:48Speaker 02

  Yes. Yes, and the first one to get the result. And the algorithm will use as input some of the data that they have on their block. Okay? So they crunch numbers using the data on their block and they're all trying to get this result that they all know what it, what the result is.

• 14:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this ledger, so this, so this distributed ledger is a ledger of pathways through the algorithm?

• 14:18Speaker 02

  You can say that, yes.

• 14:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  May I? Is that allowed?

• 14:21Speaker 02

  Yes, yes.

• 14:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't want to get over poeticized about it because

• 14:24Speaker 02

  And, and actually

• 14:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't want to liken this to poetry at all.

• 14:28Speaker 02

  You, well, if you really want to get a second thought.

• 14:30Marcia Belsky?

  It is in that, it makes no sense to me.

• 14:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In that way, they're the same.

• 14:34Marcia Belsky?

  Yeah. I've been sitting in class and the teacher's going, what do you think it means? And I'm going, you know, you tell me.

• 14:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, so, so Sandra, what you're saying is that the miners are, to borrow terms I'm familiar with, they are printing money.

• 14:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it's not printing, of course. But yeah.

• 14:56Marcia Belsky?

  Digitally printing.

• 14:57Speaker 02

  You can look at it that way because the winner, the double six winner, the person who gets that actual result first is the winner and the prize is 12 and a half Bitcoin.

• 15:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so they are working for their pay.

• 15:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 15:17Speaker 02

  Yes, yes.

• 15:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, we got to take our first break, but when we come back, I want to know what the hell NFTs are and I assume Marsha does too. And right after that, I think we might have enough foundation to go to our questions.

• 15:31Marcia Belsky?

  Yes.

• 15:32Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 15:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With our Patreon members. Okay.

• 15:34Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 15:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So when we come back, more of StarTalk Cosmic Queries with Dr. Sandra Johnson and my new co-host, Marcia Belsky. Yes. And when we come back, Cosmic Queries on Bitcoin.

• 15:53Speaker 03

  Hey, I'm Roy Hill Percival and I support StarTalk on Patreon, Bringing the Universe Down to Earth. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 16:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. StarTalk Cosmic Queries. This one's about Bitcoin and blockchains and all that stuff some people know everything about and everyone else knows nothing about. And I think my new co-host, Marcia Belsky, and I are in the same camp. And of course, then we have an expert on it, Sandra Johnson, who's got huge pedigree in the tech world, started companies, got patents. And you graduated, it's a summa cum laude, with highest honors in what was that? In what subject was that?

• 16:45Speaker 02

  In electrical engineering, yes. Southern University, Badger University.

• 16:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this would have been, I don't know how old you are, but if you go back enough, electrical engineering was the department that had computer science in it. And so later on, computer science had its own sort of identity on a campus. But that meant you were in at the bait, at the ground floor, front door of that.

• 17:11Speaker 02

  That is correct. That is correct. In fact, my PhD.

• 17:16Speaker 02

  Is also an electrical engineering at electrical and computer engineering.

• 17:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Got it. So that doubles that up. Right, right. So Marsha, what's your PhD in?

• 17:26Marcia Belsky?

  Oh, well, I got my undergrad in sociology. So.

• 17:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, that's good. If you're gonna be a comedian, you need to know that sociology. Oh, my God.

• 17:37Marcia Belsky?

  Exactly.

• 17:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All the material on the stand up floor is there.

• 17:42Marcia Belsky?

  It's just sociology. Exactly. Yeah. But I, you know, I am so lost on the engineering stuff. And it's like, but it's fascinating to me because, yeah, but I, it makes me feel better that you also don't know what she's talking about.

• 17:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why are you basking in my ignorance?

• 17:58Marcia Belsky?

  I'm sorry.

• 18:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, you should feel sad for me.

• 18:03Marcia Belsky?

  No, I'm like, because then it's like, Elise, and I know it's not just my intelligence overall. It's like, we're all just, you know, it's, it's just a new field that a lot of us don't know about. And but it's fascinating. It really is. It's crazy because people talk about it so much online.

• 18:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They do. They do. It's preoccupied online chatter.

• 18:24Marcia Belsky?

  Yeah.

• 18:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Sandra, tell me, what are NFTs?

• 18:26Speaker 02

  Okay, so crypto, cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, okay? Uh, and there, there are literally thousands of cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin, right? Uh, and, and those cryptos are interchangeable. That is, you can buy and you can use these crypto, crypto to buy or sell goods and services. Uh, and, and cryptos are what's called fungible. That is, you can interchange them. Uh, NFT is a non-fungible token. That is something that you cannot, you know, e- exchange.

• 19:09Speaker 02

  It's a very unique unit of data. You can, uh, compare it to, liken it to like a deed on a house, right? There's only one deed for the house, right? It's not interchangeable. Well, an NFT or non-fungible token is very similar, uh, to that. Uh, it basically has two parts to it. This is all electronic, all digital. Uh, it usually has a digital asset.

• 19:39Speaker 02

  Okay, uh, and that digital, digital asset associated with it, that digital asset has a certain value, you know, it's like a piece of artwork, for example. Uh, so an N F T is a unique unit of data, uh, that, that le- leverages technology to enable this digital asset to be placed on a blockchain.

• 20:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, my God.

• 20:03Speaker 02

  And it can be bought and sold on the blockchain.

• 20:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the open marketplace.

• 20:08Speaker 02

  Unique asset. In the open marketplace.

• 20:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so what you're saying is this is, so you turned physical objects, like I, if I own a Picasso, then I have that Picasso and you don't. And if you want to buy it, you come to me and pay money for it. But that's, that's a physical object made of canvas and paint. And you're telling me you have, you're, there is this world out there now of digital assets that are the an- digital analog to my physical thing that I have a possession of.

• 20:42Speaker 02

  Uh, you can think of it that way. It's not quite because the legal, it's so new, bleeding edge, that the, the legal, the, the, the legal focus has not kept up.

• 20:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 20:58Speaker 02

  But just for our discussion purposes, you can view it as.

• 21:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so if you dumb it down enough, we can think of it that way.

• 21:06Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 21:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did I hear her right, Marsha?

• 21:08Marcia Belsky?

  Yeah.

• 21:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what you just said.

• 21:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 21:10Marcia Belsky?

  I'm thinking N F Ts need better P R because like that, what you said makes sense to me where it's a token of like, because what people on the internet think it is, is people paying thousands of dollars for a photo of an ape that you could Google. And it doesn't make sense to anybody. You know what I mean? But, but your explanation as a part of these other two things, that makes sense. So it's like, I think we just need better P R out there explaining it to people.

• 21:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Marshall, why don't we go to our Patreon questions right now? Because the, the, I, there may be enough foundation there. So let's check it out. And tell me like their names and if they say where they're from, I always want to know that too.

• 21:47Marcia Belsky?

  Okay, absolutely. Yeah, let's start with this one because you were talking about working at IBM. So this is from Jelmer von der Veik, which looks like a Scandinavian name. And it says, "Hello, Sandra and Neil. I'm working in finance and my girlfriend is a blockchain developer at IBM. Most of the blockchain talk is about cryptocurrencies and NFTs, but the technology offers a lot more solutions that will change our lives. We would love to hear from Dr. Johnson about how digital identity applications work on the blockchain and how they will impact our lives."

• 22:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, this is a sociological question in a way.

• 22:30Marcia Belsky?

  Yeah, this is all very sociological and it's why, yeah.

• 22:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. So Sandra, this is, you know, to just live within, you know, within the ledgers of tech geniuses, or does this have real world consequences?

• 22:44Speaker 02

  Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I believe blockchain technology will change the way humans interact, long term. Right now, there's a lot of hype, but I think moving forward in time. So to more or less answer the question, I'll give you an example. For example, an example in supply chain. You know, you're a manufacturing company, you manufacture something and you want to ship it somewhere. Right? You can actually use blockchain technology and put on the blockchain when it was manufactured,

• 23:23Speaker 02

  where it's going,

• 23:26Speaker 02

  and who's going to pick it up. All of the details of that, you can, you can write a program, if you will. That's called a smart contract that gives you all of the details from A to B. Uh, and then once you finish that digit and put it on the truck, that automatically starts a chain of events. That now many times is manual, stuff get lost, you don't know where it is. But if it's on a blockchain, you know exactly where it is at all times. From putting it on the ship, from the ship reaching its destination, from it going from the ship to another truck, and from the truck to the

• 24:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, Sandra, Sandra, FedEx does that for me. Is that a blockchain? I know where my package is. I know when it got, I know when the label was created. I know who signed for it.

• 24:18Marcia Belsky?

  But if that got disrupted, it sounds like this could be, could maybe fill in some of those gaps. Cause we're seeing all these problems, like, that's interesting, cause it works outside of those, like, I still don't get it, but I'm starting to.

• 24:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely, Marsha, you, you're getting it, you know, you are.

• 24:36Marcia Belsky?

  Thank you, Professor.

• 24:38Speaker 02

  You know, even with FedEx, FedEx has partners, they, they, they may have their own separate databases storing information. With blockchain, everything is there. Everyone can go there and find out at the same time where everything is. Uh, nothing should be lost.

• 24:59Speaker 02

  And you know with FedEx, you lose things.

• 25:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 25:01Marcia Belsky?

  And all digital, cause a lot of companies I've worked for are not all digital.

• 25:06Speaker 02

  Right.

• 25:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, okay, so, so, so, um, okay, so that, that blockchain is not currency. It's a blockchain of information.

• 25:21Speaker 02

  Yes. That's why I remember I said initially blockchain is the foundation.

• 25:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a general concept.

• 25:28Speaker 02

  Right.

• 25:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 25:29Speaker 02

  Currency is, is, is different.

• 25:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, do you foresee a day in a not so different future, where all information transactions happen on blockchains?

• 25:41Speaker 02

  Well, the overwhelming majority.

• 25:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow, okay.

• 25:45Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. I mean, think about if you're buying a house, for example. You know, you know, you'll have to make sure that the owner is the owner. You know, and you pay somebody to do that.

• 25:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, you do.

• 25:58Speaker 02

  On blockchain, blockchain, you don't have to do that. It's gonna all be there.

• 26:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 26:02Speaker 02

  For example. Okay, that's that's one example. So, a- a- and if you could just take that little thought and kind of extrapolate it to look at how we do things now and how we can do it if we had this centralized place where everything is placed, nothing is modified, and you can you have access.

• 26:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Could there be a comedic blockchain where they put funny jokes on it? And then everybody, you'll know you'll laugh.

• 26:27Marcia Belsky?

  That you can never delete?

• 26:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can never delete.

• 26:30Marcia Belsky?

  No, thank you. I'm good on that.

• 26:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, but but but but think about this. If you have an N- a NFT associated with your joke, that if other people use it, you could get paid.

• 26:42Marcia Belsky?

  This is what everybody's been talking about. This is the first time I heard about NFTs was somebody advised me to create an NFT from some of my material. And I was like, I have no idea what you're talking about, but thank you so much for suggesting that. But people have made thousands. I know some comedian made like thousands of dollars doing that, basically. And I don't know how and I don't know who, but.

• 27:02Speaker 02

  People have made millions of dollars.

• 27:04Marcia Belsky?

  Yeah.

• 27:04Speaker 02

  Particularly last year on this.

• 27:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 27:07Marcia Belsky?

  Which is so for that, that's like, I take a video of a set and I don't want to release it for Netflix.

• 27:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A set is your comedic sequence of jokes, a set.

• 27:15Marcia Belsky?

  Right, like a set, like a, a bit, or like a, you know, an hour, an hour of jokes.

• 27:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bit means something else.

• 27:22Marcia Belsky?

  Right, right. Oh, right, yeah. Different industries, G. You're right. But, um.

• 27:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So a set is you getting up with the microphone and then sitting down and everything you did between those is a set, correct?

• 27:34Marcia Belsky?

  But but so then it's like the the NFT would be the video itself that somebody then privately purchases so that they own that set that I did.

• 27:44Speaker 02

  That's correct, yes.

• 27:45Marcia Belsky?

  But they don't own the material. They just own that video, which might be valuable if someone were like hugely famous or like if it were like, you know, like somebody huge, like if Amy Schumer did a set that wasn't released and then somebody privately bought it.

• 28:00Speaker 02

  I think, Marsha, I think you're just about ready to teach the.

• 28:03Marcia Belsky?

  Yay!

• 28:07Speaker 02

  But that that is absolutely correct. And I'll I'll give you some examples of some recent NFTs. Uh, Major League Baseball, imagine baseball cards.

• 28:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 28:17Speaker 02

  Right? They've done that, uh, made thousands of dollars off of that. Um, a year ago, December twenty twenty, a fifteen year old teenager, you know, uh, learned about this thing called NFT. Uh, he's an artist. So he worked to put his artwork, uh, uh, uh, created NFT and and sell it on an exchange. Uh, and as of December twenty twenty one, just last month, he's made over a million dollars.

• 28:49Marcia Belsky?

  Wow. See, that's where understanding this stuff would be so valuable.

• 28:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so what's

• 28:56Speaker 02

  And by the by the way, just just for fun, Melania Trump's eyes, her eyes, has also been, uh, created as an artwork that she sold as an NFT online last month.

• 29:10Marcia Belsky?

  Wow.

• 29:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so so can someone hack into the blockchain and change what everyone is thinking is permanent?

• 29:20Speaker 02

  Uh, it is highly unlikely that that will happen. I will never say never.

• 29:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You just did.

• 29:26Speaker 02

  But it's It's highly is not yet. That's that's why I said. But it's highly unlikely.

• 29:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can say I will hardly ever say never.

• 29:35Speaker 02

  I will hardly hardly ever ever say never.

• 29:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, good.

• 29:39Speaker 02

  Uh, but it's highly unlikely. It's a very difficult to do.

• 29:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, it's difficult now, but I mean, you know, with with quantum computing and I

• 29:50Speaker 02

  You can always change your algorithms to make it more difficult.

• 29:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, okay.

• 29:53Marcia Belsky?

  Hmm.

• 29:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 29:54Speaker 02

  So it's it's, you know, it's a catch twenty two.

• 29:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You have to explain catch twenty two to Marsha.

• 30:00Marcia Belsky?

  What's that? No, we read that one.

• 30:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I'll give you that one. I'll give you that. So

• 30:06Marcia Belsky?

  They taught us how to read, just nothing else.

• 30:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've got time for one more question before we take our second break. So what do you have, Marsha?

• 30:13Marcia Belsky?

  Okay, great. Yeah, this one was interesting to me. So this is from Richard L. Sanders. And it says, "Once all Bitcoin has been discovered, what will incentivize anybody to keep auditing the blockchain if they know doing so will not result in discovering any Bitcoin?"

• 30:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, I like that question. In fact, I like it so much, we're gonna take a break. We're gonna pick it up at the end of that break. See what I did there? So anyway, when we come back, more with Dr. Johnson and my co-host comedian, Marcia Belsky on StarTalk Cosmic Queries, all about Bitcoin, blockchain, and non-fungible tokens or tickets. Non-fungible toad on StarTalk.

• 31:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we're back. StarTalk, third and final segment. Cosmic Queries, all about blockchain and Bitcoin. We've got Sandra Johnson here, who's one of the world's experts on this subject and been at computing forever. Sandra, how do people find you? Are you on social media?

• 31:27Speaker 02

  I am on social media, yes.

• 31:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What do they call you there? No, sorry, what do you call yourself?

• 31:35Speaker 02

  Dr. Sandra KJ.

• 31:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dr. Sandra?

• 31:40Speaker 02

  I'm Dr. Sandra KJ.

• 31:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dr. Sandra KJ, I love it.

• 31:45Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 31:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And how about you, Marsha? How are we gonna find you?

• 31:47Marcia Belsky?

  I'm at Marcia Belsky on Twitter, M A R C I A. I also have a TikTok, that same name, and then Instagram, it's Marsha Sky, S K Y.

• 31:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Marsha Sky, very nice, very nice. And Marsha, you made headlines for this song about 100 tampons. That's just a weird topic to title a song and an album with, because you're also a musician. And, and I'm asking, I'm curious, because I knew it had something to do with space, but I don't see... I know that that's true, but I don't know why.

• 32:22Marcia Belsky?

  Yes.

• 32:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So could you please explain?

• 32:24Marcia Belsky?

  So the story is, um, the song is about the first American woman they ever sent to space named Sally Ride. They tried to give her a hundred tampons to take with her for a one week mission. And the story is, so she technically never officially took them with her, but um, they, they gave her a bag of a hundred tampons tied together by the strings is how, this is from her, an oral history, I believe. And they basically said, is a hundred the right number? And she said-

• 32:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But of course, how else would you connect tampons? That's the obvious way.

• 32:56Marcia Belsky?

  And see, the song is sort of about how even, even our rocket scientists might be a little blind when it comes to the lives of women. And um, just about how funny it is, cause NASA, you know, obviously is still pretty um, a male dominated industry. And um, although there's a lot more women um, than there was at the time even. And um, they also designed her a makeup kit to take with her to space, cause they figured that she would want.

• 33:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What? In case she met aliens, the aliens.

• 33:27Marcia Belsky?

  Exactly. You gotta look pretty for them. And she basically said, no, thank you. Um, and so, yeah, I wrote a song about how, you know, remember when NASA sent a woman to space for six days and they tried to give her a hundred tampons? Or in my song, I say they gave her a hundred tampons, cause she never officially took them. But in her oral history, they did, they did try and give them to her. And they said, is a hundred the right number? And she says, that would not be the right number. And they're like, right, cause it's too much, right? Or, um-

• 34:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But Sandra, speaking of space and, and alien encounters where, where apparently Sally doesn't need makeup, um, if, could blockchain be the basis of a currency, uh, interplanetary, intergalactic currency?

• 34:19Speaker 02

  Sure, just like it could be the, that blockchain, the actual crypto.

• 34:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm sorry.

• 34:25Speaker 02

  Cryptocurrencies. Yes, just like it could be a basis for a global currency. Yes.

• 34:32Marcia Belsky?

  Blockchain will see how the aliens study us.

• 34:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 34:36Speaker 02

  And by, and by the way, Marsha, actually you can make your song an NFT.

• 34:39Marcia Belsky?

  Yes, okay, I could, okay, great. I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna message you about how to do that. Let's, I'll give you fifty percent.

• 34:47Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 34:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Marsha, just before we hit the break, there was a great question. Why don't you just read that real quick again?

• 34:53Marcia Belsky?

  Absolutely. So, this is from Richard L. Sanders, and he said, "Once all Bitcoin has been discovered, what will incentivize anybody to keep auditing the blockchain if they know doing so will not result in discovering any Bitcoin?"

• 35:10Speaker 02

  So, you are assuming that the Bitcoin exists to be discovered.

• 35:17Speaker 02

  Bitcoin.

• 35:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think so. That's what it sounds like.

• 35:19Speaker 02

  Bitcoin is created, uh, to give, uh, to award a winner, which is a little different. It's not like it exists, uh, and then you, you know, you get your little picks like a miner and go find it.

• 35:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not like an Easter egg hunt.

• 35:37Speaker 02

  Right, right, right, right. So, so it's created when we have a new block, right? Now, there is a limit to the number of Bitcoins that will eventually be created, but it's not like it exists somewhere hiding and you'll go, you, you're going out to look for it, right? So, it's just, you keep at trying to get that next block on the blockchain, and when you get it, you get the Bitcoin.

• 36:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you said there are thousands of currencies such as Bitcoin?

• 36:08Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 36:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, isn't, and is there any limit? Could there be a billion currencies? And at that point, there is no currency. It's just, what does that even mean?

• 36:16Speaker 02

  That, that, that, well, just like, well, not thousands of currencies, but just like there are different currencies, what's called fiat currencies, that is what we know. Paper dollars, for example, is a fiat. There are different types of currencies now. There are also different types of, types of cryptocurrencies. Thousands, actually over 10,000 right now, right? So obviously, you know, it's gonna be difficult to have a global currency with greater than 10,000. Right? Well, that's one of the issues. Um, this is still bleeding edge, so I think moving forward in time, that number will grundle down. Uh, for the most part, even now, most cryptocurrencies are not used to buy things.

• 37:01Speaker 02

  People just invest in it, right? Yes, you use crypto to buy NFTs. That's probably the most popular way crypto itself is used to purchase things now to to buy NFTs.

• 37:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, that makes sense because it's the same species.

• 37:16Speaker 02

  Right, yeah, right, right, right. So, but moving forward in time, there will come a time where we will use crypto to just buy goods and services that we that we buy normally now using fiat.

• 37:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like I'm gonna buy an apple and then they tell me how much.

• 37:33Speaker 02

  And you can use a crypto to buy at some point in the future, not now.

• 37:36Marcia Belsky?

  It's funny because like, oh, sorry.

• 37:39Speaker 02

  I was just gonna say there are some businesses uh that allow you to uh purchase their goods and services uh using crypto. And there's a website that you can go to that lists the different businesses uh and then the type of cryptocurrency that they accept.

• 38:00Marcia Belsky?

  I can really relate emotionally to the people that were like living when dollars took over for golds. And they're like, I'm just gonna keep my gold, thank you, you know, like.

• 38:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, interesting transition, yeah. Here's this piece of paper.

• 38:14Marcia Belsky?

  Yeah, and it's like, why would I trust that? And now we're going from paper to digital and I think people are feeling a similar way.

• 38:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's spooky.

• 38:22Marcia Belsky?

  Yeah.

• 38:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're spooking me out here.

• 38:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, Marsha, give me some more and see how many we can fit into this segment.

• 38:27Marcia Belsky?

  Yes, so this question I think is interesting because there were a few questions about the environmental impact um of cryptocurrency, so I'm sure you're asked a lot. So this says, hello, Dr. Johnson and Dr. Tyson. How can someone invest in crypto ethically? It's something I've been interested in, but the environmental implications of the incredibly high energy use have kept me from getting involved, and that is from Chris Plots.

• 38:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why, why, why does this take energy at all?

• 39:00Marcia Belsky?

  Yeah, I'm curious about that.

• 39:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is it just turning on your computer? Is it just the, the computer?

• 39:04Speaker 02

  The computational power. It takes a lot of computational power. The computer crunching the numbers. It's a very, very computationally intensive, which means it takes a lot of electricity to actually get the double six. In other words, right? Uh, and, and, and, and for some, uh, blockchains, you know, it takes the amount of power, the equivalent of a small city. Okay. Just to do one transaction. So it is computationally intensive, particularly the Bitcoin and the second most, uh, popular, uh, blockchain Ethereum,

• 39:48Speaker 02

  uh, with its Ether cryptocurrency, very, very massive amounts of electricity. Right? So.

• 39:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Marsha, you gotta admit, that's a cooler name, Marsha. You gotta admit, right?

• 40:00Marcia Belsky?

  Yeah.

• 40:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's way, way better than Bitcoin.

• 40:02Marcia Belsky?

  I think so. We need a rebranding.

• 40:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Give me some Ethereum, yeah.

• 40:07Speaker 02

  Now, there are other, uh, blockchains that, uh, have a different type of methodology to why that who the next, who, who the winner is, for example, uh, that are not as computationally intensive. Even Ethereum, although they've been talking about this for quite a while, is moving towards another, uh, type of algorithm that is not as, uh, computationally intensive. Therefore, it will not take as much electricity. They're not there yet. They've been talking about it for a couple of years. So there are alternatives to Bitcoin and Ethereum that are not as, uh, intensive in terms of the amount of power it takes.

• 40:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if one should be a green cryptocurrency, you create a, a solar panel farm that just drives the computer that, that, I mean, it's, it's a solvable problem in some.

• 41:02Speaker 02

  Yes, absolutely.

• 41:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not all energy on Earth comes from coal.

• 41:05Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 41:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right?

• 41:06Speaker 02

  Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. That's, that's another option.

• 41:09Marcia Belsky?

  So it'd need to be sustainable. Hmm.

• 41:11Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 41:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. Okay, Marsha, keep it going.

• 41:13Marcia Belsky?

  Okay, so this, um, you were talking about how. Why this work really inspired you early on? So I think this is interesting. It says, this is from Lydia from the Netherlands. She says, dear everyone, so that includes me, I guess. As someone who has almost no knowledge about cryptocurrency and NFTs, it scares me that these things are growing and that paper money would be something for the poor people. Why does crypto have so much preference by so many people? And how can I prepare myself for the future? I relate to that. Yeah, I would like to know.

• 41:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Love that question. Very important. Once again, a sociological.

• 41:54Marcia Belsky?

  Those are the ones I'm drawn to. Exactly.

• 41:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, will the haves be crypto-rich and the pores be paper-poor? You know, what, what, what's, yeah, how's it, what's this gonna look like?

• 42:06Speaker 02

  So, so.

• 42:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whatever it is, we'll blame you.

• 42:08Speaker 02

  Yes, no, no, no, it's not me. I just know about it. I don't create it. I don't create it. I just, I just know about it. I live with it. Hey.

• 42:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 42:18Speaker 02

  But anyway, some cryptocurrencies are very expensive. You know, for example, Bitcoin last fall, November, got up to almost $69,000. It's gone down now to about $37,000 or so. So.

• 42:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Per unit, whatever.

• 42:34Speaker 02

  Per cryptocurrency, yes. So that's very expensive. But then there were others that cost much less. Okay? So in terms of cost, it really depends upon the actual cryptocurrency. You know, my view is that as we move forward and it becomes used more prevalently, the cost will go down. So to, that will, that will address the issue of, of cost.

• 43:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, so I, I have a philosophical question. What does it mean for cryptocurrency to cost anything?

• 43:07Speaker 02

  Because it is right now, unlike the dollar, like you can actually invest in cryptocurrencies.

• 43:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait, but I, I will buy cryptocurrency with my American dollars?

• 43:23Speaker 02

  You can do that, yes.

• 43:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or I can buy cryptocurrency with some other cryptocurrency?

• 43:29Speaker 02

  Um, you can do that as well. Yes.

• 43:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So if I buy with American dollars, the person who had the crypto now has my dollars and I have their cryptocurrency in exchange for it.

• 43:39Speaker 02

  That's correct.

• 43:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But in there might be a day where everybody only ever wants cryptocurrency to acquire other cryptocurrency and so that no one will want the dollar and that will drop down the value of the dollar, won't it?

• 43:53Speaker 02

  I'm not an economist.

• 43:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Okay. Because I, you know, if you go down the street, the homeless person, you hand him some coins or a few dollars, no, I want cryptocurrency.

• 44:05Marcia Belsky?

  Right.

• 44:06Speaker 02

  Well, you know, the, the mayor of New York, the new mayor, you know, said he wants to be paid in crypto.

• 44:11Marcia Belsky?

  People are kind of roasting him alive for it, to be honest.

• 44:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, right.

• 44:16Marcia Belsky?

  Because they, because also, because when the Bitcoin is down, people were like, well, now this is like what Eric Adams is paycheck's actually going to be this percent less than it would have been. And I think people are just so, it's, it has such a like reputation as being for, in my mind, like white tech bros, that I don't think people understand that there's like different people and like, like incentives working on this. Because I think a lot of the fear is like, these are just the top 1% making a new set of money for themselves. But hearing you talk, it seems like something so much different than that.

• 44:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, right, right now, because it's still new, uh, most of the people who buy crypto, Bitcoin, E-Phil and others, they use it as an investment speculators.

• 45:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 45:06Speaker 02

  They are speculating.

• 45:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's just the Wild West.

• 45:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it might settle somewhere.

• 45:10Speaker 02

  Four years ago, I mean, even though we thought it was high then, it was like 20,000, right?

• 45:15Marcia Belsky?

  Right.

• 45:16Speaker 02

  So now it's gotten up to almost 70,000. So, you know, it's, it's speculation.

• 45:20Marcia Belsky?

  Yeah, that makes sense. And you have to have a certain bravery to like, or a certain comfort level to, to do that.

• 45:28Speaker 02

  Right.

• 45:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, I don't know if we have time for another question, but I do, since I'm host, I can make time for my own question. So Sandra, so I, you know, I've been in computing for a while, you know, I, you know, since high school at least, and, and I'm old. So, but I've, so I've seen the power of computing grow. I've seen what, and particularly in astrophysics, there are categories of problems that are intractable at any given moment.

• 45:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With what the computing power is at that moment. And so we say, well, we need this extra power. And then so new problems get solved as computers get faster and more efficient.

• 46:08Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 46:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Algorithms get more clever.

• 46:10Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 46:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So why lock anything into? Why lock an economy into something that's fundamentally seems to me about the power of computing at that moment? Because if in the future, computers are billion times more powerful. What you're telling me is what takes the whole power of a city. I mean, look at the computers from 1958. There were entire rooms to just to do four function math. So, so, so why lock into something that seems to me to something on a, is a moving target? For the power that computers will bring to that problem.

• 46:48Speaker 02

  Okay, so let's go back to the whole, how much power it takes to, to complete a transaction. You know, much of that is because you have miners, remember them all over the world. So as we move forward in time, more and more miners, miners are competing. It's taking significantly more computing power because of the bottleneck, right? So as you increase the power of the computer, that reduces the power to actually do the mining.

• 47:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 47:20Speaker 02

  So increasing the computational power of the computer helps that issue.

• 47:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, I, I get that, but then now I have a computer that just finds every single Bitcoin there is, and I can do it this afternoon. And then I'm the richest person in the world.

• 47:35Speaker 02

  I don't think we'll get to the point where, you know, it's, um, um, the computer becomes more computational, computationally intensive, more miners are added. And, you know, it's, it's sort of a loop, keeps going, right? More miners, more power needed. You need more miners, more power needed, et cetera.

• 47:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so Marsha, the comedy club owner who offers you Bitcoin, are you gonna say, no, I want Ethereum?

• 48:02Marcia Belsky?

  I would, the problem is like, I would say no, just because I still, it's, it's tough though, because it's like, I take cash and stuff, even though I probably would still need to hire an accountant, but it's like, yeah, I don't feel that I'm on the, the bleeding edge enough to, to be able to do it. But then it's, you know, I think it's like anything too. It's like, I've heard stories of, well, there was this one guy I really trusted. He got me into Bitcoin. It turned out to be like a bad investment. And then I've heard stories of the exact opposite. So I think that's what keeps people afraid is the inconsistency of the, um, what's it called? The reward. But, so it's like, for me, I still want my cash

• 48:46Marcia Belsky?

  because I'm not at the point in my life where I can risk my paycheck being $2,000 less than it was supposed to. But I can understand why somebody who is in the financial position to do that, would do that because it could potentially have a great, bigger future payoff, not just for them, for their kids to, I think it's like diversifying your portfolio in a way. It would make sense to have stocks, have crypto, and also have cash, but you need to be at a certain level to do that.

• 49:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Marsha, you have to confess though, you've come a long way, not you, you, but you as, as representative person in this conversation, you've come a long way from the days when you might've just accepted a chicken for payment, right?

• 49:28Marcia Belsky?

  Yes. Yeah, exactly. We've, that's, it's like, it feels so scary to me, but I'm seeing it in my head like that, where it's, I bet it's the same that people felt when we went from, you know, cowry shells to gold, from gold to whatever. But not for me, not yet. But I am, but I, I'm interested by it.

• 49:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. Well, Sandra, we're gonna have to do, we, this is, this topic is ever, ever growing. And Yes, yes. Uh, we might have to do this again, do a part two, uh, and you have to give us buying tips.

• 50:02Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 50:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That'll be the most popular StarTalk episode ever. All right. I made a million dollars. All right, do we?

• 50:10Speaker 02

  You have the richest fanbase.

• 50:13Speaker 02

  I must say, I'm not a professional at this, so, you know, you'll buy your own risk.

• 50:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, there you go.

• 50:18Speaker 02

  But there is one thing I do want to point out, though, Marcia and Neil, you know, kind of alluded to the volatility of cryptos. But there are some, some tokens, if you will, cryptocurrencies that are stable. They're called stable coins. And these are associated with a physical entity. For example, there's a USD coin. It's a crypto, but it's backed by the US dollar, right? Dollar for dollar. The same thing with gold or diamonds. So there are stable cryptocurrencies that you can actually hold.

• 51:02Speaker 02

  And many people, they have these stable coins and then they they use them to buy the volatile cryptos and they go back and forth, right?

• 51:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know what this sounds like to me, Sandra? When Apple first came out with their Macintosh and they had the windowing system. If you had a file and you wanted to save it together with other files, you put them in this icon on your screen that looked like a folder.

• 51:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not an actual folder. It's a virtual folder. And then you throw something away, there's a little trash can. So they tried to emulate your office environment into the space that you were operating on for comfort levels.

• 51:44Speaker 02

  Right.

• 51:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I guess. And I make special note that in recent Macintosh updates of their system, their icon for their mail, which used to be a stamp. Is now just an envelope. Both of those are still kind of archaic, but especially a stamp. Because the generation Q or what's the latest Z, whatever. They've never licked a stamp in their life.

• 52:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So like, what is that? So anyway, we got to call it quits there. Great to have you both on StarTalk, both for their first time. New, new, newbies. Very, very excellent. I love seeing some new, new blood flowing through the rivers of scientific enlightenment.

• 52:31Marcia Belsky?

  Okay, gotta go now.

• 52:34Marcia Belsky?

  Thank you so much for having me. This was so fun and it was such, it was so great to hear you talk, Dr. Johnson. Thank you.

• 52:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent.

• 52:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's been a pleasure, Marsha. And call me about your song.

• 52:44Marcia Belsky?

  All right. Oh, I will.

• 52:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A hundred tampons. Don't miss it.

• 52:47Marcia Belsky?

  A hundred tampons, NFT. Be on the lookout.

• 52:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a YouTube of her singing it. So this has been StarTalk, Cosmic Queries, all about cryptocurrency with Dr. Sandra Johnson and my new co-host, Marcia Belsky, who will never have you forget the meaning of a hundred tampons in space. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astro physicist. Keep looking up.