Bitcoin equals abundance and can uplift every man, woman, and child in the world, according to serial entrepreneur, technologist, New York Times best-selling author, and TED Speaker Peter Diamandis in an exclusive interview with Bitcoin Magazine.
“Bitcoin is digitized currency and energy, and it is going to dematerialize a lot of institutions and demonetize and democratize access to this,” Diamandis said. “We’re gonna have regulatory challenges and institutional challenges for some time to come, but there’s a tipping point, at which point it’s irreversible.”
Diamandis explained that historically, exponential breakthroughs in different areas of society have shared a set of characteristics, namely their ability to be deceptive, disruptive, and digitized at first, which enables them to then demonetize, dematerialize, and democratize old technology in favor of new developments.
“Capital is energy, bitcoin is energy, it’s all energy,” he added. “It’s about where you put that energy to work, and a lot of the work I do is about creating a better world. I fundamentally believe that the world’s biggest problems are the world’s biggest business opportunities.”
Diamandis said he had always been curious about space and space travels, and despite going to Harvard Medical School after graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with degrees in molecular genetics and aeronautics, he had the dream of becoming an astronaut.
However, while in Medical School, Diamandis learned through his network at the time that astronauts don’t travel to space as much as he had thought. Only half the astronauts get to ever travel to space, and among those who do, they only get to do a space flight about two times in their career on average, a discovery that led Diamandis to explore space through the private sector.
Diamandis founded Zero Gravity Corporation (Zero-G) to give people the opportunity to experience zero gravity for about 25 seconds in a specially modified Boeing 727 aircraft. In 2007, Diamandis and Zero-Geven flew renowned physicist and the world’s expert in gravity Stephen Hawking to experience firsthand the laws of physics that he spent his life studying.
Diamandis also founded the XPRIZE Foundation, which initially sought to incentivize private space exploration by putting out a $10 million prize for the construction of a ship with private capital that could transport three adults up to one hundred kilometers of altitude, land, and be able to repeat the flight with the same ship within two weeks. In 2004, SpaceShipOne won the XPRIZE, and the technology used in the spaceship was later licensed by Richard Branson to create Virgin Galactic.
Today, XPRIZE has launched over $300 million in global competitions to address humanity’s greatest challenges: from teaming up with Elon Musk to launch a $100 million prize to combat climate change through gigaton carbon removal, to longevity and creating a $100 million prize focused on age reversal.
“There are two, maybe three natural ties to Bitcoin,” Diamandis said, referring to his current search for developments in health and science that could extend humans’ lifespan. “What store of value are you using to maintain your wealth over a century’s timeframe?”
Diamandis first heard about Bitcoin between 2010 and 2011, but he wouldn’t take a deep dive into the digital currency until 2014. Shortly after, he wrote a blog post saying he would sell all of his gold to buy bitcoin.
“I’m a fan of the way Michael Saylor puts it, and I do believe that Bitcoin equals abundance in many ways,” Diamandis said. “As we’re uplifting every man, woman and child, unless they have a financial system that is available and accessible to them independent of what regime is in power, they can’t build wealth or hope for a better future.”
In Diamandis’ opinion, Bitcoin has a “first in line opportunity” to become the dominant currency in space as society moves off planet Earth to conquer other planets.
“I think we’re going to start to see a large number of populations and individuals begin to adopt [bitcoin] and we’ll see those pioneers like Michael Saylor and Jack Dorsey who are going to be on the front lines,” Diamandis said.
“The old guard will fall in line or be disrupted,” he added.