- Just a decade ago, hardlyanyone had heard of Bitcoin

outside of some technology circles.

Today it's gained widespreadbuzz and acceptance

from some big businessesand major investors.

Though Bitcoin has a logo,

it's actually a purelyonline digital currency

using computer code,

acting as real money forpeople to make their purchases.

It was born after the crash of 2008.

Although there has beendigital currencies before

none of them ever really gained traction,

but over the years Bitcoingradually caught on.

In 2010 it was worth less than a penny,

but in early April itpeaked at nearly $65,000

before falling back.

The explosion in Bitcoin'sprice since last fall

has come as major financialinstitutions are offering it

to clients.

And electric vehicle builder, Tesla,

made a splash in February

buying $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin.

Not only that,

- They intend to startaccepting Bitcoin for payment

when they sell Tesla cars in the future.

- [Dale Hurd] Richard Lyons

of the Berkeley Schoolof Business also said,

that's the wave of the future.

- The trend is inexorable.

I think that not just with Bitcoin

but other cryptocurrencies,

that those will become atransactable currencies

increasingly over the next five years.

It's not going to happen overnight.

- But even as cryptocurrenciesgain acceptance,

governments like China, theEuropean Union, the US and more

are moving toward digitalcurrencies as well,

possibly leading tocompetition for Bitcoin.

Regardless of the futureof Bitcoin itself,

it's clear that it's opened the door

for a revolution in digital finance.

A revolution that islikely to change the world.

Dale Hurd CBN news.

- I'm sure a lot of peoplewish they got in early.

For more on the story,let's go back to Pat.

- If you're as baffledas I am about Bitcoin

and I understand if you lose your code

you might be wiped out.

You wouldn't have any money left

and it's not there in the bank.

You've got to have yourcode in order to get it.

But CBN news' financialeditor Drew Parkhill,

Drew, what in the world, whatis going on with Bitcoin?

And why does it has the potential

to change our financial world?

- Pat, it really does have the potential

to change our financial world.

It's not going to happen overnight

as the professor from UC Berkeley said,

it's going to take time,

but more and more people are using Bitcoin

as basically an alternative money.

And it's also, and we don'thave time to go into all this,

but it has also opened up allkinds of new types of buying

and selling and digitalartwork and so forth.

It goes for a lot ofmoney, is just amazing.

This has opened up a whole new world.

It's gradually filtering downto quote unquote main street,

so to speak.

Most people are interested in it

because it's had sucha huge run-up in price

as Dale showed in his story.

The reason it's had such a huge run up

is people recognize this isan idea whose time has come.

It's got long-term implications.

I'll just point out Pat, back in 1995,

you and I demonstrated theinternet here on the "700 Club"

for one of the very firstdemonstrations ever.

At the time you asked me

how's this going to affect television?

I said, it will replace television.

Now at the time, I didn't know

that something calledcutting the cord was coming,

but it did.

But this week at the Oscars,

Netflix, which didn't exist

and couldn't have existedbefore the internet,

won seven Oscars.

I think Facebook won an Oscar.

Well, they did win anOscar for something rather.

And so we couldn't have foreseen that.

We can't foresee whatBitcoin's going to lead to

but we know this will change everything.

No question about it.

- All right, they certainly mine it.

It's all done with computers.

Tell me how the stuff works.

- Well, miners get paid ina certain amount of Bitcoin

as they bring moreBitcoins into existence.

The majority of them havealready been brought in.

But the important thing is that

this is a purely online currency

and the idea is for privacy

so that people won't know what's going on

that they can do justyou to me transactions,

peer to peer and so forth.

The important thing, andthis is very important,

is that governments arelooking to get into the act.

As Dale pointed out in his story.

And I want to show you a soundbite.

Now this is from, this isnot from just some analysts.

This is not from some Wall Street type.

This is from Mark Carney,who was at the time,

the governor of the Bank of England.

The Bank of England wasa built or not built,

but brought into being in 1694.

It's basically the model forcentral banks around the world.

Like the federal reserve,

it's their version of the federal reserve.

He said this in 2019,

talking about analternative to the dollar.

This was at Jackson Hole,Wyoming in August of 2019.

He said this in an interviewon CNBC, let's take a look.

- You don't just jump tosomething new overnight

and what we want in a multipolar world,

I think we'd agree thatwe've got European engine,

we've got the Chinese engine,

we've got the US engine of this economy.

Multipolar world,

you need a multipolar currency.

The question is how do you get there.

And I laid out some ideasof how you would get there.

- So this is the governorof the Bank of England, Pat,

laying out ideas for analternative to the dollar.

We've often talked aboutwhat's going to happen

to the dollar, or have problems with it.

This is a possibility.

Again, not overnight

but this has beendiscussed for a while now,

so this has seriousimplications for the US dollar

as well as the rest of the world.

- We are the reserve currency of the world

and everybody plays off the dollar.

- Right.

- So the dollar is the means of exchange,

the Chinese are tryingto introduce the renminbi

and it's not really taking hold

because there aren'tenough people that want it.

Now, these things, tellme how you get a Bitcoin.

You mine it in computers?

How do you get one of them?

- It's getting easier andeasier and easier to do that.

It used to be really pretty difficult,

like you were talking about earlier,

you had to get a wallet

and you had to make sure you had the code.

And there's one fellow

who had enormous amounts of money on it

because he made so much,

but he lost the code andhe couldn't figure it out.

But it's getting easierand easier to do that.

The major financial institutions,

JP Morgan Chase is now moving

to open up a Bitcoin managedaccount for wealthier clients

and so forth.

You are going to be ableto do it through Venmo

I mean like you can use a MasterCard

and pay it through withBitcoin and so forth.

So there are veryimportant things about this

but the most importantlong-term implication,

there are a couple of them.

Number one, if you dohave national currencies

that are digital, like a digital dollar,

the government could eventuallybe able to track everything,

that raises huge privacy implications.

The other thing, and thisis extremely important,

is if and when, and let's faceit, it's going to be when,

when you have a globalelectronic digital system

that's all electronic,

that means all buying andselling is done that way,

you can be shut out ofthat system at some point.

In other word you wouldnot be able to buy or sell

without permission.

I think we've read that somewhere, Pat.

- Yeah, something like that

in the book of Revelation last time.

You really think that couldusher in actually a takeover

of the world currency ifeverybody's in Bitcoin

and it can be withdrawnby the governments.

And that means all the moneyyou've got could be taken

unless you had the mark of the beast,

is that what you're saying?

- It probably won't be Bitcoin.

What Bitcoin did was open the door

for global digital currencies plural

that it will be interchangeable.

There may be one eventually,

again we've just started down the road.

We don't know how it's going to get there.

We don't know how long it's going to take,

it'll probably take decades.

It's not next week

but we've opened the doornow for the first time.

- Thanks, Drew.

Amazing stuff.