Carnegie Built Libraries - Here’s What Today’s Billionaires Are Doing

Would you do the same if you could?

Ric Edelman: It's Friday, September 8th. Coming up on today's show, The New Age of Aging with my special guest, Ken Dychtwald. You're not going to want to miss this one.

You are a billionaire. That means you have far more money than you could ever spend, far more than you could ever give to your children. Even after you make them billionaires, you're still a billionaire. What are you going to do with your money? If you're like most billionaires, you're going to give it away. Bill Gates is a good illustration. So is Melinda French Gates. They have donated billions of dollars to everything from a cure for malaria to clean water.

There's nothing new about this good behavior of the very richest. Andrew Carnegie built 1600 libraries throughout the United States a century ago. He bought the island of Saint John in the Caribbean and gave most of it to the US government as a national park.

So what would you do with your billions of dollars? I'm seeing a trend among some of today's billionaires. They're spending massive amounts of money to cure aging. They want to find a way for all of us to live forever. Robert Nelson has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in a company called Altos Labs. That's a biotech company trying to rejuvenate cells and eliminate disease. But he's not just doing this philanthropically. He's doing this out of motivated self-interest. He's trying hard to stay alive. According to one press story, he takes almost 12 drugs a day, including rapamycin, metformin, taurine and nicotinamide mononucleotide. I never even heard of that. All of these drugs are supposed to prevent illness and extend longevity. He also gets an MRI twice a year. He sees a dermatologist every three months. 

He has annual blood tests to detect cancer and he says he works out in an electric suit that emits low frequency impulses to build muscle and improve his health. His wife says he has a big fear of death, and he's not the only one.

Altos, the company he's invested hundreds of millions of dollars into, has gotten a total of $3 billion in investments. It's the best funded biotech startup ever. We're all rooting for him. But the company's research is decades away from success. Some of their work has been successful in mice, but there are no human trials yet.

Meantime, when you have $3 billion in funding, you get to spend a lot of money. Altos is hiring 500 scientists from academic institutions all around the globe, including several Nobel Prize winners. If all this works, not only will we all benefit by living forever, the company will be worth trillions of dollars.

Robert Nelson says he's not in it for the money. After all, being a trillionaire will just force him to figure out how to give it all away. And Robert Nelson isn't the only investor who's chasing immortality and vast riches. There's lots of research going on, not just in academia, but among lots of biotech companies. Altos is the best funded, but it's not the only one. Others include Retro Biosciences, Calico Life Sciences, Telomere Therapeutics, Geron, Tellus Biotech.

If you'd like to get in on this in the form of an investment perspective, I've got an idea for you. Genomics. Genomics is the new field that explores the structure, function, evolution and interactions of our DNA. There are potential applications for human health, conservation, agriculture and biotechnology. 

In medicine, genomics can help diagnose, treat and prevent diseases by analyzing the genetic variations and interactions that affect health outcomes. For example, genomics can help identify new pathogens or new sources of antibiotics. Genomics can also help design personalized medicine so that treatment is based on your genomic profile. In biotechnology, genomics can help create artificial cells that mimic natural ones or design, say, bacteria that eats plastic waste.

Genomics can also produce new drugs, fuels, materials and sensors, all using biological systems. In ecology and conservation, genomics can help evaluate the genetic diversity and health of a population or a species and identify the factors that affect their survival. For example, genomics can help map the migration patterns of endangered animals or detect the invasive species in a local environment. In social sciences, genomics can help us understand the origins and evolution of humans. We can use it to trace the ancestry and migration of populations or reveal the relationships between different cultures and languages.

I invest in the Global X Genomics and Biotechnology ETF. The symbol is genome GNOM. It tracks the Selective Genomics Index and invests in companies in the field of genomic science. These include gene editing, genomic sequencing, genetic medicine and therapies, computational genomics and biotechnology. I'm invested in this ETF because I'm convinced that personalized medicine is the future of medicine. And this fund invests in many of the innovative companies that are going to make it happen. Learn more about the Global X Genomics and Biotech ETF, symbol GNOM by going to Global X ETFs.com. If you're an investor, talk to your financial advisor about it.

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Exclusive Interview:

My conversation with aging expert Dr. Ken Dychtwald on the 4 key aging challenges now facing our society

Ric Edelman: I'm happy to bring back to the program here on the truth about your future. My good friend Ken Dychtwald. You've seen Ken several times here on the show, and rightfully so. Ken is the CEO, founder of Age Wave, widely regarded as the world's most renowned expert in the field of gerontology and the issues of aging. And Ken, you've, what, 18 books now and counting? 

Ken Dychtwald: 19. But who's counting? 

Ric Edelman: Yeah, exactly. I can't keep up with how many there actually are. And you produce more studies on this subject than anybody else, and you have a brand new one out that I think is a little bit different and really says something that's going to hit home with a lot of folks. So tell us about the new study you've just released. 

Ken Dychtwald: Yeah, the name of the study is The New Age of Aging. And let me say that it's the whole report is free. It's for everyone to read and use. And it's we just posted it on our company's website and that's age wave.com and. 

Ric Edelman: We've got the link to that in the show notes. So just click the button and you'll take you right to age wave so you can get this study, perfect. 

Ken Dychtwald: What we are trying to figure out is how is aging changing? You know, folks are trying to figure out how is technology changing, how is crypto changing, how is housing changing, but how are our lives changing? So we ask some really edgy, pointed questions and the responses we got back were kind of amazing. 

Ric Edelman: Well, actually, Ken, you have complained for decades that nobody paid attention to aging, particularly in corporate America and in marketing, that everybody keeps marketing to 20 and 30 year olds and nobody's paying attention to the 60 and 70 year olds. And so you're now saying that maybe this is finally shifting a little bit, our attitudes overall. 

Ken Dychtwald: We're at the tipping point. The time has come. And by the way, you know, for a good reason. People over 50 are about a third of the population, but they control 70% of all the wealth and in all sorts of categories, from health care to travel to home renovation to gifts for the grandkids, they are the big buyers. The other problem is, is that most young people think of older people the way they used to be, you know, kind of grandma's version of aging. And what sparked me to want to do this study was I was looking around, You know, I got involved in this subject 49 years ago, which is sort of almost hard to believe to begin with. But I've been looking around this last year and it's like, well, wait a minute, there's Harrison Ford at 81, Indiana Jones. We went to see Top Gun. There's Tom Cruise. He was 59 when he did that movie.

And I looked it up when Wilford Brimley filmed Cocoon. He was 50 years old. He was a little old man at 50. And there's Martha Stewart on the cover of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit magazine. And Helen Mirren is kind of eating it up, leading lady all over the place. Springsteen sold out his world tour in 15 minutes. He's 73. Smokey Robinson just dropped the new album at 83. So what's happening is that the entire version of aging that marketers and investors have gotten accustomed to is being left behind. And there's a whole new version coming.

For example, we asked people over 65, All right, so when was the best time in your life? 71% say the best time in my life is right now or what's in front of me. It's like, what? Wow. We also found that we asked people all this talk about the fountain of youth and we asked people what's more important being youthful or useful, you know, having purpose. 83% said purpose and being useful was more important than just trying to be a young person. And the studies just filled every single page with different versions of that. We asked people what was old in your grandparents time and they said, By the time you hit 60, you were pretty well kind of over the hill. Sure. Now, folks said. 80 or more is becoming one old age begins. And that's probably going to be pushed back in the years to come because of all sorts of breakthroughs like you've been covering on your program.

Ric Edelman: So it's really fascinating that you say that. I mean, yeah, I remember back in the day you retired at 62. You were dead at 65. That was old and it was infused in popular culture. You know, never trust anybody over 30 The Who saying, “I hope I die before I get old”. So yeah, if you were 20 years old, you looked at somebody in their 40s and saying, Wow, they're old. And that is radically changing. Now, people are healthier today in their 60s. I know I am. I'm healthier now in my 60s than I was in my 40s because I pay more attention to exercise and diet and sleep than I ever did. And I compare my health in  my 60s to my grandfather's health when he was in his 60s. What a radical difference. 

Ken Dychtwald: Yeah. And in this New Age of Aging study, all sorts of things popped up like that. We asked people who they felt important influencers were. And it wasn't just, who's looking good in a bathing suit and who's kind of fun. And young people are great, they're beautiful, they're exciting. I have nothing positive to say about young people, but folks were saying that they wanted some maturity. Would you, if you had the chance, sit down with Warren Buffett and get his point of view? Yeah, I would. Well, he's 92, you know, and Deepak Chopra is 76. And nobody's going to tell Oprah that she's too old to have a point of view. And she's 69.

And, you know, what we're seeing is, is that the whole center of gravity is moving. And let me give you the reasons. They're pretty simple. I think your listeners will appreciate these. You do such smart things with your information. There's three major changes that are happening at the same time that are causing this transformation, this new age of aging.

Number one, we're living longer and longer and longer. And now that one went backwards a little bit during Covid, but throughout 99% of human history Ric, the average life expectancy was less than 18 years. Wow. And I know that sounds nutty. There were 50 and 60 year olds here and there, but most people died in the early years of life. Life was short. We're living longer and longer and longer and with greater longevity in our future, we're going to see more of that. The other side of the seesaw, if you can think of it that way, is that all the developed nations of the world are having fewer and fewer kids, right? 

Ric Edelman: Yeah, We're not even generating enough babies to maintain the population in so many countries. 

Ken Dychtwald: Yeah, there's not one country in Europe right now that's having enough kids to grow. Older people are also buying more Mercedes. They're also spending money on the fancy travel vacations. They're also renovating their homes in greater percentage than any other age group. They're buying more vitamins. You know, they're looking after their loved ones. And more and more, we're seeing that older people want to be judged not just for how they look or how much money they have, but for their smarts. In one part of our study we looked at the age of Nobel Prize winners, and it's been going up every single year. Even the brainiacs are getting older now. I know we love to think of the brainiacs as being these young, you know, technology studs. But the truth is that more and more, older and older people are stepping forward and are looking around and saying, you know, I'm not ready to be done. I don't want to grow old like my grandma and my grandpa. I want to step into myself. I want to reinvent myself, maybe go back to school, maybe start an entrepreneurial activity, maybe try some new things, maybe listen to Ric Edelman and get some new investing ideas.

We're seeing a new model, and that's the third trend. So one is longevity. The other is declining fertility. The third is that we got this boomer generation, and whether you like them or not, there's a lot of them. And over the next couple of decades, the number of people over 65 is going to grow by 53%. And you can bet on that. That's the most predictable market force in the world right now. And not only that, the Boomers in the next 20 years, Ric hold on for this one, they're going to have 3.9 trillion hours of free time. So if you're in the gaming business or you're in the education business or you're in the travel business and you're not paying attention to this new bunch - this new population of people who are still feeling hopeful and positive - you're missing out on the future. 

Ric Edelman: Now, this raises an interesting conundrum, doesn't it? If you have so many people, 53% increase in those 65 plus who have trillions of hours available and I'll also add trillions of dollars at their disposal, Paris isn't getting bigger. So as we have this new huge wave of people able to afford and having the time available to go to Paris, is this putting stress on some of our social systems? What are the challenges as a society we're going to face as a result of this new age of aging that you're describing? 

Ken Dychtwald: Yeah, I think there's four challenges, so there's a lot of sunniness here. So let me emphasize that. But I think there are four challenges. And by the way, I wish that whoever is running these presidential debates would ask these questions first, because they're not trivial, they're serious, and they're straight up the middle of our lives.

Number one, for the last decade, we've got 70 million retirees and they've averaged 47 hours of television watching a week. So the primary thing that today's older adults are doing is not much of anything other than sitting in the couch watching TV. We've got to create in our culture almost like back in the day when they created the Peace Corps. We need an elder corps. We need to get more older people involved in helping communities and making sense of things and helping young families and helping with the kids. I mean, that's number one. What's the purpose of long life? You know, a lot of people talk about how to live longer, but I'd ask the question, what for? What could we be?

Second, and this one is serious, and I'd like to hear every presidential candidate answer this one We do not do very well when it comes to aging with health. We spend more money than any country in the world on health care. Get ready for this. Yet there are 39 countries in the world who live longer than we do. And wait, hold on. It gets worse. We are 68th with regard to Healthspan. So we've got our lifespan. That's the number of years we live. But then there's the Healthspan, which is how many of those years are we living healthy with vitality and energy and free of disease? And we do terribly. And it's incredibly expensive. People become burdens on their family. They spend down their wealth. We've got a health care system that is not doing the job.

The third challenge, I think, so we still got a lot of ageism. You hinted at it. Young people think, oh, thinking about older people, they're falling down and they can't get up or they got to wear diapers or they're you know, they're not as sharp as they used to be.

Ric Edelman: They have out of date old fashioned ideas. 

Ken Dychtwald: Yeah. And they're old fashioned ideas. It's time to turn the corner on that. It's time to bring a new chapter in. We've got older people who are smarter. They've got more wisdom, more resilience. And by the way, in our study, we saw that the highest levels of freedom and happiness were not among the young but were among older people. So yesterday's version of older people are being replaced by tomorrow's.

And the fourth issue and I would say one that you know more about than anybody I know, which is how are people going to fund their longer lives? In our study, what we saw was that people are expecting 60% of people think, I'm going to live longer and I want to stay in the game. I'm going to work longer, but I may not want to work full-time and I may want to try something new, but maybe five, six, seven, eight more years. And by the way, that makes sense if we're going to be living longer and longer and longer and we're going to need money and we can't expect all the young people to support all of these programs, this growing number of older people. We're going to need to put on our thinking caps and figure out ways to help people start planning financially much younger and have the money to go the distance. 

Ric Edelman: So related to all of that, how are the definitions changing? How do we define aging? How do we define retirement? Are these changing? 

Ken Dychtwald: Yeah, I'll give you two ways. And again, in the New Age of Aging study, which can be found, as you mentioned on the Age Wave website, two questions surfaced, some really interesting answers. First of all, we asked people what word do you prefer, aging or longevity? And it was like 80% came back on longevity. Don't like the word aging. Nobody wants to be called a senior anymore. That was from another era. You know, my grandma was a senior, not me. I'm going to be an older adult. I'm going to be a modern elder. I'm going to be a wise older person. I'm going to be empowered. And the other thing was, we asked people I mentioned this earlier, but we asked them, at what age did old age come on for your grandparents? And they said, 60s. And now they say, not until the 80s and it could be the 90s in the years to come. 

Ric Edelman: Ken, how could I possibly be considering myself old at 65 if I have a mother in law who's 87?

Ken Dychtwald: You're exactly right. And get a load of this. We now have five generations at the workplace and we have six generations of Americans alive. So when I hear people talking about, well, we got the young, we got the old, I feel like, come on, that's very 1950s. We got six generations. Talk about diversity. You know, we got 15 year olds, 35 year olds, 55 year olds. We got 95 year olds.

Ric Edelman: Well, that’s fascinating. 

Ken Dychtwald: And each one wants to live the good life. 

Ric Edelman: So you're right. We used to refer to people as the young, the old and the middle aged three categories. Now we've got six, but I don't think we have three new terms. 

Ken Dychtwald: Well, I do, but they haven't. You know, they're about to start catching on. I think middle age is going to be called middle essence because middle aged used to be the mid-age crisis. You know, people were on their way downhill. And I think more people are reinventing themselves in their middle years. I think that old age is going to be moved back and we're going to have a period that we're going to call late adulthood that'll go on till about, oh, I don't know, maybe from about 60 to about 80. And then I think there'll be elderhood, which will be 80 plus. So add that to the younger stages of life and I think we're going to see a more profound portrait of who we are going to be in this new, longer lived future. We are truly entering in a new age of aging. And you and I Ric have had discussions about this now for over a decade. But the time has come and all one has to do is go to the movies or turn on your TV and you're going to see 70 and 80 year old actors and actresses stealing the scenes. And it's because they've decided my time is now. 

Ric Edelman: So in addition to the aging issue and the difference in decades of how long people have been alive, in your study on the new aging of aging, did you find differences, Ken, as well, regarding gender or race or other demographics?

Ken Dychtwald: It's a really excellent question. And most people may not stop to think about this, although when you think about your family, you'll say, Yeah, we've seen that women are biologically superior and I've met your wife. She is clearly biologically and psychologically superior to you. And then there's that women live 5 to 6 years longer than men. That's a lot of years. And so women need to plan financially differently than men. They need to plan for a longer life. Women are also more fluid. They define themselves. I'm a mom. I'm a friend. I'm a worker. I'm a daughter. I'm a caregiver. Men are much more rigid, so men have a harder time making the transition into if they're going to retire because they lose their sense of identity.

Another variable is that women are coming to realize that they don't necessarily need to be in a heterosexual partnership in order to live a good life. And partly it's because if women are outliving men, more and more of them are going to be solos, they're going to be alone. And so we hear more and more women talking about, Hey, why don't 3 or 4 of us kind of like the Golden Girls back from the 1980s, right? Why don't we get a house together? You know, why don't we take some time and travel together? Why don't we look after each other? Why don't we have an investment group like a book club, so we can be helpful to each other? And I think you're also going to see that women in power are going to be on the ascent in the years to come. So a lot of 50 and 60 and 70 year old women who are kind of saying, hey, don't push me to the sidelines. I got a lot to say. I've learned a lot. I've raised kids. I've looked after loved ones. I know a little bit about money. I'd like to know more. But I’ve got a voice and that voice is getting stronger. 

Ric Edelman: Did any of that surprise you? 

Ken Dychtwald: Well, I've been on this beat now for 49 years, so I've seen things coming. But it was one thing like when I wrote Age Wave in 1989, it was my eighth book. It got a lot of attention. I got on magazine covers and stuff. There were speculations. You know, I was reading tea leaves, I was reading demographic projections, and now it's happening. When we look at this New Age of Aging study, this is not some futurist responding. We had a 2000 representative sample from all the generations. And what we see is that people are getting it now. People are thinking differently about their own lives. They're dreaming differently about the future. And if you're even 35, instead of thinking, Oh my goodness, my life is, the good years are over. Uh, if you look at the way people who are older are reflecting on how they're feeling, you might say, I'm looking forward to the later years. And if you stumble and fall or something hits you hard in your life, you can come back. Resilience can play a part.

I'd say one other thing that we don't give enough attention to wisdom. We give a lot of attention to somebody who knows a lot of things, somebody who might have gone to a good college, somebody who might have made a lot of money. But wisdom is a very important variable. And I'm not saying that everybody who grows older is wise, but there are buds of wisdom that start to pop up.

I got in this field when I was 24 and I thought I was a pretty clever guy. I'm 73 now and I've been there when both of my parents, each of them passed away. I've dealt with my kids leaving home and trying to make it on their own and married for 40 years. I've had successes and failures and then more successes. And so I'm a wiser guy. I'm a wiser man than I was decades ago. And I think we're going to see as we see more people living longer, you're going to see some more wisdom being respected and being a part of the puzzle. 

Ric Edelman: So was there anything that surprised you from the study's results? 

Ken Dychtwald: A couple of things. The hopefulness. We thought people would be thinking of their longer lives. You know, there's bad stuff that happens to people we know and love. But overwhelmingly, the response was a sense of this is good news and people feel excited that they're going to be 60 or 70 or 80 in this new era. The other thing that surprised me is that 97%... (Now I've just come out with a redone book revision of my memoir, and it's called Radical Curiosity.) And so I did ask a question. I said, Do you still think that people, as they get older, can benefit from some curiosity? And we got wham, 97% response. And yes, whatever age you are, be open to learning, be open to listening. Be open to learning about things you don't know about. Tune in to podcasts like yours Ric, where you can learn things that could benefit you. Talk to young people. 97% of Americans, I don't think, agree on gravity. But the idea that people felt that curiosity ought to be a key part of our lives. And keep in mind, we live in an era where there's a lot of attention given to abundance and wealth and success. The idea that curiosity - and I call it radical curiosity - ought to be something that weaves its way through our lives all the way through is something we ought to pay more attention to. 

Ric Edelman: And that is, I think, perhaps the most hopeful and optimistic, reassuring sign of all that the fact that folks are open to new ideas and recognizing the importance of pursuing them, I think is the single best way we're going to advance our society and solve a lot of the challenges. 

Ken Dychtwald: Well, let me be a little realistic here about that. Not everybody. You may have an uncle or a next door neighbor who's a grouch or you may be a grouch and who me? But overwhelmingly what people are saying is that there is a new age of aging. It's happening now. I'll go back to it. When I saw Top Gun a year ago and there was Tom Cruise at 59, I thought, wow, that's an interesting version of 59. Then I went back and looked at the age Wilford Brimley was when he came out in Cocoon, and that little old man was 50 back then. So what's happening is that we're seeing role models and role models are important. When we see older people who are frail or who have brain health challenges, we think, yikes, I don't want to be that. But when we see athletes or we see authors or poets or people like yourself who reinvented yourself, and I've got all sorts of cool things going on in your life, we think that's the kind of person I want to be. 

Ric Edelman: It's really exciting to see that this shift is occurring from the projected and anticipated from you as a futurist to a certain degree in your studies of aging to now we're seeing the reality. We're seeing not only the arrival of this demographic coming into its own, but the fact that so many people are now getting it, not just the marketers and the corporations that are selling to these folks, but the folks themselves. Because what I often discover when I used to talk with clients in our financial planning practice and now when I do my podcast and I hear from so many of my listeners, so many people in their 60s and 70s who are preparing for retirement or recently going through it or dealing with life post-career so often can they feel that they're alone, that they're going through an experience that no one else can relate to or can share? And I think what your study is showing us is that we're all going through this together and we may be coming from it from a different point of view or a different aspect of life or different background or geography. Our attitudes are largely similar, and I think there's a lot of solace and a lot of comfort in that. I think your survey data is giving. As I read through it, I was like, This is making me feel better, that I'm not isolated, that I'm not the only one thinking about this. I'm not the only one thinking the way I'm thinking. 

Ken Dychtwald: Yeah, let me let me add to that. A lot of people feel like they're approaching a cliff when they reach retirement. I used to be something. And now what happens? We don't have retirement boot camps yet or we don't have training seminars on who I can be in the next stage of my life as we're going to in the years to come. We need advisors who can help us reimagine ourselves, get a new purpose in this stage of life. But we did ask people what they felt the primary ingredients were in living well in this stage of life. And I'll tell you what they are. They're simple. First of all, you got to take really great care of your body. You got to put a lot more effort into it than you did when you were a young person or else you run into problems.

Second, they said, it's the people you love and who love you back. And it may not necessarily be just your family. It might be friends you have or new friends you'll make. That's a key ingredient in living well.

Third, people said you have to be willing to make changes. You know, if you're rigid and this is what I've always done, growing older can be challenging. Then people said, you’ve got to have funding. You got to make sure you're doing some listening and some studying and get some help making sure you got the money to go the distance.

And last people said be willing to course correct. If you're doing something and you don't like it, try something else. Or if you are in a career and it doesn't make you happy, walk away. Find a new one. And so good lessons from our elders. And by the way, that's another word. Nobody likes the word elderly. But if you look at the history of the world, elders were always considered the wise ones, the ones with power, the ones with knowledge. If you remember the painting we've all seen of the signing of the Constitution, all those people were wearing white wigs and powdered their hair white in order to look old because it was believed that the older you were, the more wise you were and the more power you had. I think we're coming into a new era where being a modern elder will have some power. 

Ric Edelman: You know, it's funny you mentioned that about the wigs. Jean made a decision not long ago. She stopped coloring her hair. She's like, Why do I need to do that? I mean, this is who I am. And she looks fabulous. And it's not something I think women generally would have reached a conclusion of decades ago. 

Ken Dychtwald: Not up until this new age of aging, everybody tried to hang on to being young as long as they could, as though young was the better thing. And young is great. Nothing but you know if my. If I had a ten year old and they still wanted to be three, I'd think something was off about that. So if you're 60 or 70 or 80, take a look around you and realize, as you said, that you're not alone. There is a lot of us that are transforming this stage of life and who we could become. And there are possibilities that never existed before to make something yourself, to reinvent yourself, to try to play the guitar for the first time, to write your first book of poems, to have your own podcast, buy a new house, move to a new neighborhood, make some new friends. It's a new time in life with new possibilities. 

Ric Edelman: I encourage you to read Ken's study. It's not only great content, it's delivered in a really fun and breezy style. You'll enjoy reading through it. You can get it at AgeWave.com. The link is in the show notes. And while you're there, take a look at all the various books that Ken has written. I think you're going to really enjoy reading those. I've read them all and can't recommend them highly enough. Ken Dychtwald, CEO of Age Wave. Always a pleasure to have you here, my friend. 

Ken Dychtwald: Great to be with you, Ric. 

Ric Edelman: Oh, by the way, before we leave the interview, I want to mention, as Ken did briefly during our conversation, that his memoir, Radical Curiosity My Life on the Age Wave, his revision of that book is coming out, and in it, he shares his experiences and life lessons. And I've read the book and he tells some really amazing stories, including one fascinating one involving a group of bikers. So you'll find the book at your favorite bookseller, and I invite you to check it out.

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The Blockchain Trilemma

Ric Edelman: Finally today, I want to tell you about the trilemma. What on earth is that? You know, blockchain technology has been under development for nearly 15 years now. Everybody's heard of Bitcoin. Even if you don't understand it, even if you don't own it, you've heard of it. But there's a challenge that researchers are trying to resolve with blockchain technology.

It's called the blockchain trilemma. You see, there are three issues that we're trying to deal with decentralization, security and scalability. By decentralization, it means we don't have our computer data on a centralized server, all of our information in a single place. Instead, it gets decentralized on computers all around the world. This makes it much safer, virtually immune from hacking.

Related to that is security. How, in fact, do I keep my computers safe from cyber hackers and finally, scalability. How do I allow this blockchain to work really, really fast so we can do thousands and thousands of transactions every second? You know, just kind of the way Visa does right now when they process those thousands of credit card transactions all around the world. What blockchain technologists have been able to figure out is that they can solve any two of these issues at any given moment. They can solve for decentralization and security or security and scalability or scalability and decentralization, but they haven't been able to figure out how to solve all three all at the same time. This is the current holy grail of blockchain research. And when we figure that out, it's off to the races. 

Ric Edelman: That's all we've got for you this weekend. Thanks for joining me. Hey, if you want to read about NFTs and digital assets, I've got articles on those subjects and a lot more at TheTruthAYF.com.

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