An examination of cryptocurrency, its origins and how it works.
Despite its episodes being less than 20 minutes long, Explained generally packs in all the essential information on a subject. There's enough there to educate you. Plus, the content is quite objective, this despite some of the potentially controversial subjects it's had.
This episode is an exception. There's detail on its origins and the mechanics of transactions but the producers skirt the most important question: what intrinsic value does a cryptocurrency have and what determines its market value? They skirt it because the crypto producers would freak out when they point out that it has no intrinsic value and its market value is determined by people talking it up.
More than avoiding this they have someone say that it is like gold in terms of intrinsic value. Well, no. Gold is a physical commodity with practical uses. Cryptocurrency doesn't exist in any form, it's just created out of nothing. Even national currencies are backed by the assets of the country's central bank.
Then they roll out all the snake oil salesman saying how great crypto is and why you should buy it. Of course they're going to say that: due to having substantial positions in crypto they have an interest in demand increasing and the price going up. It's really just a giant Ponzi scheme and they're at the top of the pyramid.
The producers could at least have had someone point out what I just did, but they didn't. There's no dissenting voices (except a few talking about hackability and energy consumption), just rows of people with vested interests saying how great crypto is.