Cryptocurrencies: An Investment, a Safe-Haven Asset, or a Scam?

In the realm of economics, there are plenty of terms that might confuse the layperson, but most of us probably know what the word "money" means. "Cryptocurrency," by contrast, can be baffling. It's money, but not government-backed money? It gets mined almost magically by a process that does nothing else of value? How does that work?

But given the level of investor interest in cryptocurrencies, for this episode of Motley Fool Answers, Alison Southwick and Robert Brokamp brought in Motley Fool analyst Aaron Bush to give their listeners the lowdown on bitcoin and the other cryptocurrencies that are making such a splash. But first, they answer a Twitter question from someone looking for a good way to get international exposure in their portfolio.

A full transcript follows the video.

This video was recorded on Nov. 21, 2017.

Alison Southwick: This is Motley Fool Answers. I'm Alison Southwick, and I'm joined, as always, by Robert Brokamp, personal finance expert here at The Motley Fool.

Robert Brokamp: Hello, Alison!

Southwick: Cryptocurrencies are all the rage now. You know it and I know it, even if none of us really understands it. That's what we're going to try to do today with the help of Motley Fool analyst Aaron Bush. He's going to explain the ins and outs of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies so that when your clueless friend asks -- "I've been hearing a lot about Bitcoin. Should I invest in it?" -- you'll know what to say. All that, and more, on this week's episode of Motley Fool Answers.

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It's time for Answers, Answers and today's question comes from Twitter! And it comes from MguestAndB. And they write, "I am looking for a Vanguard ETF to provide international exposure. Do you have any suggestions that I should look into?"

Brokamp: Yes. People are paying more attention to international investing these days. Since the recovery from the Great Recession, U.S. stocks have significantly outperformed international stocks, so people stopped paying attention. This year is different. U.S. stocks have still done well. Most major markets are up 16% by the end of October. The international market -- depending on what you look at -- up 25-30%. You're seeing more people saying, "Maybe I should get back into international investing." And one great way to do it is through Vanguard and a low-cost index fund or ETF.

So, yes, I have a suggestion. My first suggestion is the Vanguard FTSE All-World ex-US ETF. The ticker is VEU -- FTSE standing for Financial Times Stock Exchange. FTSE Russell are the folks who created the index and then Vanguard just follows the index. This is a great improvement over some of the earlier international index funds, which mostly focused on developed countries from Europe and Asia [not Canada and not Latin America]. This ETF covers it all. It also has developed markets as well as emerging markets. About 14% of the assets are in emerging markets, so that's a good start.

However, if you were to ask most major firms about what they expect to outperform over the next five to 10 years, most people expect emerging markets actually to do better than most other asset classes, so I would recommend that you enhance this a little bit by also looking at Vanguard's Emerging Markets ETF. It has the ticker of VWO. One knock against that is almost a third of the assets are in China, so you have to be comfortable with that, and it doesn't have South Korea. These days people debate whether South Korea is an emerging market or a developed market. Those are a couple of little knocks about that ETF, but I still think it makes sense.

Also, both of those ETFs are market-cap weighted, meaning they have big companies. Anywhere from $16-30 billion is around the average. If you want a little bit of small-cap exposure, Vanguard also has an International Small-Cap ETF. The ticker is VSS and the average market cap of the companies in that ETF are around $1-2 billion.

I think if you really want solid, international exposure, I would consider a mix of those three and as an allocation guidance I would say maybe 30% of your assets should be international with 15% in VEU -- that's sort of the umbrella ETF -- 10% in emerging markets, and 5% in small caps.

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Southwick: Bitcoin, the largest and most well-known cryptocurrency is up 400% this year. It's actually quite volatile, so as I'm taping this, I think it's up 400%. I don't know where it is at the time you're listening to this, but it's causing everyone to stand up and take notice. In fact, a headline that I saw in Bloomberg just today said one-third of millennials say they would rather own bitcoin than stocks. I thought the subhead should then read, "One-third of Millennials Have Just Enough Information to Form Dangerous Opinions About Bitcoin." Joining us today to talk about bitcoin and cryptocurrency is Aaron Bush. He's an analyst, here, at The Motley Fool. Aaron, thank you for joining us!

Aaron Bush: Thank you for having me!

Southwick: Our discussion is mostly going to focus on bitcoin, since I guess it's the first and has the largest market cap. It's basically the first successful cryptocurrency and it's got the largest market cap, so we're going to focus on that one rabbit hole to go down as opposed to all the many rabbit holes that we can go down. It's very easy to get into the weeds so, caveat, listeners. It's easy to get into the weeds as far as the history and the technical details of how this all works, but we're going to try and do our best to make it accessible and understandable.

Bush: Let's do it!

Southwick: I love your optimism! The headline that I read earlier about one-third of millennials say they'd rather own bitcoin than stocks. It's surprising, but at the same time [I wasn't that surprised] because we have a family member who just graduated from college. In his twenties. We gave him some money to buy some stocks.

He bought Google, maybe one share of Amazon, and then he was like, "Wow. I wonder if I should buy some bitcoin?" We went, "No! What are you talking about? You just bought your first stock and now you want to get into bitcoin?" I feel like he is not the only one in the world who doesn't understand bitcoin, but thinks they should be getting in on it.

Bush: Right. I think people love to invest in things that have made other people a lot of money, and that's causing a lot of momentum right now.

Southwick: At least this particular cryptocurrency, bitcoin. The idea first came in September of 2008. But most of the growth has been within just this last year.

Bush: It's definitely taken off this past year. Bitcoin has gone through peaks and troughs in the past, but 2017 has absolutely been a breakout year.

Southwick: Let's go back to the beginning, and it all goes back to a person named Satoshi Nakamoto. Or is it a person? Or a bunch of people? We don't know!

Bush: It's a mystery!

Southwick: Let's help unlock this mystery. We're not going to solve the mystery, but you can at least explain the mystery for us.

Bush: Satoshi Nakamoto, whoever he or she is, or they are, came up with the idea of bitcoin in 2008. It went live in 2009. For about 20 years or so, people [have been] trying to create a currency that is native to the internet. This was a dream of libertarians at the time. It was a way to bypass an intermediary. People were upset with the central bank[s], and so this was viewed as a way around that. If you can create your own currency native to the internet, you can set all of the rules yourself with computer code. You can create something new in a way to bypass the system. Create a new economy of sorts.

Southwick: And this was September of 2008, so this is at a pretty low ebb in Americans' feelings of happiness with their government and money.

Bush: Absolutely. I think the timing was important, but really it just came down to the technological breakthrough that just happened to match with that time.

Southwick: And this is, if I'm correct, blockchain.

Bush: Correct.

Southwick: Here we go. Here's another one of those buzzwords you're going to see, people, blockchain. And blockchain is...

Bush: The easiest way to look at a blockchain is saying it's like a database. Or it's like an accounting ledger. It's a database that you put entries into but can't take anything out of. If you want to make any changes, you have to put in another entry.

Southwick: Like [the] Constitution.

Bush: In a sense.

Southwick: Right? We have to [create] amendments and then [create] amendments to amend amendments. I probably should not have interrupted you with that, but I instantly made the connection. It's a permanent record.

Bush: Yes. It's a permanent record of all transactions in the past. It's a [permanent] record of who owned what and when. With that you can do all sorts of interesting things.

Southwick: One of the interesting things was bitcoin. That's been the most successful interesting thing. Later on, I do want to talk about some of the broader implications of what blockchain can do for us, because I think that might be more exciting for long-term investors than bitcoin, but we're still going to focus right now on bitcoin. He, she, whatever, Satoshi Nakamoto wrote this paper [about creating] this permanent ledger, but this permanent ledger is housed on [the computers of many different people].

Bush: Right, and that's what makes this special. There's nothing special about a database that can keep track of things.

Southwick: Yes, it's not blowing my mind.

Bush: We can all do that. But this one is distributed. It lives in computers around the world. Anyone can install bitcoin software and become a node in the bitcoin network. When this entire network can be run distributed, that's very different from a computer network being run in a centralized way. That was the breakthrough... being able to run in a distributed way that's also secure for the first time.

Southwick: I don't want to get too much into the weeds of mining, because, woof, that gets kind of crazy, but essentially how new bitcoins are created... Actually, you should probably explain it. How are new bitcoins created?

Bush: You touched the word mining. There are miners. These are the people who are running the nodes on the bitcoin network. [The computers of these people] are solving increasingly difficult math problems. They're trying to find a random sequence of numbers. The winner gets whatever new bitcoin is released, and this happens about every 10 minutes or so. They're competing to win the new bitcoin. Right now, there are about 16 million bitcoins in circulation and there will be 21 million over time. These miners compete to win over the new blocks of bitcoin and that's what adds new bitcoins to the network.

They also are the ones who verify transactions across the network, so they serve two main purposes. One is to create the currency, and the other one is to verify everything that goes across it. Doing that provides the incentive for them to keep the network running. The incentive that keeps bitcoin functioning is built right into the code and the miners are the ones who make that possible.

Southwick: If I'm someone at home thinking, "I'm going to install this software and then I'm going to start mining bitcoins on my computer," that's easy peasy, right?

Bush: Not so much. It used to be. In the very early days, any of us could have bitcoin running on our computer right in front of us, right now, and be competing for bitcoin or verifying those transactions. As the market has become more competitive, it's become increasingly difficult for any one person to win in any of those given competitions. Now we're seeing fleets of supercomputers dueling it out to see who can win the network and run those big money operations.

Southwick: Massive computing power.

Brokamp: Is there any sort of arbiter here? For example, they're solving these math problems. Who's creating the math problems?

Bush: It's built into the code. That gets pretty complex with the security.

Southwick: This is where we say, "Don't worry about it."

Brokamp: OK, got it.

Bush: It's called a cryptographic hash function for short.

Southwick: My favorite hash function.

Bush: The shortest way to explain that is it's very difficult to find the answer, but once you find the answer it's very easy to verify. And whatever the problem was is just set in the code from the very beginning.

Brokamp: Got you.

Southwick: Do you? Do you really?

Brokamp: Here's the thing about it. Crypto means secret or hidden in Greek, so already built into this whole system is some sort of mystery. It's created by this person who may or may not exist. The whole thing is just so sci-fi, and it just feels like something out of a novel.

Southwick: Yes, I feel like proponents tend to brush off the concern about it, but where does the value come from? Because they'll be like, "Well, for any currency we agree that a dollar is worth a dollar." But then I'm like, "No, but then so does the most powerful government in the world." They also agree that the dollar is worth a dollar. Let's move into the value. How is the value of bitcoin even determined?

Bush: I think bitcoin is, in some ways, its own case study. It's not representative of all cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin originally was just a peer-to-peer payment platform, but increasingly it's becoming the reserve currency for all other cryptocurrencies, and that means it's also becoming a store of value. And when something becomes a store of value [like gold], the most important metric is the number of believers.

To what extent all this news that happens -- all these changes are made to the code -- all that matters is how it affects the number of believers and the number of believers essentially determines the market value. I would say there is very little, fundamental real value in the bitcoin network beyond just what people say it is.

That's just bitcoin, but for other cryptocurrencies, part of why this movement is so fascinating is because this is money built into the internet and that money represents real utility of some type. Those tokens have value because you can trade them in for some work in an application that's running on whatever blockchain network.

All these different cryptocurrencies have their own applications and have their own use cases, and so the extent to which those networks grow in value and demand for those applications grows, that determines the value of the network and the value of each individual token.

Southwick: That's the first time you've used the word "token." Can you talk about that a little bit more? Sorry. Are we getting [too far into the weeds]?

Bush: No, this is fine.

Southwick: I know it's fine for you. I know you're good talking about it. I wish some of my listeners could yell back and be like, "Yes. We're good. We're keeping up."

Bush: I'll do my best. Bitcoin with a capital B, I would say that is the cryptocurrency. Bitcoin with a lower-case B would be the token. The cryptocurrency is the platform as a whole, and the tokens are just pieces of it. The U.S. dollar is the platform, but each dollar [or coin] would be a token. I think that's a good analogy.

Southwick: I got that. That's not so bad. I'm good. I got it. I get why a decentralized cryptocurrency is fantastic if I'm doing something really illegal online. It's not traceable. If it's online, it's not traceable. This is [part of] the dark web, right?

Bush: Generally, things are more traceable than you think they are. Even with bitcoin, there was a major fallout with Silk Road, so you're not as anonymous as you think you are, even using bitcoin. But, yes, there are other cryptocurrencies that have tried to make things more anonymous.

Southwick: More anonymous. People who like gold are probably drawn to bitcoin -- the Armageddon aspect -- that if the government is going to fall, at least I've still got my bitcoin.

Bush: Yes.

Southwick: I'm a law-abiding and generally optimistic person. I don't think I should be using bitcoin as a currency, but it is becoming more common. People can use it for goods and services. That's growing.

Bush: I don't think [for us] there are many use cases for bitcoin, beyond what we can do with Mastercard or Visa or anything like that. I will say there may be some value in less-developed countries where currency is more unstable. They can put money into bitcoin as a store of value vs. seeing their money light on fire. I think that is a very good use case. They can also transport it over borders without having to go through a middleman.

So, there are some use cases with it being a transfer of value. In some ways this transcends [and becomes] a threat to governments, but for our case it's probably less so of a use case.

Southwick: I guess with bitcoin you don't have any insurance [which is the wrong word], but if I use my credit card I have fraud protection. We've got the FDIC to protect my money at the bank. The reason for entities like [the FDIC] is to provide me with protection. I realize the blockchain is supposed to provide me with that protection. Is it the same?

Bush: I would say taking down the bitcoin network would be just as difficult as taking down the internet. In that case it is very secure, but more on an individual basis security is very important, and that just boils down to having good security practices and making sure not to do anything dumb.

Southwick: In theory, is it possible the computing power required to keep this going could [fall] off a cliff? If people actually start using bitcoin and it's this "forever ledger" that's housed on massive supercomputers around the world, in theory couldn't that data just blow everything up?

Bush: What do you mean?

Southwick: Let's say we're all using bitcoin. At some point does this ledger become too large for even computers to manage? Even if we're managing it right now and there's only so many billion in circulation, and we require so many nodes... I don't know how many nodes there are.

Bush: A lot.

Southwick: A lot!

Bush: Yeah.

Southwick: So, there's only this much market cap out there, and we're already requiring these massive nodes, and [at this point] it's getting even harder to get in it for your one bitcoin that you might get by being the computer that solves the puzzle...

Bush: Yes.

Southwick: That sounds like it could, in theory, go off a cliff if the data required to run bitcoin grows so exponentially as more people adopt it.

Bush: I would say the short answer is no. There definitely is a scaling problem with bitcoin right now. It's very energy inefficient.

Southwick: Yes. It costs more to mine bitcoin than to get a bitcoin that you're mining, right?

Bush: Yes. When you transact with bitcoin, the network still has to verify and go through a process that's very energy inefficient, too. The good thing about this being run by software is that you can change the code. It is an open source software project, and so there are a lot of people looking to make this more efficient.

You [then] come to something that's called "forking." We didn't talk about this at all. This is the most contentious point in the bitcoin community right now -- people disagreeing about how to make it more scalable to allow for more transactions. There are a couple of different technical ways people want to take it, but when people disagree they can fork it and then essentially the blockchain splits and starts going in two different directions based on different rules.

Right now, there's bitcoin and then the third-largest cryptocurrency right now is Bitcoin Cash, which was forked out of bitcoin in August. This is like everyone trying to tackle that scaling issue. I do think it will be done, because you can constantly improve the code to make it more efficient. We've seen that in other currencies, too, but it's a huge issue to tackle right now.

Southwick: All right, we'll work on that. Let's move on to bitcoin as an investment idea. Wall Street has definitely, in the last few months, started to talk about bitcoin and dip their toes in. Jamie Dimon over at J.P. Morgan is quoted as saying bitcoin will eventually blow up. It's a fraud. It's worse than tulip bulbs and it won't end well. He also said that he would fire any trader for trading bitcoin just for being stupid.

On the other side, other Wall Street figures [for example, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein] said he had a level of discomfort with bitcoin, as I have a level of discomfort with anything that is new. I thought, "Well, that's keeping your options open." And then I also read this other great quote in an article in The New York Times about a guy who invests in cryptocurrencies, digital currencies, and assets. That's his full-time job. He was talking about bitcoin and whether or not it was a bubble. He said, "If my landscaper ever asks me about crypto, that's the day I get out."

I feel like we're very close to that day, but maybe not. Like I said, we've got a 22-year-old family member who wants to get into bitcoin without any idea of what that even means. Bitcoin. Speculation? Bubble? What are your thoughts?

Bush: It is absolutely speculative, and the whole cryptocurrency market beyond bitcoin is also very speculative. That said, the technology that underpins everything is very real. It's very real for what blockchains can do outside of cryptocurrency, but I also think it is very real for what cryptocurrencies can be in the future.

In my opinion, this is classic hype cycle, where we've seen this several times before across history. The internet bubble was the last big example of something like this. All of these companies are rushing to sell tokens instead of stocks, and a lot of companies are putting blockchain in their titles. That's very similar to companies who used to put .com in their names before. I do think there are a lot of similarities with there being hype, so investors absolutely need to be careful.

This also is a very small asset class. It's brand new, and because the technology running it is very real, I personally do believe it will be significantly larger over time as new applications are found, but it's probably going to be a very rocky road getting there.

Southwick: I saw that only 2% of Americans own or have ever owned bitcoin, and it's a limited quantity. There's only ever going to be so much bitcoin in the world.

Bush: There's only going to be 21 [million] bitcoin total, and I do understand the sentiment of when everyone suddenly becomes interested, it makes sense to be a little skeptical; but at the same time, I think there's something like 11 or 12 million millionaires in the U.S., and there's only enough bitcoin, in total, as the end goal essentially for bitcoin, that they can't even own two of them, and the market cap is about $120 billion.

So, even if this just becomes a small piece of a lot more people's portfolios, which really isn't that much out of the question, this can be worth so much more.

Southwick: So, don't focus on the immediate bitcoin and what people are freaking out about right now. What are you focusing on? What are you looking at as an investor, not a speculator?

Bush: I'll disclose I actually do own some bitcoin.

Southwick: When did you buy it?

Bush: I bought in early 2017. It was just more about being interested in it. I wanted to learn more about it. But I've been following it for a while. I also own some Ethereum, which is the second-largest cryptocurrency.

My approach for investing is I'm willing to invest very small percentages of my portfolio -- less than 1% of my portfolio -- in order to learn more about this. I recognize that the upside is significantly larger than the downside, potentially. What I'm really looking for are the next hundred billion-dollar ideas. Trillion-dollar ideas. I'm not just jumping around buying a bunch of different things.

I'm taking a very slow and measured approach to figure out which ideas stick, because at the end of the day this is not investing in stocks. This is closer to venture investing. This is more like seed-stage investing because many of these new cryptocurrencies, when you buy them, actually don't function, yet. I do think it's good to take it slow. That's what I'm doing personally, but I also am taking a very open-minded approach and trying to surf the learning curve. Trying to stay on the very steep end of things so that I can spot these opportunities before they turn into something much bigger.

Southwick: We have a friend who, as a lark, bought a bitcoin for $50.

Bush: Nice.

Southwick: What did we say? Today bitcoin is like $7,500? $7,600? What is it today?

Bush: It's about $7,500. That's not a bad investment.

Southwick: That's why everyone wants it, but he bought it a really long time ago just for the heck of it because he's a tech-savvy kind of guy. He never expected this to happen, but he's going to hold onto it for a very long time and see where it takes him.

Bush: That's awesome. I do think people should be very open-minded about this. I think just it being something new and something hype makes it easy to laugh at, but I haven't met anybody who's dug into this that became a skeptic. Everyone who digs into this becomes far more optimistic and I think that's pretty telling.

Southwick: Now when you say digs into it, you're talking more specifically around...

Bush: Understanding the technology, understanding how essentially the monetary system of this works, and understanding where it can go from here.

Southwick: I think it's possible I'll pay for my lack of vision one day, but I think this isn't for me. That's OK, though.

Bush: Oh, yes, that's fully OK.

Brokamp: That's perfectly fine.

Southwick: Thanks. It's fascinating. It's incredibly fascinating and so I really appreciate you coming on the show and explaining it to us.

Bush: Thank you again for having me!

Southwick: You're going to stick around, because we're going to do a little quiz, and see how well you guys know a few things around currency and cryptocurrency.

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Southwick: Well, that was a fun rabbit hole to go down, and now we're going to have some fun with it. I've got your standard Motley Fool Answers quiz, let's finish the show episode segment.

Brokamp: Outstanding.

Southwick: I've got four questions about currency and cryptocurrency, and I want to see if you guys can guess it. I think together you will be able to get all of these.

Brokamp: So, this is collaborative?

Southwick: Yes, do you want to collaborate?

Bush: Let's do teamwork.

Brokamp: We're open course.

Southwick: Even famous musicians are singing the praises of cryptocurrency. Björk just announced that you can purchase her ninth album using bitcoin, AudioCoin, Litecoin, or Dashcoin. Even though she was the first to wear a swan to the Oscars, she was not the first to accept cryptocurrency. What Spice Girl was reportedly the first to accept bitcoin for her solo album, For Once in My Life, when it was released in December 2013?

Bush: My problem is I don't know the name of any of the Spice Girls.

Brokamp: I'm just going to say Sporty Spice.

Southwick: Just come up with a word and then stick Spice after it.

Brokamp: Gluten-Free Spice.

Bush: Llama Spice.

Rick Engdahl: Crypto Spice.

Southwick: Crypto Spice. The answer is Scary Spice, aka Mel B.

Brokamp: Wow! That was my next guess.

Southwick: All the way back in December 2013. First launched on January 7, 2014 the cryptocurrency Coinye was abandoned after a trademark dispute for using which hip hop artist as its mascot?

Brokamp: Kanye and going to a suit.

Bush: That's probably a good guess.

Southwick: Yes. Three days later the development team stated [after this trademark dispute] that they had removed all references to West but instead they were using a half-man, half-fish hybrid for their logo which is a nod to a South Park episode in which Kanye West fails to realize that people are jokingly calling him a gay fish. So, this was the logo, by the way, for Coinye. It is a half man, half fish.

Bush: That's good.

Brokamp: And there's a resemblance there.

Southwick: Well, take that up with the lawyers. This lady has appeared on more currency to date than anyone else. Thirty countries, in fact.

Brokamp: Queen Elizabeth, right? It's got to be Queen Elizabeth.

Bush: That's what I would guess.

Southwick: It's Queen Elizabeth. The first country to feature the Queen was Canada, which issued a banknote in 1935 featuring her as an eight-year-old. Oh, but it was adorable. As countries have gained independence from Britain, some have removed her from the currency; however, in at least 20 countries, the Queen remains front and center.

Brokamp: Nice.

Southwick: Last question. Put the U.S. coins in order of how much it costs to make them, from most expensive to least. This is not a function of their actual value, by the way. Just how much it costs to make the four major coins.

Brokamp: Are we sticking with the four? We're not doing like the Sacagawea or the Susan B. Davis.

Southwick: No. We're sticking with the four.

Brokamp: Susan B. Anthony, not Susan B. Davis.

Southwick: So, starting with the most expensive.

Bush: The quarter? Should we go with the quarter? It's the biggest.

Brokamp: It's the biggest. I'll say that, but there must be a surprise, here. Let's go with the quarter, then let's go with the penny.

Bush: The penny?

Brokamp: Let's go with the penny.

Bush: Hm.

Southwick: Aaron disagrees.

Bush: I'm going to fork this and say the nickel.

Brokamp: You're going to say the nickel?

Bush: And then I'll say the penny, and then I'll say the dime. Let's go size-wise.

Brokamp: I'm going to say that the dime is more expensive than the nickel.

Southwick: OK. Are you ready?

Brokamp: It's more to get that small precision.

Southwick: Aaron's fork was more correct, although not totally correct.

Bush: Well, I can fork again, right?

Southwick: Fork again. The quarter costs almost nine cents to make. A nickel costs eight cents to make. That's right. It costs more to make a nickel than a nickel. The dime costs roughly four cents and a penny is 1.6 cents.

Brokamp: Man, I was way off.

Southwick: Why not just make them out of cheaper metals, you might be saying. Experts say it would save the government about $39 million a year; however, other experts say that it would cost businesses up to $10 billion to retro fit coin machines to recognize the change in weight that would come from changing the metals.

Bush: Or just turn it crypto.

Brokamp: There you go. It will all be crypto.

Southwick: Boom! Solution!

Bush: I'm going to call it now. It's going to happen.

Southwick: See if we can get in on that. So, that's it. That's all the questions I've got. You guys did pretty well. Three out of four. Not bad.

Brokamp: Yes, I think we did all right.

Southwick: Very nice.

Brokamp: Especially Llama Spice. She was awesome.

Bush: I could swear I was right.

Southwick: Llama Spice. Watch out! She's pissed. Aaron, thank you for joining us. It was wonderful to have you here and explain this. It's a really fascinating conversation, even though I'm not totally sold, but that will be on me.

Bush: In time. Thank you for having me!

Southwick: In time. In time we'll have you back and I'll be like, "Oh, Aaron, I should have listened."

Bush: Sounds great.

Southwick: That's the show. It is edited fork-i-ly by Rick Engdahl. Our email is [email protected]. A few of you have left reviews for the show on iTunes in the last couple of weeks and I want to say thanks for doing that. One of you isn't in love with our show, but that's OK. I'm still fine with that. I'll be OK. No hard feelings. It's fine.

Brokamp: Is it OK with you? It was not like one star, but... You know.

Southwick: I'm just going to cry myself...

Bush: A single tear.

Southwick: Just one little tear. One little tear. It's fine. For Robert Brokamp and Aaron Bush today, thanks again! I'm Alison Southwick. Stay Foolish, everybody!