Influencer Kyla Scanlon breaks down the Bitcoin social media craze

Yahoo Finance's Brian Cheung sits down with financial content creator Kyla Scanlon to discuss the online discourse surrounding cryptocurrency.

Video transcript

BRIAN CHEUNG: The CEO of the nation's largest bank, JPMorgan Chase, said he thought Bitcoin was worthless. And he even went further in questioning the limited quantity of Bitcoin. He said, quote, "how do you know it ends at 21 million? You guys all believe that? I don't know. I've always been a skeptic of stuff like that."

And the online community was up in arms about this one, making it a perfect topic for our next guest. Kyla Scanlon is an influencer in the TikTok and Twittersphere who has pointed out that markets aren't driven by fundamentals anymore. They're driven by memes. So Kyla, the prevailing response to that Dimon quote that I was seeing on Twitter was basically this. OK, Boomer. So, what say you in regards to all of this?

KYLA SCANLON: Yeah, I mean, I think it was just of all the things to point out about Bitcoin, the fact that 21 million was questionable was kind of-- I think maybe not his best line of defense. I think that it's pretty well known that 21 million is written in the code, so a little bit unfortunate of a choice on his part, I think, yeah.

BRIAN CHEUNG: Well, we're showing that response right there from Nick Carter, who was just joking, yes, the answer is, yes, we have read the code before. And the code actually does pretty clearly state it. In fact, there's actually notes in there. This is all open source. People can just go on GitHub and look it up. It says that the cap is clearly 21 million.

Now, again, I think maybe there's some technicalities here, which some people in my mentions have kind of been pointing out. All this really has to do with the Bitcoin nodes. In theory, there could be changes to the Bitcoin open source, but enough nodes would have to agree to any sort of changes. And it seems unlikely.

I don't know about you, but it seems unlikely to me that they would want to vote at any point in time to change the 21 million cap because it's such a big selling point for the asset itself. I mean, do you think, though, that there is some ounce of interest, though, in the idea that these hard forks could, in theory, be a thing?

KYLA SCANLON: I mean, maybe. I think that Jamie Dimon, his whole point was that Bitcoin is worthless. And he's going to allow people who invest with JP Morgan to invest in Bitcoin. And they're going to give them avenues to do that. But I think for him, he was like, I don't like this. And so, I'm going to make a public statement about it.

But I think the crypto universe, there's, like, so many different things that you can invest in now and put your money in. And Bitcoin is sort of leading indicator there. But I think that there's-- Jamie Dimon calling out the 21 million isn't going to make that 21 million number not be true. And I find it very hard to believe that one day, that 21 million would be changed, even if it is possible.

BRIAN CHEUNG: Yeah, and it's so funny when he said Bitcoin is worthless because actually, Bitcoin is worth about $57,000. It's very clear cut, based off of what the markets are saying. But can you just explain this to me? I mean, when you make TikToks and you make Twitters about these topics, you do such a good job of explaining, kind of, what's going on in not just Bitcoin, but whatever the topic du jour is, be it the Federal Reserve or other types of things.

But it seems like to me, at least, being someone who tweets every now and then as well, that whenever you hashtag Bitcoin, whenever you hashtag BTC, people go nuts. I mean, I was shocked at the amount of people with, you know, crypto punk avatars that were hopping into my mentions and notifications over the week. Why do you think it is that Bitcoin still, even multiple years into this project, remains such a hot topic within the online community?

KYLA SCANLON: Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's collective belief driving the value of the asset. And it also has a lot of real-world applications, too. There's just a lot of people that believe in it. And it's a whole community that's riled around it. It has been around since early 2010s, so it's been around for a long time.

So I think, like, the idea that people wouldn't believe in that, that they're not going to have some sort of passion tied to this thing that has gone through so many up and down cycles, people are just very emotional about it. And they've been along for the ride for a while. So I think it makes sense that they're going to be in your mentions on Twitter, if you talk about it.

BRIAN CHEUNG: Now, what about the element of Jamie Dimon being a part of this, right? He's the CEO of the country's largest bank, right? Largely seemed to be the establishment that a lot of people who are pro-Bitcoin maybe aren't as big of a fan of.

Do you think that there's anything to be said about whether or not banks are really-- traditional banks, if you will-- kind of the antithesis of what Bitcoin is going? Because the other argument would be, well, actually, banks want to be on the side of those in the crypto community when you consider maybe not JPMorgan Chase, to many degrees, but a lot of institutions are becoming more warm to the idea of banking their clients to, at least, if not Bitcoin, other types of crypto adjacent industries.

KYLA SCANLON: Yeah, no, I mean, I think The Block released an article about it yesterday. Most of the money that's flowed into crypto recently has been institutional dollars. So it's not retail driving this up movement. And if it's institutional dollars, you can imagine it's going to be companies like JP Morgan, like Bank of America, that are getting involved. I think for them, like, they just can't ignore it anymore.

It's gotten so big, you just can't ignore something that has become such a behemoth and has little tiny economies growing across its entire platform, whether it be DeFi or [INAUDIBLE] or NFTs especially. Like, banks and institutions have to pay attention to something of this magnitude. So I think even if Jamie Dimon thinks it's worthless, it's, like, you still have to understand it and know what makes sense to invest in and to give your clients access to.

BRIAN CHEUNG: And then one last point here is that there were some people in the mentions that were saying even though they disagree fundamentally with everything that Jamie said with regards to questioning the hard cap for Bitcoin, but that they said, maybe this is a good thing that traditional finance people are still fighting against it. That gives us more fuel to the fire here. And when you consider BlackRock CEO Larry Fink today saying, quote, "I see huge opportunities in a digitized crypto, blockchain-related currencies," end quote-- digitized crypto. I mean, is this guy kind of new to the game, too? Is it OK-- are we OK boomer-ing Larry Fink as well?

KYLA SCANLON: Yeah, I mean, that was a little bit of an oxymoron there. So a bit of an unfortunate choice of words because crypto is digital inherently. So I think, like, everybody's just trying to figure it out. And I think it's good that Larry Fink is, like, actively think about it, because BlackRock is, like, running the world behind the scenes. So it's good.

But I do think that there's such a steep learning curve, both for the institutions, for politicians, for, really, everybody. And they're going to have to start learning quickly because the space is just growing more massive by the day. Yeah, so I think that there's-- well, it's still early, a lot of people on crypto Twitter would say, yeah.

BRIAN CHEUNG: All right, well, we'll see if that conversation picks up in the days to come. But Kyla Scanlon, again, you can check out her stuff on TikTok. Thanks for hopping on Yahoo Finance this afternoon.