Epicenter - Learn about Crypto, Blockchain, Ethereum, Bitcoin and Distributed Technologies - Adam Ludwin, David Bailey, Devon Gundry, Eric Rykwalder, Nic Cary, Rodolfo Novak & Roop Gill: Bitcoin 2014 Amsterdam

Episode Date: June 26, 2014

This episode is part of our coverage of the Bitcoin 2014 Conference which took place in Amsterdam from May 15 to 17, 2014. Topics covered in this episode: Adam Ludwin, Devon Gundry & Eric Rykwalder of Chain.com Rodolfo Novak, CEO of Coinkite Roop Gill, videographer for Coindesk David Bailey, Founder and Editor-in-Chief yBitcoin magazine Nic Cary, CEO of Blockchain This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/bitcoin2014-06

Hi, I'm Brian Fabian Crane and I'm here with Sebastian Guter. We just got back from Amsterdam where we attended Bitcoin 2014 conference, which took place for May 15th to 17th. It was the second conference organized by the Bitcoin Foundation and over 1,000 people gathered for three days of talks and conversations. We had the opportunity to interview many speakers and attendees and talk about their projects and perspectives. We will release those episodes over the coming weeks.

So first off, the guys from chain.com tell me about their startup, which provides a blockchain API for developers, and they also gave out some very cool research at the conference. Next, Brian and I talked to Rodolfo Nolvac of a coin kite, a Canadian company, which positions itself as a Bitcoin bank, and builds Bitcoin point-of-sale terminals for merchants. We also ran into Rup Gill, a videographer for CoinDesk, you may recognize her from their weekly Bitcoin News Roundup videos. and interestingly enough, she told us about a topic which doesn't get discussed much, which is the state of Bitcoin in India.

Then we caught up with David Bailey, whom we interviewed in Berlin, and he gave us an update on his Y-Bitcoin magazine. And finally, Nick Carey, CEO of Blockchain.Info, talks about his Bitcoin-only company and some of the opportunities and challenges of running a company entirely on crypto with no bank account. We want to make the blockchain beautiful. Yeah. So this is our first one is that. I mean, it's a mountain chain.

That's the most. And these are all the transactions that are happening up here. You'll notice they're blocked with stars. It's a subtle, a little detail that you landed on. I like that. That's awesome. The big one is magic money, so we wanted to film Magic Money. Yeah.

Interative money. Yeah. So I'm here with Adam Ludwin. Devin Gundry. Eric Reichwalder. And you guys are from chain.com. Wait, let me say it in the radio voice. Chain.com.

Awesome. So could you tell us about chain.com? So chain.com is providing a Bitcoin node as a service. So we are a platform for developers who are building Bitcoin apps and blockchain apps. Today we offer the Bitcoin D node as a service, and we're also adding support for Dogecoin, light coin, and name coin. And so our goal is to be of service to developers and to be their infrastructure provider and to do it over a beautiful piece of software with world-class support.

And when did you launch? We launched yesterday. Yesterday. Awesome. Congratulations. Yes, this was the perfect place for us to launch. and you guys are based out of the... We're in California.

Awesome. Half of us in Los Angeles. Another half in San Francisco. And to add to what Adam was saying is, now that blockchain technology and Bitcoin specifically has become so prevalent and so popular, we're starting to see that

there's so many developers in the world that are interested in building great products. And when you start to look at the infrastructure behind Bitcoin and what it takes to actually run a node and and make the data, prepare the data in a way that's really accessible and fast and speedy and reliable. It's really hard. It's a lot of work. And it actually has nothing to do with your actual core product. So everyone who's building products are just doing the same work over and

over and over again. And we want to take that load off of their shoulders and allow them to focus on building their products. And we can provide all the data that they would go into the blockchain and get on their own and we can make it fast. Yeah, that's cool. I was on a new website and it seems very easy to get set up and started. That's the goal. Yeah. So basically we have two main structures that are running, and our main feature is just our HTTP API.

So we allow people to send curl requests or SACP requests to us to get their info that they need from the blockchain. And so our website is just a simple sign-up. You get your token, and you can start making requests on our API. Cool. And so you guys are in beta right now? Yeah. Yeah, we're in beta.

and our API is unlimited and free right now. And we're in a unique stage of the company where we're learning from developers. So if you're a developer out there listening, we want to hear from you. Go to chain.com, send us an email. We want to hear what developers want us to provide them by way of features.

And we've had a wonderful time here at the conference learning from dozens of developers and we're going back to our office energized to bring all sorts of amazing features to that community. We're really inspired by what we've been seeing, how developers are pushing Bitcoin and blockchain forward. And we really want to see, if you're a developer and you haven't built anything on Bitcoin or any kind of blockchain or any other coin, now's the time to do it because you can do something amazing.

So the service is free for the time being. You plan on keeping it free always and having some premium services on top of that or will become paid? There will be paid tiers. So we're going to provide. service level of agreements to businesses that we power. And we do that because this allows us to wake up at 3 in the morning if there's an issue, get on the phone with our customers and help them. And so our goal is to be a sustainable business. And we do that through charging, you know, candidly quite reasonable fees relative to what you might pay for your database, what you might pay for your web server.

Likewise, you know, when you have hosted Bitcoin infrastructure, if you're a startup, it'll be less expensive than if you're an enterprise. And if you're an independent developer, it'll probably be free for you forever. So I think the vast majority of developers will always be on our free tier. I like the fact that you're keeping it free for small developers that just want to, you know, play with the blockchain and get started. Most important to us is to innovate in the space. we want to enable the developers to innovate,

and we don't want to create any barriers to that. So the more people that are building great products and pushing this industry forward, the better is going to be for literally everybody. And the world! So right now you've got the Bitcoin API up, and I see you've got Dogecoin, Lightcoin, and Namecoin coming out soon. Can you tell us a bit more about that?

Sure. So when we talk to our initial set of customers, they ask for those three repeatedly. light coin principally for the wallet and exchange services that want to integrate light coin dogecoin because there's this awesome community of developers who are just having a lot of fun with dogecoin

it's the coolest coin it's the cool coin it's a cool kid on the block right now for sure and all the cool dogs are doing it and they're they're building some fun apps and we are so excited to be powering those and name coin's unique because it's a great way to get data into a blockchain. And you can do that with the op return on Bitcoin, but Namecoin

is one of the early examples, and there will be many more, of taking the blockchain concept and extending it into all sorts of other incredible applications. And we're excited to see what the likes of MasterCoin and Ethereum and others will do to push the envelope even further. And do you plan to integrate any of those other coins in the future? So as soon as they come online and achieve the requisite scale that it's secure enough in our minds and there's traction with developer community and interests, we'll absolutely do that. I think if you're a developer and you want to build an Ethereum app or you want to build a master coin app or you want to integrate across them, we should be there to serve you. So we're really at the service of developers. And like

I said before, if you're a developer out there, email us hello at chain.com. Tell us, tweet at us, at chain, and let us know what you're working on, and we'd love to help you out and figure out if there's a way for us to be supportive to you. Awesome. Thanks a lot, guys. Thank you so much. Thanks, man. All right, so I'm here with Rodolfo Novak.

And you are? CEO and co-founder of Quenkite. All right, so can you tell us a bit about Konkite? Quinkite is the only H-S-based web wallet, right? What that allows us to do is have our... hardware, wallet, security on the server side, and have full liquidity for our web wallet users. That means that you can audit your funds any time, right? Your keys, the funds are segregated, so we cannot play with your funds.

And that allows us to do a whole full of infrastructure for payments. So with Coin Kite, we also have payment terminals. These are PCI certified hardware. Which we can see here. So they look a lot like any kind of debit card or credit card terminal. Exactly. They look like every other debit machine at the cashier. And these machines actually have two modes. They have a retail mode where you can just print a QR invoice to get paid from any other web wallet.

Or you can use a Coin Kite debit card. These debit cards are linked to your Koyn Kite account. And if you pay with them, you can do secure zero confirmations because they hold both. sites. Oh, okay. Right. So, yeah, you're keeping kind of in... Yes, but all point kite transactions are blockchain transactions.

All. There is no IOU sort of system like some other wallet. Right. Okay. And then if you put the machine in exchange mode, it's basically an ATM. Because you can print paper wallets, you can print vouchers, you can scan other wallets to send money to you. We have a whole infrastructure for you to choose which exchange rate you want to use.

BitStamp, BitPay. You can also set up your own markup. You choose your markup, and that should help you make a little profit there too. So when you say you can put it up in exchange mode, what you're saying essentially is I can use a credit card to buy Bitcoins with it? No. We don't touch Fiat to protect our users. Okay.

Right? Because if we do go that way, then it brings in a whole other bunch of problems. When you do crypto only, it does make life simpler, including for countries that may have more issues around that. When you're in ATM mode, all you really need is somebody to handle the cash, right? So most places already have registers already are set up to handle all that. Okay. And tell us about this debit card that you have here. So this debit card has a QR on the back.

That's your Bitcoin address. Also has a chip. one of them, yes. Looks a lot like a regular credit card. Exactly. It's chip and pin on our machines, or you can use the back public key to receive money from any other ATM, from anybody. It's very easy, really, because you pull out of your wallet and you have your QR code, right? All the CoinKite accounts are BIP 32, hierarchical deterministic. We don't reuse receiving addresses. That makes things a little more secure, more private. With CoinKite, you can do funds forwarding as well. So you can choose an amount of funds you want to afford from your account for every transaction that comes in to another Bitcoin address.

You can have multiple of them. That's good for you to auto exchange. That's good for you to split your funds. A lot of people want to send a little bit of took-word storage, a little bit stays in CoinCai, a little bit goes to a friend, family. You can also send funds by email. We have a lot to offer in our web wallet. And so these terminals, they work internationally? Yes.

And you ship them internationally? We ship anywhere in the world. And what's your deployment rate like right now? How many are there? We have hundreds now. We're in every continent. You choose if you want to make your terminal public or private. The nice thing is if you make it public, we plot it on a map on coin kite.com slash locations.

And the nice thing about it is we tell all of our customers that you were there and they already have coin kite cards, so it makes the process really easy. And what's been your feedback from the users, the merchants that are using this terminal? These machines are loved. I mean, we have a guy from Switzerland that brought his that he bought a few months ago

just to show to us that he really likes his machine and he wanted to show that. Okay, cool. Is there anything else you want to add? We have an API coming in the summer now, And with that, you're going to be able to do what we call wallet as a service. So you're going to be able to do anything you want to do with Bitcoin without having to handle Bitcoin. So if you want to create apps that need to handle coins, you don't have to handle that stuff anymore.

All the funds are securely stored in the HSM, and you can just transact that way. Cool. Thanks for watching. Hey, thank you. So hi, I'm Ruth Gill. I'm the video reporter for CoinDesk. And we're here at Bitcoin 2014 in Amsterdam. How are you guys doing? Pretty good? Good as well, yeah.

So you're kind of like the face of Coin Desk. Everybody will... You know what? It's funny, you mentioned that, because I do have a lot of people come up to me like, Coin Desk? You're like, yes! And I get really excited.

But yes, even though I'm the face of Coin Desk, obviously there's like so many, so many hardworking people. How many reporters are there? In total, like writers. With freelancers and everyone and full-timers and part-time's included, we're about a 20-person team right now. Okay, and how many people? How many full-time staff do you know that?

About seven or eight people at the full-time, and then everyone's like freelancer. Based in London. So there's like seven people? No, no, all of them are based in London. We have an editor in the United States, and we also have an editor in Tokyo. So, you know, I mean, it's Bitcoin.

It's all over the world. It's, you know, and beyond. So it's, uh... And beyond the world? Beyond the world. Beyond? Beyond? It's like, it's like,

super territorial. Can we go into this beyond the world? I don't know. I don't know. But you know what I mean. It's like, you can't be stationed in one place and be like, I got this. I got a whole coverage of what's happening in the world of Bitcoin, except maybe over here. Literally everybody from everywhere is here.

You were saying that you had been traveling to India to cover some of the stuff that's going on there? Yeah, so I was actually in India earlier this year. did some reporting for coin dusts from there as well. And it's really interesting to see how India is, you know, at least some people in India are excited about Bitcoin, but Indians in general are very vis-diverse. Like, their society, you know, they like how things are. It's an 80% cash economy, you know.

Even credit cards aren't that popular. A lot of people don't have bank accounts, but everyone has mobile phones. So there's a huge potential there. So there's a huge potential, but at the same time, I think there's a lot of, like, cultural issues that need to be surpassed in order to, you know, really get people interested. But, yeah, I mean... What do you think those are? Well, I would say people are really vis-tovers. So the volatility is a problem.

No, I don't... Yeah, the volatility is a problem, and also, you know, I mean, trying new thing or becoming comfortable with new technologies. I mean, I always give this example. So my background's Indian. My grandmother has been going to the same guy to buy her mangoes for 20 years. years. If today his mangoes are not very ripe, it's not like he's going to go to the guy next door. She's just going to buy bad megons. So it's just, it's very difficult to introduce something into that society and to those people. Should we wait? We're good.

So I think that is definitely one of the big challenges. And the second challenge is obviously education, you know? I mean, I think I heard this at one of the conferences or one of the talks in London that right now in Bitcoin there's a lot of awareness, but there's not a lot of education. People know about it, but not a lot of people understand it. And I think that in India is like an apparent problem as well. You know, you go to India, people ask you what you're doing there. You see I'm writing about Bitcoin. They're like, oh yeah, I heard about it.

And, you know, automatically the negative connotations pop up. So that's, I think that's definitely the next step. At least in India where kind of my semi-expertise, but I'm sure like all over the world as well. Cool. So, tell us a bit about coinness, you know, CoinDIS is going in the future. Like, what do you think the company will look like two years from now? I don't want to comment on that. I'm sorry. Okay. I can't comment on that. I'm a video reporter. I'm not even a full-timer. I'm probably not the right person to speak about that.

Okay, no problem. No problem. Thanks, thanks. Yeah. We're starting when Berlin was, so I had a little bit of... In February. All right. So I think we had... We're just going to press with our second issue when I talked to you guys last. The business is doing fantastic. We've increased our print count almost 50%. So instead of printing 30,000 magazines, this issue, we're printing 45,000 magazines. We have partnered with some really high-tech, high-end conferences that are not Bitcoin conferences. So as I explained last time, really our focus is on expanding the Bitcoin community by bringing in new people.

And so we don't want, you know, no one in the Bitcoin space will ever read our magazine because they know everything that's in it. It's like 101. So we are really trying to focus on making sure that the people who get the magazine or the people who need it. So, for example, we've partnered with Money 2020. So every executive or every person who's attending Money 2020 will actually have a magazine on their seat. So that's over 7,000 FinTech executives. That's awesome. So, yeah, I mean, there's lots of individual things like that that are going on.

So are you selling them to Money 2020? They're free. Oh, you get for me sponsors. Right, so it's completely advertiser-supported. So we're here with David Bailey, who's founder of Y-Bitcoin magazine. And he's one of our returning guests. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

So, yeah, so we've increased our print count. We've now have, like, 300 of the nicest lobbies in New York. If you go into the lobby, there's Y Bitcoin magazine there. So we're really, like, getting this. Awesome. Yeah, I mean, a good anecdote that I've been sharing is, About two weeks ago, we had someone who found our magazine in a restaurant, a really nice restaurant in San Francisco.

And he owns a pharmaceutical company that sells drugs in Africa. So he understands some of the friction and pain points in, like, doing international business. So Bitcoin kind of made sense to him already. He read the magazine about three times, understood it, understood why it was exciting, called our office and said, I need to buy 10,000 bitcoins immediately. Who do I go to? So that's just one person. And I think that's why the audience we're targeting so great is because we're targeting people that not only have the resources to invest in the Bitcoin, but also he owns a pharmaceutical company.

Who knows what conversations they're having now about how can we be selling our drugs in Africa and using Bitcoin on the back end? So he's actually bringing the purpose of why we created this technology. He's kind of fulfilling it. So, you know, that's why we've kept our model us focusing on the high-end audience rather than, you know, we have a lot of colleges that want the magazine. And we have to prioritize where we send it because we're only printing $45,000. We could honestly be printing $250,000. Yeah. So we, you know, we'd rather have someone who owns a company than someone who, you know, is 17 or something like that.

Yeah. But then again, I mean, that audience is also going to be, you know, if it's a computer science major. probably more advanced than... Yeah, and I mean, you know, these people are building the startups of tomorrow, right? Right. I think the last time we spoke, you were talking about branching out into different countries and probably getting the magazine translated. Right.

So the project that's closest to coming to fruition, and we have a lot of stuff going on in our pipeline that I can't completely talk about because for competitive reasons. But we have a project that is in Mexico, it's based on Mexico. It's our Spanish edition. So that's our number one priority. And that's already... We have a team in place.

We haven't printed it. We're sourcing out the sponsors right now. But we have people that we're working with on the ground in Mexico. We have our distribution locations laid out. And as soon as we can find all the sponsors, which is something we're actively working on, it's going to go live. So I think that that's probably maybe a month to two months away from happening. Just because right now we're doing production of our third issue. And then right when we roll that issue out, we'll be working.

on the Spanish edition. That's going to be in Mexico. It's going to be, so it'll be... Latin America. And then it's not yet worked out, but we want to have it in Argentina as well. Yeah. The difficulty is that one of the biggest costs for us is shipping, distribution. So we're printing this thing in Mexico.

So how do we get magazines to Argentina from Mexico in a cost-effective way? It's not that feasible. So what we're going to have to do is probably print the magazines in Argentina, but to do that, We're going to need to be able to source enough advertisers that we're doing two different print runs and two different countries in the same language. So I think it'll happen, especially because something that started to occur now is that we have non-Bitcoin companies advertising the magazine. So like let's say I'm Samsung and I want to advertise the Galaxy S5, Android, because our audience is high-end, tech savvy, etc. So as we see, you know, there's only a few hundred Bitcoin companies. there's tens of thousands of tech companies.

So as we have more and more tech companies that want to reach out to the Bitcoin audience, it's going to become feasible for us to get into a lot more market. So after our Spanish edition, our next priority is launching a Chinese edition. So we're in the very early stages of that one comparative to where we are with the Spanish edition. Well, we were just talking to Bobby Lee a while ago,

and he says the media has banned from talking about Bitcoin in China. Right. Yeah, it's a little bit complex. Yeah. So I'm curious, is this a kind of a charity? organization to spread the word about Bitcoin or is it a business? It's a borderline charity. It's not a charity. It is a business. But, you know, we really did it because we just want to grow the community. That's like our number one goal. And I can tell you, you know, we make enough money to be

able to pay our staff and pay all of our bills. That's awesome. But we, we're not, you know, there's really no money going into my pocket. So, and as our, you know, our advertising has gone way up. So now our ad sales are up, you know, almost 200%. So we've taken the excess money and just pumped it back into printing more magazines. So like I said, we're printing 30,000. Now we're printing 45,000. So our goal is, and I might have shared this with you, we've wanted to basically bring a million people into the Bitcoin space just through our product, why Bitcoin?

So to do that, we have to amp up how many magazines that we're printing. We estimate that per magazine we have at least three readers before. it kind of gets to the end of life, especially since our focus is on like coffee tables, etc., you know, a couple people will browse through it, put it back, etc. So right now we have 70,000 magazines in the wild. So after this next print count, we'll have 120,000 magazines in the wild.

Well, since our content is timeless content, it's not news, it's like, you know, what is Bitcoin, how to buy Bitcoin? These magazines, they keep circulating and circulating. So as we increase our print count, I think it's very realistic that by the end of this year, we'll have 300,000 magazines in the wild, getting read by, on average, three people per magazine. We'll have touched a million people. I don't think that's going to translate to bringing a million people in,

but you got to shoot high. Maybe when you get 10 million people or 20 or something, then. Right. So, and we've also kind of thought about doing some interesting things like Bitcoin giveaways to the magazine. So on the cover, we say free Bitcoin inside. And then you go inside and you can redeem, you know, code from a company that's going to give you a dollar, $2 with a Bitcoin. That's not as exciting in the United States, but if we do a Spanish edition, $2 with a Bitcoin, actually, you know, that is worth your time to go and get $2 with a Bitcoin. That might be...

Well, I think even in the U.S. that can be... I think that hurdle to, like, getting their first Bitcoin is big. So if you can just make an account and redeem it versus, you know, get authenticated sending you ID, wait a few weeks and buy some, I think that's great. I think it could really work. Well, and we have a project that's in the pipeline that I specifically cannot talk about, but I will say I think it's going to expand the amount of people that we can reach,

and it's going to make Bitcoin seem much more accessible to the average person in terms of to stay up to date about what's going on with Bitcoin. It will require you to, you know, like think about like this. How many people watch C-SPAN? I don't know if you're even familiar with C-SPAN. It's like the... The parliamentary channel. Right.

in the United States, and it's like interviews, and it's very fact-based, Zilch ratings. All right. How many people watch MTV News or, you know, VH1 News, a ton of people, or TMZ, the gossip site? Unbelievable numbers of people are reading that. So we want to create a means for people to get educated about Bitcoin that's more accessible to them, less C-SPAN, more, you know, MTV News. And have you thought about different distribution methods, like digital, app,

flipboard, that kind of stuff. So right now, the reason that we're doing a print publication is because our audience is not actively seeking us out. We're trying to find them. So, you know, in Bitcoin, you have like push and pull transactions. Well, we consider ourselves like push marketing. Yeah. Okay.

And so a website is more like pool marketing. So I don't want to say too much. Like I said, we have some plans to expand into the digital space. but for why Bitcoin the magazine, the model makes sense for it to be in print. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think that, like you say, having those magazines in the wild and having to be kind of like a push approach is definitely going to do a lot more impact,

have a lot more impact than a flipboard. We actually, one of the Lamborghinis that was bought in Bitcoin was bought because somebody found our magazine in a Lamborghini dealership and then went and started seriously investing into it and then turn around and bought the Bitcoin or bought the Lamborghini from the location they found the magazine. So, yeah, I mean, we know it's working. We're hearing stories like that all the time, but it's just, you know, it's a lot of work. Well, David. Well, thanks a lot for talking to us again. Thank you for having me on.

I'm sure we're running to you again. Yeah. My name is Nicholas Carey, and I'm the CEO of blockchain.Info. And we're the world's most popular Bitcoin website, and we also have. of the world's largest wallet service that's web-based. So we have over 1.6 million users. And interestingly, everyone at blockchain is paid in Bitcoins. We're a 100% Bitcoin-based business.

And we've conducted the world's first two acquisitions in Bitcoin as well. Cool. Did you have any problems running like a pure Bitcoin business? Did anyone try to force a bank account on you? No. And so far we haven't had too many troubles. Of course, there are certain things we can't pay for yet at the last mile with Bitcoin. But those are some of the reasons we build the service.

and products we do. So earlier this year, we launched a very simple merchant app, and it's been incredibly successful. Thousands of companies around the world are accepting Bitcoin through our merchant app. And we advocate everywhere we travel to to get restaurants and people to start accepting Bitcoin. So for the same reasons that the financial system has frictions in it to establish businesses for a lot of entrepreneurs, running a Bitcoin-only business is easier and faster. And for all the same reasons that the financial system has troubles with 100% Bitcoin-based business, all the things get easier. So for us, it means we can pay salaries more quickly. It means we can conduct acquisitions faster. It means that we can reduce all the frictions

in our own accounting. So as far as I know, and tell me if I'm wrong here, but you're the first Bitcoin business, 100% Bitcoin business. Are you, I mean, are the companies coming to you to get advice on how to do this? Because, you know, this is becoming sort of a thing now. Yeah. So I think there'll be more 100% only. Bitcoin businesses, especially in the space where entrepreneurs are going to have difficulties probably finding banking relationships. So there's a better way, and there's an option in front of us today. You could just choose to be a Bitcoin company. You could do your fundraising in Bitcoin. You could solicit the community for help with your seed round and things like that. So I think

especially going forward, you'll see more companies choose this pathway because it gives them additional financial freedom and they run their companies. So in terms of the kind of blockchain of the blockchain business, or the blockchain business, where do you see that going? I mean, the wallet service is free, right? So are you, I don't know there's a zero block kind of trading thing that's paid? Yeah, so blockchain really consists of three main divisions effectively. So it's blockchain.com. The search engine.

Right now, the wallet is really closely tied to that, and we're going to divorce it. We're going to launch blockchain.com as a new super consumer-friendly wallet service. And that's something we hope to roll out later this summer. So it's a new UI and an HTML5 version of it. So if you're on your iPhone, you'll be able to send and receive and use your Bitcoins anywhere you are. And the last piece is Zero Block, which is not only a news system, which you can download on your iPhone or Android, but it's also a multi-exchange trading platform. So this means it's a user interface in front of some of the world's most popular and largest exchanges

so that you can execute an order on a consolidated order book. And that's a finance tool. So we strongly believe if we can help people make money that we can charge for that type of service. And right now that's only $20 a month. And we're trying to build that subscriber base. Our revenue model for the rest of the services is very simple. It's ad-based. Blockchain is one of those popular websites in the world of any kind,

and definitely in Bitcoin. So with all that attention, we can direct people to high-quality services and partnerships where they can go spend their Bitcoins or buy Bitcoins. So some of our partners include companies like Gift, which is really popular in the United States. You can buy gift cards and shop on Amazon or Walmart or Whole Foods. And then other exchanges and things like BT. TC Jam, Cracken, and some of other partners.

So that's how we pay for the parade today. We want to continue to provide free services for consumers. This is huge for us. All of our APIs are free. We make enormous investments in infrastructure. And for us, building software that's easier to use and Bitcoin is our core mission. Now what about on the wallet side?

Do you anticipate bringing in some premium services like a credit card, Bitcoin credit cards, something like that? So for the time being, we are 100% focused on just improving the user experience there. Longer term, there's a lot of different vision for where that can go in terms of maybe having integrated apps or premium services. For us, we're more interested in making sure that the core experience is simple, easy to use, and free.

And that's kind of the promise of Bitcoin. So we're going to bring that and deliver it to people via web browser. That's what's our core competency. And there'll be other services in the space that try and do much more secure, systems potentially with offline cold storage and complicated setups. And that'll work for certain types of Bitcoin users for us. We really want to make adoption a widespread thing that we're invested in. So we're really interested to make sure that's easy to use on mobile anywhere in the world,

basically for free. So there's a lot of competitors know in the wallet space, and a lot of them have raised large amounts of money. Are you also thinking of raising venture capital, or do you think you're going to need that to compete with them? This is a question we get asked a lot. And I think for us, we've done everything we have so far at blockchain without any growth capital whatsoever. So this is one of neat and interesting narratives in the space is that the old way of doing things,

building an executive team, structuring a company with all these complicated jurisdictions, and going out and building out a ridiculous legal team to kind of sort out what your agreements look like. And all of that capital goes into doing things that don't actually focus on your product. and for us, we've done everything on a bootstrap budget, and we've maintained a preeminent position so far doing that. Now, the real question is, has everything we done, is that product, is that service offering, is that trust going to be there with the next 10 million or 100 million users?

And I'm not naive to think that we can rest on our laurels. Like, we're going to constantly reinvest and innovate, and we're not raising money right now. We're going to not close doors to opportunities, though. And if we feel that it would help us grow faster, or if there were things we could do, that's something we'd explore. Of course, it would have to be a venture capitalist that invest in Bitcoin.

It would have to be a company that believes in Bitcoin. But think about that for just a second. If a year ago today, you're a venture capitalist and someone shows up and says, I've got this great idea, but I need $10,000 in cash to do it. Or someone else shows up and says, hey, I've got this great idea, but I'd like to do the investment and take it in Bitcoin. Imagine if you had made that investment. You would have made a much better bet by placing that value in Bitcoin

and giving it to the entrepreneur instead of cash. And the reason for that is with the rise of value in Bitcoin, the person you made that investment now had potentially 5 or 6x more value to distribute and innovate with. And that's why a Bitcoin-only investment in a Bitcoin company is so much more compelling than an opportunity made in cash. And it's still surprising you haven't seen more of those moves. But I think as people start to study the math on those and get more comfortable with Bitcoin in general, that's the way the whole industry will move.

Cool. Well, thanks very much. Thank you. So we hope you enjoyed this episode about the Bitcoin 2014 conference. If you liked our coverage, please consider tipping us at epicenterbidcoin.com slash tips. You can also subscribe to a weekly newsletter at epicenterbidcoin.com slash newsletter. And tune in next week for more interviews and coverage of Bitcoin 2014.