Epicenter - Learn about Crypto, Blockchain, Ethereum, Bitcoin and Distributed Technologies - Alan Meckler, Andreas Schildbach, Elie Chevignard, Hubert Gertis, Josh Zerlan, Moe Adham, Philippe Rodriguez, Rafael Rodriguez, Stanislav Wolf, Thomas Hessler & Tuur Demeester: Inside Bitcoins Berlin 2014 – Conference Floor Interviews

Episode Date: February 26, 2014

This episode is part of our coverage of the Inside Bitcoins conference which took place in Berlin February 12 and 13, 2014. This episode features a first set of interviews we did over the course of the 2-day event. You’ll hear the many conversations we had with entrepreneurs, developers, investors and the conference organizers. Thank to all the people who agreed to talk to us! Topics covered in this episode: Alan Meckler of Mediabistro – twitter.com/alanmeckler Thomas Hessler of UFOstart – twitter.com/ThomasHessler Andreas Schildbach, developer of the Android Bitcoin Wallet – twitter.com/schildbach Elie Chevignard, freelance journalist – twitter.com/Elie__ Philippe Rodriguez of Avolta Partners – twitter.com/philrod Hubert Gertis of gertis.media – twitter.com/hubert Rafael Rodriguez organizer of the Texas Bitcoin Conference – texasbitcoinconference.com Stanislav Wolf of bitcoin-konferenz.de – twitter.com/bit_stan Moe Adham of BitAccess – twitter.com/moeadham Josh Zerlan of Butterfly Labs – butterflylabs.com Tuur Demester, investor and economist – twitter.com/tuurdemeester This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/eb-inside-bitcoins-berlin-02

Hi, I'm Brian Fabian Crane and I'm here with Sebastian Coutier. On February 12 and 13, we attended the Inside Bitcoin's conference in Berlin. After two months of podcasting together, it was the first time we met in person. We had lots of fun, interviewing many people from the Bitcoin community, attending interesting talks and capturing Bitcoin at this unique moment in its history. This is one of a series of episodes about this conference. This episode features a first set of eight reviews we did over the course of the two-day event. You'll hear the many conversations we had with entrepreneurs, developers, investors, and the conference organizers.

We were able to capture their enthusiasm and excitement, as they gave us their impressions on the conference, as well as their outlook on Bitcoin's future. Enjoy. I'm Alan Meckler. I'm the chairman and CEO of Media Bistro. and among other things, we produce trade shows around the world, including the one that we're at today inside Bitcoins in Berlin. And when did Media Bistro become involved with Bitcoin? The first event for Inside Bitcoins took place in New York City in July of 2013.

And what prompted that... that involvement with Bitcoin, I guess. One of the editors who works for me got very interested in the whole concept of Bitcoin, and I didn't know anything about it. It took me a while to understand exactly what it was or is. And once I realized that it was complicated and most people didn't understand what was going on, I thought there might be an opportunity to train people or teach people around the world, and thus the idea of starting a seminar series.

So how did you go from having interest to thinking that there's a real potential also to put on a large scale of conferences? In my career, I've done many events over the years in the 1990s. It created a trade show, the first large trade show in the world for the Internet called Internet World. And then in 2000, I created another show

which became very large on search engines called search engine strategies. So I've had a career of finding paradigm shift and or cutting-edge topics and hopefully being first to the market and then expanding from one to many around the world. As I said, I've had experience in putting organizations together to help run shows like that. And so over the last year, two years since the first Bitcoin conference happened in New York, there's been quite a few more that have sprung up all around the world. Where do you see this going? Like where do you see inside Bitcoin in two years, three years?

Well, this year alone, we'll probably do nine around the world, maybe 10. In fact, just yesterday we decided to do Israel, Singapore, we're already in Hong Kong obviously in New York Las Vegas here we are in Berlin we're doing it in London and we'll probably

announce Paris and Milan sometime in the next few weeks cool I live in France so I'll be looking forward to the Paris conference so if you compare the sort of atmosphere and the people here at the Bitcoin conference

with what you saw in the beginning of the SEO or the internet world, how would you compare those groups or the type of people? This is very similar to the beginnings of the commercial internet in 1993 and 1994, where there was significant confusion just on the basic way in those days how the internet might operate and how one communicated. And here we have the Bitcoin and how that operates and how that operates and how you use it and how you buy it.

But what's really exciting is the number of people from different walks of life in industries who are seeking out an opportunity to create a new venture. And I think that this business with the Bitcoin is so significant and there's so many services that can be created around it that I see thousands of businesses being created in many different countries. So yeah, you spoke about the contrast to when the Internet first started expanding in the early 90s. Do you think that, because then we were building infrastructure.

We were building the services and really just the know-how of how the Internet was going to work over the next years. And I don't think at that point we knew that in 20 years from then there would be a Facebook or Twitter. So do you think that the expansion? of Bitcoin, none of that technical infrastructure is there and that kind of social shift that we've had over the last few years, 20 years. So do you think that the rise of Bitcoin will happen much quicker than the Internet did? Or, you know, have to? Oh, yes, because back then it was extremely difficult to just connect to the Internet. And initially, there wasn't a World Wide Web. Don't forget the browser opened up everything so that people could jump from one website to another

with the same protocols. Obviously, what we're seeing with Bitcoin, which is very exciting, is it is a peer-to-peer currency with potentially millions and millions of organizations and individuals participating. So much as we saw a paradigm shift in how we listen to music, we're going to see the same thing. But the financial transatlantic. actions are much wider and greater than what we saw. Plus, people are much more tuned in today on technology than they were back then. I'm curious about the, so what's going to happen with the kind of conference circus, because we had from a very few Bigman conference in a very short time,

now a lot of them, you're alone, are putting on 10 or something this year. So do you think we will have a kind of... conferences taking on a more specialized role or are they just going to become bigger what do you do you think that's going yes no i think more services are developed than the expo part becomes bigger fortunately with our experience and and know how to put on highly well-run and functioning conferences we believe our brand will be the one that larger companies like canc and others will will will say, oh, this is a good series, and we won't bother going to the smaller ones. I know there's a competitive conference, and you may have been to it, but I won't mention the name,

but I know they recently had one in Miami, and there are several people here who were there, and they said the quality of production was very low. You know, it didn't run smoothly. The room wasn't set up properly, and everything. everything was out of sync. I have over 40 years of experience putting on events and have a team to match that. So we make sure that we run a very smooth, professional event. And as I said, we become sort of the marketing arm of a larger Bitcoin company who has a service and wants to offer it around the world because we will be in so many different major cities and countries.

you could plan all your marketing around our series of events. And there's no other one right now that is more than one or two cities, where, as I said, by this year alone we'll probably do nine or ten. Yeah, my name is Thomas Hesler. I'm one of the founders of Zanox, what we did in the past. I'm here at the Bitcoin Conference in Berlin because right now we are looking for startups to invest, especially in the Bitcoin field.

And we are developing a platform for startups. to set up a community, basically, to bring together experts, investors and customers with an entrepreneur. And that's exactly what we see here, and the Bitcoin infrastructure will happen in the, let's say, next generation of crowdsourcing. That's what I was really excited about the Bitcoin. Are you going to integrate Bitcoin into that platform?

Absolutely. That's why I brought my partner to the conference. He is responsible for the technical partner. And yeah, we definitely see the value for startups if you basically replace your equity for colored coins. And so from the first day on, you are basically a public list of company. You don't need to raise cash because your own currency is your cash, which you need to pay your expense, pay your partners and experts and whatever you need. That's interesting because I mean I know some companies are doing that but I've never heard of anyone

sort of using that as a general startup funding model. That's super interesting. Yeah, I mean for us it's really interesting because basically our idea of UFO start was that we try to convince entrepreneurs to have a strong vision as an idea and then convince people joining their team by working for equity. Because only if you really are excited about something, then you take the risk by taking equity. But the problem is it's not easy to handle. It's highly regulated.

And many founders don't have a clue about how to deal with it and to do it. And now with the Bitcoin infrastructure, you have basically everything you need to do it. So, of course, we see the challenge to implement it in our platform that you can easily use it, but I think we are very close. That's what we have to figure out. How are you going to deal with regulations? That's a topic for himself. We have to take care about that, for sure, but we think and we see it's much easier to do it in that way than it was before.

Okay. So I guess I would call you a specialist of building platforms, You built Xanax, and now you're building this platform. What got you involved in Bitcoin, which is so different from when you were doing before? Yeah, I mean, I spent the last four years in Silicon Valley. So I've seen probably 2,000 pitches of different startups. And maybe two years ago, the Bitcoin topic became more and more visible. So it was just a matter of time that it grabbed my attention.

And finally, when I came back to Berlin, then I was completely sold, especially after joining your meetup. When I heard the first time we want colored coins, I was like, wow, that's what we are looking for, yeah, all the time. So what's your impression of the state of startup, some Bitcoin activity in Berlin? I'm actually excited about the small crowd here at the Bitcoin conference, because, because I thought it's bigger already. I mean, probably the biggest crowd of Bitcoin fans is still in the United States. So I think Silicon Valley is one of the hub spots and Austin, Texas. Another one.

But I'm impressed that Berlin already catches up and could bring that crowd, even though I'm really missing all the startups guys from Berlin. So there are almost no investors, there are almost no leaders of the startup community here. So I see that there is no connection between the startup community and the Bitcoin community so far. No, that's absolutely true. That was actually one of the reasons why I started its meetup, and that's one of the things. I don't know how successful it's been with that, but that's one of the things I hope that we'll be able to achieve in the future. So, I mean, it shows us that we are really ahead of the wave.

I mean, we are really, that's the front line here. of this new industry and I'm proud of being part of it. So it's really exciting. I'm Andreas Schildbach. I'm the author of the Bitcoin Wallet Android app. And tell us about it. Well, it's an app which you can use to take your bitcoins on the road. I mean, really have it with you in your pocket

and have a decentralized way of managing your business. good coins. Cool. I actually use that app, so thank you. Thank you for using it. You're welcome. And so when did you develop it? I started 2011, I think March or something like that. I was planning, I mean, the story is I went to Room 77, which is a restaurant in Berlin, and I went there with my notebook and paid there, and it was just very, very, very, very, very. Horrific. Horrific, yeah. You had to enter your address by hand.

And I immediately decided I need a mobile app where I can scan a QR code and all is done. But there was no Java. I mean you, Android you need to develop in Java Android apps. There was no Java. All was C and I don't know C. So I waited, basically waited for something to happen. And then Mike Huron really really. I used Bitcoin J, this Bitcoin Java library.

And I took that immediately and wrote a UI around it. So the UI that we see in the Bitcoin client for Android is the UI that you designed? Yeah, you can say that. I mean, it's very much the Android style guide says how it has to look. There's not much. And so all the other wallets that look like the Bitcoin wallet, So the Dogecoin, light coin, feather coin, they forked your UI essentially. They forked the app.

I mean, they forked Bitcoin J because they need to implement the logic for these altcoins. And also they forked the Bitcoin wallet app. So what are your kind of next projects with the Android wallet? What are you working on? I just released a version which has the payment protocol. That's Bib 70, 71. me too. Yeah, I mean, what will happen is that... So you'll be able to receive messages and you won't see the address, but...

The payment protocol is the channel between the payer and the payee, so the customer and the merchant, for example. If you make a payment, then you send the payment directly to the merchant. So because the merchant can also put it in the merchant, you can also put it in the merchant. to the Bitcoin network and then you get a receipt for having made the payment. So essentially, the payment request is also signed. If you go to court, I mean if you... A dispute. Yeah, if there's a dispute about did the merchant get the money,

then you can prove with the payment request with the sign payment request and the blockchain that you have paid. So this is coming in the new version? That's already in the version that rolled out since yesterday. It's version 3, 3, 4. So do you have that on... Are there any point-of-sale systems that already utilized the PIM protocol now? Or is it just because you need it on both sides?

No. Yeah, there's online payment processors that implemented right now. I can't make any announcements because they have to do it. There's Bitcoin Q2. QT who implements it. There's also one guy I can't remember his name who's doing an NFC

payment terminal or something like that which you can use and he also tends to support it. I think everybody will support because it's a PIP standard it's very huge. Are you kind of a hand sir? Most

is it already now in QT in the current release? It's calming in an end-runner. Yeah, I'm very early, I'd say. But on the other hand, we talked enough about the protocol. I mean, it's in development since one and a half years or something like that. Do you have any other projects you work now? The next thing that will come after that is HD wallets,

BIP 32, I guess, which allows you to generate all your addresses from just one, seed. So the wallet doesn't un-back-up itself if you use multiple addresses. So this is coming in one of the next versions of Bitcoin Jet? I don't know when it will come, maybe in summer or something like that. Mike is working on that, and if he is finished, I will, I mean, at some time I will start working on the UI for that. Okay. The seed

Funsect is already implemented in Armory, for example. What's taking so long for that to come into Bitcoin2T or some of these negative clients? Good question. The early implementations of that are not compatible to each other,

so a standard has to be formed, but just PIP 32. And still the standard is not completely discussed. I don't know. I mean, there are still some variables that need to be found. So we need to check if, for example, mobile devices don't have much processing power,

and you probably need much more processing power for implementing that standard. We, yeah, it's not easy. Yeah, I was wondering about that. So is the backup seat from Armory when you use the ASEe wallet? To restore, you have to use Armory. Right? You can't use that with any other. implementation? I think it's not interchangeable right now, but it will be. So in future you can put your seat into another wallet and get the same addresses and see the same balance. So I ran into a fellow Frenchie.

Hi. So tell us who you are and what you're doing here. I'm E. Chevinniar. I'm what am I'm my show v. doing here? I'm not here for any company. I'm just here by curiosity with a press badge. So I'm going to write about the event. And more generally, I try to write about Bitcoin or make some talks or whatever to explain and make sure I understand myself the concepts because I believe that Bitcoin is, I guess, the most important thing in the tech ecosystem that happened in 2013 in the sense that it became very popular.

And I'm a victim of the fear of missing out. So I want to make sure that I understand everything with Bitcoin, how the protocol works, and where it might go, what are the opportunities, et cetera. So I'm really here because I'm curious. The strange thing is that I didn't meet any other French fellow. So there are no French, although we are just

a one-hour flight from Paris but no French here it's a bit sad and that's it cool and are you involved in any projects specifically no in this we were having this conversation a few minutes ago

I'm really hesitating right now because I'm kind of planning my future I'm in the process of choosing what I'm going to do in the coming month and I think that I should get involved in something in Bitcoin, but at the same time, should I do something full-time or not?

I mean, as an advice, I would say that it is really the time to get involved in some way. So right now my way of getting involved is understanding and explaining it to others. It's good for myself and it's good for the whole community. And with this key message that Bitcoin is not about, the ups and downs. It's not about the currency, etc., but more about the protocol and all the technologies that can be built on it. And I think

that this is very important because mainstream journalists haven't been doing this work. So this is my way of getting involved and maybe with this understanding I would go one step further at some point, but I'm not even sure. I'm just yeah, evangelizing, holding a few bitcoins and that's just my involvement.

in some money. Cool. Thanks, Eddie. Thanks. Good talking. Okay, so I managed to find another French guy here at Bitcoin Berlin. So just tell me who you are and what you're doing here. So my name is Philippe Rodriguez.

I'm the president of an amene boutique for La Volta Partners. It's a fundraising company for startups in France and in Europe. What's your involvement with Bitcoin? with Bitcoin? Well, I'm a passionate of Bitcoin as an individual first. And I meet a lot of people in France who are turning this idea into reality. So that's why I'm so involved with Bitcoins. And obviously we haven't seen very many French people here.

I think you and Eid are the only two and I'm sort of half, I guess you could say have French. Why is it that there are not so many French people here? And is it because they don't, perhaps, perhaps they don't know about the conference, or maybe it's a different ecosystem, or maybe the Bitcoin ecosystem isn't so developed in France? No. What are your thoughts on that? Well, first of all, the ecosystem in France is really low at this time.

It will grow very fast, but nowadays we can say that it's really low. We can count something like 10 startups or projects that are really good, good technology, which is really slow because in Germany we count like 16-hour startups in Bitcoin's and more than 200 in the US. So I guess it's just that we are really slow to start, but as soon as we start, we are really quick. And what are some of the interesting projects coming out of Paris or other cities in France? Well, we have seen very good Bitcoin exchange first. And this is really important because it is a point of entry in the market.

And a good thing about wallets and cryptographic applications and everything in the value chain of Bitcoin that we need to promote. and maybe to have technology that can be exported globally. And so you told me about a project you're working on, which is... You told me about a project you're working on, which is the French Bitcoin Foundation. Yeah. Do you want to tell us about that? Well, I'm very excited to gather now. All the people, all the ecosystem in France, because as the ecosystem is really small,

we really need to be united, and this is what we are doing. are doing. But the good news is that the more we talk about it, the more people are coming seeing, I want to join, and I think we'll be a lot of people by the end of the month. And so you're leaving early tonight to go to the first Paris startup meetup? Yep. What do you expect you'll see there? Well, we will have three startups that will show that new products. We are gathering like 80 people in Paris. It will be, the venue is really cool because it will be in the startup 42 in Paris,

which is a good venue for this kind of thing. And there is like 100 people in Paris tonight. And the conference will be live streamed that shows that we have a lot of interest nowadays in France. Cool. I'm looking forward to going down to Paris for one of the meetups. So I founded the Hill startup. our Bitcoin Talks in LIL meetup. And we brought in about 20 people at our first meetup last week.

I've seen that, yeah. Yeah, so what do you think some of the collaboration? Maybe that's been happy with the Lidt startup scene and the Pair start? Absolutely. 100 person. It's so close, it's very close, and it's cool to go to Lille. So 100 people. Cool.

All right, thanks for talking to me. My name is Hubert Gertes, and I'm, working a concept which might be called collector and is working with digital assets, transfer the digital assets. Could you elaborate? Could you elaborate? Yes. Should I? You're not under IDA or something like that?

No, I'm not on IDEA. It just has been a long day, and I'm already having a hard time to speak coherently, but I might try. Eventually, it's what a concept. If you look at things which are going on besides Bitcoin as a currency and besides Bitcoin as a money store or a store of value, it's many things which can be done with the blockchain or any other blockchain by using it as a platform for completely different services. Like Namecoin would be one of the first examples or all the things.

Mastercoin is after or the pitchers people are after or color coin people are after. And I would be something like a potential user of one of the services with my service. Because what we want to create is an environment. Let's take one step back. Every Bitcoin user is complaining about central bankers creating value out of thin air. And maybe rightly so, maybe not. I don't care, actually, because there's a certain group of people

who always created value out of thin air. And also created people, artists, musicians. They start with a blank canvas. Yeah. They start with a blank canvas. And, I mean, look at a Bob Ross video, which is maybe bad art, but it's very good.

way to follow the process. They start with a blank canvas and they create something of value, of emotional value, of a value which, if it's an open source artist, it's put it like that, and good doing some total, he might even add some commercial value to other people. But if you look at how the Internet works, essentially this kind of value does not transfer into financial value anymore. Because if you take any creation, you just put it on the internet and it's there indefinitely. You cannot even talk about original copies anymore. It's an infinite number of originals or copies

which essentially are inherently worse less because not scars anymore, not like Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a wonderful example of the power of Star City. And the real power of Bitcoin is the potential of unleashing this power of digital. scarcity into completely different areas, non-currency related areas, like

the arts, like music, like open-sure software. And this is where I think most of the innovative stuff happening in Bitcoin, that's going to be happening in Bitcoin over the last two years, it's going to be in the space. The other apps, you know, outside of course. Definitely so. Because

I mean, who's caring about currency central bankers and some Bitcoin people? That's definitely not enough. Because this leaves maybe like 7 to 8 billion people outside of the system, people care about completely different things. And bringing the power of Bitcoin and the power of digital stars in people to everybody else, just what we should be after.

My name is Rafael. I'm from Colombia, South America, and I decided to go to the most happening place in the United States, which is Austin, Texas, to get Bitcoin. going. I co-founded the Texas Bitcoin Association and the Texas Bitcoin Conference. The conference has grown exponentially just like the Bitcoin itself. We're going to have a hackathon with over $1 million in prizes and contracts.

We have the first Bitcoin concert. We call it the Bitcoin cert. and yeah our conference is the 5th and 6th of March right before South by Southwest starts in Austin so we're going for like the Twitter effect right Twitter blew up in 2007

because of South by Southwest we're going to make sure that Bitcoin blows up because of the Bitcoin conference and what we're doing you know and the Bitcoin Sir and the Hackathon and yeah this is a collaborative effort of the whole Bitcoin community, it really is.

So how many people are you expecting? At least 2,000 people. Now, keep in mind that Miami, Miami was expecting 400, and they got around 2,000. So if you get five times, this is many of you expecting, you can, you'll get 10,000, right?

You know, I think we'll cross that bridge when we get there, right? And I wouldn't be surprised if we get there. And, yeah, we're very excited, yeah. So who's playing at your Bitcoinsert? This is the first time I've heard this. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Did you coin the term Bitcoinsert? I think that was a group effort. I don't know if any one person came up with it. Seems obvious, right? Yeah, Big Quints. The Big Coins are? Yeah, yeah. Miss Malachi will be featuring.

Actually, she came to us. She's a Grammy nominee, artist. Tatiana Morose, Jordan Page, and also there is an awesome band, the Eric Tesmer band, and also we have Nagavilia. I think that's how you support. She's an East Indian singer. So what's about yourself? What's your main activity?

Is this, I guess at the moment conference is going to be the only thing you do? Right. Do you have other projects? Well, the real reason why I came back to the United States to Texas was because in Colombia, I felt very lonely. I mean, I was the only Bitcoin guy that I knew of. And the Bitcoin exchanging Colombia, bitmarket.co, I called the guy, and a guy answered in Germany speaking in German, you know, with a little bit in English. So I'm like, what's going on here? And I figured, you know what I should just go to Austin.

really get things going there so that when I go back to South America, I'm set with the good connections that I need in order to provide adaptability and liquidity. How is the Bitcoin community in Austin? How vibrant is it? In Austin? Extremely vibrant. Our meetup group is very much of an Austinite culture. By that I mean it's very entrepreneurial.

People are very open to share. and to collaborate and mastermind ideas. We come together once a week and we have at least 50 people coming on a regular basis. You see, Austin, before I got there, there were two meetups, Bitcoin meetups going on.

We joined forces and now there's one. And the Texas Bitcoin Conference grew out of that grassroots effort, which is beautiful. It really did grow out of that meetup. and a lot of it I think is I think I attribute it to the up grassroots and entrepreneurial nature of the city and the culture itself right so yeah it's just this is just amazing you know just to see what's happening cool well that sounds

very exciting so if if people want to go to the conference where can I when is it taking place and where can they find out about it you can go to Texas TexasBitcoinconference.com. Again, that's TexasBitcoinconference.com. It's happening the 5th and 6th of March. South by Southwest starts the 7th of March through the 16th. So if you're already coming to Austin for the Texas Bitcoin Conference, I recommend you stay until 16th.

And watch Bitcoin blow up in front of you. And if you're coming from South by Southwest, come early for the Bitcoin Conference. Exactly. Exactly, exactly. Well, thanks for talking to us, and good luck for the conference. Thank you very much, guys. And you have five times more people than you're expected.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a collaborative effort, you know. It's a collaborative effort of the whole community. And that's literally, everyone is welcome to chime in and bring ideas as to how best to blow Bitcoin up during these events. Oh, yeah, man. Oh, for sure, man. We go, we go.

Awesome. I'm Stanislavre. I'm organizing the meetups in the Cologne, Germany. I also organized the first Bitcoin conference in Germany last year. And now you're planning a big event on September 1st and 2nd. And where is this event taking place? It will be in the former German Bundestag, the former German parliament. In Bonn, it's a great location.

There are 1,200 seats, and we want to fill every one of them. We're going now on a PR tour. into all the Bitcoin meetups in Germany, where people going to Melbourne to the meetup, to San Francisco the conference. We want to talk personally to every Bitcoin fan on this planet. You want to get everyone to join us on the World Bitcoin Forum taking place in Bonn, Germany. So can you tell us a bit more about what's the conference going to be like? Who are you targeting?

Is it going to be German-English? There will be one gem track. We want also discuss German topics, German that are like, will only be in Germany, but all other tracks will be in English. There's a lot of room. There's a big plenary chamber. There are several other halls, big lobby. So we'll have several tracks, one track for developers, finance track, the main track, of course.

And the funny thing is because it's the former parliament, there's all the infrastructure there. serve even booths for translators. That's amazing. Everybody can put their headphones on, yeah? It's just a question of the finance, yeah, but we want to finance it, and we want to have translators sitting there and translate it. It will be great, yeah?

I think that's a fantastic idea. If you could have a live translation and streaming online, that would be amazing. We can also cover it. I won't be there. Why not? The great thing about this, if you want to really,

we call it the World Bitcoin Forum. They want to bring Bitcoin to the mainstream. There's like the big, what's the, not the hawk? Gundas Adler? The eagle. The eagle, the symbol of Germany is there

in the background. It's really a special feeling of history. Space visualization. Yeah, definitely. We want to bring with a bit mainstream and discuss. And it's also going to be very cheap conference, right? Because I remember I was at the Euro conference last year and it was lots of fun and excellent conference and it was completely free, which was amazing. So I think this one is also going to be very economically now.

Definitely. Our tickets will start at the 200 euro, but we will also provide coupons. So everybody, if you are in part of a meetup, for example, we will get the coupons. So you can get in cheaper and you want to discriminate the regular payment system. So if you pay with Bitcoin you get in for cheap. If you pay with credit card you have to pay double. Why not? I like it, yeah. And can you tell us about the World Bitcoin Forum? So what's that organization that you've created?

It's basically you want to bring everybody together, everybody in the Bitcoin space. So we choose that name world Bitcoin forum for the conference. And so that organization will organize and host conferences going forward? Are you planning on public events? It depends on the manpower. Right. Because now we are two of us who really are the core of the organization. Then they have around 10 to 20 people who help us organize.

We also do PR for us and talk with people. But it's really complicated. We don't want to make money. So we want to make a different than inside Bitcoin, for example, they charge higher prizes. Don't deliver the best results, I think. But the reason for that is because they have to make

money. We don't have to make money. We want to make the best event possible. That's our goal. So my name is Mo Adam. I'm one of the co-founders of Bit Access. We're a Canadian corporation based in Ottawa, Ontario. We've been recently building, releasing and selling our

Bitcoin kiosks, which will accept cash and send Bitcoins instantly to a customer. Was that right? You raised $10 million? I saw some posts somewhere. That is a post that was made. We're a private corporation, and so we don't discuss our private financing. But there's a lot of investor interests in our company.

We are focused on releasing the best products right now, and not on releasing press releases about money or taking pre-orders for products that don't exist. Our number one focus is on releasing great products. How many, I think you're calling VTMs, How many of those have you implemented so far? So I think there are four right now live on the planet. So that would be in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and in Geneva, in Switzerland.

There's a few more going online. There should be another online this week in Canada, actually. And so you've been doing a lot of that implementation in Canada? Yes. Because of the geographical advantage, obviously? For both regulatory perspective and from a geographic perspective, Canada is a really great place for it. It's also a great test bed for it. expanding into international markets. We recently launched in Geneva which taught us a lot

about going international. Are you guys selling the APMs or are you operating them? We do not operate ATMs. We sell them to customers who have strong banking relationships and that can manage cash because that's the biggest thing with operating these releases. If you don't have a cash management strategy you're not going to be able to operate one of these at its full attention. Yeah, you need a lot of working capital no you need to be able to manage cash I mean if you're running an ATM what you mean and there's a run up in the price of bitcoin there's going to be a lot of people running to your machine to fill it up with cash and then you're going to have all this cash you're going to have to have

a good exchange relationship and a good banking relationship to be able to manage that and if the point price drops you're going to need to be able to fill the machine up with cash rather quickly to meet the demand also are you have btams one way or both ways so the ones that are currently live or prototype units they're one way we're happy to say that we have a two-way unit that just came off the production line in Ottawa, and so those will be released into the wild really simple. So you're building them in Ottawa? Yep, we have welders in Ottawa who are putting the machines together, building really nice, strong boxes for the cash and everything. We're very vertically integrated. This is a machine that was designed for

Bitcoin. This is not us taking a kiosk off of the shelf and putting it on the market. So how many are you planning to launch? We have orders for a very, very large number, and so we're just working on making sure that we can fulfill those current orders. And that's why we're not advertising very much in seeking many customers, because we do have a very strong customer base already. And so if there are interested parties, we encourage you guys to contact us.

But I'm not going to release numbers because there's been a lot of promises in the Bitcoin world that have been fulfilled. And so we're really focusing on just hitting strategic objectives right now. That is going international very quickly and having the best products on the market. You spoke about regulation, and how regulation in Canada is quite favorable to Bitcoin.

What are the sort of hurdles that you've read into in other countries in the U.S. Well, like I said, we only sell to customers. So when we say regulatory, we say, where can we find customers that have the correct regulatory framework set up? And so there are some customers in the U.S. who do appear very close to having that. But right now, we are only selling to customers where we have validated that they will be able to operate the machine

without getting in trouble. I mean, in Canada, we're pretty confident that all of our customers are compliant. In Switzerland, we did a good review with some lawyers to make sure that they are compliant. I think that there are some certain countries like the U.S. where it's not obvious. And that's why we're really looking for the perfect customers to operate. Who are your customers typically? Is there a typical customer or is that point very? Well, I mean, a typical customer for us, somebody who's been involved in Bitcoin for some time

and understands the implications of what they're doing. and who typically has a business that is cash-related already so that they understand the implications that they have a banking relationship set up. Or Bitcoin Exchange, in which case they have a very valid model for operating in ATR. Cool.

Well, thanks very much. Thanks a lot, guys. Thanks. Do you want to talk about Coinbox there? Well, I can tell you about Coinbox really quickly. So Coinbox right now is probably the easiest way to accept Bitcoin and a point-to-sale environment. It's a very basic app.

the Android App Store right now. Apple, unfortunately, has refused us access to their App Store, so I'm sorry to all of your Apple users. We're working on mitigation policies right now. But it's really, right now we have a point-to-sale terminal. It's easiest way to accept Bitcoin on the planet, in our opinion. It's a market leader. It's used in over 20 countries on five continents already. We have lots of shops or getting back to us asking for suggestions on how to accept Bitcoin. And we've built this really for the typical average user who's saying, I want to I want to accept Bitcoin, but I'm not ready to replace my current point-of-sale terminal. I just want to be able to accept Bitcoin really quickly.

This is built for you and your employees so you can get them up and running instantly and securely. Thanks, Mo. We're going to let you get to me. Yeah, yeah. Thanks. I'm good to see you here. My name is Josh Zerlin, and I'm with Butterfly Labs. And what we're looking at here is our BitSafe, which is our hardware wallet.

And it's a secure hardware wallet that you can use as your, cold storage or your warm storage, but you can also take it with you if you want. It has a camera built in so you can send and receive Bitcoin transactions. They'll have a Bluetooth module to allow you to sync up the transactions and everything. It uses an E-ink screen, which gives you great battery life. We're estimating a one to two week recharge window for the device, depending on how often you use it. And it'll be a great way to secure your Bitcoin. Are you using HD wallets for this? No, this will be an all open source implementation,

and we're basically using, we're working with a couple of developers that were developing an open source wallet. We basically heard of the project long, and once we're done with it, what we're releasing back in the open source community. Can you back up the piece? Yes.

When you first, it's a deterrent. Doministic wallet. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. First make your wallet, you just make a paper print out of the backup, and then if you ever lose your bit safe, you can just restore it. Oh, yeah, yeah. It's like Electrum in that regard. I'm sorry? It's just like Electrum.

Similar, yeah. Yeah, kind of like Armory. It'll be like Armory's paper wallet. Yeah. Can you tell us about some of the security implementations in this wallet? So it has basically two machines in there, the operating system, which is completely isolated from the key store. and when you want to send a transaction, the operating system will send a request to the key store. The key store will sign the keys or sign the transaction with your private keys and send the request back out.

So the private keys are never exposed to the outside world. And in that case, if the operating system is compromised or there's a bug, it can't get at the private keys. So what about physical security? Like, is there a biometric scanner or something if you lose that? the wallet. On this, no, it will just be a password. It'll be up to 255 character, alphanumeric password. We were going to do a biometric scan, but we weren't, not this first version of it probably won't have it. The second generation probably will. So he has a touch keypad? Yeah, it's a touchscreen. I can understand that from the use case point of view is, you know, I'm not going to

put my life savings on the wallet. I'm going to, as the typical use case is that, hey, I have a desktop. I'm going for a, on a trip, I'll put a hundred bucks in the hardware wallet. When it's depleted, I'll reload it. So I don't see the need. If it's a hundred bucks, you can give it on your phone. Yeah. Yeah, this would be where you would put the bulk of your coins.

Yeah. You may have one for carrying around and one for keeping in your safe. I think the advantage of a device like this over a mobile phone is the battery life. Yes. I was going to say that, because this is purpose-built and bones are not

purpose bills for Bitcoin wallet. Right. You know, the phones aren't nearly as secure either. If you lose your phone, especially if you have a rooted Android or a jailbroken iPhone, they can get access to your bitcoins through that. Whereas this would be much, much harder,

if not impossible, to actually crack it open and get access to the private keys. And I got the Bitcoin wallet on my phone. If I lose it, I lost my money. It's simple as I can back this up. who put the password on and then, I mean, you lose it, you notice it, you can probably transfer money out in time.

The person who, you know the Android Java 1 passing has a flaw in it even now, it's MD5MHR1 side by side and the pin for the phone can be brute closed in like a few minutes. The other problem with the phone is it's stored on the web, so you're trusting your bitcoins to a web wallet. And I don't, I don't, that's terrifying. This is actually on the phone, I think. Oh, is this Andreas's wallet? Okay. A lot of people use blockchain down there.

That scares me a lot. It scares me. Because if the transport is compromised, like in this internet connection, I don't believe it's as a cell. Yeah. So I can see the use case for that. If it was cheap, I would carry it around. How much did you say these we're going to go for?

I'm sorry? How much did you say this we're going to go for? We're going to try to get the price down as low as we can, but the initial generation will probably be around $150. That's pretty affordable. Yeah, it's pretty decent. I would like to have like the... Available worldwide?

I'm sorry? It'll be available worldwide? I'm sorry. It'll be available worldwide? Yes. Okay. Yeah, we'll sell to just same as we sell our mining hardware. So everything but the AT countries will sell to, sell and shift to.

I think this is going to be really fantastic when the price can get down to. $30 or something like that really provide you. Are you taking orders already? No. When is it likely to be? I hope to start shipping it, hopefully by the end of next month, but maybe in the April. Do you have a sign-up list for the people who want your wallet?

Can I put, no. It's private or just on the web? Nothing. We're not doing any pre-orders for it. But do you have a mailing list to say when it gets on the market? Yeah, yes. If you go to our website, you can sign up there. You guys follow me on Twitter

Yeah, we'll put it out on Twitter And on Facebook as well Okay Okay, thanks Josh Yeah, absolutely Cool, thanks very much Yeah, sure Cool, cool

And where do you from And what do you do? I'm from Belgium Cool, yeah We're in Belgium Where from Bruges actually Oh, I like this I'm going there in a few months actually

You live there a couple months? No, no, I said I'm going there in a few months Oh, okay So tell us about what you do. Well, I ran an investment newsletter. I started recommending Bitcoin as an investment quite early on. We also got into Lightcoin and some other Bitcoin-related investments. And personally, I'm also an investor in Coitara, the mining company, and I do some consultancy here and there.

I go to a lot of the Bitcoin conferences. Is this your first Bitcoin conference here in Worldon? In Germany? Yeah. In Germany, it is my first, yeah. Okay. And how do you like it so far? I like it a lot.

I mean, Media Bistro is just, it's a great company. I think they're really, they're really, what they bring is they're really well organized, so they can really have everything go smooth. It's a great crowd. I'm actually surprised, and it's always fun to meet a lot of the European entrepreneurs and see what they're up to.

And, yeah, there's always, like, new, like in Miami, I was also surprised, like lots of new companies, and then here as well, actually. So, yeah, I'm stoked, I'm excited. So how you recommend new things now in your newsletter? Or what's your perspective there on Bitcoin and investing in cryptocurrency? Yeah, I'm thinking about what the next step is. Like, when the Internet was launched, the next step was, okay, applications on the Internet.

And then when we had big networks like Facebook and eBay, and especially Facebook and like Google Android. Then the thing was all about creating applications that click on those networks. So now the question is do we have to focus

on protocols next to Bitcoin or do we have to focus on protocols that are operating already in the blockchain environment, the Bitcoin blockchain? So kind of like Ethereum versus... Yeah, like colored coins but then also just Bitcoin business. that are operating in the blockchain today.

I don't know, like I'm actually not very sure. I think it's going to develop in all directions. I'm less sure than I was a couple months ago about what is going to be the killer app. For the moment, I just like Bitcoin a lot. And I was surprised by Dogecoin. I was surprised. I'm actually really happy how this really...

There's a lot of sophisticated investors that got into Bitcoin and that, including myself, like, felt quite smug, like, oh, you know, we kind of know what's going on and what this market is all about. And then this dogecoin thing happened and almost everybody missed it entirely. And there's a community of 60,000 people on Reddit and the price is going up. And I don't know. Honestly, I'm also a bit dumbfounded. I don't know what's next.

I think it's great and exciting. And maybe it is this cryptocurrency that's going to be. make crypto popular. No? Who knows? Right? Yeah, who knows? Because, I mean, you can give a...

It's very easy to give a thousand doge coins to a friend or a million even. I know. I know. It makes you feel a lot better than if you give 0.003. Yeah. Yeah. I know. I think that's so true.

I think for tipping, this is perfect. And it's also just cool and from this dog, cute dog on it. Right. Well, and I saw this just yesterday. I was looking at the volumes of the doge corn exchanges. It's insane. It's especially going crazy in China. I didn't realize, but in China the volumes are massive. At least from what I could see, yeah.

I mean, and it makes sense, because as far as I know, that's a Chinese dog, right? Is it Japanese, I think. Is it Japanese? Yeah, it's Japanese. I think the Japanese guy owned the dog. Okay. At least an Asian dog then. Yeah.

So what do you most look forward to at the conference here? Well, I always, in general, I always just look forward to talking to the entrepreneurs, like what they're up to, and I just always want to hear. And also, I guess what I'm interested in here also is synergies, like what existing companies are partnering with other companies. I just think in general that's a theme going forward, like to see maybe mergers, acquisitions, but also just a lot more corporations between individuals and companies, that's exciting to me, because that means from the customer perspective

just a more friendly environment, because if everything's integrated, then that's just much more easy to interface with. I want a question, I think you've spent a lot of time in Argentina now, though. Right. So what's your view

on the Bitcoin adoption there? Is there usage as a payment system, for example? Well, it's interesting. duality. On the one hand, it's really easy to get people to understand, like, you know, the meaning of it, but it seems like the actual adoption is not really keeping up with that. Like, it's very easy to get people excited. And at the conferences, there's, I would say, more passion, right? There is more genuine passion about how incredible this technology is beyond just the profit

motive. But then they're challenged in the sense that they are like just internet penetration is not as deep as in the West or just in general technology is not as advanced even though most people have smartphones especially in the metropolitan areas. So but I think yeah we'll see really exciting things going forward. It's also a bit challenging for companies because uncertain sometimes, like what the legal environment really is about. But, I mean, yeah, Bitcoin is going to boom in Latin America, I'm sure about that. We hope you enjoyed this episode about Inside Bitcoin's Berlin. If you liked our coverage of the conference, please consider tipping us at epicenterbidcoin.com

slash tips. You can also subscribe to a weekly newsletter at epicenterbidcom slash newsletters. We really enjoyed providing you coverage of this conference. We're excited about the journey we're on with Epistand of Bitcoin. And we're grateful to have you as our listener.