Epicenter - Learn about Crypto, Blockchain, Ethereum, Bitcoin and Distributed Technologies - Eric Larchevêque, Nicolas Baca & Thomas France: La Maison du Bitcoin in Paris

Episode Date: September 22, 2014

La maison du Bitcoin is a dedicated Bitcoin center located in the heart of ”Silicon Sentier”, which is situated in the 2nd arrondissement of Paris. Founded by entrepreneurs Eric Larchevêque and Thomas France, La maison du Bitcoin is an open space where people are encouraged to walk in and get information about Bitcoin. It also offers a variety of services such as a co-working space for bitcoiners and the ability to purchase Bitcoin over the counter. It’s also the home to meetups, conferences and training seminars. For 10% off the upcoming Euro Bitcoin conference happening on October 8 in Paris, go to EuroBitcoin.org and use the code EPICENTER. Episode links: La Maison du Bitcoin French Bitcoin Association Coinhouse Euro Bitcoin Conference This episode is hosted by Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/040

Hello, welcome to Epicenter Bitcoin, the show which talks about the technologies, projects, and startups driving decentralization and the global cryptocurrency revolution. My name is Sebastian Couture. Today is September 21st, 2014, and thanks so much for joining us on episode 40. So I just got back from about a week-long trip in Paris, and while I was there, I was working out of La Maison du Bitcoin, which is the Bitcoin Center situated in the heart of Paris. And while I was there, I took the opportunity to interview the co-founders of La Maison of Bitcoin, Eric L'Archevequevac and Tomafrance.

and you'll hear that interview in just a minute. So as you may know, I'm working with the French Bitcoin Association to organize the first Francophone Bitcoin conference in Europe, Euro-Bitcoin. It takes place on October 8th at the very prestigious Bibliatech National de France, which is the French National Library. So you've got a very interesting lineup of speakers for this event, from philosophers to economists and politicians who will weigh in and give their opinions on Bitcoin, as well as French Bitcoin entrepreneurs.

So if you want to get the full agenda, you can do that at Eurobidcoin.org, where you can also get your tickets. And we've got a coupon code for 10% off, and that code is epicenter. So if you want to attend, again, it's on October 8th at the Bibliotech National de France, and you can get 10% off with the code epicenter. So I hope you enjoy my interview with Eric Larcheweck and Thomas, co-founders of La Maison of Bitcoin. So I'm here in Paris with Eric Larchevegue and Tomah France, who are the founders of La Mesaum of Bitcoin. Hi guys. Hi, hi, thank you. Thanks for taking the time to come on the shop.

So Eric and Tomah founded the Mesaum of Bitcoin in 2013. So you've been open for... Right now, in fact, we are open for a few months. We started the project last year. The grand opening was in May of this year, May 2014. So it's quite a recent operation. recent operations but since the few months we have had quite a lot of activity here. So could you just briefly introduce yourselves?

Yeah, so I'm Eric Larchevek, I'm 40 years old, I'm engineer and I'm what they call a serial entrepreneur because I have started my first company in 96, almost 20 years ago. And since that I've founded maybe like 10 companies, startups usually in the internet and new technology, but also in different areas like real estate hospitality business in other countries. And I've also been a poker player for one year. So I had the opportunity to do quite different things. And since 2011, I'm back in Paris. I've made startups in the price comparator,

which we sold like one year ago and we started to work on Bitcoin. And so on? I'm 29, I'm also engineer, a little bit of strategic consulting after school and then I partnered with Eric on Prixing. So as he said, it's an app that we developed back in 2011. We raised some money on that concept when we sold it in 2013 to work out on Bitcoin. Investing the money on Bitcoin. So when, so you both started getting involved in Bitcoin around.

2013? Yeah, quite late actually. 2013 and we were very interested but we didn't have time to really work on the technology or to invest ourselves because we were very busy on our project. And when we had some time for us it was sure that

we had to do something on Bitcoin so there was no question asked and we immediately started to say, okay, now we have time, we also have some money because we sold the company so what can we do in Bitcoin and in France because for personal reasons we just wanted to stay in the country and not go abroad.

And so we started to think and to see what was the, how was the ecosystem of the Bitcoin and actually in 2013 it was quite empty. There were only a few companies, maybe only one or two who was operating into the Bitcoin industry. So we thought about it and we said that maybe the first thing that we had to do around Bitcoin was to make a place where we could speak about Bitcoin, where we could have startups working on Bitcoin, and where we could show a different image of the Bitcoin in the media.

And we'll get to that. Maybe we'll talk about the Amazon to Bitcoin afterwards, but I think it'd be interesting to kind of go over the French ecosystem first, because it is quite particular. I mean, I talk to people from all around the world, and I always find that the French ecosystem Bitcoin ecosystem is quite particular. So could you kind of give me your general thoughts on the French Bitcoin ecosystem as it stands now?

What is the state of the French Bitcoin ecosystem in a broad sense? Well, in a few words, we could say it's quite empty. Even if I said in 2013 it was almost completely empty, now it's better there are like a few startups. But if you compare the number of startups working into the Bitcoin ecosystem, the number of startups working even in the mobile payment industry, not related to Bitcoin, then it's almost a total desert. So right now we can say that the community of bitcoins, even users, entrepreneurs,

finance, it's quite small. It's growing because the first meetups that were like maybe one year ago, you had only maybe five persons. And right now in the meetups that we do here or in other places, we can be, let's say, 150. So of course, it's better. But we still have a lot of progress to make. And there is, let's say, a big, big, big way to still have to boost this ecosystem. But basically we can see that there's more and more projects starting on Bitcoins.

We organized Akaton in June of this year and we were quite surprised to see that there were something like 60 people on 14 projects. So basically there's some people willing to do to start. Yeah, we were surprised because we were afraid that no one would show up actually and yeah 60 developers and a lot of quality of the project were very interesting. And are any of those projects taking shape? have? Yeah, a few. Not a lot, but a few. And as you can see, we have constantly people in the Maison de Bitcoin and they are developing, coding, and there is really some activity. So it's

picking up. Maybe because they know that they can go in place. We'll speak about that later, but co-working, et cetera. So they think, let's say, welcome and they can also discuss other people share the same passions, so it's also important to find other people if you want to start a project. I've been here all week, and this is exactly what I like about it, is you come here and there's people coming in all the time, some people who are coming in to buy Bitcoins, and we'll go into the services of the Amazon to Bitcoin in a few minutes, but there's people interested in Bitcoin coming here all the time. Yeah, there is a lot of certainly pity about that, yeah. And there's some stuff to do, yeah, because in France there's like a big culture of math, strong, mathematic,

scientific skills, cryptographic skills, like smart card industry is very big. So there's some assets that will enable some nice startups to grow out of here. We've got some of the startup working on the fintech, on the options and different services for marketplaces, people working on the smart card industry where it's typically French know-how that you have and people will use this know-how to adapt it to the Bitcoin world. Yeah, there is quite a strong startup ecosystem in France, especially in Paris, and especially in where we are right now. So there is no shortage of ideas, project, entrepreneurs, and they just need to start to understand

Bitcoin. And the fact to know that there is this place, it's trying, it's helping the people and developers just to try to understand Bitcoin, etc. So for sure, maybe in the last. last six months there have been between 10 to 15 companies which have been created maybe not they are not all incorporated because to stay lean and for the reasons they're not really creating the companies but there are between 10 and 15 real projects with real teams and real vision and assets and six months

ago there was absolutely nothing so really it's starting to pick to to to pick up and also the government stance about Bitcoin is quite positive and it's also very it can help also people to take this decision to go into Bitcoin because you don't see you can see some support in a way from the law regulation etc so it helps a lot also and you spoke about the media image that yeah that Bitcoin has in France and just this morning who was staying with some friends and one of the roommates comes out and I work at Bitcoin. And he kind of said in a joking way, but he says, oh, yeah, that's the money that you used to buy drugs. We all hear this kind of nonsense, right?

But what is your impression of, you know, awareness of Bitcoin and Friends? When you talk to people that come here that are not Bitcoins, they're coming to, you know, they see this on the door, you know, this huge Bitcoin sign. It's quite visible from the outside. This is a place where people work on Bitcoin projects and they come in. And what do people tell you or what do people ask you in terms of questions? Well, it's true that the general image that you have about Bitcoin is quite negative from what you have in the press because it's always a new innovation.

You always see the bad aspects and talking about money laundering, buying drugs, scandals, mangos, all that. So people have this very negative image of Bitcoin. This is changing, though. We had some positive report from the government. We had like all the news about eBay accepting Bitcoin and all that. So they're starting to be a lot of positive press. And when people come here, they're like, okay, I heard about Bitcoin.

There's a maison-du-Bitcoin. How come there's something like something brick and mortal about Bitcoin. It must be something serious. So they just come in and get a bit of general information. And it's like opening an email back in the 19th. And they're like, okay, I want to try, I miss the email, I want to know how this works, I want to get my first bitcoins, I want to make my first transaction, I want to save a bit of money on Bitcoin.

So it's like people, well, they just want to divert something, they've heard that this missile and they want to kind of know how it works, get some from Bitcoin and get into it. And we were quite surprised about the type of people who are opening the door. I was really sure that it would be mainly like geeks and bitcoinsers and cryptographers or whatever. And in fact, of course, they come a little bit, but most of the people are just total newbies. They are just curious and they heard on the TV or on the press because we have had a lot of coverage. And they are curious and they ask questions and often they stay one hour because when you start to ask questions, you open a door and then you ask more and more questions.

And so, yeah, this kind of people is really newcomers to Bitcoin. So it was a very surprising, refreshing aspects. And we have had some very different kind of people. I remember we even had a group of old ladies just coming and asking a lot of questions about Bitcoins. They even bought some Bitcoins and they stayed like, yeah, one hour asking a lot of stuff. You mean they had mobile phones which were sick of buy Bitcoins? Yeah, some, yeah, yeah, some had, and they took, for instance, more like paper wallet. I said, okay, I'm going to buy a gift for my grandson or something like that.

And one time we even have quite an old lady, she came and she said, I want to buy Bitcoin. She said, okay. And she wanted to ask for 500 euros. And okay, well, why not? And she asked to have an address. and she came back the next time, next day, and she said, okay, I want to buy for $1,000.000. And I said, okay, are you sure that you know what you are doing?

Why do you want Bitcoin? Is it for your son? And she said, no, I want to back. I need Bitcoin because I want to buy dark coin. So I just was speechless. Okay. So sometimes we have some surprises, you know, like that. Some people you never see.

would be up to date about alcoids and they just come here. So yeah, you have to forget everything you know about people and what you would expect. And I suppose some people also probably come in control or something like they know they oh yeah yeah to criticize or to no yeah of course well not not too many but there are like sometimes some strange people who come and ask question and say sometimes they say why the government let you exist you are going to get they are going to let you get you down you know i don't know how bang are not killing you yet or something they were like banks are going to kill you offender so there's some trolls of course yeah it's some strange people you know and uh but it's okay it's not not so often and the vast majority of people

are pushing the doors are just uh newcomer asking question and come here in a very positive way so i like to come back just to the french ecosystem for a few minutes um At a national level, I guess you can say that's what I'm based in Newt of course, and there's a small community there. What are your ideas? Do you have any ideas of what the French ecosystem is like? Are there any meetups anywhere else? Or is it mostly Paris-centric? No, there are a lot of activity in the south, in Mordeaux or in Lille.

So it's not only in Paris. Of course, maybe there are more companies than projects in Paris because it's just this density of population. But there are a lot of projects which are based in many parts of France. so it's quite distributed and and sometimes in fact we just don't know that the people behind the project are French because you know with Bitcoin as well yeah so it's not always easy to see where it come from and you just learn it after by by chance by asking or meeting some some people so it's quite distributed it's not only a Paris thing I find that a lot of times I'll in my my conversations with people

I'll find out after emailing them that they're French They're just not in France. Yeah. They're somewhere else. Or I'll find out about this startup that's operating in South French. I didn't know that it was French. Yeah. You have these old surprises once in a while.

Yeah. So maybe Toma, you could tell us about the types of startups that are launching in France. What types of startups are we seeing? Well, in the Bitcoin space, you've got like this exchange of Pémium that European exchange, there's some other services like wallet services that launching. There's one here in Amazon Bitcoin, launching in Yenna. Electrum is French as well. And then you've got like some, as I told you, there's not that much sort of.

There's also this master exchange that is trading Bitcoin to master coin and to different alcoins. It's a French team. They are here in Paris and sometimes they come here. There is a broker. It's a way to buy stuff over the internet with Bitcoins and with a discount because other people that's going to buy this with their own credit cards. So it's worth like a peer-to-peer exchange. You've got ChromoCoy that's selling Bitcoin through the internet with credit card and you get a physical delivery of a hardware wallet.

Yeah, and there is this hardware wallet company, BT chip, which launched for a few wallets and the last one was a multi-signature wallet, green wallet. You have also projects like escrow service such as a handshake, trying to develop where to secure all e-commerce exchanges. You have quite a few, two or three maybe projects working around finance, trading, market making these kind of things or but trading, algorithm finance. And there's a little magnanimity of a... project better rigs? It's a French, you can lease rigs, in fact, to mine the alt coins that you want,

also a French project. So it's quite different. We are almost all the scope of what you can do. And are there any of those projects that you're particularly interested in or excited in? Yeah, yeah, well, the hardware wallet, I think it's... There seems to be a lot of hardware wallet, a lot of hardware coming out of France. Yeah, these smart chips. Smart chargers.

This is, let's say, it comes from France and a lot of talents are engineers. So you will find them mainly in France, so that's why. There is this ChronoCoin company and we like also a handshake, a broker. Well, it's, and also the guys from this Master Exchange, they are very lean, trying to do a lot of stuff and they are a very small team and they are always a lot of ageing. It's very good version. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's a lot of quite interesting projects. and we are just waiting for them to grow.

We are seeing new projects coming, companies incorporating, raising some small round of money. So things are moving, not very fast, but things happens and we see new projects. So it's quite positive. So yeah, let's perhaps move on to, before we go into really, let me sort of Bitcoin the type of things that you do here, talk about investment,

Traditionally, and this is why I've noticed since I've been here in France for the last a little while, is that the French are usually quite conservative about new technology. Yes. But they do catch up quite fast. Once it's like, okay, this is good, we're going to go for it, and we'll invest our time energy in this, then VCs come in, then we saw this with e-commerce, we saw this with the Internet, where you had the ladies. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But after we catch up, we finally catch that. And quite well, I saw this particularly with e-commerce in the 2000s, where there's a lot of e-commerce happening in perhaps even more than other European countries. So what do you think needs to happen there for that shift? Particularly with VCs, for traditional tech VCs, because there are quite a few here, to kind of have that click and say, okay, now this is an ecosystem in which I want to invest and help flourish. You know, the VC are always looking at each other and they are afraid maybe to make a move which would look ridiculous or something like that. So what needs to happen in France for VCs to start investing in Bitcoins is to have a first investment. I mean, someone like Tijuana VC, French VC or needs to make a first investment and publicize it and be proud of it and just talk about it.

And then it will show the way. Because in France, the VCs, we also have this problem that we don't have so much seed investments in France. It's more like lay stage, growth, stuff like that. And with Bitcoin, you don't have any growth Bitcoin project. It's only seed or really early stage. So mechanically, it's also not helping. So they will have at one time to say, okay, we know that Bitcoin is young, we know that in France a great project, but they are all in early stage.

We believe in Bitcoin, so we are going to do something. And then it will start. And the fact that European VCs, such as index ventures, start to make some investment in Bitcoin, it's also open the eyes of the VCs. And we spend actually quite a lot of time with some VCs, just trying to start to make some explain Bitcoin, explain Bitcoin why it's important, why they should consider it. And this is the first step of them just looking at projects, et cetera. So we just need one time. And then others would go. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, like a good time to just mention that, you know,

the conference was coming up in a few weeks and there will be some BCs there. Yeah. From Index Ventures. Yeah. Also, you know, VCs that are not really involved in Bitcoin, but that are interested in. So perhaps, events like, you know, you know, there are, this help get that ball rolling because it gives some later of confidence about Bitcoin so it shows that there is something really happening with people investing etc so so to perhaps move on to to this place where at them is only Bitcoin can you tell me tell me how did you get the idea for this project did you did you think about it together or was it well in fact we

I think we thought about it independently in the same time because we were really exploring all the possibilities of doing projects in Bitcoin because it's quite vast, it can do a lot of stuff, different stuff, and it was all about the French ecosystem. We saw it was really quite inexistent and there was a huge deficit of image. Bitcoin was heavy. So, like quite naturally came the idea of making a place. It will give us time to better understand the technology, the ecosystem. It will give a better image of Bitcoin, so it will help in the future. So it was a good first step for us.

We had the money to do it because it costs a lot of money, so it would have been impossible to raise money for such a project, so we had to make the investment ourselves. So in fact, how we see that at some kind of... marketing investment for Bitcoin and for us of course because it was a huge investment I mean this

yes yes no we are talking about not like a delirious investment but yes it's a few hundred thousand euros investment and

so it's it had to be to be done with our funds and yeah we just had okay let's make a place and

And we had to choose a name and we didn't want to have something very tech or techno. We wanted to have something which would just give some reinsurance about the place. So that's why Maison de Bitcoin, which means house of Bitcoin. And you have a lot of Mezondu in France like about Meison Du Vin, and Maison du Caviar, so it's something that people understand. And they really say, okay, I understand what this place is about. Yeah, it doesn't have that kind of tech startup incubator, like decentralized. No, no, no, no, because it's too soon.

I mean, it's too, we just need to be in phase with the language people are talking and we want to be mainstream. This place is not only for developers, start-opers, bitcoiners, it's also for newcomers, people who want to understand Bitcoin. So that's why we have, we want to, we want it. to be also a place where you could work on projects but also where you can access easily to Bitcoin. So we have an exchange, physical exchange counter and we do also a training, free training, explanation, formation about Bitcoin. So we really want to have a maximum number of

persons just understanding about Bitcoin because it's all about the network effect. And so one of the medium and long-term goals that you're trying to accomplish with this project? But basically it's to continue to have a flagship on Bitcoin and it's free to be able to continue having a lot of press, a lot of talks discussion about Bitcoin. There's a lot of people coming in to kind of command what is happening on Bitcoin. and it's a good way to be having a different vision on Bitcoin rather than what you hear in the press. So it's a way to counterbalance all that is said in the press. It's also a way like a flagship where you can again evangelize, talk about Bitcoin, make some training, online trainings for French people and also to have ways to buy Bitcoinism.

And in this place, in fact we have had like very quite large companies who came and asked about Bitcoin. And they will never have come if this kind of place never exists because they say, okay, there is this place, it looks good, professional, serious. So in a way, Bitcoin must be serious. So, okay, maybe I can come and ask. So this is the starting place. And all the startups who are working on Bitcoin, they can use this place also to see if they need to see people, et cetera. then it gives them confidence and it's always good.

So that's why the basic idea is some kind of marketing investment for Bitcoin. And from that what we want to, at the end, in fact, what we want to see is to help to see a giant of Bitcoin emerge, like French Google Bitcoin or something like that. And this is ultimately the goal of the Maison de Bitcoin. And also having this kind of place where we are seen and people can just come helped us having discussion at regulation level, government level, because they say, okay, we can discuss with some kind of Bitcoin people, they are operating in exchange, how can we see about regulation, we can give them data about how it works in the real life.

So it really helped to advance on many subjects. You mentioned that this is a marketing investment for France and also for Paris, I guess, but more broadly for France, but you guys have goals of your own. You're not just investing in Bitcoin marketing, you're also investing in a space where you can potentially, I guess, incubate Bitcoin projects. You can talk a bit more about that. Yeah, in fact, we have seen a few projects. We are invested in some.

So it's always very early stage, so it's quite a small investment at this time. And we also are developing in-house some projects. So there is all these aspects of, let's say, it's not really incubating because we don't have some kind of program or something like that, but we are welcoming place for startups, so they want to have desk, co-working space, et cetera, so we can help them just work in a lean environment. And also we can help from them to develop to give them contact with angels, investors or any kind of resources. And the last point is that we are also ourselves doing some project of our own.

For instance, we have worked on open source BitID protocol, which is the way to connect or identify yourself with your wallet. It's some kind of, let's say, a glue for all these applications. So this is a project that we are trying to work on. And also just more classic projects such as the one we have launched a few weeks ago, which name is Coin House, where the idea is just to be able to buy with your Bitcoins on any website by getting a virtual card. You want to go on the FNAG, for instance, they don't accept Bitcoin, but you have to pay 20 euros,

You go on Coin House and you buy a payment card of 20 euros which you are going to pay in Bitcoin. Yeah, I really like this project. So just kind of explain how it works. You go in Coin House, you log in, you say, I want to buy something that's worth 120 euros and 17 cents. And it gives you a QR code. You send that amount of Bitcoin as obviously a fee associated with that. And then the Coin House will generate a credit card number. Yeah, on the fly, yes.

It's on the fly, and how many confirmations you'll be for two, three confirmations, and then you get the credit card. Yeah, it can be on. It depends on the amount, but we do instant confirmation for under 100 euros. And then you use that credit card to copy paste it into any website. Yeah, exactly. I think this is great. Like this is a really cool service.

I used others like Snapcard before, but it takes a bit longer because you have to wait for them to pay for it and everything. Yeah, it's like a snap card, but you just pay yourself, so you don't have also to think about Are they going to order? What happens if I have to return? You are just, in fact, using a credit card and it doesn't change the way you are ordering. And so Coin House works in Europe? Yes, it's in Europe, on your currency.

So it's not just in France. And anybody in Europe? No, no, in fact. And we have also people from other countries, even from the U.S. You want to buy and stuff in the European shop, then they can use also of cereal. So it's quite open.

Right now, we are going to stay on the euro currency, because obviously we don't have right now access to other currencies, but maybe in the future the project is getting traction, why not? And what are some other projects gravitating around Coin House? Because I know that there are other things that are coming into plug into that, so it's kind of create this whole glue of... Yeah, well, we're also doing this, the way to buy, in fact, Bitcoin with your credit card.

So there are like some difficulties with the KWIC and fraud. So right now it's, let's say it's reserved to people who are going to do the physical KWIC in the Amazon of Bitcoin. But once they have been validating their account, then they can buy with their credit card from home, for instance. Basically, we already have our physical exchange here. Come here, 100 euros of Bitcoin, you pay with credit card, it's all done, it's made in a minute. And once you white list this credit card, you can buy again. and again through the internet.

And how do you protect yourselves against fraud or contracts? Because someone came here, gave his passport, we can check that he has really this credit card. So we are just white listing. So it's not like we cannot scale. But at least we can provide a service where people can buy, let's say, let's say a large amount of bitcoins with their credit card

without having to being exposed to large fees. What is the fee associated to purchasing a Bitcoin with a credit card seat here at the camera, for instance? It depends on the amount. For a small amount, it's from 10% to 6.5%. So depending on the accumulated amounts that you have exchanged so far. And some people may think that 10% exchange fee is quite high. Yes, but why do we have people using it?

Because there is a convenience of paying with cash, for instance. or credit cards so it's instant. It's uh... that's why people, when they need bitcoins, uh, quickly, uh, there is this service. And of course, the more volume we have, the more we will be able to lower the fee. Uh, but for instance, if you go to local bitcoins, it's 10% so it's not completely out of faith with the market. And this cash for bitcoins model that you have here, which seems to work, is that

something that you're trying to deploy maybe at a larger scale because in France you have this large network of tabah shops that also sell phone cards and things like that we are we're exploring a lot of ways to distribute bitcoin in an easy way yes but it's um far shops I mean you have that same kind of model with the with shipping right where you can have your packages shipped yeah yeah exactly so the only thing is something that something that we're looking but a for a moment The ratio is quite complicated in terms of cost, the intermediate. It's not that we need to find a greater model because so far with some prepaid cards,

get 10% for the retailer so it doesn't match economically. We're still thinking that way. It costs a lot, so we need to find new ways of distribution about that. And can you tell me with some of the other services that you provide here in the Better of Bitcoin, other than selling Bitcoins to people who come in for a bit? This co-working area, well people can either go downstairs where you can put your proper computer with your screen and all that and you pay like for 250 euros a month and you can have this co-working space, a desk.

Upstairs you can also work like with your laptop coming up for the day. So there's two co-working spaces. We'll do a little tour afterwards. So there's the co-working space upstairs which is sort of kind of temporary corks. Yeah, maybe you come in a room. where you can go and pay out of the day, perhaps by the week, something like that. And then downstairs is a physical, kind of long. Yeah, more like regular offices, where you can just put your screen, your tower, or whatever,

and you have blockers, and you can use like an office. As well, what we provide here, we have some, once a month we try to do like a 101 class on Bitcoin to explain to new commerce what is Bitcoin, something that we love doing to kind of explain what it is. It takes us like two hours. And just needed. Yeah. And we also, but it's more for enterprise. We do like training on site about Bitcoins for, they say large companies because they want to understand why Bitcoin.

Why should I care about Bitcoin? And we are the first thing we say that is not having a strategy for Bitcoin right now. It's like not having a strategy for Internet in 1984. So they just need to understand Bitcoin and this is where we can bring service. We basically had some large e-commerce site. We had some payment processors. We had some banks even coming here. Yeah.

Banks, yeah. They want to understand what's going on. So we made them make some Bitcoin transaction on the ATM. Of course, quite fun. It was about mining, stuff like that. No, we have been like some delegation of 30 or 40 bankers coming here like on Safari, you know. And they were like, what? What is that?

And with the ATM and they were like in shock, it's so. No, it was quite funny actually. And so you also obviously, we probably probably probably probably It's really your host events here. You had the real meet-up. And so how many media apps do you have per month? It's like one. But as there is other meetups in Paris,

maybe it would be like every two months. So it depends because we are trying not to overlap or making too much meetups in the same time. How many games in Paris? Like three. Three. Yeah, three already. And how many people come to the meetups here?

Here there were like 100 to 150 people. We tried to have like one guy talking about Bitcoin and one entrepreneur presenting his, projects we had some VCs presenting the Bitcoin ecosystem the way the index index was here to present their thoughts about on Bitcoin there was this guy from the the tribunal like the court Paris court of justice talking about Bitcoin was very very interesting very interesting I had a very positive approach to Bitcoin it was like actually I think I gave him a standing-o like when he finished this I was just so overtook by the fact this Andrew

who works than... He's a judge, yeah. He's a judge, was quite favorable to Bitcoin and also lucid enough to understand the risks to the existing financial and economic markets. Yeah, yeah, totally. So he was specialized in financial crime and really he was saying that money laundering in Bitcoin

is just a nonsense. It's not that it doesn't exist because you can always exist a little, but it's totally crazy just to focus on that because it's a drop in the ocean. So it was really clear. about that and it was very refreshing because he is quite a guy from the older regeneration and yeah he had a very high position in the the Paris court system

well if there's almost anything I want to add maybe we can go and let's take a tour yes of people from all over the world you can come here we have a lot of people coming from for a week from Toronto we had some people coming from Asia from from the rest of Europe coming here to work for a week so feel free to come to La Amazon deConts for a few days here and you'll be welcome. That's right this week and that's great. So we're standing right outside of the Amazon to Bitcoin. Can you kind of tell me about this area where we're standing here? Yeah well we are what we call the Santier or Silicon

Santier which is second arrondissement of Paris which is traditionally a place for startups to develop because in the late 90s this is the first place where you had access to high speed internet. So here in fact around you have many, many startups. There is a Numa here, this is large building which is just facing the Amazon Bitcoin. So this is a co-working space. It's about five stories high. Exactly.

Yeah, yeah. You have inside, you have some program for startups, a lot of events, et cetera. So it's quite large. So it really makes sense for us to be here because we are really in the heart of this Paris startup area. Yeah, and it's quite lively. I mean, it's, it's, there's an energy here, like there's a little cafe across the street,

there's people working on their MacBooks, it's a... Yeah, and historically, it's a place for textile and clothes and all this kind of stuff, so you have always... A lot of textile entrepreneurs that are here. It's a country of... Street of entrepreneurs, it's really funny,

very lightly, nothing's happening. And so if we turn around, So there's the front facing of La Maison de Bitcoin. Exactly. Here you've got like a corner. It's like 10 meters large where if you big B, Lamezon de Bitcoin, so people can see like Bitcoin and they're like, oh my God, what is happening here?

It looks like a bank really. It looks like the facade of a bank, really. And so you have a huge B for Bitcoin on the front doors, which most people are probably seen on pictures online. So yeah, let's walk inside. Yeah. So tell me about this room here. Yeah, well this is the entrance floor.

Usually this is where people come and ask questions. So there is always some people here to greet them and help them about, okay, what do you want to know about Bitcoin and stuff like that. This is also the place where we held events like this training session or meetups. And right now this is the place where you have a desk and this is co-working space. where you can come by the day or by the week. It's good if you have just only your laptop because you cannot really put stuff for a long time.

And you also like some informal meeting room where you can just stand and discuss, have phone calls. And we also have some kind of glass floor. Glass floor, yeah, which connect to the under floor. So you can see. There's about 10 spots here. Yeah, more or less.

We could have more because you can see it's quite a lot of place. But so far this is what we need and we're going to adapt depending of the needs. And... So the room is about 100 meters square meters? So it's like maybe 70 square meters here. It's quite a large room. Yeah. Nice big windows.

And yeah, a lot of light, a lot of light because it's quite only a window. And over here. if we walk towards this side so we have some glass floors we can see what's happening downstairs so this is kind of a nice future and also it sends some light downstairs of course yeah and probably even cell phone signal as you can see you have someone here working Nikola Vaca which we spoke to an Amsterdam yeah want to say hi hi hi which doing this hardware wallet is developing a smart card hardware wallet Yes. So we are developing basically the first smart card designed specifically for Bitcoins.

And we have been on sale since last week with a partnership with Green AdWise to demonstrate that a smart card even if it doesn't have a screen or buttons or whatever can be a very nice solution for multi-signature wallets and bring more security to everybody. And you can buy that hardware wallet.com. Exactly. Exactly. Good domain. Thanks. Thanks.

And so if we walk towards the back of the room, Yeah, here we have some also looking like a bank stuff, which is the door. So this is a huge metal door which looks like a bank vault, I guess. Exactly. Yeah, it allows us to just to close and separate when we have like transactions and stuff if we want to be safe. So if we... It's the cold storage. And so this is sort of a reception area.

Yeah, which is you have a little bit of... Merchandise, mubs and t-shirts. And you have the ATM. And this is the counter where you do all the physical exchange, where you can actually buy Bitcoins. And here you have all the brokering system and you can also deliver like paper wallets, all the stuff that you need. So every day there are like tens of people coming here.

here buying. Depends of the price, when the price goes down, a lot of people come. And I see you have an ATM but it doesn't seem to be functional. Yes, because in fact this ATM doesn't allow any KWIC. It's an Amazon where you can just scan passport and we have some requirements where we need to ask for identification even for one euro. So it's from one euro we need to ask for identification such as passport ideas, stuff like that. Okay, well let's go downstairs. So here is the workshop with what was the mining area which now is going down in flames

because now it's quite impossible to mine from let's say from a normal point of view. So you were mining script here because it was a lot of graphics cards? Yeah yeah we had 60 graphic cards mining scripts and right now we are just selling them. We also have Shah miners but it's not here. because anyway it makes too much noise and too much... It's not profitable to be mining in the center of Paris, definitely not. Yeah, yeah. But here you have desk where you can do some hacks, whatever.

We have place to try a lot of things. Yeah, it's sort of a kind of a workshop area with soldering irons and motherboards and... Exactly. Altono chips and things like that. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Cool. And then we have a little kitchen area where you can make your coffee. Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. With the restroom stuff. And then downstairs, and this is the main, I guess, co-working space, permanent production space, where we can see upstairs through the ceiling windows here. And there are how many spots here? Here we have 12 spots. So it's either a co-working space or for our own staff also because we're also developing the projects, as I said, and so we have some coders designers that are working here.

And we also have this quite large meeting room where we can host meetings and also do some smaller training session. And when we had this weekend of Hackathon, everything was packed. We had people, coders everywhere. It was quite nice. Well, thanks for the interview and thanks for the tour. Thanks for having me all week. Yeah.

Very welcome. I'll definitely be back. And if I could say anybody who's coming to Paris and who's working on Bitcoin projects who's interested in Bitcoin, do definitely come by at the Maison of Bitcoin. It's at 35, 35-R-D-U-C-A-R-D-R-U-K-R-C-A-R-R-C-A-R-R-E. It's next to the Rheom-Mur-S-Bastopol.

Yeah, and Sentier, Metro, it's the center of Paris. Not far from DeAL. Yeah. Type it in Google, you will find it. Yeah, M-O-D-D-M-G-M-O-M-M-D-M-M-R-E. You can probably walk here from La Guard, you know. Take a leap.

Take a bike. It's like a four station for metro. It's not very far. Awesome. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Thanks. So thanks so much again for listening to episode 40 of Epicenter Bitcoin.

I want to thank Eric Larchavec and Tomafrance for taking the time to sit down with me. And also for letting me work out of the co-working space last week. Now, if you want to support the show, there are multiple ways you can do that. Firstly, you can leave us a review on iTunes. You can also follow us on Twitter at Epicurkin. Epicenter BTC. And finally, please leave us a tip at epicenterbikwin.com slash tips. Now, you may have noticed that we haven't been releasing any content on Thursdays for the last few weeks, but that'll change this week because our regulatory affairs correspondent,

Sean Jones, was in London on September 15th and 16th for the Inside Bitcoin's London conference. And so we've got a whole bunch of interviews that she did there and that we'll be releasing as of this week on Thursday. So stay tuned for that. So thanks again for listening. And we'll talk you next week.