Epicenter - Learn about Crypto, Blockchain, Ethereum, Bitcoin and Distributed Technologies - Jaron Lukasiewicz: Coinsetter

Episode Date: April 7, 2014

Brian’s away on vacation this week so joining us as a guest host is Jaron Lukasiewicz, CEO of Coinsetter. We talk about IRS guidelines and what impact they may have on everyday Bitcoin use, China’s “crackdown” on Bitcoin and the effect on price, a new startup brings wallets to iPhones and Jaron tells us about Inside Bitcoins New York were we will be taking part in a panel about the future of exchanges. Episode links: Coinsetter IRS Virtual Currency Guidance This episode is hosted by Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/014

Hello and welcome to Amn Center Bitcoin, episode 14. Today is Sunday, April 6, 2014. My name is Sebass Sincuicchio. I'm a user experience designer and developer from Canada, and I'm based in Lille, France. I'm also the founder and organizer of Bitcoin Talks Lille. And I'd like to thank our listeners for joining us today for our 14th episode. So today's a little different because Brian's not here. Brian is actually on vacation right now.

I'm sure he's in the sun somewhere. and we are fortunate enough to have a very special guest as a guest host, Jaron Lucasevich, of CoinSetter. Hi, Jaron. Hey, thanks for having me. Well, thanks so much for coming on. It's such a short notice. So when Brian told me he was going on vacation and that I should be, I should find a co-host, I immediately contacted you.

I thought that you would be. An interesting guest host, given your particular, well, given that you work at an, that you run an exchange, and kind of the financial side of Bitcoin, which we rarely have the opportunity to cover in such a depth. Could you just kind of tell us what you do in the Bitcoin ecosystem and present yourself? Sure. Yeah, so our company CoinSetter is a low latency, high uptime, high performance, Bitcoin Exchange. I would call it an ECN. We're based in New York City. You know, we, you know, most of our users right now are, you know, more active traders. But the system we've built is ultimately targeted towards, you know, Wall Street institutional hedge funds. and as well as, you know, Bitcoin payment processors, ATMs, and then, you know, I think also we're essentially a plug-in-play option for, you know, brokerage houses and then also, again, hedge funds.

You know, we haven't officially announced it yet, but in the coming weeks we'll be announcing our Fix API, which really turns us into a plug-in-play option for a lot of these more active trade. so that they can take the trading systems that they use in other markets and connect that to Bitcoin liquidity that we can offer them. So your clients are institutional traders or specifically Bitcoin traders? What's your client base like? Right now, it's definitely the more active side of just traditional Bitcoin traders. People who have probably traded on other exchanges or used other services in the space.

But what we can offer is a whole lot of liquidity, but also very low latency, a well-structured API. And then just, I think, really appealing customer support. And the fact that we're based in New York City also helps for a lot of our U.S. users who will either stop by our office and meet us or whatnot. and we have a pretty cool office. So it's usually a pretty good time. But, you know, I would say, you know, right now that's where the market is at. But we definitely have a growing number of hedge funds reaching out to us, trying to learn more about Bitcoin. We have two smaller ones that are actively coding to our Fix API right now.

So, you know, I think that it's sort of just the beginning of institutional Wall Street coming into Bitcoin. over the next 12 months, especially as regulation gets settled, you know, I see a huge, huge amount of interest coming, coming into the space. So what's been your experience with like institutional traders coming into the Bitcoin space? How has that been like? Well, I would say they're definitely very smart people who ask a lot of very good questions. And, you know, I think one of the biggest Bitcoin right now operates just so differently from, other spaces, other, you know, if you trade commodities or FX, you know, Bitcoin just, it's very different. And I think a lot of guys have a hard time understanding that you can't really

short the market. You, I think the banking situation still, you know, we have a lot of work to do as an industry regulation. It's very, you know, I think, you know, when you look at the traders currently in the space, they're all trading on their personal accounts. So it might might be a hedge fund manager, but in the end, it's just kind of his own money. What you really want to see is a change where these guys feel comfortable taking their regulated investor funds and placing those on a Bitcoin exchange. And how does that happen and the changes that need to happen? Those are things that we're really working on, both on how we structure the banking side beyond what we're currently doing. But then also, you know, we're in the process

of applying for a bit license. We have some, you know, partnership discussions in the works as well. And so, you know, no matter what happens, I expect, you know, six months from now for our company to, you know, be showing some major improvement there on the regulatory side and have regulatory licensing of some sort that, you know, allows us to give a lot of of these very serious institutional investors comfort that, you know, they're placing, uh, placing funds, not just in like safe hands that they can trust, but like they don't even have to trust us because it's so obvious that, you know, we're regulated in a way that, um, you know, we,

we really can't F up. Okay. I see. And so the, the types of services that you provide at Coinsetter would essentially make it so that an institutional investor that comes into, wants to get into Bitcoin can get up and running with a very little learning curve as, with regards to the platforms that he already uses. I mean, I know very little about this kind of stuff. These questions might sound a little stupid. Yeah, so your coin setter essentially. makes it very easy for an institutional investor to come into Bitcoin. Yeah, I think that's a really good way to put it.

And, you know, right now it's, you know, I am really happy with the technology we've built. Like we, our platform is, is very low latency. It, you know, is just performing really well. You know, the next step is, you know, I, so you're, you're joking about asking stupid questions, but that's like. No, just because I have like zero. financial, economical background. It's all good.

I've made this clear on the podcast before. So as I was, as opposed to Brian, who's got a background in economics and a lot of guests that we had on sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. No,

but that's my entire life is trying to figure out stuff that I have no clue about. And, you know, I think that I being located in New York City and having these guys, you know, being able, having access to so many of these guys who are so

successful already. You know, it's been a great learning experience so that we can provide something that, you know, I think aren't super intuitive and, you know, definitely no, there's certain things, both on the banking and regulatory sides that no Bitcoin exchange is offering right now. Such as. You know, I'd probably not want to go super into it just for like our own competitive reasons. But, you know, I would say on the banking side, for instance, it's, it's, it's probably, pretty uncommon to as a hedge fund,

to wire funds to a foreign bank account that is in the name of the company. So like the exchange, you know, things work a little bit differently on the institutional Wall Street level. And, you know, those are things that we'll be working on replicating over the coming months. Cool.

Well, maybe before we get into the topics, It's just something I want to talk about real quick. So to all our listeners, if you could just right now stop what you're doing. I mean, I don't mean stop listening to the podcast, but if you're working or, I don't know, maybe working out in your living room or doing your dishes, if you could go to your computer, launch iTunes and give us a review. So we're asking our listeners to review us on iTunes. It would really help us out. And we'd really appreciate it. If you could give us honest feedback, you know, it really helps us to better understand how our content is.

I mean, if you appreciate our content. And also it helps for new listeners that come on to get a better idea of whether or not they want to listen to our show. So if you could go on iTunes and just give us a review, an honest review. We'd really appreciate it. And also, please send us your feedback and questions and topics that you want us to talk about. Brian and I were really trying to build a community audience-based podcast. And so we really appreciate your feedback. So if you could send us your feedback at Epicenter Bitcoin at gmail.com, we'd really appreciate it.

Let us know what you think. Are there topics that you want us to discuss? Do you have any questions? Is it too long? Is it too short? Whatever you think, whatever you want to let us know about the podcast, whether if you like it, if you don't, I mean, we want your feedback. So if you can send us your feedback at EpicenterBitcoin.com, we would really appreciate it.

Or on Twitter also, Epicenter BTC. So, yeah, we were discussing this just before the show. There's not a lot of news this week. It's been kind of a slow news week in terms of. really interesting news. But I wanted to kind of get your impression on these IRS guidelines that came out, I guess, about 10 days ago. We had an opportunity to discuss this with Sean Jones last week. We went into quite a lengthy details as to how this is going to affect mostly consumers, I guess. But from your perspective, running an exchange, how does this,

how is this going to affect your business? I mean, where you were already, yeah, so how is it going to affect your business, really? Sure. You know, so I think that a lot of this we kind of saw coming. We're still in early stages of trying to figure out exactly what kind of reporting we need to give to our customers in terms of their profit and loss calculation and any sort of taxable gains reporting that we need to provide them with. And those are things that we'll be working on in the coming months. In the meantime, I know that there are a couple of companies emerging right now that can help people kind of keep track of their Bitcoin profits and losses and spending.

You know, I have a lot of confidence that this will get figured out and companies are going to come out and find ways to help people track this. In the near term, it's, I think, you know, a bit of a pain for, it's, it's like pretty obvious that you're going to have to pay taxes on your Bitcoin gains in general. But, you know, I think figuring out what your actual profit, what your actual taxable gains. is can be difficult, especially if, you know, you've been just sending bitcoins versus paying bitcoins. Like, it is difficult to track. And I think that will get easier over the next year. As an exchange, I expect us to, you know, have to make similar reports to what, like, a, a brokerage house like Charles Schwab would have to do. I was thinking about this. So, obviously, you know, the exchange, you know, you have to

declare any kind of gains that you make. But for your customers, are you held to having to give them the tools to effectively calculate or figure out what their gains are? Like, how does that work? I mean, is it, does that, is that already exist in institutional trading or is it up to them to figure it out? You know, it's a little early for me to speculate on that. But, I mean, I, I, I believe that there are requirements. I'm not sure that we, in terms of like the Bitcoin space, we do have requirements yet, but we might. We're trying to figure that out now.

But, you know, obviously, Bitcoin's are meant to be sent. So that's going to provide a level of complication to any sort of reporting we can do. But, you know, we're going to, through the course of the year, be hiring council that can can help us have a better understanding of what we need to provide our customers. I see. Yeah. I mean, how do you, when you, when you heard these, when you read these guidelines that came out, I mean, what was your reaction? Were you, were you surprised or were you already kind of in line with what the guidelines say? Yeah, I've been telling people for the last

six months that like if you spend your bitcoins you have a taxable gain and uh you know six months ago everyone laughed at me or got pissed off and uh and then you know here we are today and the irs is you know uh confirming that and it you know i think that a lot of people were kind of like running off of hope that you know bitcoin would never be taxed but and i mean in the end like people are still going to some people are going to try to not report their gains and whatnot but, you know, it's, it just kind of comes down to, you know, I, I would rather live a life where I don't have to, like, fear that I'm doing something wrong, the wrong way. So, you know, I think it's a complication on, you know, kind of tracking where you're spending bitcoins and whatnot. But I think someone will come out with a fairly elegant solution to do it.

Yeah, well, that's interesting because, you know, for, I guess it depends who you are. I mean, if you're a business or if you're an investor or a hedge fund, I think that you have quite an interest in protecting yourself and making sure that you're, like you say, you're not living a life where you're afraid of things that you're not doing right. But if you're just like Joe everybody and you're buying and selling bitcoins and maybe you're making a little bit of money or even, like I was thinking about this a while ago, like say you buy bitcoins from someone, say on local bitcoins,

you pay them in cash and then you turn around and, buy an expensive piece of jewelry after your bitcoins have doubled or tripled in price with Bitcoin. How is the IRS going to enforce that? How can they even enforce that at a consumer level? And I'm not even talking about buying a cup of coffee or anything like that. I mean, I just don't see how, of course, like, this is law that already exists, right? This is just a guideline to say, okay, this is how we interpret the law.

this is how it's been all the whole time. Like you should have figured it out by yourself. Essentially, this is what the guideline means. But like the IRS, how could, how could they even perceive that people are going to are going to follow this? Like, knowing that people use Bitcoin as a currency. Yeah. You know what I mean? You know, a lot of people will probably get away with that.

But, you know, I mean, I would fear if I were giving advice to anyone on it is, you know, maybe you will get away with it. But if, you know, the government is ever looking for a reason to catch you on something down the road, you know, and they know that you're active in Bitcoin, then they could probably later do the math and, you know, create a case that would show tax fraud. So, you know, I would, I would err on the side of, you know, just like figuring out a way to track it and then doing it. Well, see, that's, I don't know, maybe I'm missing something. But, you know, take that example that I just said. So say you buy Bitcoin from someone with cash, okay? And then you turn around and you buy something like an expensive piece of jewelry or maybe, I don't know, whatever. Anything that, I guess, is not registered anywhere, like property or a car.

or a house. How, I mean, how would the IRS, I guess you have to show a receipt, right? If you get audited, is that how they would figure it out? Well, if you're running a coffee shop and you only accept cash, how is the IRS going to, you know, monitor how much cash you're making? I mean, in the end, it's, you know, it's, well, yeah, you have receipts, but they're, I mean, you know, people run cash businesses all the time and, and don't necessarily report. to the IRS correctly. So, you know, I mean, I think you can ask these questions anyway on a number of other issues. You know, it comes down as some are going to report properly and others aren't and the ones who don't are going to be at risk.

And, you know, I mean, I hate like taking the side of, you know, like the man and. Don't be the man. The beat down on this. But, I mean, like, if you're looking for the realistic answer, it's like, you know, that that's kind of, it's, you know, it's, you. You know, it's gray. I mean, the law is black and white, and people are going to operate gray if they choose to. Yeah. And I would, you know, some people will get away with that.

Others won't. And the ones who won't will wish that they had reported properly. So, I mean, I don't know. This is probably not the most, you know, fun thing that people like to hear about. But it just kind of comes down to, you know, you have to make your own choice on what you're going to do. No, and I'm not saying that people should. should not comply with the law. And I mean, who am I?

I mean, I don't even live in the U.S. So I'm, but I'm not saying people shouldn't comply with the law. I'm just saying, like, I don't know how the IRS thinks they'll be able to enforce this. And also, that aside, it seems to me that it's, that it's so, it would be so easy to screw up. And like, because it's still unclear to me how people are actually going to go about. figuring out which Bitcoins they bought and which Bitcoins they sold at what time. And like, this is the whole question, right? Like, how do you actually calculate your gains when, when maybe you're using Bitcoin,

like maybe you bought like one Bitcoin and that Bitcoin gets sold, I mean, I'm using sold in air quotes by buying goods and services and divided it up into many smaller portions? Like, how do you calculate the gains that you're making on that when the price varies every day. I mean, I think for just regular people that are using Bitcoin all the time, you know, I guess that's pretty rare. But for people that are using Bitcoin to just buy goods and services down in the road, this could be potentially just a mess to try to figure out, like, okay, so I made like this much on this portion of Bitcoin that I bought. And I think that's still kind of unclear. What are your thoughts on that? I think there are laws that,

are already written that handle these scenarios, and there's just not a lot of information out there yet. So my guess is that people will create services that make it really easy to calculate, you know, what your gains are and act accordingly. Yeah. Do you think that down the road there could be perhaps, I mean, I guess anybody could speculate on this,

but actual Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, I mean, cryptocurrency, digital currency tax law come into effect the next few years. Is that something that's foreseeable? Or do you think that we're always going to be, I mean, in the U.S. at least, having to deal with having Bitcoin as a property? I mean, it's anyone's guess. I think that the IRS made a ruling and that, you know, calling it property is probably pretty reasonable. I don't, I don't necessarily see why that would change.

So I don't know. I mean, say, let's say that digital currencies do become mainstream. I mean, at some point, they're going to become an everyday currency, right? If they do become mainstream, and it would just be difficult for people to have to, I mean, even the government would recognize it as currency then, right? if people are using it every day to buy goods and services and it doesn't really fall into that property category anymore it falls into some sort of like you know foreign currency or something like that yeah but now you're getting into something that i always debate which is will bitcoin be used as a currency or will it be used as a a payment commodity that is used to facilitate

transactions over the network and like that's what i lean towards and that's what i lean towards So, like, maybe I'm completely wrong and people in the U.S., like in third world countries, I think the use case for Bitcoin as a currency is totally there. But in the U.S., like, what kind of consumer wants to take price risk on, you know, you still have to buy the Bitcoin. So there's a cost in that. And then you have to take price risk and you may lose a ton of money. Like, I don't necessarily think that that's a whole lot better than.

the current, like using Venmo to pay your friend back or some of the other payment options out there. Because if you take, I mean, if you look from a consumer perspective, not the merchant perspective, but, you know, the consumer perspective, you know, you actually get paid to use your credit card. You know, you get points. And rewards are a really important thing. With Bitcoin, like, I just think that there's other than the long, other than some of these less tangible benefits that are not, I think, super relevant to what most Americans would perceive today. You know, maybe if we have, like, massive inflation, that will change. But, you know, I think based on the world today, Bitcoin actually has a way to go in terms of, like, how if people were going to hold Bitcoin to use as a currency.

I think much more likely is, you know, you have a lot of companies that you expand, you keep development, develop, helping the protocol, the payment protocol is super, super important. And you know, you're starting to see bits and pieces of that being developed. And, you know, when that really gets finished, you know, you, I think that there's a ton of potential for, you can really start to see the potential of Bitcoin displacing Visa and MasterCard at that point. And most people still think that sounds crazy, but you really can start to see it when you read into what they're doing on the payment protocol. So, you know, assuming that's the case, I mean, I see a world where people hold dollars in their bank account and then pay for stuff over the Bitcoin network. And in that behind the scenes was an exchange and, you know, the payment processor takes care of all that.

But like the consumer never actually helped the Bitcoin themselves. And they never took price risk on it. They just paid a fee. And that fee is based on a lot of things happening behind the scenes. How much does the exchange costs? What's the volatility and how is that affecting the spread? Stuff like that. But over time, you can definitely see a world where you know, you're paying network fees,

payment processors are paying like 0.1 percent or something like that. Just very low. That's really interesting. I've actually never heard anybody put it that way where you say that people would hold dollars in their bank accounts. just use Bitcoin as a tool for payment. Yeah. That's why it's important because, you know, I always get back to the protocol.

Like the protocol is why this is important. And it's also the reason why Bitcoin exists, because in theory, a better protocol would be just to have something denominated in fiat. If you're just talking about the payment network, I'm not getting political here. Oh, please do. Well, no, because I don't think it makes sense of it doesn't necessarily I think it doesn't necessarily overlap with the business argument.

The business argument would be let's just have a new Bitcoin that is denominated in dollars and the problem. So you could say that and it would be awesome and people would have these really cheap payments and it would be great and all. But in the end, we're talking. about a protocol here. So a protocol is something where everyone agrees upon something and then agrees to do things the same way. And so, you know, if you had that protocol, it's hugely flawed because you have to trust an institution and who can you trust and you can't, you certainly can't

send things internationally. And, you know, not everyone would know where their Bitcoin, like, you know, if my dollar Bitcoin, my dollar coins are backed by JP Morgan. and I want to go send funds to you in France right now, you know, you would probably have a lot of trouble accepting my currency because you'd be saying, well, I don't actually know that it's even being held in JP Morin. Like there'd be all these issues. So with Bitcoin, you know, we've stripped it down and we've said, okay, here's the protocol. We'll, we want to send money this way and because on the bare minimum, it didn't, it didn't have a currency underneath it, that in a way gave value to the Bitcoin itself. And so, like, you know, people look at Bitcoin as a currency,

but I really look at Bitcoin having value because the payment network has value and is better than other methods of paying people. And so, you know, when you can kind of get to that level, You know, people have taken something that's kind of bare bones. And I mean, Bitcoin has so much cool stuff in it. I mean, stuff like multisig and scripting that hasn't even been really developed too much yet. Right. Hasn't really been exploited that much, the scripting aspect. Yeah, the scripting has, like, almost not been developed at all.

Multisig are starting to see it, which is very cool. But, you know, I think it is, I mean, it's, you know, it's the beginning. but I think if people really focus on that payment protocol, I think people just jump two steps ahead and the protocol, the technology, that's a really important thing. That's a huge innovation. It does, by consequence,

I mean, it was created with these political undertones, and that is why it came to be, so you can't completely untie the currency aspect of it. or maybe just like the digital asset, you know, like you can't, you know, having an asset that can't be confiscated and it's yours. Like those those are intrinsically tied into the asset. But, you know, in the end, you know, I think you just need to, when you're actually applying Bitcoin to a use case, it's important to like, I think go back to basics. No, no, no, and I really agree. And I think it's an interesting kind of point of view to have because, like you say, a lot of times when we evangelize about Bitcoin as we do, us Bitcoin people, and we'll talk about all that kind of, you know, not political stuff, but that, you know, the, like you say, you know, there's the fact that you can't take it from anyone that it's, it's borderless.

It's not corruptible, you know, those kind of things. But, yeah, the payment side of it often gets kind of not pushed aside, but overshadowed by all this other kind of ideological stuff. Well, I think it's interesting because in the early days, people didn't really want to focus on the payment network or the technology. You know, I mean, it really was a political thing. And that's what got people excited about it. I mean, you're talking about, like, you had a real need.

And that's why, you know, people focused on the use cases. It's actually, like, makes a ton of sense. The best, you know, anyone who's, you know, selling a product should, you know, is usually selling it on the, like, how does it help you? Not the cool technology that's underneath it. And so, you know, that, so that kind of, was everything that was written about Bitcoin in the early days. And I think we still see a lot of the remnants today.

But they continue to be valid also. They do. I would love to see Bitcoin being used in developing countries way more than it is today. And I think it's probably just so early and things don't happen overnight. And I do believe that it'll get there. but, you know, the, I don't necessarily like to argue for something on the use case that, like, this is probably just because I live in America and live like this peachy, peachy life, but it's like, you know, a lot of the people who were talking about Bitcoin in the early days

talking about how, like, it is, you know, unconfiscatable assets and the government can't track it and all this stuff. They weren't really like doing it for noble causes. You know, I think when you start to get to developing countries with truly bad governments and, you know, maybe tons of warlords who are stealing money from the population, like then like those political undertones really start to mean something to me. But when you look at a lot of the early guys in Bitcoin, like these are also people who, excuse me,

were, you know, kind of living in first world countries. And, I mean, their problems were super first world problems. So, you know, I mean, it's not that I disagree with them because I certainly share a lot of their viewpoints as well. But I think people like to put themselves in this industry on a pedestal and, you know, talk about how they kind of give the same feel that like someone living in like a very dangerous part of Africa should be giving. But it's like they're not that same person. They don't really have those same problems. Some of them probably do.

So, you know, that isn't targeted towards them. But, you know, ultimately, I would love to see a lot more traction. And, you know, I'm not quite sure what it'll take to get there. certainly people devoting to charitable causes that are purely meant to distribute Bitcoin in third world countries like if you gave out cell phones that had Bitcoin app installed on it. I think that would actually be

really cool. I'm not sure what the pricing is on that, but you know, doing stuff like that and I'm you know, if anyone's doing it, I'd love to hear about it because that would be very, very cool. but at Coinsetter we're mostly focused on on developing Bitcoin as as its use case is applied to, you know, really America and how people will be using it here. And I think when you look at the space we operate in, you know, it is a little interesting to have come, you know, so far in a year and a half, you know, a year and a half ago when we were

starting the company, you know, Bitcoin was just such a different place. The reasons why we were what we were building and the reasons why we're building it were a bit different. And today, it's, you know, really focused on, I think Bitcoin has changed quite a bit since then. And, you know, as we look at its use case in the U.S., I think, you know, what people get really excited about is, A, you know, just placing various types of payment networks and credit card companies. And I think that's becoming a real thing. And then, B, you know, I think the remittance side. And, you know, I mean, that is exciting because as we can grow the remittent remittance side, we'll see in other countries on the receiving end, people may not convert their money back

into their local fee. They may just hold the Bitcoin. And then you can really start to see some some interesting things happen on the on the currency side. Yeah, I mean, but for that to happen, uh, local markets need to develop first. Um, yeah, uh,

yeah, but that's a given. I don't know how we got the, how we got this deep into, into, uh, into this topic when we were, we started talking about our IRS guidelines.

Yeah, I think when you start talking about regulation, it just kind of always evolves into some sort of political debate. Yeah. And I mean, you got to consider also, I mean, you're coming from the U.S. I live in here. Brian and I live here in Europe. I think the use case for Bitcoin just between the U.S. and Europe might also be different, you know, not even forget about the third world. obviously the U.S. and Europe have very developed banking infrastructure and we don't have the same kind of needs as developing countries. But for instance, in Europe there's quite a few cities or counties that have like local currency, I think a bit more than in the U.S.

and I see that as kind of, I see cryptocurrency as kind of an alternative to those. And so I think there's different use cases, even between like developed nations and countenance. Yeah, for sure. Maybe we should talk about China real quick. This kind of segues into China stories. So this week, well, there's been a lot of. lot of news about China this last little while. So we've kind of went back and forth about this. And since December with the Chinese central bank issuing statements and kind of warning exchanges

and companies dealing with Bitcoin and also saying that Bitcoin shouldn't be used as a currency. And there's been a lot of speculation as to what's going to happen there. It's obviously had a lot of effect on the price. And so this week, the Chinese Central Bank effectively clamped down on Bitcoin and so now a bunch of exchanges are pulling out. For instance, BTC 38 announced that the company was suspending the use of its third-party payment processor

due to the central bank policy. And so we've seen the price really be affected by this. And I wanted to get your impressions on this and are we at a sort of floor in terms of how low we can go for the Bitcoin price? Can the Bitcoin price bounce back from this? I mean, I think that most of the, I mean, other than the Mount Gawks story, the news out of China has had probably the most significant impact on the Bitcoin price. Where do you see this going? Yeah, I agree.

You know, it's hard to say if we've bottomed or not, but Bitcoin historically has always been really resilient. And this does seem to be another case of it. You know, no one loves to see Bitcoin at 450. And, you know, who knows, it's still going to double right now or it's going to shoot to 300. So we have no clue. But what I feel is that, you know, you just given, you know, the continued banking. situation, especially the events this week. In China, you know, anytime something like that happens, that's going to have a pretty drastic effect on the trading that's going on in China. And

all of the trading going on in China is speculative right now. So, you know, when I look at the Bitcoin price now, you know, I think that the worst of the China situation, unless they ban it outright, because, you know, I mean, BTC China came out this week, you know, saying that, you know, everything's cool. And so it's, you know, Bobby Lee always says everything's cool. That's, that's all you knows how to say. It's fine. Like, you know, they're going to shut down Bitcoin in China. They're going to, like, put up their firewalls and, like, Bitcoin traffic is going to be blocked.

And nobody. No, no, Bitcoin is fine in China. Yeah. It does seem to be hopeful strategy. but, you know, so you hear like kind of conflicting statements, but in the end, actions speak louder than words. And, you know, you're watching multiple exchanges have their accounts shut down. So, you know, I think it would definitely hurt Bitcoin, the Bitcoin price to see China outlawed outright. I, you know, I have no clue if that will happen, but I suspect it won't.

I suspect they'll keep Bitcoin, but put. immense capital controls on the exchanges there. Do you think this is not going to be? I mean, they haven't banned it, but you can't, the only way you can buy it right now is through services like local Bitcoin, right? And I mean, the only way, you can't use it to buy products and services, like, other than banning it, how else, how much more can they hurt it? Like, it's, I think that they don't want to ban it because they want to see where it's

going, you know, and they don't want to. to take action right away. These are just kind of measures to suppress it so that it doesn't get big enough so that they can lose control over it. And they're taking a kind of wait and see approach before they take like really definitive action, whether banning it or imposing, you know, maybe maybe they're taking this time to write laws and, you know, in fact, put in place regulation. Yeah, that could be. That really wouldn't surprise me either.

I, yeah, I mean, I kind of get the feeling that they, it just wouldn't be that smart to ban Bitcoin altogether because it's like they, they have so much more to gain from accepting it and allowing it. But I really, I think that they are pretty scared about. it being used for what I would call their equivalent of money laundering, which is like pulling more than their capital restrictions allow.

Which is what, like $10,000 or something like that? Yeah, I thought it was a little bit more than that, but it is pretty low. It's, you know, like $50K, I thought, but I'm not sure. But, you know, regardless, it's not a whole lot of money. and the people who have the power to create large amounts of capital flows, you know,

have way more than $50,000 there. They have, you know, 50 million. So that's like what would really scare them. And Bitcoin is, you know, a good way to do that. So, you know, I think they are probably nervous about it and they're going to place capital restrictions on the exchanges there. I just don't see how they couldn't. and the alternative is all the exchanges there will probably just be closed down.

So, you know, I definitely hope that doesn't happen. I think that they'll go for some sort of regulatory approach. But, you know, it's so hard to say. But in the end, I think, like, you know, as long as it just isn't shut down completely, you know, there, I think most of the worst is kind of behind us there. and you can look at the current price and I think like, you know, I kind of base Bitcoin on,

you know, what is, what's the volume being done that's like as a legitimate transaction or like a money transfer versus just like someone arming the exchanges or more speculative purchases and, you know, of Bitcoin.

So, you know, I think you look at the current price and it would still be fairly optimistic, but kind of reasonable for, you know, the amount of transaction volume that's going through the system right now. You know, I think if China hadn't, you know, kind of pushed the first bubble, you know, pushed demand so high that, you know, the price spiked, you know, a few months back, you know, this is probably where we would be at anyway. So, you know, it's hard to say, like on the micro level.

because I think most of us think that Bitcoin's going to 2000 in the next 12 to 18 months anyway. But until then, you know, it does seem like we're at least kind of getting to that low point. Yeah. I agree with you. I think that they don't have an interest in banning it outright. I don't see that happening just because it would be foolish for them to do that because there's such – There's lots of opportunities there. Of course, they want to try to control the money that comes out of the country.

But so what's happening with BTC China? You mentioned them. I didn't really follow what. Well, they're, I believe that they still are, they still have some sort of bank funding option. Right. And so, you know, and everything, they're saying everything's peachy clean. So, you know, I think. that's the news right now. It's just,

it does seem to be a bit of an outlier versus what's going on with some of the other exchanges. And so the other exchanges, I mean, if they're not taking payments anymore, they can just pretty much close down, right? Like, BTC 38, I don't know what's going to happen there, but if they can't take

money and they can't withdraw money, like, what's you know what I mean? Like, how can it continue to operate? Yeah. I mean, uh, Malcolm got's it for a long time, right? Yeah. Yeah, I suppose, but you can always have speculative trading because that's all it is in China. So it's like to me, if something like that happened to bit stamp, that would be just like a huge critical issue for the whole industry.

But if that happens to some speculative exchange where all the trading is just people trading against each other, speculating on the price anyway, like it isn't as much of a critical issue. Just because they don't need that steady banking flow. Like if you saw a lot of payment processing going on in China, then you would say, okay, well, the payment processors, or the companies accepting Bitcoin will have to offload their Bitcoin and pay for their bills. So they need an exchange where they can do that.

And then they need to be able to receive a bank transfer for the funds. But in China, I think that you just see all. you see a whole lot less. I think it's almost just an entirely speculative market right now. So where do you think the price is going to go? No, I mean, that's not a serious question. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I mean, let's say China does, let's just speculate here and say that China does ban

Bitcoin. Then I guess the price would probably go down a lot more, right? Yeah, it'd probably go to 300. Yeah. And what do you think can, because there's been such, like, the last few, there's been lots of good news in the last few months, but there's lots of bad news also, obviously Mount Cox and all this news coming out of China has had lots of negative effects on the price.

Do you have any idea right now, like what kind of news could really kind of boost Bitcoin's price? Is it like, you know, Amazon starts, accepting it? Is it, uh, like, what, what,

what, what kind of, you know, what makes the price go to $2,000, you know, like you said? Uh, it's a couple of things and it always comes down to market forces.

Like, in the end, the fact that, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh,

uh, was it both Stripe and Square announced, uh, this week that they're, they're integrating Bitcoin payments. Like, I can't think of a more exciting thing to invest on right now. Like,

that that's such a big deal and and you know uh over time uh you know if investors don't want to uh if that doesn't cause investors to buy in well uh you know the only in the end like those if this is real and people are going to be using the bitcoin network to for these for facilitating these purchases whether by paying through bitcoin or you know just a greater app system develops that makes it, you know, compelling to use Bitcoin over your, you know, your Amex, which gives you sick rewards. So people, like, actually want to do this. If you start seeing that, you're going to see that reflected in the Bitcoin price because there will be so much more demand for Bitcoin.

You know, people, if the payment network grows, then the Bitcoin price is going to grow as well. So, you know, I think over the long run, this will all be reflected in the price. And that's, I mean, I would love Bitcoin to shoot up to 2000 right now for, you know, just my own greedy personal reasons. But in the end, like, yeah. But, you know, in the end, the way I really want Bitcoin to grow is legitimately through providing real value to people. I think even today, you know, most of the ways people pay with Bitcoin, it's slightly gimmicky. And that's just not how I, that's not going to be sustainable. So in order for Bitcoin to improve the world, have the effects that we all like to talk about,

you know, you do want to see huge growth in usage. and that in the end is not going to come through like sexy ways like some cool company accepts it. It's going to come through the most boring way possible, which is it's an underlying payment network. Probably very few people listening to this. I've heard of a star payment network, and that's because it's an extremely boring topic.

But if Bitcoin can get to that level of boringness, then Bitcoin is probably at, at 10,000. What's the Star Payment Network? Exactly. Yeah, if you take your debit card and then turn it over, you'll see the Star Payment Network. And, you know, it allows you to use your debit card at a variety of ATM machines across the world. Oh, I see.

So it's, okay. Yeah. So you can see how, if you just replace the word star with, Bitcoin and then go to a Bitcoin ATM, how there is a huge amount of overlap there, except that we can probably reduce fees substantially. Well, I guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens in China. And we know that Bobby Lee will always be there to let us know that everything's fine. So just before we get to our last topic,

maybe you should just talk about this really quick because it's kind of interesting and important for everyday Bitcoin use, I suppose, for a large majority of people. So this startup claims that they have a way to install a Bitcoin wallet on iPhone. So the company is called Avalonic. Yeah, Avalonic. And so they announced this week that they've got this new product called BitStore, which essentially allows you to install a Bitcoin wallet on your iPhone.

And so the way that it does this from what I understand and from what I can gather is that, so you install this BitStore app, which is, which is basically a web app. So, you know, when you go, you can install a web app in your iPhone. So you go to Safari and you say add to bookmarks and you say like add to home screen. And that adds the website to your home screen and kind of installs it as an app without the Safari interface around it. So this BitStore is kind of like that.

And then within that BitStore web app, they've got other applications, other web apps that you can. buyer install. And this is completely just like without having to go through the Apple iTunes store. And so I think it's in beta right now, but it seems promising because it seems like an easy way to get Bitcoin into iPhone users' hands. Like for now, if you're an iPhone user, you have to use either the Coinbase wallet or like blockchain.

info and you're always using a website and those interfaces aren't always I mean even though they're mostly responsive and or either like a mobile a mobile website it's not like just like touch and go where you just like turn on your iPhone and you've got the icon there on your desktop so I think this is interesting and um I think it will be good for iPhone users I mean I use an Android phone most of the time when I tell someone about Bitcoin, the first thing I ask them is, what kind of phone are you using and hope that they say Android? Because if they're using an iPhone, like, I really don't know how to help them. So this might be a good option for iPhone users. What do you think,

Geron? Yeah, I think this is super, super exciting news because, you know, I mean, I hate to admit it, but, you know, a lot of people have iPhones and the majority of people who use Bitcoin have iPhones per discussions with blockchain. And, you know, we have to get Bitcoin apps into the hands of iPhone users. So I think that people, like I met the FIVA guys at Coin Summit last week. And, you know, they were showing me their app and how to download it on your iPhone. and they were kind of the first guys to find a way to, you know, get, you know, legitimately get past Apple's restrictions. It's not quite as easy to download.

It's just going to the App Store, but it's really not that bad. And so, you know, I think, I really hope that people in the space can continue to find legitimate workarounds like this. Because when we can do that, that, frankly, has to be one. one of the things holding Bitcoin back is the fact that, you know, people can't really innovate on the iPhone app level. And that's such a big use case. I mean, it's like kind of why we're, it's half the reason why we're using Bitcoin is because it can integrate so

easily into your mobile phone. And, you know, what kind of VC right now is going to invest in someone saying, hey, I'm going to create a wallet service for iPhone. Like, you know, it's just a non-starter. So, you know, if you can start, if we can start seeing things like this work, you know, I think that there will be a network effect there too because the really good apps are just going to be so widely talked about by people. Just because I think there's such scarcity in the iPhone world right now. I mean, I still have my blockchain app and now I have FIva as well. But, you know, it's like blockchain hasn't, they weren't able to update their app for, uh, you know, know, it must have been two years. Yeah.

You know, and they wanted to, but they just, you know, couldn't. And it, uh, it kind of sucks that there aren't any, any great iPhone apps right now. But, you know, if people can keep pushing forward like this, that will change. And, you know, then we can really get back to expanding Bitcoin. The other side of that, though, is like, you know, you really want the, uh, the squares of the world to be able to integrate Bitcoin. as well. And you know, you can see tangibly now that they have a desire to do that, you know,

if, I think Apple is a, is a roadblock there. So, you know, we have to find a way to overcome that. Yeah, I'm surprised that other wallet providers like blockchain haven't

went down the strategy. I mean, because it's just a web app. It's just like you, a web app is not hard to build from the front end side if you have the back end for it. I don't know why blockchain hasn't done this already. It would be super easy for them to implement, given the infrastructure that they have already. And the, I guess, kind of technical knowledge of their average customer, which is probably quite knowledgeable about this kind of stuff. And plus, it's not that hard to install a web app on your, on your, on your,

on your home screen. Like they could just, like, as soon as you go on, on blockchain. info on your phone, you just have this little pop-up that says, like, okay, so click here to install this on your, on your, on your home screen. So, yeah, this is really interesting. I think, though, that it's just,

it is kind of a, a temporary solution because in the long run, we're going to need some more, we're going to need some better solutions and some more, I guess, better integrated with the OS solutions. And I don't see Apple staying like implementing this ban on Bitcoin apps forever. I think they're doing it right now as a precautionary measure. But as the U.S. government and other governments around the world are starting to come out with regulatory guidelines and where Bitcoin is being more accepted, I guess,

as a legitimate forms of value transfer. They'll probably at some point turn around. And to come back on a discussion from a while ago, once Apple opens up their doors to Bitcoin, I think that will have an effect on price along with other companies like Amazon and such accepting it. Yeah, definitely. Do you have an iPhone or what do you use? Unfortunately, I do. Well, I can't wait to try this.

I don't have an iPhone, but I'll definitely try to try it on one of the phones that I have at my disposal. Yeah, so I guess the last thing we could talk about is the upcoming New York conference. which you will be attending, I think, you said. Yeah, I'll be speaking at it. So the conference is April 7th and 8th, so that is tomorrow. Starting tomorrow? Yep. Yeah, well, this airs on the 7th, so it'll be starting today as you're downloading it on your...

So tell us about the conference and what... You'll be taking part in a roundtable discussion? Yeah, I'll be chatting with a few other Bitcoin exchange operators. We'll be talking about the future of Bitcoin exchanges. So I think we'll be covering a variety of topics. I think what the technology is that exchanges will need over the next five years. I think the exchanges today are just, you know, when we go five years from now, at the technology we had, it'll, I think, be pretty, pretty minor versus, like, the cool

stuff we'll be doing at that point, especially as multi-sig is starting to develop now. That's actually a big thing that we're doing right now is talking to a lot of the multi-sig wallet developers and providers about our own implementations. You know, I think we'll probably touch on altcoins. Paul Vernon is going to be part of our discussion. And so, you know, I think it'll be a really interesting chat. You know, we're kind of on the inside of it. So it's, you know, a lot of the problems.

It's kind of like, you know, there are a lot of interesting issues you face once you actually start an exchange because ultimately, you know, it sounds really easy. It's like, okay, let's just create something that people can come to make a deposit and then match trades together and how hard can that be? It turns out really

complicated, yeah. And I wish I had known that. And so, you know, I think we'll probably just talk about some of the challenges that companies like ourselves face, whether it's security and then really implement

innovating because anytime you're innovating in Bitcoin, there are huge security consequences to that. So I think we'll probably chat about multi-sig and how and implementations we look to do with that. That's, by the way, one of the things I'm most excited about right now is a year ago when you went to conferences, it was kind of like the same thing. Everyone was starting an exchange or a payment processor. And then anyone's starting a creative company around on Bitcoin, you just kind of look to them and you're like, eh, is this, is this really like something people will use?

And now, you know, people, you know, you kind of have more or less, you know, who the exchanges are going to be in the space. And now you're starting to see people really developing on the protocol level, people, you know, working on different companies kind of on that level. And then also multi-sig wallet providers. And there are some really good ones coming out who have products that they're testing actively right now.

And that to me is just super, super exciting because you can really, I think, reduce the risk involved in a lot of Bitcoin withdrawals and transfers through technology like that. So can you just kind of walk us through what a multi-signature implementation of an exchange would look like? Uh, yeah, I mean, it totally depends on, on, I think there are a lot of ways that this will go, but on the most basic level, you know, you're going to do either two of two or two of three multi-sig wallet and, uh, and, you know, have, you know, some sort of, uh, black box that, you know, you sign transactions with. And then, uh, maybe the customer has their own through a client they possess or, uh, just their iPhone or something. Uh, or you could have, uh, or you could have, have like a third party. Like they're different who, you know, has fraud monitoring software. You know, they're different. It's like so early days on this, but, you know, you can kind of, I think it's easy for people to intuitively see that, you know, having two signatures and two signatures, two

signatures, two people operating like in different places and different, under different, like, you know, reasons why they sign a transaction or don't sign a transaction. Like, you can kind of see why that will be. make Bitcoin a lot more secure versus just having like, you know, a hot wallet on, uh, on like your, on some server that is obviously, I mean, has to touch your, uh, your internet somehow. Like, it's not, it's not to say that, um, it, it's, uh, like, super easy to, to get into, like, I think there are ways you can create a non-a-multiv wallet in a secure way as well. but just bringing that that second point, that second authentication point on board will make a big difference in terms of the likelihood that someone can successfully hack in this space.

And this kind of, this really changes your infrastructure. I mean, because right now in exchange, I mean, it has to have cold storage for this reason, right? So when you implement multi-scenture wallets, you almost don't need to have cold storage anymore. Am I right? You know, yeah, I would say I share that view. Maybe you'd want to have it for just kind of the best security possible. But once you have multiple signature wallets, then that problem kind of goes away. Yeah, I mean, it depends on if you want to settle on or off the blockchain, right?

So if you want to settle on, which frankly I think is really cool stuff, you know, everything's a hot wallet, but it's just a relatively secure hot wallet. Otherwise, you know, you can stick the majority of your funds. You can bundle everything and stick everything into a cold wallet and then say, okay, well, we're going to keep, you know, this percent of our funds that we feel okay, having it in a hot wallet. wallet, you know, online. But the good thing is, is that over the, you know, as we continue to build out this infrastructure as an, as an industry, the, I think idea of having a hot wallet is, is going to become much more, much more, like a much more comfortable idea versus what it is now. Because if you can't have things on an automated hot wallet, then, I mean, like, you're also kind of diluting Bitcoin.

So, you know, I think number one is make sure you never get hacked. And that's a huge, huge priority for us, which is, you know, why we and a lot of other exchanges have, you know, manually verify withdrawals. But over the long run, you know, you want to be able to send out a withdrawal in a second. And that I do believe that will happen strongly. It's multi-sig and possibly scripting on top of that are things that are needed to do that safely. So I wanted to get your impression on this. So this whole question of on off the blockchain, like should exchanges be transparent about where your funds are and have on blockchain transactions where you can trace your funds as someone who operates in exchange? What are your thoughts on this?

Do you think that this is a good idea or do you think that exchanges should have their funds bundled up together in a cold storage wallet? I mean, I'm not, in the best case world, a lot of people disagree with me on this, by the way. But in a best case world, I think you leverage the blockchain as much as possible. You settle everything on the blockchain, but, you know, there are fees involved with that. They're huge technical complications if you're operating in exchange. just thinking about partial fills and how that is settled and how you do this without fraud risk and stuff like that. So, you know, you can never have your cake and eat it too. And this is certainly one of those cases.

So, you know, I wish that everything could just be settled on the blockchain, maybe in the future. That will be the case. But for the time being, I think that you'll continue to see things kept in cold storage. you know, a lot of, if you can do your hot wallet really well, I think that that's the, that kind of hits the, the strong point of like value proposition that people want. Like if you can get a withdrawal and you can do it immediately and you have confidence in, in, you know, the firm's assets, like maybe you can see the firm's assets are there fully backed and all this stuff that we've wanted for the Mount Gock crisis. if you can do all of that, then I don't know that people value the blockchain settlement as much, although it is nice to have because it always is nice to see your bitcoins on the blockchain. Yeah, I mean, this is what a lot of people have been saying, right,

you should have access to your exchange. It should give you access to your private keys, but this, like you said, this makes it very technically and technically challenging for the exchange. I guess like the other thing that I wanted to ask you is so this the Mount Gawks fiasco has kind of taught us a few lessons and there had seemed to be sort of coming together of exchanges when Coinbase and a whole bunch of other exchanges got together and wrote that letter and kind of coming together to say, we're not going to be operating like this. So where do you think we're going in terms of standards? Are exchanges eventually going to come together and kind of build these standards of quality and trust and transparency?

And any exchange that follows those standards would be a trustworthy exchange. And any exchange that doesn't, you would have to kind of watch out for. where do you think standards are going in exchanges? That's a very good question and complex one. Something like that will happen, yes. I get the, I'm an idealist, but I would like to think that exchanges would auto-regulate, you know, that there would be some sort of a, and I mentioned this before

on the podcast, that there would be some sort of a standard authority, a consortium of exchanges that comes together and says, like, this is how we're going to operate our businesses. These are the principles on which we will operate our business. And these are the levels of transparency. You know, some of the things you mentioned, like, for instance, being able to trace the company's assets, that kind of stuff. Yeah. Sorry, I could show.

That's all good, man. So, I mean, in the end, you have to realize that we're all competitors. and we all have, we all have different business models, and we also don't want to disclose some of the things that we're working on to each other. So that, to me, has been one of the biggest holdbacks in seeing a lot of the self-regulatory stuff happen in the space, not to say that it won't, because there are certain things that we will and have to come together on. But I find that to be a challenge.

And then at the same time, like, we all in the U.S. have a money transmitter licensing requirement. And if that's the case, like, we can go out and try to make our own SROs and our own, and these are things that we are going to continue doing. But, like, we can go out and try to do that. But in the end, the quickest way to market is going to be getting the licensing that's already available, already been created. you know, you already have the money transmitter designation. Now, does money transmitter laws, do they fit Bitcoin space cleanly? There are tons of cases where they definitely do not. So that's an issue.

But, you know, it's going to be very, it's not super realistic to say that we won't be I mean, SROs are usually created because the U.S. government, the U.S. government, decides to regulate an industry. So what's an SRO just for Internet listeners and for myself? Yeah. An SRO is a self-regulatory organization. Okay. And so it's, you know, basically all of the companies in an industry come together. Yeah, what I was talking about just now.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And the reason why these exist is because the government, you know, decides and wants to regulate something and then, you know, creates a branch or a, like maybe a committee to regulate that industry. But then they, for various reasons, pass the actual oversight off to an SRO, which has good and bad things associated with it. So, you know, you kind of see a little bit of that happening, but in the end, there's a very clear regulatory framework behind that. And I'm not sure that they're going to create a separate, you know, a separate regulatory body for Bitcoin and digital currencies.

I think we're going to kind of fall under, we already have our licensing requirement. And so now, you know, things are going to be created around that money transmitter regime. So, you know, the companies should regulate themselves. They should feel a responsibility to do things in the best way possible and to release, you know, documentation on their security practices, on all these things that people find to be important. And I think in the Bitcoin space, you'll also see, you know, a lot of innovative ways that we disclose assets.

for instance, cryptographically, for instance. So, you know, I think our industry will be different, but at the same time, you know, just saying that in the U.S., at least, that, you know, we'll be able to operate and, you know, the government is going to take a hands-off approach to us. I mean, the licensing requirements are already there. So, you know, that's not the case. And, you know, you can't just kind of, for the most part,

make up your own, you know, licensing or regulatory bodies. And SR is the closest thing to do there. And, you know, we're an active member in data ourselves. But in the end, like, when we look at the licensing we're going after, especially on the federal level, it's, you know, we're not pushing data. We're trying to, you know, find a home with the regulator. who, you know, an already existing regulator who will accept us. So I'm going to give you the opportunity now to maybe you kind of plug CoinSitter

and tell us how, you know, how and coin setter is different from other exchanges and why we should trust you. Yeah. I mean, what kind of things are you doing to, well, reassure your customers that you're not going to get hacked? I guess I'm kind of hinting at the Mount Gox fiasco, but what kind of things do you put in place to make sure that this kind of stuff doesn't happen? You know, I think anyone who's interested in learning more about our security procedures, you know, we have a large, lengthy post about them on our site,

which I highly encourage people to read. And it goes through, you know, everything from how we secure our bitcoins to, you know, our internal practices who has access to different parts of our platform. And I think anyone who, you know, we're, we're, anyone who looks at our platform, you know, kind of on a diligence level tends to, I think, come away pretty, pretty impressed. So I certainly, I mean, right now, I, I, I, and really, really confident in our security

and, you know, especially on the Bitcoin side, which is just something that, you know, easily keeps you up at night. So, so, you know,

I think on that level, you know, we're definitely better than a lot of the other exchanges out there. You know, on, I think the reason why people would want to use us, though, is, you know,

if you've ever used a Bitcoin exchange, and, you know, had a lot of downtime or had a trade that got filled in a very weird way. Or, you know, you contacted customer support and you didn't get a response for a week. Or, you know, you dealt with a company that had bank options that, you know, disappeared the next day. These are all things that we excel at. Like we, these are all problems. We wanted to create a company that people could, you know, an exchange that people could just had super high standards and was high quality,

high performance and just a really great system. And that's what people get with CoinSetter. And, you know, I think as, you know, we right now do anywhere from, you know, kind of 50 to a thousand BTC a day, this last week, we probably had three days where we did around 300 BTC of volumes. So, you know, I would kind of put us, we've only been on the market for a couple of months now. But, you know, we, you know, we're definitely building up traction. And, you know, I think the people using our platform are seeing that, you know, this is, you can,

with us, you kind of can have your cake and eat it too. You know, we, I think we've really just spent a lot of time and money on building something that's high quality. spoken like a true CEO. Thank you. Well, I think we're going to end it there. So you'll be speaking at Inside Bitcoin's New York tomorrow from 536. So the talk is the future of Bitcoin of crypto exchanges. You'll be speaking with, you'll be on that panel with Jesse Powell and Paul Vernon.

And it's being, so Jesse Powell is CEO and co-founder of Cracken and Paul Vernon, the CEO and founder of Cripsy. And that panel is being moderated by Ken Majmoudar, founder and chief investment officer at Ridgewood Investments. Well, I hope you have a good conference. Thank you. Yeah. I'll be at this one.

The networking events start tonight and we'll be meeting with a lot of other companies in the space. Then it's pretty much a nonstop two days. You know, Wednesday I get to actually get some work done at my office and then head to D.C. for the data conference, which should be really good because it's an opportunity for us as an industry to meet with regulators, explain our businesses to them. you know, hopefully, you know, hear their thoughts, but also kind of tell them, you know, issues we're confronting and, you know, what we need them to do to help us succeed. Cool. So you're heading there tonight, right?

Tonight I'll be in New York City and I'll be at the New York City conference for the next couple of days and then head there on Wednesday and I'll be there through Friday. Cool. Okay. Well, be sure to tell everybody there that you're one episode of Bitcoin so they can listen to that episode. And say hi to everybody for us from the other side of the pond. All right. I'll be sure to do that. All right. Well, thanks a lot, John, for coming on again. I'm not going to keep you any longer. And it was really great talking to you. And I think we had some really interesting discussions. So I just want to say again to all our listeners, if you could head over to iTunes and give us a review, that would be great. Also, you know, send us your feedback, episode of

Bitcoin at gmail.com, your comments, questions, anything you want us to talk about on a show, anything you want us to cover, any guests you'd like us to have on, we definitely want to try to get more guests on because it's really been interesting to have people, you know, different people from the Bitcoin community come on in these last few weeks. Also, if you to tip us, it's at epsennerbidcoin.com slash tips. We've had some problems with, I think, our doche coin and like coin addresses and weren't good because some people have told us that they weren't valid, so I'm going to change those and make sure they work. And also, follow us on Twitter, Epson or BTC, and you can find us on Facebook at Facebook.com

slash Epsonor Bitcoin. So thanks again for listening and we'll talk to you next week.