Epicenter - Learn about Crypto, Blockchain, Ethereum, Bitcoin and Distributed Technologies - Siân Jones: European Banking Authority Opinion, Regulation, Coinsummit London, COINsult

Episode Date: July 14, 2014

The recent publication of a European Banking Authority opinion on “virtual currencies” has caused great concern among actors of the Bitcoin ecosystem. Siân Jones joins us to dissect this 46-page document and the 70+ risks it identifies. Siân also helps us better understand the EBA, its role and the extent of its influence in the European Union. We also briefly recap the Coinsummit conference which took place in London and which we attended. Episode links: European Banking Authority EBA opinion on “virtual currencies” Bitcoin receives red carpet welcome in the Isle of Man [City A.M.] sle of Man Launches Digital Currency Startup Incubator [Coindesk] COINsult This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/028

Hello everyone, and welcome to episode of Bitcoin, the show which talks about the technologies, projects, and startups driving decentralization and the global cryptocurrency revolution. My name is Sebastian Kutjou. And I'm Brian Fribe and Crayne. Today is July 6, 2014, and thank you for joining us for episode 27. On today's show, we have two guests on. First is Tatiana Morose. She's a singer and a songwriter, an anti-war activist and a very active Bitcoin enthusiast and evangelist. Recently, Tatiana created Tatiana Coin, which is the first ever.

musical artist coin on the counterparty protocol. And Tatiana coin is a token which will give holders exclusive access to Tatiana, gear, events, the upcoming album. And so she's joining us today from New York. Tatiana is also the new sales director at Bitcoin Magazine. Hey, Tatiana. Hi, how's it going? Very good.

We also have Wendell Davis on. You probably know Wendell from episode 22. He's the creator of the Hive Wallet. He's also the CEO of Humeant, which is a company that aims to help companies create their own coins and deploy and sell branded coins. So he's a very knowledgeable in the field of kind of crowd sale platform and tokens. It's a Bitcoin 2.0 type thing. So it will be great to hear his views on Tatiana coin in that side. So he's joining us from Thailand today.

Hey, Wendell. How's it coming, guys? great thanks for joining us now i just want to point out how interesting this is because um brian you're in berlin i'm in lill tatyana is in new york and wendell is literally on the other side of the globe in thailand so tatiana it's like 10 a m where you are and wendell it's probably close to 10 p m and you know even though we're spread out across the world we're able to communicate thoughts and ideas pretty much instantaneously as though we were sitting across from each other in the same room. It's the internet. It's the internet. Yeah. And this is possible because of the internet

and technologies like TCPIP. And I just want to point out that if this is possible, it's mostly because when the internet started to develop and when companies like Skype started emerging, they mostly went unregulated. And although lobbies such as the telecom lobbies, etc, would have liked to kind of trample that innovation before it got started, regulatory bodies and governments allowed it to happen for the most part. And this is why we have the internet that we have today and we're able to do all these things. And you can also look at e-commerce and how that's revolutionized the way that we live and work and such. And it's such a stark contrast to Bitcoin.

And it just goes to show that our, I'm using air quotes here, opponents, which is the banking sector and the financial sector, it just goes to show the grasp that they have on governments and the lobbying power that they have. And I'm saying this because this week, the European Banking Authority, which is a risk management, risk assessment authority, based in the EU, which basically consults all of, of the 28 member state national banks issued an opinion piece, an opinion paper, which it's a 247 page, 46 page paper, where it identifies more than 70 risks associated to cryptocurrencies in several categories. And at first, I mean, when I first read about this, I thought about it, I thought this is just another one of these. central bank type papers, which tries to warn the public about Bitcoin. I think most of us, and from discussions we've seen online, kind of don't really understand the implications of this paper in Europe. But then I got a call from Sean Jones yesterday, who we had on several

episodes ago and who's quite specialized in matters relating to regulation, and told me, And so she told me that this is actually very, very bad news for Bitcoin, at least in Europe. And so we already had our episode set up today with Tatiana and Wendell. And although this is really important news, we're going to have Sean on next week for a full-length episode on exactly what this means for Bitcoin. But she insisted that we discussed it today. And so she was nice enough to record a short segment just to kind of go over what this paper. means for Bitcoin in Europe. And so here's Sean Jones explaining this recent European Banking Authority paper. In a 46-page opinion published on Friday, Europe's banking super-regulator, the European

Banking Authority, called for the regulation of virtual currencies in the European Union. In December last year, the EBA issued a public warning to consumers about the risks of virtual currencies that triggered a raft of similar warnings from banking regulators around the world. In its new opinion, issued after a joint assessment carried out with other European authorities, the EBA proposes a two-pronged approach. A whole new body of European Union regulation governing virtual currencies, but it acknowledges will take considerable time, and in the meantime, calls for immediate action by national regulators in the 28 EU member states to discourage, its words, banks, payment and e-money institutions from buying, holding or selling virtual currencies.

In effect, the EBA is advising national regulators to ban banks and other payment institutions from directly dealing with virtual currencies. Instead, it suggests virtual currencies should be allowed to develop outside the financial services sector, presumably until such time as a regulatory regime is in place. The EBA also recommends that virtual currency gateway such as exchanges be made subject to existing anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing regimes, something that has already been enacted or proposed in other jurisdictions such as Canada and the Island Man. The regulatory regime envisaged by the EBA would require governance requirements for market participants, segregation of client funds, and most

controversially, the creation of what the EBA calls scheme governing authorities to be accountable for the integrity of each virtual currency. Imagine, if you like, the Bitcoin Foundation having to be authorized as the sole governing authority on the use of Bitcoin in order for Bitcoin to be allowed to interact with existing regulated financial services. This will create a two-tier world in which regulated virtual currencies are permitted to be used in the Fiat world, and unregulated virtual currencies are not. Arguably, the EBA opinion is the single most significant event so far in the regulation of virtual currencies.

It has implications in the development of virtual currencies. It will have immediate implications for banking relationships. It will have significant cost implications and it will cause business models to be re-evaluated. In next week's episode, I'll be covering the background to the EBA, its powers, examining some of the 70 risks it's identified with virtual currencies, and consider the next steps and likely outcomes of this significant development in virtual currency regulation. This is Sean Jones for Epicenter Bitcoin. Okay, so thanks very much to Sean Jones for taking time to record that for us. And so we'll

have around next week to go over these 70 risks associated to Bitcoin. from the opinion of the European Banking Authority. Yeah, I look forward to talking about that because I saw that news as well. I didn't really pay attention to it until we heard from Sean like, hey, this is really important. I mean, I just came out on Friday only. And then I read it today.

And I had this impression. You know, I think all of us are aware that Bitcoin is just really, revolutionary. It has the potential to completely change the financial system, the way we do commerce, the way money works. It also has the potential to change government, the power

of government. And it's always been sort of surprising to an extent when you see governments take a fairly positive stance toward it, to say like, oh, you know, this is innovation, etc. Because, of course, while it is

that, it's also extremely threatening. And it seems governments hadn't grasped that. And when I read this thing by the European Banking Authority, my impression was sort of that, first of all, they understand. They're very aware of just how disruptive that can be to the banking, to the banking system and the control of governments. And that response in that paper is, you know, that's the kind of response you'd expect.

given that they grasp that. So, you know, it feels sort of like the gloves are off. So I'm really interested in getting this in depth. So, but, you know, we'll do that most next week. But it's a super important topic. Also, I just want to remind everybody that we're going to be at Coin Summit next week. So if you want to meet us, definitely send us an email, eBetconerat at gmail.com or send us a tweet.

And we'd love to meet with you. And if you want to talk to us, if you want to do an interview or something like that, definitely get in touch with us. Yeah. You'd actually have to chance see us in real life, like the flesh, you know, not just seeing pictures online. This is a huge opportunity. All right.

So let's get into some perhaps funner topics than this recent EBA news. So Tatiana, you recently created Tatiana coin. So could you just tell us a bit about Tatiana coin and the crowdfunding. that has been going on for the last little while? Yeah, sure. So basically, back in February, I was in Berlin, and I remember we were walking through the streets and everybody was joking around,

let's do a Tatiana coin, and I thought that was very funny. Is that where you had the idea for Tatianicorne in Berlin? Well, Adam Levine had brought it up with me when I had visited him back in January, but I didn't really understand. He was explaining to me LTV coin, and he was explaining how that model could be used,

in a recording studio or for an artist. So it was sort of like, you know, building up in terms of my awareness of this as a legitimate concept. But basically, after I came back from Berlin, I guess in early March, Adam and I reconnected. And we, you know, we chose to go with counterparty. You know, we were with MasterCoin for a while. And then we went with Counterparty. And we went with Coin Powers, which is the crowdfunding platform upon which we were building

our campaign. So I was the first coin ever launched on coin powers. And yeah, since then, you know, we started the campaign with a model where we had 100,000 coins distributed daily of the 3 million coins total that we made over a 30-day period. And it would, the price would vary based on how many people would donate that day. So if it was a slow day, the people who donated would get a really, really large amount of coins. And that was really fun for certain people who were really savvy, but for other. it was very difficult.

And it became apparent very quickly that that might be a little bit of a challenge for some of my fans that are newer to Bitcoin. So we stopped the campaign after the 15th day and we pivoted it to go into a different model, which is more of like a vending machine model. I think that they're implementing the actual vending machine in a couple days. But right now you just go to coin powers and you're purchasing the coins at a fixed rate. and that seems to be a little bit more understandable for the average user. So what was the motivation for initially having the sort of proportionate donation model where you get so many coins depending on how many donations are given that day?

You know, we all saw what happened with Madesafe. And Madesafe had a lot of different problems. So we thought that that would kind of deal with the issue. So it was Adam's idea. but I think it would work for bull like I think it would work for a different type of coin but because Tatiana coin was so new I think it was just it just didn't really match

what we were trying to do I certainly think that they're going to make that available for other kinds of coins but just it didn't really work for my model yeah I'm curious as well because it seems to me sort of from an economic perspective what this incentivizes if you have this, you know, a fixed number of coins per day. You know, it incentivizes people. Actually, I saw somewhere Adam pointed out in a comment, like the optimal strategy is to, you know,

donate small amounts each day and, you know, then hope that you donate on a day where maybe nobody else donates or something. But I don't see why that makes any sense. Like, why would you want to incentivize that behavior versus just people donating, you know, however much they want to give. So I was, I was very kind of bevaled while this was chosen. I know he's used to something similar for LTV coin, where, you know, you get sort of like more reward when you comment when no one else is commenting, which I also don't understand.

Well, I mean, that's the idea that, you know, we were, you know, sometimes with this stuff is really like I kind of defer to the guys on it because I'm so unfamiliar, you know, I don't have any training and, you know, trading of coins or any of that stuff. I could barely understand. in Bitcoin now. Now I'm a lot better with it. But, you know, it's still a learning process for me. So I deferred to them. And this was an experimental process for everybody. And I just don't think that it, that it was really the right move. Like, we liked the idea that people would come back to the page every time. But even my diehard Bitcoin friends that were fans of mine, they didn't, they couldn't figure it out. They're like, I don't like this either. So I don't know. It just,

It just didn't end up being the one for me. But I think the way that we did this from the beginning is that it's the first one. It's an experiment. So, you know, that part of the experiment didn't exactly work for us. And so we changed the model around. I have to say one thing I really liked about it when I was reading through some of the details is the idea that, you know, once people have the coins, you know, and then you offer certain rewards like at dinner with you or you, you. record a song for them or some of the higher rewards or just get the album. So you essentially get those coins back because, you know, people buy the rewards from you

with the coins. And I really like the idea that if you do another crowdfunding campaign in the future, it is those same coins that you're going to sell again. I think that is brilliant and really, really a positive thing because it can give a lot of value also as an enable investment at this stage in sort of your future success as an audience. And, you know, I think that that we'll definitely be doing crowdfunding in the future. One of the things that I thought was really cool about the Tatiana coin is that it's really just based on how accountable I am to do what I say. You know, because people donate the money.

They don't have any guarantee of anything. But it allows me an opportunity to deliver what I say I'm going to. And when they see that next album, then they're going to say, oh, okay, so this is a. girl didn't just, you know, take the money and, uh, spend it at a casino or something, but, you know, there was like a legitimate use for it and then people can see, oh, well, this is a really great quality product. So the next time I go back to them, they're going to have the experience where they say, oh, well, this girl did what she did last time. Let's give her a little bit more and see what happens next. And in general, that approach, you know, the coining of, I guess,

people's creative content, uh, this kind of holds people to a different standard and it incentivizes people in a different way. You know, when people go to their day jobs, there's all sorts of motivation going on and lack of motivation. And that's why a lot of people mess around at work doing nothing. But if you think about just how people will look at work in the future, if it's really truly based on their output and people will judge whether or not, you know, the value of their coin will go up or down based on how well they do.

So I think that there's a whole different motivation for people being built into this, this thought process, I guess. Yeah, I totally agree. So I think where that also comes into play is, you know, if you do a future crowdfunding campaign, nothing commits you except your word and promise now that you'll again sell Tatiana coins versus like creating another coin. So I think that kind of plays to that as well.

Yes, I mean, there's also a few other concepts that I want to explore with the Tatiana coin. For example, I have a talent agency called SameSide Entertainment, and it has about, I don't know, 70 different speakers, musicians, educators, comedians that are all kind of liberty-oriented. And a lot of those activists have a hard time raising money for their projects. So I wonder if there wouldn't be a way where we could create a coin that would be compensating each of them based on how many people like what they're doing versus another person on it. So it would be almost like a label for activists. and then I'd like to explore the concept with making an actual record label

because I used to work in a lot of really, really nice recording studios in New York, and I became extremely frustrated with the music industry. It was completely unfair. The people who got the budgets in order to record were usually, I don't know, like their music's been very good, and it would really depress me because I think that, you know, the music is the expression of the people. The most sacred thing that I contribute in the world is music. So I have high standards for what I expect people to be putting out into the world.

And the people that had really good messages in their music were not given access that, you know, the major label supported artists were. So I kind of want to help break up that stranglehold, which has been a bit of a process within the music industry for the past 10 years. The music industry has changed so much. So I think that, you know, you have Indiegogo and you have Kickstarter and those are working somewhat. But I think that they've jumped the shark a little bit. And also, if you give me, let's say, $25 for an Indiegogo campaign and you get my t-shirt, well, what if you don't like that t-shirt? What if it doesn't fit you right?

Or what if you want a girly t-shirt? You guys probably don't. But, you know, these are stupid things that kind of come up when people make these donations and you're stuck with the prize. And then after you make your donation, that's pretty much the end of your relationship with the person that you donated to. Now, with a Tatiana coin, you have the incentive to go along on that journey with me. Give me real-life feedback as my fans and as my backers from the very beginning.

And you have a vested interest in seeing me succeed because then you can transfer your coins to somebody else and maybe get your money back or make a little bit of money off of it. Or you can have a really cool present for your friend who's my fan or something. So I think it's interesting to see the different possibilities. And this is literally the first step. So it's fun to be on the front end. I think that the one thing that really transpires in your campaign, in contrast to Indiegogo or Kickstarter or whatever, is really that building that lasting relationship with your fan,

whereas with a Kickstarter campaign, you're trying to fund one specific thing, and then once you're done with that, I mean, you move on to something else, or you create another campaign or what have you. But with this new kind of coin model that you've created for artists, being the first artist to try this, you're really trying to create this kind of long-lasting relationship.

So moving forward, do you think that this is a model that other artists can embrace? Or do you think it's too early right now? Like, how do you see this moving forward? Well, you know, I think that this is definitely something that I would like to make available to artists everywhere, right? I mean, that would be the best idea is to make it universally acceptable. But the problem is that even with my knowledge of Bitcoin, which is vastly superior to anybody in the music industry that I know, it was still very difficult.

So I think that there's a need for consulting and I think that there's a need for help. And in order to get those things, you need a certain amount of money, which sort of defeats the purpose of making the coin in the first place to a certain extent. What I was thinking would be cool is to make it as a record label. So I could pick out, for example, artists that I like and that I think will do really well. We raise their funds based on how much they raise. and then, you know, the label will offer that consulting and will offer regular recording label services as well. So I think that that might be a bit of a better model. And then what I was thinking

was maybe we could even franchise the coin label model. So I obviously am not to sign, you know, 500 artists, but if you had five artists that you liked and I already came up with a system that really worked, well, maybe other people could model their record label after, you're or my model and then create all these little mini coin labels. But I mean, that's definitely a little ways away. But I think that things move so quickly within this space. Some of my next steps are going to be to start reaching out to people in the music industry. You know, I have a lot of experience in that regard and I have a lot of friends.

And slowly but surely, people definitely seem to be coming around. So, but it's still a little bit away. Yeah, but it's, you know, what you mentioned is interesting, you know, the ease of use, I guess, or the ability to be able to create your coin and being able to do it simply and easily. You're using coin powers, which is a crowdfunding platform, which allows you to create your own coin, and you can choose whether you use counterparty or color coins or master coin. And maybe you can weigh in on this, Wendell. You know, these platforms are kind of enablers, which, I mean, essentially, now anybody can just create their coin.

So if like whatever band wants to create their coin, they can do it quite easily. So aside from having these platforms crop up, you know, like we've seen Swarm and others, what else needs to happen in order for this to kind of take off? Well, okay. So I think we should kind of back up a little bit and make sure we're clear about what exactly this is. Because, you know, these things that we're talking about that are, you know, being created and traded on coin powers and, you know, swarm soon, I suppose. You know, these are user-created assets, right?

These are not native coins. They're not native cryptocurrencies, so it's not like a competitor to Bitcoin or something like this. This is actually something that rides on top of it. And as a result of, like, the complexity that is involved there, the tools are all extremely young. There aren't a lot of really good ones right now. You know, like the reason I think a lot of people are basing what they're doing on

counterparty and counter wallet right now is because they actually had probably the best user experience. And as far as I can tell, they have the most complete set of tools, but they're still not really easy to use. And the whole process right now of creating a new user-created asset is a bit, I would say, bewildering. So, you know, obviously we need better tools to do this. We need, you know, more unified processes. We need people to be able to understand what it is that they're doing when they go in there and create one of those things. And, you know, what it really means to have something that, you know, quote, rides on top of the Bitcoin blockchain. I think we're really kind of surprisingly close, though, even though, you know, where we are

we are right now is almost just out the gate. It's amazing how much this side of the equation is really developing. And, you know, as I've said, I think I maybe mentioned this on a previous podcast with you guys. You know, I actually personally believe that this is like the killer application for cryptocurrency, so-called cryptocurrency. I think it's mostly in these kinds of user-created assets. And what those are, right, is something, in my opinion, much more akin to stock than a currency.

You know, to some earlier points that Tatiana made, if you think about what, you know, the artist coin really is, right, it's an opportunity to buy in to an artist. It's an opportunity for you to basically say, I believe in this person and I want to support this person, so I will give this token that we have created some value. And, you know, I guess if you think about the Kickstarter model in the past and things like that, you know, I mean, you know, every time I've ever spoken to someone that has actually done a campaign there, you know, people always say, you know, they hate this rewards thing. The rewards thing is the biggest pain in the ass because you basically have to come up with some stuff that you really don't necessarily want to do. And maybe some cases you do, but it's just extra work that's really sort of a distraction from the thing that you are trying to do. And as Satiana said, you know, sometimes, well, probably more times than not. It's actually, you know, it's not. It's actually, you know, it's not. really what people want. There's not like a super satisfactory experience from that, etc., etc. You know, if you look at something like Oculus Rift, it's a little bit of a different story. Oculus Rift was this, you know, virtual reality helmet that Facebook recently acquired for $2.5 billion. And they, you know, crowdfunded and raised $2.5 million on that platform. And you can sort of imagine that those people feel, even though they didn't sign up for,

you know, an equity deal, that wasn't part of the deal. They may feel a little bit jipped on that. They didn't have an opportunity to take an ownership stake in that. And what these user-created assets do is they change all of that. So, you know, it's a roundabout way of actually, you know, kind of saying when I was trying to get at the first place, which is, you know, I think that as these tools come into more maturity, this is going to be seen as, you know, more or less the obvious, obvious killer application for Bitcoin, in my opinion, much more obvious than even currency. And, you know, this is going to, this is the thing that, you know, to use the faded words,

will change the world because it gives this opportunity of raising money to anyone anywhere in the world. And I should put money in quotation marks, but you get my point. But you still need... I couldn't agree more. Yeah. You need... Of course, you need Bitcoin to do this, right? You need Bitcoin to buy Tatiana coin, et cetera. So do you think, Wendell, that wanting to participate in these kind of crowd sales is going to be the thing that incentivizes people

you know, that's going to drive Bitcoin adoption? Or do you think for a large part, it will kind of lack, you know, it will be, it will come with Bitcoin adoption. So that, you know, I mean, Tatiana, you have a very Bitcoin-specific audience or a lot of fans in the Bitcoin world. But an artist who doesn't is going to be much more difficult, no? That was what I was, that's why I saw a need for a label. But I really agree with Wendell in terms of this being the future. One of the reasons why I was so picky with, you know, how I wanted to approach the coin from the beginning, picking my team, making sure that everybody was cool, was because, you know, it is such a challenging process.

And I would really like to be building a model that people could use. For example, making regional cryptocurrencies. I was talking with somebody in Washington State about that. I mean, I think that the applications for this are just, unbelievable. So I'm more interested in changing the world, not just because I made an artist coin, but because I could help create funding for all different kinds of projects that I think are really incredible. Look at the women's annex, you know, they're trying to raise money, and I met with Foreshda the other day, and she, I'm trying to get her to get a coin, but she's not really

into it. But I mean, that kind of an organization would benefit greatly because now the donors get something back for the money that they're given. I mean, charitable coins in general, I think, could really benefit from this in addition. to it, I mean, countless other applications. So I really, I really strongly agree with that. And I mean, the interesting thing about this is, of course, you know, I guess to answer your question, Brian, I mean, I believe it will drive this adoption of Bitcoin. I believe this will be the reason to get Bitcoin.

You know, as I've kind of, I guess, you know, matured or regressed or whatever you want to call it in this ecosystem, I guess I've more or less come to the perspective that Bitcoin is super useful for a couple of things, like sending large amounts of values. pretty much anywhere. And it's also really useful for this. And I think that, you know, it's not so useful as a day-to-day currency given the fluctuations and given the, you know, the crazy, the crazy value change that is, you know, it's, if you're just going to use it to go buy a cup of coffee, it's a little bit more frustrating than it is if you're going to send, you know, $20,000 to Russia or something like that. So, yeah, I believe this will actually drive

Bitcoin adoption for people to get Bitcoin. And the nice thing about it is there's already such a, you know, a reasonably large size pool of, you know, quote unquote value in the network, that this to me seems like, you know, it's really already ready to go. It's, you know, if this is the killer app, then I think we have enough to get started. Yeah, and I think that, you know, this kind of touches on what I was mentioning earlier, where if you, if you compare it to the internet, you know, you have TCPIP, which is just the underlying layer, and then you have all these other apps on top of it. Most people don't even know what the hell is TCPIP is and how it works and what

actually is doing for them in the background, but they do have this underlying layer of technology, which is enabling this traffic to transmit over the internet. And I agree with you, Wendell. I think that adoption is going to be, adoption will occur at the top layers and not so much at the bottom layers where it's happening now, you know, with all these Bitcoin enthusiasts and these guys that are kind of, you know, technically savvy and know how to get around and use an exchange and have the patience and, you know, to actually purchase Bitcoin. Whereas moving forward, I think we'll have this adoption sort of at the top layers like you mentioned, you know, using these crowdfunding platforms, et cetera.

Yeah, I think that's a totally awesome way to look at it. And I hadn't actually modeled it that way myself, but I think I'll start to say to say exactly that. I mean, that likes a lot of sense. I mean, you know, as again, as a day-to-day token, I think that Bitcoin has a lot of advantages and disadvantages, but I think the disadvantages for the average person who right now is perfectly happy using, you know, debit credit cards and that system to, you know, make day-to-day payments. I mean, that's more than sufficient, and I believe that they wouldn't really

understand the wider advantages. So yeah, if it happens at the top layers, then it's probably going to happen in some form or fashion like this. I think we talked last time, I don't remember if we mentioned this on this call or not, but we also talked about this idea of, like, you know, a fiat-backed token, something like that could pop up, you know, who knows. But I think the notion of Bitcoin as, quote, the world's currency, is less likely than Bitcoin as the underlying token layer that all this other stuff ends up riding on. It probably will be other things too. I mean, not just Bitcoin, but these blockchain technologies generally.

Tatiana, just going back to Tatiana Coin, I want to ask, why did you choose to go with Counterparty and not some of the other protocols? Well, you know what? I mean, I felt like there was maybe a little bit less organization in some of the other companies, and Counterparty just seemed really solid. Like there were no frills. There was nothing fancy. They didn't have a budget, but their stuff worked. And at the end of the day, I just wanted something that really worked and was going to be, you know, functional. And it just seemed like the easiest one to use. And I really liked the guys over there. You know, they were not, you know, fan. Yeah, they didn't have like a lot of bells and whistles. They seemed like a little bit like the underdog. I like the underdog generally. But aside from that emotional appeal or whatever, I thought that they had the superior problem. and that was the reviews that I was getting from other people as well. What were some of the challenges you ran into and the problems you had in the process?

Well, even understanding it first place, you know, just understanding the concept was a little bit tricky. It's a very intimidating process, you know, because unless you already have a good understanding about how these things work, even from, you know, like an alt-coin perspective. But let me think. Yeah, I mean, just knowing how to approach things and making the right decision was very stressful because I wanted it to be really good and I wanted it to be a huge success. And I most of all wanted it to be something that would just, I don't know, that was done the right way. That was really important to me.

So all along, that was a little bit tricky just to make sure, because, you know, this is such an uncharted territory. nobody really knew exactly how to approach it. But luckily, the people that I chose to align myself with, you know, my team, Lisa Chang and Adam Levine and Amos, they were all really supportive and really patient. And, you know, also there were a lot of unforeseen technical things that came up, which as a person that doesn't have an experience in that realm, I didn't realize that that was even a possibility. So when those issues started coming up, I was really taken aback because I thought that we were going to do things on this timeline and things end up sometimes taking a little bit longer than you expect them to. So I don't know. I'm not the most patient person. So I would say that that was definitely a little bit tricky for me.

And are there any other functional alternatives right now? Like, could you do this with MasterCoin or Counterparty for instance? Or call it coins? Yeah. I mean, we definitely could. And I'm not even, you know, I would like to try out some of the other platforms as well. But, you know, I have Tatiana Coin right now. The Bitcoin magazine job is taking up a lot of my time.

So there's only enough time in the day to try and create another platform. I mean, I know that people have been really happy with the other platforms as well. But I just happen to be, you know, starting out with counterparty. Can you talk a bit more about the record label and how exactly that would work? Would it essentially be something like coin powers for artists or can you go more in detail? Yeah, sure. I mean, this is a relatively new idea and it's built on a few different things. So for me, what's been really important with my activism when it was talking about Ron Paul or Liberty or Anarchy or Bitcoin,

I really want to make things really accessible for people. So the way that I got, you know, the way that I got this idea was when I was working in the recording studios, there would be all this downtime and nobody would be in the studios. And I found it really frustrated because, you know, the electricity's on. And there's all these unpaid interns there, you know, cleaning the trash, which I'm pretty sure they didn't want to go to school to be trash cleaners, but whatever. And it was really frustrating because I felt like there were a lot of learning opportunities missed and they were really great artists. So I started this video series called One Shot One Takes. And that ended up, sort of spiraling into, and it was basically like a video series where artists would come in, they'd get one shot, one take, we'd do a video of them performing live. We would show the engineer, showing different tips and tricks for people to use at home. So the interns were getting a training, and then we would create video footage of the training so we could almost be sharing that knowledge with other people. Because in the engineering world, you know, they have like their own fans. If you're a rock star engineer, you know, there's a whole bunch of aspiring engineers that want to know your

tips. So the problem was that my boss, he didn't really like the idea. And also, in order to really capitalize on the artist, we would really have to have a label because if I wanted to put out a compilation, you know, I'd have to be getting shit from everybody. And when I found out about the, and in general, like, I just thought that there was so much interesting stuff happening in the recording studio, just an interesting backstory to everybody. So when I started doing the Tatiana coin and I started thinking of applying it to a record, I was really imposing it onto a previous plan that I had, which would be to change the recording studio model. Right now in a record, in the studio, all you have is people who are engineering,

and that's pretty much it, right? But what about a record company? You know, back in the olden days, record companies used to have their own recording studios so as to save costs. And I thought that you could basically make a more well-rounded one-stop model for musicians if you incorporated some crypto into it. And I don't know exactly what that would look like, but what I would like to do is show video and make almost like a reality show. I know reality shows are horrible, but just showing how cryptocurrency plays into the music world while also experimenting with this new record label model. I just thought that all those things were really complementary to one another. And, you know, you could potentially raise money and have people voting for artists with their coins or if you made like a label coin,

then they could do that. So I know that's not maybe the most thorough explanation, but that's sort of an overall view as to how I wanted to make it work. So, Tatiana, I actually think that this idea could be done now. I mean, it's something where it's like, I would say sooner rather than later in general. You know, if you wanted right now to create a record label that actually, you know, was based around crypto tokens, you could basically, you know, issue a new user-created asset on counterparty or something like this. You could basically sell that out to stakeholders explaining the vision. And you could issue unique tokens for not only every artist, but, you know, every project that the artist is

involved in. With counterparty, it's possible, for example, to issue dividends. And you can issue those dividends in other tokens. So, for example, if I wanted to create a record label that was based around this crypto token, I would issue that token. I would sell it off to people, giving myself some initial startup capital, I would at that point, you know, bring some artists in, you know, spending some of that capital as necessary to kind of fund all this stuff, issue tokens, unique tokens for each of those artists, which also then, by the way, could, you know, have their own sort of mini crowd sale or IPO. At that point, all the projects that that person does would also be a unique token. So the artist basically has its own

token or her own token, and then the project has its own token as well. And you follow the same process with each one. Now, what happens here is that basically you can have dividend flowback into the main company, so that basically anyone that is holding the tokens of either, well, first of all, the artist would actually have some tokens of the project, and the label would have some tokens not only of the project, but also the artist. And whoever's holding the record label itself, you know, would be able to be eligible for those dividends. I mean, this model works, as far as I can tell, it works right now. We could actually do that in Counterparty. It's just a matter of organizing it, telling the story correctly, and getting it going. So Tatiana, if you wanted to,

you could totally do this. I mean, I would say it would be an amazing next step for you, in fact. Well, that was something that I put into the original crowdfunding campaign. And actually, later, I think tomorrow, or today, later today, I'm going to meet with Adam from Counterparty, and we're going to talk about it at the studio. We didn't know how much interest there was going to be in Tatiana Coin, right? So in order to do a label the way that I would really want to do it and partner with the studio, you have to actually have people that you pay to work there because I can't do it. I have a job at Bitcoin Magazine.

I'm touring musician. I'm recording my own music and stuff. So there's just so many hours in the day. In order to get that going, I need resources. And that's definitely like something I'm planning on doing within the next three months. really want to start getting that going. But it's just there's only so many hours in the day. And that's what it, that's one of the main challenges that I face. And I'm sure all of us here do. It's just there's so many great ideas and just not enough money or time to do them all at the same

time. But that's certainly something that, you know, I'd be happy to talk about more and explore with you guys. And I don't know. I mean, I think this is, I think of this is a bit of a group project, um, because we're all going into the unknown. So that's something, um, you know, I used to work at a studio in Manhattan. I've been thinking of approaching my own boss to talk about this, but I think that there may be other studios that are more suited to this that we could potentially partner with. So yeah, it's definitely on the agenda. And if you have any feedback on that, I'd be happy to, obviously, be thrilled to get any kind of feedback on that. Well, I think that, I think interesting thing is, I mean, you know, you already have an artist coin,

right? So you don't need to, you don't need to reissue an artist coin. But I think that the process that would be most effective is to kind of do it in the hierarchical structure that I just mentioned, right? So, you know, you start with the label, you move towards the artists, and then, you know, you start to do the projects individually underneath them. You already have the artist, you're the first artist coin. So, you know, naturally, you could just like basically fit into that by having the label that is created, acquire a sufficient number of your tokens so that it has, you know, dividend rights to anything that you create and so on. I mean, it could all fit together. I understand that, you know, of course, we're all super busy, but, you know, that's a pretty exciting concept.

Yeah, and I think that I'm uniquely I have a very unique position because of my previous experience in the studio industry and I'm one of the seven people in the music industry that even knows about Bitcoin or even thinks of using it. One of the challenges that I had

was, you know, I have those friends and stuff and they were just, they just didn't get it. You know, and they couldn't get their higher ups to get it. So what I was waiting to see was what's going to happen with Tatiana Coin and how is this going to do? Because if we could show a proven success in that,

then that would be a much easier explanation point. I mean, these aren't forward-thinking folks, and I am going to need help from some people in order to do it the way that I would want to do it. And I have access to some of those people. They just don't get it yet. So that's on the agenda. Also, what do you guys think about this?

Like, do you think that one of the things that I felt with Tatiana Coin that was difficult was, you know, people that don't know about Bitcoin really didn't feel like it was easy to participate? Because now they had to first, they had to go out and find Bitcoins, which is terrifying for people. And the easiest way to do it is Coinbase. And you couldn't send it from Coinbase to CoinPowers because the address wouldn't show up.

So you'd have to go from Coinbase and then send the coins to either your counter wallet, which you'd have to set up. And then you know what I'm saying? Like, this is miserable. So I think that there's a little bit of a more streamlined process necessary in order to start tapping into, like my fans know about Bitcoin.

But my friend Megan Wright, she's an incredible artist. Her fans don't know anything about Bitcoin. So how are they going to get involved in that process? But I think that your solution with creating the label first before finding the artists may circumvent that problem at least a little bit. Yeah, I mean, that's definitely a big challenge. I mean, I think that's just a challenge we face in so many areas of Bitcoin. And really, a big part of it is usability and other part of it is education. I just want to throw in, I guess, one thing, which may be a bit of a boring aspect.

I feel like one big challenge, I mean, I agree with Wendell that this is a super interesting approach, but I guess one big challenge you'd run into is probably the legal side. Because I know, I think, the swarm, I mean, it's really quite similar to what swarm guys want to do. We're having this top-down swarm coins and then having projects underneath that issue their own tokens and they pay back just the swarm coin holders. And I think from my understanding is that they can't really do this as a sort of profit-sharing dividend model because they feel that's illegal or, you know, that's very, very problematic.

So that they have to do actually similar to what you're doing where you're getting a reward, you know, you get a CD or a dinner or something like that. But that it kind of comes away from that financial, you know, investment angle, but of course, that financial investment angle is really kind of the most interesting side of it. So it's definitely a challenge. Hopefully we'll get solved in some way, or maybe someone just has to do it. Of course, if someone just goes ahead and does it, preferably they don't have a local studio where they can get arrested in. Yeah, I mean, you know, touching on what we were talking about earlier, I think that the underlying problem is, you know, interaction with fiat, you know, so if it's difficult for people to go out and buy, you know, get the bitcoins, like you were saying, Tatiana, on, on coin base and then transfer them to a wallet and such, you know, the initial issue, the real problem for most people, I think, is just acquiring Bitcoin. And this is where, you know, the initial issue, the real problem for most people, I think, is just acquiring Bitcoin.

and this is where there needs to be a lot more fluidity. Once you have Bitcoin, you're fine. You know, you can invest in user-created assets. You can pretty much do what you like, but it's really just acquiring them. And, you know, if we look at, you know, these kind of absurd papers by the European Banking Authority, not to go back on that,

but this kind of thing isn't going to make things easier, obviously. We need to fluidify the transfer of fiat to Bitcoin or just all out, you'll start paying people in crypto. So we need people to take initiative and companies to take initiative and start saying, okay, well, I can pay

my employees in cryptocurrency or part of their salary in cryptocurrency for instance. I don't know. What do you guys think about that? I mean, that's going to happen, but it's a very, very slow process. So if you want to have, I mean, absolutely, you know, if you want to have fast adoption, et cetera, the intersection of fiat and crypto and some integration in the financial system is really essential.

I mean, that really is the thing that has a potential of getting like really fast results. And I think the other thing is going to happen too when that's not possible. It will just be much, much slower and it will have to basically build up in a whole separate system. And I think it will work as well. You know, I don't have doubts that in the end, you know, no, you know, no, cryptocurrency and this whole approach we're pursuing here is going to prevail. But I think it'll have a very big effect on the speed at which it happens. One of the things that I thought that I was, you know,

that was really important about the artist coin was a couple things. Number one, it avoided because it was an artist coin, people were already familiar with and it kind of avoided the legal implications of doing something where you have dividends and all that, because then that becomes something where you maybe you're breaking the law and you don't even know it. But in terms of mass adoption, I think that having an artist coin is really helpful because people don't, they're scared of Bitcoin, but they're not that scared of artists in general. And they're always looking at any time an artist is something new, they're like, oh, this is

exciting and new, and they like that. So I think that it was less about me as an artist than just the artist's concept in the first place. And I think that artists are generally tastemakers and they can bring about mass adoption. So it's almost like a little bit of a chicken or the egg thing. But I think as these, you know, I, I'm curious if Amos is going to take a fiat at any at Coin Powers. You know, now Coin Powers is going to have wallet on there starting tomorrow. So that's going to help make it a little bit easier. But I think that that really would have been the easiest thing is if people were able to buy into Tatiana and using their credit card. But that's just, we're not quite there yet. You know, I think if he's,

offer something like that. I mean, he's going to put himself into a lot of risk. You know, that's, that's one of the situations where he'd end up having to open a bank account. I'm not sure if he's even incorporated. You know, this is a, the interesting thing about this kind of stuff, right, is that, you know, as, as, as Brian was saying, like, kind of once you're in, you're in. You know, once you have Bitcoin, you can kind of easily exchange it for others and there's no big deal. It's like, it doesn't, you know, the crowd sales stuff doesn't have the choke point, really, that getting Bitcoin actually does in the first place.

So that's the kind of the challenge. We're dealing with basically the same problem we've had for a couple of years now, which is just getting these things in the first place. But once you're in, you're in. So indeed, it seems that once we come over this fairly massive hurdle of just having general adoption of this thing as a concept, all this other stuff can really start to happen. But until that point, it is unfortunately,

going to, I think, be quite niche. But I believe that these new use cases will start to drive people towards the adoption of it. Yeah, no, totally. So people want to participate in the Tatiana coin fundraiser. It's still going on for a while, right? So where can they check it out or, you know, donate? They can go. Or purchase some coin. I don't know what terminology is appropriate. They can go to coinpowers.com. And my campaign is right there on the front page. or they can go to Tatianacoigne.com. I'm actually going to be updating that website in the next couple of days. So there'll be some new information and some new blogging and stuff like that.

But a lot of the info on there is pretty accurate. So people can go on there. I just want to kind of update people on the new form out of the campaign, but otherwise everything is up there. So people can donate very easily and progressively more easily as time goes on. And when is the ending? In 15 days. But I think what we're going to do is just keep the coins.

on sale after that point. So anytime anybody finds out about it, they can participate. Because that was one of the challenges with the 30-day campaign was that it didn't give people enough time for that information to sink in. And there wasn't this really huge...

It wasn't like some of the other coins where there was an incentive to purchase because, oh, you'd make all this money and you could sell it a week later. I mean, that's not what this is. So it's a certain type of person that's interested in this project. I think they're more the idealistic people that are interested in this project versus, you know, just like the straight up money guys.

So we think that, you know, I'm on tour constantly, you know, so if I'm going around and telling people about it, I want to continue to tell people about it. So that's kind of how we're going to approach it going forward. I think that's cool. So you basically have, you know, you have the three million titanium tokens and you can just keep selling those until I guess you sold all of them. Well, we already sold 1.5 million of them because of the first half of the campaign. Right, right. Because you have 1.5 left. And are you going to adjust the price at some point?

You know what? That is a question. Yeah, I think that pretty much the flexibility is there to do whatever, whatever you really want with it. I just want to make sure that whatever I'm doing is ethical. I don't know. I just, I don't want to do anything shady. And I think that sometimes with crypto stuff, it's not the, you know, it's not all roses in sunshine. So I wanted to make sure that whatever I do is, is, makes people feel comfortable and

they feel like they understand it because whenever people don't understand something, they're very, very suspicious. So I want to make it as open. And, you know, that's why if I'm, if I misspeak about things, I think that makes people feel a little bit more comfortable that at least I'm willing to acknowledge if I make a mistake or something, because then they feel like, oh, okay, this is a real person and not some shyster. Yeah, no, totally. So Tatiana, I just want to ask you about briefly the women's crypto association that you're involved in. Can you just kind of explain to us in a few minutes what this project is and what you're trying to accomplish? Yeah, sure. Basically, we have a women's crypto association. It's different from crypto women

worldwide, which is an organization I'm also a fan of. What my organization does is we pick kind of like the industry thought leaders, women. I know that Andrice is going to be supporting us and a few of the guys, you know, we don't want it to be only women. But it is women focused. And we think that women can offer a different perspective into Bitcoin. I think we're very valuable in terms of helping with mass adoption. Anytime I try and explain to a girl about Bitcoin, she totally gets it. And any time a guy tries to explain it to us, it's like a little bit more challenging.

There's just something in the communication. So I want to make sure that women's voices are being represented. And, yeah, basically, you know, we also have like a venture division. So if women want to learn more about how to pitch their ideas, they have a little bit more of a welcoming environment. We do have one of the women on our board has her own organization, which is women in venture finance. And so hopefully there'll be opportunities for women to pitch. And I think, you know, we just want to make sure that, for example, there's an event, I think the Chicago event. Maybe it's not Chicago.

I shouldn't say which event. But there was an event recently where 48 of the 50 speakers were men. I mean, come on. That's just a little ridiculous. And we're not looking for anything special. Most of the women on the board have said several times, we don't want to be some whiny, give us something special, feminist organization. We're feminist, but in the way that we would expect anybody to be treated equally. And we identify with the feminine because we're girls. And there are certain issues that we find particularly interesting to us, but we're just about equality in general and for a bigger diversity in the space. and we're not here to browbeat anybody into it, but we hope that by organizing, we can kind of have a better, more influence on there. And we have a lot of wonderful women on there. You know, Elizabeth Ploshae from the Bitcoin Foundation,

Connie Glippy from BitGiv, Elise is our venture capital, Angela Keaton from Anti-War, Pamela Morgan from Empowered Law, Emily Vaughn, who recently joined BitPay, and then Lisa Cheng, who helped with the Tatiana Coin, who also does coin consulting. So that's kind of what our full. focuses and we hope that we'll be able to make an impact.

Tatiana, can I just ask one question? This is actually really interesting that you bring this up because I was sitting at lunch with someone recently and kind of asked the same questions. Like, why is it that we don't have more women in this space? And, you know, the closest answer that I could possibly come up with was that like anytime a man explained it to a woman, it probably sounded like it's something about gambling, you know, inadvertently. So I'm actually really curious, like, what is the distinction you think in the explanation that you give when you speak to women about it versus how men speak to a woman about this subject?

Because this would be really, I don't think anyways ever talked about this, but it's something good to know. I think it's because I have a perfect example. I asked a guy at the Toronto conference, and by the Toronto conference, I was all fired up because I kept hearing about these sleazy guys, you know, offering women jobs in Bitcoin and then grabbing their butts. and then when it becomes apparent that they're not going to, you know, get any action. All of a sudden the job, Albert disappears. I mean, there were so many, like, horrible stories. But aside from that, I remember in Toronto, I asked my friend a question about something in Bitcoin. And he answered me like, oh, you're so stupid.

How do you not know this? And I think that that's very symptomatic of the way that the men are trying to explain it. I mean, I would sit at a table with a bunch of guys talking about Bitcoin. First of all, they could care less what I had to say. second of all it was just a big party showing oh who is who was more manly who knew more and it wasn't like a shared environment whereas while women can be competitive there's not that intimidating factor when i explain something to somebody if i don't know it like to another girl we'll giggle about we'll be like oh okay well you know we'll figure it out and then we ask a question and it's more of a warm and welcoming environment whereas if it's a guy there's just this i don't know there's this just sort of like intimidation with the with the men in the in the space and it's more of a warm and welcoming environment whereas if it's a guy there's just this just sort of like intimidation with the with the in the space. where they don't really think that maybe the way that they're explaining it isn't that accessible. And instead of, like, they'll get frustrated that the woman isn't understanding. And so they'll just, you know, explain it in a way that makes us feel stupid.

And I don't think that that's good. Yeah, no, that's shame. I don't know. I think in Berlin, like, you know, I want to meet up here. There's always some girls there. And there's also a, there's also now women's. or I think a Métian Auburn, so like girls evening now. So there's like a women's meetup in Berlin as well now.

So that's really exciting. I think there were like 14 people last time. But yeah, I think that's also just something that's going to change, right? I mean, I'm sure if you looked at the internet in 1993 or something, it was like all male. In a lot of tech areas, it's just very male-dominated. And I think over time that kind of changes. And I think the same thing is going to happen with.

Bitcoin. Yeah, I mean, this is a problem that has been reported in male dominated industries for years, you know, especially in the tech space. And I just, I think that there's a, there's a better way around that. And, um, and we hope to kind of explore that. And it's always a little bit difficult to kind of express the, the views of everybody. And I don't mean to because everybody has a different association with what the word feminism means or woman means or whatever. But we just want to make it more welcoming environment and we think that we could do that through some of the talks that we lead. And I don't know, just, you know, I mean, I think girls like seeing other girls up on the stage. It's kind of simple and it's sort of silly, but it's true.

You know, you identify with the person that looks like the most like you. And so that's what we're trying to kind of circumvent. But there are a lot of wonderful women's organizations that are addressing this issue. There's Miss Bitcoin in Israel. and I hope to be involved in all of those organizations because, you know, I think that there's a number of approaches to getting the message out there. And honestly, I wonder if the woman's approach wouldn't sometimes work with men as well. Because what if you're a guy that's not really tech savvy, you know? I don't know. I think that there's something in the psychology of the explanation when it's somebody that isn't threatening you, and obviously not physically, but you know, mentally threatening you in some way. Like in plot. with the social contract or something. So, so I don't know. I think, I think that this could be something helpful for more than just women.

And the guys, I think, sometimes they don't know how to include the women. They're not the most socially adept people. They sit behind computers all day. And I don't think that they want to be, you know, excluding anybody. So we can help educate them on how to be better, better at welcoming people into the space. Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, hopefully that will, that's something that's going to change. and I think it will,

but I think it's very important that this work is being done. Perhaps before we end today's episode, Wendell, do you want to give us update on what's been happening with Hive? Yeah, absolutely. Well, we actually just released a new version of Hive, which we're calling Hive Web.

It's an HTML5 wallet specifically, you know, kind of targeting the iPhone. We started this, of course, you know, a couple of months before Apple has, well, you know, they've apparently announced that not so much an announcement, but a rule change that, you know, Bitcoin apps may possibly be okay. So we started this project before that point. So it's, it's an HTML5 wallet, which we think actually is one of the better ones. And it's actually, you know,

fairly unique in a couple of ways. One is that it allows you to do sort of geo-based payments, which are, you know, you're standing next to someone. You want to pay them something in Bitcoin. Now, normally you'd have to use QR codes or something like this or, you know, somehow get them the address. In this case, you turn this thing on with, we call Waggle. And Waggle basically, you know, looks out for people who are close by, and you just see them in a list, you click it, and you can send Bitcoin right away. There's no need to do QR code swapping or any of this kind of stuff. And additionally, it also is the first, as far as we know, a consumer multi-wallet, meaning it supports more than one token. So it supports Bitcoin and Lightcoin right now,

and we have a bunch more coming. The goal is literally to support all. And that's another topic that we can go into later because it needs some explanation, but we're trying to be sort of as agnostic as possible. So, yeah, we're really excited about this project and this product being out on the market now. And we'll be actually wrapping that as well into a native iOS wallet and trying to submit that to the app store. So hopefully that actually gets pushed out pretty soon.

We have some other pretty cool plans coming out on the line. But, yeah, if you haven't checked it out, you know, please do. It's a BIP 32 wallet. You just need to basically write down a passphrase and you can port it to any other BIP 32 wallet that's out there. So, you know, super friendly, super portable and, you know, really quick to get going. So I would encourage anybody that's interesting, that kind of stuff to give it a try.

I really like this waggle feature. So I just created one. Obviously, I'm alone, so I can't really use it. But this is really interesting. So how did you get this idea? Is it something that you saw somewhere else? Or did you just come up with it by yourself? Yeah, actually, it was, you know, I saw this in use in the Dwalah app, actually.

they had a really excellent, you know, pay someone close by feature, which I thought was just, you know, from a U.X perspective, just brilliant. And I thought, well, we could probably do the same thing. And it just so happens, of course, that, you know, most of the modern web browsers and the mobile web browsers especially do allow you to use the location services native to the phone. So, you know, in that case, basically we can have a really nice web wallet that basically, you know, gives you geofeatures as well. So that's where that came from.

That's a really good idea. I mean, as a UX designer, I, I, I really like this. And so I'm on it right now. So it's really nice. I mean, it's super simple. You sign on.

You get, it generates a passphrase, right? So your passphrase is essentially your login. You get a four digit pin. And then you just have this very simple wallet where it tells you at the top, like how many, how many bitcoins you have. And then I guess you can add your name and email, which probably makes it simpler for you to find someone nearby. Yeah, that's right.

And we also, you know, pull from Gravitore. if you happen to have one of those things, right? So, of course, your name and your picture appearing in there is really helpful, you know, for a waggle purposes. Though, of course, if you're standing right next to somebody, you obviously will know who that is. Awesome. And so you're thinking of encapsulating this as an iOS app as well? Yeah, we actually already did it.

And we'll be submitting it pretty soon. So, you know, be on the lookout for that. And hopefully, again, you know, Apple's rules are always sort of a little bit, you know, wobbly, I suppose. and we can't know for sure that they'll accept it into the store. But this is an easy way for us to do it, so we are going to give it a shot. And if it manages to get there, I think it'll be a pretty nice addition to the Bitcoin Wallets ecosystem on iOS.

And that's speaking historically as well. I think it's one of the better ones. Awesome. I'll be looking forward to that. Thanks a lot. Can you tell us anything about human? Are there any projects that you can talk about? Yeah.

I mean, there's always, there are always projects. We, we are going to be announcing something in just a few days that I think, you know, people either find utterly horrifying or intensely funny or kind of wonderful. I'm not really sure which. It does relate to crowd sales. But, you know, I don't want to reveal anything just yet because we actually kind of have a little bit of a rollout plan for that. But yeah, there are some things coming down the line. It's just, you know, the stuff we're doing right now is, well, you know, part of it is like commercial, right, which we can't really talk about. And the other. part is our internal stuff, which we're going to be rolling out, you know, as an accelerated schedule as we possibly can, but these things, these things all take time. Cool. Well, maybe you can come back on a bit later to tell us about it after you've released. I'd love to. Well, thanks so much for joining us today, guys. It was great, you know, talking about Tatiana coin, and I think just really exciting

model, and it was great to hear kind of your insights, Wendell, and also about the exciting developments you have with Hive, and I look forward to trying out that Hive Web Wallet as well. This was really fun, guys. Thank you everybody for, you know, weighing in. And I don't know, I like hearing about human anyway and the high ball. So yeah, this is great. Thank you. I think the thing to say, though, is, you know, it's super cool to have these conversations. And I think we'll look back on these with just like, you know, kind of awe and astonishment years from now, right? Because, you know, this is in such an infancy. And I mean, right now, it seems, at least in this, I think in this, you know, Bitcoin 2.0 space, especially, it seems like so, you know, weirdly. innocent and playful because, you know, none of us really know what we're doing, you know, we really have no idea. We're just kind of, we're just kind of trying things out. But I mean, I think that the stuff that we're talking about here is really, this is really groundbreaking.

And I believe these things, you know, at least some of these things will end up being, you know, more or less like, you know, part of the story of humanity going forward, not to make it too dramatic, but I really, you know, I really feel that way. So, you know, it's an honor to be able to, you know, have these conversations, frankly. Yeah. Aw, and astonishment or perhaps even embarrassment. Definitely embarrassment. Like you say, things do evolve quite fast, and sometimes I'll listen to one of our first episodes,

it'll be like, what we're thinking? Yeah, of course. It's a learning path for all of us. Yeah, I'm sure there will be lots of that. Well, thanks so much for listening in. We'll be back next week. I think there's actually another episode coming out from the Bitcoin 2014 conference.

It's going to be our last. So Sean Jones did some interviews with a lot of people in Amsterdam. we're still sifting through that and it'll be pretty much just centered on regulation. So look forward to that. That's coming out Thursday. And Sean will be on next, so next week's episode on Monday. Exactly.

To go kind of in-depth into what's going on in Europe and what this all means. So thanks so much for listening. If you can follow us on Twitter at the episode of BTC, you can also subscribe to your newsletter if you're interested. It goes out every Friday and kind of, you know, analyzes that sex what's been going on

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