Epicenter - Learn about Crypto, Blockchain, Ethereum, Bitcoin and Distributed Technologies - The Tiger’s Bit Of Cologne

Episode Date: January 26, 2014

Topics covered in this episode: TigerDirect becoming the largest retailer to accept bitcoin The prospects of the mighty Google accepting bitcoin Marc Andreessen’s post comparing bitcoin to personal computers and the internet BitCologne The latest bitcoin ATM stories Ethereum Update: News on the fundraiser terms and launch This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/004

Hi there, today's January 26, 2014, and this is Episode 4. On today's show, we're discussing the successful start of Tiger Directus Bitcoin acceptance. They've passed overstock.com and are now the largest retailer to accept Bitcoin. We're also discussing rumors about Google toying with Bitcoin and all the excitement that surrounds this prospect. We're talking about an interesting blog post by Mark Andreessen, a famous entrepreneur and venture capitalist. who thinks Bitcoin will be as big as personal computers and the internet. There's Bitcoin alone for more private-to-peer interactions. We're discussing the latest Bitcoin ATM news.

More of those are coming every week. And there are updates on Ethereum, revolutionary new protocol that will launch next week. If you like the work we're doing and you'd like to support the show, please go to epicenterbitcoin.com slash tips for our tipping address. Welcome to Episandar Bitcoin, a weekly podcast about the latest news and developments in the Bitcoin world. My name is Brian Fabianne Crane. I'm an entrepreneur in Berlin and the founder of a Bitcoin startup spelling group. And my name is Sebastian Kutur.

I'm a Canadian developer and user experience designer and I'm based in Lille, France. How have you been, Sebastian? Not too bad. Pretty good, and you? Yeah, good too. I'm excited to be back here in our fourth episode now. also excited. How has your week been? It's pretty good. I've been quite busy with reading on a bunch of Bitcoin related topics and we're having our next meetup coming up on Tuesday too. So I'm going to

give a talk there, I think, about the Ethereum. Yeah, I've been reading a lot about Ethereum since last week actually. And I'm really enjoying the content that Vitadik has been posting on the Ethereum blog about the decentralized autonomous corporations. I've got to read it over again. I've got to say the articles are pretty long, but it's very interesting stuff. Yeah, he's a fantastic writer. It's quite amazing how many talents he integrates in one person. Yeah. Maybe I just wanted to talk about, well, what's coming up, basically. We're going to be attending the Inside Bitcoin Berlin conference. And so we'll be attending that conference on January 12th and 14th and 13th, right? Is that it, 12th to the 13th? I think so, yeah. I think it's a Wednesday, Thursday.

Yeah, so we'll be attending that conference and hopefully doing some interviews and interviewing some of the speakers there. We've got to get in touch with those people and also recording some conferences. I'm really excited about this because, well, for one, I've never been to Berlin. Two, I can get to go to our conference. And three, well, we get the meet because for those of you who don't know. Well, Brian and I have never met yet. Yeah, indeed. That will be very exciting. Yeah, there will be tons of fun here, I'm sure. So I'm leaving on the 11th.

I'm arriving on the night of the 11th. I think you've got your meetup that night. Yeah, we're doing a meetup just before the conference. I think that's going to be exciting too because I think we'll have a lot of people from outside probably to come to the conference and are there the evening before. So I'm very excited about that too. Yeah. Well, I'm landing around 8.30 at night, I think.

So I don't think I'll be there for the meetup, but at least we'll be able to have drinks afterwards. Yeah, well, we tend to go pretty long. But yeah, you probably missed the Hawks. But, yeah, then afterwards, the drinks. So that would be great. All right. And, of course, if you're at the conference, you know, please get in touch and we can meet up. So it would be great to meet some listeners, too.

So maybe we'll start the topics we've got, well, it's been a slow. news week. There hasn't been very many stories, but there's some interesting stories. A lot of stories in Bitcoin acceptance this week. Not so much regulatory. This week is, I guess I would characterize it as a positive week for Bitcoin because we've been getting a lot of visibility in large retail stores and online presence as well. So let's get into it. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think it's actually interesting in general that we've seen so much positive news on Bitcoin recently. But then if you look at the Bitcoin price, for example, nothing's happened there. It's very interesting how these two seem to be quite disconnected at times.

Well, it's time to buy. Indeed, yes. And take that opportunity. Okay, so our first topic is Tiger Direct. I mean, I'm sure anyone who's following Bitcoin has heard about this. Tiger Direct is an American e-commerce site. I think they have physical stores as well, and they sell electronics, so computers, consumer electronics, things like that.

And they've just started accepting Bitcoin on Thursday. And they're now the largest company to accept Bitcoin. They're about twice as big as overstock. So they have two billions in annual sales, 3,000 plus employees, a Fortune 100 company. So one of the 100 biggest U.S. companies, I think. And they're working with BitPay. So it's interesting, too, we see some real competition here between Coinbase and BitPay.

I think they're both trying to sign up the major merchants now. And this is something that have been expected for a while. I think a lot of people in the Bitcoin community have been, you know, our customers of Tiger Direct and they've been kind of encouraging them to start accepting Bitcoin and now they finally done it. And it's been a huge success in the first 17 hours. They did it 20 through a few thousand in revenues. Do you have any idea of how much, what portion of their revenue that is for a day?

Yeah, I did calculate that. So if you take their annual revenues, this works out to about 6% during those 17 hours. Oh, God. Now, of course, that's not going to continue. at that level. Right. But still very substantial. And then just if you think on the difference in the payment processing fees,

they're paying on that, it makes a big difference. So, yeah, this is amazing. And of course, this is extremely positive because on the one hand, now you can buy so much more with Bitcoin. But I think what's really the major positive news here is that we've had now, with Oestock and with Tiger Direct, two big merchants accepting Bitcoin, and they've had really positive results. Of course, that gives a lot of incentive for other merchants too to say,

okay, we're going to do this as well because it's so easy to do. And even if we have a moderate success with it, you know, because of the lower payment fees, this can make a lot of sense, especially for merchants that are in low margin business. So like Tiger Direct and. generally speaking, merchant-thousel technology. Exactly. E-commerce sites, but also, I mean, in general retail,

you know, I think a lot of that is margins of, you know, 2% or 4% and things like that. I mean, I used to work in tech sales and, I mean, margins are just scraps. This is why they, I mean, this is why when you walk into a Best Buy, They try to sell you every possible accessory next, you know, with your purchase because that's where they're making their margins, right? So, yeah, you're right. This is huge for tech retailers. Yeah, so there's actually another company called New Egg, which is very similar.

And they're, I think they're also rumored to be about to start accepting Bitcoin. They're kind of in the same boat for a long time. People were always wondering, is it going to be New Egg for? or Tiger Direct first, and both companies were hinting that they're thinking about accepting Bitcoin. And now Tiger Direct first, and it's such a success. And, you know, all these Bitcoin users now went to buy from Tiger Direct. So I think this gives new egg, of course, this really strong incentive to do it as well.

I don't think they have much of a choice now than to accept it. I mean, if only as a competitive. This is so interesting. Now we have this kind of switching dynamic where this actually starts to be a strong incentive for emergence to, uh, to start accepting Bitcoin. And I honestly did not expect that. This is taking me by surprise.

I thought that merchant acceptance and the kind of viability of Bitcoin as a payment system would just take much longer than it seems to be taking. I mean, at least if this continues, then, yeah, I'm going to be, I'll be kind of proven wrong because I thought this was going to take more longer time. Yeah, I think this was during our predictions episode where I was saying this is going to happen real quick and you're saying, I don't know, I don't know, what's doing it, 2014? maybe 2015. Yeah, I mean, it's been a month and already we've seen so many merchants come into this

space. Of course, we still have the issue that, right? I mean, now we have this influx of Bitcoin users that already have Bitcoin. But there's not that many of them. Right. So this novelty will wear off. And at some point, you know, if there's Tiger Direct already, if New Egg now follows, I don't think they will see the same kind of sale search.

So I think at some point the incentive is going to decrease a bit. And then what we really need is a larger Bitcoin adoption, more people to own Bitcoin to buy Bitcoin. What we might need is integration of bank accounts with Bitcoin. So basically they have like a Bitcoin paying card. I think some people actually work on that. So you have like, let's say Bitcoin payment card. And, you know, let's say,

Tiger Direct would say you get 2% off if you pay with Bitcoin. And then you pay with your Bitcoin payment card. And kind of in real time, your bank would take the corresponding amount of dollars by Bitcoins. You know, you basically sent the Bitcoin's standard Tiger Direct or, you know, whoever that merchant is. So that way, you know, you wouldn't have the volatility problem. And you could basically use Bitcoin.

as a payment system. And you wouldn't have these issues that, you know, first you have to go to Coinbase or local Bitcoins or something to buy the Bitcoins. But you can kind of just use that advantage, the efficiency advantage. So this is the first time I've heard of this card system. You're talking about what kind of card were you talking about here? Like a credit card? This, I don't think this exists yet.

Right. But it's just such an obvious thing. I mean, people will do this. Basically, it's the same thing that. BitPay is doing on the merchant side, you could do the same thing on the consumer side, no? So that, you know, just the other side instead of like them selling your bitcoins for, for dollars, they would basically buy you. They would buy you bitcoins with the dollars. So that's, you know, that's, that would be fantastic, no, because you could have really cheap

transactions and it would be great. I mean, of course, now the incentives may not there, but let's say merchants start giving discounts for you paying with Bitcoin. And for a company like Coinbase, this would be pretty simple to do because they already have their bank account integration. So I think this is going to happen. And this would lead to obviously more adoption. If we have these systems in place, which make it much easier for you to purchase with Bitcoin. And plus, you've got an incentive to do so. Yeah, yeah. No, this is, I think this is going to happen. And it's, it will be very important. then you don't have to, you know, then you won't be restricted just to the people who are

with the own Bitcoin and now are in a position where they say, okay, I have a whole bunch of my money in Bitcoin. I need to buy a new computer. Why don't I use my Bitcoins? Because that's just a very, very small segment. And that's not going to scale. Now, just back to this Tiger Direct story. I think that Tiger Direct accepting Bitcoin and possibly now New Egg, maybe accepting Bitcoin soon because of the Tiger Direct move, I think we're going to start seeing other tech retailers get into this space. I wouldn't be surprised if within 2014, like we start seeing companies like Best Buy getting and also accepting Bitcoin, maybe online at first, but also in their stores. If their larger competitors are accepting it and people are seeing them, I guess like you say, you know, that incentive is going to go down. It's not like Tiger Direct's going to be making $250,000 in revenue per day on Bitcoin.

but it does play on the image or the perception that people have towards that brand. You know, they're innovative. They're getting into this innovative payment system. They share my values. I'm going to go buy through Target Direct because I can buy it with my Bitcoins rather than Best Buy or any other merchants. So I think that they're going to have an incentive, if not because they need to make that revenue, but also as a branding thing. Yeah.

And the barrier to entry is so low. you know, all you do is, you know, you just put, it's easier than, it's basically, you know, to kind of work to accept PayPal, you know, it's a similar thing. So it's extremely easy. Right. I mean, for online for now. I mean, I think that if. For online, yes. Best Buy wants to put in Bitcoin payments in their stores, that'll be something different. Yeah. One thing I want to mention too is, it's kind of funny because they, um, Tiger Direct had this big banner on their front page that, you know, now we're accepting Bitcoin and you can buy these graphic cards to mine Bitcoin. I saw that. It's, of course, a bit ironic because mining bit coins with graphic cards is a terrible, terribly unprofitable endeavor and, you know, not to be recommended.

But however. Would it be selling Butterfly Labs mining hardware through the website? That's what it says, yeah. So they have, says it's coming soon. And of course, that will be. huge successful butterfly labs. I'm a bit skeptical of that for a number of reasons. I mean, I think butterfly labs, of course, has a very bad reputation

because they've continually not delivered on their promises. So I wouldn't want to buy anything from that company. But more importantly, it just seems that, you know, Bitcoin mining is not really so much a consumer thing anymore. And while it might be desirable, if a lot of different people buy, you know, mining equipment just to make the mining power more decentralized. I don't know if it's actually a good decision for individuals.

I mean, I personally wouldn't want to buy that. Yeah, because we've obviously seen mining move to the cloud and to larger scale operations since difficulty's been going up. Yeah, yeah, totally. But maybe Butterfair Labs will be getting into script ASIC chips this year. So perhaps they'll be getting into this space. most certainly we'll be getting to the space as well. And maybe we'll be seeing that hardware come in where that hard work is still,

where mining, script can still be profitable for, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I looked into this script mining hardware that's coming up. And if you do their calculations, this is just not,

you know, it doesn't make any sense because the issue of script is that it doesn't scale as well. So you can make specialized hardware, but it's, more expensive to do than with Bitcoin, or with the ASIC, Bitcoin ASIC miners. And the efficiency advantage is not as much higher. So basically, with these script miners that you can buy, there was recently an announcement from some British Indian company where you could pre-order and you would be getting it in, sometime in the summer. This just doesn't make any sense because

you could buy just graphic cards now and you would get, you know, maybe half as much mining power for the money. But of course, if you look at difficulty increase, that's way better than waiting for six months to buy this script mining hardware. So I think the people who bought this just didn't actually sit down and put some numbers in to calculate if this makes any sense. Do you think that maybe script mining is more of a bet on speculation that those currencies values will increase. Yeah, but that doesn't even make any sense, right? Because, I mean, if you can buy, let's say you can buy a thousand light coins for a certain

amount of dollars. And then really the question is, if you instead invest this into mine your hardware, are you able to mine more light coins? Yeah, but we're not only talking about mine light coins. We're talking about those coins and feather coins. Yeah, yeah, sure. But what I mean is the comparison then you have to make. You know, if you only make money if the currency increases in value,

you have to also compare it. Well, how does your profit compare it to just buying the currency outright? Because obviously that will also do better if the price increases. But yeah, it will be interesting. And in any case, it's certainly great news that Tiger Director is doing this move. And it seems there is really something happening. happening with merchant adoption now and it's happening very, very rapidly. Yeah, we've seen a lot of merchants except this week.

We'll be talking about that a bit more at the end of the show, but there seems to be indication that Google might be also accepting Bitcoin. So what happened is that this guy named Gerard Malik decided he would contact some of the large, some large corporations to see what their stance on Bitcoin was. So he says, all right, so I'm going to email these companies. companies and see what they say. And so he emails high up execs at Apple, Amazon, Google, and obviously receives no, no answer. So he decides that he's going to persist. And he sends an email to Vic Gendotra, who is a Google vice president. And he gets back to him within a few

minutes and says, we're basically, he says, we're looking into it. Right. So he answers and says, we're paying close attention to this issue within, you know, basically a few minutes after he sends the email. And he copies Shridar Rameswami. Am I pronouncing that right? I have no idea. Who is a vice president of ads and commerce at Google, who gets back to him and says that, you know, also they're paying close attention to this issue and they're looking into how they can integrate payments and that they'll be in touch with him as soon as they know more. And so he CCs another Google staffer.

And this all happens within 20 minutes, right? So this guy, Gerard Malik, goes on Reddit and starts a Reddit post. And so the Google staffer who was copied was vice president of payments at Google. And he gets back to him and says, would you like to moderate a discussion, a survey on how Google could integrate Bitcoin. Like, what can we do for customers? And so they started a Google moderator post that has since gotten over 1,300, almost 1,400 suggestions, last I checked. And so then Google reacts officially by kind of backtracking on the issue and saying that, so as we continue to work on Google Wall, we're grateful for a very wide range of suggestions. While we're keen on

actively engaging with wallet users to help inform and shape the problem. product. There's no change in our position. We currently have no plans regarding Bitcoin. So I think this was just kind of like the VP's answering his email and not consulting PR. And Google PR comes in and says, okay, so maybe we need to rephrase this in a more official kind of way. But I think this is a pretty good indication that Google is seriously considering Bitcoin. I mean, they got back on the dime. I mean, of course they're thinking about Bitcoin, right? Right.

The question is, what would they do with it? And yeah, it was very interesting. I mean, to be quite honest, if you look at this merchant adoption we're seeing now, perhaps it's not that absurd to think that Google would start accepting Bitcoin for, I don't know, perhaps, you know, in Google Play and Android or for some other of their services. Yeah, I think that we might see them rolling it out in some, as a test maybe first to see how it can be used, maybe like for AdSense payments. I think that rolling it out for Google Play, at least worldwide, would be kind of risky because there's such, there's a lot of regulatory risks in certain places. Maybe they would roll it out first in the U.S. or certain countries.

Yeah, that's possible. But like I said, this is pretty good indication that they're looking at it seriously. And I think that the fact that this story has gotten so much traction, that they've gotten so much response in this Google moderator post will kind of push them even more to make a move on accepting Bitcoin. Yeah, I mean, Google's been historically a bit more friendly to Bitcoin than others. Of course, they're one of the only mobile OSs to accept Bitcoin wallets in their store. And Mike Hearn works at Google. So I don't know how he, what kind of influence he might have. But Mike Hearn, who we spoke about last week, who was one of the core developers on the Bitcoin project, works at Google.

So I don't know. I think this is positive and it's probable that we might see some sort of Bitcoin integration within the next year. What do you think? I don't know, but it's exciting to see and I'm certainly, you know, watching that. And I think I would see Google try this out before Apple. That's certainly correct. You know, because Apple tends to be much more conservative, less experimental and much more kind of protective of their environment, their ecosystem. But so, yeah, this is, of course, very exciting.

and let's hope it happens. I mean, I think that we'll start seeing something from Google within the next year. It would be interesting to see how they would integrate it with Google Wallet. I mean, would you use your Bitcoin to purchase wallet credit? Or could you integrate a Bitcoin wallet directly into your Google Wallet so that it would pull directly? I have no idea because I personally, I don't use, I have an iPhone, so I'm not familiar with Google Wallet, really. Okay. So Google Wallet is, I guess it's sort of like PayPal where you have a credit card, which is attached to this account. And you can use Google Wallet to, of course, purchase applications from the Google Play Store. I think you can also use Google Wallet to purchase things from different Google properties. And you can use it, obviously, to purchase additional space on your Gmail or Google Docs. And you can also use Google Wallet to integrate, to your e-commerce site to accept payments, much like PayPal.

If Bitcoin was to be integrated with Google Wallet, there's two possibilities. Like, either you can buy Bitcoin with Google Wallet or either you can use Bitcoin to purchase things with Google Wallet. So it's kind of an in-er-out. So I guess the most probable scenario is that you can use Bitcoin to buy Google Wallet credit. So, for example, you say, I want to buy a, I want to buy a, $1,000 worth of credit so I pay with a Bitcoin and then I can, I have $1,000 with a credit on my Google Wallet account and I can then buy apps or whatever. The other, I think more interesting thing

would be the other way around where you can use Google Wallet to buy Bitcoin. Of course, that sounds unlikely to me. Yeah, that sounds unlikely because we're using credit card and we know that's a problem. And just like getting, I don't think Google's going to get into this kind of thing, you know, like when they're actually acting as a kind of exchange. But of course, they could use something like BitPayor's on payment processor. So you could basically, yeah, exactly buy Google credits. And the other, I think the other place where this could be used is for app merchants. So maybe as an app merchant, you can get paid in Bitcoin.

Unlily, but. Certainly possible. Yeah, I don't think that's very likely. but at least in the next, let's say, six months. Yeah. There's one more thing, a story we can mention in terms of kind of like widespread merchant acceptance. And the CEO of Airbnb, his name is Brian Chesky, on Twitter he asked, you know, should Airbnb accept Bitcoin?

That, of course, would be very exciting. And I see a good chance of that happening for a number of reasons. number one is there is an Airbnb competitor, nine flats that already accepts Bitcoin. Actually, I was in Barcelona last year, and we rented our apartment through nine flats and paid with Bitcoin. It's kind of cool.

Really? Yeah. And another important factor, I guess, is that Andresen Horowitz, we're going to talk a bit about them later. They're one of the lead investors in Airbnb. and of course they also

they also led the last financing round for Coinbase and they seem to be very bullish on Bitcoin and I also saw one of the trade responses was also from Mark and Dries and he said yes to it of course if the you know the people who own a significant share of your company kind of support it in the same way that's a strong argument

and I think for Airbnb it makes a ton of sense And it would be fairly straightforward, really not much different from a Tiger Director, a company like that. It might actually, for them, it might make even more sense because they have customers all over the world. And, I mean, I presume they have a significant payment processing costs. You know, if someone pays in the U.S. and purchases, you know, rents an apartment in, I don't know, Thailand, And now somehow, of course, they have to pay that person in Thailand and that's not going to be that cheap, even if they have, of course, a good infrastructure and good deals with banks, et cetera. So I think for them, it's a very strong incentive to do that. And so I'm pretty hopeful there, actually.

Yeah. And for the people who are renting their apartments out, it's another, I mean, if we, if we, if we're, if, we can incentivize them to be paid in Bitcoin that also reduces the fees for Airbnb, right? Yeah, exactly. I mean, if they, let's just think about this, right? So if you rented an apartment with Airbnb, you know, let's say you're American, you went in our apartment in Thailand, and Airbnb asked you, do you want to pay with Bitcoin? Airbnb asks also the apartment owner, do you want to receive Bitcoin?

And, you know, both sides say yes. I mean, their payment, a processing cost, basically is zero now. Yeah. And that's, I mean, that will make a huge difference in terms of profitability on a trade, on a deal like that. So, yeah, I think they have very, very strong incentives to do that. Maybe we should talk about this Mark and Dresden post. Yeah. So as I mentioned now, right?

So Mark Andreessen is, of course, one of the founders of Indreason Horowitz and Drisdon Horowitz is a major venture capital firm. I mean, one of the very leading companies. Martin Driesen is also the developer of Mosaic originally, which was like the first popular web browser and then. Oh, really? Is that him?

Yeah, yeah. And then Netscape. He was one of the founders of Netscape. So he's, you know, kind of a legendary entrepreneur and now venture capitalists. And they've invested with Andrews and Horowitz in all kinds of massive tech startups like Facebook, Twitter, Skype, you know, and now Coinbase as well. And he's written a very good post on why Bitcoin matters. And I highly recommend people to read that.

I mean, you can just Google why Bitcoin Matters. I think it will come up. and he mentions a few things. Just so our listeners know it was on the New York Times, right? Well, it was in the New York Times, but it's also on their block. So Houston Horowitz has a block. So I think their website is A16.z.com. And then if you click on, well, it's on the front page there at the moment.

So it's like if you scroll down, they have like a block feed from the different partners and I guess people work there. So it's on there as well. So let's just briefly talk about what the points he mentions. And then we can discuss some things about that article. So Mark and Driesen compares Bitcoin to some fundamental kind of technological breakthroughs. So in particular, he compares it to the invention of computers in 1975, so the personal computer, and then the internet in 1993.

So he kind of puts it on the same level as this really fundamental technological breakthrough that's going to kind of revolutionize the world. So really the invention there is that Bitcoin allows you to establish trust between unrelated parties, over an untrusted network. This is basically what Bitcoin establishes and makes possible. And of course, one of the consequences is that you have this kind of form of digital cash, which wasn't possible before. Because before you always needed either trust each other or you need to be related somehow

or the network needed to be trusted. But, you know, something had to be in between that facilitated that transaction. Now you don't need that. So he points out, you know, one of the. The advantages, of course, is first of all that this is possible at all. Second of all, that this is possible very, very cheaply and globally. Then he also talks about the value of Bitcoin. And he argues that the value of Bitcoin is based on two things.

The first one is Bitcoin's use as a payment system and the velocity of Bitcoin. So maybe I can briefly explain that. So let's say you have $200 billion in sales, a Bitcoin sales per year. Now, if you have a velocity of 1, that means each Bitcoin is spent once per year. So in a sense, to realize $200 billion worth of sales, you would need $200 billion worth of bitcoins if you spent them once. Now, if you spent them at 10 times, you would only need 20 billion worth of Bitcoin. So basically, the faster the velocity is, the smaller the total value of the Bitcoins can be to satisfy a certain transaction volume.

So this is one factor, he argues. And the second factor that drives the price is the expectation people have about Bitcoin's future as a payment system. So basically on the one hand, kind of the current utility of Bitcoin in terms of like how much transactions does it do and what's the velocity. And second, the expectation of people have about the future. So they might buy Bitcoins now because they expect that it's going to be a big utility in the future. I actually disagree with that argument he makes.

Or let's say like this. I think there's one big part he's missing here, which is Bitcoin's. function as a store of value. So it's interesting because I see venture capitalists and people are kind of from the technology startup world just ignore this function again and again. And I don't quite understand why that is. I guess it doesn't make as much of a product

because it's more this abstract function. But of course, Bitcoin has a lot of value just in terms of something where you can keep your asset, your wealth. And it's very secure in the sense that it can be seized. So I think that's actually a major factor

in terms of price as well, apart from the payment system aspect. But he's making a good point. He also talks about that volatility is not an issue. Now this comes kind of back to what I mentioned before, you know, where you could have immediate conversion on both sides. So he also mentions that, you know, volatility is not an issue for merchant,

and he doesn't think it's a problem. And I completely agree with that. I think that's something that mainstream media keeps missing, that they focus on this volatility thing, which really isn't a big problem, especially not in the medium term. Not for, I mean, it is if you're storing it, but not as a, if you're using it as a payment system.

Yeah. And there's immediate conversion. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it does cause, of course, some issues if you use it as a payment system. So you do have to make some additional, let's say, hedging or you have to immediately trade it or you have to take some risk, etc. But these are all, you know, they're manageable problems. And if you look at a lot of, for example, economists writing about Bitcoin, they would be like, it doesn't work as a currency because it's too volatile.

And that's just not true. I find it astonishing just how uninformed and kind of ignorant a lot of. things are that economists write about Bitcoin. It really amazes me. So I mean, I'm kind of an economist by background and it just, I don't get why these people just don't get it. It's, it's astonishing really. I mean, if you read about like people like Paul Krugman right about Bitcoin, you know, really, you quite wonder about their intelligence sometimes. He, Mark and the reason makes some other interesting points. Perhaps this is something we could discuss too.

So he argues that a Bitcoin alternative will have it very difficult now because Bitcoin already has such a network effect. I wonder, what do you think about that? Do you think that's true, Sebastian? What he says, so this is what he says. And this is what has been said by other people as well. Now that Bitcoin is established, it's going to be very difficult to dislodge it as the leading cryptocurrency. And the only way that could happen is if somebody else comes along with a clear advantage.

If another currency comes along, which outweighs all of Bitcoin's advantages, I mean, it's difficult to think about this to actually think of what could be more advantages, but we never know. I mean, something else would come along tomorrow, and the perceived advantage would be so much higher that Bitcoin would just disappear. So the four-sided – so I agree with this. So maybe let me weigh in briefly here. So I've been wondering about that, too. And I honestly don't know the answer.

I don't know how this will turn out. But I think one factor to consider that's important is that the whole technical infrastructure that's built for Bitcoin, let's say Bitcoin payment acceptance, you know, the exchanges, all that, all those things that are built to kind of enable the Bitcoin network, you know, it's no problem whatsoever to switch that to another altcoin. So it's not like there's so much lock in there. So I'm, I don't know if it's going to be like that. If we will see Bitcoin as the kind of prevailing and only major alt coin or currency. Or if, If we may not have a more of a kind of an open fluid ecosystem, because in the end, also technically, I think we will see in the future,

perhaps the company like BitPay, for example, they might say we accept any old coin or any coin. Because if they can trade it for US dollars, and of course, you can, maybe it's not so easy at the moment, but I think it will be quite easy to do this, then why not? There's no problem for them. Yeah, but what will be the incentive for, if you go back to the basics of this problem, what would be the incentive for a consumer or just a regular person to buy these other alt coins

where Bitcoins are being accepted at all major merchants and Bitcoins are attached to their bank account and they're getting paid in Bitcoin. So that falls into the network effect, right? So what he says in this post is that Bitcoin has a, foresighted network effect. Consumers who pay with Bitcoin, merchants who accept it, miners who verify the transactions, and developers and entrepreneurs who stimulate the Bitcoin ecosystem by adding value to it and creating new services around it. Yeah, but let's say now BitPay says, because you know, a lot of these companies, I mean, basically all these merchants use payment processes

to accept Bitcoin. And now let's say BitPay says to target the correct. Well, how about you can accept any old coin, any currency? It doesn't, you know, we'll still credit you, US dollars the next day. So, so they might say, okay, sure, you know, if there's some demand for it, why not? And for BitPay, this is a simple problem because they can just simply trade it on some old coin exchange and then maybe they have to trade Bitcoin first and then convert the US dollars. But let's say maybe they charge a half a percent more or something like that for other currencies. So this is very simple and you don't have to do much investment.

You know, if there's a demand there, why not? And I know there are already. I think in Canada there's a company called Coin Kite. They're doing like point of sales systems and they're doing actually some type of Bitcoin payment card. And they're also integrating light coin, I think. And there's a company called. go-coin. I think it's called

Go-coin. They're also a payment processor. They're also integrating light coin. So, I don't know. I mean, of course Bitcoin has a big advantage. Yeah, and I agree that it would be easy

because of this infrastructure to add light coins to payment systems. But I think it would be more of a long tail kind of thing where let's, it's easy so it goes something like this. So it's easy to add all these other light these other alt coins to the payment system let's do it because we're going to get

a few people come in and it's you know the investment is not that significant but i think that bitcoin would count for so much more transactions so so so many more transactions than all these light coins put together because it has such an advantage has such a foothold what i think what he's talking about though is bitcoin being dislodged as the major platform where all these other all coins are revolving around. And that for that to happen, and this is what other people have been saying also, is that another coin would have to come in with such an advantage, like, I don't know, for example, being able to be traded without electricity. Say tomorrow there's another coin that comes in, and that coin can be traded without the use of electricity. I don't

know how that would work. That could be perceived as a major advantage where we wouldn't need electricity, so then therefore that's a major advantage. So Bitcoin would slowly disappear as this new coin would take over. Yeah, I think this actually brings up an interesting point, you know, because one of the reasons why Bitcoin is valuable, no, is that it's perceived as scarce. You know, people know there's a limited amount of Bitcoin. It's increasing at a, you know, kind of a predefined rate, and there will never be more than 21 million. So people think, okay, Bitcoin is going to be big. So if I own some Bitcoin, they're going to be worth a lot. And that's because, you know, there's a limited amount and if there's a huge demand, the price has to increase.

But, you know, what makes that scarcity? What about if you have all kinds of other currencies too? And so this is very interesting because, of course, the scarcity is very much an issue of perception as well. And I don't know how this will turn out. I think it would be very interesting to see. But of course, you know, like let's say as a consumer, if you can use, let's say a few years down the line, two years down the line, you can pay with Doke coin or whatever other coin in lots of places as well,

because payment process has been integrated that and, you know, it's simple. Or maybe even if not, you could have services that would automatically trade your currency for Bitcoin and then you could pay with that or something like that. You know, you could have easily, you could have services that make it. So it's practically not a disadvantage to own that coin. And then, you know, why not buy some other coin? Perhaps you have more of an upside potential. I mean, more volatility to, you know, it's interesting.

And I don't think we have the answer, but we're already seeing so many old coins. And you can trade them all to move kind of seamlessly with Bitcoin. And it will be interesting to see where it goes. Yeah. we lost coin, yeah. Yes. It was the most promising of all alt coins. Yeah, definitely the one with the best-looking logo.

Yeah. Have you seen their website since they updated the... They updated it this week with a funny meme. Yeah, yeah. What I like about his... What I like about his post is how he compares the Bitcoin Revolution to the introduction of personal computers and the invention of the Internet. in the 90s.

This is something that I use also to explain Bitcoin to people. Think about it as the Internet in the early 90s. We're only at the beginning. Yeah, yeah. There's certainly very powerful analogy, you know, because people can relate to that, and it makes, it evokes the idea of this huge potential. And I do think Bitcoin has that.

Now, whether or not Bitcoin itself will survive, like we were saying, I think that's another question. but the Byzantine general's problem that this peer-to-peer decentralized network solves, all the other applications that we can imagine now, the things like what color coins are doing or proto shares or Ethereum, applications that we didn't have before. And whatever cryptocurrency achieves that is another question. But one thing's for sure is these things are coming and these things are here to stay.

yeah absolutely okay should we do another very important topic oh yeah so you want to talk about this one yeah so just briefly mentioned it we came across this thing it's kind of funny it's called bit cologne so a cologne like perfume basically and it's quite hilarious so they say they made this perfume and it's made for peer-to-peer interaction. Yeah, so they say it's an embodiment of some of the main Bitcoin characteristics, such as subtle, that's in a way that's both bold and unique, light, portable, available whenever you need it, and it offers freedom to go against the grain. When you sent me this link, so it's bitcolon.com, I thought it was a Bitcoin meetup

in Cologne, Germany. I didn't think for a second I'd be seeing an actual bottle of cologne with a QR code on it Yeah I think it's more of a joke But it's kind of hilarious But you can buy it

You can buy it It's only available in the US for now But I was quite surprised They accept PayPal And that they put PayPal first And not Bitcoin Well there is Bitcoin at the bottom of the page I mean it

Yeah Yeah let's talk about ATM stories I mean, do you have brought up a few things that you want to talk about? Yeah, so there's a couple of ATMs stories this week. So Canada, I guess is again in the news, there's going to be a few new ATMs appearing in Canada, so in Ottawa, Montreal, and Toronto, and possibly even in Calgary and Winnipeg. So this comes at a time where the government of Canada issued a statement last week saying that Bitcoins were not a legal tender.

But I guess that doesn't really matter because we're not considering it to be a legal tender. Yeah, what does that mean? Well, that means that you can't pay your taxes with it, I suppose. Yeah, well, I don't think anyone was expecting that to happen. Yeah, I didn't read the statement. Okay. Yeah. So these ATMs, at least a few of them, are being produced by a company in Ottawa that I had never heard of called Bit Access.

and they're calling them Btm. So we had this discussion, and I think it was two episodes ago, where were we going to call these things? And they're calling it a Bitcoin teller machine. So for now, it seems like they're only, like it seems to it's only a one-way operation. You can't, you can only buy Bitcoins. You can sell your Bitcoins for Fiat. You can put Fiat money and receive Bitcoins.

And apparently there, maybe not this version, but a future version of this machine, will also support light coin. So for now, there are three machines that have been announced. One in Montreal at the Bitcoin Embassy, which is a non-profit that helps facilitate adoption of Bitcoin. There are also one in Ottawa in a pub, Clock Tower Brew Pub in Ottawa that has apparently been installed already.

And another one in Toronto at Bitcoin DeCentral, which is a co-working space dedicated to Bitcoin business. And they're run by different companies. And so these ATMs can get live rates from bit stamps and vertex. So vertex is the Canadian Bitcoin Exchange plus a 5% fee. So, yeah, what's interesting maybe, it's just stepping briefly. So the bid access, I saw a post at Bit Access, so the company that makes these, you know, Bitcoin ATMs or as they call it, Btems, there was a post in medium that they've supposedly raised. $10 million. Now, I looked for confirmation of that and I couldn't find anything. So I'm not sure

if this is, you know, true because it seems to be a massive story if it is true. Because of course, the Bitcoin ATM manufacturers, they're small companies so far. None of them have raised a substantial amount of money. Now, $10 million is a ton of money. So if that's true, I think we will see a lot from them and that that would be really major. But I don't know, if you look at their website, they have like this kind of crappy looking square space website. So I find it kind of hard to believe, but I guess what we'll see. Yeah. I guess I'm kind of excited about the fact that Canada is leading the way Bitcoin ATMs. I think that's probably the country that has the most now, right? I think at the moment there's still just one, right? Are these, are these, are

operating in this park? So the one in Montreal... It's already operating. It's operational since the 24th. The one in Ottawa also has been installed, apparently, and the one in Toronto is coming soon. And so if there's one in... Yeah, no, then it's the most.

Definitely. So, you know, that's kind of exciting. I'd like to see one on the East Coast. So next time I go back home to New Brunswick, I could buy Bitcoin there or maybe transfer some money over so I don't have to pay hefty bank fees. Yeah. So this is exciting.

And, you know, potentially a new, obviously a new Bitcoin ATM on the market with the Lamassou and Robocoin and Sky. What was it? Sky Hook. Sky Hook, yeah. So a fourth competitor on the market. Well, there's also a company called Monero in New York, right? they're also making Bitcoin ATMs.

And then there's a company called Bitcoin ATM during San Diego. I don't know what's going on with them, though. They had one of the earliest prototypes. You know, they were like at the San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose conference. I think they were showing one. So that's almost a year ago now or like nine months ago. But I don't know what's going on. They're not operating one at least.

So a bit closer to home, there's a story in Switzerland also where two Bitcoin enthusiasts ordered a Lama Su machine. And while they're waiting for delivery in March, they've convinced the owners of the Bratislava unit to loan it to them so that they can show it off in Zurich. Have you heard about this? Yeah, yeah, I read about it. Yeah, my mother sent me the article too. Yeah, this is cool.

Do you know anybody who went to the demo? No, I don't know anybody who used it now. Okay. So, apparently, over four days, they got more than 90 transactions and sold like 15. I think it was like, yeah, it was like 15,000 euros they did in. Yeah, and this is despite the fact that the machine only accepts euros and that's Swiss francs and that this display is only in Slovakian. Yeah, it's pretty funny. I don't care.

It's in Slovak and I'll buy the Bitcoin anyway. Yeah. Yeah, this is cool. And I think we were definitely seeing this kind of acceleration of the ATMs. I mean, it has to happen because we know that lots of them have been sold already. And they've shipped into many different places. And I think what's slowing this down somewhat or, you know, what's delaying it is that people have to figure out the regulatory situation. They have to get bank accounts.

they have to get connected exchanges, all those things. So those things can be tricky. But we will see an explosion of these ATMs in the near future. I'm certain of that. Yeah, I think there's also some investment fund in the Czech Republic. And they're planning on putting up a whole bunch of them in Czech Republic. Yeah, cool. So lots of ATMs popping up all around the place.

I wonder how much these basically, coin teller machines cost. You mean the bid access ones? Yeah, I wonder how they're positioning it in terms of price. I think it was similar to a Lama Sue. Right. Like around $3,000, $5,000. I think something in that area.

So let's talk about Ethereum. We've covered the topic last week, and I think it's time for some updates because there's been some changes to the project. So originally the launch date, I think it was supposed to be yesterday and it's been pushed back for a week. So now the fundraiser is starting on next Fridays. That's the 31st. And that's at midnight at GMT.

So that's London time. And they've made a few changes. So we've touched briefly last week on the criticism that has been made. So the Ethereum founders, they're basically awarding themselves a substantial. amount of that new currency they're issuing ether. And this has been criticized, but, you know, people are saying, well, you know, they're kind of enriching themselves. And another criticism was that this, the amount they're issuing to themselves is going to

be locked for one year, but then they would receive all of it kind of regardless of whether they actually contributed to the project or not. And so they've slightly decreased how much they're getting. But more importantly, I think. It's now vested over three years. So vesting means that they kind of get this money, but it's only released partially. So after one year, they get 40%, after two years, another 30%, after the 30% and other 30%. So this is quite similar to how startups handle stocks for employees or founders.

They also changed mining rewards slightly. Now, the consequences of this are that the inflation rate is going to be slightly lower. Of course, that makes it more attractive to invest in it as well. And what they've also changed is that if you now buy Ether at the beginning of the fundraiser, you basically get twice as many and this goes down gradually over the course of the 60-day period. So you have more incentive to kind of get in early. The team has also been rebuilt the rest of it. I mean, last week we knew Vitalik Burtaren, who is the Bitcoin.

magazine writer and he's been involved in a lot of different Bitcoin projects. He's the kind of the main guy. And now we also know that Charles Hoskinson, who's the former CEO of Invictus Innovations, which is the company behind the protas shares, he's part of the team. Now, so this is basically a competitor. So he's switched from competitor to Ethereum to this. project. There's also Anthony D. Yorrier, who is part of this Bitcoin and Alliance Canada. I think that's actually Bitcoin DeCentral, where they're putting up this ATM. And Mihai, I'm not sure how you pronounce the last name, Lacey or something like that. He's the founder of Bitcoin magazine. So there are four people and I think there's some, four main founders.

there's some other ones involved. And I think there's going to be an official announcement tomorrow or today. I think on the 26th, so today at the Bitcoin conference in Miami. So Vita Lick's giving a talk there and I think he's going to introduce the project. So it's exciting to see what's going on there. And I think it's a really cool project to watch. There's a lot of debate about it, a lot of things that I still don't understand. And I've also written a blog post on Ethereum.

It's, you know, I've spent quite a lot of time, and it's a very detailed post going into some of the applications of it as well. And if you're interested in reading that, it's on epicenterbitcoin.com. Yeah, I read your post and it's quite interesting how you go into, you explain it in ways that people like me will understand. So you were talking about, I mean, I've spent the, yeah, you were talking about some of the. the incentive for people to invest early. So some of the changes that they made to the way that this is going to work is that the people who invest within the first 60 days are going to be getting twice as many ether for the Bitcoin invested?

Well, not quite. So I think in the first week, if you invest in the first week, you'll get 2,000 ether per Bitcoin. You send to their fundraising others. And then this goes down gradually over the 60. day period. So if at the very end you send one day coin, you only get a thousand. I don't know how they decrease it if it's like a linear decrease or every week it goes down by a certain amount. But basically you want to invest. If you do want to invest, you probably want to invest in the

beginning, although perhaps one would also want to wait for a while to, you know, see how the project develops. So if if you're not sure, then. It might be less risky, of course, to invest later because, you know, there's two months of more information. You can see how the project is developing, et cetera. So it makes sense, I think, right? So you're basically rewarding people who also take a bigger risk. What I find interesting, what I kind of like about this, is that they seem to have readjusted their strategy in the way that they're going to be doing things based on the feedback that they've been getting. So there was a lot of criticism towards it because, well, they're going to be making so much, they're going to be getting.

rich basically off of this project. And so they've reacted to that by changing the way that it's going to work fundamentally. So I think that's that's really good and kind of shows that their interests are, that they have an honest way to go about this. Yeah, no, I think the changes they've made are very positive. And now their incentives are really quite aligned with the project as a whole. So they're only going to be, they may still become rich with this, but it kind of depends on success of Ethereum, where the three-year timeline is really a long time for in this cryptocurrency Bitcoin world we live in. So, yeah, I think there are positive changes.

And the team, of course, is very well known. The people are very respected in the Bitcoin community. I think they're very smart, very competent. And, yeah, I think it's a good project. It's very exciting to see. There's still a lot of things I don't understand. So, you know, one thing I've often wondered about this because Ethereum basically enables you to run code,

run scripts on the miners' hardware. Isn't there a security risk there? You know, what if you write some kind of Ethereum virus? Can you do this? I don't know. I mean, I've seen people raise this question in other places, but I've never seen one discuss it. And I personally just don't understand enough about the whole thing they're doing to evaluate

if this is a real risk or how much of a risk it is. So there are still a lot of questions that are open. And I will try to figure those out. I mean, I'm definitely planning to participating in the Ethereum Forum as well to kind of really understand this project. I've been reading a bit more since last week. I've read those articles that he wrote on that, Vidalek Viteran wrote on

the Ethereum blog about the decentralized autonomous corporation. So the three articles that are quite long. It took me a few days to get through them and I'm going to have to read them again because there's a lot of things that didn't quite quite get.

What do you think, now that the rest of the team has been revealed, what kind of credibility do you think it gives to the project? I mean, I think this project has a lot of credibility because of the people who are involved them because, yeah, mainly for that reason. I don't know why Charles Hoskinson left Indictus. So this is a very interesting question, of course.

I don't know if it was, you know, a personal conflict there was or if he believes that there is some disadvantage to the way they go about it. I would be very interested in seeing a statement from him on this point. I've also seen the master coin people have announced that they're going to write a blog post on kind of their statement and view of what they're trying to do. Because of course, in the Ethereum paper, they're basically saying master coin's not going to work. So the reason why they argue it's not going to work is that with Bitcoin, there's something like a simplified payment verification. So you don't have to have the entire blockchain to verify whether a payment you receive is, you know, actually a valid payment. You just need the headers and then you can basically do this kind of thing.

So you can have mobile wallets, you know, people that don't have the full client. Right. To verify payments. That's, of course, is a big advantage. But the problem is because you can have transactions that are valid Bitcoin. transactions, but they're not valid master coin transactions. Because just to briefly restate, Mastercoin is basically like a protocol layer on top of Bitcoin.

So you use Bitcoin transactions that have a certain format and then Mastercoin interprets those as Mastercoin transactions. So let's say I send you some amount of money and I also send a very small amount to a specific address. That other small payment to a specific address marks it as a master. master coin transaction. And now the master coin network understands, okay, this is a master coin transaction and it interprets in a different way from a regular Bitcoin client. But the problem with this is that now you can have a valid Bitcoin transaction. That may not be a valid master

coin transaction. And the Bitcoin client won't know. It will just say fine because it's a fine Bitcoin transaction. So the problem with this is now, at least that's what Vitolik argues. It's argued in the Ethereum paper, because of that, you can't have these light clients. Every MasterCoin client needs to have the full blockchain. And that's, of course, a problem because we already have a blockchain now with more than 10 gigabytes. So if, you know, for mobile wallets, this is not possible. I don't know what MasterCoin is of that, whether they think this is correct, whether

I think there's a way around. I personally, it certainly makes sense to me with Vittalik's arguing, but I can't personally evaluate whether it's correct. So it would be interesting to see kind of other projects response to this as well. And yeah, I think it's very exciting to watch this, and we'll see a lot of interesting things coming out of it. It's a very interesting project. Like I said last week, I'm only getting, I'm only starting to,

to read up on it. And I still have a lot of questions. We're going to have to talk about off the air. Yeah, yeah. Now, I think we'll cover this again, certainly when the fundraiser starts and when there's more developments, we will kind of keep this updated. Did you have anything else you want to cover about this Ethereum? No, that was all on Ethereum.

Okay. Well, we've got to, we wanted to try this kind of new segment. This kind of ties into what we're talking about earlier. where there's just been an upsor of Bitcoin acceptances, companies and merchants accepting Bitcoin. So we want to try this new segment where every week we're going to go over the Bitcoin acceptances. There have been quite a few this week.

And of course, we're talking about this from the perspective of where we are, which is in Europe, and we obviously don't know of all of the new Bitcoin acceptances. So if there are new merchants accepting Bitcoin in your area, maybe your local bakery or maybe a store in your city, give it a shout on Twitter and let us know that someone in your community is not accepting Bitcoin. So who's been accepting Bitcoin this week? So we've got Fancy, which is a Pinterest competitor. They're accepting Bitcoin now in their store.

Obviously, well, you know, porn's getting involved. So Noddy America also is accepting Bitcoin as of this week. Yeah, there's porn.com. I think they started accepting Bitcoin a few weeks ago and they've released some numbers about how this is affecting their revenues, which are quite stunning. So apparently after they started accepting Bitcoin, their revenue increased by 50%.

And now it's kind of stable at a 25% increase. So yeah, perhaps people appreciate that they're, don't have their porn, you know, purchases on their credit card bill. Yeah. I don't know how it's shown there. I presume it doesn't say porn.com. It seems, I mean, we know that within the last few years, the porn industry has lost a lot of revenue to some of these, you know, free alternatives and that they're making a lot

less money than they used to be. But it seems like Bitcoin would have been welcome maybe 10 years ago when porn, when internet porn was at its highest. And, well, this idea of. having your porn purchases and your credit card bill was a problem. So there's also a New York City newsstand that is now accepting Bitcoin. And what's interesting about this newsstand is that they don't accept credit cards. So the owner of the newsstand says that he prefers accepting Bitcoin over credit cards because there's less risk and less fees.

Yeah, then there's two hotels in Vegas. So the one is called the Las Vegas Casino Hotel. The other one's called Golden Gate Hotel and Casino. They're only accepting it for, I think, the hotel itself, the gift shop, and the restaurants. Not for the gambling, because I mean gambling is very well-relateded. So at the moment, it's not clear whether they're actually allowed to accept Bitcoin for the casino. And there's the University of Cumbria. Cumbria.

Sorry. Where is this? I think this is in northeast of England. kind of near Scotland, if I'm correct. Okay. And so they're accepting Bitcoin for two programs that are linked to the study of cryptocurrencies and complementary currencies. So it makes sense for them to accept it, I guess, if they're offering those programs.

Yeah, absolutely. There's also the BCSBCA. So the first Bitcoin ATM, having been installed in Vancouver, I guess BC merchants are getting involved as well. So you can buy merchandise on their online stores, such as, pet food and supplies. And lastly, there's Minku design, and they're a boutique fashion startup based in Lagos, Nigeria, and also in Barcelona. And so they make handbags and purses and jewelry and other accessories. And so they accept Bitcoin on their online store.

Yeah, lots of places starting to accept Bitcoin. It's cool. Yeah. So we're going to be trying this new segment every week now. So obviously, if you, if you know of places they accept Bitcoin in your area, wherever that may be, just send us a tweet and we'll talk about it. Okay. Well, I think that was it for this week. Yeah, that's it. There's been a slow news week, but we still had quite a lot to talk about. Yeah. If you want to give us a tip, then, you know, please support the show.

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So let us know what you think and we'll see what we can do to make Epic Perth or Bitcoin better over the long run. Thanks so much for listening. And yeah, we'll see you soon. Yeah, thanks for listening and we'll talk to you next week.