The Bitcoin Group, the American original, for over the last ten seconds, the sharpest satosis, the best bitcoins, the hardest cryptocurrency talk. Say it's not pairing. Welcome to the Bitcoin Group. The Bitcoin Group is sponsored by AlphaLion Technologies. AlphaLion Technologies. We don't make the altcoins. We make the altcoins of the future. We'd like to welcome our panelists this week. We've got Derek J. Freeman from Pete's Loose Now. Hey. Davi Barker from ShiniBaggis.com. Hello. Megan Lourdes from Bitcoin. Not Bombs. Hello. And Will Penguin from Bitcoin MKE.org. Howdy. Issue 1. China Banks. No Bitcoin for you. While the Chinese government once allowed Bitcoin documentaries and were taking a hands-off approach, its hands-off no more as they said no to the mixing of banking and Bitcoin, but allowed BTC China to continue as long as they collected information on their customers and ended anonymity. The price of Bitcoin fell, but bounced right back up to $10.40. What is the long-term effect of the Chinese government waking up to Bitcoin? I ask you, Derek J. Freeman. That was fast. I thought their hands-off was going to last a little bit longer than a couple of weeks. But I think the long-term effect of Chinese regulation and interference with the Bitcoin market is going to be the long-term story of all governments intervention with Bitcoin. It's going to be a flop. And Bitcoin represents an exit from these governments. So there's nothing they can do. Megan Lloyd. Sorry. Dovey Barker. So, I think it's really an interesting thing as far as prohibition is concerned because what they're essentially saying is that financial institutions can't use Bitcoin, but the citizenry can still buy and sell Bitcoin. They call it virtual merchandise. So what that means is that what they're saying, and this is something that I think is true, Bitcoin is not terribly compatible with companies who are in bed with the government. And that's fine with me. It may be as a hiccup in the road for adoption in China, but the fact of the matter is all of those individuals that make up any financial institution in China are still citizens and therefore can still use Bitcoin. So this just strikes me as fog. Megan? Yeah, I don't really think that the central banks making financial institutions not allowed to use Bitcoin is a huge problem. I mean, there's still peer to peer. People can still use Bitcoin amongst themselves. And it's such a huge population we're dealing with in China that I still don't really see that it's going to be much of a problem. And I also think long term, when China sees the economic advantages that they're missing out on, they might change their mind on it because while they do want to have control over their people, they still want to be competitive in the world markets. And I think Bitcoin's going to become a major player in those. And they're going to realize that they're going to be an economic disadvantage. Will? Yeah, I kind of want to give the Chinese government a little bit more credit. I kind of see this as a warning shot or a test balloon, if you will. It feels like a very smart move because I don't think Derek mentioned many of us saw it coming or saw it coming this quickly. I was just looking at the news feed here. My Google alerts for Bitcoin news and it looks like China is still very by heavy on Bitcoin and the sell-off is seemingly looking more triggered by panic Westerners. So I don't know what to make of where this came from, but I think there's some brinksmanship, some strategy going on here. Certainly if the Chinese government eventually wants to be a large holder of Bitcoin, it might be whove them to be able to dictate that down to their central banks and their partner banks to first put the Bitcoin in the hands of create a large holding in the government's hands and then dictate from there. So it'll be interesting to see what's next, but it looks like China is still very by heavy with Bitcoin. Well that's good news. I agree with Megan's point that perhaps if China is the first government to take action on Bitcoin, they'll be the first government to change their mind. Now that they're really addressing the issue, they could get back into it. But I was ready to write this off until today's Part 2, Bidu crash that we're experiencing. Now I just really don't know what's going on. Derek, what are your thoughts? I'm shaking my head no, especially because when I heard Megan's statement, no, governments want to control things. It's not their nature to say, oh well, let's just see what people want to do and let them be free and have interactions that aren't encumbered by regulations. No, the nature of governments is to control. When they see that they have an opportunity to control Bitcoin, they're going to want to. They're not going to back off even if they can't. You know, even the worst case scenario is still good for us because let's say for example that China goes completely Gestapo and tries to ban every Bitcoin transaction in all of China. Well, all that that's going to mean is that Bitcoiners in China will develop the tools that we will have immediately accessible to us when the government tries to stop us from you. Yeah, I'm going to have to agree with that. The technological advances are still so far ahead of government regulation, even the most, you know, the, the, the was controlling governments. So yeah, I mean, I was looking at Fiat League today. I mean, it hasn't stopped the buying in China. That's for sure. I mean, they're still trying to regulate it, but it's, they're still buying it up over there. So yeah, the, the, by do pulling back and I also saw that the Chinese telecom company that advertised they were accepting Bitcoin removed the Bitcoin logo from their homepage. So I think Westerners see this and they, you know, freak a little bit, especially the new adoptees, you know, everyone who bought in over $500. So it's, you know, I agree with both Derek and, and Davi and MK, I know you were, you mentioned this too, the technological innovations are far out pacing, whatever government can do to try to wrap their head or rules around this thing. And you know, it doesn't bode well. I for one, almost wanted to see, you know, even over the summertime, a more draconian hand taken to Bitcoin by the, the states around the country because it would show their, um, ineptitude. It would just, uh, I think they're a little, they're a little too smart for that. They know that they're relatively inept and they probably need to be more careful and subversive to this technology to maintain control over it or over the public consciousness of the people who are learning about it. Um, but yeah, I would have liked to see them fall flat on their face and fail with a, with the firm, you know, iron fist approach. Um, the, the, I think these are all delay tactics, perhaps by the various governments around the world and China's maybe leading the way because they see that the world stage is poised for them to lead the way in the number of arenas, um, technological and financial innovations at the forefront of those. So, uh, it'll be an interesting ride. I don't think we're ready for Bitcoin businesses to start leaving China yet, but the iron hand could be coming. They could go for it. Exit question, will the Chinese Bitcoin rage continue? Yes or no, Derek? Yes. Dobby. Ma, Megan. Yes. Will. Yes. The answer is yes. Moving on. Issue two. A tale of two crashes. The Sunday crash was caused by the closing of sheep marketplace, which cascaded into the closing of black market, reloaded. The Thursday crash was caused by panic over China's decision to stop their banks from using Bitcoin. How are these crashes alike? How are they different? Will we see more of them in the future? I ask you, Dobby Barker. I love crashes. I, I, you know, because I, I've seen enough of them now that I know that they bounced back from them about 48 hours. Usually they bounced back before I even find out why they happened. But I, I, I see it as an opportunity to buy. I see it as an opportunity. I actually promote like, oh, Bitcoin is crashing. Quick, spend them at shinybadges.com. But here's why, here's what I really love about crashes is because they are a function of the Bitcoin network that has never happened in economic terms before. And what they do is they directly connect government aggression to the financial sector. So like in the past, if like a swap rate happens and a million dollars of cocaine money was seized, nobody in Wall Street cares. They get to like look down their nodes at those drug dealers. Now if the government does something stupid, it immediately affects the black market. If they attack the black market, it immediately affects the financial sector. We are looking at the economy for the first time as a single organism. And the fact that everybody is hurt by these crashes simultaneously means that now people have to start taking seriously how they think about drug policy, how they think about monetary policy, how they think about all of these things affect everybody now. And so I think that that that that is it is a school of hard knocks, but it means that everybody will have to learn to stop aggressing against one another. Megan. Uh, and even the terminology of crash sounds a bit fear mongering to me. I use, I like to use a term correction. And yeah, I mean, I, I think when it corrects downwards, it's a great time to buy. So the, some differences with the crashes. One was about black market sites and one was about government intervention, but they're very similar in that the price that corrected down was really close to the same amount. And it kind of shows you what Bitcoiners kind of think about state intervention and black market sites being shut down. And that is not very much. I mean, you saw it rebound really quickly after that because it dipped in a bunch of people bought it and it corrected back up. So I think that it still shows a very strong belief in Bitcoin and the strengths of Bitcoin. Well, it's funny. I see, I see news come out that's, you know, even some of the negatively tainted news seems, you know, to have a positive effect on the price, even through these dips. You know, I like to like Megan don't, you know, I prefer a different term than crash because if you're not losing 50% of the value during one of these downturns, and I don't think it could be called a crash. And it's also showing pretty consistently where folks think the floor is in the temporary ceiling, if you will, of the price. You know, we see it kind of bouncing off of 850 the last couple days at the bottom here. And you know, again, sort of hovering around that, you know, 1,000 or 1100 mark when it was around the ceiling. So it's part of the price discovery. I think a lot of people strictly use Bitcoin just for these black market sites. And I think plenty more people just want to speculate. So the traders are really being hurt during these corrections and the true believers or long term bullish Bitcoin users who see it as an exit, as Derek mentioned earlier. Yeah, they're holding fast and they're benefiting even during these downturns, you know, buying on the dips, traders who lose on these corrections can't buy at the dips necessarily very easily. And you know, recover what they might have lost in their bad bets. So it's certainly indicative of where the world thinks the price of Bitcoin is and speculating future value. So that's what interests me. I think it's also indicative of the massive adoption that has happened in the last month. Because we have a floor at 850 and less than a month ago, we were well below that price. You know, that's what I'm interested in seeing how many more people stick around after they adopt. Derek? Yeah, who knows exactly what the price should be, but like Megan, I call these corrections, not crashes. What's the same? Well, each saw drops of more than $100, which is pretty significant in any market. And they represented directly intervention from government agents, as Dottie mentioned. How are they different? Well, it was different governments intervening, which is part of the reason we get to know that governments are actually influencing the price. And will we see more, of course, Bitcoin is notoriously volatile? Exit question, pop quiz. What is the price of Bitcoin next week? Derek? I think I already had a prediction on this last week. I said, 1400, I'll stick to it. Dovey? I'm going to stick with my last week's prediction, too. I think we're going to float around 1000. Megan? I think I'm going to stick to my last week's prediction. Maybe a little bit lower, closer to Dovey's estimate of 1000, because of the psychological barrier there. But yeah, I think you're going to see it correct back up a little bit. Well, I didn't have a prediction on this last week with you all, but I think, um, you know, we didn't see 1200 in, uh, bit stamp, BTC dashy and some of the other exchanges. Um, I think we'll see the other exchanges, um, broach the 1200 mark by the end of next week. Well, break through 1200 up to 1500. Biddylicious, biddylicious, biddylicious. Get your bitcoins today, the UK way at biddylicious.com. Issue three, sheep marketplace closed, five million dollars stolen or hacked and stolen. Bc talk forum hacked again. User passwords revealed. Why are there so many Bitcoin related hacks? Is it just jealousy over Bitcoin success? I ask you, Megan lords. Well, freedom doesn't eliminate predatory people. There's always going to be criminal elements, no matter what market you have. And Bitcoin's nature does make it easy to make a lot of money from Bitcoin, from ripping people off. But at the same time, people realize that risk. And I think you're going to see technology improve to cover that or what I found was interesting. There is this business insider article about two individuals going after the person who stole the five million dollars off of sheep marketplace by themselves. So I think you're going to see some instances of vigilantism come out as a response and you're going to see people going after these thieves because in the long run, we want Bitcoin to be accessible to everyone. And when there are these hacks, it kind of, it hurts everyone in the community. So but yeah, like I said, you're always going to have that criminal element, but I think there are going to be better ways of dealing with it. And then also, I mean, don't put your money on sites like that. See you on trustworthy. I think you use some common sense with your finances. If you want to buy drugs, that's cool. I mean, fine, you know, buy drugs, but don't keep all your pick coins on the site. Well, yeah, I think it's really interesting how, you know, in concurrence with the first Silk Road being shut down in the Bitcoin talk forum being hacked. And then this other black market site gets shut down and the Bitcoin talk forum gets hacked as well. You know, there's some kind of congruency there. I'm really interested to hear what other, you know, people have to say about that in the coming days and even the rest of the panelists here. There's got to be some sort of connection here with that. Again, the security issue, you know, after the Silk Road went down, anyone interested in trying to use a website to, you know, whether dark web or otherwise or to purchase illicit goods, that would, you know, I'd be suspicious of any of them being a honeypot or even just being very poorly managed. You know, the success of the first Silk Road was kind of one of a kind. And I know some of these others have come close to trying to replicate that, but it's certainly not a, because this has to be underground, there are really no recourse for victims of thefts and hacks and things like that or even the websites themselves. So that's unfortunate, you know, if this could be above board or even at least decriminalized, you know, we'd see a lot more infrastructure to mediate these kinds of minor disasters. Derek, why are there so many Bitcoin-related hacks? Because it's so easy to start a website and accept Bitcoin. It speaks to the level of every man nature that Bitcoin has. It's not like in the 90s when banks were setting up their websites, they didn't have these similar problems because they were already banks. These things, these websites that are starting now are just getting off the ground. They're just regular people like us who are just deciding to start a website. It's easy to integrate Bitcoin and they may not have the technical knowledge to even know what security features they should include. So this is just a natural process of everyday people developing a new technology. And yeah, there are going to be some snags, but it does show that Bitcoin is worth investing some time and energy into hacking, right? Dovey. You know, during the gold rush, a lot of people fled to California in an effort to mind for gold. And a lot of people also fled to California to run confidence scams and cheat people out of their gold. The fact of the matter is that new money or people who have new money are often sort of ignorant about how to protect it. And so that's what we're going to see. But there is another group of people that made a lot of money during the gold rush and that is people who sold mining equipment. So there is also a burgeoning service sector in the hacker economy. And I think that it's important to point out the other side of this coin. It is now very profitable and very valuable to find a very competent hacker or computer programmer or computer scientist to get into a hard drive you think has crashed. Or maybe you've seen recently there was a landfill scavenger hunt for a hard drive that had quite a bit of Bitcoin in it. I've heard stories of white hat hackers helping people get into wallets that they like forgot the password to or you know, so we are also seeing a service economy helping people facilitate losses of Bitcoin. And as Bitcoin gets more valuable, it wouldn't surprise me if people were just out in the ring shows looking for hard drives on the like possibility that there's something out there. So I mean, you're always going to see every economy is always going to have both sides of this. There's always going to be bad actors and there's always going to be opportunity for new innovators for services. Obviously, the problem with Bitcoin is once you get access to the website, if you can send the Bitcoins anywhere, they're gone. So if you're a security as weak and someone gets through, it's over. But I think what we should really do here is take a moment to appreciate the dread pirate Roberts. What a reliable and consistent drug trading website he ran. He's not like the people at sheep marketplace, which seemed like a scam in name itself. I really didn't understand that one when it came out sheep marketplace and now the sheep get fleeced. It's just a little too easy. Yeah, can I just say like if you really want to buy drugs with Bitcoin, I don't think it would be that hard to convince like your local drug dealer to take it. I don't know if you wanted to be safer with it. We need some more how to and help material in that advice for people. More videos exit question. If you could give one safety tip to our viewers, what would it be? Derek J. Watch the presentation on cold storage at bitcoin phl.com. Dovey Barker. Don't put all your Bitcoin one wallet. Megan Lords. I would actually say both of those things or paper wallets are extremely secure. Basically, if you wouldn't walk around with $10,000 in cash in your purse because it might get stolen, don't do it with a Bitcoin wallet. Will Pangman. Yeah, don't store your bitcoins on third party websites where you have to trust their site security with the security of your, the coins are holding there. If you have to trade or if you have to use one of these commerce sites with escrow services, pull your coins off, put them on in the morning, pull them off at night, however you want to do it. Take that extra step. It is a little bit time consuming, but it's worth it. I agree with everyone about paper wallets. It's definitely a good idea and maybe even multiple wallets try to separate your money, keep it in different piles away from yourself so that when there is a panic crash, it's harder for you to sell. Moving on. Issue 4. Bitcoin. Fear. Uncertainty. And doubt. The media can't win an honest argument against Bitcoin on the merit. So they resort to false comparisons, generalizations, and red herrings to defeat Bitcoin. What is your favorite media, fud argument? And how would you counter it? I ask you, will, ping. My favorite one is probably, it's the question I get asked the most when I encounter press or journalists. And that's why would people spend this if it appreciates at the rate that it does? How does it function as a currency? It must not be a good currency if you can't or don't want to spend it. The way I usually counter that is how a lot of merchants counter that issue. They offer 30% discount, 40% discount for customers wanting to use Bitcoin. They can safely do that if they look at, you know, if they're long-term bullish on Bitcoin, they can comfortably do that. And probably make a higher profit margin than if they had accepted cash or, you know, another government currency. So that's probably my favorite rebuttal to that. The other one is that Bitcoin is more than just a currency. It is so much more than just a currency. I'm sure I know the Bitcoin group has covered the kind of what is Bitcoin question and all the things and the potentials. So I won't list them, but possibly infinite. And certainly there's at least seven or eight classifications you could give it today. Derek J. I have two. One, you can't spend it, which I get all the time shockingly. And I would refer people with this objection to spendbitcoins.com, which has a list of merchants, which accept Bitcoin directly. My second one, it's difficult. Well, it can be difficult for people to learn something new. That's why I produce videos so that people can have their hand held as they learn something new on our YouTube channel for Bitcoin Philadelphia, which is youtube.com slash BitcoinPHL. Dolly Barker. To Will's point about business is offering incentives to spend a Bitcoin shiny badge is offers free shipping for anybody who pays for their order in Bitcoin. That was my black market Friday deal, and I'm extending it for the foreseeable future. But my favorite objection to Bitcoin is that it is fiat money because this objection comes from a crowd who supposedly knows a lot about monetary history and monetary policy and monetary economics. And there is a fundamental misunderstanding of what fiat means. So the people who make this objection, what they think fiat means is that it is not backed by anything. And they think that Bitcoin should be operating as a promissary note backed by a commodity. And they think fiat means not that it is not backed by a commodity. But that is not what the word fiat means. The word fiat means to decree for a government to declare the value of something or to declare that something is money. And so Bitcoin is the complete opposite of a fiat currency. There is no government anywhere who is saying you must use Bitcoin or declaring the value of Bitcoin or declaring that it is valuable. It is completely market driven. So I think that one of the things I really like about this objection and about Bitcoin as a technology is that it drives a wedge into the people objecting to fiat currency for various reasons and forces them to define the term specifically. It's funny, Dobby. They always kind of think that the dollar is still on the gold standard or they can kind of draw illusions back to that and pretend that their money is still solid. Their money is not solid either. Well, they know that. I mean, people who object to fiat currency know that. But it is market driven. It is a graph that goes up and down and Bob's and weaves the same as the graph for gold and silver. It's based on an aggregate of exchange. So mega lords. That was a good point about the gold standard. We still get people coming in the office who think the dollar is back by gold. And these are like older people too. And it's like, really? Like this happened when you guys are okay. But my favorite favorite comparison is the Ponzi scheme one because it's incredibly effective at emotionally manipulating people, especially since the Bernie made off Ponzi scheme is still kind of fresh in our minds. So I have to give them put us for being incredibly effective at that emotional manipulation thing. But it loses out because it's totally not comparable. For a Ponzi scheme to exist, you need to have a central authority at the top who has control over all the finances and is able to basically manipulate people and they're getting it. It's all decentralized with Bitcoin so you don't have that problem. You also don't have this promise of excessive wealth in the future. Now a lot of people have made a good amount of money off of Bitcoin and that's awesome. But that's not a guarantee that in the future everyone is going to be a millionaire if they accept Bitcoin. And also it's still a currency. So you're going to see stabilization in the long term and that will be good news. Also it doesn't, along with Ponzi scheme or Pyramid scheme too, it doesn't help the people who are already in Bitcoin make more Bitcoin if they sign up someone for a wallet. I sign people up for a wallet all the time. I help them out with it and I don't get Bitcoin for that. It's not like I'm signing them up like hey come into this scheme and I'll make more money off of you and if you get someone to sign up for this wallet you'll make money too. It doesn't work like that. So it's a totally incomplete comparison. I mean it's a completely wrong comparison but it's very effective because of how recent the Ponzi scheme meme is. Yeah, I just want to chime in on what Megan and Davy said about Fiat and the Ponzi scheme thing. What I usually say, I try to come up with really short responses to a lot of folks I engage in conversation with about these issues and when I get hit with the Fiat thing or it's not backed by anything or it's a Ponzi scheme or it could be or the bottom could fall out tomorrow or whatever. And I just tell people you know what, you're free not to use Bitcoin. Tell me another government currency you're free not to use and that's it. My favorite short answer to the Ponzi scheme objection is to say yes it is a Ponzi scheme except there's no Ponzi and there is no scheme. Nice. Absolutely. The one I've been watching lately is Bitcoin has no intrinsic value which if you don't believe in software is true but if you think about it the Bitcoin network itself you're getting an investment into that when you put your money into Bitcoin the currency. The more people use Bitcoin the network even if they just put their money in and take it out the other side there's still more money being put into that network all the time and it's using your network as a transaction vehicle so you're buying stock in the network's future and that's intrinsic value. The thing the people like the way that I like to explain this issue of intrinsic value is that you absolutely know for a fact that the transaction capability of Bitcoin has an intrinsic value because people were paying for it before Bitcoin existed. Before Bitcoin existed in like 2001 people were willing to pay a percentage to pay pal to transact money. People were willing to pay a fee for wire transfers. People were willing to pay their bank to have a checking account. There was always a subjective value to the service of transacting funds and the fact that that was before Bitcoin ever existed means that Bitcoin offering that service now has an has a value. Yeah intrinsic value implies usefulness you know I heard Peter Schiff say you can use gold to make forks and you can eat with forks. Great you know just look at all the myriad of things that Bitcoin has allowed to be built around it and so many yet to come that are fascinating and really really exciting encouraging things but be that as it may you don't have to be able to make something for it to be useful. You can just share it, trade it, move it, use it as the tool that it is you know in its very own nature. You don't have to enhance it or reconfigure it to get for it to have value. Absolutely. Exit question when will the media admit that they're wrong? What kind of a major event would it take to bring the chattering classes to our side? Derek. When does the media ever admit it is wrong about anything? I'm still waiting for David Gregory to turn himself in for holding up a magazine. No I was expecting it would be someone from the bureaucrat class announcing that they think Bitcoin has value but even when Ben Bernanke gave it a pass it didn't convince the media. Dovey Barker. I am predicting that the very last paper newspaper printed by the very last mainstream media in existence will print a retraction. Megan Lourdes. I'm going to say likely never because we rarely see the media apologize or public officials apologize for much worse atrocities than misreporting on Bitcoin. And what's kind of interesting is there's a project that a friend of a friend is doing his name is Isaac Yanomato and it's called Project Maryland and basically it's going to be working on a cancer treatment that's going to be affordable and effective and just able to reach the mainstream completely go around the pharmaceutical companies and he's making this project completely open source and transparent so anyone has access to it and can see the funds. I think this is going to be a project that Bitcoiners are going to be pretty enthusiastic about. It launches next week on Tuesday and I just think it would be interesting if okay so a bunch of Bitcoiners fund this project and you know we fund the cure for cancer and it still wouldn't be enough. Will Pangman. I want to take a somewhat of a different line. I don't disagree with everybody else that you know they won't publish any retractions maybe until the very last day of the last published paper newspaper. But I have been inundated lately as the organizer of the Milwaukee Bitcoin meetup with press requests. I've been doing a number of interviews with folks and yesterday I was interviewed for 40 minutes by the Fox affiliate out of Green Bay. They came all the way down to Milwaukee and I didn't get a single Silk Road question. At the end of the interview he asked is there anything I left out or anything you'd like to add and I just said you know what I'm just kind of flabbergasted that you didn't ask anything about black market or the Silk Road or even mention any of those terms. It was a very I haven't seen what he's produced with the story that's being produced yet but it felt like a very fairly conducted interview genuinely interested in the price volatility and the adoption rate and its nature as a currency. How it can continue to be used as a currency with the price increase and things like that. Those were the questions I've been fielding and how it can be put to use for social change for community activism and things like that and I love talking about that stuff but man I didn't have to fend off any of the questions that I was prepared to fend off and that was really relieving and that's true of the last three or four press interviews that I've done. So I think maybe they won't produce any retractions. I did see something in the business insider. Some economists or analysts agreed that he changed his mind on Bitcoin which was nice but we may not see any retractions but I think we're seeing a tide change for sure in the tone and interest, the topics on which they're interested in Bitcoin and for what reasons that's dramatic and relatively recent and really encouraging. I think it's going to take a major defector from their side for the media to really give it a chance. Something like Amazon taking it directly or maybe Facebook allowing you to send Bitcoin to your friends. Something like that will give us a good example to hold up against them. If it's a Ponzi scheme, why is Amazon accepting it? If it's a pyramid scheme, why is Facebook accepting it? Once these larger players get into the media, their ideas will have to change. Moving on to questions and answers. Let's see if we have any questions and answers. All right, here we go. First question. Less H-Bomb. How do you pay someone with a Bitcoin fraction? Do you get change made before or after the transaction? Derek? Bitcoin transactions right now are so specific. You could send them an exact amount of Bitcoin with no change necessary. The way Bitcoin protocol handles change is a little bit complicated but for the user, you don't have to deal with any of that. Next question. Do you think Bitcoin will become an issue in the 2014 US House and Senate elections as far as donations to non-establishment candidates? Could this be the reason why the mainstream press-atudes are mounting this crash campaign against cryptos, Davy Barker? I wasn't sure the impression that this was already an issue, that they were trying to say that Bitcoin donations would have to be cashed out immediately and that you were not allowed to hold Bitcoin as a campaign donation. Of course, the fear then would be, let's say that a libertarian or green party candidate decided to announce his candidacy now and I gave him one Bitcoin and then by the time the election came around, that was worth $10,000. It would be a method of rapid fundraising and the establishment doesn't want to see third party candidates do that. It would also be illegal, Davy, because you're only allowed to contribute $2,000 as an individual. Well, I would only be contributing $1,000. I would be giving him one Bitcoin. That's sort of my point. So yeah, the establishment politics does not like volatility. Bitcoin is volatility. So yeah, it will increasingly be a problem. I'm not sure if they've opened or closed the door right now to Bitcoin donations, but I definitely think it could be a big issue, especially if a fringe candidate affects a lot of money. If they raise $50,000,000, $100,000 and start blanketing television with third party advertisements, it could change a major race. The door is open on the local level, maybe not the federal level at this point, but there is one, at least one candidate named Mark Warden from New Hampshire who ran his campaign financed partly by Bitcoin. Think about the Ron Paul campaign in 2008. A lot of the promotion, a lot of the sign waving, the blimp, like a lot of the Ron Paul campaign was not funded or even approved of by the campaign itself, and therefore it was not subject to typical campaign finance regulations. So if that campaign, which took place dominantly on the internet, happened today, it would be 10 times what it was in 2008. But the problem is there is no Ron Paul. There's nobody exciting in politics that's left. So it seems like maybe history just missed that boat. Another question. What do you guys think of Litecoin? It seems to be similar to Bitcoin, but has a faster transaction time. Many say it will be the silver to Bitcoin's gold. Do you think it will catch on? Megan? I like Litecoin personally. I have a few Litecoins myself. I think though, I don't know that the silver to Bitcoin's gold is necessarily accurate. I mean, it's the second most popular cryptocurrency, but it's definitely, I'm definitely curious to see where it's going. I'm very pro altcoin in general. But as far as the subtle differences between it, I've been kind of reading more about it. It's not super different from Bitcoin. I think the only way it's really going to be able to survive is if more people start accepting it, which some places have kind of opened up to it just in the way they've opened up to Bitcoin. So I like Litecoin generally. Next question. Does your cold storage tutorial include advice for migrating from the QT client without using the QT client on an online computer? Will. I wonder if that question is more directed at Derek's video, really great video tutorial on cold storage. Derek, do you want to take it? Yeah, I think it is directed towards that video, which people can find for those who missed it earlier in the segment, Bitcoin phl.com is the website for Bitcoin Philadelphia. We host a couple of instructive videos. One of them is about cold storage, how to take your bitcoins offline and store them securely in order to take your bitcoins in that process that's outlined in that particular video. You do need to download the blockchain, but only at the point where you're trying to retrieve your coins when you're trying to take them from the cold and make them hot again. The ionic Bitcoin asks, I'm looking to start selling bitcoins on local bitcoins and other sites, but I'm having trouble sourcing bitcoins in the US via exchanges. How would you recommend obtaining bitcoins in the US? Dobby. I accept them as payment. I do freelance graphic design work, I sell shiny badges, I, you know, that's how I do it. If a person wants to buy a sort of modest amount for dollars, I like cash into coins.com. And also local bitcoins goes both ways. You can create a listing and go out and buy Bitcoin from other people who are selling. So if you're already familiar with local Bitcoin, you can do that. Excellent. And finally, our last question from Spludda. When will the Bitcoin network become sentient and decide to exterminate humankind? Derek. It's just around the corner. Just around the corner. And moving on to predictions, the part of the show where I ask you to predict the future. We're going in order and that means back to you, Derek. My prediction is that by next week's episode, Bitcoin will be trading higher than $1,000 US dollars on the top three largest Bitcoin exchanges. I'm predicting that as we continue to learn that there is a sort of psychological incompatibility between decentralized and centralized structures, that there's going to be a new emphasis in interest on strategies of decentralized project management in the Bitcoin community. Megan Lorde. Our prediction is that we're going to see other countries start looking at Bitcoin as a strategy to get away from the petriot dollar. I think especially larger countries like China and India and a lot of Middle Eastern countries who are already saying and have been saying for a long time, we no longer want to take dollars for our oil. We want gold or we want something tangible. I think they're going to start really looking at Bitcoin because it's way easier to use. I think it's going to stabilize over time and definitely destabilize the petriot dollar even more. Will Pangman. My prediction kind of points to the question about elections, campaign finance and things like that. Completely speculating, but I think that we will see a Bitcoin super PAC formed possibly by the 2014 election cycle, but certainly by the 2016 election cycle. Excellent. Western Union, the venerable telegraph and money order business founded in 1851, will not live to see its 200th birthday if it does not adapt to modern times, dramatically reduce fees and switch to Bitcoin. If the dinosaurs do not evolve, they will be turned into fossil fuel. We're out of time. Until next time, bye bye.