The Bitcoin Group, the American Original, for over the last ten seconds, the sharpest satosis, the best bitcoins, the hardest cryptocurrency talk. We'd like to welcome the panelists, Derek Freeman from Peace News Now. Hello! Megan Lourds from Bitcoin, not bombs. And Will Pangman from BitcoinMKE.org. Hello. The Bitcoin Group is sponsored by AlphaLion Technologies. AlphaLion Technologies, they don't make the altcoins. They make the altcoins of the future. Learn how to make your own altcoin at AlphaLion Technologies dot com. Issue 1, Bitcoin Roller Coaster. The price goes up, the price goes down. Bitcoin seems to be riding between $800 and $1,000. Will it keep doing this or is this pre-breakout pre-crash behavior? I ask you, Derek J. Woo! This roller coaster keeps going. But I've been looking at the charts for a while. And although I didn't want to believe Davi, when he said that we're finding some stability around $1,000 seems to be the case. Megan Lourds. The only thing predictable about Bitcoin is that it's unpredictable. That being said, I've been really pushing for hope and for some stability for a long time now. And I agree with Derek, I think we're seeing it kind of level out a little bit. Will Penguin. Yeah, since we went under $1,000, I've been watching the charts more closely. And after things kind of settled down after last weekend, there's a lot of upward pressure at about $8.50. So I don't know if we'll see the price go below $8.50 on BitStamp, which I think is a good thing for the stability fans. But yeah, I'm not sure. There's some bullish news all the time, and it doesn't seem to budge upward as much as one might suspect. It does seem that we reached a top at about $12.24, which I think was around the price of gold at that time. Do you think that gold is somehow artificially keeping the value of Bitcoin down? Derek? Well, and people's minds subconsciously, absolutely, when people talk about a store of value, when they're talking about a currency, gold is in the bag of people's minds. People do central banks still hold gold as a form of currency. And so we know that gold is going to have a pretty big influence on the price of Bitcoin. When we're talking about investors, where are they going to put their money? I think the investors see long-term stability in gold, and they're not sure about Bitcoin. So yeah, that price is going to be magic for a while. Megan, do you think we'll break through the gold price anytime soon? I think there's some psychological factors at play, but there's also very different things, manipulating gold in Bitcoin. They seem to be driven by very different things, and I don't know that I can make a prediction to say that Bitcoin would break through the gold barrier anytime soon. But I also think that they affect each other not a whole lot. Like I said, there's very different things manipulating each market. So I don't know that while there's some psychological barriers, I don't know that there's correlation there that they're affecting each other very much. Will, do you think we'll break through the gold price? Yeah, certainly, eventually, probably soon, maybe within a quarter year. But yeah, I mean, there's a psychological barrier with that gold price. I think it's probably some of the heaviest trading action is probably from season commodities traders who've taken an interest in Bitcoin, and thrown maybe larger chunks towards trading Bitcoin than many other crypto traders. So their behavior is probably heavily dictated by other commodities prices and gold specifically, too. So yeah, there's a psychological barrier that we need to break through, just like maybe the 250 barrier earlier this year, and maybe the 1000 barrier a month ago or so. Those didn't take very long, it seemed. But maybe the gold barrier will take a little longer. It's funny, we see the settling down of the price action right after the China news. And there isn't much movement in the last two days, really, compared to the previous month. So yeah, it's more big wigs are getting involved in Bitcoin. That's clear in the news and kind of clear if you're watching order books and stuff. So yeah, it'll take a few months, I think, to get through. Hopefully not, though, I like to see wild upward action too. Exit question January 1st, 2014, 19 days from now. What is the price of Bitcoin for the new year, Derek J? 1000 and $1,000. Megan Lords. You know what, I'm going to go with 1100. Will Pangman. $9.99. I'm sticking with 1500 to the moon or bust. Issue 2. Apple versus Bitcoin. Formerly the Apple of my eye, the once forward thinking technology company has banned Bitcoin wallets from the app store using a catch 22. While Apple once complained about Microsoft's anti-competitive behavior, they are now doing it themselves. Presumably they see Bitcoin as competition for their own payment processing solution. Is this the end of Apple by making their once stellar iPhones clearly inferior to Android? Has Apple just taken a knee and given up on being a technology company? Is the spirit of Steve Jobs that once guided this great company now truly dead? I ask you, Megan Lords. Oh man, Apple needs to get with the program. I've never been a huge Apple fan to be honest. I just got a brand new LG G2, and I love it. It's a great phone. I love my Silium app. For example, it's a great Bitcoin app. It's not surprising that the Apple would be acting this way. They've never been very happy about competition. They've always used their patents to do patent trolling and things like that. This isn't surprising behavior coming from Apple, but I really think they need to get with the program if they're going to want to stay competitive in natural ways, as far as their products are superior, because they can fight and court all day long with Samsung and some of these other companies. That's how they want to make their money. I think they best get with the program and start being more open-minded towards Bitcoin. Will Penguin. Oh man, is a faithful Apple user? Probably. Yeah, I've been continually disappointed by their approach to Bitcoin. Of course, I had suspected, along with a lot of other people, that Apple was going to eventually roll out their own payment application and perhaps even a proprietary currency. It looks like that was the plan. I don't think I'm breaking this because I found it on the Bitcoin sub-routed in the new category. But there's an article on cryptocoinsnews.com that's really interesting about a new Apple feature that apparently has been silently embedded in the last two or three generations of I devices that's going to enable payments for the enabled devices. These can be third-party devices or really your iPhone, your iPads, and computers and stuff. Right now, I guess it's activated for Apple stores only. But yeah, from what I'm reading, and even before I even read this article, I was sure that whatever Apple was going to come up with or roll out here in the near future was going to be inferior to Bitcoin. Same is true. Some of the other proprietary currencies we hear about sometimes with Google or Amazon. Yeah, it's just disappointing. I'm luckily downloaded the Coinbase app with the send-and-receive and buy-and-sell functions right when it came out. I still have it so I can still use those features. Thankfully, it's very convenient. I love it. It's always been disappointed that GIF.com's app on iOS does not allow me to buy cards in Bitcoin. I have to go through many different browsers to do that on the phone at least when I'm in a store. It's nice to just be able to do that. Derek tells a story a few months back, actually, of doing that in the Gap Store. I've done it in CVS where you buy the GIF card right there and it works. You know, Megan's right. Apple needs to get with the program. Unfortunately, I don't think they will. Their headstrong and determined to come up with their own inferior product and violate people's privacy throughout. So I encourage folks to check out that article. I don't know the author, but I was very stimulated by the read. And it's interesting. The feature is called Ibeacon. So check that out. Derek J. Apple's a great company. They had a great start and great leadership. Everyone knows that they've been forward thinking with the PC and with tablets with the iPhone. The unfortunate reality, though, is that they're a great company bred in an environmental disaster swamp of stedism. They've been raised as this great company. Unfortunately, without the healthy competition that they need to stay sharp. They've been running this race with the advantage of having the government keep everyone else off the track. And that's not good for anybody. And it's been good for them in the meantime, but I think what we're seeing is the slow death hangs of copyright. And is this the end of Apple? Yeah, it will be not with just Bitcoin, but the fact that they rely on the government to keep competition away from them is what's going to be the death of Apple and many other tech companies. Their strength has been hardware. I'm using lots of Mac technology now and they make great hardware. Just stick to that and compete, honestly. I wish they would. I mean, like Will said, it's good for people that already downloaded the Coinbase app. But if you're trying to show a new person Bitcoin, it's a lot harder to show them Bitcoin on the iPhone. And that doesn't make any sense. The iPhone is technically completely capable of handling Bitcoin. If Apple had legitimate complaints like the apps didn't have secure pin numbers, they didn't have codes to keep users safe, that would be fine. But these apps do have pin numbers. They are controlled. And as far as the risk, I don't think Apple would take the risk for that. If they would take the risk for any other program that could be a suspicious programmer, steal someone's credit card or something. It's absolutely absurd. How much exit question? How much longer will this madness go on? Will I really have to get an Android phone to get a decent Bitcoin wallet app? I hate this. And it's driving me crazy. Will. I completely agree. If this, really, I'm about at the point where there's only a straw needed to break my back for me to go Android. I've been resisting it. I've seen the new features, the new phones, and the new processing power and hardware come out. And it's really attractive. But I just like the interface with Apple. I like a lot of Apple products, like Derek mentioned. But one more aggressive move here. And hey, my loyalties are with trustless cryptography, mathematics. And I'll gladly choose a product that provides me the freedom to use that service. Derek J, will it ever end? No. The madness with Apple is going to continue. Like Will mentioned, they've got Ibeacon. It's competing with Bitcoin not directly, but indirectly enough that they're not going to want to help adopt Bitcoin. They've got no skin in the game, no incentive to help that develop. Unfortunately, you are going to have to get an Android phone to get a decent Bitcoin wallet app. And this isn't just you who is striving crazy. I speak with in Philadelphia business owners who are working to adopt Bitcoin. That's part of my mission in life is to get business owners hold their hand while they adopt Bitcoin. Well, a lot of them are using iPads or iPhones, and they were using them successfully to receive payments from customers. All of a sudden, Apple took that away from them. And so they were using Bitcoin happily with their Apple products, no more. What do you think that says to those business owners? Are they going to go buy Apple products again? Not likely. Megan? Come to the droid side. It's so much better. But, well, yeah, I would say for Bitcoin users, droid is where it's at. I mean, there's no comparison with the apps available. I think the nonsense is definitely still going to go on. Apple is really comfortable where they are in the market right now. And your average for your average person, I think iPhones are still in Apple products in general are still really easy to use. But for Bitcoiners, I think we need to vote with our wallet on this one and switch over to companies who are going to be, you know, allowing apps in our best interest. And like Derek said, that's something I do too. I try to get business owners accepting Bitcoin. And it's very difficult if they have an iPhone or they're working with an iPad. It's trickier to get them set up. And yeah, like you said, those people are going to be moving away from Apple products because Apple is going to continue with nonsense. It's incredibly unfortunate. This episode was sponsored by Let's Talk Bitcoin. Let's talk Bitcoin, the premiere Bitcoin podcast. Fascinating interviews, helpful how to's and more at Let's Talk Bitcoin or on YouTube. Issue three, lifestyles of the rich and Bitcoin. First, it was a ride into space. Now it's a Tesla electric sports car. What's next? A professional sports team, a castle, a skyscraper in New York City. Mark Cuban famously bought the Dallas Mavericks with his profits from the incredibly lucrative sale of the Wendeworthless broadcast.com to Yahoo, which is now just a domain name that links to Yahoo. What large item will be purchased with Bitcoin next? And what would you buy if you had the Bitcoin? Megan Lords. What will people be buying with it? This is interesting. I can't speak for other people. I think you're going to see, I think you could see this coming to play with politics, though. I mean, banks are very good at buying the government. You know, well, I know that's some Bitcoiners by far as of it. But what I would like to buy with it, I just kind of want to be able to buy a nice little piece of land somewhere in a nice old house. That's really, I want to keep it simple. And the president for buying land of Bitcoin has already been set by Sean's outposts. And I know other people who were able to pay rent and things like that. So that's all I really want to be able to buy with Bitcoin. Will Penguin, what would you buy? Yeah, I think Megan stole my thunder a bit. Yeah, I want to buy lots of land with Bitcoin one day. So that's kind of what I'm buying up. Just end some independence from some debts probably too. Get that burden off. So that's what I'm thinking of personally. But I'd like to see people put up real estate development skyscrapers sound great. I think we need another order of magnitude or two for some large Bitcoin holders to afford such ventures like that. I think that's coming maybe sooner than we think. And I'll be exciting. So the sports team idea is cool too. The first sports team bought with Bitcoin and a fully Bitcoin enabled sports arena concessions. And everything. I mean, that would be neat. And we could rename the team the Philadelphia Bitcoiners. The Philly Satoshi's. Yeah, that would be cool. Yeah, so those are exciting. I mean, entertainment, especially fluff entertainment stuff, like perhaps professional sports or certainly reality TV and things get a bad rap. But we're going to have those in a freer society also. And I'm glad for that. Hopefully some of the patriarchal power structure stuff will go away obviously in a freer society. And maybe we could see more genuine competition both in the marketplace and on the sporting field. Derek J, what would you like to see purchased with Bitcoin? Well, one of the jokes I saw on clenian.com this week was that an employee was asking for pay in Bitcoin. And the next day he bought the company. And I think that would be the next thing I would like to see is people buying factories, serious capital and reinvesting their bitcoins and something productive like a factory. But if I had my choice, I would buy an island. Bitcoin has no nationality and neither do I. Exit question, what would you rather buy? A space ride that you can use once or a Tesla that you can drive every day, Megan? I'm going to hold out for the Tesla flying car because we were promised flying cars and that's what I want. I mean, it'd be cool to go to space and all, but I want my flying car. Will? Yeah, oh, the flying car, it is awesome. Tesla for sure, I've ridden in one and yeah, I want one. Derek J? A space ride. The government can't take that away. It's really hard because I'm very practical. So obviously the Tesla or Prius, but I don't think I could pass up the chance to go to space. Issue four. Almost worked. Issue four, Bitcoin and the banks. Well, that's not what it says. China says no banks. J.P. Morgan says they wanted their own Bitcoin clone, but it turned out to be an old patent. Fidelity said they would accept the second market Bitcoin ETF, but they changed their minds. What is the future of Bitcoin and the banks? Will they work together or can there be only one? Derek J. Yeah, they'll work together. We're already seeing this in places like Cyprus and places where Bitcoin is more free, like the UK and Canada. So I think there's B payment network and NIO, which are sort of one and the same over in Cyprus, and they're really paving the way. And it's not surprising that we're seeing banks in Cyprus paving the way, seeing as they had some of the worst during the financial disaster. So it's probably going to follow in that sort of trend. People who are aware of the dangers of the existing financial system are going to start moving away faster than those of us who are still relying on it heavily in the US. Megan Lorde. I think they're going to work together for as long as it's profitable for the banks. I think when they start seeing some serious competition and more people maybe start pulling their money out of the banks, then you might see them use their government privilege to try to crack down on it. A lot of times, some of these large, some of the larger banking firms are kind of an as the unelected government. And yeah, they're definitely going to use their privilege to try to crack down if they perceive Bitcoin to be more of a threat. But for now, I think they see some incentive to get involved and to be more accepting towards it. I think they're going to do that for a while as long as it suits their needs. Will Pankman. Yeah, so in the US, we don't see much cooperation or tolerance even of Bitcoin among banks. I always get the question from folks, why does Coinbase and BitPay still have their bank accounts when these other startups end up with frozen accounts and banks demanding customer depositors withdraw all their money and seek a new haven for their business account? And I don't have much of a response except that the money backing those businesses has some nicer relationships with certain banks. Maybe background checks were just more thorough and checked out. Who knows? Well, Mt. Cox was famously using a personal DeWalla account to transfer everyone's money and they didn't have a money transferring license to my understanding. Yeah, so you can't play the game of, I'm only going to ask for forgiveness, not permission when it comes to banks. And so I think that's what maybe we saw in the case of Mt. Cox and lots of other really great startups like, for example, BitSpend. If folks who've been around with Bitcoin for say six to nine months, you know about BitSpend and how awesome of a company that was. There's sort of a new company called SnapCard that does a lot of what BitSpend was doing and so far so good with them. I've heard good things. But yeah, when it comes to banks, what we've seen from China, you know, the play by China was interesting. The government said no banks and then we see a huge sell off. That could be just negative sentiment, but I tend to believe that there was already bank money in Bitcoin and China and it was sold off to comply with the new announcement. So you know, I think they want to get involved and explore it. I'm sure certain individuals want to get involved. I know I hear that out of New York City a lot with some contacts there and the meetup there. It's, I see an acts of aggression, if you will, by banks against Bitcoin businesses, against Bitcoin itself. They do smell the threat of Bitcoin and they realize that it is a threat to their hegemony, but I don't think they yet realize that it's actually an existential threat to them, a deeply existential threat. And you know, if they did, they would take a much heavier hand and then fail sooner with that approach. So I know I said this last week, I'll kind of say it again, you know, I'm eager for a misstep, you know, some hubris that exposes the kind of, you know, vulnerabilities or weaknesses with the traditional central banking model, you know, finance and the advantages of Bitcoin far outweighing all those features. So, you know, I'd like to see one of those mistakes pretty soon and when we see kind of how robustly Bitcoin responds to such an approach, then, you know, I think the wool comes off of a lot of people's eyes. Derek J. No, unlike, well, I don't think that the banks are going to come with their own heavy-handed approach. Banks have every interest in making money. They see the potential gains in Bitcoin. They see that their customers want to use it. They are going to adopt Bitcoin like a fat kid is going to try and run a race. I mean, they'll do their best, but they're just not going to be able to make it and eventually they're going to fail. The big, the bank that, oh, okay, but that's the answer to that question. You haven't asked your exit question yet. The big exit question, which bank in the USA will accept Bitcoin first and why? Megan Lords. Oh, which one? Oh, man. What I'd like to see is some smaller credit unions, start except in Bitcoin, but that's probably not likely. So I'm guessing someone like Bank of America, just because I think it would be good PR for them because they're kind of seen as, you know, when you think of like these big evil banks, Bank of America is always at the very top of the list. And only Nixon could go to China. Only Nixon could go to China. Right. They need good PR. People still are kind of, I think, distrustful of them. And I think it would be good for their image. So I'm thinking they might be the first ones. Will Penguin. Yeah, you know, my wish would be for small community banks and credit unions to kind of one of them somewhere in America to, you know, have a forward thinking director, you know, CEO of that bank, take that step. But I agree with Megan, you know, the most positive sentiments to come out of the banking higher ups has been from folks at Bank of America. So that would be my answer to you. I think if any of them ever do formally and, you know, like truly, fully accept Bitcoin, it might be Bank of America just because of the sentiment from their leadership. It sounds like Derek J shaking his head. Of course. Now I'm shaking my head. Have you guys forgotten Occupy Wall Street Bank of America earns their bad name. I don't expect that's going to change now. That's why they need good PR. Yeah, they need good PR. It would be the first time they do something right. TD Bank is going to be the one in the US who starts accepting Bitcoin first because they're one of the biggest banks in New York City, Philadelphia, DC, along the East Coast. And they're also Canadian. So we know that Canadian has loose regulations with Bitcoin. So they're the first most obvious choice. TD Bank. That would be nice. I mean, I agree with the panel. It would be nice if a small bank or a credit union adopted it, but I have no reason to believe that. It's interesting that Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, has properly analyzed it, said a price target, said positive things about it. But maybe a small bank somewhere will see this as a competitive advantage and adopt it and really market themselves as the Bitcoin bank and just go for it. I mean, that would be a nice challenge to the traditional top three banks. Yeah. Very well. Two questions and answers. Let's see if we have any questions and answers opening up the app. Let's see. They're asking about when Bitcoin will break the gold barrier. I think we discussed that pretty well. I'm going to check on Twitter. We have a question from Johnny Bravo. He'd like to ask, what are the amount of Americans that know what Bitcoin is? Is it about one out of 30? Do you think? Derek J? It's 42%. There was just a poll that was done, I think, on Bloomberg. Something like 46% thought that it was, that they had no idea what it was. 42% knew that Bitcoin was a virtual currency. Six percent thought it was a new app and so we had some other couple of funny answers. I would say pretty safely, it's about 40% of people. I think that's quite good. That's a good place to start from. We can build up from there as way better than 20%. It looks like we don't have that many other questions, so we're going to move on to predictions. The part where I ask you to predict the future. Are you ready, Derek J? Bitcoin is going to make it to people's Christmas list this year and all the old people in your family and at your family parties, we'll be asking all the young folks to set up their Bitcoin wallets. Megan Lourdes. Yep, we're going to see more families getting involved except in Bitcoin. I've already set up my mother-in-law and a couple other family members who have expressed interest. We'll see the start of Bitcoin Christmas this year and then by next year I think it'll really take an off. I think it's just a matter of time after that before people are like, well, why I use cash anymore? Why use credit cards? Bitcoin's so much easier. Will, payment. Yeah, I don't know if my prediction is much different. I think within this holiday season we're going to see the non-investing, non-crypto-liberitarian crowd get interested in Bitcoin and start, they'll show up on all the forums. I'm already starting to see this. Just a lot of these kinds of folks showing up on the forums and asking the questions. I get a lot of these questions from folks I would never expect to be interested in Bitcoin, middle-aged women who are coming, emailing me, coming up to me. Folks who I'd never expect and then when I go and I ask folks if they know about Bitcoin, if I'm trying to integrate a new business, have you heard of Bitcoin and someone says, yes, I don't want to put them through like a quiz just to make sure they know what I'm talking about because they don't fit the description. They're not 20s, 30s, white male, right? So it's interesting, I'm seeing the growth in the awareness and my prediction is we're going to see the general American consumer interest in Bitcoin emerge pretty heavily in the new year early on. As mentioned recently on the Bitcoin report, if $4 billion or 1% of Fidelity's assets were invested into Bitcoin, the market cap and thus the price of Bitcoin would triple to more than $3,000 a coin with so much to gain and nothing to lose, it would only take one of these major events to send Bitcoin skyrocketing and it will happen in the next three months. We're out of time until next time, bye bye!