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, including Andreus and Tenoppelis, Bitcoin developer and commentator. Page Peterson from the San Francisco Bitcoin Meetup. Megan Lors from Bitcoin, not bombs. And Kristoff Atlus from anonymous Bitcoin book. May the bits be with you. Issue 1. Feds approve Bitcoin for campaign contributions. But not really. They've just allowed Bitcoin donations, but they won't allow anonymous donations, and they want the freedom to scrutinize the transactions in case they've been involved in illegal activity. Just like they do for cash. Candidates never accept political donations from shady businesses, or shady people. Do they? Andreus and Tenoppelis. Oh, this is absolutely fantastic news. The ability to buy a politician online with Bitcoin is one of the linchpins for our continued legitimacy. Listen, every other type of business, both shady, illegal and legal and above the board, has had the opportunity to purchase politicians at clearance sale prices, in fact. And now we have the opportunity to purchase politicians of our own. This is fantastic news. It provides not only legitimacy for Bitcoin, but it also firmly establishes the fact that spending one's Bitcoin in terms of association and expression is a first amendment politically protected activity. And that activity has now been properly regulated by the Federal Election Commission. They can use the Bitcoin blockchain to provide for transparency of political campaign donations far better than they could ever do that with checks or cash in the traditional banking system. So this once again will show how radical transparency is the nature of Bitcoin, and will allow us to buy over your own politicians. I'm very excited. It's a very good deal. It reminds me of something you said once. If you can't buy a politician with your currency, what good is it? Absolutely. Well, at least we can rent one for one election cycle. It's a good deal. Get the NASCAR sponsorship of politicians. Page. Well, honestly, I'd rather see people spend Bitcoins and other places when on politicians, like businesses and innovation and things like that. But from what I know, there have been a couple of politicians that have started accepting it or saying that they were accepting it already. I know the contender against Nancy Pelosi this year, John Dennis came to the last Bitcoin meetup we had to get a little stir rolling. But honestly, yeah, I'd rather see Bitcoin spend in other places. Megan Lort. So this is definitely not surprising. I think you're really going to see this embraced by third party candidates, mostly Adrian Wiley, the libertarian candidate for Governor and Florida. Actually, it came to the Miami Bitcoin conference to kind of check it out and talk to the Bitcoin governors. And he seemed pretty interested in taking Bitcoin donations. I don't know how effective it's going to be for them to be taking Bitcoin donations. I think it's great that now you can buy politicians. It's like, yeah, finally, it's our time to be buying the politicians. But like Page said, I don't know that I want to see such precious Bitcoin going to these people, especially if it's going to be on some third party candidate who doesn't really stand a chance. There's still very much entrenched in this two party system. And it's very much an uphill battle if you're working this third party candidate. Even if you are embracing new technology, which I think is really good, I found it interesting. The way that the FEC is commenting on this quote, this is, let me see, I just pulled it up. Mr. Goodman from the FEC said, just philosophically, I think it's important for the FEC to embrace technology and innovation. And that's what we did today. And I thought it was really interesting because they're selling this as, oh, we're so progressive minded. We're so forward thinking, but I don't really think it's about that at all. I think this is, they see money to be taken or money to be swindled. I guess you could say, because it's definitely harder to steal Bitcoin. At least politician's stealing Bitcoin from people than through something like a taxation system. So it's interesting the way they were kind of spinning this. But what's also interesting is so they're going to have to track all of these donations out. And they're not allowed to spend them on things. They're not allowed to use Bitcoin so much as a currency. You can take them as donations, but you have to invert them back into cash if you're wanting to spend them on, for campaigning purposes, whatever they're going to buy with that. So that's kind of interesting that they try to take that function out of the equation with this. But I think overall, it's kind of great that now we can buy politicians. I mean, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan are used to doing that already. I'm a bit skeptical to how much of an impact Bitcoin will have, especially compared to these bankers. The FEC is a very high tech and cutting edge political organization. They're the same ones that organized all those die-bold, steal your voting machines, right? They don't even have open source tabulators, the machines that count the votes. So they're very much on the cutting edge. I'm sure. And that's all for this stuff, Atlas. Well, I host a show on the World Crypto Network on Tuesday called Dark News. And I talked about, on the last episode, this past Tuesday, I talked about this article by Daniel Cray-Witz. And he was talking about Bitcoin and black markets. And he was basically saying, look, when a black market is willing to use your money or your currency, that is a true test of the currency. So don't be scared of the Silk Road or one of these other dark markets using Bitcoin. It really means really very positive things for Bitcoin. And I think we can logically extend that to say, if you look at some of the CBS people, which are the politicians, and I'm sure that some of the backroom deals that they have going on would put the black marketeers to shame, really, politicians in a significant way are part of the black market, of course. And I think it's very positive indicator for Bitcoin that it is truly legitimate if it's being used by politicians. As a researcher in the area of privacy, I am very curious about how they would attempt to enforce some of these laws in terms of traceability and making sure that you're not getting your coins from CB people and so forth. I wonder if this is language that they're trying to use to pave the way towards coin validation or something along those lines. But as long as something like coin validation cannot exist on a unanimous scale within Bitcoin, I'm not quite sure how they would possibly hope to enforce these laws. Trying to, if you're trying to trace payments against people that are really working hard and have a significant financial incentive to not be traced, that's a huge challenge. We've seen a huge growth in terms of privacy with respect to dark wallet. While it is now getting press on Forbes.com and the New Yorker and Wired magazine and all these other places. So this privacy issue and this anonymity issue is really at the forefront of Bitcoin right now. And so of course, the issue for these regulators is if some politician takes dirty money, are they going to be able to make it fake and make it look like it's coming from a clean source or someone that's more reputable. So I'm very curious to see how that all plays out. It seems like a very unenforceable law. If you put up a Bitcoin address and someone sends you a quarter, how are you going to know where they're from? So I just don't get it. I think what you're going to see is in fact, they're going to use intermediaries in order to request that you first enter some identifying information like your first and last name and your address similar to what they do for credit card donations. And that's going to solve the problem. And then you can not publish a transactional address. And if you do receive donations from a transactional address, balance them back to the origin address. And that's how most politicians are going to resolve this in a way that allows them to receive Bitcoin donations. But I'm very excited about this. Well, if there's big money involved, my question would be, does that not just shift it to an identity theft problem? Yes, without a doubt. But as long as you're able to provide sufficient independent identities, as they do today with cash and credit card donations, then it doesn't really matter. I don't think you're really going to see that issue pop up. But really what this does is, it's on lines the idea that the possibility of banning Bitcoin entirely, at least in the United States. It is now pretty much a move point. You can't do it anymore. Once you've established the legal basis that this is a means by which you can contribute to political campaigns, that puts Bitcoin in a legal position which is very, very difficult to attack. And that's great news for Bitcoin. And cryptocurrencies in general. Moving on, issue two, the Department of Justice. The Department of Justice is recruiting new businesses for Bitcoin. Maybe not the businesses you want, but the businesses you get. The DOJ has launched Operation Checkpoint to drive businesses they don't like into accepting Bitcoin by cutting off their access to the traditional financial system. As many know, the DOJ is also one of the major holders of Bitcoin thanks to the ongoing Silk Road situation. What do you think of the DOJ's latest Bitcoin promotion? More cash in Bitcoin only the future of business, page Peterson. Well, I obviously don't think that they were thinking about or intending to push anyone to Bitcoin. This is just old practices without considering even the fact that they have another option to go to now. So in general, I think this is like them to think about Bitcoin in the future and Bitcoin being the opportunity that these businesses have to fall upon and keep doing business is going to make them rethink this whole policy of pushing, making it harder for businesses but they don't think. It does seem like they're pushing businesses out of an arena that they control into an unknown arena. Megan Lourdes. Yeah, when you try to clamp down on businesses because you disagree with them from a morality standpoint or whatever you want to call it, then you're going to drive them into these other markets and to these alternative markets. I think that's great for Bitcoin. Recently, it was announced that they've been cracking down on some of the accounts for women who spent porn. I'd love to see more sex workers taking Bitcoin. I'd love to see a lot more of these businesses taking Bitcoin, especially guns. This is really a kind of unwise decision on the DOJs part, especially when you have other agencies who are trying to crack down on some of these bad behaviors and they're trying to prevent people from doing business and basically try to take them over. I think it is interesting. It almost seems very contradictory to what other government agencies are trying to do when they're trying to crack down on black markets and stuff like that. This is very interesting, but I also think it's really good for Bitcoin. It's very good for the people who are trying to crack down on some of these bad behaviors and stuff like that. First, it's amazing that we live in a world where there's something called the Department of Justice that can do that and we call it the Department of Justice with a straight face or at least some people do. That blows my mind. Let's shut down the bank account or let's pressure banks into shutting down the accounts of female porn stars because we're the Department of Justice. I think it will drive more stuff into the Bitcoin space, of course. It seems like such a stupid move in terms of having control over capitals that I can only think that this is a directive that has come down from people that do not quite understand how cryptocurrencies are going to challenge capital controls. You only think that this is a smart move if you think that people have to use the banks and therefore the power that you exert over banks is going to encompass all of their financial activities. That's no longer the case now. I can only assume that the people that came up with this idea just have not grasped it yet. And, Dres, and to not go with. I think it's important to look at this in the context in which it is occurring and look at it clearly for what it is. The executive arm of the government is deciding that 30 categories of business that are perfectly lawful under current U.S. law are not desirable and is applying executive and administrative pressure on private corporations to ban these businesses from operating in the financial environments. That should be absolutely appalling and horrifying to any freedom-loving person because what it represents is not just executive overreach. Listen, if you want to think that these 30 businesses should not exist, then go to Congress and pass a bill that makes these activities unlawful. If you cannot pass a bill that makes these activities unlawful, then those activities are lawful by definition. The executive using power that it has over the banks through coercion through the regulatory system to achieve legislative goals is a violation of the separation of powers of the three branches of governments in the United States. An coalition between the executive administration and private corporations in the forms of banks to apply their own particular flavor of morality and direct violation of the laws of this nation has one word and one word only in that is fascism. It may be soft fascism and it may be fascism that is applied to people you don't like who are doing activities that you find distasteful like porn. But nevertheless, this is a gross violation of the rule of law and it is a massive violation of due process because the people most affected by this are small businesses and independent entrepreneurs and private individuals. It's not just porn, it's payday loans, it's all kinds of other activities that have nothing to do with CD businesses but are simply undesirable to the Department of Justice because they want to exert an iron fist control over all financial activities of the citizens of this country. We should be very worried because if you accept this kind of executive overreach in the case of pornographers or porn artists or payday loans or check cashing operations or gambling or firearms sales or God knows what else they have on that 30 industry list, then that's a long and slippery slope that leads to the executive being able to exert its own particular case of morality and make no mistake the big banks are not being excluded from making payday loans. The Department of Justice is not banning the bank accounts of corporations that sell tear gas and rubber bullets to the worst fascist governments on this planet. It's not banning the bank accounts of corporations that pollutes the rivers and streams and are air. It's not banning the bank accounts of corporations that are slaughtering animals in in humane conditions and introducing poisons into our food and our environment. It's not banning the bank accounts of organizations that are exporting war industry and droning people from above. No, it's applying its own particular version of puritanical morality without any backing of law in the most fascist way possible. I think we should be appalled by this and it has nothing to do with Bitcoin really. What it is is the perfect demonstration of why governments should never have power over money because that power corrupts absolutely and when you give government that power they abuse it to achieve goals that they cannot achieve through the normal democratic and legislative process. Absolutely. First, they came for the pornographers. Exit question, which category of business do you think will go cash and Bitcoin only first? Page Peterson. So there's already been a lot of gambling, online gambling businesses being run in completely Bitcoin. Maybe not the gambling in Vegas or where it's like stay regulated as well. But yeah, I would say online gambling. Online gambling. Megan Lordes. I would say guns, people who deal with guns, drug dealers or sex workers. I think any of those people would, I mean, drug dealers especially mostly deal in cash. So I think those would be great categories to become Bitcoin only or cash only as some of them already are. And it will be beautiful because it will prove as if it needs proving but it will prove that you cannot stop this activity from going on no matter how much you dislike it and that there will be other routes people can take and then we'll have more people in Bitcoin too. So I think it's really refreshing and it could stop a lot of unnecessary trips to the ATM once they just accept Bitcoin directly. And it's just off at this. I think medical marijuana dispensaries are definitely in a good spot to do that. They've been getting a lot of harassment with regards to accepting credit cards and having big accounts and whatnot. So I think Bitcoin could be a good option for them. I imagine that they have a slightly skewed user base towards young people. And so their users might be more likely to get Bitcoin and be able to jump on that quickly. Absolutely. It's another case where previously their controls used to work but now their controls are actually liberating their victims. And Dres, your thoughts. I'd like to think of the people that the current banking system doesn't serve. The other six billion. And surprisingly enough we have a big chunk of that right here in the United States. Some 18% of the population of the United States, the adult population of the United States do not have bank accounts. That affects some 60 million people in this country, the family heads of household as well as the rest of the family. So that includes both illegal immigrants, itinerant workers, as well as the working poor who through bureaucracy, high fees, limited access and various other issues do not have access to banking services and banking facilities. And so giving access to many of those people to systems that allow them to have access to international markets, international credit, liquid credit loans, as well as be able to transact. That becomes increasingly an necessity and the more the government tries to control and narrow the financial services that are offered to everyday consumers, the bigger that group becomes. It's another great time for that with the banks cracking down on free checking accounts. More and more, everything requires a fee for a bank account. Yes, you are checking. You're checking is not profitable anymore. I know and that's a great time for Bitcoin to come out as a competitor to consumer checking. Issue three, doze car, doze car, doze car. The NASCAR field was joined by a unique competitor this weekend. The first ever NASCAR to be sponsored by a cryptocurrency. No, it wasn't Bitcoin. It was dozecoin. First the conference, now the car. What's next? Landing rovers on the moon? No seriously, they might do that. Doze car and dozecoin. The best promotion or the best promotion ever. I'm not the biggest fan of NASCAR, but I did grow up with my mother who really, really loves NASCAR. She's a huge NASCAR fan. What this does is it opens up the discussion to an entirely different demographic of people that maybe a lot of Bitcoiners and dozecorners haven't really thought about even appealing to. NASCAR fans are very, very excited about this sport. They're very attentive to the drivers. They definitely have their favorites. It's a very interesting culture kind of in the United States. I think it's something that could really open up a very interesting discussion to them because now they're going to be seeing this car driving around. They're like, what does that mean? Why is that dog doing on this car? Maybe they'll Google it and maybe they'll take them down the rabbit hole. This definitely opens things up to a group of people that I didn't even really consider myself. Despite having grown up with someone who's really in NASCAR, I hadn't even really thought about how to appeal to them. I think NASCAR is a really good way to do that. I think that's great. I love watching the GIFs and the various clips I saw of the Doze car driving around. I think that's awesome. He placed really well too. He placed out of 40 that's actually pretty good by NASCAR standards. It's really interesting. It was very exciting to see develop. It was pretty good. He didn't even have a team out there. Imagine if you had the Doze car, the Litecoin car, the Bitcoin car working together as a team, we could have gotten even closer to first. Christoph, Atlas. I did watch the race on Sunday and I was out there live tweeting it with you Thomas. I don't think I've ever watched a NASCAR race before. I think for NASCAR, it seems like a pretty good deal that they had lots of people tuning in that I'd never done it before. I would watch another race if there was another Doze car or something as a mother car that was being sponsored by cryptocurrencies. That's a win for NASCAR certainly. In terms of the impact that it's going to have for Dozecoin, I'm not exactly sure. I don't know how likely the NASCAR demographic is to jump into cryptocurrencies right now. Maybe if it was up to me, the next thing that they would fund is a study of the economic or consumer effects of this sponsorship and see exactly what it did for Dozecoin. I think something that's interesting for me to think about is whenever you see a cryptocurrency, whether it's Bitcoin or Dozecoin or something else, in one of these highly public, all-American kind of places, I think that does a lot for the legitimacy of cryptocurrencies in general. I would ask someone out of all of the companies and corporations that have sponsored NASCAR, how many of their CEOs have gone to jail, how many of their customers have gone to jail, I would guess that not very many of them have if any. Dozecarb and I want to see cryptocurrencies all of the damn place and normalizing those cryptocurrencies for people. They feel comfortable with it. When the suits come over and they say, hey, we just found this guy. He tricked him into doing a $10,000 swap of big coins for cash on local big coins so that people stand up and they're saying, what did he do wrong there? Tell me what's wrong with that. I'm fine with Bitcoin. I'm down with Bitcoin and Dozecoin. I think that's the effect that I want to see out of these situations and sponsorships. It does normalize the Bitcoin to have it be a part of such an all-American event. It's just another sponsor like Tide or GoDaddy and Dres, your thoughts. Much horsepower, such room, room. Many left turns. Wow. To the moon. It was quite something. Page Peterson. So yeah, I think it's overall. It was a fun time. I caught a little bit of it, but I didn't watch too much. In terms of the future and maybe what could be a little more planned up, I guess would be something like... In terms of this happening, I can see a lot of people seeing the car and being like, Dogecoin is a company or kind of referring the cryptocurrency back to the problem where people think that coins are a company. To fight that, I think it would be a fun thing to do to sponsor a car that was a bunch of different Bitcoin based companies. There's just blockchain, DIPA, and it kind of shows cooperation and community within that. That means that you and each other, once we get big enough to wear blockchain, coin based, maybe they all have their own cars. Maybe this is a whole thing that takes off. Well, I'd rather see them be maybe on the same car. That would be a little... That would be nice to see. I think you two small, bigger, bigger. We should buy all the cars. Exit question. What should Doge or Bitcoin sponsor next? Is there anything better than a NASCAR? Maybe a Senator? Megan Lordes. The Senator is interesting. I'm not a big fan of politics, so I wouldn't personally like to see this. As far as sponsor, I don't really know. I don't know that I have a super great answer for this. But maybe this is idealistic. I'd really like to see Bitcoin and Dogecoin being known for being associated with charities basically and helping people and spreading these ideas. I've been not just spreading ideas, but actually helping people improve their lives. That's what I'd like to see them known for. As far as who they would sponsor, I don't really know. Kristoff Atlas. Maybe another sport, maybe like an MMA fighter or something like that. That seems like an area that would be ripe for cryptocurrency penetration. How about fencing? You never hear about fencing anymore. And dress. Yeah, I think maybe sponsor some dog rescue charities, especially for Doge, but for Bitcoin more generally, I think addressing issues such as homelessness and poverty are more important. I've never really understood commercial sponsorship of large sports events. But that's probably because I've never understood large sports events. But hey, that's just me. I'm just a geek. We've got to have bread and circuses. Maybe the North Shore Animal League would be a good sponsor for Dogecoin. I know Howard Stern is very involved. And maybe if we could get on Howard Stern's radar, we could get a little press. They could get, I know they're building an incredible facility for the animals. It's all cage free. It's a Billy Joel recently chipped in a lot. So maybe North Shore Animal League, if you got some extra Bitcoin. Page Peterson. So in terms of having the most impact, I'd probably say continuing to sponsor various conferences where there's a lot of technology and a lot of developers' presence to kind of get the word out and show them that there are big companies around the space. And just continue that attraction for developers and people that are already could be interested to help the economy grow. It does seem like there's a new conference almost every month and that's something I'd like to see keep going. More conferences. Moving on to issue four. Blockchain Awards 2014. Nominations announced. They had over 900 ballots cast, but they've narrowed it down to the top three in categories like most creative video, most impactful charity, and even Bitcoin champion. Voting is still going on today at bit.ly slash vote mad. Who will win? Who should win? Your thoughts? Who's off at list? Gee, I wonder who you're trying to get people to vote with with that short URL. I saw it on blockchain. It's probably, yeah, it's probably completely impartial. Of course I voted for Maddeque Coins because I'm a big fan of that show. I think it's a fantastic show and deserves everyone's vote. I did look through the rest of the survey and mostly I noticed that I had not heard of most of the people that were involved in it, especially in the area of like, I guess I have my kind of niche in Bitcoin. I do a lot of stuff in terms of security, privacy. And so if someone lives off of Bitcoin for a week or a month or whatever it is, then I won't necessarily hear about their story because I don't really tune into that stuff as much. So that was my general impression of the competition was I hadn't heard of most of those people. And Jaya said to Nopolis. I think it's a great program. I'm glad the company I work for is working with the foundation who I also kind of work for for the committee for the other six billion. And so I actually tried to withdraw my nomination because I see it as a conflict of interest and unfortunately that didn't quite work, but we'll figure it out. I think it's a great program and I wish all the luck to all of the contestants in this award program. It's going to help, especially some of the organizations that are doing things not for profit to get a bit of funding. And I'm glad my company is supporting that. Page Peterson. Yes, similar reaction to Chris stuff. I basically probably knew one of choice that of each category. I feel like we all probably chose the same option. I think it's like you, I don't know. And it was really strange for me to see it and not recognize a lot of the names in the two. So, yeah, obviously I voted for Mad Bacoins and and Jaya's and Roger Bear and similar Liberty oriented people. Megan Lorde. I'm a total shell for Mad Bacoins. So yeah, I voted for you. I was super surprised not to see some people on there, especially in the charity category. Of course, I suppose to see Sean's outposts. I definitely nominated them. But I was surprised not to see Big Kid or Freed who was one of the very first charities. If not the first, I think to fully do to fully accept Bitcoin. So even though they got hacked and all that, I understand that was really unfortunate. But I was surprised not to see them in the charity category. And basically to echo Page and Chris stuff, I really didn't recognize a whole lot of other people there. I didn't recognize one of the journalists, but I wasn't super familiar with her word. Of course, I voted for Andres. But yeah, it was kind of interesting to see as familiar as I am, or at least I thought I was, with the Bitcoin community. I didn't really see a whole lot of familiar names or organizations. Well, remember in a popularity contest, it's not always the best charity. Sometimes it's the best social network. So it's just something else to work on, another facet of being an internet-based organization. That's a good question. Left off the list. Who deserves to be nominated, but wasn't? This is a good chance for honorable mention. Kristoff atlas. Oh, geez. In terms of the journalists that I'm the most interested in, I think people like John Mattanis, who has written some great articles in the area of financial privacy. Sorry to keep bringing up the same damn topic over and over again, but that's why I live and breathe all day. Obviously free aid would be a great candidate in terms of the charities. Those are a couple of them that come to mind. Andres and to Nobulous. I'd certainly add a bit given free aid to the charity category. I think we could have had more options. We didn't just need three for the voting process. We could have had ten. I don't see why we only had three nominees, but then again, I didn't organize this. In terms of the journalists, I have a lot of respect for people like Bob McMillan and Andy Greenberg, who now works for Wired, who used to be with Forbes. Both them right. Excellent. Head tutorials. And yeah, I think a broader selection would have been nice. I agree with Andy Greenberg for sure. Page Peterson. Yeah. In terms of reporters, I didn't really recognize them. I definitely second Bob McMillan and also Kashmir Hill. She's the one that did the week living off of Bitcoin, what she's actually doing again this week. So I think that's a really interesting experiment to do, to kind of like, and she tends to like go to the community, to the meetups and like kind of surround herself in it. And so I think that's something to go off of. And the thing I didn't add to the general statement was I would like to see this voting process, or I would have liked to see in this voting process, mimic the way that let's talk Bitcoin did podcasts. I think they could have done a little more experimentation with the whole like being able to use the blockchain as a way for voting. Yeah, Kashmir Hill's series on Bitcoin has been great. And it's great to watch it a year later to see how San Francisco has changed, to see how Bitcoin has grown up and gotten better. Also a life on Bitcoin, the movie, and maybe even a Bitcoin not bombs, the hoodie for homeless campaign and all the other things that they do. Megan Lourdes. I was knowing this say Kashmir Hill for a journalist because even I have seen some good critical articles from her and I really think that's necessary. I make no secret that I'm a Bitcoin propagandist. So I really like her critical approach and then her hands on approach as far as living off of Bitcoin too. Of course, I would like to see Bitcoin and free aid pretty much what the other panelists were saying. I think all of them had really good recommendations for nominations. And I would have liked to see the voting process and stuff like that too and also few more categories. But I think it's overall a great idea and I think whoever wins in these categories will be putting that Bitcoin to good use. Very good. Moving on to questions and answers. Your questions are answers. The first question. The Bitcoin network could use more full nodes, non-mining ones. And Drena says he runs some nodes in the cloud. Can you please point us to directions for running a Bitcoin node in the cloud? Also does geolocation influence the utility of the node? Yes, and Drena, this one's for you. Yeah, geolocation does not influence the utility of the node, well-connected nodes. Essentially non-mining nodes help to propagate transactions and blocks to the rest of the network quickly and a well-connected mesh network is more resilient to the denial of service attacks and allows for faster propagation. In order to run a free node, here's what you can do. Amazon Elastic Cloud has a free micro-tier. The micro-tier allows you to run a node for free. Now, it's not really useful for many things and it's very constrained in terms of memory. But if you properly tune an installation of Bitcoin D or the Bitcoin core client, you can run a Bitcoin D on a micro-free tier instance for free on Amazon EC2 and YouTube could be running a node. Very cool. We have a couple of other category nominations. Perhaps Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto for Best Sport. We've also got some comments. Yay, Matt Bitcoins and Andreas for the win. As drawing political lines in the sand, Bitcoin represents freedom and liberty. Bravo. Preaching to the choir, but then slowly expanding exponentially. Other people agree they hadn't heard of some of the nominees, but again, that's a good part of the nominees. Maybe these people deserve attention. We just haven't heard of them. Now we have. So that's good. We have a request to invite Kashmir Hill on the Bitcoin group. I think she'd be welcome if she'd like to talk with us about Bitcoin on Fridays. I'd like to ask her why she thought that the Dorian Nakamoto story was amazing reporting, which I thought was absolutely disgusting. But I respect her as a journalist. I just think she got it completely wrong on that one. That was a low point and I'm not sure she issued a retraction. She was also wrong recently when she said the Sacramento Kings didn't sell tickets in Bitcoin. They did. I videotaped it and I went. So it's all very public. Sacramento Bitcoin meetup. Shout out. We can't always get it right. We all make mistakes from time to time. I'll be the first to admit that, but it's worth coming back and revisiting some of those. And their website did update. It doesn't show the tickets is offering anymore. Of course, basketball season is over, so there are no tickets to offer. But let's see. More questions. Let's see. Over kind of running out of questions. They say, love your hair today, Megan. And page your bad. So I think that's about it for questions. How come I never get comments on my hair? Well, they did love it left, but I've combed it all very carefully. You don't want to start a competition there with me. That's a bad competition to get into because I'm going to win. That was sweet. They're having a comment about Andrea's tweet. They say they love your tweet that Bitcoin is not a terrorist threat. People bombing wedding parties from above is a terrorist threat. Go investigate yourselves. Yeah, I figured there's a couple of watchlists I'm not on yet. So tweets like that will definitely get me on those watchlists. It's the simple truth. If you define terrorism as killing civilians in order to achieve a political goal, then we have to be very careful about how we look at the American drone program and its implications for world peace and its implications for our own security and safety and the blowback it causes. I think it's blatantly hypocritical to look at Bitcoin as a source of terrorism when those who are investigating it are responsible for one of the programs that kills more civilians around the world than any other program. So yes, that is the truth. It may not be the truth you want to hear, but it is the truth. And certainly they inherited it and they regulated it. They just kept it going. But next question. It's been massively increased in size. It's been increased, yeah. Just normalized as I think what I was going for. They've normalized the program. So now it's a part of presidential life. Of course, the president has drone powers to kill anyone he wants in the world. That's a standard power to the presidential package. Did anyone else feel disgust as they were watching him talking about the death penalty? I mean, really, this is the person who kills children all the time. How could he have any kind of opinion on the death penalty just saying? Is that jokes about his? Is that a Thornman's Bedruns? Well, I have a very simple question. If you think that this is a lawful program, then it should be perfectly lawful when applied in a different context. If there is a fugitive from another foreign government who is hiding on the Jersey shore, on the Broadwalk in Atlantic City. And a foreign drone comes overhead and kills that target to prevent terrorism in another country. And blows up a limousine with innocent bystanders. That is acceptable collateral damage. That is the position we take against other countries. And if it's good for them, then it should be good for us. If you think that is a lawful program, then you need to examine it more carefully. And of course, President Obama was an attorney. So he wasn't attorney. But yeah, I absolutely agree. Collateral damage is the key there. We have a question from Terence Yang. He says, what is the number one single most leveraged thing we can do to help Bitcoin cross the chasm and go more into the mainstream? Anybody starts on this? Is everybody? I'm going to repeat the same thing I say every single time. And the thing I do every single day, which is give one or two people Bitcoin, helps them experience the power of Bitcoin, see how fast it's transmitted, see how easy it is. I give them the power of money as an application, money as a content's type. Persuade a taxi driver to take Bitcoin. Don't give them Bitcoin for the fair because they won't be open to it the first time. But tip them in Bitcoin. Or talk some about Bitcoin as you're taking a taxi ride and offer to install an application and give them some. Give two or three dollars to two people every single day to demonstrate the power of Bitcoin. If everybody did that with two people, we would get this meme spreading, to more and more people around the world. And it's the best way to experience Bitcoin. Yes, I definitely agree with that. And if you're out anywhere, whether you're at a restaurant or wherever, especially if it's one that you frequent regularly, ask every single time, do you take Bitcoin, just planting that little seed of that word is just enough. People will remember that over time and tell everyone you know, just keep talking about it and just talk about it. We'll really plant that seed. And of course giving Bitcoin away too, that's one of my favorite ways to get people started with it. Add a slight air of inevitability. Do you take Bitcoin yet? Yes. Yet is key. Absolutely. I'd like to see that. Let's see. We have a good question. How can the FEC stop someone from donating more than $100 worth of Bitcoin? But Andreas had a very good point on this. They could hide the address behind several layers of information that you'd have to fill out to get into their system. And that should presumably stop that. I guess there is a bit of confusion if you donated $99 in Bitcoin, but by the time they cash it out, it's worth $102. Something like that could be an issue. But I don't think that's going to be too much of a problem. They're going to mark to market at the time of the donation. And that should be enough for the limits. I would expect that this is a really good application for merchant processing companies. If I was BitPay, I would be building a campaign donation interface that collects the necessary information and reports it that applies the limits. And also the bounces back payments that are higher than the amount allowed or payments that come in without the corresponding identity information. And then you've got a perfectly comfortable, easy-to-use campaign finance platform that candidates can use and convert directly to dollars. Not see any of the details. And it opens up a whole new market for Bitcoin. That's a great idea. I think they could use an American flag for the theme. Some kind of American flag would be great. We've got a question about USA Today. Did anyone see today's USA Today? They replaced their logo with the Bitcoin logo. Some people are wondering if it's actually real. I saw it on their actual website, so I would confirm it's real. Do you guys have a version had it as well? It wasn't just the website. The paper version that got delivered to hundreds of thousands of subscribers, all of them hotels. But nevertheless, hundreds of thousands of subscribers today had a Bitcoin logo instead of the USA Today logo. Someone there secretly likes Bitcoin, I think. That's interesting. They did it in the hard copy in the paper version as well. I thought it was just kind of some pandering for the online. Because sure, you could change the logo online. It takes five seconds. I mean, nice work. But in the paper is something else. That's cool. Yeah, I think we're seeing all of these indications that Bitcoin is becoming part of the zeitgeist. That's a really important threshold for Bitcoin. It's now becoming quite rare to talk to people and ask them, have you heard of Bitcoin and have no reaction whatsoever? They're still giving us a relatively negative reaction, but they've at least heard of it. That's really the point where we hit around 1993, 1994 was the internet, where it started entering the common vocabulary and became part of the media narrative on a very regular basis. The stuff they also noticed on, I think, comedians are really great social critics. And Stephen Colbert has actually mentioned it a couple times on his show. Of course, he's kind of joking about it. Like when the MIT story came out, he was saying they're going to give students $100 worth of Bitcoin or $80 worth of Bitcoin or $600 worth of Bitcoin. And it was really funny, but that just goes to show you, is it's entering the culture more and that they're joking about it. I think it's a good thing. And I'd love to see an awesome Bitcoin or on the show. I mean, I'd love to see Andreas on there or even someone like Jason King get on there talking with Colbert. I really think that would be awesome. I'd love to see like a campaign started or something to that, you know, the great. So. I would do the Colbert show in a heartbeat. I really, really like Stephen Colbert and the work he's done. So you're absolutely right. It is definitely entering the common lexicon and even making fun of it is a great way to increase the understanding for people and to demystify it and to make it more approachable. Comedy is a great way to introduce it to people. By the way, on the topic of MIT donations, Matthew Green tweeted out a great tweet today. Matthew Green is a cryptography professor. He's a very well-known cryptographer and one of the brains behind zero point. He wrote that the MIT project aims to distribute $500,000 to hackers who hack into MIT students computers. I thought that was a great observation because in fact, if there isn't a security primer or some kind of tutorial that goes with those bitcoins, that's exactly what's going to happen. It would be great to be a great time to be an IT guy at the MIT campus. You just, everyone's computers are open and now they're all full of money. That's great. So it's a good point on Colbert too because even though we're losing Colbert the character, Colbert the person is being promoted to the late show with David Letterman, which he might do more Bitcoin bit so he'll have an entire hour to fill. Maybe they'll give away Bitcoins. There's lots of future possibilities there. I don't know that Jimmy Fallon or Jimmy Kimmel have mentioned Bitcoin yet. I'm not sure what's wrong with them. There's still a chance before Colbert gets there and takes their thunder. We do have... There's also an aspect of like there was this article that was released earlier this week about people, the more people understanding Bitcoin, the more they liked it or were open to accepting it as an idea. I think that just about the fact that if you aren't reaching someone or you're trying to explain Bitcoin to someone for the first time to not really be the spurred if they're put off at first but to be welcoming and open and kind of nudge them in the right direction, give them good resources. Just be accepting to their questions and just skepticism in general. Well, and remember, you might not be able to convince them about Bitcoin the first time but what you're really doing is just planting seeds because maybe they hear of it two or three times and they get a dollar's worth and maybe they hear of it four or five times and they're like maybe we'll accept that from my business. It's going to take a lot of mentions, a lot of people telling them about it before they really turn over and become Bitcoiners. So hell, I wasn't convinced the first time. I thought it was silly old nerd money and I dismissed it. How many other people on this show also dismissed it the first time they heard it or maybe the first two or three times? That's normal part of the process and this really feels very, very familiar. This is exactly the journey we traveled in the early 90s with the internet where at first it was seen as something that was nefarious and too geeky and very technical and we're sure that we were all very concerned about the internet and the internet and the internet and the internet and the internet and then it started essentially infiltrating day to day life more and more effectively until it just disappeared into the background. Now we don't even talk that much about it anymore. We just use it. I think that's gradually we're seeing the same thing happen with Bitcoin. Think about this. Three years ago or two years ago how many of us would have thought that in 2014 USA today would have Bitcoin replacing its logo even for a day that a popular comedian would be talking about it. And the Federal Election Commission would be accepting it for campaign donations and all of these things happen in just one week. This would have been staggering year making news just a year ago and now it's just this week's news. Come a long way. It seems like a lot further than just a year for even that. Our last question today. How will digital currency affect the poorest people in the world who don't have access to the internet? It's good to know that it's going to be a lot more than just a year. It's going to take a long time. It's definitely going to take a long time because you need to combine bringing the technology of Bitcoin down to more accessible levels. One of the projects that I'm very interested in is working to make Bitcoin wallets more accessible on feature phones. And feature phones are essentially old-style phones that only do text messaging and not smartphones. A feature phone such as the workhorse of Africa, which is the Nokia 100R. This is a phone that already exists. I think two billion of them or close to that exist in more than a hundred countries around the world. And these phones can only do SMS. So people are working to bring Bitcoin wallets and the capability to do fully functional commerce with Bitcoin wallets on SMS on these phones. And we know that that experiment has already succeeded in places like Kenya with MPSA and in other environments like that. So the other side of this is that the internet itself is definitely a significant tool for improving people's lives. But if you lack many of the other things, then the internet is a bit of a luxury. However, as soon as you make the internet also be your banking system, then as an investment, getting even a basic internet connection, even if you only have one in a village and you use that to support a network of SMS phones, suddenly this becomes a very worthwhile invention. So keep in mind that not only does Bitcoin penetrate where the internet exists, but Bitcoin makes internet penetration worthwhile where it wasn't before by changing the economic incentives by allowing you to make an internet connection, a banking teller, an access to international markets, a lending institution, and a remittances end point like a Western Union office. So if you now bring an Android smartphone with the internet's capabilities into a village in some of the rural and poor areas around the world, especially in Asia, Africa and Latin America, now that Android smartphone is not just the terminal for information. It's also a banking terminal, a stock terminal, a wire transfer terminal for remittances, as well as a lending terminal for getting loans for local farmers and local business people. And that changes everything. It makes it much more, much higher incentives to bring that technology. So the internet is needed for Bitcoin, but Bitcoin also makes the internet much more, much more valuable to people around the world who don't have banking. That's an incredible change. And I don't think people have realized that. Yeah, that when they bring you the internet, the not just bringing information, which is, you know, good information, bad information, garbage, whatever, they're bringing a bank that they're installing a bank in your local community when they install internet access now. The cell phones with emperors are a great example. I definitely agree with that. The only other thing I'd say is there's a new idea where a solar panel could generate energy. The energy could go to a box like a bank and then be sold to your neighbors in Bitcoin. So that you don't need a power company and you don't need a bank and you can sell and buy and sell energy right there from the box. So when that kind of technology is fleshed out and developed, you won't need a power company. You won't need a bank. You'll just need a solar panel and some friends. Well, we already see that one of the predominant uses of solar panels, especially in rural African, rural Asia, is for the charging of these Nokia 100R or 1000 feature phones that are used then in order to communicate with the rest of the world. To do simple things like finding out what the price of crops are in the city where the farmers going to sell their crops, getting weather and meteorology information to tie the planting and harvesting of crops, connecting with relatives and also with members of the family who work abroad and send back remittances. So if solar panel installations were fueled by the need for information and connectivity and communication with these phones, imagine how much more they'll be fueled when these phones become cash machines, credit card systems essentially. And they allow you to transact with people around the world and also to receive funds from abroad. That's a really powerful incentive. It does seem to be. There you go. I was going to say I would love to see something like the equivalent of the one laptop, one laptop or child project, but integrating Bitcoin into there. I guarantee that you, you know, even in these rural areas, if you can get children a laptop that can get on the internet that it has access to things like Bitcoin within one generation, they will be programming for people on the other side of the world in exchange for Bitcoin. It's amazing what these kids can pick up if you can get this technology to them early enough. Absolutely. That brings up a, sorry. That brings up another point about the one laptop or child. I think they're actually like doing their operations anymore, but they were really interested in this whole idea of mesh networks, which are really important for like bringing the internet to kind of the world. And that's kind of like the edge of people where there aren't necessarily hubs and access to strong, strong Wi-Fi hotspots and stuff. If you have just people dispersed out their devices, smartphones or smaller routers or something, then you can spread out the access to internet a lot easier and more reliably. Basically like Bitcoin, but for internet access. And you can fund that with a cryptocurrency. So Bitcoin ends up funding the phones that you're running the stuff on, the solar panels that you're using them to power them and the infrastructure of mesh networks that you use to get data to them. That's a tremendous combination. Bitcoin is the fuel that makes decentralized infrastructure like internet thrive. I'm going to say that the technology seems really close, but the project seemed far away. But I know if we just get one of these systems working as a test, we'll be able to replicate it over and over again. And like wildfire, it could transform entire areas. I mean, it seems hard to believe that a village in the middle of nowhere that has no technology could suddenly get technology. But if we do it, I really think it'll work and it'll help people. It'll be close. Keep in mind at the same time that there are two and a half billion people on the internet already. And only about a billion and a half of them have access to fully capable bank accounts with international currency capabilities, international markets and international credit. The other billion, we can bring online onto Bitcoin right away and change their life in a dramatic fashion by bringing currency. And they can then influence the communities around them and provide the incentives to extend the internet even further in countries that already have penetration of infrastructure, penetration of cellular telephony, as well as literacy and numeracy that is required to adopt these technologies. And in many cases, countries that are already English speaking, or which, you know, we have to accept the fact that for the time being, Bitcoin is documented and coded primarily in English. So that's one of the barriers to entry. Well, India and the Philippines, just as two examples of countries with great infrastructure penetration, enormous issues with poverty. And they have the literacy, numeracy and very large numbers of English speakers to be able to wire up the country for cryptocurrency. And also the technology is such a threat to very tyrannical governments who have such a lockdown on their people. I recently interviewed Michael Malas who's written a book on North Korea. And it was, I mean, it's a very, very, very difficult situation there. They don't have internet. But what they're able to see is they're able to see across the river into China. And they're able to see every night when the sun sets all of these lights and all of this electricity over there. A lot of people escape and the problem that you have and people scare the problem. It's a problem of government killing their families when they escape. But what they've done is the urge to protect their families is so strong. They're exploiting black market means to get money back to their family to bribe the guards to not take their family away. And this has been increasing. So this urge for freedom is very strong and even the most repressed countries. And while North Korea is a really long way from having this technology, the more it spreads around the world, the more, you know, the better it is for everyone, the more empowered and it can be for all people. And you can only stay in islands so long. And in the case of North Korea, they've definitely had this set up for a very long time. But I think over time you're going to see them in some of these other governments losing their power as people become more empowered by technology. Yeah. If they try to make Bitcoin illegal in these countries, that means that the first people to acquire Bitcoin are the heads of governments, then their cabinets and ministers, then the operational ones of the bureaucratic administrations, then the police and military. And then of course, at that point, because Bitcoin provides them away to hide their money and take it out of the country, that means that the other people who want to hide money and take it out of these oppressive countries will bribe the officials in Bitcoin, which is exactly. And there's already a few paper wallets in North Korea. They're not able, of course, to, you know, again, access to them yet, but people do have paper walls Bitcoin on them in North Korea. Right. And decentralized, decentralized capability is much easier to hide from the government. This is not radical technology. This is exactly what happened all across Eastern Europe during the days of the Iron Curtain. And only at the time, the currency of choice was dollars. All of the officials in all of the Eastern European governments had hard dollars. And they were the only ones who had hard dollars. And if you wanted to bribe them, you had to find hard dollars to bribe them. And because they wouldn't take the local money, because they knew it was worthless. Now the only differences that now we can do this in a digital fashion, and it's even more powerful. Excellent points. And a good point to end on. We're moving on to final thoughts, predictions, or story of the week. Andreas, are you ready with a final thought, a prediction, or a story of the week? Tom, have you met me before? Of course, I am not ready, and I don't have a final one. I was trying to stall there with a little girl. I was giving you a chance. I was like, I'll just stall here, but we'll move on to page. We'll come back to you. We'll let you thank you. Can't pull everyone else's ideas first. Are you ready, Paige? Yeah, I actually thought of one. So I know that just a shout out, I guess, to Jason King, who's in the LA area right now. And I'm generally excited for him to come to San Francisco, which should be in a couple of weeks. So keep going, Jason. I'll be here. Very cool. Megan, Lord. I predict that I will be interviewing Pam Mullamorgan of Empowered Law next Wednesday at six o'clock, Central Standard Time. So definitely check it out. She is a fascinating person to talk to and very, very knowledgeable. And it will all have a Q&A section too. So please like come join us, ask legal questions. I think it's going to be a really great interview. Kristoff, Atlas. I'm excited to hear about Megan's interview. I'm looking forward to that. Something that I've been following lately is the press around dark wallet. How are people reacting to dark wallet, especially since it's been the charge has been led by Cody Wilson, which, you know, at this point, a lot of people are familiar with Cody through the 3D gun printing stuff. And I'm really impressed by the amount of attention that it's getting. I noticed that my Kern posted today an article on medium.com about stealth addresses. And so I'm excited to see to get some more attention to these very important privacy technologies in the Bitcoin space. Andres has brought the stuff before and I agree with him that eventually we're going to get to a point in Bitcoin where the protocol and a lot of the software starts to ossify. It's going to be harder and hard to make changes to the protocol from a forking standpoint of you. There's going to be hardware that has, you know, that's kind of set in stone. And so privacy is one of these issues that we absolutely need to solve that we need to tackle before that ossification takes place. We don't want that we want Bitcoin going to be a force of liberation in the world. We don't want to be a part of these surveillance apparatus. We don't want it to be hog tied by the degree to which people can track transactions online. And so I'm really, really excited to see the amount of tension and the amount of energy that's going into these technologies to help, to help basically protect people from thieves of various forms. Andres, we're coming back around again. Are you ready? No, well, I'll try an easy prediction. I predict that next week at the Amsterdam conference, one of the members of the group for the other six billion, the committee that's been working on issues of poverty will be releasing an early draft of our white paper on the remittances market. And we're looking at both why this is a problem that needs to be urgently addressed, why Bitcoin offers an opportunity to address it in an entirely new way. And what applications, but also what challenges exist in implementing Bitcoin as a foundational currency for creating global flows of remittances from the developed world to developing nations such as Mexico into an easier. The Philippines, India and Pakistan, which are some of the greatest recipients of remittances. That's the people we've been working on for a while and we're looking forward to feedback. So that's going to be seen soon in Amsterdam and that prediction is based on a very strong probability that happening. Very cool. When in the course of human events, you might get nominated for a few awards. It's important during times of great adulation like these to stay humble. Don't let it go to your head. Don't go buying any trophies or statues or chocolate cakes with three different types of frosting packed with alternating layers of cake and frosting cake and frosting. How would Horatio Alger have handled this situation? I'm sure he would have just pulled himself up by his bootstraps and dove right in and then eat more cake. We're out of time until next time. Bye. Bye. Bye.