The Bitcoin Group, the American original. For over the last 10 seconds, the sharpest satoshi's, the best Bitcoin's, the hardest cryptocurrency talk. We'd like to welcome our panelists, Davy Barker, from ShiniBadges.com. How's it going? Just off at list from anonymousbitcoinbook.com. Hey, it's good to be here. Will Pangman from Bitcoin, Milwaukee. Thanks for having me again. And Marty Melrose from MidasMardi.com. Hi, thanks for inviting me. Issue one, net neutrality dead. The FCC says they don't. The FCC says they like net neutrality, but they don't know what it is. They don't understand that the end-to-end network neutrality is one of the fundamental and underlying principles of the internet that allows for small businesses to compete with large ones. It is the feature of the internet that prevents absolute monopoly and encourages innovation and is as struck down by myopic idiots. Davy Barker, your thoughts. I don't get it. I've disagreed with people about this net neutrality thing for a long time. I think that a free or an open market for internet service providing is a better solution than price fixing. So I don't know this is a good thing because I don't know how sort of fashized the internet service providing industry is, but in general, it sounded like a bad idea in the first place. Kristoff at list. Well, as a sort of laissez-faire capitalist, I quite agree with Davy that price fixing is generally not the optimal solution. Basically the problem is not so much that companies or corporations will be allowed to charge extra money for extra speeds or anything like that. The real problem is that we have incredibly monopolistic or do-opelistic organizations providing internet service in the United States. It's pathetically bad. There's just a, wherever you go, there might be two or three Macs, internet service providers that you can have just a handful of phone providers and even most of the phone providers that you can get are just picky backing off of a couple different networks. So that's the real problem here that governments have created and erected these incredible barriers to entry to provide internet service to other people. So that's what we need to have to defeat as far as what's going to be passed as a law or whatever you can sign all of the White House dot gov petitions you want, but it's not going to do a damn thing. They're pretty much going to do whatever they feel like they can get away with. What we need to focus on is creating alternatives. I think mesh networking is very promising. In particular, mesh networking is now much more viable than ever before because we have a price discovery mechanism called crypto currencies or Bitcoin. And so I think that there's definitely some real possibility for us to re-examine the way that we do internet, of course, there's made safe recently. We'll talk a little bit later in the program about made safe, but I think they will have some alternatives coming around the band and hopefully they come soon enough in order to counteract these legal changes. Well, Penguin. Yeah, I was going to say, you know, I think in some way, I try to always find a way to look on the bright side here and nothing encourages me more than watching all the innovation in the cryptocurrency space and how fast it happens. The reason it happens so fast is because you don't have to ask permission to get involved. You don't have to ask permission to commit progress to any open source code that's out there and a lot of these new technologies. So you got everyone from 12-year-olds to first-generation computer users contributing in this space and they're doing so in their free time, they're volunteering, and you know, this is happening at such a blinding rate. Anyone who's spent even a few months in Bitcoin, you know, consuming the news media that comes out from Bitcoin sources and such, you're immediately aware of how quick things move in this space. I'm encouraged because if these choke points are created and squeezed more tightly than even, as Christophe mentioned, the already choking aspect of monopolies and dooples, I mean, much of the country between the coasts has not even just two choices. They just have one choice for a provider for high-speed internet. So, yeah, this is going to bring to market so many more alternatives so much more quickly than they could ever be counteracted by the powers that shouldn't be, as I like to call them. So, yeah, I'm encouraged. I wouldn't have, the only reason I'm not like, you know, up in arms or whatever about this FCC ruling and, you know, whatever protests and subsequent rulings and things will have to come out is because this is to be expected, you know, we're, this is no surprise. I'm not surprised that my many Democrat and liberal friends are very disappointed by the leaders that they voted for. I'm not surprised that they're saying this stuff. And so, but I am encouraged that there's all all kinds of alternatives in place, in development already. And they'll be here faster than we think and it's, you know, it's not, it's not the cleanest ride, but this is what's fun about, about all these innovations and participating in the cryptocurrency world is you get to actually see some things that we've been waiting really decades for. So, this is interesting times. Marnie, Mel Rove. Well, I don't know a heck of a lot about the whole thing. I know I don't like what's happening. But I do agree with Will. And I'm a Luzzie Fair capitalist, just like Kristoff. And so, I'm kind of, I'm excited at the same time because whenever you get a situation where people cannot, right? Then especially in a country like America, people say, well, wait a minute, maybe we can. And that kind of actually fuels the growth faster than if we had, we were too comfortable, right? So, when we're, and you know, we're talking about Bitcoin in the world of, of, you know, how fast it spreads and everything and here in America, it doesn't spread so fast because we're a little bit too comfortable. And so, again, when things get uncomfortable, then sometimes it actually, you have that impotence of actually moving us forward faster. It does seem like it might be, although painful and uncomfortable, a good advertisement for what was so good about net neutrality in the first place. And basically, Dauby, the reason we need net neutrality is it allowed Netflix to happen. Without net neutrality, Netflix never would have been able to stream their video and to get their position. They would have had to pay a gatekeeper to stream their video, which they wouldn't have been able to do until after they'd gained their position. I'm sorry, but economically speaking, that sounds like who will build the roads. I mean, like just because there's a networking principle here that networking actually works like this. It's not an on-rand situation. Like, networking is actually passing along other people's packets. Like delivering other people's mail is part of networking. So, if you want to have a network, like, if you want to have a network of computers that don't share with each other, a selfish network, it's going to be weaker than this network that shares with each other. Then it would not succeed. If the possibility exists for people to create multiple networks and one paradigm is superior to the other, that's the one that people will choose. I mean, that is what lays a fair capital in the freedom and free markets. Popularity where the entrenched internet has a certain popularity. And if we were going to say start an internet too, we would have to compete with internet one, which has now been corporatized. Yeah, absolutely. And the existing roads have a certain popularity. And if I wanted to build a privatized road, I would have that barrier to entry before I would have the network effect of transportation to succeed. These are the public roads that they're privatizing. These were the public roads and they're privatizing them. Yeah, and that's really the road to our good example, though, because there are very, very few privatized roads in the United States, because you can't just keep building more and more roads. Like, you kind of have to use these existing channels. And when you have a monopoly over those existing channels, and it's critical space that you cannot, that is not open to the free market, that's not open to competition, then that's one of these kind of these tactics with net neutrality and so forth come into play. Well, that's the system we have now with the cable companies continuing to merge and consolidate power into this position where if you like Netflix, you're going to have to pay for a fast lane on the internet is what we're looking at. I wanted to say something, but Marnie, Marnie had something to chime in, I think. Oh, so what's happening right now, too, on the internet is that the brick countries are actually creating routers that route the data around the United States, because the United States is actually becoming very, very disruptive to the global internet. And I don't think long term that this is actually going to help America, I think that we're really shooting ourselves in the foot here. We have this internet that's a universal innovation engine, and we're making it less innovative. To Davi and Tom's little back and forth there, you know, I agree with Davi about, you know, the market usually if left unfettered, well, you know, the cream rises, but there are cases where you know, like I'm not going to carry the analogy through, but where like the second or third best or most the second or third most optimal product ends up winning out like in the case of VHS and Betamax is one example that comes to mind. But then that's due to network effects growing and like, you know, the gestation period of network, of, you know, building network effect. But yeah, I mean, this is an interesting point because you know, it's, there's these community technologies. And Christoph brought up the point that like there is no private, there's no real like private road system that's an alternative to the current road system. You know, there's not even on a small scale like, for example, if all streets and county highways and state highways were like, you know, the private roads and just the freeways were the public road. Like there isn't that. It's all public pretty much. There's very few private roads, you know, gated communities is it pretty much. So if, I mean, let's think of like these lanes in the sky, you know, if someone invented something that allowed you to put lanes in the sky and vehicles or whatever in the sky, you could have an alternative to the existing system that would be obviously superior and, you know, then would clearly win out. And this is like, I'm trying to carry the analogy through of like the, you know, the status quote, like cryptocurrencies come along and there are these roads, this road in the sky all the sudden. And more and more people start using it and it just starts growing so much faster than even the people on the ground can realize, you know, and then, you know, the jurisdiction goes up to, you know, the heavens or whatever. So now they're trying to, you know, reach and grasp up there. So yeah, I mean, it's just a race to the heavens, right? You know, more alternatives can be built on top of whichever one starts the octopus's tentacles can grasp, right? Here's the challenge though with that analogy, okay? So if you think like, for instance, there's the five freeway that goes up to Orange County and then there's the 73 freeway, right? The thing is, is that we're not talking about something like that. We're talking about, there's the big pipes, right? And there's only so much bandwidth that is distributed actually to the ISPs, okay? The big pipes across the oceans are like covalent or whatever the heck those company names are, the big, big companies, right? That have the massive pipes and they're the ones that are actually selling it down onto the ISPs. So the ISP actually only gets, you know, they have a DS3, OC3, whatever, all of them, I can't remember all of them at that moment. So you're getting this much and then basically what they're saying is I get this much and I'm going to charge more for this much to these people. But I have to squeeze these people down a little bit and they have to get less because I don't get more, right? And that's where that analogy doesn't quite fit entirely. It's a little bit different because there's only so much that they're going to get in the first place. So aside from the economic debate on this issue, there's also the who watches the watchers problem and that is that you're appealing to the federal government to solve this economic so-called market failure. And the thing about the federal government is they like build these Trojan horses, they build these like, like, laws that are meant to appeal to everyone and there's feds in those horses, okay? So it's like, it's like you're asking the agency that wants to surveil you, that wants to track all of your internet activity, that wants to squash the age, that wants to squash dissent and you're saying, hey, would you please manage who gets access to the internet and how much and how fast? Like, it just strikes me as a as a tremendous conflict of interest. And the thing about it is activists don't read these bills, politicians who vote on them don't read these bills, but I'm willing to bet you that within these bills, there's all kinds of unrelated things that are about seizing power over traffic, not freeing traffic. It seems that all we were asking them to do were to maintain an unmanaged system, the same unmanaged system that we'd been enjoying for the last 20 years or so. Moving on, issue two, eBay flirts with Bitcoin. It's a competitive world out there, Amazon, and sometimes you can't give your customers what they want, you have to give them what they need. eBay, the world's largest marketplace and owner of dated old world currency transfer system, PayPal. Most famous for cutting off funding to WikiLeaks is considering accepting Bitcoin. Could eBay, the marketplace of the past, also be the marketplace of the future if they accept Bitcoin? And what happens to PayPal? Christoph, Atlas. Well, every time we've talked about PayPal in the past, I've been confused about exactly how this works out favorably for PayPal. I know that people have said that PayPal, they have this reputation, they have these coders, they are competent at building secure payment systems, but it's hard for me to see how they managed to segue from getting 2 or 3% plus off of everyone's transactions for the longest time and having some legally enforced monopolies as well. To becoming a trusted Bitcoin provider where they're getting a fraction of a percent. It's hard for me to imagine that large of a segue in a short period of time is going to be necessary for PayPal because the window of opportunity for them to become this leader as a Bitcoin third party service is closing. They're going to be competing with BitPay, they're going to be competing with Coinbase, they'll be competing with tons of other entrepreneurs that want to get into this space. If they're going to make the move, it's going to have to be relatively soon, but I still have a hard time imagining how they make this work for them. It's interesting for me to hear this news coming out from eBay as opposed to PayPal. eBay sort of own PayPal. This makes me think that perhaps eBay is sort of edging towards the exit as far as PayPal is concerned, cutting their losses and moving towards the next payment technology or just making sure they have their foot in that door so that if they need to do so, they're ready to make the move. Well, Pangman. Yeah, I mean, there's no reason why we shouldn't see cryptocurrencies being accepted by PayPal. It's another line of business for them. It's probably very easy. The same amount of volume of transactions isn't going to produce the same revenues for them, but it's just another stream of business. People are not going to stop using credit cards for a long time, perhaps. So as another line of business for eBay to look into accepting cryptocurrencies, it makes complete sense that a lower line of business, I think, will provide a large growth to the e-commerce side of how cryptocurrencies are put to use and also bring a lot more users to the space. So all signs point to yes. I don't know why a lot of these usual suspects like PayPal frequently comes up wouldn't figure out, take a look at what circle is doing, take a look at what Coinbase and BitPayer are doing and just try to take some of that market share for themselves with a new line of business, a new department. It'd be great. I think a lot of people out there in Silicon Valley, very smart. They see the writing on the wall. When you have people with huge stakes in many different industries like say Richard Branson come out and say that the financial system as we know it is on the brink, then I think you're going to take notice and you're going to start strategizing exits. And offshore stuff too, like these barges offshore, data centers offshore, cities offshore, I think they'll have a lot to say in the development of this topic, the eBay accepting Bitcoin and even the last topic, the FCC and net neutrality stuff. So people in Silicon Valley are doing this slowly but surely they may not be talking about it but I like to hear the rumblings. Marty Melrose. Hi. Well I think it's interesting to listen to the distinction between eBay saying this versus PayPal and not to get the two confused because there's separate CEOs in each company and they were talking just as recently as last year about separating the two companies. And so there's a lot of internal discussion going on there and I think we want to be careful about not getting the two confused because I think that they are two completely separate companies. I can absolutely see where it would be in eBay's favor to accept PayPal. You know why not? And do they think that PayPal could one Bitcoin into it probably and the reason they're probably not thinking that it's that much of a conflict either is because the thing is that humans are and you guys know this, right? We love Bitcoin. We're technologically adept, right? But the thing is is that there's a lot of people, our aunts, our mothers, our grandmothers. They like what they know. They're very safe and they feel okay in there, right? And at first they didn't feel okay and there was fishing attacks and all of that but now they're in there, they're in their little bubbles, they're in their little cocoon and they feel safe. So if somewhere where they feel safe offers Bitcoin now, they're probably going to feel safer about that than if it was out in this brand new company that I don't know, right? And so I just think that we need to pay attention to who's saying what? Because they are very distinctive two different things. I would just wait until we hear what PayPal has to say before we try to think about what they might be trying to do. Dovey Barker. I miss Bitmit. I don't know if you guys ever use Bitmit but it was essentially the eBay of Bitcoin and it worked fantastically and they went out of business for some reason. I'm not really sure why and I haven't seen a auction Bitcoin auction site re-emerge. So there's definitely a demand for that. As somebody who sells merchandise, I have sort of been twisted into going back to eBay and going back to PayPal since Bitmit left. But here's the thing, eBay is pretty hostile to selling Bitcoin stuff. Like if I put the word Bitcoin in the description of a product, they accuse me of selling an alternative currency in violation of the terms of service and I'm selling a t-shirt. Right? So they're making the same mistake that the TSA is making. But I've said this before, they're going to come kicking and screaming eventually when PayPal and eBay first started, they didn't examine US monetary policy and say, are we going to accept the dollar or not? They did it because it was normal. And so as Bitcoin becomes normal, they're going to just adopt it because it's sort of the water the fish are swimming in. So it's just a matter of time. If they make this step, I think it's still early enough that it's bold of them, but they're coming eventually. I think Christoph's right that eBay and PayPal are two separate companies. Like Marney said, but eBay will cannibalize PayPal to accept Bitcoin. PayPal is just another user list. And Marney's right, maybe PayPal will have some legacy payment value like AOL. Oh, I used to pay people on PayPal, so I still do. We've all seen the circle announcement this morning, Circle has basically exposed themselves to be like a PayPal. You hold USD on one end, you send it to someone else through the Bitcoin network and they convert it into pesos or whatever currency they're going to need there and they hold it in the local currency. So Bitcoin is just a transfer mechanism. Obviously PayPal still has time. They could do a similar thing. If eBay accepted Bitcoin, it would be a clear difference between eBay selling and Amazon selling. eBay selling could take Bitcoin and that's what eBay needs. Exit question. In five years, PayPal is the same Bitcoin company, a historical footnote. Christoph, Atlas. I was just looking up some information. So in 2002, eBay acquired PayPal. At the time, PayPal, sorry, eBay had a subsidiary called BillPoint, which was their kind of checkout mechanism. They were very happy for BillPoint to die a painful death by replacing it with PayPal. And so I could see something similar happening with PayPal. Maybe PayPal is largely gutted and replaced with a Bitcoin based version of it. And I think one of the advantages would be that Bitcoin is an international currency that cannot be stopped by governments. But whereas PayPal, whenever they want to spread to a new country, they have to do some pretty incredible negotiations with the local bankers there. I know at least as a few years ago, I don't know if this is still the case. They still didn't have PayPal in Japan, even though they had been trying to do this for years. Whereas Bitcoin doesn't necessarily have that problem, or at least the negotiations are going to go according to a different kind of a line of new negotiations. So I would see maybe PayPal, whether it has the same name or not, might be changed into something more cryptocurrency based. Christoph's description has me thinking of PayPal like Caesar, surrounded by enemies who all say that they're PayPal's friends. Will, how long will PayPal last? That is a tough question, because five years is a lot of time. I mean, if you think about the last five years, you're thinking of the entire lifespan of Bitcoin. And we've seen incredible iterations and innovations on the blockchain technology and inflated things. So, man, I guess I think the safest answer is the same, but I don't think that's entirely true. I mean, they won't be a Bitcoin company. I don't think. Maybe I don't even think you can classify a circle as a Bitcoin company based on anything I've known about what they're working on. But yeah, it'll be a payment processor company. So in that sense, it'll be the same. And perhaps they'll have some Bitcoin tools, cryptocurrency tools, and perhaps they won't. And they'll just be happy to continue processing credit card payments over email. And as long as they're able to do that, Marnie Melrose. Well, I actually, I just got a client away from PayPal and moved him over to Bitcoin. Because PayPal had deemed that he had done something nefarious or something. And he hadn't. But it looked like that to him. And so they seized a good $20,000 of his money for a bit. And he's still fighting them with that. And even a few years ago, it was like about three years ago, they did the same thing to me. There's a much smaller amount. And there was a perfectly good explanation, but they grabbed onto the money. And you know what? Small businesses don't really like that. They kind of get a little bit pissed off by that. And so if they see an opportunity to have something that's going to add more less friction, right? Frictionless movement of money. And that's really, I think probably the biggest thing in Bitcoin is that frictionless movement of money around the world. I'm saying PayPal, if they don't do something soon, I'll give them three years. Dovey Barker. I actually think two of these answers are the same thing. I think that not changing and being a footnote in history are actually the same answer. Because if you don't change, it's the world around them that will change. That is what will make them a footnote in history. So I guess the question is just, are they going to become a Bitcoin company? And I actually think it's more likely that a company like eBay would than a company like PayPal. Because PayPal is a money transmitter, which means that they are much more, they're already entrenched in financial regulations now, which means that they are going to be more cautious than a merchant. And as a result, probably less likely to change. So it might be the defenal of PayPal. I mean, how exciting would that be if a technology is invented and within 10 years, like the largest online payment transmitting services is out of business? I think that's entirely likely. When it happens, they'll act like they knew it was happening the whole time. Can I jump in? Change or die? For one sec, Tom. I'm speaking at the International Money Transfer Conference here in San Diego in January. And so all of the major money transmissives, and this is the annual thing. I'm sure that PayPal is going to be there. And so I'll give you a report afterwards and let you know what I hear. How about that? We'll see if PayPal even has a keychain. Because I have both a Bitcoin and a light-caned keychain, but I've never gotten a PayPal keychain before. That's important to survive. HKBitcoinATM.com is having their grand opening this Sunday in Hong Kong. Bitcoin Museum, Meetup Place, and more. Make the Bitcoin Robot Dance at HKBitcoinATM.com. On a similar note, hundreds attend China's first Bitcoin summit defying Beijing's warning. China, issue three, China, Bitcoin, Boom. China is ignoring warnings or perhaps heating them as good advice and getting into Bitcoin anyway. Hundreds attended the Bitcoin conference in China. And Bitcoin businesses are moving offshore to get away from influence and plan to continue operating. Is Bitcoin truly the cyberpunk international currency of the future? Now that it is both banned and actively in use worldwide? Will Penguin? Yeah, I think so. Maybe not the kind of, maybe not what the original cyberpunk said in vision. But so what you have with Bitcoin is something that forces you to understand what money is in the first place. If you want to, if you're new to this and you wonder what it is and why the invention of the blockchain, this timestamp ledger that's updated in real time by everyone, if you want an attempt to understand what that is, you need to, in many cases, many folks I talk to, have to reexamine money and what that means. And what it symbolizes in everything, how it's created in the first place. So this is really cool process because it allows people's understanding to be much deepened, as they reexamine some of these things that they've been using all their life and thought they know very well all their life, but really come to realize they don't when something as paradigm shifting and important comes along like a black swan like Bitcoin. So, so yeah, people are having to relearn what is property, what is security, what is money, and that allows a lot of other illusions about our society to drop for people. So this is like an unraveling of the onion organic process that I know a lot of people in a lot of different kinds of movements throughout history have tried to impose through their activism, through their public speaking, through their writing, loud proclamations, whatever it may be. Anyone who's bucking the status quo is really selling hard this unraveling of the onion process. But coming to something like Bitcoin and having it be so neutral and basic allows people to do this unraveling of the onion process kind of on their own. And that's the only way that anyone really ever changes their mind. So that's really cool. And I'm again, you can be in the most totalitarian, you know, superpower nation out there and we could debate which one that is, but let's say it's China. You're still going to have people who are compelled through just their human nature, birthright, their energy, their, you know, their lifeblood, their livelihood, the desire for productivity and fulfillment in life. Or have an idea and they know it can help people and so they want to share it and they're going to go to all ends to share it no matter what, no matter where they are. So yeah, this is going to happen in countries around the world and as Andreas likes to point out, the countries that have the more transparent or overt totalitarian attitude towards anything in society end up with much less respect for these rules from their populace, from the body politic and they make a job out of disobeying these regulations and rules and they actually becomes kind of socially acceptable to do so as long as, you know, like even among the enforcement class, if you will, you know, like breaking the law in Russia after the wall fell was like a way of life for everyone. And that's one of the reasons why organized crime rose to such prominence right after the wall fell in Russia. So yes, that's an unfortunate consequence, and I'm not in favor of, you know, different thugs taking over for the previous thugs. But I think with something like Bitcoin, which you have is the ability for more and more people to see something working in practice that defies the propaganda. And that allows them to, you know, reexamine these things on their own, which is really exciting. It's a fun process to watch your friends go through. Just stay friends with them long enough, be kind and friendly with them long enough even though their their economics or their history or their social view or their whatever their cultural view is abrasive to you. Stay friends with them long enough and whenever and you'll see them come around as Bitcoin becomes more mainstream. And this is why I'm so optimistic about, you know, what this means for us around the world. If you know, the US cracks down on it, yeah, it's going to suck for a while for US citizens and whatever. But the rest of the world is going to still go on and you can find pockets of freedom everywhere. Marty, Melrose. So I used to live in Bangkok, Tyrant for 10 months. And my ex-husband, we were involved in international business. And I spent a lot of time in Southeast Asia. And I can tell you that the black markets in Asia are the biggest markets in the world. And I got apples, OS 8. You can remember that far back. OS 8. And anyways, I got it down at a little black market in Bangkok, Tyrant. And it was like seriously less than 24 hours. They had had that thing cracked and hacked and ready to go out the door. Okay. So the thing is that the Chinese and all you have to do is go to fiatleak.com and watch the money flow into China. I can tell you that the business people of China could care less what their government thinks. They're just going to do whatever it is. They're going to do anyways. And so, you know, I think, I mean, you think about Hong Kong. Hong Kong is the country where everybody goes. And I noticed your little Hong Kong ATM saying there, you know, why they want to, they want to, you know, publicly come out right now is because whenever anything gets shut down in China, it just moves to Hong Kong. I mean, it's no big deal. They just move to Hong Kong. They run out of Hong Kong. They're set, right? And so really, there's always a way around it. And they're not going to slow down. Yes, like the mass is going to slow down. But the underground movers and shakers, it could really care less. They're just going to do what they're going to do anyways. And they're going to keep on doing whatever the heck they want to do. And that's the way it is in China and all of the Asian countries. The underground is very, very big. Dovey Barker. I feel like this is what we've been saying from the very beginning. Like it gets banned and we use it anyway. Like this is why they've been calling it the honey badger of money. This is why Bitcoin was created and designed the way that it was in the first place was so that you could ignore it being banned. So of course, if it's banned somewhere, it continues to be used. I don't, I don't feel like this is even newsworthy. That's what we've been saying. But the market keeps saying the opposite. Christoph Atlas. Bitcoin is not yet the cyberpunk currency of the future. It has some very significant weaknesses before I can grow into that position. I think it will eventually, but particularly in the area of privacy, it's quite weak. Designing software to track people on a very large scale in Bitcoin is maybe like a two-month project for a small government contractor team. And you can be sure that the US various branches of the US military, in fact, probably they've hired multiple contractors in the same branch of the US military because they just have all that money to burn when they're not just letting it fall off the back of a truck in Iraq. And you can be sure that China is doing the same and Australia and Germany and all these other places. So we still have a lot of work to do in that area. And I don't think that the market has quite wrapped its head around to what the potential is for Bitcoin in terms of how people can use it to evade capital controls, how in some countries people will be able to use it to avoid sales taxes or other kinds of taxes. I don't think that the market has wrapped its head around it yet because I haven't seen the kind of funding of these crucial projects that we need in order to advance these privacy features. And so I think that's coming down the line. But honestly, the sooner that we work on this, the better off we will be in the long run. Exit question, will more countries attempt to ban Bitcoin? Will they be just as successful? Will Penguin, are you back with us? Moving on to my money, Marnie Milrose. Yeah, so I think, sorry about that. Yeah, I think more countries will definitely try to ban it. I don't do that. I think that they'll be as successful, probably not because it's, I mean, China is a totally totalitarian. It is like the most Macavillion, you know, control everything country on the face of the planet. But like I said, when the people decide that they're going to do what they're going to do, they just go and do it anyways. And that is kind of a strength of China. Now, will the people inside of these other countries that are going to be banned? Will they be as strong as the Chinese people and continue on? That remains to be seen because they're not used to those controls like the Chinese are. And the Chinese just find ways around things, right? All of the Asians do. They just find a way around. It's no big deal. But other countries, yeah, you know, there are people go, you know, and like they do here in America, the price goes down. We can't do that. We can't do that. You know, oh, in the UK, oh my god, if it was banned in the UK, it would be totally, oh, we can't do that. Can't possibly do that, you know. If you asked the shop to take Bitcoin, they'd think you were criminal already. Yeah. Criminal currency can't have any of that. Isn't that illegal? Very much so. Cheerio. So let's go backwards. Will Pangman. Will more countries ban Bitcoin? Yeah, I think I agree with Marty. They probably will try. I think it was probably see it banned in more, even more local regions or local economies. Like, you know, there'll be a state ban. Some state, like some backwards state, like, I don't know, oh, Ohio. Pick on Ohio or West Virginia or something. Yeah, we'll see that. Again, you've got lots of places in America that view certain social issues very differently from each other. And there's very backwards from each other. Just, you know, for example, from Illinois to Indiana, you know, just there's a lot of, you know, if you live in the Chicago Land Area by the border, you have to be very careful what you have in your car when you drive between the states, right? So it's probably going to be something like I will see. And in some of these other countries, you know, I think their spirit of disobedience is alive and well and humanity is, you know, in large part, thanks to how quickly information travels these days. So more and more people can, you know, have a glimpse of what it's like on the other side of the world or, you know, on the other side of the fence in some cases. So, yeah, I'm, I think the resilient spirit of people and nations that try to really clamp down on Bitcoin. And in some of these nations, I think we'll quickly realize that they cannot succeed in doing so and just look foolish in attempting to do so transparently inept to people, to neighboring nations and body politic, body's politic. And so yeah, we won't see, we might see it attempted and then it'll just not be a thing that anyone tries to do. I think they'll always be room in the let's, let's look foolish club for nations. Christoph Atlas. Yeah, of course more governments will try to ban Bitcoin. Essentially, here's what's going to be the effect in the long run. All of these different websites that we use to look at where Bitcoin is being used in the world. We're going to have to close those websites down because it's going to end up just being a random pattern that looks exactly like the tour network. And we're going to have to, you know, we will get use the blockchain.info or block explorer as much because all the transactions will just be a coin join transactions. So, that's going to be the end effect is that they're going to make some of these websites a little bit less useful in terms of tracking Bitcoin, but that's about all that they can do. The golden age of open Bitcoin tracking, Davi Barker. Yeah, absolutely. Banting things is what governments do. So, you know, there are two sort of characteristics of Bitcoin that make it ideal for banning. One is it frees people and two is it's confusing. So, yes, governments will continue to ban it. Let us put the hammer down. Moving on, did you know the Bitcoin group has its own website with donation information at thebitcoingroup.com, the Bitcoin group on the world wide web. It's amazing, yes? Astounding, maybe. The Bitcoin group is also on the world crypto network, worldcryptoneetwork.com, subscribe for daily YouTube shows about Bitcoin. New shows every day. Issue four Bitcoin businesses continue to earn big funding. Bit pay raised $30 million. Craykin raised $5 million and made safe raised $5 million as well. There seems to be no question that well-funded companies like these will continue to build the Bitcoin ecosystem. What new technology company or Bitcoin business are you inspired by? Marnie Melrose. Oh, you're going to have to come back to me on that one. Let me talk to you, Barker. Well, I suppose of the ones on the list, I use bit pay and I've been very happy with their services. They essentially function like PayPal, which lets me sort of transition off of PayPal. And they've made it very easy for me to get in and out of the currency when I need to. If I ever end up short on Fiat for some reason. But I suppose the one that like the company I'm most impressed with is blockchain.info and now blockchain.com. You know, ideologically, I know those guys are real, sort of strong free market folks. And I see them sponsoring good events. I see them tabling. I see them merchandising. I see them. They're continuing to develop new and innovative products in their field. And they're also of all the sort of merchant services out there. They're the ones who are really interested in privacy and the protection of the user. And so of all the companies out there, they're my favorite. Kristoff Atlas. I am kind of perplexed by Made Safe. Not really sure what to make of the project at it. It's such a grand project and really all the projects that I've seen that I've been on a similar scale have remained a favor where because it's just it's too much. And but we do, like I said earlier, I've been sort of thinking about recently this idea of Satoshi as a necromancer because there's all these technologies that came out in the 90s through the Cypherpunk movement. And they were just weren't able to go anywhere. They either stayed very small, which is true of the tour network. Or they just they died out. And they were what they were lacking essentially was a price discovery mechanism. Jonathan Mohan has talked about this recently on Let's Talk Bitcoin as the his idea of let there be price. And what Bitcoin gives us as a template for technology for a price discovery mechanism and a way to incentivize people to operate in new networks, a financial incentive. And so all of a sudden, you know, all this technology for mesh networking and anonymous eCache and you know, all kinds of stuff is just being resurrected from the dead from a decade or more ago. And we're seeing a well sprint of new ideas and really Made Safe and a lot of ways is a resurrection of a bunch of of older ideas that people had and still been in other projects that just couldn't get off the ground. So I think that maybe that's the answer for something like Made Safe is now we have this price discovery mechanism. Now we have a way of giving people money to to use the stuff that we want them to use. And maybe that's how things like that actually happen. And it would be an incredible opportunity for humanity to to liberate ourselves from this highly centralized internet infrastructure. We certainly saw an incredible burst in dark, dark coin price. Perhaps people do want to be anonymous. Will Pangman. Yeah, I'm going to echo Davi with both of his answers, you know, BitPay is incredibly inspiring just, you know, the relationships that they're putting together around the world. And also in the US with different partners that they are going to need to increase their market penetration, which they've done so consistently every time I turn around, you know, it's so impressive. They're doing something that's very, very important. They're basically building incredible tools that are ready at the flip of a switch as soon as hundreds of thousands of people decide that they want in on Bitcoin, you know, business owner, you know, merchants in particular. They all they'll have to do is basically flip a switch because, you know, BitPay is increasingly incorporating, you know, different hardware terminals, point of sale terminals. They're developing software tools to work with almost anything out there. Most point of sale terminals are going towards the iPad or tablet route anyway. And they're already plug and play in that respect. So that is so huge and really like encouraging. Again, blockchain.info for all the reasons Davi mentioned, I totally agree. They're very inspiring. One in particular that I really appreciate as I work for a Bitcoin startup that essentially seeks to do a lot of the same things from a business plan standpoint that blockchain is doing, which is function without a bank account, which, you know, a company like the one I'm working for, to Peaky.com. We won't need a bank account to function. But that's an important trait that blockchain.info has that I think is so admirable. I mean, there's so many headaches that they don't have to worry about for use, you know, the traditional banking system. And that allows them to be incredibly nimble and innovative. And we've seen this with their partnerships. The other thing I really love about blockchain is I know Nick and some of the other executives there are hot on the trail of any and all apps out there or, you know, different Bitcoin programs and things like that that just are seeking to simplify the user experience or streamline, make more appealing the user experience for the average computer user, which again is something we need to do as an industry so that we can increase adoption. So for those two reasons, I am a huge fan of both BitPay and blockchain. Marty, Melrose. Hang on. You know, I still don't have an answer. I'll say like, for instance, you were talking about BitPay. One thing that I like about BitPay that they are working on is co-sign. I think that that's really needed, especially from a business standpoint, having a multi-signature account where you've got, you know, the directors of the company. I think that that's something that's really needed if a company is to accept Bitcoin and remain in Bitcoin and authorize those transactions. I think that that's really important. I see little different pieces in so many different companies that I like, right? It's like if I could take this from there and this from there and this from there, then I would have the perfect company. But I don't have that company yet. You know, I'm talking to XAPO about some of the stuff that they're doing, greenadress.it, blockchain.info, you know, the monolith, Coinbase, you know, and BitPay as well. And like I said, for me, it's too early for me to have a favorite yet. I'm just not there yet. I like your idea of the Franken company. All the companies put together to give us what we want. Moving on to questions and answers. What are your thoughts after the first glimpse of Circle? What do you guys think? Do we need a Bitcoin service where you store your money in Fiat? You send your money in Bitcoin and then you store your money in Fiat? Dovi. I prefer not to store my money in Fiat. I mean, that sort of, I don't see the point. So, it uses the transfer protocol, but it is an interesting adaptation, another middleman. Chris, I mean, for people that don't want to hold Bitcoin and just want to use it as a payment system, that's cool, but that's not the most exciting function of the blockchain for me anyway. So, um, um, Christoff, what do you think? To me, Circle looks like a basic Bitcoin bitch. You know, it's, this is some, some PayPal 2.0 stuff and it personally doesn't interest me. They took a while to announce it, but now it's here. Will, what do you think? Yeah, I think, I think it's like, it's kind of a no-brainer idea. It's weird that no, like, traditional Bitcoin players, if you will, um, have explored or at least had said anything about doing something similar. I do see some interesting use cases. Like, you pointed out when you, when you sort of walked through one use case earlier, Tom, you know, if someone from the US wants to use the Bitcoin rails or the pipes as Marney was discussing earlier to send, you know, through currency exchange. I mean, that's saving tons of time and hopefully some money too. We don't know what Circle's fees are going to be for something like that, but, you know, that's, that's a great use case, you know. I also think that some of the, I have my ear to the ground with a couple of companies, uh, who are coming out like in the next couple days or a couple weeks with some really new, like peripheral apps on their platform that will do something similar to kind of what Circle announced, um, but basically everything stays in crypto, you know what I mean? So, exactly the opposite. Right, but, um, I'm not, I'm not going to spill any beans because I don't know what I should share or not, but I want them to enjoy their, um, data, son and stuff. But basically, I think these other Bitcoin companies that have been mainstays in the space for more than a year, you know, which is a long time, um, longer than Circle, uh, they have ideas coming out that will basically for the most, for the large section of current Bitcoin users, which is a ton of people, uh, will have favorability over what Circle's providing. What Circle's providing, you know, might be something that works in the background when people want to send money, like maybe Circle's competing with Western Union and that's it, you know, I don't know. So yeah, I'm not that impressed by Circle, I'm very suspicious of them, you know, just, just some of the, it's been vapor wear up until today pretty much. So, um, we'll see. Uh, but now it's real, Marty Melrose, your thoughts on Circle. So, um, well, I have my personal thoughts and then I have my greater adoption thoughts and, uh, so I'll take, like me personally, I, I don't want anybody to have any, any information about me and, and how much Bitcoin I have or do not have, right? And so, uh, I'm more on the side of, yes, and I, I want to stay in Bitcoin. Um, you know, and then there's the idea of, of debit cards where you can stay in Bitcoin, right? But you could use the Visa Mastercard thing, but it's kind of, like it's almost doing a disservice to Bitcoin, right? And I know that doesn't have anything to do with Circle, but trust me, I'll tie it all together in a second. And then there's, you know, uh, it's definitely for Circle anyways. I was just speaking at the Tory Pines uh, Rotary Club and there was this guy there super wealthy. He needed to move $800,000 from the United States into a German bank account. And he's like, how would I do that in Bitcoin? And you know, I had to like, yeah, you do this over here and then you do that over there and yeah, so I would like that transaction to happen in Bitcoin. Um, you know, and if there's going to be a company that's going to make that happen and it is going to benefit the Bitcoin network, then I, then I'm all for it. Um, would I use them myself? Probably not, but would that help to get greater adoption and understanding of Bitcoin? If it does, then that's what I'm for. Because at the end of the day, for me, it's not about, you know, uh, whether it's, uh, it's greater adoption of the entire Bitcoin idea, right? And the technology behind Bitcoin, that's what I want. I want everybody using Bitcoin in any little way that they can. Um, and I don't want to force them to have to do it one way or another. I just want everybody using it. Makes sense. It does seem like Square or Circle or whatever they call themselves maybe another middleman. They're using Bitcoin. They're still Bitcoin's middleman. I think we need them. I think it's going to be quietly brilliant people that you don't think about now are going to use it. What we're going on to other questions. Is there a crypto based fund or movement to compete with the big internet providers? Not really. I think the closest thing you've got there is maybe something like open, uh, open garden where you have a mesh network that could perhaps compete with the major internet providers competing with the people who own the pipes is such a large undertaking. They have the physical equipment already and they're rolling out new fiber and other things. So it's incredibly difficult to compete. I have a thought on that, you know, I know of a project called MiaoBit. I'm not very well versed in it, but, um, uh, I know one of Davi's colleagues is, uh, is one of the head guys of MiaoBit. And to me, that seems like a solution of dealing with some of these internet choke points. Davi, can you elaborate or? Yeah. Well, MiaoBit is essentially an application to sort of facilitate the name coin, the DNS system. Although Michael W. Dean has called BitShares the name coin killer. And so he sort of anticipates, uh, I guess BitShares is launching a DNS system as well. That is, it's decentralized, but has some different sort of features. I don't know. That's gonna, that's gonna have to come out in the wash as users adopt both of them, neither of them feel like they're ready for prime time. Um, but the point is is that there's a need. And so people are, uh, seeking that out as far as like the physical equipment. That's, that's true. Like laying fiber off the cable like a DNS system is not going to replace the physical equipment. Um, but you know, the advance of technology is going to make that easier to compete with over time. So I mean, it's just a matter of time. And we need, we need a new internet infrastructure far, far more than we need a new DNS system. Um, frankly, our existing DNS system works perfectly fine. And the vast majority of situations, but not so much the, uh, the internet infrastructure. We're running out of time. So let's move on to predictions or final thoughts or story of the week. Dobby Barker to have a prediction or story. Let me first. Okay. Let's see. Predictions. Um, let's see. We also have a point to raise that you can join in on the hoodie for homeless fundraiser at Bitcoin. Not bombs.com. Every time you order a t-shirt from Bitcoin. Not bombs. They'll buy a hoodie and give it to someone in need. Last year in 2013, we distributed more than 325 hoodies to the homeless in San Francisco. Buy a t-shirt today. Help us break our goal for next year. There you go, Dobby. Well, thank you for stalling for me. Uh, so I actually do have a prediction. There was a story recently that there are a few, um, uh, political candidates who are accepting Bitcoin as, as a donation model. And FEC has, has the federal, I don't even know what it stands for. FEC has. That's no election commission. There you go. FEC has decided that it is okay for them to accept Bitcoin. As long as they, uh, have reasonable scrutiny that that Bitcoin was not acquired through elicit activities. I don't know how they're going to determine that. But my prediction is that they will not raise more than $100 in Bitcoin. I don't think that the Bitcoiners of the world are interested in donating to political campaigns. Christ off Atlas. Well, something that I talked about in dark news on Thursday, just yesterday, was, um, there are some, there are some wonderful new privacy features that are being worked on in dark coin, dark wallets. Um, there's, I, even some, some amazing, uh, privacy technologies that I've been kind of flying under the radar for a little while in the form of a crypto note and a few other projects. And basically what these all mean is that pretty soon we will be able to trade cryptocurrency. And that's a much more anonymous fashion with some, some actual math, mathematical, uh, guarantees on exactly how much blockchain and anonymity we can get out of these technologies. And we will be freed from the possibility of FBI or NSA or GCHQ, uh, honey traps, honey pots for our cryptocurrencies. Because you know, of course, that's been the problem with these, you know, the way that we get anonymity in the past is what if your, um, Bitcoin fog mixing service is actually just being run by, you know, the CIA or something. There's no way to know because they tried to be anonymous too. And um, anyone that's anonymous can be the CIA as well. So, um, this is something that's being worked on and should be fixed in a very significant way in the next, let's say eight months or so. And that's actually people have not yet got a sense of how enormous that is because it, it, it closes one of the last, uh, really important windows when it comes to cryptocurrency privacy. Well, penguin. I guess I'm going to go with a story of the week this time. Um, and this is just something that just came to me and I'm just going to go with it, uh, Glenn Beck hosting Jeffrey Tucker, Elizabeth Ploshay and our very own crick-a-tell of Atlas. Um, I guess they did a 45 minute interview and I saw two short seven minute or so videos of what they did and I thought, uh, all three of our colleagues did a fantastic job of delivering this, uh, information to that audience. And I also think, you know, I'm, I'm no fan of Glenn Beck and I don't think any of the people who went to meet him were fans of him either, uh, necessarily. But, um, you know, from what I heard and had nothing but nice things to say and the fact that he was so, I mean, you know, I, you almost never see, um, it's so funny. There are two people who have brought Bitcoin to millions of ears and eyes who have never before heard them term or had totally discarded it because of a 32nd CNBC news blurb. And they are Joe Rogan and Glenn Beck and they brought this stuff to, to completely different demographic audiences. And they also both admitted repeatedly that they were stupid about this when they were, you know, seeking more information about it in Rogan's case from Andreas a couple times and in Beck's case from, you know, Christoph, Elizabeth and Jeffrey Tucker. So this is something you don't see on cable news and from major, you know, pundits who have major sized audiences. You don't see them disarming themselves. You don't see them totally exposing vulnerability or calling themselves stupid. And so I think this is, uh, maybe not the best thing to admit in general, even for anybody, I'm not applauding that. But I do think it shows that they were both curious and I talk about this all the time. I know Adam V. Levine mentions this a lot too. If you're not curious about cryptocurrency and you're talking about it like you know about it, then you're, you know, you're making a fool of yourself. And if you are curious, then you're honest about how much you know and don't know and what you want to know and what you don't want to part of and what you do. And so anyway, both of all these kinds of things are very, very positive for adoption, bringing it to people. Again, we can start the unraveling of the onion process as they take a hands-on approach to this thing, the more comfortable. When they hear someone they trust, like Joe Rogan's hardcore fans, trust him because he's helped them with the material and the guests that he's had on in previous shows. So they trust him. He's brought them intelligent people who helped them change their lives in small ways that they appreciate it. The same is true of Glenn Beck and his demographic. So, you know, whether you agree with a guy or not is beside the point. The fact of the matter is, um, the people that trust him, the millions that trust these men, have now heard an objective view of Bitcoin and they have actually fair chance to decide if this is something that has a place in their life, like Marty said, just in a small way. So I think most of them are realizing that it probably does, especially based on their favorite spokesperson's endorsement or, you know, entertainment of the issue. So again, that's a huge, that's a huge news item from the week that a lot of people just want to attack Glenn Beck or dismiss Glenn Beck or whatever. And we don't highlight, even if we totally disagree with the guy and all of the other stuff, the ridiculous, you know, show that's been put on in the past, need to appreciate the kind of impact that this, um, the delivery of this information to that audience can have. So huge thumbs up. Thank you, Christav and Elizabeth and Jeffrey if you watch this, thank you both. So you digs, everyone hit a home run. I was very impressed, especially with Christav to be honest. Thank you very much. And I wanted to say about Glenn Beck, before the show and after the show when people heard that I was doing this, I heard from a lot of people that said, oh, Glenn Beck is just, you know, he's just, he's only a political opponent. He takes his talking points from Karl Rove and the Neo Conservatives and all this kind of stuff. And, um, you know, let me tell you, Karl Rove is not not going to be a fan of Bitcoin. It's not going to work well for him. So I'm not saying that Glenn Beck is, um, you know, my, is a thought leader for me or that I want to follow exactly on his footsteps. But I was very impressed. Like, it would have been so easy for him to invite some other douchebag onto the show and, you know, some, some professor Bitcoin to talk about how it's going to cause a divisionary spiral and volatility and blah, blah, blah. Like, he actually brought some knowledgeable people on the show to explain this stuff. And I was really impressed by that choice and by his humility on this topic. And just, you know, his open mind is about it. So, you know, people cut him some slack and he certainly has my appreciation for um, furthering the, the interests of Bitcoin in that fashion. Absolutely. And I would add to that, he was so basically he did a classy job. You guys all did a really classy job. And I love seeing that. And I'd like to see more of that. And my prediction is there will be more of that. And there will be more of these major people, you know, uh, Colbert report, Bill mayor, uh, all sorts of these crazy people, you know, who have massive really like volatile audiences, whether they believe one way or the other. But if we can be, my hope is that we can be as open and as gracious towards them as we can so that we can get our message heard there, right? Rather than if we align ourselves too much with one idea, ideology or another, then, then we can't get massive mainstream. So we have to be a little bit more neutral of the well at least I do anyways, maybe not all you guys, but I have to be a little bit more neutral in order to get to the masses. And, um, you know, sometimes you have to play in other gardens in order to to spread your seeds. Very well said. And finally, my prediction, Bitcoin Jesus, Roger Vier is predicting that Amazon will start accepting Bitcoin. And I'm joining him. Amazon is not going to let eBay just let this one go by the only difference between buying a used book on Amazon and buying a used book on eBay could be that eBay accepts Bitcoin. If eBay does it, Amazon will have to follow and fast. Amazon would much rather be the leader. Why not go first, Amazon? Until next time, we're out of time. Bye bye. Bye. See you later.