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 our panelists, Blake Anderson from Facebook.com slash God Blake. Hello everyone, thanks for having me. Bryce Weiner from Block Tech. Thanks for having me on. Victoria Van Echt. Hi everybody, thanks for having me. I'll say it wrong the whole time. Megan Lourdes. Thanks for having me. Christoph Atlus. Hey everybody. And I'm Thomas Hunt, moving on to issue one. Charlie Shrem pleads guilty to Silk Road charges. Former CEO of BitInstant, Charlie Shrem will, according to the terms of the plea bargain, forfeit $950,000 to the US government and be required to serve a prison term of up to 60 months. Blake Anderson, your thoughts. Well, I just think it's a very bizarre that the government would steal money from somebody for a victimless crime or something that they just assume is damaging because of the thickness of the law and legal books and where we've gotten. Really, if you look at what's the physical material damage measurable to various different parties from Charlie, that would be really, really hard to measure. So it's really, we've gotten into a weird space with that kind of thing. And I just think that it's a ridiculous and I feel really, really bad for Charlie. It's not entirely clear what harms the government is presenting. Bryce. Well, that's kind of the curious thing about the whole affair. I'm honestly curious who blinked first. Is this a deal that Charlie and his attorneys approached the state with or did the state just kind of throw in the towel prior to the DFS regulations? There's all these little moving pieces that make it really curious as to how all that make me really curious as to how all this actually came to come about. They are calling the plea deal a good deal for his lawyer. But when I see the 60 months in jail, I'm not so sure. Victoria. Yeah, I'd have to know a bit more about what's going on behind the scenes with Charlie, not just from these top level reporting. I'm not surprised that this is happening. Back to Blake's comment while it's not measurable and if it's a listed drug trade, it's still illegal. I feel bad for Charlie. I think it's hopefully he can just pay the money and walk away from this. I think it's awesome. He still wants to work in Bitcoin. That's as a lot. And remember, you can work in Bitcoin anywhere, not necessarily in the US, Megan Lorde. So this seems like a kind of, you know, I wouldn't say it's a bad decision because I think his hands were tied in this. I saw some people kind of giving him some shit about it like, oh, you should fight it. You should fight it. And I think it comes down to he obviously knows what he's up against better than everyone else. So I'm not going to fault him for taking the plea deal at all because he's more familiar with the circumstances. And the other charges he's facing in regards to money laundering, the structuring charges, something that they will go after before. It's the most ridiculous thing. The structuring is when you try to avoid, it's suspicious activity, you're trying to avoid a cash transaction report where you're doing multiple low level transactions below $10,000. Well, here's $10,000. It may be pronounced wrong. But it's something that they're going to go after you for to make an example out of you anyway. And I think that Silk Road Chargers are a lot more serious and you could have been facing a lot more serious jail time. So I think it's unfortunate that he's been put in this situation for things that haven't hurt anybody at all and have not, I mean, there's no one that was harmed in these transactions, whatsoever. He just happened to break the wrong rules. And I hope that this can be resolved more financially and that you won't have to spend any time in jail. But we'll see. I definitely wish him the best of luck. I'm happy to see his enthusiasm still and he's still very active in Bitcoin and plans to continue being active in Bitcoin. So I think that's really inspiring, considering everything he's gone through and continue to have, at least it appears to be a fairly positive outlook. And the American legal system really is built on plea bargaining. So many times it's a much better deal to accept the plea than to risk going to trial. I'm sure that's what his attorney said. Christoph Atlas. Yeah, so plea bargaining is hugely popular. Apparently from 1984 to 2001, the common, how common it was for people to take a plea bargain in the United States. It rose from 84% of federal cases to 94% over just a few years. And back in 2013, there was a study done by Human Rights Watch that said that the Justice Department is regularly coercing defendants in federal drug cases to plead guilty by threatening them with steep prison sentences. They found that people who did not take the plea deal received prison sentences on average 11 years younger, longer than those who pled guilty. So there really is a lot of pressure behind people to basically circumvent the court system and to push some kind of punishment upon these people that are going after. They don't want to actually have to prove themselves in a court of law. What they want to do is they want to make it so that there's a chance that they will possibly prove themselves. They'll throw a lot of accusations at you, hoping that one of them sticks and they threaten you so that if any of them happens to stick that you get very severely punished, if you're allowed to go to court and so you always end up taking the plea deal. And this is just a way of circumventing the supposed rule of law that we have in the United States. Here's something that Charlie wrote to a mailing list six days ago about the plea deal. He said, in a federal case, only the judge decides my sentence. Or, generally, if I had lost the trial, I could face 30 years from three charges, including money laundering, which is biggie. I played to a much smaller charge, which is sort of an eating and a bedding crime. It's still a felony, of course. And he's expecting some probation, but it's going to be better than the house arrest that he's been under so far. So I guess he's, you know, as of six days ago, he's not expecting that he's going to do additional jail time, just some more probation, of course, who will be a felon. Now in the future, and I don't think this is anything of the distant future, this may even happen within Charlie's lifetime. People will be 100% clear that what Charlie Shrem did was completely morally acceptable. That there was not a shred of evil or misdeed in what he has done with bit instant end in the Bitcoin ecosystem. But we will understand that he has been a political prisoner, that he has been persecuted by a government who is opposed to cryptocurrencies because it threatens their tax base, their control on the population, their ability to collect taxes, extort taxes from the population that they have control over. And it's not going to be long until this is pretty clear to the majority of the population, so unfortunately, Charlie happened to be born at a time and in an age of Bitcoin where this is not still well understood by people. People don't understand that money laundering is a made up crime that excludes the government and all of their cronies from this behavior. And basically, Boils down to, well, you're moving money, we didn't give you permission to move this money and we don't like it. So here's some jail time for it. And it's a real shame. It's really disappointing to see this kind of stuff happening. It's a disappointing to see $950,000 taken out of the Bitcoin ecosystem, divested from Bitcoin startups and put towards the government war chest instead. That's a great unfortunate event as well because Charlie is an excellent entrepreneur and I'm sure he could put that money to much better use. So it's unfortunate news and I guess the best that I can hope out of the circumstances that he pays the fee, he gets the probation and he moves on and this is the end of the story. And if I could jump in and comment really quick, my best friend is a libertarian attorney we share in office space together and so I talk with him a lot and we talked a lot about the co-cash case and about other cases about the Albrecht case. And he's the type of attorney that people always are telling him, you know, why don't you do more plea deals? And he doesn't like to do plea deals because he likes to go to court and fight. He actually goes to court more than any other lawyer that I've ever heard of. But when it comes to a federal case and you don't have the right to a trial by jury and or there's different considerations relative to what the jury instructions are and things like that, someone who almost always says go and got it out and fight it out. He will say, don't get the eye of Sauron, the federal government to look at you because just as Christophe was pointing out, the number of times when they will just load on you, all of these charges to scare you. I mean, there's two things happening. They want to scare you and then they also want to show everybody else that you should be scared and that they will follow through because the justice system is not well funded enough to actually try all of these people appropriately and fairly. So there's a motivation for the state to do things even beyond what you would think that they would want would just be the money which they want that to. It's a really dangerous situation and my heart goes out to Charlie. There's long been a theme amongst protesters that if they could just get everyone involved in the war on drugs to take their cases to trial, that it would back up the system hopelessly and they would have no choice but to change these obviously unfair laws. And not sure it's gotten to that point, the threatened and police systems seems to work pretty well for them. But the question is, who wants to be at the front of the queue? Who wants to be the first few cases that are not going to get backed up and that are going to end up in prison for 20 years? No one wants to be at the front of that line and so it's not happening, right? Well, actually, hi. This is a very personal topic for me. I believe in it very strongly. To the point where I quite frankly am aligned with Razor Road and distributed deep web marketplaces, we're not, I mean, we are quite literally developing, you know, tour-based marketplaces to allow people to circumvent economic censorship on a federal level. And a lot of people have said, you know, they're going to come and get you for doing this. And I'm looking forward to it because it will provide the opportunity to open up the dialogue with the federal government in a court of law and really begin to set down to educate them as far as what this technology is and the implications that it could have. I'm just writing software. I'm not telling anybody to do anything with it. So it's like bringing the lineage tour of vaults to court for making lineics. And we literally are going to challenge these existing regulations with software development in order to get someone to come and drag us into a court. I mean, that's, and quite frankly, if nobody does, we're just going to keep going because nobody cares. And then we win anyway, so it all works. And if the software is open-sourced, people could pick it up and continue working on it, even while you or even your group was in court. So what they're fighting against here, how bad it gets, how quickly it gets, because, look at Ethereum, Vitalik Booterin is one super smart, 19 year old or whatever. All we need is five of those, three in India, two in Russia, one in China, a variety of people all over that share the same ideas can all read the same code and work together. And this thing's over. We'll just solve the problem with software. And what are they going to do then? And if we put it out now, while the regular and we're very heavily incentivized to get this going, because an open bizarre too, we are a fork of their project. And so we're all very heavily incentivized to get this going before regulation is established, because nobody wants to be the good person responsible for making laws that can't be enforced because things passed beyond it. So there is an absolute concerted development effort on the behalf of cryptocurrency developers to make these regulation discussions going on now absolutely irrelevant. And as we saw in the proposed New York regulations, Satoshi Nakamoto would have had to register his invention of Bitcoin with the New York D-Y-F or DFS before he could have engaged in Bitcoin. So it clearly makes no sense. They want all the altcoin people to register. It's just not going to happen. No idea. Great. I think that Charlie Schrem's case is clearly in a separate category from, for example, the developers of open bizarre. There isn't much precedent for programmers being arrested. There was this stuff in the crypto wars where they were trying to wafer them for exporting munitions without permission and whatnot. But that was shot down. So the general precedent is that programmers can't be gone after for this type of stuff. But Charlie ran a company that had a money service business license. He was a money service business by any structure of the imagination as far as the law is concerned. And so there's, you know, it would not make much sense in my opinion for him to try and take some kind of stand in court. I don't think he would have much basis to make a standard. I think he would just end up in jail and spend more money on lawyers and all that stuff. So good for him for finding, trying to find a way to move on from this situation. Well to respond, there actually is precedent for the attempted prosecution of developers who make Bitcoin related and cryptocurrency related software. They're the stated New Jersey, they're attorney general. Actually arrested someone for a proof of concept Bitcoin mining app. It was actually a subpoena, excuse me, because the mining app was something that was basically cloud mining on people's computers and the state attorney general overreactive. And I think when it comes to that sort of thing, that's kind of what we're expecting. It's not that it is going to be any sort of rational reaction to this technology. It's going to be completely irrational. And that's what we're looking to highlight because it's just so. I believe they were concerned that the browser-based cloud mining app would become a virus or something run in the background on web pages. It was a MIT type project. Yeah, I do recall that was very much an overreaction. And it is speculation on how the software was going to be employed, not on the developer, not on what the software was actually designed for, but speculation on how the software was going to be deployed. And that's really the scary part. I just hope that nobody makes a command where you could copy files, where you could say copy this file to that file, because that'll destroy everything. Moving on to the exit question. The Ross Oldbreak, the alleged dread pirate Robert's trial, is scheduled to begin on November 3rd. Yes or no, will we see a plea bargain? Blake Anderson. Well, this is definitely an issue that hits really close to home for me. Ross's mother and I are pretty good friends. So from a parent to a parent when we talk about this issue and she basically tells me about her child, her baby, that she loved being in a cage. It really hits home. And one of the things that she told me is that when she went to go visit him in prison, he almost cried seeing her red sweater and he said that he forgot what red looked like. So it's a very, very horrifying situation. And if he does plea, I would be very understanding, but I hope that he doesn't and that the state cannot make a case because I feel that they have no evidence that doesn't violate the Fourth Amendment. And I just wish him all the best. Bryce. Well, you know what? I don't know Ross or his family, but I feel very strongly about the issues. And I hope that Ross makes a decision that's best for him. And I would like to think that the stuff that we're doing right now eases his mind as far as the political stance that needs to be taken. So we'll pick up the banner. We'll keep going. And I just hope that Ross makes a decision that works out best for him. I think we've got this one in here. Victoria. Yeah, I sure hope so. I sure hope we see this and I hope he takes it. But I don't, I feel like they're going to use him as an example to scare other people. I mean, it seems like a lot of the law is about scaring people into behaving. And I don't think this is obviously any different. In 60 months left with Charlie Shren. This guy, you know, this is how I learned about Bitcoin through reading about slope road, right? It's how everyone knows about Bitcoin really who I was hoping to, right? So I think the US government may use him as an example just to scare the heck out of people to keep them out of Bitcoin. But I really hope not. I'm optimistic, but I guess we'll see. Megan. Well, according to this coin desk article that just came out today, he's going to plead not guilty to the new charges that have been added to his case. If you don't wear this, they added a bunch of extra charges to try to intimidate him. And here's a quote from his attorney, Joshua Dredel. These additional charges simply demonstrate the government's pension for converting a single alleged course of conduct into a set of multiple similar interchangeable charges. And Len has talked about that a lot. And his mother, what they're doing is they're basically playing word games. And that's a lot of what law is. A lot of it is just changing definitions, whereas, you know, the government's definition of something is going to be a lot broader and a lot overreaching than your average person's definition of what something should be. And that's really the scary part about this is it not only will it set a huge precedent one way or another, but they just added all of these new charges recently. And he was already facing a kingpin charge and all of these other very serious charges that if found guilty, he would be facing decades in jail for. So it's really terrifying to see this play out. And they are very much trying to make an example out of him. So but it looks like he's going to fight it. And this is something that Len was saying a couple months ago and I was talking to her that they were wanting to plead not guilty and really fight it because they believe that their evidence will stand up in court. And I surely hope that it does. I think it's really difficult though to call the outcome of this because they are intent on crushing this person. It's really disgusting. It's horrifying how much they're really trying to crack down on this one person. I mean, this is obviously not going to be a fair trial. I think that's really the problem you have when you're versing a plea deal versus going to trial. Either way, you're losing the plea deal. They're just extorting maybe less time and money out of you. But if you go to trial, you're working within a system that is meant to basically benefit the state and not you. And as far as I've been to something about funding early, I don't know if it's a matter of funding that's the problem. I think it's a systemic problem. I think it's something that's a lot deeper. And I know, like I wasn't trying to say, that was just the only thing that was a funding thing. But yeah, I mean, you're literally in these situations where you're going to be an example out of and it's very difficult to fight back in any, using the system that's available to us. So I wish him the best of luck. Lynn is a wonderful person and what they're going through is just an absolute nightmare. So please support them. The free Ross fund is still out there and definitely support them and look into the other people who they're trying to make examples of too. So I mean, if he does end up fighting and sticking with it, I think that's a very honorable thing to do. So please don't waste off at least. I think that it's pretty unlikely that he would be offered any kind of significant plea deal. There's not a whole lot of difference between 50 years in prison and life in prison. And I think he's going to be a made an example of, which is unfortunate because really what they're going to accomplish is not dissuading other people from starting versions, split off the silk road, they're just going to encourage people to decentralize their workplaces further as bracing the open minzar guys have been working on. So it's not going to have any kind of consequence in terms of justice or drug trade or anything along those lines. I think that I unfortunately, I don't see much hope for Ross not spending a good deal of time in prison. I wanted to jump in really quick and to say, I mean, jurisdiction is a big issue too. I mean, if they're like, OK, nobody in our jurisdiction can do this again. Well, I mean, it's a whole worldwide technology. It's a worldwide currency. I mean, it's like, OK, you've crushed this in your jurisdiction. So what? There's going to be 100,000 more to pop out outside of your jurisdiction. And I know that's a terrible exaggeration, but it might as well be. So. And there's a good argument to be made for the semantics as well. When they shot an approach to these charges, what they'll be able to do in the future is say, well, we got this to work for Charlie Schram. And here's a case that's kind of sort of similar to that. So then they can continue to expand this legal argument for prosecuting people, for exchanging these currencies one to another. And if you want to talk about the scariest consequences from all of this, that's it. And I'm not sure what's going to be able to stop that, except for either a lot of money for legal teams or the big scary R-word regulation, so that it stops this encroachment of these ridiculous shotgun approach to trying to make us criminals. Christoph and Victoria are correct. No plea deal will be offered. Therefore, no plea deal will be accepted. Moving on, issue two. Chief air is now accepting Dozecoin and Lightcoin with most altcoins in a severe decline. Does this even mean anything? Or is this just a cheap attempt by Chief air to garner some cheap publicity? Bryce Weiner. Well, from an economic standpoint, you're right. The one thing that all coins do over time, including Bitcoin actually since the pump in November, is decline over time. This is part of a natural hype cycle of emerging technologies, independent of just cryptocurrencies. So what Chief air is doing is providing a major outlet for currencies with decent volume and very decent market acceptance to be able to cash in on their own popularity quite frankly and increase that transaction velocity. Translates into higher trading volume, which translates into a higher market price. So the anytime a major retailer, especially like I buy all my play tickets with cheap air, so with Bitcoin. And the ability, the acceptance of these altcoins right alongside Bitcoin for major purchase like this, like air travel, I think it's a huge deal. I think it's good for all the coins, for both of those coins. Victoria Van Ik. Yeah, I think it's publicity. I don't think it's bad. Since I've gone involved in Bitcoin, I've always heard maybe from the people that I've been historically speaking to that Litecoin would be added to ATMs. Litecoin would be accepted by merchants. It was just this, as I say, silver to the gold. And my question is, will it actually be used? Like, will people be using Litecoin? I think very minimal transactions will actually occur in Litecoin and Dogecoin. But yeah, I mean, I don't see a downside to this. It could be cheap publicity, but I don't see it as bad. Why not accept more money from in more forms, right? So yeah, that's my point of view. Hustler Magazine did famously accept Dogecoin and Litecoin and actually have a lot of sales through it. Megan Lordes. Yeah, I think it's good for Litecoin and Dogecoin. I was cracking up at that headline, though, when I realized it was Forbes, because it's like, wait a second, since when has Forbes ever been big on altcoins and seemingly knowledgeable about Bitcoin in any way other than the couple of writers who were very knowledgeable on the staff there? But I've had to be such a strange headline. I just have to say that. Like, who writes Yon headline? Okay, I'm sorry. Like I just, I don't know, stuff like that bugs me as an editor, especially when it's made out to be kind of like, oh, Bitcoin so last week or something. It's like, we're not even on board with Bitcoin yet in a lot of ways. I very much view it as a futuristic thing. In the future, more people are going to be on board with this kind of treating it as if it's last week's news or something. It's very strange coming from a source that obviously doesn't get it. So yeah, I think it's good for Litecoin and Dogecoin. I think cheap air is trying to get some publicity. I think they've seen that they've had good luck with Bitcoin. A lot of people have been booking their vice using Bitcoin with them and that's definitely helped them out. So I mean, I don't see why they wouldn't expand the horizons to other coins. I really have a whole lot of Litecoin and Dogecoin. I guess I don't pay attention too much to the price of those coins, but I'm sure this is going to be good for them and good for the people who have a lot of Litecoin and Dogecoin that they're wanting to utilize. So yeah. It did seem more like a business insider headline, but then again, like Blake said, the click bait competition continues. Kristoff Atlas. Yeah, it's for publicity and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I will point out though that there's this weird thing about Litecoin now. So it wasn't even that long ago, but it seems so, so long ago that people were talking about Litecoin as the silver to Bitcoin's gold or whatever. And then there was some other coin, some other coin that was going to be the bronze or the copper or whatever. And at that time, there were so few cryptocurrencies and there were so little innovation that it kind of made sense. Like yeah, like it's got a larger supply of coins and like the transactions are a little bit faster. So why not? Because now we have things like Darkcoin and coins that are paged the US dollar and Blackcoin that does all this complicated inter cryptocurrency mining, balancing stuff and the level of innovation is so much higher. And yet still for some reason that just I can't wrap my head around, Litecoin is still the number two cryptocurrency. Why? Why? What has Litecoin done? Nothing. It's a nothing. It's like a two line modification of Bitcoin with a Chinese guy that's got a nice smile. You know, his picture is attached to each article about Litecoin and that's what Litecoin is. What else have they done? Nothing as far as I can tell. So it's just kind of baffling that we have this amazing technology, new technology called cryptocurrencies and there's this amazing innovation and that's where the value comes from and then there's one guy that's like, I changed the name. So it'll be the second best. It just doesn't make any damn sense to me. I don't understand why Litecoin hasn't died already. They need to do something other than just the few little script tweaks. It's not even like asic resistant anymore. There are script miners that are asics now. They don't even have that going on for them. What is going on with Litecoin? Someone please explain this to me. They surely lose a nice guy. I'm on. I don't know if you really want me to explain it to you because we're getting in to a kind of trouble. I don't think anybody wants to hear. It's my turn. No one can explain it. Many think that Litecoin is used to move money between exchanges and other than that, maybe some kind of money laundering by changing coins through this coin to that coin to this coin to that coin. But that's just obscurity. That's not actually security. No one really knows why Litecoin is so valuable. Moving on. Quite a lot of it. What is my turn? Yeah, what do you want to say? Go. I wanted to say a lot about this. Me and Adam Cokesh had a public disagreement about Litecoin versus Bitcoin quite a while ago. Adam was saying a lot that Bitcoin was my space and that Litecoin was Facebook. So we started to get down to the semantics of the differences with the script and Shadash 256 and Asics and Asic Resistance. And I, oh my God, I received so much hate mail from people saying that I didn't understand what was going on and that I didn't understand Asic proof things. Well, from a computer and information science perspective, making an Asic proof anything is kind of as a nine. I mean, yes, script is a more memory intensive language than Bitcoin. So it's, you know, it was harder to figure out. But now I think what? Like 25% of the hashing power for Litecoin is in like one room somewhere in Asia. And Charles Lee is a really nice guy. You go and talk to him about it. Like he will be the first to tell you all that he's not dishonest about it at all. But I agree with Christoph and that it's really not the same thing. But as far as it being accepted through various different institutions and companies that want to accept it, I think that that's a good thing because it provides kind of an outlet to be able to spend it directly for people that are still holding on to it. And then maybe it will be knocked down or be, you know, less talked about relative to things like that. So those are my two cents about Litecoin. I think it was great that it was invented so early on, but it is kind of bizarre that given all the new feature sets that have come out in the space that it has maintained its value. It's because it's the silver to Bitcoin's gold. Come on, get with it. It's a marketing slogan and it works quite a lot is happening over at the world crypto network where you can join and help decentralize the world by spreading the blockchain. Search your own show or be a co-host, work behind the scenes and join our solutions oriented team. Join us today at worldcryptonetwork.com. Issue three, Vox allows a reporter to buy Bitcoins, then changes their mind. In a bizarre attempt to maintain impartiality, Vox, who allows their reporters to own both dollars and houses while reporting on both, will not allow their Bitcoin reporter to hold Bitcoin while reporting on Bitcoin. The message to Bitcoin reporters and employees of Vox.com is clear. Quit your jobs, Victoria. What's your thoughts on holding Bitcoin while reporting on it? I hold Bitcoin and I report on it. I did a 180. I think it's ridiculous that they're telling these people they can't, but they can and cannot buy. I'm sorry, that's just crazy. They're obviously not educated on this. They're obviously not educated on this. They're looking at it like, okay, if you're holding GE stock and you're reporting on GE, it looks like you're an insider trader or something, it's just ludicrous. I can't believe this is an issue. Once again, not surprised. Some people, you know, but I'm going to go out and talk about this. Clearly the power of Vox.com to move the entire market is so incredible. We must protect against this. Exactly. It's like when Sexy got all those gigahash Vox as all our gigahash, we have to protect them. Megan, Lord, your thoughts. So I'm super done the headline, Hatered today, and that headline is killing me. It makes it sound like they recommended Bitcoin as an investment, but you know, just generally speaking instead of what the article actually says, which is that they forced that one of their reporters to sell the Bitcoins that he was allowed to buy last week. So I mean, it's unfortunate for him. I'm like, I would be pissed if I had, if I was working somewhere, they'd probably have to sell my Bitcoins. I have Bitcoin. I report on Bitcoin. Granted, I describe myself as more of a propagandist than a reporter, but still it's something that is kind of ridiculous. And I like Victor, I don't know who's going to Vox for. Who use that as this, you know, like a great piticle of information or anything. So I thought the headline was completely misleading. You know, I think it was a poor decision on their part. And you know, you know, maybe writers can quit and come over to Bitcoin magazine or Bitcoin op-ons or someplace where, you know, they will pay you in Bitcoin to write articles. So it doesn't seem very fair. I don't know if it was really what they said. Yeah, what I accept of face value that it was about impartiality, but I don't know, I find that kind of ridiculous considering what Thomas said, which is, you know, they allow you to hold cash and houses while reporting on those. So I mean, I don't know this whole journalistic ethics, though, in general, it has gotten to be such a strange environment. It used to be, you know, very, you used to have standards for things and used to, you know, impartiality is something that is definitely a good thing. But I, yeah, you can't be impartial in all things. This whole idea that you can be objective about every single thing is ridiculous. You know, let the readers decide, you know, do the research and put it out there and, you know, do the hard work and allow people to make up their own minds. Unfortunately, everything has been so watered down in general. I'm just going to go on journalistic rant in general here. Everything has just been so watered down. The quality of reporting has gotten so, so atrocious. It's impossible to try to find any information now without going through a mid-clickbait headlines. It just be crazy. It's someone who actually likes to write and cares about quality. So, you know, I hope they get their shit together and realize that this is a bad decision and how, you know, conflicting it is. And yeah, that's why I choose to censor it. And I was reminded of Danny Davido's great quote from the David Mammoth movie Heist. He says, everyone wants money. That's why they call it money. It's just off at this. Yeah, so I can kind of understand this concern about journalistic ethics friend article where you're talking about how the price can go way up, which could potentially have some kind of impact on the price. Not much of one. I've never heard of box.com before we talked about this story, but, you know, I get the basic idea. But it's interesting to me the priorities that they make in terms of journalistic ethics. So the American media leading up to the Iraq war were like, raw, raw, raw, raw, let's go get them boys. Yeah, they've got these weapons of mass destruction and then afterwards it was just like, oh, shhh. We didn't, we didn't do good there. Sorry guys. You know, like that was the, that was the degree of their apology or taking responsibility for basically acting like a hand puppet for the state. Which is basically what every significant publication these days does. I look at the article that we were talking about with Charlie Shrem's case. He was, maybe it was money laundering. He's put guilty. So he must be guilty and we're going to just plea ignorance to the fact that people plea guilty regardless of their innocence, right? They didn't mention that once in the article that he would be led to plea guilty regardless of innocence. It's just like, oh, well, here's what he did. Here's what he's festing up to and here's the state's assessment. Right? And that's those are the facts of the matter. I think these priorities are rather messed up. I think that for the most part, the mainstream media is nothing much more than a fourth branch of the government. They've been often compared to parrots on the shoulders of pirates, which I think is an apt analogy. So to me, this is concerning themselves with trivial little details while ignoring the really important stuff. And again, it's great that they're trying to be impartial, but they would put out a headline like this. We made the wrong call on buying Bitcoin. Wait a minute. Who's we, the magazine? It doesn't say we made the wrong call on our reporters buying Bitcoin. It's a completely misleading headline. No idea what's going on here. Blake Anderson. Yeah, I mean, it's basically the worst headline that could have possibly been chosen for this article. And I don't mean that as hyperbole. It is literally the panic. Any change of this headline would represent positive progress because you have basically two scenarios that can happen. People that read this that don't go through and read the whole article that assume, okay, well, Vox is bearish on Bitcoin. We'll delete that new speed and completely, you know, we'll never visit it again. We'll know there's people that are really going to take it seriously and maybe not read the entire thing and say, oh, well, okay, well, I know I won't buy Bitcoin ever again. When really what they're saying is that they are trying to, if you read the article, make it so that there's no conflict of interest with people that are using Bitcoin. But this, you know, like is illustrating a lack of understanding of what Bitcoin is because you don't want to be like we said before owning GE stock and then reporting about how great GE is and that's something bad happens, not reporting on that. But Bitcoin is not just an investment. It is a medium of exchange. It's the most salable goods that's ever come about. So if you have like, you know, here's the dollar and then here's, you know, derivatives and markets and then companies and all that stuff that flows down from that naturally, Bitcoin is at the top of another separate pyramid that has a whole thing. So you would never say you can't own the yuan and then like post or write about like Asian politics or China stuff like that. Like it would be athinine. So there's so many different things that are wrong with this article that it really, really makes me doubt the basic ability of Vox to perform in this space. And I really don't like to look at people from the lens of let me see what you've done wrong and then use that one little criticism to try to blow away all your credibility. But this is such a massive, massive, massive error that I think that Vox should actually write in apology or a correction or something. And I think that if they don't, that we should probably not, you know, read their stuff a whole lot anymore. It's that bad. Well, it would be crazy is if there were some currency out there that was just like prop up on violence and stealing from people and wars and whatnot. And then like all of the journalists out there would just like present this organizations, you know, their information as pure fact. Like that would really be, and if they were getting paid in this currency at the same time, like that would really be a significant, you know, conflict of interest, I would say. Real like deep capture almost. And but where have I heard that word before? Oh, Patrick Burns talked about the deep capture, not just capturing regulatory body, but all the way down to journalism. And you're right, Christophe, the dollar has really, you know, created institutions that have captured regulators, captured what's going on, captured politicians all the way down to the mouthpieces of what we should or shouldn't believe. And it's, you know, it's hypocritical for them to be like, well, we're going to be completely non-biased. And I mean, I hate to jump back into a full ramp mode here, but a bias is something that you have to expose and own up front. You can't just have certain little pieces of like, well, my bias is exposed to you through these semantical pieces of information that I can write whatever I want. I mean, you have to expose and own your bias. Objectivity is not something that is possible. And to pretend that it is like they did. Just another giant red flag for this publication, my opinion. I think this guy should just write a series of articles about how he can't buy Bitcoin now because clearly he's exposed that he wants to buy it. He even did buy it and now they're making him sell it. So this whole, this guy's whole existence is now how much Bitcoin I had to sell because I worked at this crap magazine. It's like someone comes to you in the future and they're like, let me tell you about the future. One word, plastics. And then your boss is like, you can't invest in plastics. You can cover it all the time. You can read about how great they are, how it's going to change the world, but you're not going to be a part of that. But that sounds like a really good deal. I would stay working there. Bryce Weiner. Well, I'm very critical about it. This is, I'm all with some of the earlier comments. I have been a long time basher of the absolute Bitcoin propaganda machine that comes out and beats us over the head with all of this nonsense every time something good or bad happens with Bitcoin. It doesn't matter. The propaganda machine starts cranking out all these blog posts and coin desk kicks into overdrive and everything starts going and the drum beat goes. I'm just like, I'm getting the headache. Some of the, I think, I'm all about regulation these days. And I am a strong, of the strong opinion that people don't want regulation in the space because they're going to have to shut up. And then they're going to have to be held responsible for the things that they say in regard to the actual use cases, in regard to the technology, in regard to the actual market prices that these coins, that these currencies will generate. You know, John Matonis, there was this big thing recently about the Bitcoin being shorted in the markets and the price going down and everybody went, oh, you know, traders are destroying our coin price. And John Matonis, a very visible, very public figure for the Bitcoin foundation, comes out and says, Bitcoin, not good for trading. It's too illiquid. Don't do it. 24 hours later, Wedgbush Securities releases a report that says the number one very first killer app for Bitcoin is trading. What? You know, that kind of app and Wedgbush is a member of the Bitcoin foundation. So on one hand, we have members of the board saying Bitcoin is no good for trading. Please don't do it because you're destroying the market price. And then we have actual people who are financiers, who are institutional investors in securities, saying that the first killer app with Bitcoin is trading. This sort of mixing of the message definitely a result of the distributed autonomous corporation aspect of Bitcoin. However, you know, there's so much hype that goes on and I have a real problem with, you know, the PT Barnum sort of methodology that goes along with trying to get more suckers involved in Bitcoin because in the long term, everything will be forgiven because we're going to change the world, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I take great issue with that. So you're trying to really against this end justifies the means thing and I agree with that. But when you say regulation, do you mean regulation in that people can say whatever they want about Bitcoin right now because it's not a group or individual that can sue for libel or slander or what do you mean more when you say regulation because that's such a dirty word sometimes in the space I want to get in the up straight up. I'm, you know, you see the car on CEO of blockchain financial. All I do all day long is trade coins, make coins, come up with new ways to trade coins and create new financial tools. So when I, and I have a very active Twitter feed with all kinds of people on media, traders, all kinds of stuff. So when I say something about a coin, the price moves. People make a decision on whether or not to invest in that coin or not based upon the things that I said. So I have to be very careful because it's a not trade against my own discussions because someday the SEC is going to come and ask me, well, you said this in public and then you made this trade on this exchange over here and profit at $50,000 from your own words. I mean, Carl, I can just have to pay a massive amount of fines for doing exactly the same thing. He pumped his own stocks and then dumped them at the high. So you would say that the statement that reputation systems coming back as a result of this decentralized technology will not be enough to push people like that out of the space and we want to see regulation, preferably healthy regulation that stops people from being hypocritical in their own statements to try to make money off of swings. Based upon the actual disbursement rate of the coins held in the top 100's wallets of Bitcoin, it would take about 20 to 30 years for Bitcoin whales to no longer be an issue. I mean, let's just stop and consider that for a moment that all of these coins are held in a very centralized group of people who have all joined the Bitcoin Foundation. So now they have this enormous propaganda organ by which they can present their own message to support their own investment while still being able to claim that it's decentralized and it's everybody just so you know, but you come on. There are billions of dollars at stake. I don't quite as anybody. I'm sorry. Why does it matter who holds the coins? Oh, in my opinion, it doesn't. I mean, I'm an altcoin guy. If I don't like what Bitcoin's doing, I'll go make another network and we can compete. When it comes to the message that's being presented, that it leads to decentralization and this, that and the other thing, well, decentralization is only up until a certain point until you start to dig down to the details of it and then centralization simply starts to take on other forms. And the decentralization in Bitcoin is in the blockchain technology and in the open source nature of the source code, not in the actual network itself. Yeah, we're talking about the double-beet decentralization, not lower-case. But decentralization here, I think that was what Christophe with meaning was, well, you know, the Bitcoin unit of account centralization has nothing to do with the network centralization. Is that what you meant, Christophe? Well, my argument is in the longer chain of analysis, I don't think it matters. You know, if we're talking about a group of centralized individuals, a group of individuals who are able to control the price of a major liquid asset on global markets, what's the difference? The difference is simply government backing or it's a collusion of a cartel. But you know, six, and I said this recently in another interview, let's not replace the old assholes with new ones. Good quote. And I think we're moving on. Issue four, Chamber of Digital Commerce receives donation from Overstock. The CDC, no, not the Center for Disease Control, which is currently on the front pages every day fighting a possible Ebola outbreak. But the other CDC, the Center for Digital Commerce, made big news this week, collecting the first donation from Overstocks, promote the future adoption of Digital Currency Fund. The CDC, famously run by DCI Perianne Boring, has the goal of promoting Bitcoin and Washington DC, i.e. to promote Bitcoin to regulators. Is this really the best way to spend Overstocks money? Megan Lawrence. No, because while I'm sure the intentions are pure with the CDC, I don't think they've been around a long enough for us to see the results of their activism and educating regulators and all of that. I definitely get the goals of the group. I don't necessarily agree with everything. But I don't think this is the best source to really be donating to, because they just haven't really been around a long enough. They haven't proven that they've been able to stave off any of these really, really bad regulations that have been proposed. I think they need more time to prove themselves in the space. I think it's a little early to judge the outcome of their actions. I mean, I'm not necessarily the biggest fan of supporting anything that has to do with reaching regulators or any kind of a DC-based group. I don't find the closeness to that space to be a little bit concerning. Like I said, I'm sure they have the best of intentions. I was talking to regulators, but I just don't trust that they're going to be able to do that. I'm worried about the regulators not being educated enough so that they can properly regulate us. That's just not a concern for me. I want to see other people educated about it who aren't regulators. I don't care about getting Bitcoin in the hands of politicians and regulators. Those are the last people I want to use Bitcoin or even be involved in it at all. But that's my personal view. I do wish them the best of luck in saving off these regulations. But yeah, I don't know that it's the best choice for a stock. We'll see. Kristoff, Atlas. Now, I have to say I'm pretty disappointed with overstock on this. I don't even care about the track record of these particular lobbyists and that's what they are. They're lobbyists. They're not educators. I think this whole argument that they're going to educate regulators and legislators and so forth is pretty disingenuous. Maybe that's a good tactical move on their parts to lie about what their intentions are. I don't know. But it's pretty disingenuous. The idea that somehow the dollar in Bitcoin are going to happily coexist and that these regulations that are coming along the opposition of the state to Bitcoin is just a simple misunderstanding. They just don't understand the technology. They're just also new for them. Their a bunch of hapless, innocent children is completely farcical. That's a crazy view of the world. The people who are opposing Bitcoin now, they understand the technology just fine. What they understand fundamentally about it is that it is eating away at the institution that gives them power. They've put all of their resources, all their life's work into that they hope to preserve in the future for the legacy of their evil little children that they're raising. That's what they need to understand about Bitcoin. They don't need to know about the blob of blockchain works or any of this other stuff. I think it's money wasted. I think the regulators are not people who we try to educate or who you try to negotiate with. I try to design around them. I try to route around them. I think this is how the internet in general deals with censorship is that it routes around it. Bitcoin is the internet of money. I think that's exactly how we should be trying to deal with the situation rather than spending precious dollars, talking and interacting with regulators and legislators. Blake Anderson. Well, I want to try to see positivity here. Nobody is a fan of people that are trying to take over other people's lives and do things that are well beyond the bounds of what people should be doing. But I think that I actually agree with overstock with Patrick giving these people money because hopefully where that money will go is to help for plane tickets and hotel stays for people that go to DC and talk to various different people that are in charge, not for them to understand the technology behind Bitcoin because if the risk of sounding offensive, they're not going to really get it. But hopefully at a macro level Satoshi figured out how to do something amazing. He wrote this software that interfaces with computers and networking and it also interfaces with humanity and culture. It works basically just as well with one as it does the other. If we can go and get these politicians to own Bitcoin themselves and then they have a festive interest materially in the technology, what that can do in the best case scenario is make it so that when these really untenable larger regulations come up, they will get a lack of support on an individual level from everybody else below it. So Bitcoin is very, very, very sneaky in that regard and that it can undermine collective decisions with individual motivations. If we can go and get people on capital to actually own Bitcoin, they will have a very, very solid disinterest in doing really, really stupid things to harm the network. So hopefully the money will go to this infant organization and they will spend it well and hopefully they'll spend it on getting people that really, really are good at either giving Bitcoin to these people or getting them materially invested and then hopefully they will want their investment in Bitcoin to go up and they won't regulate it like clowns. Blake, as a project manager, would you, if someone came to you and they're like, I want a big bucket of money and I'm never going to be able to tell you what the effects of my actions are. I'm never going to be able to demonstrate any kind of positive consequences of my actions. They're all going to be immaterial but I have guaranteed you that it's going to have some intangible positive effect. But would you say to them as a project manager? Well, I mean, I would look at how much money it is. I think it's about 12,000 if we had to guess about how much they're getting and that's not a ton of money for the amount that's over so that it's getting in but you're right. In a situation that you told me, I'd be like, absolutely not, let's get a project baseline and have a report that you're going to bring back and let's make sure that you're not, you know, going out to the strip clubs and blowing money and or using the money, worst case scenario to go talk to a politician about how to regulate this the best and how to make it so that your constituents or whatever feel like you were the one that came up and made the rule that killed Bitcoin. So I think that there are definitely dangers but I think that the silver lining would hopefully be in the vein of kind of what I talked about. Remember that one of the beautiful things about lobbying is that like advertising, you don't have to show any results. You put the message out there like maybe for all we know they're working on a special version of Sesame Street just for the congressmen to teach them about Bitcoin because you know Muppets work. And if that's successful, that's successful, if it's not successful, they got paid anyway, good deal. Bryce Weiner, your thoughts. Well, I'm a little bit kind of the odd man out here. I'm a business guy and I'm coming at it from the perspective of perhaps what overstock was coming at it. I met Perian in Carolina at Kryptolina and she and I sat down and discussed her plans for the CDC and I got to say that we're considering joining. As a business in the space that is quite frankly made a statement of taking on regulators and pushing the envelope as far as regulation occurs, you know, being part of a lobbying organization in DC is only in our own self interest. And I think that overstock electing to join the CDC as opposed to the Bitcoin foundation is a definite vote towards that move that businesses now want to take over this conversation. So and I'm obviously an anarcho capitalist on making Bitcoin marketplaces for profit. So this is not like we're going to turn into Morgan Stanley. But by the same token, we still have to make money and we still have to be productive. And the one thing that government does and what lobbying does and what regulation does and I feel it is something that is needed in the space is consumer protections to create well lit paths through the industry so we can keep it relatively unregulated. So we can still accept the fact that any 19 year old with a computer science, you know, with a background in computer science can fire up a million dollar network that you're not going to be able to regulate it that way. However, if you create the well lit paths for mom and pop who right now quite frankly don't care how their money works now, they're not going to care how their money works if they're using Bitcoin. So by creating these well lit paths, you have the option to say these are trusted vendors, these are trusted networks. These are trusted ways of doing business. You can also do it fast and loose if you want to. But you're going to take your chances, you're going to have a higher risk and potentially a higher reward as well. So when I want to make it clear that when I talk about regulation and lobbying, it's towards that aspect. I do not feel that this should be regulated into oblivion like some other, you know, emerging things have done not by any case of the imagination. It will just can't. It's impossible to regulate open source technology. All you can do is give things you're blessing that this is something that looks relatively safe to use. And I think that's all the people are really looking for in the end anyway. That's a good point, Bryce, that overstock chose to donate to the CDC, not to the Bitcoin Foundation. I think that's a significant point. Also when you join, I hope they give you some swag that says CDC on it, maybe a coffee mug or a bright yellow hazmat suit, something like that. I think their logo is something like an evolved Ebola virus. It's very timely, very timely. Victoria, your thoughts. What's interesting, when I, in April of this year, I was called into the Senate in Canada similar to what you have in the States with my business partner at the time. And I was not a libertarian at the time. I was kind of like not even knowing what libertarian was or is at that time. I was liberal. Now I'm more towards libertarian stance, but that's only because I've done a lot of research on Bitcoin and learned that it is political. But at the time, I was like, oh, yeah, we can go into the Senate. We can teach these guys all about it because they need to know and they're interested. And I don't think we should be hating on Perian for doing this. Did you guys see her on Max Kaiser? I'm not sure. I think he was a little harsh on her for being like, so you think you're going to go in and talk to these senators or these congressmen? What are you hoping to achieve with this? And it was a little harsh. I think her, she does mean well. And I think a lot of people in the space that are coming into the space aren't libertarian. Like we're seeing a lot of Wall Street people recovering bankers, right? Who would fund something like this? Because regulation will happen and they'd love to get lobbyists going into the government to get regulation the way they want it and the way that would profit them. So it's going to happen. Perian is capitalizing on an opportunity that is a gap that I think was there. I was surprised it took this long. There was nothing going on in Canada or in the States until now. Bitcoin strategy group was originally supposed to be a lobbyist group. And then I started learning more and more about Bitcoin. And I was just like, how are we going to change these people into libertarians? It's not going to happen. So it's a difficult topic for me because I don't think I'm as libertarian or anorec capitalist or anorec or libertarian. I don't even know if I'm using the right words. As you guys are, I think that you're in a different realm. And I'm kind of plotting over and learning more and more to join you. But I think a lot of people who are coming in aren't in that realm. So it's, it'll be interesting to see what happens. Is it a good use of money, the donation? Patrick Burns money and gets to pick where it goes. If he sees as a wise investment, then he sees as a wise investment. I haven't met Perian, but she's definitely motivated. She knows both Bitcoin and if she sees an opportunity to help. I got asked to go back and descend it. I'm going back in. So I don't want to be hated on by the community. I'd like to hear what the community thinks I could say. But that's my, my stance on it. I think any effort to help is good. But I can see why people in the community would say, you know, you're negotiating with terrorists. We don't do that. It's a very hard line approach to it. I tend to be more of like the middle side saying, well, maybe I can go in and teach these guys some stuff, kind of like Perian. So I hope you guys don't hate me now. I think it's very clear we're dividing into two camps. One camp says we should take away all their toys. The other camp says we should negotiate with them while we take away all their toys. Either way, we're taking away all their toys. It's not going to change the technologies there. So if I can go back to what Bryce was saying, it's like this is, it's not going to change anything. They will regulate the way me going in or Perian going in and talking to these people is not going to change a thing at all. Like, they're going to regulate this the way that I think we all know they're going to regulate it. The technology will exist. And if anything, it'll just spur on more innovation in spite of what's going to come about. So I don't think it's going to have an impact. I mean, I really don't. I think in Canada's, when we go back in, we're going to say, you know, it's going to happen. It's happening Finland, I think, made it legal. So you guys can either fall behind or, you know, stay advanced. But anyway, I'm now printing. Sorry. A lot of people thought we should have worn the dinosaurs about that asteroid, but it worked out the same way. Christoff, did you add something to say? No. Alright, exit question. If you were overstock.com, who would you donate your money to? Megan Lords. As one of those people who has said, I don't negotiate with terrorists in regard to the regulators and the politicians. I have a whole list. I like have a whole list of places that I would donate to. And I do want to make it clear. I have the utmost respect for Patrick. You know, I consider his work to be very influential and very great. And I, you know, it is his money. Ultimately, it's up to him. But anti-war.com is very close, but falling short of getting their, their Bitcoin donations matched by Roger Bear. It desperately needs your help. And they have a track record of over 10 years, like 15 years now, I believe, of doing the hardest reporting on foreign policy and all of the over and covert wars around the entire world. And they're struggling right now and they really need your help. So at the top of my list, and usually always at the top of my list is anti-war.com because of the hard work that they've already put in and the little recognition and help that they seem to get sometimes. I mean, knowing that these things are very crucial, it's very crucial as far as changing people's minds about the political system too. I get into anti-war activism when I was in the left, you know, when I was a very hardcore specialist, but that's something that has always stayed with me. And I think it helped push me more towards libertarianism. And you know, it's definitely changed my view on how I view the people in government. Because at the end of the day, we can use euphemisms for it, but they're still in our money and killing people with it. And if you want to support something that's completely opposed to that, the complete opposite vein of that, anti-war.com is a place to it. Their fundraiser is still going. You can still donate and Roger Verne is going to match those donations. And also there are a bunch of Bitcoin charities too. Bitcoin. Not bombs is about to do their hoody. The homeless project for the winter. Sean's outpost is feed homeless people every single day with Bitcoin. Free eight has fed hundreds of people in the Philippines. They also have a long track record of helping people. I'd say look into some of these charities who have the work already that they've already put in to helping people and have shown the results of that work too. So those are my thoughts on it. Check out anti-war.com. And full disclosure, while I do work for Bitcoin.bombs, I have never been paid by anti-war.com. I am just a huge supporter of what they do and I really believe in what they do. Kristoff atlas. Yeah, look, so like I said, you route around the politicians and the regulators and you do that with software development. So I'll be putting those funds into the development of decentralized marketplaces, decentralized exchanges are still very much needed in the cryptocurrency space. There aren't any that have risen to the top to really, you know, rid us of these gocks like exchanges that are still unfortunately linger around. I'll be working on funding, voting pools for exchanges and similar types of organizations. I'd be working on cryptographic proof of reserves. All the kind of the ecosystem stuff that we need that's not quite there yet because there may not be like, so I was asking a while ago to people, you know, like, why do you think you we don't have any great decentralized exchanges yet that are just, you know, that just that work for people and someone pointed out like, look, yeah, if you create a decentralized exchange, there's no clear way for you to make money off of it. It's not like a centralized exchange where you get to collect the fees that it's decentralized. There's no guide that gets to collect the fees. And so there's no clear profit motive behind creating these kinds of exchanges. So I'd be funding projects like that that we need or improving Bitcoin privacy or the privacy of people involved in these marketplaces. I think those would all be things that would hugely benefit the utility of Bitcoin and that would actually get something useful done. That's a good point, Christoph, because unlike lobbying or advertising with software companies, you actually get to keep the software after, especially if it's open source. Blake, your thoughts. Well, I think that Patrick has been really good at trying to identify what are the weakest points of where Bitcoin connects to legacy systems and how to strengthen those. And I think that some of the biggest hurdles that can be helped are to try to kind of reinvent securities and equities and things that you use Bitcoin to point out technology. I believe that Robert Dermody of Counter-Party is working with Overstock at this point to try to figure out how to issue cryptographic securities, how to basically reinvent the stock market because the stock market is totally broken. I don't think that we're going to do it first in the United States because regulations and interacting with the SEC would be a nightmare. But if we can get a system whereby other companies and other countries that are more liberal with their regulations could then end up issuing a crypto security, which would then be able to move us over into making DAX and DAOs decentralized autonomous corporations and organizations that then really cannot be shut down and that really will bring us into a future where trust is not as big of a deal where we can expand the trustless system of Bitcoin into other areas and really, really bring the future on with full force. I actually can't think of a better way for Patrick to donate his money aside from my guess. I think a good step maybe even before that would be to help maybe set up a Bitcoin exchange somewhere that is not having thin order books, meaning basically that the owners are trading a lot with bots and then people come in and then trades are suspended and then people look at arbitrage advantages and things like that that can be done. And then their trades that are coming in from actual consumers are either put off or never go through. I think that helping to fix that would allow hedge funds dump into Bitcoin without violating their security policies with moving large amounts of money. And I think that that is probably the next thing that needs to happen to engender another big Bitcoin deflationary spiral to push the price up to 10,000 and beyond and things like that. I'll be woke up at the end where he said 10,000 or beyond what? Price winner. Go ahead. Oh Blake, I'm going to make you very happy man. I might as well just go ahead and say I'm actually going to be the first federally regulated all-coring developer. This is voluntary. I will be taking my series 65 exam and submitting myself to Finra regulations and we'll be developing actual asset back networks that fall completely within US regulatory compliance both with the SEC and Finra and Finza. We've been working on these legal, we've been working on the legal of it all summer. In fact, my Finra registration is currently in process paid all the fees and the paperwork and I'm going to take the test in a couple weeks. This is exact. These are the kinds of tools and I've said this for a long time and we've developed these. We've got actually three different kinds. We're calling them ABNs, asset back networks. We've got three different kinds of ABNs that we've developed with institutional traders from well all up and down the spectrum you know from JP Morgan on down to you know regular investment advisors and we've gotten a lot of feedback on it and we're going to start to offer these sorts of tools that are blockchain based. I don't like Bitcoin 2.0 because this is not Bitcoin. This is the blockchain and the using Bitcoin for these sorts of assets really the problem because it is used as a currency. If in the example I like to use is if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck it's a duck and you can't use a currency as an asset back network and vice versa. You can do both of those things with a blockchain. When it comes to overstock and where he's putting his money and why to me I'm all for it because he's just you know when it comes to the SEC is going to come knock on my door and they're going to come and run all sorts of of justifications as to are we in fact doing this legally how is this not a hedge fund how is it like a hedge fund you know how is this not a security and we have to be able to present all of those and you know express a cogent argument. So when it comes to spending money in the direction of regulation or an education for governments I'm all for it. I think that's great. I think there should be more of it. I think things like world crypto network should be getting more money from people like overstock because they serve as a valid counterbalance to one number one the absolute vacuum of financial reporting on this eight billion dollars in the cryptocurrency industry and nobody reports on it. What the you know what the fuck. So you know things like world crypto network there and my Twitter feed and IRC channels this is all there is. So if the mainstream media wants to get involved in this and still remain relevant as we're building this entirely new underground financial infrastructure that's decentralized and spans the globe they should probably wise up and start paying attention with people like you. See and that's why I asked that exit question for a good answer like that. Victoria your thoughts. Yeah I agree I mean I would love to see more people using it. My friends and my family don't use it and are terrified of it because of what they hear and as I said earlier I learned about it through a Facebook post on so road and if I hadn't have dug a little bit deeper or gone to the North American Bitcoin conference and my I mean I wouldn't be here right now but most people don't take the time to dig. They don't have the time they don't want to come home and research things they don't know or scared of and people don't talk about money already so I would like to see money put towards more education or merchant acceptance you know if I had everyone in Ottawa accepting Bitcoin then people would say oh I should use Bitcoin or what is Bitcoin you know so I would love the money to go to something like that more education whether it's you know channels like this or I don't know something where you know people can learn more about it and learn it in a comprehensive way not just the small bead that we always hear about in the news but you know the big B which is the most valuable part of Bitcoin so specific organization I don't have one off top of my head but something like what you and press are doing I think is fantastic what like MK is being Megan I mean like that would be great to put money towards too it's just about getting the people who are not big winters in to watch these shows they don't even know about this right so maybe some more promotion on their channels is it good they'd use the money? Not quite sure and like Bryce said this is a worldwide phenomenon people from all over the world are watching these shows getting involved with the world crypto network making their own shows doing their own Twitter accounts and no one needs to give them permission to do any of that everyone has the permission right now I give you the permission I don't have the right to give it to you but you know you have it anyway it's the the tin man it was with you all along you know the scarecrow so but yeah I would like to see the money go to something like that the world crypto network is available we are doing new shows every day and we're trying to decentralize the blockchain by spreading it around we've given a I know Chris announced this last week on our town hall meeting but the first copy of the blockchain has been sent out to Ghana and what we talked about with this sending out the blockchain is that it's very difficult for countries like this to download the entire blockchain so if we send a copy in on usb stick they can take all day to update the new transactions and they can do that each day as soon as they have the copy from this usb stick and we can send it around we can put around the country and pretty soon they'll have a whole bunch of copies of the blockchain there and they can do business and I don't know if anyone else is doing this if they'd like to join us or have similar initiatives we'd welcome them aboard and all of our stuff is pretty much open we're on the reddit we have open meetings on the google hangouts and we're going to do this thing so overstock and other should consider helping us out because funding is tight but first some housekeeping the Bitcoin group would like to send its congratulations to frequent panelists on the show and Dreyis and to Nopolis who has just been promoted at blockchain.info from chief security officer to board member the word on the street is that the CSO values Antonopolis as advice and wants to keep him close to the top of the stack we if the group feel exactly the same way and send our congratulations to Mr. Antonopolis keep up the great work we'd also like to say a sad goodbye to Joan Rivers a first class comedian who would say anything to get a laugh Joan Rivers 1933 to 2014 wow that's a long time and now moving on to your questions and our answers our first question let's see Chris Ellis says hello friends sorry I can't be with you today but I'm there in spirit rock on he also says that to Chris off about the altcoins and the lightcoins he says people get it emotionally attached to their altcoin at first lightcoin wasn't innovative but the industry moves so fast to stay relevant ultimately currency choice is good but ultimately currency currency choice is good and money needs to be safe not innovative so I kind of agree with you on the lightcoin I think James asks and this is probably for Bryce he says can block tech become too much danger of holding too much power in alts or would you see it as bitcoin versus alts Bryce I don't really see it that way I look at it as blockchain technology and when we look at blockchain technology Bitcoin is the proof of concept of that you know the I say often that the primary use case of Bitcoin is to change the world it's not necessarily to be used as a currency and that changing the world is a large part of you know altcoins obviously and wherever bitcoin goes we're going to follow in right behind them and the more the people that people learn about bitcoin the more that businesses will be able to employ blockchain technologies that are significant cost savings over the type of technologies they're currently using you know if you want to talk about simply accounting packages that no longer have to have secured servers because now they work on their own secured networks with this publicly available triple entry accounting system you could start to see how multinationals could save millions of dollars a day by changing to a blockchain to to support their infrastructure I really don't see if there's a competition at all all right and we're a little low on questions today so we're going to go ahead to predictions or a story of the week so if you don't have a prediction you can go with a story of the week Blake Anderson are you ready with a prediction or a story of the week I guess it's almost kind of in the same vein that I was talking about before about the interest that I have in companies like counterparty teaming up with people that have a lot of influence over stock and trying to reinvent the stock market trying to actually really really get a good framework laid out that may or may not take hold right away but as stuff starts to collapse and as the instability starts to fall into the net to what exists I think it would be great to have something there instead of just a pervasive starvation of a billion people that's not something that anybody wants to see or look forward to so I think that's a really good project even if people are like well how are they going to make money right away or where's the instant turnaround and value since overstock themselves probably isn't going to issue a crypto security anytime soon because the SEC will price squash that I think it's nice for people to be working on stuff that's going to collapse that's going to protect the collapsing system and like even like a long time ago we've kind of covered this but Bitcoin people are like well what's the value proposition what's the value of Bitcoin I don't care about the network or anything like that well if you compare it to the US dollar which is one of the most popular currencies in history what do we have like a 116 trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities and debt and things like that so let's just say Bitcoin is worth zero and the dollars worth negative 116 trillion that's a 116 trillion dollar value difference for Bitcoin so I think that the ability a bit to catch the collapsing pieces of a dying empire is really important to consider and to try to really grow the circle of trufflessness as far as we possibly can before you know stuff really starts to hit the fans so I'm excited about that looks like we have a couple more questions we're going to go and pull these up Joe Rockhead says that he guesses not everyone on the panel feels that government and Bitcoin do not mix I think we've had some nice diversity of opinions today it's been good spread it out a little we also have Jay Cyborzki asks did anyone have any thoughts on Russia being banned from Swift sorry if you discussed it I'm not sure what Swift is are you guys into Swift this in new news to me Swift is the is a means of sending money overseas and cutting Russia out of the Swift network essentially means that Russia nationals living and working overseas can't send money home international corporations looking to do businesses with individuals and corporations inside of Russia can't interact business and everyone said oh this could be really good for Bitcoin except the price of Bitcoin did nothing on this announcement because nobody really cares about I mean and I hate to say this but nobody cares the whole Swift announcement had absolutely no impact on Bitcoin whatsoever not in price or even in the discussions that we're going on or that I'm aware of it's been going on as far as ongoing implementation efforts that it's it's just political posturing and the the infrastructure of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are not up to the point to where when something like this happens we can simply step in and and be a viable alternative we're just not there yet the Russian situation does seem to be continuously deteriorating perhaps we should have one of those Olympics things that really seem to cheer everybody up brought us all together right we've got a couple more questions here we go Jay Cyboroski says there's a rumor that the UK was going to lobby the EU to ban transfers would they use Bitcoin was this rumor from Russian TV news thoughts I think that's about the same story the Swift story might just be a continuation we've also got Chris Ellis likes Blake's point about the dollar being a debt-based currency and Bitcoin being a full reserve asset so I think you would agree that Bitcoin is at zero whereas the dollar is at minus whatever we owe on the dollar still Hey Blake I got a question for you absolutely my friend and go for it if I go out and buy mortgage-back securities or CDOs and then use that as a backing asset for a network is that a debt debt crypto crypto well it's hard to know right now because there's so many toxic assets that are floating around what we tried to do with the 2008 crisis was use all of property and stuff to be a barrier between you know default on our currency and we ended up destroying all property in that process so I don't know it's really hard to discover what properties worth right now and I mean is it an accountant is it an asset is that I mean where's the equity in it is it I mean I guess I'm talking about the CDOs themselves I mean after all those questions have been answered you know I think Deutsche Bank just bundled up one billion dollars worth of this toxic crap and offered it for sale on the open market for people to short each other and it would live in on it you know I am really curious about starting a debt-backed cryptocurrency where we actually go and buy consumer debt and that is the asset backing Bitcoin well I mean as long as we have a clean title and we have a really really good ledger like Paul Snow is talking about his projects to take it to take various different things and package them in a way so that there's transparency every single time they change hands otherwise you end up getting things like oh look at these robust sign mortgages and these bundled mortgages where there's only eight instead of ten and we're going to go back and fill them out later and then that never happens and then what can happen is somebody that's paid every single payment on their mortgage ends up getting their house foreclosed on and if you could make a system where that can't happen or doesn't happen or that's auditable I think that would be a fantastic thing to do we should talk sometime good moving on to some more questions we've got a comment from Joe Raquette he says thanks to mk and bitcoin not bombs his daughter and him love the bitcoin rebel shirts they arrived on time and they're awesome it's his first purchase with bitcoin and it couldn't have been more easy and secure so get your bitcoin rebel shirts at bitcoins.bombs.com thank you that's awesome boss I got a couple more questions Thomas hunt you've done frozen up we don't know what you're saying oh it my hard drives running any for any word on Carl Gray starting his own crypto hedge fund I haven't heard of this and yes they they they are possible they are going to exist the largest issue with crypto hedge funds is the legal structure of the corporations that are custodians of the assets but once you solve those problems hedge funds are a no-brainer yeah Carl Gray is a great guy I sat next to him during the premiere of the rise and rise of bitcoin and I had been drinking and so I was like crying the whole time and he kept looking over me like what is wrong dude can you find another seat but he's a really nice guy so of course he didn't say anything he's like trying trying to pat me on the back because I'm like snotting and stuff so that's my story about Carl he's awesome I hope he does start one because if there's anybody that's a good guy that would you know that would try to do it right at the end the only movies that make play cry are the rise and rise of bitcoin and the sand lot we've got another question from Chris Ellis he says a property is a depreciating capital asset save for centralized manipulation it should cost about two to three years of skilled labor so I think he's arguing against the mortgage system again so and we've got a question from Brady McKenna who writes Bryce do you see a decentralized stock exchange developing outside the influence of derivative manipulations and over leveraged dangers or a market that could be non-debt based without the paper movements that dilute the natural price discovery okay so after I've been on this whole kick about asset back networks and avns now I can talk about the fact that we just hired David Zimbak who is the lead developer of Bit Halo Black Halo who is also the lead developer of nitritor which is a distributed exchange for blockchain currency blockchain based currencies so the answer is yeah we're probably about a year away or less very exciting moving back to predictions or story of the week Bryce do you have a prediction or a story of the week story of the week is we yeah we actually have our very first major NGO that has decided to adopt the use of cryptocurrency for fundraising the nature conservancy nature.org block tech is proud to be partnering with them to launch an enormous fundraising campaign with their own coin their own blockchain they're going to have a complete merchant ecosystem and for it we're going to make the total coin total for the network it will be one billion proof of work coins and for every single coin that is minted on the network the nature conservancy will plant one tree so this this is a truly fantastic application of blockchain technologies and literally that we sealed that deal maybe about two hours before this call so I'm really excited about about being able to use this to actually do something really good for change. Very cool great announcement Victoria had to leave but Megan Lordes is here with a prediction or a story of the week. So I don't have a prediction um well I don't know if I really have a story of the week either but I do want to let people know about my show on Wednesday is called crypto combos I'm going to be having a really cool test this next Wednesday named Andrea Castillo and she writes some really awesome articles about Bitcoin from a very you know grounded perspective and I think she's I think it's going to be a very interesting discussion and so I just want to invite people to come watch that I allow the audience to ask questions and interact and uh and it's also going to be available on the world crypto network on the following day two if you do miss the live version so I definitely come check it out uh hang out with us uh ask questions I think it'll be really interesting. Christ off Atlas. So my story of the week is a late breaking story so this is about Ross Ulberg's case uh little while ago Ross Ulberg's defense filed a motion basically a motion to dismiss several of the charges saying that they suspected that the fourth amendment was violated in the accumulation of evidence there's been a lot of suspicion that the NSA was involved in locating the actual Silk Road servers that led to them identifying Ross as a person of interest and what the the prosecution has responded back is as they said they exploited a pretty simple vulnerability or a mis-configuration that gave up the IP address because it wasn't properly configured to go through tour for part of the login page. Now the problem with this of course is that uh basically at this point anything of the prosecution in the United States says especially if it's computer evidence it's completely suspect we can't believe it anymore because they have developed this habit of parallel construction which means they can get a tip from the NSA and then they can uh locate the you know the person that they want to go after and then they come up with some other plausible uh explanation for how they located the individual and they present that in court instead and they don't mention anything about the NSA if they're asked about the NSA if they say no we've never talked to you on the say I NSA who I don't even know anyone at the NSA I we have you know NSA had nothing to do with it so they can lie through their teeth and they've been found to be doing this in the past and come up with alternative explanations because they're not the ones that are on the stand they they that's not considered to be perjury as long as they come up with another plausible explanation that could have led them to to uh finding this individual so essentially Ross is I think he's in a bad spot because he's going up against the government that has targeted him you know the eye of Soron is gazing upon him with its fiery gaze and uh there's no justice in this situation the justice system in the United States is tenuous in any circumstance and when the the government wants to go after you because you are challenging their most cherished institution which is their central banking institution uh then they care even less about the rules they will come up with any vague technicality any little scrap of paper that's been written in some uh distant part of the legal code and they will come after you with everything they can that don't care money is no object you know is no question for them because they can always print more money to continue the prosecution and uh I think he's in a very bad spot so even though his lawyer keeps coming up with these clever legal defenses for for uh Ross it's not looking good the judge has already shown himself to be biased in this case uh writing uh findings that uh clearly sided with the the the prosecution accepting their arguments before the cases even didn't heard and uh it's it's a really tough spot and it's embarrassing frankly as someone that would be considered an American citizen that uh any of the people around you would consider this to be a semblance of justice it's really quite a shame it's uh it's a mob it's a mob lynching of this poor young man uh absolutely and if I could just jump in for a second it's uh we are a self-proclaimed constitutional republic the constitution is supposed to be the law of the land and when you have incontrovertible repeat violations of the fourth amendment used to go through and explore what somebody's done wrong that is something that everybody should be furious about it's not just like oh this is a semantic technicality that you've tried to weasel you way through to get around the law this is a constitutional decree upon which our country is supposed to be based so if they prosecute him and prison and put him in prison for this I mean it will be just another um trampling of the constitution but this is something that should be absolutely terrifying for everyone if they start to violate the fourth amendment and come through and put people in prison for political crimes that I mean that's not just like the beginning of tyranny that's full blown hardcore horrific tyranny and you know and it's not even a violation of the fourth amendment it is using and alleged uh you know that it's using as an excuse in order to not have to reveal that these abuses have taken place to begin with I mean it's just it's it's heresy compounded on top of abomination it's it's ridiculous it's a mockery of a sham and a sham of a mockery it's a sham mockery all right well I didn't write a prediction but I was going to wing this one prediction in the future there will be more celebrity deaths this is because there's more celebrities this is not to take anything away from Joan or Betty White who is also very funny or Robin Williams but if you really think about it 10 years from now 20 years from now we're going to be celebrating or whatever we do around celebrity deaths we're going to be appreciating reality stars we're going to be appreciating sitcom stars we're going to be appreciating the cast of Save By The Bell who just had their very first unauthorized TV movie so that's the level we're going to things are expanding we're not going to be able to take days off at a time to celebrate Joan Rivers Betty White or Robin Williams in the future because there's just going to be too many of them we're going to have to have special shows dedicated to nothing but celebrity and by I mean reality stars celebrity death readings etc so watch out for that because it's coming oh we're out of time until next time bye bye