The Bitcoin Group, the American Original, for over the last ten seconds, the sharpest sitoshis, the best Bitcoin, the hardest cryptocurrency talk. We'd like to welcome our panelists, Theo Goodman from Transmission Rocks. Good evening. Will Pangman from Topeka? Howdy! And I'm Thomas Hunt from the World Crypto Network. Moving on to issue one. Issue one. The recent Bitcoin bump is not from Greece. The Greek crisis continued this week with the country defaulting on their IMF loans, banks, freezing accounts, leading to long lines at the ATMs where the fortunate received 60 euros and the unfortunate received nothing. Many Bitcoiners have tried to turn this tragedy into their opportunity, but the facts on the ground persist. The Greeks have no native Bitcoin exchanges, no native Bitcoin industry, and if you add 60 euros to your name, I bet you'd spend it on food, not some obscure internet currency. However, perhaps the Bitcoin fire has spread to the rest of Europe and the world due to fear of bailouts. Theo Goodman, your thoughts on the Greek situation? I don't think it matters if people in Greece are buying Bitcoin or not. It's still because of what's going on in Greece itself. So even though there's not a large demand for Bitcoin in Greece, it doesn't matter. Price is about perception. And the perception is that you can use Bitcoin to avoid capital controls. And that's correct. That's an important utility of Bitcoin. And this is the second time in recent history that a country in the European Union has had really strict capital controls where a similar situation in Cyprus in the Bitcoin price also went up. So you see that a lot of times what if gold goes up in price? Does that mean a lot of people in the crisis area are buying gold? Probably not. But the perception is that's a good thing to have because of X because it has a certain utility or it's a safe place to put your funds, to avoid risk, to hedge your risk, etc. And definitely the other countries in Europe, people are definitely taking a more of a look at Bitcoin because of this. Because everybody knows what's going on, what's around the corner, and what's possible with these capital controls, not to speak of a possible haircut of all bank accounts. Good point. Will Pagman. Yeah, I agree. I don't think the volume increases that we've seen in Euro trading with Bitcoin or just Bitcoin in the last several weeks is, you know, local Bitcoins has had record volume week on week for several weeks, I think. Now, that's not coming from Greece. That's coming from everyone who is looking at Greece and preparing themselves to, you know, be able to mitigate a similar situation in their home land or country. So again, that is Bitcoin's value proposition as the O said. So I don't know. I mean, I haven't seen, I know what people are saying. Like, there's lots of mainstream economists or pundits out there deriding Bitcoiners on Twitter and other social forums for the Shadenfreude or whatever. But was Satoshi using Shadenfreude when he put the message and the Genesis block that he did? You know, is he dancing on some grave there with, you know, I mean, I didn't see any damage joy, which is kind of the translation of Shadenfreude. I didn't see that. I saw PSAs. I saw people trying to spread awareness. I saw people pointing out to prominent spokesperson people or thought leaders or economists or political pundits around the world who have derided Bitcoin or claimed it has no use cases or whatever, going back to those people and showing them that, yes, indeed, Bitcoin is a powerful tool, especially for anyone who might have been able to avoid, you know, the eventual haircut, which sounds like 30% now for deposits of 6,000 euros or more, 30% will just be taken from these people. And how can you defend against that? How can you defend against withdrawal limits at ATMs and obviously 500 million euros in reserves remaining in Greece? That just came out this morning, I believe, or maybe late last night. So there is only one way. There is only one way. There's no Western Union, no PayPal, there's no credit cards or payment services that allow me to send friends in Greece money. None. There's one way that isn't mainstream payment channels and regulated and whatever. And that's Bitcoin. I think anyone out there who is gloating or dancing on graves or dancing on a pain of others, obviously, I haven't seen that, but that's obviously wrong. That's obviously misplaced and very, you know, it's not advantageous to the message we're here trying to present about Bitcoin, but what I have seen has been, you know, solid and important. And we need to spread awareness that there is one solution for people, maybe not now, post after the fact, but there's one thing that we can share with people that will work for them. And that's Bitcoin. And local Bitcoins, there is a market in your, you know, probably 200 of the 211 countries in the world. There's a market in local Bitcoins for you. I have seen some of those posts on Twitter will of the Bitcoins are trying to convince people from Greece to try Bitcoin. And I agree with them in principle, like I think we want the same things. We all want Bitcoin adoption. We want people to try it. I'm not, I'm not sure about the timing. It seems like the horse is gone. The barn door was left open. The house is on fire. It's not exactly the right time to give out some fires and tell people about Bitcoin. I think if you really want to help people get Bitcoin, Argentina, Brazil, Ireland, Italy, other countries that have potential economic crisis, but haven't, you know, exploded, haven't popped yet. You want to call this Greece thing. This is one where I know it seems like an opportunity, but the reality is, even if you could send Bitcoin to your friends in Greece, there's nothing there they could buy with it. There's not a merchant economy. There's not a setup. It's, I mean, it's a nice gesture, but $5 on your phone is just not going to be useful in this situation. They need bread. They need food. It's a true crisis. So I'd really like to see this energy focused on other countries that haven't fallen yet. I know that it takes foresight and planning, but we can plan and have foresight even during a crisis. I agree. I just want to reply real quick. You're right. Point the attention more at these upcoming potential crises definitely. But I think we, you know, Bitcoiners who were around during the Cypress crash, they, you know, from the hill tops were like, you know, Bitcoin, Bitcoin. This was right during the first big run up, you know, of that year, 2013, the 266 bubble on Gox in April, early April. So yeah, we should direct our attention towards these other potential crises, but this is, this is how you show that these other, like here's the thing. When you tell people that Bitcoin allows you to avoid capital controls in the summer of 2014, everyone poo-poo's that because there's no, that won't happen. Cypress is a tiny island, you know, oh, maybe Portugal, you know, maybe. And who knows, maybe some other small island nation or micro-nation gets in trouble, but there's bailouts and safety nets and we don't need to worry about that. But when there's blood in the streets, you know, figuratively speaking and hopefully not literally, like we're seeing in Greece, you, there hasn't been enough done to drive home the point. And some, you know what the fact is, I'm pretty sure, unfortunately, I forget who said this a year ago, right after, maybe it was right after the Cypress thing, that people will not learn unless they get burned. It's a lot of people haven't learned that the banks aren't their friends until they had the mortgage for closure that was completely unfair and illegal, you know, what happened anyway. So they need to get burned before, like, you know, they never touched the stove again, maybe. And that's unfortunate. I don't think this, I'm not saying that about the Grecian people. I'm saying that about anyone who has poopued Bitcoin's ability to allow for like financial autonomy, you know, because we have such a secure monetary system. That's why I'm directing that comment too. I agree. And going back to the Cypress thing, while I want this to be like Cypress, and I thought it was, you know, great fun when the price of Bitcoin was going up like crazy, for me, the Cypress situation is very different because Cypress is number one, an island nation. So if you know anything about islands, everything that gets there has to come from somewhere else, and things are often leaving there and going somewhere else. And that's where the money came from in Cypress. It was outside for an investor's money that was temporarily in Cypress that the government was trying to seize. Where is it in the situation? That's in really an organization. Exactly. Russian billionaires. And, you know, if the money got there from somewhere else, the money knows how to leave as well. So having it leave into Bitcoin was just a surprise for everyone. But in the Greek situation, I think this is mainly local money. These are people's savings. They're not necessarily travelers. They don't know how to move their money, and they've never heard of the coins. Yeah. I read a stat. Real quick. I read a stat that 40% of people have never used the internet in Greece. That's huge. That's huge. So again, this isn't so much about the Greece and people. And again, you know, also, I don't think Cypress, the events in Cypress, contributed to the massive run up in price in Bitcoin. But what we've later found out, or, you know, if you're doing enough digging, you can find that what led to that price run up were the Winklevoss twins, Wencesysaurus, and several other major now, there are stakeholders, major stakeholders, bought their position in that period of time. Or, you know, we're in the process of acquiring their position that, you know, all these millionaires jumping in the pool at once, that really caused the price to go up. And we don't know the shenanigans on Gox as well, but certainly there was upward pressure from these millionaires wanting to get their stake. So again, and whatever follow on or fear of missing out was going on because of the Cypress crisis. That was just, again, like showing the world that there's an application here. Theo, do you want to make one more point? Sure. Well, of course, any news-driven event is an excuse to FOMO in always. FOMO is fear of missing out. So if I want to, let's say I wanted to manipulate the price, of course, it's nice to have a news event, and then it's not just random at 1201 one day, and my block goes off. However, what I wanted to say is, I don't know what people want, but I wouldn't mind having $5 of Bitcoin on my phone when, you know, my country's local currency goes into hyperinflation after we don't have euro anymore, and they're going around and confiscating silver and gold. Not saying that's going to happen. However, it would be cool if I had something that was not able to be confiscated. I'd have to know what I was doing. But so there is utility, and there is something going on in Greece. So there is a usefulness to Bitcoin, giving it to someone is a useful thing, and we had kind of a discussion argument debate, whatever you want to call it on Twitter, and basically it came down to, I think it's not that useful to give someone an umbrella during a flood, whereas other people do think it's useful. And that's just a disagreement that we're having on points. We're still pals, I think. No one's banning and blocking and burning anyone's house down. We can have these debates and discussions, and we can get down to the truth of, yeah, I think it's not that useful. You think it's useful. I'm not going to stop you from doing it. I'm just pointing out that it looks kind of bad when you're giving someone an umbrella during a flood. I'm not going to have to vote. What do people need? I mean, they're going to need imports. I think bread, they can probably buy in Drachma, local currency. That's fine. Imports are going to cost a lot, pharmaceuticals, machines, stuff like that. Anyway, I think we're moving to an exit question. What's the next country to go into crisis? Theo, Argentina, Brazil, or Italy? None of the above. American territory, Puerto Rico. Oh, throwing out the question, will Argentina, Brazil, Italy, or perhaps Puerto Rico? Yeah, I think Theo Stolmano is going to throw in Puerto Rico, but I'm going to say the city of Detroit or California, or somewhere like that, some US territory. Hey, Thomas, you're muted. There it is. All right. Try again. All right. Come on, computer. Hang together for just like 45 minutes here. My computer is drastically overheating and it really can't handle this anymore. But we're going to keep going with the show until my computer dies. Issue 2, Cliner Perkins, blockchain tech. We'll spawn Amazon-sized successes. One of the oldest venture capital firms in the country, Cliner Perkins, is getting into the blockchain in a big way. They're recently launched VC firm KPCB Edge, has a $4 million budget. That's not that much, but is expected to impact the industry in a big way. Considering the company was one of the early investors in Amazon, Google, and Netscape, 2 out of 3 ain't bad. Real-payment, more VC's in Bitcoin. Always a good thing or always a great thing. I think I'll lean towards always a good thing. Certainly KPMG, they've got their reputation. They're certainly, the pedigree is substantial. And again, once you just see that A16Z or Andrews and Horowitz and KPMG and maybe Union Square Ventures. And if you, the Draper family, all kind of anointing Bitcoin as the next unicorn maker, I don't know what more people need to see. Maybe a few more tests by Nasdaq and who knows what. But certainly, all the predictions are kind of coming true right now. Everyone thought that 2014 to 2015 would be the year of venture capital. 2015 and further would be institutional investment coming in. Big private equity, big financial firms. And so this is part of it. If you wanted Bitcoin to stay small and niche and fun and dark and kind of a clicky thing on the internet, certain memes are, then the time for that is over. That time has passed. So if that's what you're in for, then you might have to find your new coin. But yeah, it's exciting. We're having these very, very lively debates. Hopefully they can stick closer to computer science and stray more away from the political. But yeah, the debates about scaling this technology and building infrastructure on top of it. We're seeing some really exciting new startups. It's not just your same old web wallets and brokerage services and payment processors and other things like that. You've got Abra, you've got Ascribe, you've got lots of really interesting things. Alexandria Project. There's tons. And these are all like huge, huge use cases. And again, 2.0 technologies aren't really even here yet. And if ever, right? So yeah, it's just exciting time. I mean, I think on the 200 day moving average of the Bitcoin price, it's about, I think like $400 oversold or something like that. If you look at some deep charts like that. So you're still an early adopter if you get in today, that's the point. So we'll just confirm. Clienter Perkins is KPMG. Oh, I'm sorry. I was curious. I wasn't sure about the connection there, but we can look it up later. Let's move on. Theo, your thoughts on Clienter Perkins? Or why not? I like Netscape. I used Netscape. It was really important to use the internet back in the day. And it was pretty cool. So yeah, the more venture capital in Bitcoin or in blockchain, the whole ecosystem, yeah, I guess it's good. People are struggling to stay relevant and they're jumping in. They're fomowing in with the VC money. That's how I look at it. On the other hand, not all VCs are created. Equate really depends on what they're doing. And probably we need to have a discussion on who's taking the risk here. Are the VCs taking the risk? Are the startups taking the risk? Who's really taking the risk? I mean, if someone's really willing to go on the line and invest in a company, that's a huge risk. But let's take a close look at what's going on there for real. Very good. Moving on to the exit question. If you could invest in one Bitcoin company, which one would you choose? Will Penguin? Shave shift. Theo Goodman. Oh, transmission.rocks. And I, of course, will stereotypically go with purse.io. Now come on computer. Load that screen share on the side. What you have to do is when the mouse hovers over it, you bring the menu back on screen. Because for Google, just putting a menu on the screen was not good enough. They have to hide the menu and that's going to take more memory. Ah, there we go. This episode of the Bitcoin Group is brought to you by purse instant. Purse instant where you can save 5% on Amazon instantly and receive 2 free 2-day shipping just for shopping with Bitcoins at purse. Try today at purse.io where the Bitcoin spending is easy and the discounts are huge. Don't forget to ask your questions now. We might blitz through them at the end, but we are running out of time. So we're going to quickly move on and try to go back to screen share. What a risk. Can this computer even handle this? 2-3. New analysis from Bitcoin expert tone veys confirm what most people already know. The price of Bitcoin is on its way up. Most likely due to recent speculation on the Greek crisis and perhaps others hearing about Bitcoin because of the crisis. Theo Goodman, your thoughts on the recent movement in the Bitcoin price. Well, I haven't read the whole article on a Brave New Calling, but yeah, the price has gone up recently. It looks pretty healthy. I think we're going to be some kind of pull back here, but I'm not sure how dramatic. So currently we're right where my mouse is. This line here that I've drawn that's from the weekly over here. We broke over this fractal point here. I think it looks pretty good. Some people pointed out it has gone over the, I don't have it on here, the 200 MA moving average on the daily, which is pretty significant. But let's not get too excited. Everyone is in Greek fever. Let's see what happens on Monday when the Greeks have voted on the referendum. What will the Bitcoin price do then? Good question. Will Pangman. Yeah, it looks to me like Theo said, folks are in a wait and see approach based on Greece, based on China's stock market, based on various other debt issues around the world. So yeah, I think I shared some of my thoughts on the recent price in the last question. So I'll keep it brief. You're an early adopter if you get in around 250. Exit question. What will the price of Bitcoin be? One month from now. Theo Goodman. Okay, so I made a little chart. One month from now. So here's the weekly one, two, three, four. I think approximately $282. Serious predictions. The guy's got a chart. Will Pangman, your pick? I don't have any charts, but yeah, I think we're going to see step wise upward price movement for the next year, maybe more dramatically somewhere in there. So next month, see $20 increase from where we're at today. So I'm in Theo's neighborhood. And I'll go above that with $350. But if you've watched any of the previous shows, you know that probably means $150. You can't go wrong betting against whatever I've said because I always seem to take the sunny side. I think Bitcoin's great. I have no idea on the price. Moving on, issue four. Silk Road undercover agent admits stealing Bitcoin. Agent Karl Mark Forrest, the fourth. Space faces 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to charges of extortion, money laundering, and obstruction of justice. As Agent Force's attorney said, he had a stellar 15-year career with the agency, other than this one blip. Many would stay the same of Ross Obrecht, who had a stellar career being an Eagle Scout story-cord participant and law-abiding citizen until his one brush with a law. Will Pangman does the fact that the agents who were investigating Ross were stealing from him, blackmailing him, and entrapping him into false assassination plots, change your thoughts on the Silk Road case? Well, I guess it doesn't change my thoughts on the case because I've kind of held the same opinion all along that this was a railroading of justice, basically. So no, it doesn't change my opinion, but it certainly should change a lot of people's opinion anyone who doesn't know the story of what these agents were doing to Ross, you know, and the kind of access that they had to the website for over a year. There in Flint. Hi, Harvey. We got a new one. Was this you? Okay, I'll come back and see them soon. Sorry, everyone. Yeah, it's a miscarriage of justice. Ross deserves a retrial. And yeah, it'd be great to see more of the truth come out, but unfortunately because of the pleas, these two undercover agents pleading out instead of going to trial, I'm less optimistic that we'll see much more come out about all the questions that the defense raised before they were shut down in Ross's trial. So hopefully we can get some of the truth out and I certainly think this news helps his case. And yeah, let's see. It does really raise a lot of questions about the trial, what went on, why the government was continuing to run the website if it was such a harm to the American people, the government owned and ran the website for several months on their own when many of these cases of drug overdoses happened under the government's watch. And if you hadn't read about the case before and you weren't interested, boy, this sure should get you interested. I think the reach valve could be really interesting. Theo Goodman, your thoughts. Well, they kept the website running to catch the bad people to protect us. They hurt good people while they did that. I know. I know. It's a weird reasoning. So let's get this straight. Carl Marks force. I can't even believe that's a real name. So pleads guilty to this whole thing with the silk road with magic internet money. So we got Carl Marks force, magic internet money and the government stealing. It's pretty crazy story right out of a comic book. So we've got some serious comic book, Star Trek stuff going on here. That's really weird. But seriously, people take a look at this. Maybe I'm a little jaded. I'm not surprised or shocked that something like that, um, happens. I think stuff like this happens all the time. It's just that it doesn't get a lot of publicity. So let's not be too shocked. This is unfortunately regular that things like that happen that people in power take advantage and take a little bit off top, little haircut here and there. No one's going to notice, but they notice the Bitcoin. If he should get a retrial, I don't know. I'm not a lawyer. You know, of course, I hope he would be great if he could just go out of prison. He's not hurting anyone by running the site. You know, that's clear. But, you know, in the eyes of the people in power, he broke the law. And I don't see a real way around that currently. Maybe there's a chance from this trial. I don't know. Probably going to need a lot of money for a lawyer. I'm talking about the introduction was really, really spot on. I mean, the, the, the agent's attorney is saying, oh, he's had this spotless record up until now, up until he tried to steal like transparent traceable money. You know, like, what was he, how did, how was he able to keep his record clean with, you know, the other system? I mean, we don't know what kind of other undercover, you know, skimming. He did rogue skim jobs that he pulled while he was undercover on other investigations. And we may not know, right? So I'm sure there's a lot being done to keep that hush. So again, I mean, that's, that's something we should all consider. Now that there's Bitcoin, this is full transparency. And you're more on like these guys were. I mean, putting, sending money to Gox and then have or Bitstamp and having them direct to positive and do your account. This is, this is, I mean, this is just, it's so foolish. It's so foolish. So yeah, I highly doubt these guys had an unblemished record in their careers if they're so willing to for the course of years, commit crimes in their undercover investigation. Well, and I agree with Theo. I was surprised by the agent's names. I didn't think of it so much as Karl Marx as Theo was kind of hinting at. I was more reminded of a Simpson's episode where the judge said to Homer who was asking for a new name. I will give you the only name that you spelled correctly. Max Power. And then Homer says, I got it off a hair dryer. And that's where we were. Karl agent Karl Marx force. Just fantastic name always in the movie. I can't wait to see him portrayed in the movie. I'm sure he'll be an absolute character. But we're about running out of time. We have one more question. We have the exit question and Theo already answered it. But will if Ross is granted a retrial, the verdict will be. I think he'll get acquitted if we can get an actual trial. If he can get an actual trial, he'll get acquitted. Incredible optimism from Will. But I'm sorry. The answer is guilty. He's still guilty, even with the feds and the entrapment and the theft and all the other thing that's happened. Now, let's see, we have just a couple of minutes for questions and answers. So we're going to do these really fast and we only have two. So let's see. Michael asks, hi, everyone. Great to see you on. What is Andreas putting his time into now? I understand he's sold blockchain. Well, I don't know if he's sold blockchain, but I think he's left blockchain.info. And I've heard that he's working on third key solutions, which is a system for large businesses. They want to do their own kind of Bitcoin thing with multi-sig and other security technologies. And Andreas will consult with them personally. And Pamela Morgan from Empowered Law is also involved in that. And I hope it turns out great. And I support him and whatever he does. So I would be great to see him again and then again soon. Yeah, they're both Pamela and Andreas just this past week joined the board of C4, the cryptocurrency certification consortium. I think is what it's called. The standardization body, an attempt to standardize the professional skills required to contribute both non-technically and technically to companies or employment for these applications. So they're on the standards body to help develop these standards with Michael Perkland and his group. Well, that sounds great. And they could have gotten better people for it. I could barely unmute myself there as my computer continues to melt down and self-destruct. We have one more question. It's kind of a comment from Trezer Strattamy says, it's been a while since I tuned in. Great to see the crew again. It's great to see you guys as well. We don't have a lot of time for this show today. My computer was overheating earlier. Time is just very short in general. I went to three Bitcoin meetups this week, the developers, the Bitcoin social and the Bitcoin trading meetups. So thanks to everybody that I saw at those meetups. It was great. But it's been really busy and it's Friday. I think we're almost done here. So I think we're going to do one more thing, predictions or a story of the week. Theo, do you have a prediction or a story of the week? Like a computer will even let me click on you. I'm not prepared. My prediction is that when the Fiat, the Forex markets open on, well, what will be our time Sunday night? There'll be a big gap. Mind the gap. If you know what that means, that means the price is here right now and then they're going to say market open and whoop, there's, it starts like this. So a Bitcoin, you don't have that because we have 24, 7, 365 days a week. But the Forex, the foreign exchange currency markets are closed on the weekend. And so you can get a gap. It's called. It'll be a huge gap. That's my prediction. Reminds me Dr. Strangelove, we cannot allow a mind shaft gap. Will your prediction or a story of the week? I'm going to go story of the week this time. It's a privacy oriented story. So there's a new cryptocurrency buying or Bitcoin buying service that's very privacy oriented. Rick Falkvinge, who you might know is a pirate party leader, I think in Sweden, and very vocal Bitcoin advocate, has a blog post on privateinternetaccess.coms blog. That's a VPN service that accepts Bitcoin. But they have a blog. He writes that there's a new financial privacy service that lets you buy Bitcoin directly from mines. So directly from Bitcoin miners, meaning your coins have no history behind them. Now this kind of straddles the thin dotted gray line of what the definition of money laundering is in a very interesting and challenging way. We're seeing how Bitcoin challenges the status quo and all of the concepts and state-ordained structures in our society. We're not done seeing how that's going to play out. Here's another very profound and interesting question being raised by Bitcoin's technology and the services that can spring up around it. I think it's fantastic. This is a much like shapeshift, which I've seen the praises of all the time. This uses the Bitcoin core traits and features that allow it to stand out and above and well beyond the next best alternatives of any fiat money to demonstrate its power. So I love apps and services, companies that form, that really demonstrate the true power of Bitcoin. This is one of them. It's going to rustle people's jimmies as Blake Anderson likes to say. Sounds great. I'm also a big fan of one of Fox Venge's new projects. I forget what it's called, something like pirate media or some kind of media project where basically he wants people to take a new story, put a little bit of satire in it and embed it into a JPEG. His idea being that these JPEGs cannot be advertised on. They can't be easily edited and they can yet at the same time be easily shared across the internet. It's kind of a new idea. It's pretty interesting. I think Willie Simpson said. Yeah, it's great. I love that idea. Sweet. Yeah, I was going to try it out. I mean, there's some sign ups, something like Fox Venge media, Falcon media, something like that, but yeah, just Google it, check it out. Yeah, I think it's called Falcon media. Falcon media, there it is. And finally, a prediction. The world is about to change. Bitcoin is about to head into the mainstream. Everything is going to be very different in the next few months. We're going to spend, spend, spend our way to total Bitcoin adoption, TBA. You ain't seen nothing yet. Hold onto your hat. Oh, we're out of time. Until next time. Bye, bye.