The Bitcoin Group, the American original. For over the last 10 seconds, the sharpest citocytes, the best bitcoins, the hardest cryptocurrency talk. We'd like to welcome our panelists. Blake Anderson from Facebook.com slash God Blake. Hi everybody, thanks for having me. Megan Lors from AirBits. Hello. Hello. Tony Bitt, Tony Vays from Brave New Coin. Theo Goodman from Transmission.rox. Good evening everyone. And I'm Thomas Hunt from the World Crypto Network, moving on to issue one. Issue one, Bitcoin is back. But it never really left. The price of Bitcoin topped $500 recently in a speculative furory that had the mainstream media wondering if perhaps Bitcoin wasn't as dead as they had reported. And once more, the zombie sewer rat that is Bitcoin had arisen from its grave. As we all know, Bitcoin is about more than just the price. A message that is especially true to those of you who watched the Bitcoin price swan die from 500 back to the 300s. Blake Anderson, your thoughts on the recent explosion in Bitcoin price? Well, I mean, you know, price and volume and all that kind of stuff are interrelated for the reason that webcam has decided to focus on literally nothing as hard as it possibly can. That's how it's fun. Anyway, the price going up and down, I mean, there's a lot of different exchanges and there still is not like a giant central Uber popular exchange like Mt. Gox to 180% of the trades. So we have lots of market inefficiency. Market inefficiency is the birthplace of arbitrage. And when you can arve the different markets of Bitcoin, you can make money. And it becomes less of a poncy scheme than the debt-based equities of your extra year. There's actually a lot of value coming in. So the volume goes up more people become interested and more and more people make money. So I think that market inefficiency is going to be a huge driver of people getting interested that are, you know, arbiters and plants and stuff like that. It'll be good to bring them in. We pointed out earlier today that some of the markets really aren't moving, whether it be physical Bitcoin or BTCG. And that's also indicative of maybe there's not very smooth avenues to get money in and out for arbitrariering. So, I mean, in the long run, that means there'll be a lot more market inefficiency to go around in the future, which is a good thing. People will be able to make money. And I think we're going to continue to see wild swings in the upward direction. And I for one think that that is objectively good. Megan Lords. So yeah, I do think this is really good news for a couple different reasons, but mainly because it's kind of, it's generated a lot more interest. And it's kind of, you know, put the doubters of people who were saying, oh, you know, Bitcoin's debt, it's, you know, over with. It's kind of, you know, refocused them a little bit. So yeah, I think it's great. You know, I've been a fan of this long period of stability. And you know, we're going to see some spikes, we're going to see it, you know, going up and down and it's going to be a little volatile, but that's also going to generate interest. And I think overall, it's a good thing. And you know, I am looking forward to a little more stability. And yeah, we'll see what happens. It's always an exciting ride. Tony Begs. Hey guys, do you hear me okay? Everyone is nodding yes. Okay. Good. I usually go the other way with most of the people on the panel. I don't think market and efficiencies are good. Even if there is arbitrage profits in them, I prefer markets to be efficient. Now having one exchange is also not ideal. We have that with Mount Gocks and that turned terrible. There is no great solution right now. I'm hoping that what we talked about like three weeks ago or something with liquid coming out of the project from from block stream and an ability for exchanges to share liquidity. If they can ever get that to work, I think that can be a great help to eliminate some of these market and efficiencies. As for the price spike, it's also not good. I mean, it's great for reporters, it's great for some speculators. But these massive upswinging and price and then crashes because they always crash. I mean, the exponential price rises are just unsustainable. It's not good. It happens. That's how markets work. But I don't think it's so great. I think that I don't even think we fall on far enough from this rise because it was just it was unreal. There was no fundamental reason for it. There was no technical reason for it. Buying just created more buying. People were missing out. And now the prices are coming down a bit. So it is what it is. That's how markets move up. As long as it only comes down to the level that it took off from, which is about 250, we're fine. And the future is good. Some people think the price rise was caused by a Russian multi-level marketing scheme called MMM. What do you think of that, Tom? I'm sure it contributed to it, but in my opinion, the hype of MMM became a self-fulfilling prophecy. So it's not the fact, I don't think it was MMM itself, but I think it was people talking about MMM and then people checking out MMM and people buying because of MMM, because other people were buying because of MMM and then eventually reality set in at 500 and everything can crashing down. So if I had to throw a number, I would say 10% of the rise in prices was a direct effect of MMM and I'm being generous. That's all opinion. I have no hard numbers behind it. Theo, good. Is there news? Why is the price going up? I think that's what you hear a lot. I think that anyone, someone asks that, then you can give them some kind of answer and they'll believe it and then it'll make logical sense. But really, the price is not logical. It just moves around. It's not logical. I like the, I agree more with Blake. Or at least I guess I personally think it's good there. There's a little bit inefficiency. I think it's more interesting. I think it attracts a lot of people to the market. But actually, I think that things have gotten a lot more efficient than they were. It's still a lot easier to get money in and out of exchanges than a year ago or it's come a long way. So in this liquid thing is just an example of what some of the exchanges are thinking about doing. I think the price goes up because the price is going up and the price goes down because the price is going down. And that's it. And it's that simple. And there's no, you can try to figure out if it's MMM or if it's, you know what? Everyone sold because it was singles day in China and they had to buy presents. I mean, there's all kinds of, I mean, that all plays a part in it. I think the volatility definitely, the media loves it, they eat it up. And what happens in at least in my circles is that people say, hey, do you want to talk to you? Did you hear that there's a Bitcoin thing? It's going crazy. What's going on? I said, that's normal. It's going to probably go down again. You know, it's just that's just how Bitcoin is. And they go, this is crazy. I had a change tip with a dollar and now it's five dollars. What's going on? And I said, well, that's just how it is. So anyway, I don't think it's bad or good. It's just how markets are. This is just how, this is just how Bitcoin is. And I think it's irrational. It's crazy. And 2015 is the year of the shake out with this whole price going almost nowhere. Really kind of doom and gloom style price action. And let's see what happens in the future. That's a good point, Theo. The Bitcoin price is not logical. Oftentimes in the past, we'll have a series of the best news possible for Bitcoin. Nothing will happen with the price. Whereas this time we had no apparent news, but a huge breakout and then a collapse. Moving on. I mean, people are talking about it. If you look at Google trends, I mean, you can see that more people are talking about it. That has an effect on price. So maybe it's illogical. I hate to throw it to being illogical. But can we possibly figure out a global currency with such a small market cap and going up and down that much? That's a pretty hard game to peg. And I think if people have a love for the market more than the money, then things will work out. If you have short investment horizons in your pig, you will get slaughtered very quickly on these spikes and falls. So be wary of that. And remember, Blake, we've never switched over to a global digital currency like this before. This is the first time humanity's ever done this. So there's going to be some ups and downs. Yeah, Blake. But also keep in mind, there's a lot more people in Bitcoin today that are already involved. So when you see these Google Transpikes, that's not necessarily new people coming into Bitcoin. It could be people that have Bitcoin already constantly checking the price because it's going up and down. So these statistics really need to be broken down some more before any speculation can be made on them. Well, I know that there's signals. There's not a direct connection, but the people that are looking at what's going to be happening with Bitcoin, just like you said, are going to be 10% not like motivated by something real, and then 90% by either a trend or a rumor mail or some kind of a statistic on Google search. Moving on to the exit question. On a scale of one to 10, with one being nothing and 10 being absolute metaphysical certitude, how impressed are you that Thomas Hunt correctly predicted the price of Bitcoin on our last Vegas show? As you all know, we were in Las Vegas. I predicted $3.75 and a week later, at the time of the show, three o'clock in the afternoon, West Coast time, it was exactly $3.75. It later moved afterwards, but it was exactly $3.75. Blake, how impressed were you? I mean, with the amount of volatility that we experienced in between, it's nothing short of a goddamn miracle. I mean, that was the luckiest. That was the most well researched wealth of hell prediction I've ever heard. Megan Lord. As someone who's correctly predicted the price before based on absolutely nothing but pulling a random number out of my head, I have to say I'm super impressed. I'm going to say like strong nine. Tones. Yeah, I'm with you, Megan. I'm going to go with the nine as well. I already see like your grin is coming through my camera into my living room. I'll blow up your head anymore than already is. I think a nine is good. We'll keep it there. Yeah, good. Well, I'm willing to give a 10 only if you share with me privately your array of exponential moving averages that you used in order to predict the price correctly. And if you do that, then I'll give you a 10 until then nine. It took a lot of charts, a lot of Fibonacci numbers and triangles, but of course the correct answer is a 10. 10. Moving on issue two, Microsoft and Bitcoin. Well, Microsoft and Ethereum. Microsoft joined forces this week with a startup called Consensus to quote unquote play around with a blockchain tech used in cryptocurrency. No details yet on Microsoft's project, but this quote released by the formidable Redmond Washington company reminds me of something a Bitcoin startup would say with Microsoft saying that we are just scratching the surface of what can be done when you mix cryptographic security with the reliability of the blockchain. Megan Lord, Microsoft working on Bitcoin, sorry, Ethereum, is this a good thing for the future of cryptocurrency? Well, they don't really necessarily want to use the cryptocurrency part of blockchain. So this is kind of an interesting thing. So I remember like, if you've been doing the show for a while and remember when you saw questions like, oh, you know, can, you know, these big corporations or can these governments kill Bitcoin? And now the conversation is kind of shifted to, oh, wow, it looks like they kind of want to use this technology. They want to use the underlying blockchain technology. And now I keep hearing this narrative of like, oh, I don't like Bitcoin, but I like the blockchain. And it's one that I'm kind of getting tired of hearing. It's like, and there's a lot of, it would take a very long explanation for why, which I'll probably be writing about here soon. But yeah, I am tired of kind of hearing that. I think Bitcoin is really where it's at and everyone trying to do other things are not really getting the full picture. So I think it's interesting that a lot of these corporations are interested in the technology. I think that's going to generate further interest in Bitcoin. So you know, I hope it works out that way. But we'll see. I mean, it all depends on what they want to use this technology for and what their kind of angles are and things like that. So I think it's a good thing as far as just from a general interest perspective, but kind of waiting it out. I'm curious to see what direction some of these corporations are going to take. I've heard Microsoft plans to use the blockchain to bring back Clippy, the office assistant. Oh, God. No. Tone Vaze. All right. So this one is kind of weird. Let's start with. I mean, it didn't really do much for Ethereum. The price of Ethereum went up just on the hype. And if you look at the price of Ethereum now, it's back under a dollar per ether. So I mean, the price is confidence and the price of Ether is starting to go down again. So obviously, no one really cares. The Microsoft is allowing developers, I believe, to like access the Ethereum libraries in order to do some programming. Just to the other part of Microsoft being serious about encryption and privacy and security. I mean, that's just a joke. Microsoft doesn't know the meaning of the word privacy, especially. And they may know a little bit about security, but not from the perspective of the end user. So I mean, all these things are going to me. It's completely ridiculous. I mean, look at Windows 10. It's just half of it is just a complete spy machine on everything you do. So the whole idea that Microsoft would be interested in the blockchain is silly, right? I mean, they want the underlying technology. They just want to build a faster database, basically. But now, if they understood what Bitcoin actually is, which is privacy for the end user, for the end user, I mean, they would run away from it as far as they can. So it was just buzzwords, just so Microsoft's, you know, remains relevant. Theo, good, man. What were they talking about? Blockchain's and cryptographic ledgers, they're totally out of it. It's all about Merkel trees now. So if they got to get a Merkel tree and all that kind of stuff, then maybe they'll get caught up, but they're totally behind right now. So I'm not really sure what they're doing. They got to get up to date and get their wording right. They're definitely starting behind. In any case, yeah, I think it's interesting, you know, also the wording Bitcoin like technology, blockchain or not Bitcoin, it's blockchain. Anyway, you know, I think a lot of these companies, like I've said before, they just want to remain relevant. They want to, they know something's up. They're like, okay, something's up. What's good? I got a, all right, we need to get that. We don't want to, we don't want it that we want to have control. So let's just get one of those things and say we have it. And then we're cool too, and we won't miss the boat. So that's basically everyone's covering their bases and doing it not to take anything away from Ethereum. It's a cool project. I like that it's open source. I like that they've got all that programming language and all that stuff. By the way, I just checked right before the show, you can run ether scripts on counterparty testnet. You can't do it live yet, but you can do it on the testnet. That means it's going in the direction that you could write, do some scripts on the Bitcoin blockchain with the Ethereum language if you're still following me. In any case, I don't think it's positive or negative. And I think we're going to see a whole lot more of this of companies trying to figure out how they can, you know, get in on this action. Blake Anderson. I agree with the other panelists. It seems like an attempt to separate Bitcoin and the network effect, which has achieved from the fundamental technology. I mean, this is a good and useful experiment. It's good to go through and see how can we decimate costs and overhead and things like that. The thing that kind of sticks in people's craw a little bit is that the features of the blockchain and the features of what they're trying to build are incontrovertibly mutually exclusive. They're talking about we can update the value or the total supply. We can update this to 40 times faster. It's like, you're almost kind of pushing the limits of not getting it because what you've done is you've reflexively have gone all the way around in a complete loop to be like, OK, now I'm going to take a file on my computer. I can update that even faster than this new network and then, you know, make a file into currency and then copy that. It's like, OK, but that's one of the problems that we solved in the first place and why Bitcoin was born. You're making like an extremely highly quickly mutable proof of stake chain has value, but to say that it could be to Bitcoin is like, well, no, there's too many mutually exclusive features, which you cannot borrow over. If they end up creating some cool stuff and it does achieve a network effect and it does have a monetization system, which is as clever as Bitcoin, that would be awesome. But to assume that from what's happened already versus how long it took for us to, you know, discover Bitcoin and for its network effect is kind of, you know, let's not jump the gun. Exit question, what is the best Microsoft operating system, Megan Lawrence? Am I going to sound like a basic bitch, I'd say Windows 7? I don't know. It could have been worse. You could have said Vista. I don't know. I don't know. I'm going further back than you, Megan. I'm going to be a little bit more honest. I'm going to be a little bit more honest. I'm going to be a little bit more honest. If I'm further back than you, Megan, I'm going all the way to XP. That was the best one I've ever used. And I was so reluctant to update to Windows 7. And I don't know. I'm running Windows 8 right now on my surface. And if I was a better software guy, I would find a way to put XP back on my surface. Theo, good man. XT for the win. Definitely. XT was the best. XP. I'm in pony. That's what I meant. It's been so freaking long. XP, excuse me. Yeah, I got it mixed up too. It's so long. Yeah, but like you can, I held on to that as long as I could. It wasn't updated. I only changed to 7 when I bought a new laptop. I just didn't update that. That was my story. Exactly. I only switched on to Windows 7 because my other started just dying of old age. I've even heard of companies that still, I mean, they don't update the security for it, but things that are not connected to the internet. They just keep it. You cannot check. I believe it's still the most popular operating system in the world by usage. And yet it's unsupported by security updates. Yes. And soon to be unsupported by Chrome as well, which is even more important. Yeah, whenever I was updating from XP, I was like, I'll go from 32 bit to 64 bit, but I'm not going to leap into some new, like I worked in enterprise software project management. They're like, should we deploy this new operating system across all of our hundreds of thousands of end users? And I'm like, yeah, that'll cost a lot of money. And really, you know, deliver a lot of value for everybody. But it's already working at what you would consider maximal efficiency. Let's do that. No, yeah, XP was with a dynasty. Yeah, XP was the best. The correct answer is Windows 2000 with a runner up for a DAW 6.2. I mean, very close, but Windows 2000. Moving on. I like the Lenny edition. Me was nice, but not as good as Microsoft Bob. Moving on, big thank you this week to bitcoin.com, who we are proud to partner with to help spread the word about Bitcoin far and wide. We had a great AMA on this forum this week featuring questions and answers from every bitcoins CEO in the business, including Perseo, Andrew Lee. There may even be a mad AMA in the future. Check it out at bitcoin.com. Issue three. Can a Bitcoin powered social network improve on Reddit? Yes, yes, it can. Cryptocurrency development. Ryan X Charles presented his ideas for a decentralized Reddit that he calls DAT. Decentralize all of the things at a recent meeting of the San Francisco Bitcoin Meetup. Charles plan calls for users to download a client to distribute the Reddit files much like BitTorrent. The new but old idea is finally being worked on because the internet is tired of Reddit censorship. Tone Vays. Can this new Reddit solve the problems of the old Reddit? Will it even work? I'm going to come off with not a very expert opinion. I don't use Reddit. I don't even have a Reddit username. To me, there are no problems with Reddit. Why? Because I don't use it. Now, you don't need to decentralize Reddit. You just need to not have censorship. You don't need to decentralize everything. It's completely unnecessary. Reddit has a huge network effect. I think we've talked about Reddit on this show more times than we probably should in my opinion. But Reddit is not just Bitcoin. Bitcoin is maybe 0.05% of the use cases for Reddit. Again, it's going to be hard to get everyone over. Reddit has a lot of people who are not using Reddit. You lost me right there. At least that's me. I'm not even on Reddit. I'll let other people that actually use Reddit. I think it's too much information. I don't have the time. Reddit hacked Tone. Reddit at the end. They did. Okay, great. Yeah, I like that. Get it. No. Okay. Yeah, it sounds pretty cool. It sounds like a good idea. Why not? Let's test it out. Let's see if it works. Let's see if people actually download these clients and all that. Maybe then we can do some Ethereum scripting on top of it and do some upvotes or something really crazy like that. I think it's good. At least there is something going on that he has this vision. If it's going to be okay for people to download all these extra programs and all that, people are actually going to use it. I don't know. I guess part of the problem is censorship. Maybe part of the problem is identity that anyone can just make another account and say whatever they want, which is good in some ways. But if you want to hold people accountable for what they say or depends on really the kind of conversations you want to have, I think. So you could change the kind of conversation if you had to sign with your cryptographic key every time that you said something or I don't know exactly how they want to do that, but they could do something like that. Blake Anderson. Well, I'm going to have to side with Tony here. I'm not an expert on Reddit. I used Reddit very briefly and the things that were contrary and that I wanted to say were edited or voted down or something. They weren't voted down. They were just completely edited from somewhere and I was like, what is this specific page or Reddit and they were like, no, Reddit says that you can't be negative or whatever. It's like, well, maybe that's for the best a little bit. But I like to be negative at times because if you're just a manic ball of positivity, nobody cares if you have to say anymore, you have to mix both. So I think Ryan is a pretty smart guy and if he wants to do anything to replace Reddit in any way, shape or form, I mean, I'm behind it, but I won't go on too much because I don't use it very much. Megan Lord. So I kind of have a love hate relationship with Reddit. It's great for a lot of things, but I would like to see, I definitely am against the censorship and I'm against that across all different forms of social media and I'd like to see more disruption in that space in general. So I like that someone has that in mind that they want to do something different that's based on Bitcoin, but kind of like Tom said, you kind of lost me having to download a client. Like, I don't know that I would want to do that to join a social network. It needs to be just as easy to use as the ones that are already in place. And while Reddit has its problems, especially with censorship, I hope that there will be other ideas coming up to kind of give it a little more competition. And while it's a good idea, I don't know that it'll be enough to kind of unseat what Reddit has already built despite the censorship. Yeah, I just did the jump back in there. I just don't think the concept of decentralization is absolutely necessary. I mean, it would be nice. I don't know if it exists or not. Like I said, I'm not a Reddit user. If there is a reputation system on Reddit, that would be good. So you can click on a person's username and you see their history. They have a lot of comments. Obviously, you're not going to be able to parse it. But maybe some of the comments that were voted down, some of the comments that were voted up, maybe write some kind of a program. Again, I see that. I leave this to developers that are smarter than me. I just work with developers and I tell them what I need programs and I shoot for the moon and then they usually laugh and shut it down. But they get close to what I'm looking for. That's been my experience in 10 years of working with developers on Wall Street and in the Bitcoin space now. So get a reputation system in there. Try to find a way to create some kind of a reward system using Bitcoin so people can get paid for using it often, using it properly. But again, who's to say what is proper use of Reddit? That brings censorship back in. Also, if you're leaving comments, I mean, how do you treat a reputation? If you want to see person's best and worst comments, kind of like on Amazon, when I go to look for a product, I see like three best reviews and I see three worst reviews. So write a program to display people's history and reputation. You can see them on the top of the head. They have that. They have that. They have it already. On Reddit, you can look on user name and look at their comments and see what's going up up there. They're not a mess and they've just come, if it's like sock puppets you're looking at, then you don't really know who it is. But for the moderators, I think it's especially useful. You can go in there and see the different moderators and different subreddits in their comments and how they're engaging with the different communities. And I think that's really useful. Part of the problem, this is also part of the good thing about Reddit, is that it's really easy to create a Reddit account. As a result of this, most everyone has at least five. And you'll have these conversations going on between accounts. And you don't even know if those are all the same person talking to each other. If it looks like they support you, but they're all fake users, it's very hard to tell what anything actually is. The sock puppet circle trick becomes a real problem. Like that sounds ridiculous to me, right? Then why read right? I mean, people just have way too much free time in their hands apparently, right? And then they're complaining why there's no jobs. Well, stop creating five accounts on Reddit and talking to yourself and go do something useful for a living, right? So this is another reason why I don't really care for Reddit. It's, I mean, any kind of website, any kind of technology that just shows you how much free time people have to do absolutely nothing, I tend to just ignore it 99% of the time. Did you all didn't all found hamsterdance.com though? I'm kidding, I'm kidding. There is value to Reddit. It does help you find good articles, the voting of up and down. It's just that, yeah, the comment sections get a little out of control, but people like that. It's the internet. It's like using it. It's the old days. The old ones. No, I mean, it's great to, oh, yeah, go ahead. All right. We're done with that. Question, true or false, everything we do on the internet should be quantified and made into money, tone, vase. No, not everything. It shouldn't be. You should have options. I mean, do you want to see ads or do you want to pay to block them? Do you want to monetize your content or not? I mean, who's to decide? So it's, I'm going to say no. Theo Goodman. The question isn't, should it, it is already. Blake Anderson. Yeah, and I mean, I agree definitely with Tony Theo. I mean, like, should it be everywhere monetizing everything at all times? You're probably not as a rule. Should everything be? Probably so. But like, the other day, it doesn't matter. It already is. And I think that that ties back into a whole lot of other things, like should voting be free. And what is a vote? And all kinds of different things. And you know, I mean, the market is everywhere. It reaches into everything. So I mean, yeah, I agree with Theo. It kind of already is. Megan Lawrence. Yeah, I have to agree with Theo. It already is. Anytime you put time or energy into something, there is a value to that. Maybe there's not digits attached to that, but it is valuable in some sense. That leads that can go into a whole other rabbit hole. But as far as like directly monetizing content, I don't think it's a terrible idea, but that doesn't really solve. I don't think it solves any problems. Like, as far as free speech, for example, and censorship and stuff like that, because all it does is, you know, especially if you were, for example, tipping in cryptocurrency or something. I mean, someone who has a whole load of cryptocurrency can upvote content that may not really be that relevant to the discussion or may not really be that useful to people. So it doesn't change those things just like, you know, money can buy you speech in elections and whatnot. So, but yeah, it is. There's a value, but it may not be quantifiable. Can I jump in it? Go ahead. I'm going to jump in and actually ask Thomas as a panelist. You were familiar with the work of Kurt Vonnegut and the entire theory of the Industrial Revolution replaced physical jobs and out the intellectual or white color jobs are being replaced. What do you think about that in the context of everything that you do on the internet being monetized because now your job is to be studied by the rest of society to figure out, you know, what's going on? That's the new work. I mean, how do you feel about that whole angle of this Thomas? Well, I do think the healthy reading of Vonnegut is essential for our society. I see a lot of people talking about robots replacing jobs. I see a lot of people not talking about Kurt Vonnegut's very first book, Katz, or Player Piano, where he talked about the elimination of jobs and the gangs of people that would walk around with nothing to do and how the real problem at that point is what do you do with all these people who are essentially not useful? You can't just get rid of them. Some people think you can. There's also good, or good by Mr. Rosewater, where Vonnegut talked about the need for extended families and how we've lost families and what he did is he assigned everyone a unique middle name like Red 15 and then you're in the Red 15 club. And whenever you meet someone that's a Red 15, that's like your brother. Whenever you meet someone that's a 15 or just a Red, that's like your cousin. And he built a whole new network of extended families. And that's a lot of what I think the internet has done is it's given us a chance to help people. And a lot of times you'll have someone like volunteering their time on a forum and maybe they're a professional person like a lawyer. They could make a lot of money with that time, but instead they're volunteering it. And things like people do like I make podcasts essentially for free because I think they're good and I want people to enjoy them and to learn from them and be educated. And I think that has a value in its own. And I worry that when we put too much money on things, we start to value things only in money, not just in whether or not they're good. And a lot of things on the internet, people have made web comics, they've made blogs, videos, all kinds of things that I've enjoyed. And I've enjoyed them because they're free and because they're good. And I don't necessarily want to put money in between us. Like yes, I buy those people's books when they make books. I buy their movies when they make movies. But I'm waiting for them to package us up as a product, not just to pay them for every little thing they do. I hold a heart of the degree and I love to, at times, go back to Thomas because he is. I don't think I've ever met anybody who has more exposure to literature than Thomas. So I think that's funny. Skip it now, like every other word. Sorry, please. It was sick of fan-tick anyway. You go on. Yeah, no, Thomas. I agree with that as well. I mean, that was very well said. I just like you put together this podcast for free. We're all participating in this podcast also for free. Same thing when I started out with my blog, writing about Bitcoin and economy in general, that blog was only around for like two months before CoinTelegraph asked me to write for them instead. So just because you're doing something for free doesn't mean that there isn't a potential payoff just for you to be out there. So this goes back into what Theo said. Everything does, there is monetization with everything on the internet, even though there's no direct financial transfer for every single little click and every single little word. That's a good point, Tom, that you're also building your reputation when you go on the internet. If you seek out to do something like, I was making mad Bitcoin episodes every day and I was trying to improve on them and that kind of became my resume for if you give this guy a little bit of money, a little bit of support, he will do that every day. And that shows a dedication. I think a lot of people, it doesn't matter what field you're in, writing, sculpting, painting, making videos, doing it every day, keep coming back, keep improving and show people that your goal is to improve and your goal is to work together with people. And I think that kind of attitude really works on the internet. To be extended, it's almost like micro philanthropy, sorry, go ahead Megan. Yeah, well, I was just going to say, I mean, to go back to your point about phony gets player piano, it is a concern by I think it's way less of a play. It's a concern in this age that we live in now. I don't think he could have possibly imagined how the internet has opened up so many doors for so many people. I mean, I've experienced the same thing as the rest of the panelists. It's like I started writing and doing videos and interviews and stuff like that just because it was something I felt like I needed to do. I just wanted to do it. I didn't make any money doing it. But it did lead to a lot of other opportunities. So I think now more than ever, those opportunities are available for just about everyone. And I don't think we're going to see a future where people are wandering around without anything to do. People automatically do things whether they do things are passionate about whether or not they're being paid for it. And also here's the difference, right? And so like me and Blake and even you, Megan, we're not Reddit users. We actually went out and put in our time not knowing whether anyone would want to listen to us. But we had our own voice. And now we're all personalities within the Bitcoin space. We're all public speakers at conferences. While the other people are sitting there with five login names on Reddit, talking to each other, improving how smart they are and then commenting on other people's work, picking on every little thing they say, instead of going out and doing something unique and creating a brand out of them. And that's just a difference in motivation. But I enjoy those. I enjoy the people who are going to spend a lot of their time sitting on their computer criticizing you. Like that's great to me. You know, it's great that there's a platform for them to do that. I know people are like, oh, don't feed the trolls and they're terrible and so like that. But I think it's strengthens what you're already doing when you are receiving that feedback from people, whether it's negative or positive. And if it's negative, it just helps you steal yourself against that in the future and it helps you improve yourself too. So a lot of criticism might be smart. I mean, I've had very good negative comments left on my material that's actually, you're fine, my arguments better. So I'm all for it. No, you're right. I have as well. And if you look at, I always try to respond to people's comments on all these videos that I do for the World Crypto Network. I just think that if someone goes out of their way to make a comment, as long as they're respectful about the way they express their comment, they deserve a reply because they put in their time. So we will give them some time back. Absolutely. I agree, Tony. All right. Good discussion. Moving on to issue four. Screen share. Here we go. issue four. Purse to launch Marketplace to compete with eBay and OpenBizar. Purse.io, the website where you can shop and save 20% off Amazon, announced plans this week to expand its Marketplace to include additional merchants. Purse's new Marketplace would allow advanced consumer protection using blockchain escros as well as providing novel use cases for multi-signature transactions and other as of yet unannounced smart contracts. Blake Anderson. Your thoughts on Purse's plans to expand Bitcoin? Shop it. I think it's a fantastic plan. I think that they have a really, really good idea that is their core business engine and to see them continue to develop other ways to utilize all this technology is great. I mean, the more Marketplace is the better as an amcap I'm not going to be like, oh, another Marketplace. Who needs another one of those? I want Bernie Sanders just giving me my socks that I need and then we can go to free school. I think that Purse is really, really starting to shine through is one of my favorite companies. Obviously, they've hired my good friend, Thomas, who I put my time into his shows and things as well. For them to have the foresight to also see the Thomas' valuable figure makes me more and more excited that they are the company that is going to use their business engine, which does turn a profit to go over and value in other profitable areas. I think like, go Purse from something that I kind of heard of at first and was like, oh, okay, maybe I'll get more into it. I'm really one me over. So stoked for new markets. Megan Lourdes. Yeah, so I've been a huge supporter of both Mbizarre and Purse and I think that they're both wanting to do slightly different things and I think that it's both good. I mean, I'd like to see a lot of competition and even cooperation in the space. I think there's enough room for everyone. I don't think it has to be that you choose one organization over the other. People have different needs and I think you can use both. So I don't see it as, I guess, I don't see it as, I guess, competition based as some people might see. I've seen some of the discussions kind of surrounding this news as if there is a Purse is trying to take on eBay or take on Open Bizarre and I don't really see it that way. I think they're just trying to provide something different and alternative and I think that's good. I'm all for competing marketplaces. I think the more the barrier. The good point, Megan, it is a very large ocean and I think there's lots of fish for everyone. Tone Vays. All right. So before I go on with my answer, I need a sureances that I will be invited back here by the Purse that I owe employee. Yeah, yeah, go ahead. Let's see it. Okay. So also a disclaimer, I actually have not used Purse yet, but about a month ago, I swore I would never buy anything from Amazon unless I actually use Purse. So I've been just throwing things in the wish list that I actually need and I just have not had a chance to go and sign up for Purse. I know Andrew's going to kill me because I've met him like a few months ago and I promised I would like to sign up immediately. So the next purchase I will buy from Amazon will go through Purse. Okay. So get into this claimers out of the way. I'm not I'm not too thrilled about this and here's why. First of all, compete with email eBay and an open Bazaar. The open Bazaar is not even fully launched yet, but assuming they do get launched, these are two complete opposite sides of the spectrum. One is insanely over regulated and needs to know everything you do and even what I P address you do it with and the other one is the complete opposite. So one is a regulatory nightmare and the other one is a regulatory workaround that's going to be a major liability from a criminal perspective. So when Purse says they're going to compete with them, like how? Because they're so polar opposites. So right now Purse has this little niche because they're using Bitcoin for what it actually is a regulatory arbitrage. Purse is a complete middleman. They don't know who you are. They don't need to know who you are because they're just providing a platform for you to want something from Amazon. You put money in Eskraw somebody else buys it and it gets shipped to you. The moment they start going after the eBay or the open Bazaar, they run into these problems. Either they got to know every single user in which case I am no longer thrilled with Purse. And if they go in the open Bazaar route, they're an open public company that is not decentralized. Now I'm worried for everyone that works there, including yourself. So this is the big toss up for me as to how exactly they're going to do it and what exactly they're trying to do. So if what I said just makes sense. So I'm a little bit on nervous about the direction that Purse is headed, but that's just my opinion. I haven't even used Purse yet, but I will, I promise. Yeah, we'll just have to see how it goes. It did take me a long time to use Purse as well. I really liked Amazon's instant ordering. I know that it's coming. Purse definitely sometimes can take a couple of extra days, but you do save 20 or 30%. What I've found is after you've done your first successful transaction and everything works out fine, people just stop using Amazon and start using Purse. And it's like, I'm using Amazon. I just haven't started using Purse yet. So right now I just don't buy anything at the internet. You're halfway there. Yeah. That's the deal. Good. Yeah, I think it's, it sounds like a good idea. Why not? Let's try it out. I'm always in favor of, you know, trying these things out. And yeah, it's good. There's competition because then maybe the people will finally release whatever they're supposed to be releasing. How long have we been talking about open bizarre now? Everyone's waiting for it. So guys, hurry up because these people are going to release something. They're going to blow you out of the water. So I like that. You know, you put the fire under the other projects, make them go, oh no, what's going on here? Uh oh. I have to release it. So that's, that's good. I really like that aspect of it for sure. And you know, let's just see how this all works with escrow and, and the legality of it and, and all that. I think that's great. It's right for disruption. Nobody likes using Amazon. Nobody likes eBay. You know, nobody likes all that. Just like Tone said about, you know, not liking Amazon. I think everyone's had bad experiences with about every platform. So yeah, we need to make something and, uh, you know, let's see if this is the way. I wanted to count to what Tone said because I think he was right. There's the two polar opposites. But you know, maybe, maybe Perth can find something in the middle there. I think if they, uh, check with lawyers and they have the money to actually fund a responsible buildout, but it could be great. I think Tone is right. If you're a copy, it doesn't have a lot of money. And you're like, I'm just going to go and start buying and selling things over international barriers and transmitting currency to currencies stuff like that. That could be dangerous, but hopefully a company with a, a core engine that drives profit will be able to figure out legally how to best do that. You know, I think that, you know, Perth can find a spot right in the middle of us to, um, polar opposite to the Tone was illustrating. Exit question. What would you like to buy with Bitcoin next? Blake Anderson? Uh, probably I'd, I follow for, I mean, I could just pirate it, but I should probably pay for it because that's our company's awesome. So there you go. Megan Lord. I have a book wish list that I need to get through. So something on there. Tone phase. I, I honestly don't know. I, I, I just buy things when I need them or when I want them at the time. I don't usually think that far ahead. What I need to buy something. The only thing that is sitting in my Amazon wish list that's going to force me. I kind of had the side mirror on my car busted. So I need a new side mirror and I already found it on Amazon. And now I need to create a purse account to actually buy it. So that's what I will be buying. I don't know if we'll be my first thing, but that's definitely that I will be bought in the near future. It's always good to order useful things. I know I got on there. I ordered all my DVDs and books and movies and I was like, wait a minute, I can buy clothes and food. And then I started spending money wisely. Yo, good man. The next thing I want to buy with Bitcoin, I don't know, I think I'd buy a 12 pack of some craft beer, something like that. Nice, local. And now time for predictions or story of the week. Blake Anderson, are you ready with a prediction or a story of the week? Yeah, I guess my story of the week is that our good friend Chris Ellis who used to be on the show quite frequently is not feeling 100%. And anybody that wants to send him a message of encouragement or donate some Bitcoin or anything to him, I don't want to go too in depth as to him not feeling well, but he feels unwell enough that he is not on the show. And this is one of his favorite things to do with ever. So my heart goes out to Chris and my story of the week is that hopefully he can find some support in our community of love and ideological consistency because he really needs some. It is very sad that Chris is unwell. And while we're talking about sad things, I meant to mention this at the top of the show, but certainly our thoughts and prayers go out to the people of Paris today. There's been a horrific seemingly terrorist attack. I don't know very much about it. I've been pretty busy today, but it is very unfortunate. We are thinking of Paris today. Megan Lawrence. So this week in the US, we saw Armistice Day on Wednesday, also known as Veterans Day, but it started as Armistice Day, which was a celebration of peace. And right now antiwar.com on Twitter is doing a cool hashtag campaign. It's hashtag why I'm against war. And I encourage people to participate in that. I think there are a lot of things that stem from a positive view of war that we've kind of seen in the larger US culture. And antiwar has been a, antiwar.com has been a huge invaluable resource for finding out more of what's going on in the rest of the world, in regards to these wars. And I encourage you to donate to them, check them out. And it's unfortunate that these bombings happened in Paris, but a lot of these attacks are results and direct results of the very dangerous and risky foreign policy that's been undertaken by First World Nations for decades now. Tom Vase. I got to look off the Paris thing. I actually haven't heard this the first time here in a body right now from you. So I'm going to check that out once we're done here. So I'm going to go with the prediction. It's more of a longer term prediction. I'm sure you guys remember who as we did this on the show, the giant divide within the Bitcoin community during the whole X Bitcoin, XT debacle. I foresee a similar divide with people arguing on both sides over the blockchain alliance. I tweeted out the other day a press release that I got an email about an event where all these companies were getting together with the regulators. But guess what, the press release showed up the day after the event had already happened. And I mean, I just find these things incredibly frustrating and going forward. If something like this happens again, I believe that this will start to divide the Bitcoin community once again. So that's kind of my prediction going forward that that that that that that group is going to end badly. Yeah, good. Good. A story of the week. Yeah, I'm going to I'm going to go with 10. I really liked what he posted on Twitter about the the whole blockchain alliance thing. I think that was definitely the story of the week. I'm also a little distracted with all this Paris stuff going on. It happened right before we were getting ready for the show. And I think, but I do I do see I'm going to basically agree with them. I do see a lot of discussions going on about this whole dynamic. Also about the block size discussion block size limit discussion is coming up again, ironically in the near one of these conferences that's coming up. So suddenly it's injected into the conversation again. I think that that's not a bad chance that there's media outlets reporting on it. But I think that's the story of the week. Suddenly it's a topic again. I'll be there for that. I'm going to Hong Kong. Great. So you can we can get you can report on it. I think it's really interesting. And I hope that the let's also remember that I now I'm not going to claim on a blockchain expert because I'm not. However, if I understand correctly the purpose of these conferences is not a discussion on the block size limit. It's just about how to scale blockchain without risk. So that's not just the block size limit. There's a whole bunch of stuff to discuss besides that. The one the one definite thing out of the last scaling Bitcoin is that everyone agrees that raising the block limit is just is just a temporary measure like everyone agrees on that. It's just something temporary. If they do raise the block size, they're only going to raise it because they can't come up with the real solution in time before transactions become a problem. So at least a real solution agreement there. What do you mean by real solution? I mean, this sounds like scope low to me. I could not more vehemently disagree with every like we're going to scale it in general. And then wonder why we can't come to a conclusion and lie tone later on as saying I would have thought something would have come of this. It's like no, I think they need a system similar to this system that discovers difficulty where the just I think they need a block size system that adjusts so that we don't have to do this again in three years when eight megs isn't enough for whatever it is, right? I agree. And I agree. So if we focus down on that kind of a solution is good to try to say every single possible extrapolation of scalability for blocking technology in every direction, it's like that's you know, maybe we should focus down a little bit more than that. So I mean, the contrarianism is entertaining. So I thought I'd throw that out. I think I'm going to solve it all at this one conference. One conference is all we need. Actually, this is the second one. So I'm going to do two conferences. Two conferences is all we need. It's great. Not highlander anymore. There can be only two. All right. And now a prediction. Satoshi Nakamoto will win the Nobel Prize for economics. It's surprising that the committee has waved this long to nominate him and it's ridiculous that they've held up the nomination just because one of their members publicly announced his intention to nominate. Bitcoin is the greatest financial innovation in the last hundred years. And for his outstanding contributions to society, Satoshi Nakamoto will win the Nobel Prize. Oh, well, out of time. Until next time. Bye. Bye.