EB59 – Fireside Chat: A Fascinating Year in Retrospect and Exciting Times Ahead

Transcript

hello welcome to epicenter Bitcoin the show which talks about the Technologies projects and startups driving decentralization and the global cryptocurrency Revolution my name is and my name is Baron Fabian crane so today uh we have a bit of a special episode and we are approaching our our one year anniversary or actually we did our our pilot episode I think just about a year ago maybe a bit over a year ago and actually I think it was just about now about this time it was right before New Year's if I recall I think it was before Christmas but then our first official episode was uh just around New Year's right so um yeah we've sort of come a full year and

um as as you know as our listeners we have been doing a lot of interviews recently so we've been talking to a lot of people uh and getting their perspectives on things and today we're going to do a bit of a different episode and it's just gonna be the two of us and we're gonna have a time to really dive into some of the things that happened this year some of the areas that we find most interesting and most important and we're also going to look out a bit and talk about 2015 and what we can expect in those different areas a fireside chat I think we can call it yeah surpriser chat which also means we have uh secured ourselves some alcohol yes otherwise it wouldn't be a complete so what are you what are you drinking there

Brian I'm having support let's see the bottle this is from a brand called Sandman they are not our sponsor very nice and I'm I'm drinking uh I don't know if this is any good but uh it's got the green label so that means it's uh yeah that means it's good um also uh just before we get started I wanted to announce or at least let you guys know about the episode that are coming up so which are going to be again more in line with what we've been doing recently so we're gonna have a Robert Sam's coming on in one week now if you listen to our episode with vitilic we

did talk a little bit about this idea of a stable coin so uh cryptocurrency that isn't volatile but sort of adjusts its Supply in a way that the price is relatively stable and he's written a paper on that and he's a he's a well-known sort of a crypto Economist and a hedge fund guy in London and we're going to talk with him about that it's a really interesting topic then we're going to have Preston burn and Sean Jones uh Shavon Jones of course has been many times doing regulatory stuff uh four percent Bitcoin and president burn has also been on our show uh in an interview once uh that John actually did and so he started a new

company called Iris or Everest Industries I'm not sure how you pronounce it and the idea I think is to have some sort of decentralized autonomous organization a framework that's also integrated in the legal framework I think but we will be diving into that and I think Preston's a really interesting guy and uh Sean I think will will make for a really interesting topic yeah I'm really looking forward to that one yeah absolutely and we're also going to have Adam Levine on um probably in February beginning in February and we're gonna talk about cryptocurrencies and media and of course I'm living played a crucial part in in this podcast getting started because we

did our pilot episode as part of the last talk Bitcoin contest a year ago so I mean looking looking back on the year it's been an exciting year we've done over 70 episodes if you count in all the conference stuff that we did uh different conferences like Berlin London and Amsterdam and I gotta say I mean in in in in some I have to say it's been a pretty successful year we were wrapping it up with a huge episode we did with italic last week so if you haven't heard that episode definitely check it out uh it's definitely our most popular episode with I think about 2 000 views on YouTube Just a week after its release uh

it was very interesting and uh so yeah I mean I'm I'm really happy to see like where we from what we've gone which was essentially a hobby I mean if you think about it at the beginning to an actual business with an audience and a community and a growing community and I'm really looking for four to 2015. I think we have lots of things to do and uh and lots lots to build absolutely I think it will be interesting for us and of course uh correspondingly for Bitcoin and and the two are very tightly linked and that's one thing is that well let's do this so first of all I would briefly mention the topics we have before sort of segue back to what I

was going to say um so we're going to talk about regulation a bit we're going to talk about uh adoption we're going to talk about uh decentralized applications and sort of the Bitcoin 2.0 space we're also going to talk about security uh and and that's sort of in our view uh there are some of the main interesting topics this year and and looking forward and before that we wanted to just very briefly mention a few of the the I don't know how you would call that so that the main things people focus on uh sort of drivers of the development or maybe uh one could say marks of the development

um so the first one yeah yeah so the first one is price now if you are listening to this of course you are well aware that the Bitcoin price hasn't done too well in 2014 I think when we started this and when a lot of people started things in Bitcoin space was when the price was just going through the moon and we passed a thousand dollars very briefly beforehand and even though the price has gone down maybe tiny bit but at least personally I thought and I think a lot of people felt this is just sort of a speed bump but now it's going to go full up to the Moon and that hasn't happened at all right so I think in many ways you can say 2014 was a good year a lot of things have

happened but if you look at comprise it certainly doesn't look that way what what was your um what was your expectations to us here when you got into the like when we started out do you remember when you thought was going to happen with the Bitcoin price I I guess I would say in retrospect I naively thought that the price was going to continue to go up which is why I bought a bunch of Bitcoin when the price was going up uh back in uh I guess December of last year probably not a good move at the time uh probably would have been best to wait a little bit so until the price came back down again but I mean if you look at if I'm I'm no by no means uh qualified to give any

sort of analytical uh information about price charts but if you look at the price chart it is even though it has been in a steady not a steady decline but uh sort of stable decline in the last year from its peak at above a thousand dollars I mean it's definitely above where it was in 2013. um I don't want to say it's stabilized but I mean for the last few months it's been hovering around 500 between five and four hundred dollars three hundred five and three hundred sorry keep doing the euro conversion so I I think we're better off now than where we were perhaps 18 months ago

uh but there is a lot of room to grow that's that's for sure I mean I think we all like to see the price go up and the price will bring in more people and sort of it's sort of a Snowball Effect where the more people come in the more the price will probably go up and then more press goes up more people come in and right right so I mean I think the interesting thing is that I personally thought of the price to sort of a track you're a Tracker of the Bitcoin the state of Bitcoin right like where are we in the development of Bitcoin and I think that's the way many people uh think and thought of the price but what we've had in 2014 is a bit of a decoupling of that because the price is done terribly but at the

same time if you look at VC investment which is another sort of interesting um indicator and also just to growth in the number of startups and the number of mature startups and the number of startups that are run by you know professional people who have experience who have funding Etc that has exploded you know there was very quite there was not very much a year ago uh two years ago there was practically nothing and today there's quite a lot so that has developed a lot the price hasn't come along with that and it will be interesting to speculate why I think we did some of that with with an episode of Daniel galanti um

but that being said I I do suspect that is going to change I don't think we will this decoupling will continue and I think somehow it has to catch up uh right no I think that's a good good way to look at it the the the ecosystem is growing from within uh with like you said you know startup growth ecosystem the the investment Community coming in and investing uh more and more in in startups I mean we've seen just a growth of investment money in in last year it has to catch up at some point but then the question is what happens does that bubble explode when that happens you know when the mainstream realizes that everybody is is is uh that they need to start looking at cryptocurrency

you know will there be an explosion of the price and then will it come back down again well I mean in a sense if there is a cons I believe develops that cryptocurrency is sort of an asset of the future then it never has to come down per se right uh it's not like a stock where there's a bubble and there is some earnings that you know that they're tied to the corporate activities so at some point that valuation has to come down unless the earnings go up we don't have that with Bitcoin right there's nothing keeping it sort of down um that being said uh one thing that is to consider is one thing we

talked about with vitalik as well and we're going to talk about with Robert slams that's the whole idea of how good of a currency is Bitcoin have a bit of a how could of a store value is Bitcoin and and of course that may have an influence because we may have a success of cryptocurrencies but maybe not with Bitcoin so I think that's very possible um and and of course if that's the case then there doesn't have to be any correlation anymore right we can have cryptocurrencies take over the world the Bitcoin go to zero as soon as possible I think I I think that's probably one of the things that struck me most from that stayed with me since the uh from the vitalik episode is uh is um

you know it will will Bitcoin be a stable unit of account and his response was pretty simple that probably won't be Bitcoin uh yeah yeah because because it has um it doesn't have the attributes required to to be a stable unit of an account and to be honest I I think I I do agree with him I there's a lot of people have said that you know Bitcoin has become more stable over time like less volatile and maybe that is true but I don't think that's something that will necessarily continue I think even if even if the Bitcoin isn't displaced by some other currency and even if Bitcoin now breaks through and really gets used sort of globally as a world currency in payment I think that is not going to decrease

volatility at all because you will have a lot of people flushing into Bitcoin people thinking like where's this going to go do I need to move my money over there that's going to have a drive huge volatility I mean for the most part in a good way it's going to be upward volatility but also downward I mean it's going to be it's just going to be very volatile and of course one could imagine maybe in 20 years or 50 years when everybody is using Bitcoin all the time that you won't have these Dynamics anymore but that's a very very long way uh to go if we ever get there so in the meantime I think Bitcoin is going to be very volatile now the question is how much of a disadvantage is that does that mean

it's not going to be used uh as a sort of the currency cryptocurrency of the future or not and I'm not sure which one where it's going to go I think both scenarios are possible and I have a question for uh for The Economist in you um what what was what would what would be to happen if um so take for example you know we're we're a Bitcoin only company we accept Bitcoin is payment from our advertisers and we pay I guess most of our suppliers in Bitcoin and moving forward we'd like to pay all of them in Bitcoin um if Bitcoin companies that work closely together as has been the case I mean a lot of a

lot of companies in the Bitcoin space do work together uh if if they all start pricing in Bitcoin is that feasible is that possible that the the Bitcoin ecosystem prices in Bitcoin regardless of uh the volatility no I yeah I I get your question and I think the answer is no because I mean the only scenario where you could imagine this is if you had some sort of closed off system right where you don't interact uh with the outside world but that is not true at all right I mean even though we have most of our revenues in Bitcoin and we pay a significant part

of our expenses in Bitcoin nothing is priced in Bitcoin right uh everything is priced in US Dollars and Euros or something like that so you cannot just ignore that it doesn't work at all I think uh so there's I don't think there's any way of that happening so I guess the next topic on the list is uh you know still in this sort of General overview of the last year's media and specifically the TR the treatment of Bitcoin and mainstream media and how that's evolved um I think the general consensus in in Europe and also in the United States I'm not sure that would be the case in Russia or China or countries like that but uh I my impression is that

in the last year we've seen a trend where the media has become more sympathetic to bitcoin or at least not as uh they don't come down on it as much as they used to I mean when I first got into uh the Bitcoin ecosystem about a year ago my my impression was that the mainstream media was very negative about it focusing on um on sort of like the the speculative bubble and then Mount gox and all these other bad stories that happened within in the past year I think in the last six months we've seen sort of a general Trend where the media the mainstream media is starting to get it I don't know if it's also because governments have started to get it uh what are your thoughts I think that is going too far

uh I I personally see a little bit of a diversions uh uh and I think Bitcoin is being taken a lot more seriously in the in the tech space in the startup space so if you read like TechCrunch and I think it really has broken through to an extent in the startup world right in especially in the Silicon Valley startup world and I think that's reflected in the content and the treatment you see uh in a side like TechCrunch but also on some mainstream media that's more focusing on that but then if you see the treatment in uh European newspapers I I it's definitely I think there is

that has become sort of a voice right where it says oh Bitcoin this is interesting technology it has a lot of potentials it could lead to a lot of things uh even Microsoft is accepting it now that sort of thing but at the same time you still have a lot of voices that it is some sort of um dubious thing and like trying to do a currency which is a government job or it's way too volatile it's a speculative bubble I think all of those are still very very strong um but I I think it has lessened a bit right and I think that other voice has gained in prominence I think it's I think that we

can say that it's sort of neutralized so the the if if the uh if the voice was mostly negative a year ago it's more nuanced now and we might look at both sides of the coin rather than simply looking at the negative sides right you still have to negative voices but you also have some positive voices now and you have some in the middle and so is there anything else you want to add to the media no I think that's it um I mean maybe one thing we can talk about is the the Bitcoin media Bitcoin specific media um my my view is that of course you know

the price increase in December uh ushered in a whole a whole bunch of New Media Outlets I mean there are definitely more podcasts than they were than there were a year ago uh there's more bitcoin news sites now whether so I I think there's there's a lot lots more Bitcoin blogs and bitcoin news sites which ones are qualitative and not I think a lot of them are simply re-blogging or reposting what the big ones are doing but uh there's definitely more variety in in terms of uh Bitcoin media like there's lots of new YouTube channels uh that have popped up in the last year as well uh what are your thoughts on that yeah uh interesting point I mean this is

actually something I've been sort of watching over the year uh of course also from personal interests and and from us doing episode Bitcoin and uh I've really been paying attention throughout the year to the Alexa ranking so for those who don't know uh Alexa it's it's it's basically sort of a ranking of the popularity of all the websites in the world it's not perfect but it at least gives a good indication of the traffic levels we're seeing and if you look at that and you look at any of the main Bitcoin sites whether it's coinbase blockchain or the info uh coindesk any of those uh sites and companies like that have been around for uh you know relatively long time

the traffic levels have declined pretty much a very very significantly throughout the year and most of them are I would say they probably lost like 50 of the traffic or something since uh January right now I think that if you if you know if you track that compare that with a price that's very much you know very much correlated so I think that's been interesting to watch so I think a lot of these uh media sites you're talking about media Endeavors you're talking about they were started like we started it at the at the height right where everybody was excited about it this is a big opportunity and I think for the most part it hasn't lived up yet right but of

course we believe and many others believe that it will come so you know you keep doing it but and and of course some of them didn't right so I may also stop but I guess that's just normal no but I think you know like the price we've seen a leveling off of uh of Bitcoin specific media and so the cream has risen to the top and I mean in terms of in terms of blogs you you we you know we can identify perhaps four or five maybe six uh blogs that are kind of top of mind that people will be able to cite um people in the space anyway as sort of go-to places for bitcoin news and you know podcasts as well you know there's

sort of you know with uh you know a good example is uh in Amsterdam uh there was the blockchain awards and they actually had a podcast category well before before like in the year previous we wouldn't have been able to have a podcast category because it was one podcast so uh I mean I think another uh another thing that sort of very much tracks into that is uh the conference space and if you I think it's it's very similar in the conference space right there was basically in the first half of 2013 there was like one conference or two conferences there was a San Diego conference by Bitcoin foundation and then in the fall there were some

conferences I went to my first Bitcoin conference uh in the fall 2013 Amsterdam was great conference um uh also pretty much full sold out a lot of enthusiasm right price going up everybody was starting conferences you started having confidence you had like a conference every every weekend constantly there was a conference somewhere and I think what I've seen is that those haven't done very well right like there a lot of them have been half empty they have had difficulty selling their sponsorships uh so I would say you know and I mean I know personally a few people organizing conferences that have had this experience and and now if you

look at the fall conferences I think there's not that much right this fall I I think there has been a decrease uh for before and there's definitely something similar going on there right there was a lot of enthusiasm a lot of people got into the space I mean actually I was actually also thinking of putting on a conference at one point I'm very glad that I didn't get into this yeah so so was I um and and that's totally leveled off because and that sort of tracks also one of our topics is that adoption just hasn't kept up with what expectations have been yeah I mean I agree we definitely saw

explosive growth in conferences uh but whether they're profitable or um or of any interest because I mean a lot of these conferences you look at the speaker list uh uh it's it's just always the same people right so if you've got 10 conferences uh in the year and you're seeing the same talks and seeing the same people um I mean I think this is this is something we talked about at some point as well is you know what what are what are our goals when we're going to conferences uh is it is it to produce content is it to meet people uh and I think when when you're choosing a conference to go to you really have to um you really have to think of that and and and and uh evaluate whether it will

be you know profitable for you to go there um whether you're gonna get a return on well whether you'll get a return I wouldn't I wouldn't say profitable but if you'll get the return on your investment yeah absolutely yes uh briefly uh I wanted to talk about meetups because we both have meetups we haven't right talked about it in a long time um I'd like to get your for feedback on on the Berlin Meetup in the last year yeah so uh I started uh when I when I got into Bitcoin and when I was living in Berlin there were two existing meetups one was uh I meet up at room 77 which is a uh the first physical

location to accept Bitcoin in 2011. it's a restaurant in the bar uh run by owned by Europe Plaza and there was also a Bitcoin exchange which is sort of a Satoshi Square thing which was once a month and it did have a short talk like 10 minutes or something usually and uh so I wanted to have a Meetup that's really focused on um building companies getting people together really having content and that sort of stuff so I thought a Bitcoin starter of Civilian Meetup in I think it was like October 2013 and it was very well received from beginning we had like I think 35 people our first meet up it was of course also at the sort of when when

you just started having the price going up and there was a lot of enthusiasm at the time and it really felt that like the atmosphere was very clear that you know we are on to something big sort of thing and our Meetup has uh is on well you know I mean I think it's it's been a a great group we have meetups every two weeks and we have usually between three and four five sometimes even talks we've had a lot of great people giving talks and and today we have about 450 members on on Meetup and if you talk about the actual attendance of our meetups it's actually not that different from when we started

out it's still about I would say 40 people we have had a few bigger ones um so we've had up to maybe 100 people at some occasions but I think it has been it's been a great experience so and it's been lots of fun and very valuable to do it and I think it has served a good purpose in getting the community together in Berlin how many have you done so far oh I'm just on that we have to turn 32. wow okay and you do it every two weeks yeah we do it every two weeks basically yeah well that's that's slightly contrast to my experience here I mean I started the Meetup just after use I guess in January

I did my first one and we've had five uh I had a couple I had a few months hiatus the community let me it's definitely not as a big big city like Berlin so there are but it is a very uh there's a big Tech Community here there are many Tech startups and Tech incubators so I was expecting more people to come in but I've really had to grab people and tell them to come and check it out um we've got about 100 people in the Meetup group and so I'm rebooting it for January for January so my first one this year will be in in at the end of January I haven't had one since I mean really since the since like May of uh of this year

and um what I've what I found more the most challenging is getting people to do talks uh for a long time it was just me and two other guys and sometimes like one other person doing talks but I've I've really had a hard time getting people to uh to to sort of be empowered and and and tackle a subject so what I've done for for January is I've gone and just grabbed people from Paris entrepreneurs uh and said like you know come on over and so we'll have Richard katano on for instance uh from uh handshake uh we'll have the founder of the y'allet wallet and um and a guy who works for premium and you know the response

I've got from that I mean like lots of people signed up for it so I'm hoping that um this is sort of uh give people the the drive to want to do talks I've talked to other people here in town that do meetups like web design meetups and things like that and and they tell me like if nobody wants to propose a talk we just don't do one so maybe that's maybe that's the right approach yeah that's certainly one way to do it right you just have social meetups uh in Berlin it hasn't been a problem generally getting dogs I mean because we have like a lot of meetups it has sometimes been the case that I I could only find like one person to give a talk or something versus like

three that maybe we like to have at least two um and sometimes if I had to run after people and like email them but in general has been pretty good and there's some people have also sort of gone that they when Johann Barbie of 37 coins were still in Berlin he was giving a talk every meet up uh and I I've given a little talk myself and a few other people have also given a lot of talks so that's been definitely something that is just also something oh you can take on any topic get into it and give a talk about it uh and you know I've done a lot of times to take one day to learn about the topic and you know for example gonna talk on ethereum or something like that um but that's definitely I I'm sure that's a challenge if you have a smaller

a smaller community and maybe not as many active people um but before we get into our first topic we want to briefly talk about our sponsor gems here so let's put up the logo so James I think many of you heard about it James is a social messaging app we have had Daniel palette the CEO on a few weeks ago it was very interesting episode and I encourage you to check it out so uh gems uh the way I like to think about gems is that it's a bit like WhatsApp but it has a cryptocurrency aspect to it so it has its built-in cryptocurrency and the cryptocurrency is used for a few things

first of all it's sold in a crowd sale and that sale is still going on today so if you want to get involved in that we'll tell you the URL where you can go to at the end so the crowd sale uh serves to raise funds to build the app that's one thing it also gives people a stake in the project so we've brought some gems so we are like invested in the project we wanted to succeed uh and if it does succeed then the the tokens we've bought they will appreciate value and uh and the third thing it's used for is that gems will be used to incentivize users so for example well you know let's take Facebook as an example we have some

power users on Facebook that have thousands of friends post all the time invite new people and you can really say that they've played a big role in making Facebook a success and not to mention Brands too they'll have like hundreds of thousands of followers exactly right but uh I think Brands they tend to have a monetary interest trying to get people off but a lot of people if you talk about users they don't have a monetary interest all they do is is they really increase the value of the the platform and Facebook now being worth I don't know 50 billion or whatever it is they haven't gotten anything for that so what the James currency uh can do is it can incentivize people for that right so you can say uh you do a lot to increase the value of the network

increase the value platform uh we reward you and and that's something I think that's a huge potential and and that's why I think it has a big shot of actually you know becoming a big success I have to say I I actually have it on my phone yeah Daniel allowed me to get the the better version and uh so this actually comes out on on January 30th I think for iPhone and I and Android I've been using it and I gotta say it's really really cool in the interface is there uh is there uh what about the iPhone is there a beta for that yet well I think just from a technical

perspective it's it's a bit harder to get people in an iPhone better because you need to sort of add them in the developer platform you just sent me the APK for the for the Android version um so the cool thing about this is it works with telegram so telegram is an open source messaging platform there's 50 million users so if you have telegram or if your friends have telegram they'll show up in your list and vice versa yeah so um so yeah so uh now so a couple of cool things about this so they've they've integrated the wallet so for example like if you see here like I've got 123 gems and I can tap it and it says that I've got uh 0.003 Bitcoins and when when you're in a conversation with someone you just type

like 100 gems and it sounds straight away and then it sends it to the gym so I'll show you uh okay I should probably delete their history so I'm I'm just typing in 100 gems all right so I've got here 100 gems and then I could press this Little Gems button down here and it would send the gems so the the integration of the wallet is really well done like it's that's really cool and they've got uh so encrypted chat as well so you can begin an encrypted chat with someone initiate it and all the messages are encrypted end to end and you can even set like

time limits so a bit like Snapchat but for messaging so you could say like my messages only last 10 seconds and then they get deleted so that's really cool too yeah so yeah it's a it's a cool project and uh that's another thing that I I'm excited about and that's also sort of the project that they talked that Daniel talked about that motivated them was that they want to really bring cryptocurrencies to a wider audience and and this is something that could do it and I think that's a good child of doing it and of course the cool thing is that the potential is just so big right because even if you think of coinbase having like two million users at most right I mean two Billy Wallace probably means like more like 1 million users or something um it and if you think of like a company

like WhatsApp having 500 million users or something like that you don't have to get very far only if you get like five percent as good as WhatsApp five percent as far as WhatsApp that's still a huge number of new big uh cryptocurrency users so that's that's an exciting thing now um so they raised about 2 000 Bitcoins I think a bit more so if you wanna the I don't so I think the sales going on for like about another week until January 5th January 5th yeah so if you want it back to project and purchase some tokens you can do so with coinify so that's k-o-i-n-i-f-y.com and then you will see it gems and you can also check out the

app at getgems.org uh so yeah please do so check it out and I'm certainly excited until I have uh diversion as well and I can send Sebastian some gems it takes a lot of gems for the support of episode Bitcoin um yeah exactly so back to our episode now we have the first kind of proper topic now we're already kind of in so the first topic we wanted to talk about was regulation now we've talked about regulation quite a few times in this podcast it's been a big topic although not so much in the last three months uh I think at some point regulation is going to become less important at some

point we're going to stop talking about regulation because it's sort of established right like we know how what people have to do it's going to become a boring subject at some point it's not right now right it's so important right now and it has such a huge influence on where things are going and so if we in in my view if we look at the sort of current state of Regulation right there are two uh main jurisdictional areas that matter the first one is the United States the second one is Europe now a bit simplifying of course Canada matters and and the rest of the world also to some extent but uh yes kind of matters but those are by far the most important

right so uh what's going to happen in the US and in Europe is gonna have a big influence on the rest of the world and it's also just gonna have a big influence because a lot of Bitcoin companies are there right the most Bitcoin companies are either in the US or in in Europe so in my view in the EU there is one thing that sort of looms above everything which is this vat case so the question is do you have to charge VAT on the sale of Bitcoin so let's say uh for example there is a company called cephalo in Sweden it's like coinbase you can you can give them you can buy 300 Euros or for Bitcoin from them so the question is

do they have to charge ubat on that and then give that money to the government now if that's the case it is total disaster it is a disaster so many fund it makes everything a mess it especially makes a mess of accepting Bitcoin as a payment for companies it essentially becomes impossible uh and it's not clear which way that's going to go and in some countries like the UK they've said uh there's no vat and in other countries like Sweden for example they said vit should be charged and now the EU court of justice is going to decide that we don't know exactly when but it's probably going to be reasonably soon probably 2015. I would guess

um and that's going to determine a lot of things so that's really the one thing I think that's lubing in Europe that's going to be it could be a big big threat to bitcoin it could really have a huge negative effect and it's something that people aren't aren't so aware of I think I was at just a few weeks ago two weeks ago or something at a workshop in um in Berlin about founding a cryptocurrency bank with Fedor and some other people cracking were there so about 30 people talking about how we could go about finding cryptocurrency bank and this for example is a topic that was not really talked about people

aren't totally aware of it but it's so important it could totally destroy this project and it could destroy so much uh with Bitcoin in Europe so that's looming there we don't know where it's going to go but it's a big big dark cloud in the sky and then the other in the US we have the big licensing right so we've talked about licenses as well uh there has been some update I think uh Benjamin lowsky has said that some they've made some clarifications about what it will look like and I think the positive clarifications so before there were some rules that were just totally crazy like for example that um every uh every Bitcoin uh you know

bid licensed company so basically everyone who sort of transacts with Bitcoin or holds Bitcoin for someone else they have to know every party to every transaction so that means a wallet provider would have to prevent you from sending Bitcoins to some unknown address because they don't know the party of that transaction right totally crazy uh I mean it would totally destroy Bitcoin fortunately they've gotten rid of that or they have announced that they will get rid of that uh and then there's some other good changes so we haven't yet see the results but I am reasonably optimistic there that there will be at least semi-reasonable and they will allow at least the well-funded companies

and some people to actually provide good Bitcoin products in the US and uh I think it seems it may well be likely that other states are gonna a take on or take over the speed licensing but even if not companies will have to cooperate with it because otherwise they can't have New York customers which is also a pain um so those are the kind of the things that stand out to me uh this vat case in the bit last thing and the really important and I think 2015 is going to determine a lot I think we will know a lot more at the end of the year how feasible the

regulatory environment will be you know how uh how much it will allow cryptocurrencies to Blossom uh I'm curious what do you think is has the potential to be uh most harmful to bitcoin the vat case uh for instance the European Court defining that Vats must be charged on bitcoin or the propositions of bid license I I mean I think it's the vat case that's absolutely I think the bid licensed stuff is while annoying and a pain etc etc I mean it's a problem I don't think it's as big of a problem as to be a t case I think to be a t case if bat is charged that would just be really really really bad

uh but you can't help but but also I mean my way of thinking of this is I mean if if that doesn't get go through that there's no way that The Regulators are not aware that this will kill the the ecosystem well they don't care right first of all this is not the Regulators right this is the justice system interpreting the existing law it's not like someone making new law they're saying like hey this is Bitcoin thing where does it fit in or existing bat tax law uh well it should be in that category hence VT needs to be charged so these are not people coming up with uh new regulatory Frameworks for Bitcoin uh

so far I don't think there is really an initiative to do that in Europe um but so yeah so but they don't care if Bitcoin is going to have a problem they don't care if you know some companies will have to you know get out of Europe or close shop Etc I I honestly don't think Bitcoin has the weight the prominence the Mind share uh for people to really take that into account I may be wrong about this maybe I think you're right I think that the there is definitely not the Mind share there's definitely not the weight or lobbying power or anything or anything of that I

mean yeah one one more thing to mention on this uh is that in this court case different countries could submit their positions right so Sweden submitted their position they said vat should be charged on bitcoin and other countries could sort of also put in their positions because in the end what they decide is going to apply European wide and the only countries that have put in uh submitted uh their their stance on this issue have been uh Germany and Estonia and both countries have said yes vat should be charged there hasn't been a single country that has said uh no it should be exempt or no this is too important of a technology

industry we don't want the scarce service but nobody has taken this position uh in front of the court I mean the only one who can take that position is the guy who's actually doing the lawsuit the Swedish guy but no country no official government Authority has taken that position so yeah it certainly is uh occasion to to worry about but I guess we will see where this goes we might be able to absence a few months oh and one more thing on the regulatory front that I think is going to be very interesting to watch is the whole issue with crowd sales so there was recently a coinage article I don't know how much attention it got

but I think it's kind of a big story in a sense so some guy uh has some Bitcoin exchange and he sold let me pull this up Bitcoin trading Corp or something like that it doesn't really matter that much but this guy sold some sort of crypto shares uh for Bitcoin and now he got a fine which was equivalent to like all the profits he ever made with his company plus ten thousand dollars or something like that uh pretty hefty fine right so the question is to what extent uh are these crowd sales legal like if you talk about for example ethereum what do you think swarm we've done some of those things uh it's it's worrying right we certainly hope this should be legal

um but it's kind of unclear and it's not it's unclear to what extent the SEC is going to go after um people who have organize Crown sales so that's definitely something that worries me and that probably worries a lot of people and I think we don't know where it's going to go and of course the the line is sort of you're not allowed to sell shares but you are allowed to sell products so and and with some of the things we're talking about here let's say uh ether for ethereum's currency the the lines are sort of blurred is it the product or is it the share or is it I mean it's not technically a share it doesn't pay dividends but it's also maybe one could say it's a

share some people treat it as if it was a share so it's uh it's something else to worry about and I I don't know where this is going to go but I I think that you know if if 2014 the states have started being aware of Bitcoin and thinking of ways they might be able to regulate or at least fit it into existing regulation 2015 I think we'll see more of that uh focus on on dapps now the the I guess the next phase of that is when we start getting into regulated professions so take for example and that's already happening now with just like the regular

Financial system or the the regular startup uh ecosystem with companies like uber Airbnb um being confronted with existing regulation with regards to regulated professions you know when you have the ride sharing service uh the Bitcoin ride sharing service or the Bitcoin version of Airbnb or the Bitcoin version of God knows what other regulated profession then you start getting into like a whole other um a whole other area of Regulation that has like lobbies and you know powerful yeah protecting your interests so absolutely I think no you're totally right the whole dapps issue is gonna

bring up a whole other host of questions that people haven't even thought about yet and that I think regular regulators and law enforcements have like literally no clue about uh so I think to some extent this may become a topic next year uh think of that but I think factum is not so what's going on here I think we lost your video yeah I think factum is not I don't know what's going on here

do you want to just refresh the page oh there you go okay now we can't hear you though we're experiencing some technical difficulties please stand by uh we can't hear you I can see you but I can't hear you wave your hand if you can hear me now yeah okay perfect and you're back uh let me see

just make sure that I'm still recording me yeah I think you're using your internal mic though yeah I apologize okay no that's you're back okay cool yeah but uh recording stopped what's up okay yeah so I think it's not that calm like probably not gonna be that controversial I think other areas are going to be much much more but yeah well

will be very interesting definitely I think uh I I suspect it's probably more going to become an issue maybe 2016 or something like when when those steps actually start getting a lot of users because probably next year is still going to be like people developing things people figuring out the user experience people doing all those things maybe you're selling some users but I personally kind of doubt that we will see kind of breakthrough uh the apps especially if you talk something like uber like complicated things um but yeah afterwards yeah definitely going to be interesting so moving on to the next topic uh

adoption so we've sort of seen uh the the thing with adoption is there's a Divergence in incentives so we've seen strong Merchant adoption in the last year uh I mean strong you know reasonably strong Merchant adoption with large Merchants starting to accept Bitcoin uh Microsoft uh over stock Tiger Direct you know there have been some big stories of the of merchant adoption but user adoption has been sort of weak I guess one thing that can attribute you can attribute to that is that you know there's a strong incentive for merchants to start accepting Bitcoin because for them it allows them to gain new customers potentially we're still sort of in this period where uh there's a novelty aspect to it which will get you

you know all the like publicity and everything and potentially new users within the Bitcoin Community however for new users entering the space um or even outside of the space there's very little incentive uh because for them it doesn't cost them anything to use a credit card whereas the charges the costs are usually um uh taken by the merchant uh so there's the incentives haven't been aligned there so far uh I think there are a couple of things that will uh sort of change this um you know one of the one of the ways that companies are trying to bring new users into the ecosystem are projects like

gems right so uh creating an altcoin which uh has an actual use case within an application um one one other interesting area that we've been looking at or we've been closely looking at is change tips so I don't think this has the same sort of impact as a product like gems uh for the time being I think you know it's mostly used within the Bitcoin ecosystem people tipping each other uh once you start to see sort of widespread tipping where people with Bitcoin or tipping people with that don't use Bitcoin and I think that's happening that's happening but I don't know to what extent it's happening

um I think I think there's uh I think apps will play a large a large role uh so you know we may see other apps uh enter the enter the space like other messaging apps like gems for instance uh or uh a cloud storage you know that's another space that uh is due to be disrupted and where people have a strong incentive to use the currency so you know those are two areas where I think in the developed world we might see an increase in users remittances uh it's a little unclear right uh we really thought that remittances were going to take off in 2014 at least I I really thought that this would uh this would be the case

um hasn't really turned out that way so far I guess uh there hasn't really been um strong increase in adoption in those countries where uh where we send the most of our remittance uh payments so it's hard for you know people sending money there to change their money back into yeah local currency so that has been a barrier some companies are trying to change that um but yeah I mean I think you know you face it correctly so that the the basic the main basic challenge is that today if you talk to your grandmother about Bitcoin do your parents about Bitcoin someone some random person about Bitcoin especially if you're in the U.S or if in

Europe or some some place like that you cannot give them very strong reasons to use Bitcoin I mean there are a few right so if one is buying drugs on these dark markets that's just something you need Bitcoin for and if you are interested in that kind of product uh you know it makes sense to actually go out and buy Bitcoins and do that like that because you know you don't have to go out and meet some guy Etc so you actually have a strong reason there and I think the other strong reason that the main reason actually has been speculation right people buy Bitcoins because they think it's gonna succeed and then the value is going to increase and they're going to get rich right so that I think that's absolutely the the number those are the the main reasons

then you also have maybe some ideological reasons like I love this Independence and uh like money free from the government that kind of thing so some people are drawn by that so if you have those three reasons they are they tend not to be enough to they tend not to be the right reasons to sort of get the broad mass of people the broadmaster people don't want to speculate in some like weird currency they've never heard of they don't want to buy drugs on dark markets and they're not ideologically driven that they're like oh I want to have this new currency about the government so the question is then how do we get them to take Bitcoin right how do we get them to start using Bitcoin that's a good challenge I think and yeah

change tip can be something I think possible games it could be that start using that right uh payments you know I think once you set up uh for example paying online it's actually kind of more convenient with Bitcoin than with credit cards entering all those details now the the problem is it's not enough more convenient to make sense to like go out and get some Bitcoins just to buy things online uh but at least it's a small advantage and maybe over time this can become a bigger Advantage let's say if it's integrating your bank account you can automatically buy Bitcoins and then you pay and you repurchase it so you don't have to worry about the volatility or something like that then maybe you could

say like I'm going to start using some Bitcoin even if I don't care um then just developing countries uh I I think one one interesting uh space we we've talked about before but haven't really looked at as uh as a a plausible means to bring you know sort of lots of people into into the spaces um this idea of using cryptocurrency as Fidelity points so say for existence for example an existing brand uh creates a Fidelity uh loyalty yeah right a loyalty program sorry I'm using the French word uh to uh and and they use a cryptocurrency to do this

um and then they start advertising that on TV you know think of you know Facebook and Twitter back in like 2005 2006 when Brands started using social media and started advertising on TV like TV commercials like follow us on Twitter or you know like us on Facebook um I think this sort of brought on um uh awareness of social media to the general public and so bringing it down to the common denominator uh I think when Brands start utilizing cryptocurrencies in this way for some sort of like new Innovative Fidelity program uh that that might be one of the ways that we'll we'll see an increase in

use in crypto yeah no I agree I think that's an interesting use case and I think yeah I think that's very likely that it will actually happen at some point right the question is when and but yeah I think that's actually not uh uh quite feasible that right now companies like I mean and that's something if we talk about adoption that's actually sort of surprised me because I had expected that user adoption would sort of be faster than Merchant adoption you know I really thought that there would first have to be a significant user base before a company like Microsoft would say oh we started taking Bitcoin has been totally the opposite way it really surprises me um it makes sense if you think about

incentives right like them having the payment fees and also them sort of thinking ahead more um but yeah I think it's not far-fetched to think that like oh now Microsoft or Odell or the best example if this is Reddit right so Reddit is planning to have its own cryptocurrencies that will be backed or something along those lines by Reddit stock uh so that people can actually sort of you know a valuable Reddit users get rewarded and if Reddit succeeds they get some money and like that kind of thing is cool really Innovative and I think if and that that we may start seeing uh we much seeing on a much broader level and

that could actually make a big difference I agree um and I guess the the one last thing sort of in adoption that will be interesting to see in 2015 is or as a at this I've been thinking about this quite a bit is the whole question of the financial sector so this is we've talked about this with Daniel galancy in in a podcast about solid X this company is essentially tackling that problem so right now uh you know for example if you invest your retirement money uh you can't buy Bitcoins but maybe you could say it actually would make sense to put in let's say uh half a percent of your

retirement fund in Bitcoin because maybe it works out then would be worth a lot right and if it doesn't you don't lose a lot so that kind of role as an asset as an investment asset it hasn't happened yet but it could happen soon right I think the wrinkle boss ETF is one aspect one tool that could make that possible and and if it does happen that's not going to lead to a ton new users but I think it could lead to a ton new sort of indirect Bitcoin owners and it could lead to an increase in price and I think that could indirectly have a really big impact on on bitcoin as well and perhaps that's gonna happen I I think I'm actually pretty optimistic that this will be something in 2015.

yeah so there's some up there isn't like one area where uh which can drive adoption there are sort of multiple areas or pulling people into the into the space uh very different people and uh yeah I guess we'll we'll see which ones are most effective right it's very very much open question I think how because there are so many different angles right this can happen there's this sort of increase in adoption driving adoption and we just don't know where it's gonna it's gonna occur um I think in contrast with last year last year we were sort of expecting adoption but not really knowing what were the levers uh what what what what would uh cause that adoption to occur

now I think we're seeing more of the pieces of the puzzle of the puzzle kind of falling into place and um yeah so you know like I said there's there are multiple areas where adoption could grow so shall we move on to our next topic totally yeah dabs in Bitcoin 2.0 I remember like yeah I I don't like the term Bitcoin 2.0 I um although my my Twitter handle is sep 2.0 I hate when people use 2.0 to define something new and Innovative yeah yeah so I mean I think it sort of works in terms of like people understand what they talk

about yeah but it definitely has its flaws to turn so I mean if we look at the Bitcoin 2.0 space uh there have been multiple developments in the last year uh we've definitely seen an increase in the amount of protocols um building on top of Bitcoin and I mean some of those have sort of died off I guess you could say some have taken more prevalence counterparties definitely developed into this kind of huge platform uh for build for uh crowdfunding you know ethereum has had their crowd sale and a very successful crowd sale I mean in in the history of crowd sales like Indiegogo Kickstarter everything it's in second place uh

according to this article we found on Wikipedia I mean that's pretty impressive when you think about it um and there also have been many real feasible use cases for dapps so we've mentioned a few of them already storage uh factum and gems uh within uh are among those those use cases now where is this all going one one area that I see really developing in the last year in the in the next year is inoperability between these daps so what that means is the ability to um I mean I think these batch will develop on top of their existing platform apis which will which will allow them to operate um

together in a decentralized way so that for example uh I mean you can use gems to send a message to uh uh say factum to embed some sort of information into into the blockchain um you know perhaps also using I mean I'm using examples that we have so far but uh in fact I'm having an API which allows you to send proof of existence from uh send a file from Storage into a faction chain so that you can have proof of existence so I think these are the types of things that we'll see develop in the next year interoperability also one thing that I think coming back to

adoption that's very important and that will definitely grow awareness of decentralized applications and cryptocurrencies in general is seeing more Dash in app stores so I think when gems enters the App Store you know if it is successful uh if it does gain traction having a Dap in the App Store is one big step uh to gaining more users um you know there are many app stores there's the the Apple uh iPhone and iPad App Store there's the Play Store there's the macro Mac OS store I think there's also a Windows store so if we have visibility in those app stores uh that will definitely help increase adoption and increase awareness

in uh cryptocurrencies in general crowd sales is also an important um area to be looking at so that we have seen multiple crowd sales this year and many successful ones you know ethereum is definitely probably the most successful and uh you know there are others that have proven to be successful this model is being uh is being we're sort of proving that this model can exist and that it is successful uh that we don't have to go through platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo that we can uh start a create a creative product and start a company and build entirely on crypto and run a crowd sale without having to go through

any platform and so just run our own marketing and uh well I think that will grow in the next year now will we see uh I guess now the um what we have to be careful of is sort of identifying uh good crowds sales and bad crowd sales you know now that we've seen this model work and we've been able to test it and see that it's actually effective now some people will probably try to take advantage of that and uh and you know create scam coins so uh yeah so you know building reputation

around around a product is sort of an important uh component to being able to start a car sale um yeah I know I think it's really interesting and of course ethereum launch is going to be a big thing I think well I don't think we will see like yet probably in the next year like actually I assume apps uh I I mean people will develop them but probably not to the point where people actually you know use ethereum apps on their iPhones and stuff uh but it would be very interesting to see how it's really seized in the developing Community people and developing cryptocurrency apps and you know to what extent it competes with a kind of party and things like that and I do think yeah the crowd sales you're mentioning that definitely

something a model that just works it just makes a lot of sense for this and I don't think it's going to go away I mean a lot of people criticize it uh but it just makes so much sense so um do you if you is there something else you want to cover on regarding dapps well I I think the next uh logical applications of that well there's one I think that we'll see uh uh be tackled in in 2015 pass 2016 is Wi-Fi sharing so we've we've uh started to see storage uh or cloud storage uh

be applied to dapps you know messaging um proof of existence Wi-Fi sharing I think is an interesting area that we will start to see being uh addressed by by startups and maybe carpooling I I don't think like uber style uh ride sharing but perhaps like carpooling uh would be an interesting area to uh to decentralize because it is you know really like a peer-to-peer economy so I I think all of the existing incumbents of the peer-to-peer economy are sort of up next uh if you will in terms of model that models that need to be decentralized that will be decentralized

uh I think if we start getting out of the software um um space like the first ones that will be centralized are probably like carpooling or Airbnb I think we've actually there have actually been examples of that yeah no I agree I think the the whole uh um sharing economy um business models are very interesting to think about you know how they will turn out if you start integrating Bitcoin or start building them I think rather than integrated Bitcoin if you start sort of building them as decentralized applications as things with its own token sort of baked into it

um just very briefly we've had some questions in the Q a and I suggest we we cover those very briefly so um on the court so she is running one of the other meetups in Berlin she's running uh I made up for uh for girls or for women uh so I think it's one of the only ones to do that and she does I think once a month and it's it's very successful too so she was asking so she's feeling that a lot of Meetup organizers put a lot of energy in it and are running out of power after a year or six months running it um so what about personal experiences I think Sebastian it did sound a little

bit like this was your uh uh this was your experience maybe to some extent right the difficulty is finding people yeah I mean I don't know if if I was running like a Quantified soft Meetup for example if if I'd be experiencing the same thing but uh yeah it's been my experience so it's been hard to find speakers in my community that have been um willing to uh to speak like I really have to get after them yeah so I I mean personally it I would say I mean it is sometimes tiring especially because uh somehow I haven't been able to find someone else who wants to sort of you know be a co-organizer and actually like

be sort of engaged with it so it can sometimes be a bit tiring to do it you know every two weeks because it's a big frequency but overall I think it hasn't been a big issue because first of all I I think it's just pure luck by being in Berlin where there is a strong Bitcoin Community already it makes everything much much easier and the other thing is because I'm you know I think I'm going to be doing a cryptocurrency things for years to come so I I'm not so discouraged you know I have a very long view as well so so I think that the all the effort putting in now is something that makes sense yeah I feel the same way so uh Anna also mentioned uh yeah or the other media

posts having decreasing numbers yeah I can definitely see that happening and so recipe for hosting successful Meetup you know I think meetup.com is great it really it works especially when it's used I obviously met some guy from Liechtenstein and uh he wanted to start a big commit up there he came to Berlin and sort of I I met with him and the problem there is nobody uses Meetup right so you have to find different ways but if people use Meetup in your place you can put up a meetup group and people tend to uh just enroll because they get notified or here is a new Meetup and over time you have a certain number of people you can launch a Meetup and and I think that works well uh and then I do think probably if you don't have

um speakers it would probably make sense to just do it like monthly drinks Meetup you know it's supposed to know probably I would probably do that if I was you you know yeah and then have speakers as you know whenever there are speakers because I think people in Berlin for example they really appreciate the monthly doing speed up at room 77 it's popular it works well it's been there forever and it's no effort to organize right all you have to do is put in uh the Meetup event you don't even have to go there yourself as a Meetup organizer it's it's really unstructured and and I think that's a it's a good it's a good thing um yeah so the other question is the Smart contracts I think we sort of addressed that I think we are pretty far away from

having daps ethereum apps on the phone and all that kind of stuff uh I think that's going to probably take longer than people think um so I think with that do you wanna should we do this sure so before we move on to our next topic we'd like to talk about shape shift so I mean when you buy Bitcoin for the first time there are all these roadblocks right you you you you have to I mean the the inoperability between fiat currency and Bitcoin is known to be complicated but I think most people expect that when you're in the when we have Bitcoin it

shouldn't be it shouldn't be hard to get other currencies you know once once you're in it once you're in there and that's still very hard I mean up until recently it was still fairly complex to buy Litecoin from Bitcoin or sell Dogecoin for Litecoin uh Etc because you still have to deal with exchanges and exchanges in most cases will ask for you to create an account uh we'll ask for you to prove your identity will you'll have to place an order uh wait for the order to be fulfilled that takes a long time and it's not easy it's not uh the the best way to do it the best way to get all coins is to use shape shift

so shapeshift is that shapeshift.io and you know the way to think about this is Google Translate for cryptocurrencies and I I really love this I really love this analogy actually Alan Scott uh kind of coined this in one of our recent episodes and so I'm going to show you exactly how shapeshift works if I could just share my screen here we're having a hard time with the hangout today aren't we Brian indeed uh okay so screen share is not working well that's a shame okay so anyways so shapeshift.io it's very simple you get a shareshift.io and uh basically you see like a Google translate sort of thing where on one side you've got the currency that you want to convert and on the other side you've got the currency

that you want to convert to so for example let's say we want to convert Bitcoin into Dogecoin we set the amount so we'll say we want a thousand does or ten thousand dose or whatever and then you put your dosecoin address you hit start and then shapeshift will show you uh uh a QR code and an amount so you use your you know Mobile Wallet you scan the QR code you send the amount to their address and they take care of the rest you know in about 20 seconds the Dogecoin is transferred onto your account there's no assignments required you don't even have to give them your email address and uh it's just really really easy and simple to use so um I have it oh you there you go so there this is this is what it looks like

I don't think we have time to do a demo now but um yeah it's really like Google translate yeah so there are a lot of different uh a lot of they've added a few more coins yeah they recently added uh Bitcoin dark cork or the other ones uh pay coin and red coin I have no idea what these are but I I they must be they might they must be significant if uh if shapeshift has added them to uh their list of cryptocurrencies and who knows you know maybe one day you'll be able to buy app coins on this like ether Gems or storage coin totally I think that's one thing I'm actually excited I know if you things in the future that are excited about this right but yeah I think having crowd sales on there another thing is and we've actually been thinking about

doing something like that well one thing is cool they have this browser plugin so uh if you let's say you're on a site uh like for example our site and uh there is a big combination address with the shapeshift browser plugin it can pull it up and you can donate let's say Dogecoin to that Bitcoin address and then shapeshift on the back uh you know trades to do is going for Bitcoin and send the Bitcoin the Bitcoin equivalent of those dogecoins to that address so that's really cool right because you can essentially use Dogecoin or uh some other currency that they have and you can pay with it instead of Bitcoin at a variety of site and shape shift sort of does that it's a bit like bit pay right

so with Bitcoin you pay with Bitcoin and people get yours well with shape shift you can do it on your end and you could pay with Deutsche coin and the people get Bitcoin right so I think that's really cool right because it really opens up the usage of altcoins and you could say oh I prefer some altcoin and then you can keep using it so yeah so hello shapeshift.io give it a try tell us what you think and uh we want to thank shapeshift for their support of App Center Bitcoin um yeah security tell us about Securities about Sam well I mean security is is an interesting topic because there are two there are two areas of security we need to be we can look at you we can look at

security of the network and we can look at user security and to a certain extent user security kind of overlaps into uh security of you know Bitcoin startups I guess I'm more interested in in the user security side so what we've seen the last year if we if you look back at our January our first episode in January of last year when we were looking at sort of where the Bitcoin storage was going to go at the time the only real option uh to store your Bitcoins I guess in easy and semi-secure way was to store them in an exchange you know if you didn't want to have to deal with you know paper wallets and things like that um and at the time our predictions were that hardwood wallets would sort of

prevail as the sort of best practice standard way to secure your Bitcoins there have been multiple Hardware wallets to come up that come out in the last year and we've seen the treasure wallet uh the French company Elijah just released their Smart Card Wallet and um you know that is still a viable option it's definitely a very secure option but I think it still remains sort of a technical uh you know a very high-tech way for the sort of like the you know really hardcore enthusiasts that really wants to keep his own keys and um you know the tech savvy guy I don't think that's accessible to most people what we have seen emerge in the last couple months and a

lot of companies started doing this you know we've seen bitco uh coin uh coinbase and other companies like coincite is start developing really simple and easy to use multi-sig options I think Armory and electrum you know uh uh desktop wallets are also doing multi-sync now and what what multi-sig sort of tackles is the security ease of use trade-off so you you have the security uh I guess sort of you could say as high as security as having a paper wallet or um a hardware wallet or even more secure because you know you have um two out of three or three out of five uh keys and and you have ease of use so

if you look at companies like like bitco like there's their solution is really easy to use you've got uh you know they hold one key you hold one key and then you've got a backup key and you know to top it off you've got uh two-factor authentication so it's it's really secure but you know you can use it for day-to-day transactions so I think many companies have been tackling the security uh issue and trying to build a user experience and really nice user interfaces around this so that's you know one can easily set up a secure wallet hold their own keys in multi-sig and and really be sure that their coins are

secure um now there is there is a trade-off to that and the trade-off I guess is that as companies develop their old multi-sig platforms technology it sort of promotes proprietary technology and one example is that uh for example with bitco you know if you get the for if you get the premium account there are some sort of proprietary components to that if you want to use multiple users you know coinbase does their multi-sig completely differently like it it's it's uh off blockchain multi-sig and like unless you use the advanced features so you know I

think what we'll see is a lot of companies are going to start offering multi-sig but uh you know either they'll be using a proprietary off chain multi-sig where basically your coins multi stick is always on chain well no that's that's not true I mean if you look at coinbase if you take the regular uh coinbase multi-sig I don't think that's on chain you know they just send you two emails to two different places uh like if you if you take the the if the the regular uh non-advanced user basic version of multi-segon coinbase I'm quite sure is off chain

no that doesn't make any sense because you're sending to uh you're sending to a regular Bitcoin address you're not sending to an address is very clear right so right I mean they have their wall I think they have distinguish right so they have the Waltzing which is uh which is off chain and which is uh which is not a multi-sig thing and and that's the thing where you have to authenticate with different devices and that kind of thing uh and um right so you're right so that's not really multi-sig it does provide an actual error security because it allows you to have multiple signers right but it's not a real then you have Bitcoin

protocol multi-safe yeah and then you have the multi-stick which is just multi-sig of course they still have their proprietary software but they also have an open source software which you can still use to expand it yourself so it's a I think it's a nice balance but um but yeah I think overall right it's it's it has been interesting right I think a year ago we thought uh a tracer was sort of coming out and then we talked a lot about Hardware wallets and now there has definitely been um a lot of development especially in the multi-sig area and we did a fairly prediction during our episode with Ariana about um the number of Bitcoins that were going to be held in multi-sig addresses

so of course you can check that on the blockchain and that has been going up like crazy uh so I think even a year ago it was like a thousand Bitcoins or something like that and today it's like a 600 000 or I don't know what it currently is but it has dramatically increased so if you want to check it out go to Fairlane and look at the multi-sig prediction and there's a nice site too it's a p2s it's cheaper yeah yeah so pay the script hash which is a technical name for multi-sec uh you can look up uh what the statistics of how many coins are held at multi-sick oh at the moment it's six percent wow that's crazy I

think I think it was like one point something percent when we did the episode with our young assumption which was just the two months ago not very long ago right so it's it has dramatically increased um yeah I think 2015 yeah I'm I think those people probably stayed in many areas right like we'll have multi-sync we'll have Hardware wallets and there will be a lot of uh advances in both and the main challenge is no are uh user experience I think and and for Hardware wallets another challenge has been priced right because appraiser has been expensive um and I think there are cheap Alternatives I'm sure Tracer could be way way cheaper

if it was mass produced right but at the moment it just isn't demand for that um I think one thing that that happened in the last year and definitely we can attribute the mount gox uh uh debacle to uh to this is the general consensus that just keeping your having your access to your keys is is uh is really really important if not mandatory and um you know we recently had sort of like another scare with uh blockchain.info that got hacked you know luckily that was a white hat hacker that returned the coins but um that really I mean that really discouraged me to use

uh blockchain.info which you know I think General consensus in the community was that there were um uh quite secure um but uh yeah I mean I think uh Mount Cox definitely Illustrated that having your own keeping your keys is is uh is essential um well I think with this we've sort of uh come to the end of our main topics now yeah so we also wanted to take a few minutes just before I wrap up to talk a little bit about Epson Bitcoin we did do a bit at the beginning you know we've been

going for a year now uh it's just been a very time consuming project if you spend a lot of time on that like whether it has been you know producing episodes developing content uh getting guests on doing research for shows Etc it's been a lot of fun I think we're very grateful for everyone listening we're very grateful for everyone who's been supporting us uh very few tips through just listening through Living reviews through sending us feedback through sponsoring us through being on the show through uh uh through sending us questions suggestions for episodes to do all those kind of things um

so first of all a big thanks to everyone so it has been it's been a lot of fun and I think it has been a great success and we've learned a lot um we've spoken to so many interesting people and and I think it has we have also been very lucky in this context because I and Sebastian we didn't know each other when we started this it was a they're quite randomly that we were two of the guys two of the only guys she joined this conference call with Adam Levine about doing some episodes and somehow we decided to together and that has worked out you know very well I think the only criteria I think we just said oh yeah we're both

in Europe let's do it together exactly exactly that was the amount of research we did before launching into this so given that I think it has been a fantastic success yeah I mean when I talk when I talk to people I I recently I was talking to some some uh old colleagues or or people that I work with that were entrepreneurs and that were Associates and you know told them about our adventure and like you know I said like uh well I didn't know him when I first like what are you crazy yeah three months later yeah yeah no I mean I think I honestly would not recommend this to anyone I think it's uh it's probably a very risky I think the risks are probably like too big you should you

should do is to put Somehow Here it worked out so yeah um yeah so I think for next year you know we uh we're gonna continue working on this and we have plans to um do a lot like in terms of growing our audience in terms of improving equality uh improving our brand improving the quality of whether it's video uh or audio quality sure if I could just before we start getting into next year sure I'd like to point out sort of the major Milestones that I think we've had this year what one thing that I think was a defining factor in in our success uh as um well to produce interesting content was we changed our format so when we

first started the idea was sort of to create like a twitch Style Show uh where we would cover news and you know perhaps at some point have like regular guests on which would who would come on and and discuss the news topics with us and that's really changed since like episode seven or eight where we I don't think uh consciously but you know inconsciously decided to change the format and you know uh progressively started just having guests on every week and doing doing interviews now I'm personally a little skeptical about how that will play out in the future if we'll be able to keep doing this just as you know at some point will it becomes sort of redundant uh I don't think so all the

time I don't know I mean maybe not now but maybe in a year from now uh or will we have to sort of like Branch off into other topics that are you know still related to crypto but somewhat on the periphery uh I guess we'll see uh one other major Milestone was you know doing video which is what we're doing now I think that was like a pivotal thing we should have started I think you agree we should have started doing this way way before absolutely started doing this at the beginning yeah absolutely also uh I would just want to briefly say thanks and uh to all those listening please check out Singularity one-on-one it's a fantastic uh podcast really high quality he's also done some cryptocurrency episodes he did one with utility Criterion as well in one of Andreas Antonopoulos I was Skyping with him

um yeah in the summer or something he's like if I know one thing it's like do video uh so after it said talk with Sebastian we started doing video and it has been extremely successful so it's definitely absolutely I think so if you are listening to this and you're thinking of doing a podcast definitely do video do YouTube as well um so that's definitely one of the lessons we've learned and and we're very excited about this going forward because we we are seeing I think most of our growth is from video um yeah so speaking of growth I mean we haven't really set objectives yet but I I mean let let's let the set this in

stone but I think we have the potential to grow our audience two to three times over the next year yeah I think that's a reasonable number I think in the end a lot of it is also going to depend of course on the on the Bitcoin ecosystem right like what's gonna happen with Bitcoin is it gonna explode well everything's gonna be very easy right or much much easier if it's not then everything's gonna be much much harder so a lot of it to a lot a large extent it depends on that but at the same time we do think there are a lot of people still in the Bitcoin space we haven't heard about us ever who've never listened to an episode but who would like to who would be interested so one of the focuses one of our focuses is going to be reaching those people

another area is just improving quality uh you know it when when you're when you're doing a podcast with very little resources like using 50 Euro lights and 70 Euro cameras over uh ADSL connection and uh and just consumer uh consumer grade uh gear you know it you can produce good quality content but uh you know if we don't have a producer who's here all the time who's going to make sure that our mics are running okay so that I think that has been sort of a challenge just keeping the quality level uh consistent whether that be audio quality on the on the audio version uh or you know

preventing like mishaps on the hangout and things like that so I think improving that quality uh improving the brand quality and just streamlining processes is also going to be very important next year and so we're definitely looking at that and uh those are things that we'll be working on the next couple of next couple months uh so but yeah but like you said you know building community and one area that I think will also start to uh Endeavor in is how we can diversify epicenter as a platform uh whether that means developing new types of content uh new formats [Music] bringing more correspondence or hosts on

um you know these are not you know these things are not defined yet but I think over the next year we'll have to start looking at how can we build new things on top of this on top of this existing platform that we've uh we've built so being at the end of our show uh sort of our gear Rancho Sebastian water to the the two areas that you are most excited to watch in 2015 dapps and UI absolutely and and specifically UI around security and uh so what I mean by dapps so we we talked about the apps I'm excited to see more dabs in the App Store more adapts that are sort of you know uh appealing to a

wide audience where people could just kind of hop on and start using it and uh get into the cryptocurrency ecosystem I think gems is a really good example of that I really believe in what they're doing storage is another one and I think we'll see see more and more examples of just really high quality dapps um where you don't even I mean people coming into it perhaps don't even know that they're using a decentralized platform and uh and start using the currency within it to uh you know getting the cryptocurrency the other area you know UI uh so whether that be UI uh around uh uh creating smart contracts for example um creating uh crowd sales but then also

around security I think that we've come a long way in improving UI around security but that's definitely one area that needs to be that keeps that needs to keep improving and I think we'll see some interesting examples of that in the next year yeah absolutely so with me I think uh two areas are for me the regulation is just I think that's hopefully 2015 is going to be the last year that I think regulation is going to be so front and Central but I think 2015 eBay probably won't be but I 2015 definitely I think it's just going to play really big role and it's gonna determine a lot about where things are going

so that's definitely something I would be paying a lot of attention to and uh the other thing is I think the adoption by financial institutions something I'm really interested in I think could have a big impact sort of indirectly but uh one thing I'll be watching a lot um and I will be watching you pay attention to those topics exactly yes yeah so if that if that uh I think it's it's time to wrap up it's time to wrap up 2014 and Sunday around this episode so uh thanks so much for listening we do appreciate it very much also thanks for the question submitted there was another question we didn't get to uh you knew him some guy from crypto

articles mentioned uh that he had some something to say about the drop off in traffic maybe he can email you about it and hopefully we can we can cover it in some way or discuss it sure um yeah so thanks so much for listening uh and thanks for following us this year now we do our next episode as we mentioned is coming up exactly a week from now same time uh same place and it's going to be Robert Sam's and it's going to be about creating a sort of a stable cryptocurrency can be very very interesting really look forward to that and if you want to support the show you can follow us on Twitter at Center BTC you can leave us an actress review helps

new people find the show so we would totally appreciate that would love that uh you can also leave us a tip an episode bitcoin.com tips hours oh yeah and subscribe to us on YouTube as well I mean I think uh you know if you subscribe to us on YouTube you get the Hangouts automatically right right good point yes do that too do all of it right now uh and so to to your listeners uh have a you know great end of the year have a great start into uh 2015 and we look forward to seeing you next week