Jon Matonis: "VCs are not interested in a blockchain without bitcoin"

Transcript

hello everybody my name is Paul Barton can welcome in our weekly show about the future of money but bit going about all these great things today with me my co-hosts I often wear them he's a journalist writing for coin Telegraph and also we have for first time Felix Moreno is a Spanish economists rebel columnist ein MSA and residing in Madrid our guest today is a jump metolius is one of the founding and partners of Bitcoin foundation but he resigned there some time ago and he's a very vocal blogger and you can find him at the monetary future com welcome guys hello so Joanna what are you up to these days John well these days that I've been

doing a lot of traveling I try to go to every continent and meet with the the active Bitcoin out repairs in the space 10 Bitcoin meetups when I'm speaking at conferences I'm also acting as non-executive board director for about five different bitcoin startups helping out from fares get to get funding you make board decisions hire talent so it's definitely keeping me busy which a bit going companies one of the ones i'm working with is is called first global credit they are many switzerland and

they allow you to use your bitcoin assets as collateral for trading on other markets i'm also working with a hard bitcoin hardware wallet provider called meet any EK that I oh I'm also working with several other startup exchanges that are in start-up mode so i can't really disclose who they are because they're they're pre-launch but one of the exciting ones is a very professional trading platform that's going to be launched in the EU interesting i'm john now you've been very vocal these days on twitter a very passionate and

taking a firm stance in the block sighs debate that's currently the most important topic in the Bitcoin space can you express your feelings or your thoughts on this topic because you seem very passionate about it often staring up the debate what is your position in this debate and why is it so important for you well definitely I mean I am passionate about it it's something that I care about quite a bit i've been i've been involved in the debate since since it started so it's not just something new that's that's come on the scene i mean this was this was germinating about two years ago even on what we would do with the block size the reason it's interesting to me now though is that we

have actually seen something untold that we've never seen before and what I'm referring to is the Bitcoin XT software propagation work and then we're actually seeing for the first time software being propagated go direct a challenge to do it a Bitcoin core software that's already deployed we will be okay with Narron yeah so when I made the biggest to make a lot of noise that thing this

time in his room but I use a mute so just the know when I when I made the point Paul about potentially someone attempting to change the the 21 million cap for Bitcoin changing it bye-bye not decrementing the the block reward so in other words when we get to July 2016 somebody could could propagate software that makes it so that the block reward wouldn't go down to 12 and a half that's entirely possible and as an engineering hurdle that is no different than what we're witnessing now with the block size I know a lot of people would be against it of course it was I threw it out there

as an extreme view of what someone could do unfortunately a lot people in the in the community thought that I was proposing we get rid of the 21 million bitcoins cap maybe I was mirror I was merely stating that it's a propagator software propagation war like anything else would be when you're trying to make a change of that magnitude and the floating because you're right that someone is going to propose it at some point maybe no 2016 but someone will propose it in 2017 think it's going to happen so we have to have some rules about what's the necessary consensus software changes now that's exactly right that someone will

attempt it and the reason that it might even be successful even though the idea is abhorrent to us is that you don't need to be a bit coin holder to propagate software in fact you can even see some of the miners and some of the mining pools legitimately want to get behind this why do you think we end up with you know more than fifty percent of people in some countries on a government assistance or social welfare it's because once they get the the power of both through the ballot box you know they can vote themselves in more largesse and and Bitcoin through software propagation Wars is not immune to that but joke that you think that's

already being happening with OVL toys and isn't that session forking creating new coin the easy solution to relieve pressure to change it but it's open all coins exists on their own separate block chain in their own separate ledger so they're they're not a fork to to the you know to the established core or they're not a fork to where the Bitcoin value resides so so they're they're uniquely different they're totally new you know instantiations of a modified protocol they take the original Bitcoin source code and they modify it in some way they

like Bitcoin XT Bitcoin XT it exactly is modified but it's attempting to fork the core code by propagating it through the existing nodes so it'll work just like the Bitcoin core until some time release mechanism kicks in on related to percentage adoption now this is what I think is actually the very unfortunate part of what a Gavin in my current are attempting because it's unfortunate for them because they're placing themselves in this outside role of being a challenge and and you know very very likely to unravel on them I'm seeing the

tide of opinion starting to change against that though this will be negative for Gavin will be negative for Mike her who I think encouraged Gavin to do it and it'll also be negative for MIT and any future influence that MIT hopes to have so i would i would urge gavin and my turn to withdraw the Bitcoin XT propagation going forward starting today and withdrawal from propagating the software okay but John let's say that we need to do something maybe don't now it's still a long way off from the from the limit on transactions that the one megabyte blocks are imposes but let's

say one year from now we did what would you agree with the 75% consensus that they proposed or would you ask for ninety ninety-five percent anonymity what would you propose consensus building mechanism be actually change the Bitcoin protocol without leading through the hard fall well it's an excellent question I don't think that it should be any type of fixed percentage number because I don't think that a software propagation battle is the way to proceed I think it should be there absolutely as a last resort and and it shouldn't be taken away but the preferred route would be to go through

the existing VIP process the Bitcoin improvement proposal process which exists for a reason and it's the only somewhat formalized structure you can actually gain a consensus with with the multiple variables that are at play and if we use if this sets a precedent of disputing software changes through software propagation battles we're going to see this happen more and more and more and ultimately culminating in a change for the block reward we need but again we need to go to a method of formalization through the VIP process okay so you will agree that we need some form of structuring how this VIP process

because right now they're hardly if any VIP process is that well the VIP process you can make a case that you know that can become politicized itself and that's why we need software prop independent software propagation as as a last resort but when when I was you know I don't have any do you have any suggestions how a formalized VIP VIP perfect look like she was a puddle yeah exactly Aaron when I was at the foundation for about the last six to nine months we were working on a methodology and a method to transfer the maintenance of this and the

management of Bitcoin core as a reference implementation outside of the foundation to another body either it would be a new body that's created or would be something similar with in the IETF structure I think right now that bitcoin is too big of a juror to go into the IETF structure right now it would get lost in the noise there so a preferred route is to start to prepare the the process including the VIP process which is where the the hard changes need to be debated and to prepare it for something similar to the IETF and if you'd just be hosted at the foundation you believe or no I'm saying

that we were working on it at the foundation before before I designed and before you haven't transitioned over to MIT you know look at what if this wouldn't this be a huge centralization of power in itself well if you think that the internet and the you know the protocols around a tcp/ip and all of the underpinnings of the internet are centralized through the IETF then then I guess that's true but it wouldn't if it was prepared correctly and if it was managed correctly then it wouldn't be any different than the other open source protocols that are manifest that way and again it doesn't have to be the IETF it certainly wouldn't be any

worse than the way it is now but what are the birds with the stuff what are the processes chosen or whichever way we go forward shouldn't we agree that it's that we should focus on the changes where this unanimity or a very very wide consensus before trying to do anything that leads to a fork and we have seen folks before if I remember correctly we did we saw a fork in 2013 which was an easy resort because there was a very wide consensus well let us go back to the fork of 2013 because that's a good example it wasn't so much of a contentious hard fork it was it was actually an accidental fork because of

the the upgrade related to to a database change and the way it was resolved after approximately two to three blocks was to to send out an alert and get everyone to agree to shift back to the to the prior old version of Bitcoin it wasn't contentious at all because everyone recognized that there was something that accidentally occurred in the in the upgrade software and the other thing that resulted from that is that we saw that we had two to three blocks I believe maybe four blocks that actually fort the Bitcoin foundation stepped in and compensated the mining pools that were on the wrong side of that fork so that because they legitimately thought

they were mining correctly for a fork so they were compensated for abandoning that and then I believe there was also a double spin that occurred during that time through through okay coin I believe it was and that one was also reversed by the sender because he was he was an honest double spender he was just testing if it could be done so it's not an exact parallel to what we have now something that's contentious would not be easily resolved so I got I got bothered by the mailman just now sorry about that so I missed a little part of your explanation but so you tweeted out

this trio was wrongly misinterpreted by a lot of people because I thought you I'll opted for raising the 21 million limit what you're really doing is you're you're conservative regarding the block size limit which are two different things right there that 21 million limit of the coins in the buffets limit but do you think they're connected in any way with a race of the blood size limits indicate that maybe we'll have to raise the coin limbic something like a right right let me let me explain that a little more in detail because I mean Felix knows that I mean I'm an Austrian school gold-bug there's no way I would want to increase the 21 million cap so

you know my credentials are solid there I think the linkage that oh that you're referring to I I do put that out there that that could possibly exist because if you think of an increased block size as a subsidy which it really is because we're subsidizing more free transactions until we can get critical mass for the network so if I forgot a free moderate inflation if there with your me no no I'm still just talking about the block size they're just talking about the block size as a subsidy forces the the mining miners and the mining pool to support the subsidy longer than you no longer than they normally would let's

say it increases you know beyond the 32 may and goes to 64 mega over 100 Meg per block all you're doing there is increasing the subsidy and that it potentially cause the mining pools to request some other form of compensation that that's that's where I see the linkage is that you have you mean because that's not that don't build up right is that it but what was the question you mean because there won't be any fee market to be build up well exactly right now we will pay people pay fees basically as a tip it doesn't really determine yet the the transactional priority that they receive

from the from the validators and what we would do with when we're bumping up against the block size limit is we would start to establish a transaction fee market because that subsidy would go and be going away it's so already established write the software for the transaction market is already there also rob from a certain point of view from a very selfish point of view it does make sense for the miners to subsidize at this point because it's still very very small it's got a very small market uh it does make some sense for the set for the minus to subsidize the network free transaction so that the network can grow right it's one of the value propositions

of Bitcoin for uses right now isn't it well exactly the subsidy for you know free transactions at least if we want to call them that you know that's been part of the social contract since Satoshi Nakamoto released the code that's one of the things to you know to jumpstart this and to get bitcoin going is that you didn't want to tax the the transaction transaction users you didn't want to have a fee that would you know in impede progress there that that's that's absolutely true but we may not see it next year we may not see it the year after but the ultimate result is that you impact the security of the block

chain because it's the hash rate that matters so Conrad graph did recently did a preview paper on the economics of a block size increase he's an economist he hasn't finished the paper yet but I think one of the things he left doubt in this 4 dimensional chess game as he left out how it could potentially impact the security of Bitcoin which would ultimately be reflected by a decreasing ashrae that has to be factored and considered in any kind of a block size change actually this one thing that you mentioned said yet we may not say this year we may not see the year after when do you think we're going

to hit the seventh transaction for second Libya because we're still a relatively way of growth of the network is picking up quite a bit yeah the last statistics i saw i think where we're at between forty and fifty percent of capacity for the seven transactions per second throughput so we're it's a change that can be made relatively quickly when there's consensus so i don't see the urgency right now for changing it I support Adam back and and and and Jeff Garza and some of some of the other core developers on not being so urgent for this change and looking at it in a in a

more holistic way where we're not just setting some arbitrary increase every two years but we're looking at something that won't need to be changed again because we're making it with the right considerations in mind especially for decentralization and keeping the decentralization of the network strong but do you have any idea of working needles and we have side chains that we have old police say they make a lot of the pressure all right those give is at least another doubling or tripling of the of the network capacity before we really need to tackle this issue yeah let's let's be honest with it too because if if bitcoin is ultimately as

successful as we all think it is there's almost no block size limit that's going to be adequate so there has to be resolution on alternative you know off train transaction processing whatever form it takes whether its side chains or lightning network or something that hasn't been proposed yet it cannot just all be crammed in to the the single bitcoin blockchain so have you female falutin out there that you do like up till now uh yeah I mean I the solutions that I've seen so far with respect to side chains and lightning network if they were working and available now you know we'd have to see how they performed as I mean

by guarding the block 5 limit regarding the block size limit I've done like I said it's an arbitrary thing if you increase it it's not going to be enough and every time you increase it is like increasing the subsidies so how long do we want to keep increasing the subsidy before we force a market to develop in transaction fees right I don't think I'm back up on us without our material all right but I don't think we can expect this network to be free for everyone for every size transaction forever I think that's unrealistic thinking sure but but you agree that one megabyte is arbitrary as well no yeah one megabyte is arbitrary because Satoshi lowered it to that number um you know as a spam

prevention technique you know original key the proctor a little bit before was 32 meg because that was the message sighs that was the practical limit right so you would agree that one megabyte if not the final solution either get it right correct I would agree but i but I would also agree that that spam prevention needs to be a high priority as well can we can we move on because we can debate about the oxide forever but that but we do have a total time so there's a few other things I really want to ask you about sure and well the first one it's a very short answer how many VidCon uses do you think we have right

now active users oh I think it's in the millions in the millions five to ten million would you say well i would say probably about three million you know we have 10 million plus wallets and software that have been downloaded at various places but a lot that's dormant who I know people that I've given Bitcoin to a long time ago that's been lost and I can still see it there on the blockchain it makes me mad every day it meets it so yeah that's that's that's what I would say as a number but the other thing I would say about that is I think it's really it's really expanded a lot since the last bull market that we saw taking us to

twelve hundred dollars per bitcoin because now we have a much broader market we have participation from from so many more countries and regions of the world and so many different industries as well I mean we're seeing you know we're seeing investor groups and financial service institutions get involved that we're not even involved at all in 2013 so the next rally for bitcoin is going to be so much more broadly based than before which it is we are we're building that base right now which takes us to my next question when do you think the but we already have two ETFs right fit and and the the one in

Stockholm in the nest in this Swedish prospect of when do you think the winco be I've been released coin the the video place DTF yeah um you have to ask you'd have to ask them directly on on the timing for their approval I don't think it will be approved so that's that's my personal opinion on it but the other existing ETFs they're out there are doing very well especially the one from Sweden that you mentioned also interestingly they have the some of them have the goal of taking Bitcoin off the market for you know for five to ten years because that's the lock in for buying into the fund so if you're taking

Bitcoin off the market then you're the funds are really having the effective driving up price which will ultimately create more liquidity for the wholesale users you know the other point that I wanted to make Felix on your question is that back in 2013 when we have the you know the run-up in cember we didn't have anywhere near the kind of liquidity that we have now back then you know you it was it was this crazy spike that you could argue you know got way ahead of itself and now the market is normalized but the market now can also accommodate you know 23 million dollar Bitcoin trade sizes without really moving the market so the

liquidity is getting deeper and we haven't had that before that it's a very significant change from from prior years us we've come from three exchanges to over 20 as the own brand single friends have developed at us as well death penalty and there's there's been there's actually a lot more than 20 exchanges what we're seeing develop now is we're seeing regional exchanges country only exchanges such as you know four or five that exist in Sweden and other countries and then we also see the global exchanges that come become these mega international exchanges that the local exchanges will feed into and rely on for liquidity so if you look at all of those

combined there's there's a lot more than 20 and those so you know it's a complete Hobbit holes of mine and hopefully we're going to have some very good news on this tribute to the exchanges soon you know I'm good friends with the coin thing people but there's also other people working on similar projects we should have news like corn feeling they've been doing a great job they've been doing a great job globally to uh in reading and those guys are going to play a big part in the next Bitcoin boat market as well so i'm looking forward to those buzz also i look forward to seeing US dollars and euros trading room a blockchain we've already seen a couple of Carew for instance and some colored calling implementations he bit us DS or

radio yeah any anything like that that trades on the blockchain I I definitely like those efforts because I think it's correct to put him directly on the Bitcoin blockchain I was at a conference yesterday where I listen to a presentation of somebody putting diamonds on the block chain and she said we're putting bling on the blockchain and it's great it's like the factum project where they're putting the Honduras land title registry on on the Bitcoin blockchain that is the proper way to do it but you also have to remember that the the real asset is actually not on the blockchain the real asset is still going to be controlled and managed by a third party that's just

using the blockchain as a registry so there's there's still an intermediary that you would end up having to trust if you had euros and dollars on the box chain yeah it's the right way to do it and there's no way around that and Joan talking a bit more bugs the real-life cases you've probably heard a lot of people advocating for Bitcoin as a solution for Greece and what are your thoughts there yeah I wrote about that a lot too that's that's a funny situation because it's not the Bitcoin it's not the Greek government that needs Bitcoin it's it's the Greek people that need Bitcoin the Greek government needs something that's even softer than the Euro the Greek government with their with their spending habits they need to

go back to the drachma now that that's going to be good for the for the for the spending side of the Greek government but it's definitely not good for the Greek people and they have an outlet of where they need to get into hard currency and hard currency if your Creek is is is dollars it's euros now and it's gold and Bitcoin so what do you think we should the community be more active like opening an embassy in Athens or setting up you know and as am that flyers or just be there on the streets to inform educate people an alternative currencies like like Bitcoin because it seems to me like a lot of people outside of Greece have an opinion on this but we've increased there doesn't seem to be too much of the Bitcoin activity absolutely

I was thinking about that before this this call because it's not just grease but it's you know cyprus argentina any place where they have the potential or the existence of capital controls it seems like in those areas it is difficult to find somebody even on local Bitcoin scom in the areas it's sometimes difficult to find people so we do need to encourage I always try to encourage the exchange operators that are operating in those countries as well as additional people to get into the local bitcoins calm there i think when i checked on Greece there was only one bitcoin exchange operating in greece and it wasn't even clear if they were still operational

well apparently cooling based is operational in Greece but who knows if this capital controls it will affect them as well on the other brianstorm would happen it a shake but a bit of live with yeah bryan armstrong and the coinbase people would have to adhere to any you know Greek government decrees on freezing accounts yeah so basically we were sending Red Cross people to disaster zones you know so we should send like Bitcoin people whenever there is a monetary disaster in order to hell ya like like Doctors Without Borders exactly yeah something like have that's what we need I would sign up for that I so John can we maybe talk a little bit

about what happened to the Bitcoin foundation because I'm student in May of 2013 i believe the Bitcoin foundation was doing very well and had like four million dollars in assets and year later they're effectively bankrupt and you were the director for most of that year correct well I was the director from to that for 2013-2014 correct so American Banker and payment source did an article about this that summarized it I think about three weeks ago but I mean I'll repeat it here as well is that on the financial side what a lot of people don't realize is that the the Bitcoin foundation took in only in in nominal

terms probably about 500 to 600 thousand dollars that's what people donated to us when they when they joined as a member either gold or platinum member or an individual member but the fact that Bitcoin kept about ninety-five percent of its assets in Bitcoin that nominal investment appreciated just like anybody else's bit holdings appreciate it so when it started to come down we were just as much affected as the entire Bitcoin ecosystem because of the board decision to hold a majority overwhelming majority of our assets in Bitcoin now that was the main problem but you also spend a lot of money for a month right on yeah

if there is anything the spending was never matching the seven anywhere near the six or seven million that it was valued after the Bitcoin appreciation I mean our our burn rate was was only above like a hundred thousand dollars a month of you know for about only four or five months the foundation put on conferences that we did you know either at break even or a small loss for the community so that we know we kept the entrance fees low enough so that you know they were pretty much break even so that everybody could attend I think the big misnomer is that people actually thought that we had raised seven million dollars and if you do the math that's just not possible because we only have

like two platinum members and that was a hundred thousand dollars for each of them so we had three platinum enters over the over the course which would have only been three hundred thousand so you know the same people who say where did the money go well they would probably be the same critics who would say well why isn't the Bitcoin foundation keeping their money in Bitcoin you know we weren't set up we didn't set it up to be to be traitors and going in and out of the market and speculating on Bitcoin we made we made a decision to to eat our own dog food now for a moment there I thought Aaron didn't read like trance when he left but he's back now but he's still sort of a mega I think he's thinking about his next answer recognizes he did I say one

one more thing on the foundation though um because i think i think the high water mark for the foundation was the the conference in in amsterdam i think everyone agrees that that was probably a legitimate function for something like the the nonprofit membership foundation the other area that was never controversial for us was when we would do a legal defense work on filing amicus amicus briefs such as the one that we did in the state of Florida against the local bit coin dealers that were that are set up and still being prosecuted right now under the the Florida you know I'm under the Florida Florida money service businesses

still in active cases so when the foundation did those things in terms of legal defense work for businesses and individuals that's when we were the most popular those were the things that foundations should be doing it plus the advocacy through through the conferenced which is what any trade association would you I think we're the foundation ran into trouble is when it started to pander to the side of the membership that one did to be actively complicit in crafting regulations and I don't think that it is a role of Bitcoin foundation to be complicit in crafting regulations you can educate them on where it's

possible to regulate and where it's impossible to regulate but you shouldn't be rolling up your sleeves and sitting down at the table and making trade-offs on regulations about paying the developer what do you think about the 42 MIT the switch to MIT was a result of of Gavin and the court gamma team that was being funded they had their funding cut off from the foundation so they didn't make the move until they had already lost their funding through the foundation yeah I'd like I said I don't fault them for it but I think that I I think that they should be compensated I

just think that the way that this this hard fork and propagation war is being handled is going to be a blemish it's going to be a blemish on them and a blemish on MIT and it might not even be recoverable John I wanted to ask you that do you keep in touch with ethidium developers and with counterparty and all the other Bitcoin supinated projects do you do you have any ETA or any news and when some these products are going to be released so what planets they have look calendar well it's funny yesterday in London I was at a blockchain the London

blockchain conference with one of the etherium people and it was called the session was called blockchain 2020 and I think that somebody from the audience pointed out that 2020 is maybe when the etherium code will be released and that was the prediction sigh I you'd have to ask them on the timing of that you know the thing about etherium is I think that I know a lot of the people there and yes I do keep in touch with them I think that they are recognizing that the proof of work is going to be the you know superior consensus model and that there's going to have to be some method that they leverage the the overwhelming

hash rate of the Bitcoin blockchain you know whether it's through a side chain or some other merge with with Bitcoin the etherion people are smart enough to recognize that go to the mapping of leveraging octane do you think the colored coin the three different color coil for different colored coin initiatives are going to get together in reach a consensus or common something that makes them into profitable some standard which it will put up together well that means to my knowledge all of them are leveraging the the primary Bitcoin blockchain right now for the color coins the ones that I know about so I don't know reading another thing in

a standard but for instance chroma wallet chroma wallets and coin person they can't read each other's koloth coins it should be easy right it's to sit hog on Ryder write it it would be yeah it would be good for them as as an industry to do that I think we're we're probably a little bit you know early on that right now though there's a lot more work and acceptance that has to be done but yeah it would be good if they work together as an industry just like the Bitcoin ATM industry as well on you on them getting in sync with with their own standards there's nothing wrong with that and it would actually be good for four colored coins by the way Bitcoin

ATMs is showing up everywhere a year ago they're a handful and now there's over 400 yeah I'm really excited about Bitcoin ATM market because more and more that I think about it it becomes the stopgap measure for the remittance problem if you think of how bitcoin is ever going to challenge western union in the ten to fifteen percent at Western Union charges we're not going to be able to do it if you're charging seven percent commission on the inbound etm transaction and then seven percent commission on the outbound ATM transaction in the destination country so the spreads have to get to a point where they can actually be these ATMs can actually be used for remittance but

for example this in Spain there's a this two rival companies which were offering the solution to cash out via regular bank ATMs so they've connected to an existing remittance network and they you can cash out it over twelve thousand locations in Spain you can sell bitcoins on the website there's two different companies bit to me and BTC point and they have a very similar product because they connect to an existing payment no network and that has managed to if you have to install dedicated Bitcoin only ATMs going to take years to have a decent sized network if you can go through existing payment networks you can you can fit so much faster yeah maybe that's a good point i mean the

ones in spain know are only using the existing spanish payment network so it's only within the domestic country let's look if you have that in spain and then you in in kenya you have our sub one bit pacer connecting to an pacer or if you have someone in London connecting to a bitter to a regular banking network with instant transactions very very local issues or no commissions and then you have someone kenya connecting to the existing they're out there now the remittance issue is soft like that yes yes i also like the the model from a bruh a br a where they they perform the remittance mostly mobile and

the people who are using it don't even realize that they're using Bitcoin network Bitcoin blockchain as the rails they're only getting a display in their national currency that's quoted the recipient is getting that as well and it's it's an excellent example of how we're going to use the Bitcoin blockchain in the Bitcoin network as the underlying rails for when a lot of people may not even realize that's what's going on and then it really does become a lot like tcp/ip who Shh great so we should that should wrap up any time soon Aaron any closing equations from your site well now that you mention it the bitcoins tcp/ip do you think

Bitcoin will be the currency people used by coffee to use the plaza for example jump yeah no I mean I don't think that's one of the exciting uses of it but I think if the if the transaction fees are low enough and the transaction fees can be performed fast enough without that blockchain bloat then yeah those transactions will make sense but the other thing that's more interesting possibly is on the wholesale side the whole sale transaction side for bitcoin is what's really getting all the VC money and that interested VCS are not interested in you know these private block chains or block chain without Bitcoin things like that they're interested in Bitcoin because they see

it as the underlying protocol the value exchange protocol for the Internet the same way that smtp is the the protocol for email messaging the level of tcp/ip that's where they see the value proposition in the future for Bitcoin add that level so masking all the complexities from end users is an excellent strategy for adoption but Bitcoin will end up being a core component of the internet if if these guys are correct your if we're correct and that's why I get so upset at the blockchain without Bitcoin they they really need to be at a

different conference you know they're trying to latch on to going to Bitcoin conferences because that's where the mindshare is and that's where the attention is but it's kind of like the saying of um yeah I really really admire this tcp/ip network but it's these packets that just bug the crap out of me helping in that was like the smartest rebranding like speaking of the blockchain without talking about Bitcoin it's like the easiest way to get a bank's good books like the easiest way to do to get them to start looking at it oh and that's not even a joke I mean it's the full employment act for consultants over here in London and they admit it but Felix any other questions

from your side yeah one last question are there has to be at some point although infrastructure is almost in place that has to be at some point a massive coordinated marketing campaign to get Bitcoin to go mainstream right maybe not yet but in a year maybe nine months time uh who do you think has the best plan for that is it the guys at 21 is blocked ain't not infer granted who do you think has some idea of how to do this to get to millions and millions of users not yet the real hurt no there there there's a lot of answers for that and you know I've heard things ranging from advertisements at the Olympics to advertisements at the Super Bowl and

getting companies to put money together to get that you know to get to get that visibility to the millions but I actually think it's going to be through word of mouth and through being viral I think we have to get back to the original roots of why Satoshi started Bitcoin it was to be a you know to replicate the attributes of paper cash and to be an alternative to the centrally bank issued national units so until people realize that they're using Bitcoin because of philosophy or because of passion it's really not going to take off its its passion and those philosophical reasons that are going to cause people to

massively change and we have to get back to that currency is viral and it will be successful if people can get passionate about it again and then the Super Bowl we tried of course least a bit Bay try and I don't think it was a big success in terms of adoption right well that's why it has to be person person biologist just like a successful Hollywood film we've actually spoken through the trophy right job I haven't since 2010 right so yeah I think that does he tell you I think Satoshi is still out there looking

at this block sighs debate what have you thinking why don't know what he's thinking now but in about 8 10 people who write the book came he's probably thinking he's probably thinking about his Bitcoin that are still dormant on the blockchain and how he can sell them without going through an exchange whoever solves that problem is going to be very very wealthy what did you tell you in to vote Clinton in 2010 he was mainly contacting me a couple times on researching the the system going through the the white paper so that I could promote it because i had a digital currency blog at the time and he was

also encouraging me to be an active minor because there were only like four or five miners as time good and did you actively mine becton i did a little bit but not as actively as i showed him the wheel was the same intelligence in to run to the to the nearest computer store and just bought everything there yeah right well thanks so much john i've been reading your blog for many years you were actually quite pivotal in my understanding and acceptance of Bitcoin people should all check out the monetary future com m any closing remarks from your side John no I just wanted to thank you for having me on and and thanks for

doing the show it's great to get out this kind of information definitely okay take care and let's do it again in the future alright thanks a lot you guys okay thanks guys