LET’S TALK BITCOINEpisode 97 – Down in Texas

Participants:

Adam B. Levine (AL) - HostStephanie Murphy (SM) – Co-hostKyle Kurbegovich (KK) – Founder and host of CointalkHaseeb Awan (HA) – Co-founder of BitAccessPamela Morgan (PM) – Attorney, entrepreneur, educatorRyan Nil (RN) – Founder of LaReunion Cooperative ApartmentsAngela Keaton (AK) – Director of Operations @ Anti-War.comTai Zen (TZ) – Representative of Nxt

AL: Today is April 1st 2016 and this is Episode 297. This program is intended for informational and educational purposes only. Cryptocurrency is a new field of study. Consult your local futurist, lawyer and investment advisor before making any decisions for yourself.

Welcome to Let’s Talk Bitcoin, a twice weekly show about the ideas, people and projects building the digital economy and the future of money.

My name is Adam B. Levine and today we shadow LTB host Stephanie Murphy at the recent Texas conference. From Cointalk to Dorian Nakamoto, Bitcoin ATMs to the collaborative, community based ideology of cooperatives. From the seemingly simple wish to not finance causes one does not support, to the competition working to be Bitcoin’s 2.0, there’s a lot to talk about.

This episode also includes the first show-within-a-show on LTB. We’re very pleased to show the first instalment of Smart Law, Pamela Morgan’s look at the legal landscape where we’ll get to know smart contracts in the months and years to come.

But first, Cointalk, Kryptokit, Crypto Cards and Dorian Nakamoto. One of these things is not like the other.

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Stephanie Murphy interview with Kyle Kurbegovich

SM: This is Stephanie with Let’s Talk Bitcoin and I’m at the Texas Bitcoin Conference and I’m here with Kyle from Cointalk. Hey Kyle! [1:17]

KK: How’s it going? [1:18]

SM: Good. You’re an old friend. You’ve been on this show before. [1:20]

KK: I have. Thank you for having me on. In fact, you actually isolated the snippet of yourself from my show and put it on your blog and I was going to send you a message and say thank you for that because I listened to it and there were some high praises, so thank you. [1:31]

SM: Oh, thank you so much. Thanks for open sourcing your show so that I could promote it and everything. How are you enjoying the conference so far? [1:39]

KK: So far so good. It’s been crazy. I didn’t know I was coming until last minute. Basically, I’ve got so much going on in Toronto now. We’re trying to get the Cointalk studio all set up and basically, decided on Monday that I’d be coming out. It’s been a rush but it’s been good. [1:53]

SM: Oooh! Start packing, yeah. [1:54]

KK: Yeah. I’m leaving tomorrow morning as well, so it’s like I’m in and I’m out. [1:58]

SM: Right. You’re from Canada and you’re very active in the Bitcoin community. What are the differences you see when you walk into the US, and the way that people use Bitcoin, and buy and sell Bitcoin? I know you’ve got lots of ATMs up there but here we, apparently, have to give our fingerprints. [2:14]

KK: Yeah apparently. The first thing I noticed coming down to Texas, was that everybody was saying y’all. (Laughter) I thought that was kind of funny. [2:21]

SM: Yes. [2:22]

KK: That being said though, the differences that I see between Canada and the States, for whatever reason and maybe that’s just legislation or maybe this is just political parties being lax in Canada, we’ve been able to get away with a little bit more. We don’t need to follow as strictly the KYC, at least not yet. Now that’s changing, so right now all we need to do for verifications with ATMs up to $10,000 is a phone number. That’s been tremendously liberating in the sense that people can come in, get a text message confirmation and get their bitcoins without having to go on record. I’m a bit of an anarchist at heart and so for me, when I had to theoretically... like when the RoboCoin came to Vancouver and you needed to do the palm print, I was like – Yeuch... is that where we’re going with this? I agree with your sentiment that I don’t necessarily want to bow to the regulators and I want to push this movement into the free space. [3:13]

SM: Or give up biometric data that could be stolen by just regular criminals, you know. [3:17]

KK: Absolutely. I have switched to Android now and part of the reason was because of the blockchain app being yanked. The other reason is that I just can’t deal with fingerprint

scanners. I just don’t want that technology and the fact that it might become de facto. I’m not a big fan of that. [3:32]

SM: Right. Tell me more about what projects you’re working on right now. [3:37]

KK: Right now, I’m working on Cointalk and basically, we’re trying to flesh it out into a full video show. We’re going to try and switch to a live model so that’s really been taking up a lot of my time. [3:48]

SM: Wow, that’s a lot of production in a live video show. [3:50]

KK: Basically, what we want to do is we want to set it up so that we have a switcher. The problem with this show, especially when you’re dealing with video and file size and all that kind of stuff is that you need a beast to do the editing. If we can switch that to a live model, hopefully by the end of March, we’ll at least be able to... or I’ll at least be able to get up and walk away and have it be done and be broadcasted out. [4:09]

SM: I can really relate to that as a long time podcaster and I’m sure with video it’s ten times worse having to edit everything. It’s much easier to do a live show and just live with the mistakes. (Laughter) [4:20]

KK: Absolutely, absolutely. It’s kind of like you have to play the balance between being good enough to be live and also minimal editing. [4:27]

SM: That too. You have to be good enough to do a live show. [4:29]

KK: Yeah. I want to quote... what’s that guy? Bill O’Reilly, right? [4:34]

SM: Yeah. [4:34]

KK: I’ve got that on the go. I’m also working on a few side projects. I’m doing advertising for Crypto Cards, which is an offline wallet solution that uses laser-etched aluminum cards. You can check that out at www.Cryto-Cards.com. [4:48]

SM: Let’s talk about that because I saw some of the prototypes yesterday. I don’t know if they were prototypes or the actual real thing. You had some in your wallet and they were really cool. It’s basically a paper wallet but it’s not paper, it’s etched metal like you said. You’ve got your public deposit address or verify address in there and then you’ve also got a private key but it’s encrypted in such a way that if somebody physically stole your card, they wouldn’t be able to get your coins because you have to have an associated password with that private key. Did I get that right? [5:21]

KK: Yeah, absolutely. Crypto Cards is another company that’s based out of Toronto and basically, the idea is that they generate laser-etched aluminum offline wallets. You go to the website; you download a GitHub package to generate the wallet offline. You can do Bitcoin, Litecoin, Peercoin and Dogecoin. Effectively, you download the package, you encrypt it yourself and you upload the keys. They are never holding onto your passphrase. Basically,

when you get it in the mail, you get a slick card, it’s waterproof, it’s crumple proof, it won’t rust or corrode, it’s fireproof up to 600 degrees. It’s taking the concept of an offline wallet but it’s really extending it over time. It’s time resilient and it’s element resilient. [5:59]

SM: An extra security feature in there with the password. [6:02]

KK: Absolutely, and in fact, a lot of the users from my understanding are scanning them into wallets like Mycelium and using them as viewing addresses, so you can monitor your public address, never take the wallet online, but you can verify that your funds are there. Should you lose your phone, or whatever, you still have the card in a safety deposit box, or under your bed, or buried in the earth, or wherever you want to use it. I think there’s a real need for offline wallets and so, I’m glad that there’s new offline wallet solutions coming up. [6:27]

SM: Me too and one thing that I really notice is there are a lot of physical Bitcoin or offline wallet... physical offline wallet solutions that are coming out but you don’t want to necessarily have a... for instance say, a physical Bitcoin or a silver round with a private key on it that you have to break into to access. You want something that’s like a card, right? [6:51]

KK: Absolutely. [6:51]

SM: ...that you can easily carry around and that doesn’t cost a lot to manufacture, that’s another thing. [6:56]

KK: Yeah, exactly. The prices are... I think they sell for $12. The cool thing about it is that you can actually get like a public only key and then you’ve got a bigger QR code and you can keep that in your wallet; there’s no risk of somebody brute forcing your BIP-38 passphrase, though that’s near to impossible anyways. The cool thing about those cards is that you can take them out at ATMs, for example, and scan them at the ATM and send it directly offline. There’s functionality like that which is really cool and that actually minimizes the time that it’s in a hot wallet. [7:23]

SM: Yes, that is very, very cool. I don’t mean to knock the other types of solutions too. I’m sure there are lots of people who want more permanent kinds of cold storage, like the physical bitcoins and the silver and gold integrated ones but there’s definitely a place for plastic too. (Laughter) [7:40]

KK: Yeah. Aluminum in this case. [7:42]

SM: Aluminum, yes. [7:43]

KK: They are going to offer carbon fibre, marble, and all sorts of cool things coming up. The other thing is that people are waiting on hardware wallets and hardware wallets are going to be really cool but they’re just not here yet. You know what I mean? It’s kind of like we need the solution that we can have today, in a certain regard. These things are pretty cool. [7:58]

SM: Yeah, absolutely. [8:00]

KK: Let’s talk about this Satoshi Nakamoto unmasked thing for a moment. [8:05]

SM: OK. We have to talk about this, so I woke up and I was rushing to the conference today but there was an article that came out from Newsweek, I think, and they claimed to have found someone who was actually named Satoshi Nakamoto, who lives in California, is a Libertarian and made Bitcoin, although there was no confirmation in this article from my skimming of it that the guy didn’t admit – Yes, I am Satoshi. They just kind of pegged him as Satoshi... [8:30]

KK: Yeah, my understanding... [8:31]

SM: He wants to be anonymous, come on, leave him alone. [8:33]

KK: Absolutely. As far as I know and I read the article but it’s not really even the greatest article. [8:37]

SM: I think it’s ****. I don’t think it’s true but we’ll see. [8:40]

KK: I don’t know what to think. There are two things that I think are odd about it and that I can’t place. The first thing is that Gavin, basically, made a tweet about... Gavin Andresen... he was giving condolences to the Nakamoto family. I don’t know if that’s because this family, whether or not it is Satoshi, is going to have to deal with massive repercussions now. [9:01]

SM: I think that’s... yeah. [9:02]

KK: It might be the case. I’m on the fence about it. The second thing is that it seemed to be pretty well researched. It seemed like the reporter had at least spoken to 20 or 30 people to narrow it down. [9:11]

SM: The key to a good lie is details, right. We’ll see if those details are actually verified. [9:17]

KK: Yeah. The other thing is that if you look at the... apparently they found forum posts from this Satoshi Nakamoto, not necessarily the cryptographer Satoshi and they don’t match. They are totally different English usages of words, and different pronunciations, and structures. I don’t know. That could be the work of a brilliant person trying to create multiple trails but I’m on the fence. I think it’s interesting. I think it’s unfortunate that, as a community, we’re trying to focus on the celebrity aspect as opposed to the technology aspect but such is life. [9:51]

SM: I think that’s one of the smartest things that Satoshi could have done for Bitcoin. It’s not about him, it’s about Bitcoin. [9:56]

KK: Yeah, you’ve got to disappear, you’ve got to, basically, take away the ammunition of anybody who wants to challenge the platform and let it stand on its own merit. Satoshi, if you’re out there listening and you’re not the actual guy that was named in the article today, we’re with you, keep hiding. I want to see if those coins move though. (Laughter) [10:14]

SM: Yeah. Solidarity with the real Satoshi. [10:18]

KK: Yeah, absolutely. [10:18]

SM: ...and the rogue candidate Satoshi... what do you call it when... [10:23]

KK: The Satoshi stand-in, let’s call him. [10:26]

SM: The Satoshi stand-in, yes. [10:26]

KK: Fall guy. [10:27]

SM: Solidarity with the fall guy too. [10:29]

KK: Even from the perspective of perhaps being like a planned fall guy, that actually gets the heat off the real Satoshi, if you want to go into the conspiracy realm. Who knows? Who knows? [10:42]

SM: Indeed. We’ll find out more as time goes on and I think we’ve got to get ready for this charity luncheon that’s coming up so, Kyle, thank you for coming on Let’s Talk Bitcoin, as always. [10:50]

KK: Yeah, thank you for having me and keep up the good work. You guys are doing a great service. [10:54]

SM: Great to talk with you, thank you. www.Cointalk.ca is that your site? [10:58]

KK: www.Cointalk.ca, just Google us or go to YouTube and type in Cointalk. We’re the first things you find. If you’re interested in the offline wallet, you can check out their site at www.Cryto-Cards.com. [11:07]

SM: Excellent. Thank you so much. [11:09]

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Stephanie Murphy interview with Haseeb Awan

SM: I’m talking with Haseeb Awan from BitAccess. They are a manufacturer of Bitcoin ATMs and they have already rolled some out in Ottawa right?... based out of Ottawa. [11:43]

HA: Yeah, we’re based out of Ottawa but we have machines right now in Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Geneva, Winnipeg and we should be launching in Dubai, Lithuania, Belgium, Mexico, Sydney, Melbourne and Colorado. A couple of other countries and Panama within two weeks. [12:03]

SM: We’re here at the Texas Bitcoin Conference but this... and I don’t know when this will air but we’re at the Texas Bitcoin Conference now. What goes into manufacturing Bitcoin ATMs? Tell me about the security features and the features of the ATM itself. What does it do? [12:19]

HA: The machine... we have a two way machine, which means that you can buy and sell Bitcoin. The unique properties in our machine is you can have a hot wallet in the machine so the transition time is pretty faster than other competitors. Second thing we have is a recycle in our machine, which means you have a lower operator expenses so the money that goes into a machine is the money that goes out, so the operator doesn’t have to fill in the dispenser or cash (??) and put it in a dispenser. That’s the unique properties of our machine. On top of (??) machine, upcoming machines will have a safe, ink bomb, alarm, if someone ones to break in, GPS in the machine. These are all security features on the hardware side. [13:03]

SM: If someone tries to walk away with it, break into it, or anything like that, they’ll be prevented from doing it? [13:09]

HA: I don’t think that anyone can walk away with it because it’s like 200-400 lbs and bolted to the floor. [13:15]

SM: OK. [13:16]

HA: Someone has to really, pretty much have to do a lot of effort. [13:21]

SM: Right. OK. That’s interesting that these products are in a lot of different places around the world. If you’re using this in the US, what do you have to do? Do you have to give up your soul, your fingerprints? (Laughter) [13:36]

HA: No. Our machines you... the transaction limits... because we follow FINTRAC and FinCEN regulations, so up to transactions of $3,000, we only take a telephone number. We send you a text message on your phone, just to verify your number; you have to enter that code in order to proceed. Beyond $3,000, we ask to take your ID with (??) ID and face match to make sure that it’s the right person. First of all, the transaction is just a text message. We don’t do biometric because there is no way... people are sketchy about that and it’s not a requirement of any kind of regulation at this point of time. [14:13]

SM: Wow, yeah. [14:14]

HA: I won’t personally give my fingerprints, right? [14:18]

SM: Yeah, me neither. [14:19]

HA: Yeah, it’s not like some things. We don’t take fingerprints at all. [14:23]

SM: OK. Just to be clear – if somebody does a transaction that’s less than $3,000, they would only have to give their phone number? [14:30]

HA: That’s right but being said so, these regulations can change because they are not defined by the government. [14:37]

SM: Right and that’s the US government, right? Does the same thing apply in Canada, or in South America? [14:43]

HA: Right now, we’re working on... we’re following the one in Canada, right... $3,000. At the same time, it could be ten 2,000 dollars. Even for smaller transactions, I don’t believe it will kick in for $500, $300 or $400 but again, we can set it up any time we want. We can change those limits according to government. [15:04]

SM: Right. How are the ones that are out there doing right now? The ones that are actually trading... where are they located and how are they doing? [15:15]

HA: Right now, as I said, we have one in Winnipeg, Ottawa, Toronto, Switzerland, Montreal. We have these locations. Roughly, we are doing around, like last month we had around transaction of $500,000 on our machines but it’s a one way right now so they’ll be moved and converted to two way, which the volume will increase. This is roughly, we are estimating we will be doing around probably $100,000 per day within the next two months, increasing because our volume is increasing and we are working on something. We have limited our machines to one way right now, so that’s the reason. [15:55]

SM: Which way is that? [15:56]

HA: It’s only one way right now. You can only buy Bitcoin but the machine that would be launched within this week would have a two way function. [16:03]

SM: OK. Where are they located? Restaurants, bars? [16:07]

HA: The one in Toronto is located in Bitcoin Decentral managed by Anthony Di Iorio so, it’s in an incubator. The one in Ottawa is in a pub. The one in Winnipeg is in a pizza place. The one in Montreal is in the Bitcoin Embassy. The one in Geneva is also, I believe, in a kind of office space incubator. Pretty much they are in offices. We are focused on selling machines... or like becoming the people who are already in the space. [16:39]

SM: Great and where can people find the company online. [16:42]

HA: They can go on www.BitAccess.co and they can use a contact form to contact us. [16:52]

SM: Great, OK. One more question. How much... if somebody wants to buy one of these, how much does it cost? [16:57]

HA: Our machines, we have different models - the $7,000 model, $12,000 and $15,000 model. [17:05]

SM: Thank you so much Haseeb. I appreciate your time. [17:08]

HA: Thank you, bye. [17:08]

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Welcome to Smart Law, a show about using decentralized consensus systems, like the Bitcoin protocol to reshape the legal system. I’m Pamela Morgan, attorney, entrepreneur and educator. Thanks for joining me. Today, I want to talk about something really exciting. I want to talk about using the blockchain as a proof of existence for legal documents. This already exists at www.proofofexistence.com and proof of existence allows you to record the existence of a document in the blockchain. You can prove that the document existed on a certain date and you can prove that the document that you have in your possession is, in fact, the original document that was uploaded to the blockchain. This is important for a number of reasons and it’s applicable in a number of legal areas. One area is in estate

planning. Many times, my clients come to me for estate planning, which basically means drawing up a will, drawing up a power of attorney, those sorts of things. A will simply directs an executor on how to distribute assets upon passing. Some of the issues that surround having a valid will include: proper attestation, authentication, forgery, making sure that the document that you have is the most recent, storage and then proving the existence of the will itself. A valid will will be dated and signed. It will also be authentic and not modified, so how can the proof of existence on the blockchain help us to prove these things? One, if we upload a PDF or unmodifiable version of a document, that document will be time-stamped on the blockchain and so we’ll have proof that that document existed at that day, on that time and you can use the E-signature to make sure that the document was dated and signed appropriately. By using the blockchain and the proof of existence feature, you can prove that this document existed on a certain day and if you have the original, you can prove through hashing SHA 256 that the file exists unmodified. This is important because many times the wills are contested due to a forgery or some sort of modification to the will. This technology exists on the blockchain now; we can use it now to help our clients. [21:23]

I tested this out myself. I wanted to see what the process was like and it was fast and easy. I simply took a document, went to www.proofofexistence.com, uploaded the document, followed the instructions, I paid 0.005 bitcoin and it ended up to be approximately $3.12. I added a small token for the miners which ended up costing me $3.74 and I now have a proof on the blockchain that my document exists. I can go back (and I did go back) and verify the contents of that document and made sure that the hash does equal and it, in fact, does. I feel like using this technology today as a great way for attorneys to ensure that documents are proved and it’s a much faster, simpler and more effective way than recording these types of documents with the city. One of the benefits of using proof of existence is that the contents of your documents remain confidential and that’s a big deal for clients and attorneys. By posting or by using the blockchain to prove the existence of this document, you’re not disclosing the contents of the document. Instead, you are simply disclosing that there is a document, that I have it and the document that I have is exactly what was uploaded on that date. This is very important to protect confidentiality. There are so many ways that we can use the blockchain in law. There are so many ways we can use it today and there are so many opportunities to develop the technology further. The peer to peer decentralized consensus system allows us to move the justice system, not only as attorneys, but also for clients. I look forward to exploring more of those ways. Thanks for joining me for Smart Law. See you next time. [23:19]

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Stephanie Murphy interview with Ryan Nil

SM: This is Stephanie and I’m at the Texas Bitcoin Conference and I’m talking with Ryan Nil. Hi Ryan. Welcome to the show. [23:44]

RN: How’s it going Stephanie? Thanks for talking. [23:46]

SM: You had an article published on Let’s Talk Bitcoin recently about housing cooperatives, is that right? [23:51]

RN: It was more about the cooperative movement in general and how I think that it has a kind of collaborative community, asset-based ideology and how that matches, very much, with Bitcoin and some of the other new industries that are arising and how you could get some basic cooperative and emerging effects from it. [24:09]

SM: I definitely agree with you there. Can you tell me a little bit about the cooperative housing project that you worked on? [24:16]

RN: I work with a community called La Reunion Cooperative Apartments. We are located in Austin, Texas here where the Bitcoin conference is currently going on. We’ve been around for almost a year and our birthday is in a month. What we did is, we took a kind of rundown apartment complex. The housing market in Austin is really booming, and it’s a sellers’ market, so it’s really hard to find good affordable housing and these kind of old rundown apartment complexes are getting bought up and redeveloped into luxury housing. What we did, is we went in there and we bought the property and we told all of... it was mostly low income, minority families that were living there and we told them that – We’re not kicking you out, we’re new landlords but we’re not going to jack your rents up a ton, we’re not going to push you out but we do need you to be part of this cooperative. Basically, we’re democratically managed, member run and organized and they have a really powerful effect. The members aren’t going to raise the rents themselves and self exploit. The example that I always tell people is that if there’s been student cooperative housing in West Campus for the University of Texas for 60 years, and if you compare their rents, compared to the rents of the luxury apartments that they’re building now, it’s like nearly double for the nice ones. It’s about $1,000 for a one-bedroom suite and $500 for the cooperative suite. [25:41]

SM: What about the quality of the living conditions? [25:45]

RN: When we bought it, it had a shady landlord and she didn’t really want to tell us what was wrong with it, obviously, because that would decrease the value of the property, so when we bought it, half of the units had bed bug infestations. [26:01]

SM: Oh no. [26:02]

RN: Yeah, it was terrible. There was a roach problem. There was a dude who didn’t have AC and this is April in Texas, and it’s hot. All of these problems; people’s doors don’t work; they’ve been kicked down a few times. We get there and we’re trying to tell them about this new empowering landlord and they’re like – This just kind of sounds like some more weird social control that we’re used to. [26:25]

SM: Yeah. [26:26]

RN: After three weeks, we solved the bed bug problem, we fixed some doors, we bought some portable AC units for the guy who had it broken and fixed it up and after about three weeks, they were like – Yeah, you guys are way better than the previous landlord. [26:41]

SM: Kind of gaining some trust in the community. [26:43]

RN: Yeah, for sure. [26:44]

SM: I know there are many different ways to organize and manage coops. They’re all member owned and democratically controlled but within that, there are different ways to structure how decisions get made. Tell me about how it works day to day. [26:59]

RN: For sure. We use a pretty traditional democratic majority vote system. We have meetings every Sunday and you can bring up anything. For example, I’m the treasurer and recently I reached out to the Bitcoin 100 and the conversation that we had at the meeting was over dinner and I was like – Hey guys, these guys are going to give us $1,000 if we put a Bitcoin donation button on our website. They’re like – That’s sounds cool, you should do that. A couple of weeks later, I’d done that and could you just imagine going to any other commercial development and being like – Hey, you guys should take Bitcoin. [27:35]

SM: Yeah, well we have to ask our lawyers, and our board of directors, and it’s probably not going to happen. That’s probably the answer you would get. (Laughter) [27:41]

RN: Precisely and I think, when you’re dealing with people who are members, and consumers, and workers, and institutions, you’re a lot more likely to get support and buy in for what people consider crazy, wacky, out there ideas, like a lot of people consider Bitcoin right now. [27:56]

SM: Everyone who lives there would be a member of the coop? [28:00]

RN: Yes. The membership dues are, essentially, rent. If you pay rent there and live there, then you are a voting member. [28:06]

SM: Is that a way for people to have a little more ownership over the apartment that they’re living in, instead of just paying a landlord and being really not responsible in any way for the future of that property? [28:19]

RN: Exactly. At first, we called ourselves the Maintenance Coop because we had 5-10 different members who were working on maintenance. People really get engaged. Part of the membership is that you have to do labor. We typically require 2-4 hours of labor a week and that’s how you get the cost savings because, we have 34 resident members right now, so that adds up to probably 100 hours a week of labor and it’s essentially free. Those labor savings go directly into lower rents. [28:52]

SM: That’s really cool. Did anyone leave or move out because they didn’t want to join the coop? [28:58]

RN: Yeah, there were a few people and we probably retained about a third of the original tenants. Two thirds moved out and some of them just because they had to move, they wanted to move and it had nothing to do with us. Some of them probably thought it was kind of weird and they didn’t have... they were mostly living in poverty, a lot of them and they didn’t have... working 60 hours a week, it’s just hard to find those extra 2 or 4 hours. We still struggle with that and a lot of people work really hard and have other projects, so it’s sometimes hard to bring it back to the coop. We had people leave like that and then there’s just... we bought... the people who are into coops in Austin, since it comes from a college community, that’s kind of the genesis of it here, you tend to see white and educated folk. That was kind of the founders were mostly white and educated, so we had to deal with class and race issues. Some people kind of moved out because of that tension. The people that stayed; we got some people who are elderly; we got some kids running around, like 5 year olds running around. This is actually, very diverse compared to the traditional cooperative community. [30:08]

SM: Have you had a problem with too many people wanting to live there? [30:15]

RN: That’s actually, a huge problem with housing coops in Austin, and that’s one of the main reasons we’ve bought this. We actually have a wait list with probably 10-20 people. [30:24]

SM: You can’t raise the rent, right? [30:28]

RN: No, no. We’re not going to. We wouldn’t want to... no, because the members would be exploiting themselves if they did that and you’re not going to get people to vote to do that to themselves. The solution is to build more cooperative housing stock. It’s just difficult because when you tell investors – Oh hey, we’re not going to give you control and don’t expect a huge return, expect more modest returns, it’s a bit harder to get money in those kinds of situations. That’s the drawback in the current economy. [30:57]

SM: Is there a Bitcoin community there? Do you tell people about Bitcoin? Do they know about Bitcoin? [31:05]

RN: At first, it was mostly just me because I was really into it and it’s easy to sell people on it when I can tell them it’s free money but there was a member who already had some Bitcoin previously that, once I told him about it, he was excited about it. One of our new associates actually paid his membership dues in Bitcoin, using the donate button on our website. It’s not like a huge community but it was easy to set up and it doesn’t hurt anybody. [31:36]

SM: Then does the coop vote on what to do with the Bitcoin, or in the same way that they would vote on what to do with the rent? Or do they vote on that? [31:44]

RN: When I knew we were getting $1,000, I just allocated it and we were very conservative in our budget making when we bought the place because we didn’t know what the real costs of managing this place would be. We only really allocated money for maintenance.

We have a food program; we actually get donations from a program called Keep Austin Fed and they bring us food that would have been thrown away. [32:09]

SM: Wow! [32:10]

RN: We got a lot of good social programs and those things need budgets and they don’t have budgets. One of the things is, we want to set up an internet infrastructure because if you’re poor and you need a job, the internet’s pretty much the only way to go about doing that these days. [32:24]

SM: Yeah. [32:25]

RN: The $1,000 is actually going to set up a mesh network that we’re hoping can start to... so that people in the other complexes around our complex can access internet and we’re actually working with (I think they’re called) the Free Network Foundation and they set up the mesh network that the Occupy Wall Street people used to get their internet from. [32:47]

SM: Cool. Wow. Well, that’s really exciting. Is there anything else you want to add? Where can people get in touch with you if they want to find out more? [32:55]

RN: You can go to www.LaReunionCoop.org to find out more, you can donate Bitcoin and you’re totally welcome to come to check us out. If you want to be a member, come to our meetings on Sunday at 7.00pm. [33:13]

SM: Cool, Ryan. Thanks so much for talking about this with me. [33:15]

RN: Thank you Stephanie. [33:16]

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ADVERT:

This is Kris Joseph bringing you news on Nxt, the first true second generation cryptocurrency for April 1st 2014. The next blockchain passed 100,000 this past week and this week, the third and final part of BCNxt planned for Nxt will be released. Originally, Nxt was not going to become fully open source until this week but the source code was made public last month instead. Since that release, the community has put pressure on client developers to release source code for their clients as well. Five clients have stepped up to the plate. These clients are the new JavaScript client for Nxt, Offspring, ClientNxt and NxtFreerider, all of which are cross-platform and NxtSolaris, which is available for MacOS and Windows. You can find all of these clients, and their source codes at www.NxtClients.org. For more general information on Nxt, head to www.NxtCrypto.org or www.MyNxt.org and stay tuned for more news on Nxt on the next Let’s Talk Bitcoin broadcast. [34:28]

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Stephanie Murphy interview with Angela Keaton

SM: This is Stephanie Murphy for Let’s Talk Bitcoin. I’m here at the Texas Bitcoin Conference talking with Angela Keaton from Anti-War.com. Hi Angela. [34:39]

AK: Hey Stephanie. [34:40]

SM: Thanks so much for being on Let’s Talk Bitcoin. Tell me about what you do at Anti-War and how that relates to Bitcoin. [34:47]

AK: At Anti-War.com, all we do is gather news, views, all kinds of opinions and activism on US foreign policy and that’s our total focus. 24/7 we have readers from all over the world. One of the things we do is try to, through our activism, get people to think about war. We are Libertarian, we’re not a Libertarian site, we instruct in all ideologies but, as Libertarians, you try to get people to think a little differently about things, right? Like with the dollar, Federal Reserve note, how much that is tied to funding the warfare state. How much of your taxes goes to the largest welfare program of them all - the Empire. Of course, it’s the welfare program that kills children, occupies countries, and tortures, and just creates all kinds of death and destructions. Why not do something differently to... we love money (I love money and I’m sure you do)... I like having wealth, I like having... to me, a medium of exchange, I’m not sentimental about it. I mean, whatever, it’s a paper dollar, it’s something else, it’s a sea shell, who cares right? (Laughter) I’m just very, very excited about the future just as a human being, even if I weren’t at Anti-War.com to think that there are ways of doing things where I’m not involving myself further in the Empire. As part of Bitcoin... one of the groups that’s represented at the umbrella – Bitcoin Not Bombs... along with great groups like FreeAid, we’re just really teaching people who think differently. The kind of people who are early adopters of Bitcoin Not Bombs, these are people who are very progressive in their thinking and very forward thinking. It was just an easy match. It’s a really, really good match. [36:30]

SM: Absolutely. You mentioned something today at the charity luncheon that we had here at the Texas Bitcoin Conference about peace dollars and when I hear the term peace dollar, I’ve definitely heard the term war dollar before, the contrasting term, but there is actually like a silver piece that people refer to as peace dollars. Do you know the history of that? Can you tell me more about that? [36:50]

AK: I wish I did know the history of that, although I mean if anyone has any of them, we’d be happy to take them at Anti-War.com and maybe I can learn more about the history of the peace dollar. I wish I did. I’m shamefully ignorant of some of the Anti-War movement, apart from legal and political aspects. The last time I went to a Bitcoin convention was in San Jose, May 2013 and I was very sceptical. I was always very sceptical even when I first adopted Bitcoin. I said at Anti-War.com, this is a Bitcoin experiment. I was not getting

married to it. If it didn’t work, I’d write about that too on the blog saying – Yeah, this is a bad idea, or tweet, or something about it because at Anti-War.com if we’ve made a mistake, or we don’t like something, we just say – OK, well this is why we’re going to do this differently now. I was that sceptical. I’ve seen alternative currencies in different forms coming out of different ideological movements and how do you compete against the dollar, which obviously has lost a lot of its lustre anyway? Still, people are very emotionally attached to that. It’s part of their American identity, even if they’re not consciously thinking about it. With Bitcoin 2.0 being an international currency, I kind of like the whole notion, a very silly, kind of sentimental Libertarian ideas about freetrade, but how that sort of thing creates positive interactions between people in different nations. That’s the sort of mentality you need to have... to see people as humans so that we don’t have more war. [38:26]

SM: Right, so trade decreases the likelihood of war, right? Yeah, this is really interesting. There’s a lot of different directions we can go with this but I want to just touch on the fact that Anti-War.com has been under FBI surveillance – some of the members, you radicals you (laughter)... trying to get peace in the world. [38:47]

AK: I don’t want to scare people off but one of the weird things... my main reason... well, there’s a couple of reasons for why we took Bitcoin and why I wanted to experiment was one, donor demand. Donors kept asking and we said OK, it seems like it’s getting a bit of a pickup. Let’s serve our donors. These are our readers. These are the people who go out, they take our ideas and then go act upon them. Yes, let’s look into this and give this a chance and see. Also, privacy – people want privacy now. They’re going to have to pry our donor lists out of my cold, dead hands, which is one of the reasons why we’re so grateful the ACLU took our case. It’s a very long story but Anti-War.com has been under investigation by the FBI and my (??) of the organizations and my boss have seen the various files, and it’s all mostly whited out and blacked out, it’s all white... I don’t know, the whole thing is rather ominous and weird but I know that everyone is being spied upon and when you think they’re paying extra special attention to you, it is kind of creepy. Throughout most of my activist life, I’ve just deliberately lived in denial about what surveillance is like... like whatever, there’s a million and one activists... who cares, right? The chances of it being you are pretty small until, of course, it’s your boss and then you think about it very differently. With Bitcoin, there is none of that. You can do Bitcoin to Bitcoin transfers. People don’t have to know what you’re called. You don’t have to explain it to your accountant, you don’t have to explain it to your husband, you don’t have to explain it to anyone. It’s something you did that’s pro-peace. The thing is, with Anti-War.com, it kind of lowers our transaction costs if I can do something via Bitcoin, I don’t have to use, let’s say, maybe PayPal, or some of the things that have a cost attached to them. All those things add up. We have those things because our donors, many of them love PayPal... that was, at one time, the very hot thing was PayPal, or some of these other methods of payment that people who are kind of on the... who tend to be in the computer world, sort of more forward thinkers, I was thinking about the Bitcoin people generally. They want to try all these things. We try all these things. It costs to do business; it costs money to run a non-profit. It takes staff to do things and it’s difficult, though if we cut out some of these transaction costs, it saves us money and doesn’t take as much... it keeps our budget in check. I can’t see too many down sides, at this point, beyond the fact that – Yeah, we’re all

speculators and we’re all part of a much larger experiment but whether I like it or not, cryptocurrency is here. It wouldn’t matter, even if... I was a sceptic... but it didn’t matter. The world’s going to change. It would be like not accepting cars, at one time, like – Oh, I’m wedded to a horse and buggy. [41:35]

SM: Right. I was really interested in the donor privacy aspects because I know that one of the reasons that a lot of people got interested in Bitcoin in the first place was when Wikileaks was cut off, very famously, by PayPal, Visa, MasterCard and literally, 97% of the global financial network, at that time, you couldn’t send a payment to Wikileaks. It was all done extra legally. Nobody said Wikileaks is illegal now, it was all just pressure from US government and that’s all it takes really for politically unpopular organizations that are interested in freedom. I know that there are some people who wanted to support Wikileaks, or perhaps wanted to support Defense Distributed, who was doing the Cody Wilson’s thing, the 3D printed firearms, or even Planned Parenthood, and just didn’t want other people to know about it because they didn’t want to be judged, or whatever. I imagine Anti-War might be like that. Some people might want to support that organization but want to do so privately, so they can now do that with Bitcoin. [42:38]

AK: It is true. By the way, we lost donors because of the FBI’s investigation, once that became public because generally people of means who just thought that, you know what, why court trouble in my life, especially if you’re very established, especially if you have a lot to lose. Why ask for trouble? You lose some major donors that way and I understood... what was I going to say, now even though I would never release names, I don’t know... we’re never going to know... I’m a sceptic on that too... I don’t think we’re ever going to know exactly what the government’s keeping track of on Anti-War.com. I try not to give it really much thought beyond what’s important to report about the case as it’s progressing. I try not to think too hard about that aspect of working there because otherwise, it would change the way I interact with people. With Bitcoin, it is changing the way we interact. It allows people to do things like Silk Road. I had a friend who needed actual medication who, if you don’t have health insurance, it’s really hard to buy a lot of medications. Bitcoin, that’s a solution. It’s a solution to a problem. I think it’s a great thing for Anti-War activists. It’s a great thing for people who are in the tech world. I mean, this is just a wonderful way of doing business and that’s important. I like doing business. I’m a big fan of it. (Laughter) [44:09]

SM: Great. www.Anti-War.com is your website. Anything else you want to tell the audience? [44:13]

AK: Oh no, thank you Stephanie so much for having me today. [44:16]

SM: I appreciate Angela Keaton from www.Anti-War.com. Thank you so much. [44:20]

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Stephanie Murphy interview with Tai Zen

SM: This is Stephanie from Let’s Talk Bitcoin. I’m here talking with Tai Zen from Nxt. Hi Tai. [44:57]

TZ: Hey, how’s it going guys? Glad to have you here. We’ve been trying to reach out to you guys for a while now so, glad to meet up here at the Texas Bitcoin Conference. [45:04]

SM: It’s great to talk to you too. We are at the Texas Bitcoin Conference and what is Nxt for someone who’s never heard of it? [45:10]

TZ: Nxt is a second generation cryptocurrency and it’s a 100% second generation. It is not a knock off of the Bitcoin source code. It’s not a duplicate; it’s not a copy and paste. The inventor of the Nxt source code is a person named BCNxt and we think that he’s from Europe, or from Russia somewhere. It’s a completely new source code that’s written in a completely different language. It’s in Java and so it’s not like the other altcoins that you see. [45:42]

SM: Right, so this has been designed from the ground up and it has some different features that are not included in Bitcoin 2.0, at the current moment, is that right? [45:50]

TZ: Yes, exactly. What happened was that BCNxt saw that there were a lot of features that were missing from the Bitcoin protocol so, when he created this... and I say he, it could be a she... [46:02]

SM: Yeah. [46:02]

TZ: ...we don’t know, OK. It’s anonymous. [46:03]

SM: Like Satoshi from Nxt, yeah. [46:05]

TZ: Yeah. BCNxt created this source code called Nxt and he did it from scratch and he built in all the features into it that was not available in the Bitcoin source code and also, the things that the features that you cannot add to the Bitcoin source code now because it would drastically affect a lot of people. [46:28]

SM: When I said that I was talking about messaging and a distributed exchange, is that right? [46:33]

TZ: Yes, they have a messaging system, they have... right now, the biggest thing that they’re working on is the peer to peer asset exchange because of the situation with MtGox and there’s a big demand in the market for a peer to peer exchange that has transparency to it and that’s not centralized. They have the testnet out and people can go to the Nxt thread at Bitcoin Talk or go to www.NxtCoin.org or www.NxtCrypto.org and they can sign up and use the testnet and help develop it. [47:05]

SM: Wow! A lot of people are talking about doing distributed exchanges with Bitcoin but this is actually already happening at Nxt? [47:14]

TZ: I’m not sure if it’s the alpha version. I’m not a coder, I’m not a developer. I just help with the marketing team but I know that they have the testnet out and I’ve seen a lot of people test it already. They’re actually, right now, in the process of testing exchanging Dogecoins and other altcoins through the asset exchange, so it’s really exciting times. There’s a lot of development going on. [47:38]

SM: Such wow! [47:39]

TZ: Yeah, such wow! (Laughter) [47:41]

SM: Alright. Every Nxt wallet is a brain wallet by default. Is that right? [47:47]

TZ: Yes. BCNxt decided that, to avoid confusion and everything, they set it up as a brain wallet initially. Right now, there are seven clients, or seven wallets that have been put out and they all use some type of brain wallet... for the listeners... the brain wallet is where you just put in the long password and that creates the entire account. In order for you to activate a Nxt account, you would have to create it and then myself, or somebody else that owns Nxt would have to send you a few Nxt coins so that it activates your account. [48:25]

SM: Yeah, or you could buy them on an exchange like Cryptsy, right, or BTer? [48:29]

TZ: You can buy it from www.Cryptsy.com, or you can buy it on www.Bter.com, or you can buy it on www.DGEX.com, which is the first Nxt exchange and send it to yourself and that will activate the account also. [48:40]

SM: Tell me about the sending and receiving of Nxt because I know that there’s not like mining like there is with Bitcoin, with Nxt. They have something called transparent forging, right? [48:53]

TZ: Yes and the transparent forging is completely different from the Bitcoin mining. Bitcoin mining serves two purposes... well, several purposes. One is to process the Bitcoin transactions to secure the network and to mint new coins. The Nxt transparent forging is very unique and very revolutionary because instead of minting new coins, the only thing that it does is it uses what’s called a proof of stake process and, what that does is only allows you to process transactions. There’s no new Nxt coins created. There’s a billion Nxt coins that were created from the original source code on the day that it was launched and released and that’s it. Everybody just recycles those one billion coins. [49:37]

SM: How do the coins get distributed? I think that’s something people want to know about? [49:42]

TZ: There’s a big controversy with Nxt because the one billion Nxt coins were distributed through, similar to what an IPO process is. BCNxt put up an announcement for a certain period of time. I think it was like a month, or a month and a half, where if you... he was trying to raise 21 bitcoins. If you were willing to send in 1 bitcoin, you got that percentage

of the one billion Nxt. It’s a proportional and percentage wise base. A lot of people say that it’s pre-mined and they have an issue with that. [50:15]

SM: So there’s only 21 people that got Nxt in the first round? Is that what you’re saying? [50:18]

TZ: No, no, no. It’s not 21 people. If you sent in half of a bitcoin, or a quarter of a bitcoin, or a tenth of a bitcoin, you got that percentage of that one billion Nxt. [50:26]

SM: Oh, I see. Got it. [50:27]

TZ: No, it’s not 21 people. There were actually 73 original stakeholders and they all sent in the Nxt, during that IPO period and during that time, BCNxt distributed. There’s, I think, around 13 million or so, that were unclaimed. Whoever sent in the bitcoins to get Nxt started, they didn’t claim it, so we used... the community... the Nxt has a very strong community and they used those 13 million unclaimed Nxt coins to develop the infrastructure and for marketing. [51:01]

SM: Wow, that’s really interesting. OK. The clients for Nxt – there are seven clients out that you mentioned and this seems like they’re really prolific with coming out with these clients. It’s only a few months old and now there’s already lots of different ways to use it. [51:19]

TZ: Yes, it’s one of the more popular second generation currencies and after 100 days now, that it’s been out on the market, there’s a lot of developers that enjoy the fact that Nxt is not a copycat of Bitcoin and that it’s an original source code. The people that are looking to pour their time and effort and coding abilities into an altcoin, they chose Nxt because of its non-copycat nature. Right now, we have approximately seven clients. A lot of them are open source so their code can be reviewed but they’re being in development right now. You can go to www.NxtClient.com, or www.NxtClient.org – it’s one of those sites. It contains all seven of the clients that people can choose from, or you can go to any of the www.NxtCoin.org or www.NxtCrypto.org and find those clients also. [52:14]

SM: There is an actual store where you can buy stuff with Nxt, is that right? I’ve seen that. [52:20]

TZ: I haven’t seen that yet. I mean, the developments in the Nxt community are coming so fast that it’s kind of hard; it’s challenging to keep up with everything too. Now that you mention it, now I’m aware that there’s a Nxt store. [52:32]

SM: (Laughter) Great, OK. Speaking of open source, the Nxt code became open source recently, right? [52:43]

TZ: Yes. There’s something that’s very unique about the Nxt source code. When Nxt was released, they did two things that I thought that was pretty cool about it. One was that they purposely injected it with three security flaws, at different levels. They did that on purpose and they announced it to the community. The reason why they did that was because if

anybody wanted to copycat the source code when it was launched, it would be a problem because the source code has three security flaws in it. At the same time, those three security flaws was also an invitation... they put that in there to invite people in the crypto community to inspect the source code and whoever found the security flaws would receive a very large bounty. It’s to prevent copycats, it’s for security reasons they did that. The other thing that they did with the Nxt source code that was very unique is that they made it so that they were several versions ahead, so whatever features... when they came out with the alias system, the messaging system, every time they came out with a new feature, they would be two or three, like a couple of features ahead before they released the source code to everyone. [53:56]

SM: Right, mmhm. [53:57]

TZ: So that they were always ahead so that if somebody tries to copy it, because you know as well as I do that a lot of people are trying to copy these different codes that people come out with and they’re not willing to put in the time and the effort to develop it, but they are willing to copy the other people’s and change a few parameters. [54:13]

SM: Right. [54:14]

TZ: Those are the reasons why the Nxt source code was released the way it was. [54:17]

SM: That’s interesting. Wow! OK, what are your favorite things about Nxt? Why are you passionate about it? [54:24]

TZ: The biggest thing that drew me to Nxt was that I was looking for... I thought that Bitcoin was one of the most revolutionary technologies that takes power away from the 1% on Wall Street and give it back to the 99% on Main Street and I wanted to help pitch in with Bitcoin, but I’m not a coder, I’m not a programmer and I come from a sales and marketing background so I could not help out them with that because there’s enough people on CNBC and Bloomberg to help promote Bitcoin. What I did was I looked at the different altcoins and what was available that needed help. I looked through hundreds of them and they all, to me, were just a copycat of Bitcoin. They had one or two features here but there was nothing spectacular that got my attention and my colleague Leon, he introduced me to Nxt and he said – Hey, you said you didn’t want to help with these other altcoins because they were just a knocked off of Bitcoin, well here’s one that’s not. It’s an original source code. I started looking and researching into Nxt and I saw how it was put together. At first, I was turned off by the proof of stake, the pre-mine, the one billion coins that was distributed but then, when I learned what the proof of stake was, it changed my mind so I was able to get more involved into it. I’m actually here representing... being an ambassador for Nxt. I help out on their marketing efforts, so here I am at the Texas Bitcoin Conference. [55:52]

SM: Great Tai. Well, anything else you want to add about where do people find out more online if they’re curious? [55:57]

TZ: The adoption of a new coin has always been the biggest challenge for all the coins and so, what I’ve done is, if you go to my Freedom blog, it’s at www.prisonorfreedom.com /

2014 Texas Bitcoin Conference. I have the instructions in a video there of how to download, verify and install the Nxt client and then, if you leave a comment there, if your audience leaves a comment there, with their Nxt account number, I will send them 4 Nxt coins just to get their account started so that they can see how it works. [56:32]

SM: Great, very cool. [56:34]

TZ: We have a very supportive community and we like to help each other out. If your audience wants to test out Nxt and see how it works, they’re welcome to come to www.prisonorfreedom.com and leave a comment with their account and I’ll send them some Nxt to try out. [56:49]

SM: Great, well thank you so much. This has been great. [56:52]

TZ: Thanks for having us on Let’s Talk Bitcoin and look forward to seeing you guys again at the next conference. [57:00]

SM: Right. At the Nxt conference? [57:01]

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CREDITS:

Thanks for listening to Episode 97 of Let’s Talk Bitcoin. Visit us at www.LetsTalkBitcoin.com. For more content, subscribe to our feeds, tip our shows and, of course, try out all our other shows on the LTB network, like:

Paul Boyer’s award winning ‘Mad Money Machine’ Ed & Ethan’s live Bitcoin report every Wednesday night at 7pm Pacific Time Dr Stephanie Murphy and Brian Sovryn’s ‘Sex and Science Hour’ The Boys in Nashville serving Bitcoins and Gravy

Content for today’s episode was provided by Stephanie Murphy, Pamela Morgan, Ryan Nil, Angela Keaton, Tai Zen and Haseeb Awan Special thanks to the Texas Bitcoin Conference for a great event.

This episode was produced and edited by Adam B. Levine Music for this episode was provided by Jared Rubens and General Fuzz

Any questions or comments? Email adam@letstalkbitcoin.com

Have a good one! [57:52]