 You are watching The Daily Decrypt, where we bring the currency competition. I am your host, Amanda B. Johnson, and today's episode is brought to you by BlackHaloBidHalo. Some people create online stores, and other people create cryptocurrencies. But rarely, if ever, have we seen someone creating an online store and the cryptocurrency to go with it. Voxelus is the name of the VR store, and Voxels are the only type of currency accepted to purchase them. Here to tell us more about that is Voxelus founder Halsey Miner and Voxel, the cryptocurrency developer, Jim Blascoe. Each of you, in turn, please tell me what your involvement is with the project. What is your role? So I'm the founder of Voxelus and the majority shareholder. I'm actually co-founder, majority shareholder. And really sort of the driving force between us creating the Voxel, as a really joint venture between Jim and Michael Turpin and the guys at Voxelus. Okay, how about you, Jim? I am the creator of Voxel, so it's the digital cryptocurrency for the Voxelus VR platform. That's what I was brought in to do with Michael. Michael does the PR, and it was up to me to make sure that there was a secure coin that was quick and perfectly usable for everybody in these virtual reality worlds. I'm also the founder and majority shareholder and chairman of Uphold, who's also involved in the stories. Okay, very good. Well, I have a few questions that are specifically for you, Halsey, and a few that are specifically for you, Jim. Halsey, I'm very interested, I don't know if I've ever heard of, so some people create stores, right? And some people create cryptocurrencies, but I've never seen anybody create a store and a cryptocurrency to go together. What gave you the idea to do that? So I don't know if you know this, but Mountain Gox stood for Magic the Gathering, and that's a game. And for decades, there's been a problem, which is if you earn money in a virtual world, you can't transport that money out of the game. So no matter how creative you are, no matter how cool things you build, that money is stuck. And so people like Magic the Gathering set up exchanges to try to sell these in-game currencies. And then when Bitcoin came along, Magic the Gathering said, oh, here's a much better way of creating a currency that can escape borders and become much more fungible. So they gave up on their in-game currency business, and they focused on the digital currency business. So when we started Voxelis, which lets people build their own worlds, lets people create content that can be used in building worlds, we wanted people to be able to, from wherever they are in the world, to be able to not only earn a living in this virtual world, but to convert that money back into a usable form for whatever currency they have. You see, there's no law that says that you have to work in the real world to earn money. You can actually do things that are valuable in the virtual world and earn money too. And people have known that for decades. And in fact, the reason we call Bitcoin a virtual currency is based on the fact that this was, it originated from a game currency, an in-game currency. So what we've done really is for the first time created an ecosystem that allows people globally. They don't have to have dollar accounts or euro accounts or whatever, to be able to build, upload, sell, create, monetize, and then off, and then in, you know, like eBay, like YouTube, be able to actually sustain themselves off of their creative efforts. You know, I didn't know that Mt. Gox had with people trading in-game points originally. I guess I assumed that they were trading trading cards, but... Yeah, well, yeah, but I mean, basically it's the same thing. It was magic, the gathering, and any item that you bought in an in-game world, it was impossible to get your money out. Now, you could buy Beanie Babies and exchange them on eBay, so there was a market for Beanie Babies, but there was no market for any of these games. And so, you know, people would have, you know, they'd level up characters and all kinds of stuff, but they could never get any money for it. All right, so now Jim is, do I understand correctly that Voxel, the cryptocurrency, is a fork of litecoin? Will you please give us a brief overview of the tech specs of Voxel? Okay, so a lot of people get confused when they ask this kind of question, because they don't realize that litecoin is actually a fork of bitcoin, and a lot of people have forgotten it seems like. So really, Voxel's is partially bitcoin, it's litecoin, and we've taken some elements from purecoin and added that in there, and some things from Feathercoin, so we're kind of like this mud of a mix of really awesome stuff, and we've got this great coin. Well, let me ask you, I guess, some of the basics. Is it proof of work or proof of stake, or delegated? It's a proof of work coin, and as far as we know, it may be the only proof of work coin with a check point, advanced check point and server built into it, so I think we're one of a kind in that aspect. Okay, and is there a coin cap, and what is, say, the block time? Okay, so the block times are still pretty close to litecoins, they're two and a half minutes, which makes us about four times faster than bitcoin. There's 210 million coins, which were all pre-mined and offered in crowdsale. The numbers were broken up, they offered 15%, which was 31.5 million coins for sale during the crowdsale. The rest of the coins won't be sold until actually they've sold the first 31.5 million, so there's no problem with the large inflation of coins or anything like that. So it's 100% pre-mined, is that correct? Yeah, and you're going to see that, I think, with the future of all cryptocurrencies that are made for in-game systems or corporations, companies, anything, all this is going to be pre-mined because you can't just say, well, why don't you take bitcoin? Well, there's a good reason because you can't control the ecosystem of it if it's bitcoin. If it's your own coin, you can issue however many you want, you can control the inflation of it, you can set the price initially, and then really the community takes over after that. Okay, so now where will the reward come for people doing the proof-of-work mining if there is zero inflation because it's 100% pre-mined? There's actually zero payout for mining, so mining voxels wouldn't do you much good. We have our own set of network of miners that mine voxels just to keep it running. The fact that it's fully pre-mined, we don't need miners. We don't need anything like that to keep it going. We've eliminated that. Okay, so the voxel-less company is making up the infrastructure of voxel, the cryptocurrency. And Uphold, who are also contributing ongoing security to the platform. I think our goal is to make it the most secure coin of all of the coins and to have very strong built-in DDoS protection, etc. So the idea behind the voxel is to make it the perfect currency for VR. And so here's the way I look at it, right? So our stretch goal is we want to have 320 million people by 2020 using the voxel. Now we'd like to have all of them on the voxel-less platform, which is not unrealistic when you look at things like Minecraft, which we actually have more use cases and more content than an ecology. But if you think about it, right, and you say, well, if these guys have 320 million people who use this, that makes the currency basically the same size or number of participants as the US dollar. And I've been very clear from the very beginning that I think the future of vertical currencies are currencies that satisfy very specific use cases. So I think we're moving away from just using the currency we're born into to using the currencies that we believe in. And I think five years from now, the money you hold in your wallet will say as much about you as a car you drive. You say as you drive a car, okay? If you want, I'm driving the Ford plug-in hybrid, whatever that says. Well, I know so much more about you now. Now, Halsey, did you have, was voxel-less already planned as a virtual reality software store before the idea of the voxel came along or were they planned totally to be together? So I launched voxel-less and I did not have the currency in mind. What happened was I remembered probably one of the most influential books that I've ever read, which was called Snow Crash. And in that book, it was Neil Stephenson, who now works for Magic Leap. And it won the Hugo Award and it was the basis on which the Matrix was created. And it was the first time that virtual reality and virtual currency were in the same book. And they were called Kong-Bucks. That was the name of the virtual currency. And people were actually using virtual currency because all of the regular currencies were debased, but not the virtual currency. And I read that in 93 when I was starting CNET and it has always had an profound effect on me as it has most people who have read it. Most people who haven't read it have at least seen the movie, The Matrix. So they get the idea. And so I realized we're at the point where science fiction is going to become science reality. I like innovating. It gets me out of bed every morning and that gave me the inspiration to put together something that made a virtual world more tangible and more real. And now the virtual currency games, not virtual currency. I keep getting mixed up with virtual currency and virtual reality. Let's just go VR. I'm going to go VR. So the VR offerings from Voxelis are available now. Is that right? And there's a sort of stage where for the next couple of weeks all the VR games are free. And after that, Voxels will be charged for them. Is that right? That's correct. So what makes this different than many other virtual currencies is that if there are 100 million people playing the game, there are going to be 100 million people who have to buy Voxels. So it's not that they're just a currency that's nice to use. 100 million people you hope buy Voxels. Well, we can't guarantee. We can only build our business, build our vision, and see what happens. And now, Jim, the crypto Voxel is being traded, at least on Bitrex. Is that right? Is it being traded anywhere else other than Bitrex? I believe Shapeshift said they plan to pick it up as well. Yeah. Uphold hasn't launched yet and Shapeshift hasn't launched yet. And we're always trying to get us listed on some bigger exchanges. But Bitrex right now is where you can find Voxels. Since it's launched, it's been number one in volume every day since it's launched a week ago. Wow. About a week ago. Yeah, it's been very well. And uphold should be coming very soon. And just to, you know, this is a very important point. When uphold launches, you will be able to buy the Voxel with any account in India, China, the EU, the US, or any major credit card. And that's because, as of now, we just announced India, uphold supports connectivity into all of these monetary systems. So you will be able to go and convert by Voxels with money from India or China and convert it to gold. And so the Voxel inside of uphold will be fully convertible instantaneously into 24 other currencies including Bitcoin and into four metals. So you can turn your Voxels that you've earned into gold if that's what you want. So we've created a system by putting these two, by putting uphold together with Voxel that allows people to be able to earn money building really cool stuff and, you know, just like this happened in YouTube and to be able to convert that back into whatever currency they need to pay their bills. And now is Voxel, the Voxel, the cryptocurrency network, is that open source? Can I go view that on GitHub, for example? The Voxelist platform is open source. So if you're in the VR, that is completely open source. Oh, the games as well are open source. Yeah, the platform itself is open source. And Martin from Voxelist.com is working hard to bring in all kinds of VR content. They just landed a deal which brings in, I think, what was it? How is it like 20,000 virtual reality items? We signed a deal with Flat Pyramid that brings in 7,000 VR items that are already VR ready. By the end of the year, we should have just from them 16,000 items that can be woven into the world, spaceships, guns, all sorts of stuff. And then the focus is going to be on bringing in content like Star Wars or Disney. So you can get a Star Wars walker and spaceship and build out these games that you then effectively live in. And so the idea is to create a rich ecology of content so people can create all kinds of games and all kinds of worlds to play them. And will the Voxel be tradable in any of these games? So like I could create a game where I say have like a pub on the moon and then I can sell what? Like I can sell virtual beers for actual Voxels? For Voxels, yeah. I mean it drives the whole ecosystem but the most important part it solves, because people have been selling virtual beers for a long time, what people have not solved is how you take that virtual beer money and convert it into dollars. And that's what we've done for the first time. We've allowed in-game currency and I'll tell you it's very hard from a regulatory standpoint because Uphold has regulatory permission to do things like convert Voxels to dollars that a Voxelist does not have. So it was a matter of putting together the various pieces with their regulatory approvals to be able to do this. I don't think if I wasn't the founder of both these good companies, I don't think it would be possible today to be able to do this because I have to know the regulations on both sides and be able to make them fit very well so that neither does anything that violates any money transfer rules. So Voxel can create the currency but they can't trade it. And then Uphold does the currency but they allow it to be converted into a bunch of other forms. Now maybe this demonstrates my naivety about VR, but in a Voxelist game, could I interact with other people who are also playing Voxelist games or could I invite them into my game? We were the first multiplayer game. And so we're very early which is great because it gives us a chance to build out a lot of functionality before but we're already multi-user and by the end of this month we should have Marketplace up and going. We already have people who want to submit to us objects that they want to sell. So the goal is to take what YouTube did in let's say three or four years where they allowed people to ultimately earn a living on YouTube. We want to collapse that down to a year and increase the amount of content that our people have access to. So the Voxel is you can't pick one currency because if you pick the dollar as your primary currency 96% of the world doesn't use the dollar. So we create this intermediate currency called the Voxel and we allow it to be convertible back out into like I said whatever your home currency is that sends you bills in pounds we allow you to convert its pounds within a fold. This is all very interesting. Thank you for your time fellas. Halsey will you give us any relevant URLs that people can visit to learn more and Jim the same as for you as well. Do you have any websites that people can visit to follow your work? You know the primary you know the companies that started are uphold.com upholed.com voxelist.com and the voxel.com is the website for the voxel itself. You can find me on the same sites as well. I'm also all over bitcointalk.org. Oh okay. What's your username? It's Jim Blasco. Oh okay. Just like your real name. All right very good. All right. Well thanks for your time fellas. Have a wonderful day. Thank you very much. Bye. Bye bye. Today's episode is brought to you by Blackhalo Bithalo which was among the first to offer what many call the most basic use case for smart contracts the double deposit escrow. The escrow client is compatible with both bitcoin and bitcoin and you can download it for yourself at blackhalo.info or bithalo.org. And now it's time for you dear viewer to leave your feedback. What say you of cryptocurrencies which are created for products and products which are created for cryptocurrencies. Interesting indeed. Leave your feedback below. Thanks. Machik Olpinski is a technology blogger who got his start at Google and who has recently begun exploring the potential relationship between cryptocurrency and virtual reality. We'll be able to create this virtual world which are basically hosted. Maybe not hosted on the blockchain but where the consensus as to you know what happened in the virtual world or who owns what or who owns a particular piece of virtual real estate it will be hosted on the blockchain.