 Thank you all we're gonna start the second half of our program now My name is Tori Bosch and I'm the editor of the future tense channel on slate where we publish commentary on emerging technologies daily Several of our speakers have had pieces on Bitcoin over the last week And I encourage you to check them out at slate.com slash future tense Now I'd like to introduce cashmere hill who's going to tell us about her week living on Bitcoin cashmere is a senior online editor at Forbes and As others have said probably knows more about what Bitcoin means for daily life than just about anybody else. So, thank you Hello So as I was I got here yesterday I'm based out of San Francisco now and was unpacking my bags and discovered that I'd been in Vegas this weekend and I accidentally kept some of the casino chips from the the aria casino there so I have like a hundred dollars in Casino chips and I was thinking maybe I can repeat my experiment and try to live only on casino chips for a week in Washington, DC But in some ways, I mean that you know Bitcoin is Transformative and new incredibly novel innovative, but in another way, it's you know, not that unique It is much like a casino chip some new kind of medium exchange exchange or store of value I thought it was interesting. I don't know how many of you are here for the panel this morning, but Justin Wolfers the economist said well, I don't really respect Bitcoin as an exchange of value because I Went to get my Bitcoin this morning or my bagel this morning and it was only valued in US dollars And I was like well, does that mean you know pesos aren't a medium exchange that the euro isn't I don't think that's a good way to you to kind of gauge its value But yeah last year everybody was writing about Bitcoin because it had it been around for four years at that point And had been had kind of spikes in its value it had gone from a few cents to a few dollars to ten dollars and then at the beginning of last year it went from a Few dollars to thirteen dollars and people got kind of excited about it and because they got excited about it It spiked again, and it went to two hundred dollars And so you had all these journalists who were you're writing about how you buy a Bitcoin? About their adventures and speculating If they bought low and sold high and I thought a better way to explain a kind of complicated Concept of people would be just to try to live on Bitcoin for a week and see if it had value in that sense You know could I survive? Could I could I live could I eat could I travel and Last year especially it was it was really challenging in San Francisco There was no way for me to pay for transportation So on my first day of living on Bitcoin, I had to walk Three miles to work through. I don't know if you know San Francisco, but I had to work walk through the tenderloin Where you'll find Twitter's offices, but you'll also find like a lot of kind of a Rough a rough population there It wasn't it wasn't a very a very pleasant walk and then When it came to buying food at first I couldn't find any options besides a cupcake place in San Francisco that takes Bitcoin and Sushi restaurant and they were again miles from my office so I looked online and I found something called survival foods comm and They were selling like these Like high high calorie protein packed Bars granola bars and so I thought that's what I would have to subsist on for the week But then I got lucky and there was a company called foodler comm that had just a month earlier started accepting Bitcoin and They're essentially like a seamless Service that I was able to order from like almost any food delivery place. That was part of foodler So that's I mean foodler is basically the reason why I survived the week and even with that I managed to lose five pounds just in a week because Because I was walking everywhere Eventually riding a bike when I found somebody who was willing to rent me a bike for half a Bitcoin for the week And then and then not really eating a lot since I always was having to get it delivered So when I I wrote a little e-book about it and I was tempted to call it the Bitcoin diet But I wasn't sure who that would appeal to the other challenge I ran into over the course of the week was How I paid for where I lived and I was renting an apartment from a friend of mine And she was down in Brazil and she was very busy with work that week And I started emailing her and calling her and sending her text message every day saying hey Do you mind if I pay my rent this week in Bitcoin? And she just responded to me She's like I have no idea what you're talking about If you want just just pay me later. I don't know what this is. I said, well, you know I'm doing this journalistic experience Experiment and I have to abide by the rules I set for myself. She's like I just really don't understand this I'm too busy to deal with it so I ended up moving out of my apartment for the week and There were two hostels in San Francisco at that point that were accepting Bitcoin one was right near my office I thought it was gonna be great. I went to go visit had like barred metal doors and there was no desk I could see or get to there was just a Like intercom on the outside and so I pushed the button I said, hey, do you guys have any vacancies and they're like no go away and then the other one was in the mission and It was run by one of the early Bitcoin Entrepreneurs Jared Kenna who also runs the trade hill exchange, which at that point was shut down because of Banking problems and he said no sure. Yeah, we can make a space for you. We've got this great, you know kind of hacker Hostel Bitcoin space and I thought it sounded great until I got there And it was still under construction There were dogs running around the hot the hallways there they have chicken on the roof on the roof chickens on the roof which is you know charming but kind of rustic for the middle of San Francisco and I had one of the the nicer rooms, but it had this communal Bathroom and the showers were just divided by curtains. Anyways, it was a it was a little rough So so last year, you know Bitcoin living wasn't it it wasn't very it wasn't very easy Things have changed a lot in the past year It would be much easier for me to do now and I may try it again But I just don't think it would be that challenging because there are so many new merchants who have recognized accepting Bitcoin is The easiest and freest publicity stunt ever You know, I could go to a Sacramento Kings game. I could order, you know furniture jewelry from overstock There is now a gift card service that takes Bitcoin, which would allow me to spend my money almost anywhere back Back in April May when I did this people were still afraid that Bitcoin was going to be declared illegal in the US And that again has changed dramatically We had the the Senate hearings in November where Regulators and lawmakers and law enforcement agencies said that they feel pretty comfortable with their ability to to regulate and oversee Bitcoin and that's what kind of shot sent the price up Again dramatically in November In part because China saw the US kind of nodding their head about Bitcoin and decide to start investing The really weird the really difficult thing about living on Bitcoin and it's a it's the biggest problem I think for Bitcoin generally from a speculative and Investment standpoint is it's it's dramatic volatility when I first bought my Bitcoin for that week, I think it was valued at $120 it went up to $140 on my fifth day it dropped to $90 and That was the day I decided to buy cupcakes for my brother-in-law's birthday And so I ended up spending around point five Bitcoin for like a dozen mini cupcakes Which was you know expensive cupcake prices. Anyways already inflated around $45, but now that would be You know, it's gone anywhere from 300 to 500 to $600 as I spent on on on cupcakes So that's a real challenge for people that want to live on Bitcoin or or just be invested in it My big takeaway from the week of living on it Was I mean there are a couple of take it but takeaways one the Bitcoin community is really really excited about Bitcoin and super supportive They they want it to succeed. They were excited about me reporting on it and people sent me Bitcoin tips Anonymous Bitcoin tips and I ended up getting between 10 and 12 Bitcoin over the course of the week, which at the time was about a thousand dollars Now that would be you know anywhere from I'm trying to calculate whatever the the current value is But you know like six thousand to ten thousand dollars And I've never had that happen to me before where somebody was willing to pay me for a story that wasn't you know the Media publication that that commissioned it and I Ended up just taking everybody in the Bitcoin community that wanted to come out to a sushi dinner at the end of the at the end of The week and ended up spending about ten Bitcoin to buy sushi for about 70 people that showed up So it was a thousand dollar dinner at the time and now again anywhere from a six thousand to a ten thousand dollar sushi dinner That I gave for these strangers or that the Bitcoin community gave for these strangers And then one thing I discovered then too is how How traceable Bitcoin can be so I had a public address that was associated with my wallet so that people could see You know how I was spending my Bitcoin over the week and you could see all of the money that was coming into that wallet later Forbes decided to test out some of the black markets and see what the customer service would be if you ordered drugs from a black market and I Sent money along to help with the purchase of that I didn't make the purchase myself. I just forwarded my money elsewhere and later. It was traceable I ended up being tied To the the kind of purchase on on dark markets And so that was the first time that I discovered that Bitcoin was not as anonymous as everybody was saying it was That it is indeed it is instead pseudonymous so if you can You can make all of these kinds of purchases and transactions about having them tied to your identity But if then if you let your identity slip in some way by you know Publicizing your your Bitcoin address they can see all many many of your transactions that are tied to that same address So one of my takeaways was that the anonymous anonymity promises around Bitcoin were kind of overhyped My my other takeaway was just that Bitcoin's value Kind of doesn't matter. It's what we get so excited about in the press because you can talk about it went up to a thousand dollars It went down to five hundred dollars. It's a very easy and This real way to think about it, but the more exciting part of Bitcoin is its use as a payment method a means for these kind of low transaction fees In sending value from one place to another so you don't have a you know $60 wire transfer fee when you're trying to send money to another country And in that way the the value of Bitcoin doesn't matter all that matters is that it's easy to change it from You know Bitcoin into a regular currency on either end of that Transaction and I think that is probably much more exciting than the ability to Just kind of you know buy a cupcake with it or buy sushi with it So that's what at the end of it I kind of came away I started the week as a skeptic and I just thought this was like this weird You know Silicon Valley tech geek thing and by the end of the week I really saw the potential in it and I was not surprised that in the year after Bitcoin attracted so much attention and so So much in the way of VC dollars And then the other thing I just think is is interesting about Bitcoin is the sociological aspect of it it really is Incredible to me that this currency that was you know created out of thin air is now worth anything from you know $500 to $1,200 and then you have this community of people that have come around it and supported it and Really made it into this successful Economic meme and in that way I think it's just like a science fiction novel and it's part of what attracts so much attention to it It's just kind of this for all of its science and in math. It's kind of magical and that In that spread and its ability to grab people's attention and belief So those were my thoughts after a week of living on Bitcoin. I'm happy to talk to people about it after this