 Hello and welcome to The Bitcoin Show. We have a great show for you today and we have a fantastic guest and lots of really cool stuff to talk about today. However, literally like about three minutes before I came into this room, I got a pop message right up on my screen directly from Mark from Mt. Gox, breaking news press release that he just sent to me and so I had to read it very hastily and it's basically a lot of the same information that we already know, but there is a little bit of new information that might be interesting to you. So I just want to run through this real quick because it is sort of breaking news, a press release directly from Mt. Gox about the Mt. Gox hack incident. So I'm just going to read it very quickly just so that you get the gist of it because I think it's really, really important to the Bitcoin community being the online exchange that has always had, well, at least recently has had 90% market share, really important to us, right? So he's got in this press release a basically, it's sort of a chronology of events of what has taken place and I'm going to read it to you, especially the most important points of it. First of course I want to thank, we wouldn't be here without our beloved sponsors, please thank them for us, CarpeVM, C-A-R-P-E-V-M, CarpeVM.com, video marketing sees your market, say it with video. Thank Charlie for supporting us and Mezzy Grill, M-E-Z-E, Grill.com, where authentic Mediterranean food meets modern flavor and they're the first restaurant in the world to accept Bitcoin and tradehill.com, of course, the place to buy and sell Bitcoins with ease online without leaving your home, tradehill.com, 10% off your trades for life with the referral code for the Bitcoin show, TH-R141 on your screen now and usgoldcoins.com, our trusted advisor for excellent investments in numismatic, which just means rare and precious, us gold and silver coins, usgoldcoins.com, we thank our sponsors. So here's the press release that I just received from Mark directly just moments ago and really quickly while I was getting my jacket on, I read through it, so I'm going to share it with you. It's sort of a chronology, so it begins here, March 2011, Mt. Gox, now the world's leading Bitcoin exchange was purchased by Tybane or Tibane Company Limited as part of the purchase agreement for a period of time, Tibane Company Limited was required to pay the previous owner a percentage of commissions in order to audit and verify this percentage. See, there's new information here. That's why I wanted to read this to you. As you can see, he's filled in a lot more information. As part of this purchase arrangement, the Tibane Company Limited, the new current owner, was required to pay the previous owner, which I'm assuming is Jed, of course, a percentage of commissions. So it was part of the arrangement. So in order to audit and verify this percentage, that's why the financial audit, right, in order to audit and verify this percentage, the previous owner retained an admin level user account. This account was compromised, so far we've not been able to determine how this account's credentials were obtained. So they don't know for sure, apparently. I'm obviously adding my own thoughts. Section 2 is Bitcoin sell-off. So on June 20 at approximately 3 a.m. Japan time, an unknown person logged into the compromised admin account. And with the permission of that account, was able to arbitrarily assign himself a large number of bitcoins, which he subsequently sold on the exchange driving the price from $0.1750 to $0.01, within the span of 30 minutes. With the price low, the thief was able to make a large withdrawal, approximately $2,000 Bitcoin, before our security measures stopped further action. We would like to note that the bitcoins sold were not taken from other users' accounts. They were simply numbers with no wallet backing. For a brief period, the number of bitcoins in the Mt. Gox exchange vastly outnumbered the bitcoins in our wallet. Normally this should be impossible. Unfortunately, the 2,000 Bitcoin withdrawal did not, I'm sorry, unfortunately, the 2,000 Bitcoin withdrawal did have real wallet backing. And they will be replaced at Mt. Gox's expense. Again, apart from the compromised admin account, no individual user's account was manipulated in any way. That's good news. All Bitcoin and cash balances remain intact. That's fantastic news. Given the relatively small amount of damage, considering what was potentially possible, we have to question what the true motives of the attacker were. Perhaps the attack simply was not well orchestrated, but the possibility exists that the attacker was more interested in making a statement, hurting Mt. Gox's reputation, or hurting the public image of Bitcoin in general. Then he was in monetary gain. Section three, database breach. Late last week, we discovered a SQL, SQL injection vulnerability in the Mt. Gox.com code, which we suspect is responsible for allowing an attacker to gain read-only access to the Mt. Gox user database. The information retrieved from that database included plain text, email addresses and user names, unsalted MD5 passwords on accounts that had not logged in since prior to the Mt. Gox ownership transfer, and salted MD5 passwords on those accounts created or logged in to post ownership transfer. We speculate that the credentials of the compromised admin account responsible for the market crash were obtained from this database. The password would have been hashed, but it may not have been strong enough to prevent cracking. Regrettably, we can confirm that our list of emails, user names, and hashed passwords has been released on the internet, which we all know by now. Our users and public should know that these hashed passwords can be cracked, and many of our users' more simple passwords have been cracked. This event highlights the importance of having strong passwords, as I've been saying by the way in the show, have a strong password which means 16 characters or more, numbers, letters and symbols, and totally unique that you don't use on any other site, use software like KeePassX to manage them. So that because of course you can't remember a strong password, but it's very important because we're talking about money. My commentary is inserted here. Our users and public should know that these hashed passwords can be cracked, and many of the more simple passwords have been cracked. This event highlights the importance of having strong passwords, which will now be enforcing. They will now be enforcing, they say. We strongly encourage all of our users to immediately change the passwords of any other accounts that now or previously shared a password with their Mt. Gox account if they have not done so already, which I've been advising that everyone do already. Section 4, present steps. We've been working tirelessly with other service providers in order to mitigate the potential damage to our users caused by the security breach. We've been informing our users to be especially cautious of Bitcoin-related phishing attempts at the email addresses associated with their Mt. Gox accounts. And by the way, if you don't know what phishing is, P-H-I-S-H-I-N-G, for those of you who don't know what that means, you're not familiar with that term, it means sending you an email pretending to be someone else to try and trick you into getting information about you. So like an email that looks like it's from Mt. Gox, but it's not really from Mt. Gox, and they're trying to get you to click a link in the email and go somewhere and type in your login ID and password. It's just a trick website that looks just like the real one. Don't ever fall for any email like that. If you're not sure, close the email, open a new browser, and type in the web address of the site you're talking about and login with a fresh new window. Don't ever click a link in an email to get to a login screen. Okay, users should continue to be especially observant of indicators of account compromise with other services, especially email and financial services. We've already heard from the sort of a press release from mybitcoin.com that about 1% of their users lost their Bitcoin because of that exact same thing. They use the same login ID, same email address, same password on both services, very bad idea. Okay, back to the statement. We would like to give a special thanks to the Google team who are extremely proactive about flagging and temporarily locking customer accounts that appeared in our stolen list. Their quick response, no doubt, significantly reduced unauthorized account access to Gmail addresses associated with Mt. Cox accounts. That's when you logged into your Gmail account and it said, hey, your account could have suspicious activity and it forced you to pick a new password. A lot of people got that, including me. We've been actively researching the origin of the attack that led to the compromise of Mt. Cox's previous owner's admin account. However, our priority has been getting the Mt. Cox service back online and getting people access to their funds. We were finally able to simultaneously relaunch the service and launch our new site with greatly improved security on the back end on June 26, 2011. Okay, section five, Future Steps. The new Mt. Cox site features SHA 512 multi-iteration triple-salted hashing and soon we'll have an option for users to enable a withdrawal password that will be separate from their login password, other security measures such as one-time password keys are planned for release very soon as well. The recent successful attacks on huge institutions like Sony and Citibank remind us that nobody is impenetrable. We're now operating under the presumption that another security breach will happen at some point in the future and we are implementing layers of fail-safe mechanisms to greatly limit the amount of damage possible. Of course, we're doing our best to make sure those fail-safe mechanisms are never necessary. While we are making great strides with the advancement of security, we should remind our users that they too play an important role in securing their accounts. Please use a long password and standard, the standard is not whether a person could guess it but rather whether a computer could guess it. This is what I've been saying all week, right? And computers can guess very fast. Please do not share passwords across services, in other words, don't use the same password on two different services of any kind ever where passwords are shared, a compromise at one service means a compromise at all services. Help us help you. This is something, by the way, that I always talk about because literally, Gawker, one of the blog sites had a hack, a leak, whatever. They published the login IDs and the passwords of every single person on there and I was one of those people just lazy, so lazy. I don't wanna remember a password, a different password on every site. If you don't have a password manager, it becomes very, very painful to try and, what, you're gonna write them all down, carry them in your wallet, it's silly. So my password was leaked among millions of other peoples and so that was the password that I used everywhere. Luckily, I mean it was only on things I didn't care much about, like blogs. But once your login ID and or email address and your password is out there, published on the internet, man, you're in trouble because you will not remember the hundreds and hundreds of places you logged into and it could be very embarrassing if somebody hacks into your account or worse if it's money involved and Bitcoin is money. Remember, Bitcoin's money. Okay, back to this, section six, apology. The truth is that Mt. Gox was unprepared for Bitcoin's explosive growth. Our dated system was built as a hobby when Bitcoins were worth pennies apiece. It was not built to be a Fort Knox capable of securely handling millions of dollars in transactions each day. This is very candid and honest, isn't it? We can attempt to blame the owner of the compromised account for the recent events, but at the end of the day, the responsibility to secure the site and protect our users rests with us. The admin account responsible had more permissions than necessary and our security triggers were not as tight as they could have been. Since the change of ownership, we have actively been patching holes while at the same time building a new Bitcoin exchange from the ground up. Going forward, we're certain that the launch of the new site will exceed the rightful expectations our users have of the service. We only hope that we can once again earn the trust of the Bitcoin community. In the meantime, we sincerely appreciate the patience all of our users have shown. We've got a backlog of emails we're catching up on now, but if you have any questions or comments about the recent security breaches and events, Mt. Gox in general, its founder or Bitcoin, please do not hesitate to contact us. We are reading every message and we'll get back to you as soon as we can. Mark Carpales, CEO, Tybane Company Limited, which is Mt. Gox.com. So there you have it, that's hot off the press. And if you look at the new revelations, when I interviewed Mark and Adam on the show, you might recall I asked them, I said, there are rumors or speculation that the huge account that got hacked was your account, is that true? And they just said, well, it's really under investigation and we can't comment. So obviously now they're saying that it really sort of, I mean, it wasn't theirs, but it was an admin account that was controlled by the previous owner, which is Jed. And also the, what else was the other big revelation that the database breach and the presence, you know, obviously the whole new system with all this new technology to help encrypt the new passwords. What was the other thing that was revealed? Missed it. Anyway, I read the whole thing, so you've got it. You got the picture. So, what do you think? What do you think, Chatroom, about all this? The, do you feel like Mt. Gox has been very upfront and honest and they're doing a really good job of handling this? Do you feel like they are trustworthy? Have they earned your trust? Have they lost your trust? Are you gonna trust them again? What do you guys think? All right, so we'll come back to that. And let's get back to the main topic at hand. And that is our guest who's visiting us live from Australia. And so, welcome, welcome to the show, Jeremy West. And you're, Jeremy, are you there? Can you hear me? Yeah, I'm here. Can you hear me? Okay, yep, yep. So what do you think about it? By the way, what do you think of this? Since this has kind of been interjected at the beginning of today's show? Yeah, well, I watched the interview that you did with Mark and Adam. And that interview actually started to renew my confidence, the fact that they were showing their faces and they were explaining what was happening. And I was, yeah, I was really glad that they showed their faces because obviously there was rampant speculation and obviously showing their faces made it clear that they weren't just gonna disappear into the ether or whatever. And then, yeah, I'm glad they're continuing to be transparent with what's happening. And also they have, they've apologized and taken responsibility for what happened and that all makes me feel a lot better about everything that's happened with Matt Gox. Right. And the fact that they're explaining it, even though, I mean, they couldn't reveal everything probably at the time, I'm sure, you know, it's still under investigation. They don't, they still don't know. That's what it sounds like. That was another thing that they did admit here was that so far we've not been able to determine how this accounts credentials were obtained. They still really don't know. And so they're being very candid about that. Yeah, so they're being very candid about everything and transparent and, yeah, restored. My confidence in them is restored to a high level, at least in what they're trying to do and what I learned from the whole situation, my spendbitcoins.com, which we're gonna talk about, was actually set up for payments to all go through Matt Gox. So I was closed for the week that they were closed. Oh, right. And basically I learned that I needed to not be reliant on one exchange. So now my payments are coming directly to me. I think that that's, yeah, that's something that we've all learned is that, you know, as decentralized as Bitcoin is and all the benefits that Bitcoin has, we really shouldn't defeat the benefits by dealing with only one exchange. We have to have, I mean, we can have only one TV, but we can't have only one exchange. We have to really have multiple exchanges and I think everybody agrees about that, including Matt Gox and Trade Hill and all the others, that we have to have multiple exchanges. The more distributed the better, the more anonymous the better. All of these things, and even the virtual sense of Bitcoin that you want to retain all the benefits that Bitcoin has and as soon as we do something that forfeits the benefits, then it's really not good. Yeah, well, one thing that you've revealed there where they said that the bitcoins that were used the $500,000, or how does that, how many was? Anyway, the bitcoins that were used to sell the price down to one cent were not actual bitcoins in existence or something that they were saying, which makes a lot more sense because I wasn't understanding why someone who is enthusiastic enough to have that many bitcoins have them all on the exchange rather than encrypt it on their computer and that didn't make any sense to me, so. That's right, that's the other thing. You're right, I missed that because I knew there was something else that was revealed and that's exactly right, that the bitcoins were not actual bitcoins from any particular, this is one thing that never made sense to me, is like, well, why aren't people screaming? Like, my bitcoins are gone, my bitcoins are gone because if in this case, he's saying that they really weren't, they didn't exist in the first place. It was an admin access account that had more privileges than it should have and they just were artificial bitcoins. They were just numbers in the system and they were just arbitrary numbers. They could say 10 million bitcoin or whatever they wanted and just sell them all. So basically they just completely hacked the system. So that makes a lot more sense and it's also very, I mean, in spite of how horrible this is and the data breach, I mean, even, forget the passwords, that's another thing but even just the list of the users and their email addresses, that's the privacy and anonymity people trust in exchange. I mean, obviously their money is the most important thing, their passwords are probably the second most important thing because people do use them on multiple sites, the same password which they shouldn't but they do but even the simple thing that's kind of not been brought up that much is the names of the users. I mean, people use their real names. They use their real email addresses, even their business email addresses where they work and so there's a lot of confidentiality that was exposed, which is also very bad. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it does, it felt personal to have your email address up on that see that file that had all the email addresses and hash passwords. Yeah, I mean, it's not like. I just introduced my mother in a lot of bitcoins and she, I just sold her some that were put up on that gox so. And now she's on the list. Yeah, and she was staying with us because we just had a newborn. That was a bit embarrassing to get up the next morning or a couple of mornings later and say, your password, you need to go change your password everywhere. And also explain to her why she's getting all these weird spam things and don't click them and all that, yeah. It's been more than an inconvenience to people. But at the same time, okay, having said all that, how terrible it is, it's very comforting to know that nobody actually lost any dollars or Bitcoin. That's really important and a very good thing. Other than Mt. Gox losing 2,000 bitcoins worth. Right, themselves, right. Which is kind of, I guess, the cost of doing business in this type of a business. So the future steps and I think are sound very, very good and sound and the apology, obviously that's important and I'm really glad to see that. So I guess the community will decide the fate of Mt. Gox and whether they're going to rebuild or. I've been watching BitcoinCharts.com and I've actually been surprised that it looks like once Mt. Gox reopened, they're still getting the vast majority of the trades over trade deal. Yeah, is it because the people already have their accounts there and they already have their money there? But yeah, it seems like a lot of people's trust, I guess, has been restored because I expected things to everybody to move to other exchanges, I guess, and it hasn't happened that way. Not immediately anyway. Yeah, I wonder, it might just be that people are comfortable with, you know, believe it or not, I mean, I believe that there's just sort of comfort to a certain website that you know how it works and you're used to the layout and the colors and the buttons and you know how, you know, it's just, you already have an account there and it's all there. It's always easier to stick with the software you're used to than to learn something new. So I wonder how much of it is that, but. There's also, I think, you would expect that after this, that they might be the most secure site. Yeah, that's exactly right. So anyway. I remember that, you know, Ed and I had a trip planned to Europe right at the time of 9-11 and we were literally on 9-11, I was packing to go to Europe and Ed ran out to the store for something and I'm like packing and the CNN is on and I'm like, what, is that a trailer for a movie? And I saw the whole thing happen. Anyway, the bottom line was obviously, you know, the rest of the story, but the airports were closed for a couple of weeks but they actually scheduled our trip for the very next day, the first day the airports opened and I really wasn't, people said, aren't you afraid to fly? And I'm like, no, you know, I really think that that day will probably be the safest day in aviation history to fly because everyone will be at the utmost, you know, a high alert, you know, status. So it's kind of like that. Yeah, the day after Mt. Gox opens up, I think that it's probably maybe the most secure day it ever had. So, all right. But anyway, I'm doing trading, I'm both trade heal and Mt. Gox now. Yeah, both now, yeah. So, I mean, you know, I mean, it's, I think overall, you know, it all depends on how you look at things. If it's half glass, half bowl or half empty, but I think that overall it's actually good for the Bitcoin community because and the whole Bitcoin economy because people are realizing and being reminded of the importance of secure passwords, the importance of decentralization, not just one exchange. Obviously, you know, it's helping, you know, in a sad way for a, you know, sad reason, it's helping trade hill get established and all that, which is, you know, overall for the whole community, it's probably a good thing for everybody. And- Not only that, the fact that there was no, there was no collapse after Mt. Gox reopened. The price didn't collapse, it was absolutely fictitious. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it wasn't a real, it wasn't a real, does that? I mean, nobody lost any money or Bitcoin except Mt. Gox and, you know, which I guess deservedly so, you know, they weren't prepared, whatever, that's the business. And the, and there was no real price collapse. I mean, people talk about it, oh, it proves that Bitcoin's not safe and all that, it's nonsense. So obviously, it proves that Bitcoin is safe and secure. And surprising actually how, you know, durable the whole system is. But the fact that there's now two strong exchanges and there probably will be more, it's, and everybody is on high alert. I'm sure trade hill learned a lot from watching this, that like, make sure we don't make those mistakes. I'm sure every exchange site is learning from this, right? We're all learning lessons. So, it's a good thing in the end. If you look at it as a good thing, it's a good thing. So let's talk about what we originally planned to talk about because the reason Jeremy is here is because you created a site called Spend Bitcoins. Is that right? SpendBitcoins.com, that's right. SpendBitcoins.com, so tell us what is SpendBitcoins.com? Basically, when I started into Bitcoins, there wasn't really a way to spend them other than, you know, there were different sites that were web developers that would take Bitcoins and individual to individual, that sort of thing. But there wasn't, there weren't a lot of merchants that were accepting Bitcoins. And there were, I saw a few different places where you could buy Amazon or New Age gift cards for Bitcoins, but the transaction fees for doing so were anywhere from maybe three to seven percent. And so, getting your money, I guess spending the Bitcoins was expensive. So the whole idea of Bitcoins is that there are no transaction fees with Bitcoins and it's not like credit cards and that sort of thing. So there's no transaction fees either for merchants or for the consumer. So I thought there needed to be a way to spend Bitcoins with major online merchants without having to exchange fees. So that's what I started up. Started with Amazon and from customer demand at a New Age and there's a website in Australia called Fishpond, it's like Amazon. And I'm about to add Barnes & Noble. And over time, the actual plan is not to be using sites like Amazon and New Age. I'll leave those there as affiliates, but I am working on getting my own wholesalers so that spendbitcoins.com will be the online place to buy anything you want with Bitcoins, basically. So you're gonna start your own Amazon, your own New Age. That's right. So you'll have all, like, every kind of product just like they do? That's the plan. And for the time being, I do because I'm using them. But over time, I'll be slowly adding my own products to the point that people, because right now it's a little bit convoluted. You have to come on, go do your shopping on Amazon through my affiliate link. Find out where your total is, come back to my site, put in your total in US dollars or Canadian dollars or euros or wherever you are, and have it then come back to you with a number of Bitcoins and so on and so forth. So the idea in the end will be you just come to my site, the prices are all displayed in Bitcoins and you just use the shopping cart and check out in Bitcoins. Why is that? I noticed that because I was checking it out earlier. Why is it that I have to, why is it like a three-step thing? Can't I just go to New Age or something, find the URL for the product I want and then come back to your site and just paste it in? Why do I have to use the affiliate link and come back and then go back again? Yeah, well basically, that's the only way that I can make it a free service and yet be able to make money out of it myself is for people to do their shopping through my affiliate links and for me to get credit for it, they have to actually add it to their shopping cart through my website. So by using your affiliate link, they're supporting you so that you get the affiliate fee, they're supporting the site to thank you and then they enter their email address and whether they're, is it only USA and Canada by the way? On New Age is only USA and Canada, the New Age sites. Amazon is US, Canada, Japan, England, Germany, Italy and France. I see, right. Okay, and then you put in the exact total and how you heard of us. Where does that information go? The email address, the site and the total, what is that doing actually? How does that work? So that just comes to me in the form of an email to let me know once the bitcoins arrive who I'm sending them a gift card to. Oh, okay, so is this a manual process then you, right now at this point? The only bit that's manual is me ordering the gift code on Amazon or New Age. They're automatically, immediately upon clicking submit, you'll get an email that gives you the amount as well as the Bitcoin address to send the Bitcoins to. And then it takes up to 12 hours to receive the actual gift code from Amazon or New Age. And then you go back to, it says here, then you go back to Amazon and complete the purchase with the gift card. Oh, okay, so then it'll give me, so basically I'll get an email with a Bitcoin address and the amount to send and I send the amount of Bitcoins to that address and then I'll get another email back and then I go to that site and complete the purchase using the gift card. You'll send me a gift card number in the email, the next email. Yeah, that's right. Okay, all right, so it's a couple steps but at least you can actually make a purchase using Bitcoin. I think it sounds a bit more complicated than if you actually go to the site and send Bitcoin. It's just, it's just four steps. I'm sure once you do it once, it's not a big deal. Yeah. So you make money for the referral link, of course, because you're referring business to the site and then is it your business model then you also, do you make a little bit on the rate, the exchange rate? No, I mean, I can if I hold on to them and they've gone up, obviously, but the whole idea is that everywhere else I saw that you could spend Bitcoins on Amazon or Newegg or whatever was charging, their exchange rate was- They had a little rake in their percent. And it would actually be on, say, if Mt. Gox or Trade Hill. My exchange rate is just based on the 24 hour average from bitcoincharts.com. Oh, that's what I was gonna ask you. So, okay, so you're taking the 24, oh, it says right there, doesn't it? In the asterisk, you're taking the 24 hour average of bitcoincharts.com weighted average of the exchange rate for all the exchanges. Oh, that's interesting. It used to be the 24 hour average on Mt. Gox but I've learned not to rely on one exchange. Yeah, everybody's learned a lesson and especially Mt. Gox. So, all right. So actually, that's kind of a good thing. Another little use for spendbitcoins.com. If you want more of an averaged out simple value for Bitcoin, you can go to spendbitcoins.com and just look at the rate because that's gonna give you the average 24 hour. You know, I like that because obviously, the rate goes up and down every 10 minutes and people have the widget on their phone and they're like, oh, it's up, oh, it's down. It's up, down, up, down. It's like the elevator. You know, it's crazy. So this gives you more of a standard 24 hour average rate which is probably a lot more consistent of weighted average. Now, how do you weight the average from the different exchanges based on the volume? To be honest, that's given to me straight from bitcoincharts.com. Okay, straight from Bitcoincharts. That's there. I don't know how they weight it. Okay, that's cool. So, but that's the rate and at the time you purchase it, that's what you give them. And you're basically just converting those to dollars to buy the gift cards on Amazon, new egg, fish pond and so on, right? Yeah, and so I'm not taking any commission from the consumer, the commission's coming from Amazon or new egg or whoever, so. So basically, you're not getting any money out of this except for the referral link. That's why it's so important that they use your referral link because otherwise you don't make anything. That's right. Okay. I do know that there are people who, you know, obviously, anyway, I've had people tell me that, you know, I don't have enough bitcoins but I don't have bitcoins at all right now or whatever, but I'm supporting your site by going through the links anyway. Oh, that's nice. So, something to be done. Yeah, so even if you're not gonna shop, even if you don't have the need to shop on, you know, for, you know, spend bitcoins, you can actually go, if you're ever gonna buy anything on Amazon, fish pond, new egg or these, you can just go there and click as a referral link and shop anyway with your regular credit card or PayPal if you wanna support what Jeremy's doing here with spendbitcoins.com. I think it's a great idea. It's fantastic. Not only a great idea, but a great implementation of it. And you said you're gonna, which one is it? You're gonna add new, real soon? Barnes and Noble. Okay, cool. So are there plans to add others? Yeah, I need to put up on the site. Now I'm announcing it's only to put it up today, I guess. A way for people to suggest a store that they wanna see up next. Oh, you're gonna ask people which ones they would like up next, huh? Just to, yeah, because I, you know. Okay. To help me know what people are really looking for, so. Ed, I'll ask Dr. Frugal, what websites do you shop at most? Don't when you shop online, what are the major? Buy.com. Buy.com. You hear that? Get a new egg. Mono Price. What's it called? Mono Price? My, low? Mono. Mono, M-O-N-O Price.com. Mono Price, okay. Would you say buy.com and what else? Those are the main ones. Okay, he goes to dealsofamerica.com and deals plus, which is dealspl.us. But those are not actual retailers. Those are like, you know, aggregators of deals. I'm giving it all the way, all the Frugal's secrets away. Yeah, there's, we have a show that's launching called The Frugal Show, which is all about online shopping, saving money, shopping online, and otherwise. So, I'm giving away all the secrets. But anyway, yeah, so those are the, yeah. As long as you cover the major online retailers, that's brilliant. It's, I hope that it gets easier so that, you know, these online retailers could make it a little bit easier so that you could actually do it with one step, like use the referral length and get the, I guess you'd have to, well, you'd have to, you have to add it to the cart to find the price with these things, right? Yeah, that's it. It's tricky to find the exact price unless they buy a gift card that's, what if they buy a gift card that's more than the, more or less? So if they put in the wrong amount, what happens then? That's fine. I mean, what do you mean? Well, like, I guess if they, if they use it for a length and they put in this information, they put in the amount or buying something for $50, but they actually put in a hundred, then what, they're gonna end up- They'll be left with the extra 50 on their Amazon account. On their gift card for their Amazon card, which they can just keep reusing that number to shop with it, right? And what if they don't put enough on? What if there's, they don't, the amount they put in is not sufficient? Well, I had that yesterday where somebody got to the, the shipping wasn't added before they put in the total or something. So they just came back and added three, made another order for $3, basically. Oh, okay. So you can use multiple gift cards on one order, or you can be left with change. And the gift cards never expire, either, on either of those two. I wonder if you could do something like this with like that green dot money pack. I don't even know how that works exactly, but I know that that green dot money pack, you can actually, if you can get a virtual card this way, you can actually spend it many, many, many ways, like cell phone bills and prepaid things and eBay. I mean, there's lots and lots of ways. I don't know if it's a way to tie it in with that, but the more options, the better, I would think, right? Yeah. Cool, cool. So that's really very, very interesting. And I'm surprised that you don't take a cut on the actual rate. Well, that's the whole idea. Other people were already out there doing, there's Bitcoin buy dot info. I think he started just after me, but I know, I can't remember the other website addresses, but there's other people that were selling Amazon and New Age gift cards, but their exchange rate obviously wasn't, it was in their favor, which there's nothing wrong with that, but the whole idea, the point of difference with mine is that you're gonna actually get what your Bitcoins are worth. You know, if I can give you a suggestion, I think that you should put that right there in the headline, instead of spend your Bitcoins, you should put right there in the headline, nothing added to the rate. This is the, well, you've got current rate, but somehow, how could you say that? Saying this is, no fees added to the rate. This is the exact rate. I know it's sort of in the fine print, but somehow to really re-emphasize that, because at first glance, I'm just gonna assume that all you're probably taking a quarter of a percent or something like that. Yeah, you're right. But that's the key feature of it. That should be the headline, right? Yeah, that's it. My marketing suggestion. But I think it's a great thing that you're doing for the whole Bitcoin community, because these retailers are gonna accept Bitcoin whether they like it or not, right? That's it. And you don't even have to, I mean, with this, you can have Bitcoin anywhere in any kind of Bitcoin wallet and just shop online with it, that's brilliant. Also, I've seen people actually pay, use or sell prepaid Visa MasterCards with it. They're like a virtual Visa MasterCard number. Have you thought about that, adding that to your system? I have, yeah, I have definitely. I just mean to, I wanna keep with the theme of not keeping, not adding any fees. So if I can figure out a way to do that with Visa or MasterCard, definitely do that as well. Well, I mean, if you buy, like if somebody buys a $50 prepaid Visa card with $50 worth, then would they end up with the $50 value, or how does, I don't even know how to... That's what I'm saying. I need to figure out a way that I can make money, but the users don't pay any extra. Well, yeah, that's the thing, the affiliate link. That's probably a key for the affiliate, because you're probably not gonna get an affiliate link for those. With Visa or MasterCard, probably not, but I'm working on it. Yeah, cool, cool. I'm sure, I mean, everybody's trying to come up with better, better ways to do it and it's a wonderful thing. It's sort of competition, but it's in a friendly competition where everybody wants Bitcoin to succeed and it's just kind of like a fun little competition to see who can come up with the most innovative way. It's kind of like open source, like open source projects competing, but everybody wants everything to win, and we just feed off of each other's ideas and let me see if I can up my game and make, that's a fantastic idea. Let me see if I can do it even better. I've got another idea, adding to it, making it better, making it more efficient, making it easier. I love it. So, sorry, go ahead. Oh, I just said thank you. Sure, sure. So you have a newborn baby, so how does that affect your time to work on all of this? Well, yeah, it's, basically I put up this original URL to spendbitcoins.com probably six or seven weeks ago. I don't think there were any orders for the first three weeks or so, and I just happened to post in the bitcoin.org forums and immediately just took off from that day. And it's really sort of been a full-time job and my daughter was born two weeks ago yesterday. And- Congratulations. I had, yeah, thank you. I had said, oh, this is my first thought with the business taking off was this is fantastic because it'll allow me to spend more time at home than I was going to from taking time off my job. But then I realized that even though I'm at home, I'm working full-time. When I was gonna take a couple of weeks off and not be working at all. So yeah, it is a bit difficult. Well, you know, this could take off and become your job. Yeah, exactly. That's fantastic. So as far as other websites and services, what do you consider like the most interesting, intriguing concepts that you've seen so far? The Bitcoin show. Which one? The Bitcoin show. Oh, the big, oh, this show. Okay, thank you. Yeah, that's pretty cool. What else? Other interesting concepts. Obviously, you just interviewed Roger Burr, I think two or three episodes ago. That billboard was huge. Right. Not only that, he didn't mention, I don't think that he's spending a lot of his own money advertising on a national radio program called Pre-Talk Live. I think he did mention that, but he didn't mention that it's, the ad itself isn't actually linking to anything of his. It's just explaining what Bitcoins are. So he's not making any money off the ad other than making Bitcoin value go up. You mean, are you talking about, I mean, the billboard advertises his business, but you're talking about the radio ads, he's not. Yeah, the radio ad just says, basically, it's like a public service announcement about Bitcoins. No, I did not know that. I mean, I knew that. I read in the form that he was spending, I don't know, thousands, like 5,000 a month or something like that on radio ads, but I assumed it was for memorydealers.com, but you're saying it was just like a PSA, almost type of an ad, like a general information ad that he's paying for promoting Bitcoin? Yeah, it's still going. Wow. Yeah, I mean, anybody who questions his integrity when it comes to his enthusiasm and evangelizing Bitcoin, there is way off the mark because that's really amazing. I didn't know that. That's even more credit to him. That's amazing. The billboard was just a genius idea. Sorry? I don't think he was kidding when he said that he's been up all day and all night obsessing about Bitcoin since he found out about it. Right, yeah. I believe him, absolutely. Yeah, it's really very, very, I mean, he's funny because he spends a lot more on the radio ads, apparently, obviously, than the billboard, but that billboard really was probably the best investment he ever paid in marketing. Just we accept Bitcoin with a gigantic Bitcoin image and saying, we accept Bitcoin, P2P, cryptocurrency. It's just especially out there in Silicon Valley, that must have been all the buzz, but it was all over Twitter and Facebook and everybody's talking about it that had more reach than a national radio ad. Yeah. You know, one of the things. So you're asking what applications to Bitcoin or whatever, I guess, to me, the whole thing that got me into Bitcoin in the first place is I'm American, but I live in Australia. I have a lot of college debt in America, so I have to transfer money over there every month. And I just got tired of PayPal when they shut down Julian Assange's account and he was constantly charging me fees, getting me fees charged by my bank because it was not very user-friendly and basically I was using the wrong account or something. And anyway, so I just posted on Facebook and asked if anybody knew an alternative to PayPal. And someone said, well, what about Bitcoins? And I hadn't heard of them yet. And that was the killer app for me. It's just moving money from one country to another without any foreign transaction. So you're using it. That's interesting because that's obviously a huge thing of Western Union exists on that. People sending money home, whether you're an immigrant or whatever. In your case, you're an expat expatriate. So when you send money back and forth, how do you do that? I mean, you take your currency and buy it on an exchange? Well, I do it by starting up spendbitcoins.com, basically, because there's not really an Australian exchange. There's one that's just started up called Bitpiggy. I don't know the address, but it only allows up to $500 in trade and whatever. But the idea would have been that I would buy Bitcoins with Australian dollars on an Australian exchange, transform to American exchange, and sell them in American dollars. OK. So we need more exchange. Is Trade Hill doing Australian dollars yet? No. No, I've thought about being there. Yeah, that's a good idea. I think I read they're looking for partners who can help in local countries all over the world to help assist them in handling local currencies. So there's a good idea. Yeah, I actually applied for that and then haven't done anything with it because I'm too busy with SmithBitcoins.com. Fun Australian exchange to exist, and if I have to start it, I'll start it, but I kind of hope somebody else starts it up. So one of those, I know you're like me, it's like I went so many things to exist and I used to just start things and start so many things. Of course, that's actually part of the meaning of only one TV when I thought of the name was about me, that I need focus. I need to focus on only one thing because I've got 3,000 projects going at all times. So I was like, OK, I've got to have a focus here. So what is your day job? What is it the job that you're taking? A market, three different things. Time share, real estate, investment properties. And what's the other thing that I market? Oh, stock exchange software. Wow, so marketing all these things. And do you accept Bitcoin in that business? No, they don't. I'm just a peon in that business. I don't have a lot to. OK, time shares. OK, that's what you know how they give you a free brunch. If you listen to the time share spiel, you should give them a free Bitcoin if they listen to it. There's a marketing idea. What's a Bitcoin? Starts a whole conversation to see if you're a real evangelist like Roger Vera. So all right. So what else you're going to set up the first exchange in Australia for Australian dollars? No, no, no. Oh, I thought that was what you said. You're hoping someone does it. OK, now when the dollars come back, or the Bitcoin's come back to the States, then how does your family or associates hear how do they convert it to dollars? No, no, all I do would be sell it on trade and then transfer it through to all of just my own bank account in the US. Oh, OK, so you're just doing it all online. That's great. Yeah. Oh, OK. Oh, I see what you're saying. So you can just buy Bitcoin, whatever, and then just end up receiving Bitcoin. You can sell it at other currency. Oh, that's what you're doing. All right, all right. So you're receiving the Bitcoin, obviously, from spendbitcoin.com. And then the Bitcoin, and then you're selling them for US dollars on Trade Hill, and then using Trade Hill to transfer them to Dualla into your US bank account. And then when you need money, you can go to an ATM and take Australian dollars out of your US bank account, right? I could do that, but then charging is over the fees. No, I'd probably go the other way around. OK, I used to do that. I lived in Taipei, Taiwan, which is over there, like, neighbors. I lived there for a couple of years, and I would get paid. And it was so weird because I either wasn't allowed to have a bank account over there, or I couldn't figure out how to open one. It's all Chinese. Anyway, I remember that they paid you. They actually, weirdly in Taiwan and in Asia, it's their custom that they don't pay a check. They give you a cash, and they only pay once a month. So I had a salary position, and once a month they would call you, and you'd go down to the payroll department, and they would give you an envelope full of cash. It was the weirdest thing I ever saw. Everybody walks out that day with a big old envelope full of cash, and that made me very uncomfortable because Taipei's a big city, you know? So I would walk straight across the street and I would buy a money order, and then I would just put it in the mail and mail it back to my bank in Ohio and just put the whole thing into the bank, and then I would just use the ATM to take out, you know, the Thai, the Thai, the Thailand, why am I saying Thailand? The Taiwanese, I can't even remember where the currency's called. Anyway, the local currency, so. Yeah, I mean, this is a, bitcoins are huge for expats, I think, because I know in China, I don't think they move back from China, and they only allow you to take out, I don't know, there's a very limited amount of money that you can take out of the country, basically. Out of. If you just buy coins instead. Yeah. And sell them when you get back to your own country, then there you go. Right. So how do you, I mean, how do you, if you're using it to bypass the limits of the currency you're taking out of, so basically, but it's not currency, it's legally not currency, it's just virtual commodity, right? Yeah. So in effect, you're buying a virtual commodity and selling gift cards on Amazon. Right. Okay, so that's cool. Do you have a lot of, I mean, do your friends and associates in Australia there, are they aware of Bitcoin? Are they, or only through you, or what's their reaction to that? Yeah, only through me. I do a podcast that's been off the air for several months because my wife is my co-host and she was pregnant and just, yeah, whatever, but anyway, that's freeosradio.com, which now I have to give you URL working again since I just said it, but anyway, there's an interest in Bitcoins amongst the listeners of freeosradio, so those are the Australians that I know of that are into it, I don't know personally other than that I've mentioned Bitcoins to people who work or whatever. Does the Australian government have any position or made any statements or anything like that? Has there been any press in Australia, a pro or con Bitcoin? Well, there was press when Senator Schumer made the big deal about the Silk Road. Right. And basically, the Australian government position was, we're not into drugs, but we have no jurisdiction over Bitcoins, so that was good. That's good, at least they have some common sense. Seems like they have a lot more common sense than some of these wackos here. Yeah, we'll see over time. Like if the US did do something that I'm sure Australia would follow, governments like to follow each other once they crack down on something or whatever. Yeah, sometimes they do, and I think sometimes they're coerced into it too, just by peer pressure. The bully on the playground says it's bad, so it's bad. So that's interesting, but yeah, like I said, you know, whatever. I don't know anyone who's using Bitcoin for things like that, at least. That's funny that, I don't know if you read the articles, but Chuck Schumer said that it was flooding the streets with drugs. Yeah. I don't know. Flooding. Of a single Bitcoin person that was using it, or you know, I know it had it being. Exactly, I don't know a single Bitcoin person that, I mean, I can't, you know, I can't obviously read people's minds, I'm not a psychic like Schumer, but I have no idea, you know, if somebody actually did buy some weed on Silk Road or something, but I know, people tell me things by the way, people tell me all kinds of things, and I keep their confidence, you know, they're telling me all sorts of secrets, or whatever, you know, for whatever reason, they're about to launch a product or a service or something coming up, or they're working on something, they tell me things in confidence and I keep their confidence, but not one person has told me that they have used Bitcoin to buy anything illegal, including drugs, so it's just absurd. It's sort of, you know, that the streets are being flooded by drugs is just obvious hysteria. I mean, I want to know what drugs that guy's on, you know, where is he getting his information? Don't get me wrong, I mean, I'm not an illicit drug user, but don't get me wrong, I think it's actually a good thing that people can go somewhere, people that are gonna use drugs can actually go somewhere where they can get feedback and see that, you know, the sellers are doing what they've actually said they're doing, you know, that sort of thing, as opposed to buying on a straight corner, I think it's a better way. That's an interesting thought, I hadn't really thought about that, but yeah, that's right, I did read that, they review the sellers, don't they, just like eBay? Sellers and buyers and everything, so, whereas in the regular black market, you're just at the whim of whatever happens happens because it's not like you can take them to court, it's not like you can get information, I suppose, if a friend is bought through them or whatever, but here, you know, it's actually- Here review, well and obviously- It's the same for buying drugs if you're going to buy them. And these, obviously, many of those things are completely legal in certain places, like in Amsterdam and the Netherlands and things, it'd be interesting to see if they spawn a whole new breed of silk roads based in the Netherlands where these things are completely legal. You don't need to go into the coffee shop and buy it, so why would you want to do the- I wonder if they are, what to ask people in the Netherlands? Let us know. Are there any of those coffee shops in Amsterdam that are accepting Bitcoin right to me? That would be an interesting story. But yeah, that's an interesting take on it, at least there's peer review and community review, and if you are going to use illicit drugs and buy them anyway, then maybe that is actually a good thing for those people too. At least they know what they're getting. I don't think a lot of people are starting out- It's not flooding the streets with drugs. I don't think there's a lot of people that are starting using drugs just because the silk road is in existence. Yeah, I haven't seen the streets being flooded anywhere around me. And I have, like I said, I have yet to hear the first person actually tell me that they've actually bought something illegal with Bitcoin. So I'm still waiting for somebody to tell me that they actually did that. I'll let you know as soon as I do hear of that. Well, anyway, thanks Jeremy for joining us. I know it's late over there in Australia. The sun must be going down or coming up by now. No, it's early. Lunchtime. It was lunchtime. Okay, it's late here. But thanks for joining us. It was really, really fun. And let's do it again. All the best with spendbitcoins.com. I can see it expanding into its own amazon.com. It'll be the amazon.com of the future and put your little baby through college. Yeah, that's exactly it. Thank you very much, Bruce. Sure. That's a wonderful thing. Thanks for joining us. Thanks guys. We'll see you on Monday, 2 p.m. Eastern time, the Bitcoin show and every weekday, 2 p.m. Eastern time. And on Wednesdays, 4 p.m. in Spanish, let all your friends who speak Spanish know I'll show the Bitcoin. See you. See you Monday.