 Today's episode of The Bitcoin Show is brought to you by mountgoxmtgox.com and bitpaybit-p-a-y.com and mezzigrillmezzigrill.com and bitbrew.net Everyone, and welcome to The Bitcoin Show. Today, I have a special surprise for you. I've been a little incommunicado lately, and that's because of this surprise. On the heels of the world's first Bitcoin conference in World Expo NYC, as you all know, it was an amazing, amazing time. We got to spend time with all the greatest Bitcoin minds, developers, people involved in Bitcoin at every level from every walk of life, converged on New York City from all the continents of the planet. It was amazing, amazing energy. As you ask anyone who was there, it was just unbelievable. It was the most exciting conference I'd ever been to and a lot of people said the same thing. Really, really exciting. Well, I decided to get on a plane and come to Tokyo. Why Tokyo? That's where I'm at, actually. Tokyo, Japan right now. The reason is we want to shoot all week here in Tokyo live on location and we are going to experience mountgox. We're going to take you to mountgox headquarters. It's up on a mountain called Gox. It's amazing. I'm going to show you everything later. Anyway, we're going to tour mountgox corporate offices, their headquarters here in Tokyo and Roger Vera memory dealers, memorydealers.com which is one of the... I've given him a nickname, Bitcoin Jesus. You'll see more about that. Memory Dealers is one of the largest retailers who accepts Bitcoin and promotes Bitcoin. He's a Bitcoin evangelist extraordinaire. We love Roger. Also, we're going to do all kinds of interesting things this week in Tokyo. We've got an appointment this evening in Tokyo time with Hacker Space guys, the geeks from meetup.com at Hacker Space and we're going to introduce them. We're going to do a little talk about Bitcoin and explain to them and also get some feedback about what's happening here in the local community. And we've also met, already met some members of the local Bitcoin community and had some talk. We're getting all that on tape and we're going to piece it together with some good stuff about what's happening in Japan and in Asia in the world of Bitcoin. In addition to that, we're going to go to a Kabukuba. I think it said...anyway, it's a Japanese nightclub. I'm not saying it right, for sure. But it's a Japanese nightclub, okay? And it's a really, really popular venue in the evening in Japanese culture. And we have spoken to the owner of one who is willing to accept Bitcoin. So we are going to actually shoot the whole thing of us setting him up to accept Bitcoin. We might even meet one or two of the young ladies that work there, exciting. So stay tuned for that this week and also, you know, as you may know, a hurricane in New York City where we live and all in one week the hurricane actually... I'm sorry, the earthquake actually happened while I was on the jet. The jet was, you know, had already taxied to the runway and there's shock absorbers and all that. And it was a very minor tremor, apparently, is what it... I mean, it felt like on the plane. I didn't even notice. I was probably moving around. But as a result, we had to taxi back to the gate and stay on the plane for an hour and a half and all that jazz, as you may know. It was a little bit, you know, disconcerting. But, you know, they evacuated all the federal buildings, blah, blah, blah. Got ahold of that on everybody and everybody's fine and everybody at the studio was fine. I was like, okay, fine. What a relief. An hour and a half later, we took off and we ended up in, you know, flying to Tokyo. And then a hurricane's coming. What? A hurricane is coming to New York City. So, obviously, this is really weird stuff and everybody took the preparations and went to higher ground for the mandatory evacuations for a hurricane in New York. I mean, that's what you expect in Miami is the weirdest thing. So, anyway, thank God, you know, everybody I know, as far as I know, is fine and safe and sound and we didn't even have any flooding or anything. So, thank goodness for that. I mean, not in our building. I mean, where we are, all of our locations. There was a lot of flooding, but not where we were. So, you know, prayers and hearts go out to those who have been affected by that, of course. Meanwhile, now I'm in Tokyo and somebody needs to needed to remind me when you're going to Tokyo bring shorts and not wool jackets because it's tropical here. It's like sunny and tropical and beautiful, gorgeous. However, now my flight is scheduled for Thursday to go back because it was delayed. I mean, it's automatically canceled due to the weather but in New York. So, my flights were canceled because of the weather in New York. Meanwhile, the flight for Thursday going back is actually I think it might be changed because there's a hurricane headed to Japan right now. So, as we speak, there's a hurricane that's headed to Japan and it's going to be here on Thursday on the same day I'm flying back. So, hold on a second. Let me just change this skype status. The Okay, there. Alright, cool. So, children playing on skype, you know, that's to be expected. So, let's see, what else? So, that's what's happening. Let me show you a little bit. I want to give you a little bit of a tour of what's happening here. This is the skyline. You can see it, okay. Let's see here. Let me get out of the frame here but this is, I'll get on this side. Alright. So, this is the view from where I'm at at the moment and that's the skyline of Tokyo. Look at that. It's like an Asian New York except, I don't know, people say New York City is a sleepy town compared to Tokyo. It is a hustle-bustle place but as much of a hustle-bustle place as it is, it's very, very exciting. It literally is so clean and organized. The people are so polite and it's unbelievably clean and well organized. It's amazing but I'm just giving you a little bit of a panorama of the skyline that I can see from here. Now, the later, later today I'm going to be going over there. Look at that building in the back. They see the tall white building and then right there in the center you see the tallest, sort of dark gray. It's kind of like a slate colored building, the tallest one. Well, that's the hotel where I'm staying. It's called Cerulean Tower. It's actually not only a hotel, it's like one of the most prestigious office buildings in Tokyo. It's called Cerulean Tower and that's where I'm staying in the headquarters of Mt. Gox. You may have heard of Mt. Gox. That's it. So later today I'm going to take a camera crew over there and we're going to show you what it looks like the entrance and the whole scene of entering the Mt. Gox offices. We're going to tour the Mt. Gox offices and we are going to meet a lot of the staff that are over there working. They're busy working right now because it's mid-day here and it's really exciting. You'll get to see them in a way you've never seen them before. Of course, we're always bringing you things you've never seen in the way you've seen them before. So anyway, really exciting things. I've already been over there and I've seen what they're doing and it's just really, really cool. You're going to love it. We're going to show you all kinds of fun, groovy new things in Mt. Gox's offices. What else? Oh, I wanted to announce that there are we came up with while I was here, the other night we were talking at dinner I was talking with Roger Ver of MemoryDealers.com and some members of the local Bitcoin community we all went out to this amazing tofu restaurant it's famous where they make tofu at the table, really, really cool and we didn't shoot the video for that because it was an intimate dinner thing but one of the ideas we had come up with we kind of all formulated this idea together and that is that Bitcoin really needs to be associated with one of its most important uses which it really is not only micro-payments and zero processing fees and the fact that there's no charge backs and all those benefits there's so many things like monetizing web content but one of the major, major benefits of Bitcoin is its ability to be used for charity, for good and that's really, really important to me and to everybody, really it's really exciting that we can associate Bitcoin with charity because when, for example there's a charity called EpicChange.org there's a young lady who started this organization and it was the whole story I'll tell later on other episodes but the basic idea is in this little village in Tanzania there are many, many orphans due to the AIDS epidemic there and these orphans are cared for only for food and shelter but they don't get any education at all so a local woman there who sells chickens actually saved up her pennies and rented a little tiny shack and basically made a school and this woman from Florida was so moved by what she saw there she went back to the United States and started an organization called EpicChange.org and the rest is history they are this school has become a really large school helping many, many children getting the best education in the country there and we've actually Ed and I have actually met some of the kids on Skype, it's so cool see this little ten-year-old who's on Skype, he's telling us he's going to be an astronaut for NASA and the thing that really is remarkable about it is that he probably will be he will be able to do that he's going to have opportunities that he would never have had before because of what EpicChange is doing well, I introduced EpicChange to Bitcoin a while back and they have been accepting Bitcoin as donations ever since so the idea is we're going to be featuring a lot of these charities that are agreeing to accept Bitcoin and changing the lives of people all over the world in so many different ways including the amazing, amazing important work that these charities are doing so that's very, very exciting and we have let's see, what else we decided to specifically target the most popular charities in the world the least controversial most popular charities that have the most members charities like United Way and so on that actually are the largest and start accepting donations for those charities in the form of Bitcoin immediately and we can do it immediately without even asking anyone we've already published a Bitcoin address where I can hold those bitcoins in escrow for that specific purpose for United Way for example and feed the children and so on, we're going to make a list of them and I'll escrow those bitcoins they're going to be seeing a box account they'll be able to use the UBK so they'll be rock solid safe and they will be used for that purpose when the time comes they'll be converted to dollars as necessary and they'll just give a check personally to those charities from the Bitcoin community and so that's very exciting and then in the meantime Roger Vera of Memory Dealers has pledged that we want to raise $10,000 he's going to donate the first $5,000 basically matching funds dollar for dollar so if you donate a dollar he'll donate or you donate a Bitcoin whatever I guess it's in dollars we're measuring it but if you donate a dollar he donates a dollar so he's going to match that up to donate $5,000 to bring it up to $10,000 right off the bat and then people are stepping up and Tony and Steven over at bit-pay.com have said an official charity according to their tax guidelines whatever then they will give them no charge processing using bit-pay so it's a no brainer they can just put a little button on their website and we'll talk them into it we're going to get these guys to do it there's no reason not to because they put this widget on there for bit-pay people can pay in Bitcoin and boom US dollars are deposited into their account with direct deposit into their account the next day really really simple and we're going to assist them in doing that and we're going to feature many many episodes of the Bitcoin show on a regular basis in the process of setting these charities up and as the largest charities begin to adopt this of course those will be case studies that will you know if we get united way and feed the children hello every charity on the planet is going to go yeah yeah me too I'll take some money and why not there's absolutely no downside and the beautiful thing about it for every human being is Bitcoin will be associated with charity and giving which is what it's about I mean the fact that the fact is I'll admit you know I knew about Epic change I was so so moved by what they're doing but the truth is I had never donated any money to them but when they started accepting Bitcoin I started making donations via Bitcoin why because it's just so easy it's absolutely easy you don't have to mess with PayPal and credit cards and all that stuff you just donate bitcoins and it's fun to do it it's instantaneous and it's real money and there are no fees and you know I mean to pay a fee of $1.35 to send a nickel to a charity is absolutely absurd it's not even you know it's just immoral really to give that kind of money to the banking industry when you really intend it to go to the charity if I donate a nickel to Epic change a nickel goes to Epic change and it cost me a nickel that's the way it should be whether it's you know five pennies five dollars five million dollars whatever it is so we're really really excited about that so I want to take a break really quick and thank our sponsors that obviously without them we wouldn't be here but I got a lot more to tell you so stay tuned but again I want to thank Mt. Gox Mt. Gox obviously is the reason we're here in Tokyo one of the main reasons Mt. Gox is the exchange site the premier exchange site they have something like in the about 90% market share fluctuates but they're definitely the big big guys they've been around the longest they've been through it all and they're here to stay they're resilient they're rock solid and they're profitable which is good because that means they're going to be here it's a safe place to do your exchanges and because they have the best market share right now you're going to get the best price when you buy or sell bitcoins for US dollars however not just US dollars like I say we're going to be taping major announcements about the new currencies that they're going to be trading in so stay tuned for all that but we thank Mt. Gox for their support and if it weren't for them we wouldn't be here so definitely send an email to admin at Mt. Gox.com and say thank you thank you for sponsoring the bitcoin show and only went to be we are very very grateful to them and bitpay bit-pay.com they call it bitpay but I always say bitpay.com because I don't want you to go to the wrong website bitpay is the most amazing cool tool we thank them also for sponsoring us obviously but they are making it so so easy for anyone to accept bitcoin whether you have a simple blog or a simple website you do not have to be technical I mean even I could do it you just go into your wordpress or your you know website or whatever the heck it is if you know how to paste in a little blob of html you can do this you can create an item or many many items on your website that are for sale with a shopping cart that accepts bitcoin and it's brilliantly easy it's just an absolute no brainer it's easier than setting up an email account really and then in the end of course if you are you know an e-commerce pro and you already have a website and you already have a shopping cart solution well of course bitpay integrates into all the major shopping cart solutions and they are in the process of adding more they are doing massive development very quickly to integrate it into all the major shopping carts so that's bit-pay.com check it out and sign up for their service and for a very small fee they make it absolutely a no brainer super easy to start accepting bitcoin right away immediately so we are really really grateful to bitpay and not to mention that they have announced that they are going to support us in this promotion of bitcoin donations to charity and they are charging zero fees for any charity so we are very grateful for that and for them as great members of the bit-coin community and of course supporting the bit-coin show and only one TV so thanks bit-pay take them out they are brilliant solution everyone was very impressed by bit-pay at the conference and mezzie grill obviously mezzie grill the world's first restaurant to accept bitcoin they are going to go down forever no one else can ever say that they were the world's first restaurant to accept bitcoin but that's not the only reason we eat there a couple of times a week it's because their food is amazing so whenever you are in New York whether you live in New York be sure to visit mezzie grill there are only three blocks south of columbus circle the very very famous place called columbus circle it's in the southwest corner of time square and so you are going to definitely see time columbus circle if you visit New York just remember go three blocks south and you can visit the world's first restaurant that accepts bit-coin mezzie grill they have amazing authentic Mediterranean food and it's really really nice and a comfortable casual atmosphere and extremely affordable for Manhattan it's amazingly affordable for healthy food but that's not all mezzie grill is now offering franchise opportunities worldwide so they are kind of like an upscale Chipotle except it's not Mexican food it's Mediterranean food so it's much healthier food and it's a little bit more upscale than Chipotle but it's sort of that style so that it's for casual dining breakfast lunch and dinner so if you want to have your own mezzie grill get a load of this you can start your own mezzie grill franchise opportunities are available worldwide so just email bitcoinatmezziegrill.com and ask about franchise opportunities there it's really exciting that they are not only the world's first restaurant to accept bitcoins they're probably the world's first restaurant to sell bitcoins you can actually go to mezzie grill and buy bitcoins it's amazing it's you know in the future of course this will be everyday thing but right now it's amazing they're the world's first restaurant that also sells bitcoins so they charge a six percent fee and it's a thousand dollars per person per day limit but check out mezzie grill only for the food but also because they accept bitcoin also because they sell bitcoin and also because you can open a mezzie grill in your city contact them about franchise opportunities and thank them for supporting the bitcoin show and our entire community and bitbrew bitbrew.net is the official coffee of only one TV and this actually was a true statement even before they became a sponsor way back when in the early days ed found them I don't even know how he found them he's just always googling things and he found this bitbrew and I didn't even know it he didn't tell me about it but he ordered several pounds of their coffee and when it came he was really happy which is unusual because ed is really really picky if you know him you know what I mean he was he's a real finicky uh uh uh fruit what am I trying to say frugal frugal finicky and um hard to please anyway he loves this coffee he says it's the best uh ever so it's the only coffee that he'll drink he won't buy any from the store anymore so he uh and that was early right and recently um bitbrew has um actually they donated a whole bunch of coffee to the conference if you were at the conference those little bags of coffee were from bitbrew.net let us know what you think they have all different varieties uh just tons of organic and specialty coffees uh very very fresh you know made specifically and shipped to you and they accept bitcoins not I think they accept only bitcoins but it's the prices are definitely denominated in bitcoins so um and they're locked in so uh we really thank them for sponsoring the bitcoin show as their as our new sponsors it's bitbrew.net not bitbrew.com bitbrew.net so thank them for uh getting sponsors of the bitcoin show we really appreciate them and we're back so this is what's happening so we're here we are in tokyo and you know like I say you know that's the cerulean tower as I said before uh that big tall slate building it's one of the most famous office buildings in tokyo and uh we're gonna go over there later today we're gonna do uh I'm a camera crew and we're gonna uh tape a whole bunch of stuff like um and it's trust me it's super super impressive mountain ox is super impressive in many many ways so really exciting stuff happening there um let's see a couple other quick things I want to update you with um and again I'm sorry that I've been uh in comunicado and uh you know our flaky broadcasting schedule it's you know it's challenging we're doing so many things and uh I'm probably gonna stop saying that we're gonna shoot shows live every afternoon at 2pm because I don't want to disappoint people that hang out and wait for us to broadcast live I really am hearing you about that I want to make sure that you know we don't disappoint so I'm probably gonna change it so that we don't have a fixed broadcast schedule that we'll do as many as we can in the most timely way we can and we'll just put them up there as soon as we do we'll you know we'll tweet and broadcast about um the fact that the shows are there and available as soon as they are instead of focusing on watching live the other thing is that we get it done and uh bring you excellent shows and excellent content and that um you know that it's there and then it's done because sometimes we can do 3-4 shows in a day if there's breaking news or if there's lots of things happening and other times you know we might skip a day because there's too much going on like the conference you know it was really hard to tape during a conference during a hurricane during a flight to Tokyo all kinds of things like that but we've got lots of surprises in the store for you we are going to do a little bit more of traveling on the road like this like we're doing this week in Tokyo so stay tuned for that also I wanted to tell you this is kind of a news front issue with the that affects all everyone in the Bitcoin community and that is up until now or up until I guess recently in the last month or so the hardcore Bitcoin community kind of the focal point of it of communication has been the online forums for Bitcoin but unfortunately as of really a couple months ago they've just degraded and degraded and it's not that there's a problem with the people there it's just a problem with certain elements of you know there's a large group of organized very well organized like 13 year old hackers is really what I call them just 13 year olds who have nothing but time on their hands and they just want to they're anti Bitcoin and so they go in and pretend like they're adults and they pretend like they have a viewpoint which they don't even have they just want to cause trouble and stir up muck criticize and bash everybody and everything and it's just degraded to a little junior high school you know food fight it's just nastiness and really really ugly so pretty much everybody who's really important in Bitcoin has stopped using the forums sadly that's kind of the you know flip side of free speech there's a you know the other side of the coin free speech is a wonderful thing at the same time you know it just leaves it wide open to this sort of vandalism so the forums have become just nothing but vandalism it's just like graffiti everywhere basically almost every post is graffiti and causing trouble intentionally so you know that's a real it's a real sad day in a way because the forum is so important and so it has been so important until now as a way for the community to stay together and to keep informed and so on we can only hope that these children will get bored and move on but in the meantime the way the community has responded is many ways there are the core key people in Bitcoin project and all that long ago have you know lost any interest in the forum because of this issue and so they have created their own private mailing lists so there are lots of people that's what more and more is happening is private mailing lists where you know if you're a real serious adult who wants to discuss Bitcoin they'll basically whitelist you and include you in their mailing list so now it's kind of like a hurricane that's spun off into all these instead of one big forum now it's many many many private mailing lists for different groups developers you know e-commerce people all different kinds of things so I'm on almost all of those mailing lists and that's kind of what the forums have spun into there first of all it's just too much volume anyway there are just thousands of messages you couldn't possibly keep up with them all even if they are legitimate messages and that was the first problem that we had but then now with this just utter you know vandalism the destruction of of the intent of the forum it's become unusable and it's really sad so anyway that's what's happening people are creating private mailing lists we have our own and I invite you to join it the easiest URL it's based on Google groups because Google groups makes it very very easy to block these types of people you can you can only participate if you have a Google account and so you can't just join and create 200 Google accounts for the intention of vandalism Google handles that for us so that makes it really easy then every single message that's posted is personally reviewed by me before anyone can see it so it's super highly moderated so you're going to get really good quality content and that's a tiny URL I don't know if you want to have time to put it in the lower third but it's tinyurl.com slash bitcoin people so it's just the website is the URL is tinnyurl.com slash bitcoin people tinyurl.com bitcoin people and I didn't warn those guys in the studio but if you get a chance they can update it in the lower third but either way it's tinyurl.com slash bitcoin people and you can just sign up for the Google account and be on a on a good quality mailing list for bitcoin discussion and so in the meantime yeah you will probably not see me in the actual bitcoin.org forums anymore for that reason and also of course I have to say all of the you know I spoke out in the forum against this vandalism saying exactly what I'm saying now that it's a really sad day for bitcoin when these anti-bitcoin they're basically bitcoin haters are completely vandalizing and destroying the forum and of course I'm pretty outspoken I spoke out about it and of course because I spoke out about it I am now their target so they're trying to attack me every way they can and so they're spreading all kinds of nonsense about me so all these accusations that you'll read about me obviously 100% false so that's it just wanted to give you an update about that so that's what I suggest as an alternative is private whitelists and mailing lists and other ways of course the bitcoin show that's what we're here for and we want to be a centerpiece in the bitcoin community and bringing you what's important what's interesting definitely email us at bitcoinatonlyonetv.com and give us your feedback about the show we're always interested to hear from the actual bitcoin community and audience and hear what you want to hear about what your thoughts are so we want to always remain a center focal point for the bitcoin community that's what we're here for and let's see so I guess that's about it that's enough for now we're going to actually wrap it up here pack up our tripod and our cameras and stuff and we're going to go over to this Rulean tower and do a bunch of shooting at Mt. Gox stay tuned that'll be the next episode of the bitcoin show and we'll talk to you soon take care ciao