 Hello and welcome to the Bitcoin show, episode one, I'm Bruce Wagner, I'm Plato and I'm Ed and welcome to the show. We're broadcasting live from New York City and live to tape so this is our absolute first episode of the Bitcoin show and today's episode is brought to you by our sponsors CarpeVM video marketing, seize your market, say it with video, CarpeVM.com and Mezzy Grill where authentic Mediterranean food meets modern flavor. Mezzy Grill.com, 8th Avenue at 55th Street here in New York City just a couple blocks south of Columbus Circle and US Gold Coins our trusted advisor for excellent investments in rare gold and silver coins, USGoldCoins.com. Welcome to the show. Today we have our guest, the real Plato with us, visiting New York, he's on, well tell us about what you're doing, what you're up to. Thank you, Bruce. I am on the first ever Bitcoin road trip. My objective is to get across the entire country spending no US dollars at all, only bitcoins and I moved out of my house in Hartford this past Saturday so I've been traveling for one week now. And where are you going? You can see on this map behind me that, yeah pull it up, I started out in Hartford, I took a quick stop in Boston and went across to Schenectady, New York and next I'm heading down the coast and across towards Los Angeles. How long do you think it's going to take you? Well, it's taken me a week to get from Hartford to New York City so more than another week definitely, I'm thinking probably a month and a half, two months to get across the country. Right, cool and so you're basically depending on the donations and do you have some bitcoins that you're starting off with or how are you doing it? Yeah, I started off, I have basically my life savings which is not, it's fairly modest, a few hundred bitcoins which will give me a good portion of the way and I've already received several donations from community members so I'd like to thank everybody who's donated including Bruce and Ed as well as everybody who's put me up for a night and given me any other kind of support because I can't do it without you guys. But the main idea is that you're traveling across, you're the first human who's traveled across the United States spending no dollars, only bitcoins. That's correct. So how did you line up, I mean how are you going to line up what you need like in the way of food and gas and lodging, only using bitcoins? Well there's the rub, right? So far I've found people who are willing to trade me gasoline and food for bitcoins and I'm going to have to do that the entire way. When I was in Boston I stopped at MIT and I met community member Llama. So Llama sold me a tank of gas, I paid him some bitcoins, transaction cleared, I went on my way. And was this at a gas station or they had jugs of gas or something? No, no we went to a gas station, he used his credit card and filled me up. Okay, okay, I just figured along the way people would have like big containers of gas or something. Mastercard and Visa is always in the loop somehow. Unfortunately, yeah, until we can manage to get a, you know, shell gas to take bitcoins. We're working on that, working on that. It's going to happen much faster than people think. I think it's going to take some time. Oh, I certainly hope so. So the idea is that we want to promote people using bitcoins and make people aware that they're out there and that you can actually live your life. Right, you can use them for stuff. Right. I mean that's the key. I tell people about bitcoins and their first question is, well, why are they good? What's important? What can I do with them? And I mean that's the important question. Once you can do everything with them, there's, you know, no really good reason to use anything else. Right. But at the moment it's tricky. I'm expecting I'll have more than a couple of ventures on my travels. Yeah, I see over here, there's a big gap in here in the West Coast that there's no one ... Yep, after Mississippi or so, I have, let's see, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, about 5 or 6 pins and that's more than 1,000 miles. In B.C. So it may get tricky by then, but I'm hoping that people will start following my adventures. So as I travel, I'm writing down my stories, I'm taking some videos, I'd like to make some podcasts and I'm certainly hoping to put some more content on the Bitcoin show. Right. Let me ask you about how did you select this route that we're looking at? Was there some strategy involved in determining your route? It's not the most direct route, is it? That's true. It's certainly not the most direct route. I had a couple things that made me choose this. First of all, I've lived in the Northeast for most of my life and it's always been cold and I really would like to see some warm states. So I wanted to pursue a southerly route and try and get across and I like to see a lot of the U.S. as well. My primary motivation here is really I want a good adventure, I want a good story. Yeah, I was going to ask you the colors, like the green or what? So it looks like the red are people who have offered gasoline or lodging or something like that. And what are the blue ones? The blue pens are people who have offered me lodging and usually you get usually gas as well. Oh, I see. Red is gas and blue is lodging and food and other things. And then what green is sites that you wanted to see? Yeah, green is interesting things along the way. I got you. Okay, that's my recording. This map is actually publicly viewable and publicly editable. So if any of our viewers are interested in helping me out on this trip, you can go to therealplato.com and I have, well A, I have my stories. I also have a link to this map. You can open it up in Google and just drop a pin on it and that could be your house if you're willing to let me sleep for a night or maybe a gas station nearby if you're willing to buy me some gas in exchange for bitcoins. Or if you just know of something cool in your state, I'd certainly be glad to have that pin on the map. So I have a possible destination. And what do you perceive to be your biggest challenge throughout all this? My biggest challenge is almost definitely going to be gasoline. So far it hasn't been too problematic. I've met up with a number of people who I've already met, who I've known personally and it's easy to convince them to sell me gas for bitcoins. It's going to be a little bit trickier once I'm in the middle of Kansas and I have to convince people that, you know, this bitcoin has value and you should sell me gasoline for it. Well, hopefully there are, we have viewers that are going to see this and if you find yourself, well, if you go to therealplato.com or Twitter at the real Play-Doh, right, then they can, yeah, let's see. So one of these, yeah, there we are. So twitter.com slash the real Play-Doh or, you know, as you know, on Twitter it's at the real Play-Doh or therealplato.com, there's your blog and at the bottom there's an item where you can click on the map and you can actually see the live interactive map. So if they find themselves that they live somewhere on this route, they can contact you just by emailing you or Twitter, right? Sure. And also you said you're going to have a laptop in the actual car on the road, right? Of course, yeah. I have my laptop with me and I have my T-Mobile G1. That's actually the very first Android phone and it's been rock solid and reliable. I tried to play Angry Birds on it today and it was maybe two frames per second, so it's not really suitable for that, but I can certainly plug it into my laptop and use it as a tethered wireless connection. So I will have internet access along the way. I will be continuing to write and post videos and stories for this entire route, unless I hit sell dead spots, then I might have a couple days of trouble. Hopefully not a couple of days. If you're taking mostly interstates. And I recognized some people like Eric. See Eric in Denver, he's already on your map. Some people we know. So from the Bitcoin forum, there's a community obviously of people. But you don't have to explain Bitcoin to them. In fact, actually it would be the equivalent of them buying Bitcoin for dollars, because if they're going to put, you know, whatever, $50 worth of gas in your car for 50 Bitcoin, then it's sort of like them buying Bitcoin from you along the way. In effect. Sure, yeah. So, which is cool. That's all good. Yeah, that's great. And now Bitcoin is like about a dollar now. It went back up to a dollar. I'm hoping it stays there. Yeah. It makes the ones I have more valuable. Yeah, that's what we were saying that if you, you know, what would be really fascinating is if you get some donations along the way, and if the value of Bitcoin was to keep on going up to a dollar 50 or $2 during your trip. And then the trip actually ended up costing nothing. That would be so cool. That would just be so cool. That would be pretty impressive. I'm not going to bank on it, but I certainly hope. I actually, let me go back for one minute and let me, Bruce mentioned that if you, if you do live along this road, by all means drop some pins on there and help me out. Even if you don't, please still consider putting a pin on the map or two because this, this route is tentative. If it turns out that maybe Spencer and Fayetteville, Arkansas has some engagement or some reason why I can't stop by, I might, I might instead go through Texas or Oklahoma. So the more options I have, the better I can plan and the more likely it'll be that I can succeed. So any help is appreciated. Yeah. Well, we're on board with you. Is there any chance that your route might change along the way? Yeah, that's what he just said. Oh, it might. Yeah. I'm considering going through Texas, New Mexico, New Mexico and Arizona because I could probably shave off 6, 700 miles if I don't go up through Denver and down through Las Vegas. The other problem with going through Las Vegas is that my self-imposed rule on this trip is I'm not allowed to spend any dollars. And I've never been to Las Vegas and I kind of don't want to waste my first trip to Las Vegas without being able to spend a few dollars there. You're going to need to find a slot machine that takes Bitcoin. That would be ideal. That would be ideal. That would be, oh my gosh. So this is really revolutionary. I mean, this obviously, this is only one TV's first episode of our first show. So this is a real first for us and obviously it's a first for the whole world, Bitcoin itself. I always tell my friends that we're not in the ground floor of something big here. We've just met just like one or two steps up. This is really, really big and we're, before the very beginning of it, it's just so new. Oh, I completely agree. It's just so exciting, isn't it, to be like a pioneer in something that's just, you just know, the more you know about it, the more you realize that this is going to change the whole world like the internet did. You know, I think there's an Oregon trail joke here somewhere. What is that? I'm not sure. I was trying to think of it as a fail, but you know, crossing the country on Bitcoins, pioneer in a venture, it's somewhere. Exactly. It's like the Wild West. Totally, totally. And so what is, I mean, besides the altruism of it, like what is motivating you to do this? Well I want to venture and the only other real component is the altruism. I want to help Bitcoin. I think Bitcoin is a really impressive system and I think it has potential to make some incredible changes. But in order for that to happen, it's going to have to hit some critical mass and become much more widely adopted. I don't think it's going to be that hard to do. It's obviously, well, a pretty impressive currency already and like you said, we're not even at the beginning yet. So I'm just hoping to accelerate the process a little bit. So let me ask you this. I mean, we've kind of been talking, assuming that we're talking to a Bitcoin community audience, but let's say someone's tuning into this first time and they're like, what the heck is a Bitcoin? When somebody asks you, has no idea what you're talking about, first of all, what is a Bitcoin? Where can I get it? What can I do with it? Why would I use it? What are your answers to those basic questions? All right, so if somebody has never heard of this, my elevator pitch would be the following. So let's say you want to transact some business with someone in another country and you're probably going to send dollars to them. You're probably going to use the internet. Maybe you'll use Vesa, maybe you will use PayPal, maybe a bank transfer. All these are intermediaries and some of them are better than others, but they all have their own fees. They all have their own restrictions. And none of them are really perfect. Bitcoin is a way to remove these intermediaries. So I can directly send money to you. It's the people's currency. And I think that in itself is really one of the most important things that you can grasp about Bitcoin. Well, people have the question, but who controls Bitcoin? Who issues it all that? Sure. What do you say? So there isn't any sensual entity. There's no bank or company or government in the middle of the spider web. It's the network of people and they all agree on a set of rules. And those rules govern things like how do we make new coins? How do I get coins from Alice to Bob? How do we prevent people from cheating? And these rules were designed carefully enough that they, so far, appear to work perfectly. And the analogy I use sometimes is that it's more like email. You can't stop it. I mean, you can control and regulate your little fiefdom of your corporation or your city or your country or whatever. But you can't stop email or the internet itself, the internet itself. You can censor the internet in your country or your company or whatever, but you can't really censor the entire internet because it is just a web. So I heard a quote recently, what was about, actually, it was about internet censorship, that the internet views censorship as a malfunction and it routes around it. And I love that idea because it's true. Anybody who tries to censor anything on the internet, it just doesn't matter. It's detected and all the information goes around it. Not only that, but you end up making a Streisand effect where attempting to restrict that information points you out. You get called out, like you are the censoring entity. And more people start hearing about it and it backfires on you. Yeah, bad PR, to say the least. Yeah, so Bitcoin is decentralized. There's no central issuing authority. It's absolutely like peer-to-peer technology. It can't be shut down by anybody without, literally, without shutting down the internet. It can't be hacked because it's the state of the art in cryptography and cryptographic technology as it is today until we reach quantum computing or something in the future. But that's going to be like a never escalating thing technology, of course. But basically, it's at least as secure as all the world's banking, if not more. So it's really, really exciting in that people are actually buying and selling products and services as well as currency, dollars, euros, yen, ripples all over the world. That's true. You shouldn't forget, though, that it's still fledgling. And it's still small enough that there are potential vulnerabilities. If you spend several hundred million dollars to buy GPUs or hashing power, it's conceivable that you could attack the network in some fashion. It's fairly robust. And you couldn't steal people's bitcoins. But you might be able to at least cause some mischief. So I'm hoping that I can get that possibility out of the way by making it more popular. Yeah, the more popular it becomes, the more computers are on this big web of a network and the more robust and secure it will be. Right, the more people use it, the stronger it gets. Do you want to tell us some of the ways that you buy bitcoins or you traded them or sold them? Sure, I actually sold some silver quarters to Ed for some bitcoins today. Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah, who's Ed? Oh, yeah. And yeah, pull it up. I actually sold my television for bitcoins. For 150 bitcoins, I posted on Bitcoin forums and on the BitcoinOTC channel saying I'd like to sell my television for 150 bitcoins. I was contacted by an interested party. We set up a Clearcoin transaction. So thank you, Gavin. And we ended up successfully completing it. So he got the TV, I got the bitcoins, and that's good for three tanks of gas. That's right. And that's what you're using as part of your initial stock pile? Yeah, just for the audience who didn't catch all that. The reference to Clearcoin is clearcoin.com is a new venture that Gavin Andreessen, yeah, Google. I think it's clearcoin.appspot.com. But if you Google the word Clearcoin, you'll definitely find it. OK, so it's this new project that is basically it's an escrow service for Bitcoin because Bitcoin acts like cash. It's an irreversible transaction. When you send Bitcoin, it's just like handing a stranger or whoever cash. And so therefore, if you're buying and selling a merchandise with an unknown person like eBay, somebody you don't know, you can actually request or they can request that the money be sent to this third party escrow. And then when the goods are received in good condition, they can click a button and release them on money. In fact, he or she has a way that if you don't trust that the person is going to play right and actually release it, you can ask them to set up like if you really don't trust them, you can ask them to set up a charity escrow where I read this on his site that they put the money into this escrow. And if they don't release it to you, then the money will go to charity and not be refunded to them. So there's different options. The benefit of that is so that they really don't have any. They don't gain anything if they rip you off. They can't get their coins back. Exactly. Exactly. So it's a pretty cool. I think it's a needed thing. It's kind of like what eBay advertises to be, but really isn't always the idea that you can really safely transact business with strangers because of their reputation. And if you don't get what you're supposed to get, then you'll get your money back. And in this way, it's better because it's cash. And when you receive your goods and you know they're in good condition, you can click a button and release the money. After that, you can't get it back though. With PayPal and even MasterCard Visa, they've been under reverse transactions even six months after the fact, which is just wrong. Not to mention all the exorbitant fees and so forth. Well, it's attractive to some people. It's attractive to the shareholders of eBay, I guess, and PayPal. Yeah, sure. Yeah. But I think, yeah, this Bitcoin definitely is the, like you said, it's the people's money. And it also works for not only massive quantities, millions of dollars it could work for. It could also work for micropayments, totally. So I always think of this, that this could be the thing that really works finally to monetize the web. Because right now, people have a YouTube video that gets 80 million views or something. And the joke is what they're going to get paid in YouTube dollars or something. And it's like they're YouTube stars, but they don't have anything to show for it. But they can now put a Bitcoin address on their YouTube channel and say, if you like the video, send me a nickel. Send me half a Bitcoin or whatever. And people have said, like this one acquaintance of mine who created a film on YouTube called Money as That. He said, if I had a nickel for every person who's seen my videos, I'd be a multimillionaire. Yeah, he's got millions of viewers. And I said, now you actually can. So this could be a way to monetize web content, whether you're a musician or an artist, a filmmaker, or a blogger, or whatever, a software developer, or whatever, you ask for donations. And people, I think, are happier to tip on the tip jar on their way out rather than hitting a paywall. And say, you can't read that article until you enter your credit card and pay up front. Sure. That's another inherent advantage. I agree with you that Bitcoins are a great way for micro-transactions and micro-payments because one of the biggest things is that you don't need an account. You just need to have some Bitcoins. And then you can send some Bitcoins very, very easily once you have the system set up. Like an email address. If you think about it, really, it's true. Even homeless people have email addresses. I mean, they don't have a cell phone or anything. They could, theoretically. I mean, I don't know if they all do, but they do, a lot of them do. And it's just so easy because you can go to the public library, you can get on the internet, you can create an email address, and you can create a Bitcoin account just as easily. So literally, a homeless person, and none of that, but a child who's too young to open a bank account, you could be 13 from your paper out and have Bitcoins. I mean, it's just freedom and micro amounts. So you can, it doesn't matter if you're in Nigeria or wherever you are, you can send, if you wanna donate a nickel to a charity, to an orphanage in Tanzania. Or to my Bitcoin road trip. Or to your Bitcoin road trip or anything you wanna donate to. You can send a nickel and it costs exactly a nickel. Right, it's just as easy as sending 200,000 Bitcoins. Right, exactly. Yeah, so. Which is really revolutionary. You can't do that through Visa and PayPal because the fees will eat you out. Exactly, exactly. They always wanna piece of the pie. Yup. So what if your people in your stratosphere think about you doing this, do they even understand? Or do you have to do a lot of explanation? I've had to do a good amount of explanation in the past couple of weeks. So I'd like to think I'm getting fairly good at it. In general, they think it's a really cool idea. And many are skeptical that it'll work. I'm skeptical myself. It's fairly ambitious. But I'm fairly confident it'll work. I have some reservations, but. How do you define work? Work, work will be. You'll survive. I define work as if I can end up in Los Angeles without spending any dollars. Oh, okay. Did you have to make it back, though? No. Oh, that's a one-way trip. So far it's a one-way trip. Oh, okay. Got it. Yeah, I'm intending on keeping an eye on Craigslist postings, career builder postings, and looking for a job along the way. By trading, I'm an electrical engineer. I lost my job in January, unfortunately. And I figure now that I have nothing to lose, why not travel across the country on Bitcoins? Perfect. Are you willing to work for dollars instead of Bitcoin, or will we only work for employers that will pay you on Bitcoin? No, that'll make it a lot easier. So I'm willing. I don't really narrow it down if you want me to. Right, right, right. I'm willing to exchange whatever services I have along the way, maybe help you set up Bitcoin on your computer and take a couple bucks to exchange it. Yeah, I mean along the road trip. You're very technical, so you should get some business out of it for sure. You mean people that are along the route of your road trip that need some, their computer scan for viruses or Bitcoin set up, or any kind of computer work or technical work, you're willing to do those services? So I'm willing to accept dollars, but I'm not willing to spend the dollars on anything except Bitcoins. I'm making the exception for Bitcoins. And actually, tolls are kind of an exception as well. I have an easy pass, and my parents are actually covering the easy pass costs on paying them with Bitcoins as a reimbursement. So I'm attempting to not cheat. And if you want, you can send any cash that comes your way and we'll replace them with Bitcoins for you. Kind of the same idea, I guess. Sell your coins, yeah. Yeah, that's true. There's several entities throughout the country who are willing to take cash in exchange for Bitcoins. One of which is you guys. Yeah, perfect. And you can also use Google Maps to there's a setting to avoid toll roads. I don't know if that's 100% gonna work because you might find that's really the only way you wanna go on your route. But are you thinking about going down Florida down to all the way down to Miami and back? I've been considering going all the way down to the end of Florida and back up because I have a couple of people who have committed to selling me some gas along the way, maybe a bed. But floor's pretty big. And my car is 139,000 miles on it now. And I'm a little skeptical as if it'll manage to get across the country. So if it ends up breaking down somehow, that'll certainly be one for the blog. Yeah, for sure. So you're gonna blog about it on your blog. You're gonna have your laptop, you'll be online pretty much the whole way. Sure. And you're gonna also, I hear you've got a flip camera so you're gonna do video updates for us and you're gonna send them to us so we can, in our weekly show, we'll be able to do a little segment of your status updates along the way each week. That's right. Community member, Jay Crow, he was kind enough to lend me a flip camcorder. And I've been testing it out, it works perfectly. So thank you, Jay Crow. Awesome. Thank you. I will certainly be using that extensively along the way and documenting the entire trip. So don't flip phone, flip camera and tweet and try and drive all at the same time. Oh no, I won't. Pull over. Yeah. Pull over. Yeah, you gotta stay legal or else you're not gonna be able to pay your tickets. That's true. That's true. I don't know if there's any cities that accept Bitcoin for tickets yet. Yeah. Okay, well this is a good time. I wanna take just a quick moment and thank our sponsors. Carpe VM, video marketing. Seize your market, say it with video. 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Be sure when you contact our sponsors be sure and thank them for sponsoring this program on OnlyOneTV.com. Thanks so much. Thank you. We wanna bring up one of the guests. We have some guests. That is something that's happening right here in New York. It's kind of evolved from a meetup. We started a meetup.com group for Bitcoin. The first one ever to my knowledge but it's meetup.com slash Bitcoin which is the New York City Bitcoin users meetup, right? So as a result of that we actually discovered a whole bunch of amazing developers who actually met through this meetup and which is happening every month so we keep meeting more people and more developers. Well the developers have kind of spawned their own little group off from the meetup and they're calling themselves Bitcoin Labs and they're just doing some amazing work. They've been having a weekly hackathon which is basically a let's get together and program, sit down and program, make good software together every Saturday for weeks now. So we wanna check in with them. They're right here in New York but we've got them remote here on Skype. And they're doing a hackathon at this moment. Yeah, they're actually doing... Actually got a few things to share with us today. It's exciting. So we've got a hackathon in progress and so let's bring them up and on the screen here. And they have a new website called bitcoinlabs.com if you wanna check it out. And their Twitter handle is on the screen now so. Yeah, so for those of you listening to audio on Twitter they're twitter.com, bitcoinlabs. And their website where you can check out for more information is bitcoinlabs.com and their email, you can also reach them by email contact at bitcoinlabs.com. So we've got Andrew, Mark, Gabriel and Sheldon over there. Let me switch. Say hi guys. Can you hear us? Hello. Let me turn up the audio so we can hear you a little bit better. So hey guys, oh my God. There it is. Whoa, there, oh, the screensaver kicked it. Okay, cool, cool, cool. So we've got Andrew on the left and who's that behind you? Is that Gabriel? Yeah, that's Gabriel, hey Gabe. And who have we got over on the right? Sheldon and Mark. Mark's on the right, Sheldon's on the left, right? Cool, so you're hacking it out at Mark's, is that Mark's lab, right? Yes, it's my laboratory. You're taking a picture of us while we're watching you? Cool, cool, oh technology. What kind of, where are you guys at? Like, where are you at? So this is Prometheus Fusion Labs and this is a nuclear fusion research laboratory. We're doing open source nuclear fusion here. Wow. And it's a whole other story but I'm also into Bitcoin and one of the projects that we're doing here recently is a Bitcoin ATM machine. That's right, we'll show you that now. Cool, this is the ATM machine. I think Bruce has got a picture on the, he's gonna get a picture on the screen too. Wow. So this is an old ATM machine that we bought on eBay. Okay. And we're in the process of hacking this into a Bitcoin ATM machine. I think the world's first. Awesome. You bought this, you found an ATM on eBay. Let me get this straight. You found an ATM on eBay because like, of course, where else would you buy an ATM? And by the way, were there a lot of ATMs for sale on eBay? Oh yeah. So you picked the best one. All right, cool. Yeah, 200 bucks. And did you already know how to program for an ATM or did you have to learn? Well, we haven't really done it yet. I mean, I'm taking it apart now and kind of learning as I go. But no, I have no experience. It's okay. Do you know what operating system it runs? I think it's gonna run Linux. We're gonna basically take all the electronics out of it and interface directly with the motors that spit the cash out in the screen. Over here, we've got the, this is the cash dispenser itself. So this is the dispenser mechanism and this is the cash box here. So this cash box can hold $50,000 US. I was right. I won the prize. He was making us guess earlier how much an ATM holds. And I said $50,000. You know, I didn't want to guess too high because I know they run out over the weekends. They used to run out a lot over the weekends that say out of cash at a holiday or something. So $50,000, that's about right. So you're not worried about what operating system they run or anything. You're just gutting it, taking the components and you're gonna write your own code. You're gonna run it on a little, like a little Acer netbook or something, right? Yes, or a little plug computer or something. A plug computer, of course. Oh my gosh. So you could actually make this ATM like the size of an air freshener if it wasn't for the cash dispensing part of it. Right. But you've seen that the ATMs are big and heavy is so that people don't walk off with them. You can't just put your arms around it and take it. That's true. A lot of money. Otherwise it could be the size of a cell phone. Wow, so all right. And then where are we gonna position this? We're gonna find a sponsoring merchant in Times Square like TGI Friday or something and put it in the lobby of the Times Square restaurant so people can go in and use it. I was thinking the first place you'd put it is hacker conferences. Oh, yeah. Well, yeah. Wherever the Bitcoin is. As long as it's not too heavy if you're gonna carry that thing from conference to conference. But, that's what freight is for. Can you make two? Are you have any back orders? Well, first of all, wait a minute I wanna ask you this for the audience because what is this ATM gonna do? What is different about this ATM than any other ATM? Well, this ATM, what you'll do is you'll send it Bitcoin and when it gets it, it'll dispense the equivalent amount of cash. I'll send it Bitcoin? How would I send it Bitcoin? Well, we're still kind of figuring that out but the way it looks now is that the screen will display a QR code and from your mobile phone you will use that. You'll send Bitcoin to the address on the screen. And then it'll get it and then it'll be like, great, got your Bitcoin and here's the cash. So with my smartphone app, I just scan the QR code from the front of the ATM and I hit send $100 worth of Bitcoin or 100 Bitcoin and then the US dollar currency or whatever, assuming it's US dollars is just gonna pop right out of it. Basically, if we can make it work, we've done that yet. I wouldn't have to press any buttons or enter any pin code or have any card or anything. No. Wow. That's amazing. And then what it'll do is whatever it can't dispense in US dollars, the change, it'll just send back to the address that it got it from. But it can't. Oh, the change. So if you sense much or, you know, when it goes to their nearest $20 bill, there's gonna be some change left. Right. And it's gonna be obviously based on that moment's exchange rate, right? Right. Have you figured out how you're gonna determine that? I'm guessing, right? Make a little profit for your profit. Oh yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah, that's the American way. It's the, absolutely. Just remember that services like my Bitcoin, if you send the change back to the address it came from, that's not necessarily going to go back to the person who used my Bitcoin. That's true. That's something I've become aware of in the last week or so. I haven't really thought about that yet, but I'll separate it. Yeah, future work. Future work. That's excellent work you're doing there. What else are you guys doing? Yeah, so give us an update also on the app development that you guys are working on there. Or Lionel Lula plays. Yeah, so we're working on getting a really basic Android app up and then we're gonna make it increasingly awesome over time. So all sorts of paranoia features like Torra by default. Torra by default and completely offline use. For example, you would show the ATM QR code with your private key and the ATM would take it from there. So you don't have to use network access at all from your device. So yeah, fun paranoid features coming later. Nice integration with cash registers. I mean, point of sale machines for pizza and coffee. But yeah, at first just incredibly basic. Hold some cash on the phone and send and receive. Okay, so this app is gonna actually be a real Bitcoin client that will have its own wallet in the phone. Yeah, the keys are stored only on the phone. Okay. Probably not because you had to store hundreds of thousands of dollars there for a couple hundred or a few twenties. Yeah, absolutely. Unless you're Bill Gates and that's pocket change. But okay, so you can send, will it be able to, will I be able to put in like $25 in US dollars and it'll automatically do, oh, there it is. Look at that. Wow. That's the app. Send, receive, oh my gosh. Send, receive. That's, that looks too complicated for me. I'm not sure if I can figure it out. But, so you hit receive and then it's gonna display the QR code and the other one hits send and it scans the QR code. Wow, look at that. Can you put that back, the QR code? Oh, yeah, yeah. So here's the phone that's gonna receive and put it on the phone. Right. In the QR code format and then this phone is gonna scan it, right? So it's the scan button right here, the scan. Right. And I just put it over like this. And go beep. There, you got it. There you got it. Perfect. And it says all of the, it says the address and then the, and then I hit confirm. We'll say it in a second. Oh my gosh. We're still in the works. Still in the works. Now, that's awesome. What if we're not in physical proximity? Can we do this like over, you know, over the phone? You know what I mean? Like if you're in LA and I'm in New York, can I still send you bitcoins through my app and your app without the QR code? That's a very interesting idea. We might be able to work something out that way. Yeah, there's lots of ways you could transmit that invoice from one person to the other. The address, they want to be paid that. You can just email me your bitcoin address and I can copy and paste it, right? Yeah, or you just click that link and it'll open up. Yeah, anywhere on the Android system. If you have a link that's a bitcoin invoice like bitcoin, you can call it a bitcoin address. Yeah, and you click that, it'll open up this app. Okay. So yeah, it exists in other channels like email. Yeah, lots of ways you can transmit that address. Okay, that's so sweet. So I know we've talked before about so many features. I mean, it's just like unlimited of the possibilities. In the initial version that you're gonna have available to beta test once it's ready, what will the most basic features that it will include be? Yeah, it'll store money, it'll store keys on the phone and you can send and you can receive. That's it. We should have that working within a week and then we will make it increasingly awesome in a lot of ways. Cool, cool. I'm really glad to hear that. People have been clamoring on the forums for many months for an Android client. Yeah. Oh, and also there are other people around the world that are obviously, they're interested in, not only interested in this, but actually other developers who are doing similar projects and so collaboration is always really beneficial for everybody. So if they wanna contact you, they can go to bitcoinlabs.com and that's gonna give them all the details of how to reach your GitHub accounts and email and also Twitter, right, at Bitcoin Labs. Okay, perfect, so they can get all of you. Right now, I redirects to the GitHub group, Bitcoin Labs, it's just an informal group we made on GitHub. Yeah, if anyone wants to join, well, I mean, it's without you. Cool. Yeah, just developers hacking on Bitcoin stuff. Yeah, perfect. So here in New York, we meet up once a week and yeah, right now, first the Android client, then later on we wanna make a high-frequency trading exchange, like a really high-speed matching engine for the bids and the asks and all the wrappers around that. That would be an exchange site, like Mt. Gox or Bitcoin Central. We'll see the software behind it. So anybody could just say, yes, I want to run a high-frequency trading site and send all that baggage. It'll be free open source because everything you guys do is free open source, right? Yeah, absolutely. Very non-restrictive license, right? Okay. Permissive. Permissive. Okay, cool. And then, now, like, is there a benefit for many people to run a high-frequency trading site or is it better if it's just one or two? I mean, because we need to ask an economist. A benefit for them to run, but it's nice for people to be able to run. It's nice for the code to be up on GitHub so that anybody can make it better or find security flags before that, what bad intentions do. Yeah. Yeah, we're hacking Bitcoin free software. Okay, cool. And if you want to create a trading site in Uzbekistan and trade Bitcoin for the Uzbek Psalm, you can do that in your own currency just to proliferate the ease of translation from Bitcoin to whatever currency, right? And just like the Bitcoin network is a decentralized distributed network, by having decent, like, if you had just one exchange, you know, that's a weakness point, but if you have lots of people running exchanges that gets alternative and it definitely feeds into that distributed power and strength. Right, and also just in case, anything were to happen to that one, that would be a real weak link, yeah. So let's see, what else? Also, you guys have told me about another project. I don't know what you call it. We call it the warp speed, Bitcoin network warp speed project, but I don't know what you guys call it. Tell us about that. You know what I'm talking about? All right. Yeah, within a month, there will probably be a high quality Bitcoin peer-to-peer implementation. I started working on one a while back, then somebody else, Stephane, did a lot more work and it's up. We should throw up a link to that. Isn't the network already peer-to-peer? Yeah, sorry, what? The network's already peer-to-peer, so what are you doing differently? Reimplementing it in JavaScript, in with Node.js, which has some technical advantages. Yeah, Stephane did most of the work for what's up there now. So the point of this is to optimize it and make it super fast. Right, so first make a general Bitcoin node that's easily readable, understandable, modifiable, and then experiment with ways to bring the speed up, like propagating the inventory messages before you get the actual block, yeah, just experimenting with things to possibly make it faster, and then add preferred peers so that an organization, say Mt. Gox or a mining pool or a Bitcoin foundation of some sort, could set up servers on Amazon's data centers in the U.S. East, U.S. West, Europe, Japan, and have them all talk to each other. And each of these nodes, since it's Node.js, it's massively scalable. Thousands of people can be connected to each of these. And so as soon as somebody publishes a transaction, it'll hit one of these, and then it will hit all of them, and then it will hit everybody that's connected to them. So within a couple hops, you will have reached the entire Bitcoin network, and these nodes can be doing extensive monitoring of the network to see how fast things propagate. For the non-technical or less technical people, isn't that what the network already does? Tell us, what's the main difference between this and the way it works now? It's exactly the same. It's just doing it faster and having some nodes, having a few nodes which can support a massive number of connections. Okay, so because of that, it's gonna make the transactions sort of guarantee that they clear in more nodes much faster at like a lightning speed which adds to the security and the safety and the speed of the clearing of the transactions. Is that right? Yeah, right, the main concern is double spending. And if when you publish a transaction, it propagates the entire network within milliseconds, as opposed to seconds. And you, by which I mean a point of sale machine at some pizza shop, can check the network say 0.7 seconds later and see, okay, 700 milliseconds out, there's still no double spend attempt, so we're in the clear, as opposed to having to wait much longer. So this is actually, this would benefit the entire Bitcoin network and every user in the world because it's all the same network, right? Okay. Yeah, it's exactly the same network, just trying to make it faster. Okay, so right now when you send, I mean, let's say that that's implemented, right? Then when you send a Bitcoin payment and it says, it shows up unverified right away. And then you get a verification, like one more verification every 10 minutes. You're still gonna get one more verification every 10 minutes. It really won't change anything functionally from appearances, but it will just like behind the scenes, it'll increase I guess the guarantee or the probability exponentially that there won't be any double spends. So in other words, it'll make it safer for the coffee shop to give you your cafe latte, even though it's unconfirmed. Is that right? Right, okay. Yes, or it'll be cheaper for them to purchase insurance against their being a double spend. Oh boy, insurance, that's a whole nother project. Insurance, wow, this is so amazing. So have you guys been, have you guys made a lot of progress today? We will by tonight. Okay, all right. I wish we were there, maybe we'll head out there. You know, our- You guys are in Brooklyn or? Yeah, in Brooklyn. So our buddy Plato here, he's gonna be heading out on the road. He's gonna go to LA, but maybe we'll, who knows, maybe we'll make it over there to Brooklyn before you're done, if you're gonna hack all night. But well, thanks for joining us and thanks for the update. You know, we'll definitely keep in touch. We're gonna do this show weekly now, so we'll be looking to you for updates and really, really exciting. Thanks for all the info. Thanks guys. The audience can find developers and anybody interested can go to bitcoinelabs.com and bitcoinelabs on Twitter. So all right, thanks a lot guys. Thanks. Keep up the good work. We'll be hacking. Exactly. So wow. That is so amazing, right? Yeah, that's awesome. That is so cool, yeah. So, and what they're working on is just amazing. I know. You've gotten this, I mean, so fast. Android apps and well, three major things that they were talking about. Android apps, which is like just, that's just so, so fundamental. Because when everybody has a smartphone app, then Bing Bing, I can send you 50 and you can send him 25 and so forth. We can just do it even in person or remotely. You can email me your bitcoin address so I can literally go copy, pastes and right from the phone without any other, without even using an online service, having it right there in your wallet, that's really slick and global. Absolutely global. That's gonna empower every human being. Yeah. Even if you're, it doesn't matter, like I said, if you're in Tanzania, you know, you could literally use your, you've got online banking in your hand. It would make your travels faster for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No delays. And then the hyper speed project, I call it the warp speed, whatever the, I don't know if they have a name for it, but what they're doing to turbo charge the entire Bitcoin network by making these super high speed nodes is so fascinating because, and it's just so beautiful because that's like the beauty of open source software developers, like these guys, they're basically volunteers working for the benefit of all mankind, which is just all. It's true, man. Their efforts are going to strengthen the community a lot. Like when that application comes out, I certainly would like to buy a few bitcoins the day before because I expect the price will go through the roof. Yeah, absolutely. So I recommend that any of our listeners who would like to support these guys, send them a Bitcoin or two as tips because those help enormously, especially just to show your support. That's the key, it's not even the money. Yeah, you hear that, Andrew, Mark, Gabriel, and make sure that you put your Bitcoin address for tipping on your bitcoinlabs.com, check that out. But yeah, definitely send them a tip or two because these guys work so hard. Every single Saturday, they're there for hours and hours working together in this little cauldron of developer geekdom, but it's what they're going to come out with, what they are coming out with is going to absolutely change the world, just like Bitcoin itself is going to. So this is just like exponentially leapfrogging everything. And then the ATM is just the fun icing on the cake, the idea that they'll actually, he wants to take it to geek conventions, initially hack fest and stuff where they'll be able to demonstrate that and you know what's going to happen, that that's probably why they want to do that is they take it to these hacker conventions and they demonstrate this ATM that you just go up and scan an image and boom, money pops out and the hackers are going to go, oh my God, that is so cool. They're all going to develop amazing, even more interest in Bitcoin and developing for Bitcoin. So exponential again, it's going to explode. It's totally going to explode. That's great. So we have a few minutes. You want to give us a little laundry list of some of your needs that you want to tell everyone that you need to put it out there. Gas food, sure. As I mentioned, Gas food and lodging basically. Gas food and lodging are the three priorities and I can kind of scratch lodging off the list. I have a tent, I have a sleeping bag. If anyone wants to sell me a pillow for Bitcoins, I could probably take that because I better forget that. But yeah, gas and food are the predominant problems. So if you're anywhere in the bottom half of the US and you would like to help me out, head to therealplato.com, pull up my map, drop a pin on the map and get in touch with me so I know how to get in touch with you. What about, like, I don't know if you can, can you safely carry like a gas tank, like a 25 gallon tank or something in the bag? I don't know if that's safe. That would be giant, my car's gas tank is 14 gallons, which gives me a range of somewhere between 250, 300 miles, which actually is, I'm a little concerned because I don't have any gas stops, no known gas stops between Jersey and North Carolina. So if you are in the Washington DC or the Virginia area, you could really help me out a lot. Oh yeah, we've got, there's a Bitcoin meetup in DC so there are several Bitcoin users in DC that so when you watch this, make sure you go to therealplato.com and get ahold of him, he'll be online the whole time and get ahold of him and let him know that you'll meet him at a gas station and sell him some gas for Bitcoins. I'll appreciate it. What else do you have like weak links in your route there? Yeah, there are any other spots where... Yeah, pull it up, let's take a look. So right now I got my car in New York City and this was actually the first time I've driven in New York City and it was a little bit harrowing so I'm hoping it won't be quite as bad for the rest of the trip. So we got Trenton, New Jersey, all the way down to North Carolina down here. That's gonna be the first tricky part. And these green pens are interesting things to see along the way. So there's a George Washington Masonic Museum, the DEA Museum sounded kind of cool. Miles the Monster, this is some giant concrete sculpture out of racetrack. These are all free, I imagine, right? Maybe, some of them aren't going to be but what I'm gonna end up doing. So you need to be invited to some of these. Right, I figure I'll go to the proprietor and say, hey, I'd like to check out this museum. I see you have a nominal admission fee. Can I pay you in bitcoins? And of course they'll ask more bitcoins and I'll launch into my spiel and explain, hey look, I'm blogging about this, I can give you some publicity. All you gotta do is let me in for some bitcoins. Yeah, they'll say, what is that? The casino tokens or whatever you're talking about. So Jacksonville, Florida to Harrisburg, Mississippi, that might be another rough stretch. Harrisburg, Mississippi to Arkansas. I basically, everything after Florida is looking a little bit trickier right now. But especially when you get the word out, especially with Denver, is that Tulsa to Denver, that looks like a really long stretch. Yeah, that's the entirety of Kansas, guys. The middle of Kansas. On one tank of gas. Not sure how well that's gonna work. But this is all in the future. Yeah, exactly. This will all change after the show, too, so. I certainly hope so, yeah. Oh my gosh. So we know that there are bit coiners in Kansas that are gonna ring you up, so they can email you and tweet you and go to your website and find all that. And so you'll be able to answer their tweets and their emails and all that stuff along the route and make arrangements and let them know. What's the time frame that they should expect you'll be passing through? I'm not sure yet. I'm taking it one leg at a time. So last weekend, last Saturday, I decided I'll get to New York in one week. So I gave myself a week and it took exactly that. Now I'm here, I probably will head south on Monday. And I think I'd like to get to North or South Carolina by next weekend. Maybe further if possible, but I'm gonna start small, see how it goes along the way. And you can always go to the map and we'll see where your car is, so we can have an idea. We're out of time, but it's been great. It's been great. Yes, thank you for joining us. I'm glad you made a pit stop in New York City. I'm glad I did, too. I greatly appreciate it. And we want updates and we wanna keep track of you, so. Yeah, I'll certainly be in touch and I'm really glad I could be on the very first episode. I know, it's so exciting. Yes, exciting. All right, we'll see you all next week. See you, bye-bye, take care. Thank you, everyone. Bye-bye.