 Welcome everybody to the Bitcoin show welcome Bruce Wagner, and I'm Ed Gal and today we have a very interesting show for you We have with us a Very special person who has traveled across the country on the world's first Bitcoin road trip And we're gonna get to him in just one second first I want to thank our sponsors who bring us to you every day Monday through Friday 2 p.m. Eastern Time all around the world. 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So with us today We have the person known at the artist formerly known as the real play-toe Everybody I played oh, how you doing play-toe? Hey, good morning Good morning. Is it morning there? I guess it is still that's what I'm 15 in Portland, Oregon Wow, right and it's like 3 a.m. On Australia. So it's morning all over the place You know we had we did our very first episode of the Bitcoin show. We had you play-toe as a guest That's when only one TV was pretty much our dining room table and you remember because you were there in person and Since then it wasn't long ago either it wasn't that long ago I mean that everything's happening in internet time internet speed as we say and You know so you remember very well This was like when you had just started your your trip and we had said that we were going to give video updates On the progress of your trip. Of course that didn't actually manifest because so many things happened that we fell into this Opportunity of this the whole fifth floor in this fifth Avenue real TV studios We have here now three dedicated studios and all that 31 shows not just one. I mean it's nuts. What's happening and It's exploding only one TV is exploding kind of like Bitcoin is and we were not able to follow up with your with your road trip But everyone continues to ask Whatever happened to play though. Did he make it so give us the the lowdown and I really apologize that we have Been so negligent to update people on your trip, but you where are you at and give us the dates or approximate dates and stuff Well, all right. Well, I made it. You made it. I made it so let's see I left April 9th and about two months after that so mid-June I got to Los Angeles and Between Connecticut and Los Angeles. I spent no dollars, which as you may remember was the goal of the entire trip Connecticut to LA no dollars. That's right. No euros or pounds or British sterling nothing like that No, no no fiat currencies. How did you do that? well, I Spent bitcoins exclusively And I did that through a lot of planning So I started out at the very beginning of the trip going online and saying hey look I'm interested in taking this road trip and finding entirely by bitcoins first Bitcoin road trip because I think it'd be great for Publicity for Bitcoin. I think it'd be a great adventure for me. So I'm not entirely altruistically motivated here But anyway, it was a fantastic adventure. I told hundreds of people about Bitcoin along the way So I'm calling it a total success Awesome, and you had yours had speaking engagements and everything, right? I spoke to a handful of hacker spaces a couple of colleges and many many people just on the street So Okay, so It was a total success. You only spent bitcoins. I mean was it your own bitcoins or you got donations too, didn't you? For the most part it was donated bitcoins. I started out with a couple hundred But on April 9th the Bitcoin was about a dollar right my first to guess were 40 bitcoins each So I blew through most of that initial couple hundred in the first, you know a few states, right? Now what now I take a guess is three bitcoins Whoever was the first whoever the first few people I remember drackling in New Jersey he especially managed to help me out in a somewhat tricky spot So, thank you. Thank you everybody who's even met with me helped me out sent me bitcoins any support because Really this this just like everything else This was really a crowdfunded effort crowd sourced effort and you guys made it happen. Thanks. That's awesome I'm glad we can help you. Uh, do you have you disclosed how many bitcoins you went through or no? I haven't checked in poof like 4,000 miles, but last I checked it was in the neighborhood of 700 ish which could be a Variable in dollars because it has gone up and down so fast Right Yeah, it's hard to say. I mean, it's it's clearly a fairly significant amount But it was totally worth it because every one of those bitcoins now somebody else has that Bitcoin and they can put it into the economy They can spend it. They can buy a blue canary nightlight I'll pack a socks They could buy all kinds of things now we get the Bitcoin world market I don't know if you heard about that We did lot did the launch of that the other day Bitcoin world market calm Which is like the the largest online retailer memory dealers calm is so many many places that We have now this new widget on Bitcoin me.com where you click shopping and it scrolls by just hundreds and hundreds of items or Thousands of items that you can buy with Bitcoin. It's really exploding The yeah, and we're I mean, we're still at the very beginning There's there's so much room to go up that I mean Even even the markets that we have now, I mean, they're starting to take hold and I'm pretty happy about it but I think that At least long-term we we're going way up. Yeah up up up as I say Yeah, and what's the word out on the street like when you were doing this did what kind of reactions any give us the best story and the worst story You mean reactions when I told people about bitcoins. Yeah, I would just yeah All right, let's see Almost everybody I talked to you was very interested. I For the most part I would just find somebody on the street who looked bored and say hey, what's up? I'm Plato. You ever you ever had a bitcoins? Of course almost nobody has the only people I've met who had actually heard about bitcoins previously Were you know people from the Bitcoin forums and a lot of people at hacker spaces? Yeah, I'm actually at a hacker space right now called a brain silo And this is a Portland hacker space. It's so hacker space for anyone who's unfamiliar It's it's an area for people to hack and make stuff. So it's not necessarily computer hacking There's all kinds of oscilloscopes and a resoldering or workstation over here and computer parts and see me radios It's a place for tinkerers. So this one in Portland is really cool and I went to crash space Los Angeles and Noise bridge in San Francisco and all of these were filled with people who knew about bitcoins And we're really interested and wanted to learn more wanted to get their own bitcoins And even people who are making their own Bitcoin projects So little places like this are they're doing a great job to you know foster innovation or even you know Bitcoin labs write a Manhattan because Somewhere in New York. That's here. I saw that they recently released. They recently released their Android software. Yeah, you know, I don't know if you know Bitcoin labs is The the group that came out of our hackathon. Remember the the first episode you were on we visited those guys in the lab over there That's the hackathon group from our meetup that we host here at only one TV And that's what they call Bitcoin labs. And yeah, they created the first Android lab app That's in the market and they're working on several other projects all at the same time right now It's it's exploding It's just exploding the development is is crazy and I hear about what's happening, you know, a lot of new startups contact me and Want to tell me what they're working on And most of the time it's telling me in confidence. They don't want me to repeat what they're working on But I can tell you this there's a lot There's a lot it'll make your head explode to know what's being worked on right now There's so much in so many areas. It's really really an exciting time Let me let me make one note If you if you do have an Android phone and you decide to check out one of the couple Bitcoin apps that are currently in existence Just be careful because these are really early alphas. It's totally possible to lose your bit coins Yeah, buddy here actually lost his because he downloaded the Bitcoin application and Sent some funds to the phone. They didn't show up. So he decided well, you know, what I'll try I'll try clearing the application data in my phone to see if that fixes it But that actually just deleted his wallet. So he lost the coins forever. Oh That's it. Yeah, I hope it was a trivial amount of coins Yeah, they say that in the market is to be sure to just use a trivial amount of tiny tiny amount of coins just to Protesting and that the Bitcoin app For buy Bitcoin labs in the market right now. It says clearly It's an alpha thing and not to use it for any serious coins But that's one of the highest priorities right now is to really improve it and make it real solid So that it can be used every day. I think there are a couple of Bitcoin apps full clients in the Android market now Yeah, it's happening really fast, you know So you on your road trip the price of gasoline was probably going up But the price the value of Bitcoin was going up much faster, right? Yeah, sure. Were you where were you when it hit $30 or was that where you already finished with your trip by then? Who's $30? I Hit $30 when I was between Las Vegas and San Diego, I believe It's in San Diego. We watched a crash back down to I Think it only went down to 20. I think by the time it would drop back down to 1215 I was I was further north up towards LA But I mean it's It's so new. Yeah, of course, there's giant volatility. I think it's gonna go further down I mean, I'm not sure if it'll drop below 10 ever again But it very well very well might and when it does I'm gonna buy more. Yeah, exactly when it goes down buy more That's when it's on sale. That's what we say. So what was your most challenging? Day or night or part of your trip? One one pretty challenging point was in it was in Kansas I've nothing really against Kansas or can can can say is he isn't It's but it's it's pretty boring pretty boring I ended up in Wichita and I I didn't know anybody in Kansas and nobody I talked to was too interested in bitcoins And I found myself running a little on gas. So what I did I pulled out my shell gas card I got I got this gas card from a guy named Bitcoin exchange on the forums who will sell you a gift card for anything you want, right? and So I paid I don't remember the exchange rates but I paid some small amount of bitcoins for $100 gas card and Just kept my wallet until I need any emergency until I had an emergency So I'm in Wichita, Kansas, and I'm running out of gas and I don't have anywhere to sleep for the night so I go to the local shell station and all of their pumps are out of gas and They say oh, you can try the shell down the street So I go check out that shell and it's actually closed. It's now a sit-go and there's they don't take shell gas cards at sit-go So I do some math and I figure I have just barely enough to drive about 60 miles north to I believe a grand junction, Kansas So it's by this point 11 p.m And I'm I'm doing like 50 miles an hour driving very slowly very carefully not using my brakes at all Just trying to conserve some gas mileage But about three quarters of the way through the trip. I'm I'm at empty and I'm wondering why Why I'm at empty because they I did the math. I should have been able to get there It turns out I've been driving in third gear instead of drive So it was actually like with losing efficiency because you know I need 2200 rpm instead of 1500 rpm, right? So I Pull into this gas station with my needle below empty and I just start talking to everybody who walks by at midnight saying hey You got a second kind of stranded here. I eventually found this this guy He was going off to Iraq and he was about to be deployed in about a week and I explained Bitcoin He was pretty enthusiastic and I told him hey look, I mean I Can if you if you want in on this like I can give you a Bitcoin and you can buy me a gallon of gas So I can get over there and use my shell gas cart and he was he was happy to help me Yeah, I gave him a paper Bitcoin actually. I think I still have one of these a paper Yeah, you printed these out before you left now. This is this is for Bama This this was made by a guy named Bitcoin to cash and I don't think he ever publicly released these They're more of a promotional item but I bought a few of them from and they've been really handy just to go around and Give people some something they can touch right and that's that I didn't I didn't really expect There's a lot of people who don't really understand the concept of a digital object because you know, it's not really there It's just ones and zeros in a computer. So that's kind of hard to grasp So it's kind of nice to be able to say all right This isn't really a Bitcoin, but it's worth the Bitcoin Is that like a is it have a private key under a scratch off is that what that is What it actually has it has a little code under a scratch off And if you take the code and you go to Bitcoin to cash comm slash redeem You can paste in the code and you can paste in your own Bitcoin address and the guy who runs the site sends you a Bitcoin automatically Okay, so it's kind of like a paper backed by Bitcoin Yeah, that's right. Yeah, and psychologically It's easy to sell something like that when you have something tangible that you can hand it over As opposed to trying to convince him and then tell him okay. We're all happening in the cyberspace Yeah so When you when you didn't have any I mean was there ever a point when you just didn't have any dollars And you couldn't find anybody to accept a Bitcoin? um Well after la got harder, but after la I've been allowing myself to spend dollars So I was actually surprised. I would have figured that san francisco At least would have been like super heavy into into tech stuff And while they got the people at uh At noise bridge were really enthusiastic people on the street were you know less excited about it than I would have thought uh, uh, let me think Not really for the most part. I've been able to either Pay with bitcoins or just talk to people and find a couch to crash for a night successfully cool So you so after la you headed north towards san francisco I think actually got harder. That's interesting through california and then what then after san francisco. Where did you go? After san francisco, I kept going north up to portland, which is where I am now Oh, okay. All right. So now how long have you been in portland? I got here about two weeks ago and I was going to keep going up to seattle and vancouver bc But uh, like many people who live in portland. I I kind of was passing through and decided to stay so uh Yeah, uh I'm now A portland resident really it's is it that is it because it's so beautiful there or why? What made you decide to stay whether it's really nice for now? It apparently starts raining around october and keeps raining until june or so, but I don't mind rain and uh Everyone I've everyone I've met here has been really cool out of out of 25 states portland is the chillest town And really that's my that's my only metric that I really care about right now Wow, it's there's a lot of people here who I would like to get to know better Oh, that's great So did you end up going to florida because I remember last time we spoke you weren't sure because of the gas and all that What was your question did I did you end up going to florida? No, I skipped florida. Oh, okay So you just went down through the carolinas and then cut across from there I cut across uh here. Let me let me stop on my route because it was pretty circuitous So I started out near harford, connecticut and then went to boston from boston I went to schenectady new york and then down to new york city From there. I went to washington dc And uh driving in dc was terrible dc new york and boston were my least favorite driving experiences worst city of Outlay or portland, but anyway After after dc, I kept going south through uh Raleigh, north carolina and carborow north carolina chapel hill north carolina and ended up Taking a fairly heroic drive all the way from rally through charlottesville south carolina I'm sorry charlotte south carolina All the way down to huntsville alabama, which was oh man. It was like 12 hour drive. Yeah, it wasn't too much fun But so I skipped I skipped a lot of the south But then I stayed in alabama for a couple weeks after that tornado hit Uh, I ended up sticking around and helping clean up a trailer park and from there I went to new orleans baton rouge houston austin uh Denton texas, which is just north of dowes foreworth Up to Fayetteville, arkansas to meet another bit coin ur uh bitcoin bulletin dot com Then across the denver uh where I met up to some family members. I actually went skydiving in denver. That was pretty cool Nice. So yeah from denver. I went to salt lake and then vegas and san diego then uh mission viejo, which is a suburb of la and uh san fernando valley also in la And then up pacific coast highway to san francisco and north of portland Mm-hmm. Wow It's it's it's been it's been it's been a very fun trip three months, huh? Three months all together I'm sorry. Was it about three months all together? Yeah, it's been Three months in two days So what was it you what was your number one goal that you really hope to achieve by taking on the great american bitcoin road trip Spread the word of bitcoin As an evangelist like johnny apple seed right planting this yeah, you're not the first person to make that comparison actually So do you so you feel like um like you have evangelized it? Have you have you had inquiries from media or or um, I'd like to hope so. Yeah I talked to cbc.ca for an interview and algezera Mentioned that they wanted to talk to me, but then they never returned my emails So if you want algezera check out bruce's coverage of that Uh, let's see. What else a couple local radio stations, uh k-talk in Sullyx city actually that was a cool interview. That's all my blog We we talked to edwin vieira who's a constitutional lawyer and what we're talking about was uh How the federal government of the u.s. Has really overstepped its You know its responsibilities and Taking over all kinds of industries like the tsa. It's it's you know, not really a constitution We're supposed to have a right to travel unimpeded And we we can't so we're talking for an hour about The current situation of the federal government and how you might be able to reduce its power while staying within a constitutional framework So if you're politically minded, it was I thought it was a pretty interesting interview. Uh I didn't talk too much on there. There's another guy clint richardson Runs reality blogger wordpress.com. I think that's a really cool site too if you're interested in Some political research Cool cool. So yeah, it sounds like you got a lot of attention from from this. That's great and um now I think like do you have did you have a lot of friends back here on the east coast that And what do they think about you taking on this trip and relocating and and all that? Well, they thought I was crazy at first and some of them still think I'm crazy now It's weird. I've I've been living without dollars and that's that's a fundamentally bizarre concept to many many people You know right now in our society dollars are the end And You know money is the end you try to get more money. That's the goal of life It's like it's like world of warcraft you keep on going up until you have as much money as you can But I don't think that's a very useful thing to do with money. I would much rather just uh use it as a means to an end where the Is and a better world I think bitcoin is is very good for that just because it's democratic. I mean, it's a fair it's a fair system It's still money. That's honestly why I love bitcoin so much. It's still money It's just a new it's just the people's money as opposed to the the central bankers money, right? The government sure you say that I guess so like are you still living on bitcoins only? Uh No, I'm using dollars now. Okay. I am spending bitcoins if I find somebody who wants some bitcoins But I'm trying to save them until uh until the price goes back up. Yeah Yeah, yeah, and I noticed you posted that you were in Oregon and you were willing to work for bitcoin and Do whatever yeah, I'm actually at the moment. I'm living out of my car and just exploring the city Uh, I would really like to find a room or a couple rooms to rent for bitcoins So if you if you happen to know anyone in the Portland area, uh, you should either contact me on twitter at the real play-doh You could email me play-doh at subvert.me and I'd be glad to talk over some negotiations for rooms Uh, but even even living out of my car portland is an awesome city the weather is perfect. Uh Everybody's friendly. There's low crime So I'm I'm happier. Yeah So and you can also be reached at the real play-to.com, right? Yeah, that's my blog. Uh I don't know I'm stuck in kind of a cash 22 because I have all these cool projects I want to do involving like coding like for instance I want to take the real play-to.com And set it up so you can see my google plus feed and you can see my twitter feed And you can see my tumblr feed and you can see my pictures that I've taken just put them all on page And that's not really too complicated to do. I I want to just you know, write in python or something But it's it's it's hard to code when I'm sitting in my car So I would like to find just some workspace where I can sit for hours at a time and just just work sure Sure, what about the the this group the uh, uh, where you are right now the hackers? Yeah, that's actually uh an option that I use I just found these guys recently But this is this is a really great workspace. So I've solved half my problem there That's cool And um, and you want to stick to more bitcoin related projects or it doesn't matter or So here's something that I really love to do I'd like to I'd like to start the bit the portland bitcoin foundation and what this would do I don't know it would probably be a non-profit. I don't know how you get money probably solicit donations But there's so much stuff like portland is the perfect city for bitcoins because there's a lot of starving artists here There's a lot of bohemians here. There's a lot of techies here And bitcoin fits all these niches perfectly because you can have artists who are charging bitcoins for their art You can have coffee shops who are accepting bitcoins for coffee You could have you know coders who are making websites for the coffee shops and setting it up so they can Donate bitcoins and this this would be really fun like I'm envisioning a way to uh I don't know it would be cool if you had cities competing like how how How much portland use bitcoins can they use more bitcoins than san francisco? Try and set up a race to the number one city. That's this That's right. You know, new york is uh, we're hosting here at only one tv We're hosting the world's first bitcoin conference and world expo 2011 nyc here august 18th to the 21st if you go to bitcoin conference dot com You'll get all the details and you can register all all the details are there now bitcoin conference dot com but um, but yeah, that's a great idea that we should have a A competition among cities to see who which can Manifest the the grassroots bitcoin movement You know and really take hold I'm sure the college towns might do well an arbor michigan columbus ohio and places like that It'd be very fascinating I think we need to wait maybe another month or two For uh, for instance, like we need a solid you need a rock solid android client that you can't really lose your coins easily Right, so we're gonna have to wait for a couple a couple extra evolutions of its current client figure out What we need to do to To just make it better Because really biggest problem as I see with bitcoin right now is that it's nobody really tells newbies about the risks For instance, you can lose the coins in your wallet if you if you make 101 actions because it doesn't back up more than 100 keys At first, right, so it's possible to send All right, maybe you have 100 bitcoins and you decide to send one And the other 99 gets sent to a change address And if that's the 101st transaction in your wallet that change address isn't backed up So if you then delete your wallet your backup won't have those coins and that's not Should really be on the front page of bitcoin.org saying like hey look you have to Understand this wallet security stuff, right? So I mean I don't think it can take off to mainstream until we've solved that problem Like it shouldn't it should be much harder for people to screw up than it is right now But I mean we're seeing more and more developers who are joining the project We're seeing all kinds of awesome stuff happening. So I think it's I think that that'll be I think it'll be ready for mainstream in a couple months. Yeah, for sure There's all those things are in development to solve those problems Have you heard did you hear about? the Ability for them to derive more addresses from an existing address without having to Use the app to create that I don't know. I forgot what they call it now, but there's this derivative address ability One of the one of our episodes of the bitcoin show where we had Stefan from Switzerland on he talked about this. It's like sort of a recent discovery only from a couple months ago So these kinds of things can be included in the app The new version of the of the standard bitcoin client is You know, obviously in development And a lot of the security issues are going to be resolved. So That and the new versions of the android app. Yeah, I think within just a really short time within a month or two That stuff will be history Everyone will have the access to the new apps that will have fixed those problems But I mean and you when you think about how fast this is all happened It's just a miracle that it that these problems even are being corrected so fast And then oh, yeah, and we've surmounted most of the challenges that we've seen so far very successfully You know mount gox got shut down for a week and the price was right back where it was before the heck I thought it would drop significantly I thought it was going down to like three five dollars because people would lose confidence But everyone lost confidence in mount gox but not in bitcoin itself because the system is secure. The system is good mndricks actually just wrote up a very good analysis something like let's see Bitcoin resilient internet payment on his blogger and it's it's talking about how there's Many many good reasons that bitcoin is a strong system and even if one of those reasons fails or something Uh, maybe transaction fees go away up the other six reasons are still rock solid and in his opinion as in mine like It's such a resilient system. That's going to be around for For a very long time. Yeah, I think I think that even I mean, it's my opinion too, but uh I don't think that the mount gox thing has been affected as much I mean if you look at their trades, they're still trading at a high volume And and I think part of the reason is because bitcoin has such momentum already That there's so many new users that it's not really affected like the way negatively like we thought Well, I mean up to a point. It's still tiny. We still have I don't know the exact currents that but I believe it's still less than 0.1 of paypal's user base So there's a lot of room to grow and every time somebody else comes into bitcoin The current bitcoins get more valuable because you know, that's that's how Yeah A money supply works exactly it's still a drop in the bucket, but You know, yeah, what we're saying is like even with this mount gox You know had 90 at least 90 percent market share at the time and you know crash got hacked and all that It's like barely a blip in the value and and the and now that it's back up It's uh hardly hardly affected the trade volume. It's amazing But the the resiliency of bitcoin In fact, you have a hard time finding Someone who can give you reasons why bitcoin is bad like problems with bitcoin or uh kind of a bitcoin skeptic it's there really aren't very many And uh, I'm looking for some actually because I'd like to have someone as a guest on the show So that we can discuss it and debate it, but there really aren't very many I disagree. I see skeptics everywhere Really and most of them most of them do have the same title or arguments that aren't very good arguments But there's a there's many many skeptics. I mean just look on the bitcoin forums Other bitcoin forums Sure, there's skeptics on there. Okay. Yeah every every day. There's like 20 new posts by noobs who are saying like Bitcoin will fail because it's not actually met Well, I guess what I mean what his Like someone with credentials someone like who's a writer or blogger or a technologist or somebody that's not just uh, you know You know, whatever a what do they call it a flamer, you know But somebody who's actually got some kind of credentials or credibility who actually Is anti bitcoin and said there was one person I forgot his name On the Al Jazeera piece something able From wire and I'm going to try and track him down Because um, you know, he just said it's a wacky crazy currency. Yeah, he said why would anyone use it? I just don't see the implementation So but he didn't really explain anything beyond that. It's a wild wacky currency, but he didn't explain why He sees, you know, what what kind of problems he sees with it but I would like to have some people like that on to uh Discuss it with them and see how much they really know about it and uh debate a little bit Yeah, I think people are just speculating You know reasons why it wouldn't work, but no real hard facts Yeah Anybody's guess, of course I mean you could say this will never catch on or that'll never catch on but you know Their guess is as good as anyone else's as far as predicting the future But as far as real substantial, uh pros and cons Benefits and drawbacks they they you know, there really aren't very many So I would like to ask you so what's your thought now after your trip? Of the bitcoin community as a whole Okay, let me tell you at the beginning of this trip. I was uh, I was not confident I thought there was about a 90 chance that bitcoin would fail and a 10 chance that it would succeed I think that in around may in the month of may we hit critical mass already I think at this point it's reversed I think there's more of like 85 chance that it'll stick around and a 15 chance that it's gonna it's gonna fail I'm sorry. I'm sorry 85 percent that'll stick around 15 percent chance that it'll fail. Oh, wow I didn't I didn't know that you didn't mention that before Wow, and so what do you think about the community then? Uh, well the community community is awesome, uh Everyone I met on my trip has been awesome, uh the guys in mission vio california were fantastic ghosts everybody I didn't I didn't meet a single person along my way who was Uh You know a bad person Right, so everyone is kind of like got together to help you and make sure that you got through Yeah, definitely They wouldn't support your cause even just on irc everybody everybody is A great community. They're talking helping everybody out Uh I mean it's starting to grow it's starting. I think we need a new A better a better place for community members to interact And uh, I'm actually I'm actually in the planning stages of a project that I'm calling subverse And what I want this to be is uh, it'll be like a social network where people can Well, I mean the core will be a social network for subversive types for people who who think that the current system our status quo of You know politicians and corporate plutocracy and all that stuff I for one disagree with that. I think that there's many better alternatives I want to make a context for us to to discuss that and figure out ways to do it And I think one of the best ways to do that is just start using bitcoins for trade So here's here's the idea you make a social network and you set it up so that you can register anonymously with the gpg key And then if if I want to sell you my guitar for bitcoins, I can just say hey I'm selling one guitar. It's worth 10 bit point And I will only deal with people with extra reputation or above because as we've seen with bitcoin OTC You can make a reputation system. You can make a web of trust Where you can have anonymity but still have reputation So I'm saying make a social network based on that idea Right and then their reputation would be built into the social network and then that you could buy and sell things with these Yeah, sure. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So again, this is like this is still only in my head If you want if you're if you're interested you can join my irc channel to talk about it a bit That's hound hound subverse on free note. That's su b v e r s e You can also just follow my twitter and I'll make some announcements when this moves into some concrete stage because again right now It's just an idea. Yeah, it's a good idea cool So really that's what I want to do in portland I mean I would like to find a place to live and just sit down and start coding this And really the only obstacle right now is like where to live right You need a place to live or bitcoin Yeah I want to buy a rich montana for bitcoins too But I'm probably gonna have to wait a few years till they're worth, you know, 10,000 each Right, you can buy your own place then. Mm-hmm. Okay. Well, let me take a break really quick and thank our sponsors again Who obviously they bring us to you every day Uh to at 2 p.m. Eastern time the bitcoin show Monday through Friday. 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Yes, thank you So what are your um, uh, I guess you've already told us what your plans are for the immediate future and um How I have is there a vibrant community there of people that you've met already in portland that are into bitcoin Is there like do they have a meetup or anything like that going on there? I went to a meetup the other night and met maybe a half dozen pretty cool people Like I said most of the people at brain silo are familiar with it and There's there's many people here who have never heard of it, but would be very interested just because you know, it's it's The sense of community in portland is remarkable and bitcoin is really a community currency. Yeah, so it's a perfect fit Perfect. Perfect. Okay. Well, it's really exciting. We're we're gonna have to definitely stay in touch and Now that we're we're up to speed here. We're doing this show every single day Monday through Friday We'll um, we'll have you back on again in a while and touch base with you and see what's happened in the in the meantime with your social network and um The uh, you know all the projects that you've got going there And excellent. Yes. I'm glad So glad that your trip went so well Evangelizing bitcoin imagine that this is the first ever in the world. I wonder if anybody else in Europe or Asia or any other Places in the world have taken on such an adventurous trek to be able to cross their nation Using only bit talking to somebody in britain who was hoping to drive from the very bottom of great britain Excuse me all the way up to the very top And his plan was actually to uh to fund it entirely with bitcoins that he generated through mining He was planning on putting two mining rigs in the trunk of his car. Oh my gosh. Oh I don't think he did it Not yet. I was gonna say mining rigs in the trunk of his car. Oh my gosh Maybe he's waiting for it to spike up a little bit to get moving Yeah, I mean it seems like wow he would have to run generators to To mine the coins. It's a lot of power Yeah, that would take a lot of gas and over there the petroleum prices are Or it can definitely put you out, but if bitcoin keeps going up then it's probably okay Okay, here's another here's another idea that I'd like to do with bitcoins So I think the perfect industry to use bitcoins is alcohol fuels Imagine this imagine you have a community where you have some farmers who are growing corn to feed their cows And you have another guy who makes alcohol stills So the guy who makes alcohol stills Rents it out to the farmer for some bitcoins and the farmer puts his corn into the still out comes mash and alcohol Feeds the mash back to his cows and the cows are actually healthier because they don't have to digest the starch And he takes the alcohol and gives it to the guy who owns the alcohol truck The guy with the alcohol truck uses bitcoins for you know To transport stuff around accept payments. He brings it to the alcohol fueling station And at the fueling station, I can drive up fill my car with alcohol fuels And there's a mechanic, you know, I who it's that coins as well to adjust your engine timings And uh steps to your car just as much as you out of e-fuels as it doesn't have to lean But this is what brazil doesn't have a gasoline is they switch the cars over to use alcohol fuels from sugar And it wouldn't it wouldn't be too hard to set up this infrastructure in the us And I think big a great way to do it because you'd be able to win, you know, regulations You'd be able to You know all the inefficiencies of the dollar You're breaking up a little bit. What was the last thing you said? Oh, just that bitcoin is more efficient than dollars. So for You know, sustainability. This has been perfect Mm-hmm for sure for sure Interesting. There's there's no limit to the creativity in the idea. You're uh, your background is Electrical engineering, I remember Yeah, that's correct. Okay. I just want to make sure in case people are wondering Yeah, I mean if you know of cool electrical engineering jobs, especially anything in the solar sector I I'm more than willing to take a look at it but uh Getting stuck behind a desk job doing something I don't want to do for eight hours a day It's really the last thing on my mind right now But uh, yeah, by all means, uh, whenever I get around to finally putting all this stuff up on the real play-doh.com I'll toss a resume up there as well. Uh contact information the whole nine yards So, uh Yeah, you haven't heard the last of play-doh yet What about becoming a bitcoin dealer where you're uh, exchanging dollars for bitcoins, you know for a small fee We thought about doing that I could do that. I mean for small amounts, maybe on a portland needs some bitcoins Uh, I can just Mm-hmm right a lot of people I know a lot of people are starting their own businesses that where they're charging You know anywhere from two to five to ten percent for Just for the convenience of letting people buy bitcoins for cash Just keeping some bitcoins keeping some cash on hand and buying and selling bitcoins for cash For a percentage just for the convenience sake so that They don't have to go through all the, you know The hassles or whatever if there are any of of banking or finding people, you know, otherwise Another thing that I'd like to do now that I'm here is for any business that's interested in taking bitcoins I can help them out by explaining how the system works and help set up some software and help, you know put it on their website and Get all the you know infrastructure out of the way right what I want to do I would really like to get touched with with a printer I want to find somebody who can print me business cards and stickers and just promotional material in exchange for bitcoins So I tried to find something on twitter a while back and they weren't interested if anybody owns a print shop Oh, yeah, meet one of these maybe a couple thousand Please get in touch with me again twitter the real play-doh or email play-doh at subvert.me Yeah, I'm sure there are a lot of printers and printing companies that would accept it There's got to be I just I saw on craigslist because I have a An alert when anything bitcoin comes up on craigslist and I think there's already people Yeah, doing consulting type of services where they help you set it all up and And get you going with in the bitcoin world with merchant accounts, etc Yeah, sure So definitely Advertised there that's that social network idea that I had you'd have a directory There's there's a project called black and yellow pages that I heard about on agris radio cypher punk to podcast And that's that's like the current bleeding edge of Digital freedoms and digital liberties. So if you're interested in learning more about, you know, subversive technology Check out cypher punk's podcast with a d at the end Anyway, there's a project called black and yellow pages. The idea is that Trace people craftsmen anybody who has a service to sell they list themselves in this directory and say hey Check out and check this out. Here's my gpg id so you can check your reputation in any system you want And I'm an electrical contractor. I install wiring if you need wiring installed for bitcoins here are my rates I can travel this far if you need a plumber you should check out my buddy Joe And Joe is also listed on the same site and he's listing his own services and he says oh, hey I'm willing to do x y and z so I mean anybody who's Bitcoin contractors willing to set up companies they could put themselves in there as well Absolutely. Yeah, that's a great idea You should do that I mean I've been thinking about this idea of this this project subverse project for I don't know since like january and I've evolved a lot of ideas about it and I'm really what I'm trying to do now is write up a pdf that explains like how I think it should work and to put it online somewhere get some alpha testers and Start going Yeah, there are proprietary platforms where you can set up a social network, you know instantly Like ning.com and stuff, but they're not they're not necessarily free and they're not and they're super closed and proprietary But then there are some open source versions, but I'm not sure if they're ready for prime time not really Yeah, maybe somebody has a suggestion of some sort of free open source software. That's That's the the most stable Coding all the stuff that I'm talking about is not going to be easy It's going to require some some effort of coding I'd like to try and find a way to get some funding maybe listed on the global bitcoin stock exchange and uh I heard about this algorithm in san diego. I think it may be a proprietary algorithm But it's called pie trust And the way this works is that you have a group. Let's say there's five people coding an open source project And you have to somehow split up 100 bitcoins among these five people So what they do they they rate each other and say like how much each person thinks the others should get out of this pool And it's it's sort of democratic. So if everybody agrees that somebody it's very important to the project First of all, they get more of the pool And second that person's votes count more Wow People don't have the opportunity to screw up the pool, but trusted people have more cloud And this seems like a really cool algorithm. It does nations for for my project because If there's any centralization is bad, I'd like to find a way to Set this up so it can be coded with nobody in the middle. It's called pie trust encoders Sorry, go ahead. It's called pie trust Pie trust. Yes, I'm gonna have to get that information from you too Because yeah, that seems like a that would be I can think of a lot of uses for that for any any type of a business where there are multiple entities and you want to you know, uh I don't know. I guess relative Division of a pie based on their importance in contributing to the project whether it's an open source project or a business It could be anything that seems like a really clever idea This can make an open source company where you don't need management You don't need accountants So you can get rid of all the crap that has to deal with dollars Just by splitting up a pool of bitcoins In a democratic fashion as long as everybody agrees like oh, that's a fair way to do it. Let's try it You wouldn't need all those extra layers and you'd have much more efficiency Pie trust. Okay. I'm gonna google that for sure algorithm. Okay That sounds like a great idea Well, thanks for joining us play dough. We really appreciate you taking the time to hook up skype for us and uh and Revisit your trip and all your adventures and we'll be in touch with you And we'll uh want an update maybe in a month or so and see how things are going and for you in portland Especially where the rainy season hits Yeah, thanks Bruce. Thanks ed. Thanks chris. Uh, I appreciate your time and uh We'll talk to you again in the future. All right. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Great to see you. Take care. Peace Thanks for joining us. I will see you same time tomorrow to p.m. Eastern at the bitcoin show Thank you