 Hi, welcome to the Daily Decrypt. Your currency competition is ready, little Billy. I'm your host, Amanda, and today's episode is brought to you by BitShares. Today I've spoken with Roger Veer, the one and only Bitcoin Jesus. He's in Acapulco getting ready to make a presentation at Anarcapulco, and so he doesn't have a lightning fast connection speed, but his point comes through loud and clear. So I have with me the Bitcoin Jesus. And before we get into today's topic, which is very related to one being a symbol of peace, Roger Veer, tell us why you are called Bitcoin Jesus. I didn't really choose that nickname for myself, but when I first heard about Bitcoin, I realized what a wonderful, powerful tool it is to improve the lives of people all over the planet, and I did my absolute best to tell as many people about it and set them up with Bitcoin wallets and explain to them why this is going to improve the lives of everybody on the planet, and somehow along the way of telling as many people as I could get to listen about Bitcoin, people started calling me Bitcoin Jesus, I guess, but anyhow, here we are today, more than five years later, and Bitcoin is really entering mainstream consciousness. Microsoft, IBM, Dell, computer, anyone and everyone in the tech space is well aware of Bitcoin at this point. You know, I actually know people who said, hey, I went to pork fest, you know, some number of years ago, and I sold something to Roger Veer, you know, like a soda or a coffee or whatever, and he paid me in like a Cassatius coin or two. And like fast forward all these years later, they now have like $2,000 worth of Bitcoin in Cassatius coins from you buying a cup of coffee from them. So I know that they probably appreciated that very much your evangelism. Yeah, I remember that was a, I think a lot of people don't realize just what an important role libertarians in general and then free state project members have played in the spreading of Bitcoin. I remember when I went to that pork fest, I believe it was the summer of 2012 and I brought maybe a thousand of the physical Cassatius Bitcoins with me and I did my absolute best to spend them. And at the time it was like $3,000 worth of Bitcoins or whatever. And I spent them all over the campground and by the end of the week, everybody at the campground I think had some. And if they didn't, because the internet was a little bit spotty out there. So the physical Bitcoins worked really well and that was the case, but it was a fun time. I think for those who know, Mandaric with his famous baklava and bacon weaves, I think he made the most Bitcoin that week because I paid him quite a few because he had great food and other people were as well. Well, that is such a good story. Well, let me move into why I've called you today. So I saw yesterday that you had tweeted an article that was written by Washington Sanchez who is a developer at Open Bazaar. And he wrote a post on Medium that I believe, you know, I'm just going to let you tell us the title and the sentiment. What is this article that I'm asking you about? Yeah, it was about a week ago. And I think from what I recall it was basically just saying, hey, let's all get along and let's collaborate and imagine how much more we can get done if we all work together. And I think that's the right sentiment, even if it's not necessarily always possible in reality. But, you know, as a group, we can get more done as individuals, but certainly don't force, of course, others to be part of your group if they're not interested in being part of your group. But I read his post there. I liked the sentiment. I tweeted it back out because I thought it was at the very least the right attitude, even if it's not necessarily possible in every instance or circumstance. Yeah, so what he had said was, OK, so on the core side, most of us agree that segregated witness is an awesome idea. And on the classic side, most of us agree that two megabyte blocks is also an awesome idea. And so he was saying, well, since increasing the block size requires a fork anyway, which I did not even know. But he said, since that requires a fork anyway, why don't we all basically just fork together and incorporate both of our good ideas? And so as you just insinuated, there is maybe a high or a low likelihood of that happening. What do you think is the likelihood of that happening? I think it's a fantastic idea, and I hope that happens. And I think just about everybody that's on the side of raising the block size, they like segregated witness, too, the vast majority of them. So I don't think there would be a contentious fork if the people on the Bitcoin core side would say, OK, we're going to do segregated witness and increase the block size at the same time. And there's plenty of quotes from people on that side previously saying that they wanted to increase the block size. And then as soon as they came up with the idea of segregated witness, they didn't seem to be as interested in increasing the actual block size at the same way anymore. And the part that's so frustrating for me, my career was in tech. Before Bitcoin, I sold computer memory. I started a company called memorydealers.com. I remember when I started this, I was selling eight megabyte memory modules, not eight gigabyte, not eight terabyte, eight megabyte memory modules, and they were $650 each. Today, those same eight megabyte modules are absolute garbage. You have to pay someone to take them away and throw them away. And today, people are worried, oh, how could blocks ever be 100 megabytes or a gigabyte in the future? That seems so big and crazy. When I was selling these eight megabyte memory modules for $650 each, the fact that I could buy an eight gigabyte flash card today for less than $8, that's just crazy, right? That seemed crazy at the time, but today here, it's not that big of a deal. And in the future, it's not going to be a big deal either. Well, I know that there are many who would agree with you, and it will be, of course, very interesting to see how things play out, which leads me to ask, okay, so Bitcoin arguably can be viewed as the first technological innovation to really give people an idea of how all the things could be decentralized. And so it's really just a surprise after a surprise to see how we humans are reacting to this totally new thing, which is where like, hey, nobody's in charge, but everybody's individual action certainly exerts influence. What would you say has surprised you most in this new decentralization of all the things? I think the variety of new ways that people have figured out how to use this technology is the most surprising. When I first got excited about Bitcoin, it was simply on the monetary side. This was a tool to separate money from state and give people 100% complete control over their own money. And I think that's still incredibly exciting and incredibly wonderful for the world. But now people are figuring out how to do all sorts of other amazing things that are good for the world with this same technology. So I guess the thing that surprises me the most is what a wide variety of things people are figuring out how to do with this technology. And they're figuring out, you know, more and more every week it seems like. So what an exciting time to be alive and to be a part of this. We had the Industrial Revolution previously, maybe we're in the midst of the Blockchain Revolution right now that's going to change the way all society works. You know, it's sure seeming like that. Speaking of alternative applications, I suppose this is still a currency-based application, but I would like to hear a bit more about your website, Bitcoin Bounty Hunter, because that I think is just interesting and tell us about it. Yeah, so it all started, I don't know, a year and a half ago or so. Some bad person with a bad set of morals on the internet contacted me and said that he was going to send the SWAT team to my parents' house and have them held at gunpoint by the police, by lying to the police that there's a hostage situation or whatever, and was threatening to do all sorts of bad things to me and my family, and was threatening to plant drugs in my suitcase and get me arrested for that, and just all sorts of crazy bad stuff, unless I paid them $20,000 in Bitcoin, then they promised that they would leave me alone. But of course, like people that are willing to threaten and extort people like that, why would I trust this person to leave me alone if I were to pay them? So rather than pay this person the money, the $20,000 that they were demanding in Bitcoin, I set up a website called BitcoinBountyHunter.com and offered the exact same amount, $20,000 for information that leads to the person's arrest and conviction. And one of the really exciting things that's going on with that website now is there's multiple different bounties from people that have committed crimes arrested. And one of the ones was DDoS for Bitcoin, who was a bad guy that was going around threatening all sorts of people. There's currently 110 Bitcoin bounty for that person's arrest and conviction up there, which is at the time we're talking right now, like $45,000 or so. And the person was arrested maybe a couple weeks ago now, and we're waiting for the trial or the plea to happen, but it's really exciting. And I've emailed back and forth a bit with the person that turned the criminal in and they emailed back and forth a little bit with the arresting police agency. And the guy said very clearly it was like the bounty that motivated him to turn in this guy, whereas if there wasn't a bounty maybe he wouldn't have marked out his friend or associate or whatever their relationship was, but I'm keeping a close eye on that and I think that's really exciting that it looks like the first arrest has taken place directly because of this bounty. Wow. Well incentives do indeed work. They sure do, as we see in the free market with all sorts of things. My goodness. And in addition to BitcoinBountyHunter.com, which has just successfully outed someone who was DDozing people as you say, you also compete quite effectively in the media space. You purchased and began running the outlet Bitcoin.com. Which is not only news, but you also have forums there. You hosted, I believe it was being called the world's largest AMA ever. And then you're also, you started a subreddit, the RBTC subreddit. So tell us a bit about your motivations to begin competing in the news and media space as well. I kind of got thrown into that one again, to be honest. So I wound up in control of Bitcoin.com and had less Bitcoins because of it, but that was okay. But initially I had tried to partner with a couple of different businesses and wanted them to run it and manage it because it's an incredibly powerful tool for new people that are brand new to Bitcoin and don't understand that there is no official Bitcoin CEO or no official Bitcoin website. You're not the CEO of Bitcoin? I'm not and there is nobody. I know you know that, but lots of people that are new to Bitcoin don't realize that. And lots of these people, they hear about Bitcoin in the news somewhere and they head right on over to Bitcoin.com because they just assumed that must be the official website for the official Bitcoin company. And so what I'm trying to do now is build a website that's really, really useful to these people who are brand new to Bitcoin to figure out what this is all about and why it's important to them in their lives to be useful for them in their lives. And then I also wanted to be useful to people who are doing with Bitcoin all day every day and I know that they already are very knowledgeable about it because we have news for those sorts of people. We have forums. We have something that I've been trying to launch for like two months now and as soon as I can get an EV SSL certificate for an onion domain, we'll launch that. But I'm having a bit of a trouble putting pressure on did you start to do that or Dunham Bradstreet to list something as simple as a phone number on a corporate registration thing they keep track of but that's a whole other complaint. But we have lots of exciting stuff in the works of Bitcoin.com. So we have quite a team that's developed. It's working on it full time. We have a bunch of price charts that just launched recently. We have lots and lots of stuff. So check back all the time. There's tons of stuff happening over there all the time. So Bitcoin.com. I think a lot of people that are experienced in the Bitcoin space maybe aren't really fully aware of that website yet and all the stuff that we have over there. But we have lots of great things. So go over there and start clicking around. There's lots of stuff and there's new stuff being added just about every day. All right. Well, I want to shift gears momentarily to perhaps something that more people associate with your persona as Bitcoin Jesus, which is to say that you have remarked several times in the past and even made comments on well publicized documentaries such as the VPRO documentary that you believe that Bitcoin and cryptocurrency has, if mass adopted, has the power to end war. Why do you believe that? So people are always going to fight and argue and be upset with other people. But if you look around the world, the number of, you know, average Joe murdering some other average Joe, yeah, that happens sometimes. But that's nothing compared to wars waged by government where they drop nuclear weapons on people, where they round up people by the millions and send them off to concentration camps, where they intentionally give blankets infected with smallpox to other people to kill them. Like these are government programs doing this sort of thing and all of those are funded either by direct taxation or by inflation and Bitcoin makes the inflation part by government's impossible and makes direct taxation a lot more difficult for them. And what a wonderful, wonderful thing. And if you look around the world, governments are causing all sorts of problems. They're holding back businesses from being able to produce as much wealth and make the world a better place. And they're restricting Uber from being able to give people rides where they want to go. They're restricting Walmart from being able to sell people, you know, products that they need in their lives. It's just insane when you look around that. And suddenly Bitcoin and this whole ecosystem that's developing strips away of these controlling bodies' ability to control. And if you think about it, you know, if you're living in the U.S., let's say, you know, let's say you live in California, none of the politicians in Washington, D.C. or in Sacramento have ever met you. They don't know anything about your life whatsoever, yet they constantly demand and threaten you and say that you have to obey their laws and their rules. And if you don't obey them, they'll send you to jail for it. And people just go about their lives thinking, yeah, that's just fine. Those are the people in government and they're doing that. But, like, you've never met them. They don't know about you. Why should they have any say in your life whatsoever? If you were to send those people threatening letters in the mail saying that they have to give you 30% of their income and they have to obey your rules and your laws, they would think you're an absolute nutcase for sending them those letters. But if you think about it, they're doing the exact same thing. And when it comes down to it, those people are nutcases for sending letters to hundreds of millions of other strangers around the country and demanding that they obey their laws and their rules and they'll send them to jail if they don't. It's madness what we have now. And Bitcoin's about to put the entire world on a level playing field where these strangers in far off cities no longer have the ability or the power to control people living in other parts of the world. And I think that's a wonderful thing for all of humankind and it's going to lead to a much more peaceful and prosperous society for everybody. So what's not to be excited about that? I mean, when you put it that way, I guess I can't think of anything not to be excited about. Well, to finish, I want to ask you outside of the Bitcoin realm because I know that you are an investor in many projects. What in particular has you excited right now outside of Bitcoin? So a lot of people maybe are under the impression that I was an angel investor before Bitcoin and that's what I was doing. I was a CEO of a tech company selling networking equipment and computer memory and I'd never made any investments ever in any sort of startup ever until I discovered Bitcoin and then I'd poured all the money that I had earned from my previous business into Bitcoin and Bitcoin startups and even to this day that's the only sort of thing that I've invested in. One that I'm particularly interested and excited about because I think it has the benefit of really impacting the world in a positive way is BitcoinHiveMind.com which is a decentralized prediction market which is really exciting and basically what it has the net effect of doing is with this tool we'll be able to harness the wisdom of crowds and it basically gives us it's almost like a window into the future where we can have all these experts that know about a particular topic think what they can bet with real money if we take this particular action today what is the likely outcome tomorrow or next year based on this action today. It's just such an amazingly powerful tool so that all of humanity can figure out what actions we should take today in order to achieve a particular set of ends tomorrow and nothing like that's been allowed to exist before. People try to set up things like that there were companies like Intrade and this and that but governments really didn't like that sort of thing because not only can they be used as a window into the future where you can see what's going to happen they can also be used as a tool to affect the future as well and governments want to be in control of everything and they want to take a big grip on it but what an exciting technology so for people that are just hearing about that are interested in this take a look at bitcoinhivemind.com I think that's really exciting and another one I just love because it brings new people to Bitcoin all the time is purse.io you can get 20 or 30% off every single purchase at Amazon that should get everybody excited about Bitcoin even if you don't care about monetary policy or moral philosophy or any of the other stuff that I'm talking about even if you love homes on people in foreign countries with your tax dollars you should still love purse.io because you can get 20 or 30% off every single purchase at Amazon so take a look at that if you haven't as well it's really easy purse.io is the website for that nice and now are predictions already being placed at Bitcoin Hivemind yet or is that a to come thing? it's a to come thing in the very very very near future and we're getting pretty darn close there I mean it would certainly be as you say like such a glimpse into the future to see experts or otherwise interested parties really like placing their money where their mouth is right it's like isn't that the thing about prediction markets they make it so that talk can't be cheap anymore like talk becomes price that's not a word costly there's a cost to associate with it and you're not going to risk your own money unless you genuinely think what you're thinking is right so there's a million and one people on the internet that will have a spouse all sorts of opinions about this or that but I think a lot of them wouldn't be as confident of their position or what they're saying if they didn't have to actually put some money on the line and that's what makes monetarily based prediction markets so incredibly powerful is that there's a financial incentive for you to be right there and what an incredibly powerful tool for all of humankind and the guy behind that project is a super super smart guy and as are a lot of people in the big point space but I'm really excited about that project in particular as well and I'm excited to see a launch. Well I can see why because it also ties back into your stance against war because the people who wage wars it seems that they profit whether they win or lose the wars regardless of how much destruction there is the people waging the war always profit and so they're not at all putting their money where their mouth is so to speak and so I really see a sort of circuitous, I see a pattern in the things that you support and yeah thanks so much for giving me your time and sharing of your projects. Always my pleasure thanks so much. Today's episode is brought to you by Bitshares a currency with a decentralized exchange built right into its wallet where you can trade user-issued tokens as well as asset-pegged smart coins all while holding your private keys the entire time. You're also invited to participate in the upcoming Bitshares liquidity event on February 29th. 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