LET’S TALK BITCOINEpisode 103 – Seek and Find

Participants:

Adam B. Levine (AL) – HostStephanie Murphy (SM – Co-hostDavid Irvine (DI) – Founder of MaidSafeTatiana Moroz (TM) – Singer, songwriterTrace Mayer (TM) – Entrepreneur, investor, author of ‘The Great Credit Contraction’

AL: Today is April 22nd 2014 and this is Episode 103. This program is intended for informational and educational purposes only. Cryptocurrency is a new field of study. Consult your local futurist, lawyer and investment advisor before making any decisions whatsoever for yourself.

Welcome to Let’s Talk Bitcoin, a twice weekly show about the ideas, people and projects building the digital economy and the future of money.

My name is Adam B. Levine and today we’re hanging out with Stephanie at MediaBistro’s recent Inside Bitcoins New York event. Tatiana Moroz is a singer, songwriter and friend of mine. I told her about the Artistcoin idea we’ve discussed previously on the show and, with the help of the folks at Mastercoin, decided to take the plunge as one of the very first. “It’s sort of like a crowd sale of my future work and the content that I create.” Stephanie caught up with Tatiana to talk innovation and the Artistcoin space and what comes next.

“I help fund BitPay, Armory and Kraken. Those are the three that I’m helping incubate, and working with, and funding and with Armory, we’ll building out the actual foundation where you can secure your private keys.” We close up today’s episode with early investor Trace Mayer. He and Stephanie talk origins and outcomes, the importance of secure, open source infrastructure and the projects he spends his time on.

But first, you might have heard of a little thing called the decentralized internet. No? Meet David Irvine. One of the minds behind the MaidSafe project. “For instance, if you had robots, you could teach one French, then they would all know French in the world, immediately. If you teach one how to do CPR, they all know how to do CPR.”

It’s another long one. Let’s get into it. [1:46]

____________________________________________

Stephanie Murphy interview with David Irvine

SM: This is Stephanie from Let’s Talk Bitcoin. I’m here at the Inside Bitcoins New York conference and it’s my great pleasure to talk with David Irvine. He is the founder of MaidSafe, the CEO and founder of MaidSafe. [2:03]

DI: Hi Stephanie. Nice to see you. [2:05]

SM: Thank you so much for being on Let’s Talk Bitcoin. David, everybody here that I’ve talked to yesterday and today is talking about MaidSafe, like there’s a big buzz about it. Everybody’s excited about it and I want to know what it is, for somebody who’s never heard of it, your tagline is sort of you’re decentralizing the internet. MaidSafe is going to do for data what Bitcoin does for trade. Tell me more about what MaidSafe actually is. [2:31]

DI: It basically is what we say it is. It’s the decentralization of all internet services. It all started many years ago, just before 2006, when we looked at the internet and thought this is quite a strange thing because all of the computers in the world are connected to every other computer but for me to speak to you, I have to get permission from Google, or whatever, and information goes from me to them to you and maybe they let me in and maybe they don’t let me in. Maybe they monitor my information, maybe they don’t. We thought this is very strange and I took a couple of years to think about it. It was quite interesting because I’m a kind of Richard Feynman fan and one of his statements is: If you’re doing something that you can’t find in nature, it’s wrong. Then realized in 13 ½ billion years, nature had never created a server-based infrastructure like we have on the internet today. Then, I looked at the computers and said if you actually take all the computers and just connect them together, it’s much more powerful than any of these large organizations could ever dream of. There’s more storage, there’s more CPU capability. I looked back at what we have and thought why should I have to ask anyone to be able to communicate with anyone else? Why can’t I just do it because it belongs to us all? Then realized that if all of the computers connect together and we’re supplying all that computing resource, then the people should have full rights to use that. The deal of joining the internet shouldn’t be between you and a third party company; it should be between you and the internet. We kind of figured what we have to do is get all the computers to join together in some kind of global cyber brain – a bit like the blockchain does for trade, is really get all the computers together in a manner that they could provide all of the world’s resources to every individual person. That’s really where the MaidSafe story started and then it took a couple of years to pull it all together. I had to disappear off for eight months to a place that didn’t speak English so that I could try and calculate some of this stuff. [4:41]

SM: Uh huh. [4:42]

DI: I knew it was going to be calculable. People would say – Hey, you’re insane. Computers go off and on all the time. There’s hackers there and there’s people spying on you and all the rest of it. You’ll never be able to do it. That to me was a challenge that I loved so I went away and did this. It was quite interesting because there’s a few really hard things that you’ve got to solve. Three main things – one is, how do you make data so secure that

nobody can read it except you? How would you store that data on multiple computers, which switch off and on the whole time? The second part was really – What does this cyber brain do? What does it look like? How can all the computers recognize each other to be able to tell is a computer good or bad? Is it doing a good job or a bad job? That autonomous network was a very difficult part of it, so we did that. The last problem which was probably the toughest one was – OK, we’ve got highly encrypted data on a network that’s autonomous and looks after itself. How do you log in to it? You’re a person looking at this network, so there are no servers, there’s no location for you to send a message to, to say – Let me in. That’s where we had to come up with a self-authentication mechanism which is really good because you store a piece of information at a known location only to you on the network that you can download from any computer, if you ask for that location. That turns the computer you’re working on into your computer. [6:18]

SM: OK. The location where the data is stored becomes analogous to a private key that you have to have in order to access your data and it’s only known to you? [6:28]

DI: Yes, very similar to that. How you create that almost private key is you put in a couple of passwords that only you know and the client software will manipulate the information you give it and download from that key space some information and then another part of your login decrypts that information locally. That means the decision to store your account information is completely yours. Logging in or creating an account on a MaidSafe network is the exact same screen. You’d put in a couple of passwords, you’re creating an account, or you’re put in a couple of passwords and you’re retrieving an account. That means, really, you can walk up to any computer or take any mobile phone, login and it becomes your mobile phone or your computer for the time you’re using it and then you walk away. I think that’s probably one of the most attractive things about the system is the deal is between you and the network and nobody else. You join when you want and you don’t join when you don’t want to. The control is completely yours. I think this is one of the issues with society these days that if you want to make somebody very stressed, you take away their control. We do that in Guantanamo Bay; we take away people’s rights and put them under intense stress. That happens on the internet because you can be banned off the internet if you say something somebody doesn’t like. This system, when you join, nobody knows you’ve joined. The network is aware that you’re there and it can communicate your information to your friends that only you know. That’s really the way the internet should have been at the very start and it set out to go that way but it fell by the wayside and companies came in and started trying to monetize this sort of system, and advertise to you, and take your information, and steal your data, and spy on you. That’s not a very natural way to run an internet. It’s a terrible way to run a network. The network should be run for the people by the people and only the people should say what they want to do on it and what they don’t want to do on it. That’s really what MaidSafe has been able to achieve. [8:40]

SM: Wow! We’re not talking, obviously, about logging into a Windows computer or something that runs iOS. This is a completely new operating system with all new apps that have to be built on top of it but really what you’re talking about is a tool that would enable somebody to do anything they could do on a normal computer but it’s all distributed, and

it’s all accessible only to them, and it’s all private, and it’s all under their control, right? [9:08]

DI: Absolutely. At the moment, it will run on top of Windows or iOS, or any operating system. The logical conclusion is it will become a full operating system itself. You’re right. Everything is completely under the control of that person. That’s probably the most important aspect of it is it’s between the individual and the network. That’s exactly who makes that decision and it’s logically correct and that then becomes something that you do find in nature. Ants working together, they don’t go through third parties or if you see flocks of birds flying together, they don’t ask each other, they know how to do this. It’s a much more natural system; it’s a logical system and it uses resources in a much better way because the server-based system, as well as losing all that control and putting people under stress and duress requires data centers. Data centers use about 1.5% of the world’s electricity. That’s increasing at 60% a year. We’ve plugged on to a very natural system, very unnatural items like servers and data centers. The cost of them to the ecology of the planet is just ridiculous. It’s an ecological disaster what we’re doing just now as well as taking control. [10:25]

SM: It can run on top of existing platforms but eventually it’s going to evolve towards its own operating system and all of its own apps and things that people can do. The next question I guess becomes how do you incentivize people to contribute computering resources to this system that would allow everyone to access the MaidSafe type of environment? [10:50]

DI: That’s a really interesting question. We were speaking actually to a guy recently, one of the founders of Kazar and Skype, who had the exact same issue. Why would people keep computers on in the Skype network to keep the Skype network going? What Skype found was people do it because they want the network to exist. What we’ve done has taken that a step further. Like Bitcoin has miners, we have what we call farmers, and these are people’s computers who just connect to the internet and farm, so they’re looking after data and they get paid for looking after the data. [11:25]

SM: Farmers, that’s cute yeah. (Laughter) [11:27]

DI: Farmers. It really means if you download an application, you’ve got MaidSafe running on the Safe Network as it is, our mailing list is building very quickly and people are now calling Safe Network, their network. It’s not MaidSafe anymore, which is one of our goals. If you download an application, like say a storage type application, Dropbox type thing, all of a sudden it’s free. It should be very, very simple to use, it should be stunning, unlimited in space and include private messaging and sharing and what not. Something like Dropbox but much larger, much more powerful and more efficient. Additionally, what that Dropbox type application would have is a wallet on it and you would be downloading this application and think that’s great, I’m really happy, it’s a fantastic experience, I know that I’ve not lost any of my data security, or whatever. Good grief, it’s also paying me money. This free software that you use will actually start paying you money. It will pay money through Safecoin. The reason it is doing that is because you’re providing a resource to the network which is a valuable resource. The second part of that story, I think, is even better. There’s builders on

the network, so the builders are the application developers and if you decided to build a YouTube application, for instance, on the system, or a Dropbox application, or a Google type application, your lock, your wallet address into that application as the builder, as an open source developer, or closed source, it doesn’t matter, as the network itself can tell what applications are successful on it and how much data is being moved about with that application, the application developer also is paid in Safecoin. That really means that we’ve found an answer to the open source conundrum of how do you produce applications in an open source environment – you get paid. [13:25]

SM: Ahh. [13:25]

DI: Rather than saying to open source people, now you must become consultants, or support organization, or something, what we’re really saying to these application developers is, be builders and be very good at building because that’s what you can do. We don’t know if you’re good at customer support, we don’t really care. If you build an application which is stunning and people use it, the network pays you for that. People are getting paid for running an application, builders are being paid for providing applications and the network self-fuels, so it all becomes an ecosystem in its own right. That’s a particularly interesting part for me. It’s pretty exciting actually. What we’re doing today at 4.15pm is we’re announcing this to everyone to let them know. Not only are we announcing this and giving the system away, there’s a crowd funding thing, we’ve no founder shares so MaidSafe don’t get any founder shares from this. MaidSafe is a company, will become a builder on the system. We’re really saying to people, you can run your whole company on here, build fantastic applications and you’ve already got a revenue stream built automatic; you don’t need to think about that. We believe in it so much that we’re staking our whole future on it. We’re becoming builders on the network, just as anyone else can be. I think that’s a brave move but it’s a difficult, probably MaidSafe move, or a Scottish move. If it’s correct and we believe it is correct (strongly believe it is correct), we will eat at the same table as all of the other developers, so we’ll all rejoice in the benefits of being part of this new system. That’s a long term goal for us that we’re able to achieve today. [15:15]

____________________________________________

ADVERT:

Hi everybody. Adam B. Levine here. Before I became the podcast personality you know today, I used to sell environmentally friendly food service packaging, that’s forks, cups and boxes made from or lined with plant-based plastics and materials. What does this have to do with Bitcoin? It’s about creating sustainable systems. It’s about closing the loop. I’m very pleased to present one of my latest projects www.bitcoinpackaging.com. If you’re running a small business and accepting Bitcoin, don’t just turn them into dollars, spend them on what your business needs at www.bitcoinpackaging.com. Pay below market price and get a further 10% off when you pay with Bitcoin. Come kick the tyres and check us out at www.bitcoinpackaging.com. [16:08]

____________________________________________

SM: It’s seems like you’ve already had a lot of interest and buzz from people who are excited to build on top of MaidSafe, or to be farmers, or to just use it. Is it ready? When are we going to be able to start using it? That’s what I’m wondering. [16:40]

DI: Yeah, we were going to actually put the test network up for today’s show, which would have meant taking up a particular shortcut with codes, which I’ve said don’t do that. The test network will be up and running in the next week or so. We expect that to run for maybe four to six weeks and people can test this out. Application developers can start building their applications to the API, then we’ll run test network 2 with Safecoin production, farmers and builders being paid. That, probably, will be another four to six weeks and then, we go on to full launch. Within the next short period of months, the whole system will be up and running. Really, we’re kind of glad that we’re doing it this way because we don’t want to offer a fete accompli to the rest of the industry. We’ve been getting a lot of developers working with us and we’re really saying – How do you want us to work? What’s going to suit you guys the best? There’s, as I say, about 170 of them now working with us and we get great feedback. The next two to three months, we should see the whole thing going through the test phase and then become real. At the point it becomes real, there should be plenty of applications. We’re hoping 10, 20, 30 applications will be released with the network. That’s going to be a very exciting time. [18:00]

SM: You told me that you’ve been thinking about this since 1997 and actively working on it since 2006, is that right? [18:09]

DI: Yeah. [18:09]

SM: How are you feeling getting close to the launch? [18:14]

DI: That’s a strange thing because this is the correct thing and people are excited by it and they’re starting to tell us how excited they are. Personally, I just think – Yeah, that’s good because it’s the right thing to do. This is the correct chain of events and personally, I don’t really get too excited by these kinds of logical things that are correct. It’s a bit like when I was on the lifeboat going out in rough weather to save someone who was in trouble at sea, the closer you got to the casualty and the worse the weather was, the more focused you become. I think this is very similar. This is something that is so important for humanity and us as a species that the team around us, and back in the office in Scotland, are unbelievably focused because we need to do this. This has to happen and it doesn’t have to happen for us, it has to happen for everyone because our impression, we make this free to the whole world, then the other 5 billion that don’t have internet connectivity, or people who are put off the internet, can all come back on it. If someone down in Africa, or some of the other poorer countries, can get access to this data, and access to this communication system and start curing diseases, then that’s a phenomenal return for us. That’s every bit as important as a good solid business model. I think we’re managing to achieve an awful lot in one go here, implementing a very solid business model that should be profitable for the vast amount of developers and the planet, and at the same time giving individuals and humans

the ability to really start collaborating and researching worldwide. That research ability to me is incredibly important. I can’t wait until someone from some unknown place either invents something we didn’t think possible, or cures a disease we couldn’t cure, that’s really good to be the thing that says Project Safe was worth it. We think that should be soon. [20:20]

SM: I’d like to talk a little bit about the structure of the organization. You are someone, clearly, who believes in decentralization all the way. Anything that can be decentralized should be decentralized and right now, as I understand it, MaidSafe is sort of structured as a company where there’s a non-profit entity that owns about half of it, and then 30% is owned by the employees, and then the other 20% I’m not clear on. [20:50]

DI: That’s private investors. We had to raise about $5 million dollars to get here. We did that through friends and family that we showed the story to and we told them the story and it was quite interesting because away at the start, I do a presentation, a whiteboard that explains what this is, it takes about 4 hours but I do tell a couple of jokes, so it’s not too bad... (laughter) ...100% of the people who have seen that presentation and invested in us and believed in us. [21:19]

SM: Wow! [21:20]

DI: That’s why we can remember the date 22nd February 2006. People started believing enough in this that they gave up money to allow us to do it. We do intend to give them phenomenal returns but the way that it’s structured is for them to get phenomenal returns, everyone involved with the project, even companies we’ve not met yet, should get the same phenomenal return. That’s a pretty decentralized way to look at things. I think, personally, I believe you get much more strength by giving, so the more you give away, the stronger you become. Not being completely money driven to the extent of wanting to rob people of their wealth, but looking at providing value for me, is a really essential way to work. The more value you can provide to the more people, the greater the collective wealth. To become part of a society that are as wealthy as each other seems to me to be quite sensible because if you’re the flower in the field that grows taller than any other one, you’ll just get blown over by the wind. You’re better to share a bit out and let all your friends grow with you. When you do that, you maintain stable relationships. That, I think, is crucial to people’s own ability to live in a happy manner. There’s no point in going to bed rich and sad. You go to bed very comfortable and with lots of friends. I don’t think all your friends should go to bed with you but...you know (laughter) that’s what our outlook, my outlook in life is. Incentivize as many people as possible and give them as great a return as possible. Also, a feeling of inclusion so it’s not just putting money on a horse and getting a good return on that, this feeling of inclusion and saying – Here’s your return, it’s whatever multiple times your investment but potentially, we’ve saved lives here. We may have changed things for the better for a great many people, so be happy about what you’ve done. It’s almost like giving to charity but getting a return from it. That’s really what we’re striving for with MaidSafe and it seems to be paying off for us now. [23:33]

SM: Do you consider MaidSafe sort of a DAO, a decentralized autonomous organization, or is it going to that direction in the future? [23:43]

DI: I think the way I see MaidSafe is, there’ll be lots of MaidSafes, which won’t have anything to do with us or our investors. There’ll be lots of MaidSafe type companies doing pretty much the same work that we’re doing and they’ll benefit as much as we’ll benefit. I see decentralization that way i.e. one of the things we’re looking to do is take CODA, for instance, and we’ve got a huge portfolio of intellectual property rights, and trademarks, and patents, and what not, and really place them with CODA, so that we can start sharing them with the whole community, so that we all become protected. I think Genghis Khan was able to take over most of the world because he really persuaded people that it was a great idea. He couldn’t have done it on his own. Big changing events in the world require as much cooperation with as many people as possible and this is really the way that we’re looking to go. The internet is a $5 trillion marketplace. There’s certainly plenty of revenue to make as many people comfortable as possible, but more importantly, there’s revenue to enable people to start contributing to society. That there is key. If someone, for instance, was to cure a cancer that you were eventually going to get, it would be very valuable for us. There’s a lot of ways of looking at decentralization of decentralized companies and I think you can have companies which are small, don’t grow too large and replicate those companies. For a lot of software developing and research into medical things, it requires people in the same office with whiteboards, debating and arguing, so I think there’s a halfway house for me that everybody can’t be on Skype, trying to talk about very in depth things. Lots of small companies distributed about is the target that we’re aiming for. [25:44]

SM: Paint a picture for me in, maybe, five years. Someone’s going to log into a decentralized computer or, perhaps, phone, or tablet, or something like that with just a couple of passwords. They’ll be able to communicate with their friends anywhere in the world, they’ll be able to send and receive Bitcoin payments, they’ll be able to store their data, access all their files that they’ve ever created, do other types of social networking, encrypted email perhaps, messaging. Tell me what that’s going to be like, or what else you see people being able to do. [26:23]

DI: I think that’s only the start. I think that will happen within a year. The current internet services will be replaced by this and that’s OK. It’s not particularly exciting. It may be great that we’ve all got this privacy, security and freedom but what MaidSafe, or Project Safe really allows though, is the next version of applications and communications. There are things that we haven’t even considered today like a decentralized, federated news system, which would be a large thing for me. The news is collected by the people, ranked by the people and then, distributed to every person on the planet through an avatar, in their own language. Really, I would love to see the Israeli and the Palestinian getting the exact same news and then see if they hate each other quite as much. I don’t think they will. I think humans are pretty bred to look after other humans and we’ve made these unnatural borders and political differences between people and propaganda is used to control that. I think we can start removing some of those barriers pretty quickly. Another thing I’m particularly motivated by is distributed autonomous intelligence, where we can have machines that can actually own themselves in Bitcoin for a start, which is an interesting aspect, but communicate and collaborate through this cyber brain which is the MaidSafe network. That collaboration would pretty much be through maths and logic, so these

machines would be coded to try... for instance, if you had robots, you could teach one French, then they would all know French in the world immediately. Or, you can teach one how to do CPR, they all know how to do CPR. That ability for all of these AI type machines, or CT scanners to be able to start pulling together some of the intelligence that we, as humans, couldn’t even imagine, like a CT scanning machine that could read 3 trillion data points per second, talking to all the other CT scanning machines worldwide, we’d be able to identify problems that we could never imagine, no matter how good a doctor we were. Distributed autonomous intelligence is another thing and that’s what I think MaidSafe will allow. It’s not just a replacement of the current, broken and damaged systems and makes them more efficient, it’s the next swathe of things in. These are only some examples that I can dream of at the moment. When you actually include all of society and say – What can you all dream of? I think we’re going to be absolutely amazed. [28:56]

SM: That’s beautiful... (Laughter) ...and I love it but I imagine that there are people out there that don’t want information to be decentralized and don’t want apps and technologies like this to be decentralized. They want the status quo and they want centralization so that they can keep an eye on people and they can have the control, they can remove the control from the individual and have it in centralized institutions, or for themselves. Have you gotten any heat from those kinds of people? Have you encountered any issues or pushback once people realize what you’re trying to do? [29:33]

DI: No, no heat so far. I think that’s to come. I was thinking today, I’ve got this talk at 4.15pm. I was thinking how do you sum all this up and what if somebody says – What’s MaidSafe? What are you trying to do? What’s this Project Safe? I really got it down to one word, and I think its inevitability. This is not something that’s going to be stopped. This is evolution of mankind; this is our brains moving to the next level. It’s the same inevitability as the car, or the internet, or the telephone systems, or penicillin. These things, especially the internet, are starting to make inroads into reducing greed and corruption and starting to make us all a little bit more educated on an even basis, especially with some of the university projects, at the moment. This is inevitable. There’s no point in trying to stop it. It’s very much King Canute’s approach. We’ve got it, it’s open source, it’s available to everyone, there’s many copies of the system about but it is inevitable. You can’t stop evolution and it doesn’t matter... there were Luddites years ago who tried to stop the Industrial Revolution; it doesn’t work. People tried to stop trains, people tried to stop telephones; almost everything. Bitcoin, for instance, is going through that, at the moment. It’s a great thing because mass change to a society requires that there’s pushback, and that pushback is probably important to make sure that we’re doing the correct thing, and we’re doing it regardless. The more people push back, the more secure we’ll make the system, and the more efficient it will become. It actually becomes a self-defeating thing to push against evolution. [31:14]

SM: Wow! I love it. David, where can people go online to find out more about MaidSafe and about you, and how to get involved with the crowd funding? [31:23]

DI: www.MaidSafe.net is the main website for MaidSafe and the crowd funding is www.Safecoin.io. Safecoin is the digital currency that’s underpinning the whole business model for all of the builders and farmers. www.Safecoin.io and www.MaidSafe.net. I have

a blog where I certainly talk about a lot of strange things www.metaquestions.me – more ideas there. [31:52]

SM: Great. David Irvine, thank you so much for talking with me today. This has been really cool and I can’t wait to see where this technology goes and check in with you again, at some point in the future. Thank you so much. [32:04]

DI: Brilliant Stephanie. Thank you very much. [32:06]

____________________________________________

Stephanie Murphy interview with Tatiana Moroz

SM: This is Stephanie from Let’s Talk Bitcoin. We’re here at Inside Bitcoins NYC and I’ve got Tatiana Moroz with me. Hi Tatiana. [32:33]

TM: Hi Stephanie. [32:33]

SM: I’m really excited to chat with you because this is right before... we’re recording this right before your big concert tonight and you’re announcing a special, exciting announcement, right? [32:46]

TM: Yes, we’re announcing the advent of Tatianacoin this evening, so it’s going to be really exciting. I’m doing it with Mastercoin and we’re going to do it at the New York City Bitcoin Center, we’re having a DJ and all sorts of fun stuff, so it should be fun. [32:57]

SM: Cool. What is Tatianacoin? Is this like the beginning of crypto equities? Does it have to do with the fact that you’re a musician? Are they buying equity in your songs? [33:08]

TM: It’s sort of like a crowd sale of my future work and the content that I create. It’s still definitely being developed so things are kind of changing as we go along but the way that we’re looking at it right now, is that people would use it like an Indigogo campaign but instead of just getting prizes, they would also get tokens which they could later redeem with Tatiana stuff and then those tokens would, later on, be interchangeable with other Artistcoins, and other coins created on the Mastercoin protocol. We hope that the value of it will go up as they become more popular and this way, it’s a great way in my opinion, to get the fans involved so they can have a longer term experience with you and also get something back for believing in me early. I’d like to see it extend to a lot of different artists. I’m going to be the guinea pig. [33:57]

SM: That’s really cool. It sounds like you’re one of the first people to do this. [34:01]

TM: I am. [34:03]

SM: Do you have other plans to... are you going to sell concert tickets with it, or are you going to use the blockchain for other purposes related to your work? [34:11]

TM: I literally just started working on this two weeks ago, so the possibilities, in my opinion, are endless. The way that I would like to really be able to help is by serving as that example, then maybe making a model for, especially musicians, to get funded. Something that I found in New York (I used to work at a lot of different recording studios) and the worst people are in the studio and all these great artists, they don’t even have the money to get in there and if they’ve got a few people that are really willing to work with them, I think that this is more of a long term investment in the artist. I want to see that and help revolutionize the music industry. [34:46]

SM: Do you see, in like five years, every artist having their own coin? [34:51]

TM: Five years is pretty soon but I think that yeah, I would like to see different things funded this way and not just artists, in terms of musicians, but what about films, what about video ideas, all sorts of creative endeavors. I’m sure that Mastercoin probably is thinking some more practical companies but for me, I see the possibilities in terms of the creative side. [35:10]

SM: Why did you choose to go through Mastercoin? There are some other protocols available like Counterparty and BitShares. Why did you go with Mastercoin? [35:20]

TM: I have a lot of good advisors and we kind of looked over all the different things that everybody was offering and what I really like about Mastercoin is that they have a team there that I can actually call up and bounce ideas off of. They seem really enthusiastic about it. For me, that person to person experience is really important which you don’t necessarily get with other companies. That’s why I chose Mastercoin. [35:42]

SM: What would somebody have to do to get some of your tokens? Would they have to download the Mastercoin software? What do they have to... how easy is it, basically? [35:54]

TM: I think it’s pretty easy. I think that basically, you would just be going through... Mastercoin has their own wallet, right? We’re not even issuing the coins until after we do the crowd funding thing. What I want to do is make it as easy as possible. [36:05]

SM: Actually, I don’t even know. How do you monetize your work? Do you sell concert tickets? Do you sell albums or songs? How does that work? [36:13]

TM: I never want to cut out the average, regular, old fan, right? This is almost like a super-fan thing. They would get exclusivity; special videos that I don’t necessarily release to the public, maybe a little bit early; they would get discounts on albums; they would get to participate in different contests, where we say – OK, we’ll do this version better or this version better, what’s going to make it onto the album, which album cover do you like better. I mean, I think you can just be creative with it and I haven’t outlined all of that stuff yet but that’s kind of what I’m going to focus on next week. This week, I’m kind of just

getting people excited and getting their feedback about what they would want from that experience, as well. [36:48]

SM: Those are things that you just listed that you don’t do currently but you would like to do and that it would be possible to do with Tatianacoin. [36:55]

TM: I think that this provides me with a lot more structure in terms of making sure that I end up doing things like that. It gives me things to plan and ways to interact with people and, I don’t know, kind of holds me to a certain interaction level because you can get on the road and then, next thing you know, you haven’t written a blog in, I don’t know, two years. (Laughter) Well maybe not that long but you know what I’m saying. I think that having that kind of set date, it’s like a relationship, you want to cultivate that, so this will kind of facilitate that I guess, a little bit more than just – Tune into my show whenever it’s on, and that’s all. [37:28]

SM: Cool. Where can people go online to find out more about the coin and about your music? [37:33]

TM: They can go to www.tatianamoroz.com or www.tatianacoin.com and there’s information on both of those. I’m on Twitter with @queentatiana and YouTube Forever More Tatiana. I’m putting out a bunch of videos on there too. [37:44]

SM: Thank you so much for chatting with me and good luck with your concert tonight. I’ll be there, see you later. [37:49]

TM: Awesome, see you later on. [37:50]

Tatiana singing “Use Bitcoin whenever you pay.... use Bitcoin whenever you pay.... use Bitcoin whenever you pay.”

____________________________________________

ADVERT:

KryptoKit is the world’s first Chrome browser Bitcoin wallet. It’s the easiest, fastest Bitcoin wallet payment system with a simple one click install, it takes just seconds to get your wallet set up and because KryptoKit finds the address and payment for you, there’s no more fussing around or tab switching. KryptoKit is more than just a wallet. It comes with a preloaded PGP encrypted social network, newsfeeds from Reddit and Google, and up to date charts from exchanges. Finally, KryptoKit directory allows you to make two click payments with any of the BitPay merchants. Once you install KryptoKit you won’t need anything else. For more information, or to download KryptoKit, visit www.KryptoKit.com. [38:44]

____________________________________________

ADVERT:

Let’s Talk Bitcoin is heard each week by thousands of people who are participating in the new digital economy. Our listener base of Bitcoin owners, miners, investors, technologists and merchants is growing fast. We offer a limited number of short advertising slots in each show to keep our listeners engaged and to provide maximum impact for our sponsors. If you’d like to talk to us about Let’s Talk Bitcoin, send us an email at sponsors@letstalkbitcoin.com. [39:13]

____________________________________________

Stephanie Murphy interview with Trace Mayer

SM: This is Stephanie for Let’s Talk Bitcoin. I’m here talking with Trace Mayer. Hi Trace. [39:25]

TM: Hey. [39:26]

SM: Welcome to Let’s Talk Bitcoin. [39:28]

TM: Glad to be here. [39:29]

SM: You are pretty famous in the world of people who want their privacy. [39:33]

TM: We launched www.howtovanish.com back in early... well, about mid 2008 and it’s how people take control of their privacy because there are so many threats, like identity theft etc. that can just really wreak havoc on people and cost a lot of money. There are a lot of small, simple things you can do to help protect your privacy and if you’re just conscious of your privacy hygiene – I mean, we take a shower every day. Why don’t we be cognisant of the data and information that we’re leaving around in the world? [40:05]

SM: It’s especially relevant now with, not just the NSA and government spying and all kinds of governments wanting to know what you’re doing so they can tax you and regulate you, but also companies using your information to market stuff to you. [40:20]

TM: Oh yeah... and not just market stuff but Google, for example, got a patent on price discrimination so they’ll use your web browsing history and so will Amazon and from that, they’ll actually serve you a different price. [40:32]

SM: Wow! [40:34]

TM: Yeah, so they can charge you more or charge you less because they have a little bit more knowledge about you. They know what your elasticity of demand is going to be or can, at least, reasonably approximate it. Pretty soon credit cards might be integrated with your health insurance, for example, or they’ll look at your buying patterns there, charge you more health insurance because you bought Dominoes Pizza (I think that was the ad). [40:54]

SM: I hear your credit score can affect the insurance rates that you pay for all kinds of stuff including health insurance. [41:00]

TM: It wouldn’t surprise me. I mean, if I were an insurance company, I’d probably use credit scores because there was actually a study done, like your health and your wealth are the most highly correlated and so, even more than educational level or zip code etc. There is a lot to whether you can responsibly manage your credit and whether you can responsibly manage your health. [41:23]

SM: Wow! [41:24]

TM: For insurance companies, I definitely see why they’d want access to that data information but I don’t necessarily want to give it to them, right? [41:32]

SM: Yeah. [41:33]

TM: Or at least not give it to them without getting a lower premium, which they might not want to give me. [41:38]

SM: They want to give you a higher one because you’ve paid higher for stuff before. [41:42]

TM: If I pay a higher premium, they have more knowledge that decreases the risk, then they can make more profit. People need to understand that their data, their information, all this stuff, it’s valuable. Information can be gleaned from it for pricing signals and corporations who are going to take advantage of it to make their shareholders the most amount of money as they can, if they can. [42:07]

SM: Your background is as an attorney, right? [42:09]

TM: Yeah, accounting, law degree. I don’t practice as an attorney. [42:13]

SM: Tell me how you first got interested in Bitcoin and what excited you about Bitcoin. [42:19]

TM: I came across Bitcoin on the internet way back in the early days, kind of like Roger Ver. [42:24]

SM: What’s the early days? Like 2010, 2011? [42:26]

TM: Maybe even before then because we wrote an article on How to Vanish. Actually, a YouTube video for How to Vanish about Bitcoin which published, I think, January of 2011. Well before that. I was just fascinated with it because it’s pseudoanonymous. I mean you could realize from its architecture with the blockchain - I’ve never considered it anonymous, or something that you’d necessarily want to do illicit things with because it’s relatively easy to, at least, trace transactions. In terms of not having to give a merchant all your information when you’re checking out etc. I’m like – Oh, that’s really cool. Plus, its equity based and there’s no counterparty risk, so I wrote a book in 2008, called the Great Credit Contraction and I see Bitcoin is a potential solution to that. Bitcoin kind of tickled the ears in a lot of ways. [43:24]

SM: Yeah. I’m curious what the reaction was among the readers of your site when you started to get interested in Bitcoin and started writing about it, and so forth. I know you have a beginner’s Bitcoin book that you give away on your website but I can imagine two camps. One who’s really interested in it, perhaps younger people and another who says – Ah, this is a Ponzi scheme. What was it from your readers? [43:46]

TM: A lot of them just didn’t understand it, which I don’t blame them. That’s why I did write the www.FreeBitcoinGuide.com to help people get into Bitcoin, kind of experiment with the technology. Also with my other site, www.RuntoGold.com where I published the Great Credit Contraction, I talked with a lot of the gold bugs and everybody in that niche. Some of them understood it, some of them didn’t. Some of them, I had to walk them through sending their first transaction, like Jeff Berwick for example. I sent him his first Bitcoin transaction, walked him through everything. Tom Woods, Lew Rockwell, Anti-War.com, just a lot of these sites. I eventually just got so fed up with some of the negative resistance that I wrote an article on How to Vanish, why Liberty proponents... why Bitcoin’s a litmus test for whether you’re a Liberty proponent or not. In that article, I made the argument that when you’re paying with a credit card, or giving a donation with a credit card, all that information is, by de facto collected, and archived, databased, stored, searchable. If you’re a problem at the TSA and you want to figure out who to harass, you could just query the database, figure out everybody who’s made a donation at Anti-War.com and a donation to LewRockwell.com, and if the donations have been over $50, they’re automatically screened for secondary inspection with TSA. You could write a query like that. Whether Lew Rockwell and Anti-War.com intend for the information to be used that way, it is able to be used that way, so they’re either intentionally or unintentionally what’s called a honey pot for the intelligence establishment, so they should accept Bitcoin donations because your identity is not necessarily tied directly with the transaction, like with a credit card. It drastically increases the cost on being able to link the two. They can’t just run a query like that. I was like – Ah, that’s kind of cool. (??) autobuyer and very helpful, so we should be embracing this because it makes it more difficult to (??) and get all this various data and information. [46:16]

SM: Right. That’s kind of a history I guess of where you’ve gone with Bitcoin and how you got interested in it but where are you at right now? I think you said you’re excited about multi-signature transactions, right? [46:30]

TM: Yes. With Armory, I helped fund BitPay, Armory and Kraken. Those are the three that I’m helping incubate and working with and funding. With Armory, we’re building out the actual foundation where you can secure your private keys. This is one of the big deals of Bitcoin is you can literally hold the private keys of wealth, of property, yourself. There’s no imminent domain – you hold dominion or control and that’s a very libertarian thing, regardless of whether it’s pseudoanonymity, or trackable, or whatever. You holding the private key is instead of a bank, or the Fed holding the private keys, or the local government holding the private keys, in the case of car, real estate, etc. With this new multi-sig implementation with Armory, we can hold the private keys in cold storage, which I like to say helps us really protect ourselves from the CIA, or NSA, etc. It makes it very secure to hold your bitcoins and with multi-sig, it means that you have to compromise multiple computers too, or multiple seeds. [47:36]

SM: What is multi-sig for somebody who doesn’t know what it is? [47:40]

TM: You’ve got your public key, which is your Bitcoin address and then you have your private key and that would be one of one. With multi-sig, in the Bitcoin protocol, you can actually have it require say two of three, or five of seven, or fifteen of twenty, and so then... [48:02]

SM: Some trading bell going off in the background... (laughter). [48:04]

TM: Yeah, Satoshi Square at Inside Bitcoins... (laughter). If you need, say three of five, then you have to digitally sign with three signatures out of five in order to move the bitcoins, instead of just one signature. You could have that then on five different computers, or however your own personal situation is set up to do. [48:24]

SM: Right, because an individual could potentially be coerced into giving up their private keys, or whatever, even if you’re the only one who holds your private keys. If you’re in a situation of coercion, perhaps and, in order to move any of your bitcoins out of your cold storage life savings, you need three of five people to sign off on it and those three of five people don’t even necessarily know who each other are, then it’s pretty hard to coerce someone into giving up their bitcoins that way. [48:49]

TM: You can definitely build stuff like that. One of the reasons I wanted to get Armory funded and built and everything like this is because from accounting we have a concept called segregation of duties and in order for Wall Street to come in and bring in say, $500 million, they have to feel comfortable that it’s being properly secured – it’s the elephant in the room. In order to do that, with a centralized entity, you have to presume that your employee is malicious. They might be a good person, but you have to presume they’re malicious. In fact, you should probably presume that they’re all malicious. You need to decentralize; you need to distribute the trust among enough people where they’re not likely to collude together, even if coerced. In my case, I don’t say whether I have any bitcoins but even if I did, I would secure them in a way where even if my niece were abducted and my nephew were abducted, maybe we need them at the vault in order to get access to the vault in order to get to the private keys that could actually move the bitcoins. That could be

deep, deep, deep cold storage of bitcoins, and then you might have cold storage of bitcoins, so maybe I can get access to $50,000 worth of bitcoins, or something, pretty easily, but you’re having to trade off security and convenience but if you’re building for institutions or organizations, you have to pretty much presume that everybody’s going to be malicious, so you need to build the system so that they’re not going to be likely to collude. [50:23]

SM: Right, so is this doable now? Is it ready for prime time? [50:27]

TM: Well we have a working demo implementation of Bitcoin Armory with multi-sig cold storage already. I mean, that’s what we’re demoing today. [50:36]

SM: At the Inside Bitcoins? [50:38]

TM: Here at Inside Bitcoins, April 2014. [50:42]

SM: Can someone download that and play around with it? [50:44]

TM: Yeah, you can download it, play around with it. It’s still a little rough round the edges so it’s going to need to get polished off but yeah, it’ll probably be ready for prime time in the next few weeks, or a month or so. That means Wall Street can come in with like big amounts of money and feel comfortable with it... or an insurance company, or a bank. [51:03]

SM: How does that work on the blockchain? Would you be able to see that multiple parties signed off on a certain transaction? [51:09]

TM: Yeah. [51:10]

SM: Would we be able to track if a large financial institution engaged in a multi-signature transaction and say – Oh, this must mean that twelve of the thirteen executives approved this and said that it was OK? [51:24]

TM: You’re probably not necessarily going to see it to that granularity unless you know what exactly is going on behind the scene but you... just a general overview, there is going to be a difference like on the address. Usually, addresses start with a one and the multi-signature addresses they all start with a three. That’s a good way that you can see whether more multi-sig addresses are being used. [51:48]

SM: Mmmm. [51:48]

TM: There are more creative ways that we can distribute keys also where there might be some obfuscation about how many people are signing, who’s signing, etc because we want to have good operational security and part of that is not leaking information. [52:03]

SM: Right. On the other hand though, it’s also an opportunity for transparency, for instance, for companies who want people to be able to see that certain transactions are being approved by the appropriate parties, right? [52:15]

TM: Yeah, like say you wanted to know that your food was coming from wholefoods, you wanted to know that the supply chain were all organic and that they were not sending any money to buy drones, for example, to bomb innocent civilians. You could enforce that all through the blockchain in a very transparent manner. This open source general ledger definitely has an ability to bring more ‘sunshine’; it’s the best disinfectant in a lot of ways. You can enforce a lot of that transparency also in the blockchain and it will be interesting to see what consumers and individuals demand from their service providers. [52:56]

SM: What about smart contracts and smart property? Are you into those at all? [53:01]

TM: I’ve been following it with interest, like the Ethereum Project particularly but, I mean, I think we will be able to do significant stuff with Bitcoin itself but I think a lot of the innovation that’s going to happen around the edges, the innovation without permission that Andreas talks about, it’s going to probably be pushed out of Bitcoin and happen in all coins and then, when it can be, be folded or rolled back into Bitcoin. I think we’re going to see a lot of opportunity outside of Bitcoin, in the altcoins and the other cryptocurrency 2.0 stuff for development and innovation in this area. [53:44]

SM: Do you have any particular altcoins, or 2.0 protocols that you’re following with the most interest, or anything like that? [53:52]

TM: Well, Ethereum is the one that’s got most of my interest but it’s still very much early stage. Currency is just the first application of Bitcoin and you really have to be in this with a long term game plan and so, you look at my investments – there’s Armory, which is the security... you’ve got to be able to secure your bitcoins, there’s BitPay, which is a merchant processing that currency use, there’s Kraken, which is the exchange and then, we got Namecoins on Kraken and Litecoins and... I love this Namecoin concept of decentralizing DNS and using it for authentication and things like that. We have so many different... we have to bring trust back to the internet, especially in this post-Snowden era, where trust has been pretty much completely eviscerated from the internet. We’re going to have to reconstitute the internet; things like MaidSafe, Bitcoin are going to play central roles as additional protocol layers in doing this. At least, I think so. Smart contracts are going to definitely come in to play in all of this but baby steps, you know, we have to take a long term view, I think. This isn’t just going to happen in the next two years. This is going to be like a twenty, thirty year process transitioning into the information age and it’s going to... I think we under appreciate just how much human capital and talent and how complex and technical this work is. People have to be motivated to do that work and what motivates them? How do you motivate them and how do you get the work done, etc? The more complex and technical the work is to do, the harder it is to motivate someone just by writing them a check. That’s where I think that this... ultimately, what we’ve done with Bitcoin is we’ve changed the economics of violence and the internet, and even now with Bitcoin, freedom is more profitable than it’s ever been and it’s only going to get more and more profitable. That’s what, I think, is really exciting is that we’ve literally changed the tectonic plates of the economic calculation of the economics, and that’s going to lead to a whole new world being built, in my opinion. [56:13]

SM: That was great and it’s a great note to end on but I just have one last question which is, are you concerned about people data-mining the blockchain, or any of the potential traceability issues with Bitcoin and how do you recommend people get started exploring taking greater financial privacy measures with their bitcoins? [56:35]

TM: That’s where I think a lot of the altcoins will come into play. There might be on ramps or off ramps, as Andreas has talked about. The blockchain is definitely going to get data-mined. Personally, I haven’t really... I don’t really do a lot of transactions, if I do any transactions at all. From a criminal defence perspective, I can’t confirm or deny whether I’ve done any transactions. You need to prove it. I think people need to... things like CoinJoin and CoinSwap, which introduced increased plausible deniability, Dark Wallet, Darkcoin, Anoncoin, building a lot of this stuff in there, we can’t make Bitcoin all things to all people, all the time. If we’re going to be able to harness this unalterable, unforgeable, digital ledger, which is the first practical implementation of triple entry bookkeeping which is a huge, huge advancement in terms of accounting theory and monetary science, if we’re going to harness that, we can’t necessarily just build into the protocol automatic swapping of coins because then we can’t harness other uses or abilities for that particular resource. We can have a different altcoin that does have that built into it, or we need to be using CoinSwap. Misinformation, disinformation, misdirection, you can put information in the blockchain just like everybody else and so, wild goose chases are a lot of fun. (Laughter) At the end of the day, where are they going to get the resources to continue analyzing and researching all of this stuff and if you just exponentially keep raising the costs on them, intentionally or unintentionally, or whatever, great. (??) to try and sift through. It’s a lot of fun. I kind of look at it from a perspective of you need to be practical, you need to be a realist, but look at the economics and that’s where... it’s when you harness the economics of the situation that you can really begin to cause change because not everybody values freedom. For the most part, people have been able to free ride off of the sacrifices other people have made for the last couple of hundred years, particularly in America. I think that we’re going to be increasingly moving into an era where people are going to have to take... freedom’s going to become increasingly a luxury good and people are going to have to be willing to pay for it and have the human capital and ability to acquire it. It’ll be there for people who want to acquire it. Even here at Inside Bitcoins, Alan Reiner, CEO of Armory, was talking about holding your own private keys and you could tell that a lot of people in the audience didn’t want to hold their own private keys to their own money. [59:22]

SM: Wow! They’re not used to that. [59:24]

TM: When you think about it, two millennia ago, most people were slaves and then five hundred years ago, most people were serfs but we’ve been decentralizing the keys of wealth and property. Most people worked in a factory and then most people worked for a company for thirty years. Now, most people are freelancers. I mean, we’re moving in this direction of more accountability individually. People have credit cards and bank accounts. People are taking a lot more control over their finances whether they intend to or not but this is another step where you’re literally going to be holding the private keys of wealth and property yourself. That means that you can stake out that sovereign, monetary jurisdiction in cyberspace and that’s exciting and Armory is a great tool to be able to do that with. Individuals are going to have to want to do it. You can’t make a slave free – a slave wants to

be a slave? The slave’s going to be a slave. Never before have we had an opportunity to harness these tools of technology to increase our freedom, whether it’s Bitcoin, Namecoin, BitMessage, MaidSafe, KeyPassX, Tor, I2P, Tails, whatever it is, CJDNS, Hyperboria. I mean, we have so many of these tools, people just really have to claim their freedom if they want it. It’s going to be increasingly costly to go after the people that are claiming their freedom. At the end of the day, not all of the buffalo make it across the river but the alligators are going to go after the weakest of the swimmers and if you adapt and grow wings and fly over the river, the alligator’s not going to care about you. [1:01:10]

SM: Mmm. I love it. Alright, where can people connect with you on the internet? [1:01:14]

TM: www.howtovanish.com is a good place, www.runtogold.com and then www.freebitcoinguide.com if you want to get that? [1:01:21]

SM: Trace, thanks so much for being on the show with me. [1:01:23]

TM: Wonderful, thanks Stephanie. [1:01:25]

__________________________________________

CREDITS:

Thanks for listening to Episode 103 of Let’s Talk Bitcoin. Visit us at www.letstalkbitcoin.com for more content, subscribe to our feeds, tip our shows and, of course, try out all the other shows on the LTB network.

Content for this episode was provided by Stephanie Murphy, David Irvine, Tatiana Moroz and Trace Mayer

This episode was edited by Adam B. Levine Music for this episode was provided by Jared Rubens, Tatiana Moroz and Nils Frahm

Any questions or comments? Email adam@letstalkbitcoin.com

Have a good one! [1:02:00]