Jay Addison Technical and Media Advisor interviews Charles Allen, CEO of bitcoinshop.us. In bitcoinshop, they are basically building a universal digital currency eco-system and using the e-commerce platform is an on ramp to do that.
Transcript
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as a Jay Addison McChrystal vis magazine we are live in Las Vegas at inside bitcoins tradeshow and we are here with Charles Allen from Bitcoin shot us let's have an overview of Bitcoin shot us and the whole program you guys have got because I know it's a lot more extensive than we've got here in our questionnaire thanks Jay so what we've got at that Bitcoin shop is we're basically building a universal digital currency ecosystem and using our e-commerce platform as an on-ramp to to do that and on the e-commerce platform side we're effectively building the kayak AV commerce in our new site which we haven't launched yet which we're very excited about that's exciting so what countries do you currently ship to right now we are we're just shipping to the US however we see a huge opportunity in the international markets and that is you know on the drawing boards but right now it's just to the US okay fantastic now your site currently only accepts bitcoins has there been any legal issues around not accepting fiat dollars not at all I mean I think in the long run if I there's no legal issues with not accepting a dollar versus a Bitcoin and let's face it there's tons of companies that accept Bitcoin because it's digital cash the reality is is that the online e-commerce in the u.s. is at 260 billion dollar a year business and the total value of bitcoins today I'm a tyrant with it with the price where it is you know let's call it you know five billion dollars or four billion dollars it's it's peanuts in comparison to the amount of you know dollars moving in e-commerce so when we think about you know how to grow our business obviously looking at other you know payment protocols such as credit cards is something that that's on our minds because this is the long game digital currencies aren't going anywhere and as we seek to build a universal ecosystem we need to make sure that we can onboard as many customers as possible what's the most popular products on the site right now we sell about a hundred and forty thousand products so it's hard to say I don't necessarily look at you know which product sells the most but electronics seem to be popular as a category because you know a lot of the people with bitcoins today tend to be you know techies and and that tends to appeal to them how has the consistently declining price of the Bitcoin affected your sales you know it's had an impact on sales and I think the biggest issue with Bitcoin today is its volatile so it's kind of like if you bought a stock and it tripled then you get to go spend your profits right it's like like we're sitting here in Vegas if you win a lot of money you're a lot more apt to spend your winnings so I think for us in the long run long run it's really not about the price of Bitcoin which is why when I think about other payment processes we're open to that it's you know in the short run it's yeah it has a as an effect just because of the psychology it's you know it viewed more as an investment than a payment protocol but the long run I don't see any any real issue with it I think the volatility will come out of the market to some extent for sure at some point oh now you hold the title of the first publicly traded company with Bitcoin in its name how much has this helped your business and in what ways it's been great in terms of getting media exposure eyeballs that helps obviously drive down customer acquisition cost but more importantly it's helped kind of put us on the map and build out our Universal strategy so though we haven't integrated with you know the with all the partners that we've invested in you know we were the lead investor in go coin which is a payment processor which recently you know announced a deal with PayPal we've integrated with their technology we're also the lead investor and Express coin which is a way to you know buy and sell bitcoins we haven't invested we haven't integrated with them yet but it's on our you know to-do list we were the only strategic investor in Jam which is a multi sig multi currency you know wallet solution we haven't had time to integrate with them but we're an investor we just closed a deal with coin outlet which is a they're the operator of operator and manufacturer of ATMs and we just you know effectively when the deal is all said and done we'll own you know nine point eight percent of the company which would be our biggest investment to date we haven't had time to integrate with them but there's a whole host of synergies and strategies around that investment and lastly we got into mining so if you think about the consumer as the centre of a hub and lots of spokes popping off of that hub and those spokes being on or off ramps into the digital currency ecosystem we basically gone around the and created a partnership with an investment in many of those companies and you know from a public market standpoint if you're interested in Bitcoin at all you can buy bitcoins you can do venture capital which I'll tell you is very hard or you can invest in our company which is a pretty interesting proposition by no means are we you know an investment company but we have exposure to the ecosystem because we want to build a universal platform so it's quite exciting it sounds like your company is a good investment how does somebody invest if they want to call your broker tell them to buy shares the tickers be TCS be TCS fantastic one more question that we have to ask everybody January 1st 2015 what do you think the price of bitcoins gonna be well I have no idea to be III don't know it's a guessing game let's let's go with a thousand because it really is a guessing game it is it is it is a guessing game I'm gonna go with a thousand that sounds fantastic thank you very much Charles Allen from Bitcoin shot us we appreciate your time today all right thanks so much I appreciate it this is Jay Addison from crypto biz magazine live from Meckler media's inside bitcoins conference in Las Vegas 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