Jay Addison Technical and Media Advisor for CryptoBiz Magazine interviews David Smith, Bitcoin Investor, Bitcoin Bulls. David has been interviewed for CBS MoneyWatch and USA Today spreading the word about bitcoin. David Smith owns Bitcoin Bulls, a website helping bitcoin investors mitigate risks and access opportunities.
Transcript
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this is Jay Addison live from Las Vegas at inside bitcoin's convention we're here with David Smith a Bitcoin evangelist David how you doing today I'm doing pretty well I'm excited to be here that's fantastic so David tell us first of all about your two websites and I I know you've got one called so what's Bitcoin and another one called Bitcoin Bulls give us a bit of a description of what you do and what services you offer on those great so what's Bitcoin is for people who are brand new to bitcoin it explains Bitcoin in plain English so people can understand how how Bitcoin can Empower people that's fantastic and Bitcoin Bulls is for people who already are into Bitcoin they believe in Bitcoin they they think bitcoin's going to change the world be the most empowering Force since the internet and like me they're holding Bitcoins probably and it's good to when you're holding an asset to get a return on that asset if you can right and so on bitcoin Bulls I have articles where I talk about the various Services where I'm trying to get a return on my Bitcoins fantastic plus I can you know not only be long Bitcoins and from Price appreciation that I expect to occur but also benefit from from loaning out those Bitcoins so when somebody comes to let's say the so what's Bitcoin which is the educational site yes is there cost or is that all free that's all free Fant me giving back to the community You Beautiful been happy so happy to be part of this community and it just helps to give back and and I believe that Bitcoin is the most empowering Force since the internet I think it's going to do so much to change the world but it can't change anybody's life if they don't understand what it is yeah that's for sure a lot of people feel they've missed the chance for the huge gains on bitcoin do you think we'll ever see something like 2013 happen again I think we're gonna Bitcoin I think is in for some serious appreciation you know I believe it's going to be the most empowering Force since the internet today bitcoin's monetary base is around 5 billion if it gets as big as the internet you know we're talking trillions of dollars that's for sure so we're talking about thousands of times Returns on people's money and the thing about the internet you know there were a lot of rich people that got rich or entrepreneurs who got rich but the thing about Bitcoin is anybody can make a lot of money on their Bitcoins anybody can participate you don't have to be an entrepreneur in other words or technical even or a financi here you know you don't have to be a venture capitalist with millions of dollars um so you know somebody who's who's in high school or something like that can put some of their money towards Bitcoin and they can in invest in that and if it goes up a thousand times you know they made a thousand times in their money that's but during the internet boom if you were working you know you know some job uh an internship at a a supermarket or something like that you couldn't invest in Netscape you couldn't invest in Microsoft and you couldn't get those huge returns that were there for for the rich people and and I think that shows the power of Bitcoin how it is empowering you know it takes the financial tools that are typically just for people that have lots of money and it brings it to anybody that just has an internet connection yeah that's for sure it's really a great thing isn't it yeah plus it's plus the decentralization in the community the community is huge I mean even for us up in Vancouver I mean everybody's really involved and just like us and you promoting it and trying to educate people and bring in you know the common person right so it's very exciting other than Bitcoin what coins have you invested in I've invested some money in ethereum I invested some money in Aurora coin I so I invested in substantial amounts in maybe five or 10 other coins just to I got them for free or I just or something or they look interesting I mean some of these have got some pretty cool things behind the technology and that kind of stuff so when we're looking at altcoins as well to determine what might have value in the future there's really some great things coming out I mean yesterday we had some great interviews with some guys that had projects on the go that were really outstanding so it's it's going to be very exciting the next the next year even because it's going pretty quick it's going to be really really exciting absolutely yeah and it's really cool with these with these alt coins there's so much competition in the space and that's why I'm really concerned about you know the regulations because if we have these regulations it's really going to slow things down like iOS 8 was just released and there's already a Bitcoin wallet where you can use the ios8 touch ID feature to to secure your Bitcoins for your purchases you know when's Chase Morgan U JP Morgan Chase going to have that feature probably not for two years but Bitcoin had it I don't know is it two weeks after iOS launched because there's so much competition yeah and it just really raises the bar for the consumers it really brings so much value to the ecosystem and getting back to your point about the altcoins that's so cool too because there's all all kinds of people trying out different forms of monetary policy different features and and everybody can learn is learning what everybody else is doing everybody's got to compete to have the best product because it's all Choice driven so if you don't have the best product people just switch off of you and go to the next one and so consumers are really creating a great value right now that's for sure now the altcoin markets are even more volatile than Bitcoin and people have seen huge Capital returns what's your approach to deciding what to invest in so I'm primarily a Bitcoin guy I think the the altcoins are are interested interesting but I think most of them have will not survive yeah I think there's going to be a lot of consolidation that we're going to see I know some people may have made a lot of money on altcoin some people lost a lot of money but Bitcoin really has a huge ecosystem Advantage it sure does does and I think it's going to be really hard for those altcoins to overcome it if anybody was to launch a product today so one one of the problems with Bitcoin is you know there's only maybe a few million people in the world who use it which is essentially 0% of the population but that's still way more than any of these alt coins yes and so somebody could you know for WhatsApp decided to use Litecoin or something like that you they could really get a lot of Litecoin get a lot of users really quickly but if WhatsApp did that for their 500 million users it would really be a disservice to those 500 million users because now they can't do as much with their Litecoin you know they can't use it at coinbase they can't use it at Circle they can't use it at bit Reserve they can't use it at you know the thousands of other places you can use Bitcoin yes and so why would WhatsApp go with one of those altcoins so I think it's going to be this reinforcing Loop where it's just going to be more and more like that Bitcoin is going to win well that sort of goes to my next question and that is that because as we see the price going up and down in Bitcoin what do you think is holding Bitcoin back in the Western World you know in the Western World I think it's a a couple things I think one people don't know about it and then two we have really great financial tools here and so so it's not as as sort of needed as it might be in some of the sort of third world countries yeah yeah today you know I can't think of one reason why my dad would want to actually use Bitcoin you know why would he want to go log on to a website buy Bitcoins from his bank to then go and spend it at dell.com yes an extra transaction and an extra cost yeah it just takes more time and it's annoying and so I think for the Western world today the only reason I told my dad to buy Bitcoin is as a as a speculating on that the future it's going be worth a lot more yes now if my dad was doing something internationally you know then I think there is a real opportunity today for remittances or you know paying suppliers overseas or taking money overseas or opening up his Wares to take money from anybody in the world yeah certainly more efficient that's for sure yeah yeah it gets rid of the fraud it gets rid of chargebacks and things like that but I think there will be killer apps in the US you know I think any day you know any day it could happen next year who knows but sometime somebody's going to figure out a real killer app and all of a sudden you know all everybody's going to want Bitcoin they might not even know what it is or they might not even know they're using it but you know something with like a WhatsApp or SnapChat or Pinterest they're going to incorporate Bitcoin somehow and then people people are going to be like oh wow you know I need this because it lets them do something that you know helps them engage or helps them yeah that makes sense I could probably see that coming yeah microtransactions is another really interesting one that might help the Western world but the real you know the the real empowerment and Bitcoin is the you know the most empowering technology since the internet is going to come in in the other countries in the developing worlds in Africa or in South America you know places where where they have horrible monetary systems or they don't have banking systems that they can use or that they're you know governments mismanage their wealth and destroy their wealth all the time and so just like here in the US you know Twitter's nice and it's fun or it's educational it's useful but it's not life-changing for anybody in America you know nobody's going to be like have their life Chang turn your Twitter off it you're going to still keep going on your daily but but that's different overseas you know they're using it to to to for political change and for political upheaval you know in Arab Springs things like that and that's what Bitcoin you know that those are the the those are the people whose lives that can really change you know if I was in in Africa today I could I could be delivering services to the you know people in the US and charging us prices and and being all paid in Bitcoin but without Bitcoin you know how would I do that you know maybe through like a 99 designs or something like that but then there's fees and all that but yeah just opens up so much opportunity for people to do exactly what they want to do it sure does and for people that haven't done a transaction I bought a um a crypto card online the other day and buying with Bitcoin is so fast it's so easy and it's so inexpensive it's unbelievable it was actually the most Pleasant transaction that I've ever had I mean it was just instantaneous yeah actually I have trouble with credit cards um when I when I booked my hotel room here with the Flamingo in Las Vegas and apparently somehow in the credit card process I thought I paid and I was on some confirmation page I thought I was all done but apparently I wasn't and so when I got here I didn't have a room oh no but you know if it would have been Bitcoin I would have known right away you know it's like boom I sent the money I knew this happened but with a credit card I was like Oh I thought it got charged and of course I don't want to go and look at my bank statement or whatever oh did it really charged and Bitcoin I would have known and to your point about the ease of use especially with circle now um this morning I I saw you there was this big uh bear whale that people call him he he was trying to crash the price of Bitcoin the other day but all the good bitcoiners slayed this bear whale and so there's a really cool poster that I saw this morning and I wanted to buy it and the guy's selling it in Bitcoin uh and so what I did is I went to circle.com I bought $25 worth of bitcoin and I sent it over to pay this guy for his poster you know the whole transaction probably took less than a minute for sure it's amazing and that's just going to get better you know I I I'm pretty sure that Circle pretty soon will have in their in a browser where you instead of me going to circle and actually doing the buy I would have just clicked buy and it just would have done it all behind the scenes and paid that guy in Bitcoin yeah that's for sure it's exciting technology e very very exciting in the past you've said mining is one of the biggest problems with Bitcoin what about it do you think needs to be changed so yeah mining so I've said Bitcoin is the most empowering Force since the internet and and I think mining is the is the piece that could screw that up because Bitcoin is empowering it's also empowering for the miners they get to choose what they want to do so if if like let's say I was the only minor and I was doing all the transactions well for for people who don't know mining serves a purpose you know it it pays the person and they get they get paid for processing all the transactions so it'd be like we every time we swipe a Visa card Visa's process that transaction the miners perform that function yes and when they perform that function they're able to decide which transactions get processed and which don't and I see that as a problem because you know one of the problems Bitcoin was designed to solve was the fact that if I sweep my Visa card I want that money to go there and I don't want any to be able to stop that and today Visa can stop that if I do a Visa transaction but today if none of the miners wanted to process my transactions you're stuck I'm stuck yeah and I don't think it should be that way I think it should be changed where where the network just processes all the transactions and miners don't have choices on on which ones to include and which ones to exclude and I think that would result in a in a better system fantastic well David it's been fantastic talking to you today we really appreciate your time we got one more quick question we ask everyone this question it's kind of a crazy one January 1st 2015 what's the price of Bitcoin wow I know that is the question so I I'll give the wrong answer okay last year at the end of 2013 people were talking about 10K per Bitcoin at the end of this year I remember that no I don't hear anybody talking about that now people are now talking about a $1,000 Bitcoin at the end of 2016 but I think people are completely under selling it now I think people just don't want to be don't want to be wrong you know the the price went from you know just even in the past what month has dropped 50% or something like that I could see it at 50% tomorrow there are so many exciting things that are in the works second Market saying that they're going to have an exchange traded fund available this year I I know lots of people who have lots of money and they're talking a big game about putting hundreds of millions of dollars into this system so I don't see it unreasonable still as hitting 10,000 at the end of this year but I think it's all dependent on factors I think I think it's going to be a wide range you know I could see it at the end of this year being at 300 I could see it at the end of this year being at at 10,000 so I'll go I'll go out and I'll say $5,000 per Bitcoin January 1st 2015 is my guest David Smith thank you very much it's been fantastic talking to you today anybody wants to learn more from David So whats bitcoin.com and Bitcoin bus.net okay sounds great thanks kindly thank you this is Jay Addison from Crypt Biz magazine live from meckler media's inside Bitcoins conference in Las Vegas remember to subscribe to Crypt Biz magazine at cryptopm mag.com follow us on Twitter at Crypt magag thanks for joining us and learn more at cryptopm magazine.com