Foreign
We are in the midst of a serious financial crisis major financial institutions have teetered on the edge of collapse
And some have failed in the asia market asian investors remain cautious today with many waiting for fresh news on a u.s
proposed
700 u.s billion dollars bailout for the ailing financial sector over 60 people were arrested in new york this morning during
Demonstrations marking the one-year anniversary of the occupy wall street movement
It was in the aftermath of this economic crisis that on october 31 2008
a link to a technical paper appeared on an obscure online mailing list
The paper proposed a radical new form of electronic money
It was to be called bitcoin and it would be distributed over a decentralized network
Its creator was a mysterious figure who went by the name of satoshi nakamoto
Satoshi nakamoto is the guy that invented bitcoin. We don't really know who he is
Maybe he's a guy a girl a group of people. We don't know he created the software
that implements the idea of the paper and in the end of 2010 when the community got
Bigger enough to the project to to stay without him. He totally disappeared from everywhere
Some people claim that he's from the cia
Some other crazy people say it's from the illuminati some other people say it's like aliens
Technology or it's the artificial intelligence from the future. Who knows?
But because it's amazing how one human being can come up with such a brilliant idea
It is a hard
Problem to solve traditionally I send you money through a bank
So the bank is a trusted entity if I give money to the bank and the bank gives you money
Then you trust that the money you receive because you trust the bank. You don't trust me, right?
So if we take away the bank, how do you trust that I giving you money when software and data and files can be copied
A digital cache electronic system a way to transfer value through the internet that doesn't have a government or an enterprise
Or a foundation controlling this technology
Bitcoin is run by the people
From latin america to asia bitcoin began to appear across the world
Within a year of its creation and had become a global movement
The dream was to create a new virtual world where money would flow as freely as information
b
M
Bitcoin took this idea of encrypted communication
And combined it with an electronic accounting book
This digital ledger is distributed to all the computers connected to the bitcoin network
The system was designed so that any new transactions of bitcoin needed first to be verified by a large amount of computing power
This process is known as mining
Is
Is
Depression
Bitcoin captured the imagination of people around the world and is now reaching even the remotest of places
Is this beautiful band we are spreading the word of satoshi all around argentina
Going to small towns and cities
Some people have said, oh you're like an evangelist I like the term because I looked it up eventually
It's like the one that brings the good news
Buenos
Foreign
Computers plugged into the bitcoin network compete with each other to answer highly complex cryptographic puzzles
Whichever miner does the most work to help solve these puzzles has their block of transactions added to the ledger
Each block itself contains a reference to the blocks which came before it
creating an immutable log of accounts or blockchain
The system ensures transactions cannot be altered or copied
The miners who do the most work are rewarded with new bitcoins
Bitcoin unleashed the possibility of global trade free from regulation censorship and legal restrictions
But if this libertarian dream was to become a reality
People needed to be able to easily exchange their existing cash for this new virtual money
The virtual currency bitcoin took another blow today close to 1 million bitcoins have disappeared
After I heard about bitcoin
I got so excited about it. I had to read everything I could possibly find about it and
I went on I guess a bitcoin binge that lasted for about a week and I got so
Sick from lack of sleep. I had to call a friend of mine and ask him to drive me to the hospital
And they gave me some sort of sedative and I passed out for I don't know 18 hours or something slept a lot
And the next step was to start investing in any sort of business I could find
To make bitcoin easier for people to use around the world
I think it was just good luck that I wound up in japan
I needed a way to sponsor my visa. So I had an office selling memory parts
And so I told everybody at the office no more memory. We're focusing on bitcoin now
So one of my guys translated the entire bitcoin white paper, and then we had him translate the entire bitcoin website
into japanese
So we basically helped bring bitcoin to japan. Do you have a bitcoin cash wallet yet?
So the money literally went directly from my phone to your phone. You didn't give your name. You didn't give your email
You didn't give your tax id number it works anywhere in the world that has the internet
I received my first bitcoin ever from what was called a bitcoin faucet when they didn't have much value at all
It was giving maybe a 10 cents worth of bitcoin to people
And it was just so exciting. I got tingles all over my body seeing how this worked and I want
Everybody to be able to experience that
So anytime I meet somebody now I help them set up a bitcoin wallet and I send them some bitcoin
On the bitcoin cash wallet, i'll be right here. All right in 2011 and 2012 and even 2013
Traditional vc firms weren't interested in the space at all
But I knew there was no doubt in my mind. I knew people were going to start using it as money
And here it is the science fiction future is becoming real
I just came here for pizza day. So I wanted to enjoy you know, belgian beer and a little bit of pizza
Pizza day is a first recorded bitcoin payment in uh in history
So in 2010, uh 10 000 btc was paid for two two pizza
That was that only was about 40 bucks. But now if you think about it, it's a lot more money now
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Foreign
Um
The first bitcoin exchange in the world operated out of tokyo from 2011 onwards
It was called mount gox and allowed its users to buy and sell bitcoin online
This is the cross office building in shibuya, which was the headquarters of mount cox at the time
It was one of the biggest bitcoin exchanges and for a few years before that. It was probably the only bitcoin exchange
So the name mount gux, which is kind of a funny sounding name for a financial company
it comes from a trading card and role-playing game called magic the gathering online exchange and it
It first started to uh to trade cards for these role-playing games
And its original owner jed mccaleb had turned it into a bitcoin exchange where he would exchange dollars for bitcoins
Which was a radical idea at the time?
As the demand for bitcoin grew mount gox became the go-to web exchange for trading
By 2013 it was handling 70 of all bitcoin transactions worldwide
I moved to japan in 2009 as part of my work. I'm a software engineer by trade. I
Didn't get into bitcoin really early like some of the people did but
I gave it a shot at trying some day trading at one another and speculating on the price and I did awfully
so I
kind of put that down but I
Left my money still sitting in mount cox
February 2014 mount cox announced they are suspending all dollar and bitcoin withdrawals from their exchange
Panicked customers make their way to japan hoping to confront the ceo an elusive frenchman called marcarpoles
Do you still have everyone's bitcoin do you still haven't switched i'm not touching you I have a question
At the time no one really considered that they wouldn't be able to ever get the bitcoins out
You know, they really thought that the exchange was going to shut down for a couple of weeks
Then they'd figure something out everything would open back up and everything
Maybe not go back to normal, but at least they would get their money back
Within weeks the mount gox website went offline
A leak from inside the company revealed. The exchange was insolvent having lost over seven hundred thousand bitcoins
There was no
news or information coming out of mungox or from authorities or anything about what actually happened so
I started poking around and wanted answers
Every transaction that is done on bitcoin ever is recorded in the blockchain
And I basically realized that oh my god i'm going to have to pretty much write my own software to trace this
Turns out that lo and behold a total of some six hundred thousand bitcoins were moved
To a set of different bitcoin wallets that turned out to be the thief
Sometime during autumn
2011 someone gets a copy of mondox's private keys
And that's the one thing you can't lose if you're in bitcoin, if someone else has your private keys they can spend your money
I still don't know who the thief is exactly but
people have been able to
identify who laundered the money at least
Following a three-year investigation by the u.s
Justice department a russian man named alexander vinnick was arrested in northern greece
Vinik was alleged to have washed the stolen money from mount gox as part of a money laundering racket worth 4 billion us dollars
For anybody that was around in those days
It's like another story out of a science fiction novel and they stole what like half a billion dollars worth of other people's bitcoins
I hope it'll be a learning lesson for the world that
Unless you're actively trading with your bitcoin. You should hold them in a wallet in which you hold the funds yourself
So you people should understand the difference between a bitcoin bank and a bitcoin wallet
very very important distinction so you can avoid
Bad things like mount gox happening to you in the future
Sorry
My
Despite mount gox the japanese government have embraced cryptocurrency and now recognized bitcoin as an official payment method
Cryptocurrency exchanges are now licensed and must have proper security measures in place
to prevent cyber attacks and the theft of customer funds
I've heard there are over 15 licensed exchanges now and probably a lot of others in line to get licenses as soon as they can
Stores mainly restaurants, but all kinds of places can accept bitcoin as payment quite freely
Japan's probably the blockchain and crypto capital of the world
Today in japan
Cryptocurrency is used legally as both an investment asset and in daily life as a way to buy pizzas
drinks and consumer goods
But cryptocurrency also has a reputation for illegal uses
Right now the regulation of virtual currency industry is still akin to a virtual wild west
I'm the co-founder of btcc previously known as btc. China. So we were the very first bitcoin exchange in china
And i've been living in china for the last 12 years. I got into bitcoin myself in 2011
Way way back, it seems like so long ago now
It was actually my younger brother charlie. Lee
He introduced bitcoin to me
Previously, we're both investors in gold. So we both appreciated the idea that gold has value
From a very young age. We remember stories of my grandparents. I think it was
1949 when they actually fled to hong kong
and all they had with them were just the hand luggage and then they heard some gold and silver sewn into secret compartments of my
grandfather's clothing
So by learning about bitcoin we were asking can something digital have value
It's a new model of ownership. The idea is that I can own something of value
Not just a dollar but hundreds of dollars or even millions of dollars potentially
But own it by virtue of me knowing the information knowing the private key knowing that password for the first time money is digitized
The invention of bitcoin gave the world its first truly global currency
Suddenly the ability to buy and sell goods across the world was accessible to anyone who had the know-how
But almost immediately in an area of the internet known as the dark web
marketplaces began to appear offering illegal goods and services
One of the most famous of these was called silk road which came online in february 2011
Silk road was a website where people could
sell drugs or
Products or services?
That were vice-like in the sense that if they tried to sell them on ebay or amazon
They'd get caught out and probably arrested and it allowed people who visited the site to avoid being tracked by
Public servants the police the fbi it eventually amassed
quite a number
Of sellers and buyers who were coming on the site to buy marijuana to buy cocaine to buy guns
to buy all manner of things
One of the things that people also really liked about it was the payment mechanism which was using bitcoin
Unlike a regular payment in a bank once a bitcoin payment is made it's irreversible because there's no central authority to reverse a payment
There's no authority. No person. No system. No company
No exchange that will limit the amount of money sent on the blockchain which is why bitcoin got adoption in the so-called
dark market
Silk road was run by a mysterious figure who went by the online pseudonym dread pirate roberts
In less than two years. It racked up 1.2 billion us dollars in sales of illicit goods
in october 2013
It all came to an end
After a massive manhunt by the fbi and the cia a 29 year old american man called ross ulbricht
was sentenced to life in prison
without the possibility of parole
a
Individual
Illegal activity was actually
the foundation
Of bitcoin and it was thanks to illegal activity. That bitcoin got used so much
And it got used in the mainstream. You could say that for a lot of other types of technology for example, vhs
Back in the 80s one of the apparently one of the very first use cases for bhs was porn
And once people started using it for porn then people started using it for other things as well. And so these vice-like services
often with new technology
Are the ones that are driving adoption?
While some people have turned to cryptocurrency as a way to evade the law
Others and even governments are turning to it for a very different reason
As a way to survive
The creation of
Cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin gave people for the first time in modern history a large-scale alternative
to existing monetary systems
The interest in latin america was decisive
For a decade after decade countries across the continent have endured one economic crisis after another
So i'm going to show you what we've done to our money throughout all history in argentina
We've been through five different currencies. The first one was called peso monetary
We changed it for peso-lay you had to have 100 of these to get one of these but then came the worst one of all
This lasted only for two years and there were bills of one million pesos argentina's
So people were paying in like how much is this?
This is like 29 000 20 billion, right?
And then in 85 you had to have 10 000 pieces of these to get one austral
Seven years later we changed to this peso which is the one that we have right now
But we had a bank run people went to the banks to gas for the money. The money wasn't there and since 2002
We've been through an inflation. So at one point this was worth one hundred dollars
Now it's only worth three dollars
Foreign
Hello
Foreign
We are in a phase where people want to know all the technical
Details of how this technology works in order to trust the technology
Do you want to know how to check the blockchain online I mean I want to know how a hash function works
They want to know
how to follow a bitcoin trail of where the beacons go
I don't know if the benefits that you gain from a technology like a crypto coin, um are
Are good enough to replace central banks. I still have those doubts
What is going to happen I think is that you're going to change
A different system for a new system that you still don't know what are going to be the ramifications
Uh when this new system goes mainstream click
on
When you have a technology like bitcoin that allows you to just be part of the
international commerce system without knowing no one
Just someone from the very poor province in the middle of the country with just access to internet this guy
maybe can develop software and sell it to
Apples in the us and get paid in bitcoin
Right now the whole banking system
It's pretty expensive when you need to send money going from one country to the other
For example, if you want to send money from argentina to ui, there are like 50 kilometers apart
The money needs to travel 20 000 kilometers because of the whole intermediaries that are in the middle
What we do is we take these argentinean pesos. We convert them into bitcoin and in one hour or less you have moved from
local currency in argentina to local currency to euro-wide so it's a pretty good way to
Disintermediate all the banking system, you know
This is a painting from elisa, which is an argentinian artist
so you can find like peppermint scans or
Things from the day-to-day activity, you know
or even film
from
kodak films
In every us dollar bill it says in gotham
We trust we change that to in code we trust it's our motto in terms of btx
We trust in code we trust in math
So it's in god we trust in god we trust
We don't trust in god we just trust in gold
Venezuela now has one of the most severe rates of hyperinflation
ever recorded in history
It's estimated that every week the value of the local currency halves
In a bid to prevent wealth leaving the country the government has imposed strict capital controls
Restricting the exchange and transfer of the local currency bolivars into foreign currencies
We are working in import and exporting from hong kong to venezuela
generator the staff of
for selling in venezuela
But when venezuela starts to fall down and the petroleum fall down the price they put the policy of any dollar you need to fill
Thousands of formularios and they choose how much money they give to you
Like 10 000 and later the government say no we only get 500
You need to pay the invoice for 10 000 and it's impossible
Then we start to look in assistance to send money from venezuela to china and I discovered these magic things called bitcoin
Then we start to look in more deep and we discover the mining bitcoin
Almost like
10 000 people are mining in venezuela and I hear rumors. They are bigger minor like
35 000 and I see
a
Family to have one minor to survive because if you go to work in one month you you're gonna get two dollars
you're gonna mining even it's up all machine you can get like
0.3 per day this mean in the end of the month you can get 30 and you only have this miner in
In the house, and I am sure
So many families survived. Thanks to the mining
Existing grand industrial
Is
Although cryptocurrency mining isn't technically illegal in venezuela
police have been arresting minors since early 2016
Charging them with electricity theft exchange fraud cyber crime and financing terrorism
They identify pretty easily the houses that are consuming a lot of electricity
Because bitcoin miners do consume a lot of electricity
So police seize these mining operations and the military and the police are starting to mine bitcoin
And today the venezuelan government is starting to use bitcoin to pay for food
to send to venezuela
So it's pretty crazy how bitcoin can liberate you or even circumvent your own capital controls
Today it's not only governments and people turning to cryptocurrencies
But also the very financial institutions they once threatened
while some in the banking sector continue to dismiss bitcoin
More and more institutions are becoming interested in the technology behind it
So we're at a conference made up traditionally of like investment banks and some regulatory board members and uh
People in traditional finance, but here they are busy talking about cryptocurrencies
It's 80 finance 20 technology
So moving on I mean cryptocurrency. Generally, it does receive its fair amount of criticism
um, but when we stand looking at the the huge possibilities for blockchain technologies
The question is and i'll start with roger on this is cryptocurrency a necessary part of that or is it just a distraction?
I think uh cryptocurrency was certainly the first
Killer app in regards to this and I think it's going to continue to be the biggest most popular use case of these technologies
And that's not to say that they won't be used for lots of other things, but think about it now
We have a money that works in every single country across the planet. You don't have to give your name
you don't have to give your tax id number and it works for everyone everywhere regardless of where they were born or what color they
Are and i'm sure lots of other things that are interesting will be done
but uh
you know money makes the world go round and bitcoin is well on its way to
To changing it and making the world go around even faster
As the crypto craze began to travel around the world so-called alternative where altcoins began to pop up in different places
But none would surpass the attraction of the original. We got 15 grand bitcoin man. We are going to the moon
By 2017 the bitcoin phenomena had gone mainstream and the price began to rocket
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