Speaker 1: In late January, Roger Vere woke up on the island
Speaker 1: of St. Kitts. Roger lives in Tokyo, but spends a
Speaker 1: lot of time in this Caribbean tax haven, which is
Speaker 1: a popular hangout for people like him in the bitcoin community.
Speaker 1: On this particular morning, he was in for a surprise.
Speaker 1: I think I woke up in the morning and you know,
Speaker 1: check the daily news at one of the first the
Speaker 1: first thing I do every day when I wake up
Speaker 1: wherever I am in the world, is to check the
Speaker 1: latest news. And I thought, oh, wow, the biggest hack yet.
Speaker 1: All right, that's a pretty big deal. An exchange in
Speaker 1: Japan that fell prey to what could be a record
Speaker 1: heist is now under government scrutiny. Coin check says five
Speaker 1: thirty million dollars worth of cryptocurrency was stolen by hackers.
Speaker 1: That would be the biggest ever theft of digital currency.
Speaker 1: Roger himself didn't have any money at coin check, the
Speaker 1: exchange of the hackers targeted, but his friend did and
Speaker 1: called Roger in a path and he called me, and
Speaker 1: you know, he doesn't speak in English. She's like, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: by yah bay, which means like this is this is crazy?
Speaker 1: What am I gonna do? What? Am I gonna do?
Speaker 1: A huge hack of a Japanese crypto exchange. It sounded
Speaker 1: eerily similar to another disaster in Tokyo that went down
Speaker 1: four years ago. Four hundred million dollars worth of another cryptocurrency,
Speaker 1: Bitcoin was stolen from an exchange, also in Tokyo. This
Speaker 1: exchange went by the name of Mount Cox. Are those
Speaker 1: two major hackings? But maybe within you know, this eight
Speaker 1: minute walk of each other, you know, probably more bitcoins
Speaker 1: have been exchanged than any other place on the planet.
Speaker 1: So they've had the biggest hacks, but they've had the biggest,
Speaker 1: most successful amount of bitcoin trades taking place. So maybe
Speaker 1: this is a a bit of an epicenter four bitcoin
Speaker 1: trades happening around the world here right here in Hilia.
Speaker 1: The hack this time, the one of Queen Check, was
Speaker 1: particularly embarrassing for Japan because lawmakers there had just implemented
Speaker 1: some of the world's most cryptocurrency friendly regulations. These were
Speaker 1: specifically designed to prevent a repeat of the Mount Cox fiasco.
Speaker 1: I've talked to a lot of Japanese lawmakers over the
Speaker 1: past year, and from many of them, these laws were
Speaker 1: a source of pride. They hope that Japan would serve
Speaker 1: as a template for the rest of the world in
Speaker 1: terms of crypto regulation, even as many countries cracked down
Speaker 1: on it. Now, with half a billion dollars missing, these
Speaker 1: new cryptocurrency laws are facing their first major test. Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm Akio and I'm not coming up. And this week Undecrypted,
Speaker 1: we're taking you to Japan, which has become the world's
Speaker 1: premier hub or bitcoin. We'll be tracing the volatile rise
Speaker 1: of bitcoin here through the eyes of the people who
Speaker 1: were there from the very start, people like Roger has
Speaker 1: become known as bit in Jesus for his evangelism or
Speaker 1: bitcoin right now. There are plenty of critics who say
Speaker 1: the recent crashing crypto crisis vindicates their cynicism, but supporters
Speaker 1: are just as bullish as ever. They say the Queen
Speaker 1: check heist is just a temporary setback. So will Japan
Speaker 1: continue to embrace this new world or will it turn
Speaker 1: its back stay with us. Back in two thousand six,
Speaker 1: Roger was in his mid twenties and he was both
Speaker 1: a millionaire and a convicted felon. He was a millionaire
Speaker 1: from the online business he started that sold old computer parts,
Speaker 1: and he was an expelling because he sold explosives online
Speaker 1: through that business without a license. When Roger got out
Speaker 1: of prison, he decided to leave the US. He had
Speaker 1: had a Japanese girlfriend once, and I figured since the
Speaker 1: one Japanese girlfriend was a good experience, I figured the
Speaker 1: next one probably would be too. So when I arrived
Speaker 1: in Japan, actually I was kind of basically retired at
Speaker 1: that point. I had enough money where I could do
Speaker 1: what I wanted. And first, first, I don't know, a
Speaker 1: couple of years, was hanging out and puny and chasing
Speaker 1: girls and doing that sort of thing. That went on
Speaker 1: for a while, learning martial arts by day, partying at night.
Speaker 1: Then in two thousand ten, Rogers stumbled upon bitcoin, back
Speaker 1: during its super early days. I heard about this on
Speaker 1: a show called Free Talk Live, which is a libertarian
Speaker 1: oriented radio program on in the US, and Roger spent
Speaker 1: a couple of minutes googling, but then forgot about it.
Speaker 1: A couple of months later, the same show brought it
Speaker 1: up again, and then I googled it again, and that's
Speaker 1: when I put all the pieces together in my mind,
Speaker 1: and I knew people were going to start using it
Speaker 1: his money. Roger wanted to invest and he discovered a
Speaker 1: company called mount Cox. Mount Cox was a bitcoin exchange.
Speaker 1: He'd let you buy and sell bitcoin. In early two
Speaker 1: thousand eleven, moult Cox was the biggest bitcoin exchange in
Speaker 1: the world, which really saying a lot because at the
Speaker 1: time there were just barely a handful of other scrappy
Speaker 1: operations out there. Back then, mount Cox was still run
Speaker 1: out of San Francisco by an American programmer called Jet
Speaker 1: the Caleb. It was a tiny operation and bitcoin was
Speaker 1: still trading at around eighty cents each, which, fun fact,
Speaker 1: as of taping, has increased by about one million percent.
Speaker 1: At around this time, mount Cox also caught the eye
Speaker 1: of another bitcoin enthusiast living in Tokyo, a man named
Speaker 1: Mark Carpelez. He's French and he came to Japan around
Speaker 1: the same time Roger did. According to one of Mark's
Speaker 1: former employees, you'll meet this person in a second. Mark
Speaker 1: was drawn here by his love of Japanese anime, manga,
Speaker 1: and culture. Mark bought mount Cox from its American founder.
Speaker 1: He then moved the business to Tokyo. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: Roger was pouring a significant chunk of his wealth into
Speaker 1: mount Cox. The first wire sent to Mount Cox was
Speaker 1: for U S dollars. It was a risk. And then
Speaker 1: maybe just a couple of weeks later, talking to another
Speaker 1: friend of mine and he told me sarcastically on the phone,
Speaker 1: he said, Roger, if you think bitcoin is such a
Speaker 1: good idea, why don't you buy more of them? You're right?
Speaker 1: So the next day I sent another wired amount Cox
Speaker 1: somebody even more. Roger was all in and his next
Speaker 1: step was to spread the good word. So one of
Speaker 1: the things I did was set up the Tokyo Bitcoin
Speaker 1: meet up group. This was the world's second bitcoin meet
Speaker 1: up group, after the one in San Francisco. He became
Speaker 1: an important fixture in the bitcoin community in Tokyo and
Speaker 1: we had it in shibullet or fruit parlor. So I
Speaker 1: contacted them and said, hey, is it okay if we
Speaker 1: have like a social meet up and we'll we'll buy
Speaker 1: fruit from you guys, and they said, yeah, sure, no problem.
Speaker 1: A fruit parlor is one of these places you only
Speaker 1: see in Japan. It's like a fancy cafe, but instead
Speaker 1: of pastries or something, you order really expensive fruit. He
Speaker 1: was about two years later that I first heard about Roger.
Speaker 1: One of my friends met him at a house party
Speaker 1: in Tokyo, and he said, there's this crazy American guy
Speaker 1: who wouldn't stop talking about some digital currency called bitcoin,
Speaker 1: and he gave me one whole bitcoin. But I have
Speaker 1: no idea what that even means. This was something that
Speaker 1: Razer did a lot. Giving away bitcoin was his way
Speaker 1: of spreading the word. How much bitcoin do you estimate
Speaker 1: you gave away during that period? Thousands and thousands of
Speaker 1: bitcoins of full bitcoins, Yeah, thousands of thousands, more than
Speaker 1: ten thousand, Yes, ten thousand bitcoins would be worth what
Speaker 1: five sillion dollars? Right? No? Oh, non, worth fifty million dollars?
Speaker 1: So used to me give me ten thousand bitcoin? I'd
Speaker 1: say at least ten thousand. In those early days, the
Speaker 1: meetups were attended by mostly non Japanese enthusiasts, Lots of
Speaker 1: people who are libertarians, a bit of like a hacker
Speaker 1: anarchist vibe. There's people who are very much dedicated to
Speaker 1: to building a kind of solid community. This is Thomas Gluxman,
Speaker 1: who used to work from outdogs. He attended the meet
Speaker 1: ups occasionally, not just about like oh, I'm curious about
Speaker 1: how I can make money from this thing. That was
Speaker 1: not really the the goal or the focus of bitcoin
Speaker 1: back then. Then in bitcoin's first boom in late two
Speaker 1: thousand thirteen, it hit one thousand dollars. The digital currency
Speaker 1: has hit a record high morning. The question really is
Speaker 1: why why has bitcoins served so much? It's not just
Speaker 1: that prices are going up, it's usage is going up.
Speaker 1: There are more and more bitcoins. After that, all kinds
Speaker 1: of folks started coming. They meet up outgrew the fruit
Speaker 1: Spoiler and moved to a bar in ro Pungy that's
Speaker 1: one of Tokyo's nightlife areas. Yeah, and the craziest thing
Speaker 1: that I remember were the burlesque dancers. These were basically
Speaker 1: uh well era strippers. They didn't take all their clothes off,
Speaker 1: but they had QR code stickers on their bodies and
Speaker 1: he was their bitcoin wallet address. So people if they
Speaker 1: liked their dancing, they would scan the QR code on
Speaker 1: their bodies and send them bitcoin with their phone. It's
Speaker 1: amazing anyway, the burlesque side. For years, this meet up
Speaker 1: created a forum for people in Japan to learn about
Speaker 1: bitcoin and balance around ideas. He even convinced quite a
Speaker 1: number of people to quit their day jobs and embark
Speaker 1: on various crypto related ventures. Roger did other things to
Speaker 1: popularize bitcoin too. Bitcoin got started by a person or
Speaker 1: a group of people who went by the name of
Speaker 1: Satoshi Nakamoto with a manifesto that laid out the whole
Speaker 1: vision for it. That document was written in English, so
Speaker 1: Roster paid to get it translated into Japanese. Roger also
Speaker 1: created YouTube videos explaining bitcoin in Japanese and translated other
Speaker 1: promotional material like the bitcoin dot org website, and he
Speaker 1: also invested a lot of his own money and bitcoin
Speaker 1: startups like Cracking, bit pay and blockchain dot Info. He
Speaker 1: was one of the two people who initially funded the
Speaker 1: Bitcoin Foundation, which is an organization that promotes bitcoin adoption,
Speaker 1: with five thousand bitcoin. Meanwhile, Roger's meet up continued growing.
Speaker 1: Soon he was attracting people who would later go on
Speaker 1: to play key roles in Japan's bitcoin community, people like
Speaker 1: use O'Connell, a former Goldman sex retistrator. You so now
Speaker 1: runs the company bit Flyer, which is Japan's largest bitcoin exchange.
Speaker 1: Do you remember some of the conversations you had with
Speaker 1: him back then? Was it? Yeah, we both talked about
Speaker 1: who you're interested in bitcoin? So, I mean again in
Speaker 1: that way the meetups that you organized were a lot
Speaker 1: of you know, and the things that you translated were
Speaker 1: the first interactions Japanese people have with bitcoin, right thanks
Speaker 1: to me as the foreigner, I guess. Meanwhile, as more
Speaker 1: people poured into bitcoin, milkox grew, the company began attracting
Speaker 1: interest from the Japanese media. This is Thomas, the former
Speaker 1: mountdos employee. I remember we would have goals to the
Speaker 1: office from like the various different TV companies and newspapers
Speaker 1: asking us like what is bitcoin? How does it work?
Speaker 1: They thought mount box was bitcoin. You know. Mark was
Speaker 1: often quoted in the Japanese media as the CEO of bitcoin,
Speaker 1: So there wasn't that mature level of understanding that you
Speaker 1: see now in the Japanese media about cryptocurrency and bitcoin
Speaker 1: and the difference between the exchanges and the cryptocurrency itself.
Speaker 1: As mount Dox's influence grew both in Japan and abroad,
Speaker 1: for some time it handled more than gluevable bitcoin trading,
Speaker 1: which by the end of thousand thirteen and early two
Speaker 1: fourteen became a pretty big deal until it all came
Speaker 1: crashing down in early January. Milk box users started complaining
Speaker 1: that they weren't able to withdraw their money. The exchange
Speaker 1: officially announced it was stopping withdrawals in early February and
Speaker 1: stopped trading in mid fib You worry. The news set
Speaker 1: shock waves through the bitcoin community worldwide. In Tokyo, Nolan.
Speaker 1: It's still not totally clear what happened, but someone, either
Speaker 1: an inside job or external hackers ended up stealing most
Speaker 1: of the customers bitcoin deposits at Mount Cox, and those
Speaker 1: were worth about four dred million dollars at two thousand
Speaker 1: fourteen prices. Yeah, I was in Japan, and I think
Speaker 1: people were just stunned more than anything else. Moult Cox
Speaker 1: was unable to find these deposits and filed for bankruptcy
Speaker 1: protection in Tokyo. I remember visiting a police station in Shibia,
Speaker 1: which is about a five minute walk from Mount Cox headquarters,
Speaker 1: and sitting down with a man from their cyber crimes division,
Speaker 1: and it was so clear to me that he was
Speaker 1: totally clueless about what was going on bitcoin, digital currency,
Speaker 1: Mount Cox. It was it was all completely new to him.
Speaker 1: But of course that experience forced Japan to learn and
Speaker 1: unleash this frenzy to figure out how to never let
Speaker 1: something like this happen again. Welcome back. At this point,
Speaker 1: it's March and Japan is reeling from the hack in
Speaker 1: subsequent bankruptcy of the Mount Cox Bitcoin Exchange, the authorities
Speaker 1: knew they had to act to stop something like this
Speaker 1: from happening ever again, so Japan's Prime Minister signed the
Speaker 1: job of sorting the sell out to someone in his
Speaker 1: ruling party. A lawmaker by the name of mine said,
Speaker 1: this is when he first learned about bitcoin. If it
Speaker 1: wasn't from Montgos, he wouldn't have been involved with the
Speaker 1: bitcoin regulation at all. He was a pure coincidence. He
Speaker 1: didn't know a thing about bitcoin. With pretty much everyone
Speaker 1: in the country clueless about what to do, from the
Speaker 1: police to the banks to establish tech companies, if Gouda
Speaker 1: did the only thing you could do back then, he
Speaker 1: went to go meet Roger told you, sure, we know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he told me, of course. The first thing I did
Speaker 1: was going to Roger's meetups. Instead of searching for experts
Speaker 1: at all kinds of places, he was faster to just
Speaker 1: go to the meet up and ask questions there directly
Speaker 1: with the people who were buying it and using it.
Speaker 1: That's where he met others like the former Goldman trader
Speaker 1: used o'conno at this point, I mean, Yuki didn't really
Speaker 1: have another country's laws he could turn to, for example,
Speaker 1: since no other developed economy had really waited into this.
Speaker 1: He was coming up with a new framework from scratch
Speaker 1: for bitcoin regulation. He came to believe that he needed
Speaker 1: to prevent the government from suffocating this Nissan industry to
Speaker 1: its death, that the industry would more or less be
Speaker 1: able to regulate itself. Of course, that's exactly what the
Speaker 1: industry power players like use O'Connell wanted to hear. While
Speaker 1: Japan has fewer libertarians, in the US, I've met my
Speaker 1: fair share of gold bugs and government haters at Roger's
Speaker 1: meetups that I attended. Here's Thomas, the former Mountcox employee. Again.
Speaker 1: I think it's really fascinating because um persent. I was
Speaker 1: just thinking that, Okay, they're probably going to, um, you know,
Speaker 1: take the Chinese approach of just like okay, which is
Speaker 1: gonna ban this thing, and you nobody's gonna be able
Speaker 1: to do this again. We're never gonna hear this again.
Speaker 1: That's it. But they kind of win the opposite way
Speaker 1: of Okay. We think if Gooda ended up proposing legislation
Speaker 1: that would embrace cryptocurrencies, effectively turning bitcoin into legal tender
Speaker 1: in Japan alongside with the traditional currency, the Japanese yen.
Speaker 1: More about in the next day, Miniyuki told me there
Speaker 1: wasn't much pushback. It wasn't even about pushback or not,
Speaker 1: because no one even understood bitcoin. No one in the
Speaker 1: government knew what's good and bad about it. They really
Speaker 1: just left it to his team, the technology experts. It
Speaker 1: was just two people who knew anything, Miniyuki and his boss.
Speaker 1: The new law was passed in sixteen and went into
Speaker 1: effect in April. It goes against what governments have done
Speaker 1: in many other major economies. In the US and Europe,
Speaker 1: regulators and politicians have been cautious. You see headlines every
Speaker 1: day with people giving all kinds of warnings. China has
Speaker 1: outright band trading and initial coin offerings. South Korea also
Speaker 1: banned initial coin offerings and cracked down on exchanges. Experson
Speaker 1: was coming alright, so so she's like, oh, yeah, you
Speaker 1: can play with bitcoin here, no problem. A couple of
Speaker 1: months ago, Roger and I went to an electronics store
Speaker 1: called Comment Up to buy a USB stick with bitcoin.
Speaker 1: That's the kind of thing you can do now with
Speaker 1: this new legislation, which made bitcoin illegally recognized form of payment,
Speaker 1: Japan is the first major economy to do so. Okay,
Speaker 1: And now she's pointed at QR code, which roger scanning,
Speaker 1: and what does it say? Sixty one since it's non cling,
Speaker 1: send and screen the transaction. The benefit of these new
Speaker 1: laws is that they give this clarity, this certainty to
Speaker 1: companies in Japan that want to try out a cryptocurrencies.
Speaker 1: They don't have to worry about getting punished by regulators
Speaker 1: for experimenting with something that's legally dubious. Not my phone
Speaker 1: sent it, he said, His phone is sent it. Her
Speaker 1: should pop up with me in the second just okay, okay.
Speaker 1: The new law also gives the main financial regulator the
Speaker 1: right to audit and give licenses to cryptocurrency exchanges. This
Speaker 1: is supposed to protect against hackers and prevent money laundering.
Speaker 1: For a time, things seem to be going really well
Speaker 1: for cryptocurrencies in Japan. In April seventeen, when the new
Speaker 1: law took effect in Japan, one bitcoin was worth about
Speaker 1: twelve hundred dollars That rose dramatically over the next few months.
Speaker 1: It actually crossed over into record territory last night, moving
Speaker 1: closer to that eight thousand dollar mark, Bitcoin soars past
Speaker 1: thirteen thousand dollars for the first time the largest, and
Speaker 1: by December bitcoin prices were closing in a nineteen thousand
Speaker 1: dollars Roger has almost certainly gotten rich with his bitcoin investments,
Speaker 1: although he doesn't want to say exactly how much he owns,
Speaker 1: and he's becoming a celebrity in his own right. Towards
Speaker 1: the end of last year, right around the peak of
Speaker 1: the hype for crypto, I went to the Tokyo Bitcoin
Speaker 1: meet up with him, the very one he started just
Speaker 1: a couple years back. It was nothing like the quiet,
Speaker 1: intellectual discussions of the food parlor that I was used to.
Speaker 1: There must have been at least a hundred people packed
Speaker 1: to this bar in Tokyo. As soon as you walked
Speaker 1: into the door together, Roger got mobbed by everyone there.
Speaker 1: I didn't even get a chance to talk to him
Speaker 1: for the rest of the night. But a few days
Speaker 1: before the end of the year, prices started to fall,
Speaker 1: and by the end of January, several people watching the
Speaker 1: markets were talking about how the bitcoin bubble might be bursting.
Speaker 1: Then on January, just when prices were dipping towards ten
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. The Japanese cryptocurrency exchange coin check announced that
Speaker 1: it was stopping withdrawals. We were rushing to understand exactly
Speaker 1: what happened in coin check. Soon we learned that half
Speaker 1: a billion dollars of this new currency was missing and
Speaker 1: that about two sixty customers were affected. In the days
Speaker 1: after the heights became public, investors got worried that regulators
Speaker 1: would take action to protect consumers. A threat of more
Speaker 1: regulation pushed the price of bitcoin all the way down
Speaker 1: to six thousand. Ironically, the heist, like the one that
Speaker 1: had happened at coin check, was exactly the kind of
Speaker 1: thing that the new Japanese law was supposed to prevent,
Speaker 1: but its focus on self regulation meant that it was
Speaker 1: mostly up to each exchange to ensure that it was secure.
Speaker 1: Here's the lawmaker, Menayuki Good again told me that the
Speaker 1: law already requires companies to be secure, and how how
Speaker 1: you take that is up to each individual company to decide.
Speaker 1: So he doesn't think it's anything that the government should
Speaker 1: get involved in. It's up to each individual company and
Speaker 1: their management. But amid all this finger pointing public outrage
Speaker 1: and media scrutiny. Something unexpected happened. You think a little
Speaker 1: known exchange like coin check losing half a billion dollars
Speaker 1: would doom it, But it turns out coin check was
Speaker 1: making so much money he was able to use company
Speaker 1: funds to plug their giant whole. By mid March, less
Speaker 1: than two months after the hack, coin check had paid
Speaker 1: back everyone using its own money, which is just such
Speaker 1: a different story from what happened with mount Cox. To
Speaker 1: this day, four years later, Mount Cox's customers are still
Speaker 1: waiting to get their deposits back. I asked Roger if
Speaker 1: you thought the industry was getting better at responding to
Speaker 1: these big hacks, But so, yeah, I guess I do
Speaker 1: think that things are getting better. Um, but that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that there aren't going to be more horrible experiences
Speaker 1: in the future. But if you look at the horrible
Speaker 1: things that central banking have enabled across the world, it's
Speaker 1: it's certainly not going to be worse than that. So
Speaker 1: it's a the problems enabled or problems caused by cryptocurrency
Speaker 1: hackings or pale in comparison to the you know, destruction
Speaker 1: caused by central banking. For the last couple hundred years.
Speaker 1: It's spoken like a true libertarian for sure, although actually
Speaker 1: coin checks Recovery is quiet at calls for a crypto
Speaker 1: crack down in Japan. While reporting on the hack, we
Speaker 1: reached out to dozens of lawmakers and regulators. Not even
Speaker 1: lawmakers an opposition party thought the laws should be rolled back.
Speaker 1: Japan is taking to its guns. Here's Thomas, the former
Speaker 1: Mountgos employee. The fact that now we've gone from Japan
Speaker 1: is just so inconspicuous. Crypto hub which happened organically because
Speaker 1: of the presence of malt Cox and because of the
Speaker 1: kind of the handful or dozen or so very crypto
Speaker 1: like crypto evangelists like Roger Vert and a few others
Speaker 1: for example, who just happened to be based here to
Speaker 1: this now very much top down driven. Welcome to the Japan.
Speaker 1: We want to be the crypto hub of Asia, if
Speaker 1: not the world. And this is what I'm hearing now
Speaker 1: directly from the dog Yo government. Um, that's what they
Speaker 1: want Japan to be seen as. In the meantime, emboldened
Speaker 1: by the regulatory clarity that the new laws have brought,
Speaker 1: Japanese companies are continuing to jump into krypto rucked in,
Speaker 1: which is like Japan's Amazon, set in February that it
Speaker 1: will launch its own token. Coin check itself was also
Speaker 1: sold last week to Monic's, a well known online retail
Speaker 1: broker in Japan, a little bit like e Trade in
Speaker 1: the US. What's more, a government back study group this
Speaker 1: month announced a basic regulatory framework for initial coin offerings,
Speaker 1: the first of its kind in the world. If Japan
Speaker 1: and next clear guidelines for icos, it could attract blockchain
Speaker 1: startups and become a hub for more than just crypto trading.
Speaker 1: As for Roger these days, well, he's still just as
Speaker 1: bullish about cryptocurrencies as he's always been. Every day there
Speaker 1: seems to be someone new that declares the end of bitcoin,
Speaker 1: and it seemed like there's this general sense that the
Speaker 1: bitcoin bubble has popped, but like a true believer, Roger
Speaker 1: isn't phazed by any of that. So somehow I wound
Speaker 1: up with the nickname Bitcoin Jesus. I think a more
Speaker 1: accurate nickname probably would have been a Bitcoin Johnny Appleseed,
Speaker 1: because I do feel like I planned a lot of
Speaker 1: the seeds around the world to help get cryptocurrency started.
Speaker 1: And uh, it's been a fun ride Um, there's not
Speaker 1: really anything more fulfilling to work on something that literally
Speaker 1: can improve the lives of every human being on the planet.
Speaker 1: Things like that don't come along every day, and here
Speaker 1: we are right still at the early stages of that.
Speaker 1: So it's it's been incredibly fun and I still wake
Speaker 1: up excited about it every day and hope to continue
Speaker 1: planning those seeds around the world. And that's it for
Speaker 1: this week's episode of decryptid. Thanks for listening. Do you
Speaker 1: have a story about cryptic currencies? You can email us
Speaker 1: at decrypted at Bloomberg dot net, or you can reach
Speaker 1: me on Twitter at y Nakamura five six and I'm
Speaker 1: at A seven. If this is the first time you
Speaker 1: stumbled upon our show, welcome. We hope you'll subscribe to
Speaker 1: Decrypted wherever you get your podcasts. We have at least
Speaker 1: one more crypto episode coming up in the next few months.
Speaker 1: This episode was produced by Pia god Cary, Liz Smith,
Speaker 1: Magnus Hendrickson, and Francesca Levi is the head of the
Speaker 1: Bird podcast. We'll see you next week.