1
00:00:00,040 --> 00:00:03,320
Speaker 1: The Coin Bureau Podcast is a production of I Heart Radio.

2
00:00:03,800 --> 00:00:07,240
Speaker 1: Whatever the perception of bitcoin in in in the wake

3
00:00:07,320 --> 00:00:09,440
Speaker 1: of these In the wake of these cases, what's important

4
00:00:09,480 --> 00:00:14,640
Speaker 1: to remember is that bitcoin itself was never hacked or compromised.

5
00:00:25,720 --> 00:00:28,600
Speaker 1: Welcome everyone to the Coin Bureau Podcast. My name is

6
00:00:28,680 --> 00:00:32,159
Speaker 1: Guy and I'm here with my very good friend Mike Moog.

7
00:00:32,360 --> 00:00:34,680
Speaker 1: Welcome back, Mike. How are you. I'm very well, Thanks

8
00:00:34,800 --> 00:00:37,960
Speaker 1: so just I just want to update listeners slightly the

9
00:00:38,040 --> 00:00:40,360
Speaker 1: last couple of episodes that we did on bitcoin. This

10
00:00:40,400 --> 00:00:43,519
Speaker 1: is this is our third episode on bitcoin that we're

11
00:00:43,520 --> 00:00:47,080
Speaker 1: doing today. We've talked, We've looked back at some of

12
00:00:47,080 --> 00:00:50,640
Speaker 1: the people who helped make bitcoin what it was, some

13
00:00:50,680 --> 00:00:54,320
Speaker 1: of the things they had in common, and basically bitcoin's

14
00:00:54,360 --> 00:00:57,040
Speaker 1: early days from Satoshi putting it out there and the

15
00:00:57,160 --> 00:01:00,120
Speaker 1: slow growth of the network, slowly people getting to know

16
00:01:00,200 --> 00:01:03,880
Speaker 1: about it, improving it, all this sort of stuff. It's

17
00:01:03,960 --> 00:01:08,000
Speaker 1: now time to look at bitcoin out in the wild,

18
00:01:08,520 --> 00:01:11,760
Speaker 1: and in this episode we're going to focus on two

19
00:01:11,800 --> 00:01:15,480
Speaker 1: of the most notorious projects that have ever been associated

20
00:01:15,480 --> 00:01:18,880
Speaker 1: with bitcoin. Yes, okay, we are going to look at

21
00:01:19,360 --> 00:01:23,920
Speaker 1: Mount Cox and the Silk Road. I know about one

22
00:01:23,959 --> 00:01:27,199
Speaker 1: of them. You do Okay, I think I know which

23
00:01:27,200 --> 00:01:30,680
Speaker 1: one will come back to that. So yes, so these

24
00:01:30,680 --> 00:01:33,560
Speaker 1: are two of These are two projects that still cast

25
00:01:33,800 --> 00:01:37,800
Speaker 1: a pretty long shadow over bitcoin, I think. But before

26
00:01:37,800 --> 00:01:41,280
Speaker 1: we start talking about them, let's just quickly consider how

27
00:01:41,280 --> 00:01:44,040
Speaker 1: do I get my hands on some bitcoins. Let's put

28
00:01:44,040 --> 00:01:47,200
Speaker 1: ourselves back and this time sort of around two thousand

29
00:01:47,400 --> 00:01:50,200
Speaker 1: and eleven or so it was, yeah, two thousand eleven,

30
00:01:50,240 --> 00:01:53,840
Speaker 1: mid two thousand and eleven. Today, if we want to

31
00:01:53,840 --> 00:01:57,400
Speaker 1: get our hands on some BTC or any other cryptocurrency,

32
00:01:57,480 --> 00:02:00,320
Speaker 1: it's easy, isn't it fairly easier? Yeah, We've got likes

33
00:02:00,360 --> 00:02:03,160
Speaker 1: of I mean, there are hundreds of exchanges, things like

34
00:02:03,240 --> 00:02:06,200
Speaker 1: coin base, Binance, all these sorts of things. Coin bas

35
00:02:06,280 --> 00:02:10,360
Speaker 1: especially very user friendly. It's pretty easy for the average

36
00:02:10,360 --> 00:02:13,200
Speaker 1: person to get their hands on some crypto. We've also

37
00:02:13,280 --> 00:02:15,440
Speaker 1: got things like bitcoin a t m S. You can

38
00:02:15,440 --> 00:02:19,360
Speaker 1: actually go and buy it on the street they sted about. Yeah,

39
00:02:19,639 --> 00:02:21,520
Speaker 1: because I remember there was in London there was a

40
00:02:21,520 --> 00:02:23,880
Speaker 1: couple and down bit Old Street where you would literally

41
00:02:23,919 --> 00:02:26,520
Speaker 1: feed in cash and then you can still do that.

42
00:02:26,720 --> 00:02:28,919
Speaker 1: There don't seem to be quite as many as there were.

43
00:02:29,360 --> 00:02:34,560
Speaker 1: That not a money laundering sort of issue. I don't

44
00:02:34,600 --> 00:02:37,160
Speaker 1: think so, but there have been concerns raised about that,

45
00:02:37,480 --> 00:02:39,600
Speaker 1: and I mean I suppose, yeah, it would be one way.

46
00:02:39,639 --> 00:02:41,200
Speaker 1: If you had a large amount of cash and you

47
00:02:41,240 --> 00:02:43,680
Speaker 1: wanted to get rid of it and convert it, then yeah,

48
00:02:43,680 --> 00:02:46,520
Speaker 1: a bitcoin a t M would be quite useful for that.

49
00:02:47,200 --> 00:02:49,040
Speaker 1: I think a lot of them Now you have to

50
00:02:49,160 --> 00:02:51,919
Speaker 1: provide idea that's probably the I don't think you did

51
00:02:51,960 --> 00:02:55,560
Speaker 1: before it was quite simply just feeding feeding in nuts

52
00:02:55,800 --> 00:02:59,440
Speaker 1: and making cash basically digital. There are bitcoin a t

53
00:02:59,639 --> 00:03:02,280
Speaker 1: M s deal I think worldwide the number is growing,

54
00:03:02,280 --> 00:03:04,839
Speaker 1: but here in London you've also got peer to peer

55
00:03:04,880 --> 00:03:07,560
Speaker 1: bitcoin services as well, things like local bitcoins where you

56
00:03:07,600 --> 00:03:10,000
Speaker 1: can go on on the site find someone in your

57
00:03:10,040 --> 00:03:12,600
Speaker 1: area who is willing to sell you bitcoins and you

58
00:03:12,639 --> 00:03:14,840
Speaker 1: can actually go and meet up with them and you

59
00:03:14,880 --> 00:03:18,560
Speaker 1: give them some cash and they will transfer. Yeah, we

60
00:03:19,040 --> 00:03:23,000
Speaker 1: possibly go wrong with them meet me here with some cash.

61
00:03:23,400 --> 00:03:25,639
Speaker 1: It's it can be a little dodgy. You have to

62
00:03:25,680 --> 00:03:28,240
Speaker 1: be very careful with things like local bitcoins, but it is.

63
00:03:28,320 --> 00:03:30,799
Speaker 1: It does still work and it's quite popular in certain

64
00:03:30,840 --> 00:03:33,280
Speaker 1: parts of the world. Can emertionally where there's yea less

65
00:03:33,280 --> 00:03:37,440
Speaker 1: in maybe where it's not legal. Yeah, Philippines, Yeah or

66
00:03:37,520 --> 00:03:40,520
Speaker 1: yeah or slight leg in Philippines or am I thinking

67
00:03:40,520 --> 00:03:43,520
Speaker 1: of Indonesia. I'm not sure. I mean, these places are

68
00:03:43,560 --> 00:03:45,720
Speaker 1: sort of they're always kind of talking about whether they're

69
00:03:45,760 --> 00:03:48,680
Speaker 1: going to ban crypto or crypto payments. Turkey is one

70
00:03:49,160 --> 00:03:52,880
Speaker 1: that Turkey recently banned crypto payments, and I think in

71
00:03:53,080 --> 00:03:55,880
Speaker 1: I think in Turkey local bitcoins is quite popular, I

72
00:03:55,880 --> 00:04:00,280
Speaker 1: remember rightly. So. In short, it's it's easy now to

73
00:04:00,320 --> 00:04:03,160
Speaker 1: get your hands on Krypto, but back in the early

74
00:04:03,240 --> 00:04:06,400
Speaker 1: days of bitcoin, it wasn't always so. So if you

75
00:04:06,440 --> 00:04:11,680
Speaker 1: weren't a particularly techie person, for example, then your your

76
00:04:11,680 --> 00:04:15,960
Speaker 1: options were limited because these these techi people knew how

77
00:04:15,960 --> 00:04:20,599
Speaker 1: to mine on their laptops, whereas the average person really didn't.

78
00:04:20,680 --> 00:04:23,159
Speaker 1: It was it's quite a complicated process for those for

79
00:04:23,240 --> 00:04:27,000
Speaker 1: those unfamiliar, and of course most people hadn't even heard

80
00:04:27,000 --> 00:04:30,600
Speaker 1: of bitcoin anyway, So I mean, there were very few

81
00:04:30,600 --> 00:04:33,640
Speaker 1: ways that you could actually get your hands on some BTC.

82
00:04:33,920 --> 00:04:36,640
Speaker 1: You could visit Gavin Andreason's Bitcoin Force it. Do you

83
00:04:36,640 --> 00:04:39,680
Speaker 1: remember that from the last episode. That was probably the

84
00:04:39,680 --> 00:04:42,480
Speaker 1: easiest way of doing it. Yeah, fill out the capture

85
00:04:42,640 --> 00:04:45,839
Speaker 1: five free BTC. Thank you very much. You might also

86
00:04:45,880 --> 00:04:49,400
Speaker 1: remember from the last episode Marty Malmi that the Finnished

87
00:04:49,440 --> 00:04:52,440
Speaker 1: Chap became the first person to receive US dollars in

88
00:04:52,600 --> 00:04:57,080
Speaker 1: exchange for BTC and he sent a bitcoin for a

89
00:04:57,200 --> 00:04:59,360
Speaker 1: music called New Liberty Standard. He sent him just over

90
00:04:59,400 --> 00:05:02,920
Speaker 1: five thousand, etc. And received five dollars and two cents

91
00:05:02,960 --> 00:05:06,680
Speaker 1: back via PayPal. Now, what New Liberty Standard was trying

92
00:05:06,720 --> 00:05:09,039
Speaker 1: to do, He was trying to set up a site

93
00:05:09,080 --> 00:05:12,760
Speaker 1: where people could actually buy bitcoins rather than having to

94
00:05:12,800 --> 00:05:18,080
Speaker 1: mind them. Basically the first ever exchange, and that's exactly

95
00:05:18,200 --> 00:05:21,039
Speaker 1: what this user did. And the exchange was called New

96
00:05:21,040 --> 00:05:25,000
Speaker 1: Liberty Standards and you sent money via PayPal and a

97
00:05:25,040 --> 00:05:27,880
Speaker 1: little later on BTC would turn up in your wallet.

98
00:05:28,600 --> 00:05:31,440
Speaker 1: So yeah, this was this was a big moment because

99
00:05:31,680 --> 00:05:36,320
Speaker 1: it's it enabled people to enable people to buy BTC.

100
00:05:36,360 --> 00:05:40,200
Speaker 1: Fuy project. Yeah, and it's it's quite interesting the way

101
00:05:40,360 --> 00:05:43,560
Speaker 1: that whoever ran New Liberty Standard, the way they calculated

102
00:05:43,600 --> 00:05:48,279
Speaker 1: the price of bitcoins, you paid roughly what it cost

103
00:05:48,400 --> 00:05:52,320
Speaker 1: to mind each coin. So the way New Liberty Standard

104
00:05:52,360 --> 00:05:56,320
Speaker 1: did this was they basically calculated it from their electricity

105
00:05:56,360 --> 00:05:58,919
Speaker 1: bill and came up with a very rough figure of

106
00:05:59,000 --> 00:06:03,240
Speaker 1: how much each each bitcoin cost of mine, and I

107
00:06:03,240 --> 00:06:05,760
Speaker 1: think I've got it here. I think the price was

108
00:06:05,800 --> 00:06:10,240
Speaker 1: calculated at about zero point zero zero seven six four

109
00:06:10,360 --> 00:06:13,800
Speaker 1: cents back in October two thousand and nine, meaning you

110
00:06:13,839 --> 00:06:19,960
Speaker 1: could buy over bitcoin for a dollar. Yeah, let's not

111
00:06:20,240 --> 00:06:23,400
Speaker 1: let's not dwell on that new Liberty Standard itself. It

112
00:06:23,480 --> 00:06:28,000
Speaker 1: didn't last long. It's shut down shortly after opening. And

113
00:06:28,279 --> 00:06:32,000
Speaker 1: this coincided with the fact that in late two thousand

114
00:06:32,040 --> 00:06:34,520
Speaker 1: and nine, early two thousand and ten, Bitcoin had kind

115
00:06:34,560 --> 00:06:38,000
Speaker 1: of stalled a bit it had run out of steam.

116
00:06:38,040 --> 00:06:41,719
Speaker 1: It wasn't the network that the sort of adoption, the

117
00:06:41,760 --> 00:06:45,280
Speaker 1: excitement that had gradually built up after its launch had

118
00:06:45,360 --> 00:06:49,039
Speaker 1: kind of plateaued out a bit, so nothing in particular

119
00:06:49,279 --> 00:06:52,920
Speaker 1: was really happening. So yeah, new Liberty Standard. I didn't

120
00:06:52,920 --> 00:06:55,560
Speaker 1: think it became really worth their while to do it

121
00:06:55,600 --> 00:06:59,000
Speaker 1: because no one was that interested in buying bitcoins. What

122
00:06:59,120 --> 00:07:01,479
Speaker 1: this did do, though, was leave a gap in the

123
00:07:01,520 --> 00:07:04,400
Speaker 1: market for these non techi people to be able to

124
00:07:04,400 --> 00:07:07,960
Speaker 1: pick up bitcoins. And again, Marty, he ran in exchange,

125
00:07:08,000 --> 00:07:11,360
Speaker 1: but it was slow and it was basically a real

126
00:07:11,440 --> 00:07:14,840
Speaker 1: fat I think it was really it was quite um.

127
00:07:14,960 --> 00:07:18,000
Speaker 1: He he had other things going on, and as we'll see,

128
00:07:18,200 --> 00:07:23,560
Speaker 1: running a bitcoin exchange is a stressful job, stressful and

129
00:07:23,720 --> 00:07:27,800
Speaker 1: time consuming. And a couple of weeks ago, I had

130
00:07:27,800 --> 00:07:31,200
Speaker 1: a chat with a couple of friends of mine. I'm

131
00:07:31,240 --> 00:07:33,240
Speaker 1: not going to reveal their identities, so we'll just call

132
00:07:33,280 --> 00:07:36,240
Speaker 1: them Alison Bob, and they were talking. They were in

133
00:07:36,400 --> 00:07:40,080
Speaker 1: bitcoin around this time, they were really early adopters, and

134
00:07:40,520 --> 00:07:43,040
Speaker 1: we were talking about this kind of period, and they

135
00:07:43,040 --> 00:07:45,240
Speaker 1: said that one of the only ways that you could

136
00:07:45,280 --> 00:07:48,760
Speaker 1: get your hands on bitcoins was via basically peer to

137
00:07:48,840 --> 00:07:52,680
Speaker 1: peer transactions, and you set these up over Internet relay chat,

138
00:07:52,760 --> 00:07:56,080
Speaker 1: which was you know, text based chat system. It's it's

139
00:07:56,280 --> 00:07:57,960
Speaker 1: I think it's still around, but it's not really used

140
00:07:58,000 --> 00:07:59,840
Speaker 1: these days. I mean obviously things like what's happened to

141
00:07:59,840 --> 00:08:04,040
Speaker 1: tell Agram of kind of Yeah, basically an internet based

142
00:08:04,080 --> 00:08:07,680
Speaker 1: chat system, and you would you would work out a

143
00:08:07,680 --> 00:08:12,920
Speaker 1: deal with another Internet relay chat user and you basically

144
00:08:13,000 --> 00:08:15,840
Speaker 1: had to trust them. So yeah, I'd be talking to

145
00:08:15,880 --> 00:08:18,480
Speaker 1: you over over I r C and I go, okay, um,

146
00:08:19,240 --> 00:08:21,960
Speaker 1: can I've got some I've got some bitcoins for sale.

147
00:08:21,960 --> 00:08:25,360
Speaker 1: Do you want them? We'd agree a price, and then

148
00:08:25,400 --> 00:08:28,240
Speaker 1: one or the other would have to make the first move,

149
00:08:28,320 --> 00:08:30,440
Speaker 1: so I would either have to send you the bitcoins,

150
00:08:30,480 --> 00:08:33,080
Speaker 1: or you'd send me the dollars or send a little

151
00:08:33,120 --> 00:08:35,360
Speaker 1: bit offend a little bit. Yeah I suppose, Yeah, you

152
00:08:35,400 --> 00:08:38,080
Speaker 1: could have done it like that. But basically there was

153
00:08:38,120 --> 00:08:42,240
Speaker 1: trust involved, and as we've seen, trust is Bitcoin was

154
00:08:42,320 --> 00:08:45,040
Speaker 1: designed to be trust less. So there was this kind

155
00:08:45,080 --> 00:08:48,120
Speaker 1: of hole in the whole system in that you are

156
00:08:48,200 --> 00:08:50,600
Speaker 1: you basically had to trust someone that you'd met on

157
00:08:50,640 --> 00:08:55,080
Speaker 1: the internet, which is not ideal. Mind you a seat,

158
00:08:57,760 --> 00:09:00,400
Speaker 1: mind you talking to Alison Bob. They said that generally

159
00:09:00,400 --> 00:09:02,720
Speaker 1: they didn't really have any problems with that, and again,

160
00:09:02,760 --> 00:09:04,439
Speaker 1: I think this is problem. I think when when you're

161
00:09:04,440 --> 00:09:07,720
Speaker 1: talking when it's when it's worth a dollar, yeah, it's

162
00:09:07,760 --> 00:09:11,080
Speaker 1: not people are not really looking to swindle you out

163
00:09:11,080 --> 00:09:14,360
Speaker 1: of five bucks. Yeah, I don't think there were huge

164
00:09:14,480 --> 00:09:17,920
Speaker 1: amounts of money changing hands, and yeah, you're you're absolutely right,

165
00:09:18,240 --> 00:09:22,880
Speaker 1: it's what why go to the effort of swindling someone

166
00:09:22,920 --> 00:09:25,600
Speaker 1: out of a few bucks? Yeah? Um, they said that

167
00:09:25,920 --> 00:09:28,440
Speaker 1: it generally went fine, It wasn't really a problem. And

168
00:09:28,480 --> 00:09:31,200
Speaker 1: I think this is partly because the community itself was

169
00:09:31,240 --> 00:09:33,199
Speaker 1: still quite small. I think it's one of these things.

170
00:09:33,280 --> 00:09:36,920
Speaker 1: It's it's it's a community of believers and they're much

171
00:09:36,960 --> 00:09:39,840
Speaker 1: more likely to be straight with each other. It's only

172
00:09:39,840 --> 00:09:42,560
Speaker 1: when these things get bigger that the kind of bad

173
00:09:42,600 --> 00:09:46,480
Speaker 1: actors come into play. So there was a gap in

174
00:09:46,520 --> 00:09:49,760
Speaker 1: the market for people wanting to get their hands on bitcoins.

175
00:09:50,280 --> 00:09:54,439
Speaker 1: So this is when a chap called Jed macleb turns up. Now,

176
00:09:54,520 --> 00:09:58,520
Speaker 1: Jed mcleb is a really interesting chap. Do you remember

177
00:09:58,960 --> 00:10:01,600
Speaker 1: last time I mentioned that there was a post on

178
00:10:02,200 --> 00:10:06,200
Speaker 1: the sort of geek website slashed. Yeah, and that was

179
00:10:06,280 --> 00:10:09,480
Speaker 1: in July, and that got a lot of interest in

180
00:10:09,520 --> 00:10:12,080
Speaker 1: bitcoin going. A lot of people read that post, heard

181
00:10:12,080 --> 00:10:15,040
Speaker 1: about bitcoin for the first time, and started digging into it.

182
00:10:15,520 --> 00:10:18,680
Speaker 1: And one of these people was Jed macleb, who was,

183
00:10:19,240 --> 00:10:25,199
Speaker 1: believe it or not, a software developer. One of them, again,

184
00:10:25,440 --> 00:10:30,680
Speaker 1: a programmer from He was originally from Arkansas. Funnily enough, though,

185
00:10:31,080 --> 00:10:36,160
Speaker 1: jedmcleb is really Jed or Jeb Jed j E D

186
00:10:36,440 --> 00:10:39,760
Speaker 1: j E D. Yeah. Funnily enough, he's not really your

187
00:10:39,800 --> 00:10:45,079
Speaker 1: typical computer geek. He's got a very sort of I'll

188
00:10:45,080 --> 00:10:47,320
Speaker 1: believe that when I see it. He's actually got a

189
00:10:47,400 --> 00:10:51,320
Speaker 1: very laid back, sort of surfer dude vibe. So Jed

190
00:10:51,400 --> 00:10:54,520
Speaker 1: had dabbled in quite a few projects. He dropped out

191
00:10:54,520 --> 00:10:58,160
Speaker 1: of college and he'd sort of tinkered around various things.

192
00:10:58,600 --> 00:11:02,160
Speaker 1: One of his first success essays was a file sharing

193
00:11:02,200 --> 00:11:04,520
Speaker 1: program that was kind of similar to Napster. It took

194
00:11:04,520 --> 00:11:08,360
Speaker 1: its inspiration from Napster. It was called the Donkey. I

195
00:11:08,360 --> 00:11:11,440
Speaker 1: do remember that, do you? I do remember Donkey? I

196
00:11:11,440 --> 00:11:15,520
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't, but I remember because you sort

197
00:11:15,520 --> 00:11:18,679
Speaker 1: of you're more attuned to that word that that Douy

198
00:11:18,760 --> 00:11:20,520
Speaker 1: wanted to ask you about that. Whether you remember the

199
00:11:20,679 --> 00:11:26,640
Speaker 1: donkey definitely brings a bell. Yeah, So it was. Yeah,

200
00:11:26,720 --> 00:11:31,559
Speaker 1: the Donkey was was quite successful and it made it

201
00:11:31,600 --> 00:11:35,559
Speaker 1: made Jed a fair bit of money. Unfortunately, you won't

202
00:11:35,559 --> 00:11:38,360
Speaker 1: be surprised to hear that kind of attracted the attention

203
00:11:38,400 --> 00:11:41,839
Speaker 1: of the powers that be. The Recording Industry Association America

204
00:11:42,679 --> 00:11:45,160
Speaker 1: basically sued him and him and his partner who had

205
00:11:45,160 --> 00:11:47,440
Speaker 1: set it up with and forced them to shut it down,

206
00:11:47,720 --> 00:11:50,679
Speaker 1: which is probably the least surprising bit of news you'll

207
00:11:50,720 --> 00:11:54,960
Speaker 1: ever hear. So he did have form with kind of

208
00:11:55,000 --> 00:11:58,200
Speaker 1: finding a gap in the market, developing technology to to

209
00:11:58,360 --> 00:12:03,040
Speaker 1: exploit it. But while the likes of How Finny Remember him,

210
00:12:03,080 --> 00:12:06,520
Speaker 1: Marty Laslow and Gavin All guys from the last episode. Now,

211
00:12:06,559 --> 00:12:09,280
Speaker 1: these guys that we talked about before, they were really

212
00:12:09,320 --> 00:12:12,360
Speaker 1: tech focused, and obviously Jed being a software developer, he

213
00:12:12,400 --> 00:12:15,560
Speaker 1: had a kind of tech focus as well, but he

214
00:12:15,720 --> 00:12:20,440
Speaker 1: was more entrepreneurial. That's where his that that was kind

215
00:12:20,440 --> 00:12:22,400
Speaker 1: of more the direction that he leaned in. And this

216
00:12:22,520 --> 00:12:26,240
Speaker 1: is I think really important because up until now these

217
00:12:26,360 --> 00:12:29,320
Speaker 1: we've had these guys who are just focused on improving,

218
00:12:29,840 --> 00:12:32,679
Speaker 1: just on on on working on the project, and then

219
00:12:32,760 --> 00:12:35,480
Speaker 1: Jed mchaeleb comes along. And I'm not saying this to

220
00:12:36,600 --> 00:12:39,120
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not saying this as a negative, but

221
00:12:39,280 --> 00:12:41,920
Speaker 1: I think his interest was definitely more of like, how

222
00:12:41,960 --> 00:12:44,920
Speaker 1: can I you know, how can I not just contribute

223
00:12:44,960 --> 00:12:47,559
Speaker 1: to the project, but how can I exploit it? You know,

224
00:12:47,600 --> 00:12:50,360
Speaker 1: how can I benefit from How can I benefit? Benefit

225
00:12:50,440 --> 00:12:53,840
Speaker 1: is a better word than exploit, isn't it. So yeah,

226
00:12:53,840 --> 00:12:55,800
Speaker 1: I don't think he was purely out to make money,

227
00:12:55,960 --> 00:13:00,920
Speaker 1: but he certainly succeeded in doing that. So another project

228
00:13:00,920 --> 00:13:03,640
Speaker 1: that he started, as we're going to see, Jed is

229
00:13:04,120 --> 00:13:07,480
Speaker 1: a kind of he he flits from project to project.

230
00:13:07,520 --> 00:13:10,040
Speaker 1: He's got quite a few, He's got quite a few

231
00:13:10,040 --> 00:13:13,960
Speaker 1: scalps if you like. So something else that he'd started,

232
00:13:14,520 --> 00:13:16,679
Speaker 1: kind of half started, if you like, was a site

233
00:13:16,679 --> 00:13:21,000
Speaker 1: where players of a game called Magic the Gathering could

234
00:13:21,160 --> 00:13:24,960
Speaker 1: trade cards used in the game. Okay, now have you

235
00:13:25,000 --> 00:13:29,679
Speaker 1: heard of Magic the Gathering. Yes, it's it's it's basically

236
00:13:29,800 --> 00:13:34,640
Speaker 1: kind of a dungeon and Dragon sort of very software developer,

237
00:13:34,720 --> 00:13:38,760
Speaker 1: sort of the kind of things developers do. Maybe not

238
00:13:38,800 --> 00:13:45,840
Speaker 1: your Arkansas Arkansas arkansaw arks surfer dude, software developer. Maybe

239
00:13:45,840 --> 00:13:49,240
Speaker 1: you're traditional. Yeah, well, I mean he was obviously, I

240
00:13:49,280 --> 00:13:53,960
Speaker 1: think he must have made a fan gathering Magic the Gathering.

241
00:13:54,400 --> 00:13:58,520
Speaker 1: It's fantasy roleplay, which really tells. When I read that,

242
00:13:58,559 --> 00:14:00,880
Speaker 1: I was that's all I need to know. I don't

243
00:14:00,920 --> 00:14:02,439
Speaker 1: need to I don't need to dig into that, and

244
00:14:02,480 --> 00:14:06,000
Speaker 1: that's not that's not really for me. But obviously it's

245
00:14:06,040 --> 00:14:10,199
Speaker 1: actually it's very popular. That's still very popular, I think. Yes,

246
00:14:10,280 --> 00:14:14,200
Speaker 1: So Jed had Jed had put together this website where

247
00:14:14,240 --> 00:14:19,560
Speaker 1: you could trade Magic the Gathering cards online, and he

248
00:14:20,080 --> 00:14:22,200
Speaker 1: basically lost interest from what I can see, so he

249
00:14:22,240 --> 00:14:24,440
Speaker 1: shut it down after just a few months, but he

250
00:14:24,520 --> 00:14:27,040
Speaker 1: kept it dormant. He kept hold of the domain, the

251
00:14:27,040 --> 00:14:30,840
Speaker 1: domain name and all that sort of stuff, and so

252
00:14:31,040 --> 00:14:33,160
Speaker 1: when he but when he saw the slash dot post.

253
00:14:33,360 --> 00:14:36,680
Speaker 1: He really loved the sound of bitcoin, and he tried

254
00:14:36,720 --> 00:14:39,040
Speaker 1: to buy somebody found, as we've seen that it was

255
00:14:39,120 --> 00:14:42,840
Speaker 1: quite difficult to do so. So he had the idea, Hey,

256
00:14:42,960 --> 00:14:45,720
Speaker 1: I'm an entrepreneurial guy. I've got some soft software skills,

257
00:14:45,720 --> 00:14:47,720
Speaker 1: I've got some coding skills. I'm going to create an

258
00:14:47,720 --> 00:14:49,800
Speaker 1: exchange where you can do it. He spotted the gap

259
00:14:49,840 --> 00:14:54,240
Speaker 1: in the market and went to Philip and he basically,

260
00:14:54,280 --> 00:14:56,400
Speaker 1: from what I've read, he basically sort of got this

261
00:14:56,480 --> 00:14:59,000
Speaker 1: exchange up and running. He built it, if you like,

262
00:14:59,240 --> 00:15:02,120
Speaker 1: pretty much the night. So he locked away it locked

263
00:15:02,200 --> 00:15:04,600
Speaker 1: himself away in his in his study and built this

264
00:15:04,640 --> 00:15:08,600
Speaker 1: thing overnight. And he needed a domain name, and he

265
00:15:08,680 --> 00:15:11,000
Speaker 1: realized he remembered that he had at this kind of

266
00:15:11,040 --> 00:15:15,360
Speaker 1: dormant domain for Magic the Gathering Cards. So he just thought,

267
00:15:15,600 --> 00:15:22,040
Speaker 1: use that waste not whatnot. So the domain name was

268
00:15:22,360 --> 00:15:26,320
Speaker 1: empty g o X dot com okay, and that stood

269
00:15:26,400 --> 00:15:33,080
Speaker 1: for Magic the Gathering Online Exchange. So and that's so

270
00:15:33,200 --> 00:15:35,400
Speaker 1: he stuck with that, and that has since come to

271
00:15:35,440 --> 00:15:39,440
Speaker 1: be known as Mount Cox. Now apparently you're supposed to

272
00:15:39,440 --> 00:15:42,440
Speaker 1: pronounce it empty Cox, but no one ever does know

273
00:15:42,560 --> 00:15:45,520
Speaker 1: it's been mount Cox. Is there a word for that

274
00:15:45,600 --> 00:15:51,080
Speaker 1: when when things just become pronounced in the way that

275
00:15:51,160 --> 00:15:59,200
Speaker 1: you know, probably, but I've known that can be order.

276
00:15:59,280 --> 00:16:00,880
Speaker 1: You can get on Google will and find that out

277
00:16:02,360 --> 00:16:05,000
Speaker 1: in the meantime. Yeah, So we had so mount Gox.

278
00:16:05,440 --> 00:16:10,520
Speaker 1: That's that's where this rather strange name came from. And

279
00:16:10,760 --> 00:16:13,320
Speaker 1: it worked like this. Basically, customers signed up for an

280
00:16:13,360 --> 00:16:16,960
Speaker 1: account with mount Cox and they deposited money straight into

281
00:16:17,240 --> 00:16:21,600
Speaker 1: Jed's PayPal account. Yes, he then held this money on

282
00:16:21,640 --> 00:16:24,560
Speaker 1: their behalf. They were able to trade on the exchange

283
00:16:24,640 --> 00:16:28,000
Speaker 1: using the funds that he that he was holding for them,

284
00:16:28,040 --> 00:16:30,560
Speaker 1: and the way the exchange made his money made its

285
00:16:30,560 --> 00:16:32,680
Speaker 1: money obviously, was to take a small percentage cut of

286
00:16:32,680 --> 00:16:39,320
Speaker 1: each transaction. And it quickly became really popular because interest

287
00:16:39,360 --> 00:16:42,200
Speaker 1: in bitcoin was starting to pick up, especially in the

288
00:16:42,200 --> 00:16:45,960
Speaker 1: wake of this slash Dot post. More people, including obviously Jed,

289
00:16:46,320 --> 00:16:48,080
Speaker 1: had cottoned on to bitcoin, so they were trying to

290
00:16:48,120 --> 00:16:50,360
Speaker 1: get their hands on some here. He was basically in

291
00:16:50,400 --> 00:16:53,840
Speaker 1: the right place at the right time, and we also

292
00:16:53,880 --> 00:16:56,760
Speaker 1: had more people mining it as well after the slash

293
00:16:56,760 --> 00:16:59,400
Speaker 1: Dot post, so it was it was picking up Bitcoin

294
00:16:59,480 --> 00:17:02,440
Speaker 1: was picking up momentum, picking up steam, so this was

295
00:17:02,480 --> 00:17:04,679
Speaker 1: a great way for people mining it to earn a

296
00:17:04,680 --> 00:17:07,199
Speaker 1: bit of money rather than just sitting on it, and

297
00:17:07,240 --> 00:17:09,480
Speaker 1: a great way for people who wanted to get involved

298
00:17:09,720 --> 00:17:12,439
Speaker 1: to purchase some without having to go to the trouble

299
00:17:12,520 --> 00:17:15,320
Speaker 1: of figuring out how to mind it exactly exactly. You

300
00:17:15,320 --> 00:17:18,600
Speaker 1: didn't need to be a techie person in order finally,

301
00:17:18,640 --> 00:17:20,880
Speaker 1: in order to try and to try and actually buy some.

302
00:17:21,359 --> 00:17:23,480
Speaker 1: So this was this was a big This was a

303
00:17:23,520 --> 00:17:26,920
Speaker 1: big step forward. It was, and it made it made

304
00:17:26,960 --> 00:17:30,119
Speaker 1: the whole thing easier. This also, the fact that there

305
00:17:30,160 --> 00:17:33,040
Speaker 1: were more people mining it made the difficulty level of

306
00:17:33,080 --> 00:17:36,640
Speaker 1: mining go up, meaning that bitcoins became harder to get

307
00:17:36,680 --> 00:17:40,520
Speaker 1: hold of. So this exchange was you know, really well timed.

308
00:17:40,600 --> 00:17:44,120
Speaker 1: And as we've seen before, of course bitcoin pizza guy

309
00:17:44,200 --> 00:17:46,560
Speaker 1: laslow hany X had figured out how to mind it

310
00:17:46,800 --> 00:17:50,040
Speaker 1: with his GPU rather than his CPUs, so the bar

311
00:17:50,320 --> 00:17:54,240
Speaker 1: for mining was raised again. So there really was a

312
00:17:54,320 --> 00:17:56,480
Speaker 1: pretty dire need for a site for them. We have

313
00:17:56,560 --> 00:18:00,440
Speaker 1: quite a influence on the price of it. Yeah, well, yeah,

314
00:18:00,440 --> 00:18:03,159
Speaker 1: I mean it's the way these the way these exchanges

315
00:18:03,240 --> 00:18:07,320
Speaker 1: work is that you know, it's it's what's demanded. But

316
00:18:07,680 --> 00:18:10,440
Speaker 1: surely you can if you are the big exchange and

317
00:18:10,520 --> 00:18:12,960
Speaker 1: you've got okay, cool, well this is what it's costing now.

318
00:18:13,640 --> 00:18:15,520
Speaker 1: I guess you in the early stages, you'd be able

319
00:18:15,560 --> 00:18:20,239
Speaker 1: to influence the market quite quite significantly, I guess. So

320
00:18:20,400 --> 00:18:23,960
Speaker 1: I'm not quite sure how that would have worked, whether

321
00:18:24,480 --> 00:18:28,280
Speaker 1: whether Jed or you know, whoever is running any whatever

322
00:18:28,359 --> 00:18:31,880
Speaker 1: exchange could go. Do you know what I'm gonna I'm

323
00:18:31,880 --> 00:18:33,480
Speaker 1: gonna bump the price up. You know it's going to

324
00:18:33,560 --> 00:18:37,399
Speaker 1: be it's going to be a dollar and ten cents

325
00:18:37,480 --> 00:18:40,400
Speaker 1: here rather than the dollar and nine cents or something

326
00:18:40,400 --> 00:18:43,840
Speaker 1: somewhere else. I suppose, because if you're bumping up there,

327
00:18:43,840 --> 00:18:46,439
Speaker 1: then you're having to pay, unless you're sitting on a

328
00:18:46,480 --> 00:18:51,840
Speaker 1: load then and then it's easier. Yeah, I mean, I

329
00:18:51,840 --> 00:18:53,680
Speaker 1: think you want to try, and you want to try

330
00:18:53,680 --> 00:18:56,879
Speaker 1: and track the price, the general price fairly accurately. I

331
00:18:56,920 --> 00:18:59,119
Speaker 1: suppose you're just making your your cut on it's the

332
00:18:59,160 --> 00:19:02,440
Speaker 1: more people using, the more money you're making as well. Yeah, yeah,

333
00:19:02,520 --> 00:19:06,040
Speaker 1: I'm not sure it's particularly in your interest to offer

334
00:19:06,240 --> 00:19:09,320
Speaker 1: a lower or a higher price. I mean, I suppose

335
00:19:09,320 --> 00:19:11,800
Speaker 1: a lower price means that you that you do get

336
00:19:12,600 --> 00:19:15,280
Speaker 1: more people business. But it's a slippery slope. I think,

337
00:19:15,320 --> 00:19:19,560
Speaker 1: I think you you the market kind of decides. So

338
00:19:19,720 --> 00:19:23,080
Speaker 1: Mount Cox, apparently, according to Alison Bob these friends I

339
00:19:23,160 --> 00:19:26,000
Speaker 1: spoke to, Mount Cox was apparently a big improvement on

340
00:19:26,080 --> 00:19:29,760
Speaker 1: previous exchanges that were there was less downtime because I

341
00:19:29,800 --> 00:19:32,480
Speaker 1: think because Jed was actually able to automate parts of it.

342
00:19:32,760 --> 00:19:35,520
Speaker 1: I think beforehand, whoever been running it was kind of

343
00:19:35,920 --> 00:19:39,080
Speaker 1: dealing with all aspects of it. So Jed got the

344
00:19:39,080 --> 00:19:42,320
Speaker 1: tech working better. So it was also quicker and plus

345
00:19:42,400 --> 00:19:45,119
Speaker 1: apparently it had a much better user interface. It was

346
00:19:45,200 --> 00:19:50,160
Speaker 1: just generally easier to use, which obviously helped it gain popularity.

347
00:19:50,200 --> 00:19:52,600
Speaker 1: And it did so very quickly, and it was pretty

348
00:19:52,640 --> 00:19:56,480
Speaker 1: soon the biggest bitcoin business going. Well yeah, and it was,

349
00:19:56,720 --> 00:19:59,280
Speaker 1: I mean, reading about it, it seems it seems this

350
00:19:59,359 --> 00:20:05,040
Speaker 1: happened almost overnight, it really really quickly. Now this became

351
00:20:05,240 --> 00:20:07,920
Speaker 1: for Jed a bit of a problem because the more

352
00:20:08,000 --> 00:20:11,440
Speaker 1: successful something gets, the more admin you have to deal with.

353
00:20:11,680 --> 00:20:14,760
Speaker 1: And I'm sure you've found this in in any in

354
00:20:14,800 --> 00:20:16,639
Speaker 1: all lines of work you've been involved with. You know,

355
00:20:17,280 --> 00:20:24,200
Speaker 1: success does come at a price. It's more money, more problems. Yeah,

356
00:20:24,240 --> 00:20:27,000
Speaker 1: to quote quote that the greatest, the greatest philosopher of

357
00:20:27,000 --> 00:20:29,119
Speaker 1: the twentieth century. Yeah, the more money you get, the

358
00:20:29,160 --> 00:20:32,879
Speaker 1: more hassle life becomes. So yeah, as I said before,

359
00:20:32,960 --> 00:20:35,080
Speaker 1: he was living on on the beach in Costa Rica.

360
00:20:35,400 --> 00:20:37,840
Speaker 1: He was wanting to surf. Him and his partner had

361
00:20:37,880 --> 00:20:40,239
Speaker 1: a new baby. He basically was just trying to get

362
00:20:40,280 --> 00:20:44,639
Speaker 1: a nice life and had set up this exchange, you know,

363
00:20:44,680 --> 00:20:47,119
Speaker 1: to fund that, and I think it was it was

364
00:20:47,160 --> 00:20:48,800
Speaker 1: beginning to take over his life a bit. It was

365
00:20:48,880 --> 00:20:52,520
Speaker 1: just constantly issues to deal with. And there were also

366
00:20:52,840 --> 00:20:56,160
Speaker 1: security issues as well, because the site, as you can imagine,

367
00:20:56,600 --> 00:20:59,960
Speaker 1: was becoming a magnet for hackers and it had quite

368
00:21:00,400 --> 00:21:03,800
Speaker 1: quite a few bitcoin got stolen. And I think with

369
00:21:03,840 --> 00:21:07,080
Speaker 1: a business like this, with I mean cryptocurrency exchanges today

370
00:21:07,280 --> 00:21:12,040
Speaker 1: spend millions upon millions of dollars on security. It's probably

371
00:21:12,080 --> 00:21:15,800
Speaker 1: I think their biggest outgoing really because yeah, you've got

372
00:21:15,800 --> 00:21:18,199
Speaker 1: these huge that they are the places to try and

373
00:21:18,240 --> 00:21:20,760
Speaker 1: hack it. It's it's like a great big bank fold

374
00:21:21,000 --> 00:21:23,040
Speaker 1: in a way. If you can get inside, then you

375
00:21:23,080 --> 00:21:26,960
Speaker 1: can help yourself. And I mean I must say I

376
00:21:27,040 --> 00:21:30,680
Speaker 1: know nothing about programming at all, nothing about writing code

377
00:21:30,960 --> 00:21:33,160
Speaker 1: or what it must be to to try and keep

378
00:21:33,720 --> 00:21:36,800
Speaker 1: a website whatever it's doing safe from attack and all

379
00:21:36,840 --> 00:21:38,720
Speaker 1: that sort of stuff, but I can only imagine it's

380
00:21:38,800 --> 00:21:42,600
Speaker 1: really time consuming and really stressful, especially as more people

381
00:21:42,600 --> 00:21:45,000
Speaker 1: are trying to hack. And of course, remember he's holding

382
00:21:45,000 --> 00:21:49,080
Speaker 1: other people's money, so the responsibility is going up and up.

383
00:21:49,960 --> 00:21:53,800
Speaker 1: So Jed, as you can imagine, this whole thing was

384
00:21:54,400 --> 00:21:56,640
Speaker 1: causing him a lot of anxiety, and what he really

385
00:21:56,680 --> 00:21:59,680
Speaker 1: wanted to do was offload the exchange on to someone else.

386
00:22:00,280 --> 00:22:04,000
Speaker 1: He'd tried it, got it, it had been successful, and

387
00:22:04,040 --> 00:22:07,120
Speaker 1: now it was just too much of a hassle. So

388
00:22:07,760 --> 00:22:11,120
Speaker 1: at this point in the story, another character enters, and

389
00:22:11,560 --> 00:22:14,320
Speaker 1: this guy is something else. This is a guy called

390
00:22:14,520 --> 00:22:20,280
Speaker 1: Mark Carpellis. Mark Carpellis is a fascinating character, and he

391
00:22:20,359 --> 00:22:22,560
Speaker 1: has got to be one of the most controversial figures

392
00:22:22,560 --> 00:22:24,719
Speaker 1: in the whole story of bitcoin up to now. And

393
00:22:24,760 --> 00:22:27,720
Speaker 1: that's is your live Still he is alive? Yeah, he

394
00:22:27,840 --> 00:22:32,480
Speaker 1: is alive much longer well, I think, so, okay, not

395
00:22:32,560 --> 00:22:34,600
Speaker 1: that I would hope. So I don't think you can

396
00:22:34,640 --> 00:22:36,919
Speaker 1: wish any You wouldn't want to wish any harm on

397
00:22:36,920 --> 00:22:38,800
Speaker 1: the chapel, though I'm sure there are people that do,

398
00:22:39,040 --> 00:22:43,520
Speaker 1: as we'll find out. So at the time, Mark Carpellis

399
00:22:43,600 --> 00:22:47,560
Speaker 1: was a twenty four year old French computer programmer, another

400
00:22:47,600 --> 00:22:51,399
Speaker 1: one of those this story is stuffed with who was

401
00:22:51,400 --> 00:22:56,000
Speaker 1: into mudgically gathering but also surfed. I don't think what

402
00:22:56,080 --> 00:22:58,399
Speaker 1: is about surfing, like they all seem to surf if

403
00:22:58,400 --> 00:23:01,399
Speaker 1: they're vague. Yes, that's right. Health he served, Yeah, and

404
00:23:01,480 --> 00:23:03,600
Speaker 1: Jed mcleb I not. I don't think the others did

405
00:23:03,800 --> 00:23:06,840
Speaker 1: as far as I know, just served the internet. Just yeah,

406
00:23:06,920 --> 00:23:11,160
Speaker 1: they just surved, Yeah, exactly. Um No, I don't think

407
00:23:11,160 --> 00:23:14,520
Speaker 1: Mark Carpelli served. Not in France, not in France, and

408
00:23:14,680 --> 00:23:18,240
Speaker 1: not in Japan, which is where he was living. So yes,

409
00:23:18,280 --> 00:23:20,720
Speaker 1: Mark was this twenty four year old computer programmer and

410
00:23:20,760 --> 00:23:23,080
Speaker 1: he'd been living in Japan for about a year when

411
00:23:23,160 --> 00:23:26,439
Speaker 1: he met Jed online, and he had this thing for

412
00:23:26,560 --> 00:23:29,439
Speaker 1: Japanese culture. He'd gone over there and just sort of

413
00:23:30,040 --> 00:23:33,240
Speaker 1: fallen in love with Japan. He loved it, so he

414
00:23:33,920 --> 00:23:37,600
Speaker 1: up sticks and moved there. Now, before we say anything

415
00:23:37,600 --> 00:23:41,480
Speaker 1: else about Mark, he's clearly a very smart guy. He

416
00:23:41,560 --> 00:23:44,480
Speaker 1: understood bitcoin as as soon as he discovered it. He

417
00:23:44,520 --> 00:23:49,120
Speaker 1: saw its potential, He got it um and he started.

418
00:23:49,200 --> 00:23:52,240
Speaker 1: He liked it so much he was he had a business.

419
00:23:52,400 --> 00:23:55,560
Speaker 1: It was a web hosting business I think it was,

420
00:23:55,880 --> 00:23:58,680
Speaker 1: and he pretty quickly started accepting it as a form

421
00:23:58,680 --> 00:24:01,240
Speaker 1: of payment. So he he was he had the vision,

422
00:24:01,680 --> 00:24:06,560
Speaker 1: he understood it, but he was very socially awkward, one

423
00:24:06,640 --> 00:24:09,360
Speaker 1: of these guys who's basically happiest sat as a computer.

424
00:24:10,160 --> 00:24:14,160
Speaker 1: There are suggestions that he maybe suffers from Asperger syndrome

425
00:24:14,440 --> 00:24:17,680
Speaker 1: or something like that. He's certainly the sort of person

426
00:24:17,680 --> 00:24:21,399
Speaker 1: who finds human contact a bit of a struggle and

427
00:24:22,560 --> 00:24:26,080
Speaker 1: watching watching documentaries and stuff about him, people described him

428
00:24:26,119 --> 00:24:29,240
Speaker 1: as kind of strange and not like most people. This

429
00:24:29,359 --> 00:24:34,160
Speaker 1: is former colleagues speaking, so not a people person, which

430
00:24:34,240 --> 00:24:39,560
Speaker 1: is not all that surprising for a computer programmer. Computer

431
00:24:39,600 --> 00:24:44,399
Speaker 1: programming is not really a people business, you could argue. Nevertheless,

432
00:24:44,600 --> 00:24:49,160
Speaker 1: a fascinating character. He was very overweight, obsessed with Japanese

433
00:24:49,240 --> 00:24:52,280
Speaker 1: culture and also cats. Wow, this is taking a lot

434
00:24:52,320 --> 00:24:55,960
Speaker 1: of boxes. He owned this web posting business in Japan.

435
00:24:56,000 --> 00:24:59,280
Speaker 1: It was called Tapan Limited, and that was it was

436
00:24:59,359 --> 00:25:02,800
Speaker 1: named after his cat, Mark and Jed met online. Mark

437
00:25:02,920 --> 00:25:05,639
Speaker 1: gave Jed a hand with some Mount Cox related stuff.

438
00:25:05,680 --> 00:25:08,400
Speaker 1: He lent him his expertise, and this planted a seed

439
00:25:08,400 --> 00:25:10,800
Speaker 1: in Jed's mind. So Jed and Mark became quite close

440
00:25:10,840 --> 00:25:14,120
Speaker 1: and kind of Jed relied on him a bit. Mount

441
00:25:14,160 --> 00:25:16,080
Speaker 1: Cox became more and more of a pain to run,

442
00:25:16,160 --> 00:25:20,320
Speaker 1: so Jed decided to offer the site to Mark, basically

443
00:25:20,320 --> 00:25:23,720
Speaker 1: take it off his hands, on very favorable terms. And

444
00:25:23,760 --> 00:25:26,080
Speaker 1: again this perhaps should have been a red flag. So

445
00:25:26,119 --> 00:25:30,760
Speaker 1: basically Mark was offered percent of the company in exchange

446
00:25:30,800 --> 00:25:36,080
Speaker 1: for of the company's revenues for six months. Now, when

447
00:25:36,119 --> 00:25:40,200
Speaker 1: you consider that this is the biggest bitcoin business going,

448
00:25:41,040 --> 00:25:43,760
Speaker 1: that pretty much the only place that most people are

449
00:25:43,880 --> 00:25:47,080
Speaker 1: using to buy bitcoins, that is a head of a

450
00:25:47,160 --> 00:25:51,359
Speaker 1: good yeah. Yeah, And it's, as I say, probably the

451
00:25:51,359 --> 00:25:53,560
Speaker 1: sort of deal that should have set alarm bells ring.

452
00:25:53,600 --> 00:25:55,760
Speaker 1: What we're going to find out very quickly is that

453
00:25:55,800 --> 00:25:59,360
Speaker 1: Mark isn't really much of a businessman, so it's perhaps

454
00:25:59,800 --> 00:26:03,359
Speaker 1: not surprising that that got that that didn't show up

455
00:26:03,400 --> 00:26:06,240
Speaker 1: on his radar. Anyhow, the deal was apparently set up.

456
00:26:06,280 --> 00:26:08,600
Speaker 1: There were no lawyers involved. It was all pretty amateur.

457
00:26:08,640 --> 00:26:12,200
Speaker 1: I think they basically drew up their own contracts and

458
00:26:12,280 --> 00:26:14,439
Speaker 1: sent them to each other to sign, and that was it.

459
00:26:14,880 --> 00:26:18,479
Speaker 1: Mounts wasn't It wasn't making all that much money. I mean,

460
00:26:18,520 --> 00:26:20,720
Speaker 1: it was, it was popular, it was gaining traction, but

461
00:26:21,119 --> 00:26:23,359
Speaker 1: the cut of each transaction that it was taking as

462
00:26:23,359 --> 00:26:26,760
Speaker 1: a fee, I should say, it wasn't huge. So we're

463
00:26:26,760 --> 00:26:29,680
Speaker 1: not talking, you know, we're not talking making money hand

464
00:26:29,760 --> 00:26:32,120
Speaker 1: over fist, but it was certainly it was certainly gaining

465
00:26:32,160 --> 00:26:36,760
Speaker 1: in popularity. However, by the time Mark assumed control of

466
00:26:36,800 --> 00:26:39,200
Speaker 1: Mount Goox, he moved it's HQ to Tokyo, which is

467
00:26:39,359 --> 00:26:42,200
Speaker 1: obviously where he was based, this had begun to change.

468
00:26:42,200 --> 00:26:44,560
Speaker 1: So Mount Cox was starting to get more and more

469
00:26:44,600 --> 00:26:48,440
Speaker 1: popular around the time that Mark took it over. And

470
00:26:48,560 --> 00:26:51,439
Speaker 1: there was a reason for this, and this reason was

471
00:26:51,480 --> 00:26:55,560
Speaker 1: the emergence of another business that relied on bitcoin to

472
00:26:55,680 --> 00:26:59,280
Speaker 1: make its money. Should we take a break, should we

473
00:26:59,359 --> 00:27:18,080
Speaker 1: leave them hanging? Yeah? Welcome back everyone to part two

474
00:27:18,480 --> 00:27:23,040
Speaker 1: of our third episode about bitcoin. It's time to talk

475
00:27:23,080 --> 00:27:27,800
Speaker 1: about the second notorious bitcoin business that sprung up around

476
00:27:27,800 --> 00:27:32,400
Speaker 1: this time. Okay, let's lead into it a bit. So

477
00:27:32,720 --> 00:27:35,719
Speaker 1: if bitcoin was ever going to catch on properly, it

478
00:27:35,800 --> 00:27:37,560
Speaker 1: was there was going to have to be a real

479
00:27:37,760 --> 00:27:39,879
Speaker 1: world use case for it was going to have to

480
00:27:39,920 --> 00:27:42,520
Speaker 1: be something you could buy. You need to be able

481
00:27:42,560 --> 00:27:47,960
Speaker 1: to buy something with it to use it. Unfortunately, or unfortunately,

482
00:27:48,000 --> 00:27:49,400
Speaker 1: I mean it depends who you ask them. This one,

483
00:27:49,960 --> 00:27:52,960
Speaker 1: such a use case appeared around this time and its

484
00:27:53,080 --> 00:27:57,840
Speaker 1: name was the Silk Road. Silk Road, Yeah, I think

485
00:27:58,240 --> 00:28:01,080
Speaker 1: I think it's probably fair to was that most people

486
00:28:01,119 --> 00:28:05,800
Speaker 1: have heard of this in some the first one not

487
00:28:05,880 --> 00:28:09,520
Speaker 1: to the original road. Yeah, so the original silk Road, Yes,

488
00:28:09,560 --> 00:28:12,840
Speaker 1: that was the That was the trading routes from China,

489
00:28:12,960 --> 00:28:17,320
Speaker 1: wasn't it. This? This is this obviously took its inspiration

490
00:28:17,880 --> 00:28:21,240
Speaker 1: from that, but is very very different. The best way

491
00:28:21,280 --> 00:28:25,160
Speaker 1: to describe Silk Road is as an eBay for illegal

492
00:28:25,200 --> 00:28:28,560
Speaker 1: stuff and leave feedback and leave feedback. Yeah, that was

493
00:28:28,600 --> 00:28:30,520
Speaker 1: a big part of how it functioned. We'll we'll get

494
00:28:30,520 --> 00:28:34,200
Speaker 1: to that. So, yeah, it was basically a dark net marketplace. Now,

495
00:28:34,200 --> 00:28:36,240
Speaker 1: the darknet, we don't want to go too deep into this,

496
00:28:36,320 --> 00:28:38,080
Speaker 1: but the dark net is kind of a sub layer

497
00:28:38,160 --> 00:28:40,720
Speaker 1: of the Internet that you can only access through a

498
00:28:40,760 --> 00:28:46,320
Speaker 1: special browser called tour tour and that makes you completely anonymous,

499
00:28:46,360 --> 00:28:49,920
Speaker 1: So you can interact with these darknet websites and nobody

500
00:28:49,920 --> 00:28:52,600
Speaker 1: can track you. You You you can, you know you can.

501
00:28:52,760 --> 00:28:56,240
Speaker 1: You don't leave any sort of footprint. Um, and yeah,

502
00:28:56,240 --> 00:28:59,600
Speaker 1: the dark net is a fascinating subject. It's huge, apparently

503
00:29:00,360 --> 00:29:05,120
Speaker 1: absolutely massive, all sorts of all sorts of crazy illegal

504
00:29:05,960 --> 00:29:08,320
Speaker 1: edgy stuff going on there. So Silk Road was a

505
00:29:08,400 --> 00:29:12,080
Speaker 1: dark net marketplace where users were able to buy mostly

506
00:29:12,520 --> 00:29:18,280
Speaker 1: illegal drugs. It did also offer other stuff, so you can, yeah,

507
00:29:18,360 --> 00:29:20,560
Speaker 1: you could get you could get weapons, you got and

508
00:29:20,600 --> 00:29:24,360
Speaker 1: credit card details. Yeah, you could also get forged passports

509
00:29:24,400 --> 00:29:28,280
Speaker 1: and other I D documents. You could get hacking tutorials,

510
00:29:28,760 --> 00:29:31,840
Speaker 1: all that sort of stuff hit men as well, apparently,

511
00:29:33,120 --> 00:29:35,080
Speaker 1: although you could, Although you could buy all sorts of

512
00:29:35,080 --> 00:29:39,040
Speaker 1: stuff there. Drugs made up the vast majority of its business.

513
00:29:39,120 --> 00:29:41,640
Speaker 1: And I mean, we've got up here, and I'll leave

514
00:29:41,680 --> 00:29:43,200
Speaker 1: a link to this in the show notes, but we've

515
00:29:43,240 --> 00:29:46,680
Speaker 1: got here a picture of Silk Road's kind of landing page,

516
00:29:46,720 --> 00:29:49,320
Speaker 1: if you like. So up in the top left corner,

517
00:29:49,440 --> 00:29:52,600
Speaker 1: there's the there's the logo, which is a man on

518
00:29:52,600 --> 00:29:55,840
Speaker 1: a camel, all in green, and it says Silk Road

519
00:29:55,880 --> 00:29:58,640
Speaker 1: Anonymous market. And then you've got a little menu down

520
00:29:58,720 --> 00:30:02,720
Speaker 1: the side, and you've got drugs as as a heading,

521
00:30:02,760 --> 00:30:05,040
Speaker 1: and then you've got a whole You've got all these subheadings.

522
00:30:05,120 --> 00:30:12,080
Speaker 1: Let's have a look Cannabis, disassociatives, ecstasy, opioids, other I

523
00:30:12,120 --> 00:30:17,760
Speaker 1: wonder what other is precursors, prescription stimulants, psychedelics, all this

524
00:30:17,840 --> 00:30:20,800
Speaker 1: sort of and then you've got other headings apparel, art,

525
00:30:22,960 --> 00:30:28,720
Speaker 1: what's that, biotic materials, books, all sorts of stuff. Now,

526
00:30:29,320 --> 00:30:31,800
Speaker 1: what was really important about silk Crowd was if you're

527
00:30:31,800 --> 00:30:35,400
Speaker 1: buying or selling drugs or anything else illegal over the internet,

528
00:30:35,480 --> 00:30:38,360
Speaker 1: even on the dark Web, you don't want to use

529
00:30:38,400 --> 00:30:41,680
Speaker 1: your real identity, and you don't want to pay using

530
00:30:41,680 --> 00:30:44,240
Speaker 1: a bank account or credit card or PayPal account or

531
00:30:44,240 --> 00:30:46,880
Speaker 1: whatever it is that's in your name. That I mean,

532
00:30:47,040 --> 00:30:48,760
Speaker 1: you don't need to You don't need to be an

533
00:30:48,840 --> 00:30:52,080
Speaker 1: expert on privacy or internet security to know to know that.

534
00:30:52,840 --> 00:30:56,320
Speaker 1: So the person who created the Silk Road, who will

535
00:30:56,520 --> 00:31:01,160
Speaker 1: talk about later, they realized that b coin was the

536
00:31:01,160 --> 00:31:06,160
Speaker 1: form of payment to use, and yeah, anonymity was absolutely

537
00:31:06,240 --> 00:31:08,640
Speaker 1: key for silk Rode. And it should be pointed out

538
00:31:08,640 --> 00:31:12,000
Speaker 1: here that bitcoin is not actually wholly anonymous. I think

539
00:31:12,000 --> 00:31:15,120
Speaker 1: we may have touched on this before. It's pseudonymous. So

540
00:31:15,200 --> 00:31:18,120
Speaker 1: if the authorities really want to trace you through bitcoin,

541
00:31:18,280 --> 00:31:21,720
Speaker 1: they can, and to nowadays they're a lot better at it,

542
00:31:22,120 --> 00:31:25,760
Speaker 1: But it wasn't It wasn't completely anonymous back then, so

543
00:31:26,240 --> 00:31:29,480
Speaker 1: but it was it was certainly it was certainly a

544
00:31:29,560 --> 00:31:33,400
Speaker 1: much better option than using cash. Yeah, well you couldn't

545
00:31:33,440 --> 00:31:37,160
Speaker 1: really use cash, could you cash. Yeah, it was a

546
00:31:37,160 --> 00:31:40,680
Speaker 1: lot better option than using traditional ways of buying things

547
00:31:40,680 --> 00:31:45,560
Speaker 1: on the internet. Um, and yeah, the advantages here are clear.

548
00:31:46,120 --> 00:31:48,160
Speaker 1: You can Bitcoin could be sent peer to peer, buy

549
00:31:48,160 --> 00:31:50,120
Speaker 1: it to seller without anyone in between to stop it

550
00:31:50,160 --> 00:31:54,320
Speaker 1: from happening, and there was relative privacy on it. And

551
00:31:55,000 --> 00:31:59,000
Speaker 1: so silk Road made use of these kind of this

552
00:31:59,080 --> 00:32:02,480
Speaker 1: kind of nexus of new emerging technology. It had it

553
00:32:02,560 --> 00:32:07,760
Speaker 1: had the dark net and it had Bitcoin, and it

554
00:32:07,800 --> 00:32:12,400
Speaker 1: couldn't have it couldn't have functioned without both. Yeah, So yeah,

555
00:32:12,440 --> 00:32:15,960
Speaker 1: it was. It was a very clever invention. So yeah,

556
00:32:16,000 --> 00:32:19,480
Speaker 1: silk Rode, it made it took advantage of this kind

557
00:32:19,480 --> 00:32:22,840
Speaker 1: of meeting of to to new technologies. Yeah, this this

558
00:32:23,040 --> 00:32:26,320
Speaker 1: meeting of the dark net and and and everything that

559
00:32:26,520 --> 00:32:30,800
Speaker 1: it allowed you to do and also bitcoin, and it

560
00:32:30,920 --> 00:32:33,880
Speaker 1: was I mean, you can see the advantages, I think,

561
00:32:34,000 --> 00:32:38,040
Speaker 1: whatever your stance on on drugs is. And obviously it

562
00:32:38,080 --> 00:32:42,920
Speaker 1: was set up with fairly sort of libertarian ideals around drugs.

563
00:32:42,920 --> 00:32:45,200
Speaker 1: So the advantages of silk Rode I think are pretty

564
00:32:45,200 --> 00:32:48,360
Speaker 1: clear regardless of your stance on drugs in general and

565
00:32:48,480 --> 00:32:51,600
Speaker 1: drug laws. It's much better to buy your drugs if

566
00:32:51,640 --> 00:32:53,160
Speaker 1: you're going to if you're going to buy them, it's

567
00:32:53,200 --> 00:32:55,120
Speaker 1: much better than buying from the comfort of your own

568
00:32:55,120 --> 00:32:57,080
Speaker 1: home and have them sent to you in the mail,

569
00:32:57,560 --> 00:33:00,520
Speaker 1: rather than meeting a dodgy man down a dodgy to

570
00:33:00,560 --> 00:33:03,880
Speaker 1: buy some dodgy substance. Exactly. Yeah, it was. It was

571
00:33:04,000 --> 00:33:06,800
Speaker 1: a much better option and of course much better for

572
00:33:06,840 --> 00:33:09,160
Speaker 1: both sides of the bargain. Much better for the buyer

573
00:33:09,200 --> 00:33:11,240
Speaker 1: and much better for the seller because they didn't have

574
00:33:11,280 --> 00:33:13,240
Speaker 1: to go out and pound the streets and risk arrest

575
00:33:13,280 --> 00:33:15,000
Speaker 1: and all that sort of stuff. They could they could

576
00:33:15,080 --> 00:33:16,880
Speaker 1: mail things out from the comfort of their own home

577
00:33:16,920 --> 00:33:19,560
Speaker 1: as well. And as you touched on, yeah, it had

578
00:33:19,600 --> 00:33:24,440
Speaker 1: a review system so people could be people could They

579
00:33:24,440 --> 00:33:27,600
Speaker 1: couldn't be sure that what they were getting was was

580
00:33:27,760 --> 00:33:30,880
Speaker 1: what they were paying for, but yeah, it's sort of

581
00:33:30,880 --> 00:33:33,600
Speaker 1: built up trust and that if a dealer had lots

582
00:33:33,600 --> 00:33:35,840
Speaker 1: of bad reviews, then you just wouldn't use them. Yeah.

583
00:33:35,840 --> 00:33:40,960
Speaker 1: I mean it's similar to how eBay works, or especially

584
00:33:41,120 --> 00:33:44,320
Speaker 1: more eBay than Amazon, because you know, it was more

585
00:33:44,960 --> 00:33:47,560
Speaker 1: more focused on the review was down to oka called

586
00:33:48,160 --> 00:33:52,520
Speaker 1: discrete packaging, timely coms, all of this sort of stuff,

587
00:33:52,520 --> 00:33:57,000
Speaker 1: which is more important than when you're buying a substantial

588
00:33:57,040 --> 00:33:59,280
Speaker 1: amount of drugs then when you're buying you know, some

589
00:33:59,320 --> 00:34:02,320
Speaker 1: replacement by threes for your remote or something. So these

590
00:34:02,360 --> 00:34:05,680
Speaker 1: are the things that were important to people. Um, the

591
00:34:05,720 --> 00:34:09,239
Speaker 1: type of packaging that came in air sealed all of

592
00:34:09,239 --> 00:34:13,080
Speaker 1: this sort of stuff so that those pescial authorities wouldn't

593
00:34:13,080 --> 00:34:17,160
Speaker 1: catch on. Yeah. Yeah, and it's fascinating reading about it. Actually,

594
00:34:17,200 --> 00:34:21,759
Speaker 1: because the US authorities, as we'll see, they began and

595
00:34:21,920 --> 00:34:25,319
Speaker 1: authorities everywhere began to become much more aware of what

596
00:34:25,440 --> 00:34:29,080
Speaker 1: was going on. And yeah, they started sort of trying

597
00:34:29,120 --> 00:34:32,280
Speaker 1: to trying to intercept these drug packages and stuff, and

598
00:34:32,520 --> 00:34:34,840
Speaker 1: you know, they turned out and they were really baffled

599
00:34:35,080 --> 00:34:37,960
Speaker 1: at the start because they would occasionally, you know, the

600
00:34:38,000 --> 00:34:41,319
Speaker 1: sniffer dogs would occasionally come through the male depot at

601
00:34:41,360 --> 00:34:43,759
Speaker 1: various US airports or something and they'd sniff something out

602
00:34:43,800 --> 00:34:46,560
Speaker 1: and they'd find that they kept finding lots of individual

603
00:34:46,600 --> 00:34:49,640
Speaker 1: packages of maybe one or two ecstasy pills or something

604
00:34:49,680 --> 00:34:52,600
Speaker 1: like that, or are small packet of cocaine or something

605
00:34:52,800 --> 00:34:55,680
Speaker 1: which they've never really seen before. And it took them,

606
00:34:55,719 --> 00:34:58,040
Speaker 1: it took them a while to realize what was going on,

607
00:34:58,320 --> 00:35:00,880
Speaker 1: but as you can imagine, when they did it was

608
00:35:01,400 --> 00:35:03,799
Speaker 1: it was fairly alarming because this was an entirely new

609
00:35:03,840 --> 00:35:07,040
Speaker 1: way of doing things. So Silk Rode was set up

610
00:35:07,080 --> 00:35:11,000
Speaker 1: by another entrepreneurial figure very different from Jed Micaleb who

611
00:35:11,120 --> 00:35:16,080
Speaker 1: later adopted the handle of Dreadpirate Roberts. Do you remember

612
00:35:16,480 --> 00:35:21,640
Speaker 1: do you remember the movie is that Captain m No,

613
00:35:21,680 --> 00:35:26,840
Speaker 1: I don't know, the Cabean No, the Princess, the Princess Bride,

614
00:35:26,880 --> 00:35:32,239
Speaker 1: Princess Bride. Yeah, it's that quite weird, quirky kind of

615
00:35:32,280 --> 00:35:36,920
Speaker 1: kids movie from the eighties, Okay, and the dread Pirate

616
00:35:37,040 --> 00:35:41,120
Speaker 1: Roberts from The Princess Bride. He was this, yeah, mysterious figure.

617
00:35:41,200 --> 00:35:43,279
Speaker 1: And and the thing that with it was that they

618
00:35:43,400 --> 00:35:46,520
Speaker 1: handled the mantle of the Dreadpirate Roberts sort of passed

619
00:35:46,600 --> 00:35:50,520
Speaker 1: from from one person to the next, so it sort

620
00:35:50,560 --> 00:35:53,640
Speaker 1: of seemed as though he was immortal. Actually it was

621
00:35:53,719 --> 00:35:56,120
Speaker 1: just one you know, when the original when one dread

622
00:35:56,160 --> 00:35:59,560
Speaker 1: Pirate Roberts got fed up and wanted to retire from

623
00:35:59,640 --> 00:36:02,120
Speaker 1: being a dread pirate, he would pass it on to

624
00:36:02,239 --> 00:36:04,680
Speaker 1: the next person who had just assumed the Mantle and

625
00:36:04,800 --> 00:36:09,480
Speaker 1: carry on. So the myths sort of perpetuated itself. Anyway,

626
00:36:09,520 --> 00:36:13,000
Speaker 1: silk Road appeared in February two thousand and eleven, and

627
00:36:13,200 --> 00:36:16,200
Speaker 1: a bit like Mount Cox took off pretty quickly. Yes,

628
00:36:16,960 --> 00:36:20,880
Speaker 1: and here's a fascinating quote from Mark carpellis again the

629
00:36:21,600 --> 00:36:23,480
Speaker 1: guy who was running Mount Cox by this point, and

630
00:36:23,480 --> 00:36:26,919
Speaker 1: this is from a ten interview, and he says, as

631
00:36:26,960 --> 00:36:31,200
Speaker 1: far as I know, a third to half of transactions

632
00:36:31,239 --> 00:36:35,240
Speaker 1: on Mount Cox were linked to silk Road. Wow. Yeah,

633
00:36:35,440 --> 00:36:39,160
Speaker 1: that's that's a lot of transaction. But I suppose that's

634
00:36:39,280 --> 00:36:42,759
Speaker 1: kind of you know what the earlier doopters of of

635
00:36:42,840 --> 00:36:45,799
Speaker 1: most things on the Internet is normally not stuff that's

636
00:36:45,800 --> 00:36:50,080
Speaker 1: too above board. Yes, the porn is a pioneer of

637
00:36:50,120 --> 00:36:56,960
Speaker 1: most technologies, and and I suppose poison drugs is the

638
00:36:57,040 --> 00:37:02,080
Speaker 1: pioneer of of of of this technology. It's an extraordinary statistic, that,

639
00:37:02,360 --> 00:37:05,960
Speaker 1: isn't it. All this bitcoin was taking off, becoming more popular,

640
00:37:06,000 --> 00:37:09,719
Speaker 1: but really people were using it to buy drugs and

641
00:37:09,800 --> 00:37:13,160
Speaker 1: other naughty stuff. And bear in mind, of course that

642
00:37:13,239 --> 00:37:17,440
Speaker 1: by July eleven, so just a few months after silk

643
00:37:17,560 --> 00:37:21,040
Speaker 1: Road launched, eighty percent of bitcoin trading was being done

644
00:37:21,080 --> 00:37:28,480
Speaker 1: through mountgocks. So basically, at this time bitcoin was being

645
00:37:28,640 --> 00:37:33,799
Speaker 1: used mostly to buy illegal stuff, and because there weren't

646
00:37:33,800 --> 00:37:36,320
Speaker 1: any really any other use cases, there weren't there weren't

647
00:37:36,320 --> 00:37:39,680
Speaker 1: other businesses excepting there weren't many other businesses accepting it

648
00:37:39,880 --> 00:37:43,640
Speaker 1: for any other products or services. So it's all about drugs.

649
00:37:44,360 --> 00:37:48,439
Speaker 1: And this again, this is something that bitcoin I think has.

650
00:37:48,800 --> 00:37:51,400
Speaker 1: It's still kind of trying to shake that image I

651
00:37:51,440 --> 00:37:52,960
Speaker 1: think in a lot of people. But I mean, look,

652
00:37:54,520 --> 00:37:58,600
Speaker 1: you talk about the eighties, sure dollar was used, A

653
00:37:58,680 --> 00:38:02,280
Speaker 1: large chunk of dollar was used to buy drugs. Absolutely

654
00:38:02,280 --> 00:38:05,120
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that it's a you should get rid of

655
00:38:05,160 --> 00:38:07,400
Speaker 1: the dollar. Well quite yeah. And this is this is

656
00:38:07,400 --> 00:38:09,560
Speaker 1: an argument that that that comes up a lot when

657
00:38:09,600 --> 00:38:12,240
Speaker 1: people talk about, oh we should get rid of bitcoin

658
00:38:12,320 --> 00:38:17,160
Speaker 1: and cryptocurrency because it facilitates money laundering or facilitates people

659
00:38:17,160 --> 00:38:19,279
Speaker 1: buying drugs and doing illegal stuff. It's like, well, what

660
00:38:19,320 --> 00:38:22,760
Speaker 1: did you think they were using before you banned cash?

661
00:38:23,200 --> 00:38:26,640
Speaker 1: You know, it doesn't make any sense. But as you

662
00:38:26,680 --> 00:38:30,719
Speaker 1: can imagine, these businesses were attracting both Mount Cox and

663
00:38:30,760 --> 00:38:34,480
Speaker 1: Silk Road were attracting a lot of press attention, and

664
00:38:34,560 --> 00:38:39,799
Speaker 1: of course the price of bitcoin started to go up. Well,

665
00:38:40,840 --> 00:38:44,239
Speaker 1: now shall we take a quick break before we talk

666
00:38:44,280 --> 00:39:01,880
Speaker 1: about how it all went wrong. We have this situation

667
00:39:01,920 --> 00:39:05,200
Speaker 1: where we've got these two bitcoin focused businesses, Mount Cox

668
00:39:05,600 --> 00:39:12,120
Speaker 1: Exchange and Silk Road the drugs exchange supermarket. Yeah, both

669
00:39:12,200 --> 00:39:15,600
Speaker 1: of these businesses are picking up loads of traction. Mount

670
00:39:15,600 --> 00:39:20,120
Speaker 1: coxes is by far the biggest bitcoin exchange and Silk

671
00:39:20,239 --> 00:39:22,800
Speaker 1: Road is where most of the bitcoin is being spent.

672
00:39:23,920 --> 00:39:27,440
Speaker 1: And so as we've hinted at, let's go back to

673
00:39:27,520 --> 00:39:29,960
Speaker 1: Mount Cox firstly, let's talk about how it all started

674
00:39:30,000 --> 00:39:33,319
Speaker 1: to unravel at Mount Cox. As I've mentioned, Mark Carpellis

675
00:39:33,560 --> 00:39:37,000
Speaker 1: wasn't really all that suited to running a business like

676
00:39:37,080 --> 00:39:41,320
Speaker 1: Mount Cox. He wasn't a people person, as I've said,

677
00:39:41,600 --> 00:39:44,720
Speaker 1: And here's from that same eighteen interview I quoted earlier.

678
00:39:44,760 --> 00:39:48,160
Speaker 1: He says humans are much harder to manage than servers,

679
00:39:49,120 --> 00:39:52,200
Speaker 1: which gives you an idea of you know, he was

680
00:39:52,239 --> 00:39:56,080
Speaker 1: bad at interacting with staff. He really was the wrong

681
00:39:56,160 --> 00:39:59,600
Speaker 1: man in the wrong job, and this would have catastrophic

682
00:39:59,600 --> 00:40:04,640
Speaker 1: consequen pens. When Jed had Jed Mcalab had sold Mountgox

683
00:40:04,680 --> 00:40:08,319
Speaker 1: to Mark, there had already been some security issues. Now

684
00:40:08,360 --> 00:40:11,279
Speaker 1: this is this is to this is to mitigate Mark

685
00:40:11,320 --> 00:40:13,000
Speaker 1: a little bit. This is to you cut him a

686
00:40:13,040 --> 00:40:15,520
Speaker 1: little bit of slack. There were security issues early on,

687
00:40:15,560 --> 00:40:19,439
Speaker 1: with all these instances of hacking, various various breaches. And

688
00:40:20,000 --> 00:40:24,000
Speaker 1: when it it appears that thousands of bitcoins were missing

689
00:40:24,080 --> 00:40:27,080
Speaker 1: from the exchange when Mark took it over in March

690
00:40:27,160 --> 00:40:30,839
Speaker 1: of eleven. Okay, this this sort of came. This has

691
00:40:30,920 --> 00:40:35,760
Speaker 1: come to light in subsequent years. Now, these weren't really

692
00:40:35,800 --> 00:40:38,440
Speaker 1: worth much at the time. It thousands of bitcoins sounds

693
00:40:38,480 --> 00:40:41,440
Speaker 1: like a lot, but as the price of BTC wasn't

694
00:40:41,480 --> 00:40:43,600
Speaker 1: really that high at the time it was it was

695
00:40:43,640 --> 00:40:48,879
Speaker 1: a few thousand dollars, so it wasn't ideal, but it wasn't. Yeah,

696
00:40:49,960 --> 00:40:54,200
Speaker 1: but as the price of bitcoin started to go up,

697
00:40:54,600 --> 00:40:58,719
Speaker 1: this these missing bitcoins, this this shortfall became more of

698
00:40:58,760 --> 00:41:02,960
Speaker 1: a problem. And now Jed claims that Mark knew about

699
00:41:02,960 --> 00:41:05,799
Speaker 1: this when he took it on. He said, Look, I

700
00:41:05,920 --> 00:41:08,240
Speaker 1: was completely open about this. I said that these bitcoins

701
00:41:08,239 --> 00:41:10,560
Speaker 1: have been lost. He knew the risks, he knew what

702
00:41:10,600 --> 00:41:15,880
Speaker 1: had happened. Mark, perhaps unsurprisingly, claims otherwise. And this is

703
00:41:16,160 --> 00:41:18,320
Speaker 1: this is one of those burns of contention that will

704
00:41:18,520 --> 00:41:20,560
Speaker 1: you know, will never really know the answer to but

705
00:41:20,600 --> 00:41:24,120
Speaker 1: whatever the case, Mount Cox after Mark took it over,

706
00:41:24,320 --> 00:41:29,200
Speaker 1: quickly became notoriously unreliable. And again speaking to Alice and

707
00:41:29,239 --> 00:41:32,279
Speaker 1: Bob about this, that was one of the things that

708
00:41:32,320 --> 00:41:36,000
Speaker 1: they that they said, it became withdrawals became really slow.

709
00:41:36,040 --> 00:41:38,040
Speaker 1: If you wanted to get your money out, you sometimes

710
00:41:38,120 --> 00:41:42,600
Speaker 1: had to wait days, weeks or even months at customer

711
00:41:42,640 --> 00:41:45,239
Speaker 1: service was bad or non existent, and obviously there were

712
00:41:45,280 --> 00:41:48,240
Speaker 1: hacks going on all the time. And you can imagine

713
00:41:48,280 --> 00:41:50,879
Speaker 1: how I said, well, I said to them both. I said,

714
00:41:50,880 --> 00:41:53,040
Speaker 1: to both Alis and Bob, this must have been really

715
00:41:53,320 --> 00:41:56,160
Speaker 1: stressful for you if if you've put money into this

716
00:41:56,239 --> 00:41:59,480
Speaker 1: exchange and you're trying to get it out and you're

717
00:41:59,480 --> 00:42:02,919
Speaker 1: waiting weeks at a time. And they said, well, yeah,

718
00:42:02,960 --> 00:42:05,440
Speaker 1: I mean, as you can imagine, it's not it's not ideal.

719
00:42:05,480 --> 00:42:09,479
Speaker 1: And actually both of them have got emails from Mark

720
00:42:09,520 --> 00:42:12,640
Speaker 1: Carpellis himself. They showed me some screenshots of them, and

721
00:42:12,680 --> 00:42:17,359
Speaker 1: he would often personally respond to these customer queries, which,

722
00:42:17,400 --> 00:42:22,040
Speaker 1: again for someone who's the kind of CEO, the managing

723
00:42:22,080 --> 00:42:25,760
Speaker 1: director of this business, you sort of think you shouldn't

724
00:42:25,800 --> 00:42:30,080
Speaker 1: be doing. You shouldn't be handling customer support. You have

725
00:42:30,160 --> 00:42:32,640
Speaker 1: more important things to do. And this is just another

726
00:42:32,719 --> 00:42:38,640
Speaker 1: example of how completely unsuited Mark was to running this exchange,

727
00:42:38,680 --> 00:42:42,439
Speaker 1: to doing this job. And Mount Cox it simply grew

728
00:42:42,560 --> 00:42:45,799
Speaker 1: too fast. It had about around three thousand users in

729
00:42:45,840 --> 00:42:50,480
Speaker 1: March eleven, and three months later it had sixty plus.

730
00:42:51,680 --> 00:42:56,480
Speaker 1: It's absolutely exponential growth, hockey stick growth, as they say.

731
00:42:56,760 --> 00:43:00,239
Speaker 1: But security was far too slack, and Mark was plea

732
00:43:00,360 --> 00:43:02,720
Speaker 1: just slow to hire people to help him with everything

733
00:43:02,760 --> 00:43:04,440
Speaker 1: that needed to be done. Like I said, he was

734
00:43:04,480 --> 00:43:07,200
Speaker 1: managing things like customer support, doing a hundred and one

735
00:43:07,320 --> 00:43:11,520
Speaker 1: other different jobs which he should have just delegated. This

736
00:43:11,600 --> 00:43:17,280
Speaker 1: is the fire festival of of crypto exchanges. Yes, promising

737
00:43:17,320 --> 00:43:24,840
Speaker 1: a lot, delivering very little. Is someone going to jail? Yeah,

738
00:43:25,120 --> 00:43:30,080
Speaker 1: not to give too much away, people are going to go. Yes,

739
00:43:30,120 --> 00:43:35,160
Speaker 1: Mark was. Mark was not good at prioritizing or he

740
00:43:35,320 --> 00:43:37,120
Speaker 1: just wasn't very professional a lot of the time. And

741
00:43:37,160 --> 00:43:42,120
Speaker 1: there's an extraordinary story from from twenty eleven that there's

742
00:43:42,120 --> 00:43:44,319
Speaker 1: been a big security breach at Mount Cox. I mean,

743
00:43:44,320 --> 00:43:46,560
Speaker 1: this happened quite a lot, but there was a particularly

744
00:43:46,640 --> 00:43:50,759
Speaker 1: serious one and two Americans, a guy called Roger Vere

745
00:43:50,960 --> 00:43:54,239
Speaker 1: who has since become known as bitcoin Jesus. He was.

746
00:43:54,400 --> 00:43:57,840
Speaker 1: He was a real early bitcoin evangelist. He and he

747
00:43:58,239 --> 00:43:59,960
Speaker 1: I think he got the name because he would give

748
00:44:00,160 --> 00:44:02,960
Speaker 1: giveaway bitcoin in order to try and you know, to

749
00:44:03,000 --> 00:44:05,719
Speaker 1: teach people about it. I'm sure we'll talk about him

750
00:44:05,800 --> 00:44:09,920
Speaker 1: at another point in another episode. So Roger Vere and

751
00:44:10,040 --> 00:44:13,440
Speaker 1: his friend Jesse Powell, who now runs the Crack and

752
00:44:13,600 --> 00:44:17,319
Speaker 1: Cryptocurrency exchange. Um, he's an interesting chap as well. But

753
00:44:17,680 --> 00:44:20,440
Speaker 1: they heard they're being a breach. Roger was actually living

754
00:44:20,520 --> 00:44:23,040
Speaker 1: in Tokyo at the time, very near where mount Gox

755
00:44:23,160 --> 00:44:27,160
Speaker 1: was headquartered. So Roger got in touch with Mark and said, look,

756
00:44:28,400 --> 00:44:30,319
Speaker 1: let me help. Let me come and help. So they

757
00:44:30,360 --> 00:44:32,759
Speaker 1: turned up him and him and Jesse. Roger turned up.

758
00:44:32,840 --> 00:44:35,600
Speaker 1: Jesse turned up a few days later to basically help

759
00:44:35,760 --> 00:44:39,320
Speaker 1: sort the mess out, and they started they weren't really coders,

760
00:44:39,320 --> 00:44:42,040
Speaker 1: but they kind of dug into the customer support stuff

761
00:44:42,080 --> 00:44:45,359
Speaker 1: and you know, basically gave their time and effort to

762
00:44:45,360 --> 00:44:48,000
Speaker 1: try and help sort this situation out. And it was

763
00:44:48,080 --> 00:44:50,399
Speaker 1: there was a real backlog of work. And then one

764
00:44:50,440 --> 00:44:53,360
Speaker 1: Friday evening as they were sort of packing up to

765
00:44:53,360 --> 00:44:56,360
Speaker 1: go and they said to Mark Ole, we'll see you tomorrow.

766
00:44:56,640 --> 00:45:00,759
Speaker 1: What time Mark's like tomorrow's the weekend. Can't possibly and

767
00:45:00,760 --> 00:45:08,239
Speaker 1: they were like yes, but yeah, and this was this

768
00:45:08,360 --> 00:45:12,080
Speaker 1: was just him. And I mean, I recommend you if

769
00:45:12,080 --> 00:45:15,120
Speaker 1: you watch a video, if you watch Mark Carpelli's on video,

770
00:45:15,719 --> 00:45:17,920
Speaker 1: you can you can sort of see he's got a

771
00:45:18,120 --> 00:45:23,719
Speaker 1: very low energy vibe. He's very sort of slow and

772
00:45:24,480 --> 00:45:28,640
Speaker 1: kind of stolid, and he seems almost laid back to

773
00:45:28,719 --> 00:45:32,640
Speaker 1: the you know, to the point of lying down. So again,

774
00:45:32,719 --> 00:45:35,080
Speaker 1: it can't be stressed enough. Just how unsuited he had

775
00:45:35,280 --> 00:45:37,400
Speaker 1: just read like the four hour work week or something.

776
00:45:37,560 --> 00:45:41,239
Speaker 1: I think so, I think so. Yeah. He just couldn't prioritize.

777
00:45:41,280 --> 00:45:45,799
Speaker 1: He couldn't. He just couldn't run this bloody business. Not

778
00:45:45,880 --> 00:45:49,040
Speaker 1: everything I should say was his fault, though. As bitcoin

779
00:45:49,200 --> 00:45:52,400
Speaker 1: became more visible and Silk Road started causing all this

780
00:45:52,480 --> 00:45:56,399
Speaker 1: negative publicity, it basically became harder and harder for Mount

781
00:45:56,400 --> 00:46:00,200
Speaker 1: Cox to access banking services. Now, this is not thing

782
00:46:00,239 --> 00:46:02,040
Speaker 1: to do with Mark, and there wasn't. There was only

783
00:46:02,120 --> 00:46:04,440
Speaker 1: so much that he was able to do. And obviously,

784
00:46:04,480 --> 00:46:07,840
Speaker 1: if you're running a cryptocurrency exchange where people are looking

785
00:46:07,880 --> 00:46:12,520
Speaker 1: to buy bitcoin with cash with you know, with fear money,

786
00:46:12,920 --> 00:46:16,320
Speaker 1: you got to have some sort of banking relationship, because

787
00:46:16,360 --> 00:46:19,879
Speaker 1: otherwise there's no there's no other way of getting money

788
00:46:19,920 --> 00:46:24,280
Speaker 1: to the exchange. And yes, so these banks were getting

789
00:46:24,320 --> 00:46:30,000
Speaker 1: increasingly nervous about bitcoin and they they sort of started

790
00:46:30,000 --> 00:46:32,520
Speaker 1: cutting off their services to Mount Cox, which, as you

791
00:46:32,560 --> 00:46:36,360
Speaker 1: can imagine, made things very, very difficult. Now, there was

792
00:46:36,480 --> 00:46:39,399
Speaker 1: so much going wrong at Mount Cox there isn't time

793
00:46:39,440 --> 00:46:42,040
Speaker 1: to go into all the details here, but the major

794
00:46:42,160 --> 00:46:46,840
Speaker 1: issue we believe began actually in late eleven when a

795
00:46:46,920 --> 00:46:49,880
Speaker 1: hack up began draining bitcoin out of the exchange is

796
00:46:49,920 --> 00:46:55,680
Speaker 1: hot wallet. Have you heard that phrase before? Hot wallet? Yes, yeah,

797
00:46:55,719 --> 00:46:58,200
Speaker 1: I've heard of a cold wallet. Okay, Well, a hot

798
00:46:58,200 --> 00:47:00,920
Speaker 1: wallet basically is a is a crypto wallet that's connected

799
00:47:00,960 --> 00:47:05,160
Speaker 1: to the Internet. And all exchanges have hot wallets because

800
00:47:05,239 --> 00:47:08,279
Speaker 1: they need to have they need to have cryptocurrency on

801
00:47:08,360 --> 00:47:13,320
Speaker 1: hand for for daily trading purposes. So every crypto exchange

802
00:47:13,360 --> 00:47:15,799
Speaker 1: will keep a certain amount of crypto in a hot

803
00:47:15,840 --> 00:47:18,120
Speaker 1: wallet connected to the Internet so people can buy and

804
00:47:18,160 --> 00:47:21,359
Speaker 1: sell it and traded and what have you. However, for

805
00:47:21,480 --> 00:47:24,560
Speaker 1: safety's sake, it is best to store funds in a

806
00:47:24,560 --> 00:47:27,240
Speaker 1: cold wallet. Now, a cold wallet, as you might have guessed,

807
00:47:27,480 --> 00:47:31,239
Speaker 1: is not connected to the internet exactly exactly. It can

808
00:47:31,239 --> 00:47:33,880
Speaker 1: take many forms. It can be It can be a

809
00:47:33,920 --> 00:47:35,960
Speaker 1: sort of hardware device, a bit like a flash drive,

810
00:47:36,000 --> 00:47:39,719
Speaker 1: which we call a hardware wallet. You can even have

811
00:47:39,880 --> 00:47:43,839
Speaker 1: paper wallets where yeah, where basically the private keys are

812
00:47:44,120 --> 00:47:46,120
Speaker 1: are written down or printed out on a piece of

813
00:47:46,160 --> 00:47:50,160
Speaker 1: paper and that's held in in a secure location, secure

814
00:47:50,200 --> 00:47:54,040
Speaker 1: place so no one can hack it. But basically the

815
00:47:54,040 --> 00:47:58,360
Speaker 1: mount Cox hot wallets, Mount Cox did keep an amount

816
00:47:58,400 --> 00:48:03,040
Speaker 1: of bitcoin in cold store bridge offline, but what they

817
00:48:03,080 --> 00:48:05,920
Speaker 1: didn't notice was that someone had started to drain the

818
00:48:05,960 --> 00:48:08,640
Speaker 1: hot wallet. Okay, so this is something, this is something

819
00:48:08,640 --> 00:48:12,720
Speaker 1: to remember. Slowly, slowly, yeah, exactly. Over over the course

820
00:48:12,719 --> 00:48:15,479
Speaker 1: of several years, the hacker was able to slowly drain

821
00:48:15,560 --> 00:48:18,719
Speaker 1: coins out of mount Cox's hot wallet, and they just

822
00:48:18,920 --> 00:48:21,960
Speaker 1: never picked up on it. And this is again, I

823
00:48:22,000 --> 00:48:24,600
Speaker 1: mean this again. You can sort of slightly lay the

824
00:48:24,640 --> 00:48:27,440
Speaker 1: blame at mark Store here, because this is something that

825
00:48:27,480 --> 00:48:30,960
Speaker 1: they should have become aware of, but they weren't. Anyhow,

826
00:48:31,239 --> 00:48:36,080
Speaker 1: things basically came to a head in February. By this point,

827
00:48:36,360 --> 00:48:38,920
Speaker 1: users had been very wary of mount Cox for a

828
00:48:38,960 --> 00:48:42,960
Speaker 1: long time. It's reputation was was really pretty bad, and

829
00:48:43,000 --> 00:48:44,960
Speaker 1: it was so bad in fact, that the price of

830
00:48:45,000 --> 00:48:49,040
Speaker 1: bitcoin was a hundred dollars higher on mounts than on

831
00:48:49,080 --> 00:48:54,960
Speaker 1: any other exchanges. Yeah, it's reputation gotten so bad that

832
00:48:54,960 --> 00:48:56,879
Speaker 1: that it was more expensive to buy a bitcoin there.

833
00:48:56,920 --> 00:48:59,880
Speaker 1: People were just becoming less and less willing to use it.

834
00:49:00,400 --> 00:49:02,719
Speaker 1: That said, it was still there was still a lot

835
00:49:02,760 --> 00:49:07,160
Speaker 1: of volume going through it, but people realized that this

836
00:49:07,160 --> 00:49:09,680
Speaker 1: this came at a price, and people were very wary

837
00:49:09,719 --> 00:49:12,880
Speaker 1: of it. Indeed, as I've said before, it was notoriously

838
00:49:12,880 --> 00:49:15,440
Speaker 1: difficult to get your feat deposits out of Mount Cox

839
00:49:15,520 --> 00:49:17,960
Speaker 1: and really the only way to get funds out in

840
00:49:18,000 --> 00:49:21,040
Speaker 1: any sort of timely manner was to transfer your bitcoin

841
00:49:21,080 --> 00:49:23,120
Speaker 1: to somewhere else. Yeah, exactly, so this is what a

842
00:49:23,120 --> 00:49:26,280
Speaker 1: lot of people do did. But again talking to Alison

843
00:49:26,320 --> 00:49:29,840
Speaker 1: Bob as well, they they recognized this for a while,

844
00:49:30,360 --> 00:49:36,160
Speaker 1: but towards the end, even withdrawing bitcoin became difficult. So

845
00:49:36,800 --> 00:49:43,120
Speaker 1: February seven, Mount Gox suspended all withdrawals. No one really

846
00:49:43,160 --> 00:49:47,840
Speaker 1: knew why, and Mark did something very naughty at this point,

847
00:49:48,160 --> 00:49:54,920
Speaker 1: he blamed the problem on the bitcoin code itself. Sacrilege. Yeah, absolutely,

848
00:49:54,960 --> 00:49:59,759
Speaker 1: absolutely real, a really bad thing to do. Now, there

849
00:49:59,800 --> 00:50:03,719
Speaker 1: was an issue known as transaction malleability, and I'm going

850
00:50:03,760 --> 00:50:07,319
Speaker 1: to read marks a press release that Mark put out

851
00:50:07,360 --> 00:50:09,600
Speaker 1: at the time in order to explain what transact what

852
00:50:09,640 --> 00:50:13,480
Speaker 1: we mean by transaction malleability, So he said in the

853
00:50:13,480 --> 00:50:17,480
Speaker 1: mount Cox press release, a bug in the bitcoin software

854
00:50:17,640 --> 00:50:20,720
Speaker 1: makes it possible for someone to use the bitcoin network

855
00:50:20,880 --> 00:50:24,680
Speaker 1: to alter transaction details to make it seem like a

856
00:50:24,840 --> 00:50:28,920
Speaker 1: sending of bitcoins to a bitcoin wallet did not occur,

857
00:50:29,280 --> 00:50:33,600
Speaker 1: when in fact it did occur. Since the transaction appears

858
00:50:33,640 --> 00:50:38,600
Speaker 1: as if it has not proceeded correctly, the bitcoins maybe resent.

859
00:50:40,160 --> 00:50:43,120
Speaker 1: Mount Cox is working with the bitcoin cord development team

860
00:50:43,160 --> 00:50:48,239
Speaker 1: and others to mitigate this issue. Now does that Does

861
00:50:48,239 --> 00:50:51,560
Speaker 1: that all make sense? Okay? Good? I I I sort

862
00:50:51,600 --> 00:50:53,880
Speaker 1: of looked for ways to look for ways to explain

863
00:50:53,920 --> 00:50:57,320
Speaker 1: this transaction malleability thing, but I think that present issue.

864
00:50:57,800 --> 00:51:00,360
Speaker 1: It was an issue. Yeah, it was something that others

865
00:51:00,360 --> 00:51:03,400
Speaker 1: had noticed with the bitcoin code, but yeah, it was

866
00:51:03,480 --> 00:51:05,960
Speaker 1: known about and it was pretty easily dealt with, and

867
00:51:06,160 --> 00:51:09,759
Speaker 1: all the other exchanges had developed a way to to

868
00:51:09,800 --> 00:51:12,200
Speaker 1: work around it. So it was an issue, but it

869
00:51:12,200 --> 00:51:14,239
Speaker 1: wasn't a big issue, and it was something that was

870
00:51:14,360 --> 00:51:17,080
Speaker 1: that was known about, and again mount Cox should have

871
00:51:17,120 --> 00:51:20,040
Speaker 1: known about it. Mark should have known about it. So

872
00:51:20,239 --> 00:51:23,919
Speaker 1: not only was he blaming bitcoin itself for a problem

873
00:51:23,960 --> 00:51:26,320
Speaker 1: that he should have known about and mitigated much earlier,

874
00:51:26,320 --> 00:51:29,959
Speaker 1: but he was The press release itself tanked the price

875
00:51:29,960 --> 00:51:34,680
Speaker 1: of bitcoin because regular users who didn't know about this

876
00:51:34,719 --> 00:51:38,480
Speaker 1: little quirk in the bitcoin code believed that Bitcoin itself

877
00:51:38,560 --> 00:51:41,640
Speaker 1: was broken. Now, if this had been true, that would

878
00:51:41,640 --> 00:51:43,560
Speaker 1: have been a major issue. I mean that could have

879
00:51:43,880 --> 00:51:46,640
Speaker 1: that could have been under the project yeah terminal for Bitcoin.

880
00:51:47,600 --> 00:51:51,160
Speaker 1: So yeah, Mark did a Mark did a really bad

881
00:51:51,200 --> 00:51:54,440
Speaker 1: thing here, and lots of I think Gavin Andrewson among others,

882
00:51:54,480 --> 00:51:57,799
Speaker 1: sort of jumped on this and we're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

883
00:51:57,840 --> 00:52:01,040
Speaker 1: this isn't This isn't a problem with bitcoin. It's a

884
00:52:01,080 --> 00:52:05,360
Speaker 1: problem with Mount Cox. You need to fix it. And unfortunately,

885
00:52:05,400 --> 00:52:09,680
Speaker 1: as February war on, February war on, things only got worse.

886
00:52:10,440 --> 00:52:12,400
Speaker 1: You got to the point where you had angry customers

887
00:52:12,400 --> 00:52:16,480
Speaker 1: protesting outside the Mount Cox HQ in Tokyo with signs

888
00:52:16,600 --> 00:52:20,040
Speaker 1: saying like Mount Cox whereas our money, which is never

889
00:52:20,080 --> 00:52:24,520
Speaker 1: a good sign when people start turning up at the office.

890
00:52:24,640 --> 00:52:28,399
Speaker 1: February the company Twitter went offline again, not a good sign.

891
00:52:29,160 --> 00:52:32,080
Speaker 1: The following day, on, the trading was suspended and the

892
00:52:32,120 --> 00:52:36,279
Speaker 1: website went offline. By this point there were rumors of

893
00:52:36,880 --> 00:52:40,960
Speaker 1: missing bitcoins, and then on the twenty February, a few

894
00:52:41,040 --> 00:52:47,640
Speaker 1: days later, Mount Cox filed for bankruptcy protection basically the game,

895
00:52:48,200 --> 00:52:51,400
Speaker 1: basically admitting that the game was up. Now, what it

896
00:52:51,520 --> 00:52:54,799
Speaker 1: emerged happened was and hold onto your seat for this.

897
00:52:55,400 --> 00:52:59,440
Speaker 1: It emerged that mount Cox had lost eight hundred and

898
00:52:59,560 --> 00:53:10,440
Speaker 1: fifty thousand bitcoins. Yeah, worth around five million dollars at

899
00:53:10,440 --> 00:53:12,840
Speaker 1: the time. I mean, it's worth a heck of a

900
00:53:12,920 --> 00:53:15,839
Speaker 1: lot more now, but a substantial amount at the time.

901
00:53:15,840 --> 00:53:18,560
Speaker 1: In fact, it was about seven percent of all the

902
00:53:18,560 --> 00:53:24,880
Speaker 1: bitcoin in circulation. It was an absolute disaster. Seven hundred

903
00:53:25,120 --> 00:53:29,320
Speaker 1: three course of a million of these. This was February

904
00:53:29,320 --> 00:53:34,560
Speaker 1: two tho. So most of these belonged to customers that

905
00:53:34,600 --> 00:53:37,640
Speaker 1: were lost, but the exchange itself lost a hundred thousand

906
00:53:37,680 --> 00:53:41,600
Speaker 1: of its own. They yeah, they were like, we've we've

907
00:53:41,680 --> 00:53:46,960
Speaker 1: lost your money. Now imagine the bank saying we we're

908
00:53:47,040 --> 00:53:49,759
Speaker 1: terribly sorry. Really, is the world west days a bit

909
00:53:49,800 --> 00:53:54,000
Speaker 1: where yeah, yeah, this was I mean, and you can

910
00:53:54,040 --> 00:53:57,560
Speaker 1: imagine the sort of reaction from I mean people people

911
00:53:57,760 --> 00:54:01,479
Speaker 1: within the krypto, the bitcoin and crypto community and from

912
00:54:01,480 --> 00:54:07,360
Speaker 1: without as well, is you you've lost them? What we

913
00:54:08,239 --> 00:54:11,080
Speaker 1: can find them? Yeah? I think that was I think

914
00:54:11,200 --> 00:54:15,799
Speaker 1: that was the responseilt because it's told sort of traceable.

915
00:54:17,400 --> 00:54:20,160
Speaker 1: Do we know where a lot of these have gone? Well?

916
00:54:20,520 --> 00:54:23,160
Speaker 1: We did? Yeah, we have an idea. We have an idea.

917
00:54:23,360 --> 00:54:25,399
Speaker 1: I'll get to that in a minute. The story gets

918
00:54:25,440 --> 00:54:27,399
Speaker 1: even weird as because, as you can imagine, all hell

919
00:54:27,440 --> 00:54:34,000
Speaker 1: broke loose and people's worst fears. Did Mark start working weekends?

920
00:54:34,760 --> 00:54:37,359
Speaker 1: I think perhaps he might have done. I don't know

921
00:54:38,480 --> 00:54:41,680
Speaker 1: by this point. I think another weird thing that I

922
00:54:41,760 --> 00:54:45,040
Speaker 1: that I read about was around this time, like they knew,

923
00:54:45,480 --> 00:54:48,319
Speaker 1: they knew before they had to announce you before that

924
00:54:48,440 --> 00:54:51,160
Speaker 1: the thing really fell apart in late February. They knew

925
00:54:51,160 --> 00:54:56,120
Speaker 1: they were problems, and Mark apparently, rather than focus on

926
00:54:56,280 --> 00:54:58,520
Speaker 1: the job that he needed to, you know, getting these

927
00:54:58,520 --> 00:55:01,480
Speaker 1: problems sorted, apparently, he was busy setting up like a

928
00:55:01,480 --> 00:55:05,560
Speaker 1: bitcoin cafe on the ground floor of the building where

929
00:55:05,600 --> 00:55:09,560
Speaker 1: it had its officers. That was his priority, at cafe

930
00:55:09,360 --> 00:55:11,719
Speaker 1: where where you could buy everything with bitcoin, And he

931
00:55:11,800 --> 00:55:15,160
Speaker 1: was sort of spending hours a day kind of footling

932
00:55:15,200 --> 00:55:17,800
Speaker 1: around that, you know, trying to get that set up. Meanwhile,

933
00:55:17,840 --> 00:55:20,240
Speaker 1: a few stories up in the mount Box offices, people

934
00:55:20,239 --> 00:55:25,480
Speaker 1: have people considering jumping. Five million dollars are basically missing.

935
00:55:26,200 --> 00:55:32,080
Speaker 1: So again, just utterly, utterly useless for this particular for

936
00:55:32,120 --> 00:55:37,320
Speaker 1: this particular job. Did the cafeer world or Funnily enough, No,

937
00:55:38,920 --> 00:55:41,120
Speaker 1: I don't think. I didn't think it ever. I was

938
00:55:41,280 --> 00:55:43,120
Speaker 1: just wondering. I mean, like, you know, I mean that

939
00:55:43,200 --> 00:55:46,160
Speaker 1: could have been not, you know, not everything was a

940
00:55:46,200 --> 00:55:48,239
Speaker 1: loss that's gone on to become one of the most

941
00:55:48,320 --> 00:55:52,440
Speaker 1: popular cafes in that part of Japan. I mean that

942
00:55:52,440 --> 00:55:54,840
Speaker 1: would be a nice little turning over hundreds of pounds

943
00:55:54,840 --> 00:55:58,040
Speaker 1: a month, that would be a nice little yeah. And

944
00:55:58,280 --> 00:56:02,120
Speaker 1: I hope it's not everything went terrible for Mark. You'd

945
00:56:02,160 --> 00:56:08,400
Speaker 1: hope you know, his cupcake businesses. Yes, that would have

946
00:56:08,440 --> 00:56:11,840
Speaker 1: been a nice lending to the story if although MOUNTX

947
00:56:11,880 --> 00:56:14,319
Speaker 1: had collapsed, the cafe went from strength to strength and

948
00:56:14,360 --> 00:56:18,080
Speaker 1: Mark is still happily and there's nowt I've been taken

949
00:56:18,120 --> 00:56:22,239
Speaker 1: over by Bretta or whatever the Japanese quent is. There's

950
00:56:22,280 --> 00:56:26,560
Speaker 1: an added twist to this story. After these eight hundred

951
00:56:26,560 --> 00:56:29,640
Speaker 1: and fifty thousand bit coins, seven percent of all in circulation,

952
00:56:29,680 --> 00:56:34,680
Speaker 1: had gone missing, a few days later the exchange. Are

953
00:56:34,719 --> 00:56:42,920
Speaker 1: you serious? It had? Guy? So we just it was

954
00:56:43,440 --> 00:56:47,120
Speaker 1: it was in the till of the cafe. We're just like, yeah,

955
00:56:47,760 --> 00:56:51,680
Speaker 1: underneath the draw. Yeah, sometimes they just get stuck behind

956
00:56:51,680 --> 00:56:54,040
Speaker 1: the thing. It's yeah, you've always got a check there.

957
00:56:54,960 --> 00:56:58,399
Speaker 1: But we've we've, we've it's all right. Well, what they'd

958
00:56:58,400 --> 00:57:00,720
Speaker 1: actually what it actually happened was and it had found

959
00:57:00,760 --> 00:57:03,560
Speaker 1: two hundred thousand of them, which is obviously a start.

960
00:57:04,200 --> 00:57:08,160
Speaker 1: It's still leaves it still leaves a fairly substantial number outstanding.

961
00:57:08,520 --> 00:57:11,120
Speaker 1: But yeah, this was this was what you know, and

962
00:57:11,120 --> 00:57:14,840
Speaker 1: and as you can imagine, people like, okay, so you

963
00:57:14,920 --> 00:57:18,480
Speaker 1: lost them and now you found some of them? What that?

964
00:57:18,720 --> 00:57:21,560
Speaker 1: Can I have them back? Yes? What the hell is

965
00:57:21,600 --> 00:57:25,720
Speaker 1: going on? So this must do wonders for your your

966
00:57:25,760 --> 00:57:29,520
Speaker 1: public image? Yeah, yeah, this had I mean, this was

967
00:57:29,720 --> 00:57:34,040
Speaker 1: this was disastrous for bitcoin. It was terrible for yeah,

968
00:57:34,560 --> 00:57:37,000
Speaker 1: as you can imagine. But basically the upshot of this

969
00:57:37,080 --> 00:57:40,200
Speaker 1: story is that a lot of people lost a lot

970
00:57:40,240 --> 00:57:43,280
Speaker 1: of money. Yeah, a lot of people lost a lot

971
00:57:43,320 --> 00:57:46,200
Speaker 1: of money. Many unfortunately had their life savings and their

972
00:57:46,280 --> 00:57:48,320
Speaker 1: kids college funds and things like that. I mean, there

973
00:57:48,320 --> 00:57:53,520
Speaker 1: are some pretty tragic stories, um, which yeah, I mean,

974
00:57:54,800 --> 00:57:58,040
Speaker 1: don't put your life savings into into anything, really into

975
00:57:58,120 --> 00:58:00,440
Speaker 1: into one single thing. But you know, these were these

976
00:58:00,440 --> 00:58:03,720
Speaker 1: were people who clearly believed in bitcoin, clearly believed in

977
00:58:03,760 --> 00:58:06,440
Speaker 1: its potential. And yeah, I mean that's the that's the

978
00:58:06,440 --> 00:58:09,920
Speaker 1: real upshot to this story is that it had a

979
00:58:10,080 --> 00:58:13,880
Speaker 1: it had a pretty unhappy ending. So Mark was eventually

980
00:58:14,000 --> 00:58:20,280
Speaker 1: arrested in August and charged with embezzlement, so they believed

981
00:58:20,360 --> 00:58:22,200
Speaker 1: that he had something to do with it. But many

982
00:58:22,240 --> 00:58:24,840
Speaker 1: people believed that he was somehow responsible, that he had

983
00:58:24,840 --> 00:58:27,959
Speaker 1: stolen the bitcoin or at least been involved in some way,

984
00:58:28,880 --> 00:58:32,280
Speaker 1: and he was eventually found guilty in March twenty nineteen.

985
00:58:32,360 --> 00:58:35,040
Speaker 1: This this, this went on and on and on. He

986
00:58:35,080 --> 00:58:38,080
Speaker 1: was found guilty of falsifying data and he was given

987
00:58:38,120 --> 00:58:43,080
Speaker 1: a thirty month suspended sentence. Yeah, he was basically he'd

988
00:58:43,080 --> 00:58:46,440
Speaker 1: served a lot of prison time by I think. I

989
00:58:46,480 --> 00:58:49,480
Speaker 1: think the way in Japan is, you know, you're you're

990
00:58:49,520 --> 00:58:52,400
Speaker 1: basically kind of held in prison until until they find

991
00:58:52,440 --> 00:58:56,560
Speaker 1: you innocent. And Mark was, Yeah, he he'd served his

992
00:58:56,640 --> 00:58:58,600
Speaker 1: time by that point, so he was able he was

993
00:58:58,640 --> 00:59:01,360
Speaker 1: able to walk for walk free. Who was running the cafe?

994
00:59:01,680 --> 00:59:07,400
Speaker 1: I don't know that the cat I think to ban. Yeah. Um, now,

995
00:59:07,440 --> 00:59:09,680
Speaker 1: a lot of people, Yeah, a lot of people think

996
00:59:09,720 --> 00:59:13,080
Speaker 1: that that Mark was involved somehow, And I have to say,

997
00:59:13,240 --> 00:59:16,120
Speaker 1: not only was he was he found he was only

998
00:59:16,120 --> 00:59:20,000
Speaker 1: found guilty of falsifying data. They didn't the authorities didn't

999
00:59:20,000 --> 00:59:22,680
Speaker 1: believe that he was responsible at all. And actually from

1000
00:59:22,720 --> 00:59:26,080
Speaker 1: watching and listening to interviews with him, he just doesn't

1001
00:59:26,080 --> 00:59:28,120
Speaker 1: come across as the sort of person who could do that.

1002
00:59:28,840 --> 00:59:32,120
Speaker 1: So it is fairly unlikely that Mark was involved in

1003
00:59:32,160 --> 00:59:35,440
Speaker 1: any crime. And if you watch interviews with him, if

1004
00:59:35,480 --> 00:59:38,000
Speaker 1: you listen to if you listen to him talking, you

1005
00:59:38,040 --> 00:59:41,600
Speaker 1: can you can see that I think he just he's

1006
00:59:41,640 --> 00:59:44,640
Speaker 1: not He's not the criminal type, as I've said, He's

1007
00:59:44,720 --> 00:59:49,640
Speaker 1: this very kind of low energy, just you know, laid

1008
00:59:49,720 --> 00:59:54,800
Speaker 1: back kind of guy. So yeah, but it was, as

1009
00:59:54,800 --> 00:59:57,959
Speaker 1: you can imagine, a pretty it was a terrible time

1010
00:59:58,200 --> 01:00:01,120
Speaker 1: for for all involved. I do have I must say

1011
01:00:01,280 --> 01:00:03,600
Speaker 1: to be controversial here, I do have a bit of

1012
01:00:03,640 --> 01:00:08,720
Speaker 1: sympathy for Mark because it must have been the most

1013
01:00:09,160 --> 01:00:13,320
Speaker 1: stressful experience. You're running a cafe is yeah, tricky. I

1014
01:00:13,320 --> 01:00:17,360
Speaker 1: mean all those people demanding, demanding complicated coffees and things

1015
01:00:17,360 --> 01:00:19,520
Speaker 1: like that, and I want to I want my keys

1016
01:00:19,560 --> 01:00:22,960
Speaker 1: like this, having debate those cupcakes. You know what, I've

1017
01:00:22,960 --> 01:00:28,080
Speaker 1: been in situations before where things are going wrong and

1018
01:00:28,720 --> 01:00:31,360
Speaker 1: it is very easy to just bury your head in

1019
01:00:31,480 --> 01:00:36,720
Speaker 1: something else. Requsted like mostly for me, it's around exam

1020
01:00:36,800 --> 01:00:39,640
Speaker 1: time when I was at university, and I would never

1021
01:00:39,800 --> 01:00:44,040
Speaker 1: have a tidy room. It was revised for this exam,

1022
01:00:44,360 --> 01:00:48,360
Speaker 1: or sort out my record collection and sort of make

1023
01:00:48,440 --> 01:00:51,320
Speaker 1: up my room, and you'd always go, you know what,

1024
01:00:51,600 --> 01:00:55,480
Speaker 1: I haven't vacuumed in a while. Once I finished this vacuuming,

1025
01:00:56,680 --> 01:00:59,600
Speaker 1: then I'll concentrate on the five million dollars that I've

1026
01:00:59,600 --> 01:01:03,920
Speaker 1: got miss First things first, First things first, Yeah, on

1027
01:01:04,080 --> 01:01:07,360
Speaker 1: the weekend. I mean, well, I'll pick this up Monday.

1028
01:01:07,400 --> 01:01:10,800
Speaker 1: It can wait. Yea. Now, yeah, I'm I'm the same.

1029
01:01:10,880 --> 01:01:13,920
Speaker 1: I can't think that. I mean, exams were kind of

1030
01:01:13,960 --> 01:01:16,440
Speaker 1: similar for me, and but also I think, yeah, I

1031
01:01:16,440 --> 01:01:18,400
Speaker 1: think most most of us have been in that sort

1032
01:01:18,440 --> 01:01:21,160
Speaker 1: of situation at some point. I would also like to say,

1033
01:01:21,240 --> 01:01:24,320
Speaker 1: if my kids college fund was was in that situation,

1034
01:01:24,360 --> 01:01:28,680
Speaker 1: I probably wouldn't be quite so empathetic. Yes, I think

1035
01:01:28,680 --> 01:01:32,680
Speaker 1: that's fair enough. You know, I empathize because I've got

1036
01:01:32,680 --> 01:01:35,080
Speaker 1: no skin in the game and I've been in situations

1037
01:01:35,200 --> 01:01:38,320
Speaker 1: in my life, not quite at this extent, where you

1038
01:01:38,360 --> 01:01:41,120
Speaker 1: know you've got something pressing or you've you've messed up,

1039
01:01:41,120 --> 01:01:45,040
Speaker 1: and it's like, okay, I'll just divert my interest into

1040
01:01:45,080 --> 01:01:49,200
Speaker 1: something else to sort of, you know, not think about it.

1041
01:01:49,200 --> 01:01:54,080
Speaker 1: It's difficult to I think it's difficult to to empathize, perhaps,

1042
01:01:54,120 --> 01:01:58,120
Speaker 1: but you know you can. No, I can't empathize, but

1043
01:01:58,240 --> 01:02:03,560
Speaker 1: I can't. But I also can empathize with the people

1044
01:02:03,600 --> 01:02:06,440
Speaker 1: who are the real victims here. Yeah, that's true. But

1045
01:02:06,840 --> 01:02:10,320
Speaker 1: I can imagine. I can imagine that sort of situation,

1046
01:02:10,920 --> 01:02:14,720
Speaker 1: can't you? Like this is I could go and I

1047
01:02:14,760 --> 01:02:16,600
Speaker 1: could go and have a nice time just sort of

1048
01:02:16,600 --> 01:02:19,800
Speaker 1: getting my little cafe sorted. Or I could go and

1049
01:02:19,840 --> 01:02:23,920
Speaker 1: address this black hole into which people's money is disappearing.

1050
01:02:24,040 --> 01:02:28,920
Speaker 1: I can. I can't forgive it, but I can understand

1051
01:02:29,000 --> 01:02:31,240
Speaker 1: it in a way I think he might. I think

1052
01:02:31,240 --> 01:02:33,240
Speaker 1: it just must have all got on top of this. Yeah,

1053
01:02:33,320 --> 01:02:38,880
Speaker 1: it just becomes overwhelming. So yeah, it's it's hard. I

1054
01:02:38,920 --> 01:02:41,160
Speaker 1: doubt everyone can have sympathy for Mark. But do you

1055
01:02:41,160 --> 01:02:43,280
Speaker 1: think the cost of rican guys saw this coming was

1056
01:02:43,320 --> 01:02:47,400
Speaker 1: just like I am out of this. Jed mcayleb I

1057
01:02:47,480 --> 01:02:51,240
Speaker 1: don't think he can have seen this sort this catastrophe coming,

1058
01:02:51,600 --> 01:02:55,120
Speaker 1: but I think yeah, I mean I think he was

1059
01:02:55,160 --> 01:02:58,600
Speaker 1: experiencing that stress and he took the opportunity to go,

1060
01:02:58,680 --> 01:03:01,160
Speaker 1: do you know what, I don't need this. I don't

1061
01:03:01,200 --> 01:03:03,280
Speaker 1: need this. I'm going to pass it on. Funnily enough,

1062
01:03:03,320 --> 01:03:06,480
Speaker 1: Jed mcaleb has gone on to other things. He went

1063
01:03:06,560 --> 01:03:11,440
Speaker 1: on to co found a Ripple, Yeah, which Ripple is

1064
01:03:11,440 --> 01:03:14,720
Speaker 1: having its own sort of legal problems at the Securities

1065
01:03:14,720 --> 01:03:17,880
Speaker 1: and Exchange Commission. Okay, well, good luck with that, um.

1066
01:03:18,040 --> 01:03:20,760
Speaker 1: And he actually left Ripple and went on to found Stella,

1067
01:03:20,920 --> 01:03:24,000
Speaker 1: which is a kind of rival to Ripple. So he's

1068
01:03:24,000 --> 01:03:26,680
Speaker 1: bounced a bounce between a lot of projects and made

1069
01:03:26,720 --> 01:03:31,520
Speaker 1: a lot of money on that. Look good for him.

1070
01:03:31,560 --> 01:03:36,360
Speaker 1: I wish I had so. Just as a little coda

1071
01:03:36,560 --> 01:03:39,880
Speaker 1: to the whole Mount Gox story, a Russian man named

1072
01:03:39,920 --> 01:03:45,720
Speaker 1: Alexander Vinnick is believed to be largely responsible. Okay, yeah,

1073
01:03:46,200 --> 01:03:50,040
Speaker 1: so he ran a rival crypto exchange called btc E,

1074
01:03:50,520 --> 01:03:53,200
Speaker 1: which is thought to have received at least some of

1075
01:03:53,240 --> 01:03:58,280
Speaker 1: the stolen Mount Gox bitcoins. Now, to briefly talk about Alexandervinick,

1076
01:03:58,320 --> 01:04:00,960
Speaker 1: he is basically, I think the technoll term is an

1077
01:04:01,000 --> 01:04:06,400
Speaker 1: all around baddie, a massive bad guy bad guy. Yeah,

1078
01:04:06,680 --> 01:04:08,520
Speaker 1: there were Russian back in the eighties, weren't they They

1079
01:04:08,520 --> 01:04:12,680
Speaker 1: were Russian, and Alexander Vinick himself as Russian. So yeah,

1080
01:04:12,760 --> 01:04:15,720
Speaker 1: He's currently serving five years in France for money laundering.

1081
01:04:16,320 --> 01:04:20,120
Speaker 1: He's also thought to be involved in hacking, ransomware, identity theft,

1082
01:04:20,120 --> 01:04:24,000
Speaker 1: and drug trafficking. That the whole Lencher Lader. He's a

1083
01:04:24,080 --> 01:04:27,440
Speaker 1: bad guy. The Russian and American authorities are waiting to

1084
01:04:27,480 --> 01:04:29,960
Speaker 1: have their chunk of him as well, So I think

1085
01:04:30,000 --> 01:04:32,280
Speaker 1: he's I think he's staring down the barrel of maybe

1086
01:04:32,280 --> 01:04:35,080
Speaker 1: the rest of his life in prison. I think there

1087
01:04:35,080 --> 01:04:37,960
Speaker 1: were almost certainly others involved with Finnick, but he seems

1088
01:04:38,000 --> 01:04:41,200
Speaker 1: to have been the focus of taken most of the

1089
01:04:41,240 --> 01:04:46,800
Speaker 1: form um. So Mount Gox's creditors may eventually get compensated,

1090
01:04:46,800 --> 01:04:49,280
Speaker 1: which is a bit of good news. In the last

1091
01:04:49,320 --> 01:04:52,360
Speaker 1: thing that happened really was in October one, compensation plan

1092
01:04:52,520 --> 01:04:56,160
Speaker 1: was agreed. As we record this, no payouts have yet

1093
01:04:56,160 --> 01:04:59,120
Speaker 1: been made, but it looks like the Mount Gox saga

1094
01:04:59,680 --> 01:05:03,000
Speaker 1: may be kind of drawing to its clothes, and these

1095
01:05:03,000 --> 01:05:07,920
Speaker 1: guys may get some maybe all their bitcoins back, but

1096
01:05:08,080 --> 01:05:12,600
Speaker 1: actual bitcoins and the same what they're worth today. Well, yeah,

1097
01:05:12,600 --> 01:05:14,920
Speaker 1: I mean because they'll be getting because they'll be getting

1098
01:05:15,520 --> 01:05:17,720
Speaker 1: if they get the number of bitcoins that they lost,

1099
01:05:17,800 --> 01:05:19,840
Speaker 1: then yeah, they'll be able to they'll be able to

1100
01:05:19,840 --> 01:05:22,120
Speaker 1: sell them a today's prices. I'm not quite sure how

1101
01:05:22,120 --> 01:05:25,560
Speaker 1: it's all been worked out, whether that would be quite

1102
01:05:25,640 --> 01:05:29,200
Speaker 1: you know, forced hoddling. Yeah, yeah, they I mean, they

1103
01:05:29,200 --> 01:05:32,200
Speaker 1: could end up being grateful for it, I guess. But yeah,

1104
01:05:32,200 --> 01:05:38,680
Speaker 1: I mean, you can buy the college now. So just

1105
01:05:38,760 --> 01:05:41,360
Speaker 1: to round off with Mount Cox, it was obviously terrible

1106
01:05:41,440 --> 01:05:44,560
Speaker 1: pr for bitcoin. It's still casts a shadow over it,

1107
01:05:44,600 --> 01:05:46,200
Speaker 1: I think. I think a lot of people, a lot

1108
01:05:46,200 --> 01:05:49,920
Speaker 1: of people's perception of bitcoin, and obviously their experiences with

1109
01:05:50,000 --> 01:05:53,640
Speaker 1: it are colored by by by what happened with Mount Cox.

1110
01:05:54,480 --> 01:05:57,720
Speaker 1: Many people mistakenly saw the whole Mount Cox thing as

1111
01:05:57,760 --> 01:06:00,760
Speaker 1: a weakness of bitcoin. Now this is not the case.

1112
01:06:00,920 --> 01:06:04,880
Speaker 1: Bitcoin itself has never been hacked, and it was you know,

1113
01:06:05,240 --> 01:06:08,960
Speaker 1: it wasn't no flaw of bitcoin. What it did show,

1114
01:06:09,000 --> 01:06:12,400
Speaker 1: the whole thing was the danger of trusting centralized entities,

1115
01:06:12,440 --> 01:06:16,720
Speaker 1: which ironic was the point of bitcoin. So in a

1116
01:06:16,760 --> 01:06:20,960
Speaker 1: weird way, in a weird and horrible and traumatizing way.

1117
01:06:21,920 --> 01:06:27,240
Speaker 1: Mount Cox kind of made Bitcoin's point, and you know,

1118
01:06:28,120 --> 01:06:31,440
Speaker 1: it's it's about taking it's about taking ownership of your

1119
01:06:31,480 --> 01:06:36,400
Speaker 1: own assets. Do not trust the middlemen. People. Find out

1120
01:06:36,440 --> 01:06:42,479
Speaker 1: what exchanges are the most reputable. We do have some.

1121
01:06:42,720 --> 01:06:45,160
Speaker 1: We do have quite a few videos on our YouTube

1122
01:06:45,200 --> 01:06:48,200
Speaker 1: channel where we talk about we talk about various exchanges

1123
01:06:48,240 --> 01:06:51,040
Speaker 1: and we compare them and things like that. I mean, yeah,

1124
01:06:51,040 --> 01:06:53,040
Speaker 1: that's a good that's a good question, because there are

1125
01:06:53,120 --> 01:06:56,040
Speaker 1: still dodgy exchanges out there. Some of them are Some

1126
01:06:56,080 --> 01:06:58,600
Speaker 1: of them are dodgy because the people running them are

1127
01:06:58,640 --> 01:07:02,040
Speaker 1: dodgy and a badly intention and others are dodgy because

1128
01:07:02,840 --> 01:07:07,520
Speaker 1: their security is lacks. Yeah. Um, basically, if if an

1129
01:07:07,520 --> 01:07:13,440
Speaker 1: exchange has very low trading volumes or suspicious amounts, you know,

1130
01:07:13,480 --> 01:07:16,360
Speaker 1: suspicious trading volumes or risks or lists a lot of

1131
01:07:16,480 --> 01:07:19,440
Speaker 1: very dodgy all coins and things like that, then you

1132
01:07:19,480 --> 01:07:22,400
Speaker 1: need to be careful. But yeah, there's there. You can

1133
01:07:22,520 --> 01:07:25,720
Speaker 1: quite easily google the sort of top top tier exchanges,

1134
01:07:25,800 --> 01:07:31,200
Speaker 1: things like Finance, FTX, coin Base, cou Coin, things like this.

1135
01:07:31,280 --> 01:07:35,360
Speaker 1: You know they're they're well run, their regulated exchanges and

1136
01:07:35,560 --> 01:07:38,960
Speaker 1: they've got much. They've got very very strong security. But

1137
01:07:39,080 --> 01:07:42,440
Speaker 1: exchange hacks was something that have Almost every exchange out

1138
01:07:42,440 --> 01:07:46,680
Speaker 1: there has been hacked at some point um. But yeah,

1139
01:07:46,960 --> 01:07:50,200
Speaker 1: the Mount Cox was by far. Is there a Quantus

1140
01:07:50,240 --> 01:07:54,360
Speaker 1: airline to know how you remember the film Rainman and

1141
01:07:54,480 --> 01:07:57,160
Speaker 1: would only get onto Quantus because the only airline that

1142
01:07:57,320 --> 01:08:02,560
Speaker 1: has never crashed? Oh yeah, is there uh an exchange

1143
01:08:02,640 --> 01:08:05,680
Speaker 1: like that so that they've never been hacked or crashed? Even?

1144
01:08:08,120 --> 01:08:10,120
Speaker 1: Is there an exchange that's never been hacked as far

1145
01:08:10,200 --> 01:08:11,880
Speaker 1: as I know, I mean, I think there's a slightly

1146
01:08:11,960 --> 01:08:15,280
Speaker 1: newer exchange called f t X, which has only been

1147
01:08:15,320 --> 01:08:17,439
Speaker 1: going a couple of years as far as I know,

1148
01:08:17,640 --> 01:08:20,840
Speaker 1: that hasn't suffered any breaches. But I mean coin based

1149
01:08:20,840 --> 01:08:24,240
Speaker 1: in its early days had problems. Finance has had problems.

1150
01:08:24,240 --> 01:08:26,599
Speaker 1: They're the two biggest in the world at the moment.

1151
01:08:26,720 --> 01:08:30,120
Speaker 1: And yeah, I mean, but exchanges have have lots of

1152
01:08:30,120 --> 01:08:34,280
Speaker 1: security procedures in place now and they also have insurance

1153
01:08:34,320 --> 01:08:37,960
Speaker 1: and compensation schemes and stuff, so they're a heck of

1154
01:08:38,000 --> 01:08:40,080
Speaker 1: a lot safer than they were. But I mean, this

1155
01:08:40,160 --> 01:08:42,760
Speaker 1: is you know, the lessons of Mount Cos I think

1156
01:08:42,800 --> 01:08:46,920
Speaker 1: have been learned. But yeah, that the exchanges are still

1157
01:08:47,800 --> 01:08:51,320
Speaker 1: are still tricky because keeping your coins on exchange, it's centralized,

1158
01:08:51,320 --> 01:08:53,599
Speaker 1: it's it's keeping them in one place, and it does

1159
01:08:53,680 --> 01:08:59,200
Speaker 1: make them it does make them more vulnerable. So we've

1160
01:08:59,240 --> 01:09:02,920
Speaker 1: talked about the collapse of Mount Cox. Let's quickly round

1161
01:09:03,000 --> 01:09:05,400
Speaker 1: up this episode by talking about the end of the

1162
01:09:05,400 --> 01:09:09,040
Speaker 1: Silk Road. Just as Mount Gox came crashing down, so

1163
01:09:09,160 --> 01:09:12,439
Speaker 1: too did Silk Road, though in slightly different circumstances. So

1164
01:09:12,479 --> 01:09:14,560
Speaker 1: they'd obviously, like Mount Gox, Silk Road had become a

1165
01:09:14,600 --> 01:09:19,000
Speaker 1: runaway success, attracted obviously lots of attention, both from press

1166
01:09:19,080 --> 01:09:22,320
Speaker 1: and the authorities and from hackers and and other other

1167
01:09:22,520 --> 01:09:27,960
Speaker 1: ne'er do wells. Mainstream attention came to it in June

1168
01:09:28,439 --> 01:09:32,920
Speaker 1: eleven through an article in Gorka, which I think is

1169
01:09:32,960 --> 01:09:35,719
Speaker 1: now defunct thanks to Hulk Hogan. Next to Hulk Hogan

1170
01:09:35,800 --> 01:09:40,320
Speaker 1: and Peter Teal. Yeah, that's a strange story. Anyhow, the

1171
01:09:40,439 --> 01:09:44,120
Speaker 1: mastermind behind the Silk Road turned out to be one

1172
01:09:44,400 --> 01:09:48,879
Speaker 1: Ross Albrecht, who was from Austin, Texas. Young guy from Austin, Texas.

1173
01:09:49,800 --> 01:09:53,080
Speaker 1: He had strong libertarian views which he honed when he

1174
01:09:53,160 --> 01:09:57,720
Speaker 1: was in college. So again, the libertarianism just features so

1175
01:09:57,760 --> 01:10:00,439
Speaker 1: many times in the Bitcoin story. He believed in yeah,

1176
01:10:00,520 --> 01:10:03,679
Speaker 1: low state intervention. He believed that that people had people

1177
01:10:03,680 --> 01:10:06,320
Speaker 1: should make their own choices when it came to when

1178
01:10:06,320 --> 01:10:09,960
Speaker 1: it came to things like drugs. So, after graduating from

1179
01:10:10,200 --> 01:10:12,400
Speaker 1: Penn State in two thousand and nine, he had a

1180
01:10:12,439 --> 01:10:14,920
Speaker 1: master's in science and engineering, he was kind of at

1181
01:10:14,960 --> 01:10:16,400
Speaker 1: a bit of a loss with what to do with

1182
01:10:16,439 --> 01:10:18,559
Speaker 1: his life, and he was very idealistic. He wanted to

1183
01:10:18,560 --> 01:10:22,840
Speaker 1: have an impact on the world. Um So these kind

1184
01:10:22,880 --> 01:10:26,479
Speaker 1: of views, these combined with his kind of libertarian views,

1185
01:10:26,520 --> 01:10:29,400
Speaker 1: inspired him to set up silk Road. So Ross had

1186
01:10:29,439 --> 01:10:32,200
Speaker 1: some coding skills, he wasn't a professional coder by any means.

1187
01:10:32,200 --> 01:10:34,160
Speaker 1: He had to get others to help him out as

1188
01:10:34,280 --> 01:10:37,519
Speaker 1: as the site got bigger. But I think the code

1189
01:10:37,520 --> 01:10:40,000
Speaker 1: that he originally built for silk Road was pretty was

1190
01:10:40,080 --> 01:10:41,760
Speaker 1: kind of full of holes and stuff, so he was

1191
01:10:42,040 --> 01:10:44,679
Speaker 1: sort of constantly having to patch it and fight fires

1192
01:10:44,680 --> 01:10:48,439
Speaker 1: and things. But some silk Road picked up traction very quickly,

1193
01:10:48,439 --> 01:10:51,920
Speaker 1: like mount Gox did. It had nearly one million user

1194
01:10:51,920 --> 01:10:55,400
Speaker 1: accounts by the time it was shut down. Now a

1195
01:10:55,439 --> 01:10:57,760
Speaker 1: lot of users would have had multiple accounts, but the

1196
01:10:57,760 --> 01:11:02,800
Speaker 1: authorities reckoned it had hundreds of thousands of unions, and

1197
01:11:03,080 --> 01:11:06,479
Speaker 1: by some estimates it did close to a billion dollars

1198
01:11:06,520 --> 01:11:11,160
Speaker 1: in sales over its lifetime, which obviously earned Russell Britt

1199
01:11:11,280 --> 01:11:13,920
Speaker 1: a lot of money. But he wasn't a really very

1200
01:11:14,000 --> 01:11:16,040
Speaker 1: material person. He was happy just living out of a

1201
01:11:16,120 --> 01:11:19,960
Speaker 1: rucksack and he kind of traveled around the States and

1202
01:11:20,000 --> 01:11:22,920
Speaker 1: Australia and Southeast Asia, and he would just run Silk

1203
01:11:23,000 --> 01:11:26,439
Speaker 1: Road from his from his laptop, which was obviously heavily encrypted.

1204
01:11:27,600 --> 01:11:31,400
Speaker 1: But as with Mark running Mount Cox, as as Mark

1205
01:11:31,479 --> 01:11:34,680
Speaker 1: Carpoli's found, as Jed michaelab before him found, running this

1206
01:11:34,720 --> 01:11:38,360
Speaker 1: sort of site became a massive pain in the pain

1207
01:11:38,400 --> 01:11:41,919
Speaker 1: in the backside, and he was constantly having to attend

1208
01:11:41,960 --> 01:11:45,040
Speaker 1: to attend to issues to repel these hacking attempts, deal

1209
01:11:45,080 --> 01:11:48,640
Speaker 1: with dealing with complaints again, but had the kind of

1210
01:11:48,680 --> 01:11:51,360
Speaker 1: added pressure of he had to do it without getting caught. Yeah,

1211
01:11:51,439 --> 01:11:54,880
Speaker 1: it's not just okay, cool, where's my money from? You know,

1212
01:11:55,320 --> 01:12:00,599
Speaker 1: Bill in Arkansas, it's where's my money from? Jose in Jose,

1213
01:12:00,920 --> 01:12:04,519
Speaker 1: Jose with lots of guns. Yeah, yeah, and obviously dealing

1214
01:12:04,560 --> 01:12:08,240
Speaker 1: with some dealing with some pretty pretty and also avoiding

1215
01:12:08,240 --> 01:12:11,240
Speaker 1: the authorities as well. Yeah, yeah, and that's the thing.

1216
01:12:11,280 --> 01:12:14,400
Speaker 1: And again, as Mark Car police must have found, it

1217
01:12:14,520 --> 01:12:18,360
Speaker 1: must have been so stressful. You know, they're not only

1218
01:12:18,360 --> 01:12:21,240
Speaker 1: trying to run this business, but also knowing that if

1219
01:12:21,240 --> 01:12:23,800
Speaker 1: you got caught, that was it's It's not it's not

1220
01:12:24,160 --> 01:12:27,920
Speaker 1: a thirty month suspended. Its no, not by any means.

1221
01:12:27,920 --> 01:12:31,360
Speaker 1: As we'll see. So all the while US agents from

1222
01:12:31,400 --> 01:12:33,719
Speaker 1: US law enforcement were on his tail, it was picking

1223
01:12:33,760 --> 01:12:35,720
Speaker 1: up a lot of traction and and and as it

1224
01:12:35,760 --> 01:12:38,080
Speaker 1: went on, you know, I think the Department of Homeland

1225
01:12:38,080 --> 01:12:41,679
Speaker 1: Security got involved. I think it's for a Netflix documentary

1226
01:12:41,680 --> 01:12:44,679
Speaker 1: on this. Yeah, it's it's a fascinating story. And there's

1227
01:12:44,720 --> 01:12:48,360
Speaker 1: a great book called American Kingpin by a guy called

1228
01:12:48,439 --> 01:12:52,080
Speaker 1: Nick Bilton, which tells the whole story in detail, very

1229
01:12:52,160 --> 01:12:54,320
Speaker 1: very readable. I do recommend that I'll leave a link

1230
01:12:54,360 --> 01:12:57,920
Speaker 1: to that in the in the show notes. Uh so, yeah,

1231
01:12:58,000 --> 01:13:00,679
Speaker 1: it's um. I think the d e A, the FBI,

1232
01:13:00,840 --> 01:13:04,679
Speaker 1: Homeland Security, all the three letter agencies were getting involved

1233
01:13:04,840 --> 01:13:08,559
Speaker 1: as as as as it went along, and they managed

1234
01:13:08,560 --> 01:13:11,840
Speaker 1: to infiltrate the site's forums, and some d e A

1235
01:13:11,840 --> 01:13:16,880
Speaker 1: agents managed to establish contract contact with Ross who's still

1236
01:13:17,000 --> 01:13:22,360
Speaker 1: using this dreadpirate Roberts or DPR pseudonym. Now to cut

1237
01:13:22,360 --> 01:13:25,040
Speaker 1: a long story short, Ross was eventually tracked down to

1238
01:13:25,120 --> 01:13:29,160
Speaker 1: San Francisco and dramatically arrested in a public library there.

1239
01:13:29,200 --> 01:13:34,200
Speaker 1: This was September, and the way they tracked him down

1240
01:13:34,560 --> 01:13:37,280
Speaker 1: was was very very clever. They managed to dig up

1241
01:13:37,320 --> 01:13:40,320
Speaker 1: old user names that he'd used they could then link

1242
01:13:40,400 --> 01:13:43,160
Speaker 1: back to his email address that act that had his

1243
01:13:43,200 --> 01:13:46,480
Speaker 1: actual name in. But it was a very painstaking process

1244
01:13:46,720 --> 01:13:49,080
Speaker 1: and they were on his tail for a long time.

1245
01:13:49,200 --> 01:13:52,200
Speaker 1: But yeah, they they tracked him down, and yeah, when

1246
01:13:52,240 --> 01:13:55,599
Speaker 1: they arrested him, they had to make sure that they

1247
01:13:55,680 --> 01:13:59,120
Speaker 1: got him with his laptop open because they knew that.

1248
01:13:59,240 --> 01:14:02,920
Speaker 1: I think they'd tried to arrest somewhat some other hacker

1249
01:14:03,280 --> 01:14:05,439
Speaker 1: a couple a few years previously. I think the FBI

1250
01:14:05,479 --> 01:14:08,160
Speaker 1: had tried to seize this computer hacker and he'd managed

1251
01:14:08,160 --> 01:14:11,880
Speaker 1: to close his laptop just before he was arrested, which

1252
01:14:11,880 --> 01:14:15,479
Speaker 1: he automatically encrypted everything, and it took them a lot

1253
01:14:15,560 --> 01:14:17,639
Speaker 1: of it was really I think they meant they managed

1254
01:14:17,640 --> 01:14:20,000
Speaker 1: to crack his password in the end, but yeah, so

1255
01:14:20,040 --> 01:14:23,280
Speaker 1: that it was vital that they got him without him

1256
01:14:23,320 --> 01:14:26,439
Speaker 1: being able to close his laptop and and encrypted. So

1257
01:14:26,560 --> 01:14:29,040
Speaker 1: I think they staged the distraction, I think to two

1258
01:14:29,240 --> 01:14:32,120
Speaker 1: FBI agents pretended to be like lovers having a quarrel

1259
01:14:32,280 --> 01:14:34,519
Speaker 1: or something like that, shouting at each other, and he

1260
01:14:34,600 --> 01:14:37,360
Speaker 1: was distracted. And when he was distracted, like others moved

1261
01:14:37,400 --> 01:14:39,000
Speaker 1: in and grabbed him, and one of them grabbed his

1262
01:14:39,040 --> 01:14:41,760
Speaker 1: laptop and stuck a flash drive into copy it. It It

1263
01:14:41,920 --> 01:14:47,280
Speaker 1: was all very very dramatic Hollywood stuff. And Ross was

1264
01:14:47,360 --> 01:14:50,800
Speaker 1: charged with money laundering. He was charged with conspiracy to

1265
01:14:50,960 --> 01:14:55,920
Speaker 1: commit computer hacking and conspiracy to traffic narcotics a pretty

1266
01:14:55,920 --> 01:14:59,760
Speaker 1: long rap sheet. Now. The prosecution also presented evidence that

1267
01:14:59,800 --> 01:15:03,479
Speaker 1: he tried to have several people killed because they had

1268
01:15:03,479 --> 01:15:07,479
Speaker 1: threatened to expose him. And I'm not quite sure why

1269
01:15:07,520 --> 01:15:11,000
Speaker 1: they didn't present that evidence exactly, but there there is. Yeah,

1270
01:15:11,040 --> 01:15:14,200
Speaker 1: he as as the pressure of the site had gotten worse.

1271
01:15:14,560 --> 01:15:18,160
Speaker 1: He was obviously being blackmailed and extorted and all this

1272
01:15:18,200 --> 01:15:20,559
Speaker 1: sort of stuff, And yeah, there is there is evidence

1273
01:15:20,600 --> 01:15:23,559
Speaker 1: to suggest that he tried to have certain people bumped off.

1274
01:15:23,600 --> 01:15:25,360
Speaker 1: I think he got trying to get the Hell's Angels

1275
01:15:25,360 --> 01:15:29,439
Speaker 1: involved at one point, and the the FBI or the

1276
01:15:29,520 --> 01:15:32,640
Speaker 1: d e A, one of the two actually staged the

1277
01:15:32,720 --> 01:15:35,520
Speaker 1: torture and execution of one guy who had been an

1278
01:15:35,560 --> 01:15:39,439
Speaker 1: administrator on Silk Road. They managed to turn him. They

1279
01:15:39,479 --> 01:15:42,680
Speaker 1: managed to catch him, catch him in the act. They

1280
01:15:42,720 --> 01:15:45,679
Speaker 1: managed to turn him, and they sort of video themselves

1281
01:15:45,720 --> 01:15:49,040
Speaker 1: supposedly torturing him and took videos of his pictures of

1282
01:15:49,080 --> 01:15:51,719
Speaker 1: his supposedly dead body and sent them to Ross saying,

1283
01:15:51,720 --> 01:15:54,280
Speaker 1: you know, job done, now give us the rest of

1284
01:15:54,280 --> 01:15:57,679
Speaker 1: our money. It was all pretty shady, but it turned

1285
01:15:57,720 --> 01:16:01,679
Speaker 1: out that nobody was actually killed. And yes, so evidence

1286
01:16:01,760 --> 01:16:07,439
Speaker 1: was submitted for these attempted assassinations, but Ross wasn't charged however,

1287
01:16:07,840 --> 01:16:09,760
Speaker 1: when he was saying, he was found guilty of the

1288
01:16:09,760 --> 01:16:15,240
Speaker 1: other charges sentenced at the end of May. Quite a sentence, yes,

1289
01:16:15,640 --> 01:16:20,519
Speaker 1: double life imprisonment plus forty years. I mean, look, that

1290
01:16:20,600 --> 01:16:26,400
Speaker 1: seems I know he's facilitating a lot more transactions of drugs,

1291
01:16:26,439 --> 01:16:29,720
Speaker 1: but is that I don't know. It seems they were

1292
01:16:29,760 --> 01:16:33,400
Speaker 1: making an example really well. Absolutely, yeah, absolutely, I think

1293
01:16:33,479 --> 01:16:40,519
Speaker 1: Ross Albrick sentences is unnecessarily harsh. And yeah, the the

1294
01:16:40,560 --> 01:16:43,600
Speaker 1: evidence for the attempted killings was apparently a factor in

1295
01:16:43,600 --> 01:16:47,960
Speaker 1: the judge's decision, and law enforcement also subsequently managed to

1296
01:16:47,960 --> 01:16:51,080
Speaker 1: secure convictions against dozens of dealers who'd used the side

1297
01:16:51,120 --> 01:16:53,679
Speaker 1: as well. So it did all it did all come

1298
01:16:53,840 --> 01:16:58,080
Speaker 1: crashing down. And yeah, Ross's arrest and conviction they did

1299
01:16:58,120 --> 01:17:02,240
Speaker 1: cause the price of bitcoin to dip, but only temporarily,

1300
01:17:02,439 --> 01:17:07,800
Speaker 1: so bitcoin yeah kind of weather this storm as well. Um,

1301
01:17:07,840 --> 01:17:10,439
Speaker 1: So let's let's bring this all to a close. I'd

1302
01:17:10,439 --> 01:17:13,080
Speaker 1: love to have talked about especially Silk Road more because

1303
01:17:13,160 --> 01:17:16,960
Speaker 1: it's such a fascinating it's such a fascinating experiment. Really,

1304
01:17:17,840 --> 01:17:20,200
Speaker 1: but there there really isn't There really isn't time today,

1305
01:17:20,680 --> 01:17:23,040
Speaker 1: So I do urge people to to read that Nick

1306
01:17:23,080 --> 01:17:25,320
Speaker 1: Bilton book. And as you say, there are various documentaries

1307
01:17:25,320 --> 01:17:27,800
Speaker 1: about it as well. Yeah for those who don't read yea,

1308
01:17:28,160 --> 01:17:29,680
Speaker 1: which may be quite a few of you seeing as

1309
01:17:29,720 --> 01:17:34,599
Speaker 1: you're listening to this, Um, there's some great great videos

1310
01:17:34,600 --> 01:17:37,640
Speaker 1: to watch. Yeah, Coin Bureau has a few, Yes, I

1311
01:17:37,640 --> 01:17:39,800
Speaker 1: think we I think we have talked about Silk Road before,

1312
01:17:39,840 --> 01:17:41,360
Speaker 1: but there are yeah, there are lots of There are

1313
01:17:41,439 --> 01:17:43,559
Speaker 1: lots of sort of specialist documentar I think there's even

1314
01:17:43,560 --> 01:17:48,080
Speaker 1: a feature film. Yeah, so you can dive into the

1315
01:17:48,080 --> 01:17:51,360
Speaker 1: Silk Road story a lot deeper, both books, films or

1316
01:17:51,600 --> 01:17:54,679
Speaker 1: podcasts and gean, So let's bring this all to a conclusion.

1317
01:17:54,720 --> 01:17:57,040
Speaker 1: And so It's fair to say Mount Cox and Silk

1318
01:17:57,120 --> 01:18:01,599
Speaker 1: Road both played huge roles in bring bitcoin into wider

1319
01:18:01,600 --> 01:18:07,200
Speaker 1: public consciousness, but both also contributed to the perception that

1320
01:18:07,280 --> 01:18:10,639
Speaker 1: it was a scam or you incredibly risky, or only

1321
01:18:10,720 --> 01:18:14,479
Speaker 1: used by criminals. And like I've said before, I think

1322
01:18:14,520 --> 01:18:17,519
Speaker 1: a lot of people still hold these views today. So

1323
01:18:17,680 --> 01:18:20,960
Speaker 1: it's an image it's they both caused image problems that

1324
01:18:21,000 --> 01:18:23,600
Speaker 1: bitcoin is still trying to shake to an extent with

1325
01:18:23,680 --> 01:18:26,080
Speaker 1: some people. I think the most of the world has

1326
01:18:26,120 --> 01:18:28,000
Speaker 1: moved on. Yeah, I think now that there's a big

1327
01:18:28,000 --> 01:18:30,719
Speaker 1: headge fund and stuff getting involved in it, it's yeah.

1328
01:18:31,000 --> 01:18:34,080
Speaker 1: So what's important to remember, though, is that whatever whatever

1329
01:18:34,120 --> 01:18:37,360
Speaker 1: the perception of bitcoin in in in the wake of

1330
01:18:37,400 --> 01:18:39,439
Speaker 1: these in the wake of these cases, what's important to

1331
01:18:39,439 --> 01:18:44,560
Speaker 1: remember is that bitcoin itself was never hacked or compromised.

1332
01:18:44,920 --> 01:18:48,600
Speaker 1: It was these It was these other uses, this exchange

1333
01:18:48,720 --> 01:18:52,599
Speaker 1: and this drugs marketplace. And you can't I don't think

1334
01:18:52,600 --> 01:18:55,719
Speaker 1: you can pin the rap on bitcoin for what people

1335
01:18:56,200 --> 01:18:58,720
Speaker 1: chose to do with it, certainly in the case of

1336
01:18:59,280 --> 01:19:02,040
Speaker 1: in the case of So Grown So yeah, it was

1337
01:19:02,080 --> 01:19:04,760
Speaker 1: the centralized services that used it. They were the weak

1338
01:19:04,760 --> 01:19:10,920
Speaker 1: points in bitcoin. Bitcoin lived on. So next episode we've

1339
01:19:10,960 --> 01:19:12,920
Speaker 1: covered bitcoin in quite a lot of depth over these

1340
01:19:13,000 --> 01:19:15,040
Speaker 1: last three episodes. I'm going I think we'll do one

1341
01:19:15,080 --> 01:19:17,200
Speaker 1: more episode on bitcoin next time, and we're just going

1342
01:19:17,240 --> 01:19:19,479
Speaker 1: to bring it up to the present day, because there's

1343
01:19:19,560 --> 01:19:22,240
Speaker 1: so much to the bitcoin story, and we could talk

1344
01:19:22,400 --> 01:19:24,120
Speaker 1: for we could talk for hours, we could talk for

1345
01:19:24,200 --> 01:19:25,840
Speaker 1: days about all the ins and outs of it. But

1346
01:19:25,880 --> 01:19:28,679
Speaker 1: I think probably it's a nice synopsis of it, bring

1347
01:19:28,760 --> 01:19:30,960
Speaker 1: up to speed and then crack on with maybe a

1348
01:19:31,000 --> 01:19:34,720
Speaker 1: different coin. Yeah. Oh yeah, there's lots there's lots more

1349
01:19:34,800 --> 01:19:38,240
Speaker 1: there's lots more coins, there's lots more projects, There's there's

1350
01:19:38,280 --> 01:19:40,840
Speaker 1: so much more to talk about about crypto. So but

1351
01:19:40,960 --> 01:19:42,600
Speaker 1: I think yeah, by the end of by the end

1352
01:19:42,640 --> 01:19:45,360
Speaker 1: of the next episode, will will be sort of Bitcoin

1353
01:19:45,400 --> 01:19:48,200
Speaker 1: will be with us in the present day. We'll have

1354
01:19:48,360 --> 01:19:51,920
Speaker 1: had a good general overview of its history, and I

1355
01:19:51,960 --> 01:19:55,320
Speaker 1: hope everyone will. I hope everyone will understand it better,

1356
01:19:55,479 --> 01:19:58,240
Speaker 1: understand where it came from, what it's trying to do,

1357
01:19:59,360 --> 01:20:03,160
Speaker 1: where it's, where it's gone, and and the people, crucially,

1358
01:20:03,160 --> 01:20:05,479
Speaker 1: I think the people involved with it, because again, as

1359
01:20:05,520 --> 01:20:09,639
Speaker 1: we've seen today with Mark car Police and Russell Brittain,

1360
01:20:09,680 --> 01:20:12,479
Speaker 1: people like that, there are just some so many fascinating people,

1361
01:20:13,640 --> 01:20:17,000
Speaker 1: even if some of them are a bit more a

1362
01:20:17,040 --> 01:20:20,880
Speaker 1: little unscrupulous. Yes, let's say that. Let's leave it at that.

1363
01:20:21,600 --> 01:20:24,880
Speaker 1: Thanks Mike, see you next time. I see you next week. Guys,

1364
01:20:25,040 --> 01:20:27,479
Speaker 1: see you next week. Thank you so much for listening

1365
01:20:27,560 --> 01:20:29,960
Speaker 1: to the coin Bureau podcast. If you'd like to learn

1366
01:20:30,000 --> 01:20:33,439
Speaker 1: more about cryptocurrency, you can visit our YouTube channel at

1367
01:20:33,600 --> 01:20:36,800
Speaker 1: YouTube dot com forward slash coin Bureau. You can also

1368
01:20:36,840 --> 01:20:39,440
Speaker 1: go to coin bureau dot com for loads more information

1369
01:20:39,479 --> 01:20:42,240
Speaker 1: about all things crypto. You can follow me on Twitter

1370
01:20:42,360 --> 01:20:44,679
Speaker 1: and at coin Bureau all on word, and I'm also

1371
01:20:44,720 --> 01:20:48,040
Speaker 1: active on TikTok and Instagram as well. First of all,

1372
01:20:48,320 --> 01:20:52,840
Speaker 1: it's not thank you for listening, You're welcome for great content. Yeah,

1373
01:20:53,360 --> 01:20:56,759
Speaker 1: Like this is free and they're learning about a fairly

1374
01:20:56,880 --> 01:21:00,320
Speaker 1: great topic in a non boring way. If you'd like

1375
01:21:00,360 --> 01:21:03,080
Speaker 1: to visit me and hear more about me, go to

1376
01:21:03,200 --> 01:21:06,040
Speaker 1: mooch about, m O O C H A, B O

1377
01:21:06,320 --> 01:21:19,519
Speaker 1: U T or else. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,

1378
01:21:19,800 --> 01:21:23,400
Speaker 1: visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

1379
01:21:23,560 --> 01:21:33,960
Speaker 1: we get your podcasts. The coin Viera podcast is a

1380
01:21:33,960 --> 01:21:35,719
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio