The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin Page #10

( DANIEL SPEAKS )

- C++.

- C++.

Is that your main...

is that your main

- programming language?

- No.

I've got a lot of main

programming languages.

Yeah? What's your favorite

programming language?

Really depend

on what I need to do.

I create a good something

really quick

and I don't care

about performance,

I use p.H.P.

If I care a little bit

about performance,

I will use c++

with q.T. Available.

And if I care a lot about performance,

I will use axum.

When we go in,

cameras down first,

- until we get to your servers

and then back up. - Exactly.

Okay.

Getting ready to go into the mt.

Gox data center location.

Okay, cameras down.

We were allowed

to snap a few photographs

( KARPELES SPEAKING )

( SPEAKING JAPANESE )

( MAN SPEAKING

JAPANESE )

DANIEL:

If mt. Gox's new trading engine

can really support

100 million orders per second,

it should be able to scale with the

demands of professional traders.

But with complex legal problems

and increasing competition,

mark's attention is pulled

in many directions.

Do you work seven days

a week, typically?

- KARPELES:
Yup.

- It seems that you do

the majority

of all the heavy lifting.

- ( LAUGHS ) Literally.

- KARPELES:
Yeah.

You need to remove

your shoes in the entrance.

DANIEL:

Mark is a talented man

in one of the world's

biggest cities...

But maybe he should stick

to computer keyboards.

( CLASSICAL MUSIC PLAYING )

( SCOFFS )

Okay, I messed it up.

- ( CHUCKLES ) Awesome.

- ( NICK CLAPS ) Yay.

Yeah.

Erik voorhees.

We are here in northern New Hampshire

for the porcupine

freedom festival.

And this is an event

put on each year

by the free state project.

Basically it's just a bunch

of crazy anarcho-capitalists,

libertarian types

in the woods,

with freedom

and families.

Pretty much all of the

vendors accept bitcoin.

- ( PEOPLE CHATTERING )

- Ahh!

It tastes much better

when bought with bitcoin.

Thanks, guys.

Soups, salads and smoothies.

( CHUCKLES )

I would say one-third

of our sales

have been in bitcoin.

It's 20 bucks.

So you're gonna pay in bitcoin?

- Uh, yeah.

- All right.

Last year was

our first year accepting it

we did maybe 18 transactions,

20 transactions at the most.

And now we're

up to close to 120.

- ( SIZZLING )

- ( FOLK MUSIC PLAYING )

DANIEL:
This community is really

one of the largest groups

of people

in the U.S., I think,

that is truly adopting bitcoin

and using it as a currency,

because of what it stands for

and because of what it enables.

( PEOPLE CHATTER )

The world is

seriously changing now

and it is changing

in a very interesting,

very radical,

decentralized,

and, in my opinion,

positive direction.

Shoot.

Here it is.

"Price breaks

the all-time high."

DANIEL:

Vitalik is only 19 years old,

but he has a profound

understanding

of the complexities

of bitcoin

and a gift

for explaining them.

As lead writer

for "bitcoin magazine,"

he's been traveling the world,

covering bitcoin for the past year.

I'm a big fan of the decentralization

concept, in principle.

You know, have lots...

lots of different societies

operating according to whatever

people's own beliefs are.

Bitcoin has unique properties

that no other system

in the world has had before.

It really seems like

the only practical way forward.

As you move away

from cash

into your debit cards

and your credit cards,

you essentially

are giving up

a certain degree

of your privacy

without even

really knowing it.

It's important to understand

that bitcoin is not

automatically,

perfectly anonymous.

But what it does is it enables you

to be anonymous if you wish to.

DANIEL:

Erik voorhees is the founder and part owner

of a hugely popular

bitcoin gambling site

called satoshi dice.

Satoshi dice is

the first of a new breed

of provably fair

betting games

that use bitcoin.

Since all bets are public,

anyone can verify

the odds and payouts.

At its peak,

satoshi dice was responsible

for more bitcoin transactions

than all other uses

of bitcoin combined.

It played an important role

in bitcoin's development

as one

of the first applications

to really test what the

bitcoin network could handle.

Recently Erik moved his entire

operations out of the U.S.

And into Panama.

He started a company

called coinapult

that lets you send bitcoin

via s.M.S. And email.

VOORHEES:

I think most people,

at least in America,

believe that when they put

$1,000 into their bank,

the bank is holding $1,000

in its vault for them.

And they don't realize that 99%

of all the dollars are digital.

The fact that we have these

tokens called paper cash

is the exception

to the rule.

People see the cash and they think

that that's what the money is,

but it's all digital and it's

been that way for decades.

You guys moved

your business to Panama.

What was the primary driver

in that?

VOORHEES:

If you're a U.S. company,

you have to follow

the arcane U.S. regulations

for all of your customers

around the world.

So if you do business with

some rural farmer in Africa,

you're gonna need to get

his social security number,

you're gonna need to get

all this information

that Washington tells you

is important.

We did not want

to have to apply

the U.S. financial

regulatory scheme

to customers

in sub-saharan Africa.

I don't think

the developed world's

gonna be where bitcoin

really takes off, long-term,

because our banking system's

worked decently well.

Many people around the world

don't have any

bank accounts whatsoever.

Ultimately, those are

the types of people

who will find

the most value out of bitcoin.

DANIEL:

One month later Erik announced

he had sold satoshi dice

to an anonymous investor.

The price?

126,315 bitcoins,

worth around

$11.5 million.

Most of the new offices in this

city are in this condition,

all still

what's called "gray."

Not ready, no Internet,

no electricity... nothing.

But we actually got one

that was finished,

so we moved in and we are

super excited about it.

You can see

all the skyscrapers

of new banks and everything

getting built up here.

This is the financial center

for central America.

So it was fitting that we

establish ourselves here as well.

Still setting up the office.

We've been here

for two weeks.

We're getting

walls put in.

We've got furniture.

VOORHEES:

This is the brains of the operation.

- This is Mr. ira.

- Howdy.

He can program anything, and you can

see all these books he's reading.

What have we got here?

We've got "cryptanalysis."

We've got

"everyday cryptography,"

"introduction

to mathematical cryptography."

I read all of these, of course,

when I was much younger,

but ira's trying

to catch up with me.

The bitcoin phenomenon

is trying

to take control

of money away

from the state and return it

to individuals.

It's trying to separate

money and state

in the same way

and for the same reasons

that it was important

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