Jon Matonis pumps bitcoin at a KPMG eGaming conference in Gibraltar

[mikegogulski]

Matonis is known both for being a long-time deep thinker on the future of money as well as being the creator of hushmail.com

Intriguing slideshow. I'd love to have heard the talk alongside it, as well as the talk in the halls and in the bar afterward.

http://themonetaryfuture.blogspot.com/2011/03/monetising-game-play-on-social-network.html

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[Cryptoman]

This is really big.  Thanks for posting this.  I'm a big Matonis/Hushmail fan.

[Stephen Gornick]

Presentation Transcript

Monetising Game Play on Social Network Sites - Presentation Transcript

Monetising Game Play on Social Network Sites
Jon Matonis
31 March 2011

Overview
Chief Forex Dealer at VISA International
Director of Financial Services Vertical for VeriSign, Inc.
CEO of Hush Communications, creator of encrypted Hushmail.com
Editor of The Monetary Future blog on digital currencies

Social Gaming and Virtual Currency

Revenue Shift Away from Advertising

Virtual Goods Revenue Increasing

The Entrance of Facebook Credits

Social Gaming Beyond Facebook

Types of Payment Choices for eGaming
Credit card/debit card
EFT wire transfer/eCheck/ACH
Cashier’s check/money order
Western Union/MoneyGram
Proxy eWallet account (Click2Pay, Moneybookers, MyPaylinQ, Neteller, Ukash, Webmoney, etc.)
Mobile payment
Non-political virtual currency unit (Facebook Credits, Linden Dollars)

Attributes of a True Virtual Currency
P2P capable
Anonymous/pseudonymous
Two-way convertibility
Transactional non-repudiation
Easily divisible
Portable and offline capable
Security and scarcity
Frictionless (no transaction fees)
Nearly instant deposits/withdrawals

Previous Barriers to a True Virtual Currency
Gold bullion cannot be molecularly transported across the Internet
Emulating the anonymity features of physical cash or gaming chips is difficult
Digital bearer certificates have to verify against a centralised ‘mint’ which creates a single point of failure
Decentralisation opens up the possibility for double spending the digital ‘coins’

Bitcoin: A New Entrant

What is Bitcoin?
One of the first implementations of a concept called cryptocurrency (circa, 1998)
Does not rely on trusting any central issuer
Relies on the transfer of amounts between accounts using public key cryptography (like PGP for money)
Scarcity based on a reusable proof-of-work
Double-spending prevented by a distributed time server implementing chained RPOWs

Major Features of Bitcoin
Current size of economy (~BTC 6,000,000)
Nodes connected (5,000-10,000)
Trading turnover (equivalent $30,000/day)
Decentralised confirmations
Distributed nodes (peer-to-peer)
Open source software (peer reviewed)
Non-political unit of account
Independent market-based exchange rate

Evolution of Bitcoin
31/10/08 Bitcoin academic paper published
11/01/09 Bitcoin v0.1 released
17/07/10 MtGox exchange established
06/11/10 Bitcoin economy passes $1.0m
09/12/10 Generation difficulty passes 10,000
28/01/11 Block 105000 generated, 5.25m/21m
11/02/11 Bitcoin reaches USD parity, $1/BTC
03/03/11 Bitcoin v0.3.20.2 released
27/03/11 First BTC:GBP exchange opens

Benefits of Bitcoin
Bitcoin is ideally suited to the eGaming and online casino financial requirements
Monetary properties and features emulate the physical gaming chips in a real-world casino
Features correlate to the customer demand for a digital/virtual currency

eGaming Sites Currently Using Bitcoin

Map of Bitcoin Nodes

Total Bitcoins Issued Over Time

Bitcoin-USD Exchange Rate (Jul 2010 – Mar 2011)

Future Implications

Google is the Player to Watch
Google acquires Social Gold, a virtual currency platform (August 2010)
Google acquires Zetawire to look after NFC payments (December 2010)
Google releases BitcoinJ, a bitcoin client for Java (March 2011)
Google now has 750 staff in payments division!

The Dawn of the Cryptocurrency Economy
“Digital cash is to legal tender as BitTorrents are to copyrights.” -- J. Matonis
The Dawn of the Cryptocurrency Economy
A Digital Currency Revolution will......
Fundamentally alter the current hierarchy of central banking and banks
Challenge traditional value depositories
Cause KYC rules for certain transactions to become irrelevant
Make monetary and taxation jurisdictions less important

Opportunities for Gibraltar Jurisdiction
eGaming companies that adapt
Prepaid operators
(Transact Networks, IDT, Wavecrest)
eMoney and virtual currency exchanges
Cryptocurrency market-makers

Thank You
Jon Matonis
matonis@hushmail.com twitter.com/jonmatonis

- http://www.slideshare.net/jonmatonis/monetising-game-play-on-social-network-sites

[nextnonce]

Nice to see some good news that is not an April fool's joke    Thanks for sharing.

[Cusipzzz]

Wow! He used a screenshot of BTCSportsbet.com ! Very nice deck. :-)

[ColdHardMetal]

Man, that looks like a pretty legit presentation. I wonder how big his audience was. KPMG is pretty big-time so I can't imagine one of their senior guys would be wasting his day at some tiny event.

[matonis]

I'm a big Matonis/Hushmail fan.

I was too... Until Hushmail rolled over for the feds.

It's time to clear the air on this. I have read several comments like this one but I chose this one to respond to.

My tenure as CEO of Hush Communications was from 2000-2002 during the period that the headquarters was located in Dublin, Ireland. We indeed responded to many international subpoenas during that time period and a special division was set-up to verify the authenticity of the many inbound government subpoenas. Our response was to comply with the subpoena and to turn over the contents of the inbox and the outbox, which of course was encrypted. Due to the nature of the java applet and password hashing technique, Hush Communications did not have the ability to decrypt any data. Sustained non-compliance to subpoena orders would have led to significant legal fees and probably the end of the company's operations. Furthermore, if users had deployed Hushmail properly in the first place, our compliance was not harming any users and this was a major factor in our decision.

The change in policy that you refer to occurred after my tenure at Hush Communications when the company relocated its headquarters to Vancouver, Canada. The controversy revolved around compromised java applets served to targeted users where some Hushmail employees, with government coercion, actually cooperated to obtain the user's password. This is distinctly different than merely turning over encrypted data. Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hushmail

Of course, this is hindsight, but I would NOT have allowed the company to take that additional step, because I believe that it is a direct, unwarranted intervention and it violates the end-user agreement with Hushmail's userbase. It crosses the line. I would have taken it to court and I would have made it an international media issue for privacy rights. People who know me well would agree that is my stance. Failing that, I could have also resigned in protest.

It is important to state that Hushmail is still a valuable and safe service if utilized properly. All security is relative. Physical keyboard sniffers and ceiling cameras can be mounted in a suspect's home to obtain PGP private key passphrases. If one verifies the Hush applet against source code or better yet stores a clean version locally, the threat of a 'spoofed' applet can be eliminated.

[qualia8]

Excellent news.  This is what will secure the value of bitcoin.

[stick_theman]

Good work, Jon!  Love your web site.