Video: The Bitcoin Phenomenon on SQ1.tv

[bhu]

Hello everyone -

We're producing a program called The Bitcoin Phenomenon for SQ1.tv.

We have a trailer up on SQ1.tv featuring Gavin Andresen, evoorhees, Trace Mayer, Peter Vessenes, a top VC, Angela Keaton from Antiwar.com, Roger Ver, and several VC funded entrepreneurs.

Trailer & Write-up: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sq1/the-bitcoin-phenomenon-on-sq1tv

About SQ1.tv: http://www.sq1.tv

Like it, share it, tweet it if you actually like it. Feedback is welcome. Full interviews on the state of bitcoin from most of the participants will follow soon.

Sincerely,

Bhu

[bhu]

An earlier question posed to me:

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Quote from: gweedo on Today at 04:26:51 AM

What separates this from the other bitcoin movies? These are starting to blend all together. Also when is someone going to interview people from the community and just not all main people that we see all day everyday giving opinions.
______________________________________________________

Valid question, Gweedo. A couple of perspectives.

1. I used to publish a poker magazine called ALL IN from 2003-2006; during this period, there were all kinds of poker-related shows on channels from NBC, CBS, Travel, Fox Sports, ESPN, G4, to countless others. I can tell you that the proliferation of shows were a strong indication of the vibrancy of the underlying market. For bitcoin enthusiasts, the number of film and media projects focused on bitcoin should be a bullish signal. Yes, they blend together, but so what. I hope every film project is successful and fulfilling to its creators.

2. I'm not sold on bitcoin, especially not its larger claims. I'm 100%-intrigued by bitcoin as a phenomenon, but not sold with respect to its practicality or utility; I do root for all new things, though. As recently as April, I thought it was the "stupidest thing I had ever heard of." I was talking to a friend, whom I respect greatly, a top technology entrepreneur (who incidentally turned me onto the poker boom,) and I laughed at him when he was going on and on about the implications of bitcoin. I dismissed it for a couple of reasons:

---- a. I couldn't get my head around the arbitrariness of the initial value. The point at which it went from $0 USD to anything. What was that first person that paid some fraction of a government-issued currency speculating on?

---- b. The inflationary arguments that my friend made struck me as ironic. Japan has been in a deflationary trap for 20 years. Bond yields in the west, both US and Europe, were lower than low. Additionally, for all the talk about wild money printing, the problems in Europe among the PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Spain) were not the result of hyper-inflation, but the opposite. The 4 European countries cannot get their hands on enough euros. This is because as a part of the euro framework, the euro countries have ceded their sovereign right to print currency to a currency union that includes Germany and France. As a result the countries with the highest rates of unemployment in developed world, the deepest recessions, and the most insolvent balance sheets are countries without the ability to print money or depreciate their currency. This was happening at the same time that Shinzo Abe of Japan was restoring optimism in Japan by promising to bring back inflation, which the market sometimes doesn't believe he will be able to do.

---- c. There seems to be a lack of understanding of the inverse function that applies to inflation - not all are impacted equally by inflation. A person that owes creditors $100,000 in car, student, home, and credit card loans is not impacted the same way a person that has $100,000 in the bank. If you've loaned somebody $100,000 for 5 years at a fixed rate of interest and a person borrows $100,000 for 5 years at a fixed rate of interest, when some climate of hyper-inflation strikes, the person that borrowed $100,000 can pay the original loan back with vastly depreciated dollars. In a sense, net debtors are significant beneficiaries as old debts become smaller in relation to current wage levels. Young people have debt. As such, young people benefit from inflation as the largest asset a young person has is the future income stream from wages; wages generally keep up with inflation...as such, a young person's most valuable asset, future wages, is inflation-protected while the debt is being paid off with cheaper dollars. While for retirees with savings from past efforts, the savings can be decimated by inflation as they have loaned money out in fixed income instruments. People that loan money for fixed time periods have the most to lose in inflationary climates, not young people with negative balance sheets. Inflation hurts lenders, it helps debtors.

(At a sovereign level, Japan is again an example. For instance, due to 20 years of deflation, Japan has debt-to-GDP of 240%...by far the highest in the developed world due to the value of past debts not depreciating due to inflation.)

Then it struck me what was cool about bitcoin. 24 hours after the conversation...4 images/thoughts flashed in rapid succession: Elliot Spitzer, Julian Assange, Online Poker, and drugs. Now, for some reason, bitcoiners seem embarrassed by this. For me, this is the most important aspect of bitcoin: Bitcoin counters a government's ability to suppress speech, behavior, or personal habits through regulation of the financial system. With Spitzer, his crime was not just engaging the services of prostitutes, but a crime called structuring - a form of money laundering, where one attempts to evade cash reporting rules. Wikileaks, we saw how the US was able to get Paypal, Mastercard, Visa to stop payment processing and suppress speech in a real sense. Online poker, which was enjoyed by millions of Americans was shut down using the banking and payment system (and domain seizures.) And people doing drugs is none of my business provided there is no harm to others. The seller of drugs pays a far greater price than the consumer of drugs even though both are guilty of equivalent "crimes". So then I thought about it this way:

1. As a proxy for freedom, bitcoin is wonderful. There is a need for a cash equivalent online. I buy it. And I wholeheartedly believe why the liberty-minded adopters of bitcoin feel this movement is so important. I don't feel it with the same intensity, but I am glad there are people out there that are on the front lines.

2. Bitcoin as a protocol is a solid aspect as well. Once the fiat vs. math-based arguments are stripped away, (which I find the least significant attribute), there are virtues to an efficient p2p payment protocol. I think of the future value of bitcoins as similar to that of domain names. Dot-com domains used to be free back in 1993, then as the browser took off, the names started getting value, some were used for businesses, others were speculative, but the value of domains grew as dot-com became the commercial standard. Now, dot-net domains have no less intrinsic value than dot-com domains, but the latter is considerably more valuable because it took hold commercially among consumers. This is how I feel with bitcoin vs. other virtual currencies. Bitcoin is the dot-com of virtual currencies. And as domain names grew in value, if bitcoin adoption takes off as a protocol like dns did, then yes, each bitcoin will gain in value in a similar way.

(Sub-point: Dot-com domains are also limited in a sense....there are only so many pronounceable and memorable combinations possible...and the bulk of valuable dot-com domains have been registered already...this is similar to the limited supply characteristics of bitcoin. People that argue that the limited supply of bitcoins will constrain bitcoin from mass adoption should consider that the limits of dot-com domains did not constrain the growth of the commercial web.)

This brings me to the premise of our program: Liberty vs. Protocol.

The early adopters were all for liberty, decentralization, anonymity, state subversion, and an unregulated currency. The new entrants, far more commercially minded, such as VCs and VC-backed entrepreneurs are looking to take bitcoin mainstream as a protocol. The latter do not care one iota about any of the former considerations...even if making bitcoin as big as it can be means a fully-regulated currency that sheds anonymity and decentralization.

I think of it as the Libertarian Paradox. This is where the interests of Libertarians diverges from the interests of Capitalists.

The more mainstream the currency, the more valuable each bitcoin becomes, but going mainstream will likely mean total compliance. Can bitcoin stay punk?

This is the central story that our production, The Bitcoin Phenomenon on SQ1.tv, is looking to dive into.

Thoughts?

[LightRider]

Has SQ1 considered investigating a resource based economy, where tremendous resources are not wasted in the efforts of currency creation and transaction processing, and instead are used intelligently for the benefit of all people?

[bhu]

Has SQ1 considered investigating a resource based economy, where tremendous resources are not wasted in the efforts of currency creation and transaction processing, and instead are used intelligently for the benefit of all people?

Thank you, LightRider. I visited The Venus Project. Looks interesting. Will look into it further with an open mind. But I do believe that capitalism is a pretty good system. And it allows for expression of human creativity and ingenuity in ways that all other systems do not. Even in the closest thing to a controlled experiment, we saw the difference between West Germany and East Germany at the point of unification. North Korea vs. South Korea today.

[malevolent]

Has SQ1 considered investigating a resource based economy, where tremendous resources are not wasted in the efforts of currency creation and transaction processing,

Without proof of work Bitcoin wouldn't be as safe and resilient (decentralized and without double spending) as it is now. There are alternatives however (proof of stake or proof of burn).

and instead are used intelligently for the benefit of all people?

This sounds very naive

Define "intelligently", "benefit" and "all people".

[phillipsjk]

---- a. I couldn't get my head around the arbitrariness of the initial value. The point at which it went from $0 USD to anything. What was that first person that paid some fraction of a government-issued currency speculating on?

I think Bitcoin Pizza did a lot to set the initial value of Bitcoin (at about $25 USD per 10,000)

[Phinnaeus Gage]

Damn, I like this guy! I think I've read every issue of ALL IN. I know as a fact that every issue I did read, I did so cover-to-cover, albeit not in order. I loved that poker magazine!

[bhu]

Damn, I like this guy! I think I've read every issue of ALL IN. I know as a fact that every issue I did read, I did so cover-to-cover, albeit not in order. I loved that poker magazine!

Phinnaeus Gage! That is awesome, man. I just registered yesterday on here, but I have been following your posts as I was researching bitcoin. Glad to know you read ALL IN. It is coming back under the new owners by the way as poker is looking to get legalized state-by-state.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

Damn, I like this guy! I think I've read every issue of ALL IN. I know as a fact that every issue I did read, I did so cover-to-cover, albeit not in order. I loved that poker magazine!

Phinnaeus Gage! That is awesome, man. I just registered yesterday on here, but I have been following your posts as I was researching bitcoin. Glad to know you read ALL IN. It is coming back under the new owners by the way as poker is looking to get legalized state-by-state.

Excellent news! To assure a poker player that a high percentage of fish are represented at the table, one may consider moving to Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia or South Carolina, solely based on national education rankings. All the five, my choice would be Texas, rank fifth SC is ranked first, being the worse).

Then again, you don't want too many fish at a table due to the schooling (no pun intended) effect.

[LightRider]

Has SQ1 considered investigating a resource based economy, where tremendous resources are not wasted in the efforts of currency creation and transaction processing, and instead are used intelligently for the benefit of all people?

Thank you, LightRider. I visited The Venus Project. Looks interesting. Will look into it further with an open mind. But I do believe that capitalism is a pretty good system. And it allows for expression of human creativity and ingenuity in ways that all other systems do not. Even in the closest thing to a controlled experiment, we saw the difference between West Germany and East Germany at the point of unification. North Korea vs. South Korea today.

It's disappointing that you believe that the vast majority of the world's population suffers for the benefit of the relatively few is a pretty good system.

[LiteCoinGuy]

your video looks quite nice! do you take bitcoin or litecoin donations also?

[bhu]

Has SQ1 considered investigating a resource based economy, where tremendous resources are not wasted in the efforts of currency creation and transaction processing, and instead are used intelligently for the benefit of all people?

Thank you, LightRider. I visited The Venus Project. Looks interesting. Will look into it further with an open mind. But I do believe that capitalism is a pretty good system. And it allows for expression of human creativity and ingenuity in ways that all other systems do not. Even in the closest thing to a controlled experiment, we saw the difference between West Germany and East Germany at the point of unification. North Korea vs. South Korea today.

It's disappointing that you believe that the vast majority of the world's population suffers for the benefit of the relatively few is a pretty good system.

LightRider, let me clarify as I always believe in having an open mind. I spent a few weeks in India this summer. I was also born in India and immigrated to the United States in grade school. I have witnessed abject poverty of a type that any visitor to India sees. Any tourist to India knows that to see an 8-year old carrying an infant sibling begging at a stoplight for money is a common site. India leads the world in child malnutrition rates. Over 500,000 children die per year from dysentery.

This year, however, I was very pleasantly surprised in Bangalore and Chennai, both in South India. There were massive infrastructure projects being built. I noticed minimal poverty of the gut-wrenching, disheartening variety. Even 6 years ago in these same cities, I noticed large numbers of beggars and street children; I didn't this year. I was stunned. I also noticed some of the population spoke hindi, which is not spoken in the south. This is due to labor shortages where hindi speakers migrated south for jobs. It is unpopular to say this, but wealth is definitely trickling down in South India while North India, where export-oriented industries are lacking does not enjoy the same degree of poverty alleviation. This is the market working.

There is another perspective I have being born in a 3rd world country with my family's sole ambition when I was a child to migrate to a country with better economic prospects: The average American owns a car. You cannot claim to be poor when you own an automobile. You cannot claim to be poor when you have indoor plumbing and a couple of good meals a day.

In India and Africa, there is no such thing as an obese poor person; this would be an oxymoron. Poor people in the world do not have enough to eat.

In 1961, South Korea, China, and India had very similar GDP per capita. Today, South Korea is a first world country, China is on the verge of being a 2nd world country, and India hopefully can solve large issues of poverty this decade, as it is doing. Political and economic systems do matter. In my view, China embracing export-oriented growth and private wealth has uplifted hundreds of millions from poverty over the past 30 years. Remember, China used to have periodic famines. Capitalism works where it is embraced.

Here is another central aspect of my thinking: 99% of the world that wakes up to go to work in the morning makes less than $35,000 per year. If you make $35,000 or more, you are in the top 1% of wage earners in the world. So I consider it extremely ironic to find the world's top 1% in income complaining about the top 1% in relation to themselves and not the world overall.

You might be in the top 1%. Check the calculator:

http://www.globalrichlist.com/

[hlynur]

trailer is looking interesting.
I'm glad media attention is growing to document the development of bitcoin and its community (also for historical purposes).
You're planning several episodes on bitcoin or just one documentary?

[bhu]

your video looks quite nice! do you take bitcoin or litecoin donations also?

LiteCoinGuy, thank you for the kind words.

And I know you meant it differently, but we don't take "donations" at all in any currency. I'm opposed to the concept of an entity created for future profits asking for donations. I certainly hope and expect to make profits in the future with SQ1.tv. Also, as a matter of pride, our goal at SQ1.tv is to provide you with fair value for every penny or btc you pay us. I view Kickstarter as a way of selling pre-orders in an aggregated way, but not as a way to solicit donations.

We sell subscriptions to view our content. I would like people to subscribe to SQ1.tv if they believe in what we're doing.

We'll likely add a bitcoin subscription campaign, but for now I'd like to focus our efforts on driving our Kickstarter campaign.

[bhu]

trailer is looking interesting.
I'm glad media attention is growing to document the development of bitcoin and its community (also for historical purposes).
You're planning several episodes on bitcoin or just one documentary?

I think we'll cut into one full piece taking it all the way from inception to the current state of bitcoin. We'll cover satoshi, mining, speculation, cyptography, network effects, the Libertarian argument, prohibition such as gambling and drugs, VCs entering the market, the new entrepreneurs, and future applications. I think the variety of people interested in bitcoin is the most interesting part.

After this, we could do a 6-episode series. I was thinking about covering one start-up from bitcoin concept to funding to team formation to product development to marketing. It could bitcoin startup reality series. Or it could be theme-centric episodes....bitcoin in Berlin, bitcoin and the free state project, bitcoin and gambling, etc.

Additionally, we are planning on 6 10-minute full-length interviews edited by us for each of the main participants such as Gavin, Erik Voorhees, Jeremy Liew - a top VC, a couple of the entrepreneurs, Steve Kubby - a major marijuana legalization proponent. We already have the footage, so simple enough.

Beyond our initial commitment to The Bitcoin Phenomenon and releasing the individual interviews, I can't commit to the series though. We have other shows that will take up bandwidth including DEALMAKER, TERM SHEET, TRADING DESK, AMERICAN ICON, CASE STUDY, and STATECRAFT. Here's what we're thinking with these shows:

http://www.sq1.tv/about

[LightRider]

Has SQ1 considered investigating a resource based economy, where tremendous resources are not wasted in the efforts of currency creation and transaction processing, and instead are used intelligently for the benefit of all people?

Thank you, LightRider. I visited The Venus Project. Looks interesting. Will look into it further with an open mind. But I do believe that capitalism is a pretty good system. And it allows for expression of human creativity and ingenuity in ways that all other systems do not. Even in the closest thing to a controlled experiment, we saw the difference between West Germany and East Germany at the point of unification. North Korea vs. South Korea today.

It's disappointing that you believe that the vast majority of the world's population suffers for the benefit of the relatively few is a pretty good system.

LightRider, let me clarify as I always believe in having an open mind. I spent a few weeks in India this summer. I was also born in India and immigrated to the United States in grade school. I have witnessed abject poverty of a type that any visitor to India sees. Any tourist to India knows that to see an 8-year old carrying an infant sibling begging at a stoplight for money is a common site. India leads the world in child malnutrition rates. Over 500,000 children die per year from dysentery.

This year, however, I was very pleasantly surprised in Bangalore and Chennai, both in South India. There were massive infrastructure projects being built. I noticed minimal poverty of the gut-wrenching, disheartening variety. Even 6 years ago in these same cities, I noticed large numbers of beggars and street children; I didn't this year. I was stunned. I also noticed some of the population spoke hindi, which is not spoken in the south. This is due to labor shortages where hindi speakers migrated south for jobs. It is unpopular to say this, but wealth is definitely trickling down in South India while North India, where export-oriented industries are lacking does not enjoy the same degree of poverty alleviation. This is the market working.

There is another perspective I have being born in a 3rd world country with my family's sole ambition when I was a child to migrate to a country with better economic prospects: The average American owns a car. You cannot claim to be poor when you own an automobile. You cannot claim to be poor when you have indoor plumbing and a couple of good meals a day.

In India and Africa, there is no such thing as an obese poor person; this would be an oxymoron. Poor people in the world do not have enough to eat.

In 1961, South Korea, China, and India had very similar GDP per capita. Today, South Korea is a first world country, China is on the verge of being a 2nd world country, and India hopefully can solve large issues of poverty this decade, as it is doing. Political and economic systems do matter. In my view, China embracing export-oriented growth and private wealth has uplifted hundreds of millions from poverty over the past 30 years. Remember, China used to have periodic famines. Capitalism works where it is embraced.

Here is another central aspect of my thinking: 99% of the world that wakes up to go to work in the morning makes less than $35,000 per year. If you make $35,000 or more, you are in the top 1% of wage earners in the world. So I consider it extremely ironic to find the world's top 1% in income complaining about the top 1% in relation to themselves and not the world overall.

You might be in the top 1%. Check the calculator:

http://www.globalrichlist.com/

You can keep all of the money, I'd rather have a livable planet, plentiful food and drinkable water.

[600watt]

nice trailer. nice attitude.

the internet was/is a revolution. now, with bitcoin people can beam "real" money around the globe, anytime, any amount, to anyone. the internet will be monetized. this will change capitalism. it will change everything.

[meanig]

I wish you best of luck with the film. I don't want to derail this thread away from its main subject matter but you've made two statements which I always have to SMACKDOWN!!

---- c. There seems to be a lack of understanding of the inverse function that applies to inflation - not all are impacted equally by inflation. A person that owes creditors $100,000 in car, student, home, and credit card loans is not impacted the same way a person that has $100,000 in the bank. If you've loaned somebody $100,000 for 5 years at a fixed rate of interest and a person borrows $100,000 for 5 years at a fixed rate of interest, when some climate of hyper-inflation strikes, the person that borrowed $100,000 can pay the original loan back with vastly depreciated dollars. In a sense, net debtors are significant beneficiaries as old debts become smaller in relation to current wage levels. Young people have debt. As such, young people benefit from inflation as the largest asset a young person has is the future income stream from wages; wages generally keep up with inflation...as such, a young person's most valuable asset, future wages, is inflation-protected while the debt is being paid off with cheaper dollars. While for retirees with savings from past efforts, the savings can be decimated by inflation as they have loaned money out in fixed income instruments. People that loan money for fixed time periods have the most to lose in inflationary climates, not young people with negative balance sheets. Inflation hurts lenders, it helps debtors.

and

Here is another central aspect of my thinking: 99% of the world that wakes up to go to work in the morning makes less than $35,000 per year. If you make $35,000 or more, you are in the top 1% of wage earners in the world. So I consider it extremely ironic to find the world's top 1% in income complaining about the top 1% in relation to themselves and not the world overall.

You might be in the top 1%. Check the calculator:

http://www.globalrichlist.com/

I was born in the 1980s in a developed country and for my whole working life wages have never been above the real inflation (i.e the rate which includes the cost of accommodation). For the last five years they've been falling in nominal terms. This isn't the 1970s. Trade unionism is dead and wage slaves have no power to bargain for better wages with so many people unemployed across the developed world.

As for your second point being in the top 1% of earners will also put you into the top 1% of rent/mortgage payers. Being a single pay cheque away from sleeping in an emergency shelter with violent alcoholics and drug users doesn't fill my heart with thanks (not that I'm in the top 1% anyway!!)

Life for a young person in the developed world isn't dire but it's no picnic either.

[bhu]

I wish you best of luck with the film. I don't want to derail this thread away from its main subject matter but you've made two statements which I always have to SMACKDOWN!!

meanig, appreciate the response. In my view, deflation is worse than inflation for young people. Wages falling for 5 years in a row is deflation. I take it you are in the euro zone. For young people, inflation is better. For very wealthy people that had a lot of money 5 years ago, their purchasing power has increased. They can buy even more labor for the same amount of euros as opposed to 5 years ago. The double whammy is that if a young person borrowed money 5 years ago to be paid back today, in addition to the interest, the principal takes a larger share of today's wage than the prevailing wage 5 years ago. Your debt-to-income ratio gets worse in a deflationary climate. (This is one of the reasons that Japan's debt-to-GDP is at 240% today.)

[bitcoinian]

Hello everyone -

We're producing a program called The Bitcoin Phenomenon for SQ1.tv.

We have a trailer up on SQ1.tv featuring Gavin Andresen, evoorhees, Trace Mayer, Peter Vessenes, a top VC, Angela Keaton from Antiwar.com, Roger Ver, and several VC funded entrepreneurs.

Trailer & Write-up: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sq1/the-bitcoin-phenomenon-on-sq1tv

About SQ1.tv: http://www.sq1.tv

Like it, share it, tweet it if you actually like it. Feedback is welcome. Full interviews on the state of bitcoin from most of the participants will follow soon.

Sincerely,

Bhu

Great 3 min... makes me want to watch more! ( I watched 3 times) the music, cuts, mix of old style footage, effects, great quality......i could go on. What camera(Panasonic?) and sound package did you use for interveiws? boom mic?