Thank you, Roger! That means a lot coming from you who have done more to promote Bitcoin than anyone I know!Lot's of people may not realize how much Wences has done to promote Bitcoin.
I didn't fully realize it until reading the book that Wences is the star of:
Digital Gold
I recommend everyone interested in Bitcoin read it.
Wences,
When learning about Bitcoin, was there an "a-ha" moment in which you realized how important it is?
If so, what was that moment?
Can you tell us what aspect of Bitcoin has you the most excited?
Thank you for all the amazing things you are doing to promote Bitcoin!
We were looking for the safest jurisdiction from where to serve all our customers except US customers which, for regulatory reasons, need to be served from the US. So we have a US subsidiary to serve US customers and a Swiss subsidiary to serve all non-us customers.Where there any bitcoin specific objectives to move Xapo to Swiss instead of other (European) counties?
Of all the ways in which Bitcoin could fail the one that worries me most, because I think it has the highest probability of all the bad things that could happen, is a price panic that drives the price to zero, or $15, from which it may be very hard for Bitcoin to recover the public's trust.Thanks Wences for everything you have done, and still doing, for Bitcoin!
In the TechCrunch Disrupt than you made with Bobby Lee and Nathaniel Popper, you said there are still chances than Bitcoin could fail. What do you have in mind?
(don't you need a coffee boy by your side? )
We were looking for the safest jurisdiction from where to serve all our customers except US customers which, for regulatory reasons, need to be served from the US. So we have a US subsidiary to serve US customers and a Swiss subsidiary to serve all non-us customers.Where there any bitcoin specific objectives to move Xapo to Swiss instead of other (European) counties?
By safest we mean where our customers information can be best protected and we found the Swiss privacy laws to be the most robust in the world (beyond banking, just about how your personal information is treated). It is also important to be able to trust the rule of law, property rights, etc.
We also looked at other countries but ended up settling in Switzlerland, mostly for these reasons: https://xapo.com/resources/switzerland/
I am one of the most biased pro-Bitcoin people you can find so I am always buying. But I strongly recommend that people do not buy an amount they cannot afford to loose; Bitcoin is risky, could still fail and be worth zero.Are you personally still buying bitcoin?
What do you think about all the blockchain hype with companies using distributive ledgers but not bitcoin?
Unfortunately we do not have a date for the debit card to be available to US customers.What's next from Xapo?
Will the debit card ever be available to US customers?
I will copy/paste what I said in another similar question above:Hi Wences,
What is your view on the major financial institutions teaming up with R3 to create their own blockchain solution for the industry? Do you think the banks will be open to both bitcoin and blockchain or do everything in their power maintain control of the financial system?
Bitcoin is a lot more important for Argentina than Argentina is for Bitcoin. What I mean by that is that Bitcoin adoption in Argentina is higher than in other countries but, because Argentina is a relatively small economy, not enough to move the needle for Bitcoin as a whole.Hi Wences, thanks for doing this AMA. I'm a big fan of Xapo, so welcome!
Can you please tell us how the user adoption in Argentina is coming along, and how the overall climate is there (in terms of regulation, politics, users, merchant adoption, and so on)?
Thanks!
1) Xapo is a Bitcoin company, not a Blockchain company As Blockstream and others enable sidechains and other technologies to use the Blockchain to store and move other assets we may implement some of those technologies in the back-end to provide products and services to our customers, but Xapo will always be a Bitcoin company that uses other companies Blockchain products, we are not a Blockchain company.Hi Wences,
1) Do you plan to use the Blockchain for other things than "just" bitcoin?
2) Did you meet Bill Gates in the last 12 moths and talked with him about Bitcoin again ?
3) Are you storing your own Bitcoin at Xapo (i guess you are ) ?
LCG
Hi Wences,
Of all the ways in which Bitcoin could fail the one that worries me most, because I think it has the highest probability of all the bad things that could happen, is a price panic that drives the price to zero, or $15, from which it may be very hard for Bitcoin to recover the public's trust.
Right now most of the money that is invested in Bitcoin is money people can afford to loose and that makes it safe money. So when Bitcoin goes from $1,200 to $200 there is not a vicious cycle of people who need to sell, because they cannot afford to loose more money, that drives the price to zero.
It is hard to estimate how many people on bitcoins, but it may be somewhere between 13 and 15 million people right now. If Bitcoin is successful we will see hundreds of millions of people own Bitcoin and, eventually, billions. The only way we can get to billions of people owning Bitcoin is by the price going up by several orders of magnitude, let's say $ 1 million (but this is highly speculative and risky). So, if I am right, and Bitcoin has to go from $390 to $1,000,000 the best way for it to get there without crashing irreversibly is with as much volatility as possible. If bitcoin went up a couple percentage points every week and everybody began to think about it as a "sure" thing, investing money that was destined to pay for kids colleges or for retirement, that is a disaster waiting to happen price wise. Because when Bitcoin corrects those people have to sell because they cannot take more losses, potentially creating a vicious circle which is hard to reverse.
Ironically, we have to thank Bitcoin's volatility for people not investing money they cannot afford to loose. As long as the Bitcoin price remains highly volatile and perceived as risky, we are OK. Begin to worry when it is perceived as a sure thing that everybody should own a lot of.
Do you think that Crypto Valley in Zug (Switzerland) can compete with Silicon Valley?We were looking for the safest jurisdiction from where to serve all our customers except US customers which, for regulatory reasons, need to be served from the US. So we have a US subsidiary to serve US customers and a Swiss subsidiary to serve all non-us customers.Where there any bitcoin specific objectives to move Xapo to Swiss instead of other (European) counties?
By safest we mean where our customers information can be best protected and we found the Swiss privacy laws to be the most robust in the world (beyond banking, just about how your personal information is treated). It is also important to be able to trust the rule of law, property rights, etc.
We also looked at other countries but ended up settling in Switzlerland, mostly for these reasons: https://xapo.com/resources/switzerland/
please contact support@xapo.comHow do we change the 2Factor Authentication details for Xapo wallets in the case of terminated/change of mobile number (old)
Hi Wences,
Thanks for doing this AMA.
1- We currently see different governments taking very different approaches to bitcoin. What is your prediction regarding the regulatory trends for bitcoin in the following years?
2- Will Xapo Vault remain free-of-charge for non-institutional users despite costs related with infrastructure, insurance, etc?
3- What other (bitcoin) financial services does Xapo plan to offer in the near future?
I understand your frustration. I am a Bitcoin user and Xapo has a debit card because I want to use that product. The fees we charge are the fees that we are being charged, we do not make any money on those fees and the only way we would have to eliminate them would be to loose money on it which we cannot do. It is the cost we pay of interfacing with the old world financial system and its addiction to fees.When will xapo release a bitcoin debit card which is not a rip off?
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