- Do you mind to tell us which percentage of your personal net worth and/or liquid assets you hold in Bitcoins ?
I don't have exact numbers, but almost all of my net worth is in bitcoin. I do however use various products to hedge, or lock in a usd price while still holding the bitcoin (bitbays arbitrage fund for those that are wondering). I receive 100% of my salary in bitcoin and have for nearly 2 years now.
My question is, has Bitfinex started using Liquid and can you tell me what the results have been so far if you have started using it? If you haven't started yet, is there an expected launch date, and will the results be shared publicly?
We're still working with the Blockstream team on implementing liquid, we don't have an expected launch date yet but we're making progress and have high hopes for liquid. We're looking forward to completing the integration and offering our traders access to some of the most exciting technology in bitcoin.
I was wondering, when did you initially start getting interested in bitcoin? What part of bitcoin initially attracted you?
I found out about bitcoin the day the $260 bubble popped and have been enthralled ever since. I guess the first part that attracted me to bitcoin was the novelty of it, something that allows me to send money from anywhere to anywhere, at anytime, to anyone, instantly, and for free. As someone who's lived abroad for a decent portion of my life and loves to travel, the ability to do frictionless cross-border payments really excited me and got me looking more into the technology. I also share a lot of the political views that are associated with bitcoin, so I liked it from the political aspect as well.
What are your thoughts on the whole bitcoin scaling debate?
I think it's very very silly. I don't understand how people cannot have a civil debate and every discussion just turns into a childish squabble. The community on /r/bitcoin is quite toxic in this regard i think, posts get downvoted regardless of their merit simply because someone doesn't fall in line with one belief or the other. I also think the accusations thrown at Blockstream are beyond ridiculous. These people were working on bitcoin long before blockstream and have maintained their views from before blockstream was around but people are saying they're intentionally trying to break bitcoin so that they can profit from it. I think that's ludicrous. Furthermore, a year ago when blockstream had their funding round every one was super excited for what they were going to do in the future, and there was so much hype around sidechains, now there seems to be a huge backlash around that exact product which garnered so much excitement not even a year ago. I think both sides have valid points and need to work together to find an amicable solution. Because of that I'm not a big fan of the way hearn has basically said "if i don't get it my way I don't want to work on bitcoin anymore and i'm not going to maintain lighthouse or anything like that". I think they need to find a middle ground. But that bunch of people (core devs, mike hearn, gavin, blockstream) are all way smarter than I am and I trust them with bitcoin's future and believe a good solution will be reached.
Please know that these are my personal opinions and not necessarily those of Bitfinex.
Will Bitfinex follow most of the rest of the industry and and switch to BIP 101 this December? Why or why not?
I think saying that most of the industry is switching to BIP 101 isn't exactly accurate. There's a large portion of the industry that isn't going to switch to BIP 101 and I think there is still uncertainty from some big players (charlie lee saying coinbase won't back bip 101 while Brian Armstrong said he will). But a lot of the Chinese side don't seem to want BIP 101 and they definitely have a say in the matter. That being said if the majority of the industry does go with BIP 101, I believe we will as well.
How do you see bitcoin and the bitcoin space develop in the next year? What about in the next three years?
Things in this industry grow so fast I never know what to expect. I think we'll see some amazing advancements and I can't wait to see where we are in that time. I think that in three years there will be a lot more infrastructure built around bitcoin which will make it much more frictionless and easy to use, which im really looking forward to as a big bitcoin user myself.