I'm John Light. I've been interested in Bitcoin for a little over four years now, working full time on Bitcoin-related startups and personal projects for almost three of those years.
In March 2013 I started bitcoinconsultant.me as a way to teach people about Bitcoin over the Internet. On July 4th, 2013, I held the first Buttonwood SF meetup, a p2p bitcoin trading meetup in San Francisco. That first meetup had a great group of attendees, including fellow AMA participant Andreas Antonopoulos.
I spent the majority of 2013 and 2014 consulting for Bitcoin startups, and in late 2014 I started a podcast on the Let's Talk Bitcoin Network called P2P Connects Us. I got to connect with a lot of smart people working on p2p projects, including prominent Bitcoin developers and people working or investing in the p2p economy. The podcast is currently on hiatus while I work on other projects, but I look forward to getting back into podcasting in the future.
In early 2015 I joined the team from Bitseed, developers of Bitcoin full node devices. Since then we have helped deploy full nodes all over the world and worked with Coin Center to create a special edition Bitseed for Coin Center donors. We're working on the next version of Bitseed now and welcome feedback from our customers regarding what additional features or functionality they'd like to see in the next version of Bitseed.
On May 29, 2015 I released the first edition of my book, Bitcoin: Be Your Own Bank. The book is released under a copyleft license, and you can read the whole thing on Github if you want. In each chapter, I explain and show in pictures all the ways that you can use Bitcoin to "Be Your Own Bank." For example, there are chapters on maintaining a ledger (the blockchain), creating money (mining), storing, sending, and receiving money, cryptofinance, document notarization, asset issuance, and more. I'll be releasing the second edition of my book in early 2016 along with an online educational course in video format that walks people through each of the concepts step by step.
If you're interested in any of these projects, I invite you to follow me on Twitter @lightcoin.
TL;DR I'm a professional Bitcoiner and I want you to run a full node. Ask me anything!
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
The meetups in my city are either used by members for networking within the startup community here, or as introduction points for people who are new to Bitcoin. The meetup I run is a meetup for traders, so people can meet and trade bitcoin for cash or other digital currencies face-to-face in a group setting. I advertise this meetup on localbitcoins.com and Mycelium's Local Trader app so that people know it's available as an option for them.In our meetups I try to convince business to host our meetups and then use the revenue stream as the incentive for the business to adopt bitcoin. I feel like I am extorting some locations but I also really want to have a place to spend my bitcoin.
What do you feel is the most advantageous way to use meetups to encourage community adoption?
Armory doesn't quite count as a distinct implementation since the desktop client relies on Bitcoin Core on the back end. On bitseed.org we are offering Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin XT versions, but will be phasing out Bitcoin XT once we sell out of our remaining units. I like Bitcoin Core, at least as a platform to build off of, since it is the most actively maintained and widest supported Bitcoin node software available. We have looked at Libbitcoin and right now it requires more resources than the Bitseed hardware currently offers so we can't support it at this moment.Which nodes do you suggest? Core Client, Bitcore, Libbitcoin, Armory (wait... does that one count???). What node would you like to see people running, and maybe it would help if there were tutorials around running full nodes for "average folk".TL;DR I'm a professional Bitcoiner and I want you to run a full node. Ask me anything!
1. To quote Balaji Srinivasan, "BUIDL, not just HODL." Build valuable services on top of the Bitcoin protocol and the Bitcoin blockchain, services that solve real problems and make the world a better place than it was before Bitcoin. For example, I'm a big fan of what the Blockstack community is working on with blockchain identity and authentication, and look forward to seeing powerful decentralized applications built with similar technology using Bitcoin.What are the top 3 things Bitcoiners can do to further adoption?
2. HODL. Spending bitcoin is effectively shorting bitcoin since most merchants convert out right away, and that drives the price down. I think it's great that so many merchants accept bitcoin now, since they'll be ready once bitcoin becomes a stable, daily-use currency, but at best bitcoin is a cool payment protocol, not such a great currency right now. By holding bitcoin instead of spending or shorting it, you reinforce the idea that bitcoin is a great store of value.
3. Give a copy of my book to your bit-curious friends and relatives as a gift for the holidays
It's not on Amazon yet (the second edition will be) but you can buy the ebook off Gitbook w/ credit or debit card and BitPay if you want to pay with bitcoin.What is the Github link to your book?
How about on Amazon?
Credit/debit card
https://www.gitbook.com/book/light/bitc ... nk/details
Bitcoin
https://bitpay.com/cart?id=3GttG2tCE8yahkcgUMaxKw
If you want to read it online, it's available on GitHub for free:
https://github.com/john-light/BYOB
Thanks for the questions ronnieb!
1. I became interested in alternative currencies and alternative economic systems after witnessing governments' response to the Great Recession in 2008. After researching the history that lead up to the Great Recession, I came away with the conclusion that the current system was designed to fail. I felt that it was unfair that corporations could rely on the government for bailouts and golden parachutes while middle- and lower-class people were foreclosed on and struggled to survive. I began researching alternatives so that I wouldn't have to take part in that system. All of the alternative currency systems I investigated had the same flaw as fiat currency systems: there was a central point of control and failure which could be used to corrupt, subvert, and destroy the system. It took a few times hearing about bitcoin before I finally looked into it, but when I did I was amazed to find that Satoshi had solved the central point of failure problem by decentralizing control of the system, making it regulated by math instead of man. It was at this moment that I decided to devote more and more of my time to bitcoin, and eventually I quit my day job and went full time bitcoin.
1. What initially attracted you to bitcoin, and why do you think you got involved so much earlier than so many others?
2. What aspect of the bitcoin community do you think has changed the most since you first got involved? What has stayed the same?
2. The aspect of the bitcoin community that has changed the most since I first got involved would probably be the demographics of the people involved. Before, it was mostly cypherpunks/ libertarians/ crypto-anarchists, programmers, and scammers. Now, people in those demographics are still around, but their populations have been dwarfed by VCs, MBAs, charities and nonprofits, Wall St veterans, Internet industry veterans, and a growing community of international users. This demographic shift brought with it a diversity of viewpoints that has elevated the conversation around Bitcoin and has been a net-plus for the community. Another aspect of the community that has changed a lot are the types of projects people are working on. People are really pushing the boundaries of what can be done with blockchain technology these days, whereas before most apps and services were just focused on moving bitcoins around. What has stayed the same is the passion that people have for bitcoin. Different people are passionate about bitcoin for different reasons, but what unites us is that we are fervently excited about the potential of this technology to radically change the world for the better.
Thanks for the questions, Roger!
1. Just do it! I split my podcast into two parts: part 1 is news, part 2 is an interview. For the news section, I gather my favorite stories from the week and riff on them for a few minutes. For the interview, I reach out to people I'm interested in talking to and schedule a Skype call with them, then record the call, edit it down, and add it to the show.Hi John,
I want to ask the following:
1. What to start from to be a cool podcaster?
3. What do you think of the music in the podcast?
2. What is your TOP 5 favourite BTC services?
3. My podcast only has one song, and it is a song made by a friend of mine from high school. You are welcome to add any music you want to your own podcast if you start one (that won't get you sued).
2. I'm more a fan of decentralized applications than centralized "services," here are my top 5 favorite Bitcoin apps right now (in no particular order - some are still in development but I'm excited for the full release)
- Blockstore
- Lighthouse
- JoinMarket
- ZeroNet
- Bitmarkets
Honorable mentions for Bitsquare and OpenBazaar who both are working on solving hard problems with decentralized markets and bitcoin.
Thanks for the questions, The_Void!
