EB40 – Eric Larchevêque & Thomas France: La Maison du Bitcoin in Paris

Transcript

[Music] hello and welcome to epicenter Bitcoin the show which talks about the Technologies projects and startups driving decentralization and the global cryptocurrency Revolution my name is Sebestian Kil today is September 21st 2014 and thanks so much for joining us on episode 40 so I just got back from about a week long trip in Paris and while I was there I was working out of L bcoin which is the Bitcoin Center situated in the heart of Paris and while I was there I took the opportunity to interview the co-founder founders of litcoin Eric L and Tom FR and you'll hear that interview in just a minute so as you may know I'm working with the French Bitcoin Association to organize the first frankophone Bitcoin conference in Europe Euro Bitcoin it takes place on

October 8th at the very prestigious bibl National the France which is the French national library so we've got a very interesting lineup of speakers for this event from philosophers to economists and politicians who will weigh in and give their opinions on bitcoin as well as as French Bitcoin entrepreneurs so if you want to get the full agenda you can do that at eurobit coin.org where you can also get your tickets and we've got a coupon code for 10% off and that code is epicenter so if you want to attend it again it's on October 8th at the biotch National of France and you can get 10% off with the code epicenter so I hope you enjoy my interview with Eric L and Tom France co-founders of L Bitcoin

[Music] so I'm here in Paris with ER and France who are the founders of litcoin hi guys hi hi thanks for taking the time to come on the show um so Eric and tamama founded amaz Bitcoin in 2013 so you've been open for right now in fact we are openn for a few months we started the project uh last year uh but the grand opening was in May of this year May 2014 uh so it's quite a recent operations but uh since the few months we have had quite a lot of activity here so could you just briefly introduce yourselves let me yeah yeah so I'm Eric

L I'm 40 years old I'm engineer and I'm what they call a Serial entrepreneur because I have started my first company in 96 almost 20 years ago and uh since that I founded maybe like 10 company startups usually in the uh internet and new technology but uh also in different area like real estate Hospitality business in other countries and uh I've also been a poker player for one year so I had the opportunity to do quite different things um and um since 2011 I'm back in Paris I've made startups in the price comparator named pricking which we sold uh like one year

ago and we started to work on uh on bitcoin and th yeah I'm Thomas I'm 29 I'm also engineer uh I did a bit of a strategic uh Consulting after school and then I partnered with Eric on on pricking so as he as he said it's nap that we uh we we uh we developed uh back in 2011 we raised some money on that uh that concept when we sold it in 2013 to work out on the on bitcoin investing the money on bitcoin exactly so when so you both started getting involved in Bitcoin around 2013 yeah quite late actually 2013 and uh we were very interested but we didn't have time to really work on

the technology or to invest ourselves because we were very busy on on our project and when we had some time uh for us it was sure that we have we had to do something on bitcoin so there was no question asked and we immediately started to to say okay now we have time also have some some money because we sold the company so what what can we do in Bitcoin and in France because for personal reasons we just wanted to stay in the country not go abroad uh and so we we started to think and to see what was the how was the ecosystem of the of the Bitcoin and actually in 2013 it was quite empty there was only a few companies maybe only one or two who was operating into the Bitcoin

industry um so we thought about it and uh we said that maybe the first thing that we had to do uh around Bitcoin was to make a place uh where we could speak about Bitcoin where we could have startups working on bitcoin and where we could show a different image of the Bitcoin in the media and we we'll get to that M maybe we'll talk about amaz Bitcoin afterwards but I think it'd be uh interesting to kind of go over the the French ecosystem first because it is quite particular I mean I I talk to people from all around the world and I I always find the the French EOS Bitcoin EOS system is is is quite particular so could you kind of give me your general thoughts on on the French

Bitcoin ecosystem as it stands now what what is the state of the French Bitcoin ecosystem kind of in a broad sense well in a few words we could say it's quite empty uh even if uh I said in 2013 it was almost completely empty um now it's it's better there like a few startups but if you compare the number of startups working into the Bitcoin ecosystem to the number of startups working even in the mobile payment industry not related to bitcoin uh then it's it's it's almost a total dessert so uh right now we can say that the community of bitcoiners even users entrepreneurs um uh Finance it's quite small uh it's growing because uh the

first meetups that were like maybe one year ago you had only maybe 5% uh and and right now in the the meetups that we do here or in other places uh we can be let's say 150 so of course it's better uh but we we still have a lot of progress to make and there is let's say a big big big way um uh to uh still to have to uh to boost this ecosystem um but basically we can see that there's more and more projects uh starting on Bitcoins we we we organized aaton in June June of this year and we were quite surprised to see that there were

like something like 60 people on people 14 projects so uh basically there's some people willing to to yeah we were surprised because we were afraid that no one will show up actually and um yeah 60 developers and and a lot of quality of the project were very interesting and are any of those projects taking taking shape now I mean few yeah a few not not a lot uh about a few and uh uh as you can see we have constantly people in the M Bitcoin and they are developing coding and uh there is really some some activity so it's it's picking up uh maybe because they know that they can go in place uh we speak about that later

but co-working Etc so they let's say welcome and they can also discuss other people who share the same uh passion so it's also important to find other people if you want to start a project I've been I've been here all week and this is the exactly what I like about it is you come here and there's people coming in all the time and some people are coming in to to buy Bitcoins and we going to the services of the bcoin in a few minutes but you know there's people interested in Bitcoin coming here all the time yeah there is a lot of certainly pity about that yeah yeah and there's some stuff to do yeah because in France there's like a a big culture of math strong mathematic skills cryptographic skills like smart card card industry is very big so there's some some assets uh that uh that

f enable some some nice startups to grow out of here we've got some startup working on fintech on on options and and different services for marketplaces some people working on smart card industry where like it's a typically French know how that you have and people will use this know how to adapt it to the Bitcoin world yeah there is quite in general a strong startup uh ecosystem in France and especially in Paris and especially in where we are right now um so there is no sortage of IDs project entrepreneurs and they just need to to to start to understand Bitcoin and the the fact to know that there is this place um well it's it's trying it's it's

it's helping the people and developers just to to try to understand Bitcoin Etc so for sure uh maybe in the last six months there have been between 10 to 15 companies which have been created maybe not the they are not all Incorporated uh because to Stan and for other reasons uh they're not really creating the companies but they are like between 10 and 15 real projects with real teams and real uh vision and assets uh and uh six months ago there was absolutely nothing so really it's starting to pick to to to to pick up uh and uh also the the government stance about

Bitcoin is quite positive uh and it's also very uh it can help also people to take this decision to go into Bitcoin because uh you don't see you can see some support in a way from uh from the the law regulation Etc so it helps a lot also now you spoke about the the media image that that Bitcoin has in France and just this morning uh I was staying with some friends and one of the roommates comes out and I work on bitcoin and and and he kind of said it in a joking way but he says oh yeah that's the money that you used to buy drugs we all hear this kind of you know nonsense right but what what is your impression of you know awareness of Bitcoin and friend when you talk to people that come here that are not bitcoiners they they're coming to you

know they see this on the door you know this huge Bitcoin sign like it's quite visible from the outside this is a place where people uh work on bitcoin projects and they come in what do people tell you uh or what do people ask you in terms of questions but it's true that the the general image that you have about Bitcoin is quite negative from what you have in the Press because it's always about new innovation you always try to see the the down the the bad aspects and talking about uh money laundering buying drugs scandals mounts all that so people have this very negative image of Bitcoin this is changing though we had some positive report from the government we had like all the news about uh uh eBay accepting Bitcoin all that so the

there're starting to be a lot of positive press and uh and well when people come here they're like okay I heard about Bitcoin and there's a Mis on bitcoin how come there's something like something brick and Mort about Bitcoin it must be something serious so they just come in and and uh get a bit of general information and it's like opening an email in the back in the in the in in the '90s and they're like okay I want to I want to try I don't I miss the email I want to I want to know how this works I want to get my first Bitcoins I want to make my first transaction I want to save a bit of money on bitcoin so it's like people well they just want to to to they heard something they heard that this this mle

and they want to kind of know how it works get some f Bon and get into it and we were quite surprised about the type of people who are opening the door I was really sure that it will be mainly like Geeks and bitcoiners and cryptographers or whatever and in fact of course they come a little bit but uh most of the people are just total newbies they are just curious and they heard on the TV or on the Press because we have had a lot of coverage and they are cous and they ask questions and well they often they stay one hour because when you start to ask questions you know you open the door and then you ask more and more questions uh and so yeah this kind of people is really newcomers to to bitcoin so it was

a very surprising refreshing aspect and uh we have had some very different kind of people I remember we we even had a group of um old ladies just coming and asking a lot of question about Bitcoins uh they even bought some some Bitcoins and they stay like yeah 1 hour asking a lot of stuff you mean they had mobile phones which sick could buy Bitcoins yeah some some yeah yeah some had and but they took like for instance more like paper wallet I say okay I going to buy a gift for uh my grandson or something like that uh and one time we even have um quite an old lady she came and she said I want to to buy Bitcoin okay and she she wanted to ask

for500 and okay well why not uh and she she she asked to have she had an address and she came back the next time next day and she said Okay I want to to buy for €1,000 and I said okay are you sure that you know what you are doing why do you want Bitcoin is it for your son or and she said no I want to back I want to I need Bitcoin because I want to to buy Dark Coin so well I I just I was spe speechless and okay so sometimes we have some some surprises you know like that some some people you never think will be up to date about alt coins and uh they just come here so yeah you have to forget

everything you know about people and what you would expect and I suppose some people also probably come and kind of troll you or something like they to criticize or to um well not not too many but there are like sometimes some strange people who come and uh ask question and say most of the time they say why the government let you exist you are going to get they are going to let you to get you down you saying I don't know how banks are not killing you yet or something they were like banks are going to kill you so there there's some trolls of course yeah some strange people you know and but it's okay it's not not so often and the vast majority of people pushing the

doors are just uh newcomer asking question and come here in a very positive way so I'd like to come back just to kind of the French ecosystem for a few minutes um at a national level I guess you could say I'm based in mid of course and you there's a small community there what what are your ideas do do you have any ideas of what the french ecosystem is like are there any meetups anywhere else uh or is it mostly Paris Paris CCT no there are a lot of activities in the south in BAU or in Li so it's not only in Paris of course maybe there are more companies and projects in Paris because it's just the density of population but uh um there are a lot of projects which are based in the many parts of France so

it's quite distributed and uh and sometimes in fact we just don't know that the people behind the project are French because you know with Bitcoin yeah so it's not always easy to to see where it come from and uh uh you just learn it after by by chance by asking or meeting some some people uh so it's quite distributed it's not only only a Paris thing I I find that uh a lot of times I'll in my my conversations with people I'll find out after emailing them that they're French they're just not in French they're somewhere else or I'll find out about this startup that's uh operating in the South French something that that nobody really knew of or I I didn't know that it was French so it's you have these little surprises once in

a while yeah true so maybe tomor you could uh um tell us about the types of startups that are launching in France what what types of startups are we seeing well in the Bitcoin space you've got like uh uh this uh exchange premium that's a European exchange there's some uh other services like wallet services that launching there's one here in Amazon Bitcoin launching y electrum electrum of course is French as well uh and then you've got like some um so as I told you there there's not that much sh up there's also this master exchange that is trading Bitcoin to master coin and to different altcoins that are a French teams are here in Paris and

sometimes they come here there is broker uh it's a way to buy stuff over the Internet uh with Bitcoins and with a discount because other people that's going to buy this with their own credit card so it's work like a peer-to-peer exchange got chrom coin that's selling Bitcoin through the internet with credit card and you get a physical delivery of of a hardware wallet yeah and there is this Hardware wallet company BT chip uh which launched uh like for a few wallets and the last one was multi signature wallet green wallet um you have also um projects uh like Escrow Service such as handshake uh trying to develop way to secure all e-commerce exchanges you have

quite a few well few um two or three maybe uh projects working around Finance trading uh uh Market making these kind of things or but trading uh algorithm Finance uh um and there's a little mining Community with a project beta rigs beta rigs it's French uh you can Le rigs in fact to mind the alt coins that you you want so also French project uh so it's quite quite different we are almost all the scope uh of the of what you can do and are there any of those projects that you're particularly interested or excited in you can see yeah yeah well the hardware wallet I think it's there seems to be a

lot of Hardware wallet lot a lot of Hardware coming out of man St yeah smart smart this is let's say come from France and a lot of talents are Engineers uh so you would find them mainly in France so that's why um there is this Chrono coin company and we like also handshake broker well it's uh and also the guys from this master exchange they are very lean trying to do a lot of stuff and they are very small team and they always it's very good yeah yeah yeah so it's um lot of quite interesting projects and um we are just waiting for them to to grow um we are seeing new projects coming companies incorporating raising some

small small round of money so things are moving not very fast but thing happens and uh we see new projects so we are it's quite positive so yeah let's perhaps move on to before we go into really theal bcoin and the types of things that you do here uh talk about investment um traditionally and this is what I've noticed since I've been here in France for the last little while is that the French are usually quite conservative conservative about new technology and and but but they do uh catch up quite fast like once once it's like okay this is good we're going to go for it and we're we'll invest our time and energy in this then VCS come in then uh we we saw this with e-commerce

we saw this with the internet where yeah yeah but we catch up we we finally catch up and and and and quite well I find I mean uh I saw this particularly with e-commerce in in the late 2000s where uh there's like a lot of e-commerce happening and probably perhaps even more than other European countries so what do you think needs to happen there for that shift and like particularly with VCS uh for traditional Tech VCS there are quite a few here to kind of have that click say okay now uh this is an ecosystem in which I want to invest and um and help flourish you know the the VC are always looking at each others and they are afraid maybe to make a move which will look ridiculous or

something like that so what needs to happen in France for VC to start investing in Bitcoins is to have a first investment I mean someone like T1 VC French VC or needs to make a first investment and uh publicize it and be proud of of it and just uh talk about it and then it will show the way uh because in France we the v's uh we also have this problem that we do not have so much uh seed investments in France uh it's more like lay stage growth stuff like that and with Bitcoin you don't have you don't have any growth uh Bitcoin project it's only SE or a really early stage um so mechanically it's it's not also not

helping so they will have at one time to say okay we know that Bitcoin is Young we know that in France are great project but they are all in early stage we want to we believe in Bitcoin so we're going to do something and then it will start and the fact that a European v such as index Ventures uh make start to make some investment in Bitcoin it's also Open the Eyes of the v's and we spend actually quite a lot of time with um some is just trying to explain Bitcoin explain Bitcoin why it's important why they should consider it and this is the first step of them just looking at projects Etc so we just need one time and then other yeah yeah yeah well I

mean might be a good time to just mention that you know the conference was coming up in a few weeks and there there will be some VCS there from index vent and also you know VCS that are not really involved in Bitcoin but that are interested in so events like this help of course it helps get get that ball roll yeah because it gives some uh L of confidence about Bitcoin so it shows that there is something really happening with people investing Etc so so let's perhaps move on to to this place where we're at Bitcoin yeah um can you tell me tell tell me how did you get the idea for this project was your did

you did you think about it together or was it uh well in fact we we I think we thought about it independently in the same time because we were really exploring all the possibilities of doing project in Bitcoin uh because it's quite vast can do a lot of stuff different stuff and uh well it was all about the French ecosystem we saw it was really on quite inexistent and there was a huge deficit of image Bitcoin was evil so like quite naturally came the idea of making a place uh it will give us time to better understand uh the technology the ecosystem it will give a better image of Bitcoin so it will help in the future uh so it was a good first

step for us we had the money to do it because it cost a lot of of money so it would have been strictly impossible to raise money for such a project so we had to make the investment ourself um so in fact how we see that have some kind of marketing investment for Bitcoin uh you know and and for us of course because uh and it was a huge investment I mean this yes no no we are talking about not like a Delirious investment but yes it's it's a few hundred, Euros investment and uh uh so it's uh it had to be uh to be done with our our funds yes um and yeah we we just had okay let's make a place uh and

uh we had to choose a name and we didn't want to add something very Tech or techno or we wanted to have something which would just give some reinsurance about uh the place so that's why M on the Bitcoin which mean House of Bitcoin and you have a lot of meu in France like about me Cav so it's something that people understand and they really say Okay I I understand what this place is about yeah it doesn't really the kind of tech startup incubator like decentralized no no because it's too soon I mean it's too uh we just need to be in Phase with uh the language people are talking and we want to be mainstream

uh this place is not only for developers startupers bitcoiners it's also for newcomers people who want to to understand Bitcoin so we that's why we we have we we want it to be also a place where you can uh work on projects but also where you can access easily to bitcoin uh so we have an exchange physical exchange counter uh and we do also um a training free training uh explanation formation about uh Bitcoin uh so we really want to have a maximum number of of person just understanding about Bitcoin because it's all about the network effect and so what are the kind

of medium and long-term goals that you're trying to accomplish uh with with this project but basically it's to uh to uh continue to have a flagship on bitcoin and it's fre to to to be able to to continue having a lot of press lot of uh uh talks discussion about Bitcoin we become there's a lot of people coming in to uh to kind of uh uh command what is happening on bitcoin and it's good way to be having a a different uh a different Vision on bitcoin right than what you hear in the Press so it's a way to to to counterbalance all that is said in the Press uh it's also way like a flagship where you can uh again uh evangelize uh talk about Bitcoin make

some uh uh training online trainings for for French people and also to have uh well ways to to to buy Bitcoin easy and this place in fact we have had like very quite large companies who came and asked about Bitcoin and they will never have come if this kind of never exist because they say okay there is this place it looks good professional serious so in a way Bitcoin must be serious so okay maybe I can come and ask and uh so this is the starting place and all the startups who are working on bitcoin they can use displays also to uh if they need to see people Etc then it gives them like confidence and uh it's it's it's always good so that's why the the B

basic idea is some kind of yeah marketing investment for Bitcoin and from there what we want to at the end in fact what we want to see is to to to to help to see a giant of Bitcoin emerg like French Google Bitcoin or something like that and this is ultimately the the goal of the meon Bitcoin and also uh having this kind of place uh where we are seen and people can just come uh helped us having discussion at regulation level government level um because they say okay we can discuss with some kind of Bitcoin people they're operating in exchange how can we see about regulation we can give them data about how it works in the real life so

it it really helps to uh to to to advance on on many subjects so you you mentioned you know this is sort of a yeah is a marketing investment uh for for France and also for Paris I guess more Broly for France but you you guys have goals of your own you're not just investing in in Bitcoin marketing you're also investing in a space where where you can potentially uh I guess incubate uh Bitcoin projects can you talk bit more about that yeah in fact we have seen a few a few projects we are invested in in some so it's always very early stage so it's quite small investment at this time and um we

also are developing in house some projects so there is all these aspects of U let's say it's not really incubating because we don't have some kind of program or something like that but we are welcoming place for startups so they want to to uh have desk co-working space Etc so we can help them just uh uh work in a lean environment and also um we can help from of them to develop to give them contact with uh like Angels investors or any kind of resources and the last point is that we are also s doing some some project of our own for instance we have worked on open source bid protocol which is the

way to fact to connect or identify yourself with your wallet uh it's some kind of let's say glue for all these applications um so this is project that we are trying to to um to to to work on and uh also just more uh classic projects such as the one we have launched uh a few weeks ago which name is coin house uh where the idea is just to be able to buy with your Bitcoins on any website uh by getting the virtual card you want to go on the fnag for instance uh they don't accept Bitcoin but you have to spend to pay 2020 so you go on coin house and you buy a payment card of 20 which you are going to pay in

Bitcoin yeah I I really like this project so just to kind of explain how it works um you you go in coin housee you you you log in you say I want to buy something that's worth I don't know like $207 and it gives you a QR code you send that amount of an amount of Bitcoin is obviously a fee Associates with that and then the coin house will generate uh the credit card number it's on the fly with how many confirmations you wa for two three confirmations and then you get the it can instant it depends on the amount but uh we do instant confirmation for under 100 and then you use the credit card to just copy paste it into any website exactly I I think this is great this is a really cool service I I I used

others like Snap card before but you know it takes a bit longer because you have to wait for them to pay for it and everything but yeah it's like Snap card but you you just pay yourself so you don't have also to think about are they going to order what happens if I have to return you you are just in fact using a a credit card and it doesn't change the way you are ordering H and um so coin housee Works in Europe on yes it's in Europe on your your curency so so it's not just in France and anybody anybody in Europe No No in fact and we have also people from other countries not even from the US you want to buy and stuff in the European uh European shop then they can use also of service so uh it's uh it's quite open uh right now we don't we

are going to stay on the euro currency because obviously we don't have right now access to other currencies but maybe in the future the the project is getting trash and why not and what are some other kind of projects gravitating around coin housee because I know that there are other things that are coming in to plug into that so kind create this whole glue of yeah well we're also doing this the way to to to buy in fact uh Bitcoins with your credit card uh so there are like some difficulties with the CC and fraud so right now it's let's say it's a reserve to to people who are going to do the physical KC in the ma on bitcoin but once they have been validated their account then they can buy with uh their credit card from home

for instance basically we already have our physical exchange here come here 100 of Bitcoin you pay with credit card it's all done it's made in a minute and once you Whit list this credit card you can buy again and again on through the internet and how do you protect yourselves against like uh against fraud or because someone came here give his passport give his we have we can check that he has really this credit card so we are just whitelisting so it's not like we cannot scale but at we can provide a service uh where people can buy let's say not let's say large amount of Bitcoins with their credit card without having to uh being exposed to large fees or what is what is

the fee Associated to purchasing a Bitcoin with a credit currency here at the camera for instance it depends of the amount uh for small amount it's it's it's from 10% uh to uh 6.5% so depending of the cumulated amounts that you have uh exchanged uh so far and some people might think that 10% exchange uh fee is quite High yes but why why do we have people using it because there is a convenience of uh paying with cash for instance or credit card so it's instant uh it's uh uh that's why people when they need Bitcoins uh quickly uh there is this service and uh of course the more volume we have the more we will be

able to lower the the fee uh but for instance if you go on local Bitcoins it's 10% uh so it's not completely out of phase with the the market and this cash for Bitcoins model that you have here which seems to work is that something that you're trying to to deploy U maybe at a larger scale and because in France you have this large network of TBA shops that also sell phone cards and things like that where you may we exploring a lot of ways to uh to distribute Bitcoins in an easy way yes uh but it's photoshops I mean you have that same kind of model with the with shipping right where you can have your your packages shipped at pH yeah no exactly so the only thing something something that we're looking

but for the moment the is quite complicated in terms of cost all intermediates it's not that we need to find a greater model because so far with some prepaid cards get 10% for the retailer so it doesn't match economically so we're still thinking about way it cost a lot so we need to to find yeah new ways of distribution about that and can you tell me about some of the other services that you provide here in in bcoin other than Bitcoins to people come in for but this this co-working area where people can uh you can uh either go in downstairs where you can put your proper computer with your screen and all that and you pay like for €250 a month and you can have this Co

workking space desk uh upstairs you can also work like uh it's with your laptop coming there's two co-working spaces and we'll do a little tour afterwards so there's the co-working space upstairs which is sort of kind of a temporary cor by the day perhaps by the week something like that and then downstairs is a physical kind of longterm more like regular offices where you can just put your screen your Tower or whatever and you have lockers and you can it's like office as well what we provide here we have some uh once a month we try to do like a 101 class on bitcoin to explain to newcomers what is bitcoin something that we love doing to kind of explain what it is it takes us like two hours

and and it's needed yeah and and we also but it's more for enterprise we do like training on site about Bitcoins for let's say large companies because they want to understand why Bitcoin why should I care about Bitcoin and we are the first thing we say that is uh not having a strategy for Bitcoin right now it's uh like not having a strategy for internet in 94 so they just just need to understand Bitcoin and uh this is where we can bring service we basically had some large e-commerce sites we had some payment processors we had some uh some banks even coming here to kind of uh Banks yeah they want to understand what's going on so so we made them make some Bitcoin transaction on the ATM quite fun

showel Mining and stuff like that no we have been like some delegation of 30 or 40 Bankers coming here like on Safari you know and they were like what what is that and uh with the ATM and they were like in shock ET so no it was quite funny actually and so you also obious you host events here you had the meet Meetup and so how many meetups do you have per month uh it's like one but there is other meetups in Paris uh maybe it will be there is like every two months or it depends because we are trying not to overlap of making too much meetups in the the first like three three yeah three right and how many people come to the meetups here here there were like one to 150 people and we tried to have like one one guy talking

about Bitcoin and one entrepreneur presenting his his projects we had some VCS presenting the Bitcoin ecosystem the index index was here to present their thoughts about on bitcoin there was this guy from the the tribunal like the the court Paris court of justice talking about Bitcoin was very very interesting very interesting I had very positive approach to bitcoin it was like actually I think I gave him a standing on like when he finished his I was just so uh overtook by the fact that this man who works in as a judge as a judge uh was was uh quite favorable to bitcoin and also Lucid enough to understand the risks to the existing Financial economic

markets yeah totally so he was specialized in financial crime and really he was saying that uh money laundering in Bitcoin is just a nonsense doesn't it's not that it doesn't exist because it can always exist little but it's it's totally crazy just to focus on that because it's a drop in the in the ocean so it was really clear about that and it was very refreshing because he he's a quite a guy from the older reg generation and he had a very high position in the in the the Paris C system um well there another understand thing you want to add uh maybe we can go and no let's take a tour yeah so people from all over the world you can come

here we have lot of people coming from uh for a week from uh Toronto we had some people coming from uh Asia from uh from the rest of Europe coming here to work for a week so feel free to come to to L put your bags for a few days here and you'll be welcome that's right I did this week and great so we're standing right outside am bcoin can you kind of tell me about this this area where we're standing here yeah we are in what we call the saner or silicon saner uh which is uh second Aris of Paris which is traditionally a place for startups to develop because in the

late '90s this is the first place where you had access to High um highspeed internet so here in fact around you have many many startups there is like Numa here this large building which is just uh facing Amazon Bitcoin where so this is a co-working space it's about five story is high exactly yeah yeah you have inside you have some program for startups a lot of uh events ET so it's quite large uh so it really makes sense for us to be here because we are really in the heart of uh this Perry startup area yeah and it's quite Lively I mean it's it's uh there's an energy here like there's a little cafe across the street there's a people working on their

MacBooks uh it's uh yeah and his historically it's a place for textile and uh closes and uh all this kind of stuff so you have always Tex entrepreneurs that are here it's a country of Street of entrepreneurs it's very funny very Lively lot things happening and so if we turn around so there's the the front facing of amaz Bitcoin exactly here you've got like a corner it's like a 10 m large with you big be Lem is on the Bitcoin so people can see like Bitcoin and they're like oh my God what is happening here it looks like a bank really I mean it looks like like thec of a bank really yeah yeah and so you have a huge B for Bitcoin on on the on the uh on the front doors which

most people have probably seen pictures online um so uh yeah let's walk inside yeah so tell me about this room here yeah well this is uh the entrance floor usually this is uh where people come uh and ask questions so there is always some people here to uh to greet them and um help them about okay what do you want to know about Bitcoin and stuff like that this is also the place where we held uh events uh like this training session or meetups and uh right now this is the place where you have a desk uh and this is co-working space uh where you can come by the day or by the week

it's good if you have just only your laptop because you cannot really put stuff for long time uh and you'll see like some informal meeting room where you can uh just uh stand and uh discuss um have phone calls um and we also have some kind of uh glass uh um floor glass floor yeah which connect to the uh to the under floor you can see there's about 10 spots here yeah more or less we could have more because you can see it's quite a lot of place but so far this is what we need and we're going to adapt depending of of the needs and so the room is about what 100 100 met square meters square me on the first

Flor so it's like maybe 70 70 square meters here quite a large room uh nice bay windows and yeah a lot of light a lot of light because it's quite only windows and over here if we if we walk towards this side like so we have um some glass floors we can see what's happening downstairs so this is kind of a nice feature and also it sends some light downstairs which of course yeah and probably even cell phone signal as you can see we have someone here working which we SP to in Amsterdam want say hi hi doing this Hardware wallets yeah with the developing a smart card Hardware wallet oh yes uh so we are developing

basically we're developing basically the first uh smart card designed specifically for Bitcoins um and we have been on sale since uh last week with a partnership with greenal r u to demonstrate that a smart card even if it doesn't have a screen or buttons or whatever can be a very nice solution for multi sign nature wallets and bring more security to to everybody and you can buy that at Hardware wallet.com exactly exactly good domain name thanks thanks and so if we walk towards the back of our you can see we have some also looking like a bank stuff which is the door so this is a huge metal door which looks like a bank vault I guess Bank VA with a big Bitcoin sign yeah

it's allow us to to just to to close and separate when we have like transactions and stuff if we want to be want to be safe so if we theate the cool storage and so this is sort of a reception area yeah which is you have a little bit of uh merchandise cups and t-shirts t-shirts and you have the ATM and this is the counter the where you do all the physical exchange where you can actually buy Bitcoins uh and uh here you have all the brokering system and we can also deliver like uh paper wallets all the stuff that you need so every day there are like uh tens of people coming here buying

depends of the price when the price goes down a lot of people come and I see you have an ATM but it doesn't to be functional yes because in fact this ATM doesn't know uh any KY any kyc it's aasu and you can just scan passport and we have some requirements where we need to ask for identification even for one year so it's from one we need to ask for identification such passport ID stuff like that okay well let's go [Music] downstairs so here is the the workshop with the what was the mining area uh

which now is uh going uh down in flames because uh now it's quite impossible to mine from uh let's say from uh uh from a normal point of view so you were mining script here because a lot of graphics cards yeah yeah we had 60 graphic cards Mining script so uh and right now we are just selling them we also have sh miners but it's not here because anyway it makes too much noise and too much uh it's not profitable to be mining in the center of Paris definitely not yeah yeah but yeah here it's uh you have desk where you can do some hacks whatever we have place to to try a lot of things uh it's sort of a kind of a workshop area with soldering irons and motherboards

and alduino chips and things like that yeah yeah exactly cool and then we have a a little kitchen area where you can make your coffee yeah exactly bom stuff and then downstairs and this is the main I guess co-working space where permanent coring space where we can see upstairs through the ceiling Windows here and there are how many spots here here uh we have 12 spots uh so it's either co-working space or for our own staff also because uh we're also developing the project as I said and so we have some some coders designers and they're working here and uh we also have this quite large meeting room uh where

we can host uh well meetings and also do some some small training station um and when we had this weekend of hackaton everything was packed we had people coders everywhere it's it was quite quite nice well thanks to for the interview and thanks for the tour yeah you're thanks for having me all week pleas welcome uh I'll definitely be back and uh if I could say anybody who's coming to Paris to and who's working on bitcoin projects who's interested in Bitcoin do definitely come by Bitcoin it's a sorry 35 rare uh rare CA I uh it's next to the Metro it's the center of Paris not

far from the yeah type it in Google you will find it Bitcoin it's not you can probably walk here from well take a like four four station from m not very far awesome thanks guys thank you [Music] thanks so thanks so much again for listening to episode 40 of epicenter Bitcoin I want to thank Eric L and Tom France for taking the time to sit down with me and also for letting me work out of their coric space last week now if you want to support the show there are multiple ways you can do that firstly you can leave us a review on iTunes you can also follow us on Twitter at epicenter BTC and finally please leave us a tip at epicenter bitcoin.com

stips now you may have noticed that we haven't haven't been releasing any content on Thursdays for the last few weeks but that'll change this week because our Regulatory Affairs correspondent Sean Jones was in London on September 15th and 16th for the inside Bitcoins London conference and so we've got a whole bunch of interviews that she did there and that we'll be releasing as of this week uh on Thursday so stay tuned for that so thanks again for listening and we'll talk to you next week [Music] h