Alternative Bitcoin Venture experiment: Is it possible to sell a house with a Bitcoin?

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In the fiery Bitcoin boom, former Facebook executive Changhao and his small partners shunned the hottest exchanges and mining areas, opting for a more versatile bit-currency app. But they still cannot avoid the huge impact of the policy side.

Last December 16, a central bank document entitled "Notification of the risk of Bitcoin" was issued, requiring third party payers to stop supporting the Bitcoin trading platform and pouring cold water into the high fever bitcoin industry. The next day, the price of Bitcoin fell by 28%.

Meanwhile, a bitcoin website called the "currency line" is on the wind. Circle people are asking, what is the background of this website?

"We are both backgrounds!" Currency Bank co-founder Wang Hao wears a cap, mixed with a joke. Wang Hao turned out to be a Goldman Sachs trading technologist, working on Wall Street for automated derivatives trading, risk quantification and risk hedging operations. He claims to be a "Virgo Libra", an atypical financial man. His partner, Changhao, is a typical technical home, a senior Facebook scientist in the United States, responsible for products and technology.

Unlike many bitcoin entrepreneurs, Changhao and Wang Hao are not bitcoin players and have a limited number of currencies. Their plunge into the bitcoin industry was sheer coincidence. At first, it was a business story made by investors.

IDG partner Li Feng, called "Uncle Fung", is the currency line a round of the people, but also Chiang, Wang two entrepreneurial matchmaker. Li Feng, a real "Bitcoin believer", has long seen the value of Bitcoin, an angel investor in Silicon Valley, Coinbase, a start-up company for Bitcoin Purses. He later placed bets with the top Silicon Valley venture capital firm, Union Square. Subsequently, IDG joined Google Venture (Google's venture capital company) to invest in the virtual currency issue and the OpenCoin company.

In financial innovation, Li Feng is biased towards infrastructure innovation, and money is the foundation of finance. So while there is a lot of uncertainty about the future of virtual money, he wants to support entrepreneurs to make cutting-edge attempts. According to Li Feng, this is a technology-driven industry, more suitable for people with a technical background, and Changhao in his opinion is indeed a candidate.

Chiang has worked on Facebook for 4.5 hours, the first three years in charge of the product infrastructure, and the last 1.5 he led the development of the only one by one mobile apps that Facebook has so far faced. In the United States, many restaurant owners or barber shop owners will download the app to interact with their Facebook fans. "They can upload photos, send coupons, and go back to real-time statistics, which are much more functional than the micro-credit service account." Chiang said. He returned home in August 2012 and was looking for new entrepreneurial opportunities after a short trial on his first venture.

The company has always maintained a small and beautiful team, and currently employs only 10 people

Time, geography, people and seem to have, but at first Changhao refused this opportunity. In his eyes, it was just a game between hackers. Freelancers or programmers on the internet to take some outsourced jobs, from credit cards and other means of payment into a try Bitcoin payment, "You give me some bitcoin, I will help you write a small program."

2 months later, Changhao received a call from high school alumni Wang Hao, inviting him to start a business together or make Bitcoin. Originally, Li Feng in agitation Changhao and perseverance to find Wang Hao, they chatted to Facebook Changhao time, Wang Hao suddenly realized Changhao is his high school alumni.

Changhao, who received an invitation from the alumni, did two things. First, he studied the paper and source code written by Ben Cong, and second, he found some of the future visions shared by Bitcoin core developers online. At the 2012 International Bitcoin London Conference, a video shared by a core developer of Bitcoin changed his view of Bitcoin.

It is said to be one of the few people in the world who has the opportunity to communicate with him by email before it disappears. The video Ben Cong some ideas about Bitcoin design. Changhao that the Bitcoin protocol is a bit similar to the common TCP/IP protocol on the Internet today, on the basis of the basic protocol, the scripting language is programmed to realize the financial derivative activities of payment, public financing and credit guarantee.

"He actually wants to use a completely mathematical approach to point-to-point trading in an environment where the internet is so untrustworthy, without relying on the support of any central organization or third-party organization." ”

It would be cool to realize value transfers at very low cost without the need for third-party guarantees. Changhao For example, in the future, people can sell the house with Bitcoin or transfer intellectual property, directly through the Bitcoin protocol to operate, the whole network of people are notaries, no longer need a notary. It's a whole new set of rules that can revolutionize the way things are done in traditional industries.

So the Facebook predecessor, a senior scientist, is determined to step foot in. Changhao that, now or Bitcoin industry very early time, the ecology is not very perfect. "In the long run it is worth trying, though we may not be the lucky ones to pick the fruits of success." ”

At present, Bitcoin entrepreneurs typically choose to set up a bitcoin exchange or to dig a mine, while the currency is an atypical bitcoin start-up, opting for a more versatile bit-currency app.

Currency lines did not vigorously to do the transaction function of Bitcoin, until now the transaction in the currency line of the site is only a small function of cooperation with the third party, the daily transaction volume is only hundreds of.

In fact, the most wanted to do is the Bitcoin wallet, and around the wallet to do some application. After the central bank's article No. 289 last December, they were more determined to make Bitcoin applications, which were feasible within the regulatory framework set by the Chinese government. This spring festival, while the micro-letter Rob Red envelope upsurge, the currency to do a donation to play the plug-in, to the Netizen one-way gift Bitcoin, do not seek return, this is the currency in the Bitcoin application of an attempt.

In this way, they found that the promotion of bitcoin into the internet community is a unified value tool, in the current regulatory environment can explore the path. For example, can be a person in the community to get the points into Bitcoin, users can also play a direct reward Bitcoin, the future can even use Bitcoin to do public welfare undertakings. Compared with other media, the biggest advantage of bitcoin is to solve the cross-border flow of capital, reduce costs and improve efficiency. Today, the currency bank is taking the Bitcoin wallet as its core, exploring some of the iterations on the periphery. For example, they and pingwest and other science and technology blog, in the media author's article to leave a bit of money to play the plug-ins, readers download plug-ins can use Bitcoin to reward the author.

Changhao thinks this kind of reward plays down the idea of money, for example, if you run a marathon, it would be funny to give you five bucks, but it would be cool to give you a couple of bitcoin you could do something else. He believes that the future of China's Bitcoin companies should be more diversified, such as some start-up companies to do purse hosting, transfer, as well as the wealth management of Bitcoin and so on.

The currency will be traded in bitcoin and entrusted to the Bitcoin exchange for orders. They have introduced the function of trans-bank transactions, the users of the currency line can be on different exchanges under the single, which is also a major innovation in the country. Some exchanges are happy to work with the currency, because the bank can bring new users to them, but some exchanges have concerns that the currency card is on their upstream and become a super entrance, which is also a challenge for the currency bank. At present, the exchanges that cooperate with them are mainly okcoin.

In the second edition of the app "Coin", launched on April 15, the bank intends to increase its community function to provide investors with a place to share information. At present, Chinese Bitcoin circle is not too big, investors are tens of thousands of people, entrepreneurial less than 1000 people, they mostly in the micro-letter group, QQ groups and forums and other platforms to communicate. They are currently evaluating whether to use social accounts such as Weibo or QQ or to establish their own account system. This is actually a difficult decision. Wang Hao said, you can hardly imagine using Weibo account to log into ICBC account, one is because the micro-blog is relatively loose relationship, the other is that they have to guarantee the security of funds.

The Mt.Gox of the largest bitcoin exchange this year has led to increased vigilance on Bitcoin by the failure of security incidents. The Mt.Gox event also reminded the Changhao to strengthen their security firewalls. On the one hand is multiple identity authentication, followed by the state of the funds are very strict and implementation of monitoring, through the intelligent program at any time to monitor the state of funds, once the user's capital status is not the case, the internal staff will be alerted, the program will take some self-protection measures, such as cutting off the network Once a number of security risks have occurred, they will be in the shortest possible time to cut off the service. Second, they limit data access to the backend users, and only the founders and core employees can access the data. "As if you had a house." The less open the interface, then the number of illegal elements in the possibility and means less.

For security reasons, they have always adhered to the small and beautiful Silicon Valley team, hoping to come in are independently people, rather than relying on a big team to do something. Until now, the bank has only 10 employees, half of which is responsible for technical products, and the other half includes customer service, administration, marketing and operations. Spadger, spite. In fact, the same kind of start-up companies in the United States have very few employees, Bitcoin is the industry's internal security and internal management requirements are very high, like the Chinese start-up companies that the kind of tactics does not apply.

"The interior is more dangerous than the outside, so this is an important reason why we are very cautious about hiring," he said. Changhao to the Chinese entrepreneur, "we think Bitcoin if there is a future, if the industry develops well, many basic services need someone to do, so the core competitiveness of the future currency line is technology and products." That's what Facebook's experience has given him. Although the bank has missed the opportunity to carve out mines and exchange, they don't feel bad because they just want to be a real technology company at their own pace.

But the policy has always been the sword of Damocles hanging over the coins. The announcement by the central bank last December of a five-part committee to guard against the risk of bitcoin has already cooled China's bitcoin, and China's Bitcoin subscribers, once the world's second-most-active user, have fallen to nineth.

According to Changhao understanding, the central bank's notice contains so few spirit. First of all, Bitcoin is a legitimate virtual commodity, users can freely trade at their own risk, and second, Bitcoin does not have currency status, can not be used to price commodity services, can not be used to make transactions of the media, can not be used to pay; Financial institutions and payment agencies do not allow direct or indirect participation in bitcoin transactions to settle these. The notice does not completely break the Bitcoin and third-party payment of the partnership. Policy transmission takes a cycle, and the policy itself is somewhat ambiguous. He understood that if Bitcoin as a common enterprise should still be able to open accounts, transactions. Changhao that the central bank's restrictions on the payment scenario for Bitcoin are not all bad for startups. "If the central bank announces that Bitcoin can be used for payment in some scenarios and even encourages the use of Bitcoin, then the ecology of the industry will be different immediately." Perhaps Alipay, Tencent immediately killed in. Small companies basically stop playing.

But to their surprise, at the end of March this year, some media suddenly announced that the central bank has asked banks and third parties to pay not to serve the bitcoin transaction, and the April 15 as a "clean-up deadline", and this day is the bank's high hopes for the second edition of the app online days. This is almost a catastrophe for many bitcoin exchanges. Although the trading link is not deep, but the bitcoin purse most of the application and transaction-related, once strict regulation, the currency will inevitably be affected.

For Changhao, this is a completely different entrepreneurial experience, which is much more challenging than the previous experience at Facebook. It used to be outright competition, not to worry about regulation, not to worry about the Mt.Gox crisis. Looking at Facebook's growth trajectory is an invincible feeling, because social networking has a Matthew effect, as long as you do the right thing, there is no competition, there is no great uncertainty. And what he's doing this time, though, is high risk and high returns, but there's a lot of uncertainty. "Hope this uncertainty is only for a while. Maybe a month or two is a lot better. Changhao said with emotion.

"In fact, I think the pressure is good, the biggest challenge is that no one likes to do something in a state of uncertainty, it is very uncomfortable." The one thing you do has no results if 80% is not within your control, you are actually taking a chance. ”

I joked that it was a different kind of exercise.

"But this exercise is still a little less good." Wang Hao laid his hand.