2012. Then he said there was
going
to
be
a
Bitcoin
conference in Amsterdam in
June 2012. Finally he got to
the
conference
he
was
planning in Pattaya, Thailand,
only six months away.
“If that’s not enough,” he
said, there would also be the
first-ever Bitcoin cruise in
Brazil.
The audience sat silent,
with more than a few arched
eyebrows, as if to ask—“Was
that really it?” But Wagner
did not pick up on the
skepticism.
The crowd, though, had
not come for Wagner. The
attendees had come for each
other. And as the brief
planned
portion
of
the
conference concluded—after
a big group picture—the
conversation continued all
evening and all night, moving
to the Hudson Eatery, one of
three restaurants that Wagner
had
convinced
to
take
Bitcoin.
There, Roger Ver, the
Tokyo entrepreneur, talked
with the Google engineer,
Charlie Lee, who described
the computers that he had in
his garage, mining Bitcoins.
They were noisy, blowing out
heat, and had begun to annoy
Lee’s wife. Roger offered to
house
the
computers
at
Memory Dealers’ offices in
Silicon Valley.
Jesse
Powell,
Roger’s
friend who had helped out
during the Mt. Gox crisis,
found a kindred spirit in Mt.
Gox’s creator, Jed McCaleb,
who shared the same laid-
back, nerd-cool sensibility.
Jesse told Jed about his
experiences over the summer
in
Tokyo
with
Mark
Karpeles. And Jed told Jesse
about his recent ideas for a
new
cryptocurrency
that
would not require Bitcoin’s
energy-intensive
mining
process. Meanwhile, Gavin
was surrounded by people
offering to help with the goals
he’d set out in his talk.
Despite
his
aversion
to
crowds,
the
event
was
intimate
enough,
and
overflowed
with
enough
enthusiasm that even he got
into it.
The spirit in the restaurant
was no small part of what
was allowing Bitcoin to
survive.
A
project
that
seemed aimed at furthering
an even greater virtualization
and atomization of our world
was actually creating a sense
of real-world community with
people
working
together,
animated by a shared sense of
purpose for changing the
world.
The
community,
which mostly lived online,
wasn’t
always
this
harmonious.
But
it
was
possible, and the sense of
community was a significant
draw for a group of people
who didn’t always find it easy
to find like-minded people in
the ordinary world.
When it came time to pay
the bill, the waiter had little
idea of how to actually handle
the Bitcoins and it took over
an hour to get everyone’s
money transferred. But no
one much cared, or bothered
to
remark
on
the
cumbersomeness
of
this
supposedly
space-age
payment mechanism. It gave
everyone more chance to talk.
CHAPTER 10
September 2011
When Roger Ver returned
to Tokyo, he was immersed
in plotting his next big
Bitcoin campaign with a
twenty-six-year-old who had
marched up to him during the
conference in New York and
handed him a business card
that read, “I am friends with
Satoshi,” under the name Erik
Voorhees.
“We should talk,” Erik
had said to Roger.
With a confidence and
poise that were notable for
someone
his
age,
Erik
explained to Roger that since
learning about Bitcoin from a
Facebook posting just a few
weeks after Roger came on
the scene, he, Erik, had been
intently watching Roger’s
work online, cheering him on
from afar, and doing similar
evangelizing
for
Bitcoin
whenever he could.
Erik had recently moved
back to the United States
from Dubai, where he had
gone for a job in real estate
marketing after college. He
and his college sweetheart
had chosen to settle in a small
seaside
town
in
New
Hampshire, where they joined
the Free State Project, a
movement founded on the
idea that if several thousand
ardent
antigovernment
activists gathered in one
small
state,
they
could
influence
the
political
direction of that state. New
Hampshire was an obvious
choice, with its motto, “Live
free or die.” Free Talk Live, the radio show that had
introduced Roger to Bitcoin,
was hosted by other members
of the Free State Project.
Erik had grown up in the
mountain town of Keystone,
Colorado, where he had
become an adept skier and
mountain biker. In high
school, he learned to DJ,
playing house and techno
music at local parties. As an
undergraduate
at
the
University of Puget Sound, he
joined
the
Sigma
Chi
fraternity.
But he also had a more
serious, political side that he
got
from
his
father,
a
passionate advocate for free
markets and entrepreneurs
who had built his own
jewelry business. His father
had
been
a
competitive
debater and urged Erik to
follow in his footsteps, given
Erik’s smooth way with
words. Erik, though, had
discovered that he could not
convincingly argue a point he
did not believe in, and so he
threw himself into advocating
for the ideas he did believe in.
After the financial crisis,
Erik
became
particularly
fascinated by the role that
central
banks
played
in
maintaining
government
power. He came to believe
that it was only through
printing
money
that
governments were able to pay
for their budgets and wars.
Monetary policy had been
one of the issues he was most
passionate about when he
joined the Free State Project.
But when he discovered
Bitcoin, he saw a shortcut to
achieving his goal of a world
without government power.
Erik had largely abandoned
his efforts to find a new job
and went deeper into credit
card debt so that he could
spend his time evangelizing
for Bitcoin.
“You don’t have to try to
vote your way into changing
the world,” he would tell
anyone who listened. “If
Bitcoin works, then it will