2011-06-27 Interview with Global Bitcoin Stock Exchange developer AntiVigilante

Note from Editor: The following emails have been sent to us.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Hi, I'm nefario, founder of GLBSE(Global Bitcoin Stock Exchange), glbse.com

I came across this article on your site
http://wlcentral.org/taxonomy/term/958/0

And want to point out some false information in it.

AntiVigilante, is not nor has he ever been a developer for GLBSE, he is
not affiliated with GLBSE in anyway.

The part "Right now, I'm writing for Global Bitcoin Stock Exchange." is
not true/correct.

He may be using GLBSE, in the same way someone uses GMail but he is not
working/writing FOR GLBSE, I have at no time hired him.

Please update your article.

Nefario.

You could go to glbse.com and have a look at the email for contact, or
to Nefario profile on forum.bitcoin.org, both those emails are from this
address.

My GPG key is publicly available on pgp.mit.edu and other keyservers.

Nefario.

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What follows is an interview with the Global Stock Market developer known as AntiVigilante. Recently, Bitcoin has grown in both popularity and notoriety with the well known hack attack on mtgox.

Tracy Phillips: Are you a developer for Bitcoin? Please describe what your position is or what you do for Bitcoin. And do you want me to qoute you as "AntiVigilante" or another name?

Anti Vigilante: Anti Vigilante is fine.

Tracy Phillips: Describe what you do.

Anti Vigilante: I have my own interests in it but the fact is Bitcoin is necessary whether it's the best or the worst. So I'm trying to prime the pump and karma has been 60 / 40 my way because of it. I've made contacts. I've been able to cover personal expenses with Bitcoin. I am currently finishing work on a few businesses and services. Mostly documentation.

Tracy Phillips: Is there any contact person, a developer or someone, who can be the public face for Bitcoin?

Anti Vigilante: Probably the ones who consistently trade and do business at pretty significant risk. Gavin Andresen was invited to speak to the CIA. Dunno if I spelled his name right.

Tracy Phillips: Yes you did.

Anti Vigilante: There's Gavin. There's bearbones on the forum who runs Bitmunchies.com. There's BTC_Bear in the chatroom who provides market analysis (granted who doesn't try to?) There's Nefario from Global Bitcoin Stock Exchange.

Tracy Phillips: So you are helping to grow the businesses who will do exchanges using Bitcoin, is that correct? You write documentation for the businesses and services so they can make exchanges with Bitcoins, is that correct?

Anti Vigilante: Right now, I'm writing for Global Bitcoin Stock Exchange. But I've also come up with a few ideas 1) A solid lending concept based on fees not interest. Built in is a guaranteed end to loans if they are not repaid. One of the great problems right now is never ending debt.

Tracy Phillips: Regarding the problems, so you are working on solving these problems Bitcoin has?

Anti Vigilante: I'm willing to just end a business relationship than continue a loan. These loans as I have them set up will not be sold to other lenders. I do however seek financing for starting these loans but I end the dependency quickly.

Tracy Phillips: It sounds like the model for micro banking

Anti Vigilante: In a sense but they go from 1 btc to 6000 btc. I can't offer the larger ones yet but I do have a map for the future so from $17 to $102,000. Most likely I will have partners by then. What I'd love to do is just prove the model and then let others copy the concept.

Tracy Phillips: That's enough to help someone start a small business or buy a home.

Anti Vigilante: Yeah 2) I have come up with a localized Bitcoin concept one which does not break off from the main blockchain. This would be the solution for places that have been hit by tornadoes. The mistake in most relief efforts is that they don't focus on community building as much as they need to.

Tracy Phillips: Yes the US does not value social and environmental issues as much as it values cold hard cash

Anti Vigilante: Well it's not about having some crusade it's about consolidating human potential to rise back up from disaster. Everyone thinks need a nanny, they don't, they need hammers and shovels, and a way to appreciate each others' efforts.

Tracy Phillips: By US standards, tornadoes are a good thing because they cause economic growth as the community rebuilds.

Anti Vigilante: Never let a disater go to waste - Rahmbo. See that's the thing, that ideology is a superficial analysis. You can replace economic activity with whatever parasite fantasy people might have: drugs, prostitution, casinos, police run cities.

Tracy Phillips: Capitalism does not care how the cash is generated, and that is why by the US standard and by the court, it is actually of economic benefit for the BP oil spill because it causes major clean up and disaster efforts. There are whole entire industries built upon poverty, disaster, etc...

Anti Vigilante: Essentially I'm hacking that paradigm and making it productive by separating community from economic development. In the model I designed development isn't something that can just be monetized, money is supposed to be the lubricant not the engine, so the "towncoin" idea produces lots of blocks of coin but in small amounts. A bitcoin is just a token it can be worth anything you like just agree on it and get the job done. It's how bitcoins started out. I love how people wonder if BTC will ever reach $1000. People traded services for bitcents that would make that amounts seem like pennies. I don't have exact numbers but bitcoin was already worth that much in the early days because economic community cycles were short and small and very quick.

Tracy Phillips: I understand. Many people criticize capitalism for devalueing social values and environmental values. People also claim capitalism undermines democracy or a democratic republic.

Anti Vigilante: It isn't capitalism though - it's having so many me toos in the mix make something.

Tracy Phillips: So in localized use the Bitcoin platform actually expedites economic growth and activity?

Anti Vigilante: Yes and once it runs a few cycles the value of the mainline coins will skyrocket once people remember a forgotten fact: we are the market, our habits are the hidden hand. We caused this by not participating in the continual nourishment of the economy. We thought we could just ride on banker adventures. The whole "residual passive income" paradigm- btw those are showing up more and more, drives me nuts. They're not scams per se just dead ends.

Tracy Phillips: Is that another problem to solve?

Anti Vigilante: It's not a problem to solve so much as a concept to race against. 3) I'm looking into ways of adding permission structures to bitcoins and ways to move bitcoins when you only have part of the pieces. There's some risk. People are approaching bitcoin with concepts from the dollar, pound, and euro, something they can hold. So take that and then combine it with security practices like backups and what happens is carelessness like overwriting an updated wallet with a back up people associate backups with safety and positive connotations so they slip up.

Tracy Phillips: Some experts say the US economy as it has been designed- capitalism, wealth generated by unethical practices, such as the war economy, is actually a suicide economy because it destroys social and environmental values as it generates money. In the end, if we continue in capitalism, it will destroy everything and there will be nothing left to consume. How can Bitcoin be used by people who want to stop the consuming supply side economy, and instead employ a consumer driven economy, and as you say, one that is localized?

Anti Vigilante: Just implement it. In my case I recognize the "pseudo-oligarchy" of multi video card miners guys who monetized their whole data center but really they just don't want dollars and many of them understand that the point of all this computer power is to secure the transactions. Mining will become secondary to transactions in the future, but for emergency reboots of towns after a tornado mining is key, but they need to be able to use whatever resources they have. Farmers don't want to buy and configure video cards so I have a model that should work. Use a video card mining rig which mines coins, use individual cpu mining to gather those coins. The contributions from individuals with cpus will entitle them to fractions of bitcoins they can trade for nails and screws and such.

Tracy Phillips: Does this model have a name?

Anti Vigilante: Once this cycles say 20 times the recoil will hit the mainline bitcoins. Someone is buying boxes of 100 nails for .001 bitcents that is going to cause shockwaves in the bitcoin markets. You see how that works. Everyone calls the model "towncoins." it just kinda stuck.

Tracy Phillips: Is the model in review or proposal stage?

Anti Vigilante: Proposal is done - i'll be playing with it this week. It has some interesting properties.

Tracy Phillips: Will you keep me posted and maybe can do a follow up?

Anti Vigilante: Yeah, you said you wanted to cover the mtgox crash I think because that needs to be explained.

Tracy Phillips: Yes.

Anti Vigilante: The site itself was not compromised. What happened is the attacker compromised one of the accounts of an employee who only had read only access to the database so a highly automated attack was not possible, however by setting up a line of orders like dominoes, they were able to crash the price, move the bitcoins into one account, and then withdraw a chunk below the $1000 daily limit. They did however hit that limit, but here's the part people miss: most of these were database moves. mtgox, tradehill, bitcoin7 (avoid like the plague full of holes) These are each one big wallet. The database does the transactions so much of the trading was rolled back. This had the effect of scaring some speculators and also angering some people who think of it as a market, but only a few withdrawals and actual trades were made. The real market moves were simply in the minority since then tradehill and bitcoin7 showed up and tradehill have said they would help mtgox get back up as much as they can. This is what makes Bitcoins viable- a community that doesn't collapse under pressure.

Tracy Phillips: And the security issue?

Anti Vigilante: That was simply dealing with internet risk like we all do, they require very strong passwords now.

Tracy Phillips: Yes of course. Before we wrap this up can you address some of the more common criticism?

Anti Vigilante: Sure.

Tracy Phillips: I've heard everything from how the value is set to how coins are mined to the difficulty of non tech savvy users and security.

Anti Vigilante: Well reality struck - the system is at version 0.3.23 and bankers are drunk. Bitcoin is the most robust raft we've got, still, it's a raft hold on! But the creativity and determination is incredible. The variety of philosophies it attracts. I've seen this elsewhere and if those communities are any indication Bitcoin stole the fire from the gods and we ain't giving it back. You know Britannica said of wikipedia: " Like licking the door knob of a public restroom." Yeah we know that's exactly the way they see bitcoin and humanity in general. It's like all the racism, elitism, and propaganda are unmasked and we're finding this mindlessness everywhere. I hate to say we're all infected with it to an extent but it's easier to get over it by looking at solutions than placing blame so grab your flame retardant undies and look out world.

Tracy Phillips: Agreed, but doesn't it concern you that the CIA has taken an interest?

Anti Vigilante: I call that an endorsement. It's not an option to turn back now. The worst thing that could happen is bitcoin run by the CIA, but see there's a fine line between cloud computing and crowd computing and we're about to make sure it's much easier to find.

Tracy Phillips: Thank you so much sir for all the updates.

Anti Vigilante: No problem.

Tracy Phillips: One final question.

Anti Vigilante: Sure.

Tracy Phillips: Bitcoin has grown very popular, can you explain this?

Anti Vigilante: Amplification from the gold bugs, the abuse from the bankers, the bailouts, but something else too. Remember the 2007 boston fiasco with that blinkenlights toy. The media milked it instead of telling the truth that woke up millions. They went all out war on terror over a promotional stunt. 2007 January 31.

Tracy Phillips: Ok can you link to the story where our readers can learn the truth?

Anti Vigilante: NEVER FORGET

Tracy Phillips: Ok thank you so much AntiVigilante, I know you don't often grant interviews so I really appreciate this sir. Good day ;)

Anti Vigilante: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Boston_bomb_scare. By the way the criticism claim is bullshit there is a tactic called double signal like yelling "peace and quiet please" really loud. What effect do you think it has the more they talked about it the more the paranoia flared up this is why you have to mix criticism with human even nasty humor. Emotional hijacking intentional or not is a real effect.

Tracy Phillips: Market manipulation has become standard operating procedure.

Anti Vigilante: Mind games came before the money games, full circle and we hold the cards in both contexts.

Tracy Phillips: And there are more psychological operations then I have fingers to count them, for sure.

Anti Vigilante: Between bitcoins and Anonymous there's nothing average everyday people can't do if they try.

Tracy Phillips: Absolutely, and if the rumor spreaders hurt your business and financially damage it, you can sue them for slander or liable I think. Great thanks!

Anti Vigilante: No probs.

This interview will be followed up next week with another featuring AntiVigilante's current working models. P2p currency is a important topic that deserved continuing coverage. I will, therefore, bring periodic updates on the unfolding Bitcoin story, including interviews with the developers.