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Is Bitcoin secure from attacks that could destroy the currency? To a large part, this is determined by how expensive it is to carry out an attack and by the potential profits the attacker could generate. Ideally, an attack is so expensive to carry out that no profit-driven attacker would engage in it.

But in this episode, Brian argues that the cost of attacking Bitcoin will likely decrease in the future and the ability to short Bitcoin and thus benefit from an attack will increase dramatically.

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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/068

What Bitcoin did for money, OpenBazaar is trying to achieve for commerce. Born as a fork of the Dark Market project, OpenBazaar aims to facilitate online trade by removing unneeded middlemen. Built as an open source protocol, users simply install the application on their computer to gain access to marketplaces available on the network. From the app, they may also place items or services for sale by creating “Ricardian contracts”, which get propagated to the network and made accessible to everyone to see. The protocol, which uses Bitcoin as a means of payments, utilises multi-signature transactions. This makes it possible for transacting parties to include third-party arbitrators, who may intervene in the event of a dispute. We talked to Brian Hoffman, the project’s Lead Developer, about this paradigm-shifting project and the potential it has to disrupt person-to-person marketplaces such as eBay. Currently in beta, OpenBazaar is due for a full release in Q1-Q2 of 2015.

Topics covered in this episode:

Episode links:

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/067

Levin Keller is known to many in Berlin as the man who warned everyone about the dark scenario where buying Bitcoins in Europe would be subject to VAT. As with the VAT issue, Levin was also concerned with the complexity of filing tax returns. For merchants and companies dealing in Bitcoin, keeping track of gains and losses makes proper accounting a messy ordeal.

His startup, Coyno, hopes to solve that by providing standalone, read-only bookkeeping for your existing wallets. Coyno allows you to import the public seed from your HD wallet and keeps track of transactions. The service, currently in beta, reads your wallets’ public addresses and stores bookkeeping information whenever a transaction occurs. By recording the exchange rate at the time of transaction, Coyno can generate reports of taxable events, allowing users to more easily file their taxes. By allowing Coyno to read all your wallets, it’s able to differentiate incoming and outgoing transaction from funds being moved within your organization, a feature lacking from other reporting tools.

Levin also talks about his journey of being incubated at the Axel Springer Plug and Play Accelerator in Berlin. He also weighs in on some of the challenges of building a Bitcoin startup and attracting investors in Europe.

Episode links:

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/066