Cointelegraph got the chance to talk to mark Edge (Mark Edge), the man who introduced Roger Vera (Roger Ver) with bitcoins, and a leading radio "Free Talk Live". It was hard to miss Mark at the North American bitcoin conference-he looked as if he had come down from the movie "Monty Python And the Holy Grail". But, unlike Monty Python, mark is not a joke.
Free Talk Live Mark is one of the first media outlets to talk about bitcoin, and he was one of the earliest members of the crypto community. Most of the media talked about bitcoin before 2013, with the exception of Wired, spoke about BTC in 2011.
For the first time mark began studying bitcoin in February 2011 when he was contacted Gavin Andresen (Gavin Andresen). Gavin Andresen was a software developer who graduated from Princeton in 1988. It Satoshi Nakamoto has been appointed the lead developer of the reference implementation.
Lunch at Thai Garden
Gavin sent Mark an email on 8 February 2011, stating that he wants to have lunch with him to discuss "a new currency". Mark met Gavin at the Thai Garden in Keene, new Hampshire, USA. Andresen began by telling Mark the details of the new currency, and for the first time in his life he heard the word "bitcoin".
Although the world of digital currencies still continues to confuse people, digital assets were a completely alien concept in 2011. When Gavid and mark had dinner, bitcoin was only two years old, and it didn't even hit the $1 threshold. Mark asked Gavin questions such as" what is he secured "and" what if the government tries to remove it?"but by the end of the conversation, Gavin was able to convince Mark that bitcoin has a certain viability.
At the end of lunch, Andresen wanted to pay for food in bitcoin. He sent Mark 25 BTC at the time, bitcoin was worth 40 cents, and the whole sum amounted to about $ 10.
"Hey, mark, could you send me one of your addresses mybitcoin.com?! I promised to pay you back the money for lunch in bitcoin, and I want to pay off the debt before bitcoin gets even more expensive (when we had dinner, it cost 40 cents, and now it is trading for more than $1)."
"From: Marc Edge
Date: Tuesday, 15 February 2011, 13: 40.
Subject: Re: amplifier, a bitcoin developer...
To: Gavin Andresen
1HVgNPFxn69MpGk3xG6w3J1Uv3EKES
This is good news for everyone!»
MyBitcoinWallet?
As can be seen from the email correspondence above, as mark chose wallet at the time MyBitcoin.com -a site that turned out to be a Scam. On July 29, 2011, the company closed the site when it realized that their systems had been hacked. Presumably, the site was hacked by canadian hackers and managed to get away with 51% of the total funds.
On August 4, 2011, the site reopened to publish an incident report reporting security breaches to users. A few days later, representatives of MyBitcoin made a statement saying that 51% of all funds were stolen, the service goes to external management and that they will begin the process of returning 49% of funds to each user.
Roger on the radio
After lunch with Gavin, mark went home, did some research, and talked about bitcoin on the radio that night. It so happened that among the audience was Roger Vert, former CEO MemoryDealers.com Oh. Roger heard mark discuss bitcoin and became interested in the new currency.
"I'm looking for A cointelegraph story email in which you said you heard about bitcoin on Free Talk live. I have so many letters from you, it's hard to find the right one. Can you, please, quickly confirm this for the screenshot?»
"I'm 100% sure I first heard about bitcoin while listening to Free Talk Live."
At the time Ver run ads on Free Talk Live memorydealers.com. But deep in bitcoin, Roger decided to change your advertising bag; advertising instead Memorydealers.com Ver interested in the bitcoin is on the radio.
On April 29, 2011, Roger reached out to Free Talk Live regarding the launch of live advertising. Roger expected to pay for the is bitcoin bitcoin and asked whether it is acceptable method of payment. Although Free Talk Live has never accepted cryptocurrency to pay for ads before, they agreed to Roger's offer.
"From: Ian Freeman
Sent: Thursday, April 28, 2011 at 22: 11
To: Roger Ver
CC: Mark Edge
Topic: Re: off-system activism
Aha.
Will you advertise the bitcoin site?
Yang.»
"From: Roger Ver
Sent: Thursday, April 28, 2011 at 22: 14
To: "Ian Freeman»
Topic: Re: off-system activism
Mostly I want to advertise the idea of bitcoin.
This is mostly an anonymous digital p2p currency, which has tripled in price over the past few months.
Their domain — www.bitcoin.org".
From this moment on Free Talk Live has started to accept payments from advertisers in bitcoin. From the first run and as long as BTC did not cost $1 000, Free Talk Live has received approximately 50% of the revenue in bitcoins. But after the collapse of MT. Gox in 2014, advertisers refused to use bitcoin for about three years. Now that the market has intensified, mark estimates that almost 85% of their advertisers are paid in cryptocurrency.
The small station played a big role
Perhaps the fact that Roger Ver came across bitcoin while listening to the show on Free Talk Live may seem small, but it was of great importance to the current state of the industry. Roger Ver is a prominent figure in the crypto industry and he was one of the very first to see bitcoin change the world. Ver used this knowledge to tell everyone about BTC and invest in related companies back in 2011.
Roger invested $1 million in blockchain startups, like Ripple, Blockchain.info, Bitpay and Kraken when these projects were in the early stages of development, and created platforms such as Bitcoinstore.com, allowing people to purchase consumer goods for bitcoins.
Being an early supporter of cryptomeria, Roger earned the nickname "Bitcoin Jesus." In 2012, he was one of the five founders of the Bitcoin Foundation, an organization established to standardize, protect and promote the use of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
If Roger had not heard about bitcoin on Free Talk Live, then it is quite possible that some major events would never have happened, and the current industry leaders would not have received investment from Roger. If it wasn't for mark and Free Talk Live, Roger might never have known about bitcoin and become an early investor in companies like BitInstant crypto-exchange.
about Mark
Mark thinks bitcoin is a Fiat currency because it is not backed by gold. One of the main reasons why mark supports bitcoin, is that the government will not be able to generate more BTC to Fund new wars. Prior to bitcoin, mark paid close attention to alternative currencies such as Liberty dollar (free dollar).
Now mark is a pig breeder in new Hampshire-a place where, as he says, activists make daily transactions in cryptocurrency.
"If I had hired someone to work on the farm and offered silver coins, no one would have agreed. Now I offer cryptocurrency, and people are happy to take it."
As digital currencies became more popular, mark discovered that more and more people were calling to talk about cryptocurrency and ask questions about it.
"This show is not about cryptocurrencies, but many people want to talk about them."