It was a great sadness to learn of Adam Tepper’s passing. With the Bitcoin gambling guide team and we express our sincere condolences. It will be missed in the Bitcoin arena, especially in the Bitcoin exchange industry. Nevertheless, his contribution to the market will forever be seen as one of today’s novelties.
Days before his accident, I had the good fortune to talk to him to learn more about the Independent Reserve and his insights into the economy, price and future of Bitcoin , as well as the benefits of his business in the Bitcoin casino market.
Every Bitcoin fan has gone through a journey. What made you interested in Bitcoin and make us believe that you would spend most of your time on it?
Adam Tepper is the CEOThe technology behind Bitcoin is impressive. I first heard about Bitcoin many years ago, not long after it started in 2009. A friend of mine who likes to advertise the latest technology trends told me that “a guy has worked out a way to make money on the internet”. I had no idea what that sentence meant, and I don’t think it was my friend either.
It wasn’t until sometime later, in November 2012, that I thought about Bitcoin again. I noticed an online ad that had something to do with Bitcoin and thought I’d check it out. The first thing I noticed was that Bitcoin, whatever it was, was trading over $ 10 and had a good time. I expected it to be worth a few cents, or even a fraction of a cent. Of course, when I didn’t know anything about Bitcoin at all, I couldn’t have logically imagined what a Bitcoin was worth, but assuming there were millions on the market, $ 10 seemed like a significant value and I was curious to know more. Once I found the pages on the internet that I found, I was no closer to understanding what Bitcoin is or how it works than when I started. It was only after a careful reading and cross-reference of the various sources that I began to get a picture in my head. I certainly wouldn’t have called it a deep or thorough understanding; I had quite a few questions of my own.
It piqued my interest and as a software engineer I decided to write a proprietary software of my own that allowed me to send and receive Bitcoin (this was never made public, it was just an attempt to see how it works and to satisfy my own. Curiosity). ). I never finished writing the software, but I spent two or three weeks developing it, and with that I finally understood how Bitcoin works, and I was deeply impressed and impressed with the technology. It was amazing because it so elegantly brought together separate software principles into a system that no one had ever thought of and that could now be used effectively as money.
When I thoroughly understood Bitcoin, I passed on what I learned to my business partner, Adrian Przelozny. I encountered the same skepticism that I myself initially had. A month later, he mentioned to me that “Bitcoin is really amazing – I bought some”. Shortly afterwards, our thoughts turned to a business in this industry.
How long did it take to launch the Independent Reserve?
After brainstorming ideas on how best to capitalize on the new digital currency, we incorporated a company in June 2013. We immediately started designing our systems and we were with our development team until September of that year. Our product was launched just over a year later, on October 21, 2014.
An eighteen-month development period would be considered by some to be quite long for a company looking to leave a mark on a new technology such as Bitcoin. However, we paid close attention to the potential risks of releasing a product that was not designed from the outset to be robust, secure, and scalable. We were aware that our prospective customers would not tolerate the security breaches and scheduled outages that plagued them and continue to plague other exchanges today.
Adrian Pzelozny, co-founder of the Independent Reserve, and I spent fifteen years designing and developing corporate systems for financial institutions and other companies in Sydney. It was something we could bring to Bitcoin that no one else in the industry had done before. We had the engineering knowledge, the knowledge of Bitcoin, and a team of software engineers we could put together to achieve these bold goals.
QuoteWhat can you say is the best thing about your business? What are the benefits of its operation?
As I touched on in the last section, one of the best things about the Independent Reserve is the system behind it. Although I have already mentioned the fact that it was designed to be robust, safe and reliable from the start, many people may not recognize the level of engineering that has entered our system to achieve this. People are often surprised to know that our systems run on more than 30 servers, in multiple data centers. This ensures the redundancy of our systems, and each component of our system has limited liability – leading to an easier-to-maintain and more secure system. Designing our system in this way allows us to quickly modify our business model and adapt to changes in the industry by adding new modules to our existing infrastructure.
I think one of the key benefits of the Independent Reserve as a company is the management team. While many others in the Bitcoin industry have programming backgrounds, we have brought together executives with many years of experience in finance, investment banking, forex, and Adrian and me in enterprise software. I think this combination really allows us to see Bitcoin in every way and move forward with the right industry connections.
What can you say about gambling laws and the legality and regulation of cryptocurrency?
The question that many governments around the world have asked themselves is whether Bitcoin should be considered a legal tender and, if so, whether it should be regulated and, if so, to what extent.
The answer, of course, is that Bitcoin requires balanced regulation. Regulation that does not stifle the new industry, but at the same time protects consumers from being misused by the industry. The other aspect that needs to be taken into account is that we cannot pass yesterday’s laws that applied to a completely different financial paradigm and we cannot apply them to Bitcoin. Bitcoin works fundamentally differently from fiat foreign exchange, and regulations need to be developed that support the decentralized, digital model.
Ekkor felmerül a kérdés, hogy néz ki ez a rendelet. Nos, úgy gondolom, hogy feltétlenül szükséges a Bitcoin és más digitális pénznemek engedélyezése törvényes fizetőeszközként. A kormányoknak és a gazdaságoknak fel kell használniuk ezt az új világpénznemet, és figyelniük kell a kereskedelem virágzását, miközben az emberek egy szempillantás alatt képesek tranzakciókat végezni szerte a világon, anélkül, hogy a tegnapi bankrendszerek visszatartanák őket.
Where I think regulation is needed, it is with financial institutions that hold Bitcoin on behalf of others, just like a bank. We have already witnessed the first major financial collapse in Bitcoin with the fall of Mt. Gox, and we recently saw a month ago that Bitstamp had lost five million dollars in Bitcoin from its digital vault. It is an honor for them that in the case of Bitstamp, most of their funds have been safely stored in a cold store and the balance of their account holders is respected. He emphasized, however, that without some oversight of the security measures applied by these organizations, consumers would not be able to trust their banking institutions responsible for their Bitcoin.
This is not a weakness for Bitcoin; immaturity in the bitcoin financial sector. Already in the past twelve months, the collapse of Mt. Gox has seen that the entire industry has made great strides in safety best practices, and there is no doubt that we will continue to do so. It is in everyone’s interest for a strong, stable, secure Bitcoin financial sector to work – and a balanced level of regulated supervision in this area would not be bad.
It is important for regulators to take into account the fact that, as a new industry, it is evolving at a very fast pace and new practices are constantly emerging. It would be a step for regulators with limited knowledge of the emerging industry to take a strong hand that is impossible to comply with regulations or regulations that adversely affect the growth of Bitcoin. Their best position is to step back and take action as the industry matures where needed. This principle is likely to apply to most industries.
What do you think Bitcoin needs to become a more prominent and reliable payment system ??
I claim that Bitcoin is already a very reliable form of payment. I think the biggest hurdle for Bitcoin right now is reaching critical mass. The problem with the 22 catch is that consumers are unwilling to use it if only a few sellers accept it, and traders are unwilling to accept it when only a small number of consumers pay with it. It offers great benefits to both traders and consumers, and I believe that when we see new investment in the industry, we will see steady growth on all fronts. One day we may wonder how payments worked without Bitcoin.
What have been the greatest accomplishments since your business has been running since its inception? What was the most surprising challenge in the project?
QuoteOur biggest achievement was that we designed our system the way it was designed. We have had no unplanned downtime since our introduction, no security breaches, and we have provided our customers with the secure and robust platform we designed nearly two years ago.
One of the challenging areas for our company was finding the right balance around verifying our customers. It is a difficult problem that everyone in the Bitcoin industry faces, and many of our customers, and potential customers, do not understand the reasons for some of our actions. If we allowed everyone to have an anonymous account with the Independent Reserve, we would not only be ready fraud targets, we would not be applying the strict requirement that we think the entire industry should strengthen its global Bitcoin infrastructure. On the other hand, by demanding an intensive identity verification process, we run the risk of losing potential customers and feeling their irony in public forums. Finding the right balance is a challenge, but if we want to
Another common challenge for the industry is to establish critical banking relationships to be able to accept payments. Fortunately, we have multiple close relationships with financial institutions and strong support from PricewaterhouseCoopers, who provide independent oversight of our firm. We were certainly involved in financial institutions that refused to work with the digital money industry, which was frustrating.
Which features of your business do you consider revolutionary or pioneering?
I would like to say that the Independent Reserve is revolutionary. Instead, I’m going to say that the Independent Reserve applies absolute best practice in software development and security. And the development of such a system requires continuous innovation, as this level of robustness is not “out of the box”. I am also very proud of the multi-currency order that will be released in March. This allows orders to be executed in one of the many currencies and placed in the same liquidity pool. I believe that our innovative approach here offers the most efficient trading system for buyers and sellers.
Do you find it hypocritical when Bitcoin fans who critically support banks are also critical of altcoins? What do you think about the relationship between Bitcoin and altcoins?
I can’t really answer the first part of the question, but I’d love to talk more about the relationship between Bitcoins and alternative forms of digital currency.
Bitcoin is not the only digital currency, however, it was the first to have an overwhelming 98% market share in terms of market capitalization compared to other digital currencies. Bitcoin was developed in 2009, and it wasn’t until 2011 that we saw such digital currencies, such as Litecoin, which is largely the same as Bitcoin.
I think the developers of these earlier currencies were well-intentioned, but today there are more than five hundred digital currencies in the world that most people (including me) have never heard of, and I think some of them are no different. . as a scheme with which the original creator can profit.
Nevertheless, despite the fact that Bitcoin has undergone great development in the history of money, no system is perfect and it is inevitable that the Bitcoin protocol will refine over time (as it was) and that potentially new digital currencies may be viable at the same time as Bitcoin, or ultimately by replacing Bitcoin. The concept of Blockchain is fundamentally grounded, and most, if not all, digital currencies are based on the same principles as Bitcoin.
Is there a Bitcoin prediction?
Absolutely not, just to say that tomorrow will be different. The only thing I will mention is that Bitcoin can be used relatively low compared to other currencies. As this demand increases, it will inevitably drive up prices and reduce volatility. If anyone thinks the concepts of digital currency are well-founded, my advice would be to buy and hold.
Finally, for those who don’t get Bitcoin, do you have any suggestions? And anything else you wanted to add?
Bitcoin is the money that email meant for writing letters – on many levels. Many did not understand, but the world could hardly function without it now. It is much more useful if everyone uses it.