No one could ever accuse Anthony Di Iorio of slacking.
Between the Bitcoin Alliance of Canada, Kryptokit, Ethereum, hosting Toronto’s weekly Bitcoin meetups, running Bitcoin Decentral, and a handful of other projects, it’s a wonder he found the time to sit down with The CoinFront.Anthony and I talk about the Bitcoin Alliance, PayPal, Bitcoin’s price, and more.
What got you into Bitcoin in the first place?
I got into Bitcoin in 2012 in the summer, heard about it on a radio station, Free Talk Live, and had just gotten out of real estate at the time. I had a bunch of properties, and had done well with them for around 7 years before 2012. The property market in Toronto started overheating then, and I decided to just get out of it, get debt free, pay off any mortgages, take the proceeds, and see where to invest. That’s when I heard about Bitcoin, and decided to dive in.
Was that the right decision?
Definitely! I put a pretty sizeable investment into it when it was around $11, sold another company around that time, and bought in more when it was worth around $100. I held on to that too. If I had held off another couple of months, it would have been a couple hundred dollars more, so it was definitely the right time to buy in.
You play a big role with the Bitcoin Alliance of Canada. For those who don’t know, could you give us some background information on it?
Sure, the Alliance is a non-profit organization with nine board members from six different provinces. We started over a year ago when the price of Bitcoin was starting to rise, and we noticed there wasn’t much good representation of Bitcoin in the media, so we thought it would be good to have an organization in Canada to represent Bitcoin and provide information that wasn’t misleading.
We put out a call to see who would be interested and got some amazing feedback from people who called me directly to express their interest. We then had an election for board members. Anyone who wanted to run for a board member position could do so. We then set up an election committee, and you could help with that as long as you weren’t running. You couldn’t run for the board and at the same time be in charge of the process to elect the board. We kept those separate
So I myself applied for a board position. 13 people applied to be on the board, and 8 were selected. The election committee then disbanded.
And how often are the elections held?
Once a year. We added some people to the board after the conference. We lost two people from the board: one gentleman had gone to Africa for a while and was incommunicado, and another had to drop off for personal reasons so we had some empty spots and added some people.We’ll hold the next elections in the spring, and board members run every year.
It’s meant to be an open process which anyone can participate in, different from the way the Bitcoin Foundation did things.
Speaking of the Foundation, why did you decide to form the Bitcoin Alliance as opposed to getting involved with the Bitcoin Foundation Canada?
At the time there was just the Bitcoin Foundation. There were no plans to expand to do regional chapters or anything like that. We were already well-established when the Bitcoin Foundation started their chapter program, so at the time there was no thought about joining the Foundation.
We were approached by the Foundation once they did start the regional chapter program with the idea of turning the Bitcoin Alliance into the Bitcoin Foundation Canada, but the proposal wouldn’t have worked for us. We were already well established and had processes set up, so it wasn’t really a good fit for us.
I think their affiliate program is good for new organizations starting out, but not as much for organizations that are already established.
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But now there’s the Bitcoin Alliance and the Bitcoin Foundation in Canada. Do you find the two organizations butting heads or getting in each others’ way?
No, we actually have one gentleman on our board who works out of the Embassy (Bitcoin Embassy in Montreal) where the Foundation is based.
I think we complement each other. When news comes out we both push each other’s news. We have a good relationship with them, and there’s plenty of room. We’d actually like to work on some projects with them, and Francis (Pouliot, Bitcoin Foundation Canada CEO) and I have been in communication together to work something out which can benefit both of us and help spread the news of Bitcoin.
That’s a good attitude to take. At this point, the Bitcoin pie is big enough for everyone to take a chunk without stepping on any toes. So what do you think has been the Alliance’s greatest victory so far?
Definitely the Expo. It was the first conference in Canada, and we had 750 people in attendance in one of the biggest convention halls I’ve ever seen. It was a volunteer-driven non-profit project, with the funds going toward the Bitcoin Alliance. We raised the majority of our funds from that event, which turned out to be around 80 bitcoins.
And what about challenges? What’s been the greatest challenge so far?
The biggest challenge is time. Our board members are all busy people, and it’s sometimes hard to find the time for everyone to make the time for the Alliance on top of all our other projects.
I personally spent the first few months of the year taking care of the Expo, but there’s so much happening in the Bitcoin space that it’s difficult to set aside time to focus on Alliance projects.
I think the funding from the Expo will help us out though. We’re planning on using those funds to bring on someone to take care of the administrative work for the Alliance, which will free up some of our time and help our schedules coordinate.
You’re planning on rebranding Bitcoin Decentral, your collaborative workspace here in downtown Toronto. What’s going on there?
Yeah, so when we first opened it was Bitcoin Decentral. Bitcoin was always the biggest thing for me, but it seems like Bitcoin is just a piece of the next generation of technology.
Being Bitcoin Decentral is limiting ourselves. We’ll still be showcasing Bitcoin here, with meetups and our “Bitcoin accepted here” sign out front, but we’re rebranding just to “Decentral”, a home for decentralized and disruptive applications and technology.
So it’s more than just Bitcoin now. I’m involved with Ethereum, which isn’t necessarily Bitcoin but it’s a next-generation technology, and I think that’s what I’m most excited about. New technology isn’t just going to affect currency and payments. It’s going to benefit everything.
So that’s why we decided to rebrand to Decentral to showcase decentralized technology, of which Bitcoin happens to be a good example. But we’re getting involved with other things here. We’ve got a 3D printer, we’ve got a drone, and we’re getting into other things that are going to change the landscape.
3D printers are one of the coolest technologies I think that’s come out for as long as I can remember. What have you got planned with it so far?
We’ve printed quite a few things so far, but we’ve mainly got it to be printing out our hardware wallet cases for the Kryptokit hardware wallet.
What excites you about these other decentralized technologies? Is it the same thing that draws you to Bitcoin?
Yeah, the blockchain technology, which is going to affect not just payments, it’s going to affect laws, contracts, all sorts of different sectors. I’m most excited to see how the process can go from centralization toward decentralization.
It’s going to be a long road. We’re not anywhere near being able to decentralize everything. There are challenges in decentralization, and there’s a reason some things are centralized. But what’s coming out now with blockchain technology will help ease the transition toward decentralization. It’ll probably be a few years before we see larger impacts in other industries though.
One of the phrases we often hear in the Bitcoin community is “decentralize everything”. Judging by what you just told me, it seems like you disagree with that.
Well I think the end goal should be decentralization, but there are tons of challenges along the way. There are reasons why you have different people in different roles overseeing projects. If decentralization means everyone being, you know, equal in terms of being in a company, you’ll have no direction or no manager leading the charge.
To have just everybody going at things all at the same time creates issues with redundancy and efficiency. I think tools are going to help us get to that point, but it’s going to take a while before we get there.
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So back to Decentral, what’s the long-term goal with it? What would you like to see it doing, say, five years from now?
Decentral is a community-building space where we can do meetups and events for people excited about technology. It’s a co-working facility where people can start working on their ideas and projects, and meet with other people in the same space, founding companies, providing mentorship, and tools companies need to take off in the Bitcoin space.
Five years from now, in addition to the legal counsel, accounting help, and design team, and mentorship program we already have in place, I see Decentral having a more developed accelerator program, and more tools to help companies take off.
We’ve got quite a few people working out of here already, and that will continue to expand.
What do you think is the most exciting development happening within the cryptocurrency space right now?
I’m really psyched about Ethereum, I think it’s one of the best products out there right now, and they’re moving along very quickly. That’s what I’m most excited to see.
I’m also excited about merchant adoption. Seeing companies like PayPal get onboard, it will continue to snowball from there. I’m interested in seeing what the price will be a year from now.
Speaking of PayPal, some people have considered it a negative thing since they’ve been tied quite a bit to money censorship like the situation Wikileaks faced back in 2010. Many people see Bitcoin as the solution to this sort of thing. Do you think there could be drawbacks to PayPal joining the Bitcoin sphere?
PayPal is already restrictiong things. They approve anything getting sent through their platform, and they’ll probably do the same thing with Bitcoin, they’ll probably have to approve any Bitcoin transactions.
But if people want to use another mechanism, another service, they can do it. They don’t have to use PayPal. I don’t think it will affect things too negatively.
Earlier, you mentioned you were interested in seeing what Bitcoin will be worth a year from now. What do you think of the recent Bitcoin price drop? Does the price of Bitcoin have much to do with its success?
I’m perplexed actually, I have no idea why the price has fallen. I don’t really think about it much anymore though. In my head Bitcoin is still $1200. That’s the highest it has been, and that’s what I value my coins at.
It could be people manipulating it, it could be a number of things. I don’t really care to speculate much.
I see it as an amazing system, and as more and more people get onboard, the price will inevitably go up because there’s a fixed supply.
Do you play with any altcoins?
No, I don’t have time to be focusing on altcoins. I bought some Litecoin back in the day when it was a few dollars. I should have sold it when it was $50!
And finally, what do you think is the biggest barrier to Bitcoin right now? What’s stopping us from taking things to the next level?
I think it needs to be simpler for people. If we can get to the point where people don’t even know they’re using Bitcoin and it’s just easy rather than having to put in their credit card information, make it easier to bring on more brick-and-mortar locations, that will help.
It’s just about tools. Tools to make it easier to use Bitcoin. It’s like showing people how to use email back in the day, or when cell phones came out. It’s just going to be second nature to people in the near future.
Anthony Di Iorio: "Blockchain Technology Will Help Ease The Transition Toward Decentralization"
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