Bobby Lee, co-founder of BTCC, explains why he's a Bitcoin maximalist despite holding other cryptocurrencies. He argues Bitcoin works best as a long-term store of value and payment across distance, and regrets spending multiple bitcoins on office pizza years ago when they were worth far less.
How many bitcoins do you spend to buy pizza for the whole office? I'm a bitcoin maximalist and then I'm going to try to start and write a book about bitcoin.
Hi, I'm Molly, I'm here with cointelegraph and we're also speaking to Bobby Lee, who's the co founder of BTCC and a board member at the Bitcoin Foundation. So first of all, welcome to BlockShare Europe.
Thank you. Molly.
My first question for you is if you could tell me a little bit about what you're doing at BTCC now in regards to regulation in China, how the mission has changed from when you first started and up until today.
Yeah, so BTCC actually got acquired. An investment group in Hong Kong acquired the company late last year and closed early this year. So there's a new management in place. So I've stayed on as advisor to the company. So I'm just helping them out on some strategic projects. So in terms of their actual day to day stuff, I don't have that visibility to share.
So what are you doing now then instead?
So this is my gap year, taking some time off, I'm speaking at conferences, I'm going to play some poker at the World Series Poker this year in Las Vegas and then I'm going to try to start and write a book about bitcoin.
Oh really?
Yeah, yeah.
What inspired you to want to write a book about bitcoin?
You know, I think this year I finally have more time on my hands. I've always wanted to potentially write a book, be an author and given all the knowledge about bitcoin and crypto that have accumulated over the last few years. And I have a certain insider's perspective on this cryptocurrency and having a lot of experience speaking at conferences, you know, talking to people, answering their questions. I have a unique perspective into what kind of questions they ask. So I want to put that all together into a book and basically it will be for the general audience, for the uninitiated, if you will, to explain the impact of bitcoin, why it's meaningful to our society and what the future is.
So what's the question you get the most asked at the conferences then?
In crypto conferences people ask me about what's my price prediction, what assets I hold, what crypto coins I hold. And people also ask about, they ask why is bitcoin valuable when governments don't endorse it? Or that's the sort of negative perspective the non believers think that for crypto to have a future, governments have to endorse it or support it. So those are the questions I get.
So, speaking off of that, you've said in some interviews that one of the reasons bitcoin is not a bubble is because it has inherent utility. Could you expand more about that?
Yeah, absolutely. Bitcoin's utility is that now, again, the utility is only to the eye of the beholder who finds it useful. But bitcoin is very, very useful as a form of payment for people who are separated by distance or by time. So. Meaning that if people want to send large or small amounts of money when they're geographically part, usually long distances, across time zones, across countries and jurisdictions, Bitcoin is a very efficient way to send value across, as long as both people value bitcoin and understand that its market price varies. So they were good on price and they could send the amount of bitcoins and get that invoice or payment paid. So it's very useful. And bitcoin is also useful for sending through time. If you think about bitcoin investors, people like myself and possibly you and others who invest in bitcoin, what we're really doing is we're saying, let me put in $1,000 into this Bitcoin machine and I will send it to my future 10 years later.
It's an interesting way to think about it.
Or five years later or two years later. Right. It doesn't work for the short term because then it's very volatile. If I send it to me a week later, I open it up and sell the bitcoin a week later, it might not achieve $1,000, but certainly five years, 10 years. Now we're talking where it could be worth a lot. So that's the investment sort of through time aspect of bitcoin.
So do you consider yourself a bitcoin purist? Because you said once in an interview that you wouldn't touch any other altcoins, but you did say, maybe I'll change my mind in the future. So have you changed your mind?
Yeah. So bitcoin, I've said that many times, both in recent times and over the years. I'm a bitcoin maximalist. I think that's what they call a purist. But the only four coins I have and hold are bitcoin, bitcoin cash, Litecoin and ethereum. So those are the only things I hold. So everything else I consider an altcoin, and of course, the tokens themselves, I don't touch decentralized tokens. Issued by companies and groups. I don't touch. Yeah.
Going back to the beginning about your work for btcc, so you've had experience working in China and now in the past few months there's been a lot of really strict regulations that have been forcing crypto companies out. Do you think that in the future China will ever be more open and welcoming to the crypto community?
It's possible. I've said this before and sometimes people take it the wrong way. So I think China certainly has room to change their policies. It could happen within a few months or could take a few years, it could take decades. So, you know, China is a mystery when it comes to regulation and policies. Because of the form of government being that kind of government, it's not very transparent in terms of what they want to do with crypto. So nothing's permanent in China. Even like the one child policy eventually got overturned after many decades. So the bitcoin, the outright ban on bitcoin exchanges, the lack of licensing, the lack of regulation, decriminalization of some of the activities around bitcoin, I think, I think that's here to stay for the short term, but it's hard to say if that will get lifted anytime soon.
Do you see any countries that are doing it right with regulation?
None of the big countries or none of the big sort of popular famous countries are doing it right yet. I think it's a very tough terrain to navigate, if you will. So some of the small countries who are more risk prone, they're doing it right, they're doing it by the laissez faire approach. You know, they're welcoming companies to set up jurisdiction in that country and to set up entities and licensing and all that. So some are doing it more aggressively than others. And I expect. And that's just how things are because different countries will choose different paths, whether they take a strong adoption approach or where they take a more reserved sort of wait and see approach. I think China's of the wait and see approach.
All right, and the last question, really recently it was the celebration of Bitcoin Pizza day.
Yeah.
So my question is, what's your favorite kind of pizza?
My favorite pizza is pepperoni, Pepperoni and cheese.
And have you ever used bitcoin to buy a pizza?
I haven't used. So what we did do is we last year at btcc, I think we spent like, I think it was. We did it two years in a row and they did it again this year. It was like, how many bitcoins do you spend to buy pizza for the whole office. And at one point, it's like over five bitcoins. And last year may have been like three or two or three bitcoins. And this year, certainly less than one bitcoin.
Yeah, of course.
So it's been amazing to see that coming from, what is it, 10,000 Bitcoin.
10,000 Bitcoin for two pieces.
Now down to just less than 1 Bitcoin to feed the whole office. Right? Yeah.
All right, great. Thank you so much for speaking with us.
Thank you.
Molly Cointelegraph, like subscribe and Hodl.
