Exclusive Interview With Bitcoin Pioneer Nick Spanos

In the recent World Blockchain Summit in Dubai, many blockchain industry leaders visited the CoinQuora media lounge. Bitcoin Pioneer Nick Spanos visited us and gave us some insights into Bitcoin and his many other projects.

Q. As one of the earlier adopters of Bitcoin, can you tell us the difference with Bitcoin back then? And Bitcoin now?

Well back then, you know, when we traded Bitcoin people thought we were trading drugs. And we thought we were criminals for trading Bitcoin, even though we weren’t, we just saw the future and everyone else didn’t. So yes, in the beginning, we traded in the back alleys. We traded on the northside of Union Square Park, under Abe Lincoln had a statue on the northside and the southside was George Washington, but we couldn’t be in the southside. There were too many people. So we’d meet on Mondays at 6pm. And in the northside of the park and trade.

You know, Bitcoin was an experiment. Most of us were libertarians, we were actually staffers of Dr. Ron Paul, who ran for president a couple times. And his son, Rand Paul, and we were staffers for Ron, and he always spoke about competing currencies. As a matter of fact, when he ran, the reason why he ran for congress and became a congressperson. It’s because Nixon took us off the gold standard. And on that day, he said to his wife that he’s going to run for Congress, because he couldn’t believe what was happening. And so most of his life, or his service to society was to promote competing currencies and the perils of the Federal Reserve and to try to order. We have had a bill called ‘Order the Federal Reserve,’ who would share. We pass in the house, we try to pass to the Senate. One of the senators screwed us up. But we brought to light what was happening, and when Bitcoin came around, many of us who worked for Dr. Ron Paul, were playing with the Bitcoin and seeing how it worked, and socially see how it would work and try to, you know, it was an experiment, but to us was precious, the experiment.

It wasn’t just a toy for us. Others thought it was a toy, but not to us, because we fought many races. And even in Iowa, we were winning in Iowa. And the media came with all their lives to destroy us. And so every time we pushed him to win, the media would come to destroy, and the same thing with his son, and the same thing with a second run. And you know, the time came when I was fighting against the Federal Reserve since 1991. We had an organization called ‘End the Fed,’ and ‘Campaign for Liberty,’ and ‘Liberty HQ,’ and hundreds and even 1000s of members to promote this idea that the Federal Reserve was stealing from us, our worth as individuals, our work when the time came when Bitcoin came around. And when that came around, I knew that finally I had a weapon that they could destroy on election day. So when that happened, we all embraced it, and used that as our next candidate.

Q. How about your opinion on Bitcoin today? like we talked about back then, but what about right now?

Sure. Well, right now, I didn’t think it was gonna happen this fast. I didn’t think that people would learn this fast or amount of people would learn this fast and probably a large portion of them did not learn anything, they just see it going up and think it’s a stock and then it’s not a stock because you know, when stock goes up, they print more, but they still can’t do that with Bitcoin so they don’t know what’s going to happen. If it drops down a little. If it drops down, which it does, and then it rockets up, but and then it slowly drops down, then it rockets up, because they’re larger portions of the population of earth, find out about it and learn how to use it so they adopt it. So until there’s 100% adoption, you’ll still see these rocketing ups and those rocketing ups are when people and groups of people actually discover it and embrace it and adopt it.

Q. Do you have any comments about the regulations? Like some countries are really against Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general and some are more adopting it.

Well, the ones that are not adopting it are gonna fall behind. The ones that didn’t adopt the train stayed on the donkey. The ones that didn’t adopt, you know, Constantinople didn’t adopt the big long cannons, but Mehmet did. So, Constantinople ended up in Mehmet’s hands. And then the Orthodox Church lost considerably so whoever adopts the technologies quicker and understands the technologies that are going to be that is correct, and has gone through some vetting. Those are the countries that are gonna win.

So back in, I think, 2019 or 2018 or even early I think 2015-2016. I told, I went around with Dr. Marwan to many of the offices here and they explained the Bitcoin blockchain and here in Dubai, and the Emirates, and I said that after the Emirates adopt cryptocurrency, blockchain, Bitcoin, the Emirates will be the new Wall Street. So Wall Street’s dying. I know, I was there. I was on the New York Stock Exchange floor. You know, a few weeks ago, the only orders I heard were for two orders of dumplings. So yes, the computers are doing something that people aren’t. It’s not exciting.

There have back smoke filled rooms where they control the value of many things. Bitcoin is the people’s declaration of monetary independence. And they think the more people understand that, the more they’re attracted to it and attracted to it for a big reason. Because for the last 100 years since the Federal Reserve Act, you know, December 23, 1913, the world hasn’t been the same. And, you know, it used to be that one person in the family worked, and everyone had everything I’m talking about in the United States: two cars, a big house. And then, as time went by, the mother would work, and now everyone in the family works, and none of them have any money. So I was saying to myself, well, what happened? Did the earth lose all the food? All of a sudden, everyone has to work and there’s no money, I don’t understand what happened. All of a sudden, something has to happen that we don’t know about. But knows that back smell of that smoke filled room probably in the Federal Reserve in New York City.

In the beginning, I couldn’t talk like this, you know, I wouldn’t be around if I talked like this in the beginning. So we didn’t. It was a whisper. We couldn’t talk about this at all. We talked about the 21 million Bitcoin. And we let them think it was like baseball cards. We didn’t let them understand that there’s 100 million satoshis per Bitcoin. So their math was, oh, that 21 million. That can’t take over an economy. But it’s 21 million times 100 million. But we kept that a secret.

Q. How are you finding The World Blockchain Summit event?

Yeah, that’s incredible. You know, it’s an incredibly run event. Very professional. The timing is impecunious. And the people are, many of them are brilliant. I’m like azula. But uh, there’s so many I couldn’t believe how many people were here, today and yesterday, and from all walks of life, from all places in the world, very affluent, people from outside this industry. I can’t believe all the people that are brought together here in this one place where the future is being talked about, and understood, and a window into that future is being shown to whoever comes here, and they’ll be able to dictate and help themselves make decisions into the future of their lives.

Q. What projects are you working on right now? Is there anything people should watch out for?

Yeah, I have a lot of projects very, in twined, into the Oracle approach of solving the Oracle problem with Zap Protocol. We have many, many, many developers and many crypto economists. Many mathematicians are cryptographers. And what we’re doing is, we’re creating a platform while we create it, and we’re adding to it every day. And what that platform does is you can create validator networks, for the probability of different things in the three dimensional world to trigger financial events on the blockchain automatically.

So it’s not one person controlling your financial destiny in the transaction. But it’s data coming from different places. And the mathematics, like I said, on stage, is the same math that puts a man on the moon on the glanza rocket spaceship on a dime. On the moon, which is the math everyone uses, which is a universal language, which is why we say, Well, if an alien would show up, we would communicate with math. We believe that Well, we know that by using the same math that’s provable to trigger financial events is going to make the world a much more transparent, and the fair marketplace, embedding the monetary policy inside of the currency, instead of monetary policy or business logic coming from the outside, and waiting for a historian or lawyer or a judge to declare what the heck happened.

You won’t be able to, you’re not allowed to work outside of the parameters of that currency. And that makes it a much more understandable world for everybody. That’s where we’re building Zap Protocol zap.org. And we build a lot of it. We build Bitcoin ATMs, we have blockchain centers around the world. Dr. Marwan has his blockchain center here. And I respect Dr. Marwan for everything he’s done in the field, and he’s a good friend of mine. And we have a Bitcoin center. We opened up in 2013.

There’s a movie about banking on Bitcoin. They followed me around for a few years, I one thought I was crazy. When my family thought I was crazy. They’d set up Nick losted, we knew one day he was gonna be crazy. And now he’s crazy. He’s running around with video game money. He has incredible businesses, he threw everything away, he just lost $12 million on a real estate deal. And he doesn’t even care. The Nick is gone, we have to put them in the mental hospital now. Because he sort of has some big bush coin, Bitcoin, and its video game money. And he’s crazy. Now. While they said the same thing about Dr. Marconi. He said he’s going to talk in a box, and his voice was going to come out five miles away, and they put him in a mental hospital.

But meanwhile, when he got out, he invented the radio. So I didn’t invent anything. I just discovered what was already invented. And want to bring that up again. And then that’s where we are. So everyone out there who has an incredible idea, or an incredible passion for something or, sees the logic and something has to adopt it, grab that message and put it in their brains and forget about what everyone was saying.

My father was saying to me, there’s Milly, he goes, Oh, you’re weird what those people are saying, because there’s millions of them out there. How are you going to do that as millions, they all want to stop you to try to understand what you’re doing. If they don’t understand what they’re doing, what you’re doing. They have to stop you. Because if they don’t stop you, they’re not in control of their own world perception. So, you know, I thought I’d thrown my life away chasing after the Federal Reserve’s policies. But, uh, you know, thank you. I think I was on the right track. I’m not crazy anymore. I’m going to throw the medicine away and I’m done. Thank you so much, sir.