We had a chance to make an interview with Olivier Janssens early adaptor back in London at CoinSummit. Olivier started mining really early back in 2010 and really knows how to live a great life as he was the very first who used his bitcoins to travel with a private jet using privatefly.com
Bitcoinist:
Can you tell me about your $100.000 dollar offer to the crypto currency community? What was it about? What made you make that decision?
Olivier:
Yeah, I started noticing that the Bitcoin Foundation was increasingly holding Bitcoin back. I looked at it like a founding note, it’s supposed to be transparent but also bringing Bitcoin to the masses and also help the development of Bitcoin. But the problem was that it became a little bit less transparent and a little bit more political. And also the core development has really started to slack off. And if you look over there in the CoinSummit basically funding the core protocol. I think the insolve is risky, because you politicize the development process, and I think the developer should be funded by the community directly. So that is why I made the announcement about the development program a two month ago.
I didn’t know exactly what it was going to be, so I left it open. I like people bringing ideas, what the base would be. But in the end, I look at all submissions and I also start thinking about it more and more. And it also got huge distractions, so I felt like a great responsibility to make my decision. My conclusion was like what does the Bitcoin Foundation really do? Right? And I think the most important thing is funding the core developers. And I also think it’s the worst thing it is doing right now. So I mean, my current complaints, couple of months ago – I don’t know if you have heard about that – so Bitcoin development is really, almost going to a halt. It’s because the developers are underfunded. And the Bitcoin Foundation is partly or mostly responsible for that, because people rely on the foundation to fund the core devs. and announce the protocol. So I said like ok, looking at everything, I think Mike Hearn, Lighthouse, is the best solution for this, because it solves the funding of the developers, because it allows crowd funding of the developers, right?
Bitcoinist:
So lighthouse is a crowd funding platform for the developers? Can you tell us a little bit more about it please.
Olivier:
Yes, Mike Hearn was building it.He’s one of the Bitcoin core devs. So first he wasn’t planning to release it, open source it in the beginning, then he wanted to commercialize it and everything, but he won the bounty, and I talked to him upfront, like are you willing to make it open source?
Bitcoinist:
So basicly he won the bounty?
Olivier:
Yes, he won the bounty. Mike Hearn won. And he said “yeah, thanks for your bounty, now I can make it open source, from the beginning, I can release it, and I can also start doing Bitcoin core development funding on the platform. Since Mike Hearn is a core dev, it can also help get developer support. Like I asked in this conference. I don’t know if you heard my question today?
Bitcoinist:
Yes we did…
Olivier:
So I asked two of the core devs, If they were willing to join the platform? I mean, be funded by the community instead of having the Bitcoin Foundation in between, having a political organization in between as they are working on the same thing.
Why do we need the Foundation in between? And so I think they are very open to it. At least one of them.
Bitcoinist:
So were you satisfied with their answer?
Olivier:
Yes mostly. Jeff was more conservative, but the other guy was like I already want to use it for my other things there. But they are definitely open to using it. I am going to have a personal talk with them later and find out what they think. So it solves the problem.
Bitcoinist:
Lets ask a personal question to finish up the interview…what are you doing nowadays?
Olivier:
I am still investing in Bitcoin, looking for investment opportunities, I found a couple of them today. There are really interesting people here today. This conference is one of the best I ‘ve been to so far. The one, Bitcoin 2014 in Amsterdam wasn’t really good as they did not do live stream, this one is live streamed, everything, it’s great! It’s what it should be like! Because 99 percent of the people can’t come here, but they still want to be up to date on Bitcoin.
Bitcoinist:
Thank you Oliver for the interview.
Olivier:
Thank you.
Photo Sources: Google images