Having rubbed shoulders with the likes of Bono at last week's Web Summit, Gavin Andresen spoke briefly with CNBC.
CNBC: We're now joined by Gavin who is the head of the Bitcoin Foundation. We've seen bitcoin fluctuate a lot over the past one year, do you still see value in that currency and where do you see it headed from here?
Gavin Andresen: I absolutely see value, I think you can expect to see continuing fluctuation. I come from the startup world where high tech startups often fail. You can think of Bitcoin as like a high tech startup in currency. I don't think it will fail but I think we will see lots of chaos and drama as the Bitcoin ecosystem works itself out.
CNBC: Well, there's so many cryptocurrencies as they call it, there's Litecoin1 among others, why do you think Bitcoin will be the one that survives?
Gavin Andresen: Well, Bitcoin has a huge network effect so the more people who accept bitcoin as payment, the more people want to hold bitcoin because there are things you can buy, that inspires other people to accept bitcoin for payment, so you have this nice network effect that makes people want to use the leading currency and Bitcoin is the leading cryptocurrency.
CNBC: Does it bother you that we've never been able to really have a conversation with the founder of Bitcoin, he stays behind the doors.
Gavin Andresen: It doesn't bother me. I'm a high tech guy, ideas and code matter to me. Who came up with that idea, who wrote the code, just doesn't matter to me as much. I know a lot of people are really interested in it but the code is the code, it does what it says.
CNBC: Tell us about your foundation, how are you trying to capitalise on Bitcoin?
Gavin Andresen: The foundation is a non-profit member organisation, anybody actually can join the foundation either as a company or as an individual. The purpose of the foundation is to help make Bitcoin successful. So they do things like pay me a salary so that I can be the Chief Scientist of the Bitcoin Foundation and just support the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Scamcoin. ↩