CoinTelegraph interview with BTCC CEO Bobby Lee

BTCC, founded in June 2011, is one of the earliest Bitcoin exchanges. Currently, BTCC mining pool ranks second in China. BTCC leads all aspects of the Bitcoin ecosystem, providing digital currency exchanges, mining pools, payment gateways, user wallets and blockchain engraving services.

BTCC is headquartered in Shanghai and serves global customers. With its security, risk aversion, credibility and technological innovation, it has become an industry leader. BTCC's mission is to provide the most reliable and convenient digital currency services to the world.

BTCC co-founder Bobby Lee and his brother Litecoin founder Charlie Lee are both recognized as the writers of Bitcoin history, and both have extensive knowledge in the field of cryptocurrency.

Brothers Bobby and Charlie Lee were born in Côte d'Ivoire and grew up in the United States with their parents. They were the first Chinese to work in Africa in the 1960s. After growing up in Africa, they came to the United States to study. After graduating from college, both worked in large IT companies: Charlie at Google and Bobby at Yahoo.

Bobby is the co-founder and CEO of BTCC and a director of the Bitcoin Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting Bitcoin around the world.

CoinTelegraph conducted an exclusive interview with Li Qiyuan on the development prospects of BTCC and Bitcoin.

CoinTelegraph (CT): Since you founded BTCC in 2011, a lot of money has circulated through it, but people's trust in Bitcoin was far less than it is today. So how confident were you in the success of Bitcoin when you founded BTCC?

Li Qiyuan: When I founded BTCC, few people in China knew about Bitcoin. Only a small number of people who were enthusiastic about Bitcoin really understood it. Early Bitcoin miners used it to trade with early adopters. As early as 2013, when I was in private contact with friends and at some parties I attended, I always asked them if they had heard of Bitcoin. After asking, there was a silence. It was obvious that no one had heard of Bitcoin. Despite this, I still had confidence. Because I knew it was only a matter of time before people accepted Bitcoin. First we have to learn more about it before we can finally trust it.

CT: Does BTCC have mining machines?

Li Qiyuan: BTCC does not have mining machines, and we are not Bitcoin miners. BTCC operates a mining pool, which loosely brings together some Bitcoin miners (these miners own mining machines). They can pool resources to mine together and share risks and benefits. The miners of the BTCC mining pool are distributed all over the world, and most of them are concentrated in China.

CT: Do you plan to expand the size of your company’s mining pool, or maintain the current computing power?

Li Qiyuan: We have been encouraging more miners to use our mining pool services because we can provide the most reliable mining pool platform and maintain the best payment level in the industry; no matter what the luck is, we can guarantee risk-free payment based on the share. We distinguish ourselves from other competitors because we can ensure transparency of hash power and fee structure, ensuring that our customers get the most Bitcoin from their hash power, no matter how much hash power they have. Welcome to experience our mining pool service.

CT: If the mining reward per Bitcoin is reduced from 25 Bitcoin to 12.5 Bitcoin, how do you think the Bitcoin price will change? How will it affect miners? Do you think this will reduce miners' profits? Will the number of network nodes suddenly drop?

Li Qiyuan: If the profit per block is halved next year, it would be exciting news to me. This will be another milestone in the early application of Bitcoin around the world, because it is only the second time that the block reward has been halved. After that, people will think that the price of Bitcoin will rise and the issuance of Bitcoin will decrease. I tend to agree with this view because it will further remind people that the supply of Bitcoin will be limited to 21 million. For miners, if the price increase is not enough to compensate for the decrease in rewards, then the decrease in rewards means a decrease in income. This means that some miners will think that it will no longer be profitable to operate mining machines, and they will shut down these equipment, so the overall network hash rate will temporarily decrease, but this will not affect the number of nodes in the Bitcoin network.

CT: How long does it take for a mining machine to become obsolete? What happens to old mining machines?

Li Qiyuan: It's hard to say. If the electricity consumption exceeds the profit of Bitcoin, it is not cost-effective to use the old mining machine. Usually, when a machine is scrapped, it will be sold many times in the market and used in areas with free or low-cost electricity. In areas with free electricity, the mining machine can be used unlimitedly, so the bottleneck is the fixed asset investment and daily operating expenses; of course, the electricity bill is also.

CT: Bitcoin's biggest advantage is decentralization, but from another perspective, this is also a shortcoming. In fact, precisely because it is not owned by anyone, no one will spend money to promote it - this is one of the reasons why it is still unknown to many people. It is true that word of mouth is not as effective as professionally planned marketing, and some small companies have also made some investments and promotions in Bitcoin, and have indeed received good returns, but these are only local and small success stories. It can be promoted on a larger scale, but this requires more investment. Do you think that large companies in the industry like yours should hold some marketing activities together? After all, you are still the biggest beneficiaries of the rise in the value of Bitcoin.

Li Qiyuan: Bitcoin is for everyone, in the sense that it belongs to everyone; a gift from Satoshi. We all have a choice whether to use Bitcoin or not. Bitcoin is great because it is decentralized and not controlled or traded unilaterally by any company. It is like the Internet, which allows people to relax and use it. For the Internet, many individuals and companies have discovered its value, and have built businesses and new business models around it and benefited from it. Similarly, for Bitcoin, Bitcoin companies have begun to vigorously promote it and encourage the use of this currency, and I believe that more Bitcoin companies will do so. The Bitcoin Foundation is also working on the global promotion of Bitcoin. In the end, I don’t think we will have many fancy promotional activities for Bitcoin. My reason is: the success and global application of the Internet does not lie in the promotion of the theme of “please use the Internet” or “the Internet is great”. It has its own advantages to succeed - there are many Internet companies that provide great value to users.

Bitcoin will also have such success.

Source: CoinTelegraph

Original text: bt.cc/8zq0