With cash and cards becoming obsolete, the banking and payments industry is no exception to innovation from the advent of the Internet. The mobile payments system Square is processing over $4 million in mobile payments per day and just a few blocks away in a warehouse in San Francisco’s startup district, SOMA, lives Jered Kenna, founder and CEO of one of the US’s largest Bitcoin exchanges TradeHill.com which has exchanged millions of dollars worth of Bitcoins.

Bitcoin is a decentralized, electronic money system using peer-to-peer networking to send funds anonymously,free of transaction fees, worldwide.

The currency, which began in 2009 with the issue of the first Bitcoins by creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, has had a bumpy ride, with Bitcoin’s dropping in price and Wired documenting ‘The Rise and Fall of Bitcoin,’ but Kenna, as he explains in the interview below, says Bitcoin is very much alive and gives reason why it should be the currency of the future.

Read next: Navegas is a classy, super-simple music player in your browser