Cointelegraph had the opportunity to sit down and talk with Mark Edge, the l & # 39; man who introduced Roger Ver to Bitcoin and the host of Free Talk Live radio. It was hard to miss Mark at the North American Bitcoin conference, he was dressed in a suit and looked like a Monty Python and Holy Grail doubler. But unlike Monty Python, Mark is not a joke.

Mark's Free Live Talk is one of the first media to cover Bitcoin. Most publications have not resumed Bitcoin until around 2013 – with the exception of Wired, who published a Bitcoin story in 2011. That being said, Mark was one of the first members of the cryptos community

involved with Bitcoin in February 2011 when Bitcoin's lead developer – Gavin Andresen – made contact with Mark. Gavin Andresen is a Princeton-based software developer in 1988 and has been named as the lead developer of the benchmark implementation by Satoshi Nakamoto.

Lunch at the Thai Garden

Gavin sent Mark an email on February 8, 2011 saying that he wanted to lunch with Mark to discuss a "new currency". The two chose a date and when that date arrived, Mark met Gavin at Thai Garden in Keene, New Hampshire, USA. Andresen began by giving Mark the details of the new currency and for the first time in his life Mark heard the word Bitcoin.

Although the world of digital assets continues to confuse people today, in 2011 really a completely foreign concept. When Gavin and Mark had lunch, Bitcoin was only two years old and had not even crossed the threshold of $ 1. Mark asked Gavin questions like "What is it?" it? "And" What if the government tried to shoot it? "But at the end of the conversation, Gavin managed to convince Mark that Bitcoin had some viability.

At the end of the meal, Andresen wanted to pay Mark to Bitcoin for the food they ate. Andresen sent Mark 47 BTC for his meal – Bitcoin was 27 cents a piece at that time and the total came to about 12 dollars.

<img alt=" Screenshot "src =" http://cointelegraph.com/storage/uploads/view/965a34c5b0fe9393ecab4f4b02fde94f.png "title =" Screenshot "/>

<img alt=" Screenshot Screen "src =" http://cointelegraph.com/storage/uploads/view/41f62df970b481673d96cd7d379ff070.png "title =" Screenshot "/>

<img alt=" Chart" src Back to the list of the author

MyBitcoinWallet?

As you can see in their email conversation above, Mark's wallet at the time was MyBitcoin.com – a July 29, 2011 , the company closed the website when they realized that their system had been hacked, claiming that the site was hacked by Canadian hackers, were able to get out of it. with 51% of the collective wealth on MyBitcoin.

On August 4, 2011, the website reopened to publish an incident report giving users an overview of the security breach. A few days later, MyBitcoin issued a statement saying that 51% of all funds had been stolen, that MyBitcoin was going to go into receivership, and that they would start returning 49% of the users' wealth to each user.

Roger on the radio

The same day Mark had lunch with Gavin, Mark went home, did some research, and spoke of Bitcoin that night on the radio. It's just happened that Roger Ver, the former CEO of MemoryDealers.com, was in the audience. Roger heard Mark talking about Bitcoin and started to be interested in the new currency

<img alt=" Screenshot "src =" http://cointelegraph.com/storage/uploads/view/7202679c004c27ee0f29b667d79b80a1. png "title =" Screenshot "/>

At the time, Roger was broadcasting ads on memory talk live for memorydealers.com, but after inquiring more deeply about Bitcoin, Roger has contacted Free Talk Live to change its publicity advertising Memorydealers.com, Ver became interested in advertising Bitcoin on Free Talk Live radio instead.

<img alt=" Screenshot "src =" http: // cointelegraph.com/storage/uploads/view/0068e239b3e6741790d5cf479d24890b.png "title =" Screen Capture "/>

<img alt=" Screenshot" src = "http://cointelegraph.com/storage/ uploads / view / 7cd2907936e0f17df39f77c115ad2acc.png "title =" Screenshot "/>

<img alt=" Screensho t "src =" http://cointelegraph.com/storage/uploads/view/3c63840273910deb4df9ef35a0 2baf9b.png "title =" Screenshot "/>

<img alt=" Screenshot" src = " http://cointelegraph.com/storage/uploads/view/521f5856c7430a1eacc2388d38378cc3.png "title =" Screen Capture "/>

<img alt=" Screenshot" src = "http: // cointelegraph. com / storage / uploads / view / b92acfd86094b5a4ca283c8b3e693516.png "title =" Screen Capture "/>

Free Live Talk has accepted Bitcoin from their advertisers right now. From the first run up to $ 1,000, Free Talk Live received about 50% of their revenue in Bitcoin. But after the Mt. Gox Incident, advertisers have retreated from using cryptocurrency for around three years. Now that the market is strengthened from the moment it crashed in 2014, Mark estimates that nearly 85% of its advertisers pay in cryptocurrency.

A small station made a big difference

As small as it may sound, the fact that Roger Ver stumbled on Bitcoin while listening to a Free Talk Live show has a great importance for the # 39, state of the industry today. Like him or not, Roger Ver is a big name in Bitcoin. Roger Ver was one of the first to realize that Bitcoin was going to become a revolutionary software and used that knowledge to spread the word and invest in Bitcoin-related companies as early as 2011.

For example, Roger has invested $ 1 million USD in Blockchain-related start-ups like Ripple, Blockchain.info, Bitpay and Kraken when these projects were in their infancy, and created platforms like Bitcoinstore.com, which allows users to get started. To buy consumer products with Bitcoin. Being a pioneer in the world of cryptocurrencies earned Roger the title "Bitcoin Jesus". In 2012, he was one of five founders of the Bitcoin Foundation, an organization created to standardize, protect and promote the use of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

If Roger had never learned Bitcoin by Free Talk Live, it's possible that some of the major developments and industry leaders in the space that received Roger's investments have never been realized. If it was not for Mark and Free Talk Live, maybe Roger would never have learned from Bitcoin and would not have been an early investor in companies like BitInstant BitInstant Exchange.

About Mark

<img alt=" Mark Edge "src =" http://cointelegraph.com/storage/uploads/view/1ff1ff211c127241b38ee1565ebae923.jpg "title =" Mark Edge "/

Photo by Louis Kang of NoLedge Productions

Mark thinks that Bitcoin is a fiduciary currency because it is not supported by any One of the main reasons why Mark supports Bitcoin is that the government is not able to produce more Bitcoin to fund new wars. "Bitcoin, Mark has paid close attention to alternative currencies like the Liberty Dollar

Mark is currently a hog farmer in New Hampshire – a place where Mark says activists deal daily with cryptocurrency.

"It was so I had hired someone to do work on my farm and I l I offered They would overthrow me, they would let me go. Now that I offer crypto, people are happy to take it.

As digital currencies became more popular, Mark discovered that more people were calling to talk about their thoughts and ask questions about cryptocurrency.