Australian media personality Eddie McGuire has interviewed prominent futurist Mark Pesce about cryptocurrencies on his top-rating breakfast radio show.

The ‘Footy Show’ and ‘Millionaire Hotseat’ host appeared interested, yet skeptical, as he quizzed Mr Pesce about the future of digital money.

You can listen to the interview here (skip to 4.15).

“If I want to go and buy a coffee … I can’t use my bitcoin at the moment,” McGuire said.

“The transaction is something like 17,000 times slower than Visa … and it uses more power than Switzerland.”

Co-hosts Wil Anderson (comedian) and Luke Darcy (former AFL footballer) also chimed in with questions for Pesce.

“Can you just dumb it down just for a second…? What is it?” Anderson asked.

Mr Pesce, who was promoting his new Podcast ‘Cryptonomics,’ proceeded to give the simplest answer he could before explaining how the technology is still very new.

“It’s the first version. It’s like the web in 1995,” Mr Pesce said.

“You talk to some boffins and they know what the problems are and we’re working them out.”

“The big question is when a government like Singapore or Australia or America says OK, we’re going to do that with the dollar.”

McGuire interjected by saying: “And that’s the trick isn’t it, getting the governments involved.”

McGuire then went on to ask why Satoshi Nakamoto (he slightly mispronounced his name) has remained anonymous, and whether it had anything to do with the digital currency’s use by criminals.

“It has been used for money laundering, drug trafficking, slave trading, prostitution rackets,” McGuire said.

Luke Darcy responded to that by saying: “A bit like the big four banks!”

Mark Pesce is one of Australia’s leading blockchain pioneers and has created his own cryptocurrency, but doesn’t own any bitcoin.

In the interview, he revealed that several years ago he was given a choice to be paid either AU$5,000 or 10 bitcoins for a speaking role.

He chose the Aussie dollars.

“If I had (taken the bitcoin and) sold at the height of January I would have been paid a quarter of million dollars for an afternoon’s work!” he said.