The Time One Of Our Co-Hosts Launched His Own Cryptocurrency

Tracy Alloway (0:11)

Hello, and welcome to another edition of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway, and we have a very, very special episode for you today. Many of you will have been following what's been happening in the crypto currency market where Bitcoin recently dipped below $6,000 per coin. That's down from a record high of, I think it was $18,000 back in January.

And of course, lots of people scratching their heads, trying to figure out what to make of the recent price movement, and lots of people trying to figure out, still, what to make of crypto currencies in general.

So today, we have a treat for you, ladies and gentlemen. We're going to be talking with two people who set up their own crypto currency, and one of them happens to be my cohost, Joe Weisenthal. Joe, say hi.

Joe Weisenthal (1:05)

Hi, Tracy, thanks for having me on Odd Lots today.

Tracy Alloway (1:10)

Yes, a little bit of a role reversal for you there. And your partner in this cryptocurrency endeavor is also a previous guest on the Odd Lots podcast.

It's Guan Yang. He is a data scientist at a tech startup. Hi, Guan.

Guan Yang (1:25)

Hi, Tracy.

Tracy Alloway (1:26)

So in that brief intro, I mentioned that you had set up your own cryptocurrency. Do either of you want to sort of set the stage for when you did this and why you decided to do it?

Joe Weisenthal (1:39)

Well, Guan, what year was that?

Guan Yang (1:41)

It was in January of 2014 It was a time when it felt like everyone was setting up their own cryptocurrency. And a lot of these were vanity currencies. There was, do you recall Coin Yay West, which didn't really get to actually launch. And as I remember the story, I was on vacation in Arizona and you DM'd me and said, there's all these people setting up their own cryptocurrency and there are journalists doing it. And this is a big problem because you wanted to be the first.

Joe Weisenthal (2:10)

Yeah, I don't remember. I remember like over New Year's vacation at around end of 2013, beginning of 2014, I had this idea. It's like, oh, I should launch a cryptocurrency. And then I thought, you know who would be really interested because he's really fun and he has a great sense of humor and a say yes to new projects, Joa De Veev would be Guan. So I messaged Guan, I said, Guan, let's launch our own cryptocurrency. And we did it.

Guan Yang (2:41)

We did, yeah. And I think we got ahead of at least the other cryptocurrencies in media at least.

Tracy Alloway (2:47)

Guan, as soon as you said that Joe needed to be first, I started laughing because that's the Joe that I recognize. Okay, so you make this decision to do it, but it can't be that easy, right? You have to actually figure out how your cryptocurrency is going to work. So how did you go about doing that?

Guan Yang (3:05)

So at the time in January 2014, there were actually people trying to make it easier. I found this paid service and I actually paid them amount of Bitcoin that would probably be worth thousands today. Dude, I'm sorry.

And it was like a cryptocurrency as a service. You know, you paid them some Bitcoin, you put in the name of your cryptocurrency and the way that it would work and they would create it for you. It turned out that it didn't work that well.

So, you know, like any good artist, I decided to steal something that already existed. And the most obvious choice was this cryptocurrency that was quite popular back then and it's still pretty popular, I think, called Dogecoin. Is that how you would pronounce it, Joe?

Joe Weisenthal (3:47)

Yeah, Dogecoin.

Guan Yang (3:48)

Yeah, Dogecoin is based on a meme of this particular Shiba Inu that's kind of a fox-like Japanese dog breed that's like the Instagram version of a corgi, becoming more popular in the US., by the way.

And there was a particular Japanese Shiba named Kabosu who became a meme. There were all these captions like wow and such something, very something.

Joe Weisenthal (4:11)

Such moon.

Guan Yang (4:12)

Exactly, yeah. And obviously when that happened in 2013, someone had to create a cryptocurrency based on this poor dog.

Joe Weisenthal (4:21)

Well, and the other thing is you mentioned stealing, but all these currencies, the code is open for the most part. So Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin, which I think is based on Litecoin, all you have to do in a way is copy and paste the code and then change a few parameters, maybe change the name and essentially, everyone's kind of copying off of everyone.