That was my big question and it must be said that Russ is not the easiest guy to get talk time with and so you always have to be very clear about what you discuss and what you prioritise in the time he can give you. I do feel extremely lucky to get access at all, especially as I am not exactly sitting within an active team right now.
I get this access only because it was Russ himself that directly recruited me to Bitclub (although I should immediately stress that he is not my direct up-line). But I would not have been involved with Bitcoin had I not met and spoken with him back in June 2015 in Lisbon.
Given his normal time constraints, and the inevitable issues of time difference between here and wherever he normally is, I need to grab what time I can. And the last thing I wanted to do was to give him the impression that all I wanted to talk about, having found him with a little time, were problems and issues. As obvious and irritating as the problems can be, I really did want to know about the current vision for the future more than I wanted to know about admin and support. But I did have that discussion with him towards the end of our time talking.
And here's where I was really lucky this time around with the communication. I actually caught him, in traffic in Los Angeles - gridlocked (as ever the freeways around L.A. City centre are). So I had a captive audience that I only had to share with a passing CHIP. That's a Californian Highway Patrolman for the uninformed. That was quite amusing as I heard a voice below out over the traffic noise "Hey man great car, I love these!"
There's me cuddling a glass of Jack Daniels and wondering if the temperature was ever going to increase again above 5% and him sat in a white open-top Ferrari chill-in out in 70% plus degrees in traffic. Hell, if you're going to have to sit in traffic, isn't that just the way to do it.
Just the shock of talking to Russ while he was in the States was enough. He hasn't been there for over two years (you can normally find him dragging a suitcase behind him somewhere between India and Japan or Indonesia and Korea.
So, to get properly started, I am going to tell you first about the stuff that almost certainly will not now be up there on Bitclubs radar and why. And then I am going to explain why Russ is very excited about the future (probably in the next issue because of how much I have to say in total). And, yes, I am going to spend a little time discussing admin, technical and support issues in between those two.
BITCOIN ATM's - Russ and his partner Matt personally invested in a bunch of Bitcoin ATM's and still, in fact, have a few (2 or 3 - I guess that means) left that were never sited. There has been a sea change in what trends with Bitcoin and where the Crypto world is going. When the costs were properly analysed in detail against future ATM profit potential, once some machines were placed. The conclusion was soon made that there simply wouldn't be viable profits in the future in the ATM idea. Certainly not to the degree that was hoped for. Demand for the machines, wherever they were placed, proved to be less popular than anticipated.
Not because people didn't want access to Bitcoin, simply because Bitcoin can now be spent so easily using plastic cards. After, that's what I do so I don't need any convincing of that.
Clearly, given the influence the guy has with members, especially in the Far East and Bitclub booming territories he could easily have sold the remaining machines. But he told me that he cannot do that, he does actually care what people get into and he wants to help us, the members, make money not lose money. And when you talk to Russ, when you really talk to him. You know what he says is genuine. I knew that from the very time I spoke to him but, in the silence sometimes you forget these things.
Trading Software - Almost certainly now, not going to happen. This certainly will not happen in the format that they were originally going with and, frankly, the so called "self-learning" auto trading bot started to show signs of frequent fallibility which could have lost members money after all. Russ and Matt lost money during copious testing, us members did not. Demonstrating once again that these guys really do care about what happens to us.
Is the possibility of a trading side to what Bitclub do now totally dead and buried? Not totally, if the right opportunity rears its head they will be watching and anything Crypto that is good for us Bitclub members will be on the table soon enough but there is nothing on the horizon right now.
These guys are not just focused on Bitcoin by the way. They are watching other Cryptocurrencies very closely. Some make Russ laugh with how stupid they are. Some do capture his imagination. One newish coin that is storming the market right now really makes him angry and also makes him laugh at the same time. I can't be bothered to name it, many of you will guess based on conversations we may have had on a one to one basis what it is.
Let's just say that he believes (as I do) that whether this coin succeeds or not out there or proves to be genuine or not, their approach to market is designed to separate people from their cash and make a lucky few very wealthy while the majority get nothing but shafted!
But the view at Bitclub Network is very clear. For them to show an interest in an emerging Crypto it must have the following attributes to even get a cursory glance:
1) It must be developed and then launched as a pure de-centralised currency, in the public domain, that no one man or company can control.
2) Proof of Stake is obviously OK as long as the coin is available in the public domain to trade and stake as soon as it is launched.
3) It should not be manipulated through some long-term (or short term) pre-launch whilst the developers take in money for supposed shares or licences ahead of it actively being traded.
4) Whilst you can never take the speculation out of Crypto currency and money invested into it should be an investment in the currency itself with the potential for a return through either increasing numbers of the coin being generated through the one-time investment (i.e. staking or mining) or through an increase in its value per coin.
5) It must be obvious what you are getting in terms of its potential from the start. Using Bitclub as an example, you know how much a mining share costs and you know that whatever Bitclub successfully mines is shared accordingly and you will receive some of the reward.
Is it possible that a coin could emerge that takes over from Bitcoin? Not likely, but it is possible that other coins will emerge that could capture the imagination and also grow to become great investments. Whatever happens, even if another Crypto were to emerge that became more valuable than Bitcoin, it isn't as if Bitcoin is likely to disappear as a result.
Russ is convinced, really convinced, that ETH (Ethereum) and ZEC (ZCash) really could be two of the leaders in the future but he does also have half an eye on some other emerging coins. It is very interesting to note of course that those two (ETH and ZEC) are combining currently on a new project.
And what of ClubCoin? Russ is as positive today about Clubcoin as I have ever heard him. He also reveals a little frustration about how long Coinpay is taking to finally get launched as he believes that Clubcoin needs Coinpay out there for its big growth to commence. At the moment, Clubcoin's value is all about supply and demand or rather really demand. There are so many more would be buyers of Clubcoin out there than would be sellers and the buyers just can't get enough of it.
So, let us get to those Admin/technical/support issues. The state of the site and the ongoing issues they've had is very much in the forefront of the driving teams' mind. What we don't get is the absolute extent of the attacks being made on Bitclub and the incredible efforts that people are going to on our behalf to keep us safe.
Once Russ laid it on the table for me, I could easily understand how tough a job is it to keep the hackers at bay. We still haven't entirely patched up and moved past the really big hack attack from early November. This has halted a lot of the planned developments on site. So many site improvement and marketing projects have had to be put to one side to focus all efforts on site security. And the attacks show no sign of easing up any time soon.
First off, we should all know that this isn't a case of the odd kid with something to prove having a good old go at hacking Bitclub. They get attacked pretty constantly by some serious teams of hardcore hackers and they manage to keep them all out. Russ tells me that they would bolster their defences even further, and increase the site support staff and do everything they want to do at a much faster pace IF they could only get the people they need to do this.
They can't get enough good people no matter what they do and the demands on those technical and support staff they have are astronomical. Many of them have to multi-task into support capacities even though they are contracted to as coders and scripters (did I just make that word up? Not sure).
With them working flat out, it is still proving hard to get to all the support back-log queries they have and we all maybe need to be a little patient. Especially as many of the problems being encountered now are self-inflicted problems. Be sure, before you report a support issue, that you have tried all the obvious possibilities first.
It is easy to make a mistake, miss a step, forget that you set up Google Authenticator on the account and so on. I've made such errors myself. In between batting off the hacker attacks there is still some improvement work going on but it is very slow progress and an uphill struggle.
I am going to call that an end to issue 75 (that's enough for one hit I think) and you're going to have to wait for 76 before I share Russ's views on where Bitclub is going and how that makes me feel. I will try not to keep you waiting too long. | 
