I came across Merkle.io while browsing through the internet. Its tagline – ‘Google for Blockchains’ caught my attention and got me digging deeper. That’s how I found Bitproof and its creator, Louison Dumont.
Our readers at NewsBTC ought to know about him and the amazing tools he is building. Therefore, we caught up with him and asked him a few questions (including a couple of generic questions that we ask everybody), and this is what he had to say. He has kept his answers short and precise and managed to convey his thoughts clearly.
Gautham: Your profile says you started coding when you were 13 years old (my bad! It says, “I discovered Bitcoin at the age of 13.” I got it mixed up.) . Please tell us a bit about yourself, how did you start and where are you now?
Louison: I started coding when I was 8 years old. I always loved computers and spent hundreds of hours on Windows Me without Internet connection. That was very frustrating, so when I got Internet, I was super excited. I just started to spend 10 hours a day on it after school. Very quickly, I wanted to create websites and use that to make money. Google taught me everything.
I discovered Bitcoin when I was 13. I mined them, traded them and since last summer I decided to stop school and dedicate the next few years of my life to cryptocurrencies.
Gautham: Tell us a little bit about your projects/company – Bitproof and Merkle.
Louison: Bitproof is a decentralized notary built on top of the Bitcoin blockchain… Merkle is a search engine for blockchains (and sidechains); it lets you search for financial data, proofs, assets, contracts in different blockchains.
Gautham: The Bitcoin space is growing fast, where do you see your ventures fitting into the overall infrastructure?
Louison: The technology behind Bitcoin is awesome. I’ve been following it for 4 years and I feel like many people are focusing too much on developing complex technologies and not enough on making those technologies easy to use for “normal people”. I believe that Bitcoin will never be successful without strong use cases and good UXs.
Gautham: Do you have a team? If yes, tell us more about them.
Louison: No, It is a one-man company.
Gautham: How does the technology work?
Louison: We put the hash of the signature of the hash of your file in the Bitcoin blockchain and we store an encrypted version of your certificate.
Gautham: What do you think of Bitcoin’s value and role in the future?
Louison: No idea for valuation, and to be honest I don’t really care. Sidechains will accelerate the development of new features and it’s going to be interesting.
Gautham: How can the community contribute to Bitcoin’s future?
Louison: Help building big things with big impacts.
Gautham: How can we find out more about your products?
Louison: You can find more at https://bitproof.io
Gautham: When can we expect Merkle to be completely functional? Is Bitproof still in development stage or is it a finished product?
Louison: Merkle will be finished in a few weeks. Bitproof is finished (I mean, it’s never finished, new features will be created over time).
Gautham: Would you like to add anything else?
Louison: I forgot to mention I was in the Great Bitcoin Incubator Boost.VC in Silicon Valley. It was founded by Adam Draper (Venture Capitalist, investor in Coinbase) and Brayton Williams (ex Harvard Ventures).
Louison gave us a brief idea about what he envisions Bitcoin technology to be in the future. He sees blockchain and sidechains to have a far greater influence on our daily lives than just playing a role in recording and validating transactions.
Our readers at NewsBTC ought to know about him and the amazing tools he is building. Therefore, we caught up with him and asked him a few questions (including a couple of generic questions that we ask everybody) , and […]