A pioneer of the world of cryptocurrency in France, The House of Bitcoin is the one by whom it all started. She relies on proximity and pedagogy to serve her main business: selling you bitcoins.
If you have trouble realizing how a bitcoin can be worth $ 10,000, put yourself in the shoes of those who tried to understand the phenomenon in the early years. How can a sequence of 0 and 1 have so much value? An American, Mike Caldwell, has done much to improve understanding. In 2011, he created a business of real parts that contained the cryptographic coordinates of bitcoins. You could see them because they are often used to illustrate newspaper articles. Mike Caldwell started from the realization that the audience needed to physically feel a bitcoin to value it. For Bitcoin House, founded in Paris in 2014, it's a bit the same thing: it is the first European physical counter for the purchase and sale of cryptocurrencies. She is one of the precursors and her popularity goes beyond our borders.
"One of our goals is to educate the general public," explains his co-founder Eric Larchevêque. "This technology is complex, and it is with this complexity in mind that we chose this name that sounds very traditional and welcoming. We wanted to reassure people, to show them that we can talk about bitcoin and blockchain with simple words ". Apart from its brokerage business (also present online with Coinhouse), the House organizes twice-weekly free Q & A sessions open to all. They are led by Manuel Valente, Eric Larchevêque's immediate acolyte and current director of the company. We meet 95% of men but all ages and all social categories are represented. These events were victims of their success during the peak recorded by bitcoin prices in the second quarter of 2017: they were all full! The affluence has since been reduced at the same time that the course relapsed. But many thousands of Internet users continue to follow their retransmissions on Facebook and YouTube
EDUCATION OF THE PUBLIC PRIORITIZED
This year, the House sees even bigger: it organizes a tour in several major cities (Nantes, Lyon, Marseilles, Bordeaux, Lille, Toulouse, Brussels) between March and May to raise public awareness of cryptocurrencies. The goal is to introduce the technology and answer the questions of neophytes. If the curious can then buy some bitcoins or ethers to finance the initiative, it will not hurt ...
Today, Bitcoin House is 16 people full time, 87,000 transactions recorded last year and a global volume of 46 million euros. The small company is located in the heart of the "Silicon Sentier" in the IInd arrondissement of the capital. It is remunerated by charging commissions on exchanges. Depending on the amount of cryptocurrency you buy (or sell), you get 4.9% (or 3.9% if you sell) and the lump sum of 9.90 euros (only if you go through the shop). This is rather expensive compared to the prices charged by online competition. "It is sometimes forgotten, but offering a physical place at a significant cost," says Brian O'Hagan, the communications manager. "Our team also spends time studying the receipts of funds from customers (note: from 10.000 euros). It is an initiative of transparency decided on our own ", adds this graduate of Sciences-Po, arrived at the end of 2017 to support the rapid development of the company.
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THE CRADLE OF THE FRENCH ECOSYSTEM
Originally, the House is a project of technophiles born in 2014. "With Eric, we just sell Priceing (editor's note: a comparator that scans the barcode of a product and lets you know if it is sold cheaper in the surroundings), "remembers Manuel Valente," he had a global vision of bitcoin, I was particularly interested in its cryptographic aspect ".
The two engineers start by building mining machines, these very powerful computers that validate transactions on the bitcoin network. "Even in the middle of winter, we lived in a t-shirt with the windows open so it was hot in the premises," he remembers. This activity is only valid for a time because the sector is ultra-competitive. They quickly decide to build a more pragmatic business in which they are sure to win every time: broker. Their goal does not stop there: the two engineers install in their premises a space of co-working for the young shoots. At the time, France is totally devoid of blockchain companies, the technology behind bitcoin.
Several hackathons, competitions between developers to solve computer problems, are organized in this bubbling environment. The start-up Ledger was born this way at the end of 2014. It is now the world's leading manufacturer of physical cryptocurrency portfolios (one million units sold in 2017 at around 90 euros each). The company is headed by the same Eric Larchevêque. Ledger raised 61 million real euros mid-January and asserts itself as one of the most beautiful French nuggets.
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WHAT DESTINY?
Unlike Ledger, the House, whose Eric Larchevêque is still the largest shareholder, is not yet glitzy enough to open its capital to large investors: its crypto-broker activity is not framed in France and suffers of the sulfurous reputation of bitcoin. "No French bank has agreed to open an account, we had to go to Germany for that", regrets his new CEO Nicolas Louvet. The company's leaders are now fighting tooth and nail to urge the government to legislate. If possible in their meaning: they want a certification to prove to their interlocutors that their activity is legal and that the origin of the funds they handle is transparent. They also argue for a moderate tax on gains from cryptocurrency (some customers are taxed at 60% while traditional shares are capped at 30%).
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What fate awaits the House, while Poloniex, a major US cryptocurrency exchange platform has just been bought for $ 400 million? "For now, the question of a sale is totally irrelevant," said Brian O'Hagan. "On the other hand it is possible that we arouse marks of interest if we become one of the first structures to receive an approval of the authorities", he blows maliciously. An epilogue that would, for sure, make good accounts of crypto.