If you don't know your Bitcoin from your blockchain, or your Ethereum from your Litecoin, a new venture in Atlanta wants to intervene.
The Atlanta Bitcoin Embassy, founded by libertarian Jeffrey Tucker and modeled after spaces in Tel Aviv, Kiev, Panama and other cities, held a grand opening on June 13 at its new Midtown location at 1372 W. Peachtree St. with about 200 attendees.
"People hear that Bitcoin is for buying guns on the Silk Road," Nick Tucker, the embassy's COO and Jeffrey's son, said. "I tell people to get that out of their minds and let me send them their first few dollars in Bitcoin."
The embassy started holding weekly, casual gatherings for crypto enthusiasts in January and has an ATM in its WeWork-based office. The ATM is one of 125 Bitcoin ATMs and tellers in Atlanta, according to Coin ATM Radar.
While it hopes to educate, the embassy is steadfastly for-profit and aims to stay afloat with a mix of sponsorships, paid classes and consulting. Nick Tucker is working on a six-week crash course to help people go from zero-knowledge of crypto to being able to pitch themselves to companies for jobs in blockchain, the underlying technology that powers the money.
Tucker said Atlanta was a good fit for the embassy because of its "hustle spirit" and the amount of residents not using banks. According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, 10 percent of Atlantans were unbanked and another 26 percent were underbanked in 2015.
Tucker, a 21-year-old who skipped college and opted for an apprenticeship program called Praxis instead, may be a hard sell for those skeptical of the already fraught cryptocurrency space. He said Michael Tidwell, the chief knowledge officer, lends credibility to the embassy.
Tidwell is the organizer for the Atlanta Blockchain Meetup, which has 3,039 members and is sponsored in part by the Atlanta Tech Village. The meetup hosts educational programs and held a conference in January.
Marie-Antoinette Tichler, the community outreach lead for the embassy, agreed that Tidwell brings extensive blockchain knowledge to the table. But for now, Tucker is the only full-time person at the embassy, while Tichler, Tidwell and the rest of the team members hold other jobs.
Tichler is working on her own startup, C2Legacy, which has partnered with Estate Pass and hopes to manage people's cryptocurrency after they die. The concept was inspired by her own experience managing an estate for her son when his father died. She is working on raising $1.8 million in funding to finish building out the C2Legacy technology.
In 2010, Tichler also founded the Technology Organization Against Distractive Deeds to educate students on mobile technology. She hopes the embassy will be a space to teach students about blockchain.
"Having $10 of bitcoin in eighth grade could be a lot when it's time to go to college," she said.
Tichler is also working to ensure the embassy is inclusive for minorities. She sees cryptocurrency as particularly promising for people of color who have often been left out of the traditional banking system.
Even if it's not obvious to onlookers, many Atlantans are already using Bitcoin "every solitary day of their lives" through BitPay, an Atlanta-based startup which puts cryptocurrency on a VISA card, Tichler said.
Vijay Madisetti, a Georgia Tech professor who co-authored a book on blockchain, sees the need for training spaces on blockchain and said Atlanta is well-suited for the technology.
Madisetti said almost every week, a business has reached out to him to see how they can use blockchain to improve their operations.
"Tokens are now being looked at as securities, so there is a lot of need for people who have dealt with these regulatory issues to help others," he said.
