Cryptocurrency and Guns - How bitcoins value boosted gun sales
Well known crypto-anarchist, free-market anarchist, and gun-rights activist, Cody Wilson recently told of how the rise in bitcoins value has boosted the number of gun sales.
Cody Wilson, co-founder of the Dark Wallet and best known as a founder/director of Defense Distributed a non-profit organisation that today generates 10 percent of its revenue from bitcoin.
Founded in 2012, Defense Distributed develops and publishes open source gun designs called "wiki weapons"
He recently spoke of how he expects sales figure to escalate as the value of bitcoin increases.
Wilson:
"As bitcoin crested $2,000, we saw more purchases in bitcoin. Because, hell, one bitcoin gets you a gun machine now, and that's a good trade."
Wilson's work with both 3D-printed guns that don't have any serial numbers, and cryptocurrency is part of his work to bypass government controls and today he revealed that his latest Ghost Gunner 2 gun printer was getting an upgrade.
Ghost Gunner 2 is priced at $1,500 in an effort to attract more sales with the price of bitcoin near $4,500.
The machines firmware has been updated to improve the accuracy of the printer, and a number of hardware upgrades have been added to make the finished products look and act more like traditional handguns.
"This is basically the beginning of the automated manufacturing of untraceable handguns of a commercial grade, not of bizarre, 3-D printed quality," Wilson said.
However, Wilson has had strong opposition to his work. In May 2013, the Department of Justice seized the files he used to print the guns. Then, last year, Wilson suffered a setback when the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals refused to give him the First Amendment protections he sought for the files.
There will be obstacles but Wilson continues to push forward in disrupting the $51.3 billion gun sector.
"I assume we’re going to have good sales in the fourth quarter here," he said.
But Wilson is not the only one seeing an uptick in sales. Michael Cargill, the owner of Central Texas Gun Works, stated that about 45 percent of his revenue comes from cryptocurrency and sales typically increase when the bitcoin price goes up .
"Whenever bitcoin goes up, I get customers from all over the country who want to buy guns.
When we first started doing this back in 2013, bitcoin was about $200. Now, it’s peaked at $4,700, and a lot of people are cashing in."
-Michael Cargill
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