1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:01,760 The love of money is the root of all evil. 2 00:00:02,000 --> 00:00:02,960 It says this in the Bible. 3 00:00:03,220 --> 00:00:04,800 And what has America done? 4 00:00:04,940 --> 00:00:09,320 We go to war with people who try to not use the dollar 5 00:00:09,320 --> 00:00:13,360 or try to change the way oil is traded in the world, 6 00:00:13,440 --> 00:00:14,520 these valuable resources. 7 00:00:15,140 --> 00:00:16,760 You know, Bitcoin's the solution to that. 8 00:00:17,040 --> 00:00:19,900 And the fact that Bitcoin gives everyone a lifeline of hope 9 00:00:19,900 --> 00:00:22,260 to take their money wherever they want with 12 words 10 00:00:22,260 --> 00:00:26,080 or to build an institutional grade payment rail 11 00:00:26,080 --> 00:00:27,400 and infrastructure for your business 12 00:00:27,400 --> 00:00:29,180 so that you can last hundreds of years, 13 00:00:29,180 --> 00:00:30,320 I think is appealing. 14 00:00:30,700 --> 00:00:35,020 So, you know, regardless of your flavor, take, belief, 15 00:00:35,140 --> 00:00:36,760 I mean, Bitcoin's a lifeline for everyone. 16 00:00:37,780 --> 00:00:39,900 Bitcoin is a currency on the internet. 17 00:00:40,260 --> 00:00:42,940 If you don't trust any other currency, this is where you go. 18 00:00:43,140 --> 00:00:44,200 It's going to outperform everything. 19 00:00:44,360 --> 00:00:45,840 Bitcoin could eventually be worthless. 20 00:00:46,040 --> 00:00:47,740 Every day is a good day to buy Bitcoin. 21 00:00:48,300 --> 00:00:50,260 Bitcoin reached its highest price to date. 22 00:00:50,420 --> 00:00:51,900 Bitcoin hitting a new high. 23 00:00:52,000 --> 00:00:53,720 It really has reached escape velocity. 24 00:00:53,840 --> 00:00:54,860 There is no second best. 25 00:00:55,000 --> 00:00:56,120 Who cares about Bitcoin? 26 00:00:56,120 --> 00:00:58,540 It's the only secure database that's ever been invented. 27 00:00:58,540 --> 00:00:59,640 Antisocial 28 00:00:59,640 --> 00:01:01,460 Bitcoin is the real deal 29 00:01:01,460 --> 00:01:02,040 Stupid 30 00:01:02,040 --> 00:01:04,320 Everything is bullish for Bitcoin 31 00:01:04,320 --> 00:01:05,000 Immoral 32 00:01:05,000 --> 00:01:06,680 It's going up forever, Laura 33 00:01:06,680 --> 00:01:08,040 Fix the money 34 00:01:08,040 --> 00:01:09,420 Fix the world 35 00:01:09,420 --> 00:01:13,460 Wide work is a registered investment advisor 36 00:01:13,460 --> 00:01:14,980 and the opinions expressed on the show are their own 37 00:01:14,980 --> 00:01:16,280 and do not reflect the opinions of the Silicon LLC 38 00:01:16,280 --> 00:01:17,080 Jordan Gess is a CPA 39 00:01:17,080 --> 00:01:18,280 and the opinions expressed on the show are their own 40 00:01:18,280 --> 00:01:20,260 and do not reflect the opinions of trusted CPA or other affiliated firms 41 00:01:20,260 --> 00:01:21,940 Information percentage for educational purposes only 42 00:01:21,940 --> 00:01:23,320 and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation 43 00:01:23,320 --> 00:01:25,540 for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies 44 00:01:25,540 --> 00:01:27,260 Investments of all risk and unless otherwise data are not guaranteed 45 00:01:27,260 --> 00:01:31,220 Information expressed is not taking into account your specific situation or objectives is not intended as a recommendation appropriate for any individual. 46 00:01:31,400 --> 00:01:35,700 Listeners are encouraged to seek advice from a qualified tax legal or investment advisor to determine whether any information presented may be suitable for their specific situation. 47 00:01:35,880 --> 00:01:38,620 Past performance is not indicative of future performance. Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice. 48 00:01:41,500 --> 00:01:46,780 Hey, welcome to the Bitcoin for Financial Services show, the podcast where sound money meets professional services. 49 00:01:47,180 --> 00:01:52,240 We explore how to build the financial services industry within the principles, ethos, and values of Bitcoin. 50 00:01:52,680 --> 00:01:56,560 Today, we have the pleasure of speaking to Bobby Schell, the VP of Marketing at Voltage. 51 00:01:57,160 --> 00:02:02,180 Voltage makes it easy for businesses to support Bitcoin and USD payments with a developer-friendly 52 00:02:02,180 --> 00:02:02,660 API. 53 00:02:03,100 --> 00:02:05,540 We tackle a lot in this episode, so get ready. 54 00:02:05,980 --> 00:02:07,700 All right, let's get right into the episode. 55 00:02:11,700 --> 00:02:16,980 All righty, welcome back to another episode of the Bitcoin for Financial Services podcast. 56 00:02:16,980 --> 00:02:20,700 Today, we've got Bobby Schell on the episode. 57 00:02:20,860 --> 00:02:22,400 Super excited for this conversation. 58 00:02:22,400 --> 00:02:25,820 Bobby is the VP of Marketing over at Voltage. 59 00:02:26,500 --> 00:02:30,240 And if you haven't heard about Voltage, well, you are in for a treat. 60 00:02:30,480 --> 00:02:34,540 If you are still new to the Bitcoin space and trying to get your feet under you, 61 00:02:35,100 --> 00:02:39,280 buckle up because Lightning is kind of a whole nother world. 62 00:02:39,480 --> 00:02:44,020 I remember even talking with Wyatt about, hey, we've got Bobby coming on. 63 00:02:44,360 --> 00:02:45,960 He's going to talk on Lightning. 64 00:02:46,540 --> 00:02:49,920 And even Wyatt, who's been in Bitcoin for a little while, was like, 65 00:02:49,920 --> 00:02:55,660 man, I'm a little weak on the lightning subject. So I think that this conversation is just going to 66 00:02:55,660 --> 00:02:59,320 be really enlightening for a lot of folks out there, even if they've been around for a little 67 00:02:59,320 --> 00:03:06,220 while. So Bobby, thank you for joining us. Yeah, maybe give us a little bit of background. How 68 00:03:06,220 --> 00:03:12,220 long have you been in Bitcoin? What do you do over at Voltage? Give everyone just a sense of 69 00:03:12,220 --> 00:03:17,080 who they're hearing from today. Yeah, thanks for having me. You know, 70 00:03:17,080 --> 00:03:21,060 like most people in 2012, I was told, get a computer and mine Bitcoin. And I was like, 71 00:03:21,080 --> 00:03:24,820 I'm in college, you know, I can't afford this. Like who can afford this? And of course, you know, 72 00:03:24,840 --> 00:03:30,280 you look at yourself like, oh my gosh. And then 2017, you know, November, I remember when the hype 73 00:03:30,280 --> 00:03:35,020 was going on price going up. That's when I heard about it, discovered it, you know, bought every 74 00:03:35,020 --> 00:03:40,660 token under the sun, got rich on paper, watched it crash. And then lo and behold, what do you do 75 00:03:40,660 --> 00:03:45,020 after watching your net worth, you know, go down 80%? Well, you start studying and reading what the 76 00:03:45,020 --> 00:03:49,320 heck is this thing? And that's where I started to truly understand Bitcoin. And after that, 77 00:03:49,320 --> 00:03:55,240 you know, got active on X and Twitter back as it was back in the day and just began learning. 78 00:03:55,400 --> 00:03:59,500 And ever since then, it's just been such an incredible journey, you know, understanding 79 00:03:59,500 --> 00:04:05,840 across computer science, economics, you know, political game theory, all of these fun topics 80 00:04:05,840 --> 00:04:11,520 that you just begin to go down the rabbit hole on. And, you know, come 2018, started taking the 81 00:04:11,520 --> 00:04:17,700 internet a bit more serious, like leveraging it for career and just personal growth. And come 2021, 82 00:04:18,080 --> 00:04:23,460 made the shift from my career. I worked at a company called Marketing 360, was an early employee. 83 00:04:24,120 --> 00:04:27,080 Before that, we were called Madwire, helped grow it to a hundred million run rate, 84 00:04:27,560 --> 00:04:33,760 had a lot of experience, felt confident in Bitcoin as an asset that would serve institutionally and 85 00:04:33,760 --> 00:04:38,560 just for people globally. Made the leap, been at Voltage for four and a half years now, VP of 86 00:04:38,560 --> 00:04:44,940 marketing and, you know, Voltage, I help oversee the marketing and just generating demand for our 87 00:04:44,940 --> 00:04:50,460 product, working on the go-to-market and helping businesses and institutions, you know, understand 88 00:04:50,460 --> 00:04:56,080 the Lightning Network. And it's been a great journey along the way here. Love it, man. And 89 00:04:56,080 --> 00:05:01,280 you were telling me right before we went on live, yeah, long-standing employee there behind the CEO. 90 00:05:02,080 --> 00:05:06,780 And I know, and so I know a little bit about Voltage. I've gotten to know Kim over the past 91 00:05:06,780 --> 00:05:10,940 year that's been great and some of the other members of your team we haven't had a chance to 92 00:05:10,940 --> 00:05:16,500 sit down quite yet so another reason why i'm excited for this and um but you know when i was 93 00:05:16,500 --> 00:05:21,860 doing some research about voltage it seems like you all have kind of shifted your strategy a little 94 00:05:21,860 --> 00:05:27,840 bit over i don't know how many years from more of a self-serve maybe a retail type of model 95 00:05:27,840 --> 00:05:36,060 to more so going after you know enterprise uh account-based sales and i'm i'm just curious like 96 00:05:36,060 --> 00:05:41,620 you know what caused that pivot i assume that you you played a pretty heavy role in helping that 97 00:05:41,620 --> 00:05:45,720 transition assuming that i'm understanding it correctly so maybe talk through what that looked 98 00:05:45,720 --> 00:05:50,700 like because i just think the it's interesting to see how bitcoin companies especially the ones 99 00:05:50,700 --> 00:05:56,080 that have been around for several cycles and survived all kinds of different things you know 100 00:05:56,080 --> 00:05:59,940 how they think about the go-to-market and and the different customers they're working with 101 00:05:59,940 --> 00:06:22,620 Yeah. So anybody who is playing and tinkering with Bitcoin and Lightning in 2019 and 2020 is an innovator, an early adopter. And that's what our CEO and founder Graham Krizak is. He built this product for people like himself who wanted to build and use Lightning and start to integrate it and build solutions. And there was nothing that made it easy. 102 00:06:22,620 --> 00:06:28,740 It took like three to four hours of work, a lot of manual labor, and it just wasn't fun. 103 00:06:29,060 --> 00:06:37,340 And then what he decided is I'm going to package this into an enterprise product and something that people can sign up for in two minutes and you can begin building whatever your heart desires. 104 00:06:38,040 --> 00:06:39,320 And we did that for a while. 105 00:06:39,540 --> 00:06:44,900 And it's just like for those who don't know what PLG product led growth is, it's kind of like Zoom or Gmail. 106 00:06:45,120 --> 00:06:47,700 You can just sign up with an email like Jordan said and just get going. 107 00:06:48,240 --> 00:06:56,240 Well, with an early stage technology like that, it's very hard to build a business with the tinkerers and these early stage folks. 108 00:06:56,520 --> 00:06:59,660 And what you got to do is kind of close this gap if you want to have a viable business. 109 00:06:59,860 --> 00:07:05,240 You see that in startup world where someone shows up too many years too early, the business fails and someone does it later. 110 00:07:05,380 --> 00:07:08,920 Well, we identified that on our own path to success. 111 00:07:08,920 --> 00:07:12,520 And you're right. In the last year and a half, we've pivoted to enterprise. 112 00:07:12,520 --> 00:07:18,780 The idea is, you know, we need to get more exchanges, more neobanks wallets using Lightning and understanding it. 113 00:07:19,300 --> 00:07:20,880 And that's exactly what we've done. 114 00:07:20,940 --> 00:07:26,940 And that's what we found success in being able to sell viable businesses that are already leveraging Bitcoin and soon stable coins. 115 00:07:27,360 --> 00:07:31,880 And that's what's gotten us here over the last year and a half. 116 00:07:32,080 --> 00:07:42,380 And we're getting in the prep to raise our Series A and to put the pedal down, if you will, on getting, you know, lending institutions, exchanges, neobanks, gaming companies. 117 00:07:42,380 --> 00:07:46,820 all onboarded the Lightning and it's been an incredible year doing so. So, yeah. 118 00:07:47,700 --> 00:07:52,100 Love it, man. Okay. No, that's great. And it's such an interesting time to be in Lightning. 119 00:07:52,320 --> 00:07:59,340 Obviously, I guess like one place that my head goes from that comment is there has been some 120 00:07:59,340 --> 00:08:05,340 FUD on Lightning, you know, kind of across the board. I'd just be curious how you think about 121 00:08:05,340 --> 00:08:09,720 this whole, you know, people, I would say, you know, Nick Carter, for example, kind of comes to 122 00:08:09,720 --> 00:08:17,440 mind as someone who tries to poo-poo lightning and push people into potentially other parts of 123 00:08:17,440 --> 00:08:23,360 the broader crypto ecosystem. And a big part of our show is obviously we're Bitcoin only. We're 124 00:08:23,360 --> 00:08:28,820 really focused on that. Curious your thoughts, how you guys navigated some of that, I guess, 125 00:08:28,820 --> 00:08:36,060 last year going into this year. Yeah. I think proof talks, you have to demonstrate success 126 00:08:36,060 --> 00:08:42,020 metrics. And, you know, over from 2020, when Michael Saylor was demonstrating Bitcoin on the 127 00:08:42,020 --> 00:08:48,040 balance sheet and its value, brands followed. You know, we have the ETF now, best ETF of all time 128 00:08:48,040 --> 00:08:53,280 from many metric standpoints. Same thing goes with Lightning. Over the last year and a half, 129 00:08:53,340 --> 00:08:58,240 we've been very intentional about capturing success metrics from our customers. You know, 130 00:08:58,240 --> 00:09:02,980 we've done a report with Fidelity Digital Assets showing the growth of the Lightning network. 131 00:09:02,980 --> 00:09:10,120 And there's many other brands like River and Breeze who put out yearly reports and it kind of showcases the growth of Lightning. 132 00:09:10,300 --> 00:09:18,160 Now, one thing that's differentiated with Bitcoin and the Lightning Network versus venture backed chains with a CEO is you got one throat to choke. 133 00:09:18,720 --> 00:09:25,440 These are venture backed. And if you talk to any exchanges, when you say, hey, how would you prioritize the Lightning Network in your stack? 134 00:09:25,440 --> 00:09:30,980 They'll explicitly say, you know, we get paid to like market and showcase these other chains. 135 00:09:30,980 --> 00:09:39,820 So the Solana Foundation, Ethereum, whoever it may be, every crypto token does this, pays exchanges, potentially multiple millions a year to push those tokens to the users. 136 00:09:40,360 --> 00:09:41,980 Rightfully so, right? That's how it works. 137 00:09:42,440 --> 00:09:44,620 Bitcoin and the Lightning Network is open source technology. 138 00:09:44,780 --> 00:09:46,040 It has no marketing team. 139 00:09:46,200 --> 00:09:47,980 There's no CEO that runs it. 140 00:09:48,580 --> 00:09:55,800 Its entire viability, growth and understanding of it is from the free market kind of making this clear. 141 00:09:55,800 --> 00:10:00,500 So that's obviously a challenge in a world of like venture backed when it comes to crypto. 142 00:10:00,980 --> 00:10:03,040 But the Lightning Network's delivered on its promise. 143 00:10:03,040 --> 00:10:06,980 Obviously, like Jack Dorsey with Square and Cash App, 144 00:10:07,100 --> 00:10:10,300 they've got Lightning in the hands of millions of people. 145 00:10:10,420 --> 00:10:13,220 Square terminals are now handling Lightning payments 146 00:10:13,220 --> 00:10:15,000 for over 4 million small businesses. 147 00:10:15,980 --> 00:10:18,440 And Cash App even showcased, 148 00:10:18,580 --> 00:10:22,100 they have moved about 25% of all of their Bitcoin transactions 149 00:10:22,100 --> 00:10:23,620 over Lightning within their app. 150 00:10:24,040 --> 00:10:28,120 So in my purview, this looks like Lightning is functioning 151 00:10:28,120 --> 00:10:29,560 as an enterprise payment reel. 152 00:10:29,560 --> 00:10:32,220 And it just takes time for folks to understand that. 153 00:10:32,280 --> 00:10:35,680 Because again, when you have incentives like paying to get narratives out, it happens pretty 154 00:10:35,680 --> 00:10:36,100 fast. 155 00:10:36,240 --> 00:10:40,880 But with the Lightning Network, it's been moving tried and true from this kind of early stage 156 00:10:40,880 --> 00:10:45,660 tinkering technology to an enterprise grade tool that publicly traded companies use and 157 00:10:45,660 --> 00:10:46,900 rely on to manage money. 158 00:10:47,780 --> 00:10:47,880 Yeah. 159 00:10:48,300 --> 00:10:49,020 Oh, I love that, man. 160 00:10:49,100 --> 00:10:52,340 I think that it's one of those things I was telling somebody the other day. 161 00:10:52,700 --> 00:10:58,180 There's things that I think probably you and I, you know, we believe to be true and we 162 00:10:58,180 --> 00:11:03,280 meet newer people in the space that are like, you have to tell them about these things. And it's like, 163 00:11:03,420 --> 00:11:08,500 oh, you didn't know that. Or you haven't heard it as many times as I've heard it. And so you haven't 164 00:11:08,500 --> 00:11:14,080 like you, you just don't know. And so one of the funny parts, I think about this podcast is having 165 00:11:14,080 --> 00:11:20,460 to remind ourselves that, hey, if we're trying to scale this to all these new entrants, especially 166 00:11:20,460 --> 00:11:25,440 people who come from those other crypto coins, and hey, they got burned, they're looking for, 167 00:11:25,440 --> 00:11:32,060 hey, what's the legitimate thing here? I think it's just good to always remind people and say 168 00:11:32,060 --> 00:11:36,160 things over and over again, even though it seems like we're kind of a broken record. So I appreciate 169 00:11:36,160 --> 00:11:44,040 you doing that. Your wealth deserves intention. Basilic Financial is a Bitcoin-focused wealth 170 00:11:44,040 --> 00:11:48,460 management firm built to help our clients find balance between money and meaning. We integrate 171 00:11:48,460 --> 00:11:52,280 sound money strategies across four distinct personalized services, financial planning, 172 00:11:52,280 --> 00:11:57,280 individual wealth management, retirement services for SMBs, and Bitcoin financial services. 173 00:11:57,640 --> 00:12:10,280 Your prosperity your purpose intentionally guided at Basilic Financial Visit our website at basilic to schedule free consultation I guess there been this narrative right of Bitcoin is a store of value 174 00:12:10,280 --> 00:12:17,580 I think that even I was at a talk the other night, a total like TradFi thing where they just came and 175 00:12:17,580 --> 00:12:20,880 did a market outlook for one of the wealth management firms I've partnered up with, 176 00:12:21,000 --> 00:12:25,360 again, on the fiat side of things. And even this lady up there on stage, she was saying 177 00:12:25,360 --> 00:12:28,680 she's their chief investment officer. And she said Bitcoin is a store of value. 178 00:12:28,680 --> 00:12:52,740 And like, wow, that's crazy. I'm curious now, like we're headed more with the Square stuff and with what you guys are working on, we're headed into this payments rail. We're like trying to prove out the medium of exchange. Maybe highlight some things that you saw in the year, you know, in 2025 of just pushing the ball down the field from a payments standpoint with Bitcoin, not just the store value narrative. 179 00:12:52,740 --> 00:13:13,460 Yeah. Yeah. So one of our customers, Brains Mining, they are the mining pool that a lot of folks love to use whenever they're connecting their own miners. And a lot of these users are small to medium sized miners, and they're managing their personal balance sheet different from, say, like top five, 10 miners globally. 180 00:13:14,140 --> 00:13:18,740 Well, Brains has enabled Lightning withdrawals, and they have transferred hundreds of thousands 181 00:13:18,740 --> 00:13:23,120 of payments and a tremendous amount of Bitcoin through their scale, which is wonderful to 182 00:13:23,120 --> 00:13:23,380 see. 183 00:13:24,080 --> 00:13:30,740 But beyond that, average people that interact with it every single day, we now have over 184 00:13:30,740 --> 00:13:35,000 a billion users with access to Lightning, which is a big milestone across global exchanges 185 00:13:35,000 --> 00:13:36,880 and neobanks and wallets. 186 00:13:37,540 --> 00:13:42,760 And Chipper Cash, one of our customers in Africa, they really did no formal go-to-market for 187 00:13:42,760 --> 00:13:47,840 the Lightning Network. African payment rails are not reliable. And they integrated Lightning over 188 00:13:47,840 --> 00:13:53,540 a weekend. One of their co-founders is a very talented dev and he got it live quickly. They 189 00:13:53,540 --> 00:13:58,580 didn't really do marketing for it. They naturally have gotten over 50% of Bitcoin transactions now 190 00:13:58,580 --> 00:14:04,380 traveling over Lightning. And we've seen other public metrics that, those of like Coinbase and 191 00:14:04,380 --> 00:14:08,900 others, where they have over 25% of all Bitcoin transactions on Lightning. Same with Cash App. 192 00:14:08,900 --> 00:14:16,400 So we're starting to see these success metrics where whenever the option's available, customers are beginning to use it and prefer it. 193 00:14:17,260 --> 00:14:29,520 Not only that, one of the big things that we've been getting kind of latent demand that's been pent up is a lot of stablecoin businesses, like businesses that are using stablecoins at scale. 194 00:14:29,860 --> 00:14:33,360 They're very excited about the Tether announcement made in January of 2025. 195 00:14:33,980 --> 00:14:39,320 And due to some of these fees that are happening with stablecoins across chains like Tron, Solana, and Ethereum, 196 00:14:39,560 --> 00:14:42,000 they want consistency in the cost. 197 00:14:42,120 --> 00:14:46,620 They don't want these balloon kind of fees going up in these intermittent issues. 198 00:14:46,800 --> 00:14:50,680 And there's a pretty big demand for Tether and other stablecoins on Lightning, 199 00:14:50,800 --> 00:14:54,920 which I think is only going to increase and improve the network effect of Bitcoin. 200 00:14:55,420 --> 00:14:58,180 And for those who are not maybe privy to Bitcoin and the Lightning network, 201 00:14:58,180 --> 00:15:10,300 It's a peer-to-peer network. So the more capital that comes onto the network, the more peers, the higher the success rate, the better the network effect, which, you know, further drives the value proposition of Bitcoin and Lightning for users. 202 00:15:10,300 --> 00:15:17,980 Yeah. Okay. So you all are focused on business owners and I guess at the enterprise level, 203 00:15:17,980 --> 00:15:23,240 and I guess people, especially practitioners like myself, we hear the word enterprise and 204 00:15:23,240 --> 00:15:30,120 I'm trying to understand, is that a really big company? Is there any, I guess, metrics that you 205 00:15:30,120 --> 00:15:34,860 are looking at when you're saying, hey, are we going to work with this company or not in terms 206 00:15:34,860 --> 00:15:36,680 of how you measure their size. 207 00:15:36,720 --> 00:15:39,340 Is it a volume thing, revenue? 208 00:15:39,560 --> 00:15:43,280 I'm curious, like if I'm just an advisor listening to this 209 00:15:43,280 --> 00:15:44,320 and I'm like, hey, this might, 210 00:15:44,480 --> 00:15:47,660 I wonder if this fits well for a client that I work with 211 00:15:47,660 --> 00:15:49,580 and maybe want to make an introduction, 212 00:15:50,580 --> 00:15:55,120 maybe give them a framework of what's a good customer 213 00:15:55,120 --> 00:15:57,180 that would work with Voltage really well. 214 00:15:58,260 --> 00:15:58,440 Yeah. 215 00:15:59,620 --> 00:16:02,440 So, you know, we've got a target ICP 216 00:16:02,440 --> 00:16:04,260 that we're going after to serve 217 00:16:04,260 --> 00:16:10,900 who have the shortest sales cycle, and rightfully so. With early stage technology, this is what you 218 00:16:10,900 --> 00:16:16,160 do. But as far as the lightning network, who is the perfect use case? There's a few buckets, 219 00:16:16,240 --> 00:16:21,020 I would say. If you fall under one of these, your business would be qualified. If you're not wanting 220 00:16:21,020 --> 00:16:27,260 to deal with chargebacks or credit card fees, it's an incredible problem solver. It's a no-brainer. 221 00:16:27,560 --> 00:16:33,940 Anyone that has those issues loves it. Now, there's also Bitcoin native businesses. Anyone 222 00:16:33,940 --> 00:16:40,720 who's doing large amounts of volume of Bitcoin, the infrastructure and the enterprise adoption 223 00:16:40,720 --> 00:16:46,140 that you would need from like the Binances, the OKXs, the Coinbases of the world, the 224 00:16:46,140 --> 00:16:50,860 infrastructure is there for payments over Bitcoin with these major players. 225 00:16:51,440 --> 00:16:57,280 Now, there's also we have a product, Voltage Credit, which is for a revolving line of credit 226 00:16:57,280 --> 00:17:02,700 for American based businesses who are doing large volumes in USD or Bitcoin. 227 00:17:02,700 --> 00:17:18,580 So if you want to take advantage of the lightning rail, which is near zero fees, instant settlement, but have it end in USD so that you're operating under your typical way in which money flows, like settling in dollars, we have that available for businesses too. 228 00:17:18,760 --> 00:17:21,520 So if that's of interest, that is also something. 229 00:17:21,660 --> 00:17:26,260 So there's not really this, is it one to 10 employees or 10,000 employees? 230 00:17:26,460 --> 00:17:31,480 We have a breadth of businesses that fall under these different buckets, but the main problems would be under those. 231 00:17:31,480 --> 00:17:46,060 Okay, that makes sense. And talk to me a little bit more about the line of credit, because I think that that's one of the things that we hear when we're talking with someone who's like, hey, how much of my balance sheet should I be holding in in Bitcoin? 232 00:17:46,060 --> 00:17:51,660 And there's always this difficult thing of, you know, maybe a long dated asset like a Bitcoin. 233 00:17:51,840 --> 00:17:53,960 You're you're planning to hold that for the long term. 234 00:17:53,960 --> 00:17:56,240 But then you've got payroll to hit. 235 00:17:56,440 --> 00:17:58,580 You've got suppliers that you've got to pay. 236 00:17:59,140 --> 00:18:02,740 All those things that are much more short dated, maybe 30 to 60 days. 237 00:18:03,260 --> 00:18:08,360 It sounds like the line of credit is like a really, I guess, maybe explain the mechanics there. 238 00:18:08,360 --> 00:18:15,820 Is it something where you you post Bitcoin and you're able to draw on that in dollars or in stable coins on top of that? 239 00:18:15,820 --> 00:18:19,220 and then pay interest on that as you need to pay it back? 240 00:18:19,720 --> 00:18:21,260 Is that basically the mechanics of that? 241 00:18:22,560 --> 00:18:24,600 There's the option to post some collateral, 242 00:18:24,900 --> 00:18:28,100 but the line of credit is based on your payment flows. 243 00:18:28,400 --> 00:18:29,820 So this is what makes it unique. 244 00:18:29,900 --> 00:18:33,320 If you say, hey, we're doing $5 million in payments monthly, 245 00:18:33,720 --> 00:18:35,640 we can assess that, 246 00:18:35,640 --> 00:18:38,700 and then based on the payment flows of the business, 247 00:18:38,840 --> 00:18:39,940 extend a line of credit. 248 00:18:40,100 --> 00:18:43,300 So you're not actually having to post collateral in all situations. 249 00:18:43,800 --> 00:18:45,280 It's a case-by-case basis, 250 00:18:45,280 --> 00:18:50,060 But that's what's in demand. So let's talk about like, let's take a step back the extreme scenario. 251 00:18:50,520 --> 00:18:58,060 You know, miners, they might sell anywhere from 40 to 100 percent of their Bitcoin monthly, effectively shorting Bitcoin by selling it. 252 00:18:58,500 --> 00:19:05,220 What they can do is have a working line of credit, make payments with that and then settle up at whatever time they want to manage. 253 00:19:05,380 --> 00:19:14,860 So we've we've met with quite a few miners and they've all got their own unique nuanced way in which they're handling their cash and managing their Bitcoin stack. 254 00:19:14,860 --> 00:19:28,800 So it gives flexibility to teams to do what's necessary for them. We've also had some businesses that do payroll in a blend of Bitcoin and USD, and they might want to manage Bitcoin payments in their cash in a certain way. 255 00:19:28,800 --> 00:19:41,900 And they simply need this day-to-day flexibility where we don't want to have to deal with waiting on these inbound flows from our customers because it's a multi-trillion dollar problem, like the accounts receivable problem, collecting cash. 256 00:19:41,900 --> 00:19:43,900 You know, it's coming in, but is it here yet? 257 00:19:44,580 --> 00:19:48,640 A flexible working line of credit is incredible for those type of businesses because they can 258 00:19:48,640 --> 00:19:51,300 make payments when they need on time, in real time. 259 00:19:51,300 --> 00:19:56,100 And as revenue comes in, you can pay down the line of credit, which is something that 260 00:19:56,100 --> 00:19:57,320 hasn't been done in the market before. 261 00:19:57,380 --> 00:19:59,200 And we're really excited to provide that to businesses. 262 00:20:00,140 --> 00:20:00,540 Okay. 263 00:20:01,240 --> 00:20:04,560 And that, I guess that makes me, that kind of brings me, you know, I was in Vegas. 264 00:20:04,700 --> 00:20:07,440 I saw you speak up on stage in Vegas. 265 00:20:07,440 --> 00:20:11,520 That's, I think when I first got introduced to you and your orange suit, I mentioned that 266 00:20:11,520 --> 00:20:11,860 to you. 267 00:20:11,900 --> 00:20:18,280 So if anybody hasn't seen that, maybe try to go find the YouTube clip of that because it was a beautiful bright orange suit. 268 00:20:18,740 --> 00:20:19,480 Very memorable. 269 00:20:19,980 --> 00:20:32,860 But, you know, one of the big stories I think that came out of Vegas was when Square got up on stage and talked about how they were leveraging their Bitcoin stack through lightning rails to create this whole, you know, yield. 270 00:20:32,860 --> 00:20:42,360 And, you know, I hear the word yield and I'm like, I don't know what it is, but I just kind of like I have this like bad reaction to that word at this point. 271 00:20:42,500 --> 00:20:49,700 And so I'm curious, maybe talk about the mechanics of that so that someone newer to the space can understand what that looks like. 272 00:20:49,700 --> 00:20:58,540 And I'm curious also if Voltage, if you can speak on it, I guess, if there's any product that someone can post a big stack of Bitcoin. 273 00:20:58,540 --> 00:21:03,820 and maybe it is a miner that's been around for a long time and earn a percentage on that. 274 00:21:04,900 --> 00:21:11,000 Yeah. Yeah, that's a great question. So this was probably the biggest news out of Bitcoin 2025, 275 00:21:11,640 --> 00:21:20,480 in my opinion. Cash App shared that they generated a 9.7% yield while custodying their Bitcoin by 276 00:21:20,480 --> 00:21:26,100 routing payments over the Lightning Network. So what does this mean? Well, Cash App, what they do 277 00:21:26,100 --> 00:21:27,980 is they send a lot of payments out 278 00:21:27,980 --> 00:21:30,720 from their application for their customers. 279 00:21:31,460 --> 00:21:33,520 Lightning Network is a peer-to-peer network. 280 00:21:33,940 --> 00:21:35,680 So money is flowing both ways. 281 00:21:36,320 --> 00:21:38,120 And because it's peer-to-peer, 282 00:21:38,300 --> 00:21:39,540 even though you can send money, 283 00:21:40,000 --> 00:21:41,380 money can flow through you. 284 00:21:41,600 --> 00:21:42,860 So imagine this Cash App, 285 00:21:42,940 --> 00:21:44,820 a payment's going from Coinbase to Binance. 286 00:21:45,200 --> 00:21:47,560 Let's just say they don't have a channel connected together 287 00:21:47,560 --> 00:21:49,620 and it needs to flow through Cash App's node. 288 00:21:50,040 --> 00:21:53,020 By doing that, they earn a very small percentage of yield. 289 00:21:53,420 --> 00:21:54,940 But when you're doing this at scale, 290 00:21:54,940 --> 00:21:59,960 you know hundreds of millions billions of dollars of payments yearly and you're capturing that small 291 00:21:59,960 --> 00:22:05,900 spread that is where a lot of yield is had and there are third-party markets like ambos where 292 00:22:05,900 --> 00:22:11,241 if a new node comes onto the network you can buy a channel from a top peer to ensure you have high 293 00:22:11,241 --> 00:22:17,440 payment success we are partnered with ambos and they have a yield product that allows capital 294 00:22:17,440 --> 00:22:23,440 holders to bring their money their bitcoin to the lightning network to help facilitate and route 295 00:22:23,440 --> 00:22:28,680 payments. So we do have a partner and a program for that. And that's what Amboss has solved for a 296 00:22:28,680 --> 00:22:33,620 lot of these big institutional Bitcoin holders who say, hey, we see the value in lightning. 297 00:22:33,620 --> 00:22:38,500 We want to participate, take advantage of the payments, instant global near zero fees. 298 00:22:38,660 --> 00:22:43,060 And we also would like to capture some of that yield that Cash App was doing, 299 00:22:43,241 --> 00:22:47,780 which I believe was in the tune of multiple millions of dollars, nine to 10 millions of dollars. 300 00:22:48,480 --> 00:22:54,780 So this has become a very compelling thing for treasury companies, for businesses that 301 00:22:54,780 --> 00:22:57,600 do a lot of volume, even BitRefill. 302 00:22:57,600 --> 00:23:03,260 They're a company who's been selling gift cards for Bitcoin for eight to nine years. 303 00:23:03,620 --> 00:23:07,700 After the conference, they checked out their yield and they're generating something like 304 00:23:07,700 --> 00:23:10,460 three to 4% on their payment flows as well. 305 00:23:10,640 --> 00:23:16,360 So we now have a practical model that finance teams are following where they can leverage 306 00:23:16,360 --> 00:23:23,520 the payments and also earn yield to take that Bitcoin asset and earn from it. So it's really 307 00:23:23,520 --> 00:23:29,340 one of the most exciting things I'd say like in the Lightning space. And yeah, yeah, I'm glad you 308 00:23:29,340 --> 00:23:34,480 called that out. Yeah. And I guess it like it solves a lot of problems for multiple parties, 309 00:23:34,480 --> 00:23:41,680 because my understanding is Lightning does better the more liquidity that is, you know, 310 00:23:41,680 --> 00:23:46,741 posted, I guess, to the Lightning Network, right? I guess, real quick, that's true, right? 311 00:23:47,640 --> 00:23:53,100 Yeah, in some ways. Over the last year, you'll have seen many nodes went offline, 312 00:23:53,241 --> 00:23:57,880 many channels went offline. And this is because, remember back in the day, we built for the pleb, 313 00:23:57,980 --> 00:24:03,540 the individual, and now enterprises are adopting it. So a lot of these early plebs and just small 314 00:24:03,540 --> 00:24:18,661 nodes they shutting down but you able to still open channels and we seeing big players open channels but the money is being managed more effectively There many innovations as far as how channel management goes how liquidity is allocated how to best manage channels 315 00:24:19,061 --> 00:24:24,341 And these efficiencies allow you to actually send more. So to one component, if you think about it, 316 00:24:24,601 --> 00:24:30,381 the more exchanges come online and bring liquidity and the more enterprise players and high quality 317 00:24:30,381 --> 00:24:35,561 nodes, considering this is a peer-to-beer network, come online, reliability increases. 318 00:24:35,761 --> 00:24:40,701 Liquidity is where it needs to be because you now have a long-term thinker who's doing 319 00:24:40,701 --> 00:24:41,021 better. 320 00:24:41,521 --> 00:24:42,821 And you're absolutely right. 321 00:24:42,981 --> 00:24:47,481 More liquidity is going to lead to more transactions, faster transactions. 322 00:24:47,781 --> 00:24:51,501 And what I believe we'll begin to see is even bigger transactions happening on Lightning. 323 00:24:52,141 --> 00:24:53,221 But continue your question. 324 00:24:53,341 --> 00:24:54,801 I know that was like a two-part question. 325 00:24:54,861 --> 00:24:55,621 It sounded like you were doing it. 326 00:24:55,621 --> 00:24:56,201 No, no, you're good. 327 00:24:56,201 --> 00:25:03,821 If you're a financial professional working with Bitcoin, you know the pain of messy CSVs, 328 00:25:03,981 --> 00:25:09,721 broken cost basis, and accounting tools that were never built for this asset. Bitment fixes that. 329 00:25:10,161 --> 00:25:15,341 Bitment is the Bitcoin native accounting platform built for CPAs, bookkeepers, advisors, 330 00:25:15,781 --> 00:25:21,641 miners, and serious Bitcoin investors. You get clean Bitcoin bank statements, reliable cost 331 00:25:21,641 --> 00:25:26,761 basis tracking, full reporting, and fiat integration through Plaid. No crypto talk, 332 00:25:26,901 --> 00:25:30,241 no workarounds, just proper accounting for the hardest money on earth. 333 00:25:30,681 --> 00:25:33,941 Create a free account or book a demo at bitment.co today. 334 00:25:35,001 --> 00:25:42,601 I guess the other side is people just used to have just idle Bitcoin, right? They would just 335 00:25:42,601 --> 00:25:47,661 be holding it in a cold storage, maybe a multi-sig, but it was just sitting there and it used to be 336 00:25:47,661 --> 00:25:52,501 the yield you got on your Bitcoin was the price appreciation that happened over time. 337 00:25:52,581 --> 00:25:58,361 And then if you wanted to get, you know, more official yield, you would have to, you know, 338 00:25:58,361 --> 00:26:04,261 take risk and, you know, you would have to post that with a custodian. You are trusting that, 339 00:26:04,261 --> 00:26:08,221 you know, what are they doing? You know, hopefully they're not doing anything nefarious on the other 340 00:26:08,221 --> 00:26:12,601 side with that Bitcoin and then you're getting a yield. And then the question that I have always 341 00:26:12,601 --> 00:26:17,621 asked to, especially to my friends and other cryptocurrencies is where does that yield come 342 00:26:17,621 --> 00:26:23,621 from? And so I think that it's, it's a very powerful, uh, thing that now, if, especially 343 00:26:23,621 --> 00:26:29,521 for someone in my seat or in a financial advisor seat, who's maybe not technically understanding, 344 00:26:29,521 --> 00:26:33,641 you know, macaroons, all the things that happen behind the scenes on the lightning network, 345 00:26:34,181 --> 00:26:39,441 we can very simply understand you put this amount of Bitcoin in, you still custody the funds, 346 00:26:39,441 --> 00:26:46,021 right and like a two of two uh multi-sig on the lightning network and then very simply you're able 347 00:26:46,021 --> 00:26:51,481 to get interest or yield back on that bitcoin as it's being put to work and you're not having to 348 00:26:51,481 --> 00:26:55,281 take that you're doing that in a much lower risk environment versus what you had to do 349 00:26:55,281 --> 00:27:00,441 in years past and of course we know what happened to a lot of those people who did that and they 350 00:27:00,441 --> 00:27:06,841 lost bitcoin because of it right oh yeah yeah yeah yeah in the past it was you know trust us 351 00:27:06,841 --> 00:27:11,341 with your money, we will basically lend it out to other people who may lend it out again. 352 00:27:12,161 --> 00:27:17,321 The world's going to keep doing that, but do you want to expose yourself to that considering we've 353 00:27:17,321 --> 00:27:23,001 seen the outcome a few times? That's for every risk manager to decide. But with the Lightning 354 00:27:23,001 --> 00:27:27,581 Network, it is a peer-to-peer. You hold your own keys and you're capable of earning yield 355 00:27:27,581 --> 00:27:34,221 by providing liquidity to Bitcoin's most dominant layer too, this being used in enterprise and 356 00:27:34,221 --> 00:27:42,401 publicly traded companies. So that's appealing. And I think it's one of the, you know, safe is a 357 00:27:42,401 --> 00:27:48,541 word that always needs to be defined, but compared to what lending and yield stuff that has blown up 358 00:27:48,541 --> 00:27:54,301 in the industry's face before, I can confidently say that it is probably one of the better ways 359 00:27:54,301 --> 00:27:59,261 for business if they're pursuing some type of yield to handle the situation, because you still 360 00:27:59,261 --> 00:28:06,641 custody your own funds in many of these scenarios yeah okay cool uh i think that that's i i think 361 00:28:06,641 --> 00:28:12,161 that that's probably a comprehensive you know thing on on that topic i'm curious i guess if 362 00:28:12,161 --> 00:28:19,661 we wanted to go a little bit different direction uh another big uh topic that i saw a lot last year 363 00:28:19,661 --> 00:28:24,421 throughout the year was stable coins you've mentioned them a little bit um and right now 364 00:28:24,421 --> 00:28:29,221 stable coins kind of operate on multi you know on a bunch of different chains or maybe three come to 365 00:28:29,221 --> 00:28:36,001 mind right ethereum solana um and then i guess the lightning is is this thing that a lot of 366 00:28:36,001 --> 00:28:41,721 bitcoiners we've been promised with the whole like taproot assets uh going into lightning do you want 367 00:28:41,721 --> 00:28:46,861 to touch on any of that stuff and and like when bitcoiners might be able to see because i think 368 00:28:46,861 --> 00:28:51,541 obviously the stable coins it's captured the attention of the u.s government to find a new 369 00:28:51,541 --> 00:28:56,981 buyer for their treasuries that no one less and less people want to purchase for good reason um 370 00:28:56,981 --> 00:29:06,481 So I don't know, maybe we talk, maybe we go that direction a little bit just to understand how stable coins fit into Lightning and how that kind of feeds the beast that is Bitcoin down the road. 371 00:29:07,441 --> 00:29:16,601 Yeah, yeah. So Taproot Assets is the innovation that enables stable coin issuance or any token issuance on top of the Lightning network. 372 00:29:16,601 --> 00:29:33,541 So without getting technical, the simple way to think of it is Bitcoin is the ultimate trust, decentralized. Lightning is the layer two, instant settlement, global, near zero fees. Great for businesses who want privacy as well. 373 00:29:33,541 --> 00:29:39,581 stable coins, like the final piece, at least at this stage of innovation on top of lightning. 374 00:29:39,581 --> 00:29:44,521 And you have this vertical integration stack of the market dominant, institutional grade 375 00:29:44,521 --> 00:29:50,241 asset, the settlement network, and now the dollar denominated asset that the world demands, 376 00:29:50,401 --> 00:29:52,021 whether it be America or global. 377 00:29:52,841 --> 00:29:59,681 And what I think this is going to mean for a lot of teams is, I think businesses are discussing, 378 00:29:59,681 --> 00:30:04,201 do we issue our own stable coin? Do we use Tether, USDC, or a Challenger stable coin, 379 00:30:04,281 --> 00:30:10,121 some of these newer ones? I think that the big thing to consider is, again, if Bitcoin's the 380 00:30:10,121 --> 00:30:15,361 institutional asset and these other tokens are not necessarily as viable long-term, 381 00:30:16,101 --> 00:30:22,181 do we want to have exposure to the stable coins we do on, let's say, Ethereum, Solanotron, 382 00:30:22,441 --> 00:30:27,401 and Lightning? And I think if you look at Tether, what they have done is they have their token 383 00:30:27,401 --> 00:30:32,821 issued on as many chains as possible because they want to have market dominance. They also have 384 00:30:32,821 --> 00:30:36,781 deprecated their token from certain chains that are not reliable. You can go back and look at the 385 00:30:36,781 --> 00:30:41,321 last year and a half and they've actually removed their token from four or five chains. So I think 386 00:30:41,321 --> 00:30:49,101 Lightning is going to become one of the big viable alternatives because Bitcoin's one. Lightning is 387 00:30:49,101 --> 00:30:54,681 it's for all intents and purposes right now, the best layer two there is in the longest standing. 388 00:30:54,681 --> 00:31:06,821 And with stable coins coming on top, I think finance teams and risk managers, product managers, they're going to want to see stable coins on top of Lightning as well, being the market dominant asset with this chain. 389 00:31:06,821 --> 00:31:24,561 But we don't have really a large stable coin on Lightning yet. There's DPIX, I believe, out of Brazil. But we're starting to see the interest from like the top 10, top 20 coins exploring adding their stables on top of Lightning, which it sounds like will be in 2026. So it's some pretty big news. 390 00:31:24,681 --> 00:31:44,901 Yeah. Okay. So you mentioned product. I guess where my head goes from there is like, there are all these products that are being built, especially in like the AI space. Right. And I've had to crack up, you know, there's all these people are like, oh, everyone that was like a Bitcoin, you know, fanatic is now an AI expert. 391 00:31:44,901 --> 00:31:47,541 I know that's probably not true for us. 392 00:31:47,761 --> 00:31:51,601 Like we're, you know, we're dabbling like everyone else, but it's interesting. 393 00:31:51,721 --> 00:31:54,841 There's the, there's been this longstanding narrative, at least over the last two or three 394 00:31:54,841 --> 00:32:01,301 years that at Z's like AI agents or basically, you know, even with the clod bot that everyone's 395 00:32:01,301 --> 00:32:05,021 been playing around with, where it's doing things without you even asking it to do it. 396 00:32:05,181 --> 00:32:12,061 I'm just curious to get your thoughts on the narrative of AI agents will trade in something 397 00:32:12,061 --> 00:32:17,881 like Bitcoin on a Lightning network in order to do payments with each other. 398 00:32:18,781 --> 00:32:23,661 And then I guess a follow-up to that would also be, you mentioned gaming at least once, 399 00:32:23,681 --> 00:32:24,721 if not a couple of times. 400 00:32:25,381 --> 00:32:34,101 And we've seen the whole economy of streaming people money to Twitch stream or whatever 401 00:32:34,101 --> 00:32:35,121 it might be. 402 00:32:35,121 --> 00:32:40,141 I'm curious how you see something like that fit into, how you see Bitcoin on Lightning 403 00:32:40,141 --> 00:32:47,081 fit into that rumble we just launched you know on rumble so that people can actually pay us over 404 00:32:47,081 --> 00:32:52,901 lightning uh into our rumble bitcoin wallet and um so i'm just curious i guess that that's a pretty 405 00:32:52,901 --> 00:32:57,621 broad question but you can take it whatever direction you want to from an ai agent standpoint 406 00:32:57,621 --> 00:33:09,101 micropayments yeah i mean on the ai side i'll keep it brief like um l402 um is what is a part 407 00:33:09,101 --> 00:33:15,821 of the Lightning protocol and even other crypto protocols, like making it possible to have 408 00:33:15,821 --> 00:33:21,021 machine to machine payments and like pay per use on API calls. Currently, a lot of it's done by 409 00:33:21,021 --> 00:33:26,081 cards. It'll probably continually be done by cards. And there may be some edge use cases where people 410 00:33:26,081 --> 00:33:30,461 use crypto. Do I believe long term it'll all converge on Bitcoin and Lightning? We've all 411 00:33:30,461 --> 00:33:34,541 heard the argument. Yes, machines are going to choose the decentralized money that is most 412 00:33:34,541 --> 00:33:40,501 valuable with the most reliable network. And, you know, we'll see what happens. Every chain is 413 00:33:40,501 --> 00:33:45,861 trying to solve for that. And I think we'll probably continue to see those with the most 414 00:33:45,861 --> 00:33:51,521 money and capital to invest, get the earliest adoption. Kind of like altcoins and altchains 415 00:33:51,521 --> 00:33:55,501 are always the playground. Bitcoin comes later and ends up dominating the market like we've always 416 00:33:55,501 --> 00:34:01,401 seen. But in terms of like iGaming and some of these other folks, like it's like the early 417 00:34:01,401 --> 00:34:08,581 internet, you know, like, you saw like the internet first start getting adoption in some of these like 418 00:34:08,581 --> 00:34:15,121 fringe high risk, like weird ways like Silk Road, like the pornography industry, the gaming industry, 419 00:34:15,121 --> 00:34:19,781 we're seeing the same thing with payments. And I think iGaming, they have a high risk problem, 420 00:34:19,941 --> 00:34:26,081 there's tremendous chargeback risk, like users want to play fast. And that's why the crypto payments 421 00:34:26,081 --> 00:34:31,081 as a whole are just taking over iGaming by storm. Because chargebacks are a major problem and credit 422 00:34:31,081 --> 00:34:37,561 card fees just eat margins. The Lightning Network is playing a major role in solving that problem as 423 00:34:37,561 --> 00:34:42,141 well because we were at the ICE Barcelona, probably one of the biggest gaming conferences 424 00:34:42,141 --> 00:34:47,361 on planet Earth. It was overwhelming how big it was. There's a lot of crypto casinos who just say 425 00:34:47,361 --> 00:34:52,581 like, hey, we accept crypto, but the fees will randomly balloon and we want to have lower fees. 426 00:34:52,621 --> 00:34:55,821 And we tell them the value prop of Lightning and they say, this makes perfect sense. 427 00:34:55,821 --> 00:35:10,301 And a lot of these gaming payment service providers or platforms that are your all-in-one hub and solution to launch an iGaming platform, they want to have 10 to 20 payment options available for their customers to kind of a la carte build the type of experience they want. 428 00:35:10,301 --> 00:35:23,321 And these businesses are exploring Bitcoin and Lightning because, again, it's the most market-dominant coin and it's got the most at-scale layer two in the world, like we mentioned earlier, with over a billion users with access to it. 429 00:35:23,321 --> 00:35:40,881 Now, there's still massive demand for stable coins. So the big thing I just always tell folks is like, right now with the American government being so all in on stable coins, it's perfectly reasonable that everyone's focusing on stable coins like end of Q4 and Q1. 430 00:35:40,881 --> 00:35:52,741 I think people in just leadership positions, like the champions in these companies, like the thought leaders, the visionaries, they're trying to get the stablecoin strategy in place because they should have done it yesterday. 431 00:35:52,881 --> 00:35:54,241 Now they've got regulatory clarity. 432 00:35:54,841 --> 00:36:23,041 I think the big next step is you know more integration of Bitcoin which has you know very you know a vote of approval from the government if you will alongside stablecoins and then bringing stables on top of Lightning But iGaming and a lot of these kind of high risk areas they have a big incentive to take advantage of Bitcoin and stable coins at large This episode is brought to you by Satoshi 433 00:36:23,041 --> 00:36:27,881 Pacioli, a full service accounting and tax firm built for the Bitcoin economy. If you run a Bitcoin 434 00:36:27,881 --> 00:36:32,521 business, mine Bitcoin or invest in it, you need advisors who actually understand how this industry 435 00:36:32,521 --> 00:36:37,741 works. Satoshi Pacioli handles bookkeeping, financial reporting, tax compliance and strategic 436 00:36:37,741 --> 00:36:42,121 planning for Bitcoin-focused companies and individuals. They speak the language of Bitcoiners 437 00:36:42,121 --> 00:36:46,561 and help you stay compliant while building for the long term. To learn more or book a consultation, 438 00:36:47,001 --> 00:36:53,741 visit satoshipacioli.com. Okay, I want to call back again for kind of a business owner, 439 00:36:54,101 --> 00:36:59,901 like something that I run into even personally. Like if I wanted to pay an employee, for example, 440 00:37:00,461 --> 00:37:06,901 out of a corporate treasury account that we have in the business, right now, if I just do that on 441 00:37:06,901 --> 00:37:11,781 chain and they're a little bit savvy, they can pretty easily trace back, okay, this is the amount 442 00:37:11,781 --> 00:37:18,601 of Bitcoin that's sitting in that wallet. This is the dollar. And that's generally not how it works. 443 00:37:18,961 --> 00:37:23,441 You're an employee of a company. You don't necessarily know how much capital, unless 444 00:37:23,441 --> 00:37:26,921 they're publicly traded, I guess. But if you're a privately held company, you generally don't tell 445 00:37:26,921 --> 00:37:33,061 your employees how much money you have sitting in the bank. Obviously, Lightning adds this layer 446 00:37:33,061 --> 00:37:39,081 of privacy, maybe just talk through any of the mechanics that I missed about privacy on chain. 447 00:37:39,581 --> 00:37:46,361 And then how lightning really solves that problem for anyone, I guess, an enterprise level company, 448 00:37:46,561 --> 00:37:52,661 you know, like a national, like a government that can't let other governments know how much 449 00:37:52,661 --> 00:37:56,641 money they've got sitting here there. Yeah, let's go there for a little bit. 450 00:37:56,641 --> 00:38:04,021 Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, on-chain Bitcoin, you can go download the Bitcoin ledger today and see 451 00:38:04,021 --> 00:38:08,281 every transaction, every address. You know, companies like Chainalysis, they try to connect 452 00:38:08,281 --> 00:38:13,061 those dots to help authorities discern where payments go, right? So it's pretty transparent, 453 00:38:13,221 --> 00:38:18,981 like criminals, you're crazy if you use on-chain, it's easy to track. With Lightning, what's very 454 00:38:18,981 --> 00:38:23,861 interesting is you do an on-chain transaction to open a channel and you can send whatever you would 455 00:38:23,861 --> 00:38:29,981 like back and forth. And since it's peer to peer, you only know where it hopped from your peer. So 456 00:38:29,981 --> 00:38:35,061 if Coinbase and Binance are sending a transaction and it routes through a node, 457 00:38:35,701 --> 00:38:42,781 the node that's routing the payment doesn't necessarily know all of the details of the 458 00:38:42,781 --> 00:38:49,621 payment. So when it comes to the peer to peer nature, you don't know always what's going on 459 00:38:49,621 --> 00:38:52,541 unless it is a peer for a simple level. 460 00:38:52,641 --> 00:38:57,221 But more importantly, private channels is what a lot of companies will use 461 00:38:57,221 --> 00:39:01,641 where say you're a public company, you don't want payment flows to be public. 462 00:39:01,801 --> 00:39:07,221 You open a private channel with another in your holding company. 463 00:39:07,381 --> 00:39:11,301 Let's say you're a bank, a classic example, a holding company of a bank. 464 00:39:11,301 --> 00:39:14,621 You got the lending arm, the banking arm, the whatever arm. 465 00:39:15,101 --> 00:39:19,421 And you just want to use, let's say, our USD line of credit. 466 00:39:19,621 --> 00:39:24,341 to, you know, send over Bitcoin settling dollars, like a bank could do that and solve their cash flow 467 00:39:24,341 --> 00:39:30,201 problem immediately of like instant settlement. That's another kind of appealing thing from a 468 00:39:30,201 --> 00:39:37,661 privacy standpoint. But this is also to go back to our why like papers and these industry papers on 469 00:39:37,661 --> 00:39:42,061 lightning are important. And when we did with Fidelity Digital Assets, like we can only share 470 00:39:42,061 --> 00:39:46,721 and expose the data we know from our node, we have no visibility into the rest of the network, 471 00:39:46,721 --> 00:39:51,241 We only know what has happened within our node and like one hop away, like with our peers. 472 00:39:51,421 --> 00:39:59,761 So whenever River does a report, Voltage does a report with Fidelity Digital Assets or someone else shares it, we can only share what we see from our node. 473 00:39:59,941 --> 00:40:09,441 And at that time, I believe when we did the report, we're sending 25 to 30 percent of all Lightning transactions is like the enterprise, like institutional provider of infrastructure. 474 00:40:09,621 --> 00:40:11,301 It gives a glimpse into the network. 475 00:40:11,621 --> 00:40:14,521 These private channels, no one can really report on them. 476 00:40:14,621 --> 00:40:15,801 Chainalysis can't see them. 477 00:40:15,801 --> 00:40:24,121 So that's where it becomes interesting for some public companies who say, hey, we still need the privacy banking gives us and we can leverage Bitcoin. It can become appealing. 478 00:40:24,121 --> 00:40:37,481 Yeah. No, it's good. I'm glad. Man, we've covered a lot of ground, some of it technical, some of it product stuff. I've followed you now, I guess, for six or eight months, something like that. 479 00:40:37,481 --> 00:40:46,861 And I know a big part of your journey in Bitcoin, as well as a lot of the people that I run into, is just that Bitcoin is hope. 480 00:40:46,941 --> 00:40:52,941 It provides hope, especially for people who feel like they've been left behind by the economic system. 481 00:40:53,061 --> 00:40:55,641 And then you take it, I think, in a really good way. 482 00:40:55,721 --> 00:41:06,061 You take it one step further to understand what is the hope that we're really all after beyond just money solving our everyday needs for our families and our businesses. 483 00:41:06,061 --> 00:41:17,921 I would just love to kind of end it here with like, just opine a little bit on, I guess, what got you into Bitcoin from a standpoint of, you know, there's something broken here. 484 00:41:18,001 --> 00:41:19,361 I think that's where a lot of people come in. 485 00:41:19,661 --> 00:41:20,381 There's something broken. 486 00:41:20,561 --> 00:41:22,261 How do we solve for that? 487 00:41:22,261 --> 00:41:36,381 And then also, I'd love to give you the opportunity to just talk through, you know, your message of like, what is your ultimate hope in and and let people who are listening take that and and see how that might apply to their life as well. 488 00:41:37,901 --> 00:41:41,881 Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, Bitcoin is unique. 489 00:41:41,881 --> 00:41:47,321 Like we've started the talk discussing like this rabbit hole of everything you you learn and go down. 490 00:41:47,321 --> 00:41:48,901 It can be like drinking from a fire hose. 491 00:41:49,321 --> 00:41:52,921 And the one thing I've always known is the love of money is the root of all evil. 492 00:41:53,161 --> 00:41:54,121 It says this in the Bible. 493 00:41:54,361 --> 00:41:55,961 And what has America done? 494 00:41:56,081 --> 00:42:03,761 We go to war with people who try to not use the dollar or try to change the way oil is 495 00:42:03,761 --> 00:42:05,641 traded in the world, these valuable resources. 496 00:42:06,421 --> 00:42:11,281 And that has never felt good, I think, to a lot of people because we don't like war. 497 00:42:11,821 --> 00:42:13,341 We don't like our money debased. 498 00:42:13,421 --> 00:42:15,641 We don't like our savings robbed from under us. 499 00:42:15,641 --> 00:42:16,781 So what is Bitcoin? 500 00:42:17,321 --> 00:42:25,541 You know, Bitcoin is the solution to that, you know, and, you know, scripturally, it always talks about like looking in oneself, looking at your heart. 501 00:42:25,541 --> 00:42:37,961 But whenever I look at the world objectively and I take spiritual discernment, I see, well, the love of money is the root of all evil at a government perspective, too, because when there's a central issuer who has the money printer, the cancel on effect takes control. 502 00:42:38,101 --> 00:42:42,021 And those who are closest to it are rewarded. That's not equal weights and measures. 503 00:42:42,021 --> 00:42:45,141 You know, that's not an equal playing field. 504 00:42:45,321 --> 00:42:50,841 You know, there's no such thing as equal opportunity that doesn't exist in the world. 505 00:42:50,961 --> 00:42:53,301 It's like a pie in the sky kind of fake reality. 506 00:42:53,421 --> 00:42:57,201 But an equal playing field is a reality that is actually tangible. 507 00:42:57,421 --> 00:42:58,801 And that is what Bitcoin gives everyone. 508 00:42:59,441 --> 00:43:06,761 There's a scarce 21 million effect, no central issuer, having every four years that reduces the issuance by 50%. 509 00:43:06,761 --> 00:43:11,001 and you can run your own node to verify the supply 510 00:43:11,001 --> 00:43:12,521 to make sure that these things are true 511 00:43:12,521 --> 00:43:14,021 and they still continue to be true. 512 00:43:14,221 --> 00:43:18,241 So while my hope is in my faith in the Lord Jesus 513 00:43:18,241 --> 00:43:21,261 and my creator, it's nice on this earth to have a tool 514 00:43:21,261 --> 00:43:23,841 that can solve the love of money problem, 515 00:43:23,841 --> 00:43:29,561 which self-preservation and seeking out one's own good 516 00:43:29,561 --> 00:43:31,721 ahead of others is just one of the most common 517 00:43:31,721 --> 00:43:32,921 slippery slopes we see. 518 00:43:33,461 --> 00:43:36,261 And the fact that Bitcoin gives everyone a lifeline of hope 519 00:43:36,261 --> 00:43:42,181 to take their money wherever they want with 12 words or to build an institutional grade payment 520 00:43:42,181 --> 00:43:46,321 rail and infrastructure for your business so that you can last hundreds of years, I think is 521 00:43:46,321 --> 00:43:52,841 appealing. So, you know, regardless of your flavor, take belief, I mean, Bitcoin's a lifeline for 522 00:43:52,841 --> 00:43:59,641 everyone. Yeah. I love that. I always love just, yeah, kind of towards the end, just kind of, 523 00:43:59,761 --> 00:44:03,681 there's so many people out there that have lost hope and they don't know where to turn. They always, 524 00:44:03,681 --> 00:44:09,201 A lot of them turn to, you know, things that just ends up not filling that hole in their 525 00:44:09,201 --> 00:44:09,381 heart. 526 00:44:09,441 --> 00:44:11,341 So I'm glad you had a chance to talk about that. 527 00:44:12,021 --> 00:44:14,381 I guess the last thing is like, okay, so we just started the year. 528 00:44:14,501 --> 00:44:16,241 It's January 29th when we're recording. 529 00:44:16,721 --> 00:44:22,401 If you look out to this year, you know, we're not really focused too much on price on this 530 00:44:22,401 --> 00:44:25,421 show just because there's so much more interesting things to talk about. 531 00:44:25,521 --> 00:44:26,461 I think price will come. 532 00:44:27,281 --> 00:44:28,881 What are you excited about? 533 00:44:29,041 --> 00:44:32,861 You know, be it just broad, you could take it that direction or voltage specific. 534 00:44:33,681 --> 00:44:39,601 for what you guys are going to market with and building this year yeah that's a good question um 535 00:44:41,521 --> 00:44:46,401 i mean i'm excited for lightning obviously it's it's delivering tremendous value globally and 536 00:44:46,401 --> 00:44:51,601 that's really exciting but um the line of credit we're doing giving usd optionality to businesses 537 00:44:51,601 --> 00:44:56,721 is really fun that's a big focus for us this year and there's a lot of appetite for that a lot of 538 00:44:56,721 --> 00:45:02,801 demand because people have been asking companies like strike unchained lava leaden for something 539 00:45:02,801 --> 00:45:06,781 like this for a long time and there's nothing like it. So the fact that we can fill a gap in 540 00:45:06,781 --> 00:45:11,661 the market that's needed is tremendously exciting. But beyond all of that, man, the thing I'm really 541 00:45:11,661 --> 00:45:18,641 excited about is just seeing Bitcoin become everyday money. Like the work that Square and 542 00:45:18,641 --> 00:45:24,881 Cash App are doing to like make it tangible for people is incredible. Seeing, you know, 543 00:45:24,921 --> 00:45:29,241 just digital money being natively integrated online, like you were mentioning with Rumble, 544 00:45:29,241 --> 00:45:33,801 Like it's becoming commonplace for Bitcoin and Lightning to be a part of these online 545 00:45:33,801 --> 00:45:34,501 experiences. 546 00:45:34,641 --> 00:45:36,301 And I think that's what makes it tangible for people. 547 00:45:36,501 --> 00:45:38,901 You ask that question, like what made you shift to enterprise? 548 00:45:39,181 --> 00:45:42,501 Like it's exactly that, you know, Rumble has an audience of millions. 549 00:45:43,101 --> 00:45:47,901 And if you don't just bring it to the people where they are and allow them to experience 550 00:45:47,901 --> 00:45:53,421 it in a kind of native, natural and delightful way, people will never do it. 551 00:45:53,501 --> 00:45:55,841 It's the same thing as like Steve Jobs making the iPhone. 552 00:45:56,021 --> 00:45:57,361 People were like, this is crazy. 553 00:45:57,481 --> 00:45:58,421 No one's going to use it. 554 00:45:58,421 --> 00:46:01,281 And our world couldn't function without it at this point. 555 00:46:01,341 --> 00:46:01,921 You know what I mean? 556 00:46:02,341 --> 00:46:04,261 So I think that's really exciting. 557 00:46:04,261 --> 00:46:08,741 Like the innovators who are just making it practical and a good user experience. 558 00:46:09,121 --> 00:46:11,181 I think that's the most exciting thing. 559 00:46:11,301 --> 00:46:18,861 So shout out to the user experience designers and the front end developers who are bringing Bitcoin, you know, to the world in a delightful way. 560 00:46:19,521 --> 00:46:20,721 Yeah, I love it, man. 561 00:46:20,821 --> 00:46:21,901 Okay, this has been great. 562 00:46:22,001 --> 00:46:24,661 I'm super excited we got connected to do this. 563 00:46:24,661 --> 00:46:30,301 yeah, I guess anyone who's, you know, walking away from this episode, where can they find you? 564 00:46:30,561 --> 00:46:33,721 Where can they get involved, you know, with Voltage if they see a need 565 00:46:33,721 --> 00:46:38,661 here to introduce their customer or client to your all service? 566 00:46:40,301 --> 00:46:48,021 Yeah. So our website is voltage.cloud. You can find me on X, just like the iPhone. My name is 567 00:46:48,021 --> 00:46:55,701 I Bobby Shell, B-O-B-B-Y-S-H-E-L-L, I Bobby Shell. And I'm on LinkedIn here and there. Those are the 568 00:46:55,701 --> 00:47:00,601 main areas. I am on Noster. I check it a little less just because it's not as relevant for the 569 00:47:00,601 --> 00:47:05,101 day-to-day work. And I'm more so working than like having fun, just like enjoying the internet. But 570 00:47:05,101 --> 00:47:08,661 those are the best places to connect. And if you'd love to learn more about the line of credit, 571 00:47:08,661 --> 00:47:12,961 we'd love to chat. This is a cutting edge product, tremendously value for businesses. 572 00:47:13,941 --> 00:47:17,781 So we'd love to talk more about that. But it's been a pleasure. And if anyone wants to chat, 573 00:47:17,781 --> 00:47:21,781 learn about Bitcoin and lightning, shoot me a DM. I'm happy to be a resource for anyone who needs it. 574 00:47:21,781 --> 00:47:25,381 Lovely. All right. Thank you so much, Bobby. I appreciate your time today. 575 00:47:25,381 --> 00:47:27,461 Talk to you soon. Appreciate it, Jordan. All right. Bye. 576 00:47:27,461 --> 00:47:27,781 Bye. 577 00:47:47,781 --> 00:47:52,781 comes and our clients are better served. Stay sharp, stay sovereign, and keep leading from the front.