Hello, everybody. My name is Daniel Prince, and I'm the host of the Once Bitten podcast.
This is a podcast focused on Bitcoin. It's my mission to interview as many people as I can
around the different aspects of Bitcoin and help people understand exactly what Bitcoin could mean
for them and for their families and for their future. I hope you enjoy the show. Thank you so
much for listening. Hello everybody and welcome to this episode of the Once Bitten podcast. Now
you're probably thinking, you've looked at the title of this show and you're thinking, what the
hell is Princey doing talking about Bitcoin treasury companies when all he's ever done is
tweet about how shitty they are, what a grift they are and been a bit of a negative Nancy about the
whole thing. That's still my stance, by the way. But not all Bitcoin treasury companies are created
equal. Some, like B-Hodl, are taking a completely different approach to a lot of the ones that I've
seen just reverse IPO themselves with a bunch of venture capital money, take over a shell company
on an existing bourse somewhere around the world. They don't care where they find these companies
and then they turn it into a share printing machine
so that they can buy Bitcoin with the money that is given up by basically Bitcoin plebs around the world
that are trying to do something with trapped capital such as pension funds.
That's not what B-Hodl are.
They have created a completely different company.
They've listed that company.
They've gone through all of those regulations.
This is in conjunction with CoinCorner.
Coin Corner, a Bitcoin-only exchange, been around since 2014, running out of the Isle
of Man.
Same founding member, same founding team running that.
And we've got Danny Scott, who is the founder and CEO of Coin Corner, on here today as the
chief Bitcoin officer of B-Hodl.
And the CFO, Dave Boylan, who is the CFO for both Coin Corner and for B-Hodl.
So Freddie New couldn't join us, unfortunately, getting four of us together at the same time
on the same day just proved to be an absolute nightmare this is why i'm so late to the game
getting these kind of uh things out because we wanted everybody to be on the call in the end
we had to go forward and we did it with dave and danny i hope you enjoy it before we get into the
show go and check out historyofbitcoin.io and if you are an avid art collector especially if you
love the history of bitcoin check out at buy smash toshi on twitter by smash toshi on twitter
there's an auction running on scarce.city for a beautiful piece of artwork okay show shields are
you stacking your sats if not why not across europe the best place that you can do that is
relay r-e-l-a-i dot ch forward slash bitten get stacking today they also have a white glove surface
service for your high net worth individuals or for your businesses that want to go and start
accepting bitcoin for your goods and services if you want to do that by the way you can just
set up straight away paywithflash.com exists for you to be able to start accepting bitcoin
for your goods and services it's done click and click and go it is so simple it's not a lengthy
the old setup pro is no pay with flash.com it exists finally take self custody of your bitcoin
if you've not already oh god like how many have you have got bitcoin on an exchange that you sold
when you saw it go down and then you're frantically trying to buy it back as it's going up you get
caught into this mindset of trying to trade to get more bitcoin it never works you just want to get
that Bitcoin off of the exchanges and into cold storage. And then in 10 years time, you'll wake up
and you're like, oh shit, I don't need to do this fiat nonsense anymore because I've been stacking
sats and taking self-custody. Get over to bitbox.swiss forward slash bitten. Get your keys under your
control. I couldn't make that any clearer. Please make that a New Year's resolution. Order one for
Christmas. Just order one for Christmas and hand it to the wife. Make sure she wraps it up for you.
you know you can wait another three weeks i'm sure or just it's an early christmas present just
get it off the exchange it's bitbox.swiss forward slash bitten orange collab is the place for you to
go and meet other bitcoiners except it's not because it's now called club orange yes they
have had a rebrand and there's almost 20 000 bitcoiners around the world on club orange i was
just in New York for the event to launch the Smash Toshi History of Bitcoin book at PubKey
in New York. Thank you to PubKey, guys. And yeah, using that app is so damn cool. You can just flick
it open and find people, find events, find merchants, and soon there's going to be another
upgrade. But go and play around with the wallet. You can geo zap people. You can even now face zap.
If you FaceTime someone within the Orange Collab chat system, you can tap on their face and you just send them a zap instantly.
It's just cool.
Just because, right?
Just because you can do things.
Lastly, go check out Geyser Fund.
That's G-E-Y-S-E-R dot fund and what they are building over there for the Bitcoin crowdfunding space.
This is what we need to see more of.
Thank you, Mick and the team over at Geyser.
okay guys let's get into this one with dave and danny all right lads danny dave good to have you
on the show long time long time we do need a long old catch-up we do yeah thank you dan
appreciate it has been a long time i think it was are we talking three years ago i think since last
time i was on pod yeah probably maybe two i don't know been a long time well you guys have been busy
with your own pod.
Of course.
Yeah, it's been, I mean, yeah,
we like doing that as a, in some sense,
a break away from the reality of the crazy life
of running a Bitcoin exchange.
So it's great, but it also gives us the opportunity
to talk a little bit about Bitcoin
and talk a little bit to the customer base,
which is always nice.
So we seem to-
Yeah, it lets us go through the news, doesn't it?
And focus on what other people are doing as well.
So it's a kind of like a, it's almost therapy rather than anything else.
Yeah.
So why don't we, for those people that aren't aware of who you are, Danny,
why don't you introduce yourself and a quick overview of who Coin Corner are
on the exchange side of things.
And then Dave, your involvement and your past as well.
Yeah, sure.
So myself, Danny Scott, CEO and co-founder of Coin Corner.
and also Chief Bitcoin Officer for the HODL,
which I'm sure we'll come on to shortly.
I founded Coin Corner back in 2014
with a couple of other co-founders.
We are a Bitcoin exchange focused primarily on the UK market.
We are open to a couple of other jurisdictions as well,
but UK has always been a historic focus,
based here in the Isle of Man.
We've grown out now,
the company or the exchange as a whole
and the group as a whole
has grown out to quite a multitude of various companies.
We've done things such as merchandise with the Bitcoin socks,
if you've ever seen them,
but more of an education play than a moneymaker.
We've acquired a large stake in a UK EMI company,
which was a year ago,
which is Mercury FX, a company over there.
We have another couple of other subsidiaries.
We have an office in the UK
with a team now that's starting to build out.
We have an office in Dubai with a team that's starting to build out.
Majority is still here in the Isle of Man as our sort of HQ.
We pretty much bootstrapped from day one towards about, I think,
about 400,000 customers now bootstrapped from day one.
Didn't really take any venture capital funding until sort of the last couple
of years, which was due to the expansion in Dubai, which we touched on.
The bootstrapping piece, I'm touching on that because I think that's
an important part for us as Coin Corner and for the community of the industry within the UK is
because we, by doing that, we've kind of had our freedom in our own hands a little bit and we've
been able to go in the direction that we see fit going forwards. We haven't been dragged into other
directions over the years of the blockchain, the altcoins, the ICOs, the NFTs, everything that you
would have seen during every hype we've been through. So it's allowed us to focus on Bitcoin
and focus on the innovations around Bitcoin, being things like Lightning,
which I'm sure we'll come on to shortly as well.
And we have Dave. Sorry, I'll stop rambling on and pass to Dave.
Yeah, that was a ramble, wasn't it?
I'm Dave, the CFO of Coin Corner and the CFO of B-Hodl.
I've been at Coin Corner for nearly seven years, coming up to seven years.
Been in finance itself for nearly 20, probably just 15, 20 years.
And yeah, and a big Bitcoin advocate, been in Bitcoin for a while and just love the space, love the industry and love the very essence of what it can provide people.
So and as Danny says, we've been on quite a big journey, been with Bitcoin for a while, building on Bitcoin and very much Bitcoin focused.
That's about it. Very plain, boring old accounts guy, unfortunately.
Dave from accounts.
Yeah, I remember you as.
It's just that miserable guy that tries to stop people spending money, basically.
Having fun.
Yeah.
Stop them having fun.
So, yeah, you co-host the BrickCoin podcast with Molly, obviously, who's head of marketing,
chief marketing officer for Coin Corner.
Yeah and I known you guys for a great deal of time and always been impressed with what you delivered very very much Danny you not big enough like the bolt card Like that was a big thing back in the day on lightning
You guys have been very forward thinking when it comes to lightning.
Yeah. Thank you. You know, yeah, yeah, we've, we've been,
as I touched on with the bootstrapping side and allowing us to sort of
venture into these concepts and yeah, the bolt card being contactless,
first contactless payments via Lightning in the industry.
So that was pretty, in the sense of it was groundbreaking at the time,
showing that what you could do with a Visa and MasterCard,
you can effectively do with Bitcoin Lightning as well.
It was hopefully an incredible concept,
and it seems to have been taken, received well by the industry a few years ago.
And it's nice that we are seeing that used and made use of
in all sorts of countries around the world,
the Africas, South Americas we're seeing, which is really, really good.
And it shows that contactless payments can be done.
um we have also done uh there was actually i think bitcoin magazine did a world record on it
in vegas a couple of months ago um using the bulk card so they set a guinness world record i believe
um for the most bulk card transactions in a 24-hour period um which we weren't even part of we
completely um or we weren't there to attend um but a couple of the guys we know were all there
and they joined in.
So it was good to see from a distance that.
We've done something called SendGlobally as well,
which is, again, a bit of another proof of concept
around sending cross-border payments using Lightning.
So it allows someone from a Coin Corner customer, for example,
that has pounds in their EMI account with us,
which is like the equivalent.
It's an electronic money institutional account,
similar to what you'll see on like Revolut.
And it allows it to send them pounds from the UK bank as such
to then a bank in Philippines, for example.
And that goes via Bitcoin Lightning in the background,
but it goes from local currency in pounds
to then local currency in the Philippines
into almost a bank-to-bank situation.
While in the background, it's using Bitcoin Lightning
to make the transaction pretty much almost instantaneous
with a very, very close FX rate.
So it starts to compete with the Western Union
and MoneyGrams, et cetera.
So that's, again, another Lightning product
we built out with quite a few participants in the industry being pouch you mentioned there strike
bit knob neutron pay etc so yeah we've been heavily involved in lightning from pretty much
day one of it big believers in that from a payment perspective as well so hopefully that will be
a topic and a focus anyway on as we come on to be huddle shortly so i think it was miami 2022
when I ran into you in person for the first time
and you were handing out the bulk cards.
And I found the other day, very serendipitous,
I opened up this drawer and there it was,
the bulk card that I got from you,
that first one I got with the wizard on.
And I think that you had to discontinue that, didn't you?
We did, yeah, because we were the,
I forgot his name now, but the guy who'd actually,
you know, it's one of them things,
it's a meme in the industry of the Bitcoin wizard
and you just see the image.
So we'd use that as one of the cards, as you say there.
But the guy actually, unfortunately,
was not happy with us using that,
saying that he owned copyright to it.
So we did originally say to him,
he can happily receive any money we make on the back of these
because it was never a moneymaker then,
sort of thing, same as the socks.
They were never moneymakers.
They were purely just like education
and sort of marketing tools for the Bitcoin education side.
so yeah we had stopped selling them so you will have
one there that
is not available anymore
same with the socks as well, the Bitcoin socks
it was my favourite design as well
it was such a shame
big shame and now
I hope he went after Taproot Wizards as well
were they using the image as well?
they do don't they
I didn't think of that
I don't know
anyway yes
and the first
Bitcoin payment ever to be made
I believe anywhere in the world
with a pair of socks
yeah
that went viral
for the wrong reasons
yes it did
Molly found foot Twitter by mistake
yeah
that was a deep rabbit hole
you don't want to be part of it
we need a new version of that
I think that's been a while
that was so long ago
I think that was the biggest tweet
anyone from point corner has ever had and it was yeah it was um molly paying with um bitcoin using
an nfc tag basically within a sock um which was then like the bulk card equivalent but using a
sock and paid in the shop uh in the isle of maum using her foot with the sock and tapping it on the
the pos device and yeah as dan says there it went viral for um all the wrong reasons really
all the things we've done
all the amazing things we've built
and it's a sock tweet
that gets recognised
it had millions of impressions as well
it was crazy
that's a poor reflection on the world
if that's what's happening
right
get us up to before we talk about
B-HODL what's going on in
exchange world Dan because we just
had an all time high
so what happens behind the scenes at a bitcoin exchange when the price is pumping who wants to
take that one i i've got an answer but mine's not exciting nothing nothing exciting it's been
historically it was like especially like 2017 it was crazy the all-time high was like we were
the influx of customers coming through the door was crazy it was like we couldn't deal with it it
There were so many.
Then in 2021, it was kind of a little bit less again.
And then this time, it feels honestly like we've not really had retail here yet.
And we're still institutional side.
Businesses have been probably more pick up this cycle in terms of Bitcoin on the balance sheet for businesses.
And we're seeing more of that at the minute from the Coin Corner side.
But the retail audience is just not really here, from a new audience at least anyway.
All the customers that have been Bitcoiners for many years, they are coming back in the more regular.
when the price goes up, but new ones coming in, yeah, it's still lacking.
So I don't think we've had that inflection point yet.
You can probably see it on Google Trends as well in terms of people
actually searching.
It's just not hitting the same heights that it was at the last four runs.
But obviously, as an exchange, we get more logins, a bit more attention.
But for the retail audience, like Danny says, it's not there yet,
probably because it's not making as much of a splash in terms of the media.
There's a few news articles, but it's just not there.
Retail's not here yet, I'd say, in terms of the all-time high
and the attention we'd expect it to bring.
Yeah, I'm not sure as well what actually brings retail back at this point.
It's round numbers, isn't it, previously?
Like where 100k we got, that was busy because that seemed like a milestone.
But like an all-time high of 124 is a bit like, oh, it's 124.
Or maybe like a 150, that's another.
It's all psychological in terms of those sorts of investment thresholds, I would say.
I'd expect probably a lot of activity at 150.
Round numbers still count a lot.
Yeah, I think just as well from a Coin Corner perspective,
the exchange itself, Coin Corner, is actually doing still very well.
And it's probably the biggest revenue year to date, I think, again, this year, won't it?
I believe.
Which is still a great thing because you've got all the older customers coming back.
you've got the businesses putting bit on the balance sheet um we do a lot in the sort of
payment sort of space as well now um but there's that retail audience still hasn't quite kicked
back in um which is yeah a bit of interesting dynamic for uh this cycle at the moment yeah
it's merchant growth has really exploded in the last couple of years that's that's really the
takeaway in terms of what we're seeing as the exchange interesting so you've you've onboarded
like more you know a high percentage of merchants over the last handful of years than
than you would have expected or i would i would have still expected it it in terms of it's just
happened as you would have you know it as bitcoin is becoming more everyday use it's becoming
more familiar to people and and it would grow from if you're an individual holding bitcoin and
then actually migrating that into your business that has become much more acceptable and that's
probably what you're seeing in terms of the trend with treasury codes as well it's all kind of
amalgamated into more merchants holding bitcoin and in terms of a treasury play for an actual
merchant putting it on on their balance sheet this is like your sole traders your builders and people
like that it's become actually a very viable option for them i think in terms of also how
to how accessible that is to do as well it's not a niche product anymore to put on your balance
sheet is actually quite an accessible thing and obviously we know in terms of fundamentals it's a
great thing to have on your balance sheet and the other businesses we want to have in air quotes a
bitcoin treasury uh you know balance sheet bitcoin treasury company your favorite pub restaurant cafe
bar sole trader whatever it is um and that's another area where you guys were we're ahead of
curve with that i think uh with the point of sale machines that uh you were very i i remember
onboarding my my brother's cafe uh he had a couple of cafes and uh it's like well you just open a
coin corner account business account they ship you the uh the point of sale machine we even had
matt in uh in england at the time he come and set them all up in person this this was you know
groundbreaking stuff and uh yeah pat yourselves on the back lads because you're doing the hard
work here. Thank you. I think it's good. Obviously, it's very good that, obviously, you'll remember
your experience, you have lived through that time period as well, which was great. So, a big part
from obviously from Coin Corner perspective is making sure that it sustainable whatever we releasing the products and things as well are sustainable from a revenue perspective And we can see growth in that particular product going forwards One of the unfortunate sides of Bitcoin in the minute is people were still not willing to necessarily spend it
I think was a big part of that. And there was a couple of reasons.
One was they're not willing to spend it and they want to hold on to the Bitcoin, which, you know, you can spend and replenish.
And that's an option, of course. The other problem was it was almost like difficult.
it wasn't difficult to pay with lightning because it's it's very simple now and it is quick and easy
but it was difficult to like you go into a shop and they say accept bitcoin and you say okay can
i pay in bitcoin and then half of the time they they're pulling out a different pos device they're
trying to load it up are the staff trained on it if it's like a bigger bigger shop then the staff
needs to be trained on it it's it's difficult it is actually difficult to maintain something going
forwards where it's not integrated into the current system um that they're used to being like
the fiat visa mastercard payments so what we actually turned a bit more of a focus to um after
that sort of influx of interest from businesses is integrating into more the tradfi sort of
pos device companies so its lolly was one i don't know if you saw them what we did a common uh
partnership with its lolly um so any devices that they have now then you can then use bitcoin via
that and they actually they're incredibly nice really nice big touchscreen um sort of almost
like you'd see in a mcdonald's for example in touch self-service touch screen side and you can
go through you can make your order and then you just pick right you want to pay in bitcoin and
it's all automated so you can then just pay so that makes it a lot more seamless and they are
only just rolling that out properly now to to more merchants so it's it's taken unfortunately
these things do take a bit of time and it took a couple of years really to get integrated properly
and ready to roll out on a system like that but now it does look very good it's it's very very
user-friendly and hopefully that will start to attract more people making use of it.
Right. One last boring question, but it's important because it's the regulatory landscape.
Obviously now you're UK, so Brexit means Brexit. They've got their own set of rules. They've got
the Mika license, which is proving to be, from what I hear, not one, just ridiculously costly.
I think you're upwards of 200 to quarter of a million euros, 200,000 to quarter of a million euros.
The paperwork is as you'd expect it to be, you know, size of a doorstep.
It gets sent back. It gets, you know, changed again.
You've got to change it. Then you send it back.
It gets sent back again because it hits someone else's desk and they pick it.
It's an absolute nightmare. It's taking so long.
and in the classic way that these things work you have like this these bureaucracies that exist to
ensure that no monopolies exist at the same time what they're doing is creating monopolies because
there's only a few companies that can afford to do this not just with time but with investment
so what's the regulatory landscape now in one the isle of man and to the uk at large what what's
on your radar what's been difficult and yeah who wants to take that one um yeah i can jump i guess
i'm i'm closest to that um from what we're doing but you are completely right it is unfortunately
um companies the cost is is becoming crazy like we're not we're not just going through so we've
got um the allemand side has been we've been under the fsa now for uh since 2016 so nearly
nine years, I think it is now. So we've already, so historically, we've built up sort of the KYC
obligation side of things from, well, almost from day one, to be honest, but we were formally under
the obligation in 2016. That kind of meant we were, the Alaman was one of the first countries
in the world to do that. And we were a little bit ahead of the curve. So we were there when the UK
started introducing it as a crypto register. And when Europe started introducing things under VASPs,
it became we were there we kind of had the policies and procedures in place we had the
operational procedures in place it made it a little bit easier for us in some some respects
so we had a little bit of a competitive advantage over probably the sort of 2020 to 2023 times where
people were just catching up and playing catch up with the regs however now like you're saying
there with mica and europe and things like yeah they are exactly what you're saying that they're
trying to be polite um in the nicest of ways with it but it is an absolute headache it's massively
costly it's very very time consuming um we've been going through the dubai the uae one uh which is
under vara so we've got the office there um and we have the going through the regulatory overhead
there and the oversight sorry and that they're very good the regulator there has been incredibly
helpful responsive and reactive to everything the questions but exactly like you say you put
submit the application they go through it they find tooth comb they find certain things highlight
things they come back to you you correct them you go back again somebody different picks up
this time picks up your application runs through it again find something different the first person
didn't spot and then you're back and it is almost it feels like a never-ending uh loop and you have
to keep going through over and over again with this um so it is painfully slow it is costly
it's definitely putting a barrier to entry to a lot of the smaller startups um massively so and
you are right it will create this consolidation where you could potentially end up with more
monopolies in certain jurisdictions because other people are just not willing to go through that
overhead and the burden to get these things over the line. Europe's kind of nice. You've got Mika
and you've got lots of countries in that. UK is its own. So it's, again, smaller jurisdiction in
comparison to Europe as a whole. And people are, we are seeing people drop out. I think the
applications going through the UK at the minute are becoming less and less and less. They are
looking to introduce more full regulatory oversight in the coming years, which will then again create
an even bigger barrier to entry again.
A lot of these countries, I feel like,
there's definitely been a knee-jerk reaction to crypto,
should call it, not Bitcoin.
It was a knee-jerk reaction to crypto,
and that then created the panic as such
with creating these regs and how they scoped them out
and what they did, and that's then created
probably too much of an oversight over a lot of this.
And even in comparison to banking and things like that,
you know we're almost parallel to what a bank would if you go sign up with coin corner good
way to explain that go sign up with coin corner and the process and all the quizzes the questionnaires
all the questions we have to ask from a legal perspective now from a regulatory stance is
absolutely nuts and then you go and sign up to something like etoro or um one of the trading
platforms and it's barely anything in comparison to this and even going and signing up at a bank
like, you know, go and sign up with Revolut or Monzo and things like that.
It's nowhere near as difficult as it is now to a Bitcoin exchange,
which is crazy when the banks are fully regulated
and the crypto register in the UK is just a registration.
It's not regulation.
It's meant to just be an oversight for AML,
but it's encompassed all of these barriers to entry for consumers into it,
which I get the concept and why they went the theory around it
of protecting them from crypto.
but when you're a bitcoin only exchange like coin corner it's a little bit frustrating
yeah i think that's an important piece as well that they do they do the regulatory oversight
doesn't separate out bitcoin and crypto so it's all just under one very big sweeping crypto
statement which we all know is you know a bit quite a falsehood and quite annoying one as well
because it's always referred to as crypto so we're always saying actually this is completely separate
And I suppose the regulators are probably, although ours have been very helpful, guilty of sometimes like shoehorning trad fi regs into this new space.
And it can be quite inhibiting in terms of growth of the industry.
I think it's probably what you'll see in the UK is it's actually quite, you know, a stunter of growth in what should be a new industry, a burgeoning industry.
And it's actually been held back a little bit, which is a shame.
but it's always quite hard to get that balance between protecting people and,
you know, allowing a sector to grow, I suppose.
Yeah. Are you allowed to advertise again? Because that changed.
I don't know that. What's the latest on that?
You can advertise, but everything has to be,
it's like a financial promotion and you then have to have it.
Every single financial promotion would need to be vetted by a regulated entity
in the uk and then it becomes very restrictive in what you can do so like pure brand with nothing
else is kind of the simplest one that people do and that's why you'll see a lot of them now
um sponsoring like the football teams for example i think like is it kraken i've got one and a
couple of the guys and they're just sponsoring football team with just their logo on and that's
it because you can do that without needing financial promotion issues or not getting
slapped by the fca so it's quite a simple one to do um if you as soon as you say anything about you
buying bitcoin or doing anything or crypto or anything that where you can a product that might
be an acquisition of crypto um regardless of what that product is or looks like then it falls under
the financial promotions and then you've got to be careful then that's when the rules catch you and
it's kind of a you can't say we even had things like um the fca going through the website and
making sure we weren't saying things like we couldn't use the word easy or quick or anything
like that so you couldn't say this is a quick way to buy bitcoin because it's being perceived as like
this it is quick and it's kind of fomo and driving you into it um so you can kind of understand where
they're coming from with these points but it creates massive problems via companies like us
of how we can advertise and how we can't and most of that is because it's classified under the
crypto sorry is classified under the restrictive mass market investment now which there's only
I think one other thing, which is crowdfunding, is also under restricted mass market investment,
which is the likes of like Cedars a couple of other companies that do crowdfunding for the startups And they just as Dave said their shoehorned crypto into that which has all these crazy regs around it So hopefully that will get taken away in the future and they simplify it a little bit
But until, I believe, until the full regs come in,
I don't think we'll see anything, any movement on that.
Oh, it's so frustrating, mate,
because you see it everywhere, all over like the sport.
If you watch your bread and circuses during the adverts,
obviously you're going to get you know you bet 365 or whatever like you know download an app today
you'll get a free five pounds you can start gambling your tits off on absolutely anything
you know it's just and that's all fine no problem and if you haven't got that you've got a banking
ad from hsbc probably the biggest criminal organization known to man or lloyd's bank
offering small to medium-sized enterprises loans which they print out of thin air and then charge
you use serious interest on and that's all fine too but no we can't have you guys being exposed
to any kind of uh hard money that might lift you out of your gambling addiction and debt no no no
it is crazy like i honestly don't know what to say because it is just crazy it makes no sense
it really doesn't um and i don't know what regulators around the world would say in response
of that and maybe they'd say you know you're comparing apples and oranges in some ways but
you are completely right it is how can i just go and gamble and have no questions asked a thousand
pounds on on red on a roulette and nobody would ask a question um yeah i can't go and put a thousand
pounds into bitcoin because my bank's blocking me because of x y and z regulation and um yeah the
amount of people we still have problem moving money from the banking system into bitcoin exchanges
it's it's chaos it really is it is incredibly frustrating and i think we are all very frustrated
in terms of the coin corner staff because we all share the same the same problem i suppose
even the the 24-hour cool off that they brought in they like you don't need that in gambling as
far as i'm aware so you can actually sign up and just gamble instantly 24-hour cool off so what
so if i send over like 5 000 pounds successfully to a coin corner account i can't access that
for another 24 hours is that if you if you're if you sign up you have to then have a 24-hour cool
cool down before you could buy yeah so it's only after sign up yeah only on the initial sign up so
once you sign up 24 hours after that you can't send us money or do anything until that point
go off son drop a knee go and actually think about it you know basically that's what they're saying
isn't it like this guy must be crazy is he trying to buy bitcoin he'll have to have a feel after
chill out for 24 hours.
How they brought that into this and didn't
bring that into gambling, like you're saying, is crazy.
I have to double check. I'm not a
gambler, so I don't... I'm a
Bitcoiner, so I actually don't know
if they do have it in gambling.
I'm not aware of it.
No. And I find
it amusing that people use
Bitcoin to gamble with.
Like, you know,
what are you doing?
Anyway, whatever.
I just thought of something else there that crossed my mind.
What were we talking about?
Getting money across?
Yes, the questionnaires that they bought in.
I remember actually, Freddie should have been on this call
because of his involvement in B-HODL,
but Bitcoin policy when he was keeping a very close eye
on these questionnaires.
And I only did a few.
I think I did your one, obviously,
and I think I did like a Revolut one maybe.
And I kept failing them.
I kept failing them because I knew the answers
there's some questions on there that yeah as a Bitcoiner
you would be saying one answer but obviously the answer the
FCA are looking for is something slightly different and yeah
the funny thing is probably most of the people are failing that
are proper Bitcoiners that have been there for years and they're answering similar to what you're saying there
which is according to FCA technically not the right answer unfortunately but yeah it's the
quiz is yeah it's it's been a again it's another barrier to entry and you know everything we're
talking through here just to register with a company like ourselves and buy bitcoin you've
got the banking issues to start with you've got all of the information we have to collect on you
from the get-go you've obviously then got the 24-hour cool down you've then got this quiz as
well to prove that you're um a sophisticated investor should we call it um in terms of knowing
the bitcoin knowledge um it's just yeah it is incredible the amount and there isn't really any
other industry that this compares to at the minute in terms of do you think do you think there'll be
a time where they actually climb back in terms of deregulate slightly do you think it'll look
because i don't know of an industry where they've done that in terms of actually they've gone this
is too restrictive we need to actually maybe free up or do do less of that or climb but unless it
gets the like section does something else i'm not sure no i think yeah once the the new regs um so
the full regulation comes in in the uk then potentially they'll change like at least maybe
the markings it won't be maybe it won't be a restrictive mass market investment and it'll be
something different which will then give us some different set of rules um and yeah the quiz and
things like that i honestly don't know but you're right yeah normally these the regulators don't
pull back as far as i'm aware they'll just keep adding and adding onto it as opposed to pulling
back but i'm hoping because of the way this happened and everything happened so quick they
had to do that knee-jerk reaction and put something in place they know that they went in a little bit
too heavy and hopefully they will learn and pull back from that but in banking you got a lot of
reaction after 08 right so the regulations really kicked there was huge heightened regulations
because they had actually a period of deregulations.
What do you think kicked it off in terms of Bitcoin?
What made them think?
Do you think it was just adoption?
Do you think they saw the growing market
and actually saw the amount of people getting involved with it
and thought we have to play this further?
A combination of the cycles, I would say,
in the sense of the bull and bear.
So after the bull and everyone piles in
and then the bear kicks in and for whatever reason,
each cycle has been a different trigger point,
being even the likes of the FTX and them sort of ones where we had collapses.
And I think each time we've seen that, we've seen that from CoinCorner perspective,
every time there's a collapse from a bull market and it's migrating into a bear market,
we see all the negative press, all the negative reactions from regulators, from banks, from everyone.
And then we have to then take that time.
We have another year or two of then educating and pulling people back around
and trying to talk, explaining what's the difference between Bitcoin and crypto
and why it's not an ICO and all these things.
So you kind of, it feels like that's the same thing.
And this is going to be now like the fourth time
I think we'll have potentially experienced that.
You're right, actually, because the news stories you get
is that this grandma lost her money on Bitcoin
and she shouldn't have been getting involved with Bitcoin.
Then you see heightened regulations,
but they very rarely report the amount of people
that have been really successful
and actually build up a saving pot
by slowly accumulating Bitcoin.
It's just not a news story, is it?
It's not fun.
That would be the majority of people.
That would be the pattern of behavior for most people,
but it's not newsworthy.
Yeah, you've got, like you said, Dan,
you've got the problem of FTX failing, Celsius, Gemini, BlogFi,
Zingle now, no, Zygloo, is that Zygloo in the UK?
and it's all crypto stuff every single time it's crypto stuff but dressed up as um you know it's
it's all part of the bitcoin ecosystem uh yeah and these bad actors end up um taking down
millions if not billions of dollars worth of value of people's holdings and savings and yeah so
you know to play devil's advocate you can see why you know somebody that is a in in the business of
regulating and they're watching these things happen in front of their eyes and they can't
figure out what or how and it's their job to stop it.
Yeah, the knee-jerk reaction. That's what it is.
That's the crazy thing. You've just touched on it there in terms of it's bad actors as
opposed to Bitcoin. It's nothing to do with Bitcoin most of the time. It's not
Bitcoin's dead as the media portrays and things like that.
It ends up being a bad actor that has an impact on the
industry as a whole and that drags everything down with it and everything then bitcoin gets
encompassed within this crypto and um like ftx it was a bad actor at the end of the day of what
happened there um and you know that goes for every industry out there not just bitcoin so
um unfortunately yeah it's always going to play out but i think you touched on it earlier on in
terms of the short it's short term or short-sighted versus the long-sighted and hopefully we can
stick to bitcoin and keep plowing away and long term it will come back around eventually
Well, big crashes, a beautiful segue into Bitcoin treasury companies and what we're going to talk about today.
You and I had spoken before a couple of months ago now.
I can't remember exactly when, when this started coming out and, you know, texting each other.
And I'm like, Dan, this just looks shockingly bad.
All of this stuff. A lot of people are going to get wrecked.
And I can't, I just can't see the end game.
It doesn't make any sense.
And like this narrative of bridges are being built between like the fiat system to get trapped fiat into Bitcoin because, you know, the need and the hunger is there.
I found that to be a misleading narrative.
The only people that truly are wanting to do that are Bitcoiners.
it's certainly not just mom and pop retail.
And like you've just explained earlier,
like retail isn't even here yet in spot Bitcoin,
let alone buying penny stocks
of companies they've never heard of before,
run by CEOs they have no idea they are.
And then you have this more, you know, they pile the narrative on, you know, it's institutional investment.
You know, this is going to change the game.
It's like, no, it's not.
Because, you know, institutional investors can't buy penny stocks.
It has to have a certain market cap before it's even considered.
And then it's still got to have the, you know, the green light by the board once you've sat around and had the discussion with them.
There is not a pent up demand.
that I can see the demand is Bitcoin as retail pensions.
They're, they're, they're SIPs.
If you're in the U in the UK,
or maybe they're 401s within the U S or superannuation, Australia,
wherever you are and you've got money, you want Bitcoin exposure,
but you can't buy a spot Bitcoin and self custody.
So you've been buying micro strategy or maybe buying Ibit or whatever else.
and now you can buy a Bitcoin treasury company
that sprung up out of nowhere.
Makes no sense to me.
But then you guys go and start one
and I'm thinking, well, what the fuck's going on?
I mean, there's a lot to break down there.
And yeah, there's a lot of, I think, shared thoughts on,
I think, I mean, I said this on one of the,
I remember back on one of the Britcoiners episodes
and we were talking around treasury companies.
It might have been started this year
or maybe even earlier.
And we were talking around, you know, will the collapse of one of these treasury companies be a bit of a trigger point for the industry and see where we're at?
And I think one of the things we was talking around was not necessarily like your micro strategies and things like that, because they are of scale now that I don't think there's too big of an issue around a collapse of someone like micro strategy.
But I believe that the treasury companies would slowly, originally it was kind of just Bitcoin.
And we already are now starting to see the pivot from not just Bitcoin to there's an Ethereum one.
I think there's a Solana one as well coming.
There's one that, there's a couple I think I've seen that just do all sorts of crypto.
And of course, at some point, yeah, these ones are going to, there's going to be collapses within these.
But as with every industry, you're going to get collapses and failures.
But what we've talked about earlier on in terms of the knock-on effect of the Bitcoin and the Bitcoin ecosystem,
it kind of gets grouped in with all of the crypto chaos.
So it's, yeah, it's not, it's always seen as a negative, I guess.
anything on that day before I'll jump in and explain
the Adol's background? No you can crack on
yeah so hopefully yeah so reach out
to yourself Dan as you mentioned there and I reached out to quite a few people
within the industry when we was going through this process sort of to try and
validate our thought process I guess in some ways as well so not just
being a copy and paste treasury company and validate the
mechanics of what we actually wanted to build and what we were trying to achieve.
So going back, I guess, quite a few years within CoinCorner.
So from a CoinCorner perspective, we custody lots of customers' Bitcoin.
That Bitcoin is held with CoinCorner, I guess, at a CoinCorner risk is the best way to describe
that.
We don't charge for the custody of it.
It's free for our customers.
So we hold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin on behalf of the customers.
obviously big risk and we get nothing for it, no reward.
So one of the things we always looked at in the past
is there are ways to utilize that Bitcoin
to actually generate a yield on the back of that.
You will know from Alan Farrington at the conferences
and his concept of where does the yield come from.
I mean, you've already touched on the block FIs
and all these other ones that kind of had
some yield bearing instruments in some respects,
but never really disclosed how that yield was being generated.
And obviously that was a big failure to that part of the ecosystem at the time.
And Alan was always banging on the drum of, you know, where does this yield come from?
So, and that was going back to, that might've even been back in 2022 at the Miami conference,
actually, I think was maybe one of the first times I think I saw him wear the t-shirt of
where does the yield come from?
It might've been slightly after that.
But you can see already the concepts and the thought processes we've been going through.
every exchange out there has been going through similar concepts and thought processes in the back
of the mind of how you generate yield the the likes of the ethereums solanus things like they've got
like their proof of stake now for example with ethereum which means you can stake your ethereum
and generate yield on it so they have some sort of yield bearing products within some of the crypto
world should we call it whereas with bitcoin that's not a possibility so it was a difficult
concept of how you come up with yield on the back of Bitcoin.
Alan, so myself and Alan were talking and we, Alan's angle from where does the yield
come from, my angle from obviously the exchange and what you do to generate yield on the back
of all the Bitcoin you hold.
Obviously, we wouldn't ever do anything with customer funds.
So obviously, it's also a consideration of these are customer funds we can't do anything
with.
We're not charging.
We're not doing anything with them.
Is there options where we can do something in a transparent way where we can show the customer this is what we're willing to do if you want to then say, yep, you want to receive some of that yield as well.
And can we create a product that is transparent, that they know exactly what we're doing with that Bitcoin to generate more of a yield?
So we started talking a couple of years ago on this.
We actually between so Alan has a venture capital company in the industry called Axiom Ventures.
um axiom was the one i briefly touched on earlier on in the sense of the the venture capital funding
that coin corner took in 2023 was that um which was for the expansion into dubai which was part of
that so axiom became a shareholder within coin corner and that then led the conversation to
ourselves and axiom creating a joint venture which was a company we set up
18 months ago, so was it now, Dave?
Lost track of time, but 18 months ago.
That was purely focused around finding different concepts
and ways to generate yield on the back of Bitcoin.
So that's kind of a quiet private background company
in some respects.
Alan, you will see now at the minute,
is out at conferences talking around the company,
which is called Flux,
which is more starting to become a little bit more public facing
as time goes on.
But that's more structured in a fund, an official legal fund structure of the way that's being done and built out.
So it's a slightly different audience and a slightly different concept of how we go about generating yield on the Bitcoin.
That led into generating yield using Lightning.
So going back to early conversation in terms of the Lightning innovation side that CoinCorner was working on,
we've been running Lightning nodes for over five years now.
from a coin corner perspective myself and zach who's a cto of coin corner but there's also cto
of b huddle um and we've got the expertise now we've kind of gone through the stages as well of
all the pain points or not all the pain points there's gonna be more in the future but the pain
points that you find within lightning in terms of inbound outbound liquidity channel closes um
pulling in like looping funds back in back out and to various channels um there's lots of
mechanics going on behind the scenes in Lightning that I guess are under the hood in some respects
where you don't need to necessarily, as a user of Lightning, you don't necessarily need to know
what's happening and what's going on behind the scenes. But behind the scenes, there's lots of
moving parts. So we have the expertise, we've had that insight and that knowledge over the years
from that. And we've realized obviously you can generate a yield in Lightning using your Bitcoin
that you're locking into them channels, them nodes. We then kind of start to move in the
conversation of, okay, this is a good concept to do this, but we would then need to use our own
Bitcoin on our balance sheet to then make use of this. Obviously, CoinCorner could do that from
the Bitcoin on its balance sheet, but scaling that up is a slightly different scenario. And
CoinCorner doing that is a completely different business model. We operate our Lightning nodes
purely for the efficiency and the success rate for the transactions for our customers. So we're
not looking to generate yield on our Lightning nodes. We're just looking to make sure that
customers when they send or receive lightning, it's successful every time. So it's a completely
different model and projects that we'd be looking at. So we decided to look at a different company
again and thought, okay, Bitcoin treasury side is an opportunity there that we could list this
company as a Bitcoin treasury company, but with the actual operational model of generating yield
natively on Bitcoin, being initially the lightning side, which is the discussion where it eventually
led to um with we're going to more around the payments and what that all involves in terms of
lightning but um at the high level it starts to allow the bitcoin treasury play what you'll see
a lot at the minute where again without disrespect i'm not disrespecting any bitcoin treasury companies
out there but they are bitcoin treasury companies that have pivoted from there or not pivoted but
they've almost pivoted to a second business model being a bitcoin treasury company their first
business model being um you know meta planet one of the most successful ones at the minute but
they're a hotel and um you've got other ones out there that are a shit hotel as well dan by the
way have you been to it you just go and look on the website is it no it's like the shittest budget
hotel in tokyo look i don't need to be kind to these people all right i can call it for what it
is i've never seen the hotel all my reservation the royal oak in tokyo you can go check it out
people like yeah it's not a place you'd stay yeah let's put it that way okay but um yeah so what to
sum up what you're saying is somebody just gets a bunch of money from venture capital and buys a
zombie company listed on an exchange anywhere in the world and starts stacking bitcoin with uh
venture capital money and then they hype it through a certain magazine to get everybody excited
and then dump on bitcoin as pension funds but that's just the cynical kind of look that i've
got at it yeah it's a good like within this industry you know the don't trust verify and
making sure that you you know what you get into i think is key for this um and then treasury players at the minute they have like the treasury players one side of the bottle and the other side is like you say in their hotel or whatever that other ones may be um eventually in the long run the way i try and question it to people is you know what is that company going to
be in five years 10 years 20 years time what do they expect to be as a company what's their
operational model actually going to be is it going to continue as a hotel or is it going to continue
as a health company or whatever they they are and i think the reality is yeah just on that i just
I've always thought that any company that accumulates a lot of Bitcoin
and has probably the management team to be able to be mobile enough
to pivot enough to look at opportunities,
because that will bring an awful lot of opportunities
in terms of what that balance sheet can actually do for a company.
So I'm not too worried in terms of current operational models
for some of those treasury companies.
I think ours is different,
but I just think the accumulation of Bitcoin
is such a powerful thing for the future.
that these could be the banks of the future.
These could be like any sort of,
they could go into anything almost.
And that's where I was coming to the point of,
is for me, I see these treasury companies
eventually going to have to pivot to be a Bitcoin bank
and they will be a bank of the future
where they will effectively operate
in the same sort of financial instruments
and whether it's loans, et cetera,
that the banking world today operates with.
and that expertise
kind of the whole concept of that
is you end up with lots of Bitcoin
you generate more Bitcoin
on the back of that Bitcoin
and that's what B-Hodl has tried to do
from day one
but doing it in Bitcoin native
safer, I guess less risky
and less exotic concepts
than we've seen in the past
with yield on Bitcoin
so lightning routing being
a key initial one for us
of what we're looking to make use of with the expertise of the team coming in to make sure that
we can generate a yield on the back of the Bitcoin. Did you want to just, just in case people don't
exactly understand how you can generate yield through holding Bitcoin in lightning channels,
just like real basic stuff, because it's still, we're very guilty of just assuming people
understand too much stuff as Bitcoiners, especially if you've been around for a little while.
Yeah, I am definitely guilty of that.
So yes, the basic one we say routing,
it means that, say for example,
all three of us have a lightning node that's running,
but I'm connected to Dan, but I'm not connected to Dave.
I want to send a payment from myself to Dave.
It has to route through another part of the network,
another node within the network to reach Dave.
So Dan will be that middle piece
and it'd route from me to Dan to then Dave.
and Dan would take a small cut based off whether it's a percentage or a flat fee
and they may take a pound for that transaction.
That would mean that Dan has then generated some yield on the Bitcoin he has locked in
for the liquidity between myself and Dave.
So at a basic level, that is what we're talking about.
And B-HODL would be that middle piece, would be Dan in that scenario
where we're locked in between lots of nodes all around the network
and the Bitcoin that's flowing through the network in different ways,
which is effectively just passing IOU between myself and Dan and then Dan to Dave.
It's just IOUs being passed backwards and forwards.
It's off-chain. It's not on-chain.
And that allows you to make use of all your Bitcoin,
your collateral that you lock in to that network and generate fees,
which is the yield.
That's at the very basic level.
However, what we, again, what I touched on before,
in terms of the experience we've been through running Lightning Network nodes
for five years, we have ended up finding lots of quirky concepts
of how you generate that yield.
Being at the core basic level, it's the routing.
But there's other things that you'll see out there.
You'll see services like, they're already public,
so this is not the HODL thing, but you'll see services
like Lightning Labs' loop that allows effectively you to move.
If you have so much liquidity on one end of your channel,
but you don't want to close the channel and go back to off-chain,
you can loop that back around using their service
and they'll effectively give you that liquidity back to your channel
without having to go off-on-chain and close the channel
if you want to maintain and keep the channel open.
So they take then a small fee for doing that
and that allows then participants in the network
to manage the liquidity much better.
There's lots of services around that.
There's things like there's a company called Bolts
that do similar where they're doing it from cross-chain,
we call it but from on-chain bitcoin to say lightning but then from lightning to say liquid
so bitcoin's liquid network um and then even through to things like cashew and like where
feddy are doing things where it's allowing people to cross over without the need for
um the consumer and the ux from a consumer perspective to have to think about all these
these hurdles behind the scenes so they're offering a service behind the scenes that
switches between them um almost instantaneously pretty much um and seamlessly so it doesn't it's
not seen to the end user but obviously they take a fee for that and that's a service within the
background so there are already services that you're starting to see crop up um as i touched
on there in terms of the uh other protocols so you've got bitcoin at the base you've got lightning
as your layer two you've then got like liquid as kind of like a side i won't go into whether
side chains or layer twos or whatever they are but you've got liquid as another protocol you've got
arc that's another protocol that's potentially coming which will also work with lightning and
on chain side you've then got um feddy you've got cashew there's lots basically being built around
bitcoin now that are becoming like these layer two layer threes and the way that they are all
going to be able to interact with each other is going to be then services around it that provide
service and exchange for a small fee which is where bhodl for example would start to come in
if that makes sense another basic question for you is it when you're handling this is it in your
interest to have more bitcoin in one channel or hundreds of bitcoin across hundreds of channels
it varies um so there if you've got one bitcoin in hundreds of channels then theoretically
try not to get too complicated but theoretically you may be able to go only between your channel
and say myself and yourself dan there might only be one bitcoin so the maximum size transaction
might be one Bitcoin. However, there is something called Multipath Payments, which actually
would allow you to go through 10 of your different channels to send 10 Bitcoin, one Bitcoin each
channel that send and come back together at the end to send to Dave and Dave gets 10 Bitcoin.
So there's kind of solutions in there for that. But then that's a little bit more,
the success rate of that might be lower because you've got to find 10 different routes all having
one Bitcoin to eventually get to Dave, as opposed to if I just had a 10 Bitcoin channel with yourself
and you had a 10 Bitcoin with Dave,
we could just send 10 Bitcoin straight through
and it would success rate would be 100% and it'd be easy.
So there's no simple answer, unfortunately, for that.
And it becomes, that's part of the optimization side
that you do with the Lightning nodes
to make sure that you are efficiently routing
for all of the connected channels that you have
and the nodes that you have
and maybe the customers also that you have coming through that
and making sure that the fee structures and everything
are in the optimal range
that you can then push them through yours
as opposed to going through a different node.
So it becomes quite a data game
behind the scenes of what you have to do.
The conference that's just been on
the Bitcoin++ conference,
if people are intrigued and understanding
real-world examples of this happening,
I would go and listen to C Equals talk,
C Equals being the company that sits under block in the US,
which is Cash App Square, all the different names of their companies.
Sequel's is the company that's running the Lightning nodes for Cash App,
for Block, effectively behind the scenes.
They released their numbers back in May, I think it was,
and they were able to generate a yield of about 9.7% APR for the year yield on theirs,
which I believe was about a $10 million node.
that showed then all of a sudden that was probably the first big yield percentage that publicly got
disclosed in the industry of what they generated now the talk he did a couple of days ago at bitcoin
plus plus he talks around that node actually just being purely focused on serving the customers of
cash app and they didn't optimize that node for yield they optimized that node for the success rate
of customers sending from cash app to other lightning wallets elsewhere so that was their
pure focus and they focused on like this four different areas that he goes into and explains
how and what they did for that um but for them to be able to generate a 9.7 percent yield on that
bitcoin purely by focusing on the success rate of just being able to root things 100 success rate
is incredible and they didn't even think about the yield generation it was just coincidence that
they generated that 9.7 on the back of that um so that is probably the first public disclosed um
I guess bit of information in terms of what you can potentially generate on the lightning side of
things which is where hopefully be hard all going forwards we will be able to work towards and we'll
be able to disclose as and when we can in public company it's a little difficult to disclose certain
numbers at the minute until we announce it's the market properly but as soon as we do that will be
made public and we'll hopefully share the the yield numbers and generation um
maybe are we thinking um monthly basis sort of time scales i think will probably be the ideal
maybe quarterly we'll see where we get to that yeah i think that's really important for us to
get those actual numbers out there uh get a four months worth and report transparently so people
can you know don't have to take our word for it anymore yeah that's going to be obviously huge
you've clearly had this cooking in the background for well 18 months I think you said maybe even
longer was it always the plan to IPO why go public why not just do this as a private company Why get on the stock exchange Was that kind of influenced by what you seen in the last six to nine
months with the Bitcoin treasury companies? Or was this always part of the plan behind
closed doors?
It was so that there's a couple of combinations. So yes, in theory, we saw the treasury players
kicking in and there was actually interest in the UK. With lots of the UK market actually
going back to probably about this time last year,
actually, when we first looked at it
and we looked at Aquis and listed on there
and we looked at AIM and the same listed on there.
We looked at the cost, the timescales, et cetera.
And we actually kind of put it on a bit of a back burner.
And then earlier this year,
as we started to see a bit more interest
in the UK market for treasury companies,
then obviously we saw, okay,
there is a bit of a demand here,
even if it's from a retail audience majority
and Bitcoin majority,
but there's actual volume,
there's actually a demand there.
So we can actually make use of that.
So we wanted to make use of that from acquiring Bitcoin,
getting Bitcoin on the balance sheet, and then replicating this.
And what we saw, I guess, in the market, we touched on there
with the hotel chains, et cetera.
We wanted to try and what we saw these guys being in 5, 10, 15,
20 years time of being that Bitcoin bank where they are generating
the yield on the Bitcoin.
We wanted to hit that from day one.
And we realized we can do that from day one.
And we knew how to do that.
So it was a case of actually let's get to market.
Let's list on Aquis.
Let's try and drive this forwards, playing the Bitcoin treasury play in terms of accumulating as much Bitcoin as we can as quick as we can.
But then actually making use of that Bitcoin from day one to actually show what these guys we know in 5, 10, 15 years time, they will be starting to pivot to how do they generate yield on the back of that Bitcoin.
So I think it was a case of we saw that we could potentially do, we could bring, I guess, a bit of an inspiration to the Bitcoin treasury market.
and hopefully we can bring some legitimacy of the long-term business model to that treasury market.
So that's kind of what we saw.
And it was definitely a good advantage being public, obviously,
and being able to generate more Bitcoin and allow us to scale up in a much quicker capacity.
Sorry, Dave.
As a public platform, because we're Bitcoiners first and foremost,
and we'll put Bitcoin first, as a public platform, you kind of want,
we thought there's almost a need for us to get involved to show what bitcoin can do to show what
we can build to show all the capabilities of it um so even like initiatives like we've put um a grant
scheme in place that shares one percent of our raises to projects that can apply on our website
in terms of those ground level projects or anyone building on the ecosystem and bits and pieces like
that because actually a treasury company can be really supportive of bitcoin rather than just seen
is a huge accumulation.
And that's more,
even the team we brought in,
people like Freddie and Alan,
those sort of guys
that have always been Bitcoin advocates.
It's, you know,
this whole organism,
this entity is just to help drive
and expose people to Bitcoin
and fundamentally get them involved.
And I think that's maybe
what other treasury companies
have previously missed
and how important Bitcoin is
to the general ecosystem
and that's really what I want to put forward
for B-HODL
I think that's the most important piece of the whole puzzle
So how does the grant work?
Basically
1% of the funds raised will be
put to a grant which is basically
we have a page
on our website, people can come and apply
and we hope to start distributing from that
as soon as possible
And what was it like getting to IPO?
A breeze
um i mean we as i mentioned that we had looked at um over a year ago now and then we so we had
a couple of contacts that we had in place that we'd already been talking to so it kind of gives
a little bit of a head start but yeah from from start to finish officially it was probably about
four months wasn't it from um formation of the company to uh ipo it was probably around about
four months ish um so it was a quick process for listing a company um and that's part of we also
wanted to get to market as quick as we could um but it was it was i don't want to say chaos in the
background in any disrespectful way but it was like you know it is it's a journey going through
that and experience all the different regs around how you have to structure things and what you
better do and obviously like the public side of things now where we can say certain things and
can't say certain things it's uh it's an experience definitely um but it was i would say a fairly
smooth experience bar a couple of hurdles of bitcoin education as opposed to anything else
um where it was more some of the entities in between were questioning um bitcoin as opposed
to the company itself because i think bitcoin can be this exciting topic that we want to talk about
so they end up asking lots of questions on it and it probably goes slower in the process it slows
the process down as opposed to anything else but um yeah nothing nothing too bad it was the hiccups
were not too bad along the way so you didn't buy an existing company and then change the the ticker
no no we did fresh fresh listing um we didn't really see like same for you're going to end up
acquiring an existing company being then um having this operational model that you would have to
maintain and follow through with which we've seen a lot of them do and we already had our operational
model was already there. We already knew what that was. And that was the generating of the yield on
the Bitcoin. So we wanted to focus on that. So yeah, there was no point in us RTOing into something
that already existed. The other reason as well, just to touch on coming back to one of your
questions before around, you know, wireless as well, the capital, and I know you've, again,
you touched on this near the very beginning in terms of the capital demand out there, but we have
what I touched on there with Flux. We have Flux in the background, which is more of an official
fund structure which will tap into slightly different capital than the public-facing b-hardled
companies so b-hardled will then tap into a slightly different audience again and slightly
different capital pool that will pull in as you're saying there with the the sips the isas as well in
the uk um bitcoiners in general from retail um and hopefully then institutional going forwards as
well um but a slightly different play than the behind the scenes fund structure um so we're it's
allowing us to tap into, I guess, different markets and different areas of capital from a public
perception and from the private side as well in the background, which we also do have. So we do
have not just the, when I say we, I'm saying from a Coin Corner perspective, we have the public
angle of the B Huddle, but we do have a private company as well doing very similar in the background.
And what's the idea in five to 10 years time? You guys obviously have a vision for that. Whereas,
some of the others I just can't figure that out
so the basic level is
I think what I keep repeating possibly throughout this but it's Bitcoin yield
Bitcoin yield natively as natively as possible so things like
Lightning we have multiple strategies within
Lightning itself that we would then use or utilize to make
more yield on and they're all different
can't really disclose them.
We'll call it a trade secret in some respects
of how we do that.
But then that's just lightning.
And then there's potentially other things around mining
and how you can generate yield,
not mining ourselves,
but mining pools
and how they sometimes need liquidity
for payouts and things like that.
So we could then plug in there.
There's also things around Bitcoin-backed loans
where there's opportunities to tie into
then the Bitcoin liquidity required
for some of the Bitcoin-backed loan pieces
behind the scenes again.
And there's a couple of others that we're looking at
and exploring of how you can generate yield
as natively as possible within Bitcoin.
Obviously, it's always really hard.
We've been in this industry a while now
and the amount of change we've seen from 10 years ago
when CoinCorner started, seven years ago when I joined,
in terms of who's adopting it and what people are doing it
and where the need is, this pace of change in Bitcoin,
the Bitcoin industry is astronomical.
So it's really quite hard for us to say,
although Danny's got those strategies there,
where the need will be providing liquidity
into the Lightning Network,
for me is actually a huge game changer
for Bitcoin and Bitcoin payments,
which is what we all want to see.
And at the moment,
it needs that liquidity element to drive that forward.
And then there's, you know,
where the Tether coming to liquid
and the TAPRI,
in terms of what that might bring.
It's all rather exciting.
But in terms of five years, it's difficult to see where that will be.
But I know that, well, I'm imagining in terms of where the Lightning Network could be,
it's really quite exciting in terms of what that could unleash
and then what that means globally for Bitcoin.
If Bitcoin has got that payments layer absolutely nailed down
and that everyone can utilize it everywhere across the world,
that that's absolutely incredible.
And that's really where we want to be involved.
Yeah. Just to add to Dave's analogy there in terms of, or an analogy, sorry, to add on to explain Dave's thought process and the concepts of, I keep trying to explain this to people at the minute where if we think back to the internet and back in like the 80s, the 90s and internet, and you've got your TCP IP, which we can compare, let's say, to the Bitcoin's protocol.
and then on top of that you ended up building protocols on top which became so the tcpip being
like the data sharing piece and then you've got http which is like your web-based browser sort of
technology your protocol which could then theoretically let's call like your lightning
and your layer two built on top of the tcpip which is built on top of bitcoin um so you can see how
we're starting to compare the internet to where bitcoin is and then you've got smtp which is like
for your email protocol, which then things get built around that.
So that protocol in itself, SMTP, take that as an example,
is built on top of these other layers already.
And that then has Gmail and Microsoft's Outlook
and all different mail companies, ProtonMail, et cetera,
that all build around the protocol,
but then they all create services around that being web-based browsers.
Then all of a sudden you've got smartphones with apps
and you've got Netflix streaming.
You got all these things that in the 80s and 90s you wouldn even dreamt of or thought of along the way But you know 20 30 40 years later all of a sudden you have all these things at your fingertips and you don think too much of it
But behind the scenes, that's been built and built and built and built on top of all these technology layers to create what is an incredibly good UX experience today.
You turn your tally on, you've got smart tally, you can flip Netflix on and off you go and you stream and watch something straight away.
but you don't realize all the things going on behind the scenes and all of the services and
companies behind the scenes that are have built whole industries not alone just a business
single business they built whole industries around this and that's where we're seeing i guess bitcoin
and lightning and when i'm saying about arc and cashew and all these other ones that the protocols
that have been built around it all of these protocols will require services and business
models and theoretically might spin out industries around that and so that's where we're trying to
place ourselves in the middle of that to start building this sort of infrastructure around
Bitcoin. And the internet is moving data around the world. The Bitcoin piece is moving value
around the world. And all of the things that are built around it are just services, companies,
industries all around it. But at the core of it, one side is moving data, the other side is moving
value. And we are at the very, very infancy, sort of the 80s, 90s timescale from the internet
example we're kind of still in that sort of 90s era maybe for bitcoin and as dave says there we
have no idea what you know 10 15 20 years looks like for the the value moving around the world
um but that's where we're going to place ourselves now so then as the time progresses we're able to
be reactive enough to be basically pivot and move in the direction where we see success
what kills your business model what's the what stress tests have you have you run where are you
even like the likes of lightning not being successful but you know lightning is already
seven years in it's i would say it's pretty successful into the stage of where we are with
lightning now and you're seeing the likes of arc cashew etc being built and they are being built
in parallel with lightning and working hand in hand with lightning as opposed to competing with
it um they have a different audience and different niche that they're solving problem for that
lightning may not but they are still interacting and need lightning to to be that bridge between
Bitcoin or to Liquid or whatever that may be. So I think for me, I don't see Lightning as being
a failure in the future. I think it is solidifying itself there. However, if it did fail for whatever
reason, then that would be maybe a bit of a hit to the company in some respect. But as I've touched
on previously, we've still got other methods in the background of the mining piece, the Bitcoin
back loans, and there's other methods and theories that we're working with around how you continue to
generate yield on the back of Bitcoin.
So we would be, as I'm touching on previously,
would be reactive and responsive to what the success is,
and we would pivot around where the demand is for these services
and make sure we're at the forefront of that being built out
and we're able to react accordingly.
Well, Lightning did survive the Layer 2 grift of about 9 to 12 months ago,
where every other day there was a new Layer 2 solution
because the Lightning network was broken.
Yeah.
And coincidentally, I think most of them now are using Lightning to better their own version, their own layer too.
So I think Lightning is very well ingrained now within the industry.
And I think that the drive behind it, it's always the VHS, Betamax or whatever.
And sometimes it's not necessarily the best technology behind the scenes and the most perfect technology behind the scenes.
It's the one that, I guess, can move at the right time, at the right pace for the market.
and gains that traction.
And I'm not saying Lightning isn't the best,
but I'm saying there could be one that comes along
and is 10 times better than Lightning in some respects,
but will it gain that traction and that adoption
that Lightning has already managed to gain in the seven years?
And moving that first mover, I guess, in some respects
for the Layer 2s could be difficult.
I think that's why you're seeing the other Layer 2s
just integrate with Lightning as opposed to trying directly compete
because they know directly competing is going to be
such an uphill battle there.
their better option is to actually have it seamlessly integrate and solve a different problem that Lightning may be not very good at solving.
So as for the shareholders, then, Dan, you guys listed when?
Two weeks ago, officially, was that? Yeah, two weeks ago today.
Right. Well, we should have been to the moon and back by now.
And we should all be we should all have eternal riches and big titty bitches to quote American HODL.
but I mean that's been the play so far of Bitcoin treasury count so what's happened what
what have shareholders seen so far and what can they expect to see hopefully over the next five
to ten years. Joe Jumping Dave do you want me to answer that? Dave's getting the chart up
yeah well you do that I'll give a quick high level yeah the first obviously the first week was
incredibly well. I think we ended the week with about 43%. We had a bit of a dip last week and
kind of come down a little bit. Still above IPO price, I believe, at the minute. They will correct
me if I'm wrong there. But still, what, we're 15, 20% above IPO price, I think, at the minute.
So again, short term, it's two weeks in. I wouldn't, from a personal perspective,
I am not necessarily focused on them short-term movements I would rather see B-HODL over the
longer term like we've touched on here throughout the whole conversation in terms of this longer
vision of the 5, 10, 15, 20 years down the line and what we're trying to create or turn B-HODL
into I would rather focus on that and it would be much nicer for me to see a sustainable growth
pattern as opposed to a pump and dump that we've seen historically with some of the treasury
companies um ideally we can see this slow and steady uh growth not too slow hopefully so hopefully
quick and steady growth in some respects but um hopefully we can see a consistent um healthy
sustainable growth as opposed to them pumping yeah i'd echo that in terms of we've worked within
bitcoin long enough in terms of the exchange we know one of the most important things is trust
so you have to just run companies consistently with the same message with the same bitcoin first
mentality and do what you what you're going to set out to do and tell people what you're doing
in terms of for the treasury company it'll be you know steady accumulation of bitcoin whilst
generating yield on bitcoin while supporting the bitcoin network and the surrounding um
surrounding network subsidiary pieces as well as as we've learned from the exchange right it's just
about it's about consistency and building that trust and and that'll take time and you know we've
got the right team to do it so i'm very much looking forward to where we'll be in five years
time so freddie was supposed to be on this call but uh unfortunately he had to you had to you got
yeah you got you got me instead unfortunately sorry about sorry about that we should have just
pretended you were freddie dave i should have just i should have just said some latin words
yeah nobody can maybe got away with it nobody can out posh freddie and hear that
you know forget that like uh deciphering some of his terminology sometimes is is an interesting
how did that come to be how did uh you know you get unfortunately he's not here to tell the story
from his side of things but uh you obviously you obviously had a short list that you wanted uh
to reach out to.
And Freddie
ended up being your man.
Yeah, Freddie.
So we've known Freddie for quite a few years.
We met at one of the conferences
a fair few years ago.
That was maybe Edinburgh.
I think we first met, which
you were in Edinburgh, Dan. I can't remember.
Did you miss that one?
So I think we'd met there for the first time.
We kept in touch. We spoke.
Obviously, he's been running Bitcoin Policy UK.
so we've had communication with him from that side
we can see
for us yeah, seeing Freddie on the Bitcoin
policy UK side and pushing everything he
can in his free time to drive
Bitcoin adoption in the UK
and to drive it from a regulatory
point as well which is a hell of a
challenge in itself, his knowledge
and expertise around that
shows in everything he does from the
policy side
he is such
a nice approachable guy as you say
there you're not going to out posh um freddy as well um but he not only is he the the posh side of
that he is incredibly approachable um and a great guy to have on uh on board for us um he is also
very much a bitcoiner for the long-term mindset and what dave's touching on there with the payments
within the lightning ecosystem and um helping build that out that's just aligns with his vision
his vision completely of Bitcoin and where he sees that going over the decades to come.
So I think a lot of it was visions aligned, which was great. And I think for the industry in the UK,
what we did try to do, not only Freddie, we tried to pull in lots of UK Bitcoiners together to help
because for us, this was trying to help drive the adoption of Bitcoin in the UK as well. We're
seeing this play out in the US and other countries around the world at the minute.
we wanted to try and bring a UK player that brought lots of UK Bitcoins together
that had already been over the last five, ten years driving Bitcoin adoption.
So there's obviously the guys, myself, Dave and Zach from the Coin Corner side.
We have Mike as well, who was Coin Corner.
Now he's full-time B-Hodl, he's the COO of B-Hodl.
We also have Freddie, obviously, from the policy.
We have Alan Farrington from the venture capital side.
and he was expertly Gifford, so brings in some of the TradFi experience.
We have David Jacks, who is our CFO.
Sorry, not our CFO.
We've just demoted Dave.
Oh, well, had a good run.
It was far less than those two weeks, though.
Dave from accounts just got demoted.
David Jacks.
He is better than me.
David Jacks is on the board, but he's chairman.
He's ex-CFO of PayPal and CFO of many other companies,
but he's also been in the Bitcoin industry
and on the board of a public Bitcoin company
for, I think, five years now, four or five years.
So bringing that experience again,
he's also a British guy, UK side.
We then brought in lots of, I guess,
the strategic investor side where we wanted them on board.
And the idea is pulling in, we brought in,
they're on our websites you can go look at them there's adam back there's joe nakamoto
um there's the bitcoin collective guys jordan jeremy there's david parkinson who's musket in
the uk so we've pulled together as many sort of uk bitcoiners that one angle of that obviously is
is creating this um hub of a great bitcoin voice and outlet um but also validating the concept of
what B-HODL is. It's not just another
treasury play. There's a genuine
concept and business model behind this.
And we wanted that crowd to help us validate that
in some respects as well. So having their validation
and them on board kind of helps
the confidence not only in ourselves, but hopefully
within the market of what we're trying to do and achieve
here. I did promise
Freddie I'd ask the hard questions.
So,
well, unsurprising
to see Adam on a Bitcoin treasury
company team sheet.
I think it's probably easier
to list the ones he's not on.
But is there like a lockup period
or anything like that for early investors?
Because that's been one of the big kind of,
you know, finger pointing going on
at certain Bitcoin treasury companies
that are listed on a US exchange.
Let's just say that for now.
Yeah.
So the lockups are for CoinCorner.
So CoinCorner has a quite large stake in Beardle
and the directors and the team.
So myself, Dave, all the board,
a couple of the other team members as well,
they're all locked in for 12 months.
So we all have that lock-in of 12 months.
Nobody else is locked in,
but everybody else bought at the same price as,
so for example, like when you're saying there,
Adam, for example,
Adam Back bought in at the 14 pence share price,
the same as everybody did.
That was the IPO price effectively when we went live.
So nobody got a discount.
So there was no discounts offered to anybody.
there was no um like adam comes in at 10p and everyone else is a 14p or anything uh everyone
is at the same so they all went in the same ipo price we also did a wrap offering which in the uk
that's like a retail offering so it allows retail audience to join in at the ipo price um at the 14
pence um and we we actually went out with 500 000 pounds one just to try and do um what we thought
was i guess reasonable that oversubscribed within 48 hours to about 2 million and we had to close
that at that point because we didn't want that to continue too big. But we closed out about £2
million worth that came in in a 48-hour period from the retail side. So yeah, we've not done
any form of discounts for anything there. And obviously, the aim going forward, we were not
looking to do discounts for investors, as you've seen in the US. We've seen that bill badly in the
US. And I think reputationally, from a reputational side, the team that I'm talking
around there. The Coin Corner side, we've built up over
11 years of reputation. Adam Bach
obviously has a reputation as well. You've got
even Alan from
Venture Capital side, but also his
personality in the industry.
And Freddie as well. There is
reputation to uphold and we're not
looking to ruin their reputations by doing
anything silly. We're here
for the long run and making
that sustainable.
So a couple of...
I think this was probably a good question
for Dave because when I
When I look at some of these Bitcoin treasury companies, I think I tweeted this the other day.
It's pretty well known.
It's nigh on impossible to 51% attack the Bitcoin blockchain.
But you can 51% attack a Bitcoin treasury company.
So if you are BTC.xyz and you've bought a shell company and listed yourself on a stock exchange
and you're just buying as much Bitcoin as you can,
but your share price keeps dropping and dropping and dropping,
at one point, your market cap of the shares outstanding
multiplied by the price on the stock
might be less than the value of the Bitcoin
that you hold on your balance sheet,
at which point somebody like a BlackRock
could just come in and 51% attack,
buy 51% of the outstanding shares,
install their board,
and effectively buy the Bitcoin at a discount to spot.
In terms of mitigations on that,
there are market controls that mean that you have to put an offering in
if you go above 30%.
But other than that, I suppose that is a cause
for an arbitrage opportunity for someone to do that.
Yeah, I think, so we've seen that in the US with, was it Semler?
And I forgot the names, but there was, has it Strive acquired Semler?
What theoretically is it some sort of discount?
Because they were, MNAV is what people are calling that in terms of the Bitcoin on your balance sheet versus your market cap.
And when you go into negative MNAV, it means your share prices, your touch on there, Dan, is less than the Bitcoin holdings that you hold.
So there are companies around the world that are operating at a negative MNAV.
Now, the reason a lot of the time for that is because they have this operational model
and overhead that is a burn rate incredibly big in comparison to their revenues and their
income.
So just because they've got a lot of Bitcoin on the balance sheet doesn't mean the survival
of that company in the long run is worth it because they may have overheads of 5 million
a year, but they're bringing in 1 million and all of a sudden there's a 4 million deficit
there and they're not going to make that up.
So they're going to have to burn through that Bitcoin at some point or they're going to have
to raise more money from somewhere.
So the negative MNAV, there's usually a reason behind it when you look at the company and what that is.
So we are seeing, I guess, as I said there, with Semler and those companies acquiring others for the negative MNAV and then Bitcoin to their balance sheet.
However, I think we've looked at this as well and you kind of look at it and you think you want to acquire some of these companies that when you acquire them,
you are going to come with the headaches and the skeletons in the closet and things like that of what they are not only the overheads of the ongoing operations but you don know behind the scenes what potential the skeletons and overheads there are That was one of the big reasons why we listed the fresh company as opposed to RTO and into an existing company
because we didn't want that headache and that overhead. So even though we may look at others
in the market and see them in a negative MNAV, it may not be worthwhile still to go through
the cost of the acquisition of taking on that company, the operational burden that comes with
it and the team, et cetera, that maybe you could still acquire them and completely scrap
off their operational model and pull their Bitcoin in as an opportunity, but you'd have
to run the numbers and check that.
It's even viable depending on the legal costs of all the whole deal itself.
But also then, even if you do that and scrap off the operational model, it doesn't mean
necessarily that you're not going to remove the skeletons in the closet that you're not
aware of behind the scenes over the trailing years that they've been running for.
So I think it's a little bit of a high risk tactic in some respect to do that.
And I'm not sure. There's people talking online and socials around this all the time and saying that, you know, they think they're going to see consolidation between these companies.
And I don't really buy that unless they're strategic consolidations in some respect that have been planned in advance of these becoming proper treasury companies.
I don't see that as being something that I think we're going to see in the long run.
And I think that the more chance if whether they collapse or eventually they just actually close the company down and distribute the Bitcoin back to the shareholders is probably a more sensible option in some respects, which some may do.
Some may just do slow bleed and slow bleed death to death over many, many years because they have the Bitcoin on the balance sheet to be able to collateralize themselves for so many years.
Yeah, I guess we'll have to wait and see.
it's also not really a problem unique to treasury companies although in terms of that you could the
the nav can be worked out on any listed company it's like danny saying the barrier to rto any
company is so high that it's it's in most cases it's seen unless there's a big corporate advantage
to actually merging or buying another company it's it's often seen as too much of a headache to
actually go down that route so it would be that why don't you just buy more but if you had the
money to acquire that company why wouldn't you just buy more bitcoin um and i get there's
mechanisms you could do it as a share deal as opposed to a cash deal etc but then if you can
do it as a share deal it's very similar to what if you just sold your shares into the market and
then use that liquidity to then buy more bitcoin so unless you have perfect information that it
would be deemed almost extremely risky approach to actually accumulating more bitcoin that way
Because you would like that, like Danny saying that there must be under there's underlying reasons why that isn't just a one in terms of the nav.
So, yeah. Yeah, it is.
I mean, I did see when was this back?
September 16th, where the headline Kindly MDs Nakamoto commits 30 million dollars to Metaplanet and First Asia Bitcoin Treasury bet.
so you've got bitcoin treasury companies buying bitcoin treasury companies i mean
this is already happening you know kindly mds nakamoto committed up to 30 million dollars to
meta planet marking its largest investment to date but uh and yeah naka shares surged 77
after the deal it's not done that since uh so yeah i think you are going to get like the investment
into it is one thing.
I think like that $30 million
in perspective of what that is,
they're like a $4 billion market capital
or something Metaplanet.
So it's a drop in the ocean
in terms of the holding
that NACA have in Metaplanet.
And I think you will get that
of treasury companies
investing in treasury companies
because it's almost a way to
the larger treasury companies
investing in smaller treasury companies
because they'll get a larger return
on the investment
as opposed to themselves
being a, you know,
yes, of course,
a $4 billion company,
10x in that is much more difficult than 10x in a 10 million dollar company um so i think there's
definitely some mechanics at play there but a full acquisition of them purely for the bitcoin
i think there'll be few and far between of ones that we see there i don't think we'll see many
and and finally blackrock launched now in the uk this month i believe an etf or an etn i think it's
called uh uh strange exchange traded note uh well that brings a lot more competition i suppose to
to the space and and you know all three of us on this call we just want everybody to understand
buy bitcoin put it in cold storage yeah yeah first and foremost like yeah i agree it goes back to
what we were saying earlier on about the capital you're tapping into the different capital markets
and different capital.
So yes, you know, buy Bitcoin, put it in cold storage.
Coin Corner offers that product there.
Whereas having B-Hodl as the public company,
we can tap into a different capital pool,
should we call it, be in the ISAs, the SIPs, et cetera,
and institutional.
The Bitcoin ETNs in the UK,
I guess we'll see this week how they play out.
Now, I think for the, it's been no different
that you've got ETFs in the US
and have had them for like coming up to two years now,
18 months. And that's not really affected the Bitcoin treasury plays because they are a slightly
different play in a different model. Instead of you're buying into a Bitcoin ETF in the US,
and you're putting a million pounds in, but you're being charged 1% a year to
hold that there effectively. And you're just exposed to the Bitcoin price going up and down
there. Whereas with the treasury plays, you put a million pounds in and you get X amount of Bitcoin,
then one of the focuses around the treasury companies is Bitcoin per share. I kind of
hated that terminology at first, but it is probably the easiest way to explain how that works and the
differentiation between the ETFs where you bought a million pounds with these shares that might be
equivalent to a million sats, for example, within Bitcoin. But then as the company, as a treasury
company continues to grow and accumulate more Bitcoin, then Bitcoin per share will increase
over time. So instead of being charged to hold your Bitcoin there, you're actually gaining Bitcoin
and yield effectively is what we're looking at there.
So that's the differentiator between the two, I think,
is in the mechanics side of thing.
The other differentiation, I think, is, again,
the capital pool and the market that they're looking at,
whereas the ETFs are focused more on the institutional side,
whereas the treasury companies,
as much as they trying to target the institutional side a lot of that is still just retail And as you mentioned there pensions the 401ks in the US et cetera So the capital pool is slightly different I think
ETNs as well, just to clarify the ETNs versus an ETF, it's not an ETF. It's an exchange trading
note. And I believe that it's just the exposure to the price of Bitcoin. I'm not sure if they
will actually buy the Bitcoin in the background. They would. I believe you may know more than me
on etns down um but the etns i i think they don't buy the underlying asset they just um
effectively gain exposure to that that price of the asset i don't actually know exactly uh how
that works i i believe that's the difference if i could be wrong so uh please somebody fact check me
um but yeah i don't know how that's going to play out in the uk because i'm not sure the
The institutional interest in the UK for Bitcoin is nowhere near what it is in the, as in
comparisons like the US, where the US interest is, is really ramping up at the minute.
So yeah, I'm not sure how the UK one's going to play out.
We already do have European ones, ETFs for Bitcoin.
I think BlackRock have a European one of these as well.
And I think there's a couple of others in Europe and a couple of other countries, but
you know, they're not a scratch on the US ones.
They're just not in the same ballpark as the US guys.
Right. Dave, anything to add there on that?
I just think I don't see it negatively in terms of ETN or ETF adoption,
even treasury companies in terms of like any,
if you travel back 10 years in terms of the conversations we're having about
Bitcoin then,
and you could see this on the horizon in terms of institutional adoption and
the treasury companies and where the access points of Bitcoin have grown,
then I think it's all quite positive in terms of where it's come from
and where it's going.
It's not ideal, like you said, in terms of we want people
to get the underlying asset and cold store.
But maybe that's the pathway to that point in terms of getting that exposure.
So I don't view ETFs or ETNs in a negative manner.
Okay. All right.
Well, did we cover everything?
we must have um i was gonna i've done i've read uh your book i was just wondering if you
have you've got another book on the horizon
no i don't no uh no no no more books i've written a few articles obviously uh just about bitcoin but
uh yeah that book was pretty unique about like the you know what we did to exit the rat race and
take the kids out of school and travel around the world with them long term and it was my first
exposure to the homeschooling and the and the the lifestyle in terms of the house swapping bits and
pieces is it it's an eye-opener about i was just i i read it and i was very much like i i don't know
if i could do it in terms of like some some people have got the the right um i don't know
character for it almost in terms of of you might need more of an open-minded like the people might
struggle with the structural side of things and stuff like that but it was very interesting anyway
in terms of that sort of ability to be able the digital nomad sort of ethos and i've really liked
in terms of how it fits with bitcoin as well in terms of going out there and doing that it's quite
cool but i thought there might be like a a travel book coming where you know your favorite places in
the bitcoin bitcoin access you can get there so we'd have another one by now uh i'm hope hopefully
someone else will write that one uh yeah looking looking at hoddle solo who's now just taken uh
well he's quit his job wife and three girls now doing the thing exactly the same they're off going
traveling and they you know he's a he's a great bitcoiner uh writes the monthly newsletter bitcoin
events uk uh so i'm hoping yeah i'd love to see what what they experience and the different bitcoin
communities they knock up against out there in the wild and where you can now use your bitcoin
because you think it'll get easier like it should get easier right in terms of people like being
able to use the bitcoin in more places actually it's much made it more accessible probably more
more possible to do it in a way absolutely i mean you even have air btc now where you oh really
airbnb on bitcoin yeah where where plebs have listed their houses and you can uh go and just
stay there and pay in Bitcoin and get the, you know, the best welcome you could ever imagine.
We have Orange Pill app where you can connect with Bitcoiners wherever you land in the world
and get plugged straight in, you know, where did I accept Bitcoin and what are the best
things to do?
So there are great services.
Atlantis was being built out as well by Svetsky for travel.
And that was kind of Nostra and Bitcoin linked and Lightning, obviously.
Yeah.
Over to someone else to write that book.
I've laid the foundation.
You did.
Hats off to you.
Makes it more accessible.
Thank you, mate.
I've got to ask you both the final question.
If you had one last orange pill left to give to somebody,
who would you give it to and why?
I'm trying to remember my answer
from the original time you asked me.
I feel like I might have said Bill Gates, I think.
i can't remember the reasoning around it now um i'll let you answer this one day because i've
i would probably this will sound i'm just thinking over there because i didn't realize
that question would be happening but um i would probably want to give it to someone
like one of my children or all of them although because to develop the understanding as early as
possible in terms of what the world can bring under a bitcoin standard and what it actually
means and then it makes you think as you'd want access to that as early as possible to maybe like
maybe question the news you hear question the status quo in terms of schooling like you and
travel and bits and pieces like that maybe you'd want to give it to like although your kids you
know these concepts you they probably don't they won't understand until a certain age but maybe
that's where the education bit that we always talk about comes from but so maybe you give it to give
it to your children in terms of making them understand actually what's out there, what's
available, what you can do, because it's a good gift.
It certainly is, mate.
Perfect answer So how can people reach out if they want to learn more from you guys whether that Coin Corner B or anything else The Mount Sox MT Sox
Yeah, forget about the Mount Sox.
Yeah, on socials, Coin Corner, Bitcoin Holco on Twitter,
Coin Corner Danny on Twitter, you Coin Corner Dave on Twitter?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'm still referring to it as Twitter as well and not X
because I just can't get into the habit of saying X.
But yeah, we're pretty much active on there.
It's probably the best place to reach out to us
and see where we're up to.
All right, excellent.
Well, thanks for coming on, guys.
And the Brickcoiner podcast is across all platforms,
but push people towards Fountain.
Is that the idea?
We can, yes, if possible.
We've actually put a pause on that for a couple of months
while we were doing the B-Hodl stuff in the background.
We've just done our first Brickcoiner's one again.
did we release it last week or week before
which was actually with Freddie on
so we actually had Freddie on as the guest
he was here in the Isle of Man and we did an episode there
but yeah going forwards we will be
Britcoiners will be back hopefully
this week and getting back
into the swing of things
so yeah again that's on
if you Twitter again
just the Britcoiners handle
and we'll point you in the direction of all the platforms
Love it, well thanks for coming on guys
congrats on the launch
and yeah, we'll all be watching.
Cheers. Thank you, Dan.
Appreciate having us on.
See you guys.
Take care.
Well, thank you very much, everybody, for listening.
Thank you, Danny and Dave, for coming on.
Since we recorded there,
I've had a couple of conversations in person with Freddie as well
and a lot of interesting things that they're trying to do here,
which, like I said at the beginning,
you know it's almost kind of mistimed because of all the hype around all of the other stuff which I
see as really scammy crap. I don't know everything happens for a reason at the right time I suppose
the business model that they've got here maybe there's something there maybe there isn't but
they're trying it they're going for it and look I'm not here to tell you what to do with your money
full disclosure I'm not an investor
I'm not an investor
of the other one in the UK
or many of the others
that are popping up all around the world
I prefer
Bitcoin in cold storage
that's pretty much the game
and I think if most people
are doing that then
you're going to be just fine
in 4 years, 8 years
12 years, just keep stacking
away
I don't think we touched on it too deeply here
but there's been a lot of loan products being offered as well now
be careful of those as well
just be really really careful
look what's happened to the price in the last week and a half
it's crazy
and there's manipulation afoot
Wall Street are here now
They have their weapons of financial destruction at play.
They can manipulate forwards markets.
They can manipulate spot markets.
They can manipulate derivatives markets through options.
They have huge amounts of clout.
They can control the headlines.
They can push a negative feeling, a negative narrative,
just as quickly as they can push a new positive one,
talking about deregulation and this that and the other thing.
You are on the seesaw right now.
And the best thing you can do
is sit in the middle of that seesaw
on your hands with your Bitcoin in cold storage
so you are in complete control of your private keys.
That is literally the game.
And then just sleep well.
That's it.
And let everybody else run around with their heads on fire.
I just truly hope anyone listening hasn't got wrecked in the last couple of weeks with this price movement.
You haven't lost any Bitcoin to a margin call.
You haven't committed too much money from your pension to a treasury stock.
Try and play it as safely as you can, guys.
That's the underlying message here.
Reach out to Danny.
Reach out to Freddie.
Reach out to Dave.
if you've got any questions about anything that was discussed here.
They love chatting with the Bitcoiners.
They have their show, as we were talking about here, once a week.
So you'll get a feel for what they're seeing on their side of things.
They'll be talking about B-HODL, obviously, as well as CoinCorner
and all the other news that's going on in the world of Bitcoin.
And the last thing to say, really, is make sure you're stacking stats, right?
If you're based in the UK, CoinCorner is a great option.
They are, I mean, Danny founded the company 2014.
So they've been around.
They know what they're doing.
They know how to manage the Bitcoin.
They've seen several cycles.
They've been through all the ups.
They've been through all the downs.
And I'm not going to say your Bitcoin is safe there because I want you to self-custody.
Danny wants you to self-custody.
But I'm saying they are a very good service and something that you should certainly look at
if you are in the UK and you're looking to get some Bitcoin.
If you're across Europe, obviously Relay, R-E-L-A-I.CH forward slash Bitten.
Taking self-custody, Bitbox, Bitbox.Swiss forward slash Bitten.
If you want to start accepting Bitcoin, that's PayWithFlash.
Get over to PayWithFlash.com and get yourself set up.
Accept it, they will come.
geyser.fund is the place for you to go and find a project that's going to resonate with you
and just fund it with a few sats just send them 10 bucks or something see how that feels that's
obviously all done over the lightning network this is supporting the community this is trying
to get projects off the ground and lean in if there's any other way that you might be able to
support one of the projects on geyser lean in with your expertise go check them out it's geyser.fund
and lastly Club Orange
come join the club guys
Club Orange
just hit the link in the show notes
join almost 20,000 other Bitcoiners around the world
and let's keep growing out the social layer of Bitcoin
thank you so much for listening
as always
I'll catch you on
I'll catch you on the next show