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.
a nutshell they are an app that you download from the app store whatever app store you are using
and you start smash buying bitcoin through their services they're a bitcoin only app as i said
been around since 2020 you can buy bitcoin instantly using various payment methods you can
send across a bank transfer you can link your credit cards you can link your apple pay your
google pay it couldn't be easier uh it is a self-custodial wallet so that means that you are
in control of your bitcoin that's it you can stack up to a thousand swiss or equivalent per day
they are based out of switzerland they can now operate across all of europe because they have
the mica license so what is the mica license so it's spelled m-i-c-a and it stands for markets in
crypto s literally yeah of course it's bureaucratic mouthful markets in crypto assets and it's a
regulation that's rolled out by the infinite wisdom of the bureaucrats that sit on top of
their thrones in brussels in the eu and this is what they are forcing now bitcoin companies
I hate to say the word crypto companies, but there you go.
This is what you're forced to do now.
If you want to offer services in the EU around this sector, then you have to get this license.
And it is long and an arduous task.
And it is very expensive.
And we get into all of that with Julian.
He's here to tell us about their journey because they've been going through it.
They are not the first, but they're one of the first.
I believe, to have secured this licensing.
And it's now unlocked them.
They can now start advertising.
So you're going to see them popping up.
They've been popping up all over Zurich Airport.
They can start advertising their services.
They now sponsor one of the biggest ice hockey teams in Switzerland.
So they're on the jerseys.
This is really a bit of a game changer for them and for their next couple of years
as they obviously try and grow their business and try and push Bitcoin adoption across the EU.
It would be great if one day they could operate in the UK as well.
But as for now, that's a different set of regulations and they have not gone through that ball ache as of yet.
Head over to relay.ch forward slash bitten and you can hit the link in the show notes.
Just download the app and start stacking.
Now, please check in your own jurisdictions,
kind of equivalent companies or services to Relay,
wherever you might be in the world.
There are Bitcoin-only apps that you can download,
and there are the option whereby you can take complete self-custody
of your Bitcoin at the point of purchase as well.
So that's always a good thing to look out for.
Swan Bitcoin, for example, are in the US.
There's a link in the show notes.
There's a bunch of others around the different jurisdictions.
So reach out, get to your local meetup,
Go find your local people.
Ask your local Bitcoiners.
Who do we need to use in this jurisdiction?
Who's the best?
Who's the worst?
And yeah, use Club Orange.
Download Club Orange and start finding out where your nearest Bitcoin meetups are,
where your nearest plebs are, and go out and get together.
We just finished today.
It's a Sunday at the point of release.
We've been out for a proof of walk with our local Bitcoin group,
and it was an absolute beaut.
So thanks to the lads and lasses that joined us today.
That was a real family affair.
Long old dog walk with the kids and then a pub lunch afterwards.
I mean, through the English countryside.
It was wonderful.
Talking about Bitcoin and getting to know each other even more.
So yeah, get out there.
Use Club Orange.
Link in the show notes.
Taking self-custody is very, very serious.
If you haven't done it, please make sure you do do it.
get your Christmas list in front of your spouse, partner, boyfriend, girlfriend, I don't know,
uncle, cousin, doesn't matter. Or just buy one yourself because there's nothing more important
to do in Bitcoin other than take complete self-custody. You need to be in control of the
keys. You need to be the only one that can access and move that Bitcoin. So Bitbox is there for you.
bitbox.swiss forward slash bitten link in the show notes save yourself five percent using that link
and using the code bitten at checkout please take control finally if you want to start accepting
bitcoin for your goods and services which you should do paywithflash.com i've got you it's the
easiest plug and play solution out there today for accepting bitcoin get over to paywithflash.com
Meanwhile, enjoy this episode with Julian Lineker.
had to wade through to get this.
And to my understanding, are you the first considered to be the first Bitcoin only company
to have secured a Mika license?
So to be fair, there has been another Bitcoin only company, even in France also, and in
whole Europe, which is Bitstack.
Great company.
Yeah, Alexandre.
Alexandre is a great guy.
I caught up with him.
And, you know, we're all in this together.
so i'm very happy for every bitcoin only company that's making big next steps and reaching
milestones like that so they got the mica license a bit before us maybe two three months i think
before summer and they um they were the first bitcoin only company they are custodial so that's
their uh kind of the difference towards us so we can say we're the first bitcoin only company that
is also self-custodial broker and wallet and um and yeah they were i think number three or number
four in france that got the mica license we were like number six or seven and also we're the first
in the german speaking area but you know in the end doesn't really matter who's first i hope as
many bitcoin only companies as possible will get the mica license but i can tell you it's really
really hard work so props and congrats to bitstacks at bitstack and i'm very happy for
the relay team to also made it um but it's it's a lot of work i hope many bitcoin only companies
get it but i'm not sure if all of them will get it because super hard work so for those tuning in
from outside of europe did you just want to explain like give an overview of what the meka license is
how it come to be what it stands for and uh and then the processes that you guys had to engage with
Sure. So MICA stands for Markets in Crypto Assets, and it's a regulatory framework that encompasses all the EU countries.
So if you're listening from the US and you don't know much about Europe, like continental Europe is basically made of three different zones.
One is Switzerland, because it's its own different kind of piece.
That's where I'm from, and that's where Relay has its headquarters and got licensed.
and then there's the eu which uh consists of like 40 different countries but they're all
in the same regulatory kind of framework called eu european union and then there's the uk which
used to be part of the european union but did the brexit so they exited the the eu they now have
their own set of rules and jurisdiction as well and so why was mica so important for the industry
and also for us as a company is because now this one license is an overall European license.
So it allows you to, with one license, to access all these 40 different markets in the EU.
It's around 400 million people.
Imagine right before we had only the Swiss license
and we could cover actively with active customer acquisition,
the Swiss market with 8 million people.
and passively we were allowed to onboard if people find out about us onboard also eu people right
but now with mica this changes basically mica says okay we're unifying the whole regular the
whole regulatory framework and rules but if you don't get a mica license as a company you cannot
be active at all not even passively in the eu though if you have one then you can be actively
pursuing custom requisition and go after this 400 million people market,
which from a people count is bigger market than the US, right?
Less money, but more people.
So it's really, really important for a Bitcoin company,
if you're operating in the regulated space, to get this license.
So that's why it's such a big deal for us to finally,
after two years of hard work to have been accomplished
and have been approved into this Mika framework.
Two years, man.
Two years.
Two fucking years.
A lot of work.
It's like, don't get me started on it.
It's amazing how much work this was.
And I'm actually surprised that we got it
as a relatively small company,
but still 50 employees, right?
So there was 50 employees,
like let's say two-thirds of our resources in the in the last two years went into this
like a dozen compliance people like internal lawyers compliance operations people of course
a lot of tech people because we had to build so many implement so many tools build so many
systems and processes and get iso certification get cyber security audits we had to hire also
a lot of external people like lawyers and accountants and auditors and we had to work
very closely with people in the regulators we had to get in the supervisory board we had to get
advisors that helped us on the on the journey and review our application etc etc it's it's insane
what we what we had to had to do and it's all things that it doesn't directly add value to the
company or the users right even even the opposite is actually the case it makes it harder for the
user to to use our apps because our onboarding processes verification processes had to
be expanded and more like monitoring systems anti-fraud systems risk scoring two-factor
authentication etc etc these are all things we had to do that increase the security increase the
compliance, but doesn't necessarily increase the user experience and satisfaction, right? So
it was a tough two years for us as a business, but we believe, and we're Bitcoiners, we believe
in the long term, right? And I think long term, it was a very good decision. And this very hard
work will pay off big time. I can't imagine the days where the dossier just gets sent back to you
with all the lines through it and the big stamp that says, not this time, try again.
Because you never know when you send that all off, right?
You never know whose desk that's going to hit.
You're not dealing with the same person or perhaps even the same team every single time
from what I understand.
So you might have that jobs worth that gets it on their desk that day and then goes through
and checks the previous notes of like their colleague.
and then you've got an internal power struggle going on there.
And you, of course, as the people seem to be begging them
for their license,
the incentive structure of the whole freaking bureaucratic
nightmare machine that you have to go up against
is skewed in their favor in every way, shape and form.
And it almost kind of ironic that they parade themselves as you know the lawmakers or regulators or policymakers whatever you want to call them who are there to ensure that there is an open free market But at the same time they the ones that are actually creating the monopolies by putting these regulations in place because there only
going to be a few amount of entrepreneurs like yourself that can you know stick to it like two
years in a long time I mean I can't imagine the amount of times you and Adam must have just been
sitting there like should we just fucking like what are we doing now there are many times where
like giving up is not an option at all so that's already good but there's been many times where we
didn't think about giving up but we thought about well if we ever start a new project it's not going
to be a regulated financial service provider because it is it is a pain in the ass to be in
this regulated industry and you're right right these regulators i mean the people we work with
on a daily basis they don't they mean well you know they just do their jobs it's not their fault
it's just this whole system that is really skewed and they are gatekeepers whether they want it or
not they're gatekeepers and you talk about the incentives well the incentives are really
minimizing risks and and therefore minimizing also innovation they are not incentivized to
give out a lot of licenses i i predict there will be a hundred maybe max 150 mika licenses in europe
not more like there are only this year is almost over and they only gave out like 20 or 25 licenses
so far um we were the sixth license in france germany gave out i think four um the netherlands
another few um malta cyprus well you know smaller jurisdictions where not sure whether long term
these these mica licenses will hold um and there are many jurisdictions that didn't give out any
license yet um like lichtenstein like luxembourg and etc so yeah no they are not incentivized to
give out a lot of these licenses and therefore innovation will be really hindered because there
are hundreds of companies that are trying to get these licenses if they don't get them they will
not be allowed to do business and so a lot of businesses when they are small they will just die
even though maybe they have a great business case but they will not be allowed to be active on the
market and you know it takes a lot of resources to check all these applications we we submitted
more than 10 000 pages oh my goodness of crazy complicated like legal language right it's not a
novel of 10 000 pages it's not an easy to read thing it's super complicated legal compliance
language regulatory risk management operations procedures compliance concepts and policies etc
right more than 10 000 pages so imagine the the amount of workforce they need to check them
it was a close to 300 appendices next to the main application that they all have to review and check
and as you said there are red lines coming back all the time some of these appendices
had more than 10 versions until everything was you know finalized and approved and we did have one
account manager basically that or supervisor they call him that was responsible for us he was very
good to be honest he was very responsive and he did a great job right but then the system is just
the whole institution is so complex behind there's so many committees he has to get this stuff
approved many different people review they have different perspectives they give different
feedback and it's such it's a huge long back and forth there are several institutions around the
AMF that have like one has more in AML KYC and AML perspective the other has more
a regulatory perspective financial market authority then there's the ESMA which is an overall
um european institution that also basically uh jumps in this legal departments etc etc so
it's so complicated and and a lot of a lot of resources on their side as well that are needed
so imagine how many resources from the companies from these hundreds of european companies that try
to that prepare these tens of thousands hundreds of millions of pages and then the regulators on
their side all the resources they need to review all this and this whole back and forth and it's
very complicated so it's just this system that is of course very inefficient and and not very
friendly not very welcome to to innovation right and that's uh yeah that's just that's just the
situation it's not good or bad right it's just the situation on the on a positive note from
investor perspective it's and you mentioned this before it's a moat right once you get through all
this pain well you have a moat because there will only be maybe a hundred companies in europe that
even have this privilege of doing this business right so of course the competition is lower which
means more business for for us as a company higher revenues higher margins it's just the the game
we need to play also just to not only from business perspective to make money of course but also to
pursue our mission and achieve our mission, which is bring as many Bitcoin as possible
in a self-custodial way to as many people as possible.
We truly believe that we needed this license.
We had to do this very hard work to be able to distribute more Bitcoin to more people,
get more Bitcoin in the hands of the people in a self-custodial way.
And that's why we did this hard work, because we believed in that a lot.
Yeah. And hats off to you guys, honestly, hoodies off.
To stick to it and to, you know, check in with yourself each morning and check that mission, that goal is huge.
And that does have to be like the bright orange kind of glow that's going to keep like the moth flying towards the moon, you guys flying towards the Mika.
that feels like an infiltration right like a tried horse we're getting regulated in order to
distribute uh financial freedom to people like self-custodial bitcoin that in itself then you
could you know it's kind of counter intuitive for it's not regulated it's not the traditional
financial so we're basically infiltrating the traditional financial system to distribute the
new Bitcoin financial system in the right way, in a non-custodial way.
And I believe that's very important also for the resilience of Bitcoin and to give this
weight, this counterweight to the ever more regulated and restrictive and supervised and
controlled traditional financial system to give people an alternative.
Because if no one does this, the regulators will just squash all the decentralized exchanges
and ATMs, et cetera, that actually deliver self-custody.
So if more and more of these,
because they don't want to get regulated,
they get pushed more towards a gray or black area
where it's criminalized like the dark net, right?
Then we end up with the traditional financial system
and the regulators really controlling Bitcoin
because it's very easy to control custodial exchanges and banks.
you know you can just then seize bitcoin you can freeze transactions you can block
stuff it's it's not censorship resistance anymore it's not it's not free global neutral independent
peer-to-peer money anymore right what we thought it what it should be it's then become just a
just another aspect of the traditional financial system and that's not what we want we want to give
people an alternative in a regulated way it has to be regulated otherwise it cannot scale
to millions of people but it needs to be you know real bitcoin self-custodial with all the benefits
with all the freedom and and that's what we're working on i think this is very important alternative
to give people so they can choose to actually hold their own bitcoin and transact with them
freely. And in order to do that, unfortunately, we need to go to quite a lot of pain through all
this regulation. But I was also impressed, actually, by the positive feedback we got from
the community, the Bitcoin community. You know, we were in Lugano at the biggest Swiss Bitcoin
conference. And just one day before we got the approval from the AMF. So on Friday, I had a talk,
which I switched to this topic, of course, I wanted to talk about another topic, but then I
switched to announcing the meca license and and after the talk i had so many people coming to me
saying hey julian great very happy and congratulated and and supported uh us you know and and and
saluted us so yes thank you for being the pioneer for for being the trailblazer for going through
this hard work so we have an actual now like big significant institution that is regulated and
that is working on what Bitcoiners want the world to look like, right?
Millions of people having a distributed financial network
that is owned by millions and actually owned by millions
and not millions of Bitcoin just being consolidated
on something like Coinbase,
but really having millions of people owning just some sets, right?
And so I was surprised, actually, positively surprised.
There were a few trolls and super hardcore Bitcoin maxis that are like, this is not privacy oriented.
This is not, you know, you're licking the ass of the regulators, et cetera.
You know, fair enough.
They're to some degree right.
But this was really a very small minority, like 1%.
99% of the feedbacks were super positive.
So I'm very hyped and motivated by that.
Yeah, it's great to hear.
And I remember when you had to, if I rewind two years, I think it was, you had to change your or update your KYC and identification methods.
And that's when you kind of got that there was a way for UK Bitcoiners to use Relay for a while.
But then that just got slammed.
That door got slammed shut.
And that was such a big shame.
And then it got, I even remember when we were living in France, it got shut on me in France because I didn't have a French passport.
Even my French visa wasn't good.
Residency visa wasn't good enough as a KYC pass that wouldn't get through like the third party KYC people that you were basically forced to use, right?
From memory, that was another one of those regulatory creep throughout the years has just been crazy.
So, yeah, I remember you taking some heat for that.
so well done to you know keep keep the goal alive and then recently I think it took a little bit of
heat as well for poor old Adam the lightning when lightning yeah we're taking quite we were taking
quite some heat over the years we got used to it and we know how to deal with it now but and it's
good to be honest like we we welcome feedback of all sorts and we like direct feedback it's fine
you know people should speak out their mind we listen to it um you know sometimes maybe a bit
harsh sometimes it's a bit unfair or whatever or they make judgments on very limited information
but they're not to blame they don't have all the information we do have all the information
um and so we we usually really may i think we're an organization that really is truth seeking and
and objective and we very often in hindsight i think we made the right decision the the rational
decision in in this case in the lightning case it was just a business decision you know we we
there were a subgroup of our users a subset of our users the bitcoiners that really wanted
one lightning to succeed and i'm i'm a fan of lightning i think lightning is great right it's
It's amazing technology, makes Bitcoin scalable and valuable as a payment mechanism.
So that's great.
So we wanted to listen to this subgroup of our users.
So that's why we built it.
We partnered with Breeze, who came out with their SDK that made it easy for companies like ours to just implement and offer a Lightning wallet to their users without a lot of effort.
because this is really complicated technology.
So we were glad to outsource this heavy lifting
to a third party like Breeze, great Bitcoin,
Roy, shout out, amazing team.
So we integrated that and then we launched it.
And after a few months, we had to notice that,
A, not many people used it.
It was like 5%, 6% of our user base
that even tried it once.
and how many of them were actually coming back
and using it for the long term.
It really really low like probably 1 users like maybe 1 of our 100 users Then the second problem was and this may be related a bit is that it also didn really
work very well.
For like 50% of all users that tried, they had issues.
So of course, it's clear that not many of them come back.
But I think the most important one is only 5% actually even tried in the first place to
use it.
And we got a lot of feedback from our biggest customer group, which is the beginners, newcomers.
They're like, what is Lightning?
Is this another coin?
Can I now diversify my portfolio to an altcoin?
Can I now buy Bitcoin faster?
So they didn't know it's about payments.
They didn't even know it's about Bitcoin.
I think it's something very...
And so for most people, I would say for 90% of our users, it was actually confusing.
and then for the 10% of the users or 5% of the users
that actually want to use it, it was not a great user experience
because honestly the technology was just not really ready,
and of course it didn't make us any money.
So from a business perspective, it also didn't really make sense.
It didn't bring us more users.
It brought us user frustration and confusion,
and it didn't make us any money.
And from a regulatory perspective, because we went down the Mika path, well, under Mika, lightning is really still a red flag.
It's something that they don't understand at all.
I mean, it's very hard to get them to understand what Bitcoin is and what Bitcoin wallet is, like self-custodial, private keys, etc.
Already that rabbit hole is really hard to make.
we talked about how these institutions work and how complicated they are how many different
committees with people that are 50 60 years old and work for a regulator their whole lives right
to to explain them our business model which is super fucking simple right it's basically
exchanging swiss francs and euros to bitcoin and we don't even hold the bitcoin we don't offer any
other services we don't know for any other cryptocurrencies super fucking simple but even
that to to get them to understand it took us basically two years right so now if you add
something like lightning which is really another technology is super complicated it's on top it's
another network on top of the bitcoin network that they already don't understand and then
it adds complexity on on who's the owner who's the custodian you know because we have a channel
we're on one end of the channel the user is on the other end of the channel there is money in the
channel so are we are we now a custodian right this is the big question and if we are do we need
another license etc etc so to go then through all this pain to explain the regulator what lightning
is and to get it approved by them and the big risk that we would lose maybe half a year in that
process of getting the mica license for for what for five percent of users that kind of use it but
are not really happy with it because the technology is not ready and that make us no money
that didn't make sense from a business perspective so we decided to sunset it and i think i did a
very poor job in communicating it i should probably just let the marketing team do their job
and but i just basically tweeted like this was a two-minute tweet as most of my tweets
um basically i just keep updating people i'm like i like hashtag build in public right so i keep
updating people what we're doing and why but in a tweet there's only a few characters right so i did
basically what i said look we we hear you you wanted lightning we built lightning now no one
really used not many people used it it didn't really work too well and so we had to sunset it
and we now focus on things that have higher impact that's what i wanted to say but i think the tweet
really triggered a lot of lightning enthusiasts,
which I, in hindsight, understand.
And it's okay.
So I took a lot of heat,
or we took a lot of heat from that.
But to be honest, even now, also Breeze,
I saw a tweet that they also sunset this whole SDK for good.
So it just seemed an experiment
that in the end didn't work out from a tech perspective.
They're now working on other approaches with liquid
and also like lightning plus liquid and um i believe spark you know from light spark
so it's other lightning related um uh approaches but but this particular approach that they were
um with the sdk that they were pursuing that we were using it just didn't work enough
well enough so that's and that's fine you know it's it's startup life it's we're building a new
financial infrastructure for the world there is a lot of trial and error some things work some don't
so we basically got back to the roots really focusing on saving instead of payment on bitcoin
on chain instead of lightning and for now right we who knows what's going to come in the future
when we have more demand for for using bitcoin as payments as well and more demand for lightning or
other second third layer solutions we'll be happy to consider again but for now i think it was a
rational business decision to refocus and and sunset lightning but yeah you spent i mean like
listen to the market right you listen to the market both times on the way in and on the way
out on the way in every i remember the tweets like when lightning when lightning when lightning and it
was endless i was probably guilty of it uh and you know i've worked closely with you guys for
almost five years now uh from the very beginning pretty much uh actually that's a good point when
did you reach out i think it was mid late 2020 or was it 2021 by that stage uh when we started
working i think i think you were also you were one of the first uh people that interviewed me when we
launched relay so that was in summer 2020 so it must be end of 2020 that we first yeah so i i mean
i've been there i've seen it i've i've watched watch the journey very very closely and um i think
yeah you're you're right that that tweet was likely misconstrued as you being uh like saying
lightning's broken doesn't work packing up going home like throwing your toys out of the pram
which wasn't the case at all no it's like no we we tried it we listened to our market we listened
to our users we created it and it was a lot of it was a lot of work i remember adam was at his
wits end with that one trying to get that one through yeah and then no one used it and that's
just such a shame uh but and then like to to get the meeker as well what's more important like
you know have it keeping a feature there that is a little bit glitchy at the best of times and only
five percent of people are using it or just getting rid of it and focusing on getting that
that regulatory stuff which is interesting interesting listening to you talking about
like the guy that was looking after your case there man ai has to rip through this stuff pretty
oh yeah i mean think of a career risk on that guy's shoulders right now like he's he's looking
at ai bearing down at him and not only that left and right he's got his colleagues he's got his
people above him he's got the people that he's supposed to be like you know ushering through
this system i.e you guys and yeah i don't envy that position and uh it is hard to get angry at
these people these bureaucrats but at the same time to your point they're just people are trying
to i'm sure he didn't grow up like uh one day i'm gonna be that's what's you'd be surprised some
people really like compliance we hired we hired 10-12 compliance people and i asked them the same
question like do you like your job they're like yeah they're super enthusiastic about it so they're
just different kinds of people um and to the ai point of course ai could already now do half of
their jobs or more but they have also regulations on that one right they they have restrictions i
I mean, I don't think the regulators are like power users.
I think it's probably even very restricted,
if not forbidden for them to even use AI
because of data and privacy.
Wow.
Data.
So the system truly will not move forward any...
I was hoping perhaps efficiency will gain
over the next 18 months to two years and we can get more companies with the maker and you know
spread this out you know competition rather excuse me collaboration rather than competition
in the bitcoin space but i it doesn't sound as though you hold out too much hope it's i'm not
very bullish on that i think it's still a lot of manual work there and i at one point yes but i
don't think the next 18 to 24 months i'd rather be in the five to 10 years time frame there it's
Like they move very slow in terms of innovating also their process.
And because it's so much manual work, that's money.
Money. Yes, that's a point. We've not talked about that.
How much money is it like to even consider if you're a young entrepreneur in this space and you want to start like a financial app where people can buy Bitcoin and you want to go do it properly and get registered and blah, blah, blah.
I mean, what kind of money are we looking at here?
I mean, we've got two years straight away.
Yeah, that's another thing.
But if you start now, it's crazy.
If you started five years ago, as we did, especially in Switzerland, where we could still do the non-KOC stuff, it was really easy for us to get off the ground.
Now, if you want to start, like I said in my talk, I think if you don't have 10 million, probably don't even start.
What?
because of course it doesn't cost you 10 million but it took us two years we are 50 people in the
company and two-thirds of them worked for this so it's a lot of compliance operations and tech
people that need to have high salaries that you need to pay for two years so i reckon we we paid
around one million in total and the smallest cost is the regulators but then the externals that you
need all the lawyers all the accountants all the auditors the cyber security audits the iso
certification all this kind of stuff that you need to do without all the advisors the supervisory
board you need to put in place that's a big cost and then the internal costs are huge um because
you need all these employees yes you need substance right if you're a three four people company you
won't get this license you need i don't know at least 20 people if not if not more we're now 50
and so this is this is a lot of cost plus then you need that there's capital requirements so
they won't give a license if you have a runway of three months right you need a runway of three
years so you need to show them you have a lot of money on in the bank account and then you need
operational capital so if if you have 10 million on the bank account you need probably 5 million
just for the operations or six depending on you want to grow so they will see okay if you grow
your volume you will need more operation capital and still so with the rest of the few million you
have one million goes away as cost for getting the license and then you have a very few millions
that need to secure your three-year runway right so you need you need a lot of money and a lot of
effort and on the regulator side another reason for the limitation is because we said it's a lot
of resources a lot of manual work is a lot of money that are spent from them to approve licenses
and to maintain the licenses because they also audit there are auditors private auditors that
we need like audits that we need to go through every year so they check on us but also the
the regulators directly check on the companies so they also audit the companies means the more
companies they approve the more licenses they give out the more work they have again on
like recurring work on checking on them now in france for example and this is a problem with all
the eu governments and i would argue with most of the governments they have budget problems they have
huge budget problems in the u.s there's a shutdown now for i think 37 days already in france as well
i think for two three weeks in france they have a shutdown so they they have a dysfunctional
or not functioning government they don't have any budget they cannot basically approve new budget
so yes the amf might need another five or ten employees to you know do all this work with the
licenses, but they don't get, they can't hire any more employees.
They don't get new budget from the government.
And all the governments are super indebted.
And, you know, no one really wants to work also for the government anymore.
The talented people want to work in the private sector where they can make money.
And so, yeah, it's very limited.
Again, to my point earlier that I don't think there will be a lot of licenses.
It's just the incentive systems and the structure.
It's just not suggesting it.
And yes it a lot of effort from both the company you need a few millions to even get started And from the governments they need a lot of budget
which they don't have the budget they need.
And what's the investment landscape out there at the moment?
We've had lots of discussions about this over the years
because it used to be the case that if you're going to start a crypto company,
you'd get money thrown at you.
and you were very careful over at Relay with the people that you decided to engage with and accept
investment from. EgoDeath being one of those great companies that helped you guys out and
led around or two. You obviously had your angels from way back in the day. Kudos to those for
helping you get off the ground. But what's that landscape like today? What's going on in the
Bitcoin, first of all, the Bitcoin investment, Bitcoin only investment landscape, and then like
the kind of wider crypto? What are the conversations happening? What have you heard? And what do you
see? So there are good news, I think, on that front. I mean, there's a lot of Bitcoin only VCs
now. When we started five years ago, there was almost, there were very few small Bitcoin focused
vc companies like maybe still mark was around maybe um uh this other company i now forgot there
were two three not many um around back in those days maybe fulgur was around already yes and i
was looking for the other us one you know where i think marty bent is now involved oh 1031 yeah 1031
and there's even another yeah maybe a handful right um now they're they're many and they're
big ones like ego death capital just just closed their second fund which was a hundred million fund
so now these bitcoin vcs they cannot only support small companies with 100k or 200k check
but they can actually lead a 12 million series a as in our case end of last year um and that's
that's amazing so there's more money around for bitcoin only companies because they're also
the bitcoin price of course increased more bitcoiners got more wealthy and they invest also
part of their new wealth into bitcoin vcs and there are also companies that are super super
profitable like you know tether for example i think they invested i had paulo arduino in our
relay bitcoin podcast end of last year and they i think they said i mean they make more than a
billion in profit a month right so i think this year they will make like 15 billion in in not
revenue in profit it's insane and so where does this money go they invested in bitcoin directly
in gold in um also bitcoin mining and they invested i think last year they invested around
a billion in bitcoin startups through different venture funds but also directly so there is much
more money that venture capital money that flows into the bitcoin startup ecosystem i think that's
that's great news on the crypto front there's still a lot going on for me for me is insane um
but yeah i i don't understand it but there's still like andrezen horowitz and and the likes
that are pumping also billions into into altcoin projects and new
new blockchains, new altcoins that none of them really are doing anything meaningful in my opinion.
But they attract still a lot of venture capital because there are some that really do very well.
Binance coin, for example, has gone through the roof.
It's crazy.
solana went from when end of 22 ftx collapsed and it was basically in the ftx coin right it went from
200 bucks to what 10 bucks or something and now it's back to i don't even know but hundreds again
new ultima 3 400 must be i don't know i don't follow that closely but there is a lot of money
to be made with these speculative trades.
And VCs, of course, like short-term high gains.
So there's still a lot of crypto VCs,
but we don't really engage with them,
especially now that we have built our capital base
with more than 50 investors,
around seven or eight VCs
that are all very much on this Bitcoin-only narrative, right?
We have a very good network
where whenever we need more money,
At the moment, we don't.
But whenever we will need more money, we will be able, with our current network,
to raise it from great long-term thinking, Bitcoin-focused investors.
That's why we don't have to engage anymore, really, with VCs that are into crypto
or that haven't understood, that are generalistic VCs,
general VCs that haven't really understood Bitcoin.
So that's the fortunate position.
we are in.
And I think the great news is
there's just much more Bitcoin-focused VC money out there.
So even if you're starting a Bitcoin company right now,
there's so many more options than five years ago,
which is great.
And that's also why a lot of great things are being built
in Bitcoin and around Bitcoin.
And you started stacking Bitcoin onto the balance sheet.
I can't remember exactly when,
at least 18 months ago, maybe two years,
I remember seeing those tweets and that was taking profit off the table each month or perhaps after an investment round, you take X amount of percentage of that investment and put that into Bitcoin.
So, yeah, what's the update on that? Because to me, that's a Bitcoin treasury company like that.
that you have an existing business, a five-year track record,
and you're taking profit, you're skimming profit to stack Bitcoin,
to protect your future, to lengthen your runway,
to use the parlance of the venture capitalists.
Yeah, where are you at with that at the moment?
Yeah, we try to stack Sats as much as we can.
We have different pockets of capital.
But like any company, the long term capital reserve, I think, should mostly be in Bitcoin.
If you don't need your money as a company for a few years, that's also what we explain to our relay business clients, for example.
We have hundreds of businesses, mostly SMEs in Europe, that have now started to become a treasury company.
Not in the sense of the crazy way how Michael Saylor is doing it, but just as you said, just sacks at.
because if you have money that you don't use the next two three four five years doesn't make sense
to hold it in euro because the euro loses value every every year right it makes sense to use euro
for spending from today and tomorrow from today to tomorrow it's it's it's pretty stable but then
if you want to hold and preserve your value for an investment you want to make maybe in five years
it doesn't make sense because you will lose in the double digits of percentage in purchasing power,
while if you hold it in Bitcoin, you will win more purchasing power, right?
And on average, around 50 to 60% a year, especially if you have a long-term view.
So that's what we explain to companies and we also do it ourselves.
The money we don't immediately use, we put in Bitcoin.
And then we have also different buckets of capital.
We need a lot of operational capital, which part of it is Bitcoin.
This is also on our balance sheet, but not in the treasury for the long-term capital reserve.
But actually, it's moving every day.
Bitcoin, euro, and Swiss francs.
So we basically have these three buckets.
We, of course, need to make sure we're also well financed in fiat terms.
Because we have bills to pay.
we are profitable in some months not profitable in others so we're not a super profitable company
like tether uh yet where where we don't know where to go with the money we do have to be
in a good balance of um what amount of fiat we need for short-term operational capital and for
for paying salaries and taxes and bills etc but also of course we're very we're a bitcoin company
And the goal of every company, if you think in a Bitcoin standard world, is Bitcoin is capital.
And so the goal for every company is to accumulate as much capital as you want, because it will increase your market capitalization, your valuation.
And it will help you to make better investments in the future.
So, of course, we have a pretty good stack at the moment.
I'm quite happy.
We made some good decisions in hindsight of whenever we had profitable months, put some into Bitcoin, not selling Bitcoin almost ever.
And buying Bitcoin also when, for example, we had the funding round, we put some significant amount into Bitcoin, the money that we didn't use like tomorrow.
And so these turned out to be very good long term decisions.
Excellent, Mike.
You mentioned SMEs, and I think this is probably the best time to talk about Relay Private and the work you guys have done with the SMEs over there.
Small to medium-sized enterprises, for those that might not know their acronym.
How many businesses have you managed to help start Stack and Sats?
Not enough.
That is the right answer.
it's really a few so small step for for for us big step for the industry no big step for us
small set for the industry let's say because maybe we're at i don't know the exact number
three four hundred companies that we have onboarded mostly smes that are founder led so
typically they have between 10 and 100 employees they have two to three decision makers or beneficial
owners that can decide to put, you know, where to put the money to invest into Bitcoin.
And they're of all sorts of industries, which are super interesting, right?
Some of them are carpenters, dentists, you know, building and construction and IT consultants,
real estate.
We even have a gold trading company that invests into Bitcoin in the digital gold every month,
which is great.
And we just recently had, I don't know which industry this was, some company that started a 50 bucks monthly savings plan with us.
We now really streamlined all the processes so that any company that wants to start, I mean, any SME, let's say, not publicly traded companies, not like super complicated constructs, corporations,
But like SME in Europe can onboard within 48 hours with us and they can start with 50 bucks a month, set up a savings plan and put some of their profits, some of their revenue, some of their long term capital into Bitcoin.
So this is really interesting to see on the small scale.
Like that's why I say it's a big step for us as a company.
This is maybe a very small step for the industry, because you know how many SMEs there are in Europe?
no 25 million wow so even if every company in europe wanted to buy just one bitcoin
there's not enough by far not enough to buy one bitcoin per company and that's only in europe
not talking about asia the americas etc so it's insane the scarcity and in in europe maybe there
a few thousand now i would say maybe fair to say two and a half thousand um so that would be what
not even one percent zero point one zero point one percent of the companies have bitcoin on their
balance sheet in europe it's insane like the the potential is just insane and the numbers are
staggering if you think about what's going to happen if even one or five or ten percent of
these companies find out that's actually a very good idea to put some bitcoin on the balance sheet
many of them have millions as we have some companies that buy 10 bitcoin at once right
once they have understood so yeah this is really really interesting relay business and relay private
relay business we're looking after these SMEs and also we now will be able with Mika we'll be able
to start onboarding holding companies and like bigger companies more more complex constructs
also like foundations treasury trusts and you know stuff like that um but also on the private side
we have high net worth individuals that start to understand that in part of their portfolio part of
the the wealth they hold with their family office for example they should probably start allocating
to bitcoin and they start buying one bitcoin for 100k and then maybe they all of a sudden they
Thank you.
buy 50 Bitcoin for 5 million.
So we have these kind of trades that are now starting to happen.
We start to onboard these very, very wealthy clients
that decide to take the BlackRock recommendation
and put 2% of their portfolio into Bitcoin.
Some of them then start really liking it.
We have this guy that has a Ferrari dealership
and starts to put some of the profits.
They're in huge margins.
this guy is a very very profitable business starts to put pretty big amounts of that into into bitcoin
on the regular basis we have people then that start again with few bitcoin and then they sell
a business for 10 million and they put half of it half of that into bitcoin because they really
start understanding it more and more and what it can do for them long term so relay private and
really a business kind of we're at a point where we have hundreds of these clients they also have
a network right of of like-minded and and similarly wealthy people and companies so we were starting
to see this network effect there where we get more and more of these very interesting people
and companies as clients and but it's still amazingly early like gradually then suddenly
yeah yeah but we're far away step over suddenly in my opinion oh yeah it's yeah it's not very
much in the gradually bucket of that but it's very interesting what you said about that amount of smes
in in europe that's that's staggering that's really very interesting and and the ones you
guys are already servicing uh it won't be long until they realize the the power of accepting
Bitcoin as a medium
exchange as well, right?
This is going to push that narrative
a narrative we need to push as hard
as we can for Bitcoin to become
a medium exchange and for these
SMEs to start accepting Bitcoin
for their goods and services
I think I tweeted recently
you should not accept Bitcoin for your goods
and services, you should demand it
and when people start grokking that
that's
when we're just going to see this huge shift
um but yeah like you say what do you say 0.01 so far yeah we got some wood to chop so that's down
to the plebs listening keep asking at your bars restaurants cafes hairdressers mechanics you know
window cleaner do you accept bitcoin like that it's it's on us to to it's still a grassroots
movement? So I just calculated this. If we assume 2,500 SMEs in Europe on Bitcoin, which I think
it's maybe fair to say, if we have maybe 250, 300 companies, so we would have a market share of 1%,
10%. Yeah, maybe it's 25,000. What do you think? Is it 2,500 or 25,000 rather? It's really hard
to say if it's two and a half thousand there would be 0.01 percent of the companies in europe
that own bitcoin even if we're rather this is probably the converse uh the conservative
scenario if we go for the bullish scenario that already 25 000 smes in europe hold bitcoin still
only 0.1 percent so it's insane and in the on the individual side it's around 10 percent
so the individuals already kind of got it but of course companies are slower and and and
different in their decision making so it takes longer for them but like in 10 years fair to say
that at least one percent if not five or ten percent of the european smes will have bitcoin
on their balance sheet imagine this inflow of capital is insane i wonder how much because i
think they're rolling out in the us at the moment square right with their payments terminals yeah
that's great when that rolls out globally or hits europe uh whether you will see an uptick
with the uh interest on on the relay business that'll be very interesting to see because all
of a sudden if they're accepting bitcoin at the terminals the pill has been planted directly
on their countertop and bitcoiners are coming in and they're spending uh yeah it's going to be very
interesting to see it's going to be look future's always bright the future's orange uh and you can
never tell you can never tell which path we're going to take but uh yeah lots of it's just great
to see that you know you guys are building you've got your license and you can uh keep up the
engagement and now you've got 400 million users to potentially serve how do you and now you can
actively market yeah uh so is that where a big amount of focus is gonna and obviously budget
is going to rest for the next uh year to two years yes we're really excited now to finally
stop allocating so much into so much resources into regulatory licensing legal compliance etc
more towards product and growth so product in the sense that we will now be much faster in
delivering new features that users demand in improving the existing product make it more
scalable more performant more reliant just better more exciting to use for for people and then the
growth part is we can finally really talk about everything we're doing because in in european
countries in eu countries outside of switzerland we were not able to even talk about a referral
program we were not able to talk about relay business relay private um all the features that
we we offer um and and we were not able to work with great content creators like you like with
podcasters youtubers bloggers whatever right um we we will be now able to partner with all these
with also media traditional media and again influencers uh which which are a big part of
where people learn about bitcoin um we will be able to sponsor events we will be able to sponsor
sports clubs as we do in in switzerland already we can now do this all of these things in in the
most important eu markets and more than 80 of our users are in eu markets organically and this year
we will like handcuffed we were not able to talk about anything but still we're getting like 80 of
our new users also are coming from eu countries so now that we actually start actively promoting
Bitcoin and in a second step relay, I think we'll be able to onboard hundreds of thousands
of people to Bitcoin in the next year, which is really exciting.
We're looking forward to that.
So now basically handcuffs are off and we can, A, we now have this market available for
us, which is great.
But B also, even more significantly, I think, and more importantly, is we can now allocate a lot of our resources to actually create value with, you know, improving the product and promoting Bitcoin more.
So, for example, have you seen our videos lately, the relay films?
I actually had missed it, but I went for a walk this morning with my wife and she was telling me, you've got to see the relay.
I mean, she sees it before I do.
I'm like, what's going on?
And she explained about how there's the two guys,
like side by side doing the exact same thing during the day,
taking the bus, doing their fiat job and whatever else.
And one is just like the demeanor is downtrodden and whatever else.
And the other guy doing the exact same stuff is happy
and living life to the fullest.
And it's obvious which one owns Bitcoin and which one doesn't.
So she thought it was a very powerful app.
Yeah. Is that an ad?
It's not even an ad.
This is the things that we want to do more, right?
It's just explaining and therefore promoting Bitcoin under our brand.
So we're using, of course, our brand and our resources.
We have an amazing motion designer now hired, right, that produces these videos with the help of AI.
And we'll be able to many, many more things like that, working together with influencers.
or producing stuff ourselves and our newsletter our podcasts our blogs are just all this content
that we'll put out with the goal of educating more people about bitcoin is we will be much
stronger now in distributing this through our platform and through our network to more and more
people like your wife she saw it now in a because from or just organically because we posted it and
people shared it that was allowed right but now we'll be able to also put a budget behind it so
we'll be able to for example such a video an educational video it's not necessarily an ad
it's really just an educational video about bitcoin of course it's branded by relay
we'll be able to put budget behind this so imagine if it already goes pretty viral organically
and then if we put budget behind it like paid advertising it on google and meta and
YouTube and all the other networks, then we will just reach way more people with it that will start
to learn and understand and get a good feeling about Bitcoin. We need to build more touch points.
People, until they understand Bitcoin or they understand any sort of product or new thing,
it takes them usually between 15 and 20 touchpoints.
And now that we can reach these 400 million Europeans with our great content that works organically already we can also create way more touch points with these people
So at one point, they will then fall down the rabbit hole and understand Bitcoin.
And then hopefully some of them will buy Bitcoin with us.
But even if they buy Bitcoin with others, it's also fine as long as we get more Bitcoin,
more hands of people.
Well, let's just say people need 21 touch points.
Yeah.
Probably you would find that's actually the case because it's...
That could be the name of your campaign,
but I want to see way more than 21 videos.
But like, yeah, you might, it might be,
let's say you did 200 videos.
It might be a different 21 touch points out of that 200,
but until someone like just suddenly like the epiphany drops.
Absolutely.
That's why it's so important to meet people where they are
and they are on different channels.
That's why, for example, in Lugano, we did a billboard,
the digital billboard ads have you seen them they were so cool like so imagine someone gets
out the train in lugano sees a digital billboard about bitcoin and relay they're like okay cool
and then they walk they pull up their instagram they see this video this ai generated video about
bitcoin they're like oh that's pretty cool and then maybe uh you know they in the evening they
listen to their favorite podcasts uh where the podcaster has a as a stack sets hoodie on and
talks about Bitcoin, right? And talks about Relay. And they're like, oh, cool. That's good.
You know, you need all these different touch points and you meet the people where they are.
And eventually they will be interested in it. It's just, it takes a lot of time and a lot of
grind and a lot of resources and a lot of creativity. And that's where we will be more free now,
now that we have the license, we can be very creative. We can put our capital to work,
our amazing team to work to bring more Bitcoin to more people.
So next year is going to be a really exciting year.
Yeah.
I mean, the reason most people want a Mercedes
is because they remember the ads they watched
when they were three to five years old on the television.
This is literally just psychologically how it happens.
Yeah.
The more it's repetition, the more you see something,
the more you like it and the more you get into it.
And you brought up a good couple of points here that I think we are guilty of assuming that the other people, people that are listening to the podcast or coming to the conferences or watching the YouTube channels or even giving you feedback, right?
Like you said, you face some criticism.
um but like the the point i'm trying to make is i i go back to riga i was uh hosting the stage at
riga and i had to introduce a bitcoin paper summer panel and a lady come up to me during the break
and uh she said can i just give you guys some feedback i'm like yeah absolutely sure like you
know like it's i'm not one of the organizers of the conference but i'd happily take it he said
yeah well you know when you're introducing the the panels and you just throw out words like
bitcoin paper summer uh there's a lot of people in the audience that won't know what that means
and i'm like fuck yeah you just assume because people are there at a conference and it's kind
of an og conference like riga has uh that um kind of reputation for you just assume everyone there
is up to speed, knows what's going on
and is on Twitter following all of the arguments.
And they're not.
And people tuning into this podcast
could be their first podcast.
I don't know.
I can't assume that it's the same X amount of listeners
listening in every week.
But I think we are perhaps guilty of that,
people that have been in the space
for more than a cycle, let's say.
Absolutely.
That's a very good point.
And I see this almost every day.
Whenever I speak somewhere or I'm at an event or people come up and talk to me, people have no clue still.
There's so many people.
Lately, I was at an event.
It was more for, in general, entrepreneurs and investors here in Switzerland.
Wealthy people, super smart people in the audience, maybe 30 or 40 of them.
and we talked about investing in general in different asset classes we had someone from
vc someone from real estate and i was the kind of bitcoin representative right with very good
panel discussion and then people come up to me with these absolute simple basic questions of like
you know you i think you convinced me i want to try to invest a little bit in bitcoin and a little
bit for them is like 100k so they're like okay i will max out the 100k i can do with the app and
then if i'm interested further i will probably sign up for relay private sounds interesting and
then we'll allocate more capital to it and then in the same breath they ask you know but so far
i haven't done it because it just uses so much energy and i'm kind of sustainability is important
to me and also i'm not sure if it will be banned by china it will probably be soon banned by china
that was why it was a bit of a risk for me and and you know and and maybe and also quantum
computing i think will scatter it anyway uh in a few years that's why i'm so far not interested
and that it is super basic questions which just show that 90 in my opinion from from what i see
90% of the people haven't put in maybe the, let's say, 50 hours or 100 hours that are needed to understand what Bitcoin is, how big it is, how safe it is, and everything.
Many people just don't know.
They didn't put in the hours.
And that's even very smart, very wealthy people.
So now think about the average people who have maybe the slightly below average IQ, which is 40 or 50 percent of the population that have a normal job.
They also have some money aside that they want to keep for the future, but they have no idea about Bitcoin.
So many people still have no idea about Bitcoin.
And that's why our mission is to educate as many as possible about it,
because those who understand, usually they get involved
and usually it does very well for them in the long term.
Yeah, 100%.
So let's keep that in front of our minds.
Don't be afraid to ask the dumb questions.
Yeah.
And challenge.
That's the thing, right?
Challenge the narrative.
I mean, I spent the best part of 40 years of my life not asking questions.
I'm not going to make that mistake again.
You know, I changed that habit and it changed my life.
And I think that's what we should be doing is asking as many questions as possible.
Last thing on the spelling relay.
I'm sure I asked you this probably way back when on one of our first interviews, but why R-E-L-A-I?
has nothing to do with ai well that was my next follow-up because i think i think you should i
think you should go and check can you buy the domain r-e-l.ai before someone else does
because you might you might start attracting a lot of ai like investors or ai curious people
what are these dudes doing in ai oh they're a big one yeah maybe but then do we do we really
want these investors right because no you don't want you don't want them to invest in your company
but you want them to to be exposed to your bitcoin education or touchpoint video and things like that
yeah that's true that's true now where where did these this name come from oh to be very honest i
don't have a great answer to this i i think at one point like we were just brainstorming for for
a name we just need a working title for basically our presentations that we had very early on at
these startup competitions and like just the first pitch deck that we wanted to send out to a few
engine investors right so we didn't think this through to be honest and we needed a working
title and so we were brainstorming for a few hours together with adam and i think at one point it was
even it was the first working title was and there's still a pitch deck on this uh where it's called
richie which we found somehow cool because it's a name and i don't know richie and then i were like
no it sounds some somehow like rich and we don't want that it's not about getting rich right and
then somehow relay and with an with a why this was already given this is a big um shop kind of chain
you know that you see on all the airports so we're like no this is already given a relay with i is
still available and why relay is because this is like this device right so a relay in the traditional
just uh electronic industry is is a device that basically takes small signals and relays them into
a big one and that was that was kind of we thought that story is kind of cool because you know weekly
or monthly small savings can turn to a big signal also signal from the noise right so
there are a few things that we thought oh that's cool it will do as a working title and then we
just never we just you know hired marketing people that branded this thing and now we have hundreds
of thousands of followers on social media and everyone knows relay as kind of the leading bitcoin
on-ramp in in europe and so i don't think it would be a good idea now to to change it anymore so we
just keep it it works well it's short it's crisp it's memorable yeah people now connected to bitcoin
which is what we want so it's it's a good it has become a pretty good brand absolutely and what
with the latest debate about op return and relay policy and like so you know like relay you are
relaying transactions as well uh every time somebody buys bitcoin through you that transaction It works really well mate And I couldn remember the reason obviously i know very well relay with a y is taken by that big megastore so
you'd never have been able to get that so yeah now but now you rel.ai you've got some ai people
coming your way uh that well just to give you um i can tell you this because it's being announced
today and this recording will not go out for a week or two but uh yeah orange pill app is is
rebranding today so oh yeah okay so i'm not saying you relay a rebranding i love the branding i think
it's brilliant and now i like the ai at the end and i think you're going to get a lot of traction
with that but yeah orange pill app is is going to rebrand to uh club orange so look out for that
announcement today cool yeah Matteo is doing a great job too I like these these bitcoin companies
are really resilient and long-term thinking and they just they just never give up and that's
that's amazing that's a great trade that's why many of them will be successful because they never
fucking give up absolutely I'm just about to lose camera one sec I'll be uh I'm not going anywhere
still here um yeah absolutely and um yeah he's he's done a great job uh three years old as well
in a few days time time has flown by and uh yeah i've worked closely alongside that project as well
so it's been great to see you entrepreneurs you builders that are doing stuff and building and
offering goods and services into the market and stacking bitcoin onto your balance sheet like
mateo has as well which is uh the right thing to do for any small business let's uh let's be frank
but certainly bitcoin small businesses uh is there anything else before i ask you the final question
and I know you know what that is, but...
Okay, now I need to start thinking.
No, I mean, is there anything else?
I was wondering what you think,
but maybe we don't have too much time anymore,
but in a quick one,
what do you think about Bitcoin treasury companies?
Well, I like the Bitcoin treasury companies
we've been talking about.
Exactly.
Because they're like two different ones, right?
The more responsible ones
that just put some profit
and long-term capital into Bitcoin.
That makes a lot of sense.
honestly for every company, right?
Yes.
And then there are the extreme Bitcoin treasury companies
that are very aggressively raising debt
and just weak fiat currency to buy Bitcoin
and stack the hardest money out there,
which might also be a very interesting proposition, right?
Yeah.
But fear around and find out is where I'm falling on that one at the moment.
Because I think a lot of these CurePlay treasury companies are touching the stove with both hands.
I think they're actually just jumping straight on and sitting on the stove.
Like, you know, to keep raising debt the way and to keep financially engineering all of this kind of like mad plays to try and get in as much fiat capital as you can from where?
Where does that fiat come from? Who do you owe it back to?
Is it being printed out of thin air and then sent across for you to buy Bitcoin with it?
are you printing shares and hawking those shares into private pension funds for Bitcoiners with
so-called trapped capital to part with their hard-earned fear at the end of the day? And I
know this fear is like a lot of Bitcoiners say, oh, well, I'm never going to get it in 10 years
time, or I've got to wait 10 years till I get it. It's going to get inflated away or blah, blah,
blah. It's like, yeah, but guys, you know, trapped capital is still better than wrecked capital.
And, you know, buying buying penny stocks was never a good idea in any sector.
But buying penny stocks.
From companies that are really playing some very strange financial engineering games, very advanced financial engineering games, they're playing in the they're playing in the Vipers den.
Right. This is Wall Street's game.
They they own the rules. They write the rules.
and they don't care about you uh i look i don't want anyone getting wrecked i and i i i exercise
a huge amount of caution when i look at what's going on with these pure bitcoin treasury company
plays and uh i don't think i don't think bondholders pivot to penny stocks anytime soon
I don't think I know hedge funds and institutions can't buy penny stocks.
So that money isn't coming.
And I see some people promise the other the other way.
So, yeah, be careful out there is all I would say.
Stack your sets, put them in cold storage, sit on your hands, live your life like the two guys on the bus right on your video.
You know, just just be that guy.
Be that guy for one or two cycles.
You know, don't give up your job.
Try and spend as much time with your family.
Mind your fear if that's what you need to do.
You know, cut your expenses, stack as many sats as you can,
put them in cold storage,
and your life will be different in four to eight years.
That's beautiful.
Yeah, I agree with a lot of things you said.
It's definitely adding risk.
Definitely not every Bitcoin treasury company,
that pure play treasury company will make it.
many are doing it for the wrong reasons
many doing it the wrong way
but I still feel
I'm quite intrigued by
just the principle of
raising
weak currency as debt
which will devalue over time
and raising it at very low interest rates
to
buy Bitcoin
which is increasing in value
over time
I just think it's interesting
it potentially is an interesting play
but I agree with you very very should be very cautious and at this point I'm also going to say
we are not considering this with relay right because we our mission is exactly what you
mentioned to bring as many bitcoin in self-custody which is the lowest risk thing you can do just buy
bitcoin hold it in self-custody for long term this it has the highest chance of just doing very well
financially and there's there's very low amount of risk um the other is a high risk thing so we
are with relay we are on the low risk end of this but i i find it interesting to see it play out and
i think some of these treasury companies can potentially be very very um successful because
they exploit this inherent weakness of the fiat financial system and there's another like troin
horse where we um with with bit where bitcoin infiltrates in this case it's wall street right
yeah but like i say that's the viper's den and they've got lots of tricks up their sleeve i
spent 18 years in that world and you know um and yeah american hodl made a great video about this
i don't know if you ever saw it uh who's trojan horsing who is the name of it go check it out on
muster it's very very interesting and it's classic hodl he does a great job of it and uh i guess
yeah we have to be careful are we playing who's playing into whose hands here and uh oh oh but by
by doing this kind of stuff are you inadvertently validating the existing fiat currency
financial rails by entering into it and playing their games on their terms.
Yeah, there's a certain amount of staying humble that is not being adhered to at the moment
in the wider world out there. And be careful, look at before any, like back to asking questions,
right? And making critiques. Before anybody invests in these Bitcoin treasury companies,
please understand that they are very high risk they are they are literally penny stocks now just
please look that look at their filings uh i don't know what it would be called in many different
parts of europe but in the uk it's an admissions document in the us it's uh the s1 form and you can
look at that and literally copy paste it and put it in ai like do the very minimum basic research
and ask ai to look over this any red flags that you see here yeah just do what i did on a few of
them is command f treasury and as soon as i did that on one particular uh document that i was
looking at the word treasury was preceded with the words digital asset every single time but
they promote themselves as a bitcoin treasury company in all other comms but on the you're
like, wait a second, digital asset, digital asset treasury company.
Then you look at the glossary of terms and definitions and what they define as digital
assets, Bitcoin, Ethereum, stable coins, this other thing.
You're like, holy fuck, guys, like this is like, would you have invested in that company
if you knew that that was what they were actually, you know, running and declaring at the door
of the regulator?
so like i say assume nothing just question everything and have a critical mindset because
otherwise you know what are we doing we we're just going to leave the door open for people to come in
julian how how how many fucking wrecked problems have we had in this last just four years right
FTX, Celsius, BlockFi, Terra Luna, all of this stuff,
this has wrecked so many people Family fortunes have it my family fortunes have been lost and if we can just forget that uh so that exercise caution that absolutely a hundred percent but that
how people work right they want to take some risks if there's it's very hard for people
to just do something and be consistent for 10 years i bought my first bitcoin 10 years ago that's
also a story i tell people right when they say oh it's too late blah blah right i bought bitcoin 10
years ago it's 500 bucks all you had to do is buy and wait for 10 years and you make it 200x now
maybe you will make even if you make it 10x in the next 10 years but it's probably going to be more
than that just the only thing you need to do is buy it hold it yourself and wait but this is the
hardest thing for people to do because they get nervous and they're like what else could i do i
could i could take a loan against my bitcoin and invest it in more bitcoin or invest it in
bitcoin treasury companies which is that the promise is to accumulate more bitcoin per share
over time and of course this all of these investments or into altcoins or into defy
schemes or whatever all of these investments add risk they add potential reward too like if you
invested in micro strategy five years ago you would have outforn bitcoin so they are potential reward
but also huge potential risk so in the end it's really do you want to make a safe
increase in purchasing power over time then just as you said before buy bitcoin sit on your hands
that's a very hard thing to do as well it's simple but it's not easy right or yeah you play these
games sometimes you win sometimes you lose the opportunities are great but also the risks are
great so always do your research and really be cautious yeah right final question i know you've
just been buying your time haven't you
if you had one last orange pill left to give to somebody who would you give it to and why
oh i didn't know it's the last one that's the last one i've ever i had oh that makes it harder
no um no i was thinking sergio al-motti the ceo of ubs because this is a huge company now
Now that they merged with Credit Suisse, it's not only the biggest bank in Switzerland, it's one of the biggest investment banks in the world.
And they have a lot of wealthy clients.
I lately had lunch with a guy that is in some sort of extended board of directors of the UBS.
So he's there for 15, 20 years.
He's really well connected within the bank and has something to say and has a lot of access.
He's a Bitcoiner.
I mean, maybe define it as a Bitcoiner, but he definitely understood Bitcoin.
He's very pro-Bitcoin, but also pro-crypto.
But it's fine.
He definitely understood Bitcoin.
And he said there are around a thousand billionaires in the world.
It's not that many.
I thought it was more.
It was only like a thousand.
And the UBS, they have access to like half of them.
In some sort of way, they're working with like every other billionaire in the world.
And so I would be like if Sergio Armotti, who has a lot to say, he's really controlling this huge ship.
If he got Orange Pill and finally understood Bitcoin, which I think he's on the path of it.
he said something rather positive about bitcoin in january this year at the world economic forum
in davos when he got interviewed by bloomberg he said something along the lines there's a quote
online i think bitcoin is more than speculation so he kind of switches the tune very gradually
very slowly from Bitcoin is nothing, right?
We don't even consider it to actually there might be something.
And so if he got orange pilled and he then manages to orange pill a few of these billionaires,
I think that would have a, if I had one last pill, I would probably give it to him.
That could have a big impact.
All right.
Well, mate, I think, you know, as well as I do, it is inevitable.
it is gradually then suddenly not to parker lewis um and it is uh the work that you guys are doing
over at relay that is is helping this one day at a time one step at a time one sat at a time one
pleb at a time like you know it's uh it's a special moment in history and uh just glad to be
part of it and watch it play out and uh meet people like yourself and uh yeah thank you very
much for coming on and everything that you guys do look forward to the next few years
thank you so much daniel always always a pleasure appreciate it see you soon take care brother
well there you go guys thank you so much for listening as always and thank you again julian
for coming on and sharing this journey that you guys have been on for the last couple of years
in the last five years in total that you've been building out really uh what a incredible journey
it's been it's been an honor to be close enough to it to have got to know you and adam and uh
some other members of the team as well as you've just grown from strength to strength it's uh it's
great to see and yeah more bitcoin only companies that's all i can say if if you've been inspired
by anything julian said here if you think there's any position for you that you might be able to add
some value to to what they're doing over there do not hesitate to reach out to julian or the team
and go introduce yourself at one of the conferences next year.
As you heard here and as I said at the beginning,
they're going to be able to start putting more effort and budget towards marketing
and getting themselves out there.
So they'll be available and they'll be looking, obviously, to grow.
So it's a great time in this particular journey of Relays.
They've got the license in place.
They're well-funded.
They've built themselves a nice stack of Bitcoin on the balance sheet in a sensible way, might I just add there.
And yeah, let's all power to you guys and looking forward to another great year for 2026.
So if you've not used Relay to stack and you do live in the EU and you are able to download the app,
there's absolutely no downside in you doing that just to take a look around.
see if it's a service that is good for you.
Like I say, beginning and end of every show,
you can just hit the link in the show notes,
relay, R-E-L-A-I dot C-H forward slash bitten.
We'll take you straight there
and you'll get a cut on commission fees
by using that link.
What is there left to say?
We're almost at the end of the year.
What a year it's been, guys.
I mean, wow, it's never a quiet year in Bitcoin, but this year alone has just been an absolute whirlwind of...
It's been very confusing, very interesting, and there's been a lot of battles fought over certain areas of Bitcoin, certain segments.
there's been a lot of frustration out there so if you're if you're kind of new here don't worry
as much as it's easy for me to say like you know bitcoin is going to be just fine just keep stacking
your sats and keep getting them into cold storage keep a long long time frame horizon on this this is
not just an investment or a trade that you're going to you know flip out of and you know make
mad gains bro keep things as simple as you can stack your sats weekly or monthly use you know
very good services relay are a perfect example and get those sats into your possession so with
Relay that's built in because it's your wallet.
That is yours.
The sats you stack are under your control.
If you've already got some sats somewhere else on a different exchange or a different app, don't worry.
You can take full self-custody of those.
You just need a hardware wallet.
Get yourself a Bitbox, bitbox.swiss forward slash bitun.
You can hit the link in the show notes there and get yourself a 5% discount using the code BITTON
and then get complete control of that Bitcoin.
If you want to start accepting Bitcoin, paywithflash.com.
Get over there just right now.
Go hit that link, paywithflash.com.
And lastly, don't be lonely this Christmas.
Download Club Orange.
Go find your nearest Bitcoiner.
Go have that coffee.
Go have that beer.
go get dinner just start a meet up with them get out there if you're traveling download club orange
and find you the bitcoiners that are going to be on the ground ready and waiting to welcome you when
you get there with all of the local knowledge to let you know exactly where to get plugged in to
the bitcoin network whether that's with local merchants or local people meetups whatever it's
a great tool and there's almost 20,000 Bitcoiners around the world now. It's like 19,500 members.
So come 2026, they'll cross that 20,000 barrier and it will keep growing. So go and explore and
be part of the social layer of Bitcoin. Thank you everybody for listening and I'll catch you on the
next show.