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. Joining
me today on this episode is Felix from Wavespace. What is Wavespace you might ask? Well, do you want
to live on a Bitcoin standard? It is now possible across Europe. Thank you to the Wavespace team
for creating a debit card that you can now load with Bitcoin and use absolutely anywhere
and pay as if you would normally pay.
And in the background, everything is taken care of.
It's great to see more initiatives like this springing up all over the world,
all around the place now.
I go to these conferences and I get to meet people
that are working on the same kind of thing.
I recently met a guy where he was explaining what his company does in South Africa.
And South Africa is just going crazy right now.
You can spend Bitcoin in 650,000 merchants across South Africa.
I mean, come on.
This is happening.
Europe is going to be next.
The UK, who knows, man?
Really, who knows?
But someone out there I know will be building something.
So, yeah, after this episode, reach out to Felix if you want to get in touch
and start using the service or testing it for them.
If there's any way that you think you can add value to them,
he's going to want to listen to you.
So before we get into the show, a big shout out to the show sponsors here.
Relay. Did I hear Relay have a Mika license now?
Yes, it freaking sucks that you've got to go through this hell.
Regulatory hell.
It's just beyond annoying.
And it's taken them months.
And it's a lot of time, it's a lot of energy,
and it's a lot of freaking money that you have to freaking give up to this system just to be able to
run a business but they did it they waded through the shit and now they have the meeker license
which says they can now sponsor events they can get to all of these conferences they can market
their product they've been around already for like four or five years bitcoin only company
that have got an app that you can download today,
Relay, R-E-L-A-I dot C-H forward slash Bitten,
and start stacking sats up to 1,000 Swiss or equivalent per day.
And you hold your keys.
So it's the Bitcoin ethos, Bitcoin company, Bitcoin DCA.
You can even use them, use their private service
to get your business onto a Bitcoin standard,
your retirement funds into Bitcoin,
your high net worth individuals can use it and they're gonna walk you through self-custody
absolutely everything it's there for you r-e-l-a-i dot c-h forward slash bitten go check them out
now they're swiss based so a bit box bit box they offer you one of the best hardware wallets on the
market go do your own research and then circle back around and check out bit box hit the link
in the show notes, bitbox.swiss forward slash bitten, you'll get 5% discount. And more importantly,
that doesn't matter. The discount doesn't matter. What matters is you taking complete control of
your Bitcoin. If you've left it on an exchange, it's not your Bitcoin. I don't know how many times
I have to say that. In fact, I don't care how many times I have to say that. I'll say at the
beginning of every show please self custody your bitcoin right that's the message bitbox.swiss
forward slash bitten if you're in the u.s listening to this swan bitcoin offer you much the same
service as relay does so you can go to swan bitcoin.com forward slash bitten and uh basalto
fund big shout out to my friend andre loja over at the free madeira initiative in madeira portugal
If you're looking for a second passport or golden visa, citizenship, whatever it is that you want to do to add flag theory to your life, get over and check out Basalto Fund, B-A-S-A-L-T-O.
You can go find Free Madeira.
Just go and hit that link in the show notes and go listen to my episode with Andre where we talk about Basalto Fund and everything that's going on in Madeira with Bitcoin right now.
PayWithFlash.com.
What can you do?
Well, you can start accepting Bitcoin for your goods and services.
In fact, you should not accept Bitcoin for your goods and services.
You should demand it, especially if you are a Bitcoiner.
This is how we get more people in tune with what's going on here.
So paywithflash.com.
Very, very simple.
Click and go.
You can set up your wallet.
You can start receiving Bitcoin for your goods and services.
Have you looked at Orange Pill app lately?
20,000 Bitcoiners around the world
aching to engage.
So go find them.
And finally, shout out for some conferences.
You've got BitFest coming up in Manchester,
21st to 23rd of November.
And then Bitcoin Japan, that's going to be excellent.
That's back end of November as well.
Links are in the show notes.
Meanwhile, here's Felix from Wavespace.
All right, Felix, we're recording.
Thank you for coming on and welcome to the Once Britain podcast.
Yeah, thank you for having me.
So Lauren is usually here to ask the first question.
It's becoming less and less these days.
Her life's taken a little change.
She's doing a course at the moment where it takes up a chunk of her day.
So she's not here, but if she were, I would have shown her the little web card.
I've got one, not an actual web card, but I've got the little business card looking one.
I would have shown her that and she would have asked me, wow, like, does this work?
What does it do?
So why don't you just lead off with that?
What is the web card?
Yeah, of course.
Wave card is essentially a Visa debit card.
On the technical side, it's a Visa debit card, but it's connected to your Bitcoin, essentially.
And it's connected in a way where, you know, for technical reasons, we have to hold some
parts of your Bitcoin custodially with us to be able to spend it.
But using Nostra Wallet Connect and later maybe other technologies too, you're able
to connect this card to your own Bitcoin that are held self-custodially in your own wallet.
you're able to spend it anywhere visa is accepted essentially so so i've mispronounced it i thought
it's wav but it's wave is that how you pronounce it exactly yeah it's a wave right okay excellent
i thought i was being clever and pronouncing it the way it would have been pronounced in german
but like clearly not uh so wave dot space uh forward slash card is where people can go and
have a look uh so how how long is this is this actually working is this in the world are people
using it to um to use for their like day-to-day spend exactly so it's it's live since february
um and at the moment it's only a virtual card um but we're working hard to make it uh yeah
turn it physical too we hope to be able to ship the physical card within the next kind of
two to three months. Sadly, it's not on us at the moment. We have some blockers that are not
kind of in our control, but yeah, you can, it's a virtual card. You can add it to Apple Pay,
to Google Pay, and then you can just tap to pay anywhere, essentially.
Okay. So let's get into that. What are the blockers? What are the problems that you guys
are facing and you're trying to solve at the moment? I mean, it's the, you know, our business,
our company is built with a lot of other partners that make this work, right?
So we don't, ourselves, we don't have any regulatory licenses.
We don't have anything to do with that.
So we are kind of outsourcing all of that to our partners.
And those partners obviously also have to work then with another bank
that's the card issuer.
And that card issuer has to work with Visa and MasterCard.
So there's like all these big companies that are like big and small companies, but also big companies like Visa or MasterCard that are needed to make this work.
And a lot of these kind of processes just take some time.
They just take longer than expected.
But yeah.
So getting the virtual card launched was a lot easier.
It seems back to front. I would have thought there would have been more kind of regulations around, well, first of all, you've got to get on the App Store, then you've got to do this and you've got to do that.
But weirdly, you've managed to launch that a lot sooner.
Yeah. So the thing is that, you know, the most difficult part is to get is for Visa or MasterCard to accept your card design.
This is essentially, that's like one of the most problematic processes because they are really careful about with whom they want to associate their brand with.
So you can't really create any design you want.
That's kind of, yeah, it's not only in your control, essentially.
And having this virtual card kind of circumvents this, right?
Because we just have a bland kind of card design that's being provided by our partners
who already went through the process with Visa and so forth.
And then there are also card minimums for the physical cards to order,
which is a couple of thousands, right?
And since we've been bootstrapping this, we want to kind of get a little bit more traction
and then launch with our card.
And then there's also another problem that we have, not really a problem, but we're switching
from Visa to MasterCard.
That's also a thing.
So there's like multiple decisions, multiple reasons why we're delaying this, where we
have to delay this for a couple of months, but it will come.
And then we're going to launch with a very simple black card.
There's just a lightning symbol in the top right.
It's going to be on MasterCard.
It's going to be physical.
You'll be able to manage the settings within our platform,
which was not possible to that degree with Visa So there just a lot of moving parts essentially Do you have any idea that you from Bitcoin land
Not, I mean, they could if they asked. If they asked our partners, they could obviously
find out. But, you know, the card is issued by our partners and doesn't yet have our card
design so they don't really know much about it yeah okay all right so let's walk through like
what this would look for and first of all um sorry to uk listeners but i believe this is euro only
is that correct for now yes yeah so you do expect to be able to do all currencies or have you got a
list of i mean so like we have we have found this super cool partner based in estonia right who who
has who does all the heavy lifting in terms of regulation so that we don't really have to care
about that and that's how we think about going into other markets too you know we're going to
find someone who can provide a similar service like that for the uk then for the us and for
other markets and so this way we like us ourselves we didn't ever have to actually
think about regulation and can launch this product so we will definitely come to the uk
eventually but yeah it's going to probably take at least another year i would say
yeah because you also have switzerland right uh with the swiss franc and there's still some
countries that have their their native like the corona um some of the scandinavian countries
yeah they're dotted around um why okay so how does this look like you go to the app store
you just download the app it's a web app it's a web app okay so right okay so web app you and you
you create an account is that correct exactly so you go to uh wave.space you open the app
mobile or desktop doesn't really matter.
You create an account, you verify.
So you verify yourself.
You have to do KYC.
That's a necessity.
And then you just click a button, deposit Bitcoin,
and then you can start using it.
And then if you really like that, you know,
you can just deposit as many Bitcoin as you want,
as much Bitcoin as you want.
But we really recommend people to connect their own wallets
to the platform to essentially spend from self-custody.
Wow, okay. That's interesting.
So you can connect a hardware wallet or a hot wallet?
It has to be a NostriWallet Connect powered wallet.
So there's a couple of, most of those are kind of online nodes.
like AlbiHub supports NostriWallet Connect.
There's a bunch of other platforms.
CoinOS also supports it.
And then there's a couple of mobile wallets
that also start to support it,
like the Flash wallets.
And I think Breeze will also integrate it into the SDK.
And then, yeah, you can essentially connect that
and spend from self-custody.
It has to be Lightning, right?
It's based, it runs on Lightning essentially.
Right. Okay. So yeah, paywithflash.com, people can go across there and take a look at that because they will certainly be integrated with it.
Exactly.
Okay, mate. Now, this all sounds very exciting because you can now start literally living on a Bitcoin standard.
Exactly. Yeah.
That's our mission in general, right?
I mean, a lot of people always talk about you should never spend your Bitcoin.
You should only buy it.
You should spend euros.
But we were like, we want to live on Bitcoin today, right?
I don't want to need to hold euros or fiat in general anymore.
You know, I want to be able to go all in Bitcoin, have zero euros and live on Bitcoin.
And that's what we're making possible with that.
With the cart, that's one of our products.
It's our kind of core product.
that everybody is very interested in.
But we also have like an instant swap feature where you can buy and sell
between your own wallet and your bank account in seconds at low fees, reliably,
you know, for the sake of, for example, paying your rent.
So you can just literally sell Bitcoin from your Lightning wallet,
from your on-chain wallet in a couple of seconds directly onto your bank account.
And having those two products essentially allows you to really live on Bitcoin, right?
Because you have a debit card and you have essentially wire transfers now.
And both of those enable you to kind of interact with the existing payment and banking systems
and live conveniently that way.
Obviously, at some point, I mean, everybody, like every one of us, I think,
hopes that Bitcoin will become money eventually for the everyday user.
But we are not there yet.
And we're working on making it possible for people who want to take the jump today, essentially.
How on earth are you doing that?
Because you don't want to be seen as a money transmitter or an exchange, right?
Because that's a whole different set of rules that you need to...
like you'd need a Mika license or this kind of nonsense.
So how's that working in the background?
That's also done through the same partner
that kind of issues the debit card.
So we have one partner who is registered
as a virtual assets service provider.
And they are also applying for Mika right now,
or they've already applied.
So they're going to be ready for Mika in a couple of months.
and yeah through them we can essentially issue iBands to our users we can issue
custodial bitcoin accounts we can integrate with lightning we can issue debit cards and so on
what what are your tech vectors here because this sounds like the you you've lined all the
ducks up perfectly and almost seems too good to be true obviously there's time uh you know getting
all of this put together but uh what's the weak link if a bank turns around well obviously you've
figured one out visa you've got to switch to mastercard but then if mastercard decide to rug
pull you it's not back to visa what what's the yeah so i mean mastercard doesn't actually have
i mean the system is a little bit different right so it's not like we are working directly with visa
or mastercard we're working with a with a partner bank over the bank that has um that has direct
ties to visa and mastercard and through this bank uh this bank is issuing the cards on behalf of us
is it a german bank or is it somewhere else or it's uh it's wallester it's i think it's based
in lithuania um yeah okay right but this is also then again done through our main partner striga
so essentially the way you can imagine it is striga bundles up a bunch of different services
striga is i mean maybe should interview striga at some point it's super super interesting what
they are doing is um essentially they are working with wallester to issue cards
they are working with open paid to issue i-bands they are working with sums up to
um to do the kyc they're working with other partners within a within the regulatory or
in the financial space to offer other services.
They're working with Kraken, with other exchanges together.
Then they kind of bundle that up.
They get the licenses or they have the licenses.
And then they essentially give us a list of APIs
that we can just tap into.
Obviously, we are paying for that service, right?
So it's like a monthly subscription that we pay to Striga
in order to build our products.
But this way they are doing all the compliance stuff.
So really like we are just getting a set of APIs,
create account, initiate, transfer and so forth.
And they kind of take the burden of doing the compliance.
And this allows us to be really kind of innovative
with our way, like with the way we build products
and with what we want to build
because we are essentially only limited to,
well, not only limited to our creativity,
but we have a lot of freedom
in terms of how we approach building products.
Does it make sense?
Yeah.
Yeah, it does.
Yeah, Striga, I do remember hearing about them,
but I'm just looking at the website now.
So you're right.
I need to reach out and find out what's going on
because they're clearly much further down the road
than most people would have realized.
They've got good backing.
I see Stillmark and Fulger Ventures and aligned with BitRefill, which is a very well-known company as well.
So, yeah, this is cool, mate.
So I love the fact that there's a Bitcoin company leveraging itself off the services of a Bitcoin-focused company as well.
So you're like two or three hops from the actual fiat rails.
so you're not dealing with the day-to-day regulation of that because it's just exhausting
I mean I've spoken to Julian Leninger at Relay lots of times about this and they're trying to
get their meeker and the paperwork is just relentless and you submit it and it comes back
and a few things are redacted and you got to do this and you got to do the other and it goes back
again. And the expense is outrageous. It's absolutely ridiculous. And what I find amusing
is you have these regulatory bodies out there that are employed to make sure that there are
no monopolies being created out there in the world. And we must control the monopolists.
At the same time, the regulations that they put on people are so burdensome and so costly,
that only a few businesses are actually allowed or able to go through that regulation process
and afford to go through it.
So they're the ones creating the monopolies in the first place that they end up then regulating.
It's just fucking fiat shit.
It just drives me mad.
So that's my rant.
You're nodding.
You've obviously got some things to add to that.
Yeah, I think you put it right, right?
It something they create to then kind of control And it a lot of monkey work right I mean on one hand it is true that kind of some of these compliance measures a lot of these compliance measures have been created in good faith
Right. It's all we don't we don't have to like, yes, the government is probably corrupt in some areas and so forth.
But there's a couple of people who actually have us in their best interest.
And a lot of these measures are actually preventing money laundering
and terrorist financing for sure.
But a lot of the stuff is also just monkey work.
And it just creates a lot of friction on the user experience side.
and yeah I think like
companies like Striga
I think there's a couple of others popping up
right now and over the last couple
of years who are trying to say
okay we take care of everything
here's the APIs
just build whatever you want to build
there's a couple of these popping up and I think it's super
super good because it's going to drive
the cost down to build
anything that touches the regulated
space right
yeah
yeah that's a great great great kind of uh great service so you obviously are a user yourself um
that i'm trying to get some some use cases uh success stories uh from you what what what uh
what are you able to share if if if not your own uh but like direct feedback from people that have
started using the cart oh yeah that's i mean what's the one thing that we you know for us we
build the product from the perspective of you can now live on Bitcoin. But what we didn't expect is
the way just some people start using the card and our products. For example, we thought that
most of the people are going to be probably OG Bitcoiners or Bitcoiners with a large stack and
they're just going to start spending and living on it, which is true, right, on one hand. But the
thing is, there's also some people who discovered the product from the perspective of someone who
is a Bitcoin beginner. So we have a couple of people who kind of discovered us and they were
like, okay, cool. I can actually spend Bitcoin now. Bitcoin makes sense to me now, you know,
from the perspective of, okay, I understand Bitcoin now better kind of, or at least in the
money use case, they understand it better. And they start actually buying Bitcoin with the euros
onto the card and then use the card again to spend it,
which is obviously not what we intended,
what you intended, right?
Because you kind of, you have euros, you get Bitcoin,
then you can have to kind of sell Bitcoin back into euros
with the card the moment you spend it.
But I mean, it is a use case for some people.
And then I think another interesting thing was also
people who don't really use the card
but need a way to sell a lot of Bitcoin reliably,
securely, without any issues.
Because since we issue iBands to our users,
so you have your own iBand in your own name,
this means that when you sell Bitcoin with Wavespace
and you transfer it to your own bank account,
it will come from an iBand in your own name.
Right?
There's not going to be a situation where,
let's say, 8,000 euros comes from Kraken Limited
or any other company.
And your bank asks, like, where does that money come from?
It's weird.
It's from a business.
It's not from yourself.
And so, like, this is a big reason why people use us.
Just for the sake of reliability
and kind of, I guess, privacy too, right?
because your bank will just see a transfer from your own name to your own name, kind of,
from one of your bank accounts to your own bank account.
And it will be essentially designated as an internal transfer.
And that will kind of solve a lot of frustrations that you have.
So if somebody, for example, wanted to sell some Bitcoin,
they could do that on the exchange that they've always had.
let's say they've been with an exchange for a while
and they've not gone peer-to-peer.
So they've got an exchange account.
They could send the Bitcoin into the exchange account,
exchange that into fiat, and then...
No, they wouldn't even need to do that.
They could just withdraw the Bitcoin from the exchange
if they hadn't done that yet.
It's sitting there.
Straight onto Wavespace
and then convert into euros,
into your IBAN,
right and then you can send it to your bank account if you needed to fit so if you wanted to
there's been a case here in the uk recently where a guy's been trying to buy a house
and him and his wife you know they they hit the number they needed to to change their life
and sold some bitcoin to do that fully regulated bitcoin fully kyc fully aml all the way through
got the money into the bank account now has to pay capital gains tax on it and the bank
are refusing the money because of its past history, shall we say,
and because it was linked to Bitcoin.
Oh, no, it must be drug money and terrorists.
We're still dealing with this bullshit, for example.
So the case that you've just described,
that could have all been avoided if this was obviously available in the UK.
But it's available to somebody in Europe right now.
So if they wanted to make that big purchase,
that's very very interesting so obviously i mean my first thought for the use case of this card was
i can spend it in uh like uh the local supermarket i can buy my gas uh you know pub cafe bar restaurant
but you've just unlocked something potentially but are you set up to start doing like a 400 000
euro transfer uh to for somebody to be able to go and buy their dream house i mean yeah i mean yes
and no there there are some caveats to that right because um you know every every kind of private
bank every bank in in the eu or just in general every bank they have their own kind of risk models
so even if it was even if they see okay it's an internal transfer from you to yourself if that
sum is, if that amount is extremely large, they will probably ask you what that is. However,
it's a much easier thing to explain that it's your euros that you withdraw, that you just sent
from another bank or another one of your accounts to this account. Instead of saying, I just received
half a million from Kraken or from an exchange, right? So it is easier, definitely. And then
obviously also it, yeah, because it depends on the amount, right?
This means that for, for smaller transfers, as in, let's say 10,000 euros,
there won't be any questions because it's not a,
not an amount that is,
that is kind of problematic to any bank because it's an internal transfer.
Right. So I'm not,
I'm not kind of advertising that you should kind of do this with a million
euros in one transaction. Right. I mean, it will probably work,
but you might get asked questions from your recipient bank.
But the point being, as soon as you launch something,
people will find different ways to use that service.
It's a classic entrepreneur's journey.
You've designed something, you've scratched your own itch,
you've ironed it all out, you've got it to the point of,
right, let's ship it, let's go.
You put it out there live, the market gets their hands on it
and you have no idea where this is going to go.
And that's where a lot of startups fail
because they just grip onto the dream of,
no, it wasn't built for this.
You guys need to be, rather than listen to the market.
Yeah, definitely.
I mean, for us, I think we're not going to give up
on the idea of turning Bitcoin into money
by kind of connecting it to the existing system
for that specific use case.
right? We're still on the mission to enable you to just go all in Bitcoin and then spend it with
a car, do wire transfers for like paying rent and so on. But you're absolutely right, right? Like
people just will use it for whatever they want it for. And that's good. That's a good thing.
You know, we realized that the card is a great way to attract people because it's something novel.
it's something many people have
been saying
they've waited for years for something like that
you know connectable to your own
self custodial bitcoin
spend it anywhere globally
but at the end of the day
they will probably want to
maybe buy some more bitcoin
maybe sell bitcoin
and they will use our swap product as well
and
yeah so I think we're in quite a cool position
right because we have this novel
product but we also are kind of serving all the other needs that they might have right so how does
the business grow obviously you have to make money somewhere so i'm guessing it's uh commission fees
somewhere along the line or is there a payment to subscription fee or one-time fee what's what's
the model so we're it's really simple we're just charging one percent on the conversion so whether
you swap, whether you buy or sell Bitcoin, it's 1%, or whether you spend with a card,
it's 1%.
Both products are free in general, right?
You don't need to pay for the card.
You can just click it, get a card.
You can even set your own kind of pseudonymous name on the card.
It gives you a little bit more privacy.
For example, my card is called Satoshi Nakamoto, you know, just for giggles.
and yeah, you can just use it.
Just 1%.
It doesn't matter if you buy 15 euros
or 10 euros worth or 1,000.
So what's been the growth so far?
You launched SoftLaunch in February.
You guys are picking up steam, obviously.
You're now coming on podcasts, going to conferences.
What's that been like, the first handful of months?
Yeah, so we essentially launched with Swap in January and then with the card in February.
And the growth has been super good.
I think what was interesting but kind of not surprising to me was that within the first two months, there were signups.
But people were still like okay they were still kind of fearful a little bit or concerned because we just popped out of the ground with like two new products And nobody knew us beforehand And I think anything that touches kind of finances is you know people are careful with that But then over the last kind of six months we been growing about
70 to 80% every single month. We are currently at over 1000 users, signups in total kind
of and yeah we have we're growing decently um yeah so did you launch was this from like uh
a passion project or did you manage to convince some seed capital venture capitalists or
how how is it all like built and launched in the back end there yeah so it started in
at the end of 2023.
No, actually in January 2024.
You know, I kind of,
there was, we were at the point
where some Lightning Wallets,
what is like Phoenix and,
I mean, Wallet of Satoshi is custodial,
so it doesn't really count,
but there were a couple of Lightning Wallets
that really, you know,
started to become reliable.
You could actually do Lightning payments
without them failing every second time.
and I realized that, okay, this is cool,
but nobody accepts Lightning, right?
So, I mean, it's nice,
but we need to somehow connect this with what exists,
with a debit card, with bank transfers.
And so I pitched this idea to my two friends
and ex-colleagues, Mantas and Avedas,
and we bootstrapped it from that day.
So we decided, okay, it's a cool idea.
we have found a great partner with with strieger i actually met those guys in 2023 randomly through
a friend they they were visiting berlin and he was like hey those guys are cool let's let's hang
out you know let's let's grab dinner um so i knew how to build it and i knew what the problem was in
my perspective and we just uh bootstrapped it us three um and then uh about yeah in june of this
year so a couple months after launching we received our first angel investment um by actually
one of the first or maybe the first angel in relay as well so uh kind of a nice kind of um how you
how you say like a a nice stamp you know to have that i mean yeah that he kind of sees something
something good in this uh in this initiative in this business and um and yeah we've been uh we're
still kind of fundraising now. We're talking to most of the VCs that you probably know in the
Bitcoin space too. But we also, we've been approached by quite a lot of our users actually,
because they somehow found out that we are raising funds and some of them, you know,
are kind of OG Bitcoiners as well that have been waiting for something like this. Right.
and so yeah so we're also raising now from from a couple of our users which is great and then
VC maybe you know I think you know I have a couple of friends who who didn't were not Bitcoiners but
they still kind of founded companies in the more traditional spaces and they and the ones that took
VC money they said it's a it's a different game right it's a VCs have different expectations they
it's not only about becoming profitable and so forth.
It's about kind of, you know,
raising the next round and so forth.
And we're not completely kind of against that,
but, you know, maybe at a later stage,
it really depends on the VC, right?
It really depends on,
because those are going to be people
that we have to work with
for the next kind of 10 years, maybe even, right?
So there has to be the personal kind of connection.
and then also in terms of their strategic or their thinking,
like what do they want from us?
What do they want to see from us?
How do they imagine kind of our process of the next couple of years?
And so, yeah, so currently we're onboarding a couple of angels,
which is super great, kind of gets us in a good financial position.
and then VCs maybe if, yeah,
if it makes sense to both sides kind of.
Yeah, be careful.
Sounds like you're already, yeah, exactly.
That's the advice from what I've seen,
talking to lots of different,
oh God, I sound like Nick Carter.
I talk to founders every day.
Yeah, be careful.
It's cool that you've got users
that want to be part of it.
The same thing happened anecdotally with Orange Pill App.
A couple of the power users of Orange Pill App
saw the value in investing
because they wanted to be part of something
that was going to keep growing and changing their lives
and connecting them with other Bitcoiners.
So it's always the best way to do it.
And then, of course, any investment that you do get,
you just stick it into Bitcoin and let it grow.
Exactly.
I mean, this was also the, I think the main question by a couple of our investors now,
you know, they were like, okay, I like the idea, I like the team, I like the kind of
your roadmap, all makes sense, but I'm scared about not outperforming Bitcoin.
And I mean, that's also our just approach, right?
We keep all the liquid kind of cash that we have, we keep it in Bitcoin as much as we
can, you know, as much as makes sense.
and then any revenue we get is also then in Bitcoin.
It's either in Bitcoin natively, right?
If we take 1% when somebody sells it, we get it in Bitcoin
or what we're doing right now is we're just buying back Bitcoin
with euros immediately, essentially.
So we run on Bitcoin and kind of, you know, as an angel investor,
it's nice to know that if we are profitable,
we are outperforming Bitcoin
because we are just mainly holding Bitcoin, right?
Yeah, so I think it's a nice kind of,
it takes away the fear for a couple of angels,
you know, them knowing that we're not just
selling their Bitcoin and then holding euros.
Yeah, exactly.
So one of the biggest pushbacks,
you kind of touched on it a little bit earlier.
One of the biggest pushbacks you get is
I don't want to spend my Bitcoin.
People are kind of stuck in this, especially if they're mining fiat still.
They might have a nine to five fiat job and that's all fine.
I just get my fiat and each month I put a bit aside,
I dollar cost average and I build my stack and a few more cycles.
I'll be down the road and I'll be able to get the Citadel and whatever.
right uh but you've actually got a nice article on your your blog site uh about um
what was it you're shorting are you shorting are you shorting bitcoin without realizing it
and and i think that is uh very worth digging into because it might surprise a few people
the take on this so are people shorting bitcoin without realizing it um yeah i mean it's a it's a
great article uh it was mainly written by a who digged into it i think i think he posted it last
week um no two weeks a couple weeks ago and so yeah i mean you know if you're saying that
people should spend fiat and just buy bitcoin then you're essentially saying that you're still
you still have fiat.
And if you still have fiat,
this means that you're essentially shorting Bitcoin, right?
Because you're not investing all your liquid cash
or your liquid money into Bitcoin.
You're not making the choice to opt for better money
with all the cash that you have.
I think, you know, it not only,
I mean, from a financial perspective,
it actually also does make sense.
We've looked into it a little bit.
We will kind of publish more content around that.
You know, even with our 1% fees,
imagine you buy at the beginning of the month with 1%
and then when you spend it, you have to pay 2%, 1% again, right?
For a total kind of 2%, you know,
maybe we're going to kind of also push that down
for people who do use it in a way like that, but let's see.
but on average Bitcoin is growing 4%
each month kind of
so essentially if you just buy Bitcoin
and spend it with wavecard
over a long enough time frame
you will outperform
essentially holding euros and spending euros
either way
and then that's just the financial perspective
But what's also super interesting is that what we believe what's interesting is that if you go on in Bitcoin and you have your Bitcoin card, you have your wave card that's connected to your Bitcoin and you spend it, your purchase behavior, your buying behavior also changes slightly.
because you have to always ask the question,
is this worth, I don't know, 30,000 cents or not?
If you're saving in Bitcoin and you're spending euros,
you don't care because you're just spending shit coins, right?
And so it will also kind of change the way you think about money
and make you think twice maybe about the purchase that you want to make.
Is it worthwhile?
Is it not worthwhile?
Is it just stupid consumption or not?
So I think there's a financial benefit of going all in Bitcoin.
And then there's also just the psychological effect of being all in Bitcoin
that will make you more, how do you say, frugal with money, I guess,
you know, make it more careful.
Yeah.
So it's a great article.
I recommend everybody to read this because, yeah,
There's a bunch of other interesting kind of viewpoints in there too that you should.
Yeah.
No, the title is excellent because obviously it triggers you straight away.
I'm not shorting Bitcoin.
What are you talking about?
That's the craziest thing I've ever heard.
But it's interesting that everything Bitcoin touches, it turns it upside down.
So in your case, you've got, you put a debit card in people's hands.
which lowers your time preference rather than high and heightens it.
You know, it's exactly as you just said, because you,
you're going to think,
whereas usually you get the debit card or the credit card and you're like,
hooray, free money. Let's go. Let's go out. Like let's book that holiday.
Let's go and get the best restaurant in town. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap,
wherever you go. And before you know it, at the end of the month, you're broke.
But with this, it,
Low is your time preference because it makes you think, yeah,
because behind this is Bitcoin.
And do I really want to spend it?
So very interesting.
But a couple of things that you're going to open yourself up to here.
I've done podcasts on it.
Obviously, we've got Tom over at Sats Back.
And I had a guy come on that had a whole career at MasterCard
doing their rewards program.
John, you'd have to go back.
I'll send you that.
I'll send you that episode.
because I think once he listens to this, he's going to be like,
oh my God, this opens up so many opportunities.
And so will Tom, obviously, at Satsback for rewards.
And how have you guys thought about that?
Yeah, interesting that you mentioned this
because the Satsback guys were actually one of the first people
we spoke to in February, even when we launched the card.
we were like, okay, what's something that people associate with kind of banking experience,
experiences around spending. And it's obviously kind of this loyalty and rewards ecosystem. And
so we immediately reached out to them. We also, we partnered with them. So you can,
if you go to their side and sign up to Wavespace through Satsback, then you will get like a special
we are talking about, you know, how we could potentially, for example,
the easiest thing would be to integrate SADS back into the wave card kind of
experience and just give people, it wouldn't be called SADS.
I mean, it would still be SADS back,
but it's more like just cash back because you're spending Bitcoin and getting
Bitcoin. Right. But it's, it's a super interesting ecosystem.
And I, and I think this whole, yeah, it's,
an area that Bitcoiners are not focused on at all.
You know, this, I mean, everybody who's into, who's kind of pushing the spending use case
of Bitcoin is working on wallets and kind of point of sales and so on.
And that's important.
But I think there's a whole nother opportunity when it comes to loyalty and rewards.
And, you know, maybe even eventually having a platform where you go to normal merchants
and say, hey, do you want to accept Bitcoin?
But not only because you can then accept Bitcoin,
but also because it opens you up
to a whole nother type of customer, right?
And there are opportunities around that.
I mean, it's just something that we've been thinking about
and also been talking about to the Satsback guys.
There will definitely be rewards products
or reward product coming on Wavespace for WaveCard,
but probably sometime next year.
Yeah, I mean, things are moving so quickly. I'm thinking for people booking flights, right? They're going away, they're going on holiday. You know how EasyJet have just come out of nowhere with their Bitcoin wallet. But like to integrate with EasyJet, so now I can buy my flights to take my family on holiday and get Sats back or some kind of reward back, because you've partnered with one of the most well-known airlines in Europe.
uh that's just one thing airbnb another thing you know like a native tech company i can now book
the the accommodation with the card and get some kind of rewards back and well andre over to air
btc uh obviously would uh would be very much looking into this as well so yeah you're blowing
open so many opportunities for companies that are stuck in that fiat. And there's sleeper
Bitcoiners at all of these companies, right? They're trapped inside that system. And they're
just thinking of a way that they can bring a solution to the board, to the business owner,
whatever it is, whoever they work for, which says, right, this is going to unlock a whole
bunch of new customers now and all we've got to do is you know partner with someone like wavespace
where the the payment technology is already there and just offer something back in rewards
and we could get thousands of more customers yeah that's a i believe there's a there's a big
opportunity there for sure um also just for the reason uh that bitcoiners are on average quite
kind of wealthy customers to have, right?
There's also actually some interesting statistics is,
I mean, obviously people, Bitcoiners who use Wavespace
to live on Bitcoin, they spend quite a lot every single month
because they need to live on Bitcoin.
If you compare that to a Coinbase customer,
the average Coinbase customer, I think does,
the average active Coinbase customer
does 300 euros in volume each month.
Right. Then the average kind of Bitcoin broker customer, that's probably a little, quite a
bit higher. And then, but if it's about kind of spending with a car, that's even higher
than that And and then at the same time Bitcoin as being wealthier than the average kind of customer it a it a big use case I mean I don know Maybe you guys you can speak to the Setspec guys again
They're probably also thinking about this nonstop.
Yeah.
And I'm thinking about Lawrence over at ShoppingBit as well,
because he told me a statistic,
an interesting statistic about Bitcoin customers is like the level,
they do the uh they they do the research they know what they want and it's generally a higher
priced item than just like the the throwaway whatever click click click they're intentional
buyers and their return rate is through the floor like is very low than you know compared to just
the normal consumption um you know keyboard drug monkey out there that's smash buying whatever they
want on amazon each day you know yeah i imagine i imagine shopping bits ah i haven't i think it's
been a long time that i checked them out yeah yeah reach out to laurence i'll introduce you after
the show uh shopping bit.com and uh definitely a great place for uh for you guys to to go and
integrate with uh right we well we don't know much about you so what were you doing before this
I mean, you've thrown in a fiat career to go all in on Bitcoin and grow in a Bitcoin company?
So for me, let me go back to maybe when I discovered Bitcoin, because it all fits within the same.
It answers your question, essentially.
In 2015 and 16, I was studying mechanical engineering.
and I kind of was always, yeah,
I come from a family that is very scientific,
so I don't really have a lot of kind of knowledge
from the household about business, economics and so forth.
But I knew that mechanical engineering wasn't for me.
And then I kind of stumbled upon this German business school
that is focused on founders, essentially on creating founders
or like on teaching you how to start a company.
And that was super interesting to me that in 2017, I switched.
I kind of started going to this business school.
Essentially, the summer before I went to the business school,
I was like, okay, I'm going to study business now, economics and so forth.
It's interesting, but I know nothing about it.
I need to dig in.
And so that's when I kind of started reading Financial Times.
and then I came across central banking.
What is it?
And so forth.
Why is the inflation target 2%, not 3%, not 1%?
And because I have this scientific background,
I want to understand the difficult problems first.
That's what interests me.
And so I couldn't find an answer
and I really struggled with reading Financial Times
and kind of making sense of a lot.
Eventually, I kind of understood more and more about just the business financing and business economics make sense.
But all the macroeconomic stuff was always kind of didn't make a lot of sense to me.
And then during that summer in 2017, I read a headline saying that Bitcoin crossed 3000 euros.
And I was actually on holidays with my parents.
And I remember that my father actually asked me in 2014 if I knew what Bitcoin was, because it just broke.
It just crashed from 1,200 to 200.
And he was talking about like this.
I think at that time it was like the topic was these Chinese miners and kind of, I don't know, moving money abroad and so forth.
and it doesn't really matter.
But essentially from that moment,
I was like, okay, I'm trying to understand this
and kind of Bitcoin makes a lot of sense to me.
Not at that stage yet.
I was kind of interested in Bitcoin
because it broke 3000
and it kind of recovered from 200
and there had to be something there.
Then I digged into it every single day, essentially.
I started my studies at this business school,
but it didn't stop kind of learning more about Bitcoin.
And so by the end of my studies, I already knew that I want to eventually start a company and I want to do it in Bitcoin.
And so I kind of looked out for the best next steps that would kind of make this possible eventually.
And so I started working at SumUp, which is which are doing these card readers, right?
These debit card readers started working for them in the Berlin office.
And then at the end of 2020, I got introduced to this Bitcoin brokerage in the UK, which you might know.
It doesn't exist anymore, but it was called Mode.
I don't know if you've heard about that.
Mode? No, I don't know.
I don't know.
Who was behind that?
I mean mostly this one wealthy billionaire guy who wanted to venture into Bitcoin essentially You can read up about it
It was actually an interesting story.
But essentially, so I started working for this Bitcoin brokerage.
I met my now two co-founders, Avidas and Mantas.
And it was like just a Bitcoin brokerage, custodial Bitcoin app.
You could buy Bitcoin.
You could sell Bitcoin.
you could earn interest on it and so forth.
Mode actually went public via direct listing at the end of 2020
and was the first Bitcoin treasury company, if you can believe it.
They just kind of made a lot of bad strategic,
poor strategic decisions along the way,
focusing on something on like traditional payments and so forth.
But essentially, yeah, it's super interesting story for sure.
Then I, you know, I worked there as a business analyst in the product team.
And then I worked at Coinsbee, which is a bid refill competitor.
And then I founded this company.
So I kind of already knew that I wanted to go into Bitcoin.
I didn't know how.
So first, you know, through working at a regulated payment service provider, then working at a Bitcoin brokerage.
Then I actually worked at 21Bitcoin for a couple of months, supporting them with various different things.
And then working at Coinsby.
And then, yeah, kind of felt ready to create my own thing.
And the timing was right, you know.
and yeah perfect mate well well done congrats on uh on the launch and uh and everything that
you've achieved so far it's uh it like i say can't get my hands on it because uh in the uk at the
moment it's a shame you weren't around when i was living in france i was i would definitely have been
uh trialing that but um yeah i'll send this across to uh to all the bitcoiners that are living over
there that want to plug in and hopefully this will reach a wider audience.
Are you going to be at any of the conferences coming up?
So people can, will you be hosting any booths or what's your plans for the end of the year
so people can come and find out more?
I mean, people can always join our Telegram group.
I think it's just called Wavespace Community, but you can also find it on our website.
We have a really kind of vibrant and family-like community on there.
It's super cool.
But then in terms of conferences, we will be kind of at conferences
at most of the ones that exist in Europe over the next 12 months.
And booths really depends on where we go.
I will be going to Bitcoin Forum in Bavaria, which is in two weeks.
So for the German listeners, I will be there with a small booth.
And then we will also be at Lugano, Lugano's Plan B.
And then obviously next year, yeah, we still have to create that list and plan around that.
But yeah.
Yeah, for sure.
Okay.
Right.
Felix, last question.
If you had one last orange pill left to give to somebody, who would you give it to and why?
Oh, yeah, that's an interesting question.
I think I would probably give it to Christine Lagarde.
I think that would be the most effective way to get what we want.
But yeah.
Oh my goodness.
Yes.
Wow.
I mean, imagine, you know, that she would just like one day from one day to the other,
she would be like okay we're now introducing bitcoin as the reserve asset you can now pay
with bitcoin anywhere and so on that would be quite quite funny yeah that would be yeah
i mean what's going on at the moment is well we're at that time of recording
end of september she's been pushing the idea that the digital euro is going to go live in october
for the uh well essentially a cbdc any further news on that because i'm not seeing anything
to be honest not really i think the last time i thought about this topic i mean every time
they announce something you know i look into it a little bit but it feels like they've been
announcing it for a long time um let's see i mean i have no idea whether they will actually launch it
one thing that I think
you know a lot of people are fearful about that
obviously right
of course they should be fearful about that
but I think you know the kind of private banking
system is still powerful enough to not
yeah to kind of
fight this because private banks they don't it's not in their interest
to actually have a CBDC
right
they would
lose a
lot of money if that would be implemented so I think we have them on our side this time um yeah let see let see really i have no idea i almost want them to do it the quicker the sooner
the better because the more chance it will have of like a quick death a failure and uh waking up
it'll wake up a lot of people that uh that are still walking blindly into these traps that are
being set for them uh but yeah let's wait and see uh but as long as we've got people like you
building companies building these tools that we need then you know there's bright orange future
for everybody involved so thank you for what you're doing and and thanks for for coming on
the show so if people want to reach out um go to wave.space or follow the twitter account is that
active as well yeah of course uh so yeah go to wave.space um if you want to engage with us
it's at on x at wave space underscore and then um i think the best thing if you're really excited
about this is just just to join our telegram group um all three of us our entire team is there
and uh engage with us um yeah thanks for having me no of course mate thanks for coming on have a
great rest of your day.
You too.
Well, thank you everybody for listening.
Thank you, Felix, for coming on
and discussing everything that you've been
up to over there at the
Wavespace headquarters
building
something for Bitcoiners
and it's always amazing
when these products are built
for Bitcoiners by Bitcoiners
because they're scratching their own itch.
That is the entrepreneurial way.
As an entrepreneur, you
have a problem in front of you you know how to solve it there isn't that solution out there so
you go down well build it and you find the people that you can build it with and you utilize their
skills and their services and their knowledge and boom this is how we build in bitcoin this is how
the parallel economy is getting built out and you can meet people like that if you get to the
conferences that's a that is a massive shill for conferences getting out and meeting people
we've got BitFest in Manchester
21st and 23rd of November
and then slight clash
because you've got to get to BTC Japan
after that, that's around the 23rd
24th of November, both
of these conferences are offering
you a discount of 10% if
you use the code BITTON at checkout
links are in the
show notes, I'll see you at Manchester
if you're coming along, it'd be great to
answer any of your questions, hang
out and start
learning together more of what's going on in the UK especially because UK Bitcoiners they feel as
though they've been throttled a little bit by the regulations and they have and you've had
operation choke point 2.0 that was going on in the US but that spread globally obviously if you
understand how this whole fiat fucking economy works because it's dollar-based everything is
downstream of that and yeah it's been it's been tough for uk bitcoiners but that will not stop
them building and getting along to uh to bitfest in manchester or look out go join orange pill app
find your local bitcoiners start that easy where is the dude that's five to ten miles away from you
that you had no idea existed like you're still sitting there on a friday night suffering your
enormity friends that are ostracizing you slowly because all you want to talk about is bitcoin and
how this is the answer and how it's going to change society and shape the world and how you
want to get out of your fiat existence and into a bitcoin company or start something you can't have
those conversations unless you are with another bitcoiner and you can't you're not just going to
bump into each other in the street like you're not going to see the guy wearing a bitcoin hat
how often does that happen?
get on Orange Pill App
I'm telling you
if you get on Orange Pill App
and you download it
and you sign up
the link is in the show notes by the way
you will get
I guarantee you will find someone
you will find someone
you could be travelling
and you'll find someone
you could be just sitting on your sofa
and someone could be five miles away
or two or three towns over
it doesn't matter
you need to find these people
and get connected
it uh right that's enough of that preaching thank you everybody for listening don't forget go stack
your sats across europe with relay r-e-l-a-i dot ch forward slash bitten congratulations again to the
team for getting that maker license and self custody your bitcoin i said it again i said it
at the beginning i'll say it now without the music to be as specific as i possibly can self custody
your Bitcoin, go to bitbox.swiss forward slash Bitten, order the Bitbox O2 or the Bitbox Nova
Bitcoin only edition hardware wallets and get a 5% discount with the code Bitten, B-I-T-T-E-N.
Is that clear enough? Catch you on the next show.