If you own an ETF, for example, there's a lot of counterpart to risk where there's companies holding it for you again.
Those companies can fail, right?
My mom, for example, would trust her bank over me maybe holding a Bitcoin for her just because she's not aware.
The Czech National Bank was talking about, you know, looking into Bitcoin.
And now we're having banks in the United States like JP Morgan, Jamie Dimon, really starting to almost like bend the knee to Bitcoin.
If you're a hacker, are you trying to get to this one little individual fish in the pond?
You don't want any bad people to know, you know, how much you have, where you have it,
how you have it stored. And if any of those three pillars is missing or crumbling,
then the whole thing's...
What's up guys, before we get started, I've realized that over 50,000 of you guys keep
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this interview and many more to the stratosphere, it would be greatly appreciated. All right,
enough from me. Let's get into the show. All right. Bing bong. I am back with another edition
of the State of Bitcoin podcast where I've got the man, the myth, the legend, Matei,
CEO of Treasure, but there is a lot of controversy going on right now about the Bitcoin ETFs.
Obviously, you're a big proponent of self-custody and everything that you do here at Treasure.
So I'm curious what you think of the potential of Coinbase kind of having the centralization
of a lot of these ETFs and the potential of them selling paper Bitcoin.
So let me start by going back to the basics. So Bitcoin started as, you know, peer to peer,
and it's still obviously a peer to peer asset. And all its properties are made to be, you know,
peer to peer, basically, user to user, person to person, etc. It's so cool that, of course,
companies, corporations are joining Bitcoin. That's, I think, good for,
I mean, there are some cons and pros, but like, of course, there are some benefits of,
of having sound money behind corporations as well.
But of course, as you hinted,
we are a self-custody company.
So of course we would advocate for users
to store their own private keys in a self-custody way
because we simply believe that's the better way
to hold Bitcoin.
Let me give maybe a couple of reasons why that is.
Well, there's this famous saying,
not your keys, not your coins, right?
And we see it in many different scenarios
where for example, exchange get hacked,
you know, and you lose your Bitcoin,
which you thought you own,
but there is a third party that actually stores it for you.
And if they lose it, then well,
you lose the Bitcoin yourself, obviously.
Secondly, the centralization of almost like
the traditional finance built on Bitcoin
is of course problem as well,
because the centralized exchanges, et cetera,
are big honeypots for hackers and all the systemic risks.
And ETFs, I mean, of course,
those can't be really hacked in a certain way,
but also there are exchanges behind those products,
such as Coinbase.
So I would argue mainly for the fact that self-custody tools,
such as Trezor, are now very easy to use.
I think there is this big myth that somehow hardware worlds are difficult and cumbersome, and that's no longer the case.
We as a company, I think, put many products that prove that hardware worlds are easy to use.
And yeah, users should store the keys individually and self-custody their Bitcoin, as was intended by Satoshi Nakamoto.
Yeah, I mean, definitely that's the way, right, is just self-custody, hold it yourself, be your own bank, so to speak.
But I think it's really interesting that we're starting to see traditional financial institutions start to come on, specifically like BlackRock and coming into that.
So I'm curious, with your experience kind of being in the space for a while, now we're seeing traditional finance, the big players, right?
The ETFs have been here, at least in the United States, for about a year.
They've been in Europe and other countries for maybe a little bit longer.
So do you think that it's a net positive because it will give an initial touchpoint to Bitcoiners where it's like, all right, you know, whatever tax associated account, you can now have access to Bitcoin?
Or do you think it's maybe a negative because you're not practicing Bitcoin the way it was initially, you know, designed as that peer to peer cash?
Yeah, it's a good question.
I would be hard to speculate for me specifically where the future will be.
So as to speak whether it is like net positive or negative, I'm not sure it would be the answer today.
I think it's done good for Bitcoin advocacy in general.
Like it's been, you know, now it's like a big political topic, for example, right?
Like the president of the United States is talking about, you know, Bitcoin all the time.
well that's probably
you know maybe in some ways
in this service as well you know launching his
token etc like all those controversies
controversial sort of things
but I think it's good
in terms of accessibility
to the topic itself it probably brings
a lot of attention to Bitcoin
but on the other side exactly
if the main
story is that no matter
what form of Bitcoin you should
own and
the end user, the retailer really doesn't
care, then it
worries me a little bit.
And again, I think it's our
job as a company to persuade
customers to come
the right way, as was
originally intended. And not just
for the sake of the original
intention, but for the sake of
it makes sense. If you own
an ETF, for example, there's a lot
of
counterparty risk where
you know, there's companies holding it for you again, those companies can fail, right? So
as we've seen many times in the past, by the way, Bitcoin started as, you know, in 2008, right?
After like one of the biggest financial crisis in the history of the capitalism, basically. So
those, it was supposed to fix the money problem that we had in the fiat. So
it worries me a little bit that now Bitcoin becomes this topic as, you know, it's like,
it's a great asset that yields well, etc. But the original principles should not be forgotten. And
I think that's why we are here specifically. Yeah, 100%. And I think you guys do a great job.
And, you know, we're obviously we're here in Prague, coming to you, coming to you live during
the conference. But I think it's really interesting here, because I mean, you brought up the US and
everything, right? But the Czech National Bank was talking about, you know, looking into Bitcoin.
And now we're having banks in the United States like JP Morgan, Jamie Dimon, really starting to
almost like bend the knee to Bitcoin, where they're originally were really against it,
and everything like that. And now they're talking about potentially looking into
custodying it, and, you know, offering these products to their clients. So, you know, outside
of the ETFs, how are you looking at potentially like banks as, you know, a custodian? Because,
you know, my mom, for example, would trust her bank over me maybe holding a Bitcoin for her,
just because she's not aware, right? So how do you see that developing?
True. So I think in terms of like store value, it makes sense, right? Because the underlining
asset Bitcoin will store value, it stores value very well. I mean, we see it, of course.
but I think we should ask
whether the other properties
of Bitcoin
of this sound money is met
when you would custody it
for example with bank
and that's no
so can you
send it quickly
can you spend it quickly
can you do those things
well not truly
and is there a risk that somebody
will take it away from you
yes so yeah so i would obviously i would love bitcoin being you know used like directly um
also on chain or or you know the the layers above you know it's all good but um when it comes to
basically traditional finance i'm obviously you know a bit more skeptical um but then again as you
As you asked before, like, does it ultimately do good in terms of the PR?
Probably for now.
Yeah, I think it did.
It have done some good in terms of like more people know about Bitcoin now.
And I can see it even like personally, right?
Like people like friends that I've never, I mean, I haven't heard of like in a long time
would, you know, reach out again and say, oh, what is this Bitcoin thing?
And they probably hear through the channels of kind of more traditional channels in a way, not like on a cypherpunk meetup.
So in that sense, yes, but I would still love more people to really care about the basics and the grounds and why Bitcoin.
Yeah, 100%. And you mentioned the US government kind of coming in, Donald Trump.
I think I remember my mom when Tesla was first accepting Bitcoin, she was like, oh, if Elon's doing it, it must be something smart, right?
So as you've been in this space for a very long time, right?
Trezor's been around, one of the oldest companies in the Bitcoin space.
How have you seen this just develop like in the last four to five years?
And has anything like really surprised you on how quickly things seem to be moving right now?
Right. So just, for example, the fact that Bitcoin has become or became a topic in the US presidential election was honestly a big surprise.
I mean, I expected it would happen at some point, that it would get into politics in such a way.
But for it to become such a big topic was a bit surprising, to be honest.
the institutions
I think it also happened faster
than I expected
so now even BTC Prague had a whole day
of corporate day
where I went yesterday
and Bitcoin as a treasury
and many corporations
have been discussed
that was the main topic basically
so I think a lot of companies
are joining the space and again
that was kind of fast
that it happened quickly
basically or it's like suddenly then then then quickly or what is this uh saying so so i think
that's um um no sorry not suddenly then quickly it's gradually then suddenly exactly exactly like
sorry that's uh that's that um so i think that's exactly what was happening right uh
jp morgan again like a great example i think that the ceo was a big uh i have to say nice naysayer
for a long time.
He hated Bitcoin, I think.
He didn't really understand it, quite frankly.
And now we see, like, yeah, including Czech National Bank,
I think it's a similar case,
where now they consider it as being considered
as a reserve of the country.
And more countries are doing so.
I think there's more discussion now for nations
to have Bitcoin as their kind of reserve currency
or reserve assets.
and that's interesting.
So did I answer the question?
Sorry, I won't be all whole.
No, you did for sure
because I definitely think, you know,
where this whole thing is going, right?
We're seeing like institutions really start to go in.
Like you said, at BTC Prague,
I was just right before we came here,
Saylor and Adam Back were just talking about it
because there's so much access to capital
for businesses opposed to, you know, just individuals.
Like I could get a loan and go buy Bitcoin,
But, you know, if all of us in this room together were to just say, hey, we're a company now and we want to go get a loan, well, the power of us, we could get a lot bigger loan and then just buy all of this, right?
Buy a lot more Bitcoin a lot quickly or a lot more quickly.
And I think it's just interesting that the traditional financial tools that are now starting to come to Bitcoin and then on top of it, governments talking about it, I think is really changing the game.
But, you know, I'm curious with the sound money principles of Bitcoin, do you think that it's almost like they're almost admitting at this point that it's like, hey, fiat currency isn't working.
So this is why we need to go find Bitcoin.
Or are you a little bit more skeptical thinking almost it's like a PR stunt, so to speak, where it's like, hey, we needed to do this to kind of win some votes?
I believe there is definitely, I mean, as a company, you make some money and then you want to protect it properly.
I mean, you want to reinvest it maybe into making more products or better products, right?
And if the current fiat is basically stealing some value of what you kind of made, then Bitcoin makes perfect sense, right?
So in that sense, I think a lot of the corporations and strategy might be, of course, like the biggest example, might be one of the cases or is one of the cases where they basically, it's solving the store of value for them, I assume.
And that being said, also, I'm the kind of the school of thought where I think it still would be it's still better to have like a profitable company and not just like be heavily leveraged against and just like borrowing to buy, you know, Bitcoin.
It's still to a certain degree a speculation in a way.
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trusted proven i hope it's not like uh it would be not that it wouldn't be like some big bubble or
something like this uh so but but yeah i think it makes sense for for nations and corporations to
to do it and advocate for it,
because it solves exactly the store of value problem.
Yeah, and I think it's interesting
you're kind of talking about it
as the store of value right now And you brought up the corporations aspect I feel like there kind of two different types of corporations that we seeing pop up like the similar scientifics where they have you know a healthcare aspect So they have a business and then they have
the Bitcoin on the balance sheet. And then there's other corporations that, you know, you're seeing
21, Nakamoto, like those companies come up that they're just saying, hey, we're just strictly a
Bitcoin holding company. This is all we want to do. Now, do these two separate strategies almost,
I guess, worry you in a sense where it's like, all right, well, a business, it could help save
maybe a zombie business, give them a little bit more runway. But I think that there's a big risk
when it comes to these holding companies where essentially you're just getting a bunch of
leverage to buy Bitcoin. Is that something that you're almost worried about in this space as we
you see it developing?
Yeah, I'm not, just a disclaimer,
I'm not an expert on finances or anything, right?
So just to say that out loud,
but I'm a product person
and I still, you know, believe that as a company,
you should have a product that you sell.
It's quite easy, actually.
It's quite kind of common sense.
If you want to make it as a company,
well, you got to sell something to make money off.
And as I said, like reinvest it
or start it if you want for longer, et cetera.
All those things make sense.
So I would be just a little worried in terms of like,
yeah, these like heavily, heavily leveraged companies
that are really not creating a value
that they could sell in a way, right?
So of course I get the point.
I mean, the value is in Bitcoin, right?
Like they don't need product.
But I'm just really curious
how they span out in the future, to be honest.
Because again, like I'm kind of old school in a way, it's like, I would like to see some tangible value that would get out of their kind of production, right?
Yeah, 100%. And I think at the core of it, it's just Bitcoin, right?
Right, right.
So how Bitcoin was developed, you know, was to be peer-to-peer cash.
And I feel like this is kind of highlighted that right now, maybe globally, we're in that store of value phase.
How do you see Bitcoin developing and potentially getting to that peer-to-peer cash?
area. Yeah, well, I would, of course, love to see it as, you know, as you said, like as
electronic cash in a way. So I think the scalability solutions are being developed. So I would really
love us to see more of those sort of second layers and for them to be really applicable in a way that
you could like use it easily. I mean, Lightning has been, you know, doing fairly well, but it has
certain issues as well of like an actual
scalability of like rolling it out to
many
users so
yeah that I think would be
awesome but also
I guess
now Bitcoin is becoming more
of like a digital gold
in a way that like people really have
it even retail not just
the companies to use it
as a store of value so
so I think
that's where we are now. And I would love to see it as a cash as well. But who knows where the future
will go? Well, Jack Dorsey came out. Yeah, I mean, I don't either, right? Jack Dorsey kind of said
that he thinks that we don't get to that peer-to-peer cash that Bitcoin has failed. But, you know, I had
Mark Moss in here the other day, and he kind of said, you know, these things work in like 40 to 50
year cycles, where it's like the first 10 years, it's kind of like, all right, everybody's like,
retail investors. Second 10 years is the institutions, which is what we're seeing now.
Third 10 years is more of the government starting to come in. So that means like around 2030-ish time.
And then after that, then we get actual peer-to-peer cash. And then after that is unit
account. So it seems to be lining up that way. But I don't know if we're going to get there that
quickly. I think that it's kind of, you know, kind of trending in that direction. But do you think
that we're going to see, you know, as that develops, like, get closer to peer-to-peer cash?
Because we have these circular economies popping up, you know, whether it's we're buying stuff at
BTC Prague or we're buying stuff in, you know, Uvita, Costa Rica, Bitcoin, you know, Bitcoin
jungle or something like that. Do you see more of these like circular economies kind of helping
build the ground up and that peer-to-peer cash start to really start to develop?
Yeah, so I'm like a huge sort of free market maximalist in a way that like whether, if it has,
it's like when the products sort of or the service or whatever have its own valuable properties,
then inevitably it would be used by many and by more, right? So I think in this case,
it's the same thing when
we build tooling
around Bitcoin and about
keeping it safe and about
your ability to spend it
quickly, easily, etc.
Then I think it can
be the
case. But yeah, the scalability
is currently obviously the issue.
So it's something we have to work on
as a community.
And
yeah, I would love to see it happen,
of course, because again, we are Bitcoin
right yeah how do you see like the development of cold storage and like potentially having the hot
wallets how do you see that kind of developing do you think like that's going to essentially
i guess change people's personal finances where maybe hey i have a stack in cold storage
i have a stack on a hot wallet um you know for spending and kind of having different piles
um or do you think there's going to be a way that these things kind of like mix and coincide
together here in the in the near future yeah i can i can see that they would live together in like
one ecosystem, you know, I could see that happening easily.
Again, like provided it's safe, I think kind of the sort of top-up analogy is probably
the easiest, right?
So you can have the call storage, you can top up some whatever app it is and being the
same product or a different, like a competitor, for example, or somebody else in the market.
So yeah, those things I can see happening.
and I think it's how ideally how it would work.
Also, I'm not afraid to say it's even okay to start, I think, with custody
if you really don't know Bitcoin at all and you're maybe just starting out.
It's fine.
Just try to send your first transaction maybe off the custody to on-chain.
try different things, learn a little bit
and then ideally
the end game is have a cold storage
and then exactly and have some
today
mobile app that you can spend
easily. Yeah, I mean I definitely
think there's levels to it, right?
When you first send your first Bitcoin
transaction, I don't know if you remember yours, but I remember
my heart racing because you're waiting for a little
bit and you're like, is it actually going through?
Did I copy everything correctly?
I don't really know, but
yeah, I definitely think that it's going to be, you know, developing in that realm. It's actually
funny, I saw a study the other day, that River put out that 55% of all Bitcoin that's currently
in circulation is in cold storage. So although the narrative, you know, these ETFs are growing,
you know, Coinbase and all these, it seems like the majority of Bitcoin is coming off of exchanges,
I think it's only around 2 million is available on exchanges right now. And with the amount of
buying that's going on, it seems like more and more is going to get pulled off. So do you see
that as an encouraging trend, obviously, for what you guys do here, but just in general,
in the Bitcoin space, that more people are starting to, you know, maybe they're coming in,
and then they're learning pretty quickly, hey, there's a lot of these easy tools, I can take it
in cold storage and, you know, be my own bank. Yeah, totally. So I mean, I always say this,
like, whenever there are some bigger hacks, you know, happening in the market, like on these big
centralized exchanges, we see it instantly in our sales.
So the word gets out and the main message is sort of get off exchanges
and get into cold storage of a hardware wallet.
So we can see it in retail.
I assume similar things are happening in the B2B world where the custodians
would still, I assume, hold it in some proper cold storage.
so yeah I think it makes sense in this way
and it's the way it should be
yeah and I definitely think that
this is the way that Satoshi kind of intended it to go
but how have you seen the development of cold storage
because it seems like at first
it was kind of just foreign to a lot of people
and it seems like we're trying to make it
like you said a little bit easier on the end user
so how have you guys here at Trezor
and maybe some of the other hardware wallets that you've seen developed.
How have you seen that kind of, I guess, change over time
to make it easier on the end user?
Yeah, so usability is a huge part of what we're trying to do
and accomplish and improve.
Ultimately, I think there has been this myth
that hardware wallets are hard to use, as I said before,
and that's no longer the case.
They are actually very easy and intuitive devices
and intuitive applications built around them.
And that applies to us and also our competitors.
To be honest, I think it's great to have, as I said,
like I'm a free market maximalist in a way.
It's great to have good competition.
I think we are pushing ourselves.
Because in a way, we are kind of, how to say,
like brothers and sisters in a way that we want to get as many people into self-custody of hardware
as possible so i think pushing ourselves in that direction is is is good and healthy
uh because ultimately the end user wins right because they will get a better deal um
and so yeah we are trying to do a lot in terms of uh privacy security and usability we always say
those are the three pillars that self-custody is built on and if any of those three pillars
is missing or crumbling, then the whole thing collapses, right?
So I think, again, hardware wallets used to be these geeky devices
with horrible software that only engineers could use.
That's no longer the case.
It's actually, you know, very, very easy.
Yeah, it definitely seems like, I mean, hey, like,
I have no problem using it.
I mean, I definitely think that this is the way, right?
Like more of these hardware wallets.
I mean, we've got the development of the hardware wallets back there from you guys as well, which I think is always really cool to see just kind of how it's shifted and changed in general.
And like you said, I think, you know, having a few different options, let's take, you know, the cream rise to the top.
You guys have a little competition.
It's all good for everybody.
But the privacy thing, I think, is kind of unique because, you know, Bitcoiners stress privacy in a sense, right?
Even though it's like an open source ledger.
And we just had a privacy attack at Coinbase where millions of users had their phone numbers, emails, all those things stolen.
I mean, I did.
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All right, enough from me. Let's get back to the show.
Oh, wow.
So, yeah, I'm curious kind of how you see not only, you know, the privacy from, you know, having it with a cold storage device, but also, you know, just having it off an exchange, how that's kind of developed and maybe the mindset around that when we see events like what just happened with Coinbase.
Yeah. So, number one, these exchanges are centralized, right?
What it means that, why it's a bigger problem or bigger risk for the user.
Well, basically, if you're a hacker, are you trying to get to this one little individual fish in the pond?
Or are you trying to get to maybe shop with all the data that you can steal?
Of course, you will do that because it's more practical.
You will possibly gain more, right?
So obviously, these big companies are a much larger target.
And they are targeted, exactly as we see all the time.
both on the key side, like in terms of security of the underlining, you know, keys of the coins and Bitcoin and other crypto,
but also the security.
Now the security is extremely important, again, going back to the pillars of self-custody,
because the point of self-custody is you are your own bank.
So you don't want any bad people to know, you know, how much you have, where you have it, how you have it stored, you know, how to get to it.
So for us as a company, for example, we really take that super seriously and we don't really know anything about our users in terms of how much they have and anything about their keys, etc.
That simply the system is built in an open source way.
So it's auditable by the expert community, but also in a way that we cannot really track those things.
And that's very important.
On our eShop, for example, we delete the data.
I mean, of course, you need to have certain, for example, data to be able to deliver the goods to the users, but then we delete those data points.
And it's quite important.
That's something we take very seriously.
Yeah, and you guys have definitely built up the trust of the community over a long period of time.
But, you know, with these waves of the Bitcoin space, right, it's a lot of volatility, just not only in the Bitcoin price, but in Bitcoin in general, right?
When Bitcoin's pumping, everybody's like, all right, let's do this thing.
And then when it's crashing or just like kind of floating along, everything's all quiet, right?
So how have you guys with being a Bitcoin community that's been able to,
or a Bitcoin company that's stuck around for so long,
how has that been just weathering the volatility waves?
It is specific.
It is specific to this industry.
And we have to plan very carefully.
Also hardware specifically, because we are a hardware company predominantly, you need to manage your stock carefully.
So you want to have just the right amount, so not too much, because obviously that tanks your cash flow.
But also you need to build it in time to be able to serve the peak demands.
And that's hard and it requires a sort of sophisticated degree of planning.
And that's what we are trying to do.
And we've learned a lot.
I think we learned our lessons over the years because there were times we didn have stock in the past and that sucks right Because then basically means the demand will go to the competitors right
Which is not great.
So, yeah, so that's very important.
Also, in general, we are a bit more conservative in a way that we don't have any external capital.
So we grow steadily.
basically I joined the company some six years ago
and we've been growing pretty much steadily
year on year ever since.
But we grow conservatively in a way that it's like
we would not hire 200 people
and then fire 150 the next six months or something.
So that's what it means to live off our own capital.
But again, what I've mentioned before,
I'm a big proponent of this, actually, not to be a heavily leveraged company, not to live off debt, but really live off our own earnings as a healthy business.
I think it's the right way.
Yeah, 100%.
Do you guys look at putting Bitcoin on the balance sheet with that, if you're able to disclose anything with that?
Yeah, of course, you can buy also hardware wallets for our products for Bitcoin.
and we actually keep that Bitcoin.
We really don't sell.
Yeah, that's awesome.
Okay, so I got to ask,
as a company that's servicing Bitcoiners,
I think I heard the other day
from one guy who sells just Bitcoin merch,
like shirts and everything like that.
He said only about 10% of his customers
use Bitcoin to actually buy the shirts.
You'd think, right?
A Bitcoin shirt,
you'd be using Bitcoin more often.
And do you have like just a rough estimate of how many people use actual Bitcoin to buy, you know, a hardware wallet?
I believe it's around a similar number, but I don't remember the last number.
So I'm sorry.
I don't know exactly, but I think it's a couple of dozens of percent, let's say.
Okay.
It's definitely less than 50%.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's always interesting because I think that as the community and everything develops, you'd hope that we'd get more of this peer-to-peer exchange or cash that Bitcoin was really designed for.
But with the volatility, you said you've got to make sure you have enough stock and everything like that.
But outside of, you know, the stock challenges and the waves that, you know, we see in the Bitcoin space, has there been any other challenges that you think you've faced that have maybe been a little bit abnormal to a normal business just because of, you know, not only the volatility of the Bitcoin price, but, you know, the volatility of just the space in general, it seems.
Yeah, I would say in general it's Bitcoin price because it's pretty much correlated with our sales.
So whenever Bitcoin is going up, then we normally see spike in or correlation, let's say, with our sales.
Specifically, this bull market, it's been a slightly different.
It's kind of a weird bull market in this sense.
I think it's been driven mainly by the corporations that we've discussed.
And it hasn't really touched upon the big retail inflow of users yet.
And it's what we are still hoping to see.
my prediction would be hopefully this year
we still see some
bigger peaks in that regard
so I think that's
a bit specific
in that sense of course there is some seasonality
on a smaller scale
such as Christmas, Black Friday
holiday being a bit more
like a cucumber season in a way
so yeah
in that
sense there are some
specificities and it's mainly
Bitcoin price, quite frankly. Yeah. So then, you know, you brought up this cycle, right? We're
seeing more institutions come in and we haven't really seen retail come in yet. How are you
viewing this cycle? Do you think that it's going to be, you know, maybe that slow creep up? Or do
you think that once retail starts to come in and because we have these institutions, you know,
maybe we'll see that coveted super cycle. Like, how are you kind of seeing, you know, this cycle
maybe compared to previous cycles.
Yeah.
It's always hard to predict these things
because they're almost certainly wrong in some regard.
But I think it might just be the case
that the big cycles are over.
Maybe.
I don't know.
Maybe it's just...
There was always this Halloween story,
then every four years, et cetera,
and then the peak within a year
or the next sort of full-time high.
But who knows?
maybe it'll be more linear in this sense, right?
Maybe there are no, yeah.
So that might be the case.
I'm not sure.
I mean, obviously, I still hope there will be a strong bull market
again, you know, this year and hopefully next year.
But whether those big cycles will repeat,
again, I'm not sure, to be honest.
I think I would spoke differently, you know, three years ago, for example.
I would be like, now 100%, you know, there's like another one coming in and going down and then going back up.
Now I'm not so sure.
Well, what's changed then?
Why do you think that there's been a little bit of a change?
Is it because of the...
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Price action that we're seeing, or is it because of the players that are coming in?
Why do you think your opinion has kind of changed over this?
I think all of that above also because mainly I assume it's because it, paradoxically, because it has become such a big topic.
There are no big PR events any longer, right?
Now it's like constantly everybody's talking about it, including Trump.
And then, you know, maybe there are no like these sort of rushes of like the gold rushes or the Bitcoin rushes of that were here in the past of this like huge FOMO driven purchases of like a huge amount of like retail investors.
So as you maybe that's that might be one of the reasons, right?
So it's become a bit more normalized.
So on one side, you see, have like a steady growth of the price because there's so much more interest from everybody.
And now mainly the corporations or, you know, now the corporations.
But then maybe there are no more of these like big FOMO, you know, events.
Yeah, definitely seems like it's becoming a more developed market, right?
Exactly.
Yeah.
We're talking about like the store of value earlier.
And I always think it's interesting, too.
I mean, River does a lot of great, great research studies.
And, you know, even though they're an exchange, you know, they do disclose their holdings, which I think is better if you had to keep it on there.
But obviously, we encourage cold storage.
But one of the studies they put out here recently was that more Americans hold Bitcoin than gold.
And so I think that's kind of a development that we're starting to see as far as this market goes, where we're seeing, like you said, more people are like, all right, this is a long-term at least store of value.
Maybe they have some stack for the peer-to-peer exchange, and they're going to get that way.
So how do you see, I guess, the mindset shift or have you noticed that with any of the Bitcoin community where, you know, maybe there was, you know, people spending 10,000 Bitcoin for pizza at some point in time.
Maybe we won't see 10,000 Bitcoin for pizza, but maybe we're seeing people a little bit more tentative to hold on to their stats right now.
How are you seeing, I guess, maybe the mindset of the overall space right now?
Yeah, so I think I can speak for what we see in our community and our user base.
Again, we don't have any specifics because we don't really have that much data in general.
But what we can see at least, like the huddle use case, is definitely the biggest one, right?
So we have some user profiles, some personas, et cetera.
And 90% of the main use case is the huddle, right?
So most people would use Shazer to just keep it in Shazer and not really move it as much.
The other use case, the big one is basically trade.
So all kinds of exchanges from coin to coin, right?
So Bitcoin for crypto and vice versa or crypto to crypto.
But I think the store of value in that sense is definitely the winning use case.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's very difficult to trade this market.
And I think, you know, especially with the amount of volatility that we see in it, right?
I mean, everybody always says, hey, I want to just buy at the bottom and sell at the top and then, you know, keep doing it.
But it seems like a human intuition is always, you know, sell on the way down and then buy when it's going back up.
And as you see with, you know, your sales too, right?
As things like start to go up, everybody's like, okay, now I'm more interested than Bitcoin when, you know, Bitcoin was 80K a couple weeks ago or a couple months ago.
and nobody was really talking about it then.
So it's interesting to see this development over time.
But, you know, as an American,
I don't get like too much exposure
to the European side of things.
It seems like, you know, Prague just being out here,
it's absolutely massive.
So how would you kind of describe
the overall community here?
Maybe just in Czech in general,
because it seems like you guys have a lot of heavy hitters,
a lot of big companies here right now.
So, you know, how is the community here?
and why do you think there's such a big, strong community in Prague specifically?
I agree.
We have these discussions even internally
in our internal sort of all-in-s meetings, et cetera,
and I think the overall reason that we kind of agree on
might be because of the communism past, right?
So we had the revolution and, let's say,
the regime change from the communist to more capitalist sort of driven economy
in the early 90s.
And then you would have this sort of boom of, I think,
of sort of conscious censorship
and conscious stage-regulated bullshit.
And obviously, again, free market maximalism,
a lot of these companies.
I mean, that's one of the big ethos in Bitcoin, right?
So I think that might be a reason
why a lot of entrepreneurs here basically
would like to
build companies and products
exactly that are a bit against
the centralization
against the regime
etc. So that's my
thought
or that would be my bet
and then
also very practically why
so many Bitcoin companies
recently or not recently actually
in the years, I think honestly it's been
because of also Cheser
because it started some 11 years ago,
started by two founders.
One of the founders before, actually,
he created the first mining pool as well.
And from that, I would say it's almost like a Trezor mafia in a way,
like as it was PayPal mafia, I think famously.
It's like these companies that then there's a lot of spinoffs
into other companies because in Satoshi Labs Holding,
Trezor is one part of this
group. We also have
Inviti that is like
onboarding new users
into Bitcoin. We have Tropic Square
creating
a first auditable chip
secure element and we have
Vexel which is like a company
that's an app
that you can buy
non-KYC Bitcoin from
other users. So I would say
it's almost like one idea sparks
you know other ideas uh and i think success of uh specifically chaser and and you know the mining
pools that one of the founders started has you know kind of created other opportunities and
uh and also i think i hope i would like to i think it's that way but like um
also because i think we try to do like things uh exactly an open source way and kind of
transparently and how to say in like a nice,
that's a bad word.
I'm sorry, looking for the word,
but like in a like very pro and very community driven way.
Right.
So we really care for our users for, for their feedback, et cetera.
So, so yeah, I think in a way Bitcoin,
sorry, Prague is kind of a Bitcoin capital of the world, I would say.
Yeah.
I mean, Hey, I, like I said, when I came over here,
I was like pleasantly surprised.
And I know of all of these companies, but I just never really thought, oh, this one's in Prague, this one's in Prague.
And then you come out here and you're pleasantly surprised that there's so many different companies out here.
But you mentioned the open source aspect of it.
And I'm always kind of curious of how Bitcoiners, I guess business owners view it.
Because the traditional fiat-minded businesses are like, hey, we got our secrets.
We're going to keep them.
We don't want to tell anybody.
But the unique thing about the Bitcoin space is like, hey, here's our secrets.
We're open sourcing everything.
And I think that builds a lot of trust within the community.
So how important do you think it is to, you know, do that in a Bitcoin space, especially be open source and just do that for the trust of the community?
and just, you know, is there any obstacles that you felt that, you know, have maybe,
you know, been a little different than traditional business where, you know, like I said,
they kind of keep their secrets close.
Just by creating open source products, it's, you know, a little bit different.
So how do you view that as, you know, as a CEO in a Bitcoin company?
I believe it's absolutely crucial for the security model that we have.
I think it's very, very important for our even competitors, you know, basically any player in the industry to be able to check on what we are doing.
You know, especially, I mean, we are talking about products that are holding your finances, right?
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for me back to the show so so i think it's very yeah it's it's it's it's crucial uh i think we i
I hope we inspired other companies to do it.
I definitely can see it from other competitors
being sort of more and more open source
in places where they weren't in the past.
I think the community also spoken in a way
that they would like to see it.
And we saw it in some events in the past
that were happening with some launches of products
that were maybe not fully open source.
And I think, yeah, and the community let them know,
let's put it that way.
And I think it's good.
you know and but yeah as a business owner or as a business uh sort of um as a business for us as a
chaser of course it's interesting because exactly you say like uh you you could think okay why would
you give it away right like because also by the nature of the open source license you can
uh you know get inspired or almost like steal you know whatever others are working on and
and implement it into your products.
But again, ultimately, I believe that's better
for the end customers, and that's the way things should be.
And actually interoperability of our products
is very important for, again, the customers.
So for example, if we failed as a company in some way
in terms of like, you know, we would say,
okay, we don't want to work anymore,
let's take 10 years holiday,
then the products that you are using,
the backup for example that we created the BIP39 which stands for Bitcoin improvement proposal
that's the underlining sort of standard of the way you backup your keys that has been used by
the whole industry by the way not just hardware world but also software world if we stopped
existing as a company you could still use these you could still take that backup and put it into
our direct competitor hardware world and it would work it would recreate you would recover your keys
right so it's quite important right so and again by nature of open sourceness and open source
more companies can join the space and and build on top of what we are building as i mean we did
with bitcoin right like bitcoin is open source as well and that's uh that's the really important
aspect of it yeah i think that's the beauty of it right i mean it's almost like everybody's trying
to help each other out um you know and and that custody aspect is is extremely important and
feeling comfortable with that, right? Because I think that just brings another level of,
I guess, security when you're doing these things, right? Because, you know, I don't think very many
people know, like when you have your money in the bank, it's really not yours, right? I mean,
I'm not exactly a high roller, but like, say I had $100,000 in a bank account, and I wanted to go
get that out in cash right now, you can't necessarily do that, right? Because you go there,
they're going to ask you a million questions, you realize, hey, that money isn't really yours.
But then when you get to Bitcoin, you hold it in self-custody.
You realize, hey, you know what?
I can use a treasure.
And then maybe they decide, hey, I'm going to go sit back, drink some Czech beers for 10 years and just hang out.
And then you still have that access to that Bitcoin.
So I think the open source and the community aspect is very big.
but you know here in Prague we touched on it a little bit briefly about the community and kind of
the the treasure mafia as it's uh as it's uh you know kind of talked about here but it seems like
the community is very strong uh here in Prague and and everywhere else and uh in Europe uh
specifically and it's kind of centered here so you you know you touched on a little bit about
the companies being built here um but how how do you how do you view the community and like kind of
embracing it is there any like unique aspects that you think uh you know are are pretty unique
to just being here in prague uh that you haven't necessarily seen anywhere else
i'm not sure whether there are some specifics um i think maybe we are a bit more like a
taking it on very individual level i think we are very very how to say like a private
people in a way.
We don't really...
It was shocking to me. I went to Bitcoin
Amsterdam last year.
I think it was two years ago.
And I don't know if you've been to
Amsterdam, but... No, I haven't been to Amsterdam
before. Look, so you need to see
this online. I bet you will find
some information about it.
It's amazing. You walk on a street
and you have like these
I don't know, two, three store
buildings or something.
Three floors. Maybe two floors even.
and you have like these tiny streets
and these like little water canals, it's beautiful.
And then you walk there at night
and all the like buildings have their,
the windows are basically not covered
by any like sheet or anything.
So you can see exactly what the people are doing,
you know, in the ground floors, right?
So they would be like watching TV,
like one meter from you, like walking on the street
and they would not like cover the windows, for example.
So it was like really interesting for me to see that.
And I think for us as Czech people, it's exactly the opposite.
Like we would, like if you, if somebody could saw you from the street,
like you would cover it, you know, the last, you know,
like inch of the window or something.
And I feel like maybe that's something where,
why like people are interested in, you know,
Bitcoin and self-custody in general,
because they, it's like their own little, like dirty secret, you know,
like, and they like to talk about it maybe with their friends,
but they're not, you know, it's like,
they're not like boasting about it and as maybe some um you know traditional uh traders would do
or something right so maybe it's a stupid analogy i don't know but like but it's just like i think
we are kind of like private in a way so and i think there are some properties of bitcoin where
yeah you make it as your little yeah secret yeah no i mean i understand and you were talking a
little bit but before uh on the car ride over here about a little bit about your personal life
with me. So I want to dive into that because I think it's unique kind of how you use Bitcoin to
be, you know, like live a little bit more free. You talked about paragliding in the commercial
that you made with that. How did you even get into that? How are you like, all right, you know
what, I'm going to go jump off a mountain and fly off with a parachute because, you know, that seems
a little crazy. I mean, I've jumped out of planes. So I mean, maybe I'm crazy too. And every Bitcoiner
has a little bit of craziness to them. But how did you decide to get into paragliding specifically?
interesting I think it's going back to the freedom
honestly I love mountain
sports in general like I'm
a climber and mountaineer I love
you know like the freedom of the hills
as there's this famous book
the same name so I exactly
love this like feeling
and I mean flying I mean what can
what can be better you know like if you
climb the whole day
all the way up there and then
I mean instead of walking down
you can just fly down in like maybe 20
minutes and it's amazing and actually
you can do also cross-country flying and
paragliding so you can fly
long distances like 100
miles for example. Oh my god.
All those things are possible
because you use the terminals
and imagine
the views right? So it's so amazing
so beautiful.
So I just love that and I think it's about
freedom. Bitcoin is about freedom so I think
that's not exactly a coincidence
that I mean
I love working on Chaser
and building our products and also these kind of things.
And specifically in the commercial, that was the idea of our marketing team.
So it was just like they approached me and I was like,
okay, I hope I don't kill myself, but let's do it.
Well, what's the coolest story that you have from doing that?
I mean, I know you said you love to hike,
but have you done any of these cross-country types of paragliding,
I guess missions is what we could call it here?
Yeah, I mean, one of my most beautiful flights was actually
in Switzerland, it was close to
100 kilometers.
It would be like 70 miles,
60 miles, something like this.
And yeah, you could
get all the way up to 4,200
meters. So that would be what?
12,000 feet
or something like this, this high.
So one of the, so yeah,
it's absolutely amazing. Because when you have
a high cloud base, that's where the
thermos go all the way up to the cloud.
Then you can really fly this high
the whole day, all the beautiful mountains, beautiful mountains.
Yeah, so that was probably one of the most beautiful days I had.
Yeah, so you've got that.
And then I heard a rumbling that you're going to be playing at a show tonight here for the Treasure team.
So how did you get into the music aspect, too?
Because it seems like there's a lot of layers to you, man.
You're not just the shadowy super coder of most Bitcoiners.
So what instrument do you play?
And yeah, how did you get into the music industry?
Yeah, so music was my original career, actually, in a way, you could say.
I actually started playing as a child, you know, when I was maybe seven, six.
I started playing guitar, and then I went to music schools.
But then I was interested in many other things, so that's why, you know, I like tech as well.
I started to like tech, and generally managing projects, et cetera, and some entrepreneurship and endeavors as well.
but yeah so I play guitar and play bass guitar and we will play at the party tonight with my band
there we go do you see any parallels between the music like kind of like learning music and going
through that as like almost like the entrepreneurship game and you know almost the bitcoin space do you
see any parallels from there maybe not necessarily with the bitcoin space specifically but and as in
entrepreneurship and maybe like a building company for sure because it was completely normal for me
to practice eight ten hours a day like i and i by a day i mean including weekends all the time so but
whenever i could play i would play when i was from the age of i don't know like maybe
10 to 20 you know for 10 years maybe i was doing that really really quite a lot and i think that
teaches you some discipline, I guess.
And in a way, it's like,
because first maybe you see some piece
that you would like to learn
or you would like to play
and it's like so hard, so difficult,
like technically,
and then you realize,
okay, if I put in the harvest,
it will actually yield the results.
So I think that's,
I'm maybe not the smartest for sure.
I'm not, you know,
the, how to say maybe the fastest in a way, but I think I can like, uh, suffer through some, some
work, you know, uh, and like good suffering in a way. It's like, I enjoy the process, but I know
like you need to kind of be patient to get results. So, yeah, it's unique. You, you kind of, kind of
said that cause I've been teetering with this idea for a while that I think if you become, you know,
if you're passionate about something, almost like the point of like obsessed, maybe that has a bad
connotation, but like almost like you're so obsessed with something, you know, you're going
to spend so much time, you're going to figure it out eventually. So I feel like that's, you know,
how a lot of Bitcoiners, when they had that aha moment, that's how they kind of got into it.
And then same with like music, sports, maybe some other things. So yeah, it brings me back,
you know, you have the music aspect, you have the adventurous aspects. How did you find Bitcoin?
How did you get into all this? And then be crazy enough to be like, you know what,
I want to be a CEO of a Bitcoin company.
I think it's, I mean,
the beginnings are fairly boring in a way that I just,
I saw this ad in the, you know, like a job post.
And I was like, wow, I want to be like a product manager.
And this company doesn't have a product management role yet.
So I would like to do that because there's a lot of unknowns.
But I knew at the time, six years ago,
I knew like I love building products.
I love building companies in a way.
I like this kind of entrepreneurial challenge to it.
And that's exactly, I think, what Trezor needed back then.
We were a fairly small team, and there was a lot of things
that we had to improve from product, but also marketing,
you know, like organizational things, such as, you know,
developing the teams, et cetera.
And that's why when I came in, and I really, really enjoyed it,
and I think I have been working quite hard, you know,
like to exactly as I said, like I put in the hours and, uh, and I think it was important. And then
yeah, again, like I got obsessed with it a hundred percent. Uh, and, uh, and I still love it. So
that's awesome stuff. Well, one last question before we let you go, what are you looking forward
to or like anything else? What was one thing that stuck out to you from this weekend here at,
at Bitcoin Prague?
Yeah, so I yesterday specifically went to this corporate day
that was outside of this main venue.
But yeah, I was surprised how, I mean, a lot of companies
are basically now discussing the Bitcoin treasury
as their strategy.
So I think that that was kind of, yeah, new for me,
but also quite far from what we are trying to do in a way.
So as we discussed at the beginning,
I mean, worries me is probably too strong of a word
because it totally makes sense, right?
I just like, it's just a bit, how to say,
not applicable to what we are trying to do.
Like, I mean, it's applicable for us as a company, for sure.
But for the products that we are trying to build,
it's kind of, yeah, not applicable.
We are here for the retail investors,
for the individual users,
for the users that value their privacy and security
and that want to store their Bitcoin directly,
as they should, I believe.
Yeah, 100%.
So where could the users who are now looking for something with Trezor,
where can they go find out more about Trezor
and maybe even more about you?
So trezor.io is our website,
so we definitely recommend purchasing products
and learning about products and purchasing them there.
We also have a pretty good YouTube channel now
and on our socials.
Kudos to our wonderful media team because, yeah,
the quality of our videos, I think, are now, like, amazing.
So I believe a lot of people can appreciate it,
like the way we talk about the product.
And it's almost like these little movies now.
So I think I'm quite happy with that.
So definitely our YouTube channel and our socials.
And me specifically, I'm on Twitter, on X, on LinkedIn,
but I'm not huge on social media, to be honest.
All right, well, we'll find Jim.
We'll link it all in the show notes.
And yeah, you guys have a great studio here and have an amazing team.
So you're doing an outstanding job.
And yeah, thanks so much for having me and look forward to hanging out with you more.
Thanks for having me.
Thank you guys all for tuning in to another great episode of the State of Bitcoin podcast.
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