Baltic Honeybadger, Debifi, and Hodl Hodl with Max Kei - Bitcoin Infinity Show #119

0:00 Max, welcome to the Freedom Footprint show. Thanks for joining us. Thank you for having me. Always happy. yeah, good to see you, Max. Uh, Good to see you as well, Knut. we happened to bump into one another here and there around the globe, and I just heard you just came back from Lugano, right? Yes. Back to somewhere from Lugano. Back to somewhere. To different locations, you know. I'm everywhere. I'm nowhere and everywhere. as one should be. And and you're, uh, what were you doing in Lugano? Can you tell our listeners that please? Yeah, I was, uh, there was like two, two things.

0:40 Uh, first of all, I was invited as a guest lecturer to Plan B Business School, summer edition by one and only Giacomo Zucco, or as we call him Don Zucco. So he invited, uh, he invited me to give a lecture on, uh, Why Bitcoin is a super asset or super collateral, which is closer to my, to my field. And then, uh, also it was a business trip because we have recently incorporated in Switzerland our new project, which is Debify, debify. com. And we've been invited to join this amazing initiative, uh, which is called Plan B, and, uh, we're hopefully going to have an office there.

1:27 We'll be, uh, we'll be there. So it's an amazing place, honestly. Expensive, as Switzerland is, but very good, very nice, uh, Lugano in particular, you know, it's like, it's like, has the southern wipes, which, uh, which I love. And, um, yeah, it's still, it's still Switzerland, you know, everything works very good. Uh, they're very, uh, I know that, like, it's a cringe word, but, you know, they're very crypto friendly. There's a lot of opportunities out there and like, um, say whatever you say, but Swiss regulation and Swiss laws are, I think, like 10 years ahead of everything else, you know, and, uh, in general, they're very much friendly towards, uh, Bitcoin people and people who own digital assets.

2:22 So, Absolutely. for listening. these are not good words, digital assets and crypto, but, uh, well, I need to explain it to some extent. Thanks. Yeah, yeah. I would say 10 years behind and, and that is a good thing. They were the last country to go off the gold standard in Europe. So they still don't have, uh, most of the fiat problems. Yes, yes, yes. So they, they are. And obviously for us, for our new business, it's very good to be there because Switzerland is still Switzerland, you know, it's, it's a banking Mecca. It's a huge pool of liquidity and, uh, we're happy to be there.

3:03 Yeah, and I was a guest lecturer myself, I'm proud to say, at the Plan B business school, like a month back. And, uh, yeah, I just love what Giacomo and the team are doing there. It's, it's so beautiful and it's such a great place to, to, to have this thing in. And it's not only there, it's in San Salvador and where else? Like, uh, in Asia somewhere, like Hong Kong, I think. Yeah, they have different hops across the world. So like, the two that I know are obviously Logano and then Sun Salvador. But, uh, but then they have other hops as well, and it's amazing. It's, it's an amazing initiative.

3:43 Uh, very high quality of, uh, guest lecturers. Uh, except for me, but overall, you know, everyone else is very much skilled and, uh, uh, high quality of people. It's fantastic. And, and, uh, yeah, like, uh, go check it out, Plan B Network. the, the course is of course, uh, uh, available online and you can, you can join from anywhere on the globe and you can just watch the lectures from wherever you are. Um, I think the, what you joined was like the, the last stretch of it, which is like a week or two, uh, of the, the top students gathering in one of these hubs, right?

4:24 Yeah. Yeah. It's a, it's a week, it's a final week in Logano. What I really like about Plan B Business School is that it, it's, um, it's actually focuses not only pure on technical developers, because most of the Bitcoin related education is, uh, you know, like. technical developers, you know, it's for technical developers, how to code, how to, how to do this and that. But that cohort was actually about business development. And I think as we approach The stage of the market where we actually see that there's like mass adoption coming in, and there's like a lot of interest from normies.

5:07 I think we need more and more business developers or people who can actually take the amazing technology and sell the idea of Bitcoin in a proper way to normies and give them an understanding why Bitcoin is important. You know, not on the level of technical complications or technical things, and again, Bitcoin is beautiful, the code is amazing, everything, like, technical possibilities with Bitcoin are amazing, but purely as an idea, you know, that there's this amazing asset. Which can be yours if you do the self custody, which can be unconfiscatable if you, if you properly own it.

5:48 So there's a lot, a lot, a lot of things inside and that was part of my lecture when I was trying to, you know, explain in the words of a person who's in the space, but I'm not a technical person to explain to people how you can, you know, orange pill other people who are not very technical. Yeah, and it's great that people like you and me can come and give lectures Yeah, yeah, about such a technical subject. yeah, that's a good no, it's, it's fantastic. And uh, yeah, I love, I love what they're doing there, as I said, and, uh, the, the, I think I'm paraphrasing Giacomo here, but I think the, the goal of the thing was that all of these 21 students, the top students from the course.

6:31 Would each have a job in the Bitcoin space in one way or another after the course is completed, right? Yes, yes, yes, it's true, it's true. So, uh, they will apply for jobs, so they will have their own businesses, whatever, but hopefully, you know, we'll have, uh, 21 more, 21 more person joining the space and trying to orange pill as much people as possible. Not only 21 people, but 21 excellent people. Yes, yes. They have proof of results to show what they are and what they're capable of. Anyway, we're getting ahead of ourselves. Uh, Max, uh, we, we met for the first time back in 2019 when I packed a hand luggage and fooled my fiat company that I was going to visit a maritime academy in Riga when I was really going to your fantastic Bitcoin conference, one of my favorites in the world alongside I would say Atlantis and Prague, but Riga is very special to me and has a special place in my heart.

7:37 Uh, the Baltic Honey Badger Conference. I went there with a hand luggage and 50 books tucked into it next to a couple of t shirts and some underwear. And, uh, hardly even a toothbrush. And, uh, uh, that's where my sort of journey as an official Bitcoin person sort of started by just piling those books up on a random table and, uh, and seeing what happened. Uh, so how, give us the history a bit about yourself and the history of the Baltic Honey Badger Conference, please. How the, how did the whole thing start? So yeah, I'm originally a private banker, you know, I was on the dark side, or on the bright side, depends on which side you are on now.

8:24 So, um, originally I was in TradeFi, but I was always into fintech. And at some point, one of my customers, um, introduced me to this new thing called Bitcoin and, um, he started, like, orange pilling me step by step, you know, and at some point he just, uh, you know, he told me, like, there will be no reason for you to exist as a banker in the future, you know, you will be obsolete because, you see, I can just take my mobile phone and send 50, 000 worth of Bitcoin to my friend in Brazil now. Friday evening with, uh, and at that point the transaction cost was very low, you know, it was very, very low, and he said, like, I can send this 50, 000 thing, just one cent, and he will, he will receive it like in 10 minutes.

9:16 And I was like, dude is clearly crazy, but it kind of hooked me up, uh, on the idea of, of this, of this thing, and I started to do the research, and at some point I just understand, well, Bitcoin is like the essence of FinTech, you know, you have a code, and you have the money. And it all came into existence in one particular thing, which is Bitcoin. And, um, yeah, when, when, next time he came in, he said, like, you want to work for me? And I said, sure, why not? And, uh, I left my, uh, I left my fiat job, uh, joined the company. And then, um, at some point, uh, started contributing to HODLHODL.

10:01 And at that point, everyone was crazy about blockchain, ICO, every conference you went to was about blockchains and tokenization and all that stuff. That was, I think, 2017, so it was that part of the, it was that time. And, uh, well, we were like, um, very much about Bitcoin, you know, we didn't understand that, uh, never understood actually. And we decided, well, there's no, like, Bitcoin only conference, and we should do it. We first tested out our, like, uh, our theory with organizing a meetup in Riga, and that was hugely, highly successful.

10:48 There was a lot of people. We didn't expect that much of people coming in. And, uh, we decided, well, let's, let's try and organize something bigger. And then, eventually, we did, uh, in 2017, we did the first Honeybadger. It was November. You've been to Riga, Knut, you know that November is probably one of the worst months to be in Baltic States. Fucking freezing. But we have, uh, we had like Andreas Antonopoulos, Adam Beck, Peter Todd, Giacomo Zucco coming in. And there was like a lot of other, Elizabeth Stark. And we were lucky at some point. Because again, I always say that.

11:30 I'm grateful to Andreas because he was the first big name to agree to come to Riga. And, um, everyone else just followed. You know, they saw that Andreas is speaking and they just decided. Uh, and the story behind me inviting Andreas was very simple. I just went to the website and just wrote him an email. That's it. Uh, and he just replied in 30 minutes. You know, yeah, I'm interested. When it's going to happen, I'm going to come. So, uh, so first edition was, uh, like two days, uh, it was very funny because it wasn't that packed as now, you know, and we had like five talks maybe per day, maybe even less, you know, a lot of panels, a lot of different discussions and actually Honey Badger was initially, uh, created to promote HODLHODL.

12:23 You know, we, we thought like we can create this event. To promote HODLHODL. And, uh, but then it was so It was so successful that eventually it's like, it's a separate thing now, you know, it's, it's, it's not connected. Still, a lot of people, of course, think that FotoFoto organizes HoneyBedger, which to some extent is true, but, uh, HoneyBedger is like a completely separate, uh, sovereign individual, you know, completely like independent beast. And, uh, then, then it was 2019. It was bigger 2019 when you came in.

13:04 Then after 2019 we had the covid and uh, then we restarted it in 2022 and yeah. there, sorry for interrupting, but was there one in 2018? 2019. 2019. Yes. We kind of, we kind of had a simple run as Michael Jordan had with the winning championships, you know. But the first one was in 2017, First one was in 2017, yeah. We are, uh, not in the same venue as the ones in, uh, no, no, no. It was a, it was in, in the very heart of Old Town, a basement, uh, art gallery in the basement.

13:45 Dark, no window, nothing. And like, uh, and the second day was actually in another, uh, venue. It was a co working. uh, owned by one of our sponsors and then the the 2018 2019 one is this wasn't that warehouse where you have been and then we had a like COVID break for two years and in 2022 we started a new venue which is which was uh last year as well and it's gonna be this year as well. yeah, yeah, and the Phantodromes is a great venue, yeah, It's a, it's a great, it's a great venue because it's a new venue, kind of new, so.

14:28 Uh, like the warehouse still gives you, and I, and I hear a lot of, uh, people like saying, you know, 2019 or 2018, the venue was amazing, it was where, it was amazing, but it's still pain in the ass to organize everything. Good thing with Fantadroms is just, it's just plug and play, you know, you need to spend two hours between events, clean up everything, and then you can go. It's easy to set up. It's easy to run. yeah, I have so many great memories from that 2019 one, and yeah, the venue was great. I can see why you switched it though, because Phantodromes seems much more convenient, and I like Phantodromes too, it's not a bad venue at all, it's a great venue, and like, there's possibility for side stages, and also booths, and all sort of stuff that wasn't possible in that big warehouse, I think, uh, but you know, it's, I don't know, I'm not a big fan of booths.

15:21 This is my first, uh, the one in 2019 is my first, right, uh, Bitcoin only conference. And there were a handful, I guess, before that. Like, you started it back two years earlier, which is just weird, because I, the first Crypto event I went to was in Stockholm in 2017, a thing called Bloxpo. And I felt like the only Bitcoiner in the room. Everyone was shilling like football coin or haircut coin or whatever coin. And they, I was there for one reason, one reason only that that's, that they invited Richard Hart. And that very night, Richard Hart told me. That he was planning to become a shitcoiner and launch his own shitcoin because he was jealous of all the other people who were driving Lambos or whatnot.

16:06 Well, maybe not jealous of them for driving Lambos because he, he claimed that he was very rich already, which he does, you know, but before he became a shitcoiner, he was kind of based and like, uh, when, when he was all. All in on Bitcoin. So I went there to see him and that was just, just after Bitcoin had gone up to a thousand, I think, and then dropped to 200 or something. So he was, uh, he sort of fell off the bandwagon that very night and started talking about, oh, maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all. And everyone was, there was a politician there and all sorts of. Ah, it's tiresome. So when I found this Riga thing, and I saw the footage from 2018, and I thought like, all my online, newfound online friends are here, I need to go here, I need to figure out a way to get over to, get my ass over to Riga next year, like, because I'm missing out on something.

17:00 And it's so beautiful, it's like the first time I met so many people in person, like, uh, Gigi, Max Hillebrand, and The Wizard of Oz, and Seyfedine, and Piero Carden. Giacomo, and all of these great people, they were all there in 2019 and it's, it's such a, such a great experience for me. uh, and just standing there at a table being a nobody with my little book and seeing what happens and the rest is history. I mean, yeah. And, uh, now it's, I plan to go every year I can, like, I'm not missing Honeybadger for anything in the world. It's, You know, the case with Honeybadger is that we always stick with our core principles, you know, being Bitcoin only and trying to, you know, we don't fall for, good and nice sponsorships from if we are, if we're, if we feel we're not aligned with the sponsor, you know, we don't sell speaker slots.

17:59 Uh, which is, which is a no go for us. Um, sometimes it happens that those who sponsor us are high quality people and high quality companies, and we do provide them with, uh, with, uh, with the speaking slots, but nevertheless, whether they sponsor or not, they're there. And another thing is that, uh, we're blessed, uh, we're not like conference organizers by, by, by our, like, core contribution to the ecosystem, you know, it's not our main thing to organize conferences, we are builders, we build tools, we build platforms, you know, for, for Bitcoin. And we're blessed with that because we basically don't care, just like Honey Badger, we don't give a fuck how much money you can pay to us if we don't align with your values or principles.

18:46 We're just not going to allow you in our space, you know, and that's, we're not the biggest conference. Definitely. We're very small, very cozy, but we, we actually deliberately, uh, keep them, keep the amount of people below 1000 because If you go over the top of 1000, you lose that vibe, which is, uh, like Honey Badger is a huge meetup of people. Who are not missing it every year, they're coming there, they're sharing new ideas, they're discussing the old ideas, and they just enjoy being there, you know, and that's, that's the vibe we like, and we're very, very much blessed with having the loyal, uh, attendees, just like you or, or any other out there, or just whatever we will put on the stage, they will come there as long as it's about Bitcoin, and the person is like, truly, Passionate about what he's saying or she's saying.

19:44 Yeah, it's truly a legendary conference at this point, and it's because of this high signal to noise ratio that you have. I guess for some people it's a bit scary because it's quite a technical conference. A lot of the talks are pretty technical and pretty high level. But if you want pure Bitcoiner stuff, and pure, Maxi stuff or monetary maximalism or whatever you may call it, like, this is, this is the thing that it's, it's not pulling any punches. The real people are there. Yeah, and another thing, we put a lot of efforts towards, uh, you know, providing content and, and curating the content. And it's not necessarily the most famous people in the space, you know, people with a lot of followers in the space.

20:29 It's mostly the people who can actually bring value. And we would tend to We had an experience of that person was first time speaking at Baltic Honey Badger, then he or she was invited to a lot of conferences. Like, uh, Honey Badger acts as a sandbox sometimes for, for people who might not have the loudest voice in the space, but they have some things to say. And in most use cases, this, this, the things that they say are way more rational, logical, and aligned with Bitcoin than those things that say people who are like, Millions or hundreds of thousands of followers in this space.

21:12 Now, uh, Baltic Honey Badger is to Bitcoin what David Bowie was to pop music. It's, it's the, it's the Bitcoiners Bitcoin conference, you know? Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much. so I'm interested in, in sort of your take on, since Honey Badger has sort of turned into you got all these Bitcoiners coming into, to Riga and to Latvia. And, and, and by the way, it was also my first time in the, in the space as well, 2022. And so, I mean, I'm, I'm newer here, but that was the first time I met Knut, the first time I met everyone. And, uh, uh, there was no plan to it at all, but I just ended up in the Konsensus Network booth selling books with Knut and Daniel and Jimmy Song and all them, right?

21:56 And, uh, uh, yeah, there was no plan to it, but, uh, and I'd gotten connected to these guys only a couple of weeks before, but life moves fast, so, and Bitcoin. Um, but it's awesome, and, and, and, I mean, I, I think it's, I think it's this hub for not even just the Baltics, but the, the Nordics as well. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's awesome. It's the closest thing in the neighborhood, really, for this whole region, so it's, it's, it's fantastic, so, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm curious, though, like, uh, what, what is the situation in, in Latvia, generally? I mean, it's, it's, it's obviously the, you know, post Soviet, uh, part of the Baltic states and everything. It's got its, its own history there.

22:38 Um, care to get into that or, or Yeah, sure, sure, sure, sure. Feel free. Like, the situation, uh, well, obviously everything is very tense here, because, uh, things are happening between, uh, not between, but actually in Ukraine. So, uh, and, like, Baltics are just basically sharing the same border with Russia. So, um, there's certain tension but, uh, overall, as usual, you know, Nordics, Baltics, we're very calm people, you know, we don't, we're not very emotional, Northern type of people, so life, life just goes on and people just live that life and, uh, I think that, uh, what happened, uh, recently with all this, uh, things that happening in Ukraine.

23:33 Uh, just first, first months, everyone was in shock and then everyone stopped acting, you know, doing the thing, helping, which we actually did last year. If you remember, we raised some, we did a fundraising for Ukraine, for Ukrainian refugees in Latvia, and I'm very proud of it. Um, so hopefully we're going to do something this year as well. Uh, because I think that one of the things that Bitcoin actually can fix is all these things with donations and, you know, sending money to the, to the country that is basically in active war phase, you know, there's active warfare happening in the country.

24:16 So, uh, overall, in terms of if we, if you ask me about Bitcoin. I think except for Baltic Honey Badger, there's, uh, there's nothing in Latvia in that sense, you know, if we talk about purely about Bitcoin, there are some companies in crypto space in general, and some of them are very big companies, uh, on the global scale, you know, it's not just about Latvia, it's on the global scale. And, uh, different, I'm not going to show any of them, but they, they are like, um, and we have also association, which are pretty much active and they also do their part of the job.

24:57 So, but overall, I would say it's not, there's, there's basically. Close to zero community, Bitcoin community in Latvia, you know, there's some, some Bitcoin meetups, uh, with, uh, with some amount of people, there's like basement bar, which is a Bitcoin bar. Uh, of course, you will experience that if you come to Baltic, any measure, You, we have to do some chilling here, like come to Riga this year, and it will be the most amazing Baltic Honey Badger ever, and we're throwing, of course. we're throwing a party on Bitcoin Infinity Day, the launch date of our new book, we're throwing a party, an almost free party at the basement bar, and we're, we're doing the thing, so if we see you there, uh, expect a hug or two, yeah, last year, they actually launched, uh, during the Honey Badger, so it wasn't like there, there wasn't like testing phase, you know, in beta, I would say, and it was already amazing.

26:02 This year, so over the course of the last year, they have significantly improved. They have hired new bartenders, so it's very high quality drinks now, very good, so definitely come to Riga, definitely come to your event, which will be on 21st of August. So we will have a huge week of events. Uh, which we call Riga Bitcoin week, but it's, but this year it's not going to be only about Bitcoin. It's going to be a new day, uh, its usual kickoff, uh, event for, for the Riga Bitcoin week. Then it's going to be two days of AMA amazing Nos rga, which is a noster based conference. And I'm really happy that we're going to have a lot of Nostr people and finally we can connect in one, like, you know, huge, huge event.

26:51 Nostr, two days of Nostr and then two days of Bitcoin, uh, during the Baltic Honey Badger. I think that Nostr and Bitcoin is actually pretty much interconnected. They kind of complement each other. Which is a great thing. And, um, then we will obviously close the week as usual with BTCPIX Server Day. This year they will have an amazing venue, like really cyber funkish great venue. Uh, and, uh, they will also have a lot of special guests. Like, they just announced Odo coming to BTCPay server day and there will be more. So, yeah, it will be like full week packed of events, but it's not gonna be as stressful as this, uh, like, you know, large conferences with plus 10, 000 people, you know, when you basically need to run in order to, uh, you know, to, to get, uh, to meet everyone.

27:49 In Riga, what's the good thing, because of the size that we try to keep, You know, you get to talk with everyone during the, the, these two days or during the week, you will be able to interact with most of the people in the space. And the good thing that I love that our speakers, um, I don't know, maybe because of multi county measure or because of Riga. They're so humble that basically you can just, you don't need to go to, uh, you know, to some close parties and events to meet with these people. They are there. They're walking, uh, during the Honey Badger at the venue. You can talk with anyone and, uh, you know.

28:30 You can interact with people. As you said, you know, people who you follow on Twitter, who you only know by Twitter, you can meet them in real life, you can talk with them, understand that they're very humble, nice people, and they will spend, give you 5 minutes or 10 minutes or even more of their time, particularly for you, will talk to you, will listen to you, and I think these are the best conversations out there. Absolutely. And, and, uh, speaking of BTC pay server, like the, the, the full story of the basement bar includes a story about BTC pay server and making sure that the, like providing all these, uh, point of sale terminals and for, for all the, the, the, um, fast food things outside of the venue as well, so that everyone surrounding the, the conference, every side event and everything could accept Bitcoin.

29:20 Uh, so, so it's. Noob day, which is fantastic for, for people who are new to this. It's a day of lectures and, and it's very friendly and very like, uh, inviting to noobs. And, and then there's, then there's our little infinity day party at the basement bar where you can pay BTC pay server stuff. And then there's the two days of Nostriga and then the conference and then BTC pay server day. Right. and BTC pay server, by the way, was also the payment provider for Bitcoin Atlantis, which is now announced that it will be every fourth year, which is also, uh, As you know, an event that is very close to my heart, and they processed, what was it like, they had an official figure, 2.

30:03 16 Bitcoin, I believe, for selling hamburgers and coffee and stuff over the Lightning Network, without any hassle whatsoever with any payment. It's just, the future is already here, you can just, Either you choose to live in it or not, like that, that's, that's the gist of it. Yeah, it's amazing. The setup that we did, actually, again, Honey Badger was the first, uh, first conference that, uh, did that setup last year. So we were, again, the sandbox for this, and then all others followed, uh, basically Madeira did this, and then, as far as I know, Bitcoin Hong Kong did this. So now more and more conferences are, like, jumping on the train and, you know, Accepting, uh, you know, providing infrastructure using BTCPayServer, we're very much, you know, happy to do that.

30:56 We're always very supportive of BTCPayServer guys, and they also help us as well. Amazing crew, amazing people, you know, amazing project. No, it's fantastic. So remember to brush your damn teeth and use code FREEDOM for your 10 percent off your ticket to Regang. Get your ass over there and celebrate Infinity Day with us and, uh, and the book launch. It's going to be amazing, definitely. Every honey badger is better than the previous one, but every honey badger is also different. So, it's going to be cool. Absolutely.

33:09 Max, like the other, the other thing you're involved with these days, I remember the announcements for the launch of DebiFi at HoneyBadger, uh, and, uh, well, can you tell us what is DebiFi and, uh, what, what DebiFi is doing? Yeah, so the announcement was actually, um, as usual with technical development, we did an announcement expecting that we were going to launch soon, but eventually we just kept building, building, building, and it took us a while. Uh, finally, we're live, up and running since, uh, this March. So, um, basically the idea of DeFi is to bridge, um, institutional lenders or institution who has liquidity, whether it's fiat or stablecoin with bitcoiners across the world, whether, whether these are like private individuals or companies that have a bitcoin on the balance sheet.

34:06 And, um, we want to, we're kind of We built an institutional peer to peer, where you can basically go online as a Bitcoiner. if you don't want to sell your Bitcoin, which you should be, you shouldn't be doing, you know, never selling, only, uh, but still, you want to, you want to have certain utility for your Bitcoin. And what's the way of doing this? Using Bitcoin as collateral, borrowing against that. So we provide a platform or like lending aggregator where you can go online, you can input your, um, your criteria for a loan.

34:49 And then we'll give you a certain list of offers from different lenders. That will match your criteria and you can choose and then you proceed to the contract creation stage where you will create a contract and the good thing is that your collateral will be stored in multisig and the multisig will be protected with four keys. You will have one of the keys as lender will have one of the keys. Debitfi as a platform will have one of the keys. And then there's a fourth key holder, uh, authorized key holder, which, uh, which holds the backup key. So the Konsensus work with three of the four, so there's no opportunity for us to re opticate that.

35:32 Uh, it's non custodial, it's safe, and it has all the flexibility because you can do a counter offer to the lender, you can say, okay, I, I kind of don't like the rate that you're providing me. Maybe we can agree on something so you can negotiate with us. It's not like cutting the stone, you know, it's, it's more like open system in that way. And yeah, we see a huge demand from the lender side. There's a lot of banks, a lot of trade fine companies that are actually looking into it as we speak. And, uh, obviously there's a huge amount from Bitcorners because again, as Bitcoin price will go up and up and up, there's less incentives for you to sell.

36:12 But well, you need to live somehow, you know, if you need to spend some fiat and what, what is the way of spending fiat without selling your Bitcoin? Obviously, borrowing gets your Bitcoin because again, Bitcoin is like super collateral. It's the best collateral out there and, um, and it's, it's just going to go up in value and it's going to be more and more. More and more, it's going to become more and more valuable, not only in terms of price, but also in terms of, you know, underlying assets for multiple financial activities that are happening in the space. This is interesting because, uh, like, In, uh, in a fully hyperized world, I see very little use for, uh, a financial sector to be a thing at all.

37:01 Really? When, when a company can just be a, a, a couple of people on pick your social platform, you know? Uh, so, so, so do you see this, uh, deify and similar things are Bitcoin as collateral, as a bridge between the fiat world and, uh, the hyperized world. Uh, what part does that play in the. hyperbitcoinization, and that's my like, uh That's my strong opinion without, uh, having most of traditional financial institution being on Bitcoin standard, you know, you cannot, uh, because eventually what we want to achieve, we want to Uh, we don't want to have banks, obviously, but, uh, you know, let's, let's, let's, let's be logical, there will be banks, they will just become an infrastructure provider, you know, they're not going to be, they might not have a power that they have at the moment, in a bright Bitcoin future, but they will just, they will still provide infrastructure.

38:01 For FinTech companies, for individuals, whatever. So eventually our idea with Edify is that we want to make it happen. We want to make it true that whatever you are based in the world, you can go to your bank or you can speak to your bank and you can say, okay, I have Bitcoin as a collateral and I want to borrow against that. I want to buy a real estate or I want to pay for. Whatever I want to pay, will you provide me a loan? And bank will say, yes, of course we can provide you a loan. It's not going to be reopticated. It's going to be a collaborative custody. It's going to be like secured and you will be sleeping well because you will know that, uh, the only reason, uh, why we can take off.

38:45 Take that collateral is if you will not repay your loan, which is, which is pretty much logical. That's how the economical incentives work, you know, in a society. It's how loans are supposed to yeah, yeah. And eventually, how do you hook up the banks on the Bitcoin standard, uh, through the lending? Because lending is the initial use case of the banking system. They started back in 14th century because of the, the modern banking system was started in 14th century in Italy, because, because of the lending activities, they had to lend money to, uh, to those, uh, you know, to, to the, to the businessmen, local, like that age businessmen to go abroad to buy some goods to be back, you know, to sell those goods.

39:36 But it was mostly about lending. And how do you hook up the banks? You do the lending, because in case of Bitcoin as a collateral, banks are pretty much on the safe side, because Bitcoin is extremely liquid asset, extremely liquid collateral, and if your borrower fails to repay the loan on Sunday, You don't need to wait until Monday, or if the collateral is real estate, you don't need to wait for like years and years to sell it off. With Bitcoin, you can just take that collateral and liquidate it almost instantly, because markets are working 24 7, you know? And our initial idea is that we believe that reaching hyperbitcoinization can be only achieved if we will All the trade fi companies, trade fi institutions, banks, and on the Bitcoin standard.

40:28 And with lending, what we can achieve as well is that we can put them on a non custodial Bitcoin standard. Because trading is mostly, if we talk about trading, then In most use cases, you know, trading is still done custodial because traders, they require high frequency trading, speed of execution, you know, they, they, they require this. Unfortunately, at the moment, it's, it's almost unachievable with, with the Bitcoin on chain, you know, it's very, it's pretty much slow for trading. But with lending, it's a different story. So with lending, Uh, number one thing that you require is the security and transparency, and that's, it's fully achievable with Bitcoin. And number two thing, two thing that you require is, uh, liquidity of the asset.

41:14 And Bitcoin is an underlying asset. I think it's the most liquid asset in the world. yeah, back to the 14th century, I mean, the first banker is just a guy holding other people's gold in his basement, right? And the problems with banking. The problems with banking start when that guy figures out that he can give out more receipts for gold than he actually has gold in his vaults, which is not possible with Bitcoin and DebitFi because everyone can verify everything. Yes, but it's also, once again, it was, I think it started, uh, it started in Italy and the, and the use case, the main, the primary use case was that those, uh, you know, people from Venice or Florence, they, they traveled across the, like, to different countries, to remote countries.

42:04 And they need to have, like, budget or cash flow for buying goods there and bringing them back. And for that, they use a lending. You know, they use a I nothing wrong with lending money. It's perfectly fine. It's just that it's the, the, the, The pricing of loans is completely fucked since we have banks, and more importantly, central banks, which essentially stop the banks from failing when they should, whenever there's a bank run, there shouldn't be a bigger bank bailing out the smaller one. That's where all the problems with fiat start, right? So, uh, So yeah, I see this as a bridge, just as all energy companies in the future will also be Bitcoin mining companies, I think all banks will sooner or later have to be, or have to start competing with stuff like DeFi, just ahead of the curve, I guess, uh, with DeFi.

42:57 think, uh, well, we're not competing with them. We're actually providing them with infrastructure. So we're kind of providing them with a complementary feature. They don't need to build a multisig solution for themselves. They can just plug and play. They can onboard to DebiFi and they can start offloading liquidity. Using Bitcoin as a collateral. And another thing, important thing, why we discussed Switzerland before, but in Switzerland, actually, there's already a lot of banks where you can hold, in a bank, you can hold fiat and Bitcoin, for example. Or there are banks that allows you to borrow against your Bitcoin. The banks, you know, I mean, think about it. And, um, I think it's just the next step.

43:40 And, uh, as we want to provide them with the proper infrastructure, with the multisigs. So they don't need to build, uh, the multistakes by themselves, and they can do the things that they are good at, meaning providing the liquidity, you know, and care about, you know, managing these loans. We'll provide them with all the necessary tools, and they can do that easily. So, to What, what kind of, uh, is Debify only for institutions or, or like, uh, individual plebs or like, how does, how does this work? What's sort of the, the, the target here? So the lenders are only institutions, so lenders are only institutions, but borrowers can be anyone.

44:22 It could be a company, uh, we, we've actually, that's, that's not a big secret, but one of our first customers was a Bitcoin place, a Bitcoin school from Madeira. So we help them to, to borrow against one of the lenders in our platform, which is, which I'm very proud of. Uh, so it could be a company or it could be a private individual, a plat, uh, so you can go online and, uh, of course, you need to understand that, uh, most probably, uh, it will be required for you to go through KYC with the lender because again, they, they, they have rules. Right.

45:02 Um, but, uh, yeah, then again, uh, you'll, you'll have an opportunity not to sell your Bitcoin. Right. And, uh, yeah, it's always a trade off. Always do your own research, as I say, and everyone says in space, actually. But, uh, yeah, it can be used by private individuals as well. So, so just, I guess, um, a part of, because there have been other, uh, kind of people in the space that have done this, companies in the space that have done this sort of lending thing, but what's the, what's the, I guess the rationale of Lending versus selling because I guess the idea is, uh, maybe this is, this is kind of a harder idea to think about.

45:46 But if you, if you sell Bitcoin at a certain amount, uh, most places you have to pay taxes as long as you go through the, uh, the full system, right? But then, but then there's nothing to pay back and there's no, there's no price action that could, uh, Be because a massive, a massive drop and someone getting liquidated is, is what you hear about from, I mean the Celsius and Nexos of the, the world Right. And so what it seems like there's, there's risk no matter what you do, you either, you either lose some of the the fiat gains risk. Yeah. The issue with Celsius and all others are that they're custodial, first of all, so meaning you don't hold your keys.

46:32 These are not your bitcoins anymore, so that's it. Which actually was proven by BlockFi, Celsius, FTX, you know, the custody issue. So DebitFi is non custodial. Meaning that, uh, even if we go down for whatever reason, we still, you can still access your collateral, uh, you know, we, it is protected by, and you have the majority of the keys together with all the, all of those parties. And we have a piece of software, which we call doomsday software. DebitFi is down for whatever reason, you still have opportunity to unlock the collateral and to move it. You know, collateral doesn't go down with us because we're just.

47:15 Like, frontend, with just interface for you to access. And, uh, I think that was the main, one of the main issues. And another issue was that, uh, yield generation. You know, people wanted to generate yield on top of your bitcoin, which is kind of like Well, it's retarded, you know, if, if you, if you like, if you want to risk your Bitcoin for 3%, 4%, 5%, I don't know, I don't know what, what, what is the sizable amount of interest you can get for your Bitcoin that it's, that are worth of the risk, honestly, for me. literally retarded because what you're doing is retarding your returns.

47:55 Like Yeah, so, so basically. Bitcoin itself is a yield generation, a generational asset, you know, I mean, generating asset, yield generation asset, so, um, it already generates yield, if you see how fiat devaluates, if you see how everything becomes more and more expensive. Which is a like a direct source of fiat devaluation and money printing. So, um, again, I have the best advice, I think, uh, for how to generate yield with Bitcoin. You buy Bitcoin, you buy a hardware wallet, you put your Bitcoin in a hardware wallet, you forget about it for years, your yield is generated.

48:37 You know, four or three years depends on which part of the cycle we are. So, um, I think, yeah, that people become greedy. People didn't think about the custody and, um, eventually that's what's, uh, that's what's different about DebitFi, you know, non custodial setup, made only for borrowing. Again, as you mentioned, in, in, in most of the countries, borrowing against your Bitcoin is a non taxable event. And, um, in case of the selling Bitcoin, there is one particular thing that you didn't mention. There is a certain, and I would say very high cost of opportunity. Because, imagine you sold your one Bitcoin at the price of 60, 000.

49:22 Uh, or you, and again, there's no price action, nothing. Or you borrowed against your Bitcoin at the price of 60, 000. Uh, and then Bitcoin just goes up to 120, 000 and you still have that one Bitcoin. So, you know, it's different. Of course you need to pay an interest. Of course, with one Bitcoin, you won't be able to borrow all 60, 000 because there's a certain LTV ratio. You probably will be able to borrow like 70 percent or 50 percent out of that, but still, you know, you keep the assets and if you repay the loan in one year or in two years, Or in three, four, five, you will get your Bitcoin back and the price of Bitcoin at that point of time will be with you, basically, you're not going to miss opportunity.

50:14 So I think that, there's, there will be more and more companies, more and more individuals looking to the borrowing side. If, if the borrowing is done properly, if we're talking only about borrowing, because Bitcoin is only about borrowing against that. Your generation on top of Bitcoin is just, again, I mentioned this. I'm gonna, I'm gonna repeat myself, but it's just retarded, ma. Massively retarded, you know, in my opinion. Yeah. So I guess, I guess. The, the thing here for the institutions, and I, I assume also for Deify somehow, is that, is that the borrowers get fiat for putting up Bitcoin and then it's up to them to pay back the fiat.

50:59 Otherwise, eventually they'll get liquidated and the lender gets the collateral. So it's like, it, it's, it's a market, you know, it's a, it's your, like, uh, it's economical relationship between you and a certain institution. Nothing. It's, it's just the same. You have a. Contractual, uh, responsibilities in agreement, you need to repay that. If you don't repay, sorry, we're gonna liquidate you, right? If you repay, fine, you can take, uh, your Bitcoin back from collateral. It works. As it is, you know, you always have two sides of the equation, lender and borrower, and you always try to balance and protect both of them. Is and is, is the, the liquidation threshold set per loan or is that, is there kind of a standard amount or, or what?

51:44 No, it's usually depends on LTV ratio is set per loan, so it depends on that. So basically, and also at which time you're taking the loan. So usually when you take the loan, we show you the price at which point your collateral will be liquidated. So you are aware. And also, we send, uh, we send you four notifications before we actually liquidate you. So, and you have, like, a variety of opportunities to avoid liquidation, you can add more to collateral, you can do the partial repayment, or you can do early repayment. So, but it's also about risk management, you know, you never, uh, if you can, uh, never borrow against your full stack, you know, always keep some Bitcoin out of that.

52:31 even if eventually you will get less money, but you will have more flexibility in that sense that if the price of Bitcoin will go down, you will be able to add more to collateral and not lose your Bitcoin. You know, that's, that's again, that's, that's your own risk management, and, uh, there's a good, Saying that, you know, Bitcoin is like being your own bank, which is true, but nobody told you that being your own bank is easy, you know, it's very hard. As a former banker, I can tell you, running a bank is fucking complicated, you know, so you need to learn how to do self custody, how to do risk management, how to do research, R& D, you know, research and development, how to do this multiple things.

53:19 But eventually, the price of that is your freedom, so think about it, you know. Yeah. I guess we shouldn't advise people to be their own dentist, Luke. Should we? Yeah, that's, that's probably the bad advice, you know, they're like, I'm not, I'm not going into medicine or nutrition or anything like that, because usually it's end up pretty bad. Yeah. So, so, uh, a question about like, um, uh, Michael Saylor and the micro strategies strategy of just borrowing as much as they possibly can and buying Bitcoin for it all. It was the.

53:59 Uh, if I know my history right, and I think I do, it was the winning strategy for what was subsequently the richest man in Germany who did that during the fall of the Weimar Republic. He just borrowed against the falling, like, got rid of all his, uh, whatever that kind of, that iteration of the mark was called. But what do you say to that? Is that advisable for the common pleb to just acquire as much Bitcoin as you can, borrow as much as you can, What do you think? it's one of the strategies, you know, I think it's, it's, it's rational and I think, uh, well, you, everyone can be a sailor now, you know, when you have these tools, uh, it's not only about DebitFi, HODLHODL also has an opportunity to, to, to borrow against your Bitcoin, and if your end goal is, uh, buy more Bitcoin, you can just borrow stable coins, uh, which, for example, HODLHODL offers, but just for a small amount, you know, HODLHODL is more about micro lending.

54:57 And Abify just allows you to borrow in larger quantities, you know, larger volumes, but also stablecoins, which could be way more simpler than borrowing fiat. um, I say, I'm not going to advise you on this, you know, everyone does, but everyone does, uh, how he thinks or she thinks, uh, is, uh, is, is, is more, uh, appropriate for, for the, for their use case. But while we saw that, that's kind of a winning strategy, uh, alongside with, you know, DCA and doing the regular buys. And, uh, I think it's only rational to research that.

55:41 Uh, but, but then again, it's, it's a question. What's, what's the end game for you? Like, some people, like, they're happy just with the amount of Bitcoin that they have, and they don't want to risk, they don't want to borrow, they don't want to, like, trade, they don't want to do anything. They just want to hold it in cold storage, and it's fine, you know. Some people are more, uh, you know, maybe sophisticated, or maybe they're a bit more crazy. They borrow against their Bitcoin, they buy more Bitcoin. Then they borrow against that bitcoin, they buy more bitcoin. Like, they do that. There's like different types of people who do different things and, uh, of course we want to accommodate everyone, but eventually we have a lot of people in the space who will never use our services, and that's fine.

56:32 So, what are the main differences between hodl hodl and similar things such as peach or bisque? Like, well, how does hodl hodl differ from that? Well, if we're talking about the variety of tools available on HODLHODL, HODLHODL is not only about buying and selling, it's also about borrowing and lending, so you can also borrow and lend on HODLHODL, right? Uh, these are the things that not, uh, doesn't exist in competing platforms. Another thing is that we are web based, meaning you don't need to download a certain software, you don't need to run it on your mobile, or you don't need to run it on your machine.

57:14 You can just access the web based version and use it. Uh, I think ease of use is another thing. And we also use 2 out of 3 multisig, which is not used by BISC as far as I know, and not used by Peach. But, uh, like, these are all great platforms, complement each other, depends on the market where you are, depends on your needs, depends on, again, size that you want to obtain, You can use one or another or a third one. So I would say, they all differ, you know, like Beach is mobile only, Bisk is software only, Foddle Foddle is like web based.

57:58 So that's, that's, these are distinguished, you know, you don't need to run anything. Uh, the technical setup is a bit different, again. Uh, you don't need, uh, we have 2 out of 3, Pitch has 2 out of 2, and BISC has 2 out of 2. Markets are a bit different, you know, some of the countries serve, serve by BISC, uh, some of the countries serve by HODL, HODL, some of the countries serve by Pitch. So there's, there's like a different, uh, different things, but overall, of course, it's about peer to peer, it's just different tools. Yeah. So peer to peer and as KYC free as it can be, I guess.

58:39 Yeah, but we, we, uh, there's another difference, we don't enforce. Uh, having or not having KYC. We are very much for free market and we believe that market will decide. We have traders on the platform that do KYC. Large traders, you know, licensed traders. Uh, and that's completely their like, we just provide tools, we don't engage in these things, you know, we just provide tools. And if people are happy with, uh, giving their information, we're not gonna be a watchdog for that, you know, we're not gonna ban people who collecting KYC if they're supposed to do that.

59:21 Like in some regions, I can tell you from, from experience, are actually collecting KYC, light KYC on other people. Why? Because There's a huge level of scam happening, and they need to protect themselves like that. It's not that they are enforced by the government to collect the data. It's just, you know, markets decided eventually, did the research, and decided that, you know, having certain level of data about your counterparty is the best thing out there. So, like, we, like HODL, HODL always was about free market, and let the free market decide. You know, we're not going to enforce certain level of rules.

1:00:04 We might enforce some rules if we want, if we think that there's a threat for us, or we want to protect us. So, for example, we don't surf U. S. market. Because, obviously, there's a reason for that. What's the point? You know, we don't have any activity there. Uh, and we believe it's a huge risk for, uh, for pla peer-to-peer platforms, uh, to, to serve certain markets. We just don't do that. That's it. yeah. And, uh, there, I mean, there's always a trade off and privacy is like, you can, it comes in layers, right? And whenever you, whenever you receive money into your bank account, you have like, you have to give someone the information about your bank account.

1:00:52 So, so the guy giving you, buying the Bitcoins from you, We'll know your bank account. And similarly, if you use Bitcoin and you haven't coin joined them or done anything privacy wise with them, people can see where they came from and how much is left on that. So there's always, there's always something, right? And it's up to each and every one of us to take care when doing these things and doing our own research and doing the things properly, right? But then again, there's no way out of totalitarianism other than using the tools that are available to get out of totalitarianism. There's no choice. It's, we need Do your, do your research, but do it well.

1:01:36 Yeah. There, there's a lot of tools available online. You know, it's, uh, the, the thing that I don't understand, something doesn't work anymore. It's like 21st century. You can understand basically everything. You know, there's, there's a tons of information available online, uh, starting from, you know, like, uh, tutorials, guides, and this can be audio, this could be readable, this could be video, so you can learn. Almost everything, you know, especially learn almost everything about Bitcoin, you know, best practices out there, just free, available, free of charge, you know, you go, you learn, you spend a certain amount of time, of course, but eventually it always pays off.

1:02:22 With Bitcoin, it always pays off. Yeah. And with, with that, I mean, there's a lot of misinformation. I think the, the, the problem people have is to navigate what's, what's misinformation and what's not, but there's an easy rule of thumb to follow. If it's Bitcoin only, it has a much, much, much, much, much greater likelihood of not being a scam. That's, that's just, if you follow that simple rule of thumb, you won't get fucked over. Most of the time. Like, so, if it has anything else, if it has any shitcoin attached to it, and if it's KYC'd, most of the time, like, avoid these things. Go Bitcoin only and go hardcore.

1:03:03 That's, that's the thing. I mean, It's not at least Bitcoin first, uh, that's, yeah, That's, uh, it's good. Yeah. I mean, elephant in the room is, is that Debify and HODLHODL do support other things, right? But, but you guys are no, but, but, but as Max said, that's a free market, right? You should be given the choice, Yeah, what do but I was, I was, I was not talking about the platforms, but about the education about the No, no, no. I mean, uh, what, what we support. We support, you know, if you go on DeFi, you can borrow with fiat or you can borrow with stablecoins, but we do provide only infrastructure for Bitcoin.

1:03:44 So we are a Bitcoin only company in that sense. We're not building infrastructure for Ethereum, whatever. And, uh, what you can borrow against Bitcoin, uh, instead of fiat or stablecoins. Obviously, you won't borrow against Bitcoin, Bitcoin, because it's like useless, right? So, uh, it's, it's, it's still Bitcoin only, same way with Fuddle Fuddle, you know? Uh, the infrastructure is only about Bitcoin, you know? You can buy and sell Bitcoin, you can lend and borrow. And when you're buying and selling, of course, you can use different, uh, type of shit coins. You can use fiat, but it's just, uh, you know, it's, it's again, it's, it's a market out there. It's, it's there, you know, nobody exchanging, uh, Bitcoin against like Bitcoin.

1:04:30 Obviously there are some use cases, you know, uh, we saw that people were like trading Bitcoin for Bitcoin on top of lightning on HODLHODL, which is a legit use case, of course, but still, you know, they're, they're way more convenient way how to do that. So, basically, peer to peer is made for, um, I would say peer to peer and the idea behind HODLHODL, specifically for HODLHODL was that we were building this stuff and that stuff was built specifically for emerging markets. You know, markets that doesn't have an infrastructure. doesn't have the privilege having Coinbase or Kraken or, uh, big exchanges where you can easily go and buy with, like, having, like, a couple of clicks.

1:05:19 And, uh, these are peer to peer markets. Like, uh, so, so, yeah, why not? Uh, You exchange fiat, fiat, uh, fiat, shitcoin, what's, what's basically the difference, you know, but there are use cases, you know, you cannot go to the grocery store, unfortunately, yet, uh, in most of the use cases and spend bitcoin, and in fact, I would say I'm kind of, I don't like the vibe of spending Bitcoin at all, you know, I don't understand why everyone is hyping around, you know, you can go, you can go and spend your Bitcoin with this and that, I'm kind of, okay, spending a little bit, you know, buying a coffee sometimes, it's fine, but just spending, I'm not a big fan of that.

1:06:09 To be honest, and, uh, it's like, yeah, it gives you a wipe, obviously you support the, uh, the adoption and there's a lot of, uh, of course, great things, maybe I'm, I'm one and only like that, but, uh, some kind of don't like spending my bitcoin. Yeah, uh, we're, we're making the case in the book for store of value being, uh, uh, Um, uh, uh, misguided term, and that it's only a medium of exchange. It's just that it's a medium of exchange over time and space, and saving is just a medium of exchange over time. So what you're doing is you are trading Bitcoin, but with yourself.

1:06:51 obviously we don't have anything to spend as well because we lost everything in voting accidents. So, you know, it's like, we're just, we're just theoretically, uh, talking about that. And now with Boeing, with Boeing, the Boeing thing going on, we all lost them in a, in an airplane crash, right? Sure. Why not? Max, it's been a great pleasure having you on the Freedom Footprint show. I mean, go over to BalticHoneyBadger. com is the address, I believe. Uh, and get your tickets now, use the code FREEDOM for 10 percent off, go to HodlHodl and, uh, do stuff, uh, go to Debify and do stuff, uh, and anywhere else you'd like to, uh, uh, any other direction you would like to point our listeners in Well, I think that, honestly, the best direction is like, just, you know, learn, learn about Bitcoin, orange pill yourself.

1:07:52 There's nobody who can orange pill you. Uh, but anyway, like, learn new things, um, but still be very conservative with, uh, with, with money because, you know, money is about, sometimes it's being about conservative, and this, that's the case that I like about Bitcoin in general, that it's very conservative, innovative, yet very conservative. So, yeah, learn about Bitcoin, read books, come to Baltic Honey Badger, educate yourself. That's the best investment you can actually do in the Bitcoin space. You know, being, you know, having, having a wide range of friends in Bitcoin, meeting new people, going to the conference, reading the books, you know, learning, and, uh, eventually you will get it.

1:08:42 If you didn't yet. you get properly orange pilled. Yeah, hopefully. Yeah, looking forward to seeing you again, man, and it's just, it's like less than two months left, so, Yeah, the best, All the best. Thank you very much, guys. Bye bye. Thanks a lot, Max. This has been the Freedom Footprint Show. Thanks for listening.