Why Every Bitcoiner Needs Two Stacks | Matouš Ledvina | BIS #226

0:00 Matusz, welcome to the Bitcoin Infinity Show. Nice to have you here. Nice to be here, Knut. I very much appreciate it. Yeah, since you haven't been on the show before, I think giving our listeners a little TLDR on who you are and what you're doing is a good place to start. So why don't you start by introducing yourself? sure absolutely so i'm currently i i'm working in for invity part of the satoshi labs holding i work in in product marketing my background is in big tech i worked for google for like seven eight years which was good at the time but it was enough for me and yeah and eventually i i jumped the ship and i figured like you know let's do something exciting let's do let's do something on building the financial tech of the future.

0:56 Yeah, and you're from the Czech Republic, I guess? Absolutely, yeah, from Prague. Yeah, cool. And how was working for Google? Where did you work from Google? Did you work from Prague? Yeah, I was in the Czech branch in the Prague office, which is a fairly small one. It was a great chapter of my life at the time. It was very exciting. It was a great opportunity to learn a lot of things. But, you know, as the company grew and all the bureaucracy and all the processes, I eventually felt like, OK, this is no longer for me. And it felt like working for a state at one point. So I figured, you know, let's do some freedom tech for a change.

1:39 Yeah, just to double click on that a bit more, was there a DEI creep in Google in the Czech Republic? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It was still like when it was much more in fashion until it was like abolished by the current US administration. But yeah, like all the DEI and all the wokeness was very palpable there, yeah. Did you have to attend like special diversity training courses and stuff like that? Yeah, funnily enough, funnily enough, we had like 10 or 11 trainings that we had to do every year. some of them were like meaningful on data sharing and whatnot but actually there was like ethics and compliance and code of conduct and and all these things yeah so so the the don't be evil slogan slowly morphed into be selectively more or less evil to certain groups yeah i don't want to like trash on it too much because as i said it was a great opportunity for my life at the time and i'm super grateful for it but yeah as i said eventually it just like grew over my head and i realized it's it's no longer for me yeah yeah no i'm i'm interested i've heard the story before from other former former google google employees but uh but anyway that's that's not the main reason you're here and that's not what we're going to talk about today today we're going to talk about invity mainly which is one of i believe four companies under the satoshi labs umbrella

3:15 so there's Trezor and there's what's it called the Tropico Tropics Square and Invity and also Vexel and I find Vexel and Invity to be a nice pairing we have the KYC Bitcoin exchange and the non-KYC well it's not really an exchange at all is it? It's a tool for finding other Bitcoiners. Yeah correct i like if i were to speak on behalf of the whole satoshi labs umbrella and because it's a it's a holding per se and it's just basically it still like stands on the all the original values of its founders but let's say that there are trenches for for various use cases to to to suit suit every need of a of a various bitcoiners so there is this like a non-kyc platform that for anonymous Bitcoin, obviously for peer to peer exchange, which is Vexel.

4:16 There is Invity, which is the fully regulated Mika license path, which is like a custodial solution, not incentivizing people to hold Bitcoin on the on the platform, obviously long term at all. There is Trezor, obviously the ultimate self custody of a hardware wallet and the Tropic Square, which is just basically providing the tech for the open source chip powering the recent models of the of the treasure yeah and and what's the motive behind invity like why why was that started and uh what's the story behind it yeah so it was it was originally just let's say comparator of for buy and sell crypto in general uh and it was uh like now that that part is fully integrated in the treasure suit. But then like eventually the founders felt like, okay, let's do something like bigger, better with it. Let's make it Bitcoin only let's not make it a shitcoin casino. And it like branched to its own company. And if we if if if we were to go this this this full on regulated way to get the mica, it was just it just needed to be standalone company. That's why the comparator is no longer there. It's fully integrated into into the suit, as I said.

5:33 And well, the reason for Inviti's existence within the umbrella is, as I said, to suit various needs because I'm like all for anonymous tech. I'm a huge proponent of Vexel. I love the platform. I saw it from its very birth. But at certain point, if you sort of need to onboard the next 10x generation of Bitcoiners, It's kind of tricky to do it with this, you know, download this app, put your phone number there, write some ad or write some offers in there or text to some other offers, meet anonymously and write these 12 words, secret phrases.

6:16 So as a first step for a Bitcoiner, it's a huge chunk of a learning curve. so that's why we are trying to build the invity with the utmost convenience to to be it as a as a first step of anyone coming across bitcoin hopefully learning more along the way learning the the beauty and power of self-custody and eventually of course learning the the beauty and huge benefits of anonymous bitcoin as well yeah the the way i see it there's like uh If you imagine a line between total cypherpunk values and mass adoption, every company in Bitcoin will have to figure out where to put themselves on this line and what to focus on.

7:04 There's always a trade-off. Exactly. I see it very much on my surrounding, on my friends, because surprisingly, I still have non-Bitcoiner friends. or you know maybe extended family because eventually like there is this huge fiat shit storm coming on us that is brewing hotter and hotter every day every year and eventually i strongly believe that eventually like everyone will need or should have some sort of exposure to bitcoin just to to prosper long term so yeah as i said like that there has to be some level of convenience. And as you said, it's a scale. I'm very much of a proponent of the original of the original cypherpunk vision. I love it. That's what got me into this ecosystem.

7:52 I still fully stand behind it. But yeah, as I said, it's just like, it cannot be complicated in the first step for anyone who just tries to dip their toes into this Bitcoin thing. no and there's there even if you dip your toe and your entire legs at some point you can you can still have one foot in each world so to speak you don't you can always do do all the things i guess yeah exactly so so i would actually say that it's a good uh good personal and financial hygiene to actually focus on both of these elements because i guess we can talk about it more in detail. But I would say that like KYC Bitcoin and non Bitcoin they both have their own use cases They both have certain benefits and they both have certain disadvantages And I guess it for someone planning long term I would say that it like it sort of cunning, I would say to just have, you know, exposure to both of these piles to have the to have the pile with the receipt and to have the pile that no one should know about, which is no one's business, basically.

9:05 Yeah, this is the only diversification you need, basically. I suppose. I'd say the tip I give to everyone, every semi-noob I meet is whatever you do, don't mix the two stacks. Keep them separated. Exactly. Because otherwise you lose all the benefits of your non-KYC stack. Exactly. That's why I love Trezor because Trezor actually has a lot of these functions natively. You can have separated accounts. There is excellent UTXO management. You are never left with unspent Bitcoin on a doxxed address, for example.

9:49 So yeah, I would agree Trezor is the perfect way to handle that. So philosophically, would you say that Bitcoin is for everyone or that Bitcoin is for anyone? How would you distinguish between those two? For everyone would be that everyone could own Bitcoin or everyone could, I shouldn't say own because it's debatable if you can even own them at all, but everyone can use Bitcoin or anyone can use Bitcoin. I see your point. So on that note, I would definitely say that Bitcoin is for everyone. If it is for anyone, well, I would love it to be so.

10:32 But then again, like people have diverse skills and diverse opinions. So like anyone should come across it at one point, make their opinion about it. And then, you know, it's like, we're all grownups here. Hopefully. Yeah. Yeah, I personally like the phrase Bitcoin is for anyone better because it's really only like proper Bitcoin use is for anyone rather than everyone because it's for anyone willing to do their homework to actually take control of their own keys. Yes, exactly. And that is actually that is exactly what I'm telling my extended social circle when because at some point it for normal people, it gets very annoying to be friends with a bitcoiner because you just cannot shut up about it.

11:27 So I usually just tell them, look, if you don't understand it, if you keep telling me that you don't understand it, just dedicate 60 minutes of your life to make the opinion. Just study it. I can even send you the videos that give you a perfect introduction. Give it 60 minutes. And after this one hour, you can make at least a slightly educated decision and realize if it is in fact for you or if it's not for you or at least if you're interested enough to study it further. so because like one hour that is what is that like one episode of net on netflix you know that's like it's a no-brainer for me yeah and i'd say if if you really want to understand it on on a sufficiently deep level to to actually know know what you're doing controlling your own keys for a medium intelligent human being do a hundred hours and if you do a hundred hours you'll have of course from the right sources and this is this is the tricky part i think because there's a lot of misinformation out there and semi semi bullshitty information like for instance when the bcash fork happened back in 2017 and roger veer bought bitcoin.com i think that bamboozled a lot of people so so it's it's quite hard to to find the correct information but if you manage to do that if you if you put in 100 hours you have a very good understanding and yeah i definitely

12:57 agree and i would also even say because look i'm a class of 2020 okay i when the covid started when the lockdown started i had a lot of time on my hands i started studying the economy macro economics more and i discovered this whole charade that we are playing for the past 50 60 years with the fiat money. And, and at the beginning, of course, I went through the usual and unfortunate shenanigans with all the shit coins. And I burned myself on it. And I think that was it was, I don't regret it. It was like such a great investment. I call it educational budget, because it brought me so far to actually realize what is not the way what is not the path. And just set me has set me straight on the right path. And now I have it. I know I tried it. I tried all this shit, all these DeFi protocols, everything. And now I know which way the path is not actually leading anywhere. And like a lot of people, when I'm explaining Bitcoin to a lot of people, they're asking me about this. And like, eventually, there are just certain mistakes that you have to make on your own to get the visceral experience from it.

14:06 Yeah, unfortunately, making the mistakes yourself is always the best teacher for anything in life, really. And for Bitcoin, it's especially true because it can be very costly to fuck up. And I believe this is part of why it's so wonderful. It's just because it is such a harsh mistress. That's required for you to actually achieve self-sovereignty and get all the magic powers that it comes with. That is not easy, but it's easier than you think, probably.

14:47 and once you get there it it truly gives you immense uh superpowers because now money is information and that changes basically everything and how you view society in general yeah and as the great classic said you know with great power comes great responsibility so eventually you just have to pull up the grown-up pants and and just be being your own bank you know it's not it's not you can just not you just cannot do it over breakfast basically no you you have to become spider-man at some point uh otherwise you don't get the superpowers exactly i have this sorry i have this funny anecdote because i have a this this great friend of mine i've known her for a long time she's like my sister and eventually i orange built her and i i and i taught her the treasure i i taught her how to set it up and i told told her like adamantly look and with this magical phrase you need to actually treat it as as that is your Bitcoin practically. You just never, you can never expose it anywhere. And she was like, yeah, yeah, I'll put it somewhere safe. And she, in the meantime, to bring it home, she like put it in her case, in her phone. And after like nine months, she's texting me and she's like, I lost the magic words. And I was like, oh my God, Jesus, what did I tell you? So I came over there. She still had the device, which is okay. So I brought her, we brought a new one. We set up a new wallet.

16:11 we sent over the funds and i i'm telling her and this time actually keep it safe and she was like yeah yeah okay i will and she she again wanted to place it in her phone again and that's where she found the original seat and you know she got the scare and and and she learned from it hopefully it did not really like a great flight did not really cause her anything but you know otherwise she would not know it yeah and the 12 words they not only practically but literally they are your Bitcoin, since they're actually just a way to express the private key. And the private key is the thing that actually moves the Satoshis on the ledger.

16:53 And the ledger is just a historical record of what happened to them. So I would say that this secret that you keep from people is literally the thing. That is the Satoshis. they're not really in any useful sense anywhere else. They're in your head. And that the most fascinating aspect of this I think because when you really unpack that it a whole new rabbit hole to fall into Precisely And that is actually how I even internally felt that I can be part of this KYC game of Inviti. Because in the end, for a lot of people, normal people, they don't just shove a ton of money in there. They just try to buy at least a little bit. And usually when the price appreciates a little bit, they start to be interested more.

17:47 And that's why I think like it's not even, it's not that much of a dirty word for me to keep just a little bit of the Bitcoin in a custodial solution, because that is how, because it's a path, you need to like, you need to settle yourself internally with it. So if people just get a little bit and they, for the time being, keep it with a custodian, and then they just see what the price is doing, what it's doing to their psychology. And for me, the rule of thumb is once you have 10 times the value of a cost of a hardware wallet, it makes sense to spend 10% of your holding to actually keep it safe. So yeah, that is actually the reason why I feel the onboarding through the KYC platform is probably the way to go for just a lot of the normal people.

18:37 Yeah, I agree. it's just sometimes these like custodial solutions they i i agree that for for some people maybe even most people it's even safer to have them on a in a custodial solution than than having them yourself but it's still an iou and not real bitcoin as long as they're with the custodian And that's why I think, for instance, these Bitcoin strategic reserve stocks, they're even worse because they're advertised as super secure and safe, but you're actually taking on a lot more risk than what's advertised. Because at the end of the day, you're trusting a company that is in turn trusting a bank and an auditor that is, you know, sent out by a government.

19:30 So they're trusting a government, an auditor and a bank, and also they're trusting a custodian. And the custodian in turn is trusting their employees, whoever actually holds the keys, to not just run off and buy an island somewhere. So there's all of these layers of risk that you can't really see and that are never advertised. So unless you actually take self-custody, you don't get the full suite of superpowers that Bitcoin actually comes with. Fortunately, you can withdraw. Absolutely. And, you know, don't even get me started on these treasury companies.

20:12 I genuinely cannot fathom how anyone would consider that a good investment. Like, okay, if you get just a little bit of Bitcoin at the beginning and you keep it at a custodial platform for the time being until you just like learn enough. Okay, I get it. I can understand it. But anyone investing their money, their life energy into a company who says, you give me money and I will buy more Bitcoin in my name. I genuinely don't understand how anyone sane would do that. And like, unfortunately, it was a bit of a Trojan horse, I would say, because at some point, Michael Saylor just became the absolute poster child for Bitcoin.

20:56 And as a businessman, he got a lot of the exposure. And you expressed this opinion in the past yourself. I think it's the utmost case of I like Bitcoin, buy my shitcoin. and it's just we've seen that 100 times before we've seen that with the altcoins with the defi with with all the with all the stupid shit that basically said bitcoin was great but i have something better and it never turned out to be better and so so treasury companies i i genuinely don't get it and besides i have like this uh i thought of this conspirational uh theory with because it it may not result in someone being on a private island actually that is That is, I would actually consider that undoable at this point that someone just runs off with the keys. But if you think about the centralization and of what strategy, for example, which is the biggest treasury company, the accumulation of bitcoins that they did, that's a total honeypot for the US government.

21:58 end, like, I would like to be wrong. But in the end, I think strategy is the best beginning of the strategic reserve of Bitcoin for the United States, because in the end, if they will come and seize it in one way or the other, I don't think they will just come with soldiers into the offices and take their Bitcoins. But let's imagine that that something happens with strategy. And there is just a minor hiccup, as we've experienced this summer, by the way, that with with their weird derivative products that started losing the pack. So something bad happens, there is a hiccup, and let's say there is a class action lawsuit on the company. For the time being, there will be some institution that will freeze those assets until the case is settled.

22:43 That will take for many years, as we've seen in the past with the fall of exchanges and platforms such as Celsius and whatnot. It will drag for many years. The Bitcoin in the custody will appreciate immensely throughout the years. And in the end, the settlement comes. The holders of these financial derivatives and stocks, they will be compensated in their fiat value at the time. And someone will grab the Bitcoin eventually. So I would like to be wrong. It's like just a conspirational theory that I came up with. But, you know, there are historical precedents for this. It's a 6102 attack. That's what it is. basically the the when they when the us government stole all all the gold from the gold holders yeah that's one of the that's one of the precedents exactly exactly yeah so in the end but like that is kind of a part of the vision of of invity as well because when when sailor started this whole shenanigans he started to get exposure on immense amounts of borrowed capital basically and he started shoving this borrowed capital into bitcoin bitcoin in his own name or his his legal entity name whatever so the the game for bitcoin for borrowed money was on from that on from that point and that is why like one of the products that we that we came up with with invity is is turbo buy which

24:14 is an instrument to in a very modest and fairly safe fashion get exposure to higher amounts of bitcoin in your name that you actually end up holding in the end while still using external capital that just allows you to accumulate more bitcoin in the long term. Yeah so tell me more about how that works as I understand it you're basically able to be sailor yourself because you're paying a certain amount of fiat and you get a higher amount at the current market price in of that same money in bitcoin yeah it's it's it's like an inverse sailor i would say because because as i said the treasury companies they say you people give me money and i will buy my buy more bitcoin in my name what we do with this particular product because we have we have like accumulation strategies we have normal dca with just like the plain old monthly weekly daily whatever that can be like auto sent to your Trezor device right away.

25:17 But this particular product is working in a way that each one of your DCA transactions is buying 60% higher exposure to Bitcoin. So it works in a way as if each of your DCA transactions was leveraged 1.6, which is fairly modest leverage still. It's not a coincidence why it's 60%. But yeah, you're just basically, if you're committed to be stacking for several years, you're, let's say you're a bit established Bitcoiner, you want to be accumulating Bitcoin, DCA is just way to go. So if you buy it within this strategy, you are getting this extra buying power for which you are buying a fee Funnily enough we cannot call it an interest because it not a it not technically like a loan product loan is a very regulated way You would have to go through the registers and it would be looking bad on your for example mortgage application and whatnot So you're just accumulating within the strategy.

26:14 You're paying a continuous fee of 9.9% and you're basically making an open-ended bet that Bitcoin in the future will appreciate more than 9.9. This extra Bitcoin that it bought. And from all the simulations we've ran and from the one year that the product has been running, it's been running like fairly great. And in the end, it's not a long-term solution per se. It's more like a midterm strategy. It's optimal to run it for like one to four years, depending on which timing in the cycle you begin. But you just keep stacking through the turbo buy. eventually when Bitcoin appreciates, you can sell off a small portion of this 60% extra that the strategy bought.

27:02 That way you settle the strategy. Small portion of it gets sold off to basically even out the fiat obligation that you're carrying with yourself. And you end up with extra more Bitcoin that you can just send to your cold storage and you have more Bitcoin than you otherwise would not have even compared to DCA. Okay, so Yeah, let me see if I understand this. If I buy 100 euros worth of Bitcoin with the TurboBuy, the fee is added. So 9.9% of that will go to the fee. meaning that it's actually 90 euros plus 60 percent so around 150 euros i guess or 145 that i that i actually get worth so it's worth of satoshis and am i am i then owed do i send do i then owe in invity the the additional 60 how does that work yeah so you start with your let's say 100 euros of weekly monthly whatever and when you when you begin you just buy 100 100 euros worth of bitcoin and the strategy buys 60 more euros over time as you are accumulating it you are accumulating bitcoin for your money your own money for your for your own 100 euros contribution and then at the same time you're accumulating money for this extra 60 euros. As you are accumulating this extra capital,

28:39 you pay this fee on it only as it's accumulated. So in the beginning, you're actually not paying 10 euros because you're paying just, let's say, if you have a monthly frequency, you are paying an interest because this 9.9 is per year. It's not for each transaction. So at the beginning, as you are accumulating this 60 euros extra, you are paying from each of the DCA transactions, you are paying 9.9 divided by 12, which is like 0.83 per month, or it's even less if it's weekly. And you're basically like accumulating this extra Bitcoin for this buying power.

29:23 And you pay continuous fee from that. but that fee is let's say it's it's it has like an inverse structure because if you take a loan traditional loan or if you take a mortgage you you borrow a lump sum of money and you pay the highest interest at the beginning but this is this has inverse structure so you're accumulating first like from very small amounts as i said from the 60 next month 60 next month 60 and you're paying the fee only on the on this 60% extra capital. So it's in the end, it's not really even 10% of of all this extra extra accumulated capital, because at the beginning, you pay just from the 60. After one year, you pay from 60 times 12. And it's not really even if you just take the lump sum of the money and apply this 10% from it, it in the end, it ends up being much less.

30:17 all right so so so how does that work for you guys like how do you make money off of this basically betting on bitcoin not going up in value or how does that work that's a very good question so like we are just you know at this moment like invity in in general is trying to innovate within the products we are trying to build i don't know neobank of sorts like bank and bitcoin does not really go together well, but we are trying to like build products, bank-like products for Bitcoiners because banks don't like Bitcoiners, you know, and no Bitcoiner should be a second-class citizen for financial services, basically. So where we get this funding is from the traditional investors world, basically. We have institutional investors that are willing to get 10% on their, basically borrowed, landed out capital.

31:18 And, you know, ThreatFi investors are fairly happy with getting 10%, and the 10% for them is very much of a low risk because it's collateralized by Bitcoin. Bitcoin is liquid 24-7, 365. So it's virtually zero risk for them. They are getting their 10%. They are fairly happy with that. And Bitcoiners are getting extra capital for 10% while Bitcoin's average growth rate eventually tends to be much higher than 10%. So it's an arbitrage of sorts and connecting the two sides through our app. And as I said, like in the end, those institutional investors, like they are the suckers. I would not tell it to their face on a meeting, but you know, they are borrowing money for around this 10%.

32:07 percent and they are either unwilling or unable to have exposure directly to Bitcoin themselves. They cannot hold it themselves or they are unable to withstand the volatility basically. So they're the ones betting on Bitcoin not increasing in value? Yeah, like, you know, I don't know, either big banks or big funds or whatever, they are not just ready to throw all of their money into bitcoin because for them it's a speculative asset you know so they're getting their 10 which is on a on a on a low risk money market that is that is actually very competitive because what is the alternative u.s bonds that are having their own problems at this moment so it's a competitive rate on the on the low risk financial instruments and as i said also great product for a bitcoiner because bitcoin's average growth rate outperforms that eventually and you can keep running the strategy open-endedly for as long as you want and you can settle it only once bitcoin appreciates so you can just keep stacking for two two three years bitcoin goes sideways then it pumps you close and settle you pocket the Bitcoin extra hard sets to your wallet.

33:27 Sort it. Nice. I mean, government bonds is, in my opinion, probably the most cynical thing you can invest in because if you think about what it is, especially US bonds, government bonds, that's how they create the quantitative easing, like the big chunks of money printing that come every now and then. they exchange these bonds for newly printed cash. But what is a government bond? It's a promise from the government to make more money in the future, right? It's a bet on the government. Exactly. Which means, how does the government make money again?

34:09 Well, they take it from their populations. So it's a promise from the government to be even bigger assholes to your children than they were to you. and in exchange for diluting your purchasing power. So that's the trade between the Fed and the U.S. government. It's totally insane. It's such a big scam. And people are falling for it left and right. And it works. For the U.S., it works because they're the world's reserve currency and the petrodollar system, meaning that... They give us these green things that they can print. By us, I mean everyone else in the world in exchange for real resources.

34:53 So they get insanely rich while everyone else is paying for it. And I truly believe we're in the fiat endgame because you have total clown world shenanigans and banana state things like Trump offering $5,000 to anyone who votes for him. It's just insane. That's a promise you'd get from Kim Jong-something. Like, I mean, it's just, yeah, mind-blowing. When I saw this news, I came to my girlfriend. And because God knows what Trump will do, he might just be bullshitting, right? You cannot trust anything what he says. But when I saw this news, like that he actually said that, I actually told my girlfriend, look, it's happening.

35:38 Like, we knew this will come. The death of the dollar will come and it's happening in front of our very eyes. It's actually very scary. And as they say, the chickens are coming home to roost because the bonds are a total shitshow. The U.S. currently has the tough decision that they will either save the currency and not turn it into a total inflation spiral or they will save the bonds, the debt. basically and they cannot do both and i think they will just like inflate it away and like unfortunately average people will be the ones who pay for it probably not bitcoiners but it is like it's getting worse and worse and i was not the first one who made this uh parallel but it's like the game of musical chairs you know the music is slowly stopping and there's just not enough chairs to sit no yeah so tough one yeah and the the worst part is that every other currency is paying for it first i i personally i don't i i think the dollar can go on for longer than every other currency so like the smaller ones like the czech corona or the swedish krona they will uh they will go before the dollar goes i think like they're basically exporting the inflation exactly that's Yeah, I was even confused like it was a year ago or when when when when Trump was doing I don't want to be get like overly political but discussing the macro you cannot, you cannot not dabble into politics a little bit. When Trump was adamant about their trade policies and when he was like, applying tariffs to all their trade partners, and he was he was even calling it like that it's not fair that like, that, that if the US is running a trade deficit,

37:33 it it's not fair like but at the same time what are you doing you're exporting your own inflation to the rest of the world what do you it's not fair exactly but not the way you think it's just it's just mind-blowing no exactly and tariffs are not going to make things better like that's shooting yourself a whole different ballpark of shooting yourself in the foot tariffs are not going to make American workers less fat or lazy at all. And China will just sell to other countries. It's insane. But can I ask you, because the whole world is following the US policy decisions, basically, but I don't think the Europe is actually doing much better. I think is doing actually a lot worse. So I think it will be it will be first to see this decline. By the way, I don't think the dollar will die over. Absolutely. I don't, I don't think we will open newspaper tomorrow and read the dollar is dead. But slowly, like, someone has to pay the bill for the party. And I think Europe will be first. And for example, the Czech Republic, Czechia, like we do not have euro. So there is still like this small hint of sovereignty within within our very small currency of a small nation but in the end it all just drips down on the sovereign currency anyway so uh i think france uh uk and germany they are like not in a very good state

39:03 and the nordic countries were like notoriously pretty well off and and pretty rich so how do you how do you assess it from from your end yeah my my current end is i live in spain so so things are pretty bad down here in terms of political turmoil. And what I'm seeing throughout Europe is just that it's at a boiling point. And it's very scary, actually, because it has like these, there's, shit is going down. I think we're going to see a huge backlash because all the banks are out of money all the governments are out of money um when i whenever i go to the us in particular but but really anywhere outside europe uh and i i tell them i'm from europe they they like tap my shoulder and say oh oh sorry to hear that are you okay like because and they're right because over the last decade the purchasing power of the average american has doubled in comparison to the purchasing power of the average European.

40:12 And it's just insane how big the difference is and how fast the gap grows. Because the saying is true that US innovates, Asia replicates, and Europe regulates. Our bureaucratic machines here are so slow and so inefficient, and all they do is put up hurdles for innovation everywhere. So we're getting behind on every single level. And so many countries have just shot themselves in the foot with totally irresponsible policies, socialist policies for everything, from green energy to immigration and all of these huge costs on societies that nobody really asked for.

41:05 It's just voting bait in the end. And you can sell FUD to idiots, and thereby you can get voted into parliament and make up all these idiotic rules. And the EU at this point, it's become such a burden when it was such a beautiful thing in the beginning when it's just about open borders. What people tend to forget is that nations can still have open borders without centralized bureaucratic machines in terms of trade. Like the saying, if goods and services don't cross borders, soldiers will, is absolutely true.

41:47 and everyone benefits from trade between countries. It's like obvious. So the governments themselves put these hurdles up in the first place. And the EU, it's not the EU tearing them down that's the good thing because in the end the EU is just a bigger country and it leads to more centralized bureaucratic bullshit So the better way would have been smaller nations with more open trade rules And I hope that we're going in that direction. But unfortunately, I think there has to be a bigger disaster first.

42:29 What we're seeing in France right now is just horrible. And the media reporting gets more and more clownish. the more time that passes. Like calling it school revolts and that they're unhappy with their, you know, pencils and rubbers and stuff. When Paris is literally burning, it's so retarded because that's obviously not the whole story, especially since France is paying, is spending more on education than any other country in Europe. And it's still shit. so something else is completely wrong there so I don't know where Europe is heading I just want to have a fast way to exit if shit really hits the fan, unfortunately there are some hopeful things there's a re-election here in Spain in the end of November looking forward to that and to having Sanchez kicked out because he says it's a totally corrupt disaster anyway it doesn't affect me that much because I have my own ways of doing things but but still I feel sorry for the people who are falling for it and who believe all these promises from all these politicians and then well they are in the finding out phase of the fuck aroundery so they just have to bite the bullet yeah it's literally fuck around and find out yeah and as you said like europe regulates i

44:03 completely agree like i sometimes say that only a complete masochist would be doing some business in europe and especially regulated fintech it's uh it's it's uh that element of it is is absolutely abysmal but in the end i i was never that much of a patriot to be honest like If someone were to be putting a rifle in my hand and sending me to fight a conflict that I did not start it and I don't really feel any emotion about, it would be completely ridiculous to me. But at the same time, I traveled a lot. I've seen a lot of the world. I've been to many continents. And I have to say that it is my home.

44:43 Like Prague is my home. I don't really want to see it burn. So it's not like I am putting all the weight of the world on my shoulders. I don't think it's up to me to save the world. But at the same time, if I can do just a little bit to make it less shitty, I will put in the effort. Yeah, that's great. And I think we need people to have that kind of attitude and be entrepreneurial in Europe. And yeah, my travels to Europe have shown me that the Eastern European countries are actually more liberty-minded than the Western ones at this point, because you guys have it in, like, your parents' generation, they figured out, they actually, they had a very harsh find-out face of their fuck-aroundery with communism, so they know what happens when you obey the orders from the government.

45:41 And it's in the collective memory, sort of, why you shouldn't, why you shouldn't take government mandates too seriously. What do you think of that? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I have to say that in Czechia, so we've been under the Soviet influence for so long. There is this huge distrusting element because it's the center of Europe, but everyone west from us considers Czechia Eastern Europe and everyone east of us considers it Western Europe. That's kind of funny. But I think, so especially here for our small country, there is this huge distrust in the system.

46:24 But overall, in general, the more west you go, the sheer fucking hubris on the policy and regulation is just abysmal. And I think it was just far too good for far too long. And as you said, it has to get worse before it hopefully will get better. So it's like a fever, you know, you kind of need to go through this very unfortunate state of your organism to actually overcome the virus. And I don't know, I, the, all the collectivists and socialist policies are just like someone is going to have to pay for it. And right now there is no one to pay for it. So I think it's, it's pretty much tearing down.

47:06 And, you know, I'm always so entertained when I have to click. I'm not entertained in a good way, but when I have to click the stupid cookie bar on every website. On every website you visit, you have to click the stupid cookie bar. And I think to myself, if I accumulated all this time, because it's a split second. Let's say it's a one second, half a second. But every fucking European citizen. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm not sure if you can swear on your show. that every every european citizen has to click this several times a day if you account for all this aggregated time how much human potential was wasted on this stupidity that okay i i own my cook i own my cookies well thank you very much my life has been so much improved by this no i i always think the same thing in the when i stand in line for the security check at the airport and if you average out how much time each traveler spends there and how many travelers go through there per day and this was put in place after 9-11 so to prevent future attacks so how many people died in those planes that crashed into like 30 in each plane because this is you're trying to stop terrorist attacks in planes so add another thousand that died in the actual towers So say 1,000 people.

48:33 I think it was like 3,000 was the death toll. Okay, so the point is 3,000 lives times the average lifespan, 75 years or 80 years or whatever, times 365 times 24. Then you get a number of life minutes that were lost because of this hijacking. But if you add up all the 15 minutes on average that every single traveler spends in every single airport, every single hour of every single day, like what does that add up to in a year? Like in wasted life, total lifetime.

49:17 well that's a math you cannot really say on a national television but i see your point and i have my own beef with airport security but my own my own beef with that is i understand that the plane once it's hijacked and it's in the air it's basically a missile okay i get it but what i what my beef is with people at airport security when they are just like following orders without actually understanding them so for example every time i have to take off my belt i have a metal clip on my belt i always take it off and and sometimes they tell me you need to sir you need to take off your belt and i like why and they say it the regulation and i like why what what harm can i do with my i going through the metal detector i have a i have a i have a belt made out of fabric why do i do i need to take off my pants as well so just people people following orders without thinking about its purpose i think that that's the thing that that scares me the most i i yeah same here i think that's the scariest part it's just blind obedience and you have like once i saw a a lady in a wheelchair and they had to take the fucking wheelchair through the the x-ray machine and carry her through the thing and it's like yeah but you can see that this woman is not going to hijack the plane like it's so obvious you could just let her through like but they have to do everything by the book and uh but i figured out a couple of hacks so i feel more sorry for the other people who are

50:48 like who obviously aren't terrorists and who they're doing these things to like i'm very used to it because i go through security checks all the time right so so so i'm sort of impervious to it i just don't give a crap about it but and i figured out a couple of hacks for instance the your toothpaste and your deodorant and stuff you're you're always told to take it out of your bag you don't need to so just don't disobey as much as possible there because it depends on the machine but but go on no no it depends on the guy sitting behind the machine yeah and maybe if you get someone who is just recently employed, they will hassle you for it. But very soon, it's all about incentives, right? So these people, they hate their lives, they hate their jobs, and they sit there every day and look through people's fucking underpants. And if they're going to stop every single motherfucker like me that doesn't take his toilet bag out, they're going to have a rough day because they're going to have to examine every single bottle of deodorant or perfume or whatnot.

51:56 So just leave it in there. And then it's on them. And I guarantee you, I've done this for at least five years. Nobody gives a crap. When they open up my bag, it's not for that. They have found, or it's for something else. But they never even mention the 100 milliliter bottles or even 200 milliliter bottles sometimes that I keep in there because they have no incentive to do so. They're incentivized to let that through because they see so many of them. So that's a trick. Yeah, like with airport security, we can go on for hours because it's kind of a guilty pleasure of mine. I've researched that quite a lot because I'm always baffled when I'm traveling.

52:37 and I used to do my fair share of traveling like for the job in Google, for example. But yeah, I agree. And I'm a huge proponent of like overall like hacking the authorities because I understand there has to be some order and security because the evil element in the world, it's like the Hydra. You cut off one head and two more will grow. So I get it. But at the same time, as they say, everyone who trades their freedom for security does not deserve either. And overall, when it comes to hacking the authorities, if you find a loophole that is legal, that is just, I love it. I think a hacker does not have to be a computer hacker. Hacker is anyone who sees the system, understands the system and makes it work to its benefit, sort of speak.

53:21 So that is, for example, like taxes. I don't understand why they call it tax avoidance and why it's a crime. You have specific tax laws. Someone finds a way through them or not even around them, through them. And then they can still like charge you for tax avoidance. I mean, you wrote the laws, goddammit. How is that tax avoidance? No, I think it's in everyone's best interest and in the interest of all people around the world that we take great care into paying as little taxes as possible. Our individual responsibility is to avoid them as much as possible because that's what's funding all the wars.

54:03 It's what's funding all the bullshit. except except that and this includes by the way in inflation uh which is the tax that we we can't see but it's still there and the more we use bitcoin the more we get around that too and then we're not sponsoring wars and that's fucking great yeah no so so and i i absolutely agree hacking hacking the system in any way you can is is it's it's even a responsibility i think because we shouldn't give these people more power. You can always... And even people who are not that ideological about their taxes funding wars. Like, I don't know a single person who woke up and said, well, you know what?

54:45 I did not really pay that much on my taxes. I might throw an extra 20%. You know, said no one ever, literally. So I'm just a big proponent of overall hacking systems. And I actually have like one work example on that because in Invit, we will be launching... like collateralized loans, Bitcoin-backed loans. But you cannot do loans for consumers without just using Bitcoin as a collateral. So we just found a way around that, which is fully compliant, MECA compliant, approved by the Czech National Bank. In order to get a Bitcoin-backed loan as an individual from an institution, you would just make two transactions, one sell transaction, where you sell your Bitcoin for half the price to have 50% LTV.

55:33 And with that, you sign an option to make another transaction in a year or like when the loan matures. And when you buy your Bitcoin back for the original price with like extra fee for the processing of the loan, which is not a loan. And so like working around these stupid regulations is I think only way to do anything in Europe anymore. Yeah, somewhat unfortunately, unfortunately, but the more that people learn this, the better off everyone is. My best story about this, working around the bullshit, is a friend of a friend. So my friend Andre on Madeira, he had another Portuguese friend, I think this was on Madeira too, who wanted to install a window in his 100-year-old house. And he knew that in order to get this window installed, He had to apply for a permit to get installed from some government institution.

56:31 So what he did was he immediately realized that he will get rejected because that's what these institutions do. Otherwise, they have no purpose. So what he did was apply to, he applied for removing a window instead of installing one. And then that got rejected and then he installed the window. So he just reversed the thing. Are you following? like it's it's it's brilliant so he he he used their own propensity to say no to everything against them so he asked the opposite question yeah it's it's uh i think there has been extensive literature about the pointlessness of of arguing with with authorities i i like my anecdote anecdotes I a I a like the chairman of the building association here in for an apartment here in Prague which is the worst job ever. And we are in a like, historically protected zone. So and the whole neat whole building needs their windows changed its windows changed. And we cannot just put there the standardized plastic windows, which is absolutely sorted out technology. It works best. It's cheaply scalable. It's super easy to manufacture and implement. But no, no, no. It's a historically protected house on the main street. Like it's not even in the historical part of the city. It's like a street that goes to the airport.

57:56 And so we have to install custom-made windows that have like 10% slimmer frames. And for that, we have to pay three times the amount because we cannot use this like easily scalable technology. And I have to tell the people living there, look, you will have to allocate three times the amount of money because the authority says so. So my general sentiment with these things is slowly becoming, you know, better ask for forgiveness than permission. Because what are they going to tell me? Like remove those windows that they are already installed? I don't think so. No, yeah, here in Spain that definitely works for a lot of things because sometimes, sure, you can get the permit, but the fee for doing something wrong is just marginally higher than applying for the permit.

58:53 And there's no guarantee that you will actually get the permit. You'll probably get a no. So it's better to just do the thing and pay the fine. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That's actually, unfortunately, it's not the sentiment that we can afford with the company and with the with the National Bank license. That is those are higher stakes because they can always revoke the license. So there we have to like jump through the hoops perfectly. But I think the way is to just hack it to find the workaround. As I said, with the with the with the loan instrument that we will be launching, they actually said, it's okay. the national bank said it's okay in this way we can do it it's it's it's not a loan it's not called a loan it acts like a loan but it's not a loan technically so they they gave it the stamp of approval which is like completely dadaistic for me yeah and uh i mean i i i still stand for my original advice to to every bitcoiner is that the still the best way to make bitcoin or to accumulate Bitcoin is, of course, to accept it for your goods and services.

1:00:04 Like insist on getting paid in Bitcoin. One thing that is really good that I know Ben Sessions does, for instance, BTC Sessions, he charges a 50% fee on top of all the fiat invoices he sends. So like if you want to pay him in fiat, you get a 50% extra fee on top of what you're already paying if you were paying in Bitcoin. So you're really incentivizing people to get out of the old system. And that is how the real revolution happens. It's going to take a lot of time. There's, of course, other tools to use.

1:00:45 We mentioned Vexel. It's not that big outside of Prague yet, but I really hope that Vexel does well and gets more popular in other parts of the world too because it's an excellent tool. yeah look that up i'm not going to explain how it works here but a good thing to look up and if you if you want to just accumulate uh bitcoin the the the good old-fashioned kyc way then invity is probably the best option in in europe now with the turbo buy and everything and you have you have the 50 what is a 50 euros extra for free if you use my promo code and you do 10 transactions i think it Yeah, exactly.

1:01:28 Check it out. Check it out. Apply the code to infinity. Check the strategies. You will get 50 euros to your first recurring strategy, including the TurboBuy. It's paid out in 10 installments in your recurring strategy in 10 transactions. But check it out. Discover the beauty of it, especially TurboBuy or TurboBuy Plus that is actually the same element, but buys you within the scale, either more or less, depending how Bitcoin is valued based on the 120 weekly moving average. And yeah, check it out. It's super smooth, super easy. If you're a Bitcoiner who just wants to be doing DCA, as I said, it's extra sets that you otherwise would not have eventually.

1:02:09 If KYC is not a stinky word for you, just check it out. It's a total no-brainer for a convinced Bitcoiner. Yeah, that's good. What else? What haven't we covered here? Is there any other subject you want to bring up or anything else you want to talk about before we close this out? Yeah, I very much enjoyed ranting about regulations. To check out the recurring strategy, investing with modest leverage element is not your thing. We have other strategies that buy depending on the Bitcoin's valuation, undervaluation, overvaluation. We are launching payment cards in December. There is still a waiting list. If you apply now, you will get a higher rate of Bitcoin cashback.

1:02:55 Sorry, cashback in Bitcoin. With the card, you can either spend euros or spend Bitcoin, depending on your situation. We will have the checkout, sorry, cashout feature rolled up hopefully soon. That is the like loan that is not a loan. And just long story short, with Inviti, we just try to innovate because buy, sell Bitcoin is like, it will not pull out anyone out of their socks. we are trying to innovate with the products and just keep hacking the regulations. Yeah, nice. And you will be in Prague, of course, during the BTC Prague conference, which is in a different venue this year, I hear. And more in the city center than before.

1:03:36 So looking forward to that one, for sure. It should be a very nice venue because it burned out the place that it will be. It burned out when I was in high school. I think it was like 20 years ago that it burned out and it was renovated for 20 years. That's how State handles things. So apparently it should be very nice. Yeah, so looking forward to all of that. And yeah, Matusz, I thank you a lot for this conversation. And go and check out Invity and see more of how it works there if you weren't listening that closely. But good luck with everything.

1:04:17 We'll keep the conversation going. Great to have you here. And see you next time. I enjoyed it very much. This has been the Bitcoin Infinity Show. Like, subscribe, and brush your teeth. And thanks for listening. See you next time. Thank you.