Heroes in Business - Chris Yim, Cofounder and CEO, Liberty X, Bitcoin on every block

Episode Date: June 13, 2022

Chris Lim, Cofounder and CEO, Liberty X, Bitcoin on every block, Largest network of bitcoin ATMs, cashiers and kiosks in the U.S. with 20,000 cashiers and 12,000 ATMs across 45 states is interviewed by David Cogan, celebrity host Heroes Show and founder of Eliances entrepreneur community.

Welcome back to Alliances Heroes, where heroes in business align. To be part of our super community and find out more about Alliances, visit www.alliances.com. And that's right, and we're back again. And you know, it just keeps getting better and better and better. We're going to learn a lot of things. You're going to hear one of the words that is probably now found more on the internet than any other word but before we get started thank you to for the feedback we had when I had on the co-founder of Oracle so make sure you all know where to go by now I hope go to the only place that's

alliances.com elian CS com to see those past interviews. Because as you all know, it is the only place where entrepreneurs align. And you may have the opportunity to meet many of our heroes that are on our show in person and live. So we have with us today Chris Yim. He is the co-founder and CEO of LibertyX. Are you ready for this one key word that you hear more than anything else? I think, Chris, it's safe to say more than on the news, more all over the news, online, people starting to talk about it everywhere.

He is the co-founder and CEO of LibertyX. That's a Bitcoin on every block. The largest network of, you ready? Bitcoin ATMs. You heard me right. Bitcoin ATMs, cashiers and kiosks in the US with well over 20,000 cashiers and 12,000 ATMs across 45 states. And he's just getting started. You can reach him at libertyx.com. All right, Chris, boy, we're just going to have a gazillion questions for you because people are like, what? What? I mean, I don't even know where to start because it's just such a such a such a a whole

new field for a lot of people so walk us through maybe the first part is is how did you even come up with let's do kiosks for bitcoin when people are still trying to figure out even what bitcoin is sure and i think like a lot of startups out there and businesses, it starts with a personal pain point. So in late 2013, kind of was just doing some research. I was looking to start a business school at Wharton. And I knew I wanted to do a startup I previously worked in investment banking and venture capital, but really didn't have that aha moment. And that's when I first came across Bitcoin. And it just seems so fascinating like what it is. I think today, it's been so many different things to people. For a lot of people,

it's a store of value. For some people, it's a speculative asset, medium of exchange. It's just digital money that you can go and transact with. And back then it was even more amorphous, I would say. So the first thing that you try to do is you buy some Bitcoin. And back then, really, there was no way to do it. Literally, there was a site called Local Bitcoins. It's kind of like Craigslist, where you go and you reach out and you say you want to buy Bitcoin and it matches you with somebody else to coordinate an in-person meetup, you hand over money, they send you the Bitcoin afterwards. And that, that was the aha moment for me. I realized that Bitcoin had so much potential, but there had to be a better, more trusted and safe way to do it.

So basically after that I talked about Bitcoin to everybody that would listen to me. The one person that really got it was my, ended up being my co-founder, Kyle. And we looked at all the ways that people transacted. What was the most time tested and true way to build that trust? And really the ATM came to the forefront, right? It's been around a while. It's a very, very secure device. Everyone's probably used it at this point in their life. And so our mission at that point

was really to work with those types of mediums and get Bitcoin out there so that it was really easy for people to transact and buy it. Because once you have it, right, then you can start tapping into all the potential that really exists out there. How did you place your where did you place and how did you place your first Bitcoin ATM? I mean, where was it? Yeah. Yeah. So as you can imagine, it's kind of this. Very, very esoteric topic back in 2014, and you're talking about I want to put a Bitcoin ATM. No one knew what we're talking about. So really, we're just talking to everybody, anybody. And what we knew is we wanted to have really, really high foot traffic, high visibility,

because this was going to be the first one in the US. And we ended up finding a location in Boston South Station, which is the large train station right in downtown Boston. And we actually, all the spots were taken. So we actually had to buy a DVD kiosk, take it out and put our Bitcoin ATM. So one day we kind of did this stealth launch, took it out, dropped this thing in. And from then it's really just been a rocket ship. And I mean, I couldn't, I would like to have been a fly on the wall when you had the conversation with them of what you're trying to do.

They're like, what? ATM, what? What? Bitcoin? We know what ATM is but but that so um congratulations and so then the first one you got and then you just continue to roll from there i'm sure yeah we we learned how difficult hardware was and so quickly made the the shift to software what was really encouraging was people were coming from all over the world people would

literally would fly into logan airport and they saw there was a Bitcoin ATM there and make it a trip to go try out and be part of history. And so we've really been focused on scaling the solution because we know everywhere there are people that want to engage in cryptocurrencies and we just want to have a trusted way for them to do so. And again, you can reach Chris Yim. He is the co-founder and CEO of LibertyX.

You can also find where the machines are, the ATMs, cashiers, kiosks, and more by going to libertyx.com. You'll see the link below again, libertyx.com. But Chris, so walk us through the difference between someone just using their phone who may not be familiar with Bitcoin versus going to the ATM machine and what does it exactly consist of when they go there? Yeah. So I would say there's really two ways you can buy Bitcoin. One is from the convenience of your home. You link your bank account, you send a wire transfer and you're able to buy Bitcoin remotely. What that means though, is you have to basically turn over all your information, social security number, link your bank. And in today's

day and age, with all the credit bureau hacks and things of that nature, people are a little bit wary. And anytime there's a new technology, it takes a while for people to get comfortable with it. And so what we found was there was an opportunity to tap into existing brick and mortar, existing locations that consumers actually trust and prefer to transact. A lot of people actually like going to their bank to take out cash, whether it's from an ATM or from a teller, just because it's something that they're used to. And what we tried to do was really tap into that and see if there was a way to marry the convenience of being able to use a app but also the benefit of working and going through legacy trusted systems like atms and stores so essentially what you do with our application is you you download it you create an

account you go through the kyc process it's required to do to offer or sell a Bitcoin or any type of money-related product. And then you find a location near you. You give us your Bitcoin address and we essentially create a mobile order similar to if you're going to buy a latte at Starbucks. You select the location and then you go and make the payment and you pick up the good. The only difference is you're making the payment on the ATM or the cashier. And then the Bitcoin is immediately sent to your wallet. That's fantastic. And what do you see now?

I mean, again, you guys have been growing. You have, you know, 12,000, 20,000 of these cashiers and 12,000 ATMs across 45 states. Do you plan on moving into additional states? Do you plan on like, where do you want to take the company the next step? Because it sounds like you've got a strong footprint already. Yeah, yeah, I would say, you know, it sounds like a lot, but there's hundreds and thousands, millions of businesses out there. And what's been really encouraging is some of the best performing markets are suburbs, are towns that might only have 10,000 people.

And these traditionally are the people that have been underserved. Because when you think about launching a new product, right, you go after the big cities. But you know, most of America actually doesn't live in a big city that lives in a suburban or rural area. And what's great about ATMs is literally the groundwork has been done, right? Over decades, ATM operators have gone out, find good top performing locations. They work with local brick and mortar, local business owners, and we're able to really just add new offerings

to tap into that and offer something that, you know, might've been a forgotten consumer demographic previously. Incredible. And again, you're watching me, David Kogan, listening and watching, host of the Alliances Hero Show. Make sure that you go to Alliances.com, as you all know, ATMs, cashiers, and kiosks in the US. Make sure you go to Liberty X, where you'll be able to reach out to him or make sure you find the location that's nearest to you. And again, you were mentioning, Chris, that people were flying in all over

to go to the station to use your kiosks and that. And where do you see, though, Bitcoin itself going? I mean, you ask a thousand people, you get almost various answers from everyone. So how do we sift through everything that's going on of Bitcoin? Yeah, and to me, actually, that's what makes it really compelling. It's not just one thesis, right? Like there's a lot of different reasons people like or use or transact with Bitcoin. And first and foremost, I think, you know, initially it was a store of value.

And what's great about a store of value is literally the longer it's been around, the more people trust it. So, you know, Bitcoin's been around a little over 12 years. It doesn't seem like that long, but in that time, it's never been hacked. That's something that is really important if you're thinking about building a new monetary system, a new technology that people are going to be using. People compare it to gold, right? So it's a digital form of gold. Gold is probably the best store of value out there. It has a several thousand year lead

for better or worse in terms of trust and all that. So I think all else equal, Bitcoin every year that goes by and there's no hack and people use it, it builds that trust and people get more and more comfortable with it. In addition, what we're seeing with interest rate hikes and all the macro things that are going on is people are really looking for a

way to have uncorrelated assets. They're looking for ways to generate yield. And I think that's where Bitcoin is really interesting, right? Because it really is not a business. It doesn't generate cash flows. It's something that's global. Every country, you can transact with Bitcoin pretty much. And all you really need is a computer or a phone and the internet, and you can send Bitcoin to anyone, anywhere. It really provides this kind of global macro coverage and exposure. Whereas usually if you're invested in stocks or a certain business, you might only be limited to a certain geography. So for a lot of people, it gives that comfort of having exposure to the world in general and also tapping into something that is rapidly emerging technology.

People these days, they really like investing in the stock market. And a lot of people think about Bitcoin as like a stock where today everyone's kind of heard about it, but not that many people have it. So if you're able to get in early to a technology, like I think about if you bought a share of the internet and where the internet went, right? Like a lot of people are making that kind of parallel and there's a lot of opportunity also to generate returns and build businesses that way. Can you imagine when you were growing up, like this wasn't even around or anything of that, and now you're in a whole industry leading away, leading the way to things that weren't even in existence?

Yeah. Yeah. It's a little terrifying. I actually feel like I was a little bit late. You know, there are people coming out of college now, right? And this is the world that they know, and just very, very envious of having those 10, 15 years back and all the stuff that could be done or will be done in the next decade. Now, besides Bitcoin, there's a gazillion now of these other coins every day I'm hearing and seeing more of this different names in that. What what can you share about that? And will will there are there any plans to have other coinage on your system? Yeah, I think that's what's really interesting about the space. Literally anybody can create a new token and you can fork existing tokens. So Bitcoin has a bunch of forks that people basically have copied the code, maybe changed some of the language.

The challenge is always user adoption, right? copy the code, maybe change some of the language. The challenge is always user adoption, right? It's trivial to create something, but to get people to use it and transact with it, I think that that's really the challenge. And that's what's been so impressive with Bitcoin. Literally people opted in,

they redirected their computers to mine Bitcoin for the better part of a decade. And they're actually spending real dollars to do it today, right? A lot of places have a decade and they're actually spending real dollars to do it today right a lot of places have mining farms and they're taking renewable energies or places with electricity to go and support the bitcoin network and process these transactions and i think that's that's really great because literally anywhere in the world you can spin up a node and be part of the network. As far as additional tokens, I think this is where there has to be a nice balance. So something like Ethereum that

has proven itself, that has a really strong community, a lot of derivative projects, it's very interesting. When we think about a Liberty is how do we launch products in a way that we can adequately support it and have the right support system and all the tools to make sure it's a successful experience, right? Because people are going to us, a lot of them are buying for the first time. So we just want to be very methodical and make sure we have all the checks in place and tutorials and all that. And I think Ethereum is going to be something that we're going to add shortly. As far as, you know,

I think there's tens of thousands of tokens out there. We'll likely never really do that because we're not, I don't view us as like an online exchange or like a stock brokerage where they offer everything under the sun. We're a lot more targeted, but of course we're also, you know,

we listen to the feedback of our customers and partners. And if we see a lot of demand for something, we'll strongly consider it and see if we can roll it out in a safe and trusted manner. Now, Chris, there are definitely some newbies that are on that don't realize this is you don't have to spend and buy an entire Bitcoin, 50,000, 100,000 or whatever it may be at. So can you just talk a little bit about what it means to buy a fractional part of it on your system sure so the way bitcoin is designed you can actually buy up to 100 million at a time or you can send 100 million um that that's not a practical fraction today since it's you know less than a penny but with our platform you can buy as little as a few dollars and that that's actually what we see right right? When you're trying a new technology,

it's great that you don't have to spend $50,000, right? So I think that would be a huge barrier to entry. A lot of people, we see they buy maybe $20, $50. They see it in their wallet, literally before they leave the store, they get comfortable. They maybe track the price of Bitcoin a little more than they used to. And then they get comfortable and they come back and buy larger and larger amounts. Our platform supports purchases up to $5,000 per day. And what we see is a lot of people, once they get comfortable with it, they view this as kind of dollar cost averaging. Bitcoin's a very volatile asset.

So if you can time it or you can buy it consistently over time, you'll be able to get probably a better price than if you just YOLOed and bought all at once. Excellent. And Chris, you're an MIT graduate, Wharton graduate. I mean, the most prestigious, some of the most prestigious schools that exist. What did you learn from school since, I mean, you know, schools don't teach you right now, at least not at least not now about you know bitcoin and this whole other industry and stuff what did you learn from those schools that you've carried over to what you're doing now yeah i would say so i was a chemical engineer at mit uh which is really just generalized problem solving and i think that the biggest takeaway was just like you know being open and tackling like tremendously difficult problems and not really knowing or not, it's less about having pattern recognition and more about just

hustle and framework. And I think being an MIT, it was just surrounded by brilliant people that were way, you know, way, way, way smarter than me. So I learned that my competitive advantage was really just execution, learning new concepts and figuring out how to deploy them. And in Wharton, similarly, you know, a lot of really smart people that already had done something else in their career. Fortunately, that's where I met my future co-founder. So it was great just to be able to have some experience to talk about and find, you know, serendipitously somebody else that really got it as well. But I will say that that world was a little bit challenging. It's a little bit different now, but back when we... I actually dropped out of Wharton, so I didn't graduate.

Technically, I have a few more years, I think, to go back and officially get the degree. But a lot of the people who go to business school, they go like a very traditional route. They want to do venture capital or private equity. At the time, got a lot of looks. I was like, why are you dropping out to do this? Why don't you just get a safe job? And I think that that's something that really resonated with me. I think if you're going to business school now, or you're going to college now, it's a totally different world out there, right? It's not guaranteed anymore that you necessarily want to go do four years and do a job that you're going to be doing for your whole career. It's probably a really, really different and exciting time to be a young graduate these days. Sure. And what was the exact moment, the spark that you said, i have this idea like that that specific idea of

let's do these machines like where were you what was like how did that come to be yeah so that would be a coffee shop um in uh west philadelphia actually so the transaction where i bought my first bitcoin my co-founder was there. I invited him. Basically, he was going to be the muscle in case things went south. It ended up being very, very smooth. But right after I saw the Bitcoin on my wallet, we looked at each other and we're like, there's something here, right? It actually went through, but nobody in their right mind is going to go through what we just did. but nobody in their right mind is going to go through what we just did. So we need to figure out and brainstorm and do all the stuff that, you know,

the frameworks that you learn in business school, iterate, test, go through the MVP and repeat to see if there's something there. And we were fortunate enough that just by putting an unannounced kiosk, right, in South Station, people are coming from all over and really since then it's been iterating but we never had to really worry about product market fit which was a looking back a great problem to have great we've got time for one more question I think it's important because you mentioned about you know new college graduates and that type of stuff what kind of secrets now knowing what you know, would you share with those that are graduating soon from high school? So, you know, I've got a son, he's graduating very soon

from high school and it's like, okay, you got a whole lot of new things that never existed when I was around for graduating. And now that you were at the time weren't around that are now. So what secrets would you share? Yeah, I would say forget the master plan. I would really encourage side projects because that's where you tap into your actual real interest. The school curriculum is pretty regimented. And I think if you're a smart kid and you had the creative spark, you'll do fine. But the side projects are actually where you really develop the skills necessary to run a business or learn about certain skills and interests that you do have that you can really take to the next level. And that's something that you won't get once you get a job.

So there's a chance to really develop those interests, pursue them in a relatively risk-free environment, right? Because you can always go to college or you can always get a job, but there's more risk involved at that point. or you can always get a job, but there's more risk involved at that point. Well, Chris, you definitely look for a better way and are bringing Bitcoin to every block. That's a hero. That's right. Chris Lim, co-founder and CEO of LibertyX.

You could reach him by going to libertyx.com, L-I-B-E-R-T-Y-X.com. This has been David Kogan with the Alliance's Hero Show.