TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast - Tales from the Crypt #30: Ryan Dippmann

Episode Date: May 31, 2018

Join Marty as he sits down with Ryan Dippmann, co-founder of Azte.co, to discuss Bitcoin on/off ramps, payments, low hanging fruit that entreprenuers can use Bitcoin to exploit, surfing, and much more. Follow Ryan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RyanDippmann Follow Marty on Twitter: www.twitter.com/MartyBent Check out www.azte.co Use the code "CRYPT" at www.thecryptocandle.com for 10% of and a chance to buy a whole Bitcoin for $45!

how's it going freaks this episode of tales from the crypt is brought to you by the folks at the crypto candle.com so head over to the crypto candle.com and pick up one of their candles there's a chance you'll also be buying a whole bitcoin for 45 you read that correctly a whole bitcoin for 45 dollars how does it work you ask well 5 000 candles have been produced each candle has a token with a unique code embedded on it buried in the wax 53 of the 5 000 tokens around one percent are redeemable for a little bit of bitcoin 50 of the tokens are redeemable for one percent of a bitcoin two of the tokens have a half a bitcoin on them and one token among the five thousand has a whole bitcoin on it what you do is you let the wax melt down to a certain

extent you take out the token you go to the crypto candle.com and see if your token is redeemable for a bit of bitcoin uh when you're at checkout make sure you use the promo code crypt that's c-r-y-p-t to receive a 10 discount on your order and uh hopefully you can thank uncle marty for for getting you some cheap bitcoin that's uh the promo code crypt c-r-y-p-t at the crypto candle dot com what is up freaks welcome back to tales from the crypt it's your boy marty bent we're still in blockchain week here in new york city it's been a crazy week i'm tired i've been doing a lot of morning podcasts we had a jameson lap on yesterday morning great conversation i was a sluggish in the beginning but i think we picked it up by the end this morning i brought my a game

really uh to talk about an exciting product uh i'm here with ryan dipman co-founder of esteco ryan welcome to the podcast marty thanks for having me thanks for coming on man i appreciate it this is great there we go yeah like talk like right into it um yeah so esteco uh your co-founder and somebody I've been fascinated with on Twitter for a while, Beautyon, a.k.a. Akin Fernandez. How'd you get mixed up with him? Yeah, so it was through Twitter, like a lot of other people in the industry with Bitcoin.

So it was October of 2016 that I really took notice to Akin. And prior to that, I was following him on Twitter and just thought he had a lot of great insights on Bitcoin and i learned a lot from him um so it was october 2016 i remember i was i'm from the midwest originally madison wisconsin madhouse yes um i've i've been to madison wisconsin a lot we used to go for a halloween lacrosse tournament every year when i was at depaul i have very fond memories of madison wisconsin

it's a halloween city especially right it's crazy in stage street um before we get into you meaning beauty on all right i always forget this what is your tale how'd you find bitcoin first so yeah so it's about like every as well like everybody else when i first heard about bitcoin i thought oh it's geek money or it's criminals use it bad people use it and um i kept hearing it and this is about mid 2014 i kept hearing about bitcoin and i got more interested more interested in it and then I write down the rabbit hole and yeah I couldn't stop it just all day all night and just I was just fascinated by Bitcoin yeah and I saw the global potential of the software project and

how unprecedented it is and it just it blew my mind so i just went all in and got on twitter essentially fall beauty on is one of the followers and in october of 2016 i remember i was going back to madison i was in at a wedding in minneapolis and he he wrote a blog and saying that software could sell itself and my background is sales business development strategy and i i thought well software doesn't necessarily sell itself out of the gate and um so i was a little bit i would i wouldn't say upset but uh i was a little bit perturbed with that statement and And so I stopped following him, but I kept seeing retweets by him and thought, yeah, you know, he's just got some great insights.

So I followed him again, and next thing you know, we're DMing through Twitter, and he eventually introduces me to his tackle. When he sent me the voucher, that's my aha moment. It was, I was just blown off my feet. You know, I couldn't believe what he built. And he asked if I was involved in the venture capital side of just business in general. And I have some connections there. But I started to help him look to raise capital for the seed round that we're raising.

Actually, we're closing here in a couple weeks. Yeah, that's why you're in town. So let's dive into Azteco. I've used it. It seems like an incredible service. very excited for it to go live around the world so what how would you describe azteca so azteco is the simple and fast way to get bitcoin so right now if you ask anybody an average person how to get bitcoin really they they don't know and maybe in the united states let's say coinbase

there's other options now but um even with coinbase you have to set up the account you have to have a bank card you have to give them all your information they're custodian So if you want to own your private keys, obviously you have to get them off Coinbase. So Azteco is the simple and fast way to get Bitcoin and essentially we're the on-ramp. And what are the mechanics of Azteco? So how does it work exactly? So you go into our, so we, it's software as a service. So we have vendors or merchants, brick and mortar, retailers.

You walk into a grocery store, convenience store, clothing shop, anybody and everybody, auto repair, anybody that wants to sell Bitcoin, you go in, buy an S-TACO voucher, just like you would a mobile top-up or pay-as-you-go for mobile phones, and you get a voucher code. On the voucher code, there's a 16-digit number. You can either enter that 16-digit number into our website and redeem your Bitcoin almost instantly. Or you can use, there's also a QR code on there now. So you can download your Samurai wallet app and scan the QR code and redeem an app. So you guys have been working closely with Samurai on this? Yes, yeah. That's one of my favorite wallet teams in the space, probably my favorite wallet team in the space.

We love Samurai, and they're going to dominate the wallet space. Can we talk about them for a little bit? What do you like about them most? um i so so my background is throughout the entire payments ecosystem so i was very familiar with selling gosh anything from check processing services to to credit cards i was in credit card processing back when they had the knuckle busters and before like when when taxi cabs wouldn't even take credit cards and that really wasn't that long ago so that was i remember about Eight years ago, there was taxicabs that still wouldn't take, they just did not want to take credit cards.

And so now we see Uber and everything's just built into Uber's software, including the payments. But with regards to the digital wallets, mobile wallets, at one time there was, I think it was about six years ago or so, There's about 615 digital wallets, startups that are out there. And today, I believe, like, Walmart is number three in the wallet space. So the digital wallets are so many silos. So you have the hardware, iOS, Android. You have the gateway. You have the payment processor.

You have the point-of-sale systems, which are, for the most part, very difficult to get integrated with. and then you have the chicken versus the egg so the users versus the the retailers so what comes first so um so with regards to the digital wallet space there's although apple is is leading digital wallet right now i believe still um i don't think many people really use the the apple wallet i don't use it yeah it's it's why don't you use it that's just that it's just easier just to use the card in my opinion yeah right yeah and and so yeah and i i truly believe samurai is just going to be like water off a duck's back for everybody it's just you're just going to walk in just

tap you know scan phone boom that's it and the one thing about samurai is that they're like true cypherpunks they're absolutely they're privacy first fungibility first they have a very high uh um they put a very high importance on fungibility correct absolutely yeah and that's where we really align it's like peanut butter and jelly so how does uh what are the mechanics of samurai and azteca meeting up or linking up it's just simply that they yeah it was gosh i I really can't – somehow they connected with Akeem and BeautyOn and hopped on a call, and it was like we've known them forever, it seemed like. And we're just so aligned with them.

Is he as intense on the phone as he is on Twitter? Well, he'll tell you that Twitter is not real life. you know so he's he's uh people are very very surprised of um his composure when you meet him in person yeah he's really cool yeah yeah he's really cool and and that's also when i started working with him he he really took me under his wing and although i i had a good uh idea of what bitcoin is where it's going um he he's just a technical genius and and i don't have a technical background so he just um was able to essentially mentor me in a lot of ways that's awesome um so what uh what is the vision for

esteco like what how do you see things playing out once you guys go to market in mass yeah so gosh um so we're launching in london um and it's within conservatively four weeks um but maybe a maybe six weeks um and but so we're launching in london it's a hub and spoke business model so we'll we'll start out in london and then we have other countries um lined up as well with resellers or vendor opportunities so i it's right now it's just the two of us so this is truly important for us to raise the capital because we need help yeah and and from the software development side keen need some some help on the um the back end and then also the ux ui

um i'm gonna need some help with regards to the business development building this thing out and then there's everything else too but um we we and just anticipate the floodgates just being open so it's um we're every week we're getting at least one maybe two new vendor requests and this is with hiding our contact page on our website so how does it work with vendors do they pay a certain fee up front or you just give them access to the voucher program and they get a fee for facilitating it exactly so we charge a fee four percent and we split that with the vendor okay so they get two percent we get two percent all they need is internet access so they can work off of an existing laptop if they have a printer we're looking into different

options with the hardware maybe have our own hardware manufactured or use chromebook and epson printer for example and um just have some sort of plug and play option yeah at least for the first you know few hundred merchants and and so it's it's a we have a tripartite agreement so essentially what the vendor does is they'll put a deposit into a certibond and we cannot access that bond they cannot access that bond and let's say it's for thirty thousand dollars then they're able to sell the up to thirty thousand dollars in bitcoin uh once they pass the the fees so they'll keep their two percent we got our two percent and then the uh the bitcoin will be recycled essentially so they'll they'll start back at zero and you can sell up to thirty thousand

dollars again so do these vendors have to put thirty thousand dollars up front they do yeah or ten thousand whatever they like whatever they're comfortable yeah and if they want to pay Within a couple days or a week, it can be a lot faster, too, so they won't have to put as much. But the current market right now is local Bitcoins and also Bitcoin ATMs. Yeah, and local Bitcoins getting some shit in the news recently for putting in some KYC AML. Disappointing.

Right? Yeah, totally disappointing. They were the best stand for OTC markets. Hockey stick growth. Yeah, so you guys, you guys, I mean, Akeem particularly is very anti-state, very anti-KYC AML, and that is sort of the ethos that is driving Azteca, I would imagine, correct? Yeah, and I wouldn't necessarily say he's anti-state. He'll describe it as being anti-illogical. That makes sense. Yeah, so it's, and it's not that we're, we'll be following the AML laws.

So I believe in the UK it's 5,000 or 10,000 pounds. And that's for every business. It's not just for Bitcoin businesses. And then with regards to the KYC, we're not holding any consumer data. And that will vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction as well. And that will be on the vendor. So if they need to, in Nicaragua, if they need to see an ID or something like that, that's on them. Yeah.

No, and that's one thing I noticed right away. Like, I had an aha moment, too, when Akeem first sent me a voucher. Didn't need to put my name down. Didn't need to do anything. Could have walked up to the vendor in cash and just created a random wallet on a library computer, which I wouldn't recommend. But we're talking hypotheticals here. and nobody would have known that like i bought bitcoin absolutely and it's and it's that similar in the u.s it's so also the current market obviously in the u.s is the exchanges right

um so there's this decentralized exchanges and the centralized exchanges uh at the end of the day we do not see many people even touching exchanges but we are in the long run but but although BISC and HODLHODL we're big fans of and yeah they're going to see enormous growth and when we say not many people are going to be touching these exchanges

so the market that we're going after is folks who are unbanked and then also you have the average person that just doesn't know how to get Bitcoin so they just walk into a store buy Bitcoin

and they can either use that however they want as far as holding some sort of equity in the new global e-commerce. Eventually, people will be using Bitcoin to buy things to use it. Like right now, there's some cool sites like purse.io, for example, or the escrow. Once Bitcoin gets in the hands of millions

and then billions of people, then we're going to start to see tons of hundreds of millions of applications flooded to the market yeah it's just a matter of time yeah it's going to take patience and people like you building the on and off rooms we're seeing some really exciting uh cool uh startups that are that are going to be here pretty soon too so are you allowed to talk about any of them no i can't but it's it's um um i can give you some names of people you might want to reach out to and they can tell you

but because of Bideon Akin's presence on Twitter so he's very well known very well respected and

so a lot of people want to talk with him and run by their projects see what he thinks and you know he'll tell you what he thinks

so you know be ready for that if you want to get his opinion yeah but we are seeing some fascinating fascinating exciting projects out there and they're simple and they're very simple projects that just a lot of people are overlooking and at the same time we're seeing all these complex 37 page white papers that just are junk and techno babble

techno babble that's the thing like people are missing like the low-hanging fruit like this azteco is like such a low-hanging fruit and such a novel application to an on and off ramp for this stuff that's just applying sort of the the cell phone minute fill up model to fill up your bitcoin wallet that's exactly what it is yeah it's simple and everybody outside of the well even in the u.s i believe it's about 25 of the market use some sort of mobile top up or pay as you go but outside of the u.s it's this is what everybody does and this is yeah yeah let's talk about this market for a little bit so people africa latin america they would you call them burner phones oh yeah Yeah, there's burner phones and there's SIM cards, but they just have a phone.

They top it up for minutes every month, so I'm sure it's $20, $40, $60. And they do this at a local gas station? Yeah, corner shops in the U.K. specifically, for example, or there's places like Carphone Warehouse, which is kind of like a Best Buy mobile store in the U.K. Yeah, there's tons of these places, grocery stores. Everybody has it. So this is very familiar with people outside of the U.S., not only for the vendors but also for just the consumers.

So this is going to be natural for them. Yeah, this is a user experience that people are used to. Absolutely. Absolutely. and so what uh yeah what i'm trying to think like how to phrase this question um so i would say you guys are like i don't want to say confrontational but just showing people that there is another way to interact with bitcoin on an off on off ramp than an exchange like coinbase or gemini or kraken like do you see people seeing the novelty of

azteco immediately and being like holy shit i can never believe i actually use coinbase ever um or do you think there's going to be a hurdle with people creating their own personal wallets and stuff like that do you think there's like an education piece needed there an educated education push needed there for like people to be more comfortable downloading uh wallet software and holding their own private keys yeah that's a that's a yeah that's a great point a great question um yeah there's we're definitely at the beginning um still even though bitcoin's nine years in um we're still at the beginning of um getting people familiar uh with with with bitcoin so it's um there will be some education that will need to be done there

but even though in in a lot of countries where maybe some folks are illiterate they're very familiar with numbers they're good at numbers so this bitcoin should be very very easy to them and it'll be natural to them i believe and and so with samurai you know it's it's um so we'll be referring folks to samurai um open dime as well we love open dime huge fan of open dime yeah she got gifted an open dime last week oh i saw that Yeah, you posted that on Twitter, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was cool.

It was a cool gift. Yeah, I love Open Dime, too. Yeah. And then Samurai, they're about to roll out an iOS app, correct? I believe so, yeah. They're at least working on it. Yeah, I shouldn't speak on their rehab, but I believe so. Yeah, I think they're working on one.

But, yeah, just going back to your question about Coinbase, Gemini, and if we're confrontational, we're just working with bitcoin by by its nature so bitcoin is its software it's a database it's in the united states there's new york specifically nobody with the bitcoin company is going to be starting a business here in new york anytime soon because of the license and all the regular regulations that are going on here which unfortunately um i want to see america thrive with bitcoin and i think america can can lead the way with bitcoin but with all these regulations and hurdles um it's very similar that we saw with

fintech companies so to have a fintech company you had to have you know all the the state regulations the federal regulations and very very difficult for just entrepreneurs that two entrepreneurs that are bootstrapping to launch a business in the United States. But hopefully this will change, whether it's from outside pressure from other countries. But we are launching in the UK because we feel that the UK is definitely going to be,

one of the reasons is we definitely feel the UK is going to be leading the way in Bitcoin. Why is this? uh just well right now uh bitcoin is in the uk is legal because it's not illegal and so they they actually they have a they follow the laws so in in order to in the uk if you you can't just make up a law or you know uh close somebody's bank accounts just because you know you don't like what what their business is doing so you actually have to draft the law debate the law goes to the parliament

and then it then the law is implemented and that whole process takes about you know eight nine months or so um and if there's when we're following the laws and and if there's any laws that we need to follow we will definitely follow them but these laws need to be um they can't just make them up you know yes in the uk they're sort of have a laissez-faire stance right now just absolutely let it let it play out absolutely and you see like with blockchain.info for example and and in worst case it's it's software so we can we can be incorporated anywhere we can operate anywhere uh it's it's not like moving an apple manufacturer yeah it's not like it's not like getting your mining operation band in china and having to move it no yeah yeah it's not hard yeah

not hardware big space it's server yeah that's one thing beauty on talks about a lot uh that you mentioned earlier is uh bitcoin is speech yeah it's it's speech it's just code in a in a github repo zeros and ones right no can we dive into that a little bit so what's it like i mean i think i understand his mentality but let's describe it for the freaks out there yeah so well it's in and he'll have to come on here sometime soon and and talk with you about the technical details um but yeah it's bitcoin is it's software it's not um it's not illegal money so um like in in the u.s there's all these money transmitter licenses that that companies need to have at least for custodial purposes i know right now in the u.s they're also looking at

um not having those licenses for lightning network for example or for mining um as well um but yeah bitcoin is once we once we see all these applications go to market we're going to see just um it's going to change everything so it's not just transaction you know between two people for, for, um, trading huge amounts of volume on a hedge fund or, you know, these are going to be for, for escrow for, I mean, gosh, you name it for, for, yeah, for, for buying, uh, news articles to read, uh, without all the ads, um, for buying a soda can, you know, bus tickets, things like that. And, uh, it's going to, it's going to be used for everything, but, um, yeah, there's a,

There's a ton of applications that will be out there. Yeah, we're seeing this infrastructure get built out with the Lightning Network. What do you think about Lightning? Still experimental. There's only like 21 Bitcoin on the Lightning Network right now, correct? Right, something like that. About like 10,000 nodes, I think. Or not 10,000, probably like 5,000 nodes or something like that.

No, I think it's exciting. I'm not going to put any of my Bitcoin on Lightning Network yet, but not yet. I mean, Elizabeth Stark and the people at Lightning Labs will tell you it's very experimental at the moment. It still needs to get fortified and ossified as a second layer. So just waiting for that to get built out. Again, that's something I preach here on this podcast is patience. It's going to take time for the second layer to get built out. but i envision once it is built out that yes it will enable insane things like the machine payable

web right like it's going to get to a point where machine like maybe machines drive more of the uh drive more of the economic activity on bitcoin than humans in the future i agree that's a that's a completely uh possible scenario yeah um but yeah i'm in i'm in the hodl mentality right now hodl hodl and we had a hodl versus hodl debate this week oh you did with with who uh with crypto ethan and bitcoin sign guy believe it or not nice the guy that held the sign behind janet yellen yep yep i'm familiar i was pretty convinced or i was uh was beaten in the debate it's hodl i gotta start pronouncing it correctly how are you beaten in the debate it's just consensus was was uh was agreed upon and the consensus is it's hodl it's not hodl it's

this is uh this is a system built on consensus so i'd like to follow consensus i don't want to fork off the uh the hodl chain yeah definitely not yeah it's got it's gotten us this far and um yeah and about the lightning network too it's yeah you're right about the conservative and this is actually a great feature of bitcoin it's not just rushing throwing all these applications on top and breaking things it's these these soft and this is why another reason why i'm so excited about bitcoin like the best talent in the world is all working on it um but ethereum has so many developers they do don't they they do yeah and you know microsoft is uh was running on so many machines too and it still is but it's uh it's you know it's it's not the juggernaut people

envisioned it it's not yeah yeah from a operating system uh standpoint no it's not and yeah and i I would highly recommend, Bitcoin is tough to build on, but I would highly recommend that software developers that are building on Ethereum start thinking about building on Lightning Network. Yeah, why is that? Well, just, I think Ethereum is like building on sand and Lightning Network is Bitcoin and it's the future,

you know, and these applications take time to build. So, for example, Beautyon, he's been building Azteco for about four years now. And actually, this idea for Azteco has actually gone way, way back to the days of Chomzy Cash. Oh, really? Yeah. Really? Yeah. So, he'll release the document here pretty soon.

And, yeah, I think people will be pretty amazed, like, how long he's been thinking about this and working on this. so yes yeah it's the other thing like slow and steady versus move fast and break things in this space it's you know it's a huge point of contention for the the competing the factioning development teams i'm a big slow and steady guy you know it just makes the most sense right this is potentially the most important network that we'll ever create as humans absolutely we should take our time with it yeah absolutely and it's it's uh yeah it's once in a thousand year opportunity too for um for people to start building on and and have companies to to own equity in this new global um financial system yeah whatever you want to call it i mean it's it it yeah financial system

to maybe folks here in like wall street or um but to to some other people it's it's just some global equity that has value to them, you know, and how they want to use it, that's up to them. So transactional basis to send to family, to use for, you know, quote, we don't like the word smart contracts, but, you know, for smart contracts, things like that. For multi-sig contracts. Multi-sig, yes.

And that's going to be really exciting, too, down the road. yeah we were talking about some some cool multi-sig functions last night at the bitcoin meet up here in new york things are gonna get weird you know things are gonna get weird they are gonna get weird they already are a little weird yeah it can only get better though yes so you've been in this space for a while how uh how do you think about like the pace of innovation in this space is it surpassing your expectations or is it in line is it behind it's it's very difficult to keep up with right it's i mean you know it's uh let me ask you i mean like it's like how much you know how much time a day do you put into to reading about bitcoin you know it's

uh i'd rather not say because i have a job and i don't want them to know if they did the math to be like wait a second when are you working yeah no no no no but it's enthralling i mean and that's the thing like a lot of people since i write the newsletter and have this podcast some people jump into my dms ask me about random altcoins i'm like i don't have enough time to like pay attention to this there's so much going on in bitcoin right and that's the other thing i don't want to say i've become jaded or disenchanted i've just grown a thick skin over the last five six years five years uh there's scammers everywhere like this this ico craze it happened already like it was pre-mined all coins in 2013 2014 it's the same scam dressed

in different clothes like it's marketing people just trying to get a quick buck from dumb money and the sooner people realize this i mean i don't think there is anything but experience that can force people to learn this yeah you're right um but it's like just because the marketing materials are getting flashier and the conferences are getting bigger doesn't mean the ideas are getting any better they're they're as stupid as they were five years ago you're exactly right exactly right and it's i mean this week in particular it's just like a roadshow of terrible ideas yeah are you have you gone into consensus i would i would not step foot in that place why not but it's just not uh you know i went to the to the block stream party last night and that

it's cool to go there and i mentioned this to in the elevator it's uh it's like going to all-star game you know versus in these in these people are serious people um who are really trying to to change the world and and make a difference for for various reasons you know and i just you know i don't see that with these these tokens or these whatever you want to call them these day security tokens, DLT, you know, blockchain without Bitcoin, you know, it's just, it's, it's, it's all nonsense, right? Yeah, it's all nonsense. And, and, and that, that's, that's actually been a challenge. One of the challenges that we've faced when trying to raise capital here for over the past year is a lot of... Bitcoin's become somewhat contrarian now.

And what do you mean by that? People are enthralled by ICOs and these securities. They're like, oh, why is Bitcoin boring? Why would you even think about that? And that's just it, right? It's the fundamentals. And people just want to, it's here. Bitcoin is here.

And instead of looking at what we have right here, they're trying to figure out the next best thing. And in my opinion, they should not be doing that. But, you know, everybody's got a different approach different thoughts different anticipation um but yeah kind of going back to the to the one of the challenges that we've faced in raising capital is we get this question asked a lot by vcs for example so why don't you just go you know raise an ico or something like that and even some of the Bitcoin startups that we talk with,

they have said, yeah, it's tough raising capital. And we've even, you know, it's crossed our minds that we should maybe do an ICO. But the thing is that reputation lasts forever. Right. So there's no way we would touch an ICO. And most Bitcoiners, they won't touch an ICO either. Yeah, so it's a long-term reputation game.

Right. It's been my thesis. People are sprinting out of the gate looking for the next best protocol, and we're going to look back in 10 years and be like, you're an asshole, you're an asshole, you're an asshole. Great idea, not. But yeah, it's like you said, I love what you said. We have this right here in front of us,

and everybody's running off to find the next best thing. And what people don't realize, people are trying to create Bitcoin killers. If Bitcoin dies, this whole space dies, in my opinion. I agree. Absolutely. The immaculate conception of Bitcoin is, we're getting very religious undertones here again. But honestly, I've talked about this before. This is the narrative that's going to win out in the long run, in my mind, is Bitcoin's longevity preceded by somewhat immaculate conception. Being that we don't know who Satoshi is, and he's gone.

And it's crazy. I don't think anybody's going to beat that narrative. There's no way. especially none of these like crypto vc hedge funds like pumping capital into pre-sales like it just doesn't that's not the way value is created like i'm getting in arguments with people over eos eos has five billion dollar raise how do you deploy five billion dollars to did they raise five i didn't see five billion apparently that's like the like nobody knows for certain that's like the number being thrown out there it's billions of dollars wow it's at least three

billion dollars wow potentially five and how the fuck do you deploy five billion dollars of capital like we got a developer army it's like no you can't just throw money at problems and expect them to get solved no no no if if and if they if they would we'd see we'd see the the banks um be be all over the space then right yeah and i mean let's just use heuristics here of software are projects that have taken the slow and steady approach like linux right so linux like we were talking about microsoft earlier right like they're they paid a bunch of developers they threw a bunch of money at development for their operating system it's ass it's it's one of the most it's one of the buggiest leakiest operating systems like don't ever use windows if you have a bitcoin wallet

on your computer but linux was a decentralized operating system project the developers put their head down for decades and now microsoft sort of put up a flag and said all right we're going to allow linux to be run on microsoft computers strange it's a better operating system right but maybe we can use this as an example to like sort of pay attention to bitcoin and maybe bitcoin will get over like overlooked because maybe ethereum maybe ethereum throws money at a bunch of developers or yes there's money at a bunch of developers people are like oh my god like look at this they're building shitty applications and that we can somewhat use but they're shitty we'll lose 100 million dollars every few months but in the long run people slowly but surely building out

bitcoin and it becomes something that people can't deny it's going to be the most secure have the most uh i guess the bitcoin developer community in particular has a very like defensive paranoid mindset where they're thinking about everything that can go wrong where other development projects are thinking about everything that can go right right yeah that's a great point right that's a great point and yeah the uh we and we see that as as you hit the nail on the head there too it's it's with all these developers working on ethereum we just see it as an opportunity for us and just um and for everybody that that's working on bitcoin projects it gives these these software developers

that much more of a head start to capture the market or whatever market they're going after. For us, it's capturing the global market for the delivery of Bitcoin. So let's jump into your philosophy. What philosophically drove you to Bitcoin?

Is it from your payments background where you're like, holy shit, this is way more efficient? Not even more efficient. It's not more efficient to an extent. Yeah, so it had a lot to do with my payments background. And just, I just saw the potential of how Bitcoin is literally going to change everything. And I just, I had to be part of this in some way or another. And because I'm not a software developer, I had to, you know, I spend all day every day

just learning as much as i can about bitcoin and um yeah you get the people saying oh you know it's who really don't understand bitcoin so trying to explain this to people everybody has a different uh you need a different way to explain bitcoin to some folks right so So it was – so for me, it was really just – it's a way for the – really connecting the entire world to this new global e-commerce. And with regards to the payments, yeah, so I just – I got out of payments. I just saw the payment space becoming kind of scammy. um yeah how so well it's just there's no there's really been no innovation i mean if you look at the card networks it's the same thing since 1960s you know it's it's just it's a card you know i

mean now they have the uh they got rid of the signatures i believe recently which that was really never needed and in a few years back uh with the with the target hack they um they had the EMV chips implemented, and that was really a top-down thing by the card-issuing networks. I won't say that, but it was. And also the hardware providers, too, because hardware providers are in trouble. So there's been no innovation there.

And even today, if, like, last week using Zelle with Chase, you know, it was like their way to send payments, basically. quickly but it still it still takes one to three business days really that's quickly in banking terms you know it's with bitcoin it's just it once people try bitcoin for the first time it's just like really it's that easy you know it's it's uh yeah let's jump into point of sale systems in particular because that's like because i've thought about creating apps in the past i've had a couple ideas and actually pursued one um not aggressively but like did a lot of research and was thinking about putting together like a prototype it's basically an app where uh i mean this has been

tried before too so it's not like a novel idea but it's basically an app where you can see uh if you go to a bar you just sign up your when you go to the bar you check in via your phone like hey i'm here you run your tab from your phone yeah it's hooked up your social network so you can see like if it's your friend's birthday you're in chicago i'm in new york it's my birthday here you want to send me a beer you see that i'm at a bar you throw it on you throw a beer on my tab and you pay it that way and what i found was the thing that makes it impossible is the point of sale systems like you can't integrate with them like they're all completely different they're not yeah they're not plug and chug you can't just uh they're they're not cooperative they want their

piece exactly so bitcoin as software like a point of sale system a lot of its hardware a lot of the hardware and proprietary software right um but bitcoin as open source software like you could just make an app basically where if somebody had a ipad or something download the app and you can create this global point of sale system that anybody can plug into right i love it and you should really see it's these simple ideas like this marty where you just they're simple but it's this will work this right literally it's a low-hanging fruit it is a total low-hanging fruit and yeah this is the point of sale system so you have um gosh i mean there's just so you have you have micros who's more of like the retail side and they're relatively easy to integrate with but

they still want their piece they they have their own loyalty program um there's still the uh the interface where the there's some sort of training that needs to be done um and then there's also like ncr uh there's ibm which i believe actually toshiba bought the ibm's um retail point of sale units um but but these are old huge expensive pieces of hardware bulky pieces well i like the the big the bitcoin atms are just you know regular atms are just bulky pieces of hardware they're expensive especially point of sale systems they're very expensive and then once um restaurants retailers get locked into these point of sale systems it's very difficult for them to leave because especially if you have multiple locations um it's it's not easy for them

to get out of those and just swap all new brand new equipment but if they have like small point of sale Square's got it right Square's figuring it out if there's anybody innovating in the point of sale arena

it would be Square and now we know that Jack might be a Bitcoin maximalist maybe he's working on lightning apps maybe and we might see

like Bitcoin compatibility on the Square point of sale systems that would be interesting but if anybody wants to work on an open source

POS system not proof of stake point of sale let me know that's an interesting idea I think this is a low-hanging fruit too it is it really is yeah and then and yeah with also the the bar tab thing too you just open it and then you can leave um and then maybe some people forget to pay so they'll

uh so they'll actually have that almost like a uh maybe you could do like some sort of escrow thing as well yeah um you could figure it out yeah yeah some yeah i'm not sure but uh but yeah It's just a high-level idea, right? We'll flesh out the granular details in time. Yeah, absolutely. No, but again, the opportunity to disrupt simple things like that, things like that. What other low-hanging fruits would you say there are?

Jeez, I mean, regarding point-of-sale systems? Just that Bitcoin could disrupt in particular. Oh, you know, on the walk over here, I just, I see all these, yeah, just the, just, just all the banks here, you know, obviously it's, it's, these banks are just so, they're, they're thinking about Bitcoin, and I know some, I know some banks, and I have nothing against banks, for the most part. It's more the fiat system that they run on, right? Yeah, it's just, yeah, yeah, I think the problem I have, the problem I do have with banks is they're getting tax money, essentially, and just charging people high interest rates and just puts people in traps, 20%, 30% APRs, and then, yeah, it's, they played a different game.

Yeah. But, yeah, I mean. we're good yeah we got uh it's loud in the barstool office right now i don't know what's going on out there you know willie cologne screaming for some reason um but yeah yeah i think um yeah there's just any any kind of business today can be can be replicated into to Bitcoin businesses in the future and kind of going back to to the the escrow or you know quote smart contracts for example I mean one one idea that that I really like is for example for let's say here in New York as well you know you see a bunch of apartments well people put deposits down

for for apartments rentals right and so you you don't know if you're getting that money back so Let's say you put down $2,000. You don't know if you're getting it all back, part of it back. And then so what applications can be pulled from this, for example, is that you can have a third-party arbitrator and maybe take a picture or videos of the apartment before you rent and then after you rent, and that arbitrator will decide whether the Bitcoin should be released.

Yeah, the arbitrator is the landlord who's looking to take your security deposit right now. Yeah, and these never go to small claims courts. no because it's too expensive too expensive yeah exactly the incentives are the landlords are raping people three ways you know like it's great in new york city in particular like the rent here is ridiculous yeah what infuriates me in the new york rental market is the broker scam so i don't know if you know this i don't i don't know so in chicago yeah let's go step out in chicago i felt like when we were looking for apartments we would go to a broker they would take us around look at

apartments and we would sign a lease and all you have to put down a security deposit maybe first month last month and that's it and then the owner or the landlord of that apartment complex pays the broker a fee for filling the house i see here in new york it's completely ass backwards and when you're going apartment hunting and you use a broker you get you get the apartment you sign the lease you put a security deposit down first month last month and then you pay a broker's fee which is many thousands of dollars so the the consumer is paying the broker to find an apartment for them really like the owner of the apartment is not paying the broker really the the tenants are it's completely ass bad right and the way these brokers work they have no idea what they're

selling they like show up to a place for the first time and they all they do is open the door and say, take a look, and they get $3,000 off the top. Wow. It's absurd. Wow. It's completely ass-backwards, and I'm going to do something about it. You should. That's an application right there.

Right? New York City brokers, I have some friends that are. You're assholes. Forget about it. It's completely ass-backwards. It makes no sense. It doesn't make any sense. But New York City can drive rationality.

you know the people want to be here i want how did this come about like uh i don't know i don't know i'm gonna find out though no i don't put it into it yeah get it because it's madness it's it drives me crazy because i'm looking for a new apartment right now she's like fuck yeah i don't want to give the stupid broker three thousand dollars are you dealing with the brokers right now are you no you try me and my wife try really hard to keep brokers out of it So you've got to work hard to keep a broker out of it. You've got to go straight to the owner and be like, I'm not paying the fee. Kind of like under the table stuff, huh?

Sort of under the table. You just cut out the middleman. It's cutting out the middleman. And that's like, you want to talk about a parasitic middleman. It's New York City brokers. They just insert themselves. They have no, they don't care about you. They don't know the apartments they're showing 95% of the time.

And they just show up, open a door, and get a $3,000 cut from the tenant. that's my that's marty's rant for the day nice um you mentioned chicago and and yeah so we we talked about this when uh when i first got here too yes i used to live in chicago and what a great city it's incredible city most underrated city in the in the country i would argue i agree yeah i agree and i'd say of course i'm a little bit biased but i'd say madison is up there as well and madison's a beautiful city san diego too maybe never been to san diego oh do you serve i do yeah that's real you gotta go to san diego yeah no longboard shortboard hybrid um longboard yeah i'm uh i'm too bulky i'm a beefy bitcoin boy i don't know if you know that

it's been a meme that's been propagated on this podcast before um so yeah i don't i'm not too boing on a shortboard uh if i've got a better center balance on a long board. I think I'm a pussy or whatever. I'm sorry. Um, yeah. What about you? You surf? I do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I love, yeah. I love to surf. I learned how to surf in, I lived in LA for a year, so I learned how to surf at Huntington beach. Um, and they used to take trips to San Diego quite often. This is PB Pacific beach. Um, you know, kind of touristy, but I like, I actually, I think the waves are perfect. Nice rolling, um, you know six to ten foot waves typically yeah but right now i i go surfing in um san francisco i

go surfing at pacifica so it's like a cove but it's nice because there's not there's rarely any riptides there's great whites out there but there's we're looking for seals yeah you know yeah or beefy surfers and so i will stay out of san francisco Yeah, next time you're in San Francisco, man, yeah, they'll take you out. Got to wear a wetsuit and booties, the footies. Do you wear those out here, the booties or the hood? After October, you got to put it on.

I'm too much of a pussy. I don't surf after October. Not too much of a pussy. I don't have enough time to get down to Jersey. During the summers, I'll surf a lot. but I wanted to make it a point to surf more in the off-season. But, yeah, like right now the water in South Jersey is probably like 55 degrees, I would say, Fahrenheit.

Oh, wow, yeah. Which isn't bad. I'll bear back that. That's not too bad. That's about San Francisco. Yeah. You don't use a wetsuit with that? No, it's like a Jersey hard-o thing.

Oh, man. That's awesome. People like the, I mean, people will wear wetsuits, but a lot of people like to be a hard-on-go bareback. What's funny, though, I feel like a lot of surfers found, like, a lot of Bitcoin people, like, Bitcoin attracts, like, a surfer vibe. Yeah. I feel like a lot of the people I've met. PirateBeachBum. Give a shout-out to PirateBeachBum.

Shout-out PirateBeachBum. Yeah, he did an interview on Azteca, right? He did, yeah. and he's actually one of our we go to him for for some advising uh at times uh he's um you should have him you should have him in uh in here sometime he's super cool dude i'll let him tell his story um he's a private guy but uh yeah i love i love pbb he's um very insightful he's an entrepreneur um yeah he's he's and he's been through this whole river more uh for for starting with starting businesses,

multiple businesses, things like that. He's somebody I highly respect and often go to to run things by and see what he would have done or how he thinks. Much respect, PBB.

Shout out, PBB. What else can we hit on here? Is there anything in particular about Bitcoin that's going on right now you want to talk about? Let's see. I really think hitting home on the – so you mentioned HODL, right? So a couple of things. So with regards to HODLing, this is obviously a key driver for the foundation of Bitcoin. um but at the same time it's people should also understand that um

without bitcoin getting into the hands of millions and then billions of people hodling really doesn't mean too much um so it's it's gotta it's gotta get out there these these app these and i cannot stress this enough these startups do need help like and it's and we've been through it and we're you know finally getting the funding but there's been um a lot of time that we've spent just chasing the um the vcs for example and i mean maybe it was my my my approach is wrong i actually should have started out targeting individual the angel investors and um but i i think these these bitcoin startups are getting overlooked um and take you mentioned lightning for example right so they just this is lightning they did they raised 2.5 million

over 11 investors you know and and you know dcg was part of that and and i i don't imagine any Bitcoin started wanting to take money from DCG, you know, so it's, but this is, like, they had, this is lightning, and they only raised 2.5, and they had to do it across 11 different investors. Yeah, it was like 100, 200 grand, 210 grand a pop. Yeah, yeah. It's like, and then that same week, CryptoKitties raised $13 million. I was just going to say, yeah.

And CryptoKitties skips, they started, what, in November? They skip seed, go straight to 12, 13 million, Series A. Priorities, people. Priorities. I think the startups in the Bitcoin ecosystem, they shouldn't even have to think about raising an ICO. So for those Bitcoin millionaires out there and hedge funds, they should really start. I think these crypto hedge funds are actually going to be disrupting VCs.

Really? yeah absolutely like and i had these vcs don't see it come i know uh there was speaking of a ton of vcs and i have much respect for vcs because they they have to raise capital themselves and and we know some that are going through that right now and i have friends who are venture capitalists but they um if they don't get into the to the bitcoin game they're they're going to miss out um and it's kind of like going back to the ico thing of uh what you see is people down the road and bitcoin is such a small space and people do not forget things and right right yeah so people don't forget red creighton

yeah it's yeah it's it's it's jeff garzik yeah people don't forget no it's Brian Armstrong. Yeah, it's... Who else can you say? Oh, gosh, there's, you know... Dan Larimer. There's a lot of scammers out there. There is, yeah, there's...

Bryce Wiener. I'm going to call you all out. Ver, you know, there's, yeah, it's just... No, that's, like, one thing I harp on, though. This is a long-term reputation game. I think in the long run, the best mentality to have is a conservative mentality. Yeah, you're right. Because if you go out there preaching that you're going to solve the world with a delegated proof-of-stake system,

and it turns out to be completely ass, people are going to look at you and laugh. Turning complete. That was a red herring. That was a red herring. The world computer. That's the other thing. I mean, we say this, like people don't forget, but do people forget? They do forget, and they're building on it.

Some people don't forget. All right, we're going to have to change that. Some people don't forget, Brett. And the thing, too, when I mentioned that Ethereum is building on sand, let's not forget that the DAO, right? And we've seen it occasionally where there's been other hacks, and Ethereum, I don't think that's going to stop because it's like Hotel California.

You can check out, but you can never leave. Right. So you never know if there's going to be another hack next week, 10 years from now. Who knows? I bet there's a bunch of zero days out there waiting to be exploited. I'm sure, yeah.

That's what will happen when you create a programming language from scratch and deploy it within two years without heavy testing. Um, we'll see though. We'll see. We'll see. We'll see. We have these convictions.

I don't like you talk to people who are so convinced that Ethereum is going to happen. It's like, huh? What do you, what information do you have that I don't? You know? Yep. Always be skeptical. Skeptical. You sound like a Bitcoin maximalist.

Uh, I'm so toxic. Do you embrace that term? Bitcoin maximalism? Yeah. Yeah. I do too. I do too. Um, yeah, it's whatever.

um i'm trying to like i'm trying to begin to like stop uh antagonizing you know actually that rant was pretty antagonizing but it was um i just think i just think in the long run bitcoin is going to win on its merit like this is it's an open source meritocracy this whole space at the end of the day it's common sense right why is it common sense it's it's just the fundamentals big bitcoin that the software project has been running for again like almost a decade yeah it's um for the most you've never been hacked there's never been any really there's been a hiccup but there's really never been any downtime and this is literally unprecedented software project and it's common sense because the it's it's just many many people don't

understand the fundamentals right of this and we're seeing it yesterday bitcoin cash had a hard fork i didn't i didn't even that was i just flew in yesterday so i didn't i missed a lot of them they had a planned hard fork may 15th bitcoin cash did bitcoin cash did and it looks like i'm seeing here ben verrett is reporting on twitter that bitcoin abc nodes that upgraded after yesterday's hard fork can't sync so you have an unskilled development team very hubristic development team thinking they can solve all bitcoin's problems bitcoin cash is the real bitcoin people don't forget this is what these people believe it can't even manufacture it can't even coordinate a hard fork without having nodes drop off the network and make

it impossible to sync like interesting there's so many externalities and small details that are that i believe the bitcoin core process takes into consideration that other people other software projects are not that my money's on them just low and slow yeah it's uh it's gonna be a long it's gonna be a long time it's gonna be it's gonna be a long road yeah but we're already we're already a long way down the road but it's only gonna get longer Yeah, and that's another thing, too. It's if one of the top Bitcoin core developers, you know, God forbid something happens to them,

there's still many other Bitcoin core developers that understand the project and will step up. On the other side of that, Ethereum, you know, also God forbid something happened to their leader over there, uh something but if something happened there i don't think that people can just step in and replace what he's doing yeah you know so it's there's a lot of uh vitalic worship yeah vitalic if you're listening i have a conversation with vitalic like once a week on this podcast yeah is it with him or is it it's i just speak into the abyss he never listens he never hears

me i'm sure he's listening i'm sure vitalic if you're listening come stop by the studio let's talk you've got a lot of stress on your shoulders for a 23 year old it's uh i can't imagine it i have empathy for you yeah yeah empathy no because i do not know what it's like to be in your shoes yeah i have sympathy for you yeah um all right right it's been a great conversation is there any like parting notes or anything you want to talk talk about in particular before before we get out of here um let's see no i just thank you very much for having me on marty i really appreciate this is very cool this is a fun conversation yeah this is great where uh where can people find out more about you and azteco azteco azte.co and i'm on twitter ryan dipman

d-i-p-p-m-a-n-n double p double n and my business partner beauty on beauty on underscore on twitter he he will he will teach you some things on Twitter Beauty on yeah

absolutely and that's yeah and in closing it's he's he's got kind of going back

to that I don't know if I skipped over that a little bit but one of the things that really really attracted me

to to to his to his project and to him as a person is his anticipation for where all this is going.

And he shares this with everybody. He's been pretty correct in his predictions. And that's just it, right? It's, he looks at what's going on currently and he's able to see into the future. And he puts it out there and people should pay attention. They really can get business ideas from this. And sometimes it's like, oh, you know,

Maybe, you know, don't share too much information, but it's open source ideas and it's great for Bitcoin and great for the development. And we're really excited for the future of Bitcoin and for Steko and just onboarding these millions and billions of people and capturing the global market. Well, good luck to you as you roll this out. I'm very excited for it. I think it's going to be a very successful company. Thank you very much. I think the UX that you guys have worked out is impeccable. It's very simple.

Thank you. I'm Marty Bent. You can find me on Twitter at Marty Bent. If you like this podcast, subscribe, rate, review, tell your friends. Tell me you don't like it. Tell me you like it. Just let me know what you think. That's all for this week.

Peace and love. All right. That was fun. That was cool, man. Thank you.