The Wolf Of All Streets - Revolutionizing Crypto: How Fold Enables Bitcoin Earnings for Everyone | Will Reeves

Episode Date: June 11, 2023

Join me in this comprehensive interview with Will Reeves, CEO & Co-Founder of Fold, as we dive deep into the mechanisms that are enabling everyday people to earn Bitcoin. We explore Fold's transformative role in the crypto space, discussing everything from its unique loyalty and rewards system, its focus on satoshis, the recent banking crisis, and El Salvador's significant investment in Bitcoin mining.  Follow Will Reeves: https://twitter.com/wlrvs ►► OKX Sign up for an OKX Trading Account then deposit & trade to unlock mystery box rewards of up to $10,000!  👉 https://www.okx.com/join/SCOTTMELKER ►►THE DAILY CLOSE BRAND NEW NEWSLETTER! INSTITUTIONAL GRADE INDICATORS AND DATA DELIVERED DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX, EVERY DAY AT THE DAILY CLOSE. TRADE LIKE THE BIG BOYS. 👉 https://www.thedailyclose.io/   ►►NORD VPN  GET EXCLUSIVE NORDVPN DEAL - 40% DISCOUNT! IT’S RISK-FREE WITH NORD’S 30-DAY MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE. PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY! 👉 https://nordvpn.com/WolfOfAllStreets   ►►COINROUTES TRADE SPOT & DERIVATIVES ACROSS CEFI AND DEFI USING YOUR OWN ACCOUNTS WITH THIS ADVANCED ALGORITHMIC PLATFORM. SAVE TONS OF MONEY ON TRADING FEES LIKE THE PROS! 👉 http://bit.ly/3ZXeYKd  ►► JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER, DELIVERED EVERY WEEK DAY! 👉https://thewolfden.substack.com/   Follow Scott Melker: Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottmelker   Web: https://www.thewolfofallstreets.io   Spotify: https://spoti.fi/30N5FDe   Apple podcast: https://apple.co/3FASB2c   #Bitcoin #Crypto #trading  Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 1:04 What is Fold 5:30 Earning Bitcoin 9:00 Banking crisis 13:10 Giving out $30 million  17:15 Loyalty and rewards 22:20 Focus on satoshis 27:10 Bitcoin only 30:00 Bull market 34:00 Bitcoin on and off ramps 38:45 El Salvador’s $250 million investment in Bitcoin miner 44:15 Adoption in El Salvador   47:45 Follow Fold and Will  The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own and should in no way be interpreted as financial advice. This video was created for entertainment. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision. I am not a financial advisor. Nothing contained in this video constitutes or shall be construed as an offering of financial instruments or as investment advice or recommendations of an investment strategy or whether or not to "Buy," "Sell," or "Hold" an investment.

If we want to onboard the entire world to Bitcoin, then we need to make it much easier and more compelling for the average person. Now, people like Will Reeves at Fold are doing that by offering very simple reward programs that pay you in sats for the spending and activity that you already do. Arguably, this is a much easier way to get someone interested in Bitcoin than trying to convince them or explain to them how to buy it in the first case. We talked about this, about the Bitcoin cycles, about why they're Bitcoin only, and about their big move to El Salvador.

You guys don't want to miss this. Obviously, I think the best place to start is for you to give us a bit of context. Tell us what Fold is, why you created it, and where it currently stands. Yeah, Fold has been my journey for the past couple years. And in that, the world of Bitcoin and the world around it has totally changed. So it's been a fun ride to see it through the lens of Fold. And so our initial kind of problem we were trying to solve is that Bitcoin was this new form of money

that we found it hard for people to grasp, both in what type of value can it bring to their life? Why should I have Bitcoin? What can it do for me? Should I use it to transact? Should I use it to save? Should I use it to bond with my son who bought some? And that's all he talks about now. who tend to be coming at it from either economic, technical, political, or just being young on Reddit threads lens. What about everybody else who maybe has full lives and don't have that? And so we looked at how can full be a vehicle to onboard everyone else, give everyone the ability to acquire Bitcoin, learn about Bitcoin, and how do we remove all the traditional barriers to acquiring it? Let's remove the need for understanding totally about what wallets are. Let's remove the ability for understanding it from an economic or political lens. Let's turn it into something fun, a reward that anybody can earn and start to accumulate. And so we looked at different ways of doing that.

And rewards was the obvious choice. Over 90% of Americans participate in loyalty programs already, we're already earning rewards. And what better way to earn free Bitcoin than this? And so it really allowed us to speak to brand new customers and people that Bitcoin, the community of Bitcoin really wasn't totally about. And so Fold to this day is really about hardcore people who understand it and who just want more. But also, I think one of the more important things that we do is be on the kind of cutting edge of introducing

new people, new audiences to Bitcoin to have them start their journey. So you've been doing this for a couple of years, and your initial premise was to abstract away all the difficulty that we know is inherent with getting someone to do that first transaction, to open that first wallet, to finally engage with the asset. Do you think that those things, those barriers have disappeared here still in 2023? Or do you think that those things, those barriers have disappeared here still in 2023? Or do you think that we still years later have those same problems? It's a complicated thing. In some ways, absolutely. In some ways, there have never been better options for holding your Bitcoin with self-custody. There's never been better options for where to get your Bitcoin. And in some respects, all the efforts to make it easier has also led to problems. And this

has been really borne out in the last year. How can we make Bitcoin as easy to buy and not have to think about it at all? Well, that's kind of how we get into these custodial platforms who say, hey, don't worry about it. You don't need to learn about keys. You don't need to learn about anything. This just will take care of you. And we know how that story has ended with FTX, with Voyager, with BlockFi, with all of these that purport to give value of Bitcoin in the day to day and also say, hey, let's make it easy. It comes with trade-offs. And so what we've learned more

than anything is for all the gains we've made, we've also learned that there are hard lessons about making Bitcoin too easy for some extent. And so for Fold, what we try to do is manage that journey for our users and allow them when they're ready to figure out, okay, I've earned it. Now I want to do more. Well, where can you go buy Bitcoin in a way that makes sense, low fees, is safe, is going to help educate you? Well, here's different ways you can do that. How about storing it?

Then we have that conversation. We really have to be involved at every step of the way after, or else, as we know, you go type in Bitcoin wallet in the app store and you get a lot of choices that you wouldn't want your parents storing their Bitcoin with. Yeah. To me, I won't say it's discouraging because these things take a long time, but it

really does not seem like we've advanced that far. But I think it's just a very complex balance between being your own bank and making that a comfortable idea for your average person. So talk about the steps, I guess, of going through Fold if you're a new user. I want to do this. I've never bought Bitcoin before. I want to set up a Fold account. How do I custody it? Where does it go?

You have the whole story. So you have your friend raving about Bitcoin and you're like, hey, it's a bear market. Bitcoin, look at Bitcoin's price chart. It was $60,000. Now it's $20,000. Friend, I'm stopping listening to your raving and ramblings. And then your friend says, well, what if there was a way that you didn't have to buy Bitcoin, but you could just earn it passively, start to learn about it in that way. And that's enters Fold. And so you would go to the app store, you download Fold. First thing you do is you see that, hey, I shop at Amazon, I shop at Uber,

I shop at Starbucks, you name it. I can earn Bitcoin for every purchase I make there. And so you would link a credit card or debit card, add that to the app, go about your regular shopping, you start to accrue Bitcoin for doing so. Sometimes up to 20% back, it can get pretty crazy. We've had people who have bought new sets of golf clubs and Bitcoin's price is appreciated so much that the rewards they earned on those golf clubs are worth more than the actual amount that they used to purchase them. So really crazy things can start happening. So you've earned it on your merchant offers, you're feeling good. And now you want to say, hey, I want to earn on everything. I you've earned it on your merchant offers. You're feeling good. And now you want to say, hey, I want to earn on everything. I want to earn it on not only my

grocery shopping, but I also want to earn on my bills. I want to earn my mortgage. I want to earn it on my rent. And that's when you upgrade to the fold card. And that will give you 1% flat on everything you do. You can get 1%. You can lower your mortgage rate by 1%. You can get 1% back on your groceries, you name it. And this allows you to have 360-degree stacking experience in all your spending. It's going to really accelerate that. So now you wait a couple of months and you look up your accounts and you've seen, oh my, I have millions of Satoshis I've earned. That's now starting to get to be kind of a lot.

Now what do I do with that? I can't just have $5,000 on an app, on a rewards app. What do I do? So you can go to withdraw. And from there, we're going to help educate you on places to withdraw that Bitcoin. So places that we feel that our users have loved, used, trust to do that. And from there, you can withdraw directly with zero fees right to your wallet in whichever way makes most sense for you. And suddenly now you are now going from someone who said, hey, friend, I don't want to buy Bitcoin, but I'll earn it for free. Now you are custodying your own Bitcoin with your own solution. And then from there, you might say, hey, how do I buy more Bitcoin? How do I get more? Well, Fold, you can just go to the next Bitcoin tab in Fold. You can start buying Bitcoin, DCA, Smash Buy. And from there,

it starts to accelerate. But we really aim to meet people at the very top of the funnel. The first, what is Bitcoin? Why do I want it? If you're there, the fold is for you. And we'll bring you all the way down the funnel to being your own bank to some extent. And we'll try to keep you as safe and having fun, as much as fun along the way. Your custodian is trying to get everybody to not have you be their custodian. It's exactly right. And this is a lesson that we, you know, we, well, you know, at the very beginning, from a very practical level of running a Bitcoin company, there's two things. I can make a lot of money off that if I hold the keys. So you get the Blockbites, the Voyagers, the FTX. They can take that Bitcoin and do other things with it. And they generate revenue off of it. And then there's the other camp that says, wow, if we hold the keys, essentially, we're just a honeypot for holding the responsibility for everyone else's Bitcoin.

That brings on brand risk, that brings on overhead, that brings on high security requirements. What if we just don't need to deal with that? And what if our whole premise is to withdraw it as soon as possible? And so these different companies, and you're seeing some of it now, make this very basic decision of which pathway to go. And we clearly chose one way. Other companies have chosen the way that we've gone and say, hey, we want to hold as little of your Bitcoin as possible. All we want to do is be the place where you earn it and buy it. From there, we're going to help you get it off. And then other companies made a choice to say, hey, what can we do with it?

And how can we make money off of it? And many of those are not around today. And it's been a scary last year of lessons to be learned. I hope that we've stopped learning those lessons, but I don't have such high confidence that we won't see these things again. Oh no, Scott. They're coming around. It's a cycle. I already see some of the actors who are complicit in it starting new things and with pretty wide support. So I would not be surprised to see it all happen again. And I guess we just hope that more people learn in each cycle and that we advance the ball. But you're never going to stop, I think, humans from being greedy and humans being humans, right?

That's it. And it shouldn't really be our job. Part about Bitcoin is necessary about free markets. But the thing that's been missing in the conversation is while both may talk... The keyword was yields over the last couple of years. 8% yield on your Bitcoin versus, hey, I'm not going to get anything if I just withdraw out of my wallet. So that was the ROI calculation people made. But there was a hidden variable in that calculation, which is the risk of you giving the keys of your Bitcoin. And if that was risk adjusted, that 8% would be pulled down into a negative number. And that was just actively hidden. And so I think you're exactly right. It's just we need, unfortunately, it's going to take a couple more cycles of people to get this. And at the end of the day, it won't go away.

Ideally, it's just more the consumers and people are just more educated about the true risk profile of that. And if they want to engage, great for them. They've at least made a calculation with their minds and eyes open. But that just wasn't the case, unfortunately, for thousands of people over the last cycle. Yeah, and it should be clear that this is not unique to Bitcoin or the cryptocurrency market. I mean, these things have been happening with markets

since the beginning of time. I hate it when people sort of point directly at us and say that this was a crypto problem or that this was a Bitcoin problem. It's just a human greed and that hunt for free lunch, really. I mean, that's all it was. That's exactly right. Exactly right. Just look at the last bank crisis that just recently happened. Many people tried to put that on Bitcoin, but the true thing was just a horrible risk calculation, putting it into what is

considered a riskless thing like short-term, long-term treasuries. And that's what broke this whole thing down. And so you're exactly right. Yeah. And your average person, though, is still not going to go to their bank and ask them what they're doing with their money and understand it. So there's some risk that your average person doesn't know they're taking, and that will always be the case, I think. I want to dig a little more in on Fold, though, because you've given away... How much money have you given away in Bitcoin? How many Satoshis? How many Bitcoin have you given away since you started? Let me first start there. Roughly. I think in dollar values, it's coming close to $30 million over the time, adjusted for the amount of Bitcoin's price. But we've given away

54, 55 billion Satoshis for our users. Okay. So that's an absurd amount. Where does that come from? So how do you do that? What's the business model? So we try to create a business model that's aligned with our users. It's a very simple thing. We want to stack stats every time our users stack stats. Every time our users. It's a very simple thing. We want to stack sets every time our users stack sets. Every time our users buy Bitcoin, we want to earn Bitcoin. And so just try to keep that aligned so that all we're doing is aligned for people to stack more and more. And so how that works on our platform today is when you take advantage of a merchant offer, say it's getting 2.5% back at Amazon or 10% back at DoorDash, we are sharing part of that reward.

So DoorDash may say, hey, we're going to give you 12% back for every time a user takes advantage of this in your platform. So you're an affiliate. Fundamentally, at that point, you're an affiliate, you're driving traffic to these vendors, and they're paying you a percentage of the transaction. That's how you guys make your money. Yeah. So we'll make these deals with these merchants and we'll just come to an agreement there. It's primarily affiliate model on our debit card. Every time you swipe a debit card or a credit card, we get paid from what's called an interchange fee. It's the merchants paying us for bringing a customer to you. And then we split that with our users and Bitcoin, we take some and give the lion's share away to our user base.

So simple. So for you, it's just a matter of going out and making more deals and getting more people on the platform. It's a simple numbers game. You know, we're betting on being at the forefront of Bitcoin adoption and that we expect to that growth curve

to continue to, you know, be at the angle it has always, it has been traditionally. And if we're able to do that and provide a good product, we get to ride that wave. The more users that come on board, spend the more money, the more successful Fold becomes. So on the app side, I would imagine maybe with the crypto winter and bear markets and market cycles, you would see sort of an uptick and downtick in signups. Do you see with the card, is it much harder to sustain people when we get into these bear markets, these cycles of apathy, or do you still see people

consistently signing up? Because obviously there's major competition for you. Does someone want their reward 1% Bitcoin or do they want to go to a card that gives them 3% on their travel or 1% on gas, whatever's important to them. Yes, exactly right. Historically, rewards card programs are one of the most highly competitive segments out there. It's only a close second to insurance and things like this that's very competitive. And so for us, we definitely see correlation with the Bitcoin bear and bull cycles. And what we see is on bull cycles, we see a huge influx in new users coming in. And that is a major tailwind for us.

And it's very exciting. It's always, hey, build in the bear markets to get ready for the activity that happens in the bull markets. But there's an interesting that happens when it goes into bear markets like we're at now, where that tailwind of new users starts to slow a little bit just down to normal levels, still growing very strong in terms of new cardholders and new account signups. But the more interesting thing is that our existing user base who already had the card

use it even more. And part of it is two things. Number one is that our existing user base who already had the card use it even more. And part of it is two things. Number one is that they're understanding the value of Bitcoin because they got to see what happened to the rewards at bull markets. And they understand, wow, one Satoshi may be worth this today. But wow, I just saw what it could be worth tomorrow. And it creates this kind of cycle of people having a lower time preference about understanding how Bitcoin works in the bulls and bears. And so we actually see

card spend per user increase in bear markets. That's interesting. Not what I would have expected. But it does make sense if people are Bitcoin native and passionate and understand, obviously, dollar cost averaging. Of course, you want to, if you're going to set it and forget it, the best purchases you're going to make are at the depths of the bear market. That's exactly right. But this is you saying that people are actively actually seeing an uptick in their activity, which I find really, really interesting. I'm not surprised that you don't see quite as many signups, but I am surprised that you don't see people abandon it. Because everything else in crypto or in you don't see people abandon it. Because everything else in crypto or in Bitcoin, you see people abandoning it.

Yeah. Exchange volumes, users on exchange, signups, all of that goes down. Yes. And you'll see, part of that is obviously the signups. We know that's industry-wide. But there's a different psychology related when you're getting something technically for free versus i have to buy and that will fall off like a cliff now um with us why we see it even more is that um loyalty and rewards are very sticky products so you start direct you try you change your direct deposit you start getting used to taking this advantage that offers and it creates just a muscle but we've also done things on the app that we're also known for. We're not just known for kind of giving you a different type of reward,

Bitcoin, but we're also known for giving you a different type of rewards experience that is meant to be very engaging and get you there. So there's gamification behind it. Every dollar you spend on the app, you get to be entered into a spin and the spin could win you up to a full Bitcoin. It could be a big prize, 100,000 Satoshis. It could be 10 sets. It's wildly different. But these types of gamification and loyalty incentives keep people very much engaged with the product, even in bear markets. And so it was important when we created this is to have both of that. It's both Bitcoin rewards, but it's also a new approach to the experience of earning rewards, because just as we said, if we're trying to attract the highest, newest users

to Bitcoin, they're also going to be the flakiest to some extent. They will be the ones who say, hey, I only had a year of this and I just got burned. So what we do with changing the experience about earning rewards is to keep those people engaged, interested, and bought in. Yeah, I think that's why I'm so surprised. Because it's easy to talk about the people who understand and they see their sats go crazy after the bear market and into the bull cycle. And they've paid for their golf clubs three times over and those stories.

But we all know that most people who buy bitcoin do it at cycle highs right it's when the retail fomo kicks in most people who probably hate bitcoin right now bought between 50 and 70 000 and think even though they have not sold it they've lost everything? Because you know how the attitude of retail is and they effectively hate it. Personally, I believe they'll hate it until they'll sell it at the bottom and then they'll buy it again above $70,000 because that's what people do. But so how do you fight that sort of sentiment? Because you said you get this massive tailwind of people signing up on the way up, but those people are underwater yes um so with

that a couple things so number one number one we've known this was a case because we've we've operated enough Bitcoin cycles to know that hey that's a reality we're gonna have to deal with at least half the time probably more and this is why we tried to make the actual experience of using the card very fun and rewarding in and of itself. We use a lot of mechanics that we've learned from Duolingo and things like this to keep people doing something and engaged over the long term in building. We do a lot about education, about, hey, it's the bear cycle. This is the best time to be earning free Bitcoin. Look at these user stories that we've seen. So a lot of education around around that we do a lot of social things so

um people are stickier and continue to do things if they're doing it in a community context and so if they're doing with their friends family and children uh they are more likely to stick around it's a fold has social at social mechanics in there that try to bring a community experience to using the card um and then I'd say the other one is we do interesting things. You really don't see Bitcoin around the app too much. You see Satoshis. And there is a true unit bias happening when you earn something and I earn 10,000 Satoshis. Because even in a bear market,

10,000 just seems like a big number. And so even for people who are not like constantly calculating the market value of their rewards, 10,000 seems like a big number. And honestly, you go look at who we're playing against, you might get 10,000 air miles and they use the same unit bias things as this. Or you make it 50,000 points as a

signup. Those are all made up things. So fold, we can play the same game, but we're actually going to give you some real value. And so definitely the unit bias and focus on Satoshi's has been a very important strategic decision that we made. I never thought about that, to be honest. I mean, the miles thing obviously makes sense when you talk about it, but I never thought about that to be honest i mean the miles thing obviously makes sense when you talk about it but i never thought about the fact that you're not like getting a one thousandth of a flight yes because if they said that people would never be encouraged to keep saving and using it exactly right but yours is an actual unit of account right so so it is a little bit different and a little bit more compelling and it sort of leads to the conversation about whether we should just be talking in Satoshi's instead of Bitcoin in general. I think there's still, even after all these cycles, a mainstream sentiment that I can't afford one Bitcoin,

so I'm not interested. Yeah. We've made big bets on talking about Satoshi's only. And I think, I don't, I actually don't think, I think it won't take that much from, I think it's a couple other Bitcoin companies that are, that offer this, making this decision that could change that conversation away from talking about in terms of one Bitcoin. And, you know, it would be huge if Cash App made this decision that you could fully turn your denomination into Satoshi's. That could really help us change. And I really think it's a realistic thing for us. It takes a little bit of other companies going in on this direction. But I think talking in bits and sats makes perfect sense, would help combat unit bias, and would set us up for not only more successful bull runs, because it would make things feel more within reach. Even when you're at 70,000,

you can't say 70,000 Bitcoin now, you could say, well, you can buy $70. But it also helps retain you over the bear markets too. I think it's just a general good thing that I personally would like to see more. And I try to get other founders and other products to do this all the time. You mentioned getting Cash App to talk in sats. But so it made me think, obviously, that over the last cycle, we saw these huge, huge news events, PayPal, Venmo, Cash App, Square, all these people allowing Bitcoin purchases, adding withdrawals eventually, I think, which was somewhat huge. But yet, we're still seeing, once again, historically low volumes and interest at the depth of this cycle.

Maybe I was too optimistic in the last market. We all, I think, probably are during a bull market. But I thought with all of that sort of mainstream availability that actually things would be a little bit different this time. Yeah. I mean, if we really want to look at the last bull market, only really Cash App was well-positioned to participate in that. These are all like the PayPal's and the Venmo's. These are all kind of at the tail end of it and or built during where arguably kind of sideways movement, bear cycles were happening. And so this is going to be a perfect example of get shit done in the bear markets to get ready for the bull markets. And I think, Scott, in the next cycle, when we do see Bitcoin enter the bull again, we will absolutely see what you, I think, were hypothesizing will happen.

It just happened at an awkward time in that cycle where it wasn't able to do it. And most people already had made their decision where they were buying Bitcoin from. This was a new thing, but they already said, I'm doing it on Coinbase, and then they all got burned because the market turned. And we know the rest of the story. But I think the mass availability of it being available in the next bull market will have a serious impact. Right. It's not like we've seen them pull back. Right. So the very fact that they're still committed to sort of that side of the product

and it's just sitting there waiting for the interest to flow back in. Yep. That's exactly right. And there are other benefits. I've spoken to teams at Cash, at PayPal, and there's weird things that you see when you offer Bitcoin besides just do people buy it? The price action of Bitcoin becomes a thing of focus itself. They see daily active users go up. Even if they're not necessarily buying Bitcoin, they are maybe tracking it. And so you see a lot more app opens, which opens up for new areas of engagement.

You also see a lot more referrals. People who are bought into Bitcoin and are loyal in the bear markets, they are sources of growth for their products. And so there's other ancillary benefits that these companies get. And I think we're probably surprised at when they first saw them, when they thought, hey, we're just going to add more volume to the the platform but really they I think they see all these other metrics start to tick up in the right ways as well I'm going to assume that the answer here is obvious but are you committed to remaining Bitcoin only yeah you know we uh made we know we made a decision a long time ago to do this and there's to some extent you know everybody should make and operate their business. I have

shareholders, I have customers to attend to. So I have to always make the decision based on the information I have at hand and where I think will be best for the business, my team, and our customers. And really that decision of remaining Bitcoin only has not changed. Part of the reason why it really works for us as well is we're an awards company. We are talking about the top of the funnel. Bitcoin is the Coca-Cola of brands. It is the of digital currencies. It is the trusted. That's when you think about it.

That's the first one people will think of is, hey, have you heard about this thing called cryptocurrency? Yes, I've heard about Bitcoin. Now, there's some others that would start to maybe enter that list. But we've seen with them very fleeting. I can't put our trust behind any of them at this point. And so Bitcoin does the job that we need. It is the one brand that gets all eyes on us. And there's something to be said.

There were other Bitcoin, there are other crypto rewards cards out there. And some of them offered other cryptocurrencies, but there's a reason why 95% of the rewards they paid out was in Bitcoin. People just want Bitcoin, even if they have a choice. And then the other example is, save for a few exceptions, there isn't any Ethereum only rewards card out there, or there's actually one Doge one out there that is that. And that's kind of the origin of that company is a whole different conversation. But there's just not that. And so you ask why?

Well, the market's telling you something in that case. And it's just from the data that we've seen. We've asked our users, tell us what you want added to Fold. And what you'll see is going down the top 25... You'll see 25 different requests, the top most requested requests before you start seeing things like add XYZ currency to it. It's just something we don't hear about. I'm not surprised, actually. And not because of anything against any of the other assets, but it's always been my impression that the people who generally are concerned with saving,

which I think is probably your customer, right? They have a low time preference, as you said. They're looking at 10 years, 20 years. They save in Bitcoin, right? And I think that that's probably why they're using it. The rest of it, I think people love to speculate and trade. And you don't want to earn rewards on something that you might want to sell based on price action next month. Correct.

Oh, good. It's a good assessment. So that said, you're obviously counting on another bull market, right? You have to believe that there's another cycle coming. We keep talking about it as if it's a foregone conclusion. Why do you believe that? I do too, by the way. I think everyone knows that, but.

Yeah. Well, number one, we not, not prior performance, fast performance does not predict future outcomes, but at the same time. We do have the having. We do, we do. There are the structural things built into into bitcoin that are are not uh things to you know forget about um there's also uh the idea

that you know fundamentally we have seen from my own life and the lives of our users it's a bitcoin it has been a force for good in in their lives And so I think that Bitcoin still is at the very early adoption phase. I think we have so many more people to introduce it to. And that represents 98% of the addressable market. We've only penetrated 2% of what I think is the potential group of people now. And so between the predictability of Bitcoin cycles over the last decade, looking at the world and macro events that we're in now, Bitcoin will be needed more now and valued more than ever before. It just being something a force for good that we believe

in, and we want to be someone who's actively forwarding that adoption. Those three things keep us around, but also at the same time, we see what is coming to the world of Bitcoin. A lot of people say there's not much building happening in Bitcoin. There's not many things new, but being a part of a builder and founder community, Bitcoin is at the precipice of many things now. The tapping into the custody problems, the use case issues, the payments, everything is about to get into a maturity level that is going to basically load this spring for the next full market. And now is not the time to lose faith. I mean, for better or for worse, I think that BRC20 and Ordinals have somewhat dispelled the nothing's happening on Bitcoin myth. And I think actually that now, as much as you say people say that, I think they said that.

And nobody's saying it as much anymore. Like I said, for better or for worse, I don't have a passionate opinion on either one, on either side of the Bitcoin, BRC20, and ordinals debate. But it's certainly drawing a lot of attention back to building on Bitcoin and utilizing that block space and what can be done with the original blockchain. It's such a good reminder that Bitcoin, not just conceptually, but practically is an open and fair market. Now, who knows when the BRC20s and ordinals will be priced out in the future because the monetary premium that Bitcoin block space is meant for will eradicate their use case? Maybe. But at the end of

the day, it is truly right now a place for incredible projects and experiments that will come to it because of the premium that it brings. You know, a lot of these people said the reason why we bring in NFTs to Bitcoin is because why the hell would I want to own an NFT on a blockchain that may disappear tomorrow? I want to do it in something that's permanent. You know that if you're into NFTs and that's what your whole world is, that makes a lot of sense that you'd want to pay a premium to do that. Now, how long can that market be sustained for? Who knows? We'll see. But at the end of the day, I love to see Bitcoin's free market principles be very true, regardless of you get a lot of emotional slides on both.

Yeah. Listen, it's a permissionless right i i laugh when people all of a sudden seem to want to give permission to what can be done with a permissionless blockchain whether you like it or not it is what it is i mean if you want a wizard i guess go on and wizard right um but you said that being in the community you're seeing what's being built what are some of the most exciting things you can either give specifics or not, but just conceptually, what are some of the most exciting things that you're seeing being built on Bitcoin? And I guess the second question to that is, are any of them things that haven't already been built on other blockchains? Yeah. So I think there's two categories of this. There's one that is

entering maturity is that people offering Bitcoin on and off ramps are now not just Bitcoin only companies. This has now fully bled into all of the major institutional mass market mainstream brands. You mentioned a lot of them at the top of this. It will be in every single bank account that the buy, hold, sell, send option will be ubiquitous. And we are seeing the, not only just beginnings, but we're like midway through it, Bitcoin being within a couple clicks of every single person who already is banking wherever the hell they're banking. That alone is something we've seen in the early stages, but now is a hard fact that Bitcoin is within fingers reach of everybody now. And that starts the journey. The on-ramps start the journey for everyone. For everything else, about all the challenges that come with that,

about how to custody it, things like that used to be only the domain of very technical people or people who are just trying to secure a ton of wealth. Things like multi-sig and the abilities to make that easy and to custody things in a way that's safe are making leaps and bounds progress right now in ways that within a couple of years, you will see things like non-custodial Solutions be very very simple maybe that won't be where people onboard into but it will not be a hard switch into then uh getting them into non-custodial options it's still so hard yeah I mean I use multi-sig obviously and you'd have to like put me on a because we're all insane right

so you have to put me on a plane and fly around the world just to send my mom 50 bucks in Bitcoin, right? But what else are you seeing outside of the custody space? Yeah. So outside of custody, you have things like... Things that I am really... Bitcoin, at the end of the day, has always grown at the fringes. We just talked about, oh shit, it's now storming the gates

of PayPal, Venmo, Acme Bank, you name it. But Bitcoin historically has always been coming from the edges in as well. And so those use cases I love to see continue to progress. How can Bitcoin empower people with better money either to save in or to spend in than their fiat options that they have around them? And so things like Fedements popping up from companies like Feddy that are providing approaches to it, ways to have more ways to transact, hold and share Bitcoin as a community. I'm very excited that Lightning Network has competition is starting to come to it now about different ways of imagining how fast scalable payment stacks could be. Things like ARK has been proposed. It's just going to show that, hey, Lightning may not be the end

all be all end all solution for everything it hasn't been yet i write that and i'm not even hating i think these things just take time but if you wanted to send a ton of bitcoin on lighting you have a problem yeah and it's and you know the good part is that is terrible yeah yeah lightning doesn't have to do everything we always everyone the narrative was lightning was basically the only thing being built that could do it all, but it's really not great for it all. So now we get to say, what is lightning really great for? Permissionless transfer, fast transfer between non-parties that don't trust each other. Great. Fine. We can have other things that satisfy the other use cases and we don't have

to blanket say, Lightning is the be all end all solution for everything. It has never been, it's not today, and it doesn't need to be in the future. And so I love competition on layer two scaling. Again, ordinals and such have sort of, I think, really kicked even the most aggressive maxis in the ass to get it together and make these

layer two solutions work because block space is really expensive and the blockchain is really slow if you don't have the money to pay for it now. And that is not great if you're trying to send somebody 20 bucks and you're from El Salvador and don't want to pay a fee to do it. That's exactly right. Speaking of El Salvador, I think the mining space and the theory and the concept that Bitcoin can incentivize energy production in places that were previously economically untenable now is starting to come to fruition. You're seeing projects in Africa that will go set up in hydropower or areas where you couldn't really justify an investment to go create power production in very rural areas. But now when you have the profit incentive behind Bitcoin there to help fund it, kick it off the ground, or at least attract that initial investment, you now can expand power to new people. And so you're seeing that with some very fun projects out in Africa, but also today, today, El Salvador's announcement that their

volcano mining is real and it's, they've committed 250 million to it. You know, what you see. That was literally today. I mean, I was, yeah, everybody, because it's June 5th. So everybody was talking about Binance today. I didn't get past that. I think it got, I think it got a little bit buried there because of that. But the thing there is that, hey, they would never make that investment in just a pure power generation project if they didn't think they could have a profit incentive or a way to sustain it over the time. And Bitcoin is what they believe will do that. And so that kind of theory that what Bitcoin is now becoming less theory and more practical reality that we get to watch

and see come to fruition. I literally can't believe I missed that announcement, but I guess I was off the internet for two hours today. That'll do it, Scott. That'll do it, Scott. But it's funny because I think there's been a lot of people skeptical of El Salvadorador saying there was all this excitement two years ago you know we all remember the bitcoin convention in 2021 and the huge announcement and then within a month of that it was volcano bonds and circular bitcoin city and all these things and then you just kind of didn't hear about it again for a That's exactly right. It is very natural in that. It came to huge hype. And it came really from what was essentially a bottoms-up project. It was recognized from the top. And then from essentially government decree was, hey, we're going to embark on this project. But the infrastructure, nothing was there. It was always, hey, it's going to come down the way. And so it was more a promise of delivering, you know, on delivering future gains and future infrastructure.

And anytime you have that in any place, you know, we know how in the United States, how long does it take to build a new bridge? Or forget that. How long does it take to like, you know, fill up the potholes on your street outside? It takes now. Never takes you.

Exactly. Now, 4,000 years. And so I think to see the pace, you know, knowing that it's in the context of this is a government project that had, it was announced with very little, you know, infrastructure behind it to see the gains that it's made. I think if you change the perspective on what you're looking at, it will be viewed as more successful.

And I think knowing Fold recently announced that we're opening up our global headquarters in El Salvador, we've been able to be on the ground and see what's going on there in very big ways. And I'd say a lot of this is yet to be priced in about truly the commitment not just a headline that el salvador wanted to get out of the bitcoin story but a commitment in a very serious way uh to seeing this bitcoin experiment go through i mean this is insane just because i wanted to look which i never do while i'm having a conversation like this.

I went to my news terminal that I use. It's not even there as a trending story. And literally, that's only because it's based on how much something is tweeted or shared, obviously, that makes it trending. But the first 25 stories are different news outlets reporting on US SEC Biden. There you go. Completely buried. Completely buried. Yep. Which is astounding.

El Salvador's Volcano Energy secures $1 billion in commitments for 241 megawatt Bitcoin money. Absolutely monster story. Yeah. It'll be the largest Bitcoin operation in the world. Huge story. So are you in El Salvador right now? No, I'm not. but I will be there. I will be going there frequently now that we're opening up our office. We are going to be hiring local talent. We will have some of our team members

there. We'll be doing projects in Latin America from which El Salvador will be our base of operations. So you will definitely find me down there. Do you think we're going to see a significant expansion into other parts of Central and South America from El Salvador? Or do you think that right now there's some hesitancy? I think we'll see it from the kind of ground up organic level. I think... On the ground, but not from the government. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And I think to some extent, that's probably the way Bitcoin should move anyway, as just knowing what it is. And also the very specific context of El Salvador being a country that relies on a US dollar standard,

one that, you know, had a, it's much smaller of a country. There's many things that made El Salvador really a perfect place to be able to do this that would be harder to replicate in other spots. But I think organic adoption will continue apace. So you've obviously spent some time down there. How much organic adoption would you say there has been in El Salvador? Because it's very mixed reporting. So when my team goes down there, it's definitely mixed reporting every single time. Someone has a great experience. Someone says, where is it? And so it's hard to really put a universal trend on it. What is true is that everyone in the country knows about Bitcoin. It is true that everyone in the country has direct access to Bitcoin and those that need it are using it. Those that still make use of US

dollars and that's where you still do that. And Bitcoin again, won't be a solution for everybody in the short term. But in a big way, it's a thing that, again, the infrastructure has got to keep up with it. But you talk to our friends at OpenNode or River who are powering some of the infrastructure down there, and those numbers are only up and to the right. The Bitcoin Beach, Galoi Wall, everybody is seeing up and to the right in terms of activity, adoption. And those are encouraging numbers to see. I think it's just back to human nature. You can know exactly what's going to happen. We're just terrible at predicting the time it's going to take or when it's going to happen. I absolutely couldn't have said it better.

Yeah. People just expected that six months after El Salvador made an announcement because of the velocity of the news that all of a sudden everybody in El Salvador was going to love and be using Bitcoin. And anyone who's experienced what you talked about at the very beginning with starting with Bitcoin should have known that there was going to be some major obstacles and challenges here. But it does sound like they're going to get there. All signs point to yes. And again, you don't need to talk about Bitcoin as just this purely top-down government project. It's so much more than that even in El Salvador. And so you're going to see, I know the government has a very strong roadmap, and I also know the builders there on the ground who are building from the bottom up have very exciting things coming too.

And I think it's going to be the convergence of that will make El Salvador a really, truly great place to see how Bitcoin evolves and settles into the daily life of people. Is Fold available in El Salvador and other countries? So Fold, what we announced is that we signed a global partnership deal with Visa to bring the Fold model to the globe. And what that means is both a combination of our own app that will be made available in the local app stores, but it also means that Fold may not be there as our own consumer app, but we will be powering local providers in the local country. That probably makes more sense, to be quite honest. And that's a better expansion model, I would imagine, for you as more countries look to

adopt and as more people are interested. That's exactly right. Build something that's familiar to them. And what Fold knows is we built in the American market with insights that we knew and a cultural milieu that we knew that we were building in. Now, when you go to another country, I can't say I have the same understanding of how to build and what is the true value. And so what do we do? Let's partner with those people who do know the value and let them leverage the infrastructure that we've built to their end.

So I think you're exactly right. I love that. So where can people, a.k.a. follow you, but but be sign up, check out Fold, start earning Sats? How can they do that after this conversation? Go check out foldapp.com. You'll see our little Sat counter. You'll see everyone have fun getting rich together, stacking Sats on a daily basis. And some of the things we offer debit card, merchant offers, you name it. A lot of cool things coming down the pipeline. Download the app. And then for me, I will occasionally tweet and engage on Twitter. I'm at WLRVS. And yeah, give me a shout. Let me know how you're using the product and onward. Keep stacking sacks.

Well, I find that if you're too busy to tweet all day, it's probably a good thing for your company. Yeah. Sometimes I look around at some of my peers and I say, I know you have a family. I know you have... How you're on Twitter spaces for seven hours. I mean, I guess there's... Listen, it's my job to talk about these things. So that might be me. But I don't understand. You're running people and it's impressive job to talk about these things. So that might be me. But I don't understand. You're running people and it's impressive running these huge companies. Maybe there's incredible multitaskers.

But man, some of these people who are running companies are like prolific tweeters. Yes. Agreed. Agreed. I'm not quite there yet, but I'll be on there and I'll respond if you give me a shout. Awesome, man. Well, I look forward to following up on this conversation. I would actually love to do that in a couple months

once you guys are well-established down in El Salvador so we can get a bit more, I think, accurate information on what's coming out of there. So if you'd be willing to do that, I'd love to have you back. It's a great idea. I'm very down for that. Perfect. Awesome, man.

Thank you, Will, so much. All right, Scott. See ya.