You're The Voice | by Efrat Fenigson - Ep. 98: Max Kei - Banks Will Bow to Bitcoin

Episode Date: October 2, 2025

My guest today is Max Kei, former private banker and founder of Debifi, the world’s largest non-custodial Bitcoin-backed lending platform for institutions. With over a decade in private banking and deep experience building peer-to-peer Bitcoin infrastructure at Hodl Hodl and launching the Baltic Honeybadger conference, Max has become a leading voice on how Bitcoin will reshape global finance. In this episode, he explains why banks will adapt to Bitcoin rather than be destroyed by it, how Switzerland is quietly becoming the prototype for Bitcoin-banking integration, and why non-custodial finance is essential to prevent the next FTX-style collapse. We explore the tradeoffs between custodial and non-custodial systems, the security advantages of three-of-four multisig for institutional loans, and why stablecoins act as both a lifeline in emerging markets and a gateway to a full Bitcoin standard. ► If you got value, please like, comment, share, follow and support my work. Thank you!-- SPONSORS --→ Get your TREZOR wallet & accessories, with a 5% discount, using my code at checkout (get my discount code from the episode - yep, you’ll have to watch it): https://affil.trezor.io/SHUn → Shield your bitcoin with time-delayed transactions over multisig with BitVault: https://bit.ly/bitvault_efrat → Have you tried mining bitcoin? Stack sats directly to your wallet while saving on taxes with Abundant Mines: https://abundantmines.com/efrat/ – AFFILIATES –→ Get 10% off on Augmented NAC, with the code YCXKQDK2 via this link: https://store.augmentednac.com/?via=efrat (Note, this is not medical advice and you should consult your MD)→ Watch “New Totalitarian Order” conference with Prof. Mattias Desmet & Efrat - code EFRAT for 10% off: https://efenigson.gumroad.com/l/desmet_efrat → Get a second citizenship and a plan B to relocate to another country with Expat Money, leave your details for a follow up: https://expatmoney.com/efrat → Join me in any of these upcoming events: https://www.efrat.blog/p/upcoming-events -- LINKS –Max’s Twitter: https://x.com/keidunm Efrat's Twitter: https://twitter.com/efenigsonEfrat's Channels: https://linktr.ee/efenigsonWatch/listen on all platforms: https://linktr.ee/yourethevoiceSupport Efrat's work: ⁠https://www.buymeacoffee.com/efenigson   ⁠Support Efrat with Bitcoin: https://geyser.fund/project/efenigson-- CHAPTERS –00:00 - Coming Up01:20 - Introduction to Max Kai: Bitcoin Pioneer04:50 - Baltic Honey Badger Conference Origins10:27 - Ad Break: Trezor & BitVault11:50 - Bitcoin’s Community Ethos, Mission & Conferences19:00 - Max’ Intro to Bitcoin Through A Client 20:50 - Gradually Moving From Fiat To Bitcoin30:40 - When Will Banking Join Bitcoin?32:53 - Switzerland's Role in Bitcoin Banking38:03 - Rehypothication, Non-Custodial, Multisig Solutions42:01 - Flexible Lending Platforms & Security Measures56:13 - Max’s Take On Stablecoins: A Bridge to Bitcoin1:08:18 - Max Motivations, Aspiration & Hope

you go to sleep on sunday being a very wealthy person working all your life stacking some money for your pension you wake up it's gone and bitcoin is like crown jewel of fintech you have a money and you have a code and everything in one place it's the perfect thing if you think what's the essence of finta it's bitcoin it couldn't get better switzerland is banking mecca of the world If you think about bank, what country do you think about? It's probably 98% is going to be Switzerland. A lot of Bitcoiners, they hate banks, but they don't understand that banks are not making the rules.

You have high inflation, you have government that can confiscate whatever. They can do anything, basically. It's a wild west out there. There's a saying, our generation, we're born too late to explore the earth, too early to explore the space just in time to fix the money. I always wanted to have some kind of legacy behind me. It's less about making money and be super successful or whatever, but just leaving something for the community. That's what drives me. hello and welcome to another episode of you're the voice i'm a flat here in lugano switzerland

a pretty rainy day during the summer which is pretty cool the weather is great i'm here chilling with my friend max gay how are you max i'm good thank you for having me it's a pleasure to be here and it's pleasure to record with you it's not very rainy actually so yeah this is very mild yeah it's good i mean it's breaking the heat yeah it's good which is also great here in lugano i think everyone that comes here everyone i speak to is falling in love with this place are you one of those two amazing place that's why we have office here actually so i'm coming more and more often i mean it's a great place to be especially if you're a bitcoiner it's amazing city amazing vibe amazing people here at plan b hub okay yeah so we we really

enjoy the city we'll love it amazing so max a little intro for um my audience that may not know you okay i'm just gonna i'm gonna do it so it's easier for you so max k is the founder and ceo of debify the world's largest non-custodial bitcoin backed lending platform for institutions with a background as a private banker and deep experience in peer-to-peer bitcoin infrastructure including his early work at huddle huddle max has become a leading figure in building privacy respecting decentralized financial tools for a post fiat future which i am dreaming about every day well actually we're living it already his latest venture debify launched in march 2024 is that yes okay and he's and is now based in lugano switzerland i mean not you debify is but

um and we met first time last year in brazil no actually i think we met before that yeah but not like we we hang out in brazil yeah like that was the first time we were hanging out and it was a lot of thanks to lucas i mean that's gone that's gone was amazing that's gone was awesome thanks to lucas thanks to anna that is like the glue gluing everyone together all the time um anna is amazing i thought she was your little sister at the beginning but then i understood the family connection and she is like your little she is like my little sister yeah and she this one has so much power and energy she's amazing she is she's great you like working with her um of course i mean i i try to work with people that i like yeah i'm i'm already

i think in that age when you choose the people that you surround yourself with you know it's life is too short to surround yourself with pricks with douchebags and yeah so i also had a lot of years like that and i think that uh this is what we discussed yesterday that bitcoin allows you to live a life that you want actually and uh you know surround yourself with smart nice people travel see other countries you know engage in in with other people so i think it's it's really amazing did i miss anything important in your bio a bit about your background yes actually you know i'm i'm also co-founder of baltic honey badger oh that's correct which is like uh that's my soul child you know it's it's something that i seven years ago it started uh no it's actually

it started in 2017 so it's like eight years we had two two years of non-operational years due to the cat call it yes and this year is going to be the seventh one so there will be 10 years around date in 2027 wow yeah i think we're like why was it born it's a very funny story actually it's a podcast type of story so we um when i started contributed to hodl hodl we were trying to figure it out you know we don't have anything it's it's 2017 we don't have any particular connection in the space uh we we don't have marketing budget probably is going to be hard for us to raise because again as you said like the project is like um preserving all the core values of bitcoin you know it's non-custodial you can you can operate anonymously if you want

um it's peer-to-peer you know and it's it's not like the favorite success story for like raising the funds yeah uh so we were thinking how we can promote this venture and we decided okay there's a lot of ico blockchain style style of snake oil conferences happening and maybe we can make a bold move and do the leap of faith and you know do something bitcoin only and and um through that conference we will be able to promote hodl hodl so we decided like hodl hodl is going to be like apple event for apple you know baltic honey badger i mean for for hodl hodl and uh it was crazy i mean end of november in riga so if you haven't been i've never been strongly strongly suggest you not to be in riga end of november because it's

like a disaster because the weather is like worse weather you can get i mean wind is blowing from all parts uh you cannot turn from it it's very it's freezing and it's like we decided okay we're gonna do that and it's it was 300 people and i'm really grateful to andreas antonopoulos because he was so approachable and that's another funny story um we were trying to get someone like a superstar because if you get like a superstar to your event there's a high chance that others will come as well and we're thinking well who who's like the superstar and at that time and i think at this time as well andreas is like one of the leading voices and he's a legend and um yeah we were like thinking how we can do this you know maybe someone from our network knows him maybe

we were like thinking we were like basically over complicated then at some point it just went to his website wrote a message in a contact form and 15 minutes later he replied no way i'm like yeah i'm interested so andreas agreed uh then adam beck agreed jacoma agreed peter todd agreed elizabeth stark agreed so imagine having that rooster and the first time you do it first time you do it 2017 riga uh latvia which is like there was like some speakers coming to our conference asking other speakers you know is it safe i mean is it that's that's that part of the europe now a lot of them knows that actually eastern europe at this point is actually safer than the western europe you know but at that point it was like yeah it wasn't where i'm going you know it's

like close to russia and there's like you know that kind of perception and we had zero community almost zero community in latvia bitcoiner so it was like 99 and still it is uh true until this time until this moment that 99 of our visitors are coming from abroad and at the first baltic honey badger i remember there was a guy i think he was either from australia or from japan in riga and i was like dude what are you doing here it's like wow it's like we put almost zero efforts towards promoting it but that goes to show that it was successful your strategy to just yes like it was it was complete mess in terms of organization because that was the first event but everyone enjoyed so much and there was so high signal that we decided okay next year we're

going to do one more wow and next year we had some people from uh coming from other conferences that actually was launched two years later that baltic honey badger that become highly successful in the space so they were coming in 2018 to riga and in 2019 to riga to check it out how you can organize bitcoin only so i would say i'm not gonna like brag but i think baltic honey badger kick-started the modern like wave of bitcoin conferences in general you're the voice is brought to you by Trezor, the original Bitcoin hardware wallet company pioneering the development of self-custody for crypto assets since 2013, empowering individuals with an open source device, enabling beginners and experts to easily and securely hold their coins. I find my Trezor

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Works with trusted hardware wallets. Open source and built with one focus. Beyond keys, protecting humans. Only 42 lifetime subscriptions are available at $199 forever. Head over to bitvault.sv to sign up and use code AFLAT for 10% off. This is a super interesting and just putting like my marketing hat on after 20 years of being in the business of tech and marketing, and I've done hundreds of exhibitions and conferences and all that stuff. I think what I'm seeing in this industry, like in the Bitcoin echo chamber, that is so different from any other tech industry that I was part of, is that the strongest thing in this community, in this industry, is the ethos and the community and the mission. And the fact that everyone is aligned to the same mission and everyone cares about, really, it's not the NGU.

I'm not talking about today's conferences that you have so many of them and you can choose your NGU type of conference and go to it and you'll find your peers. I'm talking about the real signal, no noise kind of conferences. you get all these people coming from all over the world and you get that first hurdle removed very quickly with the speaker saying yes even if it's a first time conference because they are aligned on the mission you know you approach someone he doesn't even know you and he doesn't even know the place or the conference he would say yes because you have this thing in common called Bitcoin and you both want to progress the world to the same direction. So for him, it's a tick on his target list anyway. Why wouldn't he say yes? It was similar in Madera, right? When Andre

started this and he's like, okay, I want Jeff Booth. I want Jack Muller's. I want this. I want that. They all said yes. They don't know him. They don't know the place. They don't know the conference. They'll all come. And it became like a super successful conference right off the bat. because everyone's aligned before it even starts and you guys have discovered that like okay we're gonna do it it works everyone wants this and it will continue to work even if it's small in terms of quantity and scale yeah which it will grow i think in the next decade we're we're actually blessed with uh you know honey badger is um well first of all to answer your question uh about hotel hotel and baltic honey measure the story behind so baltic honey measure

initially a marketing event for hotel hall but it becomes so successful that it should be its own thing so it's a known thing now uh and um but i think regarding the the sizes of the conference that's not an interesting point because we decided uh initially that we're going to keep it like very below 1,000 people, because I think that's, you know, that's the capacity that you can basically engage with everyone at the conference, right? And the only thing that I would like to warn, and I see, like, signs, you know, we're, and you can, like,

you can disagree with me, but we're probably in a bull market to some extent right um although it's a very silent bull market there's no messages no calling nobody calls you asks you about this like fancy fancy digital thing but um i see that there's more and more conferences popping up the there and here and there and uh i just wanted to warn all the people who are doing this is like guys this is very hard and you need to think long term because a lot of i saw that last time there was a lot of conferences uh during the last bull market and now like most of them are gone so i mean think twice when you're gonna because like again we're blessed with honey badger i think we had a kind of first mover advantage and we have a very

loyal uh guest base yeah so we always have like i would say at least 50 of people that are coming to baltic honey badger these are returning like guests they're always so we we literally don't and it's not our bread and butter conference organizing you know we actually want to like you know we want to cancel this stuff but you know every year there's people coming and saying you need to do one more you need to do one more they will not allow you like anna is so kind she's always like she's after every conference she said no that that was the last one then it's like three months uh you know she had some rest and then like yeah maybe we can you know because then this and that and um but um you know we're blessed with that it's not our bread and butter if i would be

just conference organizer i would probably go nuts because it's like highly competitive super tough business and the issue is that fortunately or unfortunately i would say 80 percent of oral speakers going to the conferences are actually this the same people because like the same people continually deliver in this space and uh you know it's like it's not like the the space is hostile towards new people but it's like uh you obviously want to hear about what's like adam back is doing recently or what's jackham is doing recently so i mean that that type of uh which is again good it means that there's a lot of people coming into bitcoin space and in the bitcoin space with high conviction rate and they're they're here for a

long run it's not like just hyping around but it's still like you know i i just from time to time i open websites of other conferences i see the agenda and i'm like okay this is like it's like every month we have a meetup of the same people in different parts of the world kind of like that if we're talking about speakers of course like yeah yeah right so that's a bit complicated but again as i said we're in a very good position because we just do it out of fun And, you know, we can we can have a pleasure of not accepting some of the sponsors because they just don't lie with our ethos. You know, we've canceled a lot of speakers, not speakers, a lot of sponsors who are like, hey, we were doing this wrapped Bitcoin stuff. You know, maybe Web3, maybe we can like throw money at you.

We're not going to do that. I love that. Yeah. I get so many of those messages. i'm like not even i think everyone who's had certain traction in the space will have these messages but yeah it's like it's very tempting sometimes but overall i think it's like uh bitcoin is about low time preference and it actually proves so this is a good um a good entry into my first question to you outside of your your experience in bio um

about bitcoin specifically so you spent 10 years in private banking right more more more actually a lot more 11 plus okay before you went down the bitcoin rabbit hole yeah what was the moment that made you realize your client sending 15 000 in bitcoin to brazil wasn't crazy but actually ahead of the curve yeah so we were sitting in in riga in the very nice bank office you know it was like high-end luxury office something like that and we were sitting with him and he was like very you know he was um uh the the type of people who's always onto something new you know sometimes they get distracted innovator or visionary to some extent he's like was showing me okay at some point i'm gonna stop coming to you and like uh stop being your customer because

you see now i'm gonna send 15 000 to my friend in brazil in like in the minutes and i'm gonna pay like at that point the the the fees was very low they are low actually at the moment yeah at that point and he sent like he paid like i don't remember something something something below like 20 cents for sending 50 and it was almost instantly and uh and you're a banker you're looking yeah but i was like okay like dude it's like some kind of whatever scam yeah you know like shell money or something like that fine but then i started at some point i started researching and just yeah it kind of hooked me up and uh i decided yeah probably probably banks are uh i have a theory that i think that um a lot of bitcoiners they think you know we're going to

destroy the banks i don't think we need to destroy the banks and i don't think the banks will be destroyed i think banks will adapt and this is what we're doing with debify you know we try to provide them with necessary infrastructure for this new like let's call it like digital money age bitcoin age right so um i don't think they will they some of them will be obsolete of course like the highly conservative boring uh whatever but uh most of them will just adapt and they will become like you know infrastructure providers because we still need um fiat and we still need that stuff we still need infrastructure i don't why do we still need fiat because if and that's another thing that many bitcoiners doesn't understand you know

if we're moving to the bitcoin standard it has to happen gradually because if it's going to happen instantly then it means that there's some kind of black swan event in the world which means that there will be a lot of suffering a lot of people will suffer a lot of people will lose money a lot of people will be broken not financially but also mentally and and obviously you don't want to you don't want to have that around you because it's also insecure for you even if you have absolutely all bitcoins in the world it's highly insecure if if people around are just you know trying to survive yeah what's the point then of course uh because i have i was born in soviet union and by the age of 18 my country changed currency four times four times because it was

like soviet union rebels then we got independence uh we had one currency then we had another currency then when we joined euro zone it was a euro like the euro the only the last one was a like normal change because you had like grace period you have a time when you can exchange it was a fixed course you know the first two two i think the first two changes of the currency was basically you go to sleep on sunday being a very wealthy person having uh you know working all your life at your 50 or 60 and um you know stacking some some money for your for your um pension you wake up it's gone so i've been through that process i was very small but i saw and i have a very vivid memory about how some people were acting and how complicated it was for

a lot of people and not many bitcoiners understand that i think that's a very wrong perception when you say like tomorrow we need to yeah it's brutal so i mean what's the point of having amazing sound money which bitcoin is and i'm not saying it's not but uh if like people around you suffering of course a lot of a lot of them can say like well through suffering they will maybe there's another way you know right maybe there's like gradually just the blow doesn't have to be so hard yeah or maybe uh sometimes it's lethal sometimes when the blow is so hard it's just causes so much destruction i mean maybe there will be some like hopefully there will be some authorities uh government authority because like general public they still listen to what government

says and that's that's kind of bad but it's also that's kind of good because you need to have a certain level of control and and you know order in in in a society it's not you know chaos is a great thing and like you know a lot of things happening from chaos but obviously you don't want people running around the streets you know stabbing other people trying to get some food and money right you want to avoid that and maybe there will be some like governments that will gradually understand okay we are we're pretty much doing a lot of things work like wrong fiat system is like uh not working not performing we need to move gradually to like bitcoin standard or to some type of money that is backed by bitcoin for example you know we have we need to have some

reserves in bitcoin which is happening at the moment you know i think it's it's just going going to increase like government adoption state adoptions it's just going to increase tired of feeling like your freedom and future are fading away do you live in a country with growing inflation crazy housing prices weird culture and a chaotic economy you're not alone and my friend mikhail thorpe and his team at expat money can help mikhail is the world's leading expat consultant on a mission to free you from broken systems he's been an expat for 25 years lived in nine different countries and has helped hundreds of people with second residencies and passports offshore banking international investing and many other essential tools

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Learn more on AbundantMinds.com. slash effort and even if they don't adopt it but they become friendly or not hostile to it and allow the market to open up to it then that could definitely accelerate the change and i think that it's gonna happen it's just we need to have patience we need to continue working we need to continue promoting because if you look at the history like micro strategy like corporate adoption uh michael saylor bought first bitcoin in august 2020 2020 we're in 2025 and only this year we see a lot of treasury companies yep it it it was like four four years four complete years even five i would say when everyone get it right so this is

it takes time and and governments just started you know discussing this idea yes el salvador was the first one but you know you need to have someone like us and they're they they finally waking up you know they're they're talking about this more and more they're they're trying to bring attention eventually at some point in the future it's going to happen and there will be like i think again it's gradually then then suddenly same what happened with treasury companies you know first it was micro strategy nobody like it was a big thing for us but in general general public was even like professional investment public was like what's happening and then you know august 2020 and now we're almost in august 2025 and it's basically every day you hear this news like

there's a public company here buying bitcoin there's a public company there you know this is what happened eventually for four years it's like a um slowed down popcorn process yeah because the the cooking of the corn kernels it takes a long time but once it gets to that heating point they all start to pop yeah so you're saying five years but i'll take you back only one year ago i interviewed sailor and one of my questions to him was are you being approached by other ceos to do the same as what you're doing because at the time he wasn't or maybe there was one or two people talking to him behind the scenes yeah and he was telling me from time to time and it's only starting but i think it's going to accelerate so within one year yeah look what happened so that

one year is like that popping of that popcorn for corporations yeah so we're yeah you're right it's the brewing takes longer it takes much longer of course especially for behemoth kind of organizations like government yeah yeah big public institutions yeah even even private companies are bigger entities so i hope that yeah we will we'll move to to like a perfect form of money which i believe bitcoin is but hasn't been it it it must be something with bitcoin could be like money-based and supported by bitcoin to some extent right so but but then i want to take you back to your experience as a banker and you're saying banks will adapt to it you think that in banking we are going to see the i mean banks are so rigid they're so like

you were a banker like how many beliefs do you have to undo and unlearn in order to be open yeah other way of working you know i was i was fascinated by fintech always i was trying to find my niche because i didn't want to work in the bank all the time i wanted to like i was very fascinating fascinating by that time there was like revolut already and other like neo banks and i was like really impressed by what they were doing how they were optimizing i was really excited about that and then i discovered bitcoin it was like a perfect storm and bitcoin is like crown jewel of fintech you have a money and you have a code and everything in one place yeah right yeah it's the perfect thing if you want to if you think what's the essence of finta it's bitcoin

right it's finance and tech you know it couldn't get better that's true so for me it was like uh like revelation moment right i was searching for it for an answer kind of i know i i sound like a religious person uh but uh i was searching for for for some solution and at that point i was maybe lucky but also you know those who search they they will find you know those who work the luck will come you know as my father says and um for me it was like that but i think like uh banks in general uh highly conservative people most of the people working in banks or decision makers still um like people in their 50s 60s uh people of old system you know but look at switzerland right right switzerland is a banking mecca of the world you know you talk ask anyone in the world

uh what's your like if you think about bank what country do you think about it's like it's probably 98 is going to be switzerland everyone will say chocolate cheese watches banking cheese not maybe france can like you know compete with them but i mean chocolate banking watches it's going to be switzerland right and you look at what's happening in switzerland you know there's a there's a lot of private banks who already work with bitcoin they want to have bitcoiners as customers they you can buy bitcoin through them you can store bitcoin with them they don't ask questions uh i mean what is it what what is it they offer you service you can borrow against your bitcoin uh through the bank if you will i was first time i was in switzerland

uh not the first time i was in switzerland first time i was in uh german part of switzerland in tuk uh i went out uh at the train station because i had a meeting there and there was a huge advertising by tuk cantonal bank which is canton bank of tuk and it was like you have bitcoin come to us open really open the bank when was that it was a year ago a bit more than a year ago i think it was april or march 2024 you know and i was like it's a cantonal bank and there's like private banks cantonal banks in switzerland already working with bitcoin so it's already happening. And I mean, Switzerland is like highly conservative country. And they are highly successful with their banking industry. So I strongly suggest every banker that is outside

of the Switzerland, if you want to have some competitive advantage, I strongly suggest think about adding bitcoin or or trying to get some bitcoin products into your bank because if what switzerland is doing in banking eventually gonna gonna happen with everyone with everyone else you know there are innovators in here there they have a first mover advantage a lot of customers from outside of switzerland they basically having a new wave of customers you know before that that was like bank secrecy uh stuff for them and there was a lot of people coming i think first wave was that switzerland was neutral and there was a lot of capital park here and not necessarily good capital in a way that you know the capital provider can be both bad person and good person

but you know it's it happened then there was like a case with you know informational disclosure i think now the new wave of customers outside of the Switzerland is that they have a very friendly regulation towards like digital assets and Bitcoin in particular. And there's a lot, a lot of people coming from across the globe to Swiss banks willing to open a bank account because you can simultaneously in one bank account store your fiat and your Bitcoin. And that's amazing. that just blows your mind right and this is what's going to happen so if you're in the banking outside of the switzerland i strongly suggest you look at what's happening here because they have a first mover advantage they've been innovating banking industry for thousands of years and

they're not gonna give it up anytime yeah and everyone wow switzerland's so successful small countries you know no commodities uh birth in the burnt in the buried in the in the soil you know they don't have anything but how they are successful that's how they are successful you know making uh you know bold moves sometimes but it's happening and it pays off i mean i was talking with one of the banks just yesterday and they told me like our bitcoin lending and borrowing growing uh like businesses like fastest one of the fastest growing businesses um recently and that proves a lot you know proves our personal theory within the company and proves that there's a huge demand for for bitcoin that's what presto was talking about

yesterday in his talk here but also in the podcast about the innovators dilemma and the fact that you big corporations always need to have this small chunk of their business targeted towards how do I innovate and create a new revenue stream and create the advantage that I don't have with my legacy products and this is becoming it in banking yeah interesting that just takes me to it may be like a too too deep of a rabbit hole and we don't have to go there but It just takes me naturally to the difference in nature between the fiat-based fractional reserve system of commercial banking versus Bitcoin that is supposed to be more honest and should not allow you to re-hypothecate. I mean, it can, but then you're a scammer. so how do those things live side by side in a banking mechanism or is that like all based on

regulation and local laws and things like that i think it's based on regulation heavily of course like uh banks um they must obey the rules and i would say that again we are returning to the question that you know a lot of bitcoiners they hate banks but they don't understand that banks are not making the rules so it's actually the end boss is like authorities that create those rules so uh a lot of bankers that i've been talking with who are who say we cannot do that i mean there's there's a reason they cannot do that not because they don't have will or cannot do what like work with bitcoin okay outside of switzerland okay right it's not because uh they don't want or they hate bitcoin or they think it's like threat whatever it's because the regulation

there is just outdated and they don't have a legal framework how to operate with bitcoin so uh to the question of rehab education i mean it's it's actually also happening with within our space you know what do you what do you want to expect from like fiat bros if even bitcoiners are still launching custodial services in 2025 i'm talking particularly about lending and some of these services you know continue to re-hapticate uh customer money you expect people outside to to do differently right i mean we need to set an example this is what we are doing and a lot of companies i'm happy which i'm happy about with debify yeah we're doing with debify but there's a lot of like uh companies in the lending space who are also taking this

approach, you know, no replication, you know, Bitcoin sits, where it sits, you know, you put it in the collateral in one address, it's going to be the same address by the end of the contract, we're not going to move your Bitcoin, which is great. But then again, we move we move to the phase two, which is like providing non custodial setup for the collateral storage, because it's like, I still need to trust you, even if you have proof of reserves uh which a lot of not not only lending you know it's it's becoming a

new fancy thing you know proof of reserves which is great it's definitely step forward but what but proof of reserves only proves that uh the bitcoin that customer put it in in a certain address is still there it doesn't prove how keys to this address are stored what are the security measures uh who holds the keys to this address because it could be not necessary the platform that you're working through it could be a custodian other custodian so you're basically effectively trusting not one entity but two entities or it can be like multiple entities so i mean proof of reserve is definitely step forward but it's not enough you're saying it's not enough it's not enough i believe it's not enough i actually believed it in 2022 when uh

block five celsius you know ftx everything was was happening you know we are in 2025 we have an amazing technology which is called multisec it's been there for years right we have companies that pioneered this technology like unchained capital um hodl hodl and a lot of them and uh the the the thing that a lot of founders saying well you know we need to build good ui ux you need to you need to build a good security first because even if you have fancy nice ui ux if you're going lose customer money nobody will care what your application or platform look like people will care about that you lost their bitcoin yeah so you put security first and then you move to to other parts of the equation yeah and i think like in 2025 okay you provide a custodial lending

services or whatever custodial services you have even if it's trading or whatever uh i know that building non-custodial tools is harder it's longer to ship to the market the proper one but i mean add a non-custodial feature to your set of of tools and you can have an optionality to offer to the customer you know you can do this this way and by the way you can do this that way with us and this is what we are with debify also like building inside that we want to offer optionality to to other businesses and uh even to like lending platforms that think that we're competing with them we're not competing with anyone we're just technology provider and we're also technology provider for custodial lending platforms in the space okay we're not technology

provider for those who want to lend using bitcoin uh as a collateral we're also technology provider for any exchange out there or any custodial lending platform out there that wants to offer non-custodial approach to their customers. So effectively, we're complementing... So you can be white-labeled for them? Yeah, we can be white-labeled.

We're going to be white-labeled. Okay. And it's like, it's a very... Like, we're not competing over the customers because, again, we focus on the technology. Right. and we don't intend to lend money by ourselves we don't want to touch money actually we just want to provide a tech that's that's our thing okay um and this is what we're effectively trying

to achieve and you know communicate to the market you know we we are in talks with some of the custodial lenders and there are some custodial lenders who actually understand that hey we do understand that we can bring more customers if we're going to offer a non-custodial approach hey we can complement our existing features and we can actually collaborate instead of competing yeah but there's still a lot of them with you know doing the going on the easy right and i'm not saying that we're going to repeat the unfortunate set of events what's happened with Celsius, BlockFi and FTX, I'm sure most probably we're not going to repeat that in the lending space, at least at that magnitude that that was happening. But I'm sure there will be

some issues. And I mean, I think that Bitcoiners who will become or they are your customers, they deserve better in 2025 you know and i i really i really don't understand when people are saying oh things doesn't work like that they do they do work it's just you need to put a bit more effort to that and it's hard i know that it's probably not gonna move fast you know break things right it's gonna be move slow and build things but i mean we're bitcoiners we have we have to have low time preference you know yeah definitely and and i wanted to ask you specifically with debify about the approach that you chose to take of three out of four multi-sig yeah as opposed to the two out of three which which is what you normally see when people implement

multi-sig so what's the problem you're solving with this design with your choice it's actually security you know we we we've been working with two out of three in hodl hodl and two of the three works well it's really great uh but we believe at some point that for large volume loans like one million or two million five million ten million even adding one extra signature is already like magnitude higher higher security level and confidence uh we're gonna offer two out of three as well on debify so we're going to offer optionality two out of three three out of four we're actually going to offer other types of multi-sig setup so it's going to be like multiple different options to choose uh we're actually building debify is i i like to give this example

of you know if you're a gamer there's like games with open world where you can just there's a map and you can do whatever you want. Roam around and discover stuff. Yeah, like one of the great examples is Grand Theft Auto GTA where you can just drive a car, you can go do some side missions and, you know, it's like...

So what we're building with DebiFi effectively is like fully flexible technology infrastructure like platform where if you're a lender, you can set whatever terms you like, whatever ltv ratio you like whatever interest rate margin call um you can set you can choose at some point you will be able to choose at some point uh you know the multi-sig setup that you're operating on so like full flexibility yeah and uh but we we started with three out of four because

and it's very simple explanation out of four keys two are stored with uh like institutions like with debify and we have authorized key holder which is also like bitcoin company that operates in space at the moment we're working with anchor watch and um we're we're we're adding more authorized key holders so at some point you will be able to like choose who will hold the fourth key yeah and then there's a lender and borrower as well right so in order to move the collateral you need to have at least three keys right and if we make a very like pessimistic assumption that let's say borrower is a bad actor for whatever reason he managed to get the lender's key right and because again if you remember debify itself we don't provide liquidity we just provide

the tech infrastructure tech so uh we don't we can we can support you and supply you and we're already doing this with debify with basically the best set of skills in order to secure your key to the collateral but there's always like social engineering there's always human factor there could be a collision of interest between representative of lender and the borrower we never we i don't know how they use the tools that we provide to them right how they store they so if it's two out of three borrower gets lender keys and funds get swiped from yeah from from from the game from the cloud or from the escrow if it's three out of four you still need to make one extra step and try to get into either debify or or or um authorized key holder so it just

complicates uh and creates the entry barrier for the bad actor to to perform their actions i'm not saying it's like 100 bulletproof system it's never 100 bulletproof system there's no perfect 100 bulletproof system yeah but it's already like a like a significant increase in the security level yep and i mean we we've supported our customers with opportunity to store their keys on a hardware wallet you know we support gold card we support now top signers so i mean it's a cheaper alternative still very secure so i mean you can provide all the best tools and like debify been through security audits where open source like whatever but i mean there's all there's always a human factor yeah which so for us which is the thing that is unpredictable

yeah so for us it was like uh it was like kind of experiment as well so we we like we tried to test it out our theory with with like adding one extra key to the equation but it went well and it's going well uh but as i said we're still going to offer you an optionality yeah so you if you want to keep it simple two out of three i mean why not be our guest there there was like um there there is like unchained yeah they're doing two out of three they are securing yeah i had joe joe kelly was an enormous amount of money they've been highly successful super professionals so it works very well and they have their own approach we have our own approach and like yeah works like this amazing and then what type of organizations are coming to you now that

there is like no limit on the loan size that you as a borrower as a lenders because the case with debifies that as a lender you can only be institution so you can only lend out money if you're an institution you're allowed to provide loans that's what i mean so what kind of scale of institutions you see you know you now have like uh the loans can be expanded to 24 months right yeah so that's a different scale already yeah mostly at the moment uh fund managers like private funds hedge funds then it's family offices because they have a flexibility of different investment strategy right and they can perform differently and then the third is asset managers you know yep but we are on the track to you know attract some big big players from like

like banking industry, we think it's going to be huge because eventually one of our initial goals was to put banks on a multi-sig standard because, again, we do believe that we can do that and it's achievable. Well, I think you're in a pretty good position to have them as your target market with your background in banking and everything you know how to speak their language yes but and it's not easy i understand from what we talked about right with the it takes a lot of time innovation mindset and the processes of these big corporations yeah they

have a lot of different units like risk departments legal departments you know security this security that which is good yeah that's that's why they're banks yeah yeah they have policies and we respect that and we go with them together you know hand by hand you know and we do understand it's important to explain everything yeah it's just extra 10 extra steps but i believe that strategically it's very very good thing to have and you know you don't need to be afraid of doing extra steps sometimes if the price is really big i'm with you taking you a little bit to a broader picture um so debify supports loans in stable coins dollars euros and swiss francs and and also adding other currencies right down the line what's driving that currency strategy and what

patterns are you seeing in different regions very very simple um as i said we're technology providers so if we have a liquidity provider who goes to us and saying okay i have money in swiss francs you know i want to lend out swiss francs you will open that we're gonna we're gonna add swiss franc in basically two weeks okay if there's a technology liquidity provider coming to us saying hey you know i i have a lot of money in mexican peso two weeks mexican pesos pretty simple so it's like again it's uh it's highly scalable platform that we're building as long as we have a lender in any certain market that allow to provide liquidity in in whatever currency they prefer uh we can just you know okay so then let's zoom on a certain type of currency stable coins

which is also one that you accept how what's your opinion how do you see the role of stable coins evolving um and the latest u.s legislation around stable coins what is your opinion about that especially your take on people calling stable coins cbdc's like this is the next cbdc what do i mean for me personally i think and i thought about this like five years ago i had the same view like stable coins are bridge to bitcoin people who are using fiat they will there's there's a i would say there's like 10 times less opportunity for them to discover bitcoin that for those comparing to those who are using stable coins because eventually uh you are using stable coins you're already in like digital asset

you already get familiar with the stuff you get familiar with peer-to-peer right how to send how to receive and then at some point you're going to discover obviously bitcoin it's just it's so i would say stable coins are like gateway drug okay bitcoin it's a good way to orange peel a decent amount of people i do understand the use case of stable coins i know that a lot of people in developed countries they don't get it but if you live in developing countries you get it's like a lifeline for you absolutely right you have high inflation you have government that can confiscate whatever they can do anything basically yep it's a wild west out there so when i see some people from developed countries oh no you know stack and bitcoin la la you have a pleasant opportunity

to have extra money in your stable well well-developed uh country to have an invested in bitcoin people outside of developed countries in emerging markets they don't have that opportunity they don't have that privilege they're using stable coins and this is what we see from our like business that uh usdt for example taser highly used in emerging markets it's like a lifeline for people yep you know people borrowing people trading people doing a lot of stuff with that and that's great you know they eventually will end up you know you first give them opportunity to be uh at least you know to to feel stable yeah and then at some point they will have some extra money and they will consider okay maybe i should consider this thing called bitcoin and i can

easily swap from thezer or any other stable coins to bitcoin you know the infrastructure is already there and it's getting better so my personal view on stable coins bring on i mean more and more it's way more better we see it from our lenders as well on the institutional side you know some of our lenders that started both with fiat and stable coins now going stable coin only they don't want to touch fiat because they said like last time i sent the loan to the borrower the bank freeze it for five days and i had to go through multiple rings of uh communication circles of hell you know yes providing them with all the necessary agreement with stable coins you know as soon as collateral in the multisig under five minutes borrower gets their money yep so i think that

stable coins is just a better form of fiat money and uh i would say we are very much encouraging stable coin uh adoption we are very much encouraging that there's more and more like liquidity in stable coins because it makes our life so much easier especially if we're talking about stable coins like desert that is built on liquid which is bitcoin technology effectively or lightning which is bitcoin technology the more we see that well personally the happier i will be all right and there's a lot of i don't think there's any i don't i mean you can have an issue with other blockchains you know and you you can be principled uh which i respect but when there's a tether on liquid or tether on lightning well it's a green light for most of bitcoiners to

start using it as well you know i don't see any issues with that and i fully support that and i think it's a great thing and honestly i do think that like stable coins uh stable coin insurers they're actually in some regions they're they're like helping a lot of course they're of course they're making money right yeah but it's like it's it's a business of course it's about money making and there's a lot of controversy you know it's not like it's not as uh i would say it's not as permissionless as bitcoin because it it can be traced it can be blocked to some extent but it's still if you compare it with fiat it's 100 times better than fiat so if we are forced or we want to use or we need to use fiat for a certain amount of time period as we discussed at the beginning

you know you obviously want to happen everything gradually i would prefer for next whatever 20 years 30 years using stable coins uh because another important thing that stable coins actually allows is like peer-to-peer again you just remove the the middleman and that's very important so even though banks will be issuing their own stable coins or using other third-party stable coins they effectively are lowering their involvement in the yeah because transaction because i can uh you know uh this at least at this point i can deposit like again in switzerland i can deposit stable coins in my bank account and it will be a bit harder for me to send it to whoever i want to send because bank might say okay that that address uh particularly is whatever like

blacklisted okay something like that but if i'm but also as a stable like with stable coins i can be outside of the banking system right and so you can choose how to do it yeah whether it is optional you know there's optionality for it got it with fiat yeah i can use cash uh but then how you transfer cash there are other shortcomings yeah to other to other uh country like it's really hard with stablecoin i can do that pretty much easily so i think what's important to remember in this uh discussion especially when all the fear is surfacing for people who are not very familiar with this space is how nuanced this is so you need to look at the pros and the cons for For everything, as you said before, there's never something that is perfect.

There are always advantages and disadvantages. But the moment you introduce a new tool or a new technology and you get better optionality, you are then, if you educate yourself, you are then freer to choose what you want to use and how and in which direction or in which geography, etc. And I agree with you. I definitely understand the fear that people hold. But if you remove the emotional bias or emotional part from this thing and you just look at it in a cold way, there are more options now and you can operate in a different way. And if you also zoom out and look at this from a time perspective as a transitory phase until we get to like a new reality on a Bitcoin standard, then this serves a purpose. Yeah. And I mean, again, there's a lot of people, most of the people who are complaining about stablecoins, you know, eating something from Bitcoin, you know, and most of them, I'm not saying everyone, because I envision that there might be comments when this video is released. you know there are always comments i'm from like emerging market you know and i hate stable coins whatever like but most of the people who are trying to be very vocal against stable coin are coming from well-developed countries right correct so basically these are like well fed up

people who are teaching hungry people how to survive that's a very good way of putting it you know that that's that's you're saying like humble yourself go live there for a bit and it's like if you if you have a salary or paycheck of 200 dollars and you receive it in your local currency and you know or you have it or your local currency have a track record of being inflated at an enormous pace and you need to have this 200 dollar worth of buying capacity for the next month or whatever like you because you you your life in life of your closest ones depends on that honestly who cares right and uh i mean you just convert it to stable coin and you know you have certain uh stability in your life yeah and then at some point you will learn

and and again as i said it's like a gateway drug to bitcoin right uh i mean these people they don't have extra money to invest in bitcoin and stop like a lot of like i think it's also hypocrisy oh stack this and that they don't think about stacking they think about surviving right when you're hungry you don't think that hey i need to save some money for whatever you think hey i need to satisfy my basic needs i need to provide for my family i need to work harder maybe and when i get there when i'm going to satisfy the first level then i'm going to think of you know maybe having some long-term strategy of stacking sats or even just i'll say for the next month that's like their long term yeah yeah you

it's not a year this is what a lot of people bitcoin is still whatever you say it's still volatile yes on the on the scale of like four or five years it's like performing well always performing well so far but i mean we're talking about weeks and months here we're not talking about years these people they don't have years right they have a month to survive correct right or they they need to pay someone or it's a small business that needs to pay to other country right they won't be able to open a bank account fast they might not be able to open bank account at all in their country they will be losing a lot of money in fees and with stablecoin they can just convert almost instantly and like send money abroad and you know the business will go on

right absolutely thank you so much for that view it's important to go into those nuances all right we're coming to the end of our interview i would love to hear from you what gives you motivation aspiration what gives you hope i really enjoy what i'm doing honestly and i think i'm i think i'm blessed with that that that i enjoy what i'm doing and i think a lot of bitcoiners are blessed with that we don't we don't actually appreciate how amazing this space is yeah uh well they like it's it's it's to be probably very standard answer but like my people who are close to me who support me family that that gives me a lot of motivation but also you know i truly believe that bitcoin is

is you know we we were there's a saying we were we are born our generation we are born too late to explore the the earth too too early to explore the space just in time to fix the money so i think we are actually uh we're we're on to something big here i think we are doing great thing and i think that again in 2025 we don't have as a society as a individuals we don't have a private property in a form that it was like 100 years ago right if you look at anything any asset that you have it's basically not your asset right you have money in bank account great you know it is yours but if something goes wrong or someone thinks you are doing something wrong not your money you have a house not your house you have whatever you have and bitcoin is like

uh it's the purest form of private property and i think maybe my background with what what i've been like through in a very minimal way with you know growing up in a country that was like yesterday it was one country today it's another country you know you see how people some people struggle some people are lucky some people are like i think that was a huge example for me and i think that bitcoin actually provides you for a freedom and like true freedom in terms of how you interact with other people financially and i think that's crucial important of course We want to make money and we want our projects to be successful, right? But I think there's a bigger motivation.

For me, bigger motivation is that I think Bitcoin brings the true freedom. And I think it's important for us. It's time for us to unleash this true freedom, educate people and move and change the system that we're working in. Because we already have a freedom of knowledge with internet. We also have a freedom of communication. Basically, I don't need to rely on any mobile network. I can just buy a phone, go to any Wi-Fi, and call anyone in the world. So I don't need to rely on any mobile network provider.

So there's freedom of information, freedom of communication. We need to have a freedom of money. I think that's the last piece of the puzzle. As soon as we will have that, we might, as a community, we might enter a new bright age, hopefully, you know. But I mean, it sounds very nice, but there's also a lot of contra, you know, a lot of forces, a lot of fighting. And it's not going to be the easy road. But I think there's like Bitcoiners in general are a group of very curious, smart people. Stopporn, I would say.

And that's really good. I mean, and we all have different opinions again. But I would love us to start respecting other opinions. I love it. You know? Yeah. So I didn't answer your question. What motivates me.

You answered it beautifully and amen to everything you said. There's a lot of stuff. I just enjoy being in this space and I just enjoy doing my stuff. And I think we're onto something big and I think we're changing the world. And that excites me because like personally, I always wanted to have some kind of legacy behind me. it's it's it's less about making like money and be super successful or whatever but just leaving something uh for the community that was that was drives me so i'll tell you a little secret as we finish off okay okay um normally people say that you know when you speak at events you max speak

at events like either on a panel or or keynote or whatever you always finish very quickly because you're right to the point you're like you know what you want to say you go there you say it and that's it and i was thinking maybe it will be difficult to have a conversation with you because you will just finish very quickly and you just opened up and that was a pleasure to have that type of conversation with you yeah you do just sometimes yeah at the events i'm sometimes there's like four panelists they already said what i wanted to say and like right you don't want to repeat the same stuff i'm just okay we are well a well of knowledge and it was a pleasure talking to you thank you very much it was pleasure talking to you as well yeah i'm very grateful i can tell

you're grateful for what you're doing and i'm grateful for what you're doing thank you and thank you very much thanks for being with us please take a minute to give this episode a like a comment and subscribe or follow and please share it with your friends so they can also get