Vietnam’s Quiet Bitcoin Uprising

Hi everyone and welcome back to Stephan Livera podcast brought to you by Bold. For American listeners, you can buy Bitcoin over at Bold for the industry's lowest fees and you can earn the highest Bitcoin back rewards with the Bold debit card. Now joining me on the show today is Albert Buu. Albert is the founder and CEO of NeutronPay. Welcome to the show, Albert.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

So Albert, I know you've been working on Neutron Pay and, I guess, Canada-based, but also serving Vietnam, and, I know in earlier years you were very much on the Lightning focus, payments focus of things. do you wanna just give us a bit of an overview where is Neutron Pay at nowadays, or Neutron at nowadays? Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

So we rebranded to Neutron, we just cut off Pay to make it a little bit easier. so we're still focused on, on Bitcoin- Lightning. we just do have off-ramp payouts that, that we supported before, which is pretty much all of Southeast Asia, a little bit of Northern Asia. So we still do have a core focus on Bitcoin. we've kind of evolved a little bit more with a couple more products. before we were just doing payments, payouts with Bitcoin to payout, and now we did a mobile app, and now we have a product that's Lend that's come out, obviously Bitcoin collateral for USDT. And then, we also built out a set of APIs for Lightning network, so that's kind of our suite of products now.

Gotcha. And I know in earlier years you were talking about how, as an example in Vietnam, some of the regulations were that, you know, the local government and regulators wanted payments to be in VND, but you had to sort of set it up so that when people do Bitcoin payments, maybe on the front end to the end user, they can pay, you know, Lightning, but actually in the backend it needs to- Turn into VND. So can you,

yeah,

maybe elaborate a bit on that and how has that view shifted, if it, if at all?

Yeah, no, I think that's, the way we approached it before, 'cause when we came here, obviously Bitcoin was a very, very bad word for a lot of people here, even though it's, Vietnam is one of the top three countries for Bitcoin uses on chain, and you can, you can see that on chain analysis, it's been like that ever since even before COVID, for about three or four I was obviously trying to pitch the Lightning stuff, that was very like, no, no. So we kind of thought about a different approach. So when I was here, I said, "Well, if the local merchants were able to get VND, but they were receiving it as a different payment, I don't think that would be a huge issue." And so talking with our legal, from this side of the world, they said that is a little bit cheeky, but it does follow the rules of having the actual currency being settled in VND, and so receiving it as whatever it Because some people do receive US dollars here, and so they'll take the US dollars, obviously, so that's not allowed, but people do that here. So just having Bitcoin and then us instantly, you know, converting it into VND, seemed like a more reasonable play. And once we did that, a lot more people started using it, picking up, understanding it, tourism, a lot of expats, here in, in Vietnam or from like the US, UK, Australia, all over, all over the world. And so when they started using that, and then there Kind of show, they just hit it, hit the lightning QR code, they pay it, it comes back with obviously the stats on the other side, but the merchant will get exactly what they're looking for in VND. A hundred and fifty thousand VND is about, it's about less than ten dollars around there, so they would get that actual hundred and fifty VND for, say, like a bun mee or something like that, and everyone's happy in the transactions. So that, that really helped a lot with kind of- A lot of the pickup in, in Vietnam, it kind of with understanding of the Lightning and why they would say, "Okay, I would accept this payment option," because a lot of the people would just thought it would be, "I would just get Bitcoin at the end of the day," and we kind of had to change that a lot, that narrative here, where they could receive something else but get VND at the end.

Gotcha. And would you say that's still true nowadays, or is it actually changing a bit now? That, you know, has the, has the regulation and the,

No, the attitude shifts quite a bit. so I don't know if you know, just as of this year in July, Vietnam actually officially passed into law. They call it, you know, crypto blockchain, but it's, it's Bitcoin and everything else that's actually accepted. So that was officially signed into legislation on July 1st. I think I

might have seen like a news article, but I, I forgot it. Can you give us the details on that, just for listeners? Yeah.

Yeah. So now they're, really opening up, Vietnam to We just call it like Bitcoin and everything else. And so that's allowed for trading, exchange payments, pretty much everything under the umbrella that digital assets that they would say, would do. I think I got kicked off.

Hello? Hello? Hello? Sorry, Albert, I lost you there. you were just out-- You were just outlining the change in the regulate or the new law around what was, yeah, I guess from the government perspective, they're calling it crypto blockchain, but you're saying more like Bitcoin.

Yeah. So they, they, came back and they said the regulation for moving forward with, like, crypto and blockchain, but we'll call it Bitcoin, they're more open to it now. So they see that they're allowing for payments, exchanges, you know, broker services you want to do if you have a license. So pretty much everything under the umbrella under blockchain services you're allowed to do into Vietnam that starts, as of January twenty twenty-six. But from now until January twenty twenty-six, there is something that's- Called a sandbox, and there's certain participants that are allowed to get early access, which is like the banks, larger payment financial institutions, mobile apps, and kind of you

guys in that sandbox?

Some things I can say yes, because we have to partner up with, pretty much a bank, and so we are kind of in the race with, a partnership with, with a bank to allow to start servicing legally, more services and functions within, within the space. But yeah, we're, we're looking to, partner with a bank to be able

Excellent. And so as you said, what exactly is on offer here? So I think you were outlining a bit like, are we talking payments? Are we talking account, transactional account services? Are we talking borrowing against Bitcoin and lending? what's, what, what is the government, let's say, permitting now or, you know, giving a regulatory allowance for?

Yeah, so for now it looks like they're gonna start with, anything that's a broker exchange along with payments. So those are probably the first two categories that they're gonna start with. as the years go on, they do have other- Financial products, that they are aware of, especially like the lending and everything else like that, but they wanna start with those two first to make sure that, I guess, kind of the locals and everyone understand kind of the use and the purpose of it, and also to make sure that no one's getting scammed, right? 'Cause that's a, that's a huge thing that's also here as well, is there's a lot of people that are affected by a lot of the token scams and DeFi stuff that's been pushed around here, and so they're trying to clear that solicited kind of tokens that are coming in. so once that's all cleared out, they want to just start with those two. So anything as an exchange or a broker or some payments.

I see, yeah. And something I, I wanted to-- you touched on this earlier, and I have heard of this also from talking to other people who are in and/or around Vietnam, the very high volume that Vietnam has, right? Because it's kind of like, you wouldn't expect that, right? Like you wouldn't expect that Vietnam is kind of that high in terms of how It makes me wonder why. Do, do you know why that is?

Yeah, it's, if anyone's been under a country that has a lot of capital flight restrictions, and it was also, kind of one of the larger export countries, there's gonna be a lot of people that are using alternative methods to get, money out or investments out. And so like, a, a particular example would probably be like China, right? Everyone knows China. If China were to get into, into Bitcoin, it would be a massive run, right? There's just a lot of money that's It's been happening there, but that's also because China is a massive export company. Vietnam isn't that size of China, but it is a very, upcoming competitor, as you would say, because a lot of the exports are going to, to Vietnam, right? A lot of warehousing is being built here as well, and so it's, it's growing very quickly, right? Especially with all the tariffs that are happening, so the Chinese are trying to figure out proxies and, and I think people have heard of this before, Trump is taxing, Vietnam if they do any percent tariff on Vietnam already, and there's gonna be a forty percent tariff if you're caught doing proxy things, right? So stuff like that, cause kind of that investment to come into other vehicles, right, as such as Bitcoin and everything else. And that's why when you see kind of like the on-chain analysis is that ever since- It, it was like, I think 2019 to 2023 or 24. Vietnam has always been in the top three of just usage of, Bitcoin or, you know, other blockchains. And so it's very well versed here. It's just kind of in a hush-hush kind of gray area, but people do use it. And so that's why Vietnam's kinda wanting to turn Their kind of tough stance and open that up for, for the locals here.

Sure. Okay. Interesting. And so, are you able to say, is it like the, the users of, you know, Bitcoin and maybe stablecoin stuff in Vietnam, are we talking here like- Entrepreneurs and investors coming from outside Vietnam to set up businesses and then take profits out using Bitcoin or stables, or are we talking like B2B use of this thing? Are you able to explain that or do you know? Yeah,

yeah, I think it's, it's a combination of both, right? So there's a lot of There's, there's a big manufacturing hub here, right? I think everyone knows, right? So a lot of the manufacturing is coming here, and so it's sometimes a lot of the people to get around the taxes and the capital control flights here, they'll go through digital assets, right? They'll go through Bitcoin or stablecoin. And so the government has recognized that, and they know that they're losing a lot of taxes and fees and everything else like that because of the hard stance that Vietnam had before, right? Now that it's cleared, everyone's kind of easing up. That, Vietnam's finally looked at it and said, "Hey, we're losing a lot of tax because of what we're doing. "Because if you're a bigger business in Vietnam, you're allowed to move money out, it's just a lot of paperwork. So it's very tedious, you gotta go do a form, you gotta file it into the bank, the bank then goes and gives it to the SBV, SBV is a state bank in Vietnam. They come back within anywhere from three to five days with an approval or denial. So a lot of people say, "Well, Japanese, Koreans, and Chinese a lot of have a lot of businesses here, so they need that money back into their countries to go obviously buy supplies and, and kinda get the, their profits and investments back. And so with, with kind of the stablecoins that came into place, that kind of went rapid, and Bitcoin went rapid probably for those last four or five years, and now they're trying to slow that down to say, okay, we'll ease up on this kind of hard stance and we'll collect the taxes now in the proper way.

it's really fascinating to see how it's like around the world, people have different uses. Now, you know, in much of the, let's say, Western tradfi world, it's all about Bitcoin as your kind of long-term store of value, and that's a big narrative. And here, what you're see-what we're seeing is more like people are using it as like a way to get around things, and I presume a lot of that is, stablecoin as well, and so I guess stablecoin volumes are also very high there.

Oh yeah, very high. I think it's just because, you know, Vietnam has always been very closely, had close relationships with the US, and so a lot of the US dollar is still used here as well, and so kind of stable coins and US dollar, you know, one and a one. but there is a lot of usage for Bitcoin too as well that people don't talk about, but I think that's because that's more of a tool, to be used, because a lot of people that do use it, look at it as like an edge, Tell the next competitor that I'm using this edge, because they'd rather use them something else, right? And so the actually, I call it, maybe it's a bad term, but, you know, the smarter money that's in Vietnam already knows exactly kind of the inflation, the money printing, they understand like the kind of business cycles that they have, they go through the fees, the taxes, the capital controls, so they look at Bitcoin as a flight for them, right? That is, it's a safe asset, nothing can get touched. Vietnam's really known for, a lot of So a lot of people are scared of losing money in their assets, and so they always trying to find a specific way to make sure that they're holding those assets, right? and Vietnam itself is pretty much looking at that as well, because, y-you know, just, I, I don't know if you guys heard, like, in the last two weeks there was like a Thailand and Cambodia war, right? that has nothing really to do with us, but for some reason, because of, I, I guess, kind of just trauma in the way it's like, will we be people using kind of Bitcoin, they understand they can use stable coins as too, as well, because it's more of a, a stable, there's no volatility. But also a lot of people understand here that when you have USDT, there's also, a particular point where your, your assets can get frozen. Right? They're seeing it, the internet's there, access there, th-th-this, it's very well known. It's just that you have two groups. You have one group that just understands Bitcoin more and feels more comfortable that way, and you have another group that just understands stablecoins and are fine with, with, say, someone freezing their accounts with, with that type of abilities.

Gotcha. And as, as everybody knows, right? the stablecoins are obviously not intended to be as censorship resistant as Bitcoin. It's quite public that, you know, when there's like a very Public theft, you know, Paolo or some of the stablecoin guys will sort of publicly say, "Hey, we heard about this theft, we've frozen these coins or we've invalidated them somehow," this kind of thing, and obviously with Bitcoin it's a different story. and so it's interesting to see that. So would you say in terms of- Vietnamese entrepreneurial and investor circles, kind of smart money, as you were saying, you would say they're pretty Bitcoin and stablecoin savvy, right? Like if you were to talk to like entrepreneur network, like high level entrepreneur networking groups and hanging out with those guys, they'd all be pretty Bitcoin savvy, at least to the level where they might use Bitcoin.

Yeah, yeah. Like I would say they wouldn't be too hardcore, like if you were saying, "Hey, do you know how to use a cold card and air gap it?" That'd probably be out of the conversation. Yeah, of course

This is what Taproot and Script Path, yeah, they're gonna be like, "I use Bitcoin to buy and sell things or to earn and spend."

Yeah, correct. Yeah. So the general use case of like being able to use it, get it, store it, send it somewhere, receiving it, you know, kind of all the above, right, for general use, but yeah, they would understand kind of the basic of it and how to get it, yes?

Yeah, that's really interesting to see, like, just kind of these, these, these cultural shifts over time and Because obviously you and I and kind of, you know, listeners of this show, we're kind of all, you know, hardcore Maxies. So for us, it's like, yes, this is, you know, this is, this is my jam, you know? But, it's-- we're sort of waiting for the rest of the world to wake up to what we've been on for a while, right? so tell us a little bit about what you're doing on the Neutron side of things, for businesses then. Like, we're talking about businesses.

Yeah, so the APIs, we changed our focus a little bit, right? 'Cause before we were just, payments and kind of like a merchant provider, so we had like a gateway. So we were kind of like BTC Pay, but more of like a custodial side, right? So we'd provide like an invoice and you could pay it in. So we moved away from that 'cause we just thought the merchant side was a little bit tougher, to do. And obviously the merchant always came back and said, "You know, where's the users?" And so if the merchants didn The businesses and kind of more institutional side.

Gotcha. what's, what's included in that product suite?

Yeah, so that product suite is everything pretty much just anything that we can service on the Bitcoin side. So pretty much on-chain, Lightning, we push Lightning pretty heavily, so we say you can do kind of like a wallet service, so we would go to any of the mobile apps, within the country or payment providers, or any type of businesses that just want to be able to accept Lightning or send it. And so that would be able to have them go So obviously like Lightning, the on-chain stuff, we were gonna put in some of the Taproot stuff, but we thought that was a little bit too advanced, and we just said, "Hey, how about you just kind of do these two products first? " Lightning would probably be the biggest thing for instant, obviously, settlement, and it allows them to pretty much interconnect with the businesses that are globally, right? So this isn't really a play for internally for Vietnam, it's more or less for the businesses that are here that have, connections globally to be able to accept Being able to buy from, like, say, a cash app user, and now they can buy stuff from, like, say, Square terminals that have opened up, right? So, w-what I mean by that is, we would go to an app provider, they would plug in our APIs, they now have a Lightning wallet. So now they have V and D, but they also have a Lightning wallet that they can use, they can convert the V and D into, obviously, BTC.

It's like a, let's say, a custodial white label wallet

sort of service. But we think that the custodial route is better to get users on board and businesses on board. And so the, the, the quick example of the reason why we would go to like this mobile app and do that, it's 'cause now it gives that mobile app what I call like wings or legs. So now a person can go and say, "I have this Vietnamese app, there's a big one that we're trying to, to get to as well, it's called Momo, " and Momo is like a kind of a version of like Cash App, right? So really quick

To integrate our APIs and module, now they have a Lightning wallet integration, they can now fly over to the US and scan any QR code, obviously from Square or Cash App, and it would take the VND dollars out of their balance, shoot it over Lightning network, and then the person on the other side, say a Cash or Cash App, would be able to get US dollars. Everyone in both parties are happy. No one really cares what's in the middle, they just know that they're able to go and say, "I'm using VND in the US, but the actual receiver is getting US

So talk to me about the end user in that scenario. Are we thinking that is like a retail end user, like man on the street, or are we saying that's like a B2B kind of use case? That's like a businessman in Vietnam who wants to buy something from the US. Like, what's the use there?

Yeah, I would say probably both, 'cause they're pretty, pretty similar, right? So I, we'd categorize it both, where one is kind of like a global traveler, where that could be a retail person, maybe they're just visiting friends and family,

The US, Europe, or Australia and sold back into Vietnam, right? Vietnam's products are a lot, are a, a lot of them come from China, so it's a lot of like the T-Mo stuff and the Shopee stuff, it's really cheap stuff

and,

yeah. Yeah, yeah, and it's, it's very kind of cheap and it's not really high quality stuff, even though some of the stuff is made in China, but they feel that the brands that are overseas, bring more kind of value, right? And they're actually more kind of looked Screened, for any type of like, regardless of quality of clothes or, or products that they're buying that, that are like consumption, food or anything like that. So that business side could also be the same thing, like a business guy could go over to the United States and say, "I wanna buy a bunch of crates or something like that from the US and bring that over to Vietnam to resell. " And so having that ability to have in that mobile app to be able to use, say, Lightning instead of doing like a Swift or wire transfer, you can actually pay that instantly.

Right? Can be retail or a business guy, 'cause in Vietnam, everyone does everything on their mobile phone. Everything. Like, there is probably maybe, you know, probably skewing the numbers, but I, I would say probably maybe ten percent people use laptops, to do a lot of stuff, but everyone is using mobile phones.

Yeah,

mobile is first, always. You'll see business people in cafes, meetings, there's no laptops, everybody has a phone. Everyone is doing something with texting, sending files, sending payments, there's nothing with a laptop. So it's kind of funny because Vietnam grew up with, it did a leapfrog, right? I, I think I might have mentioned this before in another podcast where it's like, in the US and where we're from, right? We went from like, you know, laptops, desktops, dial-up and all that stuff, all the way up to mobile phones. Vietnam literally went from dial-up to mobile phones. Like they didn't have desktops, yeah. They really leapfrogged, so that's why they're very used to just doing everything in, in, on the

mobile phone. And Right, so we're talking about like a young population, right? It's not like some of the Western countries where the population is aging. These, these are young people on average.

Yeah, yeah. And it's very driven here, right? That's why they say a lot of people are saying Vietnam has a lot of people that like to hustle. It's just because of that average, that average age that you brought up. Is everyone's in that, in that bracket when they're about thirty to thirty-five, they really wanna go after something, they wanna get their own business, they wanna make a

Use banks, right? They'll use a lot of online services like NeoBank,

crypto

services, yeah, yeah, yeah. It'd be like NeoBanks and crypto services and the mobile wallets. They don't go to actual banks anymore. They just, they feel that it's too slow and cumbersome for the, for the lifestyle that they're doing with their business.

Gotcha. And so then you view Neutron as trying to either become that or sort of plug into that vision, and then on the wallet side, I presume then, are you designing the vault, the wallet? Is that for a Vietnamese user or like Vietnamese diaspora or just anyone around the world? Like who is it designed for?

It's pretty much anyone. and I think that's why it's kind of, we, we kind of skewed that a little bit where we thought we were only, like, in our narrative that we were just only focused in Southeast Asia. we were just doing that in, in this part of the world 'cause we just feel like there wasn't enough education and, and people using it here, right? but it is for everyone, it's global, right

In North America, right? 'Cause in Canada, at that time when we-- when I was doing it, there wasn't really any need for it, right? There's pretty much stable services there with, with banking and credit cards and, and debit. and US is just very competitive, so we would have probably drained a bunch of money just trying to, you know, fight our way to the top. Where in Southeast Asia, there is nobody. There is I don't think there is still anyone that's doing anything that's lightning based at what we're doing to try to push the envelope in, in the country and in Southeast Asia. So we're trying to get more businesses, institutions kind of to start using the, the Lightning Network in a different way, right? Because a lot of people just like to use, like if you hear the narrative a little bit in the US, now it's moving a little bit, but before it was just buy Bitcoin, buy, save, hold it, don't do anything, right? Whereas the narrative what we're A lot of cross border trade happens with a lot of, digital assets, right? Like today, it happens with a lot of stablecoins, and now we're trying to push that narrative with Lightning and saying, "Lightning would also be a better solution for this, right? " We're not saying we can displace stablecoins, but we say, "How about you put it beside one another, and now you have two options. You can either use stablecoins or you can use the Lightning Network."

Yeah. And while we're there, I guess curious to get your take on,

The RGB guys, like there is this effort to, quote unquote, bring stablecoins back to Bitcoin per se, like it started on Bitcoin in, on the Omni layer, then transaction fees went up, and then Tether Went to basically a lot of, a lot of the uses on shit chains, right? Ethereum and Tron and whatever. And, you know, now we're starting to see a little bit of liquid, liquid tether. It's, it's growing, but it's still small compared to kind of the Tron and whatever other stuff. How are you seeing that now in terms of, quote unquote, bringing it back to Bitcoin?

I would say it's, it's still an uphill battle, especially for those kind of side chains. like the biggest thing in kind of this side of the world is Tron, right? Tron is just hands down very, very, saturated here. Everyone uses a lot of the USDT on Tron, and I think that was just because Tron had obviously a huge advantage, right, with kind of China and, you know, Justin Sun kind of really pushing it in Southeast Is there was no one pushing that narrative of Bitcoin on this side, it was just all North American and all kind of the Western countries, right? And no one was really focused in Southeast Asia and Northern Asia, like the China area. And I think that's where, you know, Justin Sun really got the audience, 'cause he was like, "No one's here doing that, I'll just kind of spread Tron, " and it just really broke out really further. And I noticed that a lot of stuff is, now, now Tether's trying to do the same thing. They're All these other blockchains and stuff like that. That's why I say it's a little bit of a tough uphill battle with, like, say RGB and say Liquid trying to push maybe Tether and use their networks. It's just that everyone's so used to using Tron, and now to get them out, to move away from that, would be a little difficult. I think now because we've pushed a little of the Lightning kind of thing, they've understand like Lightning's a little bit better, and they understand Bitcoin purpose of it, people use it already, but now they see A little bit quicker, and hopefully with Taproot and supporting Tether, I think that would easily move that narrative over to taking some of that market share away from, from Tron.

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Yeah, so we're only supporting like the two blockchains, which would be Ethereum and Tron. and we chose those 'cause we just don't want to start supporting all the other blockchains, 'cause we really wanna have a push for Taproot assets, you know, Liquid possibly and RGB, so more of kind of closer to the Bitcoin, kind of ecosystem than the other ones. and, you know, if that gets taken off a little bit higher, then we'd probably Ethereum

and Tron and focus

on those other ones more, you

know? Yeah, yeah, but I, I totally get you, like it's an uphill battle right now. Yes, I think we're starting, I would say, it's fair to say we're seeing some green shoots in term, in, in terms of the liquid tether side of things, like we're starting to see more people who actually truly do use that, but it's, it's still early days and not, not, still not at the level of, you know, Tron tether or Ethereum tether, so,

give us the overview, like what, like what's the loan period, what's the rate, what's the LTV? Just give us the high level stats there.

Yeah, so high level stats is, so we're offering anywhere from six to twelve percent. So the higher amounts obviously get the six percent, the lower amounts get twelve, and so anywhere in, in the middle could probably get around, you know, the eight or nine percent. we do a twelve--

Just to be clear, the six percent, how much do you have to borrow to get that rate

over a hundred and fifty thousand.

Gotcha. Okay. I mean, that-- But six percent for USD lending actually is pretty competitive compared to what the-- What's out there? Yeah.

Yeah, and that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to be very competitive in the market, especially kind of in the region, to hopefully get as much market share as we can. and we-- We feel, I think, six percent is a good deal. I think there's other people that are trying to lower to that rate. But yeah, so, so for us So if they wanted to extend it, then it would just be a rollover with a fee. So it'd just be like, how long did you wanna extend it for? And we'd extend it for another twelve months with a fee. you'd still have the same percentage rate, right, until you paid it off. Our LTV is just fifty percent. We do have sixty percent, we don't recommend it in, in the platform because we just say, hey, do your management services, we understand your finances and stuff like that, you can select sixty, but default

is

Yeah, so the liquidation is, so if, if you use fifty percent LTV, so we'll do it all the way down to about, I think it's about like ninety-two percent. So as soon as ninety-two percent is hit, then we'll do the liquidation. We're working a little bit to make it-

Yeah. Yeah,

margin calls. We have a bunch of notifications too where it's like yellow, and then going into red, and then right when you're about to get liquidated, we'll start firing a bunch of emails and notifications.

Got Are the target market here, like are we talking Vietnam or SEA or Southeast Asia or around the world? Who is eligible to borrow against the Bitcoin? Everyone. Everyone. Right. So you're just going, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, we're going everyone, but we do have a little bit more marketing in Southeast Asia, just 'cause again, we're trying to still kind of just encompass just in Southeast Asia to be like, hey, these are the products, this is the financial services that you could use through us, right? With, with lend, you can tie it in with mobile Mobile side, right now it's just a web platform. and so that's what we're just starting to target, but anyone can use the lend product, in the world. It's just that we're-- because we're in Southeast Asia, we have a lot of the communities here, so we kind of talk to them a little bit more and figure out, like, you know, what, what's their interest and how they would wanna do the loans. and it just seems like it's a little bit more of a closer knit with us 'cause we've been

here Now, as I-- Okay, so we spoke about how, on the lend side, the USDT availability is Ethereum, Tether, and Tron Tether, just 'cause that's the most popular. Do you also offer like actual just fiat wire or fiat swift or something like that, or is it actually just stablecoin only?

Yeah, it's only stablecoin only. Gotcha.

Okay. And then I'm curious, because this is something that seems to come up when, as an example, you talk about international banks, for example, a lot of international banks don't like having American customers because of the regulation and the compliance, right? Because of whatever FATCA and FBA or whatever these other regulations are. And this is like a famous thing, even like Swiss banks don't wanna have US customers. So how is it that you're doing that then?

Yeah, sorry, so I forgot to say like, we're not servicing US customers because of, because of those regulations.

US, okay. US,

yeah, yeah, yeah.

Gotcha, okay, fair enough. and then, yeah, certain jurisdictions are just seen as sort of high risk. again, I'm against AML and sanctions laws in principle, but this is the world we live in, unfortunately, or in America, it's called BSA, Bank Secrecy Act, but basically, and Patriot Act arguably as well, kind of in there.

Yeah, so I guess these are some of the trade-offs, right? And of course, there's different-- We have to think about the different trade-offs of the different options out there, right? Because, yes, on one side, there are some of the products that allow the hodler to still hold maybe one key out of the quorum, so like a, like an Unchained or like a HodlHodlLend or Debuffy or Firefish or Lava, like some of these options out there, and then you've got more, just, you know, deposit your coins

There's a spectrum of different options there. some of those, i-include things like, hey, no re-hypothecation, or you have a better, you know, better assurances that there's no re-hypothecation, but maybe you pay a bit more on the interest rate there, or you're kind of, it might be a slightly more clunky experience. The custodial products, maybe they can offer, in many cases, slightly better interest rates, maybe a slightly slicker UX, but you're taking a bit more in terms of custodial risk and theoretically rehypothecation. So How do you see that? Do you see that as a fair analysis? What would you, where would you agree or disagree, or where would you add anything to that?

Yeah, I mean, I mean, there's, there's gonna be some products with, with kind of that, yeah, I guess people would call it like, "Trust me, bro." we, we don't wanna be in kind of that camp, so we've, we've kind of, for, for us, we've kind of split it up a little bit, where obviously like the user gets a key And third party. So we already have partnerships with, like, BitGo and Kobo. So those would be two of the, the keyholders that we have, and then you could select if it's BitGo or Kobo. So Kobo is gonna be, yeah, so Kobo- And in this model,

actually the user is holding one of the keys.

Yes, the user is holding one of the- Yep. They're holding one of the keys where they have a couple options, right? So the option is, one option is they can generate it, it'd be held up in kind of

Yeah, yeah, but it's, it's encrypted and then if they lose it, if they lose the password, then we, we can't recover it from them. So that's where kind of Bitcoin and Kobo would come in. we have a key. They, they can also have-- So we also have a, a, a particular software where it's called Neutron Guard. So you could download the app, you can pretty much create your keys, and then you can load your pub-- public key into the actual, lending thing. So you would say, "Here's my Full control offside of our platform onto an app that's gonna obviously be open source pretty soon, and so it's called Neutron Guard, and you could use that if you wanted to. And then the next, just to be clear, this isn't

like a two of three multisig lend setup or how does it-- Yeah. Like as in one chain is a two of three, but the user holds one key, right? Yeah, yeah. Correct.

Yeah. Yeah. So they, they can have the user generated key, they can use our Neutron Guard app, which would also generate the keys on Here's your public key, and then if they wanna sign it, then they would sign it from their hardware wallet.

gotcha. Okay, so that's-- So, but to be clear, that's a future option, not current-- That's a future option, not currently yet, yeah, yeah, soon. And then, do you currently just offer like a full custodial option? Or no? We don't,

we don't know. So we don't want to know the

browser option or this Neutron Guard, which is a phone app key kind of thing, for now. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Yeah, for now. Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay, interesting. Okay, so yeah, that's interesting though, because that, I, yeah, because when you first explained it to me, I first thought, "Oh, it's like a fully custodial thing," but actually it sounds like-- It's better than that, actually. You actually do have, no rehypo-- no rehypothecation on the, on the coins, obviously. So that's actually a good step.

Yeah, and that, that was kind of the purpose of what we really wanted to build, right? 'Cause we wanted to follow in the footsteps of, we're trying to move over, like Neutron itself is trying to move over to non-custodial products while still having custodial products. So our business plan was to make sure that if you want to do custodial, you can do custodial. If you don't want to, then we have a suite of non-custodial products that you can do. And this was kind of our first kind of move into that. So a lender's pretty And it's not gonna move because obviously you'll have a key, we have a key, and then the trusted third party has a key. And so as soon as that's paid off, it automatically shoots back to, to the user.

Gotcha. And so then when- The price of Bitcoin drops and, like, we're talking about margin calls and liquidation, actually what's happening in the back end is Neutron has to coordinate with either BitGo or Kobo to do that liquidation in that case. So let's say the price drops, you know, really quickly, again, none of us wants this to happen, but again, just to understand what is the failure scenario for the user, it would be like if the price drops really quickly, they aren't able to deposit new collateral or pay off the loan, then at that point Neutron has to coordinate with BitGo Go or Kobo or and Kobo to, sell the collateral and, liquidate that user. That's correct. That's the model, right? Correct.

Yeah, that's the model. Yeah. So we're, we're still at risk too, right? 'Cause it does take a little bit of time to get that collateral to get liquidated. but we look at it as if it ever, if it ever is gonna get liquidated, because we are a Bitcoin company, that's the risk that we're willing to take, right? So we're willing to take

All the way down to, say they borrowed it at a hundred thousand, it drops to like fifty thousand, we'll still take that fifty thousand in Bitcoin, hold it, and then wait for it to go up.

Gotcha. And then in terms of the funding side of things, like are you-- because different platforms, I'm trying to understand how yours works, are you actually-- are there people who wanna come to you and say, "Hey, I wanna lend out fiat," or do you have a ba-- a bank who you're partnering with, like who, in terms of funding and capital source for the loans?

Yeah, a lot of it is private capital, some VC investment firms too as well that we talk to. And so we looked at it and said, "Here, here's our product, this is what we're doing." and so they were interested in it. So a lot of the good VCs that we already had already in our investment rounds were helping with us, with this. so that's kind of helped a lot. And just kind of showing them how it works, it, it actually also, also helped because the market is actually moving forward with a lot of

Before, but it seems like the number one hot topic is the treasury companies and number two is lending, right? Like there's so many people who are interested in lending recently, both on the borrower side and the lending side. So it's kind of interesting we're seeing this, and this is definitely what I'm hearing from many people who I talk to in the industry. So, it's heating up. but I do find it interesting that you've got as low as six percent over a hundred and fifty k, like that's actually pretty low. Like I'm surprised you managed to find people

You know?

Yeah, like, what we call it is like a phase, right? Like I think we have a certain phase of, it's kind of like the discount kind of era where it's like, we'll give you this amount, if,

intro rate, intro rate,

intro rate, yeah, yeah, and if, if you stay long enough, we may be able to keep it around and keep the investors a little bit happy, even though it's super low, but I think as long as we can get a lot of the AUM under, and we The investors would be happy, right? 'Cause the interest rate, although it's not as aggressive as the other ones, that they're not collecting it. But if there is a lot of interest and a lot of people are doing it, usually that six percent we will try to keep. But it's, it's an introductory phase, yes. There's gonna probably gonna be a little bit more of an increase as probably more loans start coming in, and there are a lot of loans that are coming in now. And so our block is almost kind of filled up, and that's why that's why Hold up, could you give us another block? We need more capital, and this is, you know, proof that here's all the actual loans that are on, on chain, you can see them for yourself. And would we be able to get it again at six percent? And so that's us negotiating back with them again, and hopefully they will give us the six percent. And so we already, we are in talks right now to try to get another block for, obviously the six percent, the third block, probably not, we'll probably not get six percent, but we'll try to get

Gotcha. Yeah, and I mean, that's the, yeah, that's kind of the big question because that's been, I would say, when I talk to like Bitcoiners and hodlers who want to borrow against their stack Some of the pain points have been, look, man, like the loans are only one year, I would really like more than one year, and the rates are a bit high, right? Because historically it's been like fourteen, fifteen percent, like that kind of level. And so those are probably the two main blockers that I can think of for a lot of people. And over time, I think these things will, will get kind of solved or over time as Bitcoin grows, there'll be more interest in these kinds of things. but, you know, that's, that's where we're at for now. I'm curious, in terms of the use of these loans, is it generally gonna be people who like, are we talking like hodler who wants to borrow against some coins to pay his living expenses or like person who wants to lever up on Bitcoin and borrow some fiat to then buy Bitcoin? or other, or borrow Bitcoin, for some kind of commercial use case. What are you seeing, where has the interest been at?

Yeah, it's been probably both with the latter ones that you're talking about, so a lot of them taking out a loan and then buying more Bitcoin with it, kind of, we call it like a little bit more the degenerate kind of side. but we can't say like, that's their money, right? If they wanna do that, they wanna, they wanna lever up, then that's up to them. We Really interesting. not, not too interesting, but I, I think it's probably pretty much the norm, is that people wanna buy other assets with it. And so we see a lot of commercial buying. That's why there's a lot of people asking for rollovers, 'cause they're saying, "I'm buying this property, I need more than twelve months to be able to do it. Could you offer a rollover?" And we do offer rollovers, it's just when it comes to that point, it's just the fee, and then you can roll over for another twelve And so we see a lot of that, so a lot of commercial building, buying other assets. An interesting one that we see now that is coming in a lot is people are buying it to buy the Bitcoin treasury companies.

Yeah,

yeah. A lot of that is coming in.

Yeah, I think that's, that seems to be the play because it's kind of-- it's well, that's like the number one and number two hot topics, right? So it's kind of, it was only natural that we were gonna see that kind of, practice, of course. You know, depends how things go this cycle. of course, the obvious comparisons, everyone's gonna be like, "Oh, FTX, BlockFi, Celsius, etcetera, Three Arrows Capital, whatever." but, yeah, I'm curious how you're seeing that then. Like, are you, hearing a lot of people talking about that, worried about those things, or right now it's like, "No, full steam ahead, we're in the bull market." What do you think?

Yeah, like I, I think, I think it is okay Couple more months, I think we'll actually really see kind of, you know, what the bull market really presents. But I think we're just at the start of it. I think it's a good time to do the loans. you know, obviously I'm gonna get a lot of, you know, maybe, you know, bad kickback on it, but I think now is better to do it than at the top, right? And I think that's where a lot of people are gonna fall suspect to it, where, say, Bitcoin goes all the way up to two

hundred

and fifty Obviously know your financials and understand how you're gonna do your finance, but I think now would be a very good time to do the lend and then do into the treasury stocks and everywhere else, 'cause once it does go up, then you would wanna exit them, right? not when everyone is kinda fomoing in and as institutions and countries are buying it. And then there's gonna be a catastrophic fall, right? 'Cause I think that's, I think that's just gonna happen, that's just in Bitcoin's nature, right? As much as people say that it's not gonna happen, people need to take profits. That's what happens, right? It's not a correction, it's just people saying "Hey, look at this." It's, Bitcoin is two hundred or three hundred thousand dollars. There are people that are gonna take profit. People have responsibility, people have lives to do, and not everyone is like a hardcore Bitcoin maxie like you or I, where we would like forever keep it, right? And just loan against it. There are other people that just do have normal lives outside of Bitcoin and wanna take care of their families, and maybe they feel that being cash-heavy rich and having a house is just their normal life, right? But getting to that point, maybe is Makes any Bitcoin at three hundred thousand? I don't know, right? But I think that's just-- there's always gonna be different groups that do that, that's why I think it's just kind of you let the person decide, right? That's their money, if they're in it for the ride, great, and if it changes their life, that's even better, right? I, I think that's just-- I think that's the main goal, right? Is that everyone gets out of kind of the rat race, everyone has a very good life with their families,

and,

Yeah, and I think it, you know, it's not even a, a zero or one, you know, like I'm sure there are long term, you know, hodlers and, I mean, historically that's been what's happened, right? In these cycles, if you sort of look on chain, look at the, like kind of, checkmate and some of these other on-chain analysts are looking and they're saying, "Well, look, every time these cycles have been, it's like the smart money and the whales who put in, who, effectively, they sell

Take some fiat, and then they, they are some of those whales. Maybe they are, yeah, maybe they're trying to buy whatever fancy things, whether it's Lambos or yachts, or some of them are like, "No, I want some fiat because I wanna buy back the bottom or whatever." so, and that's historically what has happened, right? Whether we like it or not, or whether we, you know, because it's-- I think online there's this kind of like, "Oh, yeah, I'm hardcore, never sell, I'm staunch," but there are Into the scene or whatever, or they're just not as public about it, but they are selling or doing these things. It's just that it's not as publicized. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, so anyway, tell us a little bit about, like the remittance side of things, right? Like a few years ago, that was also part of, you know, your story, your messaging. Are you still into that or is it more-- Now the focus is more about- Like the wallet, the lend, the API aspects of it.

Yeah, it's, it's, we're a little bit more focused on like the APIs and the integration for institutions and the wallet and the lend. So we're kind of more focused on, the word that we like to use is kind of like open finance, right? Where open finance is like anyone's allowed to come in, right? As long as you have a mobile phone, you have access to finance, right? Where closed finance is all what we call is like the traditional side, right? You gotta sign up, get KYC, if you're allowed, you're allowed, right? And so we're focused now on that. We still do the remittance side, like we still have it open, because there's a lot of people,

Send it into our mobile app, and then once you send the Bitcoin in, you can send it out to all the Southeast Asian countries here. So Malaysia and India, Indonesia are pretty very active. I, I think there's a lot of contractors out there.

And are, are we talking here about like Vietnamese people in those countries or just like anyone in those countries? Just

anyone, yeah, yeah, because we service everyone in Southeast Asia, right? and so a lot of the uptick that we're seeing now is from Malaysia and Indonesia, where they'll send in the Bitcoin and they get paid in Pay their bills, but they'll keep the rest of it in Bitcoin, right? So there, there are a lot of contractors that just say, "Hey, I just get paid in Bitcoin, and I just need to sell a percentage to be able to pay my bills, just to pay bills, yeah." And so they said, "Our, our mobile app fits perfectly for that, and that's where our remittance kind of comes in." And so we've kept that on, and people just continually use it, and it, it is growing quite a bit, because I think just more

Just 'cause it is, it is just a better technology, right? It's just on an app, you can just download it and do this thing, right? Now, I guess, you still have to KYC though, right? Like to use the app, but it's, you know, once you've done that, you're at least able to- More seamlessly transact across the world.

Correct, correct. Yeah, that's an unfortunate part, right? 'Cause what I always call it is, as soon as you get into fiat, you gotta pay by fiat rules, right? And that's just, you can't get around it, right? So, and that's why we kind of wanted to move a little bit more away from kind of the remittance angle, because a lot of people were just saying, "Well, I don't wanna do the KYC, I just wanna use the Bitcoin and stuff like that." And it's funny because that

And so they don't wanna go to an exchange, and they wanna do this exchange stuff, and they're saying, "Can I just send it to a mobile wallet, save some of it, and then just have, like, say, twenty percent of it just kind of cash out for bills?" That

you're just saving into Bitcoin, yeah?

Yeah, and that's where we kinda fit in. It was a lot easier for them because now they're just like, "Oh, I just, once I sign up on the KYC, I can send it to myself, or I can send it to another They can get their own fiat, but they can also send it to, say, Indonesia or Vietnam if they have other family members in there too as well.

Gotcha, yeah. Now, the other thing we're starting to see more is, sadly, we're seeing more and more of this, the KYC kind of creep or choke that we're all facing. Everyone faces this. and some people's banks are like asking them the questions if they get like a transfer and saying, "Hey, this money you just received, who is it from? Show me the

We, we're starting to see that slowly, yes. it was kind of funny enough, just last week, Malaysia halted, a few transactions because of that, and we don't know why. Also, they just flipped the switch, it was perfectly going, perfectly fine, and then as of last week, it kind of, they kind of stopped and halted payments for more KYC. and we provided all the, the KYC, and it's the same thing that you said, they're like, "What is this amount for? Why, why is it going?" Like what is that gonna do? The guy's just trying to pay bills, his purpose of getting the hundred dollars out is maybe paying either an electrical bill or paying something for his family, right? And he even says in the description like it's for family, it's going to, you know, his cousin or his sister, right? And it's a hundred dollars. I don't understand like the, the KYC kind of chokehold where it's like you have to make sure every single dime and dollar has to be recorded when the guy's literally telling you what he's using it for, but that's Isn't good enough for some reason, because obviously the source was Bitcoin, and now it's converted from Bitcoin to, to fiat, and that's where the token point is. Yeah, which is

unfortunate, and this is kind of all around the world. I wish, I wish we had enough, momentum to kind of fight back against all this AML sanctions, BSA, all this stuff. We don't have it yet, but, you know, we've got to start somewhere, and slowly, maybe this is like a ten, fifteen-year project that if we build up enough people who

It's really frustrating for a lot of people, both everyday users and businesses, and yeah, we're just kinda-- Yeah, it's quite frustrating for many people, but this is, again, unfortunately, that's, that's the reality that we're in. But look, on the bright side, though, we have Bitcoin, we have these opportunities, more and more people are coming to Bitcoin and learning about it, and I think this lending thing is also quite interesting for a lot of people, whether that's because they wanna- Borrow against Bitcoin to not sell the Bitcoin and therefore pay their bills and whatever, or two, it's because maybe they want some sustainable form of leverage, not like don't go DGN on it, but you know, if you're doing like a small percent of your portfolio, that can make sense depending on, you know, your income, your net worth, your, you know, various conditions, how many dependents you have, all these different things that weigh into it, but it can make sense, so I think we're going to see, you know- A continuation here. so I guess we've spoken about a lot of things. I guess, as you mentioned, it's like one big theme, from this podcast really, is that Vietnam is actually turning around in terms of the stance on Bitcoin, which is actually quite notable, given the stance in past years. So now it's kind of turning around, and now we're seeing entrepreneurs and investors really- Take to using Bitcoin, and okay, yeah, some stable coins too, where does that all end up? Any closing thoughts?

Yeah, no, I think it's, it, I think it's, you know, as much as I say it's, it's a It's a paradigm shift, I think, for the country because it's, again, it's another leapfrog, right? Because I think Vietnam has been put into this area of, kind of like it's a dictatorship, right? The North won the war, right? And now it's complete dictatorship and you can't do anything, everything's capital controls. And now they're kind of easing up on that, and I think Vietnam is now choosing the side of a little bit more democracy and kind of the path of China. And so I think that allows more for, a lot of the growth and They want to show the world, Vietnam can be a larger kind of country just without exports, right? They want to be able to provide other services. And so I think a lot of people are getting noticed to that, and that's what Vietnam is trying to do, right? And I've always, when I came, when I came here, obviously, I'm Vietnamese myself, and the reason-- that's one of the reasons why I came here was to kind of just improve kind of where I came from and also improve the country a little bit more with a little bit more education and why

And I think having that hope and kind of, you know, I've been here for a long time for, I think over six years now, it's finally turning around, and I think that's a very positive light, and I think a lot of people, in other countries will co- could probably see that too as well, right? So I think it's one person that steps out the door and then everyone else will start, start following, right? 'Cause it's kind of the same thing that Michael Saylor said, it's kind of, you know, I put the playbook

Right? And I think that, that's what Vietnam wants to do in Southeast Asia. So that's why the, the stance is changing. a lot of the stuff where people can use and spend Bitcoin is obviously gonna be a little bit more open in Vietnam. I think that's gonna open up a lot of doors, a lot of investments, a lot of obviously expats coming in a little bit more, doing more business, from all over the world. And I think it's just gonna be a net benefit for both sides, right? Vietnam gets what it wants, which is a little bit I think the country overall will just change, and I think a lot of people do come here now to kind of work, obviously kind of like the, the vibe coding and, you know, kind of everything else that they do and kind of like the beach that we have here, which is called Da Nang. I think you were there too, as well as, at our first LightningCon, yeah, I think it was early twenty

twenty-three, I think. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, twenty twenty-three. That, that area has blew up with a bunch of expats that do a bunch of, businesses there, right? There's a lot of vibe quarters there as well. and then it's grown into a huge hub for a lot of people, right? So it's like Thailand and Bali and now, Da Nang. Yeah, I think overall, I think it's a very good net positive. I think Vietnam does see the potential of what Bitcoin could do for the country, along with stablecoins as well. And so I think as soon as that is shown in January of twenty twenty-six, I think there's gonna be a lot of other countries following that suit as well. So I think, yeah, we'll have a, a very unique time in twenty twenty-six, hopefully not the bear market, but I think everything else going forward, I think going for the Bitcoin side of things, where we wish and hope that How that's being, reciprocated will be, will be a lot different.

Yeah. Alright, well, yeah, thanks for joining me and, listeners check it out. I think it's neutron dot me and, you can find Albert, on X at subnet mask. Albert, thanks for joining me today.

Yeah, thanks for having me.