{ "episodeId": "SLP184", "speakers": { "stephan": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "host", "tag": "STEPHAN" }, "alessandro_cecere": { "name": "Alessandro Cecere", "role": "guest", "tag": "ALESSANDRO" } }, "segments": [ { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:09", "start": 8.87, "text": "Hi and welcome to the Stefan Livera podcast, a show about Bitcoin and Austrian economics. Today, for episode one hundred and eighty-four, my guest is Alessandro Cecere, also known as El Sultan Bitcoin. He's the CEO of Coinspry, he's in Venezuela, and he's extremely passionate about spreading Bitcoin. This show brought to you by Swan Bitcoin. You already know Swan is the best place to order. Stack your Bitcoin in the US with incredibly easy setup and low fees. But Swan is also making a splash on the Bitcoin content scene with Swan Signal. Swan Signal pairs up great Bitcoiners for unique, compelling discussions. They broadcast live every week on Twitter and YouTube, and then you can get it at swansignalpodcast dot com. Swan has also launched the Swan Force. With Swan Force, you get paid to recruit Bitcoiners. You earn zero point two five percent of every Swan plan purchase your referral makes for up to three years, and They get ten dollars of sweetsats dropped into their account. Everybody wins. Join the Swanforce at swanbitcoin dot com slash enlist. This podcast also sponsored by Unchained Capital, a Bitcoin financial services company offering you products and services built on the foundation of multi-signature. If you need a way to improve your security beyond a single signature, you can look at multi-sig and get a two of three multi-sig vault with Unchained. You can use Trezor or Ledger. It's a really simple setup on the website, and they have Vault and And loan specialists who can help you out if you're stuck as well. 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If you've got a Bitcoin hardware wallet or just a seed or even a passphrase that you are protecting and it's just on a piece of paper, just be- Be wary, is it fireproof? Is it waterproof? Is it rustproof? Is it petproof and tamper evident? That's why you need to look into the Cypherwheel. It comes in a wheel shape, it masks the words of your seed, and it's also got a padlock tamper evident seal. Make sure that you or your loved ones have access to your bitcoins if an accident occurs. Orders are going out, go and order yours at cyphersafe dot io. Alright, so in this chat with Alessandro, we talk about a range of things, growing up in Venezuela" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "02:58", "start": 177.94, "text": "and Bitcoin in Venezuela, Bitcoin nodes. Just note though, if you have kids in the car, there are a couple of swear words in the interview, so just warning you. Here's the interview. Welcome, Alessandro." }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "03:09", "start": 189.35, "text": "Thank you very much for having me on the show, Stephan." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "03:12", "start": 192.25, "text": "Oh, it's great to chat with you. So, look, just a quick note for the listeners, we were planning to do this the next morning actually for my time, or it would have been in the afternoon, but, you know, you're on now, and we thought, well, we might" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "03:30", "start": 210.02, "text": "Where you are. So look, tell us a little bit about you, man. We wanna hear your story. How did you get into, you know, all this Bitcoin stuff? And, you know, let's start a little bit with, I guess, I think it would be very interesting for my listeners to hear a little bit about, you know, growing up in Venezuela, what was it like from an economic and monetary perspective? What was that like?" }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "03:49", "start": 229.49, "text": "Well, I'm twenty-six years old, and I was thinking before getting on the show, you know, the fact that I, For the past twenty-eight years, I think, right? but all of my life, I've been living a recession. All of it, man. So it's pretty, yeah. No, well, it's pretty normal to me here in the term, I think it's, it mu- it's, it's not an, the normal for people that have not been like inside my country. It's, it's crazy. It's a thing that you need to live and breathe to totally understand it. So look, I, the other day on Citizen Bitcoin, right? Talking to Brady, I told him that, my Bitcoin story started in 2011, at high school, when I was talking to this, to some friends, I was, at a friend's apartment, and we were just browsing on the internet and we found this, you know, digital currency, and we started peeking around it, It was first like a cool thing, and then I started really getting into it. But actually thinking about it, this, these past days, I'm pretty sure, Stefan, that my Bitcoin story starts in 2009. Since 2009, I traveled to the United States with my father, with only my father and me at the time. And we went to Santander Bank to check our family savings, and I had to stay there like for six hours. I was, I was like fourteen years old, twelve, twelve years old maybe, right? and I, I didn't, I didn't know what was happening, and, and then it ended, it ended up being the fact that Santander Bank had, Had taken from us more than two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in savings, and that went through a whole deal that we went to the FBI in the United States to go through the case, and then attorneys, attorneys, attorneys in the United States, just to get back our money, you know, That was just a hectic, a hectic story. So that was pretty much the thing in my life that, I started asking me, asking myself this question of, \"Where does money come from? How does the banking system work? Why did a bank so reputable in the United States took my family savings?\" And, but yeah, sorry," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "06:13", "start": 372.77, "text": "sorry, one thing, why did they take it? What was the reason?" }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "06:16", "start": 375.81, "text": "Look, my family never emitted nor any debit card or credit card or checks for that account. It was just some family, it was just a savings account in the United States, okay? The reputable savings account in the US, man, you know? Someone at a certain point went inside the bank and they just emitted new debit cards, and then they started withdrawing with those debit cards. Like a hundred or a hundred and fifty dollars daily from Bucaramanga and Medellin in Colombia. How the fuck, if you're a reputable bank, someone, starts withdrawing a hundred or two hundred dollars daily from a savings account that has never moved in like, five, seven years, and then all of a sudden he's in Colombia with more money? What the fuck is that? So there must be a, a thing pretty messed up inside the banking system, and I think it's not the US, I think it's globally. But yeah, basically, let's get to 2011. I was at this friend's apartment and just Started studying about Bitcoin, I was not very, you know, I was, I wasn't high school man, I wasn't even in college yet, so to me it was just a game. People were playing video games on the internet, man, and exchanging bitcoins for magic cards and stuff and have a hotel, whatever, you know? but that-- but then it wasn't twenty thirteen, then it was in Sweden. I was already, I had already like investigated so much about Bitcoin, man, and it's the price started skyrocketing, the bubble started, the twenty thirteen bubble, and I was in Sweden, yeah, I couldn't stop watching the Bitcoin's price. I was not very well financially educated at, at the time. Right? So I was not able to grasp that, like, Bitcoin in a way that I thought about it for the long term." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "08:09", "start": 488.81, "text": "Yeah, yeah. So at this point, did you have any Bitcoin or were you just kind of researching it or what?" }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "08:14", "start": 493.62, "text": "I didn't, I didn't. I was only researching, doing some research. But then in twenty thirteen, I started one of the biggest mines, with a couple of friends. I'm actually looking at one of them right now, I'm borrowing his office. He is a pretty cool Bitcoin project in himself. And we'll talk about it later, that's pretty confidential for the time being. but yeah, we, we built one of the biggest Venezuelan Bitcoin mines at the time, man. We, we, we started mining with S1s, then S3s, S7s, S9s. I built mines for people, and that's how I got my first bitcoins. It was just mining. and you know, I, I see Bitcoin swell as I call it, the Bitcoin, the Bitcoin heaven of the globe, man. I mean, free electricity and, and whenever you- Bitcoin was started mining, oh, it was just, it was perfect, it was like the perfect setup scenario, dude, literally, and it's always been, and it, it has just continued growing up and building on itself, just like everywhere else, right?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "09:17", "start": 556.88, "text": "Yeah, and so tell us about your mining experience, because I am, I could imagine they were, they, you know, they might have cottoned on and said, \"Oh, hang on, there's all this electricity usage going on here, don't we wanna look into that?\" What happened with that?" }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "09:31", "start": 571.27, "text": "Okay, so, of course, we started mining with video cards. when we started mining, I was looking at some mining hardware that was being launched in California. I started telling my dad that I was w- going to become a millionaire. Traveling to California and I was going to start mining this magic coin with this special hardware, whatever, but look, it was not-- there, there was a period, and I, and I would say that it was the S9 and S As, as whatever that came after that period, that was, during 2017 model, you could buy like an end miner for twenty-five hundred dollars in Qadest. and that's when the government started going, after all of these mining operations underground that were happening in Venezuela. But at that time, twenty se- twenty thirteen, you were just like the ideal pioneer. Nobody knew what the hell you were doing, man. Everyone thought you were just a crazy dude spending your time, wasting electricity or whatever, and resources, buying some crappy stuff or, I don't know, it was just so cool, man. I've lived I'm not made of steel, but I'm made of Bitcoin, you can be sure." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "10:50", "start": 650.01, "text": "So, so then, okay, so what, what was the kind of next step then in, on your journey, like you were doing mining in twenty thirteen, and then, you know, you've gotten to this point now. Tell us a little bit of what, what you were doing after the mining." }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "11:03", "start": 663.06, "text": "We mined like until twenty fifteen, I personally ran myself. then I got separated from the group, and then eventually we sold all of the mine, so we made a pretty good, good decent profit on that, 'cause we don't-- it was like, we sold the hardware after two years of being operating, almost at the cost that we paid for it initially. so we mined Bitcoins, we sold the hardware pretty decently, we made a decent profit. I started investigating More about Bitcoin, man, and, and because of those bitcoins that I had, I look, I've always had this personal, interest of creating a hardware myself, 'cause I started studying electrical engineering at college in 2011, So in 2016, I traveled to China, dude. I traveled to China in December. I wanted to see China, see what the heck was going on, over there. I went to Shenzhen, Guangzhou. I went to Hong Kong as well. That was an amazing trip, dude. especially to a humble Venezuela, man. It's like you're, you're going to the other side of the globe. You're opening your mind, right? So, I booked two, two Airbnbs. I booked an Airbnb for Guangzhou and for Shenzhen, and both my hosts had Bitcoin. What's the probability, right?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "12:23", "start": 743.1, "text": "Well, you know, maybe people who are on Airbnb, they're like on the, they're very like forward-thinking about these things, I don't know. So, yeah, so, I mean, it's, sounds like, you know, you're quite well-traveled." }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "12:34", "start": 753.8, "text": "Yeah, man, a lot. I, I've, I've had the opportunity to, to see thirty-five countries for myself, man. for Venezuela, that's a lot, and I, I, I try to channel as much, hum-humility as possible, right? humbleness. when talking about that, 'cause I come from a very humble country, man, and there's, it's only full of beautiful people. I can tell you, I bet, I can bet you that this is the most beautiful country in the world, man, and you're gonna see it with your own eyes because you're gonna come here with El Salvador, man. Be sure of that." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "13:08", "start": 787.7, "text": "So I, I think I'm curious actually, like, 'cause I can imagine then your story would be very atypical, right? Like most, like most Venezuelan people wouldn't have had, like, wouldn't have had that kind of opportunity, right? And I guess that's the other thing as well, like- in terms of like, you know, the typical understanding around Bitcoin, what, what would the typical sort of understanding be, like when you talk to, you know, Venezuelans, what's their kind of understanding around Bitcoin?" }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "13:35", "start": 814.58, "text": "Okay, so they think it's a" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "13:35", "start": 815.3, "text": "scam or, you know?" }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "13:38", "start": 817.64, "text": "most, most of them think it's, it's a scam. But, but there's a, I mean, it's already been so many years that you've seen, I'm gonna use the term millennials, although we all, we, I'm a millennial myself, and we hate that term, 'cause it's a stereo- it's a stupid stereotype of the industry. The industry doesn't even exist. It's only small groups of people drinking coffee together." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "14:03", "start": 843.11, "text": "Yeah, yeah. The smash have a-" }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "14:05", "start": 845.49, "text": "So, so look, so many people have already got into Bitcoin, like twenty somewhat, years old people inside, inside Venezuela, specifically in Caracas, right? the capital. if you tell even a chick today, like a beautiful chick from my country, and you tell her, do you know where Bitcoin is? She'll tell you, yeah, I have a couple of friends that mine the cryptocurrency or whatever. And you know, we, we actually have this, national cryptocurrency, El Petro, that's- Started in 2017, and, and that was, that was like the government shooting themselves in the, in the foot, man, literally, 'cause they did, marketing for free for Bitcoin. That, that's it. And then in twen- in the 2017 bubble, we got all of this hype inside Venezuela, especially with the dash of, the Caracas and Venezuela Foundation. I actually believe that they, they- They opened people's mind a lot because they started giving for free Dash to people inside Caracas, so it was hectic all of this, events that the Dash Foundation would do inside Venezuela. Bitcoin itself hasn't had yet A, a, a, a events as big as the ones that Dash has al-- has already done inside my country. I actually think that's, somewhat negative, but I'm already planning on doing one of the best global Bitcoin events inside Bitcoin Sol, you can be sure about it, man." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "15:34", "start": 934.38, "text": "That's cool, that's awesome, man. So like, what's the typical, I guess? What's like the level of the education around Bitcoin then? Like, what, what are some of the materials that, Venezuelans would use or look at for Bitcoin education?" }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "15:50", "start": 949.69, "text": "So there's this, in Spanish, there's this digital, digital journal, right? Crypto Noticias. It's very well known for the Latin American market, right? South America. It's f-for the Hispanic market overall. I know the CEO himself, the, the founders and the co-founders, they've even come to my office. twice. nice, nice guys, Venezuelans, just tough entrepreneurs, baddest bitcoiners. the, the, that would be one of the main resources that they use. I, I think that most of the curated, material and, you know, learning and education stuff about Bitcoin on the internet, it's all in English, you know that, Stefan. It's like that, right? you have one of the most trending podcasts thanks to your beautiful accent. But Un-unfortunately, if I, if I, if I told a couple of friends like, \"Listen to this podcast,\" they'd probably say like, \"Oh, but it's too Bitcoiner stuff and, and it's, it's in English. Is there anything in Spanish?\" But then, if you do a podcast in Spanish, you need to do it very, very well, and it can only be Bitcoin. It, it must have also other related stuff to it. It's like, and I wanna-- if you wanna put Bitcoin, it's, it's great, but it needs to be like" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "17:08", "start": 1027.88, "text": "Right, I see. Yeah, yeah. And, I'm also curious around what people use as, you know, like store of value, right? Like, are people trying to hold USD instead so they don't lose value? Are they looking at, you know, Zelle or these other kind of, kind of sort of stablecoin-ish or just using kind of the, you know, the, the banking system in some way to preserve their wealth? What's the typical-- What are some of the methods people use if they're not using Bitcoin right now, yet, you know?" }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "17:35", "start": 1055.27, "text": "Well, look Bitcoin was discovered in Venezuela, was pretty much done by the Americans. so all of our history since the 1900s, right? we've been tied up to the American economy until Chá, Hugo Chávez came in, literally. the whole thing just went sideways. So, we were used to, as Venezuelans, traveling a lot to the United States, openin-opening up bank accounts, savings accounts, checking accounts, and just depositing all of our nation's wealth inside the United States. Literally, man. I mean, even the government, like, the government right now has, freeze, some accounts that they had, at Citibank. So, pretty much every Venezuelan's dream was travel to the US and see Mickey and Disneyland and open up a- Bank account in the US. So if, if you have the chance to travel to, to the US, man, you, you do have a bank account in the United States. I use JPMorgan Chase, for example, and I use Zelle to make some payments daily. I don't even use the bolivar anymore. I just change some bitcoins when I wanna spend my bitcoins, and I change them to, for bolivars and on local bitcoins. So as custodial solutions, people here, mostly use local bitcoins totally, that's it. they just leave the, those bitcoins there, if they have a US bank account, probably they already have an, an Uphold account, 'cause, you know, at the beginning, ATM, I don't know if you know ATM. I've" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "19:09", "start": 1148.74, "text": "heard of it, but I don't know much about it." }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "19:10", "start": 1150.41, "text": "It's like a peer, it's like a peer-to-peer platform. You can buy bitcoins using Zelle, using wire transfer. It's sort of like a local Bitcoin, but more user-friendly. it's just a piece of shit. My friend that is here, he has a better project. He's gonna eat up, local bitcoins in that town, you can be sure of that. He's a commer- he's a commercial partner of Coinspring, so I'm pretty aware of what the fuck" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "19:34", "start": 1174.48, "text": "Right, yeah, yeah. So, and then, that whole story as well of, so I'm sure you've probably seen, the Matt Alborg stuff and like you've probably seen that stuff. And I presume, I mean, you, you'd have friends, you know, who are part of that story, who are doing that sort of stuff." }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "19:50", "start": 1189.63, "text": "Of course. I have lots of friends that got into the remittance part of Bitcoin. Because before being Bitcoin, it was only dollars. You would buy and sell dollars, buy and sell dollars, and then you solve Intermediary concept. for the past fifteen years, that's been basically the main driver of business inside Venezuela. How to get the money out of the country, how to get the money back in inside the country, okay? Because you can't accept, dollars here, nor euros inside your bank account. It's terrible. The whole, the whole banking system is broke, okay?" }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "20:34", "start": 1234.43, "text": "look, Venezuela is a very particular stuff, man. Look, it's-- I have more than ten friends that they live out of Bitcoin re-remittances. after the sanctions of the United States and the twenty seventeen bubble, Bitcoin was-- Bitcoin usage inside Venezuela just went booming, and it's nonstop. And now we don't even have Zelle. Wells Fargo quit Zelle payments inside, coming from- Venezuelan territory. It's pretty stupid. Oh, Wells Fargo is a, is a, is a very hypocrite and shitty bank. It is. So," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "21:12", "start": 1272.36, "text": "so then the typical flow, as I understand it, is you have this diaspora, right? So people will go overseas to try and earn money, and they'll buy bitcoins in whatever other country, send them, and then they'll sort of do it through one of these traders who is kind of being the middleman here, and then they're the one who is trying to- Provide that kind of in-between between bitcoins and then the, the bolivars that the local person needs, right? So I guess some of your friends are those trader guys, right?" }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "21:41", "start": 1300.82, "text": "Right. You got that almost right, except for the part that, people-- those people that live outside Venezuela, not most of them, are buying bitcoin for themselves and then giving bitcoins to these remittance traders. No, it's like they just send them their euros to any bank account and then they, they are in charge of taking the money Changing it for Bitcoin and using Bitcoin to change it for bolivar, and it's all happening through local Bitcoins, man, and I think it's a cycle that will just continue, it's growing, and Bitcoin volume inside Venezuela is going to surpass the billion dollars per year, man, and that's huge for this country. I mean, like our international reserves right now are standing at six point sixty-seven billion dollars, and that's mostly gold and stuff, some dollars and euros, and- And eventually, I think that Bitcoin volume inside Venezuela will even surpass, the amount of international reserves that we have. Bitcoin is gonna be bigger than the whole Venezuelan economy itself." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "22:43", "start": 1362.63, "text": "So I mean, that's kind of like the, I guess that's the remittance story, and then there's also the, you know, holding story. So, I mean, as I understand, it's, it's kind of like not everyone Well, many people aren't at the point where they can really save, right? Because they're kind of living sort of hand-to-mouth, right? what's your experience there? Is it, is that like a small percentage of the people who are able to actually hold Bitcoin and kind of do it for speculation reasons?" }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "23:09", "start": 1388.62, "text": "Totally, dude, and I can tell you, and I can, and you can be sure of that, that I'm the best Bitcoin HO-hodler, okay? I swear that, dude. I have 100% of my savings ex- Exclusively in Bitcoin, dude. I've been even into financial markets for the past six years, and I've quit all of that. I only have GPTC on my broker account in the United States, dude." }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "23:38", "start": 1417.52, "text": "so yeah, not much people can actually deal Bitcoin, that's it. So I think it's actually a huge deal to build, important businesses that will make usage of the Lightning Network for people to buy even cents of Bitcoin inside La-- Latin America, not only Venezuela, and Zimbabwe and those countries like that. Okay. So Zimbabwe is comparable to Ghana, Venezuela is comparable to Zimbabwe and Ghana, and it was Pakistan and whatever. I mean, and you see all those, those tweets that, they come out, often. Those videos that- And those who aren't, those, those who don't look and remember the past, they will be destined to live the past once again, whatever. Although those-" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "24:21", "start": 1461.19, "text": "Yeah." }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "24:22", "start": 1462.31, "text": "doomed to repeat it, yeah. All those flags and hyperinflating economies, love it the past years, and then suddenly in, in two thousand and fourteen, Venezuela goes, \"Wow, first place! \"" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "24:34", "start": 1474.36, "text": "That's cool, man. So, tell us a little bit about, your Lightning experience. Have you played around with any Lightning wallets? Sure, dude." }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "24:41", "start": 1481.19, "text": "Sure. I run five full nodes myself and one of them is satellite. So yeah, look, I played the Lightning spin, the Lightning spin. I started playing the, the, the Lightning spin on the Lightning network, before it was bought by Open Node. I think it was actually easier, to, to grab something or make a profit before Open Node bought it. But that's fine, yeah. I played with the Lightning Network, I, I even grabbed, the, the tiny, the Lightning tiny torch, not the actual, torch, but the, the tiny torch." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "25:15", "start": 1514.84, "text": "Awesome, man. So like, what are some of your, the wallets and things that you would use in the Lightning Network?" }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "25:20", "start": 1520.45, "text": "I, I, I only use the LND protocol. That's it. And if, and if it's for my phone, I would probably use BlueWallet 'cause I have an iPhone." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "25:30", "start": 1530.01, "text": "Yeah, okay, awesome, awesome. And then, yeah, so, do you have like, do, are any of kind of your trader friends into Lightning stuff as well, or are they kind of all just doing on-chain stuff? Because that's kind of lo-what local Bitcoins is, right?" }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "25:43", "start": 1542.8, "text": "On-chain, dude, on-chain. I mean, Lightning Network is still for geeks, man, as bad as Bitcoiners, but we gotta continue building it, on it, okay? It's, it's so important. I think there are only like three Lightning One of CoinSpry's team members right now, he lives in Switzerland, he moved abroad about, two to three years ago. he's been helping me a lot. Now he's, he's starting to run his open door box in Zurich, and, and he already, like installed a gigabit, per second, internet over there, so, so CoinSpry is gonna start building like a-- We're gonna have, always twenty-four seven open our lightning node, from Switzerland, yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "26:25", "start": 1585.28, "text": "That's awesome, man. Look, so let's get into nodes then. So, tell us about your first Bitcoin node experience, like, what, what, what was that like?" }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "26:34", "start": 1593.77, "text": "That was actually thanks to Jameson Lapp. I gotta give that dude, okay, that credit is his. I got into a tutorial I found, on Medium. It was how to install a Bitcoin Core full node on Ubuntu. For non-technical users. I've already, I've always been a tech no file, a geek all of my life, man, okay? an internet guy, literally. I never, I had never installed Linux myself, and we're talking about almost three years ago. I just went through the tutorial, Just went through it, installed my node, and started understanding like what, what was happening here, what was happening. before that, in 2016, and al-almost in 2017. I had the opportunity to meet up with some friends, and I tried to set up like what was going to be the first, Bitcoin only Venezuelan exchange, okay? not like Local Bitcoins, which is a company from Iceland, okay? And that is eating up all of the volume, That's where I started learning more about nodes. They didn't, they didn't even know what the fuck a node was, but we, we, got with, got into talks with a developer, a Bitcoiner. Abroad, from the United States, and he started explaining to us about this full node and such. So I started digging more into that, and that's why in 2017 then eventually I installed my own node. And that's when I said, \"Stephan, oh my God, I don't know how the hell, but everyone needs to run a full node, and they just don't know it. They don't know it, man.\" And, and I've just studied so much about Bitcoin, and I went crazy about it. I found some parallels, with Atlantis to Bitcoin itself, and I think that if you don't run a Bitcoin full node, you're not into the real decentralized part of Bitcoin, okay? And you're not a Bitcoin, citizen, okay? To me, Bitcoin, Bitcoin isn't a currency anymore. It's more than that. It's a global digital continent, man. And it's the first digital continent that humankind has ever created in history, Stefan. And it is like that, and it is above everything now, man, above the constitution and above governments and above banking system, above everything, dude. And the community is It's just beautiful. Look at this, I'm having the possibility to talk to a dude that's in Sydney 14 hours ahead of me, and it's all because of Bitcoin, dude." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "29:10", "start": 1749.78, "text": "That's cool, man. So, I mean, look, the thing is, it's one of those-- It's difficult to communicate the value of that to a person who's new, right? Because the typical answers you'll get from people are, \"Oh, you know, I've already got my hardware wallet,\" or, \"I trust the exchange.\" Worst, worst of all, right? and I can understand, you know, when someone's first learning, they might just have a phone wallet, and that's all, right? And so it's kind of like," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "29:38", "start": 1778.44, "text": "Journey, right? Like typically they start on, you know, the phone wallet, and then maybe they get a hardware wallet depending on how much they've got, and then, okay, now it's time to start learning, okay, how-- what's this node thing? How do I use that? How do I connect it, right?" }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "29:52", "start": 1792.24, "text": "So, so that's why I think Stephan that, look, running a Bitcoin business or trying to run one, build one, it's actually not looking too much into the future. It's about getting back to basic, getting back to basics and touch ground, okay? People, people that don't know what Bitcoin is, you won't, I mean, to convince them at once that they want a Bitcoin full node, it's like, what? It's like, I'll give you an ex-example. I've convinced people that don't know anything about Bitcoin that they- They should run a Bitcoin full node, but because I don't call them Bitcoin full nodes anymore when I talk about them to pre-coiners, I call them Pandora boxes, and that-- and I show that to people physically, and that's where when they say, \"Oh, that's beautiful,\" even chicks, man. What's the probability that you create a Bitcoin product, okay, a Bitcoin full node, and then you show it to girls and they say, \"I want one of those to look myself into that stainless steel that, that works like a mirror and paint my lips?\" Crazy man. So look, I, I think it's, it's great stories, awesome brands, okay, tied to the, those awesome stories, great products Do one thing, do one product first, focus on that, okay? And start finding the way that you will educate people and shorten the learning curve for them. And, and then good distribution, and good distribution right comes with investment, VCs, and I'm on that, I'm on that, you can be sure." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "31:26", "start": 1886.48, "text": "Yeah, yeah. So look, tell me, tell me about Coinspray, why did you start Coinspray?" }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "31:33", "start": 1892.51, "text": "So it was actually because- I had already got too much into Bitcoin, okay? And I, I was already grasping an understanding about it that I-- when I started talking to people inside Venezuela and other Bitcoiners, I didn't, I didn't see them having the knowledge that I already hold about Bitcoin So it, it's, it's kind of like, yeah, personal ego stuff that started telling me inside my head like, \"You gotta build a Bitcoin business because it's our responsibility.\" It's not even because you want, it's because you got too much into it and now you're, you have the possibility to become a pioneer in that, and I have some assets and resources of my family, Myself, so I said like, \"Which other Venezuelan has the opportunity at Alessandro? Which one? You're gonna do it, man. This is a call, this, this is, this is your call, okay? This is one part of your call in life.\" So I started digging into more about Bitcoin full nodes and starting more, learning about how to, how to install them on a Raspberry Pi. And that's when I thought about it, like, \"Oh my God!\"\"\" I can use the smallest computer on, in the world to install Bitcoin full node there, and that's pretty much a bank, right? Like a personal bank, literally. A hardware wallet is not. If you don't have the blockchain, you are still depending on a third party to interact with. Nets not call it Bitcoin network anymore, let's call it Bitcoin continent, okay? So look, and Learning more about Bitcoin full nodes and trying to create a market, right, inside Venezuela because there's not a market, for Bitcoin full nodes. And I think this unique advocate, and, and Like a pastor, yeah, I've been shepherding, the whole way for to like build a new infrastructure based on Bitcoin full nodes inside Venezuela. I, I envision my country with at least ten thousand Bitcoin full nodes, okay? I have to, look, I've talked to the banking system, I've talked to investors, I've, I've talked to, The Venezuelan stock market. I've talked to, I've talked to fintechs inside Venezuela, and I, and I started showing them first, why they wanted a Pandora box and how I could help them out, build a multi-signature schemes, and how we could eventually, make usage of the liquid network and be part of the inter, intercontinental exchange network that Blockstream is building and build up some stable coins ourselves, like a bolivar stablecoin, even, right? But on the liquid network. so my whole business model with Coins34Bitcoin full nodes started as a B2B business model, and still is. It will not become a B2C business model, I think. For the next, year and a half or two years until I finish the application and until I really build the best plug-and-play Bitcoin full node that exists on the market, 'cause I've already have Nodeo, I've already have Samurai, I already have Casa, and they all have their own approaches. I've already installed myself my node BTC, I even grabbed the SD card of Casa and I've- formatted that and I installed my node BTC on it. And I just think that I have my own approach, man, you know, and I, and I have a different story, and that's a huge opportunity 'cause no other Bitcoin company globally basically has immediate penetration f- inside the Venezuelan market. And I think we're actually like the perfect Bitcoin consumer globally, but because our government made us outliers of the system. If you're in Venezuela, you pretty much can open an account in every single exchange in the globe. Bitrix has already shut down my account, Uphold has shut down my account, and it's all 'cause you're inside Venezuela. Kraken has not. Kraken is awesome." }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "35:30", "start": 2129.96, "text": "Well," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "35:31", "start": 2130.82, "text": "yeah, so then I guess the business model that you're kind of going for is, Selling to businesses inside Venezuela to have a Pandora box. So what's the case for them, like, why would they want a Bitcoin node?" }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "35:45", "start": 2144.56, "text": "So look, I've already told this to so many people inside my country. If you think about it, it's so stupid that we are-- we have like one or even two percent of the global mining hashing power inside Venezuela, and our economy is broke, literally, okay?" }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "36:04", "start": 2163.65, "text": "why are we exporting? Every single Bitcoin that we mine into an international exchange or into a hardware wallet of an international company, it's because we don't have a national custodial solution. That's it. And that's what I envision, Stephan. I envision that we can actually Bitcoin, and I think it will happen. Bitcoin Suella will be the first economy in, in the world to get Bitcoinized, dude. It's already pretty much Bitcoinized, but it will adopt Bitcoin as a standard, not only as a- The unit of account. It will adopt Bitcoin as a philosophy, as an, as an ideal of life and a life-lifestyle, literally. So that's why I think we need Bitcoin full nodes, man, right? and, and themselves, store Bitcoin for the long term, don't depend on third parties to transact, over Bitcoin continent, okay? have a foot in Bitcoin continent yourself, and the fastest ship to Bitcoin continent is the Durabot." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "37:06", "start": 2225.65, "text": "Cool. Oh, cool. So, so what are the businesses saying? Are they sort of, anxious about it? Are they sort of like, \"Oh, we don't really know about Bitcoin, we don't want that\"? Like, what's their, what's, what's their message typically?" }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "37:17", "start": 2236.94, "text": "Totally. Definitely, look, the hardest penetration for Coin Street to date has been, of course, with the banking system inside Venezuela. But again, it's completely broke, okay? The Venezuelan banking system is completely broke. So they don't have anything else to do. They can't have dollars, They're, they're sort of like inside a room and, and there's not any more space to move inside that, inside that, okay? So they definitely have to get in, into Bitcoin, and nobody else has approached them, and you can be sure of that. Only El Sultán has approached them. They could study a solution. Who's gonna build for them a Bitcoin full node in seven days for that? Nick Newman? James Salab? No, they're not, they can't." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "38:05", "start": 2285.16, "text": "So you're gonna try and help them set up with multisig. Yeah. What, what are you using then? Are you doing like Electrum multisig or what's your, you know, what's your plan with that?" }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "38:15", "start": 2294.74, "text": "It's actually more like a manual process. I'm trying to get rid of Electrum server, for the institutional part, right? and just building multisigature from raw, okay, from terminal. And we use different hardware wallets. We use Trezor and then also Ledger. I'm actually in talks with the Trezor enterprise division, and Become an official commercial partner of Trezor, very soon. So I'm very much excited about it, 'cause that will give me the possibility of not buying, you know, a Trezor like on Amazon or from any reseller. I will become a reseller myself, and I will just get the Trezors directly from Trezor and use them to build the multisig, scheme. that would actually help us a lot with those Shamir backups that they use, for the private keys and, and all that. I'm actually planning on installing Article from Unchain Capital. Nice, nice, nice. Unchain is my" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "39:08", "start": 2348.5, "text": "sponsor, but, I, I'm a big fan of them as well. I love, I think the caravan is a great option. hopefully that also becomes like one of the easy ways for people who wanna kind of do their own, right? If they have like a min node and it's already on the min node, then they can set it up, right? And, I mean, even for business uses, you could, you could definitely, try and put that to use there as well. So" }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "39:35", "start": 2374.96, "text": "We're more than ten, we're ten plus people, yeah. and we're, look, there, there's a Swiss guy already, he's forty-seven years old. There's my father, he's almost sixty years old. the business development advisor of, of Coinspry used to be the auditor for the FBI servers in Florida in the United States, and he worked for over twenty years inside the Venezuelan banking system, so he has pretty much done all of the lovey for Coinspry inside the Venezuelan banking system. In the end, it's a cartel, it's, it So you need to do somebody in lobby. You need to invite them to a restaurant and give them a nice piece of steak and a bottle of whiskey or whatever." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "40:15", "start": 2415.4, "text": "Awesome. Awesome. So is the business mostly-- Sorry, go on." }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "40:19", "start": 2418.61, "text": "we're, look, we're mostly millennials, we're twenty-three year olds people and twenty-six year old people, twenty-nine years old people. We're a very multi-faceted team. I, I only build, teams, filled with maniacs." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "40:35", "start": 2435.02, "text": "What's that saying? It's like, those ones who are crazy enough to believe they can change the world, they're the ones who can do it, right? Yeah, man." }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "40:41", "start": 2441.4, "text": "Yeah. Bitcoin is money only for maniacs." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "40:46", "start": 2446.22, "text": "It'll, it'll get there, it'll get there. so is, is Coinspring meant to be mainly inside Venezuela in terms of customers, or are you kind of looking at, you know, Latin America? What's, what's your, what's your, what's your kind of market there?" }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "40:59", "start": 2458.65, "text": "So look," }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "41:04", "start": 2463.64, "text": "I had not in Like blog screen deal that I did, two weeks ago, right? I was envisioning that like two, three years in advance, you know, Stephan, but then the whole COVID-19 thing exploded and the globe has already changed, mindset has already changed, psychology's a-- has already changed. People that used to sleep ten hours are sleeping three hours only now or four hours, so it's hectic. And, of course, I've got that into consideration. So, I know that Latin- And South America as a very vibrant and special market for not only coins, but the whole Bitcoin deal, man. Okay? We've been, we've been craving for years with counter currency exchanges everywhere inside South America, Argentina, Brazil, and Peru and Chile. Every single one of those country-- countries has gone super inflationary or hyperinflationary, and, you know, Venezuela is working as the harbor for Bitcoin. Volume through local bitcoins for all of South America. So I know that, the, the story behind coins, the amazing story behind Vindora Box is starting inside Venezuela, I've already built use cases with Universidad Metropolitana, right? Who is, the, the my college. It's the most entrepreneurial college of all of, all of Venezuela. I've already run proof of concept, tests with them, and they fell in love with the Pindora nodes, they were crazy. As soon as we connected the full node, we were connected to China, to Iran, to the United States, they couldn't believe it. It's, there's, there's no boundaries. It's Bitcoin continent again. But yes, now I'm trying to look, insert, the whole satellite deal for Latin America And I know that making usage of the Raspberry Pi is ideal for that. I'm actually in to-- on the talks with Blockstream to figuring out, we're running tests together on the Raspberry Pi 3B+ stressing it as much as possible, because I think it's the ideal hardware to continue deploying that over all South America. I've already actually been in touch with the Raspberry Pi Foundation themselves, right? itself. and eventually, look, the Raspberry Pi four has already eight gigabytes, it's a monster, okay? You could run an AI neural network and, and neural network node on that and, have installed a Bitcoin full node with, with Lightning and Liquid, and it won't crash, you can be sure of that. so look, eventually even the Raspberry Pi Foundation will start giving for free, you know, for free Raspberry Pi, all, all spare parts of Raspberry Pi three B pluses, and I pretend on using that for Latin America and start giving that, even as donations to start building use cases. I, I, I need to continue educating people, okay? And, but- After Venezuela, I do plan on going internationally. I also, inside Coin, Coinsphere, we have already traced a vision on, and a, and a strategy on how to penetrate the European markets, the US markets, and South America. And it's amazing, and it's all under my sleeve, man." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "44:23", "start": 2663.28, "text": "Well, look, man, I wanna hear about, your Blockset story. So, tell us how, how did that come about?" }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "44:30", "start": 2669.84, "text": "Okay. So So, last year, when the electrical grid started failing in my country, I immediately bought the hard-- the necessary hardware to start running tests with satellite with my team, because we felt freeze, we couldn't do anything, man. I mean, we were undergoing the Pindora box development, we were starting to run over the Lightning network and that, and the electrical grid started failing. That, that was chaotic. We started using first Fedora 'cause I started looking at not Grubbs tutorials a medium. And, the, the first tutorial he, he put up online made usage of the Fedora distro of Linux, right, to install the, the satellite. We run some tests, we connected to the satellite, it was ver- it's, it's actually very, it was very, Blockstream had not launched the two megabyte per, per second download speed, under satellite, it was already sat- Block, Blockstream satellite one point oh. But yeah, we had al- we were already been testing for over a year with Blockstream satellites, Ursa one, one, three, this- The South American satellite. but then the whole directed video that all of a sudden they left Venezuela, I said, \"Okay, dude, I'm fucking tired. I'm tired of the government, tired of the system. There's no system, I'm tired of everyone. I'm going to get the transponder out and j-- I just installed the, the- The free LMB, right? And, and now I'm just having-- I'm running my own Bitcoin satellite full node on there. It's, it's amazing. After, after I started running them on Fedora running it on Fedora, I started running it on Ubuntu because now it's pretty much, it's way easier to install it. The listener should totally try to install a Bitcoin full node and go above the system. We don't give a fuck about anyone." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "46:26", "start": 2785.68, "text": "Yeah, I mean, and, and there were some, pretty big updates that came in the new Blockstream Satellite version two, as I understand. They've got a new feed which can-- So previously, I think it was like the last one day worth of blocks, whereas now they've actually got another stream which apparently can go from zero to all the way, on Blockstream Satellite now. So that's very cool, especially for people who want to try and just start up from the very beginning and do it all the way. So there's a lot of, awesome- you know, sense-resistant properties that come from that. I think it's a very cool project by Blockstream. So I, I presume you were also in touch with some of the guys from Blockstream?" }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "47:03", "start": 2822.85, "text": "Yeah, Sam Semail, Exellion, and BlueMat, and yeah, yeah, man. I'm inside, I'm inside the private Slack channel." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "47:12", "start": 2831.84, "text": "Awesome, man. That's, that's very cool. So, yeah, so I guess then with the Pandora box, what's the thought for the hardware around that? Is that gonna be Raspberry Pis inside the box or what's your, okay," }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "47:26", "start": 2845.61, "text": "it is gonna be definitely the Raspberry Pi. To me, at a hardware, at a hardware perspective, perspective, Stefan, the Raspberry Pi, dude, it's like the Bitcoin of hardware, literally. Literally, dude, literally, 'cause it's like the most open Open source hardware and computer PC, of the globe. So, I, I think it will co- and it's backed by the Raspberry Pi Foundation, dude. It's just an amazing hardware. And I-- And look, I've not done tests like inside a laboratory like, Swiss people would do inside Switzerland. And, and I think that's pretty much why the Bitbox project got stopped by Shift Crypto Security. costs, dude. How much does it cost you to have a developer in Switzerland? Like five thousand Swiss francs per year. You know how much Coinsphere's teammates charge to Coinsphere? Zero, because they're married to the cost" }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "48:25", "start": 2905.26, "text": "The hardware is" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "48:26", "start": 2906.06, "text": "expensive, right?" }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "48:27", "start": 2907.06, "text": "It, it's, it's expensive, man, and, and trying to run those kinds of projects is very difficult. I, I look, do you think that I, I, I already had in my mind the Pidor box when I started Coinspeak? No. And frankly, and, and that's just how any project starts, man. And you just gotta keep on going, gotta keep, keep on building, and you gotta show the people that you're in love of what you're doing, man. Otherwise, what? Why the hell are you doing it, man? Quit that. But look, I'm gonna be pretty honest, and straightforward. If it's not me, Stephan, eventually someone will build a Bitcoin full node like this, as flat as your iPhone, dude, okay? And as sick as your iPhone. And you need, like, I, I've run the, I've ran the numbers already because I'm a, I'm an industrial engineer. I know how to build production lines myself, right? Any sort of production line. For whatever it is that you want. and you need like fifty million dollars to bid, to build a hardware factory to start producing, Bitcoin full node dedicated hardware, literally. So before anyone achieves that in the globe, I think it'll first, it'll first be through the Raspberry Pi itself. So that's why I've already been in touch even with Farnell Ltd. They're, one of the only two companies that globally have, the license given by the Raspberry Pi Foundation to produce Raspberry Pi's. They have factories in the UK, in China, and even in the United States, in Florida, and they are able to, produce Raspberry Pi's at the same cost at each one of them because it is so automated to the last nanometer. It's sick, man. You gotta see one of those factories. It's sick. So I've already been in touch with him and the general manager from, from Europe that was back in December 2018, and he, and he w- he fell in love with the project. He was like, \"How the hell?\" It's a dude from Venezuela approaching me in Milano, Italy, and, and one of the best bakeries inside, inside Italy, and I-- and he's with this small raspberry pie and he's telling me that he wants to install Bitcoin full node there, that it's going to be open door, it's, it's an awesome story, man, really." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "50:47", "start": 3046.93, "text": "That's awesome, man. Yeah, so that's, that's great to hear. I, I'd love to talk a little bit more about the, you know, Bitcoin community, you know, so tell us a little bit about the meetup scene and, you know, is, is there much of that going on? Or not really?" }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "51:02", "start": 3062.45, "text": "Look, there's only one dude that has been doing most of the meetups here, okay? Crypto Astato. Literally, it's him, Javier. and I think he's done a pretty well job. He's built a brand himself from scratch, from the ground, and that's the beauty of the Bitcoin community, right? When, when you start introducing yourself and you do your own research, you start talking to all of the Bitcoiners, and you start introducing yourself there. I think that we need more than just Meetups inside Venezuela. We need like a Bitcoin techno party inside, inside, inside Venezuela." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "51:39", "start": 3099.46, "text": "So what's the techno, what's the party gonna be?" }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "51:44", "start": 3104.23, "text": "That's confidential for the time being, but you're gonna be inside it, you're gonna be inside it, and Brady has to be there, and Andrea Santonabo has to be there, and Jesse Powell and everyone, dude. Because frankly, we Bitcoiners need to show one thing to the globe right now, because it is our moment, Stefan. We need to show that we are united, united, dude, that we don't give a fuck about governments, and we don't give a fuck about any system. And once the whole Code V19 deal passes I'm, I'm sure, dude, it'll be explosive once we start uploading the videos and the photos together from Venezuela. And, And I'm taking the time to set up a nice thing. I think we're gonna call it Bitcoin Tropical Valley event, cause Caracas is a valley itself, it's a beautiful valley" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "52:35", "start": 3154.94, "text": "Right, yeah. So you gotta, you gotta brand it and, you know, I think they've got like, you know, different places called, you know, whatever, Bitcoin Valley or Crypto Valley or whatever, things like that. So you're gonna set that up there and get that started, hey?" }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "52:48", "start": 3167.52, "text": "Yeah, man. And you're coming. You are coming." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "52:52", "start": 3171.98, "text": "So what, what, what's it like the current story, you know, if people wanna travel in and out of Venezuela now?" }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "52:58", "start": 3178.41, "text": "For now, because of the whole COVID-19 deal, blah, blah, blah, da da da da da. it's, it's a, it's a mess, but probably next year it'll be, it'll be just fine, man. Okay? If you wanna travel to Europe and you have enough money, you can go. If you wanna travel in South Venezuela, you can come. Of course, you have to know someone inside Venezuela, but be sure, you know, I'll solve the problem, you're gonna be safe over here with me." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "53:23", "start": 3202.68, "text": "So," }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "53:24", "start": 3203.9, "text": "so tell us a-" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "53:26", "start": 3205.68, "text": "Oh, yep, sure. Oh, he's lost his headphone there. Got him. Too much passion. That's right, too passionate. so tell us about your rebranding to El Sultan Bitcoin." }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "53:38", "start": 3218.29, "text": "Sure. it's specifically, specifically because of part of that strategy of Coinstry of transitioning from a B2B business model into a B2C business model, right? we're starting to communicate to people and the Bitcoin community that bit by bit we have the intention of Selling Pandora Box to people, okay? so the rebranding will help us at, it, it's gonna be awesome. All of the Bitcoin, all of the coinspring team members will have their own meme, okay? Sort of like their own character. I'm L Soultime Bitcoin, and there's, we're gonna have L, L Bitcoin Rider, L DJ Bitcoin, L General Bitcoin. It's gonna be so cool, man. I, I think it, people are liking it, okay? People that don't know anything about Bitcoin, they- They, they feel more in touch with it. They, they, they, they are connecting more to that feeling. And, yeah, I test every single thing that runs through my mind. Firstly with my friends, then with my Bitcoiner friends, pre-coiner friends, old people, right? Look, I'm this crazy guy, Stephan, that has even thought that Andrea Bocelli should be able to use a Bitcoin full node. Artists should be able to use a Bitcoin full node, and we Bitcoiners have the, the responsibility Of continue communicating how important it is for people to run a Bitcoin full node for the globe, man, okay? For the globe, for the future of humanity, man. I think that even Kim Kardashian will run a Bitcoin full node eventually. I think that even Roger Federer will run a Bitcoin full node, dude. I think that even a blind person should be able to run a Bitcoin full node. Otherwise, look, look, what's the sound of Bitcoin, Stefan? How does Bitcoin sound? You don't know. Bitcoin is dead. If it doesn't have a sound, it's dead. If you don't have a sound at all, you're missing one of the senses. And, and if you're missing one of the senses, you don't even have a user experience at all. So I'm trying to bring music to Bitcoin, okay? So that even a blind person can use Bitcoin. We're, we've been already testing a voice assistant for, for Bitcoin Core itself, so you can talk to the blockchain. It's like, \"What's my balance?\" Boom, and" }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "55:55", "start": 3354.64, "text": "And it gives you the last blockchain. It's hectic. It's super cool. But Nordblock is gonna have a very, very ambitious," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "56:01", "start": 3361.39, "text": "very ambitious goal. Super ambitious." }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "56:03", "start": 3363.42, "text": "Super ambitious." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "56:05", "start": 3365.0, "text": "Yeah. so then I guess thinking more like, you know, security of the node and stuff like that, how are you kind of thinking about that as an issue for people, and, you know, are they, you know, you're thinking they're keeping their keys hot on the node kind of thing, or, you know, they're gonna do the whole Electrum server, hardware wallet thing?" }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "56:24", "start": 3383.51, "text": "Sure. I think, I think it just depends on the use case, right? it depends on, on how, how much Bitcoin you have, how much are you into Bitcoin," }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "56:35", "start": 3394.64, "text": "You wanna start liquid trading Bitcoin, and you gotta change Bitcoin for liquid, for liquid Bitcoin, and then start trading with USDT, your liquid Bitcoins and that stuff, okay? Which is totally doable, right? There's even liquidity dot io to start buying your liquid Bitcoins. So, I, I think it's, it's, a task for CoinSprue to continue educating people all of the possibilities of what they can achieve with their node. but as JW Weatherman says, right, that he has yeti, yeti dot co, yeti co dot, dot Or dot org. Awesome page, you can plug safely a couple of thousands of, of dollars inside your node, okay? And, and that's gonna be fine. I've done it myself, I've had like more than four bitcoins inside a hot node, and it's fine. From Venezuela, it's fine. And running over Tor with Lightning, whatever, and, and I've also CoinJoin myself, and, and it's fine, okay? It's, it's just like, and I'm not giving CoinJoiner to people yet. I didn't think they're giving Lightning to people yet. It's, it's, it's not, it's not ideal, man. It's not ideal. Look at what happened to Casa. When you started setting up your fir- your first, the first version of Casa through your web browser, it's like, \"This is an experimental technology.\" How are people that don't know about Bitcoin gonna buy that? They, they just don't know. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "57:52", "start": 3471.81, "text": "Yeah. Another interesting one is this idea of, well, now everyone, a lot more people gonna work remotely potentially, and they might be able to, if they've got a digital skill, then they can start earning Bitcoin. So that's potentially another angle as well. So are you exploring that as a way that you teach people about Bitcoin of, of, \"Hey, you can earn Bitcoin if you have a You can sell your service online and earn Bitcoin." }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "58:17", "start": 3497.4, "text": "not yet, but because I still have lots of work to do with our strategy and the whole-- Again, one thing at a time. Focused, and our focus is Bitcoin full node, literally building a beautiful, a beautifully aesthetically, aesthetically Bitcoin full node. One cable, only one cable, and- Maybe in the future, in, in five years and ten years, a wireless hard, wireless charging hardware without any port, okay? like that. But yeah, I think that, look, I'm planning on even building Spanish tutorials, very curated, with coin sprays, image and colors and all of that, right? So, so it's beautiful and, and interesting to people that don't even know about full nodes. So, to, for them to learn how to install a full node themselves, okay? Probably just, and bit by bit, right? First Bitcoin Core, stable, okay. Go Lightning, stable, okay. Try going Liquid, okay, stable. Run Tor, okay, stable. VPN, okay, stable. CoinJoining, and all of that, man. Eventually, yes, every single, every single Bitcoin business globally and Bitcoin project needs to understand how to ad-adopt inside their vision an open source, an open source model. Of anything, education, technology, whatever it is, a GitHub page, whatever, man. But you, you have to include it." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "59:39", "start": 3578.88, "text": "Awesome. So in your view, what does the next, let's say, one or two years look like for Bitcoin?" }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "59:46", "start": 3586.37, "text": "For Bitcoin, I think it's going to surpass the added price level. I think it's going to surpass the fifty thousand dollars. I'm co- I'm counting on that. If it doesn't happen, I don't care. Look, I have all of my savings, and I've seen them go to twenty thousand, and didn't sell anything, and then it went to three thousand, and that was a pretty interesting psychological experience, right? And that makes you tougher. the Venezuelan Bitcoin ecosystem, I think, is continue being very vibrant, for the, for that next year and two years. I'm very excited about what's going to happen for Bitcoin globally. look at, as Jesse Powell said the other day on Bloomberg, we are seeing merchants, hedge funds, VCs, every single sort of client that is getting inside our exchange and is starting to buy somewhat Bitcoins. And Bitcoin is just this Awesome brand that will be superior to Amazon. It'll be, and it'll be the best brand, man. It'll even be more loved than Coca-Cola." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:00:48", "start": 3648.04, "text": "Yeah, it's exciting to see, Bitcoin" }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "01:00:50", "start": 3650.01, "text": "will actually save families, not Coca-Cola." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:00:56", "start": 3656.91, "text": "So, have you got any ideas around, you know, Bitcoin citadels?" }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "01:01:02", "start": 3662.23, "text": "Bitcoin citadels, what is that? What does that mean? I'm sorry." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:01:06", "start": 3666.82, "text": "Well, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, I mean, it's kind of tongue in cheek, but it's this idea that, you know, people are gonna set up You know, these kind of gated communities with like private security or whatever, and they're gonna have like their, you know, their kind of higher security area for Bitcoin people who wanna get away from, the more crazy people out there, but, you know, it's, it's, it's more like, some people joke about it, some people are more serious about it, let's say, you know? So you got people who're talking about, oh, let's have free private cities and let's have, whatever, right? but then Actually, not a very good idea from a security standpoint to have all these Bitcoin people together in this one area because, you know, they can get attacked and so, all that. So, but I, I think it's an interesting thing to see, and I think I'm, I'm Expecting to see this kind of jurisdiction competition idea, right? Like people are just gonna set up in lots of different areas, and there'll be some that are better for Bitcoin and some that aren't so good for Bitcoin. And that's, you know, that's how I see it playing out, but w-what's your view? Do you have any thoughts on that idea?" }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "01:02:10", "start": 3730.35, "text": "Look, I think that, eventually maybe even governments start creating globally a Bitcoin, an official Bitcoin embassy, inside the country, right? Inside, inside their juris- their jurisdiction. I do It's not a network, it's a continent. And what do you do with other countries and other continents? You do trade deals. You don't regulate them. Actually, look in, inside my thesis, that I'm doing for, it's, it's called a production line for, full nodes pertaining to P2P blockchain networks, case Bitcoin, okay? And in it, I, I think, I'm, I'm pretty much sure, I built one of the best, I designed, I designed one of the best Bitcoin full node production lines. But, Inside my thesis, there's a specific part where I mention, another thesis of a, of a dude that studied, he's in Torney, and he studies, digital messages and how governments should regulate digital messages, right? For example, an email, a WhatsApp message, and I think that The countries that go first at seeing Bitcoin as a digital message, okay, from a regulatory standpoint, and not as money, and start building the need for licenses and a bit license in New York and whatever crappy license that you're trying to put on top of Bitcoin, I think those companies will thrive best at Bitcoin adoption than others, the ones that start seeing from a regulatory standpoint, Bitcoin as a digital message. It's a message, that's it. It's a message, dude, over the internet. That's it, over space. so look, with regards to my vision, look, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are going to launch a whole bunch of mini-satellites providing global internet usage to the world, okay? So that's part of my vision, and b- as, as far as Bitcoin citadel, citadels, I don't know about Bitcoin citadels, but I'm sort of building my own, just that it doesn't have gates. I'm thinking about- Financial telecommunications. So I'm running a satellite node, and I'm planning on hooking up to it a LORAWAN antenna, to, to start providing offline radio frequency blockchain Bitcoin signal. For pretty much all of my neighborhood to have free Bitcoin signal. So if they have that and they start buying a, a more cheaper hardware than the high five hundred dollar cost that you have at a Pandora box level, for example, to bu- to build your full node on a Raspberry Pi with SSDs. you start having all of a sudden access to Bitcoin signal without using an exchange. You only need like this very small hardware to decode the, the signal, the frequency, and start transacting over the blockchain, and then maybe, half coins free be paid a dollar per month, okay? That, that a Venezuelan can't allow himself to pay a dollar a month to transact over the Bitcoin blockchain network. Somehow I have to monetize the business." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:05:18", "start": 3918.33, "text": "Of course, of course. And so what, what, what do you do in terms of power outages and still being able to use Bitcoin and all that?" }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "01:05:26", "start": 3926.7, "text": "So, since, since I had the interest in, creating the PedoBox project, I approached a electrical engineering teacher, one of the best electrical engineers of Venezuela from Universidad Central de Venezuela. it used to be one of the best colleges globally at its time. He installed, automated systems based on Raspberry Pi running on Raspberry Pis for the banking industry inside Venezuela, to automate all of, all of the lighting, infrastructure, okay, and, and part of their, their AC usage, their AC, It's a very cool project, and he had running, those, those full nodes for over two years. So I did approach him to see, how much, to see if, if it was actually viable to run a, on a Ras- to, to have running a Raspberry Pi twenty-four-seven for three, at least five years, and it is totally, totally doable, man. I'm totally impressed at what the Raspberry Pi Foundation has achieved with that mini computer. I think it's gonna thrive. So much, man, and it's gonna teach not only about Bitcoin to people, it actually helped me about learning to code, and that's very, it's way more important than Bitcoin. Bitcoin is code itself. Well, it's, it's the World Cup of, of, of code, right? It's, it's, it's as heavy as the World Cup in that sense, and it's the best open-source technology that exists, totally. I think I might have missed the point, but I'm just really excited about what's coming." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:07:01", "start": 4021.5, "text": "Oh, cool. So, I Then you, you just ha- you kind of-" }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "01:07:09", "start": 4029.79, "text": "I use an UPS." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:07:11", "start": 4031.47, "text": "Right. Yeah, yeah." }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "01:07:12", "start": 4032.53, "text": "I use an UPS. But I am planning on doing tests with, solar panels. I even built a solar panel with an acr- an acrylic sheet and then put some, garbage, a piece of a garbage bag, inside it, and then wired some copper to it, and you can get like five volts out, out of that. You can, so yeah, I'm an electrical engineer, man." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:07:35", "start": 4055.36, "text": "Of course, of course. also wondering whether you've explored the whole local kind of mesh networking, you know, stuff like Gotenna or Lo-Locha Mesh, any of those ideas? Sure," }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "01:07:45", "start": 4065.97, "text": "sure, of course. Randy is a proud Bitcoiner, and I've been in touch with Randy himself. He's building a very interesting thing, and, and, and that sense, CoinSpry and Locha are somewhat of like brother projects, right? We're, we're at a Howard level, we both come from Venezuela. I just approached first the in- institutional part of it Which I think is very important. And so we're like, w-- together, we're both building a very vibrant Bitcoin ecosystem. I'm very proud of what the dude is doing" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:08:17", "start": 4097.68, "text": "Yeah, that's fantastic. Awesome. look, man, I think the most of the questions I had for you, so look, let's, finish up, I guess. Where can listeners find you online and, you know, w-w-if they wanna follow you, wh-where's the best place?" }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "01:08:32", "start": 4112.98, "text": "Okay, so I'm also tap Bitcoin on Twitter, and I'm also tap Bitcoin on Instagram. we don't have a YouTube page yet because the internet is pretty crappy, and we've been, we've been hooking ourselves up with some, Nice offices to be able to launch the YouTube channel eventually. But I'll be mostly on Twitter as, look, just as Anthony Pompiliano says, and probably you already know because you're an expert at this, go and curate first one social media site, then another social media site, then another social media site, and bit by bit, I'm very conservative. I'm, I'm a hectic guy, but I'm conservative." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:09:12", "start": 4152.4, "text": "Awesome. Well, listeners, make sure you go and follow Alessandro, check out- CoinSpray, and, thank you very much for joining me, Alessandro. Thank you, Stefan. Get, just be in touch, man." }, { "speaker": "alessandro_cecere", "time": "01:09:24", "start": 4164.29, "text": "You will come to see Bitcoin Suella. You will come to see the oldest land on the globe, and you will, you will enjoy it, man. Every single one. And we have to totally promote this, and you're gonna help us do it. We're going to promote Bitcoin Suella, and we're going to promote the Bitcoin Tropical Valley, and you're going to be hearing a lot about us, and it's going to Thank you very much, Bitcoiners. Continue building the world." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:09:51", "start": 4191.45, "text": "Get the show notes and subscribe to the show at stephanalivera dot com slash one eight four. I'll see you guys in the citadels." } ] }