{ "episodeId": "SLP202", "speakers": { "stephan": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "host", "tag": "STEPHAN" }, "jeff_yew": { "name": "Jeff Yew", "role": "guest", "tag": "JEFF" } }, "segments": [ { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:08", "start": 8.45, "text": "Hi, you're listening to the Stephan Livera podcast, a show about Bitcoin and Austrian economics. Today for episode two hundred and two, I'm speaking with Jeff Yew of Binance Australia. This show brought to you by Swan Bitcoin. If you're in the US, absolutely get your auto-stacking on with Swan. It's so simple, even a no-coiner could do it. Step one, auto-fund USD from your bank account. Two, auto- First, stack Bitcoin and three, order withdraw to your cold storage. Swan doesn't charge withdrawal fees, they want you to follow Bitcoin best practices and hold your own keys. Swan crushes Coinbase's fees for recurring buys by up to eighty percent and Cash App's fees by up to fifty-seven percent. 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So if you're interested in that, make sure you use the code LIVERA for a discount. And for those needing a loan, Unchained also offer Bitcoin collateralized loans, enabling you to get US dollars without incurring the capital gains tax. Go to unchained dash capital dot com. So for this chat with Jeff, we talk about his experience in the Australian Bitcoin meetup scene, particularly in Brisbane, also some of the earlier day stories around transactional commerce with Bitcoin. Bitcoin running node, how to earn, and also Binance. Just note Jeff is working with Binance Australia, though his views here are his own and not the views of Binance. Here's the interview. Jeff, welcome to the show. Hey, thank you. Thanks for the fun. Thanks for the invite. Jeff, I know you've been around the Bitcoin scene in Australia, and, you know, you're doing some stuff now with Binance Australia. Let's hear a little bit about yourself and what were you doing before all this Bitcoin stuff? So my background is in," }, { "speaker": "jeff_yew", "time": "02:29", "start": 149.31, "text": "design. So, I'm not from a tech background. So I was previously the chief, chief product officer for Travel By Bit, which is a crypto-friendly, startup in, based in Queensland. So, earlier last year, I was the, I, I, I led the, founding of Binance Light Australia, which is a, cash to crypto, cash to Bitcoin brokerage, that we launched in Australia, allowing, you know, Aussies to buy Bitcoin at over a thousand three hundred New Zealanders in, in Australia, and, so some time before, sometime around last, maybe last, last quarter, so I was appointed the CEO for Binance Australia, where we launched, you know, zero fee deposits and withdrawals, AUD withdrawals into Binance dot com, through PayID and stuff like that." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "03:17", "start": 197.18, "text": "Awesome, man. so tell us a little bit about your story of how you found Bitcoin as well. So what, what was it about Bitcoin that attracted you to it? Yeah, I think that's a" }, { "speaker": "jeff_yew", "time": "03:27", "start": 206.93, "text": "good question. So I discovered Bitcoin in, I believe it was 2013. You know when that, C-Period, financial crisis happened? When, I, I, I saw in the news is like people's savings, fifty percent of people's saving was confiscated by their own government. I'm like, \"Ah, is that, is that true? \" So I look into it and in fact it's, it's possible. So, and then I did some digging and I found this thing called Bitcoin on, on Reddit." }, { "speaker": "jeff_yew", "time": "03:55", "start": 234.77, "text": "Still have that link because I, I, I, I was so amazed by it, I shared on my Facebook page back then, I think it's still there, somewhere around April twenty thirty, I believe. And, and my, I, I come from Malaysia, so Malaysia is a country known for its, you know, you know, financial cleanliness, I would say. So it obviously made me, made me, made me pretty aware that, I have to start looking for, I'm looking out for alternatives. And, you know, Bitcoin being that, you know And censor, it immediately caught my attention, and this is something that is really, really important, down the line, because, you know, as we move on, progress into a more digital world, it's our choice to, to sort of like promote and sort of bring people into, a digital world that is monitored, is surveilled, is censor-censorable, or a digital future that is uncensorable and everyone can use it, and it belongs to the people. So, yeah, that's my background. And I think, I think one, years ago, and the first thing that I did, guess what? I, I went to a Bitcoin meetup before I even got a place to settle. Yeah, I, I just chucked my, my luggages into an Airbnb and I hop off, hop onto a meetup. I timed it really perfectly so that when I get there, I remember it was, Lucas hosting it in, in, in, in University of Queensland. It was a screening of, of, I think The End of Money as we know it, or one of those docos, Yeah, and then since then, I've been in the space, back and forth, doing a lot of, doing a lot of things. I've experimented with different startups, I advised a couple of, you know, companies in the space, and, you know, soon, soon, soon, soon, that led me to, you know, Stefan and, and, and, and you, and you, Stefan from, the Sydney scene, went to a couple of, meetups there, and we soon pretty much hit off right off the" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "05:43", "start": 343.3, "text": "That's great, man. Yeah. And so, look, I'd love to ch- chat a little bit about the Bitcoin meetup scene and your involvement. I know you've been around the Brisbane scene for a little while. Tell us about your experience with the Brisbane meetups." }, { "speaker": "jeff_yew", "time": "05:55", "start": 355.26, "text": "Yeah, and it's, it's an interesting, interesting story. So it, it al-always started as Bitcoin, because back then there was no, there was no rave about altcoins and, and things like that. And, it was pretty much everyone was there, there was people from, from, from students, there were people from, people that retired, they're all really interested about technology. And sooner or later, they, they kind of split up into different paths. There is the Bitcoiner meetup and there is the blockchain meetup. And, and And, and then that's kind of where things diverge, and the Ethereum Meetup kind of grew very, really, really big, and they call themselves Blockchain Meetup right now. they'd have like, you know, more members than the Bitcoin Meetup when it first started. And, and the whole ICO thing happened, you know, the, you know, that, their Meetup grew to like a couple of hundreds per session, and right now, and I sort of like see that, that kind of die down already, and people are starting to have that, that con-- You know, people were still fighting Bitcoin, not Bitcoin. it was kind of annoying, a little bit sometimes because people tend to sort of over politicize and, and, you know, this kind of infighting isn't really healthy for the, for the ecosystem. So it's good, good to see that, you know, that, you know, in early, late last year, early this year, and you can kind of see like the two groups kind of merging in together and have a, have a more heated, sort of conversation and, and, and, discussion" }, { "speaker": "jeff_yew", "time": "07:25", "start": 445.18, "text": "And that kind of, that kind of conversation." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "07:28", "start": 447.6, "text": "Right, and I know they have hosted some debates up there as well. So were you around for any of those? I," }, { "speaker": "jeff_yew", "time": "07:34", "start": 453.97, "text": "I, I remember explicitly one of those, debates was the, I think it was about a year after the, the, the, the Bch fork. So, when Bch forked off Bitcoin, obviously there was, there was a split on opinions, and, I remember those debates weren't pretty. I can, I can sense from an external perspective Active, if I'm, if I'm here to learn about, you know, Bitcoin and all this great technology and I hear people debating about, you know, blockstream and, and, and, and things like that, it's, it's just, it's just aren't aren't aren't really pretty, and I, and I, I'm pretty glad that phase kind of went through because right now, if you hear people, you know, bring up those debates again, it's, you know, it's beating like a dead horse and people, you know, tend not to listen or pay too" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "08:25", "start": 504.84, "text": "The Australian Bitcoin Meetup scene is, for some time, it was seen like, you know, TA was Bitcoin, right? It was like people went to the Bitcoin Meetup and they were just do-- doing this whole crayon drawing exercise, where I was more interested in, you know, talking about economics and technology of Bitcoin. What was your experience with that over the years? I, I rem- I remembered," }, { "speaker": "jeff_yew", "time": "08:47", "start": 526.69, "text": "there was some trader focused meetups. I wasn't really, you know, I wasn't really, you know, into that because in Brisbane there was, there was, mostly just a very geeky kind of, conversation. people were exploring, you know, even before Lightning Network, people were exploring, you know, interoperability between blockchains. there was discussions of paper, there was a project back then called Comet or something, and, and it, it was, it was really tech and My experience with meetups is pretty much, around that technology, technology focused, space, and, and it's kind of what, why, why, why I, why I drew interest in Bitcoin as well is because there was, not just a financial revolution, but it also brought on a, you know, an entire way of looking at how we, how we actually, you know, do internet of things instead of having, you know, you know, centralized systems talking to centralized systems, now you can have distributed systems talking to decentralized systems like Bitcoin versus, you" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "09:45", "start": 584.61, "text": "Yeah, and as I think, you know, I think the, the feeling in the air is quite strong right now, like a lot of people are thinking, \"Well, look, we're, we're really on the cusp of this kind of big next run, we're gonna see a lot of people coming in, so then it comes to that question of how are we gonna educate these new people, right? Because, and I think Bitcoin meetups are a big part of this, and that's how we can teach people the values, right? Like why you should learn to run your own" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "10:14", "start": 613.97, "text": "In terms of driven, in terms of the Australian scene?" }, { "speaker": "jeff_yew", "time": "10:17", "start": 617.41, "text": "Yeah, I think that's a interesting, interesting question about nodes. I, I mean, before I answer the full question, I would like, if you since you pointed out nodes, and nodes are very, a very important, part of, you know, the whole Bitcoin, protocol, 'cause like what nodes do, from a beginner standpoint, is that it validates the, the, the truth of the protocol. If someone injects a malicious, version of Bitcoin, if you're Attack which is malicious and you can choose to trust it or not trust it. and if, you know, collectively everyone doesn't trust the malicious version or the malicious upgrade, Bitcoin stays, you know, s-stays at its, its, so it's really important versus like, you know, you, you know, one of those things where you get a false upgrade from your, from your Uber Eats app and you, you got no choice but to upgrade to use it. You know, Bitcoin is different, you know, you can choose which version of Bitcoin you wanna, you wanna, Tech that says that a version that is, you know, released much later, it's compatible and it's usable, to the earliest version possible. So if you're running Bitcoin version, you know, you know, the one of the early one, zero, zero point one something, you are able to still communicate with, you know, the latest, you know, Bitcoin, you know, Bitcoin core protocol. So and, and another thing that Note does is that it relays information between peers so that it's a, you know, Bitcoin is a P2" }, { "speaker": "jeff_yew", "time": "11:44", "start": 703.88, "text": "get received, you know, and, and relay its true notes. So the more nodes there is, it ensures that no one, the lesser chance it gets intercepted, you know, and, and, and corrupted in the process. And also the one of the most important thing in Bitcoin is that, you know, the twenty-one million cap. And how do you actually validate that twenty-one million is to, you know, run a node, you can easily validate and audit the state and supply of Bitcoin at any point of time. So, but why is this important to, to beginners? You" }, { "speaker": "jeff_yew", "time": "12:14", "start": 733.84, "text": "Attack of Bitcoin comes as strong as how, how defensible Bitcoin is towards, you know, this kind of attacks, whether it's state-sponsored, whether it's some rich dude with a lot of Bitcoin trying to sort of like, turn Bitcoin into the version that he or she or, or group of people want. you know, the more notes you have equals more decentralized, and, you know, and, and, and, and it keeps Bitcoin true to what it is. running a node is something that, you know, it's getting better. This would be quite difficult in the past, I, I admit, we've, with right now, you have, you know, AB, ABC Core, AB Core that you can run on Android, you can just use it on spare phone, you can run it on a hosted, you know, hosted device, you know, you can, you can, you can basically, if, if you really wanna know about this, the best person to talk to is, is Katan from Ministry of Note if you're, if you're in Australia. So he teaches you how to run notes and different ways of complexity. But if, if you're just getting started, I would say don't jump right to it, just read more about, read more about why, why is running a note important? Because it's very important for you, as users Why that rule exists and, and stuff like that. It's really interesting." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "13:32", "start": 811.97, "text": "Yeah, that's cool, and I noticed, when I met you in person, actually, I noticed you were running a, a Bitcoin node on your phone with a b core. So can you tell us a little bit about your experience with that and, you know, would you recommend that for other people or would you say that's more like a power user thing? I think that's a" }, { "speaker": "jeff_yew", "time": "13:49", "start": 828.89, "text": "power user thing, because, there's a couple of things that you might want, want, not, not want to do. I, I'm, I'm a bit of a power user myself, so I, I'm a bit reckless. but running a node on your phone, it doesn't just eat up a lot of data, you know, but it also runs a lot of, you know, battery. So you probably want it, want to tether your phone to like a power source" }, { "speaker": "jeff_yew", "time": "14:15", "start": 854.69, "text": "twenty-four seven. I So it, I, let's me listen in, you know, you know, without, without trusting someone else and trusting myself. But if I have a, if I, I basically carry on the notes a bit more for education channel thing when I show people, hey, you can actually run a note easily on a phone, but, if you really wanna dig deeper, you should explore, you know, specialized, you know, hardware and, and, and, you know, network requirements and, and, and stuff that you can put at home and run securely, you" }, { "speaker": "jeff_yew", "time": "14:48", "start": 888.07, "text": "So never store your coins on the same, same device as you're running the note on, because, you know, notes, notes are expendable, you can always spin up a new one, but if you lose a Bitcoin because of some hardware failure and you forget to do some backup, and then you're, you're screwed, bitcoins, the lost bitcoins aren't recoverable" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "15:08", "start": 908.19, "text": "Yeah, that's, people have learned that lesson the hard way sometimes when they've, for example, kept too many coins on, say, a lightning node or, you know, I know people, in their, sometimes in their earlier node experiments, they don't know the backups part of it or, and they haven't, maintained that separation. So I guess longer term, you, you wanna think about things like hardware wallets, multi-signature, and so on, but, certainly it's all part of, learning how to put it all" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "15:37", "start": 936.79, "text": "When you're talking to a new co-in, a new coiner or say a pre-coiner today, I'm curious, do you normally try to onboard them Bitcoin on-chain or do you try to show them Lightning? What are some of the ways that you'll normally teach? I think this, it," }, { "speaker": "jeff_yew", "time": "15:52", "start": 952.48, "text": "it ha- it, it does, it does change from time to time. back maybe three years, four years ago, I used to, ex- I used to showcase people, hey, the first thing you can do with Bitcoin is send, money from The whole point of Bitcoin is like one, one part of it, but it's what people are more, easily tuned into, because if you just jump right into the conversation of, hey, you know, you know, fiat, Bitcoin, you know, decentralized, you know, it's important monetary freedom, people might get kind of bored because it's kind of out of touch of their, of their version of reality. But if you say that if, if I can send money as quickly and as, and as, as, as accessible to any, from anyone This is what Bitcoin can do. It's kind of a, it's like a kind of sneak peek of, of, you know, back then there wasn't Lightning, so you can do it Bitcoin, which pretty, back then fees wasn't that great and that high, can do it quite, you know, quite, you know, a- You know, pretty much anywhere and in, in, in high velocities. but since then, you know, we have the Lightning Network, which I kind of showcase to, to say that, hey, you can have a payment layer on top of Bitcoin that does, you know, pretty much what like things like Visa and PayPal does, it's like sending money from A to B, but our main difference is that there's no intermediary in between that can sort of spy and take logs and, and, and surveil on your transaction. so it's, it's really a big difference on it You know, people spin up a Lightning wallet, and I send it like a few, a few satoshis to them, and they receive it, and I'm like, \"Wow, okay, this is something really, instant and really is real in your, in your, in your, in your, in your eyes.\" But going back to like, you know, how I would demonstrate layer one, right? at this day and age, I go by, \"Hey, look at how the internet works in layers,\" right? You have like the whole TCP/IP, protocol, internet protocol stack that is built on top of, you know, multiple layers. You don't call, you know, the, the, the function that allows you to call, you know, a, a stranger's car to pick you up in a, in a specific location doesn't run on the base core protocol, it runs on something like layer, whatever layer, fifteen or seventeen or twenty, so Bitcoin is kind of like layer one, it's like the most stable, most, apolitical layer of the protocol, That I, that like I use, I, I like to compare, it's like, there's a Chinese saying that every building that is like a thousand meters tall, starts from the foundation. So if you don't have a strong layer one, you don't have, you know, you can't really scale, things like payments or high velocity, you know, you know, gossip networks on top of it. So yeah, I mean, and to, and to, to go back to the question is that it, it does, it does change, but Users is the payments part of it, because that's what people can relate to the most." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "18:48", "start": 1127.76, "text": "Yeah, I've, I've also gone back and forth myself in terms of what I use to demonstrate for people. Sometimes I have to think about what are they going to be more interested in. And so if I think they might be more interested in just seeing a lightning demonstration of paying, you know, a light, just a small lightning payment, or are they more interested in that sort of idea of savings? And then that, that sort of drives what sort of wallet? Or experience I'm gonna try and demonstrate for them. I mean, for some people, it may make sense for them literally to just start straight on a hardware wallet, right? Like just literally get a Ledger or a Trezor or something like that and just stack into that, because if they're already buying larger amounts, well, maybe that's a better way for them to start. but then the other people, they might be more interested in seeing the Lightning part to see, oh, okay, I can pay for an, an article on YOURLS dot org or things like that" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "19:42", "start": 1182.18, "text": "Treat it in terms of trying to step someone up that ladder of learning about Bitcoin." }, { "speaker": "jeff_yew", "time": "19:48", "start": 1188.0, "text": "Yeah, I think you're doing" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "19:48", "start": 1188.5, "text": "really pretty," }, { "speaker": "jeff_yew", "time": "19:49", "start": 1189.1, "text": "pretty well, so yeah, I understand your, your, your, your audience. So, but lucky for me, you know, most of my friends and family that I talk to, that usually come to me with this kind of questions, they all come from a, they, they, they don't come from a really sophisticated tech background, so they don't really demand see the intricacies of how, you know, Bitcoin works, I've dealt with a couple of, people that are really interested to, you know, invest or look into Bitcoin as part of their, you know, either their family offices investment, you know, and, you know, that, that the mix of their, their portfolio, and that, that's where I go into more, hey, you know, the, the importance of having, you know, holding your keys, not your keys, not your Bitcoin, this are a few options that you can, you can explore, custody in your coins, multis The Lightning wallet and hey, I send you some Satoshi's, and then I, I show you, this is all the cool plays online that can, you can, you can go experiment, and, and, and play with your, you know, your, your assets that I just sent you, like, you know, through, either through, you know, just face to face or it could be like someone from, an entire different part of the world. And I think one of the cool things I like, I always do, do, do get get them to explore" }, { "speaker": "jeff_yew", "time": "21:12", "start": 1272.46, "text": "What's that, what's that website call again? That's a, that's a site I can't, I can't remember the top of my head, but it allows you to sort of pay, some sat to tag locations with a message. So it's like a It's, it's, I think it's, it's the same developer that does, Sets for Like, you know, that, that thing that lets you earn Sets, Satoshi's for, you know, Twitter. Okay. Sort of" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "21:33", "start": 1293.11, "text": "like, like Satoshi's" }, { "speaker": "jeff_yew", "time": "21:34", "start": 1294.09, "text": "Place, but a newer version of it. Yeah, yeah. So it's like a, it's like a real world Satoshi's Place. you can go to like a Google, it's, it's a fork of like Google Map that you can insert images or insert text at certain locations, and it depends on how That function is, it can, it can be a picture, it can be a gift, you know, that determines how much sat you pay for it, and then it get, it stays there for like pretty much forever. So it's pretty cool to see that, you know, once it's hit sent on, on, on the, on the, on that, on that, on that app. And it, things just magically happens." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "22:07", "start": 1326.55, "text": "Yeah, that's great. And so in terms of Lightning, what sort of wallets do you normally use when you're demoing or teaching? So I usually use, back then," }, { "speaker": "jeff_yew", "time": "22:16", "start": 1335.71, "text": "I was pretty, pretty early use, I was using like the Eclair, light-lightning wallet, wallet, like the one, the old one. you know, back then there was the only usable Lightning wallet there, had a couple of reckless incidents during that early days, and right, right now, I either get them use Blue Wallet or, you know, Wallet of Satoshi, I recently started, getting them to use, you know, the, the LND wallet, developed by Lightning Labs, but that, you know, be-because that requires a little bit more, you know, technical knowledge on, you know, how, how long it has to take for the neutrino, you know, to spin on and And sometimes it takes a while to sing, sometimes it, you know, the fee calculation, needs a bit of work on. So I usually stay between blue and wallets of Satoshi. But if someone that is more, a little bit more sophisticated, I'll either push To like, the, Lightning wallet by Lightning Labs or, you know, Eclair, the new Eclair is pretty good." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "23:14", "start": 1393.64, "text": "Yeah, right, right, and because Eclair is still being maintained, separately from Phoenix, which is like the, I think of Phoenix like the, really easy Android, wallet that you can just start up and people can just have a go with it, and it's non-custodial, but there's certain trade-offs with it, so yeah, Phoenix is a great one for that, and then typically I'm usually showing Wallet as well. So usually, yeah, BlueWallet's a good one if they're on iPhone, I think. that's like kind of from a Lightning perspective. so I, I also wanted to chat a little bit about how the understanding of Bitcoin has evolved over time. And so I think- Over that time, people initially thought of it like, \"Oh, hey, it's all transactional commerce.\" And I know, obviously working with Travel By Bit, you were involved, with the team helping merchants who wanted to accept Bitcoin. So can you tell us a little bit about your experience there and, you know, kind of how you saw the understanding shift around using it for day-to-day commerce?" }, { "speaker": "jeff_yew", "time": "24:18", "start": 1457.81, "text": "Yeah. so in, in Australia, what we did with Travel By Bit was, Travel By Bit was not just a travel booking website, which have now merged with Trivago. back then, we, what we were doing is that we, enabled, Bitcoin point of sale, to merchants across, you know, the country. So we have, you have Brisbane Airport as one of our, one of our flagship, you know, the, the airport council was really open, had a couple of meetings, introduced, you know Potential of it, and they're quite open to it, because, you know, if, if think about it, like, when every time when you travel, like, you got all this leftover, cash that you really don't know what to do. Like, I, I still have like coins, you know, some like, you know, you know, from my travels that is just sitting somewhere in my wardrobe doing nothing. But, you know, before, every time before I travel, before I fly off to, to, to, from a country, I would wish that I had" }, { "speaker": "jeff_yew", "time": "25:18", "start": 1517.51, "text": "And convinced the Apple Council was that, hey, you know, you can, you can let people experiment to pay with Bitcoin. It's not gonna be like replacing, you know, you know, you know, mainstream commerce in like, you know, in a day or a year, but, you know, it gives, you know, people a headspace that this technology is real, and peo- and we saw, you know, we, we even built a tracker to try to see, when people start paying at certain locations and, and a little pink shows up" }, { "speaker": "jeff_yew", "time": "25:47", "start": 1547.39, "text": "Paid for, you know, a, a pair of shoes there. I think what's really interesting is that, and during that project, we were one, we were the world's first, I believe, to roll out Lightning Network point of sales to a, physical, you know, merchant network It's pretty cool, I think we still have it on some merchants, but I'm, I'm not directly involved in the, in, in the company anymore since I move on to, move on to doing Bitmain Australia. But, that was a really interesting, time, you know, we did experiment, we did do a lot of firsts in the world, we did get a lot of feedback from users on, on what they hope to see, how, how they hope to, you know, that the point of sale to evolve and add features and" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "26:28", "start": 1587.55, "text": "Yeah, I think, it was really, interesting, and I guess from my perspective here in Sydney, what I saw is in twenty thirteen and fourteen and the kind of the, the hallowed, merchant adoption days, and people were Trying to get pubs and restaurants and everything to accept Bitcoin, but sadly what happened is it was kind of like people would start taking Bitcoin and then there'd be some turnover or there wouldn't be that many people actually paying with Bitcoin and then some of the staff inside those restaurants or pubs or whatever would forget how to take Bitcoin because they hadn't, like, not that many people were kind of really using it day to day, so I think that just for me when I, whenever I'm thinking about like, oh Merchant adoption and so on, and like I, I guess it, it is a lesson for us in terms of how to, teach Bitcoin that maybe in, i-it may be more Amenable to teach it as a savings technology at first, right? Even though you can, obviously, nobody's stopping you, you can use it for peer-to-peer transactions. it, it may just be that we have to build the savings kind of aspect of it, before the spending aspect becomes more prominent. But with that said, it's probably also fair to say that during a bull market, ev-- all numbers go up, right? So you'll just see a lot of people spending just because they've, quote unquote, become-- well, they have. They've, they've got a wealth effect, they've become richer, so you'll see a lot more people spending there. But what's your view there around, you know, the narratives of Bitcoin and how best to teach it to people? I think with Lightning Network as" }, { "speaker": "jeff_yew", "time": "28:03", "start": 1683.09, "text": "a given example, back, go back to Lightning Network is that, it allows us to demonstrate, Bitcoin as more than, say, more than just a payment technology that, that day-to-day people can understand. It's, using Bitcoin as a, digital court. So, payments is just one examples that, you know, it ca- it pay- by paying you something, right? That Bitcoin transaction can actually mean a lot of things. It can mean a contract, it can mean a, a o- a, a signing of an ownership of an asset, or a just a, you know, it's, it's just basically packets of, of data, right? So you can, you can, you can insert anything you want into a Bitcoin transaction or Or given meaning or something. Payments, as you know, it's just something that it was really convenient back then, but with the Lightning Network, you can actually see people building contracts and people building, you know, layers on top of it that enables, you know, functions that wouldn't otherwise be even remotely possible, so like high-frequency, you know, you know, high-frequency payments that, you know, if, if you, if you try to pay something with like Visa, PayPal, there's usually a limit that you can pay with. So like, I think the Lightning Network's hypothetical payments, you know, that, that velocity, something like twenty million transactions a second, it's just because it's not, it's not, it's not bound to the, the, the block size of Bitcoin, it's, it's bound to the channels that is, you know, that's, that's It, it's, it's really, it's really interesting because, to me, that, that is why, that is why I, you know, that, that is kind of the thing that kind of bothers me back then is that it has all this cool stuff. Because currently it's being built outside of Bitcoin, that'll hope that you, someone who just experimented on Bitcoin itself, but, you know, you know, early, early days there wasn't a really, scalable layer two like Lightning, you know, people tried to experiment Mastercoin, Omni, colored coins, but before it, it, and it kind of like warped into a, you know, place that it's, it's, it's kind of bothering the, you know, it's kind of like eating into the decentralized aspect of the base layer, that's kind of like This project didn't take off the ground, but with Lightning, it, it doesn't, it doesn't really pop, you know, doesn't really, you know, take up space on base layer, it doesn't, you know, it doesn't contaminate it with like spam, spam data and stuff like that, and you can actually see the potential of people building, you know, cool stuff, you know, like how, you know, Dr. You know, Maxim, you know, Ovsy was built, you know, it's currently doing the RGB, On top of, you know, Bitcoin, it's pretty cool. I would like to see more, more, more experimentations on that front. But it comes to day-to-day users, I still think, you know, payments for regular users, it's really something that people can relate to, and custody of coins, it's something for more, you know, high net worth people with a bit more, more, more, more money at stake." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "31:00", "start": 1859.89, "text": "We've also got to chat about earning Bitcoin, because that's also a great way for people to get started as well," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "31:09", "start": 1868.76, "text": "Shop or they can have a Lightning wallet on their phone and earn at a market and things like that and sell just on their phone. do you have any thoughts around earning Bitcoin and what are some ways that you've seen people do it? Yeah," }, { "speaker": "jeff_yew", "time": "31:22", "start": 1881.92, "text": "I think the essence of earning bitcoins that, you know, you, you have to be a certain kind of person that, that, that, that will do that. you know, you know, by, by that, by that definition, if you're earning bitcoin, it means that you're, you're looking and valuing things around you in bitcoin, right? So using bi-- bitcoin as a numeraire, like how, you know, the, the episode with Prussian fish, It's, it's, it's kind of, it's kind of like, you don't, you don't actually have to earn Bitcoin because the places that you can earn Bitcoin in a, in a, in a scalable or, you know, you know, offer livable kind of like level, it's pretty limited, right? There's like, places with mic- like Microlancer, there's Stackwork there are places that allows you to shop and earn Bitcoin, but those usually come at really small kind of trivial amounts. But, you know, if there's always ways that you, you want to sort of like get, get You know, if you wanna convert your pay into Bitcoin or you wanna do something like that, there's always brokerage exchanges that can, can, you can do it, you know, pretty easily at this, at this day and age. You know, that's pretty, that's kind of like what we did for Bynance Australia, is that you can just deposit, you know, you know, money through PayID and you see it instantly on your, on your exchange wallet. You can, you can buy Bitcoin with it, you can take it out, whatever you want. So it's, it's kind of like we, we, our, our job here is to lower the barrier of people, to move between fiat and Bitcoin, and because like if, if we kind of create services that only allows people So, a lot of these earn Bitcoin sites tend to, you know, come and go, but we-- if we're gonna have just a open marketplace that people can decide when and how they wanna do it, that's another way to look at it. It's like, you can't, you can't get paid in fiat, but if you value your, your- Your work and your time in Bitcoin, you can choose to convert some part of it or, you know, you're a bit, you're a bit, you're a bit reckless, you wanna convert all part of it, I don't recommend it, into Bitcoin, you know, feel free to, no one's, no, no one's stopping you on that." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "33:23", "start": 2002.54, "text": "Great. And so yeah, let's talk, let's talk a bit about Binance Australia. So when did Binance Australia launch? And tell us a little bit about, what you guys have going there?" }, { "speaker": "jeff_yew", "time": "33:33", "start": 2012.87, "text": "Yeah, so Bitcoin Australia, we launched it, late last month on July. it is, it is, it is our flagship product that we, we allow, you know, users in Australia to deposit, AUD directly on, you know, into their finance account and, you know, buy, you know, buy crypto with it. So previously in, in, in Australia, there's a lot of, you know, barriers of, you know, you know, moving money in and out of fiat and from crypto to fiat, and something that, you And as a user, I find it really hard for me to, to, to move money, from exchanges to an exch-- from, from AUD into exchanges and then from another exchange to, to like, let's say Binance, where, you know, the liquidity is the highest. So it, it is, it is kind of, a, a revolutionary move that we, we experiment. Binance Australia is a regulated crypto exchange in Australia, we're registered with Austrac, so that gives a sense of, you know, security for users, a sense of peace that, that, you know, what we're doing here, it's, it's 100% compliant to Australian laws. they don't have, they don't have to, you know, jump through hoops. Just to, you know, acquire some Bitcoin for their own or, you know, for their, for, for whatever reason, they see fit. so yeah, I think, I think it's, it's all part of, our, our, our goal, our vision is to, you know, promote the freedom of money to people. that's, that's kind of, you know, what we, what we kind of want people to, to, to do it. And one of the ways that, you know, is to get the access of Bitcoin easier and lower the barrier of it to more people." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "35:07", "start": 2106.55, "text": "And as, larger exchange, I presume then part of the value there for the customer is just the liquidity, right? The ability to buy a larger amount if they wish, where, Depending on what kind of platform or if they're trying to earn Bitcoin that way, you might not be able to get the right kind of volume that you would want, right? Yes, exactly. and so in terms of, you know, Binance Australia and then sort of the hook up with Binance globally, how's it working there in terms of like order books and things like that?" }, { "speaker": "jeff_yew", "time": "35:37", "start": 2137.15, "text": "Yeah, so, Binance, Binance obviously has, you know, is one of the, the biggest exchange by trading volume, no doubt. so if you wanna, Australian dollars. Previously, what, what users would tend to do is that they would deposit AUD, go through a local exchange or a local brokerage, once they get their Bitcoin, they would then send their Bitcoin on-chain to Binance and then trade, you know, you know, you know, all sorts of other assets they, they, they want on top of Binance. But what we do, what we did here is to remove that middle step for users, so that, you know, users can have access to liquidity faster, they can have access to, exchange, and exchange with a, you know, much higher and much larger back, better global reputation, than local exchanges, and also the more, more importantly, is to, is to know that, you know, finance is here for, for Aussies. It's not, it's not just an exchange that is sitting overseas that has no, you know, connection and has no, care for Australian users. We, we do actually, we act, we do actually talk to our users a lot, like we've been, we've been in community for so long actually, even though we just launched about a month ago, but, you know, we, you know, a lot of, we, we talked to a lot of users throughout meetups, you know, we had, we hosted, we sponsored, we, we partnered locally, for, you know, pretty much for the whole last two years actually." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "37:00", "start": 2219.77, "text": "Great. And so let's chat a little bit about balancing that aspect of, you know, being a Bitcoin guy but working at a crypto company. Now, I guess people have different, concerns or criticisms they might raise. They might say, you know, I'm sure you probably saw Rusty's post about the fifty-seven types of pyrite or, that aspect. How do you balance that yourself in terms of, you know, being primarily interested in Bitcoin but also having to, offer the broader, quote-unquote, crypto?" }, { "speaker": "jeff_yew", "time": "37:29", "start": 2249.11, "text": "Yeah, I think that's a, that's a very good question. I, I do think about it, myself a lot as well. So, ev- even though at the beginning of trial we paid, you know, for the fact that we offered, lightning, point of sale, but at the same time, we do allow users to choose, other assets they wanna pay in. So I think it comes down to, to the fact that I realized that we are all very early in the space." }, { "speaker": "jeff_yew", "time": "37:53", "start": 2272.62, "text": "it is our duty" }, { "speaker": "jeff_yew", "time": "37:56", "start": 2276.07, "text": "to still, it's still Believe is best for the user. You know, I have my own opinion on Bitcoin, I have my own opinion of other coins, but I, I do tend to, you know, not pollute that, that with, you know, the- The professional, line of work that I'm in, because think about it, right? It's not an exchange job to censor projects or, or dictate users what and what not to do. you know, Binance do does a pre-- does a pretty good job at explaining Bitcoin, intro-introduct-introduction to Bitcoin to beginners through the Binance Academy website, and look, just look at the quality of project listing compared to a lot of other exchanges, right? Only a small fractions is a ver-- it's a known fact that Binance only allows a small, small fraction" }, { "speaker": "jeff_yew", "time": "38:39", "start": 2319.07, "text": "perspective, right? Google's job, you know, isn't to censor information of what Google's execs think is good or bad for its consumers. Google's job is to sort the best quality information for the, for its users when they need them. So while I think we're still pretty early, what we can do, is to sort of like, you know, let people have the choice to learn and put out the best information for people to choose what's best for them. Instead of, you know, locking down people into, into a certain state of mind, and we might, we might not be able to see the bigger picture here if we do that." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "39:11", "start": 2351.26, "text": "I suppose one other concern that listeners might have is, just around So Celine Jin from Blockstream has, spoken about this concept of quote-unquote dark patterns, that sometimes, you know, a website might present to you a, a sort of false dichotomy or like a false image that, \"Oh, these are all the same sort of thing,\" when really Bitcoin is different. What do you think about that?" }, { "speaker": "jeff_yew", "time": "39:36", "start": 2376.21, "text": "I think there aren't, there's no doubt that there are, there are, there are other exchanges that are doing this kind of things, but if you really look into, what Binance do and the values of Binance is, you know, we, we are here to promote the freedom of money, and freedom of money being that, you know, people can have the freedom of choice to choose, and, you know, like, like my previous question, we do have a lot of good contents to inform people into what Bitcoin is and what Bitcoin isn't. I piece on the halving, you know, that happened earlier this year, explaining what Bitcoin and it really drilled down into the aspects of, you know, the details that a lot of, a lot of, you know, you know, Bitcoin-focused people would, would, would adhere to? I definitely recommend people, you know, recommend people to check that out. So you can't, you can't say that, you know, that's not, that's, that's not what, you know, we, we are here to do is to tell people that, hey, everything is the same. it's, it's more about giving people access, giving people content, and letting people to decide, you know, what, what's best for them." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "40:40", "start": 2439.95, "text": "In terms of the Australian scene, let's chat a little bit about what you think the Australian Bitcoin scene needs." }, { "speaker": "jeff_yew", "time": "40:47", "start": 2447.17, "text": "I think it's about, education, recognition and support for developers, I would say. I mean, it's actually two points really. So education is one thing, more, a lot more conversations need to happen with, you know, the Bitcoin group and the non-Bitcoin groups, 'cause, you know, what, what I tend to see is that, you know, if we have two side-by-side conversations in each projects and each, you know, it's- Perspective thought of, you know, the school of thought, it's very hard for people to bridge that understanding and actually to see and compare by themselves. Because when, when they go to a Bitcoin meetup, all they hear is Bitcoin. When they go to a, go to a, you know, a blockchain meetup, all they hear is about all the, you know, industry use case, probably mention Bitcoin like two, two times in the span of two hours, that's, that's it. So, but to have conversations," }, { "speaker": "jeff_yew", "time": "41:36", "start": 2496.31, "text": "you know, e- you know, on an equal platform to Friendly panels talk that will really help to bridge the connection, between, you know, what Bitcoin is, what Bitcoin isn't, or what blockchain is and what blockchain isn't for new users. And, when it comes to like supporting developers, I would say that, you know, Bitcoin is, well, obviously Bitcoin, you know, is an open source project, there's a lot of, you know, things to fix, there's a lot of things to be worked on, you know, if you think work is done on layer one, there's still work Based on their own, on their own time and their own passion, and there are a lot of good developers in Australia, like, you know, Rusty is a good example, he's, he's one of the, one of the, you know, one of the, one of the best Bitcoin developers that I, that I, that I ever seen, and probably one of the best in Australia, actually. So, it's just better support and recognition for the work that they have put in, and also, more support and more, interactions, you know, with that we can, we can sort of like, you know, put out as, you know, businesses that, you know- Would benefit on the growth in understanding of, you know, Bitcoin." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "42:45", "start": 2565.0, "text": "Cool. would, Binance Australia look at that kind of thing as well, of, of, development sponsorships for Bitcoin developers?" }, { "speaker": "jeff_yew", "time": "42:53", "start": 2573.41, "text": "Yeah, I mean, I mean, we, we're always open to it. we actually, we're actually planning, a couple of things in that line, you know, it just got, it's just got a bit of, shelf based on, the, the, the The recent launch and, and everyone's busy, but you know, when things get settled down, that's really what I really want to explore is to look out for all the good developers in the space and have some kind of like, you know, recognition or some kind of sponsorship to keep that, you know, keep that good work going." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "43:21", "start": 2601.28, "text": "Have you got any predictions in terms of, let's say, this next year or two, do you see, any particular hurdles to further Bitcoin adoption just broadly, like whether that's like government rules and regulations, or just kind of common misunderstandings around Bitcoin, or do you, do you think like this time around we're gonna see better messaging around Bitcoin?" }, { "speaker": "jeff_yew", "time": "43:44", "start": 2624.45, "text": "I think, I think with compared to what we were before, like in twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen, there wasn't a Stavandavar podcast, there wasn't, there wasn't, there wasn't Ministry of Notes, there wasn't Finance Australia. So I think the future is bright. we have, we have better, we are better educators, we have, you know, more high quality contents for new users, we have, you know- you know, better and more accessible platforms for people, whether they are from, you know, just, you know, wanting to buy their first Bitcoin or they are like serious traders and stuff. So I think the industrial is pretty bright, I, I do, I do, I do see definitely, you know, challenges in, in continuing challenges for in terms of understanding, it's a new technology, no doubt, and a lot of people have their own, you know, sort of opinions tied to, you know- This thing called Bitcoin, this thing called blockchain, it's about this, about this kind of inev-inevitable, you know, in the early days of the internet, you know, people say all kinds of, you know, you know, stuff about it, not, not all of them are wrong because, you know, it is very, you know, it's a very decentralized space, people do a lot of things, people are free to do a lot of things, and that comes at a cost. Yeah, I mean, decentralized, de-decentralization comes at a cost, you know, you can't always maintain order and, and come, you know- At any point of time, there's always gonna be differences in opinions, differences in, you know, in, in, in voice and, and, you know, it's, it's not, it's, it's kind of like our job to make sure that the users get the best information sort of in front of their face, but, you know, not, not to the point that we kind of censor, you know, you know, you know Words and sensor and opinions and projects for users that's not what we are here for." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "45:21", "start": 2720.83, "text": "So Jeff, if listeners want to find you online or they want to find Binance Australia, where can they find you?" }, { "speaker": "jeff_yew", "time": "45:27", "start": 2727.12, "text": "So Binance Australia is just on, au dot binance dot com. you don't have to create a new Binance account for that, your, your existing Binance account is your Binance Australia account, you just gotta do, you know, update your KYC, just to make sure that we stay compliant for Australian laws, and then, you know, we can start depositing AUD after that. Yeah, pretty cool. So if you wanna find me personally, I'm on Twitter, my Twitter handle is vnumerous, Stephan could probably tag it somewhere, but, you know, I, I" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "46:01", "start": 2760.7, "text": "Excellent, well, thank you for joining me, Jeff. Yeah, no worries, man. Thanks, thanks, Stefan. Get the show notes at stefanlivera dot com. That's it from me. See you guys in the citadels." } ] }