{ "episodeId": "SLP48", "speakers": { "stephan": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "host", "tag": "STEPHAN" }, "nicolas_dorier": { "name": "Nicolas Dorier", "role": "guest", "tag": "NICOLAS" } }, "segments": [ { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:08", "start": 8.0, "text": "You're listening to the Stephan Livera podcast focused on Bitcoin and Austrian economics. This is episode forty-eight with Nicolas Dorier, who started a great project I wanted to discuss, BTCPay Server. Nicolas is also the creator of NBitcoin, a Bitcoin library for the.NET platform in C#. Here's my conversation with Nicolas. Nicolas, thanks for coming on the show." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "00:31", "start": 31.0, "text": "Yeah, thanks for inviting me." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:34", "start": 34.0, "text": "Yeah, looks, I've seen you've been, you've been doing so many interesting things and really impressive things, really, with, BTCPay Server, and so obviously I had to get you on and get you to tell a bit of your story and tell us a little bit about, you know, why you're doing what you're doing. So let's start with a little bit of, when did you, when did you get into Bitcoin, and what was it about Bitcoin that drew you in?" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "00:59", "start": 59.0, "text": "Basically, Mt. Gox," }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "01:02", "start": 62.0, "text": "when this Mt. Gox crash happened, I didn't really give any shits, but it turns out that I was very surprised that Bitcoin wasn't dead after this. I didn't know what Bitcoin was for me, it was just a startup money and like just a scam. but because it was still living, even by people who lost money to, to, to MTGox, I got curious about it and, Well, just, once you start informing yourself of, of Bitcoin, you're never over and like, it's, maybe around, around four years, five years I'm in this space and, still learning every day since the first question I asked. So, yeah, that's what drew me in basically." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:44", "start": 104.0, "text": "Nice, nice. And then what was it also that drew you into work in terms of working on Bitcoin? Because obviously, I see you doing, you know, you're working really hard with BTCPay Server. Someone with your skills could easily go work in some large tech company, right? You could go work for a FAANG — Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google, one of those companies, and probably earn hundred, multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars. Why do you work on Bitcoin?" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "02:11", "start": 131.0, "text": "Well, the because once you discover Bitcoin, everything seems a bit boring. So I'm happy where, where I'm in the case where I can Basically, find the right mix, between flexibility, boredom, and, salary in my work. So, and, yeah, I mean Every, right, right now everything I'm working which isn't Bitcoin is basically, boring, so I, I, I can, I can afford to, to push that away." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "02:46", "start": 166.0, "text": "Excellent, okay. Alright, now let's, let's get li- a little bit into what it was that drove you to, you know, go and start BTCPay Server. I'd like to hear a little bit around what it was with BitPay that irked you." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "02:58", "start": 178.0, "text": "Okay, so-" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "03:01", "start": 181.0, "text": "so basically before the B2X, episode last year, I was pretty a big fan of what PayPal, BitPay was doing" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "03:12", "start": 192.0, "text": "I was using their wallet, which was Copay, which, which was one of the best wallet on the market at this time." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "03:21", "start": 201.0, "text": "And, yeah, I was pretty supportive of them. And, I was a bit upset where when they start like pushing the narrative that it was a software upgrade instead of a hard fork, and try to push all their merchants to support this new shitcoin and telling them that it's Bitcoin, I thought it was very fraudulent behavior." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "03:44", "start": 224.0, "text": "and the people that were behind it," }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "03:48", "start": 228.0, "text": "didn't seems to care at all about it and never bother to, like, you know, apologize for, for, for this story. So, yeah, basically, I, I found out that Bitcoin, while it might be, decentralized, you know, at the blockchain level" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "04:10", "start": 250.0, "text": "because Bitcoin is hard to program upon, lots of people end up depending on, on a infrastructure provider, centralized infrastructure providers like BTCPay or like, I don't know, BlockCipher or like some centralized," }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "04:27", "start": 267.0, "text": "infrastructure provider. And at the end of the day, if everybody is like depending on them, then even if you have a decentralized currency, you're, you're still vulnerable to the kind of attack that Bitcoin is meant to prevent. So, yeah, that's why I started like working on BTCPay. I wanted to, to provide an easy-thost infrastructure that everybody can run, so they don't need those kind of third-party services to, to run their business." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "04:59", "start": 299.0, "text": "Excellent. And I think Nicolas, it might be great if you comment on perhaps the difference in opinion in the standing of BitPay back in the early days versus the standing that BitPay was in, in, you know, sort of two- Towards the end of two" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "05:15", "start": 315.0, "text": "thousand and seventeen. The difference of what, sorry?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "05:17", "start": 317.0, "text": "In the standing, you know, the way people looked at BitPay, the way people would help promote BitPay back in the early days, and then it changed obviously." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "05:25", "start": 325.0, "text": "Yeah, yeah. So in the," }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "05:28", "start": 328.0, "text": "so back in the day, like the Bitcoin community was very supportive of BitPay, like I was. I think right now, like most of pure Bitcoiners, like just hate them and prevent and," }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "05:43", "start": 343.0, "text": "try to avoid merchants that accept payments via BitPay. So, but on the other hand, BitPay like become a bigger company and don't really care anymore about Bitcoiners, so I go, I think it goes both way." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "05:58", "start": 358.0, "text": "well, it's, on my side right now, I'm less worried about BitPay. So like one year ago, they had like lots of, lots of people were depending on them. nowadays there is lots of- Competing payment processors, so not only BTCPay, but also like," }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "06:17", "start": 377.0, "text": "CoinPayments and, Globee and like many, many others that, that start, you know, like- Fixing the gap that BitPay left in the market. So I think right now they aren't really relevant anymore, and I think that's for the better." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "06:34", "start": 394.0, "text": "Right. And now, tell us a little bit about the narrative in a little more detail. Let's talk a little bit about what BitPay were trying to do in terms of how they were trying to change Bitcoin. Whereas, say, the Bitcoiner type people, the average, you know, individual person was not necessarily in a, in favor of those changes." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "06:58", "start": 418.0, "text": "yeah. So" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "07:00", "start": 420.0, "text": "basically, I think their main idea was that the merchants that are using, BitPay, don't really care about, you know, all the drama about Bitcoin. So they can silently update them, without too much resistance because most of them like just want to, where to get paid in Bitcoin and don't care at all about Bitcoins." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "07:25", "start": 445.0, "text": "but well, lots of Bitcoiner, we can, we, we can tell that lots of Bitcoiner are like a stubborn minority in the sense that" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "07:37", "start": 457.0, "text": "if it ever happened that BitPay do this change, then pure Bitcoiner will never pay any merchants, with, with this new coin. So like it means that we have a split and we have a new coin, coming, coming along." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "07:55", "start": 475.0, "text": "yeah, so, yeah, I for-- sorry, I forgot the," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "07:59", "start": 479.0, "text": "the-- I was just mentioning, I just wanted, I thought it'd be good to just touch on how BitPay were basically providing a different angle than what most Bitcoiners would have agreed with, so they would say things like, \"Oh, the network is congested, and this is the network fee.\"" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "08:16", "start": 496.0, "text": "Yeah, yeah, I mean, the-- if you are a merchant and you don't care about Bitcoin, like you obviously believe, what BTCPay is, is saying, and if they tell you that the fees are high, then you don't complain, you have no way of verifying by yourself, and you don't really care as a merchant You know, lots of merchants don't really care at all about Bitcoin. So, I, I understand their position, I understand what they try to do, but at the end of the day, like the customers, the Bitcoiner, will never use, the such, such currency that is controlled by a, by a few, infrastructure provider. So, well, I, I understand what they try to do, but I, I think it's, it's useless. As long as people are refusing to, customers are refusing to use this new coin, then doesn't matter what they try to do, it won't work." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "09:07", "start": 547.0, "text": "Right. Right. and I think it might also be good if you just touch on, just tell the listeners a little bit around BIP 70 and, you know, some of the, the contrast and the debate that happened on that particular BIP." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "09:20", "start": 560.0, "text": "Okay, so BIP 70 Is a, is a payment protocol which aim to like remove, have a, have a sort of protocol to pay a destination which doesn't involve copy-pasting addresses, and that unlock also some capabilities where, well, I can pay several destination at in one payments." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "09:46", "start": 586.0, "text": "So the, the Bib by itself was, so for lots of reason, it has been specified in a way that is very, very bad. I think it's very bad protocol, but like for purely technical matter, so for example, they are using protobuf" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "10:03", "start": 603.0, "text": "and it also add a dependency at the application level about PKI infrastructure, so it's very-- for people that want to implement their protocol, it's like lots of requirements" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "10:17", "start": 617.0, "text": "however," }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "10:20", "start": 620.0, "text": "so" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "10:22", "start": 622.0, "text": "this protocol I think is bad, but like BitPay added some, somewhere, so an extension to this protocol actually, which allow the merchant to tell what are the fees to the user" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "10:35", "start": 635.0, "text": "I think that this particular feature is not a bad thing per se, like I think it's a good idea that the merchant can communicate to the user the fees that is expecting" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "10:48", "start": 648.0, "text": "it's just that the manner they did it, like without any, you know, one-sided way, without asking to the community or without asking for feedback or improvements, like through, threw lots of people off But," }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "11:05", "start": 665.0, "text": "I, I, I think at the end of the day, like having a way for the merchant to tell the fees is a good thing. So, just to tell you the problem they are, they are trying to fix And, the, with this new, with this new extension that they did, so when the network was congested, like customers were paying the merchants To a certain rates." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "11:29", "start": 689.0, "text": "And, the problem is that i-i-in BitPay, if the transaction takes more than one hour to get confirmed, then BitPay decide that this transaction is invalid. And like it, then after the, the merchant need to send back the money or BitPay need to send back the money to the, to the customer, okay? So imagine that you are in a, you know, when there, there have been lots of traffic, when the, the blockchain was congested, basically lots of customer were paying, transaction were not validated after one hour, so then you need to refund all those customers, but because the network is congested, refunding these customers take even more fees. So they were kind of stuck. So their solution was, well, we might be able to impose to the user which fees they need to pay to prevent this problem And I think at the end of the day, it's a, I mean, it's, it's a good idea, but just the way they try to push it and like completely removing the, the address, turns lots of people off." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "12:39", "start": 759.0, "text": "Right, and then let's talk a little bit about some of the troubles that cause people who are trying to pay with Bitcoin." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "12:46", "start": 766.0, "text": "Yes. So right now, their, their new payment protocol, like most of the wallets that we're using today aren't supporting it. So on my side in BTCPay, I made like," }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "13:00", "start": 780.0, "text": "some tool to translate, you know, their, their protocol to a normal address that you can copy-paste on another wallet." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "13:11", "start": 791.0, "text": "I saw also LunaNode, so LunaNode are using BitPay as payment processor. So on their side, they are proposing inside their, their user interface, they, they themselves coded a piece of code to extract the address from BitPay payment protocol and show it to the users. so like people are doing workarounds, workarounds and," }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "13:37", "start": 817.0, "text": "I, I got lots of merchants that came to BTCPay whose primary reason was we don't want to deal with customer support that can't pay our product basically. So yeah, it turns lots of people off. I think it's bad decision, but well, it's, it's good for, for BTCPay. It bring us more, more people." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "13:59", "start": 839.0, "text": "Yeah. Yeah, sure, definitely. So I think, the other thing I think we've got to obviously touch on where you famously tweeted, \"This is lies, I will make you obsolete.\" Tell us a little bit about that." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "14:10", "start": 850.0, "text": "Well, yeah, so when, when, when This happened basically I understood that Bitcoin was in danger if it everybody keep depending on centralized services." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "14:23", "start": 863.0, "text": "so yeah, I started developing BTCPay, so myself as well as a Bitcoiner, I'd advise people to use BitPay," }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "14:31", "start": 871.0, "text": "To, to lots of customer and people I know. But basically, you know, if you are merchants, you-- and you integrate BitPay, you can't, you, you can't easily migrate to another, you know, solution if you don't have developer in-house that's, that can, you know, help you with this transition. And like it takes time to test, it takes time to, to, to get it up. So my goal was," }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "15:00", "start": 900.0, "text": "I wanted to migrate everybody that I, you know, advised BitPay to, to a open source solution without code change on their side. So I basically replicated the API of BitPay inside BTCPay, so like merchants that are already integrating with BitPay can just, you know, seamlessly migrate to BTCPay without any code change to their backend. So that was my, my primary, goal." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "15:32", "start": 932.0, "text": "I won't say I make them completely obsolete yet, like for example, if you want fiat integration, you still need a payment processor either like BitPay, though I will advise picture one like I don't know Globee or CoinPayments or like many other that has been created." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "15:52", "start": 952.0, "text": "but in BTCPay later, so I know that Truxodev is working on the fiat features and integration to exchanges." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "15:59", "start": 959.0, "text": "Yeah, yeah. Oh, let's, let's start with a b-- then let's talk with a bit of an overview around BTCPay Server and how to set one up, and then we'll get into some of the more detailed components of it." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "16:09", "start": 969.0, "text": "So," }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "16:12", "start": 972.0, "text": "so yeah, you want me to talk about what about BTCPay?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "16:15", "start": 975.0, "text": "Yeah, just around, you know, how it's sort of, what's the process to set one up? How kind of, how tech-savvy do you need to be to run one?" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "16:23", "start": 983.0, "text": "Okay, so good question." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "16:27", "start": 987.0, "text": "basically BTCPay, I took maybe half of my time copy, like, coding BTCPay and half of my time trying to find an easy way to deploy it. So, when, so when you are-- So my background is mostly Microsoft, okay? I always use Microsoft product, I love what they're doing, and, in Microsoft world, like installing new software is quite- It's easier in general than in, in the Linux space." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "16:58", "start": 1018.0, "text": "for, for one reason is that in general Microsoft software come in one big blob Of software that you install on your machine, while in Linux in general, it's very lots of different small tools that you're gluing together to get, something that's match your expectations." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "17:17", "start": 1037.0, "text": "but the average user, you know, don't know how to properly, you know, like glue everything together to make it work, and you can't expect normal user to read like a ten page manual on ten different GitHub, you know, pages on how to make those tools work. So," }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "17:39", "start": 1059.0, "text": "basically," }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "17:41", "start": 1061.0, "text": "lots of effort has been to make BTCPay run on one command line And actually, I tried to remove this command line so like even if you are like a, you know, a user that don't have any technical skill, you can get it running. So at first I," }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "18:00", "start": 1080.0, "text": "so I was using Azure as a hosting provider, and Azure allow you to have a sort of wizard which help you to provision a new VM and like install some stuff on it. And so I was using this, so you, you got a wizard where you can say, okay, I want Bitcoin, Litecoin, and I want Lightning Network, please create the VM and give me the address. And so it was working fine." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "18:28", "start": 1108.0, "text": "just that, Azure is very expensive and like not very efficient." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "18:34", "start": 1114.0, "text": "Yeah. So on that, let's talk about the range of cost options now that are available to a-- say, I'm a merchant and I want to take Bitcoin payments and I want to self-host, I don't want to use BitPay, what are the different cost ranges or options available to me?" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "18:51", "start": 1131.0, "text": "Yeah. So right now, the most popular one is like around nine euro per, no, nine dollar per month. So when I started doing it in Azure, it was sixty bucks. we managed to find ways to drop it to less than ten USD per month, and like it's really a very simple wizard, you know, like you create an account on LunaNode, you fill out your account with-- you can fill out your account credit with Bitcoin if you want. And, then you, you just have to go to a cer-a certain page, there is a si-a sort of wizard that you can follow up to say, \"Okay, I want Bitcoin, Litecoin, I want, LND as a lightning network, please do so.\" You click, and bam, like in ten minutes, you already have your BTCPay that is running. So, yeah, nine, around nine euro per month. And one thing, I think I can drop it to four, four dollar with the new offer that LunaNode released recently, but I still need to make some tests around this." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "19:59", "start": 1199.0, "text": "there, I, I'm also there is some people that are trying to push self-hosting at home," }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "20:06", "start": 1206.0, "text": "BTCPay Server. So like basically you put BTCPay Server on a Raspberry Pi and then you just run it, at your home, you just open the port as you need it and It just work. if you do this, it's more technical, but like you can drop the price to around one or two dollars per month, basically it's the cost of electricity that it takes to run the Raspberry Pi." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "20:30", "start": 1230.0, "text": "Fantastic, and I think another thing that's really great that I've noticed with the BTCPay community around it and the Slack channel is that it's very supportive. So it's-- there are a lot of people who are out there creating guides. So I know BitcoinShirt, or I think he changed his name now to Pavlenek, he, he made a really great guide, and you got guys like RockstarDev, and you got all these other people in the Slack chat. Talk a little bit about that community and how they're helping pe- people set up their own BTCPay Server." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "21:00", "start": 1260.0, "text": "Yeah, so like the big contributors to this project, so there is," }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "21:06", "start": 1266.0, "text": "so RockstarDev came first, then there was BitcoinShirt that came, and, these days there is also Kukks that is very, very, active." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "21:19", "start": 1279.0, "text": "there is also Britt Kellyelly that is doing lots of," }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "21:24", "start": 1284.0, "text": "translation related work, that is very useful." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "21:30", "start": 1290.0, "text": "so yeah, it's, it's growing and, so RockstarDev and Kukks are like, you know, developers, they're, they, they think about the feature they want, they just code it." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "21:43", "start": 1303.0, "text": "and BitcoinShirt is like, you know, trying to tie everything up together, like trying to document everything, making video of it to advertise it. Basically, it's like the marketing, the one-man marketing team of BTCPay, and he did very great work, he, he like, did us, tutorials to, tutorials series about if you're a merchant, how to create your own WooCommerce, you know, your own e-commerce website, how to create your own BTCPay participate, how to plug them together and like, you know, everything from scratch, and so lots of people came on the Slack asking questions. And, You know, we aren't a company, which mean that we can't expand resources to have customer support people. So that's why we depends on having the slack and the community, you know, like replying to each others when there is problems. And it's working fine, so when, when I see problems like lots of question that come back, very often like BitcoinShirt told me, \"Oh, like...\" This particular point, like, lots of people don't understand it, so on my side, I try to fix the code so like there is less questions the next time, and like it's an iterative process, you know, like every two or three days I release a new versions, and like, you know, it's slowly, slowly," }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "23:09", "start": 1389.0, "text": "evolving in the right direction, thanks to all this feedback that we get continuously every day." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "23:14", "start": 1394.0, "text": "Fantastic. And, well, you mentioned new features there, and I think now might be a good time to just talk about this fiat exchange component. So obviously, the easiest way right now is if you just take Bitcoin and just accept Bitcoin, but obviously the reality is many merchants don't have prices denominated for their inputs, the things that they're buying aren't in Bitcoin, so they have to convert it back into USD or whatever. Over other fiat, talk to us a little bit about what the plans are around that fiat exchange component." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "23:45", "start": 1425.0, "text": "Okay, so the main developer on fiat stuff right now is RockstarDev." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "23:50", "start": 1430.0, "text": "so as a general rule, I never code something that I don't choose myself. so for example, I, I never sell Bitcoin, I always hold all on my side. So like I have no interest into coding fiat's integration myself." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "24:07", "start": 1447.0, "text": "but like RockstarDev, there, for example, is working on it, and as far as I understand, I'm not sure because he didn't talk to me too much about what he's doing exactly, but The way he's thinking is, if you're a merchant," }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "24:23", "start": 1463.0, "text": "you buy some stock of Bitcoin on some exchange. So like, let's say you buy like one Bitcoin" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "24:33", "start": 1473.0, "text": "On, on, I don't know, Coinbase. And like when a payment isn't coming into your store, immediately you sell, you know, a bit of this stock of one Bitcoin." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "24:46", "start": 1486.0, "text": "Right. So it's almost, it's almost like there's a float maintained on the exchange." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "24:49", "start": 1489.0, "text": "Yes, yes. And so basically when the, the money is received by the merchants, then the money will be forwarded to the exchange and like the balance will be restored to one Bitcoin eventually. Right, and that's what he's working on." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "25:03", "start": 1503.0, "text": "Right, and my understanding then would be this is because, again, Bitcoin on chain was not necessarily designed to function as a retail level payments network, and because of these, you know, difficulties that you might face around confirmation time, once a transaction is sent, it may not necessarily confirm instantly, or it-- in most cases, it won't. So that's why we need this, this sort of, concept of a float held at the exchange." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "25:30", "start": 1530.0, "text": "Yep. So basically I call it, so like I tell you before, BitPay, if the the transaction doesn't confirm after one hour, they, they call this invoice invalid, and the the reason behind it is" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "25:47", "start": 1547.0, "text": "between the time that the customer sends a transaction, no, between the time that the invoice is created on the merchant side to the time this this transaction is confirmed by the network you know, the exchange rate is like changing a lot. So like, that's why that BitPay, like after one hour, if the transaction isn't confirmed, they say, \"Oh, the exchange rate changed so much that we can't ensure about this particular exchange rate.\" So, that's why our plan is really to do like, we, we receive a transaction, we convert immediately on the exchange, and then later the coins are like forwarded to the exchange. So it means, it still means that the, the merchant is taking some risk on one Bitcoin because he has like a stock of one Bitcoin on the exchange, but at least it's calculated risk." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "26:43", "start": 1603.0, "text": "Right. And so the idea there, so tell me if you don't know the, the detail, but is RockstarDev working with any particular exchanges on who he might try to set this up to work with?" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "26:57", "start": 1617.0, "text": "that's a very good question. I'm, I'm, I'm not sure. I don't, I don't really know. I know he's working on this," }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "27:04", "start": 1624.0, "text": "I don't know if he's working with a particular exchange. I know that lots of exchange approached him to work around this, so I would say probably. but I, I don't know enough myself about it. Excellent." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "27:17", "start": 1637.0, "text": "Well, we'll have to get him on eventually, but, yeah, go on." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "27:20", "start": 1640.0, "text": "Yeah. So, but the thing is" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "27:23", "start": 1643.0, "text": "that, in It's more like, you know, different, different contributor want different features and just like get it done and then we ship it. so there's no like real, real big roadmap and People sticking to it, it's just like, you know, a need and that you just code it." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "27:45", "start": 1665.0, "text": "Yeah, sure, sure. No, I totally appreciate that. I mean, that's the, the nature of open source software. It's not like a standard company where there's someone paying you to do a certain function. but I think another area that might be good for you to touch on is just around this idea of getting from the broader Bitcoin, you know, what we might call the Bitcoin community, obviously, years and years down the line, there won't be a Bitcoin community Community, but for now there still is. Are you getting a lot of support? Are you getting a lot of people who recommend, who kind of bring you new people who might use BTCPay Server?" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "28:19", "start": 1699.0, "text": "Yeah, yeah. I mean, so BTCPay Server, like in one year," }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "28:25", "start": 1705.0, "text": "it like developed entirely thanks to the Bitcoin community, like we didn't invested into any marketing" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "28:33", "start": 1713.0, "text": "like we, we didn't even have an official website since like last month, so like it's, it has been entirely community-driven or like, of like people trying it, you know, talking to other people about it, and then at their turn they try it and like it and then spread the virus a little bit more." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "28:55", "start": 1735.0, "text": "we, we-- so even, even for example, BitcoinShirt, that is our main, let's say, marketing guy in the team, he came himself because like he learned about BTCPay about, by somebody else in the community and then tried it for his own store where he's selling T-shirt and he found it very interesting, so like he's dedicating lots of resources to a-- help spreading the virus. So it has been very organic all, and like, you know, i-it's, it's thanks to the community, you know, it's, and people just spreading the word of mouth. And it's, it's, I, I prefer it to be like this because" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "29:34", "start": 1774.0, "text": "I-Im-Imagine that we inve-invest in marketing and like lots of people come at once," }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "29:41", "start": 1781.0, "text": "because we don't have any support team behind it Like th-this will qu-uh quickly implode. But if the communities keep growing and growing, even if there is more and more question, it doesn't matter too much because there's so many people using it by now that Lots of people can reply to questions, so it's, you know, it's very organic growth, and, yeah, I hope it will continue like this." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "30:05", "start": 1805.0, "text": "Excellent. And now the other aspect there is also around hardware. So I know, I, I haven't looked into it too much, but I know Nodl were looking into this idea of putting in BTCPay, BTCPay Server software built into the hardware full node product. Can you comment a little bit on that?" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "30:24", "start": 1824.0, "text": "Well, that is awesome, so there is not only Nodl as well, Lightning in a Box, there are several people trying to do this." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "30:34", "start": 1834.0, "text": "So I, I'm very fan of this approach because it means like, you, you go further, you know, you own your own h-hardware, you don't even depends on one, data center, and it's way better for the network. So right now in BTCPay, most people use Luno to host because it's the simplest one. But what if Luno tomorrow go out of business? Then it can have a sizable, sizable impact. of course, I can make, you know, other tutorial to other host provider," }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "31:07", "start": 1867.0, "text": "But if people run, you know, their BT, their own BTCPay in their own home, you completely remove this problem at all, you know? Like you don't have a single point of failure anymore." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "31:20", "start": 1880.0, "text": "the, the big, the big," }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "31:22", "start": 1882.0, "text": "challenge. So m-my myself and my company in Japan, we, we will try to, try to do some kind of box like this as well." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "31:31", "start": 1891.0, "text": "but the main, the main," }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "31:34", "start": 1894.0, "text": "difficult part in this project is," }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "31:40", "start": 1900.0, "text": "lots of consumer like don't know how to configure their router. You know, if you host a service at home, you need to configure what we call the NAT." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "31:49", "start": 1909.0, "text": "of your router, and so like it's quite technical, so it's not ready for everyone. And on top of this, there's lots of, of, of, internet provider that don't provide static IP. Which mean that you can't just configure your a DNS name to point to your home." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "32:07", "start": 1927.0, "text": "there is solutions to this that I'm thinking about, but It's, it's still a bit messy. I, I'm still wondering how to make it as easy as possible, and I, I don't have the perfect answer yet. Right, right. Right, right. People still need to be a little bit technical savvy to, to set it up with these boxes." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "32:28", "start": 1948.0, "text": "Right, and I suppose one, some of the other difficulties could just be if you live in an area where you don't have reliable internet that might drop out or in-power might drop out, and then how would you take payments on it, that kind of thing as well." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "32:43", "start": 1963.0, "text": "Yeah, that kind of thing as well, but there is also p-- some people that are asking," }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "32:49", "start": 1969.0, "text": "you know, where they say, \"Oh, we don't really want BTCPay to be accessible from the outside.\" So it simplifies some stuff, but not everything. So, for example, if you want to accept Lightning payments, you need a public IP and a fixed IP to receive the payments. So," }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "33:12", "start": 1992.0, "text": "yeah, it's still, it's still, there's still things to think about, yeah. And, indeed, if for example, you want to accept Lightning payment and you don't have a reliable connection, then you have more problems. So it's, yeah, there, there's still things to be fixed. I hope to push this, this push to self-hosting at home, but yeah, there's some technical, technical consideration around this." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "33:44", "start": 2024.0, "text": "Sure, sure. And I suppose then the other, the other angle is also as Bitcoin grows up, we'll see more and more commercialization around some of these things, and we may start to see more and more Companies and providers who come out and say, \"Hey, we'll set up and configure the BTCPay BTCPay Server for you,\" that kind of, concept. You wanna comment on that?" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "34:05", "start": 2045.0, "text": "Yeah, I hope so. So, LunaNode themselves, you know, they, they, they created this simple wizard, to create your BTCPay. Actually, this wizard is open source itself, so- Like, I think they are using Cloud in it. I don't really know what it is, but like for provisioning new VM, they are using this Cloud in it tool. And, they created this," }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "34:31", "start": 2071.0, "text": "they created this wizard where if you, you are a hosting provider as well using this Cloud-Init stuff, you can just use the stuff that LunaNode did. And, it can easily spread that way. But," }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "34:47", "start": 2087.0, "text": "right now I don't know how interested are other, you know, host provider to, to offer this kind of specific service." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "34:56", "start": 2096.0, "text": "Right, but I guess it all helps out." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "34:58", "start": 2098.0, "text": "Yeah, yeah, it will help out, but right now I, I saw only LunaNode doing this." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "35:03", "start": 2103.0, "text": "Got it, I see, I see." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "35:05", "start": 2105.0, "text": "Yeah, if, if there is another host provider that is interested into doing this, I, I wish they join the Slack and then we can all talk together about it and help them to do it." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "35:15", "start": 2115.0, "text": "Okay, excellent. And, I think another good point that you were touching on earlier is just around, in general, the rise of self-hosting. So obviously that is becoming- becoming more relevant nowadays, especially with this whole Patreon shutdown, more and more people looking at alternatives. What else is required to help people use Bitcoin in a self-hosting approach? So, for example, making sure that the servers don't get shut down or other tech infrastructure, not just the payments component. Do you have any ideas on that?" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "35:47", "start": 2147.0, "text": "yeah, so it's a very hard problem basically. So, so here is the thing, for example, Gab right now is using Gab dot com Tom is using a BTCPay Server, and basically recently they have been like targeted by political opponents to try to shut them down even if they did nothing, nothing wrong." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "36:08", "start": 2168.0, "text": "and basically the way it works is that, they have some services hosted on some IP address, and then, like people are trying to find who is who owns this IP address, and then complain to the owner of this IP address. And then this owner like has better things to do than processing this sort of complaint, so like they just shut them down." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "36:36", "start": 2196.0, "text": "so it's very problematic. The only pro-- you know, like the only way to fix this problem is using Tor. so, you know, one of the way to, the simplest way to solve this problem is using Tor. Like if you are using Tor, then you're fine, you know, like they, they won't manage to shut you down. But like, lo- most people don't use Tor. So you have another option that I tr- that I will, I think, push people to, and it's related to those boxes as well. So," }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "37:08", "start": 2228.0, "text": "one solution is you host your, BTCPay Server box inside your own data center, okay? Except that you don't accept queries directly into your data center. Instead, what you are doing is like you set up another server, so for example, a very small server on LunaNode On LunaNode, you set up some SSH server and like you use a system like what, what we call a reverse, reverse tunneling. So basically what will happen is that if a user want to go to your website, he will use the public IP of LunaNode, and LunaNode will forward the request to your- Backend server that is on some another IP that you, you know, you control." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "37:56", "start": 2276.0, "text": "Right, an intermediate step." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "37:58", "start": 2278.0, "text": "Yes. And so basically if there is a complaint, so like if people complain to LunaNode, of course LunaNode will shut you down. But, you know, you, you don't really have to care, you just go to another jurisdiction, opening a new server and like just resetting these tunneling things and then you're back online. So then it become very unproductive to try to, you know Like reach those IP owner because it's so easy to pop up a new service, because they don't own your data. I, it's only possible because the, you know, the server, the service provider don't own your data. Your data is owned by yours. So it's, i-it's related as well to the boxes basically." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "38:39", "start": 2319.0, "text": "Right. And I, and I imagine the other way is essentially if you're lucky, like say Gab, they managed, I think they've managed to find a provider who just- We're, is willing to still continue hosting them?" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "38:53", "start": 2333.0, "text": "Yeah, so," }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "38:55", "start": 2335.0, "text": "i-it's good that they find it, but it will work until one point, you know, we never know when it will break." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "39:03", "start": 2343.0, "text": "but Well, I guess if it break, they can, you know, jump to another provider as well, you know, they," }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "39:09", "start": 2349.0, "text": "as they're getting more and more kicked, and that every time they get kicked, they learn more and more about this space. And, they will become more and more resistant to it. Like, like Gab.com before trying to use BTCPay, like tried many, many other solutions. Basically, they tried every single centralized payment processor that they could, and like Mastercardrd basically was like pulling the strings to prevent them to, you know? To, to servicegap dot com. And at the end of the day, they become, become maximalists because they, that's the only thing they, you know, the only way for them to accept money then. So yeah. They, they, they, they become more and more efficient at it as, no, they, they can ban them, but at one point they will always come back." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "39:55", "start": 2395.0, "text": "It, it becomes a little bit like, the story of, the government trying to shut down torrenting. You know, like say how they tried to shut down the Pirate Bay, but then someone keeps, you know, making proxies and re-pulling it back up." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "40:07", "start": 2407.0, "text": "Yeah, yeah, that's it. I, I mean, as long as you own the data, you know, as long as you own your own data in your own end, then they can't shut you down. You can, you just have to find another way to get back online. It's eventually possible, you know? So yeah, it's no, no, no, no problem, I think, about this." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "40:26", "start": 2426.0, "text": "but well, i-it's still, right now, technically speaking, it's still a bit hard to do it. I I will try to make it easier, but it's, you know, I, I always come back In the sense of, on my side, I'm always coding only stuff that I, I use myself. And, myself, I'm not, you know, I'm not targeting that these kind of behaviors. So like You know, I'm less motivated to work on it than, say, Gab.com or, or people like this. So if people are targeted and are willing to help me on this, like it will be very helpful." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "41:03", "start": 2463.0, "text": "Right, right. Okay, another area, so you, you touched on this earlier, was just around the hosted options. So companies like, Globee, OpenNode, CoinGate. Do you have any thoughts on the main trade-offs that a, a person has to think about when they're thinking about whether they want to use? BTCPay Server self-hosted or, or whether they would go through one of those other options?" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "41:28", "start": 2488.0, "text": "Well," }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "41:31", "start": 2491.0, "text": "so the, the other option are possible- Depending on where you live, depending the re-jurisdiction and depending of, of your political inclinations. So like if you're a Gab, like, I mean, Globee Coin Payment or anything else, like eventually will get shut down. Like there is no question of, of, about this." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "41:52", "start": 2512.0, "text": "for people that aren't politically targeted," }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "41:57", "start": 2517.0, "text": "I, I think they can be a good solution, but because of the fact that you don't control your own key, what you can do with those payment processors are like way more," }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "42:10", "start": 2530.0, "text": "Restricted. So, for example, BTCPay Server is not only useful for merchant, actually it's very good wallet. You can use it for, as a, as a wallet and, you depend on, on your own node, so like you don't leak any privacy. you can't do this with Coinpayment or like, or Globee or, or the, those kind of services. And like we have other features that are pretty cool, so for example, we have the point of sales feature. Where, you can very easily create, you know, very sim-simple point of sale, very easy to, you know, operate and then create invoice out of this." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "42:50", "start": 2570.0, "text": "you know, it's like kind of feature that is possible only with BTCPay, not with Globee." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "42:57", "start": 2577.0, "text": "or recently there is Kukks that's- That, created a crowdfunding application of BTCPay. I don't know if you have seen it. I've heard of it. But basically, yeah, it's-- I, I can send you the link later, but like basically anybody can create their own fully customized, crowdfunding page and," }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "43:18", "start": 2598.0, "text": "you know, and be public. And then people can just send Lightning payments, you know, Bitcoin payments to it, and, so it's fun, you know, it's kind of fun feature like this that you can't really do with centralized payment processors. And, where more fun feature like this will come in the future in BTCPay, so, yeah, keep tuned." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "43:40", "start": 2620.0, "text": "Yeah, it's a very exciting space. I think there's a lot of possibilities around this whole concept of self-hosting. have you got anything else that you wanted to bring up around BTCPay Server, anything to look out for coming up or anything else to point, that you wanna bring up?" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "43:53", "start": 2633.0, "text": "Well, there, there is also a, a very interesting thing with BTCPay is that because it's open source, there are some people that Their own feature or adding their own design and like, you know, time to time merging the upstreams changes. So like if you're a business and like BTCPay doesn't even match it, you know, doesn't even completely match what you want to do, it's very easy to fork. And I, I, I plan to do it even more easy, easier to fork in the future." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "44:27", "start": 2667.0, "text": "so yeah, that's kind of flexibility that you can get from open source project, but not from other centralized payment processors." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "44:36", "start": 2676.0, "text": "for the features to look out" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "44:42", "start": 2682.0, "text": "so there is a, the Fiat things that RockstarDev is working on, I can't say myself too much about it because I'm not, I, I don't really know as, that much about it." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "44:55", "start": 2695.0, "text": "there is Kukks that have a pull request about doing permanent invoices. So, so I'd say, so imagine that you are, you are a freelance And you want to request a payment to your customer," }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "45:12", "start": 2712.0, "text": "the problem right now is like when you create an invoice with BTCPay, it locks the rate, you know, the, the rate is locked for like fifteen minutes. Yeah. So like if the user don't pay in 15 minutes, then you need to create a new invoice, you know, it's not very user friendly. So like Kukks is doing a new feature where, you know, he create a simple page, a payment, he call that payment request page. So like you send a link to this page to your customer, and when your customer want to pay, just click on it, it takes the rate of the day, creates a invoice, and you can pay. So it's, so like he can pay at his own convenience." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "45:51", "start": 2751.0, "text": "fantastic. A-and yeah, the last thing I will work is what we, we were talking about, way. So you, you remember when I- Talk to, talk to you about the, these reverse tunneling features that is to prevent people to be shut down. Actually, it's not only useful for people, that are politically, targeted. It's also very useful For," }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "46:19", "start": 2779.0, "text": "for people that want to host BitPay at home because they don't have a, you know, a fixed IP. So like if you don't have a fixed IP with this reverse tunneling solution, you can still create your own BitPay. And," }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "46:36", "start": 2796.0, "text": "and, and a very easy setup, and you don't have to configure the net or that kind of things. So like it's not even useful for You know, politically targeted people, but also for people that just want to plug the box at home and like that it just work. So, that, that will be what I will work on in the short term." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "46:57", "start": 2817.0, "text": "Yeah, that's awesome. I think it's really, fascinating to see all the ways these different technologies are kind of, building out together and interacting in different ways. And you've got, you know, the hardware guys, and then you've got you guys, and, and, and there's just a really, really interesting- What's the word? Kind of symbiosis there in the way that some of the different products are kind of interacting together." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "47:19", "start": 2839.0, "text": "Yeah, it's, it, it, it's al- it's always a question of, you know, in open source, like people aren't paid, which means that they need to find their own motivation," }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "47:29", "start": 2849.0, "text": "to, to code some features. So it can be profit related, like people selling boxes, they hope to make profit with it, like people like Kukks, did the crowdfunding app because like he himself has a cool idea to code and want to raise money by doing this. So like when people are like customer of their own product, it gives like lots of, you know motivation to code on it. And then, as more stuff getting built, some other people say, \"Oh, wow, what you do is pretty cool. I want to use it for myself and like maybe improve it.\" And then, you know, little by little, the product become bigger and bigger. You know, it's, yeah, it's very organic growth and, yeah, it's, it's the beauty of open source." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "48:13", "start": 2893.0, "text": "Yeah, I think you make a great point around how many people, they just wanna scratch their own itch, and then that is what drives people" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "48:22", "start": 2902.0, "text": "Yeah. Okay. have you got anything else that you wanna get the listeners to, to know in terms of how they can, if they wanna come and support BTCPay Server or anything else to consider?" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "48:33", "start": 2913.0, "text": "Yeah, Ja, I mean, Ja, a very good way to have BTCPay Server is using it by yourself and see for your own case like what is, you know, the gaps of features that you would like. And like just discuss it on the Slack, get some developer motivated to do it, or like developing it yourself, you know, like it, it, it's fun, you know, and you don't have to be a merchant, you know, even if you are a normal user that just want a easy way to manage your wallet. Where you don't click your addresses to third parties, then BTCPay is for you as well. So, yeah, just try, just try it, have fun with it, and like come on the Slack sharing your experience." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "49:12", "start": 2952.0, "text": "Excellent. Okay. And, where can people find you guys and find the Slack?" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "49:16", "start": 2956.0, "text": "It's a slack.btcpayserver.org." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "49:20", "start": 2960.0, "text": "Okay. Excellent. And also, obviously, your Twitter is nicola doriere. I'll put the link obviously in the show notes. And there's" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "49:27", "start": 2967.0, "text": "also, there is also the btpays, btpay server, Twitter account as well." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "49:33", "start": 2973.0, "text": "yes, I'll link that as well. So Twitter for that. Okay, excellent. anything, any final comments?" }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "49:39", "start": 2979.0, "text": "that's, oh, oh, oh, yeah, as well, you can also send the, the link to our YouTube channel because like we have a YouTube channel with lots of video to get started, like to play with BTCPay and that kind of stuff. So it's, yeah, I will, I, I send it to you by text." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "49:56", "start": 2996.0, "text": "Excellent. Alright. Well, look, thank you very much for coming on, Nicolas. I hope, the, I hope the, the listeners found it interesting to just learn a little bit more about BTCPay Server." }, { "speaker": "nicolas_dorier", "time": "50:07", "start": 3007.0, "text": "Yeah, I hope so. I think they will." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "50:09", "start": 3009.0, "text": "There you go. I hope you enjoyed hearing more about the BTCPay Server project and why Nicolas started it. More importantly, I hope you'll be interested to go and try it out. So go and check out the YouTube channel for some how-to videos and join the BTCPay Server Slack and discuss with the guys. Links are in the show notes on my website, stephanlivera.com. Lastly, if you enjoyed this podcast, remember to retweet and share with your friends. That's it from me. Thanks and chat next time." } ] }