{ "episodeId": "SLP499", "speakers": { "stephan": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "host", "tag": "STEPHAN" }, "earning_bitcoin_remote_working": { "name": "Earning Bitcoin & Remote Working", "role": "guest", "tag": "EARNING" } }, "segments": [ { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:08", "start": 8.43, "text": "Hi, you're listening to Stephan Livera podcast, a show about Bitcoin and Austrian economics, brought to you by Swann dot com. Today, my guest is Jonathan Chester, he's the founder of BitWage, a service related to, do payroll but with Bitcoin. And so we're talking about earning Bitcoin and remote working and the story of growing BitWage, as well as the market size for- Payroll, as well as hodling being the use. This show is brought to you by swan dot com, and if you're with a business, have you considered stacking Bitcoin as part of your corporate or business entity balance sheet? Swan Business can help you with this by making it easy for you to automate your Bitcoin investment, your custody and management strategy, and you will get expert guidance every step along the way. There's a lot of entities who are signing up with Swan because Swan offers really fast sign up, so this is a great benefit for you because I'm aware that with many- Competitors, it takes a long time to get businesses onboarded, so if you onboard with Swan Business, you can start stacking Bitcoin in your corporate balance sheet, and this is for various entity types, and you can also make use of Bitcoin benefit plan. This is a plan where you can pay out Bitcoin as a benefit to your staff every month or every year or even on a one-off basis. So Swan handles all the heavy lifting, like creating wallets and so on. If you want to stack Sat as part of your business or pay out Bitcoin benefits, go to Swan. dot com slash business. And now onto the show with Jonathan. Jonathan, welcome to the show." }, { "speaker": "earning_bitcoin_remote_working", "time": "01:36", "start": 96.36, "text": "Hey, thanks for having me, Stefan." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:39", "start": 98.76, "text": "Yeah, so, I see what you guys are doing over at BitWage, and I thought it'd be interesting to have a chat with you. obviously, you've been around in the space for a while, so do you wanna just give us a bit of a, a background on who you are and how you started BitWage?" }, { "speaker": "earning_bitcoin_remote_working", "time": "01:53", "start": 113.35, "text": "Sure. Yeah. so, I first heard about Bitcoin back in 2013, and I came across it on a TED talk that was just talking about different forms of money and how money can, how people can transact in different ways in the, in the future. One way was actually people trading, laundry detergent in prisons. another way was with, you know- Money that came in the form of essentially loyalty points that you acquired by running in Nike shoes, and then it kind of built up to the concept of Bitcoin, right, being this, this digital currency that enabled financial sovereignty to help bank beyond bank and has implications on, you know, making international payments more efficient. And I came out of this, this TED talk You know, basically obsessed about Bitcoin. You know, I was, I was, I wanted to learn everything I could, so I, I went down the rabbit hole. I was reading all, reading and watching all the content. I, I read the Bitcoin white paper, and after I think it was like the first two pages, I couldn't really understand it. now, now I can, but back then I, it was, it was, it was pretty hard to understand the cryptographic concepts. And I remember watching Andreas Antonopoulos, and all of his videos were just like him at a bar talking Bitcoin. Anyways, now I'm this obsessed Bitcoin guy, 2013, and I'm going around at my job at, at Oracle, being like, \"Hey guys, you gotta get Bitcoin, you gotta get Bitcoin,\" you know? And everyone thinks I'm this crazy guy talking about magic internet money, and of course, the pri-price of Bitcoin at the time is like- Two hundred and fifty dollars, three hundred dollars, and it spikes to a thousand dollars, and, you know, I felt, I felt pretty good about tell-telling people about this. But o-ultimately what ended up happening is I got connected with another guy at Oracle who was happened to also be a crazy Bitcoin guy. He was mining, he was actually mining like from a computer, you know, at home at the time, and, you know, we got together and we said, \"Okay, well, you know, Bitcoin is gonna be the future of money.\" And if, if so, like what are the different areas that it's gonna touch? You know, and we didn't, we, we didn't think so deeply about like what are sophisticated financial products that can be created with this, we just thought You know, what are the basic, how, what are the basic ways that money moves in an economy? Right? Well, you know, and we looked at what was out there, right? There, ways for you to hold your money, a wallet, ways for you to, I guess, purchase Bitcoin, which is exchanges, a way for you to spend it, merchant processors. but there's never really a way to, for those merchant pro- merchants to then take that Bitcoin and like use it to- Pay employees with it, and so it wasn't a fully, you know, a full financial loop, a, a full system within itself, right? And so we wanted to be the first ones to enable that, to close the financial loop, to create a system so that So that Bitcoin could exist in itself as a full financial ecosystem, and we wanted to be the first ones to do it, and that's, that's how the idea sprouted and, and two thousand and fourteen My co-founder, Jon Lindsay, and I, we just did the jump, went full speed ahead, quit our cushy jobs, and have been full time at BitWage ever since." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "05:18", "start": 317.95, "text": "Fantastic. And yeah, I think it's interesting to see that the different narratives that have come and gone. I remember in those days, twenty thirteen and fourteen, there was the whole narrative of merchant adoption, and there was this-- you know, there was a lot more talk about the kind of idea of circular economy. This is pre-Lightning, so, you know, it was, it was different. And I How do, how do we get more people to get paid in Bitcoin, right? Because you're trying to help them close that loop, right? And of course, that's, that's what you're doing today still, and I'm sure, you know, the company must have grown a lot over that time period, right?" }, { "speaker": "earning_bitcoin_remote_working", "time": "05:49", "start": 349.38, "text": "Yeah. I mean, so the first product we launched was to enable companies to pay their employees in Bitcoin. and we thought this because we saw companies that were receiving Bitcoin as merchants, and we called them up and said, \"Hey, would you like to do this too?\" And they were like, \"Oh, yeah, sure, why not?\" They didn't actually mean it, so we, we created the product, and, and it was very, very hard to get any customers. I think the first customer we had was a company called FreshPay, which doesn't exist anymore, but it was one of the first Bitcoin debit cards. But we, we knew that even though companies weren't quite ready to accept this, that there were people who wanted to receive their salary in Bitcoin. So we said, okay, well, let's figure out how we can do that. And so we created, direct deposit product, which, essentially we, you know, spin up a direct deposit account, which you can connect to your payroll service, and you can receive a, a portion of your salary into that, and then it can be converted into Bitcoin and deposited, into, into whatever wallet that you wanted, And that was important because that basically, you know, unlocked all the people who wanted to receive part of their salary in Bitcoin, and, you know, we were able to grow from that. And, you know, at the time The, a lot of people were actually like knocking Bitcoin and saying like, \"Oh, but can you get paid in it?\" And so a lot of people were like, \"Oh, yeah, you can with Bitwage, right?\" That was, that was some nice marketing back then. But, But yeah, so that, that helped us grow, and I'd say until about, in 2016, we realized that there were certain pe-people who would get like five, ten, fifteen, twenty percent of their salary in Bitcoin, and then there were other people who would receive their entire salaries in Bitcoin. And when we looked at those people, they were all international. and so what we realized is that there was this huge problem with international payments w-w-with regards to rates and speed to deliver money, so people would get their entire salary in Bitcoin and then they converted what they needed into local currency as they needed it. And so then what we built out after that was an off-ramp that leveraged Bitcoin to move the money from country A to country B, but then off-ramp in local fiat currency to pay out. To the users. And, you know, that k-- the, we ended up growing pretty, pretty well, until, you know, the, the end of the twenty seventeen bubble. And once that kind of crashed, you know, the interesting thing about our business is that people don't really reduce their volume during a bear market, but we don't see a lot of new business. So we kind of stayed a bit flat. You could tread water," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "08:17", "start": 497.3, "text": "yeah." }, { "speaker": "earning_bitcoin_remote_working", "time": "08:18", "start": 497.54, "text": "Yeah, we could tread water, but we stayed a bit flat during that time. And then when twenty twenty hit, it was" }, { "speaker": "earning_bitcoin_remote_working", "time": "08:25", "start": 504.92, "text": "Mechanism, because all of a sudden, remote work just like blew onto the stage, Bitcoin and, you know, the rest of the crypto market kind of just exploded and all, so all, all this interest began to grow. And so that, you know, we, we've grown four hundred percent since then, which is, which has been great, and we continue to grow despite the current market conditions, which is also great. And, yeah, that's, that's kind of where we are today. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "08:52", "start": 531.8, "text": "Well, I mean, that, that's cool to see that you can, grow even in a so-called, you know, bear market or whatever, whatever we're calling this right now, you know, Bitcoin about thirty K, right? But I think, an interesting theme you're touching on there is remote working and Bitcoin. Is there some natural synergy that you see there or some natural combination that it just, it works well together?" }, { "speaker": "earning_bitcoin_remote_working", "time": "09:13", "start": 553.27, "text": "Yeah, so I, I, you know, when we first came to offer the product, the thought process was, okay, how do Bitcoin. And in the United States, a lot of people will think, okay, well, you know, what's the difference between, you know, getting cash and buying Bitcoin and versus getting paid in it? And, and there, there is minutia and difference in terms of like, you know, where you can get your money deposited, how fast it happens, you know, how much effort is, is going into it, where you actually want the money deposited. Since we're a non-custodial service, we deposit to whatever wallet that you want, and you can even split it. But at the" }, { "speaker": "earning_bitcoin_remote_working", "time": "09:52", "start": 591.52, "text": "The, the, where we saw much more of a need is on this international side of it, because, unlike in the United States where it's easy to just Get your cash deposited and then buy Bitcoin on the cross border side, it's actually much, much harder, and that's because, first of all, when you send the money over, you actually lose a lot of value and time just during that process. So Purch-purchasing your Bitcoin to actually move the money saves you money. Additionally, in a lot of places that, have less stable currency regimes, the price of Bitcoin is more expensive, and as a result of that you get access to Bitcoin with better rates if, let's say, you're a freelancer from like Argentina or Brazil or Nigeria or South Africa, and you're getting paid from a client in the US. Not only do you save money on the transfer, but you actually get a better rate if the Bitcoin is purchased in the US and then sent to you, right? so there are, there are synergies. Right. Because Argentina" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "11:02", "start": 662.16, "text": "has like different rates, they've got like the blue dollar rate and like the government rate and so on, so they're getting the better rate, therefore they're getting Yeah," }, { "speaker": "earning_bitcoin_remote_working", "time": "11:09", "start": 669.32, "text": "yeah, exactly. I mean, it, it, we can, we can go into, I mean, the, you know, the, this kind of thing happens in, in, in places that have like very high rates of inflation, right? There's Argentina, there's Nigeria, there's Turkey, right? Where there's almost like this dual currency regime because all the debt they have isn't in their own currency, it's in a different currency, and so they, the countries have an incentive to maintain like a, a particular exchange rate Between let's say dollars and their own local currency, even though on the streets it's going out of control, right? It's way worse than that, but they're trying to peg it to this rate so that their debt is easier to pay off and comes out basically at the expense of the, the, the, the people on the ground And what ultimately happens when this happens is that Bitcoin off-- tends to trade at the, the true market rate as opposed to this pegged rate. and that's how this kind of benefit, occurs. But it, it, it, it, it, the benefit happens anywhere where there is more demand for dollars than the dollar markets in the local country are able to, to facilitate, right? Argentina and Turkey and Nigeria, these are like extreme use cases where, where you, you know, you, you're talking about like getting double your money, right? But in a lot of places around the world, it's not- Quite so, so big. Like, I think in like Brazil or in Mexico, you might be able to get a few percent more. You actually do end up getting more, it's just not as extreme because there isn't as extreme of a, of a, a, a, a demand to acquire dollars outside of the local currency. so it's almost, it's almost as if it's a, a proxy to that demand to the dollar, which is kind of interesting in itself, right? Because Maybe what's happening is people are, are just trying to exit their own, their own currency, and maybe they'll take that Bitcoin, they'll try to turn it into dollars at some point, or they'll hold it, I don't know, and that's what creates that premium, right?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "13:15", "start": 795.45, "text": "Fantastic. And so you, you are playing at both sides here, because on one side you could be the freelancer who uses BitWage to get paid, or you could be on the, on the other side, you could be an employer who's doing the payouts with Bitcoin, and so in that case, the Turn it into Bitcoin and send it out to their per-- like the employees or the people they're paying. Yes," }, { "speaker": "earning_bitcoin_remote_working", "time": "13:38", "start": 818.25, "text": "and there's, there's two, there's two kind of use cases on the employer side. One is like, I'm paying my employees in the US, I wanna offer them the option to get par-- part of their salary in Bitcoin, and we see when we're in the Bitcoin bull market, you know, the demand for that is, is a lot higher, right? But, we actually recently just launched an integration with the top twenty-three payroll companies, which basically Basically create the benefits in the payroll system and then read that on payday so that the pay-- the, the employers don't basically don't have to do anything. This is like with AEP and paychecks and Trinet and, Zenefits and Gusto. I mean, mo-- if you could think of a payroll provider, it probably works with it, right? And basically it then allows the employer to offer the benefit in, you know, a compliant way without any additional overhead, and the employees are able to, you know, easily- Get the, the, the Bitcoin direct, direct deposited. So we can do that, but we also have another use case, which is again the international use case. On the international side, though, it's actually not Specifically Bitcoin focused, right? It's more like I've got remote workers everywhere in the world, in like ten, fifteen different places, and like today, like they all have their own invoicing tech, some of them want to get paid into a Payoneer card, some of them a Revolut card, some of the, you know, I- Some of them want their bank accounts, but PayPal only does these places, and bank wires are ridiculously expensive, and so they have to hobble together all these different systems. And so what we built is not just this like Bitcoin direct deposit, but, an entire payment system with an HR layer on top of it. And so what the company can do is they can onboard the workers and pay them without thinking, and the workers self choose what they want on the other side. They can get fiat, they can get Bitcoin, or they can get stable coins. And they can choose what percentage they want between all of it, and, you know, we're basically just saving the company all the headache while giving the workers, you know, the ultimate freedom." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "15:44", "start": 944.08, "text": "Fantastic. And, I'm curious as well if you've seen much in like Lightning uptake for this kind of thing as well. Like, do people get paid out in Lightning or is it still kind of all on-chain stuff here?" }, { "speaker": "earning_bitcoin_remote_working", "time": "15:55", "start": 955.41, "text": "Yeah, so we only did a proof of concept with Lightning actually. one of the things that I'm, I'm, I'm looking to do later this year is like a more sophisticated Lightning implementation. we, you know, we don't have, a, a wallet ourselves, and so, you know, Lightning has all these different sophistications where, you know, if I had hosted a custodial Lightning wallet and I just like filled it and then, you know, you paid for it a little bit here and there That, you know, that would be like an experience that could easily be done, but, you know, our ethos is like non-custodial forever, and the reason why is we want to make sure that as regulations change, that You still have, you still have a, a compliant outlet to be able to get your, Bitcoin deposited into whatever wallet you want. That, that, that's like a core ethos that, that I have to, you know, so that we don't lose that, that functionality. But to put that into perspective when it comes to Lightning, it's actually very, very hard To do that, because of the sizes of the transactions that people are getting, right? and so as a result of the sizes of the transactions, we would run into like channel liquidity issues. This, this is-- at least when we did the pro-concept a year ago, so I need to, I need to basically do one again. But we, you know, we run into issues where, you know, we couldn't get liquidity to deposit like five thousand dollars into someone's wallet so that they can Spend it with the rest of the, you know, the Lightning network. You know, you know, I've always kind of a tangent, I, you know, I feel like there should be a, a term for, you know, like the greater communal Lightning network, 'cause technically like the Lightning network is a technology That can have like private channels and/or can be connected to like the huge, the huge public channel. And I've always been calling it public channels. Yeah, yeah. So I've always just been calling it like the, the lightning network hive mind, right? But, But, anyways, just going back to it, it's something that I, the experience that I want to have is you put in, you know, whatever Lightning wallet you want, or maybe it has to be like, you know, LNURL-enabled Lightning wallet, and then we just like can pay you, and like you don't have, you know, you can passively collect it, you don't have to accept it every single time, and we're not running into weird, you know, issues where money's not getting to where it needs to go. Payment failures and things, yeah That's what I want. I, I, I based on my conversations with the lightning vendors that are out today, 'cause we, we would do it with a partner, it seems like we might be like there. I'm just, not a hundred percent sure if we are or not, but it's something that, you know, it's acutely on my radar and something that But I want to make sure that we implement." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "18:50", "start": 1130.11, "text": "Yeah, I mean, that, that's cool, and I mean, like you said, right? It's, it's grown, and certainly the Lightning Network in twenty eighteen and twenty nineteen, it was a different beast. It wouldn't have been easy to route those kinds of payments, but, you know, maybe over time, and maybe it's not right now, but, you know, let's say over the next few years, it could get to that point, and, you know, as a, as a quick example, you know, we didn" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "19:18", "start": 1158.26, "text": "You know, in the same way that when people sign up to a service online and they type in, \"Oh, what's your name? What's your email?\" It might be, it might literally be like, \"Hey, what's your name? What's your email? What's your lightning address? And what's your bolt twelve code? And we'll pay you out on that, you know?\" And it's kind of like, then, you know, eventually, you don't have to think so much, you know, so hard about the channels and liquidity and all this, you know, the users Gonna do Vault 12, then they can just like get paid like that and, and then all that kind of inbound liquidity is handled, you know, by Asyn and Phoenix or by the LSP, right? But I mean, this is, you know, in the future, but I think that'd be so fantastic to see, and, you know, maybe the real impetus for that will come when the bull-- when, you know, when the bull comes and there's, you know, on-chain fees are spiking and all that." }, { "speaker": "earning_bitcoin_remote_working", "time": "20:11", "start": 1211.06, "text": "Sure." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "20:16", "start": 1215.58, "text": "Well, tell me This idea, it was originally called Offers, and so the idea is could you have a reusable string, like a, a, you know, instead of, you know, Bolt eleven invoice where it's a one time invoice, it's actually, it could be a reusable. And so now a lot of the implementations, so obviously Core Lightning, because that's where Rusty's working on, they're kind of had it first, but other, other implementations are working on this. So even the Asynch and Phoenix wallet guys, they've mentioned Bolt twelve is coming to their wallet. I know LND is gonna I have like a little side extra bit. I think someone's working on some, I don't know the detail, I'm probably getting it wrong, someone correct me, but someone's like working on like another little module that you could plug in so that LND could kind of speak Bolt twelve, and I know even the LDK guys are working towards this kind of idea. And what it would enable is, is exactly this idea that right now one of the downsides with Lightning Address is that you have to have a web server, and because for most people that's a lot of work, and most Technical people, they just, they just wanna get paid, right? Fair enough. And so LNURL and this lightning address style, it relies on that web server, so typically a lot of people are using custodial wallets for that, unless you're able to run your own thing with BTC Pay Server or stuff like this, right? But with Bolt 12, it doesn't require a web server, so you could just easily have one reusable QR code that people can, you know, scan and just pay you. Yeah, that's awesome. So, yeah, and so this is the kind of stuff that Coming over time, right? So it's interesting to see kind of over time, you know, people have been, you know, there have been the people who are kind of bearish on Lightning and think it's not gonna work, and then you've got people in the middle, and then the people who are super bullish on it and think, you know, everything should be done on Lightning. But I think in terms of the experience, right? Like once you've earned on Lightning and then you can spend on Lightning, and it just kind of, it's very slick, right? Once you've earned on" }, { "speaker": "earning_bitcoin_remote_working", "time": "22:18", "start": 1338.26, "text": "Split, you know, between their savings account and their checking account, right? Lightning is their checking account and their, you know, on-chain, on-chain Bitcoin is their, is their, is their savings account, right?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "22:30", "start": 1349.74, "text": "Yeah." }, { "speaker": "earning_bitcoin_remote_working", "time": "22:30", "start": 1350.14, "text": "And, I mean, you know, of course, it, it, it has to be like that. If you live in a hyper, hyper Bitcoinized" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "22:38", "start": 1358.01, "text": "Bitcoin world, yeah," }, { "speaker": "earning_bitcoin_remote_working", "time": "22:39", "start": 1359.49, "text": "because, you know, on-chain fees are going to be, unsustainable for an average everyday transaction. It just, it's just what it is, right? I mean," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "22:49", "start": 1368.86, "text": "yeah, that's just how it's gonna work, yeah, for sure. But I mean, that's where it's interesting as well, we're seeing technology like Splicing. So I did a recent episode with Dusty, and Splicing enables people to have a unified balance, right? You could have a wallet with one balance and it can just pay And we're seeing this now with Phoenix, I think they were the first out of the gate, and they've got it now on the beta. So if you apply for the beta channel on Android, and I think on i- it's coming on iPhone soon, you can literally have just one balance, and so you can either get paid on chain or you can get paid in Lightning, and it will splice it and kind of combine it all into one channel. So instead of before historically where if you were a Phoenix user and you had like eleven channels, if you're on the beta and you're on the splicing, you just have one channel, and whenever you pay, it just, you know, and when you need to do an on-chain payment, it's kind of splicing some out of the channel that you already have. So even if you, I don't know, as an example, let's say you receive two thousand dollars and you ne- you need to make an on-chain payment for two hundred dollars, you just make that, and now the channel" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "23:53", "start": 1433.25, "text": "Right? So that's kind of enabling-" }, { "speaker": "earning_bitcoin_remote_working", "time": "23:56", "start": 1436.11, "text": "I feel like I'm missing something. So, so it's like you, you got on-chain Bitcoin and then you spent that on-chain Bitcoin on Lightning. At least that's the user experience, isn't that the- Okay," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "24:06", "start": 1446.16, "text": "so it depends how you receive it. So in the, in the example where you receive it on-chain, then Phoenix has to do a, like a swap operation. And so think of it like you've got your channel and you've received some on-chain, then it's Phoenix has to do another on-chain transaction to kind of splice it Like a unified balance thing." }, { "speaker": "earning_bitcoin_remote_working", "time": "24:25", "start": 1465.39, "text": "Oh, wow. That's pretty cool. So you just have" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "24:27", "start": 1467.01, "text": "one balance and you don't have to-- and like all the channel management in the background, you don't have to think about it. Now, to be clear, you will pay a fee for that. So Phoenix's, Lightning, you'll be paying mining fees for that, right? For each on-chain transaction, of course. And when you make a Lightning payment using Phoenix, I think it's up to zero point four percent of the transaction value. So let's say you make a thousand dollar payment on" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "24:53", "start": 1493.33, "text": "But with their credit card, they're already paying three to five percent, so they're already paying more than that. And, you know, how much would people pay, yeah?" }, { "speaker": "earning_bitcoin_remote_working", "time": "25:02", "start": 1501.55, "text": "You know, it's, it's interesting, right? 'Cause in different parts of the US, they treat, like credit card spend differently. 'Cause like when I was in San Francisco, you know, it didn't matter whether you paid with cash or with credit card. But like when I'm over here in Miami, like, I see a lot of people who are, you know- Tacking on the additional fees. Like if I go, if I go to my doctor and I pay with credit card, they're charging me an additional, you know, two and a half percent, right? Exactly. So, and actually if I pay with Zelle, which like I didn't know, like had, had, had a cost for them, they're charging, I think like one percent or something like that. So, you know, even here in the United States, for certain purchases, people can, peo-the, the actual consumer can feel, can feel the difference, right?" }, { "speaker": "earning_bitcoin_remote_working", "time": "25:49", "start": 1549.24, "text": "I think that, yeah, I mean, point, point four percent is, it's pretty good, especially if, you know, you aren't-- if the merchant can give back the money, right? I mean, right now, the credit card companies give back the money, right? The credit card companies, they're like, take the money from the merchant, you know, take their profit, and then give, give, give the user back the money, right? But really Could cut, cut that out and have the merchant give the money back to the, to the user for spending it. Yeah. Well, I" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "26:19", "start": 1579.14, "text": "mean, a lot of this stuff kind of hinges on people being willing to spend, of course. Now, I think- In practice, what we're probably gonna-- now, personally, I do earn and spend Bitcoin, but I recognize that most people aren't gonna do that yet for various reasons. It could be because of capital gains tax and record keeping and accounting and stuff like that, or it could also just be because they're hodlers and they don't wanna spend, they'd rather just kinda spend the fiat if they have fiat. So I appreciate that, but at the same time, I also think getting more people who could earn with Bitcoin is a really powerful thing, right? If we're growing that base Because we're, we're trying to win hearts and minds here, right? Like, at least that's how I see it. We wanna win hearts and minds, we wanna get more people to be Bitcoiners so that we can sort of push forward, you know, the, the vision of, you know, being in a hyperbitcoinized world, which, you know, I would like to see, but, I, I understand, you know, it's gonna-- I also appreciate that it's gonna take time to get there. I mean, nobody really knows, right? So" }, { "speaker": "earning_bitcoin_remote_working", "time": "27:19", "start": 1638.56, "text": "Yeah. I you know, we're talking about, I think it was like, it's close to like twenty trillion dollars, right? Huge, huge amounts. And if people are choosing to get, you know, if, if the average person's getting five percent of their salary in Bitcoin, right? We're talking about like a trillion dollars of positive, you know, like buy volume, yeah. Buy, buy volume, right? Of buy volume consistently, right? So that obviously is, is, is gonna help the network get to What I would say is it's endgame, right? i-in my opinion, you know, you know Bitcoin is early when there's volatility Right? And in fact, you know, what, where, where we know, when we know it's mature is when five percent of, you know, people are getting, or, or people are getting five percent of their salary in Bitcoin, and that has basically no impact to the price. Oh, that just acts as a stabilizing factor to the, to, to it. And that's, you know, I mean, in my opinion, that's when people would spend, because who, you know, most people don't want to spend Bitcoin when they feel like it's still early, right? And" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "28:37", "start": 1716.95, "text": "Back to the show in a moment. This show is brought to you by mempool dot space, the leading Bitcoin and blockchain visualizer that you can host and run for yourself. So with mempool dot space, you can go there and target the fee for your transaction. You can also take a look at the mempool there and see what are the transaction fees in terms of low priority, medium or high priority and all kinds of statistics related to the mempool, as well as mining pools, and also they've got a lightning explorer. So there's all kinds of features there that you can go and see. See, they've recently brought out v3, so they've got some new features there on that also. For example, mempool blocks are scrollable and keep an eye out for the mempool accelerator. This is going to be a useful tool for those of you who have transactions that are further back in the backlog and you need a way to accelerate them. So keep an eye out for more detail there and go find out more over at mempool dot space. When it comes to hardware and securing your Bitcoin, you need to go to coinkite dot com. Coinkite make the Mark IV cold card. This is an amazing device, it's ultra secure, it doesn't even have to phone home in order to set up. You can't say that about every other Bitcoin hardware device out there, because with the cold card, you can just use it with different software wallets that don't necessarily have to be the co- the Coinkite manufactured wallet. You can just use it with Sparrow or Specter Desktop. or Electrum or Nunchuk or various other wallets out there. The Mark IV is a great device, it has two secure elements, it's got NFC support, but the NFC is off by default, and it's a very reliable former that has a range of features that can be tuned for your individual security needs. So it can work for a beginner by just directly plugging it in, but if you're intermediate or advanced, of course, you can use airgapping and multisig and all of those advanced features. Go to CoinKite dot com and get yourself some cold cards. Using the code LIVERA for a discount. And now back to the show. And to be honest, for a lot of them, it is gonna be early for some time to come, right? Yeah. I mean, as I, you know, I'm curious if you've seen different numbers, but, you know, you see these numbers thrown around, okay, there's a hundred million Bitcoin users or two hundred million if you count across some of these big exchanges, but don't forget a lot of that is custodial use, and some of that may be common, like there may be users who are" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "30:58", "start": 1857.72, "text": "and so then if you look at the actual unique on-chain Bitcoin users who are self-custodying, we're probably under ten million, we might even be under five million globally, in terms of self-custody, that is. So, I mean, the global population is eight billion, right? So, you know, we're still tiny. Of course, I think it's gonna grow, and I think it's gonna have these big cycles, and just like it has had historically, there'll be these big cycles, and people, it, you know, we hit like a" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "31:27", "start": 1887.2, "text": "It'll be, and maybe that's what drives more Lightning and more, maybe more ARC or other, L2 conversations and, you know, of course, some of those users will go custodial, but of course, we wanna encourage, as you said, we wanna encourage as many of them to be self-custodial as possible, right? But, I guess speaking of hyperbitcoinization, I'm sure you've probably got some thoughts on how things went with El Salvador turning on the Bitcoin law, but at the same time, a lot of people weren't really educated about Bitcoin Thoughts on how that went, and did you see anything in terms of your numbers or your users there?" }, { "speaker": "earning_bitcoin_remote_working", "time": "32:02", "start": 1921.97, "text": "I would say, I'll, I'll start with my, my numbers and my users. I would say that, that it wasn't really a huge effect. And, and, but the reason why it wasn't a huge effect was not because it, it's more related to like the markets of remote work than it is related to the level of Bitcoin adoption in the country. So there's just not a lot of remote workers in El Salvador compared to, you know, a lot of, a lot of A lot of other countries, you know, getting paid from the US or whatever. But, you know, we have seen, we have seen, we have seen an uptick. I mean, it was, it went from like nothing to, to something. But, in terms of falling, I mean, you know, I think, I can't remember when it, when they, they did it and when they purchased the Bitcoin. Obviously, I, I, I think that they're pretty down right now, if I'm not mistaken, and that obviously has an impact on, Getting their ability to pay their debt and, and, and all this stuff. I'm actually good friends with some of the people who are, behind the, who, who are behind the technology of the Chivo wallet, which is the, the Alpha Point guys. not the first iteration, which apparently was like a terrible rollout, but the second iteration of it, and they say the, the stats they gave was like ninety percent of the population have, like, has interacted with the wallet. Really huge number, right? And that, that's surprising and really cool. I- I, I love that you can go there and just like spend it at like a Starbucks or McDonald's, right? That's really cool. But, you know, I, I, I can't say that I'm really up to date as to what is the usage today in El Salvador? Right. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. But again, I view, I view Bitcoin today as a savings mechanism, and I, I, I almost feel like it, that is what it's supposed to be, right? I, I look at it as digital gold, and digital gold is essentially just a, you know, a, a way for you to store your money. without governments being able to print more of it." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "34:05", "start": 2045.32, "text": "yeah. The use is hodling. You know, you know." }, { "speaker": "earning_bitcoin_remote_working", "time": "34:07", "start": 2047.28, "text": "Yeah, the use, the use is hod-hodling. That, that is the main use case. It's just that once it's-- Right now, it's like we think that it could go to a hundred K, two hundred fifty K, a million, right? but at some point, you know, it's going to be closer to gold. You know, maybe it'll be, you know, two percent or, you know, like, like Or grow, grow at average global inflation, right? which is, you know, not, not nearly the same degree or magnitude of growth. And once we are, once we're at that point, you know, people are saving their money in it, they'll feel like, okay, well, I'm not, you know, saving for it to, to grow substantially, I'm just saving to buy a house, to buy a car, to, to buy something big, and then I'll spend it there. Or maybe, you know, you put all your money there because you're I know this money's not gonna be inflated away, and I know I can spend it with the Lightning Network, right? And, you know, that, that's really the point that, that I think there'll be much more of a spending adoption, right, when it's there." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "35:13", "start": 2113.21, "text": "Yeah, for sure. no, I think that is the likely path. Now, of course, there will be, there'll be a small but growing segment, right, of day-to-day spenders, right, people who use, as an example, Bitrefill and things like this, right, who are" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "35:30", "start": 2130.38, "text": "Grow, but I think maybe on the pathway there, you've got different segments or groups, right? You're the Bitcoin saving, right? The holders, right? That's probably the important one. But maybe for you, the remote working is actually a really important sort of, demographic or segment that if remote working were to grow, to continue to grow, then you're-- then you continue to grow as well, right?" }, { "speaker": "earning_bitcoin_remote_working", "time": "35:54", "start": 2153.56, "text": "Yeah, exactly. I mean," }, { "speaker": "earning_bitcoin_remote_working", "time": "35:57", "start": 2157.16, "text": "obviously, obviously spending, spending is great Great. And, and what we've seen with the growth of remote work, right, is that there is kind of a constant percentage usage of Bitcoin, right? I think, we're at about Seventeen percent," }, { "speaker": "earning_bitcoin_remote_working", "time": "36:15", "start": 2174.75, "text": "of like the remote workers getting that amount of volume in Bitcoin. And this is like, they have the choice to get their local currency, to get stablecoin, to get Bitcoin. So it is a pretty high, pretty high percentage relative to, you know, what you might think, 'cause we're not, we're not just like servicing Bitcoin companies or crypto companies. actually, most of our companies are, like main street companies. Whether it be like a tech company or like a professional services company, you know, that might traditionally-- these, these are kind of the companies that traditionally have remote workers, and they're using us, and the employees are, are, are electing to get a portion of their salary in Bitcoin, and I think that's, that's going to continue to be the case as, as we grow, right? Especially, especially as, as the use cases for Bitcoin continue to grow." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "37:06", "start": 2226.11, "text": "Yeah, and I think, it sort of, some of this stuff aligns a little bit with like the sovereign individ Individual and ideas like that where, you know, people can just jurisdiction shop, right? They can go to some other jurisdiction, whether it's low taxes or better quality of life or, you know, less COVID hysteria, less climate hysteria, who knows, and they can go there and just get paid with Bitcoin and sort of float a little bit above the regime there, in, you know, or just kind of not be as impacted by what's going on because they can just deal with Bitcoin, right? So that's kind of interesting to see. I'm also curious If you have any thoughts on Bitcoin as contrasted with stablecoins and sort of the growth that you've seen, in those, right? Because even, even a few years back, many of us thought, \"Hey, these stablecoins are gonna get shut down by the government,\" you know? And maybe some of them are, you know, we can't, you can't, totally minimize that risk, like it is possible also. But I'm curious if you have any comments on what you've seen sort of Bitcoin compared to stablecoins." }, { "speaker": "earning_bitcoin_remote_working", "time": "38:09", "start": 2288.75, "text": "I would say that stablecoins are pretty I, I, so I, I actually look at, stablecoins as a Trojan horse to Bitcoin. so what, what, what do I mean by that? Well, you know, there's, there's sort of two main barriers to entry to Bitcoin. The first is volatility, and the second is public-private key cryptography, right? And You know, on the, on the trading side and then the US side, what we see is that a lot of people, care-- they, they want the volatility, but they don't want the private public key management. And so they, they, they offload that to a custodian so they can get access to the volatility stuff. but what we've seen with remote work and stablecoins is it, it's, it's, it's, often these people around the world aren't ready for the volatility of Bitcoin, but they want access To a currency that's not their local currency, and so they'll get paid in a stablecoin, and then they'll actually learn about public-private key cryptography and they'll leverage it and do non-custodial stuff. And so what that Why I see that as a Trojan horse is because, you know, in my mind, it's an eventuality that the US dollar will, not be, not be the dominant currency anymore. And when, when that happens, you know, what currency is gonna come up from the ashes? You know, you and I both, both believe that's gonna be Bitcoin. And so when that happens, if you are in a world where you already know public-private key cryptography with stablecoins, it's just a click of a button to get to Bitcoin, and now you are in full control of your finances, And but where we are today, a lot of these remote workers, they're just not ready to get like their entire salaries in Bitcoin. They want something more stable than that, you know, because people don't-- are not thinking on like four year, ten year strategies. They're thinking, how am I going to pay for rent this month? How, you know, what are my expenses in a week, in a month, in six months? And, you know, when you aren't barely saving or living paycheck to paycheck I, in my opinion, this isn't a great Bitcoin use case, right? Because the, the volatility on the one month and the two week, you know, and the, and sort of the, the, the three and six month use case is so high that if you're barely able to spend, you don't have a long enough time horizon to get you to where Bitcoin's gonna be. And so people then choose, okay, well, I want some of the speed advantage, that Bitcoin has and some of the arbitrage, you know, that's going on Using stablecoins or getting out of their own local currency, and that's, that's sort of where they, where they sit, where they land. but again, the, the surprising thing is that still we're seeing about sixteen percent of the volume going to these remote workers being in Bitcoin, which I think is, is high. stablecoin though is also, is actually, it's, it's higher than, than, than Bitcoin because of this particular phenomenon." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "41:05", "start": 2465.31, "text": "Yeah. So, yeah, again, I'm not hating or whatever, I, I recognize that for some of users out there, they are just simply not in an economic position where they are able to save, right? a, a lot, or, or a big percentage of their salary or their income, but I think, and I think of them as maybe they're not ready for Bitcoin yet, but obviously we want as many people to be ready for Bitcoin, and we wanna promote. So personally, I, I never promote stablecoins, I promote Bitcoin, obviously, but I, I am trying to at least try to understand what's happening out there so that we're not blind to what's going and I, I guess in some cases it may be that they will need to sell to local cash in their market, whatever market they're in around the world, they, you know, may not be able to pay their rent with Bitcoin or with stablecoin, and they have to sell it for physical cash, and that means they need to go find a guy, you know, they need an OTC trader, a cambio, they need, they need someone they, they can go and sell that for physical cash and then pay their rent, buy their food, et cetera, pay their bills. Although I will say some of the downsides are of some of the stablecoins existing in a way is that, you know, rewind the clock to twenty seventeen, Bitcoin was the reserve asset of the kind of, you know, I, I don't like the term crypto, I know it's Bitcoin and shitcoins as far as I'm concerned, but It was seen as like the reserve, you know, it was what people counted their profits in. But then I think stablecoins sort of took some of that volume and some of that because it sort of gave people almost like a false promise in a way, because really we all know they're not, they're not decentralized, right? They don't have the same qualities of Bitcoin. But maybe many of these users around the world, they understand that risk. And look, if they understand the risk and they, they, they are comfortable with that risk, that okay, the stablecoin could rug them or" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "42:58", "start": 2577.91, "text": "And, you know, so be it, right? Like they know the risk they're taking it, and maybe for them, they would rather that risk than trying to trust their local fiat banks, or it's literally impossible to get paid, you know, through their normal fiat banking rails. So, you know, I've tried to have, awareness of that, right?" }, { "speaker": "earning_bitcoin_remote_working", "time": "43:14", "start": 2593.86, "text": "Yeah, I mean, you know, sometimes, sometimes, 'cause with the, a lot of, like, the stablecoins that, that we offer mostly are centralized, centralized pegged, right? And so, you Trust like the US regulatory body over the regulatory body in my own local country, right? On the banking system, which, you know, obviously with Bitcoin, it's like you don't have to trust any regulatory body, but, you know, people may are just not necessarily ready for a hundred percent of their salary on such a radical concept. Instead, they're just thinking like, \"How do I pay? How do I, how do I feed my kids? \" You know? And like, \"What's the closest thing that, that's easy for me to comprehend that make it easy for me to pay It's really what they're thinking about. And, you know, the, as you said, like, like, w-when it, when it comes to like shitcoinery, we don't, we don't really do any shitcoinery. We're not-- It's not like we're trying to go to like the, the, the people who are trying to figure out how to their kids and say, \"Hey, go purchase this shitcoin and you're gonna become a millionaire and that's how you're gonna do it.\" It's like, no, you're gonna, you're just" }, { "speaker": "earning_bitcoin_remote_working", "time": "44:25", "start": 2664.79, "text": "gonna In a dollar pegged, you know, token on this ominous technology called a blockchain." }, { "speaker": "earning_bitcoin_remote_working", "time": "44:39", "start": 2679.1, "text": "Yeah, yeah, I mean," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "44:40", "start": 2680.4, "text": "yeah, I get that. I think, yeah, so it is kind of the, but as remote working grows and as the awareness and desire to huddle Bitcoin grows, that's really, that's really where I'm seeing the growth pathway come here. and so I guess in some ways for you and like your business in Bitwage, it's sort of like you're trying to get connected up to HR and payroll because really, you don't care whether they are a Bitcoin Bitcoiner who came to you for it, like you just want more people to be able to do it, and then inside their own internal HR system, payroll system, oh, I want to get paid Bitcoin, then you're, you're getting new people. That's kind of the- Exactly." }, { "speaker": "earning_bitcoin_remote_working", "time": "45:21", "start": 2721.4, "text": "And, and you know, we're, we're actually not trying to convince people. I mean, yes, I provide education on why Bitcoin, but, but, but- That, that's like a personal thing. When I think about Bitwage, it's not that we're trying to necessarily be the first educational step to Bitcoin, right? I think of it as the second educational step. Once you've bought into Bitcoin, you know, how do you, how do you sort of turn it into a thing that's regular, and doesn't po-- you know, create a lot of short-term risk for yourself, right? and getting part of your sal- Salary in Bitcoin is, is kind of, is kind of that thing. I mean, but, you know, we don't-- what we don't want is the grandma who decides to go a hundred percent all in because the price went up so much, right? We don't really want that. What we want is like, oh, I heard about this thing, it seems cool. Oh, I see that my, my salary, like I can get part of my salary, and why don't I turn on five percent or ten percent of my salary to be in Bitcoin, right? And that's, that's like, that's my hope and dream, is that when, w- we're there. So when you get onboarded to your employer and they say, hey, you can do this, you're like, oh, you know, why not? Let me test this out with like" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "46:45", "start": 2804.9, "text": "And I think the other angle is for people who can't easily buy it in their own country, right? Because if they can earn it, that's like another easy way, because maybe they're in a country where maybe there's not really good Bitcoin exchanges or they're giving you really bad rates or it's not easy. Because here's the other angle, there's a big, you know, debanking angle, right? Which I'm sure you're seeing, you know, Nigel Farage obviously, is a famous case, although that was maybe a bit more political, but nevertheless, if you are Fiat banking system, just simply being in some other country and just being able to accept Bitcoin is, it's a big win, right? so I'm curious if you're seeing that as maybe that's like another growth area for you, is like the more the fiat de-banking happens, the more people come to you." }, { "speaker": "earning_bitcoin_remote_working", "time": "47:30", "start": 2850.01, "text": "I mean, yes, but it's not such a huge- It's not like a huge, you know," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "47:36", "start": 2855.57, "text": "like factor for you, yeah?" }, { "speaker": "earning_bitcoin_remote_working", "time": "47:37", "start": 2856.61, "text": "Cataclysmic event that's happening, right? It, it, so, you know, it, it happens and people come to us for it. they're ta-- people sometimes come to us because they, they are volunteer, voluntarily debanking themselves, right? Like getting your salary in Bitcoin is actually like the only, it, it's like one of the only ways for you to reliably acquire Bitcoin without a bank account, right? So if you wanted to, like- To, to, to, to get the unbanked on the Bitcoin standard, Bitcoin payroll is, is the answer, right? I mean, the alternative is cash to Bitcoin ATMs, and you're just gonna, you know, get robbed that way. I mean, that's just, that's just like payday loan industry basically, the Bitcoin ATMs, it's like robbing you. But with this mechanism, you know, you're, you're able to acquire your Bitcoin Without having a bank account, never had a bank account, and, and, and do it in a reasonable way." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "48:33", "start": 2913.18, "text": "Gotcha. Yeah. Okay, yeah, that's interesting to see and, yeah, hopefully we'll see, more people start stacking. I mean, for me, but, you know, I want more people to just self-custody Bitcoin, right? However they get it. Yeah. Whether they mine it, whether they buy it with us at Swan, whether they, you know, whether they, buy it peer-to-peer, whether they earn it, like at least starting their rabbit hole journey and going down that rabbit hole journey, and, and, you know, then I, I see it like that is what enables this kind of broader vision of just being able to, you know, transact peer to peer, and, you know, I think that'd be a really cool thing to see. So." }, { "speaker": "earning_bitcoin_remote_working", "time": "49:17", "start": 2957.38, "text": "Yeah. Awesome." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "49:18", "start": 2958.48, "text": "Yeah. Alright, well, yeah, I guess that's pretty much a pretty good, spot to wrap up there. So if you got any, any, closing thoughts in terms of you know, with, Bitcoin and, you know, why should people, consider, consider getting paid in Bitcoin?" }, { "speaker": "earning_bitcoin_remote_working", "time": "49:34", "start": 2974.32, "text": "Yeah, I mean, I, I, I'm excited for what's around the corner, right? E-every day we see, we see a lot of, I mean, I'm not excited about this generally, but for Bitcoin, you know, we see a lot of risk happening to the US dollar with, like, you know, all, all the br- the attack from BRICS, right? that, that's happening, and them thinking about creating their own currencies, right? to challenge the dollar. I think that, you know, with the halving that's coming soon, there's going to be, an interesting opportunity, and it'd be, I Will the cycles continue, right? that we've seen over and over and over again. and, you know, why, why, why start getting paid in Bitcoin today? Well, I guess 'cause it's, it's, it's super easy, it benefits you, it benefits everyone, and it's a very low risk way for you to get five, ten, fifteen, twenty, or a hundred percent of your salary in Bitcoin. So, yeah, thanks for having me. You can check out BitWage at, bitwage dot com." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "50:36", "start": 3036.31, "text": "Fantastic, thanks, Jonathan So I hope you found that episode informative, and of course, I'm keen to see more people who are aware that they can actually earn Bitcoin even if their employer doesn't necessarily do Bitcoin payouts. So go and check out the show notes at stephanlivera.com. If you enjoyed the show, make sure to share it out there, and of course, I will see you in the citadels." } ] }