{ "episodeId": "SLP57", "speakers": { "stephan": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "host", "tag": "STEPHAN" }, "alex_adelman": { "name": "Alex Adelman", "role": "guest", "tag": "ALEX" } }, "segments": [ { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:10", "start": 9.57, "text": "And we're live. Hi guys, this is Stefan Livera podcast. Today this is episode fifty seven, and so the podcast is focused on On Bitcoin's economics and technology. So today we're trying something a little different, and we're trying to put some of this material on YouTube rather than as an audio-only podcast, which is the typical way I've done these in the past. So just to quickly introduce my guest today, he is Alex Adelman. He is the CEO and founder of Lolly, which is a Bitcoin company that enables you to essentially earn back Bitcoin whenever you shop online. So I've been I'm impressed about the way Alex has been doing some things with his company, and I wanted to get him on and just have a discussion about things like the psychology of newbies to Bitcoin and how can newbies be interested to join and, be enticed to come along and earn Bitcoin. So first of all, thanks for coming on the show, Alex." }, { "speaker": "alex_adelman", "time": "01:11", "start": 71.12, "text": "Thank you for having me." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:13", "start": 73.1, "text": "Yeah, so look, let's, get it started with- Discussion around the psychology of Bitcoin for newbies. How does, in your view, how does like a newbie think about Bitcoin?" }, { "speaker": "alex_adelman", "time": "01:25", "start": 85.05, "text": "Yeah, so it's, it's, it's, first of all, it's way different than on like crypto or Bitcoin Twitter. I think a lot of times, we, you know, having been in the space and constantly learning and, compounding this knowledge that we, you know, we've gained over the years, we forget what it's like to first learn about Bitcoin. And, and so when we were Creating Lolly, in, you know, in the early days, about a year ago, we had to think like really hard about like, who, who is the customer, who is the, consumer that has never heard about Bitcoin or just heard about Bitcoin and is literally Googling for the first time, \"How do I get Bitcoin? Like, how, what is Bitcoin?\" And When you start to bombard somebody with keys and block size and, and all the different coins out there, it's just, it's overwhelming. And so I went, I don't know, I like, and I got into Bitcoin about five years ago and was just fascinated with, like- I mean, e-everything, but really like the, the technology, it was, it, it was, it was one of the most transformative technologies I've ever seen, and I, you know, I've been building since I was twelve. Like, I've just ne- it's, it's sort of like the most incredible thing I've ever seen, and we're so lucky that it's a part of like our generation and our life right now. And I would just sort of like, like just- Like a magnet, just sort of like drawn to this thing. And, and so, when my mom started texting me, my sister, my friends from back home in North Carolina started texting me, \"How do I get it? you know, what do I do?\" I didn't have a solution for them. I, I didn't want to tell them to go invest in it, because that's risky. I, I don't give financial advice for stocks, I don't give it fin-- financial advice for anything. So why would I give someone financial advice for Bitcoin? I After, you know, my, my team and I, were really talking about how do we solve this issue? you know, the, there's so many smart people out there solving the infrastructure issues, but who is gonna solve the distribution issue? Who's gonna solve the education issue? And we've done a great job as a community to bring Bitcoin to probably around fifteen to twenty million people. how do you bring it to the next hundred million, the next billion people? And you can't just give them an- Address and expect them to go learn it. You have to give, like, give them Bitcoin, you have to teach them. And, and so, yeah, that's how we came up with Lolly. We made it really, really simple. We took something that a billion people do in the world, shop online, and made it incredibly easy for people to, earn Bitcoin when they do something they're already doing." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "04:10", "start": 250.05, "text": "Fantastic. I love the fact that you're really looking at this in terms of big numbers, right? So, look, Bitcoin today is ten years old. We're about About ten million, or, or, whatever it is, you know, fifteen, twenty million, whoever. But really to get the next number, it's, it's gonna have to be something different and even better as an approach One thing that we can consider is what, what drew us into Bitcoin, and do you think what would draw-- could that be the same thing that would draw in more, like the next wave? Or do you actually think it needs to be something different?" }, { "speaker": "alex_adelman", "time": "04:46", "start": 286.04, "text": "It's a great question, and, and we think about that a lot, is like, what is the value that Bitcoin had to the early adopters, and what is the value that it has to the next phase of adopters, When we started, you know, concepting for, for Lolly, you know, I went, I went back home to North Carolina, I, I went to Omaha, Nebraska, I went to Minneapolis, to Chicago, to, you know, all over the country, and I talked to the people that, you know, we've been talking to, you know, since I've been-- since I built my last company, and, and we asked them like, you know, what do you know? Like, what do-- you know, what, what does it I'm not sure what, like, why. And, and so, you know, we, we really had to say like, like people were like, \"What, what can I do with it? \" And, and then we sort of reversed the questions and said like, \"Well, you know, what is, what is money? Like, what is money to you? \" And one of my biggest takeaways, in talking to, you know, potential first, like, early users was that people didn't know what money is. And, and once you start- The value of money, start to see where money breaks down, then you start to see, how money serves you, and what-- and, and there's lots of types of money in the world, right? Like there's hundreds of currencies, there's, tons of stores of value, depending on how you, how you look at it. You have to convince somebody that there's a better store of value than the US dollar, than the, you know, Japanese yen. Like, how do you convince somebody to do that? And I think you have to just get them involved. You have to teach them about sound money. You have to teach somebody like why it's important. and we're lucky, like- Why I think this is the time, and it, you know, it wasn't twenty years ago, it wasn't, it's not twenty years from now. Like, we are frustrated. We're frustrated with our governments, we're frustrated with our banks, we're frustrated with, you know, the, military, we're frustrated with all these things around us, and we've never been in a world that has had so much information just thrown at us. Like, we literally can look up anything in the world, and we're just overwhelmed by it, and, and we're, we And so when, when you finally start to realize like what, you know, what the value of money is in the world and, and who controls it, you start to realize you have very little control of the money that you thought previously was your money. So you start to ask questions, and then you start to see, well, if there's no good answers, if there's no alternative to the US dollar, then what is there? And Bitcoin came about, and then it was just like, okay, well, here's the answer, and it's in, you know, code, and it's, it's, it's just out there, it just, it just is. It's just this beautiful thing that we can all use. And We've never been, like, you know, in addition to information, we've also never been so connected. So the internet brought information, the internet brought communication, and then we're, we're on these like old rails that have been around for decades, and, you know, and then we're like, wait a second, we can't, we can't actually transfer money, we can't actual-- actually transfer value, and yet we're all hyper-connected. And so there's this, there's just like the perfect time where there's this tension, and then there's an answer with Bitcoin. And that's why I'm really excited about it." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "08:09", "start": 489.31, "text": "Fantastic, yeah. And now let me throw another slightly different way of thinking about it at you. So obviously I agree with many of the things you have said. Now, many people aren't going to go to the level of understanding, \"Oh, the economics and why do I hold money and so on,\" right? Because obviously there's a certain sound money camp, Bitcoin Austrian group who are into that, and we love that. But maybe the average person out there may not be so interested in that. However, there may be another reason why they might be interested from a psychology point of view, and one of my friends, Vijay Boyapati, prior guest of the podcast, also mentions this idea of being mentally captured by Bitcoin, right? And I think that's something that you as a company, may help trigger that in people by helping them own a small amount of Bitcoin and then potentially, if they see a next, see another bull run happen, that's at that, at that point, they may now come in from more of a speculation point of view. Do you have any comments on that?" }, { "speaker": "alex_adelman", "time": "09:08", "start": 548.38, "text": "Yeah, so for better or worse, people are attracted to the price of Bitcoin, and it totally is, like, you know, we, I'd be lying if I said it wasn't, You know, something that our, our, our users think about, like they want to get into Bitcoin because they've seen other people make money from it, and it, it, it's, The way that I like to think about it is, it's a, it's a touch point. It, it, it's like how many touch points does the US dollar have? Like, you see, you use it every single day, you think about it all, you know, you think about it with transferring, but you don't actually think what's behind it. But when You can take a daily action like buying coffee, getting groceries, go, you know, booking a trip, getting a hotel, whatever these like daily touchpoints are, and you can Provide someone with a reminder that Bitcoin exists and that it's, it's like, you know, what it is, and you can educate people with that, and then you can say, \"Okay, well, here's the price, and it's going up and down.\" It's a feature, not a bug, of, like, over the US dollar. We all know what, like, one dollar is one dollar, for, you know, through the US dollar. And similarly, like, you know, Bitcoin, with just the perspective that our users have, they're looking at Bitcoin It, it's sort of this dopamine rush. And so, you know, we have to lean into that, and we have to, you know, get people excited about Bitcoin, by the price. Like I think that we look at the price as like a, an, an extra, touch point for the user to, engage with Lolly, to engage with Bitcoin, and it'll get them excited. And clearly, you know, the more people that, that get involved with it, that learn about it, yeah, I think that, that sort of has a comp" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "10:53", "start": 653.15, "text": "Fan, fa-fantastic. And so now, let's talk about that distinction then between earning Bitcoin versus buying Bitcoin." }, { "speaker": "alex_adelman", "time": "11:03", "start": 663.44, "text": "Yeah. So when I first got into, when I first learned about Bitcoin, it all I knew is that you could mine it. There, I-- it was like, that's, that's all I, I was like, you know, I remember Googling it, like, how do I get it? And, and I- I was, you know, building a company at the time, I was like super fucking busy. I, can I-- Okay." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "11:23", "start": 682.96, "text": "Yep." }, { "speaker": "alex_adelman", "time": "11:25", "start": 685.02, "text": "so I, I was like super, super busy, and, and, but I just was like fascinated with it. So with my last company, we were, you know, building the democratization of commerce. We were, trying to create a technology that connected the entire world through commerce, gave everybody the ability to buy and sell anywhere. And then I learned about Bitcoin, and it was like, wait a second, that is native in a currency and This currency connects the entire world from like day one. But how do you use it? And, and so I didn't buy, you know, a mining rig. I wasn't one of those like, you know, super early adopters. I didn't, you know, set up a node, and, you know, I wish I did. And, and then Coinbase came out and gave me a easy on ramp to like, you know, go buy a Bitcoin. And, like, it was really exciting. I was like, okay, now I can pay attention to it with the price. I was checking it, you know, five times a day, and I was like, fascinated with, with, like, what it could do. And I was sending money to friends, and it just got really exciting. Then, you know, then I learned about private keys, and then I, I just went deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole," }, { "speaker": "alex_adelman", "time": "12:33", "start": 752.65, "text": "All I needed was a little bit. It wasn't, you know, like I didn't, you know, invest my life savings in it. It's not about that. Most people shouldn't do that. I don't think anyone should do that. It's gonna take this slow transition. And so to answer your question, I think that the first phase was mining, the next phase was in-investing. And if you look at i-investing, just, you know, as, as a, As a" }, { "speaker": "alex_adelman", "time": "12:59", "start": 779.27, "text": "group of people that invest, it's a very small population. It's a very small population that has the money to invest and that should ever invest. you have to have like, you know, a knowledge about, you know, what you're investing in, and it's, it's a risky game to invest in anything like that, you know, that is volatile, and especially as volatile as, as, as Bitcoin is. And, and so the next phase, I think, is about earning. It's, it's trading your time Your money for, something that you can then earn, in the future. So I think it's a very like low friction, low threshold, low risk way of taking something that you're already doing and earning. So, I think that, like, we're gonna take this group of people that is, you know, that shops online, gives them a little, a way to earn and, you know, have this sort of like faucet into, you know, into Bitcoin. And then the, the next phase is like, okay, let's give them the ability to buy Buy more Bitcoin, and every time you go buy a hundred dollars worth of groceries, and you go get, you know, five, you know, thou- let's actually probably- Twenty thousand satoshis, then you're, you're constantly like shifting from fiat to Bitcoin slowly but surely." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "14:15", "start": 855.44, "text": "Yeah, that's a fascinating way to put it. And, you know, what's funny is these amounts may seem very small in satoshis, right? So, as we know, one Bitcoin is made up of one hundred million satoshis, right? And people have done the numbers, I can't remember the exact numbers, but it's something like if you split twenty-one million Bitcoin divided by the world population population, the answer is something like two hundred and eighty thousand satoshis, which today is like tiny. It's like, I think it's like, I don't know, fifteen dollars or something. It's tiny, not even, maybe not even that. So it, it's kind of, it kind of gives you that perspective because people, when they're shopping with Lolly, they're gonna get back a percentage in Bitcoin, in satoshis, and that may seem small today, but in five, ten, fifteen years' time, that actually may be a reasonable amount of money." }, { "speaker": "alex_adelman", "time": "15:07", "start": 907.1, "text": "It, it, entirely. And, and I, I think that, so, you know, it's, it's a," }, { "speaker": "alex_adelman", "time": "15:15", "start": 914.95, "text": "it's important to understand the psychology of people outside of Bitcoin. Like, there's a lot of, okay, so, so my last company was acquired by Ebates, and Ebates is the largest cash back, company in the US, maybe, maybe World, don't quote me on that one. but largest company, largest cashback company in the US. And while I was there, we learned a lot about like the user psychology of just shopping online, like You know, I've been building in the commerce space for seven years now, have met every retailer here in North America many times over, and have been, you know, fascinated with, with commerce for a long time now. And part of, you know, building technology in the space is you have to understand who your customer is and how they shop. And so my, my customer for the last like seven years, you know, the consumer that I've been studying isn't, isn't the, the Bitcoin consumer. Like, that's just, you know, on a personal side, just that's Me necessarily, it's who your shopper is. And, and so the, while I think there's like, you know, the Bitcoin maximalists like might not shop a lot online, they travel a lot, they are, you know, they're get-- everybody has to eat, they have to get groceries, and so they've shifted from like Amazon to Jet to get groceries, they've shifted from like, you know, Home Depot to Overstock for like, you know, home goods. Like, they've, they've-- like, I don't think people realize, like, people have made a- A lot of money using Lolly, it's not an insignificant amount. And Ebates, like, if you looked over time, there was, there was users that made thousands and thousands of dollars, like, every year from their purchases. like, people have gotten better at-- it's, it's kind of funny, like, I see all our users come in, I see, I'm, I'm on every support ticket, and Like our users have gotten better at, at earning Bitcoin than I have using my own like, it's, it's a funny thing. It's like I, you build something and you think you're gonna be the best at using it, but like people have learned like how to make more Bitcoin, like using our own technology and like stacking different, you know, points and everything. It's, it's pretty cool to, to watch. And we have not given out an insignificant amount of Bitcoin, especially to the, like, I would say that our, our, you know, it's our, Bitcoin maximalists, fifty percent people brand new to Bitcoin, and, and like one compounds the other. Like we, I think we're the first app that somebody can like send to their mom, their sister, their friends from back home and say, \"You, you can earn Bitcoin now. Like, this is the easiest thing. You need your email, and that's it. Like, you start earning and you just shop as you normally would. It's dead simple, and people have earned a lot using it.\"" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "17:55", "start": 1075.23, "text": "Yeah, I think one point you raised there, it's a really good one, is that Obviously, not everyone is monitoring Bitcoin Twitter and listening to Bitcoin podcasts and watching Bitcoin YouTubes, but if you're the type who is, like, let's say you're a more hardcore Bitcoiner, chances are out of your group of friends, if someone comes to you and asks you, that you will be the one that they will come and ask to, \"Uh, how do I do this? How do I get Bitcoin?\" And people who are, quote unquote, hardcore Bitcoiners need a way to point their friends down, and, you know, Lolly can be an example of Try, one way to just get your friends who aren't so into it, just to try and get started with it. And a- ultimately, it's that, concept that I was mentioning with Vijay Boyapati before, it's that people get mentally captured, right? Once they're in and they've sort of seen it, then they can start to really see the, see why Bitcoin is better money. by f- like obviously first by playing that sort of speculation game, then they start to understand why it actually might be a better, better money. And that's on us," }, { "speaker": "alex_adelman", "time": "18:58", "start": 1137.93, "text": "like if we, you know, we have all these users that are, like, I mean, our-- I, I'll brag on our team a little bit, but our, our support team's incredible. Like, you know, that's the world we come from. And one of the things that I think is lacking in, in the, in the, decentralized technology world is like, there's, I, I mean, customer support is, is shit. Like, I, I, I remember, like, you know, working with-- I six months to get back to me. You can't have, like, I, I wouldn't send my mom to that exchange, like, I wouldn't send my sister to that exchange. You need great customer service, so we've invested in customer service, from day one, like, we're, we're educating our consumers. Like, we have mom from, from like Michigan, like, the other day, she was like, \"You know, can you explain this thing to me? Can you send me some resources?\" And so we, we put together a bunch of resources and we, we" }, { "speaker": "alex_adelman", "time": "19:57", "start": 1196.77, "text": "Because they saw Bitcoin on the news, on Fox News, on MSNBC, and then they, they, they're like, \"Okay, well, how do I, how do I earn it?\" They find Lolly, or a friend tells them about Lolly, it piques their interest, and then they're like, \"Okay, I wanna go earn some.\" Then you have to educate them. So, sort of, we think about it as like the consumer funnel. Who is the user? Like, similar to any technology, I mean, it's, it's, it's not all too different than really anything. There's a funnel of, of users that are-- that know Bitcoin, we don't need to educate them, they, you know, they're fine. Some of the stuff that we might educate them might be even, you know, too elementary. But then we have this other group of users that we have to educate them, we have to" }, { "speaker": "alex_adelman", "time": "20:39", "start": 1238.9, "text": "journalists, and, and content writers from like, you know, Buzzfeed and, and PopSugar and these fun, publications about how to humanize Bitcoin, how to talk about it. you know, we're, we're building games, we're building these like easy onramps to just teach people about Bitcoin, and, and I'm like Super excited about the next like six months, stuff that we're gonna be releasing. going back to your original question about psychology, and, and sort of, bifurcating these like two user groups and like, you know, we, we have- we have this user that we need to educate on, and we have this user that like wants to earn more. The, the user that wants to earn more, that is the, you know, is the Bitcoin, maximalist, you have to give something for them too, because Them sharing Bitcoin has led to Bitcoin going up in value and more people knowing about it. They can send it to their friends, they can, you know, transact freely country to country. There's tons of value for them. But the psychology behind, you know, getting them involved is like, you can also earn by, like, sharing as well. So there's earn by sharing, and then there's earn by shopping. And we've really broken it down into those two parts, so we're serving everybody." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "21:52", "start": 1311.79, "text": "Yeah, that's fas- that's, yeah, that's a great way to think about it as well. I think it might be good now just to actually, i-if you wouldn't mind, just stepping through the, the product." }, { "speaker": "alex_adelman", "time": "22:03", "start": 1322.82, "text": "Oh, cool," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "22:04", "start": 1323.61, "text": "yeah. Yeah. So we might just do a quick screen share, but, I, I'm obviously cognizant, well, I have, you know, thousands of audio listeners, so we'll just try and explain as we go through as well, just to try and keep it, accessible for them as well." }, { "speaker": "alex_adelman", "time": "22:18", "start": 1337.59, "text": "Alright, can you see my screen?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "22:19", "start": 1338.93, "text": "Yes." }, { "speaker": "alex_adelman", "time": "22:20", "start": 1340.07, "text": "Okay. So, live demo, it's always, always fun. alright, so I load, jet dot com. I, Lolly comes up, I activate it, it tells me it's been activated, and now I can shop. I can buy groceries, I can buy, home decor, I can buy soap, whatever you're looking for, you can earn Bitcoin, you know, when you shop. So" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "22:52", "start": 1372.18, "text": "Yeah, so essentially it's just like a pop-up that comes in the top right when you go to the website and you can just activate it that way. So is that just basically a browser extension? I was gonna try myself, but obviously I'm in Australia, so I actually can't use, the product." }, { "speaker": "alex_adelman", "time": "23:07", "start": 1386.93, "text": "Yeah, so right now, here I'll share the, the full screen," }, { "speaker": "alex_adelman", "time": "23:16", "start": 1396.0, "text": "so I can show you the, the whole experience. can you see my screen?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "23:20", "start": 1400.27, "text": "Yep." }, { "speaker": "alex_adelman", "time": "23:22", "start": 1401.97, "text": "Okay, great. so when I activate, Veil Wallet, yeah, it's a, it's a browser extension. So the way, the way to, you go to lolly dot com" }, { "speaker": "alex_adelman", "time": "23:33", "start": 1413.09, "text": "And then you click through to download the Chrome extension. And then once you downloaded the Chrome extension, it'll just live in your browser, and when you go to, let's just say walmart dot com, place that, you know, everybody shops, it comes up, does it automatically, and, yeah, you can earn when you shop at Walmart. And then you can check your balance, you can see all these different, retailers, you can see exclusions and you can see how much you've earned, and then you can see your shopping history, and so it's tracking, you know, it shares, very transparent about like what, you know, what we're tracking, where, you know? Showing where you've, where you've shopped, you can share it with friends. yeah, we make it really easy. And then if you, want to, you know, go, go sort of deeper into the Lolly universe, you can shop all of our stores here. we have a whole list of all the stores. And this makes it really easy, there's actually a lot of stores on lolly dot com, that won't automatically pop up. So depending on the agreement that we have with the retailer, some like the, the popup that, that comes up, and then other ones, you know, want people to come to lolly dot com to, to shop. So, I think like, you know, if we go to SeatGeek, you can go buy tickets. we just try to make it really easy for people to earn with just about anything that you're" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "24:57", "start": 1496.88, "text": "Fantastic, yeah, it looks like a great, user interface as well. It's quite simple." }, { "speaker": "alex_adelman", "time": "25:03", "start": 1502.86, "text": "Thank you, yeah, we worked really hard on that." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "25:05", "start": 1505.29, "text": "Yeah, that's great. Alright, so look, I think it might be good to talk about then merchant adoption. So can you tell us a little bit of insight into how that's gone for you?" }, { "speaker": "alex_adelman", "time": "25:16", "start": 1516.02, "text": "Yeah, so, so, I think, you know, one of the things that I think my team, is absolutely incredible at is like, you know, we've, we've been building, technology in the commerce space for seven years now. So, we're-- and I should note, we're building Lolly with the same team as, as Cosmic. Cosmic was my last company. and- You know, when we built Cosmic, I think it was a pretty transformative technology. We were the early inventors of, of buy buttons, giving people the ability to buy anywhere. And, we talked to every retailer in, in North America, to, you know, to sell this technology and, you know, landed Like a lot, a lot of retailers, and ultimately got acquired by our biggest customer. And so, yeah, I think part of the thing I learned over the last seven years, and if I hadn't started causing relationships with retailers, Lolly would be a whole different story. We wouldn't have as many merchants, I wouldn't really understand the, the pain points of the merchants. And the same way that I think about psychology of the consumer, you have to think about the, the psychology of the, the merchant as well. Why do they- They want to play ball, like, why do they wanna be in this Bitcoin space? Like, they're fine in fiat, in the fiat world. Like, sure, like they, they pay their fees to the credit card companies, to the acquiring banks, but like, it works and like, it's secure. So how do you incentivize and change the psychology there, and incentivize them to actually play in our world? And that's, that's, I think, a, you know, a fascinating, you know, bit of like our, Success so far. We've give-- we, I think we have, more major merchant adoption than just about anybody, in, in the space, and we've worked really hard to get it over the last year. So where my conversation started about a year ago Was going to the retailers and really finding the pain points with, like, you know, fiat rails, understanding where, you know, where they were right now and, and who they have to pay and how much they, they pay. and, you know, we, we, we asked a lot of those same questions with Cosmic, but one of the biggest pain points right now is like everybody's competing with Amazon, and they want more customers, they want more shopping to be done, and, and like they, they are happy to bring in a new customer Like they don't quite care as much as you think they do about what they're paying with, what, like, why they're, they're shopping. They like really want more shoppers. So we came to them and said, \"Look, there's this whole community of people that want Bitcoin more than cash, more than the US dollar.\" We are gonna go build this technology that distributes Bitcoin to them, and we're gonna bring you these, these, you know, amazing unique, users, shoppers that are gonna take their dollars from other places and shop at your site because you're offering them Bitcoin and nobody else is. And so we, yeah, we, we, we've been able to, land, let's see, we launched with over five hundred merchants, took us about six to nine months of like really hard, you know, BD. and then since we launched, we've landed Another two hundred and fifty major merchants, since then. and so it's different for everybody, but the common, like shift in psychology for them is like, they look at it like points. Like they're giving points, and if you think of Bitcoin as points that you can use anywhere in the world with very little rules, like the point-- the, the rules are around the code, like it's, it exists out there, and I can go, I, I explain this to people, like I was in, you know, Thailand like a few months ago, and I was like, I went to a Bitcoin ATM and I exchanged my Bitcoin, and I was able to, like, use that, that, you know, Bitcoin anywhere in the world. It's points without barriers, and every retailer" }, { "speaker": "alex_adelman", "time": "28:58", "start": 1738.33, "text": "Like the conversation to get them to understand it and adopt it. The next phase, you know, that we're starting to talk to retailers about is actually accepting Bitcoin. So of all of our retailers, there's about about ten of seven hundred and fifty, and, you know, these like major Fortune five hundred, merchants that are accepting Bitcoin. And the next phase is about going to them and saying, like, \"Okay, we've shown you that there's, like, like, you know, Bitcoin, like, the community is loud, and we are, like, we're proud of what we've, you know, accomplished and what we've built and this future that we're building. So, we need to show them that, like, people wanna use Lolly, people wanna And once people have accumulated all this Bitcoin, now they want something to do with it. And, and so then over the next five years, it'll be shifting a lot of these retailers to saying, \"Look, like, we're gonna give you, an easy exchange, like lower fees, and if you can just pay with Bitcoin, at all these retailers, and the retailer can incentivize you to pay in Bitcoin, that's where the shift happens. That's where people start to rethink, okay, should I pay with my credit card or should I pay with Bitcoin? If you That fee that would have gone to an acquiring bank or gone to the credit card company, and you can change that mindset and say, \"I'm gonna earn an extra one percent because I'm paying with Bitcoin.\" That's where the shift happens, and that's what we're, that's what we're doing, that's our mission over the next five to ten years." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "30:25", "start": 1824.68, "text": "Fantastic. And then how would that change the business model for you in terms of, right now it's, say, I spend a hundred dollars, I might get, five dollars back in Bitcoin, something like that. How would that change then when people start spending directly with Bitcoin?" }, { "speaker": "alex_adelman", "time": "30:43", "start": 1843.22, "text": "yeah, so I mean, we, we cut out the middleman. I think that's like, you know, 'cause I, I went to this like, I, I, I try to like- really understand who, you know, we're up against and, and who we're working closely with. And, I went to this like banking conference, the other day, you know, try to- I like to be involved in the, in the Bitcoin community, but to be honest, I think that it's like, you know, you need to understand who you're replacing. Like, and so I went to this banking conference, and I was like, you know, one of the only, you know, Bitcoiners, there, and I was talking with like, you know, JP Morgan and like, you know, Fifth Third and all this, they don't even see it, they don't get, like We, I shouldn't say we don't need them, because like they, I think they're gonna adopt Bitcoin eventually. They have to. They have to be a secure, you know, holder of value, and they have to adopt it eventually. But the things that we're doing right now are totally outside of anybody. Like, I, I think Square sees it, and I, I was, I, I told them, I was like, \"If you're not terrified of Square, like, are you-- you know, what are you doing?\" And then they sort of like shrugged it off" }, { "speaker": "alex_adelman", "time": "31:53", "start": 1912.66, "text": "Squares the biggest, threat to, you know, our business. And I was like, \"Oh, I wonder how that got there.\" Like, no shit. and so like, yeah, people have to see, like, retailers have to see that it, it, it makes sense for them to accept it, it makes sense for them to share it through Lolly. Bankers have to see that they have to adopt it, and they don't need to go launch their own coins to adopt it. Like, sure, like, you know, JP Morgan coin's gonna come out, all these people are gonna launch their own coins, but that's just gonna compound on itself and come back to Bitcoin, as we all do. We've all, I, I think we've all, you know, Been at fault for buying an altcoin because it looked all bright and shiny at some point over the last five years, like I'm guilty of it. you know, w-will I shill it? No, I will, I like, I believe that I will share things that have value, and, and that's how we get people to adopt things, like The bankers will adopt Bitcoin, they will, they'll ha- they have to adopt Bitcoin, they're already starting to adopt it. and so, this next phase is about showing people that these rails exist. I think Lightning is an unbelievable project that is showing people that you can transact, like, very, very quickly on chain You know, send on another layer, you know, interact with, with Bitcoin, and it's terrifying. Like to, to, to, if you ever looked at a map of like what's happening when you go pay at Target, at Walmart, and you see like what your, where your money is going and how many people are involved, and then you, right next to it, you put, Bitcoin and, you know, the transaction that happens, it is beautiful, it's just simple, it just makes sense, and you don't need, you know, all these parties to, And so it's our, our mission to, to show people, earn first, then start accepting Bitcoin, and that's how I think we change the world." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "33:38", "start": 2017.87, "text": "Yeah, that's fascinating. And I think the cool thing with that is, as you mentioned, like it may just be the step along the way. So they might start with, okay, here's a discount for, for, here's a discount at, you know, and you get that back in Bitcoin, and then the next step is accepting Bitcoin directly. So I think it's all kind of in stages there. What I was really keen to discuss with you, Alex, is just around privacy. So I know obviously lately there have been many data breaches and people are losing their, you know, companies are just, many of them aren't securing their customers' data correctly. How do you think about maintaining customer privacy?" }, { "speaker": "alex_adelman", "time": "34:21", "start": 2061.21, "text": "yeah, so it's, it's one of our highest, priorities, at, at Lolly, and it was, it was our, you know, one of our highest priorities, at, at Cosmic as well. part of, you know, a lot of it is like, you know, who's the team, who's the core team that's building this? And, Matt, my co-founder, CTO, he is a, like- He's obsessed with privacy. He, when I met him, he was building a, an appl- an application, an app called, Frame, which was a private photo sharing app with bank-level encryption. Like, he's, yeah, he, he cares about privacy. It, it has to start at the core team, and the, the core team has to care about privacy, and, and, yeah, that's what our team, cares about, and we've shown it over the years, like with, with Cosmic. you know, we're, we're early in, in the days of, of Lolly, and so, but with Cosmic, we, we showed, you know, we were PCI Level One compliant, we didn't have to be PCI Level One compliant. we-- one of our claims to fame as a team was we survived the Target, data breach. we, we landed Target as a client, and about, a week in, we're sitting around, and pull up, you know, eight AM, pull up Reddit, To their API, like, did we do it? and I turned to Matt and I was like, \"Did we do that? \" And, and, he was like, \"No, I don't think so. \" So, we ended up like learning a lot, you know, from ourselves about security, on the, on the payment level. and I think there's a lot that the Bitcoin community can learn from payments, from compliance. Like, we're all setting the standards, like, you know, everybody is sort of coming together" }, { "speaker": "alex_adelman", "time": "36:08", "start": 2167.82, "text": "With all these, you know, companies, and we all have to come together and do what the payment industry did, where we, we set this compliance, we set these standards, but yeah, I think we're, we, you know, we need to be the leader of that, because, the, you know, users' data is important. We're in this sort of, interesting territory too, where we have, like Sharing data between two parties isn't a bad thing. It's what you share between the two parties that is important, and you have to be transparent in what you share. And so, like w-with us, we have to communicate to the retailer that this user, user X Bought, you know, these groceries from your site and spent this, this amount of money, and, and that's a secure transaction of data that, like, you're already giving them your credit card information. You're giving them deeper level of data than you're giving us and or anything. We just need the data to be able to show that this person actually bought something using Lolly, and then we reward them with their Bitcoin. but yeah, we keep it super, like, we, we try to collect as little data as possible. we don't want your data, to earn Bitcoin, that's our, that's our mission. So staying true to that is, is gonna be extremely important, over the next, you know, five, ten years." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "37:22", "start": 2241.72, "text": "Yeah, and I think the other comment there is also just around de-anonymization. So, you know, let's say somebody gets a hold of somebody's spending history or they try and use that to try and impinge on someone's privacy, is that an aspect that you, you were considering as well?" }, { "speaker": "alex_adelman", "time": "37:47", "start": 2266.59, "text": "There's not really a, I mean, not really, I, I don't see a way unless, I mean, you could go hack Ebates and like- I, I, the, the, the data is, I mean, the data that, that's out there is like, if you, you know, not a challenge, but like," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "38:03", "start": 2283.21, "text": "yeah, yeah, it," }, { "speaker": "alex_adelman", "time": "38:04", "start": 2284.17, "text": "it's, it's one of those things, it's like, yeah, you would see that somebody shopped at jet dot com, you wouldn't see what they bought. We don't, we don't wanna know what you bought, we wanna know that you spent a hundred dollars and then, yeah, that you're getting three and a half percent back or you're getting, Yeah, like we don't, we don't, we don't wanna know any information. So like, there's not really that much value in, you know, part of, you know, part of like why people hack companies is like, is there like value behind it? Like, there's, we're not holding sensitive information about these people. Yeah, we, we, we know like that, that somebody like went to, like Hotwire and bought something. but yeah, we don't wanna store your information, we don't wanna store sensitive information, and the information we do s-store, we store securely, you know, bank-level encryption. Like, we're not, we, we learned a lot from the payment industry, and we saw a lot of people that tried to compete with Cosmic fail because they didn't, like, like when we survived the Target breach, it was this validation that like, you can win when you care about privacy, you can win when you care about security, and we built way slower than a lot of our The Target breach happened and everybody freaked out about privacy and everybody freaked out about security and everyone got like, you know, the limelight, you know, put, put on them. Like, we won. Like, that's in the long run. And you look at Apple right now, they are like one of the only companies that has given a shit about privacy and they've won because of it. And, and Facebook is failing because of it. And so, like, the best product and the best story will always win in the long run. And so you can, like, you know, build" }, { "speaker": "alex_adelman", "time": "39:48", "start": 2387.91, "text": "Collect whatever data you want, and, and it's a lot of like short term thinkers that are like building with that mind. But when you're building with the, with the consumer mind, and you're building with the, you know, the, the notion and sort of the north star and like that That your user's information is important and privacy is important, like, you know, that's the long game, and that's, that's the game that we're playing." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "40:08", "start": 2407.86, "text": "Yeah, yeah. That's great. And I think another angle that Bitcoiners will be interested to discuss, will be around custodianship of Bitcoin, and then obviously the aspects around custodial versus sovereign holding of keys, fully validating, et cetera. can you offer just some thoughts on that?" }, { "speaker": "alex_adelman", "time": "40:30", "start": 2429.82, "text": "Yeah, so that's a, that's a question, it's a really good question, and it, I'm glad you brought that up because, I do-- there's a debate in like the, you know, the, in, in Bitcoin, Twitter of like, should people even have custodian wallets? What do they serve the community? and I'm on, I'm on like, you know, I think there's like, it's both. That's what it comes down to a lot of times is there's not one answer, and if you believe that" }, { "speaker": "alex_adelman", "time": "40:59", "start": 2459.08, "text": "Without custodian wallets, it's just wrong. Like, that's, I mean, it's, it's naive to think that that is how people will adopt Bitcoin. Bitcoin at its core is too difficult to understand, just like being thrown at, at, like, at somebody and having these really, really high expectations of what someone has to do to, to come on board." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "41:21", "start": 2480.73, "text": "Yeah." }, { "speaker": "alex_adelman", "time": "41:22", "start": 2481.59, "text": "Like, you know, there's value in, in custodianship. Like, there's value in like bringing somebody on and teaching them, and it's the mission, and it's, it has to be the north star of these companies that are doing custodian to shift people to teach them about keys, to teach them. So it's, and, and like, it kind of goes back to like, you know, Like what I was saying with Apple and privacy, if you build with the intent of keeping somebody like absolutely, like if, if you teach somebody that custodianship is the only way, then you will lose. Like the best product will, will win. And so you have to teach people, like, \"Yeah, you should go buy a hardware wallet, you should go diversify, you should go, you know, have, cold storage, like you should go, like learn about all these different types of storage and then make the best decision. But it's our job to educate, but at first you just, you have to like make it easy. And, and so we're on the, in the camp of making it dead simple, super easy to earn, hold it, and then if you can sort of visualize, I won't, I won't pull up our, our roadmap, but if you can sort of visualize how the product evolves. Think of it like levels. You see somebody and it's like, \"I'm earning my Bitcoin, it's going up, it's going up, it's going up.\" You're earning, earning, earning. It's a daily touch point. And then over time, you, you can like maybe earn a thousand satoshis if you, transfer to your own wallet, if you learn about private keys, if you learn about key store management, if you have your own node. And so every single time, we, we want to incentivize people to earn more the, the more that they're And so that's where it kind of goes back to like the user psychology. Start them with, like, like a my first, you know, Bitcoin wallet, and then let them learn more and let them continue to like earn more and learn about private keys and, and, and key management." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "43:22", "start": 2601.6, "text": "Yeah, I think that's a good answer. I think ultimately, while we as Bitcoiners want people to be fully sovereign, fully validating, the reality is people will do what they can do, and it-- in any competitive market, there will be some who, you know, come up with the easiest approach, right? And probably the easiest approach, i-i-in fairness right now, is custodial. Now, there are a lot of effort-- there are a lot of efforts being put in by Bitcoiners to try and- Make it easy for people to go fully, full node, self-sovereign. but it's probably a recognition that right now, it's The easiest path is custodial, but if there is at least, a, a path that, that Bitcoin newbie is being taken on to try and learn more about Bitcoin, hopefully once they sort of become more mentally captured, then they do at that point try and learn to be more self-sovereign." }, { "speaker": "alex_adelman", "time": "44:21", "start": 2661.23, "text": "Yeah, and, and like, I mean, I'm-- My first few years, I wasn't self-sovereign. Like, I, I used custodial, and I'm, I'm like, you know, I've been building technology since I was twelve. Like, I, I would, I'm, you know, on the, the spectrum, like, on, in the top, like, you know, probably One percent of people who like should understand how to, how to do this and how, how like, you know, this all works, and it took me a long time. And, and so, y-y-you can't, like, you could assume that this next generation of kids are just gonna, like, understand what Bitcoin is because they're, like, you know, they grow up Seeing it on Cash App, they're, they grow up seeing it on Lolly. Like it's part of, it's gonna be part of their curriculum. It's gonna-- they're gonna see it online, they're gonna see your, you know, your, your videos, your podcast. Like there's so many people that are talking about Bitcoin right now that they're gonna just know. It's like, it, it's kind of like- What we grew up with and what we knew about having a so-- social, you know, social security number or having, any sort of like, like understanding how banking works, understanding how to, like, balancing a checkbook, like, junior achievement in, in the US, like, there's gonna be classes that, like, you know, teach people, and if they don't learn, then they're gonna lose their money. Like, it's this tax on not learning and not understanding how the world works, and that's true with all things, like- If you really boil down like how humans evolve, like the smartest humans evolve, and like you end up like earning more money, you end up passing that money down, you end up like controlling your time more, like with every growing technology Especially in, in, in this world of information where we have-- where more people than ever have access to information, it's a free for all. If you're not learning, if you're not, like, understanding how the world works, like, you're gonna get left behind" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "46:19", "start": 2779.33, "text": "Yeah, there's a lot there. There's a lot that people have to learn, and you're right, many people do come in in a non-self sovereign way and then learn to then become more self sovereign. I think i-it's not necessarily reasonable to expect that everyone who comes in is fully, doing it the right, the, you know, the quote-unquote, the right way, but, yeah, I think there are some good comments. I think Also, it might be good to just talk a little bit about more like roadmap, what you have coming down the line for Lolly. I think, that might be an interesting discussion." }, { "speaker": "alex_adelman", "time": "46:55", "start": 2815.04, "text": "Yeah, so, so largely, I mean, our roadmap is, is shaped by our users. you know, we have a really clear idea of the, you know, the high level of, you know, where, where Lolly goes. and, you know, I think it's, it's- important to think about both of our customers and, and as, as we evolve, like, yes, we wanna integrate Lightning, and we've played around with it a lot on just, you know, on like behind the scenes. I, I love what, you know, Elizabeth and the, and the team, are building over there. I think it's incredible and it's gonna change the world. but you, you know, a lot of what we're focused on is what is our u-- what are our users demanding? And, and so right now, like, That we've been working on for a year now, and, and so there's like over the next six months, we're, we're announcing some really, really exciting partnerships, that's been, I think that's gonna be really fun and like, give people more places to, to shop. one of the experiences, you know, we're, we're really excited about is, is providing a mobile experience, giving people the ability to have, again, more touch points, more places to earn, and taking not just online shopping on- Online travel, lots of touch points there, and providing more touch points of like a daily activity, you know, going and earning when you, go to the coffee shop, going and earning, paying your friends, like making it a more daily activity and, and having more touch points, is, is a lot of what the, the product is focused on. And then, you know, we, we already have the ability, like you can bring your own address, you can transfer money in and out, and so giving people like more flexibility and teaching people when there And there's an easy off-ramp, into either back to US dollar if somebody wants to, you know, transfer to US dollar or into their own address and teaching them about that. we're working with some really awesome smart, people. in the Bitcoin community, as I said, about teaching people and how to humanize it, so, releasing like a content series, releasing a blog, and, and, pretty excited about a lot of that." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "49:07", "start": 2947.49, "text": "Yeah, that's fascinating. I think there's a really bright future ahead here with Lightning partnerships, the content series as you mentioned, it, it, the future is gonna be a lot more mobile as well. People will use mobile for a lot of shopping. I've just got a couple last few questions, I think, just more for the Bitcoiners, just to understand around how they can withdraw. So when they earn Bitcoin into Lolly, how does it work around the withdrawals?" }, { "speaker": "alex_adelman", "time": "49:35", "start": 2974.92, "text": "yeah, so, you go to, lolly dot com, forward slash account, and you can withdraw at, like, I think it's, we have a fifteen dollar, in US dollar, threshold. So once you've earned your, your Bitcoin, and I think that, you know, typically takes like a few purchases, once you've earned Bitcoin, you can transfer it to your own wallet, you know, with, bring your own address policy. and then you can also transfer to, you know, your A US dollar bank account, if, if you want. all we need is, is your email and, first name, last name, so there's not a, a tricky off-ramp. And I think, you know, we, we, that's exciting, I think, for the hardcore Bitcoin community that doesn't want, you know, to g- to give their social security number out. Like, I don't want your social security number, I just want an easy off-ramp, you know, for, for those, for those users. But then," }, { "speaker": "alex_adelman", "time": "50:34", "start": 3033.52, "text": "really easy off-ramp, as well to like teach them about, you know, the, the keys and key management. So you can put in your address, we'll send you, your Bitcoin, and yeah, keep it really easy on, on both sides." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "50:47", "start": 3046.78, "text": "Fantastic. Yeah, I think that's, yeah, it's an interesting thing that many Bitcoiners will want to know, but then obviously as people, more and more people learn, they'll, they'll get into that as well." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "51:00", "start": 3060.27, "text": "Also, is your offering in the US only or?" }, { "speaker": "alex_adelman", "time": "51:04", "start": 3064.27, "text": "Yeah, US only, and we're, announcing a new, a, another country soon. and so, yeah, stay, stay tuned for that. But, I, I think one of the, my biggest learnings from my previous company is, is focus. I, I wanna do everything today, sure, like if I could just snap my fingers and, and do it, but that's not how great products get built. And that's not how we change the world. If something breaks, if we were to, you know, have a security vulnerability, if we were to like not be able to, serve our customers, it, like, it's done. Like, there's no, you know, we, it, it's- I don't, I don't wanna, I, I, we're gonna build it right and we're gonna focus on the US and then we're gonna expand. so we've had a lot of demand, in, in international, and the, the nice part is, is like the retailers are supportive of the international. That was part of the original sales pro- like process is like, they wanna serve an international consumer. The whole world's connected through information, so shouldn't the whole world be connected through commerce? I should be able to go buy, you know, something from Australia. I should go be able to buy from, you know, from my favorite brands in Japan, and everybody should be able to transact freely. That's where it gets really exciting. And you, you, you, you know, you, you kind of mentioned it earlier, it's like the merchant adoption. How does that, how, how does that merchant adoption get even more pervasive? Like, it's not just cross border fees. Like, a lot of people don't know this, but, you know, it's not Bitcoin, like a feature, when I go tell, tell, teach peop- you know, all our seven hundred and fifty merchants about Bitcoin, and I tell them it's immutable, like when you're buying something, there's no fraud. Like, if you're buying something, you go, you went and bought it, like that Bitcoin's gone. If you, if you're buying something, you're gonna get that item, and like the retailers perk up and they're like, \"Oh, that solves a lot of our issues.\" And retailers have like ten to twenty percent, Fees, like chargeback fees that they experience when somebody buys internationally. So we're coming in, we're not just solving the problem of the, you know, one percent, the two percent that the acquiring banks and the credit card companies take, we're solving that like ten percent Fee, that gets really exciting when we go international. So we're totally incentivized to go international, we're really excited about it, we've already-- it's on our roadmap, and yeah, we're, we're building as fast as we can. So, the more users that we have, the more people that are using Bitcoin, the faster we're gonna be able to grow and the more we're gonna be able to, expand. So, yeah, I share it with your friends, like, you know, I'll, I'll shamelessly plug Lolly" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "53:48", "start": 3228.42, "text": "Anyway, so let's tell the listeners where they can go to follow Lolly and to follow you." }, { "speaker": "alex_adelman", "time": "53:55", "start": 3234.54, "text": "yeah, so it's, try lolly is our, is our, handle, lolly dot com, l o l l i, dot com, probably put a link below. yeah, and you go on, download it, share it with your friends, family, and yeah, look forward to sharing Bitcoin with, with, the world." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "54:14", "start": 3254.3, "text": "Fantastic. Yeah, look, so I think that's, that's great. I think the stuff you guys are doing is excellent, and I think, you know, Bitcoiners go check it out and tell your friends. and so look, as we close out the episode today, if you've enjoyed the discussion and you wanna help me out, make sure to, don't forget to give it a thumbs up and a like. Make sure you subscribe to the channel because we've got, more episodes coming. but, that's pretty much it for" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "54:46", "start": 3286.46, "text": "Okay guys, that was the episode. Let me know your thoughts on trying to do this as a YouTube stream first and then turning that into an audio podcast. Also, make sure you subscribe to my YouTube channel, you can find it by searching Stefan Livera, and as usual, you can find show notes on my site, stefanlivera dot com. Don't forget to retweet and share the episode and press like on YouTube if you can. Thanks very much for your help, guys. Chat next time." } ] }