{ "episodeId": "SLP642", "speakers": { "stephan": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "host", "tag": "STEPHAN" }, "philipp_hoenisch": { "name": "Philipp Hoenisch", "role": "guest", "tag": "PHILIPP" } }, "segments": [ { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:11", "start": 11.09, "text": "Hi everyone, welcome back to Stephan Livera podcast brought to you by Bold. For American listeners, you can buy Bitcoin over at getbold.io. Now rejoining me on the show today is Philipp Hoenisch. He is You might know him, from the earlier episode, or you might know him, for his work with, 10101, and that's now shut down, and now he's got a new startup, which he's the founder, co-founder, and, CEO of, which is called Lendersat. So, Phillip, welcome back to the show. Hey Stephan, great being here again. It's been a while. Yeah, it's been a little while, and, maybe you wanna tell us a little bit about what happened with sort of shutting down 10101 and now going into LenderSat?" }, { "speaker": "philipp_hoenisch", "time": "00:50", "start": 50.4, "text": "Yeah, definitely. Happy to do so. it's been, it's been hard, unfortunately. About a year ago, I think we had our last session, and, back then everything looked really, really good. we launched our new app, numbers were going up, we had really decent traction, and I think that went on until April or something, and then suddenly just stopped completely. And no matter what we tried, we just couldn't get more people into our- Our app couldn't more people trade on, Tantantone. So it was a bit of a shame, and then we also tried to raise funds at the same time, but VCs wanted to see more traction, which is, was hard show traction, raise funds, don't have money, get, get stressed out. So we made the hard decision in mid of last year to shut down, Tantantone. And maybe we have been just a little bit too early, because like if you think back Back September, October, November, that's when the bull market started again and trading volume picked up probably on all exchanges. Maybe we should have lasted a little bit longer, but yeah, that, that was the decision." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "02:02", "start": 122.24, "text": "Yeah, and I think it's, it's also challenging because I think there are a lot of people who are just Onboarding custodial this time around, right? Like historical bull runs have seen, it used to be the case, okay, everyone's gotta go to the Coinbase's or the Mount Goxxes of the world and buy some Bitcoin there, and that used to be the only game, they were the only game or the main games in town, let's say. whereas this time around, you could argue ETFs, MicroStrategy, Semler Scientific, MetaPlanet, et cetera, like these Bitcoin treasury companies or, or the public miners, and maybe that's- You know, where a lot of people are going. so I'm curious any re-reactions on that, and actually, you know what? Let me, let me, let me bring this concept up and we can talk about this now as well, because this is something that- I've been asking this question as well in some interviews just to sort of get people's thoughts, and it's, it's related here, because is the future going to be on-chain per se, or is it just gonna be tradfi, and tradfi will get Bitcoin? You know, like Coinbase will be custodying the Bitcoin in, whether that's in the ETF or Coinbase custody for the corporations and this kind of thing, Yeah. So I guess the question to you is, will the future of this market be on chain or will it be tradfi?" }, { "speaker": "philipp_hoenisch", "time": "03:22", "start": 202.24, "text": "Well, I wish I had a crystal ball to predict the future, but I, I wish it will be on chain. I really wish it will be. Bitcoin for me is this cypherpunk tool which, with the, the great promise of decentralization and censorship resistance. It's just a positive side effect that you have limited amount as well, and I think the price is just a distraction and it pushes people to simpler solutions, to custodial solutions, and then I mean, I can say it on record as well, I'm not a big fan of Michael Saylor as well. He just wants to hold funds and play the dollar game. For me, Bitcoin is more, it's, it's a tool to escape the current, the, the tyranny of the fiat world. It's not just Namaqab technology. So, I hope, I hope we really see the decentralization playing out." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "04:15", "start": 254.98, "text": "Let me put the question to you this way. Do you think Bitcoin will fail if it's, if there's insufficient amount of, let's say, on-chain adoption? Or do you, or do you just see it more like it's just not your preferred outcome?" }, { "speaker": "philipp_hoenisch", "time": "04:31", "start": 271.17, "text": "Well, it would have, it, it would fail for me, yes. For me, the definition is it needs to be decentralized and self-custodial. I think for other people it's not that important. Lots of people just see the scarcity as number one important feature of Bitcoin, but for me that's not enough." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "04:47", "start": 287.34, "text": "I see, yeah. I mean, for me, I'm probably more in the camp of I would like to see more self-custodial adoption, but I don't, I, I'm not necessarily opposed to, people using Bitcoin banks per se, but okay, and I think the way- let me, let me ask you the question this way. Do you, 'cause while, while we're on this topic, do you think that- Okay, let, let me, let me put the point to you this way. I think there's a lot of the value, the wealth of the world today is already held in these big, you know, brokerages, right? And think about the generation, it's typically wealthy boomers and maybe some of the Gen X, right? And okay, maybe once those boomers die, then they'll pass some of that wealth down, and maybe the millennials and some Gen Z people will have some wealth, but right now, a lot of the wealth isn't on chain. You know what I mean? So Don't you think that implies something then about where things are going, or at least where the money is gonna come from in the short and medium term?" }, { "speaker": "philipp_hoenisch", "time": "05:55", "start": 355.18, "text": "Oh, definitely. I mean, like if you look at the historic history, it has always been that way. But we have never had such a technology like Bitcoin. We never had this censorship-resistant money. Maybe if you think back, back in the days when you hold gold in self-custody, but that has been a brief history of time ever since we had fiat and put our money in custody and trusted people, other people. I think it's time to change that. So while we have this huge amount of monies out there, which is all in big funds and managed by others, I think The, we need to empower the self sovereign, we need to empower the individual. And I mean, you've been in Australia for a while, you probably heard them thinking about tapping into the super of people. That is scary, man. Like, you have A, you're forced to save into Super, and then B, maybe you don't even get the full money out anymore. So, I don't, no, I don't want that. I think you need to have self custody over your funds, you need to be responsible for yourself. That's the only way." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "07:05", "start": 425.3, "text": "Yeah, and I mean, speaking personally, I've long been on the record being highly, highly skeptical of the Australian superannuation system. For international listeners, basically this is equivalent, something equivalent to like the 401K in the US, or I think it's called RRSP in Canada, but basically it's kind of like- In Austra- but the difference is in Australia, the government mandates that your employer pays, I think currently it's about twelve percent of your salary into these super funds, and then the idea is they give you a preferential tax treatment, but now there is a lot of talk about You know, should they tax it or should they do unrealized gains taxes or wealth taxes at that, on that superannuation balance? It's become this massive, kind of quasi-slush fund or kind of money that, you know, and I've long been saying, don't ex- don't ex- if you're young, like our age, let's say millennials, don't expect that it'll be around when you're, when you're sixty-five or seventy, because, or at least the government will tap into a lot of it, right? It's very likely that the government will Let's just redirect some of the super money into, oh, you need to invest in the roads for the nation to be a good little citizen. So, you know, I've long been of the view that it's, you, you should be very skeptical or wary of that system. Anyway, nevertheless, that exists. I think the other reaction I have is While of course I want more people to use Bitcoin self custody in, in, in a self custodial way, are we letting our ideology get in the way of reacting to What the real world and, you know, market is, you know, so there's this kind of the cypherpunk and libertarian ideal of everyone's self custody and we have this, you know, free market, and then there's sort of the other element of it, which I think is to sort of balance that is to say there's also this kind of monetary maximalist view that over time, just more and more people are gonna go to Bitcoin. Not everyone is a cypherpunk or a libertarian, but most people want NGU, right? And so what I'm trying to get to here is I'm trying to sort of say, are we in an ideological echo chamber and can that negatively impact the products and services and, you know, that, that people are building or that, you know, that we are investing in? I'm curious your reaction there." }, { "speaker": "philipp_hoenisch", "time": "09:28", "start": 567.52, "text": "Yeah, no, I, I think we would be delusional if we think that everyone would self-custody the Bitcoin and everyone would run their own Lightning node, particularly if you look at the state of the art of Bitcoin today, it's just not- Technically feasible. Like, I mean, even my wife, if I would tell her, \"Hey, you need to run a Lightning node,\" she would be like, \"Uh, can you do it for me?\" What is, what is even that, right? Yeah, they would say, \"What is that?\" Go on. Yeah, exactly. No, she, she knows already. She's been listening to your podcast. Oh, well, great. but no, she, she would be no way able to run it. Like, I mean, maybe Breeze, okay, yeah. Living room? No, that's, that's definitely not here. So I think we definitely have this ideological problem where we impose these kind of views onto people who aren't able yet. but those who are technical in the space, we have the responsibility to just make it easier for them. It's like, you also don't, prevent someone from driving a car just because they, I don't know, don't know how the car works. They still can learn it, spend hours over hours learning how How to drive it, and then eventually they can drive on their own. And people, they, they put in heaps of hours. It's just like people aren't used to the, the, the responsibility of, \"Hey, now I need to learn two weeks before I actually can use my money.\" That hasn't ever been before. Usually I just go into a bank, open a new bank account, get a card on the very next day and can start spending. I don't have to understand anything. But with Bitcoin and with responsibility, with what-- how was it, is it called, with It comes great responsibility, right? Right. It's like the Spider-Man" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "11:13", "start": 673.41, "text": "thing, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm, yeah, and I think it's an important thing for us, we have to, like, try to, you know- People have to build products that serve, you know, a real market need, but we can also still be, have a certain idea about how, what direction we would like the future to go, this kind of cypherpunk, libertarian future, whatever, whatever, you know, ideology, probably most of us hold, let's say, so I think one interesting, I mean, let's get onto the talking a little bit about LenderSat, and I think it's probably fair to say there, there- There will be a lot of demand for these kinds of borrowing products, and maybe it'll be easier for you to hit a product market fit on that as opposed to the- 10-10-1 case of trying to do non-custodial finance. But I'm curious to hear your, thought there. Can you maybe give us a bit of an overview of the case then for LenderSat?" }, { "speaker": "philipp_hoenisch", "time": "12:13", "start": 733.24, "text": "Yeah, totally. finally, the collateralized lending approach was actually our first idea before we started 10/10/1. that was, I don't know, 2018, 2019 or something, but we didn't figure out how to do it on Bitcoin yet. so we built it on Liquid. we made all the mistakes you can do as a young founder. You first build the tool and then you realize that there is actually no one, no one there on Liquid. Today it might look different, I think they have a bit more traction, but we said this, this collateralized lending use case is, is huge. Like if you look into the trade five world, rich people they always borrow against their, their property, against their houses, against their pictures, against their company shares. They don't sell this stuff. So Bitcoin is this superior asset, right? Like I'm pretty sure we all agree here." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "13:05", "start": 785.16, "text": "Yeah." }, { "speaker": "philipp_hoenisch", "time": "13:06", "start": 785.67, "text": "Why not borrow against Bitcoin? So We then said, okay, now let's just try to build it on Bitcoin, but there was nothing to borrow against on Bitcoin. So we build derivatives which are kinda similar. You borrow from someone else and then you go long against Bitcoin and then you return something again to the other party, but it's different. It's, it's a bit more complex, particularly if you're not from the finance space. So we went back onto the, the primitive, and it's, I think it's the foundation of all, financial product to borrow. Or something, and then you have immediate value you can use for day-to-day spendings or investments, and then you hope you get a better return from this, and in the future you pay it back. And that use case, I think is for everyone, it's so obvious, particularly if you have been in the space for a while and you know that Bitcoin appreciates by, you know, an average of a hundred percent every year, if you pay ten percent, twelve percent interest rates to not sell your, your Bitcoin, that's kind of a no-brainer." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "14:11", "start": 851.03, "text": "I see, yeah. And so that's the, the high level case for this. Now, I think it is also fair to talk about I guess at least, until now, and maybe that will change over time, but until now, the interest rates have been relatively high, and it's been difficult for people to structure Favorable loan terms. So for example, if you are a large public company, yes, you can get, you know, nice cheap debt, and maybe structure it with a five-year term, and so that way you can ride it out through at least one or maybe multiple Bitcoin cycles depending on your timing, whereas what we have seen so far is more like, you can get a one-year loan on Bitcoin, I guess for people who are, you know, not a large public company, and so what we have, I guess, up until- Now or up until recently seen is, yes, in some of the kind of shitcoin DeFi world, there's some, you know, leveraging and borrowing and this kind of thing. You've got things like, Unchained Capital or Leden, you've got things like HodlHodl, Lend, and I believe they've also got Debuffi as well, so that's, you know, so there's a few different options out there, but I guess Up until recently, it's been more like maybe up to one year term and interest rates sort of could be anywhere from fifteen to twenty percent, maybe even more. and so any thoughts on that? Is that gonna change? What do you think?" }, { "speaker": "philipp_hoenisch", "time": "15:40", "start": 939.75, "text": "Yeah, there's, there are so many nuances to this, it's, it's crazy. Initially, we thought, you know what, we're just gonna connect borrowers and lenders with each other and let the market decide on what the rates are. And obviously, we've been in the space for a while, so we also know some people from the crypt, from the, Web3 and, crypto casino space. And it's, it's crazy if you ask them, hey, would you like to lend out some stablecoins to bitcoiners for interest rates, between ten and twenty percent? Then the answer is, no. Like over there in this pool, I get thirty percent. You're like, what? How can you get thirty percent on what? How? It's, it's crazy. Sorry. The, the DeFi space is insane with interest rates, but the Bitcoiners, this interest rate is coming down. Like you said it yourself, it's around fifteen percent, but we've seen twelve percent is like really good to get into, but also as for very short running interest rates, so seven, seven and a half percent, nine percent for three months loan is, it's not an exception anymore. And, the more people are offering lending products, you named a few different ones, the bigger is the market. It's not about competing yet about different, getting different users, it's about building the market, opening the market up, showing the old world, hey, that this Bitcoin is the superior collateral, it's traded twenty-four seven, it's super liquid, and- It, that, that just brings down the interest rates. And, I mean, I'm dreaming of this pay, of this moment where we can borrow at the interbanking rate, so for or Euribor, you can get down to like three, four percent or something." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "17:26", "start": 1046.1, "text": "Yeah, my understanding, from talking with some of the lenders is that part of that is just because some of the larger-- in the, at least in the US system, financial system, that they haven't come to this game yet. And maybe once they can, then, okay, that will sort of bring interest rates down. And for now, it's actually been relatively difficult on their side to source the fiat, as in, because remember, you're, you're talking about somebody who is giving you their fiat and they're not buying Bitcoin with it, right? Whereas all of us- So kind of ideologically Bitcoiner, we wanna, we wanna im- we wanna increase our Bitcoin allocation and have less fiat, and so then you're talking about someone who is, who wants to still hold fiat and maybe get some interest on that, and so how, what interest rate would, would they charge, you know? And that's, that's been the conversation, and I think it's fair to say it- Probably will come down over time, that maybe in a few years' time it'll sort of come a little bit further down, maybe into the high single digits, maybe. I don't know for sure, but Yeah. And then I guess the other question on the loan term, do you think that there'll be some further innovation there to change the loan term to, so that- Everyday individuals could get loans that are more than one year?" }, { "speaker": "philipp_hoenisch", "time": "18:43", "start": 1123.21, "text": "Yeah, first on the interest rates, one more point. It, as you said, the interest rates are definitely coming down, and the hardest part for us or for other lenders is to tap into the old world of fiat and getting like banks or credit institutes convinced to that, hey, you can lend out on our platform against, or you can lend out against Bitcoin. And these are used for very low interest rate products, like they could offer then for to their customers, fixed term savings product with high interest rates, much higher than they get with the central bank interest rates. So I, I think it will play out definitely that way that the interest rates will come down, but there's a lot of hard work to do. And we are working together with some institutional investors who are actually, who are exactly acting as these kind of proxies. So Yeah, they-- these guys are going then out to the credit institutes and raise funds and then lend it out on these peer-to-peer marketplace." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "19:44", "start": 1183.94, "text": "Back to the show in a moment. This show brought to you by CoinKite dot com, the creators of the best Bitcoin hardware security devices such as the Coldcard Mark IV and the new Coldcard Q. Now, we use Bitcoin hardware security devices to keep our keys offline, our private keys offline. Now, the way these work is you can do that setup, write down your twelve or twenty-four words On those, the seed word cards and keep that secure. Now you can use this device to interact with the Bitcoin network using software such as Sparrow Wallet, Electrum, or Btcd Desktop or Nunchuck as a few examples. Now you have a range of security features that you can use with these devices such as passphrases, you can use Seed X or, or my favorite is multi-signature. Now if you're starting in a basic way, just start with the device and the USB-C cable, plug it directly Directly to the computer and use it that way, and then later improve your setup. But I believe these devices are great at helping secure your coins, especially as you start to migrate up into multi-signature security. But don't be disheartened or don't be, scared away. They are accessible, and I think you actually do learn about Bitcoin in the process. So to get yours, go to coinkite dot com, use code Laverre to get a discount on your cold card. This episode brought to you by Galloy. They are building banking software for the Bitcoin age. So If you are with a bank, a fintech, or a startup looking to offer some kind of Bitcoin product, whether that is a Bitcoin collateralized loan, deposit accounts, or payments, Galloy can help you. Their latest product is called LANA. It is a loans management platform, and you can use this to come to market quickly and offer a loans or Bitcoin collateralized lending product for your customers. Now, Galloy have a lot of experience in the space. They started with Blink Wallet in twenty twenty, and they've since grown this to become a community favorite over time. Time. And so they have a lot of experience making things work in a secure, reliable, and scalable way. So if you need assistance coming to market quickly with a Bitcoin banking product such as lending or deposits or payments, talk to the team at Galloy. You can email them, the email is biz at galloy dot io, or go to the website galloy dot io. And now, back to the show. I see. And I, I've been, I've done a few episodes talking about the problems of KYC and AML laws, but I, I presume that's also gonna be one of the big hurdles here, right? Because they might have the concern, \"Oh, what if you're lending out to a, you know, whatever?\" Is that a concern?" }, { "speaker": "philipp_hoenisch", "time": "22:16", "start": 1336.28, "text": "Yes, no, definitely. I think as soon as you go with, work with institutions, you need to add KYC. So on, on lender side, we go a hybrid approach where we allow no KYC lenders, we allow KYC lenders, and they, the lender themselves can decide whether they require KYC or not. And you also see that Reflecting on the interest rates so that, KYC lenders are actually offering lower interest rates than, without KYC." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "22:45", "start": 1365.32, "text": "Interesting. Okay. And so as we speak today, like, what are the rough rates, like, on, like, a one-year loan? Can you give us, like, a range, like, for KYC loans and non-KYC loans?" }, { "speaker": "philipp_hoenisch", "time": "22:56", "start": 1376.27, "text": "Yeah, so KYC, I think it's around twelve percent, non-KYC is around fifteen. Gotcha." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "23:03", "start": 1382.67, "text": "Okay. Yeah. And I mean, that could still be interesting for people, right? It just depends Future projection of Bitcoin is obviously what percent of your stack people are willing to use, to do on this kind of thing. And I guess it is kind of globally accessible, right? Like this idea that if you just have Bitcoin, you can just participate in this whole thing. and so maybe you just wanna, let's, if we just sort of walk through, if you can just overview a little bit about what the product is, how it works, just so people understand the makeup here." }, { "speaker": "philipp_hoenisch", "time": "23:32", "start": 1412.42, "text": "Yeah, maybe I'll start with the original vision and why it's actually called Lend a Sat, and then I go into how it turns out what we are building today. But so Lend a Sat was literally the idea that you lend someone a Sat. Now that sounds a bit weird for Bitcoiners, like, \"Why would I lend you a Sat? They need to return me the Sat again.\" Doesn't work that way, like you lend out a set, but in fiat denominated. And the idea was, I'm not sure if you read our initial post, sometimes last year, was to focus on micro loans so that when you, let's say you wanna buy a, a Bitrefill voucher, for Amazon for a hundred dollars, and you usually pay with Lightning, then instead of paying a hundred dollars for that voucher, you put up two hundred dollars as a collateral, and then you get the A hundred dollars Amazon voucher and you can do whatever you want, and then at some point in the future, you pay back those hundred dollars and you get back your initial Sats. Lend a sat came from the idea that this is the lightning invoice, and we just let someone else pay that invoice for you in sats, and they are, they are then basically stable in US dollar terms and get a hundred dollar worth of sats back" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "24:51", "start": 1491.4, "text": "in the future. Is, is it very clunky though to sort of every time you go to buy something to have to do that, or like how's the, how's it gonna be made slick for people and like actually smooth?" }, { "speaker": "philipp_hoenisch", "time": "25:02", "start": 1502.4, "text": "Exactly, and we, we talked to a bunch of different users who are actually borrowing on different platforms, and they said, \"Nah, that's not how anyone would use that. That's just way too cumbersome. Maybe if you have like a credit line where you have, I don't know, you have a thousand dollars spending and you keep spending against it," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "25:21", "start": 1520.84, "text": "like to batch it up into larger amounts, and then, you know, that would make a bit more sense to me, yeah.\"" }, { "speaker": "philipp_hoenisch", "time": "25:26", "start": 1526.28, "text": "Yeah, but those micro loans, that's, that's not what people do. So that's why we turn said, okay, we focus on big amounts, people borrowing like a month worth of cash for day-to-day spendings or bigger amounts, hundred K for investments and so on. And for that, it's, it's a different target user," }, { "speaker": "philipp_hoenisch", "time": "25:48", "start": 1547.78, "text": "yeah, the, the way how it works is you have a multisig. It's right now in the simplest form, it is a two out of three multisig where the lender has a key, the borrower has a key, and we have a key. But it could also be a two out of four multisig where we include another external third party to reduce the risk of the platform colluding with one of those players. So the bitcoins are locked in that multisig, and then the borrower can borrow stablecoins or fiat. So we also enable fiat lenders on our platform. And the stablecoins can be on any chain, and we found that many Bitcoiners actually don't want to touch or don't know how, how to touch stablecoins on other, other chains. Like if you, if you tell them, hey, yeah, you need to install MetaMask and then get some Polkadot To pay for a gas fee on Polygon to send your stablecoin somewhere, they're gonna be like, \"Yeah, no, I'm not gonna use that. It's just too far, it's a" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "26:49", "start": 1608.94, "text": "bridge too far.\" But I'd say something like Aqua is pretty, you know, accessible and it kinda keeps the balance in LBTC. So yeah, I guess of course, there's a trade-off with that. It's ca-- it's a, it's a custodial, you know, those bitcoins are held by the federation, the Liquid Federation, but nevertheless, people can use LBTC and Liquid" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "27:12", "start": 1631.72, "text": "Other chains, let's say, or to receive or to send using, you know, swaps." }, { "speaker": "philipp_hoenisch", "time": "27:17", "start": 1636.6, "text": "Exactly, yeah, and that's, that's what we came up with as well. Like the borrower decides on where he wants to get the money and most want to actually be able to just spend it, meaning maybe on their bank account or what we did is we bound in a third party service for a debit card so they can recharge a no-CYC debit card with that loan. So like, hey, I wanna take, a one thousand dollar loan, get a day to day, a, a debit card for day to day spendings, and they don't even know what they borrowed. I mean, eventually they will need to know because they have to return, they have to pay it back, unless they decide to get liquidated, like liquidate the Bitcoin holdings. But otherwise, they don't get in touch of the stablecoins" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "28:00", "start": 1680.06, "text": "at all. Interesting. So they can get like a no KYC debit card, but then the only question then, I think, would be, as I said, I'm against FATF and AML and all these laws, but it, it looks like they're clamping down on all these kinds of things. So I, I'm not-- I would question how long this kind of no KYC debit card thing would exist, right?" }, { "speaker": "philipp_hoenisch", "time": "28:23", "start": 1703.28, "text": "Well, I have big hopes that it's gonna stay around, but, yes, you never know, and historically you've seen these cards disappearing faster than you wished for, but, we are also binding in Custodial and KYC solutions for that. For example, there is a Bring in in Europe, which just brought out their debit card, so we are looking to integrate with them, and then I think the chance are relatively high that this remains there for a while. I see, yeah, but in the case of" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "28:51", "start": 1731.1, "text": "bringing, that is a KYC service, which it is KYC, yeah. So, I mean, yeah, like I said, I'm, I'm against in principle AML, but I also understand, hey, we live in the world today, and people wanna run businesses and do things today. So I'm, you know, I'm not saying, I'm not against people having to, you know, obviously be a part of this system because there's not really an easy way out of it right now. unfortunately, as" }, { "speaker": "philipp_hoenisch", "time": "29:14", "start": 1754.36, "text": "soon as you Go through peer-to-peer marketplaces and try to sell those stablecoins, but that's super cumbersome. If you want to have some form of convenience, then there is no way you have to go through KYC platforms." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "29:32", "start": 1772.41, "text": "Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, that's unfortunately, that's, that's the way it is for now. So in terms of the stablecoins then, so is the idea that, you know, the user com- the borrower will come to the platform, they'll put some Bitcoin in, they'll borrow against, you know, whatever, let's say ten thousand dollars just to make the number easy, and then ten thousand dollars worth of, did they choose like Tether or USDC or, and did they choose which chain it comes to? Like they say, okay, here's my Liquid How, how does that part work?" }, { "speaker": "philipp_hoenisch", "time": "30:04", "start": 1804.21, "text": "Yeah, exactly. Like, today it's very simple. we are literally an open order book. You see what lenders are offering, and they say, \"Hey, I'm offering USDC on Polygon or USDT on Liquid or you name it.\" And then the le-the borrower can just say, \"Okay, I'll pick this one,\" and then you provide an address. But that's just the first step. ideally, as you said, for example, Aqua has a really neat solution where you can- Receive Tether from N different chains, and you just provide your liquid address. So in that case, we could simplify the UX and say any lender is actually capable to just send the funds to your Aqua wallet, and the borrower only has to care of the stable coins. sorry, only of the, the liquid address. I see, yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "30:53", "start": 1852.85, "text": "And so Currently, as I'm understanding, you, you're saying it's in a multi-sig, but, as I understand, you, you are also talking about a DLC style. So can you explain a bit about the DLC style?" }, { "speaker": "philipp_hoenisch", "time": "31:04", "start": 1863.88, "text": "Yeah, totally. So again, for different people, different security, different requirements are suitable, and we learned for particular institutions that a multi-sig is the state of the art, and they are-- Maybe in a few years, I hope, they are willing to use DLCs, but it's, it's not there yet. DLCs, for those listeners who don't know, discrete lock contracts is a way to have smart contracts on Bitcoin with a trust reduced way. So it's nothing is trustless, don't let anyone tell you otherwise, there's always some trust. But the idea is in this case to remove the human interaction of that whole loan protocol. So if you go back to the two to three, multisig. If there's a dispute, at the end of the day, you as the borrower or lender have to go to the platform and basically beg them to side with you, sign the transaction, and give you your money. And you really don't wanna be in that situation where the platform says, \"Nah, I don't like you, sorry, I'm gonna side with the other guy.\" you don't get anything. So Deuce is this idea where you put all of this into a form of a smart contract, and then there is no dispute. Cute. If the price is X, then you either get your money or you don't get your money." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "32:27", "start": 1946.55, "text": "I see. Yeah. And so my-- Let's say I'm the, the eighty IQ, I'm the caveman. So my caveman understanding is When you go into a DLC contract, it's like you are pre-signing all these states based on the future prices at that particular time, and then the idea is the oracle is sort of at the end of the three month or six month term, whatever it is, they're putting some information out, and then based on that, that makes one of the pre-signed transactions valid, and then that's the one that can get broadcast to the chain, sort of with the correct balance going sat flow to you or to me or whatever based on, you know, what the price is And that kind of thing." }, { "speaker": "philipp_hoenisch", "time": "33:07", "start": 1987.15, "text": "Is" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "33:07", "start": 1987.23, "text": "that loosely" }, { "speaker": "philipp_hoenisch", "time": "33:09", "start": 1988.67, "text": "what's going on there in the background? Yes, now you nailed it, it's exactly that way. So you have a maturity date of a contract, and if the contract hasn't been paid back, then an oracle or multiple oracles ideally attest to the price, and then the, the collateral can get liquidated and the lender will be made whole of whatever they lent out. There's also the step in between anytime during the loan runtime, if the price, if the, the value of the collateral ever falls below a certain threshold, then you can get liquidated and the lender will receive a payout. I see." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "33:45", "start": 2025.06, "text": "And so in terms of the, collateral ratios, can you explain a bit there? Like, are you just doing like fifty percent as the default, or can people set the ratio, or do you have like a range that you're allowing? What's the situation on the li- on the, collateralized, sorry, the collateral requirement?" }, { "speaker": "philipp_hoenisch", "time": "34:04", "start": 2044.01, "text": "Yeah, that's interesting. So we are playing around with this right now. we recommend fifty percent, very simple, double the liquidity, double the collateral of what you borrow. but we let the lender actually decide on what are the constraints so they can loosen it up and say, \"Okay, I'm, I'm fine with, seventy percent LTV,\" which means, the, the borrower could get liquidated earlier, but at the same time, we enable the borrower to deposit more. And like- Again, we actually learned from institutional investors that they would like to go as low as like thirty percent LTV, like heavily over collateralized just to be on the safe side. I see." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "34:46", "start": 2086.16, "text": "And so what we're talking about here is the- On the lender side, the person lending Bitcoin, they have to, I guess, make sure they've covered their risk of not getting screwed out of the deal, per per se. Like if the price were to fall very quickly, would the, I guess, 'cause on a centralized exchange, you're kind of trusting the liquidation engine of, you know, the Bitfinex or the, or whoever, to correctly do the liquidation if the price falls below a certain level. So in this case- How is the, is, who is," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "35:24", "start": 2124.37, "text": "who is operationally doing that, liquidation if the price falls?" }, { "speaker": "philipp_hoenisch", "time": "35:31", "start": 2131.21, "text": "So who, okay, so there is an, an oracle which is just a very dumb service and that one attests to the price. And attesting to the price just means stupidly saying, every few seconds or minutes, the price is X, the price is Y, the price is Z, and it doesn't do anything else. It's not involved in the contract It's not aware at all of the contract. So these kind of services could be centralized exchanges, could be stock exchanges, like those services, they're already publishing the Bitcoin price right now. They would just need to sign this as well. Now, since they just signed the price and they don't know anything about the contract, it's your responsibility, meaning you as the lender or the borrower, to take that signature, so monitor the price, and then if an event happens, like you get liquidated, then you have to take that signature and do some manual work. I mean, it's in the app, it's automated for you, but, you have to manually publish the transaction. And we as the platform, we can also not do that for you, because then we would- Have some custodial control over your money, so it's all you'd as a borrower or a lender." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "36:42", "start": 2202.23, "text": "I see." }, { "speaker": "philipp_hoenisch", "time": "36:43", "start": 2202.79, "text": "But the" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "36:43", "start": 2203.11, "text": "idea is the app does it for you. So essentially the lender in this case, if they're not like a technical person You know, and fair enough, they might not be, they might be a banker or some or business guy, so they just have to put some level of trust in the app and the platform to actually- Watch kind of the price and watch the chain and do these things, right?" }, { "speaker": "philipp_hoenisch", "time": "37:07", "start": 2226.68, "text": "Yeah, exactly. So right now it works as a not--" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "37:09", "start": 2228.9, "text": "on a notification," }, { "speaker": "philipp_hoenisch", "time": "37:12", "start": 2232.18, "text": "method, like we send a notification and tell the lender, \"Hey, your borrower didn't pay back in time. Please log in and liquidate.\" And then there's just a button to-- And they've got to manually come in and press the button to, like, broadcast the transaction, or? Exactly, yes. But this could be, automated as well, like if you- If you think of Lightning, there's this concept of watchtowers where you outsource the channel monitoring, the chain monitoring to someone else. You could build something there as well. So we, they could hand over some, details about that contract to us and then we could publish this transaction on their behalf." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "37:52", "start": 2271.98, "text": "I see. Okay. And so then, I guess, yeah, that's kind of the overview of how liquidation will get handled. And so I guess the, the happy path is, let's say I'm the borrower, I, you know, I put up some Bitcoin collateral and I, I pay back the loan. In that case, then I get my Bitcoin, I pay you back the stablecoins, let's say, and then I get the Bitcoin back. That's the happy path. And then the unhappy path is, you know, I don't pay it back and the price drop, or the price drops, and then there's a liquidation. And on your side, let's say you're the borrower, you're the lender, you get a notification on your phone saying, \"Hey, Stephan, you need to liquidate Stephan,\" and you come on and you press the button and that broadcasts the transaction on chain And the Bitcoin leaves the, the multisig into your sole custody, is that" }, { "speaker": "philipp_hoenisch", "time": "38:44", "start": 2323.85, "text": "correct? Yes, exactly that's how it works. And we actually let the lender choose whether they want to receive Bitcoin or stablecoin, 'cause they originally lend out stablecoins, and for that we bind in another third party service which then basically converts the Bitcoin to whatever stablecoins they had in the first place." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "39:04", "start": 2344.45, "text": "The lead sponsor of this show is Bold, the best place to buy, sell, and save Bitcoin. For listeners in the US, Bold lets you secure your financial future with complete peace of mind by integrating a low fee Bitcoin-only brokerage with next-gen multisig vaults. With Bold, you can smash buy Bitcoin or set a DCA plan for only zero point nine nine percent fees and seamlessly deposit the Bitcoin direct to your Bold vault. The Bold vault is a two or three collaborative multisig where you hold two keys and Bold holds one as a redundant backup. Backup, protecting against loss or theft. You can use Trezor, Ledger or cold card hardware wallets to spin up a Bold Vault in just a few minutes, and the Bold Vault is the only collaborative custody vault available with zero monthly fees. They're also offering zero fees on your first ten thousand dollars of Bitcoin buys and twenty five dollars of free Bitcoin when you buy a hundred dollars of Bitcoin or more. Try Bold today and upgrade your stacking experience over at getbold dot io. And now back to the show. I see, gotcha. Okay, and so this is like, I presume this is all being driven like, is it out of a mobile app or is it a web app or what's the setup there?" }, { "speaker": "philipp_hoenisch", "time": "40:10", "start": 2410.45, "text": "It's a web app. So we particularly wanted to focus on web this time. With Tantin One, we were focusing on mobile first and learned that, particularly people with bigger money, they want big screens. Like big money on the phone, that doesn't feel safe enough, so they prefer to have a big desktop app. Yeah. That, that's where I get started. The irony, I guess," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "40:30", "start": 2429.98, "text": "the, the irony is given, as I'm sure you're well aware, the, the recent Bybit hack. so that was-- now, obviously, that's a different case, but they were using this thing called, I think, Gnosis Safe, or it's called Safe now, I think. And that's essentially like an app-level Ethereum multisig, and apparently the web interface got p Rumored to be North Korea supported, government supported or whatever. But anyway, the point is, a website got hacked and these guys signed a transaction kind of without knowing I, I guess web interfaces, can that make people uneasy? What do you think?" }, { "speaker": "philipp_hoenisch", "time": "41:09", "start": 2469.3, "text": "Yeah, I mean, that's, that's a very hard topic. I think, the Bybit hack is very particular because they also had this, blind signing feature where you don't really know what you're signing. Not sure if you've done Ethereum transactions in the past, it's not very transparent. Bitcoin is a little bit better there, you basically really see what you're signing, but for that you need to understand Understand what that means. So, yeah, and in this case, I mean," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "41:38", "start": 2497.92, "text": "they would, they would, would they need to understand the DLC kind of intricacies or is it more just like, yes or no, send this money there kind of thing?" }, { "speaker": "philipp_hoenisch", "time": "41:46", "start": 2505.83, "text": "Yeah, exactly. And they, they don't have to understand the DLCs, that would be a bit too much to ask. no, they just need to sign the transaction and, but yes, that's why nothing is trustless, right? They have to trust us in the sense of we actually implemented that way. They need to in that protocol. So there's a whole lot of level of trust, and that's why we, we go with this hybrid, hybrid approach where we let the lender decide on what protocol they wanna go for. Whether they wanna go for a multisig, the, the simpler approach, or the hands-off approach with DSCs. Nice," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "42:23", "start": 2542.95, "text": "yeah. And so, yeah, I guess the multisig one is gonna be Kind of more easy to wrap their heads around, probably for most people, at least today, and I, I guess coming back to that point about ideology versus meeting the market where it's at, I think there is an element where I think Bitcoin, especially technical people in the Bitcoin world, can run off with like technical ideas that sound really cool in their head, but that's not what the market wants, right? So it's kind of-- It's important to sort of-- It's important to sort of meet the market where, you know, they want a product, and so I think that's an important thing to understand. But I think, yeah, it might be interesting to see maybe in the future, like maybe with CTV and some of these other things, it gets really cool and better experience and things like that, That, so I guess a few other questions on, I guess for most people, they might be thinking, what are the costs going to be? And it would this kind of solution with lenders at be cost competitive versus some of the others? Like, what's the You know, origination fee or what's, what are some of these other fees that are gonna get associated, and how would your platform compare with other lending, Bitcoin, Bitcoin lending and stable lending platforms?" }, { "speaker": "philipp_hoenisch", "time": "43:39", "start": 2618.73, "text": "Yeah, totally. so what other costs are involved there is, there's an origination fee, which is how we pay our bills. It's currently set at, one and a half percent, which is, I think, market average. Then the other cost is on-chain transactions. So everything we do is on-chain. We are unfortunately not making use of ARK yet or any other L2, so you have to pay on-chain transactions. But that's, that's about it, like the interest rates, origination fee and transaction fee. There's no other hidden fee. You can also roll over your loan, which, like you could extend it for another term, and for that we reduce the origination fee as well. So instead of paying back the loan, taking another loan and going for another term, you can just say, \"Hey, I wanna extend that loan,\" and for that we reduce the origination fee." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "44:33", "start": 2672.7, "text": "Oh, interesting. Okay. So as an example, I could borrow, whatever, ten thou-- five thousand dollars or ten thousand dollars, whatever, and then at the end of that term, extend it again, and as-- now, I guess that's presuming the lender is happy to do that, to kind of go again, Can you explain a little bit about the rollover process? And I get, because this, this one thing that I could imagine a potential user might be thinking, well, okay, if I were to start borrowing this way What if I don't get the possibility to rollover and I have to, like, because they might want to keep the loan going for a longer period of time, but if the service provider or the lender doesn't offer that, then they're kind of, you know, they're up the creek without a paddle, right? So, so can you explain a bit about that?" }, { "speaker": "philipp_hoenisch", "time": "45:22", "start": 2721.98, "text": "Yeah, no, you're completely right. I mean, there's, it's a, if it's an open market, there's always a price. You can always roll over. The question is if you're happy with that, right? So, but the, the way how it works today is you literally just send a request to your lender and say, \"Hey, I want to extend it for another six months,\" and then the lender can say yes or no. And for them, they don't need to provide additional liquidity, so for them, it's actually a question of, \"Do I need My money back now for something else, or since I already got a borrower, there's a collateral already there, I already paid for the transaction fee, I might just let it sit there for another interest rate. And, we- We actually, I think we just ruled out that the lender can say, offer different interest rates for extending loans as well, so that, it is market-driven, meaning, let's say last term you got interest rates of fifteen percent, Bitcoin tanked a little bit, and now the interest rate might be better, or worse, Bitcoin just keeps appreciating, which we all hope, the interest rate might actually rise over the term as well. So it's interesting. It's, it's market-driven and right now You always have to go against the same lender, but, nothing speaks against borrowing from someone else and then extending it. And you could think of, hey, you are, you're the, you're my lender right now And then there is, Satoshi is lending out as well. You don't want to extend with me, but, I could just borrow from Satoshi and then he sends the stablecoin to you, and I didn't have to move my collateral at all. So that's, that's something we are looking at" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "47:07", "start": 2827.17, "text": "right now as well. Interesting. And so that could be, and then would that also allow not just rollover, but also rolling over and taking a bigger loan, right? Because as an example, there might be a use case where some people want to just borrow for, you know, living expenses, and then- Do it again for another period, and then so again they might, they might need to, you know, ex-expand that loan size. so would this also handle that case or no?" }, { "speaker": "philipp_hoenisch", "time": "47:38", "start": 2857.8, "text": "Yeah, no, totally. That's now we are talking about this credit line idea. so initially, I was talking about this debit card where you preload money, but let's say you take a loan of one thousand dollar, but you put up a over collateralize it to ten percent or something. So like really over collateralize it, and then you have this credit line where you can just keep borrowing and borrowing and borrowing, and if the lender you're tapping into is happy to keep lending, then you can just keep adding it up to your card, and you can keep spending. And, that's the, that's the idea of Bitcoin keeps appreciating, and you can keep on borrowing against it, and you never have to pay it back." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "48:20", "start": 2900.35, "text": "Because you just kind of keep topping it up with more Bitcoin until eventually, you know, I mean, who knows? Like, if you're, if you're really planning the long game and you're talking twenty years out, and you're thinking, you know, whatever, Bitcoin is ten million dollars at that point, and maybe the initial amount you borrowed was this much, but by the time you're actually closing that loan down in, I don't know, twenty years time, hypothetically, assuming no platform risk, that you would be paying it back with a very, very small fraction of Bitcoin," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "48:51", "start": 2930.83, "text": "I guess is the theory." }, { "speaker": "philipp_hoenisch", "time": "48:52", "start": 2932.41, "text": "That's the dream, that's exactly the dream. And there's an interesting topic, on the lender side, we learned that some lenders aren't willing to lend out stablecoins for such a long term because, right. The, the regulations are just uncertain. Like right now, Tether in Europe is, it's really hard to get off ramps and on ramps. USDC is much easier to do right now. So if I lend you a few K on USDT and then- I get it back in four years, and in Australia, I can't do anything with it anymore, or worse, I don't know, Tether disappears. What's-- That's, that's a big risk. so we are looking into this space, like if the lender is willing to lend out fiat against Bitcoin, that means they have a certain amount of trust into Bitcoin in the long run. Why not? And again, the lende-lender said, \"Why not lend a sat, denominated in st-in-in fiat, but all you get is Bitcoin?\" And if we all believe in Bitcoin, be it's gonna, Bitcoin's gonna be there in a few years as well, then the risk here of the stablecoins is completely gone." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "50:01", "start": 3001.11, "text": "Yeah, that's an interesting point as well around stablecoins and kind of the regulatory risk and where things go, and, you know, right now it's, you know, in the Amer- in the, at least in the American case, it seems very pro-crypto, but at the same time, maybe you have a concern about what happens in the next administration or even in this one, who knows, right? So it's, yeah, you never know. So I think that's one aspect where- It, it requires a bit of long term belief in both Bitcoin and the stable-- and that particular stablecoin you're using, if you are using a stablecoin. so I'm-- while we're on this point Do you have any thoughts on the whole DLC-style stablecoin or the stable channel and these other approaches? is that kind of what also, what you were also pointing to there, that that could be an alternative, maybe not now, but in the future?" }, { "speaker": "philipp_hoenisch", "time": "50:51", "start": 3051.13, "text": "Well, I mean, the ideologist in me would dream of synthetic stablecoins using DLCS, but the tech isn't there yet. With maybe with CTV and Tecksix from Stack, which is what is currently being discussed on Twitter, we could get to something really cool. combined with Ark, maybe we can get really usable synthetic stablecoins with DLCS, but we're not there yet. And I mean, we tried, right? With Tantan One, we really- Yeah. We had our synthetic stablecoin. It's just not there, and people trust, like, again, if you have fiat, people trust in fiat. It's, that's the, that's the name, right? And that's kind of where," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "51:33", "start": 3092.88, "text": "why we are, why we are where we are now. So, yeah, that's, I don't blame you." }, { "speaker": "philipp_hoenisch", "time": "51:37", "start": 3097.42, "text": "Tether has been around for ages. I don't believe they're gonna go anywhere anytime soon. I mean, yes, regulations will change in wherever you live, but it is so well, supported in a, in a- Peer-to-peer space that it's easy to get rid of it or get a hands-off tether these days, so I think it's a safe bet that tether will be around. the, the stable channels is a very interesting idea, but I don't think it's gonna work out in the long run. So maybe for those who don't know how it works, is you have a, a lightning channel with someone else. And you ask them to stabilize some balance for a hundred dollar, and then on a regular tick, like let's say every minute or every few seconds, you, both of you, check the price, and then if the price went up, you sent over some SATs, or if the price went down, you received some SATs. And with this, you always have a stable amount of, in fiat terms, but the Bitcoin amount changes. The reason why I'm not such a big fan of this is because it's fully trusted. Like it's not custodial, but you rely on the other party to hold up their end of that, that bet in a moment where they don't benefit from it at all. And let's say I wanna get a hundred dollars stable and Bitcoin keeps appreciating, then I keep sending oversubs to the other guy, and he's happy to get get in my subs. I'm happy, I have a hundred dollars, and he keeps on stacking subs. But as soon as the price turns around and goes down He has no incentive whatsoever to keep up that service anymore. Like he could just say, \"Yep, thank you for all the free sets, I'm outta here.\" Right. Just close down the channel at that point or whatever. And just, exactly. And that's, if you think that as a big service provider, usually you would say like, \"Yeah, a big service provider has the incentive of keeping, keeping open their service because it's their business.\" But in this particular scenario where, and we all believe in that, that Bitcoin keeps going up They just keep stacking sets from all the users, which means they get more Bitcoin and more Bitcoin, and then Bitcoin. So you're" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "53:48", "start": 3228.22, "text": "saying they could do like a long con kind of thing, like set up and be a very nice guy in the community, and everyone likes them, and then eventually at one moment just kind of run off with the sets basically." }, { "speaker": "philipp_hoenisch", "time": "53:59", "start": 3239.07, "text": "Exactly. So I think for, for the, the normal retail user, this won't work. For institutions which have contracts, which are building it on trust, that might work, but for the retail users who's running around with the Lightning node on a Raspberry Pi, I doubt that this will be a use case for them. Stable coins are probably the way to go." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "54:25", "start": 3264.63, "text": "Interesting. Yeah, it's a fair point. how do you see the market for lenders here growing as well, right? Because we've been talking a bit, a lot of this from the borrower's perspective, but what about from the lender's perspective? Do you see that that could grow too, that there'll be maybe-- And, and I guess my question for you would be, where do you see the sources of funding coming from? Like, do you think this, this might be like a rich hodler or a rich crypto person who wants to kind of- lend a little bit out, or do you see this more like tradfi institutions or maybe family office or insurance or like which entities do you think will actually come to play and be a part of this market as a-- on the lending side here?" }, { "speaker": "philipp_hoenisch", "time": "55:07", "start": 3306.68, "text": "All right, the, the big liquidity is definitely in the trade finance kind of world, but we've seen an interesting new-- not sure if it's new, but industry, showing up like in Europe, Central Europe, in Germany, Austria, there is this concept of buying Baufinanzierungs for their kids, which is like a long-term fixed-term interest product, which is like ten years, fifteen years, and you get your five or six percent over the term. They use For this concept already. Now what we would need is some kind of proxy company which taps into that and says, \"Hey, I'm selling you instead of...\" Oh, sorry, Bauchbar is backed by properties. By the way, so they're investing into someone else building properties or renovating. what we need is to tap into that is a kind of a proxy, so as a fund which offers fixed term interest rates for these kind of people and then turns around and uses those funds and lends it out But against Bitcoiners, 'cause these no-- these pre-coiners, they are probably not gonna log into a lender site and lend out the money. That's too much hassle. Right, but the idea is" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "56:18", "start": 3377.72, "text": "if it was productized and put out there with a nice marketing brochure and a glossy, all, all this stuff. Yeah. And" }, { "speaker": "philipp_hoenisch", "time": "56:24", "start": 3384.37, "text": "that can be fully regulated and guaranteed. I don't know if banking guarantees anything worth, but you could really build this as a highly regulated service, and that gives us all the guarantees what the- The no-cainer, no-coiner world" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "56:40", "start": 3399.7, "text": "wants to see. I see, yeah. and lastly, I mean, you touched on this a little bit, we were talking a little bit about CTV and CSFS, so Check Template Verify and CheckSig from Stack, which- I don't know, it's always difficult to judge the momentum, but it seems to be having a bit of momentum now amongst at least some developers as being a potential soft fork because it's quite a minimal thing and it enables more of the monetary users, let's say, I'm curious if you have any reactions on that. Would that enable anything here or maybe just other general things that you think it would really improve on Bitcoin?" }, { "speaker": "philipp_hoenisch", "time": "57:17", "start": 3436.72, "text": "heaps of things. I, I just tweeted about it. I think the combination of both will keep us builders happy and busy for a long time. the, the extent of those opcodes probably hasn't been fully explored yet. CheckSig from Stack is very simple, all it does is it verifies some signature or some message on the Stack. Check Template Verify is a little bit more complex, but the combination of this is super powerful. And I, I just came across a post from Lloyd Fournier, a researcher in the space, who was writing about Check Template Verify three years ago and its impact on DLCS, and I've done the math, but He said that it would give an improvement of thirty x over the signing. So right now, right now, you, you said it earlier, you have a bunch of CTS, like thousands, hundred thousands of CTS, and signing that, signing all of those transactions takes a few seconds. If you, with CTV, you could get this down to a few milliseconds, and then suddenly CTVs, DLCS are on par with centralized exchanges. And that is really cool. If you didn't get, Steven Roost tweeted about it that CTV will bring out the full potential of ARK. So the combination of this, I think I need to start with ten ten one again." }, { "speaker": "philipp_hoenisch", "time": "58:47", "start": 3526.88, "text": "That is, that is a huge opportunity for Bitcoin and, DeFi on Bitcoin." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "58:52", "start": 3532.46, "text": "Yeah, interesting. Well, I think, to the point earlier as well, like kind of meeting the market where it's at, it could also be that, you know, some ideas were just before their time, and that maybe it would have been, maybe it might have worked if it was five, ten years into the future, who knows, right? but, interesting to chat and, I think There, there, I think most of us are predicting that there will be a big market for this Bitcoin lending and overcollateralization, but the question will be how tradfi will it be versus how much, you know, on-chain will it be. of course, I think both of these worlds are somewhat going to merge, right? Like the tradfi people might buy Someone or build some kind of product like this or to allow Bitcoin as part of their financial services suite, and then kind of the cyberpunk side of it maybe will have to interact with the legacy TradFi KYC/AML world to sort of get some funding, funding sources. So it'll be an interesting space to see how it all develops. any last closing thought from you?" }, { "speaker": "philipp_hoenisch", "time": "59:55", "start": 3595.25, "text": "That's-- You're completely right, it's definitely coming, and we see centralized and decentral- Centralized platforms picking up, also in the DeFi space, these platforms are huge, so it's, it is a huge use case. I just recommend every Bitcoiner to look into that, how to tap into your liquidity because it has quite a few benefits, ben- I'm missing the word, upside benefits. Like, yeah, benefits, exactly. For example, tax benefits and various jurisdictions you don't pay capital gains tax on taking a loan against it. So you're not selling your Bitcoin, you're borrowing against it, and that's Yeah, it's very important to look into that." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:00:37", "start": 3637.18, "text": "Yeah. Yeah, but I, yeah, certainly, there's the benefits there, but I do also wanna just reiterate for people, don't be irresponsible, don't kind of, you know, borrow again, borrow above your head in terms of what you are able to actually, you know, achieve, because there is still liquidation, there are still risks with these things also. So it's important for people to sort of understand both sides of that argument, and obviously, listeners, you're big boys and big girls, you can And then, yeah, just lastly, where can people find you online?" }, { "speaker": "philipp_hoenisch", "time": "01:01:07", "start": 3667.38, "text": "Yeah, you can find me on Twitter, X, sorry, under bonomatt on Noster as well. don't post that much, I'm more a lurker on Noster. And LenderSet, you find under lenderset dot com and on social media, same, same name." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:01:22", "start": 3682.35, "text": "Fantastic. Well, thanks for joining me and thanks for, explaining your view of where this is all going. Thanks, Stefan. It's" }, { "speaker": "philipp_hoenisch", "time": "01:01:29", "start": 3689.12, "text": "been a pleasure." } ] }