{ "episodeId": "SLP718", "speakers": { "stephan": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "host", "tag": "STEPHAN" }, "jos_lazet": { "name": "Jos Lazet", "role": "guest", "tag": "JOS" } }, "segments": [ { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:00", "start": 0.16, "text": "Everyone wants, you know, numbers go up and they wanna have this Bitcoin price of whatever number you wanna wish for, but I think that institutional adoption is a requirement for that. If it remains a niche in a retail space, Bitcoin will never reach these super high prices." }, { "speaker": "jos_lazet", "time": "00:15", "start": 15.31, "text": "Hi everyone and welcome back to Stephan Livera podcast. Joining me today is Jos Lazet from Blockrise. Now, we're gonna be chatting about a few things. Obviously, there's been a bit of movement in the price recently, so that'll be interesting to talk about, as well as the semi-custodial model you With, with block rise and of course, lending discussions. So, I mean, obvious elephant in the room as we speak right now, the price is about seventy thousand dollars per Bitcoin, and just recently we had this kind of Dropped down to sixty K and people were really scared and thought, \"Did someone blow up? Has the body float, floated to the surface? Or is it something else?\" yeah. So first off, welcome to the show, Jos, and, give us your take on, if, if you have any thought on the reason for this recent price move down." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:01", "start": 61.43, "text": "Yeah, thank you very much for welcoming me. do I have any, any, any views? I don't know. I, I saw this very applicable theory about this Hong Kong, based went down and was, was liquidated. I mean, it's Bitcoin being Bitcoin, there's volatility in the market, and that's, that's fine. I think the, the space kind of has changed now because, Bitcoin-backed loans, like, like ourselves. are now a bigger play, so everyone gets more concerned. There was the DDoS on Strike, you know, and everyone is like, \"Yeah, what if you get liquidated in those kind of moments?\" So the market has definitely changed. It's very interesting to have a look at, but, I mean, when in doubt, zoom out, and of course, there's been quite some people, panicking, I would say, like more than I kind of expected, but I mean, come on, guys, it's like the Bitcoin will be volatile for" }, { "speaker": "jos_lazet", "time": "01:56", "start": 115.65, "text": "Yeah, and I think maybe part of that is people are, as you said, maybe there's more people using loans now, so they're kind of more focused on liquidation points and things like this. But, I mean, it's not that there hasn't been leverage before, that, you know, even the, the COVID crash in like March of twenty twenty, there was like a big drop there, and there were a lot of kind of people worried about getting liquidated on loans and things like that. So what's really changed? Is it just the absolute numbers are larger now, that like even if" }, { "speaker": "jos_lazet", "time": "02:25", "start": 144.75, "text": "Is it the absolute numbers or is it just there's a lot of new people and they're not used to it?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "02:29", "start": 148.81, "text": "Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but, there used to be more like leverage, like bid max on the, on the exchanges and the, and the, and the lending side used to be a lot more institutional, like, FalconX and Galaxy Digital providing services. I mean, there were," }, { "speaker": "jos_lazet", "time": "02:42", "start": 161.62, "text": "there were providers like Unchained and Leden have been around for a little while and, you know, there, there have been some of" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "02:53", "start": 172.81, "text": "these lending, GameMark, a lot more retail focused products, came available, so you're right, within chains, et cetera, and they're definitely setting standards for, for quite some years. But it's like, well, the fact that we introduced it and, and quite some others, I think that, it, it, it became more common ground that this-- there's, there's a market for this, and it's, it's growing a lot, this market is, is, is growing very fast, so is the private debit mark, for example From a sort of community perspective, a lot more people felt affected by this, this correction. and, yeah, I, like, I think that, for example, the lending market will only continue to grow" }, { "speaker": "jos_lazet", "time": "03:34", "start": 214.13, "text": "Yeah. Do you think people got a bit lulled into thinking the volatility had gone away, that, maybe people thought, \"Oh, it's ETF era, it's, you know, there's all these futures and options markets and so on,\" and so maybe that's gonna strip some of the volatility from Bitcoin? And do you think that was what, has lulled people into thinking we won't have this kind of crazy early year volatility again?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "03:57", "start": 237.1, "text": "Yeah, and I think the-- I think even bigger is the four-year cycle, that everyone was like, \"It's broken, it's Two cycles that I was, I was there, that was definitely not the talk, and now everyone, like, I've seen podcasts people like arguing that the four-year cycle is broken, and with last week in mind, definitely not broken. It just, it's just moved a little bit prior to the halving. So usually it was like, six to twelve months after the halving there would be the autumn high peak or at least the, the, yeah, the new autumn highs. that's, that's different now because it was reached before the halving" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "04:35", "start": 275.27, "text": "but yeah, I mean, yeah, maybe some comfort, hundred K, I mean, it's, it's been such a big moment to reach the hundred K and to break it over and over again, so that definitely gave some comfort. It's even easy to calculate, it sounds silly, I think, but for us, like, we're running, our, our financial models all the time, so like if you have a euro-denominated administration, you need to have a euro-denominated, Bitcoin number, and, and so we've been doing our calculations with that, it It's easy, and now everything's different. I mean, like, for example, we're also setting up a, a private Bitcoin treasury, just so nothing public is just for, for Blockrise and their, and their regulation, we need to do this in the, in a certain way. And now, since we started with our plans and currently rolling out the plans, we can double the amount of Bitcoin in our, our treasury. That's nice." }, { "speaker": "jos_lazet", "time": "05:26", "start": 325.76, "text": "Well, yeah, I mean, look, stacking the dip is always a, a good thing, for Bitcoin Max" }, { "speaker": "jos_lazet", "time": "05:34", "start": 334.31, "text": "when did it start? As I understand, it's, you know, you're a Netherlands, Bitcoin, company. People can, basically c-custody Bitcoin and also you have loans. I presume you have buy and sell also. Can you just talk a little bit about the overview there? Yeah," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "05:49", "start": 349.02, "text": "exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, it's, I'm, I'm a 2013 Bitcoiner, which is, which is relevant, I think. I started, helping people out with Bitcoin since 20 You can I not just get it done by you. So I started, offering more elaborate services that led to the, founding of Blockrise in two thousand and seventeen. So we've been around for a while. It's just that we really focused on the software side for a long time. So I never really went out in the public, like local meetups, sure, but Blockrise was never really a platform where people could create an account, for example. So really spent a long time building the, the software side, of Blockrise. And with COVID- Actually, we changed our mind and we said, okay, you know what, this offer business, like we had very secure, custody, really, really meant for the end users. And, y'know, I mean, this is very difficult, like security is such a hard pitch. So we said, you know what, let's pivot into a platform. We could become a, a Bitcoin platform, got regulated, et cetera. And basically we have three services, so buy and sell, the broker, asset management, which is a, a Bitcoin Euro strategy, and we have, lending, so, collateralize your Bitcoin and, and open a loan, and then everything is done over our what, what we call semi-custodial setup. so it's not non-custodial, it's not custodial, it's, it's, it's semi-custodial. and yeah, that's it, fully regulated, focused on the EU. we, we are looking for clients minimum" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "07:22", "start": 442.28, "text": "A little bit, because everything happens on chain with us and everything's quite white-gloved, it's not a super retail platform, but this is exactly what I think that I started, ten years ago, and it's still very relevant that there's, there's non-custodial wallet solutions, and don't get me wrong, they're great, but it's still very difficult to do a multi-sig setup, for example. So with that in mind, I wanted to have something that comes very close to it, that's not custodial, but it shouldn't have, for example, My technical setup, but for example, I'm not sure if my heirs can, can, can use my technical setup. So I wanted to have a hybrid system in between. That's basically what Blockrise is, and there's quite some cool quirks and it's very much meant for Bitcoin. So, yeah, that's it. Yeah," }, { "speaker": "jos_lazet", "time": "08:08", "start": 488.03, "text": "okay. So let's explore the semi-custodial model idea. So most people are probably used to just, you know, having like a phone wallet or like their cold card for hardware wallets or maybe multisig if they're a bit more advanced with it. Talk You guys are using." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "08:24", "start": 504.02, "text": "So, the, the, the whole idea is, so it's semi-custodial because, we use a, a hardware device, a hardware security module, which is basically HSM, yep, HSM exactly, which is basically a secure element at large, and so we are the owners of these, these HSMs. The whole principle of the HSM is that it can super-securely generate keys inside of the HSM, and they're not extractable. So we can't extract them, the client can't extract them. So we, we host the setup, so we are the final respon- responsible for this. However, the client generates the authentication keys, so let's say it's a blockrise key pair to the HSM, and they're the only ones with this key pair. So this key pair that they generate, it has no value to the world, it's not a Bitcoin key, it's just a key pair that's valid for blockrise. And so if you take this principle, you have a hybrid model because we have the sort of the safe, the HSM, but you have the key. So we can take the safe away, and your key is, is, has no value to the world. But if you assume both are online, so the client has the key, we have the HSM, then we have this, this hybrid model where it's super user friendly because this key pair can be put in a mobile phone, we can take care for a lot of the security, but you also have the certainty that we can't access your Bitcoin. So it's a complementary model compared to, I mean, on the one end there's custodial, which we don't have to need to have the discussion about, but on the non-custodial side, it's of course, it's the, the self-sovereignty, which is, which is the, the great part, but the technical part is, is the downside of it. Like, let's say you wanna do trades or you wanna open a loan, it easily becomes custodial, what we see, and, and the non-custodial versions of, of loans, for example" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "10:16", "start": 615.96, "text": "model where we host the hardware, you have the keys, you can verify everything that, you know, there's not additional keys being added to your, to your Bitcoin wallet inside of the HSM. And, and that's the basis. Then what we do is, for example, for every service we provide, we, derive different wallets so you can, you can always have an extended public key, verify all your holdings per service that you use, which is, which is already, I think, unheard of in the market. And then Based on this, this basic setup, you can start trusting Blockrise basically, so you can start adding Blockrise, company owned keys, for example, for the legacy, legacy planning services. So if you have limited trust in Blockrise, you can opt in for, for example, the legacy planning service, or for example, the other one is asset management. It's a one out of two multisig, so we can execute rebalances, but the client always has the key in case they wanna withdraw the funds at any time. And this is the most important- thing I think comparing it to platforms is that in any case, our clients will have a key or access to a key that they can initiate withdrawals whenever. So if you wanna withdraw funds from your wallet on a Saturday night, you aren't relying on blockchights to be online, which is usually the case with Gotcha." }, { "speaker": "jos_lazet", "time": "11:35", "start": 695.44, "text": "So just to be clear, that's in the asset management case or in all, in any case, in all of the cases, okay? It's just that Walk me through that, just so-- is it a phone app, the, the Blockrise, platform, and then like a web site interface, or just walk me through how that part of it works also?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "11:54", "start": 713.54, "text": "Yeah, so we have a, a mobile app and we have a dashboard. It's just that the, the keys are, generated on the mobile phone. so by, by default, you actually have two keys. one is inside of the secure element of your mobile phone, the Secure Enclave or the strong box, like the Titan" }, { "speaker": "jos_lazet", "time": "12:10", "start": 730.21, "text": "or whatever chip thing, yeah? Yeah," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "12:12", "start": 731.76, "text": "exactly. but the thing is that one is not transferable. So if you buy a new phone, you can't transfer this key. So we need a sort of recovery key. So the recovery key is what we call the blockchain seed, a little bit inconvenient naming, but, working on that. But the, the, this is the, So if you buy a new phone and you don't have the old phone present anymore, we, we can't recover it for you, so you need to have the recovery kit available in order to set up your new phone." }, { "speaker": "jos_lazet", "time": "12:40", "start": 760.01, "text": "Got it. And that's like the block hash seed, which is different from your Bitcoin seed, like that isn't a BIP39 key, right? Well, it is, but it's just that it's not used. So" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "12:50", "start": 770.08, "text": "it, it, it follows all the standards of the, of the" }, { "speaker": "jos_lazet", "time": "12:52", "start": 772.24, "text": "BIP39 key. Oh, gotcha. So you've used like" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "13:00", "start": 780.45, "text": "We have been playing with this idea of actually making it a BIP thirty-nine, key, for example, with the, time lock, like, the, the time lock function in Bitcoin, so that if you, if you have unspent UTXOs after X amount of blocks, your, your block right seeds becomes an actual BIP thirty-nine key in order to recover your, block right fund outside of block right. So, quite important point is that disaster recovery is of course super important in this, in this case, because you cannot just assume that The block height is always online or we never go bankrupt or whatever. So it's not live yet, but there will be, there will be disaster recovery either with pre-signed UTXOs, so you can just, add a recovery address, pre-sign all your UTXOs to this, to this address, and then in case that we, we are offline, whatever, you just publish those, UTXOs and you're good to go. so that's one way to do a, a disaster recovery." }, { "speaker": "jos_lazet", "time": "13:57", "start": 837.11, "text": "Okay. Gotcha. But that's in the future, right? So for now, it is, you know, the phone has the, let's say, I-- Okay. I'm not a, you're-- I'm not a European or whatever, I'm not an EU, but just hypothetically, let's say I'm a customer, I have the Blockrise app on my phone, I write down my Blockrise seed, and you, and you as Blockrise have, a key in your, inside your H" }, { "speaker": "jos_lazet", "time": "14:24", "start": 863.81, "text": "The new phone, how do I do that?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "14:27", "start": 866.51, "text": "So there, there's, there's two ways. One, there's, if you, if you opt in for the cloud backup, you create a, a, like a encrypted key pair on your cloud, like I don't like Google Drive or like Apple or Google or whatever. Yeah, exactly. And then you can recover super seamlessly. But if you decide not to trust that, for example, you can just literally write down your, your blockchain seed, so twenty-four word seed, and you can just recover this on your new mobile" }, { "speaker": "jos_lazet", "time": "14:51", "start": 890.83, "text": "phone. Okay Either the Apple or Google backup or my written down words, can they steal my coins? Or no? I presume not." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "15:00", "start": 900.03, "text": "No, because you need login, password, 2FA, email whitelisting, then of course, there's wallet whitelisting, there's bank account whitelisting, there's quite some, of course, procedures. So we can build a lot of application layer protection around this. So just the blockchain seed has no value, you need to have full access to the account plus the blockchain seed in order to do anything. So that's one. But then still, you can only Either white listed, bank accounts or white listed, Bitcoin accounts, and there's still a, like a personal check in there. So you always need to have a video call with one of the employees here in order to, whitelist addresses. Why? Because users have significant funds in our platform. So it's not like as, as easy as, strike and sending funds immediately to an external address. Okay, got it." }, { "speaker": "jos_lazet", "time": "15:46", "start": 946.3, "text": "So, and then, so let's say the Blockrise customer, so what can you do on your side unilaterally, like you as Blockrise, what can you do without the customer kind of knowing, I guess?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "16:02", "start": 961.88, "text": "I mean, extremely, extremely limited. So, funnily enough, the regulator introduced a new term for us called negative control, meaning that we can't control our client funds, but we can prevent them from accessing their funds currently without the disaster recovery. And the thing is that looking at it from a very sharp eye on the, on the, on the non-custodial side, it's not non-custodial, and we can never make it fully non-custodial, even with disaster recovery, there's- Ways to argue there's not non-custodial, but I think that it's, it's a lot more our mission to make it super user friendly to have on-chain funds, to know for a hundred percent certain that your funds aren't being lent anywhere, that there's nothing going on in the background, and make it extremely user friendly. I mean, users can onboard in minutes, and they really, they don't realize that they have three on-chain wallets the moment that they onboard with Blockrise, and that every time they buy You sell Bitcoin, it's an on-chain transaction, like everything is super Bitcoin native, and from a, yeah, I mean, from a platform perspective, this is unheard of, and even on the, on the non-custodial side Again, there's great wallets out there, like you named a few, but in my opinion, we haven't seen a lot of development over the last ten years making these solutions so much better. It's still like, I'm not so confident that, for example, my mom, who's been in quite early, Bitcoin adopter as well, that she is very comfortable setting up a non-custodial wallet setup. And if that's really the case, then how can we expect global adoption of Bitcoin, in a, in a non-custodial manner? I mean, the- Like as much as I would love it, we need to have more hybrid solutions. That's why I've also been praising, for example, Bitkey quite a bit because Of course, the security and the privacy model isn't ideal, but people shouldn't really see it that much as a, as a sort of non-custodial wallet, but more as a attempt to make custody more user friendly, because it really isn't. Like if you, if you talk about a single seed setup, it's already quite challenging, and we've seen like leaks over, over one password or other password managers. But if you consider then a passphrase setup, it's already more complicated. If you talk about a multi-seed setup, it, it becomes ridiculous. Again, talking about the most, most of the, the population, they're not really ready for this, and this is so important. It's so important to custody your Bitcoin, it's so important to take them off- platforms to take them off exchanges and p-placed them in a, in a, in a proper setup, and this is just, like I think that as a Bitcoin community, we, we haven't advanced enough yet to make it so doable" }, { "speaker": "jos_lazet", "time": "18:50", "start": 1130.2, "text": "Interesting. So what would you say, I guess, I mean, you're making that case now, so let's, let's talk about that. So what should, what should typical Bitcoiners a-advice for their- You know, non Bitcoin psychopath, family and friends, how do you see that?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "19:07", "start": 1147.44, "text": "I mean, I think that the, it, it, it doesn't even matter if, if, if you come from a refer Bitcoin or not, but most people start on an exchange or a broker, and they don't, they don't care about custody yet, which is, which is fine. I mean, that's just part of the journey that you have to go through, and if someone is really, forcing it upon you on, like, the whole orange pilling process" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "19:33", "start": 1172.54, "text": "so from the journey, I would say people just experience the volatility like last week, you know, this is, this is part number one is you just look at it from a price perspective, and once they start looking more into the whole be around bank principles, custody comes into play, and that's where you, you know, you start with setting up a basic wallet, and you withdraw some funds in there, and you try a transaction back, et cetera. But at some point, like especially if you are invested, you know, if, if you really start dedicating Leading more to Bitcoin, you need to consider probably like multiple setups. I've always said custody is, is complementary to each other, where for example, exchanges are, are a monopoly, I think. Everyone will switch for a cheaper, exchange. With a custody solution, usually people opt in for multiple setups. I mean, everyone has a mobile, mobile phone wallet or, or lightning wallet to do some small transactions, and probably have a sort of, warm, setup where they have some funds available, and then they have their cold storage setup where, where the majority of the funds are, you know, like that's the kind of setup that you in the end wanna move to. But that's all part of your, your journey of your own risk appetite, how well do you wanna have arranged it? And I think that, like, one of the things that I was looking for, especially in the early days, is a sort of recommendation, like, how should I set up my funds? And I've learned over the years that everyone has such a different view on this. Like, there's people that say, \"You know, I've given up on, on building this complex multi-sig setup, because it's just not feasible for my family to, to recover it. So instead wallets, like single-sig wallets or maybe with a passphrase, because the, the odds of, of my family being able to use that is higher than having like properly set up three, three wallets, which is, which is, sadly the case, I think." }, { "speaker": "jos_lazet", "time": "21:25", "start": 1284.64, "text": "It's very complicated because I can also imagine, you know, maybe in the future there will be just better consult-- like Bitcoin consultants who help, you know, help your family recover and, and of course, like all the miniscripts, like inheritance sort of stuff, and of course- The platforms that exist, maybe they'll be better at having like this kind of white glove support for, you know, your wife and your kids after we die or whatever, right? So" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "21:47", "start": 1307.34, "text": "yeah, but and, and this is the, the biggest challenge of, of, of Bitcoin in general, I think, is that you need to, you, you need to find this, this balance between comfort, like usability, and security on the other side. In the end, you know, you can't trust anyone with your funds, especially majority keys is, is something you should never do, but we also wanna have And I think it's just, it's combined effort in order to, to find this balance. And Blockrise is just another shot at making it more, tolerable. I mean, especially, so we've been live for, for two years, so, you know, there's been quite some, some growth in, in, in, in that time. And I've, I've seen a lot of clients who are just done with, with having a single sig or a, a non-custodial setup. And I, like, of course, I think this is super important for But I think that in some way, there's just a lot of people aren't built for, for having a non-custodial setup, you know? So, yeah, this, this will remain a challenge. So I'm curious," }, { "speaker": "jos_lazet", "time": "22:50", "start": 1369.84, "text": "do you see the pattern being that people might onboard with you and then like migrate out, or just kind of onboard with you and just stay in this Blockrise kind of semi-custodial model? I guess it's maybe early for you to say, but do you see that as being a future, or do you think it's more like they'll keep an amount on your They're doing for trading or lending, but keep, let's say, the lion's share or larger amounts out in their own multi-sig for the, for the larger amounts." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "23:18", "start": 1397.82, "text": "So I would say the far majority comes to us for legacy planning. So they, they have an on-custodial setup and they just wanna migrate some of their funds, let's say twenty, thirty, forty, fifty percent of their, of their funds, to our solution. Of course, Bitcoin-backed loans is another reason why people are, are opting in for us. so but that's really assuming the Bitcoin deposit site, you know, we have a lot of, let's say, family offices and people that are buying their first Bitcoin with us. Usually what we see is that they remain in our platform. So we've had a couple family offices that took in significant funds, and they, they, like when you reach a certain limit or, or an amount, then it just makes sense to do, do, to set up multiple custody solutions, and, and we'll help you with this, you know, because in the end- And they are quite new to this, to the space. So we've, we've helped, helped a couple of those, those family offices set up a proper, proper setup, and they, they can, they can decide how they balance their funds sort of between the, the custody solutions, so they have a non-custodial setup like a Casa or, yeah, those kind of things, and then they have our solution, and if they need to offload or get any loans, they'll use our platform, but that's, that's" }, { "speaker": "jos_lazet", "time": "24:36", "start": 1476.35, "text": "about fiat, dealing with the fiat wires and fiat aspects of it, do you use or offer stablecoins on your platform or is it just fiat in and out?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "24:48", "start": 1487.66, "text": "No, it's, it's, so we're, we can offer our services to all over, all over the world, it's just that we are euro-denominated platform. So, yeah, and, and I, we, we had Ethereum support for the longest time also with stablecoins in mind, or, or mostly because of the stablecoins in mind. However, the stablecoin play in Europe is just Because the euro banking system is actually so good, so we don't even have like any intermediary processors for, for banking transfers. It's just that we have imme-- like directly integrated on the-- Is this that" }, { "speaker": "jos_lazet", "time": "25:21", "start": 1521.22, "text": "SEPA thing? I'm not sure. Yeah, SEPA. SEPA. Exactly." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "25:24", "start": 1523.76, "text": "It's the SEPA system, and we can transfer huge amounts of funds instantly over our banking network directly, so without any other parties like in between settling our transactions. We do everything ourselves, and because of this, I mean, Euro, Euro-- Stablecoins haven't taken off either. I was, I was definitely a bit wrong there, like, let's say four years ago when, when we made this, this decision to implement, stablecoins in the platform, but we've removed everything because we just saw that Euro stablecoins aren't taking off and it's just less relevant. So for US and, and all the other, countries that are going big on stablecoins, I, I understand, I see it. In Europe, it's just not as relevant. So, it's just that, Likely to, to do all fiat side transfers." }, { "speaker": "jos_lazet", "time": "26:12", "start": 1571.57, "text": "Perhaps that's a, that's a consequence, let's say, of Mica and like, I guess, being brought inside the regulatory fold. Of course, that comes with certain costs from a privacy and a regulation, and a, let's say, the self-sovereignty libertarian side of it, but, that's probably-- That's w-would you say that interpretation is right, like it's mainly just around the re-- being brought into the regulatory fold, or is there some other explana-explanation for it? Yeah, well," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "26:40", "start": 1599.63, "text": "MIGOR is of course, there's a lot more recent. it was officially effective from thirty December twenty twenty-four. we've decided to, to, to use the direct banking integration from twenty twenty-one. So this is definitely nothing new based on, on, on MIGOR. But, yeah, no, it's, Mi-Mi like MiCar is conflicting, I, I understand, like from a privacy perspective, but this privacy is not really so set in the, in the regulation. I think it's more the companies like us that we need to fight for, having, sufficient privacy measures in, in, in the, in the scope of MiCar. but it's also great. I mean, everyone wants, you know, numbers go up and they wanna have this, this, this Bitcoin price of whatever number you wanna, you wanna wish for. But I think that institutional adoption is a requirement for that. Like if it, if it remains a niche in a retail space, Bitcoin will never reach these, these super high volumes and, and, and even high prices. So Mico is a sort of an accelerator for this. And, yeah, I mean, we, we- This is exactly what we see, like now we've opened up all the conversations with the banks and, and the asset managers, because suddenly we have this stamp of approval on, on the services that we provide, and it gives them confidence that Bitcoin is here to stay, and, you know, they have a regulatory framework they can hold on to. It's, it's good. MiCar is v1. There will be multiple iterations needed for it to become a lot better. There's a lot of things that are out of scope. For example, lending isn't under the scope of MiCar, so you will see us place this disclaimer on, on every MiCar, or sorry, lending related outing that, you know, MiCar doesn't cover lending, so of course it's out of scope. But I think it's definitely a, a, a step in the right direction." }, { "speaker": "jos_lazet", "time": "28:34", "start": 1713.74, "text": "One other question just around the stablecoins, I think maybe some of the reason for that is also around lending, that, some of the people who wanted to do lending, and to do it in some form of a hybrid or self-custodial format, that might be also part of it, although some of those platforms are also just doing, you know, straight fiat wires for the loan funding. so do you think that was also part of the reason? The reason some of the lending, Bitcoin lending collateralized startups do the stablecoin support?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "29:05", "start": 1745.06, "text": "Well," }, { "speaker": "jos_lazet", "time": "29:06", "start": 1745.91, "text": "I" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "29:06", "start": 1745.99, "text": "think that's also quite a, a complicate-complicated, a question because, you know let's put it this way, you know, stable coins, it's great on, I don't know, Ethereum or Solana or whatever other chain you're using, but that also means that if you wanna have it fully non-custodial or decentralized, you need to have wrapped Bitcoin. And this is one thing that I'm just really not a fan of. So I'd rather have native Bitcoin, in our case, just on-chain Bitcoin and euros, which of course, euros is the trusted aspect, because that's a nice thing if you, if you bring lending to a Price platform, you can make this like full circle, full loop covered, you know, you can fix everything in smart contracts, et cetera. But I really don't wanna have exposure to red Bitcoin, even though it's so big and it's, it had never really had issues, it's, it's too much of a risk." }, { "speaker": "jos_lazet", "time": "29:58", "start": 1797.95, "text": "Yeah, that would be even like the WBTC, the example you're talking about there, like BitGo's one and Justin Sun and whatever with Ethereum. But let's say even in Bitcoin land, like Liquid Bitcoin or, yeah, so, so Tap" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "30:12", "start": 1812.1, "text": "Taproot assets, I, I, I like, so for example, if you, UDT, so Tether, launches Taproot assets, where we can have, UDT on, on Lightning, for example, it's gonna be a game changer. I think that even Amboss, announced, over the weekend or last week, the first thing, yeah, exactly, Rails X, I think it's called, it's like a decentralized exchange on Lightning, that is the kind of stuff that we need. From a block rise perspective, we, we will be super happy to, to move that direction. I mean, if it's like, because, so for example, unfortunately, we don't support Lightning. Why? Because our transactions are just too big for Lightning in general." }, { "speaker": "jos_lazet", "time": "30:53", "start": 1852.78, "text": "The model just doesn't work, even, you know, your model is kind of more on chain, and what we're talking about is for larger kind of bigger, top-- higher end of town customers anyway, they're not doing like fifty dollar transactions." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "31:04", "start": 1863.81, "text": "Exactly. So Liquid, for example, is something that we're definitely gonna have a Because it's this also this hybrid model that can be super interesting, more instant, you know, don't rely on on chain but have this, yeah, liquid im- implementations there. And the other" }, { "speaker": "jos_lazet", "time": "31:19", "start": 1879.4, "text": "aspect is, DLCS as well. So I know there's a few startups doing that. So I did an in-interview recently with Lygos, and their idea is to sort of do like- You know, it's kind of on chain, right? and have, in the future, I think they will have like stablecoin offerings on that." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "31:36", "start": 1896.42, "text": "Yeah. Yeah. So I, I think that for us, I mean, we're just, I would say native on chain for the time being, and we're doing quite of our inventions there. Like we have the, the pre-signing of UTXOs also for, for limit orders, those kind of things. There's enough to advance there, and I'm very happy that other companies are experimenting and launching products on, on other And once it's, it's suitable for our clients and, and it matches the data that we have, we'll, we'll, we'll be the first to integrate." }, { "speaker": "jos_lazet", "time": "32:05", "start": 1924.9, "text": "Of course, yeah. And I know, even on the lending side, I think, is it Firefish? I think they're doing something like a PSBT or pre-signed sort of- form of lending also, so it's a bit more complicated there. I also wanted to chat about, while we're talking about lending, we might as well chat a bit about your, report. I see that your team recently put out this report, it's called The Bitcoin Lending Standards of 2026. So listeners, I'll put the link in the show notes, but, do you wanna just give us any high level, interesting insights that your team pulled out here from that?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "32:35", "start": 1955.11, "text": "Yeah, so we've always been researching a lot on the, on the And, yeah, with the launch of Bitcoin-backed loans, we were like, okay, let's look deep into what has happened, what is the traction of the last year, who are the players, and, and, you know, is TradFi finally coming in? So it's a very Bitcoin-native piece, it's quite elaborate, it's quite technical, I would say. So we're gonna sort of republish on weekly basis, parts of these articles, like the, the, the key points in order to, to elaborate it for the- the, the greater public. And, I mean, it really makes clear which of-- I, I mean, obviously we're biased. I mean, we're super biased, we're, we're super long on Bitcoin. I think that for the lending standards to make sense, you need to assume a, a keger of, of Bitcoin above Well, let's say fifteen percent, you know, at, at least as a bare minimum, a lot of people are closer to twenty or thirty-five percent when it has been over the last few years, because otherwise the, the, the cost of lending don't make sense compared to the performance of Bitcoin. But if you, if you assume this, then the lending game will be here, it will remain, the fees will get a lot more competitive, we're gonna see, like what we see on our end as well, you know, as TrezFy is entering from the secured So they're providing fiat for Bitcoin back loans, for example, and getting you a yield. So this is basically what we dive into. It's a really Bitcoin-denominated view. Yeah, I mean, the, the reactions on this article have been, have been great, and it's just one of the pieces that we, we decided to publish. There will be a lot more, like, actually the next one will be on custody, there will be, Bitcoin as a denominator as an article. yeah." }, { "speaker": "jos_lazet", "time": "34:27", "start": 2067.24, "text": "Got it. Yeah. A, a few things I wanted to pull out from my read of this. one interesting point that I think probably many of us had a feeling for this, but it was good to have it explicitly called out. So there's a point here the guys wrote, \"Comparative analysis for a traditional EU bank under Basel III, Bitcoin as collateral is-- and basically they're talking about how it's much, you know, it's 44x more capital intensive than a residential mortgage, 14 times more capital intensive than a commercial real estate, than listed equities and not even comparable to gold. And that explains, and they're saying that's why it's mainly been non-bank lenders like family offices and debt funds who are leading the market development, which kind of intuitively makes sense, right? Because when I talk to people in Bitcoin lending world, they're sort of like, \"I can't offer the same rates that the big banks are offering you, especially in the US case where they're, you know, they've got nice low rates, because it's fiat subsidized, right? It's government, it's literally, well, in a" }, { "speaker": "jos_lazet", "time": "35:26", "start": 2125.82, "text": "You know, while often we talk about lending from the customer, the borrower's side of the house, actually there's also the lender's side of the house, and in many cases, you're talking-- when I'm talking to people, that tends to be people who are like either a fund or a family office, or they're sourcing the money from a family office because that's-- that, these are the people who can provide the capital." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "35:46", "start": 2146.34, "text": "Yeah. No, so it's, it's clear that the private debt market, which is, I think the, the market as a whole you're talking about, is, is, is there to, to take this. And like from a more practical pers- perspective, what we're seeing is that people still see it as a sort of-- Some people, sorry, see, still see it as a sort of investment, and then they think that the interest rates that we're, we're offering is even too low. So from a secured lending perspective. And even though they-- because they really don't grasp Bitcoin, so they're really afraid that Bitcoin can get to zero so that we, we cannot even liquidate or, or get close to it, because that's in the end, you know, they're here for the euro yield. And honestly, like, w-we're talking a lot with banks, and there's a couple, I would say, global banks that are open to discuss, Bitcoin backed bonds, as we call them. So this is the, the secured lending side. It will, it will, it will take years. It's Really talking, like no, like Bezos isn't gonna be updated anytime soon, Mika isn't gonna cover it anytime soon, so a minimum of, I would say three to five years before banks are really gonna adopt this in the way that we would like to see it. This is just realistically talking, I think. in the meantime, the private debt market will continue to grow, most likely, it's been, it's been growing enormously, and this is where we need to get our funding from. As Bitcoin becomes more understood, people are more willing to provide, the depth that Bitcoin-backed loans need. You know, because to give you an example, I think there's close to eight hundred billion euros in the Dutch savings accounts retail with savings account, eight hundred billion. Like the Netherlands is winning in, in, in having the most savings, at a less than one percent interest rate." }, { "speaker": "jos_lazet", "time": "37:35", "start": 2254.75, "text": "Ridiculous. Yes." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "37:36", "start": 2256.27, "text": "And so we- We have this secured lending proposition where they get six percent interest rate because their, their savings are being used to collateralize, to collateralize Bitcoin lending. You know, this is exactly the play. And there's a couple other, like, secured lending companies, not Bitcoin related, in Netherlands, and they're offering 4%, which is already considered a, a game changer, you know, for people with savings. I mean, this is our primary focus, like European market, if you have less than one percent on interest on your, on your bank account, you might as well consider this. And it's, it's very transparent, it's, you know, it's very clear how we do it, and there's, there's no secret sauce, you know, so like everything's quite, quite open and transparent. So this is the, the game that we're playing. Maybe someday a bank is willing to, to, to take the risk or to, to make a case and, and offer this Services, but I think it's gonna, it's gonna take some time, or which is, another interesting conversation is that we become the bank or the credit institution, which is, I think, not that infeasible. It just takes a lot of time and money, but it's, it's, definitely sort of childhood dream to become a credit institution and just provide, these services by yourself, because in, in that way of, I mean, you don't get around bezel, obviously, but you can get pretty far, I think, and also because it takes about So once, you know, and you can start pushing more for regulation if you're a credit institution, of course, the lobbying, et cetera, and that way we could become in the, in the future a potential, you know, Bitcoin native, institution, on the banking side. It's, it's interesting. It's quite a- And so we're seeing a" }, { "speaker": "jos_lazet", "time": "39:21", "start": 2360.7, "text": "lot of competition in that way because, like, yes, there's this whole Bitcoin lending and collateralized and, you know, put up some fiat, earn some fiat yield based on the Bitcoin" }, { "speaker": "jos_lazet", "time": "39:33", "start": 2372.57, "text": "In a broader sense, there's a competition from, let's say, Strich, like S T R C, from, you know, because they're paying like eleven or twelve percent, like in the US, or in, in US dollar terms. And I'm sure other, you know, Meta Planet will come out with their own one and, Strive have Sater in the US, but I'm sure, you know, it's a matter of time, there'll be probably some European treasury company, whether it's Treasury in, you know, in the Netherlands or, to the size that they will start doing a similar play, and then it's sort of competing in that sense. Now of course, there's, it's a big market, there's room for lots of players, but, that might be some of the comparative analysis going on." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "40:14", "start": 2414.48, "text": "Well, I think that first of all For, for now, like we're so early still, like, and this is saying ten percent, ten years, professional in this market, that for now, I also tell all my, all my European, like founders, the Bitcoin founders that I talk to, is like, let's team up because this market is so big, we're still so early that we're not gonna be real competition in the, in the, in the near term. That said, Strage and, and, and Zeta, et cetera, are really a different product than Bitcoin You know, seen of course, but I think that Stretch and, and Sata are definitely a lot higher risk because they use the bonds to buy Bitcoin, and in our case, it's over collateralized lending. So, you know, if the, if the rates drop, if the loan-to-value of our loans drop, at some point, we really don't want to, but at some point we need to liquidate. And then at the liquidation level, which is eighty-five percent LTV, then it means that there's still an over-collateralization of a hundred and eighteen percent. So we still have an eighteen percent buffer before the, the, the loan is, is underwater. And this, this is, I think, really low risk, relatively obviously, compared to a stretch where it's literally a bond buying Bitcoin, and then it's assuming a kegger of above the rate that they're providing in, in, in fiat, so they will survive. But, a-and, and don't get me wrong, like, this is definitely a product we're looking at as well. we'll, we'll probably offer it in the, in, in, in the short term, one, one or two years. But it's, it's a very different profile from, from the lending, secured lending perspective. Yeah. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "jos_lazet", "time": "42:01", "start": 2520.52, "text": "And also, I mean, coming back to what we were saying at the start, right, this big drop recently, I think, and then you got a new round of people saying, \"Oh, look, see, that's why you shouldn't ever do leverage. You should just like self-custody only, stay humble, stack sat.\" I'm sure you've heard the same message. what, what do you make on that? Does this recent price drop show people that, okay, yeah, there's all this volatility, you should be wary about doing any kind of Bitcoin loan? But" }, { "speaker": "jos_lazet", "time": "42:28", "start": 2547.6, "text": "on Just right. You know, where, where do you balance all that out?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "42:34", "start": 2554.41, "text": "Risk appetite. Even, even, if you take leverage, on, on an exchange, it's all on risk appetite. It's like, how much risk are you, are you willing to take? If you take a, a loan out in our platform and you, and you decide to be under ten percent loan to value, meaning Bitcoin needs to drop ninety percent in order for you to, ish ninety percent in order for you to be liquidated, is very different than taking the maximum allowed loan to value When opening your loan. Yeah, so this is, this is it, you know, it's like, it all depends on your risk appetite. I think it can be feasible if, if you're loan to value or, or you have sufficient capital available in order to, to cover your margin calls. But in the end, that's, that's, that's like a margin call is already too late, I think. So it's better to, to, to be upfront and to say, hey, only take, take a loan out where you're comfortable, where you think" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "43:30", "start": 2610.2, "text": "Some buffer on that, so when you open our loan, you'll see your liquidation price, you'll see your margin price per, per Bitcoin, and that's, that's key, you know, be super focused on that, and we'll, we'll take measures on our si-aside to, to filter out, flash crashes by taking weighted average, prices and only taking one hour intervals, et cetera, because we really don't want to liquidate as well. but this is, this is where, where it needs to be, because otherwise, like, there's, there's just too many cases where I had to sell Bitcoin over the years where I really didn't want to, but there was no way I could get liquidity. And especially as a, like, I was a Bitcoiner since the age of sixteen, I, I didn't have any other, like, I never was able, I was never able to open a, a mortgage, for example, because all my life has been around Bitcoin since I started. Yeah, I mean, selling was the only option, and now I have another method available where I can, I can get liquidity because I wanna live on, on that Bitcoin standard. But Yeah, I mean, what else, what else can you do? Like, I can't really stack fiat because I have a Bitcoin company. I mean, you know, this, this easily becomes complicated." }, { "speaker": "jos_lazet", "time": "44:44", "start": 2684.14, "text": "Yeah, and I think it just comes down to, look, there's no one size fits all here. I think there are some people who just take a straight principled like just no debt ever, some people are somewhere in the middle of like, okay, it can make sense for some people, and then you've got full dgen who-- people who are taking loans when they shouldn't be, let's be honest, right? So I think it's kind of, finding the right- Audience, the right kind of person for whom this could potentially make s-sense, and of course, structuring things the right way. Like I think there's an interesting, chart or table you have or infographic, actually in the standards doc, maybe we'll put it up here, but basically this idea of if you're going with a thirty percent starting LTV, you can survive a sixty-five percent price crash, price crash. And I would say if you're gonna do this, you should even have a bit more in reserve that you, you're able to put Like top up the loan collateral so that you're not, putting yourself at too much risk of getting, liquidated, but, you know, it's, you know, it's not for everybody, I'll say that." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "45:43", "start": 2742.8, "text": "Yeah, and, and I think it's also like it's clear that it's, it's a, it's a great product, and the biggest risk that we're having is the liquidation, and there's also like, I think Salt Lending offers these non-liquidative, loans, so there's, there's still a ru- Certain fee per hour, I don't know, whatever, because we open a, let's say, a short position the moment that you would be liquidated and we'll charge you by the hour until you, you are able to, to recover your loan, those kind of things. So there's lots of opportunities still there, Bitcoin-backed loans as it, in its current form, it's just the first First version of this, of the service, and this is where we go forward, and that's why I think from a Bitcoin perspective, it's good to talk with other companies to see what they're doing and to, to share knowledge. This is something that I greatly appreciate from, from strategy as well, because they have been inventing financial instruments on, on Bitcoin basically, and, and setting some standards. So the, there, there's just a lot to do, and this is also what I would say the other way around is, it's, it's very cool, it's, it's such an honor to, to work in this space where, you know, like we're thinking of, of credit lines, so you just, instead of opening a loan really, there's just instant liquidity available. If you have that, you can connect it to a payments card, which is something that I would really need myself, so I can go back to living on the, on the, on the Bitcoin standard fully" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "47:13", "start": 2833.47, "text": "Basically, a, a, an instant credit being charged, and I can, I can cover all the fees, all instantly over a bank account, like those kind of things. That's what, where I see the future, the near future going longer term, yeah. Exactly. So as" }, { "speaker": "jos_lazet", "time": "47:27", "start": 2846.76, "text": "we stand today, can you give people an idea just on like the loan term, the interest rates you're offering, and like rolling over this kind of thing? Just give us kind of the high level on the, you know, the rates and the term." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "47:40", "start": 2859.81, "text": "Yeah, so it's, it's euro One, but it's just it's euro denominated, eight percent interest, fixed interest, and then twelve month terms. You can refinance them thirty days in advance. There's a one time origination fee There's a custody fee that we charge, liquidation fee, those kind of things, but the main one of course is the eight percent fixed interest. And, yeah, I mean, I really hope that the, the prices of the, the secured lending will drop, like the interest rates there, so we can also make it even more attractive, because We're quite competitive today, if you compare to Debitify or Firefish, the other platforms in Europe active, of course, Strike is also active. We're quite competitive there because I think the average that we see is around eleven, twelve percent, but there's always, like, again, it's beneficial for everyone to, to be lower in the end. We need to have, a bit of margin, for capital management and of course, as we're a company, yeah, yeah, exactly. But I think it's like, it's, it Pretty neat already." }, { "speaker": "jos_lazet", "time": "48:46", "start": 2925.59, "text": "Yeah. And on the just brokerage, right, just buying and selling Bitcoin, what are the fees there?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "48:51", "start": 2931.38, "text": "so yeah, if we go over all the fees, so there's the twenty-five bips, custody fee for all Bitcoin in our platform, there's fifty bips on the, on the broker, so buy and sell. There is asset management, which is, one point five percent, management fee and a performance fee. so it's a Bitcoin Euro managed fund. So it's, it's, it's fully native on chain. You have your own wallets, but we just maintain a Bitcoin position and a Euro position. The Euro position goes between zero and sixty percent. the idea is that in a, in a bull market, you dollar cost average out very, very slowly into a Euro position, and in the bear market, you dollar cost average in. It's really built for people that wanna, you know, start with Bitcoin, but they're very used to a traditional, you know, fund kind of structure. But we wanted to give them native Bitcoin exposure. As you can tell, those fees are really not Bitcoin native. So this is something we're working on. We're really working on restructuring asset management in a way that it might even become difficult to choose between having your own custody directly or using our asset management, where now the fee difference is so, so large that we need to, to revisit this. And then there will be multiple forms of, of asset management also in the near future because of Bitcoin-backed loans. Yeah. So the" }, { "speaker": "jos_lazet", "time": "50:08", "start": 3007.7, "text": "asset management is like, that is a particular strategy, as you mentioned, this kind of- DCA out on the way up and DCA in on the way," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "50:19", "start": 3019.45, "text": "when the price is going down, sort of loosely speaking. Yeah. Sort of what we call difficulty regression price. So it's a sort of, you can, you can say it's like, a sort of Bitcoin mining price, very bluntly put, and we compare this to the market price. So when we see a large sort" }, { "speaker": "jos_lazet", "time": "50:57", "start": 3056.73, "text": "of loosely like a cost of production," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "50:59", "start": 3059.16, "text": "yes, correct, and then you compare this to the market price, and then based on the premium, you start dollar cost averaging out, or if it goes the premium and the market price get, get very, close to each other, you start dollar cost averaging out. So it's a very passive model, monthly rebalances, et cetera, but it's just, again, for the people that wanna have Bitcoin exposure, but they wanna have it managed, so they wanna have a monthly rebalance because they think their funds need to be actively managed, this is a, a product for them, it's a product for them." }, { "speaker": "jos_lazet", "time": "51:28", "start": 3088.36, "text": "Whereas if you're just a straight hodler or just a typical, you know, stay humble, stack zaps, you can just obviously just buy and hodl and do the normal," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "51:35", "start": 3095.32, "text": "yeah, so you can see the platform as a sort Risk, we o-offer asset management because if you have a pool of Bitcoin and you add one euro, you already have less risk than having a pool of Bitcoin. So from this perspective, you can say, okay, asset management is definitely the lowest volatility, is the lowest risk. Then you have custody, then you get lending, then you get leverage, you know, and then you can go on very far on this, on this scale. But that's the, the range of services that we provide. And honestly, considering that we've built for quite a long time, these are like the main- Three products that we're gonna have, so a custody product, a asset management product, and lending related products, and that's it, and that's gonna be the focus for the next two years, just vertically making these, these services a lot better, but not from a, like, we're not gonna add many more services on the, on the short term." }, { "speaker": "jos_lazet", "time": "52:29", "start": 3149.03, "text": "Gotcha. Okay, yeah, well, I think that's a pretty good overview, a lot of different, concepts that we spoke about there and, a bit of updates on what's happening, in the market there. So, listeners find blockrise dot com and, Jos, thank you for joining me today." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "52:45", "start": 3165.04, "text": "Thanks for the invite." } ] }