{
  "episodeId": "SLP726",
  "speakers": {
    "stephan": {
      "name": "Stephan Livera",
      "role": "host",
      "tag": "STEPHAN"
    },
    "gareth_grobler": {
      "name": "Gareth Grobler",
      "role": "guest",
      "tag": "GARETH"
    }
  },
  "segments": [
    {
      "speaker": "stephan",
      "time": "00:00",
      "start": 0.26,
      "text": "We need to move away from explaining things to people, politicizing it. We need to move away from all those narratives and rather let people experience Bitcoin."
    },
    {
      "speaker": "gareth_grobler",
      "time": "00:10",
      "start": 10.29,
      "text": "Hi everyone, and welcome back to Stephan Livera podcast. Today we're gonna be talking about Layer Wallet with the co-founder Gareth Grobler. I met Gareth at, Baltic Honey Badger, I think, and, you know, some of the conferences and things I've seen Gareth around and, had an, he had an interesting idea with what he, him, what you, what he and the team are building. So I thought it would be interesting to get him on. Gareth, welcome to the show."
    },
    {
      "speaker": "stephan",
      "time": "00:34",
      "start": 33.72,
      "text": "Yeah, thanks, Stefan. nice to be here. Appreciate the opportunity."
    },
    {
      "speaker": "gareth_grobler",
      "time": "00:38",
      "start": 38.05,
      "text": "Yeah, so look, let's-- I mean, for listeners, obviously a lot of people listening are people in the industry, developers, builders, you know, advocates, whatever. but let's start with Layer's wallet, like what exactly you're building. As I saw and as you explained to me, the idea is it's like if you just had a wallet with just every layer on there. So just"
    },
    {
      "speaker": "stephan",
      "time": "01:01",
      "start": 60.52,
      "text": "Yeah, so I think the, I suppose the best way to start is, is, you know, I'm a Bitcoiner, and, you know, we, we all know how the markets have gone and, and how the industry has grown and, and expanded, and we sort of felt that what's happened was, you know, Bitcoin was there and then Ethereum came along and all these other layers, all, all these other blockchains came along, creating different opportunities, different tech, and then sort of twenty twenty-four, it felt like things started coming back to Bitcoin you know, people from Ethereum started developing back on Bitcoin, but what we noticed was these Bitcoin layer twos, created silos, so sort of they locked up value in silos, and it required users to have multiple wallets, you know, multiple devices, and that creates risk, it creates friction. So we thought, okay, you know, we're Bitcoiners, Bitcoin first, and, we want to, we want to add value to the Bitcoin ecosystem Ecosystem, and one of the ways we thought of doing that was by bringing all the Bitcoin layer two's into one simple user interface. Now, it's, it's, we call it a wallet, but really it's more of a, it's more of a, a exploration tool, to explore everything that Bitcoin has to offer whilst keeping the risks as low as possible, you know, how many people have lost funds by copying and pasting addresses. So it's those little things that, that we wanted to, to remove, and, you know, we don't have Have any specific layer two that we think, oh, this is the winner, because they're all different, they have different trade-offs, they, they offer different things to different people. Some try and achieve the same thing in different ways, some have different unique selling points. you know, we wanna take the sort of Switzerland approach where we're not gonna pick a winner, we're just gonna give everything to users and let them decide what, what they need to use and what works for them."
    },
    {
      "speaker": "gareth_grobler",
      "time": "02:55",
      "start": 175.17,
      "text": "Yeah. Now, obvious questions. Which obviously you got Bitcoin on chain, I presume, and I presume you have Lightning. Tell us, like, what are the L twos precisely that you are supporting, or at least list off the main ones that you have."
    },
    {
      "speaker": "stephan",
      "time": "03:09",
      "start": 188.74,
      "text": "Yeah. So, interesting thing is there's currently eighty-three, Bitcoin-based Layer twos, projects out there. So, there's a ton of them. again, not all of them have the same sort of Gravitas behind them, but yeah, we went and looked at the main ones and the ones that we think that, that add value to users right now. you've got Spark and Ark, those are the two sort of exciting ones at the moment. and then we've obviously got Lightning, we've got Liquid, we've got Stacks, Rootstock, the guys are currently working on RGB, and then one of the newer ones that came-- or two of the newer ones that came in is the, Citi- And botanics. so yeah, those, those are the main ones we're looking at, but like I said, we don't have any, we sort of wanna be agnostic in terms of what we think is the best for people. We just wanna add, add them all on then and make it easy and simple for users, to decide for themselves. So ultimately the sort of final vision we've got is where a user can decide which layers they turn on, which ones they turn off, and w- how they, how they interact with them."
    },
    {
      "speaker": "gareth_grobler",
      "time": "04:23",
      "start": 263.28,
      "text": "Yeah. And so, talk us through the setup and the ex-- like, I guess, actually, sorry, let me ask this question. I-- is your target user a power user or is it just like a noob, like a total noob to Bitcoin can use this? Like, where in the spectrum? Talk to us who you see your target user as."
    },
    {
      "speaker": "stephan",
      "time": "04:44",
      "start": 283.56,
      "text": "So I think we've got two target markets and, it, it's a bit of a weird one. W-we want the wallet to grow with people, so, we've really focused on, on the onboarding side, that's where, you know, my passion lies with the, the onboarding of it, but then we also want to make it so that When you become more familiar with all these different layers and you want to start doing, slightly more intricate things, you can just let the wallet evolve with you so you can enable different features. it's very interesting that you mentioned that because one of the biggest issues with wallets in general, is the onboarding, that this is where things go wrong and, you know, we'll, we'll get into this a bit more, but, especially, the idea of, you know, the idea of Bitcoin Of, you know, being sovereign. but we have found that with a lot of people, the approach they're taking because the onboarding of a, of a new user isn't straightforward, people tend to go with custodial solutions."
    },
    {
      "speaker": "gareth_grobler",
      "time": "05:47",
      "start": 346.73,
      "text": "And so then, I presume then the idea is You want this to be available for new people, but even for advanced users who maybe, as an example, maybe they're using it kind of like a utility tool, right? Like the Swiss Army knife kind of idea that, like, oh, someone else is trying to pay me on some other layer that I don't normally have, let me pull out my utility tool and like take a payment from them for that. And I guess the idea you're going with is if I just have all these different layers, Bitcoin, Lightning, Ark, Spark, Liquid, and others, that I will then be compatible with those And with other people and able to send and receive payments, obviously. is that loosely how you're seeing it or one way of understanding it?"
    },
    {
      "speaker": "stephan",
      "time": "06:29",
      "start": 389.22,
      "text": "I, I suppose the best way to describe what we're doing is probably the, the stablecoin layer, and I know we'll get into the stablecoins in a minute, which is very controversial, but, but hey, that's Bitcoin. so the best example would be the stablecoin layer. So the way that would work by default is that you are able to receive Any stablecoin from any network, and it auto swaps into a liquid, USD and that sits on your, on your wallet locally, and then you can then send to any network. So it just makes it so that a sort of new user can just have one wallet and is able to receive stablecoins from anywhere and send anywhere. but then if you're, if you're more advanced and you decide, okay, you know, whenever I receive stablecoins from Tron, I want them to defi- Default to, rootstock, then you can set that up. so you can decide, you know, let me choose every time I get a payment, do I want to have it auto-swap into, Spark stablecoin or do I want it to stay on the network that it's on? So, so the idea is to give, to make it very simple for a new user, but to build the functionality in the backend where the sort of power user can go and tweak the system to decide how they want it to work."
    },
    {
      "speaker": "gareth_grobler",
      "time": "07:47",
      "start": 467.31,
      "text": "Yeah. And then, correct me if I'm wrong But is it like this, is it like one seed for all of them, so the user can like write down his twelve word seed, but it's one seed across all of those different layers? They don't have to like have like ten different seeds for ten different things, right?"
    },
    {
      "speaker": "stephan",
      "time": "08:02",
      "start": 481.8,
      "text": "No, it's, it, it's one seed. so you've got one seed and that gives you the addresses and, and, and the wallets, to, to each layer, and then it also gives you sort of, I think, five accounts at this point in time, so you can actually have And all the layers inside one application."
    },
    {
      "speaker": "gareth_grobler",
      "time": "08:22",
      "start": 502.38,
      "text": "Gotcha. Okay, yeah. And so, I mean, there's a lot of different like technical weeds and difficulty, aspects we can go into, but just on the lightning side, because obviously lightning is, you know, the big, the big, you know, let's say Bitcoin's main L2. Yeah. How are you doing that in terms of, things like channel management, liveness, online requirement, like all of these aspects? How are you, integrating lightning into layers?"
    },
    {
      "speaker": "stephan",
      "time": "08:49",
      "start": 529.28,
      "text": "Currently, the idea is that a user can either connect their own lightning node. one of the main things we don't want is we don't want to, one of sort of the golden absolutes on, on, on our approach is we don't want to hold user funds, we don't want to hold user data. I didn't, I don't wanna know who the users are. I, I don't want to have any information on them. so to that end, you know, we can't provide lightning channels, but we, we will give the user the ability to Lightning channel, that they, that they choose. the main way we're currently doing it is you can effectively use Lightning with Liquid, Spark, or Ark. So, so currently you can download the wallet and you're able to receive Lightning payments in, I think, twenty seconds we worked it out, and that'll by default just go to your, your Spark address. So that, that's how we're currently doing it."
    },
    {
      "speaker": "gareth_grobler",
      "time": "09:48",
      "start": 587.93,
      "text": "Gotcha. So in the background, it's Spark, but you still show a Lightning invoice, you know, as common with like Spark and our payments, this kind of thing. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, so you've got a,"
    },
    {
      "speaker": "stephan",
      "time": "09:58",
      "start": 597.64,
      "text": "you've got a Lightning layer. Yeah."
    },
    {
      "speaker": "gareth_grobler",
      "time": "09:59",
      "start": 599.28,
      "text": "And is that like, did you guys directly integrate that with Spark, or you're using like, Breeze or someone like that?"
    },
    {
      "speaker": "stephan",
      "time": "10:06",
      "start": 605.57,
      "text": "so yeah, we've, we-- well, we've, we're working with Spark via Breeze at"
    },
    {
      "speaker": "stephan",
      "time": "10:15",
      "start": 615.33,
      "text": "Or to mess up, but, you know, there's no perfect solution. So, you know, we are able to, to do certain checks when it goes to certain networks to make sure those addresses, correspond. but yeah, ultimately the, the-- this is one of the, this is one of the things that, that hasn't been solved in the industry."
    },
    {
      "speaker": "gareth_grobler",
      "time": "10:34",
      "start": 633.7,
      "text": "Of course, yeah, and I look, I think that's-- I think that's an important point, in the industry that, you know, certainly the marketing and the product side of, aspects of it, because These different trade-offs and things. Yeah. so, you know, it's important to remember the user who is the ultimate end user there. So I guess w- as, as you've mentioned, like building in these different layers, whether that's liquid, lightning, ARK, Spark, you know, whatever else,"
    },
    {
      "speaker": "gareth_grobler",
      "time": "11:05",
      "start": 664.98,
      "text": "How do things work in terms of the defaults, right? So if the user, you know, just goes to receive a payment, are they mostly just gonna be receiving in Lightning because that's sort of the standard thing, but then they have like a way to, to change what they're receiving to? Is that like, how does it, how is that going to work?"
    },
    {
      "speaker": "stephan",
      "time": "11:23",
      "start": 683.22,
      "text": "Yeah, so we've used a sort of cards-based system. So, you know, you've got a, a main drop-down that sort of-- So we've-- the, the design is completely different from any other, any other wallet. Most wallets have sort of a main screen and then it's got a menu or sort of different tokens or, or different coins listed on that main screen. we've done it slightly different so that you're, you're inside Lightning or you're inside, stablecoins or you're inside Bitcoin. so obviously in the Lightning layer, you It'll receive and it'll ask you, which one of the three current options you wanna choose. If you don't choose anything, it sort of times out and just automatically gives you, gives you the, the Spark receive address, or Lightning."
    },
    {
      "speaker": "gareth_grobler",
      "time": "12:07",
      "start": 726.91,
      "text": "Yeah, interesting. Yeah, I'm playing around with it now just to get a sense of that. So yeah, you can see Spark, Arcade, Liquid, in the Lightning card, and then on the, other cards, you've got like USDT, Satria, and so on. So, so let's, Sorry, one other question around, Lightning. Do you have like a stable-- Sorry, do you have a, like, a Lightning address feature in here?"
    },
    {
      "speaker": "stephan",
      "time": "12:30",
      "start": 750.23,
      "text": "what do you mean Lightning address? Like a--"
    },
    {
      "speaker": "gareth_grobler",
      "time": "12:32",
      "start": 752.17,
      "text": "As in, you know, like"
    },
    {
      "speaker": "stephan",
      "time": "12:33",
      "start": 753.11,
      "text": "a, like a gareth at layers dot me."
    },
    {
      "speaker": "gareth_grobler",
      "time": "12:36",
      "start": 756.19,
      "text": "Yeah, that kind of thing. You have-- Do you have that? Yeah."
    },
    {
      "speaker": "stephan",
      "time": "12:38",
      "start": 758.27,
      "text": "Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So you can, you can set up, like a gareth at layers dot me, and then receive your Lightning payments to that."
    },
    {
      "speaker": "gareth_grobler",
      "time": "12:47",
      "start": 767.0,
      "text": "Oh, that's fantastic. Yeah, I didn't realize you had that. Okay. and then, yeah, so let's get into the stablecoins question as well, because I know you had some, thoughts on this and like w-what this means for adoption, because, you know, it's probably fair to say there are more people in the world, at least today, interested in stablecoins than in, like, you know, using Bitcoin on chain or Lightning per se. Do you wanna explain a bit of that?"
    },
    {
      "speaker": "stephan",
      "time": "13:09",
      "start": 788.87,
      "text": "Yeah, so I've got a, it's, you know you know, I don't think Bitcoin, as a peer-to-peer cash system, the way it was sort of written in the white paper, means that it, it's gonna- Be a replacement for the fiat system, but that simply doesn't work because, you know, the fiat system doesn't consist simply out of cash notes, there's all financial- Industry behind it with different products and services, the, the main one being the stablecoins, I think stablecoins to me is extremely important for adoption, because it's much easier for me to go and on a grassroots level and get somebody onboarded to a stablecoin than it is to get them onboarded to Bitcoin. I don't need to go and explain to a guy in Kenya that the dollar is better than using the Kenyan shilling, they already know that, so that's a very simple- Step to get them on board, and then from there it's much easier because you can't onboard somebody in five minutes, you need time, and getting them to actually use the technology, even though they're using stable coins and, and, you know, using the dollar, using the technology sort of makes them accustomed to it, and then seeing everything else that's in there, letting them experience it, to me is a, it's, it's a much smoother, transition, from, from our current system. And I think the, the- Important thing of stablecoins is, is that, you know, we, we can, we can promote the whole Bitcoin is changes the world thing, but ultimately we need to be realistic and the dollar rules the world, you know, the dollar is the best of the worst. So for me, it's a, it's a question of, you know, simply getting people Inching them closer to where they need to be, but not trying to just shove them into this box where now all of a sudden you're using Bitcoin. and I've just been to, all the circular economies in South Africa and, that sort of- re-emphasize that idea for me because going to these circular economies, you look at what they're doing in practice, and not everyone, but the majority of them end up Receiving lightning payments, let's say it's a merchant running a shop in, in, in one of these circular economies, they end up receiving a lightning payment which they then immediately put into stable sets. So Two things, the majority of them are using Bitcoin in a custodial fashion, and they're not really using Bitcoin, they're using Bitcoin as, as, as a means to transact in fiat currency, which is sort of, you know, it's, it's the wrong way around, and that's what's happening in reality because a lot of people on that level, they simply can't- They, they don't have the luxury, of, of dealing with Bitcoin's volatility, but that's just the reality of it. you know, yes, if they can receive and, and keep that Bitcoin for three, four years, then that's great, but the majority of them can't. so therefore, giving them the ability to use a stablecoin over and ab-above their local currency is for me a better solution, because they can then still get involved in Bitcoin. For example, on Spark with USD-B, you're holding dollars, but you're earning satoshis as interest on those dollars on a daily basis. and to me, that, that's the best of both worlds."
    },
    {
      "speaker": "gareth_grobler",
      "time": "16:45",
      "start": 1005.24,
      "text": "And so I'm curious your thoughts then on why the stablecoin aspect of it, as contrasted, because as you mentioned, there's stable Sats or stable channels, is it just that they're a different approach or they, they, they weren't the right fit for you in layers, and that that's why you're preferring the stable coin like USDT style? Or what's the, what's your reasoning around that?"
    },
    {
      "speaker": "stephan",
      "time": "17:08",
      "start": 1027.82,
      "text": "Well, again, there's-- I don't think there's a winner. We, we, we've got to go out there and do it. But, you know Somebody who knows nothing about any sort of cryptocurrency at all versus explaining, a stable coin, a stable dollar is, is, is way, is way easier. so I think to me it's, it's simply, y-you know, in order for Bitcoin to really be what we all want it to be We need the ninety percent. And, you know, the plumber, the teacher, the, you know, the electrician, they're not interested in any of this tech stuff. they're already familiar with fiat currency, they're already familiar with their local currencies, and they're familiar with the dollar. so giving them the ability to just slowly move to, to one step better, they don't necessarily need to be ten steps better straight away, is just an easier path for me, to, to, to get Adoption going and, you know, ultimately I think, imagine the whole world one point, imagine the whole of Africa, one point seven billion people all of a sudden now start adopting the dollar. That's good for Bitcoin, because now you've got 1.7 extra billion people using the dollar, and what's America gonna do? They're gonna print more dollars. If they print more dollars, that's good for Bitcoin. So, you know,"
    },
    {
      "speaker": "gareth_grobler",
      "time": "18:33",
      "start": 1112.65,
      "text": "well, they're gonna end up holding government debt bags, but, yeah, but, nevertheless, I mean, this is the world we're in, right? So there's not, a lot of, you know, and, and it's not that, those individuals aren't necessarily gonna be looking out for a, a moral lecture on the evils of holding government debt bags or whatever, but, nevertheless, as you said, there are a lot of people interested in holding dollars. Interesting for them, but I can definitely see the international, audience, being interested in this idea. so talk to us a little bit about the Transition points as well, like, I presume then you've just got swaps in the background, whether it's, you know, SideShift or SideSwap or one of these, like some, you're building in swaps in the background, so then that user, let's say he gets Liquid Tether and he wants to swap to Bitcoin, there are swaps in the background for that, and like, what, what are the rough fees that they will pay for that?"
    },
    {
      "speaker": "stephan",
      "time": "19:29",
      "start": 1168.71,
      "text": "Yeah, so currently, you know, we don't take any fee 'cause we're only building out the technology, so we're using third party"
    },
    {
      "speaker": "stephan",
      "time": "19:39",
      "start": 1178.74,
      "text": "and that's just the standard fees that, that, that Taitch have charged. we are in the process of putting together a plan for our own swap engine, a-as you do, but again, we'll have to see what the market wants. it potentially could be, that we just in-integrate way, way more swap providers and then have some sort of an orchestrator, that gives the user information saying, you know, you can use this service and this is the benefits, or, you know, you want to come- Completely private swap, then use this service, and there'll be a premium for doing that. the, the, the main thing right now is, is taking away the, the thinking part, where the user needs to think. So, you know, convenience ultimately is, is what the majority of people out there want, in general, we've noticed that most people aren't really that interested in the fees, They sort of standard and, and the competition will drive them to a sort of, you know, a nice equal state."
    },
    {
      "speaker": "gareth_grobler",
      "time": "20:40",
      "start": 1239.51,
      "text": "A stable-ish, yeah, point, yeah. And it's interesting, the other thing I'm thinking, so again, we're kind of going into a little bit more of the technical details, the end user isn't necessarily gonna see this or care about this, but some things in Lightning and these L2s may eventually involve like an ongoing cost, you know, like a monthly cost if it's Ark or something, like one of the Ark things may have this or To maintain that, that channel or this thing, you know, whatever, whatever the concept, the liquidity, there may be an ongoing fee. How will you reflect that in layers? Like, are you just gonna try to build it all into the transactional fee so that way the user just pays for it without knowing through the transaction fee? Or what's the thinking there?"
    },
    {
      "speaker": "stephan",
      "time": "21:23",
      "start": 1283.32,
      "text": "Yeah, that, that's exactly, that's the, exactly the approach, the ideas is, is, you know, we don't want people to subscribe to anything, and so therefore, either we're gonna have to Some mechanism to, to take care of those fees, or we're just gonna have to roll it up into, into a single, this is the cost of doing something. and ideally that's, that's the approach that, that we wanna take where the user just sees a simple, this is what you wanna do, and that's how much it's gonna cost you."
    },
    {
      "speaker": "gareth_grobler",
      "time": "21:53",
      "start": 1312.94,
      "text": "Yeah, gotcha. And I guess the only thing is you just have to make sure you price it so that you don't get like these kinds of weird situations where like people just kind of abuse your swap service or abuse your liquidity situations like that. I know in Lightning, there were times where people, you know, because they were, you know, for people who understand Lightning network and like inbound channels and liquidity and things like this, there were situations where maybe they didn't price, the liquidity at the right level, and then someone else on the network would sort of just like kind of fraud run it, abuse or, you know, you know what I mean? They would sort of, yeah. And so that's kind of something that you as a wallet, if you're just gonna charge only on the transaction Kind of abusing that system in a way, but, yeah, but I, I think I agree that that's the right, that's the approach. Yeah,"
    },
    {
      "speaker": "stephan",
      "time": "22:39",
      "start": 1358.73,
      "text": "I mean, that is gonna happen. That's just the way, that's just the way the industry works. but, you know, yeah, ideally the, the, the main thing is, is just, you know, if, if we have that problem, everybody else has that problem. So it's just finding, finding solutions to, you know, benefit the user ultimately. That, I think that's the main goal. Previously have, have taken an approach of, you know, we know better, so this is what you have to do, and, and I think that, that's one of the sort of things that's been holding us back a bit. It's really difficult to find that balance. I see,"
    },
    {
      "speaker": "gareth_grobler",
      "time": "23:15",
      "start": 1395.32,
      "text": "yeah. And in fairness, some of that is just like the technology had to evolve a little bit and get to a point where it was simple and cheap enough, and there were certain, I guess, opinionated trade-offs. Like builders had to have opinions about what is the simple thing that, let's say, the everyday user will want, and maybe some-- if you're a some crazy power user kind of person, well, fine, you go do your own power user thing, but for the everyday, the masses, what is a typical trade-off Maybe it just works."
    },
    {
      "speaker": "stephan",
      "time": "23:44",
      "start": 1423.92,
      "text": "Well, this is exactly it, and, you know, I don't wanna knock those guys who sort of are the far right or the far left of, of the topic, because without them posting their flags, we don't actually know where in that spectrum we, we sit. So, you know, they're important, but I think it is moving towards, you know, sort of coming more towards the middle where we all realize that, you know, we need to make it easy for that ninety percent in order for, for us to achieve what we want"
    },
    {
      "speaker": "gareth_grobler",
      "time": "24:13",
      "start": 1452.66,
      "text": "Coming back to this kind of stablecoins question, I know there are some who, they see it like this idea that stablecoins are a stepping stone is like a fake narrative and that it only applies in certain parts of the world. Here I'm thinking maybe, like Kemal from Blink or someone, like that, where they see it like, \"No, you just do Bitcoin payments and just everyone should just do Bitcoin or Lightning.\" What would you say to that?"
    },
    {
      "speaker": "stephan",
      "time": "24:37",
      "start": 1477.44,
      "text": "Well, you know, I, I'd say I, I turn it around and say it's the other way around I've actually been to these circular economies, I've actually been to a lot of these advertised as this is the way it should work, and none of them use it like that. so- Well, I say none, I mean I came across one guy who is an artist that receives Bitcoin and holds the Bitcoin for his art. But to me, that's the anomaly, that that's not the standard, the, the average person. You know, they don't wanna think about these things, you know, th-th-this isn't, this isn't, it's not the average person, and also Bitcoin itself, native Bitcoin, as this idea that it's, you know, it's, it's, it's a payment system I, I don't buy it. It's like saying the Swift system is a payment system, it, it, it's not. I just don't see it. we need, we need these different layers that, that look at specific use cases and provide solutions to those specific use cases. you know, even in South Africa, as you know, we, we can pay with, with Bitcoin via Lightning at pretty much any shop, any petrol station, it's accepted pretty much anywhere, via a long-winded process, but as far as the user's concerned I have Bitcoin, I go and scan a QR code and I pay."
    },
    {
      "speaker": "stephan",
      "time": "26:01",
      "start": 1560.9,
      "text": "but it's not, it's, it's not a step forward because it's easier for me to just take my watch and touch it on the device and use Apple Pay or, you know, it's, it's, it's making things more difficult. So I don't see that working. I think there's a lot of development that needs to happen for it, you know, for us to have a different payment system. I think, I think there's a lot to be done, Novelty side of it, yeah, I, I'm not disputing that it works, but as an everyday payment mechanism, it, it's, it's not there, and there's a lot of development that needs to happen, and this is where I, again, see stablecoins being ahead of Bitcoin as much as it pains me to say that."
    },
    {
      "speaker": "gareth_grobler",
      "time": "26:47",
      "start": 1607.16,
      "text": "So I think part of that is stablecoins were able to leverage the overarching, you know, dollar network effect and dollar brand, and so that's been part of it. Yeah. So, and the last time I've looked at some of the estimates, I think- The number of people in the world who use Bitcoin, it's something like a hundred million-ish, and some of them, to be fair, might, might have a very, very small amount or it's kind of whatever. And then I've heard the, the ballpark number for stablecoins is like five hundred million. Yeah. So there's literally more stablecoin users on Earth than there are Bitcoin users, right? Now, of course, I'm a Bitcoin Maxi, I want as many people to use Bitcoin straight away, but, you know, we've got to recognize that's, that's where,"
    },
    {
      "speaker": "gareth_grobler",
      "time": "27:31",
      "start": 1651.34,
      "text": "You know, meet, meet those people where they are at, I think."
    },
    {
      "speaker": "stephan",
      "time": "27:34",
      "start": 1654.06,
      "text": "Well, yeah, exactly. The, you know, a-and again, I'll put my hands up, I was one of those people that, that, you know, if, if you don't get it, I don't have the time to explain it to you. I, I was one of those people. but I've sort of shifted from that position and, and realized that if we really want this thing to, to be where, where we all know it should be, a-as a, a, Then we simply have to take a step by step approach. We have, we have to go and, and, and meet people. Then this is why, for example, I, I mentioned the, the USD-B, on Spark, which I think is-- I think that's brilliant because, you know, that gives people the ability to use stable coins, and then, you know, they don't actually have to do anything, and they see the sats dripping in. And, you know, I was, I did a, I did a talk about, buzzwords killing Bitcoin, and We need to move away from explaining things to people, politicizing it, you know, making it that the government is stealing your money, and, and we need to move away from all those narratives and rather let people experience Bitcoin. you know, if you, if you don't care about Bitcoin and you're using dollar stablecoin on, on Spark, for example, and every day you get a notification, \"Oh, you've earned twenty-five sets, you've earned a hundred sets,\" it doesn't matter what the number is, it's that notification that you're getting every day. It's, it's that, it's, it, you know, it's that consistent reminder of Bitcoin and then seeing those values grow in a wallet that you physically control. To me, that's much more powerful because that triggers the curiosity bit. Rather than the, I need to open myself up to learning. you know, not everyone wants to learn, and unless people want to learn, we can't teach them. So the curiosity bit, I think that angle to me is, is, is what will drive the real adoption."
    },
    {
      "speaker": "gareth_grobler",
      "time": "29:29",
      "start": 1768.84,
      "text": "Yeah, interesting. Okay. when it comes to-- So I guess as you've, the, as you've kind of implied from earlier, the idea is you're just gonna like have a bunch of these different things, and you're sort of agnostic to which one people actually use. So even in the case of stablecoins, there are different, points, possible points of confusion, right? So as an example, you might have seen on websites, and I'm sure you And also that, you know, sometimes when they're saying, \"Oh, pay only, you know, USDT on the Ethereum network or on the Tron network,\" like how do you get around those situations of paying the wrong thing to the wrong, you know, address?"
    },
    {
      "speaker": "stephan",
      "time": "30:06",
      "start": 1805.76,
      "text": "Well, again, that's, you know, there, there's no simple answer, nobody's got a simple solution to that. I think we've probably, with the approach we're taking, it's probably The best that you can find at the moment where it'll ask you when you send, for example, it'll say, \"Where do you want to send it?\" It'll say, \"Do you want to send it to Ethereum? Would you want to send it there? Do you want to send it here?\" Now, there are some things we can do, like, for example, if, if you select Tron, like, we can check is it a Tron address or to match up, but, you know, there's no perfect solution. So, you know, we are able to, to"
    },
    {
      "speaker": "stephan",
      "time": "30:46",
      "start": 1845.83,
      "text": "The things that, that hasn't been solved."
    },
    {
      "speaker": "gareth_grobler",
      "time": "30:48",
      "start": 1847.93,
      "text": "Yeah, okay. And then so let's go to some of the inside of Bitcoin land. There are different ways to do stablecoins too, right? So we have Liquid Tether. There's, you know, there's Taproot assets Tether, I believe they, they, they've announced that. I don't know the details and where that's at. There's RGB Tether. There's, as you mentioned, there's the Spark form. Are you gonna be offering, like, I presume you're gonna be offering all of those, and it"
    },
    {
      "speaker": "stephan",
      "time": "31:13",
      "start": 1873.37,
      "text": "Yeah, so we currently have Spark, Rootstock, and Liquid. Stacks, I think Stacks also have a, I think Stacks has it as well now. So ultimately we, we're sort of seeing Liquid as the easiest one of the lot right now, so we're defaulting to Liquid USDT, but again, the user can receive from Tron or Ethereum or, or wherever they want. Yeah. And the same with now,"
    },
    {
      "speaker": "gareth_grobler",
      "time": "31:37",
      "start": 1897.21,
      "text": "what about the technical difficulties of supporting all these different layers? How, how do you deal with, you know, just like the extra technical complexity?"
    },
    {
      "speaker": "stephan",
      "time": "31:47",
      "start": 1906.76,
      "text": "Yeah, well, that's probably one for our CTO, but so far, we're okay. So far, it seems, it's like, we're able to, to manage it. w-we probably will need to, as, as and when things happen, we probably will need to grow the team, which we expect to do anyway. I mean, really now, what, once it's built and working, it's sort of there and it works. So we, we haven't really come across Too many issues, and we don't foresee that many either, because a lot of the, a lot of the layer twos, for example, are sort of bitVM based. So, you know, if one works, then all of them work."
    },
    {
      "speaker": "gareth_grobler",
      "time": "32:20",
      "start": 1939.76,
      "text": "Yeah, that's an interesting one as well, this kind of bitVM concept. So, I guess you're gonna be offering, you're kind of gonna be early-ish on supporting some of these bitVM bridge-style solutions. Talk to us a little bit about that and what, what it's like, building for those."
    },
    {
      "speaker": "stephan",
      "time": "32:34",
      "start": 1953.91,
      "text": "Yeah, again, that"
    },
    {
      "speaker": "stephan",
      "time": "32:40",
      "start": 1959.54,
      "text": "Challenge really is just to get the, the integrations done. Y- you know, he was able to add additional layers literally by changing a few words. So my understanding is that, you know, it'll become more of a protocol standard and there's a lot of people working on SDKs to manage that in the background for developers. So again, we, we hope to be, to be one of the sort of pioneering wallets on, on that side of things, but, yeah, right now we're just yoloing it."
    },
    {
      "speaker": "gareth_grobler",
      "time": "33:10",
      "start": 1989.92,
      "text": "Yeah, 'cause I, I can also imagine just maybe there are gonna be challenges around like localizing things for different markets and so on. But do you have like certain markets or geographic areas or zones that you're focusing on more because you're trying to localize for them more, or you're just sort of putting it out there and just, it's a global product?"
    },
    {
      "speaker": "stephan",
      "time": "33:28",
      "start": 2007.97,
      "text": "No, like I said, we, it's a global product. There's, there's obviously different challenges in different markets, like we haven't been able to, to make it available on the Apple, on the iOS in the UK because the fact that there's a swap button means that you are advertising cryptocurrency and therefore you need FCA regulate you, you know, you become, you, you fall under FCA regulations and you have to apply and go through a whole, whole rigmarole, but, You know, that, we don't, we don't have any specific target market. I do think, in terms of onboarding, Africa is, is, I mean, that's sort of something that, that I personally, I'm quite involved with, so, I think that, that's a massive market, and I think that's a, a very underserved market and probably the one where the need is the most. I mean, people in the USA don't need another payment mechanism, they, they simply don't need it, it's not necessary. So I think, you know, we, we're obviously building it for everyone, we don't have any specific- geographical area that we're focusing on, but ultimately if it works in Africa and, and it adds value there, then by default it should circle out. And"
    },
    {
      "speaker": "gareth_grobler",
      "time": "34:42",
      "start": 2082.2,
      "text": "are you also planning to be an on-ramp in terms of like fiat to Bitcoin on-ramp or are you, you know, just using the stablecoin side of it more for that? And the idea is that these users will- Receive their first Bitcoin or payment from earning or buying like peer to peer."
    },
    {
      "speaker": "stephan",
      "time": "34:59",
      "start": 2099.43,
      "text": "No, they can go and buy it. So we've integrated with some on ramps. We have an orchestrator, so, you know, in Nigeria, you can click buy Bitcoin and it'll take you through the process of buying it from, let's, I think Nigeria Yellow Card, for example. So that works pretty much everywhere. So, you know, you can buy it in Kenyan shillings, you can buy it in, in- Euro in Germany, so we're, we're looking to add all these different services and providers from third parties, because, you know, again, I don't want to be involved in, in buying or selling actual Bitcoin, but if I can provide an easy interface for users to, to acquire their first bitcoins, then, then why not?"
    },
    {
      "speaker": "gareth_grobler",
      "time": "35:39",
      "start": 2138.9,
      "text": "What about things like hardware wallet support or is the idea this is gonna be mainly a hot wallet?"
    },
    {
      "speaker": "stephan",
      "time": "35:44",
      "start": 2144.06,
      "text": "No, we've got, we're currently, I think they, they have got cold card on the cards. So that, that is, that is, that is in the pipeline, because we also have the browser extension. So the idea with the browser extension is that, you know, you have this full functionality, but you can't actually do-- you can't sign transactions directly in the browser. You need to use the, the app, the hardware wallet to sign them. Oh, the hardware wallet, rather. Okay, gotcha."
    },
    {
      "speaker": "gareth_grobler",
      "time": "36:10",
      "start": 2169.92,
      "text": "And so then the idea would be like you'd Represent your hardware wallet stack, your cold stack, let's say, and then the, the other parts will be your hot wallet. Is that the, is that the rough idea? Yes."
    },
    {
      "speaker": "stephan",
      "time": "36:21",
      "start": 2181.11,
      "text": "That's exactly it. Same with the watch-only wallet, it's just a separate card. So, yeah, that's the plan. Interesting. Yeah,"
    },
    {
      "speaker": "gareth_grobler",
      "time": "36:27",
      "start": 2186.71,
      "text": "I think it's an interesting idea. It's, you know, it's worth people exploring. Like I just had a quick play around. it's got that quick-- I like that it's got that quick setup as well, that you can kind of"
    },
    {
      "speaker": "stephan",
      "time": "36:44",
      "start": 2203.94,
      "text": "I'll give you a quick story around that. This is, there was a bit of a contentious issue for us because, you know, I, I said to the guys, \"Look, one of the biggest problems we've got is, you know, I'm sitting in a coffee shop, I wanna show somebody, I wanna send somebody Bitcoin, I wanna, I wanna onboard them. now they download the wallet and they go and take a screenshot of the twelve words. So that's the first thing people do, and I've seen it everywhere. And I'm like, well, again, that's And why it's happening, but that sort of defeats the whole purpose. Like, this isn't what we should be doing. So this is why we came up with this concept where, we'll show you the twelve words and we'll allow you to skip it, so that if you're in that coffee shop, you can run somebody through and say, \"Just skip it and don't worry about it.\" But now the problem is, that guy's never gonna go and write down those twelve words. Unless you find a way to push them away. So the way we've done it is, well, Quick as possible. That's what I was saying, you can sort of receive Lightning payments within twenty seconds of downloading the wallet. But what it's gonna do is, in the first two or three or four weeks, it's just gonna give you gentle reminders, look, you haven't done your backup, you haven't done your backup, because you need to go through the process of verifying it by typing in the words, like this little widget that, that does that. And then, you know, after two months, it'll s-- start really annoying you that you haven't done the, the backup. And"
    },
    {
      "speaker": "stephan",
      "time": "38:14",
      "start": 2293.64,
      "text": "Allow you to send, unless you've done the backup. So we sort of wanna, we'll gently nudge people and then we'll start irritating them eventually to make sure that they have actually done the backup. But ideally, that shifts the, the responsibility of that, that, that person that was introducing them, it shifts that onto the wallet rather than them having to check in every now and then, have you done this, have you done this?"
    },
    {
      "speaker": "gareth_grobler",
      "time": "38:34",
      "start": 2314.4,
      "text": "Yeah, interesting approach. And you know, we"
    },
    {
      "speaker": "stephan",
      "time": "38:36",
      "start": 2315.64,
      "text": "are looking at, at other ways as well."
    },
    {
      "speaker": "gareth_grobler",
      "time": "38:38",
      "start": 2317.76,
      "text": "I think it's a really interesting approach. One of the big"
    },
    {
      "speaker": "gareth_grobler",
      "time": "38:44",
      "start": 2323.58,
      "text": "wallet l a y e r z wallet dot com. Yeah, I think, I think it's interesting, it's worthwhile having a look just to understand the idea of just having one wallet with all the different layers in it. Certainly novel. I know it's kind of been a thing more in like, in shitcoin land, but like actually done in Bitcoin land, it's an interesting approach. so any, closing thoughts for people, and we'll, we'll let you go then."
    },
    {
      "speaker": "stephan",
      "time": "39:05",
      "start": 2345.46,
      "text": "Yeah, no, look, try it out, let us know what you think. There's obviously a lot of work to be done still. I think the exciting thing that's happening, currently polishing it up, so it should be in the next release in the next, week or so, maybe a couple of weeks, is the yield section. So there's an action, and this is again for people to be able to explore if you want to earn yield, these are the different places you can do it while staying on Bitcoin, and these are the trade-offs. And it sort of tracks your yield. So yeah, there's, there's, there's nice little new features coming in just, just to make Bitcoin a bit more, more usable for people. our CTO came up with a The brilliant slogan the other day, I'll send it to you. He, he came up with a really interesting about, about making Bitcoin useful to people. Alright,"
    },
    {
      "speaker": "gareth_grobler",
      "time": "39:51",
      "start": 2391.03,
      "text": "we'll, we'll leave it there then. Thanks very much, Gareth, and, yeah, listeners go and check it out. Thank you."
    }
  ]
}