{ "episodeId": "SLP782", "speakers": { "stephan": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "host", "tag": "STEPHAN" }, "prashanth_chandrashekar": { "name": "Prashanth Chandrashekar", "role": "guest", "tag": "PRASHANTH" } }, "segments": [ { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:00", "start": 0.0, "text": "Hi, everyone. Welcome back to Stephan Livera Podcast. Rejoining me on the show today is Prashanth from Bringin, and I'll just make sure upfront there is a disclosure. I'm an investor and advisor in Bringin. But, yeah, with that said, Prashanth, welcome back to the show." }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "00:14", "start": 14.0, "text": "Thanks, Stephan. Thanks for having me back." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:16", "start": 16.0, "text": "So, lots of updates. There's a bit of, you know, debanking, war on cash, these kinds of ideas are kind of out there. I know you also have Bringin for Business to chat about. So, yeah, maybe just give a quick overview on where, where you see things nowadays, like with Bitcoin, just broadly, before we get to Bringin." }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "00:37", "start": 37.0, "text": "Yeah, yeah, sure. So, it, it's, it's very interesting times, actually, especially in the EU post-MiCA." }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "00:43", "start": 43.0, "text": "For me, almost" }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "00:46", "start": 46.0, "text": "clear how, how messed up trying to merge our traditional finance, which is built on a centralized systems, and Bitcoin, which is Totally on different fundamental principles, right, like self-custody and things like that. So trying to put them together, like, because we have to put them together, because people have to buy Bitcoin and then they have to liquidate or they have to spend Bitcoin. So this is a transition phase. So with MiCA regulations, this is very clear how every transactions you'll have to declare yourself and, and all this KYC, AML, frauds that comes into play, so it's, and the hacks and the data leaks and the privacy. So it's, it's a mess of times. I think the transition between the old systems and new system, this is quite evident, but it's very clear, this year at least in EU." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:37", "start": 97.0, "text": "Yeah, and so the different, I think the big thing has just been this idea of, you know, as you mentioned with MiCA and the, I guess, the scrambling of different companies to try to comply with that. And I guess you could argue it does kind of shut out smaller companies somewhat, right?" }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "01:58", "start": 118.0, "text": "That's true. So it's, it's, the data says almost ninety percent of the EU, like, crypto companies that existed before MiCA couldn't obtain the license. And I think now the number is not ninety, but like about like only thirty, thirty percent have managed to get the licenses. And all the remaining seventy, and I know some companies personally have who did not manage to get the licenses to be able to operate. So it's a, we, we, in our report earlier, we call it the reset. So," }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "02:30", "start": 150.0, "text": "And I guess on," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "02:32", "start": 152.0, "text": "there's a pros and cons to it also because it allows you to, yes, the downside is, yeah, it's very costly, very onerous, it's a lot of work, not everybody can get approved for this, but on the other hand, once you do get approved, it allows that easy passporting around the EU. So I guess that's on the pro side that you can now access this market of hundreds of millions of people instead of just the market in whatever country you're in. That's" }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "02:55", "start": 175.0, "text": "right, that's right language. So once we have a license, it's much easier to, like, operate in all the countries in EU, talk about the solutions in local languages without any issues, so the passporting is there. And this is quite, kind of important actually having regulations, having a license to obtain because I, I'm from India, so in India there is no licenses. So it's, it's a gray area, so we can't operate legally obtaining a license because there's no regulation. So I guess a clear regulations and a license that we can obtain is, is, is a, has its advantage definitely." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "03:28", "start": 208.0, "text": "Yeah, and I think this is the thing of expanding Bitcoin access. Now, of course, there is the, let's say, cypherpunk libertarian side of it, of just, hey, just do it all yourself. But the other aspect of it is, if you want more people, you have to be able to access the TradFi system, because that's where most of the wealth is today. Now, I understand for some people, that's like, they don't care about that, they just want to be able to do their cypherpunk thing, cool, that's for them. But for those of us who believe Bitcoin is going to become the money of the world, well, we're going to need ways to make services and products that are accessible for people who are not libertarian and not cypherpunk. And so that's going to be like, you know, ninety-nine percent of people, right? So I think that's probably the challenge, that's the tension, isn't it? And I think historically," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "04:16", "start": 256.0, "text": "one of the challenges in the space has just been like all the AML, KYC sanctions, all this compliance stuff, and people getting their accounts shut down, and because of the laws around things like, for example, tipping off, there may be cases where they get an account shut down, and their bank or financial institution or a crypto exchange is not even allowed to tell them why, because that, that might risk, quote unquote, tipping off. And so that's part of the, the challenge that we're in today, isn't it?" }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "04:45", "start": 285.0, "text": "That's right. I mean, getting debanked or like, your account shut on an exchange or bank is horrible enough, but then it makes it even worse because you don't know the reason. So" }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "04:58", "start": 298.0, "text": "It, it, it leaves you hanging out there where it's like, I have no idea why my account got banned. And it almost feels like you're being treated in a certain way. You know what I mean? Like, you give all the details and say, hey, we can't have an account with you. So, so what's wrong? So I can't tell you. So it's, it's not so good feeling to have account closed from an exchange or a bank. So, yeah, so as I said, like, if you own a Bitcoin private keys, if you own Bitcoin and you hold the self-custody of it, none of this will be a problem, but, dealing with banks and exchanges, especially, as I said, like, the systems are built, the AML, the screening, everything is built around centralized systems where every information of every payment, every source of funds, it's being tracked because every other banks are licensed, everything is centralized. So it's easy to understand, but to do all the AML screenings is a lot more." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "05:50", "start": 350.0, "text": "But talk us through that. What are the typical ways that people get their accounts shut down? What does it look like?" }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "05:56", "start": 356.0, "text": "So, the main reason is because some of the banks have very," }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "06:04", "start": 364.0, "text": "like a horrible risk appetite towards any funds coming from an exchange." }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "06:10", "start": 370.0, "text": "so they-" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "06:10", "start": 370.0, "text": "Oh, that's money laundering or theft or fraud or something like that. And so in their own internal risk scoring systems, they are more likely to shut you down or block a transfer if they think it's coming from a crypto exchange." }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "06:26", "start": 386.0, "text": "That's right. So, whenever the funds are coming from a crypto exchange, so firstly it's third party, and then it's not like you're making transfers from your own account to another account, it's from an institute. And that's a cryptocurrency exchange, right? So, so based on the risk appetite, this transaction is often blocked. And some of the banks are more open to having funds coming from an regulated exchange. If the IBAN is associated with an exchange that is regulated, so they let the transaction go through, but still, that's not most of the banks. Most of the banks are hostile towards transfers coming from an exchange or an IBAN that is associated with an exchange. So it's often blocked." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "07:04", "start": 424.0, "text": "I see. And so that's part of the, let's say, the innovation or what Bringin is doing where you have this vIBAN or virtual IBAN that matches the actual customer's name. So talk to us a bit about that. Why is that a differentiator there?" }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "07:21", "start": 441.0, "text": "So, when a payment comes to a customer account, so first there is a classification if it's third party or first party. So first party is like you are doing transaction from your own account, like, let's say you are owning an account in banking and then you are transferring funds to your account in another bank or bank B. So it's a first party payment. So these classifications are important. Once it's classified as first party payment, all the flags that goes, there's no much flags to trans, flags this transaction, to block these transactions. So risk appetite is, there's no risk associated with first party payments. But if a payment is coming from third party, it's from a different person or institute, there's, there are more screenings that goes through these payments to ensure there's no fraud or there's no anti-money laundering a lot more. So, what we do in Bringin is to convert all the third party into first party payment, which means we provide an IBAN account for every customers in Bringin, and that is coupled with an exchange. So when they do any buy and sell transactions on Bringin, the bank transfers are always first party payments. The bank sees the funds are going from a customer's account to another bank of the same customer's account, and such, and thus there's no risk of being debanked, or the risk is a lot, lot lesser than it would have been otherwise." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "08:45", "start": 525.0, "text": "Yeah. And so" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "08:50", "start": 530.0, "text": "comparing with Bringin with Other services in the EU. Let's talk a bit about that, right? Because there are already existing established crypto exchanges, whatever, Kraken and, Bitstamp and, you know, and then maybe even some in the kind of more like near the fintech sort of world, like Wise and Revolut and things like that. So how does Bringin fit or how does Bringin compare with those options?" }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "09:18", "start": 558.0, "text": "That's, that's a good question. So one, most of these exchanges don't have a dedicated virtual IBAN account. So there's a small nuance between dedicated virtual IBAN accounts. So one is an IBAN account given to you so that they can reconcile the deposits. So that's not a named virtual IBAN account. That's still a virtual IBAN account so that they can identify the deposit is made to you or that's your account and they can manage the ledger accordingly. So most of the exchanges do provide a dedicated IBAN account for deposits, but then that doesn't" }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "09:47", "start": 587.0, "text": "have name associated with the customer, so the SEPA payments are not..." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "09:51", "start": 591.0, "text": "So you're saying a named virtual IBAN account is distinct from just a dedicated IBAN account?" }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "09:57", "start": 597.0, "text": "That's right. That's important because what matters is whenever the payment happens, when the sending bank account sends a sender name and the receiving bank accounts, associate an IBAN account with the name, so that's important. So, like for example, there are some exchanges that provide a dedicated IBAN account to reconcile the deposits. You don't have to put the reference number and the payment goes through or payment is not identified. So these are the problems to avoid them. They provide a dedicated IBAN account, but still it's not a named virtual IBAN account. So this often leads to debanking and banks causing issues when you make a transfer." }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "10:35", "start": 635.0, "text": "And, on the other side, there's banks. Wise often, or Wise is becoming very popular for its," }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "10:44", "start": 644.0, "text": "Like, it's, it's Aust-austere towards crypto transactions, like any transfers made to an exchange from a Wise account or Tradebox account, and Wise doesn't support natively any exchanges like Revolut, for example. Although Revolut supports all of this transaction, like all this crypto assets to buy and sell, it's all with custody, so it's, it's built from banking first approach, it's not like self-custody, that's where Bringin is. Respects the self-custody, your funds are always in self-custody, and then there's an exchange and there's a dedicated IBAN account, you can still hold funds in your self-custody wallet and still be able to" }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "11:20", "start": 680.0, "text": "sell Bitcoin to bank and buy Bitcoin directly with self-custody." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "11:24", "start": 684.0, "text": "Yeah, I see. and then talk us through what that looks like nowadays in the self-custody side of things. I know you've got, you're working with Spark and Lightspark, which is like an L2 for Bitcoin. Listeners can check out some earlier episodes with, Kevin from Spark and also Roy from Breez. Will be, probably interesting interviews for anyone interested to learn a bit more about that. But, Prashanth, from your perspective, talk us through the self-custody for Bringin customers." }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "11:54", "start": 714.0, "text": "So customers, so there are, we are right now working for both consumers and businesses. So for end customers, our wallet is built on Spark, so which is layer two, built by Lightspark, as mentioned. So This has some compromises, which means like the operators are more, mostly centralized at the moment, so there is one. It relies on operator to do the transactions on your behalf, but it's still self-custody. One of the keys is held in your phone, it's encrypted, so, operator cannot move funds, on your behalf. So it's still self-custody, and, the advantage is being you can do both Lightning and on-chain payments without having to deal with liquidity managing a Lightning node, and also offers some level of privacy so that you don't have a on-chain wallet associated with your account, and then it, it adds to privacy in a way where if you own an on-chain wallet, any deposit of withdrawal to that wallet is being very visible, but, with Spark, that's not the case. It's probably visible to the operator, that's where the trust level, trust assumption comes in, but not to, like, let's say, anyone from the outside can track the payments that going to an on-chain wallet or something like that." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "13:03", "start": 783.0, "text": "Yeah, I see. And then let's talk a bit on the business side of things. So, actually, let's take a, a bit of a step back there and talk about this kind of consumer to business evolution. Like, talk a bit more broadly about how you have grown as a business and this shift of having, like, not just consumer, like, you know, end consumer accounts, but also business accounts." }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "13:27", "start": 807.0, "text": "so the reason why Bringin exists is to make Bitcoin spendable, as in to be able to use Bitcoin. So, that was the main pain that I faced when I moved to Estonia with just Bitcoin, and I was not able to spend it." }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "13:44", "start": 824.0, "text": "Being able to, like, or being able to liquidate Bitcoin and pay for goods and services or pay for things or use a debit card to spend is just one side of the equation. It, it, it kinda always requires the consumers to, like, you know, convert Bitcoin to euros, and there's capital gain associated with it, and a lot more. So the real adoption or real adoption for Bitcoin comes from" }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "14:07", "start": 847.0, "text": "merchant being, merchants accepting Bitcoin. So that's when you as a consumer can pay from self-custody directly to the merchant, and most of the countries that doesn't trigger capital gain tax, and this is very important nuances, nuance. And, of course, like, for businesses, the same problems that we talked about the consumers, but it's just," }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "14:30", "start": 870.0, "text": "it, it, it's, it's, it's very evident in businesses. So, if bank is hostile to a consumer who holds Bitcoin or do a transaction to an exchange, bank is even more hostile towards a business having to do, deal with anything related to cryptocurrencies at all, because they assume that the, the, the business is involved in some kind of financial services, and the first thing they ask is, do you have a license to do so? So, not every business who wants to just buy Bitcoin needs a license, but" }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "15:02", "start": 902.0, "text": "the" }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "15:04", "start": 904.0, "text": "banks are very hostile to businesses just doing any transaction exchange, so that needs to be solved first. So, business should be able to adopt Bitcoin, as it add Bitcoin to their balance sheet first, and then Bitcoin payments comes in next. So, we are working towards solving that for the business as well, like how we did for consumers." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "15:22", "start": 922.0, "text": "Yeah. And, as I understand, you have had a pilot. Talk to us a bit about the results of the pilot. What was the feedback there?" }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "15:30", "start": 930.0, "text": "Most of the pilot customers are victims of, being debanked or not being able to find a bank account at all. So, some of them are Bitcoin mining rig sellers, has nothing to do with Bitcoin financial services. They just sell mining rigs. So, their customers pay in euros, and then they have to convert into stablecoins or Bitcoin, pay suppliers in Hong Kong. So, there's an exchange involved. So, right now, they use neobanks like Wise, and that's been always asking questions about nature of transactions, nature of business, and then always trying to prove. So this is like living on the edge as a business. It's not a good feeling to be there. So these are one of, there are two, mining rig sellers in our pilot programs. So the value that they get is being able to, confidently accept Bitcoin, Euro payments and then convert it to Bitcoin or USDC and, send it to suppliers in China, Hong Kong, wherever they're buying their rigs from, rigs from. So this is one, kind of, business. Other businesses," }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "16:32", "start": 992.0, "text": "the other business is a Bitcoin payments service provider. So they provide PoS machines and a Lightning checkout page for a lot of local merchants in Netherlands. And, you can imagine as the nature involves Bitcoin, although it's a technology company, so banks cause issues with them." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "16:50", "start": 1010.0, "text": "I see, yeah. And so they are mainly using it to, as you said, take fiat payments or take Bitcoin payments and then change them, you know, convert them and, transfer as needed. and then are you also doing any stablecoin stuff on Bringin?" }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "17:08", "start": 1028.0, "text": "For businesses, yes. it's critical for businesses to be able to do international transactions and USD, like a stablecoin, allows them to do international transactions. So" }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "17:19", "start": 1039.0, "text": "when we talk to most of the merchants before starting Bringin for Business, stablecoin was need more than want. So we support stablecoins for businesses. Again, like stablecoin comes with the same issues with the virtual assets, there's no difference. So being able to provide a virtual IBAN account and being able to convert between stablecoin to euros securely also is a issue, issue for most of the businesses, not that. So." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "17:45", "start": 1065.0, "text": "Yeah. Yeah, interesting. And I think the other big thing is obviously businesses will tend to be doing bigger transactions. And so you might have less of them as your customers, but they're doing more volume. And so maybe that's another interesting, side of it. From the business perspective, you know, for you as Bringin, and then are you seeing more interest come because of all the debanking stuff?" }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "18:08", "start": 1088.0, "text": "That's mostly the reason why people are signing up for the, early access. they need a bank account for Bitcoin needs. they need to be able to add Bitcoin payments to their payment options. So these are the two main reasons why people are signing up for early access or are in the pilot program." }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "18:29", "start": 1109.0, "text": "Again, so debanking is one of the issues and one of the main issues that we're solving, and that's the reason why people are coming to Bringin, but then there's a lot of issues that we just untalked about, which is operational issues. Just adding Bitcoin to the balance sheet requires you to have an wallet exchange under the payment tool, and none of this work with your existing account tools and tax tools, so this is something that we're solving as well, making it like..." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "18:54", "start": 1134.0, "text": "I see. So it's like easing the, the transition for these businesses also. Let's say you have a fiat business, and you want to be able to hold Bitcoin on the balance sheet, and maybe, as an example, maybe the owner or some, you know, senior person in the business is a Bitcoiner, and wants that business to, you know, adopt Bitcoin, either as a store of value or, or, or for the payment side of it, you're also offering, let's say, services on that side of, on, on that side of it." }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "19:22", "start": 1162.0, "text": "Yeah, so it's, it's often like that one of the persons or one of the directors or one of the senior person is a Bitcoiner and they're trying to convince their, like directors to adopt Bitcoin and then, it comes with a lot more, a lot, lot of challenges. So we as a business have been, like, struggling with tools, trying to have a Lightning node and then wallet and then being able to pull all the statements from there and reconciling and then letting our accountants know and this has been a tedious process. Of course, with AI it's been much easier, but still I have to spend a lot of my time being able to work with accountants so that they understand. So this is, operational nightmare for most of the businesses being, being able to deal with Bitcoin payments, volatility, transaction matching, and accounting, taxes, capital gain." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "20:10", "start": 1210.0, "text": "Right, and the reporting that would be required, and then in terms of maybe integrating it with their accounting and financial system also to be able to, I mean, typically it's things like downloading a CSV and then importing it, but over time, all this stuff is going to get more advanced and hopefully kind of has more automations to it. So talk to us on that side of things." }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "20:31", "start": 1231.0, "text": "So the way we are solving that is we want one statement that a business can export and that has transactions related to payments, exchanges, bank transactions, and wallets. So we provide a secure self-custody wallets. So this is a, this is a bit different implementation than like our consumer wallet implementation. So right now for consumers, we have only Spark wallet and the keys is held in the phone. But then for the businesses, obviously the requirement for a wallet is a lot different from a consumer. It should be accessible, there should be policy controls, there should be governance, there should be more security, some Businesses are structured in a way that there are multiple directors, they want operational efficiency while having a multisig security. So we are leveraging our hardware enclave, like again, I, I'm, I'm not sure if or I talked about the, the Turnkey integration in, in this, in the previous episodes, but then we are leveraging that integration where Turnkey, the keys are held in our hardware enclave," }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "21:31", "start": 1291.0, "text": "and every transaction is done with our policy control, which is enforced on-chain and using cryptography. So now we, in our solutions, we allow customers to use passkey or password to protect their keys, and which is always in the enclave, which is never exported unless your customer wants to, like, export and do a personal backup." }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "21:55", "start": 1315.0, "text": "so this is how we ensure security, and of course, we can add multisig layer where multiple directors can own a key, and everything is manageable with a web UI. There's no need to Go an extra mile to, I can all get a hardware wallet and do signature while plugging into the phone or having that." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "22:12", "start": 1332.0, "text": "So talk us through just an example of how Turnkey works for the business context then. So is it more like the CEO has a key and the CTO has a key and the CFO has a key like that, or how can you talk us through what does that look like for the actual business to, to use this?" }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "22:30", "start": 1350.0, "text": "So this, like it's not designed in such a way one's one fits all. So it's totally depend on we, we totally want to build a particular tool business. Right." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "22:40", "start": 1360.0, "text": "So it's very custom you're saying." }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "22:42", "start": 1362.0, "text": "It's, it's very custom. For most of the businesses, for so single directors, we have one key that is held, held in an enclave. But the advantage is they can approve policies, for example, they can allow one of other marketing person to access it and budget in a particular month. So these policies are enforceable and then that's possible without having to share the private keys, for example." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "23:04", "start": 1384.0, "text": "Yeah." }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "23:04", "start": 1384.0, "text": "So, and for, for multiple directors, we will have multiple keys, and then there will be an extra key for, with us for operational efficiency, so that they can actually do the transactions. And depending on number of keys, we'll have one, one or two backups. So, again, as I said, totally depends on how much operational efficiency they need, or they're looking to lock it up in a treasury for a lot of security and this kind of thing." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "23:28", "start": 1408.0, "text": "And then in terms of, is, talk to us about the, the way each of the business users is managing that. Like, is it on a phone? Is it in their laptop? Is it a web thing? Like, talk to us about how they manage that side of it." }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "23:43", "start": 1423.0, "text": "The Bringin for Business right now, it's a web app. So, the keys are held in, hardware enclave. So, which is," }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "23:51", "start": 1431.0, "text": "which they don't need to hold a air-gapped wallet. So, that device only does signature based on certain policy, which is pre-approved by the" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "24:02", "start": 1442.0, "text": "So I think of it as like a policy signing thing based on, you know, and you, that's where you have like the rate limits built in for how much they can spend in a month, this kind of thing. And then you, you would set up who in the business has authorization to spend this kind of thing." }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "24:19", "start": 1459.0, "text": "That's right. So every policy is cryptographically enforceable. So only with people having access to the keys, they can manage the wallet, can approve these policies, and, based on the policies, other people can spend. So it's, it's, it's almost like not needing a hardware wallet, having this cloud enclave, secure enclave that can do the transactions on the owner's behalf and providing additional flexibility so that others can Do or move certain funds without having to compromise the private keys itself." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "24:53", "start": 1493.0, "text": "I see. And then when there is, let's say there's a rotation in the business, someone leaves the company or maybe they change role, you have to be able to change their key or their permissions, right?" }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "25:04", "start": 1504.0, "text": "That's right. So this is tricky, although it's, not the, private keys held in the phone. We, we're still designing on this structure. So one, once we have an export shown, like, like we have a record that seed phrases has been exported. So in this case, the process is different, but then most of the time we don't encourage exporting the exports like the mnemonics. So in that case, transfer of ownership is, again, like one-click transfer, we, everything is done on the backend where, the ownership is signed, and then, the funds are moved to a different setup instantly, so they don't have to do," }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "25:41", "start": 1541.0, "text": "give the private key as such so they can transfer into a different setup which has different ownership." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "25:47", "start": 1547.0, "text": "Yeah, gotcha. Okay. No, that's good. And for listeners, many of us are ourselves, you know, whether you're a developer, a builder, or you're just an advocate, an educator yourself, that's something for, especially for EU businesses, and you're trying to get them onboarded, maybe that's where a Bringin Business Account is useful for them because of, of the tooling that's there to kind of help them do it in a compliant way or do it in a way where they get the right reporting they need and those aspects of it. Talk to us a little bit about the product, you know, roadmap, anything on like cards, maybe corporate cards, API, MCP stuff. talk to us a bit about that." }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "26:24", "start": 1584.0, "text": "A lot of, things are planned. I'm really excited about this because as a business owner, you often want more features, obviously, because there are so many problems that you want to solve as a business, especially with respect to banking, finances." }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "26:39", "start": 1599.0, "text": "So, the first thing is, we'll have third-party enabled in very few days, third-party Euro payments, which means a business can use this, use Bringin accounts for Euro payments. they can invoice their clients with Bringin IBAN account, so they, clients can pay directly to the Bringin IBAN account, and they can link this to Stripe account, so they can, accept payments with credit cards." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "27:01", "start": 1621.0, "text": "So, this can be like the main bank account that you take payments into." }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "27:04", "start": 1624.0, "text": "That's right. And then" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "27:05", "start": 1625.0, "text": "automatically change it to buy Bitcoin or whatever, keep it in fiat, whatever the business needs." }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "27:11", "start": 1631.0, "text": "Exactly. So, this is going to," }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "27:14", "start": 1634.0, "text": "like, a business who is already frustrated with a bank account not supporting Bitcoin, at least for us, Bringin for Business will be the main business bank account, because it, I can take Euro payments, pay suppliers or employees with Euro, and do the Bitcoin payments as well. So, like, like, this is, just a very, very simple example, like, one of our clients paid in Euros, due to the misconfiguration of the fees, we couldn't collect it on the platform, so they were kind enough to do a bank transfer. So, and I had two invoices to settle, one in euros and one in Bitcoin. So the euro coming in, it's very easy to just, like, do another transfer as soon as, funds hit the bank account, but then doing, to do a Bitcoin payment for another contractor, it's, it's so discouraging that you almost would say, hey, just invest in euros, it's much easier, because first in that, you'll need to convert, euro to Bitcoin, you need to have a wallet, and you need to have a account in exchange, and then every time you spin up a wallet, that is another account that your accountant needs to manage the balances, the reconciliation, and everything." }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "28:21", "start": 1701.0, "text": "so all of this is super simplified with Bringin Business Account. All in one UI, the Euro payment comes in, you can send payments, select Bitcoin, put the address, and it's gone, and it's in one statement. The exchanges, the wallets, the banking, everything is integrated into one platform. This is for a, for a business who's having Bitcoin in any capacity, so having this in one place is a," }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "28:46", "start": 1726.0, "text": "is a huge value. Otherwise, yeah, the options is not many which can provide efficiency, especially if a contractor involves in on-chain, yes, it's fine. If they want to involve in Lightning, then you have to think about the Lightning wallet for the business, and that comes with the different statements, and it's not compatible with other accounting tools, so it's, it just goes on getting complicated depending on the invoice structure." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "29:13", "start": 1753.0, "text": "Yeah, I see. And so I think perhaps summing up some of that, there are, obviously there are a lot of other competitors in the Europe, Bitcoin, and crypto world, but as I'm kind of understanding it then, it's that you've got this kind of business-friendly setup all the way through, that there's kind of, there are certain individual features that you can find at competitors, but Bringin is sort of bringing the key, like, okay, so you've got the named IBAN, named vIBAN part of it, you have the business side of it, you have the, the debit cards and business cards on the way, and then you have some of these features around like treasury, supplies and payroll, accounting, some of those components, and it's all sort of wrapped into, into one service, so that way it's convenient for onboarding and use, I think. So talk to us a little bit, oh, one other thing, the business cards, is that something you have, or you're, you've got that coming?" }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "30:10", "start": 1810.0, "text": "We don't have that yet, but it's on roadmap, corporate cards, for, so they can spin off debit cards for their employees and allow them to put a pocket and they can spend." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "30:20", "start": 1820.0, "text": "Yeah, and I guess, yeah, and, I guess the other thing is to do that in a way that allows people to use self-custody also, right? Because there might be services where you can do some of this stuff, but it's custodial instead of having at least the option for self-custody. Yeah, and so I think those are some interesting points there. I guess" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "30:39", "start": 1839.0, "text": "looking out into the future," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "30:42", "start": 1842.0, "text": "do you see this as" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "30:45", "start": 1845.0, "text": "Who do you see as the main, the next round of customers who might be, interested to use this, right? Because I think Bringin started as kind of like, obviously, it started as like more like, you know, I saw you had a lot of feedback from European Bitcoiners, right? Like who are more, let's say, ideological, like, you know, which we are, right? But obviously the goal is to try to expand it out, but who do you see as the next sort of natural customer or person who might want to come on board here?" }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "31:13", "start": 1873.0, "text": "So we've, we've seen interest in Bitcoin growing, and at least interest in stablecoin growing a lot more, and Bitcoin naturally follows the stablecoin interest because they have like the setup necessary to hold their virtual assets." }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "31:27", "start": 1887.0, "text": "With With consumers, it's always going to be Bitcoiners. Right now, we are focused on only helping Bitcoiners like live on Bitcoin. So that is a product for, that, that, that is what the mobile app, the consumer app is built around." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "31:40", "start": 1900.0, "text": "And the typical appeal for them is like the self-custody part of it, right? And also the not getting debanked part of it, right?" }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "31:46", "start": 1906.0, "text": "Exactly. So, on the business side, yeah." }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "31:49", "start": 1909.0, "text": "So for consumers, it's self-custody, not getting debanked, and then reliable, fast transactions so that they can get and pay for goods and services. For businesses, so we've seen like adoption of stablecoins and Bitcoin more, and it's going to be more evident with like, you know, agents paying for things. So, like any tech enthusiastic business owner or a consultant or a small scale business owner wants to adopt these technologies, and they're more likely to do that because they want to be able to. So, let's say next, next age of, agents buying for goods and services. Right now, we have seen MPP from Stripe, and then there is x402. So there's a lot more protocols built for agents to natively pay with stablecoins and merchants accepting stablecoins. So there's, there's a lot of development around like agentic wallets, like agents being able to pay for goods and services, but the minimum requirement is that merchants need to accept stablecoins. So, and that comes a lot of frictions that I just, we just talked about, the debanking issues, efficiency, operational efficiency, and, and a lot more. And, the next wave of business would be one who wants to adopt stablecoin and Bitcoin, because they want to allow modern pay, modern payments methods, not only debit cards. And of course, the, the companies who wants to add Bitcoin to their treasury. So these are the two kind of businesses we expect. So there are people who want to add advanced payment systems like Bitcoin and stablecoins, and the ones who wants to add Bitcoin to their treasury because they believe in Bitcoin" }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "33:20", "start": 2000.0, "text": "as a business and they want to Puts on capital to have, edge against other competitors." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "33:26", "start": 2006.0, "text": "Yeah, I see. So" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "33:31", "start": 2011.0, "text": "what do you see, do you think the regulatory side of things is gonna get better or gonna get worse?" }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "33:38", "start": 2018.0, "text": "It's hard to predict. It's regulatory environment right now of recent regulations around DAC8, which means like every customer has to provide their tax identification details, and the transactions are reported directly to the authorities, and security of this data has been, has been obviously questionable because with the AI, the attacks and security is going to," }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "34:05", "start": 2045.0, "text": "shape out differently in the near future. So in a way, yes, regulations are, have to adopt To people's need to embrace self-custody, to remove the calculating taxes. So this is inevitable, that will happen, but on the other side, there will still be like more and more regulations before they actually start supporting self-custody and a lot more. So that more regulations requires like collection of data, security, and a lot more. So this is going to be a, yeah, it's going to be better and worse at the same time." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "34:39", "start": 2079.0, "text": "But on the opportunity side, as you mentioned, like, you know, nowadays, MCP and API and all these things that to people, for people to do agentic payments. I know I did an interview recently with Ben Carman from Spiral. They got Lightning added into x402. So that's also another kind of interesting idea. And as you mentioned, like if people can, you know, can see opportunities there where they, you know, if they can sign up and then they can start a business. And if they're using AI to kind of agentically take payments or have Lightning address and these factors that are, are also opportunities, right? So there, there are, yes, there are challenges on the regulatory side, but there's also opportunities now with AI for people to easily set up, take money, start a business, try something new. So I think that's also, you know, we've got to be fair. There's the challenge side, but there's also the opportunities too." }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "35:25", "start": 2125.0, "text": "Yeah, definitely. There's going to be a huge opportunity, but it didn't start buying things for people. And it's, it's so surprising how fast things change. Tomorrow we can see some Product, product, a product, a new product coming into the market that allows actually, that allows people to actually buy goods and services, maybe Amazon will enable stablecoin payments, I don't know. So things are moving so fast, and adoption can happen really rapidly. So being able to accept Bitcoin payments, stablecoin payments becomes only critical for businesses. So that's, that's there. And also, as, as a business owner, operations are totally done by AI today. So you take any API key, drop it in Claude, or you have connect the Claude with, MCP servers, and all of your tools are connected to your AI, and then AI kind of manages all of your operations, right? Like" }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "36:19", "start": 2179.0, "text": "buy Bitcoin or sell Bitcoin or access, create an invoice and into this client." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "36:23", "start": 2183.0, "text": "Yeah." }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "36:24", "start": 2184.0, "text": "So all of this is done with AI, so we definitely want to make sure that all of our services not are, not only they're available on the interface, but also available for agents where MCP lay off." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "36:35", "start": 2195.0, "text": "Because it's about selling to agents now as well, so you want to have MCP or connector things, set up so people can quickly, you know, make or take payments, buy Bitcoin, obviously, that's what we want everyone to do. But, yeah, so I look, I think it's, we'll leave it there, but I think it's an opportunity for people, as I mentioned, you know, I'm an advisor and investor in Bringin for listeners, but, I think it's an interesting one, certainly for anyone who is in the EU or if you have friends in the EU, and maybe they have a business who might be interested in getting Bitcoin services in an all-in-one, package there. So, yeah, let's leave it there. Listeners, you can find everything over at, bringin.app. That's the website, and, Prashanth will, put, your links The show notes. Prashanth, thanks for joining me today." }, { "speaker": "prashanth_chandrashekar", "time": "37:21", "start": 2241.0, "text": "Thanks, Stephan. It was great being here." } ] }