0:00 it's really interesting how the brand of bitcoin has changed over time of like you said like used for money laundering 0:06 criminals like that was definitely a story you know probably uh when was that probably really taking hold like 10 0:12 years ago even like 5 years ago you see a lot of headlines like that and now the 0:17 kind of what I'm seeing is I'm starting to see less of that I still see it 100% but it's like the noise of that story 0:23 and that brand is going down and the more security story of as we as society 0:29 becomes more aware of inflation the idea of security and maintaining your value 0:35 throughout your life that you've accumulated is starting to rise Key factor is um power getting paid as well 0:41 right of like the money that is the store of value like we were talking about In my mind that's almost that's 0:48 that's probably the first thing that really needs to get legitimized because now I have bitcoin available to spend 0:54 and if I don't have it available to spend like we were talking about onboarding and stuff now there's this whole process that I need to go to to 1:00 make a simple payment whereas if we slowly start to integrate more bitcoin 1:06 into actual salaries like now I just have it sitting there now it's easy to spend now it is faster than Visa because 1:12 it's set and ready and I just tap and pay and go and it's all finalized so I think that is another pretty big factor 1:18 in the equation of slow low slow adoption of the medium of exchange 1:27 Medium of Exchange is sponsored by the bitcoin Payments Advisor If you own or 1:32 run a business and you'd like to accept bitcoin but don't know how the bitcoin Payments Adviser can help From specific 1:39 software recommendations and accounting implications to training employees and marketing so your customers know you 1:46 accept this new form of payment the bitcoin payments adviser can help simplify your journey in accepting 1:51 bitcoin for your business Check out bitcoin paymentsadvisor.com and get 10% off when 1:57 you pay in bitcoin Again that's bitcoin paymentsadvisor.com Now let's get back 2:02 to the show Hi what's up everyone welcome back to the Medium of Exchange podcast really excited today uh to 2:08 introduce Daniel Strangfeld who is the founder of Basil Design Company to talk about bitcoin his bitcoin journey and 2:14 how bitcoin moves into that next iteration of becoming the payment layer of both the internet and the world So 2:20 Daniel thanks for joining us today um and really looking forward to this conversation Jason I I'll pass it over 2:26 to you Let's uh let's get this thing rolling Awesome Daniel just to kind of give our listeners a little background 2:31 can you share a little bit about yourself and how you became an entrepreneur and how you got into the 2:38 design space yeah for sure So I'd say like a little bit about myself now 2:43 before I go into this uh bit of backstory is so I run Basil Design Company Uh it's what I've been doing for 2:50 the past about six years now Um seven if you count very casual freelancing uh and 2:56 really how it's like grown and evolved is just through light freelancing in the beginning snowball started rolling and 3:02 is now uh an agency today Uh but journey into entrepreneurship that was more that 3:08 started in I'd say high school of I kind of learned there of I didn't I like to 3:14 work for myself Um and I learned through photography in high school I was taking just like senior portraits right i 3:19 learned that I could run my own thing and make money on my own And so that was kind of eye opening and I enjoyed that a 3:25 ton Had an internship during college uh traditional nine-0to-five thing and that's 3:30 where it like got solidified of like that is not my journey per se It was a lot of fun work It was design work Um 3:38 but it was just like not fulfilling to me So it kind of rooted in me I need to find a way to do my own thing And that's 3:45 where like out of senior year of college I started freelancing more and more seriously and luckily getting more and 3:51 more clients And then about a year after college I was able to basically go 3:56 full-time into it I was running a different startup at the time Eventually failed as many startups do but luckily 4:02 Basil was starting to really uh take on some steam and be able to make the amount of money to like cover my expenses And I was like I need to jump 4:09 ship and just do this full-time because I love design and I can run my own thing So I just need to double down in this 4:15 direction Um and so I've been kind of doing that ever since for what we do is 4:21 branding and uh web flow websites for companies And what was your introduction 4:27 and journey into bitcoin yeah so that would be uh so that would be our mutual friend Jack He was like my best friend 4:34 in college I lived with him for like three or so years and we had another friend that lived with us that he was Early bitcoin Exposure & UX Challenges 4:39 mining bitcoin back in I think like 2013 2014 Um and so he taught my friend about 4:47 bitcoin and then he got really into it and naturally when you live with someone like that and they're around you 24/7 4:53 it's just like absolutely it can be obnoxious right when you're like not really connected but it's just like 4:59 constant barging from them just constant um for like three years So it was like I 5:05 got into it probably uh when I started living with him probably 2018 2019 of 5:10 like really lightly right of like I was one of those like peak buyers and that would be 20 late 2017 of like that all 5:18 all that excitement So that was my first introduction and then it was like slowly learning about the actual legitimacy of 5:24 it over of like oh my god there's this thing that's like making a ton of money Um and then you start learning about 5:31 hold on there's actually an underlying reason why this is important So I learned about that over the next 5:36 probably like three or four years Um like kind of secondhand to my good friends and then research as well He 5:42 didn't turn you off from his constant barging Huh Uh luckily no But like in the beginning I did have a joke of uh 5:49 gosh what was that that was 2019 where it was like I told him every time you mentioned bitcoin I was like I'm just 5:55 going to go buy a 100 Dogecoin or something just to start messing with him and it would just annoy him that I was 6:02 buying this thing that he was just like that's a shitcoin and I was like like the more you talk about it I'm just I'm 6:08 just going to keep buying it if you don't stop Um so of course there was back and forth about that stuff Well and 6:14 I think that's part of you know the kind of baseline of a good friend where like you're you're teasing and and and first 6:20 they laugh at you and then at the end of and then once you actually start kind of like realizing oh no he's he's not 6:26 joking He keeps bringing this thing up the price keeps going up Why does the price keep going up is this guy who like 6:32 I really don't want to be right because he's a good friend of mine and you know we like to rag on our friends He's 6:37 actually right So maybe I'll tag along with him And I think that where you bring a really interesting perspective 6:43 is is that background in design and trying to figure out this uh this whole 6:48 network and technology of bitcoin Um and I I'm very curious to hear how how you 6:55 use more of a front-end interface approach with basil design of you know 7:01 user experience and then kind of backend engineering that uh towards 7:06 understanding bitcoin Um yeah so the front-end experience of like also coming 7:12 from design right uh we all know that bitcoin it is prioritized up until 7:17 probably the last year all the backend stuff right because that reality that that's like the foundation that's really 7:23 important but getting into that as a designer and seeing like you know a lot of the stuff just looks like a scam 7:29 still at at this point because it's like it's functionally amazing but then like 7:34 a lot of these small projects they they prioritize designs so little that only other developers will really use it 7:40 because that's what's just what they're used to But the common public um people like myself even getting into bitcoin is 7:46 like I'm really sketched out a lot about a lot of stuff because it's like oh my gosh this looks like it's from the '9s 7:52 It looks like a scam site but really it's functional Um so I think that that 7:57 has been an interesting thing of especially seeing that in the past year of companies like River companies like 8:04 Stripe that when they are starting to prioritize design a little bit more is 8:10 making them look like a legit company like Block or something like Block is investing in it heavily but um Block and 8:17 Stripe and all of those you don't really have many fears working with them of they have a surface level of appearance 8:23 of we're legit we're professional professional you can trust us with our money And now bitcoin is finally 8:28 starting to adopt to that Um and I think that's a really great thing Yeah No I I 8:33 totally agree And there's a meetup that we have down here in Austin called the Austin bitcoin Design Club Um and that's 8:40 really the focus of all of our conversations of how can we make these tools as user friendly as possible Um 8:47 and a lot of it goes to what you were saying of like what works in the financial traditional financial world It 8:54 works for a reason and it's hard to extrapolate a lot of what's going on uh 9:00 in the bitcoin space because you want to let people know that it's you're not just dealing with cash right so you 9:06 don't just have a you don't just have a username and password you have a public and private key Um so it's it's really 9:11 going through what the opportunity cost for a user uh and getting them onboarded And I think that kind of leads me into 9:17 my question of what are what are some of the ways that you uh you started to not only understand bitcoin but then also 9:24 start talking about it where you felt comfortable um in teaching others about bitcoin and things along those lines 9:31 Um yeah so for methods of learning about it I'd say like 70 70% of my knowledge 9:38 comes from close friends who are heavily involved in it and just like being around them a lot and like learning secondhand from that The other 30% is 9:46 like from personal research and figuring out how some of the technical things work Um you know the quintessential 9:54 books like bitcoin Standard The other one I think uh Lynn Alden wrote it uh 9:59 stood it's an incredible book at least like the first broken money Thank you Yeah Of like not just a technological 10:07 point of it of I get really interested in the economical viewpoint of it of like how hard different types of money 10:14 are And so research like that has been really prevalent in convincing me of 10:20 like this is very important and this is not uh you know one two three year investment This is more like a 10:27 retirement account sort of investment of like 50 years So to recap Daniel what I 10:33 heard is design is super critical if 10:38 bitcoin is ever going to reach the masses For me personally that's very much been 10:44 my experience as well is like very it's very clear an engineer developer person 10:50 built this that that they did not prioritize design it feels kind of like risky it feels clunky it feels hard Um 10:59 and so as important as those foundational layers are of the back end 11:06 you know it does seem like we're getting into a turning point now with bitcoin where comp these companies are starting 11:12 to prioritize design To your point how let's say I'm a bitcoin product Mhm How 11:18 do I improve my design to reach the masses i think from a really foundational uh principle perspective 11:26 what you or Jack said earlier of like you know there's a reason why people still use traditional finance right um Cash App’s bitcoin UX 11:34 reason obvious reason being of like that's the main medium of exchange and everything but second is the look and 11:41 feel of things familiar it feels like finance and we're very used to that uh and I almost view it of like a pendulum 11:48 of like the bitcoin design like went it's So like the principles of bitcoin are so different from the principles of 11:54 fiat right the pendulum is totally swung of what they've developed and um everything is against of how fiat now 12:01 works of like unbacked very not hard money And so naturally we we've also 12:07 swung everything design-wise of like we are anti- fiat anti- everything So we 12:12 have built a kind of brand around bitcoin brands themselves within a lot of these companies that is very anti and 12:20 against that sort of idea which is like obviously good foundationally but if we're talking about onboarding users 12:26 you're like doing something that's very uh contrary to what they're familiar with especially in a space of money of 12:34 like I've worked you know 20 30 40 50 years to save all this money and I need 12:39 to trust you with it So I think that that sort of like very anti-indifferent 12:45 when something's very different like that and I need to trust it quite heavily I should probably swing it more 12:51 in the direction of being very familiar to people of making it feel safe Um so I 12:56 think that taking more nods actually to traditional finance and to make it almost as like seamless as possible Um I 13:04 think that's a great note A company that's done that really well I believe is Cash App like Cash App's experience 13:10 is very seamless of how you deal with deal with bitcoin can pay with bitcoin 13:16 That was actually the first thing I ever like paid a merchant out of was Cash on my phone Um to be able to like walk up 13:22 to someone and pay them with it and it was just seamless It was easy Uh and so I think I I think Cash App is truly one 13:29 of the best examples out there of using the ideas and principles of design in 13:34 traditional finance and just moving them over to bitcoin but still adhering to all the bitcoin principles and 13:40 technologies It's funny you mentioned uh Cash App because I recently heard Jack 13:45 Dorsey on a podcast talking about how important design is in the bitcoin space specifically and how uh just lacking 13:54 bitcoin is with design And so that's cool to hear that you know I mean 13:59 obviously his products are great in terms of design you know Square uh was 14:05 really I mean I've been in credit card processing for the last 15 years and Square was really one of the very first companies to come out and really look 14:12 like a beautiful fintech product and massively separate themselves from all 14:17 the legacy banks and the legacy processors Uh and and here we are in 14:24 bitcoin One thing I wrote down is feel safe So how do we make people feel safe 14:30 when it's their money and it's irreversible and it's you know not your 14:36 keys not your coins and irreversible transactions and uh and all of that How 14:43 do we how do we make sure it's truly safe right on the on the back end uh but 14:49 also feels safe for users yeah So I think obviously number one the backend 14:54 is the most important there right of like it actually truly truly being safe and I'm not a backend guy so I can't Familiar Finance Terms to Convey bitcoin Security 15:00 speak to that um but that is definitely the most important part of the the 15:05 scenario the where the design comes in if that's just like the layer on top is the how we communicate and signal that 15:13 it's safe for people and what what kind of things do we tell them about the back end of this is why it's safe and how do 15:19 we tell them those things that it very easily translates into their own form of 15:25 uh language and lingo of what they understand traditionally of not being too complex with things of using very uh 15:31 if we can use familiar terminology of them of like this is your bitcoin bank account or something of like uh how can 15:39 we use more I'd say like traditional finance terms like we need to use definitely the new ones with bitcoin but 15:46 I think a lot of it is like developers you want to sound smart 15:51 because like you are like developers are very brilliant but I think there's almost a loss of language sometimes if 15:58 we are trying to onboard people how can we make it more familiar to them and I think the more familiar it is uh the 16:05 safer it feels per se does that make sense yeah I was uh talking with someone 16:12 earlier today and one of my clients were doing lightning only payments we're not 16:18 doing any onchain bitcoin payments for them And they were kind of like you know 16:23 like come on man Like why and I was like because it needs to be faster than Visa And so I'm sure because I saw on your 16:30 website Basil Design you guys do pitch decks I'm sure you've got like Uber for blank Netflix for blank You're tying in 16:36 existing brands and it it makes it very clear what this new startup does And so 16:42 faster than Visa is is one thing that kind of stuck out to my in my mind with that conversation Uh everyone has Visa 16:50 They've got an absolute monopoly on accepting money today And so how do we 16:56 make bitcoin better than Visa you know that's a good question That's a really 17:01 good question Um I do really love the faster than Visa thing Faster than Visa more secure than Visa Like you can say a 17:08 lot of things like more this more that like nearly everything right if you're using the Lightning Network Um so that's 17:15 a that's a great question I honestly I don't have a good answer to that one Um I think just that's so hard when you 17:22 have a monopoly like that In my mind it's just like the fiat system It's like hopefully I in an ideal world in my mind 17:28 it actually slowly degrades rather than rapidly because I think if it rapidly degrades and we have to switch to bitcoin I think we have much bigger 17:35 problems that there will be uh it will be not a pretty transition I think the pretty transition is actually the slow 17:42 one that takes a few decades I that would be a better world in my opinion uh 17:47 that we live in versus like all of a sudden oh in the next 90 days I need to figure out this bitcoin thing 17:54 does and everyone else in the whole world does too I think that would be a uh probably a bit of a violent world per 18:00 se and I' I'd rather not go through that sort of transition Yeah that could lead to some chaos Yeah but I I do I do want 18:07 to ask a followup there on kind of your perspective of branding and like when you're when you have a client that comes 18:13 to you and is looking to redesign their website or their business or whatever it may be Um what are some of those core 18:19 principles that you that you really look for in terms of telling a story because at the end of the day that's what a 18:24 brand is looking to do Uh and bitcoin has its own story but I'm curious how how that um how that has helped shaped 18:30 your philosophy Yeah to shape um how I define a brand of a a brand is really 18:37 the sum of all of your customers perception of you So really there's like like for every company you have bitcoin’s Brand Evolution 18:43 thousands of different brands right um because everyone's own perception is a 18:48 brand in in and of itself So when I go in with clients I'm usually I'm I'm asking more about that of like how do 18:55 you want people to feel about your company how do you want to um Yeah and 19:01 how does looks uh influence that feel and how can we evoke those correct 19:06 emotions of that trust that loyalty that feeling of security around that So 19:11 really I I structure most of my conversations around that is let's talk about your end customer target customer 19:18 and let's see how we can connect like build a better connection in in their brains to what your company does um and 19:26 looks like and feels like and how do we get a good synergy out of your thousand 19:32 10,000 100,000 millions of customers with that centralized kind of look and feel and how do we best do the look to 19:40 be able to build that It's f it's funny you take a decentralized approach to you know like 19:46 you were saying very centralized businesses and and really getting an understanding at the node level of what 19:52 what are what are we looking to to get or what do we want our customers to feel and you can kind of say the same thing 20:00 about bitcoin in a sense where it is this huge decentralized network of there are miners nodes just hodddlers who are 20:07 all kind of trying to orange pill and share the story of bitcoin in their own unique way but it bubbles up to maybe a 20:15 large news headline or seeing global adoption stories or whatever it may be 20:21 Um to build this you know brand of bitcoin that has that is still undergoing that story today I mean 20:27 people still uh will look at bitcoin and say "Oh that's money for for money laundering or for criminals or it has no 20:34 utility." Yeah And it's like well that's one brand but that brand probably had a 20:40 much stickier message eight or nine years ago Yeah Yeah It's really it's 20:45 almost it's it's like beautiful how it has changed over time too of like brands changed or perception like your 20:51 perception of a brand can change over time And it's really interesting how like the brand of bitcoin has changed 20:57 over time of like you said like used for moneyaundering criminals yada yada that was definitely a story you know probably 21:04 uh when was that probably really taking hold like 10 years ago even five years ago You see a lot of headlines like that 21:10 And now the like kind of what I'm seeing is I'm I'm starting to see less of it I still see it 100% But it's like the 21:17 noise of that story and that brand is going down and the more security story 21:22 of as we as society becomes more aware of inflation um the idea of security and 21:30 maintaining your value throughout your life that you've accumulated is starting to rise So I I really hope that one 21:37 keeps rising and I I 100% think it will because there's serious momentum behind that and like with the Fed it's it's 21:44 quite impossible to stop that momentum right so I I think that that is a great story That's a story that bitcoin needs 21:50 it it just like this criminal stuff and all of that will slowly um I think phase 21:56 out and the new kind of idea and perception of bitcoin of the brand of bitcoin and the brand of all these 22:02 companies will hopefully adjust in that direction Yeah Then and to the point of 22:07 where bitcoin is just money in our everyday lives like you were saying over that over those number of decades where 22:13 what's the brand of bitcoin well it's just the money It's the like what's the brand of the US dollar i don't know you 22:19 know like I have perceptions of it but you can't just put one brand on it Um and I think that to to your point I 22:25 think that's where we're going and hopefully that's what uh that's the track that we continue to build the momentum on Yeah And I mean I think it 22:32 totally like you could talk about different currencies as brands as well of um I was able to go to uh Turkey like 22:39 a few three four years ago and like obviously the brand per se of that currency is horrible Um we had uh we my 22:48 friend had an executive assistant over there and like the like they view the 22:53 brand of the US dollar as secure and backed and like very like it's it's very 23:00 good and solid to them to us as Americans We're starting to see that ah maybe that's not true uh for for more 23:07 and more people now Um but you can almost like you can kind of roll time 23:12 forward almost if you go to those places of if our system keeps going the way 23:17 it's going which is quite likely you can almost like peak into the future of time with countries like that to see you know 23:24 what might this be like in the future of like dollars will still be around How much we use them what they're used for 23:31 is probably going to change just like it did there just like it did Argentina Um and so you can get a cool glimpse into 23:36 the future over there That's great And Daniel I have um two really quick thoughts One that I'll just briefly 23:43 touch on that is I have a relative that wanted to learn about bitcoin Started um 23:50 kind of trying to get some podcast didn't really go the down the the reading books pathway They try to listen 23:57 to podcasts but they are like very very staunch progressive and this is 24:03 especially during heightened like political Trump you know orange orange 24:09 pill orange man And it was a massive turnoff And and her response was "bitcoin has a branding problem This is 24:15 just a bunch of bros This is all Republican bros." And I thought about it 24:20 and I was like "Well it doesn't have a PR agency to solve their branding problem there is no you know branding 24:27 department there is no uh it's fully decentralized as a protocol it's you know these are people talking about it 24:35 and we can touch more about that uh on about that I wanted to go back for a second to you mentioned the store of 24:42 value use case how the cost of living for fiat holders goes up every year the 24:48 cost of living for bitcoin holders goes down every year on average okay inflation have you thought much about 24:56 you know zooming out here we've got three use cases of money uh the store value the medium of exchange what this 25:02 podcast is named after and the the unit of account and how monetary adoption follows those three phases in that order 25:11 Um and we believe we're transitioning into a medium of exchange uh era and so 25:16 and that's you know part of the conversations here Have you thought about that medium of 25:22 exchange what the brand direction can go in or should go in We talked about 25:29 legacy banking can help you feel safe and you know Strike and River are really 25:36 doing a great job What do we need to get to medium of exchange everyday mom and pop businesses are all around us 25:42 accepting bitcoin That's a good question Um that's a really hard one I mean on 25:48 the technical side of things it's kind of a chicken and the egg problem right of like in my own business like I wish 25:54 that I could get clients to pay in bitcoin but the reality is all their money is in cash Um so Incentivizing Merchant Adoption 26:04 Yeah exactly When you're dealing with a bigger company and you're like dealing with just a controller or something it 26:11 can be a little bit hard right um but I think discounts is yeah one way I think 26:17 charging a premium for fiat I really don't like that model I've seen companies do that I much more like the model of like discounting for bitcoin It 26:23 makes a lot of sense I think the charging a premium for fiat is a bit elitist and like kind of the classic 26:29 developer kind of we'll call it bitcoin's brand a few years ago of like we are the elites and like everyone else 26:36 yada yada uh not good Um and I think it's much better in the discount realm 26:41 Um which so like discounts could be a great way but like everyday medium exchange that's a really hard one I 26:47 think it goes back to the Visa scenario Visa has a monopoly I think that something could be a tipping point is if 26:53 there is a big player like Visa or Mastercard um that starts to seriously adopt it and makes you know all the 27:00 terminals that all mom and pop shop already have um be able to accept 27:05 bitcoin like that to me would be a big tipping point that if I could just go to a grocery store and all of their 27:12 terminals already accept bitcoin because Visa itself has already enabled payments 27:18 through that I think that's massive because that means no company has to invest in new hardware like ideally if 27:24 they can somehow pull that off right with their technology I don't know how payment processing machines work you you 27:30 know much more Yeah I mean what would their incentive be to they're processing trillions of dollars uh on their own 27:38 private rails and that's I I think that's a respectable uh perspective on 27:43 it The difference though is the ch the search charges that these these credit card companies are able to charge right 27:50 like it's a four or five percent tax basically that you're paying on every transaction So when I when I see the 27:56 premium uh of paying in fiat versus bitcoin I think the the change in frame 28:02 there that you know is important is I have to charge you this because that is 28:08 what these third parties these intermediaries are taxing me on versus like the fair market value of what 28:13 bitcoin would be in terms of what you're charging And I I think the discount piece to to your point is much it's very 28:20 inviting for people to say "Oh like you're I can get I can pay less for this 28:26 in in bitcoin but that also requires them to get onboarded still You still 28:32 need to get onboarded So are you more likely to get onboarded because you're going to get a discount or because 28:38 you're actually getting sircharged with fiat because of the additional taxes that are that are playing on?" And you 28:45 know I don't know if there's necessarily a right answer there but I do think that I do think what you were saying of of if 28:51 you're just saying "Oh I'm going to charge a premium because my money is so much better in bitcoin," then I could 28:57 see that turning people off versus "No the the premium is because the fair market value is actually 10% lower or 5% 29:05 lower or whatever it may be." Yeah Um I can't remember which company It was like a 10 or 20% upcharge like a premium for 29:12 fiat and it was like 10 or 20% Like that's wild Um that's that's truly wild 29:18 That kind of feels like if you're a traditional business like a bit of a slap in the face right and like it's like okay screw you I'm just not going 29:24 to spend any money with you and I'm going to go to your competitor and just like it's going to be fine Um so but 29:31 also to your point it's like if you get the fees lower to like you know covering a credit card transaction you need about 29:38 3% because Stripe Square they're going to pay take 2.9 plus 30 cents Um so your 29:44 difference is about 3% for the upcharge And it's like at that point are they are 29:49 they even going to cons consider the other option if it's 3% on a you know a 100 bucks a,000 bucks 10,000 bucks it's 29:55 at the end of the day it's not that much money I don't know May maybe like the the answer is the whole discounts and 30:02 surcharging thing might not be the thing I still think most likely it is a 30:07 chain of world events that leads to the flip for medium of exchange I think we 30:12 can do all the little things we want and they'll they'll they'll make a difference But I think that the the 30:18 system needs to just simply keep going the direction that it's going and kind of run itself truly more off the rails 30:24 and it will it it will flip It's just patience Yeah It's like the reverse of 30:29 if it's not broke don't fix it But it's so broken so don't even try to fix it 30:35 Yeah it's just use bitcoin Possible Yeah Yeah it's quite impossible And hopefully 30:40 it's a nice slow derailing of the train and we don't end in a big old fiery ball 30:47 Medium of Exchange is sponsored by Polaris Payments Let's face it for now 30:53 businesses still need to accept fiat and credit cards Polaris Payments helps with all your credit card processing needs 30:59 using a consultative approach Think of Polaris like a performance coach helping take your business to the next level 31:06 when it comes to accepting all forms of money For more information visit 31:11 polarispayments.com Now let's get back to the show I know I can say from my 31:17 perspective that you know merchants are definitely feeling the squeeze Yesterday 31:22 I had another merchant that was like I I can't handle the several hundred bill 31:28 that I pay every month to Visa and Mastercard and I need to do something about it And so for him uh we are we're 31:37 doing a cash discount where uh we're they're increasing the rates uh and then 31:42 across the board but then offering a discount which so effectively eliminating his credit card processing fees It's just there's two different 31:48 ways to do it a search charge or cash discount Um but for you know especially for smaller transactions it's like you 31:55 know okay so you add a 30 cent fee on whatever you know it's not a big deal but the fees really start mattering a 32:01 lot for the customer the larger the transaction size but yeah I mean there's 32:07 I agree it does need to be a bigger pain point right now 2 3 4% is not a big 32:14 enough pain point uh the starting with the rails that you intend on well you have to understand that there's 32:21 alternative rails And if you don't understand that bitcoin is a better way that it's better money that it's a 32:28 better store of value and you should start accepting it in your business then you have no use for bitcoin If you don't 32:34 believe that banks have potential for fail then there's no need for redundancy If you don't ever get chargebacks and 32:40 then the card brands stealing your money back out from you within a six-month window then you don't need to have 32:48 payment finality because you've you know you've been accepting money never gotten 32:54 a charge back Customer never calls and says "I want my money back I never got that product or service." And you just 32:59 get to keep your your fiat that gets deposited If you I mean the list goes on 33:04 the pain has to be a little bit stronger on a mass scale right obviously from an 33:09 individual standpoint I think bitcoin payments make a ton of sense for a lot of merchants but when we're talking 33:15 about the masses here it is a different conversation Totally And I think one of the another key factor is um how we're 33:22 getting paid as well right of like the money that is the store of value like we were talking about In my mind that's 33:29 almost that's that's probably the first thing that really needs to get legitimized because now I have bitcoin 33:35 available to spend And if I don't have it available to spend like we were talking about onboarding and stuff now 33:40 there's this whole process that I need to go to to make a simple payment Whereas if we slowly start to integrate 33:47 more bitcoin into actual salaries like now I just have it sitting there Now it's easy to spend Now it is faster than 33:53 Visa because it's set and ready and I just tap and pay and go and it's all finalized So I think that is another 33:59 pretty big factor in the equation of slow slow adoption of the medium of exchange and then I think unit of 34:06 account is honestly like that's going to likely go right alongside medium of 34:11 exchange in my opinion I think that's how it would go It'd be quite odd for that to be a fairly lagging effective 34:18 thing So I think that would be right with it It definitely seems like it's a continuum and we are it's not a it's not 34:25 a light switch It's like okay we're switching now from store of value to medium of exchange We've got a fair 34:32 number of people that still need to just get off zero and have some bitcoin Uh 34:37 and that's obviously a precursor to getting to the opportunity to pay in bitcoin uh or have the desire to accept 34:45 bitcoin You're probably not going to want to accept it if you don't even have any of it at all or know that much about 34:50 it Totally And also the other problem is just like the one of the hardest problems in modern software businesses 34:56 is the ones that have a two-sided market of like this is a two-sided market per se You need to pay to have bitcoin and 35:04 you you need the um person who's accepting that money to also be able to have a way to accept that bitcoin So now 35:10 it's like it's it's infinitely harder when I have that scenario Um and that's just that's a long-term thing of that's 35:16 just got to like slowly work itself out how that's done I'm not too sure 35:22 I think we need more merchants Go ahead Jack Well I'm almost thinking to answer 35:29 or what you were about to say Jason is like yes I think we need more merchants but there's also plenty of people to uh 35:36 where you were referring to Daniel of people who are starting to kind of get paid and stack sats in bitcoin Um and 35:43 I'm almost imagining like the Spider-Man meme basically where you know you can pay in fiat and settle in bitcoin Like 35:51 Strike has their bill pay feature and then you know Square and Cash App have their convert to pay feature So it's 35:59 it's actually saying and finding a merchant of oh you want to you want to accept bitcoin well I want to pay 36:06 bitcoin so let's just remove the middleman and go peerto-peer So that's the that's the Spider-Man meme happening 36:12 in full effect of like wait we're both we're both like looking to do the same thing Let's stop paying a fee on it and 36:18 both save money Um but that we're far away from that right like like as of right now it's more there's individuals 36:25 who are using the tools that exist that you know back to design feel like 36:30 regular financial uh instruments to spend their bitcoin like a strike bill 36:35 pay feature Shout out strike And then there's the other side of that market of 36:40 the merchants whether they're using Square or Orchestra uh to convert all of 36:46 their revenue or not all but a percentage of their revenue into bitcoin So you have you're you're basically 36:52 reverse engineering the fiat system and these payment processors to ultimately be like okay we accept bitcoin I pay in 37:00 bitcoin what's the best way to use that then is just to exchange it between ourselves and however long that takes is 37:07 to be determined u but I feel it happening more often and and you know more frequently throughout uh my 37:13 experiences and the conversations that I'm having with business owners who who are feeling that squeeze that that you 37:19 mentioned Jason Daniel I have a somewhat uh somewhat selfish question here we're 37:25 talking about how bitcoin is better money better money to store and save Uh 37:32 and as a whole we're transitioning from just saving it to everyday merchants 37:39 adopting it accepting it being able to pay with it So we believe that bitcoin is better money but not everyone 37:46 believes that bitcoin is better money A lot of people don't realize u this One of the ideas I was playing around with 37:53 domain names and I ended up buying bitcoin is better.money Uh you know how you can get like instead 38:00 of com So I got bitcoin is freedom money and bitcoin is better.m money I don't 38:06 know what to do with them yet You got any ideas i think bitcoin is better money is is great Um bitcoin is freedom 38:12 is nice and like I think that resonates with the bitcoin crowd but the bitcoin is better money is uh really like that's 38:22 great Um yeah I just I don't know what to do with it Like I love the domain name so much I just I'm not sure what to 38:29 do It's like almost like it needs to be like an educational site or something Yeah In my mind yeah it's like a it's 38:34 like it literally says it in the domain right of like now you need to prove that of like very um like tailored towards 38:42 people who don't think it's better money or don't understand that it's money yet Um of just like slowly easing them in 38:49 right of these little kind of nuggets It's like falling like the the analogy is always used of falling down the 38:55 rabbit hole in bitcoin right of like that is a sort of a thing of like in my mind a freak like a early on idea of 39:03 getting the very simple fundamental economics of why bitcoin is better money 39:09 and speaking in very plain layman sort of language of that's what I would see 39:14 it of like it is a educational resource and it has um I wouldn't call it blog 39:20 post but almost like a library of like very simple like step-by-step things It's not a collection of random posts 39:26 but instead it's like a collection of okay here's how it works as a payment rail Here's how it works as a store of 39:32 value Um that Yeah I I like that idea and I love that domain I really hope you 39:38 do something with that I know I know I almost I mean the the space that I know so well is small medium-sized business 39:45 world and there's so much content and such for individuals I almost feel like it'd be cool to have something that's 39:52 directly targeted to small and medium-sized businesses because there's so many bitcoiners that are so eager to 39:58 pay in bitcoin and so many merchants that have no idea that they should accept bitcoin or how to accept bitcoin 40:03 or that there are bitcoiners who want to pay uh with this form of money But it goes back to the foundation of like why 40:10 should I accept bitcoin well bitcoin is a scam bitcoin is an investment bitcoin 40:16 is like this thing that I heard about years ago that I don't really know much about to be honest And so if you can 40:22 communicate bitcoin is better money right why why should you accept it why should you save in that form of money 40:28 but but you know tailor it to the small medium-sized business world I think that'd be pretty interesting Yeah So like on your point there um I know this 40:35 is probably be a plug for Jack's company but I think that that is has been one of the most overlooked thing in bitcoin It 40:43 has been a massive emphasis on individuals right rightfully so We think 40:48 about how much money there is in businesses and how much cash flow h how much cash is flowing through these 40:55 things like it is a massive opportunity if we can just get a few businesses on board like like you can see what Micro 41:01 Strategy is doing Even Tesla small percentage of their balance sheet is like billions of dollars Um so I think 41:08 that there there needs to be way more stuff built around um like bitcoin and 41:13 business and that combination uh and companies like Orchestra Yeah Like finally we are getting some really 41:19 legitimate awesome companies building products tailored directly to um 41:26 businesses for bitcoin And the other part of that like like you said like there's really not that many educational 41:31 resources out there like Jack you're you're one of the two people that I I know that like to talk to businesses 41:39 about how to adopt bitcoin Um and then yeah so I I mean Jason you as well like 41:45 you're helping people integrate it into the payment reals and I think this is such a overlooked thing and I it is 100% bitcoin for Businesses 41:52 a place to just double triple down in Well think about how much power a small business owner has Maybe they've got a 41:58 dozen employees Uh maybe they're serving a thousand community members per month 42:05 in their community Maybe they uh you know they're I don't know how much 42:11 dollars or you know their fiat they're currently uh processing and saving but 42:17 that's one out of millions of small businesses And it it really doesn't take 42:23 that many of them to start gaining some traction and momentum 42:28 Yeah It's like um like what we have been doing is just going individual by individual It's very slow and you just 42:33 get one person one person one person where like you said the amount of influence of like getting one business 42:39 even if they have 10 employees 20 employees 100 employees like even just getting that business kind of slightly 42:45 onto bitcoin per se you're actually influencing a whole massive group of individuals So we're like instead of 42:51 fishing with an individual line we're fishing with a much bigger net now Um if we can get one massive thing all at once 42:58 I think that that is that's a really great strategy for accelerating 43:04 um a healthy onboarding of bitcoin into the world It's almost like there's a there's a there's a middle zone beyond 43:12 individuals and nation states companies Yeah Yeah 43:18 Companies a and beyond massive corporations too you I mean strategy is 43:24 a at this point is you know they've had I don't know how many employees they have but it's really hard to get large 43:32 corporations to make decisions and thankfully small medium-sized businesses 43:37 usually have a bit more agency in order to do that and to really you know build that relationship Um and I think that's 43:44 where to to what you were both saying like that's where the opportunity lies because then you not only do you help 43:51 the business in terms of uh adopting a better asset to save their their wealth in but you're also then educating and 43:59 providing opportunity for their employees and really hopefully creating 44:04 that ripple effect of people understanding or learning or beginning to understand why the business is doing 44:09 it It allows you to focus on just again what the job is Like that's that's one of the things the sayings that I love in 44:15 bitcoin is just stack sats and focus on your craft And if you don't have to chase that you know constant constant uh 44:23 wave of inflation to try to pay off your next bill or to try to keep up with the with the search charges that you're 44:29 seeing from these payment processors then you can actually provide a better service for your customers You can 44:34 actually provide a better product for for your customers because you have more time and more agency to do that Um and 44:41 and I think those who see that are starting to really grasp it Uh and then there's more and more who are looking 44:47 you know across and and peeping over the corner and are like "Hey like let me let me have at least a conversation of what 44:53 this thing is about because I'm getting kind of I'm getting kind of another itch." Yep Yep I so I'm one of those 45:00 business owners as well of like and still um basically 100% of all my medium exchange is in fiat and I just like I 45:08 have an absolute just ick for transaction fees It's one of the things that annoys me the most Like I I I try 45:15 and a everyone because like that is where I'm going to incur the the least amount of fees when I have to go through 45:20 Stripe with a credit card It's just like it is a deep internal pain that I'm seeing that because I know at the end of 45:27 the year when I see uh the income statements and everything uh and expense reports of like how much money I paid to 45:33 strike it's just like it's just disgusting It's just like where's that money going where's it going great 45:40 question Obviously it's going to the business right but it's just like did they really provide that much amount of 45:46 value to me it's like no No At the end of the day it's an automated software So they could be it 45:54 could be a free service right and that's where and you see that in the lightning network because it's a decentralized protocol that charges maybe a fraction 46:01 of a penny for a transaction So the the the jig is up in a sense but because the 46:07 market hasn't demanded it yet that and the tools are still really being built out to scale the that monopoly will 46:14 stand and they'll they'll grasp as much as they can and they'll hang on as long as they as they are able Uh but back to 46:22 what you said as long as we keep the train on the tracks and keep pushing forward and keep having conversations like this you know the market will 46:28 demand and and that's I think another catalyst where Visa will be like "Okay well I guess we might as well turn on 46:34 bitcoin payments because everyone else has and we need to." Daniel do you give 46:39 your customers the opportunity to pay in bitcoin uh no I currently don't I've had a few 46:47 people paying it Um I have I have probably one person paying it every year of like if if it's a right type of 46:54 company I'll I'll ask them of like I can tell because some people as you know like when you that that can be a dirty 47:00 word still of like oh we accept bitcoin payments So like there's a risk of if I do that of like oh like you know they're 47:07 they're orange pill they're part of the orange man right now I'm not working with them and now it's like oh that whole deal was lost So I think that 47:14 we're still unfortunately in the phase where you got to be careful with that So it's not like it's not on by default per 47:19 se It's more like reading the person in the room and reading what the company's doing It's like "Hey if you want to do this I can do this." Like it's set up 47:26 for the company I think that's one of the really cool things that Zaprite has done is the 47:33 ability to send an invoice and allow the customer to pay in whatever fiat method they prefer credit card AC but then also 47:42 subtly provide that opportunity to pay in bitcoin without it ever having to be a conversation I mean I think you're 47:47 right I don't know that I have a single fiat uh client you know credit card processing client that would be 47:55 interested in bitcoin It's just it's many of them are are boomers They've 48:01 been running their business for 20 years They don't know a thing And I've brought it up a handful of times for several 48:08 times Um and we're we're not quite there yet Um but you know if you could give 48:14 your customer an opportunity to pay if they if they subtly see that you know um 48:21 that's one of the things we've seen success uh and obviously we are still early it's it's not like you you send 48:29 out the invoice and now 90% of your payments are are going through bitcoin rails but you know maybe it's the 48:35 inverse of that if you're lucky uh if you're very lucky you know you got 10% of your transactions are being paid 48:41 through bitcoin Um but at least giving the the customer the opportunity is the 48:47 first step Yeah totally And I think subtle ways like you mentioned of how Zaprite does it I haven't seen it but 48:53 it like in subtle ways I think that's really nice of the in-your-face ways is 48:58 kind of that back to that kind of elitist mentality of like more like you're forcing it down their throat It's 49:05 much better to slowly spoon feed people I think Um and so subtle ways like that 49:10 I think that's a brilliant way to go go about it Um Daniel how do you see bitcoin evolving in let's say the next 5 49:17 to 10 years overall Um I really hope going back to the 49:22 business point of it I hope that we see more and more companies put it on their balance sheets Number one I think that 49:29 that is going to be a really big thing of just like how it kind of started to transition in the in the consumer and 49:35 individual world of the store of value I would say in my like viewpoint that is 49:42 that went up first and then medium exchange like starts to follow that Um so I'd like to see more and more 49:48 companies like put the thing on their balance sheet Even if it's just like like what I'm doing is I just saving it 49:54 for taxes essentially of just like earn interest in bitcoin on the fiat so I can pay taxes of just like very subtle 50:00 little ways to put it on your balance sheet Um I think that that would be a 50:06 really nice way to see in the next five years and then more and more midsize companies do it in the next 10 years and 50:12 larger companies as well But if we could see a lot of small companies do it I think that's really cool because there's a ton more of those Over 90% of 50:20 businesses in existence are small business There you go That's massive So if you can convince a bunch of small 50:27 businesses to do it like that's that's actually a huge force Even though they're tiny they're actually like a 50:32 massive portion of the market Yeah that's I mean just to riff off what you just said that's the power law at play 50:38 That's what makes beautiful that's what makes bitcoin a beautiful you know decentralized network where the little 50:44 guys who are able to adopt it first end up uh creating that economic majority Um 50:49 so I think that is a great way to end it Uh and Daniel I really appreciate you coming on Uh this was a this was a great 50:57 conversation I had a ton of fun Again thank you for thank you for the time That's great Thank you Daniel No problem 51:03 Thank you all Yeah thank you for the invite It was it was great to chat with you all Absolutely Indeed All right 51:08 Thanks Bye-bye Bye [Music]