Freedom Money Cedric Episode 24

Welcome to Freedom Money, where we explore Bitcoin, financial freedom, and building in the Bitcoin space. Today on the podcast, we have Cédric Mar, uh, joining us, builder in the space. And welcome to the, to the podcast.

Thank you for having me, Kevin.

Just as background to some of the listeners, we've gone through some technical issues this morning, and I'm, uh, not with my best microphone, so bear with us. But Cédric, maybe you can start giving us a bit of your background, specifically your Bitcoin journey and how you got involved in the space.

So yeah, I studied cybersecurity. I'm actually a cybersecurity engineer from EPFL and also ETHZ in Zurich. EPFL is in Lausanne in Switzerland. I have a bachelor degree in communication system and a master degree in cybersecurity. So A little bit like a year, or not even a year before I actually joined university, I came across Bitcoin at some point in my life. Yeah, got a little bit interested in it, found it pretty cool, but I guess just didn't have the maturity to, you know, like go down the rabbit hole. Yeah, I guess like many, I kind of started with like, you know, little games online, little betting websites and so on. The one I used the most was freebitco.in. I don't want to make publicity here, right? It's just the one I used. And there was like this roulette type, like high-low little game that you could play with Bitcoin.

Yeah.

And naive as I was, I guess at that age, I tried, I was smarter than people and tried to apply like a martingale strategy, right? Which in theory works, but only if you have infinite money and also infinite bet size on each of the possibilities. And yeah, I thought like betting always just with one Satoshi would kind of like simulate infinity, right? Because it's a pretty small amount and you can like go pretty big. Um, but yeah, the little Bitcoin I, I got through faucets, uh, at that time just lost it all basically. So then yeah, just forgot about Bitcoin, thought it was kind of, you know, like a forgotten idea at some point and, um, joined university. But then like with the background I got at university, you know, like with cryptography and so on, programming also, communication systems, decentralized systems and so on. Well, at some point you just stumble upon Bitcoin again, right? And then you actually have these tools that you can better understand it and analyze it and just, you know, like at that point kind of like go down the rabbit hole of Bitcoin. So that would be around like 2015, 2016. Um, yeah. And then started accumulating, I guess, little bits of Bitcoin here and there. Like, I mean, I was still a student, right? So it was. Pretty, pretty low money, low amounts of money. And yeah, at first I wasn't a Bitcoin maxi in any way. I thought the other altcoins, meme coins and so on, like Doge and Ethereum and so on, like, well, yeah, it was just pretty interesting. But yeah, then like the more you go down the rabbit hole, I guess everyone kind of at some point becomes, starts to become a Bitcoin maxi. Um, yeah, and nowadays, yeah, I'm working as a software engineer in custody for Bitcoin Suisse. And next to this, I also co-founded an education service which is called BTC Education, Bitcoin to Crypto Education. Um, yeah, some time back I also co-founded and was the CTO of Frictionless. That's kind of like a self-custody fees as a service. Service. And yeah, I mean, this project is quite free, quite frozen right now. Um, and other than this, I'm also chairing the, the cybersecurity working group of the Crypto Valley Association here in, in Zug and in the Crypto Valley. So yeah, that's pretty much, I guess, my Bitcoin story from the very beginning, uh, to nowadays.

It's, uh, it's really interesting. And so I'm assuming you studied computer science? Or engineering?

So yeah, communication systems is actually in parallel to computer science. So at EPFL, you have like, you know, like it's, it's kind of split into computer science. So that would be directly working or like studying the machine itself. That could be hardware or software, uh, base. But then you have communication systems where you focus a little bit more on the communication between all of these systems. Then you have data science, right, just about data. And then at some point for the master degrees, yeah, for the master degree, they introduced the cybersecurity curriculum. And that one I then just joined and, yeah, and was able to do a double degree at EPFL in Lausanne and ETH in Zurich.

Amazing, amazing. I see. So my, my son, who's working for Kadena now, is taking, computer science, math, computer science. And it was funny seeing cryptography as a course that my degree's in economics. I didn't touch these, these things, but it, you know, over this decade or more than a decade that you've been involved in the space, you've seen a number of different things from a number of different angles. And, you know, the space evolved over time. So I'm It's a really interesting perspective and now you're still wearing multiple hats, but I think the focus is really on the communication piece. And so are you able to dive into that a bit more? And separately, I do want to come back to the cybersecurity piece and what you're doing with the association selfishly.

Do you mind repeating this question?

Well, it was a long question, so I'll start from the back. But the piece I want to start with a bit is what you're doing on the cybersecurity with the association. And then I quickly want to move to the communication work, which I think is the same education we're doing.

Yeah. So yeah, I mean, I'm working as a software engineer in custody for Bitcoin Suisse. So that would be the— how do you say— where I'm working the closest to the cybersecurity topics, right? Um, so Bitcoin Suisse is building their own cold custody system, uh, internally, and I'm part of this vault team. And so day to day I'm working with cryptographic functions. We are kind of implementing our own libraries, right? We're not reinventing cryptography, but we're actually rewriting our own internal libraries because we just don't want the third-party risk, right, that comes with a Yeah, with all these libraries, especially, you know, nowadays with them. Yeah, you see this kind of everyday, right? NPM packages get compromised and so on. So that would be mostly focused on the cybersecurity part and then the education part, right? Where at some point I noticed that most people are somehow interested to know more about Bitcoin, but sometimes just, I guess, lack that little bit of motivation because they don't really know where to start, right? Many people, when you start conversations about Bitcoin, are like, this sounds interesting, but I just don't know where to start or how to start or what to read or how I should inform myself. And how do I even do this? Because yeah, I mean, you go to your traditional bank and they just tell you, you shouldn't be doing this. That's the only answer you're getting, right? I, I got this in the past a few times with my own banks, which made me always a little bit smirk. But yeah, and then, I mean, you're, you're on your own, right? And, um, most people will then, you know, like, go to social media, and I know, like, follow all these TikTokers and Instagrammers and whatever. Um, but most of them, I guess, are pretty much focused on hype and just the pricing aspect of Bitcoin. Right? Because that's like the most, I should say, like newsworthy stuff or the one that has the most impact on these platforms. But then like, how do you actually do this, um, in such a way that you're not exposed to, you know, like third-party risk and so on? That's a very different like question and topic because most people think that the Bitcoin that you own on exchanges, or maybe if your bank— there's like a few banks that actually allow you to store your Bitcoin, right? Or now Bitcoin Suisse and so on, is like equivalent to what you actually call Bitcoin. And it isn't, right? It's mostly like paper Bitcoin or like a proxy or a security, or just like it could also be equity, right? You know, like you could be exposed to Bitcoin in very indirect ways through, I don't know, like mining companies or exchanges that are listed and so on. Or like now Strategy also and the competitors. So yeah, at some point I realized that many people have many questions that kind of like remain unanswered, or maybe answered in, I felt like, wrong ways. So I thought, you know, um, yeah, maybe I can just help these people, because I think like the more Bitcoiner we are, the better, right?

In the end, I agree with this 100%, and I think Like one thing, again, I talk about with my son a fair bit is really the usability aspect. And people have this sense of familiarity with existing banking setup. For the most part, there's kind of this trust and, you know, this is something totally new and, you know, getting people there cognitively sometimes takes a bit of time. I think, as we all know. And the people can be receptive to it at certain— it's like the words you say and the order you say them and how the person's predisposed to think about these things are all super important. But I think the one thing, uh, like that I keep coming back to is for a lot of— I don't— I'm just going to keep going and don't let it—

so could you restart that?

Like you said, I'm coming back to Well, I, I'm just coming back to the place where Bitcoin was introduced to me, and I thought, this is really cool, but, you know, I'm kind of scared of losing my keys. I'm scared of this additional responsibility, and walked away from it for like 5, 10 years and then came back and the price had gone up an awful lot. And in some ways, you don't know who to reach out to. Right? And so I'm seeing a lot more educators in the field, and with Kadena, we're able to partner with as many educators as, as we can, because I, I see tremendous benefit to both of us and everybody in the world when Bitcoin's adopted as money. And so, you know, everybody on this team is, I think, working in the same way to achieving these same goals. And so it's, it's, uh incredibly helpful to have people approaching it in different ways from different perspectives.

And I mean, one thing that's extremely important with Bitcoin is that every mistake has consequences, right? Um, and that's like, actually it's a first in the end, right? Digital actions in the past before, like pre-Bitcoin, never really had consequences, right? Anything you would do, you're doing a wrong you know, like, uh, money transfer with your bank, you just call it and you tell them, you know, like, could you just revert this payment? I didn't intend to do it. If you forgot your password, you just call or you just contact through these, uh, you know, like forgotten password, uh, forms like Instagram or whatever platform you forgot the password for and you just reset it, right? Not, there was no real consequences, but that's different with Bitcoin. And I think this is very difficult to understand. It's something I often had to repeat multiple, multiple times to people, right? That you kind of like, you have the responsibility, you have the risk, right? The risk is with you. But this choice to own that risk gives you new possibilities, right? Like you actually then own your stuff. So if you accept that risk, well, then you can be sovereign. If you don't want to accept, but you still want exposure, well, then you can do a trade-off, right? Like you're, you're taking that risk anymore. You're taking a different risk. You're taking third-party risk in the end, but then you're not really owning your stuff anymore. So in the end, like, I mean, Bitcoin has many facets, many ways to, you know, like get exposure to and like how you handle it. Self-custody is not like necessary for anyone, but But I think the great thing about this is that it gives you the choice to do it. Yeah. And then like quickly, you know, you commented on like how easy it is. Like, I guess you talked a little bit about the UX in the end, right? How easy it is to use Bitcoin as an end user. And I mean, I guess the reason why we have so many educators popping up right now is also because the UX is pretty bad in the end, right? I mean, let's be real, user experience with Bitcoin, especially in self-custody, and especially even more if it's bigger amounts, it's pretty— it's, it's bad. Techies will always say, say like, no, it's not that bad. I mean, but they have so much background in, you know, like these areas that just the random Joey doesn't have. They, I guess they just don't realize how complicated. And complex that stuff is. So I think, and I, I always like to say this, yeah, with Bitcoin, I mean, like, we are still lacking, or we still, like, there still needs to be this Steve Jobs moment, you know, like this guy that will be coming and making the UX just like a simple swipe, and then you have like your self-custody Bitcoin, you own it, you can spend it the way you like, um, you have like hot wallet, cold wallet, medium warm wallet, whatever, you know, like this, like Steve Jobs moment where everything is like so simple, you know, like, like just sending an email today.

So this is, uh, you know what I think, and until my, you know, 80-year-old parents are able to interact with this in a reasonable way that gives them comfort, I think there's a portion of the market that's missing, or people who aren't technologically inclined. So this I think folds into really what I wanted to get to, and which is what, what you're building right now. I mean, you founded your own company, so let's, uh, let's dig into this.

Sure. I mean, so BTC Education, right, Bitcoin to crypto education, is in the end really to empower individuals. We want to empower businesses. We also empower C-levels, you know, people that take decisions inside of corporate structures and so on. We empower also family offices to in the end, like, navigate, I guess, the Bitcoin ecosystem and world. Um, yeah, and we try to do this through, like, very tailored and comprehensive education. Yeah, I mean, we, in the end, like, I think it's important to start with the right education so that in the end you have the right building blocks to, in the end, like, act on your decisions in the right way, right? Not everyone wants 100% of self-custody. Some people want part of, like, their holdings in self-custody. Some people want, yeah, just a little bit of less, less, um, what you say, like, ownership of the risk. And that's fine, right? But I think, like, understanding Bitcoin and understanding how you treat the asset, especially nowadays because of the, the bad UX, is like way more important and like a step that you need to do before even getting the exposure, I think. Um, especially also because of the volatility. Um, most people, if they just don't know what they're doing or like know anything about Bitcoin, like they will get some exposure, you will have a drop, like yeah, huge drop, and then they, you know, like just sell at a loss and, and the journey is done. Um, I think if you have the right education and you, and you're under just understanding what you're investing to or like saving into Yeah, these drops shouldn't really matter in the end, I guess. You shouldn't be really caring about them. Like, you know that you're like saving for the very long term, like 10, 15, 20 years, I guess, like even more. I mean, some families, it's like generations, right, that they want to keep some wealth. So yeah, I guess like, I mean, many people in the space always say like study Bitcoin and then buy Bitcoin, and I think I fully stand behind that statement.

Yeah, I think we're getting to the same place in terms— but I'm very optimistic because I see what's being built in the space, and I honestly feel like the amount of things being built to improve the user experience today, things being built today, kind of, there's more being built today than has been built in the previous 15 years. And so I'm not like really optimistic that the user experience is going to improve to the point—

yep.

It becomes more accessible. Do you see certain kind of recurring themes of like, you know, things that you thought people knew but didn't know about Bitcoin, or certain preconceived notions that they have when they want to learn about Bitcoin that they've maybe— but they've been fed from the Matrix or other things?

Yeah, um, I think the two biggest ones are really that people just conflate Bitcoin on an exchange, on some bank, on like, I don't like, even as ETF and so on, as Bitcoin, right? They think it's all the same in the end. Um, they don't really understand that there's like this, you know, like bearer-type asset in the background which is actually Bitcoin, and then on top you build different stuff. I think that, that would be one of the two The second one I think is a little bit more tech-related. Many people also sometimes are very surprised about the notion of a key, right? Suddenly they are surprised and asking, you know, like, but what's that key you're always talking about? Like, why do I need a key? Is it like my password? And many different questions come up, right? And you are— sometimes you even like already lose people at that point because they're like, How will I even like keep track and secure that key, right? In the end, like, and it's difficult. I mean, you can't really blame them, right? People forget their passwords just so often. If I look at, I'm not going to name people, I guess, but if I, if I look in my very inner circle already, forgetting their password, it's like, it's, it's happening every month in the end. And that's something that you just can't allow with Bitcoin. And the fact that this key is so important and that the concept of a key actually still is a thing is like very problematic. I guess I have no clue how this will be solved in the future. Keys will remain, right? The way we manage these keys and backup these keys and verify these keys and so on, it will change hopefully for the better. It already changed quite a bit since, uh, since the very big the beginning of Bitcoin, but it still needs to change quite a bit, I guess, for, you know, like most people to, to be able to, yeah, just self-custody Bitcoin in the end. So yeah, conflating the asset with, you know, like, um, assets on— how do you say, like proxy assets— is a very common theme. And then like just the fact that there's like this weird key system, I guess you could call it, is, I would say, the second one.

I, I see all the fanboys on Twitter for Strategy and, you know, it's— there's a lot of the treasury companies and other things and ETFs, and it is Bitcoin exposure and different than Bitcoin. But yeah, I, people deep in the space, I think, often, you know, kind of conflate these two things.

But it's— I mean, the conflation is bad, but the fact that it exists is good, right? I don't want to criticize the fact that Strategy and coexist. Like, it's very good. Even the ETF is very good, right? Like, it's good for Bitcoin, it's democratic, like, how do you say it, more accessible.

I think, I think it's all generally very, very good. The more participants in the market are very good. The only, you know, to me, the only aspects where I kind of, you know, think twice are some of the centralization. To me, it's more of a centralization-decentralization issue. And, you know, I would just point out that there's an awful lot of trust in Coinbase custody. And every 3 months I can find an article where somebody, somebody at Coinbase to get KYC information so they could hunt them down and steal their Bitcoin. So to me, you know, in this space there's a lot of discussion about digital credit and other things. And what we're talking about is preferred shares and recreating tradfi using Bitcoin as an asset. I think there's enough financial innovation that can happen within Bitcoin itself and on-chain where, uh, you know, we can really move away from this traditional finance system. But I think we're really, really in the early innings and necessarily think it has to be a move away. It just, you know, like you said, people have options. And I, I'm curious, Cedric, I want to get some details in, in the family offices or the types of education you're providing? If, uh, like, is it customized and targeted to the group and what they want, where they feel they have gaps in their knowledge?

So quickly on the centralization issue, if I may, um, I fully agree, you know, that the huge Coinbase honeypot is an issue, but I think it's less of an issue than people I guess, believe. Obviously, a hack would be extremely bad, right? And it would drop the price of Bitcoin and we would have huge crash and some people would lose confidence and trust and whatever, like, obviously. But I think also then you have, you know, like people say it's bad that one or a few entities own that many coins. Like, I mean, I guess it's a critique on, I guess, just like wealth maybe, or rich people or whatever. But what's good, right, is that Bitcoin is and will remain proof of work in the end, right? It's not proof of stake. So just owning coins gives you absolutely no power over the network or decision rights or whatever, right? And that's like a good thing. So I guess like from a financial perspective, it might be bad if it ever, you know, like something bad happens. But I guess from the network point of view, it's completely neutral. I mean, if some people like own 50% of all Bitcoin, and then that gives them absolutely zero power other than maybe, you know, like if they would bribe software devs or whatever, that's always a possibility. But I guess, yeah, let's not go into that direction today. So yeah, by chance, I guess, or like by design. There's a reason why Bitcoin is proof of work and not something else. And yeah, I mean, to this, to your question, I guess, on family offices. So we do only tailored, how do you say, like workshops and courses, coaching, you know, like it's even consulting sometimes, I guess. It can have like many different names in the end, but it's always tailored, always, because every, I guess, every family in the end has very different needs, right? Especially already you start with the size of the family. There's like very small-ish families that are inside of a single jurisdiction, and then you have like bigger families which are over multiple jurisdictions, and that's already like a huge difference on how you treat their issues, right? So obviously we have like, we have this curriculum, I guess, that we share, yeah, with potential families that we are discussing with, that kind of like outlines a little bit the topics that we can touch with them. Also, sometimes it helps them just to ask the right questions because sometimes they just don't know the questions that they want to ask also. They are just like so lost, they have so many questions, they don't really know where to start. So I think that's like a starting point that gives them ideas and gives them just like, like food for thought to ask us and provide us with the right questions and data and issues that they have. But then in the end, when it comes to helping them, in the end, we will always do tailored to exactly their needs in the end. It's a, in the end, it's a very premium service, right? They're paying good money for this in the end. I think they should be getting the right service in the end. It shouldn't be something that you just find on YouTube, like playlists or, yeah, I don't know, just online as a blog post or something. Yeah, they want, you know, like someone that Well, yeah, as you said, like a contact person, right? Please go on.

I, I was curious, or I apologize, Cedric, we've got—

no worries. Yeah, yeah, we will edit it out.

It's, uh, my nomad lifestyle leading to some bad Wi-Fi decisions.

No worries.

Yes, so this vantage point I think gives you kind of a unique access to maybe see what's coming next in the space? If these clients are articulating what's missing or what they need, or do you get that type of feedback? And if not, I'm just curious what you think is the next, next thing in the Bitcoin space.

Yeah, um, I don't think we necessarily like get the answer to, to that. Um, I think areas where we could still improve a lot is, you know, like how backup data in the end. And by data, I guess in this case is keys, right? Especially when you have very complex setups, for example, like multisig and so on, the way you back up this data and also verify that data in the end is, is quite complex and difficult and a lengthy process, right? And this needs to be done in a very streamlined way Uh, and then you have obviously, let's say you have multiple keys and these keys must reside in multiple jurisdictions. How easy is it to verify that backup now that it's actually working if you ever need to recover, right? That's a huge issue. Um, so, so I think, yeah, in the end, the backup and the verification of this backup is something where we could really improve a lot still, I think. And I, I hope to see a lot of research going on there, a lot of new ideas coming. At least I hope that would make, I guess, my life quite a bit easier also. Yeah, I think that's— yeah, I would say like the, the next pain point that I would like to, to see, uh, yeah, improved upon, uh, in the next few years.

I, I don't disagree with that. I know for our business, we're talking to— there's this world of institutional custody where a lot of Bitcoin sits, and it kind of creates this operational challenges about, yeah, you know, who's signing, maker-checker functionality. And I do feel like, uh, there is, you know, some kind of order of magnitude steps that can be taken in this space to make it so that, you know, people aren't going to lose their coins at the, you know, as they have historically in some cases. Yeah, but I agree that that's, that's a gap. That's an area for improvement, we'll say. Do you have— again, I've been in this space for a decade and have—

can I just add something?

I'm really curious about— of course, of course.

Sorry, I think there's like a lot of latency right now. I'm not sure where you are in your, uh— no, no, go ahead. You stopped. Okay, yeah, yeah, sure. Maybe something And that's like quite family, how do you say, like specific, right? It's not really an issue with just individuals. It's not an issue with corporations. It's not, you know, like it's quite specific to families here. And it's something I actually, at the very beginning, was quite surprised by the fact that people ask us this, but I guess in hindsight, it's absolutely expected, I guess. And that's the education of. The next generation, education of children. So yeah, it's just as a fun fact, I guess, like the youngest, the youngest children that we're educating is 11 years old, and he's like one of the smartest kids I've ever come across. He, he watched every single Michael Saylor video, understands Bitcoin way better than I did, uh, yeah, just a few years ago, I guess. And yeah, the education of the next generation is really important for these families. And I think in terms of education of children, just, you know, like young people in general is where, yeah, we could improve quite a bit also. Because I guess most educational resources are tailored to adults in the end. Whether it's techies, whether it's non-techies, in the end, you're speaking to adults, right? And just, yeah, setting up educational content for children so that they grow up, I guess, with the right mindset, with the right tools to understand Bitcoin, and to, you know, like, just follow into, uh, yeah, I guess, like, their families' or parents' steps. Um, yeah, is something where, yeah, there's a lot of, of, uh, How do you say, like, stuff that could be done. So I'm alone sitting here again, or standing actually. Let's hope he comes back. I guess there's a countrywide internet outage. Still not coming back. I'm gonna get some water.