Freedom Money Episode 21Jake AirBTC

Welcome to Freedom Money, where we explore Bitcoin, financial freedom, and building in the Bitcoin space. Special guest today, uh, Jake from AirBTC. Great to reconnect, Jake.

Hey, thanks for having me, Kevin.

One place I like to start with every guest and set the stage is, uh, your specific journey to Bitcoin. How did that evolve?

So in 2017, I guess before 2017, there was a great crash in 2009, you know, uh, the, the housing downturn and everything imploded. Um, I think that set the tone, uh, for me becoming a Bitcoiner. I really didn't become a Bitcoiner until 2017, but I heard about it, uh, through friends in like 2013. I just— I didn't make moves, uh, which, uh, I'm kicking myself in the ass a little bit, uh, because of that.

I think everybody has that. That's the ego.

Yeah, for sure. And you know, Michael Saylor is like, oh, you, you get Bitcoin at the price you deserve. I think that's bullshit, to be honest. Uh, I deserved it then, I still deserve it, you know. But, um, but no, I, I, um, I thought of myself as, uh, you know, seeing the central banking system and how, you know, the government worked and how banking worked and lending and, and how there was such a control over our, uh, monetary system that, uh, kind of drew me to to the eventuality of Bitcoin. And, um, you know, I think it's slowly but surely— I wasn't like 2 feet all the way in, sold everything for Bitcoin in 2017, but, um, I slowly but surely have been just DCAing. And I think, um, you know, for the long term, it's, it's what's easiest and what's best for me personally. Um, and, uh, because, you know, at the end of the day, you know, uh, especially in the beginning, you couldn't really spend many, you you can't spend your Bitcoin. But now it's so much easier to live on a Bitcoin standard. You can, you know, book travel, you can rent a house, you can pay your bills, you can buy gift cards. There's so many ways to use your Bitcoin as money. And, you know, that's, that's why I'm here, right? I, I think of Bitcoin as money. It shouldn't just sit in a closet or in a safe somewhere or in your brain. It's got to constantly be changing hands, and we have to get more people to use it. And that's the only way that we will overcome so many of the hurdles that Bitcoin has had over the years.

Yeah, that's, that's amazing. I was, you know, I was deeply kind of entrenched in the financial system, in the matrix itself, you know, until like 2015, and then, you know, did some stuff within the financial industry on my own after that.

That.

Um, but yeah, you don't see the matrix when you, when you are the matrix, it turns out. And so, you know, people looking from the outside, I think, saw the importance of Bitcoin. You know, I think you can see that in kind of the culture before the people in the matrix who seem to be catching on now. But a lot, a lot of what you said, I think, kind of ties into the company mission and, and spending Bitcoin. And I think you and I both see this very clearly, that Bitcoin is money. And like you touched on, all these additional usability, um, improvements, and I think that's just going to continue, uh, and accelerate. And so, um, tell me about some of the challenges with the mission, um, and specifically getting people to spend Bitcoin?

Yeah, it's such an uphill battle. It's such a fight because large, uh, players in the Bitcoin game and, uh, on YouTube or on podcasts, they've, uh— everyone always says it's the best savings technology, it's savings technology, just put it away, don't use it, don't even think about it, um, and one day it'll be worth $10 million. You know, I think that's— it's, it's a horrible thing to get people to try and think this way, because the only way we get to $10 million is people using Bitcoin as money. In my personal opinion, it's not from Michael Saylor buying it or STRC or ETFs. But, you know, from, from, from our perspective, from AirBTC, it's very difficult to get people to understand why they should be using Bitcoin. And it's, it's a hurdle. It really is. It's, it's quite difficult because so many people have only thought of Bitcoin in this one way, as the savings technology. So it is, you know, it's detrimental to our business when, when Bitcoiners themselves don't want to spend Bitcoin, right? So it's, it's, it's definitely an uphill battle, and it's a fight worth fighting. And, you know, we're here to do it. I think education has a lot to do with what the next steps are for our business and for the Bitcoin community at large, because so many people have been, have been disenfranchised by either the credit system or, you know, housing. I mean, people, people my age and and younger, especially the younger kids, it's very hard for them to put up a $100,000 down payment on a half-million-dollar house. I mean, the median house in America is like $400-something thousand. You have to put 20% down. It's quite difficult. And as they print more money, there's going to be more and more effect to the upside of these assets. So home prices and value will increase in price over time, you know, just because they print more money, you know, as everybody gets poorer and prices continue to go up and people may be scratching their head.

I wrote— I mean, it's so, it's so interesting to hear you talk about it. There are so many use cases. I think, you know, again, the work I do on the credit side, you You know, I think Bitcoin has an obvious use case as collateral, a yield curve. You know, this is money, this is money that isn't printed and doesn't have a government. And it's better because of those two reasons. It's really simple and it's programmable in a lot of ways. And, you know, I think once the usability comes along and the products like yours, it's, you know, uh, I think people adopt a bit Bitcoin because it helps them. It's not— and so it's great that we can, you know, build these services there so they can take advantage of this better money, not just for hoarding.

Yeah, I agree. We have to solve some sort of real-world problem, right? May that be the fees that they would experience on other sites or the foreign exchange You know, there's so many things that, that come to mind when I think about your business or our business. Um, but, uh, but yeah, I think, I think education has a big role. And you know, the more podcasts you do, Kevin, and the more people understand your perspective, I think there's going to be, um, it just, it, it does the whole Bitcoin, uh, ecosystem, uh, uh, it's, it's definitely a positive for everyone.

Well, thank you. I'm super grateful for guests like you. So let's, you know, focus on AirBTC now. Have there been significant changes over the last year in terms of direction? Are you building new things? Where, where's it headed?

Yes, we've actually, for an arduous 6 months, we've been building our new state-of-the-art platform that has great UI/UX and all of the things that you would expect from a top-tier platform. And we've done so with no outside funding, which is quite difficult, and it takes a long time because we have such a small team and no budget. But we're doing— we're building this for the future, so we're actually bringing on a lot of hotels. So Over the next, I think, uh, month and a half, we're gonna try and roll out our new platform. So we should be, uh, by mid-summer we should be delivering, shipping product, uh, and, and, you know, the idea is we're bringing on, I want to say, over 200,000 hotel rooms worldwide. Um, so we're going to be in almost every country that you could imagine. Um, and this has been a hurdle for us, you know, before Origin story: when we first started, I flew to El Salvador and I was just knocking on doors like, hey, would you mind if we put your Airbnb or your Booking.com, you know, your short-term rental on our platform? And, you know, slowly but surely we had 5 listings and then 10 and 20 and then 100 and 700. And now we've gotten to a point where, um, we need to offer more things in other places than Costa Rica and El Salvador and Colombia, which most of our— majority of our business is in, because most Bitcoiners seem to be traveling to these locations. Uh, but we, you know, Bitcoiners live everywhere in the world, so we want to definitely make offerings for them all across the world. So This is going to help us do so, to bring all these hotels onto our platform.

Amazing, amazing. Well, the challenges of building tech, you know, never end. And so I'm curious about, you know, all the challenges you run into in terms— and one theme I think that continues to come up on pretty much every podcast is some type of regulatory/legal angle. Do you run into any issues like that?

Yes, actually, just today, this morning, my partner and I got an email on our support, you know, support@AirBTC, from a law firm that is associated with Airbnb. And, uh, it's, it's kind of a cease and desist, but it's more— it's a nicer cease and desist. Um, uh, and, uh, yeah, it's one of those, uh, I, I guess in, in a way I'm, I'm kind of flattered that we're even on their radar, right? Um, but on the other— but the— on the other hand, I, I'm like, our names are completely different and our mission are completely different. Our product's completely different. Um, so it's— but it's scary because you're going up against, like, you know, I'm not saying we're going up against anyone, but, you know, if you look at the competition, if that's what they are, you know, they've got $7 billion in debt, or, you know, they have billions of dollars worth of revenue a year, and, you know, we're just some little peanut. Um, but, uh, but yeah, we, we have run into some, some issues, uh, other than that, you know, with— there's specific countries and cities, um, in which, uh, you know, you really can't have a short-term rental, uh, and you have to pay— you have to have a permit in certain cases. Uh, so these kind of jurisdictions, you know, we kind of— we, we try to stay away from, but, you know, there's always somebody trying to gain the system. So we have to stay vigilant in many ways. But, you know, these, these, these type of things, I think they're just going to come up throughout time. I mean, over time, if you're doing something right, you'll get pushback and you'll find out that, you know, maybe that wasn't the right move or whatever. I always like— I play a lot of pickleball. I have been playing recently.

Nice.

And there's this analogy where you get this direct feedback. If you make a really bad shot, like, somebody's gonna hit you in the face with the ball, or like, you know, you're gonna know right away. And I wish in the game of life or business that that would happen more quickly because, you know, we've made certain decisions 6 months or a year ago that just now are like, oh, was that the right move? Um, uh, it— so our philosophy is constantly changing on like how we should, how we can be better. Uh, the best thing from our perspective is to, to do something quick, right? And to put as little money as possible, maximum amount of effort with a small amount of time, and try and ship something, a new idea. Um, and if it doesn't work, we'll know really quickly if it doesn't work, and then okay, we abandon it. And we move on to the next thing. Because we're such a small boat in the water, we can make these quite quick turns, and our competitors have these large boats that make huge turns. So hopefully we can continue to just stay afloat and, and, and continue to do business and outlast the, you know, our competition and really provide what Bitcoiners and in general have needed for quite some time is another way to utilize their Bitcoin in everyday fashion. I mean, who wouldn't want to travel to Costa Rica, you know, and go spend Bitcoin at a bar or a restaurant and take their family to an excursion? You know, I've been, I've been down to Costa Rica and it's an amazing place. And I got to spend Bitcoin along the way. All up and down the coast, all the way from Playa Grande to Uvita, there was people that accepted Bitcoin. So this is— I think we're very early, Kevin, and I think that the more that we push, the more that we stay alive, um, we're just gonna gain market share year over year.

Yeah, I, I have that realization every day, how early we are in this. And, and you were way earlier than I was to doing this? I mean, how long have you been operating AirBTC?

So it'll be, uh, it'll be 2 years in August.

Okay. Yeah.

Okay.

So not that much longer. We're a year-ish since incorporation. So—

oh, nice. Yeah. But the idea, the idea of the company had, had been around for quite some time. It's, you know, these things, I think a lot of people from the outside don't know how much work it is to actually get something from the ideation phase to actually like doing something.

I, Jake, I think I've spent half my day kind of explaining to people who have great ideas and want to contribute that that's what we're doing. It's just not there yet, right? Like, it takes a while to hook up all these pieces and to, you know, make everything seamless. Yeah, it looks easy, but it's really not.

So true.

So, uh, you have the orange rose-colored glasses on. Are they orange or rose?

I think they're red. It's like those— it's the Chroma. Uh, yeah, they block out all the blue light so I can sleep like a baby.

Oh, nice. So since you're— since you're a futurist and adopting all these things, what— what do you see as next in the space? And I'll make it pretty broad. And I think we can talk about this for a while.

Yeah, I think that next steps for the space in general, I think we're going to go through a lot of hardship. Everyone— I think there's a lot of people that have rose-colored glasses and they're like, oh, Bitcoin's at a million by the end of the year, this or that. I think there's a lot of hurdles to overcome because the broader economy is linked to Bitcoin. Either we like it or we don't like it. It's happening. Uh, we have so many— so much money is tied up in these ETFs. So many, um, you know, you have to think, every time there was a huge Bitcoin crash, you can link it to one specific, uh, downfall. FTX, right? There's the Mt. Gox, there's the, you know, there's always— every time there's something that has happened, um, and I'm not sure if MSTR, MicroStrategy, is the next one, uh, because I'm— I literally listened to some of, some of what Michael has been saying recently, and it scares me. I mean, he's like saying words like crypto, and, and like, you know, what they're doing about, you know, he said never sell the Bitcoin, and now they're gonna sell Bitcoin to pay off these dividends. It's kind of nerve-wracking, to be honest, from a Bitcoiner's perspective, because we thought Michael was our guy, right? And I'm not saying he's not our guy, but I mean, is he still that same hero that we all need and want?

Well, Jake, I think first you're gonna get a lot of hate for what you're saying. Because there's a lot of people who really, you know, are fanboys. And the only thing I'll say is, to me, it's an issue of centralization and decentralization. And you're pointing to all these failures, and to me, it's kind of this failure of the custody model— sorry, centralized model. And I guess I see it other places. I see it with governments who can't balance their books and You know, sometimes there's corrupt institutions that, you know, have some bloat that wouldn't be allowed to persist in the private sector. And a lot of it gets glossed over by the printing of money. And, uh, you know, I think there's a lot of interest in MicroStrategy specifically that gets talked about on the financial innovation side. And it is interesting and it's great that people through regulated capital markets are able to participate in, you know, Bitcoin derivative products. But we're not even talking about Bitcoin at this point, right? And so it's, you know, I would just shape the discussion that way. It, you know, the ETFs MicroStrategy, the preferreds— those are not Bitcoin. That is not Bitcoin. And it, you know, there's financial correlations, but some of the huge advantages of Bitcoin that seem to get glossed over in this is the self-custody aspect. And there's, you know, all kinds of financial incentives from the people giving that information of 'Oh, you know, a little bit of Bitcoin is really what you need,' when, you know, the reality, the financial reality is they're telling people in a 60/40 portfolio to put 40% of their money in government bonds, which is at this point junk debt that has no possibility of being repaid without the printing of huge amounts of money. And so, you know, the people in the Bitcoin space, I think, get this, you know, intuitively, but we're not dealing with the world and the financial realities anymore of you know, the post— like, it's not pre-2010 anymore. These problems can't be solved financially. The math doesn't work. It's printing money is the only solution, right?

Which, which will pump our bags. But the problem is, if, if you're a Bitcoiner, you know that Bitcoin self-custody is the epitome of what Bitcoin is. But a lot of people are in big— in Bitcoin because they have MicroStrategy stock or ETFs at iBit or whatever, um, you know, or Coinbase. You know, Coinbase is a— it's a big red flag for me. It's like, do they really have all that Bitcoin that they say they have, right? Um, and if they don't, that would be another FTX moment where not your keys, not your coins. Where are they? Where's the— where's the actual Bitcoin? Um, you know, I, I think, uh But that's the question.

So to me, that's the question, right? We're talking a lot about the, you know, security side and the bonds and Strike and paying 10%, 11.5% yield. To me, it's a security company. Like, if your job, if you're, you know, the value you're adding is the custody of the Bitcoin and you're outsourcing that to Coinbase, I don't understand the business.

Yeah, me either. And, and where's the audit, right? Like, if, if they have the Bitcoin, just let's get a third party, let's audit everything, and then we'll know where it is, right?

So, so I think the argument they would say is that we do— like, there are financial audits, there are like internal— yeah, it's like an accounting firm doing some type of financial audit. And, and, you know, again, the layers of risk, you know, for listeners that I'll outline, it's not like— I don't think any of these people are bad actors, but there's risks in Coinbase, there's risks in your brokerage account, you know, there's risks throughout the system that Bitcoin eliminates.

And that's about the proposition with Bitcoin, 100%. So I, I think like from, from my perspective, I think that if anyone is going to take anything from, from this or any other— anything that's ever happened— not your keys, not your cheese, right? You have to custody your own Bitcoin, and we have to go up against any, uh, bad actor or any government entity that wants to say self-custody is bad. I think eventually, I think that's what governments are going to try to push for, is that we're going to have to custody through a bank, or, um, you know, I think that's what the next push is going to be. And a lot of people, just like when they took everyone's gold, um, you know, I think we're going to come to some sort— it'll come to a head at some point. But for now, I think everyone should, should do what they can to get every, every sat off of every exchange to custody that Bitcoin. Because even though Bitcoin loses half of its value overnight, or whatever the number is, it's still 0.05 Bitcoin, or whatever you have. That number is not going to change, right? And that's a fixed supply. So given enough time, it'll come back, uh, with whatever the USD paired price is. Or, um, you know, I, I think it's hard for most people to swallow that, but, um, we— you have to stay steadfast and really be in this long term. You can't be a short, short-sighted lettuce-hand trader. You can't do that.

No, I think— well, I think that's what it brings is people with a bit of a long-term mindset. And see, you know, what's, what's coming and what, you know, is helpful for, for people, uh, going forward. Any other kind of specific things you see in the travel space?

Yeah, I think, uh, travel in general is taking kind of a downturn right now. Uh, the broader economy has effects in the travel space. Um, the fuel prices of, uh, airlines, uh, and, and, um, may that be cruise ships, whatever it is, anything that uses fuel, which is literally everyone, um, it's, it's going to affect, um, the travel industry. But, uh, we really probably won't see these effects, uh, quarter over quarter until maybe at the end of this year, um, because oil could go to $200 a barrel, right? But at the end of the day, it takes a long time for that to be realized because people book travel in advance. You know, let's say you want to go to Costa Rica, you're probably booking that 3 to 6 months in advance and you already paid for it. So the people that are really going to take the hit is 6 months from now when they're making a new booking and gas prices are you know, have stayed at, you know, at the, uh, at the price they're at currently, uh, which is not good for the overall travel industry. But I will say that, um, I think experiences are something that travel can bring you to another place of enlightenment within your personal, you know, within your personal space, with, through your family. Um, you know, we're always stuck on these calls, everyone's working remotely, um, you know, you wanna spend that actual time with your kids or family and go on these trips and experience a waterfall for yourself. You know, you can't really do that from a photo. You know, AI can't take you to that place. So I think more, you know, you get given more time, people behind desks and on Zoom calls, they're gonna wanna get out and do things. So, you know, I think overall travel will recover. Given enough time. But, uh, but for the short term, I think it's— the overall industry is going to take kind of a hit.

Yeah, um, it touched on a lot of things there. Um, what— I mean, you've been in— you've been in the space for a few years. I'm going to change gears. Uh, what's your advice for builders in the space?

Yeah, um, I mean, there's no, there's no right or wrong way to do it. Um, I think the only thing is you just have to keep coming, showing up to work. Uh, everyone's gonna make a mistake, like no one's perfect. Um, I mean, I, I have a mentor that he's had, uh, 9 different businesses and 7 of them have failed. But if he, if he would have quit, right, the 5th time or the 6th time, he would never get to the place where he is now. And the guy's worth like hundreds of millions of dollars. But I think this is like something that everyone needs to realize, and it's not just builders, but it's everyone. It's like all it really takes is determination. Like, if you think you can do it, you can do it, right? We're Bitcoiners, like, we just do shit. Right? Um, and especially within the Bitcoin space, there's so many open holes and gaps. Like, the industry is like Swiss cheese, and so many people are like, oh, I'm a, I'm a real estate guy, or I'm a balloon operator, or whatever, like, but I'm a Bitcoiner too. So I want to align how I make my money with my, with my skill set. And I think more and more people are doing this, and That's all it takes, just determination. Stay within what, within what you know and how you can change the world with, with the knowledge that you've had, you know, over your 30, 40 years, however long you've been on this earth. Um, just keep going at it because, I mean, you won't— if you fail and you quit and you just go back to McDonald's and, you know, you know, go back on the fryer It's like, that is not fulfilling. And maybe 10 years from now or 20, 30 years from now, you wanna look back and go, well, maybe I should have tried again. Because that's the advice I've gotten is just like, continue to grind, continue to do it. And people are gonna say no, like they will. And people are gonna be like, your product's shit. I hear it all the time. Your product's shit. It's so slow.

Do this, do that.

Right, right. And I'm like, okay, cool, I want to hear everyone's opinion. It doesn't mean that all of them are valid, right? A lot of them are, right? A lot of them— hey, I get a lot of feedback and I may not like it, like my ego may not like it, but at the end of the day, it's something that I needed to hear, right? To change for, you know, to, to get that next customer in the door and to get them satisfied with, with the, you know, the next iteration of what we're doing. Because if we're not trying to build every single day just a little bit better, what are we doing?

Yeah, no, I think one thing you touched on there is that everybody has this contribution to make to Bitcoin. And I really see that because, like, I've had the great fortune of meeting all these Bitcoiners, and a lot of people, it becomes a reflection if they they're an artist or if they're, you know, some aspect of their personality. Like, I was a, you know, a banker credit guy. I'm building financial applications on Bitcoin. I think, and I think because of these gaps that exist, there's all these opportunities, you know, for what is eventually going to be a much better world, you know. And I think the travel ties in. I think what you were saying before about kind of opening people's consciousness and awareness to different things, and, uh, you know, being here, leaving Canada, uh, you know, seeing people— people think differently, the language— like, there's so much just richness to life that the travel opens up. So I really appreciate, uh, you providing that in Bitcoin.

Yeah, I, I thank you so much for saying that. I, you know, for us, we don't think of it as like we're winning because we get to provide this service. We think we're winning for Bitcoin, right? It's like we're putting, we're putting Bitcoin on our back and we're going, hey, how can we benefit everyone else, right? So we bring some person from Canada to go down to Costa Rica. Cool. When you go and book your stay with us, you're going to get an email with a list of all the Bitcoin-friendly places around you, right? We're going to give you a travel guide. We're going to show you how to travel like a Bitcoiner, you know, how to hold yourself, what wallets to bring, you know, should I bring a hot wallet, should I bring Lightning, you know, uh, you know, where's the best places to go, all this information. And hopefully these people can come from all across the world and then distribute sats within the community and only create more value, you know, because it's not just about that guy from Canada, it's about the lady who's selling tacos or pupusas or tamales, or the fruit guy. If they're accepting Bitcoin, then now they have the hardest money on the planet. Either they like it or they don't like it, they have an opportunity to learn, right? It's— education is like, if I tell you, hey, this is how you fix a tire, I can tell you all day long, but if we're out there and I'm gonna like we're actually going to change a tire together, right? What education is better than that? So I think getting people on site all across the world to spend Bitcoin is our mission, right? Is to get— make Bitcoin stronger and continue to grow day over day, because that's what the world needs. It needs the hardest money on the planet.

Solves a lot of problems. Jake, where can I send people to find you?

So we have an X account at AirBTC Online. We might be— we might actually have to change our name soon. I don't know. I'm going to be in meetings all week about that. But for now, it's AirBTC Online. We have a great— we have a cool Twitter. We're always putting out dank memes. You can send me an email at jake@airbtc.online. Um, I'm on Nostr, uh, at AirBTC Online. We're on Instagram, AirBTC Online. Um, yeah, and I, I really appreciate your time, Kevin, because, um, we had talked before, but I actually met you in person in El Salvador, and, uh, I was pleasantly surprised with the— with what your product is and what you guys are doing. I think it's such a necessity, just like AirBTC is. Kadena is, you know, definitely one of those things where people need to use it, and I think the hands-on experience is the best way to do that.

I really appreciate that, Jake. You were, you were one of the first people I met in Bitcoin, like first builders, so I really appreciate everything.

Yeah, brother, nice to see you.

Talk soon.

Thanks, man.

Take it easy.