@Relai_app CoFounders @julian_liniger and @_adembilican_ - Once BitTEN 354

Right. We're recording with the Relay Chads, with Julian and Adam. And Adam and I have never met before. So this is our first, our first run out. So great, great to have you on the show again, Julian. And nice to meet you, Adam. Thank you, Daniel. Nice to meet you, Daniel. So we were just about to get into conversation before pressing record, a podcaster's worst mistake. And I asked you, well, you, I was just apologizing that I missed Istanbul because you guys have just had your little relay summit and your get-together or offsite or team building weekend or whiteboarding, whatever you call it. Jolly up, boondoggle, fun times with the team. And you said, well, we're going to see you in Prague, so no problem. And I asked you whether you had a booth and unfortunately not. So please tell the plebs why there will be no Relay booth at BTC Prague.

Sure. So first of all, it was not a little summit. It was the full Relay team summit in Istanbul. It was very nice. We also met up with Lina Seiche and the guys from the local 21 meetup that Adam knows because obviously Adam has some Turkish connections, which are really, really good. So it was, it was massive. It was awesome. Still kind of, I still kind of have a hangover from this, even though I already got back yesterday morning, but it was really, really good. That's so nice. And yeah, now 2 weeks, I think from now, there's Prague. It's the next thing coming up. And we wanted to sponsor obviously, but we can't. Well, first of all, we can't sponsor Everything, right? There's so many Bitcoin conferences and many of them are very well organized and, but we cannot, we cannot do everything in terms of budget. So we have to be focused. But BTC Prague would definitely be something that we would love to sponsor, but then also we can't currently sponsor anything outside of Switzerland. I mean, technically we could have a booth there, but then it would need to be basically for free. And obviously BTC Prague also, they need to make money. And so currently we cannot pay for sponsored like presence in EU countries because of legal reasons. This will change once we have the MiCA license.

Oh my God.

And it is all because of, you know, MiCA getting, having been voted in now, the rules are pretty strict now.

Okay, hang on a minute. All right, so this is regulators overregulating and telling you that you're not allowed to spend your money in other countries to support initiatives that would be beneficial to your business, which you are growing inside of Switzerland, which would be a benefit for the Swiss economy.

Oh yeah, yeah, exactly. Because it's financial market regulation and it's obviously very complex and very strange. So we are open, like we're a Swiss business. We can, we are open to all European countries, technically the whole world. We, we could onboard. So we, if people find out about us, they can use us, but we are not allowed to actively target customers outside of Europe. That's just financial market regulations. It's not even, it's not even only bound to crypto. It's— It's also fintechs in Switzerland are not allowed, like whenever you have a financial product and strangely Bitcoin is defined as a financial product, then this is kind of classified as high risk and then you cannot just actively target retail customers without the, the, the correct license. So that's why we are going for a MiCA license that will solve the problem.

And what does MiCA stand for?

Markets in Crypto Assets. It's a new regulatory framework that is coming up since like 2, 1 or 2 years. I think they're talking about it. And now in April this year, it has been voted in. And from June there will be an 18-month transition period. So until end of '24, basically, uh, all the businesses, the Bitcoin and crypto businesses Uh, in the EU have to, have to comply. So that means that they have to have a license.

And how do you get one of these licenses?

So there's, uh, basically also in these, after this transition period, every EU, uh, nation needs to offer such a license. Um, and then basically as a business, you just, uh, compare, evaluate, and decide for which country has the best fit, which jurisdiction is the best fit for you. And we're looking at a handful of countries here, mainly like Germany, Austria, or France turned out to make sense for us. And then you apply for a license. It's quite costly, cost, you know, a couple of hundred K most likely. And it will take 9 to 12 months. Unbelievable.

Imagine that service in the actual economy. It's like, yeah, that's 200 grand and we'll get back to you in 9 months' time.

Pretty much. And maybe you get in, maybe you're not.

Only a bureaucrat could come up with that kind of service.

Well, nothing to do with service here.

Zero. Exactly. Oh my God. And think about the brain drain and the capital drain that has on an entrepreneur. On a, on a young team, a small team that is trying to build out a service, a product that is benefiting humanity. They don't want entrepreneurs out there succeeding. They just want to crush them.

Exactly. And it's not many. They just want a handful or like just, just a very small amount of entrepreneurs that have a certain size. They don't want a lot of small ones. They just want a couple of big ones that they can control and that they can again, um, you know, tax and, and, uh, and, uh, take money from. That's, that's kind of it.

So does the argument, um, Bitcoin not crypto just fall on deaf ears with the MiCA? Like, you know,

that doesn't matter at all for them, I think.

Wow.

Yeah.

Yeah.

How it is. How it is, unfortunately. Like, it's, it's good and bad. Um, from, uh, from, from us as a, like, pure company, like, pure business perspective, it's good and bad because you, you are building a moat as well through, through such regulations, which I, as a person, I don't think it's, it's great because of what we discussed. It's crippling innovation.

Mm-hmm.

But from a business perspective, unfortunately, uh, you know, it, it reduces competitors and it builds a big burden to entry for smaller competitors. So once we have this license, and maybe I, I would guess like maybe 2 other Bitcoin-only companies in Europe will, will go for a license, there will be basically 3 Bitcoin-only companies and then they will grow, grow, grow. And it's going to be super hard for a small early-stage Bitcoin-only startup to get in. to that, um, because of this cost and time it requires. Um, so yeah, it's, it's, for example, our investors like that, you know, VCs, investors like that. The more you regulate it, the harder it is for small competitors to get your, get your piece of the pie.

So, you know, most people listening are going to be thinking, well, just operate in the UK, just open up a business there outside of the EU. But the opposite is happening there. BottlePay have just closed down. There's almost no service now left in the UK. In fact, Coin Corner based out the Isle of Man strategically, and Fast Bitcoins as well based out of the Isle of Man, are the only ones off the top of my head that have managed to exist in the UK. I mean, Coinfloor, Obi sold the business because he was just completely overburdened with all the regulation and he just couldn't be bothered with it anymore. And he's gone on to bigger and brighter things doing his Fedimint thing and helping out with Gridless Compute on the mining side. So what are the other countries that we might see pop up and start businesses? Well, Bitcoin Reserve are, I can't remember where they base their business, Estonia, I think, but I think the regulations are even changing there.

In Europe, Basically all the countries are in the EU, but Switzerland and the UK. But the thing with MiCA is the subject of this regulation will no longer be the company, it will be the individual. So it depends on where the individual lives on whether or not he can use a certain service. Mm-hmm. So basically whether you're in Switzerland or UK, it doesn't really matter anymore because Uh, as long as you want to target, for example, French people or German people, then you'll need to have the license that France or Germany will require, and they will all require a MiCA license.

Wow. Okay.

And I think in the UK, it's the reason why there are no, not many services anymore there is just because of the regulation in the UK. now that it's not gonna be the EU one anymore, but the UK one, it, uh, did this UK one, they have even higher burdens to entry and even more complex and even bigger, um, KYC, AML, um, requirements to fulfill. Switzerland, obviously you have less. EU, you have more, but UK, you have even more. That's what I understand. So it's even harder for a business to be in the UK.

Yeah.

In Bitcoin and crypto.

All right. Well, that's a bleak picture to paint. The first topic of the discussion today, overregulation. But everything is good for Bitcoin, as we know. I'm trying to figure this out. You know, how does this play out in 5 to 10 years' time when these overburdening regulations have had time to sit and, you know, affect these businesses, I can only believe it would kickstart a more of a peer-to-peer economy within the European Union. And conferences such as BTC Prague, which has the idea and the intent of getting those separate Bitcoiner groups together, like who are the Bitcoiners in Germany, who are the Bitcoiners in France, in Belgium, in Holland? Bring them all together and start really kind of organizing themselves and sharing the information with each other, which, well, let's see. Let's see what plays out. But Adam, nice to meet you. Really, really great to have you on the show. We don't have your rabbit hole story. We've had Julian on many times. Where were you and what were you doing when, when Bitcoin came and presented itself to you?

I was studying. I was still studying. Nice to meet you, Daniel. Um, we, we, we were in touch for a while actually, but, uh, never, uh, met. Uh, and I'm not coming to Prague, to Prague, by the way. I'm FOMOing, so, um, I had to not listen to you guys talking about Prague. I will be visiting family, but I'll be in Riga for Baltic Coin Badger. I think you're joining, maybe even Amsterdam. Let's see. Yeah, my story. So no coiner, shit coiner, bitcoiner. Let's put it that way. I think it's just the classic one.

The hero's journey.

Right, right. First time I heard was in a French blog. Uh, like 2 guys were, were writing some tech articles, uh, Sam and Max it was called. And just on the sidebar they had like, oh, we like Bitcoin and here you can donate. At the time it was like, oh, for me it was like, yeah, this is just like freak, freak money. So just, they can just pay on, on internet a few things and all. And then, so at the time I was still, uh, doing my, my, my PhD. I, I have a PhD in bioinformatics, so I was studying. I'm coming from academia. And I always wanted to also build things on the side and do things on my own. And I was building mobile applications when I discovered a bit more about the blockchain technology. So I was in for the tech initially as well. And then I started, uh, reaching out to a few, uh, crypto projects and building their mobile wallet because for me, although I was quite technical, It was still like, uh, there was a really steep curve, just, just as an, as an on-ramp. It was basically almost impossible to get in without having like very advanced technical knowledge. So I always thought that, uh, the mobile platform would be the way for mass adoption. I mean, if we need to reach out to a lot of users, we just need to have a very easy mobile app. And that's where I started implementing a few crypto wallets here and there. And then Julian reached out 2019, maybe even '18, end of '18. Let's do this for Bitcoin. I was like, yeah, obviously I know Bitcoin, but Bitcoin is easy. How easy can you make it? Like, but then he obviously had a big network and family and friends asking for it, which I, which I hadn't. I mean, I was just a super techie knowing the stuff, but I never was also trying to, to bring people around. But Julian had this, and that's where the, the problem was, was, was clear. And, and then I realized, okay, it's easy for me, but it's definitely not easy for all the other people we can still onboard to, uh, to Bitcoin. And then my journey to, to Bitcoin has really started clearly with, uh, with Relay actually. So, um, And since then we are all in and here we are today.

So CTO and co-founder, am I getting that right?

Yeah. Right. Yeah. So we, we had like a year or so where we just like, we're talking about doing a few things, doing a hackathon and all. Uh, but it was not really working. So we said, okay, no, now we have to stop and we do only Relay. And then, uh, April the 1st, 2020, we started like a 3-month sprint where we do only research. That's where Julian found the first 2 angel investors where we had $15K or $20K investment, which was enough for, for us, mostly for me for the first 3 months. And that's where I built the first mobile app and the backend. At the time we were working with, with BT, another Swiss broker. Um, so, um, on July 3rd, we, we launched. And for the story, my son was born June 27th. Uh, so I have 2 babies. Uh, they are the same age, uh, almost the same challenges. So the, the, the last 3 years were super intense.

So twins. Growing as fast.

Yeah, twins. Exactly. Twins.

Yes. Like, like us. Yeah. Twins are an interesting, um, time, that's for sure. Especially when you're trying to build a business. I can imagine. Uh, and are you based out of Switzerland as well, or are you guys working remotely and always in touch with each other?

No, I was in Switzerland at the time. I lived in Switzerland for, uh, for about 14 years and now I just moved across the border. So I'm still like an hour from, uh, from our office. And we still meet with, uh, with Julian and the Swiss team at least once a week.

So putting this all in perspective, we are now what, uh, May 2023? That's been a wild 3 years, guys. Julian, when you, when you look back at those early days, can you believe where it's gone now?

Honestly, no, no. We, we were always Looking at the next step and we were always, you know, achieving the next milestone. So like the short term, yes, I could, I could understand and believe that we were going to hit that next level. And then always we have had this big, big vision to be a global company at one point and a unicorn, like one of the first Bitcoin-only unicorns. But these middle, everything in between is for me very hard to grasp. And I sometimes can't believe like how, how much we have achieved in this very small amount of time. It's not even 3 years. And just in Istanbul as well, where we have celebrated, we were, we were taking a boat trip. So the whole team, 20 people, we, we took them on a boat and we have had great dinner. Nice raki and other Turkish drinks and great Turkish music, and everyone was celebrating and it was so great. And then we had this moment where Adam and I, you know, were sitting next to each other and we were looking at the people dancing. And so we were like, what have you ever thought 3 years ago when we just basically, it was the beginning of COVID and Adam was was coding and I was doing all the rest. And, you know, we had, we barely had a website, we barely had a pitch deck, we didn't have a live product yet. And now 3 years later, would have, would you have thought that we have more than 200,000 people that have installed our app? 70,000 active users processing like millions and millions every month and more than 1,000 transactions a day. And you know raised seven million with great venture capitalists and have a twenty head or twenty full-time employees team that is dancing on a boat in Istanbul. You know, it's really it's wild if you look back. You could you can't you can't plan for this. It just happened. But yeah, it's I'm truly truly grateful and and. highly appreciative of how things were going.

What were those moments where you thought, this is over? Like, we're never going to be able to open the doors again in a week's time.

Yeah, I think we had some of these moments. And maybe, maybe I can share one and maybe Adam, you also have one, but there are several, like several times we were close to giving up. I think for me it was, um, the, the last one I have in mind was when we were fundraising last year. We were starting strong with like the first angel investors that were joining the round, existing investors that were joining the round. And then we did a crowd equity where 900 plebs joined the round. So we had like, uh, $2, $2.5 million we raised and that was great. And then we wanted to close the round because these were all convertibles. Um, so we wanted to close the round, uh, after summer because in summer VC is very, uh, is quite dead. Um, so we, we said, okay, we have this first, uh, step of the fundraising and then after summer we're gonna close with, um, finding a good big lead investor and close the round. But then what happened is the whole crash, right? So, uh, Bitcoin and crypto crashed, the whole, uh, um, stock market crashed, interest rates went up. Uh, we still had COVID, we had the war. and everything. So everything went crazy and basically started this financial crisis that we are still in now, or probably still at the beginning of. And so VC, the VC market was basically put to a halt within a day or two. There was no liquid VC money out there. No rounds were closed anymore. Um, all these startups had to lay off their people or like went bankrupt. And so VC's first, uh, and foremost priority was to keep the port— their portfolio alive. as much as possible. They were not writing new checks. So as an early stage Bitcoin company, like Bitcoin is even another, like a small niche in this, to find a good lead investor putting a big commitment, like leading a round to the table was like impossible for the remainder of this year, right? So we wanted to close the round in Q3, but then because of this, it was really not possible to close anything. And also the business. I mean, we were still growing, but not maybe as crazy as we have planned for it. And yeah, then it was really about, okay, we're coming, we came to a point at the end of this year where we were like, okay, we need to find a lead investor now, or we basically need to turn the company profitable, which would mean like cutting it in half. Basically because we're not profitable yet, we would need to make extreme savings in order for our revenue to be enough to pay all the bills. And this was really a make it or break it moment where we had to make a decision where we, whether we still want to like over the year end, because in December, January also not a lot is happening. Should we be so before the year end? Should we really go to hibernation mode, like cut the team in half and and and basically wait until the time is getting better, and then go and try to raise the round or close the round? Or should we take a leap of faith with the money we still had? We still had a couple of months runway, and just believe that with the current team, with the growth, with the dynamics that we had. just believe so much in it that we will find the lead investor and we will be able to close the round. And then that's what we did. That was the decision I, or we as leadership team took. Um, but it was really like, it could have, could have been over. Like if we would not have found the right lead investor, it would be over at this time right now. But fortunately also we started really, really strong in the first year. Um, we had a record quarter in Q1 this year. Um, and so this together with a lot of other, uh, uh, good elements, uh, we have, and also because I think we have showed this, this faith, this belief, this commitment that we were like, no matter what, we are going to find a way. This convinced, uh, our, our lead investor that we now have, obviously EcoDeath, Jeff Booth. Um, that we are worthy of an investment. So, uh, that's how we then were able to close the round. But for me, that was like one of the closest times I was, I was to like, uh, giving up. But even that, even then I was like, uh, miles away from giving up because I'm never going to give up. But, uh, I mean, that was when I had the last thoughts of it, I think.

Right. Adam, you got anything there? Under the hood?

Yeah, sure. It, it's not that, um, crazy, but it's more, it's more of a challenge. Not that we've been even close, but for me, the, the biggest challenge or fear would be, um, our users just, just losing any kind of fun. And this sounds a bit weird because you guys are non-custodial. What's the risk there? But that's exactly where the whole technical challenge in, because it, it's coming in because we, we are trying to To make Bitcoin easy, let's put it that way. And sometimes making it easy is super hard and it comes with a lot of challenges. And even things like the library we are using, or it happened for a library, I think a Bitcoin library where at some point they were creating wrong addresses from a seed, uh, maybe because of the derivation path or something like this. So all of these are, are things you, you constantly keep in mind and probably that you don't have if you are custodial, you have obviously all of the risks when you're custodial, but as a non-custodial, there, there are also a lot of, uh, these challenges, uh, where we also have a big responsibility about, uh, about education, uh, for, for our users as well. But then for me, it's also the other way around when at some point I really realized that, uh, also what, uh, what Julian said, never, never gonna give up, was, uh, initially, so we didn't know each other. Uh, we met really when we, we've relayed for Relay basically. And it's crazy, the, the journey we had for, for the, for the 3 years now, actually even more. And initially, um, I'm super happy how we started and, and we are all coming, both of us from different like expertise domains. And, and we had a lot of crazy challenges that we overcame. together. And, and at some point, especially when we were the two of us alone and we had to do everything, basically me, Joo-Tek, and, and Julia and all the rest, and the challenges that we had there, not that they were bigger than what we had now, but they helped us, uh, grow together. And, and, and I think, uh, and after one or two of these challenges, for me it was like, okay, from now on nothing is gonna stop us. We know how to talk to each other. We know how to listen to each other and how to deal with things. And I think this has played a tremendous role in making Relay what it is today.

Yeah. And fingers crossed you guys keep growing. And a big shout out to Jeff that came in on the white horse, I suppose, Julian, and believed in you guys because, and this is something that's probably not talked about enough in the space. People just don't fully understand the importance of that capital that a young company needs to be able to grow. And this comes all the way back down to, call it whatever you like, human action, praxeology, capitalism, all of these things that we love learning about now as we are all falling down the rabbit hole and the history of money and how You need that capital to take it to the next step, but finding that capital is so damn difficult, especially with the market forces that you were just talking about, which are going against you and manipulated against you, including these regulations that we talked about at the beginning here. How do you go around finding those people? I mean, it's more and more, I wouldn't say it's easier now, But there are more options. There are more Bitcoin-only venture capital firms out there, which is very, very important for this space. They are going to become the backbone of Bitcoin-only companies.

Yeah, it's very positive. I think the development that is happening, that as you said, there are more and more Bitcoin-only VCs, but also There are more longstanding, big, like general tech VCs, global tech VCs that are entering the space as well. And I think it's very important. I see a lot of rounds that are being closed with only, you know, Bitcoin OG angel investors and Bitcoin-only VCs, which is great. But I think the really big leap that we need to take is also that we find Big VC money outside of the Bitcoin-only space, and that's why I've what I really liked to see. What was great to see is that River, for example, Alex Leishman has closed this thirty-five million, I believe USD round with very big general tech investors like oh hi Lauren.

Yeah, Lauren's entered after. She's been on her online self-directed education platform to interrupt us with a question. So fire away before you have to run up again.

I don't have an earphone.

Oh yeah, here you go.

Thank you. Anyways, hi, what is your favorite thing about Bitcoin?

My favorite thing is that it's That there are only 21 million of them, that they're scarce. It makes it so valuable because it's scarce and it's the only thing in the internet that is actually scarce. You probably are, or maybe are you, are you collecting something, Lauren? Like, because, or do you have some object at home that you really like because there's not many of them?

Like, well, Sam had his Pokémon cards, didn't he, that he was quite interested in for a little while. What were you collecting? Anything particular?

I was collecting pet shops when I was little. Right. Those things,

but little toys of pet animals and things.

Yeah.

But they weren't scarce.

Yeah. Still, you can like things obviously for other reasons, but the, the, the more scarce something is, Usually the more the people desire it, because if you can produce something like limitless, then well, everyone can have it. It's gonna be cheap and like whatever, you know? But if something, something is scarce, for example, also the picture you see behind me on the wall, this was an artist in Silicon Valley. She did this for me. She's a very good street artist and she did it for me. It's a unique thing with like the, I could choose the colors. And the, the way it's, it's been done, like the styles and everything. And she did one piece and she sent it to me. So for me, this is super valuable 'cause there's, you know, if you, you cannot have the same, you know? And I think everything that is scarce, people automatically want more and it's like worth more if you have it. That's a property of Bitcoin that I think like the most. What, what is it for you, Adam?

The plebs is the best thing about Bitcoin. You know what are the plebs?

Who are the plebs, Lauren? Do you, do you understand what he means? Yeah. Yeah.

The plebs are,

yeah, just the, the people, the people, the Bitcoiners that meet at the conferences and things. Yeah.

Right. And it starts with the plebs and, and what I mean is the, the whole community is how, how This, these people can, can get around something like, like Bitcoin because they believe so much into it that it's really what will bring us at least somewhere. And, and every time I meet one or two or three and I just feel, I just get hope about our future. And you are our future. So, uh, you're super lucky and, uh, and I'm happy to be part of, uh, I consider myself a pleb as well, obviously. And this is just, just gives me hope about, about our future because this, uh, still relatively small group, let's say, of, of people believe so much into Bitcoin that, um, I really have, uh, uh, some more confidence about where we are heading to, which is a very bright future, by the way.

Yeah. Thank you so much.

Yep. Sure. Well, Thank you for your questions.

Yep. Thank you.

And you'll see Julian in a few weeks in Prague, but, uh, but not Adam, unfortunately. He's not able to go.

Oh no.

Yeah.

Homo plus one.

So Julian, you can come and watch Lauren's panel. She's interviewing Giacomo and Joe Hall on stage.

I saw that. That's so cool. Lauren, is this the first time for you to be on stage?

Yeah, it's, uh, it's gonna be, I'm gonna be quite nervous.

Yeah. Well, We're working with GetMash as well. Jared at GetMash is going to help us maybe have up on big screens a set of questions that people can upvote via Lightning. So the crowd will be able to upvote like the questions that they would most like to be asked. So that's the idea. Whether we pull it off or not remains to be seen. But obviously people can, we can crowdfund those questions as well. So you can make them as stupid or as silly or as serious as you like. And then it's down to the plebs in the crowd to upvote them. You know, why does Giacomo look like Britney Spears? Could be question number one. You never know where this is gonna go.

That sounds fun.

That's, that's, it's gotta be really fun. You'll enjoy it, Lauren.

Yeah. Fingers crossed it comes off. But, um, yeah, we're looking forward to that,

huh? Yeah.

Yeah. All right, cool. All right, well, do you, uh, wanna say goodbye?

Yep. Bye. Thank

you. Bye.

Bye-bye. So yeah, we were, we were just talking about, um, you know, finding investors. So can, can you share how much you managed to raise this time around? Um, and, and it dropped in Q1, right? Of, of this year.

Yeah. Q1 this year we closed the $4.5 million round, but that included the, um, what I talked about before, like we started raising actually one year earlier. So it included the existing investors, um, tickets, the angel investors that we onboarded. The plebs that we onboarded on crowd equity, and then the closing ticket from three VCs, including Eco Death. So Eco Death did the biggest ticket, and then Time Chain Ventures, Alex Mann, that I think you also had in in in a podcast recently, and a fund based in Dubai called Cabrit Capital. So yeah, four and a half million. It's not it's not huge, but it's I think for this time, like as hard the times are. Are and were while we were raising. Um, I didn't really see any other bigger rounds at this time, so it's, uh, it was definitely good. Um, but as we talked about before, uh, like River, for example, or also Unchained Capital, these—

Unchained, yeah, they got $60 mil, I think.

Huge.

Whether that was in total over their lifetime or whether that's a new ticket of $60 million, I—

No, that might have been just around. Yeah, I mean, the amounts can go crazy. Uh, it's The first couple of rounds are usually small, even in, even below 1 or, or just a, a small amount of millions. But then when you hit a certain size, like apparently Unchained Capital and also River have done, then you can easily raise like a couple of dozens of tens of millions. And what really excites me is about River especially is that they have managed to get general funds in. Not only, it's the, the money is not coming only from Bitcoin-only VCs. And as much as, as I like and admire these Bitcoin-only VCs, most of them are still rather small compared to these bigger guys. So he, like for example, there's, there's Kingsway Capital. They, they are managing like, I think $10-ish billion. And if these guys are like coming in, that's, that, that's a big, Um, sign. And also I think in the River round there was, uh, Valor, um, Valor, uh, Ventures, also a very big fund that is starting to invest. I think they invested in both Unchained and River.

Yeah, they did.

So that's a very good sign. Like they've obviously understood, uh, the Bitcoin-only narrative. Obviously NYDIG is a big player, uh, that is investing in, in, uh, Bitcoin VC and also Peter Thiel. Now I think it was the first, uh, Bitcoin-only startup investment that Peter Thiel did. Because this is a, a size that he starts having an interest in. Like someone like Peter Thiel, who's a multi-billionaire, he's not gonna bother chipping in $1 million into a $4.5 million round for Relay, for example. It's too small for him. But once he can put in a $10 million ticket in, in, in a, uh, in something like River, that's where he gets, uh, gets interested. So.

From a pleb's point of view, like these numbers are huge, right? Even like $4.5 million to have $4.5 million land in the company's bank account, which was struggling, you know, just months before to even wonder whether or not they're going to keep the doors open. Most people would think, oh well, that's done then. They've made it. That's amazing. $4.5 million bucks in the bank account. Off we go. But That's not how it works. Where does this, you know, what's the runway? Where does this money go? What are you guys looking to use that money to help you build out? Or did you just home straight into Bitcoin with $4.5 million and like hodl like the rest of us?

Yeah, that would be nice. Yeah. No, for us, obviously it's working capital. So this capital is not lying around for a long time. It's used. And that's also why we get money from investors. It's to, it's to burn it, but burn it in a positive way, like building out a strong brand with it, but just starting, just adding value with it, right? And in the end, these investors expect a return on investors in the next 5, return on investment in the next 5 to 10 years. So they, Obviously expect us to build an amazing brand, an amazing product that is onboarding more and more users and more and more volume and more and more revenue so that the revenue in the end will be higher than, like, the annual revenue ideally should be higher than the whole investment we took. So within one year, we would technically be able to pay it all back. And that's the road that we are onboarded with. So I believe Relay can become a global company and the unicorn that is delivering plus $100 million in revenues in the next 10 years. But we are obviously now very, very far away from that. We're still at the very beginning of building this. And as you said at the beginning, there you need to put a lot of capital into building such a big business. If you want to build a restaurant, well, there's not a lot, like there's a bit of capital, but usually you could probably take a bit of your savings and start a restaurant. And from day one, you will make, you will sell food and you will get money and then more and more people coming and you grow the business, but you will never grow it or highly unlikely that you will grow it to a global million or even billion heavy company with, with a B2C tech company is way more complex. Like it requires way more initial investment, but in the end it will also yield, obviously, if you make it, 9 out of 10 don't make it, but if you make it, then it's also going to yield way more return. And that's obviously what these investors are speculating in. So we mainly take this money and within like the runway, usually after such a round is around 1 to 1.5 max 2 years, so 1 to 2 years, and you just put this money to work. You will build as much as possible on our, on the brand, like on the marketing, on the advisors. Uh, you, you've also joined as an advisor recently, um, which built a great network also of investors, of partners around the brand, like going out there, PR, media, like this, the sponsorings, participating in events. All these external, um, uh, people-facing, um, activities, they all cost a lot of money. Uh, like you could easily spend a million a day on this. Um, obviously we don't have that yet, but like bigger companies like Binance, Crypto.com, Coinbase, they spend, they, they spend one or several millions just on that part.

Yeah.

Every day. And then the second obviously is product. Um, so, uh, a lot of it goes into developing, further developing our products, uh, delivering more features.

Are you listening to this, Adam? He always wants more money for it, obviously. I was going to say, what's keeping you awake at night, Adam? Like, yeah, you got this money and people expect— what do people expect? What does that user want? I mean, for me, the app works fine. I couldn't give you any kind of feedback there. I've got my DCA set up, have done for years, and I know you can Smash buy on it with any one of your favorite ways to pay. Julien, we've talked about that on the pod before. You can add Google Pay, Apple Pay, your ATM card or whatever to it, and you can smash buy up to 1,000 Swiss per day without KYC. But people always want more, Adam.

Oh, we have? Yeah, they do. Yeah, they do. We have 2 groups of users and I love both of them. We have one group of users called the plebs, and they always want the same thing, and it's Lightning. So that's, that's a decision we have since day one. Like the day we launched, went Lightning, and we still have it. And I can come to that a bit later about the challenges.

Is that because, is that because they want to use their Relay wallet at a point of sale if they're buying something out in a bar, restaurant, or cafe? Is that what they want the Lightning for?

Yeah, most of the time. Most of the time. Yes. And also for when buying, also to get Lightning much, to get their, their sats much faster. Mm-hmm. But, but the, the main idea would be, yes, to use the relay wallet for also buying Lightning stuff outside.

Okay. So,

yeah,

Lightning challenges.

All right. Okay, let's do it now then. So we, we have 2 big challenges. Mainly the fact that we are non-custodial and the liquidity. So non-custodial since the beginning, and we want to stay and be non-custodial forever. So we really believe, yeah, we believe in our users.

For people listening that might not understand what non-custodial means, do you just want to just break that down to be as simple as possible?

Yeah, for sure. Non-custodial means our users have full control over their Bitcoin. Uh, we don't have any access to the wallet, uh, the, the private key. So the, the, the way they control their Bitcoin is on the phone. Uh, it's encrypted, it's stored locally. Whenever they create a buy or sell order or anything that needs us in between is all the time without the private key, without the private part. So we never ever have any kind of access to the user's funds. And this way the users are also kind of independent. They could send their Bitcoin anywhere else or restore their wallet. So we use some sort of standards as well, the way the wallet is created. That's for what, what non-custodial means. And Lightning in a non-custodial way is very challenging. I really appreciate the effort that a lot of projects are making for the custodial part. I think they are necessary and it's a big step that, that we anyway need to do and work on. But for us, we, we still want to stay non-custodial. And then it becomes very challenging to manage a node, to deal with channels, to like all the technical aspects of, of maintaining a simple Lightning node. So some of the listeners, most of the listeners are probably running an Umbrel node. And even then, even Umbrel is made actually to be quite easy, but even then it's so challenging that like, this is not for our users. They don't want to deal with this. What they want is not to pay much on-chain fees, for example, and not to have to wait to receive their, their Bitcoin, for example. So the non-custodial part, and the second part is liquidity. So as as you heard also from, from Julian, it's not like we have millions lying around and we could just open a channel with you, Daniel, for let's say €1,000 and then you can get €100 per month. So we have this channel open and this means that for 12 months we have you covered. Uh, and the way it is currently, it's just one way because 90, 95% of our orders are buy orders. Mm-hmm. So we really have, uh, HODLers, and then we just keep sending you Bitcoin over that channel and, and you just keep it. So there's really not a balance.

And, and you said you had also 2, I think 200,000 users, that's 70,000 active monthly users. Is that correct?

Mm-hmm.

Managing 70,000 active Lightning channels.

Nope. No thanks. No thanks indeed. But, but there, there, there is a lot of progress being made there and, and we are very close to all the The, the players, maybe naming Breeze, Greenlight from Blockstream, LightSpark recently. All of these are really playing in the, in the non-custodial market for Lightning and they're really making good progress. So I'm looking forward to, to also work together with them and, and hopefully be able to come, come to a place where we could just have an easy way to use Lightning in the Relay wallet. And in a way that, again, as we did for Bitcoin, most of our users that are newbies, they don't care about Lightning. They want to receive and send faster when they buy Bitcoin. Like, like you, you mentioned during the weekend and they pay with credit card, as soon as they paid, they want to see the satoshis incoming, which makes totally sense, which is actually was our promise since day one. It was get your sats in 1 minute. And the only part remaining for that 1 minute is the, the on-chain part, which is taking a bit longer.

With our Ordinal buddies that, uh, have broken Bitcoin, Udi and friends. Right. Uh, but I think mempool, they found a solution for that. They announced at, uh, Bitcoin Miami. Did, did you see that?

Yeah. Yeah, I've seen that. There, there were ways also before, uh, you could kind of bribe also some miners to get your transaction in a bit faster, but I still don't think On-chain would just get any better in terms of fees. I, we need to, I mean, I just believe we need to get used to, to higher fees. What, what high, whatever high means today, 500 sats per VByte is high. It might just be the normal in, in 2 years. And I just don't want us to, to rely on this. I think Lightning is really the way to go for smaller amount and, and daily transactions. That's why we, we really keep our eyes open. We are not actively working on it, I would say. I'm mostly the one also playing a bit with SDKs and APIs here and there whenever they're available. But I can clearly see that good progress is, is being made in the, in the non-custodial Lightning side.

I have high faith that some very bright spark out there is going to have that epiphany when they're, you know, when they're asleep. It's that the Donald Duck meme, isn't it? Where he is asleep and then he's just like, wide awake with laser eyes. I just solved Lightning custodial problems and, uh, off we will be to the races.

That would be awesome. I'm really looking forward to that day. Um, yeah. And then, then that, that's for the plebs part. Uh, and the other, most of the users actually, they're looking for convenience. Uh, very simple things for us that we are used to do every day. Not every day, but like backing up our wallet is something we are quite comfortable with. And it's not the case for, for most of the, the users out there. They are, they, they're actually much more comfortable with an email and the password. And, and we know all the, all the, all the issues that the password can have, but that's the way they know how internet works. If you have an account, you need an email and the password. You don't have this in Relay. You have 12 words. What, what are the meaning of the 12 words? By the way, they are in English. I speak French. I just mistyped this word. Very, very issues that small issues you would never think of, but they are getting quite common. And we would like to provide like, let's just have a quick list of features that I think would be very helpful and that are being requested by the users. One of them would be an easier backup. So their cloud backup is, is a solution. Tankred Hayes has been working on a tool called Photon SDK. for a nice way to do a backup on the cloud for Bitcoin wallets. Uh, so we, we are in touch with him as well, looking at such solutions. Other things are like savings basket. For example, you have your Relai app and you have one basket for Lauren, one basket to buy your Lambo, and one for your house, and you could just receive different amount of sats in, in different baskets. So this is also a feature that has been requested a lot by Mm-hmm. By our users. So these are more, uh, they, they're not directly Bitcoin related, let's say, but they are very convenient for, uh, for our users. So this is really bringing the, the, the Bitcoin tool to a really proper financial tool, let's say. So things they're used to see in their N26 or Revolut, sending Bitcoin to you. For example, I just want to pick Daniel. I know Daniel has the Relai wallet. I just want to pick Daniel and send him some satoshis. What is the wallet address? Why is Daniel sending always a different wallet address? These kind of things that are at the core level, at the protocol level of Bitcoin that we need to, to make easy for, for the users. And that's exactly what they're asking actually.

All right. Well, some fun projects coming your way.

Yeah.

Julian, I know you've got a, you've got to run in about 5 minutes, so we'll start closing it down. But you, you did hint at a board of advisors. Uh, so it's worth talking about the reason you've decided to ask people and what you expect from them and how you see the next, uh, year playing out for, for Relay.

Sure. Yeah, I look at the next year, maybe next 5 years, next 10 years, we will be around and we are here to onboard 1 billion, um, Bitcoiners that are now no-coiners and they're, uh, will come to Bitcoin. So we believe that in the next 10 years, billions of people and trillions of fiat money are going to flow into Bitcoin. And we are thinking on like very high level on how can we achieve that. Obviously we need to build a great product, we need to get the right licenses, blah, blah. These are more like the technical things, but like on the very high level, how will we as a Relay community or even as a Bitcoin community onboard billions of people. I think people are actually the key to that. You, for example, or together with other great advisors that we have now onboarded, like Lina Saicheh, Gigi, and Joe Hall, and there are many others out there, have done a great job already building communities around you and doing amazing education. Materials out there. Like your podcast has been going around for, for years. Joe Hall is writing for different publications, like also Cointelegraph. Lina Saiche has, you know, or she, she is on every conference, has, has a great product that she sells with the little hodler. You know, all of you guys have hundreds of thousands of followers together. And Gigi obviously creating these, these amazing essays and, and reports. And stuff like that. So you guys are educating people, and as we know, the more people educate themselves about Bitcoin, the more probable it is that they are getting into Bitcoin, buying Bitcoin, and understanding the value of Bitcoin, and then they will be in it for the long run. So I believe the more people are getting interested, the more they need to get educated, and the more of them will then also end up using Relay. So both from an ideological perspective and also from a business point of, uh, perspective, it is super important for a brand, for a company like Relay to have the right advisors, uh, around. And that's what, like a journey that we have started now. We want to onboard more and more of these great, uh, advisors and have a, a good relationship with them. So, um, so, and, and to keep close with them because I think this network And there's also education material. We can only do so much in terms of education as a company, but we also want to do way more through the advisors, you guys. So that's why I'm super happy and super excited that we were able to settle on a partnership and start working together.

Yeah, it was an honor to be invited and thank you so much for your long support of the show as well. I think that goes back to 2020. Uh,

it's the first, it's the absolute, I think this was basically the first marketing budget that has been spent. Like, but it was like, what, a couple of sats per week or, or, or month or something. I, I remember I, I myself, I sent you the sats and I think at the beginning, even from my private wallet. And then at one point we switched and I think Adam took over and sent, sent it, uh, together with the referral payments end of the month. He also sent you a couple of sats. That's all how, how it moved on. But yeah.

Oh yeah. And I look back at the start of that podcast journey and yeah, it's flown by. So I urge anybody out there who's itching to build something in Bitcoin, just, just go start. The, the plebs will find you and they'll support you and you'll find your people that can help you grow your business, whatever that is. Right. Last question. Orange pill. You've got one left. Who are you giving it to and why?

Right. Oh, it's always the same question. I'm never prepared.

Uh, you must have answered it 4 times already.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. Um, and actually I, I'm thinking about it from, uh, from time to time. And then the other day I had a great one in mind and I thought I wanted to tell you, but now obviously I don't know anymore. But, um, this time I think I would go for, I don't know, to be honest, it's, I would go for the next president of Mexico, whoever that is. There is a lot of presidential, I talked to Samson Mow about it in the Relay Bitcoin podcast. It's super exciting also what he's doing with nation-state adoption, and he said there's a lot of of votes coming up in the next elections in the next 2 to 3 years in South America and Mexico and also Brazil are kind of leading economies in South America. And there's a high probability that some of the ones that are elected are going to be Bitcoiners. So I'd really like to orange pill the next president of Mexico. Because that will, I think, be the next very important, um, uh, domino key to really kickstart mass adoption in, in South America and then the whole world.

All right, perfect. And if you need to jump off, go ahead. Um, but obviously the, uh, the same question goes to Adam. If you want, if you had one last orange pill left to give to somebody, who would you give it to and why? Yeah, that, that would feel like cheating. And that's why I laughed when, when Julian mentioned president of Mexico and also thought that great minds think alike. We are just back from Istanbul. We flew back yesterday when it was election day, the second round of the election.

And I will not get into politics and what is happening or whatever, but I would just give it to Erdoğan. This guy is there since 20 years now.

Wow.

Whatever he's doing, he's managing to convince people. So I wish he would do the same for Bitcoin. That would be 70 plus billion people on Bitcoin today. He can convince this, this mass, uh, cultural thing, like, uh, whole country to, to get into Bitcoin. So he would be the one.

All right. Well, there's no right or wrong answer, so good to, uh, good little thought experiment though. Well, thank you both for, for doing what you do. Thank you for starting Relay. Thank you for building in Bitcoin. Thank you for helping the plebs. get their, uh, get their stack and get their sats? And how can people find out more about you and the company and, uh, what's the best way to interact with Relay and start stacking?

Oh, uh, yeah, so it's probably best to start with our website, with the App Store. So our Apple, our, our, our app is on Apple and Google Android, uh, App Store, wherever. website. We are strong on social media as well, especially Twitter, but also LinkedIn, Instagram. You can find us there. And actually you can just send us DMs. So on Twitter, for example, or in the app, there's a support chat. You can DM us there and usually within 24 hours someone is replying. And yeah, if you have any feedback, input, wishes, Sorrows, whatever, get in touch with us. We're here to help. We're here to onboard billions of people to Bitcoin, and with your help, I think we'll make it.

And if anybody's not using the app yet, if they use the code BITTON, I believe they save on commissions. Is that correct?

Correct. Half a percent.

There you go. Get stacking, plebs. All right guys, thanks again for coming on and really look forward to working closer with you over the next year and far out into the future as well.

Thank you, Daniel. Appreciate the partnership. Thank you for the invite. Talk to you in Prague.

Yep. See you soon. See you. Thank you very much.

See you. Hey guys, thank you for listening, and I hope you enjoyed that rip with Julian and Adam. If you have any further questions, reach out to me via DM or just hit the guys up. They're very responsive. You can find them on Twitter as well. If Relay is a service that you think is going to suit your needs, then go ahead, give it a, give it a try. And as we talked about here in this episode, and I've said many times before, they do have that white glove service. So if you are looking to take your business onto a Bitcoin standard or accept Bitcoin for your goods and services, or if you are a high net worth individual and you want to put on a little bit more than the €100 per week, that you should also be dollar-cost averaging, let's be frank. But if you need that extra help, then these guys are there for you. And Swan Bitcoin will be able to do the same for any of you US listeners if you are tuning in from across the pond there. So that's swanbitcoin.com/bitten and go start your journey. And as you, as you probably heard here, guys, a lot of these companies need pleb support. And if If the most basic support is downloading the app and stacking €25, €50 with them per week, then that's one thing. But if you want to be able to help, maybe you've got a skill set that they might be looking for. Keep an eye out for any of these Bitcoiner companies that are trying to grow because they need your skills. Your skills are definitely transferable from the fiat world into a Bitcoin company. Especially a startup. And if, if it just begins with you lending your time, lending your expertise, that's great. It will turn into something bigger and better, I can assure you. I've seen it myself, I've seen it with others. I've had so many great conversations about people managing to escape their fiat life and get into the Bitcoin realm, and it's so freeing. It's just an amazing feeling. So with all of that said, CoinCorner are another company you can reach out to to see if they're looking for any help. They are growing all of the time. That's another show sponsor, of course. Wasabi Wallet are the place to go if you want to go and learn about CoinJoin services. You can download their software directly onto your laptop, create a wallet, and and start CoinJoining immediately whilst you're pulling your Bitcoins off the exchanges. HODL Hodler, a global peer-to-peer trading platform and lending platform. There's going to be more news coming about— coming out about the lending pretty soon, so keep tuned for that. And get across to their Baltic Honey Badger conference in Riga. That's over the, the first weekend of September. You can use the code BITTON for a 10% discount on that. Uh, yeah, bitbox.swiss/bitten. Use the code bitten, get yourself a 5% discount on the BitBox02. Please take self-custody very, very seriously. Get yourself a signing device, and a BitBox is one of those that has been around for a long time, has a very good long— very good and long reputation, and Swiss-made. Piece of equipment as well. And then finally, Liberty in Our Lifetime, a conference with a difference in Prague. It's put on by Free Cities Foundation. There are a bunch of Bitcoiners in that association, and they are trying to bring together freedom-minded people from all over the world. It's a great place to share ideas, learn about other tools. What can you be doing? You've got the freedom money, but you know, you might not have the freedom of food, you might not have the freedom of property rights, private property rights. Bringing these people together and having these discussions is a perfect way for you to start stacking freedom and self-sovereignty. So that's mid-October, Liberty in Our Lifetime. Use the code BIDEN, you'll get 10% discount. An Orange Pill app, guys, just download it. That there's nothing— that there's no entry to Barry $3, or— I mean, like, come on, let's get out there and build this social layer of Bitcoin. I've got some more episodes coming out from people that have found incredible experiences on the app, and it just keeps growing and growing every single day. More people are joining the app, and the events tab is very well populated. So if you're looking to get to a Bitcoin event and go and meet some people in real life, just head over to Orange Pill app and check out the events and find find one near you. Finally, shout out to ConsenSys. Thank you for hosting this video version on your YouTube channel. I hope this goes forwards and gives you some, some extra downloads and eyes. And get over and buy a book from ConsenSys Network in any language you can find and support that cause. Use the code BITTON for 10% discount at checkout. Catch you on the next show, guys.