All right, hey there, this is Pram Konstein and you're
listening to Bitcoin for Millennials.
If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider giving a thumbs
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In this episode, I'm joined by Will Reeves.
He's the CEO and Co founder of Fold, a company on a mission to
bring Bitcoin to everyone through innovative and
accessible methods. His experience in product design
and user experience has made Fold a stand out in making
Bitcoin more approachable to the general public.
And Will's known for his insights on Bitcoin adoption and
his efforts to lower entry barriers for everyone interested
in engaging with the best money to ever exist.
I've been a fan of what Will is building with faults, so I'm
excited to talk with him again today.
I think last time was over a year ago, but yeah, happy to see
you again man. It's it's great to be here
again, long time coming, but I think we have a lot of good
stuff to talk about so. Yeah, man, as I said, or as you
said, you, you are a bit rusty when it comes to podcast, but I
think this is just a catch up of us and we're recording it and
then of course thousands of people are going to hear it.
But no, no pressure. We're just, we're just catching
up. Just two friends talking about
Bitcoin. I mean, that's a date that's
probably every day for both of us.
So we should, I should be OK, We'll see.
I think you'll be fine. Yeah.
So from what I remember from when when we talked previously,
you were somewhat of a Bitcoin ogi think, right.
What was your first encounter with Bitcoin and how did it
change your perspective on? Well, let's start with money.
Wow. Well, First off, I need to pause
and say I reserve the title of Bitcoin OG for the giants on
which I stand on their shoulders.
So I well, definitely there's been probably 90% of the people
that we currently interact with on Twitter or currently into the
space weren't here even before 2017.
And definitely I have a few years on them.
There is definitely people who I consider the O GS and would be
nowhere near that pantheon of of kind of luminaries and heroes
that have that have come before. But I think that's always the
case, right? There's always the O GS that
come before. Now, it took me a while to get
into Bitcoin per SE when when I mean into Bitcoin, it's like I'm
going to dedicate not only my savings into it, but also my
time and energy, which right now I'm about as far leveraged long
in Bitcoin as you could possibly be.
I live on Bitcoin every day. My company is a Bitcoin company.
My friends are Bitcoiners. It's a, it's a, it's about as
far on the spectrum as you can possibly get, but it wasn't
always that way. And you know, I think it's
definitely been a journey of, you know, education of, of
learning humility and putting your ego aside because I had
some of the most incredible experiences with Bitcoin in my
early years before I got into it.
I got to see how Bitcoin was being used as a, as a means of
unstoppable remittances across borders to connect laborers and
migrant workers in one country to their home country and in a
way that they weren't being exploited.
I got to see that very early. I grew up in the Sonoma Valley
and my, my primary first jobs were just working on wineries
during the summers and harvest. And so I got to see quite a bit
of that. I spent time in Argentina and
through after one of their major defaults and I met people there
who were saving in Bitcoin, not not using it for payments, but
just purely saving it to escape the effects of devaluation and
and poor monetary policy. And so all of these are and I
was living in San Francisco and seeing people, you know, create
incredible startups from the first early San Francisco
Bitcoin meetups. You know, you have a lot of the
people behind some of the most, you know, the largest
international exchanges started there.
And that's where fold started too.
Was was in those early years. We actually shared office space
with Casa and bit refill in the very early days.
And so it was a very small spot. But going from those first
moments of experiencing Bitcoin to I'm, you know, I'm working on
Bitcoin full time there. It took, it took me years and I
think that's, I think it's pretty similar with with many
people. Some people, I've heard people
say it needed to hit you over the head three times before you
truly can fall down the rabbit hole.
Yeah, I can certainly attest to that like 10 years on and off
until I think the last 3-4 ish years that have been really
committed to to Bitcoin only maybe even maybe even shorter.
But yeah, the understanding comes in waves.
Was there was there anything that made you like not get it?
Can you remember what like was part?
Of your dismissal at first my own, my own ego, my own ego, my
own, you know, thinking I am smarter or not understanding.
So I think it was actually two things.
It was both my own ego, it was also number.
It was also not understanding the problem it was solving and
thinking that the problem it was solving was something not
relevant to me. I really came up and experienced
Bitcoin first and foremost from a unstoppable payments and
remittance perspective about being able to transfer value
without intermediaries. I saw that in with the kind of
situation I spoke about with migrant workers sending money
back home. I dabbled a little bit in Occupy
Wall Street in Oakland and we are actually all of Venmo and
PayPal accounts were being shut down and so we started taking
donations in Bitcoin. And I really just looked at it
as this kind of fringe side, this tool for a limited set of
people, but who really needed it.
But maybe most of my life, I wouldn't need it, right?
Being, you know, fairly privileged, living in the United
States at the time of, you know, and growing up in the 90s when
probably the last decade of full American, you know, ascension
and dominance, it just didn't feel like it was necessarily for
me. But I knew it could be valuable
to other people. And so I think it was a little
bit of that. It was also a little bit of my
own ego about thinking I knew about money when I really
didn't. Also a lot of smart people
around me who I could, you know, who I, I, I trust they've been
also not getting it. So it was this kind of self
referential bubble that you had going.
And it was really only until, you know, moments of meeting
other Bitcoiners who had a different perspective on it and
bringing it, which a lot happened in San Francisco at
those Bitcoin meetups, meeting my Co founder, Matt Luongo, who
brought his perspective, changed my mind.
And a lot of it started to change when I realized, you
know, hey, I, I'm an entrepreneur.
I I'm always just going to be building things, bringing teams
together to create cool stuff. Wait, I can do this with
Bitcoin. I can run my business on this.
That that skin in the game that both my money, my time
accelerated everything. And so it started off with a
curiosity, but went deeper. And I think one of the things
that we try to do at fold because I think it is so
powerful, is that it's hard for people to learn about Bitcoin
and become convinced about Bitcoin by reading about it.
Only you. There's a moment where you just
have to actually get involved. You actually have to put some
skin in the game. You actually have to start
saving some of your your value of Bitcoin where you really
start to learn that in a way that just being told or reading
about something is not going to not going to really get you
there. Can it can prime the pump, it
can do a lot of good, but there's a, there's comes a point
where you really need to jump in and that that can accelerate
things and and change that process quite a bit.
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Brom. I think a side question, you
said you were with Occupy Wall Street.
I remember I talked to Eric Case and and he said when he he was
kind of disappointed with the Occupy Wall Street movement
because like they understood the problem, they pointed to the
problem. You just gave an example of you
actually experienced, you know, your accounts being shut off,
which I think you know is the is the perfect example of what the
problem is. And and you even started using
Bitcoin. Like, why do you think?
Because what I got from Eric and and I think I have the same
feeling is like the the problem is known for a long time, right?
But just camping outside and protesting like that doesn't
really work like now. And I think you view it as the
same, like you have to start moving.
You have to stop, stop using this old Fiat system and you
have to start adopting the Bitcoin system, right?
Like literally put your money where your mouth is.
How, how was your experience with with Occupy Wall Street or
how how do you look back on that time?
I mean, I, I think if I look back at my, my coming into my,
you know, political self or what it, you know, was a lot about
recognizing a problem and seeing a lot of people recognize the
problem and having complete, you know, diagnosing in the wrong
way of how we're going to fix it.
And so I'd agree with Eric there.
And I generally think that's, if you look back at the, you know,
a lot of the movements that have happened, that's kind of the
thing that's gone wrong is that there's a real problem being
pointed to, but the path to fixing it isn't there.
It, it's wrong or it, or it's it, it's, it's, it misfires,
it's guides in the wrong direction.
And there are some, there were some early, you know, some of my
friends during the Occupy Wall Street timeline, they created a,
a site called Move Your Money. And essentially it was saying,
hey, opt out of banks, move your money out of banks and put them
in a credit union. And so it was, it was there
where it was like, OK, we get it.
We, we understand that where we choose to hold our value is a
political action in and of itself.
So that's, that's a very important step.
The second step is OK to, to truly affect political change,
you need to actually exit that and you need to put your go
elsewhere. The problem was Bitcoin was
nowhere on their radar as the, as the of the place to actually
fix it. And so this whole website was
all about people showing they moved, you know, 10,000 of their
own savings from Wells Fargo to, you know, firefighters Credit
Union in San Francisco or so you know, whatever it was.
And so it was like almost there and it was spiritually in the
right direction, but the tool doesn't didn't exist.
And I think that's where Bitcoin is such an incredible thing.
It is more than anything, it's just it is a extremely powerful
tool that can be leveraged to many different political ends.
And so I would, I would say the best thing about and why, why
Bitcoin is here and why I think it that its message is so
salient today is because we have gone through two to three
decades of identifying the right problem, trying a bunch of
different ways to to fix that problem.
And all of them leading to either detrimental effects, null
neutral effects or no actual changes being done after that.
And so we kind of, we kind of pursued all the paths and now
we're still left with Bitcoin. And I think people are having,
you know, especially over the last five years, increasingly
seen especially over the COVID years and the money printing,
what a powerful counterpoint it plays to the existing system and
what a what a powerful tool it gives you to opting out of that
system. Yeah, well, maybe it's also that
the, the, the, the timing is better, right?
Like, I mean, you, you have a starter background too.
Sometimes you can have a good idea and a good solution, but
the people aren't ready yet and you're too, too early, you know,
and a company still dies, although sometimes even 10 years
later, a similar idea pops up and that works right, because
the people are are are ready. I feel with Bitcoin.
I, I, I like how you illustrated it there.
Like, I do think people understand the the problem, but
the fact that it has been tried to, to do something about it so
many times with a lot of talking, right?
I mean, if you see what's his name, Rand Paul.
And you know, like the libertarians, libertarian
politicians, early 90s, they're already talking about the, the
deficit in America. You know, we need to change it.
But but until that time, there wasn't really a tool that was
totally disconnected with that existing system, right?
And so there wasn't really anything to to actually get in
into, you know, there was no lifeboat.
So, yeah, it's interesting to see now I feel also that why
people currently don't see Bitcoin or don't want to see
Bitcoin because it's been so you know, how to say like combined
with crypto and all the flaws in crypto and all the scams and all
that stuff that, you know, crypto and Bitcoin Bros and we
are all the same for a lot of people.
But I think it's interesting because the the problem is
bigger, way, way bigger than, you know, 1010 years ago and way
more prominent, right? Especially and, and that's also
why I want to focus on millennials like starting a
family, buying a house, like all these things that our parents
and grandparents just did, because, you know, have become
way more unattainable for for a lot of people, you know, So I
think the the problem is way more prominent, but perhaps also
Bitcoin as a solution is once you dive into it, you understand
it's more solidified than, you know, 10 years of.
Course, I think you, I think you said it right both on the timing
piece that every problem, you know, every solution needs to be
coupled with the right timing, right?
The problem can always exist, but without the right timing
instead of circumstances that the solution's not going to
achieve its full, you know, potential.
And I do think the demographic shift that you're talking about
is very important here and plays a big role where, you know, if
you look at Occupy Wall Street, it was primarily, you know,
heavily supported by millennials.
But millennials at the time were not, you know, they weren't
coming into their own of building a family, needing to
build long term security for something beyond the next two
years of their lives in a time when nihilism in their life
about hey, there's no jobs for me.
The economy is bad. You know it's going to get worse
was rampant. Now you actually see people in a
different phase of looking more optimistically.
I have a family. I want to build something that
lasts in the future for a long time.
And there's really not great examples of how to do that in
this new world that we live in. And Bitcoin is definitely a tool
that we believe is central to that and so relevant to the
lives of where millennials are today.
You know, you look at the first product that Fold launched was
our rewards product. One of the most powerful drivers
of the success of that product is not just to earn Bitcoin
rewards, It's it's coupled with the path the the addition that
our purchasing power in terms of the wages that we're earning
versus how much inexpensive things are getting has been
moving in the wrong direction. And when you combine a reward on
top of that that's earned in Bitcoin, you actually can blunt
a lot of the major effects of inflation or the driving down of
your purchasing power because not only you're earning a
percent back, but it's in Bitcoin finite supply.
It is an A inflation resistant asset that is actually
counteracting some of that. So actually Bitcoiners who have
been using fold for a long time, you know, we have thousands and
thousands and thousands of people who have earned more in
their Bitcoin rewards than their peers do in their savings
accounts that they've been saving their entire lives in
their rewards. It seems silly, right?
Seems silly that somehow the rewards could do that but that
is true all the way down the stack.
You're thinking about mortgages you're thinking about saving for
your family about saving investments things like this.
It goes all that's true all the way down the stack.
Once you for millennials to be able to integrate Bitcoin into
their lives, perhaps one of the most important financial
decisions that they make yesterday.
Not you know as as it has to be as early as possible.
And really that's kind of been the driving light of where we've
been taking fold is creating a banking experience for this
cohort for these people that are coming into their own planning
for a future and allowing them to the to bank on the on money
that works for them money that they actually that they prefer,
but also giving them access to all the financial tools they
need debit cards, checking accounts, mortgages, insurance
loans, because we still live in this world, right.
We still need to be able to interact.
We can't all go, you know, full cypher punk off the grid.
When we have our, you know, kids and we're figuring out what kind
of elementary school or home school path we're going to send
them on, you know, we have to have a little bit more
structure. And that that is, you know, kind
of been the central guiding force about Fold.
It's about creating this platform for people to maximize
their financial life. And the only way to do that
today is by integrating Bitcoin in some way.
Whether you're 1% or 100%, you got to have some skin in the
game. Yeah, Yeah, I agree once, once I
realized what Bitcoin gives you in, in terms of actually owning
the asset, right. Like like when you look in, in
your wallet and you see a transaction, you know that, that
when you are on the receiving end that you really own it, you
know, and that, that's what I also think that's difficult when
you talk about Bitcoin, right? That is so that's so conceptual.
We don't even have to talk about Bitcoin, right?
But if you say like, OK, what if, you know, there's a money
that if you see the account, the, the, the amount in, in an
app that it's not just like a view, right?
Like in your current banking app, the view of your, your, the
amount in your bank account is literally just a number in a
database. It represents nothing.
It's nothing. But if you see the number in a
Bitcoin app, it's the real thing.
You know, I love how Jack Mahler says like the information is the
asset, right? The the fact that you have the
key to a certain part of Bitcoin also makes you have the asset
itself like that. That I think is part of the, I
like the word like the paradigm shift, right?
Like it's something that has not existed.
And especially because it's digital, it's just really hard
to understand, even for millennials that grew up, you
know, partially in, in the, the, the non digital world and then
of course, also in digital world.
And I, I think that that is one of the big things people need to
understand that, you know, you can truly own the value that you
got as a reward for your work. I mean, you, you look at even
millennials. So I, I, I remember, of course,
not myself, but those around me. And, you know, college dorms and
high school would be peer-to-peer sharing files back
and forth. And, you know, we were native
growing up native. That was the primary way we were
getting access to our contents and media.
And in some ways it gave us it, it showed us something true
about the rest of the world where there is really no
ownership, right? You can, things can just be
shared and copied and inflated and that's kind of true of the,
you know, physical, non digital world.
It's just we haven't had that much access to really see it.
And that's why I think it took bitcoiners like or people for
Bitcoin to even have an even higher hurdle to jump is how
many times have you heard, Hey, can't they just copy and paste
the code base and create another Bitcoin?
Or how do you know someone can't just add more Bitcoin?
You know, all these things to it because we have real world
examples of, you know, file sharing and things where
scarcity for a digital asset wasn't real at all and they were
exploiting that massively. And you know, to your point of
that, that realization, the the weird thing that Bitcoiners go
through is when your life starts to get more complicated, you
have more responsibilities, you're starting to plan for
longer periods of time. Traditionally, that has a, an
effect that makes people more conservative on the risk that
they're willing to take when they have a family, when they
are trying to plan for a long, long period of time.
And people have asked me before, well, isn't that, doesn't that,
you know, now that you have a kid and you're, you know, all
these things are going on your life now, don't you wanna pull
back from Bitcoin 'cause it's so risky, it's so volatile.
And in fact, my life has only led me in the opposite path.
The more that my life had put these responsibilities on me,
the more I wanted to plan for the future.
I found myself adopting Bitcoin more and more and more.
That's a very counter intuitive thing for most people to know.
But I think it comes back to exactly like what you said is if
you can realize the core of it that never ever has it been
possible to truly bear to hold your, the value that you create
ever. And now you do have a tool for
that. It becomes the most conservative
decision that you could make. And that that learning curve is
not widely understood because number one, people are not used
to having such a tool in their life.
And a lot of the their understandings about Bitcoin is
just about its volatility or its riskiness or all these other
things that are essentially there to to scare you away from
the essential insight that Bitcoin is the only thing that
you can truly own. Yes, could not agree more right.
And I think especially when you have these life changing events,
right, when you have a family, you, you need to secure or or
lower your uncertainty around the future, right?
Like that is that is the consequence of when you have a
family to make to at least have an outlook on the future where
you can build towards with your family, right?
And I fully agree. For me, it's the same, it's the
same thing. You know, adopting Bitcoin is
the most rational, risk averse decision I could ever make.
It's, it's, it's, it's the most predictable, most stable assets
than that you can own. Because anything about it, any
underlying, you know, the underlying protocol, the rules,
all these things you can verify for yourself.
There's nothing that you have to rely on on, on another person
with, with other assets. It's, it's, it's only relying on
other people. It's only relying on stories of
other people or promises of other people.
You know, And that is actually what is uncertain and brings
risk, right? Because although, you know,
understanding Bitcoin is simple, not easy, like it, it, it, it
takes work there. I think there's a clear end to
understanding it. You know, if you do the work at
one point, you will understand it.
And I think, you know, with all these other assets, it's, it's,
it's, it's just, it's, they are totally different games.
And I think the abstractions and the obscurities that come with
those assets are, are there for a reason, right?
So, you know, not everyone can get value from adopting those
assets. And yeah, I, I have exactly the
same thing. For me, it's the most rational
decision to make. And I think it's also why, you
know, the people that don't see Bitcoin yet are actually way
more pessimistic and, and nihilistic, right?
And they don't get kids and they don't get married and they don't
start families. But we we cannot really blame
them because they are, you know, the, the, the foundation of
their life, the, the, the money, the tool that they use for money
or as money. It's just very unpredictable.
So their future is very unpredictable, right.
And yeah, of course then why, why would you have a kid if you
feel like your future? You know, although everyone's
future is uncertain, their future is probably way more
uncertain. And I think us by adopting
Bitcoin, we, we still have an uncertain future, but it's way,
way lower. You know, I would say it's
almost back to the normal level of no one knows how much time
they have in their life basically.
And that's it, right? But we know that we adopted an
asset to store our monetary energy in that nobody can mess
with. And that I think it's the main
thing that that lowers that, that uncertainty.
So I think it's interesting you see it in the same way.
I I tweeted about this before like I am a risky first person
and Bitcoin is the most logical decision.
I don't I don't know how to explain differently.
Yeah. I think the good framing that
you said is that, you know, ultimately life is, is about
managing risks in many ways. And we have enough being people
that rely on a heart to continue to beat is, is one of the most,
you know, the, the, the one that just looms large.
And if you're able to put aside some of these other
uncertainties in life, the ones that are actually maybe
artificially created in many ways, like our money, you
actually get to just focus on the, the, the, the aspects of
life that you know, you, you're not going to escape.
We don't get to control how long we are here, our time or the
things that could shorten that or lengthen it.
But just being able to focus on that.
What does that ultimately do it? It makes us think and desire to
spend the time that we want in beautiful places with the people
that we love. And that's a really sober, clear
eyed way of approaching life. And you really can't even get
there if all your other life is just in chaos and you know, you
feel like you're constantly subject to rug poles or built
your your foundation on sand. Just removing some of these
other uncertainties can, can truly transform your life.
And it's not about getting rich. It's about it's about being able
to see your life clearly and what's important to you.
Yeah, couldn't agree more. So how do you experience talking
to other Bitcoiners or other other millennials?
I want to say you, you just mentioned lots of your friends
are Bitcoiners, so I think that's nice, but how do you
experience? You know, my, my, my life has
really gone. You know, I obviously there
weren't that many bitcoiners for for a long time and you can find
them at meetups or online. And but the idea of like a
community that could make up the majority of friend group wasn't
really there. But I have a really rich group
of friends that I have and some most of them I would consider,
you know, are probably only interested in Bitcoin just
because I am. But for the most part, even the
example of my life and what I've, you know, talked their
ears off and everything they they still haven't gotten there
a lot of them themselves. But I that's kind of part of the
reason where fold even comes from is that hey, I I'm not very
successful at at orange peeling people directly full on
onslaught. Maybe that's not the right way
to do it. People need to come to it when
they're ready and so I get love to maintain those friendships.
I may have made so many friends in in the world of Bitcoin, but
you know, even if you get too many bitcoiners together, you're
going to be, you know, your head's going to be spinning and
be like, wait, didn't we just talk about that again because
we, we, we circle. We are all kind of refining
these concepts over and over, sharing them, sharing them back
and sometimes you just need to take a break from it even even
leaving this world and is important.
So I'm, I'm, I advocate to have friends outside of Bitcoin as
well, absolutely just for the, the health of your life.
But it's good having the balance to see, to see both sides.
And I think it goes back to the same same thing we started this
conversation off with. I think every single one of my
good friends understand the problem.
They deeply see that there's the problems that are there.
They may have different language about speaking about it, and I
think a lot of them have what they think is the solution for
it. The problem is a lot of the
solutions that they would point to are completely out of their
control. It is reliant on some major
political transformation of, you know, hundreds of thousands to
millions of people. It is reliant on some sort of
collapse. And then from there we get to
rebuild. It's it's some sort of idea
that, hey, I'm just going to opt out and just live a life as
minimal as possible. And that's how I'll control my
risk and uncertainty. But all of them are choosing
things that, you know, are, are hard for you to control like you
don't you? That's not a lever you can pull.
And the so I think a lot of the things that I have chosen to
focus on when I talk to people who are outside of Bitcoin and
say, hey, you see the problem, you see challenges in your life.
What are the things that you can do today, not reliant on anybody
else that could meaningfully make an impact?
And that's where you do get some interesting stuff.
And, you know, 90% of the time, they're not talking about
Bitcoin at all, but they're talking about, you know, eating
better or being healthier or developing healthier
relationships with those around them.
That's all extremely positive, directionally correct things to
do and much healthier than saying, hey, I'm going to live a
life in this world that I don't agree with and that I'm, you
know, a victim of. But I'm only going to change it
if everyone else suddenly decides to change at the same
time. That's a very unhealthy way of
living. And so I for me, it is really
always comes down to, hey, you know, we can bond over and agree
on these problems, but what are the things that you could change
in your own life? And actually there's a lot of
great things outside of Bitcoin that are within your control.
And I think of Bitcoiners happened to also talk about
those things too. Yeah, yeah.
I think it's interesting. Once you see the problem and you
know that you're living in a system, you know where that
creates that problem, you just have, you know, it's a fork in
the road, I'd say, right. And if you don't, if you choose
to stay there, right, Like I always use the, the the matrix
example, like the I like to eat a steak.
You know that that this guy wants to stay in the matrix,
right? Because he loves the steak so
much. Like it's, it's fine, but it
will probably give you some sort of perpetual anxiety, right?
Because you realize that you have this problem and you cannot
change it and you consciously choose to live with it.
You know, like, so eventually I do.
I do believe that people will turn around in a sense because
you can only live with the problem of, you know, unlimited
money creation and devaluation for a certain amount of time
before before you don't accept it anymore.
Right. Yeah.
So you just mentioned it before, but I wanted to ask you like
when did you really decide to contribute to Bitcoin and and
start a Bitcoin company and and why did you commit to that?
So I had always been someone who I, I early, early in life.
I, I've got the bug that I want to be building startups and new
ideas. I want to have small teams think
about big ideas, pursue them, fail along the way, be OK with
that and ultimately find success along that that journey That was
just immensely valuable for me. I just love that mode of living.
Number one, you know, extreme risk, extreme high, you know,
uncertainty, but at the same time, total control over what
you're doing day-to-day. Like total control over constant
challenges being thrown at you and you get to decide how you're
going to make it. How are you going to route
around it? How are you going to.
And I love that. I just, I love that I loved
being around people who liked doing that.
And I, I, I thought it was, it was something I knew what
happened. But when I got my first couple
experiences are like, I can't believe this is a real way to
live your life. This is so exciting.
The problem was I, I didn't really care about a lot of the
things that I actually was working on a lot of the problems
that I was there. And you know, my, my start up
background is everything from, you know, social apps to
e-commerce to peer-to-peer lending to I've done car, car,
used car marketplaces, I've done insurance, I've done so many
things. I just don't really care about
the end thing like what I'm trying.
I love the process. I absolutely love the process.
It was only when I was in between, in between some of my
projects and I was, I was working at a unnamed large tech
company and I was in product there that I met my counterpart
who ran technology in the group I was at.
And he was deeply into Bitcoin and his side project that he was
building was a Bitcoin start up. And I had by that time kind of
be on to fall down the rabbit hole in a big way.
I was probably at where a lot of people get when they're maybe
one year in and just every podcast, everything they've
read, they're, they're, they know they can quote everybody.
And I just saw someone who was showing me the way, a successful
way of living their life, both as an entrepreneur, building
something in the teams, the way I like to live, but on a problem
that I deeply cared about. And that changed everything.
I was like, I can bring these two things together and I can
provide for my family and I can still maintain all of this
lifestyle that I love so much. And it was there that, you know,
fold came about and that's, that's that's the origination.
And fold went through many different chapters because a lot
about being a start up is, is figuring out what problem you're
solving of. There's maybe a big problem
they're going after, but ultimately you have to be
focused on what smaller problem of that big problem you're
solving. And we went through a couple
cycles and, you know, ultimately, you know, found some
great success. And that's what propelled me
there today. But really, it was holy shit.
I can live a life, a day-to-day life that I want to do in
pursuit of something I truly care about.
That was that was the win. Yeah, yeah, very cool.
I, I also wanted to ask like how, how do you look back on
that decision now? But also what would you say to
any entrepreneurial person, entrepreneurial Bitcoiner who's
thinking about contributing to, to Bitcoin?
What? What advice would you give them?
First answer, I, I, I look back and I think, oh, I've been doing
this for three years, probably it's a lot longer than that.
It's, it's crazy. I don't like it's, it's, it is
warped to my sense of time because this space changes so
fast and it is so brutal in many ways.
There's it's hard to run a start up.
It's it's extremely difficult to run a Bitcoin start up.
Number one, because your, your pool of willing customers right
now are smaller than many markets.
They also change and contract with market cycles.
You're dealing with an asset that is itself undergoing
product market fit as well as your product that is related to
that asset. So you're, you have a couple
things that you're you're accounting for.
It is deeply political. It has been deeply maligned.
It is it is hard to get partners that truly are in it for the
long haul with you. So I can make partnerships with
other companies that I need their act, their services and
Bitcoin is in one day and out the other for them.
They're not like a line for the long haul.
So it's it's just, it's extremely brutal.
But again, there's no more fulfilling path once you find
that little piece of it that makes sense for you.
And so for people getting into it, you know, I would say, you
know, there's a problem in traditional startups where, you
know, there's a joke where everyone's first startup that
they make is a local recommendation app or a, some
type of social app, because that's just like where everyone
thinks to go 1st. And so you just get a bunch of
people rushing to solve maybe something that doesn't actually
have a problem. But you know, it's, it's, it's
just a, there's a graveyard of millions of, you know, these
social startups that are there. And there's in Bitcoin, you
don't have that reliance #1 there's a lot less money
available to you. You're going to have much more
brutal cycles and the markets are going to be generally
smaller. And So what I like to do is, and
my advice has always been is look at what Bitcoin brings to
people that cannot be solved anywhere else and go so much go
deep into that, whether that is unconfiscatable, whether that is
bare asset ownership, whether that is unstoppability, whether
that is just custody, whether that is, you know, there's so
many angles you can go, but choose one and go really deep
into it and become the best at that.
And you know, sometimes with a a space like Bitcoin, sometimes
that's going to end up being a start up.
Sometimes it's going to be a really fulfilling open source
career where you are contributing and getting grants
and there and that's the best way for you to contribute.
There's just so many different ways there's, there's providing
ideas and content and helping others get educated on this is
as important as building something, a tool for them to
use. So I'd say #1 be prepared for an
extremely brutal gauntlet. Be very open to finding where
your piece is, and come in with a broad perspective.
There's a lot of ways to contribute.
Yeah. Yeah, I love that I I sometimes
get these messages for people like, yeah, I, I am a bitcoiner
and I want to contribute like what should I do?
And I always just say like, just do whatever you're good at.
Like there's so much still needed to be done right.
And I think it, it, it, it does. It doesn't even matter like
where you, where you come from. Like I talked to a guy who was a
teacher and I said, well, you know, if you like teaching, you
know, there's a lot of people who still need to teach about
Bitcoin. And there's all these different
angles about Bitcoin. Like I sent him to, you know,
BTC sessions YouTube who has 300,000 subscribers and he only
talks about, you know, how does this software hardware work,
right? And and I send it to this guy
and he was like, wow, OK, you know this.
This you can go, Niche you can go.
Specific, you can go very, very niche yeah, yeah, exactly.
Or, you know, for a specific target audience or, you know,
well, that's what I'm doing a little.
But you know, any way you think there's probably value in that
to be honest, right? Because we still have the
majority, you know, 99.9% of people in the world to, to
educate on this. So, you know, any, any focus is,
is good. I think I, I wanted to ask you
about, about fault where, where you're at right now, but also a
bit before that. You started with this, you know,
reward system and eventually you also now can show the results,
right, of how people who save their rewards actually, you
know, have more economic value or, or, or financial power than
than other options. How does you know this gamified
platform or app that you create? How do you think that
contributes to kind of like broader financial education or
or understanding? I think it's, it's hard to get
people to care like we know about Bitcoin and money.
It's hard to get people to care about money because everyone's
taught not to think about money. There's and there, everyone's
taught to think about everything else that money can do or what
it gives you, but don't ever think about the money.
And right, it's A and your finances are the same way.
Your personal financial tools are the same way.
And we've used education gamification as a way to get you
to focus more to to pay more attention to your money.
Hey, come in every single day. Come look at how Bitcoin is
volatile. Look at how Bitcoin is volatile
to the upside. Look at look at where you were
six months ago. Look at the progress you've made
six months, look at where you would have been.
And so gamification has been a powerful tool to get people to
focus on the money in a way that's every single day.
That was one of our things was, hey, sometimes Bitcoin
conversations can come and they can go, but what could we create
that has people focusing and thinking about Bitcoin every
single day? And so that started off things
with, you know, giving a free Bitcoin to people every single
day. Open the app, do it.
That's another chance for us to educate them, to show them how
where they are today is better than where they were yesterday.
It's better than the other options that they could have
had. And so I think it's been
extremely powerful in that from that perspective.
And what it is also done is is because we're getting this daily
engagement, You know, we started off with rewards, very simple,
hey, instead of, you know, earning points or airline miles,
earn Bitcoin. But the convert, once you're
successful and people feel how powerful just changing their
reward asset could be, they start thinking more, Oh, wait,
maybe I should think about Bitcoin as my my primary
investment. We're not at savings yet.
They're just like, hey, maybe I should, you know, stop investing
so much in the S&P or a given stock that I've been gambling
on. Maybe my investment should be in
Bitcoin. OK, let's we do that.
Then we start showing comparing against the rest of the market
to where they are over periods of time how that could compound
in the future if bitcoins appreciation continues as it
had. Then you get them to savings and
then you start to get this really funny thing where wow,
80% of my net worth is in Bitcoin and I never really made
that decision. It just happened because the
dollars that I hold in various things are just being devalued.
That is just going down. And over the last 5-6 years my
Bitcoin has ballooned into a major piece of My Portfolio.
So we did a, A, a survey just the other day for our users and
said, hey, you've been, you've been earning Bitcoin and buying
Bitcoin for a long time. Do you feel that you will have
an urgent need for financial services specifically built
around Bitcoin in the in the near term?
And it was overwhelmingly 70% said I will need a mortgage that
involves my Bitcoin. I will need credit lines that
involve my Bitcoin. I will need credit scores, I
will need financial advisors to recognize my Bitcoin, but none
of the world does any of that. They all want to give you these
very Fiat credit products or credit scores, but none of it is
focusing on that. There is a huge hundreds of
thousands of people who now find their net worth is a significant
portion related to to their Bitcoin and they will need now
they start asking, wait, the whole thing has to change for
me. And a lot of these products
don't exist. And what Fold has been able to
do has been grow alongside of them.
We started earning rewards, we went into roundups and DCA and
all these ways to accumulate more and more Bitcoin.
And what you're going to see from Fold now is really taking
that next chapter of, hey, we know you want to buy your first,
your next home, not because you think it's a big investment, but
because you're building a family.
Hey, we know you're going to need insurance.
We know you're going to need XYZ.
And there's nobody there who's providing that to you in any
meaningful way. And if they are, it's clunky,
it's weird, it's expensive, it doesn't compete well with the
traditional products. And what Fold is going to do is
provide that entire banking kind of platform for you, but built
for Bitcoiners that you get an experience that truly leverages
the power of what Bitcoin gives that you can't get from any
other tool. And that's what you'll see us I
think on over the next, you know, few months and into 2025,
we'll be focusing on quite a bit.
We have a a very fun road map ahead.
So how? How do you see the relationship
between Bitcoin focused companies like faults and
traditional finance institutions evolved?
And like what I, I, I love what you are building.
I also really like on ramp. You know, this is like you, you
can build a Bank of the future without, you know, the being a
bank before. Like you can, you can build a
bank from scratch in a Bitcoin way.
And I, I, I think it's interesting that current
financial institutions, although you know, some of ETFs,
etcetera, like for them to reinvent themselves and become
that Bank of the future where. Business, they don't even
realize. They don't even realize the
problem yet. They don't exactly we are
because they profit from the problems they experience, right.
So it's it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a part of their business
model. And our problem is that most
people don't know that, you know, that is part of their
business model. So, yeah.
How do you see that evolve? I mean, I think just like
Bitcoin, you know, Bitcoin will operate kind of at the at the
fringes, it's going to be most valuable to the people that are
currently most under the thumb of inflation, of monetary
controls, of unfair financial systems.
The inevitable thing is that problem is increasingly moving
to the center is eating the core of everybody.
And so the financial tools that are there to facilitate your
usage, your experience of Bitcoin is it follows that same
trajectory. And we have never been moving
faster to the core. We have never been more the core
has never been more understanding of the problem in
awaiting a solution. And like you said, all the
incumbents are too entrenched in not only profiting off the way
things are, but even their approach to the problems because
they see it as well. You know, JP Morgan just today
said, hey, we're going to start charging everybody to hold money
in their accounts. We're we're going to hold
instead of paying you an interest rate, which was the
whole point of Fiat anyway, we're going to now be charging
you. And it's going to 'cause this
paradigm shift where not only do people feel the heat from this
general problem, but the tools themselves that have been used
to facilitate that economy will be turning on them customers.
And they're going to turn on the customers.
They're not going to be aligned. And what you're going to be
seeing with Bitcoin focused companies who are building a
world that not only is there to help them use Bitcoin, but
reimagine the in financial and economic infrastructure in the
image of Bitcoin will provide unfair advantages that even the
core, the most normally core in the center will not be able to
live without. And they that is going to happen
very, very quickly. And, you know, we're already
looking at some of the products that will be launching our
mortgage product unlocks things like, hey, you can get a home
that you want for no money down. You can get a home that you want
that earns you Bitcoin. As you contribute to your
mortgage, it actually increases your Bitcoin stack.
Or, hey, do you just want a lower monthly mortgage rate?
And you'll have a lower interest rate.
Once you start introducing Bitcoin into all of these
financial products and services, you get to create unfair
advantages that the existing financial system not only
increasingly has less and less of, but increasingly is eating
itself and again, charging you for having a savings account
with them. And that will inevitably hit a a
breaking point and the incumbents will not be there to
move fast enough to respond. Yeah, yeah, couldn't agree more.
I think this is really in line with my own trad FI experience
at at two big banks. I, I, I do not see them steering
that fast. But also just, yeah, it's just
the base layer values, views on money, all the ownership, all
these things are just totally different than, you know, in
Bitcoin as, as compared to traditional banks.
So, yeah, I'm excited to see what what you're going to build
there. I have a little idea now, but
I'm excited to see it unfold. That was a good pun, by the way.
Unfold. Yeah.
So if if you and probably after you more companies, you know,
will start to build these services, how do you how do you
envision, you know, Bitcoin integration into like everyday
consumer activities? But also, you know, I like the
quote, it goes something like good design will make technology
invisible. You know what, what do you think
is needed for Bitcoin to become invisible?
Do you have any any ideas about that?
Yeah. I mean, I, I think, I think
we're very, very close there already with what we built at
Fold. So when you download Fold, you
can deposit your paycheck, it instantly is converted into into
Bitcoin for zero fees. You're you're not, you're not
losing any Bitcoin in that conversion.
From there, your Bitcoin can immediately be used to pay a
bill over the ACH network. You can use it to spend on a
debit card. You can send it to someone
peer-to-peer. You can keep it in Bitcoin.
You can pull it out as cash at an ATM.
All of this is completely under the hood.
So essentially you just can go about living your life and you
look like a normal person from the outside.
You're swiping a card, you're getting cash out of an ATM,
you're buying a home. But all of it is built on top of
your foundation on Bitcoin. And it comes with insurance
assurances like good custody models for you.
It comes with insurance on your on your on your Bitcoin.
It, it creates an environment where you know all of the things
that you were worried about holding Bitcoin are gone and all
the limitations you used to have by holding Bitcoin are gone.
So we're we're very much there where you can live your life on
Bitcoin, but be purely and easily accessing every service
you need. What we like to say is live with
the money you prefer, but the financial tools you need.
And that's all to that exact quote you have.
We kind of abstract away all of it, but it's very traditional
looking banking experience and structure.
But under the hood, it's on the high foundation of bedrock of
Bitcoin versus, you know, other, other assets that you could
choose to hold your wealth in. I love the live with the money
that you prefer. That's great.
I, I just had a conversation with last episode was with Scott
Deedles and we talked about, you know, the, the currency that you
are using you in your country and me in my country.
We never opted into that. We never consciously decided,
you know, this is the money that I'm going to use now.
You know, when you were younger, you got some coins, you went to
the store, you got a bread and you know, like that's how the
money works. You never questioned it, right?
So even the fact that you can now say live with the money, I'm
butchering it, but you know. The currency you might prefer
with the financial tools you need, Yes.
Exactly right like live with the with the money that you prefer I
the fact that that is even possible, I think is the entire
point of Bitcoin showing that that is possible.
And before that, you know, as we talked about, you know, people
were aware of the fact that the money that they are forced to
use is not good enough, but there was no option, right?
And it sounds like there's now really an option.
And also at at a user experience level, you know, something that
is on par with what some what, what, what people already know,
right? So that can only be a positive,
a positive, a positive development.
I think I wanted to, I wanted to be mindful of your time.
So, so wrap up with with with three last questions, but I
wanted to ask you, are there any other companies in the Bitcoin
space that excites you? So the the companies and the the
things that I think are the most important problems to be solving
are making custody and improving the custody experience.
So how do we get Bitcoins core value proposition?
We start at the beginning of the day that the call with of you
know, Bitcoin is a bare asset. Just the fact that you can
actually own it and and hold that yourself without an
intermediary is a revolutionary quality of Bitcoin.
And I feel like that is a lot of times an under served aspect of
Bitcoin. Now.
It's great because Satoshi gave us the ability to hold custody
over Bitcoin right out the gate and it's been amazing and it's
worked very well. But I think companies that are
working on custody and improving that, not only how to custody
yourself, but how to transfer that wealth to new generations
with inheritance and things like that is an increase is, is such
an important thing to be working on.
And so non custodial products are huge.
And so I, I love what and that can come in many ways.
I love what Unchained at Casa do.
I love what wallets like Zeus do to allow you to hold in control
of your money as well as be able to use it in your day-to-day.
So I think that is working on that.
There's probably no better or more important aspect of Bitcoin
than that then contributing to making that better.
I also think that, you know, a lot of the, the user experience
about living on Bitcoin and allowing people to use it as
kind of a circular economy has been a lot of the focus has been
on custodial solutions that, you know, are available
internationally. And I, I just, I think that's
great and I think it's an important thing that's
happening, but it's not the most important thing that Bitcoin is
solving for it. It, you know, a lot of, in a lot
of ways, custodial experiences of Bitcoin in many ways are just
degrees different than what we currently have versus non
custodial or self custodied experiences that allow you to
hold, send and receive are, are the most important, but they get
a lot less of the mind share and discussion and funding, frankly.
So I would like to see that changed.
I think there's a lot of good companies that are doing that
and especially you're going to see a lot of these models.
Start to propagate in a very, in a very kind of open source
manner. And as we make some big
breakthroughs on the user experience side, you're going to
see open source be able to do what it does best and replicate
very, very fast. And ultimately take over a lot
of these custodial band aids that we have around the world
right now that people currently use.
So I think there's there's no better place to put your time as
an entrepreneur than helping people hold their money in
better and easier ways. That's the most important thing
of Bitcoin. Yeah.
So is there any misconception that you wish to debunk and how
would you debunk it? Any misconception?
Oh my gosh, I think the number one thing, and we've seen this,
you see this a lot in Bitcoin. So there's a, a thing that
happened in early, early waves of Bitcoin where some people got
in so early and they miss, they misappropriate their, the
randomness and aspect of luck that they were in it so early.
And they miss attribute that to being extremely smart or seeing
something that nobody else does. And a lot of that moved into
them putting their next their next project into weird places.
A lot of it went to go, you know, propagating a lot of the
scams that you see and, you know, in the altcoin world said,
hey, I'm so genius to catch Bitcoin early.
I'm not. Now I get to show my next
project. It's even more genius and it's
better than Bitcoin. And, you know, there's just this
weird thing that can happen when you're early to something.
And I consider people who even adopted Bitcoin last year, the
year before, as early is that they can get their ego back into
clouding, you know, what Bitcoin is or where it should be going.
And I think you're going to see a lot of that over this next
year. You're going to see a huge push
to change Bitcoin in in certain ways, for better or for worse.
But I think it's going to be a lot of this is fueled by by ego.
And if Bitcoin is good at anything, it's smashing that.
But it's also proven to us that it can take many years to
recover from very big successful movements based on this ego or
this this kind of coercive approach to where Bitcoin should
be. And we're definitely going to be
experiencing that over the next year in a in a big way.
Yeah, yeah, One of the things I feel, and I think it ties into
what we talked about, about, you know, the waves and timing.
I you know, if you are in Bitcoin for a long time and you
know it for a long time and you're also a technical person,
yeah, of course you could build anything on Bitcoin.
But I think the main question is, should you be right?
And I think the answer to should you is probably no, because with
what it is right now, there's still so many more people to
reach, you know, and, and, and we are already like the analogy,
like we are, we are already at game time, you know, at the end
of a game and other people are still unpacking their shoes, you
know, and if you're building all this other crazy stuff now on
Bitcoin, it's like you're, they're still putting on their
shoes and you're just off the pitch, you're shooting up a
rocket in space or whatever that you could be right.
But like it, it shouldn't go too fast.
It should have got too fast. Just because you see it as one
of the, I don't know, 20 people in the world that that sees
certain possibility to, to to build on our extent.
Bitcoin doesn't mean you should, I think.
And I don't know if it was Sailor who said like, I don't
know, it's something with conservatism, but I think, I
think, I think that's spot on. Like we should not ossify the
code, I think, but we should take it slowly.
And it's very precarious, right? I think Sailor has a great
example of, you know, if you if you build that rocket into
space, you know, even the tiniest bolt on the tiniest part
of, of a of a little wing has to be correct.
You know, if you move it a centimeter to the right and you
know, maybe it goes off course and the entire thing explodes.
And I feel the same with Bitcoin.
I think that's a good analogy, right?
So yes, we should, we should keep building, but at a, at a
very slow conservative, conservative pace.
Yeah, yeah. Sorry, I wouldn't say something.
No, couldn't have said that better.
Yeah, the the the IT is increasingly the development of
Bitcoin starts to look a lot like, you know, life critical
engineering problems. And it has been for a while.
And we some of the, you know, some people don't think about it
that as that way. But you know, ultimately, you
know, what do we all what do we, what a lot of what we have just
said, what the what the space has said, you know, Bitcoin is,
is the is where you should be holding the fruit of your labor
to preserve time here and that what is that time?
It's your life. And so they're they're in needs
to have an approach that recognizes the seriousness of
that. Yeah, yeah, I agree.
All right, last question, and I ask everyone the same question,
which is what is a core belief that you will never let go?
Oh, I think and one of this is again related.
What we're talking about. I I truly believe the a a a life
path that is geared towards expanding and driving optimism
in your life is is the one thing that you should follow.
So what what leads you and those around you to a brighter,
healthier, happier future is absolutely critical.
And you know, whenever you see yourself in any type of
nihilistic or, or bleak understanding of the future,
that is a subject of you are probably not optimizing for the
tools you have around you to change your situation and, and
living a path where, hey, if I'm not in a state of optimism, I, I
have, I have let go my own agency in my life in certain
ways for someone else to tell a story.
And so I'd say that's one thing I've always tried to pursue is
work on things that I believe Dr. optimism in my life and
those around me. So it's and you know, maybe some
naivete is in there, but I think that's required to to make it
through. Love that man, thanks for
sharing. Thanks so much for your time, I
really appreciate it. I will link to your social
accounts, your Folds website so people can check that out.
And yeah man, appreciate you and happy to to be talking it.
Was great to be here, always a good conversation.
Cheers man. I hope you enjoyed this episode
and if you did, check out some of my other episodes to learn
why Bitcoin is the most important subject you must
understand and adopt. If you want, you can follow and
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