WEBVTT - How To Get Bitcoin For Free | Lolli 0:00:13.160 --> 0:00:15.280 All right, everyone, welcome back to another episode of the 0:00:15.320 --> 0:00:19.040 Market Disruptors podcast. Today, I'm joined by Alex Ailman. He's 0:00:19.040 --> 0:00:22.119 the CEO and co founder of Lolly and Lotly is 0:00:22.120 --> 0:00:24.919 a company that's really trying to push adoption, awareness and 0:00:24.960 --> 0:00:29.080 adoption in the bitcoin cryptocurrency space, and so someone that 0:00:29.120 --> 0:00:32.479 I'm really interested to talk to. So welcome Alex. Hey, 0:00:32.479 --> 0:00:34.960 thanks for having me. Yeah great, Um, I know we 0:00:35.040 --> 0:00:36.440 tried to line this up a couple of times. I'm 0:00:36.440 --> 0:00:38.760 glad we finally did. Uh. Like I said, I've been 0:00:38.760 --> 0:00:41.680 excited to talk to you. So for those that don't know, 0:00:41.760 --> 0:00:43.400 why don't you tell us a little bit about who 0:00:43.400 --> 0:00:46.240 you are, the products you worked in the past, how 0:00:46.320 --> 0:00:50.080 you got here, and and what you're doing. Yeah. So, yeah, 0:00:50.080 --> 0:00:51.680 my name is Alex um. I'm one of the co 0:00:51.800 --> 0:00:55.920 founders of Lolly and also the CEO of Lolly and Uh. Yeah. 0:00:55.960 --> 0:00:58.280 What we've created is a really simple way for people 0:00:58.320 --> 0:01:01.120 to earn bitcoin when they shop online as they normally would. 0:01:01.400 --> 0:01:04.039 So we have over nine hundred merchants on the platform. 0:01:04.640 --> 0:01:06.520 People are these are These are companies that you shop 0:01:06.560 --> 0:01:11.280 at every day. There's Walmart, there's price Line, Booking, dot Com, Safeway, grocery. 0:01:11.560 --> 0:01:14.600 UM places that people where you can go get your essentials. 0:01:14.640 --> 0:01:18.560 You get your groceries, you you take your travel, UM 0:01:18.680 --> 0:01:21.440 buy your toilet paper, whatever you're looking for, and we 0:01:21.520 --> 0:01:24.119 make it really easy for everybody to earn bitcoin when 0:01:24.160 --> 0:01:26.240 you when you do it so right now, it's a Chrome, 0:01:26.280 --> 0:01:29.880 Safari and Firefox extension and it's sort of like follows 0:01:29.920 --> 0:01:31.880 you around and you go to different sites and it 0:01:31.920 --> 0:01:33.320 pops up and it says, hey, do you want to 0:01:33.360 --> 0:01:36.560 earn ten percent back in bitcoin? You can also go 0:01:36.600 --> 0:01:39.200 to lolly dot com and see our nine hundred plus 0:01:39.240 --> 0:01:42.800 merchants on the platform, and UM earn more bitcoin when 0:01:42.800 --> 0:01:45.320 you do it. UM. So yeah, so we're we UM 0:01:45.480 --> 0:01:48.360 started this company after the whole team and I we 0:01:48.480 --> 0:01:52.600 built a previous company called Cosmic, and we sold into 0:01:52.720 --> 0:01:56.040 very similar space, UH into into merchants, and we would 0:01:56.040 --> 0:01:59.120 go to merchants and we would UM sell the solution 0:01:59.200 --> 0:02:01.480 to them that let them sell their products anywhere. With 0:02:01.560 --> 0:02:05.520 this mission of democratizing commerce. UM. We ended up learning 0:02:05.520 --> 0:02:07.800 about bitcoin a couple of years into building the company 0:02:08.240 --> 0:02:11.720 and found it just to be this like fascinating technology. UM. 0:02:12.520 --> 0:02:15.160 The whole team was really drawn into this idea of 0:02:15.240 --> 0:02:17.280 giving everyone in the world the ability to have the 0:02:17.320 --> 0:02:19.560 same asset and be able to trade that asset and 0:02:19.600 --> 0:02:22.280 send it anywhere in the world a cross border, thus 0:02:22.280 --> 0:02:25.960 democratizing commerce native to a currency. So we all got 0:02:26.000 --> 0:02:28.680 really excited about it. It never made sense for us 0:02:28.680 --> 0:02:31.000 as like a payments mechanism with our last company. We 0:02:31.040 --> 0:02:33.360 talked to merchants about it. They weren't really excited about 0:02:33.360 --> 0:02:35.399 it because it didn't really solve their real problems at 0:02:35.440 --> 0:02:37.680 that moment. So that's sort of where we started, like 0:02:37.720 --> 0:02:39.720 grew in this in this idea of how do you 0:02:39.760 --> 0:02:43.359 distribute bitcoin to more people. The next phase is, you know, 0:02:43.400 --> 0:02:46.280 we end up getting acquired by a company called pop 0:02:46.280 --> 0:02:48.200 Sugar to come into power one point two billion and 0:02:48.280 --> 0:02:51.800 retail revenue. A year after that, after we grew quite 0:02:51.800 --> 0:02:55.280 a bit post acquisition, a bigger company came along, Ebates, 0:02:55.639 --> 0:02:58.480 which is largerest cash back company in the US. They 0:02:58.480 --> 0:03:01.600 came along and bought us away from Pop Sugar in 0:03:01.600 --> 0:03:04.280 a divestiture. So we were there for about a year, 0:03:04.320 --> 0:03:07.519 got to learn the cashback model, and I was thinking 0:03:07.520 --> 0:03:09.600 while I was there, like, you know, pitch this to them, 0:03:09.720 --> 0:03:12.400 how incredible would it be to use the cash back 0:03:12.480 --> 0:03:16.760 model as a distribution mechanism for bitcoin to teach people 0:03:16.760 --> 0:03:19.079 about the bitcoin and spread it to more people. And 0:03:19.120 --> 0:03:21.880 the central thesis of that is that most people are 0:03:21.919 --> 0:03:25.120 not investors, and even more than that, most people are 0:03:25.160 --> 0:03:27.920 not miners. So how are you going to get mass 0:03:27.919 --> 0:03:32.839 bitcoin adoption without attracting a whole new wave of consumers. 0:03:33.200 --> 0:03:35.920 So we said, let's take this consumer that shops online 0:03:36.120 --> 0:03:39.960 that knows rewards, that once rewards, and let's share a 0:03:39.960 --> 0:03:43.000 bitcoin with them and introduce them to bitcoin in this 0:03:43.040 --> 0:03:46.080 new way. Um. And so yeah, we we launched about 0:03:46.160 --> 0:03:49.160 eleven months ago and it's just been incredible. We're bringing 0:03:49.160 --> 0:03:52.880 new people into bitcoin, we're bringing I think importantly women 0:03:52.880 --> 0:03:56.880 into bitcoin. Um there's thirty of our users are female. 0:03:57.320 --> 0:03:59.920 And and so just shows sort of like early signs 0:04:00.080 --> 0:04:04.920 of increased adoption by new people that previously did not 0:04:05.120 --> 0:04:08.880 have bitcoin where we're not um in the space. Yeah, 0:04:08.920 --> 0:04:13.800 that's awesome. So I think everyone's aware of the system, 0:04:13.840 --> 0:04:16.760 I suppose, right, So we're earning like cash or rewards back, 0:04:16.839 --> 0:04:20.200 so whether that's airline miles or target reward points or whatever. 0:04:20.560 --> 0:04:24.279 And then there's the cash back. Right, So now credit 0:04:24.320 --> 0:04:26.560 cards companies probably started it, but you know, now they'll 0:04:26.560 --> 0:04:29.880 give you cash back instead. But rather than in earning 0:04:29.880 --> 0:04:33.760 a cash back or a rewards point, you're given bitcoin 0:04:34.480 --> 0:04:37.600 exactly right. So we're taking something that people are already 0:04:37.600 --> 0:04:39.960 familiar with. We're not having to convince them that rewards 0:04:39.960 --> 0:04:42.640 are good, free things are good, um. But we're also 0:04:42.680 --> 0:04:46.480 assigning value and having people pay attention to it, not 0:04:46.600 --> 0:04:49.560 just around price and not just around investing, but around 0:04:49.640 --> 0:04:52.520 passive earning. And when they can go see that their 0:04:52.520 --> 0:04:56.120 points are deflating, um, you know, and and there's this 0:04:56.279 --> 0:05:00.000 like um or they started inflating. There's this inflationary name 0:05:00.040 --> 0:05:04.479 terature to two points, whereas bitcoin is like there's only 0:05:04.480 --> 0:05:07.839 twenty one million of them. You're getting real bitcoin, and 0:05:07.880 --> 0:05:12.000 that is going up in value because there's scarcity um 0:05:12.040 --> 0:05:14.640 and because more people believe in bitcoin and they're learning 0:05:14.680 --> 0:05:17.919 about the principles of bitcoin. Then like, so far, like 0:05:17.960 --> 0:05:20.800 our users have seen bitcoin triple and and they haven't 0:05:20.839 --> 0:05:23.080 seen the rewards triple, and they haven't seen their points triple. 0:05:23.200 --> 0:05:26.440 They've seen their points stay the same or deflate um 0:05:26.440 --> 0:05:29.720 in value. So I think it's really important. It's almost 0:05:29.720 --> 0:05:33.160 like a forcing function of teaching somebody about the importance 0:05:33.160 --> 0:05:36.640 of bitcoin indirectly, then they value it more and then 0:05:36.680 --> 0:05:39.320 they become more invested in it, um, and they're choosing 0:05:39.400 --> 0:05:43.040 us over cash back programs, which is a really great signal. Yeah, 0:05:43.080 --> 0:05:46.159 something is uh, something definitely switches in your brain when 0:05:46.160 --> 0:05:50.160 you start to realize how a deflationary currency works. And 0:05:50.200 --> 0:05:51.800 so um, a lot of people do come for the 0:05:51.839 --> 0:05:54.400 money aspect to make money, but then, like you said, 0:05:54.440 --> 0:05:56.599 as you see it going up in value, you're like, Wow, 0:05:56.640 --> 0:05:58.120 what the heck is this? I need to learn more 0:05:58.160 --> 0:06:00.320 about it. And it's weird because it even change changes 0:06:00.800 --> 0:06:02.560 the way that you want to spend money, the way 0:06:02.600 --> 0:06:04.320 you look at spending money, Like I look at spending 0:06:04.360 --> 0:06:06.120 dollars and I don't really think about it, but like, 0:06:06.279 --> 0:06:13.360 oh no, I'll never spend my bitcoin. So um, that's interesting. Now. Um, 0:06:13.400 --> 0:06:16.880 if I guess your primary market right now though it's 0:06:16.920 --> 0:06:19.640 people that are already aware of bitcoin, is there like 0:06:19.680 --> 0:06:22.839 an option where people maybe at first want to earn 0:06:23.000 --> 0:06:25.599 cash back and then they have an option to choose bitcoin. 0:06:25.640 --> 0:06:28.880 Are you only do bitcoin? We only do bitcoin. That's 0:06:28.880 --> 0:06:30.960 our that's like what we're really focused. And there's plenty 0:06:30.960 --> 0:06:34.240 of cash back companies out there, and I don't think 0:06:34.240 --> 0:06:36.480 that there needs to be any more competition on that front. 0:06:36.839 --> 0:06:39.640 You technically can, like you can exchange it for cash 0:06:39.680 --> 0:06:42.920 like you can you you get Bitcoin is the default currency, 0:06:43.320 --> 0:06:45.400 and I think that's really important for our brand to 0:06:45.440 --> 0:06:48.520 be around bitcoin. UM. But you can get cash and 0:06:48.560 --> 0:06:50.640 you can do whatever your bitcoin is your bitcoin like, 0:06:50.720 --> 0:06:53.120 you can do it whatever you want with it UM 0:06:53.200 --> 0:06:55.960 And so some you know, very few people have like 0:06:56.160 --> 0:06:59.679 cashed out when you know, when their bitcoin triple double whatever, 0:06:59.800 --> 0:07:02.440 you know, whatever point that they got into UM. But 0:07:02.720 --> 0:07:05.080 for the most part, people were turning people into holders, 0:07:05.400 --> 0:07:08.360 you know, hoddlers and and and that's been like our 0:07:08.360 --> 0:07:11.240 bread and butter. And do you offer wallet or do 0:07:11.280 --> 0:07:13.960 you transfer to the wallet of the address of their choosing. 0:07:14.560 --> 0:07:17.160 So Lolly is effectively a wallet. It's a custodial wallet, 0:07:17.400 --> 0:07:20.360 and most people are keeping it within the wallet. There's 0:07:20.400 --> 0:07:22.920 certain like bitcoin maximalists that have earned you know, hundreds 0:07:22.920 --> 0:07:26.280 of dollars in bitcoin and are you know, feel safer 0:07:26.440 --> 0:07:28.640 you know, holding their own keys and so you can 0:07:28.680 --> 0:07:31.000 transfer it out and hold it your own It's really 0:07:31.080 --> 0:07:34.200 up to you. UM. We it's sort of our mission 0:07:34.280 --> 0:07:37.640 to teach people the importance of self sovereignty. And being 0:07:37.640 --> 0:07:40.680 their own bank and owning their keys. But there's a 0:07:40.720 --> 0:07:43.120 lot of people that want other people to manage that 0:07:43.200 --> 0:07:45.400 for them. And so you know, we can't come from 0:07:45.440 --> 0:07:48.040 a payment's background. We come from uh, you know, our 0:07:48.120 --> 0:07:51.120 last company was pc I Level one compliant. We were uh, 0:07:51.320 --> 0:07:54.320 you know, we we had a extreme dedication you know, 0:07:54.360 --> 0:07:56.760 partly because we had too in security, privacy and all 0:07:56.760 --> 0:07:58.560 of that good stuff. So I think that a lot 0:07:58.560 --> 0:08:00.240 of people you know, are trusting us with you know 0:08:00.240 --> 0:08:02.720 that we're we're taking the same principles and protocols and 0:08:02.760 --> 0:08:06.080 applying them to the bitcoin space that we did uh 0:08:06.080 --> 0:08:08.680 in the payments world. Um, but you know, some people 0:08:08.720 --> 0:08:11.440 don't you know, trust anybody, and they want their own bitcoin, 0:08:11.520 --> 0:08:14.720 even with like fifteen dollars bitcoin. So it's really up 0:08:14.720 --> 0:08:17.320 to the consumer. Their money should be you know, up 0:08:17.320 --> 0:08:19.040 to them. And that's the whole thing that we have 0:08:19.120 --> 0:08:22.160 to teach people, is like you should have control of 0:08:22.160 --> 0:08:23.640 your money and be able to do it with what 0:08:23.880 --> 0:08:27.240 you want, and you shouldn't um like if you you know, 0:08:27.280 --> 0:08:30.000 give a bank cash, like it's debatable if that's really 0:08:30.040 --> 0:08:32.680 your money. Um, the bank's doing all these things with it, 0:08:32.720 --> 0:08:35.200 they're lending, So we like to think about like the 0:08:35.200 --> 0:08:39.520 future banking system, giving these like attraction layers of earning 0:08:39.600 --> 0:08:42.400 like lending, um cash back, these sort of things, and 0:08:42.440 --> 0:08:46.040 giving it back to the consumer. Uh I think that, 0:08:46.280 --> 0:08:48.880 like one of the most difficult things about bitcoin, which 0:08:48.880 --> 0:08:51.320 you can probably relate to, is a lot of people 0:08:51.360 --> 0:08:53.640 just don't understand what money is and they don't understand 0:08:53.679 --> 0:08:56.040 how money works. Thus they're like, well, what what are 0:08:56.080 --> 0:08:58.720 the issues? Like my cash works at my you know, 0:08:58.760 --> 0:09:01.640 at my whole foods, like my credit card works, but 0:09:01.640 --> 0:09:04.240 they don't understand the back in systems of like how 0:09:04.280 --> 0:09:06.520 it all works and why and where it breaks down. 0:09:06.960 --> 0:09:10.320 So bitcoin is like better money. It's more efficient. It's 0:09:10.360 --> 0:09:14.600 like it functions without needing any any trust in any 0:09:14.679 --> 0:09:18.559 centralized parties and no data breaches. It's just like this beautiful, 0:09:18.559 --> 0:09:21.959 incredible piece of code that we all can use, um, 0:09:22.000 --> 0:09:26.400 you know, hypothetically for this like new money. Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, 0:09:26.440 --> 0:09:28.720 you're absolutely right. People have no idea how the financial 0:09:28.720 --> 0:09:32.200 system works. And um, when I do a lot of uh, 0:09:32.400 --> 0:09:34.160 I do a lot of digging through history to kind 0:09:34.160 --> 0:09:36.600 of bring some of those lessons back. And it's interesting 0:09:36.640 --> 0:09:38.480 because when you look back all the way to like 0:09:38.559 --> 0:09:40.480 the founding of the United States. And you see some 0:09:40.520 --> 0:09:43.240 of the quotes from Thomas Jefferson, but Benjamin Franklin, but 0:09:43.559 --> 0:09:46.760 even Henry Ford in the early nineteen hundred said that, uh, 0:09:46.800 --> 0:09:49.040 you know, he said that if if the average, if 0:09:49.080 --> 0:09:52.320 if the Americans understood how the financial system worked, there 0:09:52.320 --> 0:09:54.360 would be a revolution overnight. And like this is like 0:09:54.400 --> 0:09:58.040 in the early nineteen hundreds, and they got it back then. Um, 0:09:58.200 --> 0:10:00.480 numerous quotes of you know, how much danger will be 0:10:00.480 --> 0:10:03.920 in if the central banks take over and all these things. Um, 0:10:03.960 --> 0:10:06.520 but now you know over you know, the last eighty years, 0:10:06.600 --> 0:10:09.280 hundred years of education has been completely changed and now 0:10:09.360 --> 0:10:12.560 nobody is aware of it. But hopefully that changes. I'm 0:10:12.559 --> 0:10:16.360 curious because now you've built your you're a builder. You've 0:10:16.360 --> 0:10:19.239 built a couple of companies and and a couple of acquisitions. 0:10:19.240 --> 0:10:21.599 So you've built it in like the payment space and 0:10:21.720 --> 0:10:24.680 the like the reward space, cash back space, and now 0:10:25.000 --> 0:10:30.840 bitcoin space. Um, how similar is it or how much 0:10:30.920 --> 0:10:33.920 different is it building in the bitcoin crypto space versus 0:10:33.960 --> 0:10:36.720 like a traditional like points back or cash back space. 0:10:37.480 --> 0:10:40.319 So yeah, it's a great question. Um. I mean, building 0:10:40.320 --> 0:10:41.959 a company is build a company and a second time. 0:10:42.280 --> 0:10:47.000 It's just like it's so different like the second time around. UM, 0:10:47.200 --> 0:10:50.360 and I love to like share my like musings with 0:10:50.640 --> 0:10:53.960 they just building companies in general. UM, and so we're 0:10:54.240 --> 0:10:55.719 like one thing a lot of people don't know is 0:10:55.760 --> 0:10:57.720 like we're building with the same team as our last company. 0:10:57.760 --> 0:11:00.880 So we we had an incredible team, we like everyone, 0:11:00.920 --> 0:11:02.640 and we got the band back together to start this. 0:11:02.760 --> 0:11:06.480 So having like the trust built into the this next company. 0:11:06.559 --> 0:11:08.880 We you know, we we built some pretty incredible technology 0:11:08.880 --> 0:11:11.120 with the last company. We love building together. We all 0:11:11.120 --> 0:11:13.040 trust each other, we work early well together, and so 0:11:13.600 --> 0:11:17.000 uh of us built our our last company together. UM. 0:11:17.040 --> 0:11:19.080 And you know I've taken a lot of like learnings 0:11:19.080 --> 0:11:21.920 from that. So our day to day is very similar 0:11:21.960 --> 0:11:24.800 to building any company. UM. You know, you're hiring people, 0:11:24.880 --> 0:11:28.480 you're you're you're doing that, everything very similar. The customers 0:11:28.480 --> 0:11:30.360 are a little bit different. I don't think that a 0:11:30.440 --> 0:11:34.120 lot of people, UM, because so our last company was 0:11:34.160 --> 0:11:36.400 mainly like an enterprise company that was like our our 0:11:36.520 --> 0:11:40.120 primary play. And building a consumer company, I think is 0:11:40.240 --> 0:11:42.760 very different. And building a consumer company in the bitcoin 0:11:42.840 --> 0:11:45.480 space is also very different. UM. I think that you 0:11:45.520 --> 0:11:48.240 have to be very very transparent. You have to be 0:11:48.360 --> 0:11:50.920 you have to tell people exactly what you're doing. You're 0:11:50.960 --> 0:11:53.320 you have to have you know, we have open source 0:11:53.360 --> 0:11:57.640 code and like we we we want people to um, 0:11:57.679 --> 0:11:59.600 you know, make sure keep us honest about like the 0:11:59.600 --> 0:12:01.200 things that we're doing, the business practice that we're doing, 0:12:01.240 --> 0:12:04.320 which be very transparent with our community. UM. That said, 0:12:04.720 --> 0:12:08.880 we get, we get, and we have this extremely engaged community, 0:12:08.920 --> 0:12:11.160 like if you follow us on Twitter, you know, like 0:12:11.400 --> 0:12:13.760 like people who use Lolly are obsessed with it and 0:12:13.800 --> 0:12:18.080 they love stacking stacks, they love earning bitcoin and and 0:12:18.120 --> 0:12:20.439 so when you're building in this like transparent, like I 0:12:20.480 --> 0:12:23.600 think people love the story when they love to feel 0:12:23.679 --> 0:12:26.000 like they're building with us. And we because we build 0:12:26.000 --> 0:12:29.640 so open and we like leverage our community to go 0:12:29.720 --> 0:12:33.320 get new merchants, which increases the adoption of bitcoin. Like 0:12:33.400 --> 0:12:36.360 every like we're all working together, like they're stacking stacks. 0:12:36.760 --> 0:12:39.480 We're you know, we're getting new merchants. UM. We do 0:12:39.559 --> 0:12:41.120 this game where we're like, oh, who do you want 0:12:41.160 --> 0:12:43.040 to see next? And like people are like, oh, I 0:12:43.080 --> 0:12:46.400 want safe Way, I want UM, I want like hotels 0:12:46.440 --> 0:12:48.680 dot com, I want Booking dot Com. And then we 0:12:48.720 --> 0:12:50.920 go show those two like Booking dot com and we 0:12:50.960 --> 0:12:53.960 go get them on board because our community demanded it, 0:12:54.240 --> 0:12:58.400 and they see this like this incredibly engaged community. So 0:12:58.559 --> 0:13:00.520 building in the bitcoin space, I think it's like really 0:13:00.600 --> 0:13:04.760 nice because with with with when we were at ebates, 0:13:05.000 --> 0:13:06.920 one of the things we learned is like the coupon 0:13:07.520 --> 0:13:11.079 clippers and sort of like this older generation that transitioned 0:13:11.080 --> 0:13:13.679 into ebates and was obsessed with cash back is like 0:13:13.720 --> 0:13:17.000 this rabid customer that like loves getting their cash back. 0:13:17.440 --> 0:13:19.360 And I mean who doesn't love getting like things for 0:13:19.440 --> 0:13:22.160 free and like getting cash and and so people who 0:13:22.160 --> 0:13:24.520 are like getting SATs back and people who are getting 0:13:24.520 --> 0:13:28.440 bitcoin back are like so excited to like get involved. 0:13:28.520 --> 0:13:31.200 And every time we land a new merchant, it's like 0:13:31.320 --> 0:13:34.520 one step you know forward for the bitcoin community. Because 0:13:34.679 --> 0:13:37.800 we've been very transparent about our roadmap. It starts with 0:13:37.840 --> 0:13:41.199 rewards and then over time as we as bitcoin transitions 0:13:41.200 --> 0:13:44.240 from a store of value to a medium of exchange, 0:13:44.520 --> 0:13:47.520 we're at that point of transition with that, like Vertex, 0:13:48.000 --> 0:13:50.160 And that's what gets so excited when we go drive 0:13:50.200 --> 0:13:52.480 fifty million dollars in sales for Walmart and I go 0:13:52.559 --> 0:13:54.680 to them and say, hey, you guys are spending five 0:13:54.720 --> 0:13:57.080 billion dollars in credit card fees. I don't even know 0:13:57.120 --> 0:13:59.760 how much you're spending in chargebacks. Why don't you use 0:13:59.800 --> 0:14:02.040 bit poin, Why don't you use some sort of digitally 0:14:02.080 --> 0:14:08.120 native currency with immutability to solve your issue around UM fraud, 0:14:08.880 --> 0:14:11.440 to solve your issue around like credit card fees. And 0:14:11.480 --> 0:14:13.800 if we're at that point of purchase and we have 0:14:13.840 --> 0:14:16.400 all these consumers that are like using wally as like 0:14:16.440 --> 0:14:19.720 their preferred rewards wallet, that gets really exciting. To save 0:14:19.760 --> 0:14:22.800 people even more money, to bring even more transparency to 0:14:22.880 --> 0:14:26.880 eat commerce, to purchasing, to commerce in general. Like, that's 0:14:26.920 --> 0:14:29.440 that's where it gets really exciting. So I personally like 0:14:29.480 --> 0:14:32.080 love building in the bitcoin space. I think it's really exciting. 0:14:32.160 --> 0:14:34.400 And I just don't think that there's like too many 0:14:34.480 --> 0:14:38.680 markets that have a consumer that is so passionate about 0:14:38.680 --> 0:14:41.360 the future and this like new world that we're all 0:14:41.400 --> 0:14:44.240 creating together. Well, it's a it's a it's a it's 0:14:44.280 --> 0:14:45.720 a good thing and a bad thing. I think the 0:14:45.760 --> 0:14:48.680 reason why the people, the consumers are so passionate is 0:14:48.720 --> 0:14:51.560 because we're in such an early stage, and so in 0:14:51.600 --> 0:14:54.560 the early stage, the early adopters are like the true believers, 0:14:54.920 --> 0:14:58.080 and so the true believers, early adopters are going to 0:14:58.120 --> 0:15:00.280 be super passionate about it and are going to want 0:15:00.320 --> 0:15:02.000 to share it, which is why it's amazing to work 0:15:02.000 --> 0:15:04.880 with them. The con to that is that it's a 0:15:04.880 --> 0:15:08.080 small segment of the population. Uh So, um, you know, 0:15:08.120 --> 0:15:10.440 as that segment of the population grows, maybe some of 0:15:10.440 --> 0:15:13.480 that enthusiasm enthusiasm died down a little bit. But that's 0:15:13.480 --> 0:15:15.880 an interesting insight that you have and I can see that. 0:15:16.000 --> 0:15:19.280 So people are used to getting rewards back. People like 0:15:19.400 --> 0:15:23.200 getting cash back better, but we have cash everywhere. This 0:15:23.280 --> 0:15:26.000 is this is bitcoin and so for the true believers, 0:15:26.000 --> 0:15:28.960 they really want that. I guess, uh, you know, So 0:15:29.120 --> 0:15:31.920 on the consumer side, I get that. I'm thinking more 0:15:32.000 --> 0:15:35.240 about like the new maybe like regulatory side that you 0:15:35.240 --> 0:15:37.600 have to deal with. So for example, you're a wallet provider, 0:15:37.920 --> 0:15:40.840 so now you have like a bitcoin custody to deal with. 0:15:40.920 --> 0:15:43.840 I would imagine that's more challenging than just sending points 0:15:43.840 --> 0:15:47.880 back or cash back or is that not much different? Um? 0:15:48.240 --> 0:15:51.320 I mean it is, But it's like, you know, we 0:15:51.400 --> 0:15:54.160 work with some like you know, incredible third parties that 0:15:54.360 --> 0:15:58.280 like like are you know, they have um, like the 0:15:58.320 --> 0:16:01.040 regulatory licenses that we need, so we can off board 0:16:01.040 --> 0:16:06.400 a lot of the UM the that side of the 0:16:06.440 --> 0:16:11.520 house to other parties that specialize in custodial solutions, and 0:16:11.880 --> 0:16:13.920 we can really focus on the part of the business 0:16:13.920 --> 0:16:18.080 that we are uniquely great at. And it's it's it's 0:16:18.120 --> 0:16:21.480 just as uh it's I mean, it's hard to build anything, 0:16:21.520 --> 0:16:23.480 but like I mean, building our last company was really 0:16:23.520 --> 0:16:26.120 hard and has our last company had so many challenges 0:16:26.400 --> 0:16:27.640 that we had to deal with that we don't have 0:16:27.640 --> 0:16:30.360 to deal with this company. So there's like given, you know, 0:16:30.520 --> 0:16:32.440 sort of a give and take in pros and cons 0:16:32.480 --> 0:16:35.000 to building any business. And I think, you know, I mean, 0:16:35.280 --> 0:16:37.600 I think a lot of people, including myself, are maybe 0:16:37.640 --> 0:16:41.480 concerned or at least aware of of its seat. It 0:16:41.520 --> 0:16:44.440 seems to be very difficult to do crypto based businesses, 0:16:44.560 --> 0:16:47.880 bitcoin based businesses in the United States. UM. We saw 0:16:48.040 --> 0:16:50.880 I think just this week even Goldman Zack's company Circle 0:16:51.120 --> 0:16:53.720 announced they're moving most of Poloniacs offshore because they just 0:16:53.720 --> 0:16:57.120 can't deal with US regulations. UM. So we see this 0:16:57.280 --> 0:17:00.720 happening over and over and over UM US people being 0:17:00.760 --> 0:17:04.320 blocked from participating in different UM different exchanges and things 0:17:04.320 --> 0:17:06.400 like that as well. So I was just curious if 0:17:06.440 --> 0:17:09.000 you experienced any roadblocks. But as far as you're concerned, 0:17:09.000 --> 0:17:10.679 you're saying, it's kind of about the same for what 0:17:10.720 --> 0:17:13.400 you're doing. Yeah, it's pretty much. Uh, it's a lot 0:17:13.440 --> 0:17:15.040 of the same and there. I mean, like I guess 0:17:15.080 --> 0:17:16.960 it's you know, you only know what you don't know. 0:17:17.160 --> 0:17:19.120 And like when we started this business, there's so many 0:17:19.119 --> 0:17:20.560 things that we learned and we had to learn and 0:17:20.560 --> 0:17:22.840 we've gotten good at so and like also, you know, 0:17:22.880 --> 0:17:24.639 we've been in the bitcoin space for five years, so 0:17:24.640 --> 0:17:27.080 it's not like these are new things to us. We 0:17:27.080 --> 0:17:29.360 we know the regulations, we know how to like we've 0:17:29.400 --> 0:17:32.320 built in the space for a long time. Uh. And 0:17:32.359 --> 0:17:35.760 I actually think that payments, the payments space, which is 0:17:35.760 --> 0:17:38.560 what we're doing, previously had way more regulations and was 0:17:38.600 --> 0:17:40.720 way more I mean, like our claim to fame in 0:17:40.760 --> 0:17:42.520 the payments world, which you know doesn't get a lot 0:17:42.560 --> 0:17:45.159 of uh press or credit or whatever, is Like we 0:17:45.200 --> 0:17:48.639 survived the Target breach, um you know five six years ago. Uh, 0:17:48.680 --> 0:17:51.000 Target had like the biggest breach of all time, and 0:17:51.040 --> 0:17:53.240 we had just landed them, and we had to survive 0:17:53.280 --> 0:17:55.600 all of these penetration tests as like this four person 0:17:55.720 --> 0:17:58.359 company and and so that was like a really like 0:17:58.400 --> 0:18:01.919 scared moment. But you you know, we've built an incredibly 0:18:01.920 --> 0:18:04.840 secure platform. What does that mean? You had to survive 0:18:04.920 --> 0:18:10.640 the penetration tests, so without disposing too much information from targets. 0:18:10.640 --> 0:18:14.920 And basically like when Target got bridge, when anyone gets breached, 0:18:15.359 --> 0:18:17.280 they have to go test all of their vendors to 0:18:17.320 --> 0:18:20.160 make sure that everyone is compliant. And and then they 0:18:20.160 --> 0:18:23.800 do advance like security screenings on all the different technologies 0:18:23.800 --> 0:18:26.920 and like third parties come in UM to reevaluate which 0:18:27.119 --> 0:18:29.119 which parties they can keep, which parties they have to 0:18:29.119 --> 0:18:32.679 get rid of UM because they had revamped security to 0:18:32.840 --> 0:18:35.040 never have a breach again into like you know, really 0:18:35.080 --> 0:18:38.520 like lockdown, and as the smallest vendor by far that 0:18:38.560 --> 0:18:42.919 they had, we were able to survive that breach. And 0:18:42.960 --> 0:18:45.920 so we only did that because we built the best 0:18:45.960 --> 0:18:49.160 technology and the most secure technology in the space. And 0:18:49.200 --> 0:18:50.960 we did that from day one. And there's a lot 0:18:51.000 --> 0:18:54.000 of things that I think my team like our principles 0:18:54.240 --> 0:18:57.000 are around where we like, we will not compromise on privacy, 0:18:57.040 --> 0:18:59.719 we will not compromise on security, and doesn't matter if 0:18:59.720 --> 0:19:02.280 it takes longer to build and ship because of that 0:19:02.320 --> 0:19:05.800 we just we're we're not willing to give that up. 0:19:05.840 --> 0:19:08.080 So we took we took those principles with Cosmic. We 0:19:08.080 --> 0:19:11.240 were rewarded with like by them. And I mean think 0:19:11.280 --> 0:19:14.280 about like your incentives as a new startup, Like if 0:19:14.320 --> 0:19:18.840 you get hacked, if you get breached like that, you 0:19:18.920 --> 0:19:22.520 lose credibility, you lose trust, and so you're incentivized to 0:19:23.080 --> 0:19:25.159 look out for those sort of things and into like 0:19:25.640 --> 0:19:27.520 do what you do what you have to do to 0:19:27.600 --> 0:19:31.080 like be the most secure company and to not get breached. 0:19:31.200 --> 0:19:34.760 Let's not get hacked. It seems like most people really 0:19:35.040 --> 0:19:38.280 today don't don't even really think about their privacy. I 0:19:38.320 --> 0:19:40.280 think some of these hacks are starting to bring some 0:19:40.359 --> 0:19:42.199 of that to the forefront. I think it's still a 0:19:42.240 --> 0:19:46.280 long way off. Um, would you agree with that? Yeah? 0:19:46.480 --> 0:19:48.959 I mean if I could like snap my fingers and 0:19:49.000 --> 0:19:52.000 do just about anything, I I one of the one 0:19:52.000 --> 0:19:55.360 of my first initiatives would be to like have everyone 0:19:55.480 --> 0:19:58.600 understand why like the importance of privacy and the importance 0:19:58.680 --> 0:20:02.359 of like their identity. Um. I think that credit card 0:20:02.400 --> 0:20:09.000