EP31 Bitcoin podcast with Nishal Ratanji.

Welcome back to BitByBit, you'll hear something different in the background. This is the music from the recent 21-ism Bitcoin Art Collective, its agent orange licensed to shill. The movie mashup and the original music soundtrack were created by Hodler Than Now, he was on

this podcast episode 24, so for anyone who hasn't had a listen, definitely go back and check it out. The titles were done by self-banked, also been on the show episode 27, and The Voice Over is done by Ruby Ali.

I came across this the other day and I'd had both the boys on in recent podcasts, they're absolutely fantastic, putting out some amazing memes and some brilliant content for anyone who hasn't already seen Agent Orange, a licensed to shill.

I've put a link in the show notes, definitely go and check it out, it's only a couple of minutes long, but it's absolutely brilliant. This is exactly the sort of work that helps onboard newcomers to the space.

In the show today, I'm speaking to Nish Retangi. Nish is working with some of the best companies in the Bitcoin space. I met him through OB and they are now sponsoring the show. I spoke to Nish a few times, it was interesting to hear his perspective as somebody who's trying to market Bitcoin businesses and products.

It was really interesting to get Nish's perspective on things. He has now become a Bitcoiner, but he obviously came into the space, looking at it purely from a marketing perspective. I'd also like to say thank you to everyone who's reached out and been asking questions.

Thank you for all the positive feedback I've been receiving, it's really nice to hear. I had a great time recording this and I hope you enjoy listening. Welcome back to the Bit by Bit podcast.

Today I have Nish Retangi. Nish was introduced to me through OB who's the CEO of Coin Floor. They are now, as I've mentioned before, sponsoring the podcast. I got in contact with Nish. We had a long chat about two, three weeks ago and I said, "You know what, I'd really

like to get you on to talk about the other side of Bitcoin that we don't really talk about so often and how we get this idea into the heads of normies." So, Nish, if you could introduce yourself and tell us your plans, please.

Thanks Max. Thanks for having me on the podcast. Yes, so my background is I'm a marketing and communications head. I started life in the B2B tech PR space. I always had a passion for finance and fintech and eventually, through my 10 years doing the job, found myself in a role where I was focused on that.

So, now I've gone off and started doing my own thing. A lot of my clients are Bitcoin focused now and we seem to have developed quite a good niche in the space. You obviously look after OB.

You also put me in touch with Danny as well. You've got a few clients who are in this space. How did you come across Bitcoin and how did this all happen? That's a good question. So, I expect a lot of the people you have on the show come into Bitcoin very early on.

I, myself, was actually introduced to it directly through the likes of OB, who then subsequently introduced me to Danny Brewster from FastBitcoins. I've really, through them and through my own curiosity in reading, have come into it from that light.

But indirectly, my passion has always been investment in the economy. So, when I first actually started reading about Bitcoin, I was always quite into the idea of learning more about money and the concept of money and how money works.

And since my university days, I guess I grew up with some of those conspiracy YouTube videos like Zeitgeist, and I don't know if you've seen that, they're left field, but it does draw your attention to some of the key issues that are at play.

Being a former kind of, having studied economics, I've naturally had a passion for it. One of the books I remember having on my shelf, and I've just reread it again, was Ron Paul's End, the Fed, and I remember picking that up when I was about 17 or 18, and I kind of totally agreed with that premise.

And you know, just going through the financial crisis, you start to, I mean, I immediately understood then what money was, you know, it really hit home during that time what money was. But I didn't, you know, of course, of course, I didn't know about Bitcoin.

And I guess those two, it was fate, let's call it fate. I started learning more about it through reading books like the Bitcoin standard, keeping up to date with the news as kind of marketing and PIs do, and just being introduced to new subjects and topics via the likes of my clients, which is amazing.

So, you know, Obi, for example, brought me on to the subject of custody and the importance of doing that. Danny really started working with him from the ground up to launch FastBitcoins, and kind of he taught me a lot about the lightning network and why that was revolutionary.

We're working with the guys at Casa now, of course, they're doing great things in the kind of custody space too. And you just, you just learn, right, because one of the issues I'd say for most marketing agencies is that they try and perceive to be the know, the know all, you know, whereas

we get a lot of our information simply by being curious and asking our clients the really stupid questions. So is it being quite a steep learning curve for you then? Is it been something that you found you've naturally just wanted to learn more about?

Or is it been something you've had to actually really work hard to have the knowledge and learn from these guys and all about the security and taking control of keys and lightning network and all that kind of stuff?

Or are you fairly techy anyway? I'm not going to pretend that I'm a technical expert by any means, you know, if we're going to talk real deep technology and innovation, I would be left clueless.

I'm not a coder or a developer of any sorts. But where I do see the correlation is Bitcoin and its value within the economy. And I guess that's, you know, being able to describe that value to, as you say, the normies is exactly what we're trying to do with a lot of our clients today.

And I believe that's what a lot of the Bitcoin industry is looking to do today as well. Yeah, it makes sense, it makes sense because there's a very small group currently who are interested in this stuff, really, it's a very, very small percentage of people.

But I think most people agree that Bitcoin is very useful for most people. It may be useful in different ways, but it's very useful for most people. So I guess that's then your job there is to, how do you get normal people who aren't currently interested to prick their ears up and actually have some interest?

Absolutely, and we've spoken about it before. Key moments such as the halving, which correlated with the Federal Reserve's record-breaking money printing really helps to put the subject of Bitcoin in the mainstream.

And I think as we go on, particularly during this time, there is a great opportunity for not just to market, not to be selfish, but actually to use this as an opportunity to get the narrative right and actually communicate to everyone about why Bitcoin is relevant

during this time, because, for example, some of the people that I've been speaking to particularly, I use my parents as an example, they fit that criteria of coming close to retirement, they are somewhat financially savvy, they have a background, they grew up saving, they've

experienced high interest rates, where saving doesn't really have been a problem, and they've also experienced really, really terribly low interest rates. Because they've gone through that peak and trough, and also they've experienced inflation by way of higher prices on products, and also shrinkflation, which is also the downsizing

of products as well, and they're starting to question it. More people around that age group are starting to question that, and it presents an interesting opportunity to engage people about Bitcoin, particularly in the mainstream.

Do you think that's a certain thing that's happened in the last year or two? Or do you just think it's lots of small changes that everyone has seen over a certain amount of time, and over time they just go hang on a minute, things aren't quite right, and then they're open to learning?

Do you think it's like a couple of big things, or just loads and loads of smaller things that people are piecing together? I think it's the latter, I do think it's slowly then very quickly, if that makes sense.

The pressure and the noise around Bitcoin has been building for some time, and for example, if we're talking about stories in particular, every so often comes along a story of a big company that is affiliated with Bitcoin, or some bankers looking at Bitcoin, or considering

Bitcoin payments, or something like that, it's a constant din coupled with the occasional huge actualisation stories of, for example, we spoke briefly about the Fed the other day, that's a huge indirect signal there, and I think it's a combination of those things,

which are those sort of stories that have compounded over time. What I think is lacking is a very, very clear link between what is going wrong with money and how Bitcoin can fix that, a very clear link in the mainstream, because I've been in the media game for a while, particularly in the Bitcoin space, and I know that certain

publications that have immense influence against it, or have an agenda against Bitcoin, or they don't truly believe it's a mechanism for accumulating wealth or investment, they purely see it as something speculative, because they themselves don't understand the key properties

of Bitcoin beyond what they feel is left field, which they choose to ignore, right? I mean, still today you get stories about Bitcoin being used as a dark market currency, but I would say that the scale is slowly tipping in Bitcoin's favour, and I think that there

are certain people within the industry doing great things, and positioning themselves in the right way, and not just as companies, but actually getting the rights kinds of messages out there to the right kinds of people.

Yeah, like you say, it's also, it's not just onboarding people, it's actually getting them to understand what it's all about really, and that's one thing that I really liked with coin floor is that they have the education as part of it, they're doing it in a way that

it's very difficult to do something stupid, because all you can do is buy Bitcoin and dollar cost average, so like for 99.9% of people, that is the safest best way for them to enter the market, and then they have the education alongside that, so it's something

that I wouldn't ever worry sending someone, if I have a friend or family and they're like, "Oh, where do I buy from?" and say, "Okay, well just go there, you really can't make a mistake," and that's, I think that's probably going to be one of the most key parts is the education.

Yeah, I totally agree, I think that education and experience is going to be, and getting the experience right, sorry, is going to be absolutely critical for mainstream adoption. We spoke about it briefly beforehand, but one of the challenges in this space is that

that experience completely contradicts the mind of someone who is technical, because they do great things developing amazing products, at the same time what's challenging for them is someone like me coming along saying, "You need to make it simpler."

It almost feels like sometimes you're discrediting the product and all the hard work that goes into it, and it always hurts a little bit, and I know it does, but it's about striking, particularly, you know, not all products are geared towards the consumer, you know, first

and foremost, those that are absolutely need to consider exactly what the audience wants and to message against that, and in this day and age it is about complete simplicity, you know, like the premise for good marketing and good service hasn't changed really, it's

always about delivering that personal service, it's about providing a product that is easy to use and simple to use and transparent, and in the background there are values that consumers want to see, even more so from Bitcoin companies, right?

You want to see that they're credible, you want to see and feel that you can trust them, you want to see and feel that there is someone there on the other side from which you can talk to if you have any issues, right?

Yeah, like you say, especially in this industry, a bearer asset, you know, someone is looking after that or teaching you how to, I mean obviously with like CASA they're helping make people more secure, and then you have like coin floor helping on board people, and they're

fantastic, you know, if you have to keep your keys with someone for a short amount of time then they do things a lot better in many ways than the other exchanges, but end goal should really be get the keys off and be holding them and, you know, have ideally multi-sig and

all these things, and it's not really very simple, still now, but companies like CASA definitely make that easier, so is it something that you've struggled with when you're speaking to companies and, you know, is it something, like you say, they get upset because this

is their baby and you're saying no, people don't care about this part, this part, this part, we just need to focus on this, is that a difficult process or have most people just taken advice and just gone okay, yeah, I understand?

Every client's different, Max, I would say that there are certain clients which will definitely challenge your assumptions, right, and that's completely fair, people want to know why this is the right approach because at the end of the day you've been hired as a specialist

to inform on a particular task and all this work can't go into building an awesome product for it only to be kind of tapered back when it comes to developing the value proposition or a marketing campaign, you know, some are easier than others, but I think that, you

know, for example, the guys at Casa, they have a very specific mission, you know, and that is to make it easy and they've done a wonderful job way before me in order to be able to create that great user experience, what they're looking to do, of course, is

like any or most of these companies is reach a much broader audience and that requires further understanding into what the audience wants or, you know, defining the audience first, foremost, actually, and understanding what they want and then messaging against

that and in some cases, even building, you know, building iterations into your product that meet these requirements. Yeah, it's really interesting to see this from a different point of view and sort of like how we market it because, you know, on this show and most podcasts, a lot of it

is getting very technical and into the weeds and with new updates and releases and what's changing and I guess most of this just isn't seen by certainly someone new coming into the space.

So, what are they seeing? Can you give us some insight of like what's drawing them in, what's scaring people off? They're things that we're missing as an industry where people are like, "Oh, I wish there was such and such."

Like, I'll give you an example. The other day, it went to a friend of mine's house and was chatting away and his parents were pretty wealthy people, very against Bitcoin, don't want to know about it blah, blah, blah.

And I sold them on a couple of the benefits and they were like, "Okay, well, that's kind of reasonable, but I don't like this idea of having to control keys and then where do I store it?"

And the biggest issue for them actually was like, "Oh, it's too much of a pain. It's too difficult for me to bother with." So surely you just have someone who does that in-house and I'm like, "Yeah, well, that kind of defeats the whole point is that you should be able to be in control."

So is that where you see like Casa and these sort of companies getting to a point where anyone will just be able to easily and securely store their wealth and have full control eventually?

Yeah, I mean, I can't, I'm not a future gazer, but I mean, these guys are doing incredible work building products that are focused on the user. Everything from the application interface to navigation through certain services and features is being much more considered.

And particularly these consumer facing companies, of course, that is always going to be a huge factor. But I mean, it has come a long, long way since and there are two things that happen, right?

There is companies that iterate on their product because they, of course, get the user feedback. What I'm saying is nothing new. They get user feedback, they iterate, they make things simpler, they take things away, they add features on.

But also, other companies do things like provide that education. They all introduce steps to make things clearer. They'll introduce kind of nuances that perhaps sort of consumer facing nuances like information bubbles or kind of, what is this, ridiculous things for someone who is technically minded.

But for someone who's a complete novice, those steps and those little features are absolute gold and actually very, very critical in helping them achieve that adoption. You can already, you know, you can already imagine the process of buying Bitcoin on an exchange.

And if you were not given any prompts or any instruction, you were just given hypothetical education, technically you were asked to buy 10 pounds of Bitcoin on an exchange, but you've got to do that yourself without any prompts or instruction.

You can imagine for someone like my parents, that process would be incredibly hard, right? But if you were to do that process with simple education along the way, clear navigation, informative steps in whatever form, whether it's kind of step-by-step videos, whether

it's kind of information bubbles that you can hit on or off or these things are becoming far more considered now, I think. To my mind, anyway, that generation, your parents' generation, my parents' generation, they hold the majority of the wealth on the planet, the vast majority.

So they're the people that ideally we want to be looking at this stuff and starting to dip their toes in, is it something that you see that until that usability is there, the majority of them, they probably won't hold physical Bitcoin, they're just more likely to hold it on exchange or buy a derivative or something like that.

Do you think it has to be better or easier for them than it is now for the majority? Or do you think that actually with the right education, even how it is now, they'd be able to get onboarded?

It's an interesting question. One of the things I have asked myself is, what is mainstream Bitcoin adoption? Is it everyone being their own bank? Is it having their own bitcoins and managing their own keys? Is it people who are of that demographic and beyond that

are using a multitude of products and services that are within the Bitcoin space? For example, one form of Bitcoin, a ETF or a company that holds Bitcoin, a trust, some kind of index. I think the question even asking, we need to ask before we go on to talk about mainstream

Bitcoin adoption, what does that actually look like? Is the end goal that everyone is their own bank? Is it that total extreme? Or will it happen? And I believe it will more likely happen in the form of this demographic. For example, this kind of baby boomer demographic

who do control the majority of the wealth are adopting through familiar means in ways that they know and can trust before they go on to become more sophisticated holders of Bitcoin. Because I believe that for one reason, because I think that new products are coming

out to make it easier for anyone to buy Bitcoin. That's a given. And I think the guys at Casa fast Bitcoin is going to do an amazing job facilitating that, right? What will also happen is as the traditional financiers and financial services providers cotton on to the fact that

Bitcoin is, I mean, you know, let's take PayPal for an example, they're kind of speculative news around PayPal. It's a complete new term, right? Because I believe a couple of years ago or don't quote me on that bill sometime before they were publicly against Bitcoin

only to potentially be moving into the Bitcoin space and offering Bitcoin services. And I think that that's a good example of a kind of normal company that people are familiar with and trust coming into that space to provide that service. And it is questionable, you know,

I'm a maximalist point of view. And I kind of sit in the middle that, you know, I'm not, I totally understand the maximalist approach and being your own bank. But I do believe kind of mainstream adoption will come, you know, via a sort of meat in the middle approach.

I think that's reasonable. And not everyone cares. I mean, it's good to have these ideals. And like you say, the maximalist idea, which pretty much along those lines is like really you should be, but there's not that many people who really care about their privacy. And there's

not that many people are probably quite so tin foil hat to be like, we just literally do not trust any bank at all. And we think the whole system is rigged. We don't want to store any of our money with them. That's a very small percentage of people. So most

people will be somewhere in the middle and then you have extremes either end. You're going to have that with any sort of technology or anything really, aren't you? Yeah, I agree. But I mean, what this sort of meat in the middle approach, what it could do, you know, it's me speculating is that it gives people time to become adopters of

Bitcoin to become holders of Bitcoin. They will start following it naturally. They will start becoming more aware of it. They will be investors. So they will naturally start becoming more educated around it. And I'm taking my own experience to account when it

comes to investment in certain things. Because they are bought into it, right? And that's when new technologies will come out. They'll start to research and find new products and they'll move on to more sophisticated things. And that's exactly the way I, you know, as

a kind of, I've always been a kind of investor in stocks and shares, but I always find myself, you know, ever since I was sort of like 18, I would invest in something where I see potential.

But as soon as you invest in something, you do things like you set up a Google alert on the name of the company, potentially around the industry, you'll start reading articles about it. And that's really how you get into things really. So I think the first step is

literally just getting people on board to become interested and invested in Bitcoin, right? And then, you know, they're already great technologies out there that are providing great ways to facilitate that, right? And whether that's in the kind of Bitcoin first world

or whether that's in the established financial services world, people will make their own judgment, you know, and you'd hoped that they would kind of gravitate towards better products as they learn more.

Let you say, skin in the game, once you have something invested, you are so much more likely to, well, you're protecting that investment. And also you're interested to see, you know, where you think these things could go. So that's always, you know, when I'm speaking

to people, I'll say that going by a little bit of Bitcoin, put it into a wallet, play with it, listen to a few podcasts. And once they've got that, even if it's a small amount, they're much more likely to actually learn once they have that. So that's that's the first step.

And I think that's often like the biggest hurdle for people. I don't know if you have the same thing now, whether people know that you're sort of involved in Bitcoin and working with these companies, does anyone ask you about it? Or do you keep that part of your life very separate and just not talk about it?

No, I mean, I'm a sort of a private guy anyway, you know, I keep myself to myself, but I mean, it's not a dirty little secret by any means, you know, I talked to my parents about it. I mean, I was saying to the guys that fast Bitcoin was the other day, I bought my dad

his first physical wallet, yeah. And, you know, I discuss it with them. And, you know, in quite a, you know, quite an adult-like manner, it's not like he's a he's against it. He's people are open to understanding it as soon as you bring it into context of what's going on in the real in the world today, right?

The narrative for many of these people of this kind of elderly demographic or baby boomer demographic is really strong because as we said, they're seeing firsthand, you know, they're coming close to this retirement age, they're wondering what the hell is happening

to their wealth during this time, they're uncertain of what the future holds for their wealth and they want to do something about it. And that provides a really compelling case for businesses to market against, right? And that's not just specifically for that

demographic, it's also, it's anyone really. And what you're trying to educate people to do essentially is invest for the long-term, invest in the future, right? And that overarching message is somewhat different. It is nuanced for different age groups. I used to work with

a lot of payment companies and, you know, fintechs and a lot of the data you'd see around millennials and Gen Zers is that they're not interested in saving or they're not interested in anything that has what we in the industry like to call this long-time preference, right? But if you

look very closely, there's actually new answers that prevent youngsters from actually getting into saving in the first place, number one being that they can't afford to. People understand that cash is a terrible investment, but, you know, if you're earning just amount of cash

to get by, you're going to have to keep it in cash, you can't keep it in any, you can't keep your wealth in anything more sophisticated because you need it for the immediate term. And the other thing is with that demographic, you know, with a, you know, millennial Gen

Zers, that they're quite intimidated by the financial markets and actually they have a strong dislike for it predominantly because of what has happened to them, what they've experienced around the financial crisis. And I think these issues should be tackled head

on. You know, I think if you're sort of too much in the maximalist camp, you start to neglect the fact that there is an opportunity because you're bogged down in the fact that people don't understand. Whereas my mindset is they don't understand, make them understand.

So there's great things like delivering education that's really simplistic, delivering education that's actually from the person testimonials, bring it to life a little bit more, introducing more familiar functionalities and wording and, you know, tone of voice, that kind of stuff. It can make all the difference.

Yeah, definitely. And like you say, refining that message to different demographics because, you know, you're saying about the millennials growing up and they see the financial crisis and they see all the problems and, you know, they would be a little bit stupid to have a

huge amount of trust in the traditional system because they've seen the problems over and over again. And like you said, most of them don't have such disposable income and getting their foot on the ladder property wise is a completely different game to what their parents

experienced. And the world all sort of looks the same. And I think a lot of the boomers will say, oh, you just work hard and you stay in a job and everything will be fine. And it's just not what they're experiencing. And that's probably why they're not investing. I know

a lot of people in my age group, when I was investing from a young age, and I was always just basically just a fucking loser, to be honest, just I took every penny that I earn just from every side hustle. And I never spent it. And that would be invested. But it's

not how most people did things. And then because of that, I could start investing from a young age and then you benefit from the inflation of these assets over time. But the further someone gets left behind, it gets more and more difficult for them. And they don't have that benefit.

They don't have a property that's rising in price over the last 20 years. And they haven't been involved in the stock market. So they just stay out and they just say, oh, well, we'll just enjoy our lives and do a bit of traveling or, you know, they don't bother.

Whereas I think that if that message can be refined of like, you really only have to put, even if it's a couple of quid a week, and it's just every week that just comes out and it goes into Bitcoin and, you know, here's the whatever it is, 220% annualized return.

And just forget about it. It's actually not that much of a leap for them to do it. It's just literally that rather than, oh, it's a, it's a get rich quick, chuckload of money in and become a millionaire sort of idea. It's, I think that's very overdone. And a lot of

people try and sell it like that. Yeah, no, I agree. And people who are financially literate look at, look at money and investing in very different ways to someone who is perhaps less savvy about money. For example, I take the stance of money and saving an investment as

I want to make what I have earned work harder for me. And I think there's a spectrum in that. So that spectrum is, if I'm holding cash, it's a terrible, terrible investment. And I was having a conversation with one of my friends the other day, who is A, he's a

renter and pays an extortionate amount of money in rent. And B, he holds a, he holds cash. You know, he's, you know, he's not, he's got enough to build investment. But what a lot of people don't understand is the very, very basic sort of the fact that cash, if you hold

cash, it, and we're starting right from the bottom here. And this is where I believe that the industry should start is you are losing money by holding cash as savings. And that, that concept is quite hard for a lot of people to understand. Well, if I'm saving money in

my bank account, and that number is growing, how am I losing money? You know, it's contrary to what, what is happening. But actually, this is where it gets complicated, right? Trying to educate someone around the concept of inflation, monetary stimulus, the impact

of that on, you know, what is a silent tax, for example, it seems way too left field to someone who, to someone who is not that financially savvy, which is most people, which is, which is most people, unfortunately. And I'm, I'm not going to pretend I've done it. You know,

I've not cracked that nut yet. But, um, you know, it's incredibly challenging to strike that balance of pointing someone in the right direction. Let's just say, you know, pointing someone to the direction of the fact that, you know, it's never a good idea for the long

term to hold cash, because you are losing that. Even in a normal year, that's 2% every year. When I, when I broke down the amount of cash, just as an example to him, and we were comparing in this example, we were comparing what he was holding in cash, compounded losses

over a period of 10 years, versus what, what would have happened to his cash, had he invested in a blue chip stock, and then reinvested the dividends to benefit from that compound earnings versus had he invested in Bitcoin for the same period of time. And, you know, you don't

compound. I mean, full. Yeah. I mean, the reality suddenly struck home. So that concept is really hard or really long winded to describe to someone, you know, verbally. But then that makes you think it's not impossible to describe that to someone. And that's where other forms

of information come, you know, use imagery, use great illustrations, use tables, charts, some kind of inspirational, sorry, not inspirational, some sort of intuitive infographics that help bring this to life, use analogies. Where can we introduce them? And as I said, the job

is not done for me or my clients, otherwise, I would probably be on a yacht somewhere right now. But, you know, it's really difficult to take these concepts. And actually, you know, again, going back to the point of the conversation, how do you make someone who is fundamentally

comes from a technical background, kind of, you know, meet you in the middle around that, right? You were saying there, obviously, that these are complex ideas and that most people just, you know, we're not taught about the stuff at school. So why would anyone really know

most people sort of finish school. They haven't learned anything about finance or anything really useful in terms of managing their money. And if they have learned anything, it's a Keynesian way of thinking. And it, you know, it basically explains away inflation and explains

why it's necessary. And most people, finance is really actually very confusing to really understand what's going on in financial markets is very confusing. But actually, Austrian economics and the idea behind Bitcoin is really, really simple. The actual idea of if you were to explain

the two to a child, the child would be like, Oh, well, obviously, like, Austrian economics makes sense. Like the other one sounds weird. So I think maybe it actually plays in it in our favor is that most people can wrap their head around this if they can just be open to it.

Oh, 100%. I mean, this and this is the paradox because if you ask anyone to, you know, you have, I have these conversations all the time. And I'm sure what you do as well. If you ask, if you get into a conversation around Bitcoin, people going to be like, Oh, it's too complicated.

It's really hard to understand, you know, I'm not going to bother. But then if you ask them in the same, in the same way to describe to you how their existing money works, I'm sure they'll be in the exact same position. And this is, this is unfortunately the, the

dilemma because, you know, hypothetically, if we didn't live in a world of fear, it is what people knows. It is what people know, you know, and that's the reason for this hesitation and stubbornness at first and foremost. You know, it's always going to be met with criticism

and kind of neglect because it's something different. And actually, it's something that is sort of radical and people, you know, humanistically do not like change, but it's, it's happening, you know, when you first started getting involved in all the Bitcoin stuff, was there a point

where things really clicked and you went from like, this is an investment to this is something much bigger? Was there sort of a moment where that happened? Or are you fairly clear from the beginning? I sort of, I had two very, very loud speakers on either side of my head called

Obi and Dally. And actually spending time with either of them can often result in mind-blowing thought. I would say a loss of any everything I know, which is not very much to be honest with you, comes from them. You know, and actually, as I said, I am a Bitcoiner from the outside

and that's what gives me quite a unique perspective because I've worked for, you know, for example, fast Bitcoins operates in the kind of retail space. I've worked for, you know, retail technology companies like Winkor, Nextdoor, you know, people that provide, you know, they provide

point-of-sale services. I've worked for World Pay the past. I've worked for other companies. And they're trying to break into this space, you know, this is a normal space and it requires engaging with these types of audiences. But at the same time, it's, I'm sure, I'd like

to think that I'm kind of educating them on my point of view. But I mean, sometimes I will have the energy that comes from these people, you know, particularly Obi and you all know the old two, three-hour call on some of those. You know, you're kind of stuck to

the phone to the point where both of your hands are hurting and you wish that you had properly charged you a Bluetooth headset so you can just take it all in. But I've always found that, and this is partially because, you know, coming from that sort of journalistic

sphere, I found that there's no better way of sort of learning than just asking questions. Sometimes it's met with, you know, why you're asking me this, but, you know, I need to get these questions out. These guys do a great job of tolerating that. And you end up with

some wonderful context and content and actually stuff that, you know, a lot of those conversations gets turned into the education and the thought leadership and the sort of narrative that you see across these businesses. You know, if you look at the blogs, if you look at the

kind of public relations work, if you look at the, you know, the wording and the narratives that are used across certain clients as businesses, it all comes from those conversations that they're not really thinking about how to distill it. But I mean, one thing I have noticed

about the Bitcoin industry is that process of kind of refinement around the narrative and refinement around how we talk about things changes, you know, constantly. If you're, you know, there's as a kind of professional in that space when you're looking to develop

a value proposition for a company in a traditional company, that would not, you would not look to change that every sort of six months or three months. But we've, I found that we are constantly iterating. And that's purely because the pace of innovation is just so fast. You

know, the way you change, you can change directions, you can look to target different audiences, you can implement new kind of functionalities that are going, you know, every day, something amazing happens. And you have to try the best to kind of keep up and market with it and

make it hurt, you know, I mean, the innovation is literally mind bending. I spend so much time just trying to keep up with what's going on. And it literally just, it takes all your time just to keep on top of just a basic idea of what's going on in the industry. And that's

without really digging in, it's just constant, constant, constant. And like you said, the narrative changes, when I first started getting involved, it was all about payments. And that was probably not the right way to explain like really the benefits of this system. And

now the narrative is sort of almost changing again. And half of people are still in this kind of like, don't ever spend Bitcoin just hodl, hodl, hodl. And then you've got sort of the other side that I like will actually know do spend it, but it's got to be private and,

you know, using the tools at hand and things are, yeah, I can't imagine being in your shoes and trying to feel like you sort of come up with something and then as soon as it's done, everything's changed and you've got to restart again.

Oh, it does. Yeah, all the time, all the time. But I mean, yeah, I mean, and that's a really interesting conversation itself, you know, just going off on a tangent, whether you spend it or hold it, you know, I'm, I'm still sat in the middle of that conversation. I've got,

you know, clients, which of course are built for the purpose of helping people build a long term investment and holding and wealth in Bitcoin. But there's phenomenal, phenomenal innovation like companies like FastBitcoins. One of the things, and this is the thing about

Danny Brewster, by the way. I mean, the guy is just amazingly talented. He's like, I don't know how he does what he does when it comes to development. But he, when I first met him, it's kind of hard because he's not a marketer. He's kind of quite stoic.

Did you hear the intro? Did you hear the show that I did with him? I haven't listened to it yet, actually. Talking about not being a marketer. So I said, right, Danny Brewster, obviously had a great chat with him. Like, really, really liked the guy.

But first, beginning a little bit, I was like, right, Danny Brewster, if you can just introduce yourself, we had to talk about Bitcoin, you know, just do a quick introduction. It's like, hi, Danny Brewster. I, I like Bitcoin. How's that? Yeah. Yeah, right. This is why you've

gotten this. Yeah, I mean, you know, yeah, and that's it. I mean, he's, but I mean, one of the things you, it's kind of hard to understand how amazing something is, if something is not being sold to you. For example, one of the, you know, when we launched his business

and this is mad to say that that was, it's not even been two years, right? And when we first launched the business, it was the first business ever to kind of make use of Lightning Network. And one of the really amazing things about the service today, and sorry, I'm going

to go on a bit of a tangent, talk about a product that I just want to talk about to go for a scale of innovation, which is just fascinating to me. One of the product features in the, in the terminals that they build. So fast Bitcoin is just for anyone out there

to probably focus on kind of enabling people to buy Bitcoin via physical shops, by way of sale terminal, and offering and printing out vouchers, physical vouchers. And so one of the things this, these terminals already have built in, and this is way back when,

was the ability to allow merchants to accept real time payments in Lightning. And when I spoke to, I distinctly remember this because when I, when I had the feedback from Danny, I thought, Oh, it's just not that interesting, or it's not revolutionary. But as I was like,

is that true? That you can actually facilitate Bitcoin payments, a retailer can actually accept Bitcoin? Is that yeah, yeah, but we're sure want to talk about that right now. And I was like, that's insane. That's like, that's like the most insane feature I've heard of

at that time, because essentially what it allows merchants to do is accept digital payments in real time with no cost. And if you think about the way the world is going today, and how people use money predominantly, it is digital. But what you don't see on the other

side for a merchant is that to facilitate digital payments, i.e. to be able to take, tap and go contactless payments, they get charged. The payment process is charged them between two and 4% out of each transaction. So, you know, if I was a merchant, what's that industry

worth? Oh, god knows. A little bit less now that wirecard has just been buggered, right? I don't know if you saw that news. I didn't know what happened. So there's a German payments processing company called Wirecard that essentially been found to commit some sort of big accounting

fraud whereby they're shocking. Oh, no, I did see this. It was like billions. It was a billion and a bit. And yeah, so basically 1.3 or something like that, billion has gone accounted for. And it's kind of like, oh, well, it's not a surprise, you know, in order

to miss that. And then all of a sudden it's like, hey, this isn't right. But, you know, you just think all this could be literally obliterated overnight just because one guy called Danny Brewster decided to make this feature and not even talk about it. Yeah, did

he say why? Was he not talking about it? Because there was the sort of idea within lightning like early days, it was kind of, you know, this is reckless. Don't sort of put too much money on this because it was still in development and people were sort of warning each other,

you know, don't go too crazy with the sort of stuff. Was it that or was he just sort of not realizing quite how awesome what he'd done was? I don't know to this day, you know, he'll probably listen to this. So I'm going to ask him and I'll come back to you with an answer. But I think the, you know, in his mind and

in every kind of technical genius, his mind, there is absolute focus. And you, for example, the focus then was to launch the product to make it perfect people perfectly aware in the Bitcoin space that it was one of the first lightning, the first lightning enabled device

of its kind, right? Everything else after that is sort of secondary, you know, but I mean, you'll see in the latest, we've since found balance and common ground purely from me kind of working with him to, or, you know, working with him and other people within the

team to build out relevant types of messages. So there's a lot of blogs that we're putting out articulating more of the benefits for retailers, for small businesses, what it means participating in industry, you know, industry events within the retail space. The marketing is very, it is evolving, you know, and we'll continue to do so.

Yeah, it's really interesting. And so is this something you see now? Do you feel like you're embedded in this industry? Can you imagine anything else or is it sort of grabbed your attention and you're very settled now? Oh, yeah. I mean, I don't think I'm done in this

industry. I don't feel that the work is done. I think that there is genuine purpose behind what we're doing. You know, it's all good and well, and this is going to sound kind of cliche and a bit corny. But, you know, as a marketer, your job is essentially to sell

a product and you can get for a lot of established industries, for example, going back to my days, we're talking about working at PepsiCo, for example, that is pretty much what you're doing. You know, there's no, there's little purpose behind the product. But I mean, this

is, it's more than, it's more than a product, isn't it? Like, and that's, that's the, that's the difference. And collectively, all of my clients and all the people within the Bitcoin community that have consumer facing businesses almost have that collective obligation to be

able to educate the kind of mainstream audience on why Bitcoin is viable and what it means, you know, and the significance of it. No, he says, it's not a product. It's a revolution. And there's products within that revolution.

But it is about something much bigger than just selling someone something. Yeah. I've found that with almost every single person I've ever spoken to in this industry. And then go include myself. Like, no one, no one can imagine doing anything else once you're part of it.

And I haven't ever experienced that in any other industry. I've worked, like we were discussing before, you know, I worked in property, I worked in dentistry and Botox. I've worked in the motor trade. I've done lots of different things. And if someone asked me, Oh, can you

imagine doing this real rest your life? It'd be like, no, I'll get bored. I've never felt like I'd do with this. And I think that's a common theme. And that's probably why is because, you know, you wake up in the morning and you're working, but you're thinking, you

know, this is actually doing something useful. This is doing something that's actually potentially world changing. That's really, really exciting. I feel the same way. I think that the work that these companies are doing is amazing.

And actually, they're genuinely breaking the ground in every aspect to deliver this kind of innovation to the world. And it's very exciting to be a part of because it's like anything. It's like betting on David and Goliath, right? And that's how you feel every day being

a part of this community. But what you what I have noticed, even in the kind of two years that I've been directly present in it is that it's going to grow. It's growing. There are a lot of positive people in this community. And it's really, really supportive. And, you

know, like many of the beginners of Bitcoin, you go on to Google, try to research and you'll find those articles, click the articles about Bitcoin and it being used to mining death spiral and being, you know, exchanges being hacked and all of all of this stuff, which I questioned,

right? I openly admit that, you know, it makes you question it, but it's designed to. It's designed to. The first thing you can really do is find out for yourself, common term in the investment world is do your own research, right? Do your own research, come to your

own conclusions. I think there's a lot more of that, that needs to be done. But I think amidst that, there needs to be some great prompts and companies can do a much better job of putting themselves in the consumer's shoes and building, continuing to build. You

know, I'm not saying that these companies are continuing to build on building products that genuinely address their concerns, their challenges, their needs, so on and so forth. Is there anything now that you've sort of been involved and you've fallen down the rabbit

hole and you've sort of answered these questions that used to worry you, you know, you reap these sort of his headlines and you think, Oh God, let me check actually, you know, is this money being used as it shouldn't be or as they say shouldn't be or these mining death

spirals or, you know, miners all being in China, all this sort of nonsense that they write. Is there anything that still worries you or anything that you think? I'm just keeping an eye on that. Is there anything that's still you have a concern with?

No, and I don't know. It's a good question because I don't know whether that's because I'm not directly involved in that space or what, but my, you know, my personal view on Bitcoin is that even as a kind of investor, it is a great asset, you know, and I was,

I think I can't remember who I said it to the other day. One of the books I'm reading kind of dried, but I'm looking through Warren Buffett's letters to shareholders pretty much from where he started his company called Berkshire. I am sure that in another dimension, he would

have been the biggest holder of Bitcoin, purely because in every single letter, every, every year, he constantly bangs on about money manipulation and terrible interest rates. So, and cash being, and cash being a poor form of cash being a poor form of investment.

I'm sure some of these guys do get it. I don't know. Did you read Ray Dalio's letter recently? He was basically saying like, everything's fucked. We need Bitcoin, but without saying the word Bitcoin. And I think that probably a lot of these guys get it. Probably it's

not in their interest to say anything positive. So they keep quiet. I mean, if I was one of them and I was sat, if I was sat on huge, vast sums of money and most of the things that I was investing in or a lot of it was payment processors. And I had one foot very much in

the traditional system. I just keep my mouth shut and just stack sats and just not tell anyone and talk shit about Bitcoin. Why would you do anything other than that? I'm sure they must be. Of course. And, you know, that's been proven, you know, for example, JP Morgan

and Jamie Dimon. It's a total weasel. Exactly. But I know, you know, I have friends that work in the industry and they'll feel well. Many of these kind of traditional investment players are starting to build holdings in it in Bitcoin. And yeah, you are completely

on the money by saying it is not in their interest, both from a price point of view and also from the fact, as you say, they have so much riding on the current system that they would not openly admit that Bitcoin is great. But for me, one of the really clear signals

is just looking at the numbers, right? You know, and that's that's the coolest thing about the most geeky thing. It's the coolest thing about understanding investment or getting into investment is that you don't need to be a sort of supremo to understand it, because

there are very high level sort of figures you can look at that just tell you what you need to know. How good is this investment over a long timeframe? You know, why should I hold it? And if you're an individual that is concerned about maintaining wealth, growing

wealth, protecting your wealth, making wealth, it's a beautiful number to see, you know, the value of Bitcoin over the last 10 years versus the value of any other kind of high performing asset. Let's say, yeah, it's just absolutely smashed everything. This is the

best performing asset ever, I think I'm right in saying, you know, we're talking about numbers like just looking at the market cap of this thing, and comparing it to like the payment processes and like money supply and the other stores of value, look at property, look at

gold. And this thing is just tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny. So if we're to believe that we can get any more of the market share of any of these other stores of values or payment processes or any of the things that we talk about, then I can't see that there's anything else that's

going to return the same, but it's just it's mind-blowing to me that people don't see that. Yeah, and this is, you know, we're purely talking about it as an asset class, as an investment, right? But I mean, the other thing let's not forget is the actual efficacy of Bitcoin.

You're not investing in a big tobacco, you're not investing in an oil and gas company, you're investing, you know, you've got, for example, the data I see quite commonly today is that ethical investing is very popular amongst the millennial generation. And it's like, you

could tick all the boxes by just investing, you know, you could tick the boxes, let's go through value for money, right? Ethical investment, a savings mechanism, everything that I would criteria or what buffet or one of the, you know, investment titans in this

traditional space would class as a wonderful asset. It is, you know, and actually, by investing in it, you're actually putting your, you're making an, I do genuinely feel, well, by holding it, you're making an ethical stance because it is something that isn't going to destroy the world.

Yeah, I completely agree. I think it's the strongest vote you can make is just voting with your money. Yeah, and, you know, that's a whole other area of philosophical thinking. But, you know, at a very, at a very high level, it has all the criteria that makes for a good

savings mechanism, investment mechanism, and also an efficacy mechanism. And people may not necessarily understand that, but it's worth exploring it, right? It's worth helping people understand why Bitcoin is one of the most ethical investments you could make.

Well, it seems like you are helping push that message and, you know, thanks for all the work that you're doing and thanks for putting me in contact with the people that you have. Pleasure.

Is there anything that we haven't covered that you'd like to, or go into a little bit more detail, or is there anyone that you'd like to hear from and where can they find you? No, I think we've pretty much covered everything off. I'm on Twitter @nish3 with a capital N. And, yeah, everyone can check me out there.

Fantastic. All right. Well, yeah, it's been a real pleasure chatting to you. And again, thank you for putting me in contact with everyone. Pleasure. And I'm sure we will chat on the on the group message, our Bitcoin a message anyway.

For sure. For sure. Thank you for having me on. Yeah, it's been a pleasure. All right. Thanks very much for joining me. And I'm sure we'll speak again soon. Take care. Cheers Nash.