EP34 Bitcoin podcast with Danny Scott the CEO of UK Bitcoin Exchange CoinCorner.

Welcome back everyone. Today, I was talked to Danny Scott. He's the CEO of UK Bitcoin exchange Coin Corner. We talk about the early days setting up multiple Bitcoin businesses and the problems that go along with it. We talked about banking, regulations and his

contributions to Bitcoin call. When I talk to people who have been involved as long as someone like Danny, it makes me think for a split second, "Oh God, I wish I was involved back then. I wish I'd have bought Bitcoin. We've had this crazy run up and then I remind

myself that we are sat in 2020. You only have to turn on the news to see what's going on in the world and you can still buy 10,491 sats for a dollar." To me, that sounds like the deal of the century. If you're in the UK and you're looking to buy, even if it is as little

as a pound a day, a pound a week, you can jump onto coin floor, the sponsors of this pod. I'll put the links in the show notes. In fact, if you click the link, it actually helps me out slightly. Click on there and within probably an hour, you'd be buying your first sats. I hope you enjoy.

Okay, so Danny, thank you very much for joining me today. Really nice to meet you. I've been wanting to get you on the show for some time now as we just discussed off there. You're doing some pretty amazing stuff. For anyone who doesn't know you, Danny, can you introduce yourself, please?

Yep, I'm Alex. Thank you for having me on. Appreciate that. Yep, I'm Danny Scott, founder of Coin Corner, UK Bitcoin Exchange. Been around the space for quite some time now. Coin Corner was founded back in 2014, but I was involved quite a few years before that with mining and all the various ventures along the way.

Okay, so mining, that's where you started, was it? No, actually, the mining cropped up purely because we had no way of buying Bitcoin in the UK. The way we actually eventually bought from, I think, was Bitbargain at the time was one of the only exchanges. That was UK-focused. There was obviously the MTGOCs on that side,

but we wanted to try a UK one. We did end up buying from Bitbargain in the end, and myself wanted to co-found us at the time. We figured that it was very difficult. Obviously, it was all bank transfers and people are not used to doing bank transfers on a website to buy

something, especially at the peer-to-peer level. It was with Bitbargain. Bitbargain works the same way as local Bitcoins, if people are not aware of what that is. Best-core local Bitcoin model.

Yeah, yeah. We realized that you could just obviously mine the Bitcoin, and thought, okay, let's have a nosy into that. We're both software developers and techies at the time, so we went down that route eventually, and led us onto the mine inside, which then eventually led us back onto the exchange and the software side.

What date was that? It was probably, so first heard about it back in 2009, was at university, got ignored for some time during that period in 2009-10. You did, or Bitcoin? Sorry. You got ignored, or Bitcoin?

I think both, for a few years, but no, yeah. I heard about it in 2009, then I put that down while I was finishing my exams at university, then went out into the real world, did a couple of years, another startup company, and during that time, that same startup company.

I came across again Bitcoin a couple of times for various reasons, except in its payment methods as a competitive advantage, but eventually that led me onto, actually I know you're touching on the cashback, Bitcoin cashback, weirdly enough, the Bitcoin cashback was actually

the first Bitcoin project myself, and one of the co-founders developed, and that must have been in 2011 or 2012. I can't quite remember what year that was, it was 2012-ish, but that was a slightly different spin, so rather than purchasing something, you'd go onto these

cashback sites, you click a link through to PC World, you buy a PC, you get 20 pounds back in Bitcoin, what we looked to do is say you spent 200 pounds on a computer, you pay that, get the 20 pound back in Bitcoin, rather than do it that way, we wanted to do it in

a different manner, so it was, rather than get the 20 pounds back, you could be in with a chance to get the 200 pounds back, so you'd get the PC for free, so we did it almost like a raffle, so once 20, so once 10 people had come along and spent 200 pounds with, we would

then put them 10 people into a raffle, and then one of them 10 people would gain the 200 pounds, and the other guys get nothing. So rather than take the small amount of cashback, you were able to then take the gamble of getting the full amount back, now the key word there

was gamble, because it effectively becomes a lottery of sort, and we spoke to a lawyer that we knew here on the Alaman, we kind of went through a few things with him, explained what we was doing, we did this originally without Bitcoin, so we just did this as a cashback

scheme in the UK, so there's nothing to do with Bitcoin at the time, and then obviously through the conversations with the lawyer, we realised that we couldn't do that because it's gambling, so we said actually could we give them Bitcoin, because it's not a currency,

it wasn't classed as anything, and we tried to then explain what Bitcoin was to the lawyer and go down that route, which was fine, he got it great, which was good, but because there was no guidance in any sort of laws out there, regulations to encompass Bitcoin in any way

whatsoever, it was just a massive grey area, and the honest answer for him was he didn't know, and if we were to go ahead with it, we'd need to make sure we had a proper legal opinion, but he'd struggled to give the opinion and so on, so it came to a point where we

would have needed a gambling licence for that, at which point we kind of put the thing down a little bit and didn't move forward with it, and moved on to what eventually was then the mine inside.

Yeah, I can see, I mean even now, the regulations are sort of, you have a great idea, and it's always the regulation that gets in the way of actually doing that thing, and I can only imagine what it was like back then, it must have been much harder.

Yeah, it is a shame, I think, that the regulations, it's not just our industry, it's every industry, it's just they clamp down slowly, over time closing, not say loopholes, but various loopholes and various ways of operating, so I know we're in the Isle of Man, and we have quite a big

gaming industry here, and the regulators over time have just got kind of worse and worse and worse on the gaming companies, and there's genuine reasons for what they're doing there, I'm not saying they're doing anything incorrect, but it does unfortunately over time build.

Forces companies sell, it stifles their innovation of companies and they're able to change and moderate, sorry, operate in the way that they want to operate, so yeah, the regulations really have, we've seen that on our doorstep effectively for all these gaming companies,

so we've seen that first hand, which is kind of good, it gives us a little bit of a heads up of what we would potentially expect to come in the future for Bitcoin companies and like ourselves and others around the world.

So at that point you said, okay, right, this is going to be too much of a nightmare with the regulation and getting a gaming license, so you started mining, and back then was that GPU, or CPU, or is that A6, or what were you?

GPU at the time, so that was, was using, started off with the GPU side, the ASICs quickly came around, that must be like 2012, I can't quite remember the exact times, at that point we carried on with the GPUs because we couldn't get access to the ASICs, and I don't know if

you remember the, actually, that's a throwback actually, the old, the USB miners, don't know if you remember that. Bit main ones, yeah, yeah, I've seen them, I've never seen one up close, but I have seen them online.

Yeah, so we were looking at getting some of them, but we couldn't, for some reason, I can't know why we couldn't end up actually getting any of them eventually, they did become much simpler to buy as the years went on, but yeah, I remember trying to get the USB

miners which we couldn't get, so yeah, we, what we did is we then turned the focus just to mining altcoins with the GPUs and carried on with the mining farm that way, but we started off with the GPUs in a co-founder's garage, which is typical tech startup, working in

the developing software, and then mining away, it became to a point where we ended up with, we started off, I think, with three, it must have been like three computers, three PCs that we'd built and bought to just to mine Bitcoin with, and then we slowly built that

up over time, and we got to a point where the garage was, it was just too hot in there, so we had to, we moved out and got an office in the end, and then over as we kept adding to the computers, and the garage unfortunately, this was running off his house electrics,

so we blew the electrics a number of times, and eventually had to move out of the garage and we got a little warehouse and started building up and increasing the miners and increasing the GPUs in the warehouse, and we got, I do have quite a few pictures, actually all got

a couple of pictures from back in the day, I can send a cross afterwards, yeah, that would be great. Leaving the show's notes, which is quite a cool picture of all our GPUs we had set up, yeah.

That's amazing, and I imagine back then, I mean people look at anyone who's involved in Bitcoin, or most people who are involved in Bitcoin is a bit crazy now, what was it like then when you're trying to explain to people what you were doing, how did that go?

A lot of the time it was like, you know, you're just creating money out of thin air, it's like, it literally was, you were just printing money, which it kind of was, you are printing money effectively.

So yeah, the conversations were, it was all around explaining what Bitcoin is, and how it works, and then you know, mining always is the one that pops up, and when we tell them we're mining, we're showing them the pictures, and it was very difficult for people to get their heads around.

I think a lot of the banks was probably the most difficult one. It was actually luckily, due to the mining side of things, we ended up with a banking relationship to allow us to launch the exchange later on down the line, but we first went to a bank here in the Alamam, or an intermediary or such, and we was talking to them because

none of the high street banks just would not, especially the UK, they still won't touch us in the UK. So we ended up having to explain, we did look like a guy who worked for one of the kind of banks here, one of saying intermediary, it's almost like a middleman between ourselves,

a financial institute between ourselves and the actual banks, so they have underlying banks, and they operate client accounts almost within their banking system. So it allowed us to have access to the UK banking system, but through a company that all the stores effectively, so the underlying banks, which was HSBC loads at the time, they

were comfortable with it to some extent. So we ended up getting a good relationship there, and we was explaining to them what Bitcoin is, what we're doing is mining it and creating it, and then we're just selling the Bitcoin to wherever we can, and the money was just the proceeds of mining, so they were

actually OK with that and quite comfortable, which was not so bad, and it went OK for a few years doing that, which was good. But we then led on to, sorry, jumping air fan, going off on a tangent to the questions you want to ask as well, good.

So we then went off on to another concept, which was crypto by post, which was effectively we had, we were mining bitcoins and we had bitcoins, we were then looking to sell them, so we'd either go and sell them on a bit bargain or on an exchange somewhere, so we figured

why not try and sell them to the public, rather than so we'd create a website to sell them to the public. The problem with that is, obviously, we'd then become in an exchange, and the banks wouldn't give you a bank account.

We wanted to do it in a simplified manner as well, so we could have a customer just come on to the website, buy with their debit card or credit card, and as they would do on like Amazon, for example.

The problem with that is, as soon as we started talking to the card processors, they were realizing our customers were purchasing a digital product, and there was no proof of delivery of that product as such, even though I know you can see that in the blockchain, but explaining that to any of these is just impossible, just didn't happen.

So we ended up with an idea of crypto by post, which was we physically, we had some little USB sticks, and we put the Bitcoin wallet onto the USB stick, and we'd post that out physically to them.

So we got a card processor that was actually eventually comfortable with us doing that, because we was physically delivering our products, so we'd send out the USB stick once the customer received it, we know the Bitcoin address, and we topped the wallet up effectively with

that Bitcoin, so they could then move it and do what they want to do with it. So you actually, you would have to wait until they had delivery, and then they would what contact you, and you then send it to that address.

Yeah, so in the post, we had a, I'm trying to think of the process exactly now, we had a code that we'd post out to them with the USB stick, so then they could come back on the website, enter the code, so we would know that they've received the products, and then

we'd also trigger off the Bitcoin to go into the wallet that was on, associated with that card and that code, and so their wallet would then be auto topped up effectively, and obviously it's absolutely dreadful from a privacy and a security perspective, but back then it was

kind of like, it was an option, it was something that people did actually buy, and it was kind of worth it to some extent. It sounded like a good one, I wish I knew about something like that back then, because you know, for people who are not that techy, the ease of

having something physically delivered and typing in the code, I know it's terrible for privacy, but that back then I was thinking about it really, and it actually sounds like quite a cool business. So why did that stop? I can't actually remember why we stopped

that one actually. I think we kind of, because we was kind of mining and was increasing the size of the mining at the farm at the time and such, we just kind of put that down, because it was making more money on the mining side, but the crypto by post concept was more manual

labour to actually deal with it and deal with all the orders and posting it out and so on. So we just slowly came to, I guess, a natural close and slowly phased out as we just focused on the mining side. But yeah, no sooner had we done that though, obviously the mining side,

as more and more ASICs became into the market, it was been 2013-14 sort of time, I think the ASICs became early 2014, I think, when the ASICs came around for scripts-based coins, all the altcoins, so Litecoin and Dogecoin and all them sort of ones, and as soon as that

hit, the GPUs that we actually had, even though we'd kind of moved off Bitcoin, then on to the altcoins, even at that point the altcoins mining on GPUs became pointless, and there's just no point in the cost from UK Electric, as you'll probably know yourself, is a lot

more expensive than China or US or Iceland or wherever. So yeah, unfortunately, we did scale that up and very quickly it kind of hit the point of losses due to the electric costs and we had to turn that off as well. So that left you with a load of kit, what

did you do, sell it for gaming or something like that? Exactly that. Yeah, eBay for all the graphics, because the graphics cards, some of them have obviously been, have been extensively used over the time, but some of them were fairly brand new, we ordered them.

We actually ordered them, that's something I completely forgot, I'm thinking back myself now, I'm remembering things that I forget we actually did, because we were buying from is it scan.co.uk, because they actually accept Bitcoin, so we were mining the Bitcoin and

then we were using that to buy more graphics cards and more computer parts, so we kept cycling it round, which is actually quite a nice leap that we had going on. So yeah, we had a lot to go through of graphics cards and power supplies and all the, basically

all the hardware that we could recycle, which I think that must have took us three to six months, I think it was over time on eBay just to get rid of it all and sell it on. Sorry. And yeah, just during that time period, obviously we took a strategic decision that we knew

the industry fairly well, or we started to get into the industry fairly well. We were all interested in it, we all sort of saw the benefits and the potential in Bitcoin, and we didn't want to come out of the industry. So we decided, yeah, what's the next option

to carry on with obviously very entrepreneurial from the co-founders side of things, and we were just looking at what's the next best option from after mining. It's just not feasible anymore in the UK. So we turned our focus to the exchange side of things, so creating

the website, which was mine and co-founders bread and butter, because we were both software developers, and we already built quite a few things over time anyway, and just in terms of little projects we're building along the way, as we mentioned there, crypto by post

and all the various projects we're building. So we kind of pulled that together fairly quickly, launched CoinCorner in June, July, 2014, I think it was. So yeah, just six years old this month, which is good. That's quite a long time in this industry, really. Six

years is good going, and then what was it like setting that up? Was that I assume a similar problems with regulations and banks and all the people who want to get in the new way? Yeah, exactly, yeah. Yeah, six years is a long time for us, I'm thinking it feels like

a lot longer as well. I think a pace this industry moves out, it's unbelievable. But yeah, we had exactly the same issues that, as I mentioned there earlier, the banking piece, we luckily had the relationship from the mining, which is the banking relationship

to allow us to continue that relationship with them for the exchange, even though they're doing a little bit more higher risk at that point. We did continue with that, which was good, it allowed us to actually launch in the UK. I think we were the first ones in

the UK, and the only ones in the UK to have UK banking under a correct business account, shall I say, because I know there was quite a lot out there at the time still operating by their personal accounts. I think it's somehow the Mt. Gox situation turned out with that

one as well. Similar to that. So yeah, we had the same issues, regulation, luckily there was nothing around at the time, and we spent quite a lot of time with, we're based in the Isle of Man, so we fall under the Isle of Man's a funny jurisdiction. It's its own country

to some extent, but it falls under Great Britain and it follows a lot of the UK guidance and law and so on. So we have our own FSA over here, the Financial Services Authority, as you guys in the UK have the FCA. So it's this equivalent of the FCA over here, so we ended

up talking to them quite closely, getting to know them well. They realized that an opportunity, one of the benefits I think of the Isle of Man, it's a small country and they can react and be nimble in terms of direction and industries they look to operate in. So they saw an opportunity

with Bitcoin and they tried to grasp that early on, which was very good in terms of their PR perspective. It was great from our perspective because we were here starting up, there was a couple of other small startups as well that were Bitcoin related here, starting

to launch and come to some fruition in 2014, mid to late. But then the big issue came when the Isle of Man started to get quite a lot of press, about being the, I don't know if you remember, what year were you yourself when you came into the industry?

2017. Right, okay. So a couple of years before, so it's 2014 and the Isle of Man ended up being labelled as the blockchain island and Bitcoin island and things like that, I don't just saw that back in. When I first came in, I remember seeing a lot of that sort of stuff,

but I guess it'd been going on for a while. Yeah, I think it was, it was sort of mid to late 2014, when we first started to go through that sort of process and the government here pushing heavily on that, which was, as I mentioned, that it was really good from our

perspective. The downfall came for us, unfortunately, we had a conference in about September 2014 and at the time, because there'd been lots of press about the Isle of Man being a place to be for Bitcoin companies, the bank we were using, people then heard about the bank

we were using, and they ended up getting a lot of applications into applying for it basically a bank account for the UK, because banking globally was still a nightmare, it was chaos. So they had, I think at the time, about 110 applications on their desk to four bank accounts

from businesses all around the world. Literally, everybody turned up to this conference in mid September. They were all turning up for the conference because obviously it was the place to be, but then they were also turning up to get the bank accounts opened and get

that moving. The night before the conference, I got a phone call off the bank, our account manager there, and he was saying, unfortunately, HSBC had already pulled the plug earlier a couple of months before, and then Lloyd's was the sort of back up on some would fell

on to them, and then Lloyd's pulled the plug the night before the conference. So that was absolutely chaos. We was kind of like, what do we do? Because we're trying to sort our own banking out, and then we've got this conference the next day that these people from all around

the world come in, and we're trying to juggle so many things with it. And the conference began, I think the opening speech at the conference was from one of the government guys here, and they were sort of saying, you know, I'm sure everybody's heard now about the banking

situation and to give everyone heads up. That was literally the first line of the conference. So unfortunately, that absolutely just killed it for the Alaman. At that point there, all of them businesses that were, they were all looking to relocate here as well, and open

off offices. That was, you know, going back to bit pay and go coin. If you remember the guys go coin, coin floor, obviously across here, and, you know, every Bitcoin business you can think of globally at the time, they were all here for that conference and for

that bank account, which was a real shame, because if that would have continued and carried on, I'm sure there would be a lot of businesses here and a lot more would have been attracted here as well.

It would have been amazing for them to have all those businesses now, wouldn't it? It would really would. And it wouldn't, you know, there'd have been so many more created off the back of that here as well, because it would have been a perfect hub for these

companies to come to. And yeah, it was an unfortunate situation at the time, and it's left us effectively with ourselves pretty much as the only Bitcoin business here now, which is a shame.

Yeah. And so, but you managed to keep your relationship with the banks somehow then? We didn't. We saw we, unfortunately, because as soon as Lloyd shut that down, the intermediary one that we were working with, they were happy to continue, but they didn't have an underlying

bank, a clearing bank essentially was what he needed. So the clearing banks, we're just saying no. And we ended up having to go on them bank in Eastern Europe, and we've bounced there for a few years, yes, you name it, we've been in there, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia,

Latvia. Yeah, we've had accounts pretty much everywhere you can think of nearly. That was I guess the time when we realized having the bank was the competitive advantage. If you can get a good bank with a good relationship in this industry, it became that competitive advantage.

That's a crazy place to be where Bitcoin businesses heavily rely on the banks that they should have already replaced. It's a weird situation to be in. It really is. It's ironic almost. It's unfortunate circumstances, but yeah, yeah.

So okay, so it sounds like you went through it, and you stuck around. So what was next? What was next after that? So we got the banking in Slovakia, I think that was at the time, and we ended up as well then in the probably October, November time, we launched the purchase in Bitcoin with debit

card credit card with card, because there wasn't really anyone doing that again at the time. I think when we did launch that, we may be second or third to launch, I think. That gave us a quite a good competitive advantage. Again, we actually got the banking relationship

alongside the card relationship, the card processor. They were becoming a little bit more comfortable with it, and we had a little bit of history to go with it. And we again, luckily, through contacts of us knowing the person within that card processing company

effectively, that gave us that comfort or give them the comfort that they knew us, and we weren't some criminals. And that then allowed us to open up, and it really did convert. I think a lot more customers, what we found when you're going on a website, you know, people are so used to going on to

Amazon and to eBay, and you buy a product and you pay with your credit card, debit card, whichever one. And you don't really do bank transfers. It's not really a thing in other industries. So it's going to website and actually do a bank transfer. It's alien to people.

So we wanted to pull that back to be a little bit more user-friendly and create the whole process as somebody would do going buying a product on Amazon. And it did work all the sudden, we began to gain more customers, the sign-ups were obviously increasing slowly

as time went on, but the conversion rate as well of them customers was starting to increase from the early days, because it was just simpler for people to do. It came with extra fees, of course, because there's always the card fees and so on, but it was just more what they were used to.

So we kind of went heavily down than the more, rather than we initially launched more of trying to be a trading focused exchange, but then we slowly moved that to more of a retail focused exchange. So just the easy onboarding, which was, the card was just the key thing to bring that into place.

Yeah, it was sort of, it's so uncomfortable for people first coming in anyway that that must have made quite a big difference, just not having to do the transfers and doing something they used to. Yeah, completely, it really did. So yeah, we kind of, we went through that

side of the process and I think it was probably around that time then we got our first investment. So originally we've been self-funded from the start, and it was probably about 10 months in or something before we took on some investment, and that was just from a local high net worth

individual. Took a very small investment at that time there, allowed us to continue and keep growing, and we've, since then we've never actually took any more investment since that day, which has been great for us as a company, because obviously it means we're

in control and we can control our own destiny as such, and one of the things that do always try and explain to people about growing with the industry rather than trying to force the industry as such, we have a lot, we've seen a lot in the past where companies have tried

to force something that's not quite, the industry's not quite ready for it, and we've seen it from a company called, exactly. Yeah, the payment side of it is the big one, bit paying obviously forcing, try and go, not trying to force over, they were fighting against it

and they wanted the bigger blocks, because it went with their business model, but the industry didn't want that the end of the day, so they were trying to force something just because their business model suited it, but it wasn't best for Bitcoin and the industry.

I don't know if you remember, BitNet back in the day, that was 2015, maybe I think, so they were similar, they were another payment processor, they raised, I think it was about $50 million from Rakuten, which is just from Japanese, and we knew some of the guys there,

they were great guys and they were trying to effectively encourage and increase Bitcoin adoption for payments on websites, they actually did get Rakuten on board because that was part of investment, which was good, so they did initially go with Rakuten and that was

their launch, their first merchant really. That's quite a big one, which is incredible, yeah, incredible first merchant, but luckily they were the investors, so it kind of works for them, but what they had a plan with, from what I remember, they had, say, a list of about

300 merchants, but they were big, high-end merchants, so like Rakuten's and things, and they were trying to approach them and get them on board with Bitcoin. Unfortunately, I think it probably only took them about 18 months and they realized that the industry

wasn't, the world wasn't ready for the industry and wasn't ready for Bitcoin and still two early days, and I think obviously they burned through the 50 million they raised and they closed down about 18 months after that, and that was a big eye opener to us along the

way there to realize that you can't force an industry like this. It's an unfortunate position to be in, I think, to some extent, and when you're talking, so we spent a lot of time talking to venture capitalists and the US, they're used to throwing hundreds

of millions of ideas and concepts and things, but in the UK they're a little bit more hesitant, I guess, to do that, and they kind of follow the lead of the US a lot of the time in terms of Silicon Valley-esque style, so when you're talking to the UK ones and you're trying to

explain to them that, "Okay, you need to raise a few million pounds," but actually that's to see you out for the next five to ten years or a long-tail or long-term plan. They kind of look at that and that's not what they're after, they're after quick in, quick out,

and they're flipping companies and selling the companies, and that's what I want to grow quickly, grow fast, sell the company. It just didn't match with our industry and that's just not what our industry did, and I think there was a lot of companies that we've seen

throw lots of money at things, it just didn't work, bad timing, it's no disrespect to the guys that did that or the companies and the products or anything, it was just all that time and it just didn't work.

It sounds like being nimble has definitely helped because, let me say, you can make the decisions and it does seem that you sort of never know what's around the corner with this industry and things do change so quickly that if you plow the load of money into just, you

know, marketing something is a payments provider and then you have to pivot because that's no longer what people want or you realize it's not ready, then it's not very easy when you've got all those people backing it, they're going to say, "Well, hold on, you can't change it now," so it sounds like it's kind of worked in your favor.

Yeah, I think it has a ton of it's lucky or good timing or well-planned, it's definitely not well planned, yeah. So yeah, I think it's just a little bit lucky and good, say, good timing, bad timing, whichever one, it's sort of worked in our favor, and we've been able to grow with the industry and I guess

over that time we then sort of became fortunate enough not to have to need to go and take investment or chase investment and that was such a time consuming process as well as other people I've gone and done the same, I'm sure they'll tell you and realize two of the big

takeaways from ever going and seeing venture VC companies is it's so, so time consuming and everybody will always tell you, you know, don't take that VC money unless you really have to because you just, you lose control of the company, you lose control of the way

it's, it's the direction it's going, the way it's ran and that's not because the VCs are evil or anything like that but their job is to make money, it's to invest money in a company, grow it, sell it on and that's literally their job, so it's just the way it works.

Yeah, that makes sense and so, so at this point then you've, you're running, you're running basically as an exchange and you've got some investment but just from one, one high net worth individual and, and then what was next for you?

Um, next, next I lost my personal account, personal bank account, sorry I shouldn't laugh. That was, yeah, it was all fun games, that was, it was kind of one of them where it was almost a compliment from, so I had a bank account with HSBC and I've had that for like

15 years, I think it was since I was a kid and I got a letter in the post from them just basically saying your accounts being closed, you basically need to empty the account and like pay any cards or loans or anything I had with them, luckily I had nothing with them

and it would just cash in the account, so I rang them up and they couldn't get anything out on the phone, I went into the branch, local HBC branch and I was sort of querying it and the guy was sat there with me and he was going through it and he was like I don't

understand why it's been closed and all the side of it going through round in circles. You're thinking I do. Yeah, literally that was all I was doing, I was sat there and I knew full well why it was being closed and eventually then said let me just go and talk to the compliance team,

the back office, so he disappeared for about 15 minutes, left me sat there for about 15 minutes, eventually come back out and you could tell on his face as soon as he came out it was like he didn't know what to say and how to say it and he said unfortunately it's

come from the HQ in London which means that they don't get, oh this is what he told me they don't get a reason as to why it's been closed, it's just because they've said so in London HQ and that's as far as it goes, so he couldn't do anything more for me, so

I said like I sort of looked at him as like I know why it's been closed but I just wanted you to confirm and he obviously was tentative to say anything and he ended up, I eventually just dropped in, it's because of my link to Bitcoin and then his face kind of told the

story of that and give it away and then eventually the conversation kind of finished on, if my circumstances change in the future they'd love to have me back as well, so it was like okay, thanks and see you later, so yeah it was kind of a compliment I guess to some extent

that we were on the radar which was interesting but at the same time that was a little bit, the first time maybe it got a little bit real personally for me because we'd lost our accounts previously with the business bank accounts which was fine but losing it on my personal

account which I don't think I'd ever bought bitcoins through that account either which was interesting, they'd obviously picked me up from wherever, so it was just yeah, it was a, the first time I guess it got real personally for me I think and it kind of woke me up to realisation of why Bitcoin is potentially a really powerful tool.

And so when they're doing this, do you, I mean what's your thoughts on, are they doing this because they're not sure about Bitcoin, they don't understand it, it scares them, they think it's linked to criminal behaviour, blah blah blah and they close it down or

do you think at this point they've no full well, this is something that's competing with us, we do not want the system to survive, we do not want anyone who's linked to it to survive, so let's just cut everything off or not sure.

I think at the time it was kind of like, it was the, I guess the emotion gets the better of you at the time, it's like they've seen us as a competitor and that's why they're doing this and you kind of, you go down that route but I think when you take a step back

and think about it and think about, you know, what we have to do from an AML perspective from our compliance team, it becomes the unfortunate regulatory burden comes in from the compliance side and it becomes part of running a financial business and I think it

was a combination of potentially everything of, you know, yeah, they didn't understand Bitcoin for one, they didn't, they saw I had some form of relationship and I was running a Bitcoin exchange, they didn't want that risk, I wasn't worth it to them, you know,

maybe if I had a massive mortgage with them where I was paying lots of interest and they were getting, you know, good income from me, then maybe I'd be worth it to them and they'd continue to keep me as a customer because I had nothing through them except just a standard

bank account, they didn't see it worth it that I was the extra burden overhead to keep an eye on me that it just wasn't worth the admin costs, so I think it was a little bit of everything really and I think they obviously did do see Bitcoin as whether they see it as

a threat or whether they see it as still an unsure how they fit that into their business model and how they can use that in their business. I think all the banks are slowly attempting to figure that out to some extent, so yeah, a combination I would say of a little bit

of everything, no, I'd say no hard feelings but I always first to slag HSBC off at any opportunity I get, I'm sure, but we all should. I wouldn't be taking that offer back if they want you to open the account again. No, I don't think not say that. Yeah, leave that one on

the table. So that was what 2016, did you say? Yeah, I think that was 2016, about that time. I think that was roughly around 2015. We started to expand the team a little bit 2016. Again, we was expanding the team a little bit more at that point and that was, sorry. No, no,

I was just going to say what and what sort of how many were you? Was it just you and a couple of mates or was it getting quite big at that point? Yeah, no, we were still tiny. There was three, four, five, five, six of us maybe. I think that's six of us at the time. So yeah,

we were still very small team. Growing again with the industry and taking it slow, we weren't running away with millions of customers or anything like that. It was a slow and steady pace really. We spent a lot of that time as well working with the FSA over here, the Financial

Authority, and we were helping them create what eventually became designated business. We helped create the Bitcoin piece that fell under the designated business status. Designate business status here in the Alaman helps encompass companies that don't quite fall under any

regulation to some extent, but they need to have some sort of oversight. So it meant that we were then overseen for anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist finance and side of things. So I think it was a shame because the Alaman, this was still off the back of them trying

to push the island as a good place to come and relocate your Bitcoin business. So they were pushing to get this regulation through as quick as they could as well at same time as we were. I'd say, yeah, maybe naively thought that we may get a bank, a UK bank or UK banking

relationship off the back of having some regulation over us. I think we were, I think BitStamp I think beat us to it with a Luxembourg, I think they got a Luxembourg license about two weeks before we fell under the designated business act. So I think we would have been

one of the first companies in the world to fall under any formal regulation for a Bitcoin business. So it was quite an exciting time for us at that point and it's good. So yeah, we kind of move forward with that. Unfortunately, that again, the naivety side of it, we didn't

really, it made no difference to UK banking side of things because, you know, they didn't see it as anything interesting. It was just another, you know, we weren't regulated. We were just overseen by the regulator. So it was all wording of how we fell under it. Unfortunately,

the banks here in the Alaman, they're just branches of UK banks. So they all effectively have their licenses all through the UK. So all of the decision making came from London still, and the London branch didn't see us under the Alaman's designated business act

as a regulated entity. So they had no, they basically had no movement whatsoever on opening up banking tools at any point. So yeah, we still stumbled with that and it was, it was still a struggle. For the next couple of years, it was really only until 2019, I think the

UK banking eased up. So it was only just over a year ago now when we've actually gained access to UK banking. So all this time for the first five years of the business we were operating on. Eastern European banks, as I mentioned, Hong Kong banks and just everything.

It's crazy how much you have to go through to just supply a service for someone to buy something they want to buy. Yeah, it really is. It's, yeah, it's incredible. I think I guess it wouldn't put me off running another sort of starting another business or anything,

but it really does make you realize how maybe I've been unfortunate in the industry we picked to start a business up with. I think definitely, yeah. Through the pain we have along the way.

But it's taught us a lot, which is the positive thing I would take away from all this is the amount we've learned as a team here. And the amount I've learned throughout the whole process is an incredible way to learn, run into business. And I think if any of our team, if we were

to go into other industries, into another business, they would you'd think differently I think about how you run it and how competitive advantages can be found and things like that. So I think it's such a good learning experience in this space. You do have to just think outside

of the box for so many things. Yeah, definitely. And like I said to you, just before we jumped on the call, it looks like you're thinking outside the box now, still very much so. And so, you know, the things that I'd mentioned were you're doing the coin corner checkout,

which I want to jump onto in a minute. And also this earning Bitcoin Satsback reward. So it looks like you're branching out and meeting the needs that definitely are there because the Satsback is something everyone I speak to as like, yeah, that's brilliant.

That's such a cool thing. Like people who don't necessarily want to buy. If I'm trying to explain to someone, I'm like, yeah, you've got to go and buy this thing. And they don't really understand it. They're like, maybe I won't bother. But if I'm like, you can go

and spend money on something you're already going to spend money on, and you get this thing for free that I'm telling you is brilliant, they're more likely to, they're more likely to try that definitely. And the checkout, that's something I'm going through myself

at the moment, like trying to sell some of my art on my website. And I'm trying to mess around with BTC pay server and all this stuff. But actually having the option, it looks like you sort of take away some of the stresses for people. It's really, really cool. So how

did you land on those two ideas? Yep. Thank you. We were actually looking through your website earlier on today, some of the team checking out your artwork. Not really. You got some fans in the team here of your artwork. Oh, it's nice to hear. Thank you. But yeah,

we so the checkout, we launched with the checkout originally at the very start back in 2014. And that was the thing you've gained about keeping an eye on spot in the timing. We just, it was far too early. We launched with a couple of local shops here, actually physically accepting

Bitcoin. And when the conference was on, one of the pubs here, we got accepting Bitcoin and everybody was, it was incredible after the conference. It was like everybody was back to this tiny little pub in the Alaman and they were accepting. So say you had like

the likes of Max Geyser and Roger Vere, Broppis, you know, all of them people that was literally the whole industry in this pub paying with our gateway. So they've been quite, quite drink then with Max Geyser. Yeah. Yeah, he's a great character. Yeah. So yeah, that was

really good. And but unfortunately again, it all came back to the UK banking piece. And as soon as we lost the UK banking piece, it kind of kills allowing us to be able to operate with a lot of these UK businesses as soon as you say to a UK business as well. Yeah, you

can start accepting Bitcoin, but you can have to receive your payouts for GBP via an international bank transfer and it costs this much and so on and so on. It kind of killed the product.

So we pulled the plug on that pretty much at the end of September, I think it was. And we didn't revisit the checkout piece until it's roughly about a year ago, we introduced it again, or we started to introduce it again and bring that back. We didn't really that

was really the time when we started to develop it and bring the product back to life effectively. And it wasn't until really the start of this year that we've properly launched it and started to move forwards with trying to entice, I guess, bring more businesses on to accept Bitcoin.

And as you mentioned there, with the ease of what we've done, it's affected the same way as BitPay work and it allows any merchants to just pull in a plug-ins, for example, if you're using a platform like Magento or WooCommerce, something along the lines, you could

be able to download a plug-in from us, install the plug-in on your website, sign up on our website as well for your account, throw your API keys in and off you go in, you're accepting Bitcoin. As soon as the Bitcoin customer buys something on your website, pays your Bitcoin.

We're flipping that to GBP or Euro, depending on what you want. And then we've also got auto bank withdrawals. So as soon as your balance reaches, say, £500, we'll auto withdraw that to your bank account via UK faster payments. So it's quite seamless and there's very little

fees because there's no, we give the bank transfer for free, obviously, to withdraw your money. And then we'll just charge a 1% flat fee for the conversion of the Bitcoin to stir in all to Euro.

And what if someone, sorry to cut you off there, what if someone doesn't want to go back into dirty dirty fee? What if they want to keep their Bitcoin? Can you do the same thing for them or?

Yeah, yeah, that just works exactly the same. There's just a setting in your user area where you can just flag it, say, don't convert anything. So you can just hold it in Bitcoin. So yeah, that's the way that we all want the world to work and everybody to accept. And I know

you get the very much the Bitcoin maximalist hardcore side, which will be like, you know, they're not really accepting Bitcoin if they're taking Bitcoin and selling it for GBP straight away. But unfortunately, that's not the way the world works. And people that are companies,

not even people, it's companies that are brand new to Bitcoin. You know, you can't turn around to them and say you've got a whole Bitcoin because, you know, it's not, it's not just a case of you have to kind of think in their mindset as well and where they're coming

from from a business because these businesses for one people just think, Oh, well, you know, the Bitcoin volatility is the issue there. And you know, if the price goes down and they're going to lose the money, if they need to buy the supplies of whatever they're selling.

It's unfortunately, it's not even just that issue. There's lots of knock on effects of things like, you know, the accountancy side is one of the big things that you come across. These businesses have a, they may have a local accountant in Manchester somewhere. And you

know, that accountant has never used Bitcoin and never created accounts with Bitcoin in there as a currency. And it just, it creates complexity that these guys are not ready for and are not able to do yet. So unfortunately, I think the world is going to take some time

moving away, moving sort of over to that side of things. And it naturally will be, they'll accept Bitcoin, but they'll flip it straight away for Sterling. So their accountant can just see Sterling and deal with it. And they still need to buy supplies still as well.

I know people say, you know, well, why not tell them to tell their supplier to accept Bitcoin and it's like becomes a nice circle. But unfortunately, that's not always the case and the way it can be. So you have to have services like ourselves to bridge that gap initially,

and then over time, hopefully they can all stop converting to Sterling and they'll be able to just use Bitcoin. But that will take time. It's a very small percentage of people who will be in that circular economy and just want to hold the Bitcoin. It's, you know, whatever it is, even if it's 1% of people or something

like that. So it's really good to have the option for people to accept it and dip their toes in and then maybe they go down that maximalist route and want to keep everything in Bitcoin down the line. So it's a good way to get people in anyway.

Yeah, yeah. And for the ones who are keeping it in Bitcoin, that 1%, can that then I assume be linked to their hardware wallet or something and generate new addresses each time or do they have static addresses or how does that work?

So when the checkout, when somebody won the customer wants to pay with Bitcoin, that'll generate a new address every time and they'll pay for the order. Once the Bitcoin hits your account, at the minute, we don't actually have an auto withdrawal, but we, that's something

we should be bringing in shortly where if you wanted to auto withdrawal your Bitcoin out, so say your, your trees or your ledger, you've got stored elsewhere, then you'll be able to set that up and we'll just auto withdrawal when you hit a certain threshold. So yeah,

that'll all be working fine. It's same as any other exchange, you can just withdraw to where you need to. That's cool. Yeah, that's really interesting. I will, I'm trying to get lots of other artists and people who are just doing, not big, not big businesses, but just doing smaller, smaller

volume stuff. And that sounds like for some of them, it could be, could be useful. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Thank you. Yep. If you need to say, if you're, you're trying to do it for your website as well, feel free to, um, they can drop me a message after the, after

the podcast and we can, um, try and help yourself and sort something out for you there. Thank you. It may come to that. My, uh, my goal is to try and set up BTC pay server and, and do it all myself so that I know what I'm doing. Uh, but I am not brilliant at this

sort of stuff. So if, if in a couple of months, I don't manage it, I might come cry and just say, help me, help me. That's fine. No, that's good to hear. I know that's, you know, we're, we want to people to come and use those as a business and everything else, but you know,

you using the BTC pay server. Um, that's better to hear that you're, you're able to do that, or hopefully able to do that by the end of it and, um, accepting Bitcoin and holding it then, which is, you know, that's what I want. That's why I want more people to be doing.

We are as a company just that bridge at the minute for companies that don't want to do that. Yeah. So yeah, that's good to hear. And so the other one, the, uh, the Satsback, that is something I definitely want to use.

That's something that I think is brilliant and I will, I know that lots of people will be interested in that. So can you talk me through how that works? How would someone go from now? I'm not, I don't have anything to do with your business. I've never used

it before, but I want to get some Satsback. What do I do? Yep. Um, so sign up at going corner. Um, you will then there's a Bitcoin section. Um, so you pop into there and on that page, you can look for any merchants in the UK. We're predominantly UK focused at

the minute. So we have, uh, I think it's just over about 750 merchants now in the UK. Um, you will say by, you're looking to buy a PC going back to the example I mentioned earlier, PC world. They're on there. For example, uh, you will click on PC world, takes you through

to their website. That effectively puts a cookie on your machine to say you've clicked through from coin corner. Um, once you then buy the product at PC world, you will then get an email from us to say it's registered for Satsback at some point. Um, once you've

received your product, so the, the sometimes there'd be a little bit of delay and dependent on the merchant is you've got to wait for your product to be delivered. Um, make sure you also, you know, you don't return the products and, and then try and get the Satsback as well.

Cause I was going to try as well. You close that gap. Yeah. Fortunately, yeah, the merchants already closed that gap for us. Yeah. Unfortunately, not possible. Um, I think you'd be surprised how many people I think attempts that as well, and they'll from years back when I was involved

in the cash back stuff. It's, uh, so once you've got that, you'll then it's all automated in the background there that you've got nothing else to do. You'll get an email telling you, uh, Satsback coming. And then once you're Bitcoin accredited to your account, you're

going to email telling you that's been credited and how much it's full. So that's kind of the, the basic overview of it. What we've also introduced, I don't know if you've, how much you've seen of it yet, but we've also introduced a, uh, extension for your browser. So we've

got a Chrome extension. Um, it works in, uh, edge and opera and a couple of other ones as well. So you'll be able to add the extension to your browser. You'll be able to go browsing the internet. So say you're going and buying something from boots.com, for example, you

then don't have to log back into your coin corner account and click through. You're able to then it will pop up with a little pop up saying, you know, boots are a member of coin corner cashback. So then you'll just have to click the button on the pop up that pops

up and it'll effectively put the cookie on to the boots website. Um, so you'll be able to get your cash back that way. Um, so it means you don't have to go back to our website all the time searching for the company.

Yeah, that's cool. Um, so yeah, it's an old privacy conscious industry and everything else. And people are not too big of fans of extensions and plug-ins and things, but, um, it's, it will still, I think, um, hopefully suit and particular audience that do want that. Um,

and it effectively means as well, you don't miss if you forget about it, but actually you visit a website that we do have, and it'll just pop up and tell you. So it does work really well. Um, so we have, sorry, keep jumping in over the top. What sort of percentage can

people expect? I assume it varies from retailer to retailer, but yeah, it does. It's, um, I think the highest we go to is it 35%, 32%, getting told 32% from the side here. Um, so yeah, that's, uh, 32% ish. Um, it again, massively varies and depends on the merchant. Um, so

some of them may be as small as like two or three percent. Um, but they're potentially ones that you might buy, say, for example, holiday and you might get two or three percent back on holiday. So it's a big value item and it's a significant amount. Um, some of them

also will give you back rather than a percentage. Some of them may give you back, um, like a fixed fee, 10 pound, for example. So if you sign up for a subscription at sky or whatever that be, you may get like 10 pounds with back. So let me fix fees. Um, one of the interesting

things which, uh, we have just launched today, we actually, we haven't told anybody about it yet or shout about it. So we've just added today to the website a product feed. So product search. So we see you can log into coin corner where you normally see the merchants that you

can look through to get the cash back on. Uh, we've added a new section for the products. So you can search if you're looking for a 32 inch TV, for example, you can just type in 32 inch TV. It'll bring you back all the 32 inch TVs we have in the product list and

it'll tell you which merchants they're from. So you can effectively click it on the products and it'll take you straight to the products on, say, PC world or wherever that is. Um, so that's a, we've got, I think it's about six and a half million products I think in

there, um, on the 750 UK merchants we've got going. Um, so that'll be quite a good one. There's as far as I'm aware, there's nobody else out there in our industry that does this and all there is in the cashback world, uh, with good go and, um, top cash back in the

likes in the UK. Uh, and it's a couple of them that do product searches, but in the Bitcoin industry at the minute, I think we'll be the first ones to do that. Um, so excited to do it to launch that and, and start shouting about that this week. Brilliant. And that,

that goes live when today, did you say it's, it's live now. Yeah, we've, we've pushed it live today. Uh, we just haven't told customers about it just yet. So for anyone who's listening and wants to check it out, they just go on your website and it will be under just like

search bar, will it? Yeah, it's just in the, in the, uh, in cashback section and in there, you've just got the merchant search and our product search as well alongside it. So yeah, it's actually very useful. Something that I think the team here, as soon as we got the

cashback thing, it was one of the things that the team here was like, you know, I want to buy, um, you know, a set of pans, but I don't know which merchants sell the set of pans. So how do I find the merchants that sell these pans? Um, so you then it kind of lead us naturally

onto the product search. And we kind of got that together fairly quickly, which is good. Um, so yeah, very useful part, very useful feature. Yeah, definitely. And so if someone goes on there, let's just say they've never bought Bitcoin before, they've never used

it and they sign up for this service and they start buying things. Um, what, what happens with that Bitcoin? Does it go into say their account with you on the exchange and then they withdraw it in a lump? Cause I assume they don't want to be sending tiny amounts

all the time. No, yes. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly that. Yeah. Just go straight into their coin corner account and they can withdraw whenever they want, but yeah, you're not going to be able to, you may only get like, you know, 50 P back on one of your purchases. So you're

not going to be wanting to withdraw that every time. So yeah. Very cool. Very cool. And so is there anything else in the works that we haven't covered and, and should have? Um, I'm sure there's plenty, but my mind is absolutely frazzled. I did see, I did see the Bitcoin

core contributions. Uh, maybe you could tell me a little bit about that. Um, yeah, that's quite a basic, basic level, I would say. Um, so we're not, I guess when I first started getting into the Bitcoin side of things, I'm a software developer by trade. So it was kind

of, uh, I was always poking around and playing around with the code there and we myself on the co-founds at the time going back years now, we just created our own version of Bitcoin. We basically took the code and did the same as what like Litecoin did, for example, and

effectively clone the book, created our own name and stuff. Um, so we played around with it from, um, you know, very early on, um, and over the years, I've not had the time to basically come back and really do too much. I've always kept paid attention all the way

through the whole seguit. Um, it's civil war, should we call it almost? Yeah. Yeah. In terms of, uh, upgrading to seguit and, um, the scaling debates and all that side of things. So I always paid attention and kept up to date with the technology and how it's

adapting. But I've never had the opportunity to jump back in and contribute. Um, so last year, uh, it's about this time last year, actually myself, I kind of wanted to get back into it, but I wanted to encourage the tech guys to start to get back into it or to get

into it. Um, so I kind of sat down with all our tech team and I was talking more through it and we spent, uh, probably the first two or three months where we had like a Friday morning, um, where we spent about two or three hours every Friday morning, kind of going

through Bitcoin core, explaining how all the process works and all the background stuff and I was talking through all that. Um, it was learning at the same time, myself, throughout this process as well. Cause it was a really sort of great, um, experience for me going

through that. Um, and the idea was to encourage the guys to start contributing themselves and start giving back to the community events within the industry. Um, so we then I think our first, uh, pull requests that actually eventually got committed were in October last

year. Um, and we went through the process myself and three of the other tech guys, uh, now we've all got contributions, which is great. So sort of four coin corner members, uh, team members of all contributed to Bitcoin core, which is, um, I guess a great thing

from our perspective, just to, you know, it's saying contribute to Bitcoin core is incredible achievement for the guys here, which is great. Um, but it's also to give back to community. And while changes weren't significant, like, you know, signatures and taproot, esque style

changes, there was a lot of simple gibi changes. Um, and there was a lot of, uh, grammar mistakes here, there and everywhere that, you know, they still need dealing with and contributing to. So we took them as a good, good first issues, um, to be able to look at and see,

you know, how we can get into it. It's not just about, um, the code side of things, I think with Bitcoin core as well. There's a process, if you've not worked in open source software before in the past, there's a whole process that you end up having to go through.

So while we were working through it ourselves, we were recording everything and tracking everything. And we ended up writing some tutorials for Windows development, Mac development, and we've done a Linux one as well. We haven't actually really settled. Um, but what the

idea was we could create something here to show people through our first pull requests. And that would allow them to go off and hopefully encourage more new people to come into the code. We found Googling around. There was a, a, a, such a lack of walk through, it was

like a whole what we wanted was a walk through from step one, all the way through to your pull request being committed to the code. Um, to actually explain the whole process every step along the way. And the, there was just really nothing out there. So what we did

is we created that and it showed you the whole process of how you do it, how you commit by a GitHub and every little step in between and how then, you know, you communicate with the people that will be reviewing your code. And if they make changes, you've got to do

rebasing and so on. There's, there's lots of steps throughout it. Um, and coming in, you might know C plus plus, but you've never worked in open source code. You've never worked with GitHub and Git. You've never worked on Bitcoin. And it's that introductory piece.

So a big part of that whole process was to try and create these documents in these tutorials to then give to other people and let other people follow them and hopefully create something themselves and start contributing themselves so we can encourage more people into the space.

So that was kind of, that was the aim. Um, hopefully some people have found it of use. Um, we've had, I coincidentally, actually this last week, I actually had two people contacts, um, wanting to, they found the windows guide that we released. Um, and they were basically

saying there's very little out there for windows development with Bitcoin and they wanted to help on that. And they were asking us if we can kind of be their mentors and help guide them through, um, windows development on it. So, um, it seems to have worked. We at least

got two people involved, which is good. Well, that's brilliant. Um, yeah. Hopefully we've got more in the background that quietly found it useful, but, um, at least two come forward and wanted some, some form of mentorship to get them through it. Um, so yeah, it was good.

It was a good process, good experience for the guys. Hopefully the long term for us is we still want to carry on contributing, but when you're trying to build an exchange and on these other things, it's time consuming and difficult. Um, but eventually our sort

of aim, I guess as a, as a team tech team, our goal is to kind of contribute something a bit more substantial, um, a little bit more, you know, you see taproot and snore and things like that. You know, maybe they're a little bit too big, but, um, early was another one,

which is a quite a cool little, um, efficiency that's been created for Bitcoin core. And that's, I think that was developed by one person. So, um, you know, these are the sort of things that eventually as a team, we want to come on to sort of find a little project.

That's a little bit more substantial to, to that, they want to do with bandwidth or something, isn't that? Yeah. Yeah. Um, so you said you're a ping guy. I sent you a member listening to a podcast with him on there. They sounded like he was anyway, can't remember the name

now. But yeah, that's, um, yeah, can't remember his name either. But yeah, yeah, it's a fact to that one. Um, so yeah, that was kind of the core contribution. Uh, we, we are as a team going to continue to contribute where we can, um, but it was all about trying to encourage

and educate more people to come and get involved because, you know, Bitcoin is not a company. Bitcoin is this open source decentralized project and you need contributors. So it's nice to see the likes of Square and, uh, Kraken, I think Zappo as well. Uh, they've started

to now give out the grants for Bitcoin core developers, um, which is really, really good to see. Um, you know, we've not been in the position yet to start giving out grants to people, but we're doing it as a team internally to add them, contribute. So, um, the more we

can try and help educate, the more we can hopefully encourage more people to come in and get involved. Definitely. Well, it sounds like, uh, from start to start to now has been a serious amount of work and you've had, uh, had your work cut out, dealing with regulators

and banks and all the other bullshit that went with it. And it's nice to sit nice to hear that now you're working with Bitcoin core and giving back. It sounds to me that you could have done lots of other things. And there might be a reason that you're here

and there's, uh, Bitcoin's more to you than just a business. So what, what does it mean to you? Why, why are you here through all the pain and suffering that you've gone through? Um, no idea. Glutton for permission. Um, um, I think early on it was the, um, it wasn't

to be honest. I know a lot of people say they, they come for the, um, the money, the price, um, and we stay for the tech and, and, you know, it was the, the memes that go around with that sort of thing. Um, but it was originally the tech that attracted us, I think, um, because

we were tech is maybe and, and developed at the time. I think early on, I didn't realize what Bitcoin really was. Um, and it was probably for the first couple of years, you know, you didn't really realize the power of what Bitcoin is and, and how that can make an impact on

the world. Um, I think, uh, one of the things you'll, a lot of people sometimes bring up the back and the early days of the internet, or when the internet was first kind of being created, there was a payment protocol, um, actually created, which was four or two, something

like the HTTP code, four or two, I think it is. And that was created for online payments, but there was never, there was no technology there to available to actually fill the gap at the time. Um, so Bitcoin kind of, that was one of the first times I realized, you

know, actually somebody had this envisioned the internet having some form of payment and then you kind of think, okay, Bitcoin kind of actually does that and it feels like gap. And then that was a, that was probably the more the earlier 2015, 16 times when you start

to realize that and you think, okay, it's a, it's a payment, it's appeared to be a currency and all that, that side of things. But then I think it came onto more, um, the store of wealth, the investment, um, I remittance products, a decentralized base layer that can then be built on top of with various products

like your lightning and your liquid, these side chains. One of the ones I really loved the, the concept of was the, um, as LTV shop, the name thinks LTV shop, which is one of the lightning devs who has created a lightning based, it's almost, I guess it's class is

layer three sort of product and it sits, it's a lightning e-commerce website. So the website itself will have products on there. So it's, say you're, you're going on Amazon, looks just like Amazon, um, you buy a product, you go to the checkout, you don't need to create

an account with the website, so you, they don't ever store your details on their database. Um, you don't have to put your car details in because you're paying with lightning, but when you make the payment with lightning, you can attach your, you can attach details across

in an invoice to lightning. Um, so when you make the lightning payment in the invoice, you can attach your name and your address, your delivery address for the product. So your delivery address and all your details and all the payment all go in this lightning invoice

across the lightning network. The company at the other end receives that payment and receives the, your details. They can post the product to you and your, um, your personal details, your bank details, your car details, nothing ever gets bored anywhere. Yeah. That's brilliant.

It means what was it called? Uh, I'm sure it's LTV shop. Um, I can find you the thing, the, the link afterwards and I can send that over to you. Yeah, that sounds amazing. It was, it was really good little concepts and it kind of, that was one of the first ones myself

and, and Zach, one of the techies here, he was, uh, I think one of the first ones to buy something over it, which was awesome stickers. Um, so that was, I think that was about eight months ago, something like eight, nine months ago, but it was the one, the first ones where

you're real is the more time goes on. So when, you know, what is Bitcoin to me, the more time goes on, it adapts and changes a little bit to what it is and what it can become. And I think it's, it goes back to the internet days of, um, you know, the nineties, you wouldn't

someone said, what's the internet to you? You don't realize back in the nineties, it was just some, a couple of websites that people were doing for a little bit of fun and there was nothing really in it. Then e-commerce kind of came around, but then, you know, social

media came around and smartphones came around and apps and, you know, all of a sudden it evolves and it changes over time. Um, but it's all been built on this base layer of the internet protocol. Um, so, and at the end of the day, Bitcoin is built on that protocol to some

extent. Um, and, you know, it wouldn't be able to be here without the internet to, in some respects. So I think it, it slowly changes over time and it's given us something that's a, a truly decentralized base layer, I think is the best way I was describe it. Um, and

allowing us to build people can use it the way they want. If they want to use it as currency, use it as currency, store a value investment, um, you know, remittance products, they want to use it to build cool lightning shops on. Um, then, you know, they, they can do that

it's there and it's available to everybody. Um, so it's not, not one thing. It's lots of things to many people. Yeah, definitely. And do you sort of, do you have any concerns because, you know, a lot of, a lot of people say, oh, it's crazy to think that all these

other layers can be built on the top of Bitcoin and that, that, uh, it can, it can go more mainstream and can have a massive amount of use and that it can scale to that. I, I, you know, I'm not a techy guy, but from what I understand, I think it can. And I'm really

confident and excited about it. That's why I'm doing the podcast because I do think this is going to change the world or has, has a potential to do you have anything that as you are more technical that you look at and you go, that concerns me slightly or, you

know, something, something where you, you're a little bit worried. Um, yes and no, I guess there's always little, little bits and bobs that pop up here and everywhere. Um, I always say scaling perspective. Um, the scaling on chain is always been a question and always

been that, you know, debatable of, is it right? Is it wrong? Um, and I think I hope the way we've done it at the minute as once I we've the Bitcoin community keeping the block size small. Um, and scaling cleverly, not scaling with throwing bigger blocks at it and just

throwing mass at it, which is just not not the way to scale in my eyes. And I think technically it doesn't really, um, it doesn't make sense to, it makes sense to the, to build it the way it's been built. The base layer should stay, um, as decentralized as possible, which

means smaller blocks. And, um, it means you build on the efficiencies. Like we've mentioned earlier earlier on where early is, is created something there to improve on an efficiency of something that's already a feature within Bitcoin. Um, and the, the work that goes into

Bitcoin call really at the minute is all about creating the efficiencies on the base layer, which then gives the decentralized aspect. Um, sort of, uh, more strength, should we say, um, and keeps it decentralized at a scale that we need to go to the, the scaling side

of things. I think we'll come from the layer twos, which is lightning and your side chains at liquid. Um, that's where the scalability for mass adoption, I think will be the, the way to go. Uh, we've been using lightning quite heavily recently. Uh, we've introduced

that into our checkout as well. So you can use lightning on the checkout now. Um, and it's incredible. It works. It's smooth. Um, there's things in the background that, you know, we are ironing out and there's things we've spotted in lightning that we'd like

changing and things, but you know, they, it's two and a half years old lightning. And since it was on the live net, it's going to take time to adapt and evolve and change, but two and a half years in, it's working great. Um, there's, I know there's a flood and, flood

and loot attack, which has been thrown around the media quite a bit at the minute. It's on my list to go and read more of the technicals about that and try and understand what that attacks all about. And you know, is that actual danger to lightning? Now, um, in one

respect to everyone keeps saying, you know, yeah, is it can, you know, um, effectively steal the funds of what's in lightning network. There's a $10 million, lots of, I think at the minute in the lightning network. If it was really a threat, someone had gone steal

that $10 million. So it's a theoretical threat. So if this is me talking on the surface of it, I've not dealt with the detail yet, but there's always going to be my kind of point that I'm getting to is there's always going to be threats throughout any piece of software.

Um, and that's the way it is. And there's never going to be a bulletproof piece of software as, as bulletproof as Bitcoin. Uh, now is obviously along the way there was, there was hiccups and everything along the way. But no, I think the, the state we're in, the scaling

to mass adoption, I think we'll have to be doing on the layer two, but still in a decentralized manner. And the base layer is all about building them efficiencies in now, which is, uh, the key piece to it really. Okay. Yeah, that's brilliant. Well, it's nice to hear that you're

confident. Um, as I say, as a non techie, it's, it's difficult for me to dig too deep into some of this stuff. I have to, I have to trust, uh, some people and, and, and let the people who understand this stuff do the digging, but it's, it's a shame. Yeah, it's, it's a shame.

I, obviously I am techie and I come from obviously 15 years of development background and so on. So I can delve in and jump into some of the techie pieces, but I don't get time a lot of the time to actually delve into the technical aspects and really understand it

to understand all these things are threats. So even I myself have to take advice from certain people in the industry that, um, you know, if, um, Jimmy song, for example, is, um, a great sort of, um, it does pretty good technical analysis sometimes of certain things and tries

to explain that to the lay in layman's terms, which is, is great. And you unfortunately, in this sort of industry, you do have to rely on that a little bit because it's so vast, an industry and there's so much going on and so much moving. You do end up relying on other

people to almost convert the, the real technicals into something simpler that we can understand. Um, so, you know, I'm still in an exact same, um, position as yourself where, you know, even if I can understand it, I sometimes don't let the time to understand it and you have to

rely as much as it's the don't trust verify. Unfortunately, here becomes a point where you do have to trust sometimes. Yeah, you can't. You're not alone in that. Yeah, no, you absolutely not alone in that. I think the rest of the industry is very much the same. Um, and it

sometimes obviously can work quite negative where you've got the likes of, um, Roger Ver and things like that with Bitcoin Cash where, you know, they're shouting to everybody Bitcoin cash is that is Bitcoin and, you know, it can scale because we've made big a box

and all this sort of stuff. But if somebody that doesn't know the technicals listens to them, they could buy into that. Yeah, that's a scary bit. And I mean, what I always say to people who, because loads of people who I've introduced to Bitcoin have asked me that

question. And I just say, look at the market cap and then, and then listen to 20 people who are very knowledgeable about Bitcoin speak and then 20 people who think they're knowledgeable about Bitcoin Cash speak and then spot the idiot. And it's generally people realize quite

quickly that, wow, okay, this side, they've got some ridiculously smart people working on this and they understand what they're talking about. And the other side is just a lot of shouting and bullshit. And normally people work that out, thankfully. Yeah, yeah, it's

exactly that. And yeah, hopefully it's sometimes people may get burnt along the way, but generally they do work out and come to the, say, come to the side, come to the dark side, but come to the side of the realization. Yeah, she's good. Yeah, definitely. All right. Well, listen,

thank you so much for coming on today. Thank you for what you're doing and contributing to Bitcoin call. And I'm going to be checking out this Satsback. And if in a couple of months, I can't work out how to set up and take Bitcoin, I'll definitely be speaking to you about

that as well. But can you just tell us where people can find you and if you want to hear from anyone? Yep. Yep. Thank you for having me on Mike's appreciate it. And I really enjoyed talking to you. So you can find me on Twitter, mainly Coin Corner Danny and coin corner.com. If you want to come get cash back on the Sats, looking

to accept Bitcoin from checkout or if you want to just come and buy Bitcoin. Perfect. All right. Well, yeah, thank you very much. I'll be linking all of that in the show notes anyway. And everyone go and check out this search feature and go and buy some stuff and

get some Satsback. Thank you. All right. Nice to speak to you. Cheers, Danny. Thank you.