EP51 Bitcoin podcast, Bleskomat the lightning ATM helps exchange dirty fiat for tasty sats

Bitcoin is close to becoming worthless.

Now, what's the Bitcoin? Bitcoin's like rat poison. Yeah! Oh. The greatest scam in history. Let's get it. Bitcoin will go to fucking zero.

All right, you ungovernable misfits. I'm your host, Max. Everybody knows that Bitcoin is useless, worthless, and doomed to fail. But what if everyone's wrong? What if it's the system that is doomed to fail?

Join me as I speak to some of the brightest people in the space, and slither to the deepest, darkest depths of the Bitcoin rabbit hole. Today, I speak to the team behind the Blessco Mat, the Lightning Network ATM that works offline.

The thing looks absolutely amazing, and supposedly, it's going to be available for sale from March. I get to speak to the boys and learn a little bit more. Before we dive in, I just wanted to say firstly, thank you to my sponsor's coin floor for a discount on recurring buys with coin floor.

Click the link in the show notes. And also, to let all the listeners know, something very special is happening on the 5th of November. 21ism is dropping. 21ism, if you haven't already heard, is a celebration of Bitcoin-inspired creativity in all its forms.

I'm so excited for this project. I've been working on it in the background for quite some time with an amazing team. So, everyone, look out for that 5th of November 21ism.com. - Hi guys, can you hear me?

- Yes, can you hear us? - Hello. - That's better. Yeah, I can hear you perfectly this time. Nice to speak to you again. How's your day going? - Fine. - Yeah, doing well. - Good, and you're set up in the studio this time, are you?

- Yes, we are in the studio in the basement of Paralympolis. - Exactly, for the good equipment, we've been testing for having the best quality sound. - Perfect. Yeah, so for anyone who's listening now, we've already spoken, and last time we had a couple of technical issues, and I'd said, you know, we have to redo this

because it's too good of a product and too good of a conversation to have those sort of issues. So, I'm really excited to jump into this with you guys. So, for anyone who doesn't know of Blessco Matt, can you just introduce, firstly, what it is that you're building and a little bit of an introduction on both of you guys, please.

- Okay, yes, so Blessco Matt is a landing network, ATM, that works offline. And we are trying to focus on creating the best user experience for the person that uses the machine, as well as for the operator.

So, in order to do that, we are using LNG URL. I don't know if you know this amazing protocol that is on top of the landing network, and it allows the final user that is using the machine to have the best user experience.

And we also have the web platform where the operator of the machine can easily configurate the machine with the node or, and so on. - Okay, perfect. And we've got, so it's Carlos and Charlie, and do we have Thomas with us today, or just Carlos and Charlie?

- Yeah, yeah, I'm here as well. - Hi, Thomas, okay. And so, can I have just a little bit of background on you guys and how you met and how this whole project came about? - Yeah, well, we met here in Paralenio Police, where we are now at the basement.

Like we all are people that were interested on cryptocurrencies, Bitcoins, and technology, and programming, and so on. So we met like, let's say, maybe five years ago? - I think four years ago.

- Four or five years ago, four years ago. - Yes, and since then we've been like organizing meetups and learning things, doing hacking projects, always communicating and trying when we were learning something like communicating to the community here in Black, so what we were doing and what we were learning.

Yes. - Yeah, we had a group here in the basement called Learning by Doing, and the idea was to learn new stuff and to, I guess, network and meet similar people who are interested in hacking on stuff as a group.

So we would have a project, we would say, "Hey, this is something interesting, why don't we try this?" We would try it, learn new stuff, maybe the idea itself we would find isn't really viable, so we would stop eventually, we would then try a new project, maybe with different goals, different stuff to learn,

and that was our process for many years. - That's very cool. I think learning by doing is the best way for most people and have to say it's something I kind of miss, where I am, there's, especially with what's going on in the moment, you don't really have that opportunity and sort of like speaking to people on Twitter

and going through things on the phone or whatever, just isn't the same as in meet space. It's so much more fun doing that. - Definitely, yes. So-- - And they had, sorry, go on. - No, yes, basically, we can continue when we were doing these meetups, then we were working on some projects,

like connected to Bitcoin, and then we got the inspiration to start with this ATM. - Yeah, about a year and a half, year and something, year and 10 months ago. - Yeah, so yes, so we were here and we were after coming to this landing factory from Munich, I think.

So we got in touch with a lot of people from the landing community, we wanted to start to do something. So we thought that there was not a landing ATM at the moment. We were talking to already businesses that were doing ATMs already, but so we were offering that we could help them to do it

because we had experience already with the landing network and that we could be useful for them because this is the way we see the future of Bitcoins and but we didn't have any good response from them.

So we started to do our own. - Yeah. - Looking through the pictures and from what I've seen, it looks like an awesome product. It looks so polished and close to everything you would want from one of these types of machines.

And I've spoken to 21 is enough before. I've seen a lot of people coming up with these sort of ideas and trying to build things, but I haven't seen one that looks as finished and polished and like a final finished product that presumably people who maybe don't want to spend all their time building or aren't so technical.

I assume that's who you're looking for for this product. You're looking for people who want it in a shop or want it at home. Like who is your target market? - Okay. So who's our target market right now for the (speaking in foreign language) Okay.

Yeah. Well, traditionally the current generation of ATMs, I like to call legacy Bitcoin ATMs are targeting network operators. But we feel like that's, we don't want to go for that market that already has existing market leaders and they're doing okay stuff.

If they incorporate Lightning Network, then that will be great for those people. And we great for end users, fine. But that's not our idea. We believe there's a new market where there are let's say crypto enthusiasts who are excited to share their knowledge and to talk to other people, communicate in a physical space

and educate how this new technology works and how does it practically look in the real world? That's been missing for a long time. An easy way to let's say onboard new users by giving them a real, really easy first exposure to Bitcoin.

And so that's the idea with the plus comma. You come to the machine, you put in one cent a euro and you can buy Bitcoin for one cent euro. It's possible. So that's what we tried to do. And that's what we did.

Now we just need to work on the details. (laughs) - Well, certainly that idea is incredible. You know, using this as a way to teach people. When people can see it, they can believe it because, you know, I find with a lot of this stuff when you are trying to explain how powerful this technology is and the changes it can make.

And, you know, we can all get very excited. Anyone who's into Bitcoin can get very excited about this stuff and then you speak to normal people and you don't always get so far. They don't always see why this is so interesting.

They sort of think, oh, this is a stock or, you know, they don't really get it. And I think what you're talking about there is so powerful because they can just buy such a tiny amount and they can actually see what this can do.

And it makes that conversation so much easier. - Have you had any experiences from sort of no coiners or noobs who have started playing around with this and then very quickly change their mind on the whole thing?

- Yes, yes, very in the last few months when we first went to with the Descent Track which is a Pardonnapolus project. I've taken Pardonnapolus out into the real world in like a festival or conferences, for example.

They load everything up into a truck and we went with them. We took the first, let's say, finalized version, the big version with the bills of the Buskomat during the summer, we went with them and they were able to onboard 200 new users in not even a blockchain conference.

It was a finance conference that didn't have anything necessarily to do with Bitcoin. There were maybe a couple projects or some other people involved but it wasn't focused on Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies and they were able to have very smooth onboarding for 200 new people.

There were very few problems. People were super excited about it. - It's very nice to see when people are using it and the face they have when they get it and it's super fast and it's super easy to them.

So yes, it's amazing what we are getting with the help of other companies and other products in the ecosystem. So yeah, the experience is amazing. - Were you guys there to actually witness this to actually see people being onboarded with the product you've built?

- Yeah, I was there. I went there, I was sleeping in the truck and it was an experience. It was very cool. It was worth all of the extra work that we had to put in the week before to make it a reality because we had a deadline there.

So it was really nice. - And so in your team, you know, obviously, this is hardware, you know, this isn't like you're just building a bit of software and there's design involved, there's lots of different elements I imagine when you're building something like this and especially when you're under time pressure.

How does that look? Like how does your team work? Do you have one person who works on building the hardware, one person on design, one person writing the code? Or like, how are you splitting your time with this stuff?

- Not really, like we all are working on everything. We, yes, we are switching from software to hardware to design and I guess with the time, maybe some we are going to focus more on one part of another could happen.

But for now, we've been working on everything. Yeah, but it's very interesting. Like building the software and the hardware is okay, but we are kind of used to the software and the hardware is we are building on pieces that are already done, right?

So we are just connecting them and then we are configuring the board and so on. But for example, building the case, it was so challenging which you would say, okay, it's just a case, but there are many details and this has been interesting thing to find and to learn a lot from just building a case.

- Can you talk me through some of those challenges that you've had, things that maybe you thought would have been simple and ended up being a challenge or things that have been particularly interesting through this process?

- Yeah, well, actually everything has been a challenge since the beginning. (both laughing) Yeah, there is a challenge after another, yeah, what I wanted to say about the case is like, it's something that you maybe abuse, like you say, okay, we've sorted out this hardware and the software and then we just build a case.

He must have been building cases for me in years, right? Right, but actually you have to put the electronics, you have to design where it goes, then you have to give information, you have to, yeah, there are many things that you have to think about, so yes.

But this is also all a process of iteration that we've been doing. So we started first prototype, we had a cardboard box, we had a touchable screen, and the bank note, acceptor, and yeah, we did this one, we had a camera on the side, it was actually a webcam.

- It was a webcam, yes. So we were showing it here in the Congress, in the Paralympics, we had a Congress last year, and then we took it to the Lightning Conference in Berlin. Yeah, we showed it there in Amitabh before the conference, and then we were carrying it out in the conference in there was a project site, we had it there,

we got feedback, and then we changed everything to make it, because yeah, when we did that, we found out, we realized that there was a target market. We were trying to emulate what the other ATMs were doing, with a touchable screen, and nice, and so on, and I don't want to say that we are not doing nice,

but we are trying to go now for something that is more affordable. So more people can't have access to it, and obviously one of the ways to do that is like limiting, like the screen for example is a simple screen that just displays a QR code.

- It wasn't just cost though, it was also because the Raspberry Pi that we were using in the, let's say prototype zero, was very difficult to work with, there was a huge software stack, so I don't like to have a lot of dependencies, especially if you're dealing with money.

So we spent time, like a few months after, I think we didn't even come up with this latest, the prototype one design, this latest iteration that we've got until maybe like February of this year.

So we spent some time after the conferences last year, to really analyze kind of what are we trying to do, what do we really want to do, and we came up with this because of like the affordability of the components, the, I would say, in my opinion, more reliability of their components as well, because this is where you control everything.

If the stack is much smaller in terms of software, but also the hardware is simpler, so I feel like we have more control over the full experience, and it's more affordable, so that's win-win.

- That is brilliant, and like you say, these sort of the bigger ATMs with the touchscreen and all that sort of stuff, a lot of those features are not necessary. At the end of the day, what you're trying to do is get Bitcoin into more people's hands, and you don't need to have loads of complexity there in terms of a user experience anyway.

Sometimes keeping it simple is the best way, and like I said before, I think it looks really sleek. I obviously haven't had my hands on one to try it, but I can imagine that it would draw quite a crowd once someone starts using it wherever you are.

People are gonna be intrigued by this machine. I mean, what are the dimensions of this thing roughly? - Well, we've been having a few different prototypes recently because we're working a lot on the case now, but the mama, plus gammat, is what we've codenamed the bigger version, the one with the bills, I believe was 20 by 30 by 40.

- Yeah, but we are with factoring, let's say, we are iterating on the front factor a bit. - Yes. - So we might come up with something a bit smaller. - A bit smaller. - Yeah, yeah. - That's still really small though.

That can sit on top of a desk easily. It's still portable. People could move that with ease, whereas these full-size ATMs, you've got no chance in moving it around, so I think that definitely sets it apart, and I liked that you were talking earlier about this offline option.

Now, I don't understand the technicals of how that works, but it sounds very interesting. How did that come about, and how are you getting around that? How are you having an offline mode on something like this?

- Yeah, so when, well, the offline mode is the default. - Yeah, there's no mode, it's the offline. - Yeah, okay, all right, always offline. - When we were coming with the final iteration of after the conference that Sally was mentioning before, so we found out about this LNG URL thing, and it changed totally the way

that the user experience is created, right? So instead of the ATM scanning a QR code from your phone, it's just the ATM. So when you a QR code that you scan, and then this communicates with a server, the server generates the payment, right?

So we found out that it's possible that the ATM would create a digital signature. So it makes sure that it's this ATM providing this information, and then the server will create a payment.

So when we found out that it was possible to do the offline, we had to try. When we tried, we really liked it. So it was clear that we had to go with offline mode just before. - Yeah. - Okay.

- Because part of the problem in my mind with the, there are two other lightning ATMs that have been developed by one by BTC Socialist. I believe it was the first, and then that inspired 21 as enough version of the lightning ATM.

Both of those required Wi-Fi and some level of configuration on the part of the operator, which we really wanted to avoid, because Wi-Fi is notorious for having problems and just reliability problems generally.

We wanted to make something that was super rock solid. So that's why we went with the offline approach, because it allowed us to remove the device as a failure point in terms of communication.

If you can display the QR code, that's it. We don't need anything else from the device itself. - Yeah, that's a really interesting, I mean, a huge difference actually, because the way that I imagine a lot of these machines being used would quite often be in areas where maybe signal and Wi-Fi would not be great anyway.

And having that as an option just makes it so much more usable for so many more people. And like you say, the reliability is gonna be so much better. So how did you sort of think about building this?

And how does that really work? You did just probably explain it to somebody who understands what they're talking about. I'm not massively technical. The way that I'm looking at this and the way I understand it is you've got sort of like a rugby pie in this box.

You've got some kind of QR scanner, you've got LN URL and then you've got like BTC pay or something on the back end. How is it sending the Bitcoin to people's addresses? Do you have a certain amount that's stored on there?

Like how is that working? - So there is no money in the machine. There is no money. It's fiat, it wants the customer of the machine. - Well, there is fiat money. There should be fiat money.

- Yeah, so fiat should coins will go into the machine. - Exactly. - Then the machine generates a QR code. This QR code contains information about how much money the user input and the currency.

And it also includes digital signature that is only created by this machine, right? So the user scans this QR code and he using this LN URL protocol, which is standard, multiple wallets are implementing it.

So at that point, the wallet communicates with our server and they agree. So basically the server sends the invoice to the, you know, sends the amount to the wallet. The wallet sends the invoice and the server pays it.

So the communication. So we are using basically the device of the person with my phone or the wallet as a way to connect to the internet. - I see, yeah, okay, I get you now. And the machine, the actual plus-code map machine, that digital signature that you're talking about, presumably every digital signature or every QR code

that comes off that, you already know, is it something like it's a... - So the server, the server knows, the server can verify that this signature is valid. - Yeah, okay, so I think, okay, one more time.

High level, it would be three things. You've got the device itself, which accepts the fiat and then it prints a QR code. That QR code contains essentially a URL, like a HTTPS, something, something, something, something, some information in there, including this digital signature that Carlos was talking about,

and the amount of fiat currency and which currency is the fiat. So the signature is basically proof of the information that was in this URL. This URL is what the customer scans with their mobile wallet app that supports L and URL.

For example, Phoenix wallet, we recommend the most. There's also a wallet of Satoshi, but it's custodial. There's BLW and there are other ones. So there are many now, and so the customer scans this, their app then makes a request to our platform server that validates this digital signature and all of the information in this URL,

which includes the fiat amount and fiat symbol, the like check rounds or euro or whichever currency the machine is configured for. So then the server returns to the mobile app information about the amount of Satoshi.

So it converts the fiat amount into Satoshi using an exchange rate that it has at that current time. And then of course, less some fee based on what the operator has set their machine to charge their customer.

So then the L and URL magic continues. This is a protocol that's open that is available for people to implement in their own software. The rest of the magic happens and in the end, the customer gets paid from the operator's lightning node or service somewhere else.

- Okay, I'm with you now. I just wanted to clarify that because it sounded a little bit like magic and I just couldn't work out how that information was being sent, but I get it now. It's from the user's phone talking to your server.

So that makes sense. Okay, and yeah, and like I said, that is massive. That is a massive, massive difference and it really sets it apart. So if somebody is then buying one of these or building one of these and they want to accept, you're just talking about this, the mama one, the bigger one, how much notes and change can this thing accept

before it needs to be emptied and before someone can't actually purchase anymore? Do you have a sort of limit on them? - Well, so currently we are experimenting with two different node acceptors.

One doesn't have a case. So the nodes basically fell inside the box and there are some problems with it. So sometimes it gets stuck and you have to open it and manually collect the nodes, but we also have got node acceptor that has inbuilt box for the nodes and put it, stack it there nicely.

And that one has a capacity of up to 300 bank nodes. - And if someone's so then they see this, they're listening to this and they're going, fuck, that's a good idea. I want one of these. I want to either educate people or I want one in my shop or wherever I want one.

Where are you in terms of, it sounds like it's still sort of in development and you're still tweaking things. Do you have an idea of when one will be available for people to buy? And if it is to buy, is it gonna be that they just buy it, ready, done?

Or is there gonna be an option for somebody to say, build one of these and they just buy the parts and sort of instructions from you? 'Cause I imagine some people will want to tinker with something like this.

- Yeah, so we are planning to have a final product by the end of March, but it might be delayed a little bit. We'll see. Yeah, our idea is to sell final finished products. Like we want to finish to sell the final thing with all the components and everything.

So yeah, basically, if they want to get more information, we have plescoma.com where we are looking for people around Prague and Czech Republic to do beta testing before we start to sell like to everyone.

And yeah, we will-- - Somewhere in the vicinity. So it could be-- - Somewhere close, yes. Slovakia, Germany, Austria. - So we have a close relationship and we can test the machine in more real places.

So we make it better. - Okay, so looking at somewhere around March and it will be a finished product and it sounds like you're gonna have a couple of different options or maybe more. So I assume one is gonna be maybe just coins and then the other one is both or you're gonna have a few different options there.

- Yeah, that's what it looks like. We're going to have the larger the mama with the coins and the bills and the more affordable coins only which would be probably for hubby or just something cute box that you can take that you could even battery power pretty easily and take it to the office and it's a nice demonstration piece.

So that would be pretty affordable for most people. - That's really cool. So the bigger one presumably battery might be difficult on something like that. But I mean, most people I would think if they've got a bigger one they're gonna have it on a desk or in somewhere where it's staying there most of the time.

- Yeah, we haven't let's say measured the current usage like average usage and see in order to estimate how long it would survive on a battery, the larger version. We did a little bit of testing during the HCPP 20 this year on some AA batteries.

We did the baby plus command for what, like eight hours? - Yeah, it was pretty good. - Yeah, but it was nice we were just carrying the machine around the Congress and people who'd use it.

That's why having a beer or waiting for a talk or something. - Yeah, I imagine it got a lot of attention during that conference. - Yeah, it was fun. We had the workshop as well where what do we have 10 teams that were building their own?

- 12, yes. - Well, I think it was everybody building one? - I think so, yeah. - Okay, so we had like 12 teams that we gave kits out in a box and they were building their machines and we were helping them debug in real time.

It was really nice to see people struggling and then figuring stuff out and being super happy. So I think even two or three people finished or was it maybe just, yeah, it was like two or three.

- Yeah, two or three. - Yeah, damn finish it. - Yeah. - When someone decides to purchase one of these things and let's say for not such a technical person, they're gonna need, you're talking about, you have your server on the back end and that's what their phone is gonna be talking to.

If somebody's running this and they're just like a private individual, let's say, presumably they just have a node running at home or in an office or something like that where they keep funds on and that is gonna be what is gonna be communicating and from that they can then set their fees, set the percentage more they're gonna charge

and all these sort of things will be able to be tweaked. How does someone go about that? Is there gonna be software for them to do it or is it just gonna be done within the software that's already there on the node?

- So, no, so, well, we are providing a server that the users they can run on their own if they want but we are also building a web platform. It's having a, it's managing a server. This is basically for the operator and by the operator, I mean the person that is buying the machine, they own it and they operate it.

So there they can configure if they want to use their node or if they want to use a third party provider node. So because some people they might not have time or the skills to run a node.

So there are some other third party providers that they give you this possibility. So we are having an integration with these providers. So in order to get the most people, the easiest way to have an operator, let's come up.

- Yes, there are a few lightning network service providers let's say, there are a few different options these days. There seems to be more coming online. There's open node, ln pay, ln bits, which is nice one from BTC Socialist as well.

It's an open source project, but they also run their own instance. So with these kinds of services, you can, they sort of abstract away the complexity. It's custodial, of course, those things, but sometimes custodial is safer in at least the shorter medium term for some new users.

So I don't think it's a problem to recommend those things as long as you include with those recommendations, hey, if you would like, you can always learn how to do some of this stuff yourself and you can be totally self-hosted.

And you can run your own node. You can run your own plus come out server. You can run and you can have a totally autonomous like financial instrument here in the form of your own ATM with your own everything.

So it's not like you're locked in, you have options. And it depends on your skill set and the amount of time you're willing to invest in that. - That makes a lot of sense. I think with a lot of people in this space, that self-solverine model and not trusting anyone and not having any middlemen is great in theory.

But I think a lot of people who are coming into this space and maybe they just think, you know, it's really cool, I wanna be able to sell Bitcoin in my store. It's a lot to learn and you can fuck it up pretty easily.

- Having that option there is brilliant. And if they down the line, they really get interested and they wanna spend some time and learn, then they can always do that. So no, I'm pleased there is that option for people.

It's great. - Yeah, so yeah, this is one of the main focus definitely like making it super easy for the final user that is going to use the machine as well as for the operator. Because you want to open the possibility of having an ATM to as much people as possible and make it easy for them is the first step.

So they can do it. - Yeah, easy, but also the key is to make it difficult to screw things up. - Exactly. Basically, yeah, because many people, they enjoy doing it and they have time and they have the skills.

But even if you have the skills, maybe if you don't have the time or... - Maybe you're tired one day and you're setting something up and you mess it up. - Exactly, yes. - So are you might just want to start with it like fast and then learn later on?

- That's a really good point, yeah. - But somebody would find you working for you. - Yeah, definitely. And I think there's always a sort of journey. It's always with anything to do with Bitcoin.

I think it's just a constant learning curve. And you're always having to learn something new. There's always something new happening. And some people do just want to take the easier, safer route to start with and then feel comfortable and confident and then move forward and do it themselves further down the line.

And there's nothing wrong with that whatsoever. It's better to have more people playing around with this stuff and being able to onboard people rather than having this bar that some people just don't feel comfortable with to start with.

And certainly I found that with lightning. Like I haven't really used lightning all that much. Occasionally I've used it occasionally. I've played around with it, but not all that much. And I don't feel as comfortable as I do with everything on chain.

And I'm sure I'm not the only person. But the more that I see products like this and the more that I see what's possible with lightning, it does excite me. I think that it's going to make some amazing changes.

And clearly you guys are very, very interested in lightning. Otherwise you wouldn't be building this. What do you see happening with lightning? Do you see that everything is going to be going off chain over the next few years or a lot more of it?

Do you think this is going to be used by more people? And what sort of possibilities do you see opening up with it? Well, basically I think that yeah, Bitcoin for people that are not devoting their whole time for it.

Like I like to say that we live in a bubble, right? And there are too many layers. It's too complicated and there are too many things. So I think there would be like for new people and for people using Bitcoin in the future, most likely they are going to just use second layer, like a lightning network would be like the way they enter

to Bitcoin and the way they use it. Probably as you see for example in wallets like Phoenix, where all the complexity is like removed from the user experience. So this is the way we see it.

And that's why we have let's say invested in a project that is focused on lightning. Yeah, I think the model demonstrated by Phoenix, Phoenix Wallet, by Async is the newbie friendly offering in for a lightning network wallet.

And it is, I think the worry forward because it's non-custodial, but it also gives the end user the flexibility to go from nothing, from just installing the app, to receiving a payment on lightning network in under one minute.

And they can worry about backing up their seed later. They can worry about learning about how a channel works or what the heck is a channel. They can learn that stuff later. And it breaks down the barrier to entry.

You can just go from nothing to using it in a minute. And it's fantastic. And that's how we were able to get people really interested in Bitcoin without, I mean, in the years, I've seen so many attempts at onboarding.

And it was always, ah, but what about this? Or, but what about that? And there was always some problem that was a deal breaker in the mind of the new person. And now I don't see that. I see that they say, ah, cool, ah, so it works, nice.

And they just use it, that's how it should be. It shouldn't be necessary to explain for two hours how blocks work and what a confirmation is and double spending and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

They should just try it. - Completely agree. - Yeah, 'cause most people just do not care. They just wanna use it. And they do not care about all that stuff. And I think it just puts people off.

I think that people just, they start hearing you talking about all this stuff. And they're just like, oh, fucking hell. This sounds like too much for me. And what you're talking about is actually someone being able to just go from nothing to owning it and using it.

And they're almost in this completely separate ecosystem. They're not actually, all they've touched is lightning. So is that really your thought? Is that a lot of people going forward may never really touch the base chain.

Most of this stuff, especially for people coming in and with the ability to use things like the blesska mat and then have like Phoenix wallet and all of these things. And they might send this between friends or to tip or do this kind of stuff.

Maybe they don't touch the base chain. They just use lightning. Do you see that as a possibility? - No, I think that eventually people will have to understand a bit about what's going on.

And they will have to certainly, maybe they won't understand what they're doing, but they will have to touch the base chain. Because if blesska mat plus Phoenix wallet and these other lightning first wallets are the introduction to Bitcoin through lightning and your everyday usage of lightning is how you use Bitcoin,

then eventually if you want to migrate people into this new financial system, part of that is having a savings account or a checking account or being able to get a mortgage or et cetera, all these larger transactions, which are fine on chain because they're larger.

You can spend a higher fee and the security is better. So yeah, I think you're going to have both, but this is more, lightning is for onboarding and for everyday use and physical space. - I think that probably makes a lot of sense.

If someone does get excited and actually, or look at this as a savings technology and think, okay, I want to have something cold storage or I want to take something offline, but do you see that there could be people who literally just use this for the use cases that you just can't do on chain?

People talk about getting through paywalls and this sort of tipping staff and a lot of the stuff that you just wouldn't use a nor Bitcoin transaction for. Is it possible that some people don't really see the benefits of using this as a savings account?

They don't actually really care. They just use it because it's the only thing you can use it for, gaming, these kind of ideas that are talked about. - Yeah, it could be. We don't know the future definitely.

But right now, at this moment, for example, I use Lightning Network when I come here to parallel policy every day, not every day, but very often, but every day I come here, I get a coffee or I get a beer or something.

And before I was paying with a non-chain transaction, with some times I was paying very high fee that they have to migrate also to start to use a light coin because the fees were super high sometime.

And now it's just use Lightning and it's super nice for this use case. - I got tired to demonstrate the double spending app to them, so I stopped that. - Yeah. - So I'm using Lightning now as well.

- Because many of the POS, Tally was talking about this in the conference last year. I demonstrated how, I had a talk about double spending. I even had a workshop for double spending. This year I had another guerrilla workshop for double spending, but nobody was interested.

- So many of these in your Y system, they accept like an unconfirmed transaction. So you just broadcast the transaction very fast. Do you create another transaction with a higher fee? Basically the first one gets deleted from the mempool and the second one that is transferring funds to your account or to your address.

- Back to you, it's confirmed. - Yeah, for me, this alone, the double spending in physical space alone is enough reason to migrate to Lightning Network for merchants. There's no double spending on Lightning Network.

There are other problems, but there's no double spending. - And one of the reason that the double spending wasn't much exploited is that we are living in a space where people try to be sort of nice to each other.

And many of the app developers didn't even put the option to cancel the transaction in their app, but now that is changing because recently the Electrum app has put this feature. So if you broadcast the transaction and then you realize that you did something wrong, you can cancel it before it gets confirmed in the blog.

- I think I was the first to make a wallet app that was in the Play Store. It's still in the Play Store somehow. In a way, yes, but now you can use Electrum to double spend. Amazing. (laughing) - Yeah, well, I suppose, I guess most people are waiting.

They're not just accepting zero conf. I'll certainly, if I'm accepting a payment, I will always wait for like, ideally six before I let anything happen because that, the idea of that scares the shit up, right?

And it is possible. - Yeah, for selling a coffee, you cannot wait. - Oh, maybe, yeah. - It's confirmation, right, we'll see if we have that somewhere. - Yeah, especially in the next bull run as well.

It's gonna be 10 euro to send the payment, so yeah. - That's true, yeah, that's true. And I guess, yeah, like you say, that's where lightning comes in and it can do these things that Bitcoin on changes can't.

And it's exciting. And like I say, it's not something that I've played around with all that much. I certainly see why people are excited about it. And I sort of flick between, you hear a lot of excitement, then you hear some fud, then you hear a lot of excitement, then you hear some more fud.

And I guess I just don't have the same confidence with it or with certainly the large amounts that I'll mess around with smaller amounts. But I feel I'd still be a little bit nervous if I was doing larger amounts on it.

And I wonder, is there anything between you guys that concerns you on lightning? Any fears that you have or are you just like super bullish on it? - Well, everything is changing a lot. - Yeah, I mean, we're paying attention to the mailing list.

So we're seeing the day-to-day grind that the Bitcoin developer community is going through. And now the expanded lightning developer community, it's, there are problems, but steadily they are getting addressed.

There's discussion on the best ways to resolve them, but things take time. So the infrastructure needs to build up altogether. And yeah, expect years, it's gonna take a while. - What are we talking five years, something like that?

- For what? - Well, to get to a point where I know timelines and things are a little bit silly, but just if you're looking out and you're saying, okay, where can we get to a stage where you can have high level of confidence, things like using lightning and gaming, using it for everyday payments that most people will be able to do,

have that usability where normal people will be comfortable using it. And you don't have these concerns where things are gonna be attacked or denial of service and these sort of things where you just fill a higher level of confidence where things will work without those things happening.

Do you think that's possible in five years? - I don't know. I mean, five years, it's not that much time, but definitely it requires to have more development and more infrastructure and so on.

But it can surprise you, like for example, I remember like two years ago or last year, when you were using a lightning wallet, it was super difficult. You have to manage your channels. And suddenly someone comes with a solution of a non-custodial wallet where everything just works, like finished wallet.

And so yeah, so there are many good things coming. There are still problems even with that because the user still needs to be online. So if you try to send them a payment, if they're not online, that's a problem.

But there are solutions for this that are being developed. So as I said, there are many, let's say, narrowly focused, narrowly defined problems that are currently facing users in the space.

But I would say that right now, the focus is on more advanced users. Slowly things are getting better for less advanced like this Phoenix and Volus Satoshi and others. But it's gonna take time because even the infrastructure itself, the node software needs to get better.

Security of these nodes needs to get better. It needs to be easier to secure the nodes. If we want to achieve the dream, let's say of having a decentralized lightning network that's not custodial and let's say easier to manage.

Because I remember in the beginning, with even Bitcoin unchanged transactions, it was quite easy for users to screw up, to lose their money, their private keys because they didn't even have a BIP32 or BIP39 hierarchical wallets, deterministic wallets, seeds.

Before that even existed, it was much harder to back things up. And so I see the same kind of progression with lightning. People need to define the problem space and then figure out how to solve each problem.

And it just takes time. We need more people to do stuff. - There's lots of exciting things with lightning. There's lots of things like people talking about potential privacy improvement as well as the speed and all the other things that it can do.

And yeah, it's massively interesting what's gonna be possible and then no timeline time. Easy to predict, but yeah, I'm excited to see what's gonna happen. And I'm certainly excited to see Leska Mat when it's released, hopefully, March or thereabouts and I want one.

I know before you said that, I know before you said you're not gonna know how much it's gonna cost or any of that sort of stuff yet, but let me know when you know and I'll be saving my Sats ready for one.

- Okay, we'll let you know. - Yeah, it looks great. And thank you guys for coming on. Thank you for building this because I think this stuff's really important for onboarding people and I love what you've built.

It's really, really cool. I don't understand all of it, but I think it's awesome. - Thank you. - Thank you. - Thank you. - All right, cheers guys. - Okay. - Thank you very much. - Bye. - Bye.