EP57 Bitcoin podcast with Nick Neuman

Bitcoin is close to becoming worthless.

Let's go!

Now, what's the Bitcoin? Bitcoin's like rat poison. 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 deliver to the deepest, darkest depths of the Bitcoin rabbit hole. Welcome back, everyone. Today, I speak to the CEO of Casa Nick Newman.

We actually recorded a couple of weeks ago, but today is the perfect day to drop this. Some of you ungovernable misfits, ignoring the mainstream narrative, listening to Bit by Bit and other podcasts, doing your own research, having your own original thoughts, and having the balls to hold a contrarian view disgust me.

What disgust me even more is that some of you will be taking those SATs off exchange and storing them securely. How dare you want your own freedom money? How dare you want to store your value?

If I had it my way, you would own nothing and be happy. But I know some of you won't listen. So get your SATs off exchange, go and see Casa, or do your own multi-sig. And if you are going to stack and you are going to use an exchange, make damn sure it's coin floor, the best exchange in the UK.

- Hi, Nick, how you doing? - Good, how are you, Max? - Yeah, really good. Nice to speak to you again. - You too, can you hear me all right? - I can hear you perfectly. Yeah, it's coming through fine.

- Cool. - Which is very fair, actually, for this podcast. I spend most of my time editing. (laughing) But you've got a little mic there. - Yeah, yeah, I invested in this probably, I don't know, over a year ago.

It's not anything crazy, but it's nicer than at least the wearing some AirPods or something like that. - Yeah, I can hear it straight away 'cause there's no hissing or background noise. So yeah, thank you for that, that's brilliant.

- Awesome. - I'm really happy to have you on and chat to you and have you on bit by bit. After our last conversation, there was a lot of revelations. There was a lot of learn about Casa that, to be honest, I wasn't previously aware of.

And since that conversation, I've gone out, I've read through one of the articles you guys had on there about how to set it up privately, how to go about it as anonymously as possible. And I thought, you know what, I'm gonna give this a go.

And I've been really pleased with it so far. So I'm really looking forward to digging in a little bit more and also getting to know you as a person and what it is that's brought you into the space.

- That's great, I'm glad you were able to try it out. I mean, that's always good and appreciate that you, I always love hearing people went and tried it and then they actually thought it was awesome.

It's the best thing I could hear. (laughing) - Well, yeah, that's pretty much what I can report other than my ledger that I was using, which I've moved away from. I've gone to coldcard for everything else, but I had a spare one and I was just like, I'm gonna try setting it up with this

because a lot of people who were coming into the space knew the sort of friends and family who have started to listen and started to buy a little bit of Bitcoin and I'm trying to get them off an exchange.

They don't wanna use a coldcard, they wanna use a ledger. - Right, totally, yeah. - So that's why I set it up with that. And I had a couple of issues just setting it up to start with and then I realized it was just 'cause the firmware on it was like two years old or something like that.

But yeah, once it was going, it was really, really slick. It was much easier than I thought it was gonna be. - Awesome, that's great to hear. And yeah, we do always tell people they're like, I'm getting weird errors with my ledger and the first thing is always update the firmware and usually that fixes it for people.

- Yeah, well, it did for me. It was the last thing I tried. I tried everything else. I was like, oh, I just can't work out what's going on. But yeah, like I say, once it was on there, it was a weird experience for me because it was like so used to writing down my 24 words and keeping all these bits and then thinking about,

oh, okay, well, if I've written that down, then how do I separate that from the ledger and keep that in a separate location and all these bits? And I did that and I was like, that's just taken me 10 minutes and I've got nothing written down other than an email you've sent with all, I think it was the derivation paths

and all that sort of stuff, which I've stored. But it was a very different experience to what I'm used to, very, very different, but I actually think if I look back at wide, when I'd first set all this stuff up a few years ago, I was very nervous writing all the stuff down.

I can remember just fear and I think this was a much easier experience than that. There's a nice in between for like, I'd feel quite comfortable saying to someone who's maybe not so technical, that I can sit with you for half an hour and we can get this set up, which was cool.

- Yeah, and that's, I mean, it's interesting because a lot of Bitcoiners who've been Bitcoiners for a while are pretty skeptical about, oh, going seedless or some of the decisions basically that we've made around the cost of model.

And in the end, you know, if you want to keep your seed phrase with CASA, it's totally up to you, it's your own key. But what a lot of people don't remember is that when they first set all this stuff up, they probably spent hours learning how to properly protect a seed phrase and what it even was and all that.

It's a very unnatural form of backup for people. And it's very anxiety inducing to say, okay, write down these 24 words on a piece of paper and hide them from everybody and make sure that nobody ever finds it.

And it's, but you can always find it in case you lose your wallet. And it's just like it's most, the average person is not used to that kind of thing. And so we've really built CASA to help onboard the next generation of Bitcoiners.

And part of that is not making them use seed phrases if they don't want to. - Yeah, and you're talking about this perception of these sort of trade-offs or doing things a little bit differently.

And I have to be completely down the line with you. Like before we spoke and before you had told me that you can do things anonymously and send things through without actually having to do the KYC and stuff.

- Yeah. - Being honest, I've completely written off CASA. I was like, it's cool. I've spoken to Jameson. I like him. The product sounds interesting. It has a fit, but it's just not for me.

And it's not something that I would ever suggest to people. It's just not. And then once I learned that and I read through the articles, I was like, okay, no, I can see this is something that actually I'd overlooked.

And I'm really glad you told me that because that was the thing that really pricked up my ears and made me straight away after we had that conversation. I was like, writing, let's set this up and just see how good it is.

So I think that's maybe something that's missed by a lot of people. Maybe they don't know that part and they sort of assume, well, this is a service there for someone has to have all your information.

But I liked that you actually had an article dedicated talking through user VPN, go and actually use a separate burner email and all that kind of stuff. And I know obviously you can go deeper into the weeds and go full tin full hat mode, which I did.

But I think it gives a really nice trade off. And I just didn't know. - Yeah, and the whole point of it is to kind of, CASA is really trying to bring a lot of the Bitcoin cipherpunk values to people in the form of some of the best, basically the best case scenario decisions that you could make in security and privacy

and all that for the average person. And so are we going to be ever be as private as a full DIY using your own node where there's no server in between or anything like that? No, but can you get really far along that path by using an anonymous email, like creating a single purpose proton mail email for this

and making sure that you take the right steps around using VPNs and all that. There's a lot of stuff that you can do. And that's why we wrote that article because we already have a bunch of customers that are completely anonymous to us.

And that's totally fine with us. It's something that we want to enable people to have their privacy if they want it. And so that's something, yeah, it's important to us. And it's a differentiator from some of the other multi-sig services or hosted wallet services where you do have to go through KYC in order to use them, so.

- Yeah, it's really important. It's so important for someone to keep their privacy in my opinion, you know, a lot of other people don't really care about it, but it's something that I really push on the show.

So it's something that kept me away from it. And even just having that article there, allowing people to be aware of it made a big difference to me 'cause I was like, it's clear that it's not just like, oh, it's a service, you know, it's a possibility, but they're trying to keep it quiet so that they can collect data and emails

and all this stuff so they can push other products. So I was like, no, that's cool. They're actually putting an article out there to explain to people how to do it. And it really, it doesn't take that long, like it's just one extra step of creating one email on proto email or two turnover

or one of those ones and then another backup email. So you gotta make two and you gotta do it over a VPN, but what's that, 30 minutes? And then, you know, maybe you put things through Samurai Whirlpool or something like that so it doesn't have those links.

And then you've got a really good, you know, I've not used multi-sig before. I've stayed with single key and splitting things and, you know, I like Spectre. That's the wallet that I use. And I know that they have possibilities for me to do the multi-sig, but I've got a bit confused with, you know,

derivation powers and this and saving the different stuff. And I'm just like, I'm an idiot. I will find a way to fuck it up and lose my sats and it's just not worth the risk right now. And this is that middle ground.

So yeah, it's really cool. - Yeah, we've basically tried to take multi-sig and make it actually a good user experience where you don't have to worry about the derivation paths. You don't have to worry about X-pubs and all this copy-pasting of these things that, you know, are pretty confusing for the average person.

We do all the work for you, but it's still your keys. You're still the one holding the hardware wallet. You're still, you've got the key, the second key is either on your phone or it's on a second hardware wallet.

And so, yeah, we really try to make it really approachable for people where all you do is just do what the app tells you to do and you'll get it all set up pretty quickly. - And so if we take a step back, that's where we are now.

And, you know, it's slick. Like I say, it took me no time at all. I really like it, the product slick, the user experience is slick. Going back, where did that start? How did you get to a point where you said, well, first of all, I care enough about Bitcoin to want to make services and products around it that are in this middle ground

and make this stuff accessible to average people who, you know, maybe they like the monetary side of it, but maybe they're not so technical. Did it always start out as we want an onboarding, easy, multi-sig way of doing things?

'Cause I remember like back in the day, when I was first getting in, you had like the Casa node. So I remember, when I first heard about Casa, I was like, oh yeah, there's this Casa node thing.

Oh, maybe I'll buy one of those 'cause I had no idea how to set one up. - Right. - Like what was the vision initially and how did it come about? - Yeah, so what a lot of people don't know is that Casa actually started out in early 2018 with our multi-sig product.

This was the first product that we've had. And then on the Casa node side, we really did that as kind of more of an experiment towards the end of 2018 and into 2019, but that's where a lot of people first heard about Casa.

So kind of going back to the very beginning, we didn't know right off the bat that they needed to be multi-sig. Like when the company was first forming and getting off the ground, it was like, okay, there's a big problem with private key UX in general.

And private keys are the foundation for everything you do in Bitcoin. And so there's no way that Bitcoin's going to achieve mass adoption as a decentralized solution, unless we can make it way easier and way less risky for people to manage their private keys and to hold their Bitcoin themselves.

And so we kind of looked at it from that angle of how do we make this easier for people? And through that problem solving path is how we came to multi-sig, because multi-sig elegantly solves multiple problems at once with private key management.

So it solves the loss problem in that you're no longer worried about losing one key. So with a single key solution, you have all these backups because if you lose that single key, you lost all your money.

With multi-sig, it flips that on its head and you've now got three or five total keys protecting your Bitcoin. So if you lose one of them, it's actually okay. You just say, okay, that key's lost.

I'm going to replace it with a new key. And I've still got my other two or my other four keys that are actually still protecting my Bitcoin and still give me access to it. So that's the biggest thing is that it really mitigates that threat of loss.

And that's something that a lot of Bitcoiners underestimate that people weigh over index on the threat of theft and they weigh under index on the threat of loss. Many more people have lost Bitcoin by making a mistake than by having it stolen from them.

And so when people have their single key hardware wallet and they're coming up with all of these complicated treasure map-like setups for recovering their seed phrase, if they ever lose it, they're actually more likely to be shooting themselves in the foot here than stopping some would-be attacker, right?

And so that's something that multi-sig solves really elegantly, you have a very, it's actually can be a much simpler setup than somebody who has their seed phrase on multiple pieces of metal distributed in different places.

It's just you've got each of your keys and you put each of those keys in a different location. And they're all on a hardware wallet like a treasure or a ledger or a cold guard. The second thing that it does is it does help against theft.

And this is actually more important for people who have a lot of Bitcoin. So people who have a lot of Bitcoin tend to be more of a target than the people who just have a few thousand bucks worth.

And so what multi-sig does for those people is it makes them immune to a $5 range attack. So somebody can't just show up at your house and force you to send Bitcoin. Because if you've got multi-sig with geographically distributed keys, they actually would have to take you around to multiple different locations

and have you approve a transaction from each of those devices. And so that just, at that point, it's way more difficult for the average attacker and it actually makes you much less likely to be a target.

And so what's kind of funny here, and now it's getting on a little bit of a tangent, so I'll stop after this. - No, no, no, I like tangents. Could say wherever you want. - Good, good. So what's kind of funny is that a lot of people, they're like, you cannot talk about your Bitcoin security setup because this will give potential attackers

the exact roadmap to knowing like where your seed phrase is or what hardware wallet you use, et cetera. Well, with a multi-sig setup like CASA, we actually joke around sometimes, but are halfway serious, that you could literally put a protected by CASA sign outside your house or on your social profiles

because it's actually such a good security solution that it's a deterrent to attackers. Like they're gonna look for an easier target than you. And so that's something that some of our clients have realized as well and they've asked us for something like this.

But it's something that we've been thinking about as just like a kind of a gimmicky but fun marketing plan. Maybe we should make one of those like an ADT or yard sign or something like that for CASA because it really is such a high level of security that it should be a deterrent to attackers

rather than an invitation to come steal your Bitcoin. - Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. I think that, you know, like you're saying, if it's geographically dispersed, especially for hodlers, like I guess there's gonna be a difference.

You know, you have a lot of people who would just say, I'm never selling, this is for my children. This is for my grandchildren. This is my retirement. This is, you know, they're not bothered for the next 10 years, 20 years, 30 years.

For those people, if they have a setup where, you know, maybe they have to have, for any transaction to be sent, they have one that's at home. Maybe that's their phone. They have one that's at their office.

And maybe they have one in another country. That person and that attacker presumably would have to go with them to the airport, through airport security, fly to another country to actually be able to send those funds.

And suddenly, unless you're like the Winklevi or someone like that and they know like, okay, this is worth it, like you said, you're not going to bother. It's the same as if someone's going to rob your house.

If you've got a couple of big dogs and you've got gravel and you've got spotlights and next door doesn't, they'll rob next door because it's easier. - Yeah, definitely. And the other thing that even just adds to the CASA specific security model that a lot of people don't really know about or realize is that for our premium clients

who are holding a lot of Bitcoin, we have an entire client service team that is at their service and helping them with all of this. But one important aspect of that is that for each specific client, we have duress procedures.

So let's say somebody really did decide that it was worth it to go around the city or around the country with you or whatever to try and make you send your Bitcoin. We have ways in the app for you to lock down your CASA account, which triggers notifications to the client service team.

And we actually have individualized duress procedures with all of our clients that helps them to, or that means that if they ever get into a situation like this, we can call X person and notify them or put X process into place.

And so for people who are holding large amounts of Bitcoin, this is, it's kind of like having a security expert on your side and there to make sure that you are protected when you need it.

And that's something where some people say, you know what, why not just do multi-sake with Spectre or something like that? And what they're not taking into account is CASA service offering, which is really there to, from the very beginning of signing up with CASA, help people make sure that they're set up properly,

get their security fully set up in a way that is bulletproof, but then also do that ongoing security protection that you need when you are self-custodying a large amount of Bitcoin. - Is that a conversation that you'll have on an individual basis with them and sort of look at how they're set up, whether it's two or three or three or five

or what they're using and where these things are dispersed and try and find between the client and yourself what's gonna be best? - Yeah, so each platinum or diamond client that signs up with CASA has a three or five multi-sake and as part of signing up, every person goes through an individual security review call

with our team where we are talking through those things and individualizing and personalizing certain pieces of your plan. And so if you have questions about where do I, where do I put these keys?

We'll actually talk that through with you and if you are thinking about, you know, you've got a specific life situation that's, you know, you have access to certain places but not others and another client might have, you know, access to a different set of locations that they think is best, we can talk through that with you

and make sure that you're placing your keys with the right level of security. But the more important aspect of it is that for people who are non-technical or feeling a little bit intimidated by holding their own keys, our client service team is really there to help you get everything set up

and to make sure that you have the resources you need and you have somebody that you can call when you need help. That's something that hasn't really existed in Bitcoin. You know, our clients have an emergency phone line that they can call at any time of the day and somebody on our team will pick it up to make sure that they're okay.

And if they're having a problem, we'll get on a video call with them right away and start talking them through it or whatever it needs to be. And so we really try to add our, at those platinum and diamond tiers, we really try to have a super high level of service for our clients.

And then at the gold tier, which is a two of three multisage, and I think that's what you signed up for and tried out with our free trial. - Oh yeah, I'm a cheap, cheap bastard. - Yeah, no, it's totally fine.

And at that level, you know, we don't have that super hands-on level of service, but you know, that's for people who have either smaller amounts of Bitcoin or they just feel really comfortable doing it themselves.

And that's totally okay as well. We, what we are building at its core is a personal key manager that allows people to manage private keys and to secure them in a way that is easy, intuitive and removes a lot of the risk of doing it by yourself.

And so we're really doing that for all levels of Bitcoin holders. - And so when you've got these managed services, you know, your platinum or your diamond, and you're saying, okay, they've got a three of five set up and you've obviously got the geographic okay to thing.

And you could have these phone calls or these specific setups. Do you use things like, like I particularly like when you have like a timeout, like maybe on the cold card where you could log in or sign into it and then you have to then wait for a certain amount of time before you then enter the pin again before you can send something.

So it might be that, so you say you, they have to do three of five, but it's a 24 hour period from when they sign in, they've got sign in again. Do you add those sort of layers of complexity for people who are looking for a long term hold where they're saying, I don't want to touch it for 20 years.

I just want to know that it's safe. I don't want to fuck around. I don't want to spend my whole life trying to run nodes and learning all this stuff because, you know, I've got a job and I've got other responsibilities, but I want it to be locked down and I do not want to send it.

Will you add those sort of steps in? - So right now we don't have any additional like time locks or anything like that beyond just having a proper multi-sig setup because frankly, there's already a lot of built in kind of time necessary to go from signing from your hardware wallet at your house,

just to your office and signing from that one, or potentially to wherever your third location is. And so there's already, from a security standpoint, there's already enough security built in that you don't really need to add additional unnecessary kind of surface level time-outs or anything like that onto it.

But we, the second part of what you were talking about around having built this for somebody who doesn't want to have to worry about every little decision that you would normally have to make doing this yourself around running your own node or fully doing the DIY setup on a multi-sig.

That's the kind of thing that we have really streamlined the process for people, made the best security decision for 90% of people out there and just baked that directly into the product so that you don't have to worry about it.

You just sign up and use it and it's really a similar user experience to a lot of the best designed Web 2.0 apps out there. But it's actually giving you a huge amount of personal sovereignty and empowerment by holding your own money.

So that's kind of, that's our whole goal is to streamline people's ability to be sovereign individuals. - I mean, I can see it just from using the app that little bit that I have, it is very slick.

There are some people that will come to me and they wanna buy Bitcoin. And it's only really happened in the last six months. There was probably a year and a half, two years, where everyone just treated me like a stupid piece of dirt on the bottom of their shoe and like, listen to, like honestly, I don't think I converted one person.

And then over the last six months, actually quite a lot of started coming and going, "You know that Bitcoin thing that you've been talking about?" - There's real magic and number go up. - Oh, NGU technology is just so powerful.

It's, it's, you know, I can say, this is gonna change the world. And, you know, it's gonna do this, it's gonna do that. And it's gonna, you know, it's gonna level society. It's gonna bring all this change and where?

And it's just like, fuck off, I think, they see the number go up and they're coming and asking me. But what I've found is there are some people who are really techy, they love all that kind of stuff.

And I'm just like, yeah, okay, we'll get you set up and we'll get you a cold card and I'll teach you to run a node and all this sort of stuff. And then there is a group of people who I just know if I try and even set you up on a ledger, even the most like simple user experience, you are going to lose all your money, definitely.

So then with them, I have to say, okay, I'm gonna have to put you on coin floor. You know, you buy on there, you dollar cost averaging, you leave your money on there, we'll set up the two factorial authentication, but even that's a little bit challenging for them.

And I'm too scared to do anything else because at the end of the day, if I suggest to them, do this, use this product and it goes wrong, it's my fault. And so I think that there's a lot of people like that who after a while they can say, okay, you know, this is actually something I want to invest in, this is something I want to hold.

And it's really useful to have something like this where you can say to people, okay, you know, this isn't the absolute self-sovereign, most incredible, do it all yourself way, but you're not capable of the other thing and you're just not gonna do it.

So it gets people off exchanges and I think that is incredibly important. You know, getting people off exchanges is a step that's really scary for most people. I remember doing it myself and being really scared.

And I really like that there is a product like this. I like that there is this option and that maybe over time, once they're comfortable with it and maybe they get as a number goes up and they're like, oh, wow, you know, this really, and then they get to like, oh, maybe this can change the world and I am really interested.

Then maybe they want to do things a little bit differently or, you know, they want to learn and run their own node, but it's a really, it takes out a massive stepping stone which they would just end up in deep water otherwise.

- Yeah, and I think that we're always making progress on our side to make it easier and easier for people to use and really to try and build in this education side of it too to help people understand what they're doing because when you understand what you're doing, you're much less likely to mess it up.

But then you also, you get the why part of it and why it's important to hold your own keys, why this is more secure than holding it on an exchange. And then you get to the revolution part which is, wow, I'm the only person that has control over my money.

And that's something that I think is a, I think it's like a base human instinct that we want more control over the things that are more important to us. And we've gotten away from that over the last, I don't know, couple hundred years with our money as we started using the banking system more and more.

And that's totally fine. There's always going to be a banking system in some form or another offering financial services and that kind of thing. But over time, the need for banks as a depository institution should be going away as more and more people are able to self custody their money in the form of digital currency like Bitcoin.

But just going back to what you mentioned earlier, one of the, about people who you feel really nervous, recommending using a hardware wallet to, one of the things that we've done at CASA is to try and build in a natural ramp of security and I guess usability in our product.

And so somebody can sign up for a free account with CASA and just have a really simple free mobile wallet on their phone and it's a seedless mobile wallet. You're still the one holding the keys.

It's not, it's non-custodial, but we automatically generate a key, save it in your phone's secure element. We encrypt it with another key from CASA's server and then upload it to your cloud backup like iCloud.

And that all happens in the background as you're signing into the app for the first time. And so what that does is it gives people the experience of using something like Coinbase, but the sovereignty of holding the keys yourself.

And so coupled with that, they can actually buy Bitcoin now in the CASA app and have it sent immediately to your self custody wallet. So somebody could buy their first $100 worth of Bitcoin on CASA, have it sent to their mobile wallet and they're doing self custody from the start.

Whereas historically you've had to say, well, you need to go sign up at Coinbase or coin floor and then you need to get this other wallet and deposit it to there. And here's why for all these security reasons.

Now you just say, get the CASA app and get started there and then go from there. And then once you get above $1,000 worth of Bitcoin, we send you a notification that's like, hey, you should check out this next level up, which is our multi-sig level.

You've got some real value here. You should consider getting yourself a higher level of security. And so we're trying to build in a experience that takes somebody who's never owned Bitcoin before from buying their first Bitcoin to having it safely secured as a proper hodler, you know, a year down the line

and they can be in that journey with CASA the entire way. And we're trying to make it as seamless, educational and really intuitive as possible for them, which is important because people aren't going to take these steps unless it's easy and unless they understand what they're doing and why they're doing it.

And so we're really baking all of that into our product. - And that number go up. They start with the free wallet by a hundred dollars and that turns into a thousand dollars. Then they're like, wow, I like this Bitcoin thing.

Like I wanna learn a little bit more. And sometimes I think for most people, there are a group of people who are just like, I want to separate money from state. I want more control. I've had enough.

I'm sick of the state of the world. I'm sick of being told what to do. I'm sick of all the bullshit. And we're drawn to Bitcoin 'cause we're like, wow, okay. I didn't think this was possible.

I thought we were all just, you know, basically slowly being put into cages and there's no way out. And then you see this thing and you're like, oh my God. And it blows your mind and you get obsessed with it and you can't think about anything else.

That is a very small percentage of the population. And that's very rare to find people who are gonna spend their whole time trying to work out how to use this. But that number going up will do it for the rest of the population.

- Yeah, definitely. - That will do it. And that's that progression like you're talking about. You know, you dip your toe in, it's nothing. It's just an investment. It's just effectively a stock.

And once people then start digging in, I've never met anyone who has dug in and spent time to learn about Bitcoin and jumped back out again. - Yeah, and said, oh, this is nothing. Like they actually took the time to research it.

Nobody's come out the other end saying, nah, I'm gonna leave this alone. - Never, I've never like, it just, it takes a long time for people to do the research if they ever do. But once they do, I only ever see the conviction grow.

And, you know, personally for me, there's been a lot of times, especially early on where I was like lying bed at night just thinking, oh my God, am I crazy? What is this? Like, why does no one else see it?

And you have these sort of, these concerns, you're thinking, oh, you know, I'm investing in this thing and no one else believes in it. But when I see time after time, after time, after time, just really, really smart people who are getting involved, they do the research.

And then they're like, oh, I've just realized that this or I've realized that. And they not only invest more of their capital, but also of their time and their heart. And it's an incredible thing to watch.

Like the evolution of somebody who starts just buying a little bit to full on HODLA. And I love seeing it. Like it's such an exciting thing for me to see. And if I can just take out that concern of getting them a hardware wallet and this kind of stuff, it's a much more enjoyable experience

'cause you haven't got to worry about them losing everything. Because that, I think, if that happened to somebody, especially early on, that's it, it's game over. They're gonna have a bad feeling about this thing and they're gonna blame probably everyone other than themselves and not come back to it, which would be a real shame.

- Yeah, and that's definitely something that we wanna avoid. And it's one of those risks that's inherent with self custody. But I think also once people get the concept that Bitcoin acts a lot more like cash than it does like a credit card, that helps.

Because if you lose a $20 bill on the street, nobody has the expectation of getting that back unless you go and find it, which is very unlikely. And it's the same with Bitcoin, and so that's one of the ways that I tend to explain it to people.

It's like, you don't wanna lose this Bitcoin and here's how you can protect it. Because if you lose it, then it's just like cash, you're not getting it back. And I think that having some of those mental models like that does help a little bit for people to grasp the differences here between Bitcoin and other forms of money

that can be used over the internet like a credit card. - And I think it's so different. This idea of personal responsibility is so different to what we used to. There's been, especially over the last, you know, 25 years, the time the internet's been around, slowly but surely you don't hold your photos anymore.

They're all on Facebook and you don't hold your information anymore that's held by some company and you don't have any responsibility for your money. And if you lose it, your credit card will get it back.

And is this nanny stay holding your hand all the time that people have got so used to? And then you say to them, oh, well, you know, you gotta look after yourself. And if you lose it, you lose it.

And people get scared by that. But I think actually in reality, it's liberating. - Right. - It's an amazing feeling when you get to a stage where you go, no, this is my money. And no one's telling me if I can spend it or not.

And no one's telling me where I can send it and where I can't send it and what I can do with it. I see it all the time. I see people going into banks, especially here in the UK, where I saw the other day like an elderly gentleman going and he's saying, oh, I just wanna put this money into my wife's account.

And they're like, you can't do that. So what do you mean? I wanna put my money into my wife's account. I just wanna put 200 pounds into my wife's account. No, you can't do that. It's not your account.

Anti-money laundering this and that and that and this rule and that. And you see these people walking out like either really angry or just like confused and sad. And I just think, yeah, 'cause you're not used to this, 'cause you're in your 70s.

This didn't happen when you were my age. This wasn't normal and people have got used to it, but it's not normal. It's not right. And we should have control of our own money. And it's such an amazing feeling to have that.

And I want everyone to have that. I want everyone to feel like they have control. And it's, I don't know, it lights a fire in me every time I see something like that. Every time I see these sort of injustices and people being treated like their property's not theirs.

And it only pushes me to wanna do this more. And I think certainly for most of the population that is gonna happen once this twigs, once they realize, yeah, I can hold this in its mind, they're never going back.

- Yeah. And I think the pendulum, like you were saying, has really swung from personal ownership to third party ownership out of convenience over the last 10 to 20 years. And it's gonna start swinging back, especially as you start to see, especially around personal data, as you start to see more of these documentaries coming out,

like the Netflix documentaries around the social dilemma and that kind of thing. It's just, the popular awareness is kind of waking up to how much third parties have control over us today and how much they know about us today.

And it's the natural state of human beings is to have more control over what is most important to you. And so it's gonna swing back the other way. And I think that Bitcoin is the leading indicator of that.

Is that what drew you in? Is that something that, straight off the bat, when you found Bitcoin, you were like, okay, this solves this problem. Or did you come, like, I don't know, I have no shame in saying this.

It was completely energy you for me. I was just like, this is going up. This is way to me to make money. And the other stuff came afterwards. How did you find it and how did this grab your attention?

- So the thing that first grabbed my attention about it was actually thinking about the ability to have real ownership over your identity online. And that kind of got me thinking about like, well, what if you could own something digital truly yourself?

And then realized, well, Bitcoin is doing that today with money. And so I'm a firm believer that we will have a world five to 10 years from now where people use private keys to secure their identity.

And they'll have lots of different identities online and they will all be represented by cryptography and public private keys. And there will obviously be nice interfaces on it. So you're not just looking at a string of numbers there.

But it's something that is what is better to own than your own identity? That's even more empowering than owning your own money. It's the most, your identity is the most important thing to you as a person.

And so that's what originally got me really interested in it. And then obviously I looked at Bitcoin as something that is doing this today with money. I don't think that there are solutions.

There's a lot of solutions that I've tried to do online identity right now. I don't think that the market or the technology is ready for that yet. And so it's gonna come, but it's not here yet.

I think one of the interesting projects that's doing it actually on top of Bitcoin is like the Microsoft Ion project which cost is working with. But even that's still kind of a ways off, right?

And so where we are today is that Bitcoin gives you full control over your money. And that's really interesting to me. So that was the angle that I came was more from this like decentralized tech and full ownership side of things rather than from the economics and inflation hedge side of things and libertarian side of things

which is where a lot of the Bitcoin people come in today. But I will say that number go up technology definitely played a big role in it. I was not 100% just philosophical. The first thing that grabs your attention is wow, the price is really going up on this thing and people have made a lot of money investing in it.

And then you start looking into it a little bit more and realize all the philosophical side of it. But I think the other thing that has always really interested me, I'm always personally interested in difficult user experiences that can be made better.

Like maybe highly technical user experiences that can be explained better to the average person or something that's just a user experience challenge and private keys are one of the best UX challenges out there today.

And so that was just the challenge aspect of making this more usable for people and how that can actually have a meaningful effect on their lives is what's also something that really interested me because it was just something to tackle.

- And so were you from a tech background when you were introduced to Bitcoin or you came across Bitcoin already? - Yeah, so I was already working in tech. I was working in the travel tech space actually when I came across it.

Before that I had actually been in finance doing investment banking and private equity investing before really deciding that I wanted to be building companies and products more than anything.

And so that was when I got into the tech startup world. But I've loved technology my whole life, grew up playing video games, messing around with computers, all that kind of stuff. And so it's always been a part of my life which made me, I think, a little more open to Bitcoin.

But that's something that is very similar for a lot of people of our age group. - Yeah, so you already had the tech background. You're then in tech but travel. So I assume that's where the identity stuff came in and why you already interested in that part and that part to ignore you.

- I think the identity stuff was actually more around just looking at social media and how it was really interesting that our social media identities were kind of wrapped up into these platforms that had full control over things.

And you couldn't really have, it was very difficult. Excuse me, it was very difficult to have a identity that transferred between different types of internet applications. And so you had an identity on Twitter and identity on Facebook and identity on Google and each of those companies owned that specific identity

but then you didn't really own any of them and you also, it wasn't transferable between the two. And so there's just a lot of friction in that process that I think would be solved by more of like a decentralized identity.

And so just thinking about some of that stuff was super interesting to me. So yeah, it didn't necessarily come from the travel side. - Okay. Yeah, it's always interesting to see how people have come into Bitcoin and from the different angles and whether it's libertarian or whether it's an Austrian view

of money or whether it's literally just a tech. And there's so many different ways in because it's such a multifaceted subject. But I think at the end of the day, everyone always eventually tends to sort of arrive at the same ideas and the same thoughts.

And I can see what you've built here. I have so much more appreciation for what you've built here than I did a couple of weeks ago. And I can see now how you would have come into this. But what I'm really interested to see is where the future lies, like what do you think about the future?

Where are you thinking about Casa going? Where are you thinking about Bitcoin going? And are you looking at certain technologies like say, for example, the Lightning Network or... 'Cause I can feel already from this conversation that you're obviously looking at identity.

You're obviously looking at there being a way to give someone full self sovereignty, not only over their money, but over their identity and everything about them, which is brilliant. Like, I love that.

It's something that I've listened to early days, like all the Andreas Antonopoulos talks and all this stuff. And I was like, oh my God, this is gonna change the fucking world. This is amazing.

And I was so hyped about it. But then I started trying to actually think about how I would do it or use it. And it wasn't quite there, but it feels like it is starting to be. I don't know if you've used this Finx chat and some of these other things that are, it's so cool and like...

Yeah, it is. I can see it developing now. So I'd love to hear where you see this going and where you see Casa going with this stuff, because I feel, and maybe I'm completely wrong and tell me to shut up if I am, but I feel like that's where you're maybe looking in the future.

Yeah, so over a long time horizon, we're definitely looking at things like the basically enabling people to be a full sovereign individual, right? Where we start with that is with Bitcoin.

And the analogy that I like to give a lot is similar to Netflix. So Netflix, when they first started out, they knew they wanted an easy way to get people access to video, TV, movies over the internet and that that probably meant streaming or something along those lines eventually.

But in 1999 or whenever they got started, the internet was nowhere near ready to handle things like streaming video at high quality or at all. And so they started out with DVDs by mail and they just made an entire company around DVDs by mail and it was extremely successful.

And Bitcoin for us is like DVDs by mail. Obviously, not in the way that we think it will become obsolete. Eventually, we think Bitcoin is around forever for a very long time at least. But we think that right now it is the use case for this stuff, for blockchain and for decentralized money and private key management.

And so that's where we're fully focused. And so where we're thinking about going over the next year or two is in the immediate near future, our main focus is just how do we make self custody of Bitcoin as easy as possible for anybody?

And that's gonna be really important through this next year. As the bull market is happening, we wanna make sure that we are able to help as many Bitcoiners as possible, take that step into self custody and into having full control over their money.

Then there's some really interesting things we can start to experiment with, like you mentioned, around lightning or around DLCs or some of these other types of technologies built on top of Bitcoin.

And the reason for that is that private keys remain the foundation for everything you do in Bitcoin. So CASA as a private key manager has the ability really to be a platform for people to plug into a lot of different areas and services, products, features that are within the Bitcoin ecosystem.

And so at the core, we are building a personal key manager. And what that allows us to do is a lot of different things all within this kind of Bitcoin decentralized ecosystem that is really growing right now.

And so like you said, there's some really cool stuff that people are doing with lightning network right now. And that doesn't mean that suddenly we're gonna start competing with Sphinx on doing lightning network based chat.

No, that's their game and they're doing a great job at it. But what we can do is maybe find interesting ways to help people to actually interact with the lightning network or to have some extra security around their Sphinx chat through some sort of integration or something like that.

Like there's just a lot of different angles that we see opportunity with around how keys themselves let you interact in the Bitcoin ecosystem. And so we've got some more concrete ideas around that that we're playing with that I can't really talk about right now because they're still just early ideas that we're really still forming.

But there's a lot of really cool things when you constrain yourself to saying, all right, we're gonna focus fully on private keys. We're not making the cost of note anymore. We're just really focused on what can we do with self-cost of the in private keys?

That actually opens up a huge realm of creativity for what you can do, which is pretty cool. - Yeah, almost like a hub is like, you look after someone's security, you look after their identity, you look after their private keys and that's invaluable to people having a company that they can trust to do that, especially going forward.

- What's important there is while CASA is looking out for it and we are giving them the tools to be securing it themselves, we are not the ultimate owners of record here. So for example, with every CASA setup that happens, our customers get an email that says, okay, here's the information you need to basically take all of your keys

and move it to an entirely different platform. So you can take all this info, we just sent you and recreate everything within Electrum. And we think this is really important because CASA is giving people their individual sovereignty and we want them to use the CASA product and service because it's great.

We don't want them to use it because they're locked in forever and never have any other options because that's just, that's not resilient. That's not, it doesn't fall under the ethos of being a Bitcoin company.

And so if you want to, you can take their your keys, you can take the information and go use an entirely different set of software without ever having to use CASA to transfer funds out. And so a lot of people like this too, because it means that if for some reason, CASA were to be wiped off the face of the Earth one day

without any notice, which is obviously not gonna happen, but if that were to happen, we're Bitcoiners, we plan for the worst case scenario. You can take your toys and go elsewhere in the form of setting up your keys on Electrum and have no problem still accessing your funds, which is really important to us.

So yes, we are helping to look after people's money and to look after people's identity eventually, but we're building it in such a way that they are really the people who have the ownership and the control of that, not us.

- Yeah, I did notice that on set up and I was pleased to see that. It was like, what if something happens to CASA and it did talk through the whole Electrum thing and all that kind of stuff.

And yeah, like you say, it fits with the ethos. It's very different to the normal business model of free, free, free, free, you are the product. And then we take everything, you build all your information on there and then you can't leave.

Which I think everyone's sick of. Like it's so refreshing. That's the thing with Bitcoin. It's so refreshing is like this whole idea about owning your data and owning your money is completely different to what everyone's used to.

But it's at the perfect time because everyone is so sick of it. Everyone, like you're saying, people are watching the social dilemma and they're watching these things on Netflix and they're starting to wake up and then Snowden didn't quite do it for most people.

I don't know how, but they're starting to realise that they are the products and that they are controlled. And what a brilliant time for all this stuff to happen. It is almost like it was meant to be, you couldn't have a better year.

I don't think than 2020 to highlight some of the problems in society and push people towards wanting to own their own data and their own money. - Definitely. And I think it's gonna be, it's definitely a wake up call, but it's a really big change for people to make in their life.

And so it's not gonna happen overnight. I'm not under any sort of delusions that in 2021, suddenly the entire world is gonna be managing a decentralized identity with CASA. That kind of change takes years in the making, but it's what we're working towards over a long time horizon.

And in the meantime, that a really important part of that overall picture is making it really easy for people to have full control and great security for their Bitcoin. That's what our main focus is.

And that's what we said that at the beginning of 2020 that we were focused on that for 2020 and we'll continue to be focused on that in 2021. - Yeah. And I'm very glad that you have. And I'm very glad that our conversation, the other day opened my eyes up and I've really seen what you guys are trying to build here.

I'm not trying to build, you have built it. It's really, really slick. It's really fucking cool. And it's something that I can now comfortably, especially 'cause I've set it up myself, I can comfortably say to people, this is what you use.

You don't fuck around on an exchange and you're not gonna be able to do this other setup. And there are so many people there and I'm pleased that there is something like this. So thank you so much for building it and creating these products that are incredibly important and really these are the things

that are gonna help onboard the next few million or billion people because without it, they're fucked, they're never gonna do it. - Yeah. So thank you for saying that. And honestly, we have an amazing team at CASA and it's been a huge team effort over the last two plus years of working together to get to where we are today.

We're obviously nowhere near being done, but it's something that it's a team effort and couldn't be like here then to be working with the CASA team. So, but yeah, we agree, it's really important if we're gonna be bringing in a new generation of Bitcoiners to help them do it safely and correctly from the start

so that we don't have some of the mistakes and losses that we've seen in the past. So we totally agree with you there. - Good, excellent. And just to plant a little seed here 'cause I have no idea how to build this stuff.

And clearly you guys have all the capability and build some amazing UX. So this is what I just dream of. Just so it's planted in your head. I dream one day of being able to speak my mind and not being kicked off Twitter every month or two.

I dream of being able to communicate with other Bitcoiners about changing the world in a positive way and bringing more freedom to more people without being kicked off every platform that is out there and owning my own identity so that all that time and all that effort that it takes to build these connections and to build a following

doesn't get just destroyed by some dickhead in Silicon Valley deciding that it doesn't fit in with their political views, even though it might be correct. And that I can go on to some application and own my identity and get my friends and family to do the same so that these big tech giants who don't care about the people

that they're supposed to be looking after, the people that are supposed to be their clients who they're treating like cattle can fuck off. And if you guys can do that, I mean, you've already done an amazing job and like it really is lovely.

I really, really like it. But if somehow in the next 10 years you do that, you're the best company ever. You are the best company ever and I will just sing from the rooftops and send every single person in the world your way.

- Well, thank you. Well, you know, it's not gonna be easy. I won't pretend it'd be easy. But it is, it's important to us to really help people be able to retake some of their control over their own life.

And so, yeah, that's something that we are working towards. And I'm excited about it. It's what gets us out of bed every morning. So, yeah, I appreciate that. And we'll see if we get there, but I love it.

- Awesome. All right. Well, look, anything that I've missed, anything that you wanna say, any sort of new releases or anything we haven't covered before we close the interview out? - No, I think that's about it.

I mean, if you're looking to learn some more information about Casa, our website is keys.cosa, K-E-Y-S.C-A-S-A. And our Twitter is @cosa-hoddle. And so, we actually, just like with our client service and support offerings, we really try to add the human element in here.

So you can go to our website and schedule a call with someone on our team right from the website to ask questions, just talk about your Bitcoin security setup. Even if you're not buying the product, you can get some tips from us, that kind of thing.

And so, it's something that we're really, we're here to be helping people do this stuff because it can be intimidating. And while we've tried to make it easy, it's not always easy. And so, yeah, we're here, we're trying to add in that human element, and so feel free to book a call with us or give us a call, and we're happy to talk to you.

So, we love talking to other Bitcoiners, especially people who are working their way through this kind of stuff. So, definitely reach out. - Cool, all right, Nick. Well, I'll link all those bits in the show notes anyway.

And I've said it before, I'll say it again, I'm massively impressed with what I've seen. It's exceeded my expectations, and I'm a little bit ashamed to have written Casseroth previously because I love what you're building.

And I'm really, really pleased to have people like you building this stuff and making it accessible to people. Thanks for coming on, thanks for taking the time to speak to me and for building what you're building.

- Yeah, thank you, Max. It's been fun talking with you and really appreciate what you're doing to educate people through your podcast. I think that's invaluable. So, maybe we will, I hope that the product impressed you enough that at some point you might be moving over your funds from that single-sig wallet over to a cost of multi-sig.

We'll see if they can get there. - We will see, yeah, it's certainly impressed me so far. So, yeah, thank you, Nick. And I hope as things progress and as I play around with it a little bit more, maybe we'll get you back on the show.

I will certainly be shilling this product so that group of people that I talked about who slipped through the cracks. - Awesome. - Thank you very much. Speak to you soon. - All right, talk to you later.