KYC free Bitcoin P2P with @proofofsteph

Bitcoin is close to becoming worthless.

Let's go!

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.

Yeah. 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.

I just had a creme egg in case anyone cares. I'm sure you don't. Should be doing the carnivore stuff. But isn't it Easter? Smash one in my face. It was fucking delicious. Today's episode is with Steph, the co-founder of Peach.

And it was really good to chat to her about p2p networks and onboarding people in a less shitty, less KY seed way. Steph and the team have been supporting me and John with Pledminer Monthly and a massive thank you to them for that.

Also, a big thank you to everyone who's been streaming Sats on the podcasting 2.0 apps, and to everyone who's been sending Sats to my Paynim. Really do appreciate it. If you want my Paynim, it is posted on my Twitter.

It's plus max by bit. Also, just another reminder that all clothing is pulled from ungovernable misfits at the moment. I just wasn't happy with the quality. It seemed to have gone down over time and just being able to get orders out to people on time.

So until it's rectified, everything is pulled from the store. So everyone who's messaging me, I do apologize. I am working on a solution and as soon as I can get something that's reliable and really good quality, then it will be up again and you'll be able to buy them.

So thanks for everyone who's holding on for that. Also, a massive thank you to my show sponsors, foundation devices who make my favorite hardware. It's fully open source. It is beautifully designed.

It has a fucking amazing team behind it. Bitcoin Q&A, as we all know, is a bit of a pain in the ass, but the rest of the team are fantastic. If you are a sadist and you do want some more pain, you can pay a little bit extra, and Bitcoin Q&A will hold your hand through the process of setting one of these up

and make sure that you are completely comfortable with the whole process. It really is simple though. You don't have to subject yourself to any extra time with him. You can do this very, very simply.

Any idiot can do it, including me, and I feel completely comfortable telling friends and family to use this device. Go to foundation devices.com and use the code bit by bit to get an extra $10 off.

A big thank you also to FastBitcoins for supporting the show. I really don't know why they do it. I tell everyone in every episode to buy peer to peer, to buy in cash or to mine at home, but I know not everyone does that and some people wanna use exchanges.

You wanna give all your details away and have them stored. I wouldn't suggest it, but I know some of you will, and if you are going to do it, go to FastBitcoins. The team are absolutely brilliant.

They'll do everything that they can to keep you safe. They'll do everything that they can as a regulated business to keep you safe. FastBitcoins has an absolutely world-class team, and if you are gonna give over all your sensitive information and banking details, please make sure it's a quality team.

You can reach them at FastBitcoins.com, and if you have any questions about the trade-offs when buying KYC versus non-KYC or anything else, you can reach out to me and I will be open and honest about it.

Thanks to everyone who's been supporting the show. Thank you to the sponsors, and I hope you enjoy it. - Hello. - Hello, how are you? - Hello, I'm good. Thank you. How are you? - Very well.

Excited to speak to you today. - Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. It's really nice of you. That's, I think that's my first, yeah, I did a kind of podcast interview in French, so I think that's my first one.

Big one in English. - Okay. - Oh, I did it quickly. The Coinica is show, but it was not like it's a show, so it was not entirely about it. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. When did you do the one with Coin Icarus?

- One month ago, approximately. - Oh, one month ago? - Oh, okay. - Yeah. - Yeah, he's great. I love Coin Icarus. - And to all the old pleb. - Well, that's what it's all about. And to be honest, that was why I was so excited to speak to you about Peach and to see the developments that have been happening, because I don't know,

we're getting to your sort of backstory and why you're doing what you're doing shortly, but I don't know if you ever get the feeling that Bitcoin and the whole scene kind of has been slipping a little bit.

It's kind of got a bit too corporatey, a bit too KY seed, and a bit co-opted. When I see what you guys are doing, it kind of gives me some hope again, because it's a way that actually people who are coming into this space don't have to go straight into surveillance coin.

I'm really, really pleased to see what you guys have done. - That's all. Well, we don't need the podcast, you say that we sing. (laughing) - You're so funny. - So, how did you start here?

'Cause I know Chino, we go back a fair way when he was doing like Ring of Fire and all the stuff he's been doing with lightning, and we actually had him, we featured him on 21ism, maybe two, two and a half years ago or something like that, and we started the Meastodel together.

So we go back a fair way, but I know he's been a busy boy, whereas me and you, we've barely spoken, you kindly reached out and offered to sponsor one of my shows that I do with John around pleb mining.

So thank you for that, but sort of outside of that, we've not really spoken. So be really good to know why you're doing what you're doing. - We did meet in real life, though. - No, we didn't.

- Really? - Yeah. - No, sorry, I did, okay. - I don't do all the meetups or any of that kind of stuff. I stay off the grid as much as I can. - Right. Right, so the question is how did it start, right?

How did it start, where do I start the story? So, well, I've been hanging out in Bitcoin, well, in the Bitcoin space for a few years. And well, I've been hanging out in Bitcoin, both in the cyber Bitcoin space, you know,

through Twitter, and both in real life. I actually think that I started more my Bitcoin experience kind of in real life, actually, because when I started to discover Bitcoin, I first started because I was, well, I heard about crypto, blah, blah, blah,

and I actually got hired by a small marketing agency in New York who wanted to switch a little bit their activity to crypto marketing. And I had some clients at the beginning, so like New York, like extra bankers who wanted to put gold on the blockchain and things like that.

(laughing) I didn't really understand much, but the interesting fact was that I was super scared because I was like, oh my God, I'm not gonna understand anything, blah, blah, blah. But when I joined, I understood that they understood even less than I understood, so I understand that it's quite low.

And so I started actually to do a lot of events, a lot of how to show, I started in Asia. And so I hang out a lot in conferences and stuff, and at the time already in those even big conferences, there were some Bitcoin maximalists, obviously, because there was not really a lot.

I mean, there was, I think few Bitcoin conferences, but not as much as today, I feel like, or maybe because now I'm, (laughing) I don't know, maybe now I see them more than before. So I didn't, I mean, I didn't, I never clicked with crypto, I never, I think I never shit coined really once I was, once I got paid in Ethereum, like 3000,

and I actually lost the key, so I never received my-- - Oh no. - Yeah, so I didn't, I was like destiny. Yeah, and so yeah, anyway, so I was in all those conferences and stuff, crypto conferences, and crypto narrative, like, didn't click, it was like, people were telling me, yeah, but it's secure data, I was like,

I don't understand, like, more tell me why, tell me how. And the explanation kind of stopped there, yeah, because it's in the blockchain, okay, and so what, and I don't know. And so I attended, like, the speech from safe dean.

I remember there was, there was turnways also at the time, and all of a sudden Bitcoin clicked. So, so I basically went down the Bitcoin hub at all, and this is where it started. I joined Bitcoin Twitter and Voila.

And so then I spent as everyone else, like, so much time thinking about Bitcoin, like, so much time talking about it, yeah, trying to map the whole system in my head, blah, blah, blah. And I spent so much energy on it that I was like, okay, I have to align at some point.

My two things, well, first I was like, I have to align my, my, my, my economic, you know, life, economic output with, with the energy I'm spending, because I'm spending so much energy into it that, that this energy needs, you know, there needs to be a feedback loop at some point, you know,

this energy needs to turn into an economic reward. I think it would make sense because then I, at this time, I, I went back to a share job, right? Because I, I left any single lady to keep a while back.

So I wasn't a share job all day, while I was a new Bitcoin, I was like, okay, this doesn't make any sense, you know, to, to spend my time on, on, on a share job, while thinking about Bitcoin and I combined the two, my energy and my economic output.

So that was the first, the first reason why I, I, I started the, I started the pitch. The second reason was, well, this is how I started like the first, the first blog that I, that I wrote and the only blog that I wrote.

It's like, at someone, you know, you always ask yourself, oh, what you can do for Bitcoin, you know, you want to buy it in a way. So that was like, yeah, I want to do my part, you know, I want to, to, to build something that, that will stay, you know, at least try, at least try something that I will stay, that will have an impact,

that I will be so down proud about it. That will, that will really help people that, that I will feel, you know, deep down in my, in my, I don't know, in my guts that, that it's there for a reason that, yeah, it's contributing to the network.

So yeah, that was the, the second reason and the third reason was I wanted to build a product for myself was like, okay, the first thing is, the first thing, okay, thinking about Bitcoin is great, but then you need to get Bitcoin, right?

Tangibly, you need to acquire Bitcoin. I mean, I must, as, yeah, as tangible as it can be, but yeah, and I was not really happy with the option I had in front of me. And so I was, I was starting to think, okay, what would be the ideal product?

And so that's how I started to, to, to think about pitch. Yeah. - It tends to be the best products that are in the Bitcoin market are ones that people have built for themselves. And especially like that feeling, you know, you were saying, ah, you know, I was thinking about Bitcoin all the time and I'm thinking, what can I do for it?

And it was interesting, you said, what can I do that feels right in my gut? And I think that's what separates the good quality stuff that will be around for a long time and the people who are just out there to make money and fleece people.

- Yeah. - 'Cause they're just there to clean up. They know there's a buzz, they know there's a hype. They think, okay, I can make some money here. And they don't really care about what sort of legacy they're leaving, whether on their deathbed they can think, fuck, you know, I can be proud of what I've done here.

And I think that's what separates the sort of more plebe, more serious here for ethical reasons to the like coin bases and, you know, the bullshit things like that. So it's good to hear you say that.

And so what was it like, you know, you're obviously in a fiat job. It sounds like you were successful doing that. Were your family and friends like, Steph, what are you doing? What the hell were you thinking here?

- Well, I think I was always a little bit the crazy one in my family. So it was surprised for my mom and that. Yeah, you know, I think Bitcoin gave me a frame, basically. I was a little bit, maybe all over the place.

I think I was looking for, I don't know, my way or a frame. A frame, basically, you know, I always, I think I was, I mean, as most Bisco Bitcoiner, I guess, I always saw that that something was wrong.

But it was very hard to give it to give it a frame. It was, you know, to find a solution to this feeling of, okay, my life is not aligned, the world is not aligned, things are not aligned.

To find a solution to that was actually really hard. So yeah, no, I mean, my family and friends, well, they were a bit scared, but supportive. And, you know, at some point, it's funny because I told, I remember, I told my dad, he was like, he told me, oh, I'm scared for you.

I'm like, but dude, you're scared of what? That was blank and he was like, I don't know, maybe you're failing. I'm like, but you're completely out of scope by saying that because okay, then what does failing mean to you?

Because me not trying this, that is the definition of failing. Me being in a fair job all day, or job all day that I do not like with no purpose, this is failing. Me being right now in the middle of the jungle, building a product that I suck in love, you know, with supportive community, with people that I like

building this product with etc, etc. That is not the definition of failing to me. I don't know what we do winning actually, you know, even if it stops from all, I've won already. - Yeah, 'cause you're chasing your dreams.

I think what a lot of people do is they get so scared about life, they get so scared about failure that they just don't ever try. You know, you get to a certain age and you think, what if, what if I'd have tried?

- Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. Like, even if things don't work out, and I think they will, 'cause I think what you guys are doing is incredible, but even if they don't, you can still be proud, and you also meet an incredible bunch of people.

There's a huge value in that. And so, how did it come to be that you met Chino then, and Lab? - Yeah, the story is quite long. So, yes, so actually, at the beginning, the first pitch, when I saw it about pitch, the first pitch was a bit of a centralized pitch, because I was like, okay, what are the best option

to buy Bitcoin at the moment? And to me, the best option, as a user, was cash up and strike in the US. But I mean you, and cash up and strike, well, they're not available here. So, I started to investigate a business model around cash up and strike, but to be honest, it's too complicated.

Then you have to hold a hold of fiat, you wantable for a fiat, and you don't want to be accountable for people's money. And so, then it moved to this peer-to-peer, like I started then to look at the peer-to-peer category, and I was like, oh, damn, this is fucking amazing, but this is not the product that is built for me.

So, I started to write a paper on the first pitch ID, and then, I don't know, it's like the hand of God, maybe, I don't know, a small telegram group was created out of Bitcoin Twitter, with people that I actually never interacted with.

So, it was extremely random. And this little telegram group was EU players, with some EU players. - Oh, I was in there. - Okay, well, and we stopped at like 12 people, because we kind of hit it off.

This group was created when COVID started, and it was like a kind of support group, or whatever, you know, to want to be toxic about COVID, clown world and stuff. And so, we hit it off, and so one day I was like, okay, because that is a very trusting atmosphere in this group, I was a bit shy to share the first pitch paper,

but I was like, okay, I'm going to share it with those guys. And Tino really liked the idea, actually got triggered. His brain got triggered, I think. It's really good work. So, he started to actually, yeah, think about them, but what will the implementation look like, blah, blah, blah?

And the lab was triggered as well. And so, we created a side group, a side telegram pitch group, and how it started. It's the, yeah, yeah, we started working on it in the summer 2021, and the January 2022, we decided at the time, so the exporter was with us as well.

- Yeah, Herman. - Of us, yes, yes. And we decided to meet in real life for the first time. To do a pitch sprint for a week. And at the end of the week, we were like, okay, let's take and go.

(both laughing) What is amazing with pitch is that it's really grassroots. It's really, really important, and stars a line. Like, I told you, she's like, I don't know, we got the help of an invisible hand sometimes, you know?

- Yeah, it does feel a bit like that. And it's amazing how quickly it's all moved to something that was an idea, 'cause I remember Chino and Solex, 'cause we were chatting a lot after the Meastadale calls and stuff like that.

And I remember them saying, yeah, we've got this idea and this is gonna happen. And it was like just a thought. And there's a lot of those thoughts in Bitcoin where people say, I'm thinking of doing this or I'm gonna do that.

And 95% of the time, nothing happens, you know? It's just like it's an idea, but life's too busy or whatever, people don't do it. So to see this go from literally that thought and that initial, like, this is what we're gonna do to where it is now is pretty impressive.

It's very, very fast. What's the biggest problems you've had so far? Like, it's easy to look at the successes, but has there been anything where you've been like, ah, fuck, I don't know if I can do this.

Like, this is too much or has it been relatively plain sailing? - No, it's been a Holocaust term. (laughing) - It's been made of 10 down. I think the first thing is that moving from an idea to action is not, well, it's human nature, you know?

Like, I think that by definition we're lazy, you know? So moving from an idea to an action is hard. And then, well, basically I think the secret for us to move, as you say, fast from an idea to an act, to a product was to just keep acting, you know?

Action, human action, and this plus perseverance, plus resilience, a lot of resilience. Like, I often say like, honey badger is not a meme. Like, I think that the corners will need to be honey badgers.

Like, how honey badgers? Like, you know, we need to be resilient as fuck. - Yeah. - Yeah, there is no other way because life is made of up and down. If you're not, if you can enjoy the up and cannot go through the down, we're not gonna make it as simple as that.

Just self-awareness of up and down is super important. Being able to step back is super important. Okay, we're in the up, it's amazing. And this is where the mean, stable, stack sets, kind of came in, like, you know, like still stay humble when we're in the up and we're in the down, don't lose face, don't lose face, don't lose trust.

- Building the relationship has been extremely important with Chino and Lab and now the team because now we're six people. - Oh, wow, okay. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Six people and going.

So building trust is building the personal relationship is super important because at the end of the day, pitch is us, you know, it's everything we want with us. So when there is one of us who is not good or not performing, well, then you can back speech, you know?

- Mm-hmm. - Yeah, it sounds like you've got a great team there. Am I right in thinking you guys are all or some of you are in El Salvador? I know that Lab was. We recorded about a month or two ago in me in Lab, but I fucked up and my mic was so horrible that we couldn't put the show out, but the audio quality was so bad.

But it was really good to catch up with him. - I hope I want the dojo will be okay, yeah, because I'm not using the headphone, by the way. - Yeah, it would be all right. I'll mess around and clean it up anyway.

But it was my fault on the one with Lab. I don't know what happened, but my mic wasn't working at all. So it was just like muffled noise for an hour and a half. (laughing) But he did tell me that he's really enjoying it out there and it's got a really good vibe.

Are you out there as well or? - Yeah, a little bit, yeah, yeah, I was-- - Nice. - Well, I've been going to Latin America for the best three years during the winter in Europe. I've been escaping winter.

It's not-- - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's also amazing to connect more to nature over there, you know, like your day in the middle of the nature, barefoot, you know, eating food all day and sex, stuff like that, talking on the beach.

It's been like, you know, it's a good recharge, like a weekend. - I imagine that helps with the creativity as well, 'cause, you know, being in England, over the sort of winter time where you wake up and it's dark and you come home and it's dark and it's raining and it's cold and it's miserable, you just think, oh, for fuck's sake,

this is not what I wanna be living. Whereas when you're in the sunshine, I don't know, there's something, like you say, like you do recharge, there's some excitement and that being around nature really does ground you and-- - Oh yeah.

- I imagine that's probably helped with these, you know, you're saying it's a roller coaster. When things are going down, I assume that's pretty helpful. - I mean, yeah, the light is so, I'm important.

I came back to York a few days ago and I instantly noticed the impact on my body of not having the sun, but yeah. No, it's been nice to change scenario from, yeah, from a creative standpoint and also from a perspective standpoint.

- Yeah, being able to step back and also see how an environment impacts you differently from another environment and being a bit more aware of those different outputs that an environment can avenue.

It's, yeah, it's productive. - And what's it been like seeing people in South America interacting with Bitcoin, especially in El Salvador, there's a big, big difference with the use cases for most of people in Europe to maybe what it would be in South America or Africa.

Are you getting a sense of people's need out there and is it a positive experience? - In El Salvador, at least yes, it has been a positive experience. Not everyone is using it at the moment.

I feel like, well, I feel like the understanding of Bitcoin is not there yet, you know, even from people who are actually using it. So maybe that's, I mean, it's normal, I think, at this stage, but yeah, I think for them, I mean, it's good as well because at some point you also learn Bitcoin by using it.

Some of the people like my taxi drivers, they were using it because I was paying in Bitcoin and I only had Bitcoiners, like, okay, I can hire you to be my driver over El Salvador for months, but I will only pay you in Bitcoin.

So it was like, okay, if I want this job, then I need to accept Bitcoin. - Okay, yeah, it's interesting. It's like the way I look at it is they kind of have the most need for it, but it's very difficult to take the time to learn about this stuff.

Like timing-wise, I always think I was quite privileged to actually have the time to study this because it's hard and it takes an enormous amount of time and energy. Like the actual energy that you use when you're working out Bitcoin, when you're working out why it's here and what it's gonna do and everything else, it can drain you.

And then I think like, well, if you're already working a couple of jobs and you're already stressed about your finances and maybe you have kids and all the other stresses of life, we're still not there at like kind of explaining this thing and maybe, I mean, O'Dell says it all the time, like people just need to keep getting roughed

until they realize and like, it's funny, but it's also kind of sad 'cause they're the people that need it the most and it would be nice for that not to happen, but I don't know where around it.

- The thing is that Bitcoin at the moment, I mean, Bitcoin is a saving vehicle and I, well, and they don't have savings, you know, and it's not safe, you know, and the core value proposition is Bitcoin is a saving vehicle.

So yeah, in that sense, I think it's a little bit complicated. Then banking the unbank, yes, that's the value prop, but yeah, you know, I don't know. I feel like, yes, of course, of course banking the unbank, of course, like, yeah, when we say they need it the most, I mean, yeah, they need it,

but while I am on the European market right now, I'm also thinking that European need it as fuck, like as fuck. - Oh yeah. - And so because like, you know, sometimes it's like, okay, maybe I have this feeling of I'm gonna help first my closest, I don't know, circle before helping someone

further away and that I know less, but yeah, European need it as fuck. Like, like when I see the stage once at the moment, it's, it's, it's what the fuck they're gonna make it, those people are like, it's crazy, it's crazy.

Like the censorship with their bank account, the, the, the, the valuation of, of your social protest, the quality of life, like, it's misery. It's basically misery. Like, yeah, yeah, I mean, friends is, is going to misery.

I mean, I, and I'm talking about friends because I know friends a little bit more than, than countries, but yeah. - It's crazy to see, I think the difference is though, that like people still haven't really come to terms with the fact that France and Europe and the UK are fucked.

Everyone's just going about their daily lives and piling on debt and they just, I feel like the average person that I speak to just, they still don't get it, but they know that things are getting so much harder.

Everyone who I know who's just normal people are like, just struggling, like, they're working all the hours they can work, they're trying to save, but they can't. They're, they're trying to pay their heating bills.

I had a 940 pound heating bill in December. - Not crazy. - I was like, oh, that's almost my mortgage. (laughing) How a hell a normal people are going to pay this? And they're not, I think, you know, it's, it's little stuff that I hear with friends and family.

They're like, oh yeah, we've stopped shopping here. We're going to Aldi. Oh yeah, we're cutting back. We won't be having a holiday. We won't be doing this. We won't be doing that. What's weird though, is it seems like the French, they don't mess around.

They're out there protesting. They're out there saying, like, I've had enough. Whereas the British are like, that's okay. You can just, just take everything from us. It's fine, don't worry about it.

- And then it's a, it's a circle thing because the people who actually see it and who have the, the financial resource and the financial independence to, to make a choice. Well, then they will just, well, this is where the country arbitrage comes in, right?

Well, you just go to Latin America because guess what? It's hot all year long and you don't need to pay for energy bills, you know, as long as that, you know? So then those countries in Europe will be just left with people who have no choice to stay there.

And I think that the next bull market because Bitcoin price is important, the next bull market will all be, I think a strong signal for those people. I think in Europe, I hope. And this is why also I, I mean, I want us to do our best at pitch to be there when the next bull market will come in.

Because I think that then those people will be like, wait a second, this Bitcoin thing is that, okay, let's be bearish, 100K and, and wait, we still have our euros which we cannot do anything with.

Like, you know, so wait a second. Then, you know, I think, you know, the next bull market I think is going to, well, I just, I hope is going to attract a big new wave of Bitcoiners. Yeah, I agree.

I had that feeling though, last bull market or before the last bull market because when all the COVID stuff was going on, my feeling at the beginning of it was like, I'll come on, everyone's got to wake up now.

They're locking you in your house. And it was hilarious. Everyone's locked in their house. And I was saying to my missus, like, listen to these fucking idiots. They were all out on their doorstep clapping for the NHS, like little monkeys.

They're all doing that while locked in their house and their incomes are being taken away. And it was fine for like the middle class who were in like normal fiat jobs because they were being paid to sit at home and watch Netflix.

But the blue collar workers or the workers who can't afford to pay all their taxes as they should do when they duck and dive a little bit, like half of England, they were not getting paid.

All the handyman and people who were working for cash, they just lost everything. And I was saying, this is it, this is it. They're going to realize the government hates them. They're going to buy Bitcoin.

Did they? No. No one was interested. No one cared. The only thing that people actually care about and you're right is the price. People see the price going up. They go, oh, what's this thing?

I might buy some. It is kind of the marketing strategy for Bitcoin. It is the thing that pulls the people in. I mean, I'm not going to say anything new here, but we are so early. We need to be patient.

I think Bitcoin is like patience, you know? Yes. In general, like, yeah, we're so early. It's going to come. It's going to come, but we really need to think, I think like five years, 10 years, 20 years down the line, you know?

It's not that long. It's not that long. Yeah, exactly, exactly. But yeah, we need to be patient for sure. A decade or two is fine. I think maybe what makes it more urgent, especially for me, like where I'm like, oh, I wish this was hurry up.

I wish these governments would start failing quicker is I hate seeing the pain of like average good people. I hate seeing people that I know and care about really, really struggling and being taken advantage of.

And I've mainly given up trying to shield them Bitcoin because it ends up just being very frustrating. I know they're not ready for it because I've tried and tried and tried. So I just sort of have to watch their value being taken and them having to take a few more hours of work and see their families less and all this kind of stuff.

And it's, I think that's where I'm, where I get impatient. In terms of like, do I have to wait a decade or two for my sats to be worth more? It doesn't really matter 'cause I don't plan on ever selling unless I absolutely have to because my main goal, like what I love more than anything else is not when I open up a wallet and see,

oh, okay, I've got this is my balance. I don't really care about that. I care how many sats have I got because then the fuckers who are taking control of people can't ever have them. That's where I get my joy from.

I look at it and I think, ha, you can't ever have these. So the value doesn't matter so much. But yeah, it's interesting as well because trying to get people involved. And this is one big thing with Peach that I particularly like is the professional look and how clear it is for somebody to go on and use this.

'Cause for example, like a couple of years ago when I was orange pulling people and getting them on board, I was saying like, okay, we'll set you up. We'll get you on. Bisc is what I was using at the time.

I was like, get you set up on Bisc. And honestly, zero, zero people used it, zero. They went, oh, I'm not doing this, this is horrible. They just couldn't get their heads around it. It was too much, even with like some hand holding.

So in the end, they would end up just going to an exchange. And I was like, okay, we can do some stuff here after you've bought, we can put it through Whirlpool and I'll help and they're like, okay, so now it's private.

And I'm like, well, no, not really. You're better off than you would have been if we didn't go through Whirlpool, but it's still not that great. But you can go here. - An exchange is not that easy.

And it's kind of scary. I mean, bye. - On an exchange. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not for everyone to buy on an exchange. - It's not that simple. - No, I don't think that everyone can go to an exchange and everyone will go to an exchange to buy Bitcoin even.

And this is where I think, and that might be a little bitter. Well, I don't know, but we have to be, I think. It's not pretentious, but set the goal higher. That business is like pitch, can and should even compete with those so-called centralized exchange.

- Absolutely, they definitely should. - Yeah, when I look at the competitors' map, I do not only look at peer-to-peer competitors. I look at it because tomorrow, when someone will want to get exposure to Bitcoin, I do not believe that the average person will go to an exchange.

I mean, at least basically, again, coming back to me, and because when you build, this is what we said at the beginning, well, I do not like, I mean, I don't think personally that exchanges are for everyone, for all.

It was not really for me at the beginning, the first, I remember the first time I saw an exchange, I was like, what the fuck? Yeah, no, no, it's not for everyone. Like tomorrow, your grandma, mother, daughter, and sister and friend will not, I think, buy on exchange.

I mean, there will be much easier, faster, simpler solution like pitch, and I really hope pitch will be one of this solution. - I think you're certainly on the right track, and the fact that someone doesn't have to give over all their information.

On the one hand, a lot of Bitcoiners will say, I'm really worried about the state of the world, I'm really worried seeing what these governments are doing, I'm really worried that they're taking more and more control, I'm really worried that the currencies around the world are devaluing, I'm really worried about what they're going to do

when they see Bitcoin succeed, I'm really worried how they're going to attack Bitcoiners. But when they're onboarding their friends and family, they allow their friends and family who they love and care about and want to help to give all of their personal identifiable information to people who are definitely going to either give it

to government or they're gonna be hacked and all their information is gonna be out there for everybody. And they're going to be on a list. What do you think's gonna happen to all those people who have their names, addresses, photographs?

Do you really think that they're not gonna have a knock at the door? - Right, right. But at the time, well, before pitch existed, now you can tell people to go on pitch, but before pitch existed, then the question was, did you prefer, okay, what was it, what was better?

The person to not have Bitcoin at all, or the person to go on an exchange and have Bitcoin, even though it's KYC Bitcoin, you know? That was the question. - I don't know. - Yeah, I don't know now.

- Exactly, that was the question. Well, I still believe that owning Bitcoin is superior to owning, you know, yeah, if you had the time to buy Bitcoin with KYC, well, you have Bitcoin, that is what matters.

And now, well, this was the beginning, and now let's do it right, you know? Now let's buy Bitcoin, self custody, no KYC, and yeah, and let's fucking go. I think that should just be now, basically, this is how we build pitch, you know?

With embedding those principles in the app by default, like self sovereignty, owning your own keys, security privacy is a default. - It's very important. - Well. - And I really like that you have the option for gift cards and cash.

That would be the way that I always try and push people if at all possible, 'cause I always want to take out as much risk for them as possible. So can we talk about the gift cards and cash trades?

'Cause that would be what I try and push my audience towards if possible, because I see it as the least amount of risk. Was that why you incorporated it? - Well, yes, because as you said, it's clearly the most anonymous way of buying Bitcoin, but there is an interesting thing that came up recently from a regulation standpoint.

Basically, they introduced the new notion of anonymous payment method. And they now differentiating the trading limit between anonymous payment method and non anonymous payment method. So cash and gift card have a trading limit, non-K-way situation, trading limit of 1,000 per month instead of 1,000 per day.

- Of course it is. They're sneaky bastards. - Oh yeah, oh yeah, that's really sneaky. And it's more than sneaky, it's a, I have no word. I mean, I don't even think I can say out loud when we sing that.

(laughing) - Please, please, please. (laughing) - It's basically changing. Well, it's introducing new concept. It's introducing new concept. It's introducing new new lingo. This concept didn't exist before in the regulation.

The concept of anonymous payment method didn't exist. So it's like how the fucking nowhere you're introducing a new lingo new concept. You know, that is now the road. And this is, so this is obviously the biggest risk of pitch or I don't know how to say that,

but yeah, risk maybe is obviously the regulation because pitch is a business, you know? - How recently was that introduced?

- It was introduced, if I'm not mistaken, a few months ago, all right. And yeah, it was, I think it was end of the year, November 2022, when they revised the regulation regarding to crypto exchanges.

Because remember, they were actually revising the whole Swiss regulation around that. And in Switzerland, like the, and actually female received a ton of letters coming from Bitcoiners, coming from like the Bitcoin communities all over Switzerland.

They received a ton of letters of letters. And then they published the amendment of the law. So they kept the KVC trading limits per day. But they added this little sneaky ball for cash and the, - That's very frustrating.

- It is frustrating, it is frustrating. But, you know, the goal is, I think the goal is to ship new ideas, new product faster than the ship, the regulation, and faster the ship, the enforcement of the regulation.

So obviously the goal is to, well, we have a ton of things to do to, on pitch core, so pitch 1.0, pitch up. But I think that we have also a lot of new side products, maybe your ecosystem or features to develop on top of pitch.

I would try to circumvent all of this. - I can imagine a couple of them already. I won't say them on here. - I can imagine. Okay, well, so you've still got that option of a thousand euros a month, which to be fair is actually still a decent amount for most people.

You know, that is quite a lot still. And yes, the value of these euros is gonna drop away. And so eventually, if it stays at a thousand, you know, you'll be able to buy a couple of sats and almost not be worth it.

But for now, I think it's still a really good option. It's definitely something that I would suggest to people. It's like, you know, if you can do these cash trades or if you can't, because obviously, it's maybe not so easy to find a trading partner who's close enough to you that you can do this with cash

unless you're at a meetup or something like that. But, you know, the gift cards are fantastic because I think you've got the option for Amazon on there, you know, pretty much everyone uses it.

It's a really nice option for someone. And they can keep their identity hidden and still have the ease of use that they would actually probably easier than they would with an exchange. The trading in cash, I think I saw on your website, you're kind of trying to work with meetups, possibly.

Is that right? - Exactly, exactly. So yeah, absolutely. At the moment, we have integrated exactly 44 meetups all the way up into Peach. - Oh, wow. - And shout out to Marcus, our team-mate in Peach for coordinating all of this.

So, and actually on the next release, we will have 50 meetups integrated into Peach. So the idea was to partner with Bitcoiners on the ground,

local meetup organizer to integrate to facilitate first the cash trades. Because with the cash trades, well, you know, there is always this security in real life security risk, you know, so at least in Bitcoin meetup, you are in a kind of safe place, hopefully.

And we'll also, I don't know, it's also this feedback loop, you know, kind of seems like it's very nice to partner with Bitcoiners all over Europe. It gives, maybe it will give some visibility to their meetup, then it gives you a little bit of pitch at their meetup, like it's win-win for everyone.

And the other reason also is that the UX in Peach for cash is not ready yet for having it outside meetup.

And I think it requires a very, very specific UX integrating, because you know, there is this whole dual localization kind of part in which city you are. So I don't know, we're not ready yet for this feature, but it will come.

- Yeah, it would definitely be nice to see. And I think that's quite a nice thing with the meetups. Like you said, it's a safe space for people to bring cash, especially with larger amounts.

It's certainly safer than just meeting a random. I remember doing like local Bitcoins, the bloke that I would buy from. He got held up with a group of Somalis with swords, and they took everything from him when he thought he was going to just do a cash trade.

It happens. You always have to have your head on a swivel. You always have to have that little bit of a worry in the back of your head. And if you're at a meetup, you do have a lot less risk in that sense.

So it would be good to see. And you also have like, you know, one thing I've noticed with our Pledminer monthly group, there's a lot of people who do need to sell Bitcoin on a regular basis, you know?

You have this nice thing where you've got people who need to sell 'cause they're mining. They need to pay their energy costs. They need to live, you know? We've got lives outside of Bitcoin.

So they have to sell. So who better to sell to than people who actually understand the ethos of Bitcoin? That's why they're using something like Peach. That's why they want to do something with cash.

That's the perfect trade. And so everyone stays off the book. Everyone keeps low. You keep the government out of your money as much as possible. That's what Bitcoin's about. - Yeah, 100%.

- Any other sort of teasers or anything you can tell me, any ideas or things that might be coming soon? - Well, in terms of ideas, we have, I think, 100 of ideas per day. (laughing) I don't have to go through that.

But even though I have to say, so I attended the Noster Confidence in Costa Rica. - Okay, yeah. - That also triggered some ideas, you know, for the future of Peach as well. So that was cool to feed a little bit our creativity and souls.

In terms of Peach, also now we're consolidating Peach as it is today. I know a lot of people are asking about when lightning and my answer is when on chain because at the moment we have a sell yesterday wallet into Peach, but it doesn't have the full wallet functionality first.

So basically, you know, I think that we first, we want to do one thing and do it right. So Peach aims to be the fastest, simplest way to buy and sell Bitcoin here to peer and to then use the self-custered wallets to, well, send and receive Bitcoin and store a small amount.

First, let's do that first of all, you know? - Yeah. - Let's do that and we're not there yet, you know? So there is already a lot of work to first do that and do it well. - Yeah, or before you can run, I think that's where people trip up.

It's like trying to do too much too quickly and then you lose focus. And what you're focusing on is so important. Like it's like the bedrock of getting people involved and having a circular economy.

So, and also like lightning. I mean, the fees aren't that high on chain at the moment. I know people want to use it, but I barely use lightning myself like personally. I barely find a need.

I use it for the podcasting 2.0 stuff. That's great. But outside of that, like if I'm going to make a payment, I do it on chain. I just set my fee level. I can wait. And I don't personally see the need right now.

Fees go up and I'm having to pay $100 for it to get a transaction through. Then yeah, okay, I'm going to be using it. - It depends. I did see, so personally, I'm 100% with you. At least here in Europe.

But when I was in Latin America, I did see the need of lightning when I was paying for my daily stuff in Bitcoin. - Yeah. Okay. Yeah. - There was a need for lightning. Yes, absolutely. Yeah.

- Paying for a coffee. Just, if you just hold on 10, 20 minutes. (laughing) Wait for this to clear. - Trust me, please. - Yeah. - Well, that's funny because it happened to me. Actually in Mexico, I was working in Mexico and then I saw a coffee shop with the sign Bitcoin accepted here, I was like, what?

So obviously I go inside and it's funny because I was actually the first one paying for my coffee in Bitcoin in this coffee shop and the owner was telling me that he started to accept Bitcoin because he was buying Bitcoin on an exchange and his bank for his payment.

So he was like, okay, I own a coffee shop. So I'm just not accepting Bitcoin. - It's smart. - Super smart, super cool. And all of this to say that the guy obviously didn't know about, I mean, he didn't even know about lightning.

So I paid him on chain and he was like, now I trust you, whatever. But yeah, it's kind of, the thing is that I think he didn't realize this fiction because he was like, okay, because I was the first one paying for my coffee in Bitcoin.

When I was like, yeah, but the transaction is not gonna arrive right now, you know. So I mean, I cannot stay for one hour, two hours, six hours. (laughing) So you have to trust me and then, well, I guess Bitcoin also, to some extent, at least at this stage, trust, which was sometimes.

- Yeah, there's definitely something to that. I'm hoping that there is some type of movement with South America, you know, we touched on it earlier. This idea that more people will be maybe moving out there and that we have sort of, - Yeah.

(sighing) - I don't wanna say community, but like, a bit of a support structure and like a clear objective of what we want. The one thing that I really respect and love about most of the Bitcoiners that I interact with is like, they just wanna do their own thing and be left alone and they're not gonna interfere and fuck around

with other people. So if you could live somewhere where there's a fair few people who have that same view as you, you can get so much more done and life is just so much more enjoyable. And it's not that you have to like sit and nerd out about Bitcoin and talk about all the updates and stuff like that.

You just live your life and just be a normal person, but you know that people have a similar kind of view. And I think that that's really, really rare in Europe at the moment. - Yeah. - If you're sat around a dinner table and someone says, oh, who are you voting for?

Are you gonna go conservative or are you gonna go labor? And you're like, I don't give a fuck 'cause they're all criminals and I don't vote and it's bullshit. People will look at you like you're a lunatic, you know, 'cause all they wanna do is argue about politics.

- Yeah, exactly, whereas you're around Bitcoin, isn't it like, yeah, obviously. - Yeah, it's so much easier to live with like-minded people. That's also, I think one of the reason why I go to Latin America once a year for my sanity, just be, you know, just because, oh my God, talking about that, well, perfect, perfect story.

I come back from Latin America, wait a few, last week, a few days ago, two days after I go to yoga class. And I think my frequency were not in tune yet with the European yet clone world frequency.

So what happened is that a girl next to me, a boomer, kind of, kind of a woman next to me, started to talk about, she was starting to cry about the fact that banks are currently firing people because we know that we had to bail out credit fees, right?

So then she's printed $100 billion to bail out fees. And so I hear that, so obviously, I answered. (laughing) Obviously, you know? And I said, well, those fucking criminals are losing their job, but we have to fucking bail them out, you know, with, you know, and so I start to went on that.

And this already died, no, that she was a bank. (laughing) And once I got done, I got in real life done from my yoga class. - Really? - Yeah, because she was feeling unsafe. - Are you serious?

- Yeah. So-- - Oh my God. So you go in real life-sensored and blocked. - Absolutely, I got in real life done. And again, that's the adjustment of frequencies when you are in a place for three months where you live among pit corners-- - Solarius.

- You know what I mean? And then you come back to clan world and you're not adjusted yet to the narrative to how people live. (laughing) They're level of fairness. They're level of, you know?

And yeah, I forgot that the level of fairness where I live is extremely high. So yeah, I got in real life done. That's funny. - That's hilarious. She obviously felt unsafe because she probably heard that there was some truth in what you're saying.

And she couldn't bear it. 'Cause how often do people attack Bitcoin? It's like, I can't tell you how many times people have, like, said to me how stupid I am and how dangerous Bitcoin is and destroying the world and blah, blah, blah.

Like, I'm not gonna, well, I don't do yoga anyway. I'm too inflexible. But like, if I did, and someone said that to me and yoga, I'd be like, okay, you're not gonna go and get someone banned for having an opinion.

That's fucking ridiculous. - Yeah. (laughing) I was like, girl, I didn't even know you were a banker. Well, it's not, I mean, I didn't attack you personal. But the thing is that, as you said, I think that they cannot hear, it's too hard right now for people to hear some truth.

Some truth are too hard to hear, you know? So they cannot, their belief system just cannot handle it. Like, listen, those people have been living and working and, yeah, blindly living every day for more than 30 years, as she said, for example, in this traditional system and now saying something that is not even my opinion.

It's, I was saying, it's not my opinion that the fact that we bail out, one is not my opinion, is a fact, you know? - Yeah. - Is a fact. So the fact that they're evaluating money and that this is fucking criminal, it's not my opinion.

It's a fact. (laughing) - It's not my opinion now, you know? It's a fact as well. And the thing is that they cannot hear it so they have to live or they have to ban you. Why they are dangerous?

Because they cannot handle to hear the truth, you know? - Brilliant. Well, (laughing) hopefully you find a new yoga class where you go to where they aren't so ridiculous. But I think that's a good place to wrap up, Steph.

It's really cool to see what you guys are doing. - Thank you. - I wanna say a massive thank you from me and John and all the pleb miners for the support on the show. You did that completely blindly.

We hadn't even started the show. You just, you trusted us and, you know, I wanna say thank you for that. And just keep doing what you're doing. It is really, really exciting. I can't wait to see where it goes.

And yeah, thanks for what you're doing. - No, thank you so much. And thank you for having me. It was really, really nice chat. - Yeah, it's been an absolute pleasure. We'll do it again a little bit further down the line and see where you guys have got to.

- I would love that. - All right. Thanks for listening. I really hope you enjoyed that as much as I enjoyed recording it. If you haven't already, check out the weekly update show that I do with John.

It's 10 minutes, it's mining news and because I fucking hate reading articles so much, I read them so you don't have to because I hope it's useful for you. So some feedback would be great.

Let us know if you like it. Let us know if it's shit. Especially if it's shit because it's John's problem. And then ideally what you wanna be doing is send some abuse his way. I'll put links to his Twitter in the show notes so that you can do that.

All right. I'm for listening and I'll catch you on the next one.