P2P Bitcoin Trading No KYC, coming to your smartphone powered by Hodl Hodl

Welcome to the Stephan Livera podcast, a show about Bitcoin and Austrian economics. Today, for episode one hundred and sixty-six, my guest is CEO of HODL HODL, Max Keidun. This podcast is brought to you by Kraken, one of the world's leading Bitcoin exchange platforms, offering high trading volume and low fees with no minimum or hidden fees. Kraken have twenty-four seven support and the sign up process is This is really quick. They're consistently rated the best from a security standpoint. They've got Kraken Security Labs with a lot of really interesting blog posts there, and they are also rated the best from a user standpoint. Kraken also offer Kraken Pro mobile app, delivering all the security and features you love about the Kraken exchange in a beautiful mobile-first design. Don't forget, there's also a Kraken Futures app, which you can find in the Google Play Store or Apple App Store. Kraken also offer margin trading up to five times and Futures, up to fifty times leverage for those outside the US. Sign up at kraken dot com. This episode also presented to you by Unchained Capital, Bitcoin financial services company. Are you looking to improve your security with multisig and you're struggling to do it on your own? Well, Unchained Capital have two of three multi-signature vaults, so these are really easy to use. You can use Ledger and Trezor, you can secure your Bitcoin for the long term, and then friends don't let friends sell Bitcoin, so you can use Unchained's collateralized loans, USD. All Bitcoin is stored on chain in dedicated multisig addresses. Unchained also offer a lot of excellent content on their website. They've got some really cool posts. I liked Phil Giger's post about twenty one million is not negotiable. I think you will enjoy partnering with Unchained Capital for your Bitcoin financial services. Go and learn more at unchained-capital dot com. Check out Swan Bitcoin, the place to auto stack bitcoins if you're in the US without manual processing. Look up Swan Bitcoin at swanbitcoin. Bitcoin dot com, you can link any major US bank account via ACH and auto buy it weekly or monthly. It's delivered to your wallet or stored with a licensed and regulated custodian. The focus is on education and advocacy. Swan Bitcoin offer the cheapest possible rates in terms of dollar cost averaging, and I recently did an episode with Corey Clipston, the CEO, so you can go back and check that one out as well. So there is giftbitcoin dot io for your Bitcoin gifting and go to swanbit Bitcoin dot com for your automated Bitcoin stacking. So I like that HodlHodl are building on the no KYC Bitcoin economy aspect, and they've got some updates to share around the user experience and also the new local trader feature in BlueWallet, which I think is a pretty cool idea of connecting up smartphone wallets with HodlHodl's liquidity. And we also talk a little bit about Baltic Honey Badger twenty twenty and what, what that's looking like so far. Here's the interview. Max, welcome back to the show.

hey Stefan, thank you for having me again. I'm really pleased. I, I really like your show, so I'm happy to be here.

I like, what you guys are doing at HodlHodl, and I know you've got some great updates to share with everyone. But first, give us an update from you and the team. How is everyone going under this whole corona? House arrest, lockdown thing.

Yeah, like, nothing changed much for the whole, whole team because we've been, remote since, since, since day one. So basically we've been working remotely, since the beginning. So, for us it's just a regular work week or just regular another week because we are working also during the weekend. So, yeah, it's all good for us. not so good for some of our partners, but, yeah, hopefully this, Corona stuff will be over soon and we will be back Back to track, everyone would be back to track. But yeah, as for Code Holodeck team, everything is good, we're working, nothing changed.

Cool. And most of the guys are in Latvia, right?

no, actually we're pretty distributed, globally, so like basically, I think from North, starting from North America. Ending with Asia, so we have a pretty diverse and, and, and pretty distributed team of people. So, There's like a lot of different countries, and actually, there's not so many people in Latvia, to be honest. There, there's more people in other countries.

Cool. Well, look, I, I know there were some updates that you and the team shared last year back at Baltic Honey Badger 2019, and, some of those involved things like user experience update on the platform, open sourcing efforts. Do you wanna just tell us a little bit about what you're doing there?

Yeah, so, we've been- Announced during the Honey Badger that we're going to improve user experience significantly, and we started, this by redesigning the weekly auto-holo. We already released first part of redesign. or a new version of Hoddle Hoddle in February. it was a pretty, like, pretty nice, was a small success because we received a, a lot of positive feedback on that. And, we also, a-as, as you know, but most probably we will talk about this later, we also, released our API, and that allowed us to integrate with Blue Wallet, which basically gave us opportunity to present Homo Hodl trading functionality in a mobile phone. So basically now you can use HODL, HODL, through mobile wallet, which is a blue wallet. And, another thing we've announced that we're going to be an open source, we're going to open source whole HODL. It's, currently it's now in development, so we're, we're working on that as well. we, we did change some priorities, so most probably the open source stuff coming in the end of 2020, but we already released some of the parts of HoloHolo, publicly. You can go on HoloHolo dot com, And check, the open source section. It's called open source basically, so you can click on that and check it out, which parts of Holochain are already open source. And the third thing was, standalone escrow platform. we decided that we should,

we should create a standalone platform for our tech That we use in HODL HODL and in other, our projects, which is basically, Bitcoin-based escrow solutions. they will be, a bit, bit different. From these that we use, in HoloHolo and in our prediction market, they will be way more flexible, easier to integrate, easier to use So hopefully we will bring some new people in, in, into Bitcoin economy and hopefully regular businesses will be able to use Bitcoin based escrow solutions from I think from the middle of summer, most probably, but the, the, the expectations that we most probably release this platform by the middle of summer.

Great, and let's talk a little bit about the experience with HodlHodl. So, I think most of my listeners, know the platform, but, just, for those who aren't familiar, or if you, you weren't following, Baltic Honey Badger, the conference, the, the platform on the website basically is using multi-signature escrow, and you can basically- Buy and sell Bitcoin in a non-custodial way. So that's a really cool feature of the platform, and I think I, I've noticed as well, just having a look on the website recently, it does look a little bit cleaner and easier as well, because it's one of those things where, let's say you were new to Bitcoin, it might be a bit, it might have been a bit more difficult for you to understand, oh, okay, so I sign up on this website, and then, okay, how does it work? Like, I have to actually deposit some Bitcoin into this But it's actually a multi-sig address, and then so on and so forth, and so the, the platform can sort of help walk you through that. So talk us through a little bit of what the platform shows the user when they wanna buy Bitcoin without using KYC, if they're doing this on hodl-hodl dot com.

So basically, if you wanna buy, you just go to hodl-hodl, you, if you're new to that, you can click sign up. It will take you basically less than one minute to sign up and We're good to go. Like you, you're free to trade because, again, as you mentioned, we don't require any verification in KYC. so basically what you need is only a valid email and a password. you then you click buy Bitcoin and you choose, the country where you wanna buy Bitcoin or the payment method that you're willing to use Some payment methods are tied to countries and, and, and that's it. And then you click, they will, like, the website will show you, offers that are available at the moment And, basically you click on the offer, create a contract, and you're good to go. The contract is happening like in very easy way. So you have a buyer, you have a seller, and, the seller deposits, bitcoins in, an escrow, multisig escrow, which is, like multisig address with three keys. One key goes to the buyer, one key goes to the seller, and one key goes to hollowholder. So if everything goes well, then we inform the buyer that, bitcoins are in escrow. buyer sends fiat, in any way that they, agreed upon. With, with the seller, like for example doing the banking transfer. when the seller receives the fiat, he released the bitcoins directly in the wallet of Of a buyer. So, we don't have any hot wallets. You don't deposit any Bitcoin with HoverHodl. basically you trade from your wallet to your wallet. So the only middle thing is between the, the buyers and sellers' wallets are as close which is also not owned by HodoHodo, we only have one key, and even with that one key, we can do, basically anything. We can transfer these coins to Any location that we want, because, the escrow solution works, in that way that you need at least two keys in order to move coins from the escrow. So that's how it works. I know that's-- it, it doesn't sound so easy I do understand that, but, like peer-to-peer markets and non-custodial peer-to-peer markets are actually a bit more harder to grasp. but we are trying to make the solution as easy as it possible. So like already now, when you go on Hodo Hodo, you won't see any difference between buying and selling like bitcoins on Hodo Hodo or, for example, local bitcoins, which is a custodial peer-to-peer solution. So That's our one of the, one of the goals of HodlHodl to make non-pistolio trading as easy as it can be.

From the user perspective, they would look at the different offers, and there would be a range of different offers, right? Because there's a bunch of different traders on there, and they would-- Some of them would be in person, some of those might be, you know, Revolut, some of them might be PayPal, and, you know, I've seen even some people on there using things like, here in Australia, we have, That person is offering for, so in this case, the person who is buying would basically give them like a, like an ATM code that that seller would go and use to actually take the cash out and then release the bitcoins to the individual who's buying. Yeah. There's some difference there.

Yeah, there's different payment methods. Again, as I mentioned, some regions like, they prefer, bank transfers, some region prefer payments, different types. types of payment, systems like Revolut, as you mentioned, or Transf-TransferWise, and there are like cash by mail, cardless cash, some-something like that. you- Your coins are, are protected, bitcoins are protected by the escrow solution, so we won't release them, before, like if you're a seller, we won't release them if you didn't, receive the fiat, and if you're a buyer and you didn't make, didn't make the payment, then we won't release it back to you to, to the seller. So there's like game theory in, in, in our escrow because you need a consensus to release coins. So if one party disagree, then And we start disputing and we start, analyzing what's the, what's the problem there. Also one interesting thing, and not many people know that even if you go on HoloHodl and you don't see a, an offer that suits you, like for example, you don't see, a price that you like, or you don't see a payment method that you like, or there's no your location, you can, for free, you can create an offer. It's also very simple, and we're going to present a new way of creating offer. Like in April, I think, which will be pretty simple. So it's free to create your own offer and publish it and wait for a counterparty to accept that. So not many people know that, but it's actually pretty, pretty free, obvious for us, but not obvious for people, but we are also working on that that we will, we want to,

stimulate people to create their own offers. Because like there's no, on hold of hold of, there's no difference between how much you pay, how much commission you will pay from the trade if you create it, an offer or if you just take an offer, there's no difference. The, the commission's split at fifty-fifty between market makers and market takers. So Create your own offer if you don't find one.

And also something that new users might not know is that the way you set it up is when you're setting up for that trade, there's a little, receive address box. So the idea is you would use your wallet and generate a receive address and then put that receive address into the hodl-hodl form. So that way when you complete the trade, that's, you know, the bitcoins will come to you in that address. Yeah,

directly, directly in your address, in your wallet. So again, we, we don't- Hold any funds. And, if you're a seller, you are sending directly from your wallet to the multisig address, and if you're a buyer, you will receive from when the trade complete, you will receive coins directly in your wallet that you control, and you have keys to that, so there's no counterparty risk in that case or no third party risk in that case. And actually, we, we've, we will talk about it later, but, we're about to introduce, extremely secure way of acquiring bitcoins on HodlHodl with the help of BlueHodl.

For sure, yeah, we'll get into that. One other topic I wanted to just touch on is around the price range. So the user is presented with a range of different prices, right? And they might, they might be familiar with like the traditional, custodial kind of big centralized exchange. so they might not be used to this idea. but basically there, there will be different offers and typically they'll be pr- priced at a certain premium or, or a, a discount to the actual exchange price. So it might be, whatever Bitfinex plus three percent or whatever. so if you could just explain a little bit around that price range and what, what some of the ranges are that you see?

Yeah, of course. now, to be honest, like, I'm, I'm analyzing the, and, and I'm trying- to, to, to research, to do my research on peer-to-peer markets. And actually, with Kado Kado is one of the few peer-to-peer exchanges, or trading platforms, as we say, that, you can pretty often you can get coins by the spot price. So basically, there will be no difference between the price on Bitfinex or Bitstamp or Kraken and the price on Kado Kado. so because some people just don't wanna go through the KYCAML and they're happy to sell their coins by the spot price. But usually the price range is, like I think in, in, in limits of, three to five percent. So why, why is this so? Because, you don't go through the com-complicated verification process, and the peer-to-peer traders, they, they, they think that trading on peer-to-peer markets is a bit more riskier. So basically, you are paying for-- it's, it's, the price is, risk-adjusted to be, to be say like that, so. is basically a price for risk or for not going through KYC/AML. But you also need to understand that we don't put these prices by themselves. HodlHodl is purely market-driven platform, so If the market decides that they're going to sell today, by the spot price, they will put the spot price. If they will decide where you need to pay extra at three percent premium above the spot price you will do that. So it's like some people tend to just sell coins and they're happy to sell it by the spot price, some people, making the business out of that, they're just buying cheap coins on centralized exchanges and then they're selling them Premium on Hodo Hodo or any other peer-to-peer platform that exists there. So yeah,

awesome. Yeah, I think, that's an interesting point, and it's also worthwhile pointing out that, look, every person has to assess their own risk and what they're looking at, but let's just put it this way, the value of getting non-KYC coins to the user might actually end up being a lot more than just paying three to five percent premium. It might actually be worth a lot more to them, so that's something worthwhile pointing out as well. Well, that if you think through the long term implications of holding Bitcoin.

Yeah, I, I don't, I don't, I don't insist on that, but, you have a point there, because like, yeah, KYC still is, oh, it's a bit tricky question. A-and again, as I mentioned, Hodl Hodl is purely market driven trading platform. We have some buyers and sellers that require KYC, and they do it, by themselves. But the majority of our traders don't require KYC and they, they're happy, being anonymous. So

yeah. Right. Yeah, yeah, that's true, and that is a fair point, point as well. There are some who require KYC. I suppose even in those cases, th-th-that's a little different, to, the sort of KYC regime, depending on where you go, right? If you're at a big exchange versus, like an individual trader who's on one of these platforms. but I'm I'm interested to change and now talk a little bit more about Local Trader. So as you mentioned, Blue Wallet, one of, one of the, they're like a well-known Bitcoin wallet for smartphone, and they've got this hookup with API through an API into HodlHodl. Can you tell us a little bit about how Local Trader came about?

Yeah, so, we've been like, since, again, since the day one, we've, we've thinking that, obviously you need to have a mobile application for your project or for your trading. Trading platform because like everyone is using mobile phones these days and it's so convenient, you can trade on the go, you can be updated on the go, you don't need to, to log in your computer, you're not attached to any place, you can do whatever you want. But, as a non-custodial platform, we understood that, As long as you don't deposit any coins with us, it's, pretty obvious that there's no reason for us to create a standalone mobile app because, like you won't be able to trade, effectively, and you won't be able to trade, like in a convenient way with that kind of app. because we either need to develop our own mobile wallet and then say, "Okay, guys, you deposit in our mobile wallet and then trade from our mobile wallet," using our mobile application, or we can just- go and build an API and become a liquidity providers and partners for many other types of wallets, like we're now in talks with different mobile wallets, hardware wallets, desktop wallets. They all want to have a feature That they people, their customers, trading from their interface, not logging in into Hodo Hodo, just like, you know, you open your wallet and you're free to go and trade non-KYC, non custodial way, easy, secure Secure and, and, and, and, brilliant and un-anonymous. So we came up with this idea that we need to release an API Not only of course for mobile wallet integration, but mostly because of that. And we, in January, we re-released an API we actually meet each other with the Blue Wallet team, last October in Berlin during the Lightning Conference, because mobile, because Blue Wallet is famous for also lighting being a lightning enabled, wallet, and we had also, some experience with lightning, although actually it was one of the few Exchanges that actually allow you to trade through, through lightning channels. And, so we met each other with the Blue Wallet team last October. we discussed some things and we decided, well, we should, we should build API and they should integrate our solution in their wallet, and it will be win-win. So we started working and We just like two weeks ago, I think we released the alpha version of, a project called Local Trader, which is basically,

opportunity to trade Through Blue Wallet using HodoHodo liquidity. And at the moment, it's, pretty like, like limited functionality. You can only log in and check out the, the offers that available on HodoHodo, but, I think in two, three weeks from now, you will be able or ready to trade through Blue, Blue Wallet. So, yeah, we came up with a, this idea that we should, you know Merge non-custodial wallet with non-custodial trading platform, and it should be funny and interesting and, and, and really, solid user experience

Can you tell us a little bit about what you're hoping it might look like then, for the user that like would-- Would this only be for in-person cash trades, or would it actually be they, they could still just do like a, a standard bank transfer, but they've just seen the hodl-hodl offer inside Blue Wallet? Do you know what I mean?

Yeah. So, so in the end, you will be able to, you will unlock your Blue Wallet. With the local trader or what it build in, in it, you can like, well, obviously you're downloading Bitcoin wallet because you have some Bitcoin, so you wanna purchase some Bitcoin. So, and then you will be able to sign up or log in if you have an existing account, Hodo Hodo, through Blue Wallet. you won't-- there's, there will be no reason for you to go on Hodo Hodo, so basically you, you can trade on the go through Blue Wallet's interface. You will be able to publish offers on Hodo Hodo through Blue Wallet. You will be able to buy bitcoins through BlueWallet. So, BlueWallet will became not only a wallet, but also, I don't know, trading device, like peer-to-peer trading device. And future trading app as well. So, like, we, we want to have, for people to have a proper, easy experience With trading coins and still having them, in, in your own wallet. So you will be able to send directly from Blue Wallet. if you wanna sell to Hodo Hodo Escrow, and if you wanna buy, tho- these coins that you will buy through Blue Wallet, most probably will go to Blue Wallet address in your wallet that, that is basically owned by you. So yeah, we want to do this. And, there's one interesting trick w-which I, I wanted to tell you specifically, I prepared this for your podcast. like,

awesome.

Yeah, we want to have a-- we, we, we've been thinking how to connect all this trading experience with cold storages, like hardware wallets. And, We've been speaking with the Blue Wallet team, and they recently integrated with Coldcard. As you know, Coldcard is one of the top safest and securest solution to store your bitcoins, because it's, basically hardware wallet. And, So they recently, like two weeks ago, three weeks ago, they introduced the integration with, BlueWallet can be integrated with Coldcard wallet and BlueWallet can became watch-only wallet, which means that you can synchronize your cold card with BlueWallet. You can, send addresses like, for example, Stephan, you, you want to send me, some coins, I can generate the, the address on the BlueWallet, I can send you, this address. on Telegram or WhatsApp or whatever, you will send this, you will send some coins to this address and I will receive them directly to Coldcard So they, they will not be stored on my blue wallet, they will be stored on my cold card. And in that case, like, blue wallet becomes watch-only wallet. So what we came up with idea, now you will be able to buy coins on HODL HODL through blue wallet, blue wallet, and they will go directly to your cold card. Which means, like There's no, like, it's, it's a perfect solution because you can trade on the go using BlueWallet and you won't be-- and there's no need to compromise your security because if you want to store your coins in a cold storage, feel free to connect your ColdCard And buy bitcoins on Hodl Hodl to blue wallet directly to your cold

card. Yeah, that's very powerful because a user might want to buy a decent amount of coins that they're not necessarily comfortable to walk around with on the street. And let's say they wanted to buy a couple thousand dollars worth of Bitcoin and they didn't wanna walk around on the streets with that much, then this is actually a good, I can think of that would be a good example there, because if they've set up their cold card, then they can receive it directly there.

Yeah. In that case, Hubble Hubble becomes liquidity provider, Blue Wallet becomes a trading engine or a trading platform, and Cold Card, Cold Card obviously becomes your cold storage. So you go to Blue Wallet, you buy some coins, and these coins go directly to your Cold Card, and you're happy, and you're safe and secure, and everyone is, everyone is happy, everything is good. Your cold, your, your Coins are in cold storage. So yeah, the, the, the idea is like that, and I think it should be very interesting for people to use that type of thing. So I know that Blue Wallet team are, releasing, they already actually released this integration with Coldcard. They're going to update and make it way more easier to people, to, to connect their Blue Wallets with, with, Coldcards and like in two Three weeks from now, you will be able, yeah, to buy, coins on HodlHodl and deposit them directly in your cold storage.

Yeah, that's very exciting. un-unfortunately for the US listeners though, they're, they're not, able to access HodlHodl, but I think that's basically everyone else, everyone else in the world can, oh, I think it's pretty much every other country, right?

Yeah, it's pretty much every other country. And as for US, customers, we From US based people and they've been constantly asking when Paddle Paddle is going to be allowed for US, customers. Trust me, we're working on that and hopefully we will be able to To provide some interesting solutions also for US based, customers and for US bitcoiners in during twenty twenty. So hopefully we will be able to be back in, in, in US, where, where we're working on that, guys.

Awesome. And, just for any listeners who are concerned about scammers and, you know, if something goes wrong during the process, because That, they've, you know, obviously there are stories of this, you know, sometimes cash deals and so on, or these platforms can have that. So can you, help outline what happens if somebody is trying to scam you, and then how the system works to protect you?

Well, I, I will start with, some preventive measures. Like, first of all- you need to understand the potential threats of any payment method that you use. So if you want to do a cash trade, like person in person, you need to understand the risks. or if you wanna do, like for example, PayPal is, is pretty often used by the scammers because they're, they're, it's easy to, to get, to, to get money back if you made a payment. So you need to understand the implications of each and the risk of each payment method. We have, by the way, a pretty interesting explanation about risk types of, of, of payment platforms. So that's the first thing. The other thing we have limits on first trades, so you won't be able to acquire more than you are allowed, or, your counterparty won't be able to trade more than they're allowed, so they need to have a proper reputation, and that's, that's the third point. Always check out the rating and reputation of your contact point. It's way more secure sometimes to pay a bit more and to have a like Like not, not that good price of, of coins, but to do it with a proper and experienced trader rather than accept an offer from a guy guy who's new to the platform and who, who is like offering you bitcoins for a discount, most probably that guy, will be either crazy or, or, potential scammer So you need to, we have a pretty solid system of rating and reputation and feedback and all of that. So when you choose an offer, which, which, which offer, to accept, I would suggest you look for the offers with, From a trader's that they have a proper experience, at least for your first trade or first few trades, like pay a bit more but be, be more secure in that case. Now, for, for scamming? Issues. We have a pretty strong dispute system that allows us actually to resolve disputes. So in case you're, for example, you're a buyer And in case, you, you are paying for Bitcoin. So first of all, you need to always remember that you shouldn't make a payment before Coins are, are deposited in escrow, and we're warning about that during the trading process. We, we always, we have this big red banner, on the contract page which says, "Do not send the money before we don't tell you that it's- It's okay to send money, so don't be in a rush, you know? so first of all, always wait for a needed amount of confirmations for your trade. So if you, if you see that the, the contract is in progress and we inform you that all good, you can do the payment, only then you do the payment. And in this case, if you made a payment and everything's good, but the seller refuses to release coins, you can always start a dispute. You can always provide a proof that you made a payment, and if the proof will be solid, and if the seller is actually a scammer, we will help you to release coins in your favor. Now, if you're a seller And you didn't receive the payment, same way, you need to like, there will be dispute, we have a system of dispute resolution, we will request some proofs. if you're able to present these proofs and if everything is fine, you will release points back to your wallet. So we have a pretty interesting and, and pretty safe system to resolve this dispute. So There's still a possibility of being scammed, but, like to be honest, the percent of disputes on HoloHolo is like, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero point one percent because people are-- they do understand that it's a trust-based system and they do understand that it's a secure escrow system. And there's not so much space to, to, to create a proper scamming techniques on hold wallet.

Yeah, I think it's just, useful to clarify what the process is, what it looks like, and so on, as that is obviously, this is a, a space rife with scams, so people have to be always be wary. but, yeah, you've got a few things there, like the reputation system and, and the dis- dispute system and so on.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, of course it's a, it's a Because you trade with the peer, you don't need to pass the verification. it's way more secure to trade through non-pseudor solutions, but again, there's a risk of, of that, your counterpart is somehow I don't know, a person who's willing to scam you, something like that. But like we've been in business for two years now, and, we've developed a pretty solid system of preventing these scams.

And also just so listeners are aware, the fee per trade, as in the fee to hodl-hodl, is, zero point six percent. I think that's the max fee. I think you can get lower if, if you have referral links and so on.

Yeah, with the, with the referral links, you will get lower zero point five five. the fee is actually divided in two parts, so your fee particular will be half of, of this, total fee. So If you are speaking about 0.6, then you will pay only 0.3. So your fee is basically 0.3% for, for each trade.

Oh, that's, I didn't know, I didn't realize that. Yeah, that's also another ver- that makes it quite attractive then.

It's not like each party paying 0.6%, it's like this, this is a total fee which is divided between Two parties, like one party is paying zero point three and another party paying zero point three. It's, it's actually pretty funny, but it's close to centralized mar- like centralized exchange, like I know that on a Kraken you pay zero point twenty-five percent. so it's, it's almost the same price you can obtain, coins on HodoHodo as, you can obtain Hodo's, coins on, on, on Kraken. So

So what about the escrow platform? Tell us a little bit about that. well, yeah, first of all, what is it?

Yeah, so, we use, we've developed this non-custodial, escrow system that we- We've been using for more than two years in HodoHodo, and we also, like last year, we released the prediction markets, which is a bit more complicated as well. escrow solution. So we thought like, well, obviously we aren't able to showcase to the world all use cases of, Bitcoin escrow. because there, there could be like potentially could be like hundreds and thousands of different use cases how you can use a Bitcoin as protocol. And, we came up with the idea that we want to became an infrastructural providers for that type of solutions. For example one of my favorite examples is like, there, there are a lot of websites and platforms for freelancers, like for example, I don't know, you Stephan, are in Australia? I'm in Latvia, I want you to write an article for me. I don't know, or make a podcast, whatever. And, I don't know you, I don't trust you, and you don't know me, and you don't trust me. You seems to be legit for me, and I seems to be legit It for you, but, you know, there's always a trick because I need to pay you somehow, but I, I also need to be sure that you won't, try to scam me and you will do your part of the job. And you need to be sure that I will pay you and I have funds to pay you. So in that case, Bitcoin escrow is pretty nice alternative, because we can create a contract with all terms written in. And, I can deposit the bitcoins. You will see that these coins are deposited in escrow. I have funds to cover your job, and you will do the job. He will send me the result and I will release points in your favor, and we will do this, pretty easy with no middleman, with no banks involved, with no high fees involved, and all that mumbo jumbo that is usually involved with banking institutions and all that stuff. So,

like freelance markets can use that, I don't know, you wanna sell real estate to foreigner? And he's willing to pay you with Bitcoin, whatever, use an escrow solution in Bitcoin. And we just, we thought that there's like multiple different use cases that, in the world that exist that people can use this, multi-signature escrow, not only for trading bitcoins to fiat and vice versa. And we decided that we can take our experience develop more flexible, easier to integrate and easier to use solution and allow any platform in the world, any business in the world to use that and to start accepting bitcoins. So that's, that's the whole idea.

Is there an arbitrator there or is some kind of moderator between them?

yeah, of course. You can, you can, with our, with our solution, you will be able to create, an escrow services with, Arbitrators or without, it's up to you to decide of course. And, you can become an arbitrator, like example, if you're a platform that's selling real estate, well, obviously you will be, you, you can become a dispute resolution entity or, you can have, a more flexible escrow solution like we will be able to, we're developing the solution that will allow you to have, for example, five out of ten signatures. Like if it's more complicated process, then you will, the coins will be released, there will be ten keys distributed b-between ten different parties and five keys out of the ten will be able to release this coin. So, you can, you can say, like, you can, you can put any arbitrator that you want. Like, in case of real estate, you can put a lawyer as an arbitrator, he will hold one key, your platform will hold another, and buyer and seller will, will hold, two, two other keys. So, like It will be pretty flexible, but it's up to each, each business to decide who will be the arbitrator. We want, we don't want to provide an arbitrator services, because it's, it's, it's obviously not our responsibility. We just want to write code and provide a proper infrastructure for, for Bitcoin escrow tech.

That's cool. So people can even, I could imagine sometimes you see, on Bitcoin Twitter, you see people who wanna make a bet and, they could even put up, you know, put up that into escrow and have a trusted, you know, community member or someone with a reputation at stake, and they can be the arbitrator then, right? Yeah,

you can do that. you can also- Also put a bet on our prediction platform that's already there, but anyway, we're about to redesign this as well, it will be way more simple to use it. but yeah, you can, yeah, you can create bets if you wanted, like, I don't know, maybe some, some Roger Ver is betting against, Albin Ekdal. which chain will survive? Which, which is basically obvious which chain will survive now, I think. But anyway, and, and you are Stephan as, arbitrator for this. And, yeah, you can pick You can go to this smart, smart platform. The, the, the interesting thing will be that on this platform you will be able to create a contest that you like, but you will, will be also able to take the, this escrow tech that we're building through API that we're building for this platform, and you can put this escrow services in your website or in your business. So it's up to you to decide whether you want to use our platform or you want to- Just take the services and use them in your platform. So it's like, will be like very, very flexible, very easy to use and a, a cheap solution that we want to build

And in terms of the escrow platform, maybe this is a silly question, but is the only asset that you can use, that you can put up, is it only, is it Bitcoin or can people put up other things as well?

we want to build it first for Bitcoin definitely, for Bitcoin at the moment, but we're also, like two, two weeks ago, we, Bloxim announced that we are now members of Liquid Federation, and we're also looking at, building the escrow, escrow tech for, for Liquid. so we want to, honestly, we want to build tech only for Bitcoin and Bitcoin based solutions, like Liquid or Lightning. Or any other side chain that will, that will appear in the future, and we will, we will think that it's, it's a good, it's a good solution and doesn't compromise the values of Bitcoin, then why not? At the moment will be only Bitcoin, but, we are already in talks with, with, with Liquid guys that we will most probably build also escrow solution for Liquid.

Yeah, I meant, I didn't mean like other crypto things, I meant like even if it was just other things, but yeah.

Definitely not other crypto. We are like maximalist in that case, but, Scaling solutions like Lightning, Liquid, why not? These are like proper solutions. We've been working with Lightning already. we're going to work-- start working soon with Liquid. And, why not? They, this, these teams, these solutions, they don't compromise the values of Bitcoin. They actually help, them becoming more and more strong and, and, We like these teams and of course we want to help to expand these solutions, because these solutions expand Bitcoin as itself, so helps to, to create a mass adoption. So why not? But no, yeah, we, we don't, we don't develop smart contracts for Ethereum or, or... Some other

of course, of course. so look, just in terms of your outlook, on the market in general, like, are you seeing- like, has coronavirus and so on, all these lockdowns and things, has that impacted your platform in terms of how many people are doing trades? I presume, you know, people can't do in-person cash trades, right?

Yeah, but, to be honest, in-person cash trades wasn't so popular in October, huh? actually, the funny thing when you've, increased our volumes, well, actually, we are, we are growing, at the rate of twenty, thirty percent per month. since the inception of HoloHolo. So each, each month we do twenty percent more trades, both in trade amount and in volumes than the previous month. So we also onboarded a pretty solid amount of people already, more than twenty-five thousand customers globally. and, yeah, like in March we see that, amount of trades And amount of, of the volumes they actually increased, by thirty, thirty-five percent, which was a pretty solid increase, in general. So yeah, people started buying Bitcoin actually, more and more since the, the money printing machine went, went, so.

yeah, I, I think my outlook is that, I don't see that, honestly, I don't believe that, that we will see like Bitcoin price skyrocketing right away, because You need to understand the implication of this crisis. It's, it's more physical rather than economical. Of course, we do understand the economical implications of it somehow, but if there wouldn't be corona, then most probably we would go on and, Now we see that, people are afraid, and, I don't think that in times when people are afraid about their health and families and- about their jobs and how they will survive in the future, whether they will have water and food, like in a week time. I don't think they're thinking about, "Well, I need to put some money in Bitcoin or in gold." Most probably people aren't thinking in that type of, of paradigm. They, they are thinking about, "I just need to have money for food, for, I don't know, for something that is essential for my living." So of course that they inflated now, this, with this fiat printing, the economy, this will have a long term implication, and I think the long term outlook for Bitcoin is, become more bullish for me personally, quite I, I, I become more bullish on Bitcoin that in long term we will see like a pretty solid price increase for Bitcoin, but I, I, I, I doubt, I doubt that in upcoming two to three months we will see any big increases in prices because people aren't great, you know?

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. It also is worth bearing in mind that the, this is about having a money that's permissionless and that There might be opportunities coming out of this as well, right? So obviously it's, it's a bad thing, all this stuff is going on, but maybe there'll be some more people who see a way to actually set up shop and start earning Bitcoin online, and then those people will need some fiat to live, and then they'll go on your platform to sell some Bitcoin because they need to pay expenses or whatever. So I think there's this whole permissionless angle and permissionless- Yeah, but basically this whole permissionless angle that Bitcoin can continue building even in a down market.

Yeah, it's, it's pretty like, it's pretty simple logic, you know? But each day we see that there's more and more people that are actually upset with the fiat money. They, they-- there's more and more people that understand that there's no value in that. and there's more and more people day by day that they're, they do understand the, the, the value in Bitcoin. So definitely we, we will, we will see a long term bullish scenario for Bitcoin, but again I've been just like recently, like a week ago, I've been on one Russian-speaking podcast and they were asking, "Well, we will see the Doomsday Moon in the upcoming months," and I'm telling them, "Guys, no, no, no, no, no, no." No, no, not now. maybe in one year, maybe a bit more, but not now. I, I, it's, it's again, it's my perception. it's never a bad time to buy Bitcoin, but, you know, when it's, when it, when you decide whether you will buy food or you will invest in Bitcoin, I think the answer is obvious, unfortunately or fortunately.

with, Baltic Honey Badger, I thought it might be good to just give the listeners an update there. Baltic Honey Badger twenty twenty, obviously, it's kind of everything's sort of up in the air, right? Can you just give us, wh-what's the latest on that?

Well, we, we actually like already in January, we already contacted the first, batch of speakers. We, we already had a list and we already have the confirmation. From them, and we wanted to, to, launch the website in the beginning of March, but unfortunately everything like happened with this Corona stuff. So, I think we will, we will still look at, the dynamics and what's happening around in April and make some announcements in May. And that's, that's, I think that's, the The real situation out there, because, like in Latvia, there's pretty, well, pretty nice situation with Corona, because We've reacted pretty fast. The country is not so populated. the country is actually been named an introvert, introvert nation of Europe because, like, as I, as I mentioned to you, I've been speaking with Jakoma recently, Jakomozuko, and, I've told him, well, Jakoma, we've been social distancing for a whole long while because, you know, in Latvia, there's not so many people and they don't like to gather around, so, It's, it's, it's not social

distancing before it was cool.

Yeah, yeah, true, true. It's, it's, it's like one of the, mentality issues in here. and,

yeah, we, we don't have, such a bad situation in here. like for example, today I just checked out the news, we only have two people per last 24 hours tested positive on corona, and, and, they've tested like more than thousand people for like in, in last 24 hours. So That the amount of people that get sick with corona is actually decreasing. But, what we are afraid of, that ninety-nine percent of attendees for BALTIC Fin Week was, flying from abroad. Like most of them from Europe, but we also had people from US, we also have a lot of people from Australia, from Canada, from Latin America, Japan, whatever. All basically like all big countries were attending. And, unfortunately, I'm not sure whether, you will be able to fly out from your country or Latvia will be able to let you in from your country, because as I see this stuff developing, then maybe there will be, the, the, the local lockdowns will be over, but I don't see that people will, that countries will start like, allow to, to pass the borders right away. Most probably there will be like local freedom, you are free to move inside the country And, they, they will start lifting the, the travel bans step by step, and I'm not sure it will be that fast. So, and also I, I'm not sure that, air, airfare tickets will be cheap. Because I think that, for some time, airline ticket will become a luxury good, definitely, because, you know, there will be huge demand, right away.

Yeah, so the trend now is basically a lot of online events, so we'll see, we'll see how, we'll see how things go. I'm hopeful that, we can still meet up.

Yeah, I, I, I honestly am not a fan of online stuff because, you know, you've been on Balticcoin Beijing, you know the vibe, you know the atmosphere there, you know how people gather around, how funny it is, and you just like I know there's been happening some virtual reality conferences recently, and that's a good idea, and I fully support that, but I don't see Baltic Honeybeard happening online, honestly. It's like

we've actually one of the idea was, is to create once per year offline gathering for the people that follow each other on Twitter and communicate with each other only through the Twitter. And like now we're, we're like moving back to online space. I would rather skip one year and, and then create a massive event, twenty twenty-one, than, create something online. But who knows, maybe in one month I will change my mind.

Just turning More to just Bitcoin and Lightning, just technology more generally. Is there anything that you're looking forward to over the coming year, or are you just kind of more focused on just building the technology stack at HodlHodl?

we're definitely going to, we have, I didn't mention to you this, but a part of, escrow platform, we also have one secret project that we, that, that we hope to release in June. I won't say what's the project, but, hopefully this will be something big and something interesting, and something unique as we see now. but what, I'm pretty excited about Schnorr signatures, obviously because this will affect our business as well. And, I- honestly, we want develop-- to develop more non-prestorio escrow solutions, and we want more businesses to start accepting that, and we want more people to use that and to understand the value proposition of, multi-signature technology. Because it's pretty simple, it's, it's been there like since the beginning, it's pretty secure, and like we need to develop this stuff to eliminate the risk of third party. I think that's, that's, that's the thing that I'm looking, but I'm also looking as at Lightning. And in particular, we want, to see a non-pedestal lightning solutions, specifically because, we've removed lightning from Hodo Hodo as part of our new redesign pro-process, but also because lightning was and actually it is for a moment custodial solution, so you need to hold your own, channel or node in order to accept and send. We, we, we, we are trying to Understand how we can build an uncustodial lightning based solution. So, and also I'm, I'm, I'm looking forward with working with Liquid. liquid is, by the way, non-pedodial. And, yeah, hopefully we, we will see more and more people, use Not only Bitcoin, but also Lightning and Liquid. So, yeah, these are, these are my expectations.

It's, mostly, you know, focused on what's going on with Bitcoin and Lightning. So, yeah, look, I guess we'll, we'll call that an episode then. Max, where can the listeners find you and find HodlHodl?

Well, with HodlHodl is, pretty easy, HodlHodl dot com. you can go there, and in Twitter it's just auto-hodl. so these are, things that, that you, you, you can go and check it out. I'm, I'm Actually on Twitter, it's Keidun M, my handle is Keidun M, and, that's basically it. These are mostly, w-we spent like ninety, ninety-five percent of our time on Twitter. and if you wanna learn about crypto, definitely go there. And definitely listen for Stephan Livera's podcast, of course. Yeah. So these, these are the, and, and, and Telegram, we also have a group in Telegram, which is also called "Hodl". So you can go to Telegram, you can ask the questions, we, we are like, we have an amazing support team. So they're working weekdays, weekends, twenty-four seven, during the night, day, whatever. So if you have any problems with, with, grasping and understanding how to hodl, we know that it's still a bit complicated for noobs and for, for people that aren't familiar with Bitcoin, but we're here to help. So join our Telegram And go check it out holoholo dot com. Go check it out BlueWalletLocalTrader, you'll be pretty surprised, I think in, in few weeks from now, you'll be pretty surprised how easy and how, how effectively and how good it is to Trade peer to peer, and not to pass your verification data to any third party. So, enjoy.

Fantastic, thank you for joining me.

Thank you very much, Stefan. Thank you.

Hope you enjoyed the interview. I was chatting with Max afterwards, and we set up a ref code for you guys, so if you want to use the code LeVera when you sign up, you'll get a discount on your trading fees. So, check that out. And show notes and transcript at stefanlevera dot com slash one six six. That's it from me, and I'll see