Building Bitcoin services to last,

Welcome to the Stefan Livera podcast.

Welcome, listeners, to the Stefan Livera podcast, and my guest today is Jeremy. Thanks very much for joining, Jeremy.

You're very welcome. Great to be here.

Thanks for coming on. So guys, just for the listeners, Jeremy is the founder of Casa, and they are this really fascinating new company dealing with how to basically help you store your bitcoins, and now they're coming out with more services on top of that, and I thought it would be fantastic to get Jeremy on, to talk a little bit about his company and a little bit about, you know, designing products in this space. So Jeremy, maybe let's start with, w-what is- What's the ethos and what is the company mission of Casa?

Sure. So our company mission is to maximize personal sovereignty and safety. And there's a lot, there's a lot to unpack in that statement. we-- the sovereignty question, a lot of people that have read Sovereign Individual or, or other books, I mean, there, there's a lot of ideas around that, but I think that, that for most people, everyone understands personal safety. We're, we're entering a world that's a lot more complicated, politically, we're entering a world that's a lot more complicated economically, geographically, and I, I, you know, even with weather events, right? And so this question of personal safety, and getting back into personal wealth is really important, and we ourselves and as a company, we, we didn't really find anything that put the person at the center of, of their mission, and everything we were seeing in the space, even in the, just the kind of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency ecosystems, a lot of the companies weren't being built in a way that was focused on the individual and focused on giving kind of individual freedom and individual power and responsibility as well that comes with that. So we centered this mission on maximizing personal sovereignty and safety of the company and every service. Every product that we provide, you know, fits within that ethos and that mission.

Yeah, that's a great way to, I think align with very much the Bitcoin ethos and ethic of trying to make sure that you're- Ensuring that you, you can look after yourself, right? And, I think that also aligns very well with some of the, the way that your products are set up as well. So let's talk a little bit about your main product, which is the Casa Premium. From what I understand, it's very, you know, hodl-based. It's very based on how to make sure you can safely and securely store your bitcoins, and that's a little contrasted with, say, spending bitcoins. Is there a reason The reason it's been set up this way?

It's a great point, that was by design. We didn't notice or we didn't find many other companies out at the time that were focused on longer term planning, longer term, you know, hodling and saving. A lot of, again, a lot of companies out in, in the space and a lot of the products out in the space were focused on trading, on fast growth, and a lot of these things don't last. And as we looked at, you know, as you, as you mentioned the, the kind of the core tenants of a lot of this space, it just didn't line up, and so we are, we are very, very tightly focused on, the individual user, on their long-term planning, their long-term control, and the first product that we launched was this premium multisig service. you know, it's, it's a three of five multi-sig, we hold one key in reserve that we can help in emergency situations and inheritance planning, and it is designed as the ultimate setup for an individual or a small team to manage their funds themselves, have full control, but also be able to handle disaster situations, emergency situations, even theft situations, in a better way

Right, and I think the other thing is it's, it's, it's sort of targeted more towards a certain type of customer. Now, obviously, different demographics, it may, you know, not to fully denigrate spending at all, it's just that there are different uses of Bitcoin that make sense for people in, you know, different countries, different scenarios. And I think, from what I understand of the product, it's that essentially if you're kind of living in the first world You're not necessarily going to be spending day to day, but you're, but you might be earning and trying to store your Bitcoin safely.

Yes, yes, that's correct. I, I, you know, I studied political philosophy in, in school and am still a student of, of political philosophy and I, I think a lot about, and another thing I'm, I'm really fascinated with is, a very broad category, but cybernetics and thinking about, closed loop systems. and systems theory and the way-- I, I do think that there's something to the theory that the fiat economies that we found ourselves in are providing these incentives where, you know, you're, you're ultimately optimizing for what you're measuring for, and if you're measuring for GDP and you need to, you-- denominate every process within your system in some fiat currency, you know, you're, you're not worried about inflating and, and printing more of that currency, you're just worried about- About denominating more of that and capturing it in, in that value or in the series of values. And there's something that comes out of that where, you know, a, a, a company that makes a product that lasts forever is going to die in that type of economy. my dad actually tells a, tells a joke, or, or talks about and, a product that he once bought for one of his dogs. It was a, just a chew toy, and the chew toy was indestructible. And my dad joked that he, you know, he went to go buy another one because the, the product being indestructible, it just got, it got really nasty, dog saliva all over it, and the, the dog had it for years, still his favorite toy four or five years later, and he found that the company went out of business. The problem with our current economy is that the only way you stay in business is if you're, you're, you know, constantly charging, constantly nickel and diming someone, and you have to have this repeat cycle. And if you build the best product in the world, and it's something that someone can use for their entire lifetime, your business won't-- if you're not charging enough you'll probably go out of business. So you're either in this tier where you're charging, you know, a million dollars and it's, and it's, in fiat currency, or if you're trying to make Nikes, like you make them so that they break and that, you know, you have to buy a new pair once a year because that's the way you stay in business in this type of economy. So there's, there is something to the underlying mechanics of a fiat system, that I think factors into this, this overall picture, and I do We are building, you know, we, we built this initial product for a more premium set, but we wanna bring these methods of control to a much more mass market audience. We just launched a security checklist tool, you can go to keys dot casa and, and use it, but it's, it's-- we're just starting to bring these kind of broader questions to people, and the, the people in the premium subset, they're already, they're already asking these questions, they're already at this place to where they know they need, better products to, to store currency long term and, and, and start planning more long term, and they're already thinking in these ways, but we wanna help more people think in these ways. We want mass market, you know And long-term planning, to come out of this and come out of broader Bitcoin adoption and broader ability to save.

Yeah, I like the way you framed that around how the setup of the system, fiat money, has kind of created this scenario of some companies doing what's colloquially called planned obsolescence, and you're contrasting that with this concept of building something to last. And so I think that's a nice way to explain it. Now, in order to- To do this, you know, a company needs really strong talent, and your company is known for having secured some very well known tal-talent within Bitcoin, with people such as Jameson Lopp and recently with, Elena Vernova. Let's talk a little bit about attracting top talent within Bitcoin. You know, what helped you draw them in? Was it the money? Was it the overarching mission of the company? Or was it something else?

Definitely not the money. I mean, I think that the funny thing about this space, you know, not just our company, but this space in general is that most of the best people in the space, at some point or another, you know, they may not have made a lifetime fortune, but they made something. And so, very few people in this space, and it's, it's, it's one of the, both the kind of, it's, it's a double-edged sword. So it's a very good thing, but in some cases, for

It's, it's almost never about the money. It has to be about a core reason or a core product that's something that is providing very strong value. with both Jameson and Elena specifically, and we have even beyond Jameson and Elena, I mean, we have Carolyn Reckow who worked very closely with Joe Lubin early on at Consensus and scaled a massive organization. we have Scott Hurr, who's one of the best designers in the world. we have o- other engineers that we can't even talk about publicly, from the security Every side that have joined from other major companies that they just have, have chosen and have asked us not to publicly disclose them, just because they don't want any attention. but I'm, I'm, I'm continually amazed at the depth of the talent amongst the team. we do definitely have a, a, a few people that, that get a lot of the attention, but the entire team, it's an honor to, to work with everyone here. And the, the story in terms of attracting and building that team really comes down to that core mission. When we think about the core what we're building specifically, everyone on the team recognizes and sees the need for better key management. Everyone understands that this entire ecosystem isn't going to improve, we aren't going to get more people into this, we may in fact lose a lot of people and lose, you know, things could fall apart, in this ecosystem if we don't solve these problems. So it's, it's, you know, I, I, I was fortunate to stumble into a few of these, I, I would say principles or mission or thinking maybe, and, and we kind of, we, we pulled the team together that, that believed in it, and then when we approached Jameson and Ashori and when we, we happened to, it was just, just- almost pure luck with Elena, I was on a panel with her and we had a coffee afterwards and just had a phenomenal discussion and we literally kind of point for point were finishing each other's sentences. It was a, it was a true shock 'cause I, I went in, I've used Trezors for a long time and, you know, phenomenal company, they've, they've built great products. and it was a, it was a very kind of surreal experience to sit across from her and hear her background and her story, and from a world away, coming to a lot of the same conclusions that we were coming to as a company, and then we've, you know, we've been working closely ever since. So I, I think that you're just circling all of that up in a single answer, it's not about me, it's not about any one thing that our team is doing, it is about this core mission that, it's not even, you know, that And, you know, we expect there's no amount of money that we could pay that would compensate for this kind of core culture and core destination of where we're headed to and that's, i-i-i-and the ability or the, the kind of privilege of working with these people today, collaborating with these people today, it's just that at a core is what's attracting more and more people to, to the company.

Fantastic, yeah, I like that answer. It's very, it's very true, it rings very true in terms of what I've noticed in the space that there are some people who, you know, now it's not so much about the money, it's really about the mission. So, okay, how about funding? Is Casa a VC or angel funded or is it bootstrapping from your own capital?

We are VC backed. we have made the choice in a few different cases not to take money where we could have, including down the ICO path. We could have gone down that path. We very, very, we had, we had several different discussions internally and, very quickly made the decision to stay far away from, from any ICOs. And I do think that, you know, in terms of what we understood ICOs to be, that a lot of, you know, ninety-nine percent plus Maybe will, will just collapse, I do think that a few will survive and there'll be a few interesting projects that come out of it. we are close to the Blockstack team, they built a decentralized DNS product, and there are a few teams that have done it right. They were one of them. I mean, they had a, they had a decentralized DNS product that was live and, and one of, was one of the biggest apps on Bitcoin for years. And not many people knew about it. They, you know, they raised some capital in a, in a token sale and, and I, and I think that that's a little, a little bit closer to what should happen compared to some of these that are just effectively research projects, R&D, no backing, nothing real, and then, you know, raising on a dream and it's gonna, it's gonna blow up. but we did, we did raise some venture funding. we have, we're distributed, we're a distributed team, and so that also has enabled us to not need to raise much venture funding, but we have some great investors, so we have, they're all, they're all big, Bitcoin first, they understand the space, they're very supportive of exactly what we're doing, but we have, Lair Hippo, and we have, Compound. We have, Boosty C and, Precursor, actually Charles Hudson was one of our earliest, earliest backers on the institutional side, and we have a great group of angel investors as well. So Melton de Mieres, is an angel investor, we have, A few other, we have a, a, a, a, a, a buddy of mine who is a director of engineering at Uber for, for quite a while. we have a lot of, great angels, great strategic investors, and, we're, we're excited, like the, the group, the way I think about fundraising, we don't, you know, our burn rate isn't high, we're not in a position to where we, we really needed the money, but Really raising capital, a lot of people think of it, oh, like, you know, you have to raise, you have to just pay salaries, and you have-- and, and, and but then you create mixed incentives. But what a lot of people don't see is that it really is about aligning incentives, and it's about-- it's a, it's a mechanism to align incentives in a way that if you, if you agree very closely with a group of people, then you can all kind of pool your capital together and create this system that, that pulls you even closer together. So for us, it really is about that alignment, and, you know, we, we have revenue, we have, we're in a great, you know, a strong position on both sides of the business, both the key management side of the business and the, node side of the business now. The sales on the Casa node definitely surpassed what we expected, But along with that, we have, again, made the decision at several points to, to fundraise and to take in investors just because, again, we wanted to be very closely aligned to these people. They've, they've been a tremendous help to us and, and we think that the entire mission, the entire, organization and all the products are become better because of all of these people, the influence of all of these people.

Yeah, it's good to see that because I think some people in the Bitcoin space and in the Bitcoin ecosystem, they have a concern sometimes when, where companies are VC backed, that they may direct the company in a certain direction. However, it sounds like from what you're saying really, that there is an alignment in terms of what the, between yourself and what the, VCs and angels have, have as an underlying aim of the company. so that's good to see. I think the other thing that people, you know, listeners would be interested to talk The customer demographics of your business. So I understand you're, you're following a bit of a, what's colloquially known as a Tesla model, where basically you start by, you know, making a product that's really available more for the upper kind of end of town, and then over time you, you try to kind of mainstream that. Do you wanna talk a little bit about that model?

Yeah, sure. So, so it's interesting, you know, we looked at, we evaluated every area of the market. So we evaluated the mass market, we evaluated, You know, even like the kind of non-hardcore Bitcoiner side of the market, and the conclusion that we came to out of, out of analyzing the different areas is knowing that the greatest need at the time was amongst The, this wealthiest subsection of, you know, what you may call the kind of crypto rich, the people, it's not, it's not the same kind of glitz and glamour Wealthy elite that you would, you would normally think about, you know, some of these people as we've, as we've worked with more and more clients, I mean, they come from all backgrounds A lot of them are, you would never know it, you would never know that they were millionaires and, and, you know, had stowed away. And it's, and that's, that's kind of how it should be, but I think that there is this kind of misconception that, oh, it's like Casa's only for the rich and, and it's, it's a very, it's, i-i-if you, i-i-think, i-i'll just put it this way, I think that, that some of those people would gladly trade, although, like,

Come in with that group is very different from the, the broader mass market, and there is a concern even if you're holding ten thousand dollars worth or fifty thousand dollars worth of funds, but it's just something much different, and there have been friends that have held friends at gunpoint, right? Like we've seen these cases. It's just a very scary world at that level, and so we made the decision to go to that level first, start solving problems there, with the knowledge that we would be able to develop a product very quickly and develop new insights very quickly that we could then start sharing with the, the broader market. we do think also that one of the ways to solve key management, I mean, it, it's not just about great engineering, it's not just about design, it has to take all- Three of design, you know, engineering and excellent customer support. And so building up even that excellent culture of customer care, client service that we can then extend in a kind of product fashion to a more mass market audience, was really important. And it's really important that we kind of tier it up in the right way for this long term view. Again, if we're, if we're talking about fiat economies and we're talking about fiat worldviews and, and thinking in, you know, one to five year terms, I mean, we talk internally at Casa- Casa about, Casa Space Fleet and about this really long-term view of the world and how we need to slowly tier this company up to be a world-class long-term hundred-year-plus company. And if that's gonna be the case, then we, we, we need to, to do it very carefully, and it starts with this premium subset. We start bringing them in, we start working closely with them, we learn as much as we can, we start broadening everything we develop for them, we then turn it and open to the broader mass market, and that will continue to be the case. So we just launched this basic security checklist, that is the edge of a much broader kind of mass market option in terms of, of personal wealth security, and we want to be, help be a guide and, and we have the Casa node as well that we released, that's a three hundred dollar price point That Casa node is again something that we developed because we knew that our internal clients, they wanted to be running a node, they wanted some exposure to Lightning, and as we developed for them, we opened it to the broader market and you know- People bought. So I, I, I, there is something about this, you know, we, we got some flack early on, but again, if you take a long-term view in terms of how we build this out and we, we kind of root ourselves with these relationships with some of the biggest believers, earliest believers in the space, it's going to benefit, benefit everyone in the long term, and we are working as fast as we can to get more mass market options out there, but you have to build a business and you have to build gradual sustainability, and so- That's been the focus and the reason around doing

that. Yeah, fantastic comments. I think, I liked the explanation earlier because i-in the whole crypto world, people have this idea of Lambos and fancy watches and so on, but it sounds to me like some of the customers are actually more like the millionaire next door, if you read that. Oh, it's, it, it,

I would tell you ninety-nine percent of cases, and I'm not gonna touch on any details because, like, I, you know, we are, we are We are, but, but I, I'll just say it's like 99% of cases, that's it. And so it's, it's been, it's been interesting. I mean, we didn't know exactly what we would get, but we had some sense. but, you know, none of us live fancy lives, we all live very chill lives in terms of, you know, the people in the company, we're much more mission driven, long term driven, and that's similar a lo- a lot of people in this space and at that level. So it is, it is different than I think what people expect, but I think that the long term benefits and the reasons for taking those steps will, will just become much clearer and everyone will understand in time. And now we're finally to the stage where, again, we're releasing this, this first tool around the security checklist and w- there will be a lot that we're filling in in the gaps between, that, that level and the kind of three hundred dollar node level and then up to the, the, the very premium ten thousand dollar a year level.

Yeah, sure, sure. Let's talk about now the main products then. So with Casa Premium, do you wanna just give a bit of an overview on, what that is and then, you know, how the multi-signature on that would work?

Sure. So it is, we, we talk about all of this, the kind of broader picture that we're talking about here is just what we, what we term as wealth security, sovereign wealth security. And if you really look at, the, the, the structure of how, how we're laying this out, it's really just multiple kind of pay tiers or multiple wealth tiers. and we want to provide an, an option at multiple levels, but we want to, to be able to utilize Casa across the lifetime of your wealth growth and, You know, from earliest inception to starting to save and starting to use things and starting to use lightning Bitcoin up to the, the, the higher level, so but the, the price point we started at is ten thousand dollars a year, it's a premium price point, it's for people that are holding- A million dollars plus, five hundred thousand dollars plus, in terms of Bitcoin, and it is a three of five multisig setup. It is multi-device Multi-location, multi-signature. So what's important about that is it's not just basic multi-signature, you're actually taking devices, across multiple locations, different- home safes, office safes, safety deposit box at a bank, and so you never have more than two keys, or you shouldn't ever have more than two keys at one location. What comes out of that is this, this scenario where even if an attacker came to you physically That there is no logical way you could actually execute a transaction to, for them to take your funds. And so they would have to take you to another location, you know, i-in the me-anything that we can do to increase the amount of time, the amount of travel that would be required also increases your safety, because that means that an attacker would also have to journey with you on those or, you know, just spend more time to get access to things. So that was the, the kind of core design, and we looked at, we looked at, Glacier Protocol as a big model there. Glacier Protocol is an excellent system in terms of multisig, but it's all kind of do-it-yourself and, it's very manual in, in terms of setting it up. With Casa, we use both Trezors and Ledger devices. we integrate directly with those devices. We have one, an app on your phone that allows you to manage the, the key shield, the three of five or the, the five different keys, We have help built right in the app, and then there is one key that is actually on the phone. And, the-- it is the split, again, we do believe there's also a risk long term of, what we call a supply chain attack. So it is the, the split of these different devices that is helpful in, in the long-term cold storage, multi-sig, multi-location, multi-device security. and really getting and minimizing all of the, the, the potential threats here. But that is built for cold storage. We do have, the ability to do a single key, kind of more of a hot wallet on that same app. but the primary reason to use the app and the service is around that, that three or five multisig. Now the, the treasure or the, the, i-in addition to, we are a reseller for both devices, and so, we also hold devices for our clients. So if they're anywhere in the world, we hold a few extra devices, and if they're anywhere in the world and they lose a device or something happens and they flag a device as, as, as missing, then, then we will ship them a device. Overnight, anywhere in the world, free of charge, it's baked in the price, so you can rest easy knowing that, you know, there has been this question and, and, and, and all the companies in the space have gotten better about shipping and better about their logistics, but there is always this question of like, you know, what if something goes down? What if I can't get access to one? you know, what if I need to do some recovery? The last thing I'll say about that premium setup and the, and the multisig setup is it is a keyless A, keyless or seedless setup, or it's not keyless, excuse me. It is seedless, but it is, it is seed phrase. We, we removed the seed phrase from the process. So the seed phrase was originally designed, or designed, to Be used as a backup recovery if you were to lose your device. And there's this phrase that comes along with a lot of the seed phrase packets that just says, you know, store in a safe place. You write down your seed phrase, store in a safe place. Well, store in a safe place, like that, just that statement, there's a lot that's packed into that statement in terms of what that actually means that people don't really think about. And a lot of times it just ends up in a desk drawer or in a safe. Stock drawer or, you know, putting it in, even, even key split, even if you're, you're splitting your keys up, your seed phrase up, and you're putting it in a safety deposit box somewhere, all it takes is a bank employee walking in, you know, opening that, that safety deposit box or seeing it one time or one of the cameras kind of over looking your shoulder when you take it out and, and now you've got part of your seed phrase that's just out there in the world. And so, you know, seed phrases do well for a single key use case, and they are valid, and they were, it was, it was an amazing design decision specifically for that. But whenever you get into a multi-sig world If you are also using seed phrases, then all of a sudden, not only are you protecting, you know, three or four devices, you're also protecting three or four additional seed phrases, so you now have eight items that you have to protect. So we, we built a system that eliminates the need to even use those, those seed phrases. you can, can flag a key and then, you know, use a new device And rotate that in, we do, do what's called a key rotation and update your key shield, and then we automate the pro- the pro- the process of, doing a wallet sweep and getting funds into the new, the new key setup. And what, you know, what would've that, that whole process of managing your UTXOs and, and, what would've taken, you know, on a command line level, if you're extremely technical, you know, could have taken a couple hours to kind of, set back up or get back up to a, a If one of your keys is compromised, we now have gotten it to about a three or four minute process. it's really fast, and so what comes out of that is this ability to, okay, one key goes down, well, I have four more, and so I flagged that key as wrong, I have a device, or maybe I get a device overnighted to me somewhere in the world, I set it up, within three or four minutes, I'm back up to the full key set, and I've, and I've moved my funds. To this, you know, new, newly generated, fully secure, fully fresh keys, full key set. So there is, there are some other innovations that we're doing, and, and some other, you know, massive design and user experience improvements around that. And then there's just the customer service side, it's twenty four seven support. So all of that baked in, the, the well designed experience, the, your no-- there's no copy pasting keys, it's, it's really easy to use, we integrate with Trezor and Ledger APIs. really smooth experience, condensed down a lot of these processes, and then this, this support level, just that mix isn't available anywhere else, and that's why we, we price it high, but it's actually quite cheap in context if you're, again, if you're managing a million dollars plus, and, there are, there are in the traditional financial world, there are all these private wealth banks that exist, and they take strong percentages, I, I won't give you the exact numbers, but they take, quite a hefty fee. For managing and help you, and helping you manage large amounts of money, so a ten thousand dollar price point, you know, at that level is, is just not that much, but we can pack in a lot of value into that, and, and to us as a company, it allows us to build out a lot and hire the best talent.

yeah, it sounds like it's quite well thought through. how about insurance? Like if the, if, if coins were to be lost, is there some kind of insurance or what is, what's, what's the situation with that?

no. So again, this is, this is full self-sovereignty. We don't offer an insurance on top of this. The clients are taking on full liability for running the software we do. Provides and guarantees and around our service levels and around, you know, from that side even the service key as well. But ultimately, it is on the end user and, and I think, I think insurance is gonna be very hard in this world because of the uniqueness of the asset, the potential price swings in the asset are just gonna create these unique scenarios to where insurance overall is gonna be very hard. And so I, I think it comes back to just needing to have the best system possible where you've mitigated the, the, the, the, the most risks, but also somewhat usable to, like, to give you the flexibility to adapt pretty quickly to changing threats.

Yeah, right. Okay. And then what about for people who wanna store for a long time, and if they were concerned that, say, if Casa shut down or wasn't available, what- What's the, w-what's the situation with that? Yeah, sure. So it's,

it's not an issue. Casa, we, in every, in every key shield that is generated, we send you, a couple sets of pub keys that are, that, that allow you to, you know, it's what we call sovereign recovery instructions. So you are, you have full control at all times. Not only do you have the, the majority of the keys in terms of what you can actually sign with, but you also have the ability to-- It's gonna Technical to reconstruct a transaction and broadcast something, but Casa never has access to your funds. We never, w-will have any way to ever sign or influence anything, and you always, even if Casa's servers went down, even if Casa, the company, you know, couldn't do anything, even if the global internet went down, you would still have the control and the ability to recover those funds. And that's really important for the long term and the structure of our service and building trust with our users, it's, it's, it's just really important, and we've, we've designed it that way from the beginning.

Fantastic. Okay. let's now talk about the Casa node a little bit. So I think you've, you've already kind of touched on, what it does. let's talk through a little bit on what's available on it. So I've seen that there's autopilot or manual choice on there, and you've got a, Talk a little bit about the reason for offering the product and how the sales have done.

Sure. So ultimately, you know, ultimately to the end of maximizing personal sovereignty and safety and shifting more of that control into the end user, I all of the, the- Signing, you know, broadcasting transactions that we are, we are still having our customers do a few of those things, even though the customers have full control and they have the full key set. And, So what that comes down to is that we, we, we had customers asking about full nodes, some of them that were already using full nodes and creating the integration there with those other products, it made sense to build out our own. There's gonna be a lot that is, that is done on those devices. We expect many more companies to be building kind of full, full nodes for home and for office use. I mean, it's gonna, I think it'd be a big category, but we wanted to have our entry in this space and we wanted to help push the overall experience forward A lot of the products you've seen now, there's some, there's some other great products out there, but in terms of a, something that, that didn't require command line, that was, well-produced, great design, easy to use, and really fully maximized a lot of these technologies, it just, it just wasn't there. So we decided to put out our own, again, started this just for our clients and then, ex-expanded it to others. we were surprised with the, the response, we sold out of first hundred the first hundred within about an hour, and the next two hundred actually, the, the, the second batch was actually two hundred, I think some people thought it was another hundred, but it was two hundred. We sold that out by the end of the day, and then, we continued to sell at, at a pretty heavy pace, and I can't speak to exact numbers, but It's been, it's been really surprising. So we're, we're gonna get deliveries out, and we've, you know, the delivery date's pushed back a little bit, that's the way we, we're able to manage the demand, But we are getting ready to, to ship out the first batch end of October, and, really, really excited about that. And so if, if any of you, any of you listening that you have bought those, you will, you will get a, some emails in the coming weeks and closer to the end of the, the month, it will be in the month, because we have, we've got a lot to do, and, and we've, you know, even we had this first version that was built out, but we've packed in some more features, and we have And, and yeah, we're excited to, to get that up a door and launch that.

Excellent. Okay. Let's talk about product roadmap then. Is there anything you can share in terms of products or services coming down the line? And also, do you have any i-idea on timelines before something like a more premium product could be available for a more, let's say, like retail holder?

So I can't speak to the, the full detail of the, the product plan, but what I can say is that, what I can say is that You, you can start to see things taking shape a little bit with, we have this, this premium subset, and then we have this mid-tier or, or, or kind of, more, more mass market, easily accessible tier, right at three hundred dollars. And three hundred dollars seems like a lot, but on the whole, if you think about the amount of money you spend For coffee or the amount of money you spend on going to a movie once a month, or playing video games, you know, like there, there are these other experiences that you spend far more than three hundred dollars on and we're thinking of it in terms of that. Three hundred dollars is your base fee to, to, you know, fully be your own bank and do a lot more things. And, and so from that view at that price point Yeah, I, I, I can't speak to everything, but I'll just say that the, the, you know, we've launched the space security checklist now, and nobody will be able to sign up, and you'll basically be able to kind of pick your path in terms of price point, and, we, we are planning to-- So although, although this initial device, you were buying an initial device. there will be more that we are, we are giving to these end, clients. We do consider even the people buying just a three hundred dollar node to be a client and, and are excited to support them, and there will be some surprises that are coming even for those buyers, right? we don't view that as like a single product sale, we view that as, hey, like you're, you're taking a step towards supporting Casa and supporting this mission and supporting yourself, and we want to, to, to give more, And so we want to stuff more into that price point and into that, that staging area, if that's the kind of stage of life that you're in and the stage of your wealth, and we want to help you more. So there, I would just view it as we will be, we will be putting more into both the node itself, and in, and adding some other side experiences and, and, and thinking of a kind of a broader full stack experience around what that looks like between keys, w- you know, a wallet or, or a key management interface and then the node and then just depending on how much money or how much capital you're managing or what you wanna do, and what support level you need, then you will select a different, different price point, a, a different level of service. but there's a lot, there's a lot coming down the line. I can't, there's gonna be some, some real surprises. We got another one coming out in, I think, in, in four or five weeks, fingers crossed we're We've got a little mini production run going of another related product that I think people are gonna be surprised on, but we're, we're really excited about, and yeah, there's more coming. So

Fantastic. I think the listeners can, read the tea leaves and try and put, put the pieces together and, keep an eye out for stuff that's coming. next question I wanted, wanted to ask about was government regulation. So have you had much to deal with, or have you had to deal with much of that in terms of things like AML or sanctions laws or any other regulation?

we, we haven't. We've, we've been very careful and we are positioning Casa. I mean, the end, the end client takes on the full responsibility of, of, you know, the full legal responsibility of what they're using the device for. We're building Specific products and, and, we consider ourselves a kind of, you know, sovereign service corporation in a sense. It's, we're, we're gonna build products, we're gonna build tools for you, but you're taking on the liability of using those. And that's really important. on the one hand, it's, you know, people might say, "Oh, well, you're absolving yourself of responsibility," and what if someone uses it for something, you know? dangerous and, and, you know, you can take a hammer, right? You can build a house with a hammer, or you can hit someone with a hammer. And it really comes down to just building this tool that enables someone to do something unique. And on the long run, I do, I do think this is gonna be beneficial for, you know, broader civilization and for individuals and for communities and for families. but the way we think about it is that we wanna be in a position to where if the end user is taking on the responsibility, then we can build kind of the maximum edge of experience possible and we can avoid a lot of the, you know, we don't, we're not a money transmitter, we aren't a bank, we aren't an exchange, and we, we have no intention of being those things, because we wanna move fast on this side of building the toolsets, building the applications, building the kind of integrated experience, and allowing you to plug in with these other solutions, but doing it in a way that allows us to be somewhat nimble. but that means that again, that you take on the responsibility, and we do recommend that

our and, but, you know, how you, how you approach things and how you, what decisions you make are up to you, and that I think comes back to the core mission again of maximizing personal sovereignty and safety is, you know, we do respect your individual rights we are your, your individual privacy as well, and, but we do recommend that you just be aware of the communities you're in and, and, respect those around you and, and use, use these tools for good, and for, you know, and, and, and, and to support your families and support your communities, you know, in, in positive ways.

Fantastic. Okay, sure. now, do you plan to support other cryptocurrencies and do you see much of a market in supporting Ethereum, say, or, or is there, you know, an incre- increased security risk against supporting some of those other coins or other cryptocurrencies?

Sure. So we, we do, we do actually support Ethereum today, but we-- it is only on a single key. We, as we evaluated all of the multisig contracts and just using smart contracts period for multisig, we realized that there is a major problem there, and there, there's some major kind of logical flaws, game theory flaws in terms of the current multisig setup, and we don't feel comfortable risking client funds on them. So we are, we are pushing forward and, and working with the community to, to- Develop a, what the plan is and what we've released publicly is, to work with some of the major people and that, that have already created, you know, great smart contracts and have done great work in this space. We wanna help them push that forward to getting a standard that is agreed on as a community as the standard, and everyone's backing it, and everyone's on board with it, because the risk is just that, you know, if, if it's just one company that's created one- And then, you know, the core Ethereum Foundation is using another one, and then, you know, there is some bug that is, is somehow discovered, then the incentive based on what we've seen with the Parity hack and the Parity situation wasn't even, you know, wasn't even the- but the parody situation where there was loss of funds around their multisig contract, is that, you know, the, the community's not always going to back, to, to, to, to, bail us out. But if we have this core standard that, you know, everyone is using, everyone is backing, then it, then it, it is much more secure and, we are, we are much more confident in that solution. And so that's what we're pushing. So we, we are starting to develop a very clear view on, you know, we in terms of security and in terms of their multisig setup, and we would, we would like for other companies to, to, mimic how Bitcoin has, has set up, their multisig and, I, I, there are some ways to do it with, you know, with scripting or with, with, smart contracts, but the, at the smart contract level, you do potentially introduce Some other, if it's not kind of core to the protocol of the currency, then you do introduce some other potential risks. And so we, we may issue some guidelines around that. we are, we have been testing with, with, and I don't think this is public yet, but I'll just say, very, very briefly that we've, we have been testing with Monero and with, Zcash and with Litecoin, and we've been thinking about other, other coins and, and, and Zcash and, and, and The, we, even Monero, we've been looking at other coins and we wanna support more, but we wanna do it in a, in a safe way. And so just getting that right and, and, you know, making sure that our clients' f- the security of our clients' funds is actually a- absolutely the, the top priority, and not just, you know- Moving the, the ball forward with just a kind of new cool technology, integration is, is really the priority there. So it's a, it's a hard balance, but we are working on more coins and more support, broader support that will just be based off of client demand. The way we think about it is that, if a client is willing to pay and we've set this incentive structure up, and they have other currencies, then we are willing to, add those currencies to Casa and add support for them, but they have to, the, the, Be there for us to, allow you to store it on the system, and we, you also, again, you have to be a paying client, right? 'Cause I, I, we're not gonna just kind of pull off random-- You, you see a lot of exchanges that they, they're just adding different coins, and over time, it's about just exchange volume trading fees for them. But for us, it really is about just the long-term security of the user, so we, we take a very different tact.

Perhaps for a closing comment

I want to know how to structure a business to, you know, how to make it built to last. Do you have any comments on that?

sure. So I, the first thing I'll say is that I think that, you know, I, I think that zero to one, Peter Thiel's book, really is, is the bible when it comes to a lot of kind of core- and regardless of what you think about Peter Thiel's politics or anything else, his, his book really is, it, it does capture a lot of the, the core as to why you should even build a business. A, a lot of businesses, a lot of startups specifically, like you shouldn't ever just start one, just to start one. It's, it's a very hard path. You really have to be solving this core problem and, you know, building a business, building a motley crew of individuals that are tied together under an incentive structure, like that has to be the best way to solve the problem. So I encourage people to really think about, you know, why do you wanna solve this problem? Why is it necessary to solve this problem? You know, why is it so core that you can't think about anything else? And if that's the case, then, you know, you'll find a way, you'll find a path forward, you'll find the investors, you'll find the team, but it really has to come down to that core problem that, that you wanna solve.

Yeah, fantastic. Okay. So listeners, if you wanna find Jeremy, you can find

Casa, and the Casa Twitter handle is casa hold, which is C A S A H O D L. Do you have anywhere else that you would like the listeners to find you or just the process to sign up?

No, no, no, that's great. I mean, we have this new security checklist tool out now, you can, you can go through that. We've, we just got some quick feedback on, on, we do require a sign up, and that was a mix of, spam response and also we, we, we felt that we wanted to save

You can also apply there, you can buy the node directly from there, but yeah, start at keys dot casa, we, we do push out a lot of content if you go to, to the casa h o d l hodl, Twitter account and so those are questions we, we are open. We, you know, myself, Jameson, Elena, we are very involved in the community and we're always open to, to answering questions and being supportive of the community, and we just wanna, we wanna help everybody again, maximize your sovereignty and safety and, and, and build more control, you know, plan more for long term. So any way we can do that, please reach out to us, we're happy to help.

Fantastic, yeah, I think that's a great way to summarize the episode. It's around,

Thank you.

So that was my conversation with Jeremy Welch of Casa. I trust you guys found it educational in terms of potential pitfalls with Bitcoin private key storage and discussion on new models of safely storing bitcoins. I also liked the discussion on building a business or service to last. Links are in the show notes, SLP26, and for Casa, the website is keys dot casa. I hope you guys enjoyed the podcast. If you do, please remember give it a five star rating and review, subscribe to the podcast by searching Stephan Livera podcast, share it out with your friends, find me on Twitter, my handle is at Stephan Livera, and thanks, that's it from me. Speak to you guys next time.