Hodl Hodl Bitcoin Exchange & Baltic Honeybadger

Hi and welcome to the Stephan Livera podcast focused on the economics and technology of Bitcoin. This is episode fifty-six and today my guests are Max Keidun and Roman Snitko, CEO and CTO of HodlHodl, a peer-to-peer Bitcoin exchange, and they are also the organizers of Baltic Honeybadger, one of the best-known Bitcoin conferences. Here's the interview. Max and Roman, welcome to the show. I've been quite impressed with some of the stuff you guys are doing with HodlHodl.

Thanks for having us. thanks for having us, Stefan.

Alright, so- Guys, let's start with a little bit of background on each of you and why you guys started HodlHodl. Snitko, you

should, you should, you should, you should, you should say that story. He's, he's a good storyteller. Yeah, we

always do it this way. He, he says Snitko and I do it. Haha. Okay, so, it goes back to, I think, 2016 or 15, we worked together, at a Bitcoin company and, then- we were-- back then we were using local Bitcoins both of us, and, there were a lot of issues with local Bitcoins the first time I tried it, I was-- I, I almost got scammed. and then when I met Max, he asked me to explain how to use it, and it was like pretty complicated. And, it was about the time when, you know, I- I, I was looking into multisig, and trying to come up with a better solution for storing bitcoins, and we realized we can actually build a, a better exchange that doesn't- hold the bitcoins, and still allows people to trade, effectively and, essentially we quit the company and started working, two of us on, HODLHODL. And one of our assumptions was obviously that, this exchange would have, an edge over everybody else because every other exchange, because it doesn't hold the bitcoins. but also we realized that, Local bitcoins, sooner or later, they're gonna start, start implementing KYC/AML policies, which they did. and, also there was a chance that because they're holding bitcoins you know, sooner or later they're gonna be hacked, which they were, and, we just wanted to build a more secure, and easier to use exchange that is also focused on privacy, but at the same time, it's not as complicated as completely decentralized exchanges such as Bisc. So I think that's, that's the backstory of HODL HODL.

Sure. And actually, tell us a little bit about your background as

well. So I, got into Bitcoin in 2012, and by got into Bitcoin, I mean I started gradually learning about Bitcoin projects, out there about, about the technology, and,

Eventually, I, worked on a project that was very similar to BTC Pay, it was called, Straight, because, it was a payment gateway, and the reason it was called Straight is because bitcoins went straight into the merchant's wallet, bypassing the central server. I think BTC Pay, as far as I can tell, works the same way, but of course, like, I didn't have enough resources, and it was just one man show essentially. so just to give you an example, those are the kinds of projects that I worked on. And then, I went to work for, Mycelium for a little while, and this is how I met Max, and then we quit and started our own thing.

Excellent. And Max, do you wanna tell us a little bit about your background as well?

yeah, it's- pretty interesting story as well. I was a banker actually for ten years. So, joined the rebellion basically. I was a banker for ten years and, in 2013 one of my clients he actually introduced me, to Bitcoin during, during one of the meetings. And, he mentioned that, he showed me how it w- how, how it worked, saying that, you can transfer like ten thousand dollars from Russia to Brazil, in, in less than one hour, less than Five cents, no middleman, you don't need to like go and open the bank account and etcetera, etcetera. And, I thought the guy was crazy, but I, I actually started, to research the topic And, in 2015, two years later, I started like researching, started little bit buying of, of, and playing with, with technology around. but in 2015, I, I understood that, there will be no need

no need in banks in the future because, well, the, the technology works, and it's amazing how it works. And, and the same client actually at that point invited me to join his project. so I went from the bank, to join the Bitcoin company. And that's how I met Roman. So, and that's how we started, like a few months later, we, we, we started working on, Hoddle Hoddle. So yeah, that, that's my story.

Fantastic. Alright, well, look, I think one of the key things that listeners will be interested to know is why is HODLHODL different, right? And I think some of the key areas there are just that it's peer-to-peer, there's no KYC. Can you touch on some of the- Challenges around, doing that, but also why that's a benefit for your customers.

I think the, the, the, Roman, yeah, the, the, the main difference, like from other exchanges, as I say, we are somewhere in between, local bitcoins and Bisc. In that case that, as Bisc, we use multi-signature, technology, so we don't hold any funds. So basically each time you make, make a trade, we create a unique, Multi-sig escrow account, on a public blockchain, in that case Bitcoin. We also have Litecoin, but we prefer the, the Bitcoin. And, We open the, the escrow account, and that's how all the trade's happening, because, like, if you trade through local Bitcoins or through Paxful or something like that, then, everything is stored in their wallets. So the, the escrow technology that they offer is in their wallets, basically. You trade within the wallets. So that's the security-wise, that's number one thing. another thing, we are really, really, crazy about UX and UI. as Roman mentioned during our first, experience with local Bitcoins, both of us were a bit struggling with that. and I think, well, the third thing which is not so important, but overall we are, way more cheaper than, than, than our alternatives. So Maybe Roma can add something.

Yeah, so the commission is lower for sure than local bitcoins or Paxful, albeit higher than, centralized exchanges such as Bitstamp, but that's just a natural thing to have on peer-to-peer exchanges. I mean, their commission is higher. but yeah, the, the, the main advantage I think is that we don't hold the bitcoins, we don't do KYC/AML. and You know, not holding bitcoins is actually part of the reason why I don't do that. So, yeah, that, those are the things, and of course, right now the, The other project predictions is coming, I'm sure we're gonna have a chance to discuss that a little bit later, and, I mean, it's pretty unique, in my opinion.

Yeah, fascinating. And I think maybe for the listeners They might like to hear a little bit more about some of the technical challenges that you have faced in terms of implementing a multi-signature decentralized exchange. Can you talk to those challenges a little bit?

Sure. The multisig libraries that we have, there are two parts to them, the backend part and the frontend part written in JavaScript, and those libraries are actually pretty small, so the, the multisig Technology in Bitcoin, it's nothing new, it's been around for a while, we just implemented, those libraries, but the code that surrounds them, you know, this, the user interface, the, the backend, All, all sorts of, you know,

sec-security issues that we need to take care of. That's the, that's a lot of work And, I, I think when people, I mean, I, I've heard some people on podcasts discussing us and saying, "Oh, but, you know, what is called Holo, it's just, you know, a multisig. This technology has been around for a while." "Oh, yeah, sure," but, you know, try creating a peer-to-peer exchange, using this technology with all the bells and whistles, and it's actually a lot of work. it's actually a lot of Issues that you only discover when you start working on them, when you, when you face your users, and see them having issues while they trade with other people, 'cause you need to take care of reputation, You need to take care of, all the various scams that can emerge when people trade on a peer-to-peer exchange. You have to be aware of them, you have to effectively, solve disputes. so yeah, there's like a million problems that centralized exchanges where like day traders trade, they never even see them, and they never even face those problems, and we do.

Sure. So, can you talk to perhaps some of the ways that listeners should watch out to maybe just some tips for them to help avoid scams when they are buying, or selling, Bitcoin on HODL HODL?

I think in general, yeah, I think in general it's, we have a limit so called so that we, we have some, we, we, we did, we are caring about the people who aren't familiar with traders, so we made some, limits on on your first trades. So basically never trade with, riskier payment methods. we have a pa- we have a table of available payment methods with, the risk volumes, for example. There are some R-risky payment methods like PayPal, where, you can easily return the payment. so choose a payment method properly, then, choose a counterparty properly. Never trade on large volumes or on large amounts with people you're not familiar with, with traders that don't have any significant reputation, something like that. And, well basically that's it, so choose your counterparty and choose a proper payment method, and then just follow the instructions that are there. So these are, I think these are main, main two things to, to, to look out to avoid being, being scammed on any peer-to-peer, platform, not only the, the HODL HODL.

And can you touch on just the concept around education of tr- new- new traders, in terms of Bitcoin, and actually just talk a little bit around the typical user with HoddleHoddle, are they typically first timers to Bitcoin or are they normally more experienced Bitcoiners?

I think they're mostly, more or less experienced. I mean, some of them come from local Bitcoins, Because they see value in HodoHodo, and they see how actually, I mean, the commission is lower, that's part of the reason they, they come to HodoHodo as well. But I should say, and we, we constantly talk to those traders, Privately, right? Like on Telegram channels, educating them and all of that. And, it's, it's interesting that some of them don't actually realize that we don't hold the bitcoins, and we have to, you know, explain to them and, and, and It's, it's weird. I think that's just the state of, crypto trading these days. A lot of people trade cryptocurrencies, a lot of people trade Bitcoin, but they don't really understand the fundamentals. And, what we're trying to do, we have, sections on the website, one, one section is called screencasts. Essentially, we, have a lot of, a lot of educational screencasts, not just about our exchange, but they also explain how to, how to install Electrum wallet, how to use multisig with Electrum wallet, things like that, you know? really, really helpful to people. You know, for people to learn those things and, and then they can move on to using our exchange. and we also have a section called Bitcoin Quiz where you just go through, a number of questions about Bitcoin and, you don't have to read long articles. about every boring detail, but rather just, you know, play a little bit with the quiz and, click a couple of buttons and see whether you're right or wrong, and then if you're wrong, it, it, it explains to you why you're wrong and what is the correct answer and why is it the correct answer. So I think we're, we're just trying not-- we're not just trying to, to create an exchange and, and earn money from commission, but also educate people. That's really, really important.

That's an excellent approach to take, It is, even though we are ten years into Bitcoin, it's, it is still early days. I think another topic listeners might be interested to hear about is just around the trends on the volumes that you are seeing at HodlHodl. Max, can you comment on that? Yeah,

well, Of course the volumes are increasing because, you know, we started, precisely 23rd of February, 2018 when we launched, trading on Hodo Hodo, so of course, During this year, the volumes increased because from the beginning we had zero volumes. And,

I think the, the interesting thing in terms of trends is to, to, to see how the regions are distributed in terms of traders, on our platform and on a, another platform. So the most active, region at the moment on HODL HODL is Russia.

then we have, quite active and quite solid, presence in Latin America and of course Europe, also is is, doing some trades on, on Hodo Hodo. the interesting thing, and I think Roman can touch about this, about the trends, that, recently, not recently, but few months ago, we've closed US market for, for, for Hodo Hodo. So basically, if you're US citizen, you won't be able to use Hodo Hodo. we did that on purpose, due to some security reasons. but, US market was never active in terms of, in terms of peer-to-peer trading, at least on, on, on HodlHodl. so these are, these are the main trends that we, we, we saw the shift, when we launched HodlHodl, most of the, most of the trades was, Europe, and now it's more emerging markets, and, we actually had some trades from Australia as well. So, and we are trying now to approach Asian market of course, and because it's huge and big, and we're also looking to Africa as well, because it's also emerging market and people are Interestingly enough, people are using, cryptocurrency there as well, and, and they're, they're quite active in that, in that field to be honest. So, yeah, but maybe Roman can speak more about why we closed US market. It's, it's, it's interesting story.

Well, yeah, apart from like regulatory burden, I think the market is just sat-saturated, right? i-if people wanna buy Bitcoin, Bitcoins in, in the US, there's so many different options. And yeah, you gotta go through KYC and ML there, but that's just the reality of things. And, You know, we're, we're just not interested, I, I would say that. We're just not interested in the US market because we realize there's a lot of competition there, there's a lot of good, great companies operating on it, and, People are familiar with them, so I mean, why bother?

And also to, to add, to, to the trends that we saw during the past year, the average volume of single trade actually increased because, we know that some of the traders they use HODL HODL due to security reasons, due to safe and secure escrow, non-custodial escrow that, that, that we have, they use us to trade larger volumes, than On, on centralized exchanges or on exchanges that don't have this non-custodial approach. So the average volume for each single trade is actually increased. And, in terms of payment methods, I think still the most popular payment methods is usually the banks. So, pe-people do that. We, we introduced like few months ago, we also introduced, like cryptocurrency as a payment method. So now- Using HodoHodo, you can, you can, pay for your Bitcoin with, basically any, any cryptocurrency available out there. so you can use Monero, you can use Ethereum, whatever. And, these payments methods are also increasing, in the last couple of months. So this- And it's not

like we're trying to, to capitalize on shit coins. I'm, I'm not a big fan of those. Yeah. People, people, people sometimes wanna buy and sell those. that's understandable. Understandable. So it wasn't a lot of, work for us to add them as a payment method. They're not integrated into the exchange natively, right? So we, we don't, we don't track Ethereum blockchain or Monero or anything, just, they're just payment methods, just like any other. so we, we added them, we've seen a couple of trades with them, okay, that's fine.

Got it. Yeah, so I suppose then it's just on the customer who is accepting the payment to do their own verification in that And sort of trusting the exchange to verify for them or anything like that. Yeah, yeah.

And in case of a dispute, it's pretty easy for us to, to verify whether there was a transaction that was made on Ethereum, let's say, right? I mean, because it's a public blockchain. so We, we don't see a lot of, issues with that. You

guys also recently launched this prediction market. Can you talk to that?

We didn't launch it actually, we just announced. So we will launch it, in, in couple of, in couple months, but yeah, we announced the predictions. And, in that case, I need to say that Roman should speak, about predictions because i-it's his idea and it's his child, so he knows better in that case. Well, let's just say it was a

soft launch. I, I think, yeah, but we're pretty confident that, I mean, there's a lot of work, already that has been done on predictions and, i-it's definitely coming and definitely see a lot of interest because, If you, if you look at crypto Twitter, there's always people there who say, "Hey, I, I, I want to, to bet you one Bitcoin that, you know, the price of Bitcoin is gonna be a-above like five thousand." but I, I want to point out, predictions aren't betting, to be honest, it's not gambling, and in the blog post that we, that we released, We explained why, I'm just gonna, you know, touch briefly on that. betting and/or gambling, you know, it has those interesting characteristics such as, it's, it's instant gratification, you know, you throw dice, you either win or, or lose, or you go with like, ridiculous margin, on BitMax, and you also lose or win pretty instantly. And then, you know, there's an addiction part to it. There's,

there's randomness to it as well, and we, we just don't wanna touch it at all. What we wanna do, we wanna build a financial, instrument that people can actually employ to, to hedge their risks and, or, or, you know, come up with other use cases for it, but it's definitely not gambling. So the, the way it would work is you you create an offer and you say, "I believe that the price of Bitcoin is going to be above five thousand dollars on Bitstamp by May 1st." 12 PM, for example, right? So your, your condition is pretty unambiguous. So you create this offer and, this, this other person, sees it on the website and decides to create a contract with you based on this offer, and so he also, well, he creates the, the contract, you see that, and you both lock the bitcoins and, by, May 1st. You check the, condition and one of you, one of you, gets two bitcoins, and the other one loses his one bitcoin. So that's the most, the, the simplest case of how predictions can be used, but of course you can, your condition can be pretty much anything that's not illegal or ambiguous.

Okay, great. And then, does Hodel have to go and help verify the claim?

in Most cases we believe that we wouldn't have to do that, because the-- there's no incentive for any of the party, especially for the losing party, to not release the bitcoins in favor of the winning party. And the reason for that is because the, the winning party would never sign the, the refund transaction to the losing party, right? So the- The, the, the worst case, the bitcoins are gonna stay locked in escrow. Now, in that case, whole hodl would interfere because we would use two out of three multisig and we would still hold this other key, and so we would go and look for, for the condition and then, you know, sign that transaction. but I expect the people would be pretty compliant because they wouldn't wanna lose their reputation, because they still wanna continue trading on, on the exchange and on, the predictions project. so I, I don't see a lot of issues with that, especially, if, the conditions are unambiguous, and that's one thing that we're gonna do, we're, we're going to moderate. The offers before they even appear on the, on the exchange and make sure that nothing illegal is in the conditions and that conditions are

So the other thing is people talk about with prediction markets is this whole idea of, oh, these decentralized, this, that, and the other. I think by using a more centralized approach, it's perhaps a bit more of a long-term sustainable one. and I think the other concern people had with some of the other approaches that have been done in the past, they might be that, you know, there's not really much volume, so to speak.

Well, so first of all, I, I completely agree with you that a decentralized, decentralized approach that Augur uses, for example, may not be the ideal solution in that case. we believe that our solution where we are as an exchange are centralized. But, where also non-custodial is, is a good, is a good one. And, yeah, that, that's just, That's just how it is, I think, we're non custodial and, centralized, and that allows us to be effective, but also secure.

Yeah, another point I like about it is that you are leveraging people's reputation. So they may have built up a reputation on a certain name under, under, on the HODL HODL exchange, and that, that is the reputation that they then put at stake when they try to, you know, enter into some kind of prediction bet.

Yeah, yeah, of course, there's gonna be reputation. and, i-if you wanna trade with someone, you, you rely on, on that as well. but I, I wanna come back briefly to the point that you made about the volume that,

I, I do see, some people complain, about volumes and huddle-huddle in particular countries, for example, they, they, you know, go to, Go to Zimbabwe on the website and like, "Oh, there are no offers." Well, create one. It's not like it's a, centralized day trading exchange, right? You, you don't need- Your order book filled before you can start, before you create an offer. And it's the same with, the same thing with predictions, you just create an offer and, you know, it's there, now you just gotta wait a little bit for someone to notice it, and create a contract based on that offer. So I don't think for peer-to-peer exchanges, volume, or lack thereof, is, is, is a chicken-and-egg problem. It's not. You just go there and you cre- create an offer.

Yeah, that's an I think many users are naturally lazy, so they go somewhere and they kind of expect there to be volume there already. And to some extent, maybe, current, exchanges use market makers to kind of have somebody there, make, you know, putting a bit of that volume just to kind of make it, make it flow more easily. so perhaps that's a bit of a learning journey and a bit of a UI/UX question as well on how to Guide the cus-the customer down that pathway, such that they are then guided into, if there is no offer, to create one.

Yeah, yeah, I agree.

and also, you guys recently had your one year anniversary. Tell us a little bit about that, Max.

well, we didn't celebrate it, basically. Yeah, because we-- our team is, we don't have any office or premises where everyone, you know, all gathers, and, and we work remotely, we're used to that. That, we're basically distributed, globally. So, there was nothing special about that. We, our like, I think the part of our birthday celebration was that we announced, prediction markets. I think the best way to celebrate your own, birthday in terms of, for, for a Bitcoin company is to announce another product that you just, you know, you're, you're developing and, and doing something and building. So, yeah, so ab-about the birthday, really like nothing special. I, I had a glass of wine, so. Something like that. So, we, we actually have a lot of work to do, like, like extremely a lot of work to do because we have predictions coming in, we have also a project called HouseHollow, which is buying and selling real estate using the same smart escrow, smart contract functionality that we have at the moment in HuddleHuddle. we have, Honeybadger conference that we announced. few weeks ago. And, a lot, a lot of things. We're also traveling quite a lot, speaking on different conferences, been invited to, to do workshops and, and so, in terms of, you know, celebrating or, or, or having a team together, we're, we're not that type of company. We prefer building stuff and not like making an announcements of announcements and announcements that- We will do something or writing blog posts each time, so no. we, we just, we will build stuff, you know? We will do that.

Great, yeah. And, Max, I think another area that might be good to get further comments from you is just for those listeners who are more privacy conscious and they want to buy Bitcoin and do it in a way that helps preserve their, help-- preserve their privacy. Can you comment a little on how other exchanges may- When they start, they may sort of develop in ways that creep the AML forward, whereas that might contrast with hodl.

yeah, so we don't do KYCAML as Roman mentioned. Well, you c- you can pass, the, the KYC email to increase some, some limits on huddle, huddle if you want, but in general we don't do that. Because, we don't hold any funds, so we don't process, we're not acting as a third party who process, like crypto or fiat or something like that. while on other exchanges you need to like go through the verification process, so there's a two Two things, that, that usually concerns people and that actually concerns me. So first of all, you, you, you do disclose your personal data, which is, In my humble opinion, not so good, because you don't know how it's stored, because you don't know how it's-- and recently there, there, there, there has been, few cases when, there was, like security breaches where, where the data was stolen. not bitcoins in particular, but data. And the, the second thing is, if you pass the verification, usually it takes time, so the onboarding process is, becomes, difficult and, like, what we, what we saw during the bull market In the end of 2017, in the beginning 2018, where s-biggest, big centralized exchanges are struggling, were struggling by onboarding new clients and, replying to old clients because, just the inflow of people was crazy and they were, they weren't able to process everyone. So That's, I think that's two main things.

Yeah, that's a good point as well, that you don't have to take on the same level of cost that some of the other exchanges do because they're spending all this time and resource on AML compliance, whereas in some other ways, you can spend your time building more products that your customers will enjoy.

Yeah, that's, that's our Competitive advantage, at least for a moment, you know, you never know what, what the government or other, other involved parties will, will think about and will create about. So

another thing, Max, that might be interesting to comment on. And I think you were just touching on that, there is how we don't know what the government can do, and it can sort of creep forward, right? There can be other Bitcoin, and other, well, multi coin companies, let's say, who start out a certain way, but then they now put in more AML and put in more KYC, and then there are some customers who might feel a little trapped by that, because they might have put some Bitcoin on that exchange and then, or that service, and then they put in more KYC, and so you can't take it

Yeah, these cases are so not, it's, it's happening actually already at the moment. So the, the case with HodlHodl, we won't be able if you will, if, if you will, start a trade on HodlHodl and you will put money on escrow as Roman mentioned, we don't, we only have one key out of three. so even if we want, if you will, if you will discuss this and, and agree this, and agree that you want to release coins in favor of your counterparty, then you will do that easily because your counterparty and you have two keys together. So if, if we, if we won't, we won't be able to do that, so we won't be able to freeze your funds. so, but, yeah, but these cases are happening when, when companies are onboarding people and saying, "We don't have any KYCAML and blah, blah, blah," and then at some point they, they will send you a letter that, you know, we, we need to check up on you. So please send me some information, please, pass the verification, and then you will be able to receive your coins or send your bitcoins, to any other address.

Yeah. Right. And another thing that's interesting I've noticed, I think your exchange supports batch, the BECH32 addresses, and my understanding is that actually is a little bit easier than if someone wants to, say, buy Bitcoin on HodlHodl and then move that straight into Wasabi, because there are other exchanges that don't support that kind of withdrawal address. So that's another benefit there for HodlHodl. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I

definitely, I noticed that Bitstamp doesn't, for example, although it claims to, to have Or when I paste, back thirty-two address doesn't really work, and in our case, yeah, it, it definitely works. So and, because of that, transaction fees are also, not as high, right? For sure. Yeah.

Yeah, okay. And I think the last question on the exchange I wanted to ask you guys was, bit of an open question, can it be made simpler?

of course it can. As we say, there's, there's no limit for perfection, you know? it's, it's not perfect, as a old boss used to say, "I have just the guy for that." Yeah. So, peer-to-peer exchanges in general are way more complicated than centralized exchanges, but that's, that's basically, well, it's trade-off whether you want, better security and, less chaos KYCAML or you want, better usability, less security and more KYCAML. So, it's, it's a trade-off, it's always a trade-off. but yeah, we are actually working constantly on, redesigning some things, on adding new features. On, you know, the drama mentioned that we, we, we have, a special guy who, who, who is, who is creating screencasts, on different topics, how to use HODL, how to, how to install Electron Wallet. We have a, a huge, section of guides and helps, A lot of things. Also, we have a Bitcoin quiz w-where you can test your knowledge on, on Bitcoin and on topics that, that goes around that. So, but yeah, in general, hodl-hodl isn't perfect, and we, we think there's a long way to go to create A proper, you know, a proper peer-to-peer exchange when, even my grandmother would be able to go online and buy some fraction of Bitcoin, or hopefully she will be rich enough to buy a, a single Bitcoin, you know? Why not?

Yeah, sure. Why not? I, yeah, I think, I think, for the grandmother, that's just not gonna happen, my personal opinion though, but, Certainly, like when you work on exchanges, on peer-to-peer exchange, you, as an engineer, I, I tend to sort of Arrange everything correctly, in my mind, right? and, and in code, but then when you realize how that actually works In terms of user interaction, then you think, "Whoa, that's actually complicated. I, I shouldn't have done that. We, we, we can actually simplify that." so there are- Things like that, we-- that we can definitely improve. But as Max said, I think peer-to-peer changes are inherently more complicated than, regular, traditional centralized exchanges. So For some things, there's just no way around the complexity.

Yeah, fair enough. I, yeah, I think, it's a interesting question, and I think everyone is trying to fi- figure out ways to try and make it easier to bring on the next wave of people and how to- Teach them, but do it in the right way. So that's, these are things I think most Bitcoiners are thinking about. but yeah, look, I think let's now turn to talking about Baltic Honeybadger. So tell us a little bit about this.

Yeah, it will be third edition. you will join us as well. At least you are listed as a speaker, and we, and we hope that you won't, you know, you won't, refuse to come.

That's right, that's right.

You know? You know, funny, funny thing, last year we had few speakers that actually, were listed on the, on the, on, on the webpage and they were announced, but they actually reached

out themselves. Yeah,

and, yeah, and one of them reached out by himself, like, "Guys, I want to be, I want to, to speak at your conference," and we actually included him, but then he refused to come. No

hard feelings, I mean, things happen, we understand. it's just that, it's always- Yeah. No,

no, no, no, no hard feelings, but I won't invite him anymore to any conference that I organize. But, but in overall, no hard feelings, yes. So,

About the Honeybadger third, third year in a row. to be honest, when we, when we first started, thinking about, organizing s-this event, I wasn't actually Even thinking that it will be s-th-that big and the success of it will be that big, and I'm not, not trying to, to say that we're Doing some, something extraordinary, but I think we're doing a good job here and, we were surprised after the first year how the people reacted to that because at that point Everyone around was speaking about ICO, it was the end of 2017, all conferences were filling, filled with ICO, altcoins, all the blockchain hype, and we just thought Well, we need to create a proper Bitcoin conference that will be, that will focus on Bitcoin and, yeah, in the long term, it appears that we had a Well, proper strategy.

Yeah, look, Anna, you've got a really great speaker lineup. I mean, just looking on your website here, you've got, you know, people like Jimmy Song, Peter Todd, Alex Bosworth, Tone Vase, Pierre Rochard, Jameson Lopp, Dr. Adam Back, you know, Jack Ma will be there. Tell us a little bit about, who you're excited to see.

well, we, we try to actually each year we try to, invite, we try to create something different, out of the previous years. So we don't, we don't like when, you know, the same face is coming and, and Although we invite some, we usually invite also some, some, some same people, but they are doing the different stuff that they are doing previously. So I'm actually excited to, to see and to see the presentation of Jimmy Song, because I was, I was speaking last year on, in Prague at, at on the Hackers Congress And Jimmy was speaking there as well, and he had a, a really amazing presentation on, not the technical part of the Bitcoin, but more into social economical and, and, and, and, basically how the Bitcoin will save us something like that. But it was like amazing talk, and, I'm, I'm excited to see him. And, Also, well, I don't know, maybe Roma can add, who, who, who, who, who is he excited for?

Well, I, I really like that, especially this year, we have a lot of new faces who aren't necessarily very famous in the crypto community, but they definitely have made an impact. So we have guys from, BTC Pay Server and OpenNode, both are payment processors. They're slightly different. OpenNode is kind of a, you know, centralized servers that, ser- server service that charges fees, whereas BTC Pay is an open source project. But it, it's gonna be, a lot of fun to, you know, to have a panel, and discuss, payment processors, and, you know, we have, Paxful founder, we hope to see, some other exchanges, I, I can't really talk about right now, but we hope to, to have more exchange founders and, Executives, this year. and, and just in general, it's, it's really exciting to see, to give an opportunity, to speak to, people who aren't necessarily famous, but who really, really, Do important things in, in the community, and, this year in, in that particular, thing is just, just gonna be great.

Yeah, and, and we, we are actually trying to get, Jack Dorsey second year in a row. And, and, I, I know that, I, I know that, yeah, I know that you were, happy enough to have him on, on, on your podcast. So, Jack, I, I, it's like the last attempt maybe for us, but if you're, if you're listening this, please come to Honeybadger. You know, you will enjoy

it. No, but I think- So, so, so I think I, I sort of realize, I mean, for Jack to, to come to a conference, there's just, i-there, there, there is a chance it's, it's gonna be a shit show, 'cause you know, everybody's gonna come to see Jack and, you know, everybody's gonna come and, and pay attention to Jack and it's gonna be awkward and weird, but maybe, maybe like if, you know, if he listens to that, and, and decides to come, maybe we can, you know- come up with a way in which, it's actually okay. I don't know. it would be nice to have someone who, who has a lot of influence,

outside of the Bitcoin community to, to speak about Bitcoin. But yeah, I mean, I totally understand why Jack would be reluctant to go to conferences like ours.

Yeah, la-- like Latvia is too far away from US, maybe. Maybe, maybe because of that, I don't know. and it's a bit cold in there. September out there. But in general, speaking about the Honeybadger, if I may add, we are always trying to bring people, Roman already mentioned, who are building stuff actually. so yeah, he already mentioned BTC Pay server, guys, OpenNote, Wasabi Wallet, Adam will be there as well, so people who are Casa Hodl guys will be there. we're always trying to, to bring people who are actually doing something, not speaking on the conferences, you know, literally the faces that you see always, but doing something useful to promote Bitcoin and to, to increase adoption, to create a proper infrastructure. And, the second thing that we're focused, we are trying to bring people from different sectors of Bitcoin economy, like VCs, OTC traders, developers, CEOs of the companies, hardware wallet companies, software wallet companies, whatever, name it. So we are trying to, to, to, to do, what we are trying to achieve with Honeybadger, that there will, that there are Participants from different sectors of Bitcoin ecosystem, that it, it will be interesting for anyone, whether you're a developer, whether you're a broker, or whether you are journalist, I don't know, whatever.

Yeah, fascinating. And now, can you just tell us a little bit about what is the typical audience and who should come?

Well, usually We see a lot of people, we see a lot of technical people out there. but, last year there was also a lot of business developers. And people, and actually amount of people who are just willing to learn something new or willing to learn about the Bitcoin also increased. So in general, I think that the, the, the, there's like seventy, sixty, seventy percent of people coming to Honeybadger are technical people, developers, coders. hackers as well, and, forty thirty percent are, business developers, traders and, Journalists and so

on. Well, we, we definitely have a very loyal, customer base. I mean, we have a Telegram channel, where everybody hangs out, and, you know, as soon as we launched sales this year, you know, the, the early bird tickets were sold and, In a couple of days, maybe even in a day, I don't remember. so there are definitely people who, who love the conference just for what it is and, they, they, they would come this year and next year. and, there's definitely a very, very loyal user base. I'm, I'm not sure whether, they're all, engineers, probably not. but it's, it's just really exciting to, to see people being excited about the conference.

And there's a actually very important part about Honeybadger that there's a lot of networking happening, during the conference and around the conference. So-

And it's not like everybody's pitching their own project to-

Yeah, just people just meeting each other, you know, discussing interesting topics. like

I haven't, I haven't had a single person, come up to me and, and try to pitch something. I had that at other conferences, and I haven't heard that anybody pitched anything like that to anybody else. So, yeah, maybe because,

you are sometimes you're not, you're not, you know, you're not staying for the whole day, but I, I saw that, I heard that on Honeybadger. But overall, yeah, overall it's, it's, we're trying to make it like non-commercial event. Where you go and you don't see that people are pitching their project from the stage and you pay money for that. So let's just put it

this way, it happens to you then, okay?

Yeah, it happens to me. all the bad stuff happens to me usually. so, yeah, we're trying to make it like, trying to make Honeybadger educational and networking event, and I know that some people are actually coming to Riga. Not because they want to listen to, to, to presentations or, or listen to panels, which are amazing by the way, but they're coming because of the spirit, because they want to hang out with people who are As much as they're fascinated with Bitcoin and they're just wanting to have a good time, you know?

Yeah, I mean, look, personally, I really regretted not coming last year. I thought about it, but I just, I couldn't make it work and, you know, just, it was difficult. But I'm very happy that I'm coming this year and hopefully I'll get to either, you know, maybe host a panel or whatever, but I'll get to participate in some way and get to meet a lot of, you know, the faces and people who I've seen I'm really excited for that personally. so tell, tell us some of the, just some of the logistical details. When is it? It's in, September and, you know, just some of the, you know, some of those details on where people can go to sign up and find it.

it's fourteen-- well, we have a website, b h two thousand nineteen dot hodl-hodl dot com. you can go there, you can b h

stands for Baltic Honey Badger, so it's b h two thousand nineteen.

Yeah. Yeah. So you, you, you can check out the speakers. some of the speakers aren't announced yet, so we have some big names also coming in as well. And, you can go and buy tickets For Honeybadger, on the website, at the moment we only sell tickets for Bitcoin. in the end of the March, you will, we will have an, we will add an opportunity to buy with, fiat. So with payment cards, something like that. about the logistics, well, the conference days will be 14, 15 September. Riga, Latvia.

Riga is a small city, so there's, there's no need to, to, to, to say something special about the logistic. Just, you just fly in, take a cab, and in fifteen minutes you are in the city center. That's it. And, So the premises of the conference is, actually fifteen minutes, fifteen twenty minutes walk from the city center. you don't need

to take a cab, it doesn't matter, you can just walk.

Yeah, you can just walk, especially if the weather is good. so you can just walk. but if you want to have a, if you want to take a cab from the city center to premises, it will take like five minutes and it will cost you like Five euros, something like that. So it's quite cheap and fast. So okay, that's great. There's no problem with that. Yeah, we also-- I, I wanted to specify, we also will have, last year we, we, we tested this idea, this year we will have we will have, like food court on the street in front of the conference, on the backyard actually. we will have a great after party also, on the backyard. And we'll have two buildings. one building will be where the, all the main stuff happening, the second building will be used for meetings and maybe some chill outs and something like that. So Yeah, it will be. I hope that the weather will be nice and everyone will, will be able to enjoy this.

Alright, look, so look, looks like we're coming to time on the time allocated. Maybe you just wanna give us a, a last, a few closing thoughts on what, what, why people should consider, you know, using HODL, HODL to buy Bitcoin with or sell Bitcoin with.

So to, to sum it up, I think lower fees, non-custodial, which means we doesn't, we, we don't hold, the bitcoins. and, that in turn means that if, even if we're hacked in some way, the bitcoins are gonna be safe. And, So lower fees, non-custodial, no KYC, ML, those are the major reasons to use HODL HODL. and of course, the new prediction market is coming very soon and, there's nothing like it, as far as I can tell, on the market, so I, I hope it's gonna be exciting for many, many people to try it out.

Fantastic. And can you guys just tell the listeners where they can follow you and where they can find HODL HODL, obviously?

we're quite active on Twitter, of course. So in Twitter, it's simple at hodl hodl, and, my personal Twitter account is keidun m, and Roman is, roman snitko as far as I know. Yeah, correct, at

roman snitko. Excellent. Well, I'll put the links in the show notes, but it's always nice to just read it out for the listeners as well. So, alright, well, I think that's pretty much it for this episode. So thank you very much for coming on the show, Max and Roman.

Appreciate it, Thanks a lot and, see you in Riga.

So do consider getting a ticket to Baltic Honeybadger. I think it'll be an awesome time in September this year. It's really one of the memorable, memorable conferences of the Bitcoin calendar year, and it really gets a good crowd with a real community feel rather than the ICO, altcoin, and blockchain shill fests. Also, just as a quick community announcement, you should also check out the Baltathon, which is the world's first virtual Lightning Network conference and hackathon. So hackers sign up and build and vote on your favorite projects for a chance to win some, BTC. And if you're not a dev, not to worry, you can still participate by attending the online sessions featuring previous podcast guests such as Rusty Russell and Pierre Rochard. There'll also be other speakers such as Alex Bosworth, Lightning Koala, and Rockstar Dev. This will be held on April April fifth through to the seventh, and all the payments will be received through Lightning Bitcoin, and because it's online, it's super cheap, it's something like ten dollars US worth of Bitcoin, so come check out the Lightning Revolution at Baltathon dot com. So there you go guys, get amongst it, get more involved in the Bitcoin and Lightning community by attending Baltathon and Baltic Honeybadger. As usual, rate, review, subscribe, share the podcast, show notes are on my website stephanelivera dot com. Thanks guys, see you next time.