BTCPayServer, Tor crowdfunding, and Rockstarism

Hi and welcome to the Stephan Livera podcast focused on Bitcoin and Austrian economics. Today we have a very special episode. It's the start of a series on BTCPayServer. So the episode today is with Rockstar Dev. But first, let me introduce the sponsors of the show. In a space where there are many Bitcoin exchange hacks and many exchanges that come and go Kraken are one of the longest standing Bitcoin exchanges. They are consistently rated the best, they operate really well, and they've got an incredible focus on security. They've got a high quality platform, they've got some of the best liquidity in the industry, they've got high trading volume and low fees. Kraken also have twenty four seven support. If you're on the institutional and business side, they offer the highest available API rate limits. There's a Kraken OTC desk. Kraken offer five fiat currencies and also offer margin and futures. Trading. To learn more and sign up, go to the Kraken link in the show notes. Have you looked into Unchained Capital? They're a Bitcoin financial services company offering a two of three keys multi-signature vault product. You still maintain control with your two keys and you still reduce the single point of failure risk. So multi-signature helps protect you against the proverbial five dollar wrench attack as your keys are distributed. This is an option for individuals and also for institutions. The institutions have an option to do a one of three keys setup where the The third key is actually held by an independent third party also Unchained offer Bitcoin collateralized loans so you can get USD liquidity without selling your bitcoins, meaning you don't trigger a capital gains event. While that loan's outstanding, it's stored in collaborative custody with Unchained. So to learn more and sign up, go to the Unchained Capital link in the show notes. So this is a special interview series I wanted to do about BTCPayServer, an important project in Bitcoin that helps provide free, censorship-resistant payment processing for merchants. Along with many other benefits. Quick note, if you haven't already listened to episode s l p forty eight with Nicola Doria, go and check that one out too. I may even retrospectively add it to this series. Hopefully after this series, you'll be motivated to try out b t c pay server for yourself, familiarize with it, and teach your Bitcoin newbie friends how to set it up. Also, how cool is it that b t c pay server is being used as part of the recently announced Tor crowdfunding campaign? Go and donate to the Tor campaign and to b BTC Pay Server also. Rockstar is a funny guy, and I really enjoyed chatting with him. Here's the interview, which I'm sure you'll love. Rockstar, welcome to the show, mate. Thanks, man. So Rockstar, you're, very well, you're infamous in the Bitcoin community, and I thought it would be great to get some focus on you, and people can learn a little bit more about your background. I wanted to start with your name, Rockstar Dev. Now, I understand within the software Recruitment world, there's a bit of a trope or a meme of this idea of, "Oh, you've gotta hire this guy, he's a rockstar dev." Or the person trying to hire someone be like, "No, we really want a rockstar level developer." Is that where your name came from?

Well, I mean, it is that kind of a joke, right? Because everybody's like, when they say they wanna hire a rockstar developer, they really want somebody who is working 12 hours a day, right? Without requirements or anything. So it is a joke, but actually there is a-- there is a se-secret meaning behind that name which I will show you when we meet in person and, you know, do the party stuff. So you, you will also get that component of being a rockstar.

And the other, the other trope is, the one of how, let's say some new technology has only existed for two years, and they'll say, "Oh, we're looking for someone with five years experience." So look, I think BTC PayServer has been around for- Less than one year. So look, I'm looking for somebody with at least three years BTC PayServer experience. Have you got that? Yeah,

yeah, I do, man, I do. And then there is that also great comic on the topic, right? Where they're hiring Rockstar developer and the guy, you know, just throws the chair out of the, out of the office and, you know, like starts partying at whatever, and then they're like, "Yeah, let's hire this guy." So we just, just turn it into a joke, I guess. I guess that's If you're, if we're serious about software development, yeah, you want, you always want steady guys, right? Like low profile ones. I mean, even, even if you look at the Bitcoin development The, those that are really driving Bitcoin development, you don't see them, you know, shit posting on Twitter like me. So, you know, the, the guys are actually doing work, and then when you ask them a question, they're very serious, steady, and- So, I don't know, us Rockstar developers will just, you know, entertain people and let the, let the, you know, guys do real work and we'll help as much as we can with our own effort, right?

Right. And let's, let's talk about your background as a software developer then. Tell us a little bit of how you got into it.

Yeah, I mean, I was always fascinated with computers. It's just one of those things as, as a kid where, you know, like, especially when, when you're starting out and you're just like playing games on computers, right? And back in the '80s and '90s, the games, I mean, they, they left a lot to be desired, and you need to use way more imagination than today, right? But there were some seriously good games even back then, and then I was fascinated with computers, and beyond playing games, it was always this concept of automating work, right? Because, I guess that's, that's how all humans are wired. If you can do, do something once perfectly and then have that repeat over and over, like that's extremely attractive. So So that, that was, that was the biggest thing for me, that's like, and I simply wanted to understand how to, you know, direct these devices to do my bidding and, And I started my, my first day programming, like I even did BASIC back on Commodore 64, but I really got into it, you know, with the .NET framework when Microsoft released that and my first job is was like 2002, so looking that now it's 2019, man, I'm old geezer. 17 years professional. No, I mean, I'm serious. I, I know, especially today I also joked on Twitter how these young, upcoming guys, like, back in the day when I was, you know, I mean, it's still 2002, so it's not too much back in the day, but man, programmers weren't as pretty as Nicholas and, and Blue Matt. So.

Well, you gotta be an attractive- No, in here you saw that, right? Like you saw how attractive both of them are.

Come on. Yeah, for sure, for sure. I, you know, how, how, how, how can a normal mortal keep up with someone that attractive? It's very difficult.

Yeah, and I mean, it's, it's ridiculous, man. Like not only great programmers, but like good-looking guys, I don't know. But to get back onto me, yeah, 2002 started professionally, and since then, 17 years in this coding thing, I've- Programmed in, you know, big companies, small companies back in Europe, sometime in Asia, then here in US last ten years, mostly startups. And, yeah, that's, that's me and programming in short.

So how about your experiences then, contrasting whether you've done open source development versus closed source development? What are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, I mean, it is quite interesting to compare how, how it is working in a, in a some corporation or on a project that's proprietary and everybody's like, "Oh, you know, nobody can see this code." Like, and, and usually when nobody can see the code, it's, you know, pretty shitty. So that's always been heresy. Like, if, if somebody won't let you see their code, like, you can bet it's pretty bad. So But, but what fascinates me when I compare those two fields is, how underfunded open source is and still how passionate people are about it, because if you re-really look at it, like there is really no other profession that, like Uses their free time the way programmers do, right? Like you have programmers who work eight hours for some corporation, and then, you know, you ask them like, "Okay, when you go home and what is your hobby?" And they're like, "Okay, more programming." It, it is kind of ridiculous, so but it's, it's fascinating to me really, and especially on BTC Pay Server, it's fantastic community, lots of passionate people, both programmers and, you know, non-programmers, but people that are still really important, really contributing a lot, and I would say I would really say like if you wanna get into Bitcoin development, but, you know, you, you can't start from Bitcoin Core or you're not, you know, C++ wizard, you come, come and see BTCPayServer, I'm sure, you know, people will stick with, for, because of the community.

So let's talk about BTCPay Server and why it is so special. It was obviously, you know, everyone knows the story of Nicolas Dorye and so on, but from your point of view, I'd like to hear, why do you think it's special?

Well, I, I think it's special if I start going through my list of reasons, the number one is definitely BTCPayServer as a model. Because, and, and I even said this recently in some discussion, I think with Pierre,

our awesome Pierre, that I really believe the future of, especially Bitcoin is, is open source. Like any big company in Bitcoin ecosystem that wants to, you know, being impactful and, like good For the community will need to be open source, exactly because, the, the, one of the biggest beauties of Bitcoin is that, you know, opting in and opting out. And, you know- proof of work where you are picking, you know, w-what is Bitcoin by simply like looking at different parameters. And, And, and when I said BTC Pay Server as a model, I meant on, you had a situation with BitPay that was extremely unfortunate, where they were the ones deciding for Tens of thousands of merchants, you know, what is Bitcoin? And not only they were deciding, but they were, you know, trying to You know, make, like, be funny with, with the whole thing and, you know, lead the narrative in certain direction, and it was like, "Yeah, we will just-- Transfer all the merchants to SegWit 2x, if you don't like it, you know, tough luck. And people were, like, all those merchants that were using BitPay were in an unfortunate position, because you wanna keep your business running But you don't wanna support SegWit 2x, right? So, so that's what I love about BTCPay Server. That, ill, you know, example of a model how this whole should work. If BitPay wants to be a big company, Bitcoin ecosystem, ideally they should have been open source, and then when they management decides to support SegWit 2x, then every merchant can say, okay, yo, I don't support it, I'll bring up my own instance, you know, this is Bitcoin for me. And And, yeah, I wish to see that for all the projects in, in Bitcoin ecosystem to, you know, have, have that ability to. For people to host their own instance and have full access to, yeah, source code.

Yeah, I love what you're saying there about that idea of self-sovereignty. I think that was a lesson that many Bitcoiners learned, this idea that in the past, oh, I'll just trust BitPay to, yeah, deal with it for me. But now with, what happened is essentially the anti-fragility of Bitcoin kicked in, and then BTC Pay Server came, and now people have that option to not trust Some external service, and one cool thing about that is when you run btpay server, you're actually also running a full node.

Yeah, yeah, and it's all, all about that, and if you look at Bitcoin itself, it's so- Fascinating how now you have this,

money or however we call it, I mean, it's not even money, it's, it's, it's like a new element, you know, new gold that, that's completely, but, but you have a system to transfer value between people without, like- Without any, you know, intermediary eventually. And what fascinates me with Bitcoin mostly, like, is how, like, it's such a big invention, first money that's not issued by government, and yet people are still, you know, talking, you know, it's You know, a bubble, it's this, it's that. I don't, that Peter guy is crazy with gold, man. So funny. It's like he can make-- what, what, what did he say? He can make, cufflinks, right?

Yes, it was cufflinks. He was basically trying to say something like, "You can make something out of it." Or he, he's very focused on this idea of going back to like some kind of industrial value to it.

Yeah, yeah, man. Everybody will, will have gold coins and carry them in those little

And then, I don't know, man, it's so funny. But, no, but, in all seriousness, respect to Gold community, but that guy is just It's, he's so funny, man, I can't help it, and it's my fascination with people like that that just, you know, they decide and then they try to make the whole world and everything fit their, you know, views. The, but, but yeah, they make so many good jokes in the process so you can at least laugh. Yeah,

we can have some fun along the way. well, another topic I'm interested for you to touch on is, now, I, I agree with you about this idea that I think the future is going to be open source, but I'm just envisioning some listeners who maybe they're not as familiar with that idea, they might be thinking, "What? Hang on, how am I gonna protect my own business model?" So, do you have any thoughts on how a company can But still be profitable.

Well, yeah, I don't, I don't even need to go into details considering that Mattermost raised what, like, fifty million VC recently? Because in the end, it's all about service, that's how I see it. It's, it's all about creating value, and especially with software, that's, that's something that more and more people are realizing. I mean, source code itself, I mean, it does depend on the model, but I would say you will have increasing number of business models that simply work without so much focus being on, you know, let's hide the code, right? If you look at, I don't know Red Hat as an example of open source done extremely, extremely well. You're in position where you can send zero dollars to Red Hat, yet people are sending them tons of money, and what like IBM bought them for thirty-five billion? You, you just realize that at the end of the day, it is all about value creation and interaction between us humans and then, you know, organizations, those groups of people that come together to provide a service. And just Providing building value and always like the most of the value is not in the code, man. I mean, it's, it's value is always between people, and even if you look at Bitcoin as an example. I, what's, what, what's the value of, of that source code? It's, again, all the network effect, all the people, you know, that are participating in Bitcoin ecosystem, it is community, it is history even. So source code is there, people are trying to fork it, you know, creating their own Bitcoin or whatever they, you know, try to peddle, but in the end It's, yeah, it's, it's people. So, you-- so that's, that's how I really see the future and, and more and more companies are realizing that. I, I, for example, love what Microsoft is doing on that. Topic, I mean, they're open sourcing more and more, and they, they just should keep going and, yeah.

So yeah, so I think, aligned with that is, it's this idea that you might produce certain software, but what typically happens is that the people who are coding that or working with that have a better knowledge of it, and they can then deliver it as a service. So even though the software, for example, in the Red Hat model, which is a famous model, the software itself is free, but then it- And if you want service and the support, that's where you pay them.

Yeah, yeah, and I mean, again, like there are likely softwares that will forever, Or for at least a reasonable amount of time, stay close sourcing models where, I don't know, you're, you don't wanna source code of every, I don't know, Candy Crush game clone from App Store, right? But Really for, for anything in Bitcoin ecosystem, like I, I really believe all the companies should, should go in that direction and then focus on service. And it, like, I'm, I'm really, you, you would need to give me examples and I'll be hard pressed to identify a company that, you know, needs to stay close source in Bitcoin ecosystem.

Yeah, no, agreed. And another point that you might touch on is around this idea of, in Bitcoin, it's very, as the Bitcoin itself is a bearer asset, those, he who holds the private keys holds the coins, and then even by necessity, the code has to be open source for that reason. reason as well, so that people can place trust in the software that they're using.

Yeah, and, and really, it's, it's such a great feeling to participate in this global community of people and improve in that fashion where everything is public. I mean, just look at you and me, man, how would we ever meet if it wasn't for Bitcoin and everything, right? And it's, it's really beautiful because you meet all these people that you share beliefs with and somehow together. You're, you're working together essentially, like pushing forward this great system that will make humanity more efficient eventually. So Fascinating, really.

Now, let's talk about some of your experiences in building up the community of BTCPayServer. You're seen as a leader in that, so tell us about that.

Yeah, I mean, those guys are, I don't know if, if they would vote me as a leader, maybe as a chief entertainer or something. But yeah, again, it's, we can come back to the previous question of open source, and it's, it's just that, like people see what you're doing, and then they, they can help you. They can look at it and say, "You know, this is missing, or that is missing," you know, maybe I have this knowledge that's That's needed. And when, when I look at our translator community, for example, I, I love, I love all those people, even though I don't know, you know, most of them. Because like somebody's helping you, you are helping them. It's, it's poetry in motion, man, really. And for me, when I, when I joined up, I really like joined because I wanted to code something with Nicholas. I mean, we, we knew each other before this project, and I was following his work and basically said him, you know, "Whenever you need, plus one." I'm, I'm there, and then he started this BTC Pay server stuff. it also allowed me, like, it, it was a good opportunity because I spent a lot of time, Being anonymous troll on Reddit, right? And you can argue, you know, so much with people before you go crazy. So I was, I was really frustrated and demoralized with, you know, civil war and everything that was happening, and I had skills, I wanted to utilize those skills. So when Nicola started BTCPayServer, I was like, "Yeah, let me join in, let me not argue with people if Craig Wright is a Satoshi, man." I, after twenty a discussion when somebody was saying, "Yeah, Craig Wright is a Satoshi," I just couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't explain to people why, why he's not. And this was back Like in what, 2017, 2016. But yeah, I then joined Nicholas, and from there it was just whenever good person joins, you want to be there, you know, too. Greet them, to interact with them, to see what skills they have, what, what, what skills they possess or not used in their everyday life, and BTCPayServer can use it. And people, people are great, people will do phenomenal stuff as long as you just give them opportunity to do so. So that's really all I've tried. When it comes to building up community. And then, considering my experience, you know, with being in software industry for so long, I really wanted to- You know, add people around Nicholas because he's this, you know, Peter Pan man. If you look at his history, he's always, you know, doing something amazing and then jumps to the next thing. And with BTC Pay Server, I really wanted to, to see, you know, if he can be supported more by people, because he, he's not like some of the people that are very loud and have a huge reach. He's so focused on the code, and I really wanted to help a little bit with that, and, you know. Add people around him that will further amplify what he's doing and, man, it's, it's been phenomenal. Like, I can maybe try to take credit, but really it was, it was just luck, man. Especially when you look at people like Pavle Cooks, Britt Kelley. As key phenomenal people, it's just thank you guys for, you know, being on the project with, with me. So.

So tell us a little bit about how people fall down the BTC Pay Server rabbit hole, for example. Do they join the Madamost chat group and then they start hanging out and then they try and contribute in a certain area? What's that process look like?

Well, yeah, the way that I see is people essentially see something that bothers them and then They do something about it, maybe come to matter most, start interacting, and as soon as they start talking with me, they fall in love and stay forever on the project. You're just a charming man,

Rockstar.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, I mean Really, if, if I think about Pavle, Pavle really was kind of like that. He, he came and he was helping with documentation, and I, I guess BTCPayServer project was the first project that really ac- you know, like noticed and acknowledged everything that he was doing, because, man, he contributed a lot even before BTCPayServer. Then for Cooks, Yeah, with Cooks, he's just crazy, man. Like, you, you, you will see, he's just crazy and he codes. And when I, when I was saw that, I was just trying to get him, you know The more I can connect him with Nicholas, the better it is, because with programmers, you, you do want this, what I call vibration. Like you want two people that are Vibrating off of each other, you know, some-one person does this, other person does that, and they just keep amplifying. So- And Britt Kelley, yeah, Britt Kelley, as I already said, she's an angel that fell from the sky and is trying to help humanity, you know, beat entropy, so.

Rockstar, I'm also curious to ask you a little bit about your philosophy. I've heard it's called Rockstarism. Yeah,

yeah, man. I'm, I'm really philosophy buff. Like really big into philosophy and

With Rockstarism, it's really another joke, and I say it's a branch of nihilistic philosophy that it acknowledges the nihilistic philosophy essentially, that it says, "Yeah, everything is pointless, right? Everything sucks." But with Rockstarism, we need to take, you know, optimistic twist about it, you know? Yeah. Exactly, because everything sucks and everything is pointless, like, let's- Do fun stuff, you know? Yeah. And, I, I actually, when we were talking back about building up community and the whole thing with Britt Kelley being an angel man, it, it does come back to rockstarism and, and, building up community because- It's, it's interaction between people and the stuff that we don't know, those are the interesting topics. And I think also when we talk about this podcast, for example, like the- The, the whole interaction between two individuals, you know, philosophizing about certain topics, like that's the, the, the core of, you know, the whole experience and why people listen to this and participate and like so. More power to philosophy, yeah. And if anybody wants to expand their knowledge, reach out. Let's talk about rockstarism and that optimistic twist and all of us being rockstars and contributing. So,

I love that. I love the, the way you sort of act on Twitter as well. You're sort of like, "Oh, it's fine, you can take it out on me, but we're just all gonna keep building and keep going anyway." And that's, that's kind of the way you operate.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, for- For me, especially, especially a few months back when there were all that fun, fun stuff with the attacks on the project and everything else, I, I do think my philosophical background helped with that, although I, I'm not sure if people understood that I was serious or they thought I was trolling, because I, I was mentioning, yeah, we need to go back in time and kill Vitalik. But You, you read that post or no? I'm not sure if I read

that

particular place, no. Yeah, we, we need to link that post. I was actually being serious. I mean, if we invent time machine and go back and kill Vitalik, like, save all the resources being wasted on Ethereum and all that, we'll just- No, but we will just have the bigger problem with, with Justin Tron and that, what is the other name, like ByteMaster, right? Right?

Dan Larimer.

Yeah, the, the one that just keeps building the system and, and just when the money runs out, he has the new idea for the new project. I mean, that guy is so much fun, man. But, but anyways, yeah, if we take out Vitalik, we have even bigger problems. So Yeah, I, I really think my background and philosophy like shows there that everything is for, for the reason, and we should keep supporting lesser evil essentially, because it's, you don't always have, you know, good choice and, and bad choice, most of the time it's just you need to pick between lesser evils.

On the topic of less evil, how about the topic of good? In And the open source funding model around the world of Bitcoin, who are some people who do it well?

Well, a lot, a lot of people are doing it well and I'm really hoping that eventually, as we transition maybe towards having more and more of Bitcoin ecosystem being, you know, open source, because today it's not. Today really the companies that are making the most money in Bitcoin ecosystem are really closed source. Focused on, you know, stockpiling more power and, again, the ones that contributed to the ecosystem, good for them, but the ones that didn't, like, we need to find alternatives. And yeah, for, for me looking at, for example, RTL, right, the lightning, that's awesome project. I mean, LND itself also, love the way they're organized, see lightning Again, but, but really like the non-funded open source project, I would say like Raida Lightning, really, really great project, and, what Pierre Rochard is doing with, whole things, bringing the people up, up and running with full nodes. That's freaking fantastic. And finally, I'm really, really looking forward to seeing what will happen with Square Crypto, how that will completely play out. I had the opportunity to talk with, Crew there in Square Crypto and lately with, Steven Lee, who was hired to spearhead the effort, and the guy is Just like, I didn't know him before, but when I met him, first talk, second talk, he's phenomenal, man. You always want high energy people and This guy is so high energy that I can't wait to see what will happen with Square Crypto effort.

Yeah, I had the chance to meet him as well in San Francisco just briefly, but my experience of him was really great as well. He's really, sounds like a really switched on guy, and the way he's trying to help project manage Bitcoin and project, you know, Bitcoin development is really, really smart idea. So

yeah, yeah. I always, I always want people that, you know, you look in the eye. And you see you're clicking, and then as soon as you're done, they're back with something, and that's what I get with Steve. It's, it's just constant stream of energy, and I can't wait to see that, you know, energy harnessed and hopefully we have this explosion of All the services being open source and then people being able to, you know, that self-sovereignty component.

Yeah. speaking of open source software funding. I'm also interested to discuss Tor. Do you wanna, expound on that a little bit?

Yeah, I would be really glad to talk about that because BTCPay Server itself, like, we, we are not funded to this point by anybody, right? It's just a bunch of people coming together and self-funding it. And, yeah, Nicholas helped a lot with funds actually, some- Other people from Bitcoin community, we did have a fundraiser, and, it's, yeah, I would use this opportunity whoever donated, even if you donated a dollar, thank you. It's really great to be a community project in that sense. but, we essentially built this crowdfunding and, used it first for us, and it was successful. People liked that model, simply. So what we started thinking, you know, if, if we ourselves can't, be sustainably funded, let's, let's at least try to make it happen for somebody else. And, Right, like do, do good. So Tor came up, as, as a project that we definitely want to support in Bitcoin community, like everybody loves Tor, right? Because it is very important open source project. So We reached out to them, came up with the agreement, and actually, I think the day after you release this podcast, there should be, Tor crowdfunding campaign up and running, so people please be on the lookout for that. And, again, it will be Bitcoin focused, it will be hosted by BTCPay Server, we'll have a lot of great people. supporting it, including you, Stephan, probably. Of course, of course. So yeah, I mean, just come together, enjoy, you know? First time together, interact over Twitter, and try to repeat, you know, it probably won't be as we're, we're all hot or not, it won't be as big bang as that was, but still, we'll, we'll have fun, man.

It's one of those things that- You can uniquely use BTC Pay Server where every other option is gone, you can, you, you pretty much, you can still fundraise with BTC Pay Server. So that is an interesting point of differentiation that BTC Pay Server can offer compared to basically any other payment processor.

Yeah, I mean, it, it all comes from that self-sovereignty, like the fact that you control 100% of the technology. And I, I often try to explain to people that BTCPayServer isn't really like payment processor, as much as it's really becoming a technology stack, and you have more and more people that just use BTCPayServer to run their nodes, or they use BTCPayServer as a starting point for their own development. I, I, for example, love what Jeff did with Patron Libre, Libre Patron, where he essentially provided Bitcoin alternative for Patron. The only problem is Nobody like really took it forward, instead people are trying to build something new or from scratch, while they really should be supporting that effort. So, so yeah, I mean- That, that's again, w-we were talking at the beginning of podcast why I like BTCPay Server, and it's exactly that, you get hundred percent control. Of course, for some people, like too much control just, like, they can't do hundred percent because of the knowledge, but I believe we should always start from that premise, you know, hundred percent control, and then eventually as ecosystem develops, there will be people that hope host for the others. And then, you know, if that hosting doesn't work out, you always have the option to go toward more control, you know, for

yourself. Fantastic. And with the Hodlnaut campaign, so as the listeners probably are aware, there was the Lightning Torch, and Hodlnaut was famously the one who started this, and then when- Craig Steven Wright, the, the fraudster, tried to sue Hodler Nord. There was a big campaign. So tell us where BTC Pay Server came in there and some lessons from that.

Yeah, but what do you mean fraudster, man? The man is Satoshi, right?

No, the, the, the best video, I mean, one of the best video, because Craig is really entertainment, man, but the best video is that, Guy yelling at him, like "Fake Torchi, fake Torchi." He's like, "Goodbye, fake Torchi." Yeah, goodbye, fake Torchi. So, yeah, but with Hoddle Not, I actually just happened to meet the guy a few months back. Because we, we had this crazy meet between, you know, people in the Bitcoin space. I mean, to be honest, there were some also people that are, what, shitcoiners, shall we call them that? I mean, yeah, they'll be like, "We're, we're all hodlonaut," yeah, that's the name of the campaign. But, It was a great meet with great people, it wasn't Bitcoin shitcoin, it was more like DJ, like that was the, the title. And I loved the guy really, and we stayed in touch after that, and then the whole craziness with Craig happened, where they're just looking for promotion and piling on this guy that Can defend himself because of the some stuff, and they unfortunately identify that and- You know how jerks are. Whenever they identify a weakness, they just start pounding it more. Yeah, yeah. But luckily we have Twitter and Really, all the action on Twitter is in DMs. Like, I must say, like this, all the action is in DMs, people like this, public thing with likes and retweets, no, it's not there. So, we had a pretty good group formed around, around the idea that we should do something. And, from there it was just execution. I mean, we really moved fast, really fast, and, I can see that some people are still playing with the domain names, with, you know, loser dot com and, and the other domain names, but We actually wanted initially, we actually wanted to use some interesting domain names to drive the campaign, but in the end, lawyers wouldn't let us, so we only went with weareallhotonline dot com So just, it, it was phenomenal, man. It was really phenomenal, and I guess that, that's also where we really- Took it to the next level and understood that we can use this technology for more fundraising, and that's why I'm excited for, for, to see how it will follow up and from there really, whatever community, like whatever cause. Community identifies as good, if, you know, we are needed from like BTCPayServer team will be there to help and, and support with the knowledge.

Excellent, well, that sounds great. I'm, I'm also interested to just talk a little bit about, if you had any experiences in terms of growing up and living in hyperinflation, did you have anything you wanted to touch on there?

Yeah, I mean, for me, I'm really, I was really impacted with the fact that, you know, growing up you had the government doing what, what it was doing back in like former Yugoslavia and I, I, it, it really left a big mark on me. And w-when I think about all those formative years, I, I really- needed to take some time to come to terms with what was happening, and then actually when I discovered Cypherpunks and the whole Cypherpunk movement, I was really glad because I, I understood I'm not completely crazy, and these things that are important to me, like, you know, privacy, by default and all that stuff, it, it, it wasn't just me or the impact of situation in which I was growing up. But rather there are people that even, you know, grew up here in US and were sensitive on those issues and understanding how important they are. And for hyperinflation itself I mean, it's just, just that unfortunate thing of, you know, power corrupting, where you are telling to yourself that you're doing something for the greater good, right? And, when you have control over money, that temptation to print money just to, you know, make things right is, is so So, so huge. And with hyperinflation, yeah, it's, it's just terrible, man. For me, when I thought I would be probably like the last generation to grow up, grow up in hyperinflation. But obviously, what did I know? Now when I look, man, we have hyperinflations even today with all the countries, you know, something just goes wrong and then government is like, "Oh, you know..." Foreigners want to invade us, we need to print more money, you know, to defend, you know, poor us. It's just so, so unfortunate, and I don't see that cycle breaking up until we have hyperbitcoinization, you know, like- When, when we have, you know, the Bitcoin standard essentially, because politicians is, is If they have option to solve the problems by printing money, that's what they'll do. I mean, it just, that, that's the way out. So.

Yeah, and I view BTCPayServer as a important project, as part of that mission, because the other thing is, in the past, other attempts have been co-opted by the government. So PayPal got shut, you know, they got co-opted by the government. And so that's why a project like BTCPayServer is so important.

Yeah, and Man, the, the more you talk about how, how much you love us, like the more I'm loving you. I mean, I, I don't know how, like, where is the end and where is the boundary limit?

it, it, it is really that, and if you look even at the arc of history, it absolutely bends toward individual freedom. As soon as we had the technology to make individuals more free, that's what happened. And, people are saying, "I don't know, Bitcoin will disappear or this will disappear." No, it won't. I mean, people want to take- To separate the state and money, the same way they separated state and religion, for good reasons, because you do want that separation. You don't like, a-as soon as you're technically able to have that separation, like you should do it. As soon as, I don't know, you don't need all people to be farmers working in the field, being You know, general, generalist instead of specializing, like that's what you do. I mean, and, with, with money, it simply will happen, people will, people have been trying to separate money and, And state for a long time, and finally we have technology to make it happen. So, yeah, that's, that's what's coming up and what we will see, and we will need a lot of technology to make that reality and to make it. You know, user friendly, seamless, and it's just, it's, it's an honor really to be participating in that, in, in whatever capacity.

Alright, so look, turning our eye now to the future, do you have any ideas around future directions or ideas that BTCPayServer might go down?

Yeah, I mean, I would really talk first maybe about future of BTC Pay server itself, but then I do believe that future will be interesting in, in a wider perspective of whole Bitcoin ecosystem and how it will impact BTC Pay server, because, Number one thing for BTC PayServer absolutely is making it a sustainable project and a sustainable effort, because right now And ever since in-inception, it's really been going on a goodwill of everybody involved, and I am hoping that to see more support for the project that goes beyond, you know, love of you and me and this individual people who love BTCPayServer and gets more into, concrete help from companies that operate in Bitcoin ecosystem, because We do want to use this model of, you know, hundred percent control by end user and individual, but still the code base that's flexible enough that can be run by some enterprise. So I would say that's number one thing for BTC Pay Server, that's sustainability, and whoever can help with that, please feel free to reach out to me. And I'll be, I'll be glad to talk. Number two for BTCPayServer when it comes to future is doing more work that will further solidify BTCPay Server as a development platform, you know, something that people can build on top of. And I already mentioned Jeff with his Patreon alternative, like that's fantastic service, ride the lightning, also you can run it on BTCPay Server, and we really have good architecture that allows, regardless of technology used, you can plug in into BTCPay Server. And, and run. And i-it's a fantastic platform, and we will be doing more work to, you know, further m-make that like more easier, and also build a new API that's free of BitPay legacy and bad design choices. Yeah.

Excellent. So what about you then? I know there's a couple conferences coming up. Where can, any of the listeners, if they wanna meet the legend in person, where can they find you?

Yeah, well, the first one that's coming up is, Bitblock Boom in Dallas, and there is also a great dinner organized by SNI Jeff will be lifting weights with people like that will be freaking fantastic. So that's the first conference, and then I'll, also be coming for that, Honey Badger in Riga. That, that one will be freaking crazy, man. I, I, I already am preparing people and, talking with, with the crew, the DJ and crew. So likely a lot of them will be there. They'll probably pile on me for the shitcoin or comment, but you know what? We'll, we'll be partying, so yeah. Hopefully they won't mind it too much, but we'll, we'll just have fun. And Yeah, really on Twitter, whoever wants to reach out, talk, banter on anything BTC Pay Server, Bitcoin related, I'm always there. So, holler, and yeah, we'll- We'll start interacting.

Fantastic. So I think that's pretty much it. So just wanted to say thank you again for joining me today.

Yeah, thank you, Stefan, for everything.

I hope you guys enjoyed that. Make sure you donate to the Tor crowdfunding campaign and donate to BTCPay Server. Also, share this episode and interview series with your friends so they can also get an insight into BTCPay Server. Show notes are on my site stephanelivera.com. That's it from me. Thanks guys, and I'll speak to you soon.