BTCPayServer for Merchants

Hi and welcome to the Stephan Livera podcast focused on Bitcoin and Austrian economics. Today we are continuing on with the BTCPay Server series, but first let me introduce the sponsors of the podcast. Firstly, Kraken. Over my years in Bitcoin, I've been really impressed with the way Kraken operate in terms of offering really strong security and just acting ethically in the space. space under Jesse Powell's leadership, supporting various initiatives. They're one of the longest standing Bitcoin exchanges, they are consistently rated the best, they have a high quality platform, the best liquidity in the industry, they've got high trading volume, low fees, no minimum or hidden fees as well. Kraken have twenty four seven support, and I found it extremely fast to go through the sign up process as an individual. They offer the highest available API rate limits for institutions and business solutions, and there's also 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. Check out Unchained Capital, they're a Bitcoin financial services company offering a two of three keys multi-signature vault product. You can use Trezor or Ledger wallets and you still maintain control with your two keys, reducing the single point of failure risk, and Unchained Capital can act as that third signature. Note also they've open-sourced some of this solution as well. Multi-signature helps protect you against that pre- Mobile five dollar wrench attack. Customers who create an Unchained vault also get three free months of access to SafetyNetMoore's Bitcoin Standard Research Bulletin. Unchained also offer Bitcoin collateralized loans, allowing you to get USD liquidity without selling your bitcoins, meaning you don't trigger a capital gains event. So consider your scenario, but that might be more tax efficient for you. While that loan's outstanding, it's stored under collaborative custody. So to learn more and sign up, go to the Unchained Capital link in the show notes. Pavlenex from the BTCPayServer Server team has a really interesting story. He came in as a merchant, helping to write some guides to help out other merchants, and then he became a key member of the team. So he has a really cool story, and I think you'll also find that there's some really underrated or unknown aspects about BTCPayServer, which you'll find out from this interview. So onto the show. Pavlenex, welcome to the show.

Hi Stefan, it's a pleasure to be here as a long-term fan. Hi, I'm so happy to talk to you

today. well, it's a pleasure to have you on. So, Pavlenex, I think we should start with a little bit of your story. I wanna know, how did you get into Bitcoin?

Yeah, so, whenever I tell my Bitcoin story, I always like to start how I didn't get into Bitcoin like most of us, but my story is extra special because I was extra stupid with, so here is the story. Somewhere in two thousand and twelve, thirteen, I have a younger brother, so he- He was twelve at that time, and he worked on a web project with some guy, and, they worked together, and he needed to send the money to that guy abroad, let's call that guy Abdul. So my brother needs to send the money to Abdul, and they are both under age, so they're both twelve years old, there is no way, there is no way for them to send money to each other. So one day I was sitting, you know, at my desk, and my brother approaches me and hey, Pavel, I need your help, man. I need, you to borrow me one hundred dollars and, buy Bitcoin for me. And I was like, "Dude, what's Bitcoin?" And he starts, "It's, you, it's all that internet money, you know, it's mined, and, you know, they made it out of thin air." And I was like, "Huh, you can't make money out of thin air, you fool. Don't let me bit-slap you, you know? You can't do that. It's an Nigeria print scam. It doesn't work that I tried it actually, but I need you to borrow me money so we can buy it and make a transaction. And I told him, "Man, that's not how it works. let, let me do the transfer for you." So we ended up doing a wire transfer. we paid like one fifth of the fees. I need to do a bunch of KYC stuff, and we sent the money to Abdul, actually to Abdul's father. So it was like three or four hops with a bunch of paperwork and stuff, and it was super annoying. And yeah, looking back at that moment, I'm so embarrassed for dismissing Bitcoin, especially because I, I'm a communist and, I mean, what they teach you at school, at school about money, money is actually made out of thin air. The state makes it out of thin air. So I'm now super embarrassed that I didn't understand my brother and the ability for Bitcoin to allow people to transact, without permission, without fees, without, you know, asking anyone, without government. That's, that's my Bitcoin story, how I didn't get into Bitcoin.

Well, it's very typical for most people, I think the first time you hear it, you just, you don't get it. but, it's good, we're glad to have you, working on Bitcoin projects now. And so you are now working on BTCPayServer, which I believe is a very important project in Bitcoin. And the other funny thing is that you weren't actually a technical guy before you even got started in this. So tell us, how did that come about? How did you get started in BTCPayServer without being a technical guy yourself?

Yeah, so as I said, my background is in economy and marketing actually. So marketing people aren't always smart and tech savvy. So I just, got into Bitcoin, you know, in 2016, and, or it was maybe 2017. I mean, I'm not sure exactly, but I started learning about it, I stumbled upon a bunch of videos, and I wanted to buy a t-shirt, you know? I wanted to proudly say, "I know what this Bitcoin thing is," so let me show it off. And I searched for t-shirt stores, and I couldn't find any store. So I decided that I will, you know, make a t-shirt of my own, and I showed it to people on IRC, because that was where we communicated on IRC, you know, the chat room. And I showed it off to people, and someone told me, "Hey, you should sell these t-shirts. They look nice." So that's how I began searching for on how to make a website and how to accept Bitcoin payments. I, I will tell you a little bit into details about that, but I found out about BTCPay on Reddit. Actually, some user was giving me very hard time for using a third party payment processor. He was, "You're so dumb for using this, man. You should use something better. Here is this project that started a few days ago, check it out." So that's how I ended up on BTC Pay Slack. There were like five or six people at that time: Nicola, Mike from Coincards, and maybe a few more guys. So I just, you know, came there, asked a bunch of questions. Nothing made sense at that time. It costed like six sixty dollars to deploy BTC Pay, and Nicola told me, "Okay, you deployed it, now you need to wait, wait like ten days for it to sync." And I was like, "Wow, this, this isn't going to work." And yeah, eventually I managed to get it to work, and I started, you know, asking questions and, questions at, and at that time, Nicolas was, core developer, he still is, so he also helps, developing Bitcoin Core, and I was like a fanboy, I was like, "Oh man, this is Nicolas Dorey, and he's talking to me, and he's even helping me," and he was so kind, and he still is, he helps a bunch of people, he's always open to, you know, discuss and help I actually wanted to help him to, to help other members because I wanted to offload that effort that he was doing. So I kind of started, you know, contributing, giving tips to people, and that's how we started. Fantastic story. But, yeah. So actually, yeah, actually, how I started contributing to BTCPay, I made a guide on Reddit because at that time nobody knew exactly what BTCPay is and me going through all that trouble setting it up, understanding- It for a few weeks, talking with Mr. Doriere for such a long time, and I just made a guide on Reddit, and then the influx of people started coming to our Slack. I mean, people finally understood it, and they were coming to BTC based Slack asking questions, and that's how this whole BTC based thing started to, you know, become-- It's not still mainstream, but let's say mainstream in Bitcoin community.

So that's how

it all

started. Excellent. And with the setting up of the guide, I think that was really the- point at which a lot more attention started to come onto BTCPay Server. actually, just before we get to that though, I'm, I would like to just discuss for the listeners out there who are thinking, "Oh, hey, if I wanted to set up a Bitcoin store, what are the difficulties that I would typically face?" A quick example would be, "Oh, instead of, you know, a common model now when people want to put donations is they just put up one address, and then what are they doing? That's a bad practice, that's address reuse, right? Oh, when I set up BTC Pay Server, it takes time for it to sync. I just want something that works straight away, but they're not understanding the benefit that comes with running a full node. So can you outline some of those difficulties that a typical person might face and why BTC Pay Server helps them solve that?

So, for merchants specifically, when you start a store, you need something of course to accept Bitcoin payments. And most of people will tell you you can just use a Bitcoin wallet, but that's not how it works. Merchants need, an automated way for everything to be handled for them. So, BTCPay is like an invoicing system, si-simply said, which bumps and collects all of your orders in one place and informs you that a certain order has been paid or not paid or requires certain action. So what BTCPay does is that it gives, for each order, it creates an invoice, and each invoice has a se- new Bitcoin address, so there is no address reuse, as you mentioned. And when you run a BTCPay, you're, you're running a full Bitcoin node, so you're not leaking any UTXOs or anything to a third party. Everything is private, and that's how actually Bitcoin should be used without intermediaries or third parties.

Another example might even be with customer support. So let's say I, I did it in the naive way. I just put up a Bitcoin address, and then if somebody tries to send through, and maybe they sent me the wrong amount or it, it just, it's, it's difficult to deal with. Whereas BTCPayServer has a, that invoice function, and you can see each specific sale. Can you outline that a little bit?

Yeah, you really said it well. So yeah, if you had a single address, there is no way for you to know who paid, how much they paid, when they paid. It's all confusing. There Manage it unless you have one order per, per day, maybe even then it would be very hard and it would take you fifteen minutes to figure things out. But as you said, BTCPay handles everything in the background and just presents everything for you on the front end, like nice invoice, you'll see this guy paid this much, you can ship it, this guy needs to pay a little bit more because the invoice was underpaid, and BTCPay handles everything for that. It's a really, an automated invoicing system. That's the best way, to explain it to merchants They explain why, understand actually why it's better than any other system out there.

Excellent. And you were, funnily enough, you were previously known as Bitcoin Shirt, and that's actually when I first met you on Twitter, or kind of virtually met you, I knew you as Bitcoin Shirt because that was your online name. So tell us a little bit about your experience setting up BTCPay Server for your website, Bitcoin Shirt.

Yeah, so I still struggle with that nickname, Bitcoin Shirt. Nicola always calls me Bitcoin. Bitcoin shirt on podcast, so Nicola, if you're listening to that, don't call me Bitcoin shirt, please. Or even worse, just shirt. yeah. So The whole experience at the beginning was a bit, you know, hard to understand for, for me, because there, there was no documentation, we didn't have any videos, so it was a bit, you know, trial and error. But eventually, once you set up BTCPay Server, you just need to install a plugin for your store, and everything is, you know, ready. There isn't much to do, but the whole problem was setting that server up. Now we have an insane amount of ways to deploy BTCPay Server. We have, Documentation, we have videos and there are lots of community members that can help you out. So now it takes like, if you use the web deployment tool, it will take a minute to, to start deploying BTCPayServer, whereas in the past it took me like ten days to figure everything out.

Fantastic. how about customer problems or did you ever have any issues around that? Like, let's say the customer sent through the wrong amount? Did BTCPayServer help you deal with that?

Yeah, so the biggest problem with, being Bitcoin merchant and problems with customers paying is that the customer will use an exchange wallet, so they will send you, pay the invoice from the exchange wallet, and then that exchange wallet takes a little bit of fee from them. Which makes the, then the amount that arrives to merchant's address is always a little bit smaller, and the order is always underpaid. So that is the biggest issue that merchants face, in my experience. It also happens that, like, customers scan, you know, the QR code and then they manually enter fiat amount, and depending on the rate that their wallet uses, then they, they can overpay or underpay again. So it's a bit frustrating. Luckily with BTC Pay, it recognizes those type of invoices and it will mark them in red or in yellow depending on which status of the invoice is, and you will see them in the invoice list that you need to do a certain action like reach out to customer and ask them to pay, or you can just accept that tiny loss and mark invoice completed, on your end. So that's one of the issues that we face. Also, customers, simply don't understand Bitcoin yet, so they ask all sorts of questions. So in a way, merchants are also educated Educating people on how they can get Bitcoin, how they can pay, which wallet should they use. So we deal with questions like that all day at Bitcoin concerts, so it's, it's not that frustrating actually. I feel good that, I'm able to help out people and, actually provide, good amount, good resources for them to properly learn how to use Bitcoin. With Lightning Network, those issues don't exist like underpayment and overpayment because there is this Just everything is encoded in the, you know, the invoice and you just copy. Though some wallets, allow you to change the amount and I'm very, you know, I'm not so happy that those wallets allow you to change the amount because they don't, they aren't merchants, the developers of those wallets, and yeah, it's a problem for merchants. But as I said, Lightning Network really solves some of those issues, but it opens a whole set of new issues. So, yeah, we are still, you know, in early days, I must say that we're in the early days of the Lightning Network, but I'm hoping that it will solve most of the issues. If not Lightning, maybe something else will, but we're, I'm sure that it will

be solved. Just with, Lightning Network and enabling Lightning Network on BTCPayServer, can you tell us a little bit about what that looks like? And what are some of the challenges or difficulties, and maybe even touch on channel management as well?

Yeah, sure. So, specifically Bitcoin Short was one of the first stores that used the Lightning Network. I think that we were one of the fifteen stores that actually set it up in a store and started accepting it. So I know how painful it can be. the first time I experienced the Lightning Network, it was, with Joao, who was a guest on your podcast from Open Note. So yeah, he was, you know, developing a plugin which connects To your, lightning node and, you know, you plug it in into your work commerce, and he was searching for merchants who could help him test that. So I always applied and Joao and I, it was, I think, in September 2017, something like that, very early, we started, you know, experimenting and I didn't understand a thing. So I didn't understand liquidity, I didn't understand channel management, it all seemed so hard to understand and it made no sense at that time. But later that plug-in became open No, they are also good payment processor, they're, you know, now developing stuff and they're also helping the adoption of Bitcoin, just as BTC Pay Server is. Anyway, to get back on a point, in BTC Pay specifically, if you are self-hosting, you cannot use, BTC Pay if you're using a third party host, but if you're self-hosting your server, BTC Pay comes with the full Bitcoin node and Lightning node al-already implemented, so you just need to click one button. Like, you will see in the store settings you have Lightning Network and you click on it and it will automatically connect and deploy your Lightning node. So for that, it is easy to, you know, deploy it. But Since, your new node, you don't have any liquidity coming your way, so basically you are alone on the network. centralized payment processors, of course, have their own nodes which are connected, so for merchants, it is easier to use those type of solutions. But if you're a new merchant using BTCPay, you need to ask someone to send liquidity your way, because you won't be able to accept payments. So there are like, LNBIG, their website now has a copy-paste link which you can input into your BTCPay, and they will automatically send, you know, incoming capacity to you so that you can receive payments. We're also working on some ways making it in the user interface to make, other nodes, you know, for merchants to easily- Easier connect to other nodes, so we're working on solving that, right now. deploying isn't a problem, but, capacity and liquidity is. So people ask those type of questions very often on our chat.

Sure. And so with setting up channels, what about if you were to fund the BTCPayServer instance with your own Bitcoin? and obviously you can open channels outgoing, although obviously that Would not be incoming capacity, but is that-- do people do that also?

Yeah, people. Actually, we have a lightning, channel in our Mattermost, so people open up channels to each other, they, you know, connect. It all grows organically for now, but as I said, we're working on, finding ways to get that, you know, to make it easier for merchants so that they don't have to come and ask, "Hey, I set up a lightning node, but a customer can't send me a payment." And yeah, it's a bit of But as I said, I hope that we will solve that very soon. We actually have some issues open on GitHub already. Nicola opened some of them, suggestions on how we can, you know, speed up that process.

Yeah, and another, interesting idea there is also that idea of flow. So let's say you get some incoming capacity, but maybe it's only two or three hundred dollars worth, and then as soon as you have sold, say, three hundred dollars worth of product, now your channel is, in some sense, exhausted in your direction, right? 'Cause all the money in that-- you know, just for the viewers, it's like you've, you've got an abacus and all the beads are sitting on the merchant side, and now they can't receive any more because all the beads are I suppose, even here there are things like Lightning Loop or submarine swaps as well that are potential, proposed ideas.

Yeah, so balancing the channel is another problem, but in my specific case, in Bitcoin shirt store, so I use my Lightning node to also pay spent and in a way I always organically balance those channels. I never worry about even if I want to, you know, convert them to on-chain, I use an exchange such as Zixag, so it always how to balance is all Organically, it's not perfect, but, for me it works. But I, yeah, as you said, it's also a problem, but I, I think that that won't be a problem soon, but there are liquidity, I think, is a bigger problem and also the lack of lightning ex-changes for merchants, because merchants usually need to sell something or, you know, to pay their expenses in fiat, and right now, maybe there are one or two, I'm not sure that I'm not sure. I think that recently some exchange announced that, you know, there, I, I can't remember the name now. Bitstamp, I think. yeah, yeah, yeah, it was Bitstamp. so, sorry I'm not the exchange guy. The only exchange I use is Bisq, so. very nice. I'm not good with exchanges. so yeah, I'm, I'm hoping that exchanges will provide ways for merchants to, you know, and make their life easier, because right now it's a bit tough for Convert it or spend it, it's a bit tough, but yeah, as I said, it's not a big deal,

it will improve soon. Excellent. Okay, and how about any other points around Lightning Network? Are there any other things that, let's say, I'm a merchant and I wanna think about using BTCPayServer, anything else I need to consider from a Lightning Network point of view?

Yes, so Lightning Network is a hot wallet. So, in BTCPay, we don't have, you know, the only thing that BTCPay requires from Key, there is no private key, so if someone hacks your BTC Pay server, the worst thing they can get is your xPub key. But if you use Lightning Network and someone hacks your BTC Pay server, it's a hot wallet and they, in theory, can steal all the money from your Lightning Network node. That's why when deploying a Lightning node on BTC Pay server, we have a huge warning of things that people should be aware of, that it is still reckless and that risks that are out there And we are of course emphasizing that it is a hot wallet and that people should pay attention not to put that much. but, I think that hacks aren't that big of a problem for me personally. The problems were instability of the software itself. So I lost like, six hundred dollars so far in the Lightning because of, you know, I used an old deployment node and p- things changed. So yeah, it's something that I was aware of and I understand that it's still early Early days, and I'm not mad about losing all that money because, as I said, reckless till death.

So, yeah, so I guess just to explain it then, you, as a merchant, you have probably two main pathways you can go. If you want to be reckless, you can, you know, turn on Lightning, but then obviously now you are being-- you are using a hot wallet, and that means the private keys now live on that instance. And if you're hosting it in the cloud somewhere, that means, you know, if somebody gets access, they can steal your bitcoins No lightning, right? And in that case, I would, let's for example, if I've got a Trezor or a Coldcard or something, I, I would take the xPub and put that into the BTCPayServer when I set it up, but the private key is still held on the hardware wallet or, you know, somewhere else if I keep it that way, and then BTCPayServer can use that xPub to generate an invoice and generate addresses, but it can't spend from those addresses.

Yes, that's correct. You can even use multi-signature so We're working actually at adding the interface so that two people at, at one BTC Pay wallet can, you know, do multisig and all stuff like that, so it will be even more interesting. So I'm hoping that that will actually bring, more users to, because let's say you and I set up a store and both of us, you have one signature, I have the other, and we want to spend money from our store, so you sign it, then I log in, I sign it, and we're all good. But, yeah, b-right now, on-chain is, way more secure. But in BTC Pay, you can actually limit it. You can say, if the invoice is over ten dollars, don't suggest Lightning Network, suggest only on-chain. So you can do that. There are lots of stores doing that, just testing out, because I also think for merchants, it is very important to test this technology. if you understand it now, you'll be, far, In front of your competition, later, be-because if you understand it now how it works, you'll be able to move faster than your competition, and I think, I do think that Lightning Network and, you know, such solutions are the future, and I encourage people to at least test those tiny amounts in the Lightning. It's interesting at least to test it out and try out how it works.

Also, I'm curious, can you-- is it possible to segregate the wallets in some way, like have an xPub just for the on-chain Bitcoin transactions and a separate Separate one for like Lightning or is it kind of all together in one at this point?

No, it's not into one, and that's, I think, the problem actually, because people think that it is all into one, but actually, those are two separate wallets. We have the wallet for the Lightning Network and we have the one for the on-chain. So if you receive the money, it will only, you will see only the on-chain balance, whereas you won't see the Lightning balance in your wallet in BTCPay. And we hope to make them, you know, united and Separate own chain and Lightning, so it's a bit of UX issue right now, but, I think that we will solve it eventually. But right now, as I said, those are two separate wallets, and you can actually use, lots of people use Zap, for instance, if they're LND or they, they use Spark wallet if they use C-Lightning, and they, you know, scan the QR code, code, connect to their node right away, and they manage everything from their phone or desktop, whichever, because BTCPay supports C-Lightning, L I think that also we now support the, I'm not sure the trading implementation, Cooks might kill me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that Cooks added it, I'm not quite sure it's better that you ask him about that, the progress on that one.

Yeah, sure. Let's talk about some misconceptions now. Are there any common BTCPay misconceptions out there? Yeah, so

A lot of people think, first of all, that BTCPay is a centralized company. They see nee-neatly looking website and they think that we are multi-billionaires, and they are not behaving that way. They, they are think that they are entitled to get support and stuff like that. But that's okay, we're used to it. So BTCPay is not a company. It's an open-source project. It's a community of people who work in their spare time on the project and help, you know, even the people who provide support are also volunteers, We do, get donations from people, but those are really not enough to cover anyone's, you know, full-time salary, so please sometimes be patient with us, but, Actually, I think that the support on BTC Pay is way better than any other, you know, BitPay or anything. You will get a answer much faster because there are like six hundred people that are willing to help you. So, but as I said, we're not a company, and that is, I think, the first misconception about BTC Pay. Furthermore, people, still think that it costs sixty dollars to host BTC Pay, because in past it cost, it costed sixty dollars. right now, it doesn't cost sixty dollars. You don't need to use Asia, Microsoft Azure deployment, you can, you can deploy BTCPay Server or on any virtual machine or on any server which, meets the minimal requirements. So basically the, you need fifty gigabytes of storage, you need two gigs or one gig of RAM and Docker, and that's everything that you need to deploy BTCPay. Yeah, you can run BTCPay even at your home in a box on a Raspberry Pi. So, and we have all these deployment methods documented. Also, people, you know, don't understand that there are no fees with BTC Pay, so there are no fees, there are no third parties, you're your own payment processor. That is also-- That takes a bit of responsibility on your end. you need to manage your keys and your stuff. And, also, you know, I would like to tackle a controversial topic because I heard people, you know, centralized payment processors saying, "Yeah, but w-we're a Bitcoin-only payment processor," whereas BTCPay accepts shitcoins, they promote shitcoins. And, I will tell you right away that, core developers, are hundred percent Bitcoiners. I never in my life had any altcoin, beside Bitcoin Cash because I sold it the first day. I, I was able to pull it off, I sold it, so yeah, I'm b- I was a big cash holder. but,

we are hundred percent focused on Bitcoin. you can accept altcoins in BTCPayServer, those are m- maintained by separate communities, the altcoin communities. we don't help them integrate. I, I heard people saying that we are paid by Shitcoiners to integrate Shitcoins, that's ridiculous, really. I, I can't understand those sorts of social attacks. attacks people are trying to do on, open source software, but yeah, as we grow, we need to use-- get used to those kind of attacks. So we don't maintain those altcoins, we don't test them, we don't advertise them in any way, we don't, you know, tweet about them, and, we don't do invasive changes on our software in order to accommodate, shitcoin. when you deploy BTC Pay out of the box, there is no any shitcoin. You need to have a certain level of technical knowledge in order to activate shitcoin. So we don't, we don't, you know, promote easy way to add shitcoins. Also, it costs in resources to run shitcoins, so, If you want to run it, you need to pay for it. It's like Nicola calls that a shitcoin tax in a way, because you need, you need, yeah, because you need a better virtual machine, you need a better server to run all those nodes. So yeah, we are focused on that, we don't maintain, and it's, it is a bit sad, and I, I will be honest with you, it hurts sometimes to see comments like that, because that is the only thing that people attack us about, and we are just not focused on that. Sure, sure

Exceptions. there are a bit, few more, but I think those are the main ones.

Let's also talk about the, the decision a merchant has to make when they're thinking about what they wanna use BTCPayServer versus using a more centralized payment processor. Now, you know, my, my view on this is I think we, we want there to be many different options, but it's important, it's very important that BTCPayServer exists as that final option that if not, if no one else, it's there. So do you wanna just touch on your

Yes. So first of all, I'm completely agree with you on that one. So, as someone who's working on BTCPay, I don't wish that to all the third party payment processors. I think that centralized payment processors at this stage are important. People need them, they need, something easy, they need instant fiat conversion, and that's what they get with using a cen-centralized third party. So, differences between BTCPay and third party or centralized processors, let's say Let's call it a day. let's call it like that. But, the biggest difference, I, I think that BTC Pay versus centralized processors isn't even comparable because it's, it's like comparing a car factory with a car. Because when you deploy BTC Pay Server, you're actually becoming a centralized payment processor. If you want, you can use BTC Pay to, to advertise it and allow other people to attach to your node and use it to process payments for them. So what BTCPay provides you is a technology to become a payment processor. So it's like a mini BitPay factory, that's how we call it. So, when you deploy BTCPay Server, it's like you're deploying your own BitPay. You can allow your friends, or you can allow your local community, you can, you know, make a company out of it, if you want, and allow them to easily connect and transact. So it is not, easy to compare such, such solutions, you know, because BTCPay is so much more than just to Bitcoin payments, in my opinion, and actually it's a fact, because we have way more features than those centralized servers. Also with BTCPay, it is very important that there are no fees There is no any, you know, KYCAML, there's nothing because you're your own payment processor, unless you want to dox yourself to yourself, then, you know, you don't need to provide any sort of data. When customer pays to your BTCPay, if you're self-hosting, no information is, shared with third parties. You know, that PayPal shares information with like six hundred companies, I think. So when you pay with PayPal, you share your information with a bunch of other companies. When you pay with BTC Pay, the information is only shared between your, you and the merchant. No third parties are involved in that process. So also in BTCPay, you can use it as a full node wallet. When you deploy BTCPay, you can use, you know, Nano Ledger S, for example, and just use it as a full node wallet for maximum privacy and security. And as I said, I think that, you know, centralized payment processors are important at this stage, but that model isn't something that makes sense in the long run, I think.

Excellent. So just with that idea of having multiple people use the same BTC Pay Server, can you just explain a little bit, just for the merchants who might not be clear on how that might work? Like, does BTC Pay Server doesn't have segregated wallets and different xPubs, let's say?

Yeah, that's exactly, true. So, when someone deploys BTC, we call those, type of people third-party hosts. So when you deploy a BTC Pay Server, you have this box which you can tick and say, "Yes, I want to..." Open registration for other people, and then you're opening your server for other, other people to register. They input their own xPub key, so you don't see that, of course, as, whoever deployed it doesn't see it out of the box that someone even entered xPub, and, you can allow those people to connect and receive payments for free. You can of course modify it if you're a developer to charge fees, charge subscription fees or whichever you want, but, third party hosts are free BTCPay Server instances which allow other people to join and just receive Bitcoin payments for free without hosting their server. And there are, I think, a bunch of those instances, we have them listed. If you go to BTCPay documentation, you can see third-party hosts, and you can also read about the privacy issues, that can bring because you're essentially using a centralized payment processor when you're using a centralized BTCPay server. I mean, the BTCPay server hosted by a third party. But, it's better for people to read that document because it is-- we go quite in detail why it is important to run your own server, which privacy and security advantages and disadvantages are there when you use a third-party host. But there are instances, for example, BTCPayJungle hosts, for, I think, eight hundred merchants, so there are just one BTCPay instance allowing people to accept Bitcoin payments for free. The thing is, anyone can use that, anyone can become a third-party payment processor and all- Of their local community or, you know, in their country to accept Bitcoin for free, or they can modify and charge fees, as I said.

Now, you mentioned the idea of using it as a full node and with your own hardware wallet, so can you just explain that because I think some listeners might like to know about that option?

One issue that merchants face, specifically is a gap between what? Gap limit is, usually marked to twenty addresses. what that means is if someone creates twenty invoices on your BTC Pay server, you won't see, your wallet, such as Electrum, stops following, after twenty-- first is created, they stop following the balance from it. They just think that, you know, stop following. In Electrum, you can increase the gap limit and you can follow it, but in BTC Pay, you're relying on your full node. So in Electrum, you're Depending on third party servers, when you use BTC Pay, you have your own full node. So, you can use, BTC Pay wallet to send your funds and don't share your UTXOs with anyone. So everything goes through your own full node. You just plug in your Ledger, Ledger Nano S, and you can send payments. right now, we only have, Ledger Nano X integration, S, sorry, integration, but we're working on adding Trezor, and I think, you can actually- Also use cold card wallet, it's also supported, so it's ledger and cold card are supported, and you can use BTC Pay wallet in a way more private way. For example, if you go to Treasure's website, you use their wallet, but you're leaking your information to their servers, right? You can in the same way use your BTC Pay wallet, but you're leaking information only to your node, so you're not leaking basically information. It's way more private way of using, a Bitcoin wallet. I hope that I was clear on that one. I'm not sure. Yeah,

I think so. I just wanted to clarify then, so for example, if I use a cold card and I put the xPub for that cold card, into my own BTCPayServer, and could I then use it to sign the transaction itself, or how would I, how would I do that part?

Well, with cold card, you can also use partially signed Bitcoin transactions, so It's also a way more secure way of using it. It's not something that I recommend for newbies to use. It's, for newbies, I think Ledger is way more easier to understand and use. But you can also sign the transactions partially with your cold card or any other wallet. We also added an option for you to sign a transaction with your, mnemonic seed. But, that's just because, we needed for people to add a way for people to spend from their BTC Pay wallet. But if you don't want to, you know, it's very-- it's not the best security practice, you need to use Tor browsers and stuff like that. If you want to use, you can use Electrum wallet, maybe it's better to use it that way, with BTC Pay. So, my point is here that, BTC Pay wallet, allows you to sign transactions, with Ledger, with Cold Also your seed if you want, but we don't recommend that you use it.

Yeah, I think that might be another handy option that I think a lot of my listeners might not have thought of before, because it's not a very well-known fact, I would say.

Yeah, so one of the things I always like to-- I, I thought that I need to make a video about it, because people just don't, aren't aware of the possibilities of BTCPayServer. We allow you to connect your Lightning node via, just a simple QR code scan. So there are many Not advertise yet, but you can do that. Excellent. So it's not just a payment processor, it's also a very private web wallet.

I love it. Yeah. So let's talk about some of the guides and the videos, because I think you have been very instrumental in making some of those guides and videos. Tell us a little bit about your experience there.

So usually open source software has a documentation which is technical, and they usually tell you, "Just run this command and you're good to go." when I first came to BT- BTCPayServer documentation and everything was exactly like that meant, made for developers, but for regular people, in order for them to understand your open-source software, you need to make a little bit, you know, newbie-friendly guides and videos. And, what we saw at BTCPayServer is that people, nowadays love watching videos and tutorials. So, for each new feature that we add in BTCPay, I make a video, I explain it, because no matter how some- how- How hard something is to understand. If you guide a user step by step, do this, click here, and you're explaining why you're doing that, why it is better, in a ten minutes video, everyone can do anything with BTC Pay. So you just watch a video and you'll understand it. And that's why we're making lots of videos. Our YouTube channel has, I'm, I'm not sure how many videos right now, but I really try to make a video for every feature we have on BTC Pay because people like watching them and they-- it also reduces the amount we have Supporting them because, you know, you watch a video, everything is clear, you don't have questions, good for us, we don't have to provide support to you. But yeah, videos are something that I really recommend to other open source software that they need to find someone because, if you find the developers don't like doing videos, they, even if they do it, it's so technical that I just tell them, okay, we're not doing this video, let me do it in a newbie friendly way so that people can understand it. So yeah, op-- I recommend to open Open source software, that they should have one or two videos at least explaining the software to people and just, you know, how to use it, how to run it, walk tr- walk people through that, because it really reduces that stress that people have with the complicated software like this one. So yeah, videos are a great way to get more people to use your software. And yeah, as you said, we really see an increasing amount of users after those videos and documentations and decreasing the amount of support, so it's a win-win for everyone.

Great. And do you see any difficulties, I suppose, when you come up with a new feature and then sometimes the old videos are now out of date, so you've got to update those?

Yeah, so that is one thing that we really try to be, you know, careful We, when adding a feature, we always try to see how it will change our videos and documentations. Docs are great, you can change them right away, we change them, but with videos, as you said, it is tricky, and we try, not to make that much breaking features, but at some point, we will completely rewrite the user interface of BTCPay, and that will be, the day when I need to spend a month or, or two, or making all of these videos again, but I, I don't mind it, I, I'm certain that when That I didn't know, so it's fun for me to make those videos and people like them. So yeah, it's hard to edit them, but yeah, you have user documentation, so you can always balance those two a bit.

Yeah, and I suppose even though it costs time to make the video, it saves you still, because that saves all these other people coming and asking support questions as well, and it helps people use it.

Yeah, exactly. And it, it doesn't cost much time if you get used to it. I mean, you, you can get a decent mic like

Supporting software like, I use Snagit, I think it's called, so you can just showcase. It's really not that hard, I think. So yeah, people make videos for your software, it really, really help users and it will decrease the time you have to s-spend supporting them.

Great. Let's talk about the BTCPayServer community. What's been, what has your experience been in building that?

I must say that BTCPayServer community is one of the best communities I ever, you know, came into and experienced. People are so open there, it's, quite different from other Bitcoin communities. We really try to help each other, support each other. Everything is open. I call Bit- BTC Pay for me is like an open organization, because everything is open, each change, each decision is discussed publicly, so everyone can see, you know, what we are working on, and, that way you get people's feedback. So when we, want to add a feature in BTC Pay, We discussed it with our community. We asked people on Twitter, we asked people on Mattermost what they think, and that's how, best idea always win, no matter where it c- comes from, the best idea always win, and that is, why closed source software will never be able to beat open source, because even for our website, we have twenty people, fifteen people constantly providing feedback to developers of our website, and our website is pixel perfect, it works just because everyone is so excited about it and everyone wants- To help in a way, and, you know, people provide feedback and help us improve everything. So everything is openly discussed. It's really a pure joy and to be the part of such community. building such community can be a bit hard because you need to channel all, all that energy that people have. everyone wants to help, everyone has some sort of idea, and how do you choose the best one? So we, as I said, we always discuss the ideas, but sometimes you need, you know, to say, okay, this is It's a bad idea because such and such reason, technical or UX reasons, and yeah, you need to communicate that idea to people so that they don't get, you know, frustrated or offended. You need to engage them to maybe improve that idea or provide another one, and I think that we are quite good at that because we try to get the best out of everyone who wants to help us build BTCPay. We don't dismiss them in any way. When someone new comes to BTCPay community chat and they say, "Hey, I want to help," I usually approach them in private and ask them, "Okay, what are your skills? I'm designer. Okay, could you make us, you know, a poster for BTCPay? Okay, sure." And then slowly, step by step, you get, they get, bitten by BTCPay bug because, you know, they get addicted to helping, be- because when someone, you know, provides, or, you know, works on open source software like BTCPay, they really-- I, I at least feel that,

religious person, but it really gives you the good sense in your heart that you're working on something good and that you're helping someone, that your work is appreciated, and that you're helping in making something very big.

I love it, that's great. Let's talk about what open source tools that you guys use when you're, you know, working on BTCPayServer. I can think of already, you've got Mattermost, you've got GitHub, go on.

So the first software we use is of course GitHub, that's where all development happens there. Second, we use Mattermost. I will now show you I have their pen because I'm their fanboy. Mattermost is an open source solution to Slack. in past, we have our community on Slack, and we have like, over a thousand users out there, but we really felt that as an open source project, we really need to use someone-- something that is open sourced. So we migrated to Sl-- to Mattermost, and Mattermost is fantastic piece of software. I would recommend it to any open source project out there. It is also free, and if you want a better license, they will give it to you if you're Open source software, they will give it to you for free. So it's an amazing piece of software, and we run it on a ten dollars virtual machine, so it is uncomparable to Slack, where you need to pay that amount just for a single user that you have. So we also use, Transifex. Transifex is also great software. You can discuss that with Britt Kelly. She handled, she handles that. It's a software that help us translate BTC Pay software, website, videos, everything. They also provided us With, free and open source license for us to use. And, I think there are a few more, but I, I can, cannot remember them now, but basically we use a lot of open source tools. We try to use everything open source because we're open source, source project. So,

how about this project that you're running as well? It's called BTCPayServer Merchant Directory. What, what's going on there?

So that's, one of the ideas, That we recently started to implement into BTCPay. on Mattermost, we divide, channels into small projects. So let's say someone has an idea and wants to make, as you said, BTCPay Merchant Directory. So we create a private channel, BTCPay Merchant Directory, and I ask people in public who wants to participate into this small team, let's create something. People volunteer, and that's how, you know, in all of those small channels, there are all sorts of people discussing things and making software improving We have designers, testers, we have, you know, marketing people, everyone, you know, likes helping. So merchant directory is actually, a website which we're working on. I think it, it should be ready in, I think, five or six days. Basically, we want to help, merchants, advertise themselves. So they will, we h- we will have a merchant directory which will list, all BTCPay stores, projects, apps, whatever people are working on, they can submit their project there and we will list it. For others to, you know, showcase it, for others to see, read about it, and click a link or maybe test it or buy something. as I said, being a Bitcoin merchant is sometimes hard advertising platforms like Facebook, Google, they ban you. I experienced that with Bitcoin shirt. I made an ad and they simply banned because it just mentions the word Bitcoin. So, merchants don't, especially those accepting Bitcoin, don't have a way to advertise themselves. That's not something that's known that much, but it's really an issue because we are, you know, subject to censorship in that way. So merchants either post on Reddit You know, spam the Reddit and people are not happy about it, or they, you know, use their Twitter to promote their stores. So we're trying to make a website where merchants using BTCPay can get the word out and people can, you know, buy from their stores and stuff like that. So I think it's a very nice little project, it's very simple, anyone can contribute. And as I said, we engage people. We now have like five or six new contributors working on that single thing, and they feel happy about it, they're excited, we just, you know, help Direction in which that has to go. We don't, you know, order them what to do or anything, we just let them develop something good, and I think that you will be happy when you see that merchant directory alive. So it will be very good. We also have channels for website and stuff like that everywhere or Mattermost. So we have small teams, I call them task force teams, so they are just, you know, small teams working on all sorts of things, and it is a way better way to organize open software, like that, so small teams working on On, you know,

different projects. What about working with Rockstar and, his Rockstarism philosophy? What are your thoughts on that?

Oh, yeah. So Rockstar is my favorite person, besides of course, Nicolai and Cooks. I love those guys. Rockstar is an amazing psychologist. I talked about h-him in one of my tweet storms, but, Rockstar seems like a goofy guy, you know? He-- nobody takes him seriously at first because he's Rockstar He always has some joke to tell, you know. But actually, he's great, psychologist. we're so lucky to have him, inside our community because he has that talent to notice when someone in the community isn't good. And that's very important. And I don't know how he has time to talk to all these people, but when someone, you know, you see that people are, are just, not toxic, but, you know, they're, they're just not themselves. So Rockstar, creates a session, video session With them and talks about their problems and he solves their problems and, we call that rockstarism. And, you shouldn't do rockstarism when you drink, because it won't work with girls. I tried it and, yeah, I was not, that doesn't work with girls when you're drunk. So, rockstar, sorry, but your rockstarism doesn't work well for me with girls, but I, I, for me, for other things, I think it works. It helps me find my focus, what I'm happy about. So thank you, Or your Rockstarism. But to back, to be back, you know, on point, it is very important to have people like that in your community. I mean, Rockstar is developer, he's marketing guy, he's product manager, whatever, he, he has all sorts of, you know, talents, but he's, first of all, he's very good with people and, you know, getting the best out of them, and I think that that is very important. So yeah, thank you Rockstar for that.

Fantastic. Alright, Pavlenex, let's talk a little bit about how you think BTCPay can be improved. So, Stefan,

one great thing about BTCPay is that it works the way it is. It is great, people use it, people are happy. But there are, there is an insane amount of improvements that we can make to make it so much better, so much easier to use to, you know, get people to even more less tech-savvy people to it. So first of all I hear from people that BTCPay UX is good, like, I've never seen an open source project with UX like this. My opinion is that it isn't good. We still have a mountain to climb when it comes to UX. So if there are any UX people out there looking to help or work on open source software, please come to BTCPay, we'll be happy to, you know, help you out and ask you for tips and help. So first of all, we need to improve that UX. personally, what I would love us to improve is that initial setup process. So you set up your BTCPay server And then you need to create a store, create your account, and connect your wallet. I would love if we could connect those three steps into one. Imagine that you can just plug in your ledger, and it creates everything for you. That's one way I think that we may be able to reduce two steps with ledger, like it creates your account, it secures with U2F authentication and stuff like that. Furthermore, sometimes, in this era, of course, when everything is mobile, I would really love, if we could have at least a remote BTC Pay Server app for, for start, which would allow you to scan a QR code and, you know, remotely manage your BTC Pay Server. Unfortunately, we don't have any that many mobile developers out there, so again, if there are mobile developers that want to build BTC Pay app, come to our chat and... Discuss it. And besides that, one day I would really like if we could, if we would be able to run a full node on a mobile phone and BTCPayServer running on a mobile phone for people. We're still not there. There are many things before that that we need to do, but if we manage to do that, that's going to be crazy. Imagine just installing an app and running, running a full node with your BTCPayServer. It's like having your own bank in a pocket, and that's crazy. That's, that's one of many of- Dreams that I have for BTC Pay. That's awesome. But yeah, so yeah, ease of setting up, UX, and mobile app are top three things. And also, if there are developers out there, we have all of our GitHub issues labeled UX, UI, you know, good first issues, so everyone can-- people who want to help us can tackle those issues. We try to manage them very clearly so that they can help us out easier.

Yeah, that sounds awesome. Now I think that's a great vision to build towards. I, I wanna finish on this other point that you were making. I saw you making it, and you were saying that essentially BTCPayServer adoption in some way actually helps Bitcoin's decentralization. So a quick example, Luke Dasher has spoken about how he believes something like eighty-five percent of Bitcoin's network should be running a full node to help protect Bitcoin. I think you were touching on that. Do you wanna expand on that?

Yes, sure. So one of our goals actually Actually, is to make running full nodes fun and easy. People will run a full node only when they have a benefit of running it. So if your full node, allows you to have lightning node, you will run it, of course. You, you see that we see an increasing amount of light, of nodes now because of BTCPayServer, because of all those lightning apps, software, you know? So our goal is to in-increase the amount of full nodes Nodes on the network because it is the only way any of us in the community sees that, that is the only way Bitcoin should go. So of course, not everyone will run a full node, but if we can get as many people as we can, that would be great. When you run, when you deploy BTCPay, as I mentioned already, you're running a full Bitcoin Core node, you're running, running Lightning node and all, all other things that, you know, maybe Cooks can touch up on the architecture later. I can, but I will leave that to him because he's Tax savvy. But, as I told you, it is my dream that, anyone can run a full node, especially every merchant out there running a full node, and I think that BTCPay can, can make that happen. one of the ideas that I have Is, if, big or any point of sale company implements BTCPay Server on their own hardware, imagine millions of merchants out there running full nodes. the impact for the network would be crazy. I mean, can you imagine some small shop just running a node without even knowing that they're running a node? And that's the ultimate goal. People shouldn't be, you know, scared of running a full node. It should be fun. It should provide you With features that you otherwise wouldn't get, and it should be implemented in the way for people to not even be aware that it is implemented. So if, We, we can get as many merchants running full nodes, that would be great, because for them it is also important, their node validates all the transactions they receive, it makes sure that nobody is cheating them, it makes sure that everything is running nicely and secure, and that you are, you know, making your own rules on the network. So it is your vote on the network, and people should be running a full node.

Especially merchants. It's a great vision to really, finish things off with. So look, Pavlenex, lastly, before we let you go, let's, make sure you just tell the listeners where they can find you if they wanna follow you online and where they can obviously, keep up with BTCPayServer.

Yeah. Sure. So first of all, BTCPayServer dot org is BTCPayServer's website. We have documentation there where you can read more about BTCPay. We have videos where you can, you know, watch everything that I You can find me on Twitter at Pavlenex. I, sorry, I, I have no idea how to spell it, so there'll be a link there, yeah. So you can find me there, you can visit my shop bitcoingshirt dot co, and you can find me on BTCPayServer Mattermost. If you have any questions about BTCPayServer at Pavlenex, I'll be happy to help you out, set it up, and even, you know, talk about the ideas you have for BTCPayServer. So just ping me, and I'll be happy And you can also ping Rockstar if you would like some philosopher to help you out with your life, you can ping Rockstar.

I love it. Alright, well, look, I think that's pretty much it. So thank you very much for coming on the show.

Yeah, thanks

for having me, Stefan. It's been a pleasure. So there you go. Make sure you share this particular episode with some of your friends who are looking to use BTCPayServer as a merchant, and this will give them just an overview on some of the key things to think about in terms of how they would set it up for themselves. If you wanna find the show notes, you can go to stephanelivera.com and just keep an eye out for the upcoming episodes. We've got a few more to come in the BTCPayServer series. That's it from me. Thanks for listening, and I'll speak to you soon.