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- [00:00]
A
Sam. Foreign Bitcoin Monday Freaks. It's a beautiful Monday morning over here. We got a great show lined up as always. This is Citadel Dispatch. The show focus on bitcoin and freedom tech discussion. I'm your host Odell. The current bitcoin block height is 940918. Six sats per dollar is 1355. The fiat price in dollar terms I guess that was also the fiat price is 73,753. We got a little pump going on this morning UTC time. It's Monday March 16th at 1800 UTC. You will be listening to this in a few hours once I clean it up and get it uploaded. Bitcoin priced in gold. One bitcoin can now buy you 14.46 ounces. We're pumping in gold terms. We're up on the one day, one week and one month. Now we're just watching that one year. I think we'll flip that hopefully relatively soon. As always, Dispatch is funded by viewers like you. We have no ads or sponsors. So thank you freaks for supporting the show. Our largest zaps from last week was blockchain boog with 50,000 sats. He said. Big fan of Sideswap. Thanks for interviewing Scott and letting people know about this awesome project. We also got a 50,000 sad zap from Prodigious. Great content as always. And then we got two 21,000 sad SAPs. We got vertical Vines. Longtime Dispatch listener here, currently trying to liberate 3D printing. Love to hear it. And Rod Palmer, very bullish on Sideswap Scott and simplicity. Thank you freaks for your support as always. If you you do not have sats to spare I know they're hard earned. You can also support the show by sharing with your friends and family. Citadel Dispatch is available on every podcast app. By searching Citadel Dispatch you can also all relevant links are at citadeldispatch. Com. Also by the way Freaks, just real quick, I've been going down an AI rabbit hole so I told you guys about citadelwire.com which is my AI powered news desk which is getting quite good. So check it out if you haven't. But I also decided to start making games so you can go to Citadel arcade. Com Coin operated nostalgia fund. Simple games, no bullshit, no ads. You just pay a hundred sats. That's seven cents right now FYI guys and get on the leaderboard. But check it out. Citadel arcade. Com Anyway we have a great show lined up. I have Leah here from founder founder of Vexel and she's focused on P2P exchange. No KYC. Bitcoin buying. How's it going?
- [03:17]
B
Hi, Matt. I'm doing. I'm doing fine, thank you. Thanks for having me.
- [03:21]
A
It's a pleasure. We've. We had the pleasure of spending some time together back in January and we've been trying to get this show to happen, but life has been getting in the way. So I'm very excited to actually have it happen also. I mean, I've been going down a bit of an AI rabbit hole, so the freaks have been getting AI shows left and right. So it's nice to be back to the basics of bitcoin.
- [03:42]
B
Like I. I would say like the deeper basics of bitcoin. Like the very first sentence of bitcoin white paper, kind of bitcoin with me.
- [03:50]
A
Yeah. So what is Vexel? Why should people care?
- [03:54]
B
Vexel is a mobile app that allows you to buy and sell bitcoin and products and services for bitcoin like it was intended. And when I say like it was intended, I don't mean intended by myself, but Satoshi Nakamoto himself, who in the very first sentence of the bitcoin white paper said that bitcoin should be peer to peer electronic cash that would allow you to transact without going through third parties. Right. But, well, it's not where the industry really shifted over the past couple of years. Certainly Vexel is our attempt to bring bitcoin back where it belongs. And that means from the hands of institutions to the hands of the users.
- [04:42]
A
Love it. So, I mean, the freaks are very familiar with the risks of KYC lists of bitcoiners and our transaction history. Obviously it's become very pervasive through the bitcoin space, but also just pervasive, I think, through all of our digital lives. It's not just bitcoin. It's very obvious in bitcoin because the friction is heavy when you mix freedom money with highly regulated KYC services. But it's everywhere. It's in social media land. I mean, it's all over the place. Once you start paying attention, you start to realize that it's really, really seeping in everywhere. So it's cool to see Vexel launch in that environment, I guess. When did you guys launch? About two years ago.
- [05:21]
B
I think it was two years ago. It was launched globally, but we've been launched locally here in Czech Republic and Slovakia for a year before that. So that means altogether three years.
- [05:35]
A
Love it. So the basic premise is it's a mobile app that people can download with A very straightforward UX and then they can buy and sell Bitcoin with other people. Correct?
- [05:45]
B
Exactly. And well it might sound like, well what is interesting about that, right there is zillion apps and desktop, there's mobile apps that do exactly that. But what Vexel brings to the table as an innovation is their reputation model, I dare to say. And with us it's quite interesting and I know it will sound controversial in the first place, but hear me out. So basically on vexflow you can meet only people you know or people you know know. While everything you see on the app is anonymous and end to end encrypted, you always know that you can't meet strangers and you can't trade with strangers. That's very important. And so how it works, when you download the app and you log into it, we determine your social graph based on your contact list and your mobile of your like phone contact list. And we show you the offers that are only encrypted for you in within this certain social graph. And you don't know who you're trading with or you don't know until you decide to reveal the identity to each other in an end to end encrypted chat. But with every offer which is anonymized, you can see how many common contacts you have with the, with the counterparty and who these people are. Which when you zoom out is very interesting because you always know per every offer in which social bubble bubble you are kind of moving within. If you really think about it, the innovation is that we actually this way, this way we managed to bring the real world reputation into an app which, which I think it's a, it's something well unheard of before.
- [07:37]
A
Yeah, I mean I think as someone who's been neck deep in both the education side of Bitcoin and also building products in Bitcoin. The ideological stance of privacy best practices only gets you so far. Ultimately what scales is users choose what's most convenient to them. So what I think is cool about Vexel is that yes, I'm sure you probably have been bootstrapped with a bunch of users that really care about privacy and they seek it out. But as it scales it's probably more just users finding it the most convenient option. And you guys have really done a good job of nailing that ux, nailing that user experience. So it's actually more convenient than using whatever your local KYC regulated exchanges. And that's how we actually see massive user growth in these types of use cases. Would you Agree that I almost kind of, I kind of think of it and I haven't been in this world for a long, long time now at this point. But it's kind of similar to the dating app issue, right, where people don't want to meet with strangers but they want to meet with friends or friends of friends.
- [08:43]
B
Exactly. It's. We are actually, actually even joking. Like it's a tinder for bitcoiners, but with privacy and steroids. I know it doesn't sound like that, but yeah, it is. And I'm very happy that you actually, well, pinpointed the UX because that's something I'm very proud of. From the day one, as we started designing Vexel and thinking about Vexel, I kept asking myself the question, like, would my aunt be able to use this without the guidance? And that was my guidelines for any kind of UX decision we were making. It's like, it's a huge focus since the very beginning that it must be understood by rookie users because like, look, if a product needs a two hour long tutorial, it's not a good product.
- [09:35]
A
Yeah, no, I always say like, if we're doing things right, you should put BTC sessions out of business. Like someone shouldn't like have to go and watch a two hour YouTube video to use your product.
- [09:49]
B
That's amazing. KPI. I don't want to point fingers on BTC onto BTC sessions, but so far, so far, no guide on, on Vex.
- [10:02]
A
I. So I mean the bitcoin side of P2P exchange is relatively straightforward. I mean bitcoin was designed for it. It's super easy to send a bitcoin payment between two people. The hard part has always historically been the fiat side, whether that's dollars or euros or whatever on your platform. What is the, what's the most common way that people are, are exchanging that side of the equation?
- [10:30]
B
Just, just to be sure, like you're asking me what is the, you know,
- [10:34]
A
like, so, so there's been heavyweights in the past, right? Like let's say bisque has been around forever, right? And bisque, if I'm making a bisque trade and I'm trying to buy bitcoin and it's usually it's someone on the Internet, I'm not meeting them in person. It's like the bitcoin transfer side, they can send me bitcoin super easy. I give them a bitcoin address and they send me bitcoin. The dollar side is the difficult part. I'm like sending Them wire transfer or in Europe, like a revolut payment or something like that. So how do you see people using the dollar or euro side of the equation?
- [11:06]
B
Okay, gotcha. Okay. So basically it's always the local currency. And the really important thing to note when we say peer to peer, what we are encouraging is actually meeting in person, handing over whatever Fiat coin you want to hand over. Cash. Yes. But that being said, if I connect over Vixel with someone who is sitting in an open space two desks from me, yes, I will when the money or revolute the money and I won't care. Important thing when we are like, we can't say and we don't know and it's impossible for us to know how people behave in reality. And. But what I wanted to state is that the exchange itself happens out of the platform. We never touch fiat, we never touch bitcoin, we never touch any data like, associated with the, with the transaction itself. So. But mostly, mostly what we know that means literally what people are tweeting, if they are tweeting or telling us when we meet them, is meeting in person.
- [12:08]
A
So there's a lot. I mean, cash is obviously ideal here because it's a kind of a bearer asset and there's no chargebacks and it's very private. I mean, I don't know what the deal is in Europe, but in America, unfortunately, cash is quickly becoming the exception. I like, looked at, I go to dinner with friends or whatever, I pull out cash from my pocket. They like look like I'm crazy. Everyone's throwing cards on the table. There's a whole informal economy in the US that's based on Venmo. You know, like my nanny, she usually accepts Venmo payments. I don't know, the dog groomer, everyone accepts Venmo. Cash is the exception for them. Like, I'm one of the few people that pay them in cash. So I'm expecting that as you scale, more people will be using these, I don't know, these controlled Fiat Rails and they come with a bunch of fraud issues. How do you think about those? Like, if someone sends a bitcoin payment, obviously it's not reversible. It's beautiful, right? Bitcoin is fantastic. But if there historically with P2P exchanges, because Bitcoin is not reversible, there's been issues with the, the fiat side and obviously, I mean, it's. I think it's really cool that you guys don't touch any of the actual flows of money or see actually the details of the transaction. So maybe you're limited there. But like what does a user do if they get defrauded basically on the dollar or euro side.
- [13:31]
B
So it's actually, it's hard to be like to get fraud on Vexel because, well, as I said, like, maybe, let me repeat, the reputation model is all about like having common people you both know, right? And so you are strongly incentivized to behave properly on Vexo because, well, just easily, I mean simply you don't want to be called a dick among your friends, right? So and this, this works. Of course there might be like attacks like men in the middle attack or someone can try to impersonate your whoever that might happen. But it's very easily mitigated and it's actually something that works beautifully. On Vexo in like three years we might have had maybe one man in the middle attack we knew about. And unfortunately like we can't do anything because we don't even know that the transaction happened. Right? Like we have literally nothing with it. All of the communication is end to end encrypted. The offer isn't end to end encrypted. We don't know the users so well. But having this reputation model, I described what is actually happening. So as I said, you might reveal the identity in the chat to each other with your, with your counterparty. But there's the point where someone could be impersonate, impersonating someone else. So what you do, and this is actually happening, and this is, and it works really, really flawlessly, is that you ask the common contact for a recommendation and you don't even have to ask if, or you don't even have to tell that, okay, this is, this is, I'm trading bitcoin with them or whatever. You can just ask like, is this a real person? Do you really know them? Also it allows you to individualize, to have very individualized look on the risk assessment, right? Because well, if I'm trading, if I need to buy €100 in Lightning, I don't need to reveal identity and maybe I don't even need to ask a common person if I will be trading one Bitcoin on chain with $70,000 in cash, I will ask couple of people if I want to meet that person and if they are legit. So and honestly like most of these, most of these issues can be prevented and most of the fraud can be prevented if you're meeting with a person in person and if you are sane and actually treated as for example, dating well, you Wouldn't meet someone in the middle of a forest in the middle of the night. You go to a public place, you have a coffee, you wait for two confirmations, you take the cash and you shake hands and you split. So but that being said, like as I said like this, these are hypothetically possible, but it's very rare on Bexel because like, well, inherently people want to behave properly when they know they might be ostracized.
- [16:35]
A
Yeah, no, that makes sense to me. Is there. Do you have like a report mechanism or something if something happens or.
- [16:44]
B
No, I mean we have the. Because that's one of the challenge of like anonymous or like privacy aware apps. Like how are you tracking success? And like what are your KPIs? So we have some kind of. We have like very basic tracking with data that is aggregate it anonymized, stripped of whatever identifiers there could possibly be. There are noised. So we are more like spotting like transporting instead of like we can't have like exact, exact KPIs. And one of these metrics is after you close a chat, we prompt you to leave an anonymous feedback where you can tell us like if the trade went well or not and if it didn't go well, what was the problem. So, and it's rare like mo. Like if, if, if there is like it's rare that there would be a fraud. I don't think we ever got any kind of report like this. What we got was maybe like yeah, the counterparty didn't show up. So.
- [17:47]
A
Right, I got ghosted.
- [17:48]
B
No, we have different kind of policing of the network and that's basically because we cannot prevent users. Sorry, yeah, we cannot prevent you to like buy 10 phone numbers and log with 10 phone numbers and what we can do because. Well, if I block you, you can just like try again.
- [18:11]
A
Right.
- [18:11]
B
And as I'm not doing kyc, I cannot block Matt Odell.
- [18:15]
A
Right.
- [18:16]
B
But what we can do and what we are doing and this thing is another thing that we consider, consider like to be really like working out for us is like we are shadow banning offers. So that means if there is an offer that was problematic, if three people and this threshold can be changed, if three people mark that and flag that offer, we stop showing it to, to like no one. So even if you're a scammer or you're a shady person or you send like dick pics in, in a chat, well you just, you, you won't be shown to, to other users.
- [19:00]
A
That makes sense to me. Is, is, is the goal For Vexel to be a for profit project and if so, how do you make money?
- [19:13]
B
Well, vexflow app, what we are speaking about is working pretty much the same way as Signal, right? So it's a Vaxel T app that has the developer account that is employing people, employment, contractors, et cetera. And on the top there is Vexel foundation that is supporting Vexel and also other privacy and their projects, communities, etc. So it's not just for Vexl, just basically the foundation dedicated to defending individual financial freedom and well, but of course, and the Vexel is the app. Well, it was brought to life as a gift to community and it was brought to life because our very deep dedication and deep belief that we need an app like Vexel and we don't plan to monetize it in any way. And we can't even if we want to have a Vaxel without Kyc, we can't monetize it. We want to have it as privacy aware as it is. It has to be this way. That being said, it's incredibly challenging to be an open source project that is privacy aware, can't even sell the data, you know, to well maintain like financial health. So of course we are constantly evaluating various, various possible streams how that we could direct towards supporting Vexla. But the Vexler app, as it is now, we plan to keep this for free. So there might be ways for launching or there might be ways for us to launch a separate service in the future that would be just, that would come to life just in order to support Vexel's mission. But right now there is none.
- [21:04]
A
Yeah, that makes sense to me. Um, I battled with that question a lot. I mean there are some that are trying to do for profit. No KYC P2P but it's, I mean I think it does expose you to a lot of regulatory.
- [21:21]
B
I mean like look at me, I'm too way good looking to be in, to spend my best, best years of life in jail. So like so far now we are very, very grateful to Satoshi Labs, EGRF or OpenSet for supporting us and enabling us to maintain, maintain the service up and running. That being said, I don't want to poke, but I don't want to poke, but I think we could be better, we could be doing much better as an industry generally. And as you said like trying to maintain this kind of services and support them financially, it's not easy. Even if you, if you have a for profit company and you want to support a service like, like ours. It's not easy for you either way. Like for example what happened to me is like I personally know a CEO of, of an exchange that uses us every week to trade bitcoin like peer to peer without kyc and they can't do it and they hate KYC but they can't support us because they are like yeah, I can't give you money because well, I want to have mica license.
- [22:32]
A
Yeah.
- [22:33]
B
So it's really tricky. I wish I've seen more entrepreneurs having balls and you know, directing like I mean for this kind of companies earning like crep load earning creple like it's like tiny portion of their marketing budget they could directly to if not to particular projects and like yeah. To open sets to HRF other. Other titans on whose shoulders this project stand.
- [23:01]
A
Yeah, I mean the freaks know that. I, I completely agree with your frustration in terms of trying to find open source support within this industry. It has been a massive grind. I'm, I'm grateful to see the support that has been coming. Incredibly grateful. But it is, is very lacking. It is a small subset of businesses and high net worth people that are supporting the majority of these projects and, and industry very much depends on them whether or not they realize it or not. By the way, just in your particular situation opensats we do, we, we're happy to facilitate larger one off donations for you. It's a little bit difficult for us but for instance, if a large exchange or something wants to pass through a donation to vexel like a $500,000 and wants to do it through open sats, we can make that a reality. We have done it in the past, but just, just from organization standpoint it's gotta be a larger amount because otherwise it just gets very. It's a lot of paperwork and whatnot that we have to do.
- [24:03]
B
Yeah, gotcha. Gotcha. I had no idea. Thanks. Thanks for letting me know.
- [24:07]
A
Yeah. Because we have seen that in the past that people want to be disconnected or. I also don't know how your foundation sits, but in the CA there's been European foundations that need a US entity so they get the US tax deduction. So we've done it in the past for them. The big one we did was we facilitated a million dollars to Graphene os and Graphene didn't have a foundation yet at that point and the donor needed to donate through a US tax foundation. So they donated through us and then we passed it along to graphite.
- [24:42]
B
Love it. Super cool.
- [24:44]
A
Yeah. So you Mentioned Satoshi Labs, which is Trezor. What is the connection? It feels like it's very much a Trezor bootstrapped project. Am I wrong in that belief?
- [24:58]
B
Yeah, kind of. It's like Vexler is a separate company. But what connects us is basically I co founded Vexla with Slash and Stick, who invented Trezor or invented hybrid wallets. Like what? I don't know, 13 years ago, something like that. So we co founded Vexel together. And so Satoshi Labs is owning Satoshi Labs, which is basically Slash and Stick is owning Trezor and part of Vexel, et cetera, other companies as well, tropicsquare, the open source chip, et cetera. So that's the connection. And we share some resources because like we are very small, lean team. So Trezor, like if I need an accountant, Trezor might be. Because they are very kind to us, they might be lending us their accountants for a bit or something like that. Also we are using their offices, but except that it's a completely separate companies, not connected by any means.
- [26:02]
A
So you don't work for Trezor?
- [26:05]
B
No.
- [26:05]
A
Did you previously work for Trezor?
- [26:08]
B
I did not.
- [26:09]
A
Okay, got it. By the way, I mean, I guess you don't work for Trezor, but I got a Trezor Safe seven and it feels really, it's really good build quality. I was very impressed by it. It's come a long way from the original, original device. I have like every device.
- [26:27]
B
I mean, I mean look, I'm the kind of person that if, if Trezor Model 1 had Shamir, I would be probably still using it, you know, the old, old one. But it does not. I'm also very surprised and I must say, like I don't think there is a better. And like I have zero. Like whatever. I don't have any conflict to say or any interest to say it, but I don't think there is a better wallet or with better UX for a newcomer than Trezor. Like literally they don't have competition in that regard.
- [27:01]
A
Yeah, they do a good job with the app. Like the app combination, especially with the new hardware.
- [27:06]
B
Yes.
- [27:07]
A
Because I think a lot of people are mobile focused, you know, they don't have a computer. Which is also why I think Vexel is really cool. Because I, you know, I think I had the join market guys on years ago and I asked them, I asked them when mobile app and they're like, well, if you care about privacy, you should only use desktop. It's like, okay, there's, there's a subset of us that, that believe in that, but if you want something to scale, you got to be mobile focused now. Like, everything needs to be mobile focused.
- [27:35]
B
Absolutely. Like, that's. We have not even considered it. We were considering pwa, but it's.
- [27:48]
A
Well, that's a good, good point. I mean, part of the reason I assume you were thinking about PWA is because app stores fucking suck. And so you guys launched your own app store in Europe, I believe.
- [28:01]
B
Exactly, yeah. It's almost a year. So basically it started out as a joke, honestly, because it was. Once again we were threatening to be removed even from the test flight, which is like. And like the amount of correspondence I wrote to Apple over the years at this time, it might be by the range of Anna Karenina is like. And so imagine my frustration. So it's years and years and years and they just don't like you. It's like. And they don't give you any kind of like actionable points like why what you could do differently in order for them to accept you. So it was actually a year ago, like February 2025. And once again we got that one message telling us like, oh yeah, so this is your last 90 days. And then like, bye, bye. So I was like. And so, and out of this frustration I was like, fuck this shit. Like, I really don't know what to do. Like, let's launch our own App Store. And we started looking into it back then. So what we did, we basically used altstore, the major provider of like sideloading marketplace for, for Apple. And within the old store we launch dedicated like App Store, App Store, which is dedicated to Freedom Tech. So open source Freedom Tech. So it's not only for vexflow. If users with the EU App Store download EU account, download altstore and then add Freedom Store as a source. By the way, Freedomstore IO is where you can check it out. Then you can, you will, you will be able to access also other apps like Minibits.
- [29:46]
A
That's awesome.
- [29:47]
B
Flash, like Sovereign Bull, Bitcoin. So it's not just us and any kind of open source developer that is open source Freedom Tech developer that is facing these issues is Balcom.
- [30:00]
A
Yeah. So this is, this is probably one of the rare situations where the fact that the EU is a heavily regulated bureaucracy actually paid into the Freedom benefit. This is EU only because Apple was ordered to allow outside app stores into, into the, for European customers. Just obviously I'm not European. Just to clarify here, altstore is basically another App store outside of the App Store. And then it, it aggregates like other curators. Basically like you're one of many different like packages you can install within AltStore.
- [30:42]
B
It's called Sources.
- [30:44]
A
Okay.
- [30:45]
B
In this. Yes. Basically as you are describing it. Yeah.
- [30:49]
A
Right. So it's kind of okay. That makes sense to me. That's pretty awesome. I mean then obviously on Android you have no issues because there's a bunch of different app stores. People can just download the APK too, I assume.
- [31:00]
B
Yeah, we have APK's App Store Optanium. You can also use Aurora Store. Like when it comes to Android you can push whatever into that phone. But of course we don't want to lose Google App on Google Play Store.
- [31:11]
A
Right.
- [31:12]
B
And like it's not because I love them, but you have to ask like, okay, who am I building for? Am I building for nerds that are going to go to GitHub and then download APKs? Or am I building for rookies who care about the privacy? Or care can. Or I can shield them from going to KYC Exchange and Buy with kyc. And I'm building for these people who are coolest and like Play Store or App Store is the easiest way for them to get the app. So of course I don't want to lose those.
- [31:47]
A
Yeah. I mean as to our earlier conversation where it needs to be the most convenient option, you have to meet the users where they're at. Like if you want this thing to actually scale, obviously if we can, if you can get into the major app stores, you want to be there. I mean, working with, with Apple trying to stay in the App Store is like the most frustrating, infuriating thing ever. It's not clear, people. I mean it's a, it's a little bit of an art itself in how to navigate it, especially if you have freedom oriented aspects to it. I remember like in Nosterland people were like, Apple hates us. They won't let zaps into the App Store stuff. And then Primal, we got it in, we got zaps into the App Store with Primal and they were like, how'd you do it? And it's like, well, we don't have like a rubric. Like hopefully it lasts. Like we're just trying our best to here to keep it in the App Store.
- [32:34]
B
And I was like, but this is ridiculous because we've been in the App Store for a year and then suddenly like we were not allowed anymore. It's like. And you know what the reasoning was? Like using cash is clearly clearly reckless. And I'm like, dude, what the fuck?
- [32:54]
A
So what's the. I guess first off, so if we're in the US and you have an iPhone, you have to download via test flight right now, right?
- [33:02]
B
Yes.
- [33:04]
A
And I guess the limitation there is not only is it a little bit less convenient, it's still not that inconvenient if freaks here haven't used TestFlight. But the big limiter is you're capped on the amount of downloads, right? It's like 10,000 downloads or something.
- [33:20]
B
No, it's 10,000 users. Users or like installs like so you have 10,000 seats.
- [33:29]
A
Right. So I guess you could kind of get around that if you have multiple test flights. It's not ideal, but you could have
- [33:38]
B
different versions of the bent for life.
- [33:40]
A
Yeah, well, so what's the deal with. You mentioned a pwa. So like a progressive web app that someone could just use without the App Store's. What are your thoughts on that right now
- [33:54]
B
we repeatedly come back to the idea and evaluate the feasibility and like in theory it's feasible, but not. We are using contact list of the phone.
- [34:04]
A
Right.
- [34:04]
B
And it wouldn't work or the UX would be so clumsy no one would use it. So right now it's not really feasible or like it doesn't really make sense from the UX perspective. It would be too much effort for well, maybe what, three users that would be. And also like PWAs, honestly they never took off. I remember like five years ago or six years ago everybody would be like oh yeah, PWs changing everything. No more app stores. But like who uses that? Like, you know what I mean?
- [34:35]
A
Like, I mean I think Apple specifically too, like makes they like they break it to a degree. Like you have a significantly better experience with the native app than you do on Apple PWA experience. And they have an incentive to. Right, like they want to control the App Store, they want to collect their 30% cut of revenue and have complete control over their platform. I will say that I'm cautiously optimistic that all these people vibe coding apps will make them change their mind because supposedly right now they've never had a bigger backlog for app review on the App Store. Every app that you see in the app Apple App Store Freaks is. Is reviewed both. Usually it's like both by a bot and then by a human and then they, they have. So you can just imagine like just random people oftentimes non developers like building a new weather app or something and they're just mass submitting to the Apple App Store so they're kind of getting ddosed right now and it's causing an issue with their main driver apps because it's just the whole organization is getting slogged down with all these entries. So maybe they end up opening it more. I mean, I would love to see at the very least some kind of APK style. Okay. If you want to install an app outside of us, we won't listen to the App Store, but you can just click a couple buttons, check a box that says I take full responsibility for potentially messing up my phone just installing it.
- [36:09]
B
It's actually interesting. It's sad that one's proponents of privacy and security now, like, are these morons guarding their walled garden at the same time? This is one part where the regulation, no matter how much I hate regulation, any kind of regulation, and I feel like any kind of regulation is basically just. It feels like if someone is throwing sand into a, into an engine, you know? You know what I mean? So no matter how much I hate, feels like we can see the pressure of regulators around the world on Apple to be opening the platform more. There was, it was a, it was for example in Brazil, which is a huge market. Other might follow. So we'll see how that goes.
- [36:58]
A
Yeah, I mean I, I think, I mean I hate regulation. I think the free market might force their hand. Here is, is was more my point on the, on the vibe coding stuff. Like there are people that, you know, have been Mac loyalists, iPhone loyalists, they've used it for years. Then they, then they vibe code an app and they want to use it on their iPhone. Maybe they don't even, they're not trying to commercialize it. They just want to use this app on their own iPhone with their own vibe coded thing and they're hitting walls and then they're going out and buying their first Android phone ever.
- [37:33]
B
Yeah.
- [37:34]
A
And so I think if they're not careful here, if they're not careful here, it's going to cause a big momentum shift over to Android. And if they're savvy, they would at least put a path that might, once again, it might not be as ideal as being in the App Store. Right. There's plenty of people that. The way they find their app, for better or for worse, is they open up the App Store and they type in Bitcoin Wallet, you know, and they just take whatever's the top in the App Store. But just a path, a path that like I've created this app. I don't want to go through the review process. I want people to just Download it directly from my website. I'm cautiously optimistic that the free market pushes their hand here now. So we'll see, we'll see.
- [38:15]
B
Let's hope so.
- [38:17]
A
I so you also. One of the things I want to talk about is you have an event coming up. What's the deal with the event?
- [38:25]
B
Oh yeah, well the name of the event is Freedom Tech Summit and it's happening June 10th in Prague. And so basically it's a successor of two previously organized events. One was organized by Stickk and the organizers of BTC Prague called Dev Hack Day which was a conference focused on developers of bitcoin, Lightning, Cashew Nostrum, bitcoin design, et cetera. And then me and a couple of friends like Max Hillebrand also stick, we were in parallel organizing a cypherpunk meetup which outgrew the DevHack day eventually. Last year it basically it had more visitors from all around the world than the DevHack day and we started joking like yeah, next year we have to turn this into a festival. So and that's kind of happening. So Freedom Tech Summit is a successor of these two events. It's. Well it's in the name of the event. It's about all about freedom tech. It's for hackers, it's for builders, it's for designers, anything in between. One topic that I haven't explicitly mentioned so far was Mesh networks. So we also have this track directly focused on, we call it the resilience track. So any kind of like post Apple tech that off grid communication, et cetera. And it's basically one day event where or the best brains of the industry being that free communication or free money or free and sound money or off grid communication philosophy connected to it, come together and have a lot of fun on workshops, panels, keynotes, anything in between. So everyone is welcome. We are already selling the tickets and accepting calls for proposal. Yeah, calls CFPs. Yeah, calls for proposals. So if you go to freedomtechsummit.com you can find more information about it there.
- [40:28]
A
I'll put a link in the show notes. I mean we need more of this. I love it. I think the concept is great. I think the topics are more important than ever. And by the way freaks, this is the day before Bitcoin Prague. Yes, in Prague. So you can make one trip. BTC Prague's like the larger, more mainstream event but still got good cypherpunk roots. And then this one is going to be a little bit more intimate, probably higher signal. So you can make, you can make a trip out of it. I will say I unfortunately cannot make it this year for personal reasons. Good personal reasons. But Prague is awesome. It is a great city. The Czech bitcoin community is fantastic. If you're American, it's a really good place to visit. It's. It's relatively cheap. The food's good, the drink's good, the people are good. Everyone speaks English. Absolutely everyone speaks English. It's a good place for families. I just. I love Prague. Prague is one of my favorite European cities. So just consider it. Guys, on the topic of mesh networks, do you have a connection with any of the guys working on fips? Are you aware of fips?
- [41:33]
B
Yes, it is. I love the pro project. We reached John Arjun. Is that. Yes. Yeah, Arjun and Jonathan, both of them. Jonathan can't make it, unfortunately. Arjun. Fingers crossed. Yes. But it's not confirmed yet.
- [41:47]
A
Yeah, Jonathan is, you know, too much of a legend. Arjun came on Dispatch two episodes ago. Jonathan refused. He's just sending Arjun in his stat everywhere. But hopefully.
- [41:59]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Also. But of course, we are trying to. To get more. Like for example, when you're buying a ticket, you can. You can get the. The kit, the mesh core kit in the. In the Eshop and we will be people flash flashing it for you. We'll have workshops like, dedicated to mesh core and. But other mesh networks as well.
- [42:21]
A
So I wasn't familiar with this mesh core project. Is it similar to meshtastic or.
- [42:27]
B
Exactly. It's. But it's a bit newer. I don't want to get infinity nitty gritty, technical side of it because I would implement. I would embarrass myself. But it's newer and it's like more effective. And then you have reticulum, which is like super private encrypted stuff. We were trying to get the reticulum. People come and speak on the Cypherpunk meetup. Well now the freedom takes so much for years, but they're so super very private that they never.
- [42:55]
A
I can't even get them on the podcast.
- [42:57]
B
So. Okay, so if you fail, then I feel much better that we are failing.
- [43:01]
A
For years in this, I've had multiple freaks reach out. They're like, you got to get the reticulum guys on the podcast. It's like, yeah, yeah, welcome to the club. Let me know if you can get them on the show. And I will happily have them on the show.
- [43:14]
B
Yeah, yeah, I'm a big fan. I'm a big fan. I can't. I will be never able to tell them in person.
- [43:21]
A
But I. I love. I love that you guys are leaning into the mesh stuff. I think it's the missing piece. And it's been. We've just had so many false starts with, like, hype, you know, for, like, the last 10 years. I've just like, oh, this is the moment. This is. It's gonna happen now. It's. It's about to happen. And to be honest, I feel that way still, but hopefully it happens because, you know, the Internet is. Is way more centralized than people realize, and our society depends on it more than ever. So we need. We need these alternative. These alternative communication networks.
- [43:59]
B
It feels like we are, like, on the brink, right?
- [44:01]
A
Like, it's like for the last decade, though.
- [44:05]
B
Yes, exactly. But my friend Jure Bednar, who is co organizing the event with us, he keeps telling me, since January, this is the year of crypto anarchy, so fingers crossed.
- [44:22]
A
Well, we need it more than ever. It feels like it's all coming together. It's just wild times. We live in the best time. We just need to bring all the pieces together.
- [44:32]
B
It's like I'm completely on board with Justin Moon here who said, like, it feels like centuries can happen in five years. So that's exactly how it feels to me. It's unbelievable. I have only two poles, right? Like, either like, we are doomed or like, wow, we got the. And the second one is like, we got the fire of. Fire of God gave us the fire nerve, guts. And I'm oscillating in between these two constantly.
- [44:58]
A
Yeah, I'm right there with you. I. I mean, so part of it is, with all this stuff is. Is. It's a bit of a chicken and egg, right? Like, you need the scale for them to be effective, but you need the tools to even get bootstrapped in the first place to ever dream of getting the scale. And I. I mean, I feel like there's a strong relationship here with you guys building out Vexel. Just to get back to the main topic of the conversation, to the freaks listening. How can they be helpful in, you know, achieving this Vexel vision? Because, I mean, you guys have found pretty good success. I think it's a very useful tool. Obviously, like, the big. The big holdback is the network effect, right? Like, if it's friends and friends of friends and you don't have people using it around you, then it's not as useful. So how do you think about. About how they can be helpful and how we make this thing a reality in a bigger way?
- [45:57]
B
So, yeah, kickstarting a Community like this is a pain in the ass. And Odell just left. So. All right, so kickstarting a community like this is a major pain in the ass. But once you achieve a certain threshold, once you achieve a certain threshold, then it grows exponentially, right? So we are not present in the USA because it's a huge country this far and we are a small team that doesn't have much money. But good news is you don't need us to support you. We will. If you tell us what you need, we will, we will manage. And like for example, the community in Namibia, they were like, yeah, give us Namibian dollars, give us that, give us that. And we will, we will proceed. But we cannot be there and we cannot be organizing meetups and we cannot be spreading the word. Right, but you can. And we've seen this as a huge success story. A success story, for example in Canada where we had one, one person that just fell in love with Bexel and started speaking about us on every meetup. And now I don't want to bullshit you, but Canada might be like the fifth biggest market for us. So that's one thing that you can do. Like MV really literally had like zero presence there. We never like, like we did nothing in Canada. We haven't been in a conference, nothing. There was one person that understood the importance of peer to peer non kyc Bitcoin and they wanted that for them and their community. So organizing meetups, speaking, speaking about us, reaching out. If you need something from us, we are going to support you. Open an issue on GitHub, reach out to our support. We have life support, so speak to us. We are here to help. Second thing that you can do is something I forgot. It will come back to me. But the community aspect is the most important one. As you said, there is the chicken and egg problem and so the user, if they are not connected or they're isolated in the social graph, they don't see any offers. So I have, what I wanted to say is you don't have to feel off or demotivated by the fact that you would have to onboard hundreds of people. So just to illustrate an example of like real world story, imagine the community doesn't have to be big in order to be very active. So in Botswana, for example, is one of our smaller, smallest communities. Again, we haven't, we haven't spent any time building any kind of presence there because we can't, literally can't. But there must have been someone because. And that's like one of my most favorite Stories from Vexel. Like, just one day I see this tweet from someone I've never heard of who is posting like, yeah, I just bought pickles in Botswana for sats on Bexel. Right.
- [49:07]
A
That's awesome.
- [49:08]
B
And it's like. And it's like small network. Like in our terms, like I don't know if in Czech Republic you have 9 million possible connections between the people in the app. In Botswana it's 13,000. So like disproportionately smaller. And. But there was someone that posted that offer into the network and someone else, and it was not even for fiat, it was for Pickles and someone else who picked that offer. So don't be put off by the fact that we would have to go and be this like, you know, Vexel's witness going from door to door trying to onboard hundreds of users. So once it grows organically and like, and it really spread by word of mouth. And the last thing maybe a motivation. You know, as I said, like small network is enough. And there might be. There might be another chicken and egg problem. So you have let's say like tens of people already on Vexillo in your area, in your community. But when like everyone wants to be buying or everyone wants to be selling and depends and then so I want to present your opportunity. We have a. This is a. This is a great opportunity for you to earn money. So what we see and how we actually scale, like how Vexel scaled in different markets, we will have these agents of great economy. The people would be selling or buying with discount or fee and earning on the spread and basically providing liquidity to whatever site and earning like either sats or fiat or whatever how you decide, decide to do it. And they would be hedging themselves on both sides and then basically earning money on providing the service. And now we in like in the like more active network or the biggest ones here in Czech Republic, for example, we can see these liquidity providers will be competing with each other. So they wouldn't be. Just because there are so many now.
- [51:10]
A
Right.
- [51:11]
B
So they would be offering you like, okay, I will, I will explain whatever you need. I invite you for coffee. I can help you set up a hardware wallet. Like if you have any questions, like we can chat. Like. So they're.
- [51:24]
A
Oh, they're not just competing on price, they're also competing on exactly like additional services.
- [51:29]
B
Yeah, I can come wherever you tell me to sell. And these, these people are. You don't need many of them. You need one effective one to Just like start serving this couple of users and everyone is happy. Right? And these people are. These liquidity providers are the blood of the marketplace. Right. Without them, just like so another, like, for the greedy ones or for the entrepreneurial ones, here is a great opportunity.
- [51:54]
A
Greed is good. I mean, I love the meetup point, especially in the U.S. i mean, we have such established meetup infrastructure. There are so many meetups. It's one of the most bullish fundamentals of American bitcoin. And it seems like such a good fit for meetup organizers. So, I mean, I will say personally, I mean, obviously I co founded Bitcoin park in Nashville. We can do a better job of it. So I'm gonna start thinking about how we can incorporate that into our programming. But there's a bunch of meetup organizers. I listen to the show, so just consider it. I think it's a way to supercharge your community and make your community more resilient and help out everyone else at the same time. And I do agree with you, like, it probably doesn't take that many people. You get like five to 10 people, start to use it more actively and then they get a couple people and then they're onboarding their nanny and their nanny, instead of buying from Strike, they're buying on Vexel and. And then all of a sudden you're scaling.
- [52:47]
B
Exactly. And also it goes vice versa because we also have. We currently have a couple of ways how we can support the community. One is Vexel Club. We can speak about that for a bit later. But another one is, another one is like, with the upcoming redesign of the app, there will be even more community features that we will be launching. I don't want to get into too much detail here. Stay tun. But it's already being developed, so yeah,
- [53:17]
A
that makes sense to me. Lean into the meetups.
- [53:20]
B
So. And when it comes to. So we are very community focused, heavily community focused and meetup focused. And one of the ways we can support these meetup organizers is launching a Vexel club, which is basically same Vexel experience, but the reputation models shifts a little bit. It's particularly, for example, rural areas where people wouldn't be connected just by the phone numbers. We shift this reputation model onto the meetup organizer and they can distribute an invite code that would connect these people. So if you know someone who is going to your meetup, coming to your meetups for five years, and you know they are trustworthy, you can invite them or like have moderators who would be inviting more people and Then you can see offers from your community, from your meetup. Of course, you know, and you might have people in common or might not. And then you can again, like distinguish and individualize the risk. Like, okay, am I going to Venmo the money or not? Am I going to meet for meeting person? Am I going to rebuild the identity, et cetera.
- [54:26]
A
I mean, that makes sense to me because the. I'll say, at least from my experience as a meetup organizer, you know, they're bitcoiners, so I don't really have most of their phone numbers. Like, that's not how we communicate. So if there's a separate way to. It makes sense to me that for convenience sake, phone numbers are the single best way to create social graphs. That's why WhatsApp has been so successful, for instance. But on meetups, specifically bitcoin meetups, I mean, we communicate on signal, right? We communicate through. I don't have most of their phone numbers. So if there's a way for like someone to put in a code that is, I like, I don't know how you actually set it up. That's on you as the person building part of the team, building the project. But like, if there's a way for them to put in Nashville bitcoiners and then have offers that are from Nashville bitcoiners, and maybe that looks like empowering the organizers to manage that community or something like that, I think that would probably go a long way. It would make it a lot easier because right now if I'm thinking about it and we're saying, oh, you should use Vexel, but also kind of have to like go around and like collect everyone's phone numbers because we just don't have that information right now.
- [55:36]
B
Yeah, this was one of the motivations why we came up with the idea of exit clubs. Because no matter that bitcoiners don't use phone numbers, the rest, the rookies I was speaking about, they do. And it's the best underlining social network there is. Like, there is that is global, that scales that works everywhere from the east to west, from the north to south.
- [56:01]
A
I agree.
- [56:02]
B
We always start at the bitcoin community, so. And then we spread. And that's by the way, how I knew we made it in Czech Republic. Like I was going for a peer to peer trading and no one knew. We. I wasn't. Suddenly I was not meeting the people that knew me from a podcast or from an interview. Right. They was just like they came to a peer to peer trading and they were asking me, I said, yeah, what do you do? Like, yeah, kind of build up, you know. So it always starts with the. With the bitcoin community itself. And that's why we want to empower them as much as possible. And when it comes to. When it comes to your point about the organizer, then managing the community is not the case here. Like you, of course, you have to be saying like, who you. You should not put the invitation code somewhere on Twitter. Right, Right. Also, I wouldn't do it. You can, but it's kind of reckless, so.
- [56:57]
A
Well, wait, so what is Vexo Club?
- [57:00]
B
So Vexo Club is basically a way how we can connect you with other bitcoiners or like, but we can connect you with other bitcoiners and like, I don't know. Let's say we create a club called Nashville Bitcoin Park.
- [57:20]
A
Yeah.
- [57:21]
B
And be established that you or whoever is the meetup organizer or the club manager. Right. And then if you think someone is trustworthy, you will hand over that code.
- [57:40]
A
Or is it a code that's a QR code.
- [57:42]
B
QR code or like numeric code. And then from there it's up to you. We still don't know who you are or we don't have to do. Of course I know you are, but we don't need to know who you are. We don't know what is happening inside of the club. We don't know who the people joining are, if you are and how you are interacting. Nothing like that. It's from that we can just like set up some parameters for you, like let it be number of seats, et cetera. And again, it works like we are not policing it in any way. The people seeing the offers are policing it. So if there are I guess like five offers within the club that are shadow banned, then the club gets deactivated because probably there is something fishy going on. But we don't know that. Now, the contents of the offer, we don't know identities of the people, nothing like that.
- [58:35]
A
And the meetup organizer doesn't either.
- [58:38]
B
Right, Sorry.
- [58:42]
A
The meetup organizer doesn't know the identities of the people either, right?
- [58:46]
B
No.
- [58:47]
A
Right. They don't see.
- [58:48]
B
No, you don't. No.
- [58:49]
A
You see, I like that. It seems ideal for meetup organizers.
- [58:53]
B
Yeah. You see an offer that is. You don't know who the person, who the person posting the offer was. Like, you have no idea.
- [59:00]
A
To be clear. Like as a meetup organizer, I don't want to know either. Like that's how it should be.
- [59:04]
B
Set up that exactly my approach towards knowing what is happening on Vexel or not.
- [59:10]
A
Yeah, no, that makes sense to me. That's awesome. Okay, so how can someone sign up for Vexel Club if they're a meetup organizer?
- [59:17]
B
Write us at marketingexel it or supportexel IO.
- [59:22]
A
Okay. Email. Got it.
- [59:24]
B
I'm gonna. Yeah.
- [59:26]
A
Okay. That's awesome. I have a last question for you before we wrap. It's kind of random, but why Vexel? Why'd you come up? Why is it called that?
- [59:33]
B
That's actually a great question. Is it random, really?
- [59:39]
A
I mean, I've just been curious. I have no idea.
- [59:41]
B
Okay. I thought, you know, the backstory, because it's, like, really interesting.
- [59:45]
A
Hit me.
- [59:47]
B
As you know, in Czech Republic was a part of Soviet Union, right? So. And in Soviet Union, you used to have this embargo on goods. Foreign. Foreign currencies, et cetera, like, foreign services, you name it. And in every kind of Soviet Republic back then, there was this layer of agents of great economy. In Russia, it's called Fartsovka. In Romania, it was Biznitzars. In Czech Republic, it was Vexlax. And they were doing Vexel. So. And the reason how they gained this name was that these people typically would be. People would be exchanging foreign goods and foreign, like, currencies, and often in parking lots close to German border, because there was a border in between the west and the East. It would be also happening on the main squares, et cetera, and would be like, these people wearing, like, long coat or leather jacket, and they would approach you and be like, vexel, Wechsel. Wechsel. And the reason is because it's from German, Bert Vexel, which means to exchange. So they acquired. So they were basically saying, like, vexeln, Vexel, Vexel. But we then used it as Vexel. And these people start to be called Vexlax in slang. In Czech slang. So we are paying tribute to them.
- [61:14]
A
That's awesome. Great origin story. That makes a lot of sense to me. Back to the basics.
- [61:20]
B
Yeah. And fun fact. So because the exchange rate in between Czech crown and, I don't know, $, it was like, centrally planned, right? So the Czech national bank had no idea, like, what the real street price of the dollar was. So they actually went to the Vexlax to ask, like, okay, so how much is the. After the Soviet Union fell, they actually went to Vexlux to ask them, like, okay, so what's the real price of dollar these days?
- [61:54]
A
That's awesome. Yeah, I mean, I think that's one of the coolest aspects of bitcoin as a global money, is that it just makes it really hard for governments to pretend their shitcoin is worth a different amount because you just look at how much is someone willing to trade bitcoin for it. And if that's the amount, then that's the real price of whatever their fiat is. We've seen it time and time again. I mean, I remember. I'm not sure what the current state is over there, but for a while like the official Argentinian price.
- [62:27]
B
Oh yeah.
- [62:29]
A
Of dollars to I guess Argentinian pesos, I think that's what they're called, was way off of the difference between bitcoin to them. And then you could just use. You could use that as the official price of it.
- [62:43]
B
Actually if I have one KPI for Vexel, that's. Or two I have two KPIs. One would be if we used two Vexel in the same way as we used two Hudl for peer to peer trading. Like two Vexel eat. That would be. That would be pretty cool. A second one if the price. And that's. That's how I will know that we made it everywhere. If the price of bitcoin, the real price, the street price will be the one that is being traded on Vexel. You know, not what the charts on Binance show you, but the street price on Vexel.
- [63:21]
A
Yeah, well, the P2P exchanges is what keeps the centralized exchanges at least relatively honest. They can't play too many games. Leah, this was. This was a great conversation I would love. Can we plan on like doing it again in a year maybe and see where we're at?
- [63:38]
B
Absolutely. We'll be looking forward to.
- [63:41]
A
You have any final thoughts for the freaks before we wrap
- [63:46]
B
that we need one zillion unregulated little exchanges and every single one of us can act as one, be that on Vexel or not. So don't send your friends to centralized exchanges, sell them some bitcoin or buy from them and don't tell anyone.
- [64:07]
A
Love it. Just vexalut.
- [64:09]
B
Just vexalut.
- [64:10]
A
Yeah, this was great. Thank you for joining us.
- [64:13]
B
Thanks Adele.
- [64:14]
A
Thank you, freaks. I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as me. I have a great conversation lined up on Friday. The next conversation, it's going to be with the Simple X founder, the encrypted chat app. I'm very excited for it. It's an awesome app. If you haven't used it. All the links we talked about today will be in the show notes, so check them out. If you forget what links you need and love you all, stay humble. Stack sets. Peace.