← The Bitcoin Treasuries Podcast with Tim Kotzman
The Bitcoin Treasuries Podcast with Tim Kotzman
Buck - The Bitcoin Dollar with Travis VanderZanden
00:12:12
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome back to the Bitcoin Treasuries podcast. I'm Tim Kotsman. I'm here with Travis van der Zabden, the founder of Buck. Travis, thanks for having us here in the office today.
- [00:10]
B
Yeah, thanks for coming, Tim. We appreciate you checking out Buck HQ here in Miami.
- [00:14]
A
Absolutely. Can we start with a little bit of your business background and maybe go from there?
- [00:21]
B
Yeah, of course. So I originally, you know, did computer science undergrad. I won't take you through the whole background here and bore the audience, but I. I did come from a tech background. Ended up in Silicon Valley at a company called Yammer. We sold that to Microsoft. I actually, that was back in 2012. I took some of that money and actually bought my first Bitcoin in 2013, which we can get back to if. If you'd like. Ultimately, unfortunately, I sold that bitcoin, but ended up buying years later in 2017. But I stayed in Silicon Valley. I ended up very passionate about the transportation industry. My. My mother, growing up in Wisconsin, was a bus driver. And so I was very passionate about transportation and how to use technology to move people around cities efficiently. Ended up being an executive at Uber and Lyft. Ultimately left and started Byrd, the electric scooter company, which you. You might have heard or ridden before. It was a fun business, had a great time, but ultimately left Bird and. And started incubating some startups a couple of years ago in the AI space. And during that time, while I was incubating things in the AI space, AI is incredible. Obviously going to be game changing in many ways, but really was spending my nights and weekends watching bitcoin videos, going really deep on bitcoin and the power law, and really getting more and more orange filled, and ultimately decided to pivot from an AI startup into the bitcoin world.
- [01:50]
A
Got it. I'm just curious, what did Yammer do?
- [01:54]
B
Yammer was kind of the slack before there was slack.
- [01:58]
A
Okay.
- [01:58]
B
So it was kind of, at the time meant to bring Twitter to the enterprise.
- [02:02]
A
Okay.
- [02:03]
B
Founded by David Sachs, and ultimately I ran a big part of the business side over there, and we sold that to Microsoft. And the timing was good because I got a little bit of liquidity in 2012, and I was watching Bitcoin closely, and I bought $25,000 worth in 2013 at about $100. But then I had two daughters and ended up buying a house. And so I sold the bitcoin. And I think a lot of people in the bitcoin world have that same experience where you got an early taste and ended up selling. And then when I started buying again in 27, I decided to just, just hold at that point. But. But yeah, Yammer was a great company. It was kind of like Slack 1.0.
- [02:41]
A
Got it, got it. There's not a lot of people from Silicon Valley that are like starting businesses in bitcoin. What caused you to pivot into bitcoin from AI?
- [02:55]
B
Yeah, I actually had someone pretty well known in the crypto world comment on that yesterday, saying they're seeing a lot of people from crypto go to the AI space and it's refreshing to see some more people coming from AI to crypto. And I think you might see more of that actually coming because, you know, AI is amazing in a lot of ways, but there's a lot of people building a lot of things in AI and it's kind of very easy with, you know, vibe coding to build software on the AI side. And so I think what you're seeing is a lot of this stuff now at the application layer is not very defensible. And so I think you'll see entrepreneurs, you know, hopefully more kind of come into the crypto world really over the next couple years. I think it's a really exciting time to be in the crypto world. I'm a bitcoiner and from an investment standpoint, I spent more time on the bitcoin side. But I do think there's a lot of exciting things happening last year with Genius ACT and not the issue with the Clarity Act. Regulations are changing quickly and I think there's going to be a lot of opportunity on the larger crypto landscape.
- [03:59]
A
That's interesting. It's like, would you almost equate the direction of AI as you have to build something on it? Because you don't. That has a moat in the same way that bitcoin doesn't need anyone. But now that you have corporates and institutions building on it, then like, okay, maybe you could do something in that direction.
- [04:20]
B
Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think right now you obviously have the models, MI models which very expensive to build a model. So as an entrepreneur, you're not really looking to do that. I mean, there's already big players building AI models, so.
- [04:34]
A
Right.
- [04:34]
B
So a lot of the AI stuff with at the entrepreneur level, early stage startup is more application layer type things and there's opportunity there. Don't get me wrong. I just think for me, I was way more passionate about bitcoin and ultimately decentralized finance.
- [04:55]
A
What do you think is special about Stretch STRC and why did that IPO in particular kind of get your attention and cause you to change course and create Buck? If you can kind of walk us through all of that.
- [05:11]
B
Yeah. So I wanted to do something in the bitcoin space. As I. As I mentioned, it wasn't obvious, you know, what to do in the bitcoin space because usually the best thing in bitcoin is to buy bitcoin and hold it. But I had been a bitcoin investor and strategy investor since early 2024. And so I was watching strategy closely. And when they IPO'd stretch last summer, it was definitely an aha moment for me. I immediately thought, that's amazing. And it should be tokenized with 100 to 1 split roughly and brought to the larger kind of crypto defi world. And so it was really an aha moment for me. I think stretch is incredible for so many reasons, but some people don't like the volatility of bitcoin, obviously. And so for those people that are maybe newer to bitcoin or don't like volatility, it's a great kind of stepping stone. Obviously, Sailor and strategy strip off the volatility. I think it's got 7, 7% volatility or something. Now it's down to. And it's been pretty steady at 100 the last few days. And so you just get the less volatility with the 11% dividend is pretty game changing. And in our minds, if we tokenize it, we can take it to a whole different market than strategy's taking it to. Right. Because a lot of people have money tied up in wallets. Maybe they're outside the U.S. maybe they want to trade 24, 7. And so we felt like there's a huge opportunity to take this really genius piece of, as Saylor calls it, digital credit, tokenize it and take it to the rest of the world.
- [06:42]
A
Rich come up with the name and the view of Buck being the bitcoin dollar.
- [06:50]
B
Yeah, so Buck, my grandfather's nickname was Buck. So that was kind of one thing that was in my mind. And then I'm from Wisconsin. And so Wisconsin is known as the land of the Bucks, Milwaukee Bucks, and there's a lot of deer in Wisconsin. And so. And then it just kind of felt like a great name for a bitcoin dollar would be Buck. You know, it just kind of felt like it fit nicely. And so it just kind of popped into my head and it seemed to resonate with people. The bitcoin dollar is really a tagline meant To a lot of people don't know what stretch is. And so we tried to create some branding that was a little bit easier to understand for people that might not be in New York or as deep on the finance side. And so we felt like Bitcoin dollar was something that the average person would understand that's not in the finance world. And so it seems to be resonating so far with people.
- [07:46]
A
Got it. Can you walk through which platforms are where jurisdictionally you can buy Buck who It's for things of that nature.
- [07:56]
B
Yeah. So Buck right now you can buy pretty much anywhere except the U.S. in the U.S. we're waiting for the Clarity act, which hopefully is coming soon, and we'll kind of see how the regulatory environment in the US evolves. But right now it's available non US you can buy it, you can mint it on our website at Buck I.O. or you can go to Uniswap right now and purchase it there or swap there. And over time we'll add more and more decentralized and centralized exchanges, but that's where we're starting today.
- [08:29]
A
Any thoughts of additional products per se or kind of focus on what say right now?
- [08:38]
B
This is the one thing we're very excited about. We think this is a massive opportunity. We think digital credit will be huge in the years to come. I think, thankfully, bitcoin's starting to bounce back the last few days, and I think that'll be a helpful tailwind for this new digital credit industry, if you will. And we think it'll be a massive opportunity over the next 10, 20 years. I think, like the way I kind of see it is bitcoin in 30, 40 years ultimately could be used as a more stable coin to actually purchase things and pay for things. Maybe it's in the forms of sats at that point, and maybe the volatility will be low in 40 years. But until then, there's this opportunity to create something that is more stable and it can be used for more things that strips out the volatility. Obviously, you have stablecoins today, but stablecoins are backed by fiat. It doesn't pay any rewards to you. In fact, bitcoiners know this well. They're probably getting debased 7 or 8% because it's ultimately backed by fiat. And so we think Buck is this great kind of thing that sits in between a stable coin and bitcoin. Maybe in 40 years, bitcoin replaces Buck because bitcoin's not as volatile then, and you can just kind of use it but until then, we think there's this interesting opportunity right in between stable coins and bitcoin. And I kind of think of stablecoins as like your checking account and it's great for moving money around, doing payments, et cetera. But Buck's more like your, your like a savings account, right? And we're trying to create this new category that we call savings coins. And we think bucks really like kind of the digital version of your savings account. Use stable coins for checking type things, payments, that's fine, but you don't get yield. In fact, you're probably getting debased 7 or 8% on that. Use Buck if you want to earn extra rewards. We pay 7% right now. We'll probably pay more soon. And ultimately there's no replacement for bitcoin if you can handle the volatility. We think ultimately people should be buying as much bitcoin as possible. But buck can be a place that people park money in between trades or in, in between payments or whatever if they just want to earn, you know, that steady yield. And today in the crypto world, if you have money in a wallet, there's not a lot of great, like low risk ways to earn that type of yield to excess.
- [11:14]
A
Where can people reach out to you and the team if they want to connect, learn more, have a question?
- [11:22]
B
Yeah, so we're, we're@www.buckio. you can find us@bucktoken on X as well. Those are probably the best places to reach out. I'm Travis B. On X as well. But yeah, we'd love to get feedback from people, especially in the bitcoin community. The whole team are bitcoiners and you know, we want to, we want to get that feedback. So far we're off to a good start. We have over a million dollars of total value locked, over a million dollars of stretch purchased, and we've only been live for a week. And so off to a good start so far. But we do want to get feedback from the community and figure out how we can continue to help take bitcoin to the world.
- [12:03]
A
Awesome. Travis, thanks for having us here at the office today for the Bitcoin Treasures podcast. Appreciate your time.
- [12:09]
B
Yeah, thanks for coming. Thanks, Tim.
- [12:11]
A
Thank you.