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BTC208: Why CBDCs are Failing & Bitcoin is Winning w/ Dread (Bitcoin Podcast)
01:02:21
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- [00:01]
Preston Pysh
You're listening to tip.
- [00:03]
Dread
Hey everyone. Welcome to this Wednesday's release of the Bitcoin Fundamentals Podcast. This episode is brought to you by river, the place that I personally go to securely invest in Bitcoin with confidence and with zero fees. On this week's show, I have a stellar guest with Jamaica's very own Dread. He's a former world class athlete entrepreneur building the premier bitcoin exchange application for the Caribbean. And he's a board member at Open Sat. During our conversation, he talks about the unique situation where the Caribbean islands are trying very hard to incorporate a CBDC or Central bank digital currency to the local population and why it's all going so terribly wrong. In addition to many other topics, Dread provides an amazing overview of how E Cash payments are conducted completely offline and without an Internet connection for both the sender and the receiver, and how that's all possible. He provides awesome examples and makes engineering seem easy by some of his descriptions. So I promise you this isn't a conversation that you'll want to miss. And with that, let's jump right into the conversation with Dredd.
- [01:10]
Preston Pysh
Celebrating 10 years, you are listening to Bitcoin Fundamentals by the Investors Podcast Network. Now for your host, Preston Pysh.
- [01:28]
Dread
Hey everyone, welcome to the show. I'm here with Dredd. Welcome to Bitcoin Fundamentals on the Investors Podcast Network.
- [01:35]
Preston Pysh
Thank you, Preston. It's a pleasure to be here.
- [01:37]
Dread
So we've gotten to know each other through a couple different events that we've both attended. You're obviously in the bitcoin space, you're building in the bitcoin space. But where I want to start off this conversation is probably in an area that a lot of people aren't expecting. And we're going to start off talking about sports because you, sir, are a pretty renowned pole vaulter, have done pretty well at sports. And what I find interesting in this space is you find people like yourself that are high achievers in certain areas and they then latch on or they see this thing called bitcoin and it just really resonates with them. And I guess my question is this, do you think that there's some type of parallels here between athletes that are just some of the top tier athletes and their ability to focus and to work really hard at something and to to kind of really understand bitcoin very quickly? Because maybe the proof of work that's associated with it or some other type of quality that just resonates with peak performers. So take it away.
- [02:37]
Preston Pysh
Yeah, well, again, thanks for Having me on your show, I think that you're hitting something that's pretty close to home. As an athlete, there's two things, two characteristics, I think that really drove me into Bitcoin headfirst. It wasn't just the proof of work. It was also the fact that for sports, especially a single athlete, sports, like, not team sports, but like a sport like track and field, you really have to be able to push past not just your own personal boundaries or your own personal limitations or limiting beliefs, but you also have to push past other people telling you that, oh, you might not be able to do this, or, oh, you know, no one else has done that before. What are you thinking? So my story is that track and field is a huge sport in Jamaica. You know, Usain Bolt, the 100 meter world record holder. So when you go to track and field in Jamaica and you try to do it, it's like trying to compete in American NFL. You're not going to probably make it because it's one in a thousand that you're going to be that good. To be able to compete in track and field in Jamaica, the athletes are just top tier, right? Best and best. We win gold medals every Olympics and we're a very small island. So when I went into track and field, you know, I went in thinking, I'm going to be a star, I'm going to do my thing. And then I failed at sprinting. I go, I mean, I wasn't bad, but I was competing against the best.
- [03:52]
Dread
So what kind of sprinting? What distance?
- [03:55]
Preston Pysh
100 meter.
- [03:56]
Dread
Okay, what was your time for 100 meter?
- [03:58]
Preston Pysh
I think my best time ever was 10.4.
- [04:01]
Dread
What?
- [04:02]
Preston Pysh
Seconds.
- [04:03]
Dread
Yeah.
- [04:03]
Preston Pysh
And it sounds great, right?
- [04:05]
Dread
Well, it is great.
- [04:07]
Preston Pysh
I couldn't even make the finals in the local competition in Jamaica. Wow.
- [04:11]
Dread
So you can move out. That time is blazing fast.
- [04:15]
Preston Pysh
At my peak, I probably can run 13 seconds now.
- [04:17]
Dread
Right. Still, that's fast now. Yeah.
- [04:20]
Preston Pysh
But then I thought I was good until I realized that there were better athletes. And then I said, you know what? I really love track and field. I'm going to try other events. I'm going to see, you know, how I can make the Jamaican national team. I tried long jump, I tried triple jump. I tried long distance, I tried, you know, throwing the shot put, throwing the javelin. You name it, I tried the event, trying to make this team. And they were just talented athletes left and right. And then there was this one sport called pole vaulting that no one in Jamaica did because it was just such a crazy sport, Right. Like Pole vaulting. To explain to your audience, you take this long up to 16 foot fiberglass pole that is really hard to bend. You have to put a really lot of pressure into it. You sprint full speed down a Runway and then stab a hole in the ground full speed. And then you throw your body into the pole so your body weight bends the pole, and you hope that you bend it enough to throw you upwards and over a bar while you yourself are doing a gymnastic move to go upside down over that bar. So that whole thing, Jamaicans are just like, nah, I'm just going to sprint. I'm not doing all that crazy stuff. I decide that I'm going to try it. I'm going to make the Jamaican team by doing this completely revolutionary thing in our island that no one's ever done before. So you kind of see where I'm going with this, right? It's like you have to have this pattern of wanting to excel where you realize people haven't really have been brave enough to separate from the pack and do it yourself and do it themselves. And that is where I would parallel it to bitcoin. I was excelling in pole vault because I was willing to take that leap. I was willing to go out and see if this thing was possible and if it failed, okay, fine, just go back and try to sprint again or play chess or something. I don't know. But because I took that chance, I had phenomenal success. I traveled all over the world. I represented my country. I had the national record for 11 years straight in the pole vault. You know, I'm pretty good, but only because I took that chance. And pole vault's the same way. I'm. I'm sorry. Bitcoin is the same way. I was able to really understand bitcoin and then benefit from it because I stepped away from the traditional, you know, corporate technology trends that I knew about. Where people were telling me in Accenture, oh, blockchain is the way, and bitcoin is bad, or bitcoin's only an investment profile and our investment happening. It's not really a. It's not. It has no technical merit. And I had to step away from the people who I trusted in the technology space and say, let me explore this for myself and find out if this thing actually has technical merit. Find out this thing actually is separate from cryptocurrencies and, you know, if it actually has a purpose. And that's when I realized that it actually had a bigger purpose than just investment. You know, it has a purpose for freedom. It has a purpose for, you know, financial sovereignty. You name it. We can talk about that for days. But that's kind of where I parallel athletics to bitcoin. It allowed me to, one, do the proof of work, but two, trust myself that I can find out what something that other people might not know is possible.
- [07:15]
Dread
What I'm curious is, who taught you to think like this? What caused you to think like this? Where it was like a lot of people were telling you no, and you're just saying no, you know what? I can make this team like, you were so. What's the word? I'm looking. You were so determined that you could do this, despite all the naysayers and despite all the people saying, oh, well, you know, you run a 10, it's really fast. But, you know, and most people just kind of throw their hands in the air and, like, I did really well, and then they just move on to the next thing. So what caused you to be relentless like this? Was it a parent? Was it an event? What, like, help us understand this, because we want to tap people listening to this, want to be able to tap into what that is, whatever it is.
- [07:56]
Preston Pysh
Yeah, that's a great question. Maybe I'm just really stubborn.
- [08:00]
Dread
I like that.
- [08:01]
Preston Pysh
I would probably say that I come from a lineage of engineers. My dad's an engineer. My grandfather was an engineer. So we have this methodology within my family of really trying to solve problems, you know, as opposed to trying to go around them, try to engineer your solutions to things. Maybe that's where it came from. You know, kind of like I consider myself to be a dog with a bone. When it comes to a problem that I need to solve. I don't try to run away from it. So I would consider it, some of it being nature, some of it being nurture. I would probably a combination of the two.
- [08:35]
Dread
That engineering background probably helped with the bitcoin piece, too.
- [08:39]
Preston Pysh
Absolutely. Absolutely. It was another problem to solve. Right?
- [08:44]
Dread
Yeah. So tell us the highest that you.
- [08:47]
Preston Pysh
Ever cleared pole vault in American imperial system. That would be 17ft, three quarters of an inch.
- [08:54]
Dread
Oh, my.
- [08:55]
Preston Pysh
17Ft, four and three quarters of an inch.
- [08:57]
Dread
So like a whole basketball hoop and then three fourths of another basketball hoop, and you got your entire body up and over it without touching it.
- [09:06]
Preston Pysh
That's right. Over 5.3 meters. And this is all the way up upside down without touching it.
- [09:12]
Dread
It was fun having watched people pole vault and never at heights that you're saying here, but just watching people pole vault, the thing that always seemed so crazy to Me was this leap of faith, like moment, like right as the pole is getting stuck and you're pushing all of your weight into it, how you have enough faith to continue to hold onto the pole to then slingshot you that first, like that first part and to kind of put your body in a position. I couldn't imagine learning to do that for the first time. Like what that leap of faith. Because it seems like such a leap of faith that, like, I'm just going to trust this thing and it might like throw me wherever or I might just like slide down the pole or whatever. What was that like when you were first learning this? And how old were you when you first started learning this?
- [09:58]
Preston Pysh
So when I first started learning, I was reused the British system. So I was in third form. So I was probably about 14 years old, almost 15 at the time. And you're going to love the answer to this. What gave me the confidence and the faith that I could do it and that was possible apart from just watching videos of other people. The answer really is math. It's very similar to bitcoin.
- [10:22]
Dread
It's such an engineer answer. Such it is.
- [10:27]
Preston Pysh
But it also made me. Gave me an advantage over the other guys that competed against me that wasn't sure what was going to happen. They needed to bend this pole and they didn't know what was going to happen. Would it break, would it throw them to the left, to the right? But with physics and understanding the conversion of potential energy into kinetic energy and understanding the angle that the pole hit the ground, and then if you understand the math behind it all and you know what the possible outcomes are, it gives you a lot more confidence going in. And with a lot more confidence, you can put a lot more power into it. You have less concern over going the wrong direction. It really was math. I mean, it sounds like an engineering answer, but it gave me a distinct advantage over guys who didn't do the math, who didn't do the proof of work to find out, is it safe to do this? And then they would compete against me and they would be holding on for dear life to the pole instead of actually using the force that they needed to use.
- [11:19]
Dread
So, wow, I love this. And it really taps into something that we talk about on the show with respect to bitcoin all the time, which is people were talking about position size. And I tell them, you can't possibly have a larger position size without matching it with intellectual rigor and understanding of what it is that you own, because you're just kind of. It's almost like walking into a dark room and you're kind of scared to take the next step because you don't actually understand, like, what's in there or how it's constructed. And, like. Perfect example of what we're getting at with some of that. All right, let's transition into the conversation around Bitcoin. I love that. That was so fascinating. You and I had this conversation when we were in Nashville about in the Caribbean and how they're really pushing hard for central bank Digital Currencies, or CBDCs, down there in the islands. Explain this cultural phenomenon. Why is that happening? What's it like from the local population standpoint? Just give us kind of the lay of the land of what's happening.
- [12:15]
Preston Pysh
Sure. Let's start off with just the local region and what they're trying to accomplish. Macro perspective. Right. Just like most frontier regions, they want to be on the edge of technology. They want to show that they are the first to do this or the first to do that. Well, a lot of Caribbean islands, Jamaica, the Bahamas, Aruba, they're all trying to be first in technology. And one of the technology fads that are happening right now is the cbdc, the central bank digital currency. So they think that if they are able to promote and push out a central bank digital currency, then they'll get better favor with organizations like the Financial Action Task Force, like the imf, like, you know, all of these different organizations that are pushing for it. They will be more favorable. They'll take them off the gray list if they're on the gray list. So it's a very big financial incentive to show that you are trying to do what the central banks of the central banks want you to do. That being said, it's a little bit of a. I like what Bzinski said. It's a little bit of a LARP where they're making this thing, but it's not really doing what you think it's doing. Like bitcoin is, you know, the real scarce asset. Stable coins provide a bridge, and they allow people to have liquidity in a digital space. But the CBDC is just a digital representation of the same fiat trap that we're in today. It doesn't provide scarcity. It doesn't provide any more security. And then it creates this, you know, aura of surveillance that people didn't have before. And it. If you look at different cultures across the Caribbean, we are all reacting the same way as Nigeria, reacting the same way where we're not adopting it. They've tried to roll out CBDCs in Jamaica there's 2% adoption. They've tried to roll it out. In the Bahamas there's 6% adoption and they're trying to force it, they're trying to mandate it to happen. So I think what's going to happen in the long run is that the CBDCs are going to be launched and then they're going to kind of fade away because the central banks will not have support from the retail and commercial banks because they don't want it either. And then eventually I think stablecoins will become kind of the shift where they'll say okay, well CBDCs didn't work. Let's see if we can use the stablecoins to course correct where the fiat currency is going awry. I don't know what that'll look like in the long term. And this is what I'm hoping for. The dystopian alternative to that is that they decide to push CBDs forward regardless and then it becomes more of a surveillance tool than a financial correction tool. And that's my big fear. That's the reason I'm building a company that's going to like counteract what the CBDC is trying to do.
- [14:40]
Dread
Interesting.
- [14:40]
Preston Pysh
In Jamaica.
- [14:40]
Dread
Yeah. And I want to definitely jump to. Go ahead. What else were you going to say?
- [14:44]
Preston Pysh
Yeah, I wanted to give, I don't know if this is an edit or not, but I wanted to give a quick differential description between the C.C.B.D.C. and the stablecoin. Yeah. For people who are listening.
- [14:54]
Dread
Yeah, let's do that.
- [14:55]
Preston Pysh
Because the cbd. Yeah the CBDC is like I said, it's a fiat currency just in digitized form. That means there is still is no scarcity. It's not backed by anything except the full force and faith of your local government. Whereas a stablecoin, it depends on a stablecoin classification. If you're an asset backed stablecoin then you can be backed by a basket of goods, right. You can be backed by US Treasuries, you can be backed by US dollars, you can be backed by assets, stocks, bonds, et cetera. If you're a crypto backed stablecoin then you can be backed by other cryptocurrencies which as we know are very volatile but it's still a backing of some sort. And then you can have algorithmic stablecoins which are the terra lunas, the stuff that FTX failed upon. And these are all different classes of stablecoins. Now the stablecoin that you've seen most of the world using is stablecoins like Tether, like Circle. These are very strongly asset backed stablecoins that governments are probably going to start tapping into mainly because they're relying on them. Right? You look at the US government, a big chunk of their treasury or their second biggest buyer I think, or third biggest buyer is tether of their treasuries. So to me that looks like something that would be a much more realistic endgame for digital currencies versus the cbdc. And that's why I want people to see the difference. CBDC is more of a surveillance larp and the stablecoin is more of a fiat bridge. And then as we know the end goal is always going to be Bitcoin. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors.
- [16:22]
Dread
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- [17:25]
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- [18:22]
Dread
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- [19:21]
Preston Pysh
All right, back to the show.
- [19:23]
Dread
Talk to us about how they're rolling it out. The CBDC in the Caribbean are people being asked to download a wallet and then there's coins in there like walk us through it because I'm not familiar at all with how that process would work.
- [19:36]
Preston Pysh
Okay. It's ironic because they're rolling it out in almost a self destructive way. So step one, they create a CBDC and it's not DLT based. It is a straight database with a central password somebody's holding. And once they mint all these coins, these tokens, then they say, okay, this CBDC is now being controlled by the central bank and we have our own commercial bank partners that can distribute the tokens among your users, your wallets. The central bank does not have a wallet. The central bank has mandated now all of the retail banks to create their own wallets to distribute the cbdc. So now the commercial banks and the retail banks are creating different wallets. NCB has a wallet called Link, L, Y N K. Sagicor has a wallet called MyCash. And JMMB is still developing their wallet but hasn't completed developing it yet. Each one of these link is the most mature one. They went out and they did what, you know, most people do, they give 30 bucks us free for everyone who downloads the wallet. They had millions of people download the wallet. Jamaica has 3, 2.8 million people right now. They probably had 70% of people download the wallet. 60% of them immediately deleted it afterwards, got their 30 bucks and dipped. So they spent millions of dollars doing this, but no adoption. And the banks, the retail banks specifically did not push for this adoption because to them they're like, well, you're taking away our revenue.
- [21:00]
Dread
Right.
- [21:01]
Preston Pysh
If we're using regular dollars, we get fund, we get fees for those dollars, we get transaction fees, we get point of sale fees, we get all the different fees. If we give people your CBDC to use, we're getting cut out of the picture completely. We get no fees.
- [21:14]
Dread
Yeah.
- [21:15]
Preston Pysh
So the banks completely self destructive, their rollout strategy and now they're trying again to see if it'll work a different way. But I think that, you know, like I said before, it's a LARP and that they're not going to get any support from the banks, not directly. The banks will always say, yes, yes, we'll do what you say, but the banks are never going to actually proactively support them and make this a success. I think it'll have to be much more of a forced mandate. Like that's my concern. Bahamas is forcing it via government top down mandate. And if that is successful, then it doesn't matter what the banks say, people will be forced to use it and that's a concern. But from an incentive perspective, I think that cbdc, they have a tall hill to climb because they don't have institutional support.
- [21:58]
Dread
Yeah, well, and it also seems like any government entity, they just have a total gross misunderstanding of incentives and rolling things out in a way that you're going to have a natural incentive or desire to use it. Wow, that's fascinating. You can see why it's failing so badly based on how you describe that. We had Matt O'Dell on the show just a couple weeks back and he was talking about Open Sats, which is a nonprofit where they're helping, you know, they're getting lots of donations and then they're helping startups allocate resources into the space for great ideas and maybe things that are experimental or, you know, very early stage. You are a board member at Open sats. So talk to us about some of this experience that you've gained and what that's been like, maybe something that you find really fascinating or exciting about the project and just anything else you want to share.
- [22:51]
Preston Pysh
Open SATS has been a humbling experience for me, I have to say. I am on the board with eight other people that are far and beyond some of the best people I've ever met. There are some OGs in the space, all from different corners of the space too. We are very, very decentralized group. I would say a lot of our conversations are never, they never end in agreements, which is good because then we have a very wide range of opinions and you know, have good votes because of that. But I would say my experience with open sats has been great from the beginning. Matt Odell and Ben Price that founded it have been stalwarts and you know, they've been very, very consistent about the mission, which is 100% pass through for all of our donations. And we have separate donations for the operations fund, which, which in and of.
- [23:34]
Dread
Itself is for anybody in the nonprofit space is totally crazy to see numbers of that magnitude just to throw that out there, but. Sorry to interrupt. Keep going.
- [23:42]
Preston Pysh
No, you're right. I asked Ben, how is this going to work in the beginning, you know, but because the vision is clear, you know, it just. The incentives aligned and it worked very well and we have really generous donors because of that.
- [23:53]
Dread
Yeah.
- [23:54]
Preston Pysh
And then we also have very clear mission statement. We're open source first. Like all of our projects and grants have to be on an open source license. If you're education, which I am a of, it has to be on a Creative Commons license with or without attribution. So we're very clear on that. From there, it's all down the line. From there. Are you lightning? Are you Noster? Are you bitcoin? Are you Bitcoin core? Do you need long term support? Are you a one time project? It becomes very easy from that point forward to know who we want to fund based on who's doing the proof of work in the space. We don't fund ideas as much. We fund people who are actively working in the space and showing proof of work. And then from there, if you are looking for funding, go to OpenSats.org we have a mission statement there so you can know exactly what we fund. We have applications online. If you need any questions you need answered, you can reach out to us directly. All of our information is on the website. All the board members are willing to talk on signal or you know, in person if you're at a conference. We're very accessible. So I love the fact that we are so open. I am concerned sometimes that we, you know, we have a little bit too much, I guess you can call it centralization in the funding space. I would like to see more organizations doing this. And on the other hand I'd like to see more donations coming in from profitable bitcoin companies. And that's very important to keep the space going because open source is the reason we got here and open source is going to be continuing to push that forward. So we're supporting that dollar all we can.
- [25:15]
Dread
Has there been a project or thing that you've seen come across your desk that has really excited you there two projects.
- [25:23]
Preston Pysh
The OG one that has really excited me from the beginning is BTC Pay Server. We funded them from the early stages. I've always been excited about what they've done. I was caught up in the hype of, you know, the I will make you obsolete for bit pay. And that was before open SaaS actually. And ever since then I've been really happy that we've been able to consistently support them.
- [25:44]
Dread
Yeah.
- [25:44]
Preston Pysh
So I look forward to what they're doing. They just released I think version 0.2.0 which with a lot of cool features and customizations. So I'm looking forward to that. But the other project in this space that I like a lot is the validating Lightning signer. This allows things like Breeze SDK to exist because you're able to lightening, you're able to sign lightning transactions as a non custodial node without needing all the resources on your own laptop. Right. You can have them in the cloud somewhere but still have sovereign control over your funds in a lightning environment. So I'm excited about that. There's like over 200 projects right now we're currently funding. So it would be unfair of me to try to pick and choose winners. But we're all excited about everything we're doing there.
- [26:26]
Dread
That's amazing and it's and from afar for somebody who's seeing these like BTC Pay server from the outside, they don't necessarily know how it's being funded or how a lot of that work that's been done, where that resourcing came from and so perfect example of the power of open sats and what you guys are doing. So hats off to you. And it's very exciting to know like a person like yourself is one of the board members there helping to make just sound solid decisions. Yeah, go ahead.
- [26:56]
Preston Pysh
Another part to it because we just pipped two months ago launched the education initiative. Education initiative focuses specifically on projects that are either trying to increase awareness or increase adoption or increase education in the bitcoin space across developers and the 101 welcome to Bitcoin crowd. So we're trying to fund teachers, educators, developers that want to fund it. Developers. The examples I would give would be like BTC plus, they just had E Cash in Germany the other day. And those are the kind of functions and spaces that we want to be able to continue to push. Because it's one thing to create a project and to do some open source code and make something cool, but it's another thing to teach developers to come up in the space and then they are the next generation that continues to make even cooler projects. And we want to make sure that we're building a hundred year, thousand year timeline of work here, not just a 10 year timeline. And that's, I think the education initiative helps to achieve that goal.
- [27:55]
Dread
So you had mentioned earlier that you're working on a business of your own. Tell us the name of the business, what it is, and then most importantly, tell us from the user's perspective what value prop you're solving for. Kind of explain it as a person's listening to it. If they were going to get something out of this product, tell them what that value prop is.
- [28:14]
Preston Pysh
Okay, so the name of my company is Flash and we're bringing Bitcoin to the Caribbean. Connecting the Caribbean using Bitcoin. If I was to give you the value prop in an elevator speech, it would be that if you're a Jamaican or from the Cayman Islands or many other islands in the Caribbean, how do you buy Bitcoin today? The usual answer you're going to get is, oh, we can't, we don't know anything about Bitcoin or we've heard about it, but we can't buy it. And that's because in the islands, like the Cayman Islands and like Jamaica, if you have a bank account there or a debit card there, it's impossible for you to buy Bitcoin. You can't go on Binance, you can't go on Coinbase, you don't have cash app. It doesn't exist in those islands. There's just no way to buy Bitcoin. How people do it is they go find a friend in the US or they find a friend in Europe and they say, hey, buy me some bitcoin. I'll wire transfer you some money and then I'll have it on my own. We're bringing on ramp and off ramp into the island. So people with Jamaican currency or Cayman dollars or any other island that we go to, they can directly buy Bitcoin with cash or with their bank account or their debit card with low fees and they'll have the same access that everybody else in the world has to be able to buy and sell Bitcoin and use it for transactions and everyday payments. And remittance, don't forget remittance. That's a big one.
- [29:22]
Dread
Do you think that this is.
- [29:23]
Preston Pysh
That's what we're doing. We are already launched. Go ahead.
- [29:26]
Dread
Oh, sorry. Do you think that the. The reason that it's not there is just because it's so bifurcated as far as, like, which island is associated with some of the other countries? Is that why it's just kind of lagging or what's caused this?
- [29:40]
Preston Pysh
I think that might be a secondary reason. I think the primary reason is really the current climate of the banking system of the Caribbean islands compared to the banking some of the US and Europe. So we talk about the Financial Action Task Force, these unelected group of officials that are putting people on a gray list or a white list or a blacklist. If you're a sanctioned country, they've put a lot of the Caribbean islands on a gray list. And that gray list means that there is intense KYC and additional regulatory restrictions that are being put on the banking systems in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands. And if you're an international company, it makes it very hard to do business there. If you are an international company like Coinbase, you try to accept a Jamaican bank card and the Jamaican banking system is required to do additional kyc. They can't just approve the transaction and that makes it really hard to do business. So I think that's where the stunted growth has happened. I think it's really regulatory. I think some of that regulatory is the backdrop of, oh, well, this island used to be from France and this island used to be a colony of the uk and whose regulations should we be really following? That is a little bit of the confusion. I think it's a literal regulatory gray area, which means. And we're on a gray list, so we're in a gray spot. I would love for it to be different and I think I'm pushing for that. I think as I bring companies like Flash into the forefront and show them what a regulatory framework would look like in this space. And they can create their own legislation, approve their own legislation, and I think that would bring us into the 21st century a lot faster than living right now. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors.
- [31:17]
Dread
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- [33:55]
Preston Pysh
All right, back to the show.
- [33:57]
Dread
First of all, tell everybody kind of where you're at with the value prop and the business. Can somebody log on to Flash today and buy Bitcoin or are you months out? Talk to us about the timeline of where you're at with the business.
- [34:08]
Preston Pysh
Sure. So I like to say that we are in the pilot phase right now. You can download our app if you're not in the US you can download our app on the app Store, on the Play Store, or you can download directly using our apk. You can log on and once you do a manual kyc. You can buy and sell bitcoin today. If you are in Jamaica, we have five physical locations that you can go to. You can just hand over cash and buy bitcoin today as well, or use your debit card and buy bitcoin today as well. We plan to cover the island with locations, of course, by the end of the year, by the end of 2025. Also, if you are in the Cayman Islands, next year we plan to have our first few locations there where you can buy bitcoin with the Cayman Islands dollars. And the end goal of this is to be able to say you can buy bitcoin with cash or in your app. You can buy it by just pressing a button, add your bank account, or you can swipe your credit card and buy it as well. And we're probably in the last. No, December will be our last month of pilot. And then we go public in January in Jamaica where anybody can walk in and buy bitcoin or download it and buy bitcoin as well.
- [35:07]
Dread
How exciting. That's awesome. As an entrepreneur, what's been your hardest challenge? Building all of this?
- [35:14]
Preston Pysh
Two main challenges. The first challenge has been finding dedicated good resources to help me build it. You know, bitcoin is one of those things that it's a passion project. Right? Like you really have to get it, understand the value prop of bitcoin and then build upon it. And finding resources has been difficult in the beginning. I have to thank companies like Layer for talent. It's a recruiting firm that helped me to find amazing talent when I was struggling to find it myself. And then the second part would be probably the adoption in terms of education and knowledge of the people that are going to be using it. When you talk about bitcoin to people in Jamaica, they immediately think, oh, wait a second, isn't that that scam thing, that World Coin? Wasn't there something in ftx? That's all they think about at first.
- [35:58]
Dread
Right.
- [35:59]
Preston Pysh
So getting over that hump is probably a big challenge that we've had to address. And we've addressed it two different ways. One, by creating a community in the Caribbean called Island Bitcoin, we can go to meetups, you can learn things. There's no pressure. You hear about what Bitcoin is. You hear about the history of it, you hear about cryptocurrency, et cetera. And then the other thing is in the app itself, we've created educational modules so you can learn about Bitcoin as you're using the app in a very hands off, very non pressure format. And we're hoping that this combination of education and access to Bitcoin will allow people to adopt it better. But I would say that that's probably the biggest challenge. The biggest challenge is getting people to open up their mind, especially people who are in the islands, not exactly flush with discretionary funding, not exactly flush with free time to think about this. If you have $100 and $100 has to pay your rent next month and then you hear something might be a scam, you're not going to take the time to figure out if it is or not. So we're trying to make it as easy and as quick as possible for people to be able to decide to themselves, okay, this is good and I want to learn more.
- [37:04]
Dread
I suspect that you buy into this idea that we're on the precipice of a bull market coming here in the coming year or two. Do you think, if true, do you think that that's going to help alleviate some of these FTX concerns or all these things that kind of happened on the last cycle that are challenges from an education standpoint for people to understand Bitcoin or understand what's happening? Do you think some of that goes away if we go through another cycle and people see this? Or is this something that's just going to continue to perpetuate itself over and over and over again? Where do you see this from a community and education standpoint kind of moving forward?
- [37:40]
Preston Pysh
My first year in bitcoin was around 2017. It was right at the end of the block size wars. So I've been through two cycles so far in terms of feeling how people respond and I think we might be in for a couple more cycles like that. I not really a full believer of the super cycle theory or the, you know, immediate hyper bitcoinization, but every cycle there is always a flood of people that come in and then a few always stay to say, I get it and this has changed my mind as to how money works, but they will. I think we still have a couple more FTX cycles to go. Not ftx, it's probably going to be more, you know, nation state level or what is it the risks or the size of the can't remember what I want to use here.
- [38:22]
Dread
Maybe like the speculators are going to come, come in and kind of bid the price, and they don't even understand necessarily why they're there. They just know that their neighbor made a bunch of money, and so that's why they come and then they leave just as quickly because they came chasing money and not necessarily the fundamentals. Right?
- [38:37]
Preston Pysh
Exactly, exactly. And then there'll be a small percentage of people that do stay and stay for the fundamentals. And I'm expecting that. But I'm also expecting that during the next bull run that happens, there's going to be a scaling challenge to solve as a company. Sure. You get a couple thousand sales and then a bull run happens, and all of a sudden a million people are knocking at your door wanting bitcoin. I think that's an important problem to be ready for. And then because you're able to solve that problem and make it easy, you have more people that stay, more people that say, oh, this was a good experience. I do want to learn more about bitcoin casting this wide net. Right. Trying to catch that when the bull market happens.
- [39:13]
Dread
What's some of the interesting things that the people working in your physical stores have heard or been asked? I'm real curious what that's like, because you're the first person I think I've ever talked to that has a physical location that people can come into to buy bitcoin. And I'm sure you see and hear all sorts of things. So is there any interesting comments or funny stories or anything that's worthy of a highlight?
- [39:37]
Preston Pysh
Well, first I want to make a clarification that the stores aren't ours particularly. We partner with existing businesses. So we have a supermarket that's become a flat. We call them flash points because it's flash. So you can buy and sell bitcoin in the supermarket. We have a gas station in Buff Bay, Portland, and then we also have another supermarket in St. Anne's Bay, and then a restaurant also in St. Anne's Bay, & then a pizza place called Pizza Please in Kingston. So those are the five locations. And each one of those locations, people would go in and they would either just buy food there. Right. Or buy drinks. And then some would actually come in and say, hey, pop up my wallet with some bitcoin. And each one of those people that go in, they've already been briefed. Right. It's a pilot phase that have been told what's happening. They go in and it's mostly comments about the technology and how Smooth it is. And easy compared to trying to use their debit card, trying to use cash and get change. We haven't really heard anyone come in and say, what's this bitcoin thing? Or there hasn't been any kind of.
- [40:36]
Dread
They already know that before.
- [40:38]
Preston Pysh
They already know. I think we're going to get those comments in January when we have people walking off the street and just trying. And then I can give you some more probably really cool stories about it. But right now we're just kind of focused on making it work as easy as possible for people and iterating on the product so it's seamless. When we go live in January, we.
- [40:56]
Dread
Have a ton of new people showing up to the space right now that are interested in learning what's like one of your key highlights or things that you think are important for them to understand or that you would like to impress upon somebody who's showing up to bitcoin for the first time right now.
- [41:10]
Preston Pysh
So I'm going to have two different answers for you.
- [41:12]
Dread
Okay?
- [41:13]
Preston Pysh
The first answer is going to be for someone in Jamaica who is showing up for the first time. I'm always going to tell them the same thing. I'm going to say, look, there has been a lot of scams in the past, especially because Jamaica is used to that. Like, I hate to say it this way, but we have a culture of, you know, people in certain areas of Jamaica scamming, like calling people in the U.S. old retirees, telling them that they can give won the lotto and they just have to give some money. It's terrible. And because of that, if you tell people anything about technology, they immediately start thinking, is this a scam? How should I be careful? So my first piece of advice to anyone in Jamaica is just take a step back, keep an open mind and try to think from first principles. What you're hearing right, if you think it's a scam, afterwards, totally understand. But step away from all of the things you've learned and start afresh and see if you can learn something new today. That's the advice for Jamaicans. For anyone else in the world, the big piece of advice I would say is look into the technology behind bitcoin. I mean, we talk about the economics all the time. We talk about the potential for what bitcoin can do. But the way I really understood bitcoin to the point where I wanted to work in it was being able to understand the technology behind it. Maybe this is an engineering answer. Once I did the math and I realized that not only is this thing bulletproof, but it's also a discovery, the same way that we changed the entire method of doing math to become infinitely more efficient, maybe not infinitely, but exponentially more efficient, just because we discovered one number. And I feel we have the same type of discovery here where we've discovered something that is now digital scarcity that didn't exist before. And now we have exponential improvements in almost every other space we study. So I would recommend that people try to understand the technology behind Bitcoin and then go from there and see where your brain takes you.
- [43:06]
Dread
I love that. Speaking of the engineering, what would you say is the most fascinating aspect of Bitcoin that just kind of like blows your mind? Is it the halving schedule? Is it the two week difficulty adjustment? Is there anything in particular, and it could be even on lightning or anything in Bitcoin that from an engineering standpoint just kind of blows your mind. And then talk about it and explain it to the listeners so that they understand the nuance of what you're talking about.
- [43:32]
Preston Pysh
Okay, I'm probably going to go a bit off roading here because you're probably used to hearing the different types of core Bitcoin discoveries or the different things that built up to make Bitcoin core and the bitcoin white paper. But my most exciting thing right now is ecash. I think that ecash to give the listeners a background is not new. David Chaum, I don't want to say invented, let's say he discovered ecash back in the 1980s, wrote a paper about it, brought it to the different banks and organizations, see all the history behind it. And it failed back then because there was nothing behind it that was decentralized to push it forward without a centralized party derailing it. So now there's Bitcoin and if you put ecash on top of Bitcoin, you get this amazing new technology that provides absolute privacy. It doesn't give you the same non custodial feel or non custodial properties, but it gives you absolute privacy and it gives you near zero transactions. And then the part that excites me.
- [44:33]
Dread
The most, it gives you zero fee on the transactions.
- [44:37]
Preston Pysh
Sorry. Yeah, zero fees on the transactions. Thank you.
- [44:39]
Dread
Yeah.
- [44:40]
Preston Pysh
And then the part that excites me the most that I want to get to is that it enables for the first time truly offline payments, offline payments from the sender and on the receiver. And I'll tell you a story. Just two weeks ago, it's been happening for two weeks now in Jamaica In Portland, in one of the two locations that I have that I'm running flash, the power is on, but the Internet is not working. We have two Internet providers in Jamaica, both Digicel and Flow, and they're both out. So if you're in that city, you cannot use the Internet on your laptop on nothing. Right? Your cell phone reception is not working either. So you can't make any phone calls, you can't use your data plan. So now you have merchants in the city that have their Visa point of sale machines, their bank point of sale machines, and they can't use them. People are walking in with regular debit cards and cannot buy anything in the store. If you don't find an ATM and get cash and walk into that store, you can't buy anything to eat. And then that gets worse. That city, Buff Bay, does not have a bank in it. You have to travel an hour north, get to the closest bank. It has one ATM, no two ATMs in that city and the ATMs are out. Why? Because the Internet is out and the ATMs use the Internet and the cell phone service to connect to the banks. So now if you're in that city as of two weeks now, you have to travel an hour to go to your closest bank and you have to get cash physical and come back into the city to be able to live. So that's a serious problem. And ecash is the first technology that I've seen that actually solves the problem on both ends. So you can now transact with your phone using Bluetooth or even just a QR code on a camera without needing the Internet, without needing infrastructure behind it. And I'm super excited for that to proliferate. I know we're still in the early stages of ecash, but once that becomes an enterprise level solution, man, like we're going to solve so many problems in the third world.
- [46:27]
Dread
Technically, what's happening here from an engineering standpoint is quite fascinating as far as the way that this gets signed between these two devices and how the ledger is obviously eventually updated whenever there is a connection to the Internet by either the sender or the receiver. I can't talk to the nuance of it. I've had it explained to me, but unfortunately I can't off the cuff go into the nuance of how that's all happening through the encryption of what's shared between the two devices. But this is mind blowing type stuff. Can you do it, Dread? Can you talk to it a little bit? Yeah, go ahead.
- [47:00]
Preston Pysh
Yeah. And I'LL use a couple analogies. But what's basically happening is the ecash creates a system, almost an internal system, that is, I would call it a layer 2.5, right on top of bitcoin. And what it does is it locks bitcoin into a multi sig in cash case. It would be a single wallet. In Fedimint's case, it's a multisig, but it basically locks your bitcoin into that wallet and then from there it mints ecash tokens that are equivalent in denomination to that bitcoin. So if you have one bitcoin, you have 100 million sats of ecash. And then from there you're able to distribute that among different people using Charmian tokens. And these are actual bits of data, like just big old hashes of data that aren't on a blockchain, that aren't on a network, they're on any kind of lightning channel. And the way they work is would it be similar to envelope? If you remember back in the banking days, you might have an envelope and that envelope has a piece of carbon copy paper inside of it. So what it does is inside of that carbon copy paper, you write down exactly what the amount is and then you close the envelope. So the bank can't see it, but the bank can stamp it. And what that stamp is a signature, right? It's a public private key signature that the Mint is using to stamp. And say we authorize this as an actual payment. The bank doesn't know what's in it, but the bank says that you have it now, that envelope, your data, you can hand it to anybody you want. That is the E cash. And if you hand it to somebody, they can see the bank's signature on it, AKA the Mint signature on it, and they can have it in their hand saying, I have this cash. And to your point, whenever they get back online in the future, a day, two days later, they can hand it back to the Mint and say, hey, I need you to redeem this for me. And redeeming means validate. This is true. Take it and give me a brand new copy of it. That is signature name to say, now I have ecash I can spend. So that's the overall analogy of it. The Mint doesn't always have to be connected to the wallet. There are no accounts per se. You don't have to sign up with the Mint. All you have to do is have the cash on you and then you can redeem it for new cash whenever you want. The one thing I would also say about it is that whenever you have these cash ecash token that you're passing around, there is no transaction fee involved in that. Right. The only thing you're using is data to pass it around. And when I say data, not Internet, you can pass it via Bluetooth, you can pass it via QR code on a camera, you can even pass it just writing it down. If you have a, you know, you see it and you can write it down on a piece of paper. It might be long but you can do it. And that's the exciting part about it.
- [49:32]
Dread
The thing that I found most fascinating with these ecash payments is how fast it takes place. So even, you know, if we were using the Lightning network right now and we wanted to shoot sats through this video feed through a QR code, it's really fast. Like really, really fast. Like you'll see the screen turn green within a second or two. But this is near instantaneous. Like I mean whenever I've scanned it in the past, I mean it is literally like that second. It's immediately the screen goes green and it's valid and like you're moving out like faster than tapping a Visa payment or a MasterCard payment. It is crazy fast. So wow, I love that highlight. That is an amazing, amazing highlight for people to hear.
- [50:12]
Preston Pysh
Here's another point for you. Yeah, even on Lightning, it's super fast. But there is a limit to how many Lightning payments you can have at one time. Right. So if you're on the screen and you have your QR code up and let's say a thousand people try to send you lightning at the same time, you're going to have some delays there because even the Lightning network has an upper limit. With ecash, people could send you millions of payments and they're all going to go through instantly because they're just sending you data. So it's a step factor in scaling in terms of what payments can be in the future. So it's not just about the offline payments, it's the scale as well. If you want to move to a billion people in instant payments or multiple billions of people, I think ecash is the way, I think lightning is a B2B glue. But ecash is going to be one of the many things that Lightning is connecting to bring Bitcoin to billions.
- [50:57]
Dread
Yeah. From a payment stand. So obviously a lot of the stuff we were talking about earlier. Yeah. Early in the show is much more store value based. And now all these comments that were just for the audience, that kind of keep track of where we're at. A lot of this is the technology of like, hey, I want to go buy a cup of coffee. This is how we suspect a lot of this is really going to evolve in the future. Dread. This is amazing. I love this conversation. For anybody in the Caribbean, if you're wanting to buy Bitcoin, I think you know the source to go to with Flash. Give people a handoff of the website or where they can. You said earlier they can download it right off the App Store. Would they search Flash, Bitcoin or what would be the best way to search and find it?
- [51:37]
Preston Pysh
Yeah. So you can go to our website. That's the easiest way. If you go to get Flash IO, you'll see the website there. We'll have the links to download on the App Store or the Play Store or your APK directly. If you are in the App Store or the Play Store and you're not in the US I have to stress that because we're not inside the US yet. You can just type Flash, send, spend and Save or ln Flash and you should see it pop up. We also have our own Discord Group. If you are in Discord, you can just. For our Discord server, it should be also a link on our website. Where else can you find us? That might be it for now. Or we're a noster. Of course. I forgot to tell you that Nostr is an integral part of Flash. You get an endpub when you sign up with Flash and you can chat inside the app.
- [52:20]
Dread
Oh wow. That is. That's a huge thing we needed to talk about there, sir.
- [52:25]
Preston Pysh
Yeah, completely.
- [52:27]
Dread
Real fast. Let me just explain why I think this is a really big deal and correct me if I'm missing anything or you want to add onto it Dread. But by incorporating the Nostr End Pub, you're mixing social media, decentralized social media with payments. And here's the great thing is I could go look up. I could go onto my whatever Nostr app I'm using to access the decentralized social media. I could find Dread real fast just through a search. If I wanted to pay him 100 bucks for whatever, maybe we just split dinner together. I could pay him back whether he wanted to receive the payment or not. I could find him there and I could zap the payment over. And it sounds like this is all going to be incorporated into your application that you're making, which is really exciting. Wow, that's amazing.
- [53:09]
Preston Pysh
I can tell you the use case for it too.
- [53:11]
Dread
Yeah, go ahead.
- [53:11]
Preston Pysh
There's a social stigma to remittance. You might have people that are in the US and they're sending money home, and the people home. Oh, they feel like they have to ask for the money, and no one really wants to ask money every month. It's not a very proud thing to do. So they have to actually push for that payment to come. If you have now consistent social interaction in the app with somebody, you're sending them pictures of your family, you're showing your good grades. Now your aunt or uncle in the US can see these things and just constantly zap you money just because you're communicating with them. There is no active ask for money anymore. It's just a consistent flow that you get because you're sharing your life with people. And I think that kind of change in the interaction can actually change the remittance world in terms of how people get money instead of having to wait for it and walk into a Western Union and do all the embarrassing things to get it. So I'm excited for that future with Noster as well.
- [54:02]
Dread
Yeah, that is fascinating. While we were talking, I pulled just to kind of demo this for people, and hopefully this works. I looked up dread on my phone while we were just talking right here. This is all spontaneous. I put a thousand sats into my phone and. And let's see if this pushes through. And this is again on the Lightning network. Look at that. I just sent you a thousand sats. And can you confirm whether you received 1,000 sats or not into your Bitcoin wallet?
- [54:29]
Preston Pysh
Yeah, I didn't even ask for that. Let's see if it popped out.
- [54:32]
Dread
It's on your getalby is what I'm seeing.
- [54:34]
Preston Pysh
Let's see.
- [54:35]
Dread
So, I mean, this is the power of being able to just look somebody up. And it's like Twitter, or at least the interface that I was just using is a lot like Twitter. This NOSTR protocol. But I'm able to find him. I'm able to. I didn't have to ask him for his bank account information. Typically, it'd be like, oh, here's my account number, here's my routing number. All this stuff. To be able to send a micro payment. What's a thousand sats? That's like 50 cents or something. And I would just zap that over the call while we were sitting here talking. And it just kind of shows you the power of some of this stuff that's coming down the pipe. And you are where? I don't know if you want to.
- [55:12]
Preston Pysh
Disclose an extension oh, there it is. I just got it to my extension online. It popped up a minute ago. 1,000 sets. Thank you for the tip.
- [55:20]
Dread
Yes.
- [55:21]
C
There you go.
- [55:22]
Dread
And here's what's amazing. You are outside of the United States, I'm assuming, right now. In fact, I don't even know where you're at. And that's a super powerful thing to kind of think of being able to send an international payment. Micro size $0.50. He got all of it happened within seconds. And you didn't even tell me any details else at all. I just knew your name and I looked it up.
- [55:45]
Preston Pysh
Yeah. And if you're in Jamaica now and you did that, someone could go into a local flashpoint and buy a candy with it or anything else they wanted to. That's the power of just instant payments and instant cash outs.
- [55:56]
Dread
Yeah. Crazy times upon us, Dread. All right. Hey, sir, thank you for this. Anything else that you want to highlight or point people towards. I think you gave somewhat of a handoff. We'll have all that in the show. Notes for people, but anything, any final notes or comments?
- [56:11]
Preston Pysh
Yeah, I would say if you're in Jamaica, look us up. Island Bitcoin. We have monthly meetups every Thursday. They're either going to be at Summit, which is a really cool place to hang out and drink and play games, or sometimes we have them at the AC Hotel. So just contact us a website called islandbitcoin.com and also if you're looking for Flash, it's GetFlash IO, we're on Twitter and Nostr. And then of course, if you are a developer in the bitcoin space, look at open sats. We're constantly giving out grants and we're looking for great developers. Like you don't feel like your project is too young or, you know, not the right one. Just apply. The application is the beginning of the conversation, not the end. And then we take it from there. I'm looking forward to talking to all of you. One love.
- [56:51]
Dread
Thank you so much for coming on the show today, Dredd. I really enjoyed it.
- [56:54]
Preston Pysh
I enjoyed it too, Preston. I appreciate you having me. And we'll talk soon.
- [56:58]
Dread
Talk soon.
- [56:59]
Preston Pysh
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