Beyond Store of Value: Bitcoin and Lightning Are the Real FinTech Opportunity

It all comes down to computers communicating. The information superighway can be a confusing mix of on-ramps and off-ramps. Bitcoin is worthless artificial gold. Is it still rat poison? Probably rat poison squared. We need to get into the world of Okay, this is actually foundational technology. What the internet of money does is it creates a single network which can do a microtransaction to a giga [Music] transaction. The internet is going to be one of the major forces for reducing the roll of gun. The one thing that's missing but that will soon be developed is a reliable ecash. All righty. Welcome back to Final Settlement. Today is Tuesday, April 8th, 2025. Super excited for today's RIP. We've got a uh great episode for you guys. Two special guests today. So, alongside me is my uh co-host Liam Nelson and our two guests today, Pierre Corbin, uh founder and CEO of Flash Payments, and Graham Kriezik, founder and CEO of Voltage Payments. So uh you know lots to talk about today. The the highle theme is going to be really you know what we've talked about a lot on this show historically is Bitcoin is more than just a store of value. It's more than digital gold. I think that's you know the the primary thesis that a lot of allocators are wrapping their heads around today. Even if you think about something like you know the United States uh adopting Bitcoin in some sense and creating a strategic Bitcoin reserve that's very much the store of value use case. That's how they're thinking about it. That's how most allocators are thinking about it. But the reality is that, you know, digital gold doesn't really do Bitcoin uh justice. It can be much more than that. and um propelling forward that sort of next leg of the thesis if you is if you will is you know thing things like the lightning network other protocols that are interoperable with Bitcoin's base layer that are going to enable uh all these different payments use cases uh microp payments things that you know uh Pierre and Flash are doing with Noster Wallet Connect are fascinating um and Graham and his team also just uh put out a report with Fidelity uh around the lightning network so we'll we'll get into that as well and some some announcements from the voltage team uh in addition to that. So very excited to have you both on the show today. Um how are we doing fellas? Doing great. Yeah, excited to be here. I think that uh I love the topic because this is something that we talk quite a bit about of just if Bitcoin's only a store of value then, you know, we kind of lost lost some of the point. Um so yeah, excited to dive in. Yeah, that's um it was actually I think there was a clip or a quote from from Jack Dorsey going around the past week or so that said something to the effect of that like you know if it's just a store of value Bitcoin has failed. Would would you guys agree let's just maybe start there. Would you guys agree with that that sentiment from from Jack a week or so ago? I mean I think generally speaking I guess not. I mean the store of value is still people using it right. I think it it will mean you know uh Bitcoin's full potential won't have been reached I think but but yeah I think you know there's still first just as you know education and store of value number go up I think there's already like a lot of value in Bitcoin just just with that but but yeah 100% I mean that's what we're working on at flash as well it's you know bitcoin you know before being peer sorry before being sort of value I mean the title of the the white paper is that it's you know um peer-to-peer electronic cath right so that's uh it's supposed to be the first use case before store value store value is just a result of all of the fundamental mechanisms that were built into Bitcoin so yeah but I don't think it would have failed right people would still use it even if it's just to stand there Graham do you agree with that or different yeah I mean like like yes I think that ultimately if Bitcoin is only a store value has it failed like I think failed is like a strong word there. I do think that it has not reached its full potential that it could um and I completely agree on you know Satoshi's I think original vision for it is for a payments mechanism. I mean he put that in the paper of like here's how you can you know send these electronic you know digital cash payments. Um so I think there is a huge amount of potential inside of Bitcoin for the payments use case. Um, I think that's been one of the challenges that we've seen at the start of this year is, you know, everyone's excited or was excited about all the things going on in the federal government in the United States of like the whole um like the Bitcoin bill and like the the crypto stockpile, like all those things that were kind of happening at the administration level. The thing is all of those things were for a store of value use case. They're all talking about the government's going to hold this like all those things. I'm not saying that those are all bad things necessarily. we can, you know, debate all those different things independently, but like overall I think the focus has been on the store value for so long that people have really lost sight of the payments side of it. Um, and so that's what I think, you know, both of our companies are really trying to to to bring up is just more of, you know, it is not only not only can Bitcoin do payments and it can do payments well, but it is actually the most superior way of doing payments in the entire crypto ecosystem. And that's what we kind of highlighted in our report with Fidelity is it's not only like oh Bitcoin can also do this thing too. It's like no it can actually do it and it can do it much better than other systems that have been created to try and solve that problem too. So I think that it um it doesn't you know it doesn't um fail if it's only a store of value but it definitely doesn't reach its full potential. Yeah, I think that's that's very well said by both of you and I I sort of land in a a similar camp of Yeah, it's it's sort of like the next extension of the thesis and it's you know its full potential is being you know serving all the needs of a of a form of money, right? Which would include uh a medium of exchange type use case. And it's also just fascinating because like you pointed out, you know, the white paper obviously calls it peer-to-peer cash and then like you know it the first real usage of Bitcoin, you know, whether you're talking about Silk Road or otherwise like that was medium exchange. So it's like we've seen this evolution from that to then digital gold and now it's like well you know into the future it'll probably be some combination of both of those things. Um and the other um thing that comes to mind is uh we had uh Bitstein on the show many months ago and he had a an interesting way of thinking about you know all of this in the sense that I think a lot of people get their you know get stuck in the mode of thinking like well it needs to be a store of value first and then then it becomes a medium exchange and he had a very interesting insight around that in the sense that he was like it's kind of everything all at once it's just you know you're delaying the spend right like If you as a person who understands the value profit of Bitcoin, you understand that you're in a you know very small minority that actually understands what it is then the price is going to go up over time uh probably pretty aggressively over the next like decade or two. So you're not incentivized to spend your Bitcoin. And so that's just a reality. But at the same time, money is is money for a reason, right? Like you're eventually going to use it for something. And so even if you're um delaying that eventual medium of exchange use case, like one, we still need to like plan for it. And two, there are going to be people around the world who have different use cases and different needs at different times. Um and so yeah, I think that's that's well said. I I certainly wouldn't say it's failed if you know if we don't uh succeed you know to the full extent on the medium exchange side but I think it's just going to be I think we're early days and I think it's going to be a process and um different people have different needs at different times for for money generally speaking um but I did want to um maybe just taking a step step back a bit uh Pierre you've been on the show before people are somewhat familiar with uh Flash a portfolio company of of early riders Uh but maybe each of you could give sort of just a high level brief background on yourselves, how you got into Bitcoin and and what each of your companies does. Uh yeah. Well, so I can go first a little bit further. So I'm K Corbin. I'm CEO and co-founder of Fl. And yeah, FL, we um provide software solutions for businesses that want to be able to monetize in Bitcoin in uh self-custody. Uh no intermediaries, just uh unlocking peer-to-peer payments for for businesses. Awesome. Yeah. So, my name's Graham. I'm so I'm founder and CEO of Voltage. Um, and I got into Bitcoin about 2012. Um, very fascinated about it from like the tech perspective of man, how can you create this like globally decentralized like payment network that no one can like, you know, stop payments and like all all the things that kind of uh go along inside of Bitcoin um from the tech perspective. Um and then you know kept it as a hobby for a long time and worked in software and then ultimately started voltage basically to solve my own problem of as you as I was building things inside of Bitcoin. It was just really starting from scratch over and over and over again and everyone was like building everything from scratch like from from you know for every single projects building Bitcoin core from source like all these different things. says like, "Man, there's got to be a better way." And so that's why I created Voltage and what it ultimately is today is a a method of just being able to integrate Bitcoin in the Lightning Network is what we do the majority of our business on. Um to make it much easier, faster to integrate the technology into your business. And so instead of hiring out a team of you know four or five people and again starting it all from scratch, you can really just kind of hit our APIs and plug in um to be able to process payments um or you know both bitcoin and then stable coins are coming soon which we'll we'll probably touch on soon. Um and being able to do that much easier and faster than you would um kind of starting it all from zero. Yeah. No, it's that's a super helpful overview. Maybe like um Graham on your side, it'd be helpful um to walk through maybe like a few examples that are like tangible of like how you know either projects or you know different use cases are using voltage today. Um you know we we mentioned we or we alluded to the the partnership with Bitco on the stablecoin side but maybe even before stable coins like just on the sort of Bitcoin native side some could you walk through some sort of tangible tangible examples of of how voltage helps companies? Yeah, definitely. I mean, so we so some examples of customers that we work with are like exchanges. Um, so if they want to if an exchange wants to add in Lightning to do, you know, deposits and withdrawals inside of their platform, um, they're able to hook into Voltage really quickly and easily and add in that capability without having to again hire a team and and do a lot of the complexity themselves. Um, we also work with uh like payment processors, so people that are doing uh, historically it's been very much like if anyone is moving any kind of Bitcoin on chain, you can do it faster and cheaper via Lightning. So that's a better user experience and that's saving potentially millions of dollars a year depending on your volumes of onchain fees that you can um save in into moving into lightning. And so we work with a lot of like uh crypto or bitcoin specific um payment processors and being able to move create better better cogs as well as faster you know better experiences by moving that volume into lightning. Um, and then we're also working on, you know, some newer use cases of, uh, you know, getting more traditional finance into into Bitcoin and being able to have, um, kind of like the the dollars to Bitcoin kind of solve for them and all those different things. So, ultimately, we really, um, Lightning is made to be a faster, cheaper way of moving Bitcoin. Um, and that's basically what we enable for people like exchanges, payment processors, neo banks, wallets, any of those kinds of folks. Gotcha. And um maybe we can we can touch on the uh the partnership with Bitco um because I found it very interesting just in the sense that you know I think to announce and launch something like this I'll pull up the um the presser now but you know to to go about this I would imagine that there was you know a significant demand like there were people you know institutions in particular asking for this type of thing. Um and and I'm curious one is that true and was that sort of the impetus for doing this that there was you know clear demand from institutional folks that wanted to you know move dollars in a more efficient way effectively and then beyond that I guess you know secondary question in in your mind at this stage is that where the majority of demand is for using something like lightning is moving dollars as opposed to you know institutions moving around bitcoin on lightning? Yeah. So like with so with this integration with Bitco I mean we're starting off with doing bit Bitcoin payments over lightning and so stable coins are kind of a coming soon thing as soon as like tapered assets is has launched and we have people like Tether that have publicly announced that they're going to support it in the coming months. So the stable coins over lightning is a coming soon thing which we do see a huge amount of demand for um with this as well for specifically on this Bitco integration. Yes, I mean there has been um a lot of folks that we talked to um that are very interested in Lightning. They want to enable it um for all the the benefits that I've kind of mentioned before. Um but they already use people like a BitGo or some kind of a custodian to to manage all their other asset movements, asset management. And so, um, instead of having kind of a a an additional, um, provider that would be like Voltage if they work directly, we're able to hook into the Bico, um, network and they're ultimately customers are able to kind of hit a single source that they've already integrated their business um, and be able to get the benefits of Lightning. So ultimately it makes it much um a better user experience for these companies that are wanting to integrate Lightning because they still use the same kind of provider, the same interface that they always have been um but can really uh enable it much quicker and faster than they would have previously. So ultimately this should um we're anticipating having a big jump in adoption by leveraging the Bitco their fairly large set of of customers and being able to bring Lightning into that that group. Um, so we're we are really excited about what this is gonna um how this is going to catapult adoption over this coming year. Nice. That's that's super helpful and really fascinating. I guess before we go into the stable coin side of this a little bit further. Um I just you know uh reread the voltage and fidelity report from earlier this year and one of the things that really stuck out to me was the average uh channel capacity really growing significantly whereas the average number of channels per node um has has not really grown quite as much. Um, and you mentioned a ton of integration with, you know, custodians, neo banks. Um, and we're seeing a ton of demand from, you know, peer-to-peer custodians in terms of, uh, you know, ways to settle, uh, balances that are exchanged between the two custodians, I guess. Um, where where do you see most of the demand for lightning, at least in your seat? Um, and based on kind of the public data that you have, would be interesting just to see if this is kind of matched what you thought Voltage was was going to be in in the Lightning Network exactly when you launched or or where we are today. Yeah. I mean, I guess like touching on the the kind of the the the way that I was thinking about when I started the company versus today, like touching on that first. I mean when I definitely started Voltage it was very much like consumer like retail focus like you know everyone in the world is going to have a node and everyone is going to need like really easy access and all those things. I think that that's definitely shifted as we've seen um the lightning network mature over the years where it's definitely less less people operating like a a a node and like the full-fledged node. We've seen a lot of advancements in things like LDK um that help make it much more like you can still do self-custodial lightning without like the full-on node that we think about in like the start 9ines or umbrellas or like a full node on voltage. And so we've seen much more of like these kinds of you know people like us moving much more onto the business end of things where we work with again like exchanges, payment processors, all those things that I mentioned and being able to really optimize on creating better experiences for them and then ultimately their users as well. And so in that shift, you know, we in that shift of um at least us focusing a lot more on the business side of things, we've seen the metrics inside of Lightning kind of shift towards that as well. As we've highlighted, the average channels getting much much larger. Um that's because, you know, businesses are just doing more than you know, they're trying to um facilitate, you know, thousands of payments across their their customer base, not just like, hey, a couple payments a day maybe for an individual. So um that requires more capacity and it's just the the the mature that the maturation of the network itself to realize that okay it's better to have like five really large channels than have like a hundred small channels both from like from a management perspective from like your the the the effectiveness of payments going through the likelihood of success all those things. And so the this data as we've kind of highlighted in the report really show that um this is this is maturity in the network as we've learned what is working and not working. And so that's kind of like what we it's the public data is kind of um uh validating what we're seeing on the business side. Yeah, that makes that makes a ton of sense. I think you know ju just thinking about the past few years um in terms of the lightning network, its adoption, its growth, its development. I think you know generally speaking, people are just way too impatient. Like I think there's you know been a lot of rhetoric and and talk on Bitcoin Twitter etc. um you know in terms of just the frictions of lightning which do exist and the ways in which it needs to improve. I'm curious from both of you, you know, how would you sort of handicap the past, call it 12 to 24 months of Lightning development and how it's gotten better, more efficient, more usable with, you know, and and maybe that's even related to like folks like Lightspark and David Marcus entering the fray. Um, how does that sort of relate to again just this uh ongoing development that's just going to take time and and again I think people are just very impatient and and you know wanting things to just work seamlessly and perfectly overnight and that's just not the reality of building on an open protocol. Um but curious any of your either of your thoughts on that. Um yeah so I think and you know the thing is it's a kind of general question. We could go all all over the place. Um but uh but yeah, I'll start somewhere and we'll see we'll see where it can go. Uh so generally speaking, when it comes to already building um beyond just user experience, but already the building experience, the developer experience, it's um it's pretty tricky to build on lightning. Um and it's kind of like what Graham said earlier. You know, you want to start a Bitcoin business, you have to like start from scratch. You have to, you know, you have a use case, but you first have to like build a wallet essentially. Uh which which is complicated. that that's you know what we stumbled upon at flash that's you know thought but this is where there's a big difference is with no wallet connect and the fact that you know you can just connect to a shared uh library of APIs and any wallet can become compatible and all of a sudden your agent can work for all of these wallets that's that's how we developed FL in the first place we then of course created our own wallets in order to be able to just scale this right but even when it comes to building the wallet itself you know how do you make um Bitcoin easy over the lightning network is not is is not a simple answer because um you know if you want to start a lightning wallet in self- custody well then well you need to download the wallet and then you need to fund the wallet because you need to open channels you need to uh add liquidity to this channel and so it's kind of you know if you're a first-time user that is just curious and just wants to try this out uh and start in our case accepting Bitcoin payments. Well, then to do this in full self custody, which is of course what we recommend, right? Um to get to get started, well then uh in in that case, you need to pretty much do three payments, four payments before you can actually get there because you need to buy Bitcoin to be able to like do it and stuff. So for for a new person, it's it's impossible. Um now there are other tools out there that exist but it's not exactly lightning in that case just like uh but but allows to do things much more just faster while being compatible with lightning network which is how we built our wallet which is using the liquid network right so the funds are liquid and you can do automatic swaps um that uh that just allow to do a bunch of things right and so of course it is self custodial because you own your keys but you do rely on the liquid network which is less sovereign perhaps compared to, you know, Bitcoin or or even the Lightning Network in self- custody. So, it's it's a matter of trade-offs, right? But then we managed to make a user experience of Flash that if you're a business that is just furious about accepting Bitcoin payments. Well, then you can get set up in literally just a couple minutes because you download the wallet, it's got a balance of zero, and you don't need any balance to start accepting Bitcoin, right? So, it's automatically connected to FET and you can accept these. It's very easy and it simplifies such things, right? Yeah. Where where the the lightning network makes this more more complicated. And then there's different use cases that the lightning network makes also a bit more complicated. Um like offline payments and stuff like that, you know, we managed to solve with liquid, but we get into that later. Uh but but also one of the great things with the lightning network that other networks don't have including the liquid network is uh micro payments uh that are you know instant uh the currently you know with the back wallets there's a limit uh minimum amount of a thousand satoshi because that's the requirement that bolt swaps have a th00and satoshi transaction now I mean word on the street is that they're going to lower it to the minimum amount that they have for the amount of fees that they want which would be about I think 43 satoshi's. So, you know, we're already getting into the microtransaction territory, but uh but still still not quite the price of Bitcoin going up. I think uh um you know, this this number will have to to be revised and so um yeah, so that's just some some general thoughts. Uh yeah, and Graham on on your side, I'm curious as well, just you know, I think that was correct me if I'm wrong, like a lot of the impetus of you and Fidelity putting out that report was just to say like, hey, here's the state of things. here's how things are progressing, here's how development is moving forward. So curious your thoughts on like, you know, where are we today relative to a year or two years ago and and how do you see this playing out? Yeah, I mean definitely that was one of the reasons why we put out the report is I mean it's one of the really challenging parts about lightning is that it's it's inherently a very private network and given it's peer-to-peer. You can't you don't have the same uh metrics that you do with other chains Bitcoin or Ethereum or you name the chain almost all any kind of public blockchain you can see exactly how much is being transacted how frequently the fee rates all those things with lightning it's all private because it's peerto-peer so it's it's easy that's one of the reasons why you see so much like FUD and light and like on Twitter and things like that uh for lightning is there's no public data that you can point to. So that's kind of one of the reasons why we wanted to do a report with Fidelity is to highlight, okay, here's like really what's happening behind the scenes that you can only really get by being in the mix and being able to like, you know, facilitate transactions and th those kinds of things. And so that was one of the reasons almost everyone that is um kind of throwing shade at Lightning usually has like some kind of motive of their own. Um it's like they're trying to push like side chains or their other layer two or something else that is like kind of um competing. And so it's uh it's it's something that should basically just be ignored. um for like from those kinds of folks. Um and then there's also like inside of crypto in general, there's always like the the desire um to have these these solutions very very quickly. Well, to your point like building an open protocol and doing it in a correct way where people actually get self-custody the entire time is a very challenging thing and that's a very hard thing to do. Other chains are able to move faster because they're sacrificing on a lot of those things. And so sure if Lightning wanted to sacrifice on all like the properties that like that Bitcoin started with, yeah, we could move a lot faster. we could make things a lot, you know, easier in a UX or whatever, but like we would be sacrificing on the whole reason why Bitcoin was created in the first place. And obviously the community doesn't want to do that. And so, um, we're very intentional with the way that the like lightning has been built out. Um, but then going into more of like from what we see like, you know, from a couple years ago today to to today, vastly different in terms of like what it takes like get started and get, you know, ramped up in Lightning. You know, we our product has come a huge a very long way um in that that time. And we also have a new product that we're releasing in in next week that should do a lot um in terms of all boosting that even to another level. And so ultimately the experience has been um it has definitely started challenging and it's been gradually being reduced over over time um to the point where you know it's it's really as simple as any other payment scheme or blockchain or whatever you want to whatever you want to equate it to um via people like you know like a voltage or a flash or something. If you're going to try and start and like do it all yourself like again from scratch, then like there's definitely still some edge cases there. There's still some things that you know some gotchas that you can run into. But um if you're working with a provider that has basically run into every single one of those gotas and figured out a way to solve for it, um it makes the experience far far better. So, we've come a huge way in the last couple years of making it accessible and not only accessible, but being able to to to process payments quick, faster, and cheaper than any other blockchain out in the crypto ecosystem. And that was something else that we highlighted in the Fidelity report is, you know, comparing it to the global like crypto networks. Um, there's nothing that can beat it in terms of speed and reliability and and cost then, uh, then then what then what you can do on Lightning. That was another thing that we wanted to highlight and show that, you know, it's not only working, but it's working really really well. Yeah, I'm I'm I'm glad you uh you pointed out a few really important points there. Um one just being the distinct difference in architectures of, you know, the broader crypto space and and people building on Bitcoin. I think, you know, there's obviously trade-offs associated. Um but to your point like they are they are sacrificing on certain things in order to move fast and and not really care about some of these fundamental things that are important to Bitcoin. Um the other component there I think is you know I'm curious your views on well you know if I'm being generous about it I think like the broader crypto space has found some product market fit in stable coins generally. So if you just look at stable coin volumes, vast vast majority of them are not on Bitcoin, right? Um but as you're alluding to, you know, they they should be on Bitcoin because, you know, it's cheaper, faster than these blockchains, but I guess why why the disconnect up until now? Is it just because um the development on Bitcoin tends to move slower almost purposefully so than these other blockchains and that's why they've gotten sort of the initial adoption of stable coins? And do you do you think sort of medium to long term that uh percentage split shifts over time? So where you know more stable coin volumes are happening on uh lightning or other bitcoin adjacent uh protocols. Yeah. I mean I think I think like like yes I think that the the percentages shift over time. I think why like yeah why it's taken a little bit longer on Bitcoin is one I mean the the protocol for actually being able to like issue a stable coin on lightning didn't exist until the recent like I don't know a year and a half two years ago or something and then even then it takes a while to build it out and have it like you know very very reliable. You compare it to people like like the Salana Foundation or something that raises like hundreds of millions of dollars to go and like just throw at the problem. you know, we don't really have that inside of Bitcoin. Like Lightning Labs is kind of the lead developer on like the tapered assets protocol which enables stable coins to be issued on Lightning, but that's they're still have like no near the funding of like the Salana Foundation or anything like that. And so it's kind of like, you know, the other other folks solve it by just throwing a bunch of money at the problem, which like is Bitcoin and Lightning is just so grassroots that we don't have that same ability. Um, and I think that that leads us to build it in a much much better way ultimately. But um I do think that we're we're we're kind of at the point where that is like now possible and we're looking we're seeing people like Tether publicly announce they are going to be issuing on top of Lightning. And so I think that once you create like combine that there's there's no denying that stable coins generally have have product market fit inside of the crypto ecosystem. It's what the majority of crypto in general is used for is stable coin movement. Um, and so when you couple that the a strong use case um, with Bitcoin and Lightning being the best way of moving value, I think that's a big recipe for success and that's going to over time really um, take a lot of market share from these other chains. Um, especially like, you know, Tron was one of the most popular ways of moving um, Tether. It still still probably is, but their fee rates are gradually going up. And so I think that as like these ones that really started um, in a value prop of moving it fast and cheap are starting to lose that value. Um, and so it's only natural that it starts to move into the the better way of of transacting, which is lightning. And so we're very excited for, you know, the stable coin um movement to come to to come to Lightning. We think it'll have a a really big impact. Yeah. Two things that I wanted to hit on there. One that um really gets underlooked is Bitcoin being and lightning network being able to be the fastest, cheapest way in order to transact across all of crypto but also having the value acrruel narrative behind it of it being a store of value because if there is no reason to have a store of value then you know paying or um out of that it's it's essentially you need it as a savings technology in order to also use it and want to keep it in as a payments technology, right? Like um you know, I'm sure everybody's seen Jesse Myers's chart previously of like um where all the assets sit and it's you know 10 or$1 130 trillion with money and then there's about a $500 trillion use case for storing value over time. Um and so with Bitcoin, it's kind of just both of it actually can both compete with the money aspect um as well as actually saving value. And so, you know, just kind of to to solidify it, it doesn't make sense to, you know, really focus on having the best payments technology if there isn't any actual real way to store value in the asset. Um, and then additionally, um, yeah, was was curious how you see demand for the stable coins kind of rolling out here in the future. Are you going to be kind of going after the same market as the the Tethers of the world? Is it going to be a little bit different in terms of you know where Voltage kind of plays in its uh collaboration with Bitco? I was just kind of curious about you know how how you see that playing out. Yeah, I mean ultimately I think for for us it's definitely um definitely some overlap in the existing you know stable coin world um just because of you know it's a a lot of these I think that over time like as you look at the inefficiencies that you people are seeing inside of these chains for moving stable coins um for us to come in and say hey you can do the same thing on lightning and you can save you know again a couple million dollars a year on your transaction fees like that's kind of a no-brainer um so I think that there's going to be there's a lot of overlap naturally just because it's still stable coin movement. It's just kind of a different chain so to speak, but it's one that actually it's not just another chain for the sake of, you know, more users or anything like that. It's just a far faster, cheaper, better way of moving value. And so I think that there is a lot of um overlap that we'll see uh between the two. Yeah. Yeah. And I think also it might I mean I'm curious to see how long it'll take to transition because of course USDT uh on Tron on Salena whatever isn't compatible with USDT on lightning directly right or on liquid or whatever they they're on their chain. So you need to have like some kind of swap solutions there or through exchanges and and and all that. So I mean, you know, I wonder how quickly um some of the the the stable coins that are exchanged on these are their blockchains are going to start being transitioning uh uh to um yeah to to Bitcoin to lightning, I guess, uh is is the better way to say it's not actually Bitcoin, right? It's just the lightning network itself payments. So it's the payment network of it that is uh that is strong. It's just we're uh using the best payment network for Bitcoin and found a way to actually reuse it for uh stable coins as well which I think is just about the efficiency of the payment network itself. So I think this this transition might take a bit of time and and I look forward to the day where it won't be messy when you're trying to send USDT to someone where you know it's just okay so where do you want this USDT? chain with like yeah none of them are compatible and yeah the rise of other swap services would also be very very useful so for such things supposed to rely on like custodian startups to just you know do this swap and hold custody of funds momentarily um like like the market is today. Yeah, absolutely. Um maybe maybe it's worth taking a bit of a a step back and just thinking about sort of you know the interoperability of open protocols I think is is something that's really fascinating to me and and particularly Pierre on your side what you guys have done uh leveraging Nostra wallet connect if you could talk a little bit about that and and sort of just what's that what that has unlocked for you in terms of you know making Bitcoin payments better and more efficient by combining various open protocols Um because I think that's um again it's sort of this this other side of the spectrum when you think about the super centralized Salana Foundation building XYZ thing. It's like well no we're going to take this different approach. One it's going to be slower a little bit um you know uh more purposeful in sort in in terms of how slow it moves but also like it's not just going to be this this centralized monolith monolithic thing. there's going to be various open protocols that work together to enable all different types of things. So would love to to hear a little bit about uh what you guys are doing at flash and then if that resonates with anything you guys are working on at Voltage Graham that'd be interesting as well. Yeah. So you know essentially we're using um of course multiple technologies but I think in that sense the one that that is the most important one and really the one that we started with uh because before reaching life we built a bunch of things with my co-founder and uh just trying to figure out what's the best way to build things how do we avoid uh holding custody of user funds because you know the point is to avoid regulation as much as possible and and solve problems in in a bit of a different way. And essentially in doing all this we found Ostra wall connect and we realized that it's the the best way for us to build in an interoperable environment without having to build a wallet of our own. Um and and the reason for it is because essentially you can using master wall connect you can connect your wallet to flash and then flash can just use this wallet. So, we can we can trigger payments. We can also make payments requests. And and what's very interesting in all of that is that when I say we can trigger payments, Flash isn't really doing anything. We're just sending a message to your wallet and your wallet will receive this message and can then make the payment. But the wallet can still block that payment, right? Like uh everything is under the user's control. And you know, if I think today of the the best wallets that work with flash, we've got uh so obihub, which is self-custodial, but uh you have to pay for it. Uh unless you go the more technical route, but you know, I'm thinking like very simple users. So, you know, selfcustodial, but you have to pay for it. There's a coin OS that is free, but custodial and then there's flash that is self-custodial and free, right? So the the point that I'm trying to make here is that there's different uh wallets with different uh features whether it's custodial and self-custodial that can you know help users manage their funds in whatever way they prefer but these same users can connect their wallet to that and for them we solve the peer-to-peer payment side of things. So, we're solving the payment problem, right? We're not solving the custody problem uh like at all. Uh that's an entirely different topic. The point is more that um flash can interact with wallets and automate uh certain actions on these wallets using this technology. And any wallet that has no wallet connect support to it, all of their users are automatically compatible with flash. But of course, it's not only fast. It's with the whole ecosystem of NATO wallet connect that that is growing and um every new wallets that you see coming out like in the past few months, most of them have support for wallet connect because of the use cases that it allows users users to build. Um and I can give you I think one of these example use cases that that I think is is pretty mind-blowing is uh how we manage our fees at Flask. So, um, the way Flex works is that, um, it's free to get started. Uh, you know, free to use. You can create a store, you can create a point of sale, whatever you want inside of Flex for free. And then, the moment you receive a payment as a merchant, well, then, of course, this this happens through our software. So, we know when the wallet, the wallet can confirm to us when he's received the payment. And so, then we can trigger a payment from the merchants's wallet to ours. So it'll be like yeah a microtransaction 1 and a half% fee that that we take and um we know what wallet is connected to flash and we can we have access to methods that allow us to get the information about that wallet and as part of this response we can see what network the wallet has access to. So by default master wallet connect was created only for lightning and and a lot of use cases were built with that. When we created the platform, as I said earlier, you know, we wanted to go the the easier route, easier UX to get started, but also easier for us to build. So, we went uh through the breeze nodus SDK, which uses the liquid network, which which means that essentially for it to be compatible properly with flash, we added liquid to Nostra Wild connect. And I know that now onchain is being added to Nostra Wild connect, right? And so essentially what we can do is when the moment we have to pay the fee to the flat wallet from from the merchants wallet we can see what networks this user has available and as I mentioned earlier the liquid network in order to do swaps with lightning there's a limit of a thousand Satoshi's so instead of doing a swap if the user has a liquid wallet well then we're going to pay ourselves in liquids but if he does have lightning well then we're going to do the payments as well in lightning to our lightning wallet. And so in this completely interoperable way where we know nothing about the user because we don't need to do any kind of KYC or anything. So we don't know the user. The only thing we have is a connection string from his wallet with this we can know exactly what networks he has and we can generate backend payments choosing the network that works the best between the pay and the merchant. Right? So this is how it works with our subscriptions as well where uh I gave the example of the fees but subscriptions the same thing. We know the payer wallet what networks he has. We know the merchant wallet what network he has. If they both have liquid right now it means they both have a flat wallet. We can make them use liquid instead of uh use um lightning because they're going to be able to do well uh smaller transactions and smaller fees because you know liquid to liquid is cheaper than having to do the swaps with bolts and priest and take their own their own. So, so we can we can choose the network based on that and and I think that's like one of the true powerful things that that exists in off connect that um yeah that just keep discovering you know with time. Yeah. No, that's that's amazing. I think um you know a goal for all of this is like to make it so the end users whether it's the payer or the merchant isn't you know isn't privy to like what all everything you just described in terms of what's going on behind the scenes which networks each each uh party A or B is is operating on and it can just be as easy as possible for them to click a couple buttons and you know send or receive their payment like that's where we need to get to and I think like you know what you guys are building is is really accelerating that that progression to get there. Yeah. So, I think just just to follow up on that, that's that's 100% how we're thinking about this long term. Imagine just a network of payments. Imagine PayPal um where you know you can connect your bank account or something something right and hold these funds in PayPal and you can send them between these users. PayPal holds custody of these funds and of course the the payments that happen in PayPal happen in the PayPal network, right? But, you know, the way we're thinking about this is being able to be uh a P ourselves or the network itself. You know, that's what Master Wall Connect is. It's not necessarily what what what F is meant to be, but you know, it's it's a network where people can just hold their funds in in whatever it is. You know, as soon as we have stable coin uh support, we will add stable coins to Noster Wallet Connect, right? what whatever kind of funds are as part of Nost Wallet Connect and the user's wallet. Well, one user should be able to send money to another user, not having to wonder what network it is, right? As long as they have one network that matches, whether it's lightning, liquid, onchain, uh, stable coin, whichever one it is that they have in common, this is how the payment should go, right? And the users wouldn't even need to like, yeah, choose, which I think is yeah, pretty pretty exciting. and all in you know from from Flash's perspective uh non-custody I guess right because the wallets might be self-custodial or custodial from Flash's perspective it doesn't matter right because we're anyway facilitating peer-to-peer payments in this yeah I mean I think I think overall like I think that Nostra wallet connect is like you know very interesting for the fact of like trying to offiscate as much of like the complexity of of the the experience that we can I think that that's something that is going to be very important as we look at more like of the kind of like merchant level like point of sale type experiences because I think that's something like you know we we remember Strike announcing like integration with like NCR and all those things which like ended up like kind of not panning out but I think that that was I I don't know all the details of that specifically but I think that that was one of the challenges of the experience was um like the the complexity that exists inside of actually like paying at that time with Bitcoin and kind of an appointed sale method. I think if there's a lot more that has been solved today versus then and then also more that can be solved to really just make it a very very seamless experience and just um that's one thing that I will admit is one of the great things about credit cards is it's a pretty easy experience to pay. I can even just like tap my phone and it just works. And so um we need that's that's what that's our competition. That's what we need to be striving for. Um and so that's what we need to be you know building towards. I think that you know NASA wall connect is one of those things that um kind of is helping us get there. 100% agreed. And one of the things that um you mentioned Pierre I think you listed off like five or six interoperable open networks um during that including Nostra wallet connect um you know liquid lightning bitcoin on chain and then uh you know being able to use both swaps and breezees um it's just really uh amazing the progress that's kind of happening behind the scenes at the moment and I guess in in person too but uh you know at least you know, you're obiscating that for the consumer. So, it's just the easiest process it can be. Um, one uh one one thing you you guys didn't mention, I'm just curious to get your thoughts on is uh the world of of eCash. I'm curious, you know, uh what are your thoughts on on you know the development there? I know there's a few uh different efforts whether it's Fetty or Cashew that are are sort of pushing that forward, but where do you see that um sorting sort of fitting into the landscape of Bitcoin payments generally speaking? Um is it just another sort of cog in this this overall system? and and you know because the other the other sort of component of all of this is like you know I don't necessarily view lightning as like winner or take all like I I think over the medium to long term there's going to be many different layers on top of Bitcoin um and so you know maybe you have uh you know various different sort of um things that are progressing simultaneously and and sort of interop as well but curious if you guys have any thoughts on eCash in particular go ahead here. Yeah, sure. So, um, so I have some I think you know and I'm trying to to dig a bit deeper because the ETF community they are embracing master wall connect so you know that's that's why I'm I'm of course trying to follow this as much as poss groups and and so on. I think the developer community there and how it's growing is super impressive and I think that some of the use cases that they've unlocked are um yeah very just really really good to see. I I remember the one thing that made me I think start to kind of look a bit more discover e-cash a bit more was when uh Dr. Cali on Twitter shared a a video of uh him making an e-cash transaction on an airplane without uh internet access which like because that that's I think you know that's one big difficulty I think that exists in lightning in self-custodial lightning um which is that uh the lightning node needs to be well it needs to be online but it also needs to be reachable right so you know if you think of uh mobile lightning wallets well the node node is in the cloud, but you access the node from the device. And that's kind of how we were working with flash originally, and that's how we work in fact just with no wire connect uh typically. But we've added extra features through the flash wallet that allows us to uh create offline uh so uh create lightning invoices while the phone is offline. And that's because we can leverage the liquid network for that. And so, you know, we can know if if a wallet is offline, we can't wake it up with a notification. Well, then we're going to use the the liquid address that we saved and we're going to do a swap directly this way. Um, and and I think that's one of the things that and it would be very interesting to see how uh ecash can kind of scale this, make this more more usable and how we could also try and implement something like that so that merchants would uh um would be able to accept offline payments completely, you know. And yeah, I don't know the question mark at this stage to be honest how we could potentially integrate it but but I think know it's uh it's pretty good. I do also have some some not necessarily doubts but uh um you know it is uh a mint that needs to be created. There is a certain I don't know gray area when it comes to the custody of it just like there is with the liquid network. I'm not saying right but I think that's just when it comes to um regulation that's that's where you know I think I help because it's uh you know from the perspective of FL again we want to be always non-custodial so we got to be able to like figure out what technology is what technology do we exactly provide to our users to avoid the situation where you know six months down the road all of a sudden we get a you know a warning and we have to start KYCing all of our users, right? Because we're again we're we're fixing the the payment side of things. Yeah. It's like it's just peer-to-peer coins. There's no need for KYC knowing who our users are. None of that. So, you know, that's really if you manage to solve this properly, well, we will never need to KYC our users for for this. And that's that's what we'd want to yeah keep as just a direction for Flash. So, so you know that's that's where I I still don't exactly grasp what would be implications when it comes to to to regulations there. Yeah, just my my two cents. Yeah, I think that's that's super fair, Graham. Yeah, I mean I think um it's interesting. I think that it'll be it'll be interesting to see how it kind of continues to play out. Um, I think that it it it makes sense as just like I I agree with Pierre's kind of evaluation of like it's it's similar to a liquid or um any of these other side chains. Um, and so I think that they all have um unique trade-offs um for what they, you know, you kind of have some some things you give up um while you're using it, but then you also gain some some other things. And so it'll just be I think it interesting just to see where the adoption lands. Um I do think that you know lightning is obviously still the most prominent L2 or like what it's not a side chain but it's the most prominent um offchain scaling mechanism that um has existed inside of Bitcoin and that's still like from like you know you think about the exchanges that have adopted lightning over the last year. Um there's been a lot um there's been far less adopting liquid or ecash or fedment or whatever it is. And so um I think it's still that's why we focus so hard on lightning is because we still see it as not only what's in demand today but also where will be the ultimate um biggest value acral inside of Bitcoin scaling in the long term. U but it will be interesting to see how some of these newer um protocols and and you know methods like this um play out and see where the adoption ultimately lands. Absolutely. Um maybe uh we could turn to, you know, what both of you are excited for for the rest of the year here. Maybe talk a little bit about the roadmap at each of your your companies. What's uh what you're what your heads down focused on right now in terms of building out um and offering to your customers. Go for it, man. I think Sure. Um yeah, I mean, yeah, we we got quite a few things in the works. um you know, we'll we'll have a new product out, you know, in the next week or two that we're really excited about that I think is probably just best to to read all the announcements when that happens. But, um really just simplifying the experience of integrating and using Lightning um and just continuing to to push the envelope and how how how simple we can make it and how quick and easy it can be. Um so, we're doing a lot with that. But then also the big thing that I'm excited for in this year is the stable coins on Lightning. So, you know, we've talked about it for a while and now that we it seems like it's, you know, possible. it's here. People are doing it and so it's really um still yet to be seen what impact does that have on the network and um adoption and all of those things. So I think that it'll be a pretty big deal both from you know the the efficiencies that the companies gain from doing stable coins on lightning like we talked about but also the the boost in the network itself of you know more liquidity in the network or whatever it is. And so I think that it'll help both um the users of stable coins but then also just the general Bitcoin lightning network in itself. Um, so we're really excited. We're working on products in that realm too. Um, so we're excited to see that be finally possible and then you know look working with customers to enable that inside of their applications. So we think that'll be a big uh a big opportunity this year. Awesome. Yeah. Well, so on on Fax's side, we're Yeah. So we're we're about to release the new version of our web application that has much uh nicer user interface but also just user experience. uh you know we gathered a lot of feedback from the users in the past six months and so we're yeah hoping this version will be one that um puts all of this feedback uh together you know after watching how users use uh flat the first things they do when they get on the application and what what kind of issues they they they see the the Bitcoin crowd they they can be a bit a bit difficult when it comes to to some things like uh you know in our onboarding currently um when you when you create the out um you have to provide some I mean you can provide some information if as a business you want to be able to receive invoices in order to justify well the expenses uh that uh you had which are the flash fees that we take it's completely optional you can click on the little skip button but the skip button is too small and bitcoiners consider this KYC process even though it could be like fake information even yeah so you know that's the kind of like stuff that's but but but the the the the the the answer here and I think it's it's it's true for every product that that you build is how quickly can you get the user to actually using your your platform and like actually having something that allows him to and so that that's you know what what we're we were trying to to work on on this new new version. So we're also going to be releasing our our wallet that is currently on test flight. We're going to be releasing it uh in uh app stores and uh with yeah backed up functionalities uh including subscription management uh directly uh so you'll be able to manage all of your flash subscriptions from the wallet um but also we'll be uh adding the possibility of having these offline payments as I mentioned and it'll be offline payments in any kind of network. Now what we want to do is every single one of our checkouts by default will show the lightning network and show a lightning invoice. uh but you can pay other ways. You can pay in liquids, you can pay onchain USDT. So, you know, kind of pack all of these payment solutions using lightning as the default, but you know, giving more options when when paying, which of course will make it easier for for merchants that want to get into into Bitcoin because we get we get this about first of all, most people they don't understand uh you know, Bitcoin versus crypto and so oftent times is oh ah you only have Bitcoin now okay and I understand them, right? So then of course you know uh the majority of anyway the the the conversations I have like this are education and explaining kind of why why we we make this difference but also being able to add USDT uh and just stable coins in general is the kind of thing that um will make this it'll make it easier to to answer when when someone has these kind of um remarks. Uh but but then you know the next thing that we want to be able to do is um of course scale all of this make sure everything works nicely but then adding your self-custodial lightning is kind of you know a priority for us here um because you know first of all I think self custodial lightning is kind of the way to go uh and it's become so much easier than what it used to be so I think there's just yeah depending on some use case you know of course we're looking at voltage a lot we've of course had many conversations with gran as well and his team simply because of the you know the the quality of their product uh uh the of course the reputation that it has and just how easy it is to get started on that right so because what one thing we need to be able to do is you know building the flash is one thing and it's it's great because we can unlock use cases and we didn't show them but in the end our business model comes from our business tools uh therefore you know we need to be able to make sure that we bring more people over so other wallets that already have a user base help them get on to Nostra while wallet connect. And so we're going to be open sourcing a bunch of our work as well to make it easier for them to be able to reach out and say look here it is. It's the exact same technology you're using the exact same uh wallet all of this to be able to to simplify that and grow this network because we will grow with it. Brilliant. Very exciting boys. Um maybe uh before we wrap here I I started the the convo by mentioning a report that that Liam had written uh called Bitcoin is the true fintech and I think we've enumerated a lot of reasons why that is and and you know part of that report and part of what re Liam um uh put out there was like you know if you think about quote unquote fintech what that really has looked like over the past couple decades it's really like you know lipstick on a pig of the traditional finance system all these slow, old, archaic rails, the Swift system, what have you. And it's, you know, it's not something fundamentally different and new and better and more efficient. Whereas, if you look at everything that you can enable via Bitcoin and all these interoper interoperable protocols that work together like that is that is really uh financial technology i.e. fintech more so than just um you know mapping sort of like you know VMO on top of these old slow rails where like the payment isn't actually settling i.e. you know name of the show final settlement like these are better uh native um sort of infrastructure for everything you could possibly do in finance. So Liam I don't know if you had anything else to share on that or uh just generally on on what we've talked about today. I uh yeah no just would recommend anybody check out the piece if they haven't already. I mean we touched on most of it but a lot there are three main pillars of why Bitcoin is the real fintech I would say which is you know it's elite savings technology just being completely finite. Um it is, you know, the custodial properties that are built into it, whether it's self-custody, multi-IG or uh collaborative custody. Um it just allows for better escrow payments. Um you know, holding Bitcoin in more self- sovereign ways and in uh ways where there's reduced custodial risk. Um and then the last one is primarily talking about how its interoperable nature is uh just allows it to be the best fintech ever. Um you know allowing for you know everything like consumer rewards, payroll uh payments um different escrow natures is just um significantly better than the existing systems. So um I and I think just based on the conversation today you guys are are really pushing the ball forward um on you know really bringing this especially on the payment side just to uh to the broader audience but would uh yeah I mean unless yeah that's I would just recommend everybody check out the report if they haven't already. Yeah, we'll uh we'll put that in the show notes. We'll also put uh Voltage and Fidelity's um recent report in the show notes as well. and uh Pier and and Graham, where can where can folks learn more about Flash and Voltage and and yourselves as well? Yep. So, you can just go on uh paywithflash.com. Uh that's uh our website directly that we redid recently. I think just last week uh so go check it out. Uh we also uh have of course on X you can find me Pier Corbin just search for me you'll find me and you can find all the information about about the directly and yeah all the other stuff that I do. If I can plug actually um if ever there there's anyone in Europe next month May 23rd to 25th there's the Bitcoin Film Fest happening in Warsaw. I'm the co-founder of that. I I'm not so much involved in the organization of it anymore because I just don't have much time but it is happening. It's going to be a blast. So it's just a small so you can also find that on on my export. Beautiful. Awesome. Yeah, you can find um Voltage at our website's voltage.cloud. Um yeah, hit us up. Send us an email. Well, my name my email is graham@voltage.cloud. Um, you can also find me on like Twitter gri i zk. Uh, yeah, definitely hit us up uh if you're interested in lightning payments. Beautiful. Well, really appreciate the time, fellas. Uh, this is a great combo and uh look forward to speaking again soon. Thanks a lot. Later, boys. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the show. If you found the information valuable, please share the episode with a friend or leave a rating on your favorite podcast app. All the links we discussed in today's show will be in the show notes inside your podcast app. Before we finish, a quick reminder that Onra Media is forformational and entertainment purposes only and nothing should be construed as investment or legal advice. Regardless of where you are on your Bitcoin journey, we'd love to hear from you. 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