Building Discreet Log Contracts To Create Trustless Bridges Between Bitcoin and Ethereum and Foster the Evolution of Decentralized Finance, with Aki Balogh @ DLC.Link

[00:00:00] Hello everybody and welcome to the Crypto Hipster podcast. This is your host, Jamil Hasan,

[00:00:07] the Crypto Hipster where interview founder, thought leaders, entrepreneurs, executives you name

[00:00:11] it in the world of crypto blockchain all around the world. And today I have another amazing

[00:00:17] guest. He is to co-founder and CEO of self-rapped Bitcoin platform dlc.link. His name is

[00:00:29] Aki Balag. Aki welcome. Thanks for having me on Jamil. You're very welcome. Very welcome.

[00:00:37] So I hope I got your name right. Yes, I've been called many things but yeah, my legal name

[00:00:44] is Ako, so I was born in hungry, but I go by Aki. It's much easier to pronounce. Great,

[00:00:49] excellent. So great to have you and my first question to kick things off is basically,

[00:00:56] what is your background and is it a logical background for what you're doing now?

[00:01:01] Oddly enough, it is. You know, careers when you go on forward, when you're in a position

[00:01:08] where you have to make a career move, there's always a ambiguity, what does the future hold,

[00:01:14] but then looking back, everything does make a lot of sense in hindsight. So I guess as

[00:01:19] I mentioned, I was born in hungry, grew up in Boston and Michigan. I started writing

[00:01:25] code when I was like nine or 10, got into it at 13 when I learned Pearl, which added regular

[00:01:31] expressions, which were kind of the coolest thing in computer science back then. I think

[00:01:37] did a computer science degree, business degree management consulting private equity VC.

[00:01:43] I was a VC in Boston in 2011 looking at data management, no SQL, big data, which also machine

[00:01:50] learning and AI, both of which are relevant today with of course, blockchain being kind

[00:01:56] of a new evolution of data management. And I also looked at marketing automation and I basically

[00:02:02] created an AI content marketing optimization company called Market Muse that I led for eight

[00:02:08] years. And then all of that, I actually had heard of crypto early. I heard a bit going in 2011,

[00:02:15] but I was already doing this AI, MarTech thing. So I couldn't just didn't really have the focus for

[00:02:22] it then unfortunately, but they say the next best time is now. So three years ago when I was

[00:02:28] transitioning out of Market Muse, we put a CEO in there to run the company. I just devoted myself

[00:02:34] full time to crypto and launched or showed that kind of brings us to DLC link where I found this

[00:02:40] DLC invention that I can describe more and read my co-founder and I started building a company

[00:02:46] around it. And now we're four weeks away from launch. So we are launching to main net on

[00:02:51] arbitrum in a month. We're launching DLC BTC, a safer rap Bitcoin and I can talk more about that too.

[00:03:00] I think you're the first person who said they're launching Bitcoin on an arbitrum that I talk to.

[00:03:05] But it's really interesting. So let's get into it. DLC link, what is it all about?

[00:03:13] And we see what is the stand for. The screen long contracts. How do they work?

[00:03:18] Yes, so I guess I should preface it by saying when I came to crypto, I was not a cryptographer.

[00:03:25] I never have been. It's a very specialized art and science. So instead, what I had done also

[00:03:33] for my previous companies is I like to find basic research out of universities. My dad's a scientist,

[00:03:39] so I grew up in a household. I always talked about basic research and reading papers and that kind of

[00:03:44] thing. And so when I came to this base, a friend of mine told me about DLCs and basically they were

[00:03:53] first proposed six years ago by the creator of the Lightning Network. There's an MIT researcher Tadge

[00:04:00] Strigia who used to teach the Bitcoin course at MIT. And he proposed, quote unquote, smart contracts on

[00:04:08] Bitcoin. And that's what the original white paper was about. And so that idea of course has sort of

[00:04:15] been very exciting through the years. But basically DLCs proposed a way where you could have,

[00:04:24] two Bitcoin holders, Alice and Bob, and let's say they put up some Bitcoin for a bet like a sports bet

[00:04:30] and then you have this off chain entity called an Oracle, called Olivia the Oracle.

[00:04:36] And then Olivia basically sees who won the bet, which team won, and then the Bitcoin is moved to

[00:04:42] the winning party. That was the example that Tadge used to describe how DLCs could work.

[00:04:49] And so when we start looking at it, some of this made sense. Some of this did not make sense

[00:04:55] in terms of that specific example because how often do you see sports betting on Bitcoin? That

[00:05:01] was maybe more just a illustrative example. But long story short, we realized that what this could

[00:05:07] be, first of all, these are not, DLCs are not smart contracts fully. I would describe them as if

[00:05:13] then statements. So if and there's some condition that's evaluated on off chain somewhere else

[00:05:20] through this Oracle, quote unquote, Oracle. If that condition happens then move the Bitcoin here,

[00:05:25] otherwise move it here or else move this amount here and that amount there. So we realized it's an

[00:05:30] if then statement nothing more. And then we realized, well, who is that Oracle? And really,

[00:05:38] who are these Oracle? The thing with Oracle is there's something called the Oracle problem.

[00:05:42] If Olivia says you know this team won, how do we know that team won is Olivia biased? Are

[00:05:48] their measurement errors? And so we realized in the world of crypto, the Oracle should be another

[00:05:56] blockchain. So for example, Ethereum. So you have Ethereum validators, Ethereum chain. They have

[00:06:06] a state they have their tracking value. What if we have Bitcoin controlled by Ethereum chain? That

[00:06:14] was sort of our first big insight is what if we have smart contracts on Ethereum controlling the

[00:06:20] movement of Bitcoin between Bitcoin wallets. So that seemed really interesting. And then we had

[00:06:26] another breakthrough when we realized, okay, who are these parties? Who's Alice and Bob? And so for

[00:06:32] the purpose of what we're doing now, the LCBTC basically were creating a safer rap Bitcoin. We're

[00:06:39] creating a way for Bitcoin to be used in DeFi on Ethereum. We realized for this purpose,

[00:06:46] it's kind of a special case, but we should only have Alice basically. So Alice and I'll kind of

[00:06:52] describe it in everything I'm saying, which is sort of high level theoretical, it'll make sense.

[00:06:56] So so to mint. So today let me take a step back. So today to use Bitcoin in DeFi on ETH, you have

[00:07:05] to use something called WBTC rap Bitcoin. The way rap Bitcoin works is basically you take Bitcoin,

[00:07:11] you send it to Bitcoin a custodian, they put it in their vaults, they give you WBTC which is

[00:07:18] an Ethereum token and then you can use your Ethereum token and take loans on it using DeFi. And then

[00:07:24] when you burn it, Bitcoin sends the Bitcoin back. This is kind of the current state of things.

[00:07:29] And WBTC is a 13 billion dollar plus TBL, it's a top 15 token in crypto. So it's used very widely,

[00:07:37] but everybody who uses it is sort of afraid that something would happen to Bitcoin. You have sent

[00:07:43] your Bitcoin to Bitcoin, not your keys, not your Bitcoin. If anything happens there, Bitcoin's lost.

[00:07:48] And that's sort of the known weakness of WBTC. But with DLC BTC using this DLC construct,

[00:07:55] I could take Bitcoin and lock it with myself in a DLC. So I basically put it in this locked state

[00:08:04] that is this DLC, and the DLC can only pay out to me. So the way we've set up the DLC, Alice

[00:08:11] locks with Alice, Alice basically puts Bitcoin in, it can only go back to Alice. But when you put it

[00:08:17] in a locked state, that can mint an ERC 20 on ETH that can be used in DeFi. So it basically just

[00:08:25] creates a decentralized version of WBTC. So anybody with Bitcoin can now participate in DeFi,

[00:08:32] do investments or yield, take loans, whatever they want to do on ETH without having any kind

[00:08:39] of custodian or bridge or intermedia hearing because they've locked it with themselves.

[00:08:47] That sounds like a wonderful solution, you know. I don't have anything on Bitcoin but I did

[00:08:52] have crypto and Celsius. And that was a 600 plus day experience that I never want to live again.

[00:09:02] Exactly. And that was our thought that Bitcoin is huge, it's over trillion dollars now,

[00:09:09] it will be I think many more trillion by the time you know, but over the coming years,

[00:09:14] personally I think it's going to be that big and it's too big to trust any intermedia,

[00:09:22] any custodian, any bridge, anytime you send your Bitcoin to somebody else, not your key is not

[00:09:28] your Bitcoin, like that's the first thing we learn in Bitcoin of course. So no bridge, no chain,

[00:09:34] nothing will ever be big enough to hold Bitcoin other than locking it with yourself, just your

[00:09:40] wallet, your self-custody, that is exactly how Bitcoin was designed philosophically as well.

[00:09:48] And so basically the only safe custodian of your Bitcoin is yourself.

[00:09:52] Yep. So that's one benefit. What are some other benefits of establishing trustless bridges

[00:10:00] between Bitcoin and Ethereum? So there's actually a couple as we have developed the SBC and now we're

[00:10:09] getting it ready for launch, we've discovered actually it's a pretty neat technology or pretty

[00:10:14] neat product because one, of course you've got the safety aspect to we don't have to set up a chain.

[00:10:21] There are a lot of Bitcoin alt-tos, there are a lot of chains, a lot of bridges that's great. I

[00:10:26] love to see the innovation but we are not a chain. We are just using Ethereum as the chain. So you're

[00:10:32] wrapping from Bitcoin to ETH or burning from ETH to Bitcoin so we don't have to create a whole new

[00:10:39] chain and have like a token and have everybody buy into the token and set up all these servers.

[00:10:45] We're just leveraging Ethereum's quite, I would argue quite decentralized state.

[00:10:52] There's this concept of like quote unquote sufficiently decentralized. I feel that ETH is

[00:10:56] sufficiently decentralized but anyway if you want to wrap your Bitcoin to ETH,

[00:11:00] you have chosen to trust ETH. We're not adding any other trust elements as in terms of having

[00:11:06] another chain. So that's another, it's just kind of more simpler, more elegant in that respect.

[00:11:13] It's also faster. So one issue with WBTC that traders are quite passionate about is when you send

[00:11:21] your Bitcoin to Bitcoin and they mint that WBTC, that can take three to 12 hours to get back to you

[00:11:28] because they have to like receive the Bitcoin, move it between accounts. There's all this stuff they

[00:11:33] have to do that's fully manual. With DLC BTC you're just using smart contracts so you can

[00:11:39] you can mint within three to six Bitcoin block confirmations or 30 minutes to an hour.

[00:11:46] If you spot an opportunity, you want to do a trade, you can be in under an hour and then do that

[00:11:52] trade and maximize your profit from that. So traders really like that faster aspect

[00:11:59] and it's also cheaper because DLC link, we make the software that powers this bridge but we are not

[00:12:06] custodian. We never receive customer funds, we're not a money transmitter of any type.

[00:12:11] We make software that let companies lock up their own Bitcoin with themselves so we never touch it

[00:12:16] by design of course and so we don't have old fees, we don't have kind of any type of deposit

[00:12:23] insurance, we don't need it because we don't have any deposits and so we save a lot of overhead

[00:12:28] and we pass that savings onto those customers onto our customers so that minting DLC BTC is 25

[00:12:35] percent to 50 percent cheaper than WBTC which you know these institutions that are wrapping a lot

[00:12:42] of Bitcoin it really makes a difference for them on their BNL.

[00:12:47] That makes sense that they would so where does arbitrage from fedin in this?

[00:12:51] Yes, so wrapping so we originally looked at wrapping to ETH L1 which is still something we will do

[00:12:59] in the future but just to start, gas fees are kind of high so a lot of people are using L2s

[00:13:06] so we thought let's just wrap it according to an L2 to start and ARB is the biggest in terms of

[00:13:12] TBL and having a vibrant ecosystem it's a leading L2 so we're basically launching DLC BTC on arbitrage

[00:13:20] from first and now we'll be launching it on other L2s and L1 and other chains as well.

[00:13:26] So they're just the first venue where retail users will be able to acquire DLC BTC.

[00:13:35] Got it. So little earlier you said people were gambling using Bitcoin and I'm like

[00:13:45] when I think of Bitcoin I don't think of speculation, I think it being as a money

[00:13:51] as a store not just a store of value but by Austrian economics it's actually money and a harder

[00:13:56] form of money than gold. But Bitcoin does and people say Bitcoin has a role in DeFi and I'm

[00:14:04] like when I think of DeFi I think of AVE I think of Ethereum, I think of different things so

[00:14:10] you are currently transforming Bitcoin to be not just a store of value to be useful

[00:14:16] and have a useful role in DeFi. How are you doing?

[00:14:21] Yeah absolutely. So and that was also that original kind of sports but analogy that didn't

[00:14:27] make sense to us either for the same reason, you know you've got the best asset that you can have,

[00:14:32] it scares, it's you know there's a lot of obviously Bitcoin price right now it's hitting all time

[00:14:37] highs because there's more demand than supply, the supply keeps going to reduce,

[00:14:42] it's engineered in a beautiful way but when you're sitting on this Bitcoin and you're sitting on

[00:14:48] it for generations, it's intended to be generational wealth that you you know pass onto your kids

[00:14:53] and so on or when you use it as your safe store of value censorship resistant and so on

[00:15:00] over the years if you don't invest if you can't invest it somewhere or if you can't use it

[00:15:06] somewhere you had a beating an opportunity cost and that opportunity cost starts adding up

[00:15:11] and that's fine some people choose to just eat that cost and that's you know not a problem

[00:15:17] but I personally I even have some Bitcoin miners you know I have some Bitcoin that I you know

[00:15:23] acquired through dollar cost averaging like I also want to kind of invest it so that it becomes

[00:15:28] a productive asset and of course you cannot stake Bitcoin, you can't just it's not a proof of

[00:15:34] a stake chain so what you want to do is you want to I mean if you're like me you want to use it

[00:15:39] in some form of finance, so there you have C5 or D5 and C5 in crypto has a you know spotty reputation

[00:15:49] like what you pointed out with sales yes I mean when we came to this space that's sort of that's

[00:15:53] the only thing you could do is to send your Bitcoin to C5 institution and kind of hope that they don't

[00:15:59] mess it up somehow and there's you know it could be anything from fraud to theft to hacks to

[00:16:06] regulation changing the game and I mean anything can happen because crypto is a wild you know

[00:16:11] highly volatile landscape and none of these C5 players have deposit insurance in any meaningful form

[00:16:18] so basically as soon as you send your Bitcoin somewhere else you know puts it at risk of course

[00:16:23] so C5 didn't seem to make sense for me kind of from a long-term perspective

[00:16:28] and so of course there's D5 and I've been talking about Ethereum but there's also D5 on Solana

[00:16:34] and other chains so there's this kind of growing D5 movement D5 has several of course benefits

[00:16:40] being transparent you can look at the smart contracts it's building in the open you know D5 is not

[00:16:47] perfect but it does seem like a safer for me safer place to do you know investing and so on

[00:16:54] and so basically then so if you if you can get that Bitcoin value in a liquid

[00:16:59] representation synthetic liquid representation let's say on ETH it could take loans against it

[00:17:05] that's the common if you want to do a trade you can use Bitcoin as collateral Bitcoin makes great

[00:17:10] collateral in these lending platforms like Aave when we launch we are we will not yet be live on

[00:17:17] Aave specifically because they have a little bit they need a couple months of on-chain history

[00:17:22] until they're comfortable but we do want to launch on an Agina Protocol which is a permission

[00:17:27] this lending pool we also have a standing offer with Maple Finance where they will do loans

[00:17:33] on DLCPTC as long as it's five million dollars of value or more so they'll do larger loans

[00:17:40] but those are but Maple's an excellent platform so we're going to be in a couple of you know

[00:17:44] lending pools like that to start and then you can also have it on Dex's you can you know use it

[00:17:50] as an LP token earn fees that way and then we also have some partners who provide options

[00:17:57] products for example we have a partnership with STS Digital out of Switzerland that will do covered

[00:18:03] calls on DLCPTC and historically they've been able to generate like a 10 to 30% APY doing these

[00:18:11] covered calls and they have a bunch of different options products for whatever somebody strategy

[00:18:16] might be so we're basically DLCPTC becomes a conduit for you know people and companies institutions

[00:18:25] accessing various T5 financial products in a safer way than what they can do with WBTC now

[00:18:34] sounds good sounds like there's going to be a lot of options kind of down the pipe since

[00:18:38] sounds really good so I want to shift gears a little bit because I haven't talked anybody about

[00:18:45] about this platform but I want to learn more you talked about market muse but I know you had a

[00:18:52] role in the creation of Shivo the Shivo wallet right what's the what was that role like and

[00:18:58] what is the current state yes yes so I guess I would I would say play a small role but it was

[00:19:06] I it was very encouraging because of the first thing I did in crypto when at the first meaningful

[00:19:13] contribution I made to the space when just when I arrived in this space I met a very brilliant

[00:19:21] team of engineers out of Hungary called DeKai like DAKAI and they were just they were just brilliant

[00:19:29] they already by that by the time I had met them these guys are like I mean I guess I'm not

[00:19:35] disposing anything you wouldn't figure out but they're in their 20s like these these are just

[00:19:40] brilliant engineers young minds but they had already by the time I met them they had already done

[00:19:46] like 50 crypto projects they work with the likes of Binance and Coinbase and you name it

[00:19:52] and and I just felt that they could really build kind of they love challenges I thought that

[00:19:58] they could build you know anything and do a great job and separately and so basically I offered to

[00:20:04] do kind of B.D. and introductions I live in New York so there are a lot of great firms here

[00:20:09] they're in Hungary so hey if nothing else I can you know make some intros in New York

[00:20:13] and long story short I introduced this company to another company called AlphaPoint which is founded

[00:20:20] by a friend of mine Videen and and AlphaPoint chose to hire them as a subcontractor an AlphaPoint

[00:20:28] then won the project to build the Chivo wallet which they what the whole Chivo ecosystem

[00:20:36] which they even run for AlphaPoint today and so long story short my my Hungarian friends got pulled

[00:20:44] into that and built that wallet so it was just an introduction I can't blame to have written any

[00:20:50] code or anything I did do any of the hard work but it was really cool to just see because then

[00:20:56] the impact of that you know when we look at our kind of life and of course we all were you know

[00:21:02] we have professional jobs in career who want to make money and we want to be successful but when

[00:21:06] we look at the global impact that's that's why I then started building on Bitcoin is you know the

[00:21:13] the Chivo wallet launched and it was started it was it was right after the launch it was starting

[00:21:18] to get used by something like 250,000 daily active users which then quickly grew to four hundred

[00:21:25] million cumulative users which is kind of like the population of El Salvador everybody was using it

[00:21:31] and I'm like oh my gosh what this means is that Bitcoin has quote unquote cross the chasm

[00:21:38] Bitcoin is something that anybody can understand you know anybody can get behind

[00:21:43] it's very simple but powerful and and that's when I chose to then build on Bitcoin specifically

[00:21:51] because if you know if a smaller kind of Latin American country can do it and read the benefits of it

[00:21:57] there's so many countries in the world that can benefit from having this out there and I just saw

[00:22:03] kind of it's the the first step in a chain reaction so long story short that's when I decided to

[00:22:08] build on Bitcoin and then soon after learned about the OCs

[00:22:12] that sounds great um yeah so remember watching for the first time El Salvador build that mining

[00:22:21] facility on the volcano and I was this is pretty cool you know so oh yeah and it turned out to be

[00:22:29] financially too a brilliant investment for the country I mean I don't I haven't checked what

[00:22:35] their you know P&O games have been recently but I'm sure they're quite happy yeah I think they are too

[00:22:43] um so what's it mark it's already like mid-march right um and supposed to be I mean I think in the

[00:22:51] next two or three weeks uh the next Bitcoin having is coming up you know um what do you what do

[00:22:59] you expect to see in the coming weeks months and maybe up to a couple of years from now things play

[00:23:05] out as a result of the next having on all these ETFs and everything that's going on right now well

[00:23:10] in the short term I think the having of course will cause some level of supply shock the demand for

[00:23:16] buying Bitcoin is growing day by day but supplies about to get restricted to half of what it was

[00:23:24] to you know currently so that's uh you know of course there's a there's sort of a mechanism there

[00:23:33] you know the the restricted supply increases the price but I think more than that um so I have some

[00:23:39] so you know I mentioned earlier I have some miners so what's going to happen for the first time a lot

[00:23:45] of the miners including my mine mineers will be underwater mining has been profitable uh it's

[00:23:52] typically been like um I think the the the point has been around like nine cents big if you can pay

[00:23:58] energy at nine cents a kilowatt hour or less you can be profitable in mining now that number is

[00:24:04] going to go down to like six and most miners in the US including where the facility where miner

[00:24:10] hosted are not going to be profitable from mining alone uh and so now miners are going to get pushed

[00:24:17] to look for investment opportunity um in the you know previous ten plus years it's been fine to

[00:24:24] just you could just mine it sit on it no problem no pressure now you're not going to be able to

[00:24:29] clear uh you know to be cash flow positive as a miner unless you have some sort of strategy

[00:24:34] for generating yield on it um unless of course the price kind of skyrockets but then uh of course

[00:24:41] the price will go up but what if it doesn't hit exactly what you wanted it to and so on and

[00:24:46] the mining industry has been under a lot of pressure recently pass rate has gone up even during

[00:24:52] the bear market hash rate went up by surprising amount that's getting more competitive so long story

[00:24:58] short miners whether they um are comfortable with it or not the miners like myself are going to get

[00:25:05] pushed to look at sources of yield and investment income uh just to kind of pay their bills uh and

[00:25:11] and that's where I think DeFi historically of course Bitcoin and you know if DeFi people have been

[00:25:18] different camps you know different ways of looking at the world totally cool and not everybody's

[00:25:23] going to get comfortable with this new world but I think we're in a multi-chain world I think if

[00:25:28] you take the best of Bitcoin and the best DeFi options available like the obvious of the world

[00:25:33] uh I think those have sort of proven themselves as as a more reliable alternative than others

[00:25:39] and uh and yeah basically miners are gonna start learning about avi and and eat and you know

[00:25:44] even other chains where they could get yields uh so I think these narratives are you know

[00:25:50] though having is pushing these camps together and that's one thing I love about softwares when

[00:25:55] different camps get pushed together they come up with better ideas better approaches it ends up

[00:26:00] being a value creating event for it's it's uncomfortable in the beginning to learn something

[00:26:04] you know new but it becomes a value creating event forever so I think that even though of course

[00:26:10] profitability is about to drop a lot I think of the having as a good thing and I think it's going

[00:26:14] to create some really good financial products that are safe and reliable okay so some miners that

[00:26:23] will go into investment opportunities that makes sense to go into DeFi that makes sense

[00:26:29] there are other proof of work um mining the coins out there right there are just like coin

[00:26:36] there's sysco in this urge do you see a migration towards any of them um I can give you my personal

[00:26:44] opinion on it uh I'm definitely not an expert on the alternative proof of work chains but it seems

[00:26:49] to me that if you have one big dominant proof of work chain it just doesn't really make sense

[00:26:55] to have smaller less secure proof of work chains kind of what's the benefit might as well just use

[00:27:00] the safer one if your if your goal is asset preservation or capital preservation why put it in a less

[00:27:07] safe place than a more safe place um the costs are not that much different for the store of value

[00:27:13] use case uh you're just more worried about not losing your money okay and what do you see

[00:27:21] as the next as happening in this next bull cycle the next one the two years with Bitcoin

[00:27:26] obviously it's going to go up um what else what what else do you see happening yeah it's it's an

[00:27:33] interesting time now I mean I guess I would say by first our human minds tend to we tend to think

[00:27:41] in linear ways and we're not really good at imagining non-linear growth I mean who would have

[00:27:46] thought that I mean look I heard of Bitcoin when it was like under a dollar uh of course uh

[00:27:52] you know I have my own sob story about why it didn't go super hard in it then but uh you know who

[00:27:58] would have thought that it could go from one dollar to seventy K a plus and then give it in

[00:28:04] that performance in you know whatever twelve year period what what is the future hold in ten years

[00:28:10] in fifty years our brains are not very well equipped at that of course your question was for

[00:28:15] a couple years out but I mean who knows who knows the the I can tell you just anecdotally you

[00:28:21] know I live in New York there's I mean New York was built on finance predominantly uh Goldman Sachs all

[00:28:28] the big ones are here um of course there's been several kind of anti narratives coming out of like

[00:28:33] Jamie Diamond and some others over the years but imagine when when I when I look at all these I mean

[00:28:38] I'm looking at the Manhattan skyline right now when all these brilliant highly educated very powerful

[00:28:46] financial professionals kind of wake up to what Bitcoin and ETH and you know crypto

[00:28:53] legitimately the value it legitimately presents they're going to have a oh crap moment where

[00:28:58] it's like oh my gosh we have to be in this in a big way and when that capital and even more

[00:29:04] that expertise floods in we're going to see an explosion of of protocols chains value you know use cases

[00:29:13] products I mean we're still in very early days but it's going to get big so I actually think

[00:29:19] you know we're just in a still in an early whatever we're in the third inning of a very big global game

[00:29:26] that has to do with our money our capital presentation our safety kind of these are things that are

[00:29:31] very near and dear to everybody as far as this is a thing we work on you know breaks my heart when I see

[00:29:37] there's some Bitcoin movies there's one where somebody talks about how he's an Argentina

[00:29:42] and his parents lost everything they work for everything they owned they lost it three times over

[00:29:48] during the course of their lifetime and that breaks my heart that should never happen and you know

[00:29:53] Bitcoin is part of that solution I think all the other innovation on the other chances also so I

[00:29:59] think I think we just cannot imagine what we have an influx of talent brains and money you know

[00:30:05] highly passionate motivated coming into this base I cannot set a price target I will you know

[00:30:11] we will see the results of that as it plays out but I think it's going to be the biggest thing

[00:30:17] I've ever worked on in my life I agree I agree um so I'm looking forward to the next influx of people

[00:30:27] coming in and I know retail is still not here now you see some trends where retail is by mean coins

[00:30:34] stuff like that but the retail that I know people who I my parents might they I tell them okay

[00:30:41] they ask me how they can buy Bitcoin and like one of the ways to say what you can buy it on PayPal

[00:30:45] you can buy it on Coinbase you know like what's a coinbase they don't even you know so but I think

[00:30:53] you believe that non custodial self-rap Bitcoin can take the whole entire crypto market to the next level

[00:31:00] and they can bring in retail right how can I do that yeah yeah absolutely so and I would even say

[00:31:07] you know people tend to focus on price action of course it's normal you know something pops you

[00:31:13] know if people make money we as humans we notice but I do tend to approach these things from an

[00:31:20] engineering standpoint the reason that I got into this base is a lot of the engineering solutions are

[00:31:26] beautiful there's just really great built-in incentive structures and advantages and so that's

[00:31:33] what of course we also focus on we're just one step in a in a long string of you know it kind

[00:31:40] of a long value chain and we're just you know we believe we have a safer and you know I guess

[00:31:47] more intelligent design engineering design leveraging this DLC invention that we did not come up with

[00:31:54] so so I think I think it's just kind of one step in a process but I think what it's going to let people

[00:31:58] do is it's going to give them more peace of mind to use their Bitcoin in DeFi right now when we talk

[00:32:05] to just anecdotally when we talk to trading funds and we talk to individuals oftentimes we hear

[00:32:11] that they have chosen not to use WBTC because of the inherent custody risk you know you get into

[00:32:18] Bitcoin because it's the most decentralized asset and then the first thing you have to do is send

[00:32:22] it to one custodian that you know may or may not lose it basically you know and I think the

[00:32:28] world of Bitcoin they were WBTC was a huge invention years ago when there was nothing but that

[00:32:35] there that's it's the solution I believe is showing its age now now that we have better options

[00:32:41] and and we are one of these better options so so long story short it'll just give retail a bit more

[00:32:47] retail and institutions a bit more peace of mind a bit more comfort and it's something that they

[00:32:53] can evaluate and you know look at the risk of course there are always risks of a synthetic asset

[00:32:59] we have two main risks I can even kind of describe them just to get them out of the way one is if

[00:33:04] there's a hack attempt or if there's a software issue the Bitcoin cannot be stolen because it

[00:33:11] can only come back to you but a hacker let's say it can censor the unlock so you have minted

[00:33:17] DLC BTC you burn the DLC BTC but your DLC doesn't unlock and you can't get your Bitcoin back

[00:33:23] because you're being held hostage that might be you know that's one form of smart contract risk

[00:33:28] that we're very upfront about the other risk is that DLC BTC is actually minted through institutions

[00:33:34] kind of like USDC you know with USDC you have SVB in Wells Fargo kind of minting USDC but if you want

[00:33:41] to redeem it for dollars you have to go back to SVB in our system we have DLC BTC merchants like

[00:33:46] Amber group is our first merchant they're minting it so if Amber group you know chooses not to redeem

[00:33:52] or cannot redeem you know you can't get Bitcoin for it back from them so but that's kind of how USDC

[00:33:58] also works and we have you know at least in this case you have Bitcoin on chain and unlock state

[00:34:03] you can verify it on chain so anyway those are my disclaimers for the two risks that everybody

[00:34:07] needs to consider but once if you have become comfortable and you choose to use DLC BTC despite

[00:34:15] those risks you can you know use it in these protocols or in a yield and just do something with

[00:34:22] the Bitcoin that's normally for most people is just kind of sitting there in their wallet kind of

[00:34:26] lonely and unused so if we can generate if we can help or enable people to generate some investment

[00:34:35] return you know we will have honestly done our part you know with this project sounds great to

[00:34:44] me and thank you for that I learned something new today about the about the smart contract lock

[00:34:48] with the risk I don't even think about that so so it's good to learn something new um

[00:34:53] so I want to thank you very much for your time today I enjoyed speaking with you and I have one last

[00:34:59] question and it's how can people find out more information about you about your company about

[00:35:06] how they can use your platform any of that how can they how can you do that yeah absolutely so

[00:35:12] if you're an institution and interested in being a DLC BTC merchant or just learning more about

[00:35:17] that program this comes our website dlc.link or find us on twitter dlc underscoring and you can

[00:35:25] reach out there um you know or there's a chatbot or whatever you can find us there's also a form

[00:35:31] you can use to register your interest as an institution as retail retail cannot mint or burn dlc

[00:35:39] BTC directly they cannot use the bridge because of this merchant system I mentioned for very safety

[00:35:44] reasons that we have some blog posts about but retail will be able to get it on dexes and sexes so

[00:35:52] right now our plan is to launch on arbitrable on curve so it should be on curve there should be

[00:35:57] a wbTC dlc BTC curve pool in in about four weeks or so and then we are looking to launch on several

[00:36:06] exchanges the first will probably be mexie so that should be live sometime in a month or two as well

[00:36:13] so similar to wbTC you have to either swap Bitcoin for it or buy it uh you know uh so so that's

[00:36:20] just kind of how retail can interact with it but once you have the dlc BTC you'll be able to use

[00:36:25] it in various lending platforms and so on and we're going to have a dashboard where you can see all

[00:36:31] the places where you can use dlc BTC so as soon as all of this is live in a few weeks I just

[00:36:37] invite everyone it should be accessible through our website uh so so all of so basically come to

[00:36:43] our web long story short come to our website the information should be there and uh and if you have

[00:36:48] time please be sure to read our excellent blog posts that are our content writer jiziah wrote many of

[00:36:53] them i wrote some of them too but the blog posts really describe everything from our philosophy

[00:36:59] to the mechanism to the risk to the uses so um i highly recommend our blog

[00:37:06] awesome thank you very much for your time today thank you it's been a pleasure