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Samson Mow | Simply Bitcoin IRL · Simply Bitcoin

• 0:00
  If you're talking about $1 million Omega candles?
• 0:02
  It's all happening. It's just a matter of time.
• 0:05
  It's impossible that Michael Saylor gets 10% of the supply at
• 0:09
  these levels. He's going to get 10%.
• 0:11
  Like, that's just ridiculous. Bitcoins become like a stable
• 0:13
  coin. The volatility has really
• 0:16
  decreased tremendously. What's the deal with that?
• 0:20
  I think the alternative to fixing it is a debt jubilee, a
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  reset, a great Fiat reset. We're so.
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  Early, I know. You always tell me.
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  You told me that earlier this year.
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  Funding mechanisms I think for Bitcoin Core are kind of a bit
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  off. Developers get grants to work on
• 0:38
  whatever they feel like working on.
• 0:40
  Oh, wait. Wait, are we going down this
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  rabbit hole? Where are the grants coming
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  from? Samsung Yeah, welcome to another
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  episode of Simply Bitcoin IRL. We're here in the beautiful
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  Lugano, Lugano, Switzerland, during the Plan B Forum, and I'm
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  here with a dear friend, Sam Swinow.
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  How you? Doing you, Nico.
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  Good to see you. Great to be here.
• 1:01
  So, Samson, I want to tell you, I want to talk to you about Jan
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  3 because you know, that's your thing.
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  But I recently found out that I'm having another daughter and
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  her due date is Jan three. Wow.
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  Yeah. Congrats, it's a coincidence.
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  Happenstance maybe, You know, Destiny.
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  Destiny. That's a good way of putting it.
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  So yeah, man, that's what I wanted to start it off.
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  With. Nice.
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  Just RIP off the bandit news, right?
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  But anyways, so you guys have developed a fantastic wallet,
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  which I'm a big fan of. I've been using it downloaded
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  immediately when you guys released it, the Aqua Wallet.
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  And can you describe it to everybody?
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  What's it you? Why is it unique?
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  There's so many Bitcoin wallets out there.
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  What differentiates the Aqua wallet with the rest of the
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  Bitcoin wallets? I think there's a few different
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  differentiating factors. 1 is that we're our base is a liquid
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  wallet. So liquid as you know it's a
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  Bitcoin side chain launched by Blockstream originally.
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  Doctor Adam backsing his idea largely and we use liquid as the
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  foundation. So I think there are many cool
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  things in Aqua, but the main practical thing is you can use
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  lightning very easily with Aqua because the base is swapping
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  from liquid Bitcoin to lightning.
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  So we kind of use Lightning is an interoperability layer, but
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  the basis of it is liquid Bitcoin.
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  And I think this solves some of the problems from non custodial
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  Lightning wallets where you have to do channel management and
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  what not or you outsource it to LSP.
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  But this gives you the best combination of privacy and ease
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  of use because you have a strong foundation.
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  You're not subject to fee spikes on the base Bitcoin network as
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  if you're running if you were running your own Lightning node.
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  So that's a big improvement in usability of Lightning, I think,
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  or either you go to full custodial model of some sorts.
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  The other differentiating factor I think is we are the only
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  Bitcoin wallet that is really focused on stable coins as well.
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  And I like to say that as a whole, Bitcoin wallets have lost
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  market share to all coin wallets because they've embraced stable
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  coins. You look at any Ethereum Tron
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  wallet or whatever, they always have Tether in there and we have
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  it front and center. You have Tether, you can swap
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  from liquid Tether into other chains.
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  And I think this, it's just an underserved market that people
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  don't really seem to care about. But I believe if you want mass
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  adoption, you cannot ignore stable coins.
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  By and large, people are building wallets just for
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  Bitcoiners that are already orange filled and they already
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  have Bitcoin, and they're not addressing people that want a
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  stable currency like a dollar value token but don't yet
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  understand Bitcoin. So I think we're kind of
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  bridging that gap and so far, I think we're proving out that the
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  model, the mission is right because our biggest user, two of
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  our biggest user bases are in Argentina and Brazil.
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  Yeah. And I, I, I want to focus on
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  that, right? Because again, I think you guys
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  built a wallet based on what the market is signaling because I
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  think bitcoiners had this initial interpretation of
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  Bitcoin where they believed. And in a way, they're, they're
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  correct because I, I, I ultimately believe that that
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  stable coins are a bridge to Bitcoin, right?
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  But in the developing worlds, you know, people are not so
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  concerned about, you know, saving.
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  They're really concerned about just getting by, living
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  day-to-day. They don't have the financial
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  privilege that we have in the West.
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  And that is a big reason as to why stable coins are so popular,
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  right? And not having, you know, a
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  stablecoin implementation in a Bitcoin wallet actually pushes
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  people away from Bitcoin and into all coins instead.
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  This is, you know, you should. The way that I see it, and
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  perhaps, you know, I'll get heat about this from Bitcoiners, is,
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  you know, stable coins or you're spending money and Bitcoin is
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  your saving money that you're never supposed to spend, Right.
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  And I think that's what you guys tapped into.
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  And I think that's why you guys are experiencing the success
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  that you're experiencing. Yeah.
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  It's also a utility, like you can just do a lot of things in
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  Aqua, just downloading it and putting Bitcoin in.
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  You can swap from Bitcoin to liquid Bitcoin, then swap to
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  liquid Tether and then on both rails, there are two Bitcoin and
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  stable coins. You can swap out to other things
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  like Lightning and maybe we'll do to RGB on there too as well.
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  But we're just focused on giving utility.
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  And we also recently opened up the beta for the Dolphin card,
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  which is a prepaid Visa card that you can load with all those
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  assets. And because Liquid has
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  confidential transactions, I think it's the most private
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  solution. So you can register with an
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  e-mail, load it with Liquid USCT or Liquid Bitcoin and you have
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  the best privacy on the market. Yeah, and and you come from a
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  gaming background, right Samsung, it has any of those
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  experiences what you picked up back then?
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  I think we just saw a wild Bevan dolphin, those pretty crazy, but
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  you come from like a wild, you come from a gaming background.
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  Has any of that influenced the UI of Aqua?
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  I think so. So I've done a lot of mass
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  market games. So there is a Smurfs game I
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  built at Ubisoft, which was that's so cool.
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  It was like one of the biggest Facebook games.
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  You remember Social gaming kind of took off in 2910, so we built
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  this, The Smurfs game and we launched it alongside The Smurfs
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  movie and we got to 10 million users.
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  So my background is making games, but not just games, but
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  consumer level games that people can use and play average people,
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  your your mom, your dad, your grandpa, grandma.
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  And I think I try to bring some of those accessibility lessons
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  to the Bitcoin space because our goal is not to make a really
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  great wallet that I don't Adam Back will use because he can,
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  you know, run his own note, set up his own lightning note and do
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  everything by command line. Our goal is to get the next
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  billion people into Bitcoin. And again, like stable coins
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  have opened up the market. Tether has 500 million users now
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  and we should be leveraging that to bring them all to Bitcoin.
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  So we want to make something that anyone can use, like you
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  can just send Bitcoin. It works, very simple,
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  minimalist UI, not too cluttered and focusing on the core things,
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  Bitcoin and stable coins. Yeah, I think that's something
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  that, you know, Bitcoiners forgot, right?
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  Because I'm, you know, I come from the air, I'm an I'm an
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  electrum junkie, right? I love it.
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  But like that UI is I love them, I love those guys.
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  And for me it makes perfect sense and I understand it
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  inherently, but it's not something that I think people,
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  someone could just pick up and use, right?
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  So I think the key for mass adoption, which is one of your
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  missions, right? And your team's missions is
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  making the the user experience easy enough that you can just
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  pick up and say, oh, this, I'm just, you know, you just
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  pressing a couple buttons and I get to use money.
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  Yeah, and also structuring it in a certain way.
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  So we have a Bitcoin price at the top.
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  We show Bitcoin labeled as your savings account.
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  Like we talked about, you know, we want people to understand
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  that Bitcoin as your savings account and then your spending
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  accounts are, you know, layer 2 and Tether.
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  So we think people understand that stable coins are for
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  spending, but having Bitcoin at the top is a really big
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  differentiator from a lot of the altcoin wallets.
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  And they're they're going to put like every single altcoin and
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  people are largely using it for Tether.
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  So maybe they're going to start to get into altcoins that way.
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  But for us, it's pushing people to swap up the stack to liquid
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  Bitcoin and then to Bitcoin. Another thing that Van BDC
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  Sessions did is he's using it to aggregate too.
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  So there's so much cool things you can do with this very
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  minimal product. So he just gets payments in
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  liquid Bitcoin, and when he gets in a big enough UTXO, he'll swap
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  it all to Bitcoin. So he uses Aqua kind of as an
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  aggregator. No, it makes perfect sense.
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  And I think again that you're hiding a lot of the complexities
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  behind a UI. So the user, they're just
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  looking at it like a regular Smegular Bitcoin wallet.
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  But in reality, you know, it has a lot of function.
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  They're very complex functionality that's working
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  behind the scenes. But I think that's the key to to
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  technology, right? Making it seem like magic,
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  making it seem flawless. Yeah.
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  One goal is that we have sort of a non custodial Venmo like we
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  want to deliver that Venmo like clean UI and experience, but
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  it's all self custodial. It's all your own funds and the
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  swaps are large. The atomic swaps, I think some
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  of the the USTT swaps are not trustless or trust minimize, but
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  you know a lot of the liquid swaps are.
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  Yeah. And where do you think we are in
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  the adoption curve, in the mass adoption curve?
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  We're so. Early, I know you always tell me
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  you told me that earlier this year, but it's it's, you know,
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  it's hard. I guess it's hard.
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  It's not hard to believe. Like the logical part of my
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  brain is saying, yeah, we're super early.
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  And then the emotional side, my brain is saying, no, we're not
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  early. Well, I see.
• 10:12
  Different people understand things differently.
• 10:14
  So I think Sailor also knows we're early, but I believe he
• 10:18
  understands it's ending soon. That's why he is buying, you
• 10:23
  know, like I'll buy the tops. Yeah, when he has the capital,
• 10:26
  he'll deploy it. Yeah, it's not about OK, I'll
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  wait a bit because he sees that urgency.
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  But another good indicator is why are we early?
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  Because we have Dats or digital asset treasury companies that
• 10:38
  are buying Ethereum. Like why would any rational
• 10:42
  person or investment committee authorized something like that
• 10:47
  where you're buying something that has 70% pre?
• 10:50
  Mine is largely controlled by the guys that launched the ICO
• 10:54
  and one of the dats is owned by one of the guys that launched
• 10:57
  the token. It's just it's a sign that we
• 11:00
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• 11:20
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• 11:23
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• 11:26
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• 11:30
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• 11:44
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• 11:48
  today. Let's talk about where you know
• 11:51
  Bitcoin is and it's its current history, right?
• 11:53
  The ETF approval happened last year, January of 2024.
• 11:57
  You know you had the embracement of Bitcoin by the.