We dive into the creation of a decentralized super app by Obi Nwosu's startup, Fedi, highlighting its mission to empower communities through open-source innovation and disrupt the centralized app ecosystem.
This episode of TFTC explores the rise of "super apps," particularly in Asia, and their potential impact in the West, with platforms like Telegram and X evolving into centralized digital hubs. It features a discussion with Obi, whose startup, Fedi, aims to decentralize the super app model using the Fedimint protocol. The startup, now in the "market product fit" phase, integrates technologies like Bitcoin and the Lightning Network to create a community-controlled app for private financial operations and communication. The conversation also highlights the challenges of startup development and emphasizes the app's potential to empower disempowered communities. The company is committed to an open-source model, with plans to fully open its source code by January 2026.
The episode provides a fascinating glimpse into a Fedi's journey to create a decentralized super app, with Obi shedding light on the hurdles and achievements in building a platform aimed at empowering communities through integrated financial and communication tools. The focus on open-source development and community-driven innovation underscores the company's mission to disrupt centralized super app models. As this space evolves, the startup's vision could offer a promising alternative to the current app ecosystem, potentially driving widespread adoption and a more inclusive digital future.
0:00 - Intro
0:51 - Launch euphoria
4:04 - Fedi’s purpose
8:30 - Fedi devs
11:43 - River & Bitkey
13:06 - Interoperability and unleashed chat
16:55 - Individual community needs
24:33 - What Fedi replaces
33:54 - How to improve and expand
37:34 - Flipping perspective on money
47:37 - Stability pools
53:44 - Sapping power from fiat system
1:00:27 - Managing expectations - What’s next
1:06:04 - Open source announcement
1:11:21 - Running on a bitcoin standard
1:16:21 - Wrapping up
(00:00) super apps are the most popular apps in the software ecosystem um many of them have billions of users or hundreds of millions of users um they're used around the world and they're coming to the West telegram is transforming into a super in front of our eyes and x.com their state mission is to become a super app so it's going to become much more common in the west but in in Asia and other of the world is already these are by far the most common apps and every single one of them are incredibly centralized we need
(00:31) to put that power into the hands of any Community anywhere to be able to run this rip of tftc was brought to you by river it's the best place to buy Bitcoin go to river.com tftc and enjoy this episode OB welcome back to the show thank you thank you too long too long has been too long you were just telling me you've had a week since launch Euphoria is coming down back to reality it was it was a long Sprint yeah I mean I it's it's um it's actually this is the phase in the three phases of of a a ambitious startup this
(01:19) is the phase that I enjoy the most this the the first phase is the second most um fun I guess um and so the free phase are initialization that's like building the car for the race um and dragging it up to the finding the driver or the the the crew to man it and then dragging it up to the start line and then there's the market product fit which is where your it's the early stage of the race where you're vying for position and you're finding your racing line and you finally get a formula that works and
(01:53) you're like you're lapping people and you're just catching up and you know that something's working and then there's growth where you're just extending your lead um is the FI the Final Phase but the growth phase is is a lot of people enjoy that but for me that's not the that's the easiest Spas because you've now got your Rhythm you've got your team you're cooking on gas literally and you're just extending your you're just increasing your your lead on a lap by laap basis this is the
(02:22) point where you're discovering Market product fit this phase we're in right now um and the the phase that just finished um Tuesday last week um on the August 6 2024 was the initialization and we started with um Eric Justin and myself with literally a early an open- source project which was incredible um and a dream but no company and we went from there to forming a company getting an incredible group of investors um and then find this incredible sort of Avengers like team um to actually make this dream become a
(03:08) reality and then over the last two years we've been working with communities around the world to refine and listen and refine and um never give up not number go up never give up until we actually achieved our goal which is a functioning super app not run by a calized entity in Silicon Valley or or Beijing China but actually run by communities for communities where the sources available eventually open source and all of the elements are using Freedom Technologies yeah and I think you're you're being really humble in your
(03:49) description of building a startup is you're not only building a car but the uh internal combustion engine that's going to make that car go is being built in parallel as well and your case the fediman open source protocol and so what was it like in the leadup to last week sort of getting fety ready to be to be launched as the fedt protocol was being developed because this is I think a proof of concept came out in the summer of 2021 Eric really leaned into it um in 2022 post Bitcoin 2022 and so for the
(04:25) last two years we've had uh that open source project get developed and earlier this year get to a point of stability where uh version 1.0.0 was launched and um you actually have a viable stable protocol to build on so what was it like for you and the team yeah and um it's actually interesting because fedy fedy the company is two things it's the app and it's the it's the team that's behind it that works with communities but if we're talking about the app itself the app is s is this sort of integration
(05:02) point for all freed a number of Freedom Technologies one of the most Central is custody Community custody and that's how we can scale custody to a community level if you can individually custody self custody is always the best but it's still challenging for many people to be able to do that and so it leaves people hoarding their money in these very centralized um custodial offerings with millions and millions of users we felt that there was something in the middle and and that came out with the idea of community custody where trusted
(05:37) members of a community could custody on behalf of their family because it could be like Uncle Jim's um and Auntie James or their group of friends through to their club and football team up to their Village or town or company or organization and if you do it that way um and use the community as the unit we could have this gap between between the ideal um Bitcoin standard of self- custody and the current standard the actual on the ground standard which is what is it half a dozen a dozen centralized entities where everybody are
(06:14) are cting their Bitcoin and instead you can have the scenario where you can have tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands if not millions of these um Community custodial pack um offerings and you get these other benefits because it inherently uses ecash it was the first um e-cash protocol backed by Bitcoin you get privacy Simplicity and so on but that's not the only Freedom technology we had to integrate into fed we of course we have to integrate Bitcoin and to connect these different um federations communities to to the
(06:46) rest of the Bitcoin ecosystem we had to integrate lightning um and then to extend functionality further we realized very early when we started getting feedback from communities that they needed a way to communicate with each other within the system U that was also privacy preserving from the get-go um and focus on onetoone communication in the main so again we started with xmpp if you want to know the technical terms for the audience was the protocol that we used initially and it's a very popular protocol but after a while we
(07:21) realized that we wanted something that was more easily Federated and more naturally encrypted so we moved over to Matrix uh um and we then went further we needed a mechanism to have identity so we integrated support and we've only got the basic but we every single user of f automatically gets an nsec npub I.
(07:44) E they get a Noster identity and we can use that to integrate with the nosta ecosystem and we keep going on and on and on identifying Freedom technologies that reached maturity that add value and merge them all together into one application which is now Source available um and will eventually be open source as well so that we have these Technologies and it requires all of them this is what was the big Insight it requires all of them to be in one offering for really magic to happen if you miss some of these elements you
(08:23) don't have the complete picture which is something that can be used by everybody everywhere yeah when you really think about it like the fundamental properties of a bank in particularly a Community Bank like it's not only custody sending receiving money it's things like communication coordination um getting people together and so this is in my mind um something that's truly sci-fi when you talk about like innovation in fintech this is something that is truly unique in new to the space where you're not depending on
(08:56) any incumbent Financial system or banking right s to provide banking services to individuals around the world you've built it from scratch which is no no easy task I well as I I um have to always um dock my virtual cap um off to my team to make that happen because I said we we had an idea and many people for you Eric was mentioning that some of the people that he knew in the Cipher Punk circles was saying that this would either never be built or it'll take about a decade to do so the fact that we we did it in two
(09:38) years is a testament to an incredible team I I remember that uh Justin um when we had these sort of especially early on would uh would um go on these sort of deep coding sessions and he would take his Karate Kid red sash stick it around his head and um go into coding mode to just deliver make something real that shouldn't really have been real you know and basically make magic happen so um now we have a product that um has all of the MBP features it has a global chat and eventually that'll be Federated it
(10:20) has Federated um chaman ecash mint capability fedy mint it connects to the lightning Network it can be upgraded um with in two ways it can be upgraded with something called fate modules where you can really add deep functionality across the community for example stable balances and social backup and so on and other features like this that will be coming and it could be aggraded on an individual basis are the equivalent of apps but we call them fedy mods they these are basically specialized web pages or web apps and
(10:57) anyone can build these many of them exist already and this again because of the last several years of work in the Bitcoin ecosystem there are a number of incredible websites that solve problems bit refill allows you to buy gift cards from around the world BTC Maps allows you to find Bitcoin establishments from all over the place um unleashed.
(11:18) chat allows you to access AI stack of news and Primal allows you to access the entire nosta ecosystem um and all of these support things like nosta for logging in and so on or webn for payments bya lightning and because all these standards are now out there we can easily integrate these and upgrade the fedy app because of the work of thousands of other people from around the world this episode was presented by river river is the best most secure place to buy Bitcoin in the United States go to river.com tftc set up an
(11:52) account today you'll be able to DCA into Bitcoin without paying any fees you'll be able to give people Bitcoin via river links you'll be able to send send and receive Bitcoin over the lightning Network and you'll be able to set limit orders if you want to buy Bitcoin at a particular price below or above where it is now you can set orders to buy Bitcoin when it hits that price go to river.
(12:11) com tftc and set up your account today this episode of tftc was also brought to you by bit key bit key is Bitcoin made easy to use and hard to lose if you're hardcore bitcoiner out there with friends and family members who have not gotten their Bitcoin off exchanges because they're worried about the complexity of Hardware wallets seed phrase backups this is why bit key exists bit key is collaborative custody you have a ergonomic Hardware device with biometric confirmation you have the bit key app with a key in it and then
(12:40) block holds another key in the server this doesn't come with any seed phrase backups that people have to secure you have social backup it's a beautiful solution if you're worried about the people in your life that aren't as advanced as you in terms of Bitcoin hardware and being able to set that up and secure it bit key is a great first step so tell them to get a bit key go to bit keyworld use the code tc20 checkout they'll get 20% off their first bit key yeah we often talk about the beauty of
(13:11) bitcoin's interoperable nature not just at the protocol level but at the lightning layer now with these chami mints whether it's the fety mint protocol or cashio like they're all interoperable and then you think of things like NST the interoperability between all these different disperate protocols is something that people I don't still even within Bitcoin don't really grasp the gravity of of what can be done like that example that you just walked through there is like somebody can upgrade an application or a protocol
(13:42) somewhere else and fetty can easily Implement that and make the Fetti app better yeah a perfect example is unleashed. chat um and I uh it was announced uh a month or so ago and it's a cool app very focused you can um connect to this open- Source large language models and use them to ask questions and so on but knowing that they're not under the control of some centralized silicon valy entity for example um and as a when it came out I just took my uh phone I I um added a fedy mod I put in the URL for unleashed.
(14:31) chat and the mod was automatically created I renamed it to just unleash or chat and I had a mod but then when I clicked on The Mod I noticed it had login via nost I clicked on that and the fedy mod recognized that the person was trying to log in by Noster used the um nost ID that it automatically created for me um when I when I installed the app and I was logged in I didn't have to go off to a different app or or do anything and then I needed to um credit the unleash unleash do chat with um some Bitcoin to be able to use the services I
(15:10) again went to credit it showed an invoice and it says um connect to app and connect to wallet and I clicked on that and again um the fedy app recognized that I was trying to log in um to trying to um deposit money into this this mod um and um it popped a box saying do you want to transfer these amounts of SATs and I clicked yes and ecash privately and simply was converted to lightning went over the lightning Network and credited it and a few seconds later I saw the balance and this was an app that was built and there had
(15:47) been no interaction between nvk and myself on this it was a great app I just gave it a go and it just worked and um even better we've also seen services and and websites and mods which have great functionality but didn't quite integrate support for webn or lurl or or nosta correctly um and they haven't had that many people using them and then what would happen is we would um add support or or in one Community they would ask for this service and they would give feedback to the maker of that website
(16:29) that this is not working and they would fix that because of the fact that we're on the ground actually working with communities who want to use these features Beyond just playing around with them but really actually want to use them they start giving you feedback so we effectively become this outsourc business development marketing user user experience center for the rest of the Bitcoin ecosystem yeah and this actually a good segue into one of the questions I'm most curious to hear your response to which
(17:03) is having worked with communities on the ground over the last two years to figure out exactly what they need like what were some of the most surprising needs that you found and had to build for or did you go in with particular expectations and then come out with oh actually we need to focus here so I think um I a there's a lot um one we are building an app for um everybody everywhere um but because of the history of where we came and and when you're building a business you start with a market that you know how to
(17:44) reach and you have an unfair advantage of how to reach and and we did that the the the network of people that we have on our team have incredible relationships within the human rights Defender Community humanitarian community and globally um in in various communities around the world so communities was our superpower in terms of connections um and many of these communities um need solutions to problems and and Bitcoin and the and the freedom Technologies around it solve that problem sometimes they're aware that
(18:19) they can solve the problem but it's too complex sometimes they're not but they start with we have a need and can you help solve that need as opposed to we have a want to use this technology and and we'll figure out an actual need it Services later and and so one of the things that we realized very early on is the level of integration there's Solutions all over the place that solve their problems but they really want a One-Stop shop which brings them all into one place and that was that's at the
(18:56) beginning we were struggling do we just make it a wallet or do we add in other features and so on and it became clear that we want to add in features like chat and up and upgradeability because of feedback from users um and so early on that wasn't something we were clear about but when we saw the Delight on their eyes where we're in a chat they can just send payments um or they can integrate with these mods which they could have done separately you could say well why don't I just open up a web browser and why don't I also have a
(19:26) different app that connects to the web browser and why I just switch between the screens but when people want to get stuff done they don't want that friction of switching between multiple different apps they wanted to be integrated so that was the first the desire to be integrated it's not a technology it's the combination of multiple Technologies in one place seamlessly and we've started that Journey but that journey is going to continue for the for several months to come as you make it even more
(19:54) slick this integration the the next thing that um be clear was um the need for um again when you're dealing with people who you're trying to expand the number of people using Bitcoin you realize that um people who don't know about Bitcoin Etc will need more than just the technology the human element we call it the fedi order and the fedi council um this human element is as important as the as the as the technological element often people just focus on the technology and they don't realize that
(20:33) people will need support and and help if you think about the iPhone why is that different from an Android phone because you have things like the Apple Stores and the genius bars that you can go to so the normal user the mass Market feels comfortable that they can use this incredible piece of technology but if there's something that they don't understand there is a place to go to whereas if you're using Android Android um now at this stage it's progressed people can understand how to use it but
(21:05) for the First on two to three years that was the killer advantage of of the ipon so again the second thing we learned that the human element in many of these areas is absolutely essential and that's hard to build because it's about relationships it's about trust and you have to build that for people to be able to switch especially from other Solutions that they already know um then there were truths that we were probably aware of but we didn't want to admit as bitcoiners um and after a while of
(21:41) hearing it again and again and again we realized that there was some need to stabilize the value of Bitcoin for short periods of time long term we know it's impossible to stabilize the value of any asset for forever and in fact even for Fiat Fiat attempts to do it and it does it for a long period of time and then it generally has some sort of catastrophic failure because of trying to do an impossible thing but for short periods of time for a month or two when people are receiving money from family for example or from Aid agencies and that
(22:17) money is to buy this amount of food for the month and that amount of food is priced um in the local currency they want to make sure that um a short-term reduction in price doesn't mean that by 10% doesn't like happened last month for example we saw a 10 20% reduction in the price of Bitcoin that would mean if people were on a Bitcoin standard for that month they would have 10% less food 10% less accommodation 10 10% less fuel for their car 10% less medicine for their children or elderly parents which would mean that
(22:55) many people would have literally been in di Straits result of that but what we observed is the communities that um don't have disposable income who um or don't have large amounts of disposable income um where who were using stable balances actually were able to continue on and weren't affected and so again that product came very early on as something that we realized was being asked for again and again by communities and we started working on that aid over 18 months ago um it was actually came out of a
(23:32) hackathon originally and we then took over the code and and because it was open source and improved it and made it production ready because making something that works in a hacka fon and making something that's production ready that you would have people use real money is very different thing that's that's a 12 to 24 36 month journey to go from proof of concept to to reality um and so that so we worked on that quietly behind the scenes and it's now pretty full tolerant and pretty pretty bulletproof so I I could I could go I
(24:06) could go on and on about the uncommon knowledge the need for integrating everything the need for including chat the need for having some stable solution but as Bitcoin is we wanted a solution that didn't involve if possible adding on a third-party asset backing because that would introduce the centralization vector again and we wanted to always give the power to communities to do so yeah this I could give you another 10 but those are a few yeah if I recall correctly the last time we talked maybe like a year year
(24:37) and a half ago now at this point you're describing what the Ambitions of what you're trying to build at Fetti as the open source we chat the power app of the world it seems like you guys are pretty damn close to that or you're there having launched and I think this is a good point to talk about how the is an alternative to what people are are doing right now like what does this replace for these communities that you've been working with for the last couple of years so one one example um so um it depends on the community but uh
(25:21) one example is repunit um they have um they work with community around um the world um they can reunite as the name suggests refugees with their with their loved ones but they also work with communities um and um often Refugee communities and to provide Aid and then help them use that Aid they very quickly um and very early cottoned on to the realization that Community was key um and before we and Fredy existed they were starting to work in a community context they worked with communities and they did would deliver Aid and then they
(26:08) would work with trusted members of those communities to report back on how the aid was used um to suggest ways in which data will be used locally and then handle the detail on the ground locally this was a realization and it's sort of common sense that people who are local and trusted are going to be able to react quicker than someone who's remot they're going to be and likely react more um accurately than someone who's remote but they would need tools to help them so they started building tools inh
(26:40) house with more limited resources than us and they use a combination for they realized they needed to have conversations happening so they built some stuff on WhatsApp with Bots and so on they also needed a way for people to hold money and so on so they started using Bitcoin to send and bit bit coin wallets um that were managed by members of the community they would have wanted to use multisig or or um some sort of federating model but that was too complicated to use the solutions out there for these communities so one or
(27:14) one person would have a normal wallet in that community and there would just be a convention that it would not be spent by that one person unless um multiple people agreed so they they they smoke and mirrored sort of of some sort of multi- offering as well um and then they would um have different web pages or different um apps for specific use cases and specific purposes they would also find and locate people to help on and off um onramp and off-ramp Bitcoin to local currency as well and so what would end end up happening is there's this big
(27:53) training overhead to bring people up to speed because I to use these different apps uh and different Services um and a lot of complexity to be able to service and manage that then a comes ready and in one app they could do every single thing that they wanted to do and better and more integrated and so it was it was um basically obvious that this was the solution for them and that was in a very early stage I think we were Alpha we were working with them when we were just going to Alpha like there were some of
(28:25) the earliest clients um so that's that's just be nice example where having it all integrated in one place solves um a key problem also working with communities on the ground as well to train them and bring them up to speed again solves a key problem um for other people um in our certain communities um privacy um is quite important privacy of communication and privacy of money is important I won't go into more details than that but that's that's useful for certain communities in C especially people are
(28:57) living under the o of authoritarian regimes um and in other communities it was the coordination element um the Community Savings um and spending so we saw these um in um Togo for example is an area where we're working with farming cooperatives and they're able to organize and collectively hold money this Collective savings is a very very common um functionality and feature and and what's exciting about us is they these organization these um organizations or communities have different problems they have problems
(29:35) with internet access they have problems with um complexity language translation but here's the thing once you solve those problems in the rest of the world they are equally applicable in in the west um yes we have very good internet but not everywhere if you at a busy um concert or if you're Underground on a subway um you might have for short period of times no internet you can still do uh an e-cash transaction um in in certain circumstances in those scenarios or if you're just somewhere where internet is
(30:15) a bit more flaky and not so reliable because of the work we've done working in these Edge case extreme environments it means that our app will tend to operate better than an app that's been built in the West designed for the west and never and assumes perfect gigabit internet and the latest and greatest um smartphone and and or or tablet and nothing in between those ones will work in the west but they will never work in the rest of the world if you can work in the rest of the world you automatically
(30:48) are incred guaranteed to work in in the west as well yeah it's um that's that's what we were discussing before we had recorded like designing for these extreme edge cases really forces you to build the most robust product possible and with that in mind with the launch happening last week what is your approach post launch to figuring out how to improve the product and and get in the hands of more people yeah so this is this is the um exciting time we've got a few things different things we're doing we continue
(31:28) to work with these communities that we've worked with already and we built strong relationships with and are giving us incredible feedback um and we already have a long list of features so I mean it's we really um appreciate people commenting and giving us feedback um I it's likely that nine out of 10 of the things that come back will already be on our list of things to add or improve but we're always looking out for that one out of 10 so please please keep it coming um but we're going to continue to
(32:01) work with them the other thing we're going to do is continually make it easier and easier and easier for people to set up their own federations and that's a key thing for us whether you want to set it up um for your family or for your community or anything in between or your company or anything in between we want to make that easier and easier and easier because we think that that will lead to a level of innovation that we have no visibility on it might be a community anywhere in the world World they have set up a federation um
(32:31) they set up just for that Community it could be private and have no Vis and and have no online footprint but only the people will know about it will be the people in the community or it could be a public Federation that that you want to have as this public good um that is for for anyone to use we're interested to see what people do with that um and and if we see people doing that organically and there's a use case that gains adoption we'll lean into that and support that with resources and effort
(33:04) and time um the other thing that we're very keen to do is see people building more fety mods and or taking their existing websites or web apps and either they will eight times out of 10 they will just work or out of out out of the box they just work as a Fred mod but sometimes with a few an hour or so of tweaking they will work better and generally the improvements make the app better o or the web app better overall adding in web alend support is just a good thing to do it's it means that Albi and all
(33:38) these other services will work adding in support for nosta logins is just a good thing to do so we're always looking to make sure that when you have support for FY you're automatically making your offering better for yourself and therefore for the community so working with existing um humanitarian human rights Defenders communities disempowered communities to continue to get feedback from these edge cases as you say or these edge cases represent billions of people by the way but still um from a western perspective their edge
(34:09) cases um and also making it really easy for people to set up their own Federation we'll we're GNA that's going to be an iterative process um and then with all of this feedback from people organically selling up their own federations feedback from the communities that we're working um closely with with um feedback from people building mods we will then take the feedback um and adjust the product improve and improve and improve and it will just get better and better and better until one day some Community
(34:43) somewhere is looks around and realizes that a large percent over half of their transactions in a monthly basis for their Community are happening on bitcoin rails in one way or another whether it's a main chain ecash light ing or otherwise um and when that happens we know we've hit the milestone for Market product bits and we switch to the next phase which is growth where we'll just see what's working and just lean into it and and and until we we won't stop until we we pass one billion users yeah we were talking about this
(35:20) earlier this week it seems like the point at which people in meat space don't need to convert Bitcoin the dollars then go spend in a merchant like once those Merchants adopt and it's just like Fetti app to Fetti app Bitcoin to bitcoin whether it's dcash lightning onchain um that will be a critical Tipping Point in moment where it's like all right this thing is running wild that's the that's that's the market product fit and there's many um um hypotheses as to how that can happen uh it doesn't really
(35:52) matter which one it is we're we're exploring the ones that se from the last 18 months to have the most excitement they're the ones that have got people like save the children excited and rep unite and so on um but we're also really excited to have this Cambrian explosion where we just make it easy for anybody to serve a federation um it's already quite easy it's just going to get easier and easier over the next three or four months now that we're able to focus in on it um I might my vision my sort of
(36:23) crazy idea would be you should be able to at some point be able to cck a button and create a federation you know or or if you already have the hardware download an app and just click and it would just create um and we're we're we know um technically how to do that and it would just every month that goes by the hope is it just gets easier and easier towards that that goal so that it becomes less and less of excuse to run a federation and if you run a federation that's the beginning of running other
(36:57) stuff in a self in a selfrunning way so you you'll start with that um Community custody but then you can imagine people start taking on lightning um um node operation and um Bitcoin node um running as well is something that's is is related to running a federation and more and more of this infrastructure becomes decentralized with um basically the fedy Min servers being the sort of uh patient zero of of these decentralized um hardware and and and services yeah with that in mind there's a lot of preconceived notions
(37:38) particularly from the Western perspective it's like um I find it hard to believe that people are going to do this but I think um if anything in Emerging Markets people have really proven like if they need to get something done they will get it done and they again in these extreme edge cases individuals find a way to make things work and so on that thought like what are what are some other preconceived notions from the Western world as you build this product targeted firstly for emerging markets that um may be a blind spot that people
(38:18) don't really recognize or realize yeah um there are many but one that just immediately came to mind when you said it was and this was a big insight for me as well I mean I I'm like a child of Two Worlds my my family came from from Nigeria I grew up in the UK I traveled backwards and forth between the two so I like to think that I have like a foot in these two worlds but even then I was completely blind to this one uh namely that um in the west um especially the communities that we're in we're in the
(38:54) Bitcoin Community people understand Concepts like stacking SATs they understand um the the importance of having disposable income and savings and Bitcoin as a savings technology inherently so we are actually even in Western terms where most of the West is very consumerist and and doesn't focus enough on savings um we're already like an an unusual subset of that and so if you have dis exposable income and you understand the importance of savings and investment then your um relationship with money is going to be first money is
(39:38) a store of value because I have value to store so I'm going to see as a store of value first second it's a medium of exchange but again if you have value to store um you probably are likely to have a pleora of payment options like just you have more than you know to account but you're going to have Visa PayPal dinos card AMX you're going to have um you're going to have MasterCard and venmo and um you're just going to have a ton of options um and many of them are actually even though behind the scenes
(40:16) is this sort of like um this sort of like Ruby go bergia machine of different companies um from your point of view you just literally take your phone nowadays and like or or or a piece of plastic and tap it on some machine and the payments made it's literally one tap to pay for for most people and so uh money as a medium of exchange your experience of it is only a short amount of if you take all those Taps over the period of a month you probably actually are transacting and going through the process of transacting for minutes a
(40:57) month maybe two or three minutes a month when you add all those TPS up together um whereas you're thinking about it as a store of value for almost all the month and then finally store of um unit of account um I.E how you measure prices and thinking about prices um unless you're buying a house or a car you're generally not really thinking about money as a unit of account if you have savings and so on um if you think about the times when you buy a cup of coffee from various places you probably don't
(41:28) know how much you paid for the coffee you just didn't even think about the unit of account it was you just checked was it was it under was it one was it one or um unit or was it two units was it under $10 then I don't really care the price you know because you have enough wealth to just not even think about money as a unit account so number one by far store of value because you have value to store because of Technology you spend a little bit thinking about and money as a medium of Exchange in your monthly living and
(42:04) almost no time thinking about it as a unit of account unless you're literally buying a house then you'll be thinking about the price and negotiating about thinking about price um now the moment that you are in a disempowered community and you have no disposable income it literally flips and that was the Insight um your first thought is not store value because you have no value to store so if you have no value to store you you don't you can't start thinking about do I use an ETF or not or do I do um some sort of
(42:43) staking or a yield you can't think about that because that requires you or even trading or investing in nfts or or inscriptions all of that requires disposable income to be able to do that um and so 99.9% of what people work on in the west is not relevant to anybody who does not have any disposable income which is billions of people so store value you spend the least amount of time thinking about not the most um your second you spend the most more you spend much more time on medium Mo exchange um because
(43:20) you might do the same number of transactions in a month you're buying food accommodations so on but you have way l less and way less efficient payment options you but you might be using cash way more often which means that if I want to buy something I can't just go online and pay or if I do get to the shop when I buy it I don't just tap to pay I have to go into my wallet find the coins find the change and then find and pass it to the um Merchant and then they give me the change I receive the change I count it so actually me the
(43:56) actual medium exchange interaction is a larger percentage of your month because you have less efficient tools to do it so you spend more time thinkware as a medium of exchange and then finally again if you are someone who has no disposable income slight movements in price of prices going up or down have a massive effect to you so every single purchase you're making you're thinking about the price if you're buying a coffee you think about the price of the coffee and this is not just the Global sub this is this empowered communities
(44:29) everywhere in Midwest United States or or Northern um UK or or the or the b or the outskirts of Paris it will be the same if you're if you have no disposable income you're going to be consumed about units of account how much is the price of this how much is the price of that I have the budget can I afford it is my money going to reach the end of the month so you're spending most of your time thinking about univ account in your local currency not in Bitcoin not in USD in your local currency you're thinking
(45:00) about you of account you're second you're spending second the most of of time thinking about medium of exchange because medium of exchange is much less efficient you don't have this smers board of payment options and the ones you do have are way slower if I haven't got enough cash I have to um go and walk to my bank and withdraw cash and come back out you know so again it takes I I spend a lot of time thinking about it as a medium of exchange and I spend the absolute least time thinking about it as
(45:31) store of value and that's the big thing the moment you don't have disposable cash your relationship with money does a 180 overnight and that was a big insight for us and and a lot of the things that we built around that are um as a result of that and if you're in a West and you and you don't have that realization a lot of the things that are needed to get Bitcoin to be used as a medium Exchange would just be invisible to you they're beyond your um they're beyond your spere of of of ability to perceive because
(46:07) you're living in a world where disposable disposable um capital is the norm and so you have to sort of mentally think imagine I had no disposable cash can I empathize and mentally um Inuit it that world and if you do you'll realize that a lot of the products and offerings you have to give have to be the diametric opposite of of of what they are in the west just one example you want to be able to convert Bitcoin to FIA and FIA to Bitcoin in the west the predominant conversion that you're interested in as a consumer is
(46:44) Fiat to bitcoin you want to buy Bitcoin you want to Stack sets but in a world where you have no disposable income then what generally is happening is you're receiving Bitcoin from friends from Family from abroad the diaspora from Aid agencies and the predominant conversion is going from Bitcoin to Fiat you just want to quickly convert it into Fier so you can buy the stuff that you need to buy so it's literally as a result of that difference disposable income or not your relationship just on conversion
(47:16) becomes immediately flipped and so that was a big insight and and a lot we're still we're still um digging into what it means in terms of of the interface but we think that that Insight is a key part of us of finding the solution for Bitcoin being used as a medium of exchange yeah thinking about what you just said in the product that you're bringing to Market particularly like stability pools do you think on the unit of account side being able to give uh communities in Emerging Markets of the world like these dollar stability pools
(47:56) like that that is one step in the right direction where they're not making the conscious de decision of all right how much how many nirra do I have how many um Vietnam dong do I have they're they're you give them a dollar saving account that's backed by Bitcoin with these stability pools and that is a step in the right direction where they get the yeah yeah they get the piece of mind like oh I have a dollar savings tool now that I didn't have before and even though the dollar is inflating and our
(48:26) monetary policy isn't as responsible as many would like it to be it's impossible to ignore that out of all the Fiat currencies it is relatively the most stable yeah and but it's interesting even that might not be far enough um and again this is part the insights but a dollar savings tool we Again Naturally think oh we own stable coins USD stable coins and so on but actually we are seeing that there could be more of a demand for for local currency stable assets why would I want that I mean US USD is ter right why
(49:04) would I want the local currency because for me in this world my unit of account is not USD USD is just as alien to me as Bitcoin and this is where you know so you're not going far enough but then you think well but it inflates far worse well okay so I need to educate people about KY and versus Austrian economics and so no I just want to pay for my groceries and I need the currency that's in the that the prices are in in my in my country which is why for example you can't do that with a f back stable coin
(49:42) you just can't do that because Fe back sa coins require Fe at Banks and and teor is not even willing to hold the money in a European Bank you know they're pushing back for in Europe let alone hold it in a Botswana bank accounts and so on um you can only do that with something like stable balances and each Community needs to do that for their own Community but what can be done though is because it's backed by Bitcoin you could potentially hedge that um against USD and therefore that Delta could be potentially given back to the
(50:19) US user in in in a form of effectively they have a local currency but with some level of Interest so they almost have now have not just a community custody solution but they have an interest bearing account almost for themselves and that's sub subconsciously and and psychologically way more intuitive than a USD account um then a USD account which is in a currency that there's 6425 Kenyon shillings to the US dollar and I need I need um 2,500 Kenyon Shillings um for my groceries what is that in US Dollars
(51:05) what is what is that in US Dollars I have no idea I I'm pretty numerate but I don't think I can easily on o in my head do 2,500 divided by 6425 I just I I just can't do that in my head very easily so why would we expect um billions of people to be able to do that but if you tell me my budget is 2,500 and you give me 2,500 Kon Shillings and by the way if I manage to hold on to some of it I earn I earn more Kenyan shillings that makes more sense and it's it's thousands of decisions like that that come from um
(51:43) realizing and listening to people on the ground that you realize that these would have not you're not goingon to you're not going to come to these insights if you're in the west and not dealing or or if no it's not actually the West actually I I think that that language we need to adjust it's if you're in in an environment where you and your friends have disposable income because you could be in the global self and you and your friends have disposable income and again you might not notice this because you're
(52:15) going to be in your disposable income bubble in in the global self um and you might be very familiar with Bitcoin and stable coins and so on and be using those and be doing significant volumes but not aware of your fellow countrymen and women who are not in that camp and the same will happen in the west as well where you could be living somewhere and you have disposable income which we all most people in the Bitcoin space are fortunate to be in that camp including myself and so but there will be someone around the corner who doesn't have that
(52:50) situation and their reality is literally the diametric opposite of yours but because everybody that you know is is going to be um another bird of the same fever as it were you're going to your view of the world is going to be based around that um now in the west is the percentage of people who have disposable income is way higher than in the global itself but it's it's still the same thing this is a worldwide issue um medium of exchange usage of Bitcoin is going to be in a community somewhere my bet will be it in a community
(53:24) somewhere where um first will eventually be everywhere but the first will be in places where they do not have disposable income wherever that is in the world but that will be it just they tend to be more frequently in the global self but it's more about do you have disposable income or not yeah that makes sense and do you think with hopefully the success of Fetti it's continued adoption like that's what interest me about what you're building and designing for these extreme edge cases like is your hope at some point
(53:59) over the Long Haul one decade two decades however long it takes these economies sort of meet in the middle like you give individuals in these lower tier economic situations the tools to to pull themselves up and coordinate activity and give themselves the ability to separate themselves from the ills of the Central Bank and governments that that control their money um and debate their money um slowly but surely and sometimes even more rapidly over time I I well I one that's my hope but I don't think it's 10 20 years I think
(54:39) actually we're going to see them meeting in the middle very soon um really so if we take we talk a lot about these disempowered communities but even empowered communities I think that you're going to find people wanting to use something like a f as a very simple spending lightning spending wallet it's it's an incredible experience and it's only going to get better if you want to um but if you want it where you can choose who is going to be your custodian you can choose and set up a custodian closer to you in your
(55:18) community but the experience is this simple experience that's as simple as using some of these more centralized Solutions you're going to still find that use B and so that you're going to gain so you're going to see them both using it in in that context the other thing that I'm really excited to see and we're already starting to see and we're going to lean into that is that you have um in the global sou all these people and who want to use it as an app to to help them um manage money spend money
(55:49) and eventually form savings um as they if they're constantly receiving money in Bitcoin and then they convert it to local currency and they realize that the amount of local currency they get for the same amount of Bitcoin keeps going up or the amount of Bitcoin to receive the same amount of local currency keeps going down they will be um implicitly trained on the the concept of inflation without having to be trained on the cost of inflation but um to service these um um federations and communities there's
(56:21) going to be a series of different service providers that will need and will start to appear you're going to have um you're seeing these public federations starting to pop up for example um and they provide a service for people who want to store smaller amounts or get started before they set upate on Federation so I mean interested to see how that goes um there there's something called um fedy gateways that connect federations to the lightning Network federations can run them themselves but you're starting to see
(56:52) people offering that as a third party service where they can serve as is multiple federations so the federations only need to um in a trustless way so the federations only need to um um the communities only to run the federations and they can connect to one or more gateways to connect to the lightning Network um and that's another service that we're starting to see that's and and a third yet a third one is for St stable balance sumone has to be be willing to provide stability in Bitcoin the the benefit of doing that is they
(57:25) can they are effectively going long Bitcoin so they can earn a yield on their Bitcoin but the end users are are benefit from from having stability for these short periods of time and again we're starting to see interest in providing that stability provision and then finally all of these things um need um time and skill to sell up and support so you're starting again to see people um um looking to offer services where they help people set up stability provision services or help people um set up fed um gateways or help people to set
(58:03) up um federations so um basically setup Support Services as well so and all of these I think are fertile ground for people in the west to right now effectively stack more SATs by helping communities around the world and advancing the use case and proof of the use case of Bitcoin as a medium of exchange glob globally while so it's a win-win they get to gain more Bitcoin while helping people and while advancing the cause of Bitcoin yeah it'll be interesting to see how that side of the market develops because if you agree that the price of
(58:45) Bitcoin is going to go up long term like I wonder if there's a contractual agreement or whatever it may be that you could set up where if you lock Bitcoin in you keep it there for four years so like if you're coin or and you're thinking like all right what are the chances that the price of Bitcoin goes up what's the time Horizon I'm comfortable with it's like all right I'll lock it up and provide liquidity to the stability Poll for four years and um if Bitcoin does what it has done
(59:09) historically I should have more Bitcoin at the end of the day for providing that service or if or you can hedge and you could um if this local currency you could hedge it against USD and then you're as long what's the chance that USD is going to perform better than the local currencies like 99.
(59:27) 9 9% and I've still effectively earn a Bitcoin yield so there's ways you can like reduce the risk you so you can choose I just go long and and make um but for long periods of time and and make a large yield or I hedge and make a smaller but way lower risk yield and I can choose to do the two so there's there's uh there's there's just so much stuff and and here's a thing you're you're able to retain your Bitcoin um obviously if you provide a good service um earn more while helping communities and so that's
(1:00:10) why these two sides are coming together um and advancing the cause of of um Bitcoin not just as a store of value but as a medium of exchange it's like a win-win win and uh um yeah I'm interested to see how that progresses as well yeah with this in mind I mean everything we're talking about today that we have talked about over the last couple of years um with on air and off air like this is something that I recognized immediately when Eric first dropped the MVP of his ecash system a few years ago was like well this could be massive and
(1:00:48) a lot of people jump forward to the endstate possibilities of everything you can do here but as we all know particularly if you've been in Bitcoin for long enough like managing expectations is important so with that in mind like what is what would you say in in regards to that just managing expectations like obviously everything we're talking about is possible in the long run but these things have to be built out these markets have to be developed you need user feedback iteration all of that and so with that
(1:01:20) in mind what would you tell the audience in terms of where we are today and what the path to getting to these end points look like and what should people expect that to look like that's a that's a really good question because um this is well I would say that um we have now launched and it's taken about two years I as the sort of crazy entrepreneur said it was going to take six months and it took two years to get to this stage but many people are an example was of a friend um of Eric felt that this was either never going to
(1:02:03) happen or take over a decade based on um conservative estimat to achieve and so the fact that we've got to this point in two years is incredible um but the next phase um the market product fit phase is where um we work really hard to find really strong demand in one or two markets around the world it doesn't matter where they are um but we before we go on to like aggressive growth we want to stay patient we're building a decentralized super app a super app run by and for communities which is built
(1:02:42) completely off Freedom Technologies only um so an experience like WeChat or alipe or what Elon Musk wants for x.com but instead of running by the you know Chinese government or you know Silicon Valley megalomaniac it's run by communities for communities and um this is something that we need to just keep focusing on and know that it will take some time to do that being the case um our progress is incredibly fast and every day that goes by every week that goes by it will just get better and better and better
(1:03:23) well let's say every month just I don't want to but you'll you'll see adjustments and improvements every month on an ongoing basis yeah and I mean I can attest just the user experience alone like what you figure out and you guys have made it really easy particularly with launch last week to join a federation like you don't have to past codes or anything anymore you just click and you're in and the ability to join a federation hit receive and then present somebody with a lightning invoice and get Bitcoin that
(1:03:54) way and then when you're spending from there on out not knowing U not needing to know maybe you do know but you don't need to know how that Bitcoin is moving whether it's within the Min or to a lightning invoy like the user experience is just far superior um in the reliability on that as well because there's also something called observer.
(1:04:16) fed.org which is really cool um which is fedin Observer is basically like the fedman ecosystem equivalent of a blockchain Explorer so so um the beauty of the ecash protocol is that you can be completely transparent about all ecash not all the information at the the Federation stores to anyone in the world and because it's cryptographically perfectly private to the Guardians it means it's perfectly private to anyone else so you can actually observe minting of ecash and redemptions and so on um for any
(1:04:55) publicly uh um uh listed Federation so um and over time this is very early days there will be more um transaction history of these public federations there will be um um more assuming more public federations and you'll be able to see them and and navigate them and and observe and so yeah it's the first blockchain explorer the fedy V Observer um um as well and so but this is part of it on on one hand as a user you have this really simple experience with the FED app but as someone who wants to be able to observe the fedy sphere as it
(1:05:36) were and how it's operating it'll be interesting to see when an event happens how does and we'll be interesting for us see you're going to see the same time as us when an event happens how does the fedy sphere react to that just like how does an an event happening geopolitics affect the the Bitcoin blockchain you know it's or the mempool where where will be interesting to see as well yeah yeah it will be and I think it's also before we wrap up here we should mention um what you guys announced the end of
(1:06:12) your of your launch video last week was the fact that by January 3rd 2026 um the Fetti Pro Fetti platform will be agpl open source technology yeah yeah uh yeah just to so it's as of May the 4th May the 4th be with you we already went Source available but we kept on the wraps until the announcement but we gave a copy of the source code to a number of parties just in case um so right now the from a security point of view you want to be able to see the code you can do that already it was possible from May 4th and it's possible now and
(1:06:51) in fact the moment we did it we we um added something to the Bitcoin blockchain which was the hash of of the letter confirming that we were going over to this this protocol of source available and eventually open source and it's an interesting block number I think it was like block 84269 I believe it was which is a nice cool number but um um but beyond that um we will be fully open source latest and that's in latest um um January 3D 2026 um if we were at any point as a company to decide to shut down or stop
(1:07:36) developing the fedy fedy app it would instantly become open source from that point onwards instantly um as part of the terms as well as a little detail and also at any point we could decide to say we're going open source earlier and once we say that we can go earlier we can never go later and if we State an earlier date that is the new new Target date so that will be the absolute latest time um and it could be significantly before that that's awesome it's incredible to see it's uh also I mean
(1:08:15) that's uh one of the frustrating Parts about being in Bitcoin and particularly when new protocols launch happen with the lightning network still happening to today happening with the fedman protocols everybody expects it to be this outof the-box Panacea that works um immediately and does everything that it can do uh right out of the box and it's simply not the case these things have to get built and um that has been one of the most rewarding things for me as just an observer over the last three years is
(1:08:48) that it is getting built it is getting better uh it is increasing user experience privacy um usability and it's it's going to take time and the fact that we've gotten to the point where you guys have your official launch out in the wild now you're going and um working with the communities to iterate and continue to improve the product like this is a very exciting time um and that's what I would caution anybody listening who um reads a white paper sees like initial protocol launch and uh sits
(1:09:26) there asking like why can't it do all the things you said it could do it's like well it takes time to build and I think where you're building at Fetti and the work that your team is doing on the fedt protocol is a testament to um if you spend the time and put the effort in like you can actually build powerful products that that are giving the world utility that simply does not exist anywhere else anywhere else but it takes time it takes time but we have an incredible team and we're adding to the
(1:09:57) team all the time as well um and um yeah you're going to we've now started the race and it's just going to the foundations are in place and they're very reliable and the core foundations are there so now it's the fun bit because we now actually get to open it up to more people that accelerates the amount of feedback we get and we can resource up to be able to fulfill the feedback that they give us so it's just going to get better and better and better um this is the way forward we super apps are the most popular apps in
(1:10:37) the software ecosystem um many of them have billions of users or hundreds of millions of users um they're used around the world and they're coming to the West telegram is transforming into a super in front of our eyes and x.com their state mission is to become a super W so it's going to become much more common in the West but in in Asia and other parts of the world is already these are by far the most common apps and every single one of them are incredibly centralized we need to put that power into the hands
(1:11:07) of any Community anywhere to be able to run and that's what we are going to do we must do it and we will going we are going to do it and uh we are going to ngu never give up until we have done it well I know I said that was the last topic but and we know to put this in the recording if you're not comfortable talking about but the other number ngu number go up as a Founder running a business on a Bitcoin standard what has Bitcoin in the treasury meant to you guys in terms of how it gives you optionality as a business yeah it gives
(1:11:44) us incredible optionality and so this is where I had the advantage of running a Bitcoin exchange for many years starting of other a garage um and very f focused on bitcoin um and after a while it became clear to me probably around 2015 and and we had a lot of push back from our investors at that time on this idea but I just felt that we're a Bitcoin exchange um and so we effectively a one-way bet on bitcoin if Bitcoin fails then our business becomes obsolete anyway so we might as well hold Bitcoin this was a
(1:12:27) very crazy idea at the time um and because we and also what we are doing as a business is inherently helping Bitcoin become more of a money become more proven so as we succeed Bitcoin should go up in value by virtue of our activities um and yes we generate revenues and so on but if we just did the numbers the the amounts that we can make from holding um Bitcoin in our treasury could also be significant now it was push back for probably about a year until we finally managed to get it to um agreement for that we hold a small
(1:13:08) amount in Bitcoin and after over the following few years we we ran for nearly a decade it grew to quite a sizable amount and ended up being a significant amount of our assets in the end um beyond our revenues our profitable revenues so that's already was in ingrained so when we had the opportunity in fety um we had the same conversation and we realized that we wanted to put a significant amount in Bitcoin as well the key difference here though from the learnings from my previous company is I was really insistent that the core
(1:13:46) investors that we worked with were people who had an understanding an inherent understanding of the power of Bitcoin and being on a Bitcoin standard and people who shared the mission and vision of not just for petty but for Bitcoin and the in the greater Bitcoin ecosystem that was key and that was a learning so that it wouldn't take a year to agree and as a result um there was broad approval for this idea I I talked to um uh Jack boof who is who's uh who's um on the board and you know I was going
(1:14:23) to put a certain percentage in his only respons is why don't you put a larger percentage in and which is like and and I would I'm sure it have been the same if it was anyone from 1031 or block or tram or Venture Partners or anyone else they would have understood the importance of being on a Bitcoin standard and so we did that and uh it it means that we've been able to build a team we're also obviously very focused on being controlled with our expenses um but even so we're we're growing and
(1:14:55) we've been operating for two years now and at this point in time we still have in terms of asset value more money than the amount that we originally raised in the company even after all the cost for two years and that's by virtue of what's obvious for someone in this but outside of the space not so obvious but the the power of being on a Bitcoin standard yeah it's extremely powerful and we're 1031 is definitely uh similar to Jeff Booth like why not more why not more it's uh it is and it is insane it
(1:15:33) completely um changes the way Founders view again the optionality that if you take a long-term View and obviously you have over a decade experience building companies in the Bitcoin space and we're able to recognize that um with the exchange you're running in the UK bit floor and apply that to Fetti like it's it's a secret weapon that that many people particularly outside the Bitcoin space do not recognize and if you're really working on a project with very ambitious goals like the ability to have that
(1:16:08) treasury safety net held in Bitcoin just gives you the ability to to focus on those ambitious goals which is again a secret weapon yeah per is exactly it anyway that's uh that's where we are we're super excited we're we're ready to rock and roll um and now we're we're actually racing we're moving um yeah I'm just I I don't like to talk too much about what's coming in future I really prefer proof of work over proof of talk um so um but yeah I'm very very excited about what
(1:16:49) we're going to see in the perceived velocity of fedy over the over the coming months yeah I'm as well um very pumped for you guys very proud of everything you guys are doing I'm having having been close like I remember I know I'm getting wordy here at the end but I remember when Justin and the Mutiny guys did the first uh mint to lightning Gateway payment um in the Commons in Austin and that being like a magical moment I was like over their shoulder watching them that was amazing executed from the command line and um that's the
(1:17:23) type of stuff that most people don't see that uh I I remember the the uh the feeling of joy that was in that room because it's like holy it worked and um to see it a full-fledged super app now like it's yeah not and even before I I I was aware of uh um um Feddy mint uh Eric also did a tweet of the first buying a cup of coffee with ecash in 2021 I believe it was um so as well so you know there's a lot of there's a lot of history um by both of those guys and also the team that's been supporting
(1:18:05) them and uh yeah we're my mission is to make is to just work with Incredible people um and bring this missing piece of the ecosystem out there and and be a a fully fledged part which is basically providing this simple integration point and user experience that anyone can access and anyone can use and if we're not doing a good enough job for the code and and build something better either compete um contribute or comment if you if you can't contribute and you can't can't compete then comment and we'll
(1:18:46) take all the feedback um really gratefully because no matter how it's given um we're very fix skinned and it it it's all going to lead us to learn and improve the product so we're ready for it let's go you heard it here first we'll end there Obie thank you that's all we got today thanks
