Max Keidun, CEO of Hodl Hodl rejoins me on the show to talk about some exciting updates with Hodl Hodl:

UX/UI update to Hodl Hodl website interface

How the platform protects against scammers

Local Trader feature in BlueWallet

Stacking Bitcoins p2p, No KYC, directly into your Coldcard

Baltic Honeybadger 2020 Update

Max Keidun & Hodl Hodl links:

Previous episode:

Sponsor links:

Stephan Livera links:

Podcast Transcript:

Stephan Livera:

Max, welcome back to the show.

Max Keidun:

Hey, Stephan, thank you for having me again. I’m really pleased and I really like your show. So I’m happy to be here.

Stephan Livera:

I like what you guys are doing at HodlHodl and I know you’ve got some great updates to share with everyone, but first give us an update from you and the team. How’s everyone going under this whole Corona house arrest lockdown thing?

Max Keidun:

Yeah, like nothing changed much for how the whole team, because we’ve been remote since day one. So basically we’ve been working, remotely since the beginning. So for us it’s just a regular work week or just regular another week because we are working also during the week, weekends. So yeah, all good for us. Not so good for some of our partners, but yeah, hopefully this Corona stuff will be over soon and we will be back to track. Everyone will be back to track, but yeah, as for Hodl Hodl team, everything is going to square working, nothing change.

Stephan Livera:

Cool. And most of the guys are in Latvia, right?

Max Keidun:

No, actually we’re pretty distributed globally. So like basically I think starting from North America ending in Asia. So we have a pretty diverse and pretty distributed team of people. So there’s like a lot of different countries and actually there’s not so many people in Latvia to be honest. There’s more people in other countries.

Stephan Livera:

Cool. Well, look, I know there were some updates that you and the team shared last year back at Baltic Honeybadger 2019 and some of those involve things like user experience update on the platform, open sourcing efforts. Do you want to just tell us a little bit about what you’re doing there?

Max Keidun:

Yeah, so we’ve announced during the Honeybadger that we’re going to improve UX significantly. And we started this by redesign of Hodl Hodl. We already released first part of redesign or a new version of HodlHodl in February. It was a pretty like, pretty nice, was a small success because we received a lot of positive feedback on that. And we also as you know, most probably we will talk about this later and we also released our API and that allowed us to integrate with BlueWallet, which basically gave us opportunity to present HodlHodl trading functionality in a mobile phone. So basically now you can use HodlHodl through mobile wallet, which is a BlueWallet. And another thing we’ve announced that we’re going to be an open source.

Max Keidun:

We’re going to open source HodlHodl. It’s currently, it’s now in development. So we’re working on that as well. We did change some priorities, so most probably the open source stuff coming in the end of 2020, but we already released some of the parts of HodlHodl. Probably can go on HodlHodl.com And check the open source section. It’s called open source basically. So you’re going to click on that and check it out, which parts of Hodl Hodl, are already open source. And the third thing was a standalone escrow platform. We decided that we should we should create a standalone platform for our tech that we use in HodlHodl. And you know, our projects, which is basically a Bitcoin based escrow solutions. They will be a bit different from things that we use in HodlHodl, and in our prediction markets. They will be way more flexible, it easier to integrate, easier to use. So hopefully we will bring some new people into Bitcoin economy and hopefully regular businesses will be able to use Bitcoin based escrow solutions from, I think from the middle of summer, most probably. The expectation is that we most probably release this platform by the middle of summer.

Stephan Livera:

Great. And let’s talk a little bit about the experience with HodlHodl. So I think most of my listeners know the platform, but just for those who are not familiar or if you weren’t following Baltic Honeybadger, the conference. The platform on the website basically is using multisignature Escrow and you can basically buy and sell Bitcoin in a non-custodial way. So that’s a really cool feature of the platform. And I think I’ve noticed as well just having a look on the website recently, it does look a little bit cleaner and easier as well because it’s one of those things where let’s say you were new to Bitcoin, it might’ve been a bit more difficult for you to understand. Okay, so I sign up on this website and then, okay, how does it work? Like I have to actually deposit some Bitcoin into this deposit address, but it’s actually a multisig address and then so on and so forth. And so the, the platform can sort of help walk you through that. So talk us through a little bit of what the platform shows the user when they want to buy Bitcoin without using KYC. If they’re doing this on HodlHodl.com?

Max Keidun:

So basically if you want to buy. you just go to HodlHodl you, if you’re new to that, you can click sign up, it will take you basically less than one minute to sign up and you’re good to go. You’re free to trade because again, as you mentioned, we don’t require any verification KYC. So basically what you need is only a valid email and a password. You then you click Buy Bitcoin and you choose the country where you want to buy Bitcoin or the payment method that you are willing to use. Some payment methods are tied to countries and that’s it. And then you click, the website will show you all that available at the moment. And basically you click on the offer, create a contract and you’re good to go. The contract is happening like in very easy way.

Max Keidun:

So you have a buyer, you have a seller, and the seller deposits Bitcoins in an escrow multisig escrow, which is a, like, we’ll just say the address with three keys. One key goes to the buyer, one key goes to the seller and one key goes to HodlHodl. So if everything goes well, then we inform the buyer that Bitcoins are in escrow. A buyer sends fiat in any way that they agreed upon with the seller. Like for example, doing the bank transfer when the seller receives the Fiat, he released the bitcoins directly in the wallet of a buyer. So we don’t have any hot wallets. You don’t deposit any bitcoin with HodlHodl. Basically you trade from your wallet to your wallet. So the only middle thing is between the buyers and sellers wallets are escrow which is also not owned by HodlHodl.

Max Keidun:

We only have one key. And even with that one key, we can’t do basically anything. We can transfer these coins to any location that we want because the escrow solution works in that way that you need at least two keys in order to move coins from the Escrow. So that’s how it works. I know that it doesn’t sounds so easy. I do understand that. But like peer to peer markets and non-custodial peer to peer markets are actually bit more harder to grasp. But we are trying to make the solution as easy as possible. So like already now when you go on Hodl Hodl, you won’t see any difference between buying and sell like Bitcoins on Hodl Hodl or for example, Local Bitcoins, which is a custodial. So that’s our, one of the goals of Hodl Hodl to make noncustodial trading as easy as it can be.

Stephan Livera:

From the user perspective, they would look at the different offers and there would be a range of different offers, right? Because there’s a bunch of different traders on there and they would, some of them would be in person, some of those might be, you know, Revolut some of them might be PayPal. And you know, I’ve seen even some people on there using things like here in Australia we have cardless cash. And so basically that person is offering for, so in this case, the person who is buying would basically give them like an ATM code that that seller would go and use to actually take the cash out and then release the Bitcoins to the individual who’s buying. There’s some difference there.

Max Keidun:

Yeah, there’s a different payment methods. Again, as I mentioned in some regions like they prefer a bank transfer, some region prefer payments different types of payment systems like Revolut as you mentioned or TransferWise. And there are like, cash by mail a card was cash, some something like that. Your coins are protected, Bitcoins are protected by the escrow solution. So we won’t release them before like if you’re a seller, we want release them. If you didn’t receive Fiat and if you are buyer and you did make a payment, then we want to release it back to to, to the sellers. So there’s like game theory in our escrow because you need the consensus to release coins. And so if one party disagree, then we start a dispute and we start analyzing what’s the problem there.

Max Keidun:

Also one interesting thing and that made people know that even if you go and pull a Hodl Hodl and you don’t see an offer that suits you, like for example, you don’t see a price that you like or you don’t see a payment method that you like or there’s no location you can for free, you can create an offer. It’s also very simple and we’re going to present a new way of creating offer like in April I think, which will be pretty simple. So it’s free to create your own offer and publish it and wait for a counterparty to accept that. So not many people know that, but it’s actually pretty, pretty free. Obvious for us but not obvious for people because we are also working on that if we will. We want to stimulate people to create their own offers because. On Hodl Hodl there’s no difference between Hodl Hodl. You pay how much commission you will pay from the trade if you created an offer or if you just take an offer, there’s no difference. The commission is split 50-50 between market makers and market takers. So like create your own offer if you don’t find one.

Stephan Livera:

And also something that new users might not know is that the way you set it up is when you’re setting up for that trade, there’s a little receive address box. So the idea is you would use your wallet and generate a receive address and then put that receive address into the Hodl Hodl form. So that way when you complete the trade that’s, the Bitcoins will come to you in that address.

Max Keidun:

Yeah. Directly in your address, in your wallet. So again, we don’t hold any funds. And if you’re a seller, you are sending directly from your wallet to the multisig address. And if you’re a buyer, you will receive when the trade completes, you receive coins directly in your wallet that you control. And you have keys to that. So there’s no counterparty risk in that case or no third party risk that case. And actually we’ll talk about it later, but we’re about to introduce a extremely secure way of acquiring Bitcoins on Hodl Hodl with the help of BlueWallet.

Stephan Livera:

For sure. Yeah, we’ll get into that. One other topic I wanted to just touch on is around the price range. So the user is presented with a range of different prices, right. And they might, they might be familiar with like the traditional custodial kind of big centralized exchange. So they might not be used to this idea but basically there’ll be different offers and typically they’ll be priced at a certain premium or or a discount to the actual exchange price. So it might be whatever Bitfinex plus 3% or whatever. So if you could just explain a little bit around that price range and what some of the ranges are that you see.

Max Keidun:

Yeah, of course. Now to be honest, like I’m analyzing trying to research to do my research on peer to peer markets and make sure the Hodl Hodl is one of the few peer to peer exchanges or trading platforms as we say that you can pretty often you can get bitcoins by the spot price. So basically there will be no difference between the price on Bitfinex, or Bitstamp or Kraken and the price on Hodl Hodl. So because some people just don’t want to go through the KYC AML and they’re happy to sell their coins, by the spot price. But usually the price range like I think in limits of 3% to 5%. So why is this so? Because you don’t go through the complicated verification process and peer to peer traders they think that’s trading on peer to peer markets is bit more riskier.

Max Keidun:

So basically you are paying for it. The price is risk adjusted to be say like that. So it’s basically a price for risk or for not going through KYC AML. But you also need to understand that we don’t put these prices by themselves. Hodl Hodl is purely market-driven platform. So if the market decides that they’re going to sell today by the spot price, they will put the spot price. If they will decide where you need to be extra 3% premium above the spot price you will do that. So it’s like some people tend to just sell coins and they’re having to sell it by the sport price. Some people making the business out of that, they’re just, buying cheap coins from centralized exchanges and then they’re selling them at a premium on Hodl Hodl or any other peer to peer platform that exists there. So yeah.

Stephan Livera:

Awesome. Yeah, I think that’s an interesting point and it’s also worthwhile pointing out that look, every person has to assess their own risk and what they’re looking at. But let’s just put it this way, the value of getting non KYC coins to the user might actually end up being a lot more than just paying 3 to 5% premium. It might actually be worth a lot more to them. So that’s something worthwhile pointing out as well, that if you think through the longterm implications of holding Bitcoin.

Max Keidun:

Yeah, I don’t insist on that, but you have a point there because like yeah, KYC still is, that’s a bit tricky question. And again, as I mentioned Hodl Hodl is purely market driven trading platform. We have some buyers and sellers that required KYC, and they do it that by themselves, but a majority of all our traders don’t require KYC. They’re happy being anonymous. So yeah.

Stephan Livera:

Right. Yeah. Yeah, that’s true. And that is a fair point point as well. There are some who require KYC, I suppose even in those cases. That’s a little different to the sort of KYC regime depending on where you go, right. If you’re at a big exchange versus like an individual trader who’s on one of these platforms. But I’m also interested to change and now talk a little bit more about Local Trader. So, as you mentioned, BlueWallet one of the, they’re like a well known Bitcoin wallet for smartphone and they’ve got this hookup with, through an API into Hodl Hodl. Can you tell us a little bit about how Local Trader came about?

Max Keidun:

Yeah, so we’ve been like, since again, since the day one, we were thinking that obviously you need to have a mobile application for your project or for your trading platform because like everyone is using mobile phones these days and it’s so convenient. You can trade on the go, you can be updated on the go. You don’t need to log in your computer, you don’t have to dash to any place. You can do whatever you want. But as a non-custodial platform we understood that as long as you don’t deposit any coins with us, it’s pretty obvious that there’s no reason for us to create a standalone mobile app because like you won’t be able to trade effectively and you won’t be able to trade like in a convenient way with that kind of app.

Max Keidun:

Because we either need to develop our own mobile wallet and then say, okay guys, you deposit in our mobile wallet and then trade from our mobile wallet and using our mobile application. Or we can just go and build an API and become liquidity providers and partners for many other types of wallets. Like we’re now in talks with different mobile wallets, hardware wallets, desktop wallets. They all want to have a feature that their people, their customers trading from their interface, not logging into Hodl Hodl, just like, you know, you open your wallet and you’re free to go and trade non-KYC and non-custodial way easy, secure and pretty anonymous. So we came up with this idea that we need to use an API, not only of course for mobile wallet integration, but mostly because of that.

Max Keidun:

And we, in January we released an API. We actually meet each other with BlueWallet team last October in Berlin, during the lightning conference because because BlueWallet is famous for also lightning, being a lightning enabled wallet. And we had also some experience with lightning, Hodl Hodl was one of the few exchanges that actually allows you to trade through through lightning channels. And so we met each other with the BlueWallet team last October and we discuss some things and we decided, well, we should, we should build API and they should integrate our solution in their wallet and it will be, win win. So we started working and we just like two weeks ago I think we released the alpha version of a project called

Max Keidun:

Local Trader, which is basically opportunity to trade through BlueWallet using Hodl Hodl liquidity. At the moment it’s a pretty like like limited functionality. You can only log in and check out the offers that are available on Hodl Hodl, but I think in two or three weeks from now you will be able already to trade through BlueWallet. So yeah, we came up with this idea that we should you know, merge non-custodial wallet with non-custodial trading platform and it should be an interesting and really a solid user experience.

Stephan Livera:

Can you tell us a little bit about what you’re hoping it might look like then for the user that like would this only be for in-person cash trades or would it actually be, they could still just do like a standard bank transfer but they’re just seeing the Hodl Hodl offer inside BlueWallet. Do you know what I mean?

Max Keidun:

Yes. So in the end you will be able to, you will then log into BlueWallet with the Local Trader or what it built in it. You can like, well obviously you are downloading Bitcoin wallet because you have some Bitcoins or you want to purchase? So, and then you will be able to sign up or login if you have an existing account, Hodl Hodl through BlueWallet you will, there’s will be no reason for you to go on Hodl Hodl. So basically you can trade on the go through BlueWallet interface. You will be able to publish offers on Hodl Hodl for BlueWallet. You will be able to buy Bitcoins through BlueWallet. So BlueWallet, will became not only a wallet but also I dunno, trading device like peer to peer trading device and peer to peer trading app as well.

Max Keidun:

So like we want to have for people to have a proper easy experience with trading coins and still having them in your own wallet. So you will be able to send directly from BlueWallet if you want to sell to Hodl Hodl escrow and if you want to buy these coins that you will buy through BlueWallet most probably will go to BlueWallet address in your wallet that is basically owned by you. So yeah, we want to do this and there’s the one interesting trick which I wanted to tell you specifically. I prepared this for your podcast. Yeah, we want to have.We’ve been thinking how to connect all these trading experience with cold storage’s like hardware wallets and we’ve been speaking with the BlueWallet team. And they recently integrated with Coldcard.

Max Keidun:

As you know, the Coldcard is one of the top safest and secure solution to store your Bitcoin because it’s a basically hardware wallet. And so they recently, like two weeks ago or three weeks ago, they introduced the integration with BlueWallet can be integrated with Coldcard wallet and a BlueWallet can became watch only wallet, which means that you can synchronise your Coldcard with BlueWallet. You can send addresses. Like for example Stephan, you want to send me some points I can generate the address on the BlueWallet. I can send you this address on telegram or WhatsApp or whatever. You will send this you will send some coins to this address and I will receive them directly to Coldcard. So they will not be stored on my BlueWallet.

Max Keidun:

They will be stored on the coldcard. And then in that case like BlueWallet became watch only wallet. So what we came up with idea. Now you will be able to buy coins on Hodl Hodl through BlueWallet, BlueWallet. And they will go directly to your Coldcard, which means like, there’s no, like it’s a perfect solution because you can trade on the go using BlueWallet and you won’t be and there’s no need to compromise your security because if you want to store your coins in a cold storage, feel free to connect your cold card and buy Bitcoins on Hodl Hodl through BlueWallet directly to your phone.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah, that’s very powerful because a user might want to buy a decent amount of coins that they’re not necessarily comfortable to walk around with on the street. And let’s say they wanted to buy a couple thousand dollars worth of Bitcoin and they didn’t want to walk around on the streets with that much, then this is actually a good I can think that would be a good example there because if they’ve set up their Coldcard, then they can receive it directly there.

Max Keidun:

Yeah. So in that case, although Hodl Hodl becomes liquidity provider, BlueWallet becomes a trading engine or a trading platform and Cold card obviously becomes your cold storage. So you go to BlueWallet, you buy some coins and these coins go directly to your Coldcard and you are happy and you are safe and secure and everyone is happy, everything is good. Your coins are in cold storage. So yeah, the idea is like that and I think it should be very interesting for people to use that type of thing. So I know that BlueWallet team are releasing they actually released this integration with Coldcard. They’re going to update and make it way more easier to people to connect their BlueWallet with Coldcard. And like in two, three weeks from now you will be able to buy coins from Hodl Hodl and deposit them directly in your cold storage.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah, that’s very exciting. Unfortunately for the U.S. listeners though, they’re not able to access Hodl Hodl, but I think that’s basically everyone else. Everyone else in the world can Oh, I think it’s pretty much every other country, right?

Max Keidun:

Yeah. Pretty much every other country. And as for U S customers, we have a really solid support from US-based people and they’ve been constantly asking when Hodl Hodl was going to be allowed for US customers trust me, we’re working on that and hopefully we will be able to, to grow mine, some interesting solutions also for US-based customers and for US Bitcoiners during 2020. So hopefully we’ll be able to be back in U.S. We’re working on that guys.

Stephan Livera:

Awesome. And just for any listeners who are concerned about scammers and you know, if something goes wrong during the process because obviously there are stories of this, you know, sometimes cash deals and so on, these platforms can have that. So can you help outline what happens if somebody is trying to scam you and then how the system works to protect you?

Max Keidun:

Well, I will start with some preventive measures. Like first of all you need to understand the potential threats of any payment method that you use. If you want to do a cash trade like person to person, you need to understand the risks. Or if you want to do like for example, Paypal is pretty often used by the scammers because they’re there. It’s easy to get the money back if you made a payment. So you need to understand the implications of each and the risk of each payment method. We have, by the way, a pretty interesting explanation about the risks types of payment platform. So that’s the first thing. Then another thing we have limits on the first trade so you won’t be able to acquire more than you’re allowed or your counter party won’t be able to trade more that they’re allowed.

Max Keidun:

They need to have a proper reputation. And that’s the third point. Always check out the rating and reputation of your, counterparty it’s way more secure sometimes to pay a bit more and to have like not that good price of coins, but to do it with a proper and experienced trader rather than accept an offer from a guy who’s new to the platform and who is like offering you bitcoins with discount, most probably that guy will be either crazy or potentially a scammer. So you need to, we have a pretty solid system of rating and reputation feedback and Hodl Hodl. So when you choose an offer which, which offered to accept, I would suggest you look for the offers with from the traders that they have a proper experience, at least for your first trade or first few trades like pay a bit more, but be more secure in that case.

Max Keidun:

Now for scamming issues, we have a pretty strong dispute system that allows us actually to resolve these disputes. So in case, for example, you are buyer and in case you are paying for Bitcoin. So first of all, you need to always remember that you shouldn’t make a payment before coins are deposited in Escrow. And we warn about that during the trading process. We would always we have this big red banner on the contract page, which says, do not send the money before we tell you that it’s okay to send money. So don’t be in a rush, you know so first of all, always wait for needed the amount of confirmations for your trade. So if you see that the contract is in progress and we informed you that all good, you can do the payment, only then you do the payment.

Max Keidun:

And in this case, if you made a payment and everything good but the seller refuses to release coins, you can always start a dispute. You can always provide a proof that you made a payment. And if the proof will be solid and if the seller is actually scammer, we will help you to release coins in your favor. Now, if you’re a seller and you didn’t receive the payment, same way you need to like, there will be dispute. We have a system of dispute resolution. We will request some proofs and if you’re able to present these proofs and if everything is fine, you will receive coins back to your wallet. So we have a pretty interesting and pretty safe system to resolve this dispute. So there’s still a possibility of being scammed. But like to be honest, the percent of disputes on Hodl Hodl is like a 000.1% because people are, they do understand that this trust-based system and they do understand that this is a secure escrow system and there’s not so much space to create a proper scamming techniques on Hodl Hodl.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah, I think it’s just a useful to clarify what the process is, what it looks like and so on. As that is obviously this is a space rife with scams so people have to be, always be wary. But yeah, you’ve got a few things there, like the reputation system and the dispute system. And so on.

Max Keidun:

Yeah, of course. It’s a tradeoff. You know, any peer to peer markets, it’s always a trade off because you trade with a peer, you don’t need to pass the verification. It’s way more secure to trade through non-custodial solutions. But again, there’s a risk of that your counterparty is somehow, I don’t know, a person who’s moved to scam something like that, but like we’ve been in business for two years now and we’ve developed pretty solid system of preventing these scams.

Stephan Livera:

And also just so listeners are aware, the fee per trade as in the fee to Hodl Hodl is a 0.6%. I think that’s the Max fee. I think you can get lower referral rates and so on.

Max Keidun:

Yeah. With the referral links you will get lower 0.55. The fee is actually divided in two parts. So your fee particular will be half of this total for yourself. If you speaking about 0.6 then you will pay only 0.3. So your fee is basically 0.3% for each trade.

Stephan Livera:

Oh, that’s right. I didn’t know, I didn’t realize that. Yeah, that’s also another, quite attractive then.

Max Keidun:

It’s not like each party paying 0.6%. It’s like this. This is a total fee which is divided between two parties. Like one party spends 0.3% and then the other party paying 0.3%. It’s actually pretty funny, but it’s close to centralized exchange. Like I know on Kraken you can pay 0.25%? So it’s almost the same price. You can obtain coins on Hodl Hodl as you can obtain coins on Kraken. So basically the fee is almost the same.

Stephan Livera:

So what about the Escrow platform? Tell us a little bit about that. Well yeah, first of all, what is it?

Max Keidun:

Yeah, so we use we’ve developed this non-custodial Escrow system that we, we’ve been using for more than two years in Hodl Hodl. And we also, like last year we released the eviction markets more complicated Escrow solution. So we thought like, well, obviously you were not able to showcase to the world all use cases of a Bitcoin escrow because there could be like potentially it could be like hundreds and thousands of different use cases, how you can use a Bitcoin Escrow. And we came up with the idea that we want to became an infrastructural provider for that type of solutions. For example. One of my favorite examples is like there are a lot of websites and platforms for freelancers. Like for example, I don’t know, you Stephan are in Australia, I’m in Latvia. I want you to write an article for me, I don’t know, or make a podcast, whatever.

Max Keidun:

And I don’t know you, I don’t trust you and you don’t know me and you don’t trust me. You seem to be legit for me. And I seem to be legit for you. But you know, there’s always a trick because I need to pay you somehow, but I also need to be sure that you wont try to scam me and you will do your part with the job. And you need to be sure that I will pay you and I have funds to pay you. So in that case, Bitcoin escrow is pretty nice alternative because we can create a contract with all terms within and I can deposit the Bitcoins. You will see that these coins are deposited in an escrow. I have funds to cover your job and you will do the job. You will send me the result and I will release coins in your favor.

Max Keidun:

And we will do this pretty easy with no middle man with no banks involved with no high fees involved and all that mumbo jumbo that was usually involved with banking institutions and all that stuff. So like freelance markets, can use that? I don’t know. You want to sell real estate to foreigner and he’s willing to pay you with Bitcoin, whatever, using Escrow solution of Bitcoin. And we just, we thought that there’s like multiple different use cases in the world that exists, that people can use this multi signature escrow trading Bitcoins vice-versa. And we decided that we can take our experience develop more flexible, easier to integrate, and easier to use solution and allow any platform in the world, any business in the world to use that and to start accepting Bitcoins. So that’s the whole idea.

Stephan Livera:

Is there an arbitrator there or is some kind of moderator between them?

Max Keidun:

Yeah, of course you can. You can with our solution, you will be able to create an Escrow services with arbitrators or without, it’s up to you to decide of course and you can become an arbitrator. Like example, if you’re a platform that’s selling real estate well obviously you will be, you can become a dispute resolution entity or you can have a more flexible Escrow solution. Like we will be able to, we are developing a solution that will allow you to have, for example, 5 out of 10 signatures. Like if it’s more complicated process and you will, the coins will be released. There will be 10 keys, distribute between 10 different parties and five keys out of the 10 will be able to release the coins. So you can, you can say like, you can put any arbitrator that you want. Like in case of real estate, you can put a lawyer as an arbitrator he will hold one key, your platform would call the another and buyer and seller will withhold 2 other keys. So like, we’ll be pretty flexible, but it’s up to each business to decide who will be arbitrator we want, we don’t want to provide an arbitrator services because it’s obviously not our responsibility. We just want to write code and provide a proper infrastructure for Bitcoin escrow tech.

Stephan Livera:

That’s cool. So people can even, I could imagine sometimes you see a, on Bitcoin Twitter, you see people who want to make a bet and they could even put up you know put up that into Escrow and have a trusted, you know, community member or someone with a reputation at stake and they can be the arbitrator then, right?

Max Keidun:

Yeah. You can do that. You can also put a bet on our prediction platform that’s already there. Anyway we’re about to redesign this as well it will be more simple to use it. But yeah, you can create bets if you want to like, I dunno, maybe some Roger Ver is betting against Adam Back, which chain will survive, which is basically obvious which chain will survive. So I right now, I think. Anyway and you Stephan, as arbitrator for this and yeah, you can go to this smart platform. The interesting thing will be that on this platform you will be able to create a contract that you like what’s your, we’ll be also able to take that this Escrow thing that we’re building through API, that’s where building for this platform, and you can put this Escrow services in your website or in your business. So it’s up to you to decide whether you want to use our platform or you want to just take the services and use them in your platform. So it’s, will be very flexible, very easy to use and a cheap solution we want to build.

Stephan Livera:

And in terms of the Escrow platform, maybe this is a silly question, but is the only asset that you can use, that you can put up? Is it only, is it Bitcoin or can people put up other things as well?

Max Keidun:

We are wanting to build it first for Bitcoin definitely for Bitcoin one at the moment, but we are also like two weeks ago, Blockstream announce we’re now members of Liquid Federation and we are also looking at building the Escrow tech for Liquid. So we want to honestly, we want to build tech only for Bitcoin and Bitcoin based solutions like Liquid or lightning or any other side chain that will appear in the future. And we will think that that’s a good, it’s a good solution and doesn’t compromise the values of Bitcoin then why not. At the moment will be only Bitcoin. But we’re already in talks with liquid guys that we will most probably we build also Escrow solution for liquid Bitcoins as well.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah, I meant I didn’t mean like other crypto things. I mean like even, other things.

Max Keidun:

Yeah, definitely not other crypto. So we are like maximalist in that case. But scaling solutions like lightning, Liquid, why not? These are like proper solutions. We’ve been working with lightning already. We’re going to work, start working soon with liquid and why not? These teams, these solutions, they don’t compromise the value of Bitcoin. They actually help them became more and more strong. And then we like these tapes and of course we want to have to expand these solutions because these solutions expand Bitcoin as itself, so helps to, to create a inaudible. So why not? Yeah, we don’t, we don’t develop smart contracts for Ethereum or some other thing out there.

Stephan Livera:

So look, just in terms of your outlook on the market in general, like are you seeing like as Corona virus and so on, all these lockdowns and things, has that impacted your platform in terms of how many people are doing trades? I presume, you know, people can’t do in person cash trades right?

Max Keidun:

Yeah. But to be honest in person cash trade wasn’t so popular in Hodl Hodl actually the funny thing we’ve increased our volumes well actually we are growing at the rate of 20, 30% per month since the inception of Hodl Hodl. So each month we do 20% more trades amount, both in trade amount and in volumes than the previous month. So we also onboarded a very solid amount of people already it’s more than 25,000 customers globally. And yeah, like in March we see that amount of trades and amount of the volumes they actually increased by 30-35%, which was a pretty solid increase in general. So yeah, people started buying Bitcoin more, more since the money printing machine went BRRR. So yeah I think my outlook is that I don’t see that, honestly, I don’t believe that, that we will see like Bitcoin price skyrocketing right away because you need to understand the implication of this crisis.

Max Keidun:

It’s more physical rather than the economic of course. We do understand the economical implications and so on. But if there wouldn’t be Corona, then most probably we would go on. And now we see that people are afraid. And I don’t think that in times when people are afraid about their health and families and about their jobs and how they will survive in the future, whether they will have water and food like in a week time. I don’t think they’re thinking about, well, I need to put some money in Bitcoin or in gold. Most problem people are not thinking in that type of paradigm. They’re thinking about I just need to have money for food, for something essential for my living. So of course that they inflated now this with this fiat printing the economy, this will have a longterm implication. And I think in the longterm outlook for Bitcoin is, become more bullish for me personally. I become more bullish on Bitcoin that in long term we will see like pretty solid price increase for bitcoin. But I doubt that in upcoming two to three months, we will see any big increases in prices because people are afraid, you know?

Stephan Livera:

Yeah. That makes a lot of sense to me. It also is worth bearing in mind that this is about having a money that’s permissionless and that there might be opportunities coming out of this as well. Right. So obviously it’s a bad thing all this stuff is going on, but maybe there’ll be some more people who see a way to actually set up shop and start earning Bitcoin online and then those people will need some fiat to live and then they’ll go on your platform to sell some Bitcoin because they need to pay expenses or whatever. So I think there’s this whole permissionless angle and permissionless. Yeah. But basically this whole permissionless angle that Bitcoin can continue building even in a down market.

Max Keidun:

Yeah. It’s really like, it’s pretty simple logic, you know? But each day we see that there’s more and more people that are actually upset with the fiat money. There’s more and more people that understand that there’s no value and there’s more and more people day by day that they do understand the value of Bitcoin. So definitely we will see a long term bullish scenario for Bitcoin. But again I’ve been just like recently, like we could go, I’ve been on a Russian speaking podcast and they’ve been asking, well, we will see “To the Moon!” in the coming months. And I’m telling you guys, no, no, no, no, no, not now. Maybe one year, maybe a bit more, but not now it is, again, it’s my perception. It’s never a bad time to buy Bitcoin, but you know, when you decide whether you will buy food or you will invest in Bitcoin? I think the answer is obvious. Unfortunately, or fortunately, I don’t know.

Stephan Livera:

With Baltic Honeybadger I thought it might be good to just give the listeners an update there. Baltic Honeybadger 2020. Obviously it’s kind of, everything’s sort of up in the air, right? Can you just give us, what’s the latest on that?

Max Keidun:

Well we actually, like already in January, we were in contact with the first batch of speakers. We already had the list and we already have the confirmation from them and we wanted to launch the website in the beginning of March. But unfortunately everything happened with this Corona stuff. So I think we will still look at the dynamics and what’s happening around in April and make some announcements in May. That’s I think that’s the real situation out there because like in Latvia this really pretty nice situation with Corona because we’ve reacted pretty fast. The country’s not so populated. The country is actually been named an introvert nation of Europe because as I mentioned to you, I’ve been speaking with Giacomo, Giacomo Zucco, “We’ve been social distancing for whole our lives” because in Latvia.

Max Keidun:

There’s not so many people and they don’t like to get around so distancing before. Oh, that’s cool. Yeah. Yeah. True. True. It’s like one of the mentality issues in here. And yeah, we don’t have such a bad situation in here. Like for example today, I just check it out. We only have two people or last 24 hours tested positive for Corona and, and they’ve tested like more than a thousand people for like in the last 24 hours, so that the amount of people that get sick with Corona is actually decreasing. But what we are afraid of that 99% of attendees for Baltic Honeybadger was flying from abroad like most of them from Europe. But we also had people from US, we also have a lot of people from Australia, from Canada, from Latin America, Japan, whatever, basically like all big countries were attending.

Max Keidun:

And unfortunately, I’m not sure whether you will be able to fly out from your country or Latvia will be able to let you from your country because as I see this stuff developing, then maybe there will be the local lockdowns will be over, but I don’t see that people will, the countries will start like allow to pass the border straight away. Most probably they will be like local freedom. You are free to move inside the country. And they will start reaching the travel bans step-by-step. And now I’m not sure it will be that fast. So, and also I am not sure that airfare tickets will be cheap because I think that for some time airline ticket will become a luxury good definitely. Because, you know, there will be huge demand right away.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah. So the trend now is basically a lot of online events. So we’ll see. We’ll see how things go. I’m hopeful that we can still meet up.

Max Keidun:

Yeah. I honestly I am not a fan of online stuff because, you know, you’ve been on Baltic Honeybadger, you know, the vibe you know, the atmosphere there. You know, how people gather around how funny it is and you just like, I know there’s been happening some virtual reality conferences recently and that’s good idea and I fully support that, but I don’t see Baltic Honeybadger happening online. Honestly. It’s like we’ve actually one of the idea was is to create once per year offline gathering for the people that follow each other on Twitter and communicate with each other only through the Twitter. And like now we’re like moving back to online space. I would rather skip one year and then create a massive event, 2021, than create something online. But who knows, maybe in one month I will change my mind.

Stephan Livera:

Just turning more to just Bitcoin and lightning. Just technology more generally. Is there anything that you’re looking forward to over the coming year or are you just kind of more focused on just building the technology stack at Hodl Hodl?

Max Keidun:

Where are definitely going to, we have I didn’t mention to you this apart of Escrow platform. We also have one secret project that we hope to release in June. I won’t say what’s the project? But hopefully this will be something big and something interesting and something unique as we see now. But what I’m pretty excited about Schnorr signatures obviously, because this will affect our business as well. And honestly, we want to develop more non-custodial Escrow and we want more businesses to start accepting that. And we want more people to use that and to understand the value proposition of multi signature technology. Because it’s really simple is it’s been there like since the beginning, it’s pretty secure and like we need to develop this stuff to eliminate the risk of third party. I think that’s the thing that I’m working, but I’m also looking at lightning and in particular, we want to see a non-custodial lightning solution.

Max Keidun:

Specifically because we’ve removed lightning from Hodl Hodl as part of our new redesign process, but also because lightning was an issue for the moment, custodial solution. So you need to hold your own channel or node, you don’t want to upset and send, we are trying to understand how we can build non-custodial lightning solution. So, and also I’m looking forward with working with Liquid. Liquid is by the way, non-custodial and yeah, hopefully we will see more and more people use not only Bitcoin but also like liquid. So yeah, these are my interpretations.

Stephan Livera:

It’s mostly focused on what’s going on with Bitcoin and lightning. So yeah, look, I guess we’ll call that an episode then Max. Where can the listeners find you and find Hodl Hodl?

Max Keidun:

Hodl Hodl is pretty easy. HodlHodl.com you can go there and in Twitter it’s just @hodlhodl. So these are I think things that you can go and check it out. I’m actually on Twitter, it’s @keidunm and that’s basically it. These are mostly, we spent like 90, 95% of our time on Twitter. And if you want to learn about crypto definitely go there and definitely listen for Stephan Livera’s podcast of course. Yeah. So these are the and in telegram. We also have a group in telegram which is also Hodl Hodl . So you can go with telegram, you can ask the questions. We are like, we have an amazing support team. So they’re working weekdays, weekends, 24/7 during the night and day, whatever. So if you have any problems with grasping and understanding Hodl Hodl, we know that it’s still good complicated for noobs and for people that are not as familiar with bitcoin, but we’re here to help so we have telegram and go check it out, HodlHodl.com Go check it out. BlueWallet trader, and you will be pretty surprised I think in a few weeks from now you will be pretty surprised how easy and how effectively and how good it is to trade peer to peer. And not to pass your verification data to any third party. So enjoy.

Stephan Livera:

Fantastic. Thank you for joining me.

Max Keidun:

Thank you very much, Stephan. Thank you.