Podcast with Amber’s Aleks Svetski

Find the app at Amber

Konrad: Hello, and welcome to the Bitfwd podcast. This is the second episode, and I’m your host, Konrad Hurren. Today I am joined by Aleksander Svetski, co-founder of the Amber app which is a Bitcoin accumulation app. Aleks, if you’d like to give a short rundown on yourself to the audience

Aleks: Thank you my friend. First of all, thank you for having me on. As usual, I really appreciate that. A quick rundown on me. Well, I guess most people would probably have come across me in the last few years as an avid Bitcoin advocate.

I think most people would probably know me from either my writing or my abusive tweeting. That’s kind of where a lot of my time ends up being spent. But I do actually run a technology startup, a FinTech startup. That’s really what I would more classify myself as. Throughout my life I’ve always been entrepreneurial, I’ve run all sorts of different businesses. And yeah, these days I run a company that allows people to auto accumulate Bitcoin and it’s based in Australia. That’s the only market we’re available in at the moment but the US is coming up next so that’s kind of the next stage for us.

And I guess yeah, the way I’d kind of frame it is Amber is my entrepreneurial expression of the thing that I value most today which is seeing Bitcoin succeed fundamentally. Because there’s nothing more important happening in the world, like, by us separating not just money and State but by us like placing money outside of the realm of issuance control by any authority, institution, organization or person. It kind of, it creates, what I would suggest and assert is the only possible form of equality of opportunity.

Like, when we’re all playing the same money game. The only way really to succeed is to add more value, produce more, create more and it also has a corrective, like an immediate feedback loop corrective function for bad behavior, bad action and non value adding and that like as a fundamental shift to what Bitcoin, you know, kind of, as a thing that Bitcoin does to the world, you know, it everything that occurs downstream to that starts to realign towards you know, more functional versions of itself. So, yeah, that’s a quick overview.

Konrad: So in a nutshell, Bitcoin fixes this.

Aleks: It really does. Bitcoin fixes this so much and people don’t realize why. I actually this morning, I was on a partial podcast with Chris Sky the gym bro. Yeah, and, dude, the guy’s an absolute moron, like really tried to have a conversation with him, and you know, we… he just loves the sound of his own voice. And he’s sat there just … blabbin’ on for 20 minutes and when we tried to define human action, he couldn’t. He couldn’t put forward the definition of you know, how do we get here? We got, my plan was to get him to agree to like “is free speech important?” Yes. “What is the most important form of speech?” human action? Yes. “How do we measure human action?” “That doesn’t matter! Blah blah” and then he … went off on this tangent like: “know what you’re trying to take this as that you know bitcoins the only way to fix this” and I was like “look if we can’t come to a common ground around simple definitions, we can’t have a conversation”.

So yeah, Bitcoin fixes things in such a profound way but it really takes ‘a’ some humility and ‘b’ it takes time to understand how human action functions and what money means to understand why Bitcoin needs to exist and and as a result why Bitcoin fixes so much.

Otherwise you just end up becoming an ignorant lemming like what this Chis Sky idiot is. He’s just running around, you know, genuinely trying to do stuff but making a … fool of himself and cutting himself out of the one thing that actually matters. Yeah, it’s crazy. So anyways, bitcoin does fixes everything.

Konrad: Yeah, for sure. I think I’ve been saying for a few years, ever since I found Bitcoin and kind of got it. The biggest thing is that the only reason we have Bitcoin, this weird software system, that’s, it’s open source. The code is weird. There are some bugs in it that Twitter have made me aware of. I don’t know how big of a deal they are. But you know, it’s a really weird solution to a problem, but the only reason we have it is because we need it.

[Post Script: take an objective look at bitcoin as a solution. We send a number to some people who say “yes this number and some other things follow the same rules I do, this is fine. And then through repeating that you get a history of all the numbers that have been sent around. From that you know the balance, of numbers, each number has attached to it. Excuse me humans, who did this? It seems so preposterous. But the only reason we have it is because we need it.]

Aleks: yeah, fundamentally

Konrad: Anyway. So my first question is, well, a good place to start would be, kind of, how did you find Bitcoin? Who radicalized you?

Aleks: hmmm. Who radicalized me? I think that radicalization, I think, is a process, not a point in time. So I don’t think there’s any one specific person. For me, I had been a gold and silver guy back in 2010, 2011. So I’d already had the ingredients as a gold silver bug. And in the early days, you know, Bitcoin sort of came across my radar and I still to this day, can’t remember where my first exposure to it was, but I assume it was Max Keiser jumping up and down on the couch. Yes, probably.

But realistically, I only really came into bitcoin in 2016 when I met this degenerate junkie friend of mine blabbering on about Bitcoin and I was like “is that … still around?” and then I started to dig and it took me a little while like to really appreciate the importance like you know, I got the censorship resistant part very quickly. I was like holy … you know you can use this thing to transact online and no one can stop yours I thought that that’s powerful but it didn’t it didn’t like dawn on me and and it was only like as I started digging more you know.

I climbed ‘Mount stupid’ as I call it, which is I started messing around with you know, cryptos and … coins and all that sort of stuff and I slowly came to realize, like, how much of a, you know, shenanigans and stupidity were going on or on around Bitcoin. And how much signal Bitcoin itself represented and I would say probably early influences for me were people like Giacumo Zucco and and Tone Vays and people like that who were quite strong vocal intolerant Bitcoin maximalists were like ‘No, it’s just it’s just dumb’.

And Giacumo i really liked because he’s just so so so so intelligent. He’s so honest, and he’s so … articulate even though English is a second language. Like he’s able to really explain things and navigate the nuance in complex topics. And for me, just that level of signal versus the level of noise and stupidity. And that’s just one thing I’ve always I think been allergic to.

So i was already primed to bitcoin in the sense of being allergic to idiots and allergic to stupidity and all I saw in crypto, crapto, Fiat, legacy, finance, and everything was just dumb on top of dumb, built on top of dumb, built on top of more dumb and stupid. Whereas Bitcoin was just like this piercing signal that cut through everything else. I was like … hell this is amazing and you know as that, the more I dug, the more I, that reinforced me and you know I just don’t, I guess for me, this is why I also wrote that article recently that’s what separates like the remnant from the dumbass masses like they they’re seeking noise and we seek signal.

Konrad: Good point. So you sort of started off as someone sort of as you’re always on the outside, not really on the outside looking in, but kind of different from everyone else and saw bitcoin for what it was. Yeah I get that. I went on a similar journey kind of, in 2016 I got my first job kind of after university. I bought a book called ‘Austrian economics for investors’, i can’t remember who its by, just by a couple of American economists I think. Because at uni I studied economics. And I’d heard of Austrian economics. Never been introduced to it over a three year degree. Thank you. And then yeah i read in the book they were actually talking about Bitcoin

[Post Script, the book is Austrian School for Investors: Austrian Investing between Inflation and Deflation by Mark Valek, Rahim Taghizadegan, and Ronald Stöferle]

Aleks: oh, really?

Konrad: They were like yeah, from memory the message is, uh, i gotta read this book again. The message in the book is if it’s interesting, invest in it if you think it’s worthwhile because like their whole thesis about Austrian, the Austrian approach to investing is kind of, it’s value investing plus just being logical. Like, is this thing going to be worth something? Yeah, and I read that and they were like, if you think it’s valuable, buy it, if you don’t, don’t and I was like, Okay, “what the hell is Bitcoin?”

So started googling it, looking around, figured out how to buy some. And I remember, I was, you know, the, the anxiety you feel when you first buy bitcoin and first transfer it from like one wallet to another. You’re like “omg! Did i put in the number right?”

And yeah, then I remember thinking in my head, there’s that episode from spongebob where they go into the future. And Squidward has a panic attack essentially. And he’s doing like sit ups against the wall and he’s just like ‘future’, ‘future’ and that was my reaction to Bitcoin.

Forreal. Like just you know, kind of because I’ve always been, kind of a finance guy like I’ve always understood the background of kind of how finance works, how banks work etcetera. Going through uni always interested in finance, economics, and kind of just having a way you could pay someone with nobody else telling you what to do, or nobody else agreeing you just send a message to a network. And people just say, “yes, that message matches my protocol. That’s fine. Let’s do that. Yes. Really cool.”

Aleks: Yeah, interesting. So so your your experience with Austrian economics started there? Did you did that end up taking you down that rabbit hole any further? Like having come from an economics background? Like Did you have you read like Mises or anyone else?

Konrad: So yeah, so my answer to who radicalized me, was that book. So yeah, that that led me down a rabbit hole because they referenced Human Action. And I was like, wait, they’ve had this reference, like 300 times in this book already. Let’s get this book. I bought it on Amazon app. I bought that. I bought the book and yeah, i read it. Read it once, got through after a long slog, because you know, Mises writing is pretty dense. Didn’t really fully appreciate it. So i was kinda like, OK I learned some stuff, kind of, a lot of my views have kind of changed now.

[Post Script: Human Action By Ludwig von Mises is the most important book you’ll ever read. It’s available at Mises.org for free or on Amazon.]

Then I bought the Theory of Money and Credit. And that was an even longer slog, because, you know Mises writing that in, was it, 1950? when he first wrote the English version anyway, I believe the first edition was in 1913. Anyway. So yeah, after that, then I kind of went back to human action and read it again. And then I really got it. And since then, I’ve done a lot of work going into Austrian economics. I’ve read most of Mises’s works, most of Rothbard and few of Hayek’s, even dived into kind of the non Austrians like Ludwig Lachmann, George Reisman. I guess George Reisman is an Austrian, he kind of says he is. I don’t know.

You know he’s a ahh, he comes from, he comes to economics from a background of objectivism Ayn Rand’s philosophy. That’s really cool. So i’ve done all that reading.

[Post Script: yes, Mises wrote the first version of The Theory of Money and Credit in 1913 — in German]

Aleks: Yeah, that’s super interesting. Yeah. I’d like to read some of those because mine mainly I didn’t end up finishing Mises because it was just the, I was traveling at the time and I was doing it as an audio book. And i’m like man you can’t … do this as an audio book, you actually have to read it. So I dumped it and said Oh, when I finally settle down somewhere I’ll actually read this thing but Rothbard stuff I could digest as audiobooks and I … love Rothbard’s work man. He’s just so hard hitting, he’s not as you know, dense and complex to read as meses or anything like that, it’s just, he’s really good. And then and Hoppe as well like, as a derivative of you know, Rothbard work is just like, incredible. Those two those two are my favorite. Definitely.

But I’d be super keen to like, check out the dude that’s blending objectivism with the Austrian school because Ayn Rand i think is one of the most powerful philosophers of our time as well. She’s incredible. Like her, her ability in Atlas Shrugged, I think primarily like to, to define the archetype of, I guess the remnant, the hero and the archetype of the parasite, the antagonist, and then the background of the masses, was just so … on point. And it’s just like, manifested all around us in real time. So anyone who can blend her objectivism with Austrian economic theory, I think would be a powerful read.

Konrad: For sure, shout outs to George Reisman for sure. Yeah, so kind of on that theme of the hero’s journey and kind of entrepreneurialism. What style is your entrepreneurial journey with Bitcoin?

Aleks: with Bitcoin or just my entrepreneurial journey in general?

Konrad: Actually, i reckon, lets go back further, like, What started that journey to be an entrepreneur?

Aleks: yeah the, man I don’t know what triggered it. But I guess, being a person who finds it hard to work within, you know, arbitrary frameworks, I guess, like, and I’m also a bit of, a bit too much of my own man, I guess where I don’t think I would make a good employee. I honestly don’t, like I think I could try and but I’m not good with like, boundaries I’m not good with, how can I say, working within something where I add a piece, but then don’t sort of bleed in? So I guess that’s to do with the boundaries as well. So yeah, I find myself like trying to recreate, reimagine things. And my brain really functions as a, maybe as like, a problem solving apparatus, which, which I guess everyone’s brain does that, right?

But my mind just seems to do that in a non-process oriented way. And I guess that led me to just figuring out how to buy, you know, something for x and sell it for y. And that process of buying for x and selling for Y is really the core of, of the entrepreneurial endeavor. Which is “Can I can I create or buy something for x and use it to solve a problem and therefore sell it for y and then make a spread in the margin?” Then it’s just, it’s almost in my DNA at this point. Like I never, the only job I had was a pizza delivery boy for Domino’s, for two weeks and I crashed the damn car twice and got fired. And that was when I was 16. So everything other than that has been me trading the market trying to make money, has been me doing sales, has been me creating God knows what … stupid business idea to make money and lose money and all this sort of … And it’s all sort of been this consistent process all throughout my life since I was 18 years old. And here I am now close to my mid 30s and yeah, I’m still building, still creating, still designing. And the the entrepreneurial spirit is like, almost like it is ingrained in my DNA at this point now.

I don’t know how long that’s gonna last, you know, maybe another 5,10 years or whatever. But you know, thereafter I really want to double down on writing and just sort of you know, give time for that side of my personality to develop but yeah, that’s sort of the entrepreneurial journey started at 18 and continues today with a desire to like look at things that are broken and say, yeah, I think that makes any sense, how about we do it this way and go ahead.

Konrad: Given you’ve always had that kind of entrepreneurial bent it’s kind of like a natural move into seeing Bitcoin in 2016 and kind of thinking, hey, something’s broken. And the way people get Bitcoin I can fix that or what happened there?

Aleks: Yeah, absolutely. I think, I think to understand Bitcoin, you need to have some ability, like your brain needs to take in a specific way. And I guess that doesn’t mean everybody understands Bitcoin should be an entrepreneur, but I think if you have that natural bent towards entrepreneurialism and towards problem solving, when you see and discover Bitcoin, you naturally start to grasp how it fixes a problem in a novel way.

Like it doesn’t try and like i always laugh at these idiots building neo-banks and fintechs and all this sort of stuff and I always like I look at him I’m like, Man, you’re putting lipstick on a pig, like all you’re doing is you’re trying to pretty up … a steaming pile of …, that’s all you’re doing. So it’s already broken. Bitcoin just says, fuck it, go on, we’re creating something new and Peter Thiel’s book Zero to One like had a profound impact on me because he really pushes the idea, like he keeps he sort of pushes the wrong way.

He articulates the idea of true innovation and true creation is a zero to one moment, and it only ever happens once. And that is really what Bitcoin is. It’s that zero to one moment it happened. We’re not recreating … Bitcoin again, it’s not going to come because some dweebs decided to make the books faster or, you know, find a new stupid consensus mechanism. It’s not going to happen again.

Like Bitcoin is the zero to one moment. It occurred, it happened. It’s done. Now, what can we do with that? And where does the next zero to one moment happened down the track thanks to the invention of Bitcoin, so we’ve got to think downstream not to try and replace it and, and yeah, I guess that for me, it’s just a it’s just a profound piece. And what I’m doing with my business, like by no means is a zero to one business that that’s not what it is like I’m trying to leverage the zero to one moment to help people move over from the old world into the new world, you know, my, I would definitely not classify what Amber is doing as a, as a Bitcoin zero to one piece. They’re two different things, like, if the internet was zero to one, then you know, all the software and all products and all the companies built on the internet, you know, are the, they leverage that zero to one moment. So the zero to one has actually happened extremely, extremely rarely. Like they’re sort of once in a generation occurrences. And then what you do with those then counts. And I think that’s sort of where we sit with Amber as a business.

Konrad: Yeah, and so. Looking for the zero to one in the outside world, and kind of looking how you can fit into that. So, what are kind of some interesting challenges you’ve kind of faced and kind of building out Amber? where like, Where did you start with Amber? In the beginning, was it kind of like a Python app that you built for yourself? Kind of a minimum viable product or something?

Aleks: Yeah, it was, um, man, it’s, uh, it was a stressful period. I knew some, so I don’t code myself, speak the language. But and when I say speak the language, like as a non coder, like, if I look at some code, I don’t know what, what’s going on. But I can talk to developers, you know, I’ve, I did study engineering, I understand enough of the framework to have a discussion.

So what I did was I found a couple developers who I had known that had built a FinTech app. Already, that was scraping banking data. So it was like an open banking kind of app. And scraping banking data. And they had failed because they had no like, go to market strategy. They were just couple techies, couple coders who built something and just had no idea how to commercialize it. So I said, Look, let’s join forces, I will sell this … thing. And we’ll make some money out of it. But I also want to build this and I pitched what Amber was supposed to be. And yeah, we came together, we set out to build it, split the company and all this sort of stuff.

And it turned out in the end, that most of what they had built was in principle, it was good. In practice, it was garbage. Like it was unfinished, it was broken, it was all sort of … So me not having validated that in the beginning, I ended up spending a …load of time, money and energy with these idiots trying to like fix their original product so that amber itself would … work. It was just one nightmare after another after another, like we kind of wasted 2018 fixing their …, until I kind of lost the plot and there was there was one of the guys who was the culprit really, and I ejected him out of the …. business. And we started from scratch and I’d hired some other developers by that point. And then we threw out everything, started again. And in 2019 we you know, we built out the first version of the app and got it into market got some customers and started building and yeah, I hired Peter who’s my right hand man and say, you know, my, my truly my business partner in this company and he has been absolutely … invaluable on this journey, because he’s like, people process systems,numbers oriented, whereas I’m more vision strategy oriented. And yeah, we came together and kept the bloody thing together the whole time. And, and here we are, like, what started off is just this idea that turned into a cluster… of an execution, has actually turned into a product and a function of business. So hallelujah.

Konrad: So how did you overcome those challenges kind of building the app, like hiring developers? What does it even look like?

Aleks: Hiring developers is … Black Magic Man, like. The problem is you never know how good they are until they actually write some code. And the problem with that is that they could go and write a bunch of code, and then everything catches fire. So it’s like, you know, it’s a very, very dangerous thing. It’s kind of like, imagine flying a … plane, and then getting the engineers to work on the engine while you’re in midair.

That’s effectively what you’re doing with the software company. And you got to trust like that this … engineer well knows what he’s doing. So, you know, you make assessments, like, what good experience, you know, have a conversation, see if you can call up the bull…, but that first idiot who I had to eject from the business, like, he could talk the talk, you know, and he was actually a good coder. But he just didn’t … work, he didn’t do anything, he didn’t apply himself, you know, he was too busy playing games at home all the time, like he broke his leg or some … And he didn’t want to come to the office. So he was always like I’m working at home, but just not actually doing anything. So.

And he was just one of those, like, what I would call brilliant jerks. Where he was smart, but just not a team player. Like if he was one of those random coders to sitting at home and you know, living off his own money and just building cool …, you will probably build some cool …. But he was just, he was toxic and detrimental to the company.

And yeah, like the, the developers that we ended up with, were basically all referral based, they’d come in, I’d have a great conversation with them. And one thing I’ve always been good at is like, selling a vision, and I’d get them around the vision and define what it is that we’ll have to do. And we ended up with some really good developers, and just one of them in particular has been the, really the product has been built around him, and he’s just an awesome guy. Super, super competent. And, yeah, we, um, I guess, there’s a lot of luck involved, and a lot of black magic and luck to finding good developers now, as you, like, that’s more relevant as a startup than/then as you grow as a larger company. So as you move into scale up, which is sort of our next chapter, as we start to become more of a functional business and a functional company, that’s when you can put more of a process around the hiring and you know, you have to have the money to pay the recruiters who have a process, who have some sort of accountability around, who they place in the role, etc, etc. And that’s kind of where we’re moving into next. But that’s, that’s when it becomes a little bit less luck and black magic and more process.

Konrad: that makes a lot of sense, kind of you think of a startup as literally starting it up. So of course, it won’t be a process, will be a lot of luck. So, so what is the, I don’t don’t try to dive into any kind of business secrets here. But like, well, what is like applying for funding and all those kind of issues look like, as a as an off the ground startup?

Aleks: Yeah man, it’s a, i always, people never really appreciate how hard it is to get funding for something because what you’re effectively doing is, you … Mr. Big Brain are going up with basically a non existent product or service. And you’re saying, Hey, mister investor, come and give me your money. And I will sell you a piece of this company, which by the way, we don’t actually make any money. And we don’t have a product yet. And we don’t know if we can build it. But trust me, there’s this opportunity here. And we are the right people to capture this opportunity. And we won’t fuck it up, we won’t waste all the money, we won’t steal the money, we won’t run away. We won’t get beaten by the competition. And if you invest and buy a piece of the company now, I can build this thing up, and you will have a lot more money later.

So it’s this … completely absurd pitch that you’ve got to give to somebody. And then this investor on the other end has to be this completely absurd maniac who’s going to trust you with his money to to fulfill on this promise, and it’s just … hilarious actually. But like, I have a lot of respect for venture capital in general. The problem now is venture capital is morphed into this, like, mutilated version of like, the dregs of Fiat and central banking, where, you know, really venture capital now is, who’s a founder that we know, let’s put $200 million behind them. And let’s force the product down people’s throats until we make it successful, list it and dump it.

Doesn’t matter if the company actually makes money, if it’s a product that anyone needs or if it’s functional or anything, let’s just like throw … money at it. So it’s kind of skewed, natural entrepreneurialism and natural venture capital which is about finding good entrepreneurs, finding good game changes, finding rule breakers and placing a risk or a bet on them to create something that is other than what exists in the world today and, and yet the, like fiat’s decayed and it’s such a cancerous thing it’s decayed everything around it and you know it’s transformed the entrepreneurial venture capital industry into something that it that it genuinely wasn’t before. Like it was it was a it was a incredible place now it’s just the … … show. And it’s hard to separate, like, what’s good and what’s bad. And the problem is like, even what’s good now needs to kind of, you know, leverage all the bad Fiat’s … because otherwise you can’t compete. So it’s like, yeah, it’s a, it’s an interesting, it’s an interesting time to be alive. But yeah, to answer your question, the process is not an easy one. Particularly if you’re an unknown or new entrepreneur, like it’s excessively harder.

Konrad: Yeah thats real interesting you talk about the venture capital scene kind of morphing into something. I can’t remember where I’ve heard that before, but I’ve heard it somewhere before. And I think actually, I think it’s George Reisman talks about it, in one of his books, pretty sure it’s him. Anyway, the fact that we live in an inflationary environment, like interest rates are a lie. The relationship between the future and present, is a lie, essentially now, it’s been so, so controlled.

[Post Script: Jorg Guide Hulsmann discusses how entrepreneurship has changed in the world of unsound money in multiple books and articles. George Reisman may also have said similar.]

And that’s kind of, that skews not just incentives, but it skews signals, so that you actually, you can’t take a risk on a entrepreneur you don’t know. Because, yeah, because your time, not your time, but your, um, your information and your knowledge is just skewed, which is more interesting.

[Post Script: my point was that economic calculation (like investing in a startup) requires you to make a judgement on how you value the nearer future relative to the farther future. The interest rate on a market tells you roughly how much other people value the nearer/farther future. If the interest rate is suppressed you’re receiving bad information. And with bad information you’re obviously going to make bad decisions.]

Aleks: Yeah, it really is. And then and then what it does is it, it creates this situation where, you know, you’ve got these disproportionately large venture capital firms, who don’t succeed because they picked well, they succeed through sheer mass of capital.

Konrad: Yeah

Aleks: that’s why and that’s no longer capitalism. That’s … cronyism. It’s ridiculous. And so we’ve so we no longer building anything of value that the marketplace actually needs. You know, we’re building the next … dick pic that can get 10 million users, sorry, the next dick pic app that can get 10 million users. Just because the venture capital firm put half a billion dollars behind it, so dumb.

Konrad: it really is. Yeah, that’s that’s like the whole story of like, the Austrian economics story of malinvestment. It’s just, it’s like it’s the wrong stuff at the wrong time. And that’s wrong. the market of, I guess not the market, but what the entrepreneur thinks as what the market wants, is correct them, but, the signals are just all wrong.

Aleks: It’s just noise everywhere. It’s just noise, noise, noise, noise noise and you’ve got a bunch of, we’ve all become basically lunatics building a bunch of … Because there’s so much noise and you think you’re building the intelligent thing. Like, we actually have no idea. It’s and it’s just such a shame. like think about the amount of resources like natural human time, energy, that’s like wasted, Holy …

When you tie that back to why Bitcoin fixes so much like Bitcoin fixes that, think about the downstream effects of like a pure signal that allows you to make precise economic calculations decisions, fuck me, like, people don’t, can’t even grasp the amount of energy efficiency that we’re going to have, functionally as a society, as a result of being on a Bitcoin standard. It’s just, it’s beyond what, beyond any of our wildest imaginations.

Konrad: Yeah, it really is. The idea of, like, wasting capital, wasting resources. That’s, that’s so key to understanding Bitcoin in general. And kind of, I think there’s also a key to understanding entrepreneurialism. Like when you go through university, particularly in economics, like in all the courses, they reduce capital, this whole mass of cool stuff, they reduce it to this one, symbol “K”. It’s just like, you can’t capture everything that capital is in one variable, you can’t even make it a mathematical variable.

Because, like in the Austrian economics story or version, whatever you want to call it, capitals like a, it’s a mass but it’s also a spectrum. It exists kind of forward in time as well as right now. And it’s a structure. And that relates to interest rates of course, and kind of when you are getting things wrong, or even when, even when you’re getting things right, you are actually using real goods and real resources. They’re specific. and if you brought them forward in time, from somewhere else, say you’ve, you’ve dug a hole and filled it with water to make a pool for some reason. Like, if you then use that up, kind of unprofitably, you have actually wasted it, and that, that particular resource will never occur again.

[Post Script: key idea is that profit (extra value over cost) leads to economic progress. Because if fundamentally leads to an excess of stuff that makes the stuff (capital). If you don’t make a profit there’s no progress.]

And that’s super important and kind of relates to, I felt like it relates to a whole lot of the, um, the criticisms that we see of capitalism, of investment, of Bitcoin even, that people are like it’s polluting the earth, everything’s being destroyed. And it’s like, well yes it’s being destroyed because you’re screwing up our information system dude.

Aleks: yeah, it’s, it’s, and this is where the like the lemmings get it completely wrong again, and why I wrote that article recently about the remnant and the masses is that like, the masses being too stupid to like, think deeper than, you know, the, like, it’s the difference between causal thinking and symptomatic thinking. It’s like, you see, oh yeah look, you know, heres a symptom. And like, quickly, like, just … jab him, or, you know, like, cover it up quickly, or print some money or whatever, it’s like, it just keeps covering up the … symptom. And the symptom is just purely a signal saying that there’s something wrong down here, man, like, you know, if you’re flying a plane, and the altimeter is saying, you know, you’re too close to the ground, or there’s a mountain coming, like, that’s the symptom. You don’t go and pull the … altimeter out, like you pull up, you know? And that’s the that’s the solution of all these idiots. It’s like, you know, remove the pain receptor, remove the signal.

Konrad: Yeah. Damn, that is, that’s a diagnosis for sure dude. Yeah cos you see that, in um, like in the effort to reduce poverty, or reduce unemployment, or any other stupid policy, they’re just like, oh, there’s the thing that needs to be gone, then we’ll make it gone. But actually, No, you haven’t fixed a damn thing. like, it’s deeper.

So I guess, that was a bit of a bit of a tangent. Kind of, when you’re talking about funding, like, this is going to completely change the topic again. When we’re talking about funding, what is the next stage of Amber look like in terms of funding and kind of,how do you how do you plan for that? How do you go through that as an entrepreneur?

Aleks: Well the early stages of finding that sort of black magic, they like, you go you you sell someone on a … pipe dream, and they’re crazy enough to part with their money for a piece of your imaginary company, then as you actually build something that is functional, that works, that has proven, either that, you know, you can build a market or that customers are willing to pay for it, then you go and use the traction. And it’s still sort of, like, I would say, seed is like, pure concept based. Series A is, um, is a mixture, like so. So it’s like seed is narrative, series A still narrative, but a bit of traction. So it’s like, hey, look, we’ve been able to execute initially, but it needs a little bit more narrative. Then as you move into, like Series B Series C, as we move into subsequent funding rounds, it’s less narrative and more traction.

It’s more like hey, look at this. We’re fuckin like we’re hockey sticking here. We need some money because we need to like deploy resources towards making sure we can keep the hockey stick growth going, basically. So that’s kind of the changes. so for us, you know, we’re kind of moving into that series a phase which is we can you know, and it’s funny we’re about to do a, we’re about to do a raise, I think on Monday we’ll be live on Bank To the Future, which is kind of like a crowdfunding website for, for, I guess, crypto companies, more or less, but we’re listing on there so that way anyone can basically invest in amber from around the world. And we’re letting people get a bit of skin in the game early to participate in amber’s growth and yeah, like the pitch has now evolved to saying hey, this is who we are, this is what we’ve done. This is what we’ve produced. This is what we’ve achieved. And now we’re raising a little bit more i need to do is this, this, this. And so it’s a little bit more concrete than ephemeral, which is, you know, what it is in seed stage

Konrad: And you’ve got kind of the, the results to show that aye, from the accounting documents and everything?

Aleks: yeah, we Yeah, we’ve got a product, we’ve got users, we’ve got revenue, you know, like we’re further ahead now, even, even at series A, like no one really looks at your accounting documents and any of that sort of … Like I said it’s still like that they want to know what your attraction numbers are. And like, unless you’re a complete scammer of a company you don’t go and show them attraction numbers that are fake right? So it’s like you don’t really need to show audited financials and stuff like audited financials are probably a Series B thing. And you know, because you’re going to, you know, high level checks and more sophisticated investors etc. But yet seed and series A investors is still kind of more venture capital and venture capital still more primarily interested in the narrative, the story and the opportunity. with, you know, the later you are, the more the more they’d like to see some sort of substantiation of traction.

Konrad: And have you found any profound differences between kind of looking for funding in Australia versus looking for funding in America, where you are now? Trying to scale

Aleks: totally, totally, totally, Australia is a … no name place for venture capital they’re … losers. I’m not afraid to say it. Like there’s a reason why Australia doesn’t have any like, well it’s got maybe a couple of runaway successes, like what half Afterpay and Canva that’s about it, like the Australian venture capital scene is horse…. They have no hope. Like there is absolute reason why it’s ingrained in the in the US culture, right. It’s like, they are frontiersman and they are there to create something out of nothing. And that that piece I think, is really, really important and unique to America in many ways. So yeah, it’s been like, I mean, in the beginning, we raised all our money in Australia, but like, now, like, all the money’s gonna come from America, for sure.

Konrad: Because the reason why i ask is, one is curiosity, but two is also because kind of, I see, Australia and New Zealand as kind of like really, really similar in terms of investor policy. I mean, Australia is just bigger. Who cares about that. But kind of all the policies and the accounting standards, of course they’re the same, but yeah, just basically all the policies surrounding finance, and I guess, is there is there like a fundamental difference that actually matters, not just kind of surface level stuff between the policies that Australia and New Zealand have, and America has? or is it a, or is it a cultural difference? Like can we solve this?

Aleks: Cultural difference man. Yeah, I think it’s a cultural difference man. I don’t think it’s policy thing to be honest. in fact I think Australia’s actually easier in many ways like from a policy perspective like to set up a company. in America might be easier for later things like you know divvying up options and shares to people and all that sort of stuff but yeah I think it’s fundamentally cultural difference.

Konrad: yeah so what’s next for Amber, kind of, in the US? Maybe even after the US, what’s the vision? Is it the world?

Aleks: well, yeah sort of like the next steps for us is going to be US first but then we’re also rolling out a buy now, pay later extension to the product. So we want to be the ones to pioneer bitcoin backed buy now, pay later. So the ability to go and purchase any products or services that you want but uninhibited by a traditional buy now, pay later limitation. Which are usually, you have to pay in full, you need to do a credit check with some providers, you need to, like you know, there’s a maximum purchase amount, and all that sort of stuff.

But what we want to do is make it as simple as deposit some bitcoin on amber, that bitcoin gives you an available buy now, pay later balance, and you can checkout with any of our partners. So you can spend fiat and then you repay your purchase in fiat and you re-unlock your bitcoin. But the bitcoin merely acts as collateral, like as property, against which you can go on access purchasing power for anything that you want without, without selling the underlying asset triggering a taxable event, or you know, yeah without selling underlying asset or triggering a taxable event, they’re the two things. So we want to solve the hodl and spend all problem. It’s like we want you to hodl but hey we’ll give you access to your purchasing power without having to spend it.

Konrad: That sounds really … cool dude. That’s a really cool solution. Cos there is actually like, a valid critique against bitcoin, which is the whole, i forget what the words are called … reverse Gresham’s law. Which is the bad money actually defeats the good money because people don’t want to spend the good money, and that of course was written about gold and silver back in the bimetallic era, where the colonies were forced to use silver and i think it was in the Philippines from memory, there was some history there i’ve forgotten the details, i won’t go into it. But yeah, the people could accumulate gold but they preferred to spend their silver or even their kind of fiat notes, this was of course before 1913, so its kind of a lot different but whatever.

[Post Script: I was way off see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham%27s_law for a good introduction.]

Aleks: yeah so the money in circulation defaults to the one that people are willing to spend. Yeah. Bitcoin is super unique in that sense because i think this block of growth is going to be predicated on the fact that it is viewed and used as basically pristine collateral, like its property, which we draw dollars against, we spend the dollars, you know so the increase in velocity remain, we increase the velocity of money basically and the velocity of fiat, and [bitcoin] remains. Like how can i put it, like it is, it remains as asset like real estate or whatever that we draw against, we increase the velocity of normal money but as we do that, bitcoin’s purchasing power will continue to increase, increase, increase, increase, increase until such time that it is stable enough to use as a medium exchange and because it’s inherently able to be moved across the internet at the speed of light and we’ve got things like the lightning network, etcetera, you know that infrastructure is there, so when bitcoin is, from a liquidity standpoint, stable enough and from a volatility standpoint is dampened away enough. It already has all the … rails, like it’s unbeatable man. It is absolutely unbeatable.

[Post Script: this idea of “pristine collateral” is something I will explore in an article]

Konrad: we win

Aleks: yeah, literally

Konrad: Yeah for sure. I think it was you who tweeted that or put on linkedin or something, that we win. And that we’re winning so hard. Yeah that just stayed in my brain for a long time, ever since you said it. Its crazy. And yeah, just the whole 50 year plan of Klaus Schwab and his bros and just defeated by memers.

Aleks: yeah, literally. Literally.

Konrad: sweet. Yeah so, kind of, where i want to end this is, like what lessons can an aspiring crypto, bitcoin entrepreneur draw from you as a case study?

Aleks: I guess, I’ll make it really simple so we can sum it up quickly. It’s like, view bitcoin as, like how much bitcoin you have is your net worth and the goal is to have more bitcoin tomorrow than you do today. Like thats the goal, more bitcoin today than yesterday. So if you sort of make that your primary measure of wealth, then the question is, can you solve a problem as an entrepreneur that can help you accumulate more bitcoin and if you can, good, if you can’t, go get a job, fiat mine and convert it into bitcoin.

Now there may be another reason why, like you might be able to get a fiat job, mine fiat and acquire more bitcoin than you could doing an entrepreneurial endeavor for bitcoin but then you’ll also have to value yourself subjectively how much you prefer the fiat job versus actually being in the bitcoin industry and creating and building something in and around bitcoin. Cos that might have a non-monetary value that you value higher than just doing a fiat job. So they’re kind of the variables, it’s like, so for me there’s probably a series of jobs that i could get where i could be paid at least four or five times what im drawing as a salary on Amber but i kind of, that doesn’t fit my personality, and i kind of like the idea that i’m helping, you know, break the state. So, you know, I have my own little entrepreneurial expression of why I’m doing bitcoin etcetera, like why I’m doing Amber etcetera. So, like for me, i place a non-monetary value on that and as a result, do that alongside trying to stack as much … bitcoin as we can

Konrad: Great lessons there, that’s awesome. so, thank you so much for your time, it’s been a really cool chat, awesome to dive into, especially in some specifics around in, kind of, finding funding, looking at problems of hiring developers, that’s like really interesting as, as someone who’s kind of maybe almost on the edge of starting to think about trying to start a business eventually, um, kind of learning about all that stuff is really cool. And I hope the listeners enjoyed this, enjoyed hearing the lessons, yeah, thank you for your time.

Aleks: Thank you so much, Konrad. I might just add one more thing, is um, if that is an area that you’re looking at and going down and the listeners who are listening, definitely read a book called ‘the hard thing about hard things’ by Ben Horowitz. I don’t like what Andreessen Horowitz stands for as a venture capitalist firm anymore, but Ben was a … genius when he ran his company and the journey he takes people through in his book is just both gutwrenching, hilarious, insightful, all sorts of things. I think nobody on the planet should start a business until they’ve read that book basically, so the hard thing about hard things, it’s the most important business book ever written

[Post Script: link to the book is https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Thing-About-Things-Building/dp/0062273205]

Konrad: very cool, thank you

Aleks: so definitely adding that in there, and yeah, for whoever is interested, if they’re keen to get some upside or getting some skin into the game, i should probably say, with amber, is like checkout ‘bank to the future’ we’ve got a campaign going live there, it will be live in two weeks and it will allow the retail market to have a slice of the upslide of a company that i think is going to be significant in bitcoin over the coming decade

Konrad: very cool. Definitely. And listeners, if you’re in Australia currently, do checkout the Amber app. I cant check it out, im in New Zealand but their website is very cool and im told their app is very good and usable, and start stacking some sats

Aleks: thank you sir.

Konrad: thank you very much