25.0 Overcoming Fiat Censorship || Ruben Waterman
Channel: Wasabi Wallet
Date: 05/08/2021

Ruben is an entrepreneur who wants to provide his clients an easy way to purchase bitcoin at regular intervals directly into their own wallet. Bittr is a non-custodial Bitcoin exchange that was victim of heavy censorship of their fiat bank accounts and overbearing KYC regulation. But now it is up and running again in a swiss company ready to serve clients.

Watch all Highlights: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPwc75tPMdsjpqK1YHYYG5b55M6Y--6Qd
Watch all full episodes: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPwc75tPMdsixsuhwau82Q0IfxECo0z_E
Website: https://WasabiWallet.io
Blog: https://blog.WasabiWallet.io
Documentation: https://docs.WasabiWallet.io
GitHub: https://github.com/zkSNACKs/WalletWasabi
Podcast: https://anchor.fm/Wasabikas
YouTube: https://youtube.com/c/WasabiWallet

00:00 Intro
01:50 What is your motivation to contribute to Bitcoin.

02:41 What were the first projects you contributed to?

04:08 Bitcoin entrepreneurship vs savings.

04:52 Bitcoin entrepreneurs on and off Twitter.

05:53 What were your initial challenges beginning a software development business?

07:52 Taking courses in Elixir.

08:38 What were the different options available for getting people involved with your project to get work done.

09:29 XBTFreelancer / Upwork.

10:36 Bootstrapping the project. / Around25.

12:17 Free and Opensource development.

15:24 Banking infrastructure. Bunq (Holland).

18:24 Fixing the broken system.

18:58 Legal compliance and disclosure.

19:55 Creating a company.

20:16 Getting a bank account.

21:37 Barriers to innovation.

22:50 Kraken vs banks.

23:54 Why did you choose Kraken?

24:55 How are your transactions structured with Kraken?

26:03 Batching transactions every hour. / Brokerage fees.

27:07 Custodianship risk.

28:36 Bittr is almost non-custodial.

29:55 Legal status in Switzerland. / Digital ATM. / KYC.

31:38 Data collection risk.

32:48 How did Bittr shut down?

34:19 AML/KYC AMLD5.

37:53 Switzerland and the EU.

39:58 Bittr as a Swiss company.

40:23 Jurisdictional arbitrage.

41:26 Differences between doing business in Holland and Switzerland.

42:54 Proof of ownership of address vs KYC.

44:31 Signing a message.

45:50 Fraudulent use of Bittr.

46:30 User experience.

47:22 Custom protocols required by law. / Financial Action Task Force.

49:15 Providing a useful service despite bureaucracy.

50:48 The entrepreneurial spirit. / Solving problems for others.

51:02 What did you work on while away from Bittr?

54:13 What was your role while working for Stekking?

58:03 How do you go about trying to find solutions for problems?

01:00:18 What is worth it learning to program?

01:01:40 What other projects were you programming?

01:03:33 Scaling via word-of-mouth. / Affiliate commission.

01:06:43 Referral programs.

01:07:27 The business model of hardware wallets.

01:09:35 Infrastructure for building Bitcoin wallets. / Bitcoin/Lightning Dev kit.

01:10:34 Tradeoffs of having user XPUBs.

01:13:22 Address reuse and common ownership heuristics.

01:14:30 Working with PocketBitcoin.

01:15:55 Regulation encourages poor security practices.

01:17:32 Bittr Lightning Payments. / Keysend.

01:18:35 Collaborating with Bitcoin businesses on regulatory challenges.

01:19:36 Why is there so much cooperation between Bitcoin companies on regulatory hurdles?

01:20:17 Other areas of collaboration.

01:22:05 Sustainability of Bittr.

01:23:24 Stay humble, stack sats.