Alex Adelman and Desiree Dickerson: Swan Signal Live E39

Alex Adelman, Cofounder and CEO of Lolli, and Desiree Dickerson, VP of Business opera­tions at Light­ning Labs, discuss light­ning, Bitcoin as a payments infra­struc­ture, and Bitcoin’s personal impacts on their lives.

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Summary

00:00 Introduction 

3:50 Desiree’s Bitcoin Story & Take On The Bull Run 

6:28 Alex’s Story & Take On The Bull Run 

12:52 Light­ning Pool 

24:20 Light­ning & Gaming: Mint Gox 

29:30 Connecting the World Through Commerce and Lightning 

41:35 Inter­sec­tion of the Virtual & Real World 

44:08 Bitcoin As A Treasury Reserve Asset 

48:12 Bitcoin’s Adoption & Future Maturity 

51:15 Bitcoin’s Nature & Personal Impact 

1:07:16 SSL Sign-Off

Transcript

Brady Swenson:

We’re live. It’s a good day to be a Bitcoiner. Above 19,000. You can feel the all-time high coming right around the corner. Who knows when it will be here, but it feels like it’s going to be soon. We are here to talk some Bitcoin with Desiree and Alex, but before we do, let’s dive in to a little update on Swan. Swan is now avail­able in New York. Very excited about that. We are now in all 50 states, and the US terri­to­ries, so that was the final piece of the geographic puzzle for Swan. We are in every state and terri­tory in the United States. Super excited to have New York on board. If you are in New York, watching from New York, you can log into swanbitcoin.com, and set up your account right now. Start auto stacking with Swan. Achieve that Bitcoin zen. It’s nice.

When price is going up and down, you don’t have to worry about it. You don’t have to try to figure out when to buy, where is the dip going to end, etcetera. You just buy it all the time. You can set up a daily stack on Swan. It’s a nice feeling. You just kind of chill, Swan and chill. We also have Bitcoin TV running. It’s up and running. It’s humming right along. We’re streaming the best Bitcoin video content ²⁴⁄₇ now for nearly three weeks. It’s all Bitcoin all the time. And there is a fun chat happening ²⁴⁄₇ as well in the YouTube chat, and some really fun conver­sa­tions that sprung up.

When the all-time high hits, I’m guessing there will be quite a few people hanging out in there. That’s what happened last time. We keep in these big number milestones. People seem to congre­gate, watch the Bitcoin content, talk about Bitcoin and price. And finally, we have buy now coming to Swan. Of course, we are focused on stacking the stats. It is the best and safest way to accumu­late Bitcoin. But every now and then, you want to smash that buy button. You want to just buy right now. We get that. We’ve heard you. So we’re building that into the product. You can help us test it out. We need some beta testers to come in and smash that buy button, test it out for us. So sign up for that at swanbitcoin.com/buynow.

We also have a Telegram chat that I want to shout out. It’s a persis­tent chat happening all the time. Lots of good Bitcoiners in there. Great place to just stay up on the news. We have some Bitcoiners in there that seem to always just kind of know what’s up before most people, and drop in news there. So it’s a good place to stay up to date. t.me/swansignal is the chat.

Okay. All right. Here we go. We’re ready to dive in with Desiree and Alex. Desiree is the COO at Light­ning Labs, and Alex is CEO and founder of Lolli. So how’s it going, guys? Thanks for joining today for Swan Signal Live.

Alex Adelman:

Thanks for having me.

Desiree Dickerson:

And just to clarify, I’m VP of Business Opera­tions, but-

Brady Swenson:

My fault. VP of Business Opera­tions. I don’t know where I got COO then.

Desiree Dickerson:

No worries.

Brady Swenson:

Awesome. So I’d like to just start. This is kind of an impor­tant sort of histor­ical moment in Bitcoin’s journey. You can feel this all-time high coming, like I was mentioning at the top. And it’s a good time to reflect on personal Bitcoin journey. So Des, let’s start with you, and just kind of tell me about your Bitcoin journey and what this historic moment for Bitcoin means to you.

Desiree Dickerson:

Yeah. Wait, so how I got into Bitcoin? That’s an inter­esting story that I always get made fun of for, which is totally fine, because it’s kind of ridicu­lous. I was in grad school, and I was in a really small program, so I didn’t have a ton of friends. And so I spent most of my free time on Reddit, not that I don’t actually do that now as well. But I actually stumbled on r/dogecoin. I had heard about Bitcoin, but not much. And so I discov­ered dogecoin before Bitcoin. And it’s just a really awesome commu­nity. Obviously, it’s just a meme, and so I loved it. And I just fell in love with being on the subreddit.

And so yeah. I kind of just followed along with that, and then was exposed to Bitcoin through dogecoin, and I was like, “Oh, okay. There’s a legit­i­mate version of this that will solve all these problems and is actually kind of pretty profound.” And so while I was doing the whole manage­ment consulting thing, I’ve kind of always followed along, and was inter­ested and active on Twitter, and ended up at Light­ning Labs a few years ago. So that has kind of been my story there. But in terms of this new price increase that we’re seeing, I’m obviously very excited. I know it can kind of crowd our ability to concen­trate sometimes. But for me, it’s just super exciting, because even though it’s annoying when people text you and ask you, “Okay, should I buy Bitcoin now? Should I buy ETH?” Ridicu­lous stuff. I think it’s an oppor­tu­nity to onboard more people. This commu­nity tends to be very insular. So I think the more people we can bring on, the more normies we can convert, that’s just all the better for Bitcoin.

Brady Swenson:

Hear, hear. That is what Salon is here for. I know that’s what Lolli is here for as well. And this is going to be another big cycle for bringing in newcoiners. Minting newcoiners at every cycle, it seems to be an order of magni­tude new people coming in. I was one of the people who came in last cycle in 2017. And it feels like ages ago, man. So Alex, let’s hear your story, man. Personal journey, let’s reflect on that, and hear what this moment, this kind of historic moment means for you.

Alex Adelman:

Yeah. It’s been a long journey for Bitcoin, and then my team just getting into the space and every­thing. So I learned about Bitcoin in around 2013. And we were building our last company called Cosmic. And we created this e‑commerce gateway with this intent of democ­ra­tizing commerce, giving everyone in the world the ability to buy and sell anywhere. And I was at this bar in New York. I was sleeping on couches because we were trying to sell the dream to these merchants. And I met this guy at this bar, and he had just learned about Bitcoin, and he was obsessed. He had gotten that bug. And every­thing that he was saying with Bitcoin, of how it was the only asset that everyone in the world could own and trade and use, it just clicked with me. And it was every­thing that I had been building or wanted to build, and it was already native to Bitcoin.

So went down the rabbit hole then. I talked to my team. My cofounder, Matt, he was cofounder of the last company, cofounder of Lolli as well. And we just went down this rabbit hole together. We had our first experi­ence, I think, in bringing it to enter­prise. We had all these merchant partner­ships with our last company. And we brought it to them as a way to get users to pay with Bitcoin at all these merchants.

Alex Adelman:

And one of the things we realized is that people didn’t want to pay with Bitcoin. They didn’t want to spend their Bitcoin, because never give up, and then the merchants didn’t want to accept Bitcoin, because remit­tance networks weren’t set up. So they didn’t want to have to balance it on their treasury. Now, clearly it would have been advan­ta­geous for them to have accepted and held Bitcoin in their reserve in the treasury, but at the time, it was just extremely cumber­some, and there just wasn’t a really good fit for Bitcoin payments.

So we learned early on that Bitcoin wasn’t really going to achieve mainstream adoption through payments and that there needed to be something else. So fast forward quite a bit. We ended up getting acquired by one of our biggest customers, which was Rakuten. And Rakuten is, for those that don’t know, is the biggest cashback company in the US, and maybe parts of the world. So we got to learn a lot about the cashback rewards space. We got to meet all these customers. We got to work with over 3,000 merchants there alone.

And we really got to see the needs of these merchants, and see how they wanted to attract customers through rewards, and how the rewards business is an incred­ible way to get people excited and build loyalty to something. So when we parted ways with Rakuten, we went to the drawing board and were like, “How do we get mainstream Bitcoin adoption?” And so we took a very similar model, which was the Rakuten cashback business model, and we basically rebuilt it. So we launched Lolli a little over two years ago and had a lot of success in making Bitcoin more acces­sible to every­body through rewards, and using Bitcoin with what it’s really good at right now, which is being a savings technology.

So yeah. That was two and a half years ago. We have over 1,000 merchants on the platform. Hundreds of thousands of users. And people have earned quite a bit of Bitcoin so far. And then because the price has really 4X since we launched, a lot of our rewards are basically teaching these users that were ex-Rakuten users, ex-cashback users that we’re four times better, three times better, two times better than these cashback compa­nies. So over time, we can start to teach people about the funda­men­tals of Bitcoin by piquing their interest with price.

Brady Swenson:

Love it, man. And speaking of price, what are you thinking right now? Like I said, it’s a moment to reflect. And what does all-time high mean to you and the Lolli customers? I assume you’re going to try to hype up all of the customers with this new milestone.

Alex Adelman:

It’s good for both sides of our business. A lot of the merchants that were holding out are now, it’s piquing their interest. They’re saying, “Oh, you were right.” When I pitched them when it dropped down to 4K, they were like a little bit weary of is it going to keep going down. But as Bitcoin is now reaching all-time highs, we’re about to … We just announced Kroger, which was a huge partner­ship for us. And we’re about to announce a huge merger right before the holidays that I think is going to drive a lot more Bitcoin adoption.

So the merchants love it. And then our users love it as well. I mean, if you are a Bitcoiner, Bitcoiners love getting Bitcoin for free. It’s way more than any of these browsers of faucets. I mean, people are earning more than two Bitcoin on our platform. There’s some serious stackers on the platform, and you can earn a lot of money. And a lot of people … I just saw that note. It was exclu­sive. Yeah, have me on next week when we announce. That would be great.

So yeah, the users are like loving it. I mean, if you’re getting … Let’s just say you earn $500 a year in rewards, and that $500 is now $2,000. It’s not an insignif­i­cant amount of money. And it works on top of your debit card, on top of your credit card. So it’s all incre­mental revenue, cash, that you’re getting, cashback that you’re getting. And so, yeah, our users are pretty happy, to say the least.

Brady Swenson:

Yeah. It’s amazing. And I 100% agree with you, obviously, that Bitcoin is a savings technology. And just getting as many people to start stacking and watching the number go up. And that’s what triggers the interest in Bitcoin, and start asking the questions like what is money, and diving down the rabbit hole. So it’s going to be fun to watch that happen and to do our part as Bitcoiners, try to educate all of these people who are coming in as well.

And we’ll come back to educa­tion in a minute. I want to ask Alex about that. But before we do, I’m really curious about Light­ning Pool. This is the big announce­ment from Light­ning Labs, came out earlier this month. It sounds super inter­esting. It sounds like another big kind of milestone for Light­ning Network, for Bitcoin as a money, in terms of estab­lishing a yield curve, etcetera. So Des, can you talk to us about what Light­ning Pool is, how it works, and what you think it means for Bitcoin and the network?

Desiree Dickerson:

Yeah, I think pool, and we obviously got lucky a little bit, and a lot of people are really pumped about pool, because of the whole G5 craze. I mean, this is real G5. This is what some folks are calling wifi, Light­ning Finance. So we’re obviously very excited that this is getting a lot of traction. But for me, why this is so inter­esting is it really was born out of a business need. I mean, if you remember the Light­ning Torch, like way back when, I mean, just passing along those few stats was such a pain because just the challenges with acquiring inbound liquidity. And I know that was just a very small example, so if you kind of look at places, these bigger compa­nies that are getting way more customers, and just doing legit­i­mate business on the Light­ning Network, inbound liquidity is a very, very serious business need.

So devel­oping a market­place for these businesses and node opera­tors to buy and sell access to liquidity is really kind of unique. I am less finance focused. And know Ryan Gentry, who is our BD lead is amazing at kind of evange­lizing really the whole wifi compo­nent to it. But in my role at the company, I’m just very inter­ested to see this huge business problem that it solves. So it’s not only just opening up the door for people to start earning real yield on their Bitcoin, but it’s also solving that problem of how can people who have excess liquidity sell that and actually make use of their Bitcoin, but also these businesses who need liquidity to balance their channels and serve their customers, like this is really solving a serious business need, and they’re willing to pay a price for that as well.

So I think it’s a really inter­esting finan­cial instru­ment that we’ve created and put out there, but it’s also, I think it longterm will have signif­i­cant impacts of really firming up the founda­tion for compa­nies to operate efficiently on the Light­ning Network.

Brady Swenson:

Yeah. It seems like a very instru­mental devel­op­ment to me for the network. And we were talking about Bitcoin functions to store value right now. That’s its primary use case, right? But we’re building out Light­ning Network. And I think it’s extremely impor­tant to continue to build out Bitcoin as a payments technology as well. It may not be used widely as payments technology yet, but it’s extremely impor­tant. I mean, if we had central­ized payment systems, those will always exist. They’re always going to be very efficient. People could opt into them. But it’s going to be absolutely crucial, for privacy, for freedom, to have the ability to opt out of the payments panop­ticon. The more payments go digital, the more we’re heading toward a cashless society, that’s just the easiest way to surveil basically everyone on the planet, so I think it’s super impor­tant that Light­ning Network continues to be developed.

What do you think about the state of the Light­ning Network right now? What are you excited about, besides Light­ning Pool, and how do you feel about the future of Lightning?

Desiree Dickerson:

I mean, yeah, I’m super super bullish on Light­ning, obviously. It would be strange if I wasn’t. But there’s just been so much progress. And kudos to our team. Like I don’t need to pet ourselves on the back, but we’ve pushed out so many amazing updates this year. Wumbo, so lifting the limits on sending Bitcoin has been a huge accom­plish­ment. Also just kind of signaling the maturity of the network. Before it was every­body be prayerful. This is new and exper­i­mental technology. But now lifting those limits kind of signals, hey yeah, it was like this is a true, legit­i­mate payment network.

So I think the last year has been extremely powerful for the Light­ning Network. And it’s kind of evidenced by just the growth of the ecosystem. I remember last year in Berlin, we hosted the Light­ning Confer­ence, and I hosted kind of a little round table to talk to some of our customers. It was a very small group, because there weren’t that many folks who were building on the network. But now, I mean, just pulling together a list of compa­nies who are building on Light­ning is well over like 120 compa­nies. It’s just incred­ible. And it’s not just people who are tinkering and building things as a side hobby.

Desiree Dickerson:

This is people who are building legit­i­mate compa­nies who are securing signif­i­cant venture capital. So it’s really incred­ible to see not only network, like the use, the general use grow, but also the businesses who Light­ning is becoming integral to their day-to-day opera­tions. But I think something that’s very unique, just with Bitcoin in general, it’s something that seems to be growing is just Bitcoin, like you said, used to be this, I mean, and it still is this thing to avoid surveil­lance. It’s very much this kind of privacy protecting technology. But that was great to get off the grid and get away from central­ized entities. But there wasn’t like … It was great. Now, I have my Bitcoin, but what do I do?

And now we have places like Lolli, which I absolutely love Lolli, which I think Alex knows, because I try to Tweet a lot if I can. But you can actually use your Bitcoin for real things. Like I’m renovating my house. I have liter­ally bought a toilet in earned Bitcoin on Lolli. So that’s probably my favorite thing to add in my investor updates. It’s like, it’s not just feeding chickens anymore. You can actually buy toilets on Lolli. So I think that’s pretty powerful.

Alex Adelman:

That is powerful. And no shitcoins needed for the toilet.

Brady Swenson:

And you know, that’s yeah, exactly. I was going to make the joke. Alex got there first. So yeah, Alex, what do you think about Light­ning, man? Does Light­ning figure in to Lolli at some point? And just in general, what are your thoughts about Lighting?

Alex Adelman:

Yeah, I love it. As just a personal user and also, like our whole team sends Light­ning trans­ac­tions all the time. I have art that I bought with using Light­ning. I almost think it’s irrespon­sible to not use it, just because there’s a lot of things when I spend using Bitcoin that I’ve regretted either the fees for something. So I think Light­ning is making this whole new world of Bitcoin possible, which is using it as a medium of exchange. And I just want to take this long view where there’s function­ality that has to be built now, which is more about Four, which is as a savings technology, and that’s where Bitcoin is at today.

But in order for Bitcoin to be more widely adopted in the future, I think we need things like Light­ning. I think it’s my favorite project, other than Lolli, as far as getting Bitcoin to the masses. We’re huge fans of Light­ning Labs, and Light­ning as a whole, and have been talking about working together since we launched. And I think that on our end, there aren’t a lot of people that are moving Bitcoin off. We have so many people that are brand new to Bitcoin that a lot of them don’t, like they just want to hold it.

And so 95% of our users just want to use Lolli as a custo­dial account, similar to Swan, similar to Coinbase, Kraken, what have you. And so when more of our users start to learn more about Bitcoin, and want to move their Bitcoin to cold storage wallets, or to their own personal keys or whatever, I think that Light­ning is going to be way more impor­tant. And then I think as we start to transi­tion over the next few years into more of a payment rails, there’s just a clear fit to use Light­ning for our merchant.

So one of the things that we’ve set out to do is be the more active wallet in between the merchants and the consumer, and to build these very strong relation­ships with our merchants. So because we just passed 1,000 merchants, and because, as I mentioned earlier, all these merchants are getting really excited about Bitcoin. They’re asking for more infor­ma­tion. They want to learn more about it. I’m sending them the Bitcoin Standard. We’re trying to educate as well as clearly make them money as well.

So I kind of see this future where we go to them and we say, “Hey, look. You’ve loved us for rewards. You’ve loved us for attracting new users. Bitcoin is way less volatile,” and speaking in the future, “Bitcoin is way less volatile. What do you think about accepting Bitcoin as a medium of exchange, because there are users that do want to spend it, and there are so many advan­tages that it has over credit cards, over debit cards, especially when you’re consid­ering Light­ning.” So I do think that we’ll be a huge player in the payments space, and we’ll be lever­aging technology like Lighting in order to facil­i­tate that.

Brady Swenson:

That’s awesome. We got a question for Alex from Pardus our friend at BTC pins. Rick, you want to throw that up on the screen. Not sure what he’s talking about, but I assume Alex will know. Alex, what was the Los Angeles thing Lolli was teasing a few weeks ago?

Alex Adelman:

Oh, it’s coming soon. It has to do with cannabis. I’ll say that much. So we’ve got some fun stuff coming up there. But yeah, we’re announcing, this is a partner­ship we’re announcing with one of our merchants that has not launched yet, but we will be announcing soon before the holidays, if any cannabis users are inter­ested in Bitcoin and cannabis.

Brady Swenson:

There you go.

There you go, Pardus. That sounds very inter­esting indeed. Des, let’s move back to you. I know you’re a big fan of Light­ning gaming. So let’s about Light­ning Gaming for a bit. I mean, let’s hear it. The gaming in the e‑sport industry is massive. And it’s growing insanely quick, insanely fast. So let’s talk about how it’s being used, how Light­ning and Bitcoin is being used, some of your favorite use cases, some of your favorite games that are using Lightning.

Desiree Dickerson:

Yeah, I mean, that’s definitely my favorite topic to talk about. I’m involved with something that’s called MintGox, which is monthly e‑sports tourna­ment that we put on. We kind of came up with it in the face of COVID. I had last year hosted a, after Light­ning Confer­ence, hosted a Bitcoin and Light­ning gaming panel, had some inter­esting folks on there, so was kind of working to … It’s my favorite use case. So I was kind of working to promote it at some upcoming event.s and when those were canceled, I was regularly on a call with Simon Cowell from Zebedee, and we were like, “We shouldn’t let that be canceled. Let’s just continue it online.”

Desiree Dickerson:

So we actually created MintGox, and it’s a monthly event that we host an e‑sports tourna­ment that features one or more Bitcoin and Light­ning games. So they’re all on Light­ning, obviously, with this small sat prices. But yeah, we consid­ered Bitcoin gaming. But yeah, this is really my favorite use case, because for me, as said earlier, people love earning Bitcoin. They love stacking stats. It’s hard to convince someone who’s not already into Bitcoin for all the reasons that we’re here to just go and spend their hard-earned money no Bitcoin, something they can’t see, something they can’t feel, something that if they don’t see the direct results of.

So if there’s ways for folks to just earn Bitcoin by doing things that they love or doing things that they’re already doing, like with Lolli, that’s just an incred­ible oppor­tu­nity to onboard people. So for gaming, to me it’s just a no-brainer use case, because people come never having used Bitcoin before, never having cared about it, but they’re inter­esting in the game. Like I know Bitcoin Bounty Hunt by Donnerlab, which is kind of a first person shooter type of game. A lot of their early users were people who never used Bitcoin before, but were really inter­ested in just playing the game and winning some type of value.

And they came and they were, obviously, they had to download a wallet and cash out their winnings. And so they were basically made into Bitcoiners through gaming. So to me, that’s how I got inter­ested, coming from a business angle, is how can we onboard massive amounts of people. Obviously, to these younger gener­a­tions, gaming and e‑sports is really their social platform. It’s what Facebook was, or like Zynga or MySpace was to some of us back in the day. Fortnite is that social platform for them.

And they’re obviously younger, so they’re more likely to adopt kind of these newer technolo­gies. So for me, it just kind of marries those two factors. And I just think it’s super inter­esting. It’s something with the MintGox stuff that we’ve been thinking about, is like do we call it Bitcoin or Light­ning Gaming. And it’s like, when does Light­ning just become Bitcoin? When do we stop saying these are Light­ning trans­ac­tions, and it’s just all Bitcoin? So I think it’s inter­esting that are we going to start completely bypassing the people onboarding to Bitcoin first, going to CashApp and buying their first Bitcoin? Or are we just going to have people earning directly and onboarding directly to Light­ning? So I think there’s some really inter­esting new ways for creating adoption through things like gaming.

Brady Swenson:

That’s awesome. Thantos in the chat. The Donner­labs game that Des just mentioned was the reason I got into the Light­ning Network, no joke. So there you go. I mean, that’s the story. And Lolli and Light­ning Gaming are both ways that are going to bring people into Bitcoin who have no idea, have never heard about it before. And I can see the gaming use case just to be absolutely massive. Like you said, with the younger gener­a­tions, gaming is how, it is social life. It’s the inter­net’s social world. And you see some of these e‑sports events are larger than the Super­bowl. You just get hundreds of millions of viewers online, and filling literal stadiums.

And you can imagine, and most of them are like first person shooter type games that people play. Using a set of some kind of scoring system, it’s all sets. And imagine people on Twitch, these gamers on Twitch who have massive audiences starting to promote games that are using Bitcoin as rewards, sats rewards. And it just takes off from there. So it’s just another avenue that you can … I mean, there’s just so many of them. Alex, are you a gamer? Have you tried out some of this stuff?

Alex Adelman:

I wouldn’t consider myself a gamer. I enjoy games, I love studying them. I mean, I’m a huge believer in Light­ning, like Light­ning strategy with gaming. It’s one of those things where when I look from more a macro­eco­nomic viewpoint, I look at markets where you’re not constrained by a country. You’re not constrained by fiat rails, as I like to say. And gaming is one of those really inter­esting things, where because anybody can go play a game as long as you have a browser, that I look for things that can connect everybody.

If everyone needs a PlaySta­tion 5, or everyone needs an Xbox, it creates this inacces­si­bility. But there’s, what, three billion people with a cellphone, two and a half billion people or more that play video games across the entire world. When I think about things that are going to connect people, or connect the world through commerce, every­body is going to shop online using their phone. Every­body is going to play games using their phone.

So gaming is this very inter­esting mecha­nism, because it doesn’t need commerce for it to work, but every new game has this commerce layer. And something that we kind of thought about when we were building Lolli is what is something that someone already knows? It’s rewards. People love getting rewards. People shop already. And rewards are just going to be common­place. For every purchase you make, you’re just expecting you’re going to get some sort of rewards. And an article we saw at Rakuten was that Rakuten didn’t have, they were super fiat constrained. They had to sell them in the US. They had to rewards in the US. Every time that they broke into a new country, it cost them so much money in order to distribute cash to people, their native currency to people. And so it broke down. And so really, they could only be promi­nent in the US and in Japan.

Where we scale is that we don’t have to work with these banks every­where we go. We can just drop Bitcoin into people’s wallets anywhere in the world. And gaming is extremely similar. Like V bucks. B bucks has no constraints. I could be in Bangladesh playing Fortnite and getting V bucks. There is no reason that a future gaming study that is passionate about Bitcoin couldn’t use Light­ning Labs to create a Bitcoin Light­ning integra­tion to make Light­ning the standard, and have this sort of like abstrac­tion of Bitcoin and of real currency that every­body can move and use in the real world, and in the virtual world.

Brady Swenson:

Yeah. It’s incred­ibly exciting to think about it as another … Just like I said. I mean, I’ve thought about Light­ning and gaming, but I’m getting super bullish on it right now as a way to bring in new users over the next few years, as people, kids get involved with it. I mean, they’re going to get it right away. Like you said with V bucks, like they under­stand the value of these digital monies. And the stats are just like the real deal. It’s like, “Oh, this is V bucks for real.” Like it’s being used globally as money already. And every­where. I don’t have to cash in V bucks for dollars or whatever. So you might as well just get straight to it, right?

Alex Adelman:

And another point, too. And what we’ve seen in, I think, gaming. Gaming and commerce are very similar paral­lels. So when we’ve seen it in the commerce world, it’s like this transi­tion from points to cash back. So points, being sort of this fake highly central­ized currency. A lot of people don’t know this, but point systems are basically arbitrages on the consumer. You’re basically saying, “This point is worth x amount of money. It can change. It buys you different amounts of things.” And so it’s always changing depending on what the point company tells you that their point is worth.

It’s basically this central­ized manip­u­lated currency. And so that’s why Rakuten has been so successful and why I think Lolli will be successful, because you know how much one dollar is worth. There’s some truth to that. When I’m going in the gaming world and getting V bucks, or I could go play a game that is just as fun and similar, and I could have real money for that, I think it’s the natural transi­tion. People are always looking for the truth. They’re always looking for what is real. And I think cash back was sort of a trend in shopping, and this next trend in gaming will be this digital currency that was made for the internet, and that is Bitcoin, that is Lightning.

Desiree Dickerson:

Yeah, I mean-

Brady Swenson:

And once it happens … Sorry, go ahead, Des.

Desiree Dickerson:

Oh, I was just going to say, I mean, it’s just, like we created MintGox just like to do for a couple of months while we thought the pandemic … I mean, obviously, it lasted a little bit longer than we antic­i­pated. But I think it’s been crazy. Like the first event, we had like 100 streamers. Now we have, the last event we had over 4,400 steamers, 15,000 trans­ac­tions. I mean, it’s just crazy. People are so pumped about it. I mean, people are pumped about winning five sats. I mean, it’s like spots are set, and they don’t care how few it is. And with these small amounts, like we can … Every­body can get paid out. Every place can get paid out, rather than just having the top three people. So there’s a lot of inter­esting things we can play with in these virtual words. I actually have a book about virtual economies on my desk. So like Design and Analysis. So yeah. I mean, Alex, likely we can chat about this forever.

Brady Swenson:

I love it. Well, let’s get into it. First of all, let’s talk more about, I love the idea of the virtual economy. So I want to talk more about that. But kind of like specifics or what you’re learning and studying. But first, what was the question? It was, oh. Are there any new games coming out right now or beyond the horizon that you know are coming, that you could talk about, that you’re excited about, that are using Lightning?

Desiree Dickerson:

Oh, wow. I mean, so there’s so much. Donner­lab’s Bitcoin Bounty Hunt, where actually, there’s a … We’re having MintGox on Sunday at 2:00 p.m. Eastern for folks who want to join. There’s a 5 million sat prize. I think that’s like over $1,000 at this point that we’re giving away. And so we’re featuring Bitcoin Bounty Hunt, so that’s like the whole first person shooter kind of battle royale type game. So that will be going on. And there’s lots of fun side games you can play. You can feed the koi or feed chickens. Like last time, we fed the koi or feed chickens over 100 times, so they’re like obese now, which is great.

And then there’s Satoshi’s games is doing really incred­ible stuff. Like they have pretty much similar to Fortnite type game. And they have like a whole in-game skins. Right now they’re doing NFTs for those skins, but they’re exploring some cool stuff with LSATs, which I’m excited about. But they have, Satoshi’s game has Light Nite. That’s what it’s called. And then also, THNDR Games has two games in the App Store. One is Turbo ’84, which is a synth­wave racer type game. And then also Bitcoin Bounce, where you kind of just bounce along these platforms and collect tickets which you can cash out for Satoshi’s. So Jack has been leading the way in battling the App Store with keeping his games there, and like the whole walled garden problem.

And then, yeah, Zebedee, they’re really focused on their SVK. They just came out with an amazing gaming wallet that uses static QR codes that are really great for streamers. Like if you want your viewers to tip you, you can just add your static QR code to your Twitch page, so we’re actually seeing a lot of folks starting to do that. It’s really cool. And here they have Bitcoin router. Yes, Bitcoin rally, sorry, which is one that we do a big e‑sports turnaround, which is like Mario Kart, so that’s a really cool game.

Desiree Dickerson:

So yeah, there’s some new folks who are coming out with games. There’s one that kind of seemed like a Fall Guys type game. So I’m excited to see what people start putting out next year, especially with Zebedee making it super easy with their SVK. I think we’ll start seeing more and more game devel­opers come to this place and start putting out these really neat Indie games, now that it’s easy. And also, the price of Bitcoin obviously attracts folks to kind of come our way.

Brady Swenson:

Yeah. This is amazing. I had no idea. You’re speaking my language. I got to get in some of these games. I love racing games, so you were talking about that Turbo game, and Mario Kart. Like Mario Kart, come on, man. I spent so much time playing Mario Kart when I was a kid. If I can play Mario Kart and earn sats, that’s going to happen this week for sure, as soon as possible.

Desiree Dickerson:

Sunday’s your opening. Join us.

Brady Swenson:

I will be there. That’s awesome. So what is this about virtual economies that you’re talking about? Like what are you learning? Alex, do you want to lead off with this, or do you want to give Des a chance to lead off and you can follow up?

Alex Adelman:

I’ll follow up, yeah.

Brady Swenson:

Yeah, okay. Tell us what’s in this book? What are you studying?

Desiree Dickerson:

I haven’t gotten very far, to be honest. It’s been pretty busy with the pool watch and every­thing else. But I don’t know. So I’m just diving into this book. But we’re kind of exper­i­menting with, one, what happens when you break down the fourth wall between viewers and people who are actually playing the game? In MintGox, we have a dashboard where you can actually stream sats to drop power ups in the Mario Kart game, or you can actually just put sats as bounty on people’s heads that you want killed in this first person.

So that becomes very, very inter­esting. But the one thing that I’m kind of focused on right now is how do we exper­i­ment with kind of the circular adver­tising models. For instance, we have worked with Bitre­fill recently, and we’ve devel­oped this kind of cool pit stop, Bitre­fill station we call it, where people can drive their carts in this Mario Kart game through the station, and they get 10 Satoshis. And they need to decide, okay, do I take these 10 Satoshis and use them as projec­tiles against my opponent, so I can obviously place higher, and hopefully get the larger prize, or do I just stack those Satoshis, and then I can just have them, keep them, and then cash out at the end of the game, and hopefully we obviously link to Bitre­fill, and at some point, we want people to be able to use the Satoshis in game to buy actual, like real world for Bitre­fill actual gift cards in the game.

So we’re kind of exper­i­menting, how do we lower the customer acqui­si­tion cost, and make adver­tising in these e‑sports, like these Bitcoin e‑sports tourna­ments more lucra­tive to sponsors and adver­tisers. So that’s what I’m kind of exper­i­menting with. That’s what I’m charged with. But Chris­tian Moss, who’s Mandel­Duck on Twitter, and also at Zebedee is kind of playing with these, like okay, how do we use virtual economies to make people who are playing these games really think? And there’s just so much more behav­ioral, like you can do so much more with people’s behavior in game when you have real curren­cies in them.

Brady Swenson:

Yeah. That makes sense. Alex, any thoughts?

Alex Adelman:

Yeah. Same page. I think it’s really cool, this inter­sec­tion of virtual and in-person. And it’s all converging right now. So I think it’s going to get really exciting too when you can use the same currency in a virtual world that you can in the real world. And Bitcoin is a part of that. I think the thing that we, being in the US, have a diffi­cult time seeing is what that inter­na­tional market is doing. And when Des was talking about all this traction and inter­esting usage, we’re probably not going to see it in the US to start. People play games every­where, and so you immedi­ately have a market of four billion people with an internet connec­tion. And a lot of those people, they don’t have to speak English, or they don’t have to be in the US in order to adopt Bitcoin, but that’s another user, they’re using Bitcoin.

And so the more and more connected the entire world is through these commerce appli­ca­tions, the better I think, the more Bitcoin adoption there will be. And when I look at like, the way I look at Lolli is we’re a startup. Most of the times when you build a company, you have to be focused on your country. But being, as you know, with Swan too, we have these fiat constraints because of FinCEN and clients’ issues and all these sort of require­ments. But with Bitcoin it’s like inter­na­tion­ally scalable. So the market is just going to be way bigger, and it’s just going to attract anybody with an internet connec­tion. It’s not just, you’re not just going after 300 million Ameri­cans that can poten­tially download this app. You’re going after four billion people.

And in building a company, it’s like entre­pre­neurs that want scale, why would you build on top of fiat when you could build on top of Bitcoin and reach way more people? It just becomes a very simple like behav­ioral incen­tive mecha­nism. Like I want to build a $100 billion company. I don’t want to go build a $100 million company. So more and more people are going to build on Bitcoin. More game devel­opers are going to build on Bitcoin. More commerce devel­opers are going to build on Bitcoin. It’s just inevitable, because it’s a global market.

Brady Swenson:

Bullish, bullish. It’s beautiful.

Alex Adelman:

Very bullish.

Brady Swenson:

I love the vision. I love the vision. Something you mentioned earlier, Alex, about using Bitcoin as a treasury reserve asset for businesses, and this is like a narra­tive. Well, it’s not just a narra­tive. It’s an actual phenom­enon that we’re seeing occur and rollout now, of course led as a trend­set­ting by Michael Saylor and MicroS­trategy, just going all in, which was amazing. And Square kind of dipping their toes in and making a $50 million buy to put on their reserve, treasury reserve. A little casual, $50 million buy.

And I feel like we kind of missed this one. We were all talking about through the bear market and stuff like insti­tu­tional adoption and national reserve currency adoption. And I didn’t hear a lot of chatter about the corpo­rate reserve currency. But of course, it makes absolutely perfect sense in retro­spect. How big of a deal is this to you? I mean, it seems like something that’s going to drive, a narra­tive that will drive this cycle.

Alex Adelman:

Yeah. I think it’s fasci­nating. And I don’t think enough people talk about … I mean, people get bullish of like, “Oh, this billion­aire’s buying Bitcoin,” or, “This massive public company is buying Bitcoin.” But it’s actually, I think it’s bigger than that. And the story that I don’t hear told is these compa­nies now, more so than ever in the entire history of the world, are bigger than countries. They’re on an inter­na­tional scale from day one. And so if your country is not going to be smart enough to have a non-infla­tionary currency, then you have to. And if you’re holding tens of millions, hundreds of millions, millions of dollars in reserves, like if you’re doing treasury manage­ment and you have an infla­tionary currency that’s losing 2%, or if we’re about to go through a reces­sion, and we might have higher infla­tion, and we go up to 4% or 5%, like your cash is not as valuable as it was.

So you have to make this decision, do you buy up a bunch of compa­nies that are profitable, and so you can make more money, or are going to be, you know, add value to your company? That’s one option. Or do you buy something that is going to hold in value. A lot of compa­nies can’t hold gold. Like I could never see Square buying gold, building their own Fort Knox and holding that gold. Like it just doesn’t make sense, right?

And so maybe you could ratio­nalize buying gold and having owner­ship of it, but there’s really nothing better than Bitcoin right now to hold your value and to go up. So I think we’re going to see this being this like overwhelming trend of compa­nies that are operating on inter­na­tional scale that want to protect their cash reserves and sort of fight infla­tion are going to adopt Bitcoin as a reserve currency.

Brady Swenson:

Yeah. I think it’s an absolutely bullish trend. It makes perfect sense. Does Lolli hold any Bitcoin in the corpo­rate treasury?

Alex Adelman:

No comment. It’s OPSEC.

Brady Swenson:

Fair. Des, how do you feel about this trend, and just the role of Bitcoin in this fiat econom­i­cally just accel­er­ated fiat time that we’re in now. These pandemic shutdowns, really, and the subse­quent money printing that’s happened, which has been shocking, and is probably going to continue even more in the next year or so. Do you see more corpo­ra­tions coming in because of that deval­u­a­tion? Like Michael Saylor said, if you count assets, the asset infla­tion rate, which is actually more like 15% or 20%, it’s like the melting ice cube is going really fast. So what do you think about this trend?

Desiree Dickerson:

Yeah. I mean, I’m like a mixed bag of emotions around it. Because one, it’s like, okay … I mean, it’s great. I mean, all these insti­tu­tions jumping into Bitcoin is great for Bitcoin. It’s great for exposure. But I’m also like kind of salty, because it’s like, “Okay, are the same wealthy old white dudes just going to get more wealthy?” And that feels not great to me. But that’s the nature of Bitcoin, right? It’s for everyone. So ultimateLy, I have to be okay with that, and I’m working through that. But no joke, like jokes aside, I do … Like all of this makes me nervous. Like this high prices. If it comes crashing down again, I mean, I remember the last time it started crashing down. I was in Deer Valley and I was skiing, and I was like, “Oh, yeah. I’m going to be Bitcoin rich. Yay!”

And then it all just started crashing, and I was like, “Oh my God. I need to return this jacket immedi­ately.” I am like very cautious about how excited I get about these things. Because what’s the narra­tive, if we crack back down to $3,000? Like what does that do? I mean, to Bitcoin’s marketing, which is just like the naturally created narra­tive. So I’m just very cautious. I’m cautiously optimistic. So I tend to just kind of stay out of it, be quiet, and just watch, and just do my job, build as much as possible, and not focus on the price, and just kind of let things happen.

But yeah, I think overall, to answer the question, more and more people, like these big players getting into Bitcoin is ultimately a good thing. But only time will tell.

Brady Swenson:

It’s going to change our little Bitcoin. I get it too. Like it’s our nice, a little commu­nity building on Bitcoin. This cycle may be the end of that feeling, anyway. But yeah, it’s got to grow up at some point, and it’ll be like, you know, it’s like, what, Bitcoin’s almost 11 years old, coming close to 12. So it’s like a really preco­cious young person right now, and with big dreams. And I know I have the sort of parental feeling about Bitcoin too, like it’s something that we kind of discov­ered early, and we’re trying to shepherd to fruition together in the best way possible.

And yeah, as it grows up, it’s sort of like leaving the nest, you know? We might all have empty nest syndrome. I think it’s a good thing, ultimately. I mean, it’s inevitable. So whatever happens, it’s always inter­esting, in every bull market and bear market, for that matter.

So Bitcoin’s nature is funda­men­tally different than fiat, obviously. It’s defla­tionary money versus infla­tionary money. Its supply is set in stone. It can’t be altered by humans or controlled. And so it’s absolutely predictable on what the value of Bitcoin will be in terms of how many Bitcoin will be minted in a given time, and the issuance rate, and all that. And this seems to have, like this differ­ence between kind of short term prefer­ence money and longterm prefer­ence money seems to have an effect on behavior. Kind of speaking earlier about how virtual economies can be set up to really effect behavior. This is that on a global level. Each individual, nothing then collec­tively will have an impact on society.

So I’d love to hear you guys talk about how you person­ally experi­enced Bitcoin. Has that kind of shift to longterm thinking affected you person­ally? And then we can talk about the future for society and civiliza­tion. But I’d love to start with just person­ally, has it changed your behavior in any way? Alex, you want to start with that?

Alex Adelman:

Yeah, sure. I mean, I love the meme. The best memes are the ones that are true and they sort of simplify a message that is every­body should under­stand, and they’re educa­tional in nature. And I think one of the best memes is fiat is your checking account. Bitcoin is your savings account. And I think it encap­su­lates how my view of Bitcoin, and I think how most people’s view of Bitcoin that have been in it for a while, how they think about it. Bitcoin is defla­tionary, fiat infla­tionary, and so you over time, you sort of see it as you’re holding this amount of money in your savings account, your Bitcoin account. And then your checking account becomes like what you’re spending.

And I think that that’s a good frame­work and way to think about it. It’s not all too dissim­ilar from how a lot of people treat stocks, or how people treat their savings account. Like the whole thing that people have been using for 50 years, which is they have your savings account. I don’t want to dip into my savings account. That’s for the future. That’s how people, I think, should for now think about Bitcoin. I do think that there’s plenty of places in the world that Bitcoin is already better than their fiat currency, and they can start to think about Bitcoin being their medium of exchange. They can think about Bitcoin being their primary currency, because Bitcoin has already surpassed the value of their fiat currency.

And the more countries like Venezuela, that sort of experi­ence this hyper­in­fla­tion, and if you have sort of the savings account, Bitcoin, and your checking account in this hyper infla­tionary currency, over time, that’s going to happen over the next couple decades. That’s going to happen a hundred times to a hundred different countries, to a hundred different curren­cies. And every single time, there’s always going to be access to this savings account. So it’s almost like this memetic nature of Bitcoin being a savings technology that has spread. The people that learn to use Bitcoin as their savings account will have more money and access to this global currency, whereas people who rely on fiat can be, you know, sort of the downsides of fiat, the infla­tionary nature of fiat, they will clearly not be in as good a position as people who do look at Bitcoin as savings. So that’s my viewpoints.

I think I try to often­times look at things not through my own viewpoint, but through others. And when I place myself in different places of the world, how I view Bitcoin, I view it differ­ently. Clearly, if we’re being honest, in the US, there are things that are diffi­cult to compre­hend. Like FDIC insur­ance is very real. I know that up to $250,000, I have all my money insured by a bank. That is very diffi­cult to compete with, especially because a lot of people have not had these bad experi­ences with that. It’s like, sure, it sucks I’m sure if you’re hacked or something like that. But the fact that you are insured is something that’s very diffi­cult to go up against in the US.

But FDIC insur­ance is in the US alone. And many parts of the world do not have that. And so Bitcoin probably is the equiv­a­lent of FDIC insur­ance, because you truly own your money, and you control the security of your own money, and you can be your own bank and savings technology by using Bitcoin. So kind of like I was saying with Light­ning Games, Bitcoin Games. I think we’re going to see the same thing with Bitcoin as a savings technology. It has advan­tages because it is a global insur­ance policy for your money.

Brady Swenson:

Yeah. Des, has Bitcoin changed your life person­ally at all?

Desiree Dickerson:

Yeah. I mean, I feel like Bitcoin is my life.

Brady Swenson:

Yeah, same. It just like slowly takes over all of your brain, spare brain cycles, and then spare minutes, till you’re doing it full-time.

Desiree Dickerson:

Yeah. I mean, I think like what Alex mentioned really resonates with me. Something that he pointed out that I find so inter­esting is the FDIC stuff. I mean, I’m so full Bitcoin maximalist, it’s not funny. But I still see value in things like that. And when we’re creating products, and when I just think about folks who are using Light­ning, that I try to step into not … I mean, the global view is very inter­esting. But I try to step into their safe space. I think about my mom or whoever. It’s like using Bitcoin doesn’t feel safe. I think that’s something that we don’t ever talk about or address in this commu­nity. As I mentioned, it’s so insular, and if you don’t lean in all the way, we are just like, “Okay, you don’t get it. You’re not worth our time.”

But it’s like a lot of people want that type of security that having 250,000 of your dollars are insured. That makes you feel safe. So it’s like we don’t neces­sarily have that with Bitcoin. And I think we’re getting further down the line. But I don’t think that we’re anywhere it’s like, “Okay, this is something that every­body is going to use.” I think having the CashApp is great, because people use that for other things. So like, okay, well, my money feels safe there when I’m just using fiat money. Like if I buy Bitcoin there, it’s at least going to feel safe.

So I think, and I know I’m getting off topic a little bit, but that’s just something that I’m constantly thinking about, is I love Bitcoin because I can control it and nobody else has control over it. But at the same time, someone could just hold me at gunpoint and be like, “I’m going to shoot you unless you give me your private keys,” and it’s like, “Okay, well, I’m ultimately going to do that.” So that’s like something I’m constantly thinking about, is where is the fine line between empow­ering people, but also giving them the security that will lead to them ultimately adopting the technology.

It’s a very fine balance, and it’s not going to be the same for every company or the same app. Like obviously, at Light­ning Labs, we’re all about self custody in your own funds. But there’s things like the Zebedee Wallet, which is the gaming wallet where it’s like, it’s people’s first wallet. When I first started, I probably should have had somebody else holding my funds. Like I didn’t know what I was doing. So I think there just needs to be safe spaces or better on ramps for people who are coming into this space.

Brady Swenson:

Yeah. I hear that. Let’s wrap up with what you think it means for the world. Let’s say Bitcoin decades from now, and however you think it will play out, how do you think it will change human society? Alex?

Alex Adelman:

Yeah, that’s a good question. I think it’s going to just change the psychology of money. I think one of the most inter­esting aspects of Bitcoin is that people never really questioned their money before. I think that’s one fun thing that I was doing, I think like two and a half years ago, three years ago, when I was trying to figure out what I wanted to build next, and I really wanted to … I knew about Bitcoin and my family and friends knew about Bitcoin because I had shared it with them. But I really, I wanted to tap into the psychology of what people’s viewpoint of Bitcoin was.

And so one of the questions that I often ask people that were new to Bitcoin was what is money. Like do you under­stand money. And most people, when asked about money, they didn’t know what it is. They didn’t under­stand what it was backed by. They never even thought about it, because our entire lives, from when you’re a kid and you’re getting allowance, and it’s just, it’s almost like from the time we’re born, we’re told that one dollar is one dollar. We don’t even think about it. It’s like, it’s just a part of our society.

And so for the first time ever, we’re now being faced with this oppor­tu­nity where we have an option of what our money is and how we person­ally define our money. And so what that’s forcing is this thing, and price is a big, it is this sort of a big attrac­tion point to it, because it’s like, okay, all these people are making all this money because Bitcoin keeps going up. Bitcoin’s in the news. And our natural tendency as humans and survivors and people who are looking out for our wallet are like, “Why are these people making money? If you own Bitcoin, why am I making money? What is this?”

And so the more and more you look into Bitcoin, the more and more you learn about money. And I was an econ major. I studied money for four years. And I still, like when I learned about Bitcoin after that, I realized how little I knew about money in general. So if Bitcoin is this forcing function for us to really redefine money and to ultimately find the truth of money to what is the best money, that’s the challenge that Bitcoin has. But it’s also what Bitcoin is intro­ducing is it’s forcing society to question the defin­i­tion for money.

Brady Swenson:

Hundred percent, hundred percent. You want to add onto that, Des? Anything?

Desiree Dickerson:

I mean, that is powerful. I mean, I didn’t under­stand money really.

Brady Swenson:

Oh, yeah. Same.

Desiree Dickerson:

I mean, I recently read that book with Amanda Caveato and I had a book club, and we read that like giant debt book, and I was like, “Oh, wow.” You know, and a little bit “Damn, we are totally fucked.” Sorry about about the language.

Brady Swenson:

All good.

Desiree Dickerson:

But we’re not, because of Bitcoin. So yeah, I think right now what is intro­duced as option­ality, but I think the further down the line we get, it’s just going to become a forcing function. I think people, even if people don’t under­stand how money really works, I think they’re starting to question, at least here in the States, I think people are starting to question who’s control­ling this, why are they doing these things, why do we not have any real say over our own money? I’m from the Midwest, and obviously, the whole finan­cial crisis hit the Midwest really hard. And I think people started to be like, “This isn’t right.” I mean, obviously they started questioning this. But now, during this kind of time of huge socioe­co­nomic turmoil, I think people are starting to think again.

Obviously, they haven’t seen the full effects of the pandemic longterm yet. But I mean, I think people are starting to question again, is like, “Okay, here we go again. The Fed is just printing money. What does this really mean?” So I think ultimately, people are going to start questioning, and they’re going to see these effects happen twice in one lifetime. And people don’t gener­ally make the same mistake three times. And so they’re just going to ultimately pushed to Bitcoin. But at that point, it’s going to be a forcing function. But right now, it’s a option­ality. And luckily, right now, people who are seeing the price, and hopefully will come over. But longterm, I don’t see Bitcoin as an option. Bitcoin will be the only option in the future.

Brady Swenson:

Did anyone else notice this whole time, over Des’s shoulder, a pair of bullhorns?

Alex Adelman:

That’s awesome.

Brady Swenson:

Brekkie go full screen. There it is.

Alex Adelman:

Computer enhanced.

Brady Swenson:

I’ve been looking at them this whole time feeling extra bullish.

Alex Adelman:

Bullish.

Desiree Dickerson:

We moved, and like we’re doing renova­tions. So I just needed to hang things up so I could get every­thing out of the way and out of boxes. So it’s just stuff on walls every­where. So yes, lots of animals. Like there’s a bear head over there.

Brady Swenson:

Yeah. You just got to put the bear head away. And the bullhorns.

Desiree Dickerson:

Yeah. The price is going down, so I think it’s us.

Alex Adelman:

It’s good motivation.

Brady Swenson:

Exactly. I’ve got a couple videos lined up here. One is the MintGox video that Des posted here in the chat for us to watch. So let’s go ahead and, yeah, here we go. Let’s watch this and get fired up about gaming, e‑sports, and Bitcoin.

Desiree Dickerson:

Yeah, if you just watch the first intro, like here’s Sarah Toby, I suck at this game, when you kind of swing around as a monkey and see how far you can go. Bitcoin Bounce, super addicting. It’s a mobile app. It’s a sat stacker game where you can liter­ally just go. It’s so easy to win sats. The OB sports. Yes. I don’t know if I’ve watched this whole thing. Here’s like the rainbow-ish road.

Brady Swenson:

Nice.

Alex Adelman:

Oh, that’s cool. I got to play that.

Desiree Dickerson:

Fill station. You can drive through, stack some sats. Yeah. The Mario Kart is cool. We do have a VR compo­nent where you can kind of go in and hang out. There’s a virtual art gallery and stuff. But yeah. The VR compo­nent is not a ton going on. It’s just kind of a side thing. But yeah, every­body should join us. There’s a really cool spooky Halloween theme track. It’s my favorite, where these ghosts come out and try and get you, and hanging corpses or something. It’s super creepy. So if you’re into that, definitely join us.

Brady Swenson:

You got to check it out. I’m fired about it now. I’m definitely going to spend some time looking more into this. All right. Well, thank you so much Des and Alex for your time. It was a ton of fun talking with you all and hearing more about Light­ning Labs and Light­ning Pool and Light­ning Gaming, and where Lolli is going. Super exciting on all fronts. So yeah, thanks for your time.

Desiree Dickerson:

Cool.

Alex Adelman:

Thank you for having me.

Desiree Dickerson:

Bye, guys.

Alex Adelman:

Take care.

Brady Swenson:

All right. Before I head out, I got a little bit more shilling to do. Don’t forget Bitcoin TV, bitcointv.network. And the Buy Now beta. We need some help. People who like to smash buy on Bitcoin, which is everyone here, you can do that. Help us test. So it’s swanbitcoin.com/buynow. And of course, we are in New York, as I said. And Brekkie produced a beautiful video for our New York announce­ment. So go ahead and roll tape, Rick.

Brekkie Von Bitcoin:

In a world filled with uncer­tainty, Bitcoin gives us hope. And if we work together, we can bring about a bright orange future, just a little bit sooner. With low fees, automatic buys, daily, weekly, or monthly, free automatic withdrawals, and world-class Bitcoin educa­tion, we’ve made it safe and easy to accumu­late Bitcoin, because you have your life to live, so go on and live it.

All over the US, people are choosing Swan to achieve their Bitcoin goals. But in the finan­cial capital of the world, the options for building your Bitcoin future are limited. Today, we are proud to announce that Swan Bitcoin is now open for business in all 50 states, including the great state of New York. Sign up at swanbitcoin.com/newyork, and get $10 of free Bitcoin when you become a member. Together, we are helping to build that bright orange future, from sea to shining sea. We are advocates. We are educa­tors. We are Bitcoiners.

Past Episodes

Episode 8 –Andy Edstrom and Ansel Linder

Episode 9 –Rockstar Devel­oper and Jeremy Rubin

Episode 10 – Bitcoin TINA and CK Snarks

Episode 11– Gigi and Knut Svanholm

Episode 12 –Adam Back and Preston Pysh

Episode 13 –Alex Gladstein and Matt Odell

Episode 14 –Robert Breedlove and Tuur Demeester

Episode 15 –Isaiah Jackson and Max Keiser

Episode 16 –Gigi and Udi Wertheimer

Episode 17 –Aleks Svetski and Jimmy Song

Episode 18 –Stephan Livera and Marty Bent

Episode 19 –Mark Moss and Ben Prentice

Episode 20 –Samson Mow and Parker Lewis

Episode 21–Lyn Alden and Jeff Booth

Episode 22– Robert Breedlove and Cory Klippsten

Episode 23 — Saifedean Ammous and George Gammon

Episode 24 –Jameson Lopp and Eric Martindale

Episode 25 –Preston Pysh and Andy Edstrom

Episode 26 –Lyn Alden and Nic Carter

Episode 27 — Erik Townsend and Yan Pritzker

Episode 28 — Max Keiser and Tone Vays

Episode 29 –Preston Pysh and Andy Edstrom

Episode 30–Raoul Pal and Vijay Boyapati

Episode 31–Dan Tapiero and Dan Matuszewski

Episode 32–Robert Breedlove and Parker Lewis

Episode 33– Danielle DiMartino Booth and Michael Saylor

Episode 34– Jeff Deist and Stephan Livera

Episode 35–Will Reeves and Yan Pritzker

Episode 36–Alex Gladstein and Marty Bent

Episode 37–Brandon Quittem and Robert Breedlove

Episode 38–Jake Chervinsky and Rafael Yakobi

Links

Swan Bitcoin

Swan Bitcoin — the best place to buy and invest in Bitcoin

Swan Bitcoin on Twitter

Swan Signal on YouTube

Swan Signal on Facebook

Swan Signal on Twitch

Swan Signal Podcast

Swan Signal Telegram Chat Room

Alex Adelman

Alex on Twitter

Alex on LinkedIn

Alex on Forbes 30 under 30

Lolli’s website

Desiree Dickerson

Desiree on LinkedIn

Desiree on Twitter

Light­ning Labs