Speaker 1: I do believe it is really like a paradigm shift
Speaker 1: in terms of how we should think about money. So
Speaker 1: I think that's where bitcoin is actually very educational, almost
Speaker 1: like a platform opens the many questions and answers around
Speaker 1: the world and around why, you know, countries get into
Speaker 1: financial problems, why there's inflation and all that stuff. It's
Speaker 1: not only technology, it's not only economic. It's more like
Speaker 1: a social science or social topic which everybody would benefit from.
Speaker 2: Knowing more about.
Speaker 3: Hey, folks, welcome into the Thinking Crypto podcast. I'm your host,
Speaker 3: Tony Edward, and we are recording in Prague at Treasure's office.
Speaker 3: And joining me is Matte Jaques, who is the CEO
Speaker 3: of Treasure.
Speaker 2: Mate, great to have you, Thanks for having me, Yeah, Te.
Speaker 3: Great event yesterday, awesome launch of the Treasure Safe seven.
Speaker 3: I got to play around the device. It's beautiful, it's
Speaker 3: great and there's a lot of cool features. So I'm
Speaker 3: excited to dive into the details there. But I like
Speaker 3: it to kick it off with people's backgrounds, you know,
Speaker 3: tell us about where you were born, about growing up,
Speaker 3: and how your professional background, how you ended up a
Speaker 3: treasure of course.
Speaker 2: So I'm from the Czech Republic.
Speaker 1: I was born fifty kilometers from outside of Prague.
Speaker 2: I call it home.
Speaker 1: We're based here, the office is obviously here. Most of
Speaker 1: our people are from the country, and my background is
Speaker 1: actually very non tech. I studied music, you know, in
Speaker 1: my early days. But actually I always have been sort
Speaker 1: of I guess you could call it like entrepreneurial or
Speaker 1: getting in all kind of like projects, you know, and
Speaker 1: managing people and managing projects, et cetera. And I was
Speaker 1: always kind of interested in back in general.
Speaker 2: So you know, I kind of.
Speaker 1: Always like the idea of like building startups, you know,
Speaker 1: scaling them up, et cetera. So so, yeah, one thing
Speaker 1: led to another, and then I kind of saw that
Speaker 1: the product management is actually super interesting kind of area
Speaker 1: of expertise that I would like to dive deeper into
Speaker 1: because that's literally about, you know, building the right product
Speaker 1: for the right people. And then seven years ago I
Speaker 1: applied for a job with Treasure. So that's how this
Speaker 1: whole went down, this whole thing.
Speaker 2: So I applied, I got in.
Speaker 1: It was a farther small company, maybe thirty forty people,
Speaker 1: and and yeah, I started building new software products features.
Speaker 1: Then I became sort of ahead of suite and chief
Speaker 1: product officer, and then finally three years ago, I was
Speaker 1: offered the cur control by the founders of the company.
Speaker 3: That's amazing, incredible journey moving up in the company. What
Speaker 3: was your first encounter with bitcoin and what was your
Speaker 3: aha moment that pulled you in and said, wait, I
Speaker 3: get what bigcoin is?
Speaker 2: It literally was when I started in the company.
Speaker 1: I mean I was interested in in general and even
Speaker 1: back in school, in economy, sociology, even psychology, those kind
Speaker 1: of I think topics are. And by the way, I
Speaker 1: also was always sort of like very much like a
Speaker 1: freedom slash individualistic person.
Speaker 2: You know, I like my.
Speaker 1: Sort of endeavors or how to say, experiences in nature,
Speaker 1: you know, like climbing and all that stuff. So I
Speaker 1: think that kind of all these things sort of connected
Speaker 1: together when I joined the company, and I had the
Speaker 1: amazing opportunity to basically be coached and taught by the
Speaker 1: founders of the whole hardware bold industry.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: So, because I always really like to read a lot
Speaker 1: and study quite a lot, I you know, read many
Speaker 1: bitcoin books and again got coached by by they founders,
Speaker 1: and then I think that's where it clicked, you know,
Speaker 1: I was like, Okay, so this really it's not just
Speaker 1: like some like money to egch, but it's als like
Speaker 1: much bigger problems in the world.
Speaker 3: And do you feel like at the start of bitcoin
Speaker 3: is this kind of pivotal moment in history where money
Speaker 3: is changing, the distribution of power is changing, because, like
Speaker 3: you mentioned, being able to be your own bank and
Speaker 3: have that self sovereignty so to speak, it seems like
Speaker 3: that was the birth of something very new in this
Speaker 3: digital age that is going to change the dynamic of
Speaker 3: people in governments and currency and much more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I do believe it is really like a paradigm
Speaker 1: shift in terms of how we should think about money.
Speaker 1: So I think that's where bitcoin is actually educational, almost
Speaker 1: almost like a platform, I would say for sure, because
Speaker 1: when when you when you read about it, when you
Speaker 1: try to get this exactly this sort of a moment,
Speaker 1: it sort of opens all the how to say, the
Speaker 1: many questions and answers around the world and around why
Speaker 1: you know, countries get into financial problems, why there is
Speaker 1: inflation and all that stuff. So I think that's yeah,
Speaker 1: that's where I would say it's not only technology, it's
Speaker 1: not only.
Speaker 2: Economic. It's more like.
Speaker 1: Almost like a yeah, like a social science or social topic,
Speaker 1: which sure should kind of everybody would benefit from knowing
Speaker 1: more about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's fascinating. And then from Bitcoin, this whole crypto
Speaker 3: asset class and industry was established.
Speaker 2: What are your thoughts looking back to.
Speaker 3: When bigcoin was started to where the market is now,
Speaker 3: where you have adoption from major banks in Wall Street
Speaker 3: and trad fin institutions, but also in general regular people
Speaker 3: being able to participate. But in addition you have blockchain
Speaker 3: tech like smart contracts and much more.
Speaker 1: So it's super multifaceted industry now, which is kind of nice.
Speaker 1: We see the adoption by more and more people. You know,
Speaker 1: the estimates are probably six hundred million people or maybe more,
Speaker 1: adding a couple hundreds every year, so it's growing, you know,
Speaker 1: pretty fast. Again, the adoption is almost like exponential in
Speaker 1: that sense. And you know, and it's a free market,
Speaker 1: which I'm by the way, big believer, and it's how
Speaker 1: it should be. So there are new services, new opportunities,
Speaker 1: new technological advancement, et cetera. And I think where we
Speaker 1: specifically come as a maybe as a company or even
Speaker 1: my own personal persuasion that we should be sort of
Speaker 1: careful or.
Speaker 2: Mindful of the true ownership of bitcoin and crypto.
Speaker 1: That's where obviously where gasure comes in as a product
Speaker 1: as well, because there are many now products that look
Speaker 1: like bitcoin or etherorem but they are actually not, right
Speaker 1: of course, spoken at the ETFs as an example, or
Speaker 1: even stocks of companies that are that are you know,
Speaker 1: treasury companies, et cetera. That's not the real ownership of
Speaker 1: bitcoin itself. And that's where I would remind everybody maybe
Speaker 1: to do the homework there, because it's kind of a
Speaker 1: pity because then it if you own this asset instead
Speaker 1: of the private keys from bitcoin itself, then it just
Speaker 1: removes you further further apart from the actual ownership, which
Speaker 1: is a pity because that's how that's why bitcoin started
Speaker 1: to exist to begin with, right so, and not to
Speaker 1: have like super leveraged financial products, but to be able
Speaker 1: to own proper non governmental money, you know, directly.
Speaker 3: That's a great point, and I think it's like a
Speaker 3: double edged sword, right where yes, it brings in more capital,
Speaker 3: Yes it gives more exposure to bitcoin, but it doesn't
Speaker 3: it takes away the ownership exactly exactly. And I try
Speaker 3: to remind people of that, like I believe in self costing.
Speaker 3: I've been self casting for a long time. And if
Speaker 3: you don't have access to your private keys, just know
Speaker 3: you don't actually own that bitcoin or that asset, just
Speaker 3: like you don't necessarily own the money in the bank,
Speaker 3: because the bank can take your money at any point.
Speaker 3: There's nothing stopping it from doing exactly.
Speaker 1: And they have just you know, some few percent of
Speaker 1: what they actually glean they own right like and a
Speaker 1: whole That's how and they are legally allowed to do so,
Speaker 1: like to boost the business, et cetera.
Speaker 2: I understand that, but it's how we got here.
Speaker 1: And therefore I would be mindful and and I think
Speaker 1: my job and job of the company is to remind
Speaker 1: everybody you know, consider this as well, because the self
Speaker 1: custody is sort of superior ownership because it's the true ownership,
Speaker 1: unlike the indirect exposure.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, so talk to us, talked to us a bit
Speaker 3: a bit about how Treasure is approaching educating the masses,
Speaker 3: the average person walking in the street, because you know,
Speaker 3: this could still be very intimidating to them, right the
Speaker 3: technological part. Maybe they're not very tech savvy. They they
Speaker 3: only know how to use their smartphone, and certain apps.
Speaker 3: How is treasure looking to approach it to make it easier.
Speaker 1: Right, some huge believer in persuading the market not by words,
Speaker 1: but by actions and by products, by really good experiences
Speaker 1: in the products. So and the just our Safe seven
Speaker 1: that we have just launched sexual testament to this because
Speaker 1: it is the most sort of user from the product
Speaker 1: that we have built. It's very beautiful, it has premium
Speaker 1: sort of built really literally you would use it the
Speaker 1: same way as you would do your high end phone. Right,
Speaker 1: So your example that you gave, like maybe people use
Speaker 1: only their phones, I would argue that's actually a very
Speaker 1: similar experience. It's like it's if you can manage your
Speaker 1: you know, has phones wireless headphones, then you can. This
Speaker 1: is even easier because headphones don't have displays, you know,
Speaker 1: so it doesn't guide you that well.
Speaker 2: So so it really is.
Speaker 1: Like super super easy. Sure, And yeah, that's how I
Speaker 1: think we should educate people by giving them the great products.
Speaker 2: And then of.
Speaker 1: Course there's the board's part as well, where we you know,
Speaker 1: we have pretty solid knowledge base, We have really good
Speaker 1: customer support. We even have a service called chess or
Speaker 1: Expert where you can actually book a session with a
Speaker 1: physical person.
Speaker 2: Not AI love that, but yeah, and you can.
Speaker 1: Talk about why self custody house self custody. They will
Speaker 1: help you to on board you and through the products
Speaker 1: and yeah, so all these things we do to serve
Speaker 1: as many people as possible.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And to your point, I love that you guys
Speaker 3: have that handholding service. So I think that's very important
Speaker 3: for a lot of people. You know, myself as an
Speaker 3: early adopter and many folks who are earlier adopters. This
Speaker 3: is it comes easy to us now, but if someone
Speaker 3: who's now encounter bring bitcoin or crypto and they want
Speaker 3: to do self class, it can be very intimidating, you know.
Speaker 3: So that's great that you offer that service. And to
Speaker 3: your point of the device, I was, you know, using
Speaker 3: the Treasure Saved seven yesterday and beautiful and it feels
Speaker 3: great in the hand. I love the touch screen and everything.
Speaker 3: So to your point, the usability barrier, breaking that down
Speaker 3: will improve adoption. But talk to us a bit about
Speaker 3: maybe you can't give away your secret sauce, right, but
Speaker 3: you know how you guys try are looking at you know,
Speaker 3: user behavior and user habits, and if you can dive
Speaker 3: dive a bit deeper, into that and like what makes
Speaker 3: the device a great device for people to use?
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, So we have actually in house research team
Speaker 1: the whole whole theme that is user experience research that
Speaker 1: basically go really long ways to uh, to understand the
Speaker 1: users' behaviors. Did they Actually that's the many versions of
Speaker 1: the early products with actual people, actually you know users.
Speaker 1: We collect that feedback, we apply it in the further development,
Speaker 1: and you know, so it's extremely important because ultimately the
Speaker 1: user is always right, right, So that's kind of the
Speaker 1: saying and when we need to listen to them, and.
Speaker 2: So that's one part.
Speaker 1: But also we are pretty heavy users ourselves, right, So
Speaker 1: that also is some feedback stream or like let's say,
Speaker 1: some feedback loop where we kind of see the issues
Speaker 1: ourselves and we try to improve upon the experiences that
Speaker 1: we have with our own products.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that makes sense that you guys are the users
Speaker 3: and you believe in self custody.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Let's talk a bit about the new device. There's some
Speaker 3: really cool features, like it's quantum resistant, it has full
Speaker 3: wireless connectivity. Let's talk about quantum resistance and what that
Speaker 3: means with the device and future updates.
Speaker 1: So specifically, this device we actually were thinking, Okay, there's
Speaker 1: the bus on the market that people might be worried about,
Speaker 1: you know, the sort of post quantum cryptography or whether
Speaker 1: it will break, you know, the hardware bullets and crypto
Speaker 1: industry and bitcoing, et cetera. And since we, uh, we
Speaker 1: were about to launch this product, we're thinking, well, maybe
Speaker 1: we can apply some of the post quantum protections already
Speaker 1: now that that will enable us to build on it
Speaker 1: in the future. Because mind you, these devices are for
Speaker 1: long term storage, right, It's not like you're sort of
Speaker 1: fast consume electronic goods in the way that you would
Speaker 1: just buy the next thing, you know, a year later
Speaker 1: or something like like you would with your phone or
Speaker 1: like people you know, like as much fast exactly with
Speaker 1: the hardware bullets. They're actually built in a way for
Speaker 1: for years of usage.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: You can upgrade if you want to do anything. But
Speaker 1: but they're built you know, with this in mind, not
Speaker 1: just with actually trying to.
Speaker 2: Onboard you in the next product straight away.
Speaker 1: And why I'm saying this is because because of these
Speaker 1: design sort of principles, we are already thinking now how
Speaker 1: we can use this advanced cryptography already at almost like
Speaker 1: the hardware slash manufacturing level, where you know, so there's
Speaker 1: a piece of quote and something called bootloader, and that's
Speaker 1: where we apply this and we can build on it
Speaker 1: in our updates and firmware and even does sweet and
Speaker 1: other software products. So so yeah, that's the idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that absolutely makes sense.
Speaker 3: And I'm assuming as there's further iterations with different types
Speaker 3: of a cryptography quantum, the devices can be upgraded.
Speaker 2: Firmware wise and things exactly exactly. That makes sense.
Speaker 3: One of the things I noticed with the announcement was
Speaker 3: the new battery and that gives extended life, but also
Speaker 3: if the device is not used for like years, it's still.
Speaker 1: Be operational exactly, So exactly because of the design principles
Speaker 1: that I've just described that you want to kind of
Speaker 1: think about it like long term useage of Because we
Speaker 1: are huddlers, we chose battery. It's called lithium iron phosphate
Speaker 1: and unlike, for example, lithium ion, which would be like
Speaker 1: your normal battery that you have in your phones and
Speaker 1: other devices. Sure, this battery, this chemistry actually allows for
Speaker 1: the battery to discharge or sell discharge much slower than
Speaker 1: the standard battery, which means that if you exactly like
Speaker 1: leave it in your jower or whatever and you don't
Speaker 1: touch the device, it will take four times slower to
Speaker 1: kind of lose the power on its own, right, So
Speaker 1: we can just leave it for a year in jower
Speaker 1: and when you take it out, it will still function
Speaker 1: without you, for example, needing to recharge it.
Speaker 2: Yet depending of.
Speaker 1: Course on you know, other factors such as I don't
Speaker 1: know temperature of the environment and how much battery was left,
Speaker 1: et cetera. But it's basically superherior how to say, it's
Speaker 1: superior technology for the given use case, which is like
Speaker 1: again the long term storage.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's great because one of the feedback items I've
Speaker 3: heard from people in general use hardware, wealties make sure
Speaker 3: it's charged because you know, it's really great. That's like
Speaker 3: a key component having the longer battery exactly.
Speaker 1: Because also another feature of this battery is that, with
Speaker 1: for example, the land batteries, you would.
Speaker 2: You could be or should be worried.
Speaker 1: About the battery being drained all the way to zero
Speaker 1: because at some point it fails, of course, it damages
Speaker 1: the device or damages the battery and you cannot really
Speaker 1: recharge it again. In this device, that's not the case.
Speaker 1: You can actually go all the way to zero and
Speaker 1: it's not going to do a sort of damage the
Speaker 1: battery itself.
Speaker 3: That's amazing. That's pretty groundbreaking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's pretty cool. Yeah, great, great feature.
Speaker 3: And then the other part is wireless connectivity. Tell us
Speaker 3: about that via Bluetooth, And is there any security risk
Speaker 3: with the Bluetooth connection?
Speaker 1: So we actually went again through pretty deep like rabbit
Speaker 1: hole to make sure that the connection is super secure.
Speaker 1: So it's into an encrypted we call it our host protocol.
Speaker 2: And I mean.
Speaker 1: Theoretically you could you could argue there are some potential risks,
Speaker 1: but actually they're not very likely or anything. And by
Speaker 1: the way, you can still use the device with the
Speaker 1: cable if you want, but it's not a it's not
Speaker 1: a big risk honestly.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, for sure. And then I noticed, I don't
Speaker 3: know if this is new, but it's like waterproof with
Speaker 3: a new aluminum body and the gorilla glass. Is that
Speaker 3: new the waterproof aspect or is that?
Speaker 1: Yeah? It has it has a certain rating for let's say,
Speaker 1: like water splashes or something like this.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: And we also I think what is quite new with
Speaker 1: this device is it is a display because we actually
Speaker 1: built like a custom shape display, so we actually worked
Speaker 1: with the manufacture that because normally you would you would
Speaker 1: look for components on the market that are in specific shape,
Speaker 1: so you know, the display would be some like square
Speaker 1: or whatever, but we actually wanted the really iconic Chasser shape,
Speaker 1: so it actually is you know, like, yeah, can actually
Speaker 1: I have the device somewhere here so you know, it's
Speaker 1: really the like the iconic shape that is, which.
Speaker 2: Is which makes it really nice.
Speaker 1: And by the way, it's also good for the us
Speaker 1: ability because it's nice.
Speaker 2: In your hands, comfortable exactly exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really great. I think the design is great
Speaker 3: and to your point, it's right away. If you see
Speaker 3: this device, you know it's treasure. Yeah, yeah, exactly, Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's really cool.
Speaker 2: I have to say.
Speaker 3: Your presentation yesterday, the device set up, it felt like
Speaker 3: an Apple presentation.
Speaker 2: It's a compliment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely a compliment, right because we've seen Steve Jobs
Speaker 3: and Apple they set the standard for Yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: product so very beautiful. I love everything that you really appreciated.
Speaker 3: A question regards to the future of self custody as
Speaker 3: technology evolves, and there's further iterations. Do you believe there
Speaker 3: might be how do I put it, the way we
Speaker 3: store self our keys, private keys is going to be
Speaker 3: tied to biometrics maybe or retina or so.
Speaker 2: The problem with this is actually.
Speaker 1: The fact that you could potentially tie the private keys
Speaker 1: to some physical object that is unique in the world,
Speaker 1: such as a retina. Sure, and that's problematic if you
Speaker 1: think about it, because then you could you could basically
Speaker 1: make the link between the two because you're not going
Speaker 1: to change your.
Speaker 2: Eye for example. Yeah, whereas.
Speaker 1: With you know what you can basically when you create
Speaker 1: a new set of private keys by for example, Chaser, Uh,
Speaker 1: it doesn't it doesn't link to anything. So so that's
Speaker 1: kind of like a security slash privacy feature. Right, So
Speaker 1: if you tie your back up to your i mean
Speaker 1: putty parts or somebody or something, then somebody could actually
Speaker 1: like affect you and so so it's probably not a
Speaker 1: good idea that a good way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just curious because you know, you see a
Speaker 3: lot of apps now they fingerprint biometric and then you
Speaker 3: know you have the folks at World World Cooin World
Speaker 3: Cooin they do the So I'm curious, like it's self custody,
Speaker 3: you can adapt in it but to your point, there's
Speaker 3: a rest there.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So it's a completely different story if you talk
Speaker 1: about just authentications such as instead of pin that you
Speaker 1: would just use your fingerprint to let's say, open an app,
Speaker 1: and then you know, that's fine, that's that's not a problem.
Speaker 1: But like when when we are talking about connecting to
Speaker 1: the private keys, that's a whole different.
Speaker 2: Story, and it's probably another great idea.
Speaker 3: Sure, yeah, yeah, somebody come and kidnap you or something, right. Yeah, Now,
Speaker 3: in regards to AI, are you looking into how you
Speaker 3: can leverage AI, and maybe maybe this might still be
Speaker 3: too early, but like maybe AI agents or AI in
Speaker 3: devices or in the software things like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, great, great question. So actually it is on
Speaker 2: our radar.
Speaker 1: So I talked about the fact that we have pretty
Speaker 1: great support and I mean we are using it already
Speaker 1: today for you know, just saying basically issues of our
Speaker 1: customers or users. So if they write to us, actually
Speaker 1: AI help with this immensely. But I can also imagine
Speaker 1: we would have like help inside of the products like
Speaker 1: our Chaser's Feet for example, where it would educate you,
Speaker 1: it would help you to make you conscious self custody decisions,
Speaker 1: It could even help with some you know, like buy
Speaker 1: the dep you know, messaging.
Speaker 2: I can imagine all these things.
Speaker 1: So so yeah, I think it would be great feature.
Speaker 1: I think it would be cool, cool for like also
Speaker 1: engagement in our apps. So so yeah, we're thinking about
Speaker 1: this and I can see that it would happen maybe
Speaker 1: next year or something like this.
Speaker 3: Oh sure, So speaking the next year, is there anything
Speaker 3: also on your roadmap that you want to highlight that
Speaker 3: There might be some things under NDA you can't say,
Speaker 3: but just curious.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are many things.
Speaker 1: So we for example, are working on sort of like
Speaker 1: a developer gateway. We call it that way we could
Speaker 1: have external companies, external developers that doesn't have to be companies,
Speaker 1: it can be individuals as well to actually submit code,
Speaker 1: for example for adding new coins to our firmware or
Speaker 1: our products. So those kind of ideas, which is kind
Speaker 1: of good for the scalability of the ecosystem. What else,
Speaker 1: we also adding more and more features to our sort
Speaker 1: of software services in terms of the ability to spend
Speaker 1: your crypto from your phone, for example, from a mobile apps,
Speaker 1: So that's on the roadmap as well. We're also thinking
Speaker 1: how to improve the experience around the wallet backup. So
Speaker 1: there are also some because now it's you know, very
Speaker 1: much like paper driven, but we you're thinking of also
Speaker 1: using the NFC and some some kind of capacity, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, the device features as well. We don't
Speaker 1: we didn't really talk about it at the at the
Speaker 1: event because it doesn't have any feature now, but but
Speaker 1: it features the NFC technology in the just or Safe
Speaker 1: seven as well, which we could apply for different applications
Speaker 1: and different features as well. And what else, Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: we are connecting more third party wallets for example, right,
Speaker 1: so so it's kind of cool as well. So users
Speaker 1: can actually if they are, for example, used to work
Speaker 1: with some software wallets in their phones, they can also
Speaker 1: use you know, proper self custody of hardware with us.
Speaker 1: But they can also connect it through through something we
Speaker 1: call connect to you know, to the.
Speaker 2: Walls that they like. So yeah, those are probably some
Speaker 2: of the highlights.
Speaker 3: Oh, very cool, very exciting. You mentioned developers, and you know,
Speaker 3: one of the great things that Treasure is doing is
Speaker 3: the code. Your devices are open source. The code is
Speaker 3: open source. People can be it. And I'm speaking as
Speaker 3: a NUBE, I don't I'm not a developer. Is there
Speaker 3: any risk to that I definitely understand the benefits in
Speaker 3: the openness. I absolutely believe in that. But is there
Speaker 3: any risk in the world of AI and bad actors
Speaker 3: trying to attack trouser?
Speaker 1: Not really, And let me try to explain how I mean.
Speaker 1: But I'm not an engineer myself, right, So also a
Speaker 1: disclaimer here, but the fact that it's open is actually
Speaker 1: benefit for the security because thousands of experts, technical people
Speaker 1: can review and do review our code, even specialized labs,
Speaker 1: et cetera, where you could argue it possibly have some
Speaker 1: more like a business. Downside is that somebody would just
Speaker 1: copy paste the code and they would start. It will
Speaker 1: give them some head start to try to here, for example,
Speaker 1: a competition or whatever. And then by the way, happened
Speaker 1: in the bust or is happening as we speak as well.
Speaker 1: But the benefits are definitely great in the in terms
Speaker 1: of the security and.
Speaker 2: What we actually do for the whole industry.
Speaker 1: And just as an example, I would give actually the
Speaker 1: wallet backup, so so you're familiar with the seat phrase, right,
Speaker 1: the words that we put as a backup of the
Speaker 1: private keys. So this standard that we created as a company,
Speaker 1: I mean, not me myself, but the founders of the
Speaker 1: company created a standard that now uses like half.
Speaker 2: Of the industry.
Speaker 1: You know, three hundred million roughly are using the wallet
Speaker 1: backup not in hardware words, but also software walds right,
Speaker 1: And this format is actually open source, and by its
Speaker 1: nature its open source nature. You know, these companies implemented
Speaker 1: it and they don't have to trust Treasure and they
Speaker 1: I simply simply use it. And that's why I believe
Speaker 1: it got so wildly adopted, which is quite cool if
Speaker 1: you think about it, because it has been so impactful
Speaker 1: on the viasibility side of the industry.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3: You Like I said, I love that openness and transparency
Speaker 3: and being able to have the industry weigh in on
Speaker 3: the code.
Speaker 2: So that's really great.
Speaker 3: With all the success the Treasure has been having all
Speaker 3: these product launches, are their plans to go public.
Speaker 2: Not really, not, not anytime soon, I believe.
Speaker 1: So we are actually quite proudly privately owned, which is
Speaker 1: cool because it gives you basically the ability to make
Speaker 1: sure the ability to protect the mission and the division
Speaker 1: of the company. So because we are quite ruthless there,
Speaker 1: I would say, you know, there are many ideas from
Speaker 1: within the company outside of the company to do all
Speaker 1: kind of new products. But sometimes I see it would
Speaker 1: diverge us from being the you know, course of Custida
Speaker 1: business and and I see it as a as a
Speaker 1: race of us not being really really solid in the
Speaker 1: core core value that you offered to the world. And therefore,
Speaker 1: you know, if he had external investors and you know,
Speaker 1: like boards that are maybe even outsiders, sure, then yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we would lose some of that some of
Speaker 1: the details that makes us who we are today.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know if we can talk about it,
Speaker 3: and you know, we'll edit it if anything, But no
Speaker 3: problem was I feel like a Ledger is in that
Speaker 3: situation that you're kind of highlighting where the influence is
Speaker 3: coming more from the outside because of taking investor money, right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: they kind of put themselves in a in a corner
Speaker 3: a bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sometimes it's it feels like that from their communication.
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, I have all the respect for
Speaker 1: our competitors, right, so I'm definitely not in a position
Speaker 1: I would like to like have to say say anything
Speaker 1: bad about them. But from what I at least have
Speaker 1: been as I follow them, I can see that they
Speaker 1: are maybe switching the focus much faster than we do.
Speaker 1: And I think that's good and bad at the same time, right,
Speaker 1: because we could argue that maybe we're not able to
Speaker 1: get all the upside from all the business opportunities that
Speaker 1: are there, like in the market right mainly in the
Speaker 1: sort of crypto not bitcoin, but more like the crypto worlds,
Speaker 1: like anything that's happening. They are all these like hypes,
Speaker 1: you know, the NFTs meme, you name it. So we're
Speaker 1: I think slower on this and more skeptical, more conservative.
Speaker 1: I think they're way faster and they're even able to
Speaker 1: switch the brand around this to whatever the darga and
Speaker 1: target audience is, you know, the next quarter, a year, whatever.
Speaker 1: But I think the benefit on the other side for
Speaker 1: us is that the conservative approach makes it sort of
Speaker 1: more stable, more twe to the values, more mission driven,
Speaker 1: which we say kind of proudly because I think some
Speaker 1: business people say, like, you cannot be mission driven because
Speaker 1: it's you know, you're kind of leaving some money on
Speaker 1: the table. But we are saying it quite proudly because
Speaker 1: we need to focus on the core, core mission.
Speaker 2: Of the company.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, I wanted to get your take on the tokenization
Speaker 3: market because we're seeing a lot of asset stocks gold either.
Speaker 3: There's even folks working on real estate to put it
Speaker 3: on the blockchain. It's treasure looking to support those assets
Speaker 3: eventually once you know, once the market settles down and we,
Speaker 3: I guess folks decide what is you know, what are
Speaker 3: what are you going to use these tokenized assets for?
Speaker 3: How they're Can you know they're gonna be fit in
Speaker 3: the market? Are you looking at that?
Speaker 1: Never saying ever, I don't know. We don't really proactively
Speaker 1: do it. I think again because of the sort of
Speaker 1: converse that the converse that the co conservative approach. My apologies,
Speaker 1: but you know, ultimately Chaser is sort of going agnostic
Speaker 1: or keyse agnostic. You could you can say, I mean
Speaker 1: it protects a bitcoin, it protects keys from ethereum and
Speaker 1: anything else that we support, right, So I could imagine
Speaker 1: that would be an option as well, But we are
Speaker 1: not like proactively looking into this, so it'd be probably
Speaker 1: more like laid back approach and see what happen, what happens.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, I think it's it's so early, yeah, and
Speaker 3: I think the regulators are still catching up to try
Speaker 3: to figure out how this will all be regulated. I
Speaker 3: could speak for the United States, there're still you know,
Speaker 3: we still need a crypto legislation. We still need to
Speaker 3: figure out what assets can be tokenized, what can't, how
Speaker 3: do you fit in the markets, and much more. As
Speaker 3: far as stable coins, you know, in the United States,
Speaker 3: for example, we just passed the Genius Act, which allows
Speaker 3: a lot of people to create stable coins. Similar question,
Speaker 3: will you look to support different stable coins as well?
Speaker 1: Yeah, we even do support some of them already, So yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's one of the valid use cases for
Speaker 1: crypto in general, right, like serre value stable coins and
Speaker 1: some casino as well there for sure, like speculation. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I believe it's one of the core use cases because
Speaker 1: you sometimes you hear like use cases in crypto and
Speaker 1: you ask in the end, Okay, so what exactly is
Speaker 1: the use is? Like just putting something on a blockchain
Speaker 1: doesn't mean it's useful to anybody exactly, So I would
Speaker 1: be a bit worried about or you know, more again
Speaker 1: a conservative there, but table going is definitely valid use case.
Speaker 2: So so we do support them.
Speaker 3: You know, to your point of like, I have this
Speaker 3: like love hate relationship with meme coins because I believe
Speaker 3: in the free market and people being able to create
Speaker 3: stuff on the blockchain, right, But also I don't some
Speaker 3: of the stuff scammers are doing, rock pulling people, right,
Speaker 3: I don't like that of course. So it's it's this
Speaker 3: weird thing in this market right now, right, being able
Speaker 3: to put you know, memes for anything, like I can
Speaker 3: create a meme for the treasure device or something. Right,
Speaker 3: what do you what do you what do you think
Speaker 3: this market ends up? You know, as far as memes.
Speaker 2: Honest I don't know much about it.
Speaker 1: Again, like speaking from a very skeptical point of view,
Speaker 1: very conservative. I mean, show me the use case, you know,
Speaker 1: tell me how it's useful, how it benefits humanity, how
Speaker 1: it benefits how it solves.
Speaker 2: Anything in the how to solve any problem in the world.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: So, and when it's just simple speculation, then I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's a free market. You can speculate as
Speaker 1: much as you want, feel free to do whatever you want.
Speaker 1: That's ultimate little freedom as well. Honestly freedom do you.
Speaker 2: Lose your money? See your freedom? You know, Like I'm
Speaker 2: not going to stop you.
Speaker 1: But again, quite conversative, con I mean choosing the difficult
Speaker 1: words for me to pronounce. I'm sorry, Yeah, so quite
Speaker 1: conservative approach.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think that makes sense because you know
Speaker 3: what this feels like. You know, in the dot com boom,
Speaker 3: there were a lot of great companies like Googles and Amazon,
Speaker 3: but there were a lot of companies no revenue model.
Speaker 3: They were just running a lot of ads and a
Speaker 3: lot of collapsed in exactly. So it feels like a
Speaker 3: lot of meme coins are going to do that when
Speaker 3: the liquidity goes away.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's yeah, it's ultimately exactly bubbles and yeah, which
Speaker 1: I mean another example, I think the AI is a
Speaker 1: little bit of a bubble as well. Like I think
Speaker 1: now every company is like AI driven and whatever. It's like, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: machine learning has been here for I don't know how
Speaker 1: many years, but a really long time, and it was
Speaker 1: just called differently. Of course, they are like a huge
Speaker 1: breakthroughs sure, and of course, like we I mean, especially
Speaker 1: as as a technological company, like a tech company, we
Speaker 1: of course want to be more productive, more efficient, smarter, faster,
Speaker 1: you know, of course than we would use AI. But
Speaker 1: I would be just careful just to go crazy and
Speaker 1: you know, and just pretend that it's going to solve.
Speaker 2: Every problem in the world, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, well put okay, match, it's twenty thirty five
Speaker 3: years from now. Where do you see the crypto industry
Speaker 3: and market? Do you see more adoption, more people being
Speaker 3: spending their more merchants accept in crypto, and things like.
Speaker 2: That, exactly those things you said. I think.
Speaker 1: The market gap will be greater, the prices will be higher, obviously,
Speaker 1: the more people will be in it, I think a
Speaker 1: couple more hundred million will probably. I can imagine we'll
Speaker 1: be around like at least one billion users, if not more.
Speaker 1: Also one eighth of the world. Treaser will have a
Speaker 1: new products in the markets as well as far as
Speaker 1: wald backups, as far as hardware, ball, as as far
Speaker 1: as software services, more coins, et cetera. There will be
Speaker 1: probably clear maybe clear legislations and some regulatory questions as well.
Speaker 2: And I cannot think of anything else. I think that's it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll have to see how things evolve. I got
Speaker 3: some wrap up questions there for you, of course. Uh
Speaker 3: it's a rapid fire favorite food.
Speaker 2: Pasta favorite musician or band.
Speaker 1: Corrosenwinkle guitarist, Yeah, nice, favorite movie The Big Shirt.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, that's a good one. Favorite book.
Speaker 1: Principles by Ray Dalio oh yeah.
Speaker 3: And when you're not working at treasure, what are you
Speaker 3: doing for fun?
Speaker 1: I climb mountains.
Speaker 3: You mentioned earlier, this is the last question that you
Speaker 3: play guitar. I play guitar as well as well. Yeah,
Speaker 3: what's your favorite type of music to play? And what
Speaker 3: type of guitars do you own? So?
Speaker 2: Yeah, good question.
Speaker 1: So I started as a classical guitar musician, I mean
Speaker 1: I studied it. So I own, by the way, some
Speaker 1: Spanish guitars, like some nice ones. But now these day
Speaker 1: mostly play jazz. I want to be just musician. A
Speaker 1: bit of my buddies from the high school, which some
Speaker 1: of them are actual professional.
Speaker 2: Jazz musicians unlike me.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: And I also play bass guitar like a five shrink
Speaker 1: and I have an electric guitar as well.
Speaker 2: Very cool.
Speaker 3: I play almost everything. I have les Paul Fender strats.
Speaker 3: I have my acoustic of course nice sometimes I play
Speaker 3: to live my wife gets upset, uh monte absolute pleasure.
Speaker 2: Likewise, incredible event.
Speaker 3: I love the new Save seven and our next interview
Speaker 3: maybe will be in New York at my studio New
Speaker 3: York and we can we can catch up on.
Speaker 2: The latest there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's talk about a bit On Wall Street.
Speaker 2: That will be cool, awesome,