@nicolasburtey AMA: Building Bitcoin Banks, FOSS, USD over Lightning, Bitcoin Beach Wallet, Liquidity fee structures for wallets
42.7k sats \ 56 comments \ @nb 15 Mar 2022 bitcoin freebie
I’m Nicolas Burtey, co-founder and CEO of Galoy. We developed the Bitcoin Beach Wallet and now offer an open source Bitcoin banking platform, based on our experience in El Salvador. You can ask me anything – here are some topics I might have an opinion on:
  • Why Lightning will take off in developing countries first
  • Being a digital nomad with a 1y old during a pandemic
  • The issues with digital nomadism
  • Pros and cons of Kubernetes
  • Shared custody
  • Creating the Bitcoin Beach Wallet
  • The benefits of Typescript in the context of a project like Galoy
  • Why working in the bitcoin space is harder than any other industry
  • How to get USD over Lightning
  • Fee structures for Bitcoin banks
  • Why European payment system is closer to Bitcoin than the US payment systems
  • French cheese
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58 sats \ 1 reply \ @02f046b2ae 15 Mar 2022 freebie
Hey Nick,
Always a pleasure my brother. Thank you for all you have done for the Bitcoin community.
As a nomad, you should come to spend some time in Dakar, Sénégal. Would love to collaborate in deploying the community wallet for Bitcoin Teranga. Would you be down?
We would love to deploy a fork of Galoy 💯 https://twitter.com/bitcointeranga
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50 sats \ 0 replies \ @nb OP 15 Mar 2022
💯
I think Africa is a prime region for bitcoin adoption like Latin America.
Very similar to El Salvador, specially the countries using the CFA. The countries not sovereign on their currency will be the first to adopt bitcoin.
And starting as a grassroot project is the best way to go!
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34 sats \ 1 reply \ @jamesg45 15 Mar 2022 freebie
How does Galoy make money?
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53 sats \ 0 replies \ @nb OP 15 Mar 2022
think like Redhat
If a company wants to deploy a bitcoin bank, then they might want to use our codebase instead of developing everything themselves
from here, they could do the deployment and maintenance themselves, but because we know the codebase best, there is benefits in hiring us (lower cost, can provide SLA, know how to add features if needed)
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26 sats \ 1 reply \ @kr 15 Mar 2022
If you had to guess, what percentage of commerce is happening on the Lightning Network for a) Bitcoin Beach, and b) El Salvador as a whole?
Bonus sats if you split up your answers into % of transactions and % of tx volume!
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68 sats \ 0 replies \ @nb OP 15 Mar 2022
something along the line of 60% intraledger, 30% lightning, 10% onchain. volume would have higher skew for onchain than transaction count.
we see different regimes across time also. for instance, when Chivo wallet was released, it was really only onchain, so we had a spike at this time, but now lightning is working better on Chivo so we see more of it, thanksfully.
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35 sats \ 8 replies \ @nb OP 15 Mar 2022
I got 17k sats from this AMA. who should I donate to it?
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33 sats \ 2 replies \ @kr 15 Mar 2022
Use those sats to post jobs for Galoy on the Stacker News job board. You'll get your job postings in front of 13,500+ Bitcoiners and all the sats will be paid back directly to Stacker News users.
100% of SN revenue goes back to users.
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73 sats \ 1 reply \ @nb OP 15 Mar 2022
good idea. I'll do that unless @02f046b2ae send me an invoice in the next 10 minutes for 17k sats
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr 12 Apr 2022
Are you still hiring at Galoy? Stacker News had 15,600+ unique visitors last month and right now you can get your job postings in front of them for $4/week
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @nout 15 Mar 2022
Donating is a great idea, but just to give another suggestion: Find the best posts on Stacker News and pay it to those authors over time - that's how we create a circular economy :)
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0 sats \ 3 replies \ @agbegin 15 Mar 2022 freebie
Send it to Bitcoin Teranga!
15 sats \ 3 replies \ @dsg00d 15 Mar 2022 freebie
What challenges do you foresee with Bitcoin banks in terms of crossing geographical borders and facilitating financial activity across many regulatory jurisdictions?
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36 sats \ 2 replies \ @nb OP 15 Mar 2022
I think most of the barrier are within jurisdictions, not necessarily across borders.
said another way, the key painpoints I think related to going back and forth from fiat to sats. every country has different rules. after the conversation to sats, going to another sats wallet has less (if any) barrier
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3 sats \ 1 reply \ @dsg00d 15 Mar 2022 freebie
Understood - so is it fair to say that bitcoin banks face the same regulatory burden / challenges as regular banks? If so - is it fair to view Galoy as making use of Bitcoin predominately as a monetary rail, without the benefits of the sovereignty properties of Bitcoin?
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29 sats \ 0 replies \ @nb OP 15 Mar 2022
it depends of the jurisdictions. it would be fair to say that's the case in the US. in El Salvador for instance, crypto was not regulated at the time we started the wallet, whereas traditional is/was heavily regulated.
now, we expect people and company to deploy our stack in (very) different ways:
  • some will want to do it at small scale for a local community and may not need/seek any licensing to do so. similar to our experience in El Salvador for instance.
  • some companies, like neobanks or corporation that want to operate on the bitcoin standard, or even some city (we're in touch with some that we can't disclose yet), want to deploy our stack and will do it with the intend of getting all the regulatory approval
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22 sats \ 1 reply \ @02b66cc60f 15 Mar 2022 freebie
Any plans for proof of reserves on the Galoy stack?
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413 sats \ 0 replies \ @nb OP 15 Mar 2022
100%. posted an issue almost a year ago already
I think we should post a bounty to get the developer community contribute on this. this is a very important things to add to our stack IMO
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22 sats \ 2 replies \ @agbegin 15 Mar 2022 freebie
I can barely stay sane with a 1 yr old at home, what tricks did you learn for traveling/digital nomad-ing with such a young child?
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41 sats \ 1 reply \ @nb OP 15 Mar 2022 freebie
it's actually easier at 6-18 months than after!
  • choose airbnb with at least 2 bedrooms
  • you have less clutter because you just get a few toy, and change them when you travel from one place to another one
  • if you find Airbnb that have toys, that is a great option
  • traveling by car is a lot easier than place. don't have to plan as much with a car.
  • don't book anything is advance
  • it's easier if one of the partner is not working :)
in the end, that is not so much different than been at the "real" home IMO.
what is more challenging is the work part of digital nomadism. things like bad internet, bad chairs, bad desks.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @agbegin 15 Mar 2022 freebie
Wait they had chairs!? Maybe I do need to nomad :laughing:
13 sats \ 1 reply \ @Majjin 15 Mar 2022
How does USD over Lightning work? Is it similar to what Strike is doing?
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382 sats \ 0 replies \ @nb OP 15 Mar 2022
similar I guess, but different. AFAIK, strike use either USD in bank account or USDT depending on the jurisdiction.
Our current POC use synthetic USD. a more detailed explanation on how this works is here.
A 1h video explaining how this works in detail can be watched here
It would not be very complicated to also add the option of USD and USDT, we would need to have another dealer that would use a spot exchange instead
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13 sats \ 1 reply \ @AdoptingBTC 15 Mar 2022 freebie
Camembert or Roquefort?
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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @nb OP 15 Mar 2022 freebie
Roquefort
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12 sats \ 2 replies \ @nout 15 Mar 2022
Do you have any thoughts on how to handle "inheritance" in Bitcoin/Lightning? I.e. how to not lose coins when the owner dies... do you have preferred solutions? How to do that non-custodially? Is there some development in this space that you are excited about?
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11 sats \ 1 reply \ @nb OP 15 Mar 2022
don't have the most insights on this one. https://revault.dev/ is probably a good starting point, but it's more institution than for individual AFAIK
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20 sats \ 0 replies \ @nout 15 Mar 2022
Thank you for revault link!
How does work with Bitcoin Beach Wallet? Like if (I sincerely hope not) the main key holders would die, what would happen? Are all finances from the individuals lost?
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12 sats \ 2 replies \ @UncleSamtoshi 15 Mar 2022 freebie
What area of bitcoin do you think needs more builders?
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234 sats \ 0 replies \ @nb OP 15 Mar 2022
we need more dev on bitcoin core that have a focus on security. there are so few devs very focus on that. The stakes are so high, we need more.
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11 sats \ 0 replies \ @0338df606b 15 Mar 2022 freebie
I'm not @nb, but I work with him. IMHO, solutions for businesses. Need readily accessible point of sale terminals for physical businesses.
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10 sats \ 1 reply \ @fiatjaf 15 Mar 2022
  1. Why do you use Slack instead of something better like Telegram?
  2. How is Galoy "shared custody" is a single server controls accounts and balances?
  3. Is Latin America "western"?
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @nb OP 17 Mar 2022
  1. slack channels are helpful IMO. slack has many limitations but I can't say Telegram is panacea. we had the discussion days ago about switching out of slack but not clear what the best option is if we were to move out it.
  2. accounts and balance are indeed a trusted setup currently. shared custody rely on the fact it's possible to have a multisig for cold storage and keys holder can be distributed on different people.
  3. no?
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @note_bene 15 Mar 2022 freebie
As legend has it, Charlie Shrem (operator of BitInstant Exchange 2011-2013) found himself well positioned to move into Bitcoin coming from an Orthodox Brooklyn community running check cashing and wire transfers to the Old World.
Is there some kind of cultural-economic milieu that's going to drive Lightning tech? El Salvador with it's ex-pats and migrant workers sending in sats?
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10 sats \ 2 replies \ @02e8923caf 15 Mar 2022 freebie
Is there any way to make lightning payments offline without internet?
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12 sats \ 1 reply \ @nb OP 15 Mar 2022
I'm not familiar with it but I know that it's possible to do some payment where only the sender is online, not the recipient. it used some types of PIN
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1 sat \ 0 replies \ @spookydub 15 Mar 2022 freebie
Neat implementation of this here https://youtu.be/DaJGkJZsImo
22 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b 15 Mar 2022
  1. What’s a prediction you have about Bitcoin’s future that few bitcoiners hold?
  2. It seems like Galoy is kind of bespoke SaaS currently. Are there plans to make setting up a Bitcoin bank even less interactive? It seems like there’s growing demand for Galoy’s services.
  3. When do you think we’ll see DLC-mediated stablecoins on Lightning?
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11 sats \ 0 replies \ @nb OP 15 Mar 2022
  1. msats are not real
  2. you mean one click setup type of things? for small community project that is the long term goal, still a lot to do to get there. for larger projects, they'll all wants specifics things so there will be custom things to configure/implement
  3. I think we're at the #reckless stage of DLC. it will takes multiple years before we have stable channel imo, because we're compounding the challenges of DLC and lightning.
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6 sats \ 3 replies \ @hunter 15 Mar 2022 freebie
allo :)
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17 sats \ 0 replies \ @nb OP 15 Mar 2022 freebie
aloha
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15 sats \ 1 reply \ @hunter 15 Mar 2022 freebie
Can you kindly explain a bit about the shared custody behind the Bitcoin Beach Wallet -- and the associated benefits ?
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4 sats \ 0 replies \ @nb OP 15 Mar 2022
shared custody means that you can have multiple keyholders for a multisig wallet.
the benefits of this for a project like bitcoin beach wallet is that this reduce the trust by not having a single point of failure in who own the keys
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4 sats \ 2 replies \ @0236c96949 15 Mar 2022 freebie
Hola
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2 sats \ 1 reply \ @nb OP 15 Mar 2022 freebie
Hola hola!
2 sats \ 1 reply \ @msubs1 15 Mar 2022 freebie
Hi Nicolas - could you please discuss the fee structures for Bitcoin banks?
1 sat \ 3 replies \ @robvaldezcpa 15 Mar 2022 freebie
Wen synthetic Euro?
0 sats \ 0 replies \ @pueblerino 16 Mar 2022
Do you see bitcoin development/adoption as enough good reason to settle and stop/pause nomadism?
How does bitcoin has changed your perception/appreciation for places? (if any)
Thanks!
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