Fireside Chat: BTCFi: Demand Is There, Users Aren’t. What Are We Missing? | EBC11

Lovely to have you here Mark. So without wasting any time please tell us about go mining and what is your role of go mine.

Thank you. I'm very happy to be here. Um great panel. I'm very happy to follow such a such an interesting discussion. Um so go mining uh is uh is a digital ecosystem uh built around bitcoin.

We our overall goal is to drive Bitcoin adoption. We've started to do that by building a digital man mining capacity. We have over three million users um running over 10 million Terraash right now of uh mining power earning uh Bitcoin rewards obviously and we're building out that ecosystem um around value creation via Bitcoin. So we've we've allowed a frictionless uh capability to mine Bitcoin. Um now we're building out capability to earn yield uh collateralized Bitcoin uh provide liquidity via via Bitcoin lending uh Bitcoin back lending etc etc.

So, um, we are one of the companies that is, uh, that is, uh, sort of bringing the the the promise of Bitcoin to life. And, uh, I'm I'm very happy. I'm I'm going to steal, um, Elliot's phrase that, uh, adoption is a one-way door. Uh, for us, Bitcoin, driving Bitcoin adoption is is one of the main sort of uh, strategic uh, goals that we're focusing the company around. We are big believers in Bitcoin.

We've been uh building our business since 2017 and u uh it's been a great journey and and we're looking forward to uh uh to to to sort of playing our part in driving the uh the entire ecosystem and the entire adoption story forward.

And Mark, help us understand what BTCI is all about. weird about traditional finance, predi, decentral finance, defy, but what is BTC?

So, BT BTCI is a uh term that that we've seen thrown around and we think it makes sense. It's it's basically DeFi for Bitcoin, right? So, Bitcoin has had this traditional story as a store of value, the digital gold um story. And that's worked very well for the first, you know, 15, 16, 17 years. um that Bitcoin's been around.

Um but we think the the story and the opportunity of Bitcoin is a lot more than just the store of value story. So I think the store of value has been um has been solved to to a large extent, right? You have ETFs, you have uh uh pension funds and and uh and and whatnot starting to buy into Bitcoin. There's legislation uh as we just heard in the US and in other jurisdictions around adopting Bitcoin as a store of value. But we think the next sort of challenge or the next frontier is beyond just using it as a digital gold uh all of the other economic activities that uh the Bitcoin blockchain is able to uh deliver to the user base.

So, we talked about I mean the the the reason for our conversation is we went out and conducted a survey of of Bitcoin holders and and we asked um 700 plus people uh that have been long-term holders of Bitcoin, you know, what else do you want to do with Bitcoin? And people said, "Yeah, great. I would like to earn yield. Uh I would like to have some sort of passive income, yield staking, whatever. I would like to have liquidity um uh around Bitcoin as an asset and uh I'd like to be able to you know do other things that people normally do economic activities around uh more of a currency aspect as opposed to a store of value aspect and that's to our mind that's what BTCI is is building out those capabilities around Bitcoin um that go far beyond just the store of value sort of value creation

and talking about BT BCI as you mentioned the topic of this discussion as well demand for BTCI is there but it lacks user what do you mean by that

right so sort of building on on on the previous question people want to do a lot more with their Bitcoin holdings but there's uh a lot of issues around adoption and around the the the friction um that is uh inherent with with all of those additional ancillary um economic functions around Bitcoin. So people have have have uh have adopted the store of value conversation but uh using that uh sort of store of value as uh an everyday economic asset becomes more challenging. There's a lot of uh BTC solutions uh various protocols, bridges uh staking solutions that are very difficult to use. So a they're difficult to use. B they don't solve the issues around uh security concerns.

So again since people have adopted the store of value um conversation uh you now have Bitcoin assets storing a significant amount of uh of people's uh people's wealth. So they're uh in a very expected way very careful about using those assets for different activities other than the store of value. So if you're going to say here's a credit card or here's a debit card, whatever payment card that can link to your Bitcoin holdings and can uh let you spend Bitcoin in normal everyday fashion. Uh it's very normal for people to have a cons security concern about okay how secure is my Bitcoin that I've been holding for years and years and watching appreciate and it's now probably comprising a significant amount of somebody's wealth. Is that payment solution uh answering those concerns?

is that payment solution sort of uh keeping in mind that uh that is something that people worry about and providing a an answer to that uh in a way that's comfortable for for the users

and what we have seen in recent years and people who are early adopters as well they're holding quite a lot of bitcoin but they're still reluctant to put their bitcoin to work to generate extra yield. Why do you think is is is what do you think is

well we we think we think the the demand is there but the solutions are not and it's in a lot of ways it's very reminiscent of the uh early sort of Bitcoin story where the the appreciation was taking place but acquiring Bitcoin keeping Bitcoin in a in a safe and secure fashion uh was difficult right and it took a few years and a number of products to come to market to remove that friction around buying Bitcoin, storing Bitcoin in a in a secure fashion, in a safe fashion that made sense for everyday users. And we think the other sort of uh interesting realization out of the out of the uh the survey that we conducted was that there's a fairly significant difference between the target audience that is interested in D5 solutions on Ethereum on Solano and other on other blockchains and the target audience uh that is interested in BTC 5 solutions. So the Bitcoin holding audience is uh much more conservative and because the the the the store value sort of story has been has been told and adopted um it's a lot less prone to experimentation. it's a lot less prone to trying out new solutions, different solutions, um, than the DeFi crowd, which is, you know, typical sort of bleeding edge adoption. And that difference is there, but the way that BTC solutions, the solutions around Bitcoin uh, staking and and yield and and liquidity solutions um, have been built have sort of tended to copy the DeFi approach.

And we think that disconnect uh is part of what's driving this this this divergence between the demand is there but uh but but uh the supply is not the the solutions are not there

and what is the product market fit and how does go mining fit into that product market.

Great question. So I mean as as we as as I mentioned our our overall goal is to drive Bitcoin adoption and we do that by uh creating an integrated ecosystem that provides um for these economic services, economic options products around Bitcoin holding and we took those results, those survey results to mean that uh a our thesis that the demand is there is very much supported but uh the the the product offerings are not and they're not for a variety of reasons. So we're taking that to to basically uh as as our marching orders to to to to start developing an integrated ecosystem that allows one to uh manage own yield um let me see start at the beginning mine own yield stake provide liquidity into uh and payment services around Bitcoin ecosystem and that's sort of our next frontier in terms of the suite products and services that we're we're looking to build.

And we're running out of time, but just briefly, I would like to have your thoughts on where do you see this BTC C5 ecosystem in the future?

Well, we think that this is a little bit of a religious conversation, but uh different people have different thoughts around which blockchains are going to uh provide the better, more meaningful solutions going forward. As I mentioned, we're we're Bitcoin focused. We think that Bitcoin adoption will drive the rest of the uh ecosystem forward. We think that as the original blockchain, as the sort of the the most dominant blockchain, Bitcoin will be sort of the make and break make or break of the of the cryptocurrency space. And uh we think that if we manage to solve this issue of building products that are easy to use and Apple is is sort of the benchmark standard for the user experience and the UXUI conversation.

If we manage to build uh services around the Bitcoin blockchain that are as easy and intuitive to use as uh Apple uh as a reference then uh in a couple of years time most people a lot of people's wealth will be in in Bitcoin but it won't just be sitting there as a as a dead weight sort of uh store of value. it will be powering everyday economic activity and that's what will drive further adoption and further further appreciation of uh of Bitcoin.

On that note, thanks for sharing your thoughts uh and thanks for bearing me for one more session. So, thank you very much.

Thank you.