Dario Sneidermanis is an Argentinian Bitcoiner and the creator of Muun Wallet.
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED TO YOUTUBE MARCH 2023: https://youtu.be/yA4YCaDpScU
FILMED MAY 2022.
(00:00:00) Introducing Dario
(00:00:26) Dario's experience with inflation in Argentina
(00:10:22) Are westerner's disconnected from the effects of inflation?
(00:18:25) How did Dario discover Bitcoin?
(00:22:07) Challenges and concerns regarding Bitcoin scalability and self-custodianship
(00:28:29) Is it possible to have freedom without sound money?
(00:31:05) Is Bitcoin inevitable and how do we scale Bitcoin?
(00:39:55) The vision for Muun Wallet
(00:47:37) The challenges with building Muun
(00:49:48) What has Argentinian bitcoiners learned from El Salvador?
(00:58:25) The inspiration behind the name Muun
(01:00:07) How many Argentinians are using Bitcoin?
(01:03:51) The Bitcoin community in Argentina
(01:05:49) What does freedom mean to Dario?
[00:00:00]
Unknown:
Dario Schneiderman is an Argentinian Bitcoiner and the creator of Moon Wallet. Moon, spelled with 2 u's, is an extremely easy to use bitcoin wallet available on both Android and iPhone, allowing people around the world to easily use bitcoin from the comfort of the mobile phones they already own.
[00:00:27] Unknown:
Seems unfortunately we have, a protest going on right now. Hopefully hopefully, it doesn't bleed into the into the audio of the interview, you know? Yeah. It's good good to find. It is what it is. Right? You can't you can't choose when there's a protest. So, Dario, you were born in Argentina? Yes. Do you still live in Argentina? I do. Yeah. How has as an American to an Argentinian, like, how has growing up in Argentina, how do you think it shaped your experiences?
[00:01:00] Unknown:
Yeah. I mean, I think there's, it changed a bit in the situation in Argentina in the last 30 years. We had at least I think, 3 different stages, if you will. The first 10 years, were pretty economically, they were, pretty good. The Argentinian peso was a stable coin. It was tied 1 to 1 to the dollar Oh, it was pegged? Yeah. It was pegged. So, I think those were the the the good times in the last 30 years. But then in 2001, there was a really big event. The economy was really bad, and the country was running out of US dollars. So from, like, 1 week to the next, everyone's accounts in the bank, go got frozen. You could only withdraw up to, I think, $300, per week.
And if you had any dollars in the bank, like, that was from the pesos accounts, but if you had any dollars, they were completely frozen. And that situation escalated throughout the year until at some point, you couldn't withdraw any money. And there's no warning. There's no warning. No warning. Everyone's, savings, frozen. So it was a really bad year. I think in that year, we got like 5 presidents in 2 weeks. Like, it was crazy. Really? Yeah. And I think that, from that point forward, the situation, fluctuated a bit. But it was always, pretty bad.
There's a lot of, the peso started inflating a lot. So I know this year, we're going to have probably, like, 60% inflation.
[00:02:59] Unknown:
So 60% inflation this year? This year.
[00:03:02] Unknown:
So that means that, prices are changing all the time. Like, if you go abroad for a couple months and you go go back, then you don't know what the prices are. You get used to this eventually. You get used to thinking in multiple currencies at the same time. Like, everyone knows in the street what the exchange the current exchange rate for the dollar between the peso is. And you actually have even, like, multiple exchange rates because there's the official one, which no one can get really. Right. And then you have, like, the black market one.
[00:03:37] Unknown:
So the official one is just Yeah. It is They just say it, but it doesn't you can't use it. I think,
[00:03:43] Unknown:
by up to $200, per month using the official rates. Like, through a bank or something? Through a bank, but not many people will do. And so, then you have, like, a whole range of different dollars. Like, you have the black market dollar. You have the bitcoin dollar, which is the one that you get if you buy in a Bitcoin exchange. And you have these many things. So I think it's it gives you a mental model to deal with a lot of uncertainty. Like, people don't know they can't save in pesos, so they do some crazy things. They save in, in TVs or, fridges or Like, they buy televisions. Yeah. They buy televisions. They buy, like, they buy anything that's going to be more stable than the peso, which is almost everything.
So crazy things happen As I'm saying. In in the Argentinian economy. So, yeah, I think that we're used to living with a lot of currency controls. The government is is super strict on what you can do with your money. It's, at times, it's really hard to move money in or out of the country. So you start not relying on institutions. There's super low trust on banks, on the governments. So it's really tough to to know what to do with your money. A lot of people, like, start storing your money under the mattress is a super common phrase in Argentina, and it actually happens. Like But they're not storing pesos?
[00:05:24] Unknown:
They're no. It's dollars.
[00:05:25] Unknown:
Yeah. I think Argentina is the largest holder of physical dollars, like cash, in the world, because, people just, like, want to have the only thing that they trust is is the the the $100 bill. And and yeah. So so with time, you you get crafty on on how to deal with all these things and and, try alternative, methods, for storing your money, for investing, for moving your money around, for buying stuff. There's a lot of common knowledge about when to buy stuff and when not to buy stuff, and, I think that it's it's even pretty different from other countries in South America. It's it's quite a special, culture regarding money and regarding how you relate with the institutions. Like, just because the money has been so bad for so long. Yeah. Exactly. And and there's, like, people already know how to deal with this. Right.
So if you go, say, to Brazil, which is next to Argentina, you're going to see that, when when money, starts to inflate, peep people start selling because they they have a lot of uncertainty. In Argentina, it's the other way around. They already know how this behaves. So they start buying stuff because the money burns because it's losing value day to day. So, so there's all these culture around how, how do you deal with inflation, which I, I think it's really interesting because in a way, right now, Argentina is like a first mover because many other parts of the world are starting to see inflation.
And the and as Argentinians, we're seeing how they are starting to learn about the side effects of inflation, which is super interesting because we see them first hand, every day. They're super experienced. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So for once, Argentina is ahead. But, yeah, other than that, I I think it's, it's a really interesting mix because you have all these problems, but at the same time, you have a super developed, culture. There's a lot of talent in Argentina. There's a really good infrastructure compared to other places, that may not have, good institutions.
And so everyone has Internet. There's a high penetration of smartphones so people can access the Internet. They are educated, and so they they understand a lot of things of both what's going on inside the country and outside the country. So, yeah, I I think it's, it's a perfect breeding ground for some of the things and the technologies we're seeing right now, such as Bitcoin. And I think that's one of the of the reasons why we're seeing right now so high penetration of these technologies, because people not only understand them, but but also need need them. There's like, you have to explain much less things to an Argentinian about why, you you need to have your money in a way that no one can touch it, that no one can freeze it, and why you need to be careful with where you put your money.
On the other hand, yeah, the the there's, when people are willing to to try a lot of new things, there's more failure cases. People make mistakes. Right. We we recently have a really good really big net goo event with with all, there was a a currency that was supposedly one to 1 to the dollar and and had, like, really good it it looked like a really good investment opportunity. And, for some reason, it it it went like fire in Argentina. And a lot of people put their savings in there. So, yeah, you have to be, like on the other hand, you have you have to be extra careful. You're more vulnerable because you're Exactly. Exactly. Because your institutions have failed you. So you're you're doing everything on your own. So you become more vulnerable. And you your trust structures went down, and you don't know what to trust. You don't have the institutions. You don't know who is telling the truth, who is not, and so it's really tough.
And you you really have to take, like, a first principles approach where you try to understand, well, like, how does this work? Which I think is is is a thing that that that's been promoted a lot in the last, years by Bitcoiners and and people in the industry. I think it stems from a different place, but it reaches the same conclusions. So,
[00:10:23] Unknown:
yeah. So the 2 of us are both part of this global Bitcoin community. Do you feel, like, a strong disconnect? Do you feel a strong disconnect with American Bitcoiners or European Bitcoiners as an Argentinian?
[00:10:37] Unknown:
That's a good question. I think that, I feel more connection to Bitcoiners in general because they are thinking about these issues even if theoretically. It's, it's hard for for someone that's lived their entire lives in a country where everything works to understand how it feels when things don't work. Be because you can reason about it in a theoretical level, but seeing it is quite different. And there's all these second or the other effects that there's other things that happen because of this that are super hard to anticipate when you don't see them firsthand.
So, yeah, I I think that, say, it's much much easier to explain noncustodianship and understand truly why it's important, as an Argentinian that maybe as a European or an American.
[00:11:35] Unknown:
Being holding your own Bitcoin, not letting an institution hold your Bitcoin. Exactly. Like
[00:11:41] Unknown:
so nonconsolidation is this property of not having anyone be able to either move your money or freeze your money, which is something that it was what how money worked 500 years ago. Like, all money. Or it's like how cash works. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And so in the I think in the last 500, 600 years, we lost these properties, in order to get some others, in order to be able to travel without all your gold bars on you and and that kind of stuff. And so right now we are super used to that. We don't question it. Like if it works, you don't question it.
But now we have the technology to to have something that helps the best of both worlds, like a money that has that can't be frozen, that can't be moved by a government when they decide to move it for what whatever reason. But at the same time, it's safe to use and and all the stuff you expect from having your money in your bank. So, yeah, I think that it's, it's easier for an Argentinian to understand, but it's not impossible for for an American or or a European to to empathize with it. It's just a little bit more work. You have to question Yeah. This is a beginning education part instead of removing the experience. Exactly. You you you need to to question a a few things that that you give for granted, but eventually, you get there. And and I mean, I think
[00:13:15] Unknown:
your your comment about Argentinian use of cash, specifically US dollars, which in in the traditional money sense is the closest thing you get to self custody bitcoin of holding your own your own bitcoin is there's a sharp disconnect there because, I mean, I was just at the Oslo Freedom Forum, and I was doing a panel on the dangers of central bank digital currencies. And I asked the audience a question. Right? And I asked the audience what the question was, if you use fiat money, if you use your local currency, do you use cash more than you use digital money? Do you use cash more than you use credit cards or payment apps?
And, you know, maybe 1% of people raise their hand saying they use cash more. Right? But if that was in Argentina, you don't even have the option to use the digital money apps really. Right? You just end up getting screwed. Yeah. So so you have, different
[00:14:08] Unknown:
use cases. So, what people want to do with with the cash is store it, and they use it for savings. They they don't want to spend it usually, because that's the hard money for them. That's the money that they know that it's not going to devaluate, that they know they can control. They they they see where it is, they can touch it, and so they understand it. And so, they they spend mostly the pesos that they are earning. They they spend the credit cards if they use them. But, yeah, I think that it's not that common, to to pay with, cash in dollars in cash in Argentina. It's super common to use cash, though.
Like, 50% of the population is is, like, operating in the black market or outside the system. Like, 50% of the economy. That's a lot. That means that most companies are outside of the system. And so, you cannot rely on banks. Like, even, even if they work right now, like, you can never know how much more they will work. But Is it a class divide? Can, like, rich people rely on banks or just nobody rely on banks? I'm sure. It depends on whether you are working, in in a, like, formal, work relationship, and it's, all by the book, which is like 50% of the population got accesses.
Still, that part of the population, there's a huge percentage of of, that population that doesn't have money in the banks, even though they could, because they don't trust them, because they've seen they've been burned before. Like, everyone that has, at least 25 years in Argentina has seen firsthand, how it felt when, you lose all the money and they they take all your money away and they they start putting restrictions. And even today, there there are a lot of restrictions for moving the money in and out of the country. What are the current restrictions? So if you're bringing, US dollars from outside the country into Argentina, you're, forced to sell them at the local at the official rate, which is half its value. So you That's the only time you get the official rate is when Yeah. Exactly. So you you the base is that you lose half your money, just to do that, and then you have to pay taxes, on on the remaining stuff.
And, you appear in in, like you start being tracked by the governments, and and there's always these promises that nothing they are not going to do anything with that information, but then the government changes, and and then 4 years later, you get all the restrictions that that, people promised that you wouldn't have. And so, yeah, it's super tough to get money in inside the country. People are starting to use, Bitcoin and crypto a lot for that. And there's and then depending on your industry, there might be different restrictions. There's a really big industry, in selling, like, exporting, vegetables and and beef and that kind of stuff, and they have, like, super, hard regulations.
They lose, like, I don't know, 70, 80% of the value. It goes to the government.
[00:17:50] Unknown:
And, yeah, it changes month month to month. Like, right now, is there a limit right now on how much money you can send outside the country?
[00:17:58] Unknown:
I'm not sure. I'm not sure. But there could be. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. I mean, there's all these complex rules and and and they're changing all the time, so it's really difficult to navigate. It creates a really big incentive for, multinational companies not to come to Argentina because it's so hard that even if they come, eventually, they go away because, it doesn't make sense. Yeah. It doesn't make sense. It's crazy.
[00:18:26] Unknown:
When so with your personal story, when does Bitcoin enter your story? Sure.
[00:18:32] Unknown:
So the first time I I heard about Bitcoin was in 2011, with some friends in college. We were You were in college in Argentina? Yeah. In college in Argentina. A friend of mine told me about it, sent me a link to the paper. I write it, and and it was beautiful. And and I I remember thinking, what? This might even work, but but I didn't gave it, and I I didn't do much with it at the time, because, I was with other things, and I didn't pay that much attention, and and it didn't seem that it was something real at the time. And then 2 years later in 2013, there was a a really big conference, Bitcoin conference in Argentina, the Latin American I think it was the first Latin American Bitcoin conference. Now a lot of people came from all over the world, and and I went there and and I started seeing that it was something real.
Other people were working on this, other people were doing stuff and and thinking about it. And so I I started to get a lot more involved and starting to think about how it could fit. Like, Bitcoin is so different from everything else that it it takes you a little bit to to understand the basics and how it fits. And I think that a year or so later, I was working from Argentina remotely for a startup in in the US, and they were paying me in, in dollars in the US. So I need to bring the money into Argentina, and at the time, we we couldn't bring any money. There were really strong currency controls. And so I used Bitcoin. Like, I I bought Bitcoin in the US, sent the Bitcoins, and sold them in, bought Bitcoins and sold them in Argentina.
And And it was, like, a really magic moment. Like, Bitcoin didn't care where I was, who I was. It just worked instantly. So that first moment is is really special, and, and from that point forward, I started thinking like, hey. Like, this awesome. It's an awesome technology, and you can actually solve a really social problem, with technology, but it's super hard to use. Like, I I had to do too many things. I had to understand too many things, too many concepts in order to be able to do that, which was super simple. I just wanted to make one payment, and and I had to go through all these hoops.
And so I started thinking about how can we make it so that everyone in Argentina can use this. Right. Like, at first, I I started with a really Argentinian focus because I saw the problem. It was clear that they needed this technology. And, yeah, that's how I eventually started working on on an application to make this easier, to make moving money, without trusting anyone else easier. And and with the hopes that eventually, we're getting there. There's still more work to be done, but eventually the idea is that everyone, should be able to use this. Even if they don't care about the technology, if they don't care about the details.
It's just a tool. Right? Like a hammer, this is just another tool, and it could be used for different reasons for different people. So yeah.
[00:22:07] Unknown:
It's interesting because it seems like for you and for other Argentinians, like, Bitcoin solves 2 problems for you. Right? It solves spending restrictions, and it solves being able to actually save your your hard work. Yeah. Yeah. For sure.
[00:22:25] Unknown:
Yeah. In engineering, we have all the financial problems, I think. We have inflation. We have problems with the institutions freezing money. We have problems with restrictions moving the money. We have restrictions with what you can buy and sell, like, what are the currencies you can buy. So I think that Bitcoin goes down all these layers and instead of trying to fix the layers it goes all the way around and says hey, like, we can do this without all this infrastructure. Like, this should be much easier. And so in a way, Bitcoin is much simpler than than, what all this system that we've been building for the last 100 years layer after layer of banks and credit cards and payment processors and governments.
Bitcoin just just does away with everything and and starts from the ground up, with very clear principles, with a very clear design and tries to create money, that that you can use without trusting anyone. So yeah, I think it solves many, many of these problems for Argentinians. I think that the missing problem right now that Bitcoin doesn't address is volatility, so there's a lot of people, we see a lot of people that are living month to month. Right. And so, recommending bitcoin to them is irresponsible in a way because it's a super volatile currency and it's going up but in a frame of maybe 4 or 5 years.
So if you're going to need to spend your money the next month or so, then, Bitcoin doesn't solve a a problem for you. It's it's pretty dang it could could be pretty dangerous.
[00:24:14] Unknown:
Even in a even when, like, the alternative is a currency that's dropping 60% year over year? Yes. Because, like, if you spend your money,
[00:24:21] Unknown:
like, within 30 days, then inflation doesn't matter that much. It's not a super big problem. Like, if you don't have savings,
[00:24:30] Unknown:
then it's not a big problem. It's just like almost a guarantee Yeah. 8% down or something. Exactly. The Cost of doing business. Yeah. Exactly. In Argentina,
[00:24:39] Unknown:
all all the people factor that that they're going to have inflation.
[00:24:44] Unknown:
And and yeah, the system adapts. That's interesting. Yeah. Because I I kind of was operating under the assumption that the volatility would feel less as a negative to people that are living in a complete you know, their alternative is a complete failed currency. Sure.
[00:25:02] Unknown:
I think that there are some currencies that are are in a much worse shape. Right. And you might like, in in periods of hyperinflation, like, in in I think in, 89, a year before I was wrong that we had, like, hyperinflation in Argentina, and at that point, you cannot even, like, press it for the next week, because it's it's really, really bad. But, for for spending the day to day and and like if you don't have savings, What the government currencies have, kind of, is that they are predictable. You kinda know what's going to happen. With Bitcoin, you don't. So that factors in in, like, it it gives, it's it's reasonable to be fearful of what's going to happen in the next month with Bitcoin because because no one knows. Could go up 50% or you go down Exactly.
Exactly. And and the risk of having your money slashed by 50%, when you wake up is too big. That's kind of what happened in 2001. Right? For sure. For sure. Yeah. But
[00:26:09] Unknown:
so We're like the government just comes in. Yeah. There's restrictions. It says you can't slow your money down. I believe that's why people in Argentina
[00:26:17] Unknown:
usually tend to to seek dollars. Right. Because it's much more predictable. It has inflation level, but it's much smaller than the Argentinian pesos. Compared to what you're used to, there's no inflation. Exactly. So, maybe eventually, bitcoin will have, will stabilize, if it grows enough. I don't know. We'll see what happens. There's many things have to happen before, we get to that point, but I guess it could happen eventually and at that point it might make sense to go all in on Bitcoin. But yeah, yeah, you can, there's some companies right now exploring using Bitcoin as a payment network and maybe use having US dollars inside of it. That has some trust involved.
You are trusting someone, but, in Argentina, people will usually prefer to trust like a foreign company than their government. It's so bad in there that almost anything is better than trusting the governments
[00:27:25] Unknown:
and the local banks. They'd rather foreign companies. Yeah. Or or Foreign company, foreign central bank, like, the full foreign Exactly.
[00:27:31] Unknown:
I I mean, they are saving in in US dollars, and so they are crossing the the US, central bank. And I guess that's for for the risk profile of an Argentinian, that's, good enough risk to take, but I think we can do better. Eventually, we should do better than than even having to trust,
[00:27:55] Unknown:
any central bank. Yeah. I mean, my hope my hope is that as adoption increases with Bitcoin, as more money, as more purchasing power goes into Bitcoin, volatility should kind of Definitely.
[00:28:07] Unknown:
Level out of time. Like, volatility is slowly, going down. It's going to take a while. It's a it's a multi decade process, But,
[00:28:16] Unknown:
we have patience. We'll see. Yeah. It seems like the protest has now turned into a concert. I hope it's not picked up on the mic too much, but gotta respect people's freedom to protest. As an Argentinian, do you think do you think it's possible to for people to have freedom without good money?
[00:28:40] Unknown:
I don't think so. I mean, money is the building block for, a lot of, human interaction and activities. And so in a capital in a in a capitalist world, capital and money is super important. And if someone has control of your money, it has it it has control of on your actions. Like, people do crazy things when their money is at stake. So I think that to to have true freedom, you really need to to not have to, you have to be thinking about the repercussions on your money of your actions in the real world. So that that's actually I think it's a combination you need a combination of basic building blocks. You you need money, but you also need privacy, right, because, even if you have a really good technology for money, the government can come to you there and force you to freeze your money.
So there's a couple of of building blocks that you you need in today's world for for true freedom, freedom to protest. Right. I like here freedom to express and and so yes. Up to now we I I don't think we've seen, many, successful experiments of of creating a money in the modern times that that actually enables freedom, for people, and and that enables them to to do whatever they want to do with the money or or with the words or with their actions. I think that that Bitcoin is is a really interesting experiment. I don't know if it's going to succeed. I hope it does, but, there there are still many, challenges ahead, but at least we're trying. It's a it's a really interesting experiment.
And even if it fails, I think the idea and the staff we learned along the way about what, how money should work and how institutions should work and who you should trust because at the end of of the day, it's a question of of trust. I I think if Bitcoin doesn't succeed, something will, eventually.
[00:31:06] Unknown:
So you would disagree with Bitcoiners that think that Bitcoin's inevitable?
[00:31:12] Unknown:
I don't think Bitcoin is inevitable because there's still many challenges. We we had to solve many problems ahead. Like, we we haven't faced the worst enemies of Bitcoin yet. Not even worse. So yeah. Exactly. So it's it's a hard assumption to say that we're going to
[00:31:28] Unknown:
to win all of those battles, but we're going to try. We're going to give our best. What's your biggest concern? Do you have do you have one on the top of your head?
[00:31:36] Unknown:
Yeah. Right now, I think, Bitcoin scaling. Like, Bitcoin processes, like, 7 transaction transactions per second. So that's and Visa processes, like, 10,000 transactions per second and 40,000 in peak, times. So we are, like, at least 3 zeros away from, from that kind of, processing power. We have right now a new technology calling, called the Lightning Network, which helps a little, but maybe give us it gives us, like, one more 0, maybe 2. Really? That's all you think? Yeah. Yeah. You think it only brings you, like, 700 trans transactions per se? Yeah. Because, for me, like, it it works really well between, say, 2 exchanges that they're exchanging money all the time. You never have to close your channels, which is this lining concept of, like, making a a Bitcoin transaction in the Bitcoin channel. Like, it's super infrequent.
But for end users, it's super frequent because the they like, if you have, lightning in a phone, the the funds that are locked in those channels, the liquidity that is being used is mostly useless because they're offline all the time, and you're not using it. So you have to close channels pretty frequently. And even if if that weren't true, you need at least one transaction per person, to open the first channel. Right. And so if you like, it would take, like, more than a decade to make one transaction per person in the world.
[00:33:15] Unknown:
So you think the people that claim that lightning is a Yeah. This beautiful scaling solution
[00:33:23] Unknown:
is is not quite there yet. It's great. I mean, lightning is is a super good technology. It works it works today, which is super important. There's still some work ahead to be done, but it it works fairly well. It's just not a magical solution. It it won't scale much more than that. It still it still needs improvements as well. Like, there could be Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But we need to be thinking about scaling in every layer. Yeah. At the base chain, in lightning, in other layers. I think that there there are many ideas, going around.
It's not like it's impossible to do, but, maybe it's it's common to think that lightning solved solved scaling. And It's a solved problem. Yeah. Exactly. And it definitely isn't, like, we are seeing first hand the the the limits of it. So to to kinda distill
[00:34:17] Unknown:
what I think you're trying to convey here is is your main concern with Bitcoin right now is the idea of having as many people as possible be able to use Bitcoin in a fully sovereign way where no company, no government can stop them from spending and cannot stop them from seizing their money. We're not necessarily there yet. Yeah. Exactly. So so for me, like, the the macro risk
[00:34:41] Unknown:
is that, we get comfortable with housing things are. We we select this what what Bitcoin is today is what Bitcoin is, and we stopped working on scaling it and making it accessible in a really trustless way for everyone. Right. And we settle for Bitcoin banks, which is exactly the same thing that we had before, but with
[00:35:04] Unknown:
the increasing financial exposure Right. Which wasn't the goal in the first place. And, like, maybe I mean, in that situation, you'd also you still have interoperability. They could transfer between each other a little bit more competition, but still not ideal. Yeah.
[00:35:17] Unknown:
And, I mean, if if if this turns out to be like, if interoperability and openness, turns out to be openness, I don't know, but interoperability at least turns out to be a good idea, then banks can copy it. Like, if they can get together, and build an interoperable protocol between them, the thing that they cannot do is not hold people's money because it hurts their business models, and and it hurts the the entire idea of a bank of what a bank does. And so, I think that what what gives Bitcoin value is the unique things that only Bitcoin can do. And having your money in a self sovereign way is something that only Bitcoin can do it in the way that it does.
And so in a way, you could say that Bitcoin scales. Self custodianship doesn't. Right. And, yeah, my biggest fear is that we sell for for custodial solutions, Bitcoin banks. Where you're trusting companies, trusting governments. And we end up in the same place where we started. So, yeah, I think more scaling work is needed. But I I hope that eventually when it starts to, like on the other hand, Bitcoin has this, like, closed loop when Bitcoin starts to not scale because peep there's huge demand for transactions, and there's, the capacity, the processing capacity is fixed.
Fees go up, and so it starts to hurt, and people start to realize that, hey. Like, maybe we should be working on getting fees lower. Right. So there is an incentive for our players, to to event like, when it starts to hurt to to work on, scalability. And it's also going to be a problem even for, custodial companies. Right. Because their cost will go up. Yeah. Exactly. So I hope that eventually, like, everyone is going to align into the fact that we need to keep working on the problem.
[00:37:17] Unknown:
Which kinda I mean, it kinda goes back to your own personal experiences. Right? Because, I mean, what I've noticed with Bitcoin is one of the key value props of Bitcoin is that it's a system that nobody controls. Right? Yeah. And because nobody controls it, it's very hard to change. Yeah. So you only really see change when there's a lot of pain that's felt, when people get burned. Yeah. And in Argentina, that it's kind of a similar situation, right, where people are getting burned and they they seek out solutions
[00:37:44] Unknown:
to stop to stop feeling the pain. Yeah. Yeah. And at the same time, it's, it's reasonable for Bitcoin, to get harder and harder to change, because that's that's a protection mechanism. It's the same mechanism that that, doesn't allow our government to come in and change things. So so I think it's important to to to keep that property and and to work with it and eventually as it starts to hurt, if everyone agrees that it's a problem and and that we should be working on it, then I'm sure we will. But, yeah, these things take time. And when it hurts, it hurts now. Right. So I think it'd be, interesting to start working now on on at least the ideas of how we could make Bitcoin, more scalable, with that while keeping all all these interesting properties of Bitcoin. Right?
Because, it's easy to scale it if you give away some of the properties.
[00:38:52] Unknown:
Right. But
[00:38:54] Unknown:
yeah. I think that at least it like, if you get every Argentinian on board in Bitcoin, you already have a problem. So I do believe that there there's a really big need, at least, I don't know, 1, 2,000,000,000 people, really need, self custodianship and and to have their money in a self sovereign way. So I I think we should like, maybe it's not for everyone, but at least for these people, it's important that that Bitcoin can solve the problem. And I don't know. We're, working on it going in that direction, but it's it's a hard problem. It takes time, and and the Bitcoin community is is super hard hardworking, and and and I I think it's super focused, on the right problems. So I hope that, eventually we we will go there. But I believe it's it's one of the biggest technical challenges right now. There are other challenges nontechnical, but
[00:39:55] Unknown:
Yeah. So let's talk about working on it. Yep. You have Moonwallet with 2 u's, one of the most popular mobile wallets. You can run it on your phone. When did the vision for Moon Wallet occur to you? When did you decide to proceed forward with building Moon and how are you inspired for to to make it what it what it is? Sure.
[00:40:20] Unknown:
So it's it's started after, seeing, the the the value firsthand, actually experiencing it. My I, by that point I had already, read a lot about Bitcoin, and thought a lot about Bitcoin, but experiencing it is something much more powerful. And so at the time, it was, this was, 2014, just 2015. Argentina Argentina was in a really bad situation, so it was, pretty clear that that, the problems were clear. That, money didn't work in Argentina. Banks didn't work in Argentina. And there's problems with money and banks everywhere in the world, but in Argentina, the the it was clear to everyone in the street. Like, you go to anyone and and ask them about it, and they're going to tell you pretty specifically what what all the problems are.
And so it's certainly being a question of how can we use this technology to solve this real world pro problem, for Argentinians. And eventually, as as the idea progressed and and, we understood what the technology could do at that point. We on on the one hand, we realize about the global potential of this. Like, it it Bitcoin works exactly the same if you're paying someone that's in front of you that, than if it's, again in a category with restrictions and if it's in the other, side of the world. So, it became clear that it should we could do a solution that worked for many other places rather than only for Argentina.
But at the same time, there there was a clear need for a for a wallet that focused on on people that don't know about Bitcoin, that don't know about the entire technology stack, which is like an a lot of knowledge. Like, you you have to to buy your 1st bitcoins, you have to understand what an address is, what the wallet is, what the wallet isn't, what an exchange is, what the price is, how it fluctuates, what KYC is. There's so many concepts and things that people have not been exposed to before. So the idea was, like, how can we make it so we we get it to the point where it's just download this app, and that's it? And so we've been working on that problem for many years now.
I think that there's still many problems to solve ahead. People shouldn't be able to lose their money. Right now, like, if you forget a password or or or a code that you wrote in a paper, then your money is gone. And and you will not accept that from a bank. Like, if you go to an ATM and you you forget the PIN, and you go to, I don't know, the the bank teller, and they they they say, not your keys, not your man not your PIN, not your money. You will kill them. So we need a way to to get all these cool properties of money, but at the same time, make it so that people just no matter what they do, they can lose the money. That it's super, easy to use. I don't have to understand all the technology to use it.
But it's been quite challenging. I think that when we started with Moon, most wallets were mostly a reflection of the protocol. And so what what we try to do is is tackle it, go from the other way around, try to understand what's the problem for the user, and and then figure out, well, how close can we get with the technology? Rather than saying saying, like, oh, Bitcoin can do all this stuff. Let's put them all inside, an interface and and and let people do everything. So I think that there's different wallets with different trade offs for different audiences, and and that's the beauty of Bitcoin. You can have many different, products competing in an open market, and and you have zero lock in. Like, you can move with 3 clicks. You can move your money from one wallet to the other.
Most wallets work globally. So they are available available to everyone everywhere. And, yeah, we try to to work on that. We're trying to to include a lot of people that maybe get left behind. Bitcoin started as as an English speaking phenomenon, and most of the content is in English. And most wallets are only in English, and and most protocols even have, error codes and that kind of stuff that are only in English. And so getting to the point where, this access like, the the way that people back up wallets today is only for English speakers. Is, like, write down English words. Write write down something English words. As foundational as well. Exactly. Exactly. And so it's we're trying to to go back a little bit there and see what's the essence of the problem and how can we apply it in a in a language neutral way.
And at the same time, it's Bitcoin is is super complex. It it can be a lot for newcomers. So having someone that you can speak to in the same language that you speak is super important. And so we've seen a lot of, this was something, super important in El Salvador. I think it was the first time that we saw a lot of adoption growing quicker than education.
[00:46:29] Unknown:
Because El Salvador had this legal tender law. Right? So Bitcoin Bitcoin is now an accepted currency everywhere in El Salvador. Yeah. And and there's a lot of people people just came into Bitcoin. From one day to the other.
[00:46:40] Unknown:
And some people wanted to, some others didn't. But everyone was exposed to this technology, and what they had mostly was questions. And so having, like, a support channel or someone that you can talk to inside the wallets, in a language that you understand that can answer some basic things about how does this work? How how do I do to not lose my money? And, make them at ease and and help them go at their own pace and understand at their own pace, what Bitcoin is and and what problems it solves. I think it's super important. So yeah. And there's many challenges, to to taking Bitcoin globally, But I think that, Bitcoiners are are super open to this, and, they are willing, to to to work on these problems.
We just have to be careful with some biases.
[00:47:39] Unknown:
What is your biggest pain point that you felt while you're building while you built Moon?
[00:47:46] Unknown:
Yeah. I I think that well, there weren't many pain points. But I I think that, one of the most challenging things, was having multiple audiences with different levels of understanding and balancing that. Like, you you have to make a product that at the same time works for someone that knows a lot about the technology and has really high expectations about how it should work and how it should look like even, what protocols you should be using. They have opinions about that. And at the same time, you have to cater to an audience that doesn't understand any anything about how the technology works.
And you have to be able to to let them build mental models about how it works, and let them relate it to stuff that they already know, like an email or a password. And so that that was something that took us many years to understand how to navigate and how to, make a product that make a product that works for many audiences at the same time. Then there's always a lot of technical challenges, when you want to, when you start with a problem rather than with the technology or the solution and you you want to, have a very specific UX, you have to take the technology to its limits.
And and so, you're dealing with a lot of problems that might not have been explored before, or or that, maybe it falls in a place where no one has given it much thought yet. So so that's an interesting challenge. But, yeah, it's it's super interesting to work on that and and see how we could, take Bitcoin to its limits and and and also inspire us into how we could extend Bitcoin, in in order to to gain new functionality and and those kind of things. The El Salvador
[00:49:50] Unknown:
situation is very interesting, I think, and could be very interesting from specifically as a someone from Latin American country. Yeah. Do you do you see any did you learn anything from from El Salvador adopting Bitcoin as a national currency that you think could apply to maybe a potential situation in Argentina? Definitely.
[00:50:12] Unknown:
Yeah. We have many learnings from onboarding users, and onboarding many users at once into into Moon. One of the things that we, we weren't prepared, for, like we all we always had the advantage of either onboarding people that already know about Bitcoin Right. Or that have someone next to them telling them about Bitcoin. Easier if you have a friend. Yeah. Exactly. If you know someone that that knows about Bitcoin and you ask them, they will speak to you for 3 hours straight and tell you all the ins and outs of Bitcoin and how it works and what problems it solves, which is great. It's I think it's the best way to get into Bitcoin. But if you don't have that, then then there is many things that you can't can't assume that, the person that's, getting onboarded to the world knows.
And so we were for example, when you go you go to the receipt screen in Moon, you you you go to receive Bitcoins. We had 2 tabs that that make you, make you, you have to make a decision on which protocol you're going to use. Either you use traditional Bitcoin or Lightning. And we have a lot of people, that didn't know what Lightning was and and saying, like, what's this other coin? Like, you have bitcoin and lightning. And so we it started, pushing us in in in ways that we haven't faced with before, which is super interesting, and and I think it will be useful everywhere to to get those work on those problems and and make it much more clear to users.
Then we had the, many users that didn't speak English, and we started seeing more of these multi language prompts. There are new protocols, right now for lining making lightning payments, that are designed in a way where if you get an error, if the, say you want to make a payment to sites online, which implements this protocol, It's called Allen URL. The developer, writes the error code that it's going to be shown to the user. But they are mostly, writing these things in English. And so we have a a really tough challenge of of how do we deal with that for people that don't speak, in English.
[00:52:47] Unknown:
Or they speak Spanish. Exactly. Payment fails, and then the error is in English, and they have no idea what the hell is going on. Exactly. Exactly.
[00:52:54] Unknown:
So that's that's a tough challenge, that no one is, speaking about. And another thing that, when you go fully global, like, truly, fully global, you're dealing in sometimes in countries like Argentina, that don't have a clear exchange rate. And so, this happens in Venezuela, in Cuba, in Lebanon, in India right now. And so there's a lot of stuff that goes into saying how much a a Bitcoin is or a dollar is in those countries.
[00:53:33] Unknown:
How do you handle that?
[00:53:36] Unknown:
We try to, ask locals, how do they solve it for them, what sites they use, and and we try to to have as many source of truth as possible and and and try to, like, average it out. And to be clear, Moon doesn't
[00:53:56] Unknown:
Moon with 2 u's does not hold, it doesn't hold your local currency. It only holds Bitcoin Yeah. But it it'll show the equivalent amount. It'll show how much that
[00:54:06] Unknown:
Exactly. Because when when people want to make a payment, they usually think, about the the the unit of account, the unit that they use to express how much money they want to send, is usually denominated either in their local currency or in some reserve currency. So it's really important that the wallet can make this conversion automatically. And and it looks like a super small thing to do, but it's quite challenging to do at scale, especially in some countries. And and, yeah, there there there's all these small points of friction that you find out when you onboard different users and new users.
So we're learning we're learning a lot all of the time. And I guess, El Salvador was a really big stress test. Many people using it at the same time. I I think it was a a really big success case for for the Lightning Network especially. I I'm not aware of any other point in time where it was used at such scale by unexperienced users successfully. So I think in in that sense it went pretty well. But there's always stuff to learn and to improve and and work to be done to make it better for the next El Salvador. You would say El Salvador, the rollout in El Salvador
[00:55:32] Unknown:
for the most part was a massive success.
[00:55:35] Unknown:
I think so. Yeah. Depend depending on what layer you look at it, like, technologically, I think it went pretty well. Socially, I don't think so. Right. I think there were many problems socially. Like, Bitcoin is usually a grassroots movement. It goes from the from the people. And in El Salvador, it went the other way around, like Not really.
[00:55:58] Unknown:
I mean, I like to think of it as a grassroots movement that grew so big that the government couldn't ignore it and then they chose to adopt it. Sure. Right? Because you had that Bitcoin Visa. It definitely started, like, aggressive move.
[00:56:13] Unknown:
Yeah. But, many people found themselves with a lot of questions and and thinking that they were, forced to deal with Bitcoin and accept Bitcoin, when they didn't even know what it was, and they were really scared. And I think that it could have been damn good sir with much more education, with with much more, clarity around what would be expected of merchants, say, like small merchants. For for a big merchant, they can adapt and and and work with it. So I think that maybe, doing it a little bit more gradually with more education would have been better. But from your perspective,
[00:56:58] Unknown:
perspective, Moon Yep. Your project
[00:57:01] Unknown:
was successful in Yeah. Definitely. Definitely. And and we even had, like, there's an official wallet, in El Salvador, that's, maintained by the government, and it's actually, like, a Bitcoin bank. And we had especially, like, really hyper penetration with the people that were opposed to the government because they they, with with all this new law, they were they, got down in Bitcoin and learned a lot and and understood the reasons why Bitcoin really existed. And and as the government was freezing their bank accounts, they were using bitcoin to bypass the government, so I guess in a way, it was, a good ending and and these people got to learn about a tool that can help them fight against the government when they need to.
Protect themselves, not fight. But, yeah, I think that, there's still a lot of work that's needed with lining on reliability. Like, many payments fail. So we we should and it's a cross cutting problem. It touches the protocol. It touches the ecosystem. It touches the exchanges that are integrating Lightning Network, the wallets. And so, a lot more work there is needed, but other than that, I'd say it was a resounding success. On the topic of language confusion Yep.
[00:58:30] Unknown:
What was the thought process about naming your app Moon spelled incorrectly in English?
[00:58:35] Unknown:
Yeah. I'm I'm really a fan of of things that have multiple meanings at the same time. And and so there was this phrase in in the Bitcoin community of, to the moon, early on. So that was one inspiration for it. And and it turns out that there's a Star Wars race, that that they're called the moons, and they are the creators and the founders of the intergalactic banking plan. The the and the deal they they are really good at math and finance and and, when when we realized about about that, it was like this is a perfect name and and and I think that, like, thinking about, like, you can think, around Bitcoin, like, building an intergalactic, money system. Like, Bitcoin might even work outside of planet Earth. But they spelled with 2 u's in there? Yeah. They're spelled with 2 u's.
[00:59:39] Unknown:
So do you have any regrets spelling it that way?
[00:59:43] Unknown:
I think it's, it it became a meme.
[00:59:47] Unknown:
It became a meme because I had to say it every week on my podcast. Exactly. Yeah. I Moon with 2 u's. Yeah. Moon with 2 u's.
[00:59:56] Unknown:
I think in retrospect, it might not have been the best name, but,
[01:00:03] Unknown:
yeah. Well, thank you for answering the single most important question for me today. So we're talking about Argentinians accepting Bitcoin, using Bitcoin. Do you have any idea of of how many Argentinians are using Bitcoin right now?
[01:00:18] Unknown:
I don't know, really. I think that, there's in Argentina, there there is a lot of people using crypto. I I think I've seen recent statistics that they're around, like, 30%
[01:00:33] Unknown:
penetration. But you're you're including
[01:00:35] Unknown:
stable coins. That's that's stable coins, Ethereum, and Bitcoin. There was, yeah.
[01:00:44] Unknown:
Do you think Bitcoin is the most popular down there? Or
[01:00:47] Unknown:
I think stable coins are the most popular because if all this idea with the US dollar When we say stable coins, we mean
[01:00:55] Unknown:
tokens that are pegged to US dollar value that require trust in the company. Yeah.
[01:01:01] Unknown:
They they are, tokens that they're one to one with the dollar. So in in a way, you can think of them as exchangeable with the dollar. There are multiple types of them. There are some of them that you trust a third party entity like a company that's holding the same Yeah. A bank that's holding, a similar amount of dollars. That's, say, Tether. There's a lot of penetration of Tether, in Argentina. There's also, some people using Dai, which is an agor algorithmic stable coin. I won't go into the details, but there's it works in another and more complex way, and and tries to do away with the trust in a third party.
But You add different trust instead. Exactly. You have different risks. Like, you you have the thing getting in the like, the the layers of risks that you are dealing with. So would you say that, like, a Argentinian
[01:01:58] Unknown:
at the core, the highest demand is dollars. They want US dollars. They want some kind of exposure to US dollars, and they're willing to take some risks Yeah. Trust wise to to have that exposure to dollars. I'd say that that definitely. So
[01:02:14] Unknown:
in I'd say that in Argentina, like, people relate to Bitcoin and crypto more in general in 2 different ways. Some people take it as like as a savings technology. And some people take it as an investment technology. And there there's a a really interesting local Bitcoin community that that's mostly for for not either as a savings, mechanism or investment mechanism, but for what it means and as a tool for freedom. And so I'd say that there's a little bit of of every use case, down there. The user is mostly mostly a savings technology. So stable coins, are a great fit there.
But then, bitcoin, is a super great fit, either for the people that are are in it for the freedom, and the the social change that Bitcoin brings and means, and and for the people that are trying to to make an investment. And that's that's a really interesting audience because that's, how you start relating with Bitcoin and start learning more about it, and you might ask the question, well, why is this going up? Why is this, the price of Bitcoin going up? And then you start falling through all these other questions and questioning, your beliefs. So I think it's a it's a really good path.
But, yeah, there there there's a bit of everything.
[01:03:51] Unknown:
One of the cool things about Bitcoin is is that it's very much a grassroots movement, you know, people talk about open source code but ultimately people need to run the code, they need to build the code, support the code. Yep. And do do you see the Bitcoin community in Argentina growing strongly and do you see this a circular economy developing this idea of, you know, merchants
[01:04:13] Unknown:
accepting Bitcoin and then spending Bitcoin? Definitely. And and Bitcoin adoption is growing quite a bit. You can I I think you can live in in Bitcoin today without ATMs, and without selling your Bitcoin? There's, at least in in the biggest cities, there's, in the last year or so, adoption grew quite a lot. You can pay with lightning network in many places. You can eat, you can go to the gym, you can do many things, paying with lightning network, which is awesome. And, yeah, I think that especially like in the last month or so, a lot of people there was like this big crisis with Terra which was a stable coin and a lot of people lost a lot of money, because they were relying on a system that didn't work.
And it it it made them ask the right questions. I mean, it made them understand, like, I think that there's we're seeing a a huge comeback to Bitcoin. A lot of people are finally understanding why Bitcoiners were saying what they were saying and why you have to be careful with these systems and why it should be sound. So I think that we'll see,
[01:05:33] Unknown:
much the rate of adoption grow in the next year or so. But you can live you can live in a major Argentinian city and earn Bitcoin and spend Bitcoin and never touch dollars or pesos. Yeah. Definitely. Period. Yeah. You can. Either the Bitcoin futures there yeah so Dario at its core what does freedom mean to you
[01:06:00] Unknown:
I think that it's it's the right to have your own opinions, to express them, to to behave in line with them. As long as you don't hurt anyone else and and you respect others freedom, like, I think that that's yeah. It's tough to define freedom. I think that you shouldn't, like, in the modern world, you shouldn't be restricted about the decisions to take you take about your life and how you relate to others. So I think that's in the end, that's that's the core of it, trying to share your your beliefs freely. And I think that in order to do that, you need a lot of, you need tools that allow you to to do this. You you need some rights that are usually hard to to maintain in different environments, but, I'd say that I think that that we are in a point of history where we have the most freedom than we we've ever had as a humanity.
So I think that, there are a lot of people rooting for freedom, and and it's more and more of the world right now is is, trying to at least have the the ideas of respecting these personal freedoms, so I'm optimistic about the future. I think we're going in the right direction. There's still a lot of work to be done. But but yeah, Not having anyone, tell you what you should do in the end, is what freedom is and what we should strive for.
[01:08:12] Unknown:
Dario, it's been a pleasure. I appreciate you. Thank you.
Dario Schneiderman is an Argentinian Bitcoiner and the creator of Moon Wallet. Moon, spelled with 2 u's, is an extremely easy to use bitcoin wallet available on both Android and iPhone, allowing people around the world to easily use bitcoin from the comfort of the mobile phones they already own.
[00:00:27] Unknown:
Seems unfortunately we have, a protest going on right now. Hopefully hopefully, it doesn't bleed into the into the audio of the interview, you know? Yeah. It's good good to find. It is what it is. Right? You can't you can't choose when there's a protest. So, Dario, you were born in Argentina? Yes. Do you still live in Argentina? I do. Yeah. How has as an American to an Argentinian, like, how has growing up in Argentina, how do you think it shaped your experiences?
[00:01:00] Unknown:
Yeah. I mean, I think there's, it changed a bit in the situation in Argentina in the last 30 years. We had at least I think, 3 different stages, if you will. The first 10 years, were pretty economically, they were, pretty good. The Argentinian peso was a stable coin. It was tied 1 to 1 to the dollar Oh, it was pegged? Yeah. It was pegged. So, I think those were the the the good times in the last 30 years. But then in 2001, there was a really big event. The economy was really bad, and the country was running out of US dollars. So from, like, 1 week to the next, everyone's accounts in the bank, go got frozen. You could only withdraw up to, I think, $300, per week.
And if you had any dollars in the bank, like, that was from the pesos accounts, but if you had any dollars, they were completely frozen. And that situation escalated throughout the year until at some point, you couldn't withdraw any money. And there's no warning. There's no warning. No warning. Everyone's, savings, frozen. So it was a really bad year. I think in that year, we got like 5 presidents in 2 weeks. Like, it was crazy. Really? Yeah. And I think that, from that point forward, the situation, fluctuated a bit. But it was always, pretty bad.
There's a lot of, the peso started inflating a lot. So I know this year, we're going to have probably, like, 60% inflation.
[00:02:59] Unknown:
So 60% inflation this year? This year.
[00:03:02] Unknown:
So that means that, prices are changing all the time. Like, if you go abroad for a couple months and you go go back, then you don't know what the prices are. You get used to this eventually. You get used to thinking in multiple currencies at the same time. Like, everyone knows in the street what the exchange the current exchange rate for the dollar between the peso is. And you actually have even, like, multiple exchange rates because there's the official one, which no one can get really. Right. And then you have, like, the black market one.
[00:03:37] Unknown:
So the official one is just Yeah. It is They just say it, but it doesn't you can't use it. I think,
[00:03:43] Unknown:
by up to $200, per month using the official rates. Like, through a bank or something? Through a bank, but not many people will do. And so, then you have, like, a whole range of different dollars. Like, you have the black market dollar. You have the bitcoin dollar, which is the one that you get if you buy in a Bitcoin exchange. And you have these many things. So I think it's it gives you a mental model to deal with a lot of uncertainty. Like, people don't know they can't save in pesos, so they do some crazy things. They save in, in TVs or, fridges or Like, they buy televisions. Yeah. They buy televisions. They buy, like, they buy anything that's going to be more stable than the peso, which is almost everything.
So crazy things happen As I'm saying. In in the Argentinian economy. So, yeah, I think that we're used to living with a lot of currency controls. The government is is super strict on what you can do with your money. It's, at times, it's really hard to move money in or out of the country. So you start not relying on institutions. There's super low trust on banks, on the governments. So it's really tough to to know what to do with your money. A lot of people, like, start storing your money under the mattress is a super common phrase in Argentina, and it actually happens. Like But they're not storing pesos?
[00:05:24] Unknown:
They're no. It's dollars.
[00:05:25] Unknown:
Yeah. I think Argentina is the largest holder of physical dollars, like cash, in the world, because, people just, like, want to have the only thing that they trust is is the the the $100 bill. And and yeah. So so with time, you you get crafty on on how to deal with all these things and and, try alternative, methods, for storing your money, for investing, for moving your money around, for buying stuff. There's a lot of common knowledge about when to buy stuff and when not to buy stuff, and, I think that it's it's even pretty different from other countries in South America. It's it's quite a special, culture regarding money and regarding how you relate with the institutions. Like, just because the money has been so bad for so long. Yeah. Exactly. And and there's, like, people already know how to deal with this. Right.
So if you go, say, to Brazil, which is next to Argentina, you're going to see that, when when money, starts to inflate, peep people start selling because they they have a lot of uncertainty. In Argentina, it's the other way around. They already know how this behaves. So they start buying stuff because the money burns because it's losing value day to day. So, so there's all these culture around how, how do you deal with inflation, which I, I think it's really interesting because in a way, right now, Argentina is like a first mover because many other parts of the world are starting to see inflation.
And the and as Argentinians, we're seeing how they are starting to learn about the side effects of inflation, which is super interesting because we see them first hand, every day. They're super experienced. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So for once, Argentina is ahead. But, yeah, other than that, I I think it's, it's a really interesting mix because you have all these problems, but at the same time, you have a super developed, culture. There's a lot of talent in Argentina. There's a really good infrastructure compared to other places, that may not have, good institutions.
And so everyone has Internet. There's a high penetration of smartphones so people can access the Internet. They are educated, and so they they understand a lot of things of both what's going on inside the country and outside the country. So, yeah, I I think it's, it's a perfect breeding ground for some of the things and the technologies we're seeing right now, such as Bitcoin. And I think that's one of the of the reasons why we're seeing right now so high penetration of these technologies, because people not only understand them, but but also need need them. There's like, you have to explain much less things to an Argentinian about why, you you need to have your money in a way that no one can touch it, that no one can freeze it, and why you need to be careful with where you put your money.
On the other hand, yeah, the the there's, when people are willing to to try a lot of new things, there's more failure cases. People make mistakes. Right. We we recently have a really good really big net goo event with with all, there was a a currency that was supposedly one to 1 to the dollar and and had, like, really good it it looked like a really good investment opportunity. And, for some reason, it it it went like fire in Argentina. And a lot of people put their savings in there. So, yeah, you have to be, like on the other hand, you have you have to be extra careful. You're more vulnerable because you're Exactly. Exactly. Because your institutions have failed you. So you're you're doing everything on your own. So you become more vulnerable. And you your trust structures went down, and you don't know what to trust. You don't have the institutions. You don't know who is telling the truth, who is not, and so it's really tough.
And you you really have to take, like, a first principles approach where you try to understand, well, like, how does this work? Which I think is is is a thing that that that's been promoted a lot in the last, years by Bitcoiners and and people in the industry. I think it stems from a different place, but it reaches the same conclusions. So,
[00:10:23] Unknown:
yeah. So the 2 of us are both part of this global Bitcoin community. Do you feel, like, a strong disconnect? Do you feel a strong disconnect with American Bitcoiners or European Bitcoiners as an Argentinian?
[00:10:37] Unknown:
That's a good question. I think that, I feel more connection to Bitcoiners in general because they are thinking about these issues even if theoretically. It's, it's hard for for someone that's lived their entire lives in a country where everything works to understand how it feels when things don't work. Be because you can reason about it in a theoretical level, but seeing it is quite different. And there's all these second or the other effects that there's other things that happen because of this that are super hard to anticipate when you don't see them firsthand.
So, yeah, I I think that, say, it's much much easier to explain noncustodianship and understand truly why it's important, as an Argentinian that maybe as a European or an American.
[00:11:35] Unknown:
Being holding your own Bitcoin, not letting an institution hold your Bitcoin. Exactly. Like
[00:11:41] Unknown:
so nonconsolidation is this property of not having anyone be able to either move your money or freeze your money, which is something that it was what how money worked 500 years ago. Like, all money. Or it's like how cash works. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And so in the I think in the last 500, 600 years, we lost these properties, in order to get some others, in order to be able to travel without all your gold bars on you and and that kind of stuff. And so right now we are super used to that. We don't question it. Like if it works, you don't question it.
But now we have the technology to to have something that helps the best of both worlds, like a money that has that can't be frozen, that can't be moved by a government when they decide to move it for what whatever reason. But at the same time, it's safe to use and and all the stuff you expect from having your money in your bank. So, yeah, I think that it's, it's easier for an Argentinian to understand, but it's not impossible for for an American or or a European to to empathize with it. It's just a little bit more work. You have to question Yeah. This is a beginning education part instead of removing the experience. Exactly. You you you need to to question a a few things that that you give for granted, but eventually, you get there. And and I mean, I think
[00:13:15] Unknown:
your your comment about Argentinian use of cash, specifically US dollars, which in in the traditional money sense is the closest thing you get to self custody bitcoin of holding your own your own bitcoin is there's a sharp disconnect there because, I mean, I was just at the Oslo Freedom Forum, and I was doing a panel on the dangers of central bank digital currencies. And I asked the audience a question. Right? And I asked the audience what the question was, if you use fiat money, if you use your local currency, do you use cash more than you use digital money? Do you use cash more than you use credit cards or payment apps?
And, you know, maybe 1% of people raise their hand saying they use cash more. Right? But if that was in Argentina, you don't even have the option to use the digital money apps really. Right? You just end up getting screwed. Yeah. So so you have, different
[00:14:08] Unknown:
use cases. So, what people want to do with with the cash is store it, and they use it for savings. They they don't want to spend it usually, because that's the hard money for them. That's the money that they know that it's not going to devaluate, that they know they can control. They they they see where it is, they can touch it, and so they understand it. And so, they they spend mostly the pesos that they are earning. They they spend the credit cards if they use them. But, yeah, I think that it's not that common, to to pay with, cash in dollars in cash in Argentina. It's super common to use cash, though.
Like, 50% of the population is is, like, operating in the black market or outside the system. Like, 50% of the economy. That's a lot. That means that most companies are outside of the system. And so, you cannot rely on banks. Like, even, even if they work right now, like, you can never know how much more they will work. But Is it a class divide? Can, like, rich people rely on banks or just nobody rely on banks? I'm sure. It depends on whether you are working, in in a, like, formal, work relationship, and it's, all by the book, which is like 50% of the population got accesses.
Still, that part of the population, there's a huge percentage of of, that population that doesn't have money in the banks, even though they could, because they don't trust them, because they've seen they've been burned before. Like, everyone that has, at least 25 years in Argentina has seen firsthand, how it felt when, you lose all the money and they they take all your money away and they they start putting restrictions. And even today, there there are a lot of restrictions for moving the money in and out of the country. What are the current restrictions? So if you're bringing, US dollars from outside the country into Argentina, you're, forced to sell them at the local at the official rate, which is half its value. So you That's the only time you get the official rate is when Yeah. Exactly. So you you the base is that you lose half your money, just to do that, and then you have to pay taxes, on on the remaining stuff.
And, you appear in in, like you start being tracked by the governments, and and there's always these promises that nothing they are not going to do anything with that information, but then the government changes, and and then 4 years later, you get all the restrictions that that, people promised that you wouldn't have. And so, yeah, it's super tough to get money in inside the country. People are starting to use, Bitcoin and crypto a lot for that. And there's and then depending on your industry, there might be different restrictions. There's a really big industry, in selling, like, exporting, vegetables and and beef and that kind of stuff, and they have, like, super, hard regulations.
They lose, like, I don't know, 70, 80% of the value. It goes to the government.
[00:17:50] Unknown:
And, yeah, it changes month month to month. Like, right now, is there a limit right now on how much money you can send outside the country?
[00:17:58] Unknown:
I'm not sure. I'm not sure. But there could be. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. I mean, there's all these complex rules and and and they're changing all the time, so it's really difficult to navigate. It creates a really big incentive for, multinational companies not to come to Argentina because it's so hard that even if they come, eventually, they go away because, it doesn't make sense. Yeah. It doesn't make sense. It's crazy.
[00:18:26] Unknown:
When so with your personal story, when does Bitcoin enter your story? Sure.
[00:18:32] Unknown:
So the first time I I heard about Bitcoin was in 2011, with some friends in college. We were You were in college in Argentina? Yeah. In college in Argentina. A friend of mine told me about it, sent me a link to the paper. I write it, and and it was beautiful. And and I I remember thinking, what? This might even work, but but I didn't gave it, and I I didn't do much with it at the time, because, I was with other things, and I didn't pay that much attention, and and it didn't seem that it was something real at the time. And then 2 years later in 2013, there was a a really big conference, Bitcoin conference in Argentina, the Latin American I think it was the first Latin American Bitcoin conference. Now a lot of people came from all over the world, and and I went there and and I started seeing that it was something real.
Other people were working on this, other people were doing stuff and and thinking about it. And so I I started to get a lot more involved and starting to think about how it could fit. Like, Bitcoin is so different from everything else that it it takes you a little bit to to understand the basics and how it fits. And I think that a year or so later, I was working from Argentina remotely for a startup in in the US, and they were paying me in, in dollars in the US. So I need to bring the money into Argentina, and at the time, we we couldn't bring any money. There were really strong currency controls. And so I used Bitcoin. Like, I I bought Bitcoin in the US, sent the Bitcoins, and sold them in, bought Bitcoins and sold them in Argentina.
And And it was, like, a really magic moment. Like, Bitcoin didn't care where I was, who I was. It just worked instantly. So that first moment is is really special, and, and from that point forward, I started thinking like, hey. Like, this awesome. It's an awesome technology, and you can actually solve a really social problem, with technology, but it's super hard to use. Like, I I had to do too many things. I had to understand too many things, too many concepts in order to be able to do that, which was super simple. I just wanted to make one payment, and and I had to go through all these hoops.
And so I started thinking about how can we make it so that everyone in Argentina can use this. Right. Like, at first, I I started with a really Argentinian focus because I saw the problem. It was clear that they needed this technology. And, yeah, that's how I eventually started working on on an application to make this easier, to make moving money, without trusting anyone else easier. And and with the hopes that eventually, we're getting there. There's still more work to be done, but eventually the idea is that everyone, should be able to use this. Even if they don't care about the technology, if they don't care about the details.
It's just a tool. Right? Like a hammer, this is just another tool, and it could be used for different reasons for different people. So yeah.
[00:22:07] Unknown:
It's interesting because it seems like for you and for other Argentinians, like, Bitcoin solves 2 problems for you. Right? It solves spending restrictions, and it solves being able to actually save your your hard work. Yeah. Yeah. For sure.
[00:22:25] Unknown:
Yeah. In engineering, we have all the financial problems, I think. We have inflation. We have problems with the institutions freezing money. We have problems with restrictions moving the money. We have restrictions with what you can buy and sell, like, what are the currencies you can buy. So I think that Bitcoin goes down all these layers and instead of trying to fix the layers it goes all the way around and says hey, like, we can do this without all this infrastructure. Like, this should be much easier. And so in a way, Bitcoin is much simpler than than, what all this system that we've been building for the last 100 years layer after layer of banks and credit cards and payment processors and governments.
Bitcoin just just does away with everything and and starts from the ground up, with very clear principles, with a very clear design and tries to create money, that that you can use without trusting anyone. So yeah, I think it solves many, many of these problems for Argentinians. I think that the missing problem right now that Bitcoin doesn't address is volatility, so there's a lot of people, we see a lot of people that are living month to month. Right. And so, recommending bitcoin to them is irresponsible in a way because it's a super volatile currency and it's going up but in a frame of maybe 4 or 5 years.
So if you're going to need to spend your money the next month or so, then, Bitcoin doesn't solve a a problem for you. It's it's pretty dang it could could be pretty dangerous.
[00:24:14] Unknown:
Even in a even when, like, the alternative is a currency that's dropping 60% year over year? Yes. Because, like, if you spend your money,
[00:24:21] Unknown:
like, within 30 days, then inflation doesn't matter that much. It's not a super big problem. Like, if you don't have savings,
[00:24:30] Unknown:
then it's not a big problem. It's just like almost a guarantee Yeah. 8% down or something. Exactly. The Cost of doing business. Yeah. Exactly. In Argentina,
[00:24:39] Unknown:
all all the people factor that that they're going to have inflation.
[00:24:44] Unknown:
And and yeah, the system adapts. That's interesting. Yeah. Because I I kind of was operating under the assumption that the volatility would feel less as a negative to people that are living in a complete you know, their alternative is a complete failed currency. Sure.
[00:25:02] Unknown:
I think that there are some currencies that are are in a much worse shape. Right. And you might like, in in periods of hyperinflation, like, in in I think in, 89, a year before I was wrong that we had, like, hyperinflation in Argentina, and at that point, you cannot even, like, press it for the next week, because it's it's really, really bad. But, for for spending the day to day and and like if you don't have savings, What the government currencies have, kind of, is that they are predictable. You kinda know what's going to happen. With Bitcoin, you don't. So that factors in in, like, it it gives, it's it's reasonable to be fearful of what's going to happen in the next month with Bitcoin because because no one knows. Could go up 50% or you go down Exactly.
Exactly. And and the risk of having your money slashed by 50%, when you wake up is too big. That's kind of what happened in 2001. Right? For sure. For sure. Yeah. But
[00:26:09] Unknown:
so We're like the government just comes in. Yeah. There's restrictions. It says you can't slow your money down. I believe that's why people in Argentina
[00:26:17] Unknown:
usually tend to to seek dollars. Right. Because it's much more predictable. It has inflation level, but it's much smaller than the Argentinian pesos. Compared to what you're used to, there's no inflation. Exactly. So, maybe eventually, bitcoin will have, will stabilize, if it grows enough. I don't know. We'll see what happens. There's many things have to happen before, we get to that point, but I guess it could happen eventually and at that point it might make sense to go all in on Bitcoin. But yeah, yeah, you can, there's some companies right now exploring using Bitcoin as a payment network and maybe use having US dollars inside of it. That has some trust involved.
You are trusting someone, but, in Argentina, people will usually prefer to trust like a foreign company than their government. It's so bad in there that almost anything is better than trusting the governments
[00:27:25] Unknown:
and the local banks. They'd rather foreign companies. Yeah. Or or Foreign company, foreign central bank, like, the full foreign Exactly.
[00:27:31] Unknown:
I I mean, they are saving in in US dollars, and so they are crossing the the US, central bank. And I guess that's for for the risk profile of an Argentinian, that's, good enough risk to take, but I think we can do better. Eventually, we should do better than than even having to trust,
[00:27:55] Unknown:
any central bank. Yeah. I mean, my hope my hope is that as adoption increases with Bitcoin, as more money, as more purchasing power goes into Bitcoin, volatility should kind of Definitely.
[00:28:07] Unknown:
Level out of time. Like, volatility is slowly, going down. It's going to take a while. It's a it's a multi decade process, But,
[00:28:16] Unknown:
we have patience. We'll see. Yeah. It seems like the protest has now turned into a concert. I hope it's not picked up on the mic too much, but gotta respect people's freedom to protest. As an Argentinian, do you think do you think it's possible to for people to have freedom without good money?
[00:28:40] Unknown:
I don't think so. I mean, money is the building block for, a lot of, human interaction and activities. And so in a capital in a in a capitalist world, capital and money is super important. And if someone has control of your money, it has it it has control of on your actions. Like, people do crazy things when their money is at stake. So I think that to to have true freedom, you really need to to not have to, you have to be thinking about the repercussions on your money of your actions in the real world. So that that's actually I think it's a combination you need a combination of basic building blocks. You you need money, but you also need privacy, right, because, even if you have a really good technology for money, the government can come to you there and force you to freeze your money.
So there's a couple of of building blocks that you you need in today's world for for true freedom, freedom to protest. Right. I like here freedom to express and and so yes. Up to now we I I don't think we've seen, many, successful experiments of of creating a money in the modern times that that actually enables freedom, for people, and and that enables them to to do whatever they want to do with the money or or with the words or with their actions. I think that that Bitcoin is is a really interesting experiment. I don't know if it's going to succeed. I hope it does, but, there there are still many, challenges ahead, but at least we're trying. It's a it's a really interesting experiment.
And even if it fails, I think the idea and the staff we learned along the way about what, how money should work and how institutions should work and who you should trust because at the end of of the day, it's a question of of trust. I I think if Bitcoin doesn't succeed, something will, eventually.
[00:31:06] Unknown:
So you would disagree with Bitcoiners that think that Bitcoin's inevitable?
[00:31:12] Unknown:
I don't think Bitcoin is inevitable because there's still many challenges. We we had to solve many problems ahead. Like, we we haven't faced the worst enemies of Bitcoin yet. Not even worse. So yeah. Exactly. So it's it's a hard assumption to say that we're going to
[00:31:28] Unknown:
to win all of those battles, but we're going to try. We're going to give our best. What's your biggest concern? Do you have do you have one on the top of your head?
[00:31:36] Unknown:
Yeah. Right now, I think, Bitcoin scaling. Like, Bitcoin processes, like, 7 transaction transactions per second. So that's and Visa processes, like, 10,000 transactions per second and 40,000 in peak, times. So we are, like, at least 3 zeros away from, from that kind of, processing power. We have right now a new technology calling, called the Lightning Network, which helps a little, but maybe give us it gives us, like, one more 0, maybe 2. Really? That's all you think? Yeah. Yeah. You think it only brings you, like, 700 trans transactions per se? Yeah. Because, for me, like, it it works really well between, say, 2 exchanges that they're exchanging money all the time. You never have to close your channels, which is this lining concept of, like, making a a Bitcoin transaction in the Bitcoin channel. Like, it's super infrequent.
But for end users, it's super frequent because the they like, if you have, lightning in a phone, the the funds that are locked in those channels, the liquidity that is being used is mostly useless because they're offline all the time, and you're not using it. So you have to close channels pretty frequently. And even if if that weren't true, you need at least one transaction per person, to open the first channel. Right. And so if you like, it would take, like, more than a decade to make one transaction per person in the world.
[00:33:15] Unknown:
So you think the people that claim that lightning is a Yeah. This beautiful scaling solution
[00:33:23] Unknown:
is is not quite there yet. It's great. I mean, lightning is is a super good technology. It works it works today, which is super important. There's still some work ahead to be done, but it it works fairly well. It's just not a magical solution. It it won't scale much more than that. It still it still needs improvements as well. Like, there could be Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But we need to be thinking about scaling in every layer. Yeah. At the base chain, in lightning, in other layers. I think that there there are many ideas, going around.
It's not like it's impossible to do, but, maybe it's it's common to think that lightning solved solved scaling. And It's a solved problem. Yeah. Exactly. And it definitely isn't, like, we are seeing first hand the the the limits of it. So to to kinda distill
[00:34:17] Unknown:
what I think you're trying to convey here is is your main concern with Bitcoin right now is the idea of having as many people as possible be able to use Bitcoin in a fully sovereign way where no company, no government can stop them from spending and cannot stop them from seizing their money. We're not necessarily there yet. Yeah. Exactly. So so for me, like, the the macro risk
[00:34:41] Unknown:
is that, we get comfortable with housing things are. We we select this what what Bitcoin is today is what Bitcoin is, and we stopped working on scaling it and making it accessible in a really trustless way for everyone. Right. And we settle for Bitcoin banks, which is exactly the same thing that we had before, but with
[00:35:04] Unknown:
the increasing financial exposure Right. Which wasn't the goal in the first place. And, like, maybe I mean, in that situation, you'd also you still have interoperability. They could transfer between each other a little bit more competition, but still not ideal. Yeah.
[00:35:17] Unknown:
And, I mean, if if if this turns out to be like, if interoperability and openness, turns out to be openness, I don't know, but interoperability at least turns out to be a good idea, then banks can copy it. Like, if they can get together, and build an interoperable protocol between them, the thing that they cannot do is not hold people's money because it hurts their business models, and and it hurts the the entire idea of a bank of what a bank does. And so, I think that what what gives Bitcoin value is the unique things that only Bitcoin can do. And having your money in a self sovereign way is something that only Bitcoin can do it in the way that it does.
And so in a way, you could say that Bitcoin scales. Self custodianship doesn't. Right. And, yeah, my biggest fear is that we sell for for custodial solutions, Bitcoin banks. Where you're trusting companies, trusting governments. And we end up in the same place where we started. So, yeah, I think more scaling work is needed. But I I hope that eventually when it starts to, like on the other hand, Bitcoin has this, like, closed loop when Bitcoin starts to not scale because peep there's huge demand for transactions, and there's, the capacity, the processing capacity is fixed.
Fees go up, and so it starts to hurt, and people start to realize that, hey. Like, maybe we should be working on getting fees lower. Right. So there is an incentive for our players, to to event like, when it starts to hurt to to work on, scalability. And it's also going to be a problem even for, custodial companies. Right. Because their cost will go up. Yeah. Exactly. So I hope that eventually, like, everyone is going to align into the fact that we need to keep working on the problem.
[00:37:17] Unknown:
Which kinda I mean, it kinda goes back to your own personal experiences. Right? Because, I mean, what I've noticed with Bitcoin is one of the key value props of Bitcoin is that it's a system that nobody controls. Right? Yeah. And because nobody controls it, it's very hard to change. Yeah. So you only really see change when there's a lot of pain that's felt, when people get burned. Yeah. And in Argentina, that it's kind of a similar situation, right, where people are getting burned and they they seek out solutions
[00:37:44] Unknown:
to stop to stop feeling the pain. Yeah. Yeah. And at the same time, it's, it's reasonable for Bitcoin, to get harder and harder to change, because that's that's a protection mechanism. It's the same mechanism that that, doesn't allow our government to come in and change things. So so I think it's important to to to keep that property and and to work with it and eventually as it starts to hurt, if everyone agrees that it's a problem and and that we should be working on it, then I'm sure we will. But, yeah, these things take time. And when it hurts, it hurts now. Right. So I think it'd be, interesting to start working now on on at least the ideas of how we could make Bitcoin, more scalable, with that while keeping all all these interesting properties of Bitcoin. Right?
Because, it's easy to scale it if you give away some of the properties.
[00:38:52] Unknown:
Right. But
[00:38:54] Unknown:
yeah. I think that at least it like, if you get every Argentinian on board in Bitcoin, you already have a problem. So I do believe that there there's a really big need, at least, I don't know, 1, 2,000,000,000 people, really need, self custodianship and and to have their money in a self sovereign way. So I I think we should like, maybe it's not for everyone, but at least for these people, it's important that that Bitcoin can solve the problem. And I don't know. We're, working on it going in that direction, but it's it's a hard problem. It takes time, and and the Bitcoin community is is super hard hardworking, and and and I I think it's super focused, on the right problems. So I hope that, eventually we we will go there. But I believe it's it's one of the biggest technical challenges right now. There are other challenges nontechnical, but
[00:39:55] Unknown:
Yeah. So let's talk about working on it. Yep. You have Moonwallet with 2 u's, one of the most popular mobile wallets. You can run it on your phone. When did the vision for Moon Wallet occur to you? When did you decide to proceed forward with building Moon and how are you inspired for to to make it what it what it is? Sure.
[00:40:20] Unknown:
So it's it's started after, seeing, the the the value firsthand, actually experiencing it. My I, by that point I had already, read a lot about Bitcoin, and thought a lot about Bitcoin, but experiencing it is something much more powerful. And so at the time, it was, this was, 2014, just 2015. Argentina Argentina was in a really bad situation, so it was, pretty clear that that, the problems were clear. That, money didn't work in Argentina. Banks didn't work in Argentina. And there's problems with money and banks everywhere in the world, but in Argentina, the the it was clear to everyone in the street. Like, you go to anyone and and ask them about it, and they're going to tell you pretty specifically what what all the problems are.
And so it's certainly being a question of how can we use this technology to solve this real world pro problem, for Argentinians. And eventually, as as the idea progressed and and, we understood what the technology could do at that point. We on on the one hand, we realize about the global potential of this. Like, it it Bitcoin works exactly the same if you're paying someone that's in front of you that, than if it's, again in a category with restrictions and if it's in the other, side of the world. So, it became clear that it should we could do a solution that worked for many other places rather than only for Argentina.
But at the same time, there there was a clear need for a for a wallet that focused on on people that don't know about Bitcoin, that don't know about the entire technology stack, which is like an a lot of knowledge. Like, you you have to to buy your 1st bitcoins, you have to understand what an address is, what the wallet is, what the wallet isn't, what an exchange is, what the price is, how it fluctuates, what KYC is. There's so many concepts and things that people have not been exposed to before. So the idea was, like, how can we make it so we we get it to the point where it's just download this app, and that's it? And so we've been working on that problem for many years now.
I think that there's still many problems to solve ahead. People shouldn't be able to lose their money. Right now, like, if you forget a password or or or a code that you wrote in a paper, then your money is gone. And and you will not accept that from a bank. Like, if you go to an ATM and you you forget the PIN, and you go to, I don't know, the the bank teller, and they they they say, not your keys, not your man not your PIN, not your money. You will kill them. So we need a way to to get all these cool properties of money, but at the same time, make it so that people just no matter what they do, they can lose the money. That it's super, easy to use. I don't have to understand all the technology to use it.
But it's been quite challenging. I think that when we started with Moon, most wallets were mostly a reflection of the protocol. And so what what we try to do is is tackle it, go from the other way around, try to understand what's the problem for the user, and and then figure out, well, how close can we get with the technology? Rather than saying saying, like, oh, Bitcoin can do all this stuff. Let's put them all inside, an interface and and and let people do everything. So I think that there's different wallets with different trade offs for different audiences, and and that's the beauty of Bitcoin. You can have many different, products competing in an open market, and and you have zero lock in. Like, you can move with 3 clicks. You can move your money from one wallet to the other.
Most wallets work globally. So they are available available to everyone everywhere. And, yeah, we try to to work on that. We're trying to to include a lot of people that maybe get left behind. Bitcoin started as as an English speaking phenomenon, and most of the content is in English. And most wallets are only in English, and and most protocols even have, error codes and that kind of stuff that are only in English. And so getting to the point where, this access like, the the way that people back up wallets today is only for English speakers. Is, like, write down English words. Write write down something English words. As foundational as well. Exactly. Exactly. And so it's we're trying to to go back a little bit there and see what's the essence of the problem and how can we apply it in a in a language neutral way.
And at the same time, it's Bitcoin is is super complex. It it can be a lot for newcomers. So having someone that you can speak to in the same language that you speak is super important. And so we've seen a lot of, this was something, super important in El Salvador. I think it was the first time that we saw a lot of adoption growing quicker than education.
[00:46:29] Unknown:
Because El Salvador had this legal tender law. Right? So Bitcoin Bitcoin is now an accepted currency everywhere in El Salvador. Yeah. And and there's a lot of people people just came into Bitcoin. From one day to the other.
[00:46:40] Unknown:
And some people wanted to, some others didn't. But everyone was exposed to this technology, and what they had mostly was questions. And so having, like, a support channel or someone that you can talk to inside the wallets, in a language that you understand that can answer some basic things about how does this work? How how do I do to not lose my money? And, make them at ease and and help them go at their own pace and understand at their own pace, what Bitcoin is and and what problems it solves. I think it's super important. So yeah. And there's many challenges, to to taking Bitcoin globally, But I think that, Bitcoiners are are super open to this, and, they are willing, to to to work on these problems.
We just have to be careful with some biases.
[00:47:39] Unknown:
What is your biggest pain point that you felt while you're building while you built Moon?
[00:47:46] Unknown:
Yeah. I I think that well, there weren't many pain points. But I I think that, one of the most challenging things, was having multiple audiences with different levels of understanding and balancing that. Like, you you have to make a product that at the same time works for someone that knows a lot about the technology and has really high expectations about how it should work and how it should look like even, what protocols you should be using. They have opinions about that. And at the same time, you have to cater to an audience that doesn't understand any anything about how the technology works.
And you have to be able to to let them build mental models about how it works, and let them relate it to stuff that they already know, like an email or a password. And so that that was something that took us many years to understand how to navigate and how to, make a product that make a product that works for many audiences at the same time. Then there's always a lot of technical challenges, when you want to, when you start with a problem rather than with the technology or the solution and you you want to, have a very specific UX, you have to take the technology to its limits.
And and so, you're dealing with a lot of problems that might not have been explored before, or or that, maybe it falls in a place where no one has given it much thought yet. So so that's an interesting challenge. But, yeah, it's it's super interesting to work on that and and see how we could, take Bitcoin to its limits and and and also inspire us into how we could extend Bitcoin, in in order to to gain new functionality and and those kind of things. The El Salvador
[00:49:50] Unknown:
situation is very interesting, I think, and could be very interesting from specifically as a someone from Latin American country. Yeah. Do you do you see any did you learn anything from from El Salvador adopting Bitcoin as a national currency that you think could apply to maybe a potential situation in Argentina? Definitely.
[00:50:12] Unknown:
Yeah. We have many learnings from onboarding users, and onboarding many users at once into into Moon. One of the things that we, we weren't prepared, for, like we all we always had the advantage of either onboarding people that already know about Bitcoin Right. Or that have someone next to them telling them about Bitcoin. Easier if you have a friend. Yeah. Exactly. If you know someone that that knows about Bitcoin and you ask them, they will speak to you for 3 hours straight and tell you all the ins and outs of Bitcoin and how it works and what problems it solves, which is great. It's I think it's the best way to get into Bitcoin. But if you don't have that, then then there is many things that you can't can't assume that, the person that's, getting onboarded to the world knows.
And so we were for example, when you go you go to the receipt screen in Moon, you you you go to receive Bitcoins. We had 2 tabs that that make you, make you, you have to make a decision on which protocol you're going to use. Either you use traditional Bitcoin or Lightning. And we have a lot of people, that didn't know what Lightning was and and saying, like, what's this other coin? Like, you have bitcoin and lightning. And so we it started, pushing us in in in ways that we haven't faced with before, which is super interesting, and and I think it will be useful everywhere to to get those work on those problems and and make it much more clear to users.
Then we had the, many users that didn't speak English, and we started seeing more of these multi language prompts. There are new protocols, right now for lining making lightning payments, that are designed in a way where if you get an error, if the, say you want to make a payment to sites online, which implements this protocol, It's called Allen URL. The developer, writes the error code that it's going to be shown to the user. But they are mostly, writing these things in English. And so we have a a really tough challenge of of how do we deal with that for people that don't speak, in English.
[00:52:47] Unknown:
Or they speak Spanish. Exactly. Payment fails, and then the error is in English, and they have no idea what the hell is going on. Exactly. Exactly.
[00:52:54] Unknown:
So that's that's a tough challenge, that no one is, speaking about. And another thing that, when you go fully global, like, truly, fully global, you're dealing in sometimes in countries like Argentina, that don't have a clear exchange rate. And so, this happens in Venezuela, in Cuba, in Lebanon, in India right now. And so there's a lot of stuff that goes into saying how much a a Bitcoin is or a dollar is in those countries.
[00:53:33] Unknown:
How do you handle that?
[00:53:36] Unknown:
We try to, ask locals, how do they solve it for them, what sites they use, and and we try to to have as many source of truth as possible and and and try to, like, average it out. And to be clear, Moon doesn't
[00:53:56] Unknown:
Moon with 2 u's does not hold, it doesn't hold your local currency. It only holds Bitcoin Yeah. But it it'll show the equivalent amount. It'll show how much that
[00:54:06] Unknown:
Exactly. Because when when people want to make a payment, they usually think, about the the the unit of account, the unit that they use to express how much money they want to send, is usually denominated either in their local currency or in some reserve currency. So it's really important that the wallet can make this conversion automatically. And and it looks like a super small thing to do, but it's quite challenging to do at scale, especially in some countries. And and, yeah, there there there's all these small points of friction that you find out when you onboard different users and new users.
So we're learning we're learning a lot all of the time. And I guess, El Salvador was a really big stress test. Many people using it at the same time. I I think it was a a really big success case for for the Lightning Network especially. I I'm not aware of any other point in time where it was used at such scale by unexperienced users successfully. So I think in in that sense it went pretty well. But there's always stuff to learn and to improve and and work to be done to make it better for the next El Salvador. You would say El Salvador, the rollout in El Salvador
[00:55:32] Unknown:
for the most part was a massive success.
[00:55:35] Unknown:
I think so. Yeah. Depend depending on what layer you look at it, like, technologically, I think it went pretty well. Socially, I don't think so. Right. I think there were many problems socially. Like, Bitcoin is usually a grassroots movement. It goes from the from the people. And in El Salvador, it went the other way around, like Not really.
[00:55:58] Unknown:
I mean, I like to think of it as a grassroots movement that grew so big that the government couldn't ignore it and then they chose to adopt it. Sure. Right? Because you had that Bitcoin Visa. It definitely started, like, aggressive move.
[00:56:13] Unknown:
Yeah. But, many people found themselves with a lot of questions and and thinking that they were, forced to deal with Bitcoin and accept Bitcoin, when they didn't even know what it was, and they were really scared. And I think that it could have been damn good sir with much more education, with with much more, clarity around what would be expected of merchants, say, like small merchants. For for a big merchant, they can adapt and and and work with it. So I think that maybe, doing it a little bit more gradually with more education would have been better. But from your perspective,
[00:56:58] Unknown:
perspective, Moon Yep. Your project
[00:57:01] Unknown:
was successful in Yeah. Definitely. Definitely. And and we even had, like, there's an official wallet, in El Salvador, that's, maintained by the government, and it's actually, like, a Bitcoin bank. And we had especially, like, really hyper penetration with the people that were opposed to the government because they they, with with all this new law, they were they, got down in Bitcoin and learned a lot and and understood the reasons why Bitcoin really existed. And and as the government was freezing their bank accounts, they were using bitcoin to bypass the government, so I guess in a way, it was, a good ending and and these people got to learn about a tool that can help them fight against the government when they need to.
Protect themselves, not fight. But, yeah, I think that, there's still a lot of work that's needed with lining on reliability. Like, many payments fail. So we we should and it's a cross cutting problem. It touches the protocol. It touches the ecosystem. It touches the exchanges that are integrating Lightning Network, the wallets. And so, a lot more work there is needed, but other than that, I'd say it was a resounding success. On the topic of language confusion Yep.
[00:58:30] Unknown:
What was the thought process about naming your app Moon spelled incorrectly in English?
[00:58:35] Unknown:
Yeah. I'm I'm really a fan of of things that have multiple meanings at the same time. And and so there was this phrase in in the Bitcoin community of, to the moon, early on. So that was one inspiration for it. And and it turns out that there's a Star Wars race, that that they're called the moons, and they are the creators and the founders of the intergalactic banking plan. The the and the deal they they are really good at math and finance and and, when when we realized about about that, it was like this is a perfect name and and and I think that, like, thinking about, like, you can think, around Bitcoin, like, building an intergalactic, money system. Like, Bitcoin might even work outside of planet Earth. But they spelled with 2 u's in there? Yeah. They're spelled with 2 u's.
[00:59:39] Unknown:
So do you have any regrets spelling it that way?
[00:59:43] Unknown:
I think it's, it it became a meme.
[00:59:47] Unknown:
It became a meme because I had to say it every week on my podcast. Exactly. Yeah. I Moon with 2 u's. Yeah. Moon with 2 u's.
[00:59:56] Unknown:
I think in retrospect, it might not have been the best name, but,
[01:00:03] Unknown:
yeah. Well, thank you for answering the single most important question for me today. So we're talking about Argentinians accepting Bitcoin, using Bitcoin. Do you have any idea of of how many Argentinians are using Bitcoin right now?
[01:00:18] Unknown:
I don't know, really. I think that, there's in Argentina, there there is a lot of people using crypto. I I think I've seen recent statistics that they're around, like, 30%
[01:00:33] Unknown:
penetration. But you're you're including
[01:00:35] Unknown:
stable coins. That's that's stable coins, Ethereum, and Bitcoin. There was, yeah.
[01:00:44] Unknown:
Do you think Bitcoin is the most popular down there? Or
[01:00:47] Unknown:
I think stable coins are the most popular because if all this idea with the US dollar When we say stable coins, we mean
[01:00:55] Unknown:
tokens that are pegged to US dollar value that require trust in the company. Yeah.
[01:01:01] Unknown:
They they are, tokens that they're one to one with the dollar. So in in a way, you can think of them as exchangeable with the dollar. There are multiple types of them. There are some of them that you trust a third party entity like a company that's holding the same Yeah. A bank that's holding, a similar amount of dollars. That's, say, Tether. There's a lot of penetration of Tether, in Argentina. There's also, some people using Dai, which is an agor algorithmic stable coin. I won't go into the details, but there's it works in another and more complex way, and and tries to do away with the trust in a third party.
But You add different trust instead. Exactly. You have different risks. Like, you you have the thing getting in the like, the the layers of risks that you are dealing with. So would you say that, like, a Argentinian
[01:01:58] Unknown:
at the core, the highest demand is dollars. They want US dollars. They want some kind of exposure to US dollars, and they're willing to take some risks Yeah. Trust wise to to have that exposure to dollars. I'd say that that definitely. So
[01:02:14] Unknown:
in I'd say that in Argentina, like, people relate to Bitcoin and crypto more in general in 2 different ways. Some people take it as like as a savings technology. And some people take it as an investment technology. And there there's a a really interesting local Bitcoin community that that's mostly for for not either as a savings, mechanism or investment mechanism, but for what it means and as a tool for freedom. And so I'd say that there's a little bit of of every use case, down there. The user is mostly mostly a savings technology. So stable coins, are a great fit there.
But then, bitcoin, is a super great fit, either for the people that are are in it for the freedom, and the the social change that Bitcoin brings and means, and and for the people that are trying to to make an investment. And that's that's a really interesting audience because that's, how you start relating with Bitcoin and start learning more about it, and you might ask the question, well, why is this going up? Why is this, the price of Bitcoin going up? And then you start falling through all these other questions and questioning, your beliefs. So I think it's a it's a really good path.
But, yeah, there there there's a bit of everything.
[01:03:51] Unknown:
One of the cool things about Bitcoin is is that it's very much a grassroots movement, you know, people talk about open source code but ultimately people need to run the code, they need to build the code, support the code. Yep. And do do you see the Bitcoin community in Argentina growing strongly and do you see this a circular economy developing this idea of, you know, merchants
[01:04:13] Unknown:
accepting Bitcoin and then spending Bitcoin? Definitely. And and Bitcoin adoption is growing quite a bit. You can I I think you can live in in Bitcoin today without ATMs, and without selling your Bitcoin? There's, at least in in the biggest cities, there's, in the last year or so, adoption grew quite a lot. You can pay with lightning network in many places. You can eat, you can go to the gym, you can do many things, paying with lightning network, which is awesome. And, yeah, I think that especially like in the last month or so, a lot of people there was like this big crisis with Terra which was a stable coin and a lot of people lost a lot of money, because they were relying on a system that didn't work.
And it it it made them ask the right questions. I mean, it made them understand, like, I think that there's we're seeing a a huge comeback to Bitcoin. A lot of people are finally understanding why Bitcoiners were saying what they were saying and why you have to be careful with these systems and why it should be sound. So I think that we'll see,
[01:05:33] Unknown:
much the rate of adoption grow in the next year or so. But you can live you can live in a major Argentinian city and earn Bitcoin and spend Bitcoin and never touch dollars or pesos. Yeah. Definitely. Period. Yeah. You can. Either the Bitcoin futures there yeah so Dario at its core what does freedom mean to you
[01:06:00] Unknown:
I think that it's it's the right to have your own opinions, to express them, to to behave in line with them. As long as you don't hurt anyone else and and you respect others freedom, like, I think that that's yeah. It's tough to define freedom. I think that you shouldn't, like, in the modern world, you shouldn't be restricted about the decisions to take you take about your life and how you relate to others. So I think that's in the end, that's that's the core of it, trying to share your your beliefs freely. And I think that in order to do that, you need a lot of, you need tools that allow you to to do this. You you need some rights that are usually hard to to maintain in different environments, but, I'd say that I think that that we are in a point of history where we have the most freedom than we we've ever had as a humanity.
So I think that, there are a lot of people rooting for freedom, and and it's more and more of the world right now is is, trying to at least have the the ideas of respecting these personal freedoms, so I'm optimistic about the future. I think we're going in the right direction. There's still a lot of work to be done. But but yeah, Not having anyone, tell you what you should do in the end, is what freedom is and what we should strive for.
[01:08:12] Unknown:
Dario, it's been a pleasure. I appreciate you. Thank you.
Introducing Dario
Dario's experience with inflation in Argentina
Are westerner's disconnected from the effects of inflation?
How did Dario discover Bitcoin?
Challenges and concerns regarding Bitcoin scalability and self-custodianship
Is it possible to have freedom without sound money?
Is Bitcoin inevitable and how do we scale Bitcoin?
The vision for Muun Wallet
The challenges with building Muun
What has Argentinian bitcoiners learned from El Salvador?
The inspiration behind the name Muun
How many Argentinians are using Bitcoin?
The Bitcoin community in Argentina
What does freedom mean to Dario?
