What made you create Vinteum?

Vinteum came out of a very concrete gap I kept seeing. Brazil has a lot of smart, motivated people who are curious about Bitcoin, but very few clear paths to go from interested to long-term open-source contributor. Much of Bitcoin development still happens far from here, both geographically and culturally.

Honestly, it also started from a very personal place. I wanted to have Bitcoin developers around me. I was learning, building, and organizing in Brazil, but most of the people doing deep protocol and infrastructure work were always somewhere else.

Over time, that personal desire turned into a broader realization about the ecosystem. If Bitcoin development stays too geographically and culturally concentrated, it becomes fragile. You miss perspectives that matter for real-world use, and you also increase the risk that political, regulatory, or social pressure in a single region can interfere with developers doing their work.

Decentralizing development is not just about adding more people. It is about creating real paths for contributors in different contexts to build deep expertise, influence priorities, and stay involved long term. Vinteum is my attempt to help create those conditions from Brazil, while staying fully connected to the global Bitcoin development process.

Do you think Brazil’s got big potential for using Bitcoin for daily payments? And do you think Pix kinda helps Bitcoin by showing people how to handle digital money?

I actually think systems like Pix make it harder for Bitcoin to find its place as a day-to-day payment tool, at least in countries like Brazil. If you look only at cost, speed, reliability, and general UX, Pix is extremely hard to beat. It’s instant, free or close to free, deeply integrated into banking apps, and works the same way everywhere. If you ignore the deeper philosophical and adversarial differences, Pix simply feels smoother and more obvious for most users.

Bitcoin as a payment system is much easier to appreciate in places where the existing alternatives are clearly broken. In countries where people still rely on checks by mail, multi-day bank transfers, limited banking hours, or expensive card networks, the value proposition of instant, global, internet-native money is immediately visible. In that sense, Bitcoin’s strengths stand out more clearly when compared against outdated or exclusionary systems.

The tradeoff, of course, is that Pix is centrally controlled, fully surveilled, and tightly coupled to the banking system and the state. It can be censored, frozen, reversed, or changed unilaterally. Those are real and important differences, but they are not part of most people’s lived experience on a daily basis, so they don’t drive behavior at scale. Convenience usually wins until something breaks.

Because of that, Bitcoin tends to gain more traction as a payment tool in places where the status quo is actively hostile or unreliable, such as under authoritarian regimes, in high-inflation economies, or where access to banking is limited or fragile. In those contexts, Bitcoin isn’t competing on marginal UX improvements, but on survival, access, and sovereignty.

Pix can still play an indirect role. It has trained people to be comfortable with QR codes, instant settlement, and self-initiated digital payments, which lowers the cognitive barrier. It also makes hybrid solutions possible, like Lightning payments that reuse Pix QR code infrastructure, as we’ve seen with things like PlebQR in Thailand. That said, these integrations tend to appeal more to Bitcoin-native users than to the general public, and are unlikely on their own to drive mass adoption.

In short, Pix raises the bar for Bitcoin on pure UX in Brazil, while Bitcoin’s advantages show up most clearly when the comparison is not convenience versus convenience, but freedom versus control.

Vinteum's 3 Year Report highlights the importance of in-person collaboration, meetups, and retreats.

Do you think online collaboration will ever get to a point of parity with in-person gatherings?

Online collaboration has improved a lot and it’s absolutely necessary. Bitcoin would not exist as a global project without it. Asynchronous communication, code review, and open-source tooling already work remarkably well for day-to-day progress.

That said, I don’t think online collaboration reaches parity with in-person gatherings when it comes to trust-building, mentorship, and deep alignment. In-person time compresses things that would otherwise take months: context transfer, informal learning, and the kind of high-bandwidth conversations that rarely happen in public channels.

There’s also something hard to replicate online: unplanned, informal conversations. Some of the most valuable insights don’t come from scheduled meetings or agenda-driven sessions, but from side discussions over meals, walks, or late nights, where people connect ideas across projects or question assumptions in a low-pressure setting.

This is exactly why we’ve been investing so much in in-person work. Recently, we hosted a retreat for the DIY open-source hardware signer community, and another one bringing together the Floresta team and close collaborators. We’re also organizing upcoming retreats for Stratum V2 teams and other Bitcoin infrastructure projects. These are small, focused groups, intentionally designed around working together rather than “events.”

Having a physical home for this matters too. Casa21 gives us a place where people can drop in, spend days or weeks together, and let those informal conversations happen naturally, not just during scheduled sessions.

What I consistently see is that people leave these gatherings with a much stronger mental model of each other and of the codebase. That translates directly into better online collaboration afterward. Reviews get faster, discussions get more charitable, and people are more willing to ask or answer naive questions because there’s already a human relationship in place.

I don’t think it’s an either-or. The most effective model is hybrid. In-person gatherings act as a catalyst that strengthens online collaboration, rather than replacing it. A few days together can set the tone for months or years of remote work.

So while online collaboration will keep getting better, I see in-person time as a force multiplier, not something that gets obsoleted.

What kind of support do you find new developers in Bitcoin are most in need of?

Most new Bitcoin developers don’t primarily need more tutorials or more documentation. They need context, feedback, and continuity.

The hardest part is not writing code, but learning how Bitcoin development actually works: how to read a large and old codebase, how to scope changes that are realistic, how to communicate in issues and PRs, and how to receive review without getting discouraged. That knowledge is mostly implicit and rarely written down.

Early, high-quality feedback is critical. Many new contributors get stuck working in isolation for weeks, unsure if they’re heading in the right direction. A small course correction early on can save enormous amounts of time and frustration, but that requires experienced reviewers who are willing to engage before things are “perfect.”

Continuity matters just as much. One-off hackathons or short programs can spark interest, but without some form of sustained support, people drift away as soon as life or work gets in the way. What actually helps is a sequence: learning, a first contribution, follow-up contributions, and eventually some form of financial or institutional support that lets people keep going long enough to build real expertise.

Finally, there’s a social component that’s often underestimated. Feeling welcome, knowing who to ask, and having a small group of peers going through the same process makes a huge difference. Bitcoin is a global project, but people still learn and persist locally and socially.

You mentioned on Twitter (https://x.com/lucasdcf/status/1849469349062447176) that leaving Lightning Labs was incredibly difficult, what convinced you that Vinteum was the right place to apply your full focus?

Leaving Lightning Labs was genuinely hard. I learned a lot there, worked with people I deeply respect, and it shaped how I think about Bitcoin, open source, and responsibility in this ecosystem.

What ultimately convinced me to focus full-time on Vinteum was realizing where I could have the highest marginal impact right now. In Brazil and Latin America, there’s still a huge gap between talented people who are curious about Bitcoin and the paths that exist to actually become long-term open-source contributors.

Vinteum lets me work on that layer: building infrastructure, programs, and in-person spaces that lower the barrier to entry, create real mentorship, and help new contributors stick around long enough to become independent.

I also realized that this kind of ecosystem work requires full focus. It’s slow, relational, and very hands-on. Splitting attention made it hard to do it well. Once that became clear, the decision, while emotionally difficult, was logically inevitable.

https://twiiit.com/lucasdcf/status/1849469349062447176

What are you must proud of having achieved with Vinteum?

I now naming one single thing will be hard, so feel free to reply with more than one :D

It’s hard to name a single thing, but what I’m most proud of is that Vinteum has helped turn something abstract into something concrete. For a lot of people, contributing to Bitcoin used to feel distant or theoretical. Seeing developers go from curiosity, to first PRs, to sustained upstream work, and in some cases to full-time open-source careers, is incredibly meaningful.

I’m also proud of the community layer we’ve built around that. Our Discord is extremely active, with something happening almost every day: office hours, study groups, book clubs, project deep dives, and informal discussions. That ongoing rhythm matters because it turns learning and contributing into a habit, not a one-off experience.

That online activity is reinforced offline. We support BitDevs in six or seven cities across Brazil, alongside meetups, workshops, and in-person gatherings at Casa21. Together, those spaces give people multiple ways to plug in, depending on where they are and how they learn best.

On a more structural level, I’m proud that we’ve shown a model that goes beyond short-term funding. Long-term mentorship, patience, and personal follow-up turned out to matter as much as money. We’ve helped people find their next step, avoid stagnation, and stay engaged through different life phases.

Finally, I’m proud that contributors coming out of Vinteum are now recognized and trusted within major Bitcoin open-source projects. Seeing people from Brazil and Latin America become recurring contributors, reviewers, and collaborators, rather than one-off participants, feels like a quiet but important achievement.

I'm based in the US. The feeling here is that self-custody is really not popular.

Is this how it feels in Brazil? If so, why do you think people aren't interested in self-custody?

In Brazil, self-custody is also far from mainstream. For most people, custodial wallets and exchanges are still the default, mostly because they’re easier and feel safer.

I don’t think this is very different from the US. Convenience tends to win over responsibility. Managing keys, backups, and security is still intimidating for most users.

It usually becomes important after something breaks, not before.

Bet the answer’s gonna be beans or mandioca! ahaha

Beyond funding developers, how else do you empower developers to begin their open source Bitcoin development journey?

Are there any particular mentorship, training, or community building methods that you've found to be highly effective?

Funding is important, but it’s usually not the first or even the most critical ingredient. A big barrier we see is that many people don’t even realize contributing to open-source Bitcoin is a viable career path at all. It simply doesn’t show up as an option.

I often say that representation inspires participation. Once people have others around them who are already contributing upstream, reviewing PRs, or living off open-source work, the path stops feeling abstract. It becomes something concrete and reachable.

What we’ve found most effective is creating clear, low-pressure on-ramps. That means structured study groups around real codebases, small scoped exercises that force people to read and understand existing projects, and early exposure to how open-source collaboration actually works, not just how the code works.

Mentorship works best when it’s continuous and adaptive. We don’t rely on a single mentor-mentee model. Instead, we combine regular checkpoints, group discussions, and public progress updates with more personalized follow-up for those who stand out and stick around. Some people receive attention for months or even years, well beyond a single program or grant.

That personalization matters because timing and life context vary a lot. People hit different phases at different moments. Jobs change, family situations change, motivation fluctuates. We try to build real relationships so we can support people one-on-one, help them find their next step, and push them to keep growing without locking them into a comfort zone.

Community ties all of this together. Mixing people at different stages, learning, contributing, and mentoring, creates a reinforcing loop. The goal is not just to help someone make a first contribution, but to help them imagine themselves as long-term open-source Bitcoin developers, and then give them the support to actually become one.