We are the co-founders of Atomic.Finance, AMA. (Non-custodial BTC yield)
12.5k sats \ 86 comments \ @TonyCai_ 11 Jul 2023 bitcoin freebie
Yo Stacker News!
We’re Tony Cai & Matthew Black, co-founders @ Atomic.Finance.
Atomic.Finance is building an app for folks to earn a yield on their BTC while holding onto their keys. Made possible using covered calls, and DLCs (think of them as a way to encode a Bitcoin financial contract on-chain).
We started Atomic because we think the current version of Bitcoin finance sucks… A LOT. Way too easy for folks to get rugged like in FTX / BlockFi / Celsius last year, because everything is custodial and a black box. We want to change that. That’s why we’re all about building what we call #SoundFinance for Sound Money (so like… DeFi, but better 😛)
Financial apps that are transparent, verifiable, and non-custodial — like Bitcoin itself.
This yield product is the first step 🤙 - it’s now in open beta on our website: https://atomic.finance/
A few inspirations for question topics:
  • Atomic.Finance (obviously 😆)
  • 🤺Building in ETH vs Building in BTC (We used to build on ETH ;))
  • 🔁Pivoting from ETH to BTC.
  • 📃DLCs - what are they? What can they be used for? etc
  • 🚀Bitcoin Startups
  • 💰Finance on BTC / BTC Options ➡️ Why does it matter?
  • 🧪BTC DeFi - what’s possible?
  • 👷‍♂️Ways to “build on BTC” - Stacks, RSK etc
  • 🔐Why we think it’s so damn important to build things non-custodially!?!
  • Custodial future for BTC ☠️vs Non-custodial future🤗
  • 🔮Anything BTC tech / BTC programming related. (eg. Scaling BTC, LN, Ark etc)
  • 💻 Programming , Mobile app development
  • Canada 🇨🇦 vs US 🇺🇸 Bitcoin scene (We’re based in Canada!)
  • 👽Aliens
Go ahead, AMA*! All questions are welcome! LFG 🚀
(Is it still considered AMA if there’s two of us? or is it AUA - Ask Us Anything? 🤣)
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415 sats \ 4 replies \ @spacewrangler 11 Jul 2023
How easy is it to lose money/Bitcoin using Atomic.Finance (how does one earn yield vs lose it) ?
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141 sats \ 3 replies \ @TonyCai_ OP 11 Jul 2023
Great question!
Will explain this in a few parts.
#1 There's no free lunch in bitcoin… 🍔
So yes, you do need to take some risk to earn a return. After all, there's no risk-free rates and lenders of last resort in Bitcoin!
In particular, with covered calls, you sell an option to earn a premium / yield. The risk that you take by selling a call option is the possibility of capping your potential gains if bitcoin's price dramatically rises within the timeframe of the call option. So you may lose a small percentage of BTC in that case. ( a couple percent)
This is different from CeFi (BlockFi / Celsius) where you're risking your 100% stack with them for a couple basis points of yield
You might be saying: “But what if I'm bullish on BTC? What if I think BTC is about to rip up? Wouldn't a covered call strategy not make sense in that case?”
#2 So we designed a Passive Strategy to help you manage market risk 😎
Here's how:
  • The strategy was developed and backtested using historical market data. It's a data-driven approach where the strategy enters into a covered call position only when it’s statistically likely for BTC to move sideways or downwards based on historical market conditions.
  • The strategy only enters positions that are significantly “out of the money”. This means the Bitcoin price would have to rise a lot before you start losing upside.
  • It adapts to the market on a weekly basis — by only entering covered call positions that are one week or shorter.
I usually say to folks: Think of the Conservative Strategy as a (transparent) autopilot 😌
Let's talk concrete examples: The bull run of Fall 2020, more recent example.
Despite BTC rising from $10K to $40K+ during the months of September 2020 to January 2021, the Conservative Strategy performed well - earning +4.21% during that time.
It managed to avoid serious losses by being conservative and remaining on the sidelines for much of this period.
Similar thing with the recent pumps mid-March (BTC pumped from below 20K to 30K in a matter of a few days / a week), as well as last month (BTC pumped from 25K to 31K in a couple days)
LMK if you have any additional questions! 💪
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2 sats \ 0 replies \ @super_testnet 11 Jul 2023
Please add a #3 strategy where you "go long" by selling to people who want a covered call position
It seems like covered calls involve a taker sending 1 btc (or some other quantity) to a maker, and in return the maker sends them a variable amount of BTC later, where the variable amount is always higher in USD terms than the value of whatever quantity of bitcoin the taker originally sent them. That "guarantees" USD yield for the taker, and a USD expense for the maker, and the maker just hopes his USD expense is offset by a corresponding gain in the price of BTC. Consequently, if I think the value of btc will rise in a way that outpaces the additional value the taker will get, then I want to be a maker rather than a taker.
Does your app let me be a maker instead of a taker? If not, why not?
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1 sat \ 0 replies \ @TonyCai_ OP 11 Jul 2023
BTW the app is designed for options beginners and experts alike! If you do end up checking it out, we'd love your feedback on the in app education. :)
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @llamabyte 11 Jul 2023
'We used to build for ETH
oh boy....
The strategy was developed and backtested using historical market data.
gambler's fallacy...ESPECIALLY with BTC which has No rational basis for price movement, no fundamentals.
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475 sats \ 1 reply \ @02ee723ff6 11 Jul 2023 freebie
What led you to leave Ethereum to build on Bitcoin?
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263 sats \ 0 replies \ @matthewjablack 11 Jul 2023 freebie
There were multiple reasons for us to decide to leave Ethereum.
We were frustrated with the community and the fact that everyone felt the need to create their own token. Not to mention that the jenga tower and the architecture of smart contracts creates a huge attack surface.
At the same time that this was happening, DLCs were becoming more mature, which meant it was finally possible to create financial contracts directly on Bitcoin. No shitcoins, no tokens, no BS.
So we asked ourselves, what's going to be around in 20 to 30 years? Ethereum, maybe, maybe not. But Bitcoin definitely is, and we want to build infrastructure for the long term.
Since then, we've gone Bitcoin-only, and have never looked back.
We also wrote a blog post regarding this: https://atomic.finance/blog/an-atomic-pivot/
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286 sats \ 4 replies \ @thunderbiscuit 11 Jul 2023
Was it difficult to raise money for a startup based in Canada? Did you consider moving to the US/Europe to build, or did you find that the bitcoin ecosystem doesn't care about location?
Also... wen 🤖?
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46 sats \ 1 reply \ @TonyCai_ OP 11 Jul 2023
It was not too bad actually!
The trick is to be prepared to spend a couple months in the Bay Area / NYC / (maybe Austin for BTC startups?) - the places with high concentration of US VC's.
I think BTC ecosystem doesn't care about location!
But I can see how there may be an advantage early on to being in a BTC hub city like Austin / Nashville where there is a larger pre-existing location to tap into!
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @TonyCai_ OP 11 Jul 2023
Re: Android we plan to make Atomic.Finance available on Android one day. Unfortunately no ETA at the moment. We're still pretty focussed on iterating the iOS version currently and improving that first!
If you have an iPad or M-series MacBook by chance, you'll still be able to use it 🤙
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @TonyCai_ OP 11 Jul 2023
Re: Android we plan to make Atomic.Finance available on Android one day. Unfortunately no ETA at the moment. We're still pretty focussed on iterating the iOS version currently and improving that first!
If you have an iPad or M-series MacBook by chance, you'll still be able to use it 🤙
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @03365d6a53 12 Jul 2023
if and when you go android - skip the play store! And avoid any hard requirement for google service framework.
Make your apk available on github, and the freedom fighters will love you for it.
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440 sats \ 6 replies \ @poe 11 Jul 2023 freebie
What is the end goal of the team?
Do you ever plan to offer this service for other coins?
How can we mitigate the impact of high fees during network congestion?
Why covered calls?
What other strategies are there in the loop?
Is the app going to get complicated to use once you add more strategies and everything gets more sophisticated?
When Andriod?
When Moon?
LOVE YOU GUYS! thanks for the great work you put out there for us!!!!
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @TonyCai_ OP 11 Jul 2023
What other strategies are there in the loop? Hedging strategies (hedge price downside), bi-directional strategies (short put and short call). Maybe some long call / long put Strats.
Is the app going to get complicated to use once you add more strategies and everything gets more sophisticated? I certainly hope not! I'm a big fan of simplicity and we spend a lot of time trying to make sure the onboarding experience is as simple as possible for folks.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @TonyCai_ OP 11 Jul 2023
Why covered calls? We chose covered calls first because we felt like they offer a good + conservative balance of risk / reward vs other strategies like short puts (especially considering BTC's occasional propensity to have serious 20+% black swan dump days)
But certainly interested in being able to launch additional strategies in the future.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @TonyCai_ OP 11 Jul 2023
No plans to offer this service for other coins.
Mitigating high fees: We have some longer term solutions around moving to DLCs on LN! Short term: we could consider increasing the length of each DLC cycle. (rather than an on-chain tx each month, moving to one every 2 months for example)
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @TonyCai_ OP 11 Jul 2023
End goal: build a one stop shop where Bitcoiners have the financial tools to do more with their BTC - whether it's earning a return / getting a line of credit / hedging downside risk. And be able to do all that in a non-custodial + self sovereign and fully transparent manner, with the help of BTC's native tech like DLCs / LN
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2 sats \ 1 reply \ @matthewjablack 11 Jul 2023
Re: Android
Yes, we plan to make Atomic.Finance available on Android one day. Unfortunately no ETA at the moment. We're still pretty focussed on iterating the iOS version currently and improving that first!
However, if you have an iPad or M-series MacBook by chance, you'll still be able to use it 🤙
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1 sat \ 0 replies \ @matthewjablack 11 Jul 2023
Re: Moon
No plans for a token ever! Moon for us means ATH TVL in DLCs!!! or Bitcoin ATH 😄 (so Bitcoin going to a million by 2030 right...? or am I too bearish 😂 )
Also tyty for the kind words 🙏 !
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460 sats \ 1 reply \ @poe 11 Jul 2023
Any chance we would ever see some sort of lightning implemented when creating the DLC so we save money when closing the contract?
Maybe something like a 'shared' onchain tx where people pay the fees thru lightning? Would something like that be possible?
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2 sats \ 0 replies \ @matthewjablack 11 Jul 2023
Lightning is on the roadmap! It definitely makes a lot more sense to open a channel with the market maker, and use that for the next 3 or 4 months, instead of having to create an on-chain tx every month.
This can be done with DLC channels.
We'll likely be focused on this early next year.
One of the nice things with this, is Atomic.Finance will also become a lightning app in the process of implementing this.
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138 sats \ 2 replies \ @poe 11 Jul 2023
Would it be possible at some point instead of committing to the 1 month period contract, maybe lock the btc for a longer period?
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @matthewjablack 11 Jul 2023
This is definitely something we've thought of, especially with the higher network fees experienced last month.
We've actually already changed "half month" cycles to "1.5x month cycles" and are considering allowing folks to invest for 2 months at a time. Likely on the medium-term roadmap.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @TonyCai_ OP 11 Jul 2023
Yes it's possible! But likely not a lot a LOT longer, because that means the market maker would have to tie up a lot more funds over a longer period.
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118 sats \ 3 replies \ @tetsu_tamasi 11 Jul 2023
Where’s the yield coming from?
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237 sats \ 1 reply \ @matthewjablack 11 Jul 2023
The yield comes from selling covered calls. When you sell a call, you get a premium, for the obligation to sell your Bitcoin if it rises above a certain price.
In our strategy, we use TA filters to determine when it's a good time to sell a call, and it will sell a weekly call option if it deems it appropriate.
Users lock their BTC in a DLC for a month at a time, and the strategy goes to work.
Of course, there's no free lunch in Bitcoin, so there's a chance Bitcoin price will go above the strike price, which will result in getting less Bitcoin back.
So far the max drawdown for a single trade has been 1.14% and the historical APY is 7.87%.
One of the nice things with covered calls is no matter what, you're up in USD terms of Bitcoin terms.
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98 sats \ 0 replies \ @matthewjablack 11 Jul 2023
USD terms or Bitcoin terms**
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @matthewjablack 11 Jul 2023
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92 sats \ 1 reply \ @faithandcredit 11 Jul 2023
Why wont the things that are problem in ETH become a problem in BTC sooner or later? And dont you think the ETH roadmap has interesting things on it that makes it worth sticking to?
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @matthewjablack 11 Jul 2023
Great question!
I think Ethereum will have a hard time scaling. Since the state is all on-chain, it'll be increasingly difficult to scale over time. Not to mention that all the scaling solutions all have their own token, and don't interoperate with each other well.
Also, there seems to be increasing centralization concerns now that Ethereum is PoS.
The surface area of attack for Ethereum smart contracts will never be a problem for Bitcoin, since DLCs on-chain are simply a 2-of-2 multisig, so the surface area of attack is minuscule.
DLCs can scale using DLC Channels (basically a lightning channel for DLCs).
When we ask ourselves the question of what's going to be around in 20 to 30 years, I feel really confident in Bitcoin. Ethereum not so much.
We also wrote a blog post containing more of our reasoning as well: https://atomic.finance/blog/an-atomic-pivot/
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92 sats \ 3 replies \ @abhimanyuQA 11 Jul 2023 freebie
A person who doesn't have any knowledge of Covered calls or DLC, can still use the product?
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230 sats \ 2 replies \ @matthewjablack 11 Jul 2023
Absolutely! Although we recommend doing your own research, the app is extremely easy to use and is as simple as setting up any Bitcoin wallet with 12 words.
Simply create your wallet, deposit your Bitcoin, click one button, and you're invested! You can get set up in under 5 minutes!
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46 sats \ 1 reply \ @abhimanyuQA 11 Jul 2023 freebie
Do I need to pick my own covered call trades? Also, how do I verify things?
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46 sats \ 0 replies \ @matthewjablack 11 Jul 2023
Nope, the strategy picks the covered call trades for you automatically. In our strategy, we use TA filters to determine when it's a good time to sell a call, and it will sell a weekly call option if it deems it appropriate.
You can verify by checking the transaction created (the DLC) after you've entered to see exactly where your Bitcoin is locked (it's locked for a month at a time).
Every time a position is entered, we also send you a notification, which you can double-check as well.
At the end of the month, you can check your returns against the positions entered, to verify the DLC executed properly.
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48 sats \ 2 replies \ @SpaceHodler 11 Jul 2023
Is Atomic.finance going to be available on Android too?
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48 sats \ 0 replies \ @matthewjablack 11 Jul 2023
Yes, we plan to make Atomic.Finance available on Android one day. Unfortunately no ETA at the moment. We're still pretty focussed on iterating the iOS version currently and improving that first!
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @TonyCai_ OP 11 Jul 2023
If you have an iPad or M-series MacBook by chance, you'll still be able to use it 🤙
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46 sats \ 3 replies \ @k00b 11 Jul 2023
Aliens land in your front yard. How would pitch them bitcoin and how would you pitch them Atomic Finance?
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500 sats \ 2 replies \ @matthewjablack 11 Jul 2023
Bitcoin: We've built money that is based on energy. Energy secures it, but only on Earth.
Atomic Finance: We've built tools for this energy currency that allow you to do more with it with limited trust. It allows humans to leverage their currency, and potentially increase their wealth, all within a secure, limited trust environment.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @matthewjablack 11 Jul 2023
Then I'd ask them if they built the pyramids 😉 😂
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @matthewjablack 11 Jul 2023
On a side note, there's a great series on Bitcoin and space by Dhruv from Unchained Capital. If you haven't read it I recommend checking it out: https://unchained.com/blog/law-of-hash-horizons/
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131 sats \ 0 replies \ @OneOneSeven 11 Jul 2023
Smart move posting this while @Darthcoin is away
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10 sats \ 5 replies \ @south_korea_ln 12 Jul 2023
Why do you mention Stacks here? Is it anything else but an affinity scam with its own (shit)coin? I ask genuinely, but that's the impression I have by listening to people that are much more knowledgeable on the topic.
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100 sats \ 1 reply \ @muteness11 12 Jul 2023
That is a big flag for me ... I know stacks inside out and for the fact it was mentioned it raises my eyebrows a bit
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @TonyCai_ OP 12 Jul 2023
I don't disagree with the classification of it being an affinity scam TBH. We have no intention of ever building there. (We're building Bitcoin native)
But, I listed it in case ppl had questions about it or wanted to ask us to compare and contrast
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @TonyCai_ OP 12 Jul 2023
I don't disagree TBH. We have no intention of ever building there.
But, I listed it in case ppl had questions about it or wanted to ask us to compare and contrast
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @OneOneSeven 12 Jul 2023
I believe you have your answer
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100 sats \ 0 replies \ @TonyCai_ OP 12 Jul 2023
I don't disagree with the classification of it being an affinity scam TBH. We have no intention of ever building there. (We're building Bitcoin native)
But, I listed it in case ppl had questions about it or wanted to ask us to compare and contrast
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @llamabyte 11 Jul 2023
Kids , you can put a website together, good for you, do something useful for society besides rent seeking. Bitcoin is the yield.
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100 sats \ 1 reply \ @kr 11 Jul 2023
what are the underappreciated use cases for DLCs that most bitcoiners haven’t recognized yet?
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276 sats \ 0 replies \ @matthewjablack 11 Jul 2023
  1. I think stablesats is a huge one. The basic idea for stablesats, is you enter a short position with your Bitcoin, which is equivalent to holding USD.
This would eliminate the need for stablecoins with significant systemic risk.
And to send them to people, you simply close the DLC, send funds over lightning, and the recipient also opens a DLC short position.
Capital efficiency will likely be the challenge with this one.
  1. Basic hedging. Lots of Bitcoin companies need to hedge their positions, which DLCs can be used to do. Instead of risking your company's funds on a centralized exchange, they should just be using DLCs to do this (and removing the custody risk). Of course there's no market built for this yet.
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100 sats \ 1 reply \ @energycurrency 12 Jul 2023
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @TonyCai_ OP 12 Jul 2023
100%, we're excited about covenants too! (if they happen)
Re: ConsenSys. Like many Bitcoiners, we're former shitcoiners. We raised capital from them when we were still a shitcoin project.
But that changed when we pivoted.
Can't really rewrite the cap table tho 🤷‍♂️
We outlined this journey in our blog: https://atomic.finance/blog/an-atomic-pivot/
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100 sats \ 3 replies \ @0xIlmari 11 Jul 2023
No questions, just a comment. As an option trader (on Deribit) myself I can appreciate how difficult it is to construct and execute profitable strategies, much less make them into a marketable product, so kudos to you.
I'll be keeping an eye on you, awaiting an Android or Web version.
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @TonyCai_ OP 11 Jul 2023
Thank you! If you have an iPad or M-series MacBook by chance, you'll still be able to use it 🤙
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10 sats \ 1 reply \ @0xIlmari 11 Jul 2023
I don't see myself ever using an Apple product. I prefer to own the hardware that I'm using.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @TonyCai_ OP 12 Jul 2023
Totally fair :) I'm ex-Android myself. But had to buy an iPhone when we decided we'd build on iOS first (it's a lot more easier for a small team - less variable like different screen sizes / aspect ratios)
Hope to be on Android soon!
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100 sats \ 1 reply \ @mampisdesign 12 Jul 2023 freebie
Oh I would like to test and make a review on myblog
100 sats \ 1 reply \ @03187da6bb 11 Jul 2023 freebie
What has been your decision tree around open source?
0 sats \ 1 reply \ @037447d9ca 12 Jul 2023
How is your product different from Moneyonchain/Sovryn?
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @TonyCai_ OP 12 Jul 2023
We're built on the bitcoin base layer, not a side chain!
This is possible using DLCs - which are what I like to call "fancy multisigs" that can be used to encode financial contracts on chain.
More details here: https://atomic.finance/blog/discreet-log-contracts/
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @muteness11 12 Jul 2023
% APY related
Please explain how you offer (starting 8%) while the likes of Ledn offers (1% on BTC and 9% USDC) which is a clear indicator of what the market wants
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @TonyCai_ OP 12 Jul 2023
Good question! The way that the returns are generated in Atomic is fundamentally different from how Ledn does it.
When you lend with Ledn, you give them custody of your coins and they lend your coins out to market makers, trading firms etc. These firms then take your coins and use it for whatever their intended purpose is - levered trading, marketing making liquidity, maybe even wrapping it into wBTC and participating in DeFi etc.
With that - there's counterparty risk. The guys Ledn lent your coins to -- you need to trust them to not screw up. Hopefully they're not the next Alameda Research. Hopefully they don't get liquidated on their trade that they used your coins as collateral for. Hopefully opefully they didn't convert your coins to wBTC that they then deployed on a ETH DeFI platform that then gets hacked.
To your question, why does Ledn offer just 1% - because Ledn's yield comes from the interest rate that these borrowers pay. Currently there's not a ton of demand from borrowing BTC- so interest rates in the market are likely low, and Leon's rates reflect that.
With Atomic, returns are generated through selling covered calls - not lending. There's still some risk involved, there's not free lunch in BTC after all. but it's a very different risk profile. It's no longer a complete black box risk - where you gotta hope Ledn lends to the right ppl. It's no longer a situation where you're essentially risking 100% of your BTC for a few basis points of yield.
I chat more about the risk/reward tradeoff with Atomic here: #207400_
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @crrdlx 12 Jul 2023
Alice puts 1 BTC in Atomic on January 1. How much does she have on December 31?
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10 sats \ 1 reply \ @matthewjablack 12 Jul 2023
Based on historical returns, she would have 1.0787 BTC. However, this can fluctuate depending on Bitcoin volatility (higher volatility = higher premiums). The strategy tends to have several months of very low returns due to lower volatility, followed by a couple of months of very high returns. So depending on where we are in the cycle, her returns could be higher or lower.
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100 sats \ 0 replies \ @crrdlx 12 Jul 2023
7.8% is very strong. Alice would be happy. 😊
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @BlokchainB 11 Jul 2023
When will beta be over?
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @TonyCai_ OP 11 Jul 2023
It's in open beta currently!
Do you mean when it will be out of Apple Testflight? We're thinking by the end of the year!
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @faithandcredit 11 Jul 2023
What will you do if Apple app store wont allow your app :(
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @matthewjablack 11 Jul 2023
No need for us to move from testflight to app store currently since we can invite up to 10k users to the app using testflight. However eventually we'll need to move to app store.
We would investigate PWA, however the main concern here is security of funds. PWA compared to secure enclave on iOS is not even close.
We'd likely look at building a desktop folks people could download or build themselves.
For users, one of the nice things, is even if the app gets removed from app store, they can still recover their funds using any BIP39 compatible wallet, so there's not a concern of apple locking you out of your funds.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @poe 11 Jul 2023
Do you see yourself collaborating with other companies like Glassnode? Would sort of a partnership there could help improving the strategy in general?
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @matthewjablack 11 Jul 2023
No plans at the moment. We've built out a pretty extensive suite of backtesting tools for Bitcoin options.
We're definitely open to partnerships that could help in this area but would need to explore further.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @ae52f929c 11 Jul 2023
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @matthewjablack 11 Jul 2023
The advantage of using Atomic.Finance covered call strategy is there's a potential for higher profit (7.87% APY historically), whereas joinmarket liquidity is < 1% APY IIRC.
The downside is you take on more risk. There's the chance that Bitcoin price goes above the strike price and you end up with less Bitcoin. However this strategy is quite conservative, and the historical max drawdown was 1.14% for a single trade.
Generally, this strategy works by using TA filters to see market trends, and sell a call during a downtrend, and do nothing during a price upswing.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @poe 11 Jul 2023
Considering the benefits of AF in terms of privacy/safety for the user... What happens if AF grows exponentially and captures a big portion of all the previously mentioned companies?
How could that impact the team and the product?
How do you keep the product fresh and exciting?
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @matthewjablack 11 Jul 2023
By "previously mentioned companies" are you referring to the market of "BlockFi" / "Celcius" or something else?
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b 11 Jul 2023
What's the most surprising thing you learned building Atomic Finance to this stage?
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111 sats \ 0 replies \ @matthewjablack 11 Jul 2023
  1. We were surprised how our competitors imploded so soon (maybe not direct competitors, but similar "returns/yield" products like BlockFi)
  2. Building on Bitcoin is hard.
  3. How many unexplored things there are for Bitcoin financial tools. It's surprising how many things have not been built out yet. For example,
  • there's still not an open market for futures or options worldwide for DLCs yet
  • escrow contracts
  • covenants
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @k00b 11 Jul 2023
Who are your early customers (persona-wise)? Are they the persona you initially imagined being early customers?
How and why do you expect your target audience to change over time?
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310 sats \ 0 replies \ @poe 11 Jul 2023
One of those early 'degens' with over .3 btc in AF here.
Apart from everything Tony just stated I must said that one of the things that brought the attention to this app is that everything is decentralized. there are no 3rd parties in the middle and to be fair... I don't see much difference between the risk of lending your btc to platforms like Nexo or Ledn or Blockfi and 'staking' with AF.
I was instantly sold by the fact that I now can 'stake' my coins at some risks ofc but I keep my privacy and the safety of the smart contract.
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100 sats \ 0 replies \ @TonyCai_ OP 11 Jul 2023
Great question!
Early customers tend to be long term BTC investors who are looking for a simple + passive way to earn a yield in sats for the long-term. And
They're typically not traders or degens! I think this is a byproduct of us designing the product for long term holders like ourselves. :) The current strategy is conservative in risk taking but also is limited to earning a modest return!
Traders and degens already have pre-existing tools like custodial exchanges. They care the most about pricing / trade execution / speed of execution. Things that we know it'd be hard for us to compete on initially!
Over time, I can see that changing though if we begin to introduce more aggressive / riskier strategies. Or if we introduce manual positions where folks can actually select their option strikes and expiries!
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @BSwgZ 11 Jul 2023 freebie
Layered scaling seems to be the way but would be nice to do it while keeping some of the key bitcoin principles - immutable, self custody, fair and open access.
Any consideration to use the developing infra of a project like Zenon for building on bitcoin? Cross chain HTLCs running, PTLCs in testing, on chain venture funding..