I'm Sergej Kotliar, CEO of Bitrefill. AMA. \ stacker news ~bitcoin

I'm Sergej Kotliar, CEO of Bitrefill. AMA.

20.9k sats \ 67 comments \ @ziggamon 23 Jun 2022 bitcoin freebie

I am Sergej Kotliar, CEO of Bitrefill. AMA

Hi everyone! I’m @ziggamon, Founder and CEO of Bitrefill. Bitrefill is the world’s number one answer to the question “but what can I actually buy with my bitcoin?”

We’re a distributed team of 51 awesome individuals, working our asses of on our big vision: creating a circular economy for bitcoin, a world in which it’s possible to live your life on Bitcoin and cut the cord (and the card) to the old banks!

We sell gift cards that you can use to buy anything you want online. We also let you refill your prepaid phone all over the world, and if you live in the US or El Salvador we allow you to pay all of your bills with bitcoin.

We’ve been a pioneer in Lightning, were the first merchant to accept lightning and are still the number one place where people go to spend their Lightning sats.

In the past year we’ve also been doing a big effort in El Salvador, trying hard to get a circular bitcoin economy going there.

Topics to ask me about:

Bitcoin
Bitrefill
Circular economy
Lightning
Bitcoin users
El Salvador
Running a distributed company

And probably much more!

Let’s roll! 🚀

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165 sats \ 4 replies \ @C_Otto 23 Jun 2022

Do you need inbound liquidity for your LN nodes? If so, for which?

74 sats \ 3 replies \ @ziggamon OP 23 Jun 2022

Need is relative, but given that we're one of the top destinations for lightning coins it's advisable to open channels to us ;)

This is our main node: https://1ml.com/node/03d607f3e69fd032524a867b288216bfab263b6eaee4e07783799a6fe69bb84fac

20 sats \ 1 reply \ @C_Otto 23 Jun 2022

Alright, I opened a new channel. The fifth, let's see how it goes :)

11 sats \ 0 replies \ @ziggamon OP 23 Jun 2022

💪 May the routing be ever in your favor!

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @C_Otto 15 Aug 2022

45 days later: there's very little "pull" from your node, looks like you have more than enough inbound.

160 sats \ 2 replies \ @nout 23 Jun 2022

Which projects in the Bitcoin space are you the most excited about?

122 sats \ 1 reply \ @ziggamon OP 23 Jun 2022

Alby the browser extension. We need better wallets and better ways for people to use their coins. Alby is following in the steps of Metamask which AFAIK is the most successful crypto wallet out there, and we desperately need something like this in bitcoin.
LNURL and all the tinkering that is going on in that community
Taro - It's not well understood by everyone yet, and still in conceptual phases. But if it works as I imagine it doing it could disrupt massive parts of the crypto industry and solve many of the problems that we currently have.
Chaumian vaults sounds really interesting too as a model that offers interesting tradeoffs between usability and decentralisation.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @tech5 27 Jun 2022 freebie

Thank you for the insightful answer.

160 sats \ 1 reply \ @stackthosesats 23 Jun 2022 freebie

What are the typical volumes of bitcoin that run through Bitrefill on any given day? Are there patterns relating to how he market is doing or is it independent of that?

30 sats \ 0 replies \ @ziggamon OP 23 Jun 2022

What are the typical volumes of bitcoin that run through Bitrefill on any given day?

We don't currently share our top-level metrics, so I need to pass on that. We will though in the near future.

Are there patterns relating to how he market is doing or is it independent of that

A bit of both. Obviously when market goes up lots of people have coins to spend, and less so when it's down. But a large chunk of our volume is from people who have a steady income in crypto, or live on crypto, and they still come in because people have to live. So we're down much less in volume than say an exchange would.

150 sats \ 2 replies \ @0xtr 23 Jun 2022

How did you get into Bitcoin?
What made you start Bitrefill?
What are you most proud of regarding Bitrefill?
What is the most sold product on Bitrefill?
What is the hardest thing about getting a circular economy going?

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @ziggamon OP 23 Jun 2022 freebie

How did you get into Bitcoin?

I was always passionate about internet and open source stuff, and saw these things progress during my lifetime. Someone being able to make a money in this way, that is internet native is incredibly cool. And the fact that it actually works continues to amaze me every day, along with trying to understand more of it.

What made you start Bitrefill?

Was a small experiment I built while learning how to code Node.js. It took off and one thing led to the other.

What are you most proud of regarding Bitrefill?

Many things really. We're at the forefront of solving the most important challenge in our industry. We haven't figured it out fully but we've gotten further than anyone I know. All this without engaging in speculative activities. Also I'd add the team and the culture we've built. It's hard to describe it to people who haven't seen us in a group. But it's the most amazing set of people, all with their own individual qualities, working together as one team towards a shared goal.

What is the most sold product on Bitrefill?

Amazon gift cards

What is the hardest thing about getting a circular economy going?

Lots of things. We can be at most half of the circle - there also needs to be ways for people to get "coins to spend". Marketing wise it's challenging because the freedomy arguments of using your own wallet and all of that gets drowned out by all the speculative stuff in the crypto space. In bitcoin the speculative stuff is just "hodl" or leverage, in broader crypto it's "shitcoins, defi, yield" and so on. We don't offer customers a way to get rich. So during bull markets it's hard for us to get attention outside of all the places where "you can get rich here", during bear markets customers are poorer so spend a bit less. That said we've weathered the current decline with only a minor drop in volumes, and are still firmly above break-even.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @0xtr 23 Jun 2022

And the fact that it actually works continues to amaze me every day, along with trying to understand more of it.

This also baffles me more and more as well, even though I've been in the space for a while.

Was a small experiment I built while learning how to code Node.js. It took off and one thing led to the other.

I love stories like that, it's so cool that something starting out as a hobby project for self improvement can end up being as important as Bitrefill is today. Never underestimate your own projects or ideas!

Thanks for some great answers Sergej!

3464 sats \ 2 replies \ @MemeLord 23 Jun 2022 freebie

How do you think bitcoiners can help market this revolution from your perspective? you seem to have a different edge than the regular twitter sphere.

93 sats \ 0 replies \ @ziggamon OP 23 Jun 2022

Great question! But a tough one :)

Marketing is to a large extent about listening in towards people needs and offering them legit advice. Pushing stuff down people's throats doesn't usually work.

Some thoughts off the top of my head:

We need to talk more about financial freedom and why that's important for someone.
Talk more about what [the listener] can do with bitcoin that they couldn't do otherwise.
We need to make bitcoin cool. As in really cool, and exciting. Something that people would have as a print on a t-shirt and go to a nightclub. Currently bitcoin is cool among a nerdy techy audience, and the gold-buggy type "sound money" enthusiasts, but those groups are a minority in the world. How to do that tho? That's the trillion dollar question.
I think we need to talk less about all the "belief system" stuff that bitcoiners associate with bitcoin. Bitcoin isn't conservative values. Bitcoin doesn't care what you eat or how you work out. It has no views on abortion or on covid vaccines. Bitcoin is a thing, and it's super amazing as it is. We need to market bitcoin as bitcoin and not as part of any specific belief system. It's money for enemies, you can use it however the hell you want, and your ideological opponents can use it too, and that's a good thing. It's just money.

45 sats \ 0 replies \ @ziggamon OP 23 Jun 2022

I came up with an even better answer:

If you think about how an enthusiast of a particular shitcoin is marketing their shitcoin, that's largely how the world perceives bitcoin and bitcoiners too. We need to make our marketing different from the shitcoin world, and unfortunately we've regressed a lot in that regard in the past couple years.

130 sats \ 1 reply \ @Meme 23 Jun 2022 freebie

What aren't you doing now that you wish you would be doing? A few answers or just one is cool.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @ziggamon OP 23 Jun 2022

We're doing the best things for us to do given our resources. With more resources there's a never-ending list of things I'd like for us to be building. As we grow we get to do more and more of them.

In terms of big things we're not doing (yet) would maybe be more lightning infrastructure and core development, a better wallet, more ways for people to be able to earn bitcoin, lots of stuff that falls under "regulated" territory, etc.

120 sats \ 3 replies \ @MemeLord 23 Jun 2022 freebie

Hey, a few questions: What are the easiest parts of creating a circular bitcoin economy? What makes you happy about the bitcoin world at the moment and what makes you upset or angry? Do you believe shitcoins will play a big role in bitrefill's future, if so what main areas should bitcoiners open their eyes or minds to? Lastly, where did you get the name ziggamon from?

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @ziggamon OP 23 Jun 2022

What are the most difficult parts of creating a circular bitcoin economy?

Copying from above: Lots of things. We can be at most half of the circle - there also needs to be ways for people to get "coins to spend". Marketing wise it's challenging because the freedomy arguments of using your own wallet and all of that gets drowned out by all the speculative stuff in the crypto space. In bitcoin the speculative stuff is just "hodl" or leverage, in broader crypto it's "shitcoins, defi, yield" and so on. We don't offer customers a way to get rich. So during bull markets it's hard for us to get attention outside of all the places where "you can get rich here", during bear markets customers are poorer so spend a bit less. That said we've weathered the current decline with only a minor drop in volumes, and are still firmly above break-even.

What makes you happy about the bitcoin world at the moment

It's a great community with lots of people optimistic for building a better world

what makes you upset or angry?

In the past few years thought leadership moved from "builders" to "talkers", and narratives in the space end up really limited to just "things that make you bullish" and stuff like that. I wish there was more focus on building the future, we've had enough "macro-economic analysis about why bitcoin is a good investment"

Do you believe shitcoins will play a big role in bitrefill's future

That remains to be seen. The history of the world has a lot of examples where one tech wins over the other for reasons other than technical. Stablecoins really killed bitcoin maximalism, and there are tons of stuff that the ethereum community is actually doing better than the bitcoin one - the main such thing is simply use of wallets. Also I think that a bitcoin world will be a world in which people create tokens, not least that which we today call "unregistered securities". The goal should not be to call every token other than bitcoin a shitcoin, but rather focusing the energy on calling out the projects that are scamming their investors (which today is the vast majority of them, but it's already not 100%)

Lastly, where did you get the name ziggamon from

It's been my internet handle since the teenage years. It's a play on my first name and nickname in Swedish, from a drunken conversation about digimon.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @MemeLord 23 Jun 2022 freebie

I saw someone asked the most difficult part and tried to edit in time to ask the "easiest" part? Perhaps you could share: What are the easiest parts of creating a circular bitcoin economy

120 sats \ 1 reply \ @stackthosesats 23 Jun 2022 freebie

How do you get changing/rolling deals for gift cards? Are there deeper discounts at some times of the year? Are they all sourced directly from the company they are for?

41 sats \ 0 replies \ @ziggamon OP 23 Jun 2022 freebie

Yes, usually it's the brand itself that wants to run a campaign with bigger discounts or sats back.

In some cases (like Pizza day) we also do campaigns based on our own decision and funded by ourselves.

107 sats \ 2 replies \ @kr 23 Jun 2022

Which country (or countries) will you roll out bill payments for next?

90 sats \ 1 reply \ @ziggamon OP 23 Jun 2022

We don't usually do pre-announcements :)

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr 23 Jun 2022

fair enough!

154 sats \ 1 reply \ @kilianbuhn 23 Jun 2022

Is Bitrefill a company that con bring people into Bitcoin or just thriving from the preexisting Bitcoin community?

27 sats \ 0 replies \ @ziggamon OP 23 Jun 2022

That's a great question. For most people (outside the community) you wouldn't want to have a money if you don't have things to buy with it. This has been the steering factor for us from day one and still is.

A chunk of our users actually do figure out how to acquire bitcoin specifically to use Bitrefill's services, because we let them do things they otherwise couldn't do. One example is the kids in El Salvador buying in-game items online: If you don't have a credit card, and your parents don't have a credit card there's no other way to get that sweet skin for your FreeFire avatar :) That's just an example, we have dozens of use cases like that.

That said, we have limited resources and mainly focus our energy on people who already have coins to spend.

110 sats \ 1 reply \ @Best 23 Jun 2022

Many questions. To start what do you guys look for when partnering with other companies? What is your Current biggest pain point? Where do you see your business in the next 10 years? Do you do sponsorships with artists and influencers you like and if you do what is the best medium for presentment of ideas? Just to start it off.

50 sats \ 0 replies \ @ziggamon OP 23 Jun 2022 freebie

what do you guys look for when partnering with other companies?

We look for real-world user traction.

What is your Current biggest pain point

Probably reaching people who use bitcoin as a tool and are looking to buy something with bitcoin. It's not necessarily the same group of people as those who (like us) are passionate about bitcoin as a movement, so it's harder to find.

Where do you see your business in the next 10 years?

It's a hard question because if we (all of us) are successful the world will look radically different. But as an example, Amazon started with a web shop for books and today they run 40% of global e-commerce and power many of the leading web services. In a similar way bitcoin will be a normal way of paying and we hope to be the dominant player in crypto commerce.

Do you do sponsorships with artists and influencers you like

Yes plenty of this, both big and small. Don't want to mention all the podcasters we sponsor so that I don't accidentally miss someone. In terms of mainstream we did a partnership with NBA player Spencer Dinwiddie on the launch of the Bitsneaks

what is the best medium for presentment of ideas

Email probably :) We get a lot of ideas, ideas are usually easy, execution is much harder.

100 sats \ 1 reply \ @nout 23 Jun 2022

How is distributed team working out for you? Are there any things that are harder than expected?

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @ziggamon OP 23 Jun 2022

Lots of things. Even simple stuff as picking up on when someone's not feeling well is trivial to do in an office but much harder when you only see someone once a week on a group call.

But there are lots of benefits, much less drama and more focus on work. And when people actually get to meet in person after having collaborated remotely for months or even years that's a really magical feeling that creates a beautiful vibe.

Meeting in person has a lot of value and we spend a lot of time thinking around how to enable more of that.

126 sats \ 6 replies \ @kr 23 Jun 2022

In January, you mentioned that Lightning payments represented 4.4% of the $ USD value of payments made to Bitrefill.

Has that number changed in the last 6 months?

https://twitter.com/ziggamon/status/1481307334068641795

132 sats \ 5 replies \ @ziggamon OP 23 Jun 2022 freebie

Yes, it's now up at 7.3% of total USD value. Of just bitcoin volume (lightning and onchain) Lightning is now at 23%.

Main growth factors are the launch of the US bill payment service which has attracted many US customers who often use Strike. Also El Salvador is growing nicely, along with a general growth in everything Lightning

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @bigjohn 24 Jun 2022

That's great growth!

What other cryptocurrencies make up the remainder of the volume?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @ziggamon OP 28 Jun 2022

Mainly ETH, USDT, Binance Pay and Litecoin

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @kr 23 Jun 2022

Great to hear!

What is your impression of how widespread Lightning usage is in El Salvador?

Could you guess a % of the population actively using Lightning today?

90 sats \ 1 reply \ @ziggamon OP 23 Jun 2022 freebie

I'd guess around 1%. This is actually not that bad of a figure, it's higher than in most countries, and growing!

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr 23 Jun 2022

it’s a good start!

43 sats \ 2 replies \ @kilianbuhn 23 Jun 2022

Will Lightning one day be synonymous with Bitcoin?

Or will we have to say "Bitcoin-Lightning" and confuse normies from now until reality?

4 sats \ 0 replies \ @ziggamon OP 23 Jun 2022

It already is for the vast majority of bitcoin users. But to answer the question: yes. Lightning will be like "http", something people have heard of but don't understand, and a part of the url you can safely skip.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @kilianbuhn 23 Jun 2022

*eternity

30 sats \ 1 reply \ @031b519e5d 23 Jun 2022 freebie

if you weren't working on bitrefill, what would you work on? Trying to see what you think is the other killer app for Bitcoin and Lightning :)

30 sats \ 0 replies \ @ziggamon OP 23 Jun 2022

Well, I'm a guy who likes hard problems, so I'd tackle a hard part of the circular economy, probably some kind of marketplace for people to earn money in bitcoin. And not in small/gimmicky ways, on uber or upwork type scale. I'm actually surprised nothing has achieved massive traction in that field yet, maybe bits of financial infrastructure missing. I think stakwork.com are doing great work in that regard but there are also other angles or avenues that should be explored.

Or maybe I'd just do open source work. Lots of opportunities in the Lightning ecosystem, not least once Taro comes out I think it will unleash a massive wave of innovation with plenty of opportunities.

10 sats \ 2 replies \ @Majjin 23 Jun 2022

I've always wondered why there aren't generic Visa gift cards on Bitrefill. Is it a legal or technical issue?

Thanks for the AMA and the awesome service!

10 sats \ 1 reply \ @ziggamon OP 23 Jun 2022

Just a matter of priorities, we'll get to it for sure, just need to get it right from a legal and biz and pricing perspectives

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Majjin 23 Jun 2022

Awesome looking forward to it!

10 sats \ 1 reply \ @irusensei 23 Jun 2022 freebie

Any plans for selling Visa or Mastercard prepaid cards like BTCCO?

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @ziggamon OP 23 Jun 2022

Yes. We just want to get it right on the first try and have had a lot of other things in our pipeline.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Ge 27 Jun 2022

Whats up nice to meet ya wanted to ask

favorite btc book
favorite none btc book that helped you 3.Whats your Bitcoin story

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @ziggamon OP 28 Jun 2022

The Book of Satoshi of course. As well as the early writings in the mailing lists. And while not a book the early writings of the Nakamoto Institute. There's also good technical books, not least the ones by Andreas Antonopoulos and Kalle Rosenbaum. And I guess Sovereign Individual should be mentioned but I guess you've already read it.

Non-bitcoin: So many tbh. Peaceful warrior is great (also a great movie). Robert Greene's series are interesting. The Fountainhead. I dunno, so many really.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @bitcoinpleb_b 24 Jun 2022

Late to the party but…if I use Bitrefill regularly should I open a channel with you?

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @ziggamon OP 28 Jun 2022

Yes probably. Our node is very well connected so it should be fine to route through it as well.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @bitcoingraffiti 23 Jun 2022

wen moon?

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @om 23 Jun 2022

If I buy a gift card from Bitrefill and then buy a product and deliver it to my home, do I thereby invite the taxman into my home as well? I'd rather not answer his stupid questions about capital gains tax on bitcoin sold for the card.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @ziggamon OP 28 Jun 2022

You should of course pay taxes on purchases on Bitrefill if that's the requirement in your country, in many cases it is. There's no automatic mechanism in which e-commerce merchants report to "the tax man" or anyone else who their customers are but one can imagine that that could theoretically happen.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @earnbitcoin 23 Jun 2022

In countries where there is an officially published exchange rate against the dollar, and then there is a parallel rate (street rate, blue rate, black market, whatever it gets called), is Bitrefill able to take advantage of that to increase their margins (and/or reduce the cost for the airtime)?

For example, in Nigeria, the USD/NGN black market rate is above ₦600, while the "official' published rate is ~₦415. Assuming Bitrefill's prices for airtiime, for example, is based on the officially published rate (₦415), that means buying airtime through Bitrefill is much more expensive for a Nigerian than instead first selling the bitcoin for naira (e.g., P2P trade) and then buying airtime with those naira.

Nigeria is one of the more extreme examples, but even in Kenya today there's a published USD/KES rate of ~KSh 117 and then a street rate where a dollar buys KSh 122 or more.

So this is not just an edge case or otherwise is not isolated to just a tiny fraction of Bitrefill's market.

20 sats \ 0 replies \ @ziggamon OP 28 Jun 2022

It depends really. In some cases we can, depends on whether we are able to buy the products locally and transfer money into the country with BTC. We did that a lot in the past, a bit less so today as it requires a lot of work, so only doing that when we actively focus on a particular country.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b 23 Jun 2022

All else being equal (e.g. same team members), do you think Bitrefill would be more or less productive if your team wasn't distributed?

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @ziggamon OP 23 Jun 2022

Yes I think it would be more productive. But all else is not equal. Hiring globally gets us to hire people with rare skills and even more importantly an intense passion for the mission we're on.

0 sats \ 5 replies \ @nullcount 23 Jun 2022

When will users be able to widthdraw their BTC rewards? Redeem for gift card is so lame.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @ziggamon OP 23 Jun 2022

To elaborate further, we're not relying on venture capital in the same way as some other companies in our space do. So we have limited resources in what we can give away, and we chose to focus those on those of our users that want to keep using our service.

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @ziggamon OP 23 Jun 2022

Rewards are an incentive for users to keep coming back. If rewards were withdrawable they'd just be discounts :)

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @nullcount 25 Jun 2022

If you can't withdraw, its not Bitcoin. Bitrefill's "Bitcoin Rewards" are not Bitcoin. Its just a token created by Bitrefill pretending to be BTC. Its contributing to the "paper Bitcoin problem".

I can't self custody my rewards. Being able to widthdraw rewards is a good feature pair with the Thor channels.

I would open a Thor channel just to widthdraw rewards.

Even robinhood has finally let their users withdraw BTC.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @ziggamon OP 28 Jun 2022

You're right, it's not bitcoin, it's rewards denominated in btc. If it were BTC we would have to require verification of all customers.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @nullcount 28 Jun 2022

Fold let's you widthdraw rewards with no verification.