Adam O’Brien on Bitcoin adoption across Canada

0:01i'm ashton addison from eventchain for investmentpitch media and fintech news network and today on blockchain interviews we have adam o'brien the ceo of bitcoin solutions adam thanks so much for taking the time and welcome to the show thanks ashley great to be here you're very welcome i'd love to kick off the show by just getting a little bit of your background and

0:19how you first got involved with bitcoin and cryptocurrencies and what made you start bitcoin solutions yeah so um i found bitcoin in early 2013 and um kind of got what they're calling red pilled uh what they call now as being red pill but just fell right on the rabbit hole and kind of fell in love with the technology and the way that um just that decentralized kind of

0:39monetary policy works and so um found myself kind of wanting to buy some finding it very difficult to actually acquire bitcoin um i was i was forced with either meeting a guy in a back alley or wiring money to russia and kind of uh didn't like either option so um was constantly seeking for better ways to do it eventually kind of created a little bit

0:59of a peer-to-peer network here in edmonton and then largely in alberta um and then um shortly in 20 shortly after in early 2014 we deployed our first uh bitcoin atm actually alberta's first bitcoin atm uh in february and then in may of 2014 we deployed saskatchewan's first so from there kind of just expanded and stuck to this non-custodial um you know fast and safe way to acquire

1:23and buy bitcoin and uh and from you know from there we kind of sit today at uh just just over 70 atms across canada wow very cool and i love that back story it's a true entrepreneurial you know venture you find a problem there must be a better way exactly right and you're like there's got to be a solution for my problem and there you go now there's 70 plus atms across canada so that's an

1:46amazing uh start so very cool adam i'd love to talk about more into what makes bitcoin solutions unique and exact services you're providing you know how exactly are you accelerating virtual currency adoption throughout the country right now with bitcoin solutions yeah i think so from day one the mission's always been make bitcoin accessible and understood so

2:08we've always held and put a big focus on customer interaction and making sure that anyone that walked through our doors or you know walked through our doors um entered onto our website got in touch with our with our team uh via email or phone gets kind of that well-rounded experience you know if they have a question like you know the the vague question what is

2:26bitcoin or uh the direct question how do i use an atm we're giving them kind of that same level of experience and kind of tailoring the knowledge that's needed for them so that's been great um from there in terms of what bitcoin solutions actually does is we're focused on non-custodial buying and selling a bitcoin so what that means is that at no time is

2:44anyone's bitcoin exposed right when you use an online exchange when we use a bank uh we put our funds in somebody else's hands and we trust somebody else i personally don't believe in that and so personally for the company that um i'm lucky enough to be in charge of and that i was you know kind of that i found it and all the rest of it we wanted to make sure that users had

3:06the same kind of protection that i would want for my funds so that's kind of been the number one way that i feel like we're really driving this financial sovereignty and and educating society and educating the people to kind of be better with their money um further from that you know we're kind of keen on making bitcoin usable now so um you know when we started in 2013 when

3:27i said i'm working in in the bitcoin industry people kind of said bitcoin what's that uh today people say oh bitcoin i've heard of that i'm not quite sure how to use it and so now we've kind of tailored our focus around being able to use bitcoin if you go on our website uh you're able to pay your bills and bitcoin so you go online you type in your your f core bill you

3:45type in your account number um and the amount that you owe and you're you're you're able to just kind of send bitcoin to pay that account off um we're working on launching and we plan to be launching before the end of the year um some merchant services so being able to walk into a store and pay with bitcoin um you know from there we certainly plan on being

4:05able to integrate kind of these these lightning network applications that um are definitely going to be kind of advancing the usability of bitcoin so that's kind of how we plan on on making bitcoin more usable yeah i love that you're taking the next step and it really is once you are at the atm and you have the coin now how do i spend it or how is it functional right and the more

4:26places that you can use it the greater the adoption the easier it'll be to make it you know regular money that you just buy and buy and sell uh items with it every day using it like it would be the canadian dollar the american dollar so exactly i think making the bitcoin ecosystem strong is definitely going to behoove the entire bitcoin industry so i was looking into bitcoin solutions

4:50and you have some really big news coming up about being the first bitcoin atm company to be publicly listed on and you're going to be on the tsx venture can you tell us a little bit about how you feel about going public how is it going to help bitcoin solutions and what are the benefits of being a listed company yeah certainly ultimately being a listed company um

5:13is going to give us credibility and that's one thing that this industry has kind of lacked you know we've seen we've all seen the headlines in canada certainly um we've had a number of different bitcoin exchanges that have gone dark as they say um bitcoin right now doesn't have a phenomenal name in mainstream media so we're hoping to do is give investors a different picture of

5:31what a bitcoin company is we're going to market we are profitable we are a company that prides itself on security prides itself on customer safety and we plan on showing investors that investing in the bitcoin market is a smart and strong thing to do and so what we had to do was we had to do something different than just buy and sell bitcoin um we had

5:54to do do i think more than that and we had to show investors that there's two ways to invest in the bitcoin ecosystem there's just buying bitcoin that's a very smart thing to do at all times but there's also buying bitcoin companies or buying equity and bitcoin companies through a registered vehicle and that's very attractive to most customers i mean

6:10it's the most retail investors we saw in 2017 this landslide of money come into the space people desperate to get into the bitcoin ecosystem but not really sure how to set up a private key not sure you know is my bitcoin really safe if i hold it myself so we're hoping to give a vehicle to those investors that can invest in a profitable company whose

6:29volumes will benefit from the rise of bitcoin but who ultimately is a transactional business and therefore even as the price of bitcoin kind of tumbles um as we've seen it do and as as we're expecting it to do as our company plans um for it to do we're able to really i think give those investors the ability to benefit in both bull and bear markets yeah that's really interesting and i'm

6:53looking forward to seeing that come out to full fruition in in the canadian markets so good luck with finalizing all of that and moving it out and you know talking about um what makes bitcoin solutions unique you talked about the fact that you have a non-custodial service and you mentioned uh the fact that a lot of people in in canada at least have heard of oh bitcoin i know about it now

7:16but how do i use it and also there's all these different news articles i've seen about you know people losing their funds or things getting hacked and things like that right and with the non-custodial version you're not really you know holding people's funds at least they're holding it on in their own wallet right and i think that the applications have become a little bit

7:35easier to use where you know they show you that the the backup phrase or the password and you have that access and you know you can easily control your own funds um do you think that that is something that makes your platform unique or what else makes bitcoin solutions unique from the investor perspective of you know growing this venture out through canada right now

8:00yeah certainly so i think from an investor's standpoint we're unique because we're essentially seven years old in a seven-year-old industry um we have as much market knowledge as as possible right now so we're definitely excited to be leaning on that market knowledge um we know how to strategically place an atm we know how to digitally market an atm and we know how

8:18to get it functioning at 100 kind of optimized efficiency so from the investors standpoint i think they should feel very comfortable in in our ability to execute from the customer's perspective though i think what truly makes us unique is just that we care so much about protecting our customer um we plan to protect them not by doing anything for them but by

8:39teaching them how to do it so an example might be you know our anti-fraud software we've been working on for for quite some time everyone's heard the calls everyone's gotten the call send us an itunes gift card you know send me a prepaid phone sim to pay your taxes or because your your power bill is outstanding etc etc so what we do is is when those victims come to our atm we

9:00actually display a bit of a questionnaire to them and we kind of force them to think twice about it force them to really answer for themselves you know why am i doing this and then of course displaying warnings across the way so you know we're not obligated to do that we don't necessarily have to do that it certainly doesn't help the business um but what it does is it helps our

9:18customer which of course on the grand scheme of things does help the business we're very very in tune with what the customer um desires and we want to make sure that we're giving the customer kind of the education to you know whether or not they're being kind of spoon fed through the transaction we want to be able to we want them to be able to succeed on the next transaction as well

9:36definitely and speaking of you know scams and phishing there's been a lot of that uh so far during the pandemic of 2020 here it seems like people are being targeted when they're most vulnerable and i'm curious how has bitcoin solutions fared throughout 2020 having the pandemic and has it affected you personally and the company and in good ways or bad ways

9:58yeah um difficult to say you know we've kind of been been planning for 2020 to be a massive growth year so we had a bunch of stuff set in place uh from last year's strategy sessions that were able to implement this year so how what the pandemic did for that was ultimately it charged us with the task of kind of shifting focus so where we planned on deploying a ton

10:19of atms in april uh of course three quarters of the world was shut down in april so we weren't able to do that so what did we do was we shifted to our online deployments and in the month of april and may uh we struck a partnership with bedali so we were able to um sell gift cards on our website and then of course we launched um the ability to fund your account uh

10:40through canada post so now anyone in canada can go to i think there's four or six thousand canada post locations across canada fund your bitcoin solutions um kind of account in order to buy bitcoin so that's that's kind of you know ways that we were able to to kind of adapt um and then we put those atm deployments that were supposed to come in april we

10:58kind of started those out in in the early parts of q3 of this year so um certainly the pandemic didn't help uh of course we we saw a hit right we had 75 of our of our locations were shut down we kind of adjusted our focus you know which kind of locations are going to be beneficial in the event of a next wave or or kind of you know we we definitely had to revisit the

11:21strategy board but i feel very lucky to be in an industry that um promotes financial sovereignty and ultimately with a government kind of having no end in sight around financial money printing and and a very very bad monetary policy if i could be blunt um you know we are in an industry that kind of protects against that so i do feel like um you know bitcoin users and bitcoin

11:47solutions customers are on the winning side um of a horrible pandemic yeah well it's interesting that you point that out and because i've seen a lot of bitcoin atm strategically placed in you know coffee shops or convenience stores and i've seen a lot of coffee shops that are empty right now right and uh so there's definitely a shift but i'm glad that you've

12:07been able to stay on top of it pivot work on the online solutions and that part about the canada post with going to any canada post outlet i didn't know about that that's actually amazing and that's a great step forward for canadians with virtual currency adoption and i'm curious on your high level outlook on virtual currency adoption throughout canada right now you know

12:29do do you see it uh with 2020 everything that's happened is it sort of projected on the growth that you were anticipating from the previous years and maybe uh forecast to what bitcoin adoption might look like in the next year or two as well yeah great question i mean i think that last year actually set the stage for truthfully what what canadians can

12:51expect i think that you know as of um as of june uh you know of course we are officially an msb which has been fantastic and the regulations came into place which is which is great and all that stuff was kind of set in stone um starting last year so so i think that that really shows the way that we're able to now interact before we were operating in this kind of unknown

13:11and we weren't really able to make any choices and now that we have some guidance we're able to really put our foot on the gas kind of just drive um the way that i think you know i am traditionally uh quite bad at predicting our growth in the fact that i never predict it to be high enough you know yeah in 2017 we had these these grand visions of what it could be

13:32and i think that you know by june or july of 2017 right we've already blown those predictions out of the water same thing's happening this year you know right now um we're on pace to to really blow these projections that we set at the beginning of the year kind of out of the water and and i i i truthfully do feel very lucky to be able to say that you know

13:51we're in the midst of this pandemic and we have a business that is able to to still grow and thrive and i and i think that you know we have uh this incredible team here that's just been working like dogs and and everyone is just so so kind of focused on our mission of making bitcoin accessible understood that it doesn't really it's not really dawning on anyone i thought i think just

14:11just how far we're kind of moving the needle which is super exciting that is super exciting and great to hear that you're ahead of your projections and hopefully that's a positive for the whole space moving forward as well and you know we're running out of time adam but i'd love to hear uh ways that we can find out more information for the viewers or for people that are

14:32looking at finding an atm or for investors to to hear about the investor relations what's the best way for them to learn more and to get involved yeah certainly head to our website bitcoinsolutions.ca you're going to find a large part of our info there and of course we have a medium page um and we have a twitter page at btc solutions ca if you head to our twitter

14:53page everything kind of gets blasted out in real time over there so certainly on the website or on twitter we're pretty active and definitely excited to kind of share the good news great well i'll leave those links in the description box below thanks so much for your time adam all the best with bitcoin solutions moving forward and let's follow up in the near

15:10future thanks ashton i really appreciate it