The following is a transcript of Bitcoin Well’s AMA session on Oct 8, 2024
CEO.CA would like to welcome Adam O’Brien, CEO of Bitcoin Well to today’s Ask Me Anything session. Adam, can we start with a quick overview of the company?
Bitcoin Well is on a mission to enable independence. We do this by making bitcoin in self custody easy to use. This is the convenience of modern banking and the benefits of bitcoin. We like to think of it as future-proofing money.
Basically that means we have a Canada wide-network of Bitcoin ATMs (launched in 2014) as well as an Online Bitcoin Portal (launched in 2022) in Canada and now the USA.
The Bitcoin Portal and the Bitcoin ATMs are designed to work together so a customer can take bitcoin in their personal wallet and do anything they could do with money in their bank.
- Pay their bills and credit cards
- Get cash
- Deposit cash
- Send money to a friend (e-Transfer)
- Buy a gift card (coming soon)
And of course, buy or sell bitcoin
We are becoming the transaction engine for bitcoin that is safely held in our customers’ personal wallets (self custody). Bitcoin in self custody should be able to replace your bank account - and we are making that happen.
How many new user registrations does the company aim to achieve by this time next year? (Or any timeline you’d like)
We are currently sitting at 25,000 total registrations (up from less than 10,000 this time last year) and we have just launched an exclusive affiliate program, and will soon be launching a more general referral program. We are hopeful these efforts will enable us to cross the 100,000 total registrations within the next 12 months, especially with the bitcoin markets heating up globally.
What upcoming features of Bitcoin Well are you most excited about, and why?
Bitcoin Well Swaps are the most useful to me, as someone who regularly transacts and lives on bitcoin. That said, it also gives us the potential to expand into other jurisdictions as it is not reliant on any fiat or banking infrastructure. I believe the ability to buy gift cards with bitcoin will give us that same opportunity and we expect to launch that in Canada this month.
In the medium to long term we plan on giving customers a Canadian Dollar account that could eventually function as a bank account. My vision for this is that someone could deposit their pay cheque into their Bitcoin Well account, automatically send some bitcoin to their cold storage, and then send the remainder to their bank account. Eventually, this account could become the place where their bills are paid and their mortgage is withdrawn which would essentially make Bitcoin Well a viable banking option for all of our customers.
How is the Portal performing in the USA this year?
Over 10% of our user registrations have turned active in the USA this year, which is something we’ve been very focused on. We are going to be spending a lot of time adding features to the Bitcoin Portal in the USA this year which should make it more useful. We’ve also confirmed that our meetup strategy in Canada (sponsoring bitcoin communities in Canada) has been fruitful and plan on rolling that out to the USA in a big way. We expect the USA to be our single greatest point of growth in 2025.
How is Bitcoin Well different or better than its main competitors? Who are your competitors?
In Canada there are plenty of “crypto exchanges” but very few offer the full capabilities of Bitcoin Well. I would categorize Shakepay and Bull Bitcoin as our main competitors. We differentiate ourselves from them with an approachable brand that emphasizes the usability of bitcoin in self custody. We are the fastest and safest platform to buy bitcoin in Canada, and the only Non custodial bitcoin company in the USA. We are marching towards our main competitors being Koho or Neo Financial, with our key differentiating factor being usability of bitcoin in self custody.
We are banking on a world that has a growing interest and desire to hold and own bitcoin, and are becoming the “bank replacement” for that world.
What do you think is going to happen to the price of Bitcoin in the next year, and how do you think that will impact BTCW?
I believe we are entering into a bull market and historically publicly traded bitcoin companies tend to perform very well during bull markets. As a business, we have positioned ourselves to take advantage of a bull market by building a scalable, multi-jurisdiction platform that gives us the ability to capitalize new user registrations as they come in. We sign up more new customers in a single day than we did in an entire month when we first launched the portal. This kind of scale will help us maximize the effects of the bull market.
Expand on partnership with LQWD. What's the threshold before lightning actually hits mainstream aka market cap relevance?
LQWD pointed some liquidity with 1 LN Channel towards our node. Our node currently has ~15 open channels. Our Lightning Integration is now complete with the Bitcoin Portal allowing our users to buy, sell and use bitcoin as part of their daily financial lives. I believe that the Lightning Network has a lot of room to grow, but I don’t think our “market cap” or business is reliant at all on the Lightning Network. We are in the business of making bitcoin in self custody easy to use, whether that be on the Lightning Network, or other Layer 2 solutions that are actively being developed and worked on.
What are the main catalysts for the company and stock over the next 6 to 12 months?
Ultimately it’s going to be user growth and a continued active user conversion rate. Our active users have been increasing steadily and I believe it’s due to our meetup strategy playing out as we anticipated in Canada. Expanding that strategy to the USA should be beneficial to our company, and paired with a referral strategy I am hopeful that our active users (and ultimately transaction revenue) should grow exponentially.
On top of that, we have just launched Bitcoin Well Infinite in the USA - which gives us the ability to facilitate large bitcoin transactions in the USA. As you can tell, the USA is a big catalyst and growth factor for us.
Do you plan further international expansion? If so, where and when?
We are exploring the compliance requirements to expand our Swaps and Gift Card products into multiple jurisdictions outside of North America. Once launched, we are planning to add the same “bank to bitcoin” functionality that we have in Canada to the jurisdictions that have the most people using our services.
How sticky are the membership signups and a second question, how has the community reacted to the increase in fees?
We haven’t seen any change in revenue due to the increase in fees. In fact, September had more active users than any other month. Our active users that turn active, stay active. We have > 20% all-time active user rate in the 2 years we’ve been operating. We generally see a customer active on a quarterly basis (i.e. every 3-4 months they make at least 1 transaction) with more customers becoming active multiple times per month.
What is the timeline for another capital raise? Are we sort of forced to raise soon at the low levels? How long is the current cash balance good for? Insider ownership over 50 percent plus I would imagine insider participation in any new capital raise like before does help.
We are hopeful we won’t need to raise money at punitive levels, but as you know we are beholden to the markets. Insiders still own, and continue to own large amounts of this company and we are working hard to help our cash proceeds draw us into the future of being a sustainable and profitable company. We are at the tipping point of that and with some of the growth we expect from new product launches I am hopeful we will have success.
In a perfect world, we will be able to raise money at accretive levels and have options to grow the business, pay back debt or simply add bitcoin to our treasury. Eventually, I would love for a portion of our profits to be consistently adding bitcoin to our treasury for long term holding.
Thanks so much Adam! Any closing remarks for our investors?
I would like to thank all our shareholders, customers and stakeholders for being a part of this exciting journey with us. We look forward to growing and sharing updates with everyone in the near future as we continue on our mission to enable independence by making bitcoin in self custody easy to use. Buy bitcoin at bitcoinwell.com
CEO.CA would like to give a big thanks to Adam and our investors for joining us today! Have a wonderful day everyone!