How a Swiss Bank got started in Crypto

00:00:00] Romain: we have some fantastic stories about like, uh, people, one thing, which is common to all these clients, it's not luck, it's always about first, curiosity and education. And once they combined these things, they start to work on that and to exploit what could be, a potential opportunity for them

[00:00:27] Didier: Romain Braud is director of digital assets at Arab bank in Switzerland. Arab bank is one of the banks in Switzerland, active in crypto offering trading staking lending and advisory services.

[00:00:44] Didier: They have many clients who've already made their money in crypto. We will discuss, why these people come to a bank and what services these crypto natives are looking for in a bank.

[00:00:54] Didier: We also look at the obstacles most banks face when getting involved in crypto and how a blockchain is. In fact,

[00:01:01] Didier: An advantage to screen customers.

[00:01:03] Didier: We discuss also the inquiries they get from corporate customers looking to get involved in Bitcoin and much more.

[00:01:09] Didier: But before we get started a word from the sponsors who make this show possible first up the Descript. Are you interested in having your own podcast, but don't know how to get started. The idea of editing your own audio files intimidates you. I use the descript software to edit this podcast and I highly recommend it.

[00:01:27] Didier: It's easy to use much easier than any other editing software. I know you can record directly on your PC or Mac or on another device and then import the files. It also produces a transcript of your audio files. Best of all, they have an overdub function. That means that you can type in text and your voice generated by the program will read the text.

[00:01:49] Didier: So when you need to add in a word or a sentence to an audio file that you forgot to say during the recording, you can use the overdub function to insert it afterwards. I highly recommend the pro version, which is what I use. And if you pay annually cost $288 a year, I really think it's worth it. Use the link in the show notes to connect to the script and help support this podcast.

[00:02:12] Didier: . Next up shift crypto, are you looking for a hardware wallet to store your Bitcoin or other crypto assets? Consider a bit box made by shift crypto they're based in Switzerland and have been very well audited.

[00:02:25] Didier: The CEO Douglas backroom was on this podcast and you can find that episode in the same place you found this episode. The other co-founder Yohanas Shelly was a Bitcoin core developer and submitted his first line of code to Bitcoin core in 2000. 13 also, if you like cool design, this product has the coolest design of all hardware wallets.

[00:02:44] Didier: I know use the link in the show notes to get started and to help support this podcast. And finally brain trust. Are you a software engineer, UI designer, content manager, content marketer, and would like to work independently, the freelancer and you think privately held platforms like Fiverr or Upwork take much too much of a company.

[00:03:03] Didier: Brain trust has replaced the middleman by code and the amount of take-home pay you get on the brain trust platform is a hundred percent of what you built other fields of work, of being added continuously to the brain trust platform as well. So check them out to see if they have a job for you. On top of that on brain trust, you can make money by referring other people to the platform as well.

[00:03:25] Didier: Looking at the two episodes I did with Adam Jackson and your favorite podcast player, Adam Jackson is a co-founder and CEO, and find out more about how brain trust works, click on the show notes to get started and help support this podcast.

[00:03:39] Didier:

[00:03:39] Didier: Good afternoon, Romain.

[00:03:40] Romain: Good afternoon. Thanks for having me.

[00:03:42] Didier: So first, can you tell us a little bit how, how and why our bank got started in crypto and how they started the crypto division?

[00:03:51] Romain: Well, uh, there's such a journey, uh, Rami Jaban which is a managing director of Arabic through the land. When I met him in 2017, beginning of January. actually. And he directly grasp the idea of crypto uh, regardless you know,

[00:04:10] Didier: a

[00:04:10] Didier: of

[00:04:10] Romain: the buzzie word

[00:04:12] Didier: of bitcoin

[00:04:13] Romain: and cryptos in general out of the back in the days, uh, he was looking into it and, uh, and um, pay attention of What is Bitcoin. So I started to, to, to work with him and what we can do, uh, with the bank, how they can case study, And then after how we can evolve, uh, all the environment that banking environments. So then it starts a journey.

[00:04:36] Didier: What were the main sort of obstacles the bank had to overcome?

[00:04:39] Didier: Do you think are most banks have to overcome to, to get involved in crypto? I imagine it's, it's mostly reputational risk and maybe some regulation risk. And why was that like not a problem for Arab bank or how did Arab bank overcome those problems?

[00:04:54] Romain: Well, it takes A lot of time to evolve Uh, I mean like um, Arab bank is a nimble, and agile and, uh, bank, uh, basically, uh, we are a tiny bank compared to like a big systemic bank so we can move faster. Uh, but you first, you need to convince people, uh, within the bank about the idea of cryptocurrencies. And that's not something like really easy because always have some people against crypto because most of the times they don't have like enough knowledge to understand deeply what could be the future of uh, financial industry.

[00:05:33] Romain: And when we talk about crypto is not only about Bitcoin, Bitcoin is a main cryptocurrency and. is like, kind of Gold 2.0 which I believe strongly, but also about like the, all the blockchain how like technology, Will revolutionize like a banking system, which was, all and not disrupted compared to uh, telecomm compared to uh, uh, even like the information system. we didn't have any network which was open connected and technology neutral for banks to exchange. So basically with cryptocurrencies. Uh, we start to have like an open connected network, open to anyone. So banks have to take the opportunity otherwise they will die.

[00:06:20] Didier: And I think you once mentioned to me, something that I thought was very interesting, that when I mentioned to you about reputational risk, you, you answered me up and in fact, the blockchain can eliminate the reputational risk.

[00:06:31] Didier: Do you want to explain that to me?

[00:06:33] Romain: Yeah. I mean, what The missing point. most of the time for banks or compliance departments, let's say is a, is he believes that when they don't understand some things, they say no first,

[00:06:48] Romain: basically their job is to protect uh, the realm of the clients and the bank itself, but mainly to protect the clients as a, or as a existing clientele.

[00:06:58] Romain: So if you let newcomers entering the of protect to protect the assets, to protect. the wealth. You need to make sure, like these people are fundamentally, uh, a reputational risk free, and basically what you can do with crypto is you can understand the crypto life because you know, you you can check like as a different transactions.

[00:07:24] Romain: So of course a year is not, to go deeper in the personal life of people, but to assess the risk of any clients of every clients who join, Uh, to understand How has it made a fortune? uh, it was a source of wealth and source of funds. And basically with the tools of blockchain because it's an open ledger.

[00:07:44] Romain: You can check the transaction. You can corroborate much more easier compared to traditional finance. When you have a lot of documents, it could be forged right now, uh, it's very difficult, very hard for like a camera or someone who tried to money lender to come in the bank, uh, we have some creep dos and counts, uh, justify. Where does it come from? Because we just need to ask like a few questions.

[00:08:09] Romain: first,

[00:08:11] Romain: give us your public key. We understand the risk. And we are pretty good at that. Meaning that we try to, uh, not be too intrusive into the personal life because we are a private bank. We want to make sure, like, we are as big as the privacy for clients, but at the same time, we need to comply with the law And we want to make sure like vis clients. Uh, and so all the questions we need.

[00:08:34] Didier: , I, the impression you have a lot of clients where we're crypto savvy and crypto native, and those are your clients. So a little bit like, yeah.

[00:08:42] Didier: Can you describe a little bit, maybe the profile of most of your, of your clients? What, what the conversations are like? Want to come to a bank and a little bit, why is it that they come to a bank if they are often already crypto savvy?

[00:08:55] Romain: Oh yeah. it's really interesting actually. Uh, we have a large panel of uh, clients, a lot of different type of clients from tech savvy to early founders, early adopters, um, late comers, uh, NFTs, uh, traders, uh, hi - frequency traders, uh, like a lot of the, Uh, you know, even crypto miners, uh, cooperates and all these people, they came, uh,

[00:09:25] Romain: at least a few, uh, common, uh, concerns. So The first one is how to protect my assets, to protect my assets. They know how to do it. Most of the time when when it's, early adopters, but our to protect my wealth is because like they know how to manage it by themselves, obviously, but when you have to teach The family, when they have to dare to talk about the handover, like what will happen.

[00:09:49] Romain: And for my wealth planning is something wrong If I'm it by a bus. how, can I, handover like all my wealth to my family. and that's where we enter ,

[00:09:59] Romain: how we help these clients is basically we ask them for wealth planning for diversification first, they earn a lot of money. We've, uh, uh, we've cryptos And they start to diversify. and because we have early adopters say facing as second further wave of crypto.

[00:10:17] Romain: Actually, we can fairly say that we are in a bear market. And they experienced it already. And that's why they start to bank with us because they want to diversify, on different kinds of financial products. We have 75,000, uh, financial instruments available here. So you can combine like the classical, market, let's say trade-fi and, uh, and the defi I saw because we we are out of also listing, like few tokens. Mainly So Bitcoin Ethereum which is taking lending and. so on. So basically instead of having like, different platforms, different banking, partners, which sometimes are to cash out because banks do not understand or ask them like too many questions. At sometimes may found irrelevant. And, uh, it looks like they do not understand them. We try to understand them as much as we can.

[00:11:13] Romain: So it's quite an easy for us to understand. the story. Sometimes it's hard to corroborate the story because when it's early adopters, is like multiple transaction, it's a crypto life. basically.

[00:11:25] Romain: So you have like hundreds of thousands of transactions, that you need to recapitulate, But we are here for that, so basically we are

[00:11:32] Romain: smooth onboarding process and ask them to diversify their asset to protect their assets for the, for the family and relatives.

[00:11:42] Romain: And so at some point they prefer to have like a. a one-stop shop. solution for execution in, uh, in safekeeping. So it's much more convenient, especially when you travel all over the world, we have a lot of digital nomads. So for the. being in the bank, especially as Swiss bank, which is six years existence, uh, it's a no brainer because it's quite a, it's a rock solid the bank.

[00:12:06] Romain: And one thing which is important. also is like, as a crypto assets are of balance sheet in Switzerland And this is by designed by the legal framework that the FINMA, ask the banks, uh, to, have the assets off blanace., What does it mean? It means that, all the crypto assets deposited by the clients are , completely segregated in case of bankruptcy, for example, these assets, belongs to the client. So they are returned, in case of failure

[00:12:41] Didier: If the bank goes bankrupt. The, the assets are segregated, so they're not on the balance sheet of the bank and the client gets back private key. Is that correct?

[00:12:49] Romain: Yeah. I mean, the clients get back as not the private keys themselves because the private keys are generated into hardware, security modules as a, never leave the custody. Basically we can't extract the, we can only transfer, uh, as,

[00:13:04] Didier: to a new address

[00:13:05] Romain: so we can send back the assets to the white list, the address of the.

[00:13:09] Romain: client. So we have like, a dedicated mechanism

[00:13:12] Romain: for that?

[00:13:13] Didier: Getting back to your clients. You have a,

[00:13:16] Didier: people who've made a lot of money in crypto and who've made it and they'll see it in bull markets and bear markets and so on.

[00:13:21] Didier: Do you have any juicy anecdotes of, uh, some of the clients and when they came to you a little bit, the things that they've lived through in crypto before, before coming to you,

[00:13:29] Romain: Well. I got to talk about the clients obviously. but what I can say is like, we have some fantastic stories about like, uh, people. One thing, which is common to all these clients, it's not luck, it's always about first, curiosity and education. And once they combined these things, they start to work on that and to exploit what could be, a potential opportunity for them. And that's what we saw. And we saw that, uh, in the trading space, we saw that, uh, Builder's space, uh, in crypto builders, we saw that as

[00:14:06] Romain: though with NFTs clients who trade Nft and it's a real expertise that they develop. Uh, while I can see from my experience, and being in a, in the crypto space for quite a while, now, it's already like, yeah, nine years and I've seen that the greed the most of the time is , above like, the rational thinking of, uh, of people. Most of the time, But we can see also a lot of people that, uh, uh, understanding more and more like what is Bitcoin, for example, and when's understand like, what is money? What is Bitcoins and the start to Hodl. Because they realize that the world we are living

[00:14:46] Romain: in

[00:14:47] Romain: We've like , the quantitative easing, for example, with the tempering, the do realize inflation's coming.

[00:14:55] Romain: uh, and How we can protect your wealth for the future. most of the people who are

[00:15:02] Romain: educated.

[00:15:03] Romain: are Hodling most of them. Are also like, uh, not crazy at some points, they have to diversify to, uh, make sure that they don't do the same mistake at every cycle.

[00:15:15] Romain: But

[00:15:16] Romain: Why don't we can see is a tase more and more wallets in the Bitcoin space.

[00:15:21] Romain: more and more like crypto, wallets, uh, opening and transactioning. So The market is expanding. Uh, we see the community expanding all over the world

[00:15:31] Didier: so

[00:15:32] Didier: these

[00:15:32] Romain: the big bear markets. there is a lot of builders and that's where I see some opportunities at some point.

[00:15:39] Romain: So you need to pay attention learn , and then they're within the beer market, you find some great. opportunities.

[00:15:45] Didier: Okay. And on that same, a bit vein of more and more people coming into the market. You told me in the past that you have more and more corporates who are looking into Bitcoin and contact you.

[00:15:56] Romain: Yeah. I Actually, uh, Bitcoin. um, it's something that corporates are looking at, uh, as a store of value. So far, we we've seen that. Uh, it was a high correlation. this last month we've, uh, we've just talked markets. So

[00:16:14] Romain: the narratives, uh, economic energy of, of Bitcoin is not correlated to stock seats or edge against is not real so far. Uh, by the way we can see is like, we don't have like, uh, we, we, we see that the real estate

[00:16:29] Romain: kind of a bubble, a, luxury market, like a lot of stock markets and in a bubble, we have a hyper inflation And you inflation is coming so when's he doing some temporary, Let's see how it goes. with the, U S market, but um, I'm, I'm a bit like uh, careful of what will happen in the future So then people are realizing like, where should I store my wealth Yeah. For all generations. are obviously going to gold, but newer generations are going to Bitcoin or Ether. and the the more they study and more, uh, you know, buying The deep at some point. So a lot of people are waiting so far because, uh, we can see that uh, there is a bear market is a really aggressive at some point, but I do believe it will come back,

[00:17:15] Didier: because th the, for example, you mentioned to me, you had major European.

[00:17:20] Didier: Corporates contacting you about Bitcoin and so on. So do they see it as a store of value or do they also want it as a means of payment in in countries where they might feel censored because basically the United States by censoring, Russia and dollar payments of swift and.

[00:17:36] Didier: And my opinion weekend a bit, uh, the status of the dollar as the global reserve currency, because they've just showed the whole world that if they don't like you, they'll try to censor to you and cut you out. So do you think more and more companies are looking to crypto? What is the store value and as far as a means of payment in countries where censorship resistant is important?

[00:17:56] Romain: Well, I think it's more like a strategic, I mean, I don't know.

[00:18:00] Didier: think

[00:18:01] Romain: Any company would like to bypass, , any. sanctions and we, will not as a banker accepted, you so we can't do any payment. , we had some constraint with the, Russian war, uh, that we applied in Switzerland, like, Switzerland, um, for the first time, , has, uh, changes the status from neutral to engage.

[00:18:21] Romain: But that's true that, um, coperates.

[00:18:24] Romain: are studying crypto about like what could be the future of, uh, payments, Uh, in the coming years is like research and development.

[00:18:35] Romain: They just want to stay at the forefront of innovation. Like they don't know yet how it will apply, but they want to have it because at some, bond it might be something like uh, even placeable like some things that people will have to use in the future.. So we see many, many use cases of, uh, of NFTs people see like, Only like a jpegs or only images, but it's much more than that.

[00:19:04] Romain: And back in the day, with Bitcoin people. , saw only like, financial expermentation but the ledger of Bitcoin is much powerful, ,

[00:19:13] Didier: I was just wondering, do you have any insights on, the Swiss national bank, do you think this was national bank is warming up to Bitcoin or I have the impression that.

[00:19:24] Didier: Western reputable central banks. They're the most, the most friendly tool at least against it? Because I would say it's not necessarily good for Bitcoin to be adopted by central African countries that have a bad reputation. El Salvador has a checkered reputation.

[00:19:39] Didier: Bitcoin would gain a lot of creditability if it was adopted by or, uh, or endorsed by it. Serious, uh, reputable central bank. What are your opinions on, on how the Swiss national bank sees it?

[00:19:54] Romain: I don't know people are in the Swiss national bank so I can't talk opinion I can do for them, but what I can talk for is like Switzerland has been always at the forefront of innovative. and people were looking at.

[00:20:08] Romain: us Uh, when we start to, to onboard like a crypto companies like backings a day, with a Ethereum, they found, a natural home for innovation, uh, in Switzerland. that's how the Ethereum foundation started here? And then after a lot of companies came into crypto, also, we have more than 1000 crypto companies in Switzerland.

[00:20:31] Romain: And this is some things that we need to remind to the . politicians and to the regulators, Switzerland is one of the top innovative country in the world. And if we don't want to kill innovation, we need to, also to embrace and to show politically how we support innovation.

[00:20:51] Romain: It's fair to say that, , beings are first sometimes, uh, presents some fears, uh, but at some points, that's how you innovate.

[00:20:59] Romain: because you're The first and in Switzerland, when we have this legal framework around the cryptocurrencies it really creates something meaningful for builders to create a company in a safe environment and to develop all

[00:21:14] Romain: What we have right now.

[00:21:16] Didier: So let's move on to Defi,

[00:21:18] Didier: the clients who come here, what are they looking for? They're quite active in Defi what are they looking for when they come to a bank? Well,

[00:21:26] Romain: active clients who generate wealth from Defi space. They come to us to diversify their assets.

[00:21:32] Romain: So basically they arrive with a lot of interaction with many different protocols, many different chains, and it's very difficult for them to justify, to different banks or to withdraw their substantial. amounts. Uh, to the bank, because the banks are asking fair questions. But they do not understand the answers because they do not, have the capability to assess all this risk.

[00:21:59] Romain: And we have this task force internally that we have built, uh, said we understand, uh, the crypto life of the clients first. And, uh, we

[00:22:10] Romain: Black, basically the onboarding of all these people, uh, from the Defi space. But for the newcomers in the device space, uh, we try to educate them. but again, uh, Defi is, um, is there

[00:22:22] Romain: a risky

[00:22:24] Romain: And environment, but it's also where innovation is coming from? Uh, with the decentralized, Contract, you can, build services, uh, between banks, between founds, wealth managers and traders.

[00:22:39] Romain: You can put everybody on the same, service, which is, neutral technology. So no one can, control it. It's the rules are already, written in advance. So you can, audit because it can be. audited. And that brings like a very interesting concept note, especially,

[00:23:02] Romain: on the derivative market, when you can have much more, capital efficiency at some point, and that's really

[00:23:10] Didier: appealing

[00:23:11] Romain: so far, uh, to have like catchy connect like all these different, counter parties together.

[00:23:20] Romain: In a controlled environment? Uh, fortunately, on, fortunately this is a debate, but like for us as a bank, we happy to work with, uh, protocols and services on the Defi space. But by the regulation we have to make sure is that we know or counter parties because by the law

[00:23:41] Romain: we are. entitled to.

[00:23:44] Didier: Okay. So you're only working I suppose, with the white listed addresses here.

[00:23:48] Didier: Okay. So what, what do you think spooks your clients or scares your clients most in, in Defi?

[00:23:56] Romain: Well, it's an innovation, uh, something new, , something very easy to, I mean, for, isn't it very easy for, for newcomers or for people who do not understand that you have to be a little bit tech savvy, right? Uh, if you want to, to use services like AAVE it's quite straightforward, because you know, it's a lending service.

[00:24:17] Didier: Uh,

[00:24:17] Romain: but if you want to, to participate to the curve war, for example, which is like

[00:24:22] Didier: a

[00:24:22] Romain: a

[00:24:22] Didier: world world,

[00:24:23] Romain: uh, by itself, uh, it's very complicated. You need to learn the Tokenomics. You need to understand that. How to interact with different microservices, , of like Defi bricks, let's say, uh, to interact between each other, like uh, to, to leverage your, capital out, you have better capital efficiency, uh, and it's really risky.

[00:24:47] Romain: So basically what we offer to our clients by now is just an exposure to a token.

[00:24:52] Romain: Uh, but what we are currently building is like, an integration of, decentralized financial services in a permission way.

[00:25:01] Romain: I mean, a lot of Defi services, know, try to legitimate their activities by integrating in the. financial system, Because, we've seen that, uh, retail, uh, is an important market to test the Defi space.

[00:25:18] Romain: how you can shape the financial services for the futures, because it's very easy, uh, for our clients when it doesn't understand a bit how it works. what our work crypto, uh, it it's really easy to interact to get a loan but it's also very risky at some point when you want to invest like, uh,

[00:25:41] Romain: some

[00:25:42] Romain: songs that it's

[00:25:43] Romain: fine, but when you have like a fairly big amounts, uh, you prefer to work with, regulated entities,

[00:25:51] Romain: which

[00:25:51] Romain: can manage it for you or can do it for you?

[00:25:54] Romain: basically. So. as let's say retail investor, uh, or late comers in the crypto space. Uh, they start to play with, uh, with Defi themselves and it helps us as a teams to shape user experience. And the new UI the user interface to make a bit more convenient or more easy to, to use. Uh, and we it's fair to say that in the web free to be better and better like the interface and more beautiful and so on. But then after, when you want to attract a big liquidity's for your services, then, , we need to invest more like the, of the traditional finance money into crypto space into the services, which are much more efficient than the traditional finance that we have now.

[00:26:41] Didier: Okay. What do you still think the main risks in Defi are? I mean, would you think, like we wrapping tokens, which I call re hypothecation, for example, do you think that's still a very big risk or what scares you in crypto?

[00:26:56] Romain: Yeah, I mean, re-hypothication is a big risk because a it's always a cascading risk and we've seen a, you know, like a Bitcoin, uh, has been built, uh, has been released at least uh, after like the, the crisis of 2008. And because we didn't have any Uh, content pour two to two tacos, uh, actual as a financial system. And the idea is not to re not to do again the same. mistake in the device space, you know, like, if you tried to reinvent, a central banks which are at some point it's, highly disputable, that's true. but at some point in trying to protect the customer with Not working so well, let's say, uh, and then the Defi we try , , to have more inclusion and to make sure we can build like a counter poor system to traditional finance, as we know it. Uh, but at some point There is Some, some greed again. Uh, when people try this man, like a get rich quick, and then if Does it drop uh, the crypto is they need to come here for the good reasons to learn and educate themselves And then have the, to be able to all, to interact and use the services, which are very useful for them.

[00:28:14] Romain: Not about like, uh, trying to make money very fast, because most of the times that's how it fails.

[00:28:20] Didier: Do you think there's more leverage in defi than in tradfi?

[00:28:24] Romain: I don't,

[00:28:24] Romain: I don't think

[00:28:25] Romain: it's

[00:28:27] Romain: one can be more then the other.. There's some leverage on both sides. Uh, the only thing is like, uh, in the tradfi, you know, like your things are much more control and much more slow to move, from that much, mostly to move in the, in the Defi space. Uh, because it's, pseudonymous, you don't know really who is behind what?

[00:28:46] Didier: So what do you think Defi will look like in 20 years? I mean, do you think in D five, we're going to have like agencies that rate every Defi project and tell you this one is safe or that the founders have all the keys, or what do you think it'll look like in 20 years?

[00:29:01] Didier: And do you think we're going to have like agencies rating the safety of protocols? For

[00:29:04] Romain: No I

[00:29:06] Romain: think it would be completely integrated into our services, it will be like your layer that completely abstracted layer Defi will just replace , how we interact with, different, uh, services, right?

[00:29:19] Romain: now. we add this huge evolution in the infrastructure space technology infrastructure space with API, and what we see is, uh, crypto's services, like on, on Defi, we'll just moved from the API, side do the smart contract. side. So basically instead of calling API, as you will call it a smart

[00:29:42] Romain: contract and that's how you bring like, a, a neutral technology in between a different counter parties. especially when we talk about like financial services. When we talk about money

[00:29:54] Romain: you would only want to have like, a, like an entity, which is hosting money, but you prefer, have like a smart contract hosting the money of the service, where all these different counter parties can, use this money and that's, what lead to much more capital

[00:30:10] Romain: efficiency

[00:30:12] Didier: Great. Thank you very much. Let's finish up with some, uh, rapid fire questions. The most important book you've ever read?

[00:30:19] Romain: I think it was into the wild, uh, one of my,

[00:30:23] Romain: favorite book. yeah,

[00:30:24] Didier: It was also turned into a movie. I think Sean Penn directed it. Yeah.

[00:30:28] Didier: Yeah.

[00:30:28] Romain: Pretty nice. but I think it's, uh, just like uh, someone which is not fitting in the world and uh, instead of uh, trying to change it just want to live it while I prefer it was a good inspiration.

[00:30:42] Romain: to take the oversight instead of trying to live, it let's build something that we want to live in.

[00:30:48] Didier: Okay. All right. That's a good, interesting somebody you admire in history and if you could meet them, what would you ask them?

[00:30:56] Romain: Well, I mean, obviously a

[00:30:58] Romain: Satoshi Nakamoto

[00:30:59] Romain: because there is a lot of questions or like everybody wants to talk.

[00:31:02] Romain: with we've him for that, but, uh, no, I think, uh,

[00:31:07] Didier: Toshi is one person or several people.

[00:31:09] Romain: My personal opinion is like, uh, like, Uh, big changes in the world. Uh, hasn't been done only by one, man, but my multiple people, there is one people we can, lead the change. obviously. And that's what often happen.

[00:31:24] Didier: one

[00:31:24] Romain: 1% is a change, but it's about like a collective, uh, uh, interaction.

[00:31:31] Romain: And, uh, basically what has done

[00:31:32] Romain: Satoshi Nakamoto.

[00:31:35] Romain: Gather like technologies, which were used already, Or we have really efficient, like in cryptography and they gather it together. And also working with, uh, with different cryptographer all over the world, to build it. So, yeah. Uh, Satoshi, for sure. And, also, of course Nikola Tesla , Einstein all these people who have revolutionized, I was in mindset, like to listen and they are not the diversity to,

[00:32:03] Romain: To

[00:32:03] Romain: understand like, what was this vision like? Uh, like seven years 700 years ago, like how they were like completely, uh, seen very different, uh, on uh, in the civilization or the time. And how has the I've pushed the boundaries of, uh, of, or civilization basically. So I think that's, that's, . in these a lot of, Uh, actual people, uh, which are talented, which I don't know, but I'm sure it's really appealing. and and one man, which is probably really

[00:32:40] Romain: not long time ago, which he was probably, he then is John Von Neumann,

[00:32:44] Didier: whichever year I appreciate,

[00:32:46] Romain: I think it's fascinating with all the work? He has, done is beyond like a lot of things, but, uh, he was not, uh, on the scene, but he has changed, uh, he was, uh, the basics of, uh, of the computer basically. and then as, always, yeah, in, uh, in physics, one of them.

[00:33:06] Romain: She got brain, of, uh,

[00:33:08] Romain: of a wall 20 century.

[00:33:11] Didier: Yeah, because you studied, I think computer science in school.

[00:33:14] Didier: So you're, you're you you're like, uh, computer science, so you know those people. Okay. All right. Let's say best piece of advice you got and who gave you.

[00:33:25] Romain: Well, my father for re uh, Try to do your best. That's uh, That's my motto. Uh, sometimes we, uh, we are not satisfied, with what we do, but as far as these are, he's already some room for improvement

[00:33:41] Didier: . Non-financial investment, the best investment you ever made, but nonfinancial

[00:33:47] Didier: well, uh,

[00:33:49] Didier: It's

[00:33:49] Romain: probably my best investments, uh, outside the crypto uh, as a time I spent in family.

[00:33:58] Didier: Okay. Yeah. Right. No problem. The favorite movies,

[00:34:02] Romain: uh, favorite movie for, I have many, but, yeah,

[00:34:06] Didier: uh,

[00:34:06] Romain: I was a teenager where like a fight club and a matrix, I was like really. attracted by these.

[00:34:13] Didier: Okay. All right. Great. Okay. Thank you very much. Hold on. So if ever, where can people get in touch either with you or find out more about Arab Bank?

[00:34:22] Romain: Well, I'd again, uh, just, uh, drop me an email.

[00:34:25] Romain: Uh We've uh, we've,

[00:34:27] Romain: do have a key or contact me on uh, on our bank cause they can contact me on LinkedIn on a Romain Braud and I accept a lot of support.

[00:34:34] Romain: So is it getting contact me and I read my, uh, my LinkedIn emails.

[00:34:38] Didier: All right, great. Okay. And we'll put that in the show notes. Okay. Thank you very much warmer.

[00:34:44] Romain: Thanks for having me.

[00:34:44] Didier: And a word again from the sponsors who helped make this show possible. If you are interested in any of these products, click on the link in the show notes, and you will be supporting this podcast first up the script. Are you interested in having your own podcast, but don't know how to get started. The idea of editing your own audio files intimidate you.

[00:35:03] Didier: I use the descript software to edit this podcast and I highly recommend. It's easy to use much easier than any other editing software. I know you can record directly on your PC or Mac or on another device, and then import the files. It also produces a transcript of your audio files. Best of all, they have an overdub function.

[00:35:23] Didier: That means that you can type in text and your voice generated by the program will read the text. So when you need to add in a word or a sentence to an audio file that you forgot to say during the report, You can use the overdose function to insert it afterwards. I highly recommend the pro version, which is what I use.

[00:35:42] Didier: And if you pay annually, it costs $288 a year. I really think it's worth it. Use the link in the show notes to connect to the spirit and help support this podcast.

[00:35:53] Didier: Next up shift crypto, are you looking for a hardware wallet to store your Bitcoin or other crypto assets? Consider a bit box made by shift crypto they're based in Switzerland and have been very well audited to CEO Douglas backroom was on this podcast and you can find that episode in the same place you found this episode.

[00:36:12] Didier: The other co-founder Yohanas Shelly was a Bitcoin core developer and submitted his first line of code to Bitcoin core in 2000. 13 also, if you like cool design, this product has the coolest design of all hardware wallets. I know use the link in the show notes to get started and to help support this podcast.

[00:36:30] Didier: And finally brain trust. Are you a software engineer, UI designer, content manager, content marketing. And would like to work independently, the freelancer and you think privately held platforms like Fiverr or Upwork take much too much of a commission brain trust has replaced the middleman by code and the amount of take home pay you get on the brain trust platform is a hundred percent of what you build.

[00:36:53] Didier: Other fields of work are being added continuously to the brain trust platform as well. So check them out to see if they have a job. Yeah, on top of that on brain trust, you can make money by referring other people to the platform as well. Look at the two episodes I did with Adam Jackson and your favorite podcast player, Adam Jackson is a co-founder and CEO, and find out more about how brain trust works, click on the show notes to get started and help support this podcast.

[00:37:20]