Delete Coinbase! Use this instead... w/ UnhappyBen (Peer.xyz)
I spoke to UnhappyBen, head of growth and marketing at Peer (formerly known as ZKP2P) which is a service that allows you to officially delete Coinbase and every other centralized exchange account you may have. Peer is protocol that allows people to do P2P trading of crypto assets and fiat through neobanks like Revolut, Venmo, Wise, etc. while providing a high degree of privacy using zero knowledge proofs. In case you didn't see it, I spoke about the solution in a recent video of mine where I ...
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Transcript
I reached out to Richard and Sasha and said, like, hey, guys. Your your marketing sucks. The product is fantastic. Here's my pitch. Let me do it. KYC started off with something that was like a was meant to be a positive and has now turned into almost a honeypot, I I would say, where your data is stored, and you can't really do anything about it. Right? If it's leaked, it's leaked. We say, hey. If you're good enough for Venmo, if you're good enough for Revolut, then you're definitely good enough for us. I believe that Josh isn't a terrorist if Revolut say he's not a terrorist. You know? Like, that should be enough for most people in general. Things like this. Like, really, I would say, odd things in this year end of 2026 happening where you see an 80 year old man being carried off by the police for saying, hey. Don't kill people in Gaza or stop bombing citizens and things like this. I think you will see the rise of, like, debanking, and that's when tools like ours kind of become more handy for them to be able to keep their funds. And on those funds as well, which is something that kind of is also important on DeFi. This episode is sponsored by NIM, the world's most private VPN that protects your Internet traffic and metadata.
Unlike traditional VPNs, NIM uses a decentralized mix net to scramble your Internet data, hiding who you're talking to, when, and how often. You can switch between full mix net mode for maximum anonymity or a faster VPN mode for everyday use. Pay in crypto or fiat, and even your payment stays anonymous thanks to zk powered anonymous credentials. Take back control of your online life at nim.com. Sign up today using the code blockchain socialist and get an extra month for free. Hi, everyone. You're listening to the Blockchain Socius podcast. I'm Josh, and I am here today with Ben Renshaw, who is the head of growth and marketing at Peer, also known as z k p two p or formerly known as z k p two p, which is a product that I've been raving about for the past few months now as I've been doing quite a lot of work to help support those fundraising for people in Gaza. And I'm gonna keep making the mistake calling it z k p two p where they just did a rebrand. Has been a really useful tool for me and a bunch of my friends who have been doing this type of work. And I've been kind of just sharing it with a bunch of people because it's super useful for those who want to send crypto to places like Gaza, but also just, like, as a really nice tool if you want to get onboard into crypto in a way without needing to do any KYC or any not any new KYC and also in a privacy preserving way. So, yeah, we'll talk about that. It's super interesting product. Ben, maybe if you want to start off, if you wanna give a an introduction of maybe you and what is Pure and how does it work.
Sure. Yeah. I'm Ben. I've actually only been in, like, a real crypto job since, like, March of this year or April of this year. Before that, I was a corporate slave. Maybe you could say that. Mainly working at large corporations. And then I I took a jump to work at CKB or Peer. Look, Dave, I'm getting wrong. Today is the rebrand day, so I'm when we record. So it is Pierre now. But I took a jump at the start of the year mainly because I was a user of the product, and I reached out to Richard and Sasha and said, like, hey, guys. Your your marketing sucks. The product is fantastic. Here's my pitch. Let me do it. And, essentially, they went, okay. This this guy's got some, you know, balls on him. We like him. His pitch is good. Let's give him a a job. And and now we're here almost a year later, rebranded, a third version launched. Yeah. So that's that's pretty much, like, my story. Very short. And and Peer is a noncustodial permissionless peer to peer bulletin board technically, and it helps you on on ramp and off ramp to crypto. So if you have crypto and you want fiat, you can use it. And if you have fiat and you want crypto, you can also use it to get on chain in a privacy preserving manner and off chain in a privacy preserving manner. Right now, we have a a web app, peer.xyz. And soon, there will also be a mobile app coming. It's in private beta right now. So if anyone wants to reach me for a a code, they're they're welcome to ping me on any social platform at unhappy Ben.
I'm very responsive, and you can also test that out too to get on enough chain there in a privacy preserving manner. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Actually, I think I think I you can also even reach out to me because I think I got a bunch of those codes as well that that Ben gave me. So if you're in the crypto leftist Discord or community, then we can get you some of those codes. You can get access to the mobile wallet, just a kind of mobile version and mobile experience of what you can do with with Peer. And so, yeah, maybe to explain a bit how it works. So one of the things that's really cool about it is that you can use whatever kind of neo banking application that you already have, like Revolut, Wise, PayPal there is an option, Venmo, Cash App for those in The United States, to make a transaction to someone else. And then somehow, through a little bit of magic, on the other end, if you prove that you've done this transaction correctly, then you'll receive cryptocurrency in the wallet that that you kind of designate to receive the cryptocurrency.
Yeah. But, like In fact, you can even pay incorrectly, and you'll still receive and you'll still receive the crypto, a partial release. So, yeah, you don't even need to do it correctly. Oh, wow. Okay. That's a that's a major improvement. Yeah. Yeah.
I know you got a joke. Sorry. Well, I guess I guess I would say, like, what for me, what's fascinating is basically what it does is it simulates the peer to peer, like, peer to in person peer to peer trading experience, but in a digital space. So, like, if you were if you've been around long enough, you might remember LocalBitcoins,
I think it was called. Or Yeah. The good old days as I call them. Yeah.
You could, you know, go to a go to a dingy mall and then meet meet up with someone and then, you know, do a little trade or with in cash or however you guys want to want to do it, and they'll send you Bitcoin or whatever cryptocurrency. And this was a way to get around having to necessarily use, like, Binance, Coinbase, any of these centralized exchanges. You could just go directly to someone else who was go would be willing to sell it directly to you, which, of course, is a little bit there's a little in that circumstance, it's a bit more intensive, labor intensive, I guess, having to get up. And I'm riskier as well. I I remember meeting people on the street kind of randomly.
Are you yeah. You are. Okay. Here's Leon. Here's some cash I just pulled from the ATM. Here's my Bitcoin, and don't don't kill me. Thank you.
Yeah. You I guess you kinda you kinda look at the corner you guys are supposed to meet at, and you're like, oh, that's definitely the guy.
Yeah. Exactly. That's definitely the guy. He's he looks shifty enough to to be selling Bitcoin to random people for cash on the street corner. Exactly.
Yeah. So it's a really it's a really good way if you don't wanna share personal identifying information to a big corporation or or whatever have you to potentially risk that data being leaked in some in some data leak accidents or whatever. It allows you to get around that so you preserve a lot more privacy in various ways. So, yeah, I guess I'm you know, to me, the big question, you know, if you're looking at it from a how how, you know, how you guys get around KYC or or know your customer regulation. Maybe for those who don't know to make sure we're all on the right on the same footing, can you explain a bit what is KYC and how you guys are getting around it in the process with with Pure?
Sure. Yeah. So, I mean, KYC, I think I I hope most people will be familiar with it. Your banks do it. Crypto exchanges do it. In fact, I think everyone pretty much does it now. And it's essentially where you give them your personal information, be it your passport, your driving license, your residence permit, a copy of your bank statement, or your gas bill just to prove that you are who you say you are. You're a human person who lives at a certain address and, you know, kind of pay their bills or or where your money comes from or things like this. It's essentially linking where you live and who you are to a a digital account in a database somewhere, and it works out pretty well. I think k y c things like this always start at something that's useful when it, like, first arrived. Maybe it's not the best thing to give your data to large corporations, but at least it's a way of, you know, saying, hey. I'm a person, and I can do things. I think what it's turned into is something that's incredibly invasive and something that gets leaked very often. And, really, these companies who look after the data are inept, I think. And I don't think I'm speaking too harshly there. I mean, it's really I have a we have a colleague, a peer, and he he was in the Coinbase leaks. And he he is just constantly attacked by emails and scams and logging login attempts. And, like Shit. They know where he lives. They know how much money he has. I think in the latest Coinbase breach, they paid, like, a a a person in the call center, like, $200 just for your information each. I think that was in one of the news. Or was it it was either Ledger or Coinbase? I don't remember which one. But I mean Right. The p it it's people working in those databases. They're obviously an attack vector, and they have all your information on hand, and they can leak it. And it becomes, yeah, something to attack you with. I mean, in France, they talk about wrench attacks all the time. Right? There's lots of kidnappings there for people who are leaking, and even their tax authorities were leaking information about crypto people that just came out, I guess, at the start of the year. So I think KYC started off with something that was like a was meant to be a positive and has now turned into almost a honeypot, I would say, where your data is stored, and you can't really do anything about it. Right? If it's leaked, it's leaked. I can ask them to delete it. Especially in Europe, we have, like, GDPR, so they have to delete your information if you ask for it. But it it becomes, yeah, I would say very difficult to, yeah, ensure they have deleted it. They can say they have, but it could be somewhere else and things like this. Not not to scaremonger, I would say. Obviously, I'm KYC ed in lots of places, and my information is in lots of places. But I do think that the companies who own the data or store the data are useless at the moment. And I think it's an area to improve ourselves. Like Right. Right. As a as corporations, they should really yeah. And I mean, they did that to you. Thing that I mean, it's a funny situation.
I mean, corporations, like, they don't want to do it. They they're they're they have to comply to regulatory standards by the state. The state does it because of whatever reason. They'll say anti money laundering. They'll say anti terrorism. But I think what is what was interesting about the Coinbase situation that happened, I think, last year that that I read at least was that part of the issue is that they outsourced. Like, the people who are doing the work of upkeeping all this data and doing the KYC stuff were just, like, sorely underpaid. So then, like, you know, you just just, you know, a guy who's working there who needs a little bit more money just need one guy, and then, like, a bunch of data is is is leaked. And once it's leaked, it's leaked. Like, there's no you can't you can't put the the genie back in the bottle or the toothpaste back in the tube. Yeah. Out there.
It's it's very difficult to do compliance. And, actually, like, we're a small team. We're a team of six people. Like, I don't wanna be also the compliance manager. Right? It's something that it's not possible to do. And I think a lot of larger corporations started to to do they had compliance teams, and then the regulations become so much that you do you either hire, like, a 100 people to do it, to store the data, or, you know, as kind of economies are, someone sees, hey. I can make a business that does all the compliance for people. I'm gonna get paid the big bucks and, you know, kind of take it off their hands. And when these sorts of things happen, they get very big, and then they start to cut corners or underpay their staff because they can or outsource from, you know, I would say first world countries to, like, third world countries where the the pay is cheaper and things like this. And that's obviously an issue, like you said. You know? It just takes they're underpaid, they're overworked, and it just takes one person to, you know, leak the data as an as an attack factor, and that that becomes quite an issue. And I I I think something that we or when Richard and Sasha in, like, first thought of this idea is that to get crypto and to get back to fear, you always have to KYC. Right? Something that we're really focusing on at the minute is being on chain is very private. So when you're there, you can do anything you like very privately. There's lots of tools, privacy pools, Houdini swap. I don't wanna say Tornado Cash now, but previously Tornado Cash. Things like this yeah. Exact Aztec is also coming. Lots of these places, they let you be private on chain, but then getting back and back to fiat to spend money in real life or actually getting on chain is you can't be private in any way, and people will always know your data and therefore can track your on chain activity. And something that we're really focusing on at the moment is, like, privacy doesn't equal equal secrecy, which is, I guess, still kind of a cyberpunk idea. But it's really important that you're allowed to have privacy, and Pierre doesn't wanna add to kind of the surveillance state if you're forgive my phrasing. We don't wanna add another layer where someone else can store your data, and it can be it can be taken away or hacked or or given away. So what what we say is, hey. We trust that, like, Revolut or Venmo or Cash App or all these large corporations, they they're held to a certain standard. Right? Banks, especially, or neobanks are held to a certain standard, and they must keep your data safe, secure, your information liable. So we say, hey. We're taking the regulated rails that almost everyone has in the modern era. I think you I mean, you almost can't exist without having one neobank at the moment or a ePay wallet like Venmo or similar. We take those regulated rails, and we just leverage the information. We say, hey. If you're good enough for Venmo, if you're good enough for Revolut, then you're definitely good enough for us. And that's that's pretty much it. That's what zero knowledge technology allows us to do is to say, hey. You've been regulated. You've passed AML. You've passed all of these, like, anti terrorism stuff. Like, I don't need to do it again. Like, I believe that Josh isn't a terrorist if Revolut say he's not a terrorist. You know? Like, that that should be enough for most people in general. Like and I think that's, like, a real niche in the market that we've really, like, seized upon, and and lots of people are using it for well, one, privacy doesn't equal secrecy, so they're just getting on chain, saving, spending, investing, whatever in DeFi they wanna do. But then also, like you and, like, with the bread co operative, you can donate in a privacy preserving manner using crypto. You can fund good causes. You can do lots of things where maybe it's frowned upon to donate to or the government doesn't like it or you don't want many people to know about it. Yeah. And I think that's, like, a secondary power of privacy doesn't equal secrecy. You can do things. Yeah. You can do good things, which people forget about when they talk about privacy. It's it's like a a positive as well.
Yeah. Yeah. So if I can kind of maybe summarize this basically, peer borrows essentially or they they rely upon Leverage. Yeah. They leverage the KYC credentials that you already have on any any of the supported platforms that that they offer. So if you've already got a Revolut account and you've given them all the information you need to give them because you need a Revolut account, then then that's enough. You don't need to do anything more to use Pure. You can just if you make a transaction using Revolut, then clearly, you have done enough k y c. And so, that gets taken advantage of using zero knowledge technology, zero knowledge cryptography which is, maybe for people who don't know a very fancy and kind of cutting edge cryptography where you can prove things without necessarily need to revealing it. That may sound kind of weird and contradictory, but I think what I think there's there's always this, like, way that people explain it that I guess kind of helps where, say, you're going to a bar and you have to show your ID to prove that you're, you know, over 18 or over 21. And but whenever you give your ID to the to the bouncer, he sees your name, not just your age, your name, your address, all these other information that he technically doesn't really need to know. And so by using zero knowledge cryptography, you can prove, for example, to the bouncer, I am above the age that is necessary. You don't need to know anything else about me. You know, let me in. That's kinda like a, I guess, the way to explain it.
It's quite a nice way to explain it, actually.
Yeah. Yeah. But, yeah, so, like, the specific cryptographic primitive that you guys are using is z k t l s, which is super super interesting to me. I know if you want to maybe give a little bit of an explanation of that just to see because I think some people were just like, yeah. But how do you leverage how do you leverage the KYC? I don't get it. You know? How do how does that what exactly is is happening in the background?
Sure. Yeah. I could just give you, like, a quick kind of introduction, and I've written it down. So if you see if the video is available, I've written it down just because I knew this thing would come up, and I don't wanna get it wrong. But, essentially, what it is is CK TLS or zero knowledge TLS is a cryptographic technique, and it lets you prove something about data you received or data you've, you know, got data about yourself from a website or or similar without revealing the information. So like Josh said, hey. Instead of giving the bouncer at the door all of my information, I just give him a small piece and say, hey. I'm old enough. You can let me in. You don't need to know all of the information about me. In kind of a more technological way, it's still gonna be high level. So you you're welcome to skip ahead if you don't care. But, essentially, it's important. It's important. I would I personally would recommend listening. But if you don't want to Yeah. Thirty seconds is a headache. Double yeah. No offense taken. Exactly. So when you visit a website, you see a little, like, HTTPS kind of thing in the top left hand corner next to the the URL. And this is essentially the server signs, the data you're you're using with TLS. And that is essentially there's a very old kind of primitive, something that kind of the Internet works on. And z k t l s uses zero knowledge proofs to let you prove to a third party that you receive specific informational data from a specific place whilst keeping the contents private. So it's essentially taking something that the Internet runs on and then, I would say, making it better, turning it into kind of a, yeah, a a more privacy preserving way of of sharing data. And it's not only for payments. There's ZK email, who who Sasha and Richard work closely for v one. They prove emails, and you can prove specific stuff. And I think they also released a new piece of technology where you can actually redact pieces of emails as well, so they don't even need to see lots of stuff. There's z k email given the occurrence.
Yeah.
Yeah. I I believe the the redacting works better than what they did to the Epstein files. So you you shouldn't be able to see it when you download the files. So they they also have that. And there's also ZK passport, which again proves that you're a a citizen without needing to see your passport data, which are becoming more and more popular, which is nice, obviously. And, yeah, in this case, we use ours for payments. So it's essentially we know that if I use Revolut as an example, we know, like, the URL for Revolut. We know that they're gonna send information about payments, and there's specific things about the payment you can kind of know that you've sent the payment. Right? So there's when you log in to your bank account, there's, like, a table of transactions that say, Josh, minus a €100 to Ben, for example. And you can see that, and that data table is made up from an API or HTML or however archaic the bank has set it up, it's made from that. And, essentially, what we do is when you log in, we have an extension, which is a privacy preserving extension, which generates a proof locally for you on your computer. So what it does is it intercepts the data from Revolut, for example. It takes the information it needs to prove the payment, so the date, the money, a hashed version of who you sent it to, and all of your PII, so Josh's name, his address, his date of birth that could be, you know, could be seen because you've logged into your account is blinded from us. I don't wanna see it. I don't care about it. I don't wanna know anything about Josh. All I wanna know is that he sent a payment to me for a specific amount of money, and, like, that that's kind of it. We don't need to know anything else about him. We don't need to see any of your data. And the the most important thing to know about the extension that Pierre uses is that it's all done locally on your computer. It's never sent to a third party server, and you have full control over that proof. Right? So there are cases where you can do a z k t l s, but you send the proof to a third party server and they can store that proof. Right? Obviously, that is a data leak because there's a similar to KYC, there's someone, you know, somewhere in the world who has the information. We make sure that it's all done locally on your computer, again, in a privacy preserving manner. Again, because we're regulating sorry, leveraging the regulated rails, and we don't have a compliance team, and we don't wanna do compliance, it's very important that we kind of keep all that information blinded and away from us. Yeah.
Right. And so I hope that was I hope that's understandable for people. I think if you if you go to the website, peer.xyz, things are new website, Then you'll you'll I think you'll get a better idea of kind of what what what exactly he's talking about and and and how it's working. And, hopefully, we can get, like, a a little a little demo in the video here that can kinda show the the flow. But, yeah, TLS, as far as I understand, it's it's top level was it top level security or no transport layer security, sorry about that, which is kind of a cryptographic standard that provides security for, like, data packets over the Internet. It's kind of how how I think about it. And so it's like a way to kind of, you know, you're you have this assurance with TLS that you are getting the information from revolute.com. You know, insert website here, like, the we're using squadcast.fm right now. You know, that you're getting some bit of information from this domain. And so the z k t l s part is just saying, I am making a proof that this domain gave me this bit of information. And so What a fantastic way to set yeah. Actually, if you fast forwarded my part, I think Josh just said it in, like, two sentences. So You want a you want a communications expert, let me know. So, yeah, just prove that that they told me this, and it's secure cryptographically. You say, okay. Then that's that's good enough for me. And then it it allows this transaction to happen, which is, like, you want to buy cryptocurrency or you want to sell cryptocurrency.
Yeah. And I think the other important thing just to mention about here as well, like, if we move on from that, like, the proof generation part is that if you've done p two p before on Binance, there's always a third party who kind of are custodial. So they hold on to their funds in an escrow, and you have to kind of talk to each other and send information and make sure that happens. But the nice thing about Peer is that we there's still technically a smart contract that acts as an escrow, but it has two directions of travel. One direction of travel is that it goes back to the seller if the proof isn't generated. And the other one is if the proof is generated and submitted on chain, the money goes to the buyer. They're the they're the only ways it goes. So we never have control over your funds. It always stays with you. Again, it stops us being an MSP. We don't need a money transmission license because we never hold your money. We never hold your funds. You can always access them. There's also, like, a very important kind of point on top of the z k t l s we use is that we also never touch your funds as well. And and never again, I don't wanna know about you. I don't wanna touch your farm and stuff. Like Don't touch me. Want you to Don't touch me. Yeah. Don't don't talk to me. Thank you. I I don't wanna know anything about you, and the company doesn't want anything about you. We just want you to be able to get on and off chain in the privacy preserving manner and kind of yeah. That's it.
Right. So, yeah, it's a it's a super interesting technology generally. We're talking about a specific instance of using ZKT. That's like a clear, use case for which is facilitating peer to peer exchange over a digital space. But you can imagine this technology used for a bunch of other things. I mean, it's actually really something I I highly recommend people looking into it a little bit just because this is like a a fascinating cryptographic primitive that's quite new. And I think we have not really yet fully grasped what I think what what this means, I guess, having this primitive. Like, imagine, you know, like, some of the things I've been this kind of a bit of a tangent, but, you know, imagine that you could transport your entire friend network of Facebook into a new social media where you z k use a z k t less proof to show, you know, these are all my friends and I'm gonna go to this network and then all of your other friends create a z k t less proof so that then they go to the other network and then so then they can match up, you know, that you guys are all friends from Facebook and you can therefore move away from, you know, this shitty social media site into this hopefully better social media site.
I think you're showing your age there, Josh, by using Facebook in the meantime. I mean, I could've said Myspace too. Yeah. But that's I think it's pretty exciting, and I don't wanna sound, like, braggy, I guess. But we are probably, like, one of the first real, like, use cases that is people are using essentially for CKD. That's like we have you know, we're we're averaging, like, $22,500,000 of volume a month of on prem volume. Like, we have over 13 k kind of users. Like Mhmm. It's really one of the the best use cases so far kind of in this space.
And I think the biggest thing for me about this as well that, like, I I should have said in the beginning is that, like, you don't need a centralized exchange anymore. You don't need it. It's done. Throw it away. You have other options where you can preserve your privacy and not have to deal with the, like, extractive casino that is Binance or whatever. You can just simply be on chain. You can simply just not have to go through this kind of middleman that's really annoying to deal with and not have to provide and, like, risk, you know, your personal identifying information with these guys.
Yeah. I think, actually, one of our our new taglines, as I said, it's on rebrand day to day of recording, is no middlemen and no datekeepers, which is, like, also, like, there is no middle person. There is no kind of data that needs to be extracted. There is nothing there. It's just you and another human being transacting with each other with a coincidence of wants. And that's all that's that's it. That's all they need to have. Right? You just need to have someone who wants crypto, forfeit, and the other way around. Right? It's just
yeah. No more Coinbase. You don't have to support the guys who sponsored the military parade in The US.
Yay. That that would be nice. Yeah. Yeah. You don't have to use them anymore. And in in fact, I haven't used them since I I just wrote an article about, like, what I did to, like, buy a house from crypto. Like, I had to use Coinbase, and I had to prove a lot of information about myself, where it came from, why I got it, how I could get it, how my bank I had to do a lot of this kind of inform just to, like, get my money that may have been used in the on chain casino instead of the sex casino. But it it it was still my money to get it back to the Fiat to go through so many hoops several years ago. And now I just use ZK B2P to to do the same thing, and it's much easier. I think an important note as well I said ZK B2P. Yeah. An important note about peer is the use of it doesn't go against the terms of service of a lot of these places. So sending money to peers or people you know or people you don't know is the intended use for them. Using the data or proving that you sent money to people is not against the terms of service, at least from what I've read. I'm not a legal expert. So, you know, I think wise is not financial advice, not legal advice. I think Wise are the only ones who who have an an explicit thing in their user agreement about cryptocurrency. But it's also important to know, like, peer to peer is what a rev tag or a cash tag or a Venmo username is for, right, is to send people money and taking that data from the account that you own and proving that you send someone data is not something you should be worried about.
Like, it's the equivalent of, like, if we met up in person and we're doing a peer to peer exchange and I just show I show you my phone or, like, I sent you the money on my Correct. On Revolut. Here it is. You see it? This is proof. And the other person's like, okay. That is proof. Thank you. And then they send you cryptocurrency. That's
the equivalent, I guess, is how how I think about it. Yeah. That would be the IRL equivalent. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly that. Yeah. Maybe they would say it's slightly nicer and less kind of condescending, but yeah.
Just to make it just to make it clear for people. Clear. Yeah. Sorry. It's not to be condescending, but yeah. So it's I mean, other thing I wanted to mention as well is I I should have mentioned this in the beginning as well. Like, I think you you mentioned it before I did, but we've integrated Peer. It still might have the z k p two p branding at the moment, but we'll update it as soon as we get that. You can now buy or go through the process of baking bread in the bread cooperative solidarity fund, which is kind of a a project that I cofounded. So if you want to be a part of, you know, like, automatically getting into some of the stuff that we're building, very crypto left wing types of projects, then you can go to fund.bread.coop. There's a little buy tab. You can go through the process of onboarding yourself even if you don't have Coinbase, you don't have Binance, any of these centralized exchanges, but you have Revolut or something like that, Venmo, Cash App, then you can get onboarded in, like it took, like, a minute or two more or less to get going. So it's also, like to me, I think it's, like, really, really cool to see this, and I imagine seeing this more and more rather than having to go through. Like, the other options in case people don't know are, like, MoonPay, these other who cares about the names, but they all still require KYC to some degree. So I think what's very cool about this one is it's like the the process is just so much easier. So I'm really hoping that we can use this as a way to onboard a lot more people and make the process a lot easier so that now, you know, I can actually get my my parents to to to get onboarded in in some way without I I remember I had to take my dad through, like, getting a Coinbase account, and that was just horrible. I mean, and then and then his, like, his bank account blocked him for a little bit because they're like, no crypto, which never happened to me. But, yeah, it didn't it didn't give a good look to my dad.
No. I also I onboarded my dad to appear when I first started working, and it was I got bonus. It was fine. Like, he understood how it worked, but it was also very painful. So I'm not sure it's just a a Coinbase explicit thing. But it was very nice that I didn't have to ask him for his passport to Alright. To get my pension. Yeah.
But yeah. So I definitely recommend, guys, please check it out and try it out on the Bread Cooperative application, the Solidarity Fund application. If you haven't tried it already, now is your excuse to go on and get onboarded. We have almost half a million Bread in TVL in the project, so that is all being used to generate interest for member projects, the solidarity fund. So make sure to check that out. Maybe next question that would be good just to to know for people, which markets and platforms are you serving now and that you hope to serve in the future.
Yeah. So it's time to bake some bread, I think, is is what I should say. Right? Yeah. Yeah. I'm not I'm not a paid actor. Yeah. Time to bake some bread. So we're mostly a European American based kind of, like, payment providers at the moment. That's where we're based, so that makes the most sense because we can get access to the account. So in Europe, we have Revolut, n twenty six, Monzo in The UK, Wise, which will then lead me into America because we have Chime in America, Cash App, Venmo, Zelle, but only three banks for Zelle, which are Bank of America, Citi, and Chase. I'm not gonna get into Zelle. It's very painful, because there are so many banks. You have to create a template for every single bank. So Oh, wow. We chose the most pop yeah. Oh, wow. Indeed. We chose the most popular banks and the banks that Richard had, and we're going from there, essentially, because it's a lot of it's a lot of work. So for that for now, it's those three Zelle banks. What else do we have? Oh, we have Mercado Pago in Argentina, which is smaller volume, I would say. And we have PayPal as well. PayPal in multiple countries. But you do need we have a a sort of reputation system on pay, which we had to bring in because we had some issues with some chargebacks, like fraudulent chargebacks. And PayPal have even for friends and family payments, they have some pretty, I would say, egregious refunds, which is like a hundred and eighty days. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's a while. It was also a surprise to us. So we had to add some reputation for this. So PayPal gets unlocked at a higher tier when you've kind of proved yourself as a not like I don't wanna say a good citizen because it makes me sound a bit, like like, I don't know, overpowering, but at least prove yourself that you're not gonna kind of charge back our liquidity providers or your peers in this case. And I I think our reputation system is, for now, is well received by our community, and a lot of people understood, like, the reason behind it, essentially. Like Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's just on on PayPal.
And those are risks that go with, like, any kind of peer to peer exchange. I mean, like, you could Mhmm. You know, you go you meet up in person, you do the exchange, and then you walk away. And then a day later, you know, they get a refund back because they requested it, and then you can't do that much about it necessarily?
Yeah. That is correct. So it's it's a risk that, like, our liquidity providers take, and we try to give them as much protection as possible or help as possible in in these cases because, like, peer to peer exchanges live and die on liquidity. Right? If you have unlimited demand, but $10 of liquidity, no one's gonna use your platform. And that's kind of, like, the problem we're solving for for right now. Yeah.
Right. Right. I kinda I kinda wanna also, like, jump back a little bit to what you were mentioning about, like, having the having the bank, like, the the banks that Richard has. Because I think what's, you know, maybe interesting for people is that, like, in order to create in order to have a system that so that you can create z k t l s proofs, you need to know the format of the websites or, like, the URL that is, like, sending information. You need to know, like, what that is. So it's kind of it takes it's like a process to know you have to know what you're expecting to receive and in what data structure and format. So that just takes, like, a bit of, like, reverse engineering. Then how do you receive that in the way that you want to receive it to to make a proof? Correct. Yeah. It's it's more like like, we're permissionless.
So, like, we don't work with any of these banks or neobanks or payment apps. Like, it's really about reverse engineering, taking the information that is ours and readily available to use and doing it. I think, actually, it's a good point because you can build your own provider templates. So if you're thinking, hey. I have Zelle, but I want Ally Bank or Wells Fargo or something else, Credit Union. Thanks. Anything else, you can in our docs, docs.peer.xyz, you can find some information about building your own provider templates. You can submit the pull request on GitHub. You can reach out to us on Discord or Telegram or Twitter or I mean, any way you like, basically, and we can also help you through that process as well if you want some different banks or payment methods. I'm not gonna say it's very quick because we're, like I said, we're a small team, but we're we're definitely willing and open to receive help. And we'd love to have a large community kind of plat of
payment providers that anyone can add in each. Right. So then if you're based in a country maybe that has a certain platform that hasn't been added yet, you could assist in in getting that getting that on the platform. Or getting on Yeah. We have a yeah. Exactly. We have a friend who's
in Tunisia. Whatnot. I think he's just moved to Paris, but he's he's previously Tunisian, and he has done one for I think they call it Flouchi. I don't I am not gonna f l o u c I. I'm going with Flouchy. I apologize to anyone listening, but we will also probably end up adding this as well once we've integrated our our latest payment provider, which I think could be quite interesting to to mention next. So in the month of February, hopefully, we'll be in integrating Alipay, which is, I guess, one of the biggest payroll providers in China, in Asia. Sashin was just in Chiang Mai, a kind of a cipher a cipherpunk event run by the GCC, which is I apologize for not knowing who their full name, but they're a kind of a collective of people in Asia who want to, push forward kind of cipherpunk and privacy in China specifically and then and then the rest of Asia. So we have the proof of concept done kind of the m p MVP works for Alipay. And what it unlocks, which I think is super interesting, is similar to the you have to use, like, a VPN to access the Internet there when Richard goes back to visit family. He has bad Internet because he's VPNing to get to Google to then kind of call us. You can also send your friend money on Alipay and receive cryptocurrency on chain without anyone really knowing about it. And, again, privacy doesn't mean secrecy. It just means you have that money, you have that Chinese one, and you want Ethereum, Bitcoin, US dollars, anything. You can do that through Alipay without anyone knowing, like and I I think that's something from, like, our perspective and a lot of people's, like, who we've had, like, feedback from. It's something that's really cool because being able to push, like, a privacy preserving method forward for people who, you know, have no other choices really, I think is really cool and something that's quite powerful, I would say. It makes you feel like you're not to sound, I don't know, too, I don't know, crazy, but it makes you feel like you're doing something important almost because you're giving people the option to to do something that they wouldn't previously have an option to do.
So right now, is it in in China? I don't I I can't I don't remember what was the latest on it, but is it I don't know if it's, like, fully illegal or it's not not legal for for mining or something like that. Or I I think it's frowned upon probably. I think it's the way you would say it. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Not And, again, they
no. Do they have all it's also important, like, even if they can do it, which I I don't wanna say if they can or can't. But if they if you can do it, you still have to give all your information away. Right? And Mhmm. You know, we've seen that with things like Alibaba and Jack Ma kinda get they get disappeared for a little bit because they do something that the the CCP don't like and things like this. Like, it is possible to then kind of break out of that stranglehold in a different way and be able to use your funds in a privacy preserving manner that that aren't being controlled by a centralized government, essentially. I think that's the the most important point.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think this is I mean, for me, what what at least in in my context, kind of the big thing that I've been noticing lately, especially just around Ryan. I mean, left wing groups are being debanked quite a bit. I was recently at at CCC, the Chaos Communications Congress, and that was, like, a big a big theme for different organizations who do good work, like, you know, helping, you know, prisoners in in Germany in various ways. Like, they're getting debanked. You know, there's I I to me, there is something in the air that is seems to be where I don't know, these types of actions by governments that we just didn't really was was done very selectively, very seldomly, I think, in the kind of peak of the neoliberal era that more or less has passed, I think, that I think there there is a good chance that it could happen more, especially as, you know, more and more things are just, like, digitized.
Yeah. I think it's like kinda like a and maybe not to get too political, I guess, but, like, a rise of, like, the the nationalistic kind of right wing where they wanna clamp down on everything that maybe doesn't fit their kind of bubble or things like this if more like, at least in Europe, you see more of them being popularized. And I feel like as soon as, like, you talk about the banking, like, good funds doing things for prisoners, this if, from my opinion, if these kind of right wing kind of nationalistic people get into power, you will see more and more of these kind of debanking or
Mhmm.
Yeah. Saying, hey. These people are bad. You can't do that. I mean, in in England, you see old people getting arrested for supporting Gaza or protesting against the genocide in Gaza. Things like this. Like, really, I would say, odd things in the in the in this year end of 2026 happening where you see an 80 year old man being carried off by the police for saying, hey. Don't keep it don't kill people in Gaza or stop bombing citizens and things like this. I think you will see the rise of, like, debanking, and that's when tools like ours kind of become more handy for them to be able to keep their funds. Earn on those funds as well, which is something that kind of is also important on DeFi. Like, you could still earn interest that's usually higher than than your average bank and be able to use those funds then for for good causes still. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. I think it's it's like a reaction to the contradictions being laid bare, I think, more or less. But, yeah, thank you for for coming on the podcast. My last question for you, just curious to know what is in store in the next couple of years for you guys? What kind of stuff are you are you thinking to prioritize? Because, I mean, there's I imagine there's a lot there's a lot that can be possibly done with with this type of stuff that I think is really exciting. Because, yeah, it's not like to me, it's like the, like, maybe the peer to peer exchange is like one aspect of it, but this can be kind of with some slight modulations. I imagine you can make a lot of other interesting types of products and, you know, things that facilitate, I don't know, ecommerce and things like this. Yeah. The next thing after today, I will have a long sleep this evening after the rebrand is done.
And then we will start with, like I think Alipay is, like, our next big milestone. We will have our our mobile app fully launched, which will be, I believe I don't wanna, you know, to speak too soon, but I believe will be the first z k TLS powered mobile app kind of that's usable by a lot of people all over the world, which is very exciting. And and and the team, we have one mobile developer, and he's shipping every day constantly. We say he's in the minds because he's working so hard. So that's like our our kind of short term road map. And then something else we're really excited about, you know, shared with you guys in the leftist discord last week, is our kind of Stripe checkout. So something that Sasha has been, I would say, pioneering and working very hard on this is kind of everyone knows a Stripe checkout flow, how it works, what it does. We're hoping to launch a a similar kind of peer pay checkout flow. You could say I think this is the first I'm probably gonna get in trouble for saying it out loud, but it's okay. I don't mind. Not real trouble, which will allow you to or merchants to receive stablecoins, in return for kind of their users doing fiat payments. And we have two kind of modes for this. So one mode will be where Josh would know that he's paying me in stablecoins and another mode where Josh just knows that he's paying in euros, and he doesn't see anything from the back end, which I think is also really exciting and something that we're looking to onboard more web two companies in. To say, hey, guys. You can use different types of payment rails Mhmm. Very easily. You don't need to pay Venmo or PayPal to integrate them into the checkout. You can just use this technology. Right. Or Coinbase Pay, Coinbase Commerce, or whatever. Coinbase Pay, whatever they have yet. You don't need to use them. There are alternatives that work. Yeah. And I think that the last big thing you said of, like, at least from a technology perspective, I got I gotta say, I got no idea. We're we're working, like, for the mobile launch and the kind of the the the checkout launch. And then from there, we'll have to see how successful we are, of course. But I I think in terms, we just wanna really push, like, the space forward. Bridget and Sachin really pioneered with, I guess, TLS Notary, ZK emails, ZK hospital. They really pushed the boundaries of the technology in 2024 to launch ZK b2b. And that I mean, Richard made the mobile SDK for proofs to work on mobile. Like, they're incredibly clever guys. I think they're fantastic people, and I think I expect them to kind of continue pushing the space forward to new technologies to come. Yeah. So that's that's kind of where we are. I just let them Cool. I let them do the big brain stuff, and then I make it sound very nice to to people. But, yeah, I think that's where we will be.
Awesome. Well, thanks so much again for for coming on. Peer.xyz, if you guys wanna check it out directly. Or I also recommend just going to fund.bread.coop, which is the solidarity fund where you can try it out and with a real use case of baking some bread. What's really cool is that you can you can buy on on on any of the chains, any of the tokens on Ethereum based chains and I think maybe Solana as well. But, yeah, we have kind of a link already set up there to help you with that with that process if you wanna go and do it to to support some of the work that we're doing. But, yeah, Thanks, Ben, for coming on. And and, yeah, looking forward to see how he appear. I almost said it. Up here progresses. I know I will be continuing to be a user of it. So thanks a lot. Thanks a lot, Josh. If you like what I'm doing here, consider supporting the show on Patreon. Your contributions help me keep doing this work and dive deeper into the politics of decentralized technologies. I promise you absolutely zero financial returns, no airdrops, and your investment may go to zero. But you will get good content. Check out patreon.com/theblockchainsocialist to support the show.