“What’s The Help Desk Number For Bitcoin?” - A Bank Actually Asked Him That

Scott Melker (0:00)

Bitcoin can look completely dead at $65,000, then one big move later, everyone suddenly remembers why they cared in the first place. Today, I'm talking with Martin Masser from ChangeNOW about where Bitcoin and crypto go from here.

Martin Masser (0:12)

These institutions, they've gone out of crypto into the AI. When the AI sort of cools down, where's that money going to be coming back into? And again, I'm not doing predictions, but a lot of the liquidity will flow back in to where we were.

Scott Melker (0:25)

Why higher prices still remain the best marketing in this industry.

Martin Masser (0:29)

Bitcoin goes up, more people start getting in, more people self-custody.

Scott Melker (0:33)

And what real adoption actually looks like beyond speculation.

Martin Masser (0:36)

The amount of people that are on the banking floor trying to approve settlements is crazy. You can do that in crypto really easily. We're now starting to see the banks integrate a lot of these systems in many ways, because they just see, like, so many efficiencies that are there now.

Scott Melker (0:49)

We get into banks adopting blockchain rails, stable coins, self-custody, privacy super apps, and why things like gas fees, bridging, and even knowing what chain you're using should eventually disappear completely. The technology may be complicated, the experience shouldn't be. Let's go.

Martin, you have, I think, a uniquely interesting perspective on this industry because you have a banking background.

Martin Masser (1:29)

Yeah, I do. I do. I started banking many, many years ago, probably when you're still at college.

So I went through there. I saw, I was on the FX floor.

Scott Melker (1:39)

I'm going to be 50 this year. There's no way you're older than me.

Martin Masser (1:43)

You were very well, mate. You were very well. So yeah, I was in banking mainly on the FX floor, which again has so many similarities to the crypto industry, especially with the pricing and the analysis. And yeah, I was there for a very long time.

Got into crypto. I saw Max Kaiser. He supports my football team, Chef Wednesday. But what's this guy wearing a Chef Wednesday tie for? And then, yeah, he just spoke about Bitcoin, just got on there. I think he used to give away Bitcoin, literally a Bitcoin live on his show. Like he was just throwing them out, like nothing, never got on to that. But it was amazing how difficult it was to get Bitcoin listening, because he was talking about this amazing technology. It was so tricky to get Bitcoin or even touch what it was, like downloading wallets, and yeah, very crazy.

Scott Melker (2:36)

Well, I mean, what year was that that you first got interested? I mean, that has to be very early, 12, 13

Martin Masser (2:42)

Yeah, it was 2012, 2013 I'll tell you a story, never do this. And I put warnings up. This is definitely never do this. But I was buying Bitcoin for people of forums, on like the Bitcoin Talk Forum, and I think people just send me it. And I think the price went up from like, I don't know, $50 to $100.

And the guy was like, oh, the price has gone up, but I'm still going to give you the Bitcoin at that time. So very different to the world we live in now where, you know, what I really loved about that time was a real community feeling. It was more like, oh, this is one opportunity we really have to change the world in the way of banking and finance. It was an amazing time there.

Scott Melker (3:26)

OK, so you-

Martin Masser (3:27)

And then we just go to the-

Scott Melker (3:29)

Right, yeah. We came over to the dark side to actually do that.

Martin Masser (3:33)

Well, yeah, yeah, it's great. It's very different, though, to where we are now than whenever we are there. I remember even going to the Crypto ATM. Have you ever used one of the Crypto ATM, Scott?

Scott Melker (3:44)

I've used one, but just because I wanted to say that I'd used one, not for- Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Martin Masser (3:50)

Yeah, it was really funny because people didn't really know what they were, you know, if you didn't know what it was. And I remember whenever there was like this big spike up, the machines were broken. And I was like, why is the machine broken? It was just full of money. And I was really surprised people didn't figure that out and just get the machines and steal them and stuff like that. Very crazy different days, very different days there. So yeah, now I've worked in crypto for a while now, and yeah, seeing different sides of it, the ups and many downs, more downs obviously than ups, but yeah, it's an amazing opportunity to work where we are.