Fedimint & the Future of Bitcoin Custody with Obi Nwosu

“Most of the solutions that I’ve seen around custody take us from A to B to C, so they’re better custody, they improve upon where we are. But what we did is look at what does the world look like when everybody’s using Bitcoin, when there are billions of people using Bitcoin.”— Obi NwosuObi Nwosu is a co-founder of Fedimint and a board member for Jack Dorsey’s and Jay-Z’s ₿trust. In this interview, we discuss how Fedimint builds upon various innovations to create community Bitcoin banks, with the aim of fully realising Bitcoin’s potential to bank the unbanked. - - - - In 2018, Bitcoin Magazine asked Andreas Antonopoulos to reflect on 10 years of Bitcoin. He remarked that not everybody needs Bitcoin; “the real impact of this technology is on the other 6 billion: the unbanked, the underbanked, the politically oppressed.” Whilst Bitcoin has the utility to help those living outside of the financial system, in its current form it still lacks the functionality and scalability to adopt the majority of people who, as Andreas stated, really need it. Bitcoin has multiple constraints, but a principal issue is expecting the unbanked to be able to self-custody. The answer to this problem lay in work undertaken by one of the original cypherpunks. In 1989 David Chaum created Digicash. Despite the venture eventually failing, decades later it helped pave the way for Bitcoin, and, now it is the basis for Fedimint. Chaum’s innovation was to create blind mints: digital banks where communities can deposit and utilise digital dollars, and where the custodians have no access to any of the user data. But it was a chance meeting between Obi Nwosu and Eric Sirion at a hackers congress in Prague last year that dusted off Chaum’s work and give it new life, with the aim of opening up Bitcoin to the masses. As a result, Fedimint was born in 2021. It attracted the sponsorship of Blockstream. Fedimint operates outside of the Bitcoin blockchain, and the idea is that the custody will be managed by trusted members of a community. Custodial risk is reduced through the ability to have such mints federated, where the operation operates as a multi-sig. Obi believes that after the provision of decentralised censorship-resistant money and payments, Fedimint is the third pillar of Bitcoin. It offers the real opportunity to scale Bitcoin into a global currency.- - - - This episode’s sponsors:Gemini - Buy Bitcoin instantlyLedn - Financial services for Bitcoin hodlersBitcasino - The Future of Gaming is herePacific Bitcoin - Bitcoin‑only event, Nov 10 & 11, 2022Ledger - State of the art Bitcoin hardware walletWasabi Wallet - Privacy by defaultTexas Blockchain Summit - Nov 17-18, 2022 | Austin, TexasBCB Group - Global digital financial Services-----WBD551 - Show Notes-----If you enjoy The What Bitcoin Did Podcast you can help support the show by doing the following:Become a Patron and get access to shows early or help contributeMake a tip:Bitcoin: 3FiC6w7eb3dkcaNHMAnj39ANTAkv8Ufi2SQR Codes: BitcoinIf you do send a tip then please email me so that I can say thank youSubscribe on iTunes | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | YouTube | Deezer | TuneIn | RSS FeedLeave a review on iTunesShare the show and episodes with your friends and familySubscribe to the newsletter on my websiteFollow me on Twitter Personal | Twitter Podcast | Instagram | Medium | YouTubeIf you are interested in sponsoring the show, you can read more about that here or please feel free to drop me an email to discuss options.