Bitcoiners - Live From Bitcoin Beach

Bitcoin’s Biggest Threat Is Inside the Community | Jake Seifert of AirBTC

• Mike Peterson

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What happens when Bitcoiners stop waiting for legacy platforms and start building their own? 

In this episode, Mike sits down with Jake Seifert, co-founder of AirBTC, a Bitcoin-first alternative to Airbnb. Jake’s not just talking about circular economy theory, he’s out there trying to make it real, one travel listing at a time.

They get into the friction points of convincing Bitcoiners to actually spend their Bitcoin, the role of KYC in a decentralized travel platform, and why it’s not enough to just stack sats. Jake explains how AirBTC works, how it handles payments in SATs, and why peer-to-peer lodging still needs basic trust. The conversation also explores why most listings are outside the US, what it’s like bootstrapping without fiat funding, and why hodl-only culture might be holding the movement back.

This episode gives a front-line view of what it takes to build infrastructure for a Bitcoin standard, no venture capital, no permission, just a platform made by and for people who want to live on Bitcoin now. It’s also a challenge: if you’re serious about decentralization, why are you still booking travel with fiat?

If you’ve ever looked at your wallet and thought, "I’ll spend later," this one’s for you. 

Subscribe, share it with your hardest-core hodler friend, and drop a comment if you’ve ever listed a room, or stayed in one, using Bitcoin.

-Bitcoin Beach Team


Connect and Learn more about Jake Seifert
X: https://x.com/airbtconline
Web: https://airbtc.online/ 


Support and follow Bitcoin Beach:
X: @BitcoinBeach
IG: @bitcoinbeach_sv
TikTok: @livefrombitcoinbeach
Web: bitcoinbeach.com


Browse through this quick guide to learn more about the episode:
00:00 What is the real goal of Bitcoin circular economies?
01:02 Why did Jake create AirBTC instead of waiting for Airbnb to adapt?
03:01 How did Jake Seifert first discover Bitcoin and what pulled him in?
06:31 What’s been harder: getting hosts or getting Bitcoiners to spend?
08:42 Why optionality is critical for Bitcoin travel to succeed
10:54 Can Bitcoin rentals actually inject value into local communities?
13:26 What kind of KYC does AirBTC require for hosts and guests?
15:24 How does AirBTC handle payments, fees, and SATs conversion?
20:47 Why is El Salvador leading in Bitcoin travel listings?
22:38 What’s more important now: listings or Bitcoin spenders?
31:18 Will mainstream platforms like Airbnb eventually accept Bitcoin?


Live From Bitcoin Beach

Jake Seifert:

I think right now we have to get people, we have to get people to spend a Bitcoin. We have to, because day by day, BlackRock and Michael Saylor and all these folks, they just that Bitcoin is never going to be seen again. It's going in a cage, you know. And if we don't distribute it throughout the people and actually utilize Bitcoin as it was intended, you know, who knows what our future will hold? If you're here in zone day, or anywhere in outside of the United States, you're you're literally doing Bitcoin mining right for your short term rental. And we think it's a very interesting world that we're going to live in in the future, if, if people can actually get on the Bitcoin standard. We think that we have a real opportunity for growth. We're actually building a Bitcoin business for Bitcoiners. So we really need Bitcoiners to support our project.

Mike Peterson:

You uh, Jake, I am fired up because we are here today, going to talk about one of the most important things that we need to succeed, succeed for Bitcoin circular economies, and that is Bitcoiners be able to pay for their lodging in Bitcoin. This is something that has been on my mind for a long time, and so I you don't know this, but I actually a couple years ago was like, we need to start a site like Airbnb and airbtc was what we were gonna call it also, because that's the obvious. And, I mean, it's kind of like made for it. And so I started doing some research, and then I saw the announcement come out from from you guys, you're gonna do this. I was like, sweet, because the last thing I wanted to do was take on another project. But I thought, like, this is super important to see happen. And then I didn't see anything for like, another year. And I was like, All right, then we're coming back. We're gonna do this. And so I actually got together with another guy who had some experience in that industry and and we started making plans. And then you guys made an announcement, you're actually coming live. I was actually coming live. I was like, Okay, let's, let's get behind them and see what they do. Because neither of us really wanted to do it, but we wanted to see make happen. So now we're gonna hold you guys to it. You guys got to make this happen. You've got to make it so that Bitcoiners are just spending Bitcoin when they travel, injecting it in the local community. So no pressure, but you got to make it happen anyways. Before we get into the details of this, this cool concept and being able to actually use your Bitcoin to stay around the world, why don't you give us a little background on yourself and then how you came to be part of air BTC.

Jake Seifert:

Yeah, so I'm class of 2017 I did a lot of reading on central banks and banking systems and stuff back in the day, and I heard about Bitcoin in 2012 and 2013 and I just kind of kept my hands away and I said, Oh, no, that's, that's probably not for me.

Mike Peterson:

But when you heard about it, were you coming? Was it interesting to you because of the money side of it, or the tech side of it, or both, or what was kind of your background in that?

Jake Seifert:

Well, it was just the money side, I guess, in the beginning. And you know, for for me, when 2017 came around, it just opened up my eye. Because, you know, we went through this large recession in 2009 with the housing crisis and all that stuff. And it was kind of the right time, right place for me. And, you know, for air BTC, you know, a couple years ago, I think this is when you're talking about, when the announcement came that we were gonna launch.

Mike Peterson:

Hey guys, just a brief interruption. We'll get back to the exciting show here. But I just want to really ask a favor that you guys could make sure that you're subscribed. If you're watching this on YouTube, if you are listening to this on a podcast, please take the take a second and review this. You know, you don't even have to write a lengthy review or anything at all. Just click the number of stars that you want to give us. It really helps us in the algorithms to make sure people are finding out about what's happening here. All right, back to the show.

Jake Seifert:

And then we didn't Andre my co founder kind of had a site up that was, it was great idea. Nothing really in place. And I came around and went back and forth with Andre and had my own existing Airbnb ease that I was trying to rent out for Bitcoin. And I thought, you know, why not partner up with him? And so we've been down the road together. And. For the site's been live since August 2024 and it's been a slow growth because we have bootstrapped this project. It's no outside funding whatsoever, and we don't have a marketing budget. All those things that would help grow business quite quickly and but right now, you know, we're at a pivotal point in our business, and we think that we need a lot more support from the community to actually utilize the product that we have, because we did build this for Bitcoiners, by Bitcoiners, and it's, it may sound cliche, but we all have to do our part to help support, you know, the ever moving flag that is Bitcoin.

Mike Peterson:

So what, what has been the, the biggest challenge for you guys, has it been onboarding properties? Has it been getting customers to actually use it and spin Bitcoin to to stay in the place? And then I'm curious because, because I haven't used it myself yet. I've been on your website, I've played around, I've looked at places, but what type of KYC do the both the travelers and the homeowners have to go through? Because obviously that's a sensitive thing and in the Bitcoin community. But also, I know people have people stay in their houses and stuff they want to know who's staying there. So I'm just curious as to how, what have been the biggest hurdles, and then how you guys are handling that aspect? I guess it's two separate questions.

Jake Seifert:

Sure, I think the biggest hurdle is, actually it's not getting the host. The host is the easier part of the equation, because who wouldn't want to accept the hardest money on the planet for a short term rental. The hard part is getting Bitcoiners to come off of their Bitcoin, even though it's not a large amount. You know, Bitcoiners have this somewhat toxic mentality at times, to not want to spend their Bitcoin and huddle, huddle. And I, you know, I don't think that's what's best for our business, a, and I don't think it's best for Bitcoin. B, but,

Mike Peterson:

you know, the world's best money, but they don't want to use it. They what they want to stay in the Fiat world. I'm like, Why do you want to keep staying in the Fiat world?

Jake Seifert:

Right? Right? I this argument that you know that you don't want to spend it. I'd rather spend the trash money. I don't understand that whatsoever. Because at some point, you know, Satoshi reached out to a guy in Jacksonville Beach, and he said, Hey, bro, you've been mining all this Bitcoin. You have to distribute it. You have 10s of 1000s of Bitcoin. So he made that famous purchase for two pizzas, right? Without that, without this peer to peer nature of Bitcoin, we wouldn't even be here

Mike Peterson:

talking probably, yeah, yeah. People always criticize that purchase. I'm like, that purchase was genius, like that. Without that, who knows if we'd even be here right now. So that's definitely crucial. So on to the So, so you're you're able to onboard properties, although I you know going to your site, obviously you guys have a small fraction of what you would find on on Airbnb or even VRBO. And so there is, like a network effect. Also, when people want to go stay somewhere, they want more choices. So I'm assuming that you guys, you know, have some impetus behind getting a certain quantity of properties, at least in select locations. And so what, how do you guys go about going on trying to onboard people, like, what is the way to property owners for

Jake Seifert:

the hosts, it's we have target areas, and we think that Bitcoiners are going to travel there more frequently, and it ties into the circular economies as well. But the idea is that we need optionality when we get to these different cities, like in El zonte, we want a three bedroom with a pool. We want a two bedroom. We want a one bedroom. We want a hostel. We want all the options, because then, as a bitcoiner, you can't go, oh well, they didn't have what I wanted. I'll go to Airbnb or booking.com or whatever. So optionality is key when we talk about these, these markets that we want to get into and focus on these focal points around the circular economies. You know, for for us, we think the next step of growth is the hotels and boutique hotels. And, you know, I've been trying to reach out to a few people here in town while I'm here, but we think that that's the next growth opportunity for us. But either way, as many properties as we get throughout the world, if we cannot get the Bitcoiners to actually come and come off their Bitcoin and, you know, use Bitcoin as it was intended, we're, you know, it's a, it's a dying effort.

Mike Peterson:

Well, I think it's the same thing we face in the circular Bitcoin economies like you have, like the chain. Chicken and the egg thing, like, if there's not a number of places that are accepting it, then people don't want to bother using it, or don't see it as valuable. But if you onboard a bunch of places and then nobody goes and spins at them, then they're like, Well, why even bother participating in this? So it's it is one of these things that I do think we need to, as the Bitcoin community, we need to take responsibility to get this ball rolling. Because it does take in the initial stages people that believe in the cause and that are gonna really kind of push it. Maybe it's not, you know, you maybe have more choices on the other site, but at least you can find something that meets your needs on this like, yeah, to in order to support this ecosystem so that a year from now, the site has gotten better, and we have more options. We have places we can spend Bitcoin without having to interact with the fiat system. That's a win, win for everyone,

Jake Seifert:

for sure. And you know the idea that we bring a Bitcoin or to your neighborhood, you know, in these circular economies, you know, I brought my family out here. We spend probably more money outside of the housing aspect, on excursions and food and all the things. So if there's optionality for these people to spend their Bitcoin, we would hope that they would do that right. And that's a big part of having air BTC in each one of these communities as it grows. I know going backwards. I know you asked about KYC. So as far as the host is concerned, we do need to vet them kind of a little bit harder than we would the guest, just to make sure that, hey, you say you have hot water, you say you're at this address, you say you own this place or manage it. We need to make sure that all of that is true, because the last thing we would want is for one of you, you or your family members, to travel somewhere and go, oh, there's no house here.

Mike Peterson:

Yeah, you know. And there are scams like that, obviously out there. And so, yeah, I can understand that tension that's there. Is there a way I'm assuming, then I'm assuming some of these people are people that don't rent anywhere else, and they only want to rent to Bitcoiners. But I'm also assuming that a good number of them are on the other platform. So is there a way, if they're on another platform, for you to kind of use that as the verification, like, Okay, if they've been verified and they have reviews on this platform, then we're going to assume that they're legitimate, as long as we can prove that it's the same person.

Jake Seifert:

Yeah, that's the easiest way to actually to do the KYC. It's very quick process. If you have an existing Airbnb booking.com listing with a certain rating, we can take that on. As far as you know, on the other side of the transaction, where the guest is concerned, it's a little bit lighter of KYC, because I we know that. You know, Bitcoiners like to have anonymity and require certain, you know certain things. You know for us, we require email address and certain information. Obviously, if, in the future, we're going to have noster logins, which will be really neat, where you can actually have a history on the person who's come to your house, if they would like to put their noster login and give you a little background on them and what their views are, and which is very interesting.

Mike Peterson:

I like that, but they could still have some anonymity too, because they don't, you know, necessarily know who they are for sure. Yeah, so that makes a lot of sense. It for is the process pretty easy. If somebody has an existing, I say they're already on Airbnb, is, do you guys have, like, an easy process for them to kind of just move all their same stuff over onto your guys site? Or what? What is involved for somebody to onboard?

Jake Seifert:

Sure, it's very, very simple. You would just need to go register an account on our site, airbtc, dot online, and once you did that, you can reach out to customer service or try and post your own information on the site. It's probably a lot easier if you just reach out to us and say, Hey, I'd like to upload this property. This is, you know, and then we can take all the information. So it's very seamless. Take,

Mike Peterson:

like, less you guys are still doing that all manually. I'm assuming that that takes a lot of time and manpower to do that.

Jake Seifert:

Well, there's multiple areas, right? So like, you have, you have the more techie folks that can actually do everything on their own. They don't want help, they don't want to talk to customer service, but there's other folks that would like their handheld, yeah, so we still want to offer that, and I think that's a big part of our business. And you know, you mentioned Airbnb and booking.com and all these other booking platforms or scraping sites that say, Hey, you know, we'll take this information and we'll just take a small percentage. We're actually building a relationship with both the guest and. The host to create this perfect scenario where, you know, it's where the trusted third party and and everyone's going to have a good experience.

Mike Peterson:

So how does the payment mechanism work, and what type of fees are involved? Do? Is there a fee to onboard, or is it just percentage of the rentals? Or how does, how does that work?

Jake Seifert:

So it's free to actually market your property on our site, to list it the there is a booking fee that comes from each each day, and it's 15% and we think that that's very in line with others in the industry, it's actually a little bit cheaper, because if you if you look at some of the Airbnb transactions, on both ends, the host will get charged a certain percentage, right? And then on the other side of the transaction, the guest gets charged a percentage. And sometimes, when we, you know, put those together, it's over 20% in some cases, not including foreign exchange fees or whatever your you know there's other costs that could be involved with that. So at 15% we feel like we're we're actually offering a better deal.

Mike Peterson:

Yeah, and so what? When say I go to book a place, and it's, you know, I want to book it for five nights. It's 100,000 SATs a night. And see you guys post both in dollars and SATs. So I don't know how what gets locked in there, but say book that we like to think it SATs, obviously, so, so it's say it's 500,000 SATs. And so I've booked that and and the the trip is in a month from now. Where do those funds? When do those funds transfer? Am I paying right at that moment? And do you guys hold those and then just release them to the property owner once that's confirmed that the person spent their first night there. Or how does that work?

Jake Seifert:

So in the beginning, if you've never done business with us before, we hold the funds from from the guest to the host until the fruition so on, upon checkout, we would then distribute the funds to the host. But after you do business with us a few times, and we have some people that have had repeat bookings, and we'll pay them on

Mike Peterson:

the first day. So you're talking about for the for the homeowner, the homeowner, for

Jake Seifert:

the yes for the homeowner or host, they would get paid the day of check in, if you are a trusted source, right? And we don't know until we've done business with you. So in the beginning, you would have to wait until the fruition of the booking. But, you know, for for us, we would take the SATs on and we hold them in cold storage, and then distribute the funds. If there's any. It depends on each booking is different, right? So if you're a host and you would require a deposit, you require. You know, let's say you have a million dollars worth of art in your house. You want to require a two Bitcoin deposit. We actually have a yacht that has a two Bitcoin deposit to even rent. So it's each each unique property has its own. You know, it's not just a one size fits

Mike Peterson:

all, Yeah, but you're locking in the price in at that time. So even if, if bitcoin goes down in that month, it's the the homeowner, or if it goes up in that month, it's the homeowner that that's taking on, that they're like, they're committed to receive a certain amount of SATs at that point. Is that how it

Jake Seifert:

works? That is how it works. You know, for now, in the future, we see stable SATs playing a role in in the longer term, booking before, before this day, because, you know, the price will fluctuate. But as we've seen over the past month, I mean, it's been pretty steady, yeah, yeah, you know, over 100k

Mike Peterson:

so well. And I mean, if you're really a Bitcoin, are you, you're gonna believe that over time, it's gonna be going up to the right and so, you know that that's for me I would want the I would want the amount locked in and SATs not in, not in Fiat, so, but, but I understand what you're saying. Some people, you know, get a little squeamish about that, especially maybe if they're a little newer to the space,

Jake Seifert:

for sure. And you know, when we, when we talk about some of these folks are not just Bitcoiners, you know, who, who are property owners. They're running a business. So we understand that you, you know, you want to run an Airbnb or booking.com VRBO listings at the same time as the airbn, air BTC listing. It's, it's very easy to do. We have calendar integration through iCal and and in the future, we're going to be tying into the back ends of some of these hosting i. Um, providers as well, managerial side. And so we see a very smooth process moving

Mike Peterson:

forward. And how long do you think before you have that that function?

Jake Seifert:

Probably about three months. Okay, yeah, it's gonna come quite quickly.

Mike Peterson:

Okay, so it looks like, from looking at your guys site, I mean, El Salvador, I think, has the the highest number of listings, which, which I love to see. And that makes sense being, being Bitcoin country, how, how have have you guys, like, gone after specific areas to try to onboard? Or is it just been like, naturally, some places like, people have come to you more or, how is that? Yeah, how is that kind of roll out going as far as who you onboard?

Jake Seifert:

Yeah, it's, it's definitely, I guess, in the beginning it was more like, you know, put your finger in the air and see what. But I had this natural draw to zonte and this whole area by the beach. But we, you know, we really think that we want to make data back decisions about where these things should go. But obviously, data isn't going to be the be all, end all. Like, you know, if you're having a new Circular Economy roll out in Santa Ana, there's no data, right? We don't know who's going to come and show up. But the idea is we want to support even before the business gets rolling or circular economies are like full steam ahead, we want to be at the ground floor and help out as much as we can. But you know, here, specifically in El Salvador, we think El zonte is the perfect spot. We want to get something or more stuff in Escalon, in the city, maybe in Zaragoza, but we're going to make a big push in Berlin, which is, you know, I think we already have about eight listings in Berlin. Nice. So day by day, I think we we we kind of reposition our thought process and but people can reach out to us all the time. They do it on Twitter, and they're like, Hey, can we, you know, do you mind if we put this up in the middle of nowhere in Nicaragua? It's like, yeah, come on, let's go, you know? So we're eager to help in any way we can, to to to further adoption and help people out.

Mike Peterson:

So what is your of the two things? What is more important to you guys right now, onboarding new new homes, or getting people to actually spend Bitcoin at the existing ones? What's your focus? I

Jake Seifert:

think right now, we have to get people and that's why, thank you so much for letting me on this on your platform. We have to get people to spend a Bitcoin. We have to, because day by day, BlackRock and Michael Saylor and all these folks, they just their bitcoin is never gonna be seen again. It's going in a cage, you know. And if we don't distribute it throughout the people and actually utilize Bitcoin as it was intended. You know, who knows what our future will hold? Ya

Mike Peterson:

know, I You're preaching to the choir right now, because that's, that's the thing with it we're always pushing on, is like, and it's, that's one thing I love about El Zante, is we get people Bitcoiners who have never, like, spent Bitcoin in their life, actually see the magic of it when they come to a place like El Zante and they see how much easier it is to live on a Bitcoin standard and how it benefits the whole community. And so I feel like for a lot of them, it kind of changes their mindset about just this hodl only, versus like, yeah, of course. Huddle save. We should all be saving for the future. But also, why are you still living in a Fiat world when you can be spending Bitcoin? And so the more opportunities that are out there to spend Bitcoin, the easier it is to move to Bitcoin standards. So we need to make sure we're supporting those as we go

Jake Seifert:

along. I agree 100% Yeah. So I'm curious

Mike Peterson:

if you guys, and, and I don't want to push you in an area you're uncomfortable talking about, so if you feel like we don't want to talk about that. But I'm, I'm curious if you guys see an opportunity with Bitcoin to to really arbitrage some of the restrictions and challenges that you see in a lot of places that they're putting on Airbnbs. And so you have these cities, you know, like New York, or, you know, Santa Barbara, where I went to school. My kids are in university there. There's areas where, you know, they restrict them from doing Airbnbs. And it's, it's kind of even dubious if they have the power to do that restriction, but they make life very hard on them. And they can go after the financial providers, you know, that are basically to make it stop. And so you see Airbnb, who was like a disruptor when they first came in, and they were, you know, all these places were claiming they were. BREAKING all these laws and doing all these things, but they kind of went in and just forced them to adapt to their model. Now you see them kind of backing off in some of these places, but I feel like because you guys aren't beholden to the fiat system, that you have the ability to disrupt that in some of these areas. And and being a smaller niche site, people can fly under the radar, and so if they're in an area where they're prohibited from doing this, that they still might be able to, you know, help their fellow Bitcoiners out. So I'm curious if you guys have thought about that at all, or if you don't want to speak to that.

Jake Seifert:

I know I don't want to dive too deep, but you know, I do agree with you. I feel like in the beginning, Airbnb was kind of slinging guns and doing whatever was necessary. But then now you have my friend lives in Germany, and he goes, Hey, man, do you know you need a permit for this, and a permit for that, and a permit for to do a short term rental. You need government approval. And actually, I tried to put it on Airbnb, but Airbnb has restriction because they know where I'm at. They know exactly my location, and they know that I need all these permits. So they need proof of those permits, which is kind of sad, you know, it's, it's, you know, the rock star in you one wants to go, oh, you sell out, right? You know, but at the same time, I understand that, you know, the governments are going to try and get their hands in and have that stream of monies any way they can for us. You know, we try and stay away from those places that have intense permitting or or things of that nature, not saying that we won't take those on. There's only a couple of restricted countries that we won't take listings for, but the

Mike Peterson:

rest of the world is, what are those countries?

Jake Seifert:

Well, yes, some of the Middle East, okay, but, but

Mike Peterson:

it's very few. Yeah, I'm assuming North Korea. Yeah, North

Jake Seifert:

Korea, yeah, North Korea is definitely one of them. But, you know, for us, we think that, yes, we are going to fly under the radar, but hopefully we're we get to a place where Bitcoiners actually support the project and we're off and running. But we, you know, most of the time when we talk about short term rentals for our immediate growth. It's going to be in places like Costa Rica, El Salvador, the Bitcoin communities that are popping up all over Indonesia and Dominican Republic. So we want that to be our focal point in the beginning. But we'll take any listing from anywhere across the world, except for a couple,

Mike Peterson:

yeah, hot spots. Yeah, I was it was noticing the the I thought there would be a lot more listings in the US than, than, than there are. Is there a reason that that's so light there so far, or compared to, like Costa Rica? I think there's more between El Salvador and Costa Rica. I think there's more than than all the US combined,

Jake Seifert:

yeah, for sure, I think it kind of plays into, you know, folks in the US don't need Bitcoin, right? And places like this, places like Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, they just, they need it. They've needed Bitcoin for a long time, and it's the Savior that has come in to swoop in. I think Americans are kind of, they're, they're great adopters to the technology, right? They are Americans in general terms are, they're, they're used to the old system. You know, the Airbnb is, has run for a really long time, and in the States, and they're okay with how that works, and if they need to, if they want to buy bitcoin, they're okay with taking that money off Airbnb, putting a bank account, losing money, you know, and then, and then buying on an exchange for, you know, less than spot price. But I mean for us, if you're here in zone day or anywhere in outside of the United States, you're you're literally doing Bitcoin mining right for your short term rental. And we think it's a very interesting world that we're going to live in in the future. If people can actually get on the Bitcoin standard, we think that we have a real opportunity for growth.

Mike Peterson:

Do you see most of the rentals? Are they mostly like, you're renting the whole home? Or are you seeing some that are like Bitcoiners that are just kind of would love to hang out with other Bitcoiners that are traveling. So they're like, hey, I'll rent a room out. And I know it's only going to be Bitcoiners that are going to be coming. Just curious, if you see any of that?

Jake Seifert:

Yeah, it's we have, we have some of, some of both. I would say most of it is renting the whole house. We do have hostels. We do have, you know, we have yachts that people put up, catamarans, depending on where it is in the world. Old is, you know, you can go rent it. We do have a lot of Bitcoiners who want Bitcoiners in their house, and I think Austin is a hotspot for this, like, Hey, let me just open my room up. And whoever's in town for a conference, they can stay at the house, and maybe they'll get some late night conversations about Bitcoin, which I think helps community in so many ways, and it's not really a big revenue generator for us, but you know, if we're facilitating Bitcoin growth, you know, the revenue really doesn't matter on all the transactions.

Mike Peterson:

Yeah, that makes sense. As Bitcoin starts to become more mainstream, and we've seen, even in this last year, a real shift, specifically in the US. I'm curious if you guys see a future where all these other mainstream platforms adopt and start taking Bitcoin themselves, and how that would impact your your guys, business model? Do you, do you think that that's a concern? Or do you think, like, No, you know, Bitcoiners are always going to prefer to be on a Bitcoin only platform, where they know they're dealing with Bitcoiners and and they'll want to support that.

Jake Seifert:

I think they will want to support us. A lot of people don't even know about air BTC, yeah, because we've been bootstrapped and we don't, we haven't taken on any funding, and it's done on purpose. I mean, we've grown to, I think, 9000 followers or something on X, you know, we've done that all grassroots and with more support, you know, will help our growth. You know, for for air BTC, comparatively to Airbnb or booking.com if they were to accept Bitcoin payments, I think booking.com actually did accept crypto payments for six days, and then they said, Oh no, not for us. So I think we're a little far off from from them actually accepting bitcoin payments, and hopefully we'll get enough of a head start that it won't come into play to affect our business.

Mike Peterson:

That makes sense. Well, what else you want to talk about here? I feel like I had a set of questions, the that I wanted to get out there, but now I want to get turn it over to you to kind of tell the story, more of what you guys see this leading to,

Jake Seifert:

yeah, I mean, I really respect what you've done here in your team, and really put El zonte on the map or El Salvador on the map. I mean, you were, you were here pre bukele, presidential, putting in the work. And, you know, I think that with help from you and other Bitcoiners that we can really make, make a real dent in the Bitcoin world, right? For the most part, there's, there's travala.com or one of these other, you know, there's other crypto platforms where you can, you can purchase short term rentals, but they're just scraping right? They're just getting stuff off the internet. They don't make a personal relationship. There's making taking small percentages of the of the transaction. And we're actually building a Bitcoin business for Bitcoiners. So we really need Bitcoiners to support our project, because it's more than just using it once and going, Oh, it was great. I mean, you even said, Hey, I looked on your website. I never used it, right? We need people to actually go on and find something, even if it's kind of a little bit out of the way in the beginning, because it'll only help adoption. So if, if we're five miles away from your destination, you need something five miles away. Please just drive five miles right and stay with us, because a year from now, we're gonna have something right, right, exactly where you want it, yeah, but it's only gonna happen if you book today, right? So we really do need the support of the community.

Mike Peterson:

No that that 100% makes sense and and as you guys start getting more locations on there, when, when I looked in the past, and this was, I think was right after you guys launched, and there was hardly anything at that time, so any of the places I was looking to go, there wasn't anything even like 500 miles away. So, but I was on there today, and you guys have a number more homes and kind of all over the world. And so if we can, kind of like, keep this, you know, spin this up exponentially, and that's how these things, you know, oftentimes go. It's those, getting those initial ones is, is kind of slow and hard, but then it then it kind of starts feeding on itself. So we'll definitely make that happen. Maybe we can. I'll have to think about a little bit, but maybe we can do some type of promotion when we release this episode that the people that booked that week, for every person that books will donate to the, you know, one of the nearby circular Bitcoin Economy. Economies there to try to give them a little extra push to get that first booking

Jake Seifert:

in. Let's do that. Yeah, and maybe we'll, maybe we'll match whatever donation is perfect. And hopefully we can, we can push adoption, and hopefully a year from now, we'll get a we'll do an update, and maybe we'll be maybe we'll have 2000 properties by then,

Mike Peterson:

that would be amazing. Is there, do people need to, like register to is it helpful for people, even if they're not booking yet, for them to just go on and register? Is there a process for that, or is there only a process when you're ready? You're ready to

Jake Seifert:

book? No. I mean, if you do want to KYC yourself and you want to give us your information so we can help to market to you, please go register your account. You don't have to do that right away,

Mike Peterson:

but you can book without really having to do any of that. You can book

Jake Seifert:

until you can go throughout the booking process. And then at the end of the booking process, you have to create some sort of account that has an email and verification system where we can, where we can send, you know, the email to,

Mike Peterson:

okay, but is that all that's required is an email. It's,

Jake Seifert:

yeah, exactly, okay. Email through verification. And then also, you know, if, if your people, if your listeners do want to go and register an account, we actually send special offers through our email list. And so it is advantageous to do it if you, if you're thinking about booking,

Mike Peterson:

yeah, okay, awesome. I feel like we, we nailed, we kind of flew through this here. So Well, I'm kind of

Jake Seifert:

surprised they want to talk about, yeah, I'm kind of surprised that you know you actually had the same idea, and I know that's something we talked about in the beginning, but I just think it's so interesting that that you were thinking about actually doing airbtc, the actual name that we're using.

Mike Peterson:

I mean, it kind of like writes itself, like Airbnb, airbtc. I mean, it's, it's, yeah, I mean, I think it's, it's the it's, it was kind of a natural. It was like it was made to happen,

Jake Seifert:

yeah, well, Thanks for, thanks for letting it happen.

Mike Peterson:

No, I'm super excited for for your guys future in that I don't know if at some point you guys are looking to raise funds, maybe you can come back on and talk about that. I definitely admire people that bootstrap things, but also I know sometimes you need funds to make it actually happen at a pace that you don't get overrun by somebody else. And so yeah, would love to have you guys back on at that point, or if you guys have any other, you know, announcements. But in the meantime, we'll have to start, you know, promote a little bit more from from our Twitter handle we can, we can push things, if you guys have, you know, specials or stuff that are new locations you trying to promote. But selfishly, I want to see this succeed

Jake Seifert:

me too. Well. Thanks, Mike. I appreciate you having me on.

Mike Peterson:

Yeah, and we'll, uh, we'll, we'll hopefully see you in one of your homes one of these days soon. Sounds like a plan. Oh, yeah, okay, let's, let's, let's roll The video before we sign off here. Wow. Sweet. All right, everybody, go there. Check it out. Follow them on Twitter. Do you guys have a noster? I'm not, sir, airbtc, yeah, and it's airbtc on on Twitter. Also, we're ex airbc online on Twitter, I believe. Okay, okay, so make sure you give them a follow, just that super helpful for getting the word out. Other podcasts out there, make sure that you have them on so that we can spread the word about this. Conferences that are out there, they're trying to bootstrap this. They don't have a huge budget, but if you can bring them in in some fashion, I'm sure they would hugely appreciate it, and yeah, let's make this happen.

Unknown:

Thanks, Mike, yeah, you.