Jay Addison Technical and Media Advisor for CryptoBiz Magazine interviews Raphael Paulin Daigle at Inside Bitcoins Las Vegas. Raphael is the Co-Founder of DucatFlow, a bitcoin consultancy that helps companies understand bitcoin and integrate it into their operations. An avid bitcoin fan, he also organizes occasional bitcoin events in New York City and in Atlantic Canada, where he grew up. His entrepreneurial journey started at the age of 11 years old. Passionate about magic, he began performing, and from 2007 to 2014 he performed over 300+ magic show for all types of events. In 2011, he launched a company that helped small businesses with their marketing, and a year later, he had the opportunity to participate in a startup accelerator program that allowed him to pitch another of his startups in front of a 300+ people audience with a combined net worth of over $7B
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this is jay addison from crypto biz magazine we are live in las vegas at inside bitcoins with raphael paulindego the co-founder of duckett flow what is ducket flow uh deck of flat deck will create uh enterprise integrations so we'll help companies from either retail companies so uh it could be a restaurant but normally franchises so for example we have a customer have 100 over 160 locations worldwide and we're trying to help them um really integrate how they can integrate bitcoin into their operations what they can do with it and we have an array of partners in security illegal regulatory and accounting services for bitcoin that work really closely with so we will make sure that any customer that we deal with will get a full service um implementation and they don't have to worry about anything right they got a strong team behind them exactly because bitcoin's so new right and it's so complicated most of them don't even really understand um what well yeah they don't even understand what's bitcoin exactly yeah you know it's a digital currency there are many benefits to it but they don't know if they should keep all their bitcoins or cash out instantly yeah so we help them figure out that strategy and like i said we do lots of retail but there's we do lots of online stuff too so so where are you guys located uh well i live in halifax canada nova scotia um where basically i see we're almost virtual because i mean we of course everybody is we travel and all our customers are basically in new york and um toronto and other cities like that now you've got a background as a performer how do you think bitcoin will affect independent performers in the long term that's an interesting question i like it i believe you know when you're a performer um for example there are many things first of all the way you accept payments right right now most performers will accept a check um we'll accept cash that'll bounce from the club yeah exactly and then it's a bit complicated i mean when you have check i remember when i prefer magic shows i would do it you know a few by weekend and going to bank all the time was just so time consuming and i hate going to the bank it's actually one of the activities that i hate the most and then obviously stripe started you know they released their new product you know they're the small cube they attach to your phone and i got it but honestly i never used it because then i knew there was those transaction fees and as a performer well you know your margins well depending on how you do could be thin sometimes it could be really good but you don't feel like you know shallowing those fees at all and you don't feel like charging customers uh sometimes you know if you perform for you know a thousand dollars for an hour well sometimes well the fees can be a bit high and you don't want to be hey i'll you know for a credit card uh i'll add the five dollar fee that so i mean obviously it's not i i think it's just a perception problem um fees aren't good but it wouldn't look that great for uh for a performer to ask their clients to shallow the fee yeah i mean bitcoin is always easier right for transactions i mean just the speed i always say i bought one of those uh crypto cards online a while ago and um using bitcoin to pay for it super fast super easy it was just the most um like pleasant transaction i've ever done in my life yeah i mean so you could see how performers i mean it's like you said i mean here you are having to go to the bank every time you could do a gig it's just an easier way to do all of that right 100 and it's so easy you have if you have your phone you can accept bitcoin right that's right you don't need anything else and it's so flawless i mean obviously i don't see all of the customers of performers starting paying bitcoin yes uh you know that will it would be ideal it will be a deal but it'll take some time to happen yes but it's definitely a great other alternative method of payment it is for sure you're partnered with bit access to provide companies with btms which are bitcoin atms are these rented out or sold and do you allow operators to set their own fee structures yeah so basically what we do with the btms we'll just refer them to btm and we're basically a bit access affiliate so in a way that we will i mean obviously for an additional fee will help them set up and manage you know everything they want to have managed um obviously well we don't manage to float i shouldn't say that because we don't manage to float we don't manage the operations of the machine but when they want to get started we'll help them do it no problem we'll help them with the installation if they want to buy a machine we'll take care of the transaction with a bit access we can provide financing options to through bit access but also through us and will really help them get set up i mean anybody in canada it's pretty easy to buy a btm surprising compared to the us obviously if i compare it here and we'll just help them get set up so canada already has the most btms per capita do you feel the market is currently oversaturated i don't think it's oversaturated it might get there uh but i believe as people learn more and more about bitcoin more people will want to use bitcoin and will want to sell their bitcoin just to cash out not necessarily sell all the bitcoin but just to get some cash to pay for something that doesn't accept bitcoin um or somebody would they want to buy bitcoins well that population that number of people that will want to do that will increase yes so i believe if you know the deployment of btms is going too fast in canada yes that problem with oversaturation will happen but if we follow a natural curve and we do it gradually then i think it's totally fine um i mean it won't work everywhere uh i mean all the small cities for now i don't see i don't see it realistic i don't see it as a possibility even having sure you still got to make money on it right so exactly you got to make money so it's the big cities like toronto vancouver calgary um and ottawa those are really able to sustain those machines and how many machines can they sustain i don't know i i don't operate any of those machines in the in those cities but yeah it's different it's it's it could be a problem but uh we'll we'll see how it goes yeah just following the natural curve is the best thing i imagine yeah now your company also offers merchant payment solutions how do you plan on competing with companies like bitpay and coinbase in the long term yeah so we don't actually uh create a new solution like coinbase or bitpay what we do is that we actually partner with okay and we will use so in canada we use c vertex they released a very good uh payment platform for merchants and we believe it's one of the best in canada so we use them as a payment uh payment processor of choice in canada and we will get our merchant all set up um depending we will play with the epi so if it's something a bit more complicated it could be like a pos integration for a merchant um if they're retail then we'll play with the apis or make sure it's integrated full in the pos system it will make sure it's compliant everything works perfectly and if they have questions on the accounting then we can also jump into that accounting legal and any anything related to it right fantastic now over time as more areas become saturated with the btms how competitive do you think fees will get do you think we'll ever get to a global standard uh global standard hard to say i would say a standard pipe by market so that makes sense uh i mean i can always sell i look toronto and i'm not exactly sure what the fees are the machine are there but i know they're a bit lower than what you know in halifax uh what's the fees of the machine and how effects i know we have a machine it's 12 um which is really high my machine that we have in moncton is eight percent which i i still believe it's high we're moving it to toronto in the few and that come in the coming weeks and i believe that it will go down um in the next few months probably it'll get competitive and like i said the more machine that we get well the lower the fees will get because they will want to compete sure and i know c vertex are installing machine throughout the country and that will be interesting because they have a fee i don't know if it varies by uh by by market but then they install 12 or 10 machine and now it creates you know lots of competition with the existing operators and that will be very interesting to see how the fees will go down and i believe it will probably go i wouldn't be surprised in a few years it would go to like three percent yeah i think you're right i mean you still have you need to just to be able to sustain a business out of it obviously the fees won't disappear but i'm eight percent and 12 is definitely high yeah i mean it's early and and i think you know there's um you know i mean that's just part of the cost of you know being first into the race i think right and i want to add to that actually is that the the fees are there yes and it's a bit high but you're paying for convenience bitcoins are a line is really complicated and i mean i i get that question every day people just chat start started chat on me on facebook and they're like hey raphael how can i buy bitcoins i'm like wow good question long story you gotta get verified what a few days with a few days another few days for your money and for you to actually receive your bitcoins but if you can find a machine then it's super easy right um so i believe that machine their biggest advantage is to bring that convenience aspect to it and i think eight percent well eight percent on those fees will really helps the convenience but as it will get easier to buy bitcoins online then those fees will have to go down for sure and i'm even questioning what will be the future of btms later on when buying bitcoins online will be as easy as uh buying something from amazon yes right yeah or you know existing atms might be able to integrate bitcoin in the near future and i know there are some people that actually talk with a few of the the 18 manufacturers and the operators so we'll see how it goes but it's different in an interesting market it is and i i think the fees right now are um you know not really unreasonable considering the convenience more than anything because if somebody wants to buy some bitcoins today like you said you just want to pick up 100 bucks with a bitcoin or something yeah those fees aren't that much the other variable is that the price fluctuates so much but eight percent i mean you know bitcoin can change in price and eight percent while we're talking yeah almost enough yeah yeah so so convenience get your bitcoins and yeah i i don't think it's out of line today i mean i certainly see as the competition comes in we're going to get you know lower the price but you know it's all about convenience have you had any problems navigating the regulatory environment in canada and do you expect it to get harder or easier in the future canada not one problem um from the btms to retail integrations never had a hitch um and we do have those partners that work with us and they're ready if they're something yes but we've never been questioned even even with the banks they never answered i mean we don't really yes we deal with bitcoin but we're not an msb right so obviously that simplifies things for sure um because we are a bit like i don't like the word consultants but that's basically what we do um so even the banks ever asked questions about the about the bitcoins and it's really funny because they were actually very interested in it when we went to open our bank account they asked us so many questions and and by interest yeah not by regulatory so that was very interesting because i mean i know companies that got their bank account shut down like three four times and it's very unfortunate but it happens and it still happens yeah um so honestly other than ask you know did access asking us for a background check that's all and that was this week that we got asked to do that but i mean in in in canada for example for the btms you can order a btm and you receive it you put it anywhere you plug it in you don't have any problem only place where it could get a bit challenging is in your taxes so then you have to you know really calculate your gains and you know with bitcoin and that really gives a bit of a headache to our accountant but some it's still very unclear uh not many problems right now even in the us for our integrations inside um i mean retail locations and none of them are public so i mean maybe we'll have a hitch someday uh but i don't think somebody accepting bitcoin would have any problem and we do mostly for now at least uh kind of you know normal integrations it's not like we're creating a new banking system uh like over stock announcement stocks right right exactly yeah yeah that was kind of interesting actually yeah so let me ask you a question january 1st 2015 what do you think the price of bitcoins gonna be oh i'm not a big fan of like speculating it's a guess we've got yeah no wide range from the last couple of days of interviews but i still like it because everybody asks that's a fun question and i would say be like in the thousands at least that's fantastic for sure i almost feel like it would be between like two and five two and five two and four okay um and this is just like a wild guess we're gonna hold you too bad i'm kidding please don't but you know it's just i said that just after hearing people saying that they might think it's 30 000 again a year yeah and other people saying it might be 2 000. so i'm like cool i'll i'll be like not too over the top so it doesn't look really weird but i'll see in the middle of it in between two and four fantastic raphael paul and diego founder of duck at flow yeah thanks for joining us today well thank you very much for the interview really appreciate it you're welcome magazine live from meckler media's inside bitcoins conference in las vegas remember to subscribe to crypto biz magazine at cryptobizmag.com follow us on twitter at cryptobizmag thanks for joining us and learn more at cryptobizmagazine.com