Wallets

Sam Sethi: 00:00:06

So now you have a wallet, you have some money in your wallet.

And now if you choose to remember this is as you want to, it's not a pre requirement, I can give you, Claire, some money to listen to your podcast, be it streaming sats, I pay per minute or a one off payment.

Oscar Merry: 00:00:25

So if you've earned a bunch of sats from your audience on Fountain, you can just in a couple of taps, withdraw to strike and then convert that back to your local currency of pound.

Claire Waite Brown: 00:00:39

Welcome Back to Podcasting 2.0

in Practice. In this course we have been talking about boosts and boost grams and if you don't know what I'm talking about, you haven't been listening to the course in order. So if you haven't listened to that episode, you better go back. But I'm back here with Sam Sethi. Hi Sam, how are you?

Sam Sethi: 00:01:02

Welcome back to me. Yes, hello, Claire.

Claire Waite Brown: 00:01:05

And I've asked Sam to come along here with his TrueFans hat on to talk about how we can get the sats, which are the tokens that we need to send our favorite podcasters those boosts and those comments. So first tell me a little bit about TrueFans, please, Sam.

Sam Sethi: 00:01:27

Thanks. Claire TrueFans is nearly two years old. Gosh, where did that time go? It's a Podcasting 2.0 app. And why do I call it that?

Well, it's just an app that supports all the tags you've been talking about, chapters, transcripts, micropayments. So we've been working very hard to do that. I mean, I know that you have spoken to other app providers like Oscar from Fountain.

So we are just one of the new breed of apps and we support the new tags that you've been talking about and that's fundamentally TrueFans. Now we also support music, we support audiobooks, courses, films, and again, this is all part of Podcasting 2.0.

RSS is no longer just the delivery of audio, it's the delivery of any type of data.

Claire Waite Brown: 00:02:12

Yeah, fabulous. Thank you. So I have been listening to, oh, there's this brilliant show. It's called Creativity Found. It's absolutely fabulous and I want to send it.

Sam Sethi: 00:02:24

It's an award winning show I believe as well.

Claire Waite Brown: 00:02:27

Thank you. Yeah, I love it. I've been listening on True Fans and I want to send a boost. Where are my sats.

Sam Sethi: 00:02:40

Currently in your wallet, hopefully. Right, let's take a step back.

So we have, in the new world that we're all working in, the ability to give podcast creators not just a thumbs up or a like or a heart. But we have the ability to now give them some monetary value.

And those monetary values are known as sats, satoshis, after the person who invented Bitcoin. And they are micro payments.

And those micropayments are needed because if I just want to send you 1p or 5p or a pound, sending that via credit card is really, really difficult because most of that money will be eaten up by the payment providers. So you're not really giving the creator all the value you want to give them. You're only giving them a very small part.

So in this world of Podcasting 2.0, we created a, what we call peer to peer system, direct payment in another language. So I want to send it from my wallet directly to your wallet. How do I do that? Well, the first thing to understand is how do I get a wallet?

And what is a wallet? A wallet is just as we would expect it to be. It, you know, it's a store of money and that's all it is. And you have your wallet and it has an address.

It has like an email inbox address. Mine is samrufans fm. Yours Claire might be Clairountain FM as an example. That's fine.

And just like you have an email and I have an email, that's all I need to know. So now when you're in TrueFans, when you join, we give you a wallet.

We thought we can let you choose numerous wallets, but let's remove that confusion and complexity really, because really what we want to try and do is make payments super simple. And one of my favorite expressions, it's by a guy called Edward de Bono is called complexity is failed simplicity.

And again, what we find is that the terminology around this new way of making payments is a. A learning curve which hopefully this course has now helped you understand how to break that down.

But secondly, once you understand the terminology, still got choices to make. Which wallet do I use, how much do I pay, and where? How does this all work? So we simplified that in truefence, when you join, you get given a wallet.

We put some of these funny money tokens called sats into your wallet through activities you do. So if you join, we give you some money. If you share your email with us, we give you some money.

In the process of learning how to use TrueFans, we will give you money.

So when you've done your first comment and you've put a little bit of money towards that and you've sent your first one, actually as a reward, we'll put some money into your Wallet as well. Say tick, you've learned how to do a boostagram. Tick, you've learned how to do this. So we use gamification.

That's what it is fundamentally teaching you how to use trufounds and rewarding you with micropayments as you learn and complete tasks. So now you have a wallet. You have some money in your wallet.

And now if you choose to remember this is as you want to, it's not a pre requirement, I can give you, Claire, some money to listen to your podcast. Be it streaming sats, I pay per minute or a one off payment.

Claire Waite Brown: 00:06:05

Yeah. So that's brilliant. You've given me a starter for 10 so I can have a bit of a play around, see what these sats are. I can boost another show.

And yeah, that's a really good way of getting into it. You've set everything up like literally the beginner's guide. I don't need to worry about going somewhere else to make a wallet now.

I'm really enjoying this and I have given all my sats away that you've given me my freebies 1. I'm ready to put a bit of money in there in order to keep sending sets to other shows.

So I'm assuming because of the way you've made this that TrueFans will make this easy for me.

Sam Sethi: 00:06:46

We have.

All you need to do if you're on a mobile phone is click top up your wallet, one click, choose the amount, say $10 pound ten, and with your thumb or your face as your validation, using Apple Pay or Google Pay, you then get those ten pounds worth of sats. Now, we've chosen to use Apple Pay and Google Pay because you people trust and know how those mechanisms work.

But it's also just one click right, type in your 10 pounds thumb or face, boom. And the equivalent amount of sats will be in your wallet.

And there you go, off you go again and start distributing sats to the podcasters you want to support.

Claire Waite Brown: 00:07:28

Brilliant. That's what I thought it would be. Nice and easy. Hi there, future Claire.

Here to remind you that specifically in TrueFans, you can see the contents of your wallet in sats, as Sam talks about in this episode, but also now in local currency. You can change this view using a toggle labelled Fiat/Sats by clicking on your avatar top right, then Settings, then Wallet.

Sam also talks about boosts, which again, specifically in TrueFans are now called Super Comments. But the term boost means the same thing regardless.

Now, my next scenario of course, is it's all very well sharing the love with my other lovely podcasty pals, but I'm being given some sats by my listeners and I want to pay for my hosting or, you know, maybe even for my own time. Can I take that out then and turn it back into money that I can use in the streets rather than just in the podcast area?

Sam Sethi: 00:08:41

Yes. And again, sticking to my Edward de Bono philosophy of complexity is fail simplicity. We've made it super simple.

So in your creator's dashboard, as a podcast creator, you will see the amount of sats that you've earned from your fans.

And if you then want to convert that back into fiat currency, dollars, pounds, euros, then all you do is one click, withdraw, show your face, or put your thumb, and the money will be back in whatever credit card or bank account you've given and that's it. So you can convert sats straight back to fiat. One click as well.

Claire Waite Brown: 00:09:22

Brilliant. What does fiat mean?

Sam Sethi: 00:09:26

A fiat currency was basically the way that we describe real world currencies. It's the central bank terminology for any currency that is central bank run.

I don't know why it's exactly called a fiat currency, but that is what it's called. They are. That's the general group name. I needed to learn this. In fact. Hang on, cut.

Claire Waite Brown: 00:09:55

I've heard you saying it on Podnews and I'm like, I'm gonna ask you.

Sam Sethi: 00:09:58

I know, I know. I just, I used. I used the term too often. I do know it and I've looked it up in. In the past. Fiat currency.

Claire Waite Brown: 00:10:05

Yeah, go on. We need our background.

Sam Sethi: 00:10:07

It's from Latin.

Claire Waite Brown: 00:10:09

How do you spell it?

Sam Sethi: 00:10:11

Fiat. F I A T. Oh, like the car. Yeah, it just means not backed by. By gold.

Claire Waite Brown: 00:10:19

Oh, okay. According to Vocabulary.com, fiat is from the Latin for let it be done.

It means a legal, authoritative decision that has absolute sanction in terms of money.

And according to Wikipedia, fiat currency is typically designated by the issuing government to be legal tender and is authorised by government regulation.

Sam Sethi: 00:10:47

So, yes, moving micropayment sats or bitcoin sats back to fiat currency is the one click withdrawal process that we have in TrueFans.

Claire Waite Brown: 00:10:58

Perfect, thank you. We've heard how TrueFans make the whole business of wallets super easy. Let's see how Fountain does things.

I want to say, as I have mentioned in this course already, that the technologies are developing all the time. So at the time of recording, this is how you can do things.

So I've asked Oscar from Fountain back again to talk to me about how we get money into fountain for our sats that we can share with all the wonderful other podcasts that we love. As Oscar mentioned in the Boosts episode, how we get that back out again. Hi, Oscar, how are you?

Oscar Merry: 00:11:38

Yeah, I'm great. Good to see you again, Claire.

Claire Waite Brown: 00:11:40

Thank you. So Fountain, currently, it has a way of getting money in and out, is that correct? And if so, what is it? Hello, hello, hello, future Claire here.

So some things have changed with the way the wallets work in Fountain since I recorded this episode with Oscar, which explains why the editing of this episode may sound a bit off. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

Oscar Merry: 00:12:17

For depositing, and this is also the main option for withdrawing the funds as well, is just using the Bitcoin Lightning Network, which is an open payment protocol. And it works in many, many different apps around the world, in different countries.

The main thing that you're going, going to want is a Bitcoin Lightning wallet that is kind of a generic wallet. There's a bunch of different options. The two that I would recommend are firstly Strike, that's S T R I K E.

And Strike is a bitcoin wallet that also acts as kind of like a bank account. So with Strike, what's really cool is you can have your Bitcoin balance in sats, but you can also have your local currency in.

For me in the uk, pounds, and you can just toggle between the two. Strike's available in the uk, it's available in the US and it's available in many countries globally. So it's a great option.

It's really easy to get started.

So if you've earned a bunch of sats from your audience on Fountain, you can just, in a couple of taps, withdraw to Strike and then convert that back to your local currency of pounds, or maybe you want to keep some in Bitcoin so you maybe you could convert 50% to your local currency and keep 50% in Bitcoin. So, yeah, strike's a great option. Another option in the US is Cashapp.

Probably anyone listening in the US will have heard of Cash app and will have used it. And then around the world there's different wallets that exist in different countries, so you can pick the one that works best for you.

I'd recommend Strike or Cash app and once you, once you build an understanding of how this works, it's so simple.

You know, the Lightning Network is an open protocol and you can send your sats from one app to any other app that speaks the protocol and it's actually really easy once you get used to it. It's no different from using Apple Pay or Google Pay.

Claire Waite Brown: 00:14:21

Brilliant. Now, when I started with Fountain, it was rather lovely because you gave me some sats and that meant I could have a play.

Is that something that you still do?

Oscar Merry: 00:14:32

Yeah, that is something we still do. So on Fountain, you can also earn small amounts of bitcoin, you know, small amounts of sats just for listening to any podcast.

We do this primarily to give people the opportunity to try out playing around with sats without having to buy any bitcoin.

Obviously, we don't give you that much, but, you know, if you start using Fountain as your regular podcast app over a few days and weeks, you should have enough sats in your wallet to send your first hundred sat boost for free. So that's another option if you want to try it out.

And also it's a great thing to pass on to your audience in terms of this is a podcast app where you can just try this out for free, essentially.

Claire Waite Brown: 00:15:19

I've had a lot of fun with that. That really got me started in, you know, figuring out what was going on and having a play. So thank you very much for that.

Thank you so much for explaining the the wallet side at Fountain.

Oscar Merry: 00:15:30

Yeah, of course.

Claire Waite Brown: 00:15:33

Visit creativityfound.co.uk/podcasting to find out more about my guests and access lots of useful podcast resources.

If you'd like to get in touch, you can send a comment, boost or super comment using any of the modern podcast apps we talk about in this podcast series. Or feel free to reach out to me on my Instagram account @podcasting2.0inpractice.