062 - Decentralized Identity with Bitcoin: Alekos Filini of Portal

Join Alekos from Portal Technologies as he shares his Bitcoin journey, from founding BDK in 2017 to launching the Portal hardware wallet and app as an entrepreneur. In this episode, Alekos dives into the creation of a decentralized digital identity solution, harnessing Bitcoin’s security and open-source protocols to replace outdated centralized systems. Explore the market challenges, exciting opportunities, and the pivotal hackathon victory at Bitcoin 2025 Las Vegas that spotlighted their groundbreaking project.

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Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Portal Technologies
03:56 Alekos' Journey into Bitcoin
07:06 The Concept of Digital Identity
09:54 Decentralization vs Centralization in Digital ID
12:53 The Role of Bitcoin in Digital Identity
15:55 Open Source Protocols and Business Models
19:00 The Future of Portal Technologies
22:02 Hackathon Experience and Team Dynamics
24:46 Funding and Future Plans

References
https://x.com/PortalOnX
https://x.com/afilini

https://www.buildwithbitcoin.xyz/
https://x.com/BuildwBitcoin
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❗ DISCLAIMER: This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any decisions consult a professional.

Transcript

Alekos: 0:00

Portal app, which is basically an app that lets you use your key that you have created and your menu securely as your digital identity, as your kind of digital profile. So I would say, like to put it simply, we're kind of trying to recreate, you know, the login with Google or the Apple Pay login with Apple, like cloud, all of that, but we're trying to recreate it in a decentralized, open source way.

Israel: 0:37

What do Bitcoin and decentralization have to do with passwords, login and digital identity. We speak with Alekos, the winner of the Bitcoin 2025, conference hackathon, about what they are working on at portal technologies. We hope you enjoy and as a reminder, this podcast is for educational purposes only. If you like the content, please remember to like, comment or share as This all helps us greatly. Lynne and Israel are partners at Base Layer Advisors, where they employ their strong network of Venture Capital Partners and startups to connect investors with unique opportunities within the Bitcoin innovation space. Alongside this, they support founders with their strategic growth and fundraising goals. Visit our website's advisory section to learn more. Welcome to build with Bitcoin. I'm co host Israel Munoz joined with co host Lynne Bairstow, today we have the pleasure of welcoming Alekos from Portal Technologies, Inc, first of all, Alekos, welcome. We're excited to get into today's conversation. Alekos, your project Portal was the winner for the Bitcoin 2025, conference hackathon. So we of course want to cover what the project is about and get into some more details on what you're what you're solving with Portal. But let's start the conversation with a little bit about how you personally got into Bitcoin, and then maybe you can transition that into just a very brief overview of what Portal is.

Alekos: 1:58

Sure this is going to be kind of a long answer, but I'm gonna start by saying this is my fifth or sixth kind of project I do on Bitcoin. So I have quite a bit of history now. I got involved, kind of randomly, I would say, so I didn't, at least initially, I was not really trying to work on Bitcoin. I was just kind of interested. I think I've always been kind of libertarian by art, and so when I discovered Bitcoin, I was like, This is my thing. It's interesting. But I wasn't really looking for a job. But then, kind of randomly, I was introduced to Giacomo Zucco, and he offered me a job to work with him in his kind of consultancy company slash research lab that he had going in Milan. So I joined him, and that was my first, like real job in Bitcoin. After that, I worked at Blockstream for a while, and during my time there, I was working on green and Jade. So I got into the wallet side of Bitcoin. I guess I got passionate about that, which led me to funding BDK, which is a pretty well known project by now, it's like a rust library to build Bitcoin wallets. So it's like a piece of software that does all the wallet stuff, logic for you. From that I transitioned into, I guess, after BDK, it was when I started thinking about building my own company. So I didn't want to just be the project. I actually wanted to build a company, so something that's profitable, that can sell products. So the first thing we did actually, because at the time, I also had the co founder join me, we built the portal, other wallet, which is still being sold, still running the portal. Other wallet is like another wallet, kind of optimized for smartphones. So it's designed for people who don't have a laptop, or don't want to use a laptop, a computer, they just want to use a smartphone. So we build that. And this, finally, this thing we're building now, which is confusingly called portal as well, so there's going to be a bit of a rebranding going on. This is almost, I mean, it is a pivot from from a company perspective, but it's also still connected to what we've done before. So the idea now is we have this hardware device which store, stores your key safely. What can we do with it? What else can we do with it? Because right now, you can only sign between transactions and that from a business perspective, it's it's very limited, like very few people care about that, in my opinion, unfortunately, but that's kind of the reality. So then we transition into this new thing, which is the portal app, which is basically an app that lets you use your key that you have created, and you're managing securely as your digital identity, as your kind of digital profile. So I would say, like to put it simply, we're kind of trying to recreate, you know, the login with Google, or the Apple Pay login with Apple, like cloud, all of that, but we're trying to recreate it in a. A decentralized, open source way. So this is finally portal, the thing we brought at the hackathon. And it's like an evolution of an existing project already, which is the portal underworld,

Lynne Bairstow: 5:12

because I think that's such an important kind of forward looking technology that needs to be developed. I think in the last year and a half, we've seen so much in the way of AI generating deep fakes and just not knowing, not being clear about what what's real and what's not real. And I just see one of the solutions for that as being a secure digital ID that you hold yourself. And the Bitcoin technology is a natural platform or foundation for that. How do you see your portal, digital ID, being used? I mean, what are the use cases for it? Or how do you how do you envision the market? What market size are you addressing? Because it sounds really big and really important

Alekos: 5:58

to me. Yeah. So, I mean, we, we are very ambitious. So I would say, like the market is potentially everybody who is now using digital devices. So any kind of anybody who interacts with digital devices, whether it's online or even in person, could benefit from this. Because the kind of realization we had is usually when you, when you speak with a machine, you need to show who you are for for whatever reason, like I'm and I'm just just talking about websites. So for example, I'm logging into my email. Obviously I need to show you who I am. So you show me my inbox. But also, in person, when I when I want to open my apartment building, I need to show kind of who I am. So my identity, obviously, when I say identity, I mean a completely pseudonymous identity. So it's just a public key. So it's the same concept as Bitcoin. You just generate your own key, and that's your identity. You hold it. You have to make sure it's safe. You have backed it up and everything. But potentially, I think, yeah, any kind of human to machine interaction could could use this, and we're tying authentication and payments together, so it's kind of all in one package or one solution that will let you again, like open your apartment building or buy a transport ticket. You kind of tap it to the subway entrance and it opens automatically buys a ticket for you. So you can do lots of things with this very simple kind of primitive

Lynne Bairstow: 7:25

that would have like a global platform. So if you were traveling from where you are in Italy to El Salvador to Las Vegas, back to the hackathon, you could that ID would follow you, no matter what I mean, no matter where you are in the world and and do you see that also verifying information on, like, if you're publishing a paper, for example, that you sign it with your digital ID, and so that therefore it's tied to you, and they know that you're the author of that paper, and no one else could take that paper and replicate it and say this was their idea. I mean, as an as an example, it could also be like a video of you with your head, but not you.

Alekos: 8:05

Yeah, there's so many, so many kind of things you can build on top. You can also do certificates. So you can, for example, have somebody else say something about you. So for example, if I get a degree, the university could issue certificate that says that this public key has completed the degree. So then, when I go apply for a job, it's automatic. And our kind of thesis is that this needs to be an open source protocol for it to become really global, because otherwise it's all companies that are very like for example, the US will never adopt a similar piece of tech made by Chinese company, just like Chinese company will not adopt one from from the US right now. We do have something kind of like this, but it's all very there are kind of isolated companies building it with very wide market share, but in very kind of specific regions, and say we're building something open, because the goal is to have something that that's global, that's that's for everybody. Different companies can come and build on this, obviously, because we're building an open source protocol, so anybody can come and implement the protocol, and you can have your American, Chinese, Russian company, they all implement the same protocol, so they can all speak

Israel: 9:17

with each other, okay? And and maybe to dig into what you just mentioned a little bit. Alicos, the motivation behind this company and project is, you notice the problem is basically this digital ID is currently centralized, so we do it either through a private company in a certain jurisdiction. Or what can you give us an overview of, I guess, the precise pain point that you see, and why you think it's it's something that you can solve.

Alekos: 9:46

Yeah, so I would say, in general, the pain point is, there are quite a few. So I'm trying to kind of summarize, but maybe it's better if I kind of break them down. So for example, one pain point would be using passwords. Yes, I think passwords are really bad, but that's still the main way humans interact with machines. So you authenticate yourself through a password, which is then leaked. People use stupid, easy to guess passwords. So on one end, for example, we say with our thing, we replace passwords so you don't need password anymore. You just use your identity. On the other end is also the payment side. So right now, the kind of user experience for payments is you need to type in a credit card number, which is, again, kind of annoying, complicated, convoluted, and again, if your credit card number gets leaked, then you have to throw it away and get a new one. Since we're building kind of this all in one solution. We're basically tackling all of these points, generally speaking, I would say, is making people's presence, making people's digital presence more secure. So the way people interact with digital devices, websites, we're trying to make them easier, more secure, avoiding most of the pain points, which are, again, like passwords, credit cards, all this kind of and also centralization, avoiding as much as possible centralization. So the current kind of market solution for this is, well, just use login with Google. So log in everywhere with Google. That's fine. Okay, you're not a password anymore, but then you're centralizing everything in the hands of Google. Google could impersonate you if Google gets hacked, they're not only hacking your inbox, but they're also hacking any other service that you have connected to that. So yeah, we're trying to solve these pain points that exist, but also in a decentralized way, because we think that's the best way build

Israel: 11:41

with Bitcoin is a proud affiliate partner of river. River is a financial services company that allows you to purchase, sell and transfer your Bitcoin, all through a great suite of products, high security standards, and as of recent even allowing you to earn a Bitcoin yield on your US dollar cash deposits for a personalized onboarding experience. Go to partner.river.com/build with Bitcoin. Can we link that a little bit a little bit better? Alekos, because it sounds like, you know, a global problem. You just mentioned the decentralized aspect of it, is that where you bridge to Bitcoin? I mean, is it, is it Bitcoin ethos, just in this ideology, or is it because it's linked to the code base,

Alekos: 12:20

yeah. So it's connected to Bitcoin in multiple ways. So in one, like very practical way I mentioned, we have payments in this protocol we're building as well. Obviously, they are Bitcoin payments. And this is not like an ideological thing. It's bitcoin is the only borderless, permissionless payment network in the world, especially lighting network. So if we're building a global protocol for authentication, we need a global protocol for payments as well. And bitcoin is the, the only answer, I would say. So we use Bitcoin payments in our in our protocol, but also we took a lot of inspiration from Bitcoin for kind of everything else. So this concept that kind of like be your own bank, you have your own key, and you are responsible for it. That obviously comes from Bitcoin as well, realizing the power, I guess, of decentralization that comes from from Bitcoin, and without Bitcoin, I don't think we would have gotten to this point. So it's in a very practical way. Yes, we use Bitcoin, but also we took a lot of inspiration and try to abstract away some of the concepts of Bitcoin, like you have your own key, and try to use them for other purposes as well.

Lynne Bairstow: 13:32

So this will require personal responsibility, so the individual, just as you need to remember your key for or have a secure way of documenting your your your private key and Bitcoin, you would also need to do that. And I guess that's probably the the shift in mindset that we've just become so accustomed to letting everything log in for us and the convenience of it, but in order to prevent, you know, identity capture, in order to preserve our sovereignty and to really be more sovereign individuals, that knowing our key will be the key to the key to the key to to really protecting our privacy in the future. Would you say that's accurate? Yeah,

Alekos: 14:14

no, absolutely. So on one end, we we think that's the most important thing. So people should learn about being responsible of basically one key. You can just have one key in your life. You can have Bitcoin on that. You can have your identity, but just one at least, you need to be careful and keep it safe. I think there's also lots of work to be done to make that process easier, and I think now it's very scary, especially for everyday people. So on one end, yeah, we're going to try to educate them to back up your key, beep, 39 mnemonics and everything. On the other end, I think we have some work to do. I don't have an answer yet on this, but I think we have to. We want people. To come closer to us, but also we have to come closer to them. We have to make it easier for them. And this could mean, for example, Building Better devices, easier to use devices. So the shift that's already happening with our device is portal is going to become kind of like your safe, kind of like the vault that keeps your key for the long term, so you just have this device, and you kind of shift the problem from a digital problem of memorizing, like a bunch of words, you shift it into the physical world and say, you have this thing and you need to keep this object safe. And I think that's already a bit easier for people to understand, because it's more practical. It's more something like you've done your entire life, keeping objects safe. So that's, I think, already kind of one step in the direction. But I think if we really want to feel what I was saying before, like we want to go to everybody, then I think we also have some work to do there to make it more accessible for everybody. But obviously we are starting from the Bitcoin world. So in our world, it's very easy to convince people to hold their own keys, that they want to hold their own

Israel: 16:04

keys. And this ties a little bit in something that's coming to mind, aliquot. So for maybe skeptics out there that list listening are thinking, Okay, well, it sounds like you're trying to take on, you know, Apple and Google. How do you plan on doing that, you know, from an execution roadmap, let's say, I mean, of course, I think people underestimate the power of open source, the power of, you know, a growing network of people using this borderless money, which is Bitcoin. But, you know, in your head, how do you, how do you look at the, you know, next 612, months, and just the kind of steps going forward in order to execute your plan? Yeah,

Alekos: 16:46

so that's a real question. Obviously, yes, we are going after them in the long run. Also, I think now it's way too early to say what are going to be the exact steps. So we are trying to focus more kind of, I guess, on the short terms. A short term could also mean, like, one or two years. Obviously, we're not going to take over apple in two years. So we kind of focus on what we can do today. And so the focus now is on building so writing the code, building the app, then it's going to move towards building a community around this building interest for this, trying to get adoption. Obviously, we're going to start from the Bitcoin companies, because those companies are going to be, I think, the first to kind of want to adopt that we want to adopt a protocol like this. So that's kind of the easy answer. And I would say one kind of key piece we need, which we are not going to be working on, at least we don't plan to work on, is bridging Fiat to lightning better. And there's already companies like lightspark doing that. And I say we need this because initially, for in order to use our app, at least, if you want to use it for payments as well, you're going to need a lightning wallet. And that, again, is a very niche thing. Very few people have it. So if you want to then break and it's fine. Now it's fine while we we live in the Bitcoin community, when we will try to break out of the Bitcoin community, hopefully we're going to have banks. And there's already, like cash up, for example, there's already a few regular Fiat banks that support lightning. So what we envision is at some point you will be able to link your bank account to our app, so then you don't even need to know that there's Bitcoin going on. From your perspective, it's you authorize the payment. The payment goes through, and it was the money were taken from your bank account. And you don't even know that there's lightning payment going on. So in my head, these are kind of the next few, next couple of years of steps that we need to do, and then, yeah, I also think the power of open source protocols, it tends to be underestimated. If we can execute this, I think we're going to be a very good position already. And I don't want to say we want to take over Apple, because since it's an open source protocol, I would like to see Apple adopt our protocol. That's kind of the way I see it. So I think it's not too reasonable to think in a few years, you can have an native app built into your iPhone that kind of speaks this protocol, just like you have a native email client. So that's, I don't see that as a replacing them. I see, I think, if we can get to a critical mass, and Bitcoin also is going to be become more and more mainstream as the years go by, then it's completely reasonable for me to have tech, regular tech companies, just kind of adopt this protocol, because they can realize, they can see that the benefits of an open source, decentralized protocol.

Lynne Bairstow: 19:44

Yeah, I want to just touch on that whole concept of open source, because for traditional tech communities and VCs and investors, it's a it's a foreign concept. It's like open source means less profits and and yet it's so inherent in Bitcoin. Bitcoin is open source and and. It's the foundation of it, and I've had to personally relearn, you know, what the potential is, and you can be enormously profitable developing open source projects. But can you, can you talk about how you view open source as somebody who's looking to have build your own company and and why you choose Open Source instead of something that's closed in?

Alekos: 20:20

Yeah? So, I mean, a short answer is, in the short term, yeah, it does hurt your profits early, so profit margins, but I think in the long run, it's neutral, or I would say even positive in that regard, because I see it as it's kind of like you can be you can create a company that just works, completely isolated from any other company. Just build your own thing. You don't speak with anybody, you don't use any tools, anything else made by somebody else. And you can do that, and that's kind of the closed source world. Or you can build a company that makes one component and then there's another company making one component, and multiple companies kind of working together. I think that compounds gains, so compounds growth, compounds even profits for all those companies. So I think a company cannot live in a completely isolated environment. And it's a little bit of the same with open source. So when you build open source stuff, it's different companies building different protocols that all building different products that all speak the same protocol. So that's kind of the concept. So we are focusing on building a client for mobile for this thing, but then you can have another company come by and say, Oh, we want to build, for example, we will focus on issuing certificates. So we're going to go to universities, we're going to sell them this software to issue degree certificates on this protocol. And we're not even competing. We're kind of augmenting each other, because now I'm going to have more users of my app, because graduate students will have to download my app, and they get for free an app, already working users and everything. So I think that usually, the way I describe it is that the benefit of open source is lowering the barrier for kind of working with other companies. And it's true that you have to change your business model a little bit, because sometimes some companies just rely on selling software that you cannot access the code to. So you only, your only gateway to that software is to buy, buy it from them. So yeah, you not implement that kind of business model, but you can implement other business models that you can provide services for a fee. And also lastly, but also very important for the user, they get much more transparency. So I think that's also a positive, like a plus for the user. So the user will probably be more interested in an open protocol than another one, because they get more transparency. They and they also know that if the company dies, the app can keep working, because the source code is out there, so you don't need the company to release it. So yes, there's lots of different benefits, but I would say overall, it's definitely better to be working on open source projects than not to add

Israel: 23:13

a little bit of color to that. Aldekos, how are you thinking through your business model? I mean, as much as you're comfortable sharing, but to linking to that. How do you actually plan on monetizing?

Alekos: 23:26

Yeah, so current plan, specifically looking at the app, is, we plan to have premium features in the app that you need to pay a subscription for. And the way we want to draw the line is we don't want to compromise on security so you still get the best security. Even with a free version, because I think that would be bad for the user to lower the security if they don't pay. So you get, still get the best security. But for example, with a premium version, maybe you can have multiple identities in the app, so you can, like, switch just like you can have, like, multiple telegram accounts in the same app. If you don't buy the premium version, you can only have one, which is fine for most people, but we can, kind of target that, I don't know, 5% Pro users, and we charge them a fee for those features. There's also the other device, which we're going to keep building and selling. The device is going to keep working as a Bitcoin other Wallet. So that's not being removed, but we're gonna have this kind of software update so that you can use the hardware device as kind of your key backup device for for this new thing we're building. And so that's what we're like, literally selling hardware device. So there's it's a it's a bit of a worse business in a way, it's harder to scale, but there's still really good profit margins on that as well. And then, as it was mentioned before, there's so many things that can be built on top of this. I don't even know yet what we could do, but I think once this is out there, we can do consultancy. So if there's if other. Companies want to use our protocol, we can sell consultancy to them. That's also not a great business to scale, but you can do that as well. So there's so many other things that can be built on top. And I think we we don't even know yet. We're gonna have to see how this gets used in practice, and then we can, if we see an opportunity, obviously we're gonna take it. So I'm not worried about that. Obviously, the app is open source. The license is not gonna allow, like, if you really want to for yourself as a user, you can download the code, remove the premium checks, and run it on your phone. But you're not allowed to distribute that kind of app. So yeah, maybe it's gonna be like, 1% of super high skilled users. They're going to do that, and they're going to get the premium for free. We don't really care. Most people are going to go on the App Store. They're going to download it from the App Store with the premium kind of embedded into it. Short term is going to be the app and the device. Long term, I think there's plenty of opportunities as well,

Lynne Bairstow: 26:00

because I want to kind of tie this back into the hackathon, which is why we're here to celebrate your your being the winning project. The hackathon had guidelines that you needed to have a new project that was started for the 30 prior in the 30 days prior to the judging. It feels like you I mean, how did you come up with this variation of your idea? And can you tell us a little bit? Do you have a team working with you on this and and what was the hackathon experience like this? We were chatting a little bit before we started hit record, but my experience with hackathons has been primarily in person, hackathons that take place over a very short period of time. So this had a slightly different format, which I think was great for the conference to enable more participants globally to to be a part of this competition. But tell us how you felt about the hackathon. Was it, you know, inspiring to you to think of this new variation of Portal and, and, and what you, you know, what the process was like,

Alekos: 27:04

yeah. So we, we actually got very lucky anyway, because we didn't necessarily start, we didn't start this project for the academic specifically, we were already kind of thinking about this, and then the accountant came and were like, Oh, this is, this is perfect. Let's build it for the hackathon. So we kind of took the arcaton as an excuse to build this. So it was not, it wasn't the other way around. So it was not, didn't start as, what are we going to build for this hackathon? We kind of already had the idea there, but there was no code or anything, and we just Yeah, took the challenge even to start doing this. And I keep saying we because, yeah, there's a team behind it. Because if you look at the app, it's pretty complicated, so it would have been probably impossible for me to do it all by myself. So yeah, we formed a team, which is officially four people, but it was actually mostly me and one other guy doing most of most of the work, and two others were kind of helping out a little bit less. And yeah, the experience for us, I kind of agree with you. I'm more experienced with in person hackathons, and I would say I prefer them over virtual hackathons, just because I like the vibe of being in the room and next to other people kind of all locking together. Obviously there are trade offs, so it's if you do it in person, it has to be much smaller because you cannot bring that many people in, and also it has to be much shorter. So the kind of project, projects that can show up are not going to be the same quality as a month long hackathon. So yeah, overall, I think for us, it was fun to do it, but it was fun because we were working with each other, I would say because, from an arcaton perspective, we were not in the room with other people, so we didn't really feel that kind of that side of it, but yeah, still, obviously we're very happy we won. So can't, can't complain on that. Yeah, I can say, I think I can speak for others as well. We all very much enjoyed doing it well

Israel: 29:19

as we begin to wrap up a locals. I mean, well, first of all, good. It's, it's a very important problem you're addressing and and it's, I think, going to take a lot of people by surprise the power of these open source protocols. And, you know, the the Win Win, the Win Win nature of working on open source protocol is, is something that, like you were mentioning, Lynne, even, even I've been speaking with, you know, we've gotten to speak to quite a few open source projects, actually, in startups using open open source, and, yeah, it is gonna, I think, completely re. Shape the future and and you're working on a very important problem. So congratulations, first of all, on, on the on the win at the hackathon. It was, it was great to see you up there, and there was a small prize associated with it, as far as you know. Next step for you guys, alakos, I mean, are you looking for any, any specific sort of funding or partnerships, anything along those lines?

Alekos: 30:29

So in terms of fundings, we managed to raise a little bit around the time of the hackathon. So it was just before, kind of around the time. So basically, the plan is, with this funding, we're going to keep building the project, and we want to get it to completion and get it to be running and everything. And there's going to be a few months of work. So I keep saying a couple months, but it could be more. I'm hoping a couple months we'll be working. We're kind of still going at an accident pace. We're still trying to go very fast. So yeah, in terms of funding, we're not really, right now looking for it, but at some point in the future we will. So the idea is, after this is working, after we started getting a few users, then we're going to go and try to raise a larger amount for so that we can, like more properly, go to market with this. So now it's going to be more like developing and then the next phase is going to be bringing this to the market, which is arguably the biggest challenge of this project, because it's such a big thing that it's very tough to bring to the market in terms of partnerships. We what? Maybe not right now, because right now it's a bit too early, so we don't really have much working, but in the next few months, what we're going to be looking for are companies that want to adopt our protocol. So any bitcoin company that right now is relying on like email and passwords, you can adopt our protocol. You can do it, obviously, in parallel, so you don't need to throw everything away all the things you've done. But just like you can add like a login with Google button, we're going to be providing all the source code and everything to add like a login Report button. So I think those are going to be the first kind of, in a way, customers, even though they're not paying us, the first kind of users for our thing that we're going to be looking for are early adopters, companies that like to try new things. Also, I think I forgot to mention, I don't know how that we were building all this on nostr So when I say digital identity, I basically mean a nostr identity. Even nostr companies, I think that would be great, great fit for this, because they're already building their own product and nostr, and they can then also use nostr for, for example, authentication, user management and all of that. Yeah, so maybe again, not right now, but soon, we're going to be looking for early adopters for these things, and you want to have people play with it and break it, and from that, we can iterate and improve it. We will

Lynne Bairstow: 33:05

be happy to share the Word and connect you with anyone in our network that can, because we're working with so many of the or we've interviewed so many of the the, you know, the Bitcoin companies. And so I can see this just being a natural extension for how they how users use it, you know, log in or start using it. So I'm really excited. I mean, this conversation has me just like, I have a feeling we're going to have you back on sooner than later, before the end of the year, to talk about what you've continued to develop. This is really meant to be more of just kind of a hat tip to the hackathon, but also to your winning the hackathon. And just talk about, you know, the whole Bitcoin 2025, experience and, and, but this technology is just so exciting. So I'm sure we'd love to have you back and do a deeper dive on the on portal and, and how you're progressing with this.

Israel: 33:59

Yeah, fully aligned there. We'll, have to get you back on now, because it sounds like there might be some more concrete updates in the in the short few months. So we'll make sure to get you back on and support you along the way in any way that we can. That all being said, I guess, any final thoughts for for the audience to

Alekos: 34:18

hackathons, they're fun, and try our thing when it's ready. And yeah, I'm happy to be back here in a few months. I'm sure most of my answers are going to be completely different, because that's what startups are. So I'm sure they're going to change my mind on many of the things I said today. But yeah, let me know when, when you when you want everything back.

Israel: 34:38

Well, very exciting project. Alcos, congrats, and we look forward to staying in touch.

Lynne Bairstow: 34:51

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