Welcome to the Year of the Horse!
2014 – the previous Year of the Horse – was the year where it all began for BitcoinVN.
Making it through a full zodiac cycle is rare in this space, so in that regard it is probably a noteworthy mention on its own.
But then again, as Bitcoiners, we are used to thinking in very long timelines and understand the effect of compounding solid work over extended periods of time – so perhaps it is not all that surprising after all.
BitcoinVN: One Zodiac Cycle Later
At the time, the firm was effectively “backed” by a $5,000 personal credit-card line.
Beyond our regular day-job income, this was the only capital available to begin building what would become our “Bitcoin business” – one that would go on to become among the longest-operating in the world.
No “serious investor” at the time would give a “Bitcoin startup” or the location Vietnam (and ESPECIALLY not in combination!) a second thought.
Time has since told the story of how that early bet on Bitcoin and/or Vietnam turned out.
Hence, bootstrapping it was for us – and while many lessons were learned along the way, we certainly know that with the right partners on our side at the time, and without the lack of capital acting as a constant brake on our ability to grow and focus on the business, our firm might have entered a very different trajectory.
And while – despite all the hurdles we had to overcome given these constraints – we still went on to plow through and build out one of the longest-lasting firms in this space, which continues to pioneer new product lines and technology in our part of the world, one thing is also for certain:
The past is bygone – but our decisions today make a difference in how tomorrow will look.
And as such, we are now fortunate to be in the position to support excellent entrepreneurs with grit and vision who build the infrastructure we want to see and from which we will all benefit – and for that, we are grateful.
Investing on a Bitcoin Standard
While our investment was already conducted in the second half of 2025 – and may therefore no longer qualify as “breaking news” by modern common standards – the deliberately measured public rollout of our commitments reflects the priorities and timelines that guide our partnerships.
While we work hard every day to build the technology, infrastructure, and serve our customers well – and better week by week – big publicity and marketing hype are not really our primary focus.
We are operators and technologists – not marketers.
We value substance and the compounding effect of targeted daily effort.
It might not receive as much public recognition, but the people “in the know” will understand and receive the signals.
We remain “in the trenches” ourselves, continuously building and maintaining our own infrastructure and systems.
Direct operational involvement in cutting-edge technology gives us a clear sense of where the ecosystem stands – its pain points, opportunities, and limitations.
We therefore do not rely on external “experts” to craft narratives around our decisions; we understand the terrain firsthand.
Furthermore, Bitcoin-related investments do not operate on artificial urgency.
There is no “narrative wave to catch and cash in on” – and no intention to “cash out” once retail has been persuaded by stories carefully engineered and disseminated by the professional “crypto marketing industry”, executed with cold, clinical precision and designed to exploit the vices of the less well-equipped walking among us.
We are in the business of value creation – not value extraction.
To be clear:
This – absolutely – does not mean a lack of daily drive.
Ourselves and the founders we are working with should be driven every single day by “a sense of urgency” – you absolutely should feel like you’re behind every day and make the most of each day to push your vision closer toward realization.
None of us has time or patience for deadbeats and slackers.
The “sense of urgency” must be directed toward long-term creation – not short-term noise.
Once you identify a problem in the wider Bitcoin economy that requires long-term infrastructure build-out, you commit to it for many years to come and are ready to build it steadily, brick by brick, day after day, with a steady and patient hand – guided by a clear long-term compass.
Rock-solid, resilient infrastructure built to endure – not sandcastles washed away by the first adversarial event.
This is the timeframe which we operate under – hence we’re in no specific hurry with these public announcements… if you have recognized the perilous state of the world and are building real things, you’re simply very, very busy.
If we invest into a founder and a team, it is because we believe they’ll build out their tech and product and evolve over the next decade or more, hence a couple months delayed announcement does not risk “missing out on the narrative du jour” as it’s known from more short-termistic investment circles – be it in Crypto or TradFi – with its underlying broken money system.
We invest in clearly identified long-term fundamental trends that unfold over time, independent of the market’s “feelings” at any given moment.
In this way, time is our friend – not our enemy.
Last but not least:
We believe it is our common duty, as participants invested in the success of Bitcoin and its ecosystem, to support the talent required to build the infrastructure ahead.
Often, we know which path must be taken to “make it happen.”
The direction is clear – but it takes a lot of time, resources, and directed, dedicated effort to proceed with the actual implementation.
You have to build out, battle-test, and strengthen the technology; find local and global partners who play their role in integrating your specific piece of infrastructure to improve their own processes – and, of course, endure the long timeframe it takes for people to become aware of your solution and switch to it.
This transition will only occur if it is truly a better way of doing things.
But if it truly is, time again becomes an ally.
A strong ally that does not budge in its direction – one you will require as you go on your daily mission to overcome inertia, and the people and organizations stuck with outdated processes and technologies simply because that is what they are used to, and because of the various – and often tremendous – switching costs involved in changing to something new.
But once people and organizations switch to a better way of doing things, they do not turn back.
Satsback – who and why?
Satsback is a Bitcoin firm that has made it its core mission to contribute to spreading Bitcoin far and wide as Sound Money for a sound socio-economic environment – something that seems to become more of a dire need with each passing year.
The monetary technology on which a society operates is – after all – upstream from the incentive structures and the outcomes of those incentive structures.
And if your monetary technology is broken – your result will inevitably be a broken society.
Now, we can sit back and complain about this all day long and feel good about ourselves as we explain to each other why everybody else is wrong – with no tangible input or output to improve the actual situation – or we can put in the hard work to actually build out the solutions and brute-force our way toward doing things in a better way.
We decisively prefer to surround ourselves with the latter.
The team at Satsback began in 2020 under the leadership of their Polish founder, Tomas, to tackle the chicken-and-egg problem behind Bitcoin payments – which, to this day, have not seen the uptake early Bitcoiners were convinced they would have achieved by now.
Merchants saw little traction and soon dropped support, as the ongoing maintenance costs exceeded the extra revenue generated. Consumers found few merchants who actually accepted Bitcoin – and businesses in the middle trying to bridge the gap discovered that this business model – convincing both merchants and consumers to use a different type of money for commerce – is one of the hardest to attempt.
Margins and effort generally do not balance out well for a very long time.
The attempt by early Bitcoiners to simply “evangelize” merchants and consumers – especially the latter – on moral grounds also proved not to be a sustainable approach.
It might give you a sense of moral and intellectual superiority – but does it really provide value to the person you are addressing?
Unfortunately – and the results speak for themselves here – this prior approach soaked up an inordinate amount of resources – time, effort, and capital – from Bitcoiners, while delivering very little in the form of tangible results or adoption.
Time to find a better way if we want to make Bitcoin work as a Medium of Exchange.
And that better way cannot rely on conviction alone.
A few will listen to you and – maybe – become fellow zealots in your drive to extinguish the societal ills derived from the widespread usage of unbacked fiat money… but that is – in the grand scheme of things – a very small group of people.
And it is more self-serving, than actually and seriously addressing and tackling a wider societal problem.
To be clear – it is GOOD to have these types of highly committed people as the core of your “movement,” as they bring the unrelenting energy and drive to initiate change. But one cannot expect “the common man” to share in your enthusiasm or deep understanding of the downstream effects of their monetary choices based on moral or intellectual reasoning alone.
You must offer something concrete – and historically, properly aligned financial incentives have been one of the few tools capable of moving behavior at scale.
Hence, you had to make use of the – now – available technology to build a solution that works better – in user experience and financially. And it is precisely that improvement which, over time, converts both businesses & consumers toward Bitcoin as their monetary settlement tool of choice.
Additionally, 2020 was the year Lightning finally entered an early stage of “maturation,” allowing Bitcoin businesses to build viable models on top of it.
Prior attempts to use Bitcoin on-chain as a payment tool had, by then, utterly failed – and the disadvantages of using it for everyday commerce were simply too overwhelming to move beyond the narrow base of true enthusiasts.
Bitcoin on-chain turned out to be too slow for most everyday situations. Every transaction was broadcast and stored permanently on the public blockchain for anyone to analyze – drastically reducing financial privacy. And, last but not least, the unpredictable fee environment and limited throughput of the Bitcoin base layer made it entirely impractical to pursue “global Bitcoin merchant adoption” with the technology available at the time.
Lightning – despite its ongoing technological complexity and challenges – has proven more successful than many observers would have guessed in addressing these issues:
Payments are instant. Payments are cheap. Payments are private.
These are the base characteristics you need if you want to compete against entrenched TradFi players in the payments space – and to build a genuinely better alternative for both consumers and merchants.
Armed with this technology, Tomas and the Satsback team set out to make a better, Bitcoin-based payment experience a reality.
Yes,Lightning is not “perfect” (what truly is?) – but if you take a step back, you see an extraordinary piece of technology that has achieved steadily increasing adoption year after year and continues to mature into what may ultimately become a superior, internet-native payment infrastructure.
Silent but steady infrastructure build-out – Source
Within the constraints it operates under, it is exceptional – a system that has reached critical mass, gained meaningful mindshare, and solves a real problem – on a relative scale – remarkably well.
But technology alone is not enough – it is only potential.
Execution is the hard part. It requires skilled, smart, persistent, patient operators to turn ideas into something that – in actu – makes a dent in reshaping our shared reality.
As is often the case when building a company from scratch, you start with an idea, validate it in the market – and get hit in the face a few times along the way by realities you initially failed to account for.
You adjust and iterate. Relentlessly. Often with – initially – little visible result. Steadily improving the underlying fundamentals of your product, one detail at a time. With each cycle, you move closer to a truly compelling product that delivers real value to its target market – in this case, consumers and merchants alike. And because the product is fundamentally superior, it begins to see steady, gradual adoption.
If you are building something real – and apply sustained focus while embracing the daily – often painful – grind for years to come – in our experience, it pays off.
You gain an ever sharper understanding of the reality you operate in – and build the tools required to shape that reality in meaningful ways.
Until one day, you have built sufficient critical momentum, refined your product, technology, and processes to such a degree that the “suddenly” moment comes into sight.
Satsback may not yet be at the latter stage – but after more than half a decade of committed and focused work, we firmly believe they are well on their way regarding the former.
The universe will test your resolve and inventiveness – but persistence is rarely left unanswered.
That philosophy directly informs how we allocate capital.
The Founder:
As discussed in previous announcements, we tend to back people who have already proven – over several years – that they are committed to an idea and willing to grind through to make it work.
Especially if they have gone through difficult times – and pushed through.
Proven that they don’t just “like the idea” when the sun shines and the ride is easy – but that they keep believing in it when the ride gets rough and shaky.
Conviction. Persistence.
Beyond that, due to our relatively rare position as active operators in the space, we are able – to a significant degree – to independently verify the existence and acuteness of a problem, as well as the proposed solution.
At that point, it becomes a matter of time and sufficient resources to push through the initial valley.
These are the people we expect to work with for a decade or more – building the compounding effect across our growing expertise, network, and access to resources.
Tomas belongs to the – unfortunately – rather rare breed of Europe-based Bitcoin entrepreneurs.
That he is based out of Poland – rather than one of the formerly prestigious Western European jurisdictions – should not surprise anyone who has paid attention to the socio-economic trajectory of the continent in recent years.
In the US, ambitious founders are frequently handed a sizeable cheque early. In the EU, they are handed an equally sizeable rulebook instead.
To be clear: this is not a slight against the countless European Bitcoiners who have made – and continue to make – substantial contributions to the Bitcoin network: in ideas, infrastructure, and in anchoring Bitcoin culture in something deeper than Wall Street or “national strategic reserve” narratives.
But if the goal is to build at scale, Europe is operating under structural constraints that materially limit what its entrepreneurial talent could otherwise achieve.
In Europe, founders are given shackles – while elsewhere, they are given wings.
We believe the mismatch between the capacity of European Bitcoin founders and the companies ultimately produced may be one of the largest structural arbitrages available today.
Europe still has an extraordinary talent pool and a high density of individuals who deeply understand Bitcoin – its ethos and its technology. Yet due to the regulatory and socio-economic environment, that potential often struggles to fully materialize.
For this reason, Tomas has increasingly looked toward the North American market – where entrepreneurship is endorsed rather than obstructed at every step (launching and maintaining a business is already difficult enough as is!), while we hope that we can contribute our part to building a bridge to the increasingly prosperous economies of East Asia.
Our founding team itself has strong heritage lines leading back to the Heart of Europe. So beyond a purely “economic venture investment,” there is also a personal dimension – a desire to help Bitcoin founders in our traditional homelands make and achieve the leap.
While large parts of Europe in the 21st century may no longer be the most desirable place to build, our family lines trace back centuries to these lands — and that will not change.
We are deeply rooted in European soil – its history, its people, and its distinct culture – which, to this day, produces on a per capita basis some of the most brilliant Bitcoiners in the world.
There is immense inherent talent which, under current circumstances, is not always able – or allowed – to flourish to its fullest potential.
Within this broader context, Tomas emerged exactly as the kind of founder we seek to back.
Tomas came with strong accolades from our friends at Blink and OrangeFren – fellow founders of Polish heritage with whom we have had the pleasure of building and working alongside for many years.
Their words of endorsement accelerated our conviction to back Satsback as one of our newest portfolio additions.
We thank Tomas and the Satsback team for the opportunity to collaborate – and look forward to many years of building together.
Satsback – Value Proposition in Brief
Satsback builds the incentive layer for Lightning payments.
It makes Bitcoin economically rational for everyday users – not just ideologically appealing.
Consumers earn Sats as they spend.
Merchants gain a direct customer acquisition tool, reduce chargeback risk, and avoid high traditional card processing fees – allowing them to pass part of those savings back to customers.
Lightning enables instant settlement, no chargebacks, and no extractive credit card processing fees. At the same time, consumers accumulate Bitcoin in a privacy-preserving way – without changing their daily spending habits.
One might see it as a “sly roundabout way introduce something that they can’t stop” – and taking part into bringing Bitcoin into the hands of ever more individuals and small business owners, rather than centralizing custody of Bitcoin behind the walls of big American Wall-Street linked firms.
If you want to check out if Satsback might be something for you, you’ll find their FAQ here.
An overview of all currently supported stores can be found here: https://satsback.com/stores
