Alexis Roussel was our guest on the Relai Bitcoin Session podcast. Alexis is the co-founder and CEO of the Swiss digital asset exchange Bity and an early bitcoin adopter. He is also the Chairman of Relai.

You can watch the podcast episode here.

Alternatively, you can tune in on AnchorFM.

Main Takeaways

Alexis Roussel started the crypto exchange Bity in 2013 when Bitcoin was still a new phenomenon. Back then, as Alexis explained, he and his co-founders had to build relationships with banks and regulators, and find staff in a time when no one really knew what bitcoin was.

While other bitcoin exchanges were also launching in Switzerland at the time, only Bity and one other exchange are still operating today, which highlights how difficult it was starting out eight years ago.

Alexis’ Vision for Bitcoin

“For me, Bitcoin has so many things within it that make it so strong.”

“The power of cryptography, the power of peer-to-peer networks, the power of consensus mechanisms, the power of protocols, the power of open-source, and the power of communities. All of these things are building our digital society. But they are totally undervalued,” Alexis stated.

Governments have been trying to fight many of these things because some can be used for nefarious activities, such as illegal filesharing and criminals hiding communication, Alexis explained. However, Bitcoin has taken so many of things “bad” things and incorporated them to turn them into digital money.

People Who Are Embracing Bitcoin Will Be Powerful

“People who are embracing Bitcoin will be free and powerful as individuals.”

Alexis believes that bitcoiners will build businesses based on the principles of Bitcoin that will improve the world for the better. It will not happen overnight, but “in one or two generations,” we could see that.

Before that can happen, however, education will play a critical role as well as reducing the friction that still exists when it comes to buying your first bitcoin.

Relai’s mission is to make bitcoin investing as easy as possible. To buy your first bitcoin, download Relai today!