The Real Bitcoin Payments with Lightning and Stablecoins – Graham Krizek

Episode Overview

Graham Krizek is the Founder of Voltage, a company building infrastructure to make Bitcoin and Lightning more accessible for developers and businesses. With over a decade in the crypto space, Graham is an expert in scalable blockchain payments and has built Voltage to eliminate the complexity of Lightning integration.

Voltage allows companies to instantly send and receive Bitcoin payments via APIs, without hiring specialized teams or building custom infrastructure. Under Graham’s leadership, Voltage has become a trusted name for secure, scalable Bitcoin adoption.

Graham is also a passionate advocate for decentralization, innovation, and expanding the real-world utility of Bitcoin. He sees major opportunities in AI-driven transactions, stablecoin integration, and bringing Bitcoin into mainstream fintech use cases.

Episode Transcript

Graham Krizek: We’ve built a team of experts inside of lightning in Bitcoin, and we have a full on kind of software suite to to service these companies. And so if a company comes in and wants to say, hey, we want to adopt lightning because our users are demanding it, we want the speed, the efficiency, all those things. You can basically plug in our system, which is, you know, virtually all API driven, and it really just hooks into our platform and instantly be able to start sending and receiving payments on Bitcoin on chain and via the Lightning Network.

Kevin Rosenquist: Hey there, and welcome to PayPal, where we bring you conversations with the trailblazers shaping the future of payments in fintech. My name is Kevin Rosenquist. Thanks for being here. Bitcoin was built to change the world, but for everyday transactions like buying a cup of coffee, it’s long, feels too slow, too expensive and too complex. Enter the Lightning Network, a game changing layer that makes Bitcoin fast, cheap and scalable. Joining me is Graham Krizek, founder of voltage, a company that’s building the infrastructure to make lightning usable for real businesses and developers without needing to become crypto engineers. We dive into the evolution of Bitcoin as a payment system, why lightning may be the key to mainstream adoption, and how stablecoins, AI and global regulation are shaping the next wave of innovation. So please welcome Graham Krizek. So what are the biggest barriers holding Bitcoin back from widespread everyday use, and how does this lightning network solve the problems?

Graham Krizek: Definitely. I think there’s a couple things there from it being kind of more widely adopted.  I guess there’s maybe starting with the technical side of things, is a lot of people that have viewed Bitcoin or have used Bitcoin in kind of the traditional on-chain version of bitcoin, which is really great at moving, like moving money globally. All the, you know, large values, all those things. But one of the challenges people hit a lot is the block confirmation time. So to have a complete assurance that your transaction is, you know, good and valid. You have to wait 30 minutes to an hour. I mean, that’s a pretty,  slow experience when you’re trying to, like, check out at a Starbucks.  As well as, like, the fees itself. Like, you know, you have to pay a minor fee to get a transaction to the Bitcoin blockchain that can range wildly in terms of like what the actual value is. But you could pay a $5 fee for a $5 transaction. Who wants to pay 100%?  You know, the transaction fee.  That’s also pretty wild. And so that’s that’s basically the reason why the Lightning Network was created in the first place is to try and solve those problems from the payment side of things, trying to actually make it easier for not only this store value, which, as I think people understand that use case quite a bit,  but trying to get it more used in the payment side of things. And so with lightning, lightning is a layer two scaling solution on top of Bitcoin. And with that you can do transactions with this instant finality, basically settling a half of a second or less, doing that with zero fees or very, very low fees. And so that is more in line with what people would love to see as far as their payment experience goes.

Graham Krizek: Is the actual,  you know, very fast, very cheap payment  that can go anywhere in the world without an intermediary. So that’s where lightning kind of solves for that and pushes it more into the mainstream, so to speak.  because, you know, when Bitcoin was first created, it kind of was hard to solve those problems. And then the network is finally solving those. And then the other side of it is also on sort of like there’s a lot of I mean, regulatory stuff, like it has been really challenging to get your head around the regulatory side of it,  for the last several years, thinking about like the regime of, you know, the previous administration just being very,  hostile towards it. I think a lot of people were like, I’m just not going to touch this at all because I just don’t know what I’m getting into. Right. Yeah.  Very, very good point. And yeah. And I think that finally the tax is like, you know, even when you spend it from a transaction perspective, you have to pay capital gains tax on that, even when you’re buying a $5 cup of coffee. Seems a little silly. So I think with that, I think the upcoming clarity from our regulatory perspective is very positive. And then also if we could see some additional,   more favorable tax,  like tax laws, if it was like less than $250 or something for a transaction, there’s like no capital gains or something like that. So I think that those are some of the things that are holding it back. But,  yeah, I would love to hear your opinion kind of how you’ve seen things like progressing.

Kevin Rosenquist: Well, I mean, I’m fairly new to the Lightning Network, to be honest with you. I’ve been looking into it more because I’ve got a few different guests that are involved with it, and you’re one of them. The regulatory thing is really interesting to me because I’ve had several people on here who talk, you know, we talk crypto and obviously, you know, like deep political discussions aside. Yeah, the the Biden administration was very anti crypto and very pro-bank, traditional bank. It felt like, you know, I mean I’ve talked to crypto people who like crypto companies who were debunked like completely debugged. Like they got a letter in the mail saying, in 30 days we’re not banking with you anymore. And just out of nowhere, they didn’t do anything. It was just because the federal government said, I’m not you. We’re not working with this, this industry anymore. Your industry is flagged because you’re in crypto. You know, you mentioned regulatory scrutiny. Where do you see that kind of affecting the Lightning Network as far as crypto regulation goes? Do you think that it’s going to change how it sort of like a broader adoption or the way that it sort of morphs or anything like that?

Graham Krizek: Yeah, I mean, I think I think it can help it. I mean, I guess in a lot of different ways. I mean, I think one there’s like so just yesterday or maybe it was yesterday, the Genius Act passed the Senate. Right. He’s going to Congress today or it’s coming out very soon. And so that is like that stablecoin regulation. And that’s going to help significantly for stablecoins in general. But stablecoins are a really new thing that are coming into lightning. And so that will help just kind of pave a way for really understanding, like, you know, a path forward in terms of how people can kind of start using stablecoins on lighting as well as other chains. But then also as we look at more just general,  favorability to Bitcoin specifically. So we see things like the Bitcoin strategic reserve and things like that.  Now that’s very much the strategic reserve is very focused on like the store value side of Bitcoin where they’re like buying it or they’re, they’re holding it as that store of value, anticipating it, appreciating a value over time. Right.  I think that still helps inside of Bitcoin on the payment side, just because the US government is going if they’re holding it, they’re probably okay with it. Like just kind of more broadly. It’s not like they’re going to be like, oh, you can’t do that over there, but we’re going to do this over here.

Kevin Rosenquist: I think there’s no I wouldn’t put anything past the US government.

Graham Krizek: I, I am, I’m hopeful. I wouldn’t.

Graham Krizek: Say that. It’s a guarantee. I am hopeful that they would have some kind of like, you know,  favourability to that, especially when you’re comparing bitcoin or lightning compared to, like, you know, the thousands of other cryptocurrencies out there. I think that they are just going to have a more favorable stance on that going forward, which is just going to help that mainstream adoption.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah, it’s also kind of that it’s the one. It’s the one even my parents know. You know what I mean? My parents have heard of Bitcoin. Don’t know if they’ve heard of Ethereum but I know they’ve heard of bitcoin. You know what I mean. So it’s just that almost for lack of a better term brand recognition it might help you know.

Graham Krizek: Yeah absolutely. And I think that that’s where we see a lot as we’ve talked with our customers on, like when you think about stablecoins being moved on top of like lightning or Bitcoin,  there’s that that exact thing kind of comes up in their heads is they’re trying to get, you know, obviously the entire crypto industry is trying to kind of branch out. They’re trying to get these more like, you know, edge like fintech companies that are kind of crypto forward or they’re just getting started in the space. And Bitcoin is the one that everybody knows. Everyone understands Bitcoin. They feel at least from the crypto standpoint, they feel the safest with Bitcoin.  and being able to like run their, their payments on top of it gives a lot of assurance. They feel really good about it compared to some other chains.

Kevin Rosenquist: Other than, you know, the context of fast payments and payments that we’re talking about here. Are there other use cases that you don’t think people are talking about enough for the Lightning Network?

Graham Krizek: Yeah, I mean, I think that there’s like there’s a couple I think one of them is like the micro payment side of things. I will say that I think that micro payments are a little bit. Some people kind of overindex on micro payments for lightning thinking that it’s only good for micropayments. That’s definitely not the case. But when I’m talking micropayments, it’s like, you know, $0.01, $0.02, even fractions of a cent being sent, you know, at either rapid rates or, you know, for things like if you think about going to a website, a news website where you want to, you know, read an article and you get the big paywall of, like, subscribe for $5 a month. And like those kinds of things. I don’t want to ever subscribe for $5 a month. So like the Washington Post or something like that. I want to read this one article and I would pay like $0.05, $0.10 to just read this one article, right, instead of the whole subscription. Well, I mean, swiping your credit card or entering your credit card information for every five cent news article you want to read is a little silly. People probably aren’t going to do that. Yeah.  if you could just do that with lightning and have it be basically, you know, no transaction fees instantly sent like super fast and have that just kind of more natively built out. I think that’s a really popular use case where, like, even those news services would probably make more money on a situation like that than the subscription model.

Kevin Rosenquist: We all get frustrated with that, right? That’s a great example because yeah, I hate that because I’m like, I don’t need. I just didn’t even know this was a paid thing. I was on my phone and my newsfeed didn’t know it was going to send me here. I know, yeah. Yeah. And if it said, hey, $0.10 to read this, I’d be like, absolutely. Here’s your dime. You know, I wouldn’t mind at all, but yeah. Yeah, that’s a great example. I love that.

Graham Krizek: I think that we see people working on that kind of thing. And so I think that that will continue to evolve and be really popular going forward. And then I think the other one that is like maybe, maybe it’s sort of talked about depending on what circles you’re in. But  you know, the AI craze is here, like it’s very prominent. One of the big things is like, how are agents going to kind of communicate on the payment side of things? How are they going to be able to like, pay each other for, you know, goods or services or whatever it is?  And there’s like a lot of people want to tout theirs, their idea or their cryptocurrency or whatever as like the solution for that. I think the problem is that, you know, AI agents move very, very quickly. They move faster than we think or that we can do things. And so they need a payment mechanism that is just as fast as they can operate. And the only one that really matches that speed is the Lightning Network. And so I think that AI agents and AI,  you know, the way that AI is being incorporated more and more and like the payments being combined, lightning is going to be a very, very good solution for that because of how fast it can and it can keep up with these AI agents. So I think that that’s another one that’s fairly early, but we see gaining some momentum as well.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah, that’s really, really interesting. Can you walk us through a real world example of a company using voltage and, and what problem you helped them solve.

Graham Krizek: Yeah, absolutely. So we work with all kinds of different companies, like exchanges, payment processors, neobanks, you know, kind of you name it, wallets. And so ultimately what we do is we built a team of experts inside of lightning in Bitcoin, and we have a full on kind of software suite to to service these companies. And so if a company comes in and wants to say, hey, we want to adopt lightning because our users are demanding it, we want the speed, the efficiency, all those things. You can basically plug in our system, which is, you know, virtually all API driven and really just hooking our platform and instantly be able to start sending and receiving payments on Bitcoin on chain and via the Lightning Network. So really what it does is it reduces the complexities of previously say, an exchange wants to incorporate lightning. They would have to hire a team of, you know, 3 to 5 people that really, you know, understand lightning and Bitcoin and how this stuff works. Build out the infrastructure and then hook it up into the exchange. And so that would take, you know, a lot of money and you know months of time where with our platform, you know, we basically built all of that out. You can just hook in our APIs and be up and running in a day or so and not have, you know, have a fraction of the cost as you would to hire in your own team.  So that’s basically what we do at a high level.

Kevin Rosenquist: Oh, that’s really cool. Yeah. Yeah. Because I was actually going to ask you where the, the advantage is between trying to do it by yourself and working with voltage. And now you just answered that. It’s, it’s just that it’s a time suck and a money suck. And you don’t have to worry about that. You just because you already did it. Yeah.

Graham Krizek: Yeah, exactly. And that’s like you can think about it very similar to like stripe. Like when stripe came along, it was like, Holy cow, how do we ever do payments before this? You had to like, do all these, like, connect, like you had to do so much work and then stripe’s, like just plug in the API and like, you’re just good. That’s basically the same thing we’re doing on the lightning and stablecoin side.

Kevin Rosenquist: That’s awesome. One of the biggest challenges with things like lightning is managing liquidity. How do you help clients solve that without needing to become kind of liquidity experts, if you will?

Graham Krizek: Yeah.  Like, I mean one like we kind of are liquidity experts. So a lot of our employees here are like, I’ve been doing this for a really long time. So they have a lot of domain expertise built up around that. But what we do is we really we we basically solve that for our customers and that when you interface with voltage, you don’t really have to worry about the liquidity, the payment channels, like, are my payments able to go where they need to go? We completely handle that with things like via, you know, software,  automated tooling and then some, some, you know, human intervention too. And so ultimately, you know, you can come onto voltage, you know, create a node or use our newer payments product and just integrate the API’s and just be able to start instantly sending and receiving payments. So we really,  it’s something that we have become very,  very good at experts in.  but there’s something that we want to intentionally be experts in so our customers don’t have to be because it is very nuanced. It is very unique to the network.  and it’s something that we don’t basically no one wants to, to be an expert in that, I mean, relatively speaking. And so,  we want to take on that burden for our customers.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah. Only psychos. Psychos want to be. I want to get into that. But

Speaker4: Yeah. Yeah.

Kevin Rosenquist: What are some of the security challenges? You know that that come with running lightning infrastructure and how to do. How do you balance trust and reliability with decentralization?

Graham Krizek: Yeah I mean yes. Like so at the end of the day you know lightning is still bitcoin. And so Bitcoin is um has very unique security properties both on like the positive side as well as, you know, you’re it’s kind of like a target as well. Um if you’re touching Bitcoin at all. So there’s a lot of considerations to make there. And it’s something that we have like on our infrastructure, we have like our Soc2 type two um certification. So we take security very seriously from like just the how we run the business and how we operate our infrastructure as well as there’s a lot of like really unique considerations that we built into the platform itself, like enabling like a couple different,  signing,  architectures where you can like run kind of like your private keys, like in your, on your own hardware and your own data center or inside of voltage and also being able to do more  as far as like IP whitelisting, restricting, like who can access the APIs and things like that. So ultimately we’ve taken security very seriously because of Bitcoin. And it’s kind of like,  security is built into the protocol itself, but also anything you’re building on top needs to take it as a kind of a first class citizen.  so we’ve done a lot to really build out a strong security posture. And,  also, you know, offering that into our clients as well, and, you know, kind of advising them on, like, you know, we we can secure our site. But there’s also the other side in the, in our, in the exchanges environment or whatever it is, and trying to help them and securing their site as well.

Kevin Rosenquist: What trends you mentioned about AI. What trends or technologies do you think will shape the next phase of lightning development? Is it I.

Graham Krizek: I think I will definitely be one of them. I think AI is a little bit like several months out before it’s like kind of,  really starting to ramp up. I think that stablecoins, like stablecoins are just, you know, maybe to take a step back a little bit. Stablecoins are a very, you know, very popular use case of crypto in general today for sure. They started on Bitcoin. They moved into other chains because Bitcoin kind of wasn’t able to really service stablecoins from like the smart contract standpoint and all of those things back in the day.  and now with a new protocol called taproot assets, you can do stablecoin issuance on top of Bitcoin again, and you can do it with the Lightning Network. And so we’re seeing that as a big shift. We’re seeing a huge amount of demand for the stable stablecoins coming into Bitcoin and lightning for the trust and the security that Bitcoin offers. Like we kind of talked about a little bit ago, but then also being able to leverage, you know, what I mentioned earlier of like half second settlement with like zero fees, that being able to move a stablecoin in that environment is incredibly attractive.  that’s something that a lot of people are interested in. And so we see that as really being a big next step for the network. And we, you know, tether announced support for the Lightning Network earlier this year. And so we’re going to see a lot more liquidity coming into the network, a lot more activity, a lot more integrators. And so I think that that’s going to be the nearest, you know, kind of next step that really takes it to the next level.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah, I think stablecoins is one of those things that, like the average person that can wrap their head around a little easier to understand how they work. There’s still people that’s like, I don’t understand why Bitcoin has any value. I don’t know where it comes from. I think stablecoins is a little bit more. I don’t know how our brains work.

Speaker4: Yeah, I completely agree.

Graham Krizek: And as I’ve talked with my parents or my in-laws or anyone and I’m like, you know, trying to explain bitcoin, I was like, yeah, I don’t know. This doesn’t make a lot of sense. This just isn’t for me. And then I’m like, okay, now there’s a thing called stablecoins and it’s just dollars with the same technology. Like, oh I would do that.

Kevin Rosenquist: Like that I guess.

Speaker4: Is really good. Yeah. Yep.

Graham Krizek: And so it’s like it does. It looks so much easier. And then there’s also like, you know, places in like, you know,  places that are harder to get like access to dollars in. And so, you know, like third world countries or whatever it is where it’s just harder to get access to actual US dollars, and this kind of flips that on its head, where it’s actually fairly easy to get dollars. And so there’s a lot of there’s a lot of not only the, the mental complexity of understanding a stablecoin, but also the, the access that people are still trying to live their lives where, you know, maybe they invest a little bit in Bitcoin, but they still need to pay like their bills, like, you know, every single day. And doing that via a stablecoin is a much more practical means.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah, it helps for I’ve talked to people, you know, our, you know, have freelancers in other countries and things like that. And what a great way to pay them in that currency so that they can get the dollar. And there has been some people that have mentioned that maybe the governments of whatever countries they’re in don’t love it. You know, they don’t like it as much as using their own currency. But,  but it is a really good use case for, for stablecoins, you know, kind of piggybacking on this, there’s still big philosophical divides in the Bitcoin world. I’m always amazed when I talk to people like I’ve talked to some really, really smart, freaking people who love Bitcoin. And I’ve talked to some really smart freaking people who hate bitcoin and think that it’s fool’s gold. You know, it makes it so interesting. Where do you think lightning fits into the broader ecosystem? Will it? Will it unify the community? Will it bring it, bring us all together? Will it fracture it further? What do you think?

Graham Krizek: That is a great question and it really depends on who you’re talking to. Just like you kind of mentioned that like inside of like the kind of bitcoin bitcoin ecosystem of like the really hard core people. I would say,  it’s a little like it’s kind of you get a lot of different opinions on lightning and when, where it falls because ultimately there’s like, you know, 20 different ideas for how to scale Bitcoin and how to solve kind of these, these similar things. And so most people that have kind of a problem with lightning usually have what they think is a better idea or a different way of solving it or whatever it is. The lightning is like the most used L2 on top of Bitcoin. So until something else comes along to kind of like disprove that, I think the lightning is like is very obviously the winner as far as you know, scaling Bitcoin. But then I do think kind of like from the broader standpoint of like, you know, crypto industry in general or just traditional finance, whatever it is, just kind of like zooming out. I do think that it helps a significant amount in the story of Bitcoin because of the kind of what I mentioned earlier of like the Bitcoin was originally created as this, like, you know, globally decentralized payment network.

Graham Krizek: And then that’s the thing that I hear a lot about, about people that aren’t as interested in Bitcoin is that like, well, you know, it kind of sucks that payments because of the things that I mentioned at the beginning of our interview here.  but as lightning is starting to solve those where it’s like, okay, you can actually solve this, like the payments use case, super, super well and still get like the store value properties. I think it helps the narrative. It helps the story. And I think Bitcoin has  an image problem sometimes of being like the pet rock of like, well it’s just it’s just this thing, it’s just like a gold or something. And like some people are like, well, I don’t even care about gold. And it’s like, yeah, like I get that. But I think that it brings it more into the,  it makes it a little bit more feasible and usable in that way. So I do think that it helps along those stores where it will ultimately unite more than it divides.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah, yeah. The education part of it, the understanding, the seeing, the use cases, the figuring out. Yeah, I can see that that makes sense. How long have you been building in the Bitcoin space?

Graham Krizek: I have.

Kevin Rosenquist: Been.

Graham Krizek: Gosh, it’s been like 13 years now. About 2012 is when I got started into Bitcoin.

Kevin Rosenquist: Wow. That’s a long time now. I mean in the scheme of things it’s changed quite a bit since you started.

Graham Krizek: Yes. I mean it changed quite a bit. I mean when I was getting into Bitcoin it was back when the faucet websites were around where you would like go to a website and click a button and get like five Bitcoin. And that was just like, you know, maybe like 5 or $0.10 back then. And now it’s like, you know, $500,000. It’s quite a.

Kevin Rosenquist: Bit. Did you save some?

Graham Krizek: No. I mean like not really.  because like when I first got into Bitcoin, like I was fascinated by it from the tech perspective of like this, you know, decentralized network, you can send payments anywhere. I kind of had no like I was just so fascinated with getting my hands dirty in it. I had no thought of like, this will one day be $1,000. $10,000? $100,000. I was like the day that it went over $20, I was like, this hobby’s getting too expensive. I might have to stop this because I can’t afford this. Like the rising price of bitcoin. So I didn’t really have that much forethought,  into the economic properties of it. I was just so fascinated by the technology.

Kevin Rosenquist: What would you say is one lesson you’ve learned from working in Bitcoin for as long as you have? That might surprise people who aren’t familiar with the industry.

Graham Krizek: That aren’t familiar with the industry. I mean, I think that ultimately I think that there’s a lot of evolution happening inside of Bitcoin, inside of the ecosystem. I think that going back to my pet rock comment, I think there’s a lot of people that still think that like, like what Bitcoin is, is very,  stagnant like it is what it is. And it’s not going to change. There are some properties that are like never going to change about Bitcoin. There’s also a lot of evolution happening like things like you know building on lightning, like developing even protocol enhancements to lightning, a bunch of other like L2 or ideas and all these different things. And so I think that there’s a lot that people think that Bitcoin is kind of stagnant in that regard. But, you know, being in the ecosystem for a long time and continuing to build in it, it was actually an incredible amount of innovation still happening inside of Bitcoin. And there’s still a lot to be discovered. It’s still a lot to be created. And so I think that that’s something that I think catches some people off guard.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah, that’s an exciting time for people doing what you do.

Graham Krizek: Yeah I mean absolutely. I mean, we’re we we love what we do. And there’s still a long way to go. There’s still a lot more to build. And we’re really excited to be doing it.

Kevin Rosenquist: Awesome. All right. Well Graham Krizek thank you so much for joining me. Appreciate your time. The company is voltage. I’d love to have you back again sometime.

Graham Krizek: Yeah. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.