Hello World

There is a saying “Don’t ask what Bitcoin can do for you - ask what you can do for Bitcoin”.

I spent the first few years of my Bitcoin journey discovering the protocol, the network and the asset. I let myself wander around in both meatspace and cyberspace. This exploratory phase often triggered my imagination. The wow moment wasn’t when I understood the basics of how Bitcoin works, the real wow moment was when I mapped the whole system in my head and started to touch upon the consequences of what “Fix the money, Fix the world” would entail.

As I embrace the beauty of human nature and the human condition, I fell in love with Bitcoin. Raw humanity. Pure humanity where natural laws prevail. May the strongest win thanks to the value he or she brings to the world. May you benefit and suffer from the consequences of your actions. Only then will you receive the signal back from nature and will you grow. I despise unfair winners created and fueled by the at system. I deeply despise the injustice of the fiat system.

And so I started to build on Bitcoin from a place of hate for the ever degenerating at civilization and from a place of love for Nature. However, hate doesn’t create. Only love can create. In other words: the love to build better has to be stronger than the hate to destroy harder. This quest for developing the better version of myself and for being part of a higher level of civilization is the ultimate and most elevated goal I could ever try to pursue. I want to be part of the Bitcoin revolution. Do my part at my own individual level, as little and insignificant as it may be. I want to align my time and energy with economic incentives based on a standard of Hope.

Individual and purposeful actions are also the basic building blocks of praxeology in Austrian economics. Individual actions create the whole. This is not about belief, this is a humble deductive science that does not predict, but analyse what is.

What is the problem I can help to solve as a pragmatic and product-oriented person? Well, the biggest problem here is quite simple to me: how do we get bitcoin in the hands of the people? How do people acquire bitcoin? Where and how do they buy it? Where do they get off 0?

Now that the problem to solve is defined, let’s look at the solution.

I looked at the on/off ramp market. A lot of big centralized exchanges: meh, they’re for traders, not for me, not for my friends. Cash app and Strike? Extremely cool but not available where I live, in Europe. Alright what do I have left? Relai, Pocket, GetBittr? Very cool too, but they require too much interaction with the banking system for my taste, as they receive the user’s at money in their bank account. What else? Bisq, HODL HODL, robosats, Local Bitcoin. Love them, but I find them hard to use.

My decision was a no-brainer: the market has a huge gap to build more and to build better in the peer-to-peer category. The opportunity is as big as the elephant in the room, and the untapped addressable market is pretty much the whole population! Peer-to-peer allows one to create an on-ramp without having to hold any funds. Neither the at, nor the bitcoins. That’s my type of business! Bitcoins go straight to people’s wallet. I “just” have to focus on building a user-oriented product. The vision was set and I wrote the first peach paper laying down the big principles. That’s when I realized that we could make P2P cooler and even more efficient than centralized exchanges. Let’s make Stacking Sats P2P the Standard!

Ideas are great but on their own are worth nothing. Implementation only matters and this is definitely not a solo project. On January 1st 2021, a random group of EU plebs from Twitter started a very small telegram group. Looking back on it, it seems like this group was created by the help of a magic invisible hand; it was made up exclusively of low key plebs and we never really interacted with each other before. Yet, somehow, we ended up together in this group and hit it off!

One day, on March 15th, 2021, I shared the first Peach paper with those plebs. And, just like that, I found my co-founders: @czino, @bitcoinlabrador. The Peach telegram group was created on April 22nd, 2021. We started brainstorming, working on the first mock-up, drafting the technical requirements. On January 9th, 2022 it was time for us to meet in real life for the first time to see if this shit was real or not. I came back home after a week, immediately quit my fiat job and went all in.

The company was created on February 23rd, 2022. In April, we got Peach on Android and iPhone for the first time: the idea became a real life product! In June, the Bitcoin VC Ten31 and a few angel investors supported us in our mission to make stacking sats P2P the standard. We have been building the app relentlessly since then! We grew and doubled the team, we attracted an amazing community to support us, got thousands of users to test our app in a close beta environment, validated the product market fit…. And we are just getting started!

Peach is a simple fruit and I am a simple woman. I just want to help people who chose the orange pill. Peach has no pretenses, it’s just delivering the proof of work required for becoming the best gateway for your grandma, your mum, your daughter and your granddaughter. And for you!

I started my life with a single absolute: that the world was mine to shape in the image of my highest values and never to be given up to a lesser standard, no matter how long or hard the struggle. — Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

Peach is not just a product, but also my individualistic journey to reach the best version of myself. Some people will join Peach because they align with my values. But the mass who will use Peach will do so because it’s the best product at their disposal.

@proofofsteph