Giacomo Zucco

I’m just a regular guy who loves Bitcoin.

I was born in Milan in 1983, my formal education was in Physics, my “fiat” career was in Technology Consulting for a few years. I quit it to go “Full Bitcoin” in 2014. Since then I founded and co-founded a good number of small Bitcoin startups; some of them were quite successful, while some others were quite unsuccessful.

I sold most of my company shares in 2018 to focus on my family and on freelance education/consulting activities. I supported the development of some non-profit open-source Bitcoin projects over the years, and I still do.

I currently live and operate in Switzerland (it’s a fine place, but I must confess I often miss Italian food).

This website gives you easy access to all my public content: articles, presentations, speeches, interviews — in both written and video format.

Furthermore, you can use this website to monitor all the future public events (both physical and virtual) and to register for all my upcoming workshops, seminars, and courses.

Finally, this website gives you an easy way to book my time for something, either public (conference speeches, podcast participations, etc.) or private (personal consultings). Powered by the wonderful BTCPayServer, the website allows you to part with your precious satoshis (either via BP or via LNP) in order to register for paid seminars or to book some of my time.

My content is usually about Bitcoin. Ok, I’ll try to be more precise.

I love talking, writing, teaching, and consulting about Bitcoin in all its aspects: either technological, economic, or political. I usually talk about the historical motivations for Bitcoin’s design, the social and financial implications of its success, the interaction of its technical trade-offs, the challenges (and the related business opportunities) for its adoption, the unique features which distinguish it from all the “crypto” rip-off clones or the “blockchain” snake-oil buzzwords.

I consult companies and individuals about rationales and strategies for financial exposure to the new asset, techniques and best practices to keep it safe, possible industrial use cases of the LNP/BP technology stack. I especially enjoy debunking nonsense.

I’m self-taught in computer science or information security (which is a bad thing), but I do my best to keep updated about best practices and industry standards, honestly presenting trade-offs and risks. I’m also self-taught in economics or finance (which is a good thing), but I am still human, so I can be wrong about those topics sometimes.

First of all, you don’t necessarily have to pay to listen to me: this website is full of existing content you can access for free. But if you want to ask me to invest some of my future time in an activity of your preference, yes, I will ask you to show your commitment with a small donation.

In the last years, the demand for interactions simply ended up exceeding my supply of time. When that happens, you have a phenomenon known as “scarcity”. I could try to organize my schedule prioritizing interactions by request time, social standing of the counterpart, feelings of personal friendship, degree of interest in the specific topic, opportunity-cost for the specific time-slot. But these strategies don’t scale.

The free market offers a more versatile way to allocate resources: a price system. So I will use that. Which is also a good way to responsibilize both of us, during our interaction.

Oh dear Lord, no! That would probably require us to negotiate and sign some boring legal paperwork all the time. Also, it would require me to pay additional taxes (Taxation is Theft, by the way).

I already have a regular consultancy job, with regular institutional clients (mostly within the banking industry in Switzerland), who pay with regular fiat bank wires and sign regular fiat contracts. That amount of regular bureaucracy is enough for me.

On this website, I just ask you to make a donation in kind (specifically, gifting me some of those digital collectibles known as satoshis) to help my non-profit Bitcoin activities. Then, based on the generosity of said donation, I will decide if I feel like donating to you, in turn, some of my time. Granted, since I have a very systematic and predictable brain, I guess you can expect a very systematic and predictable relation between your donation in sats and my donation in time.

But this doesn’t mean that our relationship represents any sort of economic trade, legally speaking. It’s just an exchange of gifts.

Not at all — you can. As I said, I have an “official” job in consultancy.

My Swiss company can issue legally valid invoices and accept bank payments. That’s actually how I pay my (fiat) bills. I also cooperate with several companies abroad, which can work as formal proxies, if needed.

If you are interested in that kind of professional relationship, feel free to get in touch with me using the contact form. We can negotiate a formal engagement, either directly with me or with other consultants assigned by me.

If after said process we end up deciding that I, personally, will be the best guy for the job, I may actually kindly ask you to get back to this website anyway, to book the best time for our consulting sessions, board meetings, conference calls, lessons, webinars, etc. In that case I will give you a code to bypass the “donation” process and book directly.

Sadly, that may be the case, yes. But ask yourself: was I really going to answer you in a reasonable timeframe anyway? Probably not, right?

As I said, I honestly think this method, while a bit “brutal”, will prove way more efficient and reliable. It will also increase commitment and responsibility for both of us. Time is scarce, time-management is hard, social media are communication black holes, conversations are entropic, overlaps are messy, opportunity costs are high. But we can still be friends. Right? Right???

Sorry mom, I know you’d like to call me every day. I hope you stacked enough sats for that, now please go to the booking form.

No, not really. I’m more a Bitcoin-only kind of a guy.

During my job, I often have to mention, explain, or even suggest many non-Bitcoin projects, products, or protocols. A few examples: Tails, Ubuntu, Tor, IRC, Git, Email, Internet, etc. But nothing which is even remotely “crypto” or “blockchain”.

If you are deeply interested in why that’s the case, we can discuss my reasoning in this regard. If you really want to present me something of this kind, feel free to book some of my time. But please manage your expectations: I will probably just do my best to explain to you why I think it’s not a good idea.

There are some exceptions, to be fair, but very few: in the crypto or blockchain space, I only promote the following non-Bitcoin projects: ZuxBux, ScamCoinBot, Etleneum, PonzIco and MyBlockchain. That’s all.

Well, I mean, if you give me your sats, sure, why not!