TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast
Tales from the Crypt #58: André Neves
- André Neves co-founded Koala Studio to build microtransaction-based games on the Lightning Network, launching Lightning Chess last week with 1,500+ accounts and ~500 funded accounts in the first week.
- Gaming serves as a trojan horse for Bitcoin adoption, especially among younger, internet-native users who already understand in-game currencies and can earn satoshis with real economic value unlike V-Bucks.
- Lightning Network enables new business models and user experiences impossible on-chain: instant payments, spectator betting on live matches, granular prop bets, and streamlined onboarding via recovery keys and voucher systems.
- Surveillance and data privacy remain core motivations; André uses YubiKeys for all logins, avoids Gmail and Amazon Echo, and advocates teaching people to become "good internet citizens" despite the UX friction.
- The Lightning Network has ~6,000 nodes after two years and represents the third-largest network by node count globally; developer interest is rising as REST APIs and gRPC abstractions make Lightning more accessible than low-level Bitcoin protocol work.
- André's experience living in Brazil, UAE, India, and the U.S. shapes his belief that the eastern world (Japan, Taiwan, Singapore) may lead Bitcoin adoption faster than the U.S. due to lower regulatory friction and higher technological leapfrog adoption.