In this conversation, Sunny Ray sits down with Sergej Kotlian, founder of Bitrefill, for one of their first real conversations despite years of crossing paths in Bitcoin circles. Kotlian traces his path from a Swedish engineering background and a location-based advertising startup to falling down the Bitcoin rabbit hole around 2014, learning as much from Bitcoin's chaotic, trollish online communities as from its idealistic thought leaders. He explains how Bitrefill began as a side project offering prepaid phone top ups, tapping into a global market of five billion prepaid phone users, before evolving into a gift card platform that lets people shop with crypto at major retailers like Walmart and Uber Eats. Kotlian discusses why staying in crypto rather than constantly cashing out to fiat matters, critiques the newly announced PayPal Bitcoin feature as more press release than substance, and pushes back on the Bitcoin community narrative that spending coins is wasteful. He closes by describing crypto as an unbundled, open network of interoperable services, with Lightning positioned to tie everything together.
Bitrefill founder Sergej Kotlian on turning Bitcoin into everyday spending money and why PayPal's crypto move barely matters.
Before Bitcoin, what was your background, were you a techie or a business guy?
I'm a mix. I went to engineering school and started building websites as a teenager, which I did through high school and university. I briefly studied media technology and worked in media for about a year, but quickly realized I wanted to be as far from it as possible. After that I helped launch a location based ads startup in Sweden in 2010 as CTO, then eventually fell down the Bitcoin rabbit hole.
What was the original offering when Bitrefill launched?
We started with phone refills, which we still do today. Globally there are more phones than people, and about 70 percent of phones worldwide are prepaid, meaning around five billion people rely on prepaid plans. Bitrefill let people exchange bitcoin for a top up of their prepaid phone balance. In some countries that was literally the only thing you could buy with bitcoin at the time.
How has Bitrefill evolved from phone refills into what it is today?
Over time we added gift cards for e-commerce services, and we noticed that side grew even faster, so that's our main focus now while we keep phone refills alive. Today most users buy gift cards and use them to shop anywhere, which gives better privacy since no account is required, and better pricing since we buy gift cards in bulk at a discount.
What are your thoughts on the PayPal Bitcoin news?
From what I've read, PayPal isn't letting you withdraw or deposit coins, it's just another currency balance like euros or dollars. It's a good sign that big companies are paying attention, but I don't think it changes much in practice. It's similar to when companies announced they accept Bitcoin payments, you get a press release, people retweet it, and then not much actually happens.
What's something you believe about Bitcoin that many Bitcoiners would disagree with?
There's a narrative, especially after the 2017 scaling conflict, that you shouldn't buy stuff with your coins because they'll be worth more later. In practice that argument just tells people to live on fiat, hold Bitcoin as a speculative investment, and neglect privacy. I'd never tell anyone to sell their Bitcoin, but if they choose to spend it, we just want to offer the best service for that.
Can people actually buy everyday things like food with Bitrefill?
Yes, plenty of people literally live on Bitrefill. You can use food delivery services like Uber Eats, Doordash and Grubhub, or get gift cards for specific chains like Burger King and Chipotle, plus Whole Foods and Walmart for groceries. So there's a lot you can actually buy day to day.
How do you see Bitcoin and companies like yours getting to a point where people never need to touch fiat?
Crypto is about open networks, like the web, so no single service needs to provide everything. We're seeing massive unbundling where different services handle different needs and interoperate. As a business we try to provide as many services as we can, but we're one part of the Bitcoin network, and Lightning is the technology I think will tie all these pieces together into a smoother experience.
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