How crazy is the space?

Philipp Pieper has been in crypto space since 2014, lived in the USA for a total of 16 years and experienced all sorts of crazy things. Today, with the tokenization platform “Swarm”, he offers a regulated staking service for institutional customers, is a member of Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner’s Digital Finance Forum, and has witnessed Lisbon’s development into a crypto hub at first hand. BTC-ECHO met the entrepreneur for an interview on the sidelines of the Staking Summit.

BTC-ECHO: You have been to Lisbon several times. How did you experience the development into a crypto hub?

Philip Pieper: That goes way back. Already in the early 2000s, Lisbon became a good location for outsourcing. But the city flew a bit under the radar because many were looking towards Eastern Europe. The reasons were simple: good quality for a good price in a beautiful setting with creative potential.

Then two things happened. First the “Digital Nomad” initiative and second the advantageous tax legislation. They acted with a lot of clarity to give the space the opportunity to transfer crypto funds into the normal fiat system. That was already a strong driver that spread through the network effect. Today, Lisbon is, alongside Berlin, the veritable crypto hub in Europe.

Is tax evasion what drives digital nomads?

One can only see it that way. I think the drive is not only to save taxes, but also to innovate. Before I’m in other environments with lots of question marks, I’d rather come here.

How crazy is the crypto community in Lisbon?

I’ve actually seen much crazier things elsewhere in the world. When I came to Space in 2014/15, I was living in Palo Alto next to a crypto house – the “Love Nest”. There were all sorts of interesting people coming and going.

But I also saw investors in Silicon Valley at the time saying, “I only invest if I did ayahuasca with you.” As such, the behavior in the crypto community in Lisbon was less shocking.

At that time it was a very early phase in which obscure people were involved in the community from a libertarian point of view. These weren’t just techno bros, they were people who had just lost faith in the system. Who wanted to build an alternative system.

As an industry, however, we have developed further. I’m just referring to the institutional or banking landscape, which you can also find in the meantime. The crowd has changed and can no longer be compared to the community from back then. And that’s just as well.

Are the topics of crypto, bitcoin and blockchain also reaching the local population?

I think this is a difficult subject. The people here are not yet very wealthy. Many of the digital nomads, whether crypto or not, are contributing to gentrification. People come with start-up or crypto money and buy nice properties. The locals here are very skeptical about this, but are also happy about the economic flow that is taking place here.