The Bitcoin startup space is not an easy landscape to survive in and few have captured the spirit of decentralization as authentically as Hodl Hodl.
Founded by self-proclaimed “paranoid crypto anarchists” in 2017, Hodl Hodl has steadfastly remained a beacon of Bitcoin’s original promise: freedom, sovereignty, and anonymity.
At the helm of this rebellious yet refreshingly straightforward enterprise is Anna, Hodl Hodl’s CEO, who rose through the ranks after starting as an intern volunteer for the Baltic Honeybadger conference.
Her journey encapsulates the essence of Bitcoin itself: bold, unconventional, and empowering.
Anna’s Bitcoin story began modestly enough during her university days, initially sparked by curiosity rather than revolution.
“I was studying in university, studying finance and business, curious about everything,” Anna recalled.
“Crypto was booming back then, and I heard about Baltic Honeybadger that was happening in Riga.”
She continues: “I started helping out with the conference, applied to volunteer there, help out with conference organization just out of curiosity as an intern volunteer.”
The opportunity turned into something much bigger: “The two guys who were building Hodl Hodl, they were the ones putting up that conference in Riga, Latvia, where I’m based.”
“This is basically how I started, enrolled with the conference, started helping out, and they loved the job that I did apparently and offered me a job after that. It’s been eight years, and now around a year ago I’ve been promoted to be the CEO.”
Today, Anna leads a thriving team of around 30 people at Hodl Hodl, a company that’s proudly never compromised on its founding principles.
The key to Hodl Hodl’s success, Anna emphasizes, lies in their unshakeable commitment to simplicity and caution:
“We started with the right values, with the right intentions, and our core values have always been self-custody, peer-to-peer.
“We never experimented with touching customers’ funds or earning extra margins on some extra features that are totally unnecessary. We’ve been simple and straightforward with what we’ve been doing.”
Indeed, the core of Hodl Hodl’s model is elegantly straightforward. Unlike most centralized platforms, Hodl Hodl never holds user funds.
Instead, it relies on multisig escrow wallets, creating a trustless peer-to-peer environment. As Anna explained clearly:
“What makes Hodl Hodl non-custodial and how is it different from other peer-to-peer platforms is that for the duration of the whole trade, people don’t send money to us.
“They would be sending money to the multisig escrow that we generate for each trading or lending contract.”
She elaborated on the technical design: “If you’re trying to buy Bitcoin from someone or lend stable coins against Bitcoin on our platform, the Bitcoin you have would be locked in a two out of three multisig for Hodl Hodl.
“And the keys go to the buyer, seller, or lender and borrower, and the platform.
“This way everyone holds only one of three keys, which gives us no power over the contract (other than to be the arbiter when needed) and there’s no way we can move the money out of escrow without other parties collaborating.”
Despite the volatility and turbulence that define the Bitcoin landscape, Hodl Hodl has stood firm, weathering storms that toppled giants.
Anna attributes this resilience to the company’s founding values, saying, “Seeing other companies in the space failing we quickly learned the lesson that third parties are security holes, and we should stick to the model we have.”
However, staying pure in a space plagued by regulatory ambiguity hasn’t been without challenges.
Anna shared insights into their ongoing struggle to integrate Lightning Network, a promising but inherently custodial solution:
“We’ve actually been pro-Lightning for forever, and were the first peer-to-peer platform to introduce Lightning to Hodl Hodl back in 2019.
“But unfortunately, we had to remove it due to the custodial way of the implementation that we had at that moment.”
She explained further: “The only way we are able to operate without collecting any user data is by remaining fully non-custodial and not touching users’ funds at any point of the deal.“
“That’s what keeps us out of the regulatory environment. The way Lightning worked on Hodl Hodl was somewhat custodial, so it was a risk for us and our users.”
Still, Anna remains optimistic and pragmatic. Hodl Hodl is currently exploring Liquid multisig solutions in collaboration with Blockstream.
“We’re looking into Liquid a lot and Liquid multisigs because Hodl Hodl operates on a multisig basis, and Liquid multisigs are more doable than something like that on Lightning.
“We’re actually talking to the Blockstream team…Hopefully by the end of the year, we’re going to develop an actual multisig on Liquid that’s usable.”
Under Anna’s leadership, Hodl Hodl has also expanded into lending with their “Lend at Hodl Hodl”.
Unlike infamous failed lending ventures, Hodl Hodl’s lending solutions are meticulously safeguarded. “It’s not rocket science,” Anna joked modestly, “just over-collateralized loans, self-custody, and multisig.”
Reflecting on Hodl Hodl’s broader mission, Anna passionately underscored their focus on developing regions often neglected by traditional financial systems.
“The biggest markets of ours are emerging markets, and that’s what we are trying to focus on, providing our services in markets like Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia, because those are developing regions that actually need solutions like that.”
She elaborated on the importance of their work for the unbanked: “In the US, probably everyone can go and register an account on Binance or Coinbase and just use those solutions, provide their data.”
“But regions that we are trying to focus on are, for example unbanked regions of Africa where we are trying to introduce those people to new financial systems because these people don’t have access to the traditional finance system the way we know it and are used to using it.
“I know so many people for whom Hodl Hodl is just the only option to buy and sell bitcoin.”
When asked about Bitcoin’s future, Anna humorously yet genuinely pondered a question for Satoshi Nakamoto himself: “Why didn’t he burn his Bitcoin?”
“That’s the question that keeps me awake at night sometimes because obviously the amount of money that’s there and what’s going to happen if the person ever comes back and starts moving it.”
Anna’s leadership, characterized by authenticity, humor, and an unwavering commitment to Bitcoin’s foundational ethos, positions Hodl Hodl as a powerful model of what Bitcoin businesses can, and perhaps should, aspire to be.
Her team’s approach reflects the core principles that make Bitcoin revolutionary: security, sovereignty, and trustless exchange.
As Hodl Hodl moves forward under her guidance, they are not just operating another exchange, they are preserving Bitcoin’s original promise in an industry often tempted by compromise and centralization.
For Bitcoiners who value true financial sovereignty, Anna and her team are fostering a quiet revolution, enabling people to transact exactly as Satoshi Nakamoto envisioned: one peer-to-peer transaction at a time.
