Tobias Kress
My Motivation to Become a Board Member of the Bitcoin Association Switzerland
My Personal Situation:
I have spent most of my working life in banking, but since I started my own company in January 2018, I have been the CEO of Tatoshi AG, an IT service provider specializing in the development of software solutions for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. With a team of software developers in Serbia, we provide full-stack software development for web and mobile applications. I also support start-ups as a business angel investor, and I am currently invested in four crypto start-ups. As a business angel investor, I sometimes join these start-ups as a CTO or Head of Engineering to apply my IT and management knowledge.
My View on Bitcoin:
I first heard about Bitcoin in March 2013 through a former fellow student. It was introduced to me as the first implementation of Hayek’s idea of denationalized money. Ever since then, I have been fully captivated by the Bitcoin virus. I share Michael Saylor’s view that Bitcoin is the most superior asset in the world. I visited El Salvador last year and enjoyed seeing Bitcoin in daily use. During my stay in Bitcoin Beach, I was able to fully live my life on Bitcoin Lightning payments. It simply works
My current focus area in Bitcoin is the development around zk-rollups for Bitcoin Layer 2s (L2s). Due to my work for Rhino.fi, I am in close contact with some of the most interesting teams working on this topic, such as Citrea, which is building a trust-minimized two-way peg based on the concept of BitVM, and Starkware, which is advocating for the re-activation of OP_CAT (BIP 347). I believe the discussions around Bitcoin L2s will be the dominant topic for the Bitcoin community and might become as controversial as the block size war in 2016-2017. Personally, I see two reasons why Bitcoin needs L2s:
Stablecoins:
Stablecoins are essential for the adoption of Bitcoin as a payment tool. All wallets in El Salvador (Civo & Blink Wallet) allow a seamless swap between Bitcoin and USD. This is considered the key acceptance criterion by the people of El Salvador, allowing users to hedge against BTC price volatility.
Smart Contract Recovery Wallets:
Private key custody is still a challenge for many Bitcoin users. In the Ethereum world, we see increasingly sophisticated concepts of non-custodial smart contract wallets with built-in recovery functionality. Having EVM-compatible L2s on Bitcoin would allow such wallets to be available for Bitcoin holders as well.
What I Would Like to Achieve as a Board Member:
I would like to facilitate discussions on technical innovations around Bitcoin. Based on my network in the community, we should invite key individuals who are working on new concepts and give them a chance to present their ideas. This will help all of us stay updated on technical innovations and form our personal opinions on trends and tech discussions. In the past, we had great speakers at Bitcoin events in Zürich, such as Andreas Antonopoulos, Adam Back, Peter Todd, and many more. I would like to revive this tradition and help spread Bitcoin knowledge throughout the Swiss community.
Bitcoin Association Financials
I am not a financial expert, and I certainly do not want to become the treasurer. However, I would like to share some thoughts on how we could spend some of the funds owned by the Bitcoin Association Switzerland. I think the best thing to do would be to support some Bitcoin Core developers in their work. These individuals rely on financial support from the community, and every franc invested there will help Bitcoin to grow.
SKILLS & Know-how
Management Skills
Familiar with start-up and corporate world
People leadership / motivation
Product strategy development
Technical Skills
Bitcoin, DeFi & Web3
IT architecture & security architecture
Could computing & IT infrastructure
Mobile app development
High performance web portals
Project & program management (SCRUM, SAFe, Kanban, Waterfall)
Certified SAFe Agilist (SA)
Teaching Skills
Guest lecturer on “Agile Project Management“ at Hochschule der Deutschen Bundesbank
Speaker at several international conferences on Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies
LANGUAGES
German (native)
English (business fluent)
Application Documents