In a financial landscape often focused on Bitcoin as merely an asset, Borja Martel Seward, Co-Founder and CEO of Roxom and RoxomTV, offers a refreshing, Bitcoin-native vision. His companies are not just in the crypto space; they are building foundational pillars directly on top of the Bitcoin network. This interview delves into Roxom’s Bitcoin-denominated exchange for real-world assets and RoxomTV’s 100% BTC treasury media operation, exploring how this unique approach shapes decision-making, capital efficiency, and user alignment. Join us as Borja shares his journey, insights into the future of Bitcoin capital markets, and invaluable advice for aspiring entrepreneurs in the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Ishan Pandey: Hi Borja, it’s a pleasure to welcome you to our “Behind the Startup” series. Could you share your journey and what led you to establish Roxom and RoxomTV?
Borja Martel Seward: Hey Ishan, it’s so good to be here. Thank you so much for the opportunity to have this exchange and interview. I am Borja, I’m 28, I’ve been in Bitcoin since I was 14 years old, and Bitcoin has changed my life ever since. I previously co-founded Lemon, one of the largest Bitcoin and crypto companies in Latin America. I exited the business around two years ago and had my sabbatical year.
For me, Lemon was about a mission of providing accessibility to the Bitcoin world throughout Latin America. However, this new phase at Roxom represents something different – it’s about unleashing Bitcoin’s economy. What we’re doing at Roxom and RoxomTV is building key pillars that are missing in this emerging Bitcoin economy.
Our thesis is that every single currency in the world has its own capital markets, so it’s inevitable that Bitcoin will develop its own capital markets – and this is exactly what we’re building. On the other hand, for RoxomTV, we believe that Bitcoin, as this new emerging and super strong currency and monetary system, should have its own dedicated media to understand what is going on. RoxomTV is about being this global hub 24/7, just like Bloomberg TV – where if anybody wants to know what’s going on with the Bitcoin markets right now, they can turn on RoxomTV.
Ishan Pandey: Roxom operates as a Bitcoin-denominated exchange, allowing users to trade traditional assets using BTC. What inspired this model, and how does it address current gaps in the financial ecosystem?
Borja Martel Seward: At Roxom, we are a Bitcoin-denominated exchange. What this means is that any person, any fund, any investor can trade all sorts of stocks, bonds, commodities, ETFs, cryptocurrencies, FX – really any asset. They can trade it all against Bitcoin, using Bitcoin as a unit of account and Bitcoin as the base currency.
We are doing this because every single currency on the planet has its own capital markets. The Argentine peso has BYMA, the British pound has the London Stock Exchange, the dollar has Wall Street with NYSE and NASDAQ. It’s a natural step, a natural evolution for Bitcoin to develop its own capital markets. In the same way that the pound has the London Stock Exchange and the dollar has Wall Street, now Bitcoin has Roxom.
We truly believe that we will see a downfall of Wall Street to second place, in the same way that Amsterdam markets fell second to the London Stock Exchange and the London Stock Exchange fell second to Wall Street. We understand that Wall Street will fall second to a new market, and we understand that new champion market will definitely be the Bitcoin markets.
Ishan Pandey: RoxomTV is described as a Bitcoin-native media network with a 100% BTC treasury. How does this work and how does the financial structure influence your content strategy and operational decisions?
Borja Martel Seward: At the end of the day, RoxomTV is a media house. Both Roxom and RoxomTV have Bitcoin treasuries and our ledger is kept in Bitcoin. Even the assets we don’t have in Bitcoin – all of our treasury, trades, and investments are accounted for in Bitcoin.
Let me give you an example: if we invest one million dollars in a given asset, which equals one thousand Bitcoins, and then in two years that investment is five million dollars but in Bitcoin terms it’s only five hundred Bitcoins, well then we went down from a thousand Bitcoins to five hundred Bitcoins – we’re at a 50% loss. In the other scenario, if that same investment was now worth two thousand Bitcoins, we’ve done a 100% increase in our Bitcoins.
At the end of the day, what’s important is that not only do we have Bitcoin, but everything we do is Bitcoin-denominated. Whatever investment or assets we have, we do our P&L in Bitcoin. If our portfolio is worth more Bitcoin, then we are winning. If our portfolio is worth less Bitcoin, then we are losing.
For us, it’s very important to have Bitcoin revenue and Bitcoin-first operations. Making money for us means making Bitcoin – this is fundamental to how we operate and think about success.
This affects our structural decisions completely. For RoxomTV, this means we have to do amazing live coverage of all the Bitcoin markets so we can provide the best insights and intel. Our mission is to transform the Bitcoin community into true market insiders. We want to provide the best insights, market color, and information on what’s happening with Bitcoin’s price – why it’s going up, when it’s going up, why it’s going down, when it’s going down. We want to be the beating pulse of Bitcoin.
Ishan Pandey: You’ve introduced concepts like Bitcoin Native IPOs and the Roxolid Layer 2 solution. Could you elaborate on these innovations and their significance in the broader crypto landscape?
Borja Martel Seward: Right now, we have this wave of Bitcoin treasury companies – it’s the first time in history we have Bitcoin-denominated companies, even though they’re listed in traditional exchanges. We understand this is a trend, and we’ve been working on Roxom for more than a year, so this confirms our thesis.
What we see for the future is that new companies with Bitcoin business models and Bitcoin revenues will want to go public, but not in any market – in Bitcoin markets. They can raise Bitcoin when selling their equity, issue Bitcoin bonds where they directly raise Bitcoin, and pay Bitcoin dividends to their shareholders. Imagine being a shareholder of companies and getting Bitcoin as dividends!
The completely global and neutral characteristics of Bitcoin make it very suitable for public markets because essentially anybody from the world can become your investor. Bitcoin’s accessibility is very easy compared to traditional stock markets.
As for our layer two solution, this is something we envision for the long-term future. Once we have hundreds of billions, if not trillions of dollars in volume of traditional assets, we will begin tokenizing all those traditional assets to bring them on-chain.
This is groundbreaking, Ishan. This is marking the future of capital markets – not only crypto, but putting crypto and Bitcoin at the center of the global financial scene. This is like building the New York Stock Exchange in the 1700s. We can see it with Bitcoin treasury companies now, and this is only going to accelerate.
Ishan Pandey: Roxom has secured significant funding from notable investors. How do you plan to utilize these resources to scale your operations and expand your market presence?
Borja Martel Seward: We are very happy to have received backing from amazing and notable investors. To be honest, our partners have been our partners for a long time from my previous company, and for them to be participating in Roxom again is a complete honor.
We are very austere, which means we use what we need. We like squeezing water out of rocks. For us, it’s all about being lean, being agile, shipping the products that our customers want and love, adding value to the ecosystem, adding value to crypto, adding value to our customers every single day.
These funds will be used to work very hard, but also to be very efficient, very austere, and keep ourselves lean and tight. We are the kind of entrepreneurs that love to do things with nothing.
Ishan Pandey: With RoxomTV broadcasting on platforms like X, Rumble, and Twitch, how do you envision its role in educating and engaging the Bitcoin community?
Borja Martel Seward: For us, RoxomTV is about transforming all the market and industry participants into true market and industry insiders. Our goal is to cover live, right here, right now, with perishable information – information that in one hour won’t be useful anymore because things change – and provide that value to our customers.
Today, if you want to know what’s going on in global finance, you tune into Bloomberg TV and get a perfect view of what’s happening. However, if you want to know exactly what’s going on with Bitcoin right now – why Bitcoin is going up or down – you have absolutely no way. That’s what we want to address.
We’re not necessarily here for education or convincing people to come into Bitcoin. We’re here for facilitating insider information and transforming the broader crypto and Bitcoin public into true industry insiders, providing the best market color, insights, and information that nobody else would be able to provide.
Ishan Pandey: For entrepreneurs looking to build in the Bitcoin space, what lessons have you learned from your journey with Roxom that you’d like to share?
Borja Martel Seward: Be real, find real problems to solve, try to understand the future – what a hyper-Bitcoinized future will look like. In the same way that we’re plugging capital markets into Bitcoin, which is inevitable, there are plenty of inevitable things that will happen in a Bitcoin economy.
The best thing I can say is try to see what problems Bitcoin has today and solve them, and try to foresee what a Bitcoinized world looks like so we can start building the services and products that we will use in a couple of years, today.
After that, dream big, always dream big, be good, be kind, and you shall be successful.
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