The Good

• 10 gift cards and 14 discount codes from 20 hand-picked Bitcoin brands brought to market
• Open Source Culture launched with the Manifesto in February 2025
• Held and completed two Open Source Culture Creator Contests with community involvement from artists, art lovers and sponsors, resulting in a public domain multimedia artwork and the Bitcoin Wall(paper) Calendar
• Gave away hundreds of thousands of sats as well as hundreds of dollars worth of gift cards and memberships via zapvertising, contests, games and giveaways
• Introduced a variety of innovative concepts:

1. Custom AI designs for gift cards
2. Gift cards which act as referral links
3. Offering one-time use premium discount codes (AKA Reverse Affiliate Marketing)
4. The ability for members to become micro-investors in the company via the Orange 21 membership
5. Creating a synergy between for-profit and charitable causes via the Open Source Culture initiative

• Launched a new division in August: Kontext Store of Value offering the book I put together along with some Bitcoin, nostr, love & freedom inspired merch. Unlike SATOSH.EE, the Kontext Store also accepts fiat payments
• 0% of the marketing budget went to centralized tech giants: all marketing was done either via unpaid posts on socials, different types of zapvertising on nostr, boosts on Stacker News, and ad hoc guerilla marketing at Bitcoin meetups in Auckland as well as conferences in Riga and Helsinki

The Bad

• Pivoted from offering both fiat and BTC payment rails to BTC-only due to major payment processors not supporting gift card resale businesses. That meant losing a huge potential market, as well as an orange-pilling opportunity through offering better deals than our fiat-based competitors, and consequently focusing only on the Bitcoin niche
• Although hands-on feedback has been positive, traction in terms of signups and sales has been underwhelming. Zapvertising on nostr, while philosophically aligned, has not converted well — leaving buying behaviour unclear
• Operating as a single-founder studio across several directions meant progress was spread thin
• Multiple failed attempts to raise Bitcoin-native funding
• Due to technical issues, insufficient funding and manpower, the website was mostly in a polished MVP (Minimum Viable Product) state for most of the year, with a limited catalogue and missing some essential features
• As the initial focus has been solely on the Bitcoin niche, the service does not yet fully deliver on the goal of expanding the number of goods and services that can be bought for Bitcoin (if you exclude the physical goods on Kontext Store of Value)
• Launch of the Affiliate membership level (called the Tribe) has been delayed several times due to either technical issues or time constraints

The Ugly

• January: Loyalty system hacked → ~100k sats stolen and site offline for nearly a month while fixing
• Referral-link nightmare (tilde ~ issue) → months lost, two hosting migrations (Rocket → Cloudways → Krystal)
• Company still operating at a loss; at one point I had to resort to farm work to pay bills. Not exactly the type of “Proof of Work” I had in mind, but proof of work nevertheless

So what’s next?

• Finally launch the Tribe — proper affiliate program with generous recurring BTC commissions for content creators
• 5x the catalogue (100+ brands by the end of 2026)
• Add physical products, shipping worldwide from SATOSH.EE (not just Kontext Store)
• Expand the Open Source Culture section, host more contests, publish the Bitcoin Wall Calendar 2027
• Regular updates to the YouTube channel with SATOSH.EE/Bitcoin/nostr tutorials and transparent build-in-public updates
• Raise a small Bitcoin-native round, team up with a co-founder or bootstrap until cashflow positive — whichever comes first
• First profitable quarter (fingers crossed!)