Interview with Yuri Yerofeyev, Founder at Tetrapolar, a Bitcoin escrow service for global trade (commodities and services).
X @yuvlero
What problem does Tetrapolar solve, and why does it matter now more than ever?
We have Bitcoin as censorship resistant money. If you are unbanked or debanked, you now have access to the best and hardest money on earth, which is Bitcoin, and nobody can say no to you. You simply download the wallet and you use it.
However, when it comes to B2B use cases, the problem of trust was not solved yet. In B2B cross-border settlement, trust is paramount because normally you would use fiat rails to settle your invoices, and that involves risking your money. 
For larger deals, traditionally, businesses would use fiat escrow platforms or banks, as well as products such as letters of credit.
In the Bitcoin world, however, this can be done in a non-custodial way. And that’s what we are solving with Tetrapolar. We are removing the trust barrier between counterparties who are located in different parts of the world so that they can settle their business safely and securely.
What market opportunity excites Tetrapolar most right now?
Every year we see that banks become stricter. They scrutinize their clients more and more. KYC and KYB are increasing in scope. Large companies can afford to deal with this. However, smaller companies as well as businesses from underserved markets have a hard time not just dealing with these banks, but even getting a bank account. Many markets on the planet are cut off from traditional financial rails due to sanctions and other trade restrictions. And I believe that this is our lowest-hanging-fruit target audience: businesses that have something to offer on the international trade arena but cannot use the traditional financial infrastructure.
What’s the biggest risk or bet Tetrapolar is taking right now?
We are already seeing that Bitcoin is becoming the reserve currency of the world. Slowly but surely, it is being adopted by businesses and governments alike all over the world. However, various jurisdictions have different approaches to treating Bitcoin. We are betting on those countries that embrace Bitcoin as a valid currency for settling international trade. As a good example, we can see that Russia has fully legalized import and export operations using cryptocurrency. We foresee that this trend will continue and more and more countries will embrace Bitcoin as an uncensorable settlement layer for their global business.
As Founder of Tetrapolar, how do you build and maintain company culture as you scale?
Our vision is quite simple: the world will run under the Bitcoin standard. So, I, as the founder, and anybody who will work for the company in the future, must be sold on this vision and the potential to liberate the global economy from the tentacles of the international banking system.
Walk us through Tetrapolar’s product – what makes it unique in the market?
In traditional escrow arrangements such as fiat escrow platforms or letters of credit, you have to fully trust the platform or the bank that you deal with. The money is normally held in an escrow account controlled by the bank, and it is at the bank’s discretion that the money will be released.
As the amount of documentation keeps growing, very often it happens that businesses may lack this or that document and then the bank has a reason to hold the money indefinitely, thus hurting their own clients. At Tetrapolar the counterparties deal with each other it is essentially a peer-to-peer platform in which Tetrapolar only acts as a backup key or uses its key for fund recovery.
Each deal on Tetrapolar is its own multi-signature wallet
Each deal on Tetrapolar is its own multi-signature wallet which is controlled by the buyer and the seller. A third key which belongs to Tetrapolar only activates after a certain period of time and is not used in a normal scenario. Both the buyer and the seller have to sign the release transaction so that the funds are released to the seller or a refund transaction to refund the buyer. In case of dispute, the buyer and the seller settle it in a legal court of their choosing per their agreement. Thus, Tetrapolar’s role is limited to pure coordination via software. This way, businesses have a secure, non-custodial, and discrete way to deal with each other internationally.
How does Tetrapolar differentiate from competitors, and what’s your moat?
I already mentioned how we differ from traditional finance escrow services. However, there have been various attempts at Bitcoin-related escrow services as well, but they were all specialized. For example, Hodl Hodl, a popular peer-to-peer trading platform, uses escrow for trading Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency for fiat in a peer-to-peer fashion. Debifi, another escrow platform, serves the Bitcoin-backed loan market. Tetrapolar, in comparison, is a neutral escrow service that can be used for all kinds of use cases including the above-mentioned ones. We position ourselves as a professional escrow service for global trade (commodities and services), and that’s why we aim at that target audience.
How does Tetrapolar handle custom integration requests from large clients?
We haven’t had such requests yet, but our roadmap does include the ability to provide a fully functional API to institutional clients.
How do you balance short-term execution with Tetrapolar’s long-term vision?
We always have our vision of a Bitcoin-based global economy in mind. However, we must hold our hand on the pulse and see what’s going on both in the Bitcoin industry and geopolitically. With the advent of AI, things are changing quite rapidly, so we must remain flexible and adaptable. So, if our long-term vision does not change, our short-term execution may change depending on circumstances.
This interview was conducted via Lightning.news
