Jakob Schillinger: Future of Money, Digital Credit, & Bitcoin

Joe Burnett sits down with Jakob Schillinger — Founder and CEO of Hermetica — for episode 4 of The Income Show. They explore the future of money, the evolution of fixed income, and why digital credit is one of the largest untapped markets in finance: what separates a durable yield product from past-cycle failures, the role of transparency, institutional-grade risk controls and low volatility, lessons from recent DeFi exploits, and Hermetica’s path to multi-billion-dollar scale. They close on Bitcoin as a world reserve asset, the intersection of AI and Bitcoin, and how a shifting interest-rate regime will redefine every digital credit issuer’s priorities.

In This Episode

• 00:00:45 — Introduction to Jakob Schillinger and Hermetica
• 00:01:44 — Discovering Bitcoin and the White Paper
• 00:03:10 — Initial Skepticism and Views on Digital Credit
• 00:04:51 — Money as a Technology
• 00:06:41 — The Evolution of Fixed Income and Bonds
• 00:08:12 — The Scale of the Digital Credit Market
• 00:09:37 — Success and Adoption of STRC
• 00:11:16 — Market Feedback and the Importance of Cash Reserves
• 00:13:10 — Stress Testing Digital Credit Performance
• 00:14:19 — Developing the Underwritable Yield Layer
• 00:17:16 — What is Hermetica?
• 00:21:52 — The History and Failure of Past Yield Products
• 00:24:36 — Transparency and Institutional Grade Risk Controls
• 00:26:44 — The Importance of Low Volatility in Credit
• 00:28:09 — Reflexivity and Hedging Downside Risks
• 00:31:44 — Infrastructure and Building on the Stacks Layer 2
• 00:33:35 — Lessons from Recent DeFi Exploits
• 00:38:05 — Simplification for Higher Security
• 00:40:01 — Scalability to Multi-Billion Dollar Levels
• 00:41:19 — Bitcoin’s Future as a World Reserve Asset
• 00:44:07 — Predictions on AI and the Future of Work
• 00:47:27 — The Connection Between AI and Bitcoin
• 00:49:47 — Impact of Changing Interest Rates
• 00:51:33 — Future Priorities for Digital Credit Issuers
• 00:54:03 — Closing thoughts