Speaker 1: People really misunderstand crypto because it's treated like a vertical
Speaker 1: category when it's really a horizontal category. And what I
Speaker 1: mean by that is going back to my time in media,
Speaker 1: TV or broadcast or radio. Those are vertical categories. You're
Speaker 1: either linear television or terrestrial radio or you're not.
Speaker 2: When you get to digital, digital.
Speaker 1: Is a horizontal platform. Anything that can be digitized ultimately
Speaker 1: will be digitized. So now take that step one step
Speaker 1: further into the crypto space. What is crypto really right?
Speaker 1: Crypto is tokenization, right, so if it can be digitized,
Speaker 1: once it's digitized, it could be tokenized. So what does
Speaker 1: that make crypto. It makes crypto a horizontal platform as well,
Speaker 1: not a vertical category.
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Speaker 3: welcome into the Thinking Crypto podcast. I'm your host Tony Edward,
Speaker 3: and today we're recording at Station three in New York's
Speaker 3: Financial District and my guest is Keith Grossman, who is
Speaker 3: the president at Moonpay.
Speaker 2: Keith.
Speaker 3: Great to have you.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Leally. This is Thinking Crypto. This is between
Speaker 1: two ferns. That's right.
Speaker 3: I'll be Zach Galafanakis.
Speaker 1: So sweet, Okay, thank you, Okay, like I was, I
Speaker 1: just didn't want to take that role on Okay, good,
Speaker 1: So Tony, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm so excited to learn all the details around
Speaker 3: what Moonpay is doing. But also your background fascinates me
Speaker 3: and I have a lot of question with your time
Speaker 3: at a Time and even Wired and much more. But
Speaker 3: let's kick it off with your background. Tell us about
Speaker 3: where you're from and growing up in professional background.
Speaker 1: So I mean I'm boring Tony like I grew up
Speaker 1: in New York City on the Upper East Side. I
Speaker 1: now live on the Upper West Side. I grew up
Speaker 1: in an apartment nine F. I now live in apartment
Speaker 1: nine F. I went to school upstate, and outside of
Speaker 1: Moonpay being downtown, my entire career has been midtown New York. Right,
Speaker 1: So I'm like, as as mentioning to you like a
Speaker 1: two mile bubble boy, right. And I started my career
Speaker 1: out of college. I was a government major in you know,
Speaker 1: at Cornell. And I started my career at Wired as
Speaker 1: an allociate on the business side. And I rose up
Speaker 1: at Conde Nasts from intern up to associate publisher and
Speaker 1: then went over to Bloomberg and I rose to become
Speaker 1: global chief revenue Officer and then from their time where
Speaker 1: I was president for four years, and then came over
Speaker 1: to Moonpey, and I've been at Moonpey for the past
Speaker 1: three years.
Speaker 2: It's been a lot of fun.
Speaker 3: So what a transition? How did you discover blockchain and krypton?
Speaker 3: What made you want to come work in the industry?
Speaker 1: Well, well, so I was never a journalist, right, so
Speaker 1: I was always on the business technology innovation side, right,
Speaker 1: so I get Wired. If you saw, like in twenty
Speaker 1: ten the tablet edition, like when the iPad came out
Speaker 1: that Steve Jobs held up, I was part of the
Speaker 1: team that did that with Scott Dadag and Maya Dresen
Speaker 1: and Harardmittman. And when we took over Ours Technica, we
Speaker 1: launched a predictive algorithm called the rs Accelerator that won
Speaker 1: a Project ISAAC Award for Best Digital Invention. And at Boomberg,
Speaker 1: it was really about bringing all these disparate pieces together
Speaker 1: to launch Boomberg Media. And then ultimately, like we launched
Speaker 1: the events, we launched Boomberg Quick Take, which was social
Speaker 1: mobile video and time was about modernizing this brand, right,
Speaker 1: which explains like why we took.
Speaker 2: It into web three.
Speaker 1: But for me, like I fell in love with crypto
Speaker 1: back in twenty ten, and the editors of Wired came
Speaker 1: to me. I was the associate publisher at the time,
Speaker 1: and they said, will you write a check for us
Speaker 1: to mind bitcoin in our offices? And I said, what's that?
Speaker 1: And they explained it to me and I was like whatever, okay,
Speaker 1: And like the check was I think it was like
Speaker 1: sixty eight hundred dollars and it was when you could
Speaker 1: mine bitcoin with the CPU, like you can't do that.
Speaker 2: Today, right.
Speaker 1: Maya Dresen was actually in the office when this happened,
Speaker 1: which I love because like I have like a like
Speaker 1: I have a validator for this story, like this moment,
Speaker 1: and and like from there they wrote the article and
Speaker 1: like I kind of was fascinated with the space. If
Speaker 1: you ever curious, like why Bloomberg has at crypto as
Speaker 1: a handle, right, Like, like I was part of the
Speaker 1: team that secured that and then ultimately we launched the
Speaker 1: Crypto vertical within Bloomberg, right, you know. But it's always
Speaker 1: been a topic that I loved. It wasn't It was
Speaker 1: really COVID that made me realize and understand what the
Speaker 1: technology could do in terms of connecting people, communities, what
Speaker 1: digital ownership really meant, what the what was actually happening,
Speaker 1: you know, and I think the big epiphany for me
Speaker 1: over that time was that the Internet was absorbing value
Speaker 1: and the movement of value, similar to like back in
Speaker 1: the day when the Internet absorbed telephany, right, like very
Speaker 1: few people remember, there used to be these ads on
Speaker 1: AT and T that were like call call Paris for
Speaker 1: two dollars and fourteen cents a minute, called Japan, or
Speaker 1: for like two dollars and ninety nine cents a minute.
Speaker 1: Those ads don't exist anymore, and it's because the Internet
Speaker 1: absorbed telephany with voice over IP and like drove the
Speaker 1: price down to zero. The phone company still exists, but
Speaker 1: they had to find new ways of making money. I
Speaker 1: saw the same thing happening with blockchain technologies, like value
Speaker 1: was all of being absorbed, and like the movement and
Speaker 1: the distillation of value, all of a sudden was going
Speaker 1: to be democratized, and I thought that that was just
Speaker 1: one of the biggest evolutions you could possibly imagine.
Speaker 3: So, Keith, you are an og I mean twenty ten.
Speaker 1: Look like in media, I was the youngest person almost
Speaker 1: every job I ever took in crypto, I am a cryptogeriatric.
Speaker 2: I think I'm fifteen years older than the median age
Speaker 2: at Moonpay.
Speaker 3: So what's it like looking back now? You know, crypto
Speaker 3: has grown significantly, we got legislation, all of wall streets here,
Speaker 3: all the banks and so forth. What's it like looking
Speaker 3: back and seeing that growth?
Speaker 1: Look, it's fun, right, it's awesome with any technology, Like
Speaker 1: in the beginning, it's always it's always beautiful in the beginning,
Speaker 1: because in the beginning it's really pure, right, and it's
Speaker 1: always sort of set forth by technological purists, and like that,
Speaker 1: that purity is what sort of attracts, you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of the thinkers to come in and build within it.
Speaker 2: To me, like, I'm.
Speaker 1: Always intrigued by the purity of that moment, right like
Speaker 1: the Internet saw it like the cyber of punks. What
Speaker 1: I love, though, is the moment where it is in now,
Speaker 1: where it's like we're no longer these crazy people streaming
Speaker 1: from the hill top, but like the wind is in
Speaker 1: the sails of the of the ecosystem.
Speaker 2: And I definitely think that.
Speaker 1: And you mentioned this between legislative clarity, regulatory clarity, banking clarity,
Speaker 1: accounting clarity, the industries seeing sort of like this Golden
Speaker 1: age emerge, whereas for the past fifteen years, it's had
Speaker 1: to sort of build and sort of like the fog
Speaker 1: of grayness.
Speaker 3: If we were to make the analogy comparing the Internet,
Speaker 3: are we at the broadband phase or the mobile phone phase?
Speaker 1: Okay, so the analogy I would actually give is, do
Speaker 1: you remember, like back in like the early nineties, like
Speaker 1: there were three eighty six chips for eighty six chips,
Speaker 1: pentium chips. People would talk about their modems they had
Speaker 1: fourteen point four bps motives, you remember, Okay, Like, do
Speaker 1: you remember what was the number one ad campaign at
Speaker 1: that time?
Speaker 2: Do you remember that?
Speaker 3: Was it around AOL?
Speaker 2: No? It was Intel inside right on tell in side.
Speaker 1: Yeah, was the biggest ad campaign you could imagine everyone
Speaker 1: would talk about when the pentium chip came out. It
Speaker 1: was the only thing people talk about. Then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, Steve Jobs comes out with an iPod, right,
Speaker 1: and he says, thousand songs in your pocket. I realized,
Speaker 1: since we're going to be on YouTube, this is not
Speaker 1: an iPod, this is an iPhone. It was the closest
Speaker 1: thing I have to it, right, right, But he says
Speaker 1: thousand songs in your pocket, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: everyone says, I want that, right, it's they don't want
Speaker 1: they don't care about the upset anymore.
Speaker 2: They care about the experiences. Right.
Speaker 1: Where I genuinely think we're at right now is that
Speaker 1: moment where we are in between the chips and the experiences, right.
Speaker 1: And what I mean by that is is when people
Speaker 1: are talking about the blockchains that they're using or that
Speaker 1: things are built on, that's still a chip. That's still
Speaker 1: the technology.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And two years ago I wrote this up ed and
Speaker 1: it's on Nasdaq.
Speaker 2: It's funny. It's called nobody Cares how your toilet works? Right?
Speaker 1: And like what's funny is like, think about do you
Speaker 1: care how your toilet works?
Speaker 2: That just work? Right?
Speaker 1: If you go onto Wikipedia and you type in how
Speaker 1: does my toilet work? You get a ten thousand word
Speaker 1: article with eighty two reference points. Yeah, right, and like
Speaker 1: nobody cares, right. And so what we're going to start
Speaker 1: to see is these adoptions in the crypto space, with
Speaker 1: these technologies that are going to be more like the
Speaker 1: thousand songs in your pocket emerging. You are also the
Speaker 1: same way that like high definition emerged, right where you
Speaker 1: got a high definition TV and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you go, this is just a better experience, And like,
Speaker 1: what does a better experience look like? I mean, it
Speaker 1: looks like a cheaper money movement, It looks like twenty
Speaker 1: four to seven money movement. It looks like money movement
Speaker 1: to your phone as opposed to having to go to
Speaker 1: a physical location, right, right, And so I think that
Speaker 1: like a lot of this evolution that's going to occur
Speaker 1: with tokenization and cryptotechnologies is going to work against the
Speaker 1: bigger backdrop of what's happening, which is this trend line
Speaker 1: towards a world that's getting faster, more efficient, cheaper.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, And you know, with your background for example at
Speaker 3: Time and Wired and so forth, how do you feel
Speaker 3: in Bloomberg these companies will transition to web three? Is
Speaker 3: it using the blockchain for content verification, weeding out deep
Speaker 3: fakes and things like that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So, like I think that there's gonna be a lot.
Speaker 1: I don't think any of them are going to consciously
Speaker 1: do it, right, Like, I think it's going to be
Speaker 1: an adoption based on how technology evolves.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So you bring up verification right.
Speaker 2: First?
Speaker 1: Like in information in the information age, I feel like
Speaker 1: I'd have to sort of ask you.
Speaker 2: It's like like.
Speaker 1: The problem that people are having with verification today is
Speaker 1: they're trying to verify truth. And I would argue we
Speaker 1: are in a and this is on content right, right,
Speaker 1: And I would argue, we're in a post truth era
Speaker 1: of content. And what I mean is is not that
Speaker 1: truth doesn't exist, but we're more in a trust era, right.
Speaker 1: And it's evolved because of the way in which information
Speaker 1: is now disseminated and accessed.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: It used to be that there were three news sources
Speaker 1: in America. You could have a Walter Cronkite who was
Speaker 1: the most trusted person on the planet. And distribution, the
Speaker 1: means of distribution we're controlled right Today, you know, consumers
Speaker 1: have infinite choice to get any type of information, and
Speaker 1: then you weigher that on with paywalls, which gate information
Speaker 1: and access right to certain certain areas, and you start
Speaker 1: to realize, like people are getting their information in bubbles, right,
Speaker 1: And the infinite information is actually creating an opportunity for
Speaker 1: brands that are trusted by certain constituencies because the consumer
Speaker 1: would probably think, I want infinite, but infinite is paralyzing, right.
Speaker 1: You have a read Berry Schwartz's book The Paradox of
Speaker 1: Choice right, right, And so the consumer ultimately wants to
Speaker 1: go back to Time or to the Wall Street Journal,
Speaker 1: or to Fox News or to CNN. It doesn't matter, right,
Speaker 1: and to them what those really are. And I used
Speaker 1: to say this all the time of time. It's like
Speaker 1: that red border was a trusted filter, right, It's not
Speaker 1: necessarily truth, it's trust that the consumer is coming for.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So like where I think blockchain technology will come in
Speaker 1: in that space is by saying Time actually verified this picture, right,
Speaker 1: like that this originated here, right, not this is true
Speaker 1: or not that you're trusting that if it came from
Speaker 1: this place, it's true. The other area that I think
Speaker 1: that a lot of brands are going to really jump
Speaker 1: into is prediction markets. And it's a weird way of
Speaker 1: saying it, but like why wouldn't Bloomberg or CNBC start
Speaker 1: to highlight prediction markets or use prediction markets on their sites?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Like, if you think about information, like information is really
Speaker 1: just in three forms. It's you know, you're informing someone,
Speaker 1: you're providing insights, or you're entertaining.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: If you're informing or providing insights, why not give the
Speaker 1: consumer the chance to be entertained right within a manner
Speaker 1: in which they can now you know, use their knowledge
Speaker 1: as a form of sort of like advantaging themselves or
Speaker 1: disadvantaging themselves.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So I think there's just like all these small things.
Speaker 1: And then the final area I would say is is
Speaker 1: I do think that, you know, a lot of media
Speaker 1: brands will move towards evolved subscription models, right, And I
Speaker 1: think that the ability to start to use a token
Speaker 1: as a sort of like a CRM mechanism to gather
Speaker 1: information around the consumer horizontally to be able to get
Speaker 1: a better picture of who they are, will will enable
Speaker 1: them to create better communities and monetize differently.
Speaker 3: Let's double click on that last one, sure, where you
Speaker 3: know you mentioned the token being used to kind of
Speaker 3: build brand resonance, keep the community going engaged. Do you
Speaker 3: see the different companies out there to Amazon's the apples
Speaker 3: creating their own token, rewarding you for holding it and
Speaker 3: allow there may be interoperability with other companies and brands
Speaker 3: that you can take that token and spend it there
Speaker 3: and things like that.
Speaker 1: I think that that's a real use case that could exist.
Speaker 1: I don't think that we're there yet, right. I feel
Speaker 1: like that that's the thing that everyone wants to do
Speaker 1: right like, or that's the promise that it goes towards.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a lot of things that you have
Speaker 1: to think about when it comes to blockchain technologies.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: One of the best aspects of blockchain technology, right is
Speaker 1: it's transparency, right right, you could see where someone goes
Speaker 1: like but you know when you read the press around
Speaker 1: like Amazon launching like its own token, the question you
Speaker 1: have to ask is is, like, until there's a privacy
Speaker 1: factor right associated with the token, why would Amazon ever
Speaker 1: do that?
Speaker 2: Because if I.
Speaker 1: Was Walmart, I would literally just be looking at Amazon's
Speaker 1: token and I would see what all their customers are doing,
Speaker 1: right r and so like this is where you start
Speaker 1: to see a lot of the tokens out there push
Speaker 1: for privacy features right like and and so like when
Speaker 1: you start to think about stuff like that, like you're
Speaker 1: seeing an emergence of like privacy or or like regulated privacy.
Speaker 2: Emerge. And the one challenge.
Speaker 1: That people have is full privacy right will violate a
Speaker 1: lot of the regulated money transmitter rules. And so you
Speaker 1: do need some sort of privacy initiative that allows for
Speaker 1: it to be private, but if needed, unzipped to be
Speaker 1: able to be accessed by regulators.
Speaker 3: Sure, so if they weren't to launch a coin, they
Speaker 3: have to have some sort of ZK technology and you
Speaker 3: can't see everything, you know, the supply maybe to token
Speaker 3: and it's interoppable with different blockchains. But that's it.
Speaker 1: And like, and the way to think about it though,
Speaker 1: is is people really misunderstand crypto if we were to
Speaker 1: step back, because we've gone down a rabbit home one area, right,
Speaker 1: but like but you know, like let's let's step back,
Speaker 1: Like why is crypto misunderstood? It's misunderstood because it's treated
Speaker 1: like a vertical category when it's really a horizontal category, right.
Speaker 1: And what I mean by that is like going back
Speaker 1: to my time in media, print, Print is a vertical category. Right,
Speaker 1: You're either a magazine or a newspaper, or you're not right, right.
Speaker 1: TV or broadcast or radio, terrestrial radio, those are vertical categories.
Speaker 1: You're either linear television or terrestrial radio, or you're not right.
Speaker 1: So you're following me so far, right? These are analog
Speaker 1: vertical categories. When you get to digital, digital is a
Speaker 1: horizontal platform. Anything that can be digitized ultimately will be digitized.
Speaker 1: So you could have digital text, you could have digital audio,
Speaker 1: you could have digital video, you could also share digital.
Speaker 1: You could target digital differently. You could do things with
Speaker 1: digital that you cannot do in verticals that are analog. Right,
Speaker 1: So people understand that, right when it comes to media,
Speaker 1: that digital is a horizontal correct, right. Okay, So now
Speaker 1: take that step one step further into the crypto space.
Speaker 2: What is crypto really? Right?
Speaker 1: Crypto is tokenization, right, so if it could be digitized,
Speaker 1: once it's digitized, it could be tokenized, right, So what
Speaker 1: does that make crypto? It makes crypto a horizontal platform
Speaker 1: as well, not a vertical category. And why is it
Speaker 1: covered by vertical as a vertical category, because it's just
Speaker 1: misunderstood by the media. And what does the media like
Speaker 1: to cover? They like to cover really three things, right.
Speaker 1: They like to cover bitcoin, they like to cover fart coin,
Speaker 1: and they like to cover stable coins, right, And like
Speaker 1: why do they like to cover bitcoin and part coin?
Speaker 1: I told you I could make the cameramen smile, right,
Speaker 1: Why they like to cover bitcoin and part cooin? Let's
Speaker 1: start there, right, Like, Bitcoin's the largest asset class in
Speaker 1: crypto and fartcoin's the most ridiculous set class in crypto, right,
Speaker 1: and everyone looks at it and goes, how could you
Speaker 1: have something called farkcoin the is three hundred million market
Speaker 1: cap at this time and day, and then stable coins
Speaker 1: they're just covering because there's so much commotion about institutional adoption.
Speaker 1: Let's unpack this for a second. Right, Bitcoin is its
Speaker 1: own vertical, right.
Speaker 2: I can argue.
Speaker 1: That the usp, the unique selling proposition of bitcoin is
Speaker 1: that it's just an alternative asset class. You can argue
Speaker 1: with me whether or not that is a valid statement,
Speaker 1: but like that's the usp of bitcoin. Really at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, the ETFs, that's their own vertical
Speaker 1: in crypto. Right, what are the ETFs really? The ETFs
Speaker 1: are really a container for traditional financial institutions to be
Speaker 1: able to hold these new asset classes in a manner
Speaker 1: that is highly regulated and compliant to their existing infrastructure.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: What are stable coins? Stable Coins are you know, tokens
Speaker 1: that are pegged to a currency at a one to
Speaker 1: one ratio, primarily the US dollar.
Speaker 2: Right now, Right, that's the unique proposition of it. Right,
Speaker 2: you have.
Speaker 1: Stability and that you can digitally move money in the internet.
Speaker 1: What is real world US It's it's just the tokenization
Speaker 1: of these commodities, right, So they could be traded differently.
Speaker 2: What are mean coins.
Speaker 1: Gambling?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Like, so like what is like what is Maybe that's
Speaker 1: the wrong term, but like what is fart coin really?
Speaker 1: It's the ability Like if you really wanted to distill
Speaker 1: this down to like, how could you justifiably with a
Speaker 1: straight face talk about parkcoin, Like it's you have an
Speaker 1: entire society that, over the past, you know, twenty years,
Speaker 1: has fixated on attention, and now you have a technology,
Speaker 1: with blockchain technology that allows you to monetize attention. And
Speaker 1: so what is farkcoin really? It's the monetization of attention
Speaker 1: by groups of people, right, Yes, And like when you
Speaker 1: step back and you're like, what can a blockchain really
Speaker 1: do that you can't do without a blockchain, it's really
Speaker 1: just three things. It's authentication, digital ownership, and the removal
Speaker 1: of intermediaries, right and and so like when you look
Speaker 1: at it from that angle or that vantage point, you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's so interesting that for the first time ever, if
Speaker 1: the only way to monetize attention historically has been through
Speaker 1: influencers and that's been siloed to individuals, this is almost
Speaker 1: like the democratization of that. Whether you buy that or not.
Speaker 1: Like it's an easier mental model to understand why can
Speaker 1: that have value?
Speaker 3: And it's offline activity, human behavior and networks. We form
Speaker 3: groups around things, offline ridiculous things, whether it be politics, religion,
Speaker 3: any type of movement. But it's now, like you said, online,
Speaker 3: tokenized on the blockchain and financialize.
Speaker 1: And so like here's a really interesting mental model just
Speaker 1: going back to media and then bringing it back to crypto.
Speaker 1: People used to ask me all the time because I
Speaker 1: have Time magazine, you know, Bloomberg, BusinessWeek, Wired magazine. They
Speaker 1: would say, is print dead?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: And I would say to people, I don't know if
Speaker 1: print is dead, but I do know that every day
Speaker 1: someone is born and every day someone dies, Like talk
Speaker 1: about the most morbid.
Speaker 2: Example I could possibly give and go from fart point
Speaker 2: to death.
Speaker 1: So I apologize, right, but every day someone is born
Speaker 1: and every day someone dies, a new print reader is
Speaker 1: not replaced at a one to one ratio, right, Like
Speaker 1: if you think about it from a replacement theory perspective,
Speaker 1: like print is on a downward trend.
Speaker 2: I don't know if that trend is like.
Speaker 1: This, if it's like this microphone like thing right right,
Speaker 1: it's like even deeper, but it is downward right, based
Speaker 1: on that, and if you'd agree with me on that,
Speaker 1: now flip it around. Every day someone dies, and every
Speaker 1: day someone's born, someone who feels comfortable being a digital
Speaker 1: native and by extension, having digital ownership, Yes, and understanding
Speaker 1: digital ownership is born at a higher than one to
Speaker 1: one ratio. So like, now you're looking at a trend
Speaker 1: line that's actually going up right, and so like, when
Speaker 1: you think about that against the ridiculousness of something like
Speaker 1: fart coin, against the ridiculousness of the fact that we've
Speaker 1: become an attention based society, it all of a sudden
Speaker 1: makes sense why that area of sort of the ecosystem
Speaker 1: would exist.
Speaker 2: When people look at.
Speaker 1: Crypto as a vertical and you try to combine all
Speaker 1: of those different sort of verticals that I had just said,
Speaker 1: the only sensical way that you can describe or explain
Speaker 1: crypto is through gambling and speculation. When people look at
Speaker 1: it through a horizontal and you look at each individual
Speaker 1: vertical in it, then you start to understand the unique
Speaker 1: value proposition of each.
Speaker 3: So Keith with that said, right, with this horizontal landscape,
Speaker 3: and you have all these new use cases and utility
Speaker 3: with the tookenization. Tell us a bit about moonpay and
Speaker 3: what your mission is and how you're helping to facilitate
Speaker 3: the use of cryptocurrencies.
Speaker 1: Sure, so, like what moon Pay's ultimately building is the membrane, right,
Speaker 1: It's the highly compliant membrane that allows people to move
Speaker 1: from the world that they know to this new sort
Speaker 1: of like DeFi you know world, these decentralized world. And
Speaker 1: you know, when moonpay was originally founded back in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: like Ivan's big vision was, you know, how do I
Speaker 1: take what I have in my pocket, my credit card,
Speaker 1: my debit card, and just to fix it to be
Speaker 1: able to access sort of this really cool crypto thing
Speaker 1: that's happening out here to buy things like bitcoin and
Speaker 1: others right today, Like what we've looked at is is
Speaker 1: like how do you expand our payment stack? Right, So
Speaker 1: it's like how do you expand trading? How do you
Speaker 1: expand the infrastructure for stable coin money movement? And the
Speaker 1: easiest way to sort of think about it from a
Speaker 1: mental model is it's essentially the PayPal of crypto, right,
Speaker 1: And that's and we work very closely with PayPal. They're
Speaker 1: amazing partners for us. But what is our partnership with them.
Speaker 1: It's a compliance partnership, right, Right. And when you think
Speaker 1: about like, think about this table for instance, right if
Speaker 1: this table was all the people in the world, right
Speaker 1: and out here outside the table was all of the
Speaker 1: really cool decentralized applications that are available, whether it's poly market,
Speaker 1: whether it's exodus wallet or you know, trust swallet or metamsk,
Speaker 1: or whether it's anything that is in the decentralized space. Right,
Speaker 1: Moonpey is essentially the membrane around the outside of the
Speaker 1: table that allows you to move from being in the
Speaker 1: world that you're in to access this world.
Speaker 2: And what do we do.
Speaker 1: We ultimately manage the you know PII of the consumer right,
Speaker 1: the personal information. We make sure that we have all
Speaker 1: the licenses necessary to be able to move between sort
Speaker 1: of the ecosystems in a highly compliant way where you're
Speaker 1: not sort of money wandering or doing something illicit, right,
Speaker 1: and we provide access right And you know, ultimately, you know,
Speaker 1: the thesis that we're building against is what I had
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, which is the world is going faster, it's
Speaker 1: getting more efficient, it's getting cheaper, right, and you know, ultimately,
Speaker 1: you know, as that's occurring, like value, the movement of
Speaker 1: value is changing, and Moonpay wants to ultimately allow you
Speaker 1: to take any sort of payment method and access anything
Speaker 1: tokenized in that new world.
Speaker 3: And that's such a critical component for adoption, right A
Speaker 3: building those on and off rams totally. So tell us
Speaker 3: about the type of folks that are using Is it
Speaker 3: both retail and institutionals?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: So you have to remember on one end we have
Speaker 1: thirty five million customers, right, that's retail. These are people
Speaker 1: who are saying I want to buy this tokenized asset, right,
Speaker 1: and they don't do it solely in the moonpay app,
Speaker 1: like where sort of decentralized. And the reason I say
Speaker 1: PayPal off cryptos is it's actually a good mental model
Speaker 1: right right, Like if you go to any of the
Speaker 1: top major decentralized apps out there, right, like moonpay is
Speaker 1: most likely there as you're.
Speaker 2: On ramp or your off ramp.
Speaker 1: Right, people don't go to eBay and think PayPal, right.
Speaker 1: They go to eBay because they want to experience eBay
Speaker 1: and then PayPal enables them to transact on eBay. Right,
Speaker 1: That's how they started started to get going the Moonpay app. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: as you have to think about that is more like
Speaker 1: how do you get a complete vision of all of
Speaker 1: your access points into this network that you've now sort
Speaker 1: of accessed. Because the original thesis of you know, like
Speaker 1: decentralized world was that you'd only want one wallet, right,
Speaker 1: and you'd go very deep in that one wallet. And
Speaker 1: like what we've seen is that based on people's moon
Speaker 1: pay accounts, about fifty five percent have three or more wallets, right,
Speaker 1: nine percent. I think I have something like twenty five wallets, right,
Speaker 1: So you're like, huh, Like what we need to do
Speaker 1: is we need to just give you a holistic vision
Speaker 1: of what you have out here, but like we want
Speaker 1: to empower you however you want to go out and
Speaker 1: experience this world.
Speaker 3: So when you're pitching or talking to institutions about adopting crypto,
Speaker 3: are they more open minded now given the regulatory landscape
Speaker 3: has changed.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So look like I would say, and I'd mentioned this earlier,
Speaker 1: like we've gone through this golden age. We're entering into
Speaker 1: this golden age. We've not gone through it. Sorry, we're
Speaker 1: entering into it. And it really is based on like right,
Speaker 1: and most industries flourish if they can get just a
Speaker 1: little bit of clarity, right, yes, but crypto is going
Speaker 1: through massive clarity. Right, It's going through clarity from a
Speaker 1: regulatory perspective.
Speaker 2: And what does that mean.
Speaker 1: It means that, for the first time ever, the SEC
Speaker 1: and the CFTC are actually defining what does an asset mean?
Speaker 2: What is this? What is that?
Speaker 1: It's not it's not irrational definitions. It's just clarifications of
Speaker 1: this is this, this is that? So you could start
Speaker 1: to build. Right, We're going through legislative clarity, like what
Speaker 1: is genius? What was so important about the Genius Act?
Speaker 1: It all of a sudden defined what is.
Speaker 2: A stable coin? Right?
Speaker 1: And you know that creates an underpinning sort of foundational
Speaker 1: base for so many applications to be built on top
Speaker 1: of it? Is what is market structure really like? When
Speaker 1: you think about it, because everyone's like, oh, market structure,
Speaker 1: this market structure that it's really about what is the
Speaker 1: definition of DeFi?
Speaker 2: Right? How do you access DeFi?
Speaker 1: And really, if you want to step one step further,
Speaker 1: it's about how do you ensure that innovation can continue
Speaker 1: to flourish in America so that way there's American jobs right.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: When you look at banking.
Speaker 1: Clarity, like when the occ all of a sudden says
Speaker 1: banks are allowed to do this, banks are not allowed
Speaker 1: to do this, It all of a sudden allows businesses
Speaker 1: to feel more comfortable about these assets and like what
Speaker 1: is actually happening with these tokenized sort of products. And
Speaker 1: then when you look at at accounting clarity, right, Like,
Speaker 1: one of the reasons you're seeing like this rise in
Speaker 1: these you know, digital asset treasury companies is because for
Speaker 1: the first time ever it's clear as to what it
Speaker 1: means to hold crypto in your books or not from
Speaker 1: a definition perspective. All of that is getting sort of
Speaker 1: institutions more comfortable with how can they participate in this
Speaker 1: evolution in value and the movement of value?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: And I think like we're just going to continue to
Speaker 1: see it take place. Right, Like I always use this
Speaker 1: really good example of sorry I'm so long winded today,
Speaker 1: but it is like I feel like I'm like, just
Speaker 1: like so absolutely aloviated. Abboviated today have a lot of
Speaker 1: knowledge between eighteen seventy nine and nineteen oh four, right,
Speaker 1: in a twenty five year period between eighteen seventy nine
Speaker 1: nineteen oh four, the airplane, the automobile, the light bulb,
Speaker 1: the telephone, All of those inventions we came to market, right,
Speaker 1: So like pictures twenty five year period eighteen seventy nine
Speaker 1: to nineteen oh four, the airplane, the light bulb, the automobile,
Speaker 1: and the telephone. Right So, if you were born in
Speaker 1: nineteen oh five, you only know this world. If you
Speaker 1: died in eighteen seventy eight, you don't know this world
Speaker 1: at all.
Speaker 2: Right, where are we today?
Speaker 1: We're like nineteen ten, right, Like, we don't know what
Speaker 1: the third level, fourth level, fifth level order of magnitudes
Speaker 1: are of having the airplane or the light bulb, or
Speaker 1: the telephone or the automobile. We are is we have
Speaker 1: a group of people who are like, this is cool,
Speaker 1: Like I'm going to adopt this early. And there's also
Speaker 1: a bunch of people who are like that automobile thing
Speaker 1: is really interesting, but I'm gonna stick with my horse
Speaker 1: for a little bit, right right, And there's nothing wrong
Speaker 1: with that, right, Like, but that's kind of where we
Speaker 1: are in this evolution of like blockchain and AI and
Speaker 1: like and these changes in the world.
Speaker 3: I read one in these institutions you're a partner with
Speaker 3: is MasterCard. Tell us a bit about that? How how
Speaker 3: they are viewing this and how you're helping them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, look like I think I think MasterCard
Speaker 1: and Visa have both been really uh you know, front
Speaker 1: and center in a lot of what they have been
Speaker 1: thinking about. Right, Like, the reality is and we're talking
Speaker 1: about this in the beginning, right, like the purity of movements.
Speaker 1: The reality of decentralization is is it cannot and it
Speaker 1: will not replace centralization.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: There will always be some sort of centralization, right, And
Speaker 1: the reason is is someone always has to be held
Speaker 1: acount uptable somewhere, right, And so like the real way
Speaker 1: to actually evolve your mental model about what's happening is
Speaker 1: that decentralized technologies are going to remove inefficiencies in centralized
Speaker 1: processes and create better experiences holistically, right, like even moon
Speaker 1: pay right like, and we are all about the promotion
Speaker 1: and success of this decentralized ecosystem. We are that throat
Speaker 1: to choke for regulators if something goes wrong, because we
Speaker 1: have all the licenses and hold all the compliance and
Speaker 1: we hold all the information. Right, So like, you're always
Speaker 1: going to need some sort of centralization, and so like
Speaker 1: what's interesting about Visa and MasterCard and the likes is
Speaker 1: you have these beautiful membranes around the world, right with
Speaker 1: access points on ramps and off ramps or off ramps
Speaker 1: really into consumers, right and on ramps into sort of
Speaker 1: like the movement of value into this ecosystem at the
Speaker 1: point of purchase, right. And so so you start to
Speaker 1: look at this and you go, huh, where can these
Speaker 1: technologies help, Like they'll help when it comes to like
Speaker 1: unnecessary costs taking place on MasterCards end. Where are on
Speaker 1: visa's end, Like where will it help? It will help
Speaker 1: from an information perspective on moving and identifying, you know,
Speaker 1: individuals across a cross border. I think that you're going
Speaker 1: to see these technologies adopted by these these two players
Speaker 1: increasingly also by like the Paypals of the world. Like
Speaker 1: I don't know if you know my or if you've
Speaker 1: if you've spoken with the PayPal crypto team. They're unbelievable
Speaker 1: in terms of some of the stuff that they're working on.
Speaker 1: But I think you're going to see these technologies adopted
Speaker 1: by all the big players because they're going to increase
Speaker 1: the sort of value proposition that that that they can
Speaker 1: provide their consumers and are going to also be able
Speaker 1: to remove costs from the equation on their back end.
Speaker 3: Right, There's something I've been thinking about. You know, this
Speaker 3: technology brings you highlight a lot of benefits, right, it
Speaker 3: eliminates costs and makes things more efficient. But these traditional
Speaker 3: companies like your master cards and the banks, they are
Speaker 3: used to the world being a certain way and collecting
Speaker 3: revenues and certain things. How do you think they adapt
Speaker 3: to this? It is they lose some revenue, but yeah,
Speaker 3: there's some new avenues that didn't make money.
Speaker 1: You know, tokenization is going to do to the financial
Speaker 1: industry what digitization did to the media industry. Right, So,
Speaker 1: like when one thing that like I never really talked about,
Speaker 1: which is really interesting, was like back in two thousand
Speaker 1: and nine twenty ten, I think it was Howard Mittman,
Speaker 1: Mayadres and myself when we were leading Wired. We were
Speaker 1: the first brand a Conde Nast to digitize what like
Speaker 1: the brand, like we had over fifty percent digital revenue.
Speaker 2: That sounds so stupid.
Speaker 1: And silly today, right, but in twenty ten, it was
Speaker 1: like a really big deal, right that, like we were
Speaker 1: commanding more revenue from digital revenue than from print revenue.
Speaker 1: And guess what, like there were a ton of people
Speaker 1: who like were like, how could you do that? That
Speaker 1: is such a silly approach because print revenue is a
Speaker 1: high CPM business, right, and they were driving all of
Speaker 1: their profit off of that. Digital revenue is a scale game.
Speaker 1: You have to play a speed game. You have to
Speaker 1: quickly go up. The same way that you know the
Speaker 1: phone companies didn't go away when they lost a long
Speaker 1: distance right, the same way that you know that you
Speaker 1: know a lot of media brands did go away, but
Speaker 1: like some are still thriving and doing well because of digital.
Speaker 1: I think that the financial industry is going to go
Speaker 1: through a reckoning, and you shouldn't look at blockchain technologies
Speaker 1: in a silo, like you should look at blockchain technologies
Speaker 1: and AI technologies as two sides of the same coin.
Speaker 1: And this is actually where I'm gonna actually give John
Speaker 1: deu Gastino over at coinbase has any right. I'm so honored, Like,
Speaker 1: did you know, hold on on a totally random throwout
Speaker 1: on this and don't edit this out, Okay, I want
Speaker 1: this piece in this Okay.
Speaker 2: So I love Ben Mezrick.
Speaker 3: If you read Ben Mezerick books, interviewed Ben as well,
Speaker 3: you even everyone at this point like, I love this.
Speaker 1: It's like Tony between two ferns and you have like
Speaker 1: all my friends.
Speaker 2: And this is so good. Okay.
Speaker 1: So Ben Mezick wrote this incredible book and it was
Speaker 1: it was called Rigged Okay, yes, And it was about
Speaker 1: the New York Mercantile Exchange and this like twenty four
Speaker 1: year old phenom in it.
Speaker 2: And that was.
Speaker 1: It came out afterwards that it was John Degastino. And
Speaker 1: anyone who's ever met him knows, like, not only is
Speaker 1: Ben one of the nicest people, but like John is
Speaker 1: genuinely one of the nicest human beings on the planet.
Speaker 1: And I was sitting here with John and not here,
Speaker 1: but like like together, and I was saying to him,
Speaker 1: I'm like, I know, crypto like blockchain technologies and AI
Speaker 1: are two sides of the same coin, and I need
Speaker 1: I can't place a great mental model for this. And
Speaker 1: he said to me, And so I said to him,
Speaker 1: I was always going to credit him, right, So I
Speaker 1: have to credit him right now. That's why you can't
Speaker 1: edit this out, I said to him. He said to me, well,
Speaker 1: it's actually quite easy. AI is scalable, truth is scalable intelligence,
Speaker 1: and blockchain is scalable truth, right, And so like what
Speaker 1: you see is like information is being created and sorted
Speaker 1: out through AI faster than ever before, but there needs
Speaker 1: to be a verifying factor, which is where blockchain technology
Speaker 1: is going to come in, because a human can't keep
Speaker 1: up with the pace of AI, right, right, So scalable intelligence,
Speaker 1: scalable truth.
Speaker 2: I loved that, right, And.
Speaker 1: So against that backdrop, you have to look at sort
Speaker 1: of like what what are we about to see? Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: Like I think we're about to see one of the
Speaker 1: biggest disruptions ever in white collar jobs, and I think
Speaker 1: that people have to wake up to that, and I
Speaker 1: think it's going to happen faster than people think. You
Speaker 1: can go down on this through a very dystopian path
Speaker 1: and it gets very dark very quickly. But you have
Speaker 1: to in your mind recognize that headlines in the news
Speaker 1: only cover the extremes, and the reality is is that
Speaker 1: like the world is ultimately defined by optimists, it's not
Speaker 1: defined by pessimists, right, And Like, if you were to
Speaker 1: read the news today, you would think the world was ending.
Speaker 1: But if you stepped back and you look at some
Speaker 1: of the stats, a life expectancy is better than ever before.
Speaker 1: Like health care is better, Like like there's so many
Speaker 1: things that are actually quite good. What people don't actually
Speaker 1: ever talk about is like Keith came to Tony to
Speaker 1: do the you know, between two ferns discussion on crypto
Speaker 1: and then last and they had a nice conversation. They
Speaker 1: both drank spin drift. Nobody cares about that, right, and
Speaker 1: so like like the news is only giving you, you know,
Speaker 1: extremes in bombarded short term segments.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great analogy you mentioned with John Dangs.
Speaker 3: You know, it gave or I think you called it
Speaker 3: mindset or.
Speaker 2: It's just a mental model.
Speaker 3: Mental model moel. So on that note with AI, is
Speaker 3: Moonpay leveraging AI in different ways?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean look like we across every part of
Speaker 1: our organization, like we're using the tools that are available
Speaker 1: to us. I think that you have to think about
Speaker 1: this moment in time as as AI will not replace doctors,
Speaker 1: but it will replace doctors who don't use AI, right,
Speaker 1: Like somebody.
Speaker 2: Said that to me once.
Speaker 1: I was like, Wow, that is an unbelievably astute sort
Speaker 1: of way of framing it. And when you take that
Speaker 1: into account, you're like, Okay, well that means that every
Speaker 1: person now has in their pocket with whether it is
Speaker 1: you know, the tools there like vo three or chat,
Speaker 1: GPT or rock or any of the tools out there
Speaker 1: you sentially have like supercomputers, like unbelievable powerful tools if
Speaker 1: you're not using them right, Like, it's a gigantic mistake.
Speaker 1: And so like we've not only rolled it out across
Speaker 1: the work, but it's like everything every department, from compliance
Speaker 1: to fraud to even you know, the content that we
Speaker 1: create for our social feeds is generated you know, through
Speaker 1: AI or touches AI at some point or some tool
Speaker 1: within the AI arsenal.
Speaker 3: Oh, for sure, this is going to be a really
Speaker 3: far reaching question.
Speaker 2: And to prepare myself for this is like, Okay, I
Speaker 2: don't know where we're going.
Speaker 3: It's like futuristic because it's like, look, we got space
Speaker 3: exploration being worked on. No one's going to use cash
Speaker 3: and space. Right, Let's say Elon is able to get
Speaker 3: us to marrow not but you know what I mean, right,
Speaker 3: it's gonna be digital money. I'm gonna send you. You're
Speaker 3: into spaceship, I'm in this that type of thing. But
Speaker 3: also AI agents right now being developed, and we know
Speaker 3: they're not going to use cash obviously in use stable coins,
Speaker 3: and then you have robots, humanoid robots that are being
Speaker 3: worked on. So eventually maybe by twenty thirty five, I
Speaker 3: have a humanoid robot in my home. I tell it
Speaker 3: to go buy me some from home depot. It has
Speaker 3: a crypto wallet built in. Is moonpay looking at those
Speaker 3: things and how you will fit into.
Speaker 1: The Yeah, so agentic AI is very real, and it's
Speaker 1: it's sooner than five years out right. I even always
Speaker 1: talks about it. From the wallet is your new bank account?
Speaker 1: Like what does that really mean when you think about that? Like,
Speaker 1: if you're able to hold value in one of these
Speaker 1: digital wallets, then you can all of a sudden program
Speaker 1: it to do certain things based on certain interactions. Right,
Speaker 1: What's funny about what you said is you mentioned like
Speaker 1: you'll have stable coins, you'll do this. This is where
Speaker 1: I actually would challenge your worldview. Right for a second,
Speaker 1: if you're ten years old today, you know you still
Speaker 1: use the word TV, sure, right, But if that ten
Speaker 1: year old speaks to a forty year old, the forty
Speaker 1: year old also uses the word TV. The forty year
Speaker 1: old's definition of TV is most likely linear television, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, cable it's Comcast its spectrum if you're in
Speaker 1: New York, right, right, the ten year old's definition of
Speaker 1: TV is video on a screen. They don't care if
Speaker 1: it's YouTube, they don't care if it's Comcast. They don't distinguish. Right,
Speaker 1: in ten years or five years, I think that people
Speaker 1: will still say us dollar, right, they won't say stable coin, sure,
Speaker 1: right like, and it will be the stable coin behind
Speaker 1: the scenes that makes sort of the transaction possible.
Speaker 2: Right to do that though, right like?
Speaker 1: And this is where the plumbing, that's it's plumbing, right,
Speaker 1: And that's why I'm saying, like you have to invert
Speaker 1: sort of like now you've shifted from the technology to
Speaker 1: the experience. Right, the world that you defined is actually
Speaker 1: very real, right, and picture this right like, why wouldn't
Speaker 1: you then say, if the price of eggs drops below
Speaker 1: three dollars for a half a dozen, please pick me
Speaker 1: up you know, x amount of eggs and deliver them
Speaker 1: to my address, right, Like, You're going to start to
Speaker 1: see a world where you could program in if then
Speaker 1: statements on everything, right, and you just speak it in
Speaker 1: to your wallet, and like you all of a sudden
Speaker 1: have now necessarily programmed out sort of like how sort
Speaker 1: of your AI agent can interact on your behalf sure?
Speaker 3: And in addition, well, let me actually back up for
Speaker 3: a second. So what you're saying is not necessarily that
Speaker 3: people are going to be running around saying I have
Speaker 3: this stable coin that save acoin. They may still be
Speaker 3: using MasterCard, but stable coin rails are powering to pay
Speaker 3: more time.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what, Like, I don't really bet unless
Speaker 1: I know I could win the bet, but I'll bet
Speaker 1: you anything that in five ten years, Visa MasterCard are
Speaker 1: still here, that city and J P. Morgan and Bank
Speaker 1: of America are still here. They're not going to go away.
Speaker 1: What will happen is is they will enable these new
Speaker 1: interactions to take place. Right And that's a really important distinction.
Speaker 3: You know you mentioned, I even mentioned the wallet setup
Speaker 3: will replace the account set up. So let's say I
Speaker 3: have a wallet with JP Morgan. Will that wallet also
Speaker 3: allow me to integrate? Is it like a central wallet
Speaker 3: or I will have multiple wallets?
Speaker 1: I mean, it all depends, right Like we think about
Speaker 1: the moonpay account, right Like, the Moonpay account essentially is
Speaker 1: your sort of dashboard for all of your wallets, right.
Speaker 2: Like, people will.
Speaker 1: Have most likely a JPM wallet, right, or a Bank
Speaker 1: of America wallet or a Morgan Stanley wallet, right.
Speaker 2: But they'll probably have like fifty.
Speaker 1: Other wallets, right, and you know there will be instances
Speaker 1: where some of them will be interconnected, and there will
Speaker 1: be instances.
Speaker 2: Where some of them will be silent.
Speaker 3: Or someone makes some an app that aggregates all of it.
Speaker 1: Maybe they'll call that moon pay.
Speaker 3: Right exactly, exactly, yeah, just exactly the problem.
Speaker 1: But you know, like it's not it's not the wallet
Speaker 1: that we want to create for the individual, it's the
Speaker 1: membrane that connects people to those those applications that's really important.
Speaker 3: Right, absolutely. And then with a multi chain world, having
Speaker 3: interoperability with all these institutions but also the chains and
Speaker 3: the different crypto assets if they're running on different chains. Wow.
Speaker 3: You know, going back to the far coin example, Okay, you.
Speaker 2: Love park cooin, so everyone loves spark coin. It's like
Speaker 2: it's like okay, so yes, you.
Speaker 3: Know, when you're going through the process of looking at
Speaker 3: what are the assets we can support or should support,
Speaker 3: and what is their demand for Let's say fark I
Speaker 3: mean look right, let's say fark con becomes this massive
Speaker 3: thing and everybody wants to use it to send value?
Speaker 1: Do you intrad So so now you've asked the key
Speaker 1: question of what's the benefit of decentralization versus centralization? Right, So,
Speaker 1: like this is where mister Degasino and I have, you know,
Speaker 1: inherently different sort of ways of operating. If you want
Speaker 1: to buy partcoin with moonpay, like, I don't censor that,
Speaker 1: like as long as it's legal, right, Like, my job
Speaker 1: is not to make rules, right, Like I don't like
Speaker 1: censor this stuff, right, And so we give access to
Speaker 1: anything that's in the decentralized ecosystem. We don't have a
Speaker 1: listing agent. Right when people at me on x and
Speaker 1: they're like, will you list our token? If you're on
Speaker 1: any of these decentralized exchanges, you can access it through moonpay.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: The flip side is is at coinbase, like they have
Speaker 1: to make a conscious.
Speaker 2: Decision to list right.
Speaker 1: So like why and this comes back like if you
Speaker 1: genuinely believe that the world is getting faster, more efficient, cheaper,
Speaker 1: Like there's nothing fast, efficient, or cheap about having a
Speaker 1: centralized actor saying you can or cannot access something, right,
Speaker 1: And so if you look and block works actually does this.
Speaker 2: Really great sort of chart on a.
Speaker 1: Weekly basis where they do decentralized. Decentralized exchange volume versus
Speaker 1: centralized exchange volume is a ratio, So dex to sex
Speaker 1: ratio right on a weekly basis. In January second, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two, that number was under two percent. I think
Speaker 1: it was one point four percent last week. Right, what's
Speaker 1: today's date? So that way, whoever is it's it's it's nineteenth,
Speaker 1: It's the nineteenth of November. I was president of Time,
Speaker 1: but I have no concept of time. Right, Like last
Speaker 1: week the number was thirty five percent. Right, So in
Speaker 1: three years you've seen the dex to sex ratio just
Speaker 1: go up. Why because people don't want to wait for
Speaker 1: a centralized player to lists to something. People want to
Speaker 1: access something with speed. People want like to have that
Speaker 1: freedom to be able to move into the space as
Speaker 1: fast as possible at their own sort of volition. And
Speaker 1: so I think, like what you've seen in the first
Speaker 1: fifteen years of crypto has been the rise of these
Speaker 1: centralized players. But what you're seeing now is the de
Speaker 1: bundling of these services because they are now technically getting
Speaker 1: legislated and regulated in a manner where they can exist
Speaker 1: outside of a centralized structure and that's what moop is
Speaker 1: really empowering.
Speaker 3: And on that note, you know I read recently that
Speaker 3: you Integrated would pump that fund yes to power instant
Speaker 3: crypto purchases.
Speaker 2: So we're Switzerland.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like this is the the you know, like if
Speaker 1: anyone wants to enter into the crypto space, right, like
Speaker 1: we are going to help the biggest players, We're going
Speaker 1: to help the smallest players. Like we're on the side
Speaker 1: of the developers, and like we are as pro competition
Speaker 1: as one can get.
Speaker 3: Oh for sure, what's on your roadmap that you can share?
Speaker 2: I mean, look like we we've been very clear that.
Speaker 1: You know, like moon pay is is evolving from just
Speaker 1: an on ramp, right and I think honestly, I've shared
Speaker 1: almost everything that we're working on, right like with you
Speaker 1: and throughout this conversation without bundling it all together like
Speaker 1: in like this perfect area. But you know, last week
Speaker 1: we announced you know, a stable coin issuance division. You know, uh,
Speaker 1: if you look at what we've been doing over the
Speaker 1: past year. You know, we started the year with the
Speaker 1: acquisition of Helio, right. We then in March acquired you know,
Speaker 1: the stable coin infrastructure company Iron. You know, during the
Speaker 1: course of the past year and a half, we've brought
Speaker 1: on a lot of people from the places like BV
Speaker 1: and K, like Rich Harrison who reads payments and banking
Speaker 1: for us, or you know Derek you who was like
Speaker 1: the head of treasury at Paxos is now our treasurer.
Speaker 1: Zach Qualter, who you know led and was Derek's partner
Speaker 1: at Paxos. You know, you know product is now our
Speaker 1: head of stable Coin and and I think you're going
Speaker 1: to see you know, us continue to lean into you
Speaker 1: know that business. You know, we just announced a big
Speaker 1: partnership with m zero, and you know we're going to
Speaker 1: continue to make you know, accessing this ecosystem through on
Speaker 1: ramping and DeFi buys like just easier and easier. Like
Speaker 1: our goal is just to continuously remove the friction to
Speaker 1: enter into decentralization.
Speaker 3: Oh absolutely, And like I said earlier, such a critical
Speaker 3: component for adoption to make it easy for people to
Speaker 3: be able to access this technology and use it in
Speaker 3: different ways. So that's really great. We talked a bit
Speaker 3: about the Clarity Act. Are you optimistic that might get
Speaker 3: passed by early next year?
Speaker 1: Look, I was at the was that one of the
Speaker 1: Senate Banking committees, And I was talking about this this morning. Actually,
Speaker 1: I think that what people misinterpret is is what the
Speaker 1: media says first, what's happening on the ground, And like
Speaker 1: I was taken aback by how deferential and cordial the
Speaker 1: Republicans and the Democrats both were towards each other. Right,
Speaker 1: There's a lot of respect from the Republicans towards you know,
Speaker 1: Warner and Gillibrand as it relates to you know, illicit
Speaker 1: finance and you know the definition of DeFi and vice versa. Right,
Speaker 1: Like I've seen the same respect to you know, Tim
Speaker 1: Scott and to Bernie Marino and to you know, John
Speaker 1: Kennedy and to Lumis who've done exceptional jobs when I
Speaker 1: was there, Right, Like, my biggest sort of comments were
Speaker 1: like I think, you know, we have to focus on,
Speaker 1: you know, ensuring strong illicit finance definitions, right, Like that
Speaker 1: ultimately is our business is like making sure that the
Speaker 1: right actors can enter into the ecosystem and exit the ecosystem.
Speaker 1: And then also the definition of DeFi. That's a really
Speaker 1: important one, right because depending on how you definite, depending
Speaker 1: on how you define DeFi, it will either burden one
Speaker 1: group or another group with the onus of regulation, right,
Speaker 1: and I advocated and I did this on behalf of
Speaker 1: moonpay and hopefully on behalf of the DeFi ecosystem. That
Speaker 1: DeFi should be regulated at the intermediary level, right, So
Speaker 1: it should be moonpay, it should be Coinbase, it should
Speaker 1: be Cracking, right, whether you're centralized or decentralized. It should
Speaker 1: not be the protocol. It should not be the developer,
Speaker 1: right because when you start to look at all of
Speaker 1: our organizations, we spend so much time getting licenses, we
Speaker 1: spend so much time with compliance teams, we spend so
Speaker 1: much time building our fraud models. This would ultimately if
Speaker 1: you put that burden on the developer or on the
Speaker 1: protocols like, it would stifle innovation, would make it cost inefficient,
Speaker 1: right and so like, I think that if you could
Speaker 1: properly regulate access into the ecosystem, let the ecosystem build
Speaker 1: for like where they want that to go. And if
Speaker 1: you could do this correctly, it ultimately fosters innovation in
Speaker 1: the country and it will foster more jobs.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, I'm excited Keith to see post that bill getting
Speaker 3: signed to law. The innovation and impact on the economy
Speaker 3: and jobs and all these things that are created.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like, I look, I don't normally bet, but I'm
Speaker 1: not a betting person, but like I feel confident that
Speaker 1: it will happen, you know, no later than the first
Speaker 1: half of next year, probably in the first quarter.
Speaker 3: It's tough. Keith got some wrap up questions here for you.
Speaker 3: Here we go first, if you could create your own metaverse,
Speaker 3: what would the theme be?
Speaker 1: Okay, well, like, well like, like I will get metaverses
Speaker 1: like like horizontals and verticals too. So this this would
Speaker 1: be a four hour question, but it would be the
Speaker 1: sleep metaverse, where.
Speaker 2: Like I could go in to just go to sleep
Speaker 2: for a few hours.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, like for me, it would be like
Speaker 3: space or you know, being able to explore a wild West.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think I would just want like a sleep capsule
Speaker 1: that I just had, like nice music on him.
Speaker 2: Everyone left me the fuck alone.
Speaker 3: Excuse rapid fire questions.
Speaker 2: Favorite food, favorite food?
Speaker 1: Oh geez, like that's.
Speaker 3: New York question. I got to see what we're you
Speaker 3: going to answer here.
Speaker 1: I mean it's probably shun Lee's on the Upper West Side,
Speaker 1: Chinese food.
Speaker 3: Nice, favorite musician or band.
Speaker 2: Bruce Frinksteen hands down, but I was named.
Speaker 3: After Keith Richard's favorite movie.
Speaker 1: Coming to America or Monty Python The Holy Grail or
Speaker 1: The Departed, which just takes in a dark, dark, different twist,
Speaker 1: but like definitely Coming to America or a Monty Python
Speaker 1: The Holy.
Speaker 3: Girl, both both well all through great favorite.
Speaker 1: Book, favorite book, best. My favorite book of all time
Speaker 1: was Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises.
Speaker 2: My favorite.
Speaker 1: The most important book I ever read in my career
Speaker 1: was Clay Christiansen's Innovator's Dilemma.
Speaker 3: M check that one out. And when you're not working,
Speaker 3: what are you doing for fun?
Speaker 2: Working?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: Come on, you got to be doing nothing you need
Speaker 3: So I'll.
Speaker 2: Tell you what.
Speaker 1: Like many years ago, I was at a dinner with
Speaker 1: a bunch of a therapists. It was a fantastic for
Speaker 1: it right, and I'm really esteemed psychologists. And I sat
Speaker 1: next to one of them and I turned to him
Speaker 1: and I said to him, I have a real problem.
Speaker 1: And he said to me what, And he said and
Speaker 1: I said, all of my friends have hobbies and all
Speaker 1: I do is work, and I feel like I'm missing
Speaker 1: out on something because I don't have a hobby. I
Speaker 1: don't I don't paint. I don't you know dance, I
Speaker 1: don't you know, do anything? And he goes to me,
Speaker 1: do you love what you do? And I said, I
Speaker 1: love what I do so much and he said, and
Speaker 1: what do you need a hobby for? And that conversation
Speaker 1: has stuck with me forever, Like I am having so
Speaker 1: much fun with the team at Moonpay, with Ivan, just
Speaker 1: building towards this future that we see and which value
Speaker 1: can be moved freely online and you know, in the Internet,
Speaker 1: and I think it's so utterly transformative that like there's
Speaker 1: nothing I want to do more. And so I wake
Speaker 1: up and I do it. I you know, on the weekends,
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 2: About it and I do it.
Speaker 1: You know, like if I had to be forced into
Speaker 1: a hobby, i'd be reading right or my peloton. But
Speaker 1: like outside of that, like I just like it's work.
Speaker 1: Like and I'm sorry, I know it's a crap ass answer,
Speaker 1: but like genuine hopefully you could hear it in my voice,
Speaker 1: like I love what we're doing.
Speaker 3: I mean that's great. I mean you love what you're doing,
Speaker 3: so it doesn't feel like work, right, Yeah, Well, Keith,
Speaker 3: absolute pleasure. Thank you for taking the time and I'm
Speaker 3: looking forward to having you back on since you are
Speaker 3: in New York, to give the latest and greatest about
Speaker 3: Moon pay. Possibly maybe early twenty twenty six. We can
Speaker 3: do another way.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate it, and I'm glad I was able
Speaker 1: to make your guy over here smile a few times.
Speaker 3: Sound good stuff. M.