WEBVTT
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People really misunderstand crypto because it's treated like a vertical
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category when it's really a horizontal category. And what I
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mean by that is going back to my time in media,
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TV or broadcast or radio. Those are vertical categories. You're
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either linear television or terrestrial radio or you're not.
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When you get to digital, digital.
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Is a horizontal platform. Anything that can be digitized ultimately
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will be digitized. So now take that step one step
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further into the crypto space. What is crypto really right?
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Crypto is tokenization, right, so if it can be digitized,
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once it's digitized, it could be tokenized. So what does
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that make crypto. It makes crypto a horizontal platform as well,
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not a vertical category.
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to learn more, visit the link in the description. Hey, folks,
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welcome into the Thinking Crypto podcast. I'm your host Tony Edward,
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and today we're recording at Station three in New York's
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Financial District and my guest is Keith Grossman, who is
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the president at Moonpay.
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Keith.
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Great to have you.
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Thank you, Leally. This is Thinking Crypto. This is between
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two ferns. That's right.
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I'll be Zach Galafanakis.
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So sweet, Okay, thank you, Okay, like I was, I
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just didn't want to take that role on Okay, good,
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So Tony, thank you so much for having me.
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Yeah, I'm so excited to learn all the details around
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what Moonpay is doing. But also your background fascinates me
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and I have a lot of question with your time
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at a Time and even Wired and much more. But
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let's kick it off with your background. Tell us about
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where you're from and growing up in professional background.
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So I mean I'm boring Tony like I grew up
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in New York City on the Upper East Side. I
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now live on the Upper West Side. I grew up
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in an apartment nine F. I now live in apartment
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nine F. I went to school upstate, and outside of
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Moonpay being downtown, my entire career has been midtown New York. Right,
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So I'm like, as as mentioning to you like a
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two mile bubble boy, right. And I started my career
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out of college. I was a government major in you know,
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at Cornell. And I started my career at Wired as
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an allociate on the business side. And I rose up
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at Conde Nasts from intern up to associate publisher and
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then went over to Bloomberg and I rose to become
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global chief revenue Officer and then from their time where
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I was president for four years, and then came over
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to Moonpey, and I've been at Moonpey for the past
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three years.
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It's been a lot of fun.
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So what a transition? How did you discover blockchain and krypton?
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What made you want to come work in the industry?
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Well, well, so I was never a journalist, right, so
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I was always on the business technology innovation side, right,
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so I get Wired. If you saw, like in twenty
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ten the tablet edition, like when the iPad came out
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that Steve Jobs held up, I was part of the
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team that did that with Scott Dadag and Maya Dresen
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and Harardmittman. And when we took over Ours Technica, we
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launched a predictive algorithm called the rs Accelerator that won
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a Project ISAAC Award for Best Digital Invention. And at Boomberg,
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it was really about bringing all these disparate pieces together
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to launch Boomberg Media. And then ultimately, like we launched
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the events, we launched Boomberg Quick Take, which was social
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mobile video and time was about modernizing this brand, right,
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which explains like why we took.
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It into web three.
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But for me, like I fell in love with crypto
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back in twenty ten, and the editors of Wired came
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to me. I was the associate publisher at the time,
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and they said, will you write a check for us
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to mind bitcoin in our offices? And I said, what's that?
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And they explained it to me and I was like whatever, okay,
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And like the check was I think it was like
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sixty eight hundred dollars and it was when you could
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mine bitcoin with the CPU, like you can't do that.
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Today, right.
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Maya Dresen was actually in the office when this happened,
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which I love because like I have like a like
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I have a validator for this story, like this moment,
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and and like from there they wrote the article and
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like I kind of was fascinated with the space. If
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you ever curious, like why Bloomberg has at crypto as
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a handle, right, Like, like I was part of the
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team that secured that and then ultimately we launched the
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Crypto vertical within Bloomberg, right, you know. But it's always
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been a topic that I loved. It wasn't It was
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really COVID that made me realize and understand what the
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technology could do in terms of connecting people, communities, what
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digital ownership really meant, what the what was actually happening,
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you know, and I think the big epiphany for me
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over that time was that the Internet was absorbing value
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and the movement of value, similar to like back in
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the day when the Internet absorbed telephany, right, like very
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few people remember, there used to be these ads on
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AT and T that were like call call Paris for
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two dollars and fourteen cents a minute, called Japan, or
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for like two dollars and ninety nine cents a minute.
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Those ads don't exist anymore, and it's because the Internet
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absorbed telephany with voice over IP and like drove the
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price down to zero. The phone company still exists, but
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they had to find new ways of making money. I
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saw the same thing happening with blockchain technologies, like value
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was all of being absorbed, and like the movement and
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the distillation of value, all of a sudden was going
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to be democratized, and I thought that that was just
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one of the biggest evolutions you could possibly imagine.
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So, Keith, you are an og I mean twenty ten.
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Look like in media, I was the youngest person almost
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every job I ever took in crypto, I am a cryptogeriatric.
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I think I'm fifteen years older than the median age
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at Moonpay.
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So what's it like looking back now? You know, crypto
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has grown significantly, we got legislation, all of wall streets here,
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all the banks and so forth. What's it like looking
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back and seeing that growth?
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Look, it's fun, right, it's awesome with any technology, Like
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in the beginning, it's always it's always beautiful in the beginning,
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because in the beginning it's really pure, right, and it's
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always sort of set forth by technological purists, and like that,
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that purity is what sort of attracts, you know, a
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lot of the thinkers to come in and build within it.
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To me, like, I'm.
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Always intrigued by the purity of that moment, right like
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the Internet saw it like the cyber of punks. What
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I love, though, is the moment where it is in now,
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where it's like we're no longer these crazy people streaming
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from the hill top, but like the wind is in
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the sails of the of the ecosystem.
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And I definitely think that.
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And you mentioned this between legislative clarity, regulatory clarity, banking clarity,
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accounting clarity, the industries seeing sort of like this Golden
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age emerge, whereas for the past fifteen years, it's had
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to sort of build and sort of like the fog
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of grayness.
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If we were to make the analogy comparing the Internet,
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are we at the broadband phase or the mobile phone phase?
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Okay, so the analogy I would actually give is, do
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you remember, like back in like the early nineties, like
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there were three eighty six chips for eighty six chips,
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pentium chips. People would talk about their modems they had
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fourteen point four bps motives, you remember, Okay, Like, do
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you remember what was the number one ad campaign at
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that time?
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Do you remember that?
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Was it around AOL?
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No? It was Intel inside right on tell in side.
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Yeah, was the biggest ad campaign you could imagine everyone
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would talk about when the pentium chip came out. It
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was the only thing people talk about. Then all of
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a sudden, Steve Jobs comes out with an iPod, right,
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and he says, thousand songs in your pocket. I realized,
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since we're going to be on YouTube, this is not
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an iPod, this is an iPhone. It was the closest
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thing I have to it, right, right, But he says
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thousand songs in your pocket, and all of a sudden,
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everyone says, I want that, right, it's they don't want
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they don't care about the upset anymore.
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They care about the experiences. Right.
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Where I genuinely think we're at right now is that
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moment where we are in between the chips and the experiences, right.
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And what I mean by that is is when people
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are talking about the blockchains that they're using or that
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things are built on, that's still a chip. That's still
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the technology.
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Right.
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And two years ago I wrote this up ed and
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it's on Nasdaq.
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It's funny. It's called nobody Cares how your toilet works? Right?
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And like what's funny is like, think about do you
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care how your toilet works?
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That just work? Right?
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If you go onto Wikipedia and you type in how
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does my toilet work? You get a ten thousand word
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article with eighty two reference points. Yeah, right, and like
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nobody cares, right. And so what we're going to start
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to see is these adoptions in the crypto space, with
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these technologies that are going to be more like the
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thousand songs in your pocket emerging. You are also the
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same way that like high definition emerged, right where you
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got a high definition TV and all of a sudden,
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you go, this is just a better experience, And like,
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what does a better experience look like? I mean, it
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looks like a cheaper money movement, It looks like twenty
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four to seven money movement. It looks like money movement
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to your phone as opposed to having to go to
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a physical location, right, right, And so I think that
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like a lot of this evolution that's going to occur
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with tokenization and cryptotechnologies is going to work against the
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bigger backdrop of what's happening, which is this trend line
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towards a world that's getting faster, more efficient, cheaper.
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Absolutely, And you know, with your background for example at
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Time and Wired and so forth, how do you feel
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in Bloomberg these companies will transition to web three? Is
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it using the blockchain for content verification, weeding out deep
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fakes and things like that?
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Yeah, So, like I think that there's gonna be a lot.
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I don't think any of them are going to consciously
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do it, right, Like, I think it's going to be
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an adoption based on how technology evolves.
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Right.
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So you bring up verification right.
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First?
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Like in information in the information age, I feel like
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I'd have to sort of ask you.
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It's like like.
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The problem that people are having with verification today is
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they're trying to verify truth. And I would argue we
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are in a and this is on content right, right,
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And I would argue, we're in a post truth era
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of content. And what I mean is is not that
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truth doesn't exist, but we're more in a trust era, right.
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And it's evolved because of the way in which information
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is now disseminated and accessed.
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Right.
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It used to be that there were three news sources
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in America. You could have a Walter Cronkite who was
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the most trusted person on the planet. And distribution, the
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means of distribution we're controlled right Today, you know, consumers
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have infinite choice to get any type of information, and
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then you weigher that on with paywalls, which gate information
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and access right to certain certain areas, and you start
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to realize, like people are getting their information in bubbles, right,
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And the infinite information is actually creating an opportunity for
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brands that are trusted by certain constituencies because the consumer
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would probably think, I want infinite, but infinite is paralyzing, right.
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You have a read Berry Schwartz's book The Paradox of
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Choice right, right, And so the consumer ultimately wants to
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go back to Time or to the Wall Street Journal,
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or to Fox News or to CNN. It doesn't matter, right,
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and to them what those really are. And I used
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to say this all the time of time. It's like
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that red border was a trusted filter, right, It's not
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necessarily truth, it's trust that the consumer is coming for.
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Right.
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So like where I think blockchain technology will come in
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in that space is by saying Time actually verified this picture, right,
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like that this originated here, right, not this is true
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or not that you're trusting that if it came from
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this place, it's true. The other area that I think
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that a lot of brands are going to really jump
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into is prediction markets. And it's a weird way of
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saying it, but like why wouldn't Bloomberg or CNBC start
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to highlight prediction markets or use prediction markets on their sites?
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Right?
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Like, if you think about information, like information is really
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just in three forms. It's you know, you're informing someone,
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you're providing insights, or you're entertaining.
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Right.
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If you're informing or providing insights, why not give the
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consumer the chance to be entertained right within a manner
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in which they can now you know, use their knowledge
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as a form of sort of like advantaging themselves or
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disadvantaging themselves.
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Right.
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So I think there's just like all these small things.
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And then the final area I would say is is
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I do think that, you know, a lot of media
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brands will move towards evolved subscription models, right, And I
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think that the ability to start to use a token
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as a sort of like a CRM mechanism to gather
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information around the consumer horizontally to be able to get
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a better picture of who they are, will will enable
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them to create better communities and monetize differently.
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Let's double click on that last one, sure, where you
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know you mentioned the token being used to kind of
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build brand resonance, keep the community going engaged. Do you
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see the different companies out there to Amazon's the apples
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creating their own token, rewarding you for holding it and
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allow there may be interoperability with other companies and brands
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that you can take that token and spend it there
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and things like that.
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I think that that's a real use case that could exist.
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I don't think that we're there yet, right. I feel
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like that that's the thing that everyone wants to do
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right like, or that's the promise that it goes towards.
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You know, there's a lot of things that you have
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to think about when it comes to blockchain technologies.
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Right.
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One of the best aspects of blockchain technology, right is
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it's transparency, right right, you could see where someone goes
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like but you know when you read the press around
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like Amazon launching like its own token, the question you
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have to ask is is, like, until there's a privacy
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factor right associated with the token, why would Amazon ever
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do that?
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Because if I.
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Was Walmart, I would literally just be looking at Amazon's
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token and I would see what all their customers are doing,
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right r and so like this is where you start
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to see a lot of the tokens out there push
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for privacy features right like and and so like when
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you start to think about stuff like that, like you're
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seeing an emergence of like privacy or or like regulated privacy.
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Emerge. And the one challenge.
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That people have is full privacy right will violate a
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lot of the regulated money transmitter rules. And so you
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do need some sort of privacy initiative that allows for
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it to be private, but if needed, unzipped to be
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able to be accessed by regulators.
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Sure, so if they weren't to launch a coin, they
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have to have some sort of ZK technology and you
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can't see everything, you know, the supply maybe to token
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and it's interoppable with different blockchains. But that's it.
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And like, and the way to think about it though,
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is is people really misunderstand crypto if we were to
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step back, because we've gone down a rabbit home one area, right,
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but like but you know, like let's let's step back,
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Like why is crypto misunderstood? It's misunderstood because it's treated
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like a vertical category when it's really a horizontal category, right.
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And what I mean by that is like going back
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to my time in media, print, Print is a vertical category. Right,
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You're either a magazine or a newspaper, or you're not right, right.
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TV or broadcast or radio, terrestrial radio, those are vertical categories.
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You're either linear television or terrestrial radio, or you're not right.
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So you're following me so far, right? These are analog
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vertical categories. When you get to digital, digital is a
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horizontal platform. Anything that can be digitized ultimately will be digitized.
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So you could have digital text, you could have digital audio,
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you could have digital video, you could also share digital.
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You could target digital differently. You could do things with
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digital that you cannot do in verticals that are analog. Right,
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So people understand that, right when it comes to media,
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that digital is a horizontal correct, right. Okay, So now
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take that step one step further into the crypto space.
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What is crypto really? Right?
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Crypto is tokenization, right, so if it could be digitized,
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once it's digitized, it could be tokenized, right, So what
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does that make crypto? It makes crypto a horizontal platform
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as well, not a vertical category. And why is it
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covered by vertical as a vertical category, because it's just
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misunderstood by the media. And what does the media like
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to cover? They like to cover really three things, right.
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They like to cover bitcoin, they like to cover fart coin,
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and they like to cover stable coins, right, And like
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why do they like to cover bitcoin and part coin?
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I told you I could make the cameramen smile, right,
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Why they like to cover bitcoin and part cooin? Let's
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start there, right, Like, Bitcoin's the largest asset class in
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crypto and fartcoin's the most ridiculous set class in crypto, right,
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and everyone looks at it and goes, how could you
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have something called farkcoin the is three hundred million market
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cap at this time and day, and then stable coins
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they're just covering because there's so much commotion about institutional adoption.
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Let's unpack this for a second. Right, Bitcoin is its
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own vertical, right.
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I can argue.
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That the usp, the unique selling proposition of bitcoin is
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that it's just an alternative asset class. You can argue
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with me whether or not that is a valid statement,
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but like that's the usp of bitcoin. Really at the
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end of the day, the ETFs, that's their own vertical
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in crypto. Right, what are the ETFs really? The ETFs
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are really a container for traditional financial institutions to be
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able to hold these new asset classes in a manner
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that is highly regulated and compliant to their existing infrastructure.
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Right.
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What are stable coins? Stable Coins are you know, tokens
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that are pegged to a currency at a one to
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one ratio, primarily the US dollar.
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Right now, Right, that's the unique proposition of it. Right,
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you have.
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Stability and that you can digitally move money in the internet.
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What is real world US It's it's just the tokenization
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of these commodities, right, So they could be traded differently.
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What are mean coins.
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Gambling?
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Right?
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Like, so like what is like what is Maybe that's
388
00:19:53.160 --> 00:19:55.440
the wrong term, but like what is fart coin really?
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It's the ability Like if you really wanted to distill
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this down to like, how could you justifiably with a
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straight face talk about parkcoin, Like it's you have an
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entire society that, over the past, you know, twenty years,
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has fixated on attention, and now you have a technology,
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with blockchain technology that allows you to monetize attention. And
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00:20:20.799 --> 00:20:24.039
so what is farkcoin really? It's the monetization of attention
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by groups of people, right, Yes, And like when you
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step back and you're like, what can a blockchain really
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do that you can't do without a blockchain, it's really
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just three things. It's authentication, digital ownership, and the removal
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of intermediaries, right and and so like when you look
401
00:20:40.240 --> 00:20:44.559
at it from that angle or that vantage point, you're like, oh,
402
00:20:44.920 --> 00:20:51.119
that's so interesting that for the first time ever, if
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00:20:51.200 --> 00:20:54.720
the only way to monetize attention historically has been through
404
00:20:54.839 --> 00:20:59.799
influencers and that's been siloed to individuals, this is almost
405
00:20:59.839 --> 00:21:04.759
like the democratization of that. Whether you buy that or not.
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00:21:05.119 --> 00:21:07.960
Like it's an easier mental model to understand why can
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that have value?
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00:21:09.039 --> 00:21:13.839
And it's offline activity, human behavior and networks. We form
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00:21:13.920 --> 00:21:19.000
groups around things, offline ridiculous things, whether it be politics, religion,
410
00:21:19.440 --> 00:21:22.359
any type of movement. But it's now, like you said, online,
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tokenized on the blockchain and financialize.
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And so like here's a really interesting mental model just
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going back to media and then bringing it back to crypto.
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00:21:31.359 --> 00:21:32.759
People used to ask me all the time because I
415
00:21:32.759 --> 00:21:37.000
have Time magazine, you know, Bloomberg, BusinessWeek, Wired magazine. They
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would say, is print dead?
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Right?
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And I would say to people, I don't know if
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print is dead, but I do know that every day
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someone is born and every day someone dies, Like talk
421
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about the most morbid.
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Example I could possibly give and go from fart point
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to death.
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So I apologize, right, but every day someone is born
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and every day someone dies, a new print reader is
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not replaced at a one to one ratio, right, Like
427
00:22:00.319 --> 00:22:02.599
if you think about it from a replacement theory perspective,
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like print is on a downward trend.
429
00:22:04.480 --> 00:22:05.759
I don't know if that trend is like.
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This, if it's like this microphone like thing right right,
431
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it's like even deeper, but it is downward right, based
432
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on that, and if you'd agree with me on that,
433
00:22:14.359 --> 00:22:18.319
now flip it around. Every day someone dies, and every
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day someone's born, someone who feels comfortable being a digital
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native and by extension, having digital ownership, Yes, and understanding
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digital ownership is born at a higher than one to
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one ratio. So like, now you're looking at a trend
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line that's actually going up right, and so like, when
439
00:22:37.720 --> 00:22:41.400
you think about that against the ridiculousness of something like
440
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fart coin, against the ridiculousness of the fact that we've
441
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become an attention based society, it all of a sudden
442
00:22:49.200 --> 00:22:53.920
makes sense why that area of sort of the ecosystem
443
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would exist.
444
00:22:55.559 --> 00:22:56.519
When people look at.
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Crypto as a vertical and you try to combine all
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of those different sort of verticals that I had just said,
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the only sensical way that you can describe or explain
448
00:23:08.240 --> 00:23:11.319
crypto is through gambling and speculation. When people look at
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00:23:11.359 --> 00:23:13.759
it through a horizontal and you look at each individual
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00:23:14.680 --> 00:23:17.400
vertical in it, then you start to understand the unique
451
00:23:17.519 --> 00:23:18.680
value proposition of each.
452
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So Keith with that said, right, with this horizontal landscape,
453
00:23:22.319 --> 00:23:24.880
and you have all these new use cases and utility
454
00:23:25.279 --> 00:23:28.759
with the tookenization. Tell us a bit about moonpay and
455
00:23:28.759 --> 00:23:31.960
what your mission is and how you're helping to facilitate
456
00:23:32.000 --> 00:23:33.279
the use of cryptocurrencies.
457
00:23:33.400 --> 00:23:37.319
Sure, so, like what moon Pay's ultimately building is the membrane, right,
458
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It's the highly compliant membrane that allows people to move
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from the world that they know to this new sort
460
00:23:44.359 --> 00:23:48.839
of like DeFi you know world, these decentralized world. And
461
00:23:48.920 --> 00:23:51.960
you know, when moonpay was originally founded back in twenty nineteen,
462
00:23:52.519 --> 00:23:55.200
like Ivan's big vision was, you know, how do I
463
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take what I have in my pocket, my credit card,
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my debit card, and just to fix it to be
465
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able to access sort of this really cool crypto thing
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that's happening out here to buy things like bitcoin and
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others right today, Like what we've looked at is is
468
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like how do you expand our payment stack? Right, So
469
00:24:11.079 --> 00:24:13.519
it's like how do you expand trading? How do you
470
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expand the infrastructure for stable coin money movement? And the
471
00:24:17.160 --> 00:24:19.519
easiest way to sort of think about it from a
472
00:24:19.519 --> 00:24:22.200
mental model is it's essentially the PayPal of crypto, right,
473
00:24:22.319 --> 00:24:24.440
And that's and we work very closely with PayPal. They're
474
00:24:24.480 --> 00:24:28.920
amazing partners for us. But what is our partnership with them.
475
00:24:28.920 --> 00:24:33.000
It's a compliance partnership, right, Right. And when you think
476
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about like, think about this table for instance, right if
477
00:24:35.720 --> 00:24:39.880
this table was all the people in the world, right
478
00:24:41.240 --> 00:24:44.079
and out here outside the table was all of the
479
00:24:44.119 --> 00:24:48.799
really cool decentralized applications that are available, whether it's poly market,
480
00:24:48.920 --> 00:24:53.079
whether it's exodus wallet or you know, trust swallet or metamsk,
481
00:24:53.240 --> 00:24:57.559
or whether it's anything that is in the decentralized space. Right,
482
00:24:59.519 --> 00:25:03.720
Moonpey is essentially the membrane around the outside of the
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table that allows you to move from being in the
484
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world that you're in to access this world.
485
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And what do we do.
486
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We ultimately manage the you know PII of the consumer right,
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the personal information. We make sure that we have all
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the licenses necessary to be able to move between sort
489
00:25:20.720 --> 00:25:23.440
of the ecosystems in a highly compliant way where you're
490
00:25:23.440 --> 00:25:26.880
not sort of money wandering or doing something illicit, right,
491
00:25:27.720 --> 00:25:32.480
and we provide access right And you know, ultimately, you know,
492
00:25:32.559 --> 00:25:35.559
the thesis that we're building against is what I had
493
00:25:35.559 --> 00:25:37.960
mentioned earlier, which is the world is going faster, it's
494
00:25:38.000 --> 00:25:43.559
getting more efficient, it's getting cheaper, right, and you know, ultimately,
495
00:25:44.960 --> 00:25:48.359
you know, as that's occurring, like value, the movement of
496
00:25:48.440 --> 00:25:52.039
value is changing, and Moonpay wants to ultimately allow you
497
00:25:52.079 --> 00:25:56.599
to take any sort of payment method and access anything
498
00:25:56.640 --> 00:25:58.119
tokenized in that new world.
499
00:25:58.680 --> 00:26:01.319
And that's such a critical component for adoption, right A
500
00:26:01.400 --> 00:26:04.920
building those on and off rams totally. So tell us
501
00:26:04.920 --> 00:26:07.160
about the type of folks that are using Is it
502
00:26:07.200 --> 00:26:09.599
both retail and institutionals?
503
00:26:09.680 --> 00:26:10.279
Yeah?
504
00:26:10.039 --> 00:26:12.480
So you have to remember on one end we have
505
00:26:12.559 --> 00:26:15.599
thirty five million customers, right, that's retail. These are people
506
00:26:15.599 --> 00:26:18.920
who are saying I want to buy this tokenized asset, right,
507
00:26:19.039 --> 00:26:21.640
and they don't do it solely in the moonpay app,
508
00:26:21.720 --> 00:26:24.920
like where sort of decentralized. And the reason I say
509
00:26:24.920 --> 00:26:27.359
PayPal off cryptos is it's actually a good mental model
510
00:26:27.519 --> 00:26:30.359
right right, Like if you go to any of the
511
00:26:30.480 --> 00:26:34.960
top major decentralized apps out there, right, like moonpay is
512
00:26:35.000 --> 00:26:36.839
most likely there as you're.
513
00:26:36.720 --> 00:26:38.079
On ramp or your off ramp.
514
00:26:38.240 --> 00:26:43.680
Right, people don't go to eBay and think PayPal, right.
515
00:26:43.759 --> 00:26:45.799
They go to eBay because they want to experience eBay
516
00:26:45.799 --> 00:26:48.839
and then PayPal enables them to transact on eBay. Right,
517
00:26:48.839 --> 00:26:52.759
That's how they started started to get going the Moonpay app. Right, Like,
518
00:26:52.839 --> 00:26:55.119
as you have to think about that is more like
519
00:26:55.400 --> 00:26:57.640
how do you get a complete vision of all of
520
00:26:57.680 --> 00:27:01.200
your access points into this network that you've now sort
521
00:27:01.240 --> 00:27:06.440
of accessed. Because the original thesis of you know, like
522
00:27:07.079 --> 00:27:10.519
decentralized world was that you'd only want one wallet, right,
523
00:27:11.480 --> 00:27:13.599
and you'd go very deep in that one wallet. And
524
00:27:13.640 --> 00:27:17.319
like what we've seen is that based on people's moon
525
00:27:17.359 --> 00:27:21.400
pay accounts, about fifty five percent have three or more wallets, right,
526
00:27:21.519 --> 00:27:24.319
nine percent. I think I have something like twenty five wallets, right,
527
00:27:24.400 --> 00:27:27.640
So you're like, huh, Like what we need to do
528
00:27:27.720 --> 00:27:29.799
is we need to just give you a holistic vision
529
00:27:29.960 --> 00:27:32.000
of what you have out here, but like we want
530
00:27:32.039 --> 00:27:34.480
to empower you however you want to go out and
531
00:27:34.599 --> 00:27:36.599
experience this world.
532
00:27:36.759 --> 00:27:41.799
So when you're pitching or talking to institutions about adopting crypto,
533
00:27:42.319 --> 00:27:45.599
are they more open minded now given the regulatory landscape
534
00:27:45.599 --> 00:27:46.119
has changed.
535
00:27:46.240 --> 00:27:46.799
Yeah.
536
00:27:46.559 --> 00:27:52.319
So look like I would say, and I'd mentioned this earlier,
537
00:27:52.359 --> 00:27:54.680
like we've gone through this golden age. We're entering into
538
00:27:54.680 --> 00:27:56.880
this golden age. We've not gone through it. Sorry, we're
539
00:27:57.039 --> 00:28:00.920
entering into it. And it really is based on like right,
540
00:28:01.000 --> 00:28:03.200
and most industries flourish if they can get just a
541
00:28:03.359 --> 00:28:05.799
little bit of clarity, right, yes, but crypto is going
542
00:28:05.799 --> 00:28:09.200
through massive clarity. Right, It's going through clarity from a
543
00:28:09.319 --> 00:28:10.599
regulatory perspective.
544
00:28:10.799 --> 00:28:11.480
And what does that mean.
545
00:28:11.519 --> 00:28:14.039
It means that, for the first time ever, the SEC
546
00:28:14.079 --> 00:28:17.680
and the CFTC are actually defining what does an asset mean?
547
00:28:17.799 --> 00:28:19.160
What is this? What is that?
548
00:28:19.640 --> 00:28:24.640
It's not it's not irrational definitions. It's just clarifications of
549
00:28:24.680 --> 00:28:26.759
this is this, this is that? So you could start
550
00:28:26.759 --> 00:28:30.200
to build. Right, We're going through legislative clarity, like what
551
00:28:30.279 --> 00:28:32.640
is genius? What was so important about the Genius Act?
552
00:28:33.119 --> 00:28:34.759
It all of a sudden defined what is.
553
00:28:34.680 --> 00:28:36.000
A stable coin? Right?
554
00:28:36.319 --> 00:28:42.240
And you know that creates an underpinning sort of foundational
555
00:28:42.240 --> 00:28:44.720
base for so many applications to be built on top
556
00:28:44.759 --> 00:28:49.079
of it? Is what is market structure really like? When
557
00:28:49.119 --> 00:28:51.039
you think about it, because everyone's like, oh, market structure,
558
00:28:51.039 --> 00:28:53.920
this market structure that it's really about what is the
559
00:28:53.920 --> 00:28:55.079
definition of DeFi?
560
00:28:55.680 --> 00:28:57.720
Right? How do you access DeFi?
561
00:28:58.400 --> 00:29:00.640
And really, if you want to step one step further,
562
00:29:00.680 --> 00:29:03.880
it's about how do you ensure that innovation can continue
563
00:29:03.880 --> 00:29:07.039
to flourish in America so that way there's American jobs right.
564
00:29:06.799 --> 00:29:06.920
Right.
565
00:29:07.839 --> 00:29:09.240
When you look at banking.
566
00:29:08.960 --> 00:29:11.640
Clarity, like when the occ all of a sudden says
567
00:29:12.039 --> 00:29:13.960
banks are allowed to do this, banks are not allowed
568
00:29:13.960 --> 00:29:18.279
to do this, It all of a sudden allows businesses
569
00:29:18.279 --> 00:29:21.079
to feel more comfortable about these assets and like what
570
00:29:21.240 --> 00:29:24.799
is actually happening with these tokenized sort of products. And
571
00:29:24.839 --> 00:29:28.119
then when you look at at accounting clarity, right, Like,
572
00:29:28.160 --> 00:29:30.279
one of the reasons you're seeing like this rise in
573
00:29:30.359 --> 00:29:33.599
these you know, digital asset treasury companies is because for
574
00:29:33.640 --> 00:29:36.319
the first time ever it's clear as to what it
575
00:29:36.359 --> 00:29:38.240
means to hold crypto in your books or not from
576
00:29:38.279 --> 00:29:43.799
a definition perspective. All of that is getting sort of
577
00:29:44.400 --> 00:29:49.440
institutions more comfortable with how can they participate in this
578
00:29:50.000 --> 00:29:53.599
evolution in value and the movement of value?
579
00:29:53.839 --> 00:29:54.079
Right?
580
00:29:54.160 --> 00:29:57.079
And I think like we're just going to continue to
581
00:29:57.119 --> 00:30:00.279
see it take place. Right, Like I always use this
582
00:30:00.839 --> 00:30:05.240
really good example of sorry I'm so long winded today,
583
00:30:06.200 --> 00:30:07.880
but it is like I feel like I'm like, just
584
00:30:07.920 --> 00:30:11.680
like so absolutely aloviated. Abboviated today have a lot of
585
00:30:11.720 --> 00:30:17.039
knowledge between eighteen seventy nine and nineteen oh four, right,
586
00:30:17.359 --> 00:30:19.599
in a twenty five year period between eighteen seventy nine
587
00:30:19.640 --> 00:30:23.839
nineteen oh four, the airplane, the automobile, the light bulb,
588
00:30:23.880 --> 00:30:27.359
the telephone, All of those inventions we came to market, right,
589
00:30:27.400 --> 00:30:30.279
So like pictures twenty five year period eighteen seventy nine
590
00:30:30.279 --> 00:30:33.480
to nineteen oh four, the airplane, the light bulb, the automobile,
591
00:30:33.720 --> 00:30:36.799
and the telephone. Right So, if you were born in
592
00:30:37.559 --> 00:30:41.400
nineteen oh five, you only know this world. If you
593
00:30:41.799 --> 00:30:45.440
died in eighteen seventy eight, you don't know this world
594
00:30:45.519 --> 00:30:45.960
at all.
595
00:30:46.240 --> 00:30:47.920
Right, where are we today?
596
00:30:47.960 --> 00:30:51.200
We're like nineteen ten, right, Like, we don't know what
597
00:30:51.240 --> 00:30:55.000
the third level, fourth level, fifth level order of magnitudes
598
00:30:55.039 --> 00:30:57.359
are of having the airplane or the light bulb, or
599
00:30:57.440 --> 00:31:01.119
the telephone or the automobile. We are is we have
600
00:31:01.160 --> 00:31:03.039
a group of people who are like, this is cool,
601
00:31:03.160 --> 00:31:06.079
Like I'm going to adopt this early. And there's also
602
00:31:06.119 --> 00:31:08.799
a bunch of people who are like that automobile thing
603
00:31:08.920 --> 00:31:11.319
is really interesting, but I'm gonna stick with my horse
604
00:31:11.359 --> 00:31:13.839
for a little bit, right right, And there's nothing wrong
605
00:31:13.880 --> 00:31:16.240
with that, right, Like, but that's kind of where we
606
00:31:16.279 --> 00:31:19.640
are in this evolution of like blockchain and AI and
607
00:31:19.720 --> 00:31:21.799
like and these changes in the world.
608
00:31:22.480 --> 00:31:24.599
I read one in these institutions you're a partner with
609
00:31:24.759 --> 00:31:27.559
is MasterCard. Tell us a bit about that? How how
610
00:31:27.599 --> 00:31:29.400
they are viewing this and how you're helping them.
611
00:31:29.559 --> 00:31:32.119
Yeah, I mean, look like I think I think MasterCard
612
00:31:32.200 --> 00:31:36.640
and Visa have both been really uh you know, front
613
00:31:36.680 --> 00:31:39.400
and center in a lot of what they have been
614
00:31:39.400 --> 00:31:43.799
thinking about. Right, Like, the reality is and we're talking
615
00:31:43.799 --> 00:31:46.880
about this in the beginning, right, like the purity of movements.
616
00:31:48.240 --> 00:31:51.799
The reality of decentralization is is it cannot and it
617
00:31:51.880 --> 00:31:54.400
will not replace centralization.
618
00:31:54.720 --> 00:31:54.839
Right.
619
00:31:54.880 --> 00:31:57.559
There will always be some sort of centralization, right, And
620
00:31:57.599 --> 00:31:59.720
the reason is is someone always has to be held
621
00:31:59.720 --> 00:32:03.920
acount uptable somewhere, right, And so like the real way
622
00:32:03.960 --> 00:32:07.559
to actually evolve your mental model about what's happening is
623
00:32:07.599 --> 00:32:13.960
that decentralized technologies are going to remove inefficiencies in centralized
624
00:32:14.240 --> 00:32:19.720
processes and create better experiences holistically, right, like even moon
625
00:32:19.799 --> 00:32:24.559
pay right like, and we are all about the promotion
626
00:32:24.839 --> 00:32:29.640
and success of this decentralized ecosystem. We are that throat
627
00:32:29.680 --> 00:32:32.559
to choke for regulators if something goes wrong, because we
628
00:32:32.640 --> 00:32:35.039
have all the licenses and hold all the compliance and
629
00:32:35.079 --> 00:32:38.160
we hold all the information. Right, So like, you're always
630
00:32:38.160 --> 00:32:41.160
going to need some sort of centralization, and so like
631
00:32:41.640 --> 00:32:46.160
what's interesting about Visa and MasterCard and the likes is
632
00:32:46.839 --> 00:32:53.559
you have these beautiful membranes around the world, right with
633
00:32:53.720 --> 00:32:56.640
access points on ramps and off ramps or off ramps
634
00:32:56.720 --> 00:33:02.359
really into consumers, right and on ramps into sort of
635
00:33:02.440 --> 00:33:05.200
like the movement of value into this ecosystem at the
636
00:33:05.240 --> 00:33:08.640
point of purchase, right. And so so you start to
637
00:33:08.640 --> 00:33:11.440
look at this and you go, huh, where can these
638
00:33:11.480 --> 00:33:14.680
technologies help, Like they'll help when it comes to like
639
00:33:14.880 --> 00:33:19.039
unnecessary costs taking place on MasterCards end. Where are on
640
00:33:19.200 --> 00:33:21.640
visa's end, Like where will it help? It will help
641
00:33:21.680 --> 00:33:25.039
from an information perspective on moving and identifying, you know,
642
00:33:25.079 --> 00:33:29.440
individuals across a cross border. I think that you're going
643
00:33:29.480 --> 00:33:35.880
to see these technologies adopted by these these two players
644
00:33:37.240 --> 00:33:41.000
increasingly also by like the Paypals of the world. Like
645
00:33:41.000 --> 00:33:42.400
I don't know if you know my or if you've
646
00:33:42.440 --> 00:33:46.119
if you've spoken with the PayPal crypto team. They're unbelievable
647
00:33:46.160 --> 00:33:48.039
in terms of some of the stuff that they're working on.
648
00:33:48.400 --> 00:33:50.680
But I think you're going to see these technologies adopted
649
00:33:50.680 --> 00:33:54.079
by all the big players because they're going to increase
650
00:33:54.240 --> 00:33:58.680
the sort of value proposition that that that they can
651
00:33:58.720 --> 00:34:00.720
provide their consumers and are going to also be able
652
00:34:00.759 --> 00:34:03.440
to remove costs from the equation on their back end.
653
00:34:03.839 --> 00:34:07.039
Right, There's something I've been thinking about. You know, this
654
00:34:07.119 --> 00:34:10.039
technology brings you highlight a lot of benefits, right, it
655
00:34:10.039 --> 00:34:14.280
eliminates costs and makes things more efficient. But these traditional
656
00:34:14.280 --> 00:34:16.760
companies like your master cards and the banks, they are
657
00:34:16.840 --> 00:34:19.320
used to the world being a certain way and collecting
658
00:34:19.400 --> 00:34:22.440
revenues and certain things. How do you think they adapt
659
00:34:22.480 --> 00:34:25.199
to this? It is they lose some revenue, but yeah,
660
00:34:25.199 --> 00:34:27.000
there's some new avenues that didn't make money.
661
00:34:27.079 --> 00:34:29.639
You know, tokenization is going to do to the financial
662
00:34:29.639 --> 00:34:33.920
industry what digitization did to the media industry. Right, So,
663
00:34:34.239 --> 00:34:37.239
like when one thing that like I never really talked about,
664
00:34:37.239 --> 00:34:40.679
which is really interesting, was like back in two thousand
665
00:34:40.719 --> 00:34:44.559
and nine twenty ten, I think it was Howard Mittman,
666
00:34:44.679 --> 00:34:48.079
Mayadres and myself when we were leading Wired. We were
667
00:34:48.119 --> 00:34:51.280
the first brand a Conde Nast to digitize what like
668
00:34:51.639 --> 00:34:54.360
the brand, like we had over fifty percent digital revenue.
669
00:34:54.360 --> 00:34:55.760
That sounds so stupid.
670
00:34:55.480 --> 00:34:58.719
And silly today, right, but in twenty ten, it was
671
00:34:58.760 --> 00:35:01.440
like a really big deal, right that, like we were
672
00:35:01.480 --> 00:35:08.119
commanding more revenue from digital revenue than from print revenue.
673
00:35:08.800 --> 00:35:11.840
And guess what, like there were a ton of people
674
00:35:12.320 --> 00:35:15.559
who like were like, how could you do that? That
675
00:35:15.719 --> 00:35:19.480
is such a silly approach because print revenue is a
676
00:35:19.559 --> 00:35:25.119
high CPM business, right, and they were driving all of
677
00:35:25.159 --> 00:35:28.119
their profit off of that. Digital revenue is a scale game.
678
00:35:28.199 --> 00:35:29.960
You have to play a speed game. You have to
679
00:35:30.239 --> 00:35:33.960
quickly go up. The same way that you know the
680
00:35:34.000 --> 00:35:36.400
phone companies didn't go away when they lost a long
681
00:35:36.440 --> 00:35:41.719
distance right, the same way that you know that you
682
00:35:41.760 --> 00:35:44.480
know a lot of media brands did go away, but
683
00:35:44.599 --> 00:35:47.920
like some are still thriving and doing well because of digital.
684
00:35:48.480 --> 00:35:50.679
I think that the financial industry is going to go
685
00:35:50.719 --> 00:35:54.280
through a reckoning, and you shouldn't look at blockchain technologies
686
00:35:54.719 --> 00:35:58.639
in a silo, like you should look at blockchain technologies
687
00:35:58.679 --> 00:36:01.679
and AI technologies as two sides of the same coin.
688
00:36:02.239 --> 00:36:03.840
And this is actually where I'm gonna actually give John
689
00:36:03.880 --> 00:36:09.920
deu Gastino over at coinbase has any right. I'm so honored, Like,
690
00:36:10.320 --> 00:36:13.800
did you know, hold on on a totally random throwout
691
00:36:13.920 --> 00:36:16.000
on this and don't edit this out, Okay, I want
692
00:36:16.000 --> 00:36:17.280
this piece in this Okay.
693
00:36:17.559 --> 00:36:18.880
So I love Ben Mezrick.
694
00:36:18.960 --> 00:36:21.400
If you read Ben Mezerick books, interviewed Ben as well,
695
00:36:21.480 --> 00:36:23.800
you even everyone at this point like, I love this.
696
00:36:23.840 --> 00:36:25.960
It's like Tony between two ferns and you have like
697
00:36:26.039 --> 00:36:27.079
all my friends.
698
00:36:26.760 --> 00:36:27.760
And this is so good. Okay.
699
00:36:27.880 --> 00:36:33.599
So Ben Mezick wrote this incredible book and it was
700
00:36:34.840 --> 00:36:37.760
it was called Rigged Okay, yes, And it was about
701
00:36:37.920 --> 00:36:41.840
the New York Mercantile Exchange and this like twenty four
702
00:36:41.880 --> 00:36:43.639
year old phenom in it.
703
00:36:44.000 --> 00:36:44.599
And that was.
704
00:36:44.800 --> 00:36:48.079
It came out afterwards that it was John Degastino. And
705
00:36:48.599 --> 00:36:50.960
anyone who's ever met him knows, like, not only is
706
00:36:51.000 --> 00:36:52.880
Ben one of the nicest people, but like John is
707
00:36:53.320 --> 00:36:55.760
genuinely one of the nicest human beings on the planet.
708
00:36:56.519 --> 00:37:00.239
And I was sitting here with John and not here,
709
00:37:00.320 --> 00:37:02.559
but like like together, and I was saying to him,
710
00:37:02.559 --> 00:37:07.920
I'm like, I know, crypto like blockchain technologies and AI
711
00:37:07.960 --> 00:37:10.280
are two sides of the same coin, and I need
712
00:37:10.679 --> 00:37:14.199
I can't place a great mental model for this. And
713
00:37:14.239 --> 00:37:15.800
he said to me, And so I said to him,
714
00:37:15.800 --> 00:37:17.559
I was always going to credit him, right, So I
715
00:37:17.559 --> 00:37:19.119
have to credit him right now. That's why you can't
716
00:37:19.239 --> 00:37:23.840
edit this out, I said to him. He said to me, well,
717
00:37:23.840 --> 00:37:30.760
it's actually quite easy. AI is scalable, truth is scalable intelligence,
718
00:37:31.280 --> 00:37:34.440
and blockchain is scalable truth, right, And so like what
719
00:37:34.480 --> 00:37:38.239
you see is like information is being created and sorted
720
00:37:38.280 --> 00:37:41.559
out through AI faster than ever before, but there needs
721
00:37:41.559 --> 00:37:43.960
to be a verifying factor, which is where blockchain technology
722
00:37:44.000 --> 00:37:45.559
is going to come in, because a human can't keep
723
00:37:45.639 --> 00:37:48.440
up with the pace of AI, right, right, So scalable intelligence,
724
00:37:48.599 --> 00:37:49.400
scalable truth.
725
00:37:49.519 --> 00:37:51.639
I loved that, right, And.
726
00:37:51.559 --> 00:37:54.159
So against that backdrop, you have to look at sort
727
00:37:54.199 --> 00:37:58.599
of like what what are we about to see? Unfortunately,
728
00:37:58.679 --> 00:38:00.599
Like I think we're about to see one of the
729
00:38:00.639 --> 00:38:07.119
biggest disruptions ever in white collar jobs, and I think
730
00:38:07.159 --> 00:38:09.280
that people have to wake up to that, and I
731
00:38:09.280 --> 00:38:12.480
think it's going to happen faster than people think. You
732
00:38:12.519 --> 00:38:16.480
can go down on this through a very dystopian path
733
00:38:17.239 --> 00:38:20.679
and it gets very dark very quickly. But you have
734
00:38:20.760 --> 00:38:25.559
to in your mind recognize that headlines in the news
735
00:38:25.599 --> 00:38:29.519
only cover the extremes, and the reality is is that
736
00:38:29.679 --> 00:38:32.960
like the world is ultimately defined by optimists, it's not
737
00:38:33.039 --> 00:38:36.440
defined by pessimists, right, And Like, if you were to
738
00:38:36.480 --> 00:38:40.159
read the news today, you would think the world was ending.
739
00:38:40.639 --> 00:38:42.440
But if you stepped back and you look at some
740
00:38:42.440 --> 00:38:45.119
of the stats, a life expectancy is better than ever before.
741
00:38:45.199 --> 00:38:48.119
Like health care is better, Like like there's so many
742
00:38:48.119 --> 00:38:51.519
things that are actually quite good. What people don't actually
743
00:38:51.559 --> 00:38:55.440
ever talk about is like Keith came to Tony to
744
00:38:55.519 --> 00:38:58.679
do the you know, between two ferns discussion on crypto
745
00:38:59.440 --> 00:39:01.280
and then last and they had a nice conversation. They
746
00:39:01.320 --> 00:39:04.039
both drank spin drift. Nobody cares about that, right, and
747
00:39:04.119 --> 00:39:07.880
so like like the news is only giving you, you know,
748
00:39:08.039 --> 00:39:11.920
extremes in bombarded short term segments.
749
00:39:12.159 --> 00:39:15.320
Yeah, that's a great analogy you mentioned with John Dangs.
750
00:39:15.440 --> 00:39:19.119
You know, it gave or I think you called it
751
00:39:19.239 --> 00:39:20.199
mindset or.
752
00:39:20.239 --> 00:39:21.800
It's just a mental model.
753
00:39:21.559 --> 00:39:25.079
Mental model moel. So on that note with AI, is
754
00:39:25.119 --> 00:39:26.960
Moonpay leveraging AI in different ways?
755
00:39:27.039 --> 00:39:31.800
Yeah, I mean look like we across every part of
756
00:39:31.840 --> 00:39:35.440
our organization, like we're using the tools that are available
757
00:39:35.440 --> 00:39:38.400
to us. I think that you have to think about
758
00:39:38.440 --> 00:39:43.599
this moment in time as as AI will not replace doctors,
759
00:39:43.639 --> 00:39:46.360
but it will replace doctors who don't use AI, right,
760
00:39:46.400 --> 00:39:47.079
Like somebody.
761
00:39:46.840 --> 00:39:47.440
Said that to me once.
762
00:39:47.480 --> 00:39:49.880
I was like, Wow, that is an unbelievably astute sort
763
00:39:49.920 --> 00:39:53.920
of way of framing it. And when you take that
764
00:39:54.000 --> 00:39:57.320
into account, you're like, Okay, well that means that every
765
00:39:57.400 --> 00:40:01.480
person now has in their pocket with whether it is
766
00:40:02.119 --> 00:40:06.559
you know, the tools there like vo three or chat,
767
00:40:06.599 --> 00:40:10.039
GPT or rock or any of the tools out there
768
00:40:10.760 --> 00:40:16.440
you sentially have like supercomputers, like unbelievable powerful tools if
769
00:40:16.440 --> 00:40:19.519
you're not using them right, Like, it's a gigantic mistake.
770
00:40:19.599 --> 00:40:21.480
And so like we've not only rolled it out across
771
00:40:21.519 --> 00:40:24.760
the work, but it's like everything every department, from compliance
772
00:40:24.920 --> 00:40:28.800
to fraud to even you know, the content that we
773
00:40:28.880 --> 00:40:33.440
create for our social feeds is generated you know, through
774
00:40:33.559 --> 00:40:36.679
AI or touches AI at some point or some tool
775
00:40:36.719 --> 00:40:37.880
within the AI arsenal.
776
00:40:38.079 --> 00:40:41.840
Oh, for sure, this is going to be a really
777
00:40:42.280 --> 00:40:43.320
far reaching question.
778
00:40:43.519 --> 00:40:45.760
And to prepare myself for this is like, Okay, I
779
00:40:45.760 --> 00:40:46.599
don't know where we're going.
780
00:40:47.000 --> 00:40:50.320
It's like futuristic because it's like, look, we got space
781
00:40:50.400 --> 00:40:52.760
exploration being worked on. No one's going to use cash
782
00:40:52.760 --> 00:40:54.880
and space. Right, Let's say Elon is able to get
783
00:40:54.920 --> 00:40:56.920
us to marrow not but you know what I mean, right,
784
00:40:56.920 --> 00:40:58.920
it's gonna be digital money. I'm gonna send you. You're
785
00:40:58.920 --> 00:41:01.480
into spaceship, I'm in this that type of thing. But
786
00:41:01.559 --> 00:41:05.960
also AI agents right now being developed, and we know
787
00:41:06.000 --> 00:41:08.480
they're not going to use cash obviously in use stable coins,
788
00:41:08.760 --> 00:41:11.199
and then you have robots, humanoid robots that are being
789
00:41:11.239 --> 00:41:14.159
worked on. So eventually maybe by twenty thirty five, I
790
00:41:14.159 --> 00:41:16.360
have a humanoid robot in my home. I tell it
791
00:41:16.400 --> 00:41:18.480
to go buy me some from home depot. It has
792
00:41:18.519 --> 00:41:22.880
a crypto wallet built in. Is moonpay looking at those
793
00:41:22.920 --> 00:41:24.920
things and how you will fit into.
794
00:41:24.760 --> 00:41:30.000
The Yeah, so agentic AI is very real, and it's
795
00:41:30.159 --> 00:41:33.000
it's sooner than five years out right. I even always
796
00:41:33.079 --> 00:41:36.119
talks about it. From the wallet is your new bank account?
797
00:41:36.119 --> 00:41:38.639
Like what does that really mean when you think about that? Like,
798
00:41:38.719 --> 00:41:41.039
if you're able to hold value in one of these
799
00:41:41.079 --> 00:41:43.960
digital wallets, then you can all of a sudden program
800
00:41:43.960 --> 00:41:47.039
it to do certain things based on certain interactions. Right,
801
00:41:47.880 --> 00:41:50.760
What's funny about what you said is you mentioned like
802
00:41:51.079 --> 00:41:54.519
you'll have stable coins, you'll do this. This is where
803
00:41:54.559 --> 00:41:57.719
I actually would challenge your worldview. Right for a second,
804
00:41:58.280 --> 00:42:02.920
if you're ten years old today, you know you still
805
00:42:03.039 --> 00:42:07.239
use the word TV, sure, right, But if that ten
806
00:42:07.280 --> 00:42:09.480
year old speaks to a forty year old, the forty
807
00:42:09.559 --> 00:42:13.519
year old also uses the word TV. The forty year
808
00:42:13.559 --> 00:42:17.559
old's definition of TV is most likely linear television, which is,
809
00:42:17.760 --> 00:42:20.760
you know, cable it's Comcast its spectrum if you're in
810
00:42:20.760 --> 00:42:23.559
New York, right, right, the ten year old's definition of
811
00:42:23.599 --> 00:42:26.280
TV is video on a screen. They don't care if
812
00:42:26.320 --> 00:42:29.079
it's YouTube, they don't care if it's Comcast. They don't distinguish. Right,
813
00:42:31.559 --> 00:42:34.079
in ten years or five years, I think that people
814
00:42:34.119 --> 00:42:37.840
will still say us dollar, right, they won't say stable coin, sure,
815
00:42:37.920 --> 00:42:40.599
right like, and it will be the stable coin behind
816
00:42:40.639 --> 00:42:44.039
the scenes that makes sort of the transaction possible.
817
00:42:44.199 --> 00:42:47.000
Right to do that though, right like?
818
00:42:47.039 --> 00:42:49.440
And this is where the plumbing, that's it's plumbing, right,
819
00:42:49.440 --> 00:42:52.119
And that's why I'm saying, like you have to invert
820
00:42:52.559 --> 00:42:55.280
sort of like now you've shifted from the technology to
821
00:42:55.320 --> 00:42:59.079
the experience. Right, the world that you defined is actually
822
00:42:59.199 --> 00:43:04.639
very real, right, and picture this right like, why wouldn't
823
00:43:04.639 --> 00:43:10.440
you then say, if the price of eggs drops below
824
00:43:11.199 --> 00:43:14.199
three dollars for a half a dozen, please pick me
825
00:43:14.280 --> 00:43:16.760
up you know, x amount of eggs and deliver them
826
00:43:17.119 --> 00:43:19.599
to my address, right, Like, You're going to start to
827
00:43:19.599 --> 00:43:22.440
see a world where you could program in if then
828
00:43:22.880 --> 00:43:26.159
statements on everything, right, and you just speak it in
829
00:43:26.239 --> 00:43:29.880
to your wallet, and like you all of a sudden
830
00:43:29.920 --> 00:43:33.440
have now necessarily programmed out sort of like how sort
831
00:43:33.480 --> 00:43:37.639
of your AI agent can interact on your behalf sure?
832
00:43:38.159 --> 00:43:40.800
And in addition, well, let me actually back up for
833
00:43:40.800 --> 00:43:42.800
a second. So what you're saying is not necessarily that
834
00:43:42.840 --> 00:43:44.280
people are going to be running around saying I have
835
00:43:44.280 --> 00:43:46.199
this stable coin that save acoin. They may still be
836
00:43:46.320 --> 00:43:49.440
using MasterCard, but stable coin rails are powering to pay
837
00:43:49.480 --> 00:43:49.760
more time.
838
00:43:49.760 --> 00:43:52.679
I'll tell you what, Like, I don't really bet unless
839
00:43:52.719 --> 00:43:54.599
I know I could win the bet, but I'll bet
840
00:43:54.639 --> 00:43:58.239
you anything that in five ten years, Visa MasterCard are
841
00:43:58.280 --> 00:44:00.840
still here, that city and J P. Morgan and Bank
842
00:44:00.840 --> 00:44:05.159
of America are still here. They're not going to go away.
843
00:44:06.559 --> 00:44:10.039
What will happen is is they will enable these new
844
00:44:10.079 --> 00:44:15.079
interactions to take place. Right And that's a really important distinction.
845
00:44:15.719 --> 00:44:19.440
You know you mentioned, I even mentioned the wallet setup
846
00:44:19.480 --> 00:44:22.320
will replace the account set up. So let's say I
847
00:44:22.360 --> 00:44:25.840
have a wallet with JP Morgan. Will that wallet also
848
00:44:25.920 --> 00:44:28.679
allow me to integrate? Is it like a central wallet
849
00:44:28.800 --> 00:44:30.239
or I will have multiple wallets?
850
00:44:30.360 --> 00:44:33.039
I mean, it all depends, right Like we think about
851
00:44:33.079 --> 00:44:36.719
the moonpay account, right Like, the Moonpay account essentially is
852
00:44:36.800 --> 00:44:40.800
your sort of dashboard for all of your wallets, right.
853
00:44:42.199 --> 00:44:43.360
Like, people will.
854
00:44:43.119 --> 00:44:47.400
Have most likely a JPM wallet, right, or a Bank
855
00:44:47.440 --> 00:44:50.360
of America wallet or a Morgan Stanley wallet, right.
856
00:44:50.920 --> 00:44:52.320
But they'll probably have like fifty.
857
00:44:52.079 --> 00:44:56.199
Other wallets, right, and you know there will be instances
858
00:44:56.239 --> 00:44:58.559
where some of them will be interconnected, and there will
859
00:44:58.559 --> 00:44:59.360
be instances.
860
00:44:59.000 --> 00:44:59.960
Where some of them will be silent.
861
00:45:00.920 --> 00:45:04.079
Or someone makes some an app that aggregates all of it.
862
00:45:04.599 --> 00:45:08.000
Maybe they'll call that moon pay.
863
00:45:07.800 --> 00:45:12.679
Right exactly, exactly, yeah, just exactly the problem.
864
00:45:12.960 --> 00:45:14.840
But you know, like it's not it's not the wallet
865
00:45:14.880 --> 00:45:17.119
that we want to create for the individual, it's the
866
00:45:17.280 --> 00:45:21.960
membrane that connects people to those those applications that's really important.
867
00:45:21.719 --> 00:45:25.800
Right, absolutely. And then with a multi chain world, having
868
00:45:25.800 --> 00:45:29.880
interoperability with all these institutions but also the chains and
869
00:45:29.920 --> 00:45:33.760
the different crypto assets if they're running on different chains. Wow.
870
00:45:35.159 --> 00:45:38.440
You know, going back to the far coin example, Okay, you.
871
00:45:38.400 --> 00:45:42.000
Love park cooin, so everyone loves spark coin. It's like
872
00:45:42.039 --> 00:45:44.159
it's like okay, so yes, you.
873
00:45:44.119 --> 00:45:46.800
Know, when you're going through the process of looking at
874
00:45:46.840 --> 00:45:49.360
what are the assets we can support or should support,
875
00:45:49.400 --> 00:45:53.000
and what is their demand for Let's say fark I
876
00:45:53.000 --> 00:45:56.039
mean look right, let's say fark con becomes this massive
877
00:45:56.119 --> 00:45:58.880
thing and everybody wants to use it to send value?
878
00:45:59.519 --> 00:46:02.679
Do you intrad So so now you've asked the key
879
00:46:02.760 --> 00:46:07.400
question of what's the benefit of decentralization versus centralization? Right, So,
880
00:46:08.280 --> 00:46:11.880
like this is where mister Degasino and I have, you know,
881
00:46:12.320 --> 00:46:16.079
inherently different sort of ways of operating. If you want
882
00:46:16.119 --> 00:46:20.599
to buy partcoin with moonpay, like, I don't censor that,
883
00:46:20.800 --> 00:46:23.440
like as long as it's legal, right, Like, my job
884
00:46:23.519 --> 00:46:26.480
is not to make rules, right, Like I don't like
885
00:46:26.960 --> 00:46:30.400
censor this stuff, right, And so we give access to
886
00:46:30.639 --> 00:46:33.679
anything that's in the decentralized ecosystem. We don't have a
887
00:46:33.760 --> 00:46:38.000
listing agent. Right when people at me on x and
888
00:46:38.039 --> 00:46:40.360
they're like, will you list our token? If you're on
889
00:46:40.559 --> 00:46:44.519
any of these decentralized exchanges, you can access it through moonpay.
890
00:46:44.840 --> 00:46:44.960
Right.
891
00:46:45.119 --> 00:46:47.480
The flip side is is at coinbase, like they have
892
00:46:47.559 --> 00:46:49.559
to make a conscious.
893
00:46:49.079 --> 00:46:50.880
Decision to list right.
894
00:46:51.199 --> 00:46:55.960
So like why and this comes back like if you
895
00:46:56.199 --> 00:47:00.480
genuinely believe that the world is getting faster, more efficient, cheaper,
896
00:47:01.199 --> 00:47:06.360
Like there's nothing fast, efficient, or cheap about having a
897
00:47:06.400 --> 00:47:10.599
centralized actor saying you can or cannot access something, right,
898
00:47:10.719 --> 00:47:13.760
And so if you look and block works actually does this.
899
00:47:13.800 --> 00:47:17.199
Really great sort of chart on a.
900
00:47:17.119 --> 00:47:24.760
Weekly basis where they do decentralized. Decentralized exchange volume versus
901
00:47:24.920 --> 00:47:28.280
centralized exchange volume is a ratio, So dex to sex
902
00:47:28.559 --> 00:47:33.800
ratio right on a weekly basis. In January second, twenty
903
00:47:33.880 --> 00:47:37.119
twenty two, that number was under two percent. I think
904
00:47:37.119 --> 00:47:41.519
it was one point four percent last week. Right, what's
905
00:47:41.559 --> 00:47:44.199
today's date? So that way, whoever is it's it's it's nineteenth,
906
00:47:44.199 --> 00:47:46.079
It's the nineteenth of November. I was president of Time,
907
00:47:46.079 --> 00:47:48.000
but I have no concept of time. Right, Like last
908
00:47:48.039 --> 00:47:51.840
week the number was thirty five percent. Right, So in
909
00:47:52.000 --> 00:47:55.559
three years you've seen the dex to sex ratio just
910
00:47:55.599 --> 00:47:58.599
go up. Why because people don't want to wait for
911
00:47:58.679 --> 00:48:01.800
a centralized player to lists to something. People want to
912
00:48:01.880 --> 00:48:05.239
access something with speed. People want like to have that
913
00:48:05.360 --> 00:48:07.320
freedom to be able to move into the space as
914
00:48:07.320 --> 00:48:10.880
fast as possible at their own sort of volition. And
915
00:48:10.960 --> 00:48:13.280
so I think, like what you've seen in the first
916
00:48:13.360 --> 00:48:16.519
fifteen years of crypto has been the rise of these
917
00:48:16.559 --> 00:48:20.719
centralized players. But what you're seeing now is the de
918
00:48:20.960 --> 00:48:25.119
bundling of these services because they are now technically getting
919
00:48:25.199 --> 00:48:28.840
legislated and regulated in a manner where they can exist
920
00:48:29.199 --> 00:48:32.360
outside of a centralized structure and that's what moop is
921
00:48:32.360 --> 00:48:33.039
really empowering.
922
00:48:33.280 --> 00:48:35.119
And on that note, you know I read recently that
923
00:48:35.159 --> 00:48:38.000
you Integrated would pump that fund yes to power instant
924
00:48:38.000 --> 00:48:38.960
crypto purchases.
925
00:48:39.000 --> 00:48:42.239
So we're Switzerland.
926
00:48:42.440 --> 00:48:45.199
Yeah, like this is the the you know, like if
927
00:48:45.239 --> 00:48:47.840
anyone wants to enter into the crypto space, right, like
928
00:48:47.920 --> 00:48:49.960
we are going to help the biggest players, We're going
929
00:48:50.039 --> 00:48:51.719
to help the smallest players. Like we're on the side
930
00:48:51.719 --> 00:48:56.079
of the developers, and like we are as pro competition
931
00:48:56.119 --> 00:48:56.760
as one can get.
932
00:48:56.960 --> 00:49:00.360
Oh for sure, what's on your roadmap that you can share?
933
00:49:02.760 --> 00:49:06.039
I mean, look like we we've been very clear that.
934
00:49:07.920 --> 00:49:11.360
You know, like moon pay is is evolving from just
935
00:49:11.400 --> 00:49:14.880
an on ramp, right and I think honestly, I've shared
936
00:49:14.880 --> 00:49:18.480
almost everything that we're working on, right like with you
937
00:49:18.559 --> 00:49:21.840
and throughout this conversation without bundling it all together like
938
00:49:21.920 --> 00:49:24.519
in like this perfect area. But you know, last week
939
00:49:24.599 --> 00:49:30.239
we announced you know, a stable coin issuance division. You know, uh,
940
00:49:30.280 --> 00:49:32.639
if you look at what we've been doing over the
941
00:49:32.679 --> 00:49:36.119
past year. You know, we started the year with the
942
00:49:36.199 --> 00:49:40.360
acquisition of Helio, right. We then in March acquired you know,
943
00:49:40.440 --> 00:49:44.639
the stable coin infrastructure company Iron. You know, during the
944
00:49:44.679 --> 00:49:46.519
course of the past year and a half, we've brought
945
00:49:46.519 --> 00:49:48.559
on a lot of people from the places like BV
946
00:49:48.679 --> 00:49:51.199
and K, like Rich Harrison who reads payments and banking
947
00:49:51.280 --> 00:49:54.039
for us, or you know Derek you who was like
948
00:49:54.159 --> 00:49:58.280
the head of treasury at Paxos is now our treasurer.
949
00:49:59.119 --> 00:50:02.960
Zach Qualter, who you know led and was Derek's partner
950
00:50:03.000 --> 00:50:05.760
at Paxos. You know, you know product is now our
951
00:50:05.800 --> 00:50:09.960
head of stable Coin and and I think you're going
952
00:50:10.000 --> 00:50:13.119
to see you know, us continue to lean into you
953
00:50:13.119 --> 00:50:15.519
know that business. You know, we just announced a big
954
00:50:15.519 --> 00:50:20.320
partnership with m zero, and you know we're going to
955
00:50:20.400 --> 00:50:23.639
continue to make you know, accessing this ecosystem through on
956
00:50:23.800 --> 00:50:26.719
ramping and DeFi buys like just easier and easier. Like
957
00:50:26.800 --> 00:50:30.119
our goal is just to continuously remove the friction to
958
00:50:30.280 --> 00:50:31.880
enter into decentralization.
959
00:50:32.159 --> 00:50:35.719
Oh absolutely, And like I said earlier, such a critical
960
00:50:35.719 --> 00:50:38.599
component for adoption to make it easy for people to
961
00:50:38.599 --> 00:50:41.320
be able to access this technology and use it in
962
00:50:41.320 --> 00:50:45.119
different ways. So that's really great. We talked a bit
963
00:50:45.159 --> 00:50:47.519
about the Clarity Act. Are you optimistic that might get
964
00:50:47.559 --> 00:50:49.079
passed by early next year?
965
00:50:49.320 --> 00:50:52.079
Look, I was at the was that one of the
966
00:50:52.119 --> 00:50:56.159
Senate Banking committees, And I was talking about this this morning. Actually,
967
00:50:56.800 --> 00:50:59.639
I think that what people misinterpret is is what the
968
00:50:59.679 --> 00:51:03.360
media says first, what's happening on the ground, And like
969
00:51:03.440 --> 00:51:08.199
I was taken aback by how deferential and cordial the
970
00:51:08.320 --> 00:51:11.400
Republicans and the Democrats both were towards each other. Right,
971
00:51:12.320 --> 00:51:15.159
There's a lot of respect from the Republicans towards you know,
972
00:51:15.280 --> 00:51:21.199
Warner and Gillibrand as it relates to you know, illicit
973
00:51:21.320 --> 00:51:24.719
finance and you know the definition of DeFi and vice versa. Right,
974
00:51:24.800 --> 00:51:27.519
Like I've seen the same respect to you know, Tim
975
00:51:27.559 --> 00:51:31.000
Scott and to Bernie Marino and to you know, John
976
00:51:31.079 --> 00:51:36.559
Kennedy and to Lumis who've done exceptional jobs when I
977
00:51:36.639 --> 00:51:40.760
was there, Right, Like, my biggest sort of comments were
978
00:51:40.800 --> 00:51:43.800
like I think, you know, we have to focus on,
979
00:51:44.400 --> 00:51:48.920
you know, ensuring strong illicit finance definitions, right, Like that
980
00:51:49.039 --> 00:51:51.440
ultimately is our business is like making sure that the
981
00:51:51.519 --> 00:51:54.639
right actors can enter into the ecosystem and exit the ecosystem.
982
00:51:55.440 --> 00:51:58.519
And then also the definition of DeFi. That's a really
983
00:51:58.599 --> 00:52:02.960
important one, right because depending on how you definite, depending
984
00:52:02.960 --> 00:52:09.599
on how you define DeFi, it will either burden one
985
00:52:09.679 --> 00:52:12.800
group or another group with the onus of regulation, right,
986
00:52:13.039 --> 00:52:15.840
and I advocated and I did this on behalf of
987
00:52:15.840 --> 00:52:19.400
moonpay and hopefully on behalf of the DeFi ecosystem. That
988
00:52:19.920 --> 00:52:24.599
DeFi should be regulated at the intermediary level, right, So
989
00:52:24.800 --> 00:52:28.159
it should be moonpay, it should be Coinbase, it should
990
00:52:28.159 --> 00:52:31.840
be Cracking, right, whether you're centralized or decentralized. It should
991
00:52:31.840 --> 00:52:34.000
not be the protocol. It should not be the developer,
992
00:52:34.320 --> 00:52:36.320
right because when you start to look at all of
993
00:52:36.360 --> 00:52:39.400
our organizations, we spend so much time getting licenses, we
994
00:52:39.400 --> 00:52:42.000
spend so much time with compliance teams, we spend so
995
00:52:42.079 --> 00:52:46.159
much time building our fraud models. This would ultimately if
996
00:52:46.199 --> 00:52:48.519
you put that burden on the developer or on the
997
00:52:48.559 --> 00:52:53.119
protocols like, it would stifle innovation, would make it cost inefficient,
998
00:52:53.440 --> 00:52:57.039
right and so like, I think that if you could
999
00:52:57.239 --> 00:53:01.519
properly regulate access into the ecosystem, let the ecosystem build
1000
00:53:01.840 --> 00:53:04.320
for like where they want that to go. And if
1001
00:53:04.320 --> 00:53:08.039
you could do this correctly, it ultimately fosters innovation in
1002
00:53:08.079 --> 00:53:10.039
the country and it will foster more jobs.
1003
00:53:10.639 --> 00:53:14.400
Absolutely, I'm excited Keith to see post that bill getting
1004
00:53:14.440 --> 00:53:18.559
signed to law. The innovation and impact on the economy
1005
00:53:18.599 --> 00:53:20.079
and jobs and all these things that are created.
1006
00:53:20.159 --> 00:53:23.480
Yeah, like, I look, I don't normally bet, but I'm
1007
00:53:23.519 --> 00:53:26.239
not a betting person, but like I feel confident that
1008
00:53:26.280 --> 00:53:29.079
it will happen, you know, no later than the first
1009
00:53:29.119 --> 00:53:31.400
half of next year, probably in the first quarter.
1010
00:53:31.880 --> 00:53:34.760
It's tough. Keith got some wrap up questions here for you.
1011
00:53:35.320 --> 00:53:37.480
Here we go first, if you could create your own metaverse,
1012
00:53:37.480 --> 00:53:38.159
what would the theme be?
1013
00:53:40.320 --> 00:53:45.199
Okay, well, like, well like, like I will get metaverses
1014
00:53:45.239 --> 00:53:48.519
like like horizontals and verticals too. So this this would
1015
00:53:48.519 --> 00:53:50.119
be a four hour question, but it would be the
1016
00:53:50.199 --> 00:53:52.039
sleep metaverse, where.
1017
00:53:51.760 --> 00:53:53.360
Like I could go in to just go to sleep
1018
00:53:53.400 --> 00:53:54.360
for a few hours.
1019
00:53:54.800 --> 00:53:57.119
Yeah, I mean, like for me, it would be like
1020
00:53:57.159 --> 00:53:59.679
space or you know, being able to explore a wild West.
1021
00:54:00.159 --> 00:54:00.559
I don't know.
1022
00:54:00.840 --> 00:54:03.360
I think I would just want like a sleep capsule
1023
00:54:03.440 --> 00:54:05.840
that I just had, like nice music on him.
1024
00:54:06.039 --> 00:54:07.239
Everyone left me the fuck alone.
1025
00:54:07.239 --> 00:54:10.880
Excuse rapid fire questions.
1026
00:54:10.960 --> 00:54:12.719
Favorite food, favorite food?
1027
00:54:14.320 --> 00:54:17.519
Oh geez, like that's.
1028
00:54:17.360 --> 00:54:18.960
New York question. I got to see what we're you
1029
00:54:18.960 --> 00:54:19.679
going to answer here.
1030
00:54:20.599 --> 00:54:23.159
I mean it's probably shun Lee's on the Upper West Side,
1031
00:54:23.559 --> 00:54:24.280
Chinese food.
1032
00:54:24.440 --> 00:54:26.880
Nice, favorite musician or band.
1033
00:54:27.519 --> 00:54:29.400
Bruce Frinksteen hands down, but I was named.
1034
00:54:29.239 --> 00:54:32.679
After Keith Richard's favorite movie.
1035
00:54:33.639 --> 00:54:38.320
Coming to America or Monty Python The Holy Grail or
1036
00:54:38.360 --> 00:54:41.480
The Departed, which just takes in a dark, dark, different twist,
1037
00:54:41.519 --> 00:54:43.480
but like definitely Coming to America or a Monty Python
1038
00:54:43.519 --> 00:54:43.960
The Holy.
1039
00:54:43.760 --> 00:54:46.880
Girl, both both well all through great favorite.
1040
00:54:46.559 --> 00:54:50.679
Book, favorite book, best. My favorite book of all time
1041
00:54:50.880 --> 00:54:52.599
was Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises.
1042
00:54:52.679 --> 00:54:53.360
My favorite.
1043
00:54:53.400 --> 00:54:55.320
The most important book I ever read in my career
1044
00:54:55.639 --> 00:54:58.800
was Clay Christiansen's Innovator's Dilemma.
1045
00:54:59.039 --> 00:55:02.400
M check that one out. And when you're not working,
1046
00:55:02.440 --> 00:55:03.239
what are you doing for fun?
1047
00:55:03.400 --> 00:55:03.679
Working?
1048
00:55:04.360 --> 00:55:04.480
Oh?
1049
00:55:04.519 --> 00:55:06.960
Come on, you got to be doing nothing you need
1050
00:55:07.239 --> 00:55:07.760
So I'll.
1051
00:55:07.599 --> 00:55:07.960
Tell you what.
1052
00:55:08.280 --> 00:55:12.800
Like many years ago, I was at a dinner with
1053
00:55:12.880 --> 00:55:16.280
a bunch of a therapists. It was a fantastic for
1054
00:55:16.400 --> 00:55:20.840
it right, and I'm really esteemed psychologists. And I sat
1055
00:55:20.920 --> 00:55:22.599
next to one of them and I turned to him
1056
00:55:22.599 --> 00:55:25.199
and I said to him, I have a real problem.
1057
00:55:25.960 --> 00:55:29.280
And he said to me what, And he said and
1058
00:55:29.360 --> 00:55:32.960
I said, all of my friends have hobbies and all
1059
00:55:32.960 --> 00:55:37.679
I do is work, and I feel like I'm missing
1060
00:55:37.679 --> 00:55:42.039
out on something because I don't have a hobby. I
1061
00:55:42.079 --> 00:55:46.400
don't I don't paint. I don't you know dance, I
1062
00:55:46.440 --> 00:55:48.960
don't you know, do anything? And he goes to me,
1063
00:55:49.239 --> 00:55:52.000
do you love what you do? And I said, I
1064
00:55:52.119 --> 00:55:56.199
love what I do so much and he said, and
1065
00:55:56.280 --> 00:56:00.159
what do you need a hobby for? And that conversation
1066
00:56:00.199 --> 00:56:04.000
has stuck with me forever, Like I am having so
1067
00:56:04.159 --> 00:56:07.239
much fun with the team at Moonpay, with Ivan, just
1068
00:56:07.280 --> 00:56:10.280
building towards this future that we see and which value
1069
00:56:10.320 --> 00:56:13.800
can be moved freely online and you know, in the Internet,
1070
00:56:13.840 --> 00:56:16.880
and I think it's so utterly transformative that like there's
1071
00:56:16.920 --> 00:56:18.920
nothing I want to do more. And so I wake
1072
00:56:19.000 --> 00:56:21.599
up and I do it. I you know, on the weekends,
1073
00:56:21.639 --> 00:56:22.199
I think.
1074
00:56:22.000 --> 00:56:22.920
About it and I do it.
1075
00:56:23.360 --> 00:56:25.239
You know, like if I had to be forced into
1076
00:56:25.239 --> 00:56:29.000
a hobby, i'd be reading right or my peloton. But
1077
00:56:29.119 --> 00:56:32.000
like outside of that, like I just like it's work.
1078
00:56:32.320 --> 00:56:34.079
Like and I'm sorry, I know it's a crap ass answer,
1079
00:56:34.119 --> 00:56:36.559
but like genuine hopefully you could hear it in my voice,
1080
00:56:36.559 --> 00:56:37.920
like I love what we're doing.
1081
00:56:38.199 --> 00:56:40.079
I mean that's great. I mean you love what you're doing,
1082
00:56:40.079 --> 00:56:43.199
so it doesn't feel like work, right, Yeah, Well, Keith,
1083
00:56:43.760 --> 00:56:46.519
absolute pleasure. Thank you for taking the time and I'm
1084
00:56:46.559 --> 00:56:48.519
looking forward to having you back on since you are
1085
00:56:48.519 --> 00:56:51.159
in New York, to give the latest and greatest about
1086
00:56:51.159 --> 00:56:54.119
Moon pay. Possibly maybe early twenty twenty six. We can
1087
00:56:54.119 --> 00:56:54.639
do another way.
1088
00:56:54.679 --> 00:56:56.119
Well, thank you, thank you so much for having me.
1089
00:56:56.159 --> 00:56:57.880
I really appreciate it, and I'm glad I was able
1090
00:56:57.880 --> 00:56:59.960
to make your guy over here smile a few times.
1091
00:57:00.079 --> 00:57:09.639
Sound good stuff. M.
1
00:00:00.080 --> 00:00:03.759
People really misunderstand crypto because it's treated like a vertical
2
00:00:03.759 --> 00:00:06.080
category when it's really a horizontal category. And what I
3
00:00:06.120 --> 00:00:08.359
mean by that is going back to my time in media,
4
00:00:08.599 --> 00:00:13.279
TV or broadcast or radio. Those are vertical categories. You're
5
00:00:13.320 --> 00:00:16.719
either linear television or terrestrial radio or you're not.
6
00:00:16.920 --> 00:00:18.640
When you get to digital, digital.
7
00:00:18.399 --> 00:00:22.320
Is a horizontal platform. Anything that can be digitized ultimately
8
00:00:22.359 --> 00:00:24.640
will be digitized. So now take that step one step
9
00:00:24.679 --> 00:00:27.399
further into the crypto space. What is crypto really right?
10
00:00:27.559 --> 00:00:31.920
Crypto is tokenization, right, so if it can be digitized,
11
00:00:32.640 --> 00:00:35.039
once it's digitized, it could be tokenized. So what does
12
00:00:35.039 --> 00:00:38.679
that make crypto. It makes crypto a horizontal platform as well,
13
00:00:38.759 --> 00:00:42.240
not a vertical category.
14
00:00:45.000 --> 00:00:47.439
This episode is brought to you by Treasure. Treasure makes
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to learn more, visit the link in the description. Hey, folks,
33
00:01:45.799 --> 00:01:49.040
welcome into the Thinking Crypto podcast. I'm your host Tony Edward,
34
00:01:49.159 --> 00:01:51.439
and today we're recording at Station three in New York's
35
00:01:51.480 --> 00:01:54.680
Financial District and my guest is Keith Grossman, who is
36
00:01:54.719 --> 00:01:56.079
the president at Moonpay.
37
00:01:56.519 --> 00:01:56.719
Keith.
38
00:01:56.760 --> 00:01:57.519
Great to have you.
39
00:01:57.560 --> 00:02:00.000
Thank you, Leally. This is Thinking Crypto. This is between
40
00:02:00.040 --> 00:02:01.879
two ferns. That's right.
41
00:02:01.920 --> 00:02:03.319
I'll be Zach Galafanakis.
42
00:02:03.359 --> 00:02:05.599
So sweet, Okay, thank you, Okay, like I was, I
43
00:02:05.680 --> 00:02:07.879
just didn't want to take that role on Okay, good,
44
00:02:08.000 --> 00:02:09.719
So Tony, thank you so much for having me.
45
00:02:09.960 --> 00:02:13.360
Yeah, I'm so excited to learn all the details around
46
00:02:13.360 --> 00:02:16.360
what Moonpay is doing. But also your background fascinates me
47
00:02:16.360 --> 00:02:18.080
and I have a lot of question with your time
48
00:02:18.120 --> 00:02:21.599
at a Time and even Wired and much more. But
49
00:02:21.639 --> 00:02:23.360
let's kick it off with your background. Tell us about
50
00:02:23.360 --> 00:02:26.319
where you're from and growing up in professional background.
51
00:02:27.400 --> 00:02:29.879
So I mean I'm boring Tony like I grew up
52
00:02:29.919 --> 00:02:32.479
in New York City on the Upper East Side. I
53
00:02:32.520 --> 00:02:34.000
now live on the Upper West Side. I grew up
54
00:02:34.000 --> 00:02:35.960
in an apartment nine F. I now live in apartment
55
00:02:36.039 --> 00:02:40.000
nine F. I went to school upstate, and outside of
56
00:02:40.039 --> 00:02:44.199
Moonpay being downtown, my entire career has been midtown New York. Right,
57
00:02:44.240 --> 00:02:46.360
So I'm like, as as mentioning to you like a
58
00:02:46.400 --> 00:02:50.759
two mile bubble boy, right. And I started my career
59
00:02:50.840 --> 00:02:55.000
out of college. I was a government major in you know,
60
00:02:55.039 --> 00:02:59.639
at Cornell. And I started my career at Wired as
61
00:02:59.639 --> 00:03:01.639
an allociate on the business side. And I rose up
62
00:03:01.680 --> 00:03:05.039
at Conde Nasts from intern up to associate publisher and
63
00:03:05.080 --> 00:03:09.639
then went over to Bloomberg and I rose to become
64
00:03:09.759 --> 00:03:14.439
global chief revenue Officer and then from their time where
65
00:03:14.479 --> 00:03:17.360
I was president for four years, and then came over
66
00:03:17.439 --> 00:03:19.599
to Moonpey, and I've been at Moonpey for the past
67
00:03:19.599 --> 00:03:19.960
three years.
68
00:03:20.000 --> 00:03:20.719
It's been a lot of fun.
69
00:03:21.080 --> 00:03:24.159
So what a transition? How did you discover blockchain and krypton?
70
00:03:24.159 --> 00:03:25.800
What made you want to come work in the industry?
71
00:03:25.960 --> 00:03:29.560
Well, well, so I was never a journalist, right, so
72
00:03:29.680 --> 00:03:33.000
I was always on the business technology innovation side, right,
73
00:03:33.039 --> 00:03:35.439
so I get Wired. If you saw, like in twenty
74
00:03:35.560 --> 00:03:38.479
ten the tablet edition, like when the iPad came out
75
00:03:38.520 --> 00:03:40.039
that Steve Jobs held up, I was part of the
76
00:03:40.039 --> 00:03:42.400
team that did that with Scott Dadag and Maya Dresen
77
00:03:42.479 --> 00:03:46.439
and Harardmittman. And when we took over Ours Technica, we
78
00:03:46.800 --> 00:03:49.680
launched a predictive algorithm called the rs Accelerator that won
79
00:03:49.680 --> 00:03:53.919
a Project ISAAC Award for Best Digital Invention. And at Boomberg,
80
00:03:53.960 --> 00:03:57.759
it was really about bringing all these disparate pieces together
81
00:03:58.800 --> 00:04:01.599
to launch Boomberg Media. And then ultimately, like we launched
82
00:04:01.599 --> 00:04:03.960
the events, we launched Boomberg Quick Take, which was social
83
00:04:04.000 --> 00:04:06.919
mobile video and time was about modernizing this brand, right,
84
00:04:06.960 --> 00:04:08.439
which explains like why we took.
85
00:04:08.280 --> 00:04:09.159
It into web three.
86
00:04:09.759 --> 00:04:13.120
But for me, like I fell in love with crypto
87
00:04:14.000 --> 00:04:19.360
back in twenty ten, and the editors of Wired came
88
00:04:19.439 --> 00:04:22.360
to me. I was the associate publisher at the time,
89
00:04:22.399 --> 00:04:25.519
and they said, will you write a check for us
90
00:04:25.600 --> 00:04:28.879
to mind bitcoin in our offices? And I said, what's that?
91
00:04:29.639 --> 00:04:34.279
And they explained it to me and I was like whatever, okay,
92
00:04:34.439 --> 00:04:36.680
And like the check was I think it was like
93
00:04:36.720 --> 00:04:39.279
sixty eight hundred dollars and it was when you could
94
00:04:39.279 --> 00:04:41.600
mine bitcoin with the CPU, like you can't do that.
95
00:04:41.600 --> 00:04:42.160
Today, right.
96
00:04:42.240 --> 00:04:44.639
Maya Dresen was actually in the office when this happened,
97
00:04:44.639 --> 00:04:46.480
which I love because like I have like a like
98
00:04:46.519 --> 00:04:48.560
I have a validator for this story, like this moment,
99
00:04:48.600 --> 00:04:53.800
and and like from there they wrote the article and
100
00:04:53.839 --> 00:04:56.680
like I kind of was fascinated with the space. If
101
00:04:56.720 --> 00:05:00.720
you ever curious, like why Bloomberg has at crypto as
102
00:05:00.759 --> 00:05:02.759
a handle, right, Like, like I was part of the
103
00:05:02.759 --> 00:05:06.279
team that secured that and then ultimately we launched the
104
00:05:06.279 --> 00:05:09.720
Crypto vertical within Bloomberg, right, you know. But it's always
105
00:05:09.759 --> 00:05:13.279
been a topic that I loved. It wasn't It was
106
00:05:13.360 --> 00:05:18.040
really COVID that made me realize and understand what the
107
00:05:18.040 --> 00:05:21.639
technology could do in terms of connecting people, communities, what
108
00:05:21.680 --> 00:05:27.079
digital ownership really meant, what the what was actually happening,
109
00:05:27.279 --> 00:05:29.600
you know, and I think the big epiphany for me
110
00:05:30.240 --> 00:05:35.079
over that time was that the Internet was absorbing value
111
00:05:35.199 --> 00:05:40.040
and the movement of value, similar to like back in
112
00:05:40.079 --> 00:05:43.560
the day when the Internet absorbed telephany, right, like very
113
00:05:43.560 --> 00:05:46.199
few people remember, there used to be these ads on
114
00:05:46.319 --> 00:05:50.600
AT and T that were like call call Paris for
115
00:05:50.800 --> 00:05:52.959
two dollars and fourteen cents a minute, called Japan, or
116
00:05:52.959 --> 00:05:54.759
for like two dollars and ninety nine cents a minute.
117
00:05:55.079 --> 00:05:57.759
Those ads don't exist anymore, and it's because the Internet
118
00:05:57.800 --> 00:06:01.480
absorbed telephany with voice over IP and like drove the
119
00:06:01.560 --> 00:06:05.519
price down to zero. The phone company still exists, but
120
00:06:05.560 --> 00:06:08.360
they had to find new ways of making money. I
121
00:06:08.360 --> 00:06:11.480
saw the same thing happening with blockchain technologies, like value
122
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was all of being absorbed, and like the movement and
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the distillation of value, all of a sudden was going
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to be democratized, and I thought that that was just
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one of the biggest evolutions you could possibly imagine.
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So, Keith, you are an og I mean twenty ten.
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Look like in media, I was the youngest person almost
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every job I ever took in crypto, I am a cryptogeriatric.
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I think I'm fifteen years older than the median age
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at Moonpay.
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So what's it like looking back now? You know, crypto
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has grown significantly, we got legislation, all of wall streets here,
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all the banks and so forth. What's it like looking
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back and seeing that growth?
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Look, it's fun, right, it's awesome with any technology, Like
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in the beginning, it's always it's always beautiful in the beginning,
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because in the beginning it's really pure, right, and it's
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always sort of set forth by technological purists, and like that,
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that purity is what sort of attracts, you know, a
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lot of the thinkers to come in and build within it.
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To me, like, I'm.
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Always intrigued by the purity of that moment, right like
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the Internet saw it like the cyber of punks. What
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I love, though, is the moment where it is in now,
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where it's like we're no longer these crazy people streaming
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from the hill top, but like the wind is in
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the sails of the of the ecosystem.
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And I definitely think that.
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And you mentioned this between legislative clarity, regulatory clarity, banking clarity,
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accounting clarity, the industries seeing sort of like this Golden
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age emerge, whereas for the past fifteen years, it's had
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to sort of build and sort of like the fog
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of grayness.
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If we were to make the analogy comparing the Internet,
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are we at the broadband phase or the mobile phone phase?
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Okay, so the analogy I would actually give is, do
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you remember, like back in like the early nineties, like
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there were three eighty six chips for eighty six chips,
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pentium chips. People would talk about their modems they had
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fourteen point four bps motives, you remember, Okay, Like, do
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you remember what was the number one ad campaign at
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that time?
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Do you remember that?
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Was it around AOL?
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No? It was Intel inside right on tell in side.
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Yeah, was the biggest ad campaign you could imagine everyone
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would talk about when the pentium chip came out. It
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was the only thing people talk about. Then all of
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a sudden, Steve Jobs comes out with an iPod, right,
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and he says, thousand songs in your pocket. I realized,
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since we're going to be on YouTube, this is not
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an iPod, this is an iPhone. It was the closest
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thing I have to it, right, right, But he says
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thousand songs in your pocket, and all of a sudden,
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everyone says, I want that, right, it's they don't want
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they don't care about the upset anymore.
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They care about the experiences. Right.
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Where I genuinely think we're at right now is that
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moment where we are in between the chips and the experiences, right.
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And what I mean by that is is when people
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are talking about the blockchains that they're using or that
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things are built on, that's still a chip. That's still
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the technology.
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Right.
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And two years ago I wrote this up ed and
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it's on Nasdaq.
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It's funny. It's called nobody Cares how your toilet works? Right?
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And like what's funny is like, think about do you
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care how your toilet works?
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That just work? Right?
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If you go onto Wikipedia and you type in how
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does my toilet work? You get a ten thousand word
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article with eighty two reference points. Yeah, right, and like
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nobody cares, right. And so what we're going to start
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to see is these adoptions in the crypto space, with
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these technologies that are going to be more like the
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thousand songs in your pocket emerging. You are also the
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same way that like high definition emerged, right where you
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got a high definition TV and all of a sudden,
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you go, this is just a better experience, And like,
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what does a better experience look like? I mean, it
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looks like a cheaper money movement, It looks like twenty
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four to seven money movement. It looks like money movement
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to your phone as opposed to having to go to
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a physical location, right, right, And so I think that
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like a lot of this evolution that's going to occur
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with tokenization and cryptotechnologies is going to work against the
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bigger backdrop of what's happening, which is this trend line
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towards a world that's getting faster, more efficient, cheaper.
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Absolutely, And you know, with your background for example at
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Time and Wired and so forth, how do you feel
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in Bloomberg these companies will transition to web three? Is
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it using the blockchain for content verification, weeding out deep
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fakes and things like that?
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Yeah, So, like I think that there's gonna be a lot.
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I don't think any of them are going to consciously
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do it, right, Like, I think it's going to be
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an adoption based on how technology evolves.
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Right.
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So you bring up verification right.
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First?
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Like in information in the information age, I feel like
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I'd have to sort of ask you.
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It's like like.
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The problem that people are having with verification today is
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they're trying to verify truth. And I would argue we
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are in a and this is on content right, right,
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And I would argue, we're in a post truth era
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of content. And what I mean is is not that
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truth doesn't exist, but we're more in a trust era, right.
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And it's evolved because of the way in which information
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is now disseminated and accessed.
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Right.
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It used to be that there were three news sources
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in America. You could have a Walter Cronkite who was
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the most trusted person on the planet. And distribution, the
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means of distribution we're controlled right Today, you know, consumers
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have infinite choice to get any type of information, and
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then you weigher that on with paywalls, which gate information
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and access right to certain certain areas, and you start
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to realize, like people are getting their information in bubbles, right,
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And the infinite information is actually creating an opportunity for
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brands that are trusted by certain constituencies because the consumer
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would probably think, I want infinite, but infinite is paralyzing, right.
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You have a read Berry Schwartz's book The Paradox of
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Choice right, right, And so the consumer ultimately wants to
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go back to Time or to the Wall Street Journal,
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or to Fox News or to CNN. It doesn't matter, right,
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and to them what those really are. And I used
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to say this all the time of time. It's like
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that red border was a trusted filter, right, It's not
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necessarily truth, it's trust that the consumer is coming for.
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Right.
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So like where I think blockchain technology will come in
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in that space is by saying Time actually verified this picture, right,
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like that this originated here, right, not this is true
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or not that you're trusting that if it came from
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this place, it's true. The other area that I think
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that a lot of brands are going to really jump
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into is prediction markets. And it's a weird way of
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saying it, but like why wouldn't Bloomberg or CNBC start
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to highlight prediction markets or use prediction markets on their sites?
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Right?
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Like, if you think about information, like information is really
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just in three forms. It's you know, you're informing someone,
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you're providing insights, or you're entertaining.
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Right.
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If you're informing or providing insights, why not give the
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consumer the chance to be entertained right within a manner
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in which they can now you know, use their knowledge
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as a form of sort of like advantaging themselves or
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disadvantaging themselves.
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Right.
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So I think there's just like all these small things.
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And then the final area I would say is is
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I do think that, you know, a lot of media
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brands will move towards evolved subscription models, right, And I
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think that the ability to start to use a token
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as a sort of like a CRM mechanism to gather
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information around the consumer horizontally to be able to get
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a better picture of who they are, will will enable
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them to create better communities and monetize differently.
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Let's double click on that last one, sure, where you
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know you mentioned the token being used to kind of
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build brand resonance, keep the community going engaged. Do you
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see the different companies out there to Amazon's the apples
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creating their own token, rewarding you for holding it and
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allow there may be interoperability with other companies and brands
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that you can take that token and spend it there
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and things like that.
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I think that that's a real use case that could exist.
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I don't think that we're there yet, right. I feel
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like that that's the thing that everyone wants to do
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right like, or that's the promise that it goes towards.
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You know, there's a lot of things that you have
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to think about when it comes to blockchain technologies.
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Right.
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One of the best aspects of blockchain technology, right is
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it's transparency, right right, you could see where someone goes
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like but you know when you read the press around
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like Amazon launching like its own token, the question you
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have to ask is is, like, until there's a privacy
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factor right associated with the token, why would Amazon ever
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do that?
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Because if I.
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Was Walmart, I would literally just be looking at Amazon's
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token and I would see what all their customers are doing,
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right r and so like this is where you start
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to see a lot of the tokens out there push
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for privacy features right like and and so like when
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you start to think about stuff like that, like you're
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seeing an emergence of like privacy or or like regulated privacy.
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Emerge. And the one challenge.
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That people have is full privacy right will violate a
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lot of the regulated money transmitter rules. And so you
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do need some sort of privacy initiative that allows for
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it to be private, but if needed, unzipped to be
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able to be accessed by regulators.
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Sure, so if they weren't to launch a coin, they
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have to have some sort of ZK technology and you
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can't see everything, you know, the supply maybe to token
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and it's interoppable with different blockchains. But that's it.
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And like, and the way to think about it though,
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is is people really misunderstand crypto if we were to
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step back, because we've gone down a rabbit home one area, right,
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but like but you know, like let's let's step back,
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Like why is crypto misunderstood? It's misunderstood because it's treated
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like a vertical category when it's really a horizontal category, right.
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And what I mean by that is like going back
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to my time in media, print, Print is a vertical category. Right,
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You're either a magazine or a newspaper, or you're not right, right.
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TV or broadcast or radio, terrestrial radio, those are vertical categories.
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You're either linear television or terrestrial radio, or you're not right.
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So you're following me so far, right? These are analog
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vertical categories. When you get to digital, digital is a
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horizontal platform. Anything that can be digitized ultimately will be digitized.
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So you could have digital text, you could have digital audio,
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you could have digital video, you could also share digital.
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You could target digital differently. You could do things with
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digital that you cannot do in verticals that are analog. Right,
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So people understand that, right when it comes to media,
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that digital is a horizontal correct, right. Okay, So now
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take that step one step further into the crypto space.
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What is crypto really? Right?
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Crypto is tokenization, right, so if it could be digitized,
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once it's digitized, it could be tokenized, right, So what
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does that make crypto? It makes crypto a horizontal platform
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as well, not a vertical category. And why is it
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covered by vertical as a vertical category, because it's just
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misunderstood by the media. And what does the media like
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to cover? They like to cover really three things, right.
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They like to cover bitcoin, they like to cover fart coin,
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and they like to cover stable coins, right, And like
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why do they like to cover bitcoin and part coin?
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I told you I could make the cameramen smile, right,
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Why they like to cover bitcoin and part cooin? Let's
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start there, right, Like, Bitcoin's the largest asset class in
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crypto and fartcoin's the most ridiculous set class in crypto, right,
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and everyone looks at it and goes, how could you
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have something called farkcoin the is three hundred million market
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cap at this time and day, and then stable coins
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they're just covering because there's so much commotion about institutional adoption.
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Let's unpack this for a second. Right, Bitcoin is its
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own vertical, right.
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I can argue.
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That the usp, the unique selling proposition of bitcoin is
367
00:18:56.559 --> 00:18:59.559
that it's just an alternative asset class. You can argue
368
00:18:59.559 --> 00:19:03.200
with me whether or not that is a valid statement,
369
00:19:03.279 --> 00:19:05.680
but like that's the usp of bitcoin. Really at the
370
00:19:05.759 --> 00:19:09.160
end of the day, the ETFs, that's their own vertical
371
00:19:09.160 --> 00:19:12.240
in crypto. Right, what are the ETFs really? The ETFs
372
00:19:12.240 --> 00:19:16.319
are really a container for traditional financial institutions to be
373
00:19:16.359 --> 00:19:18.799
able to hold these new asset classes in a manner
374
00:19:18.839 --> 00:19:22.599
that is highly regulated and compliant to their existing infrastructure.
375
00:19:22.759 --> 00:19:23.039
Right.
376
00:19:23.559 --> 00:19:27.240
What are stable coins? Stable Coins are you know, tokens
377
00:19:27.240 --> 00:19:29.359
that are pegged to a currency at a one to
378
00:19:29.359 --> 00:19:31.359
one ratio, primarily the US dollar.
379
00:19:31.440 --> 00:19:35.400
Right now, Right, that's the unique proposition of it. Right,
380
00:19:35.400 --> 00:19:35.680
you have.
381
00:19:35.640 --> 00:19:39.400
Stability and that you can digitally move money in the internet.
382
00:19:39.880 --> 00:19:42.359
What is real world US It's it's just the tokenization
383
00:19:42.480 --> 00:19:45.640
of these commodities, right, So they could be traded differently.
384
00:19:45.799 --> 00:19:47.279
What are mean coins.
385
00:19:49.240 --> 00:19:49.720
Gambling?
386
00:19:50.119 --> 00:19:50.319
Right?
387
00:19:50.400 --> 00:19:53.119
Like, so like what is like what is Maybe that's
388
00:19:53.160 --> 00:19:55.440
the wrong term, but like what is fart coin really?
389
00:19:55.559 --> 00:19:58.759
It's the ability Like if you really wanted to distill
390
00:19:58.799 --> 00:20:01.680
this down to like, how could you justifiably with a
391
00:20:01.720 --> 00:20:06.200
straight face talk about parkcoin, Like it's you have an
392
00:20:06.359 --> 00:20:10.519
entire society that, over the past, you know, twenty years,
393
00:20:10.920 --> 00:20:15.720
has fixated on attention, and now you have a technology,
394
00:20:16.119 --> 00:20:20.720
with blockchain technology that allows you to monetize attention. And
395
00:20:20.799 --> 00:20:24.039
so what is farkcoin really? It's the monetization of attention
396
00:20:24.279 --> 00:20:27.079
by groups of people, right, Yes, And like when you
397
00:20:27.079 --> 00:20:29.039
step back and you're like, what can a blockchain really
398
00:20:29.039 --> 00:20:30.799
do that you can't do without a blockchain, it's really
399
00:20:30.839 --> 00:20:35.559
just three things. It's authentication, digital ownership, and the removal
400
00:20:35.599 --> 00:20:40.240
of intermediaries, right and and so like when you look
401
00:20:40.240 --> 00:20:44.559
at it from that angle or that vantage point, you're like, oh,
402
00:20:44.920 --> 00:20:51.119
that's so interesting that for the first time ever, if
403
00:20:51.200 --> 00:20:54.720
the only way to monetize attention historically has been through
404
00:20:54.839 --> 00:20:59.799
influencers and that's been siloed to individuals, this is almost
405
00:20:59.839 --> 00:21:04.759
like the democratization of that. Whether you buy that or not.
406
00:21:05.119 --> 00:21:07.960
Like it's an easier mental model to understand why can
407
00:21:08.000 --> 00:21:08.839
that have value?
408
00:21:09.039 --> 00:21:13.839
And it's offline activity, human behavior and networks. We form
409
00:21:13.920 --> 00:21:19.000
groups around things, offline ridiculous things, whether it be politics, religion,
410
00:21:19.440 --> 00:21:22.359
any type of movement. But it's now, like you said, online,
411
00:21:22.480 --> 00:21:25.319
tokenized on the blockchain and financialize.
412
00:21:24.839 --> 00:21:27.640
And so like here's a really interesting mental model just
413
00:21:27.720 --> 00:21:30.000
going back to media and then bringing it back to crypto.
414
00:21:31.359 --> 00:21:32.759
People used to ask me all the time because I
415
00:21:32.759 --> 00:21:37.000
have Time magazine, you know, Bloomberg, BusinessWeek, Wired magazine. They
416
00:21:37.039 --> 00:21:39.799
would say, is print dead?
417
00:21:40.960 --> 00:21:41.160
Right?
418
00:21:41.359 --> 00:21:42.799
And I would say to people, I don't know if
419
00:21:42.839 --> 00:21:45.599
print is dead, but I do know that every day
420
00:21:45.599 --> 00:21:48.400
someone is born and every day someone dies, Like talk
421
00:21:48.400 --> 00:21:49.759
about the most morbid.
422
00:21:49.480 --> 00:21:51.359
Example I could possibly give and go from fart point
423
00:21:51.400 --> 00:21:51.720
to death.
424
00:21:51.759 --> 00:21:54.160
So I apologize, right, but every day someone is born
425
00:21:54.200 --> 00:21:56.839
and every day someone dies, a new print reader is
426
00:21:56.920 --> 00:22:00.240
not replaced at a one to one ratio, right, Like
427
00:22:00.319 --> 00:22:02.599
if you think about it from a replacement theory perspective,
428
00:22:02.640 --> 00:22:04.440
like print is on a downward trend.
429
00:22:04.480 --> 00:22:05.759
I don't know if that trend is like.
430
00:22:05.720 --> 00:22:09.240
This, if it's like this microphone like thing right right,
431
00:22:09.279 --> 00:22:12.759
it's like even deeper, but it is downward right, based
432
00:22:12.759 --> 00:22:14.240
on that, and if you'd agree with me on that,
433
00:22:14.359 --> 00:22:18.319
now flip it around. Every day someone dies, and every
434
00:22:18.400 --> 00:22:22.680
day someone's born, someone who feels comfortable being a digital
435
00:22:22.799 --> 00:22:27.000
native and by extension, having digital ownership, Yes, and understanding
436
00:22:27.039 --> 00:22:31.279
digital ownership is born at a higher than one to
437
00:22:31.319 --> 00:22:33.519
one ratio. So like, now you're looking at a trend
438
00:22:33.559 --> 00:22:37.720
line that's actually going up right, and so like, when
439
00:22:37.720 --> 00:22:41.400
you think about that against the ridiculousness of something like
440
00:22:41.480 --> 00:22:45.279
fart coin, against the ridiculousness of the fact that we've
441
00:22:45.279 --> 00:22:49.160
become an attention based society, it all of a sudden
442
00:22:49.200 --> 00:22:53.920
makes sense why that area of sort of the ecosystem
443
00:22:53.920 --> 00:22:55.160
would exist.
444
00:22:55.559 --> 00:22:56.519
When people look at.
445
00:22:56.400 --> 00:22:59.559
Crypto as a vertical and you try to combine all
446
00:22:59.599 --> 00:23:02.519
of those different sort of verticals that I had just said,
447
00:23:03.279 --> 00:23:08.079
the only sensical way that you can describe or explain
448
00:23:08.240 --> 00:23:11.319
crypto is through gambling and speculation. When people look at
449
00:23:11.359 --> 00:23:13.759
it through a horizontal and you look at each individual
450
00:23:14.680 --> 00:23:17.400
vertical in it, then you start to understand the unique
451
00:23:17.519 --> 00:23:18.680
value proposition of each.
452
00:23:19.319 --> 00:23:22.279
So Keith with that said, right, with this horizontal landscape,
453
00:23:22.319 --> 00:23:24.880
and you have all these new use cases and utility
454
00:23:25.279 --> 00:23:28.759
with the tookenization. Tell us a bit about moonpay and
455
00:23:28.759 --> 00:23:31.960
what your mission is and how you're helping to facilitate
456
00:23:32.000 --> 00:23:33.279
the use of cryptocurrencies.
457
00:23:33.400 --> 00:23:37.319
Sure, so, like what moon Pay's ultimately building is the membrane, right,
458
00:23:37.359 --> 00:23:40.240
It's the highly compliant membrane that allows people to move
459
00:23:40.480 --> 00:23:44.319
from the world that they know to this new sort
460
00:23:44.359 --> 00:23:48.839
of like DeFi you know world, these decentralized world. And
461
00:23:48.920 --> 00:23:51.960
you know, when moonpay was originally founded back in twenty nineteen,
462
00:23:52.519 --> 00:23:55.200
like Ivan's big vision was, you know, how do I
463
00:23:55.240 --> 00:23:57.920
take what I have in my pocket, my credit card,
464
00:23:58.000 --> 00:24:00.839
my debit card, and just to fix it to be
465
00:24:00.920 --> 00:24:03.559
able to access sort of this really cool crypto thing
466
00:24:03.599 --> 00:24:05.480
that's happening out here to buy things like bitcoin and
467
00:24:05.519 --> 00:24:08.720
others right today, Like what we've looked at is is
468
00:24:08.759 --> 00:24:11.039
like how do you expand our payment stack? Right, So
469
00:24:11.079 --> 00:24:13.519
it's like how do you expand trading? How do you
470
00:24:13.519 --> 00:24:17.079
expand the infrastructure for stable coin money movement? And the
471
00:24:17.160 --> 00:24:19.519
easiest way to sort of think about it from a
472
00:24:19.519 --> 00:24:22.200
mental model is it's essentially the PayPal of crypto, right,
473
00:24:22.319 --> 00:24:24.440
And that's and we work very closely with PayPal. They're
474
00:24:24.480 --> 00:24:28.920
amazing partners for us. But what is our partnership with them.
475
00:24:28.920 --> 00:24:33.000
It's a compliance partnership, right, Right. And when you think
476
00:24:33.039 --> 00:24:35.640
about like, think about this table for instance, right if
477
00:24:35.720 --> 00:24:39.880
this table was all the people in the world, right
478
00:24:41.240 --> 00:24:44.079
and out here outside the table was all of the
479
00:24:44.119 --> 00:24:48.799
really cool decentralized applications that are available, whether it's poly market,
480
00:24:48.920 --> 00:24:53.079
whether it's exodus wallet or you know, trust swallet or metamsk,
481
00:24:53.240 --> 00:24:57.559
or whether it's anything that is in the decentralized space. Right,
482
00:24:59.519 --> 00:25:03.720
Moonpey is essentially the membrane around the outside of the
483
00:25:03.759 --> 00:25:06.880
table that allows you to move from being in the
484
00:25:06.880 --> 00:25:08.880
world that you're in to access this world.
485
00:25:08.960 --> 00:25:09.680
And what do we do.
486
00:25:09.759 --> 00:25:14.079
We ultimately manage the you know PII of the consumer right,
487
00:25:14.119 --> 00:25:17.240
the personal information. We make sure that we have all
488
00:25:17.240 --> 00:25:20.680
the licenses necessary to be able to move between sort
489
00:25:20.720 --> 00:25:23.440
of the ecosystems in a highly compliant way where you're
490
00:25:23.440 --> 00:25:26.880
not sort of money wandering or doing something illicit, right,
491
00:25:27.720 --> 00:25:32.480
and we provide access right And you know, ultimately, you know,
492
00:25:32.559 --> 00:25:35.559
the thesis that we're building against is what I had
493
00:25:35.559 --> 00:25:37.960
mentioned earlier, which is the world is going faster, it's
494
00:25:38.000 --> 00:25:43.559
getting more efficient, it's getting cheaper, right, and you know, ultimately,
495
00:25:44.960 --> 00:25:48.359
you know, as that's occurring, like value, the movement of
496
00:25:48.440 --> 00:25:52.039
value is changing, and Moonpay wants to ultimately allow you
497
00:25:52.079 --> 00:25:56.599
to take any sort of payment method and access anything
498
00:25:56.640 --> 00:25:58.119
tokenized in that new world.
499
00:25:58.680 --> 00:26:01.319
And that's such a critical component for adoption, right A
500
00:26:01.400 --> 00:26:04.920
building those on and off rams totally. So tell us
501
00:26:04.920 --> 00:26:07.160
about the type of folks that are using Is it
502
00:26:07.200 --> 00:26:09.599
both retail and institutionals?
503
00:26:09.680 --> 00:26:10.279
Yeah?
504
00:26:10.039 --> 00:26:12.480
So you have to remember on one end we have
505
00:26:12.559 --> 00:26:15.599
thirty five million customers, right, that's retail. These are people
506
00:26:15.599 --> 00:26:18.920
who are saying I want to buy this tokenized asset, right,
507
00:26:19.039 --> 00:26:21.640
and they don't do it solely in the moonpay app,
508
00:26:21.720 --> 00:26:24.920
like where sort of decentralized. And the reason I say
509
00:26:24.920 --> 00:26:27.359
PayPal off cryptos is it's actually a good mental model
510
00:26:27.519 --> 00:26:30.359
right right, Like if you go to any of the
511
00:26:30.480 --> 00:26:34.960
top major decentralized apps out there, right, like moonpay is
512
00:26:35.000 --> 00:26:36.839
most likely there as you're.
513
00:26:36.720 --> 00:26:38.079
On ramp or your off ramp.
514
00:26:38.240 --> 00:26:43.680
Right, people don't go to eBay and think PayPal, right.
515
00:26:43.759 --> 00:26:45.799
They go to eBay because they want to experience eBay
516
00:26:45.799 --> 00:26:48.839
and then PayPal enables them to transact on eBay. Right,
517
00:26:48.839 --> 00:26:52.759
That's how they started started to get going the Moonpay app. Right, Like,
518
00:26:52.839 --> 00:26:55.119
as you have to think about that is more like
519
00:26:55.400 --> 00:26:57.640
how do you get a complete vision of all of
520
00:26:57.680 --> 00:27:01.200
your access points into this network that you've now sort
521
00:27:01.240 --> 00:27:06.440
of accessed. Because the original thesis of you know, like
522
00:27:07.079 --> 00:27:10.519
decentralized world was that you'd only want one wallet, right,
523
00:27:11.480 --> 00:27:13.599
and you'd go very deep in that one wallet. And
524
00:27:13.640 --> 00:27:17.319
like what we've seen is that based on people's moon
525
00:27:17.359 --> 00:27:21.400
pay accounts, about fifty five percent have three or more wallets, right,
526
00:27:21.519 --> 00:27:24.319
nine percent. I think I have something like twenty five wallets, right,
527
00:27:24.400 --> 00:27:27.640
So you're like, huh, Like what we need to do
528
00:27:27.720 --> 00:27:29.799
is we need to just give you a holistic vision
529
00:27:29.960 --> 00:27:32.000
of what you have out here, but like we want
530
00:27:32.039 --> 00:27:34.480
to empower you however you want to go out and
531
00:27:34.599 --> 00:27:36.599
experience this world.
532
00:27:36.759 --> 00:27:41.799
So when you're pitching or talking to institutions about adopting crypto,
533
00:27:42.319 --> 00:27:45.599
are they more open minded now given the regulatory landscape
534
00:27:45.599 --> 00:27:46.119
has changed.
535
00:27:46.240 --> 00:27:46.799
Yeah.
536
00:27:46.559 --> 00:27:52.319
So look like I would say, and I'd mentioned this earlier,
537
00:27:52.359 --> 00:27:54.680
like we've gone through this golden age. We're entering into
538
00:27:54.680 --> 00:27:56.880
this golden age. We've not gone through it. Sorry, we're
539
00:27:57.039 --> 00:28:00.920
entering into it. And it really is based on like right,
540
00:28:01.000 --> 00:28:03.200
and most industries flourish if they can get just a
541
00:28:03.359 --> 00:28:05.799
little bit of clarity, right, yes, but crypto is going
542
00:28:05.799 --> 00:28:09.200
through massive clarity. Right, It's going through clarity from a
543
00:28:09.319 --> 00:28:10.599
regulatory perspective.
544
00:28:10.799 --> 00:28:11.480
And what does that mean.
545
00:28:11.519 --> 00:28:14.039
It means that, for the first time ever, the SEC
546
00:28:14.079 --> 00:28:17.680
and the CFTC are actually defining what does an asset mean?
547
00:28:17.799 --> 00:28:19.160
What is this? What is that?
548
00:28:19.640 --> 00:28:24.640
It's not it's not irrational definitions. It's just clarifications of
549
00:28:24.680 --> 00:28:26.759
this is this, this is that? So you could start
550
00:28:26.759 --> 00:28:30.200
to build. Right, We're going through legislative clarity, like what
551
00:28:30.279 --> 00:28:32.640
is genius? What was so important about the Genius Act?
552
00:28:33.119 --> 00:28:34.759
It all of a sudden defined what is.
553
00:28:34.680 --> 00:28:36.000
A stable coin? Right?
554
00:28:36.319 --> 00:28:42.240
And you know that creates an underpinning sort of foundational
555
00:28:42.240 --> 00:28:44.720
base for so many applications to be built on top
556
00:28:44.759 --> 00:28:49.079
of it? Is what is market structure really like? When
557
00:28:49.119 --> 00:28:51.039
you think about it, because everyone's like, oh, market structure,
558
00:28:51.039 --> 00:28:53.920
this market structure that it's really about what is the
559
00:28:53.920 --> 00:28:55.079
definition of DeFi?
560
00:28:55.680 --> 00:28:57.720
Right? How do you access DeFi?
561
00:28:58.400 --> 00:29:00.640
And really, if you want to step one step further,
562
00:29:00.680 --> 00:29:03.880
it's about how do you ensure that innovation can continue
563
00:29:03.880 --> 00:29:07.039
to flourish in America so that way there's American jobs right.
564
00:29:06.799 --> 00:29:06.920
Right.
565
00:29:07.839 --> 00:29:09.240
When you look at banking.
566
00:29:08.960 --> 00:29:11.640
Clarity, like when the occ all of a sudden says
567
00:29:12.039 --> 00:29:13.960
banks are allowed to do this, banks are not allowed
568
00:29:13.960 --> 00:29:18.279
to do this, It all of a sudden allows businesses
569
00:29:18.279 --> 00:29:21.079
to feel more comfortable about these assets and like what
570
00:29:21.240 --> 00:29:24.799
is actually happening with these tokenized sort of products. And
571
00:29:24.839 --> 00:29:28.119
then when you look at at accounting clarity, right, Like,
572
00:29:28.160 --> 00:29:30.279
one of the reasons you're seeing like this rise in
573
00:29:30.359 --> 00:29:33.599
these you know, digital asset treasury companies is because for
574
00:29:33.640 --> 00:29:36.319
the first time ever it's clear as to what it
575
00:29:36.359 --> 00:29:38.240
means to hold crypto in your books or not from
576
00:29:38.279 --> 00:29:43.799
a definition perspective. All of that is getting sort of
577
00:29:44.400 --> 00:29:49.440
institutions more comfortable with how can they participate in this
578
00:29:50.000 --> 00:29:53.599
evolution in value and the movement of value?
579
00:29:53.839 --> 00:29:54.079
Right?
580
00:29:54.160 --> 00:29:57.079
And I think like we're just going to continue to
581
00:29:57.119 --> 00:30:00.279
see it take place. Right, Like I always use this
582
00:30:00.839 --> 00:30:05.240
really good example of sorry I'm so long winded today,
583
00:30:06.200 --> 00:30:07.880
but it is like I feel like I'm like, just
584
00:30:07.920 --> 00:30:11.680
like so absolutely aloviated. Abboviated today have a lot of
585
00:30:11.720 --> 00:30:17.039
knowledge between eighteen seventy nine and nineteen oh four, right,
586
00:30:17.359 --> 00:30:19.599
in a twenty five year period between eighteen seventy nine
587
00:30:19.640 --> 00:30:23.839
nineteen oh four, the airplane, the automobile, the light bulb,
588
00:30:23.880 --> 00:30:27.359
the telephone, All of those inventions we came to market, right,
589
00:30:27.400 --> 00:30:30.279
So like pictures twenty five year period eighteen seventy nine
590
00:30:30.279 --> 00:30:33.480
to nineteen oh four, the airplane, the light bulb, the automobile,
591
00:30:33.720 --> 00:30:36.799
and the telephone. Right So, if you were born in
592
00:30:37.559 --> 00:30:41.400
nineteen oh five, you only know this world. If you
593
00:30:41.799 --> 00:30:45.440
died in eighteen seventy eight, you don't know this world
594
00:30:45.519 --> 00:30:45.960
at all.
595
00:30:46.240 --> 00:30:47.920
Right, where are we today?
596
00:30:47.960 --> 00:30:51.200
We're like nineteen ten, right, Like, we don't know what
597
00:30:51.240 --> 00:30:55.000
the third level, fourth level, fifth level order of magnitudes
598
00:30:55.039 --> 00:30:57.359
are of having the airplane or the light bulb, or
599
00:30:57.440 --> 00:31:01.119
the telephone or the automobile. We are is we have
600
00:31:01.160 --> 00:31:03.039
a group of people who are like, this is cool,
601
00:31:03.160 --> 00:31:06.079
Like I'm going to adopt this early. And there's also
602
00:31:06.119 --> 00:31:08.799
a bunch of people who are like that automobile thing
603
00:31:08.920 --> 00:31:11.319
is really interesting, but I'm gonna stick with my horse
604
00:31:11.359 --> 00:31:13.839
for a little bit, right right, And there's nothing wrong
605
00:31:13.880 --> 00:31:16.240
with that, right, Like, but that's kind of where we
606
00:31:16.279 --> 00:31:19.640
are in this evolution of like blockchain and AI and
607
00:31:19.720 --> 00:31:21.799
like and these changes in the world.
608
00:31:22.480 --> 00:31:24.599
I read one in these institutions you're a partner with
609
00:31:24.759 --> 00:31:27.559
is MasterCard. Tell us a bit about that? How how
610
00:31:27.599 --> 00:31:29.400
they are viewing this and how you're helping them.
611
00:31:29.559 --> 00:31:32.119
Yeah, I mean, look like I think I think MasterCard
612
00:31:32.200 --> 00:31:36.640
and Visa have both been really uh you know, front
613
00:31:36.680 --> 00:31:39.400
and center in a lot of what they have been
614
00:31:39.400 --> 00:31:43.799
thinking about. Right, Like, the reality is and we're talking
615
00:31:43.799 --> 00:31:46.880
about this in the beginning, right, like the purity of movements.
616
00:31:48.240 --> 00:31:51.799
The reality of decentralization is is it cannot and it
617
00:31:51.880 --> 00:31:54.400
will not replace centralization.
618
00:31:54.720 --> 00:31:54.839
Right.
619
00:31:54.880 --> 00:31:57.559
There will always be some sort of centralization, right, And
620
00:31:57.599 --> 00:31:59.720
the reason is is someone always has to be held
621
00:31:59.720 --> 00:32:03.920
acount uptable somewhere, right, And so like the real way
622
00:32:03.960 --> 00:32:07.559
to actually evolve your mental model about what's happening is
623
00:32:07.599 --> 00:32:13.960
that decentralized technologies are going to remove inefficiencies in centralized
624
00:32:14.240 --> 00:32:19.720
processes and create better experiences holistically, right, like even moon
625
00:32:19.799 --> 00:32:24.559
pay right like, and we are all about the promotion
626
00:32:24.839 --> 00:32:29.640
and success of this decentralized ecosystem. We are that throat
627
00:32:29.680 --> 00:32:32.559
to choke for regulators if something goes wrong, because we
628
00:32:32.640 --> 00:32:35.039
have all the licenses and hold all the compliance and
629
00:32:35.079 --> 00:32:38.160
we hold all the information. Right, So like, you're always
630
00:32:38.160 --> 00:32:41.160
going to need some sort of centralization, and so like
631
00:32:41.640 --> 00:32:46.160
what's interesting about Visa and MasterCard and the likes is
632
00:32:46.839 --> 00:32:53.559
you have these beautiful membranes around the world, right with
633
00:32:53.720 --> 00:32:56.640
access points on ramps and off ramps or off ramps
634
00:32:56.720 --> 00:33:02.359
really into consumers, right and on ramps into sort of
635
00:33:02.440 --> 00:33:05.200
like the movement of value into this ecosystem at the
636
00:33:05.240 --> 00:33:08.640
point of purchase, right. And so so you start to
637
00:33:08.640 --> 00:33:11.440
look at this and you go, huh, where can these
638
00:33:11.480 --> 00:33:14.680
technologies help, Like they'll help when it comes to like
639
00:33:14.880 --> 00:33:19.039
unnecessary costs taking place on MasterCards end. Where are on
640
00:33:19.200 --> 00:33:21.640
visa's end, Like where will it help? It will help
641
00:33:21.680 --> 00:33:25.039
from an information perspective on moving and identifying, you know,
642
00:33:25.079 --> 00:33:29.440
individuals across a cross border. I think that you're going
643
00:33:29.480 --> 00:33:35.880
to see these technologies adopted by these these two players
644
00:33:37.240 --> 00:33:41.000
increasingly also by like the Paypals of the world. Like
645
00:33:41.000 --> 00:33:42.400
I don't know if you know my or if you've
646
00:33:42.440 --> 00:33:46.119
if you've spoken with the PayPal crypto team. They're unbelievable
647
00:33:46.160 --> 00:33:48.039
in terms of some of the stuff that they're working on.
648
00:33:48.400 --> 00:33:50.680
But I think you're going to see these technologies adopted
649
00:33:50.680 --> 00:33:54.079
by all the big players because they're going to increase
650
00:33:54.240 --> 00:33:58.680
the sort of value proposition that that that they can
651
00:33:58.720 --> 00:34:00.720
provide their consumers and are going to also be able
652
00:34:00.759 --> 00:34:03.440
to remove costs from the equation on their back end.
653
00:34:03.839 --> 00:34:07.039
Right, There's something I've been thinking about. You know, this
654
00:34:07.119 --> 00:34:10.039
technology brings you highlight a lot of benefits, right, it
655
00:34:10.039 --> 00:34:14.280
eliminates costs and makes things more efficient. But these traditional
656
00:34:14.280 --> 00:34:16.760
companies like your master cards and the banks, they are
657
00:34:16.840 --> 00:34:19.320
used to the world being a certain way and collecting
658
00:34:19.400 --> 00:34:22.440
revenues and certain things. How do you think they adapt
659
00:34:22.480 --> 00:34:25.199
to this? It is they lose some revenue, but yeah,
660
00:34:25.199 --> 00:34:27.000
there's some new avenues that didn't make money.
661
00:34:27.079 --> 00:34:29.639
You know, tokenization is going to do to the financial
662
00:34:29.639 --> 00:34:33.920
industry what digitization did to the media industry. Right, So,
663
00:34:34.239 --> 00:34:37.239
like when one thing that like I never really talked about,
664
00:34:37.239 --> 00:34:40.679
which is really interesting, was like back in two thousand
665
00:34:40.719 --> 00:34:44.559
and nine twenty ten, I think it was Howard Mittman,
666
00:34:44.679 --> 00:34:48.079
Mayadres and myself when we were leading Wired. We were
667
00:34:48.119 --> 00:34:51.280
the first brand a Conde Nast to digitize what like
668
00:34:51.639 --> 00:34:54.360
the brand, like we had over fifty percent digital revenue.
669
00:34:54.360 --> 00:34:55.760
That sounds so stupid.
670
00:34:55.480 --> 00:34:58.719
And silly today, right, but in twenty ten, it was
671
00:34:58.760 --> 00:35:01.440
like a really big deal, right that, like we were
672
00:35:01.480 --> 00:35:08.119
commanding more revenue from digital revenue than from print revenue.
673
00:35:08.800 --> 00:35:11.840
And guess what, like there were a ton of people
674
00:35:12.320 --> 00:35:15.559
who like were like, how could you do that? That
675
00:35:15.719 --> 00:35:19.480
is such a silly approach because print revenue is a
676
00:35:19.559 --> 00:35:25.119
high CPM business, right, and they were driving all of
677
00:35:25.159 --> 00:35:28.119
their profit off of that. Digital revenue is a scale game.
678
00:35:28.199 --> 00:35:29.960
You have to play a speed game. You have to
679
00:35:30.239 --> 00:35:33.960
quickly go up. The same way that you know the
680
00:35:34.000 --> 00:35:36.400
phone companies didn't go away when they lost a long
681
00:35:36.440 --> 00:35:41.719
distance right, the same way that you know that you
682
00:35:41.760 --> 00:35:44.480
know a lot of media brands did go away, but
683
00:35:44.599 --> 00:35:47.920
like some are still thriving and doing well because of digital.
684
00:35:48.480 --> 00:35:50.679
I think that the financial industry is going to go
685
00:35:50.719 --> 00:35:54.280
through a reckoning, and you shouldn't look at blockchain technologies
686
00:35:54.719 --> 00:35:58.639
in a silo, like you should look at blockchain technologies
687
00:35:58.679 --> 00:36:01.679
and AI technologies as two sides of the same coin.
688
00:36:02.239 --> 00:36:03.840
And this is actually where I'm gonna actually give John
689
00:36:03.880 --> 00:36:09.920
deu Gastino over at coinbase has any right. I'm so honored, Like,
690
00:36:10.320 --> 00:36:13.800
did you know, hold on on a totally random throwout
691
00:36:13.920 --> 00:36:16.000
on this and don't edit this out, Okay, I want
692
00:36:16.000 --> 00:36:17.280
this piece in this Okay.
693
00:36:17.559 --> 00:36:18.880
So I love Ben Mezrick.
694
00:36:18.960 --> 00:36:21.400
If you read Ben Mezerick books, interviewed Ben as well,
695
00:36:21.480 --> 00:36:23.800
you even everyone at this point like, I love this.
696
00:36:23.840 --> 00:36:25.960
It's like Tony between two ferns and you have like
697
00:36:26.039 --> 00:36:27.079
all my friends.
698
00:36:26.760 --> 00:36:27.760
And this is so good. Okay.
699
00:36:27.880 --> 00:36:33.599
So Ben Mezick wrote this incredible book and it was
700
00:36:34.840 --> 00:36:37.760
it was called Rigged Okay, yes, And it was about
701
00:36:37.920 --> 00:36:41.840
the New York Mercantile Exchange and this like twenty four
702
00:36:41.880 --> 00:36:43.639
year old phenom in it.
703
00:36:44.000 --> 00:36:44.599
And that was.
704
00:36:44.800 --> 00:36:48.079
It came out afterwards that it was John Degastino. And
705
00:36:48.599 --> 00:36:50.960
anyone who's ever met him knows, like, not only is
706
00:36:51.000 --> 00:36:52.880
Ben one of the nicest people, but like John is
707
00:36:53.320 --> 00:36:55.760
genuinely one of the nicest human beings on the planet.
708
00:36:56.519 --> 00:37:00.239
And I was sitting here with John and not here,
709
00:37:00.320 --> 00:37:02.559
but like like together, and I was saying to him,
710
00:37:02.559 --> 00:37:07.920
I'm like, I know, crypto like blockchain technologies and AI
711
00:37:07.960 --> 00:37:10.280
are two sides of the same coin, and I need
712
00:37:10.679 --> 00:37:14.199
I can't place a great mental model for this. And
713
00:37:14.239 --> 00:37:15.800
he said to me, And so I said to him,
714
00:37:15.800 --> 00:37:17.559
I was always going to credit him, right, So I
715
00:37:17.559 --> 00:37:19.119
have to credit him right now. That's why you can't
716
00:37:19.239 --> 00:37:23.840
edit this out, I said to him. He said to me, well,
717
00:37:23.840 --> 00:37:30.760
it's actually quite easy. AI is scalable, truth is scalable intelligence,
718
00:37:31.280 --> 00:37:34.440
and blockchain is scalable truth, right, And so like what
719
00:37:34.480 --> 00:37:38.239
you see is like information is being created and sorted
720
00:37:38.280 --> 00:37:41.559
out through AI faster than ever before, but there needs
721
00:37:41.559 --> 00:37:43.960
to be a verifying factor, which is where blockchain technology
722
00:37:44.000 --> 00:37:45.559
is going to come in, because a human can't keep
723
00:37:45.639 --> 00:37:48.440
up with the pace of AI, right, right, So scalable intelligence,
724
00:37:48.599 --> 00:37:49.400
scalable truth.
725
00:37:49.519 --> 00:37:51.639
I loved that, right, And.
726
00:37:51.559 --> 00:37:54.159
So against that backdrop, you have to look at sort
727
00:37:54.199 --> 00:37:58.599
of like what what are we about to see? Unfortunately,
728
00:37:58.679 --> 00:38:00.599
Like I think we're about to see one of the
729
00:38:00.639 --> 00:38:07.119
biggest disruptions ever in white collar jobs, and I think
730
00:38:07.159 --> 00:38:09.280
that people have to wake up to that, and I
731
00:38:09.280 --> 00:38:12.480
think it's going to happen faster than people think. You
732
00:38:12.519 --> 00:38:16.480
can go down on this through a very dystopian path
733
00:38:17.239 --> 00:38:20.679
and it gets very dark very quickly. But you have
734
00:38:20.760 --> 00:38:25.559
to in your mind recognize that headlines in the news
735
00:38:25.599 --> 00:38:29.519
only cover the extremes, and the reality is is that
736
00:38:29.679 --> 00:38:32.960
like the world is ultimately defined by optimists, it's not
737
00:38:33.039 --> 00:38:36.440
defined by pessimists, right, And Like, if you were to
738
00:38:36.480 --> 00:38:40.159
read the news today, you would think the world was ending.
739
00:38:40.639 --> 00:38:42.440
But if you stepped back and you look at some
740
00:38:42.440 --> 00:38:45.119
of the stats, a life expectancy is better than ever before.
741
00:38:45.199 --> 00:38:48.119
Like health care is better, Like like there's so many
742
00:38:48.119 --> 00:38:51.519
things that are actually quite good. What people don't actually
743
00:38:51.559 --> 00:38:55.440
ever talk about is like Keith came to Tony to
744
00:38:55.519 --> 00:38:58.679
do the you know, between two ferns discussion on crypto
745
00:38:59.440 --> 00:39:01.280
and then last and they had a nice conversation. They
746
00:39:01.320 --> 00:39:04.039
both drank spin drift. Nobody cares about that, right, and
747
00:39:04.119 --> 00:39:07.880
so like like the news is only giving you, you know,
748
00:39:08.039 --> 00:39:11.920
extremes in bombarded short term segments.
749
00:39:12.159 --> 00:39:15.320
Yeah, that's a great analogy you mentioned with John Dangs.
750
00:39:15.440 --> 00:39:19.119
You know, it gave or I think you called it
751
00:39:19.239 --> 00:39:20.199
mindset or.
752
00:39:20.239 --> 00:39:21.800
It's just a mental model.
753
00:39:21.559 --> 00:39:25.079
Mental model moel. So on that note with AI, is
754
00:39:25.119 --> 00:39:26.960
Moonpay leveraging AI in different ways?
755
00:39:27.039 --> 00:39:31.800
Yeah, I mean look like we across every part of
756
00:39:31.840 --> 00:39:35.440
our organization, like we're using the tools that are available
757
00:39:35.440 --> 00:39:38.400
to us. I think that you have to think about
758
00:39:38.440 --> 00:39:43.599
this moment in time as as AI will not replace doctors,
759
00:39:43.639 --> 00:39:46.360
but it will replace doctors who don't use AI, right,
760
00:39:46.400 --> 00:39:47.079
Like somebody.
761
00:39:46.840 --> 00:39:47.440
Said that to me once.
762
00:39:47.480 --> 00:39:49.880
I was like, Wow, that is an unbelievably astute sort
763
00:39:49.920 --> 00:39:53.920
of way of framing it. And when you take that
764
00:39:54.000 --> 00:39:57.320
into account, you're like, Okay, well that means that every
765
00:39:57.400 --> 00:40:01.480
person now has in their pocket with whether it is
766
00:40:02.119 --> 00:40:06.559
you know, the tools there like vo three or chat,
767
00:40:06.599 --> 00:40:10.039
GPT or rock or any of the tools out there
768
00:40:10.760 --> 00:40:16.440
you sentially have like supercomputers, like unbelievable powerful tools if
769
00:40:16.440 --> 00:40:19.519
you're not using them right, Like, it's a gigantic mistake.
770
00:40:19.599 --> 00:40:21.480
And so like we've not only rolled it out across
771
00:40:21.519 --> 00:40:24.760
the work, but it's like everything every department, from compliance
772
00:40:24.920 --> 00:40:28.800
to fraud to even you know, the content that we
773
00:40:28.880 --> 00:40:33.440
create for our social feeds is generated you know, through
774
00:40:33.559 --> 00:40:36.679
AI or touches AI at some point or some tool
775
00:40:36.719 --> 00:40:37.880
within the AI arsenal.
776
00:40:38.079 --> 00:40:41.840
Oh, for sure, this is going to be a really
777
00:40:42.280 --> 00:40:43.320
far reaching question.
778
00:40:43.519 --> 00:40:45.760
And to prepare myself for this is like, Okay, I
779
00:40:45.760 --> 00:40:46.599
don't know where we're going.
780
00:40:47.000 --> 00:40:50.320
It's like futuristic because it's like, look, we got space
781
00:40:50.400 --> 00:40:52.760
exploration being worked on. No one's going to use cash
782
00:40:52.760 --> 00:40:54.880
and space. Right, Let's say Elon is able to get
783
00:40:54.920 --> 00:40:56.920
us to marrow not but you know what I mean, right,
784
00:40:56.920 --> 00:40:58.920
it's gonna be digital money. I'm gonna send you. You're
785
00:40:58.920 --> 00:41:01.480
into spaceship, I'm in this that type of thing. But
786
00:41:01.559 --> 00:41:05.960
also AI agents right now being developed, and we know
787
00:41:06.000 --> 00:41:08.480
they're not going to use cash obviously in use stable coins,
788
00:41:08.760 --> 00:41:11.199
and then you have robots, humanoid robots that are being
789
00:41:11.239 --> 00:41:14.159
worked on. So eventually maybe by twenty thirty five, I
790
00:41:14.159 --> 00:41:16.360
have a humanoid robot in my home. I tell it
791
00:41:16.400 --> 00:41:18.480
to go buy me some from home depot. It has
792
00:41:18.519 --> 00:41:22.880
a crypto wallet built in. Is moonpay looking at those
793
00:41:22.920 --> 00:41:24.920
things and how you will fit into.
794
00:41:24.760 --> 00:41:30.000
The Yeah, so agentic AI is very real, and it's
795
00:41:30.159 --> 00:41:33.000
it's sooner than five years out right. I even always
796
00:41:33.079 --> 00:41:36.119
talks about it. From the wallet is your new bank account?
797
00:41:36.119 --> 00:41:38.639
Like what does that really mean when you think about that? Like,
798
00:41:38.719 --> 00:41:41.039
if you're able to hold value in one of these
799
00:41:41.079 --> 00:41:43.960
digital wallets, then you can all of a sudden program
800
00:41:43.960 --> 00:41:47.039
it to do certain things based on certain interactions. Right,
801
00:41:47.880 --> 00:41:50.760
What's funny about what you said is you mentioned like
802
00:41:51.079 --> 00:41:54.519
you'll have stable coins, you'll do this. This is where
803
00:41:54.559 --> 00:41:57.719
I actually would challenge your worldview. Right for a second,
804
00:41:58.280 --> 00:42:02.920
if you're ten years old today, you know you still
805
00:42:03.039 --> 00:42:07.239
use the word TV, sure, right, But if that ten
806
00:42:07.280 --> 00:42:09.480
year old speaks to a forty year old, the forty
807
00:42:09.559 --> 00:42:13.519
year old also uses the word TV. The forty year
808
00:42:13.559 --> 00:42:17.559
old's definition of TV is most likely linear television, which is,
809
00:42:17.760 --> 00:42:20.760
you know, cable it's Comcast its spectrum if you're in
810
00:42:20.760 --> 00:42:23.559
New York, right, right, the ten year old's definition of
811
00:42:23.599 --> 00:42:26.280
TV is video on a screen. They don't care if
812
00:42:26.320 --> 00:42:29.079
it's YouTube, they don't care if it's Comcast. They don't distinguish. Right,
813
00:42:31.559 --> 00:42:34.079
in ten years or five years, I think that people
814
00:42:34.119 --> 00:42:37.840
will still say us dollar, right, they won't say stable coin, sure,
815
00:42:37.920 --> 00:42:40.599
right like, and it will be the stable coin behind
816
00:42:40.639 --> 00:42:44.039
the scenes that makes sort of the transaction possible.
817
00:42:44.199 --> 00:42:47.000
Right to do that though, right like?
818
00:42:47.039 --> 00:42:49.440
And this is where the plumbing, that's it's plumbing, right,
819
00:42:49.440 --> 00:42:52.119
And that's why I'm saying, like you have to invert
820
00:42:52.559 --> 00:42:55.280
sort of like now you've shifted from the technology to
821
00:42:55.320 --> 00:42:59.079
the experience. Right, the world that you defined is actually
822
00:42:59.199 --> 00:43:04.639
very real, right, and picture this right like, why wouldn't
823
00:43:04.639 --> 00:43:10.440
you then say, if the price of eggs drops below
824
00:43:11.199 --> 00:43:14.199
three dollars for a half a dozen, please pick me
825
00:43:14.280 --> 00:43:16.760
up you know, x amount of eggs and deliver them
826
00:43:17.119 --> 00:43:19.599
to my address, right, Like, You're going to start to
827
00:43:19.599 --> 00:43:22.440
see a world where you could program in if then
828
00:43:22.880 --> 00:43:26.159
statements on everything, right, and you just speak it in
829
00:43:26.239 --> 00:43:29.880
to your wallet, and like you all of a sudden
830
00:43:29.920 --> 00:43:33.440
have now necessarily programmed out sort of like how sort
831
00:43:33.480 --> 00:43:37.639
of your AI agent can interact on your behalf sure?
832
00:43:38.159 --> 00:43:40.800
And in addition, well, let me actually back up for
833
00:43:40.800 --> 00:43:42.800
a second. So what you're saying is not necessarily that
834
00:43:42.840 --> 00:43:44.280
people are going to be running around saying I have
835
00:43:44.280 --> 00:43:46.199
this stable coin that save acoin. They may still be
836
00:43:46.320 --> 00:43:49.440
using MasterCard, but stable coin rails are powering to pay
837
00:43:49.480 --> 00:43:49.760
more time.
838
00:43:49.760 --> 00:43:52.679
I'll tell you what, Like, I don't really bet unless
839
00:43:52.719 --> 00:43:54.599
I know I could win the bet, but I'll bet
840
00:43:54.639 --> 00:43:58.239
you anything that in five ten years, Visa MasterCard are
841
00:43:58.280 --> 00:44:00.840
still here, that city and J P. Morgan and Bank
842
00:44:00.840 --> 00:44:05.159
of America are still here. They're not going to go away.
843
00:44:06.559 --> 00:44:10.039
What will happen is is they will enable these new
844
00:44:10.079 --> 00:44:15.079
interactions to take place. Right And that's a really important distinction.
845
00:44:15.719 --> 00:44:19.440
You know you mentioned, I even mentioned the wallet setup
846
00:44:19.480 --> 00:44:22.320
will replace the account set up. So let's say I
847
00:44:22.360 --> 00:44:25.840
have a wallet with JP Morgan. Will that wallet also
848
00:44:25.920 --> 00:44:28.679
allow me to integrate? Is it like a central wallet
849
00:44:28.800 --> 00:44:30.239
or I will have multiple wallets?
850
00:44:30.360 --> 00:44:33.039
I mean, it all depends, right Like we think about
851
00:44:33.079 --> 00:44:36.719
the moonpay account, right Like, the Moonpay account essentially is
852
00:44:36.800 --> 00:44:40.800
your sort of dashboard for all of your wallets, right.
853
00:44:42.199 --> 00:44:43.360
Like, people will.
854
00:44:43.119 --> 00:44:47.400
Have most likely a JPM wallet, right, or a Bank
855
00:44:47.440 --> 00:44:50.360
of America wallet or a Morgan Stanley wallet, right.
856
00:44:50.920 --> 00:44:52.320
But they'll probably have like fifty.
857
00:44:52.079 --> 00:44:56.199
Other wallets, right, and you know there will be instances
858
00:44:56.239 --> 00:44:58.559
where some of them will be interconnected, and there will
859
00:44:58.559 --> 00:44:59.360
be instances.
860
00:44:59.000 --> 00:44:59.960
Where some of them will be silent.
861
00:45:00.920 --> 00:45:04.079
Or someone makes some an app that aggregates all of it.
862
00:45:04.599 --> 00:45:08.000
Maybe they'll call that moon pay.
863
00:45:07.800 --> 00:45:12.679
Right exactly, exactly, yeah, just exactly the problem.
864
00:45:12.960 --> 00:45:14.840
But you know, like it's not it's not the wallet
865
00:45:14.880 --> 00:45:17.119
that we want to create for the individual, it's the
866
00:45:17.280 --> 00:45:21.960
membrane that connects people to those those applications that's really important.
867
00:45:21.719 --> 00:45:25.800
Right, absolutely. And then with a multi chain world, having
868
00:45:25.800 --> 00:45:29.880
interoperability with all these institutions but also the chains and
869
00:45:29.920 --> 00:45:33.760
the different crypto assets if they're running on different chains. Wow.
870
00:45:35.159 --> 00:45:38.440
You know, going back to the far coin example, Okay, you.
871
00:45:38.400 --> 00:45:42.000
Love park cooin, so everyone loves spark coin. It's like
872
00:45:42.039 --> 00:45:44.159
it's like okay, so yes, you.
873
00:45:44.119 --> 00:45:46.800
Know, when you're going through the process of looking at
874
00:45:46.840 --> 00:45:49.360
what are the assets we can support or should support,
875
00:45:49.400 --> 00:45:53.000
and what is their demand for Let's say fark I
876
00:45:53.000 --> 00:45:56.039
mean look right, let's say fark con becomes this massive
877
00:45:56.119 --> 00:45:58.880
thing and everybody wants to use it to send value?
878
00:45:59.519 --> 00:46:02.679
Do you intrad So so now you've asked the key
879
00:46:02.760 --> 00:46:07.400
question of what's the benefit of decentralization versus centralization? Right, So,
880
00:46:08.280 --> 00:46:11.880
like this is where mister Degasino and I have, you know,
881
00:46:12.320 --> 00:46:16.079
inherently different sort of ways of operating. If you want
882
00:46:16.119 --> 00:46:20.599
to buy partcoin with moonpay, like, I don't censor that,
883
00:46:20.800 --> 00:46:23.440
like as long as it's legal, right, Like, my job
884
00:46:23.519 --> 00:46:26.480
is not to make rules, right, Like I don't like
885
00:46:26.960 --> 00:46:30.400
censor this stuff, right, And so we give access to
886
00:46:30.639 --> 00:46:33.679
anything that's in the decentralized ecosystem. We don't have a
887
00:46:33.760 --> 00:46:38.000
listing agent. Right when people at me on x and
888
00:46:38.039 --> 00:46:40.360
they're like, will you list our token? If you're on
889
00:46:40.559 --> 00:46:44.519
any of these decentralized exchanges, you can access it through moonpay.
890
00:46:44.840 --> 00:46:44.960
Right.
891
00:46:45.119 --> 00:46:47.480
The flip side is is at coinbase, like they have
892
00:46:47.559 --> 00:46:49.559
to make a conscious.
893
00:46:49.079 --> 00:46:50.880
Decision to list right.
894
00:46:51.199 --> 00:46:55.960
So like why and this comes back like if you
895
00:46:56.199 --> 00:47:00.480
genuinely believe that the world is getting faster, more efficient, cheaper,
896
00:47:01.199 --> 00:47:06.360
Like there's nothing fast, efficient, or cheap about having a
897
00:47:06.400 --> 00:47:10.599
centralized actor saying you can or cannot access something, right,
898
00:47:10.719 --> 00:47:13.760
And so if you look and block works actually does this.
899
00:47:13.800 --> 00:47:17.199
Really great sort of chart on a.
900
00:47:17.119 --> 00:47:24.760
Weekly basis where they do decentralized. Decentralized exchange volume versus
901
00:47:24.920 --> 00:47:28.280
centralized exchange volume is a ratio, So dex to sex
902
00:47:28.559 --> 00:47:33.800
ratio right on a weekly basis. In January second, twenty
903
00:47:33.880 --> 00:47:37.119
twenty two, that number was under two percent. I think
904
00:47:37.119 --> 00:47:41.519
it was one point four percent last week. Right, what's
905
00:47:41.559 --> 00:47:44.199
today's date? So that way, whoever is it's it's it's nineteenth,
906
00:47:44.199 --> 00:47:46.079
It's the nineteenth of November. I was president of Time,
907
00:47:46.079 --> 00:47:48.000
but I have no concept of time. Right, Like last
908
00:47:48.039 --> 00:47:51.840
week the number was thirty five percent. Right, So in
909
00:47:52.000 --> 00:47:55.559
three years you've seen the dex to sex ratio just
910
00:47:55.599 --> 00:47:58.599
go up. Why because people don't want to wait for
911
00:47:58.679 --> 00:48:01.800
a centralized player to lists to something. People want to
912
00:48:01.880 --> 00:48:05.239
access something with speed. People want like to have that
913
00:48:05.360 --> 00:48:07.320
freedom to be able to move into the space as
914
00:48:07.320 --> 00:48:10.880
fast as possible at their own sort of volition. And
915
00:48:10.960 --> 00:48:13.280
so I think, like what you've seen in the first
916
00:48:13.360 --> 00:48:16.519
fifteen years of crypto has been the rise of these
917
00:48:16.559 --> 00:48:20.719
centralized players. But what you're seeing now is the de
918
00:48:20.960 --> 00:48:25.119
bundling of these services because they are now technically getting
919
00:48:25.199 --> 00:48:28.840
legislated and regulated in a manner where they can exist
920
00:48:29.199 --> 00:48:32.360
outside of a centralized structure and that's what moop is
921
00:48:32.360 --> 00:48:33.039
really empowering.
922
00:48:33.280 --> 00:48:35.119
And on that note, you know I read recently that
923
00:48:35.159 --> 00:48:38.000
you Integrated would pump that fund yes to power instant
924
00:48:38.000 --> 00:48:38.960
crypto purchases.
925
00:48:39.000 --> 00:48:42.239
So we're Switzerland.
926
00:48:42.440 --> 00:48:45.199
Yeah, like this is the the you know, like if
927
00:48:45.239 --> 00:48:47.840
anyone wants to enter into the crypto space, right, like
928
00:48:47.920 --> 00:48:49.960
we are going to help the biggest players, We're going
929
00:48:50.039 --> 00:48:51.719
to help the smallest players. Like we're on the side
930
00:48:51.719 --> 00:48:56.079
of the developers, and like we are as pro competition
931
00:48:56.119 --> 00:48:56.760
as one can get.
932
00:48:56.960 --> 00:49:00.360
Oh for sure, what's on your roadmap that you can share?
933
00:49:02.760 --> 00:49:06.039
I mean, look like we we've been very clear that.
934
00:49:07.920 --> 00:49:11.360
You know, like moon pay is is evolving from just
935
00:49:11.400 --> 00:49:14.880
an on ramp, right and I think honestly, I've shared
936
00:49:14.880 --> 00:49:18.480
almost everything that we're working on, right like with you
937
00:49:18.559 --> 00:49:21.840
and throughout this conversation without bundling it all together like
938
00:49:21.920 --> 00:49:24.519
in like this perfect area. But you know, last week
939
00:49:24.599 --> 00:49:30.239
we announced you know, a stable coin issuance division. You know, uh,
940
00:49:30.280 --> 00:49:32.639
if you look at what we've been doing over the
941
00:49:32.679 --> 00:49:36.119
past year. You know, we started the year with the
942
00:49:36.199 --> 00:49:40.360
acquisition of Helio, right. We then in March acquired you know,
943
00:49:40.440 --> 00:49:44.639
the stable coin infrastructure company Iron. You know, during the
944
00:49:44.679 --> 00:49:46.519
course of the past year and a half, we've brought
945
00:49:46.519 --> 00:49:48.559
on a lot of people from the places like BV
946
00:49:48.679 --> 00:49:51.199
and K, like Rich Harrison who reads payments and banking
947
00:49:51.280 --> 00:49:54.039
for us, or you know Derek you who was like
948
00:49:54.159 --> 00:49:58.280
the head of treasury at Paxos is now our treasurer.
949
00:49:59.119 --> 00:50:02.960
Zach Qualter, who you know led and was Derek's partner
950
00:50:03.000 --> 00:50:05.760
at Paxos. You know, you know product is now our
951
00:50:05.800 --> 00:50:09.960
head of stable Coin and and I think you're going
952
00:50:10.000 --> 00:50:13.119
to see you know, us continue to lean into you
953
00:50:13.119 --> 00:50:15.519
know that business. You know, we just announced a big
954
00:50:15.519 --> 00:50:20.320
partnership with m zero, and you know we're going to
955
00:50:20.400 --> 00:50:23.639
continue to make you know, accessing this ecosystem through on
956
00:50:23.800 --> 00:50:26.719
ramping and DeFi buys like just easier and easier. Like
957
00:50:26.800 --> 00:50:30.119
our goal is just to continuously remove the friction to
958
00:50:30.280 --> 00:50:31.880
enter into decentralization.
959
00:50:32.159 --> 00:50:35.719
Oh absolutely, And like I said earlier, such a critical
960
00:50:35.719 --> 00:50:38.599
component for adoption to make it easy for people to
961
00:50:38.599 --> 00:50:41.320
be able to access this technology and use it in
962
00:50:41.320 --> 00:50:45.119
different ways. So that's really great. We talked a bit
963
00:50:45.159 --> 00:50:47.519
about the Clarity Act. Are you optimistic that might get
964
00:50:47.559 --> 00:50:49.079
passed by early next year?
965
00:50:49.320 --> 00:50:52.079
Look, I was at the was that one of the
966
00:50:52.119 --> 00:50:56.159
Senate Banking committees, And I was talking about this this morning. Actually,
967
00:50:56.800 --> 00:50:59.639
I think that what people misinterpret is is what the
968
00:50:59.679 --> 00:51:03.360
media says first, what's happening on the ground, And like
969
00:51:03.440 --> 00:51:08.199
I was taken aback by how deferential and cordial the
970
00:51:08.320 --> 00:51:11.400
Republicans and the Democrats both were towards each other. Right,
971
00:51:12.320 --> 00:51:15.159
There's a lot of respect from the Republicans towards you know,
972
00:51:15.280 --> 00:51:21.199
Warner and Gillibrand as it relates to you know, illicit
973
00:51:21.320 --> 00:51:24.719
finance and you know the definition of DeFi and vice versa. Right,
974
00:51:24.800 --> 00:51:27.519
Like I've seen the same respect to you know, Tim
975
00:51:27.559 --> 00:51:31.000
Scott and to Bernie Marino and to you know, John
976
00:51:31.079 --> 00:51:36.559
Kennedy and to Lumis who've done exceptional jobs when I
977
00:51:36.639 --> 00:51:40.760
was there, Right, Like, my biggest sort of comments were
978
00:51:40.800 --> 00:51:43.800
like I think, you know, we have to focus on,
979
00:51:44.400 --> 00:51:48.920
you know, ensuring strong illicit finance definitions, right, Like that
980
00:51:49.039 --> 00:51:51.440
ultimately is our business is like making sure that the
981
00:51:51.519 --> 00:51:54.639
right actors can enter into the ecosystem and exit the ecosystem.
982
00:51:55.440 --> 00:51:58.519
And then also the definition of DeFi. That's a really
983
00:51:58.599 --> 00:52:02.960
important one, right because depending on how you definite, depending
984
00:52:02.960 --> 00:52:09.599
on how you define DeFi, it will either burden one
985
00:52:09.679 --> 00:52:12.800
group or another group with the onus of regulation, right,
986
00:52:13.039 --> 00:52:15.840
and I advocated and I did this on behalf of
987
00:52:15.840 --> 00:52:19.400
moonpay and hopefully on behalf of the DeFi ecosystem. That
988
00:52:19.920 --> 00:52:24.599
DeFi should be regulated at the intermediary level, right, So
989
00:52:24.800 --> 00:52:28.159
it should be moonpay, it should be Coinbase, it should
990
00:52:28.159 --> 00:52:31.840
be Cracking, right, whether you're centralized or decentralized. It should
991
00:52:31.840 --> 00:52:34.000
not be the protocol. It should not be the developer,
992
00:52:34.320 --> 00:52:36.320
right because when you start to look at all of
993
00:52:36.360 --> 00:52:39.400
our organizations, we spend so much time getting licenses, we
994
00:52:39.400 --> 00:52:42.000
spend so much time with compliance teams, we spend so
995
00:52:42.079 --> 00:52:46.159
much time building our fraud models. This would ultimately if
996
00:52:46.199 --> 00:52:48.519
you put that burden on the developer or on the
997
00:52:48.559 --> 00:52:53.119
protocols like, it would stifle innovation, would make it cost inefficient,
998
00:52:53.440 --> 00:52:57.039
right and so like, I think that if you could
999
00:52:57.239 --> 00:53:01.519
properly regulate access into the ecosystem, let the ecosystem build
1000
00:53:01.840 --> 00:53:04.320
for like where they want that to go. And if
1001
00:53:04.320 --> 00:53:08.039
you could do this correctly, it ultimately fosters innovation in
1002
00:53:08.079 --> 00:53:10.039
the country and it will foster more jobs.
1003
00:53:10.639 --> 00:53:14.400
Absolutely, I'm excited Keith to see post that bill getting
1004
00:53:14.440 --> 00:53:18.559
signed to law. The innovation and impact on the economy
1005
00:53:18.599 --> 00:53:20.079
and jobs and all these things that are created.
1006
00:53:20.159 --> 00:53:23.480
Yeah, like, I look, I don't normally bet, but I'm
1007
00:53:23.519 --> 00:53:26.239
not a betting person, but like I feel confident that
1008
00:53:26.280 --> 00:53:29.079
it will happen, you know, no later than the first
1009
00:53:29.119 --> 00:53:31.400
half of next year, probably in the first quarter.
1010
00:53:31.880 --> 00:53:34.760
It's tough. Keith got some wrap up questions here for you.
1011
00:53:35.320 --> 00:53:37.480
Here we go first, if you could create your own metaverse,
1012
00:53:37.480 --> 00:53:38.159
what would the theme be?
1013
00:53:40.320 --> 00:53:45.199
Okay, well, like, well like, like I will get metaverses
1014
00:53:45.239 --> 00:53:48.519
like like horizontals and verticals too. So this this would
1015
00:53:48.519 --> 00:53:50.119
be a four hour question, but it would be the
1016
00:53:50.199 --> 00:53:52.039
sleep metaverse, where.
1017
00:53:51.760 --> 00:53:53.360
Like I could go in to just go to sleep
1018
00:53:53.400 --> 00:53:54.360
for a few hours.
1019
00:53:54.800 --> 00:53:57.119
Yeah, I mean, like for me, it would be like
1020
00:53:57.159 --> 00:53:59.679
space or you know, being able to explore a wild West.
1021
00:54:00.159 --> 00:54:00.559
I don't know.
1022
00:54:00.840 --> 00:54:03.360
I think I would just want like a sleep capsule
1023
00:54:03.440 --> 00:54:05.840
that I just had, like nice music on him.
1024
00:54:06.039 --> 00:54:07.239
Everyone left me the fuck alone.
1025
00:54:07.239 --> 00:54:10.880
Excuse rapid fire questions.
1026
00:54:10.960 --> 00:54:12.719
Favorite food, favorite food?
1027
00:54:14.320 --> 00:54:17.519
Oh geez, like that's.
1028
00:54:17.360 --> 00:54:18.960
New York question. I got to see what we're you
1029
00:54:18.960 --> 00:54:19.679
going to answer here.
1030
00:54:20.599 --> 00:54:23.159
I mean it's probably shun Lee's on the Upper West Side,
1031
00:54:23.559 --> 00:54:24.280
Chinese food.
1032
00:54:24.440 --> 00:54:26.880
Nice, favorite musician or band.
1033
00:54:27.519 --> 00:54:29.400
Bruce Frinksteen hands down, but I was named.
1034
00:54:29.239 --> 00:54:32.679
After Keith Richard's favorite movie.
1035
00:54:33.639 --> 00:54:38.320
Coming to America or Monty Python The Holy Grail or
1036
00:54:38.360 --> 00:54:41.480
The Departed, which just takes in a dark, dark, different twist,
1037
00:54:41.519 --> 00:54:43.480
but like definitely Coming to America or a Monty Python
1038
00:54:43.519 --> 00:54:43.960
The Holy.
1039
00:54:43.760 --> 00:54:46.880
Girl, both both well all through great favorite.
1040
00:54:46.559 --> 00:54:50.679
Book, favorite book, best. My favorite book of all time
1041
00:54:50.880 --> 00:54:52.599
was Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises.
1042
00:54:52.679 --> 00:54:53.360
My favorite.
1043
00:54:53.400 --> 00:54:55.320
The most important book I ever read in my career
1044
00:54:55.639 --> 00:54:58.800
was Clay Christiansen's Innovator's Dilemma.
1045
00:54:59.039 --> 00:55:02.400
M check that one out. And when you're not working,
1046
00:55:02.440 --> 00:55:03.239
what are you doing for fun?
1047
00:55:03.400 --> 00:55:03.679
Working?
1048
00:55:04.360 --> 00:55:04.480
Oh?
1049
00:55:04.519 --> 00:55:06.960
Come on, you got to be doing nothing you need
1050
00:55:07.239 --> 00:55:07.760
So I'll.
1051
00:55:07.599 --> 00:55:07.960
Tell you what.
1052
00:55:08.280 --> 00:55:12.800
Like many years ago, I was at a dinner with
1053
00:55:12.880 --> 00:55:16.280
a bunch of a therapists. It was a fantastic for
1054
00:55:16.400 --> 00:55:20.840
it right, and I'm really esteemed psychologists. And I sat
1055
00:55:20.920 --> 00:55:22.599
next to one of them and I turned to him
1056
00:55:22.599 --> 00:55:25.199
and I said to him, I have a real problem.
1057
00:55:25.960 --> 00:55:29.280
And he said to me what, And he said and
1058
00:55:29.360 --> 00:55:32.960
I said, all of my friends have hobbies and all
1059
00:55:32.960 --> 00:55:37.679
I do is work, and I feel like I'm missing
1060
00:55:37.679 --> 00:55:42.039
out on something because I don't have a hobby. I
1061
00:55:42.079 --> 00:55:46.400
don't I don't paint. I don't you know dance, I
1062
00:55:46.440 --> 00:55:48.960
don't you know, do anything? And he goes to me,
1063
00:55:49.239 --> 00:55:52.000
do you love what you do? And I said, I
1064
00:55:52.119 --> 00:55:56.199
love what I do so much and he said, and
1065
00:55:56.280 --> 00:56:00.159
what do you need a hobby for? And that conversation
1066
00:56:00.199 --> 00:56:04.000
has stuck with me forever, Like I am having so
1067
00:56:04.159 --> 00:56:07.239
much fun with the team at Moonpay, with Ivan, just
1068
00:56:07.280 --> 00:56:10.280
building towards this future that we see and which value
1069
00:56:10.320 --> 00:56:13.800
can be moved freely online and you know, in the Internet,
1070
00:56:13.840 --> 00:56:16.880
and I think it's so utterly transformative that like there's
1071
00:56:16.920 --> 00:56:18.920
nothing I want to do more. And so I wake
1072
00:56:19.000 --> 00:56:21.599
up and I do it. I you know, on the weekends,
1073
00:56:21.639 --> 00:56:22.199
I think.
1074
00:56:22.000 --> 00:56:22.920
About it and I do it.
1075
00:56:23.360 --> 00:56:25.239
You know, like if I had to be forced into
1076
00:56:25.239 --> 00:56:29.000
a hobby, i'd be reading right or my peloton. But
1077
00:56:29.119 --> 00:56:32.000
like outside of that, like I just like it's work.
1078
00:56:32.320 --> 00:56:34.079
Like and I'm sorry, I know it's a crap ass answer,
1079
00:56:34.119 --> 00:56:36.559
but like genuine hopefully you could hear it in my voice,
1080
00:56:36.559 --> 00:56:37.920
like I love what we're doing.
1081
00:56:38.199 --> 00:56:40.079
I mean that's great. I mean you love what you're doing,
1082
00:56:40.079 --> 00:56:43.199
so it doesn't feel like work, right, Yeah, Well, Keith,
1083
00:56:43.760 --> 00:56:46.519
absolute pleasure. Thank you for taking the time and I'm
1084
00:56:46.559 --> 00:56:48.519
looking forward to having you back on since you are
1085
00:56:48.519 --> 00:56:51.159
in New York, to give the latest and greatest about
1086
00:56:51.159 --> 00:56:54.119
Moon pay. Possibly maybe early twenty twenty six. We can
1087
00:56:54.119 --> 00:56:54.639
do another way.
1088
00:56:54.679 --> 00:56:56.119
Well, thank you, thank you so much for having me.
1089
00:56:56.159 --> 00:56:57.880
I really appreciate it, and I'm glad I was able
1090
00:56:57.880 --> 00:56:59.960
to make your guy over here smile a few times.
1091
00:57:00.079 --> 00:57:09.639
Sound good stuff. M.
