Speaker 1: Korda and welcome to Shared Lunch. We're in a sunny
Speaker 1: and pretty windy San Francisco standing here on the Golden
Speaker 1: Gate Bridge, and today we've got another suspecial episode. It's Cracking,
Speaker 1: and we'll be speaking with co CEO Dave Ripley.
Speaker 2: Investing involves the risk you might lose the money you
Speaker 2: start with. We recommend talking to a licensed financial advisor.
Speaker 2: We also recommend reading product disclosure documents before deciding to invest.
Speaker 2: Everything you're about to see and here is current at
Speaker 2: the time of recording.
Speaker 1: Dave, Welcome to Shared Lunch. Thanks so much for joining us.
Speaker 3: Great to be here.
Speaker 1: Hey, it's been a whirlwind trip for us. You're seeking
Speaker 1: on our US tour and was really cool on the
Speaker 1: plane in Washington, d C. This morning. In a great
Speaker 1: place to start, I thought, which was we're really headlined
Speaker 1: that Cracking signs a contract with the government, So I
Speaker 1: thought maybe you could start by telling us a little
Speaker 1: bit about the breaking news.
Speaker 4: I never really thought this time would happen where there's
Speaker 4: a huge amount of crypto news. It's coming out of Washington,
Speaker 4: d C. Or any government center for that matter. But
Speaker 4: nonetheless we're here. Yeah, so look the news today not
Speaker 4: to downplate it all, but I mean I think it's
Speaker 4: one one part and a much bigger, bigger.
Speaker 3: Dynamic going on.
Speaker 4: So the news today was, you know, the Department of
Speaker 4: Commerce they're going to publish some of the kind of
Speaker 4: like US economic data on a blockchain. There it'll be
Speaker 4: attested to, you know, validated, time stamped, all that, all
Speaker 4: those good things that you kind of get with like
Speaker 4: a public blockchain that has you know, at testation and
Speaker 4: all those types of things.
Speaker 3: So that's what that's about.
Speaker 4: But there's certainly a bigger story, like around what's going
Speaker 4: on in d C, and you know, specifically with governments
Speaker 4: becoming a customer of crypto. I mean, I think one
Speaker 4: of the more basic and frankly maybe more interesting one
Speaker 4: pieces are you know, governments becoming holders a bitcoin.
Speaker 3: That's happening in the US.
Speaker 4: You have the US government doing it, and you have
Speaker 4: a number of states that are saying, hey, you know,
Speaker 4: our state sovereign fund is going to start buying bitcoin,
Speaker 4: and that's happening for probably I don't know about four
Speaker 4: or five states already, Texas, Wyoming, a handful of.
Speaker 3: Them out there.
Speaker 4: We of course see it in other countries El Salvador,
Speaker 4: and I don't know exactly what's the latest on, you know,
Speaker 4: across the globe, but yeah, it's interesting and that and
Speaker 4: of itself is of course still just a small part
Speaker 4: of all the things that we're seeing kind of come
Speaker 4: out come out of various different governments with regard to crypto.
Speaker 3: Yah.
Speaker 1: So tell us a little bit about Kraken's customers and
Speaker 1: you know who you're supporting every day to help in
Speaker 1: the crypto space.
Speaker 3: Sure.
Speaker 4: So, look, i'd break it down in three different groups consumer,
Speaker 4: professional trader, individual advanced trader institutions. I'll start with that
Speaker 4: mental group mentioned before, pro traders, Individual advanced traders. That's
Speaker 4: kind of our sweet spot from our history where we
Speaker 4: really went after first for the audience here if you're
Speaker 4: familiar with like an interactive brokers or something like that,
Speaker 4: but that individual advanced trader is like looking for all
Speaker 4: the you know, complex order types, many asset classes, derivatives, leverage,
Speaker 4: looking for a sophisticated us with a lot of analytical tools, indicators,
Speaker 4: all of those you know, features that allow them to
Speaker 4: kind of like build trading training strategies and execute on them.
Speaker 4: And then the third thing is probably like highly performance,
Speaker 4: low latency, all those types of things.
Speaker 3: That's kind of that group.
Speaker 4: That's where we, you know, have built out all of
Speaker 4: those things that I just described, probably better than anyone
Speaker 4: else in the industry. More recently, we've moved into consumer.
Speaker 4: When I say more recently, probably about four or five
Speaker 4: years ago, and it turns out that after you've built
Speaker 4: all of this more complex stuff for pro, it's actually
Speaker 4: pretty easy to build a more simplified consumer experience, and
Speaker 4: so we've had great success there as well. And then
Speaker 4: finally institutions, so we serve a number of different institutions.
Speaker 4: We kind of break it down in a few different buckets.
Speaker 4: One being trading firms, and these are kind of trading
Speaker 4: firms again similar to the pro traders, very sophisticated, large
Speaker 4: trading teams do and you know think you know, high
Speaker 4: frequency trading firms, you know, trading via a PI, you know, thousands,
Speaker 4: tens of thousands of orders trades per day, that type
Speaker 4: of thing. The next would be asset management firms. So
Speaker 4: this is the big money pensions, endowments, you know, big
Speaker 4: stock phones, big mutual funds, hedge funds, all that type
Speaker 4: of stuff. And then the last would be banks, brokers
Speaker 4: and FinTechs, so cheers these kind of falls in that
Speaker 4: last last category for us.
Speaker 1: That flows nicely that the relationship we have Lusheesy, so
Speaker 1: one of the big parts of our process once we
Speaker 1: decided we do crypto and you know, huge amount of
Speaker 1: due diligence around them, like technology, the solutions we can
Speaker 1: offer to our customers. The one thing critical in this
Speaker 1: pace security, So I just love you to share with
Speaker 1: our audience day a little bit about how Kraken thinks
Speaker 1: about security. And you know, particularly given there's been some
Speaker 1: very high profile crypto case you know, either hacking or
Speaker 1: security or you know, and ultimately a loss of money.
Speaker 1: So just how you think about that as a business
Speaker 1: or as an individual.
Speaker 3: None involve and cracking.
Speaker 4: But yeah, look this is this has been a super
Speaker 4: meaningful topic in crypto.
Speaker 3: Of course.
Speaker 4: You know, it turns out that when you have the
Speaker 4: ability to like hold the funds on your own and
Speaker 4: transactions are irreversible, security becomes super meaningful. Lo and behol
Speaker 4: probably unsurprising, but you know, cracking has a long history
Speaker 4: in this uh you know, with respect to security, it's
Speaker 4: frankly one of the founding tenants of the business. There's
Speaker 4: one of the first really the first crypto exchange out
Speaker 4: there was a company called mount Cox. It ultimately was
Speaker 4: you know hacked, had security issues and went down, but
Speaker 4: actually earlier in its life, there was a security issue
Speaker 4: kind of a couple of years before the one that
Speaker 4: actually took the company down. And when that first security
Speaker 4: event happened, Jesse, the co founder and CEO of Kracken,
Speaker 4: was already in the industry, was already knew many of
Speaker 4: the meaningful people in the industry, and they gave Jesse
Speaker 4: a call because he was already a fantastic entrepreneur, a
Speaker 4: tech entrepreneur, and was able to kind of like figure
Speaker 4: out tough, tough challenges and went out there to call
Speaker 4: them out there to go help Mount Cox in which
Speaker 4: he did and he you know, helped get them back
Speaker 4: and moving, and on his way back, he you know,
Speaker 4: he had a couple thoughts. One was, Wow, that place
Speaker 4: really isn't doing security the right way and doing all
Speaker 4: the things that they need to do in order to
Speaker 4: you know, be fully sure. The other thing he thought
Speaker 4: was someone needs to do that, and that led to Krakeen,
Speaker 4: and so that was kind of the foundation of it.
Speaker 4: The other co founder of Kracken often refers to Kraken
Speaker 4: as a security company with an exchange on top. But
Speaker 4: really the way we achieve it, I mean it is
Speaker 4: security and depth. It cuts across every function of the company.
Speaker 4: It's not just the security team. It's not even just
Speaker 4: the engineering team. You think about customer support and compliance
Speaker 4: and finance and all of these various different teams have
Speaker 4: a role to play. We also have, like one of
Speaker 4: our values is called productively paranoid, and what that really
Speaker 4: means is that like productively is the piece of like, hey,
Speaker 4: let's not be too paranoid, but let's question things anytime
Speaker 4: there's something that doesn't look like as it should be
Speaker 4: for whatever reason. And that might just be like, oh,
Speaker 4: hey someone forgot to do X y Z. Is that
Speaker 4: is that really intentional or not? Let's look into it.
Speaker 4: And that pervades across all two thousand plus krackenites, And
Speaker 4: that's a really meaningful part of like how we like
Speaker 4: pervade security across every corner of the company.
Speaker 3: So we take it super seriously.
Speaker 4: We know that it's not always top of mind for
Speaker 4: our customers, but over time, we think kind of investing
Speaker 4: in that leads to a lot of trust, whether it's
Speaker 4: whether it's clear where that trust is coming from or not,
Speaker 4: or that it's just Kracking's known to be highly trusted.
Speaker 1: What are the other values of the of the company,
Speaker 1: like the I like the waiting, like productively.
Speaker 3: Parently, productively, period.
Speaker 4: So like most of the value set for Kraken is
Speaker 4: really tied to crypto values, right, and so crypto values
Speaker 4: are kind of this like, you know, frankly this in
Speaker 4: a way libertarian set of values about you know, like freedom,
Speaker 4: you know, freedom, independence, all these you know, different aspects
Speaker 4: and that's kind of like core to our to our
Speaker 4: value sets. So Kracken's values are very closely tied to
Speaker 4: crypto values.
Speaker 1: So let's just step back a little bit and talk
Speaker 1: a bit more about you. Nine years at Kraken, and
Speaker 1: you know, I'd just love to hear a little bit
Speaker 1: about how you came to be here, a little bit
Speaker 1: about Dave, but sure.
Speaker 3: Just been about your story. Yeah, So definitely a crypto dinosaur,
Speaker 3: that's for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I guess it is nine years in krack
Speaker 4: and I founded a company in the crypto space twenty thirteen,
Speaker 4: so it's actually now been over a decade that have
Speaker 4: been in the space. That company is acquired back Cracking
Speaker 4: in twenty sixteen, Glydadira sorry you and that was called
Speaker 4: by Crack in twenty sixteen. So that, you know, like
Speaker 4: you said, puts me in about nine years at Cracking.
Speaker 3: Most of the time.
Speaker 4: I joined as chief operating officer for you know, was
Speaker 4: in that role for a good number of years, I
Speaker 4: don't know, six seven or so, and then more recently
Speaker 4: moved into the CEO role and co CEO with Argentzathi.
Speaker 1: Right now we have a Coco model she is as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I caught that. That's great.
Speaker 1: And prior to the like, what was your you said,
Speaker 1: you're a cryptos dinosaur, but it was you know, it's
Speaker 1: not that old.
Speaker 3: What was the lafe before?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so kind of a two part career. Before my
Speaker 4: move into Crypto, so started my cares as an engineer,
Speaker 4: was engineer, an undergrad software engineer. I worked in what
Speaker 4: we called at the time mobile and you know, now,
Speaker 4: of course every company is mobile tech, you know, it
Speaker 4: has mobile devices, but back in this time period it
Speaker 4: was very very new. The largest mobile device at the
Speaker 4: time was a Palm.
Speaker 3: Pilot, right, followed by the BlackBerry.
Speaker 4: And then I don't know, it's like some Microsoft devices
Speaker 4: after that or whatever. So early days of mobile, what
Speaker 4: we did is we basically built mobile applications for enterprise software,
Speaker 4: which meant that the company I worked for, Cyclo, they
Speaker 4: eventually got acquired by SAP, and so we're kind of
Speaker 4: mobilizing those types of things that SAP was like, Okay,
Speaker 4: we can't figure out this mobile shit, so let's like
Speaker 4: acquire this company who's already doing it for our software,
Speaker 4: you know, kind of independently.
Speaker 3: And so anyways, that's what that's.
Speaker 4: What was kind of part one of my career as
Speaker 4: software junior product manageer, then business school, and then I
Speaker 4: worked at BCG or served a bunch of different financial
Speaker 4: services firms, and.
Speaker 3: So that was kind of the second place as well.
Speaker 4: Was I was not no, it was it was like
Speaker 4: is one of those things where it was like the
Speaker 4: I kind of thought about it as like the the
Speaker 4: in some ways the worst timing possible, because I was
Speaker 4: there in mobile when it was like you know, the
Speaker 4: Palm Pilot and BlackBerry and so forth. And then about
Speaker 4: the time as graduating business school was right right, it
Speaker 4: was two thousand and seven, and that you know, the
Speaker 4: iPhone was hitting right.
Speaker 5: And so I've moved pivoted away from it, which was like,
Speaker 5: you know, you couldn't get worse time. So I actually
Speaker 5: kind of thought about that the many times through the
Speaker 5: Bear and Bull cycles and Crypto where it's.
Speaker 4: Like, hey, am I gonna like you know, but you know,
Speaker 4: for a million reasons, I never never wanted to leave Crypto,
Speaker 4: and you know, just I'll definitely be in this space
Speaker 4: till I till I die.
Speaker 1: Dumably b CG would have been a big player in
Speaker 1: that mobile transition large companies.
Speaker 3: And now just you know, that was sort of the.
Speaker 1: AI change we're going through now and various places has
Speaker 1: been compared to like the last large platform change being mobile,
Speaker 1: Like now, are you seeing any sort of similarities with
Speaker 1: like anything different about what what we're working through at
Speaker 1: the moment.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, I mean it, I'd be a good
Speaker 4: interest into what you guys are doing in AI as well.
Speaker 4: So we're doing a handful of things, you know. The
Speaker 4: first is we have a number of operational parts of
Speaker 4: the company. You know, this is kind of like what
Speaker 4: I would say like most companies like v one for mobile,
Speaker 4: which is we have customer support, we have you know,
Speaker 4: compliance function with big operational teams and they do a
Speaker 4: bunch of work with data and of course interacting with
Speaker 4: customers and all this type of stuff. And we're finding that,
Speaker 4: of course, like many companies, we can use AI to
Speaker 4: like automate a ton of this ship.
Speaker 3: So that's kind of phase one. Step on what we're doing.
Speaker 4: Step two, I would say, is to like build it
Speaker 4: more directly into the product. So instead of you know,
Speaker 4: opening up a crack and app where you have like
Speaker 4: an interface and you can go and click on all
Speaker 4: the buttons and pull up the lists and all the
Speaker 4: views and graphs and so forth, you just interact with
Speaker 4: AI prompt. We also just made an acquisition last week,
Speaker 4: we announced Capitalized dot Ai and there they basically have
Speaker 4: some tech where you can build trading outgoes trading strategies
Speaker 4: using AI. It's kind of a prompt and then you
Speaker 4: you can build a different trading strategy and prompt so
Speaker 4: and it.
Speaker 1: Like spits out like an algorithms exactly.
Speaker 4: So that I mean, so that's kind of what I
Speaker 4: say is like phase two, where it's more just like
Speaker 4: the product becomes you know, the product and the interface
Speaker 4: you know, kind of become AI right, and.
Speaker 3: Then phase three.
Speaker 4: You know, that's like kind of imaginating what's up to
Speaker 4: our imagination what that is. I mean, I think there
Speaker 4: could be some interesting things, how kind of like crypto
Speaker 4: and AI I'm together actually.
Speaker 1: Going to be my next question. We're havn't you asked
Speaker 1: what we're thinking about? Like, we're having a lot of
Speaker 1: fun at the moment. You know, the operational stuff's happening, right,
Speaker 1: like the the adding time to engineers hands and all
Speaker 1: that sort of stuff and with their day, and one
Speaker 1: of the things we're having a lot of fun thinking
Speaker 1: about is like eight hundred thousand that were in our
Speaker 1: case a hundred and fifty thousand different UIs or you know,
Speaker 1: because everyone's going to experience this so differently and it
Speaker 1: really does change the you know, change the way. But
Speaker 1: it's super interesting to think about. You know, you're sort
Speaker 1: of right in the middle of these two platform changes
Speaker 1: really right one yeah, yeah, crypto in the block chain
Speaker 1: space and then this AI. So how are they insecting
Speaker 1: in what sort of the future you might see from that?
Speaker 4: Well, you know, I think this is I mean, it's
Speaker 4: definitely we get into the theoretical I mean, there are
Speaker 4: some like crypto AI projects out there and so forth.
Speaker 4: But I mean in a lot of ways. I mean
Speaker 4: again this is this is going to feel pretty theoretical,
Speaker 4: but in a lot of ways, you know, AI is
Speaker 4: very can can you look at it and be like, hey,
Speaker 4: this is very centralizing. And of course that's the you know,
Speaker 4: that's the meme or the even the fear out there
Speaker 4: that there's you know, this what the movies are made of. Right,
Speaker 4: it's like this AI thing is going to take over
Speaker 4: humankind and blah blah blah.
Speaker 3: Okay, why is it centralizing?
Speaker 4: Well, you need all this compute power you put in
Speaker 4: one place, and these llms they get really sophisticated, and
Speaker 4: you have like you know, one or several lms that
Speaker 4: are very sophisticated, a huge amount of compute power. It
Speaker 4: all kind of sits in one place. Who owns the
Speaker 4: switch for it and so forth. It's very different. You know,
Speaker 4: central is you know, a centralized tech is you know,
Speaker 4: quite the exact opposite of crypto.
Speaker 3: Right, very decentralizing.
Speaker 4: You know, takes something like money, which is you know,
Speaker 4: meaningfully centralized today in central banks and so forth, and
Speaker 4: you have crypto now and it's like very decentralized networks
Speaker 4: are owned by the participants and so on and so forth, right,
Speaker 4: And so you kind of think, and if you're someone
Speaker 4: like you know myself, you look at those two different
Speaker 4: paths and you say, like, okay, well, there's a lot
Speaker 4: of benefits of the decentralized approach, and a lot of
Speaker 4: really meaningful benefits, we think, right, you know, it's kind
Speaker 4: of more of the you know, individual and freedom and
Speaker 4: ability to opt in or out and control your own
Speaker 4: participation and all those types of things as opposed to
Speaker 4: have it and dictated for you. And that's kind of
Speaker 4: like a great thing for freedom and independence and all
Speaker 4: these things that we, like, you know, I think are
Speaker 4: pretty important.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: So kind of the question is, well, like, if these
Speaker 4: two things are really big and meaningful, and this one
Speaker 4: text seems to be fairly centralized, how can crypto play
Speaker 4: a role to kind of like change that course, or
Speaker 4: actually can we combine the two and actually then have
Speaker 4: some type of like decentralized AI. Even though I just
Speaker 4: got done saying that, like, you know, on the face of.
Speaker 3: It, it seems very centralized.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So I don't know, I think that's kind of
Speaker 4: like the when I think about crypto and AI and
Speaker 4: the phase three think about like, hey, how can we
Speaker 4: how can we pull that off?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: It's because because even like this, like the decentralized nature
Speaker 1: of crypto like these and the centralized world of reserve
Speaker 1: banks and this sort of stuff that like they are
Speaker 1: converging ready right coming together, and like how do you
Speaker 1: see that? You sort of see there's a happy five
Speaker 1: path forward for both of them or yeah, like.
Speaker 4: Jumping over to financial services and yeah yeah, so so
Speaker 4: stepping aside from the AI combo, this is a huge
Speaker 4: thing that we're seeing right now today and in crypto
Speaker 4: in our space, which I mean frankly is super relevant
Speaker 4: for our conversation because here we are with a you know,
Speaker 4: traditional stock equity business, wealth wealth company and that you
Speaker 4: guys are integrating crypto. And the reality is we see
Speaker 4: that across a lot of our markets. We see it
Speaker 4: in Europe, we see it in the US, you know,
Speaker 4: across many of our markets where companies are starting to
Speaker 4: do this or they're in progress of doing this, like
Speaker 4: adding crypto. So you know, banks, brokers, FinTechs right adding
Speaker 4: crypto in to their offerings. We had a similar partnership
Speaker 4: is what Kraken is doing with Chersey's. We did with
Speaker 4: boot Bank and which is a large challenger banking in
Speaker 4: Europe and the Netherlands, and they've seen great success with it,
Speaker 4: you know, and they have And then we're frankly in
Speaker 4: conversation right now with basically all the large banks and
Speaker 4: brokers in the US about.
Speaker 3: The same thing.
Speaker 4: Now, they might not move quite as quick as you guys,
Speaker 4: or they definitely won't move as quick as you guys.
Speaker 3: But you know, lo and Behold.
Speaker 4: I mean they're all like, yeah, they're very serious about
Speaker 4: this path, and they have teams against it, and they're
Speaker 4: you know, getting our fps going and looking to figure
Speaker 4: out how they're going to make it happen.
Speaker 1: Like prior to studying at Cheesy's, I worked in a
Speaker 1: bank and this is nine years ago now, and we
Speaker 1: hit the founder of Ethereum come along to speak to
Speaker 1: us at that time, and the Ethereum was tiny at
Speaker 1: the time, so already those conversations were happening, but none
Speaker 1: of the banks have made progress really and actually delivering that.
Speaker 1: But I can you know, it feels like there's now
Speaker 1: evidence of that happening, right Like there's really large brands
Speaker 1: around the world where that is happening.
Speaker 4: I think the other thing is crypto companies are going
Speaker 4: to offer yeah as well, And that's like the other thing.
Speaker 3: Is gonna happened.
Speaker 4: And then the third thing that's going to happen is
Speaker 4: cryptotech will enable kind of traditional financial products like equities.
Speaker 4: Talking these equities being one of those examples.
Speaker 1: Let's just dive into that now, togonization of traditional asset equities,
Speaker 1: like I want to talk things like housing is a
Speaker 1: big one that's been talked about in New Zealand at
Speaker 1: the moment. I mean there's lots of sort of old
Speaker 1: alternative as sets like just old coins, but art or
Speaker 1: all these sorts of things like just what's what's the
Speaker 1: world as you see it with regards to tokenization.
Speaker 4: So that's I think jump into like kind of like
Speaker 4: you know a number of steps down the line.
Speaker 3: So like let's build their way up there. Let's take
Speaker 3: the steak.
Speaker 4: So like I mean, the first step is so we
Speaker 4: talk about tokenizing real world you know assets that are
Speaker 4: in trad fi stable coins. Stable coins are actually I
Speaker 4: mean that is effectively it you basically you know, you
Speaker 4: create this token on a blockchain, you back at one
Speaker 4: to one with fiat currency in most cases dollars with
Speaker 4: you know, tether or USDC, and that is a tokenized asset,
Speaker 4: a tokenized you know, single dollar of you know.
Speaker 1: Whatever reason I had not made the connection with the
Speaker 1: other assays that this is a that's a great example,
Speaker 1: but you know one being the most boring example you
Speaker 1: can think of, probably yeahs like sort of yea where
Speaker 1: it might go with it great.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean one hundred percent.
Speaker 4: Well, part of the reason I go there is because
Speaker 4: now let's talk about tokenized equities, which is some crack
Speaker 4: and just recently launched x stocks.
Speaker 3: You talk about that more detail.
Speaker 4: But the technology I mean, for someone who understands stable
Speaker 4: coins like okay, I got this token and it's back
Speaker 4: one for one by some dollars sitting in a bank account. Well,
Speaker 4: TOKENI is equities x stocks. Our implementation of it is
Speaker 4: exactly the same. There's this token that rides on a
Speaker 4: blockchain several different blockchains actually you know we now support
Speaker 4: and it's back one for one by a share of
Speaker 4: Tesla stock or Apple stock or whatever it might be. Right,
Speaker 4: And that's the basic premise of the technology. These are
Speaker 4: just basically asset back tokens. And so you're kind of allowed.
Speaker 4: It's a hybrid in some ways, right, I Mean, we're
Speaker 4: still talking about dollars, but now they're just on a
Speaker 4: different set of rails. We're still talking about traditional equities now,
Speaker 4: just on different set of rails, and so it's kind
Speaker 4: of combining the two, if you will, you know, because
Speaker 4: there are some benefits of dollars today that you know,
Speaker 4: people want to hold dollars, people accept dollars. They are
Speaker 4: less volatile than pretty much all the crypto currencies out there,
Speaker 4: and there are various different, you know, advantages that they
Speaker 4: still have today. I think some of those will go
Speaker 4: away over time for what it's worth, and then much
Speaker 4: the same I mean obviously equities. I mean there's huge
Speaker 4: number of benefits you know, to public equities and so
Speaker 4: forth in that whole structure. So this is basically kind
Speaker 4: of combining the two. But we could just keep going
Speaker 4: on from there, right, We can go on from there
Speaker 4: to you mentioned real estate. I think that one's a
Speaker 4: little bit you know, further down. I mean, I think
Speaker 4: more of the for what it's worth. I think more
Speaker 4: of the like higher liquid assets are going to be
Speaker 4: at least in the near term, are probably.
Speaker 3: Where we're going to see like bigger adoption for what
Speaker 3: it's worth.
Speaker 4: Like there might be some use cases that are more
Speaker 4: narrow for more ill liquid assets, I think so like
Speaker 4: real estate, But I think the broader adoption, bigger adoption
Speaker 4: is probably going to come for more liquid assets. Probably
Speaker 4: you know, the most liquid asset out there is the
Speaker 4: US dollar, I'm pretty sure, and then you kind of
Speaker 4: move across there and think about the other liquid assets.
Speaker 4: That's where we're going to see the option of tokenized assets.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the I mean the I don't want to
Speaker 1: get too far ahead of ourselves and now, but you know,
Speaker 1: you can think about like if it was property, then
Speaker 1: what's the part to play of the bank if you
Speaker 1: can sort of fractionalize your property and has sort of
Speaker 1: achieve some sort of ownership over time through that. Or
Speaker 1: with regards to public markets, like do you, like, have
Speaker 1: you thought about what that means for public markets into
Speaker 1: the future or is that just sort of something that
Speaker 1: you think will work its way out given given if
Speaker 1: it's tokenized, we're already seeing private assets tokenized and stuff, right.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, it's an interesting question. I mean, there's
Speaker 4: a lot of things that can happen now that you
Speaker 4: have tokenized dollars or tokenize equities, right, I mean, so
Speaker 4: again we just start with tokenized dollars, Well, you can
Speaker 4: move them globally for no cost or near no cost, right,
Speaker 4: And you can move them globally for near no cost
Speaker 4: nearly instantly. You kind of go down the line and
Speaker 4: these things are just you know, not possible. Otherwise you
Speaker 4: can also now you know, integrate them into what is DeFi, right,
Speaker 4: And so these are decentralized exchanges, decentralized lending protocols where
Speaker 4: we actually have people out there that can go to
Speaker 4: DeFi and borrow stable coins against some other you know,
Speaker 4: crypto assets from uh you know, thousands of people all
Speaker 4: at once on a DeFi network, which.
Speaker 3: Is just kind of amazing.
Speaker 4: And you think about the level of i don't know,
Speaker 4: kind of like peer to peer decentralized liquidity that that
Speaker 4: then provides is really amazing. And so then you can
Speaker 4: start integrating these stable coins into various different smart contracts
Speaker 4: where they can be you know, a party two like
Speaker 4: an AI agent someday you know, actually interacting with these assets.
Speaker 4: And then the same is true for toke ex equities.
Speaker 4: You know, we can start thinking about all the various
Speaker 4: different things that you know can be done with token
Speaker 4: ex equities as well now that they're you know, permission less, movable,
Speaker 4: all these types of things.
Speaker 3: So it's cool to think about.
Speaker 1: It's just for sure the change and who knows, who
Speaker 1: knows how to get there that, Like, I think one
Speaker 1: thing we can probably both say is biscises. You know,
Speaker 1: I think I sort of believe in that. I believe
Speaker 1: in the in the future. It's like, sort of what's
Speaker 1: the path is or do you think there's like a
Speaker 1: penetration point, was like a level of scale or something
Speaker 1: that that we are something.
Speaker 3: Tips or yeah, that's a good question.
Speaker 4: We you know, in crypto in the early days and
Speaker 4: even still today. I frankly haven't had this discussion too
Speaker 4: much recently, but yeah, this is you know, where is
Speaker 4: the S curve hit? Where we at on the S curve?
Speaker 4: Where did things tip? And you know, I mean I
Speaker 4: don't think we're at that like vertical part of the
Speaker 4: ES curve for crypto generally right now, still not today.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think there's still more penetration to get to,
Speaker 4: but I don't know that we're that far off. Honestly,
Speaker 4: you know, once we get to a place where there
Speaker 4: is a you know, a significant number of people that
Speaker 4: you know own crypto, are using crypto daily, just kind
Speaker 4: of like the.
Speaker 3: Level of you know, demand to build applications.
Speaker 4: For them will just kind of like continually grow and
Speaker 4: we'll just see this flywheel move and I think, you know,
Speaker 4: adoption will just really really spiral.
Speaker 3: At that point. Cool.
Speaker 1: Well, we've you know, it's been a great chance to
Speaker 1: chair and meet you as a key pers It's very
Speaker 1: cool to do that over here, so appreciate.
Speaker 3: Your time there.
Speaker 1: The last question we're going to have. We've got tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of people on a wait list already for
Speaker 1: this product, so there's clearly a lot of interests to
Speaker 1: do it from our customer base. We're getting close and
Speaker 1: a bunch of those people will be familiar with crypto,
Speaker 1: and you know, they'll come in and they'll have expectations
Speaker 1: and we'll keep building product for them. But there's also
Speaker 1: going to be a bunch of people who are doing
Speaker 1: this for the first time. So I just love to
Speaker 1: hear what thoughts you have to give to anyone whom
Speaker 1: I was listening to this and about to start visiting
Speaker 1: and crypto.
Speaker 3: For the first time.
Speaker 4: Sure, that's a great question. Look, I mean I got
Speaker 4: into crypto a long time ago. I think crypto as
Speaker 4: a technology provides, you know, a set of technology that
Speaker 4: at its core is you know, faster, cheaper, and more global.
Speaker 4: Fortunately for those of us in crypto, that is kind
Speaker 4: of like the the you know, the.
Speaker 3: Path of the world to look for those things.
Speaker 4: The world is becoming more global, h you know, you know,
Speaker 4: commerce is becoming more global, and therefore we need you know,
Speaker 4: faster and cheaper rails to get all of that done.
Speaker 3: I think there's an.
Speaker 4: Enormous amount of innovation happening in the space, even beyond
Speaker 4: just payments, and we look into all different aspects of uh,
Speaker 4: you know, trading in something that's called DeFi decentralized finance.
Speaker 4: That's another key word of this, which is decentralized. So
Speaker 4: kind of like historically, you know, in recent hundreds of years,
Speaker 4: financial services have largely been centralized by a few central banks,
Speaker 4: large large individual banks. Now this is actually a technology
Speaker 4: where the individuals, the participants in.
Speaker 3: The network actually own a part of the network.
Speaker 4: And so I think it's a fantastic place for people
Speaker 4: to check out.
Speaker 1: Favorably because Craiken, thank you so much for your time today.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Awesome