Why Crypto Wallets Are BETTER Than Banks | Ivan Soto-Wright DSH #637

Exactly.

Yeah, and why are crypto wallets better than bank accounts in your opinion?

So the big thing is if you try to move money from A to B, let's say we're trying to move money from the United States to the United Kingdom, different banking systems, sometimes it can take days for that money to clear.

It's just inefficient.

A lot of the technology is archaic and it was built before the internet.

This is a new internet-based system.

As long as you access the internet connection, you can move money over a blockchain.

All right, guys, we're going to talk crypto today.

We got Ivan, founder of MoonPay.

Thanks for coming on, man.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Great to be in Vegas.

Yeah, good to see you.

Also on Solar Eclipse Day.

I know, right?

Yeah, Moon, Lunar Eclipse.

That's pretty special.

You're going to watch it?

Well, it already just happened.

Oh, we missed it?

We missed it.

Well, I actually, I looked up for like two seconds, but it kind of hurt my eyes.

So I was like, okay, this is probably not.

I thought it was June.

Yeah.

Well, no, you missed it.

Ah, man.

And there's only like one every what, like 50 years?

Yeah, I don't know when the next one will be.

I blew it.

People were flying out to Texas to see it.

Yeah, I think that's like the best prime time location.

Interesting.

There's a lot of superstitions around eclipses.

Yeah.

What's your superstition?

I don't believe in them, but my girl was like, wear red today.

I'm like, all right.

Got the red shoes.

People that are pregnant are not supposed to leave the house today.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

Are you into that?

Affect the babies?

Yeah, I don't know.

Are you into that spiritual stuff?

You know, I've been starting to get a little bit more into like learning more about just like, I'm a Sagittarius.

Yeah.

I definitely identify being a Sagittarius.

I think there's something there.

Okay.

Yeah, because sometimes the crypto people are so analytical, they just don't believe any of that stuff but it's cool to see you opening up yeah well moon pay so you obviously need to know more about horoscopes i love that um bitcoin having's coming up right yeah we've got an exciting period of time you know this is probably the most exciting time to be in crypto

wow why do you say that um well i think you know if you look at crypto historically we've had these waves of adoption with people coming in and you know i think in this cycle um you know bitcoin happening historically we've always seen more people come into crypto more excitement around crypto And for us, we're on the infrastructure level.

So it's just, you know, it's exciting.

It's like part of the public dialogue again.

Yeah.

And you basically identified a major gap in the crypto space.

That's the start of Moon Pay, right?

Yeah.

So give you a quick background on the story.

I think wallets are going to be the future.

So as long as you have access to the internet, you can create a cryptocurrency wallet.

That wallet has a public address and it has a private key.

And that private key unlocks your cryptocurrency wallet.

And I think that wallet is going to be the future of your bank account.

Everyone Everyone will have a cryptocurrency wallet.

There are people in many parts of the world that can't get access to banking.

As long as they have an internet connection, they can participate.

And so from my perspective, I said, okay, well, there's this crypto wallet.

We need to make it easy for you to top it up and put money inside.

And so before MoonPay, you had to go to an exchange.

You had to go buy cryptocurrency on the exchange.

Then you could move it to your wallet.

And I said, what if you could just buy directly inside the wallet?

And that's essentially what led to MoonPay.

Smart.

So removing that friction.

Removing the friction.

I think the biggest problem of crypto is the user experience.

We have to nail the user experience.

It needs to be just like using any other financial app, it needs to be even better.

Right.

Yeah, it's got to be better or as good as a bank account.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And why are crypto wallets better than bank accounts, in your opinion?

So the big thing is, if you try to move money from A to B, let's say we're trying to move money from the United States to the United Kingdom, different banking systems, sometimes it can take days for that money to clear.

It's just inefficient.

A lot of the technology is archaic and it was built before the internet.

This is a new internet-based system.

As long as you access the internet connection, you can move money over a blockchain.

And so I see the blockchain, the best analogy I can give you is if you think of telecoms, right?

Telecoms, it was really expensive to place long-distance phone calls.

Then you had this thing called voice over the internet protocol, which is what was built on Skype, you know, Zoom, which we use today, is voice over the internet protocol, iMessage.

And so it's a new protocol for moving communication.

over the internet.

And the same thing should happen for money, should happen for value, and that's the blockchain.

Got it.

i like that yeah you see on the flip side there's a downside right on crypto twitter you see wallets getting hacked every day what is your uh advice to uh not get hacked most important thing you got to keep your private key safe that's like your private key is essentially the passkey to your bank account and so you wouldn't share the passkey to your bank account right some of these hacks are pretty elaborate though have you seen some of these yeah so i mean i think the reality is one of the big problems i think a lot of people should just be aware whenever you're connecting especially on ethereum right if you're connecting your wallet to a particular site, you want to make sure that that site is verified, that site is legitimate.

It's kind of similar to back in the day when you put your credit card details online.

There are websites that weren't secure.

And if you provide those credit card details, you had a chance of your credit card details being stolen and you being a victim of fraud.

Same thing applies in the world of crypto.

Wherever you connect your wallet, you want to make sure that's actually a verified, safe source.

There are a lot of people that use spoofed links where they change list like one particular component of the link, or even with the wallet, they'll tell you to send the wallet and it'll look again.

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Exactly the same at the beginning of the string and the end of the string, but they'll change the middle.

So you have to be really careful.

Some people run Google ads to a fake website that looks like the real website and just drains your wallet.

Exactly.

So you just have to be really careful.

Yeah, there's Chrome extensions.

Someone yesterday got key logged off a Chrome extension.

Yeah, so it's like a it's an ever-facing threat that you're going to have.

Cybersecurity is super important.

You know, if you, what it normally comes down to just good operational security.

So, you know, making sure that you have, you know, password manager, you're rotating those passwords regularly.

And, you know, things like your private key.

It's kind of like toxic waste.

Like, you can't put that anywhere on the internet.

Making sure that you hold that safely is super important.

And to me, the future is you should always be in control of your money.

You should always be in control of your data.

You should always be in control of all of your digital property.

And so, that private key is central to that thesis.

So, you need to make sure that private key is safe.

I love it.

Do you see crypto overtaking fiat currency one day?

I think it's just a new form factor, right?

So, you know, if you think about it, dollars, stablecoins is one of the most exciting new innovations that you're seeing.

It's essentially dollars that are on a blockchain that you can send just like an email.

And you can send it in seconds with almost no transaction costs.

It's definitely a more efficient, it's definitely a more, you know, better system than what we have today.

So, I just think, like, very similar to what we saw with voice over the internet protocol and communications, it will take years for people to opt into a more efficient system.

So if you think about it, it's, you know, it wasn't like we lost our, you know, our cell phone and our relationship with AT ⁇ T and Verizon and all these cell carriers that we have today, but we started to opt into voice over IP and using iMessage and these new internet-based protocols for communication because they're more efficient.

But it didn't happen overnight.

It took years.

Same thing with the existing financial system.

You're going to have your debit card, you're going to have your credit card, you're going to have your existing banking relationships.

But over time, I believe you're going to opt into a system that's far more efficient and it's going to be built on these wallets.

I agree.

More and more merchants are accepting crypto, too.

Yeah.

So that's also really exciting to see.

For them, merchant fees are very expensive, right?

And in a lot of cases, to accept a debit or credit card payment, it could be 2%, 3%.

That affects and eats into their margins.

So if they can reduce that cost by accepting crypto, great.

And also from a fraud perspective, right?

So the big problem that you have with the traditional financial system is when you charge a card, you have something called a chargeback where you could call your bank and say, I didn't place that transaction, the money gets reversed.

Crypto transactions are final.

So merchants love it.

If they can receive crypto, they know the likelihood of them getting a chargeback is less.

Obviously, we still have to build in the controls if someone gets their private key jeopardized, but that's why it's so important, again, for you to be control of your wallet.

Yeah.

I didn't know you couldn't charge back a crypto purchase.

Yeah, there's no way.

You can't call Satoshi Nakamoto and say, hey, man, I'd like my Bitcoin back.

When you deliver it, it's delivered final on the blockchain.

I love it.

How early were you on Bitcoin?

So I first learned about Bitcoin.

My friend in college wrote his thesis on Bitcoin.

So that's like the very first time I learned about it.

And this is back in 2012.

Holy.

So I was at George Washington University in D.C.

And I was like, this is really cool.

I wish I was writing this thesis.

It's like way more interesting.

I think I was writing about

credit unions and demographic details of credit unions in the United States.

And I just remember learning about crypto then and just looking at the ecosystem.

It was super early.

And the market cap of crypto, it was in like the hundreds of millions.

So it was super tiny at that point.

But I love the idea of like an internet-based currency, an inter-based form of money.

You know, I used to play a lot of video games kind of growing up.

So I think the concept naturally made sense that there would be, you know, we're in the physical world, we have cash, we have all these existing payment methods, like there would be something for the digital world.

And I think for me, it wasn't until I was working in the pensions world.

It was kind of random.

So after I graduated from college, I worked at this investment advisory firm where I was looking after big pension funds.

And what's interesting about that is they manage huge amounts amounts of capital.

So like 10 billion to 100 billion pounds of assets under management.

This is in London.

And you get to see how they invest it across all these different asset classes.

So they invest in equities, they invest in fixed income, they invest in real estate.

And so crypto to me was just like this new bucket, your bucket and your alternatives part of your portfolio.

And I believe that if it became as big as something like gold, that was always my mental model.

Gold today, about $11 trillion asset class.

Bitcoin now just over a trillion.

But if you think that the future generation is is going to prefer Bitcoin over gold, there's still a lot of market potential for Bitcoin.

Wow.

So we can overtake gold one day.

I believe it will.

It'd have to 12x from here, right?

It'd be less than that because I think we're like 1.7 trillion.

So

like 6x.

Wow.

That's pretty doable.

So that'd be 250K or 350K.

We're at like 60, 70K, so you're looking at 6X.

Yeah.

Are you as bullish about Ethereum as well as Bitcoin?

Well, Ethereum, I think, is incredible from an application layer perspective.

I think it has different properties than Bitcoin.

Bitcoin obviously fixes supply, so I think that's what makes it particularly special.

And I would say Bitcoin is more decentralized.

But I think the application of Ethereum is super exciting.

You now have all these smart contracts, which I think are going to be the future for any form of transaction over the future is going to take place in these kind of smart contracts.

These smart contracts, you can program basically any if this then that statement into the smart contract itself.

So I could enter an arrangement that if we both agree that

the eclipse will happen at this particular time, we could both make an assessment of that, whether it's going to happen.

That could be verified by an oracle, right?

Like some on-chain data source, maybe from like one of the weather channels.

And that could essentially determine whether crypto gets transferred from you to me.

Wow.

So it's just straight logic.

It's just straight logic.

So I think it was going to transform so many different industries.

Cool.

Any other communities, crypto products you're buying right now?

So I think it's super fascinating right now.

You're just seeing, I believe in a multi-blockchain world.

I also believe in a multi-wallet world.

I think you're going to have multiple forms of these digital wallets.

I think what's super interesting is just all these emerging chains.

And ultimately, I think everyone is fighting for the same thing.

We want to get to a place where transaction costs come as close as possible towards zero.

And so a lot of the innovation right now is really trying to reduce those transaction costs.

We've gotten to a place where with a layer two solution like Optimism, we can move US dollar coin.

at no cost and no gas costs whatsoever to actually transfer it from one person to another.

That's a huge innovation.

If you think about how expensive it is, the reconciliation, all the back-end work it takes to move money from A to B, the fact that we're bringing transaction costs down is incredible.

And so I think that's really the big theme that you're seeing is getting those transaction costs down.

And then as a result, also just the user experiences.

Like, how do we build a better user experience where all this stuff is really easy for people to use?

Yeah, and you've had 20 million people onboarded into your 20 million, yeah, pretty crazy.

Well, so it's across our entire ecosystem.

So Moon Pay, we started as purely B2B.

So helping some of the biggest companies in the world in the crypto space enable their users to come and be able to on-ramp into crypto.

So if you go to a website like Bitcoin.com or you go to Bitcoin.org or you search like buy Bitcoin on Google, you'll see a lot of different websites that come up.

Those are all places where we wanted to install our infrastructure and make it easy for customers that go to those sites to be able to buy their cryptocurrency really easily.

Then from there,

part of what we do is we also do KYC.

So we have on file the KYC information all these customers the most painful thing from a friction perspective is if you had to enter your KYC details every single time you wanted to use crypto so the beautiful thing about Moonpay and the 20 million customers that we have is it's essentially like a passport you can use it across any application that's in crypto so if you're inside your phantom wallet in Solana and you've used Bitcoin comm or you've used bitcoin.org or you've been on OpenSea you're gonna have a frictionless experience almost like a one-click checkout for you to top up and put money into that ecosystem or into that wallet I think the most exciting thing really has been we also think that it's really important that there's the backwards compatibility with the existing financial system.

People still have bank accounts, right?

And they want to be able to use their crypto in everyday life.

So what's been really fascinating to see is over the last year, our fastest growing product has actually been our off-ramp.

So you can take any crypto that you have inside of any wallet and in literally minutes, you'll see it boom.

deposited into your bank account.

Wow.

So you could take Ethereum that you have in one of your wallets, your MetaMask, you could take Solana that you have and your Phantom wallet and you can immediately just see it debited into your card.

So, if you have like Chime account in the United States or any debit card, it will work.

So, that's been really exciting.

Dude, actually,

yes, that business has grown about 700% in the last year.

I didn't know that was a thing because my crypto's on MetaMask, and I never knew how to get it in my bank account.

Yeah, so I feel like that's a lot of it.

People saw it as something that wasn't necessarily real as an asset, right?

So, I think to make it more real, we need to have frictionless backwards compatibility to the existing system.

That makes sense.

What's the fee if someone has like a thousand bucks to offer them?

It's about 3%.

Okay, that's not bad.

Because Coinbase probably charges similar, right?

Similar, yeah.

Yeah.

They just wanted to.

I think for us is we wanted to have the experience native inside the wallet.

So you don't need to go navigate somewhere else.

You can just do it directly inside your wallet.

Yeah.

They just won their case.

Did you see that?

Yeah, it's really exciting.

I think they're doing God's work.

That's interesting.

They have a lot on their shoulders.

They're obviously the biggest crypto exchange in the United States, but they're fighting super important battles.

I think this year is a huge year.

It's a huge election year.

I think it will decide a lot.

I think we want to see crypto thrive in the United States.

I think crypto is actually very American.

The idea that you can actually be in control and own your own money.

I think that's a very American value.

So I'd like to see it thrive in the United States.

I think we just need clear rules and regulation.

And I think it's moving in that path.

And these cases, unfortunately, we're going to this place where it's happening through litigation.

Ideally, it would be a place where we have like a framework in place.

We agree on that framework and we just comply with it.

Every crypto founder that I know wants to comply, right?

And so we just need those clear rules.

Let's make sure that we comply.

Ultimately, a lot of it comes down to, is this asset a security?

Is this asset a commodity?

Should it be unregulated?

How do we enable people to have access to it?

And ultimately, regulators do have a role.

They should make sure that they go after the scams, right?

They should go after the fraudsters.

That's like good activity.

But I think generally speaking, for the consumer, they just should have a really great experience.

And that's where we want to hopefully see in the next couple of years.

They need to put people like you and other crypto funders in touch with the SEC directly to negotiate because they're going after Ethereum again, right?

Yeah.

So hopefully, you know, I I don't want to comment too much on like existing litigation, but I think, you know, I don't believe Ethereum is a security.

I think there are principles that you could bring security type instruments into any blockchain asset because there's a new file format, right?

In theory, securities could become on blockchains.

But again, there should just be a clear rule on how to list that, how to do that with a broker-dealer.

And right now, there hasn't been that clarity.

Absolutely.

So Moonpay's coming on five years now.

Five years.

Yeah, we just celebrated our five-year milestone.

So

it came up with crypto history.

It's crazy.

Yeah, they say that's like decades in crypto.

You guys are like a dinosaur at this point.

Yeah.

You don't have a dinosaur yet, but

gray hairs, thankfully.

That's almost two full cycles, right?

Five years.

A couple cycles.

Yeah.

So I've seen four drawdowns in crypto so far.

So, you know, I think you really just have to have a long-term view.

You know, Hodel is one of the terms hold on for dear life.

You know, I take that to heart.

I'm Ivan Hodel.

So, you know, I really believe in just really looking at this industry for the long term.

I think over time, we're just going to opt into these systems that are just far more efficient than the systems that we have today.

I'm a hodler.

If you look at these day traders traders and if you look at their portfolio and if they just held, 99% of the time they would have made more.

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, like you can't take a myopic short term.

Like there's always going to be people that are speculating on particular assets.

Speculating actually is important.

It's price discovery, ultimately, right?

But I think if you focus on the basket of the most valuable assets that you have conviction around, that's always when people ask me what they should do or they ask me about price predictions, I go back to that analogy that I brought to you around gold, right?

You know, in terms of preferences, do we think Bitcoin could potentially overtake gold?

That's a good mental model to think about how we could think about Bitcoin over the long term.

But you have to be prepared for those drawdowns.

So, you know, I think it's not an asset to hold for, you know, not to day trade, definitely.

Yeah.

Not something to just hold for a year, but really to look at something over the long term.

If you're a venture capital investor, typically you're looking at a time horizon of seven years.

You know, I think that's a similar time horizon you should be thinking about when you're looking at crypto.

And most people don't have that horizon in crypto.

Yeah, I mean, it's

because it's also so liquid, right, in a lot of cases.

I think a lot of people,

emotions play a huge role of it.

But I think you have to silence kind of, they call it the animal brain, right?

And just think logically, right?

Is this an asset class that you want to be part of for the long term?

Absolutely.

You mentioned you were a game earlier.

Can I guess what games you played?

Yeah, go for it.

RuneScape and World of Worldcraft.

So funny enough, I am familiar with both of them, but those weren't my games.

Really?

No.

Okay, well, I was a Halo guy.

Oh,

first person shooter.

I loved Halo.

Yeah, Halo is my thing.

Okay.

And then I've recently been getting into Fortnite, which has been kind of funny.

I'm into Fortnite.

Just because I feel like I need to get part of, you know, understand Gen Z culture and what's going on there.

I think it's awesome.

You can put on your Spotify while you're playing.

Like, that's been my favorite way to unwind is I just go on Fortnite and just mess around.

I'm terrible.

I'm definitely not.

I'll play zero build.

Okay.

We're going to have to go.

I don't even know what that is.

That's how bad I am.

Well, the thing is, like, I know that I need to learn how to build.

Yeah.

Like, if you know how to build, that's how I know you're good.

Like, if you know how to build while you're playing and shooting, like, that's been the tough part.

And also, I'm playing on Xbox, which I think is a huge disadvantage to these people and they're like crazy gaming rig setups.

and they've got like the lights and they've got everything set up.

The guests coming on after that.

Yeah, they got the like special aim bots and all that stuff going on.

I don't got any of that.

Yeah, I feel that.

Well, that's a good segue into collectibles, actually, because Fortnite's done phenomenal with their collectibles, with their skins, right?

I think it's super cool.

And I think that's the way to think about a lot of these NFTs, right?

I think a lot of them could be like skins.

I think the future to me is this ready player one economy, right?

I believe in a world where ideally with MoonPay, right, you're going to see, you're going to go into your Microsoft Xbox Live environment.

You're going to scan a QR code, you're gonna have all your payment methods ready to go, all of your debit and credit cards that are linked, all of your cryptocurrency wallets that are linked.

Inside those cryptocurrency wallets could be an in-game asset, an in-game skin, and you could bring that into a gaming environment, right?

And then inside that gaming environment, you might earn more skins, you might earn other assets, those can go directly into your wallets.

You could decide to go on a platform like Magic Eden and sell that asset to anyone in the world, immediately see that into your balance, and then be able to spend that in everyday life.

Like, that is essentially the next iteration that we're going to see is they're going to be people that have their entire worlds inside of these games.

We're essentially bringing financial services into these gaming environments, which is super interesting.

It's like we're the very beginning of this trend.

They need to do that because Fortnite actually banned people from selling their accounts with skins.

Right.

But instead, they can make a lot more money if they had a marketplace.

Yeah.

Well, I think it's interesting.

If you go back to Vitalik and Ethereum, a lot of the reason that he created Ethereum was the idea that he didn't like the idea that he didn't have control of his own assets, right?

So when you think about crypto, cryptography, and what we talked about, the private key and the public wallet address, you're now in control of the assets that are inside your wallet.

Right now, when you have a skin on Fortnite, right, at any time, they could decide to take that away from you.

You don't actually control it.

So I do think the future for them, obviously, it makes sense in the short term because they're able to monetize this ecosystem.

There's no competition.

Everything happens through their platform.

But I think over time, the economic incentives will be aligned where these platforms will have to open up.

But we're in the very early phases of that.

I think phase one is just putting some of the assets inside of these platforms.

They're going to be closed-loop systems where these assets are just inside that ecosystem.

So, for example, they could take their own intellectual property, their own assets, and put it on a blockchain.

That's great for provenance and a bunch of other reasons.

When they open them up, that's where I think we're going to see a ton of innovation, right?

This idea that I can take any of these digital assets I have and transport them across any of these different marketplaces and platforms.

But there's a lot of challenges with that.

We have to agree on the format, what blockchain they're going to use.

For them, they want to look at their business model, how they make sure that they can keep monetizing it.

So we're going to see.

I think it's a, you know, we're looking at a three to five year time horizon.

Yeah, we'll see what happens.

Are you still optimistic about metaverse integrations?

So I think we got probably too excited in a lot of cases around how fast kind of the metaverse would take place, right?

But I do think that it makes sense.

Like you're going to, you have a physical world, you're going to have a digital world, and you have a digital identity associated with that digital world.

And I think it comes down to the application layer being incredible, right?

I think we got too far ahead of the actual experiences.

Like anyone that was crypto native and built like a crypto based metaverse, I think had a really rough time.

I think where we're going to see the adoption, well, I think it'll be twofold.

Like there'll be some new games that are sprung up from basic principles.

Like I think we got way too advanced in terms of promising like these really advanced experiences that don't even exist in the existing gaming world that we have today, right?

So that's where I think we got too far ahead of ourselves.

But I do think that we're already seeing a ton of innovation on things like Oculus.

We now have Apple Vision Pro.

We're at the early versions of the App Store for those platforms.

So we're just super, super early, right?

And it's kind of similar with virtual reality.

Like even when I was a kid, they were talking about virtual reality.

But it's not yet today that I see everyone in a virtual reality headset.

But it's starting to happen more and more, right?

So again, it's just one of those long-term trends that I think it's going to take time to play out.

Yeah.

Have you done the sandbox VR yet?

I haven't played with the sandbox experience, but I'm obviously familiar with it.

Have you used it?

I'm not talking about the sandbox online one.

There's a one in the hotel here

where you shoot zombies.

You put on a VR headset and they put on trackers on your body.

Oh, that's cool.

I have to check it out.

Yeah, you would love it since you like Halo, man.

There you go.

I don't like the new Halo, man.

Yeah, actually, it's funny.

I tried to play the new Halo, and I was way worse at it.

It's so boring.

It's so hard.

I don't see the purpose.

Like, at least with Fortnite,

you want to win.

Well, that's why I play Fortnite now.

Yeah.

Have you won any games yet?

I've won one.

Actually, two.

I've gotten two.

So I think I went from bronze to silver recently, and then I started going to silver and I got my my ass so yeah i'm not quite silver the fact you're playing ranked though means you're yeah well

how else am i supposed to play

no no just for fun i just play for fun dude i like killing bots yeah i think i'm super competitive so yeah that's my problem i love that man uh let's talk web three because that was hot for a while too well i still think you know it's just a It's a new form of the internet.

We're upgrading the internet, right?

And the idea is it really comes back to internet, you own and control.

Right now, when you use a bunch of these third-party platforms, whether you're using social media, you're not really in control of your data.

The future is you'll be in control of your data and you'll be able to exchange that with a whole range of different applications.

And so I think we're in the early phases of it.

I think, you know, right now the application layer, we're still early, right?

Even games aren't phenomenal.

So I think right now the major use case has really been, you know, for me in Web3, I really think the biggest use case we're going to really see is stable coins, right?

This idea that I now have this digital money, I can send this frictionlessly to many different parts of the world.

It's actually in America's interest that we see stablecoin adoption really thrive.

We want the US dollar to be on the blockchain and be everywhere in the world.

But I think in terms of like the Web3 stuff that I'm most excited about now, so we've done a bunch of work with enterprise.

So we've worked with companies like MasterCard, we've worked with, we've done activations with Universal, we've worked with Adidas.

And really right now, it's still in the experimental phase, but they have incredible intellectual property.

Can they bring that on chain?

And can they build a really compelling experience?

And I think right now the experiences aren't that compelling.

So we have a lot of work to do to make those experiences awesome.

I don't think necessarily it has to be an experience for financial gain.

It can just be an experience around a memento.

A really good example is we were just at MasterCard at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, which is our golf tournament.

And they had this little photo booth where you could take a photo.

And they have these really cool hats and they were connected hats with a little chip inside where you could literally tap RFID and you tap your phone to it and you could take the photo and put it into your hat.

So anytime you can take your phone on the hat and you could see the photo that you have.

So it's like a memory.

So that's just like a cool, unique, you know, it's on the blockchain forever.

So it's a memento.

It's building a priceless experience for MasterCard.

I think those are like right now it's around that.

I think the most exciting use case of Web3, I think, will be ticketing.

So ticketing and gaming, really in the ticketing space, I think, you know, it's really inefficient.

If you think about a lot of tickets today,

you know, you have an incredible amount of value that doesn't go back to the creator.

Like, you know, Taylor Swift complains all the time that she doesn't get paid.

Well, essentially, a lot of her fans can't afford her concerts anymore.

They're so expensive.

And a lot of that value is being captured by these third-party marketplaces versus the creator herself.

And also for her to be able to tailor who gets the tickets first, I think Web3 will solve a lot of this.

Wow.

I didn't know the ticket providers were making more than the actual talent.

In a lot of cases, yes.

And they're sharing back the revenue with the talent.

Sometimes they have arrangements to do that.

But the point is, the ticketing space today, I think, is ripe for disruption.

Yeah, that'd be a more fair system, right?

Like a lottery almost.

Well, not necessarily a lottery, but imagine you were someone that was a huge Taylor Swift fan that went and basically was a big listener.

Like you have all this data that supports that this person's your fan.

She's constantly showed up or she's been at concerts in the past.

There should be a way to be able to track that and give the allocation or the opportunity for that person to be able to get the ticket first.

I like that.

Now, you've mentioned stablecoins a few times now.

There's some people that theorize they might de-peg and they talk about it on Twitter.

What's your thoughts on that?

So, I think stable coins, I mean, the reality is we need good regulation around this.

You need to attest that the dollars that are being held in the bank account that are representing that stable coin asset are actually really there.

And so, that I think is the direction that we're moving.

I think it was a mistake for us to believe that we should have like these stable coins that are U.S.

dollar outside of the United States, right?

They should be in the United States if it's a U.S.

dollar-denominated asset.

So, I think that's the general trend that we're going to see.

So, they're going to be in U.S.

dollar, U.S.

bank accounts.

I also hope we start to see a trend where the interest that these people are making on the dollar deposits, I mean, it's an incredible business for the businesses that are actually in the business of issuing these stable coins because they're able to earn net interest margin on all the deposits.

And that isn't necessarily being held, given back yet to the consumers that are depositing.

So they're starting to work on that.

There was a lot of debate around staking and how that's going to be done.

But ultimately, we want to be able to share that yield.

So I think we're going to hopefully see a lot of innovation there.

But it's a more efficient dollar, right?

It's a more efficient dollar.

It's on a blockchain.

It's, you know, you can move it frictionlessly to anywhere in the world.

I think it's an incredible innovation that we want to see happen here in the United States.

Absolutely.

Are you a USDC or USDT type of guy?

Well, it's interesting.

I think there's two different audiences for that.

I think with the US dollar coin that's based in the United States, US dollar tether, a lot of those assets are held not necessarily onshore.

So I think there's going to be some work there.

But there are certain things that are more liquid with USDT today than they are with USDC.

So I think there should be multiple.

I think there will be a world where it shouldn't just be one or two.

It should be multiple, right?

It should be just kind of like the same, you know, competitive nature that we have within the banking system.

The same thing should happen for stablecoins.

Interesting.

What do you do outside of crypto?

Outside of crypto, I've been doing a lot of working out recently, and it's been great.

I'm doing an Iron Man.

Now saying that on the record, so I can't weasel out.

I tried to do it about two years ago, but my cows were killing me right beforehand.

So now I've got a

doing the Half Iron Man.

I'm doing it in Casca, Portugal.

So I've been really trying to train up.

I've been doing like four times a week training.

So I've got three other people, or I think actually now four other people at Moon Pay that are going to join me.

So yeah, obviously I'm the CEO, so I can't, you know, I can't do badly.

That would be poor form on my side.

So I got work to do on that.

So that's been keeping me busy.

I've been doing a lot of stuff around just like, you know, we have a value at Moon Pay.

We call it Kaisen, which is change for better.

So just constantly just trying to get better at things.

I think, you know, just making sure mental health, you know, physical health, trying to get all those stuff in tune.

Really Really believe in like sauna, cold plunge, you know, trying to get that into my routine, trying to eat healthy, you know, all the, all the, you know, there's a lot I've seen on your podcast, you've had some great people talk about, you know, essentially optimization and these type of hacks or biohacking.

I'm not like an extreme version of that.

I'm probably like more 80-20 role.

So like, let me try to take some of those principles and get better at it, try to avoid the bad stuff most of the time.

I think it's still important to have fun.

So, you know, I think there's definitely different poles of

how much people adopt it.

But yeah, curious to hear your biggest tips for me.

No, I love it.

What have you learned?

It's cool to see you change the crypto, bro, narrative of just nerdy, like not in shape.

You know, you're going against all that, but I've learned a ton, man.

I mean, infrared sauna.

I'm not into cold plunges.

Yeah.

I know some people are.

Well, it's interesting.

So there's been some interesting studies around the stress.

and cortisol levels that go up after you jump into an ice bath.

But, you know, so I don't do it every day, but you know, I try to do it.

I mean, I find it definitely wakes me up immediately ready to go.

I feel like just supercharged to do whatever I'm going to do next.

I'm a cold shower type of guy.

I've been trying to avoid 5G rays.

So on my phone, I have an EMF blocker.

Oh, interesting.

Where do you get that on Amazon or something?

There's Aries Tech.

That's the one I use.

Gary Brecca said he uses it too.

I turn my Wi-Fi off at night, and I have EMF blockers around the house.

I definitely believe there's something there with the phone.

I mean, it's kind of scary that

it's definitely not talked about enough.

They already announced it.

It's on Apple's terms of service that it causes damage.

yeah it's terrifying i hope it doesn't turn out to be something like you know i guess the cause of like smoking or something like that like future like maybe your life has been shortened by like 10 years the results of this stuff that'd be terrifying yeah and we won't know until probably 10 years from now what the actual results are yeah it was kind of crazy i remember i did a test where um they were just testing a bunch of different stuff within body composition and stuff and it was i think it's mercury is it mercury instead of the phone uh it might be I'm not sure.

It wasn't mercury.

It was actually aluminium, but my aluminium levels were a little bit high.

And they think that's because

my phone's my hand so much wow it's kind of crazy so i just had a dentist on last week so do you have those fake teeth i don't have fake teeth the metal ones no i don't so those are causing disease now too apparently and you can't cook on the aluminum foil as well you're not supposed to cook on aluminum foil no you're supposed to use parchment paper oh god that's going to change my life yeah don't use that and do you drink tap water uh well sometimes i do okay so don't drink that no and do you shower uh i try to

without a filter i mean oh no yeah definitely without the filter so i need to get the filter get the filter

That's a good tip.

Yeah, when you shower for 10 minutes in tap water without a filter, you're drinking nine glasses of tap water.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, your body's absorbing it and you're inhaling it, the smoke.

That's crazy.

Well, but some tap water is good for you, right?

They say that New York might be good, but.

Okay.

I feel like there must be some tap water somewhere, but probably Niceland.

Yeah.

You got to go somewhere like that.

That's the glass, man.

I mean, shout out to Aphora.

I'll put you in touch with the founder if he hooks it up.

Do you feel a difference just drinking a 40?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

They put oxygen in it, so

I feel great.

Yeah, that's all.

I've also heard hydrogen in water.

Yeah, right.

I mean, there's hydrogen.

It's really a big thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Why hydrogen?

I don't know the exact science.

I just follow the smart people.

Okay.

I leave them to explain that to everyone else.

But the mouth tape, too.

Have you tried that?

Sleeping with mouth tape at night?

No.

Do you snore?

My girlfriend would know.

Okay.

Yeah.

Ask her if you snore, but even not, it improves your sleep, man.

Yeah, there's a lot of different acts, man.

I'm into all of them, but you could go down too far.

So I try to keep it 80-20, like you said.

Some people sleep at 8 p.m.

every night, like Brian Johnson.

Yeah, Brian Johnson's on a different level.

He's taking the blood, right, of his son.

He sleeps alone.

There's a lot of, yeah, a lot of stuff.

I mean, I don't know, life's too short, though.

You guys still have to have fun.

So I think there's that balance, right?

So like, I think if I was sleeping alone, different rooms and,

you know, having to do blood transfusions with my son, yeah, I'm not quite at that level.

I feel that.

Anything else you want to close off with, man?

No, let's

have a great year ahead.

I mean, I think this should be a really exciting year for for crypto.

I'm really excited about what we're doing at Mimpe.

Really proud of our team.

Come a long way.

We're really just trying to build great products that make it easy for people to use this stuff.

So, you know, I think we've got our work cut out ahead of us, but going to continue to grind, and hopefully, we'll see those results pay off.

Cool.

I'll try out the off-ramp thing.

Thanks for having me.

Check it out.

Coming on, man.

Thanks, buddy.

Yeah, thanks for watching, guys.

See you next time.