How wallets and stablecoins are becoming crypto neobanks

Transcript

And so everything that we would dream of five, six, seven years ago is happening now. >> What's up everybody? It's LG Ducet here and welcome to the Milk Road Show. The daily crypto show where your wallet might be smarter than Congress. And the guy who built that wallet is here today. It is Friday, November 28th. We've got a great guest, Edidomar Liss, the CEO of Ready, which is formerly Argent Wallet, which is actually my first ever non-custodial wallet from a very long time ago. This guy has been around for a very long time building self-custody tools before it was cool. He's lived through more market cycles than most founders actually stick around for. And he's at the center of what many are calling crypto's Neo Bank moment. We're going to dig into wallets, what users

are telling him, what people are going to be what people are using now, and what we'll be using in the future on chain. And yes, I will be dragging some market thoughts out of him as well. Uh before we get going, this week only we are running our Black Friday offer. So for the next week or until Monday actually, you get 40% off Pro all access. That's crypto, macro, and AI pro all-in-one membership. The three biggest investing trends of our lifetime are rolled into one 40% off plan. You can get that until midnight on Cyber Monday. So check out the link below. And today's episode is brought to you by Bridge.

Power your business with instant stable coin payments. No friction, no banks, just global finance made simple. Block trust IRA. Let AI outsmart the market and grow your crypto while you sleep. and reserve ETFs get exposure to the entire crypto market in a single token. Listen, Idomar, he's here, sir. Welcome to the Milk Road Show. >> Great to be here, Algie. >> Okay, so let's let's get into it. Man, we're at a very crucial point obviously in crypto, but things look a little bit okay right now. I think Bitcoin's at what, like 91K and or 92. Woo! Very exciting. More [laughter] exciting. It's an exciting Friday. It's an exciting Friday compared to Friday a week ago. Uh but you've seen this before, man. like you've you've been here for a lot of crypto cycles. Um when you're looking at the market right now, um what what's one

thing that you think and you've you've had so many users kind of come through your your apps, what's one thing that you think that even in moments like this, people still get wrong about what's going on? >> I I think so. First, I think it will be the first time I comment on market and price ever. Uh no one asked me about that. So I I think people look um I think people don't don't understand exponential uh the the concept of something going exponentially up or down and um I made then like my first one of my first job I worked for a bookstore online bookstore so it was like 2006 they were selling books online uh and they would give stock to the team uh

very forwardlooking $18 I remember the price and we all we were like oh it can do 2x it can do 5x maybe will go crazy 10x and none of us thought okay Amazon will do 250x over the next decades and you know we were seeing it that way it was a bookstore and I think the same a bit happening in crypto is like um if now if if this all work we we it will go I mean exponentially for me orders of magnitudes from here but on the other end also probably many assets are overvalued by one or two order of magnitudes. And so I think that's really what people struggle to realize. And so like minus 10% plus 10% that's like a a

rounding mistake versus the the 100 or the 100x one way or the other that we can expect. >> Are you actually I I this is your first market question. I'll ask you your second market question. Uh as somebody who's been building on Ethereum for a long time, right? Again, it was my first my first non-custodial wallet. I learned a lot about uh I guess using ETH uh using Argent. Uh are you are you do you have any allegiances in the majors? Like are you a big ETH bull maxi or are you you happy for the whole space to move?

>> Honestly happy for the whole space to move. I think in some way look I I have we were born as a company out of ease that's where uh and not it's not about allegiance to an asset it's about a certain vision and for example historically we have been I I was much less into bitcoin because I felt like bitcoin was too oified and I needed a platform to build on but so it's more about those properties but on the other end personally I feel bitcoin and ease are extremely aligned in mission they're about you know a very decent entralized self-custodial uh web and will Bitcoin be the the store of value and will ease be more the computer or the home for stable I don't really care for me

they're very aligned if if anything I really don't get this opposition Bitcoin versus ETH >> and one more one more question about the market as somebody who's been building for a long time this current like the last year or so of two years I guess of ETF approvals and now DAT stats uh coming in and and and buying this buying a lot of the supply up and and kind of becoming really that kind of Wall Street institutional bid. Is that something that that surprises you that it's happened at this point? Did you ever think that that would even happen?

>> So I mean if you remember the early days we had I mean so I I wasn't I would say I would hope it would it would happen. Uh but in the early days we were talking about like Ethereum enterprise alliance and stuff like that and we were like I remember 6 years ago like oh institution are knocking at the door and clearly they were not knocking and so everything that we would dream of five six seven years ago is happening now whether it's enterprise adoption literally public treasuries now or even governments or states. So, uh, I do think, look, it was something we were hoping for. We didn't think it would happen so quickly in such a concentrated time.

>> So, this is actually a good segue into um, I guess kind of focusing more on the this part of the industry that you're building. I want you to explain to me because I I've watched some of the recent shows you've been on and I think it's still very unclear what exactly in your opinion is a crypto neoank and and why is that why has that become a narrative or something that people are focusing on at this point in in in time? >> Yeah. So I think the the starting point it's a place to do what you would typically do in a new bank which is you can deposit you can money you can grow your wealth and then you can spend your wealth. That's really the a simple definition. Now the crypto in front of it for me it's really more about

self-custody. It's it's it's such a product where users have full control of their assets. We can't move we can't run away with their assets. We can't freeze their assets. And that's quite unique to to uh know to what we are building. But it needs to end up with other benefits. Some users have see strong value in self-custody but not all. But the next benefit is that they there's much less intermediaries and so they should get much more reward when they whether it's our card that has now 3% cash back even 10% on first month or a new new reward program we are building around holding funds investing funds. So at the end it will be no the financial product you use dayto-day where you capture much more of

the value as an end user which is one for me one of the key benefit of crypto for me. Stable coins are the biggest use case in crypto right now. But let's be real using them on chain is still way too complex. That's exactly the problem bridge is solving. Recently acquired by Stripe. Yep. Stripe. Bridge helps businesses send, store, accept, and launch stable coins instantly. Explore the future of global financial infrastructure at milkroad.com/bridge. Bitcoin changed the investment game. Now AI changes the strategy. Crypto's wild ride demands perfect timing. Selling before drops, buying as it climbs. While most investors panic, seller hope, a select few leverage a crucial edge, AI.

Block trust IRA's trading platform spots market patterns with precision no human can match. Since 2020, their animous AI platform has outperformed Bitcoin by over 250%. Visit milkroad.com/blocktrust today to get up to $2,500 in bonus crypto and transform your investment strategy. I want I do want to ask you why you guys transitioned from argent to ready and kind of what's been going on with you in the last little while, but I do want to point out I saw your tweet uh that you guys are selling a card that is hitting like a new daily record. Let's pull it up here. Hold on. Let's see. And I'll give you a congratulations I guess cuz you said new day new daily record.

Yesterday we more than tripled our daily sales record of ready metal cards. Uh and I guess that you you're also doing some kind of Black Friday sale. Tell me tell me what's this card that you guys have. What is this? >> Yeah, actually you you mentioned Black Friday for you. So I should do the same. Like we we have our own Black Friday. So I think this will be live today. So you should go and buy the red card. Actually it's uh look it's it's the most amazing crypto cards out there. It's >> got [laughter] that's our is it a credit card? card a master card. What is that? >> Yeah. So, so look, this is really a normal card. We we have different on the market. It can be this one is a master card. We're also working with Visa and you can basically spend to any store

that accept no cards. But you are spending directly stable coins in yourself custodial wallet. There's no offramp fees. There's no effect fees. It's literally the most the purest the most efficient way to spend basically and then with the highest reward program. So you can use it because you are an existing crypto user who cash out and we see much more of those users now you have dollar you have stable coin you deposit in the wallet on any chain or you spend zero fees but we see market where really people are using that as a travel cards because again much more efficient zero FX fees etc. Black Friday today so it's I think 40% off too so uh go to ready.co and go uh download the app and order it. We need some kind of

We need some kind of cross promo deal where like our our pro members get a card if they sign up or something like that. You get a you get the card or vice versa. Yeah, we should do some >> Let's talk about that. I like it. >> Yeah. Maybe next year. Yeah. Or something. I don't know. Maybe uh in Canada we have Boxing Day which is like a pretend Black Friday after Christmas. So maybe >> we have it in in the UK too. >> There you go. Yeah. So maybe we have time for that. Uh it's the imitation Black Friday or vice versa. Um that's interesting. You mentioned that that uh people are using it as a travel card. I guess I guess maybe here's a question for you as well about um about what you're seeing at Ready and what you've seen from Arjun over over the years is

um I guess what are users kind of looking for these days in this current cycle uh that they haven't in the past like what's what's new in in in I guess retail and non-custodial uh user demand. >> So look what we observe that is very different is of course the the spending habit. Crypto was, you know, as you say, we we were your first wallet. We started on on Ethereum one 7 years ago. We became, it was so expensive to build like account abstraction, smart account, so self-custody in a very safe and and simple way was was very expensive in term of gas fees and so people ended up using us as a super secure wallet. We had users depositing half a billion

dollar on their phone. Literally, it was a game of holding. you were holding, you were you had ease, maybe you had Bitcoin and maybe you were investing that in DeFi, staking, etc. No, we see a totally opposite trend is it's been so many years of crypto has grown. You have so many more people who who hold crypto one way or the other and might have sold some over the year, they want to spend in real life. And that's really where we, you know, we started that card almost proof of concept. It started exploding. We see really a demand to to get, you know, some of your crypto out in the real world, which is really hard for crypto users. Banks are blocking you. Banks will freeze your account. You could deposit a billion dollar in a self-custody wallet. There's no alarm

that will ring. No one will ask you questions. It's self- custody. We don't know about that. And then you start spending with your card. That's really a big trend we see within the crypto community. The second one is starting to see those benefit outside of crypto. It's a harder challenge, but we start to see that. >> Is there anything you mentioned on a podcast recently or you guys were discussing that uh that pure Trady products that crypto is is able to bring pure Trady products to everybody? Is there anything that crypto should not deliver to people that's available in Tradfi? Cuz I saw you say that. I was like, I don't know if everybody necessarily is ready for the things that traditional finance is using. You know what I because there's a lot of more complex finance tools that maybe the

everyday user shouldn't have. But I'll let you speak to that considering that I think that that's a great statement that you're right crypto is a nice rail for all that stuff to come on chain and for people to be able to use it. But maybe you can you can differentiate for us what they what what we what people should use and not use. So I think that's a very valid point I made last week in def connect and Sarah talk around like crypto bringing like private banking products to the masses or having the potential to remove those those barriers that private bankers would put and of course the danger of that is are you by removing those barriers are you also removing protection and so like is basically the question you're asking is every regulation bad and of course not a lot of the regulation was there to

protect users we look we see things that are clearly good where there's really no doubt. I moved here in Buenoseres for five months because we felt there's a unique market here. Let's understand that market and clearly bringing they want dollar account not having to fly to Miami to open a dollar account and instead opening an app five minutes later you have a dollar account that has a huge benefit. They have a huge distrust of their uh government and financial system. twice probably in the past 20 years they had bank account basically frozen no more withdrawal they had private pension funds made public so basically they took away your pension so self custody for them is huge benefit

and if you make it simple and safe there's probably no downside on the other side of course you know remember the ICO times you could invest every in everything anywhere we got probably quite a few scams there that's the flip side of But on the other end, just compare, I was talking about my early days at Amazon. Amazon went public at $500 million valuation. Open AI today is around $500 billion and you can still not invest. You need to receive, you know, a nice WhatsApp message from a friend. I remember I got a message, oh, we can get into SPV. It's a hundred billion that you don't need to be a genius to know Open AI will do well, but we don't, we as retail don't have access to that. So there's clearly more good to

get out of it. We just need to figure out how do we bring safety creation so that users don't get burned and scammed and that's also part of the difference between nail bank and wallet. A nail bank is much more created much more gated where a wallet is just an open gateway to to anything. >> That makes sense. Yeah. You you were able to kind of predict this I feel that this that we would get to this point a long time ago. I saw you also tweeted and this is this I want to ask you about your product before we continue um discussing the trends. You tweeted this that 5 years ago you recorded a podcast in February 2020. So almost 6 years ago um that was titled the self-custody crypto bank and it was about your it was about uh Argent but that was over six

years ago. Is this tell me about the journey for Argent from from this point in time 6 years ago where you're already talking about custody self banks and to to to rebranding to ready and what's changed in your vision since then. So it's so yeah we found that back honestly I had forgotten about that and then we we looked we found that and we're like okay it's we were clearly there from day one and we knew our vision hadn't changed that much but we don't know we don't know how public we had been about that and we started really with really really argent at the time with that exact vision the difference is look we we discovered crypto I was mind blown I I I had my first non-crystal studio wallet in 2016.

I made my first transfer called my co-founder say we need to do that. I had worked at Visa and I suddenly had seen a transfer which which was virtually free Ethereum at the time there was free to make a transfer one cent uh super fast no middleman I was like wait just cryptography made my money move this is mind-blowing we need to to do that then our analysis was self custody so hard we'll end up with five big centralized custodian centralized exchange holding everyone's crypto which means we are back to square one with the status quo of trade So we're like to build this self-custodial nail bank we need to crack self-custody and so we started working there were a lot of ideas

floating around in that at that time around meta transaction how do we build safe account and so we I think we invented the first uh probably us and buyer at the time were the first really building like account abstraction smart accounts and so we we built that first smart account we're like okay it will take time for people to trust us like we were in alpha and there already someone depos depositing $70k. I remember we we hadn't yet shipped the banner that says please don't deposit more than $500. Uh and it was I I remember very well it was amazing guy working at Numera at the time and they just go with it and look product started growing. We had that clear vision of the nail bank. We thought savings account would be east is uh east staking. It was before staking.

It was like east to serenity as how we were calling Ethereum to East2 and we're like okay this would be our savings account. We had everything in mind how we would do payment or we'll put charge back on chain uh because when you do online payment you need you know recourse etc. The pitch was there, the vision on seat was there. Then started growing very well. We had abstracted the seat phrase. We were non-custodial but no seat phrase. We had abstracted gas. So we were paying for all things that feels normal now. They we invented all those those bits around recovery, guardian, social recovery, gas abstraction with pay master etc. And then if I and then compound was announced. Uh then compound launch and we're like whoa we have our savings

account. We made first native integration like really was the only protocol I think that existed there and then more came defy summer and then this transaction cost that used to be like $1,000 amount for all our users became seven or $800,000 in a single month. So that's the time of my life where I would I would wake up every 3 hours uh at night to top up our relayers because we hadn't automate that. We normally had to top them up with ease once a once a month. Suddenly now three times a night I would have to wake up to do it. We hadn't built the ability for users to pay for gas themsel. So we were screwed.

We were like we have to pay that million dollar a month. So we rushed to change everything. We had to tell users sorry now you will have to pay. We had to build that ability and so overnight we became a wallet for ultra expensive uh ultra safe for whales and so we we rename named the vault uh and it became just cold storage we had user depositing half a billion dollar there uh as a single user we reached several billions in in TVL it proved the model the security but suddenly we couldn't be at all what we wanted to be started a super long journey I think we should make the short version but basically we couldn't build what we wanted it it wouldn't scale. There was no L2 at the time.

Regulation was such that it was impossible to offer a card. It was impossible to to offer a virtual bank account etc. We went through a long journey made a big bet on ZK did several iteration end up being a wallet more traditional wallet on starknet the largest wallet there till we realize okay now we can scale extremely like thousands of TPS is super cheap both because of the work in ZK and and because of Ethereum with D sharding and and lower data availability cost suddenly we could build what we wanted and also regulation become much became much better and so we are really back rebuilding exactly what we always dreamed of, but it's just much easier, much faster to build. Now,

>> ETFs provide investors with a structured, disciplined, and diversified approach to crypto, which is cool, but the world is moving on chain. We need a crypto native equivalent. That's exactly what Reserve's decentralized token folios, DTFs, bring to the table. Reserve ETFs are rule-based baskets of crypto assets packaged into a single token, like Coin Market CMC 20, Crypto's version of the S&P 500. Go to milkroad.com/reserve to find out what's on offer. Oh my god, nice history of DeFi right there, man. Holy Yeah, that's a good that was a good summary especially >> Yeah. Yeah, that's a that's that's wild.

Is there what what do you what are you building towards for the next three years? Like what are you what are you integrating into ready and what are you seeing across the industry that people are building that that you think that that's what people will be looking for? Because it's clear you have a really long-term outset, right? So what are you what are you creating now that you think people are going to be asking for in two years time? >> Yeah. So very very short term we have few pieces that were we're completing around I would say the foundational part we we don't self custody that's fine. We have a card we need to get the card in more markets. So we're everywhere outside the US. So no getting the work there so we can be everywhere in the world. We have no virtual account so you

can deposit fiat. You have a bank account get stable. we need to do money out all that happening in the next two three months. So I would say by end of Q1 or Q2 next year the product will be fully complete from a core uh neo bankanking like feature set will be super accessible. Anyone will be able to use it from a UX perspective. Uh we're reaching this uh crypto singularity where self custody has a better UX and custody than than custodial products and we're really getting there. I want to evolve much more than into multicurrency. I want to see a long tail of stable coin. I think moving FX on chain is probably one of the biggest opportunity out there and so once we move that it will be an insanely good

business for all the crypto neo banks uh out there. Uh and you know USD is by far the biggest demand today but we start to see a lot of demands for euros for Indonesian Europa etc. uh so we will see I'm quite convinced we'll see a long tail there and then bringing more investment products. We are already improving that in Q1, but I want to see gold. I want to see silver. I want you to be able to join, you know, maybe IPOs or or ICOs if that big is very good initiative of Coinbase there. So, I want to see even not just cryptonative assets. I think we'll see more exotic LWA products uh coming into there because the barrier is very hard in trade fight. So, I'm actually very excited to bring that. Even stock for

example, not everyone can buy. It's very easy for us in like in Europe, UK, the US. Not every market has a Robin Hood or or Trade Republic equivalent. And so bringing exposure to to Stark globally, I think is also a very high value. >> Does it change what you're doing when you see Coinbase launch like an ICO platform? I >> I think we we think right now we think we're really not in a zero sum game where we need to worry about crypto competition. I think the the entire back to my point around exponential growth. I think the so if anything yes it makes it interesting maybe we can partner with them. We think it's really the pie has to grow a thousandx uh from now and so we really don't worry too much about crypto

competition and and some other crypto company have the same mindset and so we can really collaborate a lot. Some have less of that mindset. So yeah, I think every initiative for us in crypto is is is good news. >> Okay. And and one of my last questions here in Amar is and I need to ask this because I think it's it's it's more and more relevant. And it's something people are really curious about how it's impacting our industry. From a builder's perspective, where for you does AI factor into all this with from security to agents to your UX and maybe automation? What what how does this fit into what you're doing if at all?

So it does impact because the ultimate goal with crypton bank is build a to it might take time but build fully mainstream build something bigger than revolute that has more value to user and that has much better unit economic where I will have 1% of the employee either because I don't have the same regulatory burden because selfcustodial uh but um and that my the blockchain is my back office where everything is enshrined there but actually AI being AI native plays a role there can so can we create you know is what 75 billion on their latest I think that's what they announced can we build a $75 billion value uh crypton bank that

has you know 100 or 200 employees because of blockchain automation and because of AI so I ting it plays a huge role in um you know company operation engineering was the first part but obviously but can you use how do you leverage it in design how do you leverage it in customer support in growth marketing obviously so for us it's very very important internally I do think we'll see some instance of it as the product become richer very high conviction that we'll start to see AI financial advisor uh playing a bigger role I think the the AI has changed our interaction with tech there was a tech divide where maybe older generation couldn't interact well with the web it was complex to them where Now uh I see

my mom using uh AI all the time um because the the interface is so simple uh and so I think we'll see more of that and finance is a complex topic and so I think AI will have a big role to play in democratizing that uh and making it much simpler much more accessible >> what AI does your mom use now I'm curious I want to know I want to know >> she she used CHBT she doesn't you know she doesn't go to the latest model she doesn't switch to Jiminy because Gemini because Gemini 3 launched yeah But it's amazing. I mean, it's >> What does she use chat for? What does what does she do on chat GPT?

>> Well, she's a doctor. I'm not sure I should say that she use it for that. But yeah, [laughter] actually, it's uh for for everything. Chat GPT is the is the is the new interface of the older generation. Honestly, it's it's mind-blowing. >> It's scary. >> Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. Okay. Uh I want to wrap up tomorrow. This has been a great uh this has been a great history lesson uh and also a good a good full circle moment for me. uh now having you on the show I do want to add you were talking about I guess I guess you were talking about adding other currencies and one thing that you and I share is that we both speak French natively both both for both of us as our first language uh and actually talked about this in an old podcast six or five six

years ago you wrote this tweet recently French has the ability to make a bullish and exciting concept pretty lame a token is a network stake is areta ko do you really believe that because French is supposed to be this elegant and beautiful language man we're supposed to have this maybe not French Canadian European French definitely. Do do you really believe this or was this just some joke? >> Honestly, it's uh you you would see two French people speaking English for business meeting. I French is not the lang French is the language of love. It's not the language of business.

[laughter] I think that that's that's real. Yeah, >> that's the best quote right there. Yeah, it's not it's not the language of crypto, of business, of of finance, but it is it is the language of love. So, that makes a lot of sense. Um, you know, it's been fantastic having you on the show, man. Thank you so much for coming on and telling us, you know, a little bit about what's been going on at Ready, what's been going on, what happened with Argent and and how you guys transitioned and also just giving your first ever thoughts on the market. >> Awesome. Thanks for having me, LG. Was really fun. >> If y'all are making swaps or trades right now, highly recommend you check out Milkroad Swap. This is a DEX that we built in partnership with Cow Protocol.

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