The Next Era of Stablecoin Payments

Transcript

Hello everyone. It's going to be super exciting quick 15 minutes chat. We're going to talk about the hottest topic on the planet after AI which is stable coin payment. And I have nobody than Zach and Zach from Liberty. Thank you for joining me for this panel. >> Thanks. Great to be here with you today Ben. >> Yeah. So we're going to talk like very quickly about a stable coin payments but before that we'll like to make a big announcement. So I'm going to read from the script but it's very exciting.

Everyone knows that a stable coin have gotten really good at moving money. But it's a state still painfully hard for people to use them. That's where World Liberty comes to the picture with USD one to make it super simple. And we are going we are super excited to announce our partnership at Mash with World Liberty to powering everyone who has USD one to be able to spend their money everywhere like that Mash is accepted which is hundreds of millions of merchants globally. And we're super excited to bring that to life this quarter. So without a further ado we are going to

talk about the stable coin payment and use case. But Zach we go over you first. Tell us more about USD one and why you guys are looking at the most compliant way with the painful way to apply for a charter bank. What's the intersection of compliance and a stable coin and how do you guys are solving it? >> Yeah. Well first of all really really excited for the partnership. Mash has built some of the most unbelievable infrastructure anywhere in payments and you know, we're honored to be partnered with with you guys.

Um, as for the trust charter, um, we received our conditional charter uh about a couple months ago. Actually the the same day that I had my second baby boy, we also received >> Congrats. >> [laughter] >> conditional trust charter. Um, but but what does that do for the business? Um, you know, a trust charter is is probably the highest bar in American finance. Um, obviously will increase trust in our institution. It'll also increase transparency.

Um, so we'll have certain requirements that we'll have to meet, you know, per OCC guidelines. Um, hopefully we'll have that trust charter operational soon. Um, and it's something that um, you know, we're really excited about. I want I I want to be clear about this. It's it's it's something that we've been able to achieve in spite of some of the attacks against us, you know, whether it be the mainstream media or you know, some of these politicians that want to attack us for for whatever, you know, nefarious reasons they have. But um, yeah, it's it's it's huge for the business. Um, and we can't wait till USD 1 is is, you know, accepted at the thousands of

merchants that you >> Millions. >> Millions. Millions millions of merchants that you support worldwide. >> [snorts] >> Yeah, so um, the reason you need the charter is because you want to show that you're like passing the highest bar of security and compliance. So, it would be like a trusted brand uh for everyone who is using and holding USD 1 or spending USD 1. Um, why couldn't you do that without a trust? What what like tell the audience that why a trust is needed or you wanted to kind of go extra mile to make sure that you have the highest bar in compliance and security.

>> Yeah, sure. I mean, ultimately, this is people's money we're talking about. Um so, you know, there's there's trust me and then there's show me, right? Uh what we're doing with this trust is showing, you know, our holders, our customers that they they really can trust this product, right? The OCC has a process in place. Um it includes some of the things that I talked about before, right? Things like AML, KYC, one-to-one backing of reserves, things that are already in place today.

Um but of course, today we're we're issuing through Biko, right? And uh with this trust charter, we'll be able to take on that responsibility ourselves. >> Yeah, the other Zach. So, I know like trust is good as a foundation, but it doesn't move the money itself, right? So, >> Sure. >> and then one of your vision was like to abstract all the complexity of the crypto and the stable coin, so you can bring it to the mainstream. What did you guys do in that end? >> Yeah, I mean, that's a great question. I think for all stable coins, it always starts with trading, right?

>> Right. >> So, we focused, when we launched USD 1, partnering with all the top exchanges in the world, um creating as many pairs for users, being used as collateral for trading, um and expanding the use within crypto. But our vision has always been much bigger than the crypto uh community. We really believe that USD 1 is going to be synonymous with the US dollar all around the world. >> So, if you look at the use cases for crypto, it's like this. But if you look at the use cases for the US dollar, I mean, it's infinite. The whole world is is operating on the dollar. And so, for us, creating a digital dollar that moves across borders in

fractions of a second, has less friction, less cost to move funds, it's good for everybody involved in the global economy. And that's really what we've been focusing on. First, building out the distribution and the liquidity inside the crypto community, and then moving to the next bigger step, which is global payments. And that's obviously where Mesh and USD 1 and World Liberty comes together. >> Makes sense. And last year, you guys announced the debit card. Um and uh that's kind of where you kind of abstract all the complexity. You can receive USD 1 in your debit card, you can spend it anywhere debit card is accepted, which is huge. So, is it right that like the way you distinguish

yourselves from USDT and USDC is like you're building the whole ecosystem, it's not just a stable coin, it has a lot of other utilities like the debit? Do you mind telling the audience more about that? >> Yeah, I think the biggest thing to really focus on here is USDC or USDT, rather, was the first mover. So, within the crypto community, they had that first mover advantage. But there's a lot of reasons why institutions aren't comfortable using USDT, and we see a shift from USDT to regulated compliant stable coins like USD 1.

Um Circle's done a great job around being the leader in terms of being a regulated stable coin. But I think our competitive advantage, and hopefully you can speak to this as well, is our goal is to be a better partner to the technology layers and to the merchants and the distribution platforms. So obviously, we have our own goals and North Star at growing USD 1, but part of that is working closely with our partners like Mesh to really be able to bring value back to the platforms and ultimately the end users making it cheaper, faster, and easier to use.

>> Makes sense. Anything you want to add to that? >> Yeah, I mean, I would just add that I think we're building some very interesting layers on top of USD 1. Um, you know, that includes things like WLD 5 Markets. Um, Markets has grown to become a top 10 lending market in the industry. There's over a billion dollars of TVL on Markets. 300 million of USD 1. There's over 500 million dollars of borrowers. Um, and we're going to continue to innovate and roll out products that our customers ultimately want to see. And that includes, you know, like like Zach said, working with the best in the industry, people like yourselves and Mash and >> And it's probably a good time to kind of

talk about this a little bit. You know, we've talked about the World Liberty app. And a lot of people have been wondering when it's coming. Um, the reality is is when we set out and first had the idea about creating the World Liberty app, the goal was to abstract away all the difficulties to using stable coins for payments. And ultimately, that came down to finding the right tech partner that could really facilitate that, right? And deliver the user experience that we wanted. Because for us, to just roll out an app that didn't really meet our standards for what this product should be, it didn't make sense. And so, now that we've partnered with Mash, we've really

been able to create a product that we truly believe not only crypto users, but mainstream users as a whole are going to be able to use, enjoy, to Zach's point, integrate things like Markets directly into the app in a very seamless, user-friendly way. >> Makes sense. >> And, you know, you can you can sort of be first and get it right, which is very hard. Um, or you can just get it right, right? We're very focused >> people's lesson and experience and then get it right. Yeah.

>> Yeah, that's right. Like Bam, take take Muse for example, right? Muse was not the first AI product in the market, but you know, Mark and the team and Alex, you know, they got it right. Um and, you know, Meta's stock has uh been on a tear as a result. Um so, we're very focused on getting it right. Um again, this is real people's money on the line, right? >> Um and so, we want to make sure that we get this product right. We're We're very confident that, you know, our customers and community are are going to, you know, really love this product.

And, you know, you you you you're yourself and your company are are helping us make this product much better. So, again, we thank you for the partnership. >> Thank you. We appreciate >> And beyond the use of the World Liberty app itself, we are already in plans to roll out this exact same technology to some of the largest Web 2 businesses that are in the marketplace. So, not only will it be powering the World Liberty consumer app, it's also going to be powering companies can't We're not going to announce it today, but companies that have millions of users are using it to facilitate payments to things like, you know, use your imagination, drivers, uh contractors, creators, et cetera. So,

>> to this ecosystem and use the USD one the World Liberty app. >> That's right. Anywhere a dollar is accepted, really. I mean, the US dollar is the greatest product America ever created, right? Um and, you know, we want to export that around the world. >> Makes sense. And um so, like our core mission at Mash has always like the joke is like we want the product to pass the grandma test, Yep, your grandma can use it. So, it needs to be as simple as like tap and pay or click and pay. But you guys not only doing that, but um like Mesh has a small role in that, but like that was your core mission, too. But on top of it, you want to kind of make it simpler for businesses around the globe to be able to tap into this technology.

That's That's huge. >> Not only simpler, uh faster, and programmable, right? This is just a better form of money. Um you people don't want to wait, you know, 2 hours, 5 hours, 2 days to get their money. They want it now. Um you know, internet moves at the speed of sound. Uh stable coins are quickly becoming the cash layer of the internet, and we think that, you know, money should move at that speed as well. >> Makes sense. The last thing I would like to ask is about agentic commerce and agentic economy. So, we have like around 5 billion people, more or less, connected to internet. They're making like two transactions per day in average. We'll have hundreds

of billions of agents connected to internet. They do thousands of transactions per second, not even day. And on top of it, they're doing microtransactions. You cannot really pay someone 0.00005 cents using Visa or Mastercard or wire. So, that's going to where stablecoin comes to the picture. Do you guys have any plan to work on agentic economy, too? >> Well, we already have. I mean, I think uh for anybody who watched my talk at the World Liberty Forum, we announced our agentic SDK. And so, essentially, what that allows users and agents to do is with one simple command, be able to launch a USD 1 wallet, let their agent

transact anywhere agents are transacting or will transact in the future, and control the limits through a simple dashboard. So, whitelisting wallets, uh setting transaction limits, setting transaction caps, etc. So, we've already done that today and that can be integrated with things like Zach was saying like Muse, Chat GPT, Grok Bot, you name it. So, we're already we have been focusing on this for a while and we think once the market really starts to embrace this, USD 1 is already positioned to be a leader in that space.

>> Makes sense. Any closing thoughts, Zach? >> Yeah, I mean, um you know, like Zach said, already building a bunch around Agoric. Um to be frank with you, Bam, as you know, the the volumes are quite small in the Agoric space right now. We believe that those will get much, much, much bigger. Yeah, that's that's definitely where the puck is going and and we're always trying to sort of skate where the puck is going, not not where it is. Um you know, again, working with companies like Mesh, I think we'll be able to deliver um a user experience like no other in the space and we're really excited about it.

>> Super exciting. Uh with this, we're going to wrap this session. Thanks, everyone. Thank you, Zach and Zach. Appreciate >> having us. >> Thanks for having you again soon. >> Thank you, guys.