Zcash drama, stablecoin adoption, reinsurance markets & onchain reputation with Iron, Re, and Fluent

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How about the I'm the back back. JP Morgan, Black Rock, DTCC, Fidelity,

the entire thing was just institutions. It's just it's next level. This industry is going to the next level. And guys, I I don't know what else to say. I'm bullish. You said it. You finally said it. I'm so blessed. 80. I'm bullish. We're bullish. How the mother about the

How the mother Hop up above the heat. industry is going to the next level. And

guys, I I don't know what else to say. You said it. You finally said it. So bullish bullish. I'm bullish. We're bullish. I'm about the How the mother

the I'm above the Hola is headed to the top. If we're not already at the top, we're going to the top. We're on fourth floor today. We're going to be on floor one and then we're

headed straight to the moon, boys. >> Bang. Good morning, America. 9:51 a.m. Good morning, America. >> Here, reporting from the basement of Baronss, soon to be the nest of Neo finance, the uh the nest of Neo finance. The dungeon of DeFi. I got my rollup shirt on today.

Whoa. Where do you get that? It's actually really nice fabric. We got We got to make some more with this fabric. >> Is that comfort colors? Shout out Shout out to the team. >> Yeah, it is comfort. It is comfort. Uh comfort fabric. It's pretty nice. >> The rollup. Don't Don't mess around when it comes to the merch. You know, Andy, you missed it today while you were asleep. We were workshopping some new merch. >> Oh, really? What did I miss? >> Some Neo finance merch. >> Some Neo finance merch. I >> think it's a must. I've just been pounding Coke Zeros this morning.

Now, Coke Zero. What is the zero? Is it zero caffeine or zero sugar? >> Zero sugar. Brother lot. >> Zero sugar. >> Enough to get to get through the the treacherous morning here in Hawaii. >> I want to say this is the longest I've been without coffee. Maybe since I was 16. I've >> You're uncaffeinated right now. >> I'm totally uncaffeinated. Nothing but water. >> Nothing but water through my veins. Feels uh feels pretty even keel. Feel a lot more stable. My heart is not palpitating. So I think that's healthy.

>> Ah, it's boring. >> You got to get back on the caffeine tomorrow. Get firing. >> No, feel quite peaceful. >> There's a direct correlation to uh the rollup revenue to the amount of caffeine that you drink. By the way, >> direct correlation. >> Rollup's doing all right. >> Direct correlation. GM GM cocoa. GM Koka. All right, let's let's hop into the news. I think we have some Zcash drama um that we got to cover. Basically, the entire development team left um and people are trolling them hard.

>> Trolling them hard. >> Zaki is getting under fire a lot. >> So, he put out >> Zaki might get Zaki might get booted. >> Um yeah, I mean Zaki deleted all of his content. People are pissed off about it. Um Josh, the CEO of Zcash, put out a tweet saying >> not okay, hold on, hold on before you start spreading misinformation. There's no CEO of Zcash. Zcash is >> former CEO of Electric Coin Co. >> There you go. There's multiple So Zcash is a And you got to look at Zuko. Zuko, you know, obviously founder inventor of Zcash, put out this thing which basically like, look, there's multiple organizations that are working and

contributing to Zcash, one of which is Electric Coin Capital. There's no CEO of Zcash. >> No, no, >> but yes, Josh Twiart, who was on the show, is uh the former, I guess now, former CEO of Electric Coin Capital. >> Electric Coin Company. Yeah. Electriccoin company which was one of the main labs corpse around Zcash and there was internal disputes uh misalignment with uh internal team members and now there's a divergence happening and so it's really and Zuko basically made the point like look this is making Zcash even more decentralized where yeah

>> you already had multiple labs corporations now you have one of the main labs corporations electrocoin company >> splitting splintering into two organizations so you're going to have a new organization and then you're going to continue to have Electrocoin Company, I believe, but it may be reconfigured as a nonprofit. That's TBD. Yeah. So, Josh just put out this tweet. We are all in on Zcash. We need to scale Zcash to billions of users. Startups can scale, but nonprofits can't. That's why we created a new startup, Cashzorg.

>> I like it. So, they're literally creating a new wallet. >> Yeah. Using the same Zashy codebase. The code name is Cash Z. If you're a Zashy user, all you need to do is do is join the weight list below. And yeah, I don't know what uh I mean, okay, so look, so Josh put out this tweet yesterday. Over the past few weeks, it's become clear that the majority of bootstrap board members, a 501c3 nonprofit to create Zcash by governing the electric coin company, specifically Zucky, Manny, Christina Garmin, Allan Fairless, and Michelle Lie have moved >> without names is wild crazy work.

>> Clear misalignment with the mission of Zcash. Yesterday, the entire ECC team left after being constructively discharged by ZCAM. In short, the terms of our employment were changed in ways that made it impossible for us to perform our duties effectively and with integrity. We're founding a new company, but we're still the same team with the same mission, building unstoppable private money. Importantly, the Zcash protocol is unaffected. This decision is simply about protecting our team's work from malicious governance actions that have made it impossible to honor ECC's original mission. We'll have more soon.

>> And and he has a link there to what constructive discharge means. >> Yeah. And he says it's when according to the definition it's when a worker's resignation or retirement may not be found to be voluntary because the employer has created a hostile or intoler intolerable work environment or has applied other forms of pressure or coercion which forced the employee to quit or resign. >> Yeah, Zcash obviously dumped about 20% on the news. >> Yeah, which is crazy work as well. >> I think Arthur started trolling as well.

>> Oh, did he? What was Arthur up to? >> I mean, I don't know. This just doesn't look good. Like no matter how you spin it, uh you know, Bellagi's like C Zcash can scale. Zcash must scale. Zcash will scale. I don't know. It seems like um it seems like Zaki is getting a lot of the heat right now. Um Zaki Man looting and destroying the cosmos ecosystem somehow manages the bungle Z the Zashi team. No matter what, Zaki will continue to fade into irrelevant. >> Jesus. Zaki's been around a long time.

He's done a lot of good work. I'm here to defend Zaki. Look, I don't know what was happening internally. >> Yeah, Zuko said that they were that all these people are high integrity. Zaki, Allen Christina. >> There's obviously some sort of misalignment in terms of ethically and morally like what they thought to be the mission behind Zcash. Sounds like it's almost equivalent to what happened at OpenAI where you have a team internally that believes that the the entity should be a for-profit organization and that's the best way to scale this and ultimately provide the value. In OpenAI's case, obviously it's to build AGI. In this case, it's to build Zcash.

And then you have another group that believes it should be a for non-forprofit. >> Yeah, >> I can see it both ways. What do you And so Zucky puts out a post as well saying basically that um that they are saddened by this outcome from the um bootstrap perspective. Um the board engage in discussions regarding external investment and alternative structures to privatize Zashi while working with legal counsel to ensure any path forward would comply with US nonprofit law. There's nothing wrong with forprofits.

Uh, but Bootstrap ECC's nonprofit constraints are real and navigating them responsibly can be complex particularly in a changing environment. So yeah, I mean, >> wait, wait, wait. That was Zaki's message. Sounds like he's also advocating for a startup. >> They were like, "The proposed deal in it last day introduces new vulnerabilities for politically motiv motivated attacks on Zcash. Any of its donors could sue." Um, so they're basically just trying to prevent the jeopardization of the entire Zcash ecosystem. um and that some proposal going forward, you know, they thought it was for the better of all, but that proposal ended up turning out to be uh effectively causing this division.

>> It's such a it's such a shame because it it actually doesn't sound like they're too far off. It sounds like both of them want to turn this previously non nonprofit into a for-profit company so that it can properly, you know, generate revenue, build and scale Zcash. So they are both heading in this direction of turning a nonprofit into a for-profit, but they just couldn't agree on the right structure of the for-profit. Yeah, >> this all could have been avoided. You know, you could have, >> you know, these guys have their net worths in Zcash as far as, you know, I I'm I'm aware. And so, >> you know, you could have avoided a negative 20% decline in net worth by just sorting this out amicably internally.

>> Yeah. But who knows how long that's going to last. It's probably for the better that this happened this way than rather it blowing up in like two years. You know what I mean? Like >> I mean you can still >> figure this out at some point. >> Even if you're going to split off and form another entity. It doesn't have to have this like crash and burn ending. >> It's the same vibe as a bro. Same vibe as a like a a chart unfortunately has just gotten smoked as a result of that drama. And I don't like markets hate that uncertainty. Yeah, it's the same uncertainty that's happening with Zcashier where people are like, well, what's going to happen is the future yada yada.

>> It is uncertainty either way. But in A's case, it was a battle between token holders who felt like they had a right to the protocol versus entity stakeholders. >> Yeah, >> in this case, these are both entity stakeholders or internal team members to the entity. No, this is it's not like Zcash holders, you and I and Arthur and Bot like, you know, we're not standing up and revoling and saying, "Hey, we own some Zcash, therefore we own a piece of electric coin company and we want to turn it into a for-profit." >> Yeah. Right now, >> that's kind of what happened in a situation.

>> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think um you know, it kind of comes down to this. It's still funny how it comes back to this token equity thing. Um, you know, Mike Dudas put out this whole post about it and we had Sam on yesterday talking about how 2026 was going to be the year of unification when it comes to these token models. >> Yeah. >> And it's just like we're very much in a time where there's no perfect structure that works for everyone and every project. You know, actual success really comes down to having an except exceptional long-term team that runs things like a real founder company, not like this fugazi dowo decentralization stuff.

tokens can end up being the second best to equity for, you know, different app layer products that that need strong decisive leadership. Especially when we've seen so many DeFi founders step back, put Dows in maintenance mode and just kind of buzz off. Pure equity also isn't better though. For example, Binance's B&B token, it adds real utility like fee discounts and airdrops that tie directly to the business and the chain. So that the token does have a value. However, tokens don't have, you know, strong legal rights. they don't have uh the same level of of claim on value and shareholder value as equities.

So you end up trusting these teams to heavily distribute value and profits properly. And so you've got this safe and saf model which 99% of protocols give investors free tokens on top of equity as we know from our investing experience pumping perceived valuations typically stream over retail. There's probably a way to fix this in the future. there's probably a way where investors can pick equity or tokens or a mix uh for better alignment. I mean at the end of the day it's like there's been a lot of bad execution and that has been more of the problem. Um so I think if you focus on chain usage cash flow that is what's going to drive you know token value the strong teams are going to make it work whether it's

through buybacks governance utility etc. the the strong teams will unify uh and figure it out and and you know just today optimism puts out a a proposal the next chapter of optimism the optimism foundation is putting forward proposal to align the OP token with growing chain demand by directing 50% of incoming superchain revenue to regular OP buybacks and so yeah I just think that this is happening regardless Sam was right it is the year of unification and we'll see how this problem gets solved >> imagine the scenario where we have all this unification 2026 token holders, entity holders, everyone sings kumbaya, everyone comes together as one.

>> Two years from now, >> President AOC >> I know comes in destroys it all puts in more oppressive regulatory regime and everyone's forced to fragment again. Everyone goes payments and we need we need labs entities and foundations and everyone splits up again. >> Dude, I literally had lunch with the head of research at Circle yesterday and we were talking about this and I told him about your your take about like being bearish on decentralization and then Nick from Celestia brings up that exact point. He's like, "Dude, wouldn't it be hilarious if we do all of this stuff like in this centralized kind of like focused orientation just to get a Democrat in the next election and we

have to unwind it all and go back to where we were?" Just it's just hilarious, >> dude. Crazy work out here, dude. I obviously the more that we can codify into law, the less likely that happens. Even with a Democrat in office, if they flip the House or the Senate or in the presidency, if it's in law, they have to do just as much work. Like as much work the Republicans are doing now to get genius and clarity, they would have to do equal and opposite work in order to affect regulatory change to the to the contrary. Yeah. Right. So that makes it that much more difficult. We're gonna fix the title here. Um and so yeah, I mean what's the what's the consensus?

Like do we think that we're going to get so like is that the direction we're headed? What about this lunch? >> I don't know. They didn't really have an answer with with regards to where we're headed. Um, I mean, it's impossible to know, but it does look like the uh Democrats are going to win the um are are going to win the midterms. I >> 70 I think it's 72% chance on Kinoa. >> Yeah, they were they were pretty fired up about the idea of being d bearish decentralization. So, yeah. Anyways guys, we've got Max Von Wallenberg, the CEO of Iron, uh which is Moon, >> tightly knit with Moon Pay, uh talking about the enterprise stable coin stack.

We've been pushing on the uh pretty big idea here of uh Neo Finance. I think iron is a is a very good candidate of this category. Max being uh one of the uh leading players here probably has a lot to say about what's happening in the stable coin world uh and more. So, without further ado, guys, we got Max in the back ready to go. Let's get Max up and let's get this show started after the interesting Zcash drama that we had. Max, what's up, man? How are you? >> Welcome to the show.

>> Hey, we're well, thanks. Thanks for having me. >> Absolutely, sir. >> It's a pleasure. Congrats on the recent partnership between Iron and Moon. >> Thank you so much. Yeah, it's been a whirlwind. Like the, you know, last year has been really insane. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about it. I mean, you know, you guys at Iron, you're building uh basically a one-stop shop, like full service stable coin stack. You got APIs, you got compliance, you got all these things to help connect stable coins with the real world. Um, how did this deal with Moon Pay come to fruition? Obviously, crypto M&A has been really, really hot. Uh, did you approach them? Did they approach you? What made this a perfect fit?

>> Yeah, sure. Uh, I mean, interesting story. I mean, I know the Moon Pay team for a long time already. Actually, I built a wallet uh before I built iron. So uh it was a Salana wallet. We worked with Muay for a long time. I mean they're the you know as you guys know the leading ramp uh provider for wallets and more in DeFi. Uh so we knew each other for a long time. Uh kind of being a consumer of the services. Uh and then we kind of built iron. So um ultimate the wallet that was acquired by Jupiter. Uh we then kind of moved towards the enterprise world built stable coin uh APIs and you know I never kind of stopped talking to the moon team like you know we always were closely aligned.

I mean they have obviously phenomenal uh GTM and access to DeFi and um you know they've been kind of pushing hard on kind of this whole Moon enterprise uh and obviously stable coins are a really vital component of that uh started talking and uh just very quickly we realized it makes a lot of sense uh you know Moon has all the licenses u that we needed uh has like really deep connections in with a lot of players we already talked to in terms of uh stable coins and uh we just decided together we're stronger and um you know then you know pretty quickly uh the deal went went ahead and uh you know started building together.

>> It's pretty incredible. I think a lot of teams are uh realizing that now is the time when a lot of these deals are to be made. Um, I'm just curious, maybe just zooming out a little bit before we get in into the more nitty-gritty around stable coin stacks and iron and moon. Like what would you recommend to a founder? Maybe they're looking at, you know, their runway. They're looking at, you know, how much cash they have in the bank and they're thinking to themselves, you know, I've been on this journey maybe a few years. Is now the right time to get acquired? And, you know, they're weighing their options. Any any words of advice to founders out there that are considering M&A options?

>> Yeah, I get these these questions a lot. I mean, it's a really tough one, right? Because uh you know obviously there's a case for staying independent and like you know gunning for that like you know multi-billion exit right like which you know obviously is the the dream of most founders and uh you know being small and nimble and being kind of you know master of your own fate is something that you know founders really like right that's the reason why people become founders right so first of all you have to you know think about like do I have a you know a really honest shot of winning and and you know really making it right so you know we all know like VC math works you know power law like you know one in 10 works or probably even less, right?

So kind and look at look look at your your kind of chances of winning, right? And also like what it really takes. Uh and for us like it was basically we looked at like how long would it take us to you know build the whole license stack, right? Like and it's something we you just couldn't really control ourselves like it takes a long time to get kind of you know MTLS and like Mika licenses and everything into place. So that was you know for us something where we like you know speed is something that you know we really needed to win and you know obviously other players like you know the bridges BVNKs are forging ahead and so we you know we had to be fast so so that was kind of one decision for us where where speed mattered um for a lot of founders it's like you know can you

raise enough money can you be fast enough and you know also look at kind of your your team right like would you kind of really bring your team along right and we did like you know the entire team went along and like we're you staying strong as a unit but you know if if kind of your strength as a team and like you have a you know set of team members that maybe are not up for an acquisition like that and it's going to get tough right because your core DNA will get lost right so it's there's no like hard and fast easy answer to this but um I think the short run would be you know if you can win standalone go for it uh if one plus one equals three do that right so and obviously you have to be bullish on the one acquiring you right because

you're going to be you know in in bed for a long time and you know obviously your your fate is now, you know, the tied to like the company that buys you. >> Yeah. Yeah, Max. Um, appreciate that. I I think there's been, as Rob said, there's been so much M&A this year, it's it's it's kind of insane. And and it's it's all kind of seemingly happened at this enterprise level. It's it's been less of like I mean there's been a couple acquisitions of like crypto applications let's say but it's really like this like B2B infra this enterprise infra the likes of Bridge uh with Stripe the likes of of of others in that kind of category really seemingly pushing this forward um and and so you know props to you guys for capitalizing

congrats again uh let's >> there there's there's one more component here right like if you talk to really big PSPs enterprise customers >> y >> you know like you don't get fired for, you know, choosing Stripe, you don't get fired for choosing Moonpay, right? But like if you're like, you know, as a as a big enterprise picking like a small vendor and something goes south, like, you know, it's tough, right? So that that's just another thing, right? Like you you kind of really want to uh you know, make sure you have a seat on the table, right? And very tough. Like you have to build a big brand as a startup to get that done.

>> Yes. Yep. Yep. Good point. Um, Max, let's talk just kind of super high level holistically here and then we'll get into some of the nitty-gritty. You've said that you think uh 2026 will be the year of customissued stable coins. Um, this is a new term for us and our audience. Give us some of your 2026 stable coin enterprise predictions. What is going to happen in 2026 for the stable coin market? What are custom issued stable coins? Talk to us about some of your predictions here. Sure. Yeah. I mean, custom issues stable coins is a really big one for us. Like we recently launched our insurance uh business together with M Zero. Uh really happy with our partner. Uh you know like issuance is a much more complex business

than people think, right? It's not as easy as like hey I'm just going to you know uh do a feedback stable coin uh and go to market like there you know the M0 stack is really deep when it comes to like the onchain part right like smart contracts uh you know they these these things they they take a long time to develop to you know have you know a very bulletproof architecture so that's why we partners and say like together we can do this really well um but I think like a lot of the the traditional uh fintexs we're talking to and talking to like you know the large fortune 500 companies they're exploring launching on stable coins and you heard the the the Walmart news like you know there and there's others in that in that category right that are really thinking about like how do we actually um think

about our you know our money stack right of the future and like owning your own like your whole money back end including the yield component including everything and issuance you know issuing your own stable coin allows you a lot of things right like gives you more control uh it becomes a brand uh and it's something that gives you a lot of like architectural you know freedom to build a product uh without relying on like a circle stack or a Teta stack. Uh so so that's why a lot of like companies are looking at this and you know we think you know most fintexs today will look at launching their own stable coins. You already see this now in the DeFi world that's like the first one where they you know everyone that has an app and has like a lot of you know TVL on the app. you

know, you saw the hyperlquid uh tender, right? You're like, "Hey, why am I giving this money to circle, right? Like, why am I not capitalizing on this, right?" So, it becomes an easy pitch where uh you already have users, you have TVL, might as well capitalize on it. And uh you know, the the the issuance piece, there's quite a few vendors you can pick from now. Um, so it's something that becomes a pretty uh a pretty important part of your go to market as as a fintech and as a DeFi company. >> And when you're you're integrating this into the Moon stable coin stack, you know, obviously you brought iron infrastructure there. You also mentioned M0. We've had conversations with MZ.

Mastercard is a partner with Moonay as well. Could you give us a a sense of of the flow of stable coins through Moon Pay? You know, you also makes perfect sense why a lot of these companies that have a lot of cash on hand, they're looking to generate yield, they don't want to give it away. What is the value proposition of using enterprise stable coins through Moonay versus someone else right? >> Yeah, sure. >> Sorry, Andy, I can't hear. >> Sorry. Some quick context. Yesterday we had Sam on the the CEO and co-founder of Fracks and he he he laid out a prediction you know that is very aligned with Rob's questions which is that the the stable coins that are going to

experience hockey stick type growth and this kind of structures are going to be fully end to end and so I think that's pretty that is like relevant context to understanding kind of how liquidity flows through iron through moon. >> Sure. So I mean one one of one of the reasons people pick moon as a stable conditions partner is obviously like uh GTM like go to market right like moon is integrated everywhere right and we have a lot of surface area and you know there's if you want to launch a stable coin you obviously want to get people to be able to buy it right like and get exposure to it right so so that's one thing right like where if you kind of pick a stable coin partner like you want to pick one that understands kind of the fiat rails behind it where iron comes in

so you know we kind of do everything fiat related like banking rails. We issue virtual accounts which is like a almost like a a bank account like uh product like a virtual IB in the user's name. you wire money there and gets instantly minted into our stable coin, right? Can be a, you know, a UCCC, can be a custom issued stable coin and um and that's a very integrated product, right? like and then it can also be just accessible via kind of Moon Pay widget by the you know an entire kind of surface area of how people interact with DeFi and Moon is a really like really easy go to market partner for this whereas because we solve two things like one the the the whole stack behind like the issuance but also then how to actually bring it to market and um you

know if you look at kind of our social following and like our you know general uh when we launch something it becomes big very fast and you know this is something I always give advice to founders think kind of end customer go to market like scaling first how do you get this product in the hands of people and M is a good really excellent go to market partner for this so so that's where like in terms of like choosing who you want to do it with matters um it also depends obviously which jurisdiction you want to launch it in uh you know are you more defi native should it be open loop or closed loop meaning can everyone buy it or uh you know is just a hidden one that you don't even see. It's under the hood. And there's a

lot of a lot of these choices that founders have to make. >> And you mentioned a couple of the the reasons as to why some of these brands might want to launch their stable coins. I think yield is first and foremost, but on the flip side, right, when you're bringing the the the stable coin to market, you like you said, you want a lot of customers to end up buying the stable coin. It's not just, you know, helpful to have the stable coin issued and in circulating supply, earning some yield on it, uh, and pocketing, you know, the the net interest income. Uh, you want the consumer to end up using the stable coin in X, Y, and Z, right?

Could you help fill in the blank there? Like, because a lot of the value of these stable coins ends up coming >> as far as what you can do with it after it's issued. What are what are you seeing as some of the key things that a lot of these brands are are using these stable coins for? Sure. I mean, I think down the line, you know, I believe in a world of like hundreds, maybe even thousands of stable coins, but end customers won't really interface with them directly in the future, right? Like that it will US dollar balance and it can even be backed by multiple stable coins, right? Um, but in the end, you can't expect the end customer to really understand, you know, and and and force them into like swapping across venues and like, oh, which form of the dollar

do I want to use? Uh I think it's bit of an interim state that we're at where we you still see what stable coins you interact with on some of these fintexs and and platforms. In the future it will just be completely abstracted away, right? Like where you know then sort of uh architecture that just makes it very straightforward. You can send any stable coin on any chain and and we actually have that crosschain architecture built in like crosschain deposits. So you can literally send anything on any chain and then we turn it into what's needed at the recipient. Can be their own stable coin, can be, you know, one, you know, a public one that they want. But I think end consumers won't really be interfacing that much anymore, you know, give it a year or two with like really

end like the the the the underlying issuers themselves, but for now they do. >> Yeah. And so in that regard then, you know, we had Exodus just come out and uh launch their USD stable coin, right? So it's like a public company coming out >> with us. >> Yes, with iron. >> That's that that that is the motive of the question here. Max, um what makes a public obviously we have Circle, right? But Circle launched their stable coin before USDC before they were public. Uh if I'm not mistaken, there are no other public stable coins. Perhaps PayPal, but I'm not sure if PayPal is even public.

Maybe they are. Um I've never invested in them. What makes a public company comfortable issuing their stable coin now in 2025 2026? You know, why do they need iron? What kind of like what was that process like of helping Exodus launch their stable coin and be an issuer? >> I mean, I can't, you know, obviously comment on like too many of the details, but I will so I will go attack it from a bit of a different angle. I will say that like a lot of the enterprises and and fintex and fortune 500 companies are very comfortable to not just like issue their own stable coins to work with other stable coins because like it just becomes a very w you know a fully regulated form of money right so uh so

first of all like picking stable coins as a rail is not something that's perceived as a brand risk or something to companies right they would you know actually it's quite the opposite right like it's uh it's something that you know uh It's very forward, very tech forward, like something that you know, probably the public markets also appreciate if you feel uh you know, if you build at the forefront of like the the modern money stack. Um, and in the case of Exodus, you know, it it it just makes sense for them, right? Like they obviously they're a very crypto native company and if you know Exodus, like you know, they hold a large part of their their treasury in in Bitcoin. I think like I think it's like an obscenely high amount, like 70% or something. So I find it always very uh they they're they're

like properly orange pill as a company right and really believe in in this. So to their investors that cannot buy uh Exodus like they are they would certainly welcome uh you know a forward thing like launching an all stable coin but with regards to like why and how and now like I can't really comment on that. >> Understood. Yeah. Yeah, I mean it just seems like this is a trend that's likely to keep accelerating, right? With regards to all right, I'm a public company. I want to launch a stable coin. Exus is such a edge case though because as you said, they've been a wallet for like I don't know 12 years and they are very very like OG kind of like cyber punk type of uh type of idea here. So, but but you know

>> now they now now they also bought a kind of a a payment company. Was it Monovate or Banksa? Like one of the two. Yeah, exactly. So they are they're obviously going heavily into into payments, right? >> It's pretty epic to see like cryptonative companies come out and be able to just purchase large existing companies based off of the appreciation of their of their investments or just like the of their way of managing their their capital. >> Yeah, exactly. Ripple is a great example. It's a rollup company now, right? Like that. >> Yeah. Tether as well. So um you mentioned some of the the treasury degeneracy from Exodus let's say or just very con high level of convicted bets strong conviction in Bitcoin um how does iron work with companies to actually

simplify crosschain treasury management treasury management in general without adding new operational risk talk to us about your work with companies with regards to treasury management. Yeah, that's a very important topic. Like we whenever we talk to kind of traditional companies like Trafi companies, they they want stable coins or stable coin support for crossber money movement, which is one of the biggest use cases, right? Like where you uh just use stable coins to like as a as a transfer agent glue between real uh real-time payment systems like PICSS in Brazil uh you know, not quite in the US. Maybe RTP Fed now is going to come uh or be more prevalent, but you want to have local payment rails uh connected via stable

coins and that's something that you know traffic companies are really happy uh to to use, but they don't they're not very happy to actually like integrate kind of any form of onchain architecture. So what we solve for them is like you go with your existing ways. You can still wire fiat, right? And you know the recipient receives fiat and you know we solve the rest, right? we solved the the stable coin orchestration and um I think it'll come to a point where obviously wallets and holding stable coins and doing stuff with it as part of the treasury stack also will become a thing.

It's not actually as a thing yet, right? Like today, it's mainly a, you know, get me get me from A to B as fast and as cheap as you can. And if stable coin solves this, especially into emerging markets, yes, let's go. Right? And we solve it for them. Um, we do it by our virtual accounts. So, we spin up a virtual bank account. You kind of wire or send Zepa instant in there and it immediately turns into stable coin and kind of the sender doesn't even have to do anything like doesn't have to change any of the treasury systems. So you really have to be backwards compatible to the max here. Um it's almost like kind of Moon ethos, right? Like connecting uh crypto to the the to your bank account, right? Like you wire and it turns out, you know, comes out as a

bitcoin, right? So so this is sort of the analogy and um over time we'll offer the full treasury stack once it's not needed yet, but it will it will be the case then. >> And so yeah, I I'm just curious quick question. How how much of the stack would you say relies offchain and in legacy banks and managing this versus the actual payments from wallet to wallet and those APIs? A large part I would say like 80% is fiat architecture right I wrote a piece about this uh the hidden uh I think it was called the hidden uh architecture hidden cost and complexity of stable coins and it talks all about that like fiat actually stable coin infrastructure

is mainly fiat infrastructure right because not you know still not many banks are happy with uh kind of crypto with the crypto vertical in terms of like end customers etc. So you need to uh completely build an abstracted away layer on top of like many many banks to have like geo coverage which works right and you know that's the hardest part because we still have to be compatible with banks and email and compliance rules etc to be able to um get money on chain and once it's onchain things become easy right it's uh you know it's all you know public permissionless easy to access you can ledger comes up for right and um and even like AML and

compliance becomes a lot simpler as well because you can do like ch analysis KYT like transaction checks uh all of this is simpler um and I think that's that's why we're so bullish on kind of stable coins or digital money just being the better form of money um but for now it's still a large part resides on the on the fiat uh side >> yeah um how much better way to ask this h how long would you say it takes for these companies to realize the the it to for this transition to become profitable. If they're going from a fiat based system and their money stack is entirely offchain and then they're going onchain and they're realizing some of the the value and efficiency and effectiveness

of this new stable coin money stack. How long would you say it it takes for them to recoup that investment? Is it months, years? Thinking like at the scale of Walmart or Exodus, right? like they're pouring money into resources to make this migration. How long would you say it takes until they make that that investment back? >> I mean, if you use a provider like us, you know, like it's a the kind of the upfront cost in terms of like connecting you to the stable coin ecosystem is pretty low, right? Like you go in, you connect our APIs, you know, and and you can transact, you know, the fastest has been like two weeks, right? Like literally go a start and go, right? So that is pretty straightforward. Um if you compare that to building a global

like nondigital money stack it it's very expensive right to have you know the more real time money gets the less I have to park money in different jurisdictions and preund channels etc. So uh that is actually really kind of very cost- effective. Uh and I think if you pitch emerging market stable coin transfers like crossber money transfers uh you immediately know that it's just on the order of magnitude cheaper and faster, right? Um what what I will say though is like if you talk to like very large companies like they kind of also nailed their traditional finance stack like they're they're pretty effective and they can move money at very low cost. Um but for them it just becomes you know stable coins allow them to

reach certain jurisdictions which they which they have a hard time doing otherwise and also they just know that this is a new money stack they have to support because a lot of the companies they work with even requested. Um but I think like the the bigger opportunity is for like new fints. If I'm a new fintech and I launch, I don't want to have like in in the past I had had to launch like market by market, right? Like launch US and then Europe and even within Europe like launch respective countries that completely shifted, right? Where now I can literally start a global neo bank day one, right? And I have like support across 30 different currencies and everything is pretty much real time and the cost is very low in comparison to the upfront investment even a couple of

years back where I literally had to raise a seat round just to get my money stack solved. >> Yeah. Yeah. Um, Max, do you think that onchain FX is something that iron is going to be focused on or or or maybe better ask like how much of an opportunity do you think there is in the onchain FX market uh for you know currency exchange and do you see this as something that that is a priority for for this industry? How do you kind of think about this market? It's inevitable that it'll come uh in a sense that you know once once companies are willing to hold money right and not just use stable coins as transfer agent between you know just kind of on-ramp offramp immediately as a cross if you do

crossber money transfer there it doesn't actually matter what currency you hold you want to have the most liquid cheapest most accepted form of digital currency which is kind of UCCC USDT right um but once you start to move your money stack to stable coins and you hold then it becomes important that you have local currency right so longer term or in medium-term I'm bullish that like short term it's all about velocity and liquidity right so uh stable coins solve a money movement problem not a money holding problem uh in the short term and and for that like you don't actually need you know uh like localized versions of stable coins because it's just they're just more expensive even euro stable coins uh are much more expensive

to kind of swap than if you just to USD versus seller USD stable coins. So, um it's simply a matter of liquidity and uh and velocity. >> We we've heard a lot of mixed opinions on this this global FX market. Um some people are saying like right now there's a a really strong value proposition because uh a lot of the FX requires you to go, you know, from one third party currency back through the dollar back to uh another third party currency. There's no direct swap back and forth. it is very low liquidity. Not just in the onchain world, it's extremely it's non-existent, but even in the fiat world, there is low liquidity for these third party to third-party transfers.

And so there's that value proposition, but there's not really a trigger because there's not a ton of uh it would take a lot of work to unwind that current system. And so what what do you think the trigger could be? you know, because ultimately the the other side of this argument is that yes, it is inevitable, but we don't really see a path to get there because localized regional stable coins don't have a strong value proposition right now. So, h how are you thinking about the evolution of the onchain FX market over the coming, you know, couple of years to to, you know, five, 10 years?

>> Yeah. Well, first of all, I think that the classic FX market is is super efficient, right? You can go, you know, you know, sub one bip, you know, even a tenth of a basis point, right? Like if you look at some of these like big FX houses, they're they're trading trillions, like, you know, three, five trillion volume a year, right? That's a very different game than where we're in right now in stable coins, right? But we'll get there and probably pretty fast. But um you know even if if if the traditional FX market doesn't have to solve a certain problem when it comes to as you said before you know solving a certain liquidity pair I would argue that you know the onchain world it's not going to

solve that right like I think what the onchain world will solve is um you know just get crossber money transfer number one right number two will be if you once you have like tokenized real world assets uh tokenized equity etc. And people are much more happy to actually hold and use uh stable coins as just a form of money. They will start to use localized form of stable coins and then liquidity will start to acrue, right? And it always starts with liquidity. Once liquidity is there and the demand of users uh then markets will form because markets are efficient, right? Like markets movement, money is to be made, right? And uh that'll happen as soon as end customers or businesses request that. And um I don't think you can force it. Like a lot of people are

just forcing, oh the we have to have this because I'm pretty sure it's needed. Well, if the end customers don't need it today or the market's not ready yet, like you're it's going to take time. >> And to that effect, where do you think the market's going, right? Like is there things that you know you think are going to subdue in the short term and you know you're focused on one particular area that you think is going to be quite large and kind of flying under the radar right now. If you were skating to where the puck is going, you know, where where is the direction of this industry? >> Well, I mean, I think it's going to be tokenized like any any any asset will be tokenized first of all. I think like you know, Wall Street like all the capital markets are moving on chain simply

because it's a it's a better system and I think that's where the market's headed. stable coins are kind of leading the way here uh as as a first asset for money transfer and for as a as a reserve asset for crypto trading. But um I'm really bullish on just you know crypto or blockchain as like the future capital market architecture and I would put a lot of money on that actually becoming the default way uh that even you know New York exchange NASDAQ will clear in the future. So, so that that's that's one thing. And once you have that, once you believe in that future, you know, it's very obvious that like stable coins and and money backing this as a trading pair will will be equally large than

like the, you know, the the the current just like the current money supply that's being used for for capital markets, right? That's sort of where where I think market's going. And it's already we we see the first innings with kind of tokenized stocks like all of this is like really tiny still but and spreads are large and you know we have to solve the tax treatment of those because a lot of people are buying obviously stocks for retirement and portfolios and ETFs. So you have to have like an equal tax treatment for people to do that. Um but all of this will be solved and then you know it's just up and to the right.

>> Yeah. Yeah. I mean I think the the tokenization trend is just is is definitely in the early innings. You've got the largest uh players in the world like Larry Fing talking about that and then also you've got um you know US uh policy makers talking about trillions of dollars of stable coin supply. So there's like two external forces pushing this pushing this forward. I I think one thing that that people are trying to understand, Max, and super curious your perspective on this is how you think about uh the kind of like value acrruel stack of of stable coins and tokenization, right? So, you know, obviously iron is is is embedded deeply into moon, which works with all the likes of um you know, tons of different on and off ramps, chains, applications,

uh service providers, etc. And so, there's kind of this thesis, right, that Tom Lee was paring on CNBC earlier last year. you know, Ethereum is the home of stable coins. Ethereum is going to acrue all the value from stable coins and tokenizations. Therefore, you should buy ETH. And and and then you've got some other players in the market like Santiago from Inversion and others who are like, well guys, like yes, sure, a lot of these base layer chains are going to be the, you know, the home stable coins, the home of tokenization, but that doesn't really mean it does anything for the base layer asset itself, whether it be ETH, Soul, Avalanche, you know, etc., etc., etc.

How do you think about where like this value acral stack comes with with regards to stable coins and tokenization? You know, do you see a clear thesis for some of these L1s or blockchains to really have an a uptick in revenue or or in certain kind of metrics that what that would acrue value back to that base layer asset? Do you see it more in the hands of issuers of of middleware providers? How do you kind of think about th this like value equation when it comes to stable coins and tokenizations with regards to base layers?

>> Very difficult question. I mean if I would know the answer, right? Like I'll uh you know that will make my life very easy on the portfolio side. >> So uh I mean I I'm a big believer in in that kind of like the value pool will be heavily on the app side, right? Like there will be a lot of apps and you saw this with Hyperlquid, right? which kind of combined like the the the the blockchain itself and an app on top and it it it worked really well, right? It was kind of the almost the first of its kind that did it or executed it really well and you see a lot of you know obviously now with obviously AI and W coding like people can start to like build these these interfaces so distribution will matter a lot right but I think the uh the the kind of all these

new L1s even like payment focused ones uh it's a really tough space right because like you have to you have a big trust issue uh you know like if you look at like Ethereum and and Salana like I myself obviously a big Salana bull. I developed in that ecosystem for a long time. You have to beat them, you know, by an order of magnitude to you know not just be better but be 10x better, right? Like and I don't think today there are that many problems to solve on like the the the blockchain side. It's actually not a problem we face at all, right?

Like I I don't wake up at night think about oh if only I had this problem solved on the Salana East side. Like you know I worry about very different things, right? So I don't think that the uh this whole whole emergence of like a splintered L1 ecosystem um is the right path uh in terms of where value occurs. I think the like stable coins will be similar to the FX side like a huge volume game right like you know low trade rate very high volumes uh it's all about as I said velocity and liquidity and um that's also why you need obviously a heavy capital base like deep licensing to be able to pull this off and you know win this market. I think it's very difficult for like new upstarts to, you know,

enter the scene and kind of eat like you have to like really specialize in something to have a shot at winning this. But, um, you know, my my money and belief is that, uh, stable coins are a kind of a a movement velocity product and like we want to make it as simple and easy and, you know, turnkey to uh, you know, use stable coins in your in your money stack. And I think that's where that that's where you know a large part of the value acrruel on this this end happens on the on the on the issuer side it's it's a very difficult thing to forecast I think still like some of the the the major issuers like you know circle tether etc um will you know they

also have this trust premium right where people are like okay I know them and you know I treat them as one for one and they've you know survived crisis and you know they're they have a heavy capital base So they're going to be tough to dethrone uh for the for the for the time, you know, foreseeable time. Um and I I I think we'll probably land in like a three, four, five issuer world. Uh you know, where still, you know, significant margin capture will happen. Um and yeah, so that's sort of where where I see the future. >> Yeah. Interesting. So then I I guess a follow up on the specialized uh uh part of the equation there, and I think we just got a couple minutes left here. Um, this may come off weird. Are are you are

you excited about these stable coin chains, the arcs, plasmas, stables, tempos or and even like Robin Hood's chain or like do you think these are a flash in the pan? Do you think these have a reason to exist? Like I guess the question is if Tron, Ethereum, Salana, and you could throw in like Aptos and a couple others already have such kind of Lindy and real uses for stable coin payments and transfers like why does one need uh these these other chains? Well, you know, obviously Circle wants to have its its arc, you know, because uh Plasma is kind of Tether's chain, if you will.

And so you've got these kind of like competition and then well, you know, well, Stripe's got to, you know, come in and say that we're going to do crypto, too, so we're going to launch Tempo. Uh, and then you got kind of like the longtail after that. This was like a hot thing in Q4 last year and Q3. People are really excited about these. I think maybe the token price kind of uh didn't really live up to the expectations that people wanted. Where are you at with regards to stable coin chains from the iron and moon perspective? How much how much uh focus would you be placing on these from your kind of like set of of resources as as far as these being something that will you know pass the test of time and actually you know end up being worthwhile.

>> The good thing is I don't have to be right about this because agnostic, right? Like I can you know for us >> but you have to be opinionated, right? Like you have to have a bet somewhere, right? I mean come on. >> I mean for us it's easy to connect to any of these chains, right? Uh what I will say is that it's uh this is a whole this is all about go to market for these players and you know you have to have that very clearly nailed and have like strong connections obviously tempo has them and like they have a big war chest so you you see that they get this right in terms of go to market right and you know there's a lot of uh buzz around that chain specifically around like the partners that are are assigned well it remains to be seen whether actual you

know transaction activity will follow Right. Uh and I know they launched this new tip standard. Uh and a lot of these things are pretty uh novel and cool and I'm looking forward to using it, but uh it remains to be seen whether they can actually, you know, be as I said 10x better and solve problems that um Salana and Ethereum can. Today I can't really see it. Uh but maybe I'm wrong here. And uh you know, we'll see a lot of like activity there. And again, we also go where flow is, right? like if we see there our customers demand for us to be on these chains, we'll connect it and we're there. So, but we we we always built uh you know, Moonpay itself is completely agnostic when it comes to

chains. We go where users, you know, are and where people want to connect to and um uh but yeah, it's going to be a tough game to actually get those to size. Um and you know, we even see this with classic L1s where you know, most most of them are zombie chains, right? like if you look beyond like kind of like ETH Salana base and a couple of others and it gets very thin pretty much very quickly. >> Max last question from May you you hinted at this but you know with the expectation that there's going to be trillions of dollars in stable coins and we're going to grow this industry by multiples but also with the caveat that a lot of these are sort of runaways when it comes to you know the long tale of

ghost chains and the and the and the select few of winners. Do you do you think that kind of the the era of crypto experimentation is over? See like tables been set. You know, now the the winners are sort of declared and these winners are po poised for tremendous success as we expect trillions of dollars to pour into the space. They have the regulatory approvals. They have the integrations. Is this sort of the the future that you're expecting to play out or, you know, we do do you still think that there's a broad swath of crypto projects companies infrastructure applications that will still do well in 2026 and beyond?

>> I I think the latter. I mean, I think like on the L1 side, I I can't really see, you know, I think that that's in the past. And you know maybe there's going to be I mean pre hyperlquid I would have also said like hey what you know sui tried it say I think se tried it to become a trading chain didn't work out right but uh at least not to the degree that um hyperlquid was successful right but so I think there might be like a couple of like special purpose chains Kento network is also pretty strong right like we see uh you know I think JP Morgan launching their JPMCoin on them so I think there's going to be a couple of those that will be winners um but it's going to be very hard for other L1's when it comes to like in general

crypto projects and kind of experiments. I mean, I don't even think we, you know, we've seen, you know, the first inning of it. There's like now, you know, with with kind of rise of AI, there's going to be all sorts of really crazy um, you know, projects and the velocity of like new launches will ever increase. Uh, so if anything, it'll probably be even more uh, you know, projects going to be launched, but um, distribution will matter, right? So um but in terms of like really core baseline infrastructure for like serious you know traditional money movement tokenization etc. I think a lot large part of the tables have been allocated. Um and you know I think new ones really have to you know absolutely

master their their connections and and and go to market for that to win. Max von Wallenberg, the enterprise stable coin stack guru, the wizard of CEO of Iron. Are you Max? Are you German? >> Are you Dutch? >> German. >> I'm German. The Dutch is with a Van N. Yeah. So V. >> Got you. Are you uh heading to CFC by chance next week? >> I'm not. >> All right. Good. Stay away from the whole >> Every year. Every year. Every year I'm uh I'm seeing the migration of people, but like I I resist it so far.

>> Good, man. Good, good, good. Stay away from the lizard folks over there at WEF. >> That's right. >> All right, Max. Thank you for joining us today man. >> Appreciate it, man. Congrats on the partnership with Moon Pay. We'll see you again soon. >> See you around. Bye. Bye. >> Brilliant. >> Bye. >> Boom. Max Wallenburgg, >> can you tell us what you meant by lizard people? Yeah. All the lizard people go to WEF, the the Davos conference. >> The Davos conference. >> Yeah. All the freaking uh the the like, you know, the people that dictate all the policy in the world and they they don't they think they're bigger and better than everyone else and so they're just lizard people. They're lizard brains. Like what's the mean? Like like

there's um it's like the it comes from it stems from like the Rothschilds or the Rothschilds. >> I think you mean the Clintons >> and the Clintons as well. So, pretty pretty sick convo, though. I mean, our guy is uh our guy Max is firing. >> Oh, Max is great. Um, yeah, I think, you know, it's tough to parse through like what the new info is when it comes to the stable coin stack, >> but I think >> I think as you look at like where and you asked this in terms of value acrruel, I think also it's worth asking in terms of like where you can expect growth which may not acrue value to a

particular token or stock ticker, but as far as like are all the are the issuers are just set like that's why it's it's interesting at least that last question come to mind it's like are the new companies that come about I'm sure there's ones funding they're working on specialized problems but it really feels and we've talked about this the table's set like these companies that are now leading these categories are the ones that are poised for trillions of dollars of growth so I'd be hardressed to find like an infrastructure provider that's going to go out make a name for itself I do think we're going to see a lot more irons out there that do get acquired. But as far as like big household names, >> yeah, I don't know. It's

>> there's runaways in terms of these. >> Y'all paying attention to Trove ICO? I think they reached their first target. Absolutely not. In this economy in this economy, you're paying attention to Trove ICO, buddy. Buddy boy, I'm sorry. New type. The only thing that matters right now is NEO finance. It's tokenization, stable coins, institutional adoption. Trove did reach out to us. their their product looks super cool. It is hyperlquid ecosystem oriented, but in this economy, yeah, I don't know about that one, boys. All right, let's flip on to some of the news before our next guest from RE Protocol comes up talking about reinsurance.

Mark, we got a couple more things to go through here. Um, so Florida lawmakers, shout out to Florida. >> Shout out Florida Bitcoin Reserve Plan. Check this out. Who was this? This was nine hours ago. So, Florida CFO and state board would oversee a Bitcoin reserve with crypto payments for some taxes converted instantly to US dollars. We had to wait we we had to pull this one up. As you guys know, Robbie and I are Florida natives. This means that our tax dollars, our nonstate tax dollars somehow will be going to a strategic Bitcoin reserve. Looks pretty bullish.

take effect July 1st >> bill to create a strategic Bitcoin reserve allowing the state to invest public funds in Bitcoin and SEC registered crypto ETFs. >> Pretty bullish, man. I mean, taking it back from the days when it was like embarrassing to be involved in crypto all the way to your damn all the way to like now every friend and family member of yours that lives in the state of Florida is literally buying your bags passively by paying taxes is just crazy work, man. Crazy work. >> So, obviously there's no state income tax in Florida, but Florida does get federal funding for a variety of things.

>> We get we don't have taxes, but we get make we make a lot of money on tourism. >> Yeah. Yeah. And there's I mean there's Everglades, there's national parks, there's >> Disney >> Disney that pays a lot of taxes. So yeah, there's certain >> Miami >> revenue streams that are municipalities and end up flowing back into the state and >> looks like there's a 10% allocation of major state funds. >> What do we think the uh the state fund treasury is? I don't know, but uh it just sounds like more it just sounds like we're just stacking more and more passive bids into crypto like the institutional global institutional tap that Vance and Michael were talking

about a couple months back just kind of like happening but like in all these unique ways that at some point it's just going to end up to being it's going to end up being like enough, you know? So yeah, pretty cool here. Let's move on from Florida. Um, shout out to the Florida lawmakers though. Our our home state, our our business's jurisdiction. >> The uh I'm looking at total reserves. Total appropriated budget for fiscal year 2526 is approximately 115.6 billion.

>> Nice. >> 10% of that. It's about 11 and a half billion. >> Nice. And I mean obviously the speculation is you do this with Florida, you do this with all 50 states. Shout out to Jacqueline Melanick. All announced today JP Morgan's JPMcoin to launch on Canon Network that was controversial. Barclays invests in stablecoin settlement startup Ubix. Morgan Stanley filed with the SEC for an Ethereum trust, which I saw some FUD around them filing for Bitcoin and Salana first, saying that the Salana Foundation probably paid them to uh uh get on there first before Ethereum.

>> This is silly. It was >> state backed stable coin FR&T is being issued on Salana. Are you paying attention? We are paying attention. This is Neo finance, Jaclyn. This is Neoanceed. Jacquellyn, we are paying attention. Uh Andrew, what is the biggest piece of news on this list? >> I would say it is uh Morgan Stanley. >> Yeah, I would tend to agree. I think a lot of uh just looking at the second point here, Barclay's investment stable coin startup, Ubix, uh Ubix, uh I believe has been on the show.

>> Shout out to Ubix. >> Um as they've been on Money Moves Fast. >> Yes. >> And money moves fast indeed. uh Barclays, um Big Bank, >> Barclays is or I mean, uh Morgan Stanley's huge because they're a massive massive firm and this is their first kind of like entry into crypto it seems and so it's pretty bullish to understand that they want to come in this strong. >> I believe we have more news around Morgan Stanley. Why don't we flip to our last piece of news? Um I think Leo's got it keyed up for us because Morgan Stanley's got more in the works.

filed the SEC for an Ethereum trust. It's going to be an Ethereum >> and Bitcoin and Salana >> and Bitcoin and Salana. Uh and so they'll be rolling out these structured products to their end consumers here again Morgan Stanley to launch digital wallet for tokenized assets. >> Neoance coded >> super Neoance. So >> entirely >> obviously like the way in which we talk about Neoance people might be a little bit confused. Let's shed some light on the category of neo finance. >> Yeah. Morgan Stanley is, you may say, a legacy financial product, a legacy financial broker, right, of of uh financial products.

>> We believe and obviously they believe as well, Morgan Stanley itself believes that legacy finance is a thing of the past right? >> Uh financial products are not going anywhere. We need structured products. Uh we need uh not just Ethereum, Bitcoin, Solana ETFs. those ETFs and those products are launching alongside the the rest of the Morgan Stanley product suite which is a combination of money markets and ETFs and equities and cash and these things. Yes. >> But they're launching Bitcoin and Ethereum Salana uh products right alongside those and they're putting together in a complete portfolio piece of infrastructure that will allow um holding the assets in a native way,

>> right? And so I would imagine that this >> non-custodial wallet maybe >> wallet >> is probably look what's wrong with centralization when you get a forgot password button >> when I can call up my Morgan Stanley >> and I can I >> watch >> well what is wrong with that is um our boy Gavin Newsome in California has just put out a rule that if there's been inactiv if there's a three years of inactivity on a crypto centralized exchange wallet they can then seize the funds and hold it that like the state of California can seize the funds that sensorization.

Um, don't live in California. My answer to that, uh, there's multiple states with uh, no income tax. So, why would you live in a state that's going to seize your assets and make you pay 52% income tax on your on your assets? It doesn't make any sense. Um, >> all right, guys. Up next, we've got Kar Soya, the co-founder of RE Protocol. Um, should be a fun conversation. >> So, so I don't know if you guys have seen this, but if you pull it up on uh reinsurance markets on chain, I think it's on Dune or RWXYZ, it's pretty insane to see the growth of reinsurance. Um, now >> Andy, what is reinsurance? Yeah, I don't know to be honest with you, but I know

Emperor Osmo has been talking about it a lot. >> Okay, so I mean if we use our our pronouns and our prefix or our prefixes here, uh reinsurance, it sounds like you're going to ensure something again and again and again and reinsure it. >> All right, we're learning something today. >> We're definitely going to learn something today. That's for sure. So, >> so they've gone from from zero to $400 million of TVL or sorry, total supply of their um so their their re USD token is up to 100 million total supply. TVL has hit up to 400 million. Pretty insane uh growth here from from RE protocol.

>> Yeah. So reinsurance my understanding of reinsurance is that uh this is when insurance providers so obviously we have health insurance we have car insurance uh in in America we have to pay for these things out of pocket we don't have >> uh government that subsidizes these things >> and so we pay for insurance >> uh the insurers taking on risk basically betting on us not getting hurt >> uh so that they can save money and they can >> I hate insurance by the way total total terrible business. Anyway, please continue.

>> Reinsurance is when the insurance company itself goes and gets insurance. And so, think about >> Florida. Florida, right? Great example. Hurricanes happen quite a bit in Florida. Um, and there's a real problem in Florida where the housing market becomes un unattainable for a lot of home buyers simply because uh it is almost impossible to get hurricane insurance in certain parts of the state. However, if you have insurance companies that are able to insure their own book, right, because essentially they're doing this actuarial science, they're saying, "Hey, we we'll give you a premium. You pay us and we will insure you against a hurricane." They're then going to go and >> uh risk their book out to they're going

to go sell the insurance on their own book to multiple other reinsurance companies. So, it's not a super eloquent explanation, but I believe >> so. It's just a big Ponzi. No, I'm just joking around. >> I don't know. We're gonna get Kin to explain it to us. >> I have no idea. I've never heard of reinsurance until Emperor Osmo put it on our feed about two weeks ago. Stoked >> experts. So, we're gonna learn something >> and it's happening on chain and so we're excited to talk about it. >> Let's get K up here. Next episode, Neo finance, the rise of reinsurance markets on chain. K, how are you, man? Welcome to the show.

>> Thanks for having me, gentlemen. I appreciate it. >> Yeah, man. >> Absolutely. Thanks for being here. Um, honestly, Andy and I were just doing some research. We're not experts on this by any stretch of the imagination. Before we get into what exactly REI is doing and why you guys have brought reinsurance on chain, if you don't mind, a brief explainer, high level, what is reinsurance in general before we get into the nitty-gritty? >> Yeah. Yeah. We're we're the insurance company for insurance companies at the highest level, right? And so RI itself is onchain actors pledging capital that ends up backing the insurance policies that insurance companies around the world right.

>> So insurance companies will go right home auto uh earthquake floods fires hurricanes uh small businesses those businesses will pay insurance premiums. Those premiums will percolate down to the ultimate collateral provider and that's where the economics come from. That's that's reinsurance. >> And so this is essentially a yield product. Anyone can pledge collateral. I'm I'm maybe stretching this to the ultimate democratization of capital. But you know, in theory, anyone can provide collateral. Uh and then when it comes down to who is uh you know there that has to pay the bill, if there is a hurricane or there is a flood, it's going to get taken out of that

collateral. But in the case where there is no catastrophic event, these premiums continue to acrue to the people that pledge the collateral and that's how they collect the yield. Is that generally what I think about >> in some in some sense you're becoming the insurance company, right? Um and people are paying you premiums in an efficient market. Every dollar of premium plays pays the claims, it pays the related expenses, it pays you a margin. Uh reinsurance is really just kind of the safety cushion on top of that in in adverse in adverse circumstances, right? Uh if the insurance company didn't believe they were going to make money by selling you a dollar insurance and charging you a dollar premium, they wouldn't be in business for very long. We've got upwards of $400 million of TVL or just

right around there now for RE protocol. REUSD is hitting about a 100 million in outstanding supply or TVL or market cap, however kind of like count it there. >> What what talk to us about this rise, right? So take us back June 2025 REUSD is basically just getting off the ground. Um absolutely hockey stick growth. What has been the recipe for success here and just kind of give us the story a bit of re and maybe you know uh tie in some of your background here >> and why bring upon chain?

>> Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Let's start with like what the product is, right? The product is a promise to pay under a certain set of circumstances coupled with proof that we can pay under those circumstances. And having onchain capital and those representations memorial memorialized on chain is like the most elegant way to accomplish that particular task. And so insurance and reinsurance are like incredibly well suited actually for for being on chain. Um yeah, with respect to the the reprotocol continuing to grow. Look, man, we we probably run the most scalable durable business in crypto and it's just starting to show, right? Uh we're we're talking about a trillion in premium to be accessed in just the reinsurance market. We're talking about 7 to 8 trillion in premium to be

accessed in the primary insurance market. All of it is basically the same product that I just specified. It's it ends up being a contract, a price, some stipulations in the capital that you can can use to back it. Um I didn't just stumble on this like I we you know RE is now in his third year of operations uh on the reinsurance side. We back 35 insurance companies across the United States today. So we've proven out that we can sell reinsurance to insurance companies which is a very it's a non-trivial thing to do. It's hard. Uh we've also proven that we can connect DeFi capital to those insurance companies and make regulators happy along the way. The combination of those things is an incredibly difficult thing to execute on. uh and it wouldn't be possible if we didn't have a team of of

exceptionally DeFi oriented folks and folks who have built insurance companies in the past. And so prior to this, I built cover um this national insurance company out of Y Combinator. Uh and so I've got some experience now coraling uh regulators getting to to you know see see our vision uh and counterparties in the insurance space to work with us. >> Awesome. Um, Khan, do do you think that uh the scalability and durability of of the business stems from just the the clear Lindy effect of the total product market fit here? Like there's very clearly a need for insurance. It's a massive industry. Um, bringing this onchain just makes sense. Like like

there's just a very clear um longstanding business model here. uh you know I'm what what I'm trying to get at is what makes this so scalable and durable uh from your perspective. >> Yeah, look I I think you have you have a variety of of reinsurers that exist. They have product market fit, right? They sell collectively um you know they have hundreds of billions in capital that have been allocated to them. They deploy that capital to secure tens of millions of of businesses, hundreds of millions of people around the world.

There's clear product market fit. people buy these policies. Um, now what we're saying is that infrastructure needs to be updated. What you can do now from first principles is you can build an incredibly high operating leverage reinsurance business using a modern technology stack and using this transformer into DeFi. Uh, you can bring tens of millions of people on chain by simply selling them policies, having those those policies memorialized on chain and the capital that backs them memorialized on chain. And then, you know, because there's such a der of opportunity of actual real yield opportunity, we're talking about things that are not self-referential, but quite literally millions of people paying money into a pot from which you are paid your economics. Um, you know, the birth of opportunity means that the cost of

capital advantage relative to the rest of the market is going to start to be become very obvious as we scale. So you combine the cost of capital advantage, you combine the opex advantage and you build something that uh it in retrospect will look very very obvious. Uh but looking forward is just hard to do because so few people can do it. >> What what are the the network effects here as you guys scale? Because you know early on in DeFi Andy and I were there we were yield farming. We were depositing into these LPS right and a lot of times the idea was you know the most amount of trading fees divided by the amount of liquidity in the pool. You wanted to get your liquidity in early.

That was the point of maximum financial opportunity. As you scale the amount of capital that's being pledged into these reinsurance pools, will you divide will the will that dilute the yield that is acred or what generally what are the network effects? How how will this thing scale? >> Yeah. So, so look, it's a protocol for a reason, right? Like what what we're trying to build is the internet capital markets for insurance. I own a reinsurer. I uh you know that reinsurer goes out into the world and sells insurance to insurance companies. There are lots of other reinsurers. Uh and so there is no reason why the protocol should not be able to to enable other reinsurers and insurance companies to directly transact with this capital

layer. Right? And so if you're thinking about depth depth and scale, I am not the rate limiter, right? The rate limiter then becomes, hey, can we get XYZ insurance company on this platform? Can they bring tens of billions of premium to the platform of existing seasoned business? Can can they deliver a rate of return that's acceptable to the depositor? And the answer is yes, right? Like these folks go to alternative capital markets all the time. They they set up SPVS. U the the alternative capital market insurance is the fastest growing part of that capital stack, right? And so this would this would fit really neatly into into exactly what's happening in the insurance market today.

>> Yeah. Um, one of the things with insurance is like underwriting, right? You got to figure out which risks are worth underwriting, how you kind of calculate these risks. And then, you know, bringing this onchain, you kind of bring a different level of of um risk parameters to the table. Anything from smart contract risk to uh keys to custody, etc., etc., etc. like how does RE decide which risks are worth uh underwriting on chain and what is your underwriting process from uh the the protocol perspective?

>> Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So, look, I I think every every risk that is born by RE is is passed through actuaries and underwriters that have been in the business and delivered profitability in the past, right? And so, just from like a level setting perspective, the insurance company needs to make money. So their their actuation and underers got to believe their pricing is correct. We got to believe we're going to make money if we're going to if we're going to participate in some any sort of this risk transfer. Um and ultimately we need to be able to protect the the economics of depositors to the maximum extent possible because if you guys are you clearly are plugged into DeFi. People don't know how to underwrite these types of exotic risks and that's kind of the rate limiting thing, right? So the way we solve for this is like our money is

junior. We our entire balance sheet is in the junior position. uh it absorbs the insurance risk primarily. Depositors are senior to us uh and that's both for our our uh REUSD product which is absorbs insurance risk and the REUSD product which has grown the most. It it's most risk remote and over collateralized. Right? So the the way that we've gotten around this is like we we'll eat our own cooking. We believe it. We we've now been underwriting profitable for three years. We want to show that there is a vector of attack to bridge these two markets together. We're happy to do it. Uh and if you want if you want access to this market, we'll give you the most risk remote way we can make make it conceivably possible and we'll meet the liquidity needs that

you've got, right? If you're plugged into the rest of DeFi. U so require, you know, it's required quite a bit of learning on my part to like get up to speed on DeFi. We've now surrounded ourselves with really smart people in DeFi and I think they're they're going to kind of carry the flag in that realm. um and at the same time done a lot of like novel structuring on the reinsurance side to make all of this possible. But uh it's supposed to be risk, supposed to be liquid, it's supposed to give you a taste. As the market matures, people can decide whether they want to take more insurance risk or not. >> It sounds like, you know, you you cut your teeth in the traditional insurance world and now you're, you know, delving into the DeFi world. Just curious as you were, as you were diving in, you were

learning more about this. What stuck out to you? You know, where where were the light bulb moments? uh what were some things that you got stuck on? Uh just generally how how was that journey of you know going into DeFi? We're all learning about it now together. So yeah, you know what? >> Yeah, look what were those those those highlights? >> Yeah, I mean first and foremost, man, I'm a technologist, right? I build I build technology companies. Um and the I I spent seven years building a plumbing of an insurance company like everything from origination, underwriting, pricing, service like literally software that like manages the policies uh help service uh help service them. Um and so the problem surface area is very very large and the amount of money the margin

that was left over for me as kind of originating entity was pretty small and so I decided that for this time around I wanted to make more money and do less work. That was my driving principle. Uh and and I and I kind of I looked at the the counterparties in the inter I literally had to buy reinsurance from reinsurers. And so I look at what they were doing quite literally signing a contract uh uh and saying we're good for it, right? There there's our our financial rating. We're good if she hits the fan. Um and I was like I can probably do that. By the way, there's this thing that's happening in DeFi that makes complete sense to me. we should find a way to bridge into it because we see protocols that are pulling get together tens of billions of capital and

I in my mind have like the best possible economic purpose to use that capital right and from there it's been you know again this multifaceted figure out what to do with the regulators figure out what to do with the capital side convince the insurance companies to work with us and now you know we're doubling and doubling and doubling we were another 150 million in business on gen one right uh it's going to be 330 340 million in business from inception. Uh if we can get to it, we'll write a billion in premium by uh January 1st, 2027, right? That's it's no longer a toy. It's a real thing and we're backing hundreds of thousands of policies across the United States.

>> And where does that put you on the scale of insurance companies or reinsurance companies like just for for a parallel here, A has become I think it what is it the 30th largest bank might might be even higher than that. $55 billion in deposits and they are now measuring up obviously a is an onchain bank. They're a lending market. They're measuring up with the legacy financial system toe-to-toe. Where are you guys at relative on the loading bar, you know, to 100% when it's all said and done and it's all tokenized, it's all on chain. Uh what are the what is the scale that you guys are are shooting for? Uh yeah, so the largest reinsurers in the world uh reinsure something like 80 to 90 billion a piece, right? Uh and and

they're all in Germany. Um and that's not really including an artillery operations like these guys own insurance companies too, right? So you think about >> Can I pause you real quick? Why are they all in Germany? >> Uh there there's a culture around insurance in Germany that that lends really well to itself. Also, there's loads of London, right? Uh a a lot of this stuff h started in Europe. >> Got it. >> Started. Yeah. By the way, the American analoges are Bergkshire Hathway, trillion dollar entity, right? Owns Genri uh owns Geico. Geico and Genri create float. Bergkshire's asset management arm invests that float.

Apollo owns Athen. Uh this is not uncommon in Trafi and it's gargantuan, right? Um 400 million in business is no longer a toy. It's it's still uh it's still small. I think we start to really uh get people on notice as soon as we're above a billion in business. Um I is the is the goal for this protocol to remain uh insuring and reinsuring kind of like off-chain uh business models offchain products because there was there's rise of nexus mutual cover a couple of these like other D5 protocols in 2020 but it's never really worked out like like the

insurance market onchain for smart contract risk or other kind of risk it's never really worked out like is there a roadmap to to think about getting into uring DeFi or just kind of like onchain businesses not a thing that you really want to focus on. Where's your kind of general like like verticalbased roadmap here when it comes to the uh insurance market? >> Yeah, it's funny you ask. We we were just talking to Hugh and his team this morning at Nexus. Um look, I think these guys are directionally correct, right? I think that there there's a a a burgeoning um DeFi and crypto economy that's going to require insurance coverage for people to build things here and to scale them. There eventually is going to be a market clearing price

that's acceptable to the the risk taker and the the offloader of risk. Um the reason we haven't seen we haven't seen that take off yet is because that equilibrium hasn't been met. That's basically it, right? Um, so you got to be willing to pay for the cover and you have to be willing to take the risk and that that's I think it's starting to happen around the edges and eventually we'll find the core and these guys will be proven out to be correct. Um, from my my perspective, you know, I don't want to open up too many uh fronts in this particular battle, right? Uh, I have advantage. I'm going to take advantage of that advantage and lean to into it as aggressively as I can and compound um you know re and the business as aggressively as I can because there this

thing gets better and better and better with scale right like our cost of capital continues to come down um you know the the opportunities to be able to reinsure um you know unique lines of business new companies goes up uh with with safe the safety and security of skills. So that's my number one priority. it'll continue to be offchain uh you know for for the foreseeable future as we know there's lots of money there uh and so you know that's that's it and then we'll let the the DeFi guys do the DeFi thing. >> Yeah, makes sense. There's still so much room to grow. I I'd imagine the onchain thing becomes feasible once you have AI sort of pricing risk. It becomes a little bit more ubiquitous there. Maybe AI and prediction markets can get a

sense of how risky a smart contract is. we can get some credit ratings or credit bureaus even even rating some smart contracts. Um has there has there been any partners on your journey that you know have you bootstrapped this from zero? You also mentioned you have your own internal capital that you guys are putting into stake like what has been the founder journey and generally how have you guys gotten from zero? Talked a lot actually about how you guys are getting from 300 to a billion you know by 2027 but how have you gotten from zero to the 340 million that you guys are at now? >> Yeah. Yeah. So look, I I think I have the advantage of uh knowing a meaningful number of the insurance executives in America of consequence, right? Just like having built an insurance company from

scratch and that's been helpful. Um we are whitelisted with all the major reinsurance brokers in the country and that's just a function of like we've got people around the table that have managed multi-billion dollar books of insurance business profitably. We've got a structure they understand. We've got we're the only ones in market with scale and have built this capital transformer into DeFi and they they are really interested in it. Candidly, if you talk to any young person in insurance, there aren't that many. They're they're like uh they're super interested in what we're doing. Um and the folks that are retiring out of this this business, which is most of them, um you know, kind of know that this is what's coming, right? Uh and they want to be part of it. So, they're excited to get behind it as well. Um but yeah, I mean we have we

have great capital partners and we've we've raised money from Tribe and Arjun who's now heading up Kraken. Um Electric and Avichall uh you know the Coinbase team uh which we actually haven't announced so I guess you guys know now. Uh and then >> yeah uh and then uh who am I missing? Uh yeah, Electric Tribe uh Coinbase Defy. uh yeah like a a handful of other tier one angels and the like. So it's been good.

>> And you me you mentioned the process of when you're going out like you've mentioned how like when you're buying insurance or buying reinsurance you know you kind of have to check you sign the paper contract and you're like okay yeah there's their credit rating and you know okay I guess they say they have the capital right when you're now you're on the flip side now you're selling the reinsurance. So now you're going to insurance companies. They're looking at you. They're looking at, oh, like a lot of this capital, you know, it's onchain. That's kind of weird. And you know, like, do you get those questions? Do you get those weird looks?

>> Yeah. Absolutely. Right. >> Yeah. The the the thing though is like the there's a regime change in America, right? Like we have genius compliant stable coins. The the market is starting to become prized to that. This is just these are just these cash and cash equivalents, right? They're quite literally pointers to dollars in in bank accounts in US financial institutions. Um it's the law of the land. They know it's coming. Uh we're literally their first trading partner to be able to like bridge the gap here. Um and you know it's not non-trivial the the education that's been required uh to get people to where they are, but it's working right.

We're signing up more and more customers every day. >> Yeah. Yeah. I think um people in our community are going to be curious about some of the points that are uh like a points program that's going on and just generally like kind of how you're thinking about 2026 from the uh kind of roadmap perspective. So maybe just walk us through uh where where we at with the points program, where we going in 2026, what's on the road map here as we kind of come to a close. >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we haven't shared too much of this uh, you know, publicly, but you know, we we've now staffed up to make sure that people are pretty happy with the outcome of our points program over the course of the next quarter or two, right? Uh, and and that's been it's now been running effectively since

August. Uh, it's really finding its legs now. I think TVL formation is like you guys can see it starting to pick up in a pretty meaningful way. We're getting um, you know, we're getting integrated into all the right places. We're talking to all the right funds and and the right people. I I think this is going to be a pretty good time. >> Beautiful. Kin, thank you so much for joining us today, man. Um really, really, really stoked about your growth. It's been it's been cool to see from the sidelines. Been wanting to get you guys on the show. Glad we did. We'll have to uh circle back up in three to six months, see where you guys are at. It seems like this is just this is going up only, one of the only up only charts right now in crypto. So, >> it's very it's very cool, too. We're

we're talking a lot about this idea of NEO finance. And I think you guys fit in perfectly because it's this idea that we're taking an industry that was previously super legacy, super on paper, paper contracts, all these things. And now we're tokenizing it. We're putting it on chain and it's exponentially more efficient and effective. You guys are pioneers. Kudos. And uh congrats on all the great work. >> Appreciate it, guys. And thanks again for having me. >> Thank you, man. >> All right, buddy. >> Cheers. Cheers. >> Cheers, man. >> Yeah, man. That is a good neo finance uh uh player up only. Huge. That's nice. More customers and trust. Um wait, so what's the difference if I use prediction

markets as my insurance? Can't I just open a prediction that a hurricane will make land as an insurance hedge? Go for it. How much liquidity can you get in there? If if I'm an insurance company, how much liquidity at what price can I get a hedge against uh hurricane happening? >> I don't know. >> You can't I mean, dude, the the answer is the answer is not enough. Like, if I'm an insurance company, you heard he's they're they're on the scale of 60 to 70 billion, >> right? >> In these prediction markets, it's a matter it's a couple million that is going for a weather market. the weather market it's a few it's maybe you know >> 100k yeah well that I mean it's an

interesting thought experiment of using prediction markets as as insurance hedges >> uh re token is live >> no their points program is live >> oh so the points program is up only >> everyone's saying up only about the um about the actual metrics this is absolutely fantastic thank you Sophie up only caps up only up Only Chaz Re's got quite the quite the community >> up only. >> All right, guys. We're take a quick break. We got our third and final guest today, Dino, coming on to talk Fluent Connect and more. Just a couple of minutes. We'll be right back after a quick word for some of our awesome partners. See you in a second.

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Go to yeet.com to yeet into your next game. Not your keys, not your coins. From the team that pioneered cold storage, Treasure has just released its new flipflop. Flipflop. I can't wait to go to New York. I'm a big ass bear spray. Neo finance. Big ass flip flops back and forth. That's going to be us dancing up there. Empire State Building. >> Ready? I'm Andy's bias. Oh, I'm bullish.

Oh, wait. I'm bearish. Wait, wait, wait. I'm bullish again. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop flip. >> I'm about to flip flop into the ocean. >> Flippity flop. Flip flop. >> Guys, I'm a >> The end is near. Families. The end is near. Strap in. Andy thinks once again, it's all going to zero. Look look. The external market has no clue what's happening inside of our head.

>> The market I dude the market is irrelevant. Major war in the Middle East. I can't even Oh my god, it's just tragic out here. We got Dino of Fluent coming on to talk reputation and more. I'm stoked on it. Uh looking forward to having our boy on. He they just launched Fluent Connect today. Um so that was exciting for them. >> What a coincidence that Trump orders 200 billion dollars in mortgage bond buys to lower mortgage rates the same day that Fluent launches Fluent Connect.

>> It's absolutely insane. >> That can't be a coincidence. That's got to be some sort of cabal hidden hand. >> Fluent's got a big day. These guys are getting ready to launch. We've been early supporters and friends of of this team for so so long. excited to see them find their niche, come up with a specific product. >> The rollup did invest. We are angel investors in Fluent. I think that's important to to mention. We are uh bag biased here. But frankly, even if we weren't bag biased, we'd be bowled up on Fluent. All I know is I got into Fluent um uh protocol today and it called me maybe human.

>> So, either I've got a robot brain or something's gone wrong. We'll get Dino up and let's figure out what's going on here. Dino, welcome to the show, man. >> Boys, boys, boys. Good to be here. How are you guys doing? >> Doing well. >> I mean, I was doing well until your until your clawcoded agent decided to tell me that I was a freaking half human. I don't know how that's that's how 6:45 a.m. I wake up and I sign into Fluent Connect and I'm getting yelled at. >> Andy's Andy got just got finally exposed for just chatbting everything. So funny.

So it's like, okay, so goated. Group chats are full of your post. Your replies are full of slop. You made it. >> You are goated. You are goated in in the sense of just reach and influence, man. The goat. >> I appreciate it, man. Maybe human. Chances you're a bot are low, but never zero. I feel like that makes sense. Um, it's interesting that you have So, okay, so let's we'll we'll get into the nitty-gritty here. Dino, catch us up, man. Um you guys have really kind of like pigeon holed into this reputationbased uh kind of like identity reputation landscape. Uh it kind of was a a growth from your side following uh Kaido Infoi, right? You had you you know we had

talked about the importance not just of attention but of social capital. Give us your fluent connect thesis and catch us up a bit before we get into some of the nitty-gritty. >> Yeah, totally. Um so the the thesis is really based on where based on our observations about where not only infoy but uh the internet and especially CT went wrong right I mean I think that over the past I mean it's there's a kind of a more underlying problem like structurally with the internet it's like ad model and attention based models but I I think you saw over CT and everyone can everyone who's listening to this podcast could probably feel that we just went arry over the past couple of years I And and the way I would frame it is

there was just this complete and dramatic overindexing on attention and kind of the financial capital that went along with that attention, right? And so we saw this advent of info. I mean, some of the mechanics are interesting. It's like, wait, crypto gives you some cool tools to um measure and codify things and put them on chain in ways that um we we didn't have before. So something interesting was tapped into there. But we started just as crypto does like catching on to some meta or trend and just obsessing and overindexing on it. And that's what in my opinion we did for attention, right? And so people just went crazy. That obviously went handinhand with like the AI boom where um the cost to create average content

just collapsed to zero. the cost to I mean increasingly so the the cost to uh um you know misrepresent uh like somebody else with a Sora video or whatever like AI is causing this like explosure explosion um and ability to create content which could be used for for good but when you combine that with this complete overindexing on attention um you just get a bunch of slop and and CT has basically been ruined. I think anybody uh I think people would attest to that and and unfortunately I think this is part of a broader trend that's kind of CT is front running the the rest of the internet as I think it does in a lot of scenarios and like it's just spreading like this is the same thing that's happened to CT is going to happen

to every other social media platform and that's like the base case like clearly AI slop scams all the rugs that we see like that stuff is just going to like proliferate right and so we're like Okay, so we've gone way too crazy with attention. Um, what should people really be focusing on? And so we thought a lot about this and what we really came to was this notion of um reputation being the thing that that matters, right? And so what fundamentally it just comes down to like who should I trust for what on the in the like increasing amount of time that people will spend on the internet. It's like who should I trust for what? That's where the joke that you made before Andy and and uh was around

like contextual reputation, right? So like what you've obviously um maybe this is a good time to to introduce Prince. So Print Prince is um think of like your social footprint uh on the on the internet, right? And so it's basically an aggregator. We like put together a bunch of um you know we feel is the best identity and reputation primitives and and reputation can span a bunch of different things. It could be kind of a universal reputation in terms of like how trustworthy somebody is or not. Could be kind of identity. Should I trust this person to be that this person is a human and who they say they are?

Other types of contextual reputations. So is somebody a good trader or investor or holder or predictor or community member or whatever. Like so that's the idea. It's like can we can we use some of these really cool reputation based primitives that are developing kind of you know aggregate them together be like a thoughtful curator around them and um make them accessible for builders to to build on and we just think that if you can successfully make reputation a new primitive for the internet you can design much more interesting uh systems so that that's where that's where Prince comes from. So Prince is this this uh this primitive and then what we announced today is Fluent Connect which actually is the first app built on

Prince and so Fluent Connect it connect it helps builders find real reputable users. So discover distribute value to message connect with uh real reputable users. So, as a builder, you're coming in there, let's just say you're uh building a new DeFi protocol, just to make this concrete. Um, you might come in a Fluent Connect and say, I want to find people who are have a high probability of being human. Uh, maybe a low probability of being some scammer or or something. Um, has have been known to be like a good trader. Let's say I'm building a trading app or something. Known to be a really good trader. Uh, and maybe early users of a couple of pro, you know, prominent D5 protocols. Maybe they were early users

of like Hyperlquid and Poly Market and whatever. So you're like, whoa, I want to talk to those people. And so you could do that through Fluent Connect. And then maybe as a kicker, you say, "All right, you know what? There's a subset of this group who have kn been known to give really really good product feedback. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to give them an extra incentive or maybe like include them into my like public sale or or or uh give them special early access to my product to give feedback on because that's clearly what they're good at and I think they're a good fit for my app." So that's that's the idea. It's it's trying to help builders connect with real reputable users.

>> This uh this feels like the digital identity in the sense of uh proof of humanood, right? Which uh we've seen WorldCoin with the Iris scan. We've seen humanity protocol with similar biometrics. These guys are proving that you're human, but you guys are taking it one step further. You're saying, "Okay, it's not just it's not enough to be human. You also need to understand the characteristics of this human. Are they a good product feedback? Are they good beta tester? Do they, you know, are are they do they have high credit uh trustworthiness? And so I'd imagine that you could then share this and broadcast this data with protocols onchain and off-chain companies because this is

really valuable information that you know whatever it is the product that they're selling there's customers out there with characteristics that they're looking to sell to. But the issue that I think our industry has ran into time and time again is this this tension between privacy and identity like privacy and reputation in the sense that we have an inherently privacy preserving industry with you know cryptocurrencies blockchains in general privacy is a functional human right but on the other side of it you have web 2 companies Facebook has been farming our data for years we're kind of against that but we also really really need good reputation

in order to make uh valid decisions on chain. So as you were thinking through this thesis how did you manage to how did you square this like how did you overcome like all the negative things that with regard to you know data farming but also implement the positives about what can come about when you have data on a broad swath of people. >> Yeah. So the the we like to take a really pragmatic approach. So where we're starting is where the industry is at right now. And where the industry is at right now is um you do have a lot of people who are frankly like just doing a lot of public things. I mean a lot of like these social media applications are based on things that people want to make

public and social, right? And so there's just a lot of that like activity and data that's just already out there and they're already whether they whether it's being captured or not or whether people even realize it or not, they're already building some form of reputation. Maybe it's reputation like um being a very influential person even on crypto Twitter. Like it's out there and so so there's there's that element of it. Um and then there's the the privacy preserving point is is a really good one and we'll actually have a lot more to say on that soon. But I don't think these things are mutually exclusive. Like I think that you can absolutely if you can capture if you can give people tools to prove identity and reputation and do so in like a cohesive way that gives um that proves like

multiple different elements um about them like based on the context. You can you can kind of pick off each of those and make the ones that matter to that person privacy preserving, right? So maybe maybe I'm someone who doesn't really care um and I about certain elements like I want people to know that like me as this like entity on the internet is really influential on Twitter. Like maybe I even want like whatever scores, whatever whatever is attached to that. Maybe I'm like send it, bro. But I don't want you to know my identity, but maybe I want you to know my my anon, right? Like maybe I do want this like reputation to be attached to my ident my identity that's like provably like you can actually prove that I'm a human, but it's actually

attached to this like anon identity and then you could see a bunch of information compared to that, right? I think there's something powerful about creating kind of reputation frameworks that that it can actually not only help coordination between like humans and humans, but also humans and bots and frankly bots and bots. There's a lot of um there's a lot of humans I don't want to hear from and and bots that are I might want to hear from. And I think as you get into this like agentic world, as bots are starting to like actually act on behalf of humans, it starts to become a little bit less about like I mean you want to know like who you're talking to or who you're dealing with and like there's different con I mean it gets really nuanced which I'll which I'll spare like it depends on the context

completely. Um but I do think there's something really powerful about like that abstraction layer on top uh that kind of unifies just like fundamentally like who do I trust for what. Um, and yeah, I definitely think that privacy uh can and and certainly will be incorporated. >> Yeah. So, so looking at the the kind of uh the joke that I was telling you you guys earlier about the robot thing and pulling up my pulled up my score here. Um, so you guys made a choice to use uh Twitter uh it looks like at Echo and then it looks like Ethos as part of like your reputation scoring system. How how do you how did you guys create this kind of reputation system? Uh why choose

these platforms? kind of just kind of give us the walkthrough of how you're thinking about actively creating a a systematic approach to uh ensure you know lack you know no sibling of this actually scoring people accurately right like ethos Kaido these other platforms you know what is it that you're looking to achieve by combining these different uh sources of data sources of um I guess information that tell you something about some character or some person online.

>> Yeah. So, like I said, we try to be really pragmatic and frankly it's just this is an MVP and there's some good primitives out there that that that demonstrate and capture reputation across some different um different areas, right? So, like uh like you mentioned Kaido, you me mentioned ethos, like we're incorporating these like we're not we're not doing the scoring, we're not uh reinventing any of these wheels. I mean we will happily like innovate where there needs to be innovation but like just as a pure MVP product we wanted to do is is kind of get people to taste like what what this could be. So we we did take these thirdparty primitives uh we aggregated them together. There's actually one that's specific to Fluent which is uh for Fluent feedback. So every time somebody gave feedback uh to a fluent

app that we featured on testn net, you know, the app builders were the ones who were able to like assess that and determine whether the feedback was high quality and high signal. And so we incorporated incorporated that in uh besides this for the MVP, we're just using some of the tools that are out there and kind of like wrapping them together to provide texture uh on a on on a person. Um, and I I think the key part here because any anytime something I think there's that adage or whatever like when it become something becomes a metric like it's no longer good, you know, like things try to people try to gain things all the time and it's true.

That's why I actually wrote a post on this the other day, but we think that the way to solve this is um is is with just a series of checks and balances, right? Like what we're trying to do is not be we're not trying to score you. We're not trying to pick like in the one score that works best from you. We're trying to say like okay like what are all these like reputation primitives out there. Let's be thoughtful curators around them and um use them as checks and balances. So just as an example you mentioned like worldcoin. It's like well we don't you know worldcoin might be great. It might be imperfect. I think all of these will be like useful but imperfect. Um but that's okay because like you can you know somebody might be able to fool like one world coin but

maybe not maybe not three. maybe not, you know, world coin number two and worldcoin number three. And if somebody's able to and and I think the main thing here is to help aggregate and synthesize across these different just signals on the internet and then give users based on the context that they're in or based on the app that they're in um more information to to judge things off of, right? Let's just say I'm using some kind of new social media app that's built with some of these reputation primitives. like I should be able to go in there and let's just say the app is uh gives gives somebody people options to um you know to to opt into different feeds based on people's like curator like curator reputation or something like okay well who's who's this curator I want to go in there or like what's

curating this thing I want to be able to go in there and be like there might not be a one right answer but I might be able to look and say all right well you know what there's like three or four identity protocols that they're that they're checking off the boxes for that's pretty that's pretty good like there's there that's that most likely this is a human and you know what they uh have proven knowledge and and reputation across these topics that they're curating uh around and and so on and so forth and oh and by the way there are like a bunch of other people who are like able to like attest and kind of vouch for for these being like you know uh uh bias minimize like actors in this domain because whatever they just they've historically done a really really good job over the last five years

like that's just the type of texture that we're talking about, right? So, I don't think that there is like one right answer. I don't think there's like an absolute sol for this stuff. But I but I think the more we can kind of take all these amazing primitives that are being built in crypto and just, you know, um use them as signals in in a really really thoughtful way in contextualize the application being used and to the person who's using them. I think that you can at least create really useful systems. >> Yeah. So, are willing to give their data too. And and just one one quick thing here is like I I think you know the the reason people were very mad at Facebook wasn't because that they were collecting all this data. It was because they weren't paying the right price for it.

So, I can imagine like so much more of a constructive social graph where you're still collecting all of these data points, the relationship status of these people in their birthdays, all of these things, but like you're actually paying the fair price for that data and there's some sort of marketplace where I can put up a bid if I'm a company and I want to try to amass a distribution channel to, you know, pick your pick your demographic, right? Um, and I can say like, hey, if you fall within this demographic, you can verifiably prove with some sort of ZK proof that you are actually what you say you are. I will pay you five cents or a dollar or $2.

And you, you know, there's customer acquisition costs, everything everything adds up. So, I I do think that people aren't quite reluctant to give up their data, even if it is crypto, and even if people here want privacy, they're willing to opt out of privacy at the right price. Yeah, absolutely. And and I think that there's actually other types of um compensation if you will. Like I mean historically people have not been compensated in any in any way, shape or form. I think in this attention craze where it shifted was people were thinking that um what they were getting from their data and their like one one narrow sense of reputation was just like attention and financial. So attention like pay attention to me and like

financial capital which is like give me some coins and like we got crazy with that right but I so I I think you could think of it as a shift from uh attention and financial capital to I'll say like reputation and social capital right so so the reputation is just like what am I what am I known for like who are people what are people trusting me for what am I really good at um and then and then social capital which is like how do I convert that reputation into opportunities right I think everybody's probably familiar with over the last six months people uh you know going from anons on the internet to winning uh CT leads at like big companies like I think that you know we all we all know a handful of them on on Twitter often their their announcement post gets like

a lot of a lot of views because it's like a really awesome story like this permissionless world you come in you can literally be like a um just like an image on the internet and then you could start building I mean and people don't even like think necessarily think of it this way uh right now but what's happening is like they're they're building this reputation on on Twitter in this very narrow sense and then there are people whether it's Khi or whether it's Coinbase or whoever that are like damn I need like that is one of the most reputable people they have the most reach and influence in that specific area and I'm going to hire them. So it's effectively like building a narrow uh in that case like a narrow form of like reputation and then convert and using that to turn into like social capital

which then gets converted into a job. So like I think that and that's valuable too, right? That that is a form of like compensating for your data that you're putting out there and and and uh your social footprint that you're building. >> Yeah. I mean I guess the the common enemy here is just this dead internet theory, right? Is just like like this idea that we're going to have all this agentic AI based profiles. I mean we've seen the likes of men and women on Instagram starting Only Fans based on purely fake profiles. We've seen celebrities come to life uh based on pure um fake profiles. I mean you hang out with friends and people are starting to realize that the content that they see on social platforms is AI complete AI generated. Um, and so like the common

through line here is something that like Vitalik is very big on as well is just like solving this identity problem, but it's just but like you're taking a step kind of like to the side almost and being like let's solve the reputation uh problem as well and like those two kind of go hand in hand. Do do you see this as now like Fluent's main direction and main material focus? um like how does this launch change your perspective of Fluent's position? Is it a feature milestone, a network milestone, the shift going forward? Obviously coming into, you know, a big a big quarter for Fluent. What what does this mean for for the road map and just kind of like where

your head's at? >> I mean, we're tripling down on it like completely like we're tripling down on reputation as being a new primitive for the internet. And so a lot of our focus for ecosystem building um as it actually low-key has been over the past quarter uh as well just we haven't really like framed it and positioned it this way until recently um is uh helping applications incorporate reputation of all different types um you know into their products. And so we actually have a few that we'll we'll announce pretty soon and and we're working on on that um with a number of other builders just kind of like scoping out how it could be used like what type of reputation like makes the most sense. Um you know you could think about things like reputation based lending like you could take think

you can incorporate into different like buy now pay later type solutions. I mean, we're talking to a number of folks who are sitting at more like the creator the creator economy who are really interested in like fan reputation and like that is really through the eyes of the beholder of you know what what makes sense in like my particular scenario. Maybe I'm building a platform for like fighters to help connect with their uh their fans or um or whatever sports uh sports stars to connect with their fans. Um, and we're actually there's there's a few things there which I I can't exactly talk about yet, but we're we're gonna help uh we're gonna work really closely with with apps like this and just like help them integrate reputation and identity into their their products.

>> Beautiful. >> Do you know it's not just kind of going back to what what Andy's question was on. It's not correct me if I'm wrong here. It's not just um humans that have prints, right? There's also like even even in the dead internet theory, the you know the the dead internet theory is that it's completely AI generated. Everything is bot driven. But even the bots, like to your point earlier, you know, there's some humans I don't want to listen to and there's some bots that actually have some decent things to say. So even the bots are going to have some print on line and we're going to want to understand and separate good bots from bad bots in certain contexts.

>> Of course. Of course you will. And and not only about things to say, but look, think about the whole agentic economy that's forming. Like bots are not just saying things like they're starting to do things and like if you're relying like the more you rely on these things to do things like yeah you need like the robust um financial infrastructure and that's what there's already been a lot of discussion about obviously crypto and blockchain plays like a big role there but you also need the right social infrastructure and in in a sense this is like plugging into those systems and I I definitely think it will matter a ton um you know which you could say bots but just generally like automation system we automate things like you know what what is the reputation these things They build a reputation whether people think about it that way or not.

>> Do you know what is the road map here for the next you know two months? I know you guys are are busy. What's the most important things that you guys want to knock down road to mainet here? >> Yeah, so we are we are moving quickly to mainet. I think I mentioned last time I was on here uh in in Q1. That's still the plan. And um we're going to announce our second cohort of uh blended builder club apps. The the BBC is like our incubator like thing. Um and a lot of those will be focused on reputation based apps. So uh we'll we'll be super focused on that and um and then driving uh you know development of of fluent connect and prints right like I said like that there's there's a lot more that we want to do there even um on the

userf facing side which which we'll have a lot more to say soon but yeah the the ecosystem reputation based apps and uh fluent connect and of course mainet >> beautiful all right Dino stay warm man I'll see you in New York very soon I don't know if you're there or if you're in Miami but either way stay warm form. >> Oh, I thought you were bringing me to Hawaii bro. >> Yeah, I mean, >> I thought this was an in person. >> Look around. >> Oh, man. Yeah. I mean, maybe next year, man. >> All right. Well, I'll see you, boy.

Thank you for having me on. >> Yeah, pleasure. >> See you again soon, man. >> Later. >> All right, buddy. Man, that bot comment threw me for a whirl Rob. the bots, the good bots or bad bots. >> I saw you laughing. I look I think it's a good point. I mean, Dino says, you know, it's like I I do agree that there's some humans it's like, "Hey, man, you're no better than a bot." And then there's some bots where it's like, "Hey, you got you got some things to say." >> Um, I do recommend if Dino's listening out there that uh there are some some marketplaces out there with data, right?

And so I think >> like there's going to be some natural organic bootstrapping uh journey that they're going to have to go on in order to build and and collect all of these social dynamics and and contribute to these prints. >> But like you know we've had our friends over at uh Zion Burnt Banksy >> Burnt >> Burnt. Haven't had him on in a while. Uh and and and they're going on this a very similar direction, right? starting to collect not just collect data from people like pay >> yeah I know what you mean though >> pay people for data and then sell that data to like a flight right because if you want >> and and it was all based on ZKTLS right because Delta wants to vampire attack

JetBlue for for example >> so if you can verify through ZKTLS you can log in to your JetBlue account you can verifiably show that you have this many JetBlue miles delta will be willing to give you some sort of deal and say, "Hey, if you come over, you know, we'll pay you this much or we'll give you this many miles." >> Um, and so there is this robust network and marketplace of data that's already out there. >> Uh, I think Fluent's going to have to do a combination of paying people for that data >> or incentivizing them with tokens or something. Uh and then also going out and doing the hard work naturally organically mining people for this data, you know, helping them having them connect, take these take these different

actions online and onchain. But I I I like this because like I wasn't a big I didn't I don't even think I have a Facebook, maybe signed up for it, but it's a dead account. But social networks in general are farming our data >> and drawing all of these conclusions from our things, keystrokes and swipes and all these things and they don't pay it. Like they serve us advertisements. It's worse than not paying. >> I know. It's like it's Yeah, it is worse. >> I mean, great, we don't have to pay for like social apps. Sure, that's cool. But >> but just know that like your data that you give to the social network allows them to make money, which pumps the mag seven, which pumps your your altcoins.

>> Okay, in that case, shout out to the Lizard people for another great show. >> All right, guys. We're gonna wrap. See you guys tomorrow. Big show tomorrow. Got a a s a awesome lineup of guests. Uh great show today. >> Good Neo Finance episode today. I enjoyed um our insurance. >> It was neo finance. >> Yeah, >> it was very Neo finance. >> Very neo finance. Guys, we'll uh we'll see you again tomorrow. >> Peace.