LIVE From The Tokenization Tower: First Digital CEO Joins & Theo Leadership Live In The Nest

Transcript

[music] [music] [music] >> Seventeen. [music] Seven floors. >> [music] >> We'll see you around the timeline.

Feels good to be back. >> [music] >> I think The Rollup is one of the most premier media brands in crypto, and Andy and Robbie [music] are great experts at everything they talk about, and it's my favorite podcast. >> I'm going to add it to my [music] library as we speak. >> Potentially multi-chain deployments. >> We are at Devcon Day [music] One here. I'm addressing from space. >> [music] [music] [music]

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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 to say. I'm bullish. HE SAID IT. HE FINALLY SAID IT. >> I'm so bullish. >> And he's bullish. I'm bullish. We're bullish. >> [music] [music]

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>> The Rollup is headed to the top. If we're not already at the top, we're going to the top. >> We're going. >> The Rollup is my favorite. >> People from all walks of life, all over the world, all over this industry, come together for the Rollup. >> [music] [music] [music] [music] [music]

[music] >> Do you know institutions aren't coming this >> Simply here. >> It's the global major crypto, guys. Get right. Let's go. >> [music] >> Welcome to the Nest. See you on the show. >> Yes, sir. >> [applause] >> Happy Friday, Rob. >> Dude. Oh, wow. We got a bell. You're making big updates to this video while I'm not there. >> Yes, sir. Big week next week in New York City.

>> I see a raging bull behind you. >> Yes, sir. Dominating a bear over the city. We got our friends at Plume, the Nest. Shout out to Plume, of course, guys. Powering the the Nest tokenization tower, Rob. You missed it here. I was planning the event with Teddy for DAS week. It's coming quickly. We're going to be hosting a really big side event here on Wednesday night, Rob. Should be a banger. >> I'm excited. Uh we've curated the event such that, you know, Andy, we met in college. You you know, you had your time or two going to the bars around here. I know we went out, had a lot of fun.

>> Apparently. >> Everyone loves a good ratio. And so, we've curated the ratio for this event very, very carefully, very, very thoughtfully. Such that we have the ratio of crypto natives to the institutional folks the way that you would want the scene, if you will. Uh so, yeah, I'm excited. Look, we were wearing suits >> Wow. This is >> in DC. Uh this is all part of uh the repositioning of the roll-up. >> Yes, sir. Let's get into it, guys. We got today's topics. We've got a full slot. We got the nest, of course, powered by Plume, our friends in the tokenization tower.

We've got markets and weather. It is warm today. It is sunny over here, Rob. I'm sure it's nice down in Florida as well. >> before we move off the nest, Andy, I feel like we're going to have to name that bull some something or someone. >> The bull? >> Yeah. I think we're going to have to give the bull a name. >> Okay. >> And we'll maybe one day we'll we'll we'll name the bear, too, but I think we've got a Yeah. I think we're going to have to name the bull something like uh like something that starts with an H and rhymes with Hyperliquid.

>> Nice. We've got the Theo team joining in today, guys. They're launching a stable coin on Hyperliquid, THUSD, a real tokenized gold backed. Uh we're going to talk about Hyperliquid. We're going to talk about what they're doing. We've got the First Digital Founder as well, so very stable coin heavy show today. Uh they are the creators of FDUSD, something that you probably have heard of. Guys, today's topics powered by Trezor, the best hardware wallet on the market. Shout out to Trezor, trezor.io. Use code roll-up 10 to secure your self-custody to secure to secure your coins. Rob?

>> I've got my treasure. Look, uh it's working and uh I'm excited to get uh uh to take to take security into my own hands, take custody into my own hands. Um I'm pretty I'm pretty stoked uh >> [clears throat and cough] >> for what we got coming up. Obviously great week in DC. I think this is I mean we were we were joking around about it, you know, got getting calls from Gary and everything, but >> Yeah. >> like this truly was the landmark regulatory guidance that we got from the SEC and the CFTC. These two agencies have essentially been at war with each other for their entire existence.

>> Yeah. >> And this is the only administration where they've they've decided to come together and work together uh and crypto is essentially the number one priority of both of these agencies. So >> Yeah. >> [cough] >> it's incredible to see. Uh I'm also excited for what we've got coming up. Uh Digital Asset Summit this upcoming week. So I'll be back in New York. I'll be joining you there in the nest. Wow, that view behind you just looks gorgeous. I'm excited to come back. >> It's crazy today. >> And then we go to Can for ECC. Um you know, we were considering going to the Fintech meetup, but we decided we're going to join our friends at Ave for D5 Day, which I think is where a lot of innovation is happening. I'm excited to be proven

wrong because at in DC I was of the mind and you were you were fighting me on this that policy actually is much more interesting than what is happening on the technology side. >> No way. >> The way in which they've defined these things is been up for debate for so long. You don't hear anyone debating on Crypto Twitter now about the thousandth L2 and its structural architecture and its design because it's it's all the same now. Everything's fast and affordable and secure. We've solved the blockchain trilemma, but what we haven't solved is the regulatory uh uh structure of a lot of these things. And so, I found it quite interesting. Digital securities, digital commodities, digital

tools, these things, stablecoins, what they're going to come out with next. I think a lot of value accrual happens on the regulatory moat of a lot of these companies. We've got a pretty wild sound effects coming in behind the scenes. Not sure where that's coming from. >> [laughter] >> What? >> We're going to We're going to fix that. Uh but It's always an adventure here at the

Rollup. I hope you guys enjoy the new standby because uh we had some fun. We were in a new bear. We were chopping around DC with our friend uh Chris from Chainlink. >> Yep. >> And uh, man, you got a call from Gary. What did he say? >> Yeah, Gary's crew, man. Gary, Gary, Gary wants to know if he can come back into the office and, uh, come back on the podcast and talk about the state of crypto regulations, but I think we hung up on him. So, guys, it's a warm, nice day today. Let's get into the markets and weather and get this show rolling. >> But, first, >> let me tell you about Frax.

>> Go to Frax to learn more. >> Guys, it's 51°. It's sunny. It's hot. It's warm in the studio today. It's a beautiful day in New York. It almost gives you early spring vibes. Powered by our friends at Relay. Shout out to Relay powering crushing swaps at relay.link, guys. Check them out. Um, yeah, it's a nice day today. Love love to see it. Feels like Feels like a slight bit of spring. I'm looking forward to having some some drinks after after the office after the show today. Uh, let's flow into the markets, guys. >> Yeah, it's about 30° warmer here in Florida and we are pretty much flat on the day. Not a whole lot. Bitcoin's down. Bitcoin essentially flat. Ethereum up a little bit, holding above 2K.

Um, I also noticed just a couple of things as I took a stroll here. These things aren't on the board, but I noticed Polygon is kind of surging. Uh, they've had some good announcements as of recently. I also saw that Eigen Cloud surging as well. On the equity side, we had the founder of It sounded a lot like MicroStrategy, but it wasn't. It was someone who was smuggling GPUs into China. Uh, his company is down quite a bit today. >> Yeah, it's all like 27% or something like that.

>> Down 27%. Smuggled [snorts] 2 and 1/2 billion dollars worth of GP Nvidia GPUs into China. Obviously, the US and China this is a highly debated topic. Uh you know, there is uh uh not sanctions, but essentially export controls on Nvidia GPUs. And so, uh they prevent Nvidia from selling into the Chinese market, at least this particular GPU. We have agreements set forth that allow GPUs of a lower grade uh to be sold into the Chinese market. Um but this guy was smuggling. This is something that has now been confirmed.

Everyone was speculating this, but now this is proven to be the case, and his company is paying the price for it. >> All right, guys. Well, ask this market prices powered by Zama, the leader in privacy and confidential applications on Ethereum. Guys, go to zama.org, learn more about Zama, build start building today. >> Before Before we leave leave off the markets, the other one is is BitTensor here, up 10 and a half percent. >> And Templar. >> And Templar. Uh these AI coins are surging. Uh it seems like they've pulled back a little bit, but uh up almost 50% uh since mid-February.

>> Yeah, Templar was mentioned on the all-in podcast with Chamath and Jensen Huang. That was particularly interesting. And yeah, it was just talked about at length about decentralized training. So, I mean yeah, that token and that project is getting mainstream kind of like clarity now and and mainstream expansion. And so >> Could be why I can call it the Bitcoin of AI. >> Could be why I can see a little bounce here as well. >> Interesting. Yeah, they're definitely in the AI world more than previously.

>> Yep. Yep. >> All right, guys. Let's go to our flagship news. >> AI team, which is NEAR. NEAR is the blockchain for AI agents, agentic finance, and applications that are leveraging AI on top of blockchain infrastructure. These guys went ahead and they built the blockchain, but they are an AI first company. They are building the blockchain for AI. NEAR is doing incredible things, and we are proud partners of NEAR. Go to near.org to deploy Iron Claw, which is their security-tight version of Open Claw, and you are going to want to be involved in the agentic future.

Use NEAR, transact on it. NEAR intense, also tremendous product. And here, we've got the first piece of news from the tokenization tower, the vibe coding experience in Google. You were using this a little bit, weren't you? >> Uh Google Stitch. >> Google Stitch? >> Is this Google Stitch? >> I believe this is Google Stitch. >> Nice. Full stack vibe coding turn prompts into production-ready apps. Now, this is a separate one. This is a Firebase integration and kind of taking over senior development, I believe.

Um and so it's talking about this AI studio, a completely upgraded vibe coding experience, turning your prompts into apps. Um yeah, I mean, I was messing around with Google Stitch last night trying to create some graphics and some designs. Was pretty cool. Definitely a learning curve and a lot of presets required. But yeah, don't have much to add here on Google AI. Um it's probably more of a developer-focused kind of uh news piece here. >> Yeah, let's keep things rolling. Um we have some more uh news here in the pipe uh around tokenization.

Uh so we can go ahead and flip to our next news piece. Uh >> Yeah. >> We also uh so let's go ahead. Uh this was in the Indian Parliament introducing tokenization asset uh bill uh establishes a legal framework for tokenization of RWAs including issuance, trading, and custody services. Once again, we're seeing around the world legislation regulation continue to move forward. The United States is now a pillar of regulatory guidance. Big old change from the era of Gary Gensler. This particular bill introduces regulatory oversight to ensure investor protection and market integrity. Sounds like Democrats are in

office there in India. Enables fractional ownership of assets like real estate infrastructure projects through digital tokens. Andy, what are your thoughts on tokenization regulation? >> Um I mean I had a a tweet that said my biggest takeaway from DC Blockchain was if an asset can be tokenized, it will be tokenized. And I just think that that's firmly the direction that this entire world's heading in. I don't see this changing. If an asset can be tokenized, it will be tokenized. And I firmly think that's going to be the case going forward perpetually. And so when it comes to the regulatory side of things, it's a catch-up. It's how do we regulate this market? How do we

enable innovation and allow this tokenization to happen without kind of like stifling it? But we need something in place because we're going to get all of these different types of of assets tokenized in different formats with different versions of the same asset tokenized. There's going to be all this kind of like all of this separation and fragmentation of tokenized assets is coming. And so I think that from the regulatory side, one thing that I think I'd like to see is setting the standard for the types of tokenization that are approved in a given jurisdiction and kind of like limiting or creating a way to prevent fragmentation of dozens of private companies tokenizing tokenizing the same

public assets and having all these different versions of them. That would be my wish list. >> Um I think this is uh incredibly powerful. Uh not necessarily that India is introducing this bill, but we are seeing tokenization really hit stride as regulatory clarity uh and guidance improves. We will see every asset tokenized. If you're still unsure as to why tokenization provides benefits for these asset classes, you haven't been listening to the Roll Up enough. So, you should tune in more because we talk about the benefits of tokenization quite a bit. Uh bottom line is you improve your revenues and you decrease your risk uh as a result of these things being tokenized and we get into the

details very often on this show. Quicker settlement times, more risk oversight, and greater composability amongst asset classes means more liquidity, more capital velocity, and overall a more healthy ecosystem for our assets. We are going to get to our next piece, which is maybe not so healthy for the ecosystem. We talked about this a lot in DC. There's an ethical hold up or hiccup that's happening and it's holding up the Clarity Act. We may not even need the Clarity Act. Uh we basically have all of the guidance that we need over the next 2 years, but if there's a new administration that takes the office, uh they could repeal the guidance from the SEC and CFTC. This is why we want to

administration proof the legislation and guidance that we heard. What is holding this up is that Trump's involvement in World Liberty Fi and his meme coins, Trump Coin, Melania Coin, uh they are holding this up because Democrats feel like there is this ethical violation uh between uh Trump and the crypto industry. He's basically propping up this industry for his own gain. Andy and I both know that uh there is a lot of benefit to this industry aside from Trump's meme coins and personal personal uh uh you know, value that he derives from this.

But World Liberty Fi is just continuing to to to chug along. Launches SDK targeting AI payments with USD1, USD1 being the stablecoin for World Liberty Fi. Andy, what do you what do you make of World Liberty Fi as a project and how they continue to ship despite some of the concerns from the broader crypto landscape? >> I mean, I don't know, man. I mean, this is like this headline is like AI payments without data leaking. Like, congrats, guys. I don't know, man. I don't expect USD1 to really compete with actual stablecoins that are USDC and USDT. I Trump's like not in a good spot. He's just like the Clarity

Act might get slowed down because of his aggressive meme coin and uh semi sketchy involvement in World Liberty Fi. World Liberty Fi itself has all these rumors. It's honestly on the verge of being a scam. Like, it's as as it's about as close as it gets. Um without Trump's affiliation, thing would be absolutely thrown into the scam category in crypto. I firmly believe that. So, without Trump, World Liberty Fi is probably probably thrown into the scam bucket. But then here we go. They're supporting myriad markets as the core stablecoin. They're hosting events.

They're doing all these things, but I don't know, man. >> Well, >> I I think I think it's thrown into the scam bucket. >> There's a lot of noise in the whole AI payment space, which is why I'm excited to talk to Vincent. He is our first guest. He's going to be joining us in in just a matter of moments. And we're going to get into the nitty-gritty around AI payments on chain, agentic commerce, agentic finance, which ultimately is the final frontier of the evolution that we've been talking about on the show. After every asset is tokenized, then you have high quality assets on chain. They end up in D5 protocols. There's composability as a result of this. You can create structured products like vaults that are so much more expressive and creative than the current financial landscape. Once you have AI agents

managing these vaults, these products, and these quality assets on chain, the plethora of financial uh creativity is at your fingertips, which is very, very exciting. And so, without further ado, let's bring up Vincent onto the show. There he is. Vincent, welcome. >> to the show. >> Hey, thank you. Thank you for having me. Uh Really uh really uh appreciative of having us on uh me on the show today. Thanks. >> Absolutely, man. Uh CEO First Digital, Vincent. Uh you guys are the issuer of FDUSD, a trusted, fully backed, and always compliance-first stablecoin.

Uh just give us a little bit of how you got to where you are today issuing the stablecoin. Obviously, you know, we've seen Genius Act get passed. We were in DC last week talking about more stablecoin uh regulation that came forward. Um give us a sense of kind of your trials and tribulations building in this space ultimately to issuing FDUSD from First Digital. >> Well, as you know, I'm not sure if you uh know a little bit about our background. We started as a trust company. We're still more of a centralized sort of making sure we safeguard assets. I think that was the most important thing back then when we started, custody was a big thing.

There was really not a institutional custodian. And then you had the the likes of BitGo and Fireblocks and a lot of these companies sort of popped up. And moving on to 2025, you know, we we deemed it as sort of stablecoin summer. There was a lot of new stablecoins coming up. And we wanted to get ahead of the game. We know that regulation uh at the time was coming to Hong Kong. So, we issued FDUSD June of 2023. You know, we went through our, you know, our hardships, you know, dealing with banks, financial institutions, compliance. As you said, we're a compliance-first stablecoin. We were really looking at um first and foremost, the priority is

managing and making sure the reserves are safe, making sure when there's any redemptions that those redemptions goes off without a hitch. So, those those those are really the key to operating a successful stablecoin and, you know, of course, getting listed on one of the biggest or the biggest exchange in the world, the Binance, you know, that that was also a a great plus for us. And here we are, you know, moving into the Gentex payment space. I think that, you know, 2026 will be the Gentex payment summer. So. >> It certainly will be. I mean, we are we are firmly of the belief as well. Um I I'm curious, you know, early on, you know, we saw how Circle Tether sort of bootstrapped their way uh to, you know, kind of uh leading the stablecoin market

today. But I I'm curious from your perspective, how does FDUSD and First Digital, how do you guys plan to reach levels of scale, right? Because we we've seen how, you know, Tether and and really not not even Circle, Tether has kind of been able to get a foothold in emerging markets and almost be used as the alternative currency or the exit hatch to their their uh native currency if it's experiencing inflation or something like this. They've they've really gotten a foothold there. What is the primary go-to-market strategy for First Digital to drive the stablecoin towards a market cap upwards of, you know, billions of dollars? How will you achieve that level of scale and ultimately that that user base when

there's so many stablecoins out there in the current market landscape? >> That's a good question. I think for us as FDUSD, we're, you know, we're also really focusing on the emerging markets. I think the emerging markets is really where the use cases are a little bit more, uh, prominent. There's going to be, uh, more people looking at that solution that stablecoin can provide. We've always heard about the unbanked, uh, issue and really, I think with the combination of stablecoin, blockchain, and AI, I think we're closer to that solution than we were previously at any time in history. So, you know, I'm really excited that what

we want to do is really build a strong, solid ecosystem around FDUSD by providing not only products and services to the, you know, uh, DeFi space. Uh, we're, you know, we're building things like Argentic payments, as you know, we're doing, you know, uh, Argentic wallets. But, at the same time, we want to make sure that, uh, the stuff that we put out there are fully compliant, regulated, and that, uh, it's our clients first, retail first. For stablecoin, yes, there's a lot of different stablecoin coming to the market and that has, uh, different use case, different focus.

But, we we're we're looking to grow organically. We're looking at, you know, there's going to be room. Uh, stablecoins right now market cap is is at its infant stage. It's tiny comparative to where uh, we see and big institutions are projecting it to go. So, there's tons of room for other stablecoins and and I feel that we want to get that infrastructure, our background, our infrastructure, you know, building up the banking rails, everything 100% solid first before, um, we really go to market in a big way.

>> You know, I I was I was hanging out with a a couple of like normie friends, which is always interesting to see like and hear how they're reading the markets and and what is kind of the narrative that ends up catching their eye cuz we're so zoomed in. But, the things that make it out to them are are, you know, really have some exit velocity. And the two narratives that were really resonating with uh this group were, you know, okay, stablecoins are are really catching wind here because uh they are really primary buyers of US Treasuries. And so, the US is is propping this up uh because, you know, the this industry can really be a a significant buyer of Treasuries. The other narrative is that uh stablecoins are like AI-native programmable money.

You know, I I think maybe they're becoming less and less buyers of the Treasuries and more and more they're becoming uh accustomed to this narrative of AI-native money. Uh how do you think uh AI will end up incorporating stablecoins? Which of these narratives do you think is primarily um you know, is resonating more with the market right now? And is it truly the case that, you know, stablecoins like what what benefit do do stablecoins have for AI agents rather than, hey, you know, Claude bot, take my credit card, you know, just load it into this browser? Like, why are stablecoins that much better?

>> I think if you don't have a stablecoin, I think it's virtually uh maybe not not impossible, but it's it just makes things a lot difficult for AI payments to make those efficient payments instant at real time. I think the the the real use case for AI payments is also how we can, you know, there's a lot of people building on different AIs now and with with digital currency uh stablecoin, those those robots, those AI agents can really make 24/7 trades, you know, if you want to look at payments, purchasing um uh through merchants. Uh there's also what we were saying, you know, there's

autonomous vehicles right there. And we think, you know, if Elon is right, there's going to be a ton of more autonomous uh vehicles in the in the market in the future. And those vehicles in itself are AI agents. So, if you slap on an AI wallet inside the vehicles, if they need a charge, they don't have to run back to headquarters or to to their owners and get the credit card, they can go straight, you know, without a hitch, go straight charge station, bang, pay from their AI wallet with stable coins and done and get back to work, right? So, those are just some prime examples of uh how, you know, evolving that this is going to this space will be when it comes to utilizing AI as a payment

a vehicle. >> Yeah. Yeah, I've also I've also heard how streaming payments uh in the sense that, you know, as AI agents are consuming API keys, uh making API calls, uh maybe even, you know, training themselves on a video or an audio piece, uh we are going to move from the subscription-based model to a more continuous streaming model. Uh Right now, the credit cards uh essentially, you know, charge every once every month. If we were to move them to it's simply impossible to move credit cards to a continuous streaming model.

Stablecoins are capable of this. Is this Is Are Are Do you think that this is something that we're going to see happen in the near term? Or is this sort of a, you know, a pie in the sky theory that, you know, stablecoin issuers are are are are piloting? >> No, you see MasterCard and Visa, they're all scrambling really, you know, launching their own AI payments platforms. Um and, you know, the the the reason why this is really uh I think a fundamental part of the AI payments using stablecoin is the fact that you can fractionalize payments, right?

Whereby and of course fees, we know credit cards are charging upwards of 2 and 1/2 to 4% fees. You know, those are really high fees. But when you have a stablecoin payment, you're you're looking you know, less than 25 basis points in some cases. So, those are you know, those are rebates back. Those are savings back to the consumer. >> Incredible. Um well, you guys just launched Agent Wallet. Um and so, I'm I'm actually curious about how you think agents are going to continue to adopt and move into a landscape where they're conducting more of the transactions on our on our you know, in consumer finance just on a daily basis. Um similar to, you know, the idea of giving our agent a credit

card number and then just letting them kind of, you know, use it on on the web. You know, we could also provide a private key or some mnemonic phrase. Kind of give the agent a wallet itself. Um where do you stand on on kind of giving your agent access to your existing wallet? Uh pretty much just give it your password, let it do its thing versus give it its own wallet. Uh give it its own mnemonic. How does Agent Wallet think about this? What Where were you able to uh to integrate? >> I think the Agent Wallet's fine. I think it's really the the uh actual owner that provides almost like an allowance you give your kid, right? Like hey, you got $5 every week, go spend it the way you want. So, you can you can

uh deposit really, you know, a maximum maybe $100. If there's any issues with the wallets or if there's any hacks, that's the maximum they can really get. Um but we know that there's a lot of big companies now getting into uh KY A, know your agents. So, there's there's things like that that we think that's going to really be helpful to protect the consumers in the in the wallets. And what we've built with our AI wallet uh Prism is a very unique um proposition where we have a fee splitter. So, when you make when your agent makes another payment, well, who's going to pay for the gas? How is that going to be extracted? What if there's intermediate in involved in that particular transactions, people that may

have uh some sort of stake in that transaction. So, we've built a way that we can fee split. So, let's say a transaction is $10. >> Mhm. >> But then there's, you know, 2 cents for gas and there's also, you know, you have to pay commission, you have to pay the taxes. Taxes. So, what we do we we we inject those into the smart contract. So, for every payment, each participant has their AI wallet that will extract that portion of the payment. So, I think that's that's something unique that we've built in you know, it'll help for everybody that wants to get involved in, you know, in a transaction, but does not know each other or want to protect their own interest. So, every payment instantly they'll get, you know, they'll get it into their wallet

real time. So, one of the prime example of use cases would be Uber drivers or Uber Eats. Now, they don't they if they use our platform, they don't really need to wait 2 weeks to settle credit cards and Uber the the share, you know, ride-sharing companies don't have to have hundreds or if not thousands of accountants doing settlements every week. So, it's instant settlement. So, those are things that I think the AI agent really plays a big part in saving uh when it comes down to the bottom line, just efficiency.

>> We we've talked a lot about kind of the idle capital that is required in order to facilitate movement when when we're waiting on settlement times. It could be T+2, T+3, you know, upwards of 5 days sometimes where you know you have the money coming into you, but it just takes, you know, it just takes that much time in order for for it to process through these banks. By lowering settlement time, Uh, know, we can actually take a lot of the idle capital, you know, we were we were in DC and someone used a figure $27 trillion is capital that people have just sitting there in order to facilitate and it's just idle and it's just not really doing anything productive, but we have to have it there because we need to be able to have capital on hand when we're when we're waiting on money to land during

the settlement window. Uh, and so as a result with stable coins, we lower the settlement window. What happens to all that idle capital? When what when we are able to make, you know, these economies essentially, you know, frictionless, right? Settlement, you know, settlement times come way, way down. What just talk us through like you said, it improves the bottom line, but what ends up happening to a business? They just deploy that much more capital? Can you just kind of walk through the domino effect here? >> Yeah, I you know, instead of 5 days a week, businesses can now operate 7 days a week, 24/7. And the the the can really, you know, what they say, money never sleeps, right? We have to look at the different uh, different parts of the

world that this will be really um, helping corporations dealing in, say, India with somebody in Miami real time. So, agents are able to do settlements in these transactions while we sleep. So, those are going to make, you know, your 24 hours a lot more effective and a lot more you know, prosperous for for the company itself. So, savings is not only about money, it's also about time. So, time is money right? >> Yep. >> Yeah.

>> Um, one one final question here for you. Uh, I'm curious if you're viewing FDUSD as more of a payment stablecoin for retail or more of an institutional stablecoin that you anticipate businesses to integrate, like you said, drive down their settlement times, increase their bottom line. How do you draw the differentiation here and maybe there's a third category of just, you know, a stable coin that's not for really for retail [snorts] human users, it's not really for institutional human users, for for AIs. Like, where do you draw the line? What what are the differences between these these things when you're building the the stable coin itself?

>> I think it's again, it's back to the infrastructure. Like for us, um number one priority is our banking rails has to be really strong. And we have different banks, different parts of the world, not only sitting in you know, one time zone. So, for settlements, if we have people in Asia that wants to settle and that wants to redeem, they can do it Asian time. Somebody in the North America, we also have banks that can settle them uh real time in North America. So, it's really servicing our clients in that sense where they don't have to wait until, you know, 9:00 a.m. the next day to do settlements.

Um I think that's sort of where we are a little bit different because our financial institutions and the way that we protect the funds, um having dual balance sheet as a trust company. So, you have you don't commingle your your your operating money with your client money. So, I think that's those are really important aspects of >> Yeah, we haven't had the best track track record of that in the crypto industry, cough cough FTX. Um Now, good to know that you guys are taking this very seriously. Um really appreciate your time here. Uh Andy, any any closing thoughts for us?

Um >> Yeah, I mean, I was just on yesterday with the Pantera guys talking about the kind of agentic economy that's being formed and we spoke about like this identity question with regards to how, you know, in a future of agentic payments happening on chain, people actually doing a lot more agent-to-agent transactions, autonomous kind of agents running out on chain, >> [snorts] >> what that means for the identity of these agents as as interact with stable coins and send stable coins amongst one another.

I'm curious from the First Digital side what the key prerogatives are for enabling agentic usage of FDS FDUSD and kind of like what actual progress on that kind of agent to agent payment side you guys have been making. >> Yeah, we you know, we really look at when we do uh onboarding for agentic agents that uh it protects the identity of the actual owners, but we onboard them using KYC on the owners and of the agentic payment.

So, we know that identity theft is a is is a serious matter. And when we don't know whether your AI agent's being scammed by another AI agent. So, these are these are things that we have to kind of foresee in the future that there's going to be somebody setting up these AI agents that may look at okay, well, you know, if I can go out and scam other AI agents, nobody knows really who who's behind it. So, that's that's one of the uh major issues that we want to solve and make make sure that we work with really strong security companies that not only can identify the source of funds behind the AI agent, but also know the identity of the owner of that, but

at the same time when his agent makes a transaction, it's credible. So, using FDUSD, you know, I think people will know that we've done all of the background screening proper so that if there are any losses, you know, we we can't just go uh we have to take the proper proper protocol of how to sort of uh retrieve those assets lost within the blockchain. So, I think that's the that's the key for us to be a successful stable coin and AI agent provider that consumers can feel comfortable that we you know, we we're not playing God. We don't just go into anybody's wallet and freeze it. We have all of the background information to go with the proper

process and internal controls. And that will just make our our product a lot more easier to use in the future when, you know, um in the front end, it just looks very simple, AI agent making a payment, but in the back end, it's it's everything is sort of been, you know, all the eyes are dotted and tees are crossed properly. >> Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Well, Vincent, thanks for joining us today on the show. >> Hope you Hope you have a great weekend. And let's scale FDUSD >> Thank you.

>> billions and trillions. >> Yeah. Well, enjoy New York, enjoy the DAS conference. >> Thank you, man. >> Take care, guys. >> So much. We'll see you next time. All right, guys, we're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back with with our guests in the studio live at the Nest here at Tokenization Tower. We've got the Thea team building a stablecoin on Hyperliquid. We're going to talk about stablecoins. We're going to talk about Hyperliquid and more, guys. Don't go anywhere. We're going to get them set up in the studio. We'll let Rob go. Sayonara Robert. We'll see you soon. >> [music]

[music] >> Welcome back to another episode of Stable Up, our premier weekly show covering the ins and outs of digital dollars, stablecoins, and the future of decentralized finance. >> The show is made possible by Frax, and Frax is powering the financial engine of the internet, powering FRX USD and genius compliant stablecoins. This is the stablecoin supercycle made possible by Frax. Now, enjoy Stable Up, our weekly stablecoin show. >> Guys, welcome back to Stable Up, our weekly premier stablecoin show powered by our friends at Frax. Check out FRX USD and frax.com to learn more about their genius compatible stablecoin.

Without further ado, I've got Iggy Ayuby, the CIO of Theo Network, sitting here. Iggy, welcome to the Tokenization Tower. >> Thanks for having me. This is an awesome space. I love it. >> Man, I love the suit. >> 77th floor for those who don't know. >> Yes, sir, Iggy. Iggy, you have an extensive background. You guys are pioneering Theo Network. This is a new stablecoin on hyperliquid. We're going to talk hyperliquid. We're going to talk Theo. We're going to talk more. But, let's set some context here. Iggy, how did you find yourself into the role of the Chief Investment Officer at Theo Network? Walk us through some of your extensive traditional finance experience.

>> Yeah, so I started my career in private equity at Bain Capital in Boston and then worked on buyouts. Then uh went to business school and started a software company that I moved to Bay Area. Ultimately, we grew it to uh 300 people. We sold it for 200 million. Then went back to investing but on the public equity side, initially covering tech stocks and software and internet and fintech, and then ultimately covering everything and then I ended up running prop trading in equities uh long short at Credit Suisse, which was a global across all industries and analysts and PMs reporting to me.

Then my partner and I started our own hedge fund, which was seeded by Blackstone Group. And then I incubated a couple other funds we converted to family office and then I ran Polygon Ventures with also the partner for for a couple years. And during that process I met the founders of Theo and they had the right vision for RWAs that really aligned with mine and uh pretty much nobody else was working on it. So at first I became an advisor, then an investor, and now that they're they're scaling and they actually got product market fit, I I jumped in to to help them scale. And for the first time in 15 years I'm a builder again. I've been an investor, you know, for most of

my career. >> Yeah. >> So so you were doing kind of all different types of derivative strategies and kind of like alpha seeking strategies in the traditional markets for 15 years or so. >> Yeah, so most of it I was doing equities long short with I said with a private equity background. But as part of long short you have to know everything like so we cover energy stocks you have to know commodities, right? We cover home builders you have to know housing market. We cover financials you have to know interest rates and FX. So when you're like an equities long short you sort of have like a pulse on and then you talk to management teams from different companies. You see how they're hedging, how they're investing. So you have your pulse on kind of like all aspects of investing.

>> Yeah. Amazing. I And you mentioned that there was this ideal kind of state or vision that Theo had for RWAs that aligned with yours personally. What is this vision? What is kind of the tokenization thesis that you believe to be most accurate today? >> Yeah, so when I was at Polygon, we we did a lot of the early institutional deals like Hamilton Lane, for example, which is like, you know, very big uh either trillion-dollar institutions, and uh this was a huge step forward for like for RWAs, for tokenization, because prior to that the quality of assets was like really low. It was adverse selection, right? Things that you couldn't sell in the real world, you would kind of dump on the blockchain and and hope that this like, you know,

Bitcoin, you know, millionaires will will buy, but Bitcoin millionaires are actually really smart. They didn't buy it. So, the the second phase was uh big institutions, really blue-chip assets coming on chain, but for various reasons, uh they put things on blockchain, but didn't use the blockchain. So, it's not composable, it doesn't trade, it's not liquid. Often times it's white-listed permissions, geofenced, and so forth. So, the vision of Theo was to go to the third step, which is to actually make those >> [clears throat] >> financial assets still stick with blue-chip, but make them actually usable on chain. Make them liquid, composable, and all that the wonders that were invented in DeFi, for example, be be able to uh to apply that to RWAs. So, that was the the thing that

that I always wanted to do, and the team was like super crypto-native, had a lot of trading background, uh quant market making. So, they're like super smart both on the algorithmic and the and the blockchain side. It was a perfect complement to like what I know, which is like relationships on Wall Street, understanding all the whole range of like investment products and financial products. >> And you guys chose to build this on Hyperliquid. Hyperliquid's has a lot of success as of late, especially in terms of publicity. Yeah, are you very bullish on Hyperliquid?

>> Yeah, we're very Hyperliquid aligned, but we're not only on Hyperliquid, just to be clear. So, we go to wherever liquidity lives. Uh and uh obviously right now Hyperliquid is like, you know, a a key venue. So, uh but we are, you know, the the but part of the the secret is like all the people tried to get RWAs to trade and to make them composable, right? So, there is like a lot of you know, things change on chain very very very quickly, right? There was a few months ago Hyperliquid had a lot of competition. Now they sort of regained, you know, on the on the perp deck side, right? You had the Lyra and Asterina and a bunch of others. And then now they sort of regained a lot of their market share. So, you have to really know where liquidity lives, so you are there,

right? And you integrate with those protocols, but also they, you know, diluting. Like you don't want to be integrating with Well, you want to be integrated, but you don't want your liquidity to be diffused across a 100 venues. So, you have to be always watching and making sure that, you know, you you you're in the right place. So, that that that's part of like the crypto native kind of a DNA and and the Hyperliquid DNA that we have. >> Yeah. So, what what is your then your personal thesis on Hyperliquid? Do you have one? Like what is the >> I mean as as far as like it is an investor, I'm extremely bullish. I mean, if you I mean, it's not it doesn't I think that's a consensus view.

Consensus is right most of the time, by the way, right? So, everybody wants to find like when you're right and non-consensus, that's like you're and then you can brag about it at cocktail parties as an investor, but a lot of the time you just go with consensus. I mean, Hyperliquid is outperforming Bitcoin, for example, massively in the last few months and like year-to-date. So, I think the latest thing is is a big success with uh with Unit, right? The trade.xyz, where I mean, you have several assets that are trading a billion uh plus per day. Uh and you had gold trading like a hundreds of millions a day. Now oil on on traded XYZ is trading I mean it reached basically for the last you know eight or so days it's been over

a billion. >> Yeah. >> And and also the most interesting thing to me is the price discovery is incredibly accurate, right? So when you look at when CME futures reopen on Sunday at 6:00 p.m. You see the on-chain prices you know within basis points right within a few pennies off of So so you know that the price discovery that during the weekend was correct. >> So how big do you think this can get? Like what is what is the you know it's trading at like 40 billion right now or so FEV. It depends on kind of the the the way that you map it. But are are we talking bigger than Binance bigger than Nasdaq? Are we talking kind of like smaller? What is the what what's your hyperliquid bull case?

>> Interesting. Well so I mean I don't you know we haven't really like done the full investment case. And I tend to be like very like you know model driven and like cash flow driven. But you know the beauty is hyperliquid falls into like the general category of what's working blockchain now right? So when I was at Polygon Ventures we're investing a lot of infrastructure modularity L1 L2 data availability all kinds of you know different combinations permutations. So the good thing is now we have unlimited block space that's that's fast and cheap with low time to finale. That was not the case even like even in 2021.

So I would say now is the time for I believe it runs on its own chain but it is primarily an application right that happens to have its own infrastructure. So the general theme of like applications that actually give people real utility that's what's going to work in crypto as a whole not just like in the RWA space. But I mean I could definitely see hyperliquid reaching you know again I'm not not not financial advice DYOR but I mean I could definitely see it reaching 100 billion in the in the market cap.

>> Yeah. Yeah. >> That means so there there there are peers that that have less uh revenue that that have higher >> Yeah. >> higher market cap. No, not peers, but other crypto projects, let's say. Yeah, cuz they're going to do the same thing. Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. So, part of the Theo kind of design here on hyperliquid and on other blockchains is actually by tokenizing gold as this kind of gold-backed stablecoin or at least partially collateralized by gold or perhaps fully. Um why tokenize gold? Well, what does that give you what properties does tokenized gold give you to enable a better collateralization uh property for a stablecoin? Like, what does that really enable?

>> Right. So, there's like several steps. So, so broadly like so we're going to tokenize a variety of things even in our like medium-term like plan. We started with T-bills, then we tokenize gold. The third product we'll launch is THUSD, which is actually backed by our tokenized gold as as one of the layers of how we do it. So, you can buy directly tokenized gold, TH gold. Right. And and the number one benefit there by far is that it's a gold with yield. People have been using gold for 6,600 years as like, you know, medium of exchange and and way to preserve wealth of payment. And throughout history, you had to pay to use gold. You had to pay to store it. You had to pay to transport it.

You had to have security. Risks. Uh you had to pay to divide it up, to cut it up. You had to pay to test it to make sure it has I mean, there's like everything you do with gold has a cost. So, with our model, all these costs are covered, right? So, there's no asset management fee, for example. Like even if you buy a gold ETF like GLD, there is a cost there, 40 basis points a year. It's not not not terribly expensive, but it definitely does add up. In our case, all those are covered and you also get a yield. Uh for the first time we can get into, you know, how that works. So, that's the foundation for THUSD, which is the gold-backed stablecoin. So, THG stands for that. So, we already have a yield native and actually gold native

yield, which is the first time not just in crypto, but the first time in the history of TradFi as well. There were ways to get yield on gold through private providers. You have to KYC, KYB, it's a very extensive process. You have to have have high minimums and it's available only in like if you live in extremely developed financial market like like the US. There's never been a product you can just buy like an ETF that says, "Hey, here's gold and it pays a yield." A mutual fund ETF, that that never existed. So, so building blocks for THUSD is THG, then on top So, so once we have that gold, now we're delta one long gold.

What we do next to create coin is we actually short gold in the form of perps on chain uh and or uh CME futures to harvest the roll yield. And the beauty of that is, let's say if people are super bullish on gold, what happens in general is the curve, the CME curve that's usually in contango, it starts to flatten out. So, there's less roll yield to harvest because everybody's bidding up the physical gold, the near month. But what happens when people are super bullish gold is the funding rates on chain for the perps become higher, right? Because everybody wants to go long in general. So, we can by shorting gold there, we can get a much higher yield.

When the opposite happens like now, people sort of forgot gold for a little bit because everybody is excited about trading oil. Right now, contango is quite normal. We can get 4% yield uh from harvesting that the contango on the CME futures and there's less of a funding rate that we can get on like Binance and Hyperliquid. So, the beauty of this strategy is we can go, depending on like the mood of the crowd, we can go and collect the higher of the two yields. And when we stack that with the gold native yield, then we basically get a stablecoin that with, you know, I don't want to say like uh I'd say minimal risk. And the risks are very clear to everybody, right?

>> Mhm. >> So, it's like we, you know, of course, sometimes you can have market conditions where you you don't have the contango and you don't have the yield on chain. But at the minimum, you always get the yield that's native. >> Right. >> And at the minimum, we can also get the yield which is T-bill, which is the risk-free rate at now 3.6%. So, it gives you much higher yield than just doing the T-bills. With pretty much nothing but the protocol risk and execution risk on our side. >> Right. I mean, so those are the two main risks.

Um actually, I had Yuki here from Tenbin Labs talking about the yield on gold, and he mentioned that it was anywhere from um like 10 bips to 50 bips is like the expected yield on gold. Uh so, less than a percent, you know, half a percent. >> yield? >> Like like the yield that he's able to get on gold, yeah, by like lending it out or something of that effect. But you're saying that effectively by putting on a the basis trade on gold, leveraging CME futures off-chain and the discrepancy in funding on chain on Hyperliquid, there's enough liquidity on Hyperliquid for the size or or the types of volumes that you guys need to be able to facilitate that trade cuz it I don't think the on-chain market is mature

enough to to facilitate those at scale for gold perps. >> Right, exactly. That's why we need the CME. >> But isn't it isn't the difference between off-chain and on-chain where you guys get the yield? >> Yeah, so let me actually there's a couple of questions in there, right? So, first of all, the native yield we get is much higher than 10 to 50 bips. Uh because we have the scale and we have like the sort of blue chip partners, uh we get the gross yield is 2.5% and then after our partner management fee, we expect to to to keep for our investors like 2.2 to 2.3%. >> I have a hard time believing you get 2.5%.

>> the gold. So there's also in the gold lending market, there's gold loans and gold leases. And the yield ranges from 10 bips or sometimes even negative because in general again, gold you have to pay, right? >> Right. >> So from zero, let's say, all the way to 15%. If you're willing to do longer term, let's say if you do a four-year gold lease and you you you work with gold miner that's pre-production, right? They say they're a couple of years away from production, then you can get as high as 15%. So we started that market like very extensively talked to many different providers. We settled in on this particular uh arrangement to start because here it's uh extremely secure, it's over collateralized by 20%, blue chip partners.

The borrower has been in business for like almost 100 years. It's actually the largest jeweler in Southeast Asia. So they need to finance their gold inventory. They have a couple of tons of gold typically and they want to sell jewelry. They don't want to take the the price risk on gold. So we will add other uh as well, uh potentially a little bit longer term where you don't have immediate liquidity, but I So So first of all, the native yield we get is higher. >> Mhm. >> And then on [clears throat] chain, yes, the whole idea, one of the ideas behind Theo is that the yields on chain have come down.

>> Right. >> And there's there's limited capacity to generate yield on chain. This is not, you know, the DeFi summer anymore. Uh so we will use we will short the perps on gold uh where wherever we can up to the capacity and then the remainder we'll do on CME. And on top of that, of course, we'll watch the rate. So if somehow, you know, let's say the perps invert, right? What we you know, we're not going to take the other side. We're just going to do everything on the CME. But CME trades 100 to 250 billion of notional per day of on gold.

I actually forgot exactly, but it's in the order of hundreds of millions. It is definitely more than 100 billion billion, right? Not not million. So, for our purposes, it's unlimited capacity. We can always get that. >> Yeah. Yeah. And then so the stable coin backing effectively the execution risk from the team is part of it. The uh kind of change in gold price or change in the collateral asset price. And then on the stable coin, just by owning the stable coin, am I getting that yield baked in or do I need to take the stable coin and use it in a DeFi protocol or in a market somewhere?

>> No, that's something you can add on top. That's the whole idea, right? So, THUSD, which is the third product, right? That's the gold back yield coin. That, you know, will work as collateral in in in Hyperliquid and in Morpho and Penrose. So, you can still do all the same things if you want. I mean, most of the projects that we see that try to get you yield on gold, they just do that. Right? They try to lend it out and then generate some kind of return. That that you can stack on your own. The whole idea that we'll make it composable and then it's permissionless for you. You can do what you want. You can just hold it as an investment or you can, you know, you can make it very uh very active.

>> Yep. Yep. Understood. So, the way that we kind of have the stable coin landscape laid out here is you've got like these yield coins and you've got genius compatible like basically one-to-one back stable coins. Obviously, THUSD fits in this. You guys >> No, not not a genius uh stable coin, yeah. >> in the first bucket. Yeah. You guys just raised 100 million in the pre-deposit and, you know, you kind of talked about allocating that capital now that it's kind of part of the portfolio, if you will. What does that look like now? Like what does actually allocating that $100 million into these strategies look like?

>> Yeah, so I think we're starting with exactly what you described. So, it goes pretty much 100% into TH Gold. Uh so, then we get that native, you know, 2.3% yield. And then, uh we're going to do mostly CME to start. So, this is part of the reason we're like crazy busy is where we want to diversify, right? We to minimize the execution risk, we're onboarding with like multiple TradFi FCMs. They're called future commission merchants. These are people that have a seat, if you will, on CME, where like futures are traded. This is like the the canonical gold contract is is on CME. So, we're onboarding with like other sort of uh gold OTC desks and thing things of

that nature, so we can we have like other backups and and failovers. We I mean, again, the the beauty is like the the founders of Thea, like, they have this quantitative market-making background in TradFi. So, we're building this extensive system that gives you alerts for anything that can possibly go wrong. For example, our gold loan is denominated using LBMA auction prices. So, there's this like the the spot price of gold is is set twice a day in London. That's not the same thing as a CME. In general, there are a lot of like really smart people in TradFi that are being lost to things, but there could be a little bit of a basis. There could be basis because of the time, because the first London fix is actually very early in the morning in

the US. So, we're monitoring to make sure that that basis doesn't, you know, that doesn't blow up. So, like any sort of basis trade, there's sort of standard standard things and alerts that you have to look out for. And then, so we're we're making sure that that's covered. Yeah. A lot of kind of playing playing through every different little way that this could fail and then building safeguards. >> Yeah. Yeah. And if there's excessive volatility in gold like we've seen over the past several months, is this something that amplifies or kind of reduces the profitability and effective effectiveness of this basis trade?

>> Uh so, I would say it in general it's good for THG gold which was our like second product because the more interest in gold the more people will buy that and just be long gold and get a yield on it and then still, you know, be able to use as collateral in in DeFi. And then for uh you know, for it it's a depends. In general, increased wall, it could be like either indicate like kind of a fear or greed. So, I would say it's it's it's fairly neutral. Uh but, you know, wall um if you look at like on chain, when there's wall there is volume, but then wall meaning volatility, right? Yeah, so, people, you know, trade active traders are attracted to things that move.

So, in general, it would be good because it would increase the the open interest and therefore would allow us to harvest more uh more yield on chain cuz on chain yield at the end of the day that that that roll yield on CME's is not going to be more than 4% for like maybe like a few hours here and there. It's very close to risk-free rate in general. It's just a cost of capital. But on chain, 10% right, you know, 9.5% is is fairly standard pin or it could be a lot higher. So, in general, we would like to to harvest as much as we can on chain before we go to the CME. So, the more on chain the better the better for the yield.

>> Yeah, and that's not just on Hyperliquid. That's going to be across other venues as well. >> Uh definitely. Yeah, so, like, you know, Binance has gold perps and they're like they'll be more. It's essential because with oil right now, it's only Hyperliquid. Like, Binance hasn't launched their oil perps yet. I mean, there's a couple of like smaller venues, but but they don't have that. As far as like the big the big venues also there. Yeah, so we will definitely um harvest the funding rate arb everywhere that it exists on chain up until, you know, not moving the market.

>> Mhm. Okay. And then when it comes to the kind of community side, token side, we're in this really weird era of tokens, right? Where HyperLiquid has come and set the standard for revenue, for buybacks, for kind of creating a environment that is actually, you know, beneficial long-term to its holders rather than destructive. I think a lot of the tokens are destructive in their models. Does Theo need a token? Do you guys require one? What What is the What is kind of like the financial modeling here for why a token could be involved or or or kind of how you guys thinking about that?

>> So, I was a crypto VC before, so I definitely like analyzed the business model of Theo >> Right. >> before I invested and and, you know, certainly before I joined, right? >> And what did you come to? >> Yeah, and I so so so again, it fits into the the application theme first of all, right? It's like it needs to be an application, not infrastructure, right? Infrastructure is done. Uh application is actually useful to people. So, we're not in a rush to to launch the token, uh but definitely it is part of the road map because we want to share our business model with everybody who is a participant in the ecosystem. Like the key for Theo Theo is a network, right?

That's the reason it's called Theo network. Because there's multiple institutions custodians fund administrators, tokenization partners, DeFi partners, chains, investors, of course, right? Separate investors actually put money in the vault, which is different from from TVL. So, there's, you know, there is this multi-layered network effect that we want to build. And of course, if everybody is also uh a token holder, that gives them an additional incentive to to kind of a build this virtuous cycle. >> Yeah, understood. And then >> That's the beauty of of of, you know, I had to use the word Web3, but that's the original promise, right? It's like you share, you know, the the first Uber driver didn't get rich even though he was absolutely essential for Uber or the

first thousand Uber drivers, right? So, in crypto, you actually can make sure that your early users, early adopters are rewarded. >> Yeah. Yeah. What do you think the growth is going to be for THUSD, right? Like you guys have a hundred million dollars in the pre-deposit that filled in 10 hours. >> Mhm. >> Are you are you expecting to be in in the billions this year? Is it like going out and raising capital from LPs? Is it doing it just on chain? Is it a combination? Like Like how does one scale a stablecoin to the billions and and and beyond? Like what does that actually look like?

>> Yes, I think we're going to scale more slowly because we actually want to to give people proper yield, right? It's easier to offer a stablecoin that gives you nothing, right? It's like great, give us some money and we'll just we'll just sit on it and then we'll we'll put it in T-bills and capture massive spread. Best business model of all time. I mean, look, I I I'm sure you wish you came up with that. Uh so, uh I would say we we have visibility of a few hundred million. Yeah, not not not not financial advice or anything, but we wanted to cap it at a hundred for the for the initial like Genesis vault because we want to make sure again, we're very conservative, right? So, we launched THBL last year.

Fine-tuning our tech, our infrastructure on THBL, which is the risk-free rate. That's actually super safe product. Then we launched gold, which is also pretty much like a risk-off, you know, gold had its moment, but in general it's considered a safe asset. Right now we'll go to this gold-backed, you know, yield coin. Uh so, we want to make sure that everything works, you know, well for a bit before we start to to grow TVL. So, our goal is to like I think uh was at Amazon um way back in the day before I started my own tech company. There was a straight off between GBF, get big fast, and GRF, which is get right first.

>> Mhm. >> So, during the dot-com, everybody went GBF, and then they all they all disappeared even though they all had the right business model, right? pets.com had the right business model. It's a massive massive industry now. So, we are more on the GRF side. Let's get this right. Make sure we work out all the edge cases and corner cases, and then then go big after. >> Yep. Iggy Upitis, thank you for joining us in the studio today for this episode of Stable Up, guys, powered by our friends at Frax. That wraps us up for today on The Rollup, guys. Great week DC back to New York with Iggy. Amazing show here today, guys. Thank you for tuning in.

We'll see you next week for DAS big week at Digital Asset Summit here in New York City. We've got a stacked lineup for you guys, so see you guys then. >> Thanks for having me. >> [music] [music]