Meet the Blockchain VC, March 2023

Transcript

hello everyone very happy to welcome you at another online event of crypto Valley Association meet the blockchain VC today we have a bit different program due to the actualities of the current environment um we don't talk to we we we talk about the VC space but we have a very interesting company presenting himself or Chris Maurice who is presenting his company yellow card

which is very active in in Africa I think I'll I'll let him introduce himself in this company and we have with us today my very estimated co-head at crypto Valley Association investor working group the mail zahaze who is also leading the research team a coin Telegraph until talks us about the current space and how she sees what happens and what happened in the last few days so I'm very welcoming you Chris and demelza uh to today's event I will vacuum welcome our audience to be here with us and I hope that we'll get

a useful that we can provide you with some useful and interesting content so please um Chris Morris introduce yourself and yellow card and the mails are later please introduce yourself and your position at cointelegraph yes thank you sir and uh in honor of Silicon Valley blowing up you're bringing a non-vc to meet the VCS event so I I appreciate that um yeah so I'm I'm Chris uh I am the co-founder CEO of Yellowcard uh we are the largest crypto exchange on the African continent we operate in 16 countries all in Africa and uh yeah basically uh Market make it on and off

ramp for African Fiats okay nice to meet you all you've met me before my name is danelza Hayes and I am the director of research at cointelegraph and I'm also the portfolio manager for the zeltner and Co cryptocurrency Frontier AMC okay thank you great could you maybe both of you um inform us how you got involved in the blockchain space sure sure um so I I got into I got into crypto in 2013 so I was in pretty early my uh my

now co-founder is a big nerd uh and so he was you know scouraging web forums back in the day and uh all over Reddit and all of that and I just learned about it very early and that was all he wanted to talk about back then was uh was Bitcoin and uh and so after about a year and a half of of you know hearing about it consistently right um I started to really dive in more and by by 2015 I was fully down the rabbit hole and that's uh that's when I realized this is what I'm going to do with the rest of my life I have a similar story so I'm also celebrating my 10 10th year anniversary uh this year it's 2013 class of 2013.

and uh so is so is quintelegraph actually we're having a 10-year anniversary party at the Paris blockchain week uh Quinn Telegraph also came in in 2013 um I've been with cointelegraph for three years um but but my back story is uh I was working for the Department of State uh as a Fulbright scholar in India and my job was to study self-help groups which were basically micro Finance uh groups of women that were saving around two dollars per month and they didn't have enough savings um to you know warrant the bank giving them a bank account um it was also in a region of India

where it just wasn't common for females to have their own personal bank account um and also the bank was normally located you know a whole day's drive away from where these women were living and so they would save their money in groups and give each other loans based on kind of uh the Merit of each woman's investment opportunities and I was supposed to study how they could basically what what were their saving rates what were their repayment rates interest rates and and yeah I started looking online for um micropayment Solutions and vodafones in PESA came up which was popular in Kenya at the time and it was spreading

into India and then so was Bitcoin actually so Bitcoin was mentioned on uh Reddit as being a possible technology for micropayments because at the time Bitcoin still had blocks where you could put in a transaction without a fee on it and so um you know what one of the bips I think in 2015 kind of kind of got rid of those transactions that were for free but yeah essentially at that point it was still touted as a possible solution for microfinance and and now we're going back in the that direction again with lightning network of course so so that's that's also exciting but yeah that's kind of how I got into crypto a long time ago just learned about it and then uh 2015 by that by that point I was also down the rabbit hole and a full

full-blown uh uh bitcoiner so so a similar story interesting thank you now I would say I suggest that we discuss the business model um from yellow card and that we then we we opened the discussion and talk more about the current state of the space and the perfect is potential and the biggest risks but maybe first uh you know um I want to know from Chris I mean you have a very clear focus on the African continent again I mean in naturally told us about you what your products are but maybe give us a bit the reasoning behind

I mean it's it's impressive of course because blockchain company of in the African continent in a continent where banking is a big issue payments are a big issue but tell us a bit about your specific products also value focus on Africa yeah yeah so I mean I I I think to to answer the why first right it's it's because of everything you just said banking is a big issue currencies are a big issue and uh actually uh sort of fun antidote about how I got there in the first place right um I was at a Wells Fargo one day in Auburn Alabama of all places

and there was a Nigerian guy who was sending 200 bucks to his family and the bank charged him 90 to send 200 to Nigeria and I thought you know this seems absurd right and I I talked to the guy and I said hey have you heard of Bitcoin it's free it sense that it's fun all this great stuff and I I went home and essentially started thinking you know what's this guy's family gonna do with 200 of Bitcoin right you know like we've solved the middle of the problem right I can send him money no matter where he is in the world but then you know what are you gonna do with that can you buy food with it can you pay your rent with that Bitcoin in Legos right and um I'm not sure if I knew where Nigeria was on a map at the time uh they don't

teach you nearly as much about Africa as you might think they do in the American education system but I uh I set up to understand everything that I could right and um yeah eventually I I you know met this guy on the internet as all good stories start met this Nigerian man on the internet and he convinced me to come to uh come to Lagos and just see it for myself right and and really experience the problem firsthand and um yeah and it's it's you know it's everything that you said right the the banking system is unreliable the currency in you know not to pick on Nigeria but in Nigeria inflates over 50 a year last year um and when you have sort of an economy and uh you know broader ecosystem that's like that especially in the largest

economy on the continent uh it leads people to seek Alternatives right and that's what crypto provides and that's specifically what we provide as well right so with yellow card we have three main products there's the exchange which is exactly what you think it is right it's we accept all locally applicable payment methods Cash mobile money bank transfer put your local Fiat on by usdt by BTC or vice versa um number two is a product called yellow pay which essentially enables peer-to-peer cross-border transactions between African countries so if I'm in Nigeria I need to send money to Ghana then you can do that very easily right receive it on Fiat on both sides we power it through the exchange on the

back end and then the third product is an API Suite that allows companies to be able to integrate our on and off ramps for again promoting this on the continent right and just making it more and more accessible for uh anybody on the continent to be able to to get in and get out of the crypto ecosystem how would you charge now the current payment and remittance Market in Africa I mean what is it were your competitors or what's maybe also your market share already in the remittance space yeah so uh you know we're not a remittance company right uh remittance however is a very powerful use case of crypto and so it can be it's hard for us

to say specifically what our remittance market share is because it's just a use case of sort of the underlying asset but uh what I can what I could do is I can point to sort of uh you know companies like Western Union which have been completely dropping off in market share in places like Nigeria um and it's that's I mean solely because of crypto right uh you know Western Union reports that Nigerians send 60 last money less money last year than they did the year before right Nigerians abroad did not stop loving their families they just found better ways of getting them money right and so uh remittances I think a very powerful use case for crypto on the continent and I think the only thing that I would say

about remittance is that um there is there's this misconception out there I I hear all the time this conversation about how much should remittance cost right uh right now it costs about nine percent to send money to Africa the most expensive Corridor in the world and there's this conversation constantly of how much should it cost and I've heard from different players in or out of the crypto ecosystem uh you know oh it should it should only be one percent or it should only be two percent the the reality is is that when you're sending money to most African countries these countries need that money flowing in right so you're the one really providing the service here you're the one providing the value by sending dollars into a country like Nigeria

where they need hard currency flowing into the country and so I think the the question needs to be completely flipped it's not how much should you have to pay to send money it's how much should you be paid to send money to Nigeria and to these places right and that's what crypto does in practice I get more than one dollar when I sell my crypto in say Cameroon on an exchange like yellow card right I get about a dollar and four cents in Cameroon when I sell my one dollar Bitcoin for for Frank and Cameroon right and so it it it you know remittance on crypto rails especially to Emerging Markets sort of flips that question on its head and it's actually how much you should be paid to send that money

yeah yeah as well completely understandable I mean uh how is it now I mean I I I I I share your result I think you you help a lot to the people using your service to the families which can then enjoy basically this this this these transfers uh much lower costs how are you welcomed or criticized by Regulators in this country what do you seem to be are they open to this kind of discussion I mean on the end probably also let's say the National

Banks for them it's also certain risks right if you take if you you know they lose their position as a gatekeeper you come in here you're how are these discussions or do you hold these discussions maybe and are they also different uh maybe if you if you talk to the people using your services from the government at and from the Civil Society maybe which are not linked to the to the government by the way the mail so please feel free if you have a further question also to to to add yes yeah that is uh that is a that is a complicated question my brother uh it's uh look there's there's 54 unique

countries on the African continent and if you ask all of them you'll get 55 unique answers right and so um I would say uh so I guess I I would preface this by saying that we are the only licensed crypto exchange on the African continent we have licensing right now for seven countries and in a number of other countries we have sandboxing formal AML reporting Etc so it's something that uh we see ourselves as leading the way on and sort of writing the playbook for how do you regulate crypto on the African continent right uh and the way that we see it is there's uh excluding North Africa right so focusing on sub-Saharan Africa North Africa totally different regulatory

regime right um but looking at sub-Saharan Africa and you have countries in essentially two different groups right you have countries that just don't really want to talk about it and are not interested they think it's you know they think it's bad or scary but they don't really want to touch it right um and then you have countries that are a little bit more Innovation forward right and want to better understand how crypto works right there a little bit more inviting they they have questions that kind of thing right um both of which are important right um but I you know what I would say is when when we're talking to regulators

and and I think our our team has quite a bit of experience with this we've actually worked with several Regulators including most recently the bank of Botswana on actually implementing crypto regulation in the country right so Botswana has a formal crypto licensing regime now because of the work that our team has done with the the bank of Botswana there um I I think that you know when we talk to Regulators the the the pitch is hey look this is happening whether you like it or not it's going to continue to happen right and I I think when you look at the numbers it's it's very obvious people don't necessarily realize how big Africa is for crypto right uh because Africa sort of missed the boat when it

comes to the internet and other things uh there are more daily active users on crypto in Africa than there are in any other continent in the world outside of Asia uh you have six of the top 20 countries uh on you know most recent chain analysis reports are African countries in in the world for crypto right and so there's just quite a bit of crypto activity going on on the continent right and so I look I mean you know we we get invited constantly to sit down with regulators and we basically show them their ranking on this list and we tell them you know look uh this is this is gonna happen right it's not this is not us right we're not the reason that you're number three on this list right so the question is do you want to do you want to work with us do you want

to regulate this industry in a safe way right and make it accessible prevent scams right sort of formalize it or do you want it to continue to exist in the black market right and generally when you present it that way it's uh it's a much easier it's a much easier yes right yeah this is this is interesting we're also here now given the recent events notable exchanges how is Yellowcard managing its risk in this new environment uh well not banking with Silicon Valley Bank is a good start that's um uh yeah I mean so yeah I would say I I mean I would say

frankly the way that I see the recent events is the the US government has been making moves toward this but has now fully declared war on crypto right I I don't see at least I have not seen any information of I only have publicly available information right but I have not seen anything to suggest that Signature Bank for example was really under the liquidation crunch that silvergate and svb were yet The Regulators saw an opportunity to shut down and send a message to crypto and they you know they stepped up and did that right and so I think you know when we when we look at sort of this new this new industry and uh or this new world right after after this past weekend I I

think it's less about it's almost less about choosing our banking Partners carefully and and more about trying to do more and more of our banking outside of the US right I think it's I think it's clear now that the us is going to continue to how do you say fight against crypto on Shore and you know look I mean they're making the exact same mistake that we tell countries not to make which is if you fight this it's just going to go offshore it's just going to go to places where you can't control it right and so um that's that's the big thing that we're looking at is you know if if this situation continues to get worse how do we make sure that all of our banking can exist outside of the US right emails are what is your what are your

thoughts on this I think it's important also to know your opinion is uh for also maybe from coin Telegraph for how use how you I'm sure also internally you have certain discussion what what do you think sure well you know I I think a lot of banks are going to find themselves let's say broke so to speak in the next couple uh months especially banks in the US I mean even this the Central Bank of the United States is broke right now um in the sense that you know interest rates went up so quickly and and there's a mismatch of of maturities um you know and I I think that um what we saw with the

immediate action by the government was you know you know basically for me it shows that their solution now going forward is is just going to be to create more money and uh and maybe it won't be at the cost of taxpayers as they said directly but it will be at the cost of taxpayers via the the silent tax which is inflation and so I I think that a lot of people over the weekend and more and more people every time a bank has problems will will get switched on to bitcoin and uh you know alternative cryptocurrencies so for me you know it was a hard blow to the on-ramp and and off ramps for Fiat to to to bitcoin or Fiat to crypto

um as the US lost its its three main uh crypto Banks but overall it it turned a lot of people on to bitcoin and I think that you know as we saw with the big move up I I looked at the price earlier was like 25 500 it might be up to 26 000 already I can't I can't I don't know if it passed 20 6K or not but you know as that that that huge volatility swing to me you know it kind of shows how you know probably now analysts are are betting that they're not going to raise rates uh by 50 bips uh during this March's uh uh you know Federal uh Reserve meeting and instead they're probably going to raise it by 25 bips

and and then the market you know raged based on on that and so I think that we um you know overall I just think that that Bitcoin is still offering people a way to do transactions outside of the banking system with full reserves there's there's one Bitcoin is backed by one Bitcoin you know there's no fractional reserves uh with Bitcoin and so I I I think it's very powerful especially in this time as we come close to maybe you know the end of a long-term debt cycle if you want to call it that uh in Ray dalio's type of terminology but yeah so anyways um yeah and and I I tend to agree with Chris that it's

unfortunate that the United States is doing this because um you know there's a lot of talented people in the United States and those people are are going to actually have to stifle their own Innovation or they will have to move to another country if they want to innovate which is like the opposite of what the U.S the ground was grounded on you know and where a lot of its success came the last 200 years it was because they were a home for innovators it was a home where people could take risks and innovate and now and now that's that's not no longer the case so yeah actually something symbolic to the idea that Silicon Valley Bank is collapsing along with the idea of Silicon Valley so yeah I mean I've just talked yesterday

with with with a Swiss bank providing uh service for crypto companies and I mean they have they have obviously very important inflows already starting with FTX and now in this case too I think of course also being very thoroughly and regulated by the financial Market uh authorities I think now um probably they have their very good and important use case and many let's say crypto and especially institutional uh institutions in the space I mean they want to make sure that they are on board

on an infrastructure which is also in a stress situation working well and I think it's it's it's obviously sad that the U.S doesn't provide any more this dissolution and uh yeah we'll see we hope that this has I mean it's good for this the ones who are now winning the game but on the other hand it's also very difficult obviously for the whole for the whole uh um industry nevertheless I mean I I I was during the weekend a few times on let's say checking the the VR price of Bitcoin in the theorem

and I was kind of astonished of these prize hikes even if you see now today I mean the males I think we just we are at 26 maybe a few dollars below just and I mean with an important hike again today would you have thought that this happens I mean before many cries you know when when when when solution providers um vanished bitcoin price came under stress now here it's it's it went the other direction I was kind of astonished how did you did you foresee this or did you expect this well uh I mean you know as as uh you know people like Chris you know we've

seen so much volatility over the last decade in Bitcoin and I you know I thought up until 2020 uh on March 12th when there was the flash crash in Bitcoin down to 3K up until that point I kind of had this naive um opinion that at what at some point the central bank is going to you know let interest rates really go up like like Volker did um uh you know in in the 80s and basically basically let the market kind of return to a normal uh a free market that determines the interest rate but then when they when they came in with that you know zero interest rate policy and basically just pumped back up the

the markets uh immediately in response to the covid um flash crash that's when I kind of had this um realization that the central banks are in a very tough position and they don't have a lot of options except for to continue to debase the currencies and so when when uh when this kind of happened and svb went went under and and all you know the stock prices of signature started to drop and then they stopped trading of signature on Friday afternoon and you know because it had gone down 32 percent um I basically um I kind of foresaw that they were going to bail out the banks because it's it's uh they don't really have if they didn't if they had not bailed out the banks

then today the all the banks would have had a run on them like a Monday morning we would have had Wells Fargo Bank of America Chase they would all eat the large Banks would have had just complete pandemonium and so they had that they had to stop the bank runs from from uh spreading um and so I did kind of see this happening however I did not think that Bitcoin would kick back into gear and go up to 26 000 uh within just a half half of a week from 19 000 to 26 within three and a half days or so so that that was a a sudden move up uh Chris do you want to add something here uh no I think that's completely right

so what do you think now I mean it's uh it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's interesting I mean before I I've noticed this crash and I mean maybe we should also discuss I mean in in the recent year let's say the thesis the Bitcoin these is that it will and that it will be um a store of value in an inflationary environment seemed not to work now we look what happened the last few days it is a bit different again of course we're just its few days and we don't know I think we can uh with the develop general rules of of you know some things we saw which took place in a few days

but but what do you think will Bitcoin be the right mean in in an inflation inflation environment will it be where do you see use case in this environment yeah I think I think what I would say is that in order for Bitcoin to really be used for for store of value um there just needs to be less speculation overall right there's still a lot of speculation right most of bitcoin's trading volume on a daily basis is still speculation and I mean as as long as you have that there's gonna be there's you're going to

have price swings right until the market cap gets to you know several trillion dollars and uh you know and the the trading volumes there's you know infinite liquidity and the trading volumes don't matter um and so yeah I mean I think you know for the for the time being you're still going to see those price swings long term I think it it sort of takes on more of that shape of you know a good proper store of value as you get sort of less speculation or the speculation becomes a lower um how do you say like lower percentage of the overall market cap um but I you know I think what um with I mean still excites me about the the the asset and and sort of the you know the broader ecosystem and

everything is that you know maybe this is not happening as much in the US and Europe but in in other parts of the world uh you know crypto is not just a store of value it's also you know Bitcoin is used for payments right Bitcoin is actually used for you know moving money around internationally right avoiding the US dollar when it comes to International payments right not having to go fill out forms at the bank and you know beg them for hard currency uh things like that right so it it um you know even despite the sort of the fluctuations and the in the price I think it does it does still provide that you know that uh how do you say that uh those use cases for payments and for for things like that I think the the other

thing to to consider when we think about Bitcoin is a store of value is that you know your average person is not storing one Bitcoin right your average person does not have you know twenty six thousand dollars that they're storing in their their savings right um and so you know Bitcoin Bitcoin might move around right and obviously it's still going to impact people the same percentage-wise right but obviously you know you're talking about losing a lot less money if it's you know 100 200 bucks that you're trying to save right and it's it's you know bouncing around a couple dollars here and a couple dollars there so that that might uh you know that might mean something to the person whose savings it is right but uh you know again your average person is not talking about massive amounts of money

swinging you know either way now you you both have a U.S background you're born in the U.S now how do you see maybe I mean you both now you live in Barcelona Chris dementia you're off I think you're you're in the UK um how what's the discussions maybe with your peers or also with your friends uh how how do they see maybe this space is their frustration about this current crypto regulation or non-regulation or more like suppression also I mean in the end I think what is very harmful in the whole this caution always like you know

are you a security or not in the impression I'm looking from abroad I have the impression they discussed it now since five years and we're still basically at the beginning it's always lifting from here and there and we don't really know what what what's your impression or what's the impression of your friend friends what do you hear in this respect uh us is boring now man except for Florida Florida is still cool but the rest of the US is pretty boring I don't know um yeah I mean look I yeah I think um I think you know when when it comes to the industry I I don't see it getting necessarily any better I think since the

Biden Administration took over we've seen sort of just like steady movements against crypto um obviously you know there's an election coming up next year I don't necessarily see it getting better regardless of who wins right if I think if Biden were to get reelected I don't think it certainly doesn't get better right but I don't necessarily see a change at the executive executive level really stopping the how do you say the ball from Rolling downhill right um so you know we'll see um I I think until until we really get some crypto friendly politicians um in Congress and in uh I mean you know at some of these senior leadership

levels but then also in the in the how do you say the bureaucracy right I mean you need you need crypto friendly people not just at the at the top but also in these you know these government agencies that actually do all of the all of the work right um and so I you know really until until you just have more Pro crypto people running like the treasury Department and running the fed and running you know these different agencies I just don't necessarily see it changing right and so is that going to happen within the next four years six years probably not right I think it's you know going to continue to be a bunch of bunch of you know people that are uh sort of old-fashioned when it comes to finance and everything

um and so yeah I mean you know we'll we'll see we'll see how long it takes every all roads lead to crypto right oh you're muted Martin yeah I think what I think it's interesting I mean first of all I think I think now we have a very general discussion which I think it's interesting at the current time I mean on the other hand I think if you see the announcement last Autumn of BlackRock I mean you know supporting or collaborating with with um crypto exchanges where and and also clearly promoting that basically everything will be crypto in a few years be it a regular share or a beat you know

like so I think it's very contradictory and it's it's it's it's it's interesting that that the government and this government agencies are not more like embracing it and looking for like a tough but clear and pro-business regulation as we have it in certain other um other countries I think could be very missed um opportunity nevertheless I mean I think the American Financial Market is the biggest one in the world and probably will also be for a certain time still the biggest one in the world uh um but but still I think there is a mismatch if you have the chairman of the biggest asset manager of the world which

claims we believe that everything will be basically tokenized or in a in the form of of of a token or an isotope or whatever and and on the other hand you see that the government and the state agency they're just not really moving forward it's just lots of noise but in the end there is no clear outcome and no decisions are really taken and I think this is a bit sad but maybe I think the males I think you are very much probably also in this topic and wondering how you see this well I was never a fan of the current

chair of the SEC so my doctoral father was uh was the chief Economist of the cmtc when come on sorry Commodities Futures training commission cftc when um Gary Gensler was the head of the cftc my doctorate father was uh Dr Andre karolenko and um I I in 2018 I went to a Chatham House meeting at Wharton where uh you know there was only 25 people actually it was I was part of the Lichtenstein group that went and there was three or four people from Liechtenstein there um including people from the fmr and Gary ginsler was there and there was only about 25 people so I got to speak to Gary ginsler directly about his

viewpoints and you know we're not allowed to say what was said during those meetings but from that day on I knew that if he ever got into the SEC that it was going to be not good for crypto and um and and I have actually posted that a lot when when he got because you know people said oh he was teaching a course on bitcoin he's really Pro crypto and you know and I I always said no no no you know and like just because you teach a course on crypto doesn't mean that you know you you yourself will will create regulation that supports crypto and so um you know a lot of a lot of people in the government feel that they have to protect and protect us from ourselves and they you know they make

the argument that you know Grandma won't know better and she'll lose her savings if she's allowed to to do various types of risky Investments and um you know Hester Pierce is still uh fighting the good fight at the SEC I think um and trying to object to a lot of this but um you know it takes like like Chris said it just takes a whole team of people constantly fighting the good fight in order to make progress uh against this very strong headwinds um but but to your point earlier about Bitcoin as an inflation hedge you know I I think that like I have a very macro-centric Viewpoint of of asset prices mostly because I think that you know over the last 40 years we've just

seen interest rates go down further and further and so I think over the last 40 years for the most part Trader have um mostly you know we're cut we have kind of like two economies we've got the financial economy and then we've got the world world real world economy and I think the financial asset economy is really just looking at what central banks are doing and so we had a lot of money creation during covid and that took time to you know get distributed throughout the economy and so the inflation rates took time to really grow and you know it's kind of like a lagging indicator in the sense that you know we had 10 inflation each month you know or not on an annualized basis sorry for the

last couple months like in the last part of uh 2022 but the Bitcoin price kept going down and then people were saying well is is Bitcoin really an inflation hedge because we have inflation but bitcoin's price is going down but I think that it's important to look at what the Fed was doing which was they were raising rates they were tightening the money supply and so you know as a lagging indicator that should mean that in a couple months inflation should go down right and so um you know I think that now that we we you know analysts on Bloomberg and stuff are now saying that no they're not going to raise rates that much more I I do think that as long as we don't think the central bank can continue to raise rates that all risk-on assets will continue to

go up in price um but you know it just depends if if the U.S wants to kind of print itself into you know um you know if if the Central Bank keeps printing money you know and it and if they loosen the money supply that will make the dollar itself less important in the global scale so there's kind of a trade-off right now between you know raising rates and making the dollar important again as as a global reserve and and you know medium of exchange or letting it debase and just basically the U.S becoming less and less of a world power and I think that you know this is

a large dynamic that's going to play out over the next decade and uh yeah and we'll see where it goes um but I do think that that they're going to have a heart if they do raise rates we're going to have to get rid of Decades of uh um misallocation of capital and that's going to hurt so bad um that many people are going to be unemployed and asset prices are going to get hit very hard and many banks are going to fail many people's savings will get wiped out and so I I don't think they're going to go on that way because it's not going to be politically palatable yes there's a there's a question uh in the in the chat is Europe going to follow U.S and crypto regulations and

repression I'm not going to pretend to be a European expert so I don't know maybe you want to take that yes I mean we talked we talked a lot about the US uh but I think also I mean we're here in Switzerland where we also have to talk the environment which is around us and this is Europe of course also here different countries different approaches probably lots of coordination the difficulties between these as the different state agency um baby also the males I think you have had some very developed thoughts can you start in replying to this question where do you see Steve is Europe heading

towards well one thing I'm really excited about that Europe's working on is the DLT pilot regime so that started in March they've been working on that for a couple years um that's from the European Union level and um what they're allowing is basically uh like a Sandbox where um PRI you know private firms can experiment with tokenizing or real world assets that will be securities and that retail Traders can trade so it won't be only for professional I mean you there'll be different ways you can build your company and apply for this but um you can basically tokenize a reward asset on the blockchain that's public it

doesn't have to be a private blockchain that's what's exciting about this number one they're allowing public blockchain technology and number two they're allowing retailers and I think that that's really exciting because eventually you know we could have a world where buying a security is like buying something on Amazon you could see reviews you could see pictures you know you could just have a shopping cart of your of your products you want to buy it could be private Equity it could be investing in your friend's startup you know I think there's a lot of opportunity uh to to tokenize assets and and the you the EU I think is being very sensible to have a pilot where you know firms can I do I think they can do up to a billion in this pilot regime don't quote me on the exact number but they can do up to a

certain amount and during those next three years they're gonna they're gonna um work closely with this cohort of firms um from all around the EU um that did apply for this sandbox they're going to monitor it they're going to learn about it and then they're going to create sensible regulation so I really like this approach of doing an experiment First Learning and then regulating versus what the U us is doing which is hammered down before innovation foreign especially that in the past my perception it was like inverted roles no I mean often Europe you know with its

approach to legislate often they did the legislation on something and they didn't allow um Innovation because if something was not allowed then it was forbidden and the U.S in the past decades at least had the more likely approach as long as it's not forbidden it's allowed which helped probably a lot of innovation also in the Silicon Valley at this time which would have been possible in any other part of the world and now it's interesting what you mentioned that these roll up to a certain extent have um changed yeah maybe now I think we're coming soon um to an end but I still would also like

to know I mean we talked a lot now about law about Bitcoin about store of value I think it's also interesting especially also now we have increased with us and you I mean there are many over let's say use cases especially now also in the ethereum environment and with other um protocols providing uh more utility than the Bitcoin protocol does and maybe I would like to see how what what what what's the result on this where do you see its opportunities I mean we saw of course many projects in the last five

years which didn't start really to to fly as well as they should have or could have or but but but still I mean there's still lots of innovation and lots of possibilities in the tokenization and the design of the first and also second layer protocol what where do you see um here opportunities yeah I I think um I think when we look outside of Bitcoin um look obviously there's a lot of there's a lot of innovation going on in these chains um but I think you know let's not let's not sort of Overlook what's powering most of these big chains which is stable coins right it's uh you know ethereum

it's most of these transactions on ethereum are tether and usdc right if you look at the Tron chain now Tron has more usdt than ethereum now right and so it's it's you know it's really um I I you know look I I think that there's there's certainly there's a lot of you know uh various Innovative and decentralized platforms and protocols and everything that could be built on these uh you know on ethereum and on uh Technologies like that but uh I think that uh you know the financial use case right and the ability to be able to move money around the world and all of that is still the most powerful use case and it's still the largest on basically any of these chains right

that's essentially all Bitcoin is used for and then when it comes to ethereum when it comes to any of these other major uh you know major chains and everything it's it's stable coins that are really being moved that's that's what the big volume is right and so uh yeah I mean you know for for what it's worth uh we deal mostly with Tron um it's not exactly my favorite thing in the world but but uh that's what that's what people want right they want usdt on Tron because it's significantly cheaper than ethereum you don't have to worry about each fees anything like that right I can send money for less than a dollar anywhere in the world send a million bucks and you know it shows up instantly right and

I think that's really what people want right and so um yeah you know I think when you look outside of Bitcoin uh frankly I think a lot of these chains are just competing on cost right you know they all I I'm probably gonna piss some people off by saying this but they all basically do the same thing right they you know they provide you a they provide you you know a a chain and a platform that you can build really cool projects on and a lot of really cool stuff but at the end of the day I I think most of the transactions that are happening are still sort of financially based right and and you know really being dominated by stable coins well I have to agree with you I mean

even if you have adapt do you really want your gas fees to dominated in volatile underlying that you know your Gap costs one some you know one day a certain amount in your debt you know to play a video game on the blockchain costs you XML on Monday and x amount plus y on Tuesday it's just it's hard um for dapps uh as well I I I I know it'll upset people as well I mean Quinn Telegraph we pay about 200 people per year per month uh on staff we started out paying them with Bitcoin only when that was the only cryptocurrency in in town um but over time you know we switched to ethereum we switch to the stable coins on ethereum and then we switched to Tron so like a lot of people and even our clients also mostly want to pay in uh

you know Tron usdt on Tron because it's affordable and so one of the things I did was uh you know I've been looking at the on-chain growth of Tron even through the bear Market um you know transaction value montron for stable coins actually grew over over 2022 and so you know I made a Strategic investment in Tron with the zeltner and Co cryptocurrency Frontier um so I'm definitely also um excited about you know low-cost stable coin uh transactions so I do think that's a huge use case I mean it's kind of like the euro dollar um it's outside of the U.S banking system but it's pegged to the dollar except for it doesn't have to touch banks at all so it's like a it's like a

euro dollar on steroids and uh I think that that's that's a great opportunity I'm also excited about uh polygon I think that you know I think there's a lot of discussion a point you know between where will this other activity go will it go to layer competing layer ones will it go to layer twos and I think that you know we saw with you know optimism we saw ebm compatibility which I think was pretty exciting uh it brought on a lot of users very quickly but their scaling solution maybe wasn't the best but whereas arbitrum didn't have a great uh you know evm compatibility but on the other hand it had the ZK Roll-Ups which which was a really nice scaling solution and now polygon releasing the ZK Roll-Ups with

evm compatibility I think has really changed uh the uh the game uh for polygon so I'm also very excited about polygon um and yeah just you know seeing uh more uh people come on to this technology each day and uh and and be able to use it in an affordable and scalable way so yeah I'm I'm excited about uh what we're going to see in 2023 in preparation for the housing which is about a year away I think this was a very interesting statement again the malesa ice from my side I think

um I have nothing to add um maybe you Chris you want an ad the last word the middlesap please buy Bitcoin yep Bitcoin Bitcoin Bitcoin okay great I mean thank you very much obviously this is not an investment advice this is your personal our personal views we just discussed about it everyone has to decide himself I think we and um it was very cool to have you here on this panel it was interesting to talk at

this current time and it was also interesting to see that also both of you are still optimistic as far as I see for the space that we see all different regions of the world have different approaches and um yeah let's hope and work toward a good Financial including inclusive and fair Financial system which puts the people at the center not just institutions and state agencies and um of course we're now in in some cloudy skies and uh but one day there will be more light than we will see in which

direction um everything develops and I think it's very interesting to be part now here building this new infrastructure thank you very much having you here and looking forward to talking to you soon thank you also for our audience for the patience with us I hope that you liked what you have heard and seen have a good evening or a good day bye bye thank you