Morpho Is Coming For The $200 Trillion Credit Market | Paul Frambot

Transcript

Nothing said on Empire is a recommendation to buy or sell any investments or products. All right, everyone. Welcome back to Empire. Hotly requested episode. We've got Paul, one of the founders of Morpho, one of the fastest growing companies in all of crypto right now. Paul, welcome to the show, my friend. >> Hey, thanks for having me. >> Yeah, last time I saw you, you were in Japan. Uh we were in Japan and um you know, shortly after that, you guys wrapped up a monster fund raise. I think it was 150 million. Did that fund raise, you know, because we were we were hanging with some of the Paradigm folks there and then I think it was Paradigm led this round. Did that deal come together in Japan or did it come together before before that?

>> I think it I think it was done already. Uh everything was done pretty quickly. Took like two weeks or something uh approximately to do two three weeks. Um and I believe at at this point in time I the fundraising was already done. we were like finalizing some of the you know uh strategics that were coming into the round. Um including some of uh them we we met in Japan and and and during this trip by the way um but yeah it was done >> two to three weeks to raise 150 million.

>> Yeah it was a bit more. It was like 175 million. I mean you know like if you're >> two to three weeks finalize the commercial side of it like the tur like everything that's amazing right >> and to do everything. I mean there's like a lot of like operational stuff that you do after that lasts forever like you know set settling the transactions and everything. >> Um but I think you know like morpho is is is very easy to underwrite because everything is open right. Um and then obviously like you know you would want to talk to me and to talk to the team etc. But this is the matter of like three four calls but you can do a lot of the underwriting as an investor on your own and also the token is public right.

So, so people you know most of the investors in the industry they already have a perspective on morpho right they already have depth about morpho so they already know right to to some extent um so so yeah and and also I think you know if you're if you're an investor uh right now like and if you believe in tokens and and and the chain like there's I think there's actually quite a few projects that are investable is is is my sense um especially only there are only a few projects that are not there are quite a few there are only a few >> I think there are only a few um I think there's you know there's only a few primitives uh you know you have stable coins you have financing you have

trading you know payments like there's a few categories like this but uh you know by design crypto networks and and defy networks will be winner takes all market right so you're going to have very strong concentration it's only going to be a few players that are worth investing in >> or do you think it'll be a winner take all market when that's not actually how it looks in traditional capital markets. >> It's a good question. Uh two reasons. Um I think there is a more theoretical fundamental reason which is the protocols that are going to unlock the most amount of value for the end user are the one that are going to aggregate the most amount of of capital of people.

Right? So if you think for example of a credit network like like like morpho morpho works as it as its best when it's connecting every single lender to every single bar. So if you're a borrower, you come to borrow, you want to be commit connected to the entirety of the world and you want to have the entirety of the world compete for you and assess your opportunity. So as a network, the maximum connectivity delivers the best product. It's also true in trfy. So why is that not the case in trfy? Well, in trfy that would be a pretty bad monopoly. The good news is that we have decentralized networks. I think most of the value prop of being decentralized is going to be to >> to have you know the set of like standards that are going to unify everybody and no one is going to care if

it's you know the same way Morpho is able to work with Robin Hood and and and Coinbase right like you know those or Kraken like those those companies are competing with one another but they trust the neutrality of the network most importantly because I don't control anything I can't do anything I can't advantage one or the other the code is how the code is right so it's similar to HTTP like it would be bad to have HTTP one and HTTP2 I mean you have to version RHTP but like to have like two you see what I mean it like you would not be able to reach the vast majority of the protocol it's not a application where someone's >> exactly exactly >> um I have many questions on that rabbit hole but um if you said there's only a few investable tokens um what other tokens

are investable right now >> everything I'm gonna say is not financial advice obviously um I think the first thing I would look at is does the team understand what tokens are uh and structure their token in in the way that makes sense right I think the way that makes sense in the case of D5 protocol is is your token a way to own a share of the network is your token a network equity right like it's like it has to be some form of equity in in the decentralized network right and and I think actually very few projects until a year ago uh was in were in that situation I think for example unisoft now did a very good job at like unifying everything as they like to as they like

to say. I you know I I'm generally a big fan of their design and and and the way they've built the the company. So that probably would be would be one of them. But you know what matters to me is like how thoughtful the team is about aligning the incentives around the token. And that does not to me that does not mean uh doing like buyback and burn or that type of things. like how thoughtful are you about for example not turning on the buybacks right if you don't need to and if it does not make any sense or or not having equity on the side if it does not make sense in some cases it could make sense but yeah um so those are like the key things I would say uh surely from a financial engineering perspective but also tells a lot about how principled the team is and

how long-term oriented they can be >> yeah um how did you think about there's so so much conversation this is such a hot topic in crypto actually not what I want to spend the majority of this podcast talking about, but there's maybe one more question here would be this dynamic between the equity and the token. Um I I think you guys had a blog post on this maybe a year ago. Um but I'm curious. >> I like to think we kickstarted the trend. >> You Yeah, you guys were very very early there. Um I think you and I are both aligned that you should have one thing that acrru the value for your company or your project or whatever you want to your protocol, whatever you want to call it. What what would you do if you were a founder who has both today? Would you

just kill one? >> Yes, I think so. I think you and it's hard, right? But I would get one absorbed by the other. I think, you know, I don't think there is a single rule for every project. I think the only thing is important is that it has to be clear for the investors what value you're creating and where does it occur. And so basically the question is what are you getting into if you're buying something, right? It's like this basic principle, but it's actually not something we've not done for like five years, right? Like and and if you don't have an extremely clear answer and both the holders of one and the holders of the other are aware, uh it's a mess, right?

>> Yeah. >> So, you know, in the case of decentralized networks, you know, I think they're very onchain native. I think it makes a lot of sense to have them owned by a similarly onchain asset, right? Which is uh which is a token. If you have a company on the side then I don't think the value of the network should should occur in that and maybe if you have a service business it can it could occur in this maybe that makes sense but in which case you you may want to have disclosures and very clear mandates for everybody. I think the what you want I to be frank I always find it messy right like I never find a way where it works etc. And I think the most important thing is that you want to be aligned with the team right as an investor like you want to make sure that

you know their incent and that's the biggest like out of like all the tokconomics like design that people could invent etc. The only thing you should care about as an investor is like do you have the same incentives as the founder, right? Uh and it's the only thing that matters, right? You want to be able to know what is their their payoff like their incentive structure and and and you want to make sure you want to make sure that you're able to fence the value around and that whenever like some piece of the value is taken, you're able to to also uh uh profit basically. Yeah. But anyway, I think the advice for for people is is do the hard work of of merging one another if you can't find a legitimate reason to keep the two separate and don't invent the

resin if it does not exist. Right? Mo most people did this for because of the Gensler era and they they thought they had to prove their decentralization by having a bunch of companies working. That's the initial reason why with this industry like you know uh sort of decentralized the corporations uh which by the way in my opinion was not a good legal argument of decentralization. Um but whatever. So I would merge because incentives define outcomes right and if you don't have clear incentive alignment you have a terrible outcome. >> Yeah. Yeah. I tend to agree. Um, so David Senra just posted this uh podcast this week of uh Mickey Mala who started Rivet Capital and uh you know Rivet's obviously a big investor in Morpho and

you know very prolific fintech and you know very very early crypto company. I think Mickey started a I haven't listened to the episode actually, but I'm I think Mickey started a company with Wes Casaris who's you know very OG kind of Bitcoin pill a lot of the people in Silicon Valley. Um Mickey's just extremely early and a really great thinker and a great investor um and also an investor in Morpho. I'm curious what uh Mickey and the Ribbit team have done to help Morpho if if anything. >> Yes, they've done a lot. First thing I I'll say uh so Mickey specifically Mickey and and and and Ribbit in general, you know, they're not the type it's a very original font the way

they're built. They're quite small compared to like some of the very large uh uh VCs that can exist uh today. They're not like super super technical, but like they would not do like the protocol design stuff that the paradigm would do, right? They don't have like the huge team and operating machine that A16Z would have but they have two things. They understand incentives extremely well and and like they have such a depth and understanding of like the finance business. So the intersection of tech and finance they understand very well like ribbit literally means interest rate in ancient Hebrew, right? It was half of their pitch to me. It was like oh like our phone was is literally named interest rate. you should invest, right? I was

like, "Oh, that kind of makes sense." Like, you guys must have thought about it. Uh, and and so that's the one then they have a lot of depth in the intersection of finance and tech. Um, and the second thing is they are incredibly trusted by on the humanto human relationship, right? You'll never see them on Twitter like, you know, I don't even know if Mickey has an account or something. Um, but anyone important in the world of finance knows about Mickey. Trust me, right? And I can't name specifically the the relationship that they helped us build, but they've helped morph built extremely important relationship.

>> Yeah. >> Most of them, you know, are not public today, but it's like, you know, is is there's been they've been instrumental in in in especially Mickey does not talk much because obviously has a bunch of like, you know, things to do, but he knows extremely well what to tell you and who to connect you with. It's pretty impressive on that regard. >> Yeah. I mean, I can imagine where they were helpful. I think Mickey sits on the board of Robin Hood and I uh I believe they're one of the early investors in Coinbase. Um >> they did the seed of Coinbase and the >> Coinbase. Yeah, I think I think Mickey's on the board of Robin Hood. So, and you know, yeah, those are two companies you guys just embedded with. So, for people listening maybe who are not as familiar with Morpho, what is the you know, Rivet

has the napkin test. What is the napkin test for how you talk about Morpho? Yeah, I mean Morpho is infrastructure for lending and borrowing. So we basically connect two types of users. Uh lenders on one end that have an excess of capital. They want to generate interest, right? And on the other end you have people that have a need for financing and they want to borrow money, right? And Moro builds the pipe uh to connect the two together, right? And so our goal is that you know as I was mentioning at the beginning is is you get access to the best possible opportunity for what you want like as a borrower you have you know an ambition you want to fund like a project you want to do or you know may that be like some

financing on receivables or on uh some bitcoin collateral or on some stocks or whatever. Um we're going to connect you with the largest amount of lenders in order for you to get the most competitive most liquid terms right. Um in practice it's a piece of code that runs on blockchains that you can configure the way you want to accommodate any type of obligation you want between two parties and in practice you know that's yield product you see in fintex like those like non-custodial savings accounts it's like when you take out a loan in a fintech that's you know moro behind the scenes uh but it's really about having this connectivity at layer that unlocks the best possible opportunity for a given profile. Yeah, tell me about mid uh Morpho Midnight.

>> Yeah, well the goal of Morpho is to do the entirety of credit, right? Like we credit is like a $200 trillion market. You have a lot of different pockets, right? You know, you have government government bonds are like a trillion dollar hundred trillion dollar market. Um you have uh second lending, you have consumer loans, you have receivables financing, you have a bunch, right? And today crypto only does crypto stuff. only does crypto back loans right which is a very small market like a 50 billion market approximately of which morpho is like you know like an important share already we need to get out of this like we need the entirety of financing to come on chain right and

and more for midnight is an attempt to that right morph midnight is a protocol that is allowing new types of obligations between parties it turns out it's an obligation structure that is very similar to what you have in traditional finance. It's based on like a fixed rate fixed term uh uh instrument uh that allows you to um basically lend and borrow money like you would do on on more food for today except this time it's like you can control the rate right so that's like the basic you know principles obviously there's much more depth to it but that's the core idea it's just basically uh obligation structure that resemble trfy and that is fixed rate fix >> yeah there is a um so back in 2023 I want to say uh Mike and I launched a new

podcast called Bell Curve and the entire first season was on fixed rate lend borrow and how it was going to be the next big thing and we were just you know far too far too early to you know talking about that but um I remember you know there was a lot of conversation we looked at the history of it there's like you know Ethland which then obviously turned into a um there's a company called Dharma who was doing this back in the day I think it was Nadav who ended up selling to I think OpenC might have bought them uh Voltz Protocol Um there's there's a lot of there's kind of a graveyard of fixed rate lend borrow. Why do you think you guys were able to pull this off? I'm assuming the the sell for fixed rates has not been a hard sell. It's a very obvious natural

evolution in this market, but there have been people trying to sell this for many many many years. Why have you guys been able to crack this and others have not? >> It's a great question. I think there is a product understanding problem uh at the time and there was like some technical challenges that and time to market element that were hard to solve. So I think from a product perspective it's important to understand that surprisingly the reason we built a fixed rate protocol is not to get the fixed rate it's to have control on the rate which is a slight nuance is like we want to give the user the ability to set their rate right because today the rate varies according to an arbitrary formula right it's a formula it works according

to some market conditions uh but it is a formula that is arbitrary um whereas as if you talk to large financial institutions that want to control their risk, they also want to control their rate. Uh and and control is really the key of of of everything. So first it was about understanding this and this nuance because it informs the design you're going to go after. But then the second thing is okay why do all of those those projects fail and why why midnight is is built completely differently. Few things back in the day you had low liquidity and high gas. So high gas is basically there's certain types of design you can't do because it's just too expensive. Now chains have scaled and

you have this sort of mors law for chains where like throughput is is increasing like you know every year kind of um and then the liquidity piece is think of it as like the set of participants that were directly interacting with the protocols were retails like we've built retail products right like when you think about a compound etc it's all about abstracting complexity for the user it's all about managing managing the risk managing the rate managing your liquidation parameters just we don't let you touch you anything and we're going to do everything and and you know just like a broker or or like a bank right uh uh would do and and morpho stake is hey like if you want to scale you have to let the smart participants in the market

do that for you so this is why we started by by by modularizing the risk management right um but risk management was not enough like the large institutions that we worked with are like we need to control the rate like we're we're never going to subscribe to a formula that we haven't chosen we you need to control that, right? Um, and so, so basically, Morpho evolved into this protocol where we we push complexity to the edges and we have this like more active participants which now we call curators, but that's the same idea. It's like morpho midnight if you try to use it as is, it's very advanced, right?

Like most of the user on midnight today, it's all programmatic, right? like and it's all market makers that are plugging and that are market making at at obviously you can take on the front end etc. Um but uh but yeah and so we had to build this ecosystem of smart participants that will build like this abstraction layer for the end user eventually to be able to to access fix rate. And obviously back in the day no one had this sort of like curator model. But the key strategic advantage of of morpho is that we have this ecosystem of very smart participants which by the way holds billions in funds right like and and midnight midnight is still uh is not in the vault yet. It's like a switch we have to turn on in the protocol that

we're deliberately turning leaving off. We want to like leave a lot of time for midnight to to you know leave a lot of lindy and and trust etc. You know at some point in the future we'll turn it on but it already has billions in in liquidity that are available to quote on midnight. >> Who is the borrower and who's the lender for midnight? >> So I mean proquest permission I say could be anyone to anyone. um you know what >> who's who's the who's the customer like you like you build products to serve a a customer segment like who is the customer segment you were thinking of when you built midnight >> yeah I mean it's a lot of people know it's a bit like stable coins like stable coins have like a million you know ICPS right

uh you know mostly it's it's two profiles it's like the distributor and the operator the distributor would be the Robin Hood the Coinbase you know those like FinTech the operator would be the curator like the cryptonative curator or the largest asset managers in the world, right? >> So this is a this is Apollo and steakhouse. >> Yes, exactly. That's like the the type of profile. But so you need the product to be a good developer product, a good infrastructure for them to be able to build a good product for the distributor. Right? This is how you should you should think about it. D5 protocol in my mind in in 2026 is it's a developer platform that allows finance people to provide good products to

fintech people, right? Uh and so Midnight is going to be used the bare metal midnight is going to be used by um operators of of of the market in order to distribute it to to >> to the big fintex. Can we talk about this idea of DeFi becoming a one big uh or sever several layers? Um >> yeah, I love that. >> So when I see when I look I think unis swap was probably the first to do this, right? You're actually you're actually kind of >> uh oddly I feel like when when a lot of products develop you're trying to strip away complexity and weirdly in DeFi you actually kind of want to add complexity so that you can serve different markets

and different customers. So, Uni V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V2, right, you could um make and take or you could LP like you you could do all these things as as a retail user. And then V3 makes it a little more, you know, you can't it's a little more complex. And then you have V4 where it's really like just a small group that they're optimizing for. And I see you guys doing this, right? And even in the the credit markets, you have like a I would say um maybe we could compare to um yeah, we could say a was the, you know, V1 here. And then you have Morpho Blue where

you're adding curators on top and then and then actually Midnight I see as another layer on top. >> How do you use that? >> Yeah. Okay. So, thumbs up. Give me the Yeah. Talk to me about your philosophy here. >> Yeah. I think that's very intentional and it's a very natural evolution. Um I I love the UNISOP story. You know, to your point, taking side of V2 and making side of V2 was retail. In V3, only takers could be retail. Makers had to be uh experts. And in V4 you can't take at the protocol level as a retail you have to use unis swapex or an aggregator and you can't market make without like another layer of traction. Um and I think that's very intentional for for two reasons is you want two things. You

want to be able to accommodate uh users for their preferences. So that requires modularity. You can't have one size fits all right. Uh so that's the first thing. But then once you have a lot of options right once you have a million um units of v4 pools with different features etc you need aggregators you need layers of abstraction that are going to do the busy work of choosing or managing the operations right and so in unis swap before it's like an aggregator in midnight it's a router like you know you also have like it's actually very close to unis swap midnight in that regard uh and and we have vaults to like make it like a a ner product for for for people uh for the bars. Now you also have routing on on midnight etc. So it's like

one dimension by one dimension. If you want it to be market efficient u then you you absolutely need to give it to the market. Like one way to think about it of why you need it absolutely is if you're truly serious about bringing credit on chain you want to underwrite eight billion people right and there if you want to underwrite eight billion people I'm not going to do everything on my own right I'm going to need tens of thousands of curators that are going to go for every or you know and those are going to be banks regional banks uh asset managers like you know anybody and that are going to source credit and are going to and the right people for their ambitions and it obviously needs to be tens of thousands of curators to do that work. It can't be

all of us. And it's dystopian to think that, by the way, one entity would govern the entirety of what people are entitled to in terms of credit. I I I really think it's a dystopian future. Has to be it has to be the free market to get the fair price for everybody and to discover more of the people that don't have access to credit today. >> Yeah. Um so to to extend this I think when DeFi you know if you go back to DeFi summer it was like okay unis swap is going to overtake NASDAQ right it was it was uh you know a is going to over right it was it was the idea that these apps would proliferate and the way that I am personally thinking about defi today is that the apps the front end actually doesn't matter that much it's that they're actually an extension of

fintech there they're defi is doing what fintech never could do because defi didn't rip up the rails So DeFi in my mind the what it ends up becoming and what it's starting to become is just infrastructure like financial infrastructure. Um so I'm curious like if you know in five years if a billion people are using Morpho but nobody's ever heard of the Morpho brand or nobody's ever gone to Morpho's website except like let's you know your typical B2B buyer. Is that a is that a success for you?

>> I think so. I think people will still have the same perception of morpho that they have of visa today that's my goal is we want to be understood by the customer that if an earn product or loan product is powered by morpho you want to have the confidence that you're going to have the access to the best opportunity for a given risk profile it's obviously not a guarantee that you're never going to lose money like such product does not exist it's not about that it's about when you use morpho you're connected you're going to have the best opportunity and I want the consumer to understand this right. So I think the brand will still be visible to the end consumer but that is to your point mostly about hiding the wires like

people will never you know it's it's like Visa no one really understand what Visa does like as a most consumer they see the Visa logo uh but but they don't they don't understand what it is and they don't need to fully understand they just need to know that it's going to work right and it just needs to be an expectation that you have a Visa logo right that's the only thing um so I think this is the same aspiration for powerful but but to your point you know and I think crypto is just infrastructure crypto as a product is speculation uh this is the only vis and you know it's not that interesting as we as we all know >> I like to think we've been also early in this you know I wrote like a few articles like three years ago saying that DeFi should be infrastructure and

and not decentralized brokerage platforms but but protocols like the internet >> um so so yeah and that's been always the path we've done and this is why we've been introducing those layers etc. Why do you think you guys were able to have such a meteoric rise when so many other people who were trying to do similar things to you did not? Was it this is almost sometimes an obnoxious VC, you know, a VC question because you're like, I don't know, we just like out executed people. It's a little less exciting than you think it was. But was it an execution game? Was it a you got the technical infrastructure right? Was it a BD game? What is the why why did you win here? I so first I should say we are very far away from winning the because to me winning is is is

>> how have you been able to uh do so well I would say. Yeah. >> Yeah. I mean relative to the rest of crypto we have obviously but but like like truly truly winning is only once we have like a majority share of the credit on chain. Um but anyway to answer your question I don't think it's execution game. you know, Morpho, we ship a protocol every like year or two, right? It's a very slow execution by nature of of the, you know, and in in in of of the protocol being immutable, etc., etc. And funnily enough, you know, in tech, it's a lot about like a lot of iterations all the time, etc., like like ship v1, then v1.1, go to market, ship another

version, etc. In in web 3, you can't really do that and you should not do that because uh because it's finance, right? And finance is the opposite. It's like it's like basically you need trust, you need lindy, it's slow, you need to build a reputation that compounds over the years, uh, etc., etc. So, I actually think direction matters more than execution when it comes to to uh, uh, crypto. And, and direction comes from first principal thinking. Direction comes from asking you why are you doing what you do? It's not because everybody is doing something like buybacks or having token and equity that you should do the same. You have to challenge yourself to understand why. It's not

because you have a lot of craze in in crypto and etc. And I think what made the success of relative success of Moro at the time was like we really ask ourselves a question like when we do something we we we know why we do what we do, right? And it's really based on first principles and that makes us like not like sometimes we don't pump with like the trends because we don't do that. We don't do like we don't do like all those things but because we follow first principles and we know why we do what we do and that's a long-term game and that compounds right because the because you can only ship a thing every two years the thing you ship must be in the right direction.

Uh and if you don't get hacked and and you close those partnerships the there is the trust flywheel that appears etc. So that's that's the that's my take at least or my sort of like awareness on on how we've gone so far. Um but again I will say like it's still like the like the vast minority of the journey like the vast majority of the journey is still to be had and I genuinely mean it like it's it's like the fun part is going to start now. >> I agree. I completely agree. Um, what have you learned about? Okay, so if you're only shipping a new, you know, protocol here once a year, once every 18 months, what uh it becomes a like BD becomes extremely important. What have you learned about BD um from doing

Morpho? >> So many things like >> I'd also be curious how how sales and BD runs internally. Like do you treat it like a you know on one hand let's say there's a spectrum on one side of the spectrum is like you know crypto protocols from years ago that like refused to hire even one salesperson the other side would be like you know >> like you know I think of cosmos when I think of that sorry to the cosmos folks um I just remember having a conversation with them I was like you need BD people they're like we refute like the best tech will win I was like no so anyways that's one satisfaction the other side is Like think of SAS like very B2B buttoned up.

You have a BDR or SDR who drives to an account exec who drives to a customer ser success manager. Like how do you how do you even structure your sales team and what have you learned about sales? >> So many things. I think that was probably the function. You know I as I I'm super lucky to have the to to get to work in every aspect of Maru. You know I've done protocol engineering design. uh I've done product, I've done you know marketing like operations, finance etc. But GTM is probably the function that I underestimated the most on how big of a science it was. Like building a good GTM team that actually knows how to bring the product to market

is is is a beast. like really like building the org that allows your product to be known and integrated uh and grown in the entirety of the market is is is absolutely insane. So I think the first thing I learned is that it was actually an art, right? And an art that you learn by doing and over the years there's a reason why all the best sales leaders they have 10 15 years of experience is because it it takes a time to to learn, right? And so so I think that that's the first thing I learned. The second thing is um and I could talk for hours about like you know the different learnings but I'm trying to think what could be useful for the for the audience. I think

>> you have you have an audience you have an audience of one my friend. We're doing this for uh I'm asking the questions that that I am we are evolving sales you know I constantly evolving sales here. So >> I think it's another thing I learned is that what we call sales is BD in the traditional uh uh world and what we call BD is extremely hightouch BD in in in the SAS world. What I mean by this is crypto does not have so many so much reputability yet. There's still like bespoke deals for every single partner etc. And you you it still has to be like it's it's starting to get to the point where we have a critical mass where we can start having sales and like reputability in the different products uh you sell. But but the reality is that

a lot of the deals are still hand-to-hand combat, right? and you have to figure out what the person needs and there's still such a gap of understanding but also of technical stack uh between you know the integrator and you that you need the GTM folk that is in the middle to and that is bridging the two worlds to be extremely technical and deep about like understanding what are their technical requirements what is our product offering how can I match the two and and that is that is not easy to find people that have the relationship skills and the GTM grit and all the things you want about a cell sales but at the same time has this depth about product and are able to to do the matching I was I was talking about I think eventually this will change I

think this will only be true for new markets like bringing in new the newest categories that we need to bring in you need those sort of like highly trained assassins that can deploy in those large companies and explain them how to to to to move on chain but as we win some category leaders like Coinbase like Robin Hood and others that's going to inspire a lot of people and they're going to be able to do the work on their own and meet you where you are, right? Because they've seen Robin Hood do it. So, they're like, "Oh, we should probably do it as well." So, they're going to get ready and by the time you meet them, they're already ready and instead of having a BD person, you can have a salesperson. They can just show, you know, they understand the need already and they have a perfectly

reputable GTM process and product that they can ship and sell extremely easily. Um but um but yeah, I think the space critically lacks GTM talent as well that you know have the experience and the crypto knowledge because in order to sell well you need kind of like both. And I know that because I've been hiring GTM folks for like six months and I've interviewed the entirety of of this industry and I'm always very frustrated uh in in in general. Uh but we're getting there. We're getting there. I'm hiring GTM people. If anyone listening, >> when you say GDM, GTM people, do you like who do you >> who do you want? Do you want a seller or do you want a BD person or do you want a

like a growth person? >> Um, at the moment we're hiring kind of everything. And also, you know, uh, everybody has a different naming for everything. Like we have our definition of partnerships, we have our definition of uh, account growth, uh, sales, like etc. you know what I'm I'm looking at at the moment that is public in our website is people that can grow existing accounts like we have existing integrations that are big uh you know how can we grow them how can we can make them more successful so that's one uh another would be hey uh we have all the fintech leads coming in and today we don't have the capacity to handle all of them so we need more bds to to hire on the on the fintech side of things we have tr institutions right so we're

looking for uh head of institutions to to work with us etc., etc. >> Yeah. >> So, so yeah. >> Nice. >> And we're also looking for someone to lead the entire engine. Um, but uh but yeah, >> like a chief revenue officer >> kind of kind of. Uh um yeah, I call it like head of GTM because I like humble titles, but but like >> it's it's it's kind of that. Yeah. >> Yeah. Nice. Um, I imagine it's easy or easyish or easier to sell into Coinbase or Robin Hood because they're actually decently familiar with what it's like to work with crypto protocols. Extremely tough to sell into a regional bank that has, you know, their youngest engineer is 55 years old. Um, how do you what do

you even sell? Like why why do they need you? What are you selling to them? And what does that sale look like? >> Yeah. Um, you mean the regional banks specifically or? >> Yeah, just the um No, I mean like the more tradition Yeah. traditional capital markets players that have never done anything on chain. >> Yeah. So, I think the first thing that also learned the hard way is that you want to meet the customer where they are, right? You don't want to be the one that does the heavy lifting just for them. There's like too much risk involved and you're a startup like if you don't move fast, you die, right? So, you you like you need to respect that.

Now in some cases that are strategic you can invest the time over multiple years and we have some of those partners I can like think of three or four of them we've been working silently with for years and proof of concept after proof of concept just to build a relationship because it creates such a advantage to build that relationship and education within the team because you can forge their understanding in a way that you know benefits you uh and and and you know obviously because the way what you built is also what you think makes sense. It's not like uh but but yeah and and so except in those rare cases where you can afford to have like one two three four bets I think generally you don't want to spend any of the time with the people that are not you know in in

crypto at all because there's enough people that are interesting that are that are meeting us where we are and we want to address them first and we want to focus the energy there. I think if anything you start with marketing with those people like educational content that scales but you don't spend onetoone time only broadcasting. Um yeah. >> Yeah. What if um what have you learned about how many people are at Morpho right now? >> 80 maybe a bit less 75. >> Yeah. Block so Blockworks has 75 or 80 right? 75ish right now. 80 79 I think is the right number. Um so sim yeah similar scale I'd say to you guys in terms of company size. So I I can maybe empathize with some of the people and scaling problems that you might be going

through. Um yeah, what have you learned about scaling a company and what have you found to be the unexpected challenges? >> A deep I saw Merlin I saw Merlin was reading a um a book on like scaling people. I think it's really >> from Claire and uh >> I just I just know I I don't know Merlin very well. I know you better. I've met Merlin at D, you know, a couple times, but I just I was like I know what he is going through right now reading that book. Yeah. So, >> yeah. No, Claire's great. She she's in Moro, by the way. But uh um it's um it's I guess to me scaling one the things the

two things I've I've I've learned is like you have to think about your company as a vector which is the vector sum of all the people that compose it right and so your job is to define the direction of the vector and you have to maximize the uh I don't know the English word for that but like the size of the vector basically the intensity right and so what does that mean concretely is you need to define the purpose of what you're you're building and I think it's it's very that's the key thing I've learned is that you need people to understand why morpho exists you know that's the single most important thing

and and when this is clear and laid out you have to connect to their job right like why morph exists and what is a n chart and a product what is the product that you know helps you achieve that mission, right? And what is the or chart that is basically built to to build that product that achieves the mission, right? And and and so I think it's it's it's two things scaling. It's defining the why and defining the how. Why being the direction, the mission, and making it clear to everybody and making sure they connect in their heads how their job is going to basically impact the mission and build build the org chart around it.

It all comes down to the why, right? Uh and and then the second thing is what are the operating principles uh that you know people should follow in order to achieve that. The latter is harder to define because you only kind of like only discover it along the way. Uh it only also stems a lot from your own personality as a founder. I feel >> that's what I was going to say. It's actually the founder knows deeply. I've found I think Mike and I have a very deep philosophy of how to build a company but didn't realize that was a personal philosophy of ours and so you have to >> over the years you're like this person's not working out but they might work perfectly at another company. So you have to spend a lot of time actually defining these things.

>> Yes. I think I think it matters like I so every week I have like three or four like like meetings with maybe not three or four these days but like meetings with people in mor like individually. So I meet with everyone individually every now and then and and one of the question I like to ask is like you know understanding what what is different and more fob compared to the other companies they've worked at and this helps me understand better how we operate. Um and and then once you can name it and describe it, then it's it's easy to like, you know, run a process to hire people because you can look for those character traits that you know are going to work as a group, right? And and honestly, you have to come back to it

all the time like I come back like you know on the the operating principles that we have like and how we operate like every two months or something. I edit like a little sentence, a little thing here and there as I myself understand it more. So anyway, as soon as you have the y and the direction and you have the how, which allows you to to basically scale that vector, I think that's the key recipe. Um, it looks a bit abstract when I describe it like this, but it truly is what it is. >> I don't know. I know, you know, I know exactly. >> Yeah. Uh, but yeah. >> Yeah. Um, you guys raised 175 million.

Why raise that much money? I think a lot of the capital the large fundraises right now are going into like hardware, robotics like you know atoms not bits physical goods and I think a lot of people think that the days of you know raising 175 million for maybe a software company was you know maybe peaked in 2021. So I think it's pretty rare to see software and code raise 175 million other than AI. Um, I'd be curious why you raised 175.

>> It's a great question. I think the answer is we're not a software company. We're a network company. Um, you know, Morphos Code is is valueless. Like it's it's open source. Anyone can copy it. Like it's it's out there, etc. What has value is the network, right? It's the ability to connect all the lenders with all the borrowers. The same way, you know, I'm sure Visa's code is is not valuable, right? and it probably has been built like 50 years ago like visa and everything. So it's not the code that makes visas value. Uh if anything it's like the opposite right like and they all know they need to upgrade and and everything. it's more about their connectivity, their distribution, right?

And and so that's the first thing I say is um and if you look historically at at at at the best businesses, usually it's like when you have the best defensibility is when you have deep enterprise integration and when you have network effects. Turns out Morph has both, right? It's a network which edges are deeply integrated into customers and into enterprises. And the more people join, the better the product becomes to the point where our customers want Moro to be successful. Like they they they they need they need the network effect so badly that you know they would want more lenders and bars in more in order for the rates to be better to be more

liquid etc. And if you reach that stage that's precisely what makes you usually a network business is when the value of your of your product grows super linearly with a linear size increase of your of your set of participants. and and and if your customer realize that they help you grow, right? And and you know, so so Morpha is the in the unique position to be in both of those categories at the same time, which makes it a very compelling investable like uh project. Now, on the size, what we're going after is huge. It's like the entirety of the credit market is $200 trillion dollar. Obviously, if you only look at concquering the crypto lending space, like that's not like like it's not even worth like in like like to be frank investing in if I'm being

completely honest, right? Like if the ambition though is to go after Trefy and you know, tens of tr like asset managers that hold tens of trillions of dollars, you better have a lot of capital, right? And you know, I think eventually I think we'll raise so much more. I think it's the honest truth is like we're so far away like we're, you know, we're probably going to raise so much more in the future. I don't know, you know, when etc. But if the ambition match with like our execution, we we should because otherwise there's no chance, right, we're we're we're going to be able to disrupt Chi. >> Do you guys have the do you guys have the incent like have to play the incentives game in the same way that chains do? Like I was talking to one of the new corporate chains yesterday and

they're like look like we have to play the same we thought we wouldn't have to because of our brand, but like we have to play the same game. Like we have to, you know, we want this huge Fortune 100 to come onto the chain. we're giving them a lot of money to come on and that's just the game that is played right now. Do you how do you think about doing that? >> Yeah, it's a good question. >> I think it's obviously two things that does not let you play the incentive game. It's brand and product differentiation.

Uh like in order not to play the incentive game, you should not be comparable, right? It's only when you're not comparable that you can't have a distributor squeeze you for more money by putting you into competition with other people, right? And if you take lending for example, earn as a product is like in Trafy, it's a it's a pretty bad business. Like it's like three dimensions like is your product safe, liquid, high yield, right? Like those three things. So everybody's comparable with one another. You could use one or the other. You know, you could make argument that one is safer and it's like highdimensional. So like it's hard to argue even though like you know they got hacked or whatever. Uh and it's the same in TR fight like you have a bunch of

money market fund like honestly what's the difference between the money market funds like like what the hell right and so their fees are are like super compressed right and rightfully so. Um um and so in what does that mean is that means you have some products that are highly not differentiated in which case you have to play the incentive game and you have some products are highly differentiated because you're the only one that you know is immutable and gives you control or the only one that you know lets you play with programmable compliance with a wide set of collateral with fixed rates with all of those things. Uh and so you are or or because you have the deepest liquidity etc. in which case you don't have to play the incentive game. And so with that in mind, you have to, you know, put forward

like the product differentiation. I It's kind of obvious business tactics, but it's kind of like what it is. In some cases, the customer care about those um and you can make it hurt. In some cases, they don't, in which case, you play the incentive game. >> Yeah. Yeah. Um, who are the dream customers for you today? Is it the exchanges? >> We kind of won already all the exchanges, I feel like. I mean like we sort of integrated everywhere. Uh obviously we could grow more of those integrations. Some are just wallet integration and not main exchange integration etc. You know we're going to announce more etc. I think this is kind of like the you know easy lead kind of that we can do right now and it's an ICP that we have and that we go after etc.

Finex is like obviously the new you know when I say fintex like people that are not cryp like exchanges are fintex now but like that are not exchanges I think the leader of the category is Robin Hood and you know winning Robin Hood obviously had tremendous effect on on how we we we've been working with others um I think for I don't I don't know if I have a dream customer that I don't feel like we've won already or that that we you know that we work with is more to me it's more about uh making sure we can have a high like to me the bottleneck is more how can we have more customers to drive stronger network effects is more

what keeps me more at night I would say but I don't have like a dream nobody comes to mind like to be honest >> do you care more about the mark the borrower side or the lender side what's the inhibiting factor to growth >> it's a question I get asked a uh something I have a lot of thoughts about some some part I keep for myself because I want to keep some some edge uh but yeah I think both are important um in different ways you can adopt very different strategy uh to grow one or the other you know I mean the easy answer is like it depends on the interest rate right like uh uh whatever side is missing you need a more attractive like

interest rate and there exists an interest at which the other side comes right. Uh so so yeah it's like you know during three months one is going one side is going to be very constrained then it's going to be the other then it's going to be the other etc etc. So so it constantly changes. >> That was that was a vague answer Paul. >> It was it was intentionally. >> Yeah that's that's fair. We can we can move on. Um back to the BD side. The thing that struck me when we were in Japan together is how much you travel. I don't know if this is a constant, but it seemed like you were on the road for I don't know two months or something. It was Japan and Singapore and San Francisco and New York and Miami and

London I think and all all these different places. How what is how do you think about the importance of being in person for for sales? >> It's important I think it's important for uh I think there's probably three reasons. um when you have educational gap when you have cultural it's important culturally I'm thinking specifically of Asia super important to be in person for Asia um and and you know when people need to trust you because you know I think I think all of those at the end of the day comes down to one thing which is trust um which is those people at some point need to take a leap of faith and they you have more

information than they do you understand this thing more than they do. They are taking risk for their carriers. Uh it's it's a bet for their carrier as individual usually because they're leaning into the crypto space. If you know if we blow up they blow up, right? Like you know uh that that type of thing. So this is important or if they're the CEO of the thing like they won't you know they won't be fired but like their investors will replace them or their business will would go out of business etc. So I think this is this very unique marriage between like again tech and finance where you need the trust and there's a reason the finance the tech bros don't care about in person too much but the finance bros care is because finance at some point there's a trust element to it. You're going to

give the money to someone and and like they can it up and it's too high dimensional for you to control everything. Whereas tech it's like you know very asyncing communication fast you can control every dimension of the products etc. That's not the case of finance very fundamentally. And and so I think you you need to you need to do that. Um I personally don't like it that much. Uh strangely I do it a lot. Uh it's it's it's uh not the most enjoyable. Uh but um but I think it's it's useful. This is why I'm I'm doing it.

>> Yeah. Um I'm very curious to you have a better view into the vaults market than nearly anybody and there's a very interesting like subindustry developing here with you know you know Morpho and Veta and Centura and uh Upshift and the curators like Gauntlet and Stakehouse there's a whole sub industry developing how do you think about um you know right so let's look at let's look at this uh cur the chart of c uh curators right now with vault deposits on Morpho. So, you've got Gauntlet um you know, Gauntlet at 18%, Centur at 15%, Steakhouse nearly 50%. Um how do you

think this ends up developing like in in a year from now? Will it still be Gauntlet, Steakhouse, and uh you know, Spark and Centur and these guys, or will it will it look very different? >> Um I not sure. I can tell you what it looks like 20 years from now. Maybe not 20 years, but like five, 10 years from now, which is it's a very wide set of of vault curators that are the same way you have a lot of banks today. And I think the reason you have a lot of banks today is that you need to source credit. You need to source the the borrowers. And you're going to need that bank in that village in France for the financing of the houses of like whoever lives there or the bakery or like whatever. uh and

and you can't have like a single entity to do it all purely operationally does not scale and and you can't do that. Um so that's um so that's where I think it will be eventually. I don't think it's a winner market um for for for that reason except if the size of the market is constrained. If we stayed in crypto back loans only maybe one two years from now market could concentrate right uh in in a single um you know in a single curator right or something uh but you know if that was what I believe was going to happen I would be you know I would have built more as a curator like you know I don't this is not this is not what we're this is not what we've done and the

reason is is we think the market is much bigger and we think we're going to need much more curators than what we have today in order to address the entirety of the market we're going to have geographically localized curators like we you know we work in Korea we work in Hong Kong we work in Japan we work in in Singapore we need localized curators to like do and do understand the risk profiles of those people etc etc >> um I'm just looking at your in the interest acred so you guys it was uh 40 million in Q2 and uh 34 million in Q1 54 million in Q4 of last year I think Q3 of last year was your biggest quarter 58 million. So right now if I I think I think I'm getting this. I think you guys don't actually have you have zero

protocol revenue, right? So you're actually >> Yeah. The um 100% of the interest in the base yield passes directly to the supply side participants like the lenders and liquidity providers. It's not retained as you know treasury or token holder revenue. When do you expect that will change? >> It's a good question. I think what I'm interested in growth is worth. And so the question is how do I have growth um and when you take fees you face a trade-off is the amount of of revenue you're going to charge is going to slow down growth that revenue could be employed in such a way that triggers more growth. So you have to solve this

equation when you take revenue is like should I slow down my growth by taking fees and should those fees be able to um compensate for the loss of growth right >> and I think the answer is we're not constrained by capital today as moro we're constrained by my ability to scale the company so it's like basically like hiring and and like getting the right people in place and and and and building the right processes and everything. We're more execution constraint than we are capital constraint. Once we solve that bottleneck and the capital constraint becomes a constraint then the question is valid. It's not not the case today.

>> Do you have a do you have a mental model of when this like do you have a you know when we hit this many deposits or when we hit or do you have no >> it's a very high dimensional question. So I don't have like a specific timeline in mind. Um but it will come down to the thing I asked which is will this trigger more growth than it tempers growth. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. >> And again that comes down to the fact that we're ambitious about like the size of the market. If we thought the market was only crypto like probably would be doing buybacks by now because we're done with the mission. We don't know what to do with the money. >> I've you know I've always hated buybacks because it tells me that the founder has nothing better to spend the money on.

>> Exactly. Exactly. >> Exactly. But it's it probably is the case if you think you fulfilled your mission. If your why is building a crypto bank, then you should do buybacks, right? You're done. It's over. You're finished. So like you don't know what to do with the money. There's nothing to grow. Your mission is over. So do the buybacks. Your mission is not over at all. Like Moro's mission is not over. >> I totally agree. >> And you need to to hire and like do a bunch of things and execute and spend. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I totally agree. Um when you so mid uh Morpho Midnight was there were a couple zero to one features that you guys built in there or primitives we could call them. What do you think are the are when you look beyond Morpho Midnight? Um because I'm

assuming you're kind of living 12 to 18 months in the future here. What is the next kind of zero to one thing that you are >> midnight? >> Yeah. >> I think the market is not ready for what midnight is already. I think it is multiple years in advance of >> Yeah. When did you guys launch Blue? 2023. >> Two years ago. Two and a half years ago or something. >> Yeah. 23 or 24. Okay. So, okay. So, very early. Yeah. I mean, Midnight's not even fully live basically. So, >> yeah, it it is. We just released the core engine, >> right? Right.

>> And so, you can already trade on it. You can already post offers, but the vast majority of the features are not released yet, and we're going to release them progressively. We're going to take our time. There's a lot you can do already with Midnight. You can take like some fixed rate loans, etc. Um but it's like um it's a beast of its own like it has a lot of like you know callbacks gates like routing etc etc. Um I think it will take us very far away >> because for two reasons is like you know the easy reason is like people want to fix right like consumer you know are more interested in fixing the right etc. But but again, that's not the most important. The most important is that

we're going to allow those curators to be able to set the price. And setting the price is so important because as soon as you can control the price, you can fully control the risk and you can start underwriting anything including things that are abstract, right? Like including identity, including payment receivables, including you know uh all sorts of like proof of credit, right? that you want like if you if you trust it you can give it a price before you could not do it because it was a formula right but now as a curator if you want to operate as a credit fund uh you could potentially right like you could say hey um I want to do some underized loans and here's why I trust this person and here's the price I give them. One thing

I was thinking about for you guys, Paul, is uh actually after one of our conversations a couple months ago is if you're going after all of credit, so much of traditional credit relies on the credit score. And this is another primitive I'd say that's been talked about in crypto which is like can you have can you have some sort of new credit score on chain ba you know based on whatever history you may have your onchain trading history or you know how many liquid how many times you got liquidated like how do you think about is that something that you could go after in a couple of years >> I don't think we would go after I think we will allow people to express their creditworthiness in whatever shape or form they want and we will build Midnight will price it. Basically,

Midnight is the engine >> that as a borrower. So, here's how you should think about Midnight and Morphos's direction in general. As a borrower, you come and you say, "Here's the money I want to borrow at what terms and here's why you should trust me." The why you should trust me is a module, right? That could be a big stash of Bitcoin that can be liquidated by an article, but that could also be your identity. That could also be your credit score. Whatever thing that you think is going to make you more trustworthy, you put it in there and then the intent network of Midnight, the curators, they're going to assess it and they're going to give it a price, right? And it's competitive. So, they're you're going to get a fair price. That's the world that's the whole point. And and this is how you do endoclash landing on

chain, by the way. >> Yeah. >> And and and and obviously as there is more footprint and and data on chain, you can construct onchain native credit score. you can infer them from your activity on chain etc. I don't think you would be the one building this but I think it's a great >> great opportunity that will be only valuable by the way like all those web free identity primitive >> like they all were too early because there was no business case I think midnight is going to give them a business case because if you're going to be able to show your identity that's extra trustworthiness and midnight is going to price it so you're going to have a quantifiable value for having your onchain identity because you're going to get better interest rate better funding rate and this is something you can charge on as an identity primitive

Yeah. How long, Paul, until I can get a 30-year fixed rate mortgage through Morpho? Ah, >> hard, hard, hard. Highly dependent on AI accelerationism. Uh, I would say uh like anything that you project a year from now. Um, I it's hard to say 30 years is a long amount of time. I don't think we're going to have any 30 years bond in the next year or even two years from now. I don't think that would be realistic to to say that. Um now >> what's the inhibiting what's the inhibiting factor like what would what would unlock that? Uh it's not that it's not possible. It's that I would not want to spend time and energy on 30-year

bonds. Like I want to I I want I prefer short-term stuff because I can iterate. I can learn, right? Like so we can so if we focus on the short-term stuff I can do more and learn more and improve more >> and you know obviously we'll get to the 30-year stuff but I'd rather learn a lot before getting into something that's going to like can you imagine like an immutable protocol that issues like a 30-year bond like you know maybe I'm dead in 30 years like you know we don't know like so so it's like maybe the selfish thing of like hey I want to do stuff more before like launching this like borrowing 30 years bond. But we'll get there. Like we'll get there.

>> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the reason I ask is because, you know, mortgages are the most popular loan in America, right? It's the most popular and largest source of debt in America. Makes up like 70% of consumer household debt. I think it's like a 13 trillion market. You know, there's student loans are huge, auto loans are huge, personal loans are huge, but I think the mortgage is like 70% of consumer debt. Um so you know at some point um Paul in a couple of years from now um is the marginal new borrower on Morpho a human or an agent?

>> Ah um how how long did you say? >> Let's call it let's call it three years. >> Man that's so hard. Uh I mean this like the thing is like in in my mind anything that's beyond like 18 months I have so such a hard time predicting. Yeah. >> Because the the AI factor can like change so much right and it could also not change much but it could change so much right there's like a 50% likelihood that you know >> um everything diverges in in one way or or another and at least in some parts.

Um, I think there's two ways to think about it. Is is this going to be agents that operate on behalf of humans for user experience reasons? I think it's not entirely clear for me that the agent themselves would take the position. I think it would still be humans if the humans like I think it's still it's still going to be the owner of the capital that will take the m like that will be the majority of the market and and I think the owner of the capital you know 18 to 36 months from now should still be the human however if we're

saying that the the agents themselves have such a level of agency that you know they can hold money not just purely because for operational reasons like how we think about agents holding money today is because like they are operators at some point reporting to a human, right? But if you think of them as like self-sufficient entities that generate wealth and grow their wealth, etc. If we're at that point where where we have agents that have this, then it means it's probably if they're proper owners of capital without reporting to anyone, then it's the majority of the market that should be like this because as soon as you cross the chasm, feels like everything would be like this. Um, >> yeah. So, so, so yeah, but in the meantime, it

feels like it should be a minority in my mind and mostly for operational reasons, I would say until they they own um the the capital. >> Paul, anything we didn't talk about? >> A lot of things, but I think that's a lot for >> I have actually one more. What do you think of um the Hester Purse uh vaults statement? >> I think it was very thoughtful. I don't know if you read the the full thing is >> I did. Yeah. I I mean I'm just grateful in general that uh they take such care and and precision in their like they clearly understand what's going on right like by you know I

think that one of the most important things she stated is a vault can be a lot of things and they have to distinguish like different categories of vault and I think that's the most relevant statement you could make because obviously what you care about as a SEC and like the security exchange commission is want to know if some stuff are security and you know in in in order to do that you need to understand how how much agency the operator of the vault or the curator of the vault has over the funds and how much uh trust is there in the relationship uh between the user and and and the vault and you know what are the different like investor protection mechanisms that that that are at play and when you look at vaults there is a whole spectrum from it is

fully on chain with a lot of time locks and the user is fully in control and can exit at any time within the limits of the time locks two, this is a vault that is basically an ERC4x626 adapter that deposits into a Fireblocks wallet and that Fireblocks wallet is going to manage the money which does look like investment advisor, right? Um, and I think drawing the line is going to be the hard work to be done. I think they're working on it. Uh, and I think they approach it the right way and they're very first principles to their approach. uh which which I I I I like and and I'm generally I just spent a week in Washington so I I got to understand like the world I did not spend too much in policy before now I kind of like understand a little bit

better um and yeah it's been very interesting. >> Yeah. Yeah. I was in uh I was in DC last week and actually more got brought up a couple times so it was um >> Oh, okay. Interesting. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> Hope in a good way. >> In a good way, my friend. In a good way. Um Paul, always good to see you, man. Uh it is very cool to see how quickly you guys are growing and uh yeah, I'm rooting for you. >> Thank you. >> Nothing said on Empire is a recommendation to buy or sell any investments or products. This podcast is forformational purposes only and the views expressed by anyone on the show are solely their opinions, not financial advice or necessarily the views of Blockworks. Our hosts, guests, and the

Block Works team may hold positions in the company's funds or projects discussed.