New Fed Chair Nominee Kevin Warsh, Gold and silver plunge and the Rotation Trade is On.

Transcript

[music] [music] Hopped up above the [music] [music] >> [music] [music] >> H the back back [music] [music]

up the back. [music] >> [music] >> JP Morgan, Black Rockck, DTCC, Fidelity, the entire thing was just institutions. It's just [music] it's next level. This industry is going to the next level. And guys, I I don't know what else to say. [music] I'm bullish. You said it. You finally said it. I'm so bullish. It is bullish. I'm bullish. We're bullish.

[music] How about [music] down break down [music] the >> [music] >> Hop up above the [music] [music] mother.

What the mother [music] [music] above the [music] [music] hop >> [music] >> The rollup is headed to the top. If we're not already at the top, we're going to the top. We're on fourth floor today. We're going to be on floor one

and then we're headed straight to the moon boys. >> The rotation trade is on. gold, silver. I'm smiling because I am not a gold bug. I don't own a single bit of gold. I was trying to buy gold three or four months ago. My mother wanted to buy some Bitcoin. I said, "I will buy you Bitcoin if you buy me some gold." Because I wasn't even sure where to get gold. And I think she went into her jeweler and they were like, "We don't sell gold here." And they gave her a card of somewhere else and we and there was no gold bought. And so I watched the meteoric rise of metals from the sidelines. I watched gold, I

watched silver, I watched palladium, I watched copper go on generational tears. And over the last 36 hours, we have platinum, palladium, gold, and silver. Silver's down over 30%. This is something that normally changes less than a percent a day. Silver's down 30%.

A trillion dollar of market cap wiped out in the last 36 hours. Gold is down 13.6% dropping under 5,000 an ounce, under $4,900 an ounce at this point. Platinum and Palladium plunge over 20% each. Why today? Well, new Fed chair, Kevin Worsh. Congrats to the new Fed chair, Kevin Walsh. Uh, I'd say he he deserves a party.

Um, he's pro Bitcoin. We're going to be talking more about Kevin Worsh, getting into a little bit more about his background story. Um, and we've got a pretty pretty uh tight show for you guys today. We're going to be talking about Kevin Worsh. We're going to get into who he is, what he believes in, and of course, what his take is on Bitcoin and crypto. Uh, you know, obviously there was others in the running, Kevin Hasset, Rick Ryder. Um, they said Kevin Hasset was even more pro- crypto than Kevin Worsh. So this is kind of middle of the road when it comes to uh you know where where the new Fed chair will stand on crypto, but he is supportive. And then uh man, the rotation trade they're saying

now this was this was uh you know the medals bubble down 30%. It just seems like look maybe this is a dip. Maybe you should be buying here. I don't know. I've been staying out of the gold trade up, you know, since since uh you know, since its rise, but I mean the the buyers of gold especially are in price insensitive. And uh look, you know, we we are on this decade long this what I I saw a clip from Peter Theel on Rogan the other day. You know, it's like we're on this this decade long stint away from the world of bits and more in the world of atoms. This is, you know, repatriating a lot of industry.

You know, we're we're rare earths are important. All these things are important. I'm just sticking to what I know best and that's uh and that's the coins. So, I will be patiently doscller averaging into the coins for the foreseeable future and primarily most likely be staying away from the metals as well. Neoance, you know, we'll we'll play around in equities a little bit. I want to talk about Kevin Hasset. We're gonna be uh let's pull up Donald Mr. Trump, President Trump's uh tweet here. Let's get it up. Uh because this is going to give us a probably one of the better senses of who Kevin Worsh is. Uh the new chair of the Federal Reserve. So Trump is pleased to

announce that uh I'll just read this. Donald Trump says, "I am pleased to announce that I am nominating Kevin Walsh to be the chairman of the board of governors of the Federal Reserve system." Kevin currently serves as the Shephard Family Distinguished Visiting Fellow in economics at the Hoover Institution and lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He's a partner of Stanley Drunken Miller uh at the Dukens Family Office LLC. Um, quick little side note here is that believe Stanley Drunken Miller and um, Treasury Secretary Bessant were buddies and helped uh, um, take down the the pound um, and were was part of that

generational trade that they did. So, uh, I believe Besset may have weighed in on this decision for the Federal Reserve. Kevin received his AB from Stanford University and JD from Harvard Law School. He has conducted extensive research into the field of economics and finance. Kevin issued an independent report to the Bank of England proposing reforms in the conduct of monetary policy in the United Kingdom. Parliament adopted the report's recommendations. Kevin Worsh became the youngest Fed governor ever at 35 and served as a member of the board of governors of the Federal Reserve system from 2006 until 2011 as the Federal Reserve's representative to the group of 20 the G20 and as the board's emissary of to the emerging and advanced economies in

Asia. In addition, he was administrative governor managing and overseeing the board's operations, personnel, and financial performance. Prior to his appointment of to the board from 2002 until 2006, Kevin served as special assistant to the president for economic policy. Uh 2002 to 2006. That was was it? No, that was uh George Bush. George Bush was president 2001, 2002 uh until 2006. Kevin served as special assistant to the president for economic policy and executive secretary of the White House National Economic Council.

Previously, Kevin was a member of the merger and acquisitions department at Morgan Stanley in New York, serving as vice president and executive director. I've known Kevin for a long period of time and have no doubt that he will go down as one of the great Fed chairman, maybe the best on top of everything else. He is central casting and he will never let you down. Congratulations, Kevin. President Donald J. Trump that central casting is the thing that gots everyone's attention. Uh central casting for this job um means he's right out of Trump's cast of characters. Um there, you know, Trump was obviously going at Powell for not cutting rates quick enough. Uh and uh you know, they want someone that is going to, you know, you

want the Fed to be independent but aligned with the White House and the Treasury's agenda. And so the thesis here is that this is someone, you know, he's not coming directly from the administration like Hasset, but he is going to play along, right? Because he's right out of central casting. So, uh, let's bring up our next, uh, headline here, which is still on this vein. We're going to show you guys a video, uh, about Kevin Worsh. It's from an interview that he did, and he talks about crypto and Bitcoin a little bit.

Let's bring it up when it's ready, and uh, we can go ahead. We can watch it. You guys should be able to hear this as well. Um, you made reference to Bitcoin and I thought I heard a little bit of condescension that people are buying Bitcoin and these things. >> But doesn't it re Charlie Munger, this is two or three years before he died.

Charlie Munger attacked Bitcoin. He called it evil in part because it would begin to undermine the Fed's ability to manage the economy >> or it could provide market discipline or it could tell the world that things need to be fixed. Uh >> Bitcoin does not make you nervous. >> Uh Bitcoin does not make me nervous. I can hearken back to a uh a dinner I had here in 2011 um with a someone who is another guest on your show. I won't say his name. Um um okay I just did Mark Andre who showed me the white paper that was the original white paper. I wish I had understood as clearly as he did how transformative Bitcoin and this new

technology would be. >> Uh Bitcoin doesn't trouble me. I think of it as an important asset that can help inform policy makers when they're doing things right and wrong. Um it is not a substitute to the dollar. I think it can often be a very good policeman for policy. And if I were to speak more broadly to what did Charlie Mer and others perhaps have in mind, um there is a proliferation of securities that go under all sorts of names. Many if not most of them are not worth what they're might be being traded for. So what did uh Charlie say and maybe his his pal Warren say? There's the innovators, the imitators, and the incompetence. They're

real innovators that are happening in and around that new technology. And what I would try to impart towards um businesses and bankers is that the underlying technology that Mark showed me in that white paper or tried to show me in that white paper, it's just software. It's just the newest, coolest software that will provide us an ability to do things that we could never have done before. Can the software be used for good and evil? Yes, both. Like all software. So I don't cast dispersions like that. If there's a final point, it's these technologies are being built here. I don't just mean on Stanford campus. I believe in the United States and the world's most talented engineers

from China and Europe and everywhere. They come to the United States even now to try to build this stuff. >> [snorts] >> And my view is by building it here that gives us an opportunity to be more productive and create something very special over the next decade. >> Okay. So this is uh this is a very measured approach. Um I think you know he makes a lot of great points here. I'm glad that he's not you know one of these guys that is afraid of things that he doesn't understand. I think he recognizes that guys like Mark Andre and you know the cryptonative technologists out there understand it a little bit better, but as it pertains to economic policy, it almost sounds like he's he sees Bitcoin as a measuring stick for

whether or not the Fed is doing a good job. Obviously, the Fed is controlling the Fed funds rate, but it's also very very instrumental in global liquidity, right? as the dollar is a reserve currency and you can kind of increase or decrease the amount of liquidity in the system supply and demand whether you know the the Fed is in charge of keeping inflation low and so if inflation is too high you know maybe they will that that's because there's too much liquidity in the system they need to take some out in the in the the vein that Kevin Worsh is describing you know we're going to have too much liquidity in the system that's going to make its way into Bitcoin we would take some out and you can almost create a very predictable path for global liquidity

and I'd imagine that creates a much more sustainable growth path for Bitcoin. My two cents. Let's uh let's keep going. I think we've got one last thing that we want to show you on Kevin Worsh. So, we can pull that up. Um, and this is uh this is a word from Abashaw uh who is Yeah, let's go ahead and cut to it. Uh this is a word from Avashaw who is uh was on the show just recently for near intense day and uh uh is the uh is the lead at electric capital the fund that he runs and Abashall says that Worsh is excellent uh pick for for Treasury. Uh pro crypto pick for Treasury. Um I think he means

the Fed chair. Uh he's been one of our most helpful hands-on adviserss at Electric Capital. didn't didn't realize that Kevin Worsh was a uh adviser to a crypto VC. That's pretty pretty uh important there. He's an investor in crypto, fintech, and AI companies. He gets macro from his time at the Fed. Few people as qualified as Kevin for the job. Look, he's invested in the space. Usually, people, you know, tend to play to their incentives. President-elect Donald Trump's transition team is considering pairing Kevin Worsh, former Federal Reserve official in the Treasury Secretary role with hedge fund manager Scott Besson as director of the White House's National Economic Council. Yeah.

So, this is back when I guess they were they were considering uh Worsh for Treasury. Uh but obviously, you know, Worsh now is uh is primed and ready to be the next Fed chair. Let's go on. Our first guest uh is getting ready behind the scenes and so uh and so we're going to bring him up in just a moment. Uh let's get him in the back room. Get him ready. Get him ready to go. Uh Kevin Walsh is the new Fed chair. So yeah, we can uh we can go ahead. Let's keep moving. Preview looks good.

Let's go ahead and cut and uh we'll we'll talk about where uh you know where things are headed. So obviously Kevin Worsh in his Fed chair, you know, I think Flood may have said it best, quote unquote, they're going to slam rates to 1% and Bitcoin is going to double to 160K plus. It's obvious. And also for a bonus, he's the new US Federal Reserve chair, Kevin Walsh, talking about Bitcoin. And that's the video that you guys just saw. So pretty interesting. Uh, as far as how Kevin Worsh sees Bitcoin, he's invested in the space. seems like it's probably a more pro- crypto uh stance as chairman of the Fed. But again, you know, this

guy, he he controls uh you know, federal funds rate, monetary policy, a little bit of regulation as well. Doesn't have a direct impact on Bitcoin. Obviously, he you know, as Federal Reserve chair, he's going to have an impact on uh global liquidity, and you know, we're going to see uh how that affects Bitcoin going forward. I think a more sustainable growth path. Um okay, we've got our first guest. He's ready in the back room. We're going to bring him up now. This is Vicram on building onchain stable coin neo banks. Vicram, welcome to the show, man.

>> Excited. >> Absolutely. It's uh it's a pleasure to have you. We've uh we've been uh pretty pretty fired up and excited about this uh this NEO bank neo finance thesis. And so um stable coins are at the center of this. uh you know tokenization rwas are at the uh at the center of this and so I'm curious to get a little bit more perspective on superform um I think you guys are you know firmly squarely within this neo bankank thesis um and so yeah let's talk about it let's talk about what you guys have going on at superform and uh you know tell us a little bit about yourself >> yeah um you guys have been exactly on it with the neo finance thesis and um superform's in the middle of it so what

we're building is the first userowned uh neo bank and the thesis I think is pretty simple. It's that um banks have failed us for a while. Um yields right now are also low. Um fintexs have failed us. you have um you know recent cases with uh with Robin Hood and Venmo and a lot of those um where they've really just um built the same legacy rails over the existing broken system and then now you have DeFi protocols that actually have an emerging shot at embedding ownership into the stack and then making sure that those same problems can't happen to users. Um so at Superform is building um pretty much we have three layers of the stack. We have superform

core which is you know think of it as like recreating everything that the bank has done and then we've built our own structured vault products on top of it and then we've wrapped it all up into both a uh web and iOS app and yeah web's been live for for two years now um and our iOS app's about to launch in the US and Canada next Tuesday so >> let's go man exciting times was it difficult to get the mobile app through the app store because for so long You know, we've se we've heard and we've seen there's problems in revenue sharing. They want a cut of inapp sales and crypto, especially with NFT products. It was difficult to measure, you know, where does that come from?

What is a sale? What's not? Is it on chain? Is it on the app? Like, tell us about your experience getting this app through the app store. >> Um, all types of problems, but I don't want to jinx it at this point because we got it through. Um but yeah, I think uh getting DeFi protocols generally like how do you regulate how do you create a framework around them with their still licenses and you know um it's it's tough for a lot of these Apple approvers to get there to wrap their mind around it. But um at the end of it it's just open financial technology, right? And if protocols don't want a KYC and they don't need licenses to do it, I think that's just something regulators are going to have to figure out how that plays.

>> Yeah. And you know, they're they're sorting that on DC now. I don't envy those guys hashing that out. Um, okay. And so, as a NEO bank, you know, for so long, users have been forced to, you know, treat DeFi as like a browser experience. I don't mean like on the web. I mean, you know, they they hop on their wallet. They have some, you know, assets in their wallet and then they're going out and connecting their wallet to different DeFi protocols and, you know, they're choosing between a bunch of, you know, do I want to go to Morpho? Do I want to go to A? Do I want to go to Pendle? And then they're kind of sorting through the different options there. You know, it it's been very fragmented, not to mention on all these different

chains. And you know the bridging experience, the Neoank experience is one that's a lot smoother. And we kind of on this show we've talked about this barbell, this this kind of spectrum between simplicity and choice. Right? Right now the user experience is not simple. But we have like this abundance of choices and people have even said there's so many choices it's fragmented. where how how do you guys determine what yield products and and what to expose to the end user when they open the app? Yeah, it's one of the toughest um toughest problems we've had to solve on an app level is I think now, you know, there over 1500 vaults have been listed on Superform. Um

>> 1500 vaults. >> 15,500 vaults. >> And those are like that's an aggregation of a bunch of different you know from Pendle and a all all these different guys are all getting aggregated onto Superform. >> Exactly. Um and you mentioned some of the UX stuff, right? is like the the biggest thing we were solving in the first two years of superform being live was this entire search discovery and execution process. So we you know we're on 10 different chains but we allow deposits in any asset on any chain. So we you know have like our own smart account infrastructure we're bridging we're swapping we're depositing for the user. Um but the experience for a new user coming in still to evaluate all of those 1500 opportunities. Sure, we made it easier for them to find them, but cognitively it's still really hard for

me to understand as a new user what all those protocols that you just mentioned are. Um, so we realized that there needed to be a middleware middleware layer built on top of those um vault products uh which funny enough were our own vault products um that were curated products um that were actually accessing the underlying uh vault products themselves. and our Supervol product line. Um we launched our V2 of that uh beginning of December. And pretty much what that is is a um combination of fixed and variable rates from Morpho and Pendle. Um and that is just the ideal basket really for a user coming into crypto. They might not want to hold PTS for, you know, hold them to maturity for three months, but they'd be more than

happy to hold a basket of them. And the vast majority of users are entirely liquid through that entire process. So, I think there's going to continue to be and you guys have seen this vault layer evolve and now vaults are like, you know, one of the hottest areas of DeFi, but I think at the end of it, the products that get distributed to users are going to be those aggregated vault products and people are very rarely going to necessarily be interacting directly with a morpho market, >> especially with with uh retail. I'd imagine they're, you know, and we also saw like the likes of Robin Hood come in and they said, you know, park your cash here with us and we'll give you, you know, four or four and a half percent.

And I'd imagine this is something that, you know, we all, I think, wanted for a long, long time. And it's slowly coming to fruition. I think vaults get us one step closer, which is high yield savings, right? Like, you know, I I go to Wells Fargo, I go, you know, somewhere to one of these too big to fail banks. I get a quarter of a basis point on my savings account. like, you know, we're headed in a in a direction where we can get some high yield, but we can also get it safely because it's delivered to us through the banking infrastructure. Like, it's it's a it's a UX and a and a portal experience that we're we're used to in terms of the traditional banks, but it delivers, you know, five to seven y% yield, right? Um and and and I'm curious actually how you

plan on integrating more of the you know what we what we call quality assets because we've seen you know Bitcoin and ETH and obviously you know th those guys stand on on on their own and then a a entire network of stable coins that you know would get deployed into these DeFi products. But now you know institutions come in and they productize a lot of these things and and they're just saying hey here's my money market fund. it pays five, six, seven percent. I can deliver this onchain. How are you thinking about integrating, you know, the Pendle PTs of the world with the Janice Henderson CLLO's of the world?

>> Yeah. Um, I mean, look, so we have 150,000 entirely retail users on our app. um their demand is mostly for high yield savings products without KYC and they want fast DeFi type liquidity. Um the institutional investors certainly, you know, would would be looking for something they'd be okay with KYCing. They'd be okay with an asynchronous redemption process. They'd be more interested in in the genesis of the world. um as we expand into the institutional category, I think it'd be very interesting to see um where that demand comes in from, which is why we still

have a web app. Uh but yeah, for the for the time being, I mean, retail is is all about um high yield products and and increasingly they're uh looking to have some downside protection and and you know, they want insurance and I I think something that's going to be big is like this whole like tunching of products, right? you're going to have an insured layer, uninsured layer. A kind of is was leading the way with that with the umbrella program. Um, but you know, for the most part, I think cryptonatives continue to use the junior product and then maybe some of these new users that we onboard through mobile to go for the senior, but that's kind of how I'm thinking about it. I'm not sure entirely right now where the demand is for a Janice product from retail, right?

>> Yeah. Yeah. And that and that's I I think that's right. I think right now, you know, the the neo bank game is a distribution one. Like we, you know, we put out this market map of Neo Finance and I think you guys unfortunately were one of the snubs. Like that was our mistake. You guys have been building and doing great things. >> I'll I'll admit that we can't get everyone. There's all and and you guys certainly deserve to be on that. You earned it. Um and so with that being said, there's an entire industry of, you know, these neo this neo finance thesis, right, is that legacy finance is being forced to innovate for a variety of different reasons. And DeFi for a long time wasn't able to find product market fit. They're being forced to innovate and adapt as well. Just so happens these

are conver these are evolving to the same place and that that is creating this convergence of the Robin Hoods and and the Venmos and the PayPals are kind of they're kind of correct me if I'm wrong here. I'm curious to get your take on this actually. The Venmo, PayPal, like revolutes are also going into the world where you guys are headed. It's this neo bank world, right? Is that the right way to think about this? And and in that world, you know, from my perspective, distribution is is king because everyone can source yield from, you know, whether it's the CLOS's or it's the it's the DeFi projects. you know, we can all get around that that yield, but it's all going to be about product experience and distribution is

really where where this game is won. Is that Yeah. Is that how you think about this? >> I I do agree with you. Um, but there's there's two things. I I'll start with my more like philosophical cryptonative answer to that, which would be uh that you can build something you can't you can't build something decentralized on top of something centralized, right? And the entry point from a lot of those fintexs is going to continue to sure it can wrap up define a nice way easy to use but it's still going to have the exact same issues that fintex tried to solve on top of building on top of the banking layer. Um that's my my crypto answer is you just have to build these things right from the from the first place. On the distribution side of it though and why I think crypto apps can

actually beat um your revels and Robin Hoods of the world is simple in a way it's the best thing I think crypto has has introduced at least on the economic side which is just tokens. Um right Robin Hood's not rewarding people with tokens. Uh Revl does not rewarding people with tokens. Uh but as a DeFi protocol, that's how we've, you know, bootstrapped $150 billion dollars of TVL into this nent industry is primarily through the usage of tokens. Um now, if we can actually link tokens to real value and figure out how to distribute that to people and have tokens, you know, uh be used fundamentally in protocols to to dictate where money's flowing like a real bank would, then all of a sudden we have something that is

legitimately it's not being compared to FinTech. It's actually an entire bank replacement. Um, and you have users that are earning much more much much more than they would on on Robin Hood or Revel. >> So tell us a bit more about what it means to be communityowned, right? Like you know they I I take it there's the token here and you guys have you know tokconomics and incentive models to direct flows like you're saying how give us just a deeper sense of this. Tell us a little bit more about how the token works. how you know what is its role in the system and and how you use it to provide just maximum capital efficiency.

>> Yeah. Um so ultimately it's ownership in a bank. Um so staking uh up into the superv uh gives you uh the bu the ability to validate um all of these vault products on the platform. Um so so these vault products are entirely decentralized non-custodial. Um the way that we can make them like that is because uh the submitter of all those prices uh must be staking their ownership in the bank. Um up is also used for our upcoming product after this which is super assets which is effectively routing liquidity. You can kind of think of it as a smart beta like an index of products and to wait uh to to vote in the weight of the index

you have to um acquire these. And uh there's all kinds of things within governance itself for you know how fee capture happens on the protocol level for our smart account infrastructure and uh you know everything from fees taken in our bundler and front end and everything else and um that's something that typically has never been shared directly with uh with people who have own equity, right? Um it's either reinvested or for multiple multiple reasons never given back to the holders themselves. And so uh a lot of the incentives here for deposits into super form and uh you know all all the participation in the in the mechanisms

that you guys have it you know because for so long we had you know we had uh tokens and yield that was driven by emissions right and it was unsustainable but you're saying you know there's a real business model here there's real revenue that's driven and that is the yield that's being shared with token holders. >> Exactly. um in Superform's case, but I imagine honestly any any neo banking stack would be making money off of three main things. It's swaps. Um so swaps in both web web end uh and our mobile app. Um they're going to be making money off of vault fees. In SuperForm's case, it's even more pronounced because we own the entire stack for vaults. Um and then there's also card fees, interchange fees, you know, that whole flywheel that

gets going. Um and yeah, all that programmatically in the code buybacks everything >> and uh as you guys are kind of you know targeting more of the the legacy banking infrastructure and you know starting to starting to eat away more and more of their customer base are are you guys thinking about like you know we've seen crypto companies get charters for banks in the in the past I think Kraken maybe like are is that something that you guys have on the roadmap? >> Would love to. It's it's a pie in the sky idea right now. Uh but definitely like for your average retail user coming to SuperForm, they absolutely want they're looking at on-ramping fees right now and you know they can Apple pay into the app but it's actually two and a half

two and a half%. Crazy. >> Um even you know using Coinbase onramp or something is 50 bips. At some point those fees got to compress and who does that first? >> We'll see. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. Um I I I tend to think that this is where we're headed. Like I think you know right now the one thing that you know neo banks are lacking and it's not for good cause. I mean it's a regulatory challenge and hurdle in order to you know kind of provide banking infrastructure. Um you know is credit creation right like the ability to loan out uh originate loans create credit is ultimately what adds money to the money supply and banks are able to do that.

I've heard some things um I think we had Omar from ZK Sync. He was on here last week and he was telling us about tokenized deposits and how once banks tokenize um you know chartered bank tokenizes their deposits they are able to lend out do some undercolateralized lending and then ultimately we could end up with something like that on chain which you know is going to be a a challenge given like you know all the stable coin craziness that's happening right now too. I I want to get your take on, you know, we've got the DC cabal deciding on whether or not we're going to be able to pay yield on stable coins.

The banks are saying, hey, that's going to trigger capital flight out of the banks into these stable coins. Don't do that. Right? That would have massive deflationary pressure because stable coins are fully backed one to one. So, you know, how how where do you where do you stand on this? Like how how do you parse through what we should be what we should be doing here? Obviously, we want the growth of stable coins, but no, like deflationary is a is a tough thing to crack. So, you know, I'm just just curious to get your perspective on, you know, as someone that's running a NEO bank and stable coins are very centric to, you know, the entire business.

>> It's it's ironic because the banks are digging their own grave. Uh, if they are not allowing new stable coin issuers to earn yield and people like Coinbase, the custodians are not allowed to earn yield, then everything has to flow to DeFi. and DeFi is the black hole for all their dollars. Um, so now it's it's up to them if they would like to, you know, do some things like you're mentioning and maybe tokenize some of their own deposits and actually adopt stable coins. I think there are some banks that are thinking very far ahead actually on on that side. Um, but the people that are uh currently opposing a lot of this stable coin legislation, I think are really they're missing the forest for the trees, right?

um they need to be adopting this technology because that is the best thing they can do for the US dollar at this point. >> Yeah. Um give us a sense of the super forum roadmap um you know bank charter a little bit ways down the way but you know tell us a little bit more about what what you guys have coming up this quarter and and this year. >> Yeah uh we got mobile uh iOS coming out on Tuesday so I think that's like February 3rd. Um, and then we have we announced our token actually today uh this morning. >> Let's go. [laughter] >> Yeah.

>> Okay. So, all of this communityowned like this is finally live. Well, it's it's announced. When does it go live? >> It's it's very real. It goes live on February 10th. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> Okay. It's exciting times out here for Super Form. >> Yes. And so, you know, tell us about the listing process. Like, how are you guys going on that? And, you know, generally, you guys, you know, what what is it like? I mean, you're in the trenches. The next 10 days are going to be hectic to say the least. Vicron, we appreciate you taking the time coming out here and spending, you know, spending some time with us, telling us about Super Form, like launching a token in this day and age. You see what's happening in the market like give us a clue as far as how you navigate the current structure and

conditions out there. >> Yeah, man. Um, >> why now, right? I guess like you know that that's the question is why why launch a token right now? uh because our token does something very important in the protocol and and and and we need it. Um, and I think that's maybe what's been missing in a lot of these token launches is that the token is not immediately needed in the protocol and it's just something that exists. And we we go through phases like this, right? But I think for DeFi protocols especially, tokens are a very important part of how of how they can grow. And um, you know, I mentioned everything that the token is being used for here. Um, you know, ownership, we need them for scaling our superv

products and creating this whole validator network behind it. But the actual yeah the token um the process that goes into launching a token I think we've been working on this for the last year. Um actually I think our everything like our foundation was set up exactly like a year ago and it took us all that time to get everything in place. So it's not >> not for the faint of heart and there's honestly like a lot of things [laughter] uh through the process to mention but I think um we're excited that we're almost there 10 days out you know. >> Very cool. And when did you guys start Superform? when do you guys uh get your first user?

>> Uh the so we started Superform beginning of 2022. Um our first app went live at the beginning of 2023. So we're building all of 2022. So we've been live >> in some way for three years now. >> Yeah. And and how did you guys get 150,000 users to the app up to today? Right. Pre-token with just just you know the protocol. >> Yeah. Uh well I'd say like our our V1 growth was very um DeFi native just like working you know directly with protocols. Um we started doing more uh you know say web 2.5 marketing with our um with our V2 which launched uh you know last year. Um, and but it's been mostly focused on uh converting, you

know, people that are they want to be on chain, but they don't necessarily have the tools or they don't feel secure and it's just a little bit too tough of UX for them and they're able to find some of the tools that Superform has made for them easier. Um but yeah, I mean it's just like a lot of um on the ground co-arketing with with people and and seeing uh how we can convert those centralized exchange earn platform users to actually be properly onchain. >> Yeah, that that's been you know the foray for a lot of these people. It's been first step is to get into you know centralized exchange. They've been very crypto curious but haven't really taken the full leap of faith and wallet seed phrases all that. How how do you guys manage you know do you expose because

the the realization we had just just recently was hey like you know self- custody is important but I also want a forgot password button right how do you guys how do you how do you balance this custody situation >> yeah uh yeah the truth of it is is that a lot of people don't want responsibility it's it's something that you know crypto people tout but um yeah so our our we have social recovery and everything um we work with some great um MPC C uh providers for our for our smart accounts and you know there's multiple signers you can actually as a user um upload backups to your iCloud do all that stuff pass keys um and yeah it is ultimately still a self-custodial wallet

uh but there's enough technology out there through all these you know account abstraction kits that uh that it makes it a lot easier for someone to actually provide like a web two web two experience. >> Yep. Makes sense. I again I think you know we're we're heading this direction. I think there's going to be a Cambrian explosion here of Neo banks. Good. I mean you guys got ahead of the curve. You got 150,000 users. What's the what's the plan to a million? How do we get to a million users on Superform? Uh now that we have the mobile app going live, it's it's growth tactics, you know, it's how do we how do we create the same um enthusiasm and and energy for these for these cryptonative

products as people have for for the custodial versions of them, right? And it's like the truth is for a lot of those users, they might actually be getting the entire feature set that they want out of that custodial product. So I think it's very much an emotional pull. It's like, you know, you guys need to care about these crypto products. Um, because first off, they earn you more. Uh, and then second is that we can't take your funds. You're safe with us. Um, and you know, that obviously comes with us getting the brand out there more and and focusing on that. But safety, security, and and higher returns and and eventually uh we hope that people come.

>> Incredible. I think they will. Vicram, appreciate you taking the time to spend with us. You've got a hectic 10 days, couple weeks ahead of you. Try to get some sleep as best you can. We're uh we're we're rooting for you here. >> Thanks, man. Great being here. >> Absolutely. We'll see you next time. Thanks for chrome. >> Yeah. Thanks. >> All right, guys. There we go. There you have it. Neo Bank Cambrian explosion happening here on the rollup. Neo Finance is right happening happening right before our eyes. Um, and uh, you know, it'll be it'll be pretty interesting to see, right? Like once the uh,

I'm not sure. We're going to get our next guest here potentially coming up. We'll see. Uh, it'll be interesting to see once we get the new Fed chair in there and we have um, you know, suspectedly lower rates, right? We know that they're going to slam rates. Uh, they're going to be much much lower. So, what happens to DeFi rates when the Fed lowers its rate? At this point, um, you know, you can kind of get that rate at the Fed. When money is at a lower rate, DeFi becomes, in my opinion, much more attractive because you can you can borrow money, you can go deploy it, that leverage, that rehypothecation cycle.

Um, actually, you can do a lot more with it when rates are lower. for instance, you know, some of the things that were maybe uh preventative um you know uh you couldn't have done if rates were higher like take some of these yield coins right you know these only become feasible once you lower rates and then you can take you know take some credit you know eventually comes from the Fed maybe get it from banks but then you go and you loan it out you know and you originate some of these loans whether it's figure heliloc and it's going into you know the USDA thing going into AI you know. Um, so that's what's happening. It's happening right before our eyes. Prepare yourselves for the rotation trade

because, uh, it it's it's really happening. Uh, gold is just not doing well. Silver's not doing well. So, hope you guys are doing all right. If you're in, uh, in the metals, tokenized metals, um, do all kinds of crazy things with the tokenized metals. But guys, quick easy uh very tight show today. Main thing happening is uh Fed's uh chair is going to be Kevin Worsh. We're going to drop rates low. All these DeFi projects are going to be preparing for it. And I have a feeling we're going to see a lot of discovery of people looking for yield when rates are much lower. Uh where can

they find it? They can find it in DeFi and you can find us right here on the rollup. We are going to be back next week. Hope you guys have a great weekend. Survive out there. You know, stay off the leverage and um and have a good time. Touch some grass. Enjoy yourselves. Peace. [music] >> [music]