Onboarding Retail with Ramp Network Founder Szymon Sypniewicz

Transcript

[Music] d5 slate team [Music] hey what's up guys it's andrew here or andy as you know it i'd love for you if you enjoyed this content you know if you got something out of it to give it a like subscribe to our channel on youtube we're really trying to grow it here and we'd really appreciate it cheers guys and i hope you enjoyed what's going on guys welcome back we are here with with simon from ramp ramp network is a fiat on ramp to the crypto world expanding globally as we speak uh they are available all over europe

and as i said expanding globally i'm here with simon the co-founder of ramp i'm really excited for this because if we're being honest in order for the crypto space to keep growing we're gonna need uh easy access for all sorts of of customers and institutions to be able to hop in um and and invest right now there are quite a few options but the more the merrier and the easier the better uh so i'm here with simon i'll let him introduce himself uh you know kind of talk a bit about what he's been doing and working on and we'll take it from there how you doing simon fantastic yeah hi thanks uh thanks for having me it's it's a real pleasure so um i i'm a uh ceo uh the ceo and co-founder of ramp and i built this company to make access to

crypto uh so much easier what we specialize in is um we build a kind of a copy and paste solution that apps and dapps and wallets can use to add to their products so that their users can easily purchase crypto within those products so you can think of it as uh you know um kind of coinbase in the box that you can copy and paste into your product and let your users purchase crypto very easily and uh with that you never need your users to go go somewhere else and purchase right there we also have our own website our own on-ramp where people can just go directly and people love it because it is super easy super

fast super smooth um and we are very very hyped because as of now we are only available in europe all across europe but very soon we are also launching in the us and across the world so this is a very special moment for us yeah that's awesome it's been in development and and is getting going now um and that that factor that you said of being able to integrate that into anything so basically uh for those who are listening say for example um let's say on meta mask or on a trust wallet if you will you could basically be able to just be integrated into those platforms so that way that you know

if i wanted to make a payment with my debit card to purchase some cryptocurrency it would basically be through your platform through your api but on you know their wallet or their app yes that's correct and uh we kind of think that as the space is maturing um the general user flow of uh how these users start their journey with crypto will change tremendously so up until now users have been uh just using coinbase first and kind of familiarizing themselves um with crypto there and then they would just withdraw it to any other wallet and start playing uh with any product that they find interesting in the space with the d5 and fts

trading or whatever they find exciting um and it's a little bit like with um ebay in the very early days of e-commerce so um very few people remember but with ebay you had to kind of figure out the way to pay for the good you purchased um with the seller and it was pretty complicated and you can imagine you had to use ach and like coordinate offline it was terrible and then paypal happens um and uh paypal uh did something very important uh to the uh entire um e-commerce um kind of industry um and we think that it was the enabler of tremendous growth of the commerce during

last uh two decades basically and we want to do the same for the crypto industry so now we want to enable um product creators entrepreneurs creative people building stuff on top of crypto uh to kind of cut out this uh intermediary step of uh saying okay you want to use my servers but you need to go to coinbase first to purchase crypto we want to be a built-in uh purchasing process and we think that um this is a super exciting mission because we are basically an enabler for all sorts of uh different products so you mentioned some wallets but also we are getting uh implemented into many g5 products um we have some exchanges chatting with us

because they also need a few other ramps if you think about it um so very exciting space very demanding because it is very heavily regulated uh very hard to do right um and uh you need to uh be very serious about security um as well but we find it very very rewarding and i think that you know this is like just like a crucial part of uh the crypto ecosystem setup that needs to be done really well yeah undoubtedly a crucial part um and yeah you can kind of feel that fulfillment as you are as you are creating and feeling a need uh in the in the ecosystem that you know

people will need for this thing to grow um and for everything to happen i i saw a tweet uh it was it was one of those how it started and and how it is now photos and it was a picture of like eric voorhees and roger ver at a convention with a bitcoin sign and then paypal and there's a stand there's a bitcoin stand in the paypal stand and then what was it like two days ago we've got the news of paypal is going to be uh opening up cryptocurrency all sorts of purchases and stuff like that now they do have some sort of of uh of restrictions on them but um are you guys competing with paypal now is that how you view it or are you guys more like a collaboration or different

how do you see that um so we think that paypal actually um tremendously lowered our marketing budget for 2021 so we are very grateful uh for that um we think that it's going to be an amazing year for ramp uh because what people did is basically an ability to trade indices or in other words just to speculate on the price within their app and i i think that it is a very good move on their side like business-wise um first it is a relatively high margin product for them and secondly they probably also struggle to get any engagements in their mobile app so i think that they just did it uh

to get some more engagement you can think of it as you know um cryptocurrencies have this um gambling element in them so you know people are very excited and like to you know speculate with it and uh if you get invested you probably know well uh if you get invested in crypto you you check uh the prices very often and check out how your holdings are doing um is the crypto you you hold on and hold is growing or is it falling in price um so i think that people did it for just that uh but the sad thing about paypal is that you cannot do much with this cryptocurrency that you purchase through them and um i imagine i know why so it is super hard and we know it well

um to build this right and make sure that regulators are happy um with you being basically an open uh crypto wallet that can interact with this broad broad uh crypto world um maybe paypal will get there eventually um but right now i don't think it is going to happen and i just feel like you know there is marketing uh marketing wise there is a gigantic top of the funnel uh kind of opening for us and many of those people who'd you know get started with paypal and get started playing with crypto writing their interface uh would would you know just

fall into rabbit hole and then when they would open up a non-custodial wallet most likely they will see ramp built in there and you know using ramp is just as easy as purchasing crypto with paypal so i think they will find the experience very familiar very easy to navigate but at the same time the possibilities are so much broader so much more exciting so i'm excited for all those of those users as well yeah i think the i think the funnel as you're saying in terms of marketing certainly opened up the broader idea of okay we can invest in this easily all across the world they've got like 20

something i think like 25 million users or something like that so that is kind of like that first awareness phase if you will of the funnel and then once people realize like oh you know i can earn yields or i can actually own my tokens um stuff like that then when they have that interest to you know go into the or you know i don't want to have to do kyc et cetera et cetera um right then then they'll be interested in in getting to those non-custodial and actual owning of the funds and you know that's kind of where ramp comes in um so so how does that work so if i'm so say i'm going on uh wallet or arjun or or metamask or exchanges where ramp is uh integrated right

and i'm purchasing say a thousand dollars of of of bitcoin through ramp uh are you guys a do you guys have a huge wallet that is like a safe and a multi-sig or do you guys purchase it and then and then sell it like how does that process work um for ramp yeah sure so um it actually like the um the right answer is it depends it really depends on the size of your purchase it depends on what crypto assets you are actually uh going to going to buy um so with ramp we basically have uh two uh kind of paths or two ways of uh procuring liquidity for your crypto

purchase one is uh fully peer-to-peer and ton custodial and we do that for ethereum assets right now and this is only available in europe with something called open banking uh this is very exciting because this actually makes ramp the only crypto on ramp that can function without its own bank account because what we do there is we match buyer with a seller we connect with uh bank accounts via apis for both of the parties and we initiate a payment from you know bob to alice so that the fiat payment is being settled directly between banks and crypto is being escrowed at that time

um and gets released once the fiat transfer uh gets initiated um and this is this is super cool because it is instant it's basically invisible to the end user so it just feels like a very simple coin based purchase it feels like uh you're doing it with with your card or uh even better um but it's it's fully peer-to-peer it's non-custodial it makes uh rump very very um uh what what it makes is uh ramp is very resilient uh to any uh stuff that could happen with our bank accounts or uh payment facilitation kind of

relationships um so we think that this is a very important part of the business and we know that uh it is very much valued in the community yeah um but if you are going to buy with cards or uh if you are going to purchase a crypto asset that is bitcoin and not liquor to asset on ethereum blockchain um it's it's a much more conservative traditional setup so uh uh we would uh either uh pull the money from our pool of liquidity or pull the crypto assets from our pool of liquidity that we have and this is a multi-stick it is very well uh secured and this is basically our money on our uh ledger um or in our books um and we just send it over to you

sometimes if the purchase is very very big we take advantage of our gigantic network of liquidity uh sources so we work with couple otc desks we work with capital exchanges and we source liquidity there so you always know you're gonna get your crypto at the best price um this is the case with many other on-ramps they do not care about it we think that this is very important and moving forward price would be more and more important for end users as they learn how to purchase uh you know through the cheapest routes and as they learn how to take advantage of um you know uh things like defy earning yields and more kind of finance uh oriented uh crypto applications

um so yeah so we make sure that we are always the most technologically advanced best networked and uh most uh efficient way to purchase crypto for our end users and it is also reflected in a way that we procure liquidity for the end users so there are multiple different ways uh the transaction can get settled and we will always uh pick uh the way that is uh easiest cheapest and fastest for our end users beautiful beautiful yeah that's it's probably a really good a really good trait of uh or a a factor of ram to be able to have that option to

to use um just a multitude of ways to be able to provide the service because if any one thing goes down it's kind of like having a backup plan or just other options for uh for for the customers because i mean that that is what it's all about the best prices and making sure that the process is very simple because sometimes um you know it can be confusing there can be a lot of errors there can be a lot of problems with wires with banks with i mean really something that that we get into is like the merge of regular banking with crypto is is a big problem like it is it is a big problem and i think that's what you guys are trying to solve like i've

heard stories of of friends who are pulling out like pretty decent chunks of of crypto and trying to get it back into their bank and the banks freezing the funds yes they have no idea where they're coming from and and and vice versa um you know and that just kind of comes back down to that problem and finding that product market fit um so when you're creating this um you know we kind of hit on it a bit but what what kind of personal ideologies and what kind of personal views really drove you to create this because if you want to get involved in crypto there's a multitude of ways right you can do things um there's so many there's so many ideas or ways to start a business or to make money or to help the ecosystem right but you chose to try to start a

really successful fiat on-ramp so why this and kind of what drove you in the team um you know to do this yeah so me and my co-founder were actually uh the original founders of libertarian party here in poland so we we got into crypto pretty early on uh because of our beliefs in uh personal freedom and personal responsibility um so in our minds uh there needs to be a community driven alternative to central banking and we think that um cryptocurrencies are just beautiful beautiful

very elegant um solution to that and you know uh the the mere fact that uh central banks all around the world are kind of trying to rub their heads around building their own digital currencies or cryptocurrencies right now is a great great testament to um how cryptocurrencies are a very efficient uh competition to uh central banks and uh how they go about printing money and you know uh issue purchasing government's debt and all that so i think that uh it is very important for an alternative to exist uh i'm not 100 sure that we're gonna get to higher bitcoinization or that

cryptocurrencies would uh get into mainstream anytime uh soon but i think that um there always needs to be an alternative and there always will be um very interesting uh markets for crypto to penetrate so um i think that this is you know just a wonderful business opportunity and at the same time it aligns uh very nicely with our own beliefs we think that's that this is something that you know that the world just needs um if not for anything else just to check uh just keep um governments and central banks uh in check so this is um if you will you know and a weapon in hands of uh humanity

to uh just make sure that our freedoms uh are intact and that there is always an alternative that uh central banks need to uh be wary of and uh be be aware of yeah yeah it's when you put it like that as a check and balance system it really it really is easy to see the value in the system you know it's just like yeah yeah intense and and and the very beautiful thing is that uh it will always be there it will always be there it cannot uh even get prohibited but then peer-to-peer networks and you know grassroots kind of systems and products would uh would still make it available so i think that

governments know that and i think that they are kind of okay with that they already they already got used to it like during the last uh 11 or 12 years uh they kind of i think uh realized that crypto is here to stay and um it's good i think that there are many uh fantastic people in in governments or all across the world realizing how powerful this technology is and they're willing to build on top of that um and we don't want to uh you know get into a conflict with them we just want them to know that we're here and at the same time it's just a beautiful beautiful thing seeing how defy is blooming and all those uh systems built on top

of smart contracts platforms are you know um getting some more and more adoption um so i think this space is just fun uh it is a huge business opportunity and at the same time just needs to exist so there is a big intrinsic value in that uh that's what made us um you know decide to uh to to to to get in in in blockchain space and build rambling yeah yeah the the things that are going on in d5 this year are just insane i mean that this year has definitely not been the year of bitcoin the year of lightning network i mean all that's there it's always the year of bitcoin it's always going to be here i mean every day that goes by it establishes itself more and more as a trustless system but this year with

ethereum has just been insane um i've never seen so many ethereum maximalists on twitter it's it's just it's crazy um did you participate in any of that did you do any of the yield farming stuff yeah i do um all sorts of stuff with very little amounts of money actually i i lost uh much more money on paying gas than i earned uh uh farm yielding so dude it was insane for a while yeah but the gas prices were insane as well so that with uh when you play when you play with uh very little money it's kind of balanced it's uh yeah it's not intense it's not worth it yeah no yeah yeah yeah you're your

or your yield gets eaten by by guys gas prices so yeah i participate in that um i'm very excited about it and i just want to be part of the community and kind of you know feel how uh this entire ecosystem is growing and i've got many friends who are building uh you know stuff around defy and critical parts of infrastructure of this of this insane d5 world and um i feel like we are getting closer and closer to fully functional uh alternative finance system and this is super exciting because this is something i'm going to build you know um according to you know open source uh principles and it's all community driven and um

this is something that i think is uh just unprecedented i think that's the first time in the humanity that we created something like that so uh what's what what crazy times we live in um and observing observing this space is uh very rewarding and very interesting however i think that we have uh still a couple of things that are that needs uh that needs uh solving so we still need to kind of try to go about unsecured lending and this is something that uh is very hard you know from just practical standpoint um and from compliance standpoint as well so i'm now watching very closely projects like

ave and others trying to build first attempts um to to to get um uncollateralized or underculturalized loans on chain and see and see how it works that's the defined trend that i think is still kind of unleashed and once somebody figures out how to do it is going to be you know 100 guys extra for the entire space um so we still need to get ready for that i think that you know the infrastructure is not quite ready yet so we are trying to build as fast as possible to you know uh get ready for for that and uh then really fun uh fun fun part uh we'll start what's also

interesting with v5 is that um i feel like it's been clear uh since uh infamous da dao um that it's going to be it's going to be really big so i knew that um you know even a couple of years ago you well it was it was it was the time where uh bitcoin maxis were triumphing after the dao just failed and yeah good hacked by uh some very clever hacker but i knew that you know that's probably just uh growing pains and i kind of so that it's going to be it's going to be epic and here we are uh 2020. um we're seeing real craze here i think this is um

i think this is very interesting point uh in in the history of of decentralized systems and it's very very very exciting um and last part is that i'm very excited about dao's as well so basically what's underpinning each and every or it seems like uh it underpins and then each and every um crypto d5 project is uh you know uh a need of uh creating a governance system so that you can govern uh the way um of you know how you parameterize risks how you reward different stakeholder groups and um yeah i'm also very pumped about aragon

which is you know the kind of um it seems like it's going to be really important in this entire ecosystem so daos are also very exciting to me and the amount of work and progress that happened in recent months in terms of dow uh decentralized most organizations uh is is is just immense so that's also very very exciting right now yeah yeah the aragon the aragon team is definitely like the is definitely the leader of the of the creation of dao's and i mean i just remember taking off a good year or so from crypto and coming back earlier this year uh probably five six months ago and seen all this stuff and being like

what the heck where did all this come from all these protocols all this lending was borrowing all this all this all this um yeah and it's just it it's going to continuously shock people as they come in and learn and use the protocols and test them out um and all that stuff i mean it it it's huge um but with that and the governance and the governance tokens and um you know and and all these new protocols there are a lot of risks there's a lot of new stuff going on but the one thing that um you mentioned is is the governance of these protocols um and what comes to mind is the governance tokens right so ave is obviously a governance token of a comp is the government's compound so we we've got a lot of governance tokens but we

don't have a lot of use cases for these governance tokens quite yet so my question to you is is ramp ever gonna have a token will there be a ramp token um nothing is confirmed yet um i don't think that um we did not build this company with the ultimate goal of introducing a token in mind and i know that many companies got built just to launch a token so ours is to solve a real need we won't have a token for as long as we believe that not having one is not bad uh or is not detrimental of the right service we can provide so once if we figure if we figure out that a token is required to provide a better service

um we might very well get a token um i mean governance tokens are you know this is a very interesting topic i think that you know the value that's uh that is being attributed to them is just speculation that um somewhere in the future uh those would transform to something like more of shares where you do not only get a say in how the company or the protocol is being run but also um you know just just get you some some dividends just get you some cash for sure yeah yeah yeah cash flow or cash flow uh from from the protocol um so um we're gonna see i think that um you know what happened after uni swap

uh drop was just wild oh my goodness it wasn't even real that was just insane yeah every single every single wallet address that you can just sending them all in there trying to see if you get the air drop so that was that was uh jaw-dropping but i think that um it is a sign of something uh very very cool and interesting so uh basically all of these vc funded companies that build um you know pieces of infrastructure are making sure continuously to make them more and more decentralized and there are very good uh incentives for them to do so they want to avoid um regulatory pains they want to make sure that their

protocols and systems are truly owned by the community and i think this is uh really really good so in this sense um you know regulations are doing a real favor in terms of keeping all of these systems robust and decentralized because everybody just tries to decentralize a way yes so that that whatever they build in a very centralized manner um because you can't get the regulatory arbitrage if you're building a centralized exactly it doesn't work exactly so um trying to keep this balance of efficiency of a centralized entity building uh you know products focused on solving a real pain point and addressing a real need um with

with uh trying to do some regular arbitrage or trying to make sure that your product is uh really robust and uh you know there is no way that somebody can just flip a switch and turn it off um if they don't like it um it's something very interesting and there is a dynamic that i think uh is going to you know um continue to surprise us and uh events like like this uni-swap airdrop will happen more and more often because basically these are um driven by uh need of these of these companies to uh to decentralize and keep keep the promise of of being truly truly decentralized so very very interesting

um i think that more and more companies will do that um ramp might do that in the future a retroactive airdrop or something um a retroactive airdrop would be probably the best way to distribute such such token for a company that builds infrastructure for crypto yeah and i saw one i think badger dow just dropped the token i think and they they airdropped it to anybody who had donated on get going nice i think this is a really cool touch and also yeah yeah and also make they made sure this way that um whatever decisions are made in this dao you know sophisticated and engaged um kind of participants would show up with their token and help them make

great decisions right because when you are when you are contributing on bitcoin you probably know what you were doing and they were pretty well yeah different stuff needed to to make good decisions in a good uh in a good day but ultimately like the bottom line for me is that you know we are at the bleeding edge we are at the frontier um what we do now is uh sci-fi kind of stuff um but it's what's really interesting to me is how fast this stuff is going to um you know get to uh early majority of users so it's very exciting that uh bitcoin just hit its early majority um phase um i think that uh it will accelerate

you know growth uh for all the other crypto assets because you know bitcoin is just a uh gateway drug to that king right all kinds of i'm i'm a little bit of an ethereum maxi um oh me too these days just the functionality is just insane like what you can do is just absurd so much more and stable coins too that's that's the huge kicker stable coins it's crazy yeah stable calls are super cool i i see multiple teams working right now on um stuff being built on top of stable coins that is really meant to do you know real world stuff like remittances payments subscriptions um

you know even even even some products that are simplifying yield farming and get you yield in a very simple manner and just represent uh the stable coin as something akin to a u.s dollar just earning a little bit more a little bit more uh yield uh on that than your regular savings account which is also a little bit tricky right because you need to protect the customer and to make sure that customer understands what are their underpinning risks so um here i think you know products like nexus mutual which are ensuring lld protocols that are super risky still um are going to be a very important pivotal to

introducing those products to broiler audience so yeah all that very interesting we are working with like the nature of our company is that we work with people who want build something new and two really care about um you know users they care about newbies they want new people to join um to join the revolution and um you know because we chat with them on daily basis and uh it continues to blow my mind what's being built um so stuff that is much better than traditional fintech actually yeah and i think that in a year or two we're gonna be just blown away um so this is this is super exciting i

mean it's all fun stuff uh yield farming and like dows and airdrops and all that stuff it's it's fun to live in business it's almost like a game it's like it's enjoyable and with that being said like over the next year or two as you said you know that you think we'll be blown away what is your vision and big goal for ramp to to wrap us up here you know what do you see as the mission the vision the goal you know what do you want to see ramp be in a year two years three years um you know yes so um for us the main goal for this year is to get global and this year by the end of this year we're going to be available all across the world and this is one of the final

steps uh of of of the first phase of the plan so now we want to launch a universally accessible uh access layer to crypto we think this is tremendously important for all people living on top of crypto there is a huge frustration of people building crypto products because their products are global from day one and they need a global partner to get their users um on board and get their users uh you know crypto uh into their wallets um and next up is going to be um a lot of work with um making sure that this flow of purchasing crypto will get uh you know as

easy or easier than topping up your paypal wallet or then paying for uh your e-commerce purchases so right now it's there's still a little bit of a friction um we feel like with ramp we have uh the best flow around it really takes seconds kyc is just painless everything is very smooth uh but we feel that there are still things uh to improve uh before we can basically become uh you know paypal and stripe of this crypto world um so next year we'll be all about that um and also right now we offer only uh four crypto assets uh we you know so like i can't pick them uh because we picked the assets that we think are most important in the ecosystem and we trust the most so

right now it's bitcoin ethereum um die by maker and usdc um and now we are uh uh chatting with more and more teams that are issuing their own tokens of you know different kinds and uh we are adding more and more tokens based on that so we chat with people who have very cool use cases and really care about the ux of product built on top of the chains or uh using the tokens that they issued and we are adding more and more of them into our product so we feel like uh next year um this year was all about uh getting this you know uh

widespread geographical coverage um and end of this year and beginning of the next year will be all about adding more and more tokens and be making sure that every token that can be traded and can be sold via ramp um is it is being sold by our ramp also you know layer 2 is very important to us so we are one of very few companies that can actually integrate into layer two solutions on top of ethereum um most crypto on-ramps uh just send crypto uh from uh uh you know coinbase account or uh binance account and uh that you know with that technically you just cannot um

send this money straight to layer two what we want to do next year early next year is to uh create a native on-ramps into selected layer two solutions so that when you purchase your crypto it arrives instantly and it's already layered to uh ecosystem that you chose so that it's instantly ready to use and there is no need to bridge it from mainnet to uh you know sidechain or any other layer to solution that you're going to use that would be really cool and that those those goals and that that path seems exactly what to do go global get this to be as accessible as possible for

all nations and everybody around the world add as many as as possible to to make sure that people when they get on they can purchase what they want ramp up the marketing make sure everything on the back end is looking good hopefully prices appreciate as well and we should be in business and uh there it is ladies and gentlemen that was that is excuse me that is that is simon from ramp we we had a great chat covered a lot of things um any closing thoughts from you simon um it's going to be very very exciting months ahead of us i think that it's just um you know it's just the space is just heating up and we cannot even

imagine what's going to happen up next and um you know we're going to be all very thankful that we've been here uh in this space so early yes sir thank you so much uh i'm glad that i could make some time for this youtube it was an absolute pleasure it was a pleasure thanks for having me