Ladies and gentlemen, I am extremely fired up to have today's guests on the show. This gentleman worked in the finance industry and worked for a couple startups before joining one of the quickest growing companies in the crypto space. This fella is currently the VP of business development and partnerships at BlockFi, a crypto asset service that pairs financial products with institutional quality benefits. BlockFi has also received unicorn status and is currently valued north of 3 billion US
dollars. Humblebrag. I'm very pleased to welcome to the crypto news podcast Shayne Mullen, Shane, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Great to have you on. We were just chatting before and you are a South Carolina boy currently living the life in New York City,
New York is on fire right now. It is 100% back. You know, I'm telling myself tell my fiance I think we need to start making the trip up here at least once a month. And it's also just electric being back in the office, right? Like we have a pretty big office down on Broadway. We've outgrown it so we need a new one. But I haven't met any of my co workers since I
started June of last year. And just being in a room, you know, with my existing team, grabbing some water and having a conversation with you know, a founder or head of finance wherever it is. It's just amazing. It's something that I'm really excited to get back into the swing of things once we continue on.
I love that. Speaking of New York, the pomp meetup. I know pomp is one of the bigger investors in BlockFi. He's also probably your biggest spokesman and in promo boy. Mind you, he's done a great job and he has a very prominent following but I want to talk about the Bitcoin pizza launch last week. I had a friend and actually a co worker, Richard Levin, VP of sales at crypto news and @BonjourBitcoin on
Twitter. He was there and he said that there was like a two hour wait just to shake pomps hand and say what up to the guy's like, is he an A list celeb now? What's the deal with him? Have you met him yet?
I've met, I've never met him in person. We've had tons of conversations over zoom. I mean, look, the guy is amazing at what he does. He's incredibly smart. He's a sponge of knowledge. He's able to communicate very complex topics with very simple ways of discussion. He's been and has learned, you know, over the course of time, just how to really build a brand online. And he knows how to go viral. And he knows what things you know, make people interested and get people
out of the woodwork. So he's been an absolute incredible investor, partner, mentor, guide, right to all things BlockFi. I can't say enough about how great pomp has been, you know, to the success of this business?
That's awesome. I haven't met the guy yet. Hopefully in the near future.
But I did hear Matt that the pizza was like a three out of 10. He's got to find a new pizza distributor.
Where's Portnoy with that?
Right, right, exactly. I get the Portnoy pizza review of pomps Bitcoin pizza party.
That is and those guys go out on Twitter all the time, too, because they were chirping. You know, el presidente de for having those paper hands. And that would have been an absolute treat, him just shredding his pizza into two pieces. It did not look appealing at all that was, yeah, that looked subpar at the best. But I want to jump into BlockFi.
And I want you to start by, I guess we'll start by talking about the company and give us a quick you know, 30 seconds to one minute elevator pitch of everything BlockFi does.
Sure. So you know, for those who are not familiar blockFi is a financial services platform for the crypto investor. Right? So we offer a web and mobile desktop experience to customers all over the world where you're able to earn yield, borrow, trade, and our new product pair which is coming out in a couple of weeks with cryptocurrency or in cryptocurrency in the form of
rewards on the pay side. Really exciting platform, an area and niche that we've been playing in for the past, you know, four years, not a lot of businesses that offer similar type of value that we do. And we believe you know, through safety, security trust, through really good products and bringing you know financial services to the crypto investor market, right, we can help a lot of people, both existing in the system and who are looking to get into crypto really benefit over the long
period of time. So the company, we've grown, I think you said it earlier, you know, 10x, in the past 12 months, we've, you know, raised a bunch of rounds of funding, we've probably 10x our employee base. And we've just continued to build products that our customers are looking for, and our customers are asking. So it's been a really exciting ride.
Couple of the products and services that are most intriguing to not only myself, but sort of everyone listening and just the general public. The interest and APY is huge. And we'll get into that now. Another one is a credit card, which I'm still on the waitlist waiting for that hopefully, you can give me a little podcast bump on that one, that'd be a treat, but going. Yeah, for those at home the waitlist, there's got to be, I don't know, 100,000 people on here probably won't be getting
that to like 2030. But I'm joking. On the APY., now, if I would explain it to my parents, or my grandma, or just anyone who might be a little older, and who has dealt with traditional banking their whole lives. And they see a blockFi that goes earn up to 10% APY, which is 10% interest on your crypto. They're like, Okay, this must be a scam. This is way too good to be true. Getting 10%, most people like if I can get 10% return on my investing portfolio, I'm dancing and romancing. And that's
absolutely incredible. And then there's blockFi guaranteeing 10%. Walk me through that pitch. And what do you guys actually do with those funds in order to guarantee 10% back to the user?
Yeah, for sure. So look, I think there's a bunch of things that you need to understand right to really grab hold of that 10% number. We actually joked, internally, couple months back if we change the rate to 4%, will we get better adoption, right? Because it just makes so much more sense. But we can actually pay and fundamentally due to, you know, hundreds of 1000s of people on a daily basis. 10%, or our 10% rate right now is promotional, but it's 8.6% on
stable coins. So I think the first couple things you need to understand is you know, what is a stable coin? Right. So at the most basic level, right, a stable coin is a blockchain issue dollar. Right. So different entities that exist within the crypto ecosystem, like Gemini circle, Paxos have issued stable coins, within these blockchain environments, and then we at blockFi use them very similar to the way that a company would use cash, right,
or USD. So when you're theoretically or when you open an account on blockFi, and you're depositing your USD or transferring USD funds onto the platform, what we're doing is we're going to convert that into a stable coin. And you're going to have a stable coin balance within the blockFi interest account. Now, that's soon as you deposit or transfer those funds onto the platform, you start earning interest, right, 8.6%.
What we're doing with those funds is in turn going out to an institutional market, hedge funds, family offices, endowments, some insurance, some bank some real money players who are looking to borrow dollars from blockFi. And we are lending them those dollars for interest rates that are slightly higher than the interest rate we're paying to you, Matt, or to you know, someone in your family who
has a blockFi account. The difference in kind of blockFi, and that traditional model, which is very similar to the way that a bank operates is that you know, there is no FDIC insurance on the account. That being said, You're being compensated for risk, up to 8.6%. for the lending activities that you're taking with blockFi, and you can withdraw at any time, and you can move money in and out as you
feel or as you wish. So we think it's probably, it is the most compelling savings tool or savings vehicle that, you know, people should have at least some exposure, if not, you know, large bit of exposure to.
So what do you tell to those? You know, I'll use my parents, for example, again, who are very intelligent people, but would definitely, you know, bat their eye at something like this, because again, it seems too good to be true. How do you go about pitching them on this?
For me when I'm talking to someone in that particular seat, the best way to explain it is just using something that's relevant to what they've done before, right? So using like relevant and credible scenarios that would
That was a very good explanation. Thank you for that help them understand exactly how this operates. For example, when you open a bank account, you deposit your cash into that account. If you open a savings account, the bank actually pays you 1% interest, right, or 80 basis points, or 60 basis points annualized, really low rates.
What the bank is fundamentally doing is using the cash deposits that sit within that account, and they are lending them out to other areas of the bank for a yield that makes more than 80 basis points or 1% on your
money. The bank makes what's called the net interest margin, right, which is the revenue that they generate from the spread or the difference in what they're lending and what they're paying to you, the saver, and then you theoretically have a IOU, or a set of funds that you can withdraw or move at any time. And the bank has a large set of reserves that you're able to pull and draw from at any time so they can manage, you know, withdrawals and things of that
frequency. What we're doing at blockFi is relatively similar. Except your denominated currency is not Fiat, it's stable coin. And we are lending to institutional investors who are typically collateralizing their position with crypto. So an institutional investor, for example, who wants to borrow $50 million of USD and has $100 million of Bitcoin? They can't go to JPMorgan and say, Hey, JP Morgan, here's my Bitcoin, can you guys use that as collateral
and issue me a loan? Right, JP Morgan has no idea how to underwrite that particular asset, maybe they will in the future. But today, they have no idea. BlockFi does. And we've been doing it for a very long time. And we're the best in the business that does it. So we can provide the fastest execution, the best rates and the largest ticket size of borrowing USD borrowing to that particular
institution. Therefore, right, we can pay, and we can support scale on our interest accounts to pay out that 8.6% yield that I mentioned earlier. So the second part is a little bit more, I wouldn't say confusing, but more complex than the first part. But if you understand the fundamentals of how a bank operates and makes money, you could understand like the fundamentals of how a company like blockFi does within the c ypto ecosystem very, very clear and concise. Now, again, the 8.6 is a very
appealing number. And you know, you can leave money in you can leave USDT aka tether and your account stable coins in your account and make easy money, that is one of blockFi premier products. I also want to talk about the credit card. Now the credit card is very transformational. That is literally trail blazing a space. You have companies that rack up, you know gazillions of points on their Amex on their visa on their master cards every single year. You also have individuals
who can do that. Tell me about the pros of using the block Fi credit card which is coming out shortly.
Yeah, I love that word. transformative. This card really is the first of its kind. Nothing out there exists in this capacity. And we're really excited to be trailblazing and pioneering a completely new category of card and card reward. There's kind of two elements or two things I'd like to touch on with the card in particular. First to give you, before I get into either of those things, to give you an idea of the card and its, you
know benefits. Going to be issuing cards hopefully this summer, and rolling people off the waitlist. It's a visa backed, no annual fee, no foreign transaction fee card that earns you 1.5% back in Bitcoin on all purchases. We'll also have a 3.5% back on the first 90 days of spend with the cap $100. And a couple other benefits associated with being BlockFi customer, trading bonus refer a friend bonus and a
stable coin bonus. Particular folks who are interested in the card, in my opinion are kind of two buckets, two categories. One are folks who really love the crypto market, Bitcoin, etc. and want to just stack as many SATs as they possibly can. Personally, I got the card last week, I haven't stopped using it, I haven't stopped spending it. I haven't stopped showing it
to people. And all I want is to just get, I mean, I'm even tipping more because all I want is to get as much SATs back because I care so much about the future value of the asset of Bitcoin and where it's going to go and how it's going to transform society etc. So I want to stack as much as I can. For others though, which is a pretty large population as well. This card is an incredibly simple and easy low touch and low friction way to become an investor in the
crypto industry, right? All you need to do is apply for the card and then spend and you're automatically getting rewards that are landing in your BlockFi account that are automatically being just moved in there on a daily basis. Right. So you don't have to necessarily go to Coinbase or blockFi, Gemini, open an account, move money and buy spot, Bitcoin etc. You just can go to Starbucks and swipe your card and all of a sudden you're a crypto investor, right?
That is a very compelling value prop In my opinion, for folks who are maybe a little bit hesitant to jump into the space, want to participate in small capacity, maybe get their feet wet. And then I always say to once you jump in, and once you get your feet wet, you're going to care a little bit more and read a little bit more and take your time to understand exactly what it is that you're investing
in. It's a great way to help with just that general adoption and then hopeful education on a go forward basis.
I love the part about the ease of getting into the crypto space and the ease of becoming an investor. Which leads me to my next question. What do you think, and now mind you that is definitely one of them. But what do you think, are some of the biggest catalysts that those sort of last dominoes to fall in order to get the masses into the crypto industry things like the blockFi credit card really move the needle? You have lolli who's doing incredible work in space as
well? It seems like everyone loves rewards whenever you can get free Bitcoin with almost next to no KYC and you know, none of the nitty gritty like he talked about onboarding fiat onto a crypto exchange platform, then buying Bitcoin on spot or if you want to dabble a little further and have some risk of futures, whatever the case may be, it's definitely not easy. But buying a coffee at Starbucks and getting a couple SATs is.
Besides that, what other sort of big things are catalysts do you think can really increase crypto mass adoption?
Yeah, it's a great question. Something I'm pretty passionate about is just in my opinion, the general lack of education within the cryptocurrency space today. I think there is the availability for whether it's video you know, written or some other form of, you know, general, easy to understand, you know, small tidbits small bite, you know, quick lessons, etc. On the basics, right? Like, what is a blockchain? What is mining? What is cryptocurrency? What are a
stable coin? What are the risks, all of these things I think can be broken down in a really simplistic way. And if told by the right, people or group of people or delivery mechanism can really help invite more of the general population into the space and give them the tools they need, as well as the assurances they need that what they're doing, they totally understand, and they totally have a good grip on, you know, the components of this particular industry. Right?
Crypto's not the, if you're not a native crypto person, it is not the easiest thing to understand. Right? It can be confusing, it can be relatively challenging to comprehend some of these topics. But I do think the right method and the right educational setting, these topics can be told and taught in a simplistic way where more
people can understand. And I think the more companies like blockFi, and others that have the venue and the audience and the size and scale to educate in a really good way, you know, will be massive for this industry and we here are going to be launching some stuff in the coming weeks that are specifically focused on educational content and educational videos.
I love that. Just want to take a quick break and give a big shout out to our sponsor of the show CoinPoker. You guys have heard me talk about them many times before. I absolutely love CoinPoker. They are the revolutionary blockchain technology based platform that was developed by an incredible team of poker lovers and sports gamblers. CoinPoker uses USDT as the main end game currency and $CHP is in game fuel. You've heard me talk about this many times too. $CHP is almost like a
stable coin. They've done an incredible job and have kept its ground during the crypto crash of a couple of weeks ago. CoinPoker also features instant and secure transactions using USDT ethereum, Bitcoin or $CHP tokens. One of my favorite parts is no KYC you literally sign up it takes two minutes and you're dancing and romancing. You're up and running. And you can start using the platform to play different types of poker or you can even use the sports betting app which I myself am a big fan
of. Whenever I'm on the go I can whip up my phone play a couple games a Texas Hold'em or bet on sports playoff season is upon us as well. Hockey and basketball has already started. Baseball is just getting into the nitty gritty Champions League Final, some incredible stuff coming up and you can do all of this on the CoinPoker app. Head on over to coinpoker.com give him a try. I'd love these guys. I think you will too. Appreciate that. And heading back to the show. Shayne, quick little segue
there. You poker fan or sports bettor at all? I know you're a golfer you ever throw a couple, sprinkle a couple bucks on the field?
Yeah, a couple. Play some skins here and there. I'm not a big poker guy. Zach, our CEO actually was a huge poker guy back in the day. Yeah, I, you know, dipped my toes in some of that stuff back in about two years ago. And I just, I don't have the patience for it, unfortunately.
I love that.
Yeah. But like, you know, it was like, I used to play poker in high school and with some buddies, and I would always like, you know, lose and buy back in and then I realized that I just don't have what it takes to go all the way. So I've stayed away, but it's fun. And we have some partners in that space that we love to work with.
It's definitely not for everyone. You spoke about being a golfer, especially from South Carolina, one of the best golfing spots on the planet. If you don't mind me asking what's your handicap right now?
So right now I'm at 12.
Not bad. Pretty darn good.
I should be an eight, honestly. But I'm only really getting out there once a month.
Well, if you're only getting out once a month, and if you're still at 12 It's not bad.
Yeah. You know, it's funny. Like, when's the last time you had a lesson? If you had a golf lesson anytime recently?
Oh god, probably since I was eight years old.
Right? So same. And two months ago, I went to this guy, David Ayres, down in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, and I got a lesson for an hour. And the amount of stuff that he taught me and just told me about before I even swung the club. I was like, I'm doing so many things that are just not standard or correct that over the years, I've thought were
accurate. And just those little tweaks alone, with just approaching the ball where my hands are grip, all that stuff has dropped my score or my handicap by, you know, three or four points. It's been incredible.
What's the nicest track you've ever played?
I'm gonna sound like a dick on this one. But I actually got a chance to play Augusta National.
Come on.
Yeah, I did.
Come on. How? Like, I got goosebumps from you just telling me that.
So a friend of mine, her dad is a member. And when I was a senior in college, I was working as a Bellman at a hotel and they needed me to work on a holiday weekend. So my family ended up spending the holidays the weekend before. And so I had one day off over that holiday weekend, which was a
Sunday. And yeah, my friend's dad asked if I wanted to drive down to Augusta from Charleston, just the two hour drive and went down and played the nine hole course, had lunch played the 18 hole course, came back in you know, had some drinks. It was just unbelievable experience. Like, nothing will ever I think top that for me in terms of, you know, golf experiences.
Is it as nice as it looks on the TV.
Yeah, it's just, it's nicer. I mean, the entire thing like the entire course is a like mowed fairway. There's rough but then the rough is just mowed flat into the trees like it is an absolute like, beautiful place. And when I was on the first tee, there were like, a handful of members up watching us. I remember just being so shaky when I got up to the ball. So I was like, if you spray this ball on the first tee of Augusta, you will never forget that experience for the
rest of your life. And thank God I ended up hitting in the fairway and and you know, shut off some of the scaries. But yeah, what an experience.
That's so cool. One of the coolest stories we've had on the pod, that's a dream come true. I think that's any golfers dream come true. And you've got to do that. So that is absolutely incredible. Keeping on the sports side for a second. Any sponsorships coming up with blockFi? I feel like you guys are ripe and at the perfect time to sponsor with some incredible sports organizations around the world.
Yeah, you know, it's a really good question. We are certainly in the midst of conversations with some either teams and or leagues and more specifically athletes. There are tons of athletes that have been interested in the crypto space more specifically, even clients BlockFi, right? Because we have a private Private Client business. And so there's going to be something that we do probably in the coming months. But right now we're in our discovery phase.
You can't give me anything?
It will be a famous athlete.
What sport? Give me something.
That's all I can give you for now.
It's all you can give me. Okay. I'm waiting a couple years down the road for you know, who knows maybe it's the you know, Carolina Hurricanes or something. I think right now I'm gonna say it's PNC Marina, maybe the hurricanes? But you know, you guys buy the name rights of some huge sports stadium whether its an arena, you know, football stadium, baseball diamond, wherever the case may be but that would be
incredibly cool. One thing I want to talk about, and I know a lot of people are very curious about this, you saw this all over Twitter all over the news. But a couple of weeks ago, I guess that would have been last week. But for those at home, it was the week of May 18. When sort of the crypto crash occurred, mind you, we always say it's a crash. But it's really just sort of knocking out everyone who's 100 times leveraged, and it's great for the crypto family as a whole.
But BlockFi had a, I guess we can call it a mini shit show and accidentally gave full Bitcoin to some of its users when they shouldn't have, when you shouldn't have rather, again, crazy situation, no one actually knows what happened unless they're on the inside. You fortunately, were on the inside. And I'd love to hear the true story of what happened.
Yeah, look, you know, people make mistakes. We're all humans. You know, there was a promotional payout. We typically pay Gemini USD promotional payouts, which is just one to $1 on the second Friday of each month, and, you know, the G USD instead was BTC dominated. So you know, if you were getting 50, Gemini USD, you got 50 Bitcoin. That was the issue. That's what happened. About 100 people were affected.
Most of the money we've recovered, everybody that we work with, to be totally frank, are incredibly good people, and just loyal to the BlockFi nation. So we really didn't have any issue or trouble with any conversations of that on that front. But look, I mean, this industry scaling really quickly, right. And I think making sure that you're focusing on things like, you know, risk assessment and risk process, and, you know, building a business that can withstand speed, and scale is
really important. I think, for everybody at the company, it's definitely a bit of a wake up call, and just a hey, you know, it's time to continue to deepen the track of focus on making sure our practices and our risk assessment and our risk management is up to par with the likes of major banks that we'll be competing against in the short term. So you hate to see it, it's totally and utterly, you know, unfortunate. And, you know, I feel bad for all parties
involved. Right, it sucks, but, you know, we'll be stronger from it on a go forward basis.
When you say you feel bad for everyone involved. Of course, it's really, it's a much bigger mistake on your end than it is for the client who accidentally may have received, you know, 50 Bitcoin instead of 50 US dollars. But you said everyone obliged, and everyone was, you know, pretty straightforward about it. Do you have any funny stories about maybe one guy who, you know, cashed out and private jet and is now on a yacht in the middle of the ocean?
No, unfortunately, no stories, but you know, look at the end of the day, people internal people external, our client base, you know, the the media, the public, everyone that's been following this thing. It happened, it was an accident, won't happen again. But yeah, other than that, there's just, you know, steps we can take to make sure we focus on remediation and risk management. And there will be some, you know, good announcements on that front in
I'd love to hear that. I want to move forward and the coming months. talk about the founders, Zach and Florrie they get incredible praise on Twitter. I've heard and listened to many podcasts were BlockFi employees or themselves with been on. Teams like these two in particular are the creme de la creme of founders and C suite employees. I'd love if you could just touch on some of their strengths and how they've impacted you and the company.
Yeah, that's a really good question and love chatting on this topic because both of them are just so strong in so many different areas. Zach actually was my Boss back in 2014 to 2016. So I had the pleasure of working for him directly in a sales capacity. He is a very tenacious, incredible salesman, very smart, very driven, thinks into the future,
but he's also humble, right. And he's also, you know, sticks to his roots, and he's able to take very complex like, pomp, he's able to take very complex topics, understand them very in depth, and then be able to make decisions on the fly that help our business make the right decisions on a go forward basis. So very unique skill, and Zach embodies it better than anybody else. Florrie a has all those skills as well, and she is just
an absolute leader, right. She is somebody that I look up to, in terms of, you know, a young female founder in New York, creating a multi billion dollar business, you know, with a vision that really is to help include and bring as many different types of people into the financial ecosystem as humanly possible. And every time and everything she does, right embodies that mission and that statement to its core. So look, the two of them combined is, you
know, one two punch. It's a pleasure being able to, you know, hear them, discuss, future initiatives of the company, as well as just address things to the employees when either external factors or internal factors, you know, need addressing, so they're great. And I just actually saw Florrie, she's in the office today for the first time, probably in like, four years, I would say. When Zach and I worked in the alternative lending space, Florrie also had worked at a similar company in our space.
And funny enough, when Zach was starting BlockFi Florrie actually pinged me and asked me to be a reference check to see if Zach would be a good founder. So I had to get on the phone with Florrie and basically tell her what was it like working for Zach, and what were some of his strengths? What are some of his weaknesses, you know? So I told her straight up, Zach could be an incredible founder to work
with. He's going to build really big, important and impactful things one day, and now I'm here working for the company and on a podcast talking about it. It's pretty insane to be honest.
That's hilarious. I also saw you gave him a nice little LinkedIn bump, nice little LinkedIn recommendation. I don't know if you remember that. I think I was back in 2016. Doing a little research for the show and saw that I was like, guy, he's just pumping his boss's tires.
No, yeah, we would go way back. I mean, I define it as kind of FinTech 1.0. Back in 2014 2013. Maybe like a year before that 2012, the first kind of online FinTech companies emerged. Right? So you have Lending Club and prosper. Funding circle avant. So phi, right, these guys created the ability for a consumer, a business student, a doctor, etc, to apply for a loan online. So no more going into a bank
branch, brick and mortar. And that was really the start to this entire FinTech phenomenon that we're experiencing today, which spans much broader past the lending sphere, but now into the investing sphere, the Neo banking, sphere insurance, right? And then crypto amongst, you know, there's a bunch of other things obviously, that's happening. But it's been really wild to see because, you know, I started my career at Bloomberg, which arguably is one of the largest and oldest fintechs on
planet Earth. And, you know, just seeing the innovation and just the amount of money pour in and the venture and the new businesses that have that have come out because of this. And you know, my old colleagues now work, I think five of them are CEOs. One of them is a partner at QED, Matt Burton, from our orchard days, it's just incredible to see. So I don't know, who knows where the next five years will take us?
It's crazy how timing works. You're in the right spot at the right place and you know, work your tail off and the rest takes care of itself. Just really cool, really cool story. Thank you for sharing that. I want to go back and talk about how much BlockFi's grown. I understand the BlockFi has 10x'd in the last 12 months which is absolutely insane. And you've done that while you know almost
fully working remotely. To companies that are looking to grow as quickly as even the team, did you have any tidbits of advice? Or any sort of golden nuggets in regards to growing in this new remote digital world?
That's a really good question. And we have certainly seen growth that I think very, very few companies have seen over this kind of pandemic slash remote environment just in sheer volume of revenue and people. You know, look, the first thing I'll say is that our products have
incredible market fit, right. So if you're a crypto investor, and you want to earn yield, where the best place for you to go and do that, you want to then collateralize some of your crypto and take out a USD denominated loan where the best place to do that, and we have the easiest, safest and best tools for that solution, right? You want to trade in and out of different currencies on the platform as well, right, we have the lowest fees on trading side.
And now you know, if you want to pay with credit, and you want to earn Bitcoin, we have that product as well. So product market fit, number one, incredible. The second thing I would say is that consistency is an just general kind of persistence is like, very important when you're a growing company with a lot of people
working remote. So in my world, the way that I kind of approach our team, and this is like something that a lot of different teams approach within the organization is, you know, I have the same meeting three days a week, and I have the same meeting on Thursday afternoon, and the same meeting Monday morning, and that meeting the agenda, it's always the same. And we make sure we hit our goals, we have our deadlines, we
move on. We hit our goals have our deadlines, we move on, plan, we look back, and we stick to that method. And we just keep building and keep growing and keep getting bigger. It has been one of the like the most, it's just been really great to see, you know, every single team meeting that I've been a part of for the last 12 months, company wide, whether we were 100 people, or 800 people has been the same format, the same tone, the same cadence, it's just we're bigger. The numbers are
bigger right. And there's a lot, there's obviously a lot more involved in what's happening but keep it consistent. That's one piece of feedback that I would urge any founder to just keep in the back of their minds when they're trying to scale a business. You know, during this kind of remote era that we live in today.
What about company culture and your tech stack? Like are you guys using the traditional zoom meetings for sort of communication for video calls, slack for internal comms? G Suite for everything else? Maybe Canva for design? Like, can you tell me as much as you possibly can without maybe you know, divulging some of the BlockFi secrets about your company culture and tech stack that has really helped 10x move the needle?
Yeah, I mean, look like, company culture is obviously really important. And I think one of the, like, company culture comes from, and this sounds like cliche, but it comes from the people you hire.
Right? So if the people that Zach has hired in the beginning and Florrie had hired in the beginning, their culture is going to hire people with similar culture, those people are going to hire people with similar culture, and as long as you can continue to create an element of like consistency across that type of culture, right, and a set of values to follow, then like, you're going to be able to create healthy, collaborative, transparent environments to get your work
done on time going forward. So, you know, I think it's interesting, this world we live in of like, you know, back to back zoom mini meetings every half hour, right? I know you, Matt and myself, and probably like, 1000s of people, whoever's listening to this podcast, probably have, you know, 10 to 12, if not, like, you know, a little bit less than that
meetings on a daily basis. And I think part of it's great, because you can accomplish so much in such a shorter amount of time, because you have only a finite amount, or finite window to discuss what needs to be done, IE it's a little bit more regimented. There's a little bit more structure and then there's usually an output to that structure after that 30 minute call. But then also, like being in the office today, like, I've been able to talk to so many people that haven't been able to
communicate with. I'm learning about where people live and what things they like to do and who they are as a person which can get lost when you're on zoom calls all day, right? That stuff doesn't typically come out unless you make it a point to so we try and have tons of different events where, you know, you don't talk about work, it's happy hour. It's a cooking class. It's a cheese plate
course it's whatever it is. And then, you know, once we get back to the kind of non remote life, as many in person kind of team building activities as you can just to further understand who the people are that you're actually working with and what they're like. I think all those things are incredibly important.
Well said, and you're bang on about the zoom fatigue. It's definitely something real. Shayne, this has been incredible. A couple more questions before we wrap up here. We'll get into the rapid fire good stuff here. Why do you think bitcoins gonna hit 100k?
Hopefully sooner than later.
Give me a month.
100k? I don't I'm gonna say next early next year.
Early next year. Okay. What do you think Satoshi is?
Who is Satoshi? It's a really good question. I don't necessarily know. But the wackiest answer I've heard by far, is that Satoshi is actually from the future. I think people in the future, were able to send information back in time through data. And they sent the white paper back to help fix the financial services ecosystem that had been broken in the future.
So you're ally, Elon Musk, we're living in a simulation.
We're living in a simulation, some some part of it. Who do you think it is?
I have no clue. I'd say Hal Finney and Co is probably one of the best bets.
Hal Finney would be another one.
I'm pretty sure he was the first transaction on the lightning network on the blockchain, on the Bitcoin blockchain. So it's like, you know, it would make most sense and mind you I have no experience in software development, but every software developer I've spoken with and especially in the crypto slash blockchain ecosystem. They're like, they AB test everything. And what's the first thing, who are you going to test it on first?Yourself, no shit. So it
makes sense. But then again, like someone who's thinking so far in the future, I feel like it'd be sort of bait if he said, I'll test it to myself first. I don't know. Then you have Craig Wright. That guy's a clown. Would love to have Craig on the pod. Craig, if you're listening, jump on. We can shred each other for a bit. But yeah, I don't know. That's a good question I'm always asking. Every guest on the show has a very different answer. I like the one from the
future. That's awesome. And then I guess, my next question, I'll steal pomps here just because you and Pomp are boys, do you believe in aliens?
Absolutely.
100% me too
100% there is extraterrestrial life in this universe. Unless we are living in a simulation. And, you know, this isn't even real.
There's been a lot of alien news, and UFO news in the last couple months. I'm not some conspiracist but like, the most recent theory of the aliens, you know, being in the ocean and then just popping out where no human could ever see them. Unless you're on a container ship in the middle of the ocean. Like it's not bad, you know?
Yeah, I mean, think about, what is it like we've explored more in our solar system than we have in the deepest depths of our ocean or something like that. Right. So like, look, the probability of there not being life is just so unbelievably low, just by sheer volume of how many galaxies and stars and planets exists in this universe. I just can't believe there isn't something else out
there. It's just a function of like, has anyone been or has any, like alien species been able to build technology to travel? Or get some sort of message out there.
Interesting. I completely agree as well. One last thing. The Twitter handles have BlockFi employees. You have blockfi Zack, you have founder Florrie you have blockfi Shane. Most of the employees are BlockFi with the exception of founder Florrie, I believe and I could be wrong there. But who had that idea to start with? I think it's genius. It's so powerful. And the bold brand recognition really goes a long way. In my follow up to that is did you steal that from barstool?
Good question. Definitely did not steal it from barstool. I think it was, you know, Zach has always had his handle. Me and Wagner and a couple others just thought it would make sense to have BlockFi
in front of our names. Partially because we want to be recognizable as to who we are within the company, but also like I get tagged all the time with customers who are having issues and it's actually kind of helpful for them, who can just tag me BlockFi Shayne BlockFi Bodner and BlockFi Zach or BlockFi whoever else, because all they type is BlockFi, and then it comes up with five different people, they tag all five of us in at least one of us will be able to route them to
the right person. Right. So it's actually kind of a really beneficial thing on the customer service side. But I will say the blue backgrounds that you see on some people's pages, that was all thanks to our creative director Dan Hennessy, who is going to be coming out with some really cool credit card ads in the next couple months that I think everyone's going to love.
Nice. I've seen tons of startups who have popped off over the last 12 months, you've seen the funding that's going on as well, especially with the money printed never being turned off. Startups are getting crazy amounts of funding. But so many companies are literally stealing the BlockFi Twitter scheme with the, you know, at company name then first name, so you guys should definitely get some credit for that. Just want to throw that out there. But Shayne, this has been, I had a
blast speaking with you. This was lovely. Hopefully next time I'm in New York City, I'd love to catch around with you. Maybe we can go to Liberty national or something with the city in the background, that would be an absolute treat. But before we let you go, can you please let our listeners know where they can find you and BlockFi on social?
Yep. So first of all, awesome stuff. Talking about aliens and golf and crypto and you know, at 1pm on a Thursday, there's nothing better than that. You guys can find me at Twitter BlockFi Shayne as mentioned. And then if anybody is interested in opening up a BlockFi account, blockphi.com you'll see a sign up button right there. Please get your name on the waitlist for the credit card. We've got 300,000 people, we're going to be rolling people off in the summer. We're going to be doing
a lot of the time. If you refer your friends you can get yourself farther up on the waitlist. This card is going to be a game changer. It's going to really change the way that people think about crypto and think about credit card reward. So it's been a pleasure, man. I hope to be on again and yeah, go BlockFi.
Shayne, thanks a lot man. 100% on again. Hope you had a blast. I certainly did. And we'll keep in touch. We will definitely have you on shortly.
Thanks.
Folks. This was the crypto news podcast with Shayne Mullen VP of business development and partnerships from BlockFi, definitely go check out BlockFi if you haven't already. We hope you enjoyed listening to this episode. I had a blast talking to Shayne and we will have many incredible guests like Shayne on the show in the future. As always we drop on Mondays, Wednesdays and Friday mornings. We are available on all podcast platforms if you
liked and loved this one. Hope you did give us a like give us a subscribe it would mean the world and we will see you all shortly. Love you appreciate you and we'll keep in touch everyone have a good one.