Yo-yo what up? Good morning, good morning GMB Wednesday Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday July 17th 2020 look at that another beautiful day to have a beautiful day. I got my Co host in the house, Tyler Mando. How you guys doing today? Doing great man, how are you? I'm doing fantastic, a little tired, but doing great. Tyler, how you doing? Great sunshine, we got my roof fixed this morning so so no more leaks in our house. No more leaks. We're happy about that. No more leaks.
Let's go. Corns are looking good this morning too, So Jan. Yeah, yeah, dude, I absolutely love to see how corns are. Definitely looking good. Well, they were looking a little better last night. They're still looking great. This morning. My last night was like last night's raging pump was so good to see. It was like around 10:00 PM. It was just on my computer just looking at everything. I was like, oh, this is so good. And in this moment, I am. What was it? No, what's that?
What's that? What's that meme of like Kim Jong Un smoking a cigarette in the midst of it's so over. You know that one. We found we are so back. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is that it was me just like smoking a Dube last night, 10:00 PM after like a long as day and I was just like in the midst of it's over. We found out we are so back. I love that. I love look, we even I'm in notifications right now of like ETFs picking their tickers and their fee amounts for ETF's.
Let's go, let's go. We're so back. We are so, so back. It's almost that we never left Anyway, so the other show today, today we got an interesting show for y'all today, like every day, but market reports as usual. So of course we'll go through markets that are rage pumping bears and disbeliefs. Tweets are being deleted. You obviously love to see it. Then obviously Tyler's Tom 100 as usual. Then last but not least, we'll be we'll be we will be joined by Johan Kerbat, who is the VP and
GM at and not Good morning. That means general manager, but VP and GM at Robin Hood Crypto. So we reached out to that. We were talking to them when they were just buying the bit, the finishing the bit snap acquisition and figured why don't you come talk about that and a few other things that Robin Hood's got on their plate. So really excited to be able to, to chat with the VP of crypto there about all things crypto, his thoughts, his background and, and what's going on over
there. Robin Hood, hopefully, you know, we can we can get them to to, to list all of our favorite coins. Just kidding. That's definitely not what we're going to do at Robin Hood today. Don't want to burn that relationship, but but we can manifest it anyways. Without further ado, let me get some retweets. Y'all, let's go. I want to see I want to see some love and what are we? Get right into it. Can you dig it? Yeah, GM everyone.
So I think we're a little bit higher than what we did the show yesterday. But yeah, we did slightly come off the the local highs which happened kind of around last night in the in the last 24 hours. It's kind of been bullish headlines only to be honest, like we saw a the biggest influence of ETF in six weeks, which is just over 400 million in a day.
You've seen people kind of taking the Mount Cox news and and saying, you know, it was overestimated the FUD and you see wells wells accumulate on the back of that. So still looking fairly decent. I think people are now starting to downplay Mount Cox as being a big deal.
You show some very bullish headlines from various people in the industry about what to expect from the EPTF talk of, you know, E to 5K. We would see, you know, 5 billion of inflows this this month as or by the end of the year, just decent, decent figures. You've seen There's AI think a press conference with the SEC of Ripple tomorrow and XRP running fairly aggressively. It's up another 35% this week. So there's expectation that they're going to come to a settlement.
Yeah, just just bullish, more bullish stuff happening in crypto. I haven't really seen anything other than Mount Cox being being the one bearish thing. It has been a broad based rally. So we've seen quite a few different things in the AI space rally. You saw that that Grayscale announces before we went live that they they're doing like an AI style fund, which is a number of altcoins with AI, you know, slants to them, let's say. And that's meant that that bit of the, the market has felt
pretty, pretty hot. World coin announced that they were going to delay some of their emissions. So that's like 40% today alone. So yeah, broader crypto, I've only really seen positive headlines and I think there's still a bit of a, a slow appreciation. You know, that JB Vance would also be a would be very bullish for crypto as well, which has led to a lot of bullish headlines over the last 24 hours. So yeah, looking good. There was some negative macro.
We obviously hit all time highs across stocks again yesterday, but there was some negative back row related to related to chip stocks overnight, just that they might be facing some levels of bands again. The US is obviously working very hard to stop China from getting some of these AI chips or the high performance chips, and that took some stocks slightly lower today. But I don't know. I'm looking at everything right now and everything's looking good to me. To XR PS Up 40% this week.
Yeah. Jesus Christ. Sets you up a lot like bring up that chart. Yeah, let's bring it up. It's it's since the since the local lows that's rallied very, very aggressively just because there's an expectation that they're about to get a A yeah, look at that and see let. Me just bring it up. Let me put the weekly. Oh, that's yeah, that's. It's by Mark. That's not XRP, right? Oh yeah, it is. XRP, that's called. Yeah, XRPUSD. There you go. Yeah. So it's basically up 50% in the
last two weeks. So big, big move, move higher. Just there's an expectation that tomorrow there's going to be an announcement. We spoke about the idea this last week, right, that oh, sorry, yesterday that the SEC has been basically nullified in its threat to crypto here with this, with this ruling potentially, or at least it would be very, very difficult for them to pursue a lot of the
enforcement actions. So I think they're probably going to try and settle or they're going to try and toss out cases which they don't think make them wow. So I think the other right, the eyes will be on here in my, in my opinion will be on the Coinbase lawsuit, all the other
lawsuits against exchanges. So they have one against finance, obviously Kraken, they have one, Coinbase they have one and then they have, they have them against various different D5 protocols, although we haven't got the full details on that, but we know they have one against Uniswap. Madam Ask. I think they didn't. They no, they withdrew, but then they came back the next day. Yeah. Yeah. It came after the the fact that apparently it was operating
securities. They remember he withdrew the next day. They sued them. There's a it's a it's a lot dude. The SCC is fighting a lot of crypto multi billion dollar companies. Then these people are not scared to lawyer up either. Like damn. They they've lost pretty much every single one I know. But that's easy. That's like I'm thinking like if I'm the head of the SEC like it's and I run this as a business even, like is it even smart to go after all these at
the same time all these multi? Billion dollar. Companies. It's pretty pretty, yeah. Pretty costly. Oh. My God, even a lawyer there. They've probably lost a lot of and they've lost a lot of people, right? They did. So yeah, I don't know, I, I feel as though things is looking good for crypto. I think we we've we've rallied pretty aggressively right here. Like we're up 15% now on Bitcoin in what, just a few days. So maybe we just needed a, we were at 57 K on the 12th.
So five days ago we were actually at 56 K. So five days ago we're at 56 K, now we're at 65 K. So we're up like just shy of 20% since then, maybe 1718%. So that's a decent move. Can you tell me what's going on with World Coin and why is it up 25% to a $30 billion fully diluted micro market? Do any of you know the open-ended question like I just saw this, I, I went by the by, I saw the XRP pump. So I, I categorized by 7 day like what's, what's up the most? And it's World Coin's up 55
points. I said it, I said it what just before we went live or said it as we went live, that that they, they delayed their emissions. So remember World Coin has this unbelievable FTV because as all these unlocks happening, they delayed that emission schedule from three years to five years. So, and this is similar to a lot of altcoins right now. They have a decent short base on them. So when there's any sort of positive news, they can they can move up pretty aggressively. Huh I.
Mean that's not that. That looks horrific, that chart. Right. I mean, I am, yeah, I'm just bringing up because we're talking about it, but I'm just like this is like this is like the perfect, like most of this token is controlled by like VCs and market market makers anyway. So it's like it's a full level. VCs own most of it, yeah. I'm pretty sure market makers and VCs own 80% of world coin. Yeah, that would make sense. Yeah, several things I've heard.
I mean is there is there a bigger disconnect between market cap and FTV for any crypto major than? Than I don't think so dude like the what's the market cap like the actual. 130,000,000. 800 million. 2 1/2 percent. I mean XRP is pretty pretty big as well. Is it the gap like that? Let me see the XRP gap is so it went at least this was 33 bill, 33 bill and then this the the the the FDV 61 bill. The other one is a. 61 billion XRP is a $61 billion coin. Solana is a $93 billion FDV
coin. Just put that into perspective like. Yeah, that is is interesting. I still think it's, I mean it's the only way to bet on Sam Altman via crypto. I feel like there is a lot of normie demand, there's a lot of retail demand for that. At 800 million market cap it sounds cheap like if you don't see the FTV. Yeah, yeah, if you don't see the FTV, you can get caught real quick in that trade. The. FTV is not cheap.
You, you look at you look at the market only 800 mil for Sam Altman, like the guys worth more than that. And then you go and, and then you go and look at and, and then you look at the fully diluted and you're like, holy shit, this thing is a $30 billion. Oh my God, this is absolutely
wild. In other news, and that's the latest I guess on the ETF that came out as the show started new 21 shares ETF you will be .21% and the ticker is C ETH as as per their just filed a final S1. So it looks like you know, it's similar to to the last stretch of the Bitcoin ETF. So if you listen to the show, then you're probably familiar with this because we cover it every day, but you know, you're going to get all of the, you know, all of the S ones and all
the takers and all the fees. And then it's going to be probably raised to zero at first for the fees, right? Remember, most of the Bitcoin TF fees were like 0% for the first six months or up to a certain amount of Bitcoin accumulated, depending how much they're making. So we'll see. We'll see where where that goes. There's also this news from the SEC Commissioner Pierce saying Ethereum ETFs being able to stay could be open to
reconsideration. So that's like turbo bullish Ethereum news if you ask me. I think certainly something like staking or any feature of the product doors are always open for reconsideration as far as I'm concerned. So some this is we're talking headlines. This is like non-stop good headlines. You know what? Is there a world where Hester Pierce become SCC head head commissioner? I feel like. Anything's possible.
I feel like this, like we're not ready for this potential pro crypto regime because we've just been so conditioned. She's a Republican, Piers is a Republican and she's like, she came to Denver, remember she tweeted about it and she remember doing the Stoner cat stuff when they Stoner cats. They got sued by the SEC, but then it it alleged that every
NFT is a security in there. Well, then Hester Pierce was the first one very quick same day to write a letter saying that they disagree internally with the decision of the chair of the CSEC, Gary Gensler. So it's I, I, I could definitely see her like as the next chair of the SEC. It'd be a win. I mean, she's, she's logical, right? She's just reasonable.
She's logical, right? Because if I'm not missing, correct me if I'm wrong, Tyler, how it works in the states is the governing party gets to pick the chair of the SEC. I believe so. I, I'm not like super in depth with all the inner workings of, of politics, but I believe that's how it works, yeah. I think they have a term that they have to serve. But if the party swings like changes, like I think they get to, they get to see.
Yeah. See, Gary Gensler was nominated by President Joseph R Biden to serve as chair of the security exchange on February 3rd, 2021. So it's usually it's like you're appointed, right? And you have a term that you serve from, from from what I've read in the past. So anyway, so look, that's a good roundup. Bitcoins around, you know, see it's been hovering around 65K Mark, you know, a little over, a little under. We hit 66 K last night on a pretty big pump.
Theorem is at 3450. Last time was about 35 plus. I mean, Solana is so good right now. This Mark dude. It's actually wild how every positive news is also directly impact Seoul. So BTC Seoul is going band for band in market cap. So you'd love to see that. Just adding billions on the market caps and the rest of the market being dragged up with memes higher. I mean the usual suspects. Your mog yesterday hit new all time highs above it was 925 mil.
I caught at some point the Screener, so that's pretty. Wild too that they both they're just moving neck and neck it's. Why? They're just moving neck and neck at this stage, right? Like yesterday when Mark was in the 700, probably 800, but now it's the other way around like Mark is back above Pop Cats. Those two main cores were in band for band while Pepe and with who were the laggards
recently are also back. I mean Pepe's just slightly pulled back on their 5 billion and with around 2:18, but both had an enormous rise alongside, you know, a bunch of bean corns. I mean, dude, I'm looking like as you see lock in, you see Chad Retardio, Billy Zen epic. Like there's a bunch of meme corns that are like bouncing on Solana and on Ethereum. Like you have also Trump that people are looking at on there.
So it's really Ethan soul, like Daenerys are there and it seems like our ordinals are doing really good. Tyler yes, I was looking at that. But anyways, while we're talking about Tyler, when we get into your top 100. Yes, so crypto majors up another one to 2% on massive ETF inflows from the day. BlackRock with $260 million just themself, they've now got $21 billion in in Bitcoin, so a massive amount from them. Rollcoin leading alt up 40% on the day as the team extends
their unlocks. Nate Silver, he's joined prediction market Polymarket as an advisor, bringing his expertise from years of election modeling to that leader in NFT. There's there's kind of a lot yesterday, so we had eight coin they shared a new ape chain website, a new telegram, a New Testament in a big announcement last night and the board of apes also shared. Now we know why the made by apes was taken off NBA Made by apes 2.0 will be coming on ape chain soon. So it was all tied together.
NBA not going away. Ape coin responded. It was up 5% on the day to 83 cents. Doodles debuted the first teaser for their short film Dullsville and the Doodles Worst. It features several core community members, some notable PFPS. The trailer, I've watched it a few times, it's good. Got me excited for the movie. We can talk about that more in a bit. Blast announced their bridge has now shortened from 14 days to seven days, so you can get your
funds off faster. Coinbase posted a cryptic cat video yesterday, then followed it up with a Meow NFT mint link in a description. Come back on 7/17 which is today already 300,000 mints on this thing. Just 21,000 owners though. And then in Ordinals UT Meow Leonidas shared new mint for his upcoming Boldnalls drop. I think this is going to be the most hyped drop we've seen on Bitcoin in in months. Most likely that's not. Right, Well, that's a good round up.
Can I just say how disappointing I was? Maybe my hopes were higher for the Coinbase thing, but it's like all this hype, everyone's losing their shit. Of course, I did not expect it to be a cat coin listing, by the way, like this just not how Coinbase works and operates. But I was just like, bruh, at least they picked a Persian cat. You know I'm Persian, Persian cat.
You know Persian's in control. Just a matter of like, so I'm I've gotten suckered into these like some of their early Coinbase MTS, like I went through and mentioned on 100 wallets, it was like these maybe we'll get the token for this like. How many? How many of that fly you got from X copy? How many of that one you got? I went lighter on the fly by X copy because I kind of learned my lesson by by then. It's like every one of these Coinbase MTS, it's just the same
thing. I love that there's two things I want to quickly go over with you before we go to Joe here. He's in the studio. But doodles, I was I was talking to logs last night. I was like, so how's this doodle thing? Because I was watching it when he called me and I said, ask your kids, right? Because it's a cartoon. I personally thought it was good. I saw beanie give doodles some flowers this morning. That's probably the last thing I was expecting to see on my timeline.
I thought it was good for for for this. But did you did your kids watch it? Tyler? I'm curious to see what kids think of this because it's a it's a cartoon, right? It is a cartoon, so my kids are three and four. I feel like this is a little bit older because maybe geared a little bit like maybe 7:00 to 12:00. I actually was very intrigued by this trailer.
I feel like they didn't give away too much of the plot, but you got an introduction to like this universe that it's set in the Dulesville. You understand like what is happening, but you don't really know the plot of this movie, which which I like. They didn't give it away. It features music by Pharrell directed by burnt toast, produced by golden wolf, Golden wolf.
It features little tune, little yachty core, the Ray, little Wayne and I think part maybe the most important part, it actually features some of the PF PS from their core community members. Some of their core holders like Jay Fells is in there. Nathaniel who who I see all over my timeline. I think that's really cool. Like to actually see your PFP in a short film that's going to be debuted at this Toronto Film Festival and likely going to see a lot of a lot of coverage and,
and air time. I mean, I'd, I'd personally love to see my PFP in a movie like this one day. And I think the other takeaways, it just looks really, really well done. I'm like, yeah, I want to see this. I I agree, isn't the last part where where Lil Wayne is on this part is invite only? Where do we get this invite? You got to know somebody that is the Wayne know somebody. Yeah, but he's, I think that's Jay Fell's skeleton too, right? Yeah, it is a little Wayne
rocking the the skeleton there. I think that. Was a pretty he did a good job, man. You know what, like you know, you got to give like you know, it's easy to go the NFT PFPS and this and that like I they did agree. I'm going to share it real quick and I did it. I want to show them some love, but they did a good job. I watched it as well last night.
I had the same reaction as you, Tyler, You know, you at some point, like you got to give, you got to, you got to give credit where credit is due, like they, they, they did a good job, you know. Yeah. And they've been working on this for a long time. Yeah. Then then the market sells off. So like it's, it's just hard to, it's hard to please. Is it, I mean, just the market is relentless, dude, what are
doodles at? Because when you talked about it last week being undervalued, yeah, they're down from from there. Yeah, 1.6 I mean, I don't know what's if I and and E PFP right now. Dudes got to be at the top of the list. I keep saying that there's doing so much like guys, I don't know what you what you seem to do. What do you guys think in the comments? I mean, a bunch of comments for people saying that, you know, they they thought it was great.
So I'm only seeing I've only seen positive comments, right? Like even if someone, even if it's not like down your stuff that you usually watch, like it's good, it's well done, it's on brand. It's actually perfectly on brand. So this definitely did some good work, I think. Didn't Julian reach out to you? I think we should just talk to you about this on on there, I think. You get Julian on you will call
first hand. Castro Wob like I'm seeing founders, I'm seeing apes like Penguins, like seeing people from all other communities, creators, Micah Johns, like a lot of people just like coming out to support them. You see, like this is like a good blend of like artists, founders, other community members, creators, like, you know, lot of lot of people back in it. I think it's a positive. While we're on the topic of
this. So tell me, run me through the latest Ape Coin updates because we had like back-to-back to back updates last night. Yeah, so they got a new website, a new Telegram chat, which I thought was an interesting move away from Discord, perhaps a signal for what other products will be doing here in 2024. New test net is live. They're inviting creators, builders and just generally bored people to to go ahead and start joining. The website itself is pretty limited right now.
It does tease a blueprint coming soon. So perhaps we'll learn what the future plans for that the ape chain are. So that's pretty much it. Like we we have the site, it's live. You can, you know, start to register it in the telegram. And then Bored Apes piggybacked on this saying that hey, clearing the air on unmade by apes, that is going to be live on 8 chain soon so so don't stress that everything got taken down. I saw the founder of off Chain Labs change his PFP to an 8 yesterday.
He did the same thing when they partnered with Suzuki, which I thought was pretty cool. Stephen Goldfeder So I saw that celebrating the launch of Curtis. It's called Curtis test net. What are you? This is all going to be powered by the same eight coin that we're talking about. Like the same old, like that's all the same acorn. Yeah, it's up another 6% today. So clearly that now it's reacting. You know, some people blush. I'm I'm into Sergio.
Sergio loves the the Apcorn. I know I know Sergio loves Apcorn and but The thing is think about it right Risk reward. He's not making a bad bet when he was buying it last couple weeks ago. You cannot possibly get more FUD. And it was like bottom of the barrel, like nearing 0 down like probably what, from $26 to $0.60? Was that $26, right? Was like the all time high for Acorn. It was 20. Yeah, 20. 26, I remember hitting 26, yeah.
Yeah, 26 bucks and it went all the way down to how much, Tyler? 661 cents so. That's you can easily get back to one, right? Like that's the 20% move from here. It's a pretty good Aurora. It's down 60% year to date. Well, most of the coins that we are of course, not all coins like most, a lot of the coins are up here today, right? So so so so anyways, that was that I'm I'm curious to see, you know, it's we need these
ecosystems to thrive. You need those people to make the money that even if they didn't lose it per SE, let's say they just like held to 0, like you need those people to be back in the money. You need those people to be able to feel like they want to buy another ape with that ape coin to be able to buy another NFT or maybe a doodles because they're bullish on another NFT community. Like you're not going to get an NFT run that we talk about a lot
without that, right? Without the reinvigoration within NFT communities that are existing. So PUG now has its North Star abstract iglooing that's going on. Doodles has a doll verse a store * Golden Wolf, the studio. Boom, they're going ape coin board. Apes now have Garga, who's clearly on top of this, leading the charge for the first time
ever. We're seeing them mix and match with a coin and ape chain and everything because it was really, they did it the whole separate way early on, right? Which you can't really blame founders for that. For what it's worth, being someone that's going through it, it's because of regulatory landscape of USA. It's very hard to be able to work with foundation to launch a token, etcetera. It's very, very hard.
It's very intricate and expensive and annoying, but it is what it is. And so I like this. I like this. Tyler, what do you think? Do you like it? They're they are moving forward. Yeah. I think we, we, we still will see how it all ties together. Yeah, I agree, I think. I'd say the sentiment's probably bottomed. Yeah. OK, OK, OK. I like that. It's yeah, I mean, definitely bottomed on that front. And then and then those were the
the main news, right? Is there anything else you wanted to to to double down on before I go to our guest of the day? No, I think that's it. Let's get Johan on. Hell yeah. Let's do it. Let's do it. What's up? What's up, Johan? How you doing, man? Good morning. Hey, good. How are you? We are doing fantastic. Thank you for joining us today. It's always an honor and a pleasure to have you. Excited to be on. I actually didn't see the the dual trailer so that was pretty fun to see.
Right. It's pretty cool. They're they're doing a good job. They did a great job, yeah. Yeah, plus, like, I don't know if you guys saw like leading up to it, like I saw Coy La Ray do like a photo shoot and stuff and like she was rocking like that G shock doodles. Like it's even the little things like they're really integrating them into like the marketing of
it, etcetera. So it's not just like, oh, they use their voice and like they're not going to get any like promotion presents on their socials. So I think it's good. When's that Film Festival actually, Tyler? I, I think it's in, I think it's in August or September. I'm gonna have to go back to my notes. September 5th to the 15th. There we are. So that's coming in quick. That'll come probably faster than most things. So anyways, we're joined here by Johan.
So for those of you who are just on audio, I've pinned to the top the broadcast link. We've all posted it. It's across. We're live on YouTube, rug radio, YouTube every single morning at 10:00 AM or also streaming, broadcasting live on X, where it coming to us live, etcetera. Your questions, your comments, we're always able to read them live. John Kerbat, who is the VP and GM of crypto at Robin Hood,
which is really, really awesome. So it's a pleasure to have you, John. Do you want maybe give yourself like a little quick introduction for our audience and maybe talk a little bit about your background? Yeah, absolutely. So pleasure to be to be on I I'm John, like you said. So I'm the, the crypto GM at Robin Hood, meaning that, you know, I handle everything crypto at Robin Hood. I've been at the company for a bit less than four years and I joined initially as the CTO of
the crypto team. And before that I worked a bunch of start-ups. I've been in crypto for, for a bit more than 10 years now. So, you know, been a been a big fan of trying to make crypto more accessible and to open the, the, the gates to, to the retail world. And so I think Robin Hood is the best place for that. And before we get into the whole Robin Hood conversation and you're joining them, like how long have you been in crypto and what really attracted you to this industry?
Yeah, I started very early when I was still young and I basically created a small startup working on payments trails. And one of the payment rails was Bitcoin. And so at the time, you know, we felt like credit card was complicated. There was a lot of fraud. Merchant was never really sure if they were actually going to get the money or not. And so at the time, you know, when Bitcoin existed, we're like, hey, this is a perfect tool for you.
When you have a transaction that is confirmed on on the blockchain, you know, you will never have to worry about is the money coming in or not. It was probably a bit too early. So we didn't have a ton of traction yet back in the days, but yeah, basically stay in payment system and and
cryptosystems since then. And, you know, I think for me, the, the pleasure that I've been having in the past like few years is that we're starting to see a lot more usage of blockchain that it's not just, you know, trading activity, but you also are starting to see like blockchain being used for for more things. Like, you know, stable coins, for example, is one of the perfect example of a much better system than the traditional finance system.
And on top of that, it's powered by blockchain. Yeah. No, that is, that is really cool. So like when did this whole like, you know, going into going to work with Robin Hood things start like when, when did that, when does this initial conversation start? Because obviously Robin Hood is mostly known for being able to trade stocks etcetera, etcetera, most accessible to, to, to all, you know, American people
etcetera. But when, when did they really get curious or interested in the the crypto side of things? Yeah, so actually Robbie and crypto was launched in 2018. So you know, February of 2018, which I guess was the dead of the winter post like the 2017 summer.
And I think for me, that's one of the main factor that really got me excited about Robin. You know, they, they actually believe, like the founders, Vlad and Beju really believe that crypto was here to stay and it was going to be like the financial framework of tomorrow. And so no matter of the, the, the condition of the market at the time, back in 2018, they were like, you know, you know what, we're going to still
launch this, this product. And you know, since then we've been kind of improving the product. We we added more assets, we offered like more things like transfer or self custody wallet. We also expanded in, in the EU since December. So really we we went from like a small idea, small side projects that was part of the overall Robin Hood app to actually being like a pretty big crypto business now. Yeah. I mean pretty big crypto business indeed.
You know, we, I think we we chatted the same morning that where the the news came out where that you guys had a had acquired bit stamp and I was like, Oh shit, I'm like talk about a coincidence. And and I thought it was, I thought it was some pretty large use. So a few weeks ago, right, I'm looking at it was June 6th, few weeks ago. Time flies. My God, three weeks ago. Time flies. It was a month ago, yeah. Three weeks, I mean. And by the way, we thought it was all over three weeks ago,
right? I mean, not us, but definitely the people on the timeline. So a few weeks ago, this headline, you know, hit hit crypto Twitter by storm. Robin Hood acquires crypto exchange Bitstamp in a $200 million deal. The $200 million cash flow is expected to close in the first half of 2025, subject to
regulatory approval. So Joe, like to the extent to I wish you can speak to us about this, like, do you mind like maybe elaborating on why acquiring an exchange right when you have Robin Hood and like what the thought process behind that? And maybe if you can expand on the plans that Robin Hood has with Bitstamp? Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, for people who don't really know Robin Hood, just to explain how we work, we
are basically a marketplace. So when you place an order to buy Bitcoin Robin and for example, we acted as an agent and we send the order to market maker. And so we don't match between customer or we don't do anything that you know, an exchange will do. But the the reason why we looked at the pit Storm acquisition was for three key reason. The first one was to accelerate the international expansion. The second one was to get a scaled crypto exchange that is already running and already has
volume. And the third one was to get the a diversification of our business to institution. So to, to explain a bit more in details for the international expansion, Bitstamp already holds over 50 active licenses globally and we'll bring customers from the EU, from UK, from Asia and, and more. So for us, you know, it's a big
step forward. We, we used to be exclusively AUS retail app and you know, recently we started to launch in the EU for crypto in the UK for, for the brokerage, but it's still like at the very beginning of our journey. So this is a huge leap forward for expansion. And then the the exchange, you know, for us it's, it's very important because this will really help build more and more advanced products for advanced trader, especially for
international customer base. And you know, instead of trying to build the exchange from scratch and to start doing little things like Rock St. getting a scale exchange already that has been alive since 2011. So it's even older than than Robin Hood and it's still standing, still staying strong. So for us, that was like a very big value prop for us. And you know, finally the, the institutional side for us is a is a big change like we've been 100% focused on on retail.
But you know, there is a big other side of the business here where institution are getting more and more into crypto. You you've seen it with, with the ETF announcement for Bitcoin and for Ythereum institution are getting into the space.
So having an exchange like Bitstamp that is already trusted by institution because of the deep order book, because of the API connectivity, because of some of their white label service offering, you know, all of that really mean that we enter the space of institutional with already active and highly trusted business. So that was really like a big reason also for, for the deal. So yeah, I think, you know,
super excited overall. I think it's a game changer for for, for business in the sense of like we have a lot more things that we can do now. Thanks for jumping into that, Johanna. I'm curious maybe kind of taking the conversation a little bit deeper. I'm curious like have you noticed any trends or changes in, in user behavior on Robin Hood crypto, you know, since the the 2021 kind of peak mania and then the bear market and and then things kind of picking up now.
I'm curious, are you seeing similar behavior? Are we seeing pattern changes? I'm curious what might be standing out. You know, I, I think you know, we, we've seen we, we have different customer base. So we are very large player in the US, you know, we have 24,000,000 customers. So it, it will really depend on
the market. So when there is a market that is a bit small slow like September of last year, you know, we see the the heavy trader of the people that are trading on a hourly basis or daily basis like still using the platform a lot. When we see like a bit more of a of a peak trading market like we had in 2021, you know, we see more for or for customer like trading the the crypto side. So I think it, it really depends. And for us, you know, we don't really look at the volume on the
day-to-day. We try to build the features that people are excited to, to use no matter when they're going to use it. So I think the, the beauty of Robin Hood to me is that no matter what you want to trade, you can go on equities, you know, you can trade Bitcoin, you can trade Tesla and then sell Tesla and trade Bitcoin or something like that. And I think that's kind of the the really good part of of Robin, like you don't have to transfer between apps and those kind of things.
Exactly like exactly just like Adele, you want to double down on that. But like for example, like these past few weeks, Mando comes on the show every day, says there's no all time high for stocks. What if I, as someone who's I'm all mostly crypto, personally speaking, I don't really bother with stocks because I it's not my thing, right? But let's say I do think Tesla's a good buy. I could just flip within the same platform, which kind of makes sense, right? Like it shouldn't be separated
in the 1st place. Should have never been in my opinion. Yeah, I mean that's, you know, historical reason for all of this and, and there's a bunch of licenses involved in all this stuff. But I, I think for us that's really the the key and, and we want to make sure that your experience is as good as any other platform. So we've been investing a lot in
our tooling. So, you know, for example, we created advanced charts where you can do like technical analysis if you want to do like empty or something. We have advanced other type if you want to do a stop loss or something like that. So we've really been investing in our products. So no matter what type of trader you are and no matter what product you want to use, you're able to use it on on Robin Odeo. But that's great to hear it.
It's funny that you, you you brought up the Tesla, the Bitcoin train, because actually PO who hosts the Nifty show, another morning show in this space, actually made that exact trick. He sold Tesla. I love that. And it's just nice to have that functionality. One thing you mentioned is like, you know, you're building towards the future.
I think a very important kind of current macro topic right now is perhaps a change in the US political regime and potentially Trump coming in. He's a heavy favorite on Polymarket to win at 70% and he is essentially showing a pro crypto platform. I think many are thinking that could involve like a change in the SEC and a lot of the regulation and crackdown could go away. I'm curious like have you all been following that closely? Have you started crafting any plans you know, post election
into 2025? You know, based on perhaps an easier crypto regulatory environment? Yeah. You know, I think it's, it's an interesting thing like we do follow everything that is happening because of course, like everything is going like there will be an impact on, on the market and how people behave. Overall, things haven't changed too much on our side, like we, we work with regulator quite a
bit. If you think about Robin Hood, like we are regulated by the SEC by funeral on the brokerage side, on our side, on the crypto side, we, we are regulated by the New York DFS. So you know, we don't shy away from from regulation and working with them.
I think what's going to happen in October or November like who knows, But for us on our side, we've been focusing on making sure that, you know, we have a constant feedback loop with our customers and making sure that, you know, if something is of interest for our customer, we are going to try to build towards that. And you know, we've seen it a lot with for example, the the self custody wallet that was one of the top requested feature for our customer.
They wanted to have a wallet to get into web three and to get into more like of this space. And so we we've built it. So, you know, for us like it's less about predicting how the market is going to change and more about talking to our customer, doing a lot of user research, trying to understand what they are going to be interested next and and then build that to to make sure that they have what they want. Yeah. Well, that certainly makes sense. Imagine the self custody wallet.
It's been a huge one. How have customers responded? Yeah, it's been downloaded in 140 plus countries. So you know, it's been a, it's been a a great product for us. I think the, the main reason behind this wad was the crypto world is moving so fast. If we want to integrate everything inside the main app, the main custodial app, like there is no way we can catch up. Like, you know, by the time I integrate with One Dab, there is like 50,000 that got created
overnight. So our goal was to really build the system that can allow you to access whatever you want. And we've tried to do this in in ways that are also helping the customer. So we were one of the first to launch the Gasless swap. So because we realized when we were talking to customers that they wanted to swap one token to a token, but they didn't understand why they needed to
also have the gas token. So you know, all these kind of things like we have a lot of customers that are first time investor on the platform and so we want to make sure that we give them the tools that get them into what they want to do. Like sometimes I think crypto people get a bit lost into the technical and the protocol and all this stuff, but at the end of the day, a lot of customers, they just want the thing to work. Yeah, that makes sense.
It makes it much easier to work. I mean, we saw the news, of course. Like actually, Tyler, that was relevant question in terms of like, no, like the political landscape, because the latest news that came out of Robin Hood was actually like 10 days ago of you expanding Robin of crypto right in, in, in all the US states, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands. I mean, how how's this expansion in the USA been? Yeah. I mean, so at this point we're all done. So, you know, I'm very happy about that.
We are now available everywhere in the US, which I think was was a great, great change for us. So back last year we, we opened in Nevada, we announced that and then you know, just like a couple of weeks ago, we announced like this new states, Hawaii and and also Puerto Rico and the Virgin Island. I think for me that was pretty important because, you know, Robin Hood's core mission is to democratize finance for all.
And he didn't sit very well with us to not be able to do that everywhere in in our home country. So we started to expand in the, in the EU and in the UK and, you know, it was important for us to to come back and also finish the work in the US. So very excited about it and we got a, you know, at this point, the, the, the way of saying like we're available everywhere in the US is also very feels very nice. I love it Listen as a as a crypto user and I'm sure Tyler as a as AUS citizen.
It's a great signal for for the market and for crypto in general. It's a big deal and I feel like mobile is so important and I feel like so many crypto teams struggle to to really nail the crypto app. I'm actually curious, Johan, you wouldn't mind maybe walking us
through the onboarding process? So if AUS customer wants to to get in to to Robin Hood crypto, you know, down on the app, down on the wall, like what's the path from my first step all the way to be able to perhaps you know, transact on chain. Yeah, really depends on what you're what you want to do. So if you don't want to be on chain, if you just want to have your custody handled by by Robin Hood, you know, you can just
don't know the Robin Hood app. The onboarding is very simple and, and you know, you will be able to to buy and sell the, the the crypto and you can leave it on Robin Hood or you can transfer it out if you're eligible. And you know, it's a fairly basic app, like, you know, not nothing very different from from other on boarding processes.
But we also offer the self custody wallet where, you know, it's just a very simple process where you open the wallet, you have your key and you can start transferring in and out. I think one thing that we did very well in the wallet is that you can easily transfer from your Robin Hood account to to the wallet. And so, you know, we've been trying to reduce the the amount of steps and the amount of like
frustration. I will say that you can get when you when you try to use some of these products. So overall, you know, super simple and then the the wallet allows you to use multiple chains. We go from, you know, the, the classic like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Doge, and we also have Arbitram and, and bass and other, other chains. So we've been trying to make it like very accessible to everybody. It's clean. So I'm looking at the same time.
I was literally looking at this while you were while you were talking about it and and I find that really, really good. It's good to have like a major player like you guys actually get involved for real. Yeah, it's clean. And we've been trying to really, you know, all the learnings we got from the UX and UI for Robin Hood, we've been trying to port them into the self custody wallet.
A lot of the feedback we're getting from people where I love Robin Hood and then I transferred to my other self custody wallet and then I'm lost and I don't know what I'm doing. So we've been trying to really make the two application very close to each other. So you're really not, you know, lost on anything. That's good. This is this is this is quite interesting. I like, I like the marketing. You guys are good. You guys are good. You guys are good.
We're pushing on it. So that's the thing that you know, we're really pushing towards is we want to be the lowest cost to buy and sell crypto. And in the US on average, you, you will actually save quite a bit of crypto if you if you use Robin Hood.
And I think, you know, one thing that that keep telling people is when you try to use a product, look at the query of Bitcoin or crypto that you're buying that you're getting at the end, because there are so many ways of making revenue for companies. Sometimes they charge you a fee, sometimes they charge you a markup on the spread. Sometimes it's a combination of multiple things. So just look at the quantity on
the final page. And then you will see that in in average, Robin is the lowest place to to buy crypto. This is very interesting. My favorite feature always is this the recurring buys they're across. That's something I tell all my friends, like even last week this past weekend watching football and my friend was like, I want to get back into buying crypto, of course now, right? And and like, what do I do? I said, however much you make, I don't want to know how much you make.
Take like 1% of that per week per month. Just set it to buy BTC soul and just forget NFA. Of course, you know, you know, like Kanye, me, my dear, but you know, it's like do you? But the recurring buy to me is the single most important tool in the in like an exchange or wallet because it makes sure that you're always, you know, somewhat get some exposure. But anyways, Joe don't want to
hold you much, much longer here. But last question would be like anything you personally looking forward to in the industry or, and or you or Robin Hood as a whole, by the way, but what's the, what's the future like for you? Yeah, I, I think for us, you know, we want to start using blockchain technologies to power up more and more things. So you know, like we we've seen stable coins. I think we can do more with blockchain. I think we can tokenize real world assets and and actually
make them a lot more efficient. So you will, you will hear more from us, I think, but I'm, I'm personally really excited about, you know, just seeing the adoption of crypto going from, you know, back in the days just to a few assets. And now we are starting to see it more and more from tokenization of bonds to the stable coins to, to more things. So overall, like really excited of the progress we are making.
And you know, I, I can't really wait to see how much crypto will change the traditional finance system in the past in the next few years. I think it's going to be a a big transformation. Oh, yeah, very, very big. Well, John, thank you so much for being here today and I really appreciate you. Yeah, thanks for having me, was fun. Have a good one. All right, all right. Well, that was great, you know, but more bullish use, more bullish sentiment.
You're hearing from the biggest, some of the biggest in the game. So that's really awesome. Tyler, that was a great interview. It was a pleasure as usual. We will see y'all tomorrow morning, 10:00 AM Eastern Standard Time for the episode of film while we're on Rug Radio. Let's go.