Welcome to the Mentor and I'm Mark Boris.
Jason Dimmon, Welcome to the Mentor, Mate, Thanks very much, looking forward to having this chat.
Good to see you again. I didn't get to talk to you much in was and it was in Vegas when the ENERL launch was on for the Vegas round opening round.
I don't think either it's got too much of a chance. It was so much happening down there. It was pretty cool though, it was.
It was fun, really exciting, like massive energy in places like that, like huge amount of energy. And swift x is of course, which is USCL swift x. I should have said that earlier, but swift x is one of the NRL's sponsors.
We're really enjoying that sponsorship. You know, it's a great it's a great code. They really get into it, and a lot a lot of our customers, you know obviously in r L fans. So yeah, really enjoying it.
So cryptocurrency exchange, which is what Swiftexas. We'll have to break that down because not everybody knows what and exchange is. Not everybody really understands what cryptocurrency is. Other than that it's a word that's getting thrown around all of these days. But these exchanges, of course had a little bit of a drama. Not your one, but others in particular one in America had a bit of a drama two years ago.
Yeah, that's about right. It's two years ago. Look, it's an exciting industry and it's only been around for fifteen years. Probably the last four or five. People have really started to get into it. They really got into it for COVID. But to let people know, I mean, ultimately crypto a digital currency. There's probably about thirty or forty thousand of them out there. We only have four hundred and fifty
of them listed on our exchange. And basically, people have their cash, come to us, deposit their cash with us, and we go globally and source the crypto for them and put it into their wallet, and then they can retain that as an investment or they can trade on that crypto. In simple terms, that's what we do.
It's you have good like a stock exchange sort of thing.
It's the new age stock exchange. It's the digital stock exchange for digital assets.
Yeah, And whereas the stock exchange is the exchange for listed shares in the stock exchange is the exchange for shares in listed companies probably a better way of putting it that are on there sub to the A six rules. But I will go through. Just get you to step us through that at a moment. But let's just a little bit of a chat about yourself for a moment. How long you been the CEO of swift swift.
X twelve months as CEO of there for twelve months earlier than that, starting to work with the guys on their journey. The two young founders Alex and Angus only just turned thirty now. I joined them two years ago on that journey and then took over a CEO twelve months ago.
Tell me a little bit about alexand Angus. Angus, so tell me a little bit about how Alex and Angers.
They met at coding camp a number of years ago in Sydney. They were both coding, Yeah, just after school, just after school the two of them did. Angus was trading in crypto and saw that it was a really quite a frustrating, clunky process to go through, and certainly not many people would go through that unless you're a real crypto nerd, especially back then. And Alex is this sort of really downder Worth guy who wanted to democratize
financial freedom. He was frustrated as well as a young guy coming through seeing how the traditional banking system and the financial system was clunky. They got together, certainly got
together at a very good time, a great partnership. But they also got together at the beginning or just before Crypto went through one of its really big cycles through COVID, and they built this, built the exchange with the whole idea of democratizing financial freedom, making it easier for people to invest in crypto, and that's where the journey started.
Maybe we just unpack it a little bit, or just before I do that. Where were you during this period? So their period their original period.
Yeah, during that period, I had an e commerce platform, Nito, which became Australia's biggest and Telstra was an investor in that. So there was all for a while I was over. We grew that into fourteen countries and living in the US for a while there with it all growing it and selling what So it's an online platform for online retail, so we had like yeah, no, no, so it was e commerce.
Oh yeah, but like a marketplace it was.
Yeah, well, in essence, ours was the back end smarts for companies like hose Link, like Edible Blooms, the man Shake, and some of the Spotlight Anaconda. We had all of those as clients, and Nito was a smart back end role of that that enabled them to go onto the website and purchase something, and then we had all the banking rails and everything behind. So I guess moving into crypto for me was not that distinct what I was doing. So Telstra was an investor and we sold to a
North American company. I had also been investing in a number of startups and scale up companies myself, so that was kind of what I was doing. And interestingly enough, about four years ago, my wife, who had a financial education business and accounting practice that she sold into BDO, was running the CEO school for CEOs and giving him a lot of financial education. Alex attended that course. It was about a twelve week course and she said to me,
you got to meet these young guys. A really interesting guy. So I met him about four years ago and we had some coffees and just sort of stayed in touch, and then about two years ago he asked me to sort of come on and help out so I sort of started in a contracting role because I had a number of other commitments and also on an ASX company that has a big investment in India, so I didn't have the ability to kind of do full time there.
And things went along and to a point where twelve months ago, the guys thought they'd built something really great. They could see the global opportunity, but they were thinking they probably weren't the people that wanted to actually lead it directly. And that's when I stepped in as CEO.
And were you a crypto trader?
I was in a crypto investor, not a deep crypto djen like some people are, but definitely a crypto investor. I got the bug a couple of years earlier, started to really see this new form of money, new rails. I was never one of these people who thought that crypto was going to entirely debase a currency or entirely take away from the financial system, but I thought it would enhance it. So for me, I could just see crypto could enhance the existing financial system. Very excited to Bitcoin.
I think it's, you know, the new digital goal for a whole number of reasons. So yeah, I was on the journey. I'd set up as well with my son. He was a teenager and getting into tech himself, and we set up a mining rig to mine bitcoin. So I was starting to get the bug.
If you set up to mind the bitcoin that you did, definitely have the bug. It's interesting you when we talk about crypto, When we talk about bitcoin, they're sort of interchangeable, and then sometimes we talk about the way that cryptocurrencies, as you said, there's stacks of them, different types, but how they operate in terms of the programming and the software and the coding they sit on, which is sort
of a distributed system. And I don't know whether most of our listeners would really understand the difference between the two, And maybe this would be a good opportunity to talk to someone about We're just leaving the exchange aside for a moment, just in terms of crypto, what is the attraction Because you mentioned traditional banking sometimes record referred to as fiat fiat, But what's the difference between the way the traditional banking system works in terms of systems electronics
system to talk about compared to say, the way, for example, bitcoin works.
Look, I've got a good example there, Mark that I could use it. I think most people would have experienced. And you talk about the Swift network, which is that global network that's been around for thirty to forty years
of transferring money between countries between companies. There's about twelve different steps involved to transfer money bit one thousand dollars overseas or to another company or be it ten million dollars, so about twelve steps, and it will take between two to four days for that money to go through the
banking system. So there's twelve different intermediary steps and into ten million bucks in the bank, and I want to send it to my grandma in India to buy a block of lats, there's twelve steps, twelve steps along the way take them to the additional banking It'll take three to four days, and that will probably cost you close to one thousand or fifteen hundred dollars to do it right.
Crypto the rails the blockchain that it operates on, and it doesn't matter if it's Bitcoin or if it's a theoryum or XRP.
So we're sitting on blockchain.
They're all sitting on a blockchain that is more peer to peer, so it means from one from you to your grandma directly cuts out those twelve steps. It's two steps one to two steps instead of twelve. So you can imagine there's a lot of people and processes that are a lot of money that gets cut out along the way and done within seconds and done for a fraction of a dollar. That is really one of the biggest use cases of crypto. Lots of others out there.
But if I was to try and explain to somebody, why would you be wanting to look at the importance of blockchain in crypto, I would say, just have a look at the way we're sending money traditionally, and look at what is being done now. Stable coins, which are a form of crypto which are backed on a stable asset,
the US dollar, the Australian dollar, New Zealand dollar. Last year, the total global volume of that or sorry value not volume, was greater than the total value of transactions on MasterCard and Visa Card put together.
Wow.
So it's here, It's here to stay, and in fact it's actually starting to really infiltrate the financial system. All the big banks are using it in their trading desks. They might be out there publicly saying, you know, retail we're not sure about this crypto. We want to try and block things with crypto, but their own trading desks are using it. And as I said, there's no hiding the fact that the value of cryptocurrency transactions last year
was bigger than master card and block chain glob globally. Yes, no, no, not in Australia. I'm talking on the global rails.
So just in terms of blockchain, maybe it just give us a minute or two explanation of what blockchain does that the normal electronic systems in a normal banking system don't do.
Look, the easiest way to look at blockchains is literally as a physical block and each transaction is building on the former one, so it's so distributed. So I think you talked about it before. The traditional banking system is centralized, and the blockchain in the crypto is essentially decentralized, so those transactions are recorded on many computers around the world. That's the blockchain on the blockchain, so very very hard for those transactions to be erased, deleted, interfered with. So
that's number one, a much more secure system. It can happen much faster because it's not just using a few computers. It's using many computers, so that's the essence of it. And then there's the visibility and the traceability of it. I don't know if you or of any of your listeners have ever had to try and trace some of that money that was transferred virgin possible on the blockchain. It is highly traceable.
What following you Uber, you can see where it is.
That's another great example, and I mean I think that's the new technologies that we've seen in business models Uber, AIRB and B. They're very visible, transparency, big deal for those things. It is and you can see it and trust. Transparency and trust when you're talking financial as set's probably a little bit harder to sometimes see exactly what's happening and for us to understand it. In the traditional system, Yes, in the traditional and we distrust the bank to do
it for us. We do, and look, it kind of works. There's no doubt about it that the banking system works. But it's clunky and it's unnecessarily expensive. What crypto and the blockchain offers is a new way, a much more secure way, a much quicker way, and a much cheaper way, and more transparent and more transparent.
You can watch it. You can absolutely you can see it happen.
You can see it. And the exciting thing is going to be for global trade as well, and that's what I talked about the stable coins and things like that. It's going to give the big mining companies, agricultural companies, and in fact the small traders as well that are in regional Australia and regional countries that ability to deal directly with supplies and see their money going through and get money, will get their goods put on ships put
on planes much quicker. So cryptos had a real growth and talked about a lot of retail investors and speculating on it, and that's where it started. The interesting thing is that the traditional financial system bonds and that which started in the eighties and the nineties, started at an institutional level and moved down and was eventually offered to retailers.
Crypto's exact reverse. Not necessarily sure why in some reasons, But so cryptos started at retail, but is now very much moving into the institutional space and starting to mature. And you're seeing that, and we're starting to see countries around the world regulate in the space as well. So tell me about the exchange platform that has been established for swift x and in relation to people who may want to buy and or sell or exchange cryptocurrency. So
what does swift exes exchange look like. So it's a website. You come on to the website, and in fact, one of the things that we push really hard is education. So we have a whole section of our website that educates people about the asset class, how we suggest you buy, how we suggest you trade, without giving financial advice, but we certainly lay it all out there for people to make their own decisions. We also have built a demo mode so you can go in and without your actual cash.
But in essence, it's a website. You go on, you can establish an account like you do pretty much in any digital platform these days. You sign up for an account, you transfer, you don't have to put anything into it, you don't have to know. You can just simply an account yep, there if you want to put something into it. We obviously have codes that you can transfer money to that money will be in your account within seconds, so it gives people a high degree of confidence as well.
Whenever I transfer money between banks twenty four hours before that money is there. This will be within seconds. You will have transferred it out of your bank into swift x in most instances, and it'll be there within seconds, or you'll at least have a notification that we're waiting on it from your bank, even if your bank holds it up, so you'll transfer the money. There's a digital or a virtual wallet. Think of it possibly as a big circle, and you'll see how much fear you've put
on there. One thousand dollars of cash, five, ten thousand dollars. This stage is just it's just sitting there. It's just normal money. It's just normal money. It's just normal money. You'll then look through a list of assets and tick the list Bitcoin, ethereum, XRP, whichever ones you might choose. You can do one or more tick that list, and in the background you'll say how much of it you want to buy, will go out and work out what's what's it currently selling for, and we'll deduct that off.
So if you had ten thousand dollars in there and you wanted to buy five thousand dollars of XRP, it'll deduct that off and you'll have, say nine hundred and ninety eight dollars there of it, and you'll see in your ledger how much cash you've got there, and you'll
see how much crypto. And then the other beautiful thing about crypto and the swift x platform is every three seconds we're updating that price to market to market, so my stocks, I can only really look at my stocks when they're trading during the trading hours of nine am to four pm the Australian market, the US, the European whatever, crypto.
I open my swift x wallet and twenty four to seven good, all bad, because let's face it, investments go up and down, but I can see all of my investments real time twenty four to seven.
It's giving you the value in says dollars or so sort of, well.
It's giving you that. It's giving you the value of that asset and then you'll be able to see it back in terms of your portfolio in Aussie dollars as well.
You can convert about to dozzy dollars and say, like you, I started ten grand.
It's all done automatically, so you'll be able to see the value of your portfolio, your ten thousand dollars. If it's going up, you'll see that maybe it's worth twelve five hundred. You've still got that five thousand dollars of cash, but it was your investment in your XRP that's gone up to and a half thousand dollars.
Okay, So yeah, okay, So and if I'm moved to America, can I still access it just the same, exactly the same. It doesn't matter, It doesn't matter.
I would think of it.
Back.
We talked before a bit about Airbnb, Uber those sorts of things. You access the same Uber app no matter where you are in the world. You access your swift x app no matter where you are in the world, albeit with ex additional security provisions that we allow people to turn on with facial recognition and those sorts of things as well.
So can we talk about that just for a couple of minutes. What are the security systems or that sort of Obviously there's a code, or there's a facial recognition or I don't know, fingerprint, What are you using to make sure that it's me on my mobile phone on the app? Looking at what I've got.
We're using quite a few things. The challenge often times is how hard do you make it for people versus what action friction. So we have just over fifty percent of our customers that use two factor authentication. It is something that we're constantly talking to them about. Why people don't use it, I don't know, So you talk about
it on the swift x app. You could use a password, so we give you the choice, and you can have multiple layers of security, so you can have a physical password, you can log out every single time, log back in facial recognition, so we use biometrics with facial recognition, we have two factor authentication, and then sitting behind the scene, we have some pretty sophisticated monitoring tools that monitor your transactions. So very similar to the very similar to the banks.
If you go overseas and haven't advised them, or you have unusual credit card transactions, they may block it, they may stop you, and we will do a similar thing. Why if your transactions are looking suspicious, if we suspect that you might be acting as a money mule or something which you know, we've heard a lot about scams
and the likes. Swift Tex has got systems in the background which will kind of recognize through algorithms and start to block transactions until we can get in touch with you and go through a series of identification steps to make sure that it is you, to make sure that that is a transaction that you're actually wanting to undertake.
So in my case, I download the app onto here, I can put it anywhere, but I got onto here. I open the app. The apps that may immediately send me a text.
Yes, ye you, you'll have it. Within the app, you get a number of notif caations. We'll also hopefully you will have given us your mobile so you can have texts and you'll have emails. What we never do and is something we always say, we will never ask you for your personal details via text.
So if someone does, you know that's a skin that's a scam, that's so, And then I can I can also opt to have facial identification of facial recognition out of the app to open the app correct, yep, correct, and I so UI metrics, I guess are the.
Most times you'd have some security on your phone to get into your phone. Usually it's then within that the swift x app. Ideally you will have turned on all or as many as you're comfortable with security provisions as well, so before you can open that app, before you can
trade or transact. There will be the biometrics, there will be a pass code, there'll be two factor authentication, and then depending on what you do within the app as well, we may in behind the scenes block something and if we deem it as unusual for your protection, we'll reach out to you as well and try to get some verification that that is you who wants to have that transaction process. So it's a pretty deep layer of security that we've put around it.
Very good. So I'm want to go the brain comes straight back from the break and I want to talk to you about So what are the risks? I mean that you just addline a number of the mitigating things that you use in relation to the app, the swift x app, But what are the risks that you guys? I mean risks, risks as a continuum, it doesn't stop. There's always new things coming through. And what are some of the risks that people need to be aware of. How do you educate us? And I want to take
me through some of this education program. How do I choose I'm not looking for a financial advice, but how do you guide us as to crypto? Which currency we may be considering, you know, should it be my bitcoin and therefore why you mentioned earlier, could be the digital goal of the future. And you know we've seen what goal's done more recently, given all the uncertaintment, goals that
are an all time high at the moment. Sure is crazy number, but you know what, we're there because you know, we don't get a dividend out of crypto or digital currencies. You don't get a dividend out of that, but they do grow and you can make a profit, So you may do that to be dividing, but it's not. It's not like it's not like a coupon and you just read coupon on you on your money, so to speak.
So what are the defensive measures might be reasons why people do go into cryptocurrencies, and I like talked about about that after the break.
Sounds great, looking forward to it.
So I'm back from the break and we are talking about all things crypto and swift text being the one of the exchanges that you know are available for us to use in relation to trading, buying, selling, just checking our value of our crypto, the things that we've been trading and or using. I guess I'd like to know from you a lot of people are nervous about it. Okay, they get not about swift text, not about exchange. It
was just generally crypto. They're nervous about it. And because there's you know, allegations of and I don't know if it's true or not, but you know, this is a major criminal sort of trade. It's probably what it used to happen anyway, probably not so much these days. But you know, criminals love to trade in crypto because there's no cash, no actual folding money involved, and they can get the money place anywhere in the world, or they can go on access it, I should say anywhere in
the world. You know, they might make some big drug deal in Australia, some other drug person pays them in crypto and they go and pick it up in I won't suggest a country, but somewhere overseas and they turn that back into cash at a local bank and away they go. Or man. In fact, they might not know about casually misgone by assets using the crypto. They might come by a house or a resort or a ship
or something. Whatever these criminals do. I don't know what they do, but you know, how do some of the swift eggs get us around that, like, get that fear out of our actual normal day to day processing of what we've decided to about cryptocurrency. What do you tell us?
Look, I think you've raised a few good points there. There's a little bit for me to unpack in terms of fraud scams. There's actually more frauds and schemes happening with cash, definitely and the traditional financial system. Having said that that, there are frauds and schemes that definitely happen
within crypto. The industry was in its infancy fifteen years ago and it was used in those days for a large number of nefarious activities, but over the last seven to eight years, and I don't think this is so I'm glad you've raised because I don't think this has really come out in media, and potentially there are other interested parties that sometimes continue to kind of pile on to try and put the industry down all those who don't want to but those who don't want it to
be in them don't want to see the industry succeed. So what I will say around that is that the industry is really conscious of that. The KYC, so the Know Your Customer and the AML, the anti money laundering, which is really global provisions. Each country has its own. We're told as we meet with a number of the banks that swift Ex's procedures are stronger and better than a lot of the banks. Now, people don't generally know that as a new industry to be fair much easier
than older industries that are building on legacy systems. So for us, we have pretty strong identification metrics around that. There are a lot of platforms TRM labs, chainalysis, and a number of different platforms globally that are combining and looking at all of the different transactions, bringing data together and sharing that with federal authorities globally. So there's a huge has been for the last seven or eight years,
huge crackdown on that. So what I would say to people is it's generally a pretty safe industry from that point of view, and a lot of works being done by the industry to make sure that there are just reputable players in it. Having said that, whenever you're dealing with your own personal finances, you've got to have a
heightened sense of awareness. It doesn't matter whether you're carrying cash with you under your mattress or whether you're dealing entirely in the digital economy and crypto, and you have no bank accounts, you've got to be We touched on it earlier in terms of you know, the security on the phone, et cetera, keip awareness. What I say to people is just understand you've worked hard for your money,
don't let someone else take it. Always have a level of kind of suspicion around it, and make sure you deal with reputable players, ask questions as well. So I think that's the base level what I would say in terms of the idea of what do you invest in? That's another interesting issue for us in the industry, and particularly here in Australia, where there's up to twenty percent
of Australians already invested in crypto. Independent studies show there's another fifteen to twenty percent, So we're going to have forty percent of Australians invested in crypto in the next twenty four months. We still don't have regulation in this country, so we've spent forty years building up a financial planning industry and telling people to go and speak to financial planners.
They don't have crypto on their approved product list, so very hard for people to get independent financial planning advice from regulated financial planners. So that's an issue, and that also leads to the lack of understanding. It's probably why swift tex is over indexed with our education page. Why I'm talking to you, why I put a lot of time talking to people and trying to help educate them
about the industry and help them get themselves educated. There is definitely also some credible information on YouTube and social media, but there's a lot of disinformation and lack of credibility. So be discerning, like anything in life, if you're going to make a big purchase, we'll spend your money, exercise some level of caution and some level of their The way I look at crypto is there's probably three different types,
the more or less the blue chip. If we relate back to the equities market, there's probably about twenty different cryptos that.
I don't think are going to go anywhere.
They still have a level of volatility, but their volatility is coming down because their use cases is becoming a lot stronger. Then there's the for example coins, so we've talked about bit coin, Ethereum, Solana, XRP, so there's some of the ones that have been around for many years and they have got some strong stability about them. Then there's the old coins coins sit below them. There could be Suey, there could be Polygon, a few of those.
Then there's the meme coins. Meme coins have some use cases. If people are listening out there, you might have seen. And this is not something that the industry has certainly endorsed. But if a meme coin would be an example of the doge coin would be exact that Elon Musk has been involved in, or the Trump or the Millennia meme coin, So that's an exact sample of that. What I say about crypto is two things. One, it definitely was a speculative asset when it first started. I think we talked
about earlier in this podcast. The use cases that I started to show for using it. Each crypto project should they don't all so if they don't have one, I wouldn't invest in them. A white paper, So every crypto token should have out there on the website a white paper which it talks about its use case. Why is it useful now? XRP I'd mentioned is one that claims a lot of its use case is good for making payments for payments for well payments digital, between the company's governments,
et cetera. One is ethereum, which is used a lot in gaming. So just to go really basic, they should have a white paper that talks about that. But the next point, and this is what swift x is working a lot on because you touched on it before, and this is the intersect we need to have with regulation. We've got to be careful where regulation is and licensing.
At the moment, you're right, you go and buy it, and all you're doing is sitting there waiting for that asset to go up or down as an investment or you're trading it. And a lot of people have very successfully traded them. They've taken the feed out, they've used it for a deposit on their house or buying buying a full house. There's lots of stories of people trading,
lots of stories of people investing. But what's also happening now and swift x is soon to be releasing crypto back loans, so you can retain your crypto, your bitcoin one hundred thousand dollars a bitcoin, and we'll be lending against that so you can get the continue to hold that asset. If you think it's going to go up and you'll be able to borrow against.
It, sort of like a margin line.
I guess you similar to a margin loan.
It leaves like buying against shares for correctly.
Yep, you're also going to have crypto back to credit cards and be able to start to make payments as well with crypto, and the other point you touched on earning interest on it or a return of dividends like shares. There is the concept in crypto of staking, so once someone licensing approvals are through and some changes there, there's an ability for customers to earn on a number of cryptos.
We talked about the blockchain before. The proof of stake is a way of proving the transaction on the blockchain and you get paid for putting your crypto out there to do it. In simple terms, so there's a portion of that like interest. Now it might be two or three percent, it might be four or five percent or fifteen percent or higher. It depends. It's the same as
traditional financial system. There's some risks involved with that. But so we talk about the crypto project having a white paper and a purpose and if that goes well, that crypto should and is demand, you'll see the price of that crypto go up. But in addition to that, I talked about bringing the traditional financial system and the digital financial system together, so that enables the margin lending on
the crypto. It enables the use cases for credit cards and payments, which there are retailers starting to accept crypto for payments now, and it enables the idea of earning interest or staking revenue on your crypto. So you might see now that there's a lot more use cases for the crypto, just beyond the fact that it may go up or down, or that it was a trading asset. So this is what we're seeing is the maturing of the industry.
So that's an interesting one. So let's say let's pick a retailer and we won't retailer X and let's say the Australian and let's say if they decide to accept crypto, is it more likely that the exchange or whoever is going to will issue a cryptocurrency credit card and then you go to buy that item, perhaps online, with your cryptocurrency crypto credit card, and that credit card just goes
straight into your account and charges you. Like in my own credit card at the moment, not being a credit card like a debit card probably closer closer to or or is it or is the retailer more likely to charge you feit normal dollars, but the credit card converts it into goes into your wallet and grabs out of it whatever it is in bitcoin that needs to be converted into fear to pay the retailer.
You've actually think you've actually no, so it'll we both. There'll be both use cases that we'll be able to offer, so you will be able to have it. And part of this, you might see where we're going here is the idea that you can do everything if you wish within swift X, So if you wish, you can operate entirely within that ecosystem, so like a MasterCard or absolutely so the whole idea is with that card. And these
days not many of us are getting physical cards. We've usually got digital card on our wallet, in our Apple.
Wallet for example.
So you will be able to go to the retailer and the retailer can accept that in fear cash, in which case, when it's ready to pay off your credit card, that will be taken out of your crypto account account or your wallet or alternatively, and what we're seeing is particularly not so much in Australia yet, but we're seeing it in Europe a lot, seeing it in Asia, starting to see it in the US where retailers are taking some of the cryptos as a form of payment actual actually, so there's no conversion.
Now.
The interesting thing is, and this is we don't all have the answer for it. But the exciting thing, and one of the things that has drawn me to the industry is how many different use cases. But if you think about it, and most of us travel overseas, we've got to go and get a travel card, we go and convert currencies, et cetera. And there's significant I talked earlier about how institutions and any of us that transfer
money internationally have these twelve steps. It's a similar lot of friction costs when you're moving money internationally into different currencies. If you think about it, the bitcoin, the XRP cryptocurrency is are global. It doesn't matter where you are, So this notion unless you're on ramping and off ramping, so converting into cash, converting or into crypto, and vice versa.
The transaction fees are fractions, so you're actually not having the conversion fee of the foreign currency exchange.
Who will take that risk? Though?
Well, you see, crypto is global, so you might get some you might get some fees, but spending crypto anywhere you won't need to have the exchange risk.
So if I'm the retailer and I'm accepting bitcoin.
Sorry, the volatility, the volatility risk you will accept as the retailer. As a retail you'll accept the retailer. What a lot of them are doing at the moment is as soon as the transaction happens, the retailer is virtually settling or batch settling into cash, so they're avoiding that risk.
Any Are there any people that there offering your hedging these transactions?
There are as well, not at the not at the retail level, but at the institutional hedging is becoming a big market. The derivatives market, the global derivatives market is larger than the spot crypto market by many times. So these are the sorts of things when most of us think about cryptos still, we think about it from a retail perspective, because we think our own use cases which
are growing. And I guess what I've tried to highlight in this conversation and just by the retails there is that it's starting to permeate itself into the financial system and it's creating a more efficient, more transparent financial system. It's slowly happening and people are starting to see it. But I think you're going to find over the next couple of years that it's really going to the use cases and the work that's being done on the back. I talk about the industry a bit and it's probably
similar to my use case. It's going from the suits, from the hoodies to the suits.
Right.
The industry is growing up. There are an incredible number of people from traditional financial services that are disillusioned, a lot of people early and late in their career that are moving out, a lot of traditional financial players into crypto, and that is turbo charging the industry. It was started. Its giving liquidity, it's giving it liquidity, it's giving it an understanding, it's helping with the risk side of things, all of that sort of stuff and the maturity, and
it's helping with use cases. So it's definitely exciting industry to be following.
So in I think it was twenty twenty two, maybe twenty twenty three, we had the one of the world's largest exchanges run in a bit of trouble with one of its founders or through one of its founders, and they actually end up resting one of this founder in I don't know, Cayman Islands or something like that, and the issue was that he and others but some are able to access money sitting in people's accounts in anticipation of them going to buy something.
That's largely what it was here. And I think they excided him back from they did they go back and he's in jail.
Now he is in jail, is okay? So what has swift x done around that area to make sure that anyone who deals in swift x or uses swift x doesn't have to lay better than not worrying about that sort of shit.
Look, whenever those instances go down in any industry, the bad actors cause people to be concerned. It also causes, though good operators like swift x to really look in wood and go, are we doing enough? What else could we be doing? And how do we communicate that to people?
So, but you need a bad actor in the first place. Some with bad.
Unfortunately you need them, and fortunately they're still out there and will continue. So I think back to that thing. You know, people that want to get involved in this industry, they need to do their research, look at reputable players, look at players that are out there doing the right thing. But the traditional financial markets have always had the client money's rule and the separation of client assets from company assets.
That's something that swift x takes really seriously. We know every cent of a client of customers money and that does not get mixed with our own. So we have our own separate ledges. We know what's our company money and we know what's our customers money. There's a lot of work going into that whole custody area, and that's another area once the regulation comes in in terms of it, and in the traditional financial model there's been a lot
of separation of that. So there's a lot of custody players now, third party highly reputable custody players as well, where people can or wear the asse sets are actually stored, so and a lot more transparency around since since the blow up off that company.
Are you talking about are you talking about the sort of like the likes of perpetual trust in those sorts of organizations.
Or they're probably not getting into it. But yes, they have a place in which they play in the traditional financial services, but in similar similar concept ye. So there's a custodians custodians yea, the whole custodi or model that people are comfortable with and used to in traditional financial services.
It adds cost, but it does add.
Security and it's an important trust layer. And that trust layer is being built into the into the crypto landscape.
Now. So how is swift Eggs dealing with the regulatory environment? Are they on the front foot?
Are they talking to Australian governments about the possibilities to make it let's maybe build a layer and an additional layer of trust where you guys with the Australian regular Regulator. I think we've touched a fair bit in this conversation around education and the government and the opposition need that
education as well. Swift x is one of the operators here in Australia and we have a couple of industry associations, so between the Digital Economy of Australia, the Decal we called Fintech Australia and the Tech Council of Australia, So three large industry bodies that do talk a lot about policy. So we're members of those three. We accompany them to a number of meetings with current government and opposition and
it's been a real education process. So swift x has We've really linked in to have the conversation because I think it's important for Australians and I think it's important not only from a consumer protection perspective. I talked about the financial planning need for financial planners to be able to give advice, but I also see that blockchain and crypto and digital assets can become a fifth major economic
pillar for Australia. It's very unlikely Australia is going to become a manufacturing hub, but something like blockchain and crypto, where we're using our intellectual capital, if we get the legislation right where it's sufficiently innovative but it's got consumers
protections built in. And now that we're in the hybrid working environment and we've got pretty good satellite technology and communication, we can attract the brightest brains and create an ecosystem in this country and data centers and data centers and all of those sorts of things. We have power for four a robust economic pillar of the Australian governments Australian economy. So I think back to the government side of things.
I think the governments and whether it be the current government or the opposition, needs to look at this from an economic pillar productivity perspective, because I think it's a real opportunity there, and then from the consumer protection so swift X leans in because we've got a responsibility for our customers' money. We've got a response ability for over one point one million Australians.
Now you've got that many customers.
Now we've got over one point one million customers, So we take it very seriously. We're here for a long time and we're building a sustainable business. So for us, it's important to be sitting around the table with government. This is new technology. I didn't grow up with it. I've had to teach myself with it. So many of us are in that environment. So I think educating government,
educating opposition. What I'd say in Australia pleasingly is that there is bipartisan support, so both sides of government acknowledged the need for the industry to be regulated. The problem is, as we have with many governments, so many things get in front of it. And I do think the Australian population is being done a bit of a disservice at the moment because we've been kicking around the possibility of
legislation and we've had a framework. We've had a couple of frameworks proposed for the last four or five years. So it's important now that with the new government we get in and make sure that they're sufficiently educated and that that actually brings something in to help with the productivity and to help with the consumer protection.
I thing will happen because I remember in there was two thousand and one the then Minister for Finance who was Joe Hockey, who was in charge of consumer protection
for in financial transactions or in transactions online transactions. Actually I was asked to chair a task forced into online transactions and consumer protection and at that stage laws around consumer protection for online purchases, and we actually were tasked with putting together a set of recommended conventions that online vendors must adhere to, for example, like silly things not
silly labeling. For example, a prepair of pajamas you might buy online from an online vendor if it's going to be sold in Australia to an Australian consumer, then that online vendor must say if it's flammable or not flammable, or what's the return policy or what's the spam policy? Once I buy something, can they then start spamming me with stuff? Et cetera. And we recommende recommendations as opting in,
as opposed opting out, and those sorts of things. But it wasn't after very long though that I'd say would have been maybe five years. You know, it sounds like a long comment. It wasn't really really very long that
we started to turn those recommendations into legislation. And my gut feeling is if it's sort of built up as a consumer protection type argument from you guys, that the government probably will call for a task force and get an inquiry done, and then off the back of that recommended legislation, and I'll probably say, you know, appro has got to regulate it, or someone's got to regulate it, because once it's sort of regulated, it just feels a bit more comfortable.
I think you. I think you're right, and as an industry in general, we're very supportive of it. We actually understand the value of legislation. I think we've got to be careful in this country not to overregulate so that we stifle innovation, and that's something that I think Australia has done sometimes to industries. But at the same time
we have to get consumer protection. And the most important thing I think that governments can do is create an environment of certainty for business so that it can get on and deliver within those parameters. And when you've got that uncertainty, that's when you have more bad actors. You have a risk of more bad actors and you have a risk of losing innovation and getting behind the rest of the world. So I think it is something, but
you're right. I believe it's happening. It's a push and the positive thing is that both sides of Parliament are supportive of it and the industry is supportive of it. So there really is no reason that we shouldn't have regulation for crypto very clearly set out here in Australia.
But knowing governments as I sort of do, especially more recently, unless it's understandable, which is your job. Unless people understand what crypto is and blockchain is and what a swift x exchange is and how it operates, the government need people like you to continue to educate everybody, because government
won't continue to educate because's nothing inter for them. Continue to educate Australians as to what cryptocurrency is all about and why they should and you have to go to exchange to do the transactions, why that's important and as sooner or later one or either one of the parties whoever wins and who is going to win this next election, will probably have to do it because there's going to be pressure on them from Australian consumers as Australian consumers use cryptocurrency more.
What's tell me some of the things before we close off? What are some of the exciting things that you guys are involved in a swift tech in terms of the future of crypto and training on exchanges. Look, I'm just really excited and that's what's brought me at this stage of my career into this industry is I just see that it's a real coming together. This is something that we're seeing once in a lifetime in terms of modernizing
the traditional financial system. This is going to revolutionize payments, going to revolutionize investments, the transfer of money and the visibility of it for both individual consumers, small business, global corporations, and governments, so that's what's exciting me. Lots of projects
from a swift X perspective an Australian company. The two founders I mentioned before hometown is Brisbane, but we now have people working in Canada, in the Philippines, in England or the UK, in New Zealand and South Africa and throughout Australia, so we're starting to really build Crypto's global swift x is definitely we've just recently closed a transaction with buying New Zealand's largest exchange, so easy Crypto has become part of swift x, so we've got about sixty
percent now as in a roll up, and they also had operations in South Africa, and there's a number of other transactions that swift x is in the middle of. So we're looking at growing and I think that that level of growth because crypto is so global, makes a lot of sense from that point of view. So we're definitely going down that path in terms as a company. Other geographies that we're looking at, other aspects of the
industry I touched on a little bit earlier. For me, it's really important bringing the ability to have financial freedom. That's what swift X really stands for we're a crypto first company. We're really passionate about delivering world class financial education, and we're really passionate about delivering world class service customer service. However people want to interact with us, we want them to be able to interact with us. So we're building
out those pillars of the business. We're moving into that regulated environment that we talked about, but we're expanding our product lines as well, so we will soon be launching the area of credit cards, crypto backlending. We're underway working with how we are able to offer a return on people's crypto that they have on the exchange, and we're also looking into to the derivatives side of things. So there's a lot of product initiatives that we're doing. There's
a lot of geographic expansion that Swifts is doing. And the other big thing, one of the big passions that I've got and trying to bring the whole team is this vision of how do we bring digital so the DeFi together with trad fire traditional finance, and I think there's some exciting initiatives and exciting projects that we're looking at, working and bringing to market over the next twelve to eighteen months.
And just so everyone doesn't get too weird about the terminology. Def I just mean it's decentralized finance as opposed to centralized finance, which is how the banking system, the current banking system.
That's the best, that's the best analogy. Yes, using it, it's a decentralized As a consumer, you have more control, you have more visibility over that system, and there are less intermediaries in there, and there's a lot more peer to peer, so you're reducing those you're reducing the costs, you're getting control, and you're right, there's less centralized control from it, so you.
Know, you're less reliable upon one entity. That's it. That's all one system or one.
Particular system, and those points of failure, so there's there's a broadening.
And did your team of Swift Swift X get excited when Trump got voted in and he put out his meme meme, He's Trump Meme and the Millennium meme. Did you guys get excited about that sort of stuff and what Trump is going to do for decentralized finance globally.
We have gone through a range of emotions since since that Trump went to succeeded in victory. What I will say is that the US particularly, but globally, there's been a one to eighty degree shift since Trump came in. I think what he did do well for the industry was say that he was a crypto first president, so
I think he stamped his authority on that. I think he's done some really good things with the SEC in terms of at the moment he's in Exchange, which is the enforcer, which is like our asset here in Australia, and what and what he has said to them is a do no harm rule. So crypto in the United States still doesn't have clear legislation. There were a lot of legislative cases being brought against crypto companies that were
somewhat questionable, maybe they were politically motivated. He's virtually taken all of that away, and he said unless you are blatantly ripping off consumers, then the SEC is not going to go after you. So I think that's an important statement and setting it out. However, I think on the other side of things, I would say that most people in the industry probably weren't supportive of a Donald Trump or a Malenia Trump. Mean coin when he brought them out, how he brought them out as president.
No one's unaccepted.
Look at this stage, I think it's one of those things. It's hard to see the use case. They're exciting. Potentially, when you say the use case, you know that someone would accept them as payment for something. I can't see anybody accepting it because it's fairly volatile. Maybe they have a historical and they will go up like a piece of art in time over value. But besides that, yeah, I don't think there's a practical real world use case
for them. So I would say that lots of people in the industry are very happy that Trump is pro crypto, and he did those things I talked about before in terms of the regulator and giving some more certainty to the industry. I don't think there's probably too many people in the industry who are key for him to be
bringing out too many more mean coins. And I think what we've seen in the disruption and uncertainty in the so crypto certainly spiked when we saw the sea of read in November of the Republicans and Trump winning Wall of States. There was a massive rise and rally in crypto. But like most asset classes. Now, the way he's gone about the tariffs and everything like that, the asset class is certainly pulled back. So there's been a mixed bag.
There's been a mixed bag. But I think I always take a longer term view, and that is that ultimately for the industry, there's a lot of positivity around it that the industry can move forward and it can innovate. And if the industry is allowed to innovate in the US, in Australia and globally, consumers will end up benefiting from it. And that's what this is also about. How do we go on a world stage? Last question, Jason, but how
did we go on a stage? Like Jason Timman, do you turn up on behalf of a c of swift x to the Dubai conference that was recently held for crypto?
I mean, do you do? You go there and you know it's not scrup but tell about swift eggs and tell them what Australia is doing.
As as CEO, I've got to balance my time. One thing is definitely attending conferences, and it's global conferences for that very reason. So I've recently come back from Paris Blockchain Week so certainly spending a lot of time in the European community. I'm heading over to Toronto in two weeks as Consensus, which is another global conference there, and I'll be in Singapore at Token twenty forty nine later this year. I didn't go to Dubai, which is just basically currently recently.
I think it was the end of there was an April.
Yeah, just in April, yep, yep, now, but it was now.
But I was there last.
Year with those massive rains when there was lots of flood floods last year. So I certainly spend an element and valuable for people to go to just generally people who are interested, absolutely, and there's some great ones here in Australia. There's the Australian Crypto Convention, which last year was here in Sydney, has been in Melbourne, has been on the Gold Coast. So there's some good conferences in Australia. What I would say, I think back to it. For me,
it's about educating yourself. If you want to get involved, you get a new asset. This is a new asset class. You know. In my career I've been involved and still am involved in a number of different asset classes. So for me, I think it's an important asset class to be part of my portfolio, but I've got to understand it. I think the best way I've ever understood assets, and I've made money and lost money, but is by actually investing in them. So I think that's one thing, but
at a level you were comfortable at. But the other thing is I like to do my research, So going to conferences is really good. Also, one in Singapore called It's Token forty nine is total, so that's going to be the end of October. Okay this year an easy one to get up to. The big thing is the crypto community globally, compare to a lot of industries, is still relatively small, so you're getting a lot of people
in crypto that are traveling to these conferences. So it's a really good opportunity to listen to a diverse concentration of people, good concentration of speakers. And for me, building a global exchange and a global crypto first new age kind of financial services company really important for me to see what's happening, what I'm seeing. Do we get on stage, I mean as a country.
Looks.
Australia was in the early stages of crypto held in quite high regard because we've been so slow to legislate, we've been slipping down further and further. And then when you look at the global side of things, they're interested. You know, people globally are interested in what Australia is doing, what the APAC region is doing. So yeah, we do get opportunities to get on stage. So once again, I'll come back to it. The swift X is swift X and the industry it's so global, So that's why we've
does participate in those areas. And as I say, I think there's a real opportunity for people to learn a lot by going to these conferences.
And a lot of them actually online too. You can pay a lesser amount of money. I just watch the whole thing.
You can watch the whole thing, so people don't need to think they actually have to travel.
Physically, musically travel. I know the Dubai on was online as well. You can be watching it a lot there.
Well, Jason, that was actually quite for me, quite fascinating. And I've had a long interest in crypto and you know I have participated let's call it some not so well, not so successful others are more successfully in terms of various currencies. Of course I had no idea what I was doing, but I was just picking what I thought was popular. I thought that was one way of de risking it because there's more participants in a bitcoin et cetera etheroereum. But the one final thing on what do
you want to ask you? And I think is an important one in terms of volatility, maybe you could just quickly explain and maybe call out at least one currency, that cryptocurrency that is tied to the US dollar.
Importance of maybe tying a currency to either another currency like a fear currency, or certainly tying it to gold the price gold in no way sort of consumers or people who might want to participate, and it can feel a lot more safer.
So two of the currencies there are the usd T and usd C, so there are two stable coins that are actually tied essentially to the US dollar. So they're an interesting one to have a look at. There is also in Australia now where we're getting a couple of different ones that are coming up. One is a UDD so it's an Australian one, and there's a couple of others that are in the process of standing up. So
there are so those stable coins. Certainly if they change listened, you could be able to get you can you get access to those on the change, get access to the modern platform. Look, the volatility question is definitely there. What I will say is that history has shown that those cryptocurrencies that have been around longer and have continued to grow, and we touched on them, the bitcoins, the ethereums, the solanas, the xrps, the volatility is coming down, so they don't
have the same level of volatility. But just in terms of everybody listening, from January twenty twenty to January twenty twenty five, so a five year period, Bitcoin went up twelve hundred percent. It's still that fastest growing act we've ever seen over that five year period. So even though it's had lots of volatility, the worst performing period ever for bitcoin, if over a twelve month period, was a
twenty three percent increase. So I think if you have a look at look at the asset class and had a portion of it in your portfolio, the alpha that most of us talk about in the investment world, that that return can do a lot for your investment portfolio,
even with a very small portion of it. The other thing we're seeing, and you know, we talk about use cases, what I'm starting to see in the industry is seeing a lot of treasury type balance sheets for companies that may be sitting on cash are allocating five or maybe ten percent of that cash to bitcoined.
I've sent a few of the big hedge funds doing it too.
And we're seeing even more charities that have their investment pools that are starting to look at maybe five percent, maybe five percent of what their investment is are they putting into. In fact, forty seven percent of hedge funds now have some sort of crypto investment. So well, that's what have to This is happening, and the more they put liquidit it into it, the more liquidity goes into the currency, the more the currency be stabilized. So and the more rises as well, we should go up. That's
the mathematical time. And I think you're right Mark, that sort of stuff will happen. But we have a four trillion dollar Australian superannuation industry here, which I think is a great backbone for retirement savings for Australians, which is not touching the asset class yet around that aspect of regulation.
So I think once you see them getting into the asset class, and the studies that we've seen is over eighty percent of people that have superannuation are asking this superannuation fund, hey, how do we get access to this asset class. So there's some really they're asking the question. So I think what we're seeing is a lot of pent up demand. So you know, we talk about the
future of it. I think there's so many use cases that I've touched on, and I think, you know, broadly as an asset class, we're just going to sort of see the mass adoption of it happening over the coming years.
Jason Timman, who did a good case to educate us on a crypto but importantly telling us what swift deex is excited about in that currency environment, in that new age garrancy that and it is disruptive and swift x is doing a great job. And by the way, thanks very much for being a sponsor. And then because the anal needs sponsors like you, and all of these things are important for our fans, our players, our clubs and
just make everything might work much better. So congratulations and thanks very much, thank you Mark,