¶ Intro
The crypto back loans today allow people to essentially borrow against bitcoin that they have in their coin base account, so they can get instant liquidity without selling the bitcoin. Staking empowers our users to allow financial freedom by partaking in the cryptoeconomy, earning rewards on their stakable crypto assets.
What are your thoughts on the toganization market. A lot of these firms looking to put a lot of different things on the blockchain, whether it be stocks, gold, and other assets.
Ultimately, on chain economy is one that people are viewing as increasingly powerful.
This episode is brought to you by Propy, which is leading to charge in putting real estate on chain. Propy is a game changer. You can buy and sell real estate with cryptocurrencies using the Propy platform, which is powered by a blockchain of course, and they have a native token call pro and I've been an investor in the Propy token since twenty eighteen. So Propy is a licensed Web three pioneer operating since twenty seventeen. They have facilitated
over four billion dollars in transactions. They're putting titles and deeds on chain. They use Coinbase for their crypto escro service, so This is a great platform and once again they are ahead of the curve when it comes to putting real estate on chain, and they just launch a great campaign where you can earn some of the Propy tokens and it's simply by doing tasks such as sharing their
vision video, signing up and inviting a friend, and much more. So. If you'd like to learn more about Propy, visit the link in the description. Hey, folks, welcome into the Thinking Crypto podcast. I'm your host, Tony Edward, and joining me today is Ben Sheen, who is the head of Financial Services and Loyalty Products at Coinbase. Ben.
Great to have you, hey, Tony, great to be here. Excited to chat coinbase and all the products that we're enrolling up.
Yeah. Absolutely, man, You and the folks at coinbase been doing a lot of work. There's a lot of cool features, new things have been launched, and you know, one of the big milestones you folks have hit recently Ease, which your crypto back loans crossing over a billion dollars, which is pretty incredible. Well, before we get to all of that,
¶ Ben's background
tell us a bit about yourself, where you're from and your professional background. Cool.
So I was born in the United States, my parents were doing their graduate studies, but I grew up properly in Taiwan, so moved back when I was around two years old. Had an international education until my high school graduation, and then moved over to backstate side to go to Columbia for my undergrad studies. And then in terms of sort of like other background, prior to joining coinbase, I
started my career on traditional financial services. I was a equity derivatives or volatility trader on the Goldman SAX trading floor, and then I moved into an operating role at some point, but between that spent some time as a cross capitol
structure investor, so investing across high yield distressed equities. I held to stress debt as well as equities, capital structure, arbitrage, etc. As an analyst looking at different industries, and then back in around twenty sixteen, got interested in being an operator, so being in the ring and building rather than say betting on the fight, so to speak. So around that time I had joined what was then Square Cash now
cash App. It was a fledgling sort of ten person strong startup within then Square now Block, competing really with Venmo on the P to P space, So wore a lot of different hats on that journey, you know, really thinking about how we scale this business, expanded beyond period a peer into things like you know, users today can get a debit card, they can direct deposit their paychecks and millions of people do. They can save, they can
invest in a whole suite of financial services. So was there helping build that business from the ground up for the better part of about nine years, and then back in May came to coinbase and started a new adventure building out our financial services and loyalty products.
Oh that's awesome, and you know your background, it's so funny.
¶ TradFi crypto adoption
It touches on some of the key factors that are so relevant in crypto. You mentioned being at cash app and the peer peer aspect of that and fintech and you know, changing the way banking and financial services are doing it. And you were also in tradfy and all those things are so prominent now at crypto and obviously in what coinbase is trying to do. Yeah.
Absolutely, I feel like all the worlds are in some ways converging. Yeah, and there's a lot of let's say, pattern recognition from you know, my former lives that I definitely bring into the role I'm in today.
Along the way, when did you first discover bitcoin or crypto and what was your aha moment? When did it click for you?
Yeah, it was about twenty sixteen, you know, when I joined cash app. So basically at the time, you know, the overall ethos was around economic empowerment, you know, innovating on the boundaries of money itself as well and offering capabilities to users. In twenty seventeen, cash op actually introduced bitcoin trating, bitcoin trading, and bitcoin investing.
To its users.
So as part of that played a role in thinking about the strategy how we would roll it out to our user base, and got really interested in just bitcoin, read the white paper, got personally invested, and then of course from there the rabbit hole goes really deep. So started to understand you know, different you know, different parts of the crypto ecosystem across ethereum, Salona, et cetera, and
over the years have just continued learning. Of course, there's a lot of ethos around the cryptospace, trying to do a lot of the same things around you know, serving users, leverishing the superpowers of you know, being permissionless, instant money movement, and a lot of the stuff that I'm sure we'll
¶ Crypto loans explained
talk about today.
Oh absolutely, let's talk about the crypto backloge loans program or product that coinbase has, because you guys recently cross a huge milestone with users borrowing more than a billion dollars and the locking of over one point three billion in bitcoin or collateralized bitcoin. Tell us about the growth of this product and obviously maybe a bit of a background, what is it and how people can use it?
Yeah, so, in a nutshell, the crypto back loans today allow people to essentially borrow against bitcoin that they have in their coin Base account, so they can get instant liquidity without selling the bitcoin of say incurring capital gains or really just they just want to hold onto their bitcoin, but they have everyday needs, whether that be you know,
purchases in their everyday lives. We've seen some users make large discretionary purchases like a car or even a home, or potentially paying down other debt which is more expensive and really a whole myriad of use cases. So what a user can do is they can go into the
Coinbase app. They can you know, either use the bigcoin they have, or of course they can trade and buy the bitcoin and then they can instantly look at, you know, input how much they want to take in terms of a loan against that bitcoin as collateral of specifying certain things around loan to value see the borrowing rate. And then the bitcoin is then locked up in a smart contract via our integration with Morpho, and the user will have that USCC immediately which they can use. So it
is truly a much faster product. The rates are very competitive relative and lower than what a lot of a lot of other you know, alternate venues to the same liquidity provide. And we've seen users really really just use the use the feature for all kinds of needs. So I guess like we've scaled now to as you mentioned, over a billion dollars in all time originations, and of course that's you know, less than a year after we've launched.
And in terms of collateral, I think we're now probably at like one point four maybe go on one point five billion and bitcoin collateral. So it really is this you know, really market improvement over the way a lot of other people might otherwise get liquidity through the tract by system.
Oh for sure. So is it a combination of retail investors as well as institutions that are using this product.
So all the numbers we talked about are the retail users using the Coinbase app for their personal accounts and so like. Of course, the borrowing customer job, so to speak, is one that spans obviously both retail, institutional et cetera. And there are other parts of coinbase that are serving those needs though like not factored into the numbers that I just mentioned.
So let's say take myself as an example. I have maybe a few bitcoin and Coinbase, and I want to take out a loan to do some upgrades to my house or I don't know, pay for to a certain my daughter's college scholarship or whatever or tuition. I should say, walk us through that process. I'm what percentage of bitcoin's value am I getting a loan off of? And what happens with the market volatility? How is that taken into account?
Yeah, so you can specify a loan to value for your the loan that you want to take out. Of course, we have guardrails, right, so we really sort of set the guardrails to make sure that users are you know, taking responsible action. Th Ultimately, it's on the user to decide. For example, if I launch you know the defive borrow functionality and coinbase, say like I could set a fifty
percent loan to value. So let's just say I have a one hundred thousand dollars in bitcoin in the account, I could take a fifty thousand dollars loan, right, get fifty thousand and USDC proceeds and in your case, for example, use it to pay that tuition. And then in the app, we will show you the loan to value based on the price of bitcoin and the fluctuations, so you'll see the health of the loan, right.
So for example fair good.
And then we also have user facing notifications when there are market where there's market volatility, where there's the potential for the collateral to be liquidated or sold. Right that way, a user can come on and they can decide to repay the loan, right, they can decide to add more collateral.
So these are all.
Sort of like user facing pieces of functionality we give you so you can get that liquidity and then also of course manage against that bitcoin collateral as you see fit.
Got it. And as far as terms is, there are there terms on being able to borrow. Is it like five like how the mortgage terms are or a car loan terms are.
So today it's they are open ended floating rate terms. So I think today, if you just open that today, you can borrow at seven and a half percent, once again, really competitive versus a lot of the alternatives you'll see. And you know, the supply and demand essentially in the market will determine the rates, right, so a user can
kind of monitor the rates. As we continue building out the feature and functionality, you can expect that we can think about additional parameters and things that could sell serve different needs for users. So, but today it is open ended floating rate terms.
So open ended, so I could pay us back in whatever time frame I want.
Yes, And and we ultimately believe that there's just this really wider range of potential needs.
Right.
You might look to pay off your daughter's tuition in advance of a paycheck that you might receive in let's say two weeks, right, And after two weeks you may want to pay it down and sort of like get the collateral back and no longer have a loan outstanding. As I mentioned, we have seen you know, purchases even up to a home, in which case they're actually taking that in lieu of let's say a thirty year mortgage, right, And so in that case, you know that that user
may or may not want to pay it down. You know, in the immediate term, they might actually want to keep it that loan outstanding in the same way that they would right if they had gone to let's say like a ba A or Wells to get a long term martgage.
Oh wow, yeah, that's such a great option. I mean
¶ Loan timeline example
to be able to do things like I buy a home. So I think you may have addressed this, but I want to make sure I wrap my head around it, and even for the users who are watching listening, because this is, you know, brand new to a lot of folks. So let's say I have three bitcoin on coinbase, right, and the value is like over three hundred thousand based on market price. Right now, I take I want to take a loan of one hundred and fifty thousand, which
would be an approximate to fifty percent. And because the loan is open ended, I don't have to make monthly payments. I just have to repay it at some point. But let's say that I wait five years and it's twenty thirty and bigcoin shoot shoots up to five hundred thousand dollars. What happens in that scenario? Can I liquidate some of the bitcoin or repaid the loan? Like, can I do things like that? Yes?
Absolutely, so you can repay the loan at any time. Let's say, in the process of bitcoin rallying and increasing in value, your loan to value will naturally be decreasing, right, So technically, like if you did nothing, the health of your loan in terms of just asset coverage, would just be getting healthier and healthier, right, And at any point in time, Let's just say, let's just say you had USDC in your account and you wanted to pay down
the loan, You could do that. Let's just say you wanted to basically use some of the bitcoin collateral to pay down. We offer you the capability of withdrawing collateral from your loan because let's say now your loan to value is so low, right, you're feeling really good about the health of your loan. You can withdraw some of that bitcoin, and then you could decide to sell some of it use those proceeds to pay down the loan.
So what you mentioned is entirely possible with the product suite that we're offering today.
Wow, and who dumb question? Who are the lenders here and how are they able to do? The open ended term?
Yeah, so the borrowing activity happens through our integration with Morpho, So happens entirely on chain where coin Base is allowing our users to access these really valuable on chain capabilities, and essentially on chain, you know, there are Morpho vaults and markets where you know, there is a facilitation of borrowing and lending activity, right, So I guess we'll get
to at some point. But like there are platforms that you know allow users to lend USDC, you know, including coin Base, right, and those funds go towards facilitating also the borrowing needs, right, but not in like a one to one direct fashion, but all through the on chain capabilities that you know Morpho provide.
Is it like a application running on base?
Morpho is on Base, Morpho is also on Ethereum and other chains. Though, DeFi borrow and DeFi lend on coinbase or on Morpho on base?
Got it? Okay? Very cool? I love that and the open ending endedness of it. Makes it unique because if you are planning to be a long term holder of bitcoiners another crypto asset, it just gives you the long term horizon. And if we have the thesis that all of this is going to continue to go up due to different factors, this is a better way almost than going to sell and you know, incurring capital gains, taxes and much more.
Yeah, I think a lot of users are finding it that way. And of course in the end, I feel like it's all about the configuration and optionality you provide to users, right, some people do like that open endedness. There are other users who you know, have a fixed borrowing need in mind. So I think as this space ultimately expands, there will be different configurations and optionality that users increasingly have to serve their everyday borrowing and liquidity it needs.
Oh for sure. And what about expansion to other assets? So you know, folks hold bitcoin, Salona, XRP, whatever it else, Right, are you planning to add these expand to other assets?
So from the outset when we announced and launched this product, I think we stated that you know, we ultimately want to maximally serve the borrowing and liquidity customer. Job so you can expect that we're thinking about how to do that, and expansion to other assets is of course like part of the equation. So won't comment too much on our
exact plans. But ultimately, I think if you want to serve people maximally on liquidity and borrowing, you know, you want to serve them across you know, where they're at, the different assets that they might hold.
You may not be able to answer this question, but
¶ Coinbase Mortgages?
you know, as you were talking about we were talking about the home example of someone buying a house, does it make sense for a coinbase to explore mortgages given that you know you're doing this type of lending, maybe you're able to offer or maybe not just the loans itself. It's fine, I don't know, but maybe some sort of mortgage product. I don't know.
Yeah, I also won't comment too much though, once again, I do think that it's under the same customer job, right and for the same reasons. You know, a user ultimately has a purchasing need, and you know a mortgage
is a form of that. So I would say today we're really focused on, you know, sort of like the goodness we have with the DEEPI borrow product, and there's you know, a million different ways we can take this, and if I take a step back, we're ultimately thinking about our users' financial lives and how we can bring financial services on chain serve them extremely well, you know, across the very the various facets of that.
Right.
So I don't know if you if you kind of extend the timeline long enough, there's like little that we wouldn't consider doing. But once again, I'll kind of just keep it more general as it pertains to our new term clients.
Oh for sure. Yeah, I mean I love the product. I think that this is such a great idea, and I've spoken to some other folks at Coinbase at the coin Base summit. You know, I'm looking to do this. I was waiting to see how the price a bitcoin would move, but I think it's something I'm well, I should say, I discussed with my wife. I haven't pulled the trigger yet because you know, we're just trying to decide certain plans as far as home home momp grades
or buying a larger home or things like that. But this is a great option because man, I hate taxes and I would hate to have to give up my bitcoin in current taxes versus I can hold on to it and get a long term alone like this to do what I need to do.
Yep, and smart move to get that approval before you make the decision. But yes, I agree with you. And then once again, like I think a user would be thinking about the various alternatives they have, right, Like, you know, folks are smart, They'll think about the cost of borrowing. And we do believe that, you know, bitcoin back loans are a really attractive way to to get that necessary liquidity, particularly if you're already holding bitcoin as you are.
Talk to us a bit about security and even is there insurance you know, well, let's say something. I'm not saying something will, but in the event that something may have failed or it gets broken just temporarily, what happens to the user's collateral?
Yeah, so there there is no insurance program. And Coinbase is ultimately you know, helping facilitate users accessing this really valuable capability do the integration with Morpho from the ease of the Coinbase app. So yeah, like you know, users should of course like make their do their own research and make that responsible decision on their end, you know, of course, like Morpho on their end. They also have their own security practices, et cetera. So there's a lot
of information you know, both online. I think something we also serve up an app that users can of course use to educate themselves.
Got it. I wanted to ask about some other big
¶ Samsung partnership
news around Coinbase, and most recently was the announcement of the Samsung partner ship, which is huge. Tell us about that, and you know, what's the vision here?
So we ultimately want to you know, allow users to as many people in the world really to use crypto to further their financial lives. And you know, through that, one of the strategies is to partner with platforms to distribute Coinbase and the various services that we offer. So in the case of Samsung, we're offering seventy five million plus Samsung Galaxy users in the US free access to our membership program Coinbase one to bring them on board.
And you know, through that partnership, we'll also bring crypto access to a lot of people where they already are right through the device that they use every day and Coinbase one. Just because like I'm not sure if everyone knows what that is. It's basically our membership program that provides a suite of benefits, right, zero trading fees, you know,
boosted USDC reward rates, boosted staking rates. We've also rolled out the coin Base one one card recently that allows you to earn up to four percent back in bitcoin on your everyday spend. There's account protection, so there's more features actually at this point than I can really kind
of like name in a concise way. But I think the whole point is to not only introduce people to crypto, but also introduce them to a membership that maximizes the way that they can use crypto in their everyday lives as well as grow their money right and their their assets. And so you know, with Samsung, they are going to be distributing this membership, providing you know, Samsung users with the ability to quickly come on board and then also get the best of what coin base offers.
That's really great. It's such a such a huge on ramp. I am a coin Base one used subscriber, if you want to call it that, and I do have a Samsung phone. I'm on the Android side, so looking forward to testing out that integration. That's really great. And I know, Ben, you probably can't answer this but I'm assuming you're going to be knocking on Apple's door to do this as well with them.
No comment on that coin Based one member. Hopefully you've gotten the coin based one card. If not, you should also order that.
Yeah, I need to order that. I've been so busy that I haven't even like got a chance to think. I knew, I know of it, right, and I saw the announcement and everything. But I think I'm gonna try to do that this quarter as things settle down a bit. I'm not traveling as much. And then there was also some really great news about Staking in New York. I
¶ Staking in NY
know there's a lot of people in New York who have been frustrated with not having access to certain services across the board, right, not just Coinbase, but I tried to remind people like, there's this thing called the bit license unfortunately, and much more in a very strict NYDFS tell us about the launch of staking for different assets there.
Yeah, so obviously, you know, we have a ton of valued users in New York. And before we even get the staking, Coinbase one card is also now available in New York, so we're very much pushing into just like allowing our users in New York to access all of the tools that we provide to further their their every day financial life. So staking is obviously a huge win for consumers in New York and just economic freedom more generally.
So staking empowers our users to unlock financial freedom by part partaking in the crypto economy earning rewards on their stakable crypto assets. Right, so New Yorkers can now essentially sign up for coinbase if they don't already have it, or if they do, they can have their assets staked, you know, within seconds. Right, just go into the coin based experience. You can steak Eating and steak Solona, a
host of other assets. And we applaud New York for embracing the future of finance and supporting economic opportunities for citizens. And I think there's an example, This is an example that a lot of other states that don't currently allow steaking can hopefully also follow so that they where users can also once again maximize their optionality and how they want to manage and grow their finances.
Yeah, that's such a great thing. And I love the staking aspects of some of these blockchains proof mistake and being able to earn these passive rewards right for being a participant on the network, and like to your point, hopefully other states follow and then this has opened up to more people as it should be. Yeah. Absolutely, Now you guys are doing a lot obviously, what else is on your roadmap that you can share? So, I mean,
if you've been following coinbase, you will hear that. You will have heard that we're working on delivering that everything exchange, so being the place where users can trade and invest in all assets, right, whether that's you know, across crypto, across decks assets which we recently rolled out to all of our users, you know, and as well as the
cross equities, prediction markets and a host of others. So that is definitely one theme where the company is pushing forward on, you know, just really giving our users maximum access to all the ways that they can in their everyday lives, you know, trade, invest and grow their money.
That's one theme. And then if you take a step back, one big focus of ours is really to just help people grow their money, you know, in the best way that they can. So in addition to trading trading a host of assets, once we've rolled out a number of those features, you know, you can stake right you can
hold USDC and earn rewards. And then we obviously rolled out DeFi lend, where a user can I think currently at the moment you can earn about eight and a half percent on your USDC by similar lending it to on chain, right, and then outside of that, I would say, you know, the Coinbase one card. It is a mechanism for us to start serving your everyday relationship, right whether you're out buying groceries, you're hopping on the subway, or
anything else. So I think there's one big theme around helping your users grow their money across trading, investing, and even just deploying their ass sets and even spending right
in their everyday lives. And then outside of that, you know, we rolled out the pay tab that allows people to send money instantly and for free, you know, anywhere in the world, and they can send USDC, they can send crypto assets, so you can see this this also this host of sort of like different uses of money in one's everyday life that are starting to emerge, right, and DeFi borrow is obviously sort of at the intersection of that where you may have traded or bought bitcoin or
you know, and then you want to get liquidity from it, right, that liquidity, that money maybe you know, you use it directly on Coinbase, right, or maybe some people you know withdraw that money to you know, another institution and conduct their needs there. So yeah, I would say those are some of the themes of things that we are working on. And and Coinbase one obviously is a super charger across all of that.
Oh absolutely. And you know, I love Coinbase's mission to create a super app and you know, kind of all in one where you have all these features and like you said, like helping people to grow their wealth and
do their finances and so forth. And from one point of view, you know, I see it as just a great disruption of the existing banking setup and being able to offer people more in a more decentralized way and not the traditional model where they give you like next to nothing in your checking and savings account and you can put your money to work. Right, It's more free, more accessible. So I love that mission, and it seems
like the puck is heading that direction. Everybody's trying on that same path, trying to disrupt the traditional finance world.
Yeah, I mean, much more to come on this front, and ultimately We don't really think about being a quote unquote super app just for the sake of it. I think the ultimate goal is really to just serve different customer jobs in a really great and differentiated way. Right. If you do that across enough things, then yes, a user might be using you for multiple things in their financial life, right, and you know, and thereby you may
be a quote quote super app in their eyes. But I think that's quite different from you know, a lot of you know a lot of attempts where you see people just want to be a super app or a certain business model, right you call it a neobank or whatever else, just for the sake of it, and you kind of just want to roll out the sort of you know, sort of copy and paste suite of features in order to accomplish that goal, which is a little backwards from my perspective.
Yeah, for sure, you know, what are your thoughts on how and you worked at some of the tradify companies, but all of them now coming in banks capitulating obviously you got Blackrock Fidelity, all these folks. Black Rock works with Coinbase, of course, but just recently, I mean even Today's City Bank announced they're going to launch crypto custody next year, and it's just amazing what's happening. They're all the institutional herd just coming in today's asset class.
I think a lot of people are just recognizing that crypto and on chain economy is a really you know, emergent and powerful way to serve their users, right and by virtue of that, you know, a lot of them are thinking about how they can use crypto to you know, further the services they provide and in many cases partnering with Coinbase as you mentioned, right, Like we partner with the black rocks of the world with a lot of
different institutions. So yeah, Like I think, as I mentioned at the start of this call, there's definitely a bit of a convergence of sort of like financial services or what used to be sort of deemed as tradify or like traditional non crypto fintech, as well as as well as say the crypto space, right, and a lot of people are recognizing that ultimately cryptos for all the tools are powerful and within it of course, like you know, Coinbase wants to build you know, the best and most
cohesive services for our users while also partnering and empowering other platforms to do the same.
And on that note, we've seen a lot of digital
¶ DATs
acid treasury companies on the rise, buying crypto assets putting on their balance sheet. You know, Michael Sailors Strategy started his whole trend. What are your thoughts on that and are some of these folks working with coin bates to like buy the assets, custody the assets and so forth.
Yeah, So separate from just like dedicated digital asset treasury companies, right, there are certainly just a lot of corporations that are increasingly looking for ways to deploy capital more effectively without sacrificing speed, security or market access. Right. So, you know, we're seeing also corporate treasuries are under pressure to hedge against inflation or generate yield on their treasury assets, right.
You know, coinbase is definitely empowering that and partnering with a lot of platforms that are looking to use crypto more in their everyday sort of like company functions. And you know, of course within that there's also let's say, the strategies of the world and actually more pure played
digital asset treasury companies. But I just want to call out that it's actually much more broad than that if you look at, you know, the various companies that are starting to think about where the role crypto might play in their overall treasury management and allocation.
Yeah, it's just interesting to see all these folks getting involved in crypto. It's fascinating. I'm excited for the future, especially as you know, we get even more clarity in the market from the government around crypto legislation and much more. What are your thoughts on the tokenization market. A lot of these firms looking to put a lot of different things on the blockchain, whether it be stocks, gold, and other assets.
I think ultimately, the on chain economy is one that people are viewing as increasingly powerful, and by tokenizing different assets you have access to it, right, you can start to empower different things, you know, borrowing, lending in different use cases. So, you know, coinbase ultimately will be continuing to push on this front, you know, whether that's tokenized equities,
real world assets, derivatives, prediction markets, et cetera. We are working towards a cryptonative launch of tokenized equities as part of our broader strategy, and we think the total addressable market for you know, equities as well as obviously just tokenized assets is huge, right, so we're seeing the tip
of iceberg on it. We aremitted to being on the frontier of it and doing it the right way with deep tech, you know, the right regulatory investments, etc. And you know, on chain borrowing and lending our examples of that right while you know what you've seen borrowing against bitcoin is collateral as well as lending out USDC to
earn enhanced rewards. Those are a couple examples where you know assets have been tokenized and sort of like facilitating different use cases and debts trading, which we've rolled out to all our users as of this month. But that's another example where you know, people are getting access to a ton more assets for their everyday trading and investing needs.
So we're really excited to see how the DeFi mullet as we call it, can expand our product suite and really turn coinbase into the premier financial services platform for everyday use and I think tokenization plays a meaningful role in that overall picture.
Yeah, it would just open up so many new opportunities for these traditional assets. And you know, we started the conversation talking about crypto back loans that maybe eventually I think you hinted to it that if I have a lot of tokenized assets and you, depending on what they are, they could be put to work where I can borrow against them and things like that. Right, Yep, absolutely awesome, Ben, great stuff. I got some wrap up questions here for you. First,
¶ Wrap up questions
if you could create your own metaverse, what would the theme be?
Oh?
Interesting?
Yeah, I was part of the cohort that actually played around Second Life back in the day. Felt like that was like a metaverse before some of the metaverse hype. I guess there's a lot of craziness across all kinds of metaverses. If I think about it, I would love something that's quite calming and therapeutic, right, maybe the use of like certain modalities for like whether it's vr AR, some type of metaverse where you actually go to like you know, enjoy like just like relaxing sort of like
a sensory like spa like head of environment. I don't know, I'm kind of just thinking off top, but that's something that I think could actually quite interesting in addition to all of the meta verses where you like create, create, create, and you like, you know, have this like sensory overload.
Yeah, I'm with you because recently I've been on a meditation journey where trying to meditate more, especially like you know, having a busy day and interviewing people and talking all day and just like being able to get quiet time meditate, but like having a metaverse where I can immerse myself in that that would be great. So I'm with you.
Yeah, a calm or one of those platforms should probably build that.
Yeah, for sure. Rapid fire questions. Favorite food I see sushi is probably up there in Japanese food generally. Favorite musician or band Red Hot Schilip Peppers. Favorite movie Memento by Chris Nolan. I remember that. That's That's one of those movies you can't really forget.
Favorite book nineteen eighty four Georgia orwell maybe Animal Farm quite I like the George or Well books.
And when you're not working at coinbase, what are you doing for fun?
I love to just find like water out in nature, So it could be a water hole, could be the beach. Obviously here in Norcall, we'll just drive up to Bodega Bay, or let's just Sonoma Coast with the family and just enjoy a day out in the sun and kind of like the kind of wild coast of that, or maybe drive even further up to let's say, see Ranch or Mendocino. So yeah, that's sort of been the theme of my summer and whether that's there or you know, Tahoe or wherever else.
Very cool, Ben, Thank you so much for your time. I love what coinbase is doing, love the products, and you know, maybe we'll have to have you back on as you guys launched some cool new things and we'll talk about it. But thank you so much for joining me. Great to be here.
Thanks Teddy,