You know, I saw first name. My whole life is that institutional capital is that pool is much larger than retail, right. And so by going to businesses and saying hey, we can offer a better model for you versus the status quo. You know, if you support a USD and utilize us right, they are now in turn going to their users and saying, hey, actually we're going to build our best products around AUSD because we're actually part of this economic value chain.
This content is brought to you by v chain, which is a leading enterprise grade Layer one public blockchain spearheating a digital revolution from a sustainable, highly scalable smart contract platform. The v chain blockchain has many unique features, which makes it an ideal choice for Web three applications. V chain is working with many great enterprises such as Pwcgvonchi, BMW and Walmart China. Most recently, they partnered with the Boston
Consulting Group to build a revolutionary decentralized application ecosystem. I'm a big believer in this project. I have been since twenty eighteen. I've been a VET token holder for years. And this blockchain is highly scalable, great with security and speed, and it has low energy consumption. If you'd like to learn more about v chain, please visit vchain dot org. Link will be in a description. Welcome into the Thinking Crypto podcast. I'm your host, Tony Edward, and my guest
today is Nick van Eck, who's the founder of Agora. Nick. Great to have you on.
Yeah, thanks for having me, Tony.
Nick. Agora launch a stable coin AUSD. I have a lot of questions around that and how the stable coin will be used, But let's start with your background. Tell us a bit about yourself and your professional background.
Yeah, so I spent most of my career as a technology investor. My family runs an assa management business, so it may not be a surprise that I got into marcus and investing at a very early age. Always you really thought that I wanted to get into the investing world and make that that my career, and so I started, uh you right out of school, focused primarily and enterprise software at the growth stage, uh, and did that for most of my career before starting a Gora.
UH.
Moved on to another firm called General Catalyst, which is a large multi stage venture firm. Did much of the same there, uh, But then DeFi summer came around and slowly all my personal time got sucked up by crypto.
UH and having spent you know, my my day job and in cloud software, I felt that blockchain was deep back end innovation the financial services and UH payment companies never had and that blockchain would eat those world that that world in a very similar way to how cloud ate on prem and a lot of human driven workflows UH within within cloud software. And so UH decided to start a Goora about a year and a half ago.
Officially started in about a year ago today, and yeah, we've been growing for quickly and it's been a pretty busy year.
Well congrats on one year anniversary. Amazing stuff. And I want folks to understand your background, your family. Your dad is of course yan Evan k K is one of the big firms out there, and I followed your father for years and learning about investments. You mentioned that you know, your natural path was to go into the finance and so forth. But how did you kind of discover crypto and did you tell your father about that or how did you guys both discover crypto.
Yeah, so I actually started uh, you know, my own portfolio when I was younger than thirteen, and my dad managed on behalf of me, and I spent my years in summers in college trying to figure out what I wanted to do in the investing role, because there's a lot of different things you could do. You could do passive management, like a lot of what van x business is. You're like ets and just design good products, index products.
You can actively manage, you know, whether that's like a long short hedge fund, you can do to buy out you know, VC. And so I was trying to figure out what I really liked, you know, I liked you know, what I liked specifically about investing is the intellectual curiosity required that you were competing with, in my view, some of the smartest people in the world, because there was a lot at stake, and then you had to put
your money where your mouth is. And I felt that, you know, most people didn't do that in sort of the rest of the world. And so I spent my summer trying to figure out what I wanted to do. Was working for a hedge fund one summer, and they were actually buying bitcoin at the time. This was a twenty billion dollar deep value hedge fund in its peak, and the founders of the firm were very intellectually curious. We're like, you know, why are there these three thousand
cryptocurrencies that have already been launched. And this was you know, early twenty sixteen. Most of the other crypto there's like like coin, and then it was you know, raven coin, rails blocks, et cetera. And they had this view that bitcoin was going to eat a large chunk of the
gold market. And that was something that you know, immediately resonated with me because my family runs one of the largest gold minor funds in the world, and so I sort of grew up getting cougarrants for my grandfather and you know, grew up around a bunch of gold bugs, and so that's when I first got exposed to it. You know, it took me about a year to convince him that bitcoin was like this real, real thing, but you know, he's very open minded and sort of dove
right in. And van k was the first institutional firm to file for a bitcoin e TF. They did that back in twenty seventeen. And then, you know, I I liked the hedge fund, but realized that it was a little bit too short term and I wanted to focus on more long term projects and so found my way
into technology investing. I really liked that you were building companies at the front end of the tech curve and building teams versus financial engineering, which was a lot of what buy out private equity was, and so love that did that for over five years. But it was very clear to me that like blockchain was finally at the point where it was going to eat financial services and payments. And when I got into crypto, eth was trading it
like a few bucks. There were no no real DAPs, like not really that many real users either, you know, and even after the I c O boom, there still was not much going on. It was really like DeFi Summer that I think was the first true step function change in like crypto applications and usage. And to me, you know, with stables, they were just the stepping stone
into like the broader institutional adoption of blockchain technology. And you know, we felt that we could build a bit a better model, and so left my firm about a year ago to start a Goora And yeah, it's been busy.
Wow, So are you are you targeting more of the enterprise level adoption of this stable coin AUSD or will it also have a retail market, kind of like the tethers and the USDC and so forth.
Yeah, Ultimately, I think any healthy market has a combination of both institutions and retail. For US, I would say, we're more focused on going after, you know, the businesses and using those businesses as our go to market engine
to the rest of the market. Something you know that you know I saw first shame my whole life is that institutional capital is that pool is much larger than retail, right, And so by going to businesses and saying, hey, we can offer a better model for you versus the status quo. You know, if you support a us D and utilize us right, they are now in turn going to their users and saying, hey, actually we're going to build our best products around a USD because we're actually part of
this economic value chain. Whereas with the USDC, about half the income of USDC goes to coinbase, the other half coast to Circle. And so if you're a centralized exchange or a custodian or ADAP that is not you know, one of those two companies, you're cut out from that economic value chain. And the same is true for everyone. But tether right. And so what we're doing is we're going to exchanges, adapts, whomever and saying hey, you know,
you know you should be part of this, right. It's actually you that is driving utility and liquidity for these assets. And you know by incorporating Agora into your into your app, like, you know, you'll have a better business, right. And so that's resonating with a lot of people. And so a lot of these businesses are then either reducing on and off ramp fees around a USD, reducing trading fees, you know,
being their points program for a USDU. You know there's one app that's like triple the points if you use a USD versus USDC. So they're all coming up with their own creative ways, uh to drive AUSD adoption and so ultimately that should trickle down to I would say, you know, the non institutional or enterprise market, but you know, I view healthy markets need to be a combination of both those categories.
Yeah. Absolutely, And to your point, like going to some of these enterprises which have retail using their services would be an easy way for distribution in the sense and getting more people to use the app. So if you went to I don't know. Well, if you let's say ven K, yeah, right, it's an easy distribution through throughout their current customer base. And by the way, will ven K use a USD.
Yes, they have their own liquid fund and venture fund which I imagine will be using it in some capacity.
Tell us a bit about what blockchains a U S the is currently available on and plan sixpand beyond that.
Yeah, So we started on Ethereum, mainenet towards the end of the summer, launched Avalanche suiy and on Mantle, both each a month after the other. Our most active chain todate is Avalanche, although we're seeing, you know, the ensuing chain is also growing at the same rate in terms of volume in a M. In addition to to those networks, uh, we already announced that we'll be uninjective, so that I'll be coming soon, and then there's a few other large
networks that we'll be coming to. One that we're particularly excited about is coming to Polygon's ag layer. So we won that RFP against you know, the the largest players in the market today, and so we'll be going to that network natively, uh, you know, once once the ag layer is up and live, and so that's one that
we're particularly excited about. And there'll be a few more announcements coming over the next next few months, and then I think we'll probably slow our deployment schedule, you know, starting in Q two of next year.
And tell us about your reserves. What is what does this consist of and how where is it being custody.
Yeah, so from the get go, it's important to be institutional grade and actually have scalability, right, and so one of the advantages of you know, being a vanack is that they have large asset bases at various banks, right, And that's been particularly valuable over the last year given Operation Choke point two point zero and the reluctance of
banks to touch crypto. And so State Street, which is one of the largest gesips in the world that's a globally systemic bank is managing, is the cash custodian and the fund admin of the Agora Reserve Fund that is in a Delaware Reserve Trust, and so the majority of
the assets sit with State Street. We have a very small percentage with what I call settlement banks, so banks that interact with our customers directly, and so we use a variety of banks there, so that it's very quick settlement when people want to redeem, and the assets are primarily in overnight reverse repo and then short those assets are managed by Vanac, so you have a you know, money manager that manages over one hundred million dollars globally regulated,
been around for seventy plus years managing the assets, not just Agora. So they're safe, secure, and you know theoretically we could take in hundreds of billions of dollars tomorrow given UH stage street size. You know, I don't think that's going to happen, but you know, hopefully one day it is the case.
Yeah. Absolutely. How are you guys set up to avoid situations like what happened to Circle with I believe with silver Gate or I'm not mistaked.
Yes, silver Gate SVB. Yeah, So it's by relying on a very large bank, right, that is adhesive, right, So you know, one of the mistakes of you know, one of the challenges using regional banks and using uninsured bank deposits that are out of a trust structure is that they are then not as safe as if they were in you know, a multi trillion dollar asset bank UH where the assets are in a trust structure, and so you know, from a structuring perspective, we wanted to nip
that issue in the bud from the get go and to learn from i would say, others mistakes. And so that's a circumstance that will not happen with us, you know, unless you know the world is on fire.
Yeah, but then we have bigger problems. Yeah, yes, correct, are you playing to you may have mentioned this earlier, but are you planning to offer yield and in both on the institutional and the retail sign.
Yeah. So the way that we think about it is ultimately, you can't pay non KYC retail if you're interacting with the banking system, right. And so we designed, you know, our model around one being compliant, but also to delivering value to the people that are driving it, to the to the network. And so what we do is we KYB the end business and then based on the assets
within their perimeter, we share the majority of the net income. Right, So if there's you know, one hundred million of a USD on adapp or an exchange that is KYBT with us, we pass the majority of that income through and then it's up to that business to choose how to build the best products around AUSD, right, So that could be by just you know, passing incentives to users. It could be by like reducing trading fees or reducing you know,
the borrow fees, or incentivizing borrows or incentivizing deposits. It's totally up to them. But that's ultimately like how we
are driving value back to the system. And you know, if folks want a pure yield product, I think pure yield products are are better, right, but ultimately stables and yield products are are you quite quite different, And so we want to reward the people that are actually helping drive utility and equidity to our stable coin network, which is very different than you know, if someone wants to ten percent on a private credit fund and just sort of sit there for six months.
Yeah, that definitely makes sense. Now you mentioned KYC, and we know sable coin legislation is being worked on here in the US and will most likely include a lot of that. KYC a m L. In the EU, they passed the MICA regulation which seemed to disrupt Teather's business, and I believe it's more related to KYC. So talk to us about the importance of that and how these regulators are going to you know, put together the legislation for this market.
Yeah, so I think there's a few things specifically with MIKA that Tether didn't agree with. Yeah, some of them, I I actually, you know, I agree with them as well. You know, requiring x percentage to be in bank deposits, which are you know, uninsured. It is probably not safe, just based on what's happened with some other issuers, but maybe just touching on you know, broad you know, broadly, like how I think about this as the banking system.
If you're a fiatcoin, you interact with the banking system, right, and they are very strict around k y C, a m L, and like it's core to their business to maintain that everyone is compliant and if that's not the case, they're going to shut you off, right, And so as an issuer, you need to be focused on adhering to you know, appropriate regulation that you know, a lot of these these large banks are going to have to follow, which
Tether does to a degree. And you know, and I would say they're they're relatively compliant depending on the jurisdiction with regards to like k y C and a mL. It's just you know, you can't pay non identified wallets right directly, that's probably a no no. And so we're going to see and you know a lot of these bills that are passing with stable coins in particular, say you can't pay yield directly to people, right, those are
specifically yield products. And so that's why you know, from our perspective, you should be rewarding the businesses you are not altered necessarily the holders, but then it dry they can drive value to your product and make it a better experience for the users. Right, Whereas like, okay, if you are yield product, like you're in an entirely separate bugget regardless if it's in the US, the EU, or like you know, Singapore, Hong Kong, somewhere else.
Question for you, and this may be a dumb question if I'm thinking about it, right, you as the issuer, Let's say you're working with Bank of America or something like that, do you want to use a U s D? Are you responsible for the KYC or is Bank of America responsible for it? Based on who's using it through their system?
Yeah? So uh we KYB anyone that is minting and redeeming the asset, right, so anyone that is sending US fiat currency or redeeming a USD we do a you know, rigorous enhanced dd KYB. But ultimately the stable coin is freely transferable, with the exclusion of of course O fact sanctioned wallets and some other edge cases. But beyond that, uh,
it's freely transferable. And we you know, engage with you know a lot of the largest monitoring providers to make sure that uh, you know, a U s C is only in good actors hands, right, And so it's ultimately up to US RAN. The banks are our trusting that we're doing due diligence on all of our customers and have these programs in place. You know, they look at our m l K y C policies as well as other policies that we have in place.
And I follow up question to the EU micah, are are you guys only in the US market right now or are you global or only insert?
Yeah, we're actually primarily focused on the non US market. Uh so Asia, Latin America. To me, that's where stable coins are most valuable because you have emerging market, lateent dollar demand and cross boarder payments like those. That's why
stable coins are most valuable today. You know, within the US, UH, we all have relatively good banking services and payment services, and so if you're being intellectually honest, I think the value of stable coin is ten x more or even one hundred next more valuable outside the United States, right in countries where you may not have a strong rule of law or good financial service institutions, or you know, the financial services institutions may be very costly just to
even have an account. Right in many countries, double digit percentages of the population are unbanked, right because they're just like not good enough, and so like this is where technology can come in and solve those problems and give everyone access to secure financial services right through defive and so those are the markets that we're really focused on.
Do you foresee that these money transfer companies like your Western Unions and money gram and so forth, are going to use stable coins like a US or may they try to launch their own although we've seen some of them. I think they attempt to do, but it hasn't worked that well. I think of JP Morgan jpm coin, because it's not on a public blockchain, it's not free to move. What are your thoughts on the future of these.
Companies, Yeah, I think a few will launch stable coins. Ultimately, I think that's not a business that they should be in. Like, I think they should just like leverage someone like US, where you know, they're making the majority of the underlying net income that's on their platform and they don't have to worry about compliance, building the network, liquidity management, like we handle all that for you, right, and so just focus on the end relationship with your current customer base
and providing like a better service. And so if it's you know, the income from the stable that folks want, like, we're happy to provide that, and then you participate in this broader liquidity network, right. Building a stable point network is extremely hard. That's why I think you've seen many people start to do it and then abandon it because unless it's your core business, it's probably not something that
you should be doing, right. I think other service providers like can come in and sort of cut the cut the margins out from under USCC and tether and hopefully make this a much more egalitarian monetary system m HM.
And in regardless to like wallet support, tell us a bit about that. Are you currently partner with any major wallets? And things like that.
Yeah, so you know, most of the wallets can import us if they want or you know, Consensus actually is an investor in US, so meta mask, you know, any of the major wallets, as long as you import our ARC twenty token, it's it's available. And so we're planning to launch a few campaigns and we've been working closely with the ok x wallet team as well as a
number of the centralized exchange wallet teams. Most of them have built really fantastic products in addition to you know, standalone wallet companies.
I used to work for okay x, so if you need any help there, help me know.
Yeah. Now they're great and like the wallet is is like top tier for sure, particularly like they're stable coin page, which like sort of just shows you like a menu of opportunities like okay, you want to you know, make twenty percent on AUSD or U s D C U s C T like hear all the different lending protocols or a m MS. It's it's really well done.
As much as you can tell us what are some of these strategies and tactics you have for growth and what's kind of I don't once you give away your secret sauce, but you know what, what's on your roadmap.
Yeah. So one of the things that I believe is as the issuer, you should, uh, you have the right to do everything downstream from you cheaper, right, uh, particularly on the on and off ramp side, the infrastructure side, and then eventually some things in the in the app player as well. Right. I think that's one of the things to me that has been interesting is you know, USDC abandoned their API product. I think that's an area where you can see is leaning in at some point
in the future. Something that I'm also focused on is like what is like the next what are the next one hundred x markets stables and so you know, I don't want to get too deep into that, but I can tell you we're not trying to compete for BTC price discovery on finance against tether. I think that's a losing battle, and so we're focused on other things. But I think crypto trading is sort of V one of stables and V two and three are going to be much bigger than the status quo today, which is like
you know, it's mostly crypto trading. So we're going to be focused on a lot of those those use cases.
Anything on micro payments or is it too early for you guys, you know where people can do micro transactions or creators can get streaming revenue and AUSD and things like that.
Yeah, we're working with a few of the Social five companies, a lot of number of gaming companies, and so that you'll just start to see AUSD just popping up more in your favorite ecosystems and apps, because it's ultimately better for those businesses, right because they actually get to capture
a lot of the economic value. And so on the micro payment side, you know, there's not much that we're doing there yet, but you will see a lot more announcements with us and different payment providers early next year where we'll get much more deeply embedded within in the payment ecosystem.
Talk to us a bit a bit about your vision for payments or how you see the payments market evolving with the mixture of stable coins and crypto assets. You know, are we gonna see the elimination of the western unions and the money grams because I can just do peer to peer payments and I could use the stable coins settles instantly very low fees. I could do a twenty four to seven, no delays and things like that.
Yeah, I think you won't see the end of Western Union, but you'll see their margins collapse, and I think you'll see their market share collapse. Right if you have a relative, you know, whether it's in Singapore or Australia or Argentina or Germany. Right, it's just stables are not just ten x better, like one hundred x better. Right, you know there's the still I would say hard piece. It's not that hard, but it needs to be figured out. Is the on and off ramps right? And does the stable
that you're sending have good on and off ramps? Right? You know, which is on the infrastructure side, and obviously something that will be focused on. So I think stable pains will really start to eat into the cross border just dollar markets and the P two P remittance markets, which I think they've already done pretty pretty good job of making a dent into. And then I think in
terms of cross border things, FX is next. Right, So today a lot of people are doing one leg of the trade in stables and the other is like still in fiat. I think you'll start to see the growth of a number of non US dollar stables over the next five to ten years, which hasn't really occurred yet. I think the ultimately the market size there is limit because you know, the US is just the dominant currency for global trade, it's the global reserve asset. But also
people that aren't even Americans want to hold dollars. This isn't really the case for other currencies. Like You've had all these euro stables that have been around for years now, and I think they're not really going to take off other than for FX reasons and like basic balance reasons because just like no one outside like you know, as an American, I'm never I'm not holding a europe right, whereas that's not that's not you know, their ship call is not true.
Yeah. Absolutely, And the US of course has the advantage of having the world reserve currency, so everybody wants the dollars and until there's some major geopolitical shift, that's going to be the case, and stable coins, the US back
stable coins makes sense. What are your thoughts on the dialogue that's happening in Washington, d C. Of helping to preserve the world reserve currency status by having the US the backstable coins, and that the US government needs to move forward and getting proper legislation and clarity so companies like yourself can feel free to build.
Yeah, I think, you know, the announcements over the last few weeks have been really positive for development within the United States. I think it's very clear now that US dollar stables are like the best economic and almost defense tech weapon that the US government hasn't created or a defense company hasn't created, because you know, what we're doing every single day is going and you know, trying to
grow the dollars usage outside the US right. Ultimately, that reduces the cost of the federal debt and expands American
soft power globally, which is great. I think, you know, people from both sides of the aisle recognize that, and I think particularly with some of the appointments, you know, although they're pending over the next few weeks and some of the rights of resignations, things you know, within the States are looking much more receptive to crypto and so it's Yeah, I think things seem to be moving nicely, which is great.
What are your thoughts about cbdc's and the mixture of this with stable coins in the open market now, we haven't really seen any major CBDCs. There is talks of China has a digital you want. I haven't seen it. I have never seen anybody use it. But you know, there's a talk of wholesale versus retail. So do you think the CBDCs are going to be running behind the
scenes with the federal government so to speak? And I hope not, right, but use retail is going to be using the stable coins, Like I'm not a fan of CBDCs either. I would rather the free market stable coins, right, But it seems some governments are working on these things.
Yeah, I you know, each country is different. I don't think they'll ever be well received in the United States because I think think it's a dangerous tool for anyone
to have. Right is Okay, I can basically delete the money from your bank account if you say political speech I don't agree with, right, And I think in the United States over the last couple of months, there's been a lot of concern right around censorship, right, you know, And and it's sort of us living in like this crypto Twitter bubble, right, you know, I think we're most folks are aware of that, right and sort of you know, I came at bitcoin originally because I'm relatively like libertarian
and believe that ultimately like federal debt is is bad and federal government power is scary if you know, if used improperly, which almost always inevitably ends up being the case. Uh, And so CBBC's I think are a scary weapon and hope never introduced in America, but you know, much less any other country in the world. But I think other nations are maybe going to be less lucky than us. I don't know.
Yeah, No, it's a great point, and it's it's a lot of it's TBD but we know they say, like China seems to have one in the wild somewhere that they're testing, and thankfully here at least, you know, within our walls, so to speak. It seems like the country's movement in direction no cbdc's, but more free market.
Yeah. I just like don't think the American people like would like tolerate that, like it would just be like a little bit crazy. It'd also like kind of blow up the existing banking system. So I think, fortunately it's it's not something that's going to happen here.
So on that note, when we think about currency, right and the movement of money and how the Federal Reserve and the Treasury track all these things and they look, they have levers they pull to inject liquidity, move the velocity or increase the velocity of money and things like that. Will stable count legislation? Do you think mandate that the that you have to connect to the Treasury in some way via API and they need to track all the
issuance and everything like that. Do you think things like may go that direction.
I would be surprised if the legislation is that technology technologically forward where you have to connect it with API. I think we'll just have to see. I'm I'm not really one that likes to speculated on legislation, just because I have seen how slow moving things can be in the United States. I mean, look, it took seven years from Vanak, which was, you know, a top ten global ETF issho were to file for a Spot product ETF
for it to go live like very vanilla products. You know, there's like three x inverse lever and oil services ETFs. But you know Spotpiquini ETF was verboten. So I'm out of like the legislative guessing game these days, and I just react to what happens.
Yeah, for sure. You know, on that note of big quo, are you blown away by the growth of this asset. It is now in the political realm, It's now in the tradfire realm. Obviously with et apps. Countries are buying it. There's a Bitcoin Strategic Reserve bill on the table. States are also looking to do the same thing as the federal government. What are your thoughts on the growth.
I'm not surprised, Like this is my thesis since twenty sixteen, is that it's going to subsume the gold market because it's a much better product. You know, as someone that grew up in online right, So I'm not surprised. I will say it happened a little bit quicker than I expected to be honest, I didn't really think and I really never The one thing I am surprised about is it becoming more of a political issue within the United States.
It never should have been. Yeah, and I think a lot of that was in part because you had Sam Bankman free donate so publicly to political organizations and that that then had knock on effects. So I am a little bit surprised by that. But of the growth of the asset I'm not. I think, you know, this was almost inevitable. You know, once the debt printing train gets you know, going on the tracks, it's really hard to stop it. And you know, bitcoin is is in some ways an antidote to that.
So what is your outlook for the market in twenty twenty five? Do you see continued growth, you know, kind of following to four year cycle?
I think so, you know, I think we're obviously in a period of elevated enthusiasm given the change in attitudes you know, within the federal government that are probably coming within the United States, and US is the largest global economy, so that's a big deal. I also think a lot of G seven countries look at the US financial services in for sort of like guidance on you know, what
to do next. So I think we'll have continued growth within twenty two, you know, throughout twenty twenty five, you know. I I sort of view like US as in being like inning number one of like real crypto, which is like non speculative assets, and like Inning number six or
seven of speculative crypto. And so I think speculative crypto will be a little bit more short lived next year, whereas I would say, like real crypto, So just the adoption of blockchain technology, stable coins, tokenized assets will kind of continue to compound at a very steady rate. And I think that's gonna be true for the next twenty years, right, And so I think that part of the industry is going to be way less cyclical than the speculative aspect. And so, you know, we were expecting it to be
a great year. You know, maybe things are accelerated a little bit by what's gone on in Washington, but you know where we sit and sort of the stable coins, institutional capital world and stitutional products, and that is going to be growing in a really high compound rate for the next twenty years. Now.
You mentioned tokenization, and we're seeing some of the largest firms on Wallstreet, black Rock, and so forth, they are starting to tokenize. You are doing a form of tokenization with stable coins, Are you planning to or are you thinking about other forms of tokenization that Agora may want to get involved with, whether it's tokenized goal, tokenize real estate and things like that.
Yeah, not at the moment. Ultimately, we just want to be the op stable between all these different assets, right, and so we're working We'll plan and work with a number of different asset management companies r WA providers like we just want to be that neutral glue that stitches everything together. We don't want to launch competing products. We're probably not going to ever launch a non US dollar stable, certainly not on the roadmap now, but I guess never
say never, or any sort of other tokenized product. We ultimately just want to work with with other issuers of those types of assets and help make their products better.
Mm hm. You know you mentioned something earlier about you in twenty sixteen, you saw bitcoins rise in a digital world. You're on the younger side. I think you're probably younger than me. We got gen z Jen Alpha and all these folks right that are coming up and they live in a digital world and they don't necessarily care about golden stocks, but they like crypto. They're like meme coins. You know, I'd love to get your take on that.
And it seems that you know, they're going to gravitate to label coins and gravitate to bitcoin and crypto and things in the digital rem versus you know, the older generation. What are your thoughts on that change?
Yeah, you're thankfully I'm a millennial, but your gen z, yeah, I think they.
Yeah.
One of the things that's going to influence their behavior, I think more so than my generation or older generations, is that they live in like a social finance world, right. Like something that I didn't really ever think about when like first getting into bitcoin like eight plus years ago now was how much of a role communication technology you'll play on and on sort of investing or asset prices.
You sort of saw this with almost like the sevb Uh bank run, right, is like that was propagated on Twitter and then everyone withdrew their money and then the bank imploded. Right, you know, people say, oh, look this meme coin's going up, and people just pile in, you know, almost instantaneously. Like that I think is very different from ten years ago, twenty years ago, when it's like okay, you know, put money you know in uh the S
and P five hundred and just sit on it. You know, you know it's probably gonna compound at six seven percent
a year. It's safe. Secure. Like there's like sort of this social element now that's been introduced to asset prices, whether it's crypto or other things that I think is actually what's like driving maybe a behavioral change that I don't necessarily know if it's good or bad, Like is it you know, if people are spending like their savings on things that can lose their value in an hour, like the entirety of their value in an hour, Like
that's just gambling and that's probably not good. But if people are, you know, moving money from like entertainment, right, like, oh, you know I was gonna spend thirty bucks on a movie tonight. You know, well, maybe I'll just trade mean coins instead, Like that's probably more innocuous. So I don't you know, I don't anticipate people's behavior is changing. I think some of it's uh, definitely not good behavior, and there needs to be some moderation in terms of content
and what people are able to do. But you know,
you just kind of have to adapt, right. It's like when the internet got going, I think it was hard to foresee all the things that it would change, and you know, they sort of twenty four to seven terminally online ability to communicate with large groups of people is also changing how people invest, spend their money, spend their time too, right, So you know, I think a lot of the younger generation will continue to invest time and energy and crypto, but I think hopefully they you know,
spend time on fixed income and equity products as well.
Yeah, for sure. You know, as we were talking about some of the behavior things, I was thinking about the pump dot fund and madness that's happening. I don't know if you've said, like that stuff is scary, it's crazy.
Let's mark the day today is November twenty fifth. Like, the stuff that's going on on with pumped out fund right now is like a little bit too much that probably needs like well, it certainly content moderation, like absolutely, that is like the stuff that is not not acceptable.
But the idea though, the infrastructure and the concept, right, that could be applied in many great ways. For example, you, as an entrepreneur a company, right, if done in the proper format and the proper regulations are in place, I can bet on you. I can bet an Agora from day one. You know, if Elon was to tokenize himself, would I invest in him? Hell yeah, because the guy's incredible And I don't agree with everything, but he's incredible
as an entrepreneur. Same thing, Tom Brady, if he was still playing tokeniz, Yeah, would I invest in dog number five mein Cointa just started last night. No, but the idea is it just depends on what it is as being tokenized.
Yeah. I think some of it, if it was done properly, could be worthwhile. Though you know, I don't know if I want everything to be financialized right, like hyper financialization is probably not a great thing for society.
Mm. Yeah. But the part of the problem is until they fixes, people are dealing with financial hardship, inflation and so forth. I think macro investor Ralph Paller I heard him say about it, this is kind of an avenue ac oh, I can bet on this and make a bunch of money. Why not. I got nothing to lose. I'm not getting the same returns and other things. So once again that what they're betting on could be wrong.
But I think that the root of all this is people are trying to find a way out, and that goes back to the debasement of currency, the money printing and all these things that's happening.
Yeah. Yeah, I think some of the better things to do is probably just use stables in like ave or morpho or something to protect yourself against that. But yes, you know, I think some of this has been valuable to folks for sure.
All Right, Nick, got some wrap up questions here for you. First, if you create your own averse, what would theme be?
I al cream my own metaverse.
Where'd you put your Oculus or Apple?
Yeah? Yeah, I think probably going back into classical Greece. And it's not just because I saw a Gladiator, which I knows, you know, based on the Roman Empire this weekend Gladiator too, But I studied classical history and major did it in college. I've just been always fascinated by it. And yeah, I think like being able to like time travel back into that era. It would be really really interesting.
There's a lot of other different time periods I would like to go back to as well, to be like a fly on the wall, But that's probably number one.
Yeah, I would love that too. I'm being on history, so being able to go back to Rome or ancient Greece, whatever it is, it would be amazing. Rapid fire questions.
Favorite food, favorite food sushi.
Favorite musician or band.
Ciesto, favorite movie movie. Ah, this is a tough one. Yeah, I'll say Gladiator the first one. That may just because I saw Gladiator too this weekend.
But the first one's great, Like I watch it all the time. My wife like, if it's on TV, my mind's like my wife is like, haven't you seen this a million times?
Like it's really good. Favorite book, favorite book. My favorite fiction book is Aragon, So I love that series. When I was growing up, that was like incredible. And I think they're I heard they're redoing the show. The movie was not great, but I hear they're redoing the show, and so I have high hopes that'll be much better than the movie.
And when you're not working at Ogoria, what are you doing for fun?
Probably just spending time with family and friends.
Mm hmm, Nick, absolute pleasure. I love what you guys are doing with a USD, and I would love to have you back on as things progress. But thank you so much for joining me.
Yeah, thanks, Tony
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