¶ Intro
Part of the reason I'm really excited about, you know, what we're doing in the ecosystem today is, Hey, this is absolutely necessary to bring the world's finances on chain, and we're right at the point where a confluence of factors both you know, you know, politically with regulations as well as with the technology.
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includes Ripples, r l USD. You can earn up the five percent on that stable coin and five point two five percent on USBC. So if you do like to learn more about uphold and all the great services they offer, visit the link in the description. Hey, everybody, welcome into the Thinking Crypto Podcast. I'm your host Tony Edward, and joining me today's John Rising, who's the co founder and CEO of stack Up. John. Great to have you on.
Thank you so much, Tony, it's great to be on.
John. I'm very excited to speak with you. You are a literal rocket scientist. You worked at SpaceX and Virgin Galactic, and now you're building in the crypto industry. So I definitely want to learn more about your background and your journey towards crypto and this great platform that you're building for enterprises. But let's kick it off with your background.
¶ John's background
Where are you from and how'd you end up into the space industry if you want to call it that.
Yeah. Absolutely, As you said, I started my career in aerospace engineering, so I worked for companies like SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, and a company called Relativity, where I designed rocket engines and launch vehicles. I got into it because in college there was a group of students that was trying to be the first completely student run organization to design, build, and send a rocket into space, and I thought that
that was absolutely crazy. It sounded awesome. So even though at the time I was a theater major, I decided, Hey, you know what, I'm going to go check this out. And long story short, I ended up spending pretty much my entire college career working towards that. So I graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering and worked at a lot of really cool companies. And part of how I got into crypto actually was through the space industry, of
all things. I was fortunate enough to be the first employee at Relativity, which is a space company that I helped scale the team from just me and the founders to a big, multi billion dollar valuation, and I had significant equity in the company, but it was all I liquid and I saw the liquid twenty four to seven nature Crypto after you know, taking a quick break from
that company, and it really piqued my interest. Like many technical people, I had known about bitcoin since the you know, pre silk road days and even tried binding bitcoin myself, but hadn't really realized it had grown into smart contracts and DeFi and the really innovative, awesome ecosystem that is today. And so as I went through the process of onboarding myself to crypto, like many people, I was really frustrated about how difficult it was, even as a technically minded person,
you know, with time and money to spend. I lost a bunch of money just doing basic things. But once I got through it, an entire new world appeared. And I was working at SpaceX, arguably the coolest company in the world, but it was slow and boring in comparison to what was happening at Crypto. So I became kind of obsessed with the crypto industry, not so much the typical kind of like you know, Djen, you know Ico NFT,
although I did end uppecting a lot of NFTs. I really became obsessed with this problem of why is the user experience in crypto so bad? And I found a
stack up to solve it. So we became the leading developer platform for smart contract wallets when we first started, so we served as critical infrastructure for customers like coinbas wallet and trust Wallet, and through working with so many companies, we found something absolutely shocking, which is the very companies building the future of finance were struggling to do their own actual day to day financial operations, just like I
was when I was logboarding. And uh we saw the opportunity to get money moving and our technology as like the perfect solution. Uh So it was a like huge opportunity as well, you know, since like nearly all money that moves is between businesses anyway. Uh, and so we decided to pivot into what we are now. And so stack up is a wallet and play payments platform for businesses.
So with stack up, you know, you can create to share crypto wallets for your team that you can access using familiar tools like you know, face Idea, your password managers, and uh it eliminates the need to manage private keys. Additionally, you can do things like you know, connect your company's bank account to your wallet, enabling you know, seamless transfer funds in between your you know, off chain Fiat treasury and your on chain treasury.
Wow, you mentioned you helped coinbase and the trustwall to
¶ Helping Coinbase & TrustWallet
establish their infrastructure for that. That's amazing. I mean Coinbase obviously huge company, has gone public and much more used by millions of users. You know what phase did they bring you in? Were they kind of scratching their heads like, how can we make this better? Let's talk? Did you guys have stack up already established and then they brought you in?
Yeah, So what we had done was stack Up had helped develop the ERC fourth through three seven the ecosystem. So ERC fourth through three seven for those in your audience who don't know, is the account abstraction Stanford is standard that went live in twenty twenty three that garnered a lot more interest and excitement about about moving people through smart accounts, and we were the first mover in
the space. We had established a close connection to coinbas relatively early because you know, uh, they were very interested in improving the user experience of their wallets and moving them to a more smart contract wallet focused on chain experience. So so we were very lucky to you know, get in there early, have you know, build the support within coinbase that hey, this is absolutely the future of wallets
and how user experience can work. And we helped them transition to their smart wallet and smart account wow approach today.
Very nice and with regards to your technology and your platform, and you're offering is it to for I guess you may have answered this already, but I want to make sure I wrap my mind around it. For the wallet support and and all the things that can set up. Is it both on the back end as well as the front end, So there's that they can use this technology platform for customer facing solutions but also for internals back end management solutions.
Yeah, so we're primarily for people's kind of you know, back end or back office operations. So for example, you may have you know, like most of our customers are
crypto native organizations that have hid an inflection point. They've grown beyond just the founders making you know, occasional payments with uh, you know, with their personal ledgers to really being scary serious about scaling up their projects and uh they often very quickly recognize the need for applotf for them to organize you know, all the money that they're moving.
So let me give you a concrete example. We work with several security audit firms that pay out bug bounties in crypto, and before stack Up, they relied, you know, again just on a single hardware wallet that you know, one of the founders had and they manually process each transaction one by one. But now they can have someone on their team or their own internal software que hundreds of transactions, quickly review them and send them all at once.
And can this be used by pretty much any industry
¶ Helping enterprises get onboarded to crypto
or company. It doesn't have to be a crypto native business.
Yeah, correct, So, I mean one of our big philosophies is that, you know, we're really trying to modernize financial operations for crypto companies, just like brex and ramped it for traditional businesses us like the status quo in crypto is, you know, the fragmented systems manually verifying it retransaction. And in crypto, so many losses come from a user doing something they don't intend to do because their mental model of how something works just doesn't match which what is
actually happening. And to handle this, traditionally crypto wallets have been forced to communicate too much technical information to accurately describe what's happening, right, and uh, with smart contract wallets and ERC four thifty seven and these other technologies, really we can provide an experience that matches you know, users mental models of how financial accounts work period. Uh, you know, whether you are crypto native or whether you are you know,
Web two native or from the finance world. And uh, part of the reason I'm really excited about, you know, what we're doing in the ecosystem today is, hey, this is absolutely necessary to bring the world's finances on chain.
And we're right at the point where a confluence of factors both you know, you know, politically with regulations as well as with the technology, especially in the Etherium ecosystem, it's finally at a point where uh uh we can you know, create that experience that we know is existential to bringing the world on chain.
Yeah, such a great point. And I was actually going to say that that same point that it feels like the perfect timing for a platform like yours because we're at the cusp of massive institutional adoption. Crypto legislation is about to be passed this year, whether be for stable points of market structure. We're already seeing big players tokenizing
and looking to integrate stable quints. Well, they're going to need the management, They're going to need the infrastructure, and that has been a problem, a challenge for a long time. How can you get Web two or whether you're in the I don't know steel business or I don't know what a retail business, how can you get some sort of setup to accept crypto and operate with crypto?
Yeah, I mean the macro environment is about to explode, and I think we're about to see a Cambrian explosion of companies like stackup as well as you know, other solutions really helping bring organizations, you know, institutions looking to invest, as well as businesses that just want better ways to
move money. I mean, the stable coin market currently has a market cap of about two hundred and thirty four billion dollars already, but the US Treasury just a few weeks o put a report projecting into reach around two trillion by twenty twenty eight, and that's absolutely insane. That's over eight x growth in less than a few years. And how is that going to happen. It's not going to be through the current status quo, which is you know,
individuals with hardware wallets. And I'm actually really encouraged by
like the regulatory environment. You know, we just saw a couple of days ago the Genius Act clear through the Senate, and that kind of clear regulation is absolutely critical for basic things like defining what is a stable cooin, what isn't it And it's great that it's becoming less part of it and within the US, it to me makes complete sense because good stable cooin regulation is vital to the United States's economic prosperity by helping it maintain the
dull position as the world's reserve asset, especially at a time where there are some change ups in the way that the United States has perceived around the world.
Oh yeah, and I know there's like this geopolitical level of urgency to your point of the US dollar being the world reserve currency and we're seeing like bricks down trying to bypass US dollar. It feels like it's another Breton Woods moment, you know, kind of what happened after World War Two with the dollar in gold. It feels like that's happening and the technologies here, and you know, I saw Senator Haggerty, who's the one who you know,
pushing the Genius Act. He was on CNBC saying by twenty thirty, City Bank estimates that stable coin issues will be the largest holders of US treasuries, which is mind blowing to think about versus you know, other countries which have been buying our treasuries for years.
Yeah. Absolutely, And it's going to be really interesting because they have like it is going to change the structure of financial markets. You know. Uh for example, there's an open question about okay for banks, uh, you know, which hold a really important role society of you know, helping to you know, issue money. You know, they buy, you know, take your money, purchase other kinds of assets, loan it out, and the idea of stable coints becoming then the largest
purchases of treasure. Reasonble also becomes really interesting because it really challenges, especially if it happens act quickly, it really challenges how most people think about, you know, the way money moves. And I also find that a lot of people have assumed that the current you know structure of you know, the US and world economy is you know,
pretty mature and kind of set in place. And the reality is, like, as you pointed out, like this kind of structure has only really existed, you know, since the end of World War two, And in terms of like the history of money, we're to very very you know, it's still very nacent.
Oh for sure. Now walk us through maybe a mock example,
¶ how business can use Stack
so Let's say I have my podcast. Let's say I have ten employees, right, and I want to be able to receive crypto payments, whether it be stable coins or people send me bitcoin or eat whatever. And likewise, I want to be able to pay in the same way. And I have my employees and they are asking to be paid in crypto, and maybe I want to tokenize or create some NFTs and sell them and all that, right, can stack up help me to do that?
Yeah? Absolutely, I mean, especially when it comes to receiving and sending stable coins. You know, that's absolute bread and butter for us. Right. So in the example of receiving crypto, uh, you know, you can with our platform, you know, create a you know, a payment link that looks just like a traditional invoice where it has information saying hey, you know, click here to pay on chain or you know with US d C or U S d T or whatever token of your choice, or even with my bank account.
And then you could even say, hey, you know, I actually want to receive that as stable points, you know, things like that. And then when it comes to sending funds, it is very similar where you know, you have an address book, you can select who.
It is.
You can include you know, an email confirming your payment all that other kind of stuff, so very straightforward for the payroll example. You we also have this concept of automations, which is again something that you can only really do in a non custodial way with smart accounts, at least
do it well. So you can say, hey, people can pay in whatever token they want, but whenever my wallet receives something that isn't USDC, converted to USDC, or hey, when I receive USDC, convert it to a yield bearing USDC or equivalent. And then so you can have your on shade account you know, always be generating yield with its funds, but whenever you send something, you know it
automatically converts back to a stable point. You know, things like that to help kind of provide the same experience that you get if you had a you know, a money market fund or a high yield savings account where you know, you don't care that in the background, you know, uh, Fidelity is converting your money market fund to US dollars. Uh. You just know I'm receiving four percent yield and I can instantly send money out.
Now you're a lot of this is powered by small smart contracts. So which blockchains are powering your infrastructure? And
¶ Supported Blockchains
also are their plans to add more?
Yeah, so we right now support EVM blockchains, so we we support kind of right now what I would say are kind of you know, the first wave of layer two blockchains. You know, your base optimism arbitrum polygon which is in the layer two but still and that's polygon proof of stake, as well as of course the theory you MAInet where the majority of our transactions actually take place. Uh, and we are are adding in just a couple of weeks a many new layer two blockchains and kind of
alternative ecosystems like Avalanche and so on. So right now we just support EVM based blockchain so those are blockchains in the Ethereum ecosystem, but we do have plans within about the next year or so to support non EVM blockchains.
The reason we're supporting EVM blockchains first is in addition to being kind of the ecosystem of choice for a lot of institutional and enterprise players, Ethereum also has what I would say is like the most mature security and the most mature account abstraction technology from our perspective, and of course we're experts in it, so of course we're gonna you know, build with a thing that is our
own unique, you know, special advantage. Sure, but really the etherory ecosystem is where we're starting.
Yeah, that absolutely makes sense. And a lot of a lot of blockchains, even that are like not smart contract driven, they use the EVM in some way or the other, like for example, the XRP Ledger. If I'm not mistaken, I heard that they were integrating the EVM for side chains and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah, that definitely makes sense. But you know, great to hear that you're going to add Avalanche and I'm assuming Solana at some point maybe.
Well so, especially as the tools in Solon, I mean, the developer tools Salona are already pretty good. But particularly one great thing about Solana is that it has native account abstraction, so they have a native version of doing smart accounts. It's just different than what the Etherory ecosystem has, which is you know, primarily based on ERSC fourth degree seven.
Of course, with the most recent Pectra upgrade, you know, there's other things like e P seventy seven oh two, which effectively allows you to have you know smart account powers with your you know, existing private key. But the power of ERC four degree seven and what we're building is we don't need anything to change at the blockchain level. It all happens within the e v M, so we don't have to worry. We're not dependent on a blockchain, you know, having any particular upgrade, which is really.
Nice, oh for sure. Now a big question in something that people definitely want to know about is security. You know,
¶ Security
what are your security layers? Obviously you're using the blockchain, smart contracts and so forth, but what prevents someone at stack up from doing something fishy or on the business side, if someone's using your platform, what prevents what layers are security to prevent an employee from hacking into something and stealing funds and so forth. Yeah.
Absolutely. I mean one of the things that I think sets us apart on security is well, we don't just focus on security but also on safety. And the nuance is that security is about preventing bad actors from accessing your money, whereas safety is about preventing losses period, whether that is you know, by you unintentionally or from some external threat. But I mean bigger picture, you know, we totally understand managing crypto assets requires the highest level of
security without sacrificing usability. Of course, I think like usability actually enhances safety overall, because, as I was saying before, once your mental model of what's happening starts diverging from what's actually happening, you know it, things can go back quickly. So our security architecture is based on self custodial control,
enterprise grade protection, and really the simplified user experience. So this approach, of course ensures that your assets always remain under your control while providing you know, advanced security features beyond that businesses really require. So we have you know, industry standard you know Soft two type two UH requirements that you know, have policies about you know, what team members can and can access.
UH.
It sets requirements around you know, Hey, this is how we run our software development life cycle. UH. Here's how we'll do monitoring and alerts. Here's how we'll do security checks of our employees and things like that, which, uh is a step further than most cryptonative companies go. But I think it's extremely important not just for getting you know, to win customers, because we could say, hey, look we you know, we know what the right acronyms to use are.
But really it's because uh, you know, I've worked on safety critical systems my entire career, you know, uh, from you know, rockets and experimental aircraft now into financial operations, and a lot of the same like core discipline and mindset really applies to uh, you know, keeping things safe.
Oh for sure. And who are some of your investors? And is your service available globally?
Our service is available globally. We are self custody. Some of the features right now are available only to US customers. So for example, our you know, banking integration is only available right now to US customers, but hopefully that will be opening up soon.
Uh.
Our investors include you know, some of the top people in the space, uh, such as uh, you know one k X. Uh we went through White Combinator, so of course they are an investor.
Uh.
Good water. And then you know, like every early stage crypto company, a long tale of you know, the typical players in the space.
And what do you have on your roadmap? You know,
¶ Roadmap
what can we expect from you this year? Yeah?
So some of the things I'm personally really excited about are some upgrades to automations feature that we're making right now. Our automations is uh high powered, but relatively narrow and scope. We are expanding that to allow uh much more kind of flexible business operations and approvals and things like that.
We are also expanding the types of yield bearing products that we will offer, as well as finding other ways to make it easy for people to you know, paying crypto, like with cards, and you know, uh continue to kind of blur the line between operating on chain and operating in the financial system as it exists.
That sounds exciting and in in regards to let's say, I don't know if I asked you this earlier, but tokenization obviously that's been on the rise. Are you able to just support tokenize assets and things like that?
Yes, absolutely, TVD. On whether we will directly support the process of tokenizing assets, we're mostly concerned about, Hey, what are your day to day operations look like when you have these assets? But our platform is don custodial and as a consequence, has access to the entire open ecosystem, which I think is really important for bringing everyone on chain.
You know, it's not the if you do it right self, custody is a much better user experience than you know, a safe feeling but ultimately over restrictive custodial environment, which is a little bit kind of the kind of the norm right now for a lot of enterprises and institutions. So we will absolutely support real world assets, and in fact we already do today. I mean, I suppose stable
points are definitely tokenized real world assets. Yeah, but really any e r C twenty token is something we support because again, if it's on chain, it's accessibul to you.
Right, Yeah, definitely makes sense. You know, the solution you're offering to these companies these enterprises on the back end absolutely makes sense. That it's a big challenge that, like I mentioned earlier, we've been facing. But also on the retail user side, there's that challenge where the average Joe and Jane walking down the street. You showed them a seed phrase. Yeah, yeah, you showed them the wallet ad just like what right, it's like deer in the headlights?
How do you think? And are you planning to approach the real retail side of the business to help them? Maybe somebody these wallet providers or businesses be able to offer better wallets and make it easy it feels like Web two, but it's Web three powered.
Yeah. So right now, we're focusing on the B to B us case. I am A lot of attention has been put on the retail use case, often from the perspective of either you know, your cryptoative DJ and who you know really kind of thrives and more of a Metamaskie kind of experience where they're okay being close to the metal because they're just trying to you know, like
the risk launch is super high. Or there's the day to day payments use case, which often a little bit too idealistically kind of you know, assumes everyone is you know, would be happy with a separate, kind of effectively prepaid debit card connected to you know, an existing crypto account. We are not focusing on that retail like direct consumer market because frankly, I think the highest leverage right now and it will be for a long time, is in
getting B to B payments. Right it's by far the vast majority of the the volume of money that moves around the world is B to B, not not directly with consumers or individuals, and.
That is.
An absolute prerequisite to bringing the rest of the world on shade.
Yeah, That makes sense because if the businesses are able to get their house and order and to back end and have things move efficiently, they can take some of the learnings there and then maybe build the customer facing wallets that are easy for folks to onboard, be able to use and that. Now, not every industry is going to do that. It depends on you know, the marketing industry and so forth. But yeah's your point.
Yeah, there's there's also no reason why you couldn't use stack ups existing, like you know, create a payment like and have people pay that way.
It's just not a you know, like individuals pay that way. It is, uh, just not a use case that we are optimizing for right now.
Yeah, and look, there's definitely a lot of folks who are looking to build uh these wallets that are more user friendly, so there's a lot of competition on that up front as well. I wanted to get your perspective
¶ Space Economy Crypto
and this is this is really a bit out there because we're maybe I don't know, thirty forty to fifty years away from this. You are working in the aerospace sector. Yeah, the puck is going the direction that we're going to be doing space exploration right Elon wants to go to Mars and in space, we're not going to be using cash. It's going to be digital currency. It's going to be stable coins where block gains involved and you can you know,
settle instantly and all that all the great benefits. How do you see that playing out that that space economy is it with crypto and blockchain integrate into the fabric of the infrastructure and things like that.
That's an interesting question. So I think, well, at the very beginning of you know, starting to have people you know, live full time off of the Earth, we are going to those kind of affort are going to naturally be very centralized with very kind of well trained, you know, people who really kind of know what they're getting into, and they've already kind of put their entire personal safety and security into the hands of an organization that you know,
has much more clearly defined rules. And it's going to be more like kind of an early colony kind of thing where it's going to be, you know, we're going to be more like a like you're going to have something that looks more like a gift giving tiny little colony rather than you know, an intense commercial hub in space of course, as that grows out, you know, it's going to go absolutely gangbusters, and as you have places where there are people from all over the world in
different backgrounds, like stable coins is the obvious uh uh,
you know, way to transact value between them. But I think we will see you know, stable coins become the preferred method of payments, and you know, like Antarctica, likely before we will in space because like you know, uh, Antarctica is a great example of a place where there's a ton of really smart people who are really you know, who are in a place really remote, uh really kind of mirrors a lot of the aspects of what it's going to be like, you know, being in an early
space colony. So I think I think we'll see places like that be a little bit of a you know, really kind of teach us a lot about how these kind of like early human settlements offered.
They're going to look like, yeah, that's that's such a great example where yeah, it's using cash doesn't make sense and you know, these additional forms of payments, but using
a more modern system digital currency. And then you know, we obviously have robotics and AI on the rise, and I could see those being part of the space economy, if you want to call that an exploration on different planets, even just colonizing the Moon, I don't know if we're going to do that, but setting up a base camp out up there and all that, it seems like blockchain is going to be have to be used to be able to control those things, police them in a certain way.
I think even here right now, we're seeing blockchain being used to help police AI fakes and datestamp certain content and things like that. So do you see blockchain being a big part of the infrastructure in space and space colonies and things like.
That, I mean, potentially, especially where there's areas of international collaboration, where again, those are very similar things where you know there is both a strong sense of trust and is trust at the same time because things are safety critical, and there's really a lot of parallels to financial systems there. Again, though, I think that the applications on Earth are going to
come much sooner and will be the driving factor. And even though things like you know, stable coins in space is like the superior way to do commerce and space, it's also going to be the superior way to do commerce on Earth, and and it'll likely happen on Earth first, because most of us live on Earth, and most of us want to live on Earth, and will you know, die here as well, and almost all money is going to flow through Earth for you know, the foreseeable future.
Hard question for you, John, And I guess I love sci fi, I love space, I love time. Yeah, I'm very fascinated by all this. What's your best guess as to when we might reach Mars? And is it like one hundred years away from from now fifty years you know, given your work at SpaceX and much more, and how far we've progressed.
Well, we've already reached Mars. You know, We've already got robots on there, which.
We say what we as human beings get on their physically.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think we will see humans and Mars within the next twenty years. I think we will have people living full time on Mars or the Moon in probably more than fifty years.
Wow.
I And for many that's actually a bit of a pessimistic deal.
We have.
Almost all the technology to make it possible. It's just about having the political or economic willingness to uh to do it. There's some things that we really need to figure out about how you know the human body works
in space for long periods of time. Sure, but there are enough people on Earth going to say screw it that, you know, like you know that I think if push cames to shove, like we would, we would take the risk to you know, people would choose to take the risk to their long term health to be you know, some of the first people two uh you know live off the planet.
Mm hmm. Do you think we're going to send robots and and one's getting not talking this year or next year, but you know, let's say the Tesla bots or whoever else is mating making these advanced robotics where I mean they're able to do the labor function properly and not be clunky. We're gonna send those things first to get the.
I mean, the economics makes sense right, like like even if you weren't afraid about, like you know, the ethics of you know, uh of sending people to their likely deaths being the first people to go to Mars. Uh. The amount of resources you have to include with you know, to keep a sack of meat like humans alive is incredible and there are there are a lot of advantages to uh to having robotics, especially as we have you know, like artificial intelligence and those other kinds of you know,
like software tools become better. H then uh, I am. I'm hopeful that the amount of you know, to accomplish our initial goals on you know, Mars and even the Moon, that those will be accomplished mostly by you know, robots and require not too many you know, infallible sacks of meat like you and me.
Yeah. Yeah, because to your point, all the resources the physical aspect, but the mental right isolated. Yeah, just a long period of time being in a place you've never been before. It's I can't imagine, but yeah, it makes sense. Send the robots first, let them set up the camp, and then we make our way over. Yeah.
Absolutely. And also like most of what we're gonna want to do there too, is going to be science. It's going to be figuring out like, okay, how much life was there on Mars before? And actually it's better to have non humans do that at first, so that humans aren't you know, contaminating too much of you know, the surface of Mars and stuff like that.
Man, it's fascinating, It's it's funny. I almost I have a seven year old daughter. I kind of want her to be part of that, not you know, as long as it's safe, of course, but you know, to be part of that group that maybe when she's older can come. She's very smart, so I'm hoping, you know, she could be part of that group of an I don't know, colinize the Moon or something like that.
Yeah, that's fantastic And again, like the h that's a fantastic age to be at as well. For like, the way that development of space technology is going is, you know, it's going gangbusters. I mean it has been for the last you know, fifteen years or so. A lot of that was spurred by SpaceX, but I expect only going to continue to ramp up. And you see a lot of these you know, alumni of the early days of you know, SpaceX and other companies are now starting their
own companies. And there is a really really healthy ecosystem of you know, forward looking but also very practical startups and organizations really kind of pushing us there. And so it's actually a fantastic time to get into the space industry. Just don't get into crypto first.
For sure. So let's segue back to crypto. You know, what are your thoughts on how things have changed for crypto. Obviously under President Trump and in a new regime, there's been a much more friendly approach, less sec enforcement actions, Congress is working legislation, you got tradi Fi launching ets, a huge record breaking ETFs, the bigcoin ets right, tokenization, and much more. You know, are you how are you feeling about all that, and what's your outlook, you know, as as things progress.
Yeah, I mean, I'm actually feeling really optimistic and relieved in many ways. I Mean, crypto is a political issue,
but it doesn't need to be a partisan one. And again because it is so vital to the United States is economic prosperity, Like we have such a lead in ensuring that the US dollar is the primary, you know, unit of exchange on the Internet that I'm really glad that it is becoming less part is it as well, Because even though there is you know, understandably a lot of concern about you know, the push for crypto potentially you know, enriching people in power or things like that,
the truth is is that, like it is fantastic for economic freedom in the world, in the United States, and so I'm feeling very optimistic about the outlook even like a post Trump presidency, because it really feels like there's enough momentum that it is going to outgrow any particular administration.
Yeah, that's such a great point. And I think of it of similar to what Bill Clinton did in the nineties with the Internet. I forgot the name of the bill. I keep forgetting, but it was like nineteen ninety six they signed his key important bill that gave the ability for the Internet to be built and all the innovation to happen. Because I believe the telecom companies are trying to block it, you know, they were seeing the competition
and things like that. But similar now they get this legislation pass, it feels like there's going to be this innovation boom.
Yeah. Absolutely, And that's exactly right. It's you know, even though crypto is very unique in many ways, and people continue to make comparisons about, you know, the way crypto is going to the early Internet, it's all kind of true.
Like it is really following a very similar pattern. And even though a lot of people can you know, look at uh, look on the microscope, find a lot of flaws with it, the trend is absolutely undeniable and we are going to continue to see maturation of uh, not just the world's perspective of crypto when it's opportunity, but also crypto companies are maturing period and for us it's like, hey, you know, like they're maturing. You don't have to settle
for clunky crypto operations anymore. Like you can. You absolutely can reduce manual errors and you can operate at the same level of you know, efficiency and maturity as you know Web two business on chain.
Yeah, great, great point. And I've seen that maturation myself. I got into the industry in twenty sixteen, obviously as a retail investor, buying some big coin things like that.
Yeah.
Yeah, But then as you know, I started the podcast and I started interviewing people and studying what's happening, who's investing,
who's building. I've seen a lot of growth obviously twenty twenty two with FTX, and that's a hard time, but I see the industry picking up the pieces and moving forward, raising the standard, higher proof of reserves, putting in the proper guard rails, the transparency, and now trad fi's here, So you kind of have a collaboration with the crypto startups and the trati fi companies and they're building a better infrastructure.
It looks like, yeah, absolutely.
John, we're coming up on time. So I got some
¶ Wrap up questions
wrap up questions here for you. First, if you could create your own metaverse, what would theme be?
So you may have already guessed from my you know, for my questions about space, I'm not actually gonna choose space because I actually want my I would want a metaverse that enhances my existing connection with the world. I love the world as it is. I mean, there's definitely some things I change, but I do love the world, and i'd really like it to enhance that experience rather
than be some separate thing. So let's make the theme of my metaverse some like I don't know, this is going to sound like maybe travel, but with some emphasis on sensory things like food. Space is super awesome. But honestly, I think there's gonna be so many space metaverses I'm not even gonna have to contribute.
I'll just you know, yeah, no, that that definitely makes sense. And to travel one, I would love that because I'm the same way like I would love to you know, like, right now, you can chat with someone online from a different country, but I would love to instantly be able to jump into some sort of immersive world where I can see where they're at, walk around with them, chat with them, and they can say, hey, here's this and that right, jump to some place in Vietnam or Malaysia,
I don't know, someplace in Europe. I would love to be able to do that where it's immersive.
Yeah, me too. I mean, like my happy place is like I'm always drawn to like the forest and the mountains, and I would love to just be able to just be like boom, I'm on the trail of one hundred giants in Sequoia National Forest, you know, like and be able to always access kind of like you know, that place of peace. That would be absolutely incredible to me, Oh for sure.
Okay, rapid fire questions. Favorite food, Yeah.
I live in La Soo Street, tacos.
Nice.
Favorite musician or band Okay, not my favorite music, but the story of Moondog, who is a blind composer who dressed like a viking in wandered the streets in New York in the sixties is absolutely incredible. Look it up, super weird. Interesting, dude. I would call him my favorite musician just for like the just for the cool factor.
I have to look that up. That sounds very interesting. Favorite movie.
I really kind of like classics. I mean two thousand one of Space Odyssey is a wonderful choice. It's timeless. Doctor Strangelove is hilarious and very much my sense of humor or even like being John Malcovich. But I'd say a two thousand of Space Odyssey if you put a gun.
In my head. Nice.
Favorite book Rhyme of the Ancient Mirror Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coolridge.
And when you're not working at Stackup, what are you doing for fun?
So I'm the kind of person who has many very specific hobbies that come in and out of my life very intensely, just where my curiosity will take me. But one thing I keep coming back to is baking because it has this great mix of like art and technical skill that I really enjoy and even if I really screw it up and get disappointed, I still get to eat it at the end of the day. Like, so yeah, I'd say.
Baking very nice, John, absolute pleasure and looking forward to the future. Updates are on stack Up. I love I love the mission. I love what you guys are doing because it's such a critical piece that is needed for a further adoption of this technology. But thank you so much for joining me.
Thank you so much, Tony, m.
M hm
Hm