¶ Intro
One of the most exciting things in the tokenized space is access to private equity. The idea that I could have assets from a company that's not public I think has been traditionally held outside of retail grasp. With tokenized securities, you can now offer the retail customer access to that asset class that many people I think are super interested in. That is going to be a real winner on the retail side.
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the biggest players in crypto trust Bitgo. Hey, folks, welcome into the Thinking Crypto podcast. I'm your host Tony Edward and we're recording at Station three in New York's Financial District. And join me today is Nancy Beaton, who is the president of Uphold US. Uphold is a digital wallet and trading platform that makes cryptocurrencies and other assets affordable and
accessible for everyone. Nancy, great to have thanks. We did an interview before at Rippleswell in Miami different times back in twenty twenty four, so it's great to be doing another one in person with you.
Yeah, I'm glad to be here. This is my first time at Station three. It's great.
Yeah. And obviously being down in Wall Street, we're seeing crypto takeover Wall Street. Big news around Uphold. Yesterday there
¶ Crypto backed credit card
was the announcement of a crypto backed credit card product. Tell us about that.
Yeah, you know, we launched a credit card that lets you take your assets. You can put them up as collateral and not sell them, but you can unlock the value of those assets on a card. So if I want to take my BTC, my EVE, my USDC, I can deposit it and that becomes instant credit on a credit card that I can spend in one hundred and fifty million merchants worldwide.
So that's pretty profound because typically there's usually a taxable event in converting. How is this different?
Yeah, you know, so the reality is a lot of people, and we're known we have a very large XRP holding community. A lot of people want to invest and stack and collect and hold their digital assets, right and they see the promise of those digital assets, but in certain times they need the value that's locked up in those digital assets. And we know our users have more of their financial value locked up in crypto than the average crypto user.
So we want to give our users away to take those assets, to put them up, to deposit them and use them as collateral so that they can have that day to day flexibility of spending on everyday things that they may need or trips or groceries or gas or whatever it may be right now without having to sell those precious assets.
So talk to us about the logistics of how that's done. Is it via stable coins? How's the credit initiated off? Let's say I put some big cooin in and I want to spend it real the card.
It's super easy in the app. You take your bitcoin, you take your ether, you take your USDC. You can deposit as collateral. Then you can borrow against that collateral. That borrowing becomes available on a credit card that you activate in the app. You can put that credit card in your Google and Apple pay, and then you can use it as a visa signature card. At one hundred and fifty million merchants.
That's significant because a lot of folks, you know, they rightfully, so I have the pain point of capital gains tax. But if I can borrow and then use the capital to spend and do what I need to do, you know, that's really great. So is there are there limits on what I can spend or borrow.
So depending on how much you deposit is how much you know credit you get on the credit card. But you can see a real time in the app. You can also pick your payment plans, so up to fix eight fixed payments, so you can see in real time what the interest would be on various payment plans, and you can choose which one you want to use to repay that and then you can continue to borrow against any of the assets you've put up for collateral.
You mentioned bitcoin, etherorem and USDC. That's what their plans to expand to other ass.
Definitely plans to expand that. You could imagine as us in our large community that we have, we definitely want to expand that to other assets that people can deposit.
I read that there's no annual fees, no credit checks as well.
It's true, there's no credit checks, there's no annual fees, And this is really important, right, Your crypto is your collateral. Your crypto is your credit. So people you know that don't have credit, maybe are heavy into crypto, that don't have other financial vacuings. Maybe you haven't bought a house yet, maybe you haven't amassed that credit score that everybody seemed so precious. You can just use your crypto as your collateral.
And I think this is important too because that next generation of users can have access to credit without the twenty year credit score that everybody has taken a long time to build up and to perfect and to check. So yes, no credit score and checks and no annual fees.
It's such a great option because I think of myself addingdotally,
¶ Putting crypto to work
I have my crypto assets and I can't do much with them. I can't put them to work. I can use them as collateral as you mentioned. But now I can would uphold, and I can if I need to, I don't know, do some repairs in my house or whatever it may be. I can now put that asset to work versus just letting it sit there.
That's right. A lot of times they do sit idle, right. People are looking to stack them, they're looking to build their investment portfolio, so they do leave it idle. And one of the things we're looking to do it uphold is really help you maximize your assets. Why they sit idle. Nobody needs to have their investments sitting idle, right. You need to be able to borrow against them, you need to be able to earn against them. You need to be able to put them up and let others against
them and you earn a yield back. So there's a lot of things that we're working to do to make sure that when you have those assets, they don't sit idle, that you're maximizing them as they're there in your portfolio.
Yeah, we're seeing from a broader perspective, Banks and others are starting to noodle on this and try to see if they can present or offer crypto back products and using cryptos collateral.
That's right, and you'll see us do more and more. We do believe our users want to have multi asset classes, and we do believe that they want crypto to be at the heart of those asset classes. But they want to be able to use their crypto for other things, right, whether it's for borrowing, whether it's for house repairs, whether it's for credit. They want to be able to use it without selling it.
And in regards to how it's locked in their respective credit setup, what's general terms around that.
Yeah, So we are partnering with the Exactly protocol, so it's an established protocol. So this is really people's first intrigue easily into defied protocols, and so the uh, the assets that are deposited go into the Exactly protocol. This version of that protocol is actually a permissioned version of that protocol, so we know the participants and then the assets that they have when they get the credit card, it's an Exa credit card, so it's an Exa Visa
signature credit card. Comes with all the visa perks that you get with travel and lodging and rewards and benefits, and then you can use it at anywhere visas accepted.
That's pretty incredible, and it's like one hundred and fifty a million merchants worldwide.
Right, that's right. I mean, this is the utility of crypto is being able to you know, buy an asset, let it, you know, be able to be a key portion of your portfolio, but then also unlocking the value of that asset anywhere you spend anywhere visas accepted.
So a common question folks may have at times the market can be volatile. All markets are volatl, Right, so how do you do the loan to value type or
¶ LTV on Crypto
I shouldn't say loan to value, but how do you do the value of the assets and the amount of credit you're going to get as a result.
Yeah, typically you get about fifty percent loan to value credit. There is a health score that the defied protocol, the exactly protocol has and publishes, so in real time you
can see your health score. Right, you can see what is in the protocol, you can see how much you've repaid, you can see what percent loan to value you can get so right in the app, you'll see that ongoing updated health score that will let you manage how much you can borrow, your repayments, your payment plan, all of that's writing the app under the health score.
I guess I did use the right word LTV outland value. I wasn't sure because I didn't want to think of it as like a mortgage or something, but rather credit, which is really great. I love this and this is something I'm looking forward to trying, because, like I said, I want to put my assets to work. They're just sitting there, and if I could put some of that, especially bitcoin, because I don't necessarily want to spend my bitcoin. I want to keep it a long term like gold
or something. That's right, But if I can borrow against it, yeah, I could. Certainly that would be very helpful.
Yes, I think so too. You know, you'll see I think you'll see a lot of people take advantage of this because we do have a lot of people that have much of their financial holdings in crypto, and I think you're going to see more and more people holding crypto and they want the value of that crypto. They do not want to sell the crypto and this is the perfect solution for that.
Pardon the interruption. Hi, I'm Tony. I'm the host of the Thinking Crypto podcast. I wanted to ask you if you can please support the podcast by hitting the like button subscribing. If you haven't as yet, you can leave a comment below as well. And if you're listening on a podcast platform such as Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts, please be sure to follow and hit the five star rating. I'll let you get back to the content. Thank you so much. Now, this is certainly
¶ XRP rewards Debit Card
not the first fora for Uphold regards to different credit cards. I mean, you guys have had the Uphold debit card which has XRP rewards and much more. So. It's really great that you're building all these products.
Yeah, you know, we want people to come to Uphold and be able to, you know, trust in the product.
Right.
We've been publishing a transparency page of all the assets and liabilities we have in every thirty seconds on our website. We want them to be able to have access to the most tokens. We have more than three hundred tokens, and we often list tokens first. We are unique in
that we are not a traditional exchange. We are actually connected to thirty two different trading venues, so we can access tokens, we can search the market for the best liquidity and give our customers great pricing, and then we really want them to come to us so that they can maximize their assets. So it might be things like the debit card you mentioned, right, I can get a
debit card, I can spend FIAT. I can spend my crypto if I want, and I get two three, four percent up to four percent XRP back when I do my everyday spending. Again, making the most of the assets that you have this new execredit card. Right, I can deposit my BTC, my ETH, my USDC, I can unlock its spending power without selling it and then use it
in my everyday life. So those things you're going to see more and more where we can deliver to people multi assets and multiple ways to maximize their assets.
Yeah, such a great product, and I'm curious as much
¶ Younger generations investing
as you can share, you know, uphold strategy for the younger generations as well, gen Z eventually gen Alpha Ray, who are very digitally native, They're going to be doing almost everything on their smartphones and eventually maybe their glasses. Right, how are you guys thinking about the future and catering for that generation a lot?
We're thinking about it a lot. You know, that generation is going to expect that they can move money like they move a snap, right, like they move a text message, like they move an instant message. So we need to really be thinking about how they have expectations for digital assets. Right. They're not going to They're not going to wait on the weekend, you know, to access money. That's not how
they think they're real time. They're twenty four seven. I have a seventeen year old daughter and a thirteen year old son, and I can see it right now. Right when they ask for me for money, they are not asking for cash, right, they are asking me to deposit in their Apple pay. They are going to expect that
money moves like their text messages, like their snaps. And so one of the things that we're doing is we are making it easy for them to access digital assets, right, be able to have more than three hundred on the platform. We are making it easy for them to spend against the value of those assets. So in the extra credit card, no credit check, you're eighteen, you're nineteen. You do not
have the credit that somebody my age might have. So now you can get full access to the credit that your or to the value that your crypto holds, without having the traditional financial you know, build up of good credit, of spending, of habits, all those types of things, because your crypto is your collateral and they're going to expect more and more ease like this. That's going to cater to the way that they spend.
Yeah, and I'm assuming you have your kids do some beta testing for uphold.
All the time. In fact, you know, my son Jude, he's thirteen and he asks for bitcoin for Christmas. Wow, right, and so he's very interested in seeing it. He knows about it. You know, maybe a little bit because I'm in the space, but I think, you know, these kids understand different ways of making money. None of these folks
¶ Uphold tokenization market
in you know this gen Z gen Alpha are looking to sit behind a desk for twenty five years and have a four to oh one k vest so that they can retire at seventy. There are creators, they're gig economy workers. They have multiple hustles on the side. I mean, they want to make money fast. They see it that is how you know, that's how they see the world. When I was growing up, we didn't have we didn't have a tony thinking crypto or a YouTube, right, you know,
and so everybody wanted a job. And now, you know, I think they move from job to job. I think they find the right fit for them. I think they're streamers. I think they're gig economy workers. And they're going to expect that their money and payments move like that.
Too, absolutely, and just economically and how the world has changed. It's not necessarily their fault. It's just they have to adapt to how things have changed in the economy. And look, it's it's so crazy out there, you know. Economically, it is a whole macro conversation I have here. And to your point, they need to find the different avenues to earn, whether that's crypto and other things. And with the advancing in crypto and stable coins, they can get paid instantly.
They don't have to maybe wait till the end of the week for a paycheck. They can get paid the day over an hour of eventually.
That's right. And the movement of money, yeah, right, the idea that you can move money across borders, you know, across countries. The flow of money is really important to them. They expect it to flow like everything else does digitally in their worlds. You know, they think it's interested in. My kids think it's interesting that we have a local bank that we go to, right, They're like, why are we here? Can't you just do that on your phone?
And so, you know, I think they expect it all to be right there, ready, at the ready and instant for them.
So on that note, we got all of Wall Street, the bank's investment firms are all recognizing that's the direction to Puck's heading in. We have to tokenize. We have to put fiat currencies on blockchains and create stable coins and tokenize deposits. We have to put stocks, equities, gold, and much more on chain. I would love to get your thoughts on what's happening there and how Uphold is looking at the tokenization market.
Yeah, so I think, you know, there's no doubt that the financial industry is going to adopt blockchain. The operational efficiencies alone, right warrant adopting blockchain to process money, to track money, you know, to send money, it's just so much more if efficient.
Yeah.
So I fully believe that you know, traditional financial financial institutions are going to do that, and we're helping many of them do that through our platform. You know, the tokenization of assets is really exciting. We pulled our customer and tokenized securities is one of the highest things they are interested in. I think they want to diversify their portfolios. I think they want multiple asset classes, like we've been
talking about before, crypto token ised securities. They trust the blockchain, so anything that layers on that I think is a positive, and token ised securities was one of the most requested things that they told us they're interested in, and we did announce that we will be bringing token ised securities to market. I think really interesting in the token is
space for me. I mean there's there's tokenized treasuries, there's you know, institutional tokenized assets things like this, there's totalanized fractional securities. I think one of the most exciting things
in the tokenize space is access to private equity. So you know, the idea that I could have assets from a company that's not public I think has been traditionally held outside of retail grasp and I think with tokenized securities, you can now offer the retail customer access to that asset class that many people I think are super interested in. So I think that is going to be a real winner on the retail side.
And part of the token economy, so to speak, is being able to the theme of what we're talking about putting your assets to work. Because let's say a stock is tokenized, you can then put into DeFi and earn off of that.
Yeah, that's right. You could have multi asset holdings, right, you could rebalance a portfolio on multiple assets. I mean, there's so many things that you could do, and I think people are going to want to participate in more assets as they become on the blockchain.
And I read that Uphold did file an application with Finra in conjunction with t zero to launch the token I securities.
We did, and so we're actively working that now and we want to bring token is securities to our user base. Again, it's the number one thing that they are asking for.
Wow, And how is Uphold as a company prepare And you're already a global company, but when it comes to twenty four to seven markets, how are you preparing for that? Because that's a bit on steroids. You need to have people who are awake and not sleeping.
Yeah, I mean we're already there. I mean Uphold as a company when we first started. I mean, we're in crypto. Crypto is twenty four to seven. Yeah, So whether you're global not global, that doesn't really play into it. It's really if you're in crypto, money and crypto and digital assets move twenty four to seven. So we are twenty four to seven. Our platforms up twenty four to seven.
You know, we have you know, companies and people globally around the world serving different markets and then transferring that those digital assets and those assets around globally. But crypto is twenty four seven, blockchains twenty four seven. I mean, that's why I think it has huge advantages over traditional finance.
Yeah, I mean, and it's amazing to see the Wall Street folks like New York Stock Exchange and NASDAC are awakening to this. And you know, crypto started at all and now everybody's looking to go twenty four seven, three sixty five, which it's it's like dawn of a new era because no more opening and closing bell. There won't be a need for that.
You know. I feel like people appreciate clarity that has come in the last year or two around crypto and blockchain. Could there be more? Yes? Do we hope there's more soon, of course, But I do feel like we have seen more and more regulatory clarity. And when you have that, I think it allows traditional institutions, larger entities, corporations to
open up the ability to participate. And so I think with that rise in regulatory clarity, I think more and more and more banks, businesses, FinTechs, regulated institutions will participate in blockchain. I think it will continue to grow as the regulatory clarity grows.
Yeah, and the specifically the SEC and the CFTC have
¶ SEC & CFTC guidance
been doing an amazing job providing guidance, even though the Clarity Act itself hasn't been passed into law. But it's they are the pillars that you know, they're so crucial because they are actually providing defined print details. Yes, they're doing the enforcement. So it's really great that both agencies have been providing guidance.
Yes, And and the reality is we want clarity, yeah, right, We want regulatory clarity because that makes it easier for us to understand the parameters in which to operate. So we would we would love for all these things to pass to come to fruition so that they can better define how we operate in the space. And I think, you know, that's when you'll start to have more and more adoption.
Recently, Uphold announced that they're You're partnering with the Digital
¶ Digital Ascension Group Partnership
Ascension Group and this is one of the largest crypto focused iras in the US and they're managing nearly one billion in assets or digital assets for clients. Uh. Tell us about that partnership and what's the goal there.
Yeah, it's a great partnership. Super excited about it. It's on our enterprise side. So a lot of people know Uphold for our retail wallet. Right, we've been talking about, you know, a crypto back credit card, We've been talking about debit cards, you know, assets, all types of things. But I think what people may not understand, understand or realize is the platform that underpens that really great retail wallet is a super high power platform. Right. It is
twenty four to seven, It is highly compliant meeting regulatory standards. Right, We're licensed and registered across the globe, and we can now allow these banks, FinTechs, you know, broker dealers, institutions, financial companies the ability to get into the crypto digital asset market very quickly within ten weeks. So somebody like our partnership with the Digital Asset Group can take our
platform and plug it into their user front end. So now if you're a user with Digital Asset Group, you can now trade all that we have on the platform just through our plug and play process with that partnership. And so you'll see more, You'll see more banks, you'll see more FinTechs, you'll see more in stations being announced where they are taking our platform and plugging it into their user interface.
So you're kind of offering a crypto as a service product for these folks.
That's right, because we do see the mass adoption coming right and you know, people to get into the crypto space right to have the trading, to have the regulatory to have the rules, to have the periodic checks, to have the you know, money flow, to have all the rails, it can take a long time and it takes a lot to build. And so now they can come to uphold, they can take our platform and they can plug it
into their interface. You know, we were talking about you know the Gen Z, the Gen Alpha earlier, you know, banks, financial institutions, FinTechs. People are going to start demanding access to digital assets, right, and you know they are going to need to serve this next generation of financial customers and we can help them do that.
Yeah, I'm sure they're getting a lot of demand from folks who want to get out access to the acid class since it's grown and matured so much. And I can imagine you're probably getting a lot of demand from those institutions. We need to get this up and running.
Yeah, a lot of inbound calls, right. We have regulatory clarity, we have demands coming from the next generation of financial users. Those two things together create a lot of inbound calls for people who want to get up and running quickly in the digital asset space.
I got into the crypto acid class in twenty sixteen, and I couldn't imagine things being at the point they're at right now. It's incredible with all the adoption from all these big institutions.
It's true. You know, I've been in this space since twenty eighteen. I even in my first project, got the only the third SEC no action letter to bring a token to market. Imagine now what the regulatory environment is so the change that I have seen on the regulatory side, on the adoption side, it's just been tremendous. I think more and more of that's going to foster more and more growth in the space.
Nancy, I'm a user of upholds stable coin rewards program with USCC and r O USD. However, some of the
¶ Banks vs Stablecoin yield
banks don't like that. They're saying no, no, no, We're worried about bank runs and all these things, which I think is hyperbole. But what are your thoughts on that situation And is it just simply the incumbents getting disrupted and they're like, wait a minute, we need to slow this down.
You know, I personally feel that rewards are an inherent part of blockchain. I mean, go all you know, go back to proof of steak networks staking getting rewards. I think it's become part of the ecosystem. We do provide rewards on stable coins. Our users want to be able to earn on assets and some assets that are idle. So you know, I am a market led person and
I here are customers and they want this. So I think anybody that gets in the space, customers are going to want an ability to earn rewards to me personally. It's similar to when I lend my money and I get interest from the bank and it's lent out somewhere else. You know, it's it can be similar that we get
rewarded for that. Now, I do feel like, you know, this space will continue to grow and evolve, and the ways to earn yield rewards interest on your digital assets has exponentially grown in the space, so I think people are still going to want the ability to earn. On the other hand, I would say too, I think there are some really interesting things that are happening from the traditional finance space. So we have a partnersh with vast Bank and USBC and yeah, Greg, and you know, we
are going to bring tokenized deposits to our users. So I deposit a dollar at a bank and it is a digital dollar on the blockchain. So my money is moving like I needed to, but it's at a financially regulated, institutional, traditional bank. So I think there's going to be lots of ways that people leverage blockchain to deliver value to customers.
Yeah, and anecdotally, I have money in the bank account, I use JP Morgan, I put parks of money on uphold for staking and stable corn yield. I'm not putting all my money right because I still need to do my everyday thing, but I want to put my money to work and earn as much as I can. But JP Morgan, just as an example, in this savings account zero point zero one. Come on, I'm going to go park in it, uphole, I'm going to go put my assets to work or my cash to work. So it's kind
of ridiculous what the banks are doing. They should just compete and up the interest or offer a stable coin.
So we actually have a high interest savings account. So you can put in money on uphold USDC. It is FDIC insured up to two point five million, right, not the two hundred and fifty thousand at the traditional bank, but two point five million, and we're currently paying out three point seventy five percent on your USD. It is also right next to where you need it. So you need to take advantage of the market, and you want to buy assets, you can move it in buy assets.
You want to liquidate your assets, you can move that money into this account and make three point seventy five percent. Again, much higher than many traditional.
Act that we have.
So we see a lot of people bringing in that type of money to the platform because it is FDIC ensured, it's easily accessible, and it's right next to where you needed to be to take advantage of any movement.
See, this is why this here is the future. What I'll pulls is the future. And I think the younger generations, if the banks don't up their game, are gonna they're going to move away from these traditional banks because we need to. We want to look for what we want to have the option to earn and get as much as we can.
Yeah, our customers sells over and over. We want the ability to earn whether it's on my idle assets, whether it's on my USD, whether I want to steak. We just announced flexible staking, So now if you have any assets that are eligible for staking on uphold, with one button, we will stake them for you and you can come in and out instantly as you want, but still participate in the staking rewards that come along with some of
those assets. So again, it's just making it easier for users to come and get rewarded or to maximize all the digital assets they have with us.
Yeah. One of the things I highlight often is when we're in a bear market like we are now. Staking is a great option to earn on your assets versus Look, we know it's down a bit and you may have a long term view in the market, but put it to work and earn as we go through this downtime and we'll be back in another bull cycle eventually. But it's a great option.
I think people should understand. You know, it's not always about timing the market. It's about time in the market. And it's so important that you take advantage of the tools that we have reoccurring buys, which is dollar cost averaging, right you have debit card rewards, We have rewards right now if you direct deposit part of your paycheck, you get up to four percent back in XRP. You know, we have staking flexible state that you can come in and out of boosted staking that gives you a higher
reward for a little bit longer lock up. There's all these ways to maximize your digital assets and over time, those you know, have proven to pay off more than just trying to time the market.
Absolutely well said, and I know we're talking about the bear market, but I would love to get your thoughts in the market conditions. Obviously, maybe the passable market didn't go according to what people may have had in their minds. But it's all cyclical. It looks like maybe we're nearing a bottom at some point and following up for your cycle a bitcoin. You know, do you think by the end of the year we're starting to come out of it.
I think, you know, I think people should look at two things. One, I think they should look at blockchain, right the underlying technology that you know is underpenning all of the crypto that you see, that is still moving forward, that that's not retreating, that's not having a tough time. We see more and more adoption of blockchain technology, which is the real hero here. And I think you're going to continue to see banks, FinTechs, entities, institutional traders, institutions
adopting blockchain technology. That's not going away, and that is at the heart of I think what we've all started here, right, So to me, that's not in any sort of market. I see that progressing, and I see it progressing, you know, rapidly. We just had folks with American banker. We were at the conference and there was nothing but talk about moving digital assets forward. So our digital blockchain capabilities forward so
I think people need to understand that's not slowing. I think, you know, we do inter different cycles when it comes to the tokens that ride along top of that blockchain, and so so we are going to be in different types of cycles. The one thing I would just go
back to is don't try to time the market. Be in the market, right, That's my personal advice because the more that you can use those tools to continue to earn and build your investment portfolio, that's the key, right that has proven over time to be a longer better strategy than somebody who tries to play in and out, in and out.
Yeah, great advice. And you know, even anecdotally in myself buying some crypto acids in twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen, some of it I have not sold. I just let us sit there, even though it was painful going through cycles. But now it's up because I just played the time game. Just let it grow over time. The compound interests in.
This, and you can start a recurring by as little as ten dollars, you know, a week. And so I think as people see these tools, it will even out there watching of the market, it'll even out their participation and it'll be a smoother runway.
Is uphold leveraging AI and planning to leverage AI for
¶ AI investing
the users and customers on the platform. I don't know how much you can share there because you know, I don't want you to give away your big plans. But you know, what are you guys doing there?
Yeah, well, I mean I think everybody's going to leverage AI, right, So I think operationally we're already leveraging AI. I just came from a meeting where we were talking about how we're going to implement AI, and so I think, yes, you will see And again I'll go back to a survey we did with our users. They are interested in using AI now. They're interested in various ways and flavors. They're interested in AI recommendations that then they personally sort
through and take advantage of. I think they're also interested in AI for things like maybe rebalancing a portfolio or to you know, auto trade something that they set the parameters around. So you know, we know our customers want it, not scared of it at all, and so you'll see it come out in some future projects that we have.
That's exciting. I know a lot of folks are looking to build AI agents, and yeah, if you could put an AI agent to work on rebalancing your portfolio, doing different things, or just saying hey, Nancy, hey Tony, here's the quick hits, what's happening with this ASCID, this asset here, what I recommend and things like that.
That's right, And I think again it goes back to being able to build or earn on your investment portfolio, in your portfolio of digital assets, and being able to do that super easy. So I think people want to be able to again not have to time the market, but participate in the market and make that easy participation.
This is kind of a follow up question to the tokenization conversation we had earlier and uphols plans aside from adding the tokenized acid is a phole leveraging blockchain in the background in any way, are you planning to.
Yeah, I mean, I think the most obvious way that you see it is, you know, letting users just coming on and off the platform, right, you know, I mean we know people have multiple wallets, right, average user, I don't know about you, average user probably has two three wallets, So you know, I think just allowing people to move money like that, I think is super super important. I think, you know, also we can support defy access. We can
support you know, we talked about the exactly protocol. You'll see others like that coming in, so you'll see more of that in the space and giving people easier access to defy pools, to other protocols, things like that. And then I think just allowing you know, institutions, companies, businesses to move money either in our company or to maybe employees that are in different place. You'll see us be able to move money as well.
Yeah, it's exciting to see all the blockchain rails being set up for everybody to be able to participate in one way to the other. Now, we went through a lot, I'll pull us doing a lot And I want to ask, though, is there anything else on your roadmap that you want to highlight?
Yeah, you know, I think there's a lot coming right. We've talked about token is securities, We've talked about rewards and debit card and AI and all types of different things. I think things that we see people being interested in in the traditional finance space, you'll see you know, we've talked about the Digital Asset group with iras. You know, we see people interested in you know, crypto focused iras, we see people that are interested in more earning products.
We see people that are interested in more ways to unlock the value of their crypto, and I think we see a lot of interest in multi asset abilities. Ability to go from gold to bitcoin, which we have today, right, you can buy precious metals on Uphold today and one click from bitcoin to gold. I think you'll see equities, right.
They want to put that in the mix as well, and start having a whole portfolio, a multi asset portfolio that they can manage right there, and then they can earn off of or unlock the value and spend in real life.
I love that feature by Uphold because I think you guys were like the only ones that I know of that it can do that, and it's so analogous to the interoperable world that's being built with tokenized assets to allow for that instant conversion.
That's right, And I think you know, eventually you can imagine that you have a multi asset portfolio that can be rebalanced and that you can manage. So I think there'll be a lot of opportunity for people to have more of their financial holdings at Uphold and then manage them, earn off them, and unlock the value.
It may be true early to answer this question, but as more assets come on chain with the tokenization efforts, that's happening. So even like rare cars or rare comic books like the first Superman comic book or something like that, right, and things alone, those collectibles, and maybe the younger generation is saying, I like this, NFT, this Pokemon thing, would based on customer and demand, would uphold look to add things like that.
Yeah, so we regularly talk to our customers. You know, we just talked about going to be at XRP Vegas with two thousand of my best friends and customers. We regularly do research with our customers and customers outside in the general crypto market. So we're super market led, so we tend to do a lot of discussions what do our customers want, what do they need from us? And so we let that help drive you know, our roadmap, our priorities, our next projects, all of those types of things.
Well, I'm looking forward to that. I'm a comic growing up as a kid. I like the sports cards and comic books, and I can't wait for like certain comic books that I can't afford I can't go buy a one million dollar Superman comic. But if there's a token of it, a fraction of it exactly, and I think that's going to be appealing to a lot of people. I can have access for the first time.
You know what you just said it, Tony. I think this is all about delivering access right, private security access, tokenized security access, fractional security access, access to earning access to your comic book. You know things that I believe you know this this generation, you know, this group of hungry digital asset users may or may not have had in the past access to credit. Yeah, your crypto is
your credit now right. This access, I think is at the heart of delivering the blockchain promise to the retail side. You know, I think there's a lot of operational efficiency. I think there's a lot of technical efficiency on the enterprise side. Their customers are going to demand the access and now they will have the infrastructure to deliver.
Yeah, and it's all being built right now, right right.
Now, it's built. I mean, now it's being adopted.
Yeah. Yeah, it's fascinating. I think the world is going to have an eight year old So I'm thinking about the world which she's going to be in when she's eighteen or you know, becomes an adult. It's going to be much different, so fascinating. Well, I'm looking forward to the future. Updates are on Uphold and Nancy. Thank you so much for taking the time, Thanks.
For having me. This is great. It's great to see you again. Yeah.
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