#1322 John Egan on How Stripe Is Building for Bitcoin & Crypto

John Egan is the Head of Crypto at Stripe. In this conversation, we talk about the crypto industry and how Stripe is interfacing with the technology, what they have been building, how their products work, bridging the gap between Web2 and Web3, stablecoins, and more. ======================= In this podcast, we dive into the revolutionary concept of PropyKeys, an application that allows anyone to mint home addresses all over the world on blockchain. PropyKeys.com is a part of the Propy ecosystem, that has a grand mission to make homeownership more affordable and user friendly. We will explore the journey of Propy’s founder and how this innovative technology provides benefits for homeowners, and for the real estate industry. Join us as we discuss the Propy’s latest collaborations, including Coinbase, and its new fun project PropyKeys. X (Twitter): @PropyKeys Website: Mint an address at propykeys.comdApp: https://dapp.propy.com/ ======================= Get the freshest price feeds free for 12 months. Join Supra’s early integration program for zero-cost access to the fastest oracles and dVRF across 50+ blockchains: https://supra.com/pomp. Earn $1,500 by referring Web3 projects to use Supra services. The projects get the fastest services for free, and you earn $1,500 for every referral. Learn more at the link above. ======================= Pomp writes a daily letter to over 265,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://pomp.substack.com/ ======================= View 10k+ open startup jobs: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://dreamstartupjob.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Enroll in my Crypto Academy: https://www.thecryptoacademy.io/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. So it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode. Today's episode is with John Egan. He's the head of crypto at Stripe. In this conversation, we talk about the crypto industry and how Stripe, one of the leading payment companies in the world, is interfacing with the technology. What are they doing? Where have they been

• 0:44Anthony Pompliano?

  over the last five years? How do their products today work? How they engage with the crypto ecosystem? What they think about bridging the gap between Web 2 and Web 3? Why John is personally interested in crypto and how his professional history actually plays perfectly into this? And then where exactly Stripe is going? I always enjoy talking to people who are building out in the world. They're actually trying to take technology and solve problems. And that's exactly what John and Stripe are doing. This conversation is packed with insights and I hope that you enjoy it. Here is my conversation with John Egan.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 1:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Today's episode is brought to you by Propy. Imagine a world where you could buy and sell your home wallet to wallet. With Prop keys, you can mint your home address and upgrade it to a real world asset. This not only protects your home's title from fraud, but when you are ready to move, you could sell it through an NFT auction as well as through the traditional way. There's optionality here. Propy Keys is part of the Propy ecosystem. Their mission is to make home ownership more efficient, affordable, and user-friendly. Propy Keys is a fun entry point to placing title on the blockchain. Now, anyone can start their on-chain journey by minting home addresses via Propy Keys and staking them for profit until they are ready to sell their home. Visit propykeys.com to learn more. Again, that's propykeys.com to learn more.

• 2:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Today's episode is brought to you by Supra. If you're building anything in Web3 or crypto, you likely need Oracles and verifiable randomness, too. Supra is offering the fastest Oracles and DVRF free for 12 months at supra.com/pomp for a limited time. Supra delivers the freshest Oracle price feeds across 50-plus blockchains. Critical price levels or liquidation triggers? Beat your competition to the punch with Supra. It's as good as having the first-mover advantage on every price update. Supra is more secure, easier to integrate, and runs on up to 12x lower gas per feed than other Oracles. So you'll want to bank on this 12-months free offer as soon as possible. If you're just listening and know any builders,

• 3:08Anthony Pompliano?

  you can earn $1,500 by letting them know about this deal. They can get the fastest Oracles for free for 12 months, and you get $1,500 for every referral. Visit supra.com/pomp to learn more. That's S-U-P-R-A dot com slash pomp. All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got John here with me. I thought a great place to start is the classic innovator's dilemma. Stripe is a massive business. You guys are helping increase the GDP on the internet. You probably do payments better than anyone else. And everyone in the tech industry is like, duh, if I'm going to have payments on my website, I use Stripe. And then here comes Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. And they're like, well, we're going to do payments amazingly in this peer-to-peer kind of electronic fashion. It could be competitive,

• 3:53Anthony Pompliano?

  or you all could use these technologies to further your mission and wrap your arms around and say, hey, we want to be part of this. How do you all think internally about Stripe's core business and what you guys have been doing for years? And then also this new technology in Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies?

• 4:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, look, I think it's easy to mistake these two things to be competitive with each other, right? The reality is that I think crypto is native to Stripe's business. It's not, I don't even think it's an extension of it. I think it's very native to what Stripe does. I was at Facebook before, and this is a social network world. And in that world, the evolution of the medium, inside of which you're operating, changes consistently. And so we had text-based, primary social networking, followed by Photos followed by videos followed by today we're sort of in this short form video world. This happens far less often, I think, in the financial world, but I think crypto is that, right? Crypto is this really exciting medium shift. It's this entire new like layer of opportunity.

• 4:51Speaker 02

  And if you look at what Stripe is, if you look at Stripe's mission, right? Which is increasing the GDP of the internet, right? And it's sort of providing this like elegant and simple developer focused durable business, you know, through which startups and companies can interact with the oftentimes complex financial world. Right? I think these things are, you know, perfect friends inside of that space. And so I think that it's, it's not surprising to me at all when you kind of look at it through that lens, that, you know, we're digging deeper into this space and that we have a team operating and building products and trying to enable crypto as opposed to sort of taking the opposite stance, right? Which would be trying to resist it and, you know, maybe not speaking about it and, and, and not kind of trying to build in that direction.

• 5:35Speaker 02

  So, you know, I think crypto is a disruptive technology. I think that's one of the things that's really exciting about it. I think it's easy to make the mistake with a disruptive technology that it sort of can be camouflaged as like one or two solutions. Because whatever lens you look at a disruptive technology through, it'll look like it is that, right? And I think when you look at it that way, sort of as these kind of point items, you might make the mistake of saying, oh, you know, in this one area in payments, it's competitive with Stripe or otherwise. But if you zoom out and you say, no, this is a medium, this is a layer kind of for like financial enablement. Right? Then I think it becomes very natural that like this is an opportunity for Stripe and that these two technology, that this technology and this company like should be very close to each other, not far apart.

• 6:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, when we think about Stripe kind of entering into a space here, there's different components of crypto, right? There's Bitcoin, there's stable coins, there's like a whole long tail of very speculative type engagements. There's NFTs, you can kind of go all the way across this entire industry. How do you all think about maybe buckets of like, okay, we think that there's really, really high, you know, fit between Stripe's mission and like these technologies? And then we're kind of exploring some of these other things in bucket two. And then maybe there's even a bucket three of, okay, we know for sure we're not going to do anything in that area or we don't think that that's really got value to what our mission is. So how do you kind of think about maybe what those buckets are? And then like putting things in the bucket so that you can prioritize internally what to work on?

• 7:02Speaker 02

  I think we try to think about ourselves as an enablement layer across these various different technologies that are coming out of kind of the macro technology that is crypto. You know, if you look at the history of Stripe a little bit and its participation, there was a period of time from about 2014 to 2018 where Stripe actually had Bitcoin acceptance. And, you know, looking back, when that was ultimately sunset, when the blog post was written about it, right, it was turned off for very practical reasons. Right, it was a Bitcoin was very young at the time. Settlement times were taking too long, fees were going up. It wasn't really being used as a transactional currency. That might be changing a little bit today. But also what happened between sort of 2018 and today are all of these other

• 7:43Speaker 02

  kind of evolutions in opportunities for companies to participate and utilize this layer of cryptocurrencies. And this is where we've seen like NFTs, we've seen sort of the ICO run, we've seen utility capabilities, you know, now we're starting to see stable coins. And I think that Stripe has a bit of an opportunity across each of them. And you can see it in the product catalog that we've got today. So we sort of have three major remits within the crypto team here. One is enabling crypto oriented companies with Stripe core services. So if you're an exchange, you know, if you're crypto oriented and selling NFTs, you might still want to do traditional finance things like take, accept a credit card. And that's not a given to be able to do it, just like in 2011, it wasn't a given to be able to do it as a web two company.

• 8:27Speaker 02

  And so that part of our business is very much kind of a perfect metaphor analog to what Stripe was doing in 2011 that it needs to do today for crypto businesses. We also have a part of the business that is the on-ramp. And the on-ramp is much more focused on deeply crypto native organizations. So if your business itself probably runs on a smart contract, you know, is utilizing some new capability of blockchain to enable new use cases for your consumers, the on-ramp kind of bridges that gap. So that users who come to you and are interested in participating in your smart contract or otherwise can jump from the world they're accustomed to, which is fiat, over to this world that is crypto. And the on-ramp is multi-coin, multi-network. So depending on what you're doing, if it's Bitcoin, Ethereum.

• 9:11Speaker 02

  You know, a layer two, all of those are enabled. And then the third, which is this sort of future looking and has to do with the stablecoin space, is a global crypto payouts product, which is if you're participating in Stripe Connect and you're running a marketplace or something similar, your recipients of payouts should have that choice to be paid out in this new stablecoin system as opposed to having to be paid out in their local currency. So it's just like a long way of saying like, we participate in all of these areas and we try to be agnostic to kind of the specific products being built on the technology while recognizing sort of the upside. So our remit shifts over time in terms of like what the products support and who the products are supporting. But the underlying goal of the organization here, which is to kind of enable

• 9:56Speaker 02

  companies that are participating in this new economy, doesn't change.

• 9:59Anthony Pompliano?

  So what's interesting about these technologies is there's a lot of promises. Some of them seem to be coming to fruition, some of them not so much. And if I had to characterize them, maybe there's like a store value type argument for Bitcoin or some of these assets. There's definitely a medium of exchange. And if you kind of extend that out into applications, there's like remittances. There is, you know, a reduction of fees. There maybe even is a increase in speed and kind of along that side. And then there is like pricing or unit of account. And so talk maybe a little bit, store value is pretty self-explanatory. I don't know if you've got anything to add there, but when it comes to a medium of exchange, like what are you all seeing in terms of what the technology is allowing you to do that maybe you otherwise couldn't? Are you doing, you know, like instant payouts? Are you doing, you know, yeah, we can lower our fee

• 10:44Anthony Pompliano?

  because now our cost structure is different or something. And then also unit of account, like should we expect Stripe to eventually offer, you can price things in Bitcoin or your favorite asset rather than just fiat currencies?

• 10:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think across all of those things, it's really the enablement of global commerce. That's the most interesting and that kind of speaks to the medium of exchange. When you look at, you know, global commerce today, you know, within the United States especially, we have this sort of privileged position, right, of feeling like our interactions are all already instant, right? We swipe a credit card, we tap a credit card, we type in a credit card, you know, and we have this kind of instant feeling of. Of completing the transaction. There's an entire world out there that does not have that, especially when dealing with a cross-border type transaction. And so the payouts product sort of speaks to this, which is we should see advantages here across all of those different dimensions that you listed. So we should see faster settlement times, and we do see faster settlement times. We should see lower fees.

• 11:41Speaker 02

  And more importantly, I think actually than both of those is we should see kind of this payment inclusivity for these like long tail countries and long tail currencies. And individuals that are global operators to be able to be paid out in global type currencies as opposed to local currencies. And that gives them more autonomy in terms of how they want to manage their personal finances and then how they can re-interact with that global economy. And I think we think about this a little bit as a flywheel, right? So it's about receiving those stable coins and then being able to, you know, ultimately do things with them. Conceivably, the reason you want that might be for that stored value reason. You might have, you know, a local currency that's that's volatile. And so you'd rather hold something that feels a little bit more stable, right?

• 12:25Speaker 02

  But it could also be for for further commerce or for further, you know, smart chain interaction with other Web three organizations. And in that world where you're not actually having consistently on ramp and off ramp, right? You really start to see those upsides, right? Those upsides of time to settlement of, you know, transaction, cost and speed and all of those things. And we're seeing that in the networks as well, right? The better networks are coming out, the faster networks that we're able to push these stable coins over. So I think, again, it's kind of all of them, but sort of in the order of like medium of exchange followed by stored balance, like in my mind at least.

• 13:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, let's say that the technology continues to be improved both internally and externally. How do you all look at your role in kind of the contribution to the ecosystem? And sometimes I, you know, feel like the crypto industry does a fantastic job of understanding free market principles and incentives and and really kind of applying those and showing this is how that can work. And then other times we're horrible at it and we take like this like moral high ground or we're like theoretically, this is how it should work. We try to kind of build things to that. So how do you all think like you're a for-profit business? You are technologists, you're building products for consumers and customers. But also then there's like kind of open source. There is these products that you may contribute to, but other people can then use.

• 13:43Anthony Pompliano?

  And so just talk a little bit as to like your role in the ecosystem, specifically around building products? And how much of it is like building on top of things that are being built by the community versus you all are trying to create things internally and then like push them out to the community?

• 13:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, when I think about our positioning in the market in general, I think about Stripe as the honest broker, you know, within crypto. I don't, I don't really see us as an evangelist. You know, our, our role here is to serve those people who are building inside of this economy already and to serve them in a way that's durable, trustworthy, developer friendly and high confidence. That's, that's, that's first and foremost, the role of Stripe across, I think, web two as well. But then extending that out to web three developers. And so this is kind of maps back to this, this same question again around, you know, this world is changing rapidly. It's been changing since, you know, 2008 or so, when, when this all began. And I don't think Stripe's role has changed.

• 14:38Speaker 02

  I just think we've evolved a little bit from recognizing, from, from sort of taking a singular position of, okay, this is, this is all about just payments, right? Into a more expanded position of we need to lift this industry wherever we can. Because being a financial medium, there are more and more sort of touchpoints that the founders and creators who are beginning to exploit new opportunities, right? Need to be able to interact with. It's not just the payments layer, right? It might be the on-ramp layer, it might be the payouts layer. And frankly, Stripe is just a more mature business today as well. You know, I was, I was in Y Combinator in, in, in 2011. I actually have one of the first couple hundred Stripe accounts ever issued. And just before this, I was, I was digging up like the original email that I got from John Colson,

• 15:22Speaker 02

  you know, inviting me to join Stripe. And it's just such an honest statement of what Stripe was trying to do. You know, it was saying like, this is a simple, easy to use developer focused way to take credit cards. And, and it's such a simple statement, right? But it's really has these, these powerful impacts to all of these little startups at the time that were just trying to participate in commerce. And I think the role is the same. I think the role today is similar and we will continue to build out the products that enable these organizations to grow so that they can have a continually improving merchant and consumer experience. And that's, that's ultimately our job. We talk a lot about, you know, where is crypto today, right? And we say it's the dial up age, right? And that's an easy way, I think, for a lot of people to say it's the beginning. But if you look at the history of the internet, right?

• 16:06Speaker 02

  Like the first ARPANET contracts were in 1969, right? Like dial up was pretty far in, right? We were, we were, we were a long way. We were past TCP IP. We were past like packet design. We were like into worldwide web by then. And so I think it's kind of a cool phrasing. If you think about it that way is we're just in that era where the translation layer between web two and web three is still difficult, right? You're still telling your mom to hang up the phone before you hit the dial button. Right? We're, we're there. And so Stripe's role is to hold that torch high, make it as easy as possible to participate in this economy, help the consumers get on board to enable the merchants and then grow with the merchants, which I think is when we start talking about things like stable coins and global commerce,

• 16:49Speaker 02

  grow with them as they start to kind of reach their second order and third order goals.

• 16:54Anthony Pompliano?

  It's funny that you mentioned the like, hang up the phone because I need to use the internet. Uh, I recently was talking with someone and uh, somebody we work with is I think 21 or 22 years old. And this came up and he said, wait, what? And I had to explain to him the like AOL, you know, AIM, you're trying to do something, but the phone and your parents are trying to get it off. And he was shocked. He was like, wait, that really was a thing? And I was like, everybody over the age of, I don't know, 30, 35 years old. Like that is a shared experience that we all had as the internet rolled out. And I do wonder, what are the shared experiences that we will all talk about, you know, 20 years from now? When it came to these technologies and the UI UX seems horrendous. Uh, but Stripe is historically known for making beautiful. Things you see this in the kind of core product, you see this in things like Stripe

• 17:38Anthony Pompliano?

  press and just many of the things that I think the company is known for. And so how do you all think about that where like the technology seems to work? And there's this like underbelly of the mechanics are there, but the UI UX may not be that great. And so is that something that you all can kind of re skin for the Stripe experience? Or are you kind of stuck with, hey, whatever the the community has done so far? We got to kind of take it in the form that it is.

• 18:03Speaker 02

  For sure. So, so, so first of all, just just on that like general topic. Like I think we went through this with the iPhone too, right? Like skew morphism is this like really important thing that you have to have. But you only need it until the folks who grew up natively around the thing have grown up. And suddenly the skew morphism kind of falls apart, right? You don't need like a disk anymore to click the save button. And I do, I do, I do think crypto will go through the same thing like today. We have to talk about it in sort of these like old fashioned terms almost to help make crypto clear to people. But in the future, it, you know, it'll just be, you know, an infrastructure layer. Um, on, on, on the other question, though, around like UI UX, like one of the advantages of Stripe being a little bit more mature when we're coming into this space is it's not just the one product anymore.

• 18:47Speaker 02

  Like the collection of Stripe products actually give us the ability to make UI UX more improved. So Stripe has a, has a product called Link, right? Which is basically a system for making payments more efficient. If you've interacted with Stripe before. So if you've come in and you've bought something from a Stripe merchant web two, you know, maybe you bought a T shirt somewhere and you saved your credit card and you saved your profile information. And then one day you go to a merchant in web three and you hit the Stripe on ramp. We're going to remember you and we're going to say, oh, hi, John, it's you again. Great. We remember you like we've already got your credit card. Don't worry. You don't need to type it in again. Like, let's just verify who you are and let's get you into crypto. And it helps like lower this barrier, right? And instead of every part of the crypto experience, feeling like you're having to interact with

• 19:31Speaker 02

  new vendors and new companies and potentially people you've never heard of. You get this one, probably the most frightening part, right? For, for a consumer, which is the moment where you're interacting with the fiat world and translating it over to the crypto world. And you get this familiarity that comes through in the link integration. And then, you know, behind the scenes, there's there's sort of Stripe-enabled KYC and radar and and other really like powerful fraud tools. But I think that's really important, right? It's really important to show up somewhere and see that familiarity, even if the experience you're going through is new and novel. And so I that's that's kind of one of the core things we have to lean on. The other side of this, of course, is that Stripe just has it deeply in its culture to build very strong and very successful UX experiences.

• 20:16Speaker 02

  You know, I think back in I reference 2011 all the time, but back when we were first using 2011 in my startup with Stripe, what was amazing was it felt consumer-grade, you know, as a as a as a business user. So you would log in and this this dashboard didn't feel like you were logging into a program, right? It felt like you were logging into a consumer program. It was all very clean, very well-designed, very well-built. The documentation was really, really clear. And I think like carrying that over to developers is just as important as carrying it over to consumers. So while consumers get this kind of improved experience with familiarity through integrations with things like link, the developers also get that. They also get like this very clear experience where they can then deliver to consumers

• 20:58Speaker 02

  kind of the highest quality experience where they can make sure that things like fraud rates are low and and acceptance rates are high, right? Which is part of what makes something feel good. You have to think, you know, UX versus UI, right? The entirety of that user experience needs to feel clean and comfortable, you know, efficient, durable and trustworthy. And so all of those kind of come together and we can take those learnings from, you know, a decade plus of doing this in Web two and translate them very directly. And I think that comes through on the on-ramp if you look at things like acceptance rates, you know, in the in the market. And it certainly comes through for things like crypto payouts where, you know, you're interacting with connect and you just have a new payout method. All of those things should be like the core, like high-quality Stripe experience.

• 21:41Anthony Pompliano?

  So one of the ideas I'm probably most excited about is the convergence of a lot of these technologies. And obviously, there's a ton of excitement right now for artificial intelligence, even robotics and machines. But I kind of think of it all as it's like automation, right? Like we're just moving more towards this like automated society, regardless of the underlying technologies. And so in that form, it's very hard for quote machine, so there's actual software or machines to conduct transactions with money that takes one or two days to settle. And so one of the promises of stable coins, as an example, is that you can have very quick, efficient and low cost transactions. And so now there are things like streaming payments. We've seen people do this with Bitcoin. We've seen them do it with stable coins. But it almost feels like that is where the market is really

• 22:26Anthony Pompliano?

  going to pull these technologies into existence outside of just the insular crypto community. Are you all seeing that? And how do you think about, you know, places where maybe you want to provide services to Stripe customers, but the legacy financial system, not Stripe's products, but the legacy financial system, limit your ability to do that? And so you guys are forced to use the new technologies really as a way to serve your customer?

• 22:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think there's, there's like two trends there. And AI, you know, fits into one of them, and maybe both over the long term, right? Trend number one is kind of the increase in global commerce versus domestic commerce, and sort of the opportunities that that arrive there with a more efficient transaction layer. And I think in the, in the AI space, you sort of have this, this, this other side, which is what you're talking about a little bit, which is how do you map these transactions into code in such a way where they're fully settled, right? And, and in the case where like irreversibility of crypto actually becomes an advantage. I think there's another angle on that AI piece, which is that, you know, how do you make finance and transactions native to the code that's being written, right? I mean, there's, there's an HTTP code out there, right? Code

• 23:35Speaker 02

  402, which is payment required, which is not used anywhere on the internet, but is like sort of, sort of should be this core, basic capability, I think of the internet. And I, you know, when we, one of the, one of the examples I didn't get a chance to give, but, but is probably relevant here is you look at our Integrations with things like like a ramp. And two of the things we try to do there are increase availability, right? So availability in in more difficult regulatory environments like New York. But also decrease minimums. So decrease kind of that lower limit. And when you think about something like AI, right? You're probably starting to think a lot about microtransactions, right? Like smaller and smaller transactions happening faster and faster and happening like in very, very tiny, tiny ways.

• 24:19Speaker 02

  Like maybe we're even looking at like token level, right? Like cost transactions. And cryptocurrency, especially stablecoins, feel like they're very well suited to this problem. But only, right? Only if you can also handle like small and minimum level fiat transactions into it. So that the barrier for someone to participate is low enough, right? If if our barrier to interact with, you know, anything in the microtransaction world is like hundreds of dollars. Like that's the minimum to go on on ramp as a user and then have an AI agent take over. It's too high. But I think if we can keep pushing that down, I think there's there's huge opportunities. And then if we think about kind of the global environment, you know, we look a little bit more, I think in that world, at speed

• 25:02Speaker 02

  of transaction and settlement in that it's reasonably unacceptable when you're trying to operate in an automated fashion as an AI or otherwise, to have a multi-day settlement period. And it's really funny because inside of crypto, right? We sort of hem and haw about minutes versus versus like 10 minutes versus hours. And we say, oh, this this chain is no good. It takes hours, right? And then on the other side of the fence, you have this, you know, entire global world that operates on on the order of days. And and that translation layer there, I think, is something we have to lean really deeply into, right? And I think if you enable both of those and you think that ultimately, you know, they they come together, you know, in terms of like AI, automated payments, microtransactions and global commerce.

• 25:45Speaker 02

  The the sort of imagination that creators in this space who are building towards it have, I think, is is beyond something that I can personally imagine, but is definitely something that I want to enable. And we understand as primitives, right? Of speed, cost, availability as being the things that we need to succeed in as a company like Stripe.

• 26:04Anthony Pompliano?

  So when I think about maybe where we are today and measuring the current usage of these technologies, on one hand, it's like total amount of transactions in the world. Visa does 15 trillion, stablecoins all combined did 15 trillion, but still the like non-stablecoin transaction volume is off the charts compared to stablecoins. My expectation would be that will over time become a much bigger number aggregate, but also percentage wise. I would love to hear kind of how you all think about that and if that's changing anything internally. But also, I think maybe a 1A to that analysis is right now fiat currencies are like 99.9%

• 26:45Anthony Pompliano?

  of all transactions globally and quote unquote, digital currencies or like native digital currencies like a Bitcoin are, you know, not even really registering yet. I think that that number also as a percentage and aggregate will get bigger over time as well. And so how do you think about, you know, stablecoins, which are just like a different form factor for the fiat currencies, but then also like these digital native currencies that have nothing to do with the fiat currencies? Is it just up into the right in terms of adoption and usage for both of those? And is that changing anything internally for you guys?

• 27:16Speaker 02

  I think it is up into the right, but I actually think the depth of those charts is what gets more interesting. So there was a report released pretty recently on sort of the relentless rise of stablecoins that had a bunch of different charts inside of it showing kind of the breakdown of like what stablecoins were being used, where they were being distributed to. And there was a sub chart inside of there that actually didn't get that much attention, but I thought was probably the most interesting chart that broke down kind of the value of the transactions happening. So each section, right? Let's say like transactions happening at over a hundred dollars in the transaction, you know, over a thousand dollars. And there's this shift that's happening, which is two or three years ago, the number of transactions happening between like one and $25 was, you couldn't even see it, right? It was like this tiny little line, right? But over the last year or so, it started to kind of.

• 28:02Speaker 02

  Expand, it started to grow and that layer, like that layer looks like consumer activity, right? That layer looks like, you know, walking somewhere and buying something for $10, buying something for $12, you know, buying maybe a SaaS service, buying a, you know, a cup of coffee, right? And that piece of the chart is growing. And I think like, I think those are the types of early signals, really exciting when we sort of look at them as an organization trying to enable commerce, because if all that it is, is block trades, right? If all that it is, is moving, you know, a million dollars this way, or tens of millions of dollars that way. I think that's pretty interesting, but I don't know that that actually like impacts kind of the, the consumer level of global commerce

• 28:44Speaker 02

  in, in a way that's exciting, you know, for, for a company like Stripe to enable. But as we see that start to expand and we see like what looks more like merchant consumer type commerce, and we start to see, you know, individual countries beginning to adopt these things almost domestically in really interesting ways, like, um, you know, like in, in India and then like Nigeria, where we're just seeing like, stablecoin usage becoming almost native to the, uh, to the geography. Um, I think those two things combined lets you kind of pull out a little bit and say, all right, this trend isn't just a reflection of what's already been happening, right? This is actually new information, new types of commerce, new types of transactions that are happening. And that actually implies

• 29:25Speaker 02

  that sort of the future there of global commerce is potentially tied into more consumer to consumer, consumer to merchant type transactions. And if that's the case, right? That's payments, right? That's payouts. That's like onramping and smart contract conversion with average individuals. And I think like, that's the piece of the chart that excites me the most when I look at it. Um, despite the fact that certainly, you know, the up into the right macro chart is exciting day to day, but I think it's important that that kind of consumer use case continues to grow in order to kind of justify the continued investment in this space by the most creative and interesting startups, who ultimately are the people that we want to enable with Stripe crypto products.

• 30:06Anthony Pompliano?

  So what's interesting to me is like crypto at Stripe almost feels like, uh, uh, the executive team saying like, hey, let's make sure we don't get disrupted by this thing. And like, let's play a part in, in the future of this because this technology that we think is valuable and, and we could use to help service our customers. How do you think about what could disrupt, whether it's crypto at Stripe or Stripe in general? Like, are there certain things in the market where you're like, wow, if we don't embrace these things, like they 100% could disrupt Stripe?

• 30:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I think we could see sudden shifts in the market, you know, step functions in, in, in, in sort of adoption that could cause us to kind of change our paths very quickly if we needed to, right? And I, and I think like stable coins are actually a great example of this, right? I mean, this is stable coins are new. It's not that they're a new concept, but it's new that they're starting to kind of gain consumer and merchant use in a way that it's like exciting and interesting for us to build against and, and sort of payout starts to capture that, right? And I think like those types of changes are things that we have to keep our ears very perked about and then we have to stay very deep in the community to monitor. I don't, you know, I sort of reject the general statement

• 31:18Speaker 02

  that, you know, we, we, we build the crypto team as like a protection against disruption, right? I think cryptocurrencies are disruptive against like global financial markets in positive ways. And I think Stripe as a service provider within the global financial market benefits from disruption of any sort because it gives us new opportunities to build. So I, I very rarely sort of, you know, sit up in bed and worry about, you know, the next big thing that's coming that's going to take us out, right? I think a lot more about what is the like practical activity that's happening in the world that isn't maybe as enabled as we'd like it to be. And I think, um, I think that really does look more and more like, you know, globalization, global access to these things, global commerce, um, and increasingly, you know, in the stablecoin space.

• 32:04Anthony Pompliano?

  When you see some of the other payment providers, you know, the visas, the Master Cards, they're starting to play in some of these spaces. Um, and everyone's taking a different approach. Is there anything that you see across the board, everyone doing that you're like, pretty much at this point, if you're a fintech or maybe even a large bank? There's like a consensus around this is going to be a thing or something that you're going to have to do. And what is interesting to me is like, if you think about social networks over the long run, many of them realize like, hey, we need a newsfeed. Like, the newsfeed was this like, very innovative thing, although today, we're all like, of course, every, you know, social network has this. And then it became widespread. And it's unclear to me

• 32:47Anthony Pompliano?

  yet if the market outside of crypto has come to a consensus in terms of like, services they offer, or specific products that they're going to offer, outside of just like, oh, we're going to let stable coins go across our system, right? Are there other things that you see consensus being arrived at so far?

• 33:03Speaker 02

  I see less consensus. I see a lot of speculation. You know, I think I see a lot of guessing. One of the areas, I think, that's been out there for a long time, but just becomes more of a point of conversation, sort of across, you know, the networks and folks like Stripe, you know, has to do with kind of like wallets, right? And the custody versus self custody conversation, which is, you know, historically, it was extremely difficult to do kind of self custody in any sort of commerce transaction that was happening digitally. But now with crypto, it's almost the default, right? If you look at an integration with like a wallet, like MetaMask, right, where we have an on-ramp integration, right? That's all self custody. And I think that that piece of it is pretty important to keep an eye on and understand

• 33:48Speaker 02

  as we go forward, because an understanding of like, who ultimately is going to be holding the coins and issuing the transaction calls is pretty critical to defining the follow-on steps, right? Okay, then, then like, who is the financial stack that it's processing through, right? Is it still credit card networks that are involved? Or are we doing direct peer-to-peer? You know, is Stripe's role shifting in those cases? Is it having more to do with, you know, identity and radar and link and memory and on-ramping, you know, or is it actually having to do with like, custody and transaction? And I don't have perfect answers to these things. I actually think that the questions are getting more complicated. They're primarily being influenced by regulatory shifts, you know, which we need

• 34:33Speaker 02

  to operate really successfully within. So.

• 34:37Speaker 02

  Sorry, it's a bit of an anti, like, poor answer to the question of like, is there consensus coming in on this? I think I'm seeing more self custody these days, and I think that that's the trend that we're moving towards. And I think in a self custodied world, everyone's relationship with the, with the user shifts a little bit in what is probably a positive way. But if you want to look at kind of like where ripple effects happen, right? That affects everyone. That affects Stripe, that affects the, the credit card networks, that affects the banks, right? That has a really interesting ripple effect. So I think that's one of the areas that's being watched the most closely, both from a UX standpoint, you know, what's the best way to do this from a user experience? Is it better to hold your own coins? Or is it better to have someone else hold them?

• 35:21Speaker 02

  And where does that line get drawn? And then separately, the regulatory question marks, which are, does the way the product interacts, or sorry, does the way that the consumer, the merchant have to significantly change depending on whether or not it's a self custody solution? And we have, we're generally shielded as consumers, I think, in the Bitcoin world of that question historically, because we don't live in a self custody world when it comes to digital commerce today. But I think that that is probably changing. And as that changes, I think it's something that there'll be a lot of consistency around in terms of being one of the more important conversations to have, or how do we all enable that in the best way if we're not maybe directly holding the funds?

• 36:04Anthony Pompliano?

  How do you think about this idea of like, digitizing or tokenizing assets that now can be spendable? So, you know, I can't spend my house, right? It's, I have ownership of it, I can prove that I have ownership, but I can't like fractionalize the home. Maybe I could securitize it, and yeah, there's trading of it and things like that. But in this digital world, now all of a sudden, like, you can pretty much have a digital asset that could be a whole host of different things that aren't just a true currency, and I can swap them. And so it kind of opens up what potentially is like, oh, here we go, like the crypto people are going to be insane and create, you know, like recreate all the problems that the financial system already solved, you know, many decades ago? Or, oh, here come a bunch of new use cases that do become pretty interesting. And so have you all explored that?

• 36:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Have you thought about, there are transactions, it may not be with a currency, it could be with like a different type of asset in this digital format? And does that change anything about how you guys see the future evolving?

• 37:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, we don't really participate too much in that side of the equation today. And I think, I think we're probably a little ways off from where we would. I think there's something really fascinating happening there in terms of, you know, what is the backing entity? Or the liquidity that any individual has. You know, we, we look at a world of, of things like mortgages and otherwise, where we're, we're all sort of living under, under this bit of a shadow. Right. Of a large purchase that we've made and that's kind of, we're powering our day to day purchases on the backs of that purchase because we're paying off a large loan. I think there's a lot of really interesting depth there. It's not really the role of Stripe, I think, today. You know, we're, we're kind of getting a little bit deeper into like traditional banking roles there.

• 37:41Speaker 02

  And I, and I also think like the regulatory environment there is probably incredibly complicated. You know, we see this inside of sort of the dawn of DeFi and, and kind of a lot of the difficulty that there is there in terms of, can you actually move this stuff on chain in a way that is, is reliable and trustworthy? Is there an equivalent of, of sort of the town hall that holds all these records and can issue out, you know, proof of ownership accurately? You know, and in a safe and durable way. So I don't, I don't have too much to say kind of into that, into that space. I think, I think it's pretty fascinating. I think it'll probably change a lot about how people, you know, think about their, their personal, you know, net worth and their sort of day to day spending.

• 38:20Speaker 02

  But, you know, I think, I think Stripe lives a little bit at a different layer of the stack than kind of that, that piece of interaction, at least on the crypto side.

• 38:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Stripe's notorious for their mission being to increase the GDP of the internet. How much of the future success of that mission can crypto really help? Right. And I think there's a whole bunch of different ways, but is this something where you all look at it as, we will not be successful without crypto? Is it something where we will be successful with or without crypto, but crypto helps us get there faster? Like, how do you kind of characterize crypto's participation in this, you know, commendable mission that you guys are taking on?

• 38:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, I often think about about this mission statement, you know, sort of in the terms of the Internet is vast, right? You know, it's such a it's such a great vision and it's in its scale in that you really have to look for technologies like cryptocurrencies, I think, to achieve that scale of success. And it's possible it'll be something else, right? It's possible that that this crypto thing won't pan out, you know, regulatory environments will get, you know, too too messy, you know, some some grand solution to Fiat shows up overnight, and that becomes the easier path. But if I'm if I'm looking at it practically today, I think it's that crypto is probably one of the most powerful

• 39:40Speaker 02

  tools we can put in our belt to actually impact the wide Internet, not just the narrow Internet, right? We think about the Internet, and we can think about, you know, when I say the Internet today, talk about sort of generations, right? If you're if you're like 40, you're over, you probably have a very different like mental model of the Internet than, you know, if you're if you're maybe in your teens today, you might be thinking about 56 websites or apps, you know, versus, you know, hundreds and millions. But one of the great views we get into the Internet, you know, being a processor like Stripe, is we can actually see that vastness, right? Sort of that depth and all of these like long-tail tiny merchants that are just starting, you know, that are transacting with small communities that they have access to. And I think more of that, right? I think like

• 40:25Speaker 02

  the the little bit of the tail wags the dog here, right? The longer that tail stretches out, the more interesting it becomes. And I think crypto becomes the tool that really enables that those parts of the Internet to succeed. And so I think it is, I think it's native to the mission, I think, is is sort of what I'm getting at. I don't, I don't, I don't think I would, I would be so bold as to say Stripe doesn't work without crypto. I don't think we're nearly far enough along in the pathway. But I think that there is potentially a future where that's the case.

• 40:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Where can we send people to find out more about crypto at Stripe? If they want to apply for a job, I'm assuming you guys are always looking to hire great people. And if they want to potentially become a user of various products, where would you send them?

• 41:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, so you can always hit Stripe.com, which is sort of the like core, uh, core center point of everything that Stripe does. There's a link to the jobs page in there. Actually, if you just use search and search for crypto, you'll find all the different documentations on crypto and the different products that we have. Um, there's a lot of depth there. I'd encourage, you know, any developer who's interacting with Stripe to interact with Stripe Crypto the same way that they would. Um, and through there, there's an interest forum inside of the Stripe Crypto page itself, um, that actually lets you request access to specific products that are either in beta, uh, or give you instructions to come on board immediately.

• 41:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome. John, I appreciate it very much. It was great talking with you. Uh, I learned a lot and I think that having a company like Stripe, uh, put so much time, energy, and really enthusiasm into this, uh, speaks one to the progress and kind of, uh, technical, you know, ability of the crypto community and what's been built so far, but also two is, uh, the accelerant that a company like you all can put onto it, uh, is exciting. I think that it's kind of a one plus one equals more than two scenario. So, uh, thank you for all the hard work and I hope to do this again in the future as you guys continue to make more progress.

• 42:13Speaker 02

  Great. Thank you.