#573 Haider Rafique on Delisting BSV and BCH

Haider Rafique is the Chief Marketing Officer at OKCoin. In this conversation, we discuss delisting BSV and BCH, rebranding a crypto exchange, defi on bitcoin, marketing’s value proposition, and the secret of OKCoin. ======================= Did you know nearly 338 million dollars worth of NFTs were sent last year? And in 2021 that number is growing faster than ever. Looking to make your first NFT? Check out NEAR’s fast, scalable, low-cost, open-source platform. Learn why NEAR is the infrastructure for innovation at near.org ======================= Cosmos is building the Internet of Blockchains, marking a new era of interoperability, scalability, and usability. The free flow of assets and data between blockchains with bridges to Ethereum and Bitcoin will unleash the potential of DeFi, NFTs, and much more. Dive into Cosmos at cosmos.network/pomp ======================= OKEx is a world-leading cryptocurrency spot and derivatives exchange that offers some of the most diverse and sophisticated trading products and crypto finance tools on the market. Trusted by millions of users globally, we believe that cryptocurrency will reshape our money and society, enabling more financial inclusion with alternative tools and methods for wealth creation.

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. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Hyder Rafik is the Chief Marketing Officer at OKCOIN. In this conversation, we discuss delisting BSV and BCH, rebranding a crypto exchange, DeFi on Bitcoin, marketing's value proposition, and the secret of OKCOIN. I really enjoyed this conversation with Hyder, and I hope you do as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First up is NEAR. NEAR is an open source platform that accelerates the development of decentralized applications overcoming high fees and slow speeds with

• 0:43Anthony Pompliano?

  its fast, scalable, low-cost, and climate-neutral blockchain protocol. This is why NEAR was recently awarded the climate-neutral product label from South Pole. One transaction on NEAR consumes about 1,300x less carbon than a similar transaction on other chains. Learn why NEAR is the infrastructure for innovation at NEAR.org today. NEAR.org. Go check it out, let me know what you think. Next up is Cosmos. Cosmos is building the internet of blockchains, marking a new era of interoperability, scalability, and usability. The free flow of assets and data between blockchains and bridges to Ethereum and Bitcoin will unleash the potential of DeFi, NFTs, and much more. You can dive into Cosmos at cosmos.network/pomp.

• 1:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Again, cosmos.network/pomp. Go check them out, building the internet of blockchains, making a new era of interoperability, scalability, and usability. Cosmos.network/pomp. Last but not least are my friends at OKX. Crypto moves fast, and many crypto-focused companies can't keep up. Crypto exchanges that cut through the noise are the ones that give you access, wherever you are in the world, to the cutting-edge projects emerging in this new asset class. If you're looking for an industry leader that gives you access to a huge variety of crypto assets, tools, and services, I'd recommend OKX. As we all know, Bitcoin and other crypto prices can be volatile. If you're riding these price waves, isn't your thing. OKX lets you earn.

• 2:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Passive income on your crypto. You can go to their portal today and access crypto or DeFi earning protocols without the network fees as well as other lending and saving opportunities. Check out the latest high yield earning options on OKX Earn. Open an account today at OKEX.com/pomp. Again, OKEX.com/pomp. All right, let's get into this episode with Hyder. I hope you enjoy this one.

• 2:36Speaker 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.

• 3:04Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Hyder here. How are you?

• 3:07Speaker 02

  I'm well, man. How you doing?

• 3:08Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm doing great. We're doing this the week of the Bitcoin conference, which is always fun. I said that you could feel the energy in Miami. You walk down the streets, you don't know if they're Bitcoiners or just people on a wannabe spring break, but people are excited.

• 3:21Speaker 02

  Or the Paul Logan Mayweather fight.

• 3:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Who do you think wins?

• 3:27Speaker 02

  You know, if Paul Logan wins, it's like Bitcoin losing to a shitcoin.

• 3:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Pretty good. All right. You work at OKCoin. You guys delisted Bitcoin SV and Bitcoin Cash earlier this year. Why did you do that? And what was kind of the thought process leading into that decision?

• 3:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it was a thought that we went through for quite a bit. We debated it and eventually we decided we were going to do something about it. I think the trigger for us was, you know, the attacks, so to speak, on Bitcoin core developers and that IP war essentially. And that got us thinking a little more about branding, how people could potentially be confused. Look, if you look at OKCoin over the last 12 months, we've had a pretty significant effort in attracting people who were on the fence about crypto. And I think we timed it well because then then came the bull run and it helped accelerate that that adoption. What happens when you bring new retail into your platform is, you know, at least corporate

• 4:36Speaker 02

  from our side internally, we feel a sense of responsibility. You know, bring in new investors, it's important for us to point them to the right things. And what we noticed with new retail was they would look at Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash and BSV and wouldn't be able to distinguish between the three. They would almost feel, and this came through in surveys and, you know, other customer service feedback, is, hey, look, there are three Bitcoin logos, so they must all be Bitcoin. And so we added them to our portfolio. And that unintentional trading, investing, buying was troubling. And we wanted to make sure we play our part in protecting that investor base. Now, naturally, when we when we started to, you know, evaluate this stuff, the debate

• 5:21Speaker 02

  internally was, do we do something from a product standpoint to differentiate? And that's a big can of worms that we weren't ready to open yet.

• 5:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, explain what you mean by just like what those could have been and why that's not a viable path.

• 5:34Speaker 02

  Could we have, you know, had a text at the bottom of those assets that said, hey, this is a fork of Bitcoin and what have you. But then the debate was, well, the branding is still pretty identical. So how do you explain that? And oftentimes, people might not read a small disclaimer. They might just go by, you know, the visual cues. So generally speaking, I think the sentiment was, how do we protect? Priorities, protect the investors. And as we figure out what what we could do to distinguish these assets from a product standpoint, let's delist them. Let's start the conversation. Because one, you know, ideal approach would be convincing the BCH BSV communities to rebrand those assets, even if they're not going to rename it, they should stop using the Bitcoin branding.

• 6:19Speaker 02

  And I know that's a pretty controversial sort of angle, but we think that's one that's really important. You know, Bitcoin is an open source ecosystem, but that doesn't mean you can start using their branding, Bitcoin branding, and start applying it on different forks.

• 6:33Anthony Pompliano?

  So to be clear here, and I think this is a very important distinction, OKCoin and the team and the product isn't taking a position necessarily on the merit of the projects. It's simply saying, hey, we have customers who trust our product. They sign up, they attach their bank accounts, they give us information, all the things that a regulated US-based exchange needs. And they're coming into our product and they're trying to buy Bitcoin, but some of them are buying something else, simply because they're confused by the naming or the branding. And so rather than be adversarial to those communities and saying, hey, you have to change

• 7:17Anthony Pompliano?

  the name or whatever, you're simply protecting the users and we'll continue to reevaluate it if something changes where you think that users won't be confused.

• 7:26Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 7:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Is that fair?

• 7:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's absolutely fair. And, you know, we got, we got great feedback from the community and of course we upset the CHB SV communities. And the message was, look, we're, we're very supportive of your ecosystems, just stop using the Bitcoin branding. Tilting the Bitcoin logo towards the left doesn't mean you have your own brand.

• 7:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Can I ask a serious question? Did you guys care that they were upset?

• 7:49Speaker 02

  No.

• 7:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 7:51Speaker 02

  I can speak for myself, I can't speak on behalf of the company, but generally speaking, no, we weren't upset because...

• 7:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Because you expected it.

• 7:58Speaker 02

  We expected, look, anything you do in crypto, you're going to have 20% people who are unhappy with what you did. So that it just comes with the territory, but generally speaking, I, I think we have to take a stance and this was one that we felt was really important in the pursuit of protecting investors.

• 8:14Anthony Pompliano?

  And what would be the parameters for potentially relisting? I don't, I, I, obviously you'd have to do it, there's a whole team that evaluates this, et cetera. But is it like a renaming, rebranding type thing and oh, hey, the assets would be up for a reevaluation of being relisted? Or is it, I liken it to Trump being banned from Twitter forever, regardless of what happens in the future, right? It sounds like not so much the, the latter, more the former of there's a reevaluation process if things change.

• 8:44Speaker 02

  You're right, there is a compliance team, there's a legal team, there's a listings team, they do the proper evaluation. But generally speaking, I think what would trigger a reevaluation of this, of these two assets is...

• 8:57Speaker 02

  A rebranding, even if they don't change the name, which is less problematic than the look and feel. If they were to update their look and feel and change the logo, so it's not a blatant copy of the Bitcoin branding, I think there would be a conversation and there would be appetite. Again, I can't speak for the entire team, but I generally think the company would be very supportive of us reevaluating that.

• 9:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. When you think about the listing kind of process for exchanges in general, you guys have actually been pretty unique, I think. Obviously, you've got the Bitcoins, the ethers, right, what I'll call kind of the blue chips of the space. You've taken the stand that we just talked about around BSV and BCH, but you've also added things like Stacks, which is, I think you were the first people in the United States to list, and it has a rabid community. It's got kind of a different element to it than some of these other assets. Like, how does that process work? I think a lot of people are like, what is the process of an asset going from, hey, somebody created this, it's working or being adopted, or it's got a community, it's actually getting onto an exchange? Is that something

• 10:04Anthony Pompliano?

  where you guys reach out to them, they reach out to you, you have mutual friends? Like, just how does that work?

• 10:09Speaker 02

  Well, in our case, you know, we did have a relationship with Munib. My previous firm, where I was working as a head of growth at Blockchain, you know, I introduced Munib to that team, and we ended up providing wallet support. You know, the Blockchain wallet started to support Stacks, earlier version of Stacks. So there was a relationship there. The general, to answer your question about listings, the way this gets triggered typically is in a number of different ways. One is, we have a dedicated listings team, and they're going out there and evaluating assets very proactively, assets and communities. Once that evaluation is done, or whether it's done through, you know, the marketing or the BD teams where we surface something up, what happens is, we have a compliance team

• 10:51Speaker 02

  and a legal team, and then there's an executive committee. And those three groups evaluate the asset in particular. The thing that, of course, at a very high level that we look for is, is it deemed a security or a utility token? Does it pass The Howie test and when those areas are checkbox, then we evaluate the rest of the, you know, the artifacts or the, you know, things that are related to any listings. Can we list it? Can we build the right sort of product experience? What is it that the community is seeking? If we're not the first to list, can we deliver some unique value in any way, shape or form? So those are the questions that that are typically asked, but we are a regulated exchange.

• 11:35Speaker 02

  We're regulated in the U. S. And in some global markets. So naturally we have to start with a compliance process and it's a very rigorous process on our on our side.

• 11:45Anthony Pompliano?

  And when you list the traditional assets, right? That's kind of table stakes at this point. What about when you go and list kind of a outlier type asset, right? An outlier just being, hey, it's not one of the top five or six assets. Is that something where you see user signups? If you do see like more engagement on social media, like what's some of the impact of those assets? Or is there just no impact at all?

• 12:09Speaker 02

  It's a it's a mixed bag. Look, every asset we list, we hope there's demand.

• 12:16Speaker 02

  Sometimes that demand is instant. Sometimes as a platform, we have to, we have to create discoverability. What I mean by that is educating our existing base that there's an asset. This is a high quality asset and why do we think that? Of course, anything we say and do, you know, there's a there's a red tape around. It's not investment advice. All we can do is educate people and help them discover it and let them make that investment choice or that trading choice. So it's it's a mixed bag with some assets. We've seen a lot of growth with the other assets. You know, we haven't seen the velocity that we we had anticipated. But generally speaking, overall, you do see a spike in new users.

• 12:57Speaker 02

  Can actually, especially in our case, it also depends on where your firm is and what part of evolution you you're at. But for us, arguably, we've been around for a while, but in the U. S. And Western markets, we are still a new brand. And we're making our end road. So by by listing new assets, we attract these communities. And they are then able to come into the OK coin ecosystem and and experience the product. And the hope is always like we delight them from the from the rest of the experiences and they stay.

• 13:28Anthony Pompliano?

  This is like the main topic I want to touch about today, which is when you're building a business, especially an exchange business that has retail users, there's this element of trust between the user and a centralized platform. There's a couple of different ways you can build that trust, right? One is you can go get a bunch of regulatory approvals and just, hey, if it's regulated, then there has to be some level of adherence to rules and kind of risk management and all that. You guys have that, as do many exchanges that are based in the United States. But there's also marketing and product. And I think that there's this element of you could have great marketing, but a horrible product. All hype, no substance.

• 14:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Not a great situation to be in. You could have a great product, no marketing, meaning all substance, no hype. You'll build a business, right? It'll take a really long time because no one knows about you. And so what you literally are doing is you're only dependent on word of mouth. And to get that flywheel started takes a long time. The best businesses have great marketing and great product, right? They marry the best of those two worlds. How do you think about that balance of as you're building out the business? Is it marketing and then that drives product? Does the product drive the marketing? Is there maybe not as much of a connection between one driving the other and they're two distinct and separate efforts? Like just what's the relationship there?

• 14:54Anthony Pompliano?

  And how do you see you guys being successful, you know, kind of rolling out those two different bodies at work?

• 15:00Speaker 02

  So it's, it's an interesting question because I've had so many different experiences. There have been times where, you know, the marketing is leading sort of the charge where other times there's, there's a stronger product. And an ideal state is that they're both at the same time, but it doesn't, it's not usually the starting point. The starting point is like there's an imbalance. In the case of OKCoin, if I reflect back on last year, I think

• 15:27Speaker 02

  I can safely say that marketing led and pushed our product into a certain place. And then now, if you look at the last six months within, you know, 2021, product is getting ahead. So, marketing needs to catch up. And if you look at us last year, we were just an advanced trading platform. Sort of you can come in and place, you know, different order types on and so forth. And you need charting and what have you. Now, if you open the new OKCOIN app, it's a very simplified experience. It's for any novice who is coming into crypto for the first time. You can go from zero to having a crypto portfolio very quickly. So during last year, when we didn't have that product, marketing had to work harder.

• 16:11Speaker 02

  And it had to work harder in building the right partnerships. We did work with unstoppable domains, stacks, AVAX, and so forth. And now I think we're, you know, we're getting to a place where there is, the balance is, you know, we might be able to achieve a good balance. And the product in many ways is ahead. Now, we have the first decentralized staking product any exchange or any platform has. What I mean by that is you come to OKCOIN and you can go into these DeFi protocols through our ecosystem. And one thing that we make that is super appealing to new investors is we remove all the gas fees and fees related to it. So if you do it on a DEX or what have you, you're, you know, exposing yourself to high fees. We removed that. We realized that's not a great experience.

• 16:56Speaker 02

  So in those instances, the product is ahead. And when I look at the marketing side, the job is not done yet. We have to do better storytelling. We have to do better lifecycle marketing. So people understand that the next part of their journey perhaps is staking. And what is the value there?

• 17:14Anthony Pompliano?

  When you think about the product, one of the things I know you guys did, and you mentioned a little bit, is the unstoppable domains partnership. My understanding of this is that you essentially took unstoppable domains, the ability to have crypto sent to this human readable domain, and now support it on the exchange. So if I want to send a Bitcoin to somebody who has an OKCOIN account and wallet, I don't have to type in the Bitcoin address. I can instead send it to hider.crypto, for example, right?

• 17:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Is that something that it's like, oh, this is just a great improvement of the user experience for our users? And that's why we go do it? Is there some other driver or evaluation process? Like, to me, that's like so forward thinking to say like, hey, we probably should stop using these, you know, kind of random strings of letters and numbers. It's not a great experience. I today still, you know, your heart starts beating a little bit faster. I really hope I'm sending it to the right address. But just like www dot, you know, whatever you start to solve that. It's like, how does that happen?

• 18:22Speaker 02

  So with Unstoppable, we started with the utility, just like you described it. We knew that something had to be done on our platform, at least in terms of creating more interoperability, but making it easier for people to move crypto around. So if you're onboarding a friend who hasn't been in crypto yet, and the experience, you know, first off, you're convincing them that crypto is the next big thing. This is a new future of finance and what have you. And then you get to the wallet addresses and you're showing this archaic way of sending and receiving. So how do you convince people truly that this is the next innovation? And that didn't feel right. And what Unstoppable is doing is great with human readable addresses.

• 19:02Speaker 02

  We felt we should be one of the first exchanges to integrate this so that people can move crypto around freely. And with the hope that you're going to invite a bunch of other friends and it'll be easier for you to get them there. Now, of course, somebody has to go to unstoppable domains and buy a domain. But I think they've made it pretty easy to do so. And I think it's a great long-term investment because you're basically securing your digital identity, so to speak, or real estate. Because as you know, you can use it for sending, receiving, but you can also publish content on them. And it's a fully decentralized, you know, domain naming system. So we start with utility.

• 19:44Speaker 02

  But the other piece to this, when I spoke about interoperability is, you know, Unstoppable is supported by 40 plus wallets.

• 19:53Speaker 02

  As a platform, why wouldn't we integrate unstoppable domains? So people who have those wallet accounts, they can now go in and out of our platform very easily and do their trading, do their investing, staking, so on and so forth, and bring their crypto back to their, you know, their preferred wallet. And that in itself was a, was a no brainer for us.

• 20:13Anthony Pompliano?

  How do you think about the Paypals, the Robinhoods of the world, not allowing people to withdraw versus it almost sounds like you guys open it up. You say, hey, look, we want you to be able to withdraw, to go into staking, to do all these various things, and it's more of like an open system. Is that an intentional thing or is that just something that kind of happened?

• 20:33Speaker 02

  I couldn't speak for PayPal. Before I give you a response there, I'm still not, you know, sure why PayPal has BCH listed. And they didn't go after this problem because I, I feel like, you know, they have a bigger responsibility to protect retail because largely speaking, they, they just have a much bigger customer base. But in the case of PayPal and Robinhood, one reason could be they don't have proper wallet support on their platforms yet. I know I've heard or read that Robinhood is working on their, their wallet product. I don't know what PayPal is going to do in that context. You can't expect these, these traditional finance companies to create wall gardens. It's, you know, it's something that, that we've seen with other firms.

• 21:17Speaker 02

  So crypto in its nature needs to be more open. We talk a lot internally about interoperability. Let's be honest, when you think about equities or stocks, you probably have a TD Ameritrade account, but you also have a Fidelity account. And you probably also have a Charles Schwab account as an investor because, you know, you might have your 401k in one through your employer. You might be buying stocks on another and you might be doing something else on the third one. Same is true with crypto. You don't, we don't, we shouldn't expect the world that they're going to have one or two products that they own on their phone or, or their laptop. You know, it's, it's our right to have multiple products. And if this is the case, one of the key value propositions for crypto is creating this interoperability.

• 22:02Speaker 02

  Where you and I can transact with each other regardless of where we are and there's no bank involved. Well, if that's true, then we should also think about embracing interoperability in other ways between different platforms. Because naturally, people are going to want to move, uh, move value around. And I think we as platforms, uh, compared to traditional finance, have this responsibility to drive that. So it's easier, it's faster, it's cheaper. If I had to transfer money out of fidelity, put it in charge from, it's a process and there's fees related to that.

• 22:35Anthony Pompliano?

  One of the things that a lot of those Charles Schwabs, Fidelities of the world have done a fantastic job with is research, education, uh, just content in general. I know that you guys have started to spend more time on how do you actually educate the folks who come in, right? Um, I almost think of it as, as they come in on, uh, a true retail, uh, I'll say amateur, not necessarily, uh, skills, right? But more so just in their understanding, they're new to, uh, this industry, they're new to the assets. And so, uh, it seems like you guys feel like there's a huge advantage to being able to educate them on what the assets are, what the value propositions are, what the risks are. And then the things that they can do with those assets, whether it's staking or something else.

• 23:15Anthony Pompliano?

  So maybe talk a little bit just about like the education and how much of that comes from you guys, uh, as a platform versus from, you know, other things that they may consume.

• 23:24Speaker 02

  So, so it's a great question in a sense, because I think about this a lot.

• 23:31Speaker 02

  In crypto, largely speaking, we think about creating content that feeds the crypto natives. There's a lot for us to learn from traditional finance. What I mean by that is there are signals and things that investors on the equity side and stocks consume that works for us. For example, we have analyst ratings for every stock out there. And yeah, we don't have the same rhythm, we don't have quarterly earnings reports, so on and so forth, but. I think there's this product missing where you know, you can, you can look at the, maybe there's like 28 analysts out there, right? And they're, they're evaluating most of these cryptos and the markets. And based on that, they're putting a, a price target, or they're

• 24:14Speaker 02

  putting a buy sell signal on them. Into the block started to do that. I know they were doing it with Bitcoin and some of the top assets, and that was great. And I, you know, I know they have, they have an open API and other platforms can use them. But I think there is a lot in traditional finance we should look at and try and replicate because it, it works. Even the nomenclature, we don't need to create new language. The language is already there. The instruments are the same. They're not that different. So when we think about education, we're really looking at traditional finance and saying, hey, not everything is bad there. There's a lot of goodness there. Let's, let's grab that goodness

• 24:54Speaker 02

  and bring it in. So it's easier to, to, you know, quote unquote, onboard the crypto curious to the platform. So that's how we think about education. We're trying to have a very deliberate effort to move away from creating content that is for crypto natives only. So.

• 25:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Trying to basically speak to somebody in the language that they understand without having to have kind of prior knowledge is really important.

• 25:18Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 25:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. You recently rebranded as well. Is that somewhat related as well in terms of trying to kind of have a look and feel and, and level of trust that they would expect from like a traditional finance consumer application? Did somebody just not like the logo? Or like, what, what was kind of the thought process behind the rebrand? And then like, what impact have you seen from that so far?

• 25:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, look, I, I come from a traditional marketing background. I started my career at, on Madison Avenue, working for a bunch of old school ad agencies. And the, the bigger opportunity I see in crypto is that the marketing muscle is not fully built yet. We're, we're improving, but we're not there yet where consumer finances are one of, some of the, you know, larger consumer brands are. So when it comes to a rebrand, what we felt was missing in the previous one was it served as a logo.

• 26:10Speaker 02

  But we weren't confident it really served as our identity. And we were also not confident that it served this new identity we had formed over the last 12 months, where we were doing things differently as part of us now being headquartered in San Francisco. So it was, you know, we felt that we needed to change. But that change didn't need to be just because we are doing something different. It was more about what is our intention? And there was an intention missing in the previous brand. And we wanted to bring some intention into this new brand. That was reason number one. Reason number two is finance doesn't need to be boring. We can have fun with it.

• 26:51Speaker 02

  There are other brands that are having a lot of fun with it, and we wanted to participate in that. When we think about content creation and so on and so forth, there's an opportunity for us to create stuff that's just entertaining. And we wanted to introduce a platform, a brand platform, that enables us, that gives us a permission to start doing that. So if you look at, you know, our new webpage and you look at some of the design stuff, like if we scroll down, you know, we've got, we've got stuff that's just hopefully more pleasing to the eye. It's also more risky, where you'll notice we're not using any finance blue. That was very deliberate. So I think it's, it's our whole goal right now with the rebrand is to give it intention,

• 27:33Speaker 02

  give it a reason for why we're rebranding and then build on that.

• 27:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Why does every finance company use blue?

• 27:40Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 27:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Finance blue, you said that like it was like New York Giants blue. Like it's just like everyone knows what it is when they hear it.

• 27:46Speaker 02

  Look, I didn't work in finance for, you know, historically, but there was a time where I started asking that question and a few people started mentioning the term finance blue. And then I started exploring and I realized, wow, there are a bunch of like big, large finance firms that are, that are blue. Even in crypto, a lot of the legacy firms are still using blue in their color palette. And I, the notion behind having the blue in finance is that it gives you a sense of calmness and trust and so on and so forth. But I think human beings have evolved. I think we can get away with more, being more risky or being a little different.

• 28:24Anthony Pompliano?

  It's kind of like in the supermarket, they say that the reason why the fruit and produce is up front is when you walk in, you see all the bright colors and supposedly like makes you hungry or something.

• 28:33Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 28:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Really?

• 28:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:34Anthony Pompliano?

  That's wild.

• 28:35Speaker 02

  I, I fall in that trap every time.

• 28:39Anthony Pompliano?

  They also say what don't go shopping when when you're hungry, right? Because you end up buying way more.

• 28:43Speaker 02

  Way more that you're not going to eat.

• 28:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's so funny. What do you like? Where do you guys go from here? Right? So you've kind of built a product that I think is pretty compelling. I think that you've got a marketing team now that seems to really understand, hey, we should talk to people in a unique way. We should stand for something, right? Not because it's a marketing exercise, but because we actually believe this stuff. And it's okay to state what we believe. But when you have the product and the marketing, like, what's next?

• 29:13Speaker 02

  Meet the customer where they are. That's a really important piece. So for example, traditionally speaking, when we think about customer service, we think, okay, well, most of your inquiries are going to come from the help desk or, you know, systems that you've built. And what you what we all can probably agree on is that's often not the case all the time. When we have problems with any product, the first thing we probably do is go to our preferred social media platform and we complain there. So naturally, when we think about our our experience, because in marketing, we think about experiences, we're not thinking about, hey, just messaging. It's an overall end to end experience. And in that sense, I think we're really looking at our customer service

• 29:56Speaker 02

  and how we can meet the customer where they are and make sure that they get a response from us. We're in the business of money. We help people choose investments, get access to markets. That comes with a fundamental responsibility that you're gonna you're gonna build trust with your investor base and your community, and you're going to serve them well. And so there's a big focus right now at the company to be very community driven, be very customer obsessed and meet them where they are. And the second part of meeting them where they are is learning and observing on things that they are looking for that we're missing today. Could it be a product feature? Could it be a new asset?

• 30:39Speaker 02

  That could be, you know, a way of doing something within our platform. So. Well, we're, as part of that, what we're doing is listening. There are rigorous exercises happening across different services where we gather this data. There's a research arm at the company that's evaluating some of these, these signals. And that feedback makes it back into the rest of the organization and, you know, we, we take action.

• 31:05Anthony Pompliano?

  What would you say the biggest thing that the users want you guys to do that you haven't done yet is? Is there like something that you're just like, we're working on it, but like, we, we, we hear you?

• 31:14Speaker 02

  Look, the, the new app was, was a big, big requirement. I think a lot of customers were hoping that we would simplify that experience. Payment rails was another one. If you look at the product last year, we didn't have ACH, which is your ability to just connect your bank account using your username, password of your banking, banking account essentially. There were other payment gateways that we introduced, like Apple Pay and so on and so forth. So we've met that side of the demand. The second part to that was, hey, can you simplify the experience? Cause we're not, a lot of the customers we were attracting were just confused between the different order types and what have you. So the new interface is much simpler.

• 31:58Speaker 02

  It's really designed, it's uncomfortably simple and the job is not done. I think we need to even further simplify it. But that was the second big demanded product. So we've delivered on that and I think you'll see iterations over the next 30 days. Now, as soon as we launched the new app, most customers were asking for staking support within the new app. So good.

• 32:21Anthony Pompliano?

  They want to make money right away.

• 32:23Speaker 02

  They want to make money. And, and I think we, we should have that launch pretty soon. So that's one that we're excited about. And we're also thinking about other experiences beyond just what the customers are asking. Oftentimes, I think we both can agree, some of the really sticky products.

• 32:43Speaker 02

  Don't often get incubated from customer requests. In fact, most customers don't know what they want until they see it, arguably. So there is work that we're doing to distinguish our platform such that there is like core utility that just differentiates us. When you come to us, we're not like every other platform. You're not just coming to us because of one of our biggest value propositions, which is fees. A lot of customers come to us because they're placing orders and they're like, look, you guys are, your fees are very appealing. So beyond that, there is stuff that we're working on to entertain people, to have, let them have fun when they come, enter into crypto markets and get introduced through these concepts.

• 33:28Speaker 02

  Which goes back to, you know, meet the customer where they are. A lot of the new investors are younger folks and they want certain gamification in the platform and such, and they want to be able to talk about this stuff with each other. So yeah, there's, there's stuff beyond customer feedback that we're excited about.

• 33:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Makes a ton of sense. One of the things I think really caught my attention early on with you guys was you've been funding Bitcoin developers. Talk a little bit about that effort and like, where did that idea come from and then how's that been going?

• 33:58Speaker 02

  So with Bitcoin core development, this, this effort started before I joined OKCOIN last year. I think I joined somewhere in March. This is an effort that's really close to our CEO and there's another person on our team who's, who's driving this on a day-to-day basis. There wasn't any commercial intent behind why we did this. What excited me about this effort and part of the reason why I decided to join OKCOIN is there's a lot of work that happens, whether investment or product or what have you, that, that actually doesn't have a commercial intent. It's not about revenue, it's not about fees, it's about doing the right thing. So our belief internally that, that is pretty clear to everyone is

• 34:43Speaker 02

  we believe that Bitcoin serves as the foundational layer to all crypto markets. When there's volatility in Bitcoin markets, there's volatility elsewhere in all, all the rest of the alts. So it it it comes with that that, you know, as a platform, it comes with a sense of responsibility that we must fund the Bitcoin core developers because they're doing great work. They're essentially, you know, developing these markets and maturing them over time. So somebody's got to fund them. And as a platform, we feel that corporate obligation. We feel that it's our sense, it's our character. And and when we deploy some of this investment, we are not seeking any, you know, we're not seeking any commercial intent.

• 35:27Speaker 02

  There is none. And what we've really liked about our dev grants is the the idea that, you know, there was one developer we funded before that, she was funded by Bitmex, and now she was recently, for this year, funded by Gemini, which is a great sign, right? Like, we're all working together to to support these these great developers. Amity is her name, which which I think is really authentic and true to true to our character.

• 35:55Anthony Pompliano?

  How do you pick who to fund?

• 35:59Speaker 02

  It's a pretty rigorous process. I'm probably not the best person to answer that. You know, Hong, our CEO, is speaking at the Bitcoin conference, and she's talking about this in length on a panel. So I think it's, you know, you'll get more substance there than than my articulation.

• 36:13Anthony Pompliano?

  I have no clue how it's done, so you already know more than I do.

• 36:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, look, generally speaking, we look for really high caliber, really promising developers who are who demonstrated some some good intent. And there's an evaluation process. We look at their their backgrounds and such, and you'll get to hear more from Hong on Saturday if you if you tune in. But yeah, there's there's a team behind this. It's not just it's not just done.

• 36:39Anthony Pompliano?

  It's not just the Twitter account, somebody just DMing and saying, hey, I need funding.

• 36:43Speaker 02

  No, there's like a full process. We have checkpoints with these developers. We make sure they have what they need. Is there anything we can do to make them successful, so on and so forth? And we are also very open, and this is one of the things I really like about dev grants is it's one of the areas within our product or within our company where there is more interoperability. So others in in, you know, our ecosystem in crypto will collaborate. They'll reach out and there's sort of like a really friendly engagement there, which which is really great.

• 37:15Anthony Pompliano?

  What are you personally excited about kind of the rest of 2021?

• 37:19Speaker 02

  Gosh, so much. I think for us, I'll speak to it, bless you, as a marketer.

• 37:30Speaker 02

  Crypto and the crypto industry at large are at this point where I think we really need to up our storytelling. And it's easier said than done. I can sit here and say that, but executing on that is very challenging. And you really takes a lot of soul searching, but it also takes a lot of human investment and capital investment. But we owe it to ourselves at this point to do it and make those investments. There are a lot of firms that are doing great work on this side, and I am hoping that the entire industry will up-level itself.

• 38:04Speaker 02

  But what I'm most excited about is our ability to take this brand and really do a lot of creative stuff with it. A lot of creative storytelling and meet these customers where they are culturally speaking. So finding artists, finding other collaborators we can collaborate, that doesn't seem as obvious at the first glance. But as you go through it, you realize, okay, that, you know, there was a purpose and there was an intent behind this thing. So my biggest point of excitement is what the company does with the permission we have, the team, the incredible team we've been able to build, and the budgets we have to deploy some of the best storytelling. Personally, my, you know, my goal, whether it's us, I hope it's us, or it's another crypto firm.

• 38:49Speaker 02

  Since I got into crypto, one of the observations I had was, gosh, there are these phenomenal companies and products and innovation. And none of them, we get awards, but we don't get any marketing awards. So, you know, how do we become one of those brands? There's this huge marketing event that happens at Cannes. And there's no crypto company being nominated for those awards. And personally, I'd like Farokey Coin to be that company first. It would be amazing. It would be such an honor and accomplishment if we were to be, if we were to win any of those awards, whether it's a bronze, silver, or- Gold. We'd love to bring one home, maybe this year.

• 39:33Speaker 02

  But even if it weren't us, my hope is that someone in the crypto industry will do that because it will open us up into a new world. A lot of these consumer companies show up there and I think we have the opportunity to do that. It's the same thing that probably Nike asked at some point. How do we stop selling shoes? You know, how do we, how do we influence culture? How do we inspire people? It's the same thing I said in one of my blogs, which is how do you teach people?

• 40:03Speaker 02

  You know, how do you tell a company to not sell dog food, but you teach them to love, to, to teach humans to love dogs? Well, what's that in our, in our particular context? How do we show people the future of financial empowerment? How can they generate wealth for themselves entering these crypto markets? And, and I think that's the biggest, you know, exciting piece ahead of us is unlocking that story, regardless of where it comes from.

• 40:30Anthony Pompliano?

  When you think about that, what is the impact if that story starts to be the dominating narrative versus price? Energy, FUD, Elon, you know, you can go down the line of all the things that dominate headlines. Is that the most important message to kind of have dominate the headline?

• 40:49Speaker 02

  I don't know, but it has to be a message that's better than what we have right now. Because right now it's really polarizing in some ways. It's, it's not as mature as it needs to be or deserves to be for, for people to start trusting it. You know, we came, came out of the 2017 hype or run up. And then things fizzled for a little bit and there was a lot of skepticism and now we've kind of gone through that again. And I think we all have to be careful because what we do, what we support, what we put out there in the world reflects not just on us, but it reflects on the entire industry. It goes back to the delisting of BCH and BSV for branding reasons.

• 41:30Speaker 02

  If we don't do it, if one of us in the crypto industry doesn't do it, then what's the perception we're creating? If someone new comes in and they're like, oh, you guys all are, are excited about Bitcoin as a decentralized currency. But yet you have these three different Bitcoins there. And how do you, how do you build trust on that? So I think there's a sense of responsibility we should all have in, in making sure we, we keep some checks and balances.

• 41:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Before I wrap up, I ask everyone the same three questions. First is, what is the most important book that you've ever read?

• 42:03Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 42:06Speaker 02

  You know, I usually don't say this, but The Art of War was probably the-

• 42:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Ah, Zoo!

• 42:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Why that one?

• 42:12Speaker 02

  I don't know. I think it's, there's, there's a lot about human behavior and, and relationships in there that, that I, I find fascinating. I've read it a few times and every time I reread it, it fascinates me even more.

• 42:27Speaker 02

  So that's, I think that's one. I think to, to develop relationships, to, to manage relationships and, and to live life, I think it's an important book. It's a good read to have from time to time.

• 42:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Fantastic book. Yeah. Uh, second question is your sleep schedule. Comes from our friends at Eight Sleep. So I sleep not at all. Now I sleep a lot.

• 42:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, they gave me this thermo-regulated bed, uh, that I've been sleeping on and, uh, it's a life changer. Like on my full-on convert of sleep, what's your sleep schedule like?

• 42:58Speaker 02

  So that thermo bed that you have, can I get it for my two-year-old?

• 43:04Speaker 02

  Cause, uh-

• 43:05Anthony Pompliano?

  You can buy a big one and have the two-year-old lay on it.

• 43:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. Look, to answer your question, I think, um,

• 43:13Speaker 02

  it's really important to manage your sleep. Really, really important. Uh, you know, managing your energy, I think is really important and it's easier said than done. I'm, I'm really conscious of it these days and I'm trying to improve it. Uh, of course with a two-year-old at home, it's, it's a bit challenging, but that's no excuse either. I think, I think we can all be disciplined about it. And what that ends up doing is your hap- your happiness level is up, your creativity is, is up, your relationships are better, your ability to do your best work is, is much well-positioned. So I think sleep is, uh, sleep is really important. So is working out, meditation and all that good stuff and getting no screen time for, uh, during your days.

• 43:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. The, the no-screen time is, uh, is a hard one for me.

• 43:56Speaker 02

  It is.

• 43:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, third question, you get asked me when to finish up, is aliens. Are you a believer or a non-believer?

• 44:04Speaker 02

  Absolutely a believer.

• 44:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Why?

• 44:06Speaker 02

  Well, look, I think the recent evidence is too coincidental. I think it's coming from different sources. You know, President Obama said some stuff about it a few years ago. You know, has seen, watching some interview from a person who served in the Navy. So it's too coincidental now that people are coming out with the same sort of narrative or observations or sightings. What is unclear is the incidents that are being reported, are those actual aliens? That we don't know, but I do believe in the idea that there's probably some other species.

• 44:48Speaker 02

  I think it's naive for us to think that it's such a large universe and we're the only species.

• 44:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Like UFOs and aliens together isn't necessarily how it works, right? You can have an unidentified object that flies and it not be an alien.

• 45:05Speaker 02

  That's right, yeah. And an alien also doesn't have to be.

• 45:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Little green men.

• 45:09Speaker 02

  Or like, you know, two-handed or two-legged, you know, human-like creature. It can be an insect, for all we know. And what would be fascinating is an insect that's like way smarter than us.

• 45:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Cephalopod, you know what that is? It's like a thing that lives in the ocean. They took an intelligence test and it's the first animal in the ocean, I think, that passed the intelligence test that they give to like kids. Like, alright, I'm out. Alright, you can ask me one question to finish up. What you got for me?

• 45:43Speaker 02

  Hmm. What did you think about OKCoin and our BCH BSV listing? What was your view when you saw us doing that? I'd be curious to hear what your perception was.

• 45:58Anthony Pompliano?

  I think there's a lot of people who agree it's confusing. I think there's a lot of people who also for either economic or social reasons and kind of social consensus and political correctness, don't do anything about it. I don't think that it is unfair of you to say, hey, our customers are getting confused, therefore we're going to take action. People will debate on a whole spectrum of like, here's all the things you could have done, like where's the right decision, but they're not the people making the decision, right? They're not the people who are kind of like in the game, right? I liken that to like armchair quarterback, right? Monday morning quarterback. It's really easy to say, ah, shouldn't have done the ball to that wide receiver. Look at the other

• 46:41Anthony Pompliano?

  one. He was wide open, idiot. Yeah. Well, okay, you had, you play the game with, you know, all these people running at you full speed, etc. And so I think that ultimately, my guess is more people will follow. My guess is that it puts forward a very interesting conversation, one where I don't have an opinion in terms of open source and like IP and like something that's not even a crypto thing, right? It's just like, what is the rights and best practices and stuff around open source IP and like, can people use it? Can they not? I don't know. There's people way smarter than me that can figure all that out and probably already have. But then it also brings up this thing in the crypto industry

• 47:21Anthony Pompliano?

  just around like, what do we as an industry, you know, kind of accept and think is right? And what do we think is not right? And that seems to be like, you know, people in the crypto industry have much more say than just like open source IP stuff. And then ultimately, I think it's like, if your goal is to be very clear with your customer base and say, this is what we stand for. It's pretty damn clear what you stand for, right? Like it's one of those things where, and I've told you this before, when people ask me, you know, about, okay, clients, the first thing I tell them. And there's some people who are like, that's ridiculous. I can't believe they do that. But majority of people are like, oh, damn, okay. Right? And it resonates with them. And so it's like anything in life. If

• 48:05Anthony Pompliano?

  you stand for something, you're going to piss somebody off. You're going to annoy somebody, whatever.

• 48:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Suck it up, get over it, move on, right? And I think that this is like a perfect example of just like, yeah, of course people are going to be upset. But the people who are upset are a much smaller group of people than the people who actually like it. And so you gotta kind of ignore the downside and look at, you know, the, who you're serving, right? What is your ultimate goal? What are you optimizing for? And I think that you guys have been pretty clear about what you're optimizing for. And that's okay. There's plenty of other places you want to go do that? Go, you know, go and trade those assets somewhere else.

• 48:36Speaker 02

  That's right. Well, great. That's great to hear. You're supportive.

• 48:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Where, where can we send people to find you on the internet or more about OKCOIN?

• 48:44Speaker 02

  Uh, so more about OKCOIN, pretty simple. We have a new app. You can go to the app store and, and search for it. Uh, one of the unique things about the app is you can toggle between advanced and basic mode within one app. Shameless plug, uh, of course, OKCOIN.com. And then you can find me on Twitter, Haider SF is my, is my Twitter handle. Pretty easy to find me.

• 49:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome, man. Well, listen, thank you so much for doing this. We'll get it in the future.

• 49:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, thank you.