Kris Marszalek, Co-Founder & CEO of Crypto.com: Crypto Compares Are Prepping For The Next Bull Run

Kris Marszalek is the Co-Founder & CEO of Crypto.com. In this conversation, Kris and Anthony Pompliano discuss the obstacles to mass-adoption in crypto, how companies are currently expanding product lines in anticipation of the next bull market, why Crypto.com recently launched a new exchange, and what it has been like living in Hong Kong recently given Kris' 15+ year history in the city. BLOCKFI-----BlockFi allows you to keep your crypto, put it up as collateral, and receive a USD loan funded directly to your bank account. They do loans ranging from $2,000 to $10,000,000, and they're perfect for helping you reach your financial goals of all sizes. Visit BlockFi.com/Pomp to learn more about putting your crypto to work without having to sell it. CRYPTO. COM-----Crypto.com is a pioneering payment and cryptocurrency platform that seeks to accelerate the world's transition to cryptocurrency. With the vision of "cryptocurrency in every wallet", the Crypto.com App offers a full range of financial products with competitive pricing, well designed UX and high security. It is the best place to buy, sell and pay with crypto. COINMINE-----The Coinmine One is like an Xbox that turns your electricity into Bitcoin. You just plug it in, connect to wifi, and tap on the crypto you want. It’s so easy anyone can do it. Everything is controlled from the Coinmine mobile app and the Coinmine keeps getting better with over the air updates that add new coins, features and services to your Coinmine. Visit coinmine.com/pomp to get a Coinmine and earn crypto for powering a new world. ETORO-----This episode of Off the Chain is sponsored by eToro, the smartest crypto trading platform, and one of the largest in the world. Join 11 million other traders and create an account at etoro.com and build your crypto portfolio the smart way.

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

• 0:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Whoa. Before we get started, I want to go over the four sponsors for this episode who make all this possible. They're fantastic, so go show them some love. The first is the best URL in the industry, crypto.com. They're a crypto platform with one goal: driving mass adoption. That's why we're all here, right? To get every human on earth a digital wallet and to get them using digital currencies. Crypto.com is helping people do that through buying, earning, lending, and a new card payment. Everything you could want is at crypto.com. They've been longtime supporters of Off the Chain and recently announced a new exchange, so go help them out, download their app from the App Store, or visit crypto.com and tell them POM sent you. There's nothing better in the world than a company helping to drive global adoption of this new technology.

• 0:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Another part of global adoption is making sure that we secure the various blockchains with computing power. CoinMine has built the best consumer experience in mining, hands down, no competition. If you want to help secure the blockchain and get started in mining, you can go to coinmine.com/pom, order a CoinMine, it'll arrive at your door, and you simply take it out of the box, plug it in, and connect to your wifi. You'll be mining your favorite crypto in five minutes or less. It is honestly magical. I have one running right now here in the office, and it's super quiet, it's got no heat, and every person that comes in the office asks, "What is that?" Every single person asks. It's a CoinMine. The best part to me is that the CoinMine comes with a mobile app that's super slick, and the company continues to push over-the-air updates to the device

• 1:25Anthony Pompliano?

  that add functionality, add tokens that can be mined, or increase the efficiency of the device. Similar to how Tesla does car software updates over the air, CoinMine is sending these passively to thousands of CoinMines around the world on a periodic basis. Pretty damn cool. When Farboot and the team pitched me on the idea of an Xbox or PlayStation-like box that could mine cryptocurrency in your home, I was immediately sold. I invested in the business, have a device personally, and keep telling people to go to coinmine.com/pom so they can save a lot of time if they want to get started mining today. CoinMine has a partnership with our third sponsor for this episode, BlockFi. BlockFi is one of my favorite companies in crypto because they allow users to deposit their assets in a deposit account and immediately start earning interest.

• 2:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Think about it, if you keep your digital assets on an exchange or in cold storage, you aren't benefiting from any yield on the asset. With BlockFi, they allow you to deposit crypto and then get paid interest on a monthly basis in crypto. Deposit Bitcoin and want to get your interest payment in ETH? You can do it. Deposit Bitcoin and want to get your interest payment in Bitcoin? You can do it. The rates at BlockFi are currently some of the best in the industry. You can earn 6% interest on Bitcoin and you can earn up to 8.6% APY on GUSD deposits. I'm an investor in the company and think BlockFi is building really important and compelling infrastructure. So go check them out at blockfi.com/pomp. Again, that's blockfi.com/pomp. And that brings us to the last advertiser of the episode, eToro.

• 2:51Anthony Pompliano?

  These guys have absolutely crushed it over the years. Their founder, Yoni, was one of the original Bitcoin OGs and has been ahead of almost every trend in crypto. He built eToro to help people buy, sell, and trade cryptocurrencies. But he added a few twists: social trading, copy trading, and virtual trading accounts. Social trading is a feature where every asset available on the platform has its own separate social feed where people talk about the asset, share trading ideas and analysis, and even include various charts or graphs. Virtual trading accounts is targeted at beginners. If you're just starting out and want to try trading with play money, eToro will give you a virtual account with $100,000 in it to test, learn, and get comfortable. And so, then that brings us to copy trading, which is by far the coolest feature. This allows you, as a user, to select any other user's portfolio to copy.

• 3:36Anthony Pompliano?

  If you see someone on the platform you like, you can set your account to mimic their trades. They buy Bitcoin with 5% of their portfolio? Your portfolio buys 5% Bitcoin. They sell 50% of their Ether position? Your portfolio does the same thing automatically. Copy trading is awesome, so go join the 10-plus million other traders on eToro and start trading all the most popular cryptocurrencies today. They're one of the largest companies in the space and you can get started by going to etoro.com. Again, that is etoro.com, where the entire team is ready to get you started in just a few clicks. And don't forget, go subscribe to the Off the Chain daily newsletter. You can go to offthechain.substack.com. I write a letter of news, analysis, and opinion every morning that goes out to more than 40,000 investors. See you there.

• 4:22Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to Off the Chain, simply the best podcast in crypto. Let's kick this thing off.

• 4:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Chris Marszalek is the co-founder and CEO of Crypto.com. In this conversation, we discuss the obstacles to mass adoption in crypto, how companies are currently expanding product lines in anticipation of the next bull market, why Crypto.com recently launched a new exchange, and what it has been like living in Hong Kong recently, given Chris's 15-plus-year history in the city. I really enjoyed this conversation, and I hope you do as well.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 5:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Alright guys, bang, bang. I've got Chris here who's calling in from Hong Kong, so thanks so much for taking the time to do this.

• 5:32Speaker 02

  Thanks for having me.

• 5:34Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. And so you obviously had a life before Bitcoin and crypto. Maybe let's start with kind of growing up in Poland, what that experience was like.

• 5:45Speaker 02

  Oh, that was quite fun. I don't want to bore you too much with my childhood days, but it was a different country in the 80s still, before we switched to democracy. It was an interesting upbringing and certainly lets you appreciate all that you can enjoy right now in the free world. But I'm just a company builder. I've been building companies my entire life. This is Crypto.com, it's my fourth startup.

• 6:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And as you started thinking more about Bitcoin and crypto, like what was the first moment that you saw digital currencies and kind of got excited? Like what kind of grabbed your attention?

• 6:28Speaker 02

  The first time I looked at Bitcoin was over Christmas 2013. So I just sold my e-commerce startup at that time for around 20 million. I was thinking, what should I do next? And the BTC price was going crazy at the time, so I looked into it.

• 6:50Speaker 02

  But anyway, we all got goxed, basically, right, soon after.

• 6:56Speaker 02

  So I kind of forgot about crypto. And the thing that brought it back for me was the DAO hack in mid 2016. So I read an article in The Wire about it, and I was like, $150 million on something like this. I mean, isn't this thing supposed to be dead? I mean, that's where I was left off, right? Right after the Mt. Gox, it seemed that crypto would never be able to recover after that. And here we are. So I looked at it, and at that time, I was just at the very

• 7:32Speaker 02

  early days of our business. And we looked at entrance into getting distribution as a fintech startup through a debit card with like perfect exchange rates. Kind of like, you know, reinvented banking. And we combined it with crypto to turbocharge the challenger bank offering. And now it's been over three years, and the thing came together quite nicely.

• 8:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and so let's talk a little bit about kind of the challenger bank situation, right? Because I think what most people have seen, at least in the Western world for sure, is we've got the legacy banking system that are not very technology-enabled, is probably a nice way to put it. But in every other aspect of our lives, we've seen industries that have been updated by the technology. So whether that's user experience, that's functionality, et cetera. And now we're seeing this kind of like assault on the banking industry by technologists. And so that's coming from the crypto world, but it's also coming from more kind of fintech, right? So things that don't necessarily involve crypto or blockchain. How do you see, just on a kind of macro structural level,

• 8:46Anthony Pompliano?

  those challengers competing with the legacy banks who may have other advantages, whether they're regulatory or the capital resources, et cetera?

• 8:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I think banks are wonderful competitors. I mean, they're just so bad at it, universally hated. I'm yet to find a person who will say, I just love my bank, you know. It just doesn't happen in the real world, right? Um, so you're, you're right that uh uh they have advantages. They have the balance sheets, they have um, you know, all the licensing and all this stuff, right? Um, but startups are very good at uh starting with something simple uh and then getting distribution and then building all the things that the banks have today. But we're building it in a, in a way that's better, right?

• 9:39Speaker 02

  So when, when we started, we thought, okay, we're just gonna offer, you know, um a fair deal, uh transparent uh fees or basically no fees on your FX, uh no annual fees, basically not screwing your customers. It seems like it's a very basic thing, but banks just operate differently. And other challenger banks that came mostly out of Europe like Revolut and Monzo, I mean, we were starting, they were all like, you know, C S A stage. Now they are like multi-billion dollar unicorns, but they follow the same principles. You have the customer a fair deal, make sure that you've got great UX, low fees. I mean, this is the, the ultimate combination, the financial incentive to join

• 10:24Speaker 02

  uh and get a new product and the user experience just doesn't suck. Uh, and that's enough. And over time, as you get distribution size, you know, you're building all the infrastructure that the banks have today. The difference is that, you know, some of the banks are running on, you know, A S four hundred mainframes even today versus, you know, what we, we are, we are, we are built on a much more advanced, modern tech stack.

• 10:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And how much of those legacy banking issues do you think are customer service related? So just, you know, the, the um kind of uh non-technological elements suck versus it's actually a technology problem? Um, and if they had better technology, uh they could be solved?

• 11:05Speaker 02

  I think it starts with the culture. So there is lack of customer centricity. There is no risk-taking, there is no innovating for customers.

• 11:18Speaker 02

  And everything just flows from that. A large banking institutions are just full of people who are busy playing Game of Thrones rather than focusing on what to do for the customers. Right, and everything flows from that. The kind of decisions they make in terms of their tax stack, the kind of products they built and designed by committee and all this stuff, right? And by the way, I understand that banks have regulators on top of them and they need to be compliant and all this stuff, but even if you look at this, right, they're not doing a particularly good job. I mean, banks have been fined to the tune of tens of billions of dollars since 2009, right?

• 12:01Speaker 02

  So even that thing is not done well. So I think it's just a wonderful...

• 12:10Speaker 02

  If you were to pick a competitor, I mean, competing against banks, I think it's great.

• 12:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And how much of that culture, that's a really interesting way to look at it. It's just like, hey, the culture sucks and they're focused on the wrong things and so everything kind of top-down from there is messed up. When you think through that culture, you know, compare it to the crypto culture, is it things around like sovereignty, self-reliance, et cetera? Or the other elements to it that crypto brings to the table that you think kind of put the crypto businesses or crypto-native companies in a better position to serve customers?

• 12:49Speaker 02

  I think it's more about the culture of the company than the whole crypto ethos, right? So the basic stuff like, you know, having a sense of ownership, being focused on the customer, you know, being really humble, the basic stuff, being a clear thinker.

• 13:09Speaker 02

  That's just missing in the entire banking environment. So I would just separate this completely. And in terms of crypto, we view this as...

• 13:22Speaker 02

  Kind of building blocks that we can use to come up with new value propositions for customers. I mean, give them more reasons to to try out crypto and see, you know, if we can do a better job than a traditional financial institution. But those two things are a little bit different. I think that before you start talking about things like, you know, you can

• 13:45Speaker 02

  get the control of your money back, or you know, you can control your data and identity, which by the way, we think is a basic human right. But before you talk about this kind of high level stuff, for the mass market user, things that matter are, you know, what kind of value does this bring to me today, right? What kind of problem does it solve? I mean, things like, you just look at our offering, right? Our cards, you know, three, four, five percent cash back, interbank rates, no ATM withdrawal fees. In terms of the the interest rate that we offer, much better than any bank would offer, right? So this is the stuff that people understand. It it just addresses their direct needs today, and it makes their life better today.

• 14:29Speaker 02

  So after they actually get to use it and they see the product and, you know, they think it's great, right? They become advocates and then they start to, you know, be more open to understanding, you know, how does a, what is a distributed ledger technology? And then how does Bitcoin change the world? But I I think if we want to have mass market adoption, we have to start with the customer value first. And technology needs to come second.

• 14:55Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. And and so as you kind of take that mentality, let's talk a little bit about crypto.com and kind of where you guys originally started and what the vision for the business was.

• 15:05Speaker 02

  Again, so we started as a as a as a company that wants to challenge the banks, right? And and our vision today is cryptocurrency in every wallet. So we think that it's

• 15:18Speaker 02

  In terms of the impact, you would be hard pressed to find anything else, you know, in the technology field that you can work on that can change how the society works. Arguably, things are not really going very well recently. You know, you've got, I don't know if you've seen the great hack, but you know, you've got, you know, people using big data sets to influence elections, to erode, you know, your democratic rights, not to mention that you've got massive data breaches and all this stuff. I think it's, it's, it's

• 15:58Speaker 02

  time that people really get back to control their money, data and identity. And blockchain has the potential to deliver on this promise. Of course, you know, it's, there's a long way from, from where we are today to when it's actually going to happen, but Bitcoin has shown us that it is possible.

• 16:19Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. And so walk us through kind of the products that you guys offer today, right? So as you think about building out a challenger to the banks, obviously there's kind of a couple of components, right? One is the, the promise of better customer service, better kind of sovereignty for individuals, et cetera. Two is the products you offer, and then three is kind of the, the regulatory environment that you operate it. Let's focus on the products right now and just kind of walk us through the product suite that you guys have.

• 16:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. So at the center of it is today is a custodial wallet, which arguably one of the most powerful wallets for crypto. You can find out that we've got more than a million users on it. And you can do all the basic stuff like, you know, buy crypto at fiat, move from fiat to crypto, from crypto to fiat. There's like 50 coins on it. You can earn interest on your coins. You can get instant loans, you know, track your portfolio. All this functionality is just beautifully designed product. And it's paired with, with a metal Visa card where you can move from crypto to fiat and spend it. So the card itself has got great perks. You can

• 17:38Speaker 02

  Get like three for five percent cash back on all transactions. You can get access to lounges for free, you know, free Spotify, Netflix, something that matches the lifestyle of a crypto user today. But most importantly, it gives people peace of mind because you know you've got access to your money, it sits in crypto basically 24/7, 365. It's very powerful. And to complete the ecosystem, we're building our own public chain, which essentially works as a replacement of payment networks like Visa or Mastercard. And we just announced

• 18:18Speaker 02

  a cryptocurrency exchange where we'll have full institutional offering, starting with SPOT, then you know, next year, margin trading, lending and derivatives. So it's an entire ecosystem, like essentially, whatever you need for crypto, just go to crypto.com and you have it all in one place.

• 18:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And as you think through that product offering, do you think each one of those products kind of replaces a product offering from the legacy world? Or do you think about kind of these crypto native products, right? Things that maybe you can't do in the legacy world, but through technology in this world you can build?

• 18:55Speaker 02

  That's a very good question. Look, we've, we're quite pragmatic. So I don't believe that in today's world you can, you know, roll out this type of service, these type of services to millions of users globally,

• 19:12Speaker 02

  without doing things like, you know, compliance, security, privacy, right? So we're building, we're investing heavily in this infrastructure that allows us to be innovative, but at the same time compliant. And we were like the first company in crypto space globally that has ISO 27001 certification. And you know, cryptocurrency security standard level three, PCI DSS, you know, all this stuff that keeps our platform compliant and secure. We are investing in it.

• 19:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, just because you have to. And

• 19:49Speaker 02

  And realistically, people who are building even like decentralized finance protocols, they didn't technologically reach this level of decentralization, which would allow them to just say, okay, I don't need to get this license, the license just doesn't work like this, at least not today.

• 20:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And one of the things that I keep thinking about is crypto decentralized finance, et cetera, stands to be fairly disruptive to the legacy banking system and the financial system. But it feels like those competitors, right, the people that the challengers are trying to disrupt, they're not even paying attention yet. Do you kind of get the same sense? Or do you think that they're actually paying more attention than we realize and they're kind of working quietly in the background?

• 20:38Speaker 02

  I think that we are, as the industry stands today, we are a super, super small niche. I mean, there's over 50 million people in crypto space globally today. So you're right that a lot of the, you know, almost everybody kind of ignores this, which is great, because that gives us more time to build the technology and the infrastructure that you need to support a large scale business before bigger players go in. That's great, I think, for us. The other aspect of it is that I think there's way too much tribalism

• 21:19Speaker 02

  within crypto space. I mean, everybody should realize how small we are comparing to the broad finance, I mean, from payments to finance, through all the way to trading. Crypto is super, super tiny today. So we should all come together and instead of competing for this, you know, small, a little bit small slice of a cake, we should work together in. Um, an open and collaborative manner uh to expand the size of the market. That's why we we we always try to work on initiatives that grow uh this industry and

• 21:59Speaker 02

  grow the adoption of crypto uh rather than trying to just compete against players from within the industry.

• 22:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it, and as you think about that um kind of collaboration, um there's obviously a lot of things that you guys are doing, uh but one of the the pieces that I want to spend some time talking through is uh the card and and kind of um the user experience that almost, you know, most people in the world are used to of pulling out a piece of plastic or metal and and swiping it um has uh really allowed uh traditional companies to add various currencies behind that experience, uh various banking partners, vendors, etc. You guys are trying to um, you know, really push that with um crypto behind it. Maybe talk a little bit about how you're doing that and then what the reasoning behind making

• 22:50Anthony Pompliano?

  such a big push into the card uh really is.

• 22:54Speaker 02

  People understand um how does a card work and um, you know, having a Visa brand on top of it brings instant credibility and trust and brings instant utility of the product because you now can use it in fifty million locations and the perks are great. So, you know, it's better than what you're using today for your payments and it it basically kills any bank card uh just purely on the um on on how favorable the terms are. Um, so I think it's a great uh tool to uh get people in because, you know, we are early

• 23:36Speaker 02

  adopters. We are very comfortable trying out new stuff, figuring things out by ourselves, right? Uh, people sometimes need something a little more familiar to get into it and once they're in, you know, they they can comfortably absorb uh more information about this whole crypto thing.

• 23:58Speaker 02

  We are now live in Asia Pac. We are live in forty nine states in the US. We'll start shipping to thirty countries in Europe in January. So this is like the only crypto card that is available pretty much globally. And it's a really high quality product. So what we get out of it as a company is basically a very strong word of mouth. It's a conversation starter. It's just, we see it clearly that people who have the card in their world, they just transact heavily on the platform and use other services. Just makes perfect sense.

• 24:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And in terms of, you know, kind of competing on a product by product basis, one of the biggest things I've seen crypto companies run into is obviously the regulatory challenges and obstacles. You guys are based in Asia. You specifically live in Hong Kong. Maybe talk a little bit about how you think through the regulatory challenges that crypto companies, especially ones that are trying to provide true financial services face versus the kind of legacy banking world and maybe the advantages that they have there.

• 25:12Speaker 02

  So we try to do it in stages. So the first thing you do is you partner up with people who already have licenses. So for example, for a card issuing, we partner with Metropolitan Commercial Bank in New York, who are a principal member of Visa. And if they have a banking license, then they can just issue cards all over the US. We've got a similar deal with a twenty, thirty billion dollar fintech player in Europe called Wirecard.

• 25:47Speaker 02

  So we just basically piggyback off their existing licenses and infrastructure to get the product to the market first and start getting distribution. Once you have distribution, and you know, we are getting there because we already have more than a million customers on the platform, you can start getting your licenses. And on one hand, you've got things like, you know, MTO licenses in the States or EMI licenses in Europe, but also, you know, you can become a direct partner with a company like Visa for principal membership. Right? So as a startup, you need to think about what is achievable and how do you get to the market with the value prop

• 26:31Speaker 02

  for customers faster so you can get distribution so then you can be optimizing your cost structure and you can be more of control of your product and destiny by getting all those licenses by yourself. But it's very difficult to do it from day one because it's a multi-year process. So now, you know, we've got a team of over 200 people around the world. We've got customers on the platform and we're getting this stuff done by ourselves. But you need to do it in steps.

• 27:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so let's talk a little bit more about kind of where we end up, right? So you've got these challenger banks that are going after the legacy banking system. There's this regulatory framework that exists. There's some people who will argue that the rules need to change. There's some people that argue the challengers need to play by the rules that exist because they're not going to change. But how do you see kind of these two different forces, right? The legacy world and the challenger banks kind of colliding in the future? Is it a thing where the legacy banks end up having to acquire some of these crypto startups and challengers?

• 27:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Or do you see there being a kind of a winner crowned and one or the other strategy ends up being victorious in the end?

• 27:47Speaker 02

  First of all, I think that the entire industry is going to be regulated just like traditional financial services. So if we fast forward three years from today, I mean, crypto trading is going to be fully regulated. You know, all the services that are not banking but look similar to banking are going to be fully regulated. So we are already working on this to be ready. Whether there is going to be M and A activity, it really depends on what kind of scale we can reach or other players in this industry can reach. So if you look at the typical challenger banks,

• 28:28Speaker 02

  a clearly successful example is Revolut. Right? Revolut's got a user acquisition machine. They are not losing that much money.

• 28:39Speaker 02

  Capital is on tap for them. They can go from, you know, whatever. They have six, seven million customers now. They can go for 25 or 30 million customers globally. And they don't need to sell. They don't even have to IPO. And then if you look at things on the crypto side, you've got, you've got companies that have robust revenue generating engines. Like, look at Binance, two years and a billion dollars in revenue. Right?

• 29:08Speaker 02

  That's much more robust than the typical challenger banks. So there is absolutely no need for, for capital. Right? They can just grow organically. So I think these type of companies are going to be very expensive acquisition target down the road as they mature and as the regulatory frameworks mature over time. So obviously, right now, and even in the last two years, if you saw any deals in the crypto space through a massive discounts being applied because of the perceived regulatory risk over time, this is going to be fully regulated. So it's just that this discount will not be applicable. So that's the way I kind of look at it.

• 29:52Speaker 02

  But for us at Crypto.com, this is a purely metaphysical conversation because we are building something that is by definition not for sale.

• 30:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep. And as you think through that, like, how do crypto corporations, right, or companies in this kind of global decentralized ethos-based world, how do they think about alignment with investors, value creation, value accrual? Like, do some of the core tenets of building a company change? Or do you, as an entrepreneur, think of a lot of the same types of mechanisms and aspects of company building? It just happens to be that the outcome changes, where you're not looking for kind of the acquisition at the end?

• 30:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it's a little bit counterintuitive. I would say that fundamentals stay the same.

• 30:50Speaker 02

  You still need to build a great, great team. You still need to deliver a product that does the job for the client. And you need to generate revenues. And you need to be profitable if you want to have staying power. So I also, you know, I'm all for building solutions that are censorship resistant, right? But applying this type of philosophy, like, okay, let's have a decentralized team, and decentralized decision-making, decentralized governance, right? This is not how you build stuff at scale in the real world. So, you know, people should go back to the basics, I feel.

• 31:28Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. And then you're sitting in Hong Kong, you've been living there for, you know, 15-plus years. Maybe talk to us a little bit about kind of the situation, and kind of what you're seeing on the ground, and given the kind of historical context you have over the last 15 years.

• 31:45Speaker 02

  Look, it's a tough, tough situation. The society is, it's really split. And what's happening here is really touching the very core of a human being, things like, you know, their sense of justice, right? And when you go there, things just, they will never be reasonable,

• 32:12Speaker 02

  I've been here for now sixteen years. Hong Kong is home for me, so obviously that's it's very sad to watch this happen. It's arguably one of the greatest cities on earth.

• 32:29Speaker 02

  But I'm optimistic. I mean, I watch the news, but I remain optimistic. I think this too shall pass. And if I've learned anything in my sixteen years in Hong Kong is that you just don't better get against Hong Kong people. They're a very resilient bunch.

• 32:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And do you feel like everyday life has changed? Or is it somewhat compartmentalized with the protests, etcetera, but the kind of average person, their life hasn't actually seen a material change?

• 33:05Speaker 02

  It used to be that it didn't have that much of an impact in our day to day life. But in the last two weeks, things have deteriorated quite substantially, right? And, you know, it's at the point where nobody can ignore it. Hopefully, things will get better soon. Although, one could argue that probably they'll get worse before they get better. So I'll give you some practical insights, right? Like, for example, in the last six months, you know, we've got like two days where we told our team that, you know, safety is, your safety is our priority. There are going to be disruptions, citywide disruptions, right? So just work from home.

• 33:51Speaker 02

  Last week was quite intense. But, you know, this,

• 33:56Speaker 02

  the flip side of the coin is that, you know, we've, we've we've seen that the investments in time and effort to build a very strong company culture where

• 34:08Speaker 02

  where people take ownership of what they do and they take pride in what they do. Regardless of, you know, us not being able to sit in the office for a few days. I mean, people didn't chop any balls. So it was pretty good.

• 34:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Want to know who has the best URL? Crypto.com. That's right. Crypto.com. They're a crypto platform with one goal. Motherf***ing mass adoption. That's why we're all here. We're trying to get crypto in every wallet. Crypto.com is helping people do that through buying, earning, lending, and card payment. Everything you could want at crypto.com. Go help your boy out. Tell them Pomp sent you. Download the app or visit crypto.com. Pomp's got you always. Ever wanted to get into mining and didn't know how? Don't worry. Your boy Pomp's got you. Everybody got some electricity and wifi. All you gotta do is go to coinmine.com. You buy a coin mine. It's like an Xbox or a Playstation that helps you turn your electricity into Bitcoin.

• 35:07Anthony Pompliano?

  That's right. You purchase it. It shows up at your doorstep. You pull it out of the box. You plug it in, connect to your wifi. Five minutes or less, you're mining Bitcoin. All you have to do is control it from the mobile app they provide, and then you receive over-the-air updates that add new coins and new features on a consistent basis. Kind of like how Tesla does over-the-air updates and updates the car software. Just your update in your coin mine. Consumer mining made easy. That's right. Go to coinmine.com, tell them Pomp sent you, and thank me later. One more word from our sponsor, BlockFi. Their new interest account allows you to securely deposit your Bitcoin or Ether at BlockFi and receive 6% annual interest paid monthly in cryptocurrency. This rate actually compounds, so you receive

• 35:52Anthony Pompliano?

  a 6.2% APY, which is very attractive given the alternatives. So you can actually take your Bitcoin, you can deposit it with BlockFi, and get paid an interest rate of 6% in return. Go check out blockfi.com/pomp. Again, blockfi.com/pomp to sign up and start earning interest on your crypto today. You know, I always think about like, there is a catalyst to social unrest. There are the means that are pursued to kind of show that social unrest. And then there is usually some sort of conclusion, whether that is a positive or negative, right?

• 36:33Anthony Pompliano?

  That there's, you know, very few instances in the world where social unrest has persisted for, you know, decades, for example. It feels like right now, we've got a good understanding of the catalyst for what's going on in Hong Kong. And the media's done a pretty good job of covering kind of the ways in which citizens are showing their unhappiness. But what I don't hear a lot about is kind of the conclusion and kind of where realistically the social unrest can conclude. Any thoughts there in terms of how you think this plays out?

• 37:15Speaker 02

  The reason why I didn't hear about it is quite simple, because nobody knows. And so I choose to be optimistic. I think that this place has been through a lot over the last few decades, and it always comes out on top. And I think that this time will be no different. Hong Kong will emerge out of this, and it will emerge stronger. But, you know, how long is it going to take? And what will happen between now and then? The simple answer is that nobody knows.

• 37:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And has there been any effect on your business, either positive or negative, in terms of the social unrest? Do you see capital flowing out of Hong Kong via crypto? Do you see, you know, more people signing up? Or maybe you see the exact opposite effect, that there's kind of more concern, either on a regulatory basis or due to the social unrest? What's kind of the impact that you're seeing?

• 38:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, Hong Kong is a very small market for us. We've got a global business, so I can tell you that, you know, I've seen more impact from the restrictions that Argentina put on crypto purchases. We've seen a flurry of activity there, and there's not much difference in Hong Kong. I think the...

• 38:38Speaker 02

  The city has probably seen like traditional capital outflows, like people are selling on coin dollars and buying foreign currencies and trying to hedge their risks by moving capital out of the city into places like Singapore, for example, right? That's a very common strategy that is, that's been happening for months, right? And that's to a certain extent, the cost of letting the situation spiral out of control. But not much crypto impact today.

• 39:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Makes sense. And then in terms of kind of the future outlook for crypto.com, maybe help us understand, you know, where you see yourself going in the next kind of six to 12 months, or are there other things that are kind of on the horizon that you're thinking about? Or is it more of just execution on the things you already have on your plate? And that's the focus.

• 39:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, so we just released our roadmap for 2020. So it covers all three key areas. So payments, finance and trading. So on the trading front, we're starting with a spot exchange, which is now in beta and it's going to be available to the public in December. Then in the first half of the year, we'll very quickly follow up with margin trading, lending and derivatives. In terms of payments, we've got continued expansion globally for our card program. So

• 40:10Speaker 02

  we've got Latin America planned for next year, so as you know, Canada and a few other places, to have like really broad coverage of the card product and a global distribution network for that. On the payments front, also our public chain, which is now in testnet mode, we've got the second version of testnet out two months ago. Next year is where we go to the mainnet stage. So that's going to be the big milestone for the company. And on the finance front, you know, we are upgrading our card product so that you will no longer have to convert from crypto to fiat if you want to have access to cash.

• 40:54Speaker 02

  We will simply extend credit lines based on the funds you have in crypto in our, in the wallet, in the crypto.com wallet. So that's like in line with our ethos, which is, if you distill it down to, you know, we want people to be long crypto and short fiat. So that's, it sounds like an easy concept, but if you want to roll it out globally, and again, there are implications on regulatory fronts, licensing and whatnot. So the trading activities, we're full institutional offering, the mainnet of our public chain,

• 41:35Speaker 02

  and an upgrade to the card offering are just like the three core product initiatives for next year.

• 41:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And explain a little bit more about how that line of credit works.

• 41:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it's very simple. So let's say, you know, you deposit BTC or XRP or ETH or whatever. And let's say you've got $10,000 of crypto in total in the custody wallet. So if you want to spend on the card, we'll just front all your spending for you. And you can pay interest on whatever you use from this credit line. And we're going to go for super seamless, easier experience and friendly interest rates. So actually you keep the upside from digital assets that you have and you only pay the interest on the, on whatever you spent.

• 42:27Speaker 02

  So access to the cash without the need to sell your crypto. That's what we're going for.

• 42:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And then I got to ask, you guys own crypto.com and have been longtime sponsors of Off the Chain, which obviously I and listeners appreciate. And I always call out that you guys have the best URL. How'd you get the URL? Can I tell us that story?

• 42:48Speaker 02

  You know, when we started and when we did, we did a token sale in 2017, the first half. People very strongly associate us with the card. It's such a cool product, easy to understand and whatnot. But over time, it became clear that what we're building is the entire ecosystem that is focused on driving crypto adoption.

• 43:14Speaker 02

  Uh, so we looked at the rebranding options and the easiest thing to do is just typing crypto.com into the browser and see what's there, right? And um, there was a lovely message from Professor Matt Blaze over there. That's talking about, you know, the fact that crypto stands for cryptography and not cryptocurrency, and that he doesn't advise anybody to use this as a vehicle of investment or speculation. So I sent him an email, basically, and that's how it started. And as an academic, as you can imagine, you know, he's quite a character and a very outspoken one. So uh, it took us a while to reach an agreement, but

• 43:59Speaker 02

  the gist of it is very simple, you know, we always try to figure out

• 44:05Speaker 02

  what are the potential reasons for someone to say no, and we just address them one by one. Um, and in my experience, when people see that you actually put some thought into it when you approach them and try to understand their concerns, they will be willing to engage. And, you know, he held the domain for more than twenty-five years, right? And, and there were, I don't know, hundreds of people uh, trying to bite off him with, uh, you know, and being so persistent that he, you know, after the fact, I actually read some articles about it on the Verge,

• 44:47Speaker 02

  that people were actually stalking him at the, at the university and, you know, calling his landline and all this stuff, crazy stories. So he was quite adamant, but uh, uh, we managed to to find a common, common ground.

• 45:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Is there anything that you can share in terms of what his, uh, his hesitancy was, or any of the article?

• 45:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, so.

• 45:14Speaker 02

  Again, I think he's he's he's just he's a very well-known expert in cryptography. Right? So I think, you know, um, he wanted to make sure that this lands in in in responsible hands. Uh, and that he's free uh to express his opinions. And typically, you know, there's like, if you look at this type of um transactions, there's, you know, so much legal ease around it and so many restrictions on both sides.

• 45:52Speaker 02

  If you want to overcome this type of situations, you just need to, you know, understand each other and there needs to be uh a relationship of trust. And I think establishing that uh was critical.

• 46:06Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. And then um I I'm assuming you won't answer, but uh you you interested in sharing how much you had to pay for it?

• 46:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, I I think it just doesn't matter, you know, people always ask, but realistically, it it has like, it doesn't matter because uh if we achieve, you know, one-third of what we want to achieve in the next ten years, um this the euro is going to be priceless. Um, so it just doesn't matter. Plus, we are legally not allowed to say it.

• 46:39Anthony Pompliano?

  That's a good reason, man. Um, no, so so um before we wrap up here, one of the things that I want to uh spend a few minutes talking about is um kind of this vision that you have, right, of um every person in the world having a digital wallet, right? And I think that um that that's one of the key pieces as to um, you know, why you and I kind of saw eye to eye early on. Um, was that vision is uh really important. Talk a little bit about um, you know, kind of how that happens, um and then what the impact on the world is if we can get to that point.

• 47:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, so we believe that it's your basic human right to control your money, your data and your identity. And uh Bitcoin uh has demonstrated in a very powerful way uh that it is actually feasible, it is possible, it's uh uh it it's now done, right? Even, you know, you've got

• 47:44Speaker 02

  US Congressman saying that crypto is an unstoppable force and every government that tried to stop it failed, right? So this can be done. It's very powerful. Now, the question is, can we take this insight that, you know, you can, you can have this decentralized technology

• 48:03Speaker 02

  that eliminates the need for for an intermediary?

• 48:10Speaker 02

  Can we apply this to other areas of life?

• 48:14Speaker 02

  I believe really that the anti-Facebook for the lack of better word is going to come out of the blockchain space. And, and the society just needs it. Like, I don't know about you, but, you know, I've got a my son is about to turn three.

• 48:35Speaker 02

  If I extrapolate what is going on with big tech and government overreach, you know, like fifteen to twenty years.

• 48:44Speaker 02

  If you layer, layer on, on top of this, you know, the advancements in, in AI and we're ending up in a, in a surveillance society that is very unhealthy. So blockchain has the potential to help us build a healthier fabric for the society. And I'm not saying that crypto is going to get, get it all done, but

• 49:09Speaker 02

  but not, no, by any stretch of imagination, no. But we think we, we have a role to play to just making the size of this industry bigger. So the next time when there is a guy who has some breakthrough idea, you know, I don't know, an engineer living somewhere in Moscow or in Dubai or wherever, right? That he will get funded. That

• 49:32Speaker 02

  that, that the technology will be adopted and it will be scaled and collectively as an industry, we just change the world for, for.

• 49:40Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. And one of the things you just said there is super interesting to me, right? You, you put. Ownership of money, ownership of data, but also you put uh identity. And one piece I continue to think through is that the digital wallet can be the source of identity in the future uh in this digital world. You agree with that or have any kind of nuanced views as to how that happens?

• 50:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, I actually, when I think about identity, I really think about it as, you know, you know, the traditional sense of the world, of the world, like, you know, your passport or your, your Hong Kong ID or your driver license. I couldn't care less about that, right? But these days, uh, everything you do uh online is fingerprinted and the large tech platforms like Facebook or Google, they know more about you than any government, you know, they know more about you than your mother, they know more about you than you know about yourself. And if you add to it the ability to, you know, like blanket, the blanket coverage of, you

• 50:44Speaker 02

  know, entire cities with HD cameras, you know, microphones and AI on top of it, uh, that's, I think that's a very big problem and I don't think it's very healthy. So, uh, how do we, you know, bring the balance back to the force in Star Wars parlance? Uh, how do we make it a little bit healthier uh for the next generation? I think that's, uh, that's one of the fundamental questions of our time.

• 51:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And, and is your thought process here, um, you know, over time, there is a um evolution from those kind of government issued uh identifications, uh, or is this a, you know, kind of abrupt decision by somebody who says, uh, hey, you know what? I'm going to kind of move over into the alternative digital world, um, and I'm going to exclusively operate there. Like, like, how does that transition happen?

• 51:45Speaker 02

  I think it's gonna be in small steps. Um, I, you know, you will see, first of all, you know, governments, you know, migrating to uh to blockchain tag just because it's easier to manage this type of stuff, right? And, um, and there are, there are some simple benefits to it, right? But again, you know, I don't think we can uh go away from this, you know, country by country issued IDs and whatnot, you know, very quickly.

• 52:15Speaker 02

  It will be a gradual evolution.

• 52:20Speaker 02

  And yeah, I personally don't subscribe to this, you know, this nationalistic view of the world.

• 52:28Speaker 02

  There's a lot of people in this space specifically who view themselves as citizens of the world, more than a citizen of any given country. And I think, or if you, if you look at like a couple of decades down the road, the world is going to continue to get smaller and smaller. And the differences between us are going to be reducing as well. So who knows? I mean, you can see like, for example, in Europe, right? I mean, I can take my Polish ID and I'm just go anywhere freely within Europe. Uh, I mean, it's, uh, it, it, there, there's, it's, it's not, uh, impossible to see a future where this can be extended to, to cover the whole, the whole, the whole place.

• 53:12Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure.

• 53:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Before I get into the rapid fire questions, uh, what have you learned, uh, over the last couple of years? Building in this space, like what, what's your one main takeaway that you could share with entrepreneurs?

• 53:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, this time around, because again, it's, uh, it's my fourth company from day one, we've invested very heavily. I thought so much about culture and how not to screw it up. Uh, and now three years down the road, this is starting to pay huge dividends. Uh, you know, I'll give you a few stats, like almost sixty, seventy percent, almost seventy percent of our, uh, team has been recruited through personal referrals. So you build the teams slower. And if you do it like this, uh, but it's just such a solid foundation to, to build on, because people, you know, they, they work with each other before they know each other, there's already

• 54:09Speaker 02

  uh, uh, a relationship of trust. So it's, it's much, it's much stronger, uh, and better teamwork if you, if you build your company like this. So when I was in my twenties, I, I I read about how important culture is for a company. But now I've seen it firsthand that it just makes such a huge difference. And as it is today, culture, great cultures are competitive advantage. People come to work for crypto to come purely based on this. And of course, I've got cool products, this is a cool space and whatnot, right? But strong culture is so important.

• 54:52Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. For rapid fire questions, what do you think the most important company in crypto other than crypto.com is?

• 54:58Speaker 02

  I don't think it's the company, it's just Bitcoin itself.

• 55:01Anthony Pompliano?

  It's a great answer, that's usually my answer.

• 55:04Anthony Pompliano?

  What one regulation would you change or improve if you could?

• 55:07Speaker 02

  I would kill the bit license so we can finally ship to our customers asking for crypto.com's products in New York.

• 55:15Anthony Pompliano?

  I normally would ask what your most controversial thought is, but I gotta ask you about the controversial ads you put up all over San Francisco. Many of these are things like the $22 trillion money printing machine, is it gonna stop anytime soon? Or Plan B, etc. Tell us a little bit about that ad campaign.

• 55:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think, you know, we believe in what we do and we want to connect with people like us, right? So, by the way, that billboard about the 22 trillion printer, you know, which will never stop. It's kind of out of date by now, after three months, it's already 23 trillion now. Kind of proves the point. Yeah, but this is about the crypto ethos and why are we doing this, right? At a very fundamental level.

• 56:08Speaker 02

  I don't know if you've seen this, like this is this, a decade ago, there was this powerful TED Talk, you know, it's not what you do, it's why you do it.

• 56:16Anthony Pompliano?

  What's the most important book you've ever read?

• 56:18Speaker 02

  The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. It's just so authentic. This is the life of a company builder and it's a true page turner. And I actually very frequently give it away to people I come across, such a great book.

• 56:37Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. Aliens, believer or non-believer?

• 56:41Speaker 02

  I'm a non-believer.

• 56:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Non-believer? Oh, no!

• 56:46Speaker 02

  Statistically, maybe there is something out there, but statistically, we also will never find out.

• 56:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Why do you think, why do you not believe if statistically it's likely that there is something out there?

• 57:00Speaker 02

  Look, I mean, there are trillions of, I mean, the universe is big, right?

• 57:07Speaker 02

  But, you know, I just don't subscribe to this, you know, Area 51 type of mentality, that, you know, somebody visits us here and then had some impact on how we evolve. I think there's the random part of it, you know, evolution, that's, I think this is more Euroistic view of things. Of course, at the same time, one of my favorite movies of all time is Prometheus, because I absolutely love that idea of space exploration, and I'm a huge fan of Elon, right? And the idea that, you know, that there is something there, I mean, it's cool.

• 57:50Speaker 02

  I like this, the intellectual aspect of it is very potent, right? But, you know, it's not something that I would believe in. Likewise, you know, I'm not religious. I don't believe in God either.

• 58:04Anthony Pompliano?

  That's fair. What, uh, one question you have for me to wrap this thing up?

• 58:09Speaker 02

  Where do you get all the energy from?

• 58:14Anthony Pompliano?

  It's, uh, it's very similar to the answer that you had earlier about, um, things that, uh, things that I get excited about, um, I don't hide that, right? It's kind of this, uh, this level of authenticity of what you see is what you get. Um, and so when I'm excited, you're gonna know it. When I'm mad, you're gonna know it. Um, and, uh, I, I've always lived my life, uh, with kind of a couple of core beliefs, and two of those are, uh, one, that enthusiasm is contagious, and so, uh, the more excited you are, the more...

• 58:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Kind of positive you are, the more that those who are around you kind of follow suit. And so you can change, you know, people's attitudes and outlook, just pure enthusiasm. Frankly, even if it's fake, but, but, but especially when it's real. But on the other tenet, I think, is that the, you know, the hardships in life or the battles in life, if you will, half of it is literally just showing up every day, ready to tackle the day. And so I think a lot of people, they try to outsmart each other.

• 59:29Anthony Pompliano?

  They try to do all this stuff, but I've just had a belief that if you outlast everyone else, you win. And so if you think about from an energy standpoint, it's just showing up and realizing, look, I don't have to be the smartest person. I don't have to be the fastest person. I don't have to be the first person in everything. But if I just have consistency and energy, that's, you know, going to put me way ahead of most other people. And, you know, that formula sounds pretty simple, probably even sounds cheesy to some people. But at the end of the day, it's a formula that works and it's easy to identify, but it's really, really hard to execute because a lot of people,

• 1:00:13Anthony Pompliano?

  you know, I always joke and say it's that random Tuesday where they're writing something or they're creating a podcast episode or a video. And for the last three weeks, they haven't gotten as much engagement or distribution as they want. Their ideas aren't kind of resonating with people in the way that they want. And they just say, you know what, I'm wasting my time, right? And they walk away versus if you think about, you know, take the podcast for example, I did 150 episodes in the first year. Right? And in the beginning, there was really not that many downloads. But over time, you build an audience and it just takes time and effort and showing up.

• 1:00:53Anthony Pompliano?

  And so if you look at the largest podcasts in the world today, they didn't get started yesterday. Right? Many of them are, you know, four or five, some even 10 years old. And so it just takes a lot of consistency. And so if you know that that's what it takes, then you just got to show up every day with energy. Right? And so however you do that for yourself, whether it's you drink a bunch of coffee, you get a lot of sleep, or you're just excited about what you're doing. You know, just show up and have the energy and the rest kind of takes care of itself, I think.

• 1:01:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I think you're, I 100% agree with the contagious nature of your energy. I think you're a great asset to the entire industry because, you know, we need people like that with that level of energy. I also agree that, you know, never ever giving up and just being tenacious and the grit. This is, this is Halloween and it's actually much more rare than what I would think.

• 1:01:53Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. Well, it's, I tweeted the other day, I said, you know, persistence is a superpower. And it's just this belief that, you know, you're chipping away at something. Right? And there's this great image that I've seen and I've talked about it on a podcast before, but it's just, it's like seared in my brain. And it is two guys, each of them is in a separate tunnel. One of the guys is at kind of the beginning of his journey. He's got a pickaxe and he's picking away at a, you know, a rock based kind of wall.

• 1:02:34Anthony Pompliano?

  And at the end of the image is, I think it's gold or diamond or something. And so he's got a long way to go and he's really, really, you know, it looks like he's sweating profusely and he's picking away, trying to get through that wall to get there, but it's a long way away. And the other guy in the image has already picked through the entire wall. And he's got, you know, just inches to go to get to the diamond. But he's got his pickaxe dragging on the floor and he's walking away. And it's just this image of, you know, you never know how close you are to the breakthrough. And to me, it is less about, hey, where's the finish line?

• 1:03:17Anthony Pompliano?

  And it's much more about if you focus on the process, the results kind of take care of themselves. Right? And so part of that process is you gotta show up every day, gotta be enthusiastic. You know, frankly, you gotta try not to just be stupid. Is another one of my favorite kind of views of the world is if you just avoid making dumb decisions, the smart decisions are the only decisions left. And so that game of kind of probability is super helpful. But I think all of these things are just more around, you know, how do people think? How do they approach what they're doing? And again, that focus on process will ultimately take care of the results.

• 1:03:56Speaker 02

  Absolutely. No question about it. There's so many people who stop three feet from gold. No question.

• 1:04:02Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. Well, listen, Chris, I really appreciate you taking the time to do this. Like I said, you've been an incredible supporter of Off the Chain. And then obviously, you know, really driving a lot of product innovation to get kind of adoption of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. And so I'm excited to kind of see as you guys continue progressing. And I really appreciate you taking the time to do this. Where can people go find more about the company and the various products?

• 1:04:33Speaker 02

  There's an easy to remember URL, crypto.com or [email protected]. There's a lot of news coming out every single week. So it's a good place to stay in touch. And thanks for having me on the show today. And I hope that next time we can do it in your studio in New York City.

• 1:04:55Anthony Pompliano?

  You got it, man. You, when you come to New York, we'll definitely have to get you on video. You're prettier than me, so at least people can stare at you.

• 1:05:07Speaker 02

  Oh, that's just, uh, that's actually accurate, but let's discuss it face to face next time.

• 1:05:14Speaker 01

  Absolutely. All right, man. Sounds good. We'll talk soon.

• 1:05:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Hey, everyone. Pop here. If you liked this episode of Off the Chain and want to help us take crypto to the top of the Apple, Spotify, and other podcast charts, please do us a favor and rate, review, and subscribe. To review, simply go to the Off the Chain homepage, scroll down until you see the five blank stars. Taking 15 seconds to fill those stars in and leave a quick review goes a long way in helping us take the entire crypto ecosystem to the top of the charts. I appreciate you listening and see you next time on Off the Chain.