Pod Insights The Pomp Podcast #481 Brad Kam and Haider Rafique On Human Readable Domains For Exchanges About this episode Haider Rafique is the Chief Marketing Officer at OKCoin and Bradley Kam is the cofounder of Unstoppable Domains. In this conversation, we discuss human readable domains, why the user experience must improve in crypto, and why OKCoin and Unstoppable Domains partnered to bring human readable domains to the first exchange. ======================= Exodus is an absolute game changer in the crypto wallet space, and we’ve teamed up to offer an exclusive discount for you, as listeners of the podcast. Sign up for Exodus today using my promo code Exodus.io/. This is a no brainer for both newcomers and crypto heavyweights - go sign up today. ======================= Diginex is the first company with a cryptocurrency exchange to be listed in the US. Their ticker is Nasdaq: EQOS, and they are the first crypto company that you can buy stock in. They also have a crypto exchange called EQUOS, which has been built to institutional standards, but is available to everyone. You can trade Bitcoin and Ethereum spot, as well as Bitcoin perpetuals, and get a 5% discount on all fees, by signing up using http://www.equos.com/pomp ======================= Money On Chain brings Bitcoin to mass adoption with solutions to meet the needs of different types of users: a fully bitcoin-collateralized stablecoin (DoC), a bitcoin on steroids (BPro), and a dizzying bitcoiner option for lovers of leveraged trading (BTCx). All this, without requiring the delivery of private keys. Money On Chain - Bringing bitcoin into the mainstream. Visit moneyonchain.com/pomp to learn more
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:02 Anthony 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. Let's kick this thing off. Hyder Rafi is the Chief Marketing Officer at OKCoin and Bradley Cam is the co-founder of Unstoppable Domains. In this conversation, we discuss human readable domains, why the user experience must improve in crypto, and why OKCoin and Unstoppable Domains partner to bring human readable domains to the first exchange. I really enjoyed this conversation with both of these guys, and I hope you do as well. Before we get into this episode, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors.
0:40 Anthony Pompliano? First up is Exodus, Exodus.io. They're one of the most popular cryptocurrency wallets and has been around since 2015. It's supported on both desktop and mobile, and it allows you to sync your wallet across multiple devices so you can have access to your funds anywhere. You can instantly exchange around 100 different cryptocurrencies. Interactive charts let you view the price history of a specific asset or your portfolio's performance over time. And maybe the best part, Exodus is integrated with Treasure Hardware Wallet, making advanced security easy for everyone. You can visit Exodus.io for your free download or search Exodus on the App Store or Play Store.
1:19 Anthony Pompliano? That's E-X-O-D-U-S, Exodus, one of the most popular cryptocurrency wallets and one you need to go test out. E-X-O-D-U-S. Go search it on the App Store or go to Exodus.io today. Next up is Diginex. They're the first company with a cryptocurrency exchange to be listed in the United States. Their ticker on the NASDAQ is EQOS, and they are the first crypto company that you can buy stock in. They also have a crypto exchange called EQOS, E-Q-U-O-S, which has been built to institutional standards, but it's available to everyone. You can trade Bitcoin and Ethereum spot as well as Bitcoin perpetuals, and you can get a 5% discount on all fees by signing up using equos.com/pomp. Again, equos.com/pomp.
2:07 Anthony Pompliano? And lastly is my folks over Money on Chain. They are bringing Bitcoin to mass adoption with solutions to meet the needs of different types of users, a fully Bitcoin collateralized stablecoin DOC, a Bitcoin on steroids, B Pro, and a dizzying Bitcoin or option for lovers of leveraged trading BTC X. All this without requiring the delivery of your private keys. Money on Chain, bringing Bitcoin into the mainstream. You can visit moneyonchain.com/pomp to learn more. That's right, you want to use your Bitcoin and you want to bring Bitcoin to the mainstream, all without requiring the delivery of private keys, Bitcoin collateralized stablecoins, Bitcoin on steroids, and a Bitcoin or option for lovers of leveraged trading,
2:50 Anthony Pompliano? go to moneyonchain.com/pomp. Again, moneyonchain.com/pomp. Alright, let's get in this episode with Hyder and with Bradley. I hope you guys enjoy this one.
3:02 Speaker 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.
3:34 Anthony Pompliano? Alright guys, bang, bang. I've got Brad and Hyder here. I'm super excited about this. We're going to talk about an announcement they have. Let's first get started though. Maybe both of you just introduce yourselves and the companies you work for.
3:46 Speaker 02 Hi everyone, this is Haider. I am the Chief Marketing Officer at OKCoin.
3:52 Speaker 03 And I'm Brad. I'm co-founder of Unstoppable Domains.
3:56 Anthony Pompliano? Awesome. So Brad, maybe let's start with you. What is the news that Unstoppable Domains and OKCoin have?
4:02 Speaker 03 So OKCOIN has integrated blockchain domains for the purposes of sending and receiving crypto in the exchange. And the reason why this is such a big deal is because this is the first time a exchange has supported this standard, this blockchain domain standard, human readable names, instead of long crypto addresses, has been widely adopted in the wallet community, but not in the exchange community yet. And if you're a crypto user, you're using both. So you really need, in order to actually get rid of your long hex addresses, you need exchanges as well as wallets to support this.
4:37 Anthony Pompliano? Got it. So Haider, maybe let's just zoom out and kind of go backwards first of just like, what is the problem, right? If you guys are implementing this as a solution, what was the problem that you identified and were trying to solve?
4:51 Speaker 02 Look, ultimately, we can all agree that the current form of wallet addresses is a poor user experience. I think when these things probably got invented, there was no product manager or user experience person in the room. And they've played their part. And I think it's due time that these things evolve and become better. If we're all about welcoming people who are non crypto natives, essentially newcomers, we have to take a really hard look at these problems. And the reality is, there's so much goodness in crypto in its nature. It's more interoperable than traditional money. So for example, Pomp, if I'm sending you US dollars, I have to send it via a wire transfer. There's no interoperability between
5:35 Speaker 02 banking systems or even consumer fintech apps like Cash App or PayPal. You're kind of struck in their, in their wall garden, if you will. With crypto, you, we all know it's pretty easy to send and receive crypto from one wallet to another exchange and vice versa. But the problem, the key friction point has been this long string of address one has to copy and then put into your new sort of place where you want to receive it or send it to a friend. Say I'm sending you some crypto, I now have to send you this long string of address or a QR code. I look, I was never a fan of QR codes either, so maybe this is beef against QR codes. Uh, but generally, we want to solve that piece.
6:19 Speaker 02 Which is, how do we simplify interoperability and bring the best out of crypto in the form that really helps us win long term? And this is not just about OKCOIN. This is about everyone involved in this industry. It should be really, really simple and easy to take value, crypto value, out of OKCOIN into another wallet. Whether hardware or what have you, or into another exchange, or into another wallet. And that is tough today. That's especially tough if I have to tell one of my friends who's not in the crypto industry to come in and do the same thing. So for example, if a friend of mine started a wallet, I have to send him or her some crypto to get them to get started. And we believe unstoppable domains is the right solution to remove that
7:04 Speaker 02 that friction, that sort of anxiety inducing experience. That perhaps if I get one string wrong in that wallet address, it might go to the wrong pump and I might never get my money back. And the QR code thing, look, it's better than the long string address. But is it really shareable? Like, are you just gonna like text around and and message around a QR code? I don't think people are there yet with QR codes. And so with unstoppable wallet addresses, it, you know, it's as simple as Hyderdog crypto or Pompdog crypto or Braddog crypto. And now you can send and receive and share that address publicly. It has privacy features. Uh, you're not exposing your private key or your public address. So there's a lot of goodness here.
7:47 Speaker 02 And that's, that's the main reason why we wanted to implement this is ultimately make it really easy for people who are coming in to start using crypto, not just to invest, but also to share among their family and friends, or perhaps use crypto for other economical transactions, like if you're a freelancer, you wanna, you know, transact using crypto uh across the border. So that, that's the key motivation.
8:11 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah, it makes a ton of sense, but I always joke with people, you know, everyone's had that feeling when you go to send even a small amount. And you've got to put in that address and your heart starts beating and it's kind of like the Eminem song, right? It's like, you know, literally you feel like you're about to start sweating because you don't want to screw it up. So, uh, so it makes a ton of sense. Brad, maybe talk a little bit about how Unstoppable Domains and OKCoin came together. And, you know, why OKCoin? And kind of how did you guys think about entering into the exchanges and getting exchanges start adopting this on top of wallets?
8:45 Speaker 03 Yes, I mean, I think we, you know, we started with wallets because they were an easier place to start, frankly. They are, uh, it's a bit simpler for them to adopt new technology based on the way that they're structured. When you are holding people's private keys, you have this gigantic security. I'm not going to use the, the term honeypot. I think that they're actually quite, um, you know, exchanges, there's plenty of exchanges now that are extremely, extremely good at security, but they have this problem. And so, uh, it's been easier to start with wallets. Also, there's a lot of sending and receiving on wallets, whereas with exchanges, there's a lot more sending and receiving to yourself. So that was a good place to start.
9:26 Speaker 03 But ultimately, if you think about this industry, we have a $1 trillion asset class where the money is being transferred on the equivalent of IP addresses. So like this does not look like a sustainable system to anyone inside of crypto or anyone outside of crypto. And if you're trying to get people inside crypto, uh, you're going to need a system that is, that has better user experience. And the user experience of a domain name, which is effectively a username for you crypto, reminds people of what happens in the regular world, reminds people of their PayPal addresses or their Cash App or their Venmo or whatever. So, uh, it's a very clear and simple form factor. Uh, the way we got, the way we got, um, connected in with OKCoin, so Hydran and I have actually known each other for quite a little while here.
10:12 Speaker 03 Um, and I've been talking for quite a while. And when he, uh, when he joined OKCoin, he, you know, he essentially, you know, he essentially said, I'm going to make this, uh, I'm going to help make this a, uh, A top-tier innovative exchange and has said from the beginning that the goal here has been a better user experience because that's what's critical. And the thing that's been pretty unique about our conversations and this partnership is how focused the OKCOIN team has been on the user experience broadly, like the user experience of sending crypto more broadly, not just about getting more money into OKCOIN, for example.
10:55 Speaker 03 And I think that those kinds of bets are what the crypto community needs, and that's what's going to get us to this interoperability place. And I think, once we have the interoperability, then it's going to be, may the best application win. And so I think that the top applications will wind up benefiting even more from supporting interoperability.
11:16 Anthony Pompliano? And Haider, you guys are obviously the first exchange to do this. So let me talk a little bit about like, what drove that decision-making? And did you want to make sure you were the first? Was it just, hey, we thought this was the right experience for users and we happened to be the first? Kind of just talk through a little bit of the decision-making from your guys' end.
11:34 Speaker 02 Look, we'll take our wins when we can have it. So yes, there is a sense of, you know, a feel-good when you're the first. There's a sense of risk too, which is kind of nice. And I think we have to put our skin in the game a little bit here. Being the first piece really boils down from us wanting to deliver optimal user experience. So there's an argument to be had that perhaps with the engineering power we have, we should consider building something like this internally. Well, the challenge is, we could create something that's sort of a naming system within the OKCOIN ecosystem, but that doesn't really foster interoperability because we're not
12:19 Speaker 02 well-positioned to then convince other wallet companies and other exchanges to adapt our protocol or our naming structure. This is where we think it's one of those innovations that I personally don't think and the company doesn't think is one that should be built by exchanges themselves. I think we should adapt something like Unstoppable because they're on the path to achieving that true interoperability.
12:46 Speaker 02 Look, it's really the user experience. We wanted to be the first. We wanted to make this a simple experience. It's really such an easy thing to do from an engineering standpoint to integrate these guys. It's really easy to work with them as well, and ultimately it delights our customers. We're seeing it on Twitter today. People who already use Unstoppable are excited about this integration. Because now if their funds are in one of those 40 wallets, they can bring it over to OKCoin, have some fun, like use it for earn or high-yield features, use it for trading into other assets, and then take it back to a wallet really seamlessly. So there's a sense of excitement. We're happy to be the first.
13:26 Speaker 02 Hopefully, this encourages other exchanges to adapt it as well, because that's where things start to get really interesting. And that's really the rationale.
13:37 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah, it makes a ton of sense. Brett, maybe talk a little bit just about, and Haider mentioned this earlier, of while there's a single address that I can share like pomp.crypto, there's still some privacy features and things that prevent me from exposing kind of the public address and all of that. So maybe just talk through for somebody from an actual user experience standpoint, if they've got an OKCoin account and now they've got this unstoppable domain, how that actually works in terms of they just send the domain, but what can people see, what can they not see?
14:09 Speaker 03 So it depends on how you configure. There's a few different ways that you can go about it. But ultimately, if you're sending money into an exchange, it's a little bit easier because they have these kind of like pots of money. So it's hard to, you can't necessarily discern what's mine versus what's yours. If it's a self-custody wallet, there's a couple of, there's a couple of extra things that you can do that are not quite, not quite available yet. But for an exchange, it's kind of by default because they have these pots of money.
14:44 Speaker 03 And just kind of in general, I think that the reason why exchanges should do this is the user experience. I think the reason why exchanges will do this is because it helps with deposits. So if you have a domain name attached to your OKCOIN addresses, that is going to facilitate deposits into the exchange. I'm not saying that's the only reason you should do it or the only reason you did it, but that is an advantage. And I think Haider kind of touched on this briefly, but I think where we sit is sort of like, I guess, crypto Switzerland. We're integrating in with everybody. And I think that's one of the reasons why you haven't seen solutions like this
15:28 Speaker 03 come from existing crypto wallets and exchanges is because they're in a competitive market. And it would be hard for them to cooperate in that way. Whereas something like us, we can just sort of go in and plug in with everybody.
15:48 Anthony Pompliano? Got it. And in terms of when you guys both think through this and you're kind of obviously in partnership, but thinking from two different sides, does this really force the hand of other exchanges? Like, should we expect two years from now, every exchange has support for these kind of human-readable domains? Or do we think that some maybe just set a priority and they won't actually do it?
16:11 Speaker 03 I think less than two years. Yeah, I think we're going to see a lot of movement. We're already seeing a lot of movement. And I think this is the beginning of the wave.
16:23 Anthony Pompliano? Got it.
16:24 Speaker 02 I think from my standpoint, thinking about it from a consumer point of view, I, as a crypto user, want to see that happen. There's different value propositions on different exchanges and different wallets. And the ability to move around really easily and without having that sweaty experience that we were talking about, I think is something I want personally. And I think I hope that other exchanges are going to follow suit quite quickly because it helps, I think, build up the ecosystem. And arguably, crypto has been around now for a decade or so, right? And there's a debate to be had on whether we're moving fast enough on the overall adoption.
17:07 Speaker 02 Have we plateaued? Are we just converting crypto natives into the existing communities? Are we just talking to each other in an echo chamber? And I continue to look at Cash App and other consumer fintech apps, and their growth accelerates the minute they add the simplest form of a crypto entry point. Are we overcomplicating things in the crypto world? And then, you know, traditional finance and crypto or fintech companies are looking at this stuff and saying, oh, cool. They designed something really amazing. Let us take the MVP of that and onboard the rest of the people who've been on the fence because the way we're doing it in a simple form is an easier way to onboard those folks
17:51 Speaker 02 without intimidating them with all the crypto speak and the user experience. So I think exchanges should really pay attention to that particular trend because the trend is not other exchanges, crypto exchanges. It's perhaps the bigger competition is consumer finance companies.
18:10 Speaker 03 This is something I really like about Haider's approach, and I don't hear this from a lot of crypto folks, which is that we've got whatever it is, 100 million crypto users right now, or something like that. The goal is to get to a billion. And he's worried about the big guys coming and taking our lunch after all of this hard work. And I don't hear that from other crypto people. They're usually, I think they are usually, we're in our bubble, you know, patting each other on the back, talking about how great things are going, and they are going great. But at the same time, because they're going so well, we are getting the attention of these much, much more sophisticated companies, and they're better at user experience, like, hands down, they are better at user experience.
18:51 Speaker 03 And we need to step up our game because those next billion crypto users are coming. And the question is, who gets them? And that is, I think, the value proposition of human readable names is getting that next billion people on right from the start, like, never even see those hex addresses. Like, that's going to be the way that we can much more easily bring on that next billion people.
19:17 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Before we wrap up, I want to ask both of you just to kind of look forward into the future again, you know, whether it's five, 10 years forward, how are these and the use of these human readable names going to evolve? Right? So maybe Brad, you could talk about just across the entire ecosystem and Heather, you could talk about kind of not only what else you guys are looking to do with this, but how it fits into kind of how an exchange would really build this out. But just how does the human readable name kind of become the the core part of this industry and kind of where do we evolve to?
19:52 Speaker 03 So I think the advantage that you get when you get so because a blockchain domain is a crypto asset stored inside of your wallet, you control it completely. It gets you that interoperability. It means that it's it's tamper proof essentially. Nobody can take it away from you and stop all the mains can't take it away from you. And because you have that assurance, it enables you to go and build a lot of different things on top of it. So it starts with payments. There was a feature to tie a real ID, your Twitter account to your domain name so that you can have more of a sense of who it is that you're paying. But the user still controls all of that information and decides which Twitter, which Twitter handle to attach to their domain and can decide to attach other information to their domain.
20:36 Speaker 03 So what you're seeing is kind of like a bottom up way to start identifying, identifying a person, could be pseudo anonymously identifying them, but still identifying them, a person or or end of a party in order to be able to start doing more complicated transactions with them. And, you know, in the regular world, if I'm doing some sort of a transaction, I'm not usually sending it to some anonymous set of of letters and numbers. I usually have some information before before I before I do that transaction. I think that's the thing that's going to allow us to start doing more things.
21:10 Speaker 02 There's already pretty interesting use cases of these unstoppable domains beyond just the wallet thing that we're focused on today. The one that I'm continuing to explore is publishing content on these domains. So I think in the future, what this could potentially become is sort of your access into a user-owned internet. And you've probably heard us talk about this in context of the STX partnership. They're attacking this issue from a different angle. With unstoppable domains, I could see a future where this is your entry point into Web3, into an ecosystem of Web3 apps.
21:55 Speaker 02 It also is an address that you can use to transact with people and yourself across different platforms. And then it's also a place, essentially a real estate, that is truly your real estate on the internet. It's not the real estate you get through VeriSign and ICANN, which is sort of a leased real estate. I think a lot of people don't understand this concept, that if you buy a domain on GoDaddy or any other registrar, domain registrar, you're not really a true owner. You're just simply leasing it, and that fee can change and vary from year to year. And by the way, you don't have privacy. You're actually going to pay for privacy. I think it's like nine bucks or 10 bucks a year. And kid you not, there's no privacy with that package.
22:37 Speaker 02 I swear to you, I have bought domains, I have opted into that privacy package, and there I start getting calls from web developers and SEO experts. And, you know, so that, it's questionable. Back to your question about the future of these things, I think it's an identity system, or it could be a universal identity system into your access into Web3, into an ability for you to transact with people using this simple domain. And then thirdly, having this real estate on the internet that no one can take away from you. It's tamper-resistant, it's censorship-resistant, and it's true ownership.
23:16 Speaker 02 So you can publish content, say, for the lack of a better example, your WikiLeaks. It's going to be really hard for the future WikiLeaks to be taken down, for the good or bad.
23:28 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah. Look, I think that people are drastically underestimating this and you know, kudos one obviously to Brad and your team for for making this all possible and kind of building the technical stack and then Haider for you guys to just be so forward thinking, I think, and really understanding kind of the value of a great user experience that reduces friction for for people both that are already in kind of Bitcoin and crypto, but also for those that have yet to to kind of join. So, you know, I want to appreciate both of you guys coming on and talking about this, but it just seems to be like this is a no brainer and I definitely agree with both of you that this will become kind of an industry standard over time. So what is the way if somebody wants to get on boarded, right? Do they go through just the OKCOIN normal account
24:12 Anthony Pompliano? creation and then they can elect to do this? Do they need to go to unstoppable domains? Just talk through kind of people who have kind of heard about this and now want to do it? What's the best way to send them to to go participate?
24:22 Speaker 02 There's there's really two types of people that are going to be onboarding. One is the segment of people who already have an unstoppable domain. It's easy for them. They just come in, create an OKCOIN account. If they already have an OKCOIN account, they don't need to do much more. And when you go in the withdrawal flow, you can now enter your unstoppable domain and withdraw or deposit into OKCOIN using an unstoppable domain. The thing with unstoppable domains, the way it's structured is you typically your your entry point into using it, whether you're on the wallet side or exchange side, is the withdrawal flow. So say you want to deposit into
25:03 Speaker 02 OKCOIN, you're going to go into your wallet's withdrawal flow, enter your unstoppable domain address, and then OKCOIN will receive it, right? Or you can receive it in OKCOIN. Now, if you're a brand new user, you don't have an unstoppable domain, you're hearing this podcast, you want to start with unstoppabledomains.com, you want to go ahead and purchase a domain, it ranges anywhere between $20 and $40, depending on how customized you want it to be. And then, once you have that domain locked and loaded, you want to configure it with your wallet or your wallet addresses, and that's it. Basically, you're you're done there and then you can start using it to to move money around or to move crypto around.
25:44 Anthony Pompliano? Awesome. Unstoppabledomains.com, okcoin.com. You guys are legends for pulling this off. So congratulations to both of you. Highly suggest everyone go check it out and we'll talk again next time.
25:56 Speaker 02 Sounds good. Thanks for having us. By the way, anyone, a last teaser, anyone who actually uses an unstoppable domains on OKCoin is automatically entering into a $10,000 giveaway. So odds are great. Just saying.
26:14 Anthony Pompliano? I love it. All right. Thank you guys so much. We'll do it again.
26:17 Speaker 03 Thanks, Andy.
Previous #480: Rahul Rana on Moonshot Ideas Next #482: Senator Lummis on Bitcoin and Government Page updated October 29, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
