#490: Simon Chamorro on Crypto in the Developing World

Simon Chamorro is the co-founder and CEO of Valiu, which is making cross border payments much more effective for millions of people. I was so impressed with Simon and his team’s plans that I became an investor in the company. In this conversation, we discuss the legacy payment systems in South America, Valiu’s solution, why Bitcoin is so important in emerging markets, hyperinflation, oppressive governments, and crypto’s future. ======================= 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/pomp. This is a no brainer for both newcomers and crypto heavyweights - go sign up today. ======================= With over 5 Million users, Crypto.com is the easiest way to buy, and sell over 90 cryptocurrencies. Download the app at Crypto.com and get $25 with my code: POMP. When it’s time to spend your crypto, nothing beats the Crypto.com Visa Card, which pays you up to 8% back instantly, with no annual, or monthly fees to worry about! Get $25 when you download the Crypto.com App today using the code “POMP” ======================= Download the top-rated DraftKings Sportsbook app NOW and use promo code POMP when you sign up to Hammer the Over on Sunday night’s basketball game when LA takes on Denver. For every ONE THOUSAND people that bet the over in Sunday’s game, the line will decrease by one point. Yes, this is your2 chance to improve the odds of the over hitting, so tell your friends and family, this is a team effort! Hammer the over and improve your odds of doubling your money. That’s promo code POMP.… for a limited time, only at DraftKings Sportsbook! =======================

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

• 0:00Anthony 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. Simon Chimoro is the co-founder and CEO of Value, which is making cross-border payments much more effective for millions of people. I was so impressed with Simon and his team's plans that I became an investor in the company. In this conversation, we discuss the legacy payment systems in South America, Value's solution, why Bitcoin is so important in emerging markets, hyperinflation, oppressive governments, and crypto's future. I really enjoyed this conversation with Simon, and I think you will as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First

• 0:41Anthony Pompliano?

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• 1:21Anthony Pompliano?

  one of the most popular cryptocurrency wallets that's been around since 2015. Go to Exodus.io or search Exodus on the App Store or the Play Store. Next up is Crypto.com, and you're going to want to pay attention to this. Are you planning to buy a Tesla with Bitcoin? What if I told you that you could win a Tesla just by trading Bitcoin? Well, you can now with the Crypto.com app. Crypto.com is giving away four Teslas. To enter the lucky draw, download the Crypto.com app and pay at least $100 of Bitcoin before March 8. If you're new to Crypto.com, you'll also enjoy 0% credit and debit card fees in your first month. You can also apply for their Crypto.com Visa Card, which gives you 8% back along with rebates for your Spotify, Netflix, and Amazon Prime subscriptions. More

• 2:05Anthony Pompliano?

  details can be found in the show notes. Download the Crypto.com app now. Good luck going to Tesla. Lastly, it's DraftKings. Have you ever wanted to give yourself better odds on winning a bet? Well, DraftKings Sportsbook is giving you a chance to do just that. All players who place a bet on Sunday night's basketball game between LA and Denver will have a hand in lowering the over/under on the game. That's right, for every 1,000 players who bet the over on Sunday night's game, the over/under will drop by one point. Every better who hammers the over in Sunday's Denver vs. Los Angeles game helps to lower the game's over/under. The best part is that even as the line lowers, the odds remain at even money. That's right, you can double your money by hammering the over. If that isn't enough excitement for you, there's a huge title fight happening this weekend

• 2:49Anthony Pompliano?

  at UFC 258. Don't forget, DraftKings Sportsbook also offers great odds and promotions on basketball, hockey, and so much more all week long. DraftKings is safe, secure, and reliable, so you can deposit and withdraw your funds at your convenience. Download the top-rated DraftKings Sportsbook app now and use promo code POMP when you sign up to hammer the over on Sunday night's basketball game when LA takes on Denver. For every 1,000 people that bet the over in Sunday's game, the line will decrease by one point. Yes, this is your chance to improve the odds of the overhitting, so tell your friends and family, this is a team effort. Hammer the over and improve your odds of doubling your money. That's promo code POMP for a limited time only at DraftKings Sportsbook. You gotta be 21 or

• 3:33Anthony Pompliano?

  older, New Jersey, Indiana, Michigan, and Virginia only. Restrictions apply. See draftkings.com/sportsbook for details. If you've got a gambling problem, go to 1-800-GAMBLER and give them a call. All right, let's get into this episode with Simon. I hope you guys enjoy this one.

• 3:48Speaker 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.

• 4:14Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. Got a very special guest today. I've got Simon here with me. Thank you so much for doing this, sir.

• 4:20Speaker 02

  Thank you, Pomp. So very excited to be here.

• 4:23Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. Let's just jump right into your background. You've got a very unique perspective of the world. So kind of help everyone understand, where did you grow up? And then kind of what have you done over the years before you started Value?

• 4:34Speaker 02

  Of course, so I guess I can start by saying that I am a migrant.

• 4:41Speaker 02

  Right now, I live in Colombia, but I was born in Venezuela. And due to the economic collapse and hyperinflation in the country,

• 4:52Speaker 02

  I decided to migrate from a very early age. You know, everything that Venezuelan's families and my family built was lost. And so for me, the solution of crypto and what it brings to the table is something personal. I migrated to Spain to play soccer from a very early age. I played for Real Madrid. And then I did industrial design in the United States. So that was my second migration. And in 2014, I fell down the crypto rabbit hole. Essentially, right after I graduated from college, I found about Ethereum, then quickly I found about crypto.

• 5:36Speaker 02

  And then I started figuring out what I wanted to do with cryptocurrencies in Latin America, especially in Venezuela, because of the potential impact to solve hyperinflation, solve these problems. And now I'm living in Colombia. So that's a little bit about me. In general, I love building companies and getting a lot of people together to solve large problems. So I think crypto falls into that category.

• 6:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Talk a little bit just about as a kid, the hyperinflation and kind of the collapse of the Venezuelan society and government. What was your experience there? And any specific stories that kind of stand out to you to really highlight this for folks?

• 6:20Speaker 02

  Sure, I guess I can, you know, tell you a little bit of an analogy.

• 6:27Speaker 02

  You know, when we were growing up, the government multiple times because of this hyperinflation, which means everything was just getting more expensive. You know, you guys in the United States are experiencing a little bit of that right now. It's really hard to know what's the inflation rate because the Federal Reserve potentially won't release the real numbers. But everybody tells me that life is just getting way more expensive in the US. So if you're holding your currency in the local fiat, in the local Currency issued by the government, then you're just becoming poorer, right? Cash poor in Venezuela, that is, that became hyperinflation, which means that money loses value at a ridiculous rate.

• 7:11Speaker 02

  In January, for example, we had a thousand percent, January of 2021, we had a thousand percent hyperinflation. And if we look at it in past 20 years, we've just had ridiculous numbers of inflation, which means, you know, going back to the analogy, when we were growing up, the government used to take out zeros from the currency because the number, the numbers were just getting super large. So today, a dollar, an American dollar is worth like one billion, one million bolivars.

• 7:52Speaker 02

  But if we add the zeros that the government has taken out, one US dollar is about one trillion, over, over one trillion bolivars. So as you can imagine, cash bills couldn't keep up with this, with this hyperinflation, and now cash is worthless. I could literally like burn, you know, I could take a full paper wall of bills of Venezuela and burn them and I wouldn't care. Cash is exactly worthless. So a lot of the people in the crypto space may, may have seen that people in Venezuela that use the cash bills to build or to do art or to do like purses, because the purse

• 8:35Speaker 02

  that you make out of these bills is more, has more value than the actual money. So those are just some of the examples and analogies I can bring to the table. But, you know, growing up in a country like that, where 50% inflation happens in a day, where you go in the morning to buy a milk, and then you go out in the afternoon and the milk is twice as expensive, you really become, I guess, financially savvy on how to survive, right? How to survive in a country like that. And everybody in Venezuela Became somewhat financially savvy, you know, from people that are cash poor to rich people.

• 9:13Speaker 02

  And that just generated as well my huge migration, mismanagement of the country that is not only monetary, is also from an executive perspective, there's no food, there were food shortages back in the day, mismanagement of the energy systems, so bad internet and people started migrating. And businesses started to go broke. And and and now we have, we we came from being potentially one of the richest countries in resources in the world and one of the richest countries in Latin America to the poorest country in Latin America, even poorer than Haiti. So really, really big drastic change.

• 9:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Talk a little bit about before Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. What were people doing when you it became financially savvy? What were they doing to protect their wealth or their purchasing power?

• 10:11Speaker 02

  So people were basically buying stuff, buying assets that were trying to not hold their money in the Venezuelan bolivar. So, you know, back in the day when this was happening, people would, you know, turn into buying real estate or buying or just spending it in like restaurants or storing a bunch of food. And and then trading these foods. So even barter became something, you know, not a super large scale, but people started to barter, you know, things. And so communities got together to buy, for example, water for the buildings.

• 10:52Speaker 02

  And then you would buy one of those large trucks of water once, like, like to spend all the bolivars as much as you can and just hold your money in water, I guess. And so that became the norm, just putting your money in in in things that were

• 11:10Speaker 02

  less liquid, I guess, and and and food and things like that. And some some of the other people were starting to buy things like gold. And then when Bitcoin became something, when Bitcoin became like more well known, especially with local Bitcoins, which is a peer-to-peer trading market.

• 11:33Speaker 02

  College students started to getting like to understand it and grasp the concept of storing your money in Bitcoin. I think that was in 2017, even before the 2017 bubble. And then these students got so excited and these young people got so excited that they started teaching their grandmothers and their grandfathers and their parents about it. Some of them got it, some of them didn't, but the whole country knew about it, at least understood that there was this alternative digital currency, internet money, magical internet money that people could use to hold their value instead of the local currency. And you know, that's from a very basic perspective,

• 12:18Speaker 02

  from a more financially savvy perspective, you know, the amount of financial engineering and financial loopholes that, you know, richer, more educated people could find was ridiculous. Some people, for example, started asking credits from the banks in the local currency and buying an apartment in Manhattan and then paying that credit in Venezuelan bolivars over, you know, 10 years, 15 years. And they would buy an apartment in Manhattan for like the equivalent of, you know, a thousand dollars or less. And so, you know, that's, you know, that's definitely corruption in some way. But I have heard of people that did this and that's just kind of

• 13:00Speaker 02

  like something that I wanted to share as you can imagine, if that's one thing that you can do in a hyperinflationary economy, there's so many things you can do to hack the system and to, you know, get away with that.

• 13:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. And so let's talk a little bit about what you're building with value. I'm an investor in the business. I think that this is a really, really unique type of solution and one that's gaining market adoption. But just talk through kind of the impetus for the idea and kind of what you guys have built so far.

• 13:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, so one of the things, I would like to start with the problem, right? And we are potentially solving hyperinflation and rampant inflation. And even we can potentially save Venezuela. So if value, if everybody in Latin America puts their money into value, we think that we have virtually solved the largest problem in the region. And value is essentially as a simple dollar account for Latin Americans that allow people to save money in dollars, in crypto dollars,

• 14:17Speaker 02

  and send remittances or international money transfers between themselves for free, at no cost, and immediately. So it's just an app, a mobile app, where people can connect their bank or pay with cash in more than 30,000 locations in Colombia. People in Venezuela can connect their banks because Venezuela, because of the hyperinflation, is fully banked. It's a country where even more than the United States, people have a bank account. So if you're in Venezuela, if you're in Colombia, you can turn your fiat, your Venezuelan bolivars, or your Colombian pesos into crypto dollars.

• 15:02Speaker 02

  You can then send them for free and immediately between anybody, between these two countries. And people can also, you know, use it for saving and protecting their assets from the hyperinflationary economy in Venezuela and from the depreciative economy in Colombia, which is, while it's not hyperinflation, in Colombia, over the past, for example, five years, the currency has lost about 30% of its value or more against the dollar. So this is a solution that, while the initial focus is for Venezuelans, both that are still living in Venezuela and migrants across the world, this is a solution that may help any other population in Latin America.

• 15:47Speaker 02

  And and and help them have more financial prosperity. Whether you're a farmer in the middle of Venezuela or a banker in the city, you can access dollars and make money every day because your money in value dollars is appreciating against local fiat.

• 16:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Talk a little bit just how you're technically doing this.

• 16:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, so we use a combination of crypto. And and I would like to say that we are extremely pragmatic. Um, I love crypto, I love blockchain, I love the potential that it has. Um, you know, the transparency, the permissionless uh uh multi-signature accounts that people can actually, you know, hold their keys and be their own bank uh in a way. But the reality is that in Latin America, specifically in emerging markets, um, people do not have the tools, uh, the education and to understand this. So they are really demanding for very simple stuff like, is it safe? Is it uh and is it like, you know, is my money gonna be in dollars essentially?

• 16:48Speaker 02

  Because, you know, the dollar is the is the current uh um kind of like uh store of value that, you know, and most people in the world uh think is the best. Uh, still Bitcoin hasn't still got gotten there, but you know, over time, our strategy is that initially we're gonna give people what they want. Um, but very simple products built on top of crypto. But over time, as we increase our user base, uh, we're gonna give them Bitcoin and we're gonna give them uh multi-signature uh non-custodial accounts. Um, but that is not the right time just yet. Um, so the way we do this, I wanted to give that initial kind of like

• 17:30Speaker 02

  um explanation because um we have an IOU initially. Uh, an IOU because it allows us to do these free immediate transfers, which is one of the ways we um we essentially uh acquire users and promote that, you know, we're effectively killing the remittance business by helping people transfer money between countries at no cost. Um, and uh potentially acquiring all these Western Union uh users. Um, so it's an IOU, uh, which means that it's essentially a centralized accounting system that is mirroring uh crypto that we have custodied in uh places like Circle um and and other places. And um.

• 18:14Speaker 02

  And so we back the value dollar, which is an IOU, with one-to-one with other stablecoins. And the way we on-ramp is through Bitcoin. So initially, when we started, it was all Bitcoin. We were offering fiat to fiat remittances, and we were buying Bitcoin in the country of the sender. And then we were selling the Bitcoin in the country of the recipient to get the fiat and send it to their bank account. In Venezuela, like I mentioned, everybody has a bank account. So when you do the offer in Venezuela, you pay directly to the banks. And we do that in a peer-to-peer fashion, in a decentralized fashion of sorts, by doing peer-to-peer exchanges.

• 18:55Speaker 02

  And so we never touch the Venezuelan banking system, because we don't want to do that, because Venezuela is a dictatorship. And so we effectively can hack the system through these peer-to-peer systems, exchanges, and that's how we offer them. And it was all going through Bitcoin. So our main goal at the time was really to how do we manage our treasury? And how do we protect ourselves from the risk of having Bitcoin for this period of time? So we started playing around with hedging and futures. And then we found that we could effectively create a synthetic exposure to the dollar through doing Bitcoin futures trading, derivatives trading.

• 19:40Speaker 02

  So at that time, we said, all right, let's offer dollars to people. Or let's offer a synthetic dollar that is backed in Bitcoin derivatives. And we recently changed that because we were able to hold in that in BitMEX. And with everything that happened recently, you know, it definitely showed that this is a risk. In the end, it's not that we're actually custoding these assets ourselves. This money is locked in these third-party exchanges. So we finally made the decision to back the value dollar with stablecoins. And this is all I can say right now, but we are working ourselves in building our own blockchain

• 20:19Speaker 02

  and our own token, because one of the most important things is to, over time, make this censorship resistant. It's really, really important that this is censorship resistant. And one of the best ways to do this is by making the value dollar not an IOU, actually creating a token, and then building it in our own blockchain, and over time, giving people with really good UX a way for them to hold their keys.

• 20:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Talk a little bit about the market adoption so far, right? So where are you seeing people using this? How is it going in terms of the amount of transactions, or just like any data that you could share around, you know, do people want this and are they using it?

• 21:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, you know, we launched 15 months ago in October of 2019. And in 2020, we grew 10x. We went from 3,000 monthly active users to 30,000 monthly active users, and a lot of it was organic growth. The reality is that this is a matter of life or death for some people, right? Accessing dollars or stronger currencies in a place that is hyperinflationary, or even in Colombia, in general, in Latin America, it's really hard to access dollars. And specifically in Venezuela,

• 21:42Speaker 02

  it's a life or death thing. So being such an intense need, what we're offering to people, it's really, really important. And right now, we have, since we launched, about 80,000 people have used our products, about 30,000 monthly active retained. We have moved about $9 million from Colombia to Venezuela, and we're talking about like low-income migrants, right? So, super, super important. Effectively have potentially helped about 200,000 or even more households

• 22:21Speaker 02

  Venezuela access the stability of the dollar. And over time, what we're going to continue to do is, like I mentioned, make it more censorship resistant, making it more decentralized, educating people on the advantages of these technologies, and working with merchants so that the product, you know, is used for payments, essentially closing the pipe, I would say. Today, most people have to cash out into the bolivar, into the local fiat to pay. Because crypto, mostly anywhere in the world is still not used as a medium of payment. But in Venezuela, given the situation of hyperinflation,

• 23:04Speaker 02

  everybody's looking for something else to accept payments. You know, the trust barrier for crypto is way lower than anywhere in the world, I would say. So we're going to be launching Pure Payments soon, and we're going to be focusing on opening these merchant accounts so that commercees can accept payments in value dollars. And that's definitely going to be an important moment for us to, you know, as a company, to create more impact, to onboard more users. We recently enabled cash-ins in Venezuela, so, which I believe is the most important thing we've accomplished as a company, right? You know, effectively helping people turn their high inflationary currency into dollar in Venezuela.

• 23:50Speaker 02

  Back in the day, the only way they could access this was through their family members in Colombia sending them remittances. But now they can actually, you know, cash in Venezuela. And so that's effectively what we have done so far, how many people are using it. And what's, I guess what's also interesting is that through the Venezuelan use case, which is this diaspora that has left the country to Colombia, Peru, virtually every country in Latin America, the United States, Spain, we can expand to all these other places, all these other regions, build the on and off rounds for them, for the Venezuelan migrants. And then, once we have these on and off rounds,

• 24:35Speaker 02

  then this is a product that also works for local populations of Colombia, Brazil, Peru, Mexico. So the Venezuelan use case is really, really strategic.

• 24:46Anthony Pompliano?

  And so when you think through, you know, kind of just Bitcoin cryptocurrencies, value dollars in South and Central America, is this something where you think that, you know, we're going to eventually replace the legacy fiat currencies with these new digital currencies? Or will there still be coexistence? It'll just be like the fiat ones are really bad at doing what they're supposed to do. The digital ones are better, but the digital ones don't necessarily knock off or kill the fiat currencies?

• 25:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think I think time will tell. Um, you know, our bet and the reason why we started value down here in Latin America and the American markets is first because Latin Americans love the US dollar and stable coins, you know, have this, you know, mirror value to the dollar. And it's a good kind of like gateway drug into cryptocurrencies, I guess, for most people, you know, this is stable points. And over time, hopefully, you know, things like Bitcoin take over as well. But, but I do think that while time will tell, Latin American emerging economies are the places that are more prone to be,

• 26:00Speaker 02

  for the, for the system to be replaced by crypto. Because the, the, the chaos in the, and the impact of financial crisis down here in the emerging markets in general, it's really, really, really large. You know, from macroeconomic perspective, not only we have hyperinflationary currencies and economies, but we also have, like I was mentioning, the depreciated economies, which means that, you know, we import a lot of things. We only produce primary commodities like petroleum, which is now less in need from first world

• 26:43Speaker 02

  countries. We haven't made the investments in education and all these things. So over time, a crisis down here will just prove the system to be way more ineffective. And, and specifically in countries like Venezuela, like I was mentioning, if I truly believe that Venezuela can become the first crypto economy in the world. And if the political...

• 27:11Speaker 02

  If the government changes and the power changes hands in Venezuela, which you know time will tell, I can tell you that the good guys that we know them are pro crypto, are pro building because we're actually seeing the effects of actually airdropping money to Venezuelan teachers and medical workers through crypto. And you know, this is being led by the opposition, by the good guys. So they already seen, they already actually seen this potential that it has of overcoming centralized authoritarian regimes. So I truly believe in 10 years, we'll potentially have the first crypto economy,

• 27:56Speaker 02

  hopefully down here in South America, and hopefully that spreads throughout the region.

• 28:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Talk a little bit about the education of the population. So the technology, obviously, we've talked a little bit about in terms of how that's evolving and how far along it is. What about the actual knowledge of the people to know that this is a better system, that there's very simple ways to use it, and to basically just get them up to speed so that they feel comfortable using the technology? What do you see happening there and are there any areas that would surprise people?

• 28:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think, you know, education is the most important thing, for sure. And it doesn't have to be boring education. It doesn't have to be, you know, long, long information and papers about, you know, how money works and how crypto is better. I think education starts by building great products and then teaching people the features that these products are giving them. And so it has to be embedded in the product itself. It's not that you have to teach people how to use it because then you have a shitty product. You have to rebuild great, great products, but you can also take advantage of these opportunities

• 29:13Speaker 02

  to quickly hint and show them why this is better. And this is a really, really important challenge and a big challenge for all.

• 29:22Speaker 02

  And so, and I think that is, you know, apart from a few other things like on and off ramps, fiat on and off ramps, the key for crypto mainstream adoption is education, for sure.

• 29:36Anthony Pompliano?

  What do you think is the biggest risk or the thing that you're most worried about when it comes to adoption in South and Central America?

• 29:46Speaker 02

  You know, we continue to have, I guess this is not only for Central America and South America, we continue to have democracies, right? And I think democracy has failed as a political system. It's a system where, you know, you have parties, where people are divided, where, you know, you make a career of being a politician instead of actually, you know, everybody should be a politician to work for the people. So this democracy system, and you know, I can't keep on talking about this, but I'm not going to get into that rabbit hole, but democracy has failed, in my opinion.

• 30:29Speaker 02

  And so that means that power is so centralized and we are so dependent on for crypto to be successful, on politicians, that worries me across the board, even in the United States. And so I think that unless we move really fast, like really fast as an industry, unless we really are, stay true to our values, because you know, we're seeing more and more companies enter the space, more and more people enter the space recently, and most of these people

• 31:11Speaker 02

  haven't been in the space since the early days, and they haven't been here because of why this, why crypto is better. There might be a lot of people just trying to make a buck or make money by building a company in the space, but, and these might be successful companies. So that's when, when it really becomes scary for me, I really think that, you know, the good guys in the industry, the people that are working on decentralized systems, fully decentralized, on non-custodial accounts, on privacy.

• 31:43Speaker 02

  These are the people who have to win. And you know, us at Value, we're, you know, learning every day and we're making our best to, you know, pragmatically first acquire the users and then help them transition into this new, more sovereign systems and these new better systems. So I think those two, those are the two things that worry me most, the political dependency and the, and which are the companies that are going to actually lead the way in space.

• 32:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so when you think through kind of where this is all going, right? Let's zoom out and look forward 10 years. How do you view Value 10 years from now and kind of what would be the milestone of success? Or kind of the, maybe not finish line, but kind of the thing that you're aiming at? What does that world look like a decade out?

• 32:40Speaker 02

  So contrary to what most people think, I think the crypto space has a really unique characteristic where this is not going to be a winner takes all type of industry. The reason is exactly because of what I just mentioned, the regulatory hurdles. These regulatory and compliance hurdles will mean that there will be silos of companies that will target specific regions. And so for Value, I think what the most important thing for us is dominating Latin America and helping Latin Americans transition into crypto and into dollar accounts and then into Bitcoin.

• 33:21Speaker 02

  So, you know, 10 years from now, we hope to be dominating Latin America from that perspective. And then connecting Latin America to the rest of the world. Because if we are saying, if we imagine a world where we have this silos of companies that are in different regions and they're all working in blockchain and in crypto, the interoperability, you know, I'm sure in 10 years we'll have interoperability with cryptos and blockchains. It'll be just a more global, you know, financial system. So that's where I see Value in 10 years, very, very much focusing Latin America and connecting Latin America to the rest of the world.

• 34:04Anthony Pompliano?

  On that path, what are the data points? Not necessarily the numbers you're trying to achieve, but just what are the data points you think will be most important for you inside of value or for folks who are interested in the crypto markets in general to pay attention to? Is it number of users, transactions, exchange traded volume, price? What do you think is the most important things there?

• 34:25Speaker 02

  I do believe is two things. Assets under management for the companies that are in the space. So, you know, the amount of crypto, I would say crypto under management, which means effectively that people are holding their crypto and that if they're paying with crypto, they're paying to other people, but the crypto is not leaving back into fiat. So if we see that growing, that trend growing over time, that's going to mean, you know, the crypto is actually overthrowing fiat and that it's being successful. Secondly, which goes hand in hand with that is the cash-ins. So on-ramps, effectively, you know, the amount of people turning their fiat

• 35:09Speaker 02

  into crypto through cash-ins. And I think those two things are definitely going to be really, really important. And of course, you know, we're talking about like any company, market share in terms of users. We have about, I believe, about 600 million people in Latin America. And half of them are unbanked yet, which is really an awesome opportunity for crypto. And so, you know, the fact that anybody with an internet connection in a smartphone can have their own money and don't go through the banking system.

• 35:49Speaker 02

  I think that's a really, really important kind of development for the region. And I would say those are the three things. Amount of users, you know, compared to the market, cash-ins and crypto under management.

• 36:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, those are three definitely great ones. Before we wrap up, I always ask everyone the same two questions. The first question is, what is the most important book that you've ever read?

• 36:18Speaker 02

  The most important book. Oh, man. You know, I have to say that I became a less of a fan of business books over time. I, you know, following very much what Naval says. I figured that a lot of these concepts, I can learn them from YouTube videos and things like that. However, I can tell you that one book that I really enjoyed, and this is not related to crypto. It's actually related to company building, is The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. If you're a CEO or a founder, even in the early days, a lot of these advices for when you're actually starting to scale up. But even from the early days, if you read that, it's, I think it's super, super valuable.

• 37:03Speaker 02

  And of course, for people that are interested in crypto, read the Bitcoin White Paper.

• 37:09Anthony Pompliano?

  I think that's a great piece of advice. The second is a question brought by our friends at Eight Sleep. They've got a thermo regulation bed, so it makes it very cold for you to go to sleep, get deeper sleep. I sleep with it every night. I love it. What is your sleep schedule? I used to be one of these people who didn't sleep at all, and now I sleep like a little baby. I'm going to convert to the sleep religion, if you will. What is your sleep schedule every day?

• 37:35Speaker 02

  I sleep like clockwork at 11:00 PM. Sometimes at 11:30 PM, then I wake up at 6:00 AM, 6:30. So I usually sleep seven hours. It works for me so far. Over time, it seems that the older I get, I need less sleep.

• 37:54Speaker 02

  I wake up rested after less time. I do value the sleep a lot, and I value habits for me. My schedule is extremely strict. So that's a little bit of my sleep schedule.

• 38:13Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it. In terms of the third question, it's a little bit more fun. Aliens, are you a believer or a non-believer?

• 38:23Speaker 02

  I'm a believer. I'm a believer. I don't know if we have, you know, have any contact with aliens, but from a math, just from math perspective and what we know so far from the universe, it's very unlikely that there's no aliens. So, yeah.

• 38:43Anthony Pompliano?

  I, I think they're out there, man. We'll see. I think they're there somewhere, but I don't know if we're ever gonna run into them, that's for sure. You could ask me one question to wrap up. What is the one question you have for me?

• 38:56Speaker 02

  Man, how the hell do you create so much content?

• 39:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Listen, I'm learning, right? And this is, uh, this is the third podcast that I'm recording today. And I basically have sat here for a number of hours and I'm just learning. I get asked all these questions and it's pretty crazy. Like the way I look at it is I get to sit here two days a week, so Wednesdays and Thursdays normally in the afternoon. And I just have people come on and they tell me everything that they know, right? They tell me all the secrets. They tell me all of their insights. And so that helps from a podcast standpoint. And then the rest of this stuff is I just kind of live my life on the internet, right? It's, uh, when I think of something, I say it. I, uh, got something to respond to somebody, I respond.

• 39:42Anthony Pompliano?

  I just kind of, everything I do, I, I have no, uh, no things that aren't on the internet. And what it does is it allows me to kind of put out like the, uh, um, you know, the, the bat light, if you will, right? You remember when Batman would put it up in, uh, in the sky? It's the same thing. Uh, people know what I'm, you know, into, what I want to learn about, the type of people I'm looking for. And so I just use the internet to my advantage. And part of that is, is creating content. So I'm having a blast. And I keep doing it. At some point, I'll probably get tired. And then one day I'll just wake up and just, I'll disappear off the internet.

• 40:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. I ask that because I'm, I'm, I'm starting to focus on creating more content for, for Spanish speaking people. And, you know, running a, running a company, that's, that's not my priority. So I'm trying to figure out how, how do I optimize for that?

• 40:31Anthony Pompliano?

  You're tweeting in Spanish more, right?

• 40:34Speaker 02

  I'm gonna be starting, I'm starting to do that and I'm gonna continue to do that more and more. Um, both in Spanish and English, but definitely with the focus of, you know, helping spread the uh education and educate people in Latin America about money, why money, why crypto is money? The problems with the fear of infrastructure and all that. So making it by size, you know, abstracting complexity is really, really important.

• 41:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I mean, look, it's, uh, it's obviously very clear that, uh, if you're able to, uh, take what is, uh, you know, kind of all the ideas and, uh, analysis that's in English and get it into Spanish, um, and really help people in kind of the part of the world that, uh, literally they just can't understand it, right? It's just in a different language. Um, it's, uh, if you can kind of bridge that divide, cause it goes both ways, right? People in the United States, they don't know what's going on in South and Central America, cause they don't speak the language. Uh, and so I think that if by bridging that divide, uh, would be fantastic. So, well, please, please, please keep doing that.

• 41:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I will, I will.

• 41:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Where can we send people to find you on the internet or find, uh, value?

• 41:42Speaker 02

  So, uh, you can find me on Twitter, uh, at Simon Value, uh, value is, uh, V A L I U, like volume, like a drug, but without the M. Uh, so Simon Value, um, in Twitter. Uh, I don't have Instagram yet, um, uh, or Facebook. So, and you can follow Value, uh, as well at Value Co., uh, or Value Com for, uh, Spanish speaking people in Twitter. Um, and if, uh, you know, you have a Spanish speaking people, uh, listeners that are in Colombia or Venezuela, wanna try our product, uh, you know, just go to the App Store, uh, or Google Play and type value and you will find it right away.

• 42:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Amazing. Listen, thank you so much for, uh, for coming on and talking about this. I know you're very busy and, uh, we got a company to build. So keep, uh, keep going. I think that, uh, it's a no-brainer in terms of providing the solution to people in South and Central America. So, uh, I'm excited to, uh, to be part of the journey and, uh, just really proud of all the work you've done. So we'll have to do it again in the future.

• 42:45Speaker 02

  Awesome. Thank you, Bob. Take care, man.