#650 Facebook’s Crypto Plans with David Marcus

David Marcus is the Head of Facebook Financial. He is the former president of PayPal and Vice President of Messaging Products at Facebook where he ran the Facebook Messenger unit from 2014 until 2018. In this conversation, we discuss bitcoin, stablecoins, Novi, digital wallets, Libra, Diem, financial regulation, trust issues, and the metaverse. ======================= Gemini is a leading regulated cryptocurrency exchange, wallet, and custodian that makes it simple and secure to buy, sell, store, and earn bitcoin, ether, and over 40 other cryptocurrencies. Offering industry-leading security, insurance and uptime, Gemini is the go-to trusted platform for beginner and sophisticated investors alike. Open a free account in under 3 minutes at gemini.com/pomp and get $20 of bitcoin after you trade $100 or more within 30 days. ======================= MiamiCoin, the first CityCoin, is now live! Mining began on August 3rd, and the community has already generated over $1 million of protocol contributions reserved for the City of Miami. This is a community-launched program built on Bitcoin, and it’s far more than a currency: MiamiCoin is a protocol, and a platform for innovation. So, the CityCoins team is announcing something pretty cool: MiamiCoin Makers Month is a bringing together hackers, designers, and creators who are passionate about creating apps to benefit the City of Miami. $25k in total prizes will be awarded to developers who build the winning apps. And, the winners will be announced by Ryan Hoover, founder of Product Hunt, and Bored Elon Musk, everybody’s favorite pseudonymous Twitter inventor and blockchain enthusiast. Visit MiamiMakers.co to learn more and sign up to take part. =======================

• 0:02Speaker 00

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. David Marcus is the head of Facebook Financial. He's the former president of PayPal and the vice president of messaging products at Facebook, where he ran the Facebook Messenger unit from 2014 until 2018. In this conversation, we discuss Bitcoin, stable coins, Novi, digital wallets, Libra, Diam, financial regulation, trust issues, and the metaverse. I really enjoyed this conversation with David, and I hope you do as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First up is BlockFi. BlockFi provides financial products for crypto investors. Those products include a high-yield

• 0:45Speaker 00

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• 1:29Speaker 00

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• 2:56Speaker 00

  Go to the description, click on the link for more information, polymarket.co/pompod or go to polymarket.co today and use code POMP and it'll get you that free $100 trade. All right, let's get in this episode with David. I hope you guys enjoy this one.

• 3:11Speaker 01

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

• 3:34Speaker 00

  David, thank you so much for joining us. Glad to be here. Absolutely. Let's start first with Facebook Financial. You are now the head of F2 or Facebook Financial. What exactly is that and kind of what's the mission or goal of the organization within Facebook? So it's a combination of different things, right? So you have on one side the more traditional payment operations that we oversee. So think about it as Facebook Pay, when you buy something on one of our family of apps or when you make a donation, which has been a really, really powerful product and/or when you actually make payments today on Messenger in the US. So we have P2P payments in the US that is actually more popular than people believe. And then we have

• 4:20Speaker 00

  Payments in WhatsApp and India and Brazil. So all of that is, you know, running on more traditional payment rails. Uh, and it's often branded Facebook Pay. Uh, and then on the other side, uh, of the house, we have Novi, uh, which is our wallets to be for digital currencies, crypto. Um, and, uh, and that will enable, uh, cross-border payments and a full-fledged wallet, uh, with a balance and, uh, and many more things to come. Um, and, uh, and that's that the same team that started, uh, what was then called the Libra Journey, uh, uh, now, um, I mean, the journey started over three years ago now. Uh, so a while ago. Um, and, uh, and so basically that's it. Um, and then, you know, of course, there's a number of things that are required to support all of these businesses,

• 5:05Speaker 00

  like, you know, customer service and operation compliance and all these things that are part of, uh, part of that group as well. And so obviously you've had a ton of experience, both before Facebook and at Facebook with payments. Uh, you recently wrote a piece that identified a lot of the problems with the legacy payment rails. And maybe you can kind of just walk us through what some of those problems that you've identified are and kind of why they're problematic, both in the United States and outside the US. Well, the, I mean, the main reason they're problematic is because they leave so many people and businesses behind. Uh, and we kind of think about financial inclusion as a problem that is not an American problem, and that's absolutely untrue. Uh, there are over sixty-two million adults in the US

• 5:50Speaker 00

  who are currently unbanked, uh, and left behind by the current system. Um, about seventy percent, a little shy of seventy percent of the payment volume in the US still goes over ACH, which was built into seventies and takes three days to clear. Um, so, you know, we think that that's not okay. And then when you look at it from, uh, the global lens, then you have one point seven billion people who are left behind by the current financial system. And about a billion that's underserved because they just were born in the wrong place or live in the wrong place. And I feel that the, the way that the system is set is actually done in such a way that, uh, the least you can afford it, the more penalized you are by fees and all kinds of different access problems. And we feel it's just time for a change.

• 6:36Speaker 00

  As a matter of fact, it's actually overdue. When you think about internationally, I think a lot of folks would say, okay, I expect there to be high percentage of people who are unbanked. Maybe I can't determine exactly which country, I can't determine exact numbers, but that makes sense to somebody that grew up in North America. But to hear that 60 plus million Americans are unbanked or underbanked, I think is shocking. Why do you think that number is so high? Is that something that is kind of systematic? Is it an education thing? Is it a technology barrier? What's driving that? So there are lots of different reasons. And when we started on this journey, we wanted to make sure we talked to many people

• 7:16Speaker 00

  who were actually in that in that place where they didn't have access to the current financial system or decided proactively to not be part of it. And what we found is actually that a lot of people can have access to having a bank account or opening a wallet for payments. But they decide not to because they've been burned in the past by unpredictable fees that are actually, you know, just withdrawn from their balance at the time they can afford it the least. And so they actually prefer to pay 10% for a check cashing operation at one of these

• 7:58Speaker 00

  places that are payday lenders rather than have a bank account just because of the predictability of that 10%. And so, you know, that says a lot about how the current system is designed. And, you know, people who are more fortunate like you or I, we have all of these fees waived. So we don't have ATM fees. We don't have, you know, overdraft fees. We don't have all kinds of other things applied to our account. And in the US right now, if your balance falls under a thousand or $1,500 at any given point in time, some banks actually charge you a fee for having a bank account.

• 8:42Speaker 00

  And so just people can't afford it. Yeah, it's absolutely crazy when you start to Break it down. I remember somebody one time told me that the top four banks made like $8 billion in overdraft fees. And the way they pitched it to me was they basically were taking money from folks who didn't have money. Right. And so it definitely is a scary situation. You came from PayPal before you went to Facebook and I always tell folks the story of, I don't remember if it was you, Stan, or other folks on the Messenger team when I was at Facebook, but that was the first time I'd ever heard about Bitcoin specifically. And like a fool, I brushed it off and frankly, didn't do too much research. Wish I'd listened a little bit more. Look at what happened since. I atoned for my sins, but definitely made a mistake there.

• 9:26Speaker 00

  Walk me through kind of your journey with Bitcoin and kind of cryptocurrencies in general. How did you come across this and was it something that you were excited about right away? Did it take some time to learn about it? Just walk me through the kind of the beginning. So yeah, I think the first time I came across Bitcoin was probably in 2009, late 2009 or early 2010. So really, really super early in the process. And I started looking into it and then I'm like, okay, this is like way too geeky. And I don't right now have the time to actually, you know, really understand it fully. And I kind of brushed it aside and then it came back in to my life in 2011.

• 10:12Speaker 00

  When a number of friends and people here in Silicon Valley started to be excited about it. And then I actually gave it a really legitimate shot at trying to understand. And as you know, because you've been talking about this way more than I have over the years now, even though it happened later, maybe. It just takes a ton of time to really, really, truly understand what is behind Bitcoin, how it was created, how it's able to sustain all kinds of different attacks over the years and all kinds of unforeseen events. And so that's when, when I really focused on it is, you know, late 2011 and then it carried me through, through to 2012.

• 10:57Speaker 00

  And, and I've been a fan since then. I think, I think it's just an amazing creation. And, and you know, that I don't think can be replicated or will be replicated ever. So it's got this uniqueness to it that I find really appealing in this. Current economic climate. Bitcoin is always one of those assets that I describe to people. Folks will be able to understand how it works if you tell them. But they'll say, yeah, but that's not possible, right? Like theoretically, that would make sense, but you can't actually have a decentralized currency, etc. And as you kind of disprove their skepticism, they slowly become more and more convinced. Which I think everyone kind of has to take that that timeline, if you will.

• 11:37Speaker 00

  There's a couple of other types of assets or currencies in this crypto industry. So we've got things like central bank digital currencies. We have what I'll call more of the corporate or private stable coins. And then we have a lot of the altcoins. Maybe walk me through those three types of assets and kind of how you see them playing into the industry. And then we'll get into what Facebook's doing and how you kind of see where where the path for for the company to go. Yeah, happy to. So, I mean, look, if you look at the from the most stable to the less stable series of assets. I think, you know, it really starts from the most stable from stable coins. And there there are a variety of number of stable coins and the way that they're configured.

• 12:21Speaker 00

  And and I think, you know, the attributes, and I covered that in my medium post. But the attributes of a good stable coin are actually, one, a reserve that is backed one for one. Because, you know, some of them that have been created were not backed one for one. And I can elaborate on why that that matters later if you want. But, you know, one for one backing, meaning that if you have to mint mint one unit of a stable coin, you need to put the equivalent dollar amount in a reserve for the stable coin to actually exist. The second thing is what you put in that reserve. So, you know, what are the assets that are backing every dollar that you put into a stable coin? And I personally feel that a good stable coin should only have cash and very short term treasuries.

• 13:07Speaker 00

  And that's it. And if you put more, you know, or riskier assets in reserves, then you risk at some point, if there's a really black swan events to break a peg of sorts. And and people wouldn't be able to get their money out or their full dollar. For for each unit of a dollar that they purchased at that stablecoin. And and so I, you know, those are the the the biggest things. It's like, you know, the reserve of the one to one backing, what you put in it. And then there's the transparency of it, you know, is there a way for consumers and regulators alike to actually audit what's in that reserve and the way that the reserve is managed? In such a way that you have enough of a guarantee of a consumer protection.

• 13:51Speaker 00

  If if, you know, black swan events happen, and I would argue that actually a very well designed stablecoin like the one I just described. Offers better protections than almost any other form of balance that you can hold in a wallet today. Or if there wasn't FDIC insurance, actually, I would argue a bank account. But there is FDIC insurance, thankfully. So so that's stablecoins. Then I would argue that, you know, Bitcoin, Ethereum. Are, you know, the next class of asset. They're volatile, but they're not, you know, as volatile as the third category of assets, the altcoins. And I think that those two serve two different purposes, right? One is really an alternative.

• 14:34Speaker 00

  Investment asset in a world that is increasingly going towards inflation. The other one is programmable. Money or decentralized compute, depending on who you talk to. And then you have altcoins, which are, you know, basically. At the full end of the spectrum of DeFi and all these things and there, you know, basically it's anyone luck. If if it works out or not, and you know, there's a lot of speculative assets. There are lots of speculative assets out there that that people are trading. With a high appetite for risk, basically. Walk me. So I'd say those are my three categories, basically.

• 15:13Speaker 00

  I I think that that's a very fair categorization. Walk me through structurally Facebook's foray into this. So I most people who are listening to this. Have heard of a currency, a wallet. They may not understand the relationship between the two. What is inside of Facebook? What is outside? Maybe you can just give us kind of a. A structural overview. Yeah, happy to. So basically, you know, I feel that stablecoins serve one purpose in payment and one purpose only, which is basically to enable movement of value that has been digitized in this case, on top of brand-new rails that are cheaper, more open, interoperable, and more accessible than the current rails. And so when we started this journey and the project was called Libra,

• 15:56Speaker 00

  what we envisaged was basically a sort of composite currency that stapled together a number of other currencies. And then the underlying infrastructure that would enable people to move money around the world in a seamless way and at a lower cost. And, you know, at that point, we realized that, you know, just creating a new unit of accounts was really not palatable. And, you know, we can talk about the first few months of us announcing Libra and all of that, if you want, but basically, we kind of all jointly decided with the other members of Libra at the time, which is now called the DM Association,

• 16:40Speaker 00

  to focus on issuing a dollar stablecoin. So what's in Facebook is basically Novi the Wallet, that will be released as soon as possible, but it's ready to go. And then what is completely outside of Facebook is DM, which is this association composed of 26 different companies and social impact partners that is basically building and will operate the network. And we have exactly the same voting rights as any other members there. And I sit on the board, but that's pretty much it. So we created this entity, and we've basically let it get its own independence from us,

• 17:25Speaker 00

  because we feel that, you know, no one entity should actually own or have an outsized influence over new payment rails that are meant to be a protocol for money on the internet. We talked earlier about maybe the problem with legacy payments. We also talked a little bit about Facebook already is in the payment game with Facebook Pay. Walk me through Novi and what the vision for that is and why stablecoins end up being a potential solution to those legacy problems. That Facebook has experienced. Yeah, I think that's a that's a great question. So, look, we could have built a traditional wallets and then enabled people using WhatsApp or Messenger both to interact with that wallet and send money cross border domestically.

• 18:11Speaker 00

  But we felt like we had an opportunity at this time, which I think is a very particular time in the development of cryptocurrencies and new rails. And to actually build this in such a way that we would build a wallet, but we would also help spur more innovation on payment rails and and create an interoperable protocol for money. And actually, when you think about it, it's not playing to our advantage to create an interoperable, open protocol for money on the Internet and build our wallet on top of it, because it's just going to create more competition. So why did we decide to do that? Is basically because we feel that everyone wins if we have better rails.

• 18:56Speaker 00

  And then people can compete on the better wallet or the better local experience in a certain part of the world, knowing that you can interoperate with all wallets and basically exchange value or move your value or your account to another wallet really easily. And so, you know, at that point, you have a level playing field, so to speak, with more competition. And with more competition, you lower costs and you increase accessibility. And for us also, on the Novi side, we also understand and realize that in some parts of the world, we're not going to be able to be the ones building the best wallets, because, you know, we don't necessarily understand local markets as much as a local company can.

• 19:37Speaker 00

  And making interoperability a possibility between the Novi wallet and other wallets is actually going to benefit the whole ecosystem.

• 19:45Speaker 00

  Around this new infrastructure. One of the things that really struck me, I think, as I saw you all announce Novi and kind of explain what appeared at least publicly to be the vision for it is folks seem to be underestimating the importance of a wallet, especially when you start to look at money as one use case, but also once every asset is digitized, the ability to hold multiple assets, the ability potentially for identity, that you can really start to play this game out a couple of decades. When you all look at the product roadmap today, how much of it is focused on kind of what I'll consider more short-term decisions around payments specifically versus an understanding of some of the other potential use cases that

• 20:26Speaker 00

  a wallet can provide to a user, you know, 10, 20 years down the road if this stuff comes to fruition? Well, right now, and you know, I'm a super focused guy, so I like to focus on one use case and really nail it and really solve big problems for people at scale and then move on to the next one. But right now, what we're focused on is purely payments. And so both domestic and cross-border payments using the Novi Wallet. And that takes a tremendous amount of effort because in some countries where the Novi Wallet will be launched, we're also building capabilities that will enable people to do cash in and cash outs because

• 21:06Speaker 00

  there's just no adequate banking support in some of these places. And so it takes a lot of effort to actually build the right experience to really, really get to product market fit. And so that's what we're focused on right now. Once we really get to a place where we can serve a lot of people, earn their trust over a period of time, we definitely want to expand from that. And there are a number of things that we're interested in. I touched briefly on all of the things that will enable over the longer run, like, you know, more assets, including things like NFT potentially over time, because we feel that, you know, people buying NFTs should be able to store them in a high-quality wallet

• 21:49Speaker 00

  and have a really good experience and that, you know, that should be part of the overall experience that you can have with a wallet that, that I like to think of metaverse-ready wallet, basically. So we'll do that and a number of other things. And I think, you know, the key aspect, though, is really focusing on solving real people's problems and then, you know, graduating from there and building more. More and more services over time. I'm biased. I worked at Facebook and when I think of that company, I think of one of the frankly craziest missions in the world. When you think about the idea of connecting every human and delivering this net positive impact in the world.

• 22:30Speaker 00

  When it comes to finance or payment rails, it seems like many of the incumbents or legacy players aren't too thrilled about a company with a couple billion users entering into the game. And in this Medium post that you wrote, I want to read one, one specific paragraph where you said, quote, "I've repeatedly heard variations of the argument that the payments and financial services industry shouldn't let Facebook be part of these innovations. I've heard multiple conversations about how this proposal would be so great if only Facebook wasn't involved," end quote. And in that, there's kind of two pieces, right? It's like there's the innovation and the technology progress, but then there's Facebook's involvement.

• 23:09Speaker 00

  What do you think it is about Facebook specifically that kind of changes the tune or changes the perspective people have on what you all are trying to do? Well, so there's a lot to unpack here. No pressure. No, no, I mean, look, it's fine. I'll happily do it. So, look, I think it's totally fair for people to have a degree of scrutiny of Facebook that is very high. And I think that we have to demonstrate that we can be trustworthy in this industry. And we have to do that by playing in it.

• 23:46Speaker 00

  And over years of really executing really well and, and, and really earning people's and institutions' trust, prove that we can be a force for good in that industry. And all I'm asking is for a fair shot, right? It's like, you know, the, the part that I was trying to address is basically, you know, I don't think of America as a place where, you know, we single out specific companies from entering an industry just because there's, there are questions about said company, as long as the company can actually meet the regulatory hurdles. To operate in the space, which, you know, clearly, you know, on the Novi side, we're ready there because we've obtained the appropriate licensing to actually operate in the space.

• 24:32Speaker 00

  And we're eager to go solve big problems. And I think that we have a track record of doing that. And I brought that up in my post as well, which is that if you look at communications, the world prior to the internet and over the top messaging apps was very different. People were paying a dollar a minute for an international call. We were paying like fifteen to twenty five cents per text message. And sometimes it wouldn't interoperate between mobile operators. And then the internet happened, a protocol for communication and other things. And we built apps on top of this infrastructure, whether it was Messenger or WhatsApp that was acquired, but grew tremendously since we acquired it.

• 25:16Speaker 00

  And we completely changed the game for billions of people who can now communicate in an unlimited free way. And that has made a huge impact in the lives of people who can communicate now for free and do all kinds of things that were completely impossible before, like, you know, high fidelity group video chat. And so when you think about all of these things, I think we do have a track record of bringing real benefits to people and reducing costs and broadening access to these services. And that's what we want to do for payments and for money. I think we can actually be a force for good, and we're very determined to demonstrate that. Again, I'm biased, but I always tell folks, don't bet against the team at Facebook. They've proven themselves over and over again.

• 26:01Speaker 00

  When you say that you're just looking for a fair shot, help folks understand, like, what are the obstacles in your way? It sounds like they're not regulatory. Is it incumbent players who are kind of standing in the way? Or what are those issues that you've got to overcome or the challenge? Just in order to be able to operate the way that you want to. No, so I think like I think we need to set to separate what has happened on the Novi side where basically we went out there and met with state authorities and a number of other countries regulators to get approval to run and operate a wallet. And and we've done that and we will continue to engage with those key regulators over time to prove and demonstrate that we're trustworthy and we're trustworthy player in the space.

• 26:46Speaker 00

  Then there's the whole Libra project or what is now called DM, which, you know, first when we introduced it was kind of taken as a product that was about to launch. And at the time it was a white paper and an idea and the goal of actually publishing it early, which is unusual for technology companies, typically they launch products and then they explain what it is, was to actually socialize what our intentions were and to try to figure out how we could work together with the industry, with key regulators, to actually improve the state of things in payments. And so we put a first step forward with that original white paper.

• 27:30Speaker 00

  And then it was pretty clear that a lot of different institutions and people were not that thrilled with this idea. And then the team at DM, which, you know, after a period of time became a completely independent team, started really engaging with regulators around the world, taking their constructive feedback in and their, you know, some of the concerns were absolutely valid concerns, you know, things around anti-money laundering and sanctions and stability and consumer protection and sovereignty. And so I feel that, you know, from my vantage point, all and every single one of these

• 28:12Speaker 00

  concerns were actually addressed over the period of time of the two years or so since we first announced Libra. And and then, you know, they're just undoubtedly. On top of addressing regulatory concerns, there is definitely a little bit of pressure on whether Facebook should enter or not enter this space. And you know, for the reasons I discussed with you before. First of all, DM is not Facebook. But, but you know, we feel like we can actually be a solution provider and bring real solutions to the big problems that that many people experience here at home and abroad. And I think we, we, we should have a fair shot, you know, give us the benefit of the doubt.

• 28:57Speaker 00

  And, and I think we'll prove to be trustworthy and a trustworthy player in, in this industry. David, you, you've got to realize that in today's environment, ideas can be scary to people sometimes. So it, knowing Facebook and kind of the mantra of code wins arguments. I don't think people realize how rare it would be to publish a white paper and kind of elicit conversation rather than just go build the product. When you had a lot of the responses and both support and criticism from the audience once you guys actually announced this, did that change anything internally in terms of ambition, plans? You know, obviously there was kind of the moving of Libra out to DM and now as an independent entity.

• 29:39Speaker 00

  Was there anything else that kind of changed that either good or bad in hindsight that, that happened? No, so the ambition hasn't changed. And by the way, the fact that Libra became an independent entity and renamed into DM, like the renaming wasn't part of the plan, but certainly the fact that the entity was independent from Facebook was definitely part of the plan. And if you read the original white paper, you can see that this was clearly laid out. But, but I think, you know, the, the key changes are basically that instead of having a multi-currency stablecoin, you have a dollar-backed stablecoin that will basically match like the value of a dollar at all times. On the other side of it, you have a DM association and its regulatory perimeter

• 30:22Speaker 00

  that changed from being based in Switzerland, which, you know, might have made sense when you had a multi-currency idea or issuing many stablecoins. But when you're issuing a dollar-denominated stablecoin, probably Probably didn't make much sense anymore. So that was all brought back into the US within the US regulatory perimeter. And then I think, you know, for the rest, the process of engaging with international and US regulators has made the the project so much better. Because I think that now at this point in time, we actually went through all of these exercises of understanding how to design a network, an asset and a wallet that is actually going to be best in class when it comes to consumer protections and value to be delivered.

• 31:07Speaker 00

  And so I feel quite good about the journey in terms of all of the positive impact that those conversations have had on the on the project. And I think, you know, now the time has come to bring it to the world and to show the value that it can bring. You mentioned earlier the metaverse. There's obviously a lot of rumors and conversation around Facebook and the metaverse. There was the recent product demo that was done in terms of kind of the metaverse-esque work environment. That is so cool, by the way, if you haven't tried it. So I was gonna ask you, because I saw you tweet at one point saying, listen, I know people see it, but until you try it, you don't really understand.

• 31:45Speaker 00

  Okay, walk me through kind of how Novi, Metaverse, Facebook, like, how do you see these things coming together? As we kind of move forward into this virtual kind of empowered world? So happy to like. So first of all, when I think about the metaverse, that my first reaction originally was like, okay, this is going to take a number of years to become mainstream. And the problems that we want to solve for people are really squarely in today's analog and sometimes bridge digital world where so many people are left behind and can't pay or access the the financial system. But when you come to think about it, it's the interesting aspect of the metaverse,

• 32:27Speaker 00

  which is basically a fully digital environments that you can evolve in and do all kinds of different things is. They the the the it's basically the view that you can relinquish all things analog when you create for a fully digital world. And so what does that mean? So it means that if payment networks and digital currencies were actually invented for a fully digital world, they would be interoperable. So you should be able to bring your own wallets to the metaverse and use your own wallets and move money and value around really easily. It should be programmable because money in a fully digital world should be programmable.

• 33:12Speaker 00

  And you should be able to enter into contracts via smart contracts with one another, with creators that would enable you to create new business models and enable creators to make a ton more money, while consumers could have the benefit of doing all kinds of things that the current payment system doesn't enable. Like, you know, for instance, renting a digital asset for the time you need it and then passing it on to the next user, which, you know, is hard to do if you don't have smart contracts and programmable money and blockchains to actually store your digital assets in a way that is completely, you know, completely independent of any central custodian. So you can do all kinds of different things.

• 33:54Speaker 00

  And so when you think about what is a metaverse-ready digital wallet? And when you walk your way back to what you need to do for the real world, it presents a lot of advantages because you actually free your mind of constraints that are currently in the way of building the best possible product for today, not for the future metaverse. And I found that exercise to be super, super interesting. And I think it enables us and will continue to enable us to make really good decisions and to build a product. That will be future proof as well. I've got two more questions for you. One is an entertaining one.

• 34:35Speaker 00

  How much fun are you having right now? It seems like you just are really enjoying a lot of this and kind of thinking about both where the world is moving, but also the product that you're building and and kind of just working on this. Is that an accurate assessment from my side? I would say there are two parts of me. There's a part of me that is having a ton of fun working with the best team I've ever had on a product that's really exciting. And there's a part of me that's really eager to ship that product and to start delivering on the benefits that we've set out to deliver on. And and that that part is less fun. I, you know, I think that I have not known, I have not been known to be the most patient person.

• 35:16Speaker 00

  I think, you know, this whole journey has has revealed and built a new skill set in my toolkit here. So that part, you know, I mean, we're all very eager to start delivering the value. And I think, you know, if you met anyone on the team, you'll see that everyone is super mission driven and really wants to change the game for people at a super large scale, if possible. And if we're given the the benefit of the doubt and have an ability to earn people's trust. I think I think we'll do very well and we're all very eager to to get started on that journey. Makes a makes a ton of sense. And the last question for you is, for those that are watching or listening,

• 35:58Speaker 00

  what's kind of the the pitch for Novi? Or what is that future vision? If you could just spend, you know, a minute or so talking about somebody that you just met, you said, hey, I'm working on Novi. Here's what we're building. How do you pitch it to an individual or an organization? Well, simply that it's a wallet that should enable you to send or receive money as easily as sending a text message today. Period. No matter where you are. And and that's it. And so I think that, you know, if you look at even cross border payments or remittances today, which, you know, is super sensitive because it targets people who typically don't necessarily have the means to pay these fees. It costs on average six

• 36:39Speaker 00

  5% to send a payment cross border, but much, much more on certain court. Or is it takes three days? And then on the other side of it, you have a person who actually has to go walk to a cash out point and sometimes wait in line hours in a high crime area for money to be received. And I think that, you know, the interesting thing is that a lot of times, some of these money transfer services give you a receipt and people snap a photo of that receipt and send it on the other side of the world via Messenger or WhatsApp. And imagine how much better it would be if you could just send it from there and the person on the other side would receive it, you know, in a second

• 37:21Speaker 00

  and would be able to use that balance immediately and for free. I think that would be a pretty big game changer for cross border payments, but also for domestic payments where if you have interoperability, if you have an open protocol for money, if you have programmable money, it's just going to unleash a tremendous amount of value for people. I tend to think that connecting folks, which is Facebook's mission, has obviously been a huge inflection point and net positive impact on the world. If you guys are able to connect people financially and drastically reduce the friction, be another positive impact on folks as well. Thank you so much for joining us today. Is there anywhere that you want to send people, whether it's Facebook specific, follow you on Twitter?

• 38:04Speaker 00

  Where would you like to send people if they have questions or want to learn more? Yeah, so they can definitely go to nov.com if they want to have a good sense for what's coming on the wallet side. Of course, you should feel free to follow me on Twitter if you want the latest updates. And yeah, that's it. Awesome, David. Listen, thank you so much for doing this and we'll definitely have to do it again in the future as you guys continue to progress. My pleasure and good to see you again.