#745 Bringing Stablecoin Yield To Corporate Treasuries w/ Brandon Arvanaghi

Brandon Arvanaghi is the the CEO of Meow, the alternative to a savings account for businesses. Meow offers a Corporate Treasury product that helps companies convert their balance sheet to yield generating Stablecoins that earn up to 4% In this conversation we discuss Stablecoins, yield generation, potential risks, Bitcoin on the balance sheet, and the institutional repsonse to the product. ======================= With 10M+ users, Crypto.com is the easiest place to buy, and sell 100+ cryptocurrencies. The Crypto.com Visa Card gives you up to 8% back instantly, and 100% back on Spotify and Netflix. Also, Crypto.com lets you earn up to 8.5% p.a. on BTC, and 14% p.a. on stablecoins. Get $25 when you download the Crypto.com App with code "pomp". Download the App now: https://crypto.onelink.me/J9Lg/pomppodcast2021 ======================= My friends at Coin Cloud will give you $50 in FREE Bitcoin when you buy $200 or more at any of their 4,000+ machines. Use promo code POMP to get your free Bitcoin. For details or to find your nearest Coin Cloud machine, visit www. Coin. Cloud/Pomp Coin Cloud has been serving customers since 2014 and has established itself as the world's leading digital currency machine (DCM) operator. More than just a Bitcoin ATM, Coin Cloud machines make it easy to buy and sell Bitcoin and 30+ other digital assets with cash. To find your local ATM and get $50 in free Bitcoin, visit www. Coin. Cloud/Pomp ======================= Ethernity.io: The world’s first authenticated and licensed NFT platform, trusted by over 150,000 members. Digital NFTs and exclusive real-world unlockables, authentic partnerships with athletes and artists. Visit Ethernity.io, where you can buy and sell authenticated NFTs from top notable figures, rights, license, and IP holders you can’t find anywhere else; the start of an entire ecosystem bringing utility to #NFTs. =======================

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

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Brandon Orvani is the CEO of Meow, the alternative to a savings account for businesses. They offer 4% potential yields, three business day withdrawals, and they've got a very long waitlist of people who are interested in this new product. In this conversation, we discussed everything from stablecoins to yield generation to the risks to also what the reception has been from both individuals and companies, both in the public and private market. I really enjoyed this conversation with Brandon, and I hope you enjoy it as well. Before we get into the episode, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First up is Crypto.com. They're helping to mainstream

• 0:45Anthony Pompliano?

  the crypto industry, signing major global partnerships with multiple sports, including Serie A, the Italian Football League, the UFC, and my personal favorite, Formula One. With over 10 million users around the world, Crypto.com offers an easy way to buy and sell more than 100 crypto currencies. You can even buy Bitcoin with as little as $1. New users enjoy 0% credit and debit card fees in their first 30 days as well. Crypto.com also pays some of the most competitive interest rates in the industry. Find out how much you can earn by visiting Crypto.com. They're Visa's biggest crypto card partner. My listeners across North America, Europe, and most of APAC can apply for the Slick Metal Card, offering up to 8% back on most purchases, and comes with amazing perks like 100% rebate on your Netflix, Spotify, and Amazon Prime subscriptions. Get $25 when you

• 1:30Anthony Pompliano?

  download the Crypto.com app today using code Pomp. Again, $25 if you go download the Crypto.com app today using the code Pomp. Click on the link in the description, or you can go to the App Store and search Crypto.com and download it today. Go check it out and let me know what you think. Next up is CoinCloud. Did you know you can buy and sell crypto with cash? I want to introduce my friends at CoinCloud. They're more than just a Bitcoin ATM company. CoinCloud is the world's leading digital currency machine operator. They've been around since 2014 and have thousands of machines across the country. You can buy and sell Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Cardano, and over 30 other digital assets. No connecting bank accounts, no long waits, and if you have questions, you can speak to a live, US-based customer support rep 24/7.

• 2:16Anthony Pompliano?

  I've had a lot of Bitcoin ATM companies reach out, but CoinCloud is the only team I've found that does things right. They put together a special offer for listeners of the show. You can get $50 in free Bitcoin when you buy $200 or more at any CoinCloud machine and use the promo code POMP. Again, find your local ATM at coin.clohead/pomp, coin.clohead/pomp, and use promo code POMP. Last but not least are my friends at Aternity. You might have noticed just how many NFT projects are coming onto the market lately. The problem? It's becoming harder and harder to determine the true lifelong value of NFT collectibles. Meet Aternity, the world's first authenticated and licensed NFT platform trusted by over

• 2:58Anthony Pompliano?

  150,000 members. On aternity.io, you can buy digital NFTs and redeem real-world unlockable collectibles and experiences. At Aternity, our team believes in transparency and legitimacy. That's why they partner directly with the individual, the team, the brand, or the league, so you know what they buy is the real deal with a value that will stand the test of time. So, visit aternity.io to register for upcoming collections, buy and sell in the marketplace, and much more to come, from the app, to packs, to virtual worlds, and gaming. Go visit them at aternity.io. Again, that's aternity.io. Alright, let's get in this episode. I hope you guys enjoy this one.

• 3:37Speaker 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.

• 4:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Alright, next we have Brandon from Meow, which I believe is the right way to pronounce it. Is that right? Just Meow?

• 4:07Speaker 02

  As you'd normally Meow.

• 4:08Anthony Pompliano?

  But do you like, do you hit people with, "Yes, I'm the founder of Meow," or like, how do you say it?

• 4:16Speaker 02

  This might be my first podcast appearance, so yes, this is the first time I'll say that.

• 4:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Alright, let's do it.

• 4:21Speaker 02

  Alright, yeah, I'm the founder of Meow. I'm the co-founder of Meow, excuse me.

• 4:26Anthony Pompliano?

  I just figured that would be interesting. Did it when you raised money, did investors, were they like, hey, what's up with the name?

• 4:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, I got a lot of why meow. Some people tricked me into saying meow. They said, how do you pronounce the company name?

• 4:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Like I just did?

• 4:39Speaker 02

  Exactly. Yeah, but less and less people are telling me to change the name. It's not going to change, so.

• 4:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Do you and your co-founder sit there and like in investor meetings, see how many times you can say meow?

• 4:49Speaker 02

  That we tried that once, actually.

• 4:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Really?

• 4:52Speaker 03

  Is there like a story behind it or no?

• 4:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, honestly, like it's a serious story. I mean, the space is so high entropy that no one knows what it's going to be in a year, let alone like on a month to month basis. So if you pick a name like Bit Yield or Block Treasure Yield or something, you pigeonhole yourself. You need a happy name that can be anything it needs to be. And that's, that's really the genesis story of meow.

• 5:13Speaker 03

  So you like cats?

• 5:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, like cats.

• 5:18Anthony Pompliano?

  I figured that was the end, ending there. No, but that's a good point and is a memorable name.

• 5:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Right, which is important. All right, walk us through what you guys are doing. Cause I think that you guys are going after a very specific problem where there's certain types of folks who say, hey, I'm taking it absolutely on the chin from inflation. My corporate balance sheet is getting smashed right now. I gotta do something. What do you guys do from a product standpoint that helped those folks?

• 5:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, so first off, everyone's taking it on the chin, whether they know it or not.

• 5:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 5:48Speaker 02

  And the forward thinking ones are looking for active solutions. It used to be a cute thing to look for alternative yield sources. But now since COVID happened and the money printer really is just jammed open, it's not a cute thing. It's a necessity for a lot of corporates to find potentially better yields on their balance sheet. So we take their cash and we source yields from crypto markets. So right now that's lending desks in the crypto space. It's directly to hedge funds in the crypto space. And in the next couple of weeks, we're going to be announcing dollars to DeFi. So directly interacting with DeFi protocols, the click of a button, all cash based. People send us cash. We take care of all the nonsense behind the scenes of stablecoin conversion, putting it in the protocol and give them cash back for, you know, 4% yields.

• 6:29Anthony Pompliano?

  How much of what you're doing today is the lending desks versus what I think many people think of as like the frontier of like super risky DeFi related, whatever is in that market? And then do you see that percentage changing? Is it 100% today, just the traditional lending desk where you're essentially getting that yield via, I'm assuming Genesis and a couple of these very large guys?

• 6:52Speaker 02

  Right.

• 6:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Or do you look at it in the future of this business is actually going into all this like, kind of new stuff that isn't a traditional lending desk?

• 7:02Speaker 02

  That's exactly right. So the MVP, spinning it up is a lot easier when you just partner with existing institutions with reputable backgrounds, like blue chip only. But we're going to be the first, we think, to have direct access to a lot of these blue chip DeFi protocols as well. Not just one. We're going to make it as easy as picking a stock in the next few weeks, which is, which is really exciting.

• 7:18Anthony Pompliano?

  How much of it is going to be reliant on me? Let's say, let's say I am the CFO of a business and to make it relevant to the audience, let's say that I'm not a publicly traded company, I'm a private company, I've got anywhere between 10 employees up to 1,000 employees. I've been running my business, we come to work every day, we work our asses off, we've built a profitable business and our balance sheet continues to grow, maybe not exponentially, but it continues to grow. I see inflation's a problem, I want to protect myself. I have the option to sit there and just take it on the chin.

• 7:49Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 7:49Anthony Pompliano?

  I could go speculate in financial markets by buying the S and P 500 or, you know, whatever. I could go buy Bitcoin or I can do something like this. And let's just say for the sake of an argument, I don't have deep conviction on any one thing. So instead, what I'm going to do is I'm going to leave a little bit in like what I'll call fiat traditional dollars. I'm going to put a little bit in something like Bitcoin and I'm going to put a little bit in stable coins, right? And whatever that percentage is, doesn't matter for this example. When I come to you, do you just tell me like, thank you very much, we're going to go and we'll take care of the stable coins for you and you'll get 4%? Or do I need to be an expert on the lending desk versus some protocol versus some other yield? Like, how involved do I need to be versus I just know I'm making an asset allocation

• 8:32Anthony Pompliano?

  decision and therefore I get a higher return than I would get in another market?

• 8:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, the vast majority of our work right now is the education part and we have We abstract all the nonsense away from you. So you know how to deal with cash. We take your cash and we will put it into these yield generating sources. You'll see your daily interest here in your dashboard. You'll get the cash out. Now, as far as like Bitcoin, ETH and NFTs in the balance sheet. I think that's a lot of fun. I'm a big fan of Michael Saylor personally. But the market's not telling us that that's where the demand is. There's crazy demand for yield. Everyone is yield starved right now. So this is what we're building right now is this cash based bridge to yield sources with very good liquidity. I mean, three business day with Charles worst case. Now, if that leads to people storing Bitcoin in the balance sheet, I'm a big, big Bitcoin bull. It'll be as easy as one click with us as well.

• 9:16Anthony Pompliano?

  And so is there an idea of, let's fast forward, right? So where you start, I think everyone gets caught and especially people who haven't spent a lot of time investing in technology. What they do is they take a snapshot and it's like a static image and they're like, okay, your business today. It's called meow. This is how you describe it. This is the product like this sucks for whatever reason, right? Then there's some people who take that snapshot. It's like, this is amazing. This is exactly what I was looking for. In reality, a snapshot does not encompass the trajectory of a business, right? And so if you think of Facebook, right? It used to literally be like, hey, did I think this person is attractive or not? Today they own Instagram and WhatsApp as well, right? So businesses can really change over a 10, 20 year period. With this, if somebody came to you in the future and said, hey, I already have an allocation to, let's say Bitcoin.

• 10:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Maybe I have real estate and I have US dollar cash. Maybe they want to give you Bitcoin and cash and say, can you generate a yield for me? Is that something that would fit kind of within the way you think about the business? Or is it something where you're just saying, no, we only want to go after people with dollars?

• 10:18Speaker 02

  The market, I mean, we're going after savings accounts here and that's a gigantic.

• 10:21Anthony Pompliano?

  So savings accounts is like, that's what I'm trying to get. It's basically a savings account or kind of corporate balance sheet. It is basically the, the two pieces that you think that's the kind of ideal customer.

• 10:30Speaker 02

  Right. We're going to blow it out of the water. I mean, think about the future of savings accounts, guys. Like what, what's the future of the financial institutions? Where the yield is going to come from, where the payment is going to come from. It's going to be low fee, stablecoin networks and the yields are going to be sourced from very liquid DeFi protocols at the end of the day. It's obvious to us. It's going to be the case. So we want to be the first to do that. That's the biggest market right now. Now, we're certainly interested in following the progression of Bitcoin yields, for example, yield yields.

• 10:54Anthony Pompliano?

  What are the differences right now in stablecoins, Bitcoin, or like other asset yields? And none of this financial advice, all this changes on a day-to-day basis, based on user demand, etc. But like, as it is right now, generally, what's the ballpark or order of magnitude differences between?

• 11:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, for like Bitcoin right now, you're looking at like low, like 1%, 2%. But when it comes to like cash, stablecoin, things like that, a lot of that is dictated by premiums in Bitcoin futures, for example.

• 11:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, interesting. Is this the cash carry trade?

• 11:21Speaker 02

  Exactly. So it's like very low risk arb there. So you can get anywhere from like 4% to 6%. And believe it or not, Pump, we've dealt with so many different customers. Some of them say this is too risky. Some of them say it's nowhere near risky enough. They're looking for 10, 15%. So there's this wide array of offerings we can provide from riskier DeFi protocols to insurance wrapped DeFi protocols to Bitcoin-denominated yields. There's a whole array of options. And now it's just a matter of focusing our attention on the winners.

• 11:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, so you said Bitcoin is like 1% or 2%. You said kind of stablecoins is like, let's say, 4% to 6%?

• 11:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, certainly.

• 11:51Anthony Pompliano?

  And then like, I see in the headlines, just like everybody else, there's like, you know, 1,000% stuff. Like, what's going on there? How are they generating what they're calling yield, which I'm assuming isn't like they're lending it out and somebody's paying them that. So like, what's going on?

• 12:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're denominated the returns of that in whatever the token is. That's not a stablecoin. That's what's happening there. That's not really our game right now. Ours is just, you know, businesses know how to deal with cash, and stablecoins are pegged one-to-one to cash. And there's very innovative ways to get better yields via the stablecoin networks than their cash. I mean, their bank accounts are just such dinosaur instruments. We're just, we're checking it out.

• 12:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. And then how do you think about individuals versus corporations, right? So obviously, corporations, I think has been a big focus, Michael Saylor, obviously, with Bitcoin. We've seen Square and Tesla do the exact same thing. But we've also had on Eric from Ramp. They came on and he's talked about, they took, I forget the exact, if he tells us the exact percentage, but I think it was high single digits or mid-single digit percent of their balance sheet. And they went ahead and they put it into a stablecoin. They're earning a little bit of interest on it. And so I know that Private companies specifically are really doing this?

• 12:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:56Anthony Pompliano?

  How do you think about the kind of corporate environment, public versus private? And do you think that you'll have more success with either one of those two groups to start with?

• 13:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're exactly right. I mean, we're not going to be selling the Coca-Cola or Pepsi this year. I can just like say that very clearly, but the series A through D startups, tech companies, SaaS companies, they get this, you know, they price this in their heads as engineers. That's like four more engineers I could hire if I was getting 4%. So we have a lot of success with those tech companies. And if I get shut down by someone when I sell this product, they say, I don't want to deal with this crypto nonsense. I'm quite happy about that because that means we're right on the good side of slightly too early. You know, we make some good sales, some people are not getting it, but we'll be, we'll be ready when they inevitably come around.

• 13:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. What questions do you two have?

• 13:36Speaker 03

  What would be like, you know, obviously there's different, uh, different options and that kind of stuff. But what is the yield people should be able to expect from some of these type of products?

• 13:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. So like the blue chip ones, what I'd consider blue chip. I mean, we just think that the yields are totally mispriced. I mean, you look at 4% from the crypto space, it's night and day compared to the legacy finance alternative, which is a corporate junk bond. I mean, you're risking a lot there, in my opinion. So some of the more blue chip protocols, blue chip lending desks, et cetera, 4% pretty consistently, 4, 5, 6%. Now, some of the more aggressive DeFi funds we're about to launch, they can be in the 15, 20% range as well. It depends on the risk appetite and believe me, we've heard people asking for both sides of that. So we'll be ready for both.

• 14:15Speaker 03

  I was going to ask, like, what is the risk appetite for this stuff? I'm assuming most people are looking for some type of diversification within that, but maybe just talk to a little bit about like what the average person would be looking for.

• 14:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. So we're trying to, the average company is most comfortable with the blue chip offerings, I will say. But the extremes like have a lot of capital as well, like the family offices, for example, that are looking for 10, 15%. They have a lot of capital and so we're building some of these products directly for them as well. And you know, if you have one interface to interact with the blue chips, the risks, and then even one click to put Bitcoin on the balance sheet as well, that's, that's us. We want to like revolutionize the, uh, the balance sheet for, for corporate treasuries.

• 14:50Speaker 03

  Gotcha.

• 14:50Speaker 04

  So people obviously need cash to operate, right?

• 14:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:53Speaker 04

  What have you seen from how much allocation, like the general company would do? Would they do 10%? Would they do 50, 80%?

• 15:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:01Speaker 04

  What does it look like?

• 15:01Speaker 02

  This is a great question. So we, we The liquidity is so good. It's three business days, like

• 15:05Speaker 04

  Oh, really?

• 15:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. So they start with something like 30, 35% to get their feet wet. As they get more comfortable with the product, they see their interest accumulating. We'll see it progressively go up and up to 60, 70. Anything that's not operational, pretty much, they would, they would put with us.

• 15:17Speaker 04

  That was even my other question was what was the liquidity? You can get their cash actually back out to them within three to six days?

• 15:22Speaker 02

  Yes, three business days, three business days, not six, yeah, three.

• 15:26Anthony Pompliano?

  The other piece of this is, uh, let's say that you're staying down with a CFO or an individual and they say, all right, this sounds amazing. I can earn higher yield. What's the downside? Like, what's the risk in terms of absolute doomsday catastrophic scenario? Could everything go to zero? Is there like some, you know, drawdown potential? Like, how do you think about what the risk somebody is taking in exchange for the higher?

• 15:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's, I mean, there's risk in every opportunity.

• 15:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course.

• 15:49Speaker 02

  If anyone ever says it's not something's no risk, just kick them off the show, obviously. But, I mean, the crypto markets would have to do something like unprecedented. So there was a day in March 2020 during COVID when crypto markets crashed like 70%. And some of the lending desk partners that we dealt with and some of the protocols still do not have a single default. So you would have to have a impact bigger than COVID potentially. And I don't even know how much bigger, uh, but that's, it's very battle tested. And the reason these inefficiencies exist, why these yields exist is because there hasn't really been a clean, compliant way to have institutional capital come into these markets yet. It's always been own your own wallet. It's always been kind of take a leap on the compliance side. We're hoping to address both, like we have an API. We're hoping to announce some partnerships soon with fintechs to bring in like institutional money by the, by the hundreds of millions quite soon.

• 16:34Speaker 02

  So this is, I think, the gateway to a lot of money coming into this and then closing these arbitrage opportunities effectively.

• 16:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. What about like pension funds and folks that they're, you know, heavily reliant on driving returns for, uh, somebody else, right? Have you had any conversations there or any thoughts in terms of how to get those folks involved?

• 16:52Speaker 02

  It's a great idea. I've been kind of spread thin on the sales side with the other side. If you know any good ones, yeah, please send them over. But yeah, there's too many people want this for different purposes right now. So we're scaling up a lot to handle that kind of.

• 17:03Anthony Pompliano?

  And most, when you say too many people, uh, how much of the interest you have right now, like on a percentage basis? If you had to categorize it, are individuals versus, uh, like corporations?

• 17:12Speaker 02

  All of our branding is for corporations. So we've been focusing on that. Yeah, we still have high net worths coming in and we'll make the exceptions and stuff. We can easily service them as well. So, yeah, but it's predominantly corporates right now.

• 17:20Anthony Pompliano?

  One of those individuals like I am a business baby.

• 17:23Speaker 04

  What about like endowments too? Endowments might be interesting.

• 17:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's another, that's another really good one. I mean, yeah, it's just, there's a lot of meat on this bone and honestly, like, yeah.

• 17:30Speaker 03

  How do you guys make money?

• 17:33Speaker 02

  We're taking a small spread right now. I mean, we don't really care too much about the making money upfront. Frankly, we just want to provide a very, very good experience because phase two of the company is what's even more exciting. And there's just a million ways to, you know, weaponize AUM when you're obsessing over your customers, making them very happy. So right now.

• 17:50Speaker 03

  Let's hear about that.

• 17:52Speaker 02

  Look, everything I'm saying should be, should be pretty obvious. Like who likes Fedwire? Who likes ACH? Right? A billing suite is the bane of your existence, probably. Now, if you take a low fee, stablecoin network, I'm not talking about USDC on Ethereum or something like that, where the gas fees are 200 bucks. Low fee, instant settlement, B2B payments, bill pay, contractor pay, that's obvious, right? And you have a compelling initial foothold with a yield offering. That's how you build a fully digitally native financial institution. The first of its kind, in my opinion. It's not going to be like these existing dinosaur banks adding a crypto integration or adding one API and calling it a day. It's going to be from the ground up. And I think this is the right time to try to build that.

• 18:29Speaker 03

  What advantages does Meow have? Cause there's other companies that like can give someone yield for their stablecoin.

• 18:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, the compliance considerations are pretty intense. I can't go too much into the weeds on that, but we've, we tried to build a most solid foundation there. And we're a team of five ex Gemini engineers. We've been through like a lot. We have a lot of institutional knowledge. Bridging the TradFi world and the crypto world is not easy to do. That's why you see companies typically build only in the crypto world, which is great. I mean, that's a, that's a big part of the future. But that kind of institutional know-how, being ready for a bear market, like we're, that's kind of a.

• 19:01Speaker 03

  What have the conversations been like with public companies? I'm assuming that's a much different conversation than with private, you know, companies or family offices.

• 19:07Speaker 02

  I'm not even, like, I had one conversation. It went so bad.

• 19:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Why? Wait, but this is important. Yeah. Was it a lack of education, a lack of enthusiasm? Was it they just didn't like you? Like, why do you say?

• 19:21Speaker 02

  I hope they liked me, but it was.

• 19:23Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm trying to help you. If they didn't like you, then maybe we can call them.

• 19:26Speaker 03

  They're dog people, I'm sure.

• 19:30Speaker 02

  I mean, yeah, having, honestly, having a name like Meow doesn't help when you're talking to like the 50 billion dollar company like on day one, but it's, it's a, it's already become a weapon for us, for our target market and it'll serve us well. What happened there was it was just the crypto skepticism. Even no matter how much user education you'll do, there are a lot of CFOs who wear crypto skepticism as a badge of honor. And I don't blame them. This has been the Wild West. There was the ICO boom of 2017, 2018. There was, there's not a compliant way to get money in. There's like investigations happening left and right. So we'll be there when they're ready is the idea. But I'm not taking those calls anymore.

• 20:05Anthony Pompliano?

  And they called you or you guys went outbound?

• 20:07Speaker 02

  I had one intro to like a major, major company through like an interested investor who wanted to like be helpful.

• 20:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so it's interesting because my guess is that they're convinced they need higher yield because they're getting absolutely slammed. And so the crypto skepticism, we were just talking to Alex from Amber and part of it is like almost like, is this really crypto? Right? It is like a weird way to think about it because technically what you're doing is you're upgrading the technology of the US dollar and then you're simply generating yield the exact same way that the bank generates yield. You just happen because you're using new technology to have an imbalance of supply and demand and therefore that leads to higher yield. Right? Like, like in some crazy way, if people think this is crypto, right? And I'm putting that in air quotes for those who are just listening, then like wait till they find out about other crazy shit, right?

• 20:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, like this seems to be nothing that's really different than the legacy world. It's just like, almost like an arbitrage opportunity.

• 21:03Speaker 02

  It's straight up arbitrage. A lot of these yields come from Contango, like I mentioned, that's existed for, you know.

• 21:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. I don't even think that the stablecoin providers, as far as I know, the ones that I'm assuming that you're, that you support like USDC or GUSD or whatever, they don't even claim to be decentralized.

• 21:18Speaker 02

  Oh no, that's not part of the value property.

• 21:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Right, yeah. Like, it's just like literally this has nothing to do decentralization. There's nothing to do with like quote, quote crypto. It's just literally the ability to take an asset, lend it, earn yield and then pay a piece of the yield. And so when you start to think about that, like in some way, having crypto skepticism really means that they don't understand like what this is, right? And that's the education opportunity.

• 21:40Speaker 02

  That's, yeah, that's our job. And we've, we've had people successfully get over the hump. There are tech companies, there are there's series A through D, there's family offices who get it. But yeah, the giant public companies are, are not going to get that yet. But you're exactly right. I mean, decentralization is not something even retail users think about frankly. I would love to live in a world where everyone's transacting in Bitcoin, for example. It's just not the world we live in. The corporates want cash. They want better yields in their cash, right? That's what they want.

• 22:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Will that change?

• 22:04Speaker 02

  I hope so. We'll be ready when it does. If they want to put Bitcoin in the balance sheet, we need someone more than Michael Saylor to do it. And we'll do our part to encourage people to invest in hard assets.

• 22:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And then basically, it fits right within the same system, right? You, because really, what if I think about your business, you have a, I'm gonna call it a platform or a marketplace, right? You can take a bunch of different inputs, literally whatever the input, whether it's cash, Bitcoin, whatever, in, and then you can basically place it in a place where it generates yield, right? And then you bring back some of the yield for those individuals. And so there's a very clear kind of, hey, here's the first place to start. But you can almost open up both sides of the marketplace to be supportive of more assets. And over time, you, it is kind of like an exchange, and I'm gonna say exchange, in that their business model was like, we don't care what you show up that you want to buy, and we don't care what the individual asset that succeeds or fails is,

• 22:56Anthony Pompliano?

  all we want to do is provide the venue, right? And to some degree, you guys are doing that over time. Right now, you start out with one specific thing, but over time, you could become that.

• 23:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're gonna see us like, you know, one click integration with Compound, one click integration with Aave. I don't think there's any other company that's done that yet. And we're gonna be one of the first to have like, every kind of blue chip DeFi protocol available. And if you think it's inevitable, look, DeFi is not, I'm, I come from the Bitcoin world, Bitcoin's my favorite. I think Bitcoin's its own asset class. DeFi is in competition with legacy finance, which is a net positive, you know? You have the legacy financed corporate junk bonds at 4%, and you have some like, pretty blue chip like tested DeFi protocols and things like that. I think that's inevitable, that the composability of these DeFi protocols is gonna do very good things for the financial system. So we're providing a bridge to them, no one else has. And we have like, a clean UI to be able to click and interact with them. And education is what we're doing right now.

• 23:47Speaker 04

  What is the biggest hurdle convincing companies to do this?

• 23:52Speaker 04

  To me, it seems like a no brainer.

• 23:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:54Speaker 04

  If you do something like that.

• 23:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. Honestly, I think they, I think a lot of them, there have been some that we've just like, gotten over the hurdle. A lot of them like, know whether they're the kind of person to do this or not upfront, because of how polarizing crypto is to date. But the ones that we flipped was explaining kind of the history of these yields, how there has not been a default ever, how they are battle tested, how there was a 70% drawdown in Bitcoin's price in March 2020, and pointing out the inflation statistics. So the boat's taking on water. This is not like a cute hobby. Your boat's taking on water. If you want to fight back, meow is the place to do it. That's, that's how we view it.