Brandon Arvanaghi: Building the Gemini Dollar

Brandon Arvanaghi is a security engineer at Gemini, and one of the minds behind the Gemini Dollar, the first regulated stablecoin. In this conversation, Arvanaghi and Anthony Pompliano discuss what a regulated stablecoin is, how the Gemini Dollar works, why the naysayers misunderstand what Gemini is doing, and how stablecoins will play into use cases around the world.

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 Off the Chain, simply the best podcast in crypto. Let's kick this thing off.

• 0:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Brandon Orvinahi is a security engineer at Gemini and one of the minds behind the Gemini Dollar, the first regulated stablecoin. In this conversation, we discuss what a regulated stablecoin is, how the Gemini Dollar works, why the naysayers misunderstand what Gemini is doing, and how stablecoins will play into use cases around the world. I enjoyed getting an inside look at this project, and I hope you enjoy it as well.

• 0:41Anthony Pompliano?

  This podcast is presented by Blockworks Group, the only blockchain event and media production company I trust. If you're an investor, lawyer, accountant, or entrepreneur, and want to attend exclusive events and dinners, visit them at blockworksgroup.io. I promise you won't be disappointed.

• 0:58Anthony Pompliano?

  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. Before we get into this episode, I want to give a quick shout out to one of our sponsors. Soluna is a blockchain computing company powered by its own renewable energy. The team is planning to build a 900-megawatt facility on top of a 37,000-acre location, one of the best wind sites in the world in southern Morocco. You'll hear more from them

• 1:42Anthony Pompliano?

  later in this episode, but I'd love if you could go check out their website. You can find them at soluna.io.

• 1:49Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys, how are you? Here with Brandon. I'm super excited about this because Brandon is one of the minds behind the Gemini Dollar, and so lots of people are talking about it. And we figured, why not just bring somebody here who can actually answer all of our questions? Thank you for coming.

• 2:04Speaker 01

  Thank you, Anthony.

• 2:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. Why don't we start with your background and kind of how you found crypto?

• 2:11Speaker 01

  Absolutely. So, very passionate about cybersecurity at a young age. I started at a company called FireEye, where I was a penetration tester and red teamer. So, what red teaming means is a company will essentially pay you to try to hack into them. And Bitcoin was kind of a peripheral interest of mine at the time. I played with the Bitcoin scripting language, the technical aspects, but kind of my perception of the space was shaped by the security news you would hear back in the day, right? So Mt. Gox getting hacked, or an exchange getting shut down. So it wasn't great. But fast forward two years, I'm accepted to give a talk during that big cybersecurity week in Las Vegas. So there's a DEFCON conference, a Black Hat conference, and it turns out the Winkleboss Twins are there.

• 2:53Speaker 01

  And I have a mutual friend with them who introduced us, and I actually got dinner with them. And the things that they were telling me, it just kind of blew my mind compared to everything that I knew about the space initially.

• 3:04Speaker 02

  Like what?

• 3:05Speaker 01

  So they were talking about how their exchange is licensed, how their first two hires were security engineers. They had five ex-CISOs at the company from Google Wallet and Palantir, these kind of things, right? I thought this was kind of a run-and-gun space, but to see them passionate about security and talking about security first, this seemed like an opportunity for me to bring my interest into a really good place doing it. So I've been working at Gemini for a year now and working on the Gemini dollar ever since.

• 3:34Speaker 02

  Got it. And there's no red team? They weren't like, hey, come over and start a red team?

• 3:40Speaker 01

  No, I'm not involved in that. I was kind of glad to get away from that, honestly. I'm glad to be...

• 3:45Speaker 02

  Why?

• 3:46Speaker 01

  You know, the cryptocurrency space is what attracted me to Gemini in part, so I was just really interested in working on the underlying currency, so Ethereum building on there. So that was my focus.

• 3:55Speaker 02

  Got it, okay. And so, let's dive into the Gemini dollar itself, right? So tell us, what is it and how it works?

• 4:03Speaker 01

  Sure. So the Gemini dollar was the first regulated stablecoin. So what that means is that every single token, every single Gemini dollar, is backed one-to-one by a real fiat dollar. It's as good as a dollar in your hand, right? And what it means to be regulated, it's approved by the DFS, so...

• 4:20Speaker 02

  What is that?

• 4:21Speaker 01

  Department of Financial Services. So this is actually recognized by governmental bodies as a real dollar. And the implications are huge, and I think you've talked about some of those implications in your newsletter.

• 4:32Speaker 02

  Okay, so let's walk through, there's a bunch of stablecoin

• 4:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 4:36Speaker 02

  attempts, right, all across the ecosystem. We've seen everything from Tether to Basis, etc. Gemini Dollar is backed, right, by the actual dollar, one to one. And so, walk through, what are the challenges with a non-regulated stablecoin backed one to one?

• 4:56Speaker 01

  Right, so the difference between a non-regulated and a regulated one. So, we sought out to work with institutions that have been in this space for a long time with good reputations, right? So, State Street, for example, is a well-known, longstanding bank in the space. They're the ones holding the dollars. We have an independent accounting firm called BPM that's attesting to those funds at the end of every month. And those reports are publicly accessible. You don't get that kind of transparency with these unregulated coins, which is why this is a big deal. And the security audit is also a big deal to us, and we had a six-week audit with Trail Bits on that front. So, these are the kind of things that you get with a regulated coin with a lot of eyes on it than an unregulated one.

• 5:37Speaker 02

  Got it. And then also, there's an element of consumer trust, right, in this whole process? Do we think that the stablecoins have to all become regulated? Right, like, what's the thought process in terms of the adoption, at least in the United States, right, around the unregulated versus regulated?

• 5:57Speaker 01

  So, there's, there's kind of two different worlds here that we can talk about. So, there's the world of unregulated, there's the world of decentralized, which is really exciting in some capacities, right? And then there's the world of regulated and approved. And this world is the world that Gemini Dollar lives in. The regulated aspect allows new money to come in that otherwise would not have, right? Big institutions with a lot of money may not have been comfortable previously, contributing to the Ethereum ecosystem, but now they can because it's regulated, it's approved by the Department of Financial Services. They don't need to worry about how this looks on their books, for example.

• 6:30Speaker 02

  Got it. And so, who uses this, right? It's a regulated stablecoin, I get that there's, you know, it's like holding the dollar in your hand, but why would I use this, or who's that kind of target customer?

• 6:43Speaker 01

  I think you've talked about, it's a really interesting point you bring up, real use cases for Ethereum, right? Honing in, not everything needs to be decentralized, but the things that do should have a good user interface, etc.

• 6:55Speaker 01

  Amazingly, a new use case for Ethereum, it seems, is the most efficient way of transferring large sums of money, right? With the Gemini dollar. I mean, you take a wire transfer, the old way of transferring large sums of money. You're looking at a 12,000% upsell in the price, the cost to the bank. Banks are closed on weekends. Ethereum is not closed on weekends. You can just send it at the speed of an Ethereum transaction, 20,000 bucks, and it's as good as a US dollar. So this is usable for anyone who doesn't want to deal with the wire transfers. But on the other side, there's DAP developers who want to find a good way to raise money and liquidate that money, institutions who want to get involved. I'm curious, your thoughts as well, what you think?

• 7:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, look, I think everyone knows my thoughts about kind of consumer banking, right? Around, it's ridiculous that we put our money somewhere and we can't access it when we want, right? I tweeted one time, and when I tell people the story, they don't even believe it. So I'm glad that I tweeted and documented it, but I went to the bank because I had to send a wire, right? And I tried to do it online. They said I had to go into the physical bank, and I had to bring my physical identification. So I showed up. It was on a Friday, and they said to me, or no, sorry, it was on Saturday, I think. And they said to me, well, you have to come in on Monday, and you have to make an appointment.

• 8:20Speaker 02

  And the person who told me this greeted me at the front door with an iPad, with like a calendar in it. And I just looked at it, and I was like, this is not, you just lost a customer for sure, right? And so, you know, I understand why they have a lot of that stuff, but it's just not, you know, going to be very valuable in the world that we're moving into.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 8:40Speaker 02

  So it all resonates with me. Let's talk through, you know, the actual validation of there being a dollar, a US dollar in somewhere that actually backs each one, right? So there's plenty of other stablecoins, that's the big question, right? And so...

• 9:01Speaker 02

  What gives people the confidence? Is it that there's other large, respected institutions that are auditing and checking and custoding, et cetera, the dollar?

• 9:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:10Speaker 02

  Is it something else? How do you guys think about, why choose those partners?

• 9:18Speaker 02

  How does that affect the psychology of the user?

• 9:21Speaker 01

  Right. So, that's a great question. So, the longstanding reputation of these places is exactly why we chose them and why we're so thrilled they accepted. I would say two years ago, I can't speak on behalf of them, but two years ago, I don't think any of these places would have accepted this idea. And that's a testament to our relationship with them, security of our platform, and the state of Ethereum. Ethereum's come a long way. So, what you'll notice with our coin, we broadcast the name of State Street. We broadcast the name of BPM, who's validating our funds every month. You don't see that as much with some of the competitors because they don't have the same integrity of these institutions, in our opinion. So, that is, if you have confidence in these institutions, you have confidence in what we've done as an exchange, that's kind of the answer there.

• 10:03Speaker 02

  Got it. And is the thought process that people will be able to conduct ICOs and receive Gemini Dollar as a currency there?

• 10:12Speaker 01

  Right. So, that's a great question. So, now we have KYC taking place, Know Your Customer, taking place with Gemini. When you withdraw that Gemini Dollar, we know who that person is. They can give it to the DAP. That DAP can easily liquidate it on the Gemini exchange now.

• 10:25Speaker 02

  So, a couple of questions around, what I would say that, I don't know if they're the naysayers, but just the people who want to better understand in question, right? So, first is, is this only able to be bought and sold, or kind of the fiat on and off ramps on Gemini?

• 10:42Speaker 01

  So, a Gemini Dollar is created when you withdraw from Gemini.

• 10:46Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 10:46Speaker 01

  That's how we know who the customer is. But then, once that person has it, they can transfer it to anyone in the world. There's no restriction whatsoever. And then, once it gets deposited back into Gemini, we have Know Your Customer again. We know who that person is.

• 10:59Speaker 02

  But to go from the Gemini Dollar to a US Dollar, like the actual fiat off-ramp, I can only do that on Gemini?

• 11:06Speaker 01

  That's correct, yes.

• 11:07Speaker 02

  Got it. Okay. And then, from there... You know, I think there's a lot of concern of, oh, Gemini is empowering, you know, a accredited investor only type system around this, right? So in order for me to go and purchase the Gemini dollar, I've got to KYC AML, right? Do I need to be accredited or not accredited?

• 11:32Speaker 01

  No, you just think, we just need to know who you are.

• 11:33Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 11:34Speaker 01

  And that's, when you sign up for Gemini, we know who you are. So anyone with a Gemini account right now can withdraw Gemini dollars. It's as easy as that.

• 11:41Speaker 02

  Okay, so accreditation doesn't matter, it's just the KYC AML?

• 11:43Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:44Speaker 02

  And then, once I actually take those Gemini dollars and I want to transfer them to a buddy, I have to go ahead and get them KYC AML'd as well?

• 11:53Speaker 01

  No, you don't. You can transfer it to any Ethereum address in the world, just like any token. It's an ERC20 token, so it can go anywhere.

• 11:59Speaker 02

  Got it. So I can peer-to-peer transfer, I can put it on another exchange, I can do whatever I want with it?

• 12:03Speaker 01

  That's correct.

• 12:03Speaker 02

  And then, when they, that person wants to go ahead and give, or turn that Gemini dollar into fiat, that's where just KYC AML is going on the exchange.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  When they, they already have a Gemini account, they're done, they just deposit it and they get their money. It's as easy as that.

• 12:17Speaker 02

  Got it. And so, in the scenario, I guess the only hole in the scenario for Gemini, right, is that person A buys Gemini dollar, transferred to person B, person B then gives it to person C, person C goes back to Gemini onto the exchange. Gemini knows person A and C, right, through the KYC AML process. They know that the Gemini dollar was transferred to the wallet of person B, but they don't know who person B was.

• 12:42Speaker 01

  We have source of fund analysis, so we can monitor and see if there's any clear illicit activity taking place along the way. But we know the source and the destination, the person trying to cash out in the end.

• 12:53Speaker 02

  Got it. And that's just, you're checking some sort of list of, you know, hey, if that wallet address is, you know, somehow, you know, blacklisted or whatever, then you'd be able to tell that, you know, the Gemini dollar went through and could have potentially been involved in some sort of nefarious activity.

• 13:09Speaker 01

  Right. I would equate it to, if it's very obvious that there's some sort of illicit activity, the obligation for any regulated stablecoin you hear about is the same as, say, a bank wouldn't accept laundered money into their bank account. Same exact kind of view.

• 13:22Speaker 02

  Got it. And in that scenario, if it's gone through that and somebody tries to bring it back on a Gemini, obviously you guys aren't going to accept it. What happens to that Gemini dollar? Is it just kind of destroyed?

• 13:33Speaker 01

  So whenever you deposit Gemini dollars to the exchange, it's a really interesting idea, actually. Whenever you deposit to the exchange, the Gemini dollar is destroyed. It's taken out of circulation and a fiat dollar is returned to that individual. And when you withdraw from the exchange, it's created. So it doesn't matter the context. It's just always destroyed upon coming to us and created upon withdrawal.

• 13:53Speaker 02

  Got it. And then the second concern I think people have is around the freezing of assets, right? So obviously, I think much people read, there was a code review done. I don't even remember who did it, but they noticed that, hey, you're going to be able to freeze assets, right? And so in this world of crypto ethos around decentralization, unseizable assets, etc., freezing assets, obviously got a bunch of attention. What's the logic there for having that in the code?

• 14:21Speaker 01

  Right. So we talked about the two worlds, right? The decentralized part, which is why we're all here, and then this Gemini dollar, which is also exciting to get people involved.

• 14:28Speaker 02

  And that's the regulated, approved world?

• 14:32Speaker 01

  Exactly. And that's really good for every decentralized project, because we're going to be building out all these decentralized projects with people who weren't initially going to come in with DAPs that can get funded, things like that. So any regulated stablecoin is going to have the responsibility to act on obviously illicit activity. So any regulated stablecoin you see out there, right? We mentioned this in our white paper. There's a transparent way to do that, and there's kind of a less transparent way. And it was very important in our contract designs to be extremely transparent about any major change to our contracts. And I can talk about that as well.

• 15:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. I'd love to hear that.

• 15:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, so basically, all these regulated stablecoins, they have an admin account or a super user account. Now, you can either point that to a smart contract, or you can point that to just an external Ethereum account. So an external Ethereum account is just like your Trezor or your Ledger Nano or something. Whereas a smart contract, there's some logic that needs to be followed in there. So when we, if we were to issue a request to change the logic of the Gemini dollar, it would be in this pending state in the smart contract that everyone can see. And we can't actually act on that for a specific period of time. It's enforced by a time lock. The alternative, which we've seen with other stablecoins, is there's no pending state. There's no public broadcasting. It's just immediate.

• 15:49Speaker 01

  At the snap of a finger, the entire contract, their stablecoin could look totally different.

• 15:55Speaker 02

  Got it.

• 15:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that's one thing. Another thing, multi-signature verification. We require multiple Ethereum addresses to be involved in any such change at our cold and cryogenic offline sites, right? Geographically separated. You can see that enforced in the smart contract for us, but you can't when it's just an external address like our competition. So you have to trust that they're doing something like that behind the scenes. You don't have to trust that with us because you can see it in the smart contract.

• 16:18Speaker 02

  Got it. All right, so what have you learned at Gemini? Right, like you've been there for a year now. And it sounds like you went from a like highly focused security type background to what a lot of people think is like the decentralized, you know, Wild Wild West. And there's definitely companies out there that I think fit that narrative perfectly. And then there's companies which I think the, the general perspective of Gemini is, hey, these people are trying to do the right thing in a secure, kind of regulated manner.

• 16:46Speaker 01

  Awesome, yeah.

• 16:47Speaker 02

  Play by the rules, et cetera. What have you learned, you know, as you've kind of gotten indoctrinated into, into the company and into crypto?

• 16:54Speaker 01

  I think there's a, there's a big push, like you were saying, the Wild Wild West, to rush to everything, right? At Gemini, I learned that we're just blocking all that out and we're playing the long game. That means no cutting corners. No matter what the market is saying, no matter what popular trends are, we're sticking to the long game, nice and slow, everything by the book, regulated. And this is a model that I'm going to follow in any kind of venture I do from here on out. The Gemini model is just a very, very nice one to follow.

• 17:21Speaker 02

  Absolutely. I would normally ask you now your Bitcoin price target, but then people go, Gemini will kill me for asking that, so we'll avoid that.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  Maria wouldn't like that.

• 17:30Speaker 02

  All right, so usually I end with kind of some rapid fire questions. So other than Gemini, what do you think is the most important company in crypto?

• 17:39Speaker 01

  Most important company?

• 17:42Speaker 01

  So actually, this is, I think Consensys has done a lot of great stuff for the development atmosphere. I mean, they're in charge of Infura, Truffle, MetaMask. These are all tools that are used on a day-to-day basis by DApp developers. I mean, they've pushed forward Ethereum development so much, so I gotta tip my cap to what they're doing.

• 17:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's not a small task over there. I think that I heard they're burning like 100 million a year now.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 18:06Speaker 02

  Or somewhere around there. It's a pretty big budget.

• 18:09Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 18:09Speaker 02

  All right. What is the most controversial thought you have in crypto? So if you were to say it publicly, the highest degree of other people would disagree with you.

• 18:18Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. Highest degree.

• 18:19Speaker 02

  By the way, you're about to say it publicly, so we're gonna find out.

• 18:21Speaker 01

  So this is my opinion, first of all. It doesn't, I don't, not to do with Gemini, obviously. Controversial opinion. I would like to see, I would like us to, as an Ethereum community, just blanket reject any proposal to revert any transaction that has to do with a coded-in bug, like a smart contract bug that someone oversaw. Now, we haven't really accepted anything like this since the DAO, but the fact that we're even having a conversation about a logical error in a smart contract, I think is just a bad thing.

• 18:51Speaker 02

  Why?

• 18:52Speaker 01

  Because that's the point. You know, it's immutable. You should get it audited six or seven times beforehand and only put out what you're confident in.

• 18:58Speaker 02

  But would you say that Ethereum could be considered immutable now, given the DAO situation?

• 19:04Speaker 01

  Right. You know, I'm willing, so the DAO situation was important for our adoption. I think it's come a long way. I mean, the protocol looks very different than it did back then.

• 19:11Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 19:12Speaker 01

  So I'm very comfortable with where Ethereum is now.

• 19:14Speaker 02

  Got it. Okay. If you had a magic wand and you could improve or change one regulation, what would it be?

• 19:20Speaker 01

  Improve or change? So generally, so I'm not actually involved in the regulations, by this is my opinion, but I'm not super involved in the regulatory aspects. Generally speaking, I've been pretty pleased with what I have seen with the SEC, with the DFS. I mean, this is a big deal. Again, it wouldn't have happened two years ago, and rightfully so, the Gemini dollar, because Ethereum was in a different place than it is now. So generally speaking, I've been very pleasantly surprised, and you might agree with how the United States has kind of handled. Regulations around this.

• 19:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, and obviously, it's probably more me thinking as a fund manager. You know, recently, Michael Arrington came out and said that he's not going to invest in any more token sales in the US, right? And so he's going to go look in Asia. And so I think, you know, we're getting to the point where the patience and kind of discipline of regulators has been a really big positive to date, especially when you put in contrast to maybe other regions of the world that haven't had that. We've seen a lot of kind of chaos. But I think now we're getting to the point where people are saying, hey, the uncertainty, right, is it's hard to operate within that, you know, environment.

• 20:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:30Speaker 02

  Not because I want to break the rules, not because I actually think I'm even breaking the rules, but it's just, I don't know where you're going to come down on this. And, you know, I don't want to kind of subject myself to the gotcha type situation.

• 20:40Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 20:41Speaker 02

  So I think that makes sense. All right. So we just have to admit that there's aliens out there. All right. And one question I ask everybody is, do we think that there are pet aliens? Like, is there a difference between human aliens and animal aliens?

• 20:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 20:57Speaker 02

  Or is there just aliens in general, and there's no kind of difference between species or anything?

• 21:03Speaker 01

  Right. This is something I struggle with a lot. So I'm glad you bring this up.

• 21:07Speaker 02

  You've been thinking about this too?

• 21:08Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 21:08Speaker 02

  All right. This keeps me up at night. So I'm glad someone weirdo in the world is thinking about this.

• 21:13Speaker 01

  And I gotta go by the book, the technical definition of alien, just extraterrestrial, right? So you got to assume there are different classes of these. I tend to fall on the there is pets side, but I'm I

• 21:23Speaker 02

  Like, you think that there's an alien walking around with a leash around another alien?

• 21:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:27Speaker 02

  And he's like, come on, let's go.

• 21:28Speaker 01

  If I had, if you put a gun to my head, that's that's where I'd fall. But I have total respect for everyone on the other side of the aisle on that one.

• 21:33Speaker 02

  All right, Brandon for president. It's better than, I'll call out Josh Brown right now. Josh Brown recorded recently, and he told me he believes in ghosts more than aliens.

• 21:45Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 21:46Speaker 02

  I told him I felt offended. I don't know where that came from. All right. So before before we wrap up, I'd let everyone ask me one question.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 21:53Speaker 02

  What one question do you have for me?

• 21:55Speaker 01

  How do you think the the landscape's going to change with something like this regulated stablecoin? What do you anticipate? Good use case for it and what's the world going to look like with these Ethereum based dollar payments now?

• 22:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I mean, I've talked about this before. My thought here is, you know, use Venezuela as an example, right? So the part that I think people don't break apart is this idea of trust within a government or an economy. So Venezuelan, you know, Boliviar goes into hyperinflation. People start to lose trust in the currency because they're seeing it devalued right in front of their face, right? And so they're literally losing wealth while the dictator and cronies accumulate wealth, right? You know, inflation is merely a way for rich people to enrich themselves, right? And so we're seeing that happen. And so as they lose that faith in the currency, what they try to do is they try to escape the devaluing currency.

• 22:51Speaker 02

  So there's capital flight and of course dictators and those types of governments put capital controls in place to prevent the capital flight. And so when that occurs, then the citizens lose trust in the government as well as the currency, right? And so then what they begin to do is they look for a non-seizable asset, right? Now, if those capital controls weren't in place and they still had trust in their government, they likely would just move from their devaluing currency to the US dollar, right? Because they can just put that in their bank account and it's fine. Well, the problem is if you think the government is going to come steal the US dollars out of your bank account, you're probably not going to go to the US dollar, right? And so I think that, you know, historically, people have said, let's go into Bitcoin, right?

• 23:36Speaker 02

  I tend to think that that's, you know, going to end up being one of the best stores of value over the next, you know, 100 years. But there's short-term volatility, right? It's definitely unseizable.

• 23:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 23:45Speaker 02

  But I think that something like this with the Gemini dollar is, you know, I could see a couple of use cases where, okay, I need to get from the Boliviar into a unseizable asset and I don't want to take on the price volatility of something like Bitcoin over some short duration. Makes complete sense, right? So let me go into the Gemini dollar. It's like getting a swish of the dollar, but you know, my government can't come and take it from me. The other thing is border crossings and all that kind of stuff where again kind of short window times, I need to have the stability of the dollar, but I can't have it in physical dollars. And I'm worried about, you know, if it's in a bank account somewhere, that there's some sort of issue. I think that makes sense. And then the other is, you know, the promise of the stablecoin, right? So it's just kind of all stablecoins, the

• 24:29Speaker 02

  one that figures out how do you have a sustainable product that holds value and empowers transactions is going to be valuable, right? And so I think that that's just kind of, you know, the stablecoin bucket in general. And so, you know, to me, it is, we're still early, we're still seeing a lot of people try different things. So, you know, I think that that's good for the experimentation, you know, some of the innovation that comes out of that. But I tend to fall in the category of like, at some point, you know, there has to be sophistication, regulation, sustainability, etc. Doesn't have to be the entire ecosystem, right? So like the idea that Bitcoin is going to be regulated, you know, good luck. But I

• 25:12Speaker 02

  think that when you start dealing with more kind of integrated aspects of the traditional financial system, like the bank's just not going to take your money if there's not KYC AML done, right? Because the risk reward for them is not in their favor. That's right. And so I think that, you know, doing things like this, again, it's just chipping away or evolving the integration of crypto with that system. Yep, it's well said. Yeah, I practiced a couple of times before.

• 25:41Speaker 02

  No, man, listen, I think what you guys are doing is really cool. So I appreciate you coming on and hopefully you guys will be announcing more stuff and we'll talk more. Okay, thanks a lot, Bob. Absolutely.

• 25:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Hey, guys. Thanks for listening. We're back with the CEO of Soluna, John Bellzir. John, what are you most excited about right now?

• 25:58Speaker 03

  What excites me the most is that we're really in the midst of a revolution. Satoshi Nakamoto's paper that came out eight years ago really launched a revolution globally. And the blockchain is definitely here to stay. Today's blockchains are predominantly seen as the core technology for cryptocurrencies, among other things. But in the future, blockchains will do more. They'll be the foundation for entire new ecosystems. They will revolutionize a host of different industries around the world. And taken as a whole, these new distributed applications will form a new kind of internet. One where protocols replace companies and algorithms choose the best computing backend and solutions that they can find. This new ecosystem, this new internet, if you will, will need dedicated infrastructure to power it.

• 26:42Speaker 03

  And what excites me is that Soluna aims to be the key part of this infrastructure. We have the opportunity to build the next great infrastructure company to power this revolution. Thank you for taking the time. If you'd like to learn more about Soluna, please visit soluna.io.

• 26:58Anthony Pompliano?

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