October 8, 2025 • 28 mins
Is crypto going mainstream? Dave Ripley is co-CEO of long-standing global crypto exchange Kraken, service provider to Sharesies Crypto. In this episode, crypto “dinosaur” Dave tells us how he’s seeing signs that the financial establishment is ready to embrace digital assets.
Dave explains why crypto is a hot topic for lawmakers in Washington, while Texas, Wyoming, and nations like El Salvador are buying Bitcoin, and the US Department of Commerce is adopting blockchain.
Why does Dave believe that AI is, by nature, the "exact opposite" of crypto? How does tokenisation work, and why does he say it could change property investing?
Hear about Kraken’s “paranoid” dedication to security—and how Dave sees banks, brokers, and fintechs around the world rushing to offer crypto.
For more or to watch on YouTube—check out http://linktr.ee/sharedlunch
Shared Lunch is brought to you by Sharesies Australia Limited (ABN 94 648 811 830; AFSL 529893) in Australia and Sharesies Limited (NZ) in New Zealand. It is not financial advice. Information provided is general only and current at the time it’s provided, and does not take into account your objectives, financial situation and needs. We do not provide recommendations and you should always read the disclosure documents available from the product issuer before making a financial decision. Our disclosure documents and terms and conditions—including a Target Market Determination and IDPS Guide for Sharesies Australian customers—can be found on our relevant Australian or NZ website.
Investing involves risk. You might lose the money you start with. If you require financial advice, you should consider speaking with a qualified financial advisor. Past performance is not a guarantee of future performance.
Appearance on Shared Lunch is not an endorsement by Sharesies of the views of the presenters, guests, or the entities they represent. Their views are their own.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Korda and welcome to Shared Lunch. We're in a sunny
and pretty windy San Francisco standing here on the Golden
Gate Bridge, and today we've got another suspecial episode. It's Cracking,
and we'll be speaking with co CEO Dave Ripley.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Investing involves the risk you might lose the money you
start with. We recommend talking to a licensed financial advisor.
We also recommend reading product disclosure documents before deciding to invest.
Everything you're about to see and here is current at
the time of recording.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Dave, Welcome to Shared Lunch. Thanks so much for joining us.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Great to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Hey, it's been a whirlwind trip for us. You're seeking
on our US tour and was really cool on the
plane in Washington, d C. This morning. In a great
place to start, I thought, which was we're really headlined
that Cracking signs a contract with the government, So I
thought maybe you could start by telling us a little
bit about the breaking news.
Speaker 4 (00:54):
I never really thought this time would happen where there's
a huge amount of crypto news. It's coming out of Washington,
d C. Or any government center for that matter. But
nonetheless we're here. Yeah, so look the news today not
to downplate it all, but I mean I think it's
one one part and a much bigger, bigger.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Dynamic going on.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
So the news today was, you know, the Department of
Commerce they're going to publish some of the kind of
like US economic data on a blockchain. There it'll be
attested to, you know, validated, time stamped, all that, all
those good things that you kind of get with like
a public blockchain that has you know, at testation and
(01:38):
all those types of things.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
So that's what that's about.
Speaker 4 (01:41):
But there's certainly a bigger story, like around what's going
on in d C, and you know, specifically with governments
becoming a customer of crypto. I mean, I think one
of the more basic and frankly maybe more interesting one
pieces are you know, governments becoming holders a bitcoin.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
That's happening in the US.
Speaker 4 (02:02):
You have the US government doing it, and you have
a number of states that are saying, hey, you know,
our state sovereign fund is going to start buying bitcoin,
and that's happening for probably I don't know about four
or five states already, Texas, Wyoming, a handful of.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Them out there.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
We of course see it in other countries El Salvador,
and I don't know exactly what's the latest on, you know,
across the globe, but yeah, it's interesting and that and
of itself is of course still just a small part
of all the things that we're seeing kind of come
out come out of various different governments with regard to crypto.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Yah.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
So tell us a little bit about Kraken's customers and
you know who you're supporting every day to help in
the crypto space.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Sure.
Speaker 4 (02:43):
So, look, i'd break it down in three different groups consumer,
professional trader, individual advanced trader institutions. I'll start with that
mental group mentioned before, pro traders, Individual advanced traders. That's
kind of our sweet spot from our history where we
really went after first for the audience here if you're
(03:04):
familiar with like an interactive brokers or something like that,
but that individual advanced trader is like looking for all
the you know, complex order types, many asset classes, derivatives, leverage,
looking for a sophisticated us with a lot of analytical tools, indicators,
all of those you know, features that allow them to
(03:26):
kind of like build trading training strategies and execute on them.
And then the third thing is probably like highly performance,
low latency, all those types of things.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
That's kind of that group.
Speaker 4 (03:37):
That's where we, you know, have built out all of
those things that I just described, probably better than anyone
else in the industry. More recently, we've moved into consumer.
When I say more recently, probably about four or five
years ago, and it turns out that after you've built
all of this more complex stuff for pro, it's actually
pretty easy to build a more simplified consumer experience, and
(03:58):
so we've had great success there as well. And then
finally institutions, so we serve a number of different institutions.
We kind of break it down in a few different buckets.
One being trading firms, and these are kind of trading
firms again similar to the pro traders, very sophisticated, large
trading teams do and you know think you know, high
(04:19):
frequency trading firms, you know, trading via a PI, you know, thousands,
tens of thousands of orders trades per day, that type
of thing. The next would be asset management firms. So
this is the big money pensions, endowments, you know, big
stock phones, big mutual funds, hedge funds, all that type
(04:40):
of stuff. And then the last would be banks, brokers
and FinTechs, so cheers these kind of falls in that
last last category for us.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
That flows nicely that the relationship we have Lusheesy, so
one of the big parts of our process once we
decided we do crypto and you know, huge amount of
due diligence around them, like technology, the solutions we can
offer to our customers. The one thing critical in this
pace security, So I just love you to share with
our audience day a little bit about how Kraken thinks
(05:11):
about security. And you know, particularly given there's been some
very high profile crypto case you know, either hacking or
security or you know, and ultimately a loss of money.
So just how you think about that as a business
or as an individual.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
None involve and cracking.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
But yeah, look this is this has been a super
meaningful topic in crypto.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
Of course.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
You know, it turns out that when you have the
ability to like hold the funds on your own and
transactions are irreversible, security becomes super meaningful. Lo and behol
probably unsurprising, but you know, cracking has a long history
in this uh you know, with respect to security, it's
(05:56):
frankly one of the founding tenants of the business. There's
one of the first really the first crypto exchange out
there was a company called mount Cox. It ultimately was
you know hacked, had security issues and went down, but
actually earlier in its life, there was a security issue
kind of a couple of years before the one that
(06:18):
actually took the company down. And when that first security
event happened, Jesse, the co founder and CEO of Kracken,
was already in the industry, was already knew many of
the meaningful people in the industry, and they gave Jesse
a call because he was already a fantastic entrepreneur, a
tech entrepreneur, and was able to kind of like figure
out tough, tough challenges and went out there to call
(06:40):
them out there to go help Mount Cox in which
he did and he you know, helped get them back
and moving, and on his way back, he you know,
he had a couple thoughts. One was, Wow, that place
really isn't doing security the right way and doing all
the things that they need to do in order to
you know, be fully sure. The other thing he thought
(07:02):
was someone needs to do that, and that led to Krakeen,
and so that was kind of the foundation of it.
The other co founder of Kracken often refers to Kraken
as a security company with an exchange on top. But
really the way we achieve it, I mean it is
security and depth. It cuts across every function of the company.
(07:23):
It's not just the security team. It's not even just
the engineering team. You think about customer support and compliance
and finance and all of these various different teams have
a role to play. We also have, like one of
our values is called productively paranoid, and what that really
means is that like productively is the piece of like, hey,
(07:43):
let's not be too paranoid, but let's question things anytime
there's something that doesn't look like as it should be
for whatever reason. And that might just be like, oh,
hey someone forgot to do X y Z. Is that
is that really intentional or not? Let's look into it.
And that pervades across all two thousand plus krackenites, And
(08:04):
that's a really meaningful part of like how we like
pervade security across every corner of the company.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
So we take it super seriously.
Speaker 4 (08:12):
We know that it's not always top of mind for
our customers, but over time, we think kind of investing
in that leads to a lot of trust, whether it's
whether it's clear where that trust is coming from or not,
or that it's just Kracking's known to be highly trusted.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
What are the other values of the of the company,
like the I like the waiting, like productively.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
Parently, productively, period.
Speaker 4 (08:34):
So like most of the value set for Kraken is
really tied to crypto values, right, and so crypto values
are kind of this like, you know, frankly this in
a way libertarian set of values about you know, like freedom,
you know, freedom, independence, all these you know, different aspects
and that's kind of like core to our to our
(08:56):
value sets. So Kracken's values are very closely tied to
crypto values.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
So let's just step back a little bit and talk
a bit more about you. Nine years at Kraken, and
you know, I'd just love to hear a little bit
about how you came to be here, a little bit
about Dave, but sure.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
Just been about your story. Yeah, So definitely a crypto dinosaur,
that's for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (09:19):
So yeah, I guess it is nine years in krack
and I founded a company in the crypto space twenty thirteen,
so it's actually now been over a decade that have
been in the space. That company is acquired back Cracking
in twenty sixteen, Glydadira sorry you and that was called
by Crack in twenty sixteen. So that, you know, like
you said, puts me in about nine years at Cracking.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
Most of the time.
Speaker 4 (09:42):
I joined as chief operating officer for you know, was
in that role for a good number of years, I
don't know, six seven or so, and then more recently
moved into the CEO role and co CEO with Argentzathi.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Right now we have a Coco model she is as well.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Yeah, yeah, I caught that. That's great.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
And prior to the like, what was your you said,
you're a cryptos dinosaur, but it was you know, it's
not that old.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
What was the lafe before?
Speaker 4 (10:05):
Yeah, so kind of a two part career. Before my
move into Crypto, so started my cares as an engineer,
was engineer, an undergrad software engineer. I worked in what
we called at the time mobile and you know, now,
of course every company is mobile tech, you know, it
has mobile devices, but back in this time period it
(10:27):
was very very new. The largest mobile device at the
time was a Palm.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
Pilot, right, followed by the BlackBerry.
Speaker 4 (10:36):
And then I don't know, it's like some Microsoft devices
after that or whatever. So early days of mobile, what
we did is we basically built mobile applications for enterprise software,
which meant that the company I worked for, Cyclo, they
eventually got acquired by SAP, and so we're kind of
mobilizing those types of things that SAP was like, Okay,
we can't figure out this mobile shit, so let's like
acquire this company who's already doing it for our software,
(10:59):
you know, kind of independently.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
And so anyways, that's what that's.
Speaker 4 (11:03):
What was kind of part one of my career as
software junior product manageer, then business school, and then I
worked at BCG or served a bunch of different financial
services firms, and.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
So that was kind of the second place as well.
Speaker 4 (11:15):
Was I was not no, it was it was like
is one of those things where it was like the
I kind of thought about it as like the the
in some ways the worst timing possible, because I was
there in mobile when it was like you know, the
Palm Pilot and BlackBerry and so forth. And then about
the time as graduating business school was right right, it
was two thousand and seven, and that you know, the
(11:35):
iPhone was hitting right.
Speaker 5 (11:38):
And so I've moved pivoted away from it, which was like,
you know, you couldn't get worse time. So I actually
kind of thought about that the many times through the
Bear and Bull cycles and Crypto where it's.
Speaker 4 (11:49):
Like, hey, am I gonna like you know, but you know,
for a million reasons, I never never wanted to leave Crypto,
and you know, just I'll definitely be in this space
till I till I die.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Dumably b CG would have been a big player in
that mobile transition large companies.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
And now just you know, that was sort of the.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
AI change we're going through now and various places has
been compared to like the last large platform change being mobile,
Like now, are you seeing any sort of similarities with
like anything different about what what we're working through at
the moment.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
Yeah, you know, I mean it, I'd be a good
interest into what you guys are doing in AI as well.
So we're doing a handful of things, you know. The
first is we have a number of operational parts of
the company. You know, this is kind of like what
I would say like most companies like v one for mobile,
which is we have customer support, we have you know,
(12:43):
compliance function with big operational teams and they do a
bunch of work with data and of course interacting with
customers and all this type of stuff. And we're finding that,
of course, like many companies, we can use AI to
like automate a ton of this ship.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
So that's kind of phase one. Step on what we're doing.
Speaker 4 (13:00):
Step two, I would say, is to like build it
more directly into the product. So instead of you know,
opening up a crack and app where you have like
an interface and you can go and click on all
the buttons and pull up the lists and all the
views and graphs and so forth, you just interact with
AI prompt. We also just made an acquisition last week,
(13:20):
we announced Capitalized dot Ai and there they basically have
some tech where you can build trading outgoes trading strategies
using AI. It's kind of a prompt and then you
you can build a different trading strategy and prompt so
and it.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Like spits out like an algorithms exactly.
Speaker 4 (13:38):
So that I mean, so that's kind of what I
say is like phase two, where it's more just like
the product becomes you know, the product and the interface
you know, kind of become AI right, and.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
Then phase three.
Speaker 4 (13:51):
You know, that's like kind of imaginating what's up to
our imagination what that is. I mean, I think there
could be some interesting things, how kind of like crypto
and AI I'm together actually.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Going to be my next question. We're havn't you asked
what we're thinking about? Like, we're having a lot of
fun at the moment. You know, the operational stuff's happening, right,
like the the adding time to engineers hands and all
that sort of stuff and with their day, and one
of the things we're having a lot of fun thinking
about is like eight hundred thousand that were in our
case a hundred and fifty thousand different UIs or you know,
(14:22):
because everyone's going to experience this so differently and it
really does change the you know, change the way. But
it's super interesting to think about. You know, you're sort
of right in the middle of these two platform changes
really right one yeah, yeah, crypto in the block chain
space and then this AI. So how are they insecting
in what sort of the future you might see from that?
Speaker 4 (14:40):
Well, you know, I think this is I mean, it's
definitely we get into the theoretical I mean, there are
some like crypto AI projects out there and so forth.
But I mean in a lot of ways. I mean
again this is this is going to feel pretty theoretical,
but in a lot of ways, you know, AI is
very can can you look at it and be like, hey,
this is very centralizing. And of course that's the you know,
that's the meme or the even the fear out there
(15:02):
that there's you know, this what the movies are made of. Right,
it's like this AI thing is going to take over
humankind and blah blah blah.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
Okay, why is it centralizing?
Speaker 4 (15:11):
Well, you need all this compute power you put in
one place, and these llms they get really sophisticated, and
you have like you know, one or several lms that
are very sophisticated, a huge amount of compute power. It
all kind of sits in one place. Who owns the
switch for it and so forth. It's very different. You know,
central is you know, a centralized tech is you know,
(15:31):
quite the exact opposite of crypto.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
Right, very decentralizing.
Speaker 4 (15:36):
You know, takes something like money, which is you know,
meaningfully centralized today in central banks and so forth, and
you have crypto now and it's like very decentralized networks
are owned by the participants and so on and so forth, right,
And so you kind of think, and if you're someone
like you know myself, you look at those two different
(16:01):
paths and you say, like, okay, well, there's a lot
of benefits of the decentralized approach, and a lot of
really meaningful benefits, we think, right, you know, it's kind
of more of the you know, individual and freedom and
ability to opt in or out and control your own
participation and all those types of things as opposed to
have it and dictated for you. And that's kind of
(16:22):
like a great thing for freedom and independence and all
these things that we, like, you know, I think are
pretty important.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
Right.
Speaker 4 (16:30):
So kind of the question is, well, like, if these
two things are really big and meaningful, and this one
text seems to be fairly centralized, how can crypto play
a role to kind of like change that course, or
actually can we combine the two and actually then have
some type of like decentralized AI. Even though I just
got done saying that, like, you know, on the face of.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
It, it seems very centralized.
Speaker 4 (16:52):
Yeah, So I don't know, I think that's kind of
like the when I think about crypto and AI and
the phase three think about like, hey, how can we
how can we pull that off?
Speaker 3 (17:04):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (17:04):
It's because because even like this, like the decentralized nature
of crypto like these and the centralized world of reserve
banks and this sort of stuff that like they are
converging ready right coming together, and like how do you
see that? You sort of see there's a happy five
path forward for both of them or yeah, like.
Speaker 4 (17:22):
Jumping over to financial services and yeah yeah, so so
stepping aside from the AI combo, this is a huge
thing that we're seeing right now today and in crypto
in our space, which I mean frankly is super relevant
for our conversation because here we are with a you know,
traditional stock equity business, wealth wealth company and that you
(17:46):
guys are integrating crypto. And the reality is we see
that across a lot of our markets. We see it
in Europe, we see it in the US, you know,
across many of our markets where companies are starting to
do this or they're in progress of doing this, like
adding crypto. So you know, banks, brokers, FinTechs right adding
(18:07):
crypto in to their offerings. We had a similar partnership
is what Kraken is doing with Chersey's. We did with
boot Bank and which is a large challenger banking in
Europe and the Netherlands, and they've seen great success with it,
you know, and they have And then we're frankly in
conversation right now with basically all the large banks and
(18:30):
brokers in the US about.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
The same thing.
Speaker 4 (18:34):
Now, they might not move quite as quick as you guys,
or they definitely won't move as quick as you guys.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
But you know, lo and Behold.
Speaker 4 (18:41):
I mean they're all like, yeah, they're very serious about
this path, and they have teams against it, and they're
you know, getting our fps going and looking to figure
out how they're going to make it happen.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Like prior to studying at Cheesy's, I worked in a
bank and this is nine years ago now, and we
hit the founder of Ethereum come along to speak to
us at that time, and the Ethereum was tiny at
the time, so already those conversations were happening, but none
of the banks have made progress really and actually delivering that.
But I can you know, it feels like there's now
(19:14):
evidence of that happening, right Like there's really large brands
around the world where that is happening.
Speaker 4 (19:20):
I think the other thing is crypto companies are going
to offer yeah as well, And that's like the other thing.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
Is gonna happened.
Speaker 4 (19:27):
And then the third thing that's going to happen is
cryptotech will enable kind of traditional financial products like equities.
Talking these equities being one of those examples.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Let's just dive into that now, togonization of traditional asset equities,
like I want to talk things like housing is a
big one that's been talked about in New Zealand at
the moment. I mean there's lots of sort of old
alternative as sets like just old coins, but art or
all these sorts of things like just what's what's the
world as you see it with regards to tokenization.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
So that's I think jump into like kind of like
you know a number of steps down the line.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
So like let's build their way up there. Let's take
the steak.
Speaker 4 (20:09):
So like I mean, the first step is so we
talk about tokenizing real world you know assets that are
in trad fi stable coins. Stable coins are actually I
mean that is effectively it you basically you know, you
create this token on a blockchain, you back at one
to one with fiat currency in most cases dollars with
(20:31):
you know, tether or USDC, and that is a tokenized asset,
a tokenized you know, single dollar of you know.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Whatever reason I had not made the connection with the
other assays that this is a that's a great example,
but you know one being the most boring example you
can think of, probably yeahs like sort of yea where
it might go with it great.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
Yeah, I mean one hundred percent.
Speaker 4 (20:53):
Well, part of the reason I go there is because
now let's talk about tokenized equities, which is some crack
and just recently launched x stocks.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
You talk about that more detail.
Speaker 4 (21:01):
But the technology I mean, for someone who understands stable
coins like okay, I got this token and it's back
one for one by some dollars sitting in a bank account. Well,
TOKENI is equities x stocks. Our implementation of it is
exactly the same. There's this token that rides on a
blockchain several different blockchains actually you know we now support
(21:22):
and it's back one for one by a share of
Tesla stock or Apple stock or whatever it might be. Right,
And that's the basic premise of the technology. These are
just basically asset back tokens. And so you're kind of allowed.
It's a hybrid in some ways, right, I Mean, we're
still talking about dollars, but now they're just on a
(21:42):
different set of rails. We're still talking about traditional equities now,
just on different set of rails, and so it's kind
of combining the two, if you will, you know, because
there are some benefits of dollars today that you know,
people want to hold dollars, people accept dollars. They are
less volatile than pretty much all the crypto currencies out there,
and there are various different, you know, advantages that they
(22:03):
still have today. I think some of those will go
away over time for what it's worth, and then much
the same I mean obviously equities. I mean there's huge
number of benefits you know, to public equities and so
forth in that whole structure. So this is basically kind
of combining the two. But we could just keep going
on from there, right, We can go on from there
to you mentioned real estate. I think that one's a
(22:24):
little bit you know, further down. I mean, I think
more of the for what it's worth. I think more
of the like higher liquid assets are going to be
at least in the near term, are probably.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Where we're going to see like bigger adoption for what
it's worth.
Speaker 4 (22:40):
Like there might be some use cases that are more
narrow for more ill liquid assets, I think so like
real estate, But I think the broader adoption, bigger adoption
is probably going to come for more liquid assets. Probably
you know, the most liquid asset out there is the
US dollar, I'm pretty sure, and then you kind of
move across there and think about the other liquid assets.
That's where we're going to see the option of tokenized assets.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Yeah, and the I mean the I don't want to
get too far ahead of ourselves and now, but you know,
you can think about like if it was property, then
what's the part to play of the bank if you
can sort of fractionalize your property and has sort of
achieve some sort of ownership over time through that. Or
(23:24):
with regards to public markets, like do you, like, have
you thought about what that means for public markets into
the future or is that just sort of something that
you think will work its way out given given if
it's tokenized, we're already seeing private assets tokenized and stuff, right.
Speaker 4 (23:38):
Well, you know, it's an interesting question. I mean, there's
a lot of things that can happen now that you
have tokenized dollars or tokenize equities, right, I mean, so
again we just start with tokenized dollars, Well, you can
move them globally for no cost or near no cost, right,
And you can move them globally for near no cost
(24:00):
nearly instantly. You kind of go down the line and
these things are just you know, not possible. Otherwise you
can also now you know, integrate them into what is DeFi, right,
And so these are decentralized exchanges, decentralized lending protocols where
we actually have people out there that can go to
(24:21):
DeFi and borrow stable coins against some other you know,
crypto assets from uh you know, thousands of people all
at once on a DeFi network, which.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
Is just kind of amazing.
Speaker 4 (24:34):
And you think about the level of i don't know,
kind of like peer to peer decentralized liquidity that that
then provides is really amazing. And so then you can
start integrating these stable coins into various different smart contracts
where they can be you know, a party two like
an AI agent someday you know, actually interacting with these assets.
(24:58):
And then the same is true for toke ex equities.
You know, we can start thinking about all the various
different things that you know can be done with token
ex equities as well now that they're you know, permission less, movable,
all these types of things.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
So it's cool to think about.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
It's just for sure the change and who knows, who
knows how to get there that, Like, I think one
thing we can probably both say is biscises. You know,
I think I sort of believe in that. I believe
in the in the future. It's like, sort of what's
the path is or do you think there's like a
penetration point, was like a level of scale or something
(25:32):
that that we are something.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
Tips or yeah, that's a good question.
Speaker 4 (25:36):
We you know, in crypto in the early days and
even still today. I frankly haven't had this discussion too
much recently, but yeah, this is you know, where is
the S curve hit? Where we at on the S curve?
Where did things tip? And you know, I mean I
don't think we're at that like vertical part of the
ES curve for crypto generally right now, still not today.
I mean, I think there's still more penetration to get to,
(25:59):
but I don't know that we're that far off. Honestly,
you know, once we get to a place where there
is a you know, a significant number of people that
you know own crypto, are using crypto daily, just kind
of like the.
Speaker 3 (26:12):
Level of you know, demand to build applications.
Speaker 4 (26:17):
For them will just kind of like continually grow and
we'll just see this flywheel move and I think, you know,
adoption will just really really spiral.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
At that point. Cool.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
Well, we've you know, it's been a great chance to
chair and meet you as a key pers It's very
cool to do that over here, so appreciate.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
Your time there.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
The last question we're going to have. We've got tens
of thousands of people on a wait list already for
this product, so there's clearly a lot of interests to
do it from our customer base. We're getting close and
a bunch of those people will be familiar with crypto,
and you know, they'll come in and they'll have expectations
and we'll keep building product for them. But there's also
going to be a bunch of people who are doing
this for the first time. So I just love to
(27:00):
hear what thoughts you have to give to anyone whom
I was listening to this and about to start visiting
and crypto.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
For the first time.
Speaker 4 (27:08):
Sure, that's a great question. Look, I mean I got
into crypto a long time ago. I think crypto as
a technology provides, you know, a set of technology that
at its core is you know, faster, cheaper, and more global.
Fortunately for those of us in crypto, that is kind
of like the the you know, the.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
Path of the world to look for those things.
Speaker 4 (27:30):
The world is becoming more global, h you know, you know,
commerce is becoming more global, and therefore we need you know,
faster and cheaper rails to get all of that done.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
I think there's an.
Speaker 4 (27:41):
Enormous amount of innovation happening in the space, even beyond
just payments, and we look into all different aspects of uh,
you know, trading in something that's called DeFi decentralized finance.
That's another key word of this, which is decentralized. So
kind of like historically, you know, in recent hundreds of years,
(28:02):
financial services have largely been centralized by a few central banks,
large large individual banks. Now this is actually a technology
where the individuals, the participants in.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
The network actually own a part of the network.
Speaker 4 (28:16):
And so I think it's a fantastic place for people
to check out.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
Favorably because Craiken, thank you so much for your time today.
I appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
Awesome
Korda and welcome to Shared Lunch. We're in a sunny
and pretty windy San Francisco standing here on the Golden
Gate Bridge, and today we've got another suspecial episode. It's Cracking,
and we'll be speaking with co CEO Dave Ripley.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Investing involves the risk you might lose the money you
start with. We recommend talking to a licensed financial advisor.
We also recommend reading product disclosure documents before deciding to invest.
Everything you're about to see and here is current at
the time of recording.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Dave, Welcome to Shared Lunch. Thanks so much for joining us.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Great to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Hey, it's been a whirlwind trip for us. You're seeking
on our US tour and was really cool on the
plane in Washington, d C. This morning. In a great
place to start, I thought, which was we're really headlined
that Cracking signs a contract with the government, So I
thought maybe you could start by telling us a little
bit about the breaking news.
Speaker 4 (00:54):
I never really thought this time would happen where there's
a huge amount of crypto news. It's coming out of Washington,
d C. Or any government center for that matter. But
nonetheless we're here. Yeah, so look the news today not
to downplate it all, but I mean I think it's
one one part and a much bigger, bigger.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Dynamic going on.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
So the news today was, you know, the Department of
Commerce they're going to publish some of the kind of
like US economic data on a blockchain. There it'll be
attested to, you know, validated, time stamped, all that, all
those good things that you kind of get with like
a public blockchain that has you know, at testation and
(01:38):
all those types of things.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
So that's what that's about.
Speaker 4 (01:41):
But there's certainly a bigger story, like around what's going
on in d C, and you know, specifically with governments
becoming a customer of crypto. I mean, I think one
of the more basic and frankly maybe more interesting one
pieces are you know, governments becoming holders a bitcoin.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
That's happening in the US.
Speaker 4 (02:02):
You have the US government doing it, and you have
a number of states that are saying, hey, you know,
our state sovereign fund is going to start buying bitcoin,
and that's happening for probably I don't know about four
or five states already, Texas, Wyoming, a handful of.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Them out there.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
We of course see it in other countries El Salvador,
and I don't know exactly what's the latest on, you know,
across the globe, but yeah, it's interesting and that and
of itself is of course still just a small part
of all the things that we're seeing kind of come
out come out of various different governments with regard to crypto.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Yah.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
So tell us a little bit about Kraken's customers and
you know who you're supporting every day to help in
the crypto space.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Sure.
Speaker 4 (02:43):
So, look, i'd break it down in three different groups consumer,
professional trader, individual advanced trader institutions. I'll start with that
mental group mentioned before, pro traders, Individual advanced traders. That's
kind of our sweet spot from our history where we
really went after first for the audience here if you're
(03:04):
familiar with like an interactive brokers or something like that,
but that individual advanced trader is like looking for all
the you know, complex order types, many asset classes, derivatives, leverage,
looking for a sophisticated us with a lot of analytical tools, indicators,
all of those you know, features that allow them to
(03:26):
kind of like build trading training strategies and execute on them.
And then the third thing is probably like highly performance,
low latency, all those types of things.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
That's kind of that group.
Speaker 4 (03:37):
That's where we, you know, have built out all of
those things that I just described, probably better than anyone
else in the industry. More recently, we've moved into consumer.
When I say more recently, probably about four or five
years ago, and it turns out that after you've built
all of this more complex stuff for pro, it's actually
pretty easy to build a more simplified consumer experience, and
(03:58):
so we've had great success there as well. And then
finally institutions, so we serve a number of different institutions.
We kind of break it down in a few different buckets.
One being trading firms, and these are kind of trading
firms again similar to the pro traders, very sophisticated, large
trading teams do and you know think you know, high
(04:19):
frequency trading firms, you know, trading via a PI, you know, thousands,
tens of thousands of orders trades per day, that type
of thing. The next would be asset management firms. So
this is the big money pensions, endowments, you know, big
stock phones, big mutual funds, hedge funds, all that type
(04:40):
of stuff. And then the last would be banks, brokers
and FinTechs, so cheers these kind of falls in that
last last category for us.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
That flows nicely that the relationship we have Lusheesy, so
one of the big parts of our process once we
decided we do crypto and you know, huge amount of
due diligence around them, like technology, the solutions we can
offer to our customers. The one thing critical in this
pace security, So I just love you to share with
our audience day a little bit about how Kraken thinks
(05:11):
about security. And you know, particularly given there's been some
very high profile crypto case you know, either hacking or
security or you know, and ultimately a loss of money.
So just how you think about that as a business
or as an individual.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
None involve and cracking.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
But yeah, look this is this has been a super
meaningful topic in crypto.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
Of course.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
You know, it turns out that when you have the
ability to like hold the funds on your own and
transactions are irreversible, security becomes super meaningful. Lo and behol
probably unsurprising, but you know, cracking has a long history
in this uh you know, with respect to security, it's
(05:56):
frankly one of the founding tenants of the business. There's
one of the first really the first crypto exchange out
there was a company called mount Cox. It ultimately was
you know hacked, had security issues and went down, but
actually earlier in its life, there was a security issue
kind of a couple of years before the one that
(06:18):
actually took the company down. And when that first security
event happened, Jesse, the co founder and CEO of Kracken,
was already in the industry, was already knew many of
the meaningful people in the industry, and they gave Jesse
a call because he was already a fantastic entrepreneur, a
tech entrepreneur, and was able to kind of like figure
out tough, tough challenges and went out there to call
(06:40):
them out there to go help Mount Cox in which
he did and he you know, helped get them back
and moving, and on his way back, he you know,
he had a couple thoughts. One was, Wow, that place
really isn't doing security the right way and doing all
the things that they need to do in order to
you know, be fully sure. The other thing he thought
(07:02):
was someone needs to do that, and that led to Krakeen,
and so that was kind of the foundation of it.
The other co founder of Kracken often refers to Kraken
as a security company with an exchange on top. But
really the way we achieve it, I mean it is
security and depth. It cuts across every function of the company.
(07:23):
It's not just the security team. It's not even just
the engineering team. You think about customer support and compliance
and finance and all of these various different teams have
a role to play. We also have, like one of
our values is called productively paranoid, and what that really
means is that like productively is the piece of like, hey,
(07:43):
let's not be too paranoid, but let's question things anytime
there's something that doesn't look like as it should be
for whatever reason. And that might just be like, oh,
hey someone forgot to do X y Z. Is that
is that really intentional or not? Let's look into it.
And that pervades across all two thousand plus krackenites, And
(08:04):
that's a really meaningful part of like how we like
pervade security across every corner of the company.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
So we take it super seriously.
Speaker 4 (08:12):
We know that it's not always top of mind for
our customers, but over time, we think kind of investing
in that leads to a lot of trust, whether it's
whether it's clear where that trust is coming from or not,
or that it's just Kracking's known to be highly trusted.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
What are the other values of the of the company,
like the I like the waiting, like productively.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
Parently, productively, period.
Speaker 4 (08:34):
So like most of the value set for Kraken is
really tied to crypto values, right, and so crypto values
are kind of this like, you know, frankly this in
a way libertarian set of values about you know, like freedom,
you know, freedom, independence, all these you know, different aspects
and that's kind of like core to our to our
(08:56):
value sets. So Kracken's values are very closely tied to
crypto values.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
So let's just step back a little bit and talk
a bit more about you. Nine years at Kraken, and
you know, I'd just love to hear a little bit
about how you came to be here, a little bit
about Dave, but sure.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
Just been about your story. Yeah, So definitely a crypto dinosaur,
that's for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (09:19):
So yeah, I guess it is nine years in krack
and I founded a company in the crypto space twenty thirteen,
so it's actually now been over a decade that have
been in the space. That company is acquired back Cracking
in twenty sixteen, Glydadira sorry you and that was called
by Crack in twenty sixteen. So that, you know, like
you said, puts me in about nine years at Cracking.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
Most of the time.
Speaker 4 (09:42):
I joined as chief operating officer for you know, was
in that role for a good number of years, I
don't know, six seven or so, and then more recently
moved into the CEO role and co CEO with Argentzathi.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Right now we have a Coco model she is as well.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Yeah, yeah, I caught that. That's great.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
And prior to the like, what was your you said,
you're a cryptos dinosaur, but it was you know, it's
not that old.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
What was the lafe before?
Speaker 4 (10:05):
Yeah, so kind of a two part career. Before my
move into Crypto, so started my cares as an engineer,
was engineer, an undergrad software engineer. I worked in what
we called at the time mobile and you know, now,
of course every company is mobile tech, you know, it
has mobile devices, but back in this time period it
(10:27):
was very very new. The largest mobile device at the
time was a Palm.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
Pilot, right, followed by the BlackBerry.
Speaker 4 (10:36):
And then I don't know, it's like some Microsoft devices
after that or whatever. So early days of mobile, what
we did is we basically built mobile applications for enterprise software,
which meant that the company I worked for, Cyclo, they
eventually got acquired by SAP, and so we're kind of
mobilizing those types of things that SAP was like, Okay,
we can't figure out this mobile shit, so let's like
acquire this company who's already doing it for our software,
(10:59):
you know, kind of independently.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
And so anyways, that's what that's.
Speaker 4 (11:03):
What was kind of part one of my career as
software junior product manageer, then business school, and then I
worked at BCG or served a bunch of different financial
services firms, and.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
So that was kind of the second place as well.
Speaker 4 (11:15):
Was I was not no, it was it was like
is one of those things where it was like the
I kind of thought about it as like the the
in some ways the worst timing possible, because I was
there in mobile when it was like you know, the
Palm Pilot and BlackBerry and so forth. And then about
the time as graduating business school was right right, it
was two thousand and seven, and that you know, the
(11:35):
iPhone was hitting right.
Speaker 5 (11:38):
And so I've moved pivoted away from it, which was like,
you know, you couldn't get worse time. So I actually
kind of thought about that the many times through the
Bear and Bull cycles and Crypto where it's.
Speaker 4 (11:49):
Like, hey, am I gonna like you know, but you know,
for a million reasons, I never never wanted to leave Crypto,
and you know, just I'll definitely be in this space
till I till I die.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Dumably b CG would have been a big player in
that mobile transition large companies.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
And now just you know, that was sort of the.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
AI change we're going through now and various places has
been compared to like the last large platform change being mobile,
Like now, are you seeing any sort of similarities with
like anything different about what what we're working through at
the moment.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
Yeah, you know, I mean it, I'd be a good
interest into what you guys are doing in AI as well.
So we're doing a handful of things, you know. The
first is we have a number of operational parts of
the company. You know, this is kind of like what
I would say like most companies like v one for mobile,
which is we have customer support, we have you know,
(12:43):
compliance function with big operational teams and they do a
bunch of work with data and of course interacting with
customers and all this type of stuff. And we're finding that,
of course, like many companies, we can use AI to
like automate a ton of this ship.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
So that's kind of phase one. Step on what we're doing.
Speaker 4 (13:00):
Step two, I would say, is to like build it
more directly into the product. So instead of you know,
opening up a crack and app where you have like
an interface and you can go and click on all
the buttons and pull up the lists and all the
views and graphs and so forth, you just interact with
AI prompt. We also just made an acquisition last week,
(13:20):
we announced Capitalized dot Ai and there they basically have
some tech where you can build trading outgoes trading strategies
using AI. It's kind of a prompt and then you
you can build a different trading strategy and prompt so
and it.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Like spits out like an algorithms exactly.
Speaker 4 (13:38):
So that I mean, so that's kind of what I
say is like phase two, where it's more just like
the product becomes you know, the product and the interface
you know, kind of become AI right, and.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
Then phase three.
Speaker 4 (13:51):
You know, that's like kind of imaginating what's up to
our imagination what that is. I mean, I think there
could be some interesting things, how kind of like crypto
and AI I'm together actually.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Going to be my next question. We're havn't you asked
what we're thinking about? Like, we're having a lot of
fun at the moment. You know, the operational stuff's happening, right,
like the the adding time to engineers hands and all
that sort of stuff and with their day, and one
of the things we're having a lot of fun thinking
about is like eight hundred thousand that were in our
case a hundred and fifty thousand different UIs or you know,
(14:22):
because everyone's going to experience this so differently and it
really does change the you know, change the way. But
it's super interesting to think about. You know, you're sort
of right in the middle of these two platform changes
really right one yeah, yeah, crypto in the block chain
space and then this AI. So how are they insecting
in what sort of the future you might see from that?
Speaker 4 (14:40):
Well, you know, I think this is I mean, it's
definitely we get into the theoretical I mean, there are
some like crypto AI projects out there and so forth.
But I mean in a lot of ways. I mean
again this is this is going to feel pretty theoretical,
but in a lot of ways, you know, AI is
very can can you look at it and be like, hey,
this is very centralizing. And of course that's the you know,
that's the meme or the even the fear out there
(15:02):
that there's you know, this what the movies are made of. Right,
it's like this AI thing is going to take over
humankind and blah blah blah.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
Okay, why is it centralizing?
Speaker 4 (15:11):
Well, you need all this compute power you put in
one place, and these llms they get really sophisticated, and
you have like you know, one or several lms that
are very sophisticated, a huge amount of compute power. It
all kind of sits in one place. Who owns the
switch for it and so forth. It's very different. You know,
central is you know, a centralized tech is you know,
(15:31):
quite the exact opposite of crypto.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
Right, very decentralizing.
Speaker 4 (15:36):
You know, takes something like money, which is you know,
meaningfully centralized today in central banks and so forth, and
you have crypto now and it's like very decentralized networks
are owned by the participants and so on and so forth, right,
And so you kind of think, and if you're someone
like you know myself, you look at those two different
(16:01):
paths and you say, like, okay, well, there's a lot
of benefits of the decentralized approach, and a lot of
really meaningful benefits, we think, right, you know, it's kind
of more of the you know, individual and freedom and
ability to opt in or out and control your own
participation and all those types of things as opposed to
have it and dictated for you. And that's kind of
(16:22):
like a great thing for freedom and independence and all
these things that we, like, you know, I think are
pretty important.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
Right.
Speaker 4 (16:30):
So kind of the question is, well, like, if these
two things are really big and meaningful, and this one
text seems to be fairly centralized, how can crypto play
a role to kind of like change that course, or
actually can we combine the two and actually then have
some type of like decentralized AI. Even though I just
got done saying that, like, you know, on the face of.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
It, it seems very centralized.
Speaker 4 (16:52):
Yeah, So I don't know, I think that's kind of
like the when I think about crypto and AI and
the phase three think about like, hey, how can we
how can we pull that off?
Speaker 3 (17:04):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (17:04):
It's because because even like this, like the decentralized nature
of crypto like these and the centralized world of reserve
banks and this sort of stuff that like they are
converging ready right coming together, and like how do you
see that? You sort of see there's a happy five
path forward for both of them or yeah, like.
Speaker 4 (17:22):
Jumping over to financial services and yeah yeah, so so
stepping aside from the AI combo, this is a huge
thing that we're seeing right now today and in crypto
in our space, which I mean frankly is super relevant
for our conversation because here we are with a you know,
traditional stock equity business, wealth wealth company and that you
(17:46):
guys are integrating crypto. And the reality is we see
that across a lot of our markets. We see it
in Europe, we see it in the US, you know,
across many of our markets where companies are starting to
do this or they're in progress of doing this, like
adding crypto. So you know, banks, brokers, FinTechs right adding
(18:07):
crypto in to their offerings. We had a similar partnership
is what Kraken is doing with Chersey's. We did with
boot Bank and which is a large challenger banking in
Europe and the Netherlands, and they've seen great success with it,
you know, and they have And then we're frankly in
conversation right now with basically all the large banks and
(18:30):
brokers in the US about.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
The same thing.
Speaker 4 (18:34):
Now, they might not move quite as quick as you guys,
or they definitely won't move as quick as you guys.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
But you know, lo and Behold.
Speaker 4 (18:41):
I mean they're all like, yeah, they're very serious about
this path, and they have teams against it, and they're
you know, getting our fps going and looking to figure
out how they're going to make it happen.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Like prior to studying at Cheesy's, I worked in a
bank and this is nine years ago now, and we
hit the founder of Ethereum come along to speak to
us at that time, and the Ethereum was tiny at
the time, so already those conversations were happening, but none
of the banks have made progress really and actually delivering that.
But I can you know, it feels like there's now
(19:14):
evidence of that happening, right Like there's really large brands
around the world where that is happening.
Speaker 4 (19:20):
I think the other thing is crypto companies are going
to offer yeah as well, And that's like the other thing.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
Is gonna happened.
Speaker 4 (19:27):
And then the third thing that's going to happen is
cryptotech will enable kind of traditional financial products like equities.
Talking these equities being one of those examples.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Let's just dive into that now, togonization of traditional asset equities,
like I want to talk things like housing is a
big one that's been talked about in New Zealand at
the moment. I mean there's lots of sort of old
alternative as sets like just old coins, but art or
all these sorts of things like just what's what's the
world as you see it with regards to tokenization.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
So that's I think jump into like kind of like
you know a number of steps down the line.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
So like let's build their way up there. Let's take
the steak.
Speaker 4 (20:09):
So like I mean, the first step is so we
talk about tokenizing real world you know assets that are
in trad fi stable coins. Stable coins are actually I
mean that is effectively it you basically you know, you
create this token on a blockchain, you back at one
to one with fiat currency in most cases dollars with
(20:31):
you know, tether or USDC, and that is a tokenized asset,
a tokenized you know, single dollar of you know.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Whatever reason I had not made the connection with the
other assays that this is a that's a great example,
but you know one being the most boring example you
can think of, probably yeahs like sort of yea where
it might go with it great.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
Yeah, I mean one hundred percent.
Speaker 4 (20:53):
Well, part of the reason I go there is because
now let's talk about tokenized equities, which is some crack
and just recently launched x stocks.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
You talk about that more detail.
Speaker 4 (21:01):
But the technology I mean, for someone who understands stable
coins like okay, I got this token and it's back
one for one by some dollars sitting in a bank account. Well,
TOKENI is equities x stocks. Our implementation of it is
exactly the same. There's this token that rides on a
blockchain several different blockchains actually you know we now support
(21:22):
and it's back one for one by a share of
Tesla stock or Apple stock or whatever it might be. Right,
And that's the basic premise of the technology. These are
just basically asset back tokens. And so you're kind of allowed.
It's a hybrid in some ways, right, I Mean, we're
still talking about dollars, but now they're just on a
(21:42):
different set of rails. We're still talking about traditional equities now,
just on different set of rails, and so it's kind
of combining the two, if you will, you know, because
there are some benefits of dollars today that you know,
people want to hold dollars, people accept dollars. They are
less volatile than pretty much all the crypto currencies out there,
and there are various different, you know, advantages that they
(22:03):
still have today. I think some of those will go
away over time for what it's worth, and then much
the same I mean obviously equities. I mean there's huge
number of benefits you know, to public equities and so
forth in that whole structure. So this is basically kind
of combining the two. But we could just keep going
on from there, right, We can go on from there
to you mentioned real estate. I think that one's a
(22:24):
little bit you know, further down. I mean, I think
more of the for what it's worth. I think more
of the like higher liquid assets are going to be
at least in the near term, are probably.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Where we're going to see like bigger adoption for what
it's worth.
Speaker 4 (22:40):
Like there might be some use cases that are more
narrow for more ill liquid assets, I think so like
real estate, But I think the broader adoption, bigger adoption
is probably going to come for more liquid assets. Probably
you know, the most liquid asset out there is the
US dollar, I'm pretty sure, and then you kind of
move across there and think about the other liquid assets.
That's where we're going to see the option of tokenized assets.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Yeah, and the I mean the I don't want to
get too far ahead of ourselves and now, but you know,
you can think about like if it was property, then
what's the part to play of the bank if you
can sort of fractionalize your property and has sort of
achieve some sort of ownership over time through that. Or
(23:24):
with regards to public markets, like do you, like, have
you thought about what that means for public markets into
the future or is that just sort of something that
you think will work its way out given given if
it's tokenized, we're already seeing private assets tokenized and stuff, right.
Speaker 4 (23:38):
Well, you know, it's an interesting question. I mean, there's
a lot of things that can happen now that you
have tokenized dollars or tokenize equities, right, I mean, so
again we just start with tokenized dollars, Well, you can
move them globally for no cost or near no cost, right,
And you can move them globally for near no cost
(24:00):
nearly instantly. You kind of go down the line and
these things are just you know, not possible. Otherwise you
can also now you know, integrate them into what is DeFi, right,
And so these are decentralized exchanges, decentralized lending protocols where
we actually have people out there that can go to
(24:21):
DeFi and borrow stable coins against some other you know,
crypto assets from uh you know, thousands of people all
at once on a DeFi network, which.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
Is just kind of amazing.
Speaker 4 (24:34):
And you think about the level of i don't know,
kind of like peer to peer decentralized liquidity that that
then provides is really amazing. And so then you can
start integrating these stable coins into various different smart contracts
where they can be you know, a party two like
an AI agent someday you know, actually interacting with these assets.
(24:58):
And then the same is true for toke ex equities.
You know, we can start thinking about all the various
different things that you know can be done with token
ex equities as well now that they're you know, permission less, movable,
all these types of things.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
So it's cool to think about.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
It's just for sure the change and who knows, who
knows how to get there that, Like, I think one
thing we can probably both say is biscises. You know,
I think I sort of believe in that. I believe
in the in the future. It's like, sort of what's
the path is or do you think there's like a
penetration point, was like a level of scale or something
(25:32):
that that we are something.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
Tips or yeah, that's a good question.
Speaker 4 (25:36):
We you know, in crypto in the early days and
even still today. I frankly haven't had this discussion too
much recently, but yeah, this is you know, where is
the S curve hit? Where we at on the S curve?
Where did things tip? And you know, I mean I
don't think we're at that like vertical part of the
ES curve for crypto generally right now, still not today.
I mean, I think there's still more penetration to get to,
(25:59):
but I don't know that we're that far off. Honestly,
you know, once we get to a place where there
is a you know, a significant number of people that
you know own crypto, are using crypto daily, just kind
of like the.
Speaker 3 (26:12):
Level of you know, demand to build applications.
Speaker 4 (26:17):
For them will just kind of like continually grow and
we'll just see this flywheel move and I think, you know,
adoption will just really really spiral.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
At that point. Cool.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
Well, we've you know, it's been a great chance to
chair and meet you as a key pers It's very
cool to do that over here, so appreciate.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
Your time there.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
The last question we're going to have. We've got tens
of thousands of people on a wait list already for
this product, so there's clearly a lot of interests to
do it from our customer base. We're getting close and
a bunch of those people will be familiar with crypto,
and you know, they'll come in and they'll have expectations
and we'll keep building product for them. But there's also
going to be a bunch of people who are doing
this for the first time. So I just love to
(27:00):
hear what thoughts you have to give to anyone whom
I was listening to this and about to start visiting
and crypto.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
For the first time.
Speaker 4 (27:08):
Sure, that's a great question. Look, I mean I got
into crypto a long time ago. I think crypto as
a technology provides, you know, a set of technology that
at its core is you know, faster, cheaper, and more global.
Fortunately for those of us in crypto, that is kind
of like the the you know, the.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
Path of the world to look for those things.
Speaker 4 (27:30):
The world is becoming more global, h you know, you know,
commerce is becoming more global, and therefore we need you know,
faster and cheaper rails to get all of that done.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
I think there's an.
Speaker 4 (27:41):
Enormous amount of innovation happening in the space, even beyond
just payments, and we look into all different aspects of uh,
you know, trading in something that's called DeFi decentralized finance.
That's another key word of this, which is decentralized. So
kind of like historically, you know, in recent hundreds of years,
(28:02):
financial services have largely been centralized by a few central banks,
large large individual banks. Now this is actually a technology
where the individuals, the participants in.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
The network actually own a part of the network.
Speaker 4 (28:16):
And so I think it's a fantastic place for people
to check out.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
Favorably because Craiken, thank you so much for your time today.
I appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
Awesome
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