November 13, 2025 • 44 mins
Money should move as fast as your cart. We sit down with Garrett Harper, Head of Business Development at Squads Labs, to unpack how Stablecoin is quietly becoming the payment rail that matches modern retail speed: instant refunds, cheaper settlements, and programmable rewards that actually feel valuable. If “buy online, pick up in store” reset fulfillment, Stablecoin is poised to reset how cash flows through every step of the retail value chain.
We start with a clear breakdown of what Stablecoin is, why most are backed by short-term U.S. Treasuries, and where the real product–market fit already exists: access to dollars and cross-border payments. From there, we connect the dots to omnichannel operations. Imagine payouts that land in seconds, loyalty that accrues in real time, and fewer intermediaries taxing every transaction. That’s not a crypto pitch—it’s an upgrade to user experience and unit economics. We explore how retailers like Walmart can harness yield to fund better rewards and lower fees, all while keeping the Stablecoin plumbing behind the scenes so shoppers never have to think about “using crypto.”
Then we look ahead to agentic and ambient commerce. AI agents will reorder staples, handle price checks, and even settle micro-purchases across platforms. Videos, streams, and everyday contexts become shoppable surfaces with automatic, transparent revenue splits. Smart contracts make that trust-by-design, enabling if-then money that legacy rails can’t match. We also dig into how processors and networks respond—why companies like Stripe are experimenting with Stablecoin settlements to cut costs and speed payouts—and how transparency on public chains can strengthen trust for marketplaces, long-tail sellers, and nonprofits.
If you care about omnichannel strategy, payments efficiency, and what happens when AI meets checkout, this conversation maps the road ahead. Subscribe, share with a colleague who owns payments or loyalty, and leave a review with the one Stablecoin use case you want most next.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:06):
I want to clarify that this podcast is distinct
from my responsibilities as aprofessor in the CMM Walton
College of Business.
Nonetheless, it aligns with myaspiration to provide practical
insights to professionals andbusiness by showcasing companies
and people that can enhance yourability to manage, lead, and
strategize and marketeffectively and the retail value
(00:29):
chain.
And now without further ado,let's get into the exciting
episode.
I have with me today GarrettHarper, who is head of
partnerships with Squads.
We'll be talking aboutomnichannel, but we're going to
start off by talking aboutcrypto and particularly stable
coins.
(00:49):
And many people don't reallythink of crypto when they think
of omnichannel.
But when we look ahead, crypto'sgoing to have, especially stable
coins, will have a huge impacton omnichannel.
So this is a topic that needs tobe uh understood by those
(01:10):
dealing with omnichannel.
So uh so Garrett, uh welcome tothe show.
Good to have you here.
SPEAKER_01 (01:17):
Yeah, thanks for having me on.
No, this is a blast.
I'm excited to talk about theSablecoin space.
I've been in it loosely, atleast, since 2018, roughly, and
then I've been directly in thespace since about 2020.
So I've got at least a fewopinions on everything.
SPEAKER_00 (01:30):
You do.
Uh and uh I I know I've beenfollowing you for some time, and
I know you're when I think ofexperts in crypto, you are the
first one that comes to mind.
So, Garrett, would you mindsharing with us a little bit
about what are stable coins?
SPEAKER_01 (01:46):
Yeah.
So let's start really simple,and then we'll build off that
somewhat.
So stable coins are a tokenizeddollar.
So when you've heard of token,you probably think of crypto in
general, and you think ofsomething like Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is very volatile, right?
All of the tokens in crypto are.
Stable coins are called stable,uh stable coins because they're
supposed to actually track thevalue of something, and that
(02:08):
something is usually the USdollar.
So every stable coin that youhave is interchangeable for a
dollar.
So how this works at like a veryhigh level is you have$100 in a
bank account, and then somecompany then prints, I say
prints, it's digital, 100 stablecoins on top of that.
So all 100 stable coins arebacked by$100, right?
(02:30):
And so that's why it'sinterchangeable one-to-one.
It's always backed.
Now, what happens is reality isit's not actually backed by$100.
It's usually backed by like 99%US treasuries.
The reason to do that, and it'sshort-term US treasuries, is
that you can earn interest onthose treasuries, right?
So there's a few reasons thatstable coins have taken off.
Um, one reason is just thatpeople want to access dollars.
(02:54):
Okay.
So whether you're in SouthAmerica and you have a very
volatile currency, or really alot of countries around the
world, they just want to accessthe US dollar.
It's the strongest and it's themost reliable.
That's kind of use case one,access to the dollar.
The second use case iscross-border payments.
That's the other product marketfit today.
So in this conversation, youknow, we'll talk a lot about how
stable coins could be used evenby companies like Walmart and
(03:16):
others.
That has a place that doesn'thave product market fit yet.
What does is access to dollarsand then cross-border payments.
Why?
Because when you make across-border payment, it takes
days, it's very hard to track,and it's very expensive.
Stable coins, you can do so inless than a second.
It's actually the first time yousee it, Matt.
It's one of the coolest thingsthat will get you into crypto or
stable coins.
I could send you$100 right now.
You could be in Dubai, you couldbe anywhere.
(03:37):
And within less than a second,you'll see it appear.
Like it's it's honestly, itsounds lame, but it's pretty
magical to watch that.
Like that doesn't happenanywhere else.
And it's real money that you canthen exchange for a dollar at
any time.
To exchange for a dollar, rightnow, you have to go through
someone like Coinbase orExchange.
They're the ones that'llactually interchange that for
you.
Um, so that's use case numbertwo.
The third use case is companiessee it as a way to one, provide
(04:01):
better experiences to theirusers, two, make more money.
So if you can do both of those,it's a pretty good deal, right?
If I can make more money andprovide better experiences to my
users, I'm probably sold.
So, how does that actually playout in practice?
Well, it's better for usersbecause if you have payments
involved at all in your company,which almost every company does,
it's a faster, cheaper way to doso.
So your customers might be seesavings.
(04:23):
They will also get paid outquicker because it's instant.
There's no more like, hey, we'llpay you, we'll send out your
refund in 24 hours, you're paidout in less than a second,
right?
Which that may not sound liketoday, no one is used to that.
So do people really care?
Like I get paid out on a secondversus a day.
Over time, as companies adoptstable coins, it will become the
standard.
And if you don't do that, you'regonna say, why would I use that
(04:44):
company more?
Right.
So it's gonna naturally createthis competition to say, like,
similar to Robinhood, Robinhooddidn't on why did Robinhood blow
up?
They did trades without anyfees, right?
And now if you use any brokeragefirm, no one charges fees.
Same thing will happen in stablecoins, in my opinion.
It's not because users care thatstable coins are being used,
they don't, but it's justbecause it's faster, cheaper
(05:06):
payments, similar to Amazondelivering in two days.
Um, companies can make moneyhere, besides just offering a
better user experience, becauselike I said, these stable coins
are backed by US Treasuries.
So there's this wholecompetition going on right now.
Um, like today, it's been goingon for the last year, where
every company in the cryptospace, even companies like
Stripe, companies like Ramp, arelooking to potentially launch
(05:26):
their own stablecoin.
Now, like why would they dothat?
It's because if you're Ramp, ifyou're Stripe, you have a lot of
customers with balances justsitting there, right?
That balance is probably notearning you really any money.
Just like if you have money inyour bank account, you're making
less than like 0.05%.
Stable coins, you all of asudden can make that treasure
yield of like 4%.
That is a massive amount ofmoney because the stablecoin
space right now has a market capof 310 billion roughly.
(05:49):
Um, if you go back to 2021, itwas only 30 billion.
So it's already grown 10 timesover the four-year period.
Um, and our belief, especiallyfor people in the ecosystem,
believe that will be, you know,that's going to go another 10
times within like two years.
Um, and the reason for that isnot because users care, it's
because businesses can earn moremoney and they can offer better
experiences to their users.
So that's kind of the three usecases of stablecoins.
(06:11):
It's access to the dollar.
Um, it's better, cheaper, fasterfinance, which and also revenue
for customers, and it's a way todo cross-border payments.
Um, as we'll talk to you knowlater in this conversation, I
think it's also the perfectcurrency for the internet and
the perfect currency for agenticcommerce.
So that's how I think it plays arole in not just commerce, but
the world at-wide and why itcould basically power the next
(06:33):
era finance.
SPEAKER_00 (06:33):
Uh thank you for that excellent explanation of
stable coins.
Um I think as people werelistening to this, especially
those that are familiar withomnichannel, they were probably
starting to see the connectionuh to omni-channel.
But I would like to get intothat.
Uh before I do, um I would liketo say something a little bit
(06:57):
about Walmart, because Walmarthas really been the innovator in
OmniChannel.
Um there's a lot of companiesout there that are, you know,
e-commerce-based, but they don'thave a footprint of stores.
And um and there's there's uh alot of companies that have
footprints, but they don't havemuch in the way of e-commerce.
(07:19):
Walmart's a little unusual inthat what regard in the United
States.
Um but if you think about it,Walmart started in June of 1962.
June of 1962.
And they went public uh in 1970.
(07:39):
And uh in about 1973, theyadopted a strategy called
Everyday Low Price.
Uh a guy named Jack Shoemaker,um, who worked for uh Sam Walton
was the guy that came up withthis idea and really pushed it.
And really, no other U.S.
retailer has been able toemulate it.
(08:00):
It's it's it's like so manystrategies that uh are
successful.
They're very subtle, uh kind oflike why would that be a big
deal?
But when you know the industryand you know the the incentives
to use high-low promotionaltypes of uh methods, you
realize, oh, it's verydifficult.
(08:22):
Because it's also going to bepaired with something called
everyday low cost, where you tryto make things as efficient as
possible.
And I'm giving you thisbackground just because you can
imagine how this plays into itwith uh stable coins a little
bit.
Anyway, uh Walmart's EDLPstrategy and EDL C strategy has
been extremely important tothem.
(08:45):
And um other companies likeSears and many other a few big
grocers you would know havetried to implement it over time
and never succeeded.
Um but uh but in um when whenSam Walton received the uh
presidential medal of honor fromum President uh Bush, um he um
(09:16):
he said during that um interviewannouncement, he said Walmart is
about helping people save moneyand live better.
It was about 1989.
That became Walmart's mantra,their their tagline, if you
will.
And um and but of course Walmartalso started they started out
(09:41):
with just general merchandise,then they had super centers, uh
clubs, Sam's Club, um, you know,neighborhood markets were which
are more like grocery stores andsome other formats that they've
experimented with.
But then they started doingsomething called buy online
(10:03):
pickup at store, and they reallyput a lot into it, and it paid
off when COVID hit because theywere really the only retailer in
the US that could do itefficiently at scale by that
point.
And so they took a lot of marketshare um because of that.
(10:24):
But but buy online pickup atstore is truly an example of
omnichannel, you know.
Um really it's just lettingcustomers shop however they want
to shop.
You know, um you can buy onlinepick up a store, you can buy
online deliver to home, buyonline, deliver and home, buy
online drone delivery, right?
(10:47):
There's all kinds ofcombinations.
What's that?
SPEAKER_01 (10:49):
That one's cool.
I've seen that at my house inArkansas, actually.
Yes, it's very, very cool.
Throws you off the first timeyou see it, but you can see all
that with the future.
SPEAKER_00 (10:58):
Yeah, I I've uh used it before.
Um it's it's amazing.
Uh but but at any rate, um youknow Doug McMillan, the current
CEO of Walmart, um rewrote thepurpose a bit.
Yeah, the so that it's not justsave money and live better, but
(11:18):
a little bit broader.
Um he the the purpose he wind uhwound up uh writing was Walmart
is a people-led, tech-powered,omnichannel retailer dedicated
to helping people save money andlive better.
(11:40):
You can imagine why I thinkstable coins is so relevant
here, right?
It's people-led, but it's techpowered.
So the tech powered part isimportant.
Omni channel, retailer, allowpeople to shop however they
want, that's an importantaspect.
And then help dedicated tohelping people save money.
(12:04):
There's another N-Road for uhstable coin and live better.
I mean, if you can avoid scams,you're living better.
So I I wanted to point thatpurpose statement out and the
context behind it, just so yousee why when I first heard you
talking about stable coins, thiscame to my mind as being very
(12:28):
relevant to OmniChannel.
Um I'll let you react to thatbefore I ask any other
questions.
What what are your thoughtsabout that?
SPEAKER_01 (12:39):
It's funny.
I was wondering when we weremaking the connection between
what you're talking about herewith Walmart and then where
stable coins are and how thosetwo tie together.
But after hearing you talk aboutthis and their mission more or
less, I think it makes completesense.
Um the big reason I see that isbecause, you know, it at the end
(12:59):
of the day, people wantoutcomes.
They don't care about the tech.
They don't care how it happens,right?
Like they want things that arecheaper, they want things that
are faster, and they want moreselection.
Um, that's basically it, right?
They don't really care how ithappens unless something goes
wrong.
That is the only time peoplecare what is behind the scenes.
Um, the whole goal of stablecoins is to make the tech side
better without changing,necessarily having to change
(13:19):
user behavior.
They just see a better outcome.
So we're not trying to convincepeople to use stable coins
because it's some cool tech.
We're trying to use the getpeople and developers to use
stable coins because it can savetheir users time and money,
right?
And you can make new financialprimitives that you can never
make in the past.
Um with Walmart, I can see thisand just commerce in general.
(13:41):
I there's a lot of ways thatthese come together.
Um, one fun use case we'll save,I think, is like the more that
commerce becomes automated andagentic, I think stable coins
are basically money built forthat system.
Um, similar to when you had theinternet, credit cards had been
around for a while.
I think the first drop, it waslike in uh 1950s.
(14:03):
There's like Bank of America,I'm pretty sure, when they just
like dropped his credit card toall these people uh randomly.
It was like the first big creditcard, and there was a ton of
fraud, but it got credit cardsout into the system.
They didn't really becomepopular though until the
internet.
Like, can you imagine theinternet without credit cards?
Like buying anything on theinternet.
Like, how would you do that,right?
At first, it was a whole evensecurity issue when you first
had that.
Like, would you really shareyour information on the
(14:24):
internet?
People got past that.
And then encryption became athing.
Funny thing is, encryption islike the whole technology behind
stable coins, they're highlyrelated.
It's all about like privacy andencrypted and um provenance,
like pointing where things camefrom.
But you can't imagine theinternet without credit cards.
I can see a future.
This is obviously projecting.
Um, stablecoins can be the samecase for agentech commerce.
(14:45):
So you could say, how could wehave agentec commerce 10 years
from now?
I mean, just yesterday we sawOpenAI come out with this like
browser extension.
And you can do things like, hey,every Tuesday, I want you to
purchase XYZ from Walmart, forexample, because maybe it's a
recurring thing.
I know I want to cook for theweek.
Um, that agent is acting on yourbehalf.
They need maybe they're evenspending money on your behalf.
(15:05):
But that is really, really cool,but also creates this whole new
risk, right?
Like if you're gonna give anagent access to your bank
account, do you feelcomfortable?
And also, can that agent eveninteract with your bank account?
Is the money like native to thatagent?
Like, can they access it?
Can they use it?
Um, you know, these agents areacting autonomously and it's all
through computation andeverything's like basically on a
(15:26):
real-time basis.
The traditional financial systemis not real time.
If anything, it's been designednot to be real time.
Everything wants to be reallyslow.
Um, so this is where I could seestable coins coming into this.
And I think on that agentic sideis really cool because
everything you're talking aboutwith Walmart here, even if you
don't think it's agentsinvolved, but like think about
recurring purchases throughWalmart.
Whether you're having thatdelivered to your house, whether
you're picking it up, all ofthat really can be controlled by
(15:48):
an agent at some point.
And that's where I think wherestable coins can become a really
big thing.
Even without that, I think it'scool because you can save people
money in many, many ways.
Maybe if you're at Walmart, youcan earn interest on your
balance.
Like there's more incentives.
Like Walmart wants to have adirect relationship with their
customer, and they want thosepeople to either visit the store
more, to visit their site more,um, and have a reason to keep
(16:10):
coming back.
It's almost like you couldcreate an advanced loyalty
program with stable coins insome way, whether that's through
rewards, whether that's throughcheaper payments.
Um, so there's a lot ofopportunity there.
And I I know I kind of like wentoff in a couple directions, but
I think that's a reallyimportant confluence of where uh
this overlaps.
SPEAKER_00 (16:26):
You um have mentioned to me the concept of
ambient commerce.
Yeah.
Would you mind explaining that?
Yeah.
Ambient?
Like when I think of ambient, Ithink of room temperature.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (16:41):
Yeah.
Um, you know, I should look atthe actual definition of
ambient.
How I think about it, at least,is like essentially it's your
surrounding.
So ambient music.
It's like you walk into a spaceand you're just surrounded by
music.
Um, yeah, so shopping in currentcommerce has always had
dedicated spaces.
So used to that meant you walkedinto a store, right?
That's when you boughtsomething.
That's probably the only timeyou bought something.
(17:01):
Uh, then you had websites.
So you actually went to websitesto go and buy something.
Um, that was a dedicated space.
And then you had checkouts, andthen you have things like
Instagram now, right?
Where you have ads and you canactually make purchases through
those ads directly.
So these are all dedicatedspaces.
And over time, technology hasadvanced those spaces and made
them more contextual.
So, you know, when you're onInstagram, you're not maybe
(17:23):
trying to buy jeans, but likejust two days ago, I bought
jeans on Instagram because itserved me an ad and it made it
really easy to purchase, right?
Um, ambient commerce is theconcept that over time, using
both just like traditionaltechnology, but also LLMs, AI's
dynamic, dynamic UIs.
So um, it's gonna makeeverything where it's
monetizable.
(17:43):
And I think a really goodexample of this is when you're
watching YouTube or uh anInstagram video.
Every pixel on YouTube could bemonetizable in the sense that
like you're watching a video,maybe there's an influencer on
it, maybe there's not, and theyhave a t-shirt.
They um we're doing a podcastand they have headphones on.
All of those can be recognizedby an AI agent.
And when it decides the righttime for you to potentially make
(18:04):
a purchase, they can add anaffiliate link.
It can pop up, you can click onit and say, I love those
headphones that Matt Waller iswearing right now.
I want to buy them.
And immediately you get paidsome of that as like an
affiliate fee.
YouTube gets paid some of thatas an affiliate fee.
So basically, at all times,everything becomes monetizable,
which I think for some peoplesounds terrible.
It's like a transaction economy.
(18:24):
Um, I think it'd be really cool.
Like for the first time, you canbe even walking down the street.
You don't even need AR glasses.
Like, forget that.
I think that's gonna be reallycool in the future where you can
like interact with things aroundyou.
But you could just use your uhyour iPhone.
Say you're walking down thestreet and you see some sign of
something and you're like,that's actually a really great
shirt, or that is, you know, Iwant those shoes.
You could take a picture of itimmediately because of AI.
You can actually recognize whatthat is, find it on the
(18:46):
internet, create a link for youto buy it, and it's instant
checkout.
So you're moving from this, youknow, lately.
I think it's been really bigwith direct-to-commerce or
direct to um direct to consumeris something that a lot of
businesses have been trying todo.
And that means just sell, youknow, from your website directly
to some consumer.
This is where it's like directto context.
No matter where you are,everything becomes monetizable
(19:06):
in a transaction opportunity.
And that's what I mean byambient commerce.
It might sound a littlefar-fetched, but I really don't
think it is at all.
And if you've been payingattention to AI over the last
even year and how quickly thingschange, um, you can see where
every single shirt, if youwanted this Wilson t-shirt, this
would be monetizable right now.
And then you could do automaticpayouts that would go through,
if you post this on YouTube,some would go to YouTube, some
(19:27):
might go to you, Matt, and thensome might go to me.
And uh, that's a pretty coolfeature.
And and being able to distributefunds like that is something
that stable coins are perfectfor.
So that's yeah, the where thoseum have conflicts as well.
SPEAKER_00 (19:39):
So in the future, when we have ambient commerce,
attention's gonna be veryimportant in business.
SPEAKER_01 (19:49):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I was listening to a podcastthis morning.
It got me really interested inthis.
It's like ever uh it's probablyoverdone, but everyone talks
about it.
It is the attention economy inso many ways, right?
Like everyone is competing forattention.
I like to use YouTube as anexample just because uh big
YouTube fan.
They're the most streamed appnow on any TV.
So TV now, 50% of watch time ona TV is a streaming app.
(20:11):
I believe no longer traditionalTV.
And then YouTube is the mostwatched streaming app.
And now more than 50% of YouTubeis watched on um on a TV.
It's not even, you know, youthink of YouTube, you think of
being on your computer.
That's not the case anymore.
50% of the views are on TV.
Um, so everything is anattention economy.
When you're chatting withChatGPT, you're not on
(20:32):
Instagram, right?
Like maybe you don't think thosetwo are competing, but they are
because it's all about yourtime.
Um, and what's interesting isbecause right now, the majority
of these apps are monetizingthrough ads.
Well, what do ads need?
Ads need attention, right?
Um, I and I think it's reallyinteresting to see where
companies are going to goforward because uh when I when I
was listening to this podcastthis morning that I mentioned,
(20:54):
it was talking about Facebook.
So Facebook used to be all aboutconnection, right?
Like you're connecting witheveryone on your campus, and
everyone on your feed is someoneyou know or indirectly know.
Then they started basicallyFacebook and Instagram started
getting killed by TikTok.
And why?
It's because TikTok was allabout attention.
They didn't say we don't careabout your network, we just care
about serving you the bestcontent, no matter who makes it,
(21:16):
right?
So they went from like we onlyshow you what other people you
know made to what anybody made.
We just show you the bestcontent.
Eventually, things likeInstagram have said, okay, we're
gonna drop this whole like weonly show you show you things
from your friends, we're gonnashow you the best content
because it's all aboutattention, right?
That content that they show toyou, it can be created by
someone like me and you.
(21:36):
And in the future, I mean,you've seen this with Sora
probably recently, which is fromum OpenAI.
It can be created by AI itself.
Um, so that's something thatYouTube can have, that's
something Instagram can have,that's something that LLMs can
have.
And all of that content becomesmonetizable because we talked
about this AM8 Converse thing.
Everything they show you becomesmonetizable.
And so, yeah, it's always aboutattention, and it's gonna
(21:59):
continue to be so.
SPEAKER_00 (22:02):
So one of the big challenges in business in
general has always been trust.
And, you know, especially whenyou're dealing with long tail
suppliers, if you will, youknow, really niche kinds of
products.
(22:22):
And so one of the benefits ofbuying through, you know, say
Walmart Marketplace is you gettheir trust uh there a little
bit.
But I would think even forretailers, uh the trust you
could have associated withstable coins and dealing with
certain suppliers might bebeneficial as well.
(22:44):
Is that right?
SPEAKER_01 (22:45):
Yeah.
I mean, uh we talked about thisa little bit beforehand.
I think trust is becoming moreand more important.
There's there's you've probablyheard of like the barbell effect
and almost everything, you kindof have like two ends of the
spectrum.
I think it's gonna become moreand more important to be a
company like Walmart, likeAmazon, like YouTube, who it is,
that you are a brand with trust.
People trust you.
If I buy through Walmart, if Ibuy through Amazon, I trust that
(23:08):
if I don't get the right thing,they're gonna send me the right
thing later or they're gonnarefund me.
I don't even have to think twiceabout it.
That's why like seeing checkoutby Walmart, seeing it by Shop
Pay, seeing it by thesedifferent companies is huge.
Now, where does that leaveeverybody else?
Um, because I don't know aboutyou, but you probably get calls
all day.
I get texts, um, and it's allspam, right?
(23:28):
And it's only gonna get worsebecause of AI.
Like, I don't even want toimagine, like, you know, used to
my grandpa would get calls.
Um, they try to, you know,basically come after you and get
you to buy some item and it'sall a fraud.
Well, that's just gonna getworse.
You're gonna have voices thatsound real now.
It's like it's gonna be so easy.
I don't trust any text message Iget now that has a link.
Like, even at my company, we'retold never click on a link,
(23:48):
right?
Whereas used to, if you were acompany, like the first thing
you did was like, let's gettheir email.
That's how you get a directrelationship with your customer.
Then it's like, well, if you canget their phone number, that's
even better.
Then you're really close to thatcustomer.
We've gotten to the point wherethat actually doesn't work
anymore, in my opinion, becauseyou can't trust anything that
you get that's a text message.
I will not click a link thatsays Amazon or Walmart on it.
(24:09):
Because I just have to thinkthat it's probably something
that's trying to steal, youknow, information, my credit
card details, et cetera.
Um, so trust is massive.
So I think Walmart, for example,has a huge amount of trust,
which is going to be an evenbigger advantage going in the
future with this whole like AIand the you know fraudulent
behavior that's happening.
But then that is where stablecoins and smart contracts come
into play.
Because that whole thing isyou're essentially establishing
(24:31):
trust in a way that doesn'trequire a centralized
institution.
So I can, for example, Matt, Ican send you 100 USDC, which is
a stablecoin right now, and youcan look in multiple places to
see that you that you receivethat.
If I send you a bank transfer,it just leaves my account.
I don't know where it is, Idon't know if you ever receive
it.
There's no way for me to seethat, right?
(24:52):
Stablecoins completely changethat.
In some ways, it's bad becausethere's a privacy issue that
people are trying to work on.
Stablecoins are not private.
That's probably one good thingto highlight.
They're very open.
You can see every transaction.
Like Matt, if I give you mywallet address, you can see
everything I ever did.
Um, that also means in some waysyou can use that transparency to
create trust.
Um, maybe an example of this iswhat is the government doing
(25:13):
with funds that they raise?
Or say you're dealing with acharity and they raise money
from you and they say thatthey're using it for this
purpose.
Are they?
Like, how how do you know?
Stablecoins for the first timeactually provide and enable that
transparency to see where thatmoney is going.
So I think that's importantitself.
You can also do the smartcontracts, that's a whole nother
thing where you can create likethese different types of
(25:34):
transactions without needing acentralized party like Walmart.
Um, but those are the twobarbells.
I think like Amazon and Walmartare gonna do really, really
well.
And then everyone in the middleis gonna struggle.
And then that's why I think moreand more people that are on that
long tail are gonna adopt thingslike stable coins and smart
contracts because it's the onlyway to establish trust and
scale.
Um so yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (25:51):
So that that's interesting.
Um so basically, stable coinsare using a public blockchain.
unknown (26:00):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (26:01):
And um and so you get visibility.
Um and so I could see your pointabout nonprofits, that's a
really good one.
SPEAKER_01 (26:11):
It's it's massive, in my opinion.
Like the whole whether you likeDoge or not, like going into the
government and seeing wheremoney's going, this would make
it a thousand times easier.
Which for some things, like ifyou're doing military spending,
you don't want to see wherethat's going.
Maybe you don't want to sharethat with different nations.
But there is some spending thatthat's actually a feature it's
not about to have transparency.
And there are people working inthe stable coin space that are
(26:31):
trying to enable privacy, sothat will be an option.
But by default, stable coins aretransparent, and I think it's
perfect for something like that,like a charity.
SPEAKER_00 (26:37):
So, Garrett, as an omni-channel shopper, why would
I want to buy things usingstable coins with a retailer?
SPEAKER_01 (26:49):
Uh the fun answer to that is you wouldn't.
And the reason I say that isthat I don't think that a buyer
or a user should know thatthey're using stable coins.
Only someone like me who's inthe stablecoin space should know
or care.
But if Walmart, they integratestable coins in their products,
you shouldn't know.
The only thing that you shouldknow is that if Walmart needs to
pay you out for any reason,whether it's a refund, or maybe
(27:11):
you know, you're you have aWalmart card and you're putting
funds on it, you don't have towait a day to see those funds
appear on your card.
It's instant, right?
Maybe Walmart has Walmart has somuch functionality that I don't
even know about that theyprobably offer some banking
services, I bet, um, that aredirectly tied to this.
So if you're making a payment,you want that to be basically
(27:32):
free.
If I send out a dollar, you wantthat person to receive a dollar,
right?
Stablecoins can help enablethat.
Um, Walmart, for example, mightbring in stable coins because
it's cheaper to do any paymentsthat they have to do, whether
it's to their employees, whetherit's to users like you, whether
it's to the vendors.
And then on top of that, that'scheaper.
And then you also have thiswhole interest component that we
talked about earlier.
(27:52):
Um, for the first time, they canearn 4% because it's backed by
US Treasuries.
Walmart can keep all of that, orthey can have a rewards program,
someone like you, Matt, and theycan pay you some of that in the
form of rewards.
Maybe those rewards then, youknow, we talked about stable
coins are programmable.
Maybe they can only be spent oncertain things, right?
So let's just say they pay yousome type of reward.
You can't just spend that at anyother store.
(28:13):
Maybe they even say, like, thisis for, you know, we're going to
the fall season, you can buy X,Y, Z products with these
rewards.
You can do that with stablecoins.
You can say it can only be usedfor this um reason or occasion.
So the answer is really, I thinkthat's one thing maybe people
get wrong about stable coins, iswhen you think about money
today, you don't think about howit moves.
(28:34):
You don't think about like, youdon't think about ACH, you don't
think about wire.
The only time you do, it'sunfortunate because you're going
to your banking website andyou're hitting like do an ACH
and it's not a fun process.
Like in general, people shouldnot think about this.
This is just, it's just atechnology layer that makes
moving money faster, cheaper,and it gives you more and better
global financial services.
And that's why you as a usershould should not care.
(28:55):
But what you will get is thebenefit of faster payments.
Maybe you'll get higher rewardsand lower transaction fees.
SPEAKER_00 (29:00):
So, so basically, the shopper really doesn't need
to know that a company is usingstable coins.
SPEAKER_01 (29:09):
Yeah.
I don't I don't think theyshould know at all.
And, you know, a lot ofcompanies will have their own
stable coin.
So it'll be like Walmart USD.
But I do not think that you,Matt, or anyone else that's
buying a Walmart needs to knowthat.
They don't need to know that astable coin is behind your
rewards program or whatever itmight be.
That is purely for Walmart doingbecause it's highly efficient,
it's cheaper, they can earnmore, and they can share some of
(29:30):
those earnings with someone likeyou, and they can create like
greater customer loyalty.
So again, this is like a wholetechnology thing where it truly
is about the outcomes, it's notabout the tech.
It's interesting to talk aboutthe tech because that's why we
have people in the industry whoare like nerds and we love like
building the next era of what wecall fintech, right?
Like, how can we make thisbetter?
But like, no one that has acredit card is asking how that
(29:50):
works, right?
That should be the same thingwith stable coins.
You should not care.
You should just know that usinga credit card means that you can
go online and buy something inlike an instant.
That's really cool, right?
Same thing should happen.
It is just the next iteration ofthat.
SPEAKER_00 (30:02):
So it it reminds me of it's like if I order
something from Walmart, I don'tcare if it comes from the store
or a fulfillment center, right?
And I shouldn't even havevisibility to that.
No.
SPEAKER_01 (30:18):
I just want the product is that it gets there
and say like less than 24 hoursor within two days, right?
That's what you care about.
And once you have that standard,delivery in 24 hours, delivery
in two days, everyone then hasto live up to that standard,
right?
Like if if you're notdelivering, if you're now taking
a week to deliver, you're gonnafall behind.
People aren't gonna buy fromyou.
That will be why stable coinsget adopted by businesses,
(30:41):
because as people integrate thistechnology and they're able to
speed up payments, maybe Walmartwon't be the first use case.
The best thing stable coins arefor are for cross-border
payments.
That is the best thing becausecross-border payments are
terrible.
I used to live in Australia, Imoved to the US.
When my money going fromAustralia to the US disappeared
for five days, right?
Disappeared for five days, ithad a massive like FX fee, and
(31:02):
on top of that, it was$15 tosend a payment.
I could have done that in stablecoins in less than a second.
SPEAKER_00 (31:06):
Like so, if companies are doing business
across borders, that might bethe first place they adopt it.
100%.
SPEAKER_01 (31:13):
100%.
Or if they're doing businessacross borders, well, this is
really related, or they havemultiple entities across
borders, because there arecompanies that have entities all
over the world, right?
And they have to move moneyaround those entities.
Instead of using traditionalwire, you use stable coins, it's
going to be a lot cheaper.
SPEAKER_00 (31:30):
And so I guess that would make it easier to
recognize profits where you wantto recognize them.
100%.
SPEAKER_01 (31:39):
Yep.
And like a lot of merchants areenabling receiving stable coins
today.
So if you look at Shopify, forexample, they allow their
merchants to accept stable coinsfrom buyers.
Today, though, that means youhave people out there like me
that actually want to spendstable coins.
We just talked about how I don'tthink that's going to be the
normal person.
They don't want to, you know,they don't care that's stable
coins.
(31:59):
That merchant doesn't actuallyreceive stable coins.
Shopify behind the scenes isconverting those stable coins
into dollars.
Um, because right now everyonejust wants dollars, right?
Like everyone wants cash intheir bank account.
I think over time, people won'tcare.
They'll just see it as abalance.
It's just a dollar balance.
And there will be more reasonsto keep it in stable coins
because if you keep it in thatlayer, like we talked about,
it's scaling layers.
(32:21):
All your payments are cheaper.
You can earn more.
It's just a better place to haveyour money.
Just right now, what's happeningis somebody is like, they have
cash, they're turning it into astable coin.
So they have$100.
Now you have 100 stable coins.
They're like sending thatsomewhere, and then that person
is converting it back to cash.
So for every like traditionalfinancial movement you have, you
only have one on-chain becausepeople are like, what do I do
with my stable coins?
(32:42):
Right.
Over time, I think there's gonnabe more and more to do with it,
just like how I don't know ifWalmart enables this yet, but
like with Shopify, you can spinit at merchants.
Now we have a visa debit cardwhere you can spin your stable
coins anywhere.
Like, I don't have a reason nowto move back to cash.
The more that you have a reasonto stay up here because there's
more you can do with your stablecoins, it's just gonna keep
there and you have more costsavings and everything becomes
(33:03):
faster and cheaper.
And that's where things reallytake off.
Right now, you don't see all thebenefits because there's not
enough going on up here on thestablecoin layer.
Everyone's just like, as soon asI receive stable coins, I'm
gonna turn it into cash.
But once you get to the pointwhere it's up here because
everyone accepts stable coins,whether they know it or not,
that's when the like industrywill really take off.
SPEAKER_00 (33:21):
What are credit cards doing with this credit
card companies?
SPEAKER_01 (33:25):
They're definitely exploring this a lot.
Um, they all are doing, I mean,they'll do some stable coin
settlement in the sense that youknow you have all these payments
happening throughout the day.
Um, I'm not like the the masterunderstanding this, but you have
all these movements.
And then I think like at the endof the day, they'll settle up,
right?
So it's not like money'sactually moving every second you
(33:46):
do a credit card.
Um I think there's two ways tolook at this.
One, they'll see it as a fasterway to settle between
counterparties.
Because, like I said, like atraditional ACH could take up to
you know two to three days.
They can now settle withinseconds.
Um, some stable coin networkswould see this as uh potentially
a threat.
So you have somebody like Stripewho's getting more and more into
the stablecoin space.
(34:06):
Why is that?
Well, what is Stripe's mainexpense?
It's like credit card fees,right?
So for them, it's like, how dowe get around that fee, if
possible, right?
A lot of people are using Stripeby now.
So if two businesses are usingStripe, for example, and they're
paying each other, why shouldyou have to have any
intermediary besides Stripe?
(34:27):
Because you're going from oneStripe customer to another one,
right?
So, like, why pay an extra 1.5%?
I think Stripe sees this as anopportunity, and that's why
they've made some majorpurchases in the stablecoin
space to use stable coins to gofrom this merchant to this other
one, and it never has to paycredit card fees.
So in that way, they would betrying to get rid of that
largest cost that they have byusing stable coins.
And that's why they're I I don'tknow if they're convinced that
(34:49):
will happen, but they see it asa call option to say this future
could exist.
We're gonna try to make ithappen because that is our
highest cost right now.
SPEAKER_00 (34:56):
So with ambient commerce and you're talking
about friction being removedfrom transactions, um,
essentially, but you're alsoincreasing the number of and
kinds of transactions that canoccur, and uh you're also uh
allowing transactions to occurthat wouldn't have because of a
(35:20):
lack of trust.
So all these things mean thatthe total number of uh trades,
if you will, between uh buyersand sellers of all different
types are going to happen morequickly and more rapidly and
more efficiently.
And uh, you know, one thingthat's very clear is that the
(35:43):
more trading that's going on,the more wealth that's generated
for everybody.
You know, there's lots of proofof this.
Um so so you would think it'sinteresting to think about how
many things right now from atechnology perspective are
increasing wealth.
I mean, stable coins is anexample of something that's
(36:05):
gonna enable more wealthcreation in the world.
Um robotics, AI.
SPEAKER_01 (36:12):
It it's and Matt, just to jump in, think about I
mean, this is I hate going therebecause I sound like that guy
with the tinfoil hat, but that'sas you have more AI and you do
have agentich commerce, a lot ofcommerce will happen between AI
themselves.
So think about drop shippingwith a huge thing that took off
over the last like 10 years,essentially like you manufacture
something in China and youarbitrage it and you sell in the
(36:34):
US.
You can imagine that happeningwithout any human involved,
right?
So if you can have agents thatare way better than we are at
examining all the differentarbitrages and prices and
shipping and so forth, like youknow, they're on the internet um
and they have currency now, theycould create these businesses,
right?
Whether that's a human thatmaybe is then like giving them
access to funds, et cetera,that's always like guiding them.
(36:56):
You can imagine a future where90% plus of transactions are not
done by humans.
I mean, that's already the casewith like trading, right?
With algorithmic trading.
You can imagine that apping incommerce too.
Like a lot of these productscould be done through agents.
And sure you probably have ahuman involved in some way, but
once you get to that point,these agents need a way to
control money, they need a wayto pay each other, and they need
(37:16):
to operate between guardrailsbecause you cannot, for example,
fund some agent and just hope itdoes not spend all your money in
some way, right?
So that's why smart contracts,that's why stable coins, like I
said, that can do if then thatyou can do that with uh agents,
which you cannot do before withtraditional finance.
So if you believe in thatfuture, if you believe in a
future that's gonna be moreglobal, believe in a future that
(37:37):
more commerce is gonna be donethrough agents, whether that's
just like me and you orderingonline, we say make this
recurring purchase every youknow week, or it's actual agents
like interacting with eachother, doing arbitrage or
whatever it might be.
In that future, stable coinsmake complete sense.
If you think the word world isgonna become more local and
agents will not become a largerpart of part of commerce, then
stable coins probably don'tmatter much to you unless you
(37:58):
want access to dollars.
That will always be a productmarket fit.
People around the world wantaccess to dollars.
Um, people in the US don'treally resonate with that that
well because we don't have that,right?
People in the US have access togood banking.
Um, people around the world donot.
A lot of people do not, right?
And that's where there's been aproduct market fit for that for
stable coins for a long time.
But in the future, if you wantto go even you know further
beyond that, like I think that'sa pretty worthy cause in itself,
(38:20):
right?
Like it's easy to overlook, butthat is a good worthy cause.
But if you want to believe inthis agentec high-tech future
that is global by default, um,stable coins they perfectly fit.
It's really hard to deny it andto not look at it and to see the
adoption.
SPEAKER_00 (38:33):
So this is uh so interesting, but this is a
really clear example of how thisis going to impact omni-channel
commerce.
Uh but also it's a clearexplanation of why we're gonna
see the dollar, the value of thedollar is gonna increase if this
(38:56):
really spreads like you'retalking about.
SPEAKER_01 (38:59):
It's definitely a possibility.
I'm no economist, so I don'twant to make any bets there.
But it it is true right nowabout so stable coins, I often
say dollars.
Stable coins does not mean ithas to be dollars.
It could be a peso, it could bethe euro.
But 99% of stable coins rightnow of that$305 billion are
dollars.
Um, I think over time, localcurrencies will become a bigger
(39:20):
thing.
Uh, that needs to happen forthis whole world to take off
because sometimes you do need todo exchange between like dollars
and euros, right?
Like we already support thatwith our products, but the
liquidity on the Euro side isvery low.
So if you're moving big volumes,the like slippage that you're
doing is not is not good.
So right now, dollars dominatethe space.
And that's why, again, I thinkthe government's a fan because
(39:41):
they're saying, like, look,we're actually having more new
net buyers for the dollar.
And not only for the dollar, butthe treasuries underlying that.
And what's the biggest problemfor the government right now?
They're borrowing costs.
And how do you get that down?
You have more buyers fortreasuries.
SPEAKER_00 (39:53):
But you could have two companies in Bangladesh
trading, you know, again, notworrying about cash and using um
stable coins and USD.
They could do that, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so if you're in a countrywhere monetary policy is um not
(40:19):
very disciplined, which is a lotof countries.
Right.
SPEAKER_01 (40:24):
That could be a reason to do it.
Yeah.
I mean, you're already seeingthis.
Yeah, I mean, big okay.
So a little bit of a tangent,but people don't always take
crypto seriously, which Iunderstand.
It's a crazy world, but Bitcoinis over a$2 trillion asset.
If you're not paying, if you'rein finance and you're not paying
attention to a$2 trillion asset,you're probably missing
something, right?
Like that doesn't make sense.
Like maybe you should go back toschool to be harsh.
(40:46):
I'm kidding.
But obviously, so liketokenization has taken off.
We have 305 billion of stablecoins here, and it's just like
the early innings.
Um, it is something to payattention to.
I'm not gonna like make this betthat everything moves to stable
coins, but like I said, I dothink if the world is going more
global, if agentic commerce andbusiness becomes more of a
thing, stable coins are theperfect fit.
(41:07):
It's like credit cards for theinternet.
There's not a there's not abetter fit, at least that we
have right now.
SPEAKER_00 (41:13):
I heard Kathy Wood of uh Arc Invest.
Have you heard of that?
Um she recently was um beinginterviewed from someone, I
can't remember who it was, andshe said if you use traditional
portfolio theory, you wouldprobably want to hold about 20%
(41:33):
of your wealth in uh Bitcoinbased on the variables that she
was considering.
She doesn't recommend thatnecessarily, but uh I found that
shocking.
I hadn't really thought of thatbefore.
SPEAKER_01 (41:49):
Yeah, it's a big number.
I mean, I I hold uh um, I don'tknow Bitcoin specifically, but
like 80% of my net worth is intokens of some sort, whether
that's Bitcoin or somethingelse.
So I am uh a little bit biasedand uh believer, uh, to say the
least.
Um I generally, I mean, this isnot investment advice.
I generally tell my friendslike, look, if you're new to
this, it's great to have like a5% exposure in your portfolio.
(42:12):
Um, I just think you don't wantto put money in it that you're
not willing to lose.
Um, but I also just think thatit is one of the most
interesting uh investment usecases that anyone in the world
right now has access to.
If you have an internetconnection, you can buy Bitcoin.
I mean, it's pretty crazy.
It is something that the entireworld has access to.
That's a lot of demand.
I mean, US stocks, that thereason why stocks are going
on-chain, if you're a company,you want people to have access
(42:34):
to your stocks, right?
You want them to buy yourstocks.
Once you tokenize them, this isthe coolest thing about crypto,
in my opinion.
Uh, going on a little bit of atangent here.
Anything that you build, likesome type of application, and
you put that on the say Solanablockchain, the Ethereum
blockchain, there's different,like you can often think of it
as like an operating system.
Once you build that app,everyone in the world
(42:55):
immediately gets access to it.
Immediately, right?
So it's not like, hey, I'm gonnapost this online and like it'll
take it, and like only I can doit, only friends, only people in
the US get access to it.
Everyone in the world.
That means if there's somecompany in the US that all of a
sudden puts some stocks onchain, every single person in
the world gets access to that.
Now, there are things that youcan do.
(43:17):
So they could say, like, hey,only addresses that have been
approved by us can actuallytrade this token.
So there are ways to put inregulation because people are
like, well, this sounds likeit's not complied at all.
You can do that.
But the cool thing is bydefault, everything that you
build is accessible to everyone.
And that's why like the pace ofinnovation is kind of
speedrunning what we call liketraditional finance.
Because for the first time,you've like opened up this
(43:38):
financial system where anyonecan build.
Um, and once it's built, anyonecan access it.
And that that's a really coolpart.
SPEAKER_00 (43:45):
Well, Garrett, this has been so interesting.
It's amazing how crypto and umbitcoin and um stablecoins are
going to affect, are alreadyaffecting global supply chains.
There's no question about it.
But I really do appreciate yousharing your knowledge and
(44:08):
wisdom uh with us, not onlyexplaining what stable coins
are, but how they're going toaffect the supply chain and
omnichannel in particular.
Uh this has been veryeye-opening.
Uh, so I really appreciate yourtime.
SPEAKER_01 (44:21):
Yeah, thanks for having me on, Matt.
This is a blast.
I mean, lots of do it again inthe future.
You know, maybe in five years,once we see this this play out,
you know, we can revisit thesituation.
But uh yeah, this is a greattime.
Thanks for having me on.
I want to clarify that this podcast is distinct
from my responsibilities as aprofessor in the CMM Walton
College of Business.
Nonetheless, it aligns with myaspiration to provide practical
insights to professionals andbusiness by showcasing companies
and people that can enhance yourability to manage, lead, and
strategize and marketeffectively and the retail value
(00:29):
chain.
And now without further ado,let's get into the exciting
episode.
I have with me today GarrettHarper, who is head of
partnerships with Squads.
We'll be talking aboutomnichannel, but we're going to
start off by talking aboutcrypto and particularly stable
coins.
(00:49):
And many people don't reallythink of crypto when they think
of omnichannel.
But when we look ahead, crypto'sgoing to have, especially stable
coins, will have a huge impacton omnichannel.
So this is a topic that needs tobe uh understood by those
(01:10):
dealing with omnichannel.
So uh so Garrett, uh welcome tothe show.
Good to have you here.
SPEAKER_01 (01:17):
Yeah, thanks for having me on.
No, this is a blast.
I'm excited to talk about theSablecoin space.
I've been in it loosely, atleast, since 2018, roughly, and
then I've been directly in thespace since about 2020.
So I've got at least a fewopinions on everything.
SPEAKER_00 (01:30):
You do.
Uh and uh I I know I've beenfollowing you for some time, and
I know you're when I think ofexperts in crypto, you are the
first one that comes to mind.
So, Garrett, would you mindsharing with us a little bit
about what are stable coins?
SPEAKER_01 (01:46):
Yeah.
So let's start really simple,and then we'll build off that
somewhat.
So stable coins are a tokenizeddollar.
So when you've heard of token,you probably think of crypto in
general, and you think ofsomething like Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is very volatile, right?
All of the tokens in crypto are.
Stable coins are called stable,uh stable coins because they're
supposed to actually track thevalue of something, and that
(02:08):
something is usually the USdollar.
So every stable coin that youhave is interchangeable for a
dollar.
So how this works at like a veryhigh level is you have$100 in a
bank account, and then somecompany then prints, I say
prints, it's digital, 100 stablecoins on top of that.
So all 100 stable coins arebacked by$100, right?
(02:30):
And so that's why it'sinterchangeable one-to-one.
It's always backed.
Now, what happens is reality isit's not actually backed by$100.
It's usually backed by like 99%US treasuries.
The reason to do that, and it'sshort-term US treasuries, is
that you can earn interest onthose treasuries, right?
So there's a few reasons thatstable coins have taken off.
Um, one reason is just thatpeople want to access dollars.
(02:54):
Okay.
So whether you're in SouthAmerica and you have a very
volatile currency, or really alot of countries around the
world, they just want to accessthe US dollar.
It's the strongest and it's themost reliable.
That's kind of use case one,access to the dollar.
The second use case iscross-border payments.
That's the other product marketfit today.
So in this conversation, youknow, we'll talk a lot about how
stable coins could be used evenby companies like Walmart and
(03:16):
others.
That has a place that doesn'thave product market fit yet.
What does is access to dollarsand then cross-border payments.
Why?
Because when you make across-border payment, it takes
days, it's very hard to track,and it's very expensive.
Stable coins, you can do so inless than a second.
It's actually the first time yousee it, Matt.
It's one of the coolest thingsthat will get you into crypto or
stable coins.
I could send you$100 right now.
You could be in Dubai, you couldbe anywhere.
(03:37):
And within less than a second,you'll see it appear.
Like it's it's honestly, itsounds lame, but it's pretty
magical to watch that.
Like that doesn't happenanywhere else.
And it's real money that you canthen exchange for a dollar at
any time.
To exchange for a dollar, rightnow, you have to go through
someone like Coinbase orExchange.
They're the ones that'llactually interchange that for
you.
Um, so that's use case numbertwo.
The third use case is companiessee it as a way to one, provide
(04:01):
better experiences to theirusers, two, make more money.
So if you can do both of those,it's a pretty good deal, right?
If I can make more money andprovide better experiences to my
users, I'm probably sold.
So, how does that actually playout in practice?
Well, it's better for usersbecause if you have payments
involved at all in your company,which almost every company does,
it's a faster, cheaper way to doso.
So your customers might be seesavings.
(04:23):
They will also get paid outquicker because it's instant.
There's no more like, hey, we'llpay you, we'll send out your
refund in 24 hours, you're paidout in less than a second,
right?
Which that may not sound liketoday, no one is used to that.
So do people really care?
Like I get paid out on a secondversus a day.
Over time, as companies adoptstable coins, it will become the
standard.
And if you don't do that, you'regonna say, why would I use that
(04:44):
company more?
Right.
So it's gonna naturally createthis competition to say, like,
similar to Robinhood, Robinhooddidn't on why did Robinhood blow
up?
They did trades without anyfees, right?
And now if you use any brokeragefirm, no one charges fees.
Same thing will happen in stablecoins, in my opinion.
It's not because users care thatstable coins are being used,
they don't, but it's justbecause it's faster, cheaper
(05:06):
payments, similar to Amazondelivering in two days.
Um, companies can make moneyhere, besides just offering a
better user experience, becauselike I said, these stable coins
are backed by US Treasuries.
So there's this wholecompetition going on right now.
Um, like today, it's been goingon for the last year, where
every company in the cryptospace, even companies like
Stripe, companies like Ramp, arelooking to potentially launch
(05:26):
their own stablecoin.
Now, like why would they dothat?
It's because if you're Ramp, ifyou're Stripe, you have a lot of
customers with balances justsitting there, right?
That balance is probably notearning you really any money.
Just like if you have money inyour bank account, you're making
less than like 0.05%.
Stable coins, you all of asudden can make that treasure
yield of like 4%.
That is a massive amount ofmoney because the stablecoin
space right now has a market capof 310 billion roughly.
(05:49):
Um, if you go back to 2021, itwas only 30 billion.
So it's already grown 10 timesover the four-year period.
Um, and our belief, especiallyfor people in the ecosystem,
believe that will be, you know,that's going to go another 10
times within like two years.
Um, and the reason for that isnot because users care, it's
because businesses can earn moremoney and they can offer better
experiences to their users.
So that's kind of the three usecases of stablecoins.
(06:11):
It's access to the dollar.
Um, it's better, cheaper, fasterfinance, which and also revenue
for customers, and it's a way todo cross-border payments.
Um, as we'll talk to you knowlater in this conversation, I
think it's also the perfectcurrency for the internet and
the perfect currency for agenticcommerce.
So that's how I think it plays arole in not just commerce, but
the world at-wide and why itcould basically power the next
(06:33):
era finance.
SPEAKER_00 (06:33):
Uh thank you for that excellent explanation of
stable coins.
Um I think as people werelistening to this, especially
those that are familiar withomnichannel, they were probably
starting to see the connectionuh to omni-channel.
But I would like to get intothat.
Uh before I do, um I would liketo say something a little bit
(06:57):
about Walmart, because Walmarthas really been the innovator in
OmniChannel.
Um there's a lot of companiesout there that are, you know,
e-commerce-based, but they don'thave a footprint of stores.
And um and there's there's uh alot of companies that have
footprints, but they don't havemuch in the way of e-commerce.
(07:19):
Walmart's a little unusual inthat what regard in the United
States.
Um but if you think about it,Walmart started in June of 1962.
June of 1962.
And they went public uh in 1970.
(07:39):
And uh in about 1973, theyadopted a strategy called
Everyday Low Price.
Uh a guy named Jack Shoemaker,um, who worked for uh Sam Walton
was the guy that came up withthis idea and really pushed it.
And really, no other U.S.
retailer has been able toemulate it.
(08:00):
It's it's it's like so manystrategies that uh are
successful.
They're very subtle, uh kind oflike why would that be a big
deal?
But when you know the industryand you know the the incentives
to use high-low promotionaltypes of uh methods, you
realize, oh, it's verydifficult.
(08:22):
Because it's also going to bepaired with something called
everyday low cost, where you tryto make things as efficient as
possible.
And I'm giving you thisbackground just because you can
imagine how this plays into itwith uh stable coins a little
bit.
Anyway, uh Walmart's EDLPstrategy and EDL C strategy has
been extremely important tothem.
(08:45):
And um other companies likeSears and many other a few big
grocers you would know havetried to implement it over time
and never succeeded.
Um but uh but in um when whenSam Walton received the uh
presidential medal of honor fromum President uh Bush, um he um
(09:16):
he said during that um interviewannouncement, he said Walmart is
about helping people save moneyand live better.
It was about 1989.
That became Walmart's mantra,their their tagline, if you
will.
And um and but of course Walmartalso started they started out
(09:41):
with just general merchandise,then they had super centers, uh
clubs, Sam's Club, um, you know,neighborhood markets were which
are more like grocery stores andsome other formats that they've
experimented with.
But then they started doingsomething called buy online
(10:03):
pickup at store, and they reallyput a lot into it, and it paid
off when COVID hit because theywere really the only retailer in
the US that could do itefficiently at scale by that
point.
And so they took a lot of marketshare um because of that.
(10:24):
But but buy online pickup atstore is truly an example of
omnichannel, you know.
Um really it's just lettingcustomers shop however they want
to shop.
You know, um you can buy onlinepick up a store, you can buy
online deliver to home, buyonline, deliver and home, buy
online drone delivery, right?
(10:47):
There's all kinds ofcombinations.
What's that?
SPEAKER_01 (10:49):
That one's cool.
I've seen that at my house inArkansas, actually.
Yes, it's very, very cool.
Throws you off the first timeyou see it, but you can see all
that with the future.
SPEAKER_00 (10:58):
Yeah, I I've uh used it before.
Um it's it's amazing.
Uh but but at any rate, um youknow Doug McMillan, the current
CEO of Walmart, um rewrote thepurpose a bit.
Yeah, the so that it's not justsave money and live better, but
(11:18):
a little bit broader.
Um he the the purpose he wind uhwound up uh writing was Walmart
is a people-led, tech-powered,omnichannel retailer dedicated
to helping people save money andlive better.
(11:40):
You can imagine why I thinkstable coins is so relevant
here, right?
It's people-led, but it's techpowered.
So the tech powered part isimportant.
Omni channel, retailer, allowpeople to shop however they
want, that's an importantaspect.
And then help dedicated tohelping people save money.
(12:04):
There's another N-Road for uhstable coin and live better.
I mean, if you can avoid scams,you're living better.
So I I wanted to point thatpurpose statement out and the
context behind it, just so yousee why when I first heard you
talking about stable coins, thiscame to my mind as being very
(12:28):
relevant to OmniChannel.
Um I'll let you react to thatbefore I ask any other
questions.
What what are your thoughtsabout that?
SPEAKER_01 (12:39):
It's funny.
I was wondering when we weremaking the connection between
what you're talking about herewith Walmart and then where
stable coins are and how thosetwo tie together.
But after hearing you talk aboutthis and their mission more or
less, I think it makes completesense.
Um the big reason I see that isbecause, you know, it at the end
(12:59):
of the day, people wantoutcomes.
They don't care about the tech.
They don't care how it happens,right?
Like they want things that arecheaper, they want things that
are faster, and they want moreselection.
Um, that's basically it, right?
They don't really care how ithappens unless something goes
wrong.
That is the only time peoplecare what is behind the scenes.
Um, the whole goal of stablecoins is to make the tech side
better without changing,necessarily having to change
(13:19):
user behavior.
They just see a better outcome.
So we're not trying to convincepeople to use stable coins
because it's some cool tech.
We're trying to use the getpeople and developers to use
stable coins because it can savetheir users time and money,
right?
And you can make new financialprimitives that you can never
make in the past.
Um with Walmart, I can see thisand just commerce in general.
(13:41):
I there's a lot of ways thatthese come together.
Um, one fun use case we'll save,I think, is like the more that
commerce becomes automated andagentic, I think stable coins
are basically money built forthat system.
Um, similar to when you had theinternet, credit cards had been
around for a while.
I think the first drop, it waslike in uh 1950s.
(14:03):
There's like Bank of America,I'm pretty sure, when they just
like dropped his credit card toall these people uh randomly.
It was like the first big creditcard, and there was a ton of
fraud, but it got credit cardsout into the system.
They didn't really becomepopular though until the
internet.
Like, can you imagine theinternet without credit cards?
Like buying anything on theinternet.
Like, how would you do that,right?
At first, it was a whole evensecurity issue when you first
had that.
Like, would you really shareyour information on the
(14:24):
internet?
People got past that.
And then encryption became athing.
Funny thing is, encryption islike the whole technology behind
stable coins, they're highlyrelated.
It's all about like privacy andencrypted and um provenance,
like pointing where things camefrom.
But you can't imagine theinternet without credit cards.
I can see a future.
This is obviously projecting.
Um, stablecoins can be the samecase for agentech commerce.
(14:45):
So you could say, how could wehave agentec commerce 10 years
from now?
I mean, just yesterday we sawOpenAI come out with this like
browser extension.
And you can do things like, hey,every Tuesday, I want you to
purchase XYZ from Walmart, forexample, because maybe it's a
recurring thing.
I know I want to cook for theweek.
Um, that agent is acting on yourbehalf.
They need maybe they're evenspending money on your behalf.
(15:05):
But that is really, really cool,but also creates this whole new
risk, right?
Like if you're gonna give anagent access to your bank
account, do you feelcomfortable?
And also, can that agent eveninteract with your bank account?
Is the money like native to thatagent?
Like, can they access it?
Can they use it?
Um, you know, these agents areacting autonomously and it's all
through computation andeverything's like basically on a
(15:26):
real-time basis.
The traditional financial systemis not real time.
If anything, it's been designednot to be real time.
Everything wants to be reallyslow.
Um, so this is where I could seestable coins coming into this.
And I think on that agentic sideis really cool because
everything you're talking aboutwith Walmart here, even if you
don't think it's agentsinvolved, but like think about
recurring purchases throughWalmart.
Whether you're having thatdelivered to your house, whether
you're picking it up, all ofthat really can be controlled by
(15:48):
an agent at some point.
And that's where I think wherestable coins can become a really
big thing.
Even without that, I think it'scool because you can save people
money in many, many ways.
Maybe if you're at Walmart, youcan earn interest on your
balance.
Like there's more incentives.
Like Walmart wants to have adirect relationship with their
customer, and they want thosepeople to either visit the store
more, to visit their site more,um, and have a reason to keep
(16:10):
coming back.
It's almost like you couldcreate an advanced loyalty
program with stable coins insome way, whether that's through
rewards, whether that's throughcheaper payments.
Um, so there's a lot ofopportunity there.
And I I know I kind of like wentoff in a couple directions, but
I think that's a reallyimportant confluence of where uh
this overlaps.
SPEAKER_00 (16:26):
You um have mentioned to me the concept of
ambient commerce.
Yeah.
Would you mind explaining that?
Yeah.
Ambient?
Like when I think of ambient, Ithink of room temperature.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (16:41):
Yeah.
Um, you know, I should look atthe actual definition of
ambient.
How I think about it, at least,is like essentially it's your
surrounding.
So ambient music.
It's like you walk into a spaceand you're just surrounded by
music.
Um, yeah, so shopping in currentcommerce has always had
dedicated spaces.
So used to that meant you walkedinto a store, right?
That's when you boughtsomething.
That's probably the only timeyou bought something.
(17:01):
Uh, then you had websites.
So you actually went to websitesto go and buy something.
Um, that was a dedicated space.
And then you had checkouts, andthen you have things like
Instagram now, right?
Where you have ads and you canactually make purchases through
those ads directly.
So these are all dedicatedspaces.
And over time, technology hasadvanced those spaces and made
them more contextual.
So, you know, when you're onInstagram, you're not maybe
(17:23):
trying to buy jeans, but likejust two days ago, I bought
jeans on Instagram because itserved me an ad and it made it
really easy to purchase, right?
Um, ambient commerce is theconcept that over time, using
both just like traditionaltechnology, but also LLMs, AI's
dynamic, dynamic UIs.
So um, it's gonna makeeverything where it's
monetizable.
(17:43):
And I think a really goodexample of this is when you're
watching YouTube or uh anInstagram video.
Every pixel on YouTube could bemonetizable in the sense that
like you're watching a video,maybe there's an influencer on
it, maybe there's not, and theyhave a t-shirt.
They um we're doing a podcastand they have headphones on.
All of those can be recognizedby an AI agent.
And when it decides the righttime for you to potentially make
(18:04):
a purchase, they can add anaffiliate link.
It can pop up, you can click onit and say, I love those
headphones that Matt Waller iswearing right now.
I want to buy them.
And immediately you get paidsome of that as like an
affiliate fee.
YouTube gets paid some of thatas an affiliate fee.
So basically, at all times,everything becomes monetizable,
which I think for some peoplesounds terrible.
It's like a transaction economy.
(18:24):
Um, I think it'd be really cool.
Like for the first time, you canbe even walking down the street.
You don't even need AR glasses.
Like, forget that.
I think that's gonna be reallycool in the future where you can
like interact with things aroundyou.
But you could just use your uhyour iPhone.
Say you're walking down thestreet and you see some sign of
something and you're like,that's actually a really great
shirt, or that is, you know, Iwant those shoes.
You could take a picture of itimmediately because of AI.
You can actually recognize whatthat is, find it on the
(18:46):
internet, create a link for youto buy it, and it's instant
checkout.
So you're moving from this, youknow, lately.
I think it's been really bigwith direct-to-commerce or
direct to um direct to consumeris something that a lot of
businesses have been trying todo.
And that means just sell, youknow, from your website directly
to some consumer.
This is where it's like directto context.
No matter where you are,everything becomes monetizable
(19:06):
in a transaction opportunity.
And that's what I mean byambient commerce.
It might sound a littlefar-fetched, but I really don't
think it is at all.
And if you've been payingattention to AI over the last
even year and how quickly thingschange, um, you can see where
every single shirt, if youwanted this Wilson t-shirt, this
would be monetizable right now.
And then you could do automaticpayouts that would go through,
if you post this on YouTube,some would go to YouTube, some
(19:27):
might go to you, Matt, and thensome might go to me.
And uh, that's a pretty coolfeature.
And and being able to distributefunds like that is something
that stable coins are perfectfor.
So that's yeah, the where thoseum have conflicts as well.
SPEAKER_00 (19:39):
So in the future, when we have ambient commerce,
attention's gonna be veryimportant in business.
SPEAKER_01 (19:49):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I was listening to a podcastthis morning.
It got me really interested inthis.
It's like ever uh it's probablyoverdone, but everyone talks
about it.
It is the attention economy inso many ways, right?
Like everyone is competing forattention.
I like to use YouTube as anexample just because uh big
YouTube fan.
They're the most streamed appnow on any TV.
So TV now, 50% of watch time ona TV is a streaming app.
(20:11):
I believe no longer traditionalTV.
And then YouTube is the mostwatched streaming app.
And now more than 50% of YouTubeis watched on um on a TV.
It's not even, you know, youthink of YouTube, you think of
being on your computer.
That's not the case anymore.
50% of the views are on TV.
Um, so everything is anattention economy.
When you're chatting withChatGPT, you're not on
(20:32):
Instagram, right?
Like maybe you don't think thosetwo are competing, but they are
because it's all about yourtime.
Um, and what's interesting isbecause right now, the majority
of these apps are monetizingthrough ads.
Well, what do ads need?
Ads need attention, right?
Um, I and I think it's reallyinteresting to see where
companies are going to goforward because uh when I when I
was listening to this podcastthis morning that I mentioned,
(20:54):
it was talking about Facebook.
So Facebook used to be all aboutconnection, right?
Like you're connecting witheveryone on your campus, and
everyone on your feed is someoneyou know or indirectly know.
Then they started basicallyFacebook and Instagram started
getting killed by TikTok.
And why?
It's because TikTok was allabout attention.
They didn't say we don't careabout your network, we just care
about serving you the bestcontent, no matter who makes it,
(21:16):
right?
So they went from like we onlyshow you what other people you
know made to what anybody made.
We just show you the bestcontent.
Eventually, things likeInstagram have said, okay, we're
gonna drop this whole like weonly show you show you things
from your friends, we're gonnashow you the best content
because it's all aboutattention, right?
That content that they show toyou, it can be created by
someone like me and you.
(21:36):
And in the future, I mean,you've seen this with Sora
probably recently, which is fromum OpenAI.
It can be created by AI itself.
Um, so that's something thatYouTube can have, that's
something Instagram can have,that's something that LLMs can
have.
And all of that content becomesmonetizable because we talked
about this AM8 Converse thing.
Everything they show you becomesmonetizable.
And so, yeah, it's always aboutattention, and it's gonna
(21:59):
continue to be so.
SPEAKER_00 (22:02):
So one of the big challenges in business in
general has always been trust.
And, you know, especially whenyou're dealing with long tail
suppliers, if you will, youknow, really niche kinds of
products.
(22:22):
And so one of the benefits ofbuying through, you know, say
Walmart Marketplace is you gettheir trust uh there a little
bit.
But I would think even forretailers, uh the trust you
could have associated withstable coins and dealing with
certain suppliers might bebeneficial as well.
(22:44):
Is that right?
SPEAKER_01 (22:45):
Yeah.
I mean, uh we talked about thisa little bit beforehand.
I think trust is becoming moreand more important.
There's there's you've probablyheard of like the barbell effect
and almost everything, you kindof have like two ends of the
spectrum.
I think it's gonna become moreand more important to be a
company like Walmart, likeAmazon, like YouTube, who it is,
that you are a brand with trust.
People trust you.
If I buy through Walmart, if Ibuy through Amazon, I trust that
(23:08):
if I don't get the right thing,they're gonna send me the right
thing later or they're gonnarefund me.
I don't even have to think twiceabout it.
That's why like seeing checkoutby Walmart, seeing it by Shop
Pay, seeing it by thesedifferent companies is huge.
Now, where does that leaveeverybody else?
Um, because I don't know aboutyou, but you probably get calls
all day.
I get texts, um, and it's allspam, right?
(23:28):
And it's only gonna get worsebecause of AI.
Like, I don't even want toimagine, like, you know, used to
my grandpa would get calls.
Um, they try to, you know,basically come after you and get
you to buy some item and it'sall a fraud.
Well, that's just gonna getworse.
You're gonna have voices thatsound real now.
It's like it's gonna be so easy.
I don't trust any text message Iget now that has a link.
Like, even at my company, we'retold never click on a link,
(23:48):
right?
Whereas used to, if you were acompany, like the first thing
you did was like, let's gettheir email.
That's how you get a directrelationship with your customer.
Then it's like, well, if you canget their phone number, that's
even better.
Then you're really close to thatcustomer.
We've gotten to the point wherethat actually doesn't work
anymore, in my opinion, becauseyou can't trust anything that
you get that's a text message.
I will not click a link thatsays Amazon or Walmart on it.
(24:09):
Because I just have to thinkthat it's probably something
that's trying to steal, youknow, information, my credit
card details, et cetera.
Um, so trust is massive.
So I think Walmart, for example,has a huge amount of trust,
which is going to be an evenbigger advantage going in the
future with this whole like AIand the you know fraudulent
behavior that's happening.
But then that is where stablecoins and smart contracts come
into play.
Because that whole thing isyou're essentially establishing
(24:31):
trust in a way that doesn'trequire a centralized
institution.
So I can, for example, Matt, Ican send you 100 USDC, which is
a stablecoin right now, and youcan look in multiple places to
see that you that you receivethat.
If I send you a bank transfer,it just leaves my account.
I don't know where it is, Idon't know if you ever receive
it.
There's no way for me to seethat, right?
(24:52):
Stablecoins completely changethat.
In some ways, it's bad becausethere's a privacy issue that
people are trying to work on.
Stablecoins are not private.
That's probably one good thingto highlight.
They're very open.
You can see every transaction.
Like Matt, if I give you mywallet address, you can see
everything I ever did.
Um, that also means in some waysyou can use that transparency to
create trust.
Um, maybe an example of this iswhat is the government doing
(25:13):
with funds that they raise?
Or say you're dealing with acharity and they raise money
from you and they say thatthey're using it for this
purpose.
Are they?
Like, how how do you know?
Stablecoins for the first timeactually provide and enable that
transparency to see where thatmoney is going.
So I think that's importantitself.
You can also do the smartcontracts, that's a whole nother
thing where you can create likethese different types of
(25:34):
transactions without needing acentralized party like Walmart.
Um, but those are the twobarbells.
I think like Amazon and Walmartare gonna do really, really
well.
And then everyone in the middleis gonna struggle.
And then that's why I think moreand more people that are on that
long tail are gonna adopt thingslike stable coins and smart
contracts because it's the onlyway to establish trust and
scale.
Um so yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (25:51):
So that that's interesting.
Um so basically, stable coinsare using a public blockchain.
unknown (26:00):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (26:01):
And um and so you get visibility.
Um and so I could see your pointabout nonprofits, that's a
really good one.
SPEAKER_01 (26:11):
It's it's massive, in my opinion.
Like the whole whether you likeDoge or not, like going into the
government and seeing wheremoney's going, this would make
it a thousand times easier.
Which for some things, like ifyou're doing military spending,
you don't want to see wherethat's going.
Maybe you don't want to sharethat with different nations.
But there is some spending thatthat's actually a feature it's
not about to have transparency.
And there are people working inthe stable coin space that are
(26:31):
trying to enable privacy, sothat will be an option.
But by default, stable coins aretransparent, and I think it's
perfect for something like that,like a charity.
SPEAKER_00 (26:37):
So, Garrett, as an omni-channel shopper, why would
I want to buy things usingstable coins with a retailer?
SPEAKER_01 (26:49):
Uh the fun answer to that is you wouldn't.
And the reason I say that isthat I don't think that a buyer
or a user should know thatthey're using stable coins.
Only someone like me who's inthe stablecoin space should know
or care.
But if Walmart, they integratestable coins in their products,
you shouldn't know.
The only thing that you shouldknow is that if Walmart needs to
pay you out for any reason,whether it's a refund, or maybe
(27:11):
you know, you're you have aWalmart card and you're putting
funds on it, you don't have towait a day to see those funds
appear on your card.
It's instant, right?
Maybe Walmart has Walmart has somuch functionality that I don't
even know about that theyprobably offer some banking
services, I bet, um, that aredirectly tied to this.
So if you're making a payment,you want that to be basically
(27:32):
free.
If I send out a dollar, you wantthat person to receive a dollar,
right?
Stablecoins can help enablethat.
Um, Walmart, for example, mightbring in stable coins because
it's cheaper to do any paymentsthat they have to do, whether
it's to their employees, whetherit's to users like you, whether
it's to the vendors.
And then on top of that, that'scheaper.
And then you also have thiswhole interest component that we
talked about earlier.
(27:52):
Um, for the first time, they canearn 4% because it's backed by
US Treasuries.
Walmart can keep all of that, orthey can have a rewards program,
someone like you, Matt, and theycan pay you some of that in the
form of rewards.
Maybe those rewards then, youknow, we talked about stable
coins are programmable.
Maybe they can only be spent oncertain things, right?
So let's just say they pay yousome type of reward.
You can't just spend that at anyother store.
(28:13):
Maybe they even say, like, thisis for, you know, we're going to
the fall season, you can buy X,Y, Z products with these
rewards.
You can do that with stablecoins.
You can say it can only be usedfor this um reason or occasion.
So the answer is really, I thinkthat's one thing maybe people
get wrong about stable coins, iswhen you think about money
today, you don't think about howit moves.
(28:34):
You don't think about like, youdon't think about ACH, you don't
think about wire.
The only time you do, it'sunfortunate because you're going
to your banking website andyou're hitting like do an ACH
and it's not a fun process.
Like in general, people shouldnot think about this.
This is just, it's just atechnology layer that makes
moving money faster, cheaper,and it gives you more and better
global financial services.
And that's why you as a usershould should not care.
(28:55):
But what you will get is thebenefit of faster payments.
Maybe you'll get higher rewardsand lower transaction fees.
SPEAKER_00 (29:00):
So, so basically, the shopper really doesn't need
to know that a company is usingstable coins.
SPEAKER_01 (29:09):
Yeah.
I don't I don't think theyshould know at all.
And, you know, a lot ofcompanies will have their own
stable coin.
So it'll be like Walmart USD.
But I do not think that you,Matt, or anyone else that's
buying a Walmart needs to knowthat.
They don't need to know that astable coin is behind your
rewards program or whatever itmight be.
That is purely for Walmart doingbecause it's highly efficient,
it's cheaper, they can earnmore, and they can share some of
(29:30):
those earnings with someone likeyou, and they can create like
greater customer loyalty.
So again, this is like a wholetechnology thing where it truly
is about the outcomes, it's notabout the tech.
It's interesting to talk aboutthe tech because that's why we
have people in the industry whoare like nerds and we love like
building the next era of what wecall fintech, right?
Like, how can we make thisbetter?
But like, no one that has acredit card is asking how that
(29:50):
works, right?
That should be the same thingwith stable coins.
You should not care.
You should just know that usinga credit card means that you can
go online and buy something inlike an instant.
That's really cool, right?
Same thing should happen.
It is just the next iteration ofthat.
SPEAKER_00 (30:02):
So it it reminds me of it's like if I order
something from Walmart, I don'tcare if it comes from the store
or a fulfillment center, right?
And I shouldn't even havevisibility to that.
No.
SPEAKER_01 (30:18):
I just want the product is that it gets there
and say like less than 24 hoursor within two days, right?
That's what you care about.
And once you have that standard,delivery in 24 hours, delivery
in two days, everyone then hasto live up to that standard,
right?
Like if if you're notdelivering, if you're now taking
a week to deliver, you're gonnafall behind.
People aren't gonna buy fromyou.
That will be why stable coinsget adopted by businesses,
(30:41):
because as people integrate thistechnology and they're able to
speed up payments, maybe Walmartwon't be the first use case.
The best thing stable coins arefor are for cross-border
payments.
That is the best thing becausecross-border payments are
terrible.
I used to live in Australia, Imoved to the US.
When my money going fromAustralia to the US disappeared
for five days, right?
Disappeared for five days, ithad a massive like FX fee, and
(31:02):
on top of that, it was$15 tosend a payment.
I could have done that in stablecoins in less than a second.
SPEAKER_00 (31:06):
Like so, if companies are doing business
across borders, that might bethe first place they adopt it.
100%.
SPEAKER_01 (31:13):
100%.
Or if they're doing businessacross borders, well, this is
really related, or they havemultiple entities across
borders, because there arecompanies that have entities all
over the world, right?
And they have to move moneyaround those entities.
Instead of using traditionalwire, you use stable coins, it's
going to be a lot cheaper.
SPEAKER_00 (31:30):
And so I guess that would make it easier to
recognize profits where you wantto recognize them.
100%.
SPEAKER_01 (31:39):
Yep.
And like a lot of merchants areenabling receiving stable coins
today.
So if you look at Shopify, forexample, they allow their
merchants to accept stable coinsfrom buyers.
Today, though, that means youhave people out there like me
that actually want to spendstable coins.
We just talked about how I don'tthink that's going to be the
normal person.
They don't want to, you know,they don't care that's stable
coins.
(31:59):
That merchant doesn't actuallyreceive stable coins.
Shopify behind the scenes isconverting those stable coins
into dollars.
Um, because right now everyonejust wants dollars, right?
Like everyone wants cash intheir bank account.
I think over time, people won'tcare.
They'll just see it as abalance.
It's just a dollar balance.
And there will be more reasonsto keep it in stable coins
because if you keep it in thatlayer, like we talked about,
it's scaling layers.
(32:21):
All your payments are cheaper.
You can earn more.
It's just a better place to haveyour money.
Just right now, what's happeningis somebody is like, they have
cash, they're turning it into astable coin.
So they have$100.
Now you have 100 stable coins.
They're like sending thatsomewhere, and then that person
is converting it back to cash.
So for every like traditionalfinancial movement you have, you
only have one on-chain becausepeople are like, what do I do
with my stable coins?
(32:42):
Right.
Over time, I think there's gonnabe more and more to do with it,
just like how I don't know ifWalmart enables this yet, but
like with Shopify, you can spinit at merchants.
Now we have a visa debit cardwhere you can spin your stable
coins anywhere.
Like, I don't have a reason nowto move back to cash.
The more that you have a reasonto stay up here because there's
more you can do with your stablecoins, it's just gonna keep
there and you have more costsavings and everything becomes
(33:03):
faster and cheaper.
And that's where things reallytake off.
Right now, you don't see all thebenefits because there's not
enough going on up here on thestablecoin layer.
Everyone's just like, as soon asI receive stable coins, I'm
gonna turn it into cash.
But once you get to the pointwhere it's up here because
everyone accepts stable coins,whether they know it or not,
that's when the like industrywill really take off.
SPEAKER_00 (33:21):
What are credit cards doing with this credit
card companies?
SPEAKER_01 (33:25):
They're definitely exploring this a lot.
Um, they all are doing, I mean,they'll do some stable coin
settlement in the sense that youknow you have all these payments
happening throughout the day.
Um, I'm not like the the masterunderstanding this, but you have
all these movements.
And then I think like at the endof the day, they'll settle up,
right?
So it's not like money'sactually moving every second you
(33:46):
do a credit card.
Um I think there's two ways tolook at this.
One, they'll see it as a fasterway to settle between
counterparties.
Because, like I said, like atraditional ACH could take up to
you know two to three days.
They can now settle withinseconds.
Um, some stable coin networkswould see this as uh potentially
a threat.
So you have somebody like Stripewho's getting more and more into
the stablecoin space.
(34:06):
Why is that?
Well, what is Stripe's mainexpense?
It's like credit card fees,right?
So for them, it's like, how dowe get around that fee, if
possible, right?
A lot of people are using Stripeby now.
So if two businesses are usingStripe, for example, and they're
paying each other, why shouldyou have to have any
intermediary besides Stripe?
(34:27):
Because you're going from oneStripe customer to another one,
right?
So, like, why pay an extra 1.5%?
I think Stripe sees this as anopportunity, and that's why
they've made some majorpurchases in the stablecoin
space to use stable coins to gofrom this merchant to this other
one, and it never has to paycredit card fees.
So in that way, they would betrying to get rid of that
largest cost that they have byusing stable coins.
And that's why they're I I don'tknow if they're convinced that
(34:49):
will happen, but they see it asa call option to say this future
could exist.
We're gonna try to make ithappen because that is our
highest cost right now.
SPEAKER_00 (34:56):
So with ambient commerce and you're talking
about friction being removedfrom transactions, um,
essentially, but you're alsoincreasing the number of and
kinds of transactions that canoccur, and uh you're also uh
allowing transactions to occurthat wouldn't have because of a
(35:20):
lack of trust.
So all these things mean thatthe total number of uh trades,
if you will, between uh buyersand sellers of all different
types are going to happen morequickly and more rapidly and
more efficiently.
And uh, you know, one thingthat's very clear is that the
(35:43):
more trading that's going on,the more wealth that's generated
for everybody.
You know, there's lots of proofof this.
Um so so you would think it'sinteresting to think about how
many things right now from atechnology perspective are
increasing wealth.
I mean, stable coins is anexample of something that's
(36:05):
gonna enable more wealthcreation in the world.
Um robotics, AI.
SPEAKER_01 (36:12):
It it's and Matt, just to jump in, think about I
mean, this is I hate going therebecause I sound like that guy
with the tinfoil hat, but that'sas you have more AI and you do
have agentich commerce, a lot ofcommerce will happen between AI
themselves.
So think about drop shippingwith a huge thing that took off
over the last like 10 years,essentially like you manufacture
something in China and youarbitrage it and you sell in the
(36:34):
US.
You can imagine that happeningwithout any human involved,
right?
So if you can have agents thatare way better than we are at
examining all the differentarbitrages and prices and
shipping and so forth, like youknow, they're on the internet um
and they have currency now, theycould create these businesses,
right?
Whether that's a human thatmaybe is then like giving them
access to funds, et cetera,that's always like guiding them.
(36:56):
You can imagine a future where90% plus of transactions are not
done by humans.
I mean, that's already the casewith like trading, right?
With algorithmic trading.
You can imagine that apping incommerce too.
Like a lot of these productscould be done through agents.
And sure you probably have ahuman involved in some way, but
once you get to that point,these agents need a way to
control money, they need a wayto pay each other, and they need
(37:16):
to operate between guardrailsbecause you cannot, for example,
fund some agent and just hope itdoes not spend all your money in
some way, right?
So that's why smart contracts,that's why stable coins, like I
said, that can do if then thatyou can do that with uh agents,
which you cannot do before withtraditional finance.
So if you believe in thatfuture, if you believe in a
future that's gonna be moreglobal, believe in a future that
(37:37):
more commerce is gonna be donethrough agents, whether that's
just like me and you orderingonline, we say make this
recurring purchase every youknow week, or it's actual agents
like interacting with eachother, doing arbitrage or
whatever it might be.
In that future, stable coinsmake complete sense.
If you think the word world isgonna become more local and
agents will not become a largerpart of part of commerce, then
stable coins probably don'tmatter much to you unless you
(37:58):
want access to dollars.
That will always be a productmarket fit.
People around the world wantaccess to dollars.
Um, people in the US don'treally resonate with that that
well because we don't have that,right?
People in the US have access togood banking.
Um, people around the world donot.
A lot of people do not, right?
And that's where there's been aproduct market fit for that for
stable coins for a long time.
But in the future, if you wantto go even you know further
beyond that, like I think that'sa pretty worthy cause in itself,
(38:20):
right?
Like it's easy to overlook, butthat is a good worthy cause.
But if you want to believe inthis agentec high-tech future
that is global by default, um,stable coins they perfectly fit.
It's really hard to deny it andto not look at it and to see the
adoption.
SPEAKER_00 (38:33):
So this is uh so interesting, but this is a
really clear example of how thisis going to impact omni-channel
commerce.
Uh but also it's a clearexplanation of why we're gonna
see the dollar, the value of thedollar is gonna increase if this
(38:56):
really spreads like you'retalking about.
SPEAKER_01 (38:59):
It's definitely a possibility.
I'm no economist, so I don'twant to make any bets there.
But it it is true right nowabout so stable coins, I often
say dollars.
Stable coins does not mean ithas to be dollars.
It could be a peso, it could bethe euro.
But 99% of stable coins rightnow of that$305 billion are
dollars.
Um, I think over time, localcurrencies will become a bigger
(39:20):
thing.
Uh, that needs to happen forthis whole world to take off
because sometimes you do need todo exchange between like dollars
and euros, right?
Like we already support thatwith our products, but the
liquidity on the Euro side isvery low.
So if you're moving big volumes,the like slippage that you're
doing is not is not good.
So right now, dollars dominatethe space.
And that's why, again, I thinkthe government's a fan because
(39:41):
they're saying, like, look,we're actually having more new
net buyers for the dollar.
And not only for the dollar, butthe treasuries underlying that.
And what's the biggest problemfor the government right now?
They're borrowing costs.
And how do you get that down?
You have more buyers fortreasuries.
SPEAKER_00 (39:53):
But you could have two companies in Bangladesh
trading, you know, again, notworrying about cash and using um
stable coins and USD.
They could do that, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so if you're in a countrywhere monetary policy is um not
(40:19):
very disciplined, which is a lotof countries.
Right.
SPEAKER_01 (40:24):
That could be a reason to do it.
Yeah.
I mean, you're already seeingthis.
Yeah, I mean, big okay.
So a little bit of a tangent,but people don't always take
crypto seriously, which Iunderstand.
It's a crazy world, but Bitcoinis over a$2 trillion asset.
If you're not paying, if you'rein finance and you're not paying
attention to a$2 trillion asset,you're probably missing
something, right?
Like that doesn't make sense.
Like maybe you should go back toschool to be harsh.
(40:46):
I'm kidding.
But obviously, so liketokenization has taken off.
We have 305 billion of stablecoins here, and it's just like
the early innings.
Um, it is something to payattention to.
I'm not gonna like make this betthat everything moves to stable
coins, but like I said, I dothink if the world is going more
global, if agentic commerce andbusiness becomes more of a
thing, stable coins are theperfect fit.
(41:07):
It's like credit cards for theinternet.
There's not a there's not abetter fit, at least that we
have right now.
SPEAKER_00 (41:13):
I heard Kathy Wood of uh Arc Invest.
Have you heard of that?
Um she recently was um beinginterviewed from someone, I
can't remember who it was, andshe said if you use traditional
portfolio theory, you wouldprobably want to hold about 20%
(41:33):
of your wealth in uh Bitcoinbased on the variables that she
was considering.
She doesn't recommend thatnecessarily, but uh I found that
shocking.
I hadn't really thought of thatbefore.
SPEAKER_01 (41:49):
Yeah, it's a big number.
I mean, I I hold uh um, I don'tknow Bitcoin specifically, but
like 80% of my net worth is intokens of some sort, whether
that's Bitcoin or somethingelse.
So I am uh a little bit biasedand uh believer, uh, to say the
least.
Um I generally, I mean, this isnot investment advice.
I generally tell my friendslike, look, if you're new to
this, it's great to have like a5% exposure in your portfolio.
(42:12):
Um, I just think you don't wantto put money in it that you're
not willing to lose.
Um, but I also just think thatit is one of the most
interesting uh investment usecases that anyone in the world
right now has access to.
If you have an internetconnection, you can buy Bitcoin.
I mean, it's pretty crazy.
It is something that the entireworld has access to.
That's a lot of demand.
I mean, US stocks, that thereason why stocks are going
on-chain, if you're a company,you want people to have access
(42:34):
to your stocks, right?
You want them to buy yourstocks.
Once you tokenize them, this isthe coolest thing about crypto,
in my opinion.
Uh, going on a little bit of atangent here.
Anything that you build, likesome type of application, and
you put that on the say Solanablockchain, the Ethereum
blockchain, there's different,like you can often think of it
as like an operating system.
Once you build that app,everyone in the world
(42:55):
immediately gets access to it.
Immediately, right?
So it's not like, hey, I'm gonnapost this online and like it'll
take it, and like only I can doit, only friends, only people in
the US get access to it.
Everyone in the world.
That means if there's somecompany in the US that all of a
sudden puts some stocks onchain, every single person in
the world gets access to that.
Now, there are things that youcan do.
(43:17):
So they could say, like, hey,only addresses that have been
approved by us can actuallytrade this token.
So there are ways to put inregulation because people are
like, well, this sounds likeit's not complied at all.
You can do that.
But the cool thing is bydefault, everything that you
build is accessible to everyone.
And that's why like the pace ofinnovation is kind of
speedrunning what we call liketraditional finance.
Because for the first time,you've like opened up this
(43:38):
financial system where anyonecan build.
Um, and once it's built, anyonecan access it.
And that that's a really coolpart.
SPEAKER_00 (43:45):
Well, Garrett, this has been so interesting.
It's amazing how crypto and umbitcoin and um stablecoins are
going to affect, are alreadyaffecting global supply chains.
There's no question about it.
But I really do appreciate yousharing your knowledge and
(44:08):
wisdom uh with us, not onlyexplaining what stable coins
are, but how they're going toaffect the supply chain and
omnichannel in particular.
Uh this has been veryeye-opening.
Uh, so I really appreciate yourtime.
SPEAKER_01 (44:21):
Yeah, thanks for having me on, Matt.
This is a blast.
I mean, lots of do it again inthe future.
You know, maybe in five years,once we see this this play out,
you know, we can revisit thesituation.
But uh yeah, this is a greattime.
Thanks for having me on.
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