Bam Azizi Interview - PayPal Invests $5M PYUSD into Mesh to Improve Crypto Payments, Deposits & More! - Thinking Crypto News & Interviews

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
We came up with the idea thatOkay, like if they want to invest,
why they're not investing with their owncurrency, which is pay USD And
we felt like, okay, wecan use Mesh api to transfer assets from
PayPal to like Mesh account and wedid that. So that was that was

(00:22):
a big deal because it was firsttime that a big public company investing in
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Please visit vchain dot org. Linkwill be in a description. Welcome

(01:30):
to the Thinking Crypto podcast. You'rehome for cryptocurrency news and interviews. With
me today is Bamazezi, who's theCEO and co founder at Mesh. Bam
great to have you on. Yeah, thank you for having me. Great
to me. Yeah, likewise andBam, I'm excited to speak with you.
Excited to learn about Mesh. We'dlove to start with your background,

(01:51):
you know, tell us about yourself, where you're from, and what's your
professional back. Yeah. Sure,I'm originally Persian get like many other immigrants,
came to this country for higher education. So I was a PhD student
like back then when I started mykind of life in the US and uh

(02:14):
uh, and then I started myfirst company, sold it, and then
I enjoyed what they what I've done, I'm continue doing that. I'm I
call myself serial entrepreneur. But I'veheard that that means a series of failure,
but it's a back up honor.Yeah, I mean that's awesome.

(02:35):
And you know the fact that youbuilt a company and then sold it.
I think it's called no password,is that right, that's correct? And
you know what was I guess yourfirst encounter with bitcoin and crypto and what
was your amlement? Was that,like after no Password? You know,
where was that in the timeline?Sure? Uh yes, I mean like

(02:57):
it was definitely, uh exactly aroundthe same time that I started No Password.
Uh. I like, because ofmy background and coming coming from a
country that was famous for like generaltrading historically, you're like part of the
like old like Emperor basically the tradingplatform or like we had this stock exchange

(03:25):
back then, uh in in inIran or Persia as as an as a
country or continent back then. Andand I like, and my dad was
a businessman, so I was likealways eager to learn more about the business
aspect of things, but I waslike more into coding and being an engineer

(03:46):
and then building stuff. Uh Sothe combination of those two kind of help
me to be who I am today. Definitely, When like when you're coming
from that background, when you're hearingsomething new about like generally speaking about money,
which was bitcoin back then, likea peer two peer payment in a
decentralized way, it was quite interesting. So I remember doing some research online

(04:15):
to understand what bitcoin is. Backthen, we just had one cryptocurrency,
which was bitcoin, and then likeI opened the first link, it was
like, okay, this website isseized by the government, And I opened
the second website. It was aboutdealing drugs and doing some illicit activity,
and I was on a visa inthe US, so I didn't want to

(04:39):
do anything with it. So Iwent through that phase of exploration and maybe
like being a little bit pessimist aboutthe future. But the more I studied
about that, I learned. Ilearned a lot. But I can maybe
click a double click on the nopassword piece and I can connect the dots

(05:00):
for you and your audience at nopassword without like knowing anything about what I'm
going to do. Ten years afterthat, we did a lot of things
around PKI or public che infrastructure.As you may know, the entire crypto
is based on blockchain, which isa PKI type technology that basically when I

(05:26):
learned more about crypto and I learnedabout the relationship between crypto and PKI,
because of my background, my expertiseand security, it was really not that
hard to kind of figure out whatwe want to do next. But there
are other interesting stuff that happened nopassword that is correlated to what we're doing

(05:49):
at MESH. No password mission wasvery simple. We wanted to bring secure
authentication or we call it friction listbiometric authentication without like compromising the security.
So if you dig a little bitdeeper, what we were solving was back

(06:10):
then that like all the security companywas, like security tech was a hot
tech like AI now today in SiliconValley ten years ago, so everybody was
talking about additional factor of authentication.They wanted to add basically your inter password,
you enter your text message or OTPor TOTP, and on top of

(06:30):
that you prove like you own somesort of a device. They call it
what you know, what you have, what you are, which is the
biometric aspect of it. And Ifelt like this is a little bit too
much of friction for an end usersfrom experience perspective. So without like no
password, like a password less authenticationcould solve that without like compromising the security.

(06:57):
Now, if you look at Kryptotoday, you're kind of solving the
same problem. Everybody is talking aboutthe upside of crypto, but little we're
hearing about how we can make itso user friendly that is no brainer for
everyday people to use it. Youstill need to be one of like either

(07:19):
a tech pro or crypto pro tobe able to kind of own piece of
crypto and if you want to transferit, if you want to pay for
things, you want to use iton a daily basis gopless, there is
no easy way to do that asof today. So we are like tackling
that experience problem in an industry thathas a lot of upside, but nobody

(07:43):
has figured out how we can makethe experience as simple as possible for everyday
people. So from that perspective,you're kind of doing continuing doing the same
thing that we were doing No Password, and I can I can give you
a little bit more background No Passwordwe had like more than two thousand integrations.

(08:05):
We're doing kind of the same thingmesh. We're building integrations exchanges and
wallets. UH and and No Passwordgot acquired by a big company, a
public company back then called log mein UH they acquired themselves by private equity
firm. Now it's a private privatecompany. They are the owner of Last

(08:26):
Pass and I think Last Past that'sbeen off recently too. And we were
part of the Last Pass and Iam UH division and UH. Then then
I got out and we started meshuh and and the rest is history.
Wow, pretty incredible. I've usedboth platforms last pass and of course locked

(08:50):
me in. I'm sure a lotof people have. So pretty incredible that
you know the technology you built,uh, you know as part of that
holy ecosystem and so forth. SoMesh, you know, it's enabling easier
crypto deposits, payments on ramping andso forth. Tell us a bit more
about that. And the connections isit with exchanges, wallets and so forth?

(09:11):
Tell us about the logistics. Yeah, so I wish that you were
like so smart that that was likeour idea day one. But as you
know, we're like almost a fiveyears old company, so initially we're not
this company that you are seeing now. Even the name of the company was
not Mesh. So we initially itstarted as a B two C application.

(09:33):
And you can compare us to Eliand that they did the same thing.
They were a B two C appand then they pivoted to a B two
B application. So the B twoC app that we had was like modern
version of Mint. You could connectyour robinhood, your coinbase, and manage
everything in one place. And andwe wanted to do better than what plaid

(09:56):
Or was offering back then in termsof like not just reading information end of
the day, especially when you're talkingabout crypto and equities, you want to
get the pricing and the holding likein every second, right, especially when
there is a big change in priceupward or downward. People like checking their
portfolio constantly, you can just tellthem like come back end of the day.

(10:18):
So we wanted to make that amore immersive real time experience that you
could read information in real time,and not only that, you could be
able to trade and also transfer accessfrom one place or another, rebalance your
portfolio, things in that nature.So you felt like, okay, if
you want to do that, youhave to build your own integrations. There

(10:39):
is no product out there off theshelf that provides those functionalities. So we
started doing that and then and thenlike our usage can skyrocketed, but it
was all free users. You couldn'tmonitize it. And twenty twenty two happened
and then like it was not easyanymore to raise money on just based on

(11:03):
growth metrics, so we had tomake money and be post revenue company to
raise our Series A. So wedecided to launch this B two B vision
that like, Okay, this APIis amazing. This is the brain of
what we have built. And thisis more in line to our background,
which is identity security integrations with differentexchanges. Maybe there are some other companies

(11:28):
that they want to use that,so let's open that to the world.
And we launched it on product hunt, ranked top three that day and landed
our first five customers same day,and we felt like, Okay, this
is this is that's that's what weneed to do. So it was like
some sort of an organic evolvement.But I think our background and ten years

(11:52):
of like building what we are buildingno pass Wild help us to kind of
get that conviction faster. Today wehave more than hundreds of platforms using mesh
Connect API to deliver a better service, better user experience to the end users.
And also you're like working with exchangesand wallets and Vibtory platforms to offer

(12:16):
this service to the end users.I can talk about some of the market
customers that we have. Probably youhave seen our announcement. We had COINDYCX,
the largest Indian exchange, rolled outMASHED to sixteen million users. Recently,
Metamasks rolled us out to thirty millionactive multi active users that they have,

(12:39):
and then we're like talking with otherbig names as well at the same
time. So you're just at thebeginning of you're a series a stage startup
and we have a lot of greatannouncement coming up. That's awesome. So
for the folks listening and who maybeare a bit new to crypto, is
this technology you running behind the scenesthat they don't even know it's there?

(13:03):
Right, Like the integration with matamasand so forth. Is that the gist
of the platform that's running behind thescenes and make things more seamless. That's
correct. So we are a Bto B service, so we work with
platforms that they are working with endusers and customers. So the more integrations

(13:24):
we have, the more customers wehave, the more coverage we will have
for the end users. So buteven though your B to B it's not
all behind the scene like plat like, you have to connect your accounts through
us, So there are some userexpence experience exponent as well that basically help

(13:46):
users to connect their accounts and moveassets faster and easier and better. Right
now, if you want to let'ssay you want to pay like everybody's like
adopting crypto. Now you want topay for your coffee with your assets in
your coin base account. Even iflike let's say Starbucks or any other coffee

(14:07):
shop accept scrypto, there is noway, no easy way for you to
pay for that. So the wayit works is you have to scan it
your code copy of wall address ifit's there him like a good luck you
have, like there are hundreds ofL two's that you need to pick one,
and if you just miss one bitof it, then you lost your

(14:31):
fund. And then on top ofthat, you have like if you're doing
everything manually, there would be morerigorous checks by exchanges in terms of like
making sure you're sending money to theright people to the right person. We
can streamline the entire process with oneclick. So if you think about it
from end user's perspective, we're justenabling new use cases that was not possible

(14:56):
to do previously. Yeah, forsure, and I saw that obviously.
We talked about menimass and some manyother wallets. You're working with both exchanges
as well as self custody wallets,right, So that's great. So you're
tackling both sides of the out inregards to the exchanges. Does that include
both decentralized exchanges and centralized exchanges.Yes, So we really don't judge where

(15:26):
like users own their assets. Wewant like if you look at the crypto
industry and compare it to the bankingindustry. So initially banks they were like
the best place you could store yourassets. You could like it was a
safe place that it could store yourmoney, but if you wanted to go
from one state to another, youhad to carry your own money. And

(15:48):
then banks started like building branches soyou could go to another branch and ask
for money, and then they wouldcheck your account and give you money.
And then banks started talking to eachother and so you could do like ah
wire and payments and things like thatin the last like thirty forty years of

(16:08):
history. But this kind of happensat the same time history repits itself in
the crypto industry. So in thelast fifteen years that crypto was around,
we were like the whole industry wasfocused on building the best in class custudio
services that you can hold your assetseither in a centralized exchange or on a

(16:32):
decentralized self custody wallet like companies likeLeisure, Metamasks and so forth, and
without like feeling like your assets areat risk. Now it's time to connect
all these lethal islands, and MESHconnect would be that connectivity layer that connects

(16:52):
all of these isolated islands so wecan freely move assets from one place to
another. So that's kind of whatMesh brings to the table. And if
you think about it from that perspective, we want inclusivity as much as possible,

(17:14):
right, so we want to workwith different type of assets, different
type of tokens, different type ofchains, different type of exchanges and wallets.
You really don't care about like whatyou do as a customer or as
a partner. If you have endusers and you help people to hold some
sort of a valuable asset, youwill like to be able to talk to

(17:36):
you and partner with you and workwith you for sure. Now you mentioned
you know it doesn't matter the assets. So I'm assuming you support the majority
of the crypto assets out there,including maybe the top thirty fifty or whatever
the exchanges may support, or thesewallets. Yeah, so you know that
there is eighty twenty rules in thiscase. It's just like if you have
forty tokens and fifteen network that wehave. You basically cover ninety nine percent

(18:03):
of the volume. But we're nowgoing to stay there. We're going to
add more based on the request,but we have the majority of like top
wanted chains and networks. Now yougot an investment from PayPal, I believe
five million of the p y usthe stable coin. Tell us about that

(18:23):
fundraising and how it came about withPayPal. Yeah, so that's very interesting.
Of course PayPal is very vulish onKrypto. There is definitely a big
sentiment and validation for us as aseries a stage startup. A public company

(18:45):
with the amount of power and connectioncomes forward and wants to invest and they
really like the idea of what weare doing because we have a product called
mesh Pei that could potentially enable likewe're not a payment company, but we
can enable payment companies like PayPal tooffer a better service on the payment side.

(19:08):
And they have launched pay USD orp y u s D last year
as well, so they are likesuper polish on stable coins and payment use
case. So we wanted to kindof leverage that in our platform, and

(19:30):
then we came up with the ideathat Okay, like if they want to
invest, why they're not investing withtheir own currency, which is pay USD
And we felt like, okay,we can use Mesh api to transfer assets
from PayPal UH to like Mesh accountand we did that. So that was

(19:52):
that was a big deal because itwas first time that a big public company
investing in a state a coin ststartups. It broke the news, it
brought and brought a lot of attentionfor us and eyeballs. That was good.
But on top of that, weproved that both technologies and products are
working. UH you can use thatfor different type of use cases, and

(20:17):
I think that was that was thekind of light bulb moment for many of
our customers and partners as well.Yeah, for sure. Now you mentioned
like there was an exchange in Indiathat you guys are working with, so
I'm assuming your technology is available globally. Essentially any exchange in any part of
the world can essentially use use yoursolution. Yes, I think one of

(20:41):
the things that I mentioned all thetime is even if you wanted to do
this like ten years ago, evenfive years ago, we couldn't do that
because crypto maybe it was not matureenough. We didn't have enough coverage across
the globe, and API as wehave it today was not sure enough.
Back then people still like doing screenof scraping and things in that nature to

(21:06):
offer functionalities. So I strongly believethat this two global phenomenon API, which
is a global language. No matterwhere you are in the world, you're
using the same breast API as therest of the world and the same as
crypto. Right, so no matterwhere you are, you can own a

(21:27):
piece of bitcoin or any other cryptocurrencies, and no matter what dual location you're
in. And then stable coins andgovernment based the stable coins or cryptocurrencies definitely
helping that pushing that initiative as well. So this exposure or I would call

(21:48):
it coverage that we have on bothindustry API and crypto helped us to offer
this in a global manner. Andit was not like us going after well
what companies. They came to usand said, like, that's cool,
we can use that as well forthis specific use case. As a matter
of fact, we had no ideathat people can use us for payments,

(22:11):
and there was a random company inLatin America that they used us like you
could pay for things. Using mesh, you connect your coin base or binance
and pay for things and you feellike, Okay, that's that's a very
very interesting idea. We want tobuild a product vertically for payment as well.
So and companies across the globe camefor many different use cases and we

(22:37):
felt like we can add value nomatter where the user are or what use
cases they're going after. Yeah,that's amazing. And you know, to
your point of like in different markets, in different countries, people are using
PP down different ways. You know, maybe in the United States it's more
so the investment vehicle, but maybein other country is in South America or

(23:00):
across the content in Africa, Uh, they needed for payments to bypass the
old, outdated legacy payments rails rightthat are out there and even their their
few currencies and the daughter right.So it's fascinating and it's great that you
guys are presenting that solution to help. Yes, yeah, definitely we're seeing

(23:22):
more global adoption. Uh. AndI think US dollar as a stable currency
is something that probably people are takingit for granted. The rest of the
world is really not that stable.Because of that, people are more interested

(23:45):
in getting like stable coins because theycan use it as as as a saving
account. A lot of these emergingcrypto markets, people are using like their
minus account as a bank account,or the openings account or the coin basico
as a bank account to hold thestable coins because it's a hyperinflation market and

(24:10):
they don't want to hold like localcurrencies. And as a result of that,
we have like central bank based cryptocurrenciesor CBDCs that basically offering the same
services across the globe. And likerecently I've heard like there is a there
is a digital pound coming up ordigital euro coming out coming out soon,

(24:33):
and I would not be shocked thatthe US fat also issues government back cryptocurrency
or a stable coin as well.Yeah, it seems all these governments are
working on their CBDC and you know, obviously there's a lot of concerns around
that because of privacy and what theycan do with it. So hopefully they
do it right and at least herein the United States, they you know,

(24:56):
align it to the US Constitution.Question about you know, stable coins
and how the US dollar being theworld reserve currency, people want that US
backed stable coin or the US denominatedthe stable cooin with your partnership with PayPal
and the investment. Are you facilitatingthe usage of p y u s D.

(25:18):
You know, obviously PayPal launched thatlast year and they're trying to get
market penetration and grow. So areyou are you facilitating payments in p y
u s D. Yes, you'reworking closely with the PayPal team, and
there are many different use cases thatwe can leverage mention piousd to offer that.
But you're acid class agnostic. Uh, we want we're working with other

(25:41):
stable coins as well, because ifyou're thinking globally, like Pius is not
available across the globe as of today, of course because of our close relationship,
whatever they are available, that wouldbe our like top choice. So
you know, obviously you guys gota lot going on. I'm sure you're

(26:02):
wrapping up globally with different exchanges,different wallets. But what else is on
your twenty twenty four roadmap? Youknow, what can we expect later this
year? Yeah? So on theroadmap we have like you're going to be
more focused on global expansion. Wewant to work with all the local exchanges,

(26:22):
like an emerging market like Korea,Turkey, Middle East, Africa to
be able to offer the services toa mass number of users. We just
launched our product called Mesh Ramp basicallyno KYC ramp. They can like basically
you're bringing your own exchanges and youraccounts and we just use our API leverage

(26:47):
that to on ramp for like selfcustody walllets. So if you are a
user of Meta mask in Korea andyou have already your uppit account and you've
done the KYC, you don't haveto pay three percent credit card fees or
five percent on ramp fees and youcan basically on ramp it in a cheaper

(27:11):
way using Mesh solution. So ourfocus is being able to build partnerships so
we can offer that across the globe, not just being focused in the US.
And our platform helps our customers tobe more compliant, more secure and
follow the regulations depending on where theyare. We can definitely help them to

(27:36):
understand their customers and their customers needbetter and it helps them hopefully to kind
of detect many listed activities that theycannot do that now based on the manual
transfers and deposits, so we canadd a lot of value there. So
we're focused on three product core productsthat we have today Mesh Ramp, Deposit

(28:00):
and Mesh pay, and launching aproduct is one thing, like evolving it
to like finding is true places thatdifferent things. Of course we're going to
build many different products this year,but these are like top three focuses for
us. Sure, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. I forgot to
ask you earlier. But tell usabout the security, like how are you

(28:22):
what the approach are you taking tosecurity, because I'm sure that's going to
be a question that comes up tofolks, right, and that is often
a question within crypto because we've seendifferent hacks, exploits and all these things.
But what are the steps and guardrailsthat mash has in place. Yeah,
So because of our security background,from day one, we wanted to
make sure that we are offering azero trust platform for our customers. I

(28:48):
want our customers to trust this,but that's not the best way to build
a business because you want to showthem even without without like even with a
zero trust level, they can basicallyuse the service without risking anything. So
that's the whole meaning of zero trustlike term, and we wanted to offer

(29:15):
that from day one. So todo that, that's very simple. You
don't have to store anything, andyou have to act as a pass through
authentication and instruction layer, so youdon't hold any assets, you don't sit
in the floor of the fund,you don't custody any assets even for one
milli seconds, you don't save anyuser and impass where access tokens or two

(29:37):
FA methods, And we did thatin no password, and the name is
the name is obvious, and we'redoing the same thing and that Mash as
well from day one, So whena customer is using Mesh, they can
basically control everything that will be sharedwith us and they can rest the shore

(30:00):
that we don't store anything after theusage as as like, it doesn't change
anything from user experience perspective, butit has a lot of security and a
scalability upside that we wanted to leveragefrom day one. Even though in the
industry that we are in, likecompanies like planuly MX, they're storing a

(30:23):
lot of information, which is nothingwrong with it, but there are like
multipillion dollar companies and they have alot of resources that they can deploy that
necessarily we don't have. So wechose a more conservative way of doing business.
But I'm sure at some point itwill pay off for our customers and
ourselves. Yeah. Absolutely, Solet's talk about the market, crypto market

(30:48):
at large. I would love toget your perspective on how the market has
been doing. You know, giventhat we get the big cooins body t
apps approved and crypto seems to begoing mainstream right and we had a run
up from twenty twenty three until nowa little bit of a cool down.
What are your thoughts on the performanceand what you expect later this year.
Yeah, I think we're in thebeginning of a massive bull run in crypto.

(31:15):
I think institutions being able to buyspot Bitcoin's that's massive years and what
we're seeing is just tip of theiceberg. So we are like in a
positive way, I think we cando a lot with that. So now
like every pension fund, every familyoffice, they want to own piece of

(31:37):
crypto. And as we know,like top cryptos like Bitcoin, Ethereum and
Solana, they are very like theyhave a limited limited supply by the huge
demand. So like that is somethingthat basically helps a lot of crypto companies
in this ecosystem to grow and rowfast and they become the next big things,

(32:01):
like the next you're going to seethe next Venmo, the next PayPal,
the next Stripe coming out of thisboiler on companies that they were like
head down building during the winter,like Mesh could be one of them,
uh that or like basically those companiesare in the heart of the next generation

(32:24):
of cool technology that will be builtor expanded during this wor run. The
other thing that we're seeing a lotis like on top of like we're seeing
like money or the center of cryptoor the MECA crypto is going from Silicon
Valley to to Singapore to New Yorkto Dubai. We're like all these big

(32:47):
hitch funds and family offices and andand financial institutions are there. So that's
a that's a huge sentiment for forcrypt as a technology. And the other
thing that we're seeing and monitoring themarket is a massive shift from centralized exchanges

(33:09):
to self custody. So the termthat is if it's not your key,
it's not your money or your asset. That's something that we're going to see
more more development around it, bothon the regulation side and also on the
technology side. You can see morecompanies are offering NPC like companies like Fireblocks,

(33:32):
Leisure, Metal Mask, Institutional andmany others. And then on the
regulation side, I think we willhave for the first time you can be
like you can leave in a quantumstate. You can be a custodian but
not a custodian, which was notpossible in the traditional term. So if

(33:52):
you were a bank or you werenot a bank now but we have like
companies like Leiser, Fireblocks that they'rejust purely ticlogy company. Even though they're
offering the technology, it doesn't meanthey own assets because of the self custody
term or the MPC technology, AndI think you can offer a lot of
centralized services without being a centralized authorityor custodian of the money. So that's

(34:20):
that's another thing that we're seeing inthe market, and we continue to see
that in the next five to tenyears. And then last, but not
least, is what we are noticingis the number, the volume and the
market cap movement and shake up.What do I mean by that? So

(34:45):
if you go back five years,like in twenty eighteen nineteen, stable coins
were like ten to fifteen percent ofthe volume of the market in terms of
the number of transactions. That numberis now like close to ninety percent after
transactions happened on the chain or stablecoins. Now, the market cap of

(35:09):
stephal coins are around like ten tofifteen percent now, and we know,
like there's always a lag between marketcap and the volume and the market cap,
right, so we know marketcap willfollow the volume at some point.
So what we're going to see inthe next five to ten years is the

(35:30):
crypto value that's coming from stable coins, not from Bitcoin or ethereum. And
nothing nothing bad about those cryptocurrencies,but that's like, that's the fact that
based on what we're seeing in themarket. Yeah, that makes sense,
And there's certainly been you know,we kind of touched a bit on it

(35:52):
earlier, growing demand for stable coinsaround the globe, and I've spoken to
you know, folks at tether tetherSee and folks at Circle, and it
seems like the killer application at leastin so far, has been the stable
coins, right. Not not tosay there aren't other real world use cases

(36:12):
and applications for different cryptocurrencies, butstaple coins are big and shows that people
really need them, especially around theglobe. What are your thoughts, well,
sorry, what are your thoughts ontokenization? You know, there's a
lot of talks about this, alot of different block beings working with different
institutions. Black rock is tokenizing anetherorem. Larry Fink, CEO of Blackrockets,

(36:36):
said, this is the future offinance. What are your thoughts on
that? One hundred percent agree withLarry on that. I think every single
asset on the planet will be total. That's going to take some time,
but that's going to be the future. And here's the reason, because we

(36:58):
realized. It took us like fiftyin years to realize that blockchain is the
new cloud. Right, So whenlike twenty years ago, if people were
talking about cloud, everybody was likelaughing, like, like, I have
to own my own server, Ihave to have my own identity, I
have to have my own like basicallyaudit trails and checking balances and policies to

(37:22):
make sure that nobody hacks me.Like what do you mean like I can
just host everything, all of mydata, I should go to somewhere that
they don't have access to. Andyou went from that to now everything is
kind of run on clouds and peopledon't have any more cost efficient way to
manage that the same thing will happenwith blockchain, so it's a global ledger.

(37:47):
It has some downside, of course, but we're getting better and better
every day. But the upside isyou don't have to make it interoperable.
It is interoperable by nature. Anybodycan have access to that. You can
build your own logic on top ofthat. You can build your own layer
on top of that, if youwant to. And everything is democratized,

(38:13):
and all the developers know about blockchain, you don't, they don't. There
is no learning curve if you're buildingtechnology, So you can hire ten developers
and from day one they know whatthey're doing. They don't need to figure
out what's your existing systems to beable to build a ledger system or interoperability
for you. So that's why ifyou're thinking about holding an assets or transferring

(38:37):
assets, both of these two arealready democratized by blockchain. Why should you
build your own ledger system anymore?Why should you build your own accounting system
anymore? Why? Like, likeyou can get that for free, Like

(38:58):
there is no reason to build that. You can safeguard it, you can
make it more secure, it canmake it less accessible if you want to.
And as a result of that,from economic perspective, it doesn't make
sense to not tokenize an asset.Like you can sell a fraction of wine

(39:19):
now if it's tokenized, you cannotdo that with a physical asset if it's
not. So what we have seenon NFT was just a proof of concept,
and I know there are a lotof bad players there. There were
a lot of bad type of hypes, but that happens in almost every single
industry. Doesn't mean the tool itselfit's a bad tool. And what NFT

(39:42):
has proven that this could be thefuture of asset management, and that's why
I believe and I agree with Larryon that part. Yeah for sure too.
You know. With that said,and as tokenization becomes more prominent throughout
the globe, and whether it bereal estate, bonds, stocks, whatever
it is, is tokenized on ablockchain. And let's say some of these

(40:06):
crypto exchanges can hold those said assets, right because it's fractionalized, they can
offer some of it, people caninvest in it and hold the tokens,
and it's minted on the rails theblockchains that you already support and are already
part of these ecosystems like Etheroreum orany of the layer twos on etherorem or

(40:27):
avalanche or whatever it is is meshpreparing for that. You can handle those
transactions as well. One hundred percent. We are by nature, You're acid
class agnostic by nature, your chainagnostic, broker's agnostic, chronos agnostic,
API is API, and no matterwhat type, Like if we were a

(40:52):
custodian, that would have been different. But because we're just simply an instruction
layer, a connection layer that connectthings to each other, we have a
lot of flexibility. And no matterwhat asset class you want to work with
or transfer from place A to placeB, we can deliver that to you

(41:14):
as long as the source and thedestination can support that type of assets for
sure. All right, Beam,I got some wrap up questions there for
you. First, if you couldcreate your own metaverse, what would the
theme be? Where would you goto when you put on your apple heads

(41:34):
that are oculus space? I thinkto space for sure. And I got
some rapid fire questions. First's favoritefood? Jesse ask me to say Italians.
I say, I love Italian food. I love pizza, but yeah,
I'm a vegetarian. Like every timeI go out I find Italians or

(41:57):
the more like vegetarian friendly option forUS favorite musician or band while Republic m
HM. Favorite movie A Beautiful MindJohn Nash. Oh yeah, that's a
good one. Favorite book Flash Boysby Michael Lewis. I also love Guy

(42:22):
Kawasaki and his new book I thinkremarkable for founders and entrepreneurs. I gotta
check that one out. And finally, when you're not working at MASH,
what are you doing for fun?Uh? I always work. Yes,
sometimes I play poker, so Ilove poker as well. Awesome, Bam.

(42:43):
I love what you guys are doingin MASH, and I would love
to have you on as things progress. But thank you so much for joining
me today. Thank you for havingme. I appreciate it. The Talk
posts, the Talk past,

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Bam Azizi Interview - PayPal Invests $5M PYUSD into Mesh to Improve Crypto Payments, Deposits & More!

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Bam Azizi Interview - PayPal Invests $5M PYUSD into Mesh to Improve Crypto Payments, Deposits & More!