The Pomp Podcast - #481 Brad Kam and Haider Rafique On Human Readable Domains For Exchanges

Episode Date: January 29, 2021

Haider Rafique is the Chief Marketing Officer at OKCoin and Bradley Kam is the cofounder of Unstoppable Domains. In this conversation, we discuss human readable domains, why the user experience must improve in crypto, and why OKCoin and Unstoppable Domains partnered to bring human readable domains to the first exchange.  ======================= Exodus is an absolute game changer in the crypto wallet space, and we’ve teamed up to offer an exclusive discount for you, as listeners of the podcast. Sign up for Exodus today using my promo code Exodus.io/. This is a no brainer for both newcomers and crypto heavyweights - go sign up today.  ======================= Diginex is the first company with a cryptocurrency exchange to be listed in the US. Their ticker is Nasdaq: EQOS, and they are the first crypto company that you can buy stock in. They also have a crypto exchange called EQUOS, which has been built to institutional standards, but is available to everyone. You can trade Bitcoin and Ethereum spot, as well as Bitcoin perpetuals, and get a 5% discount on all fees, by signing up using http://www.equos.com/pomp ======================= Money On Chain brings Bitcoin to mass adoption with solutions to meet the needs of different types of users: a fully bitcoin-collateralized stablecoin (DoC), a bitcoin on steroids (BPro), and a dizzying bitcoiner option for lovers of leveraged trading (BTCx). All this, without requiring the delivery of private keys. Money On Chain - Bringing bitcoin into the mainstream. Visit moneyonchain.com/pomp to learn more

What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Let's kick this thing off. Haider Rafiq is the Chief Marketing Officer at OKCoin, and Bradley Camp is the co-founder of Unstoppable Domains. In this conversation, we discuss human-readable domains, why the user experience must improve in crypto, and why OKCoin and Unstoppable Domains partnered to bring human-readable domains to the first exchange. I really enjoyed this conversation with both of these guys, and I hope you do as well.

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They're the first company with a cryptocurrency exchange to be listed in the United States. Their ticker on the NASDAQ is E-Q-O-S, and they are the first crypto company that you can buy stock in. They also have a crypto exchange called Equos, E-Q-U-O-S, which has been built to institutional standards, but it's available to everyone. You can trade Bitcoin in Ethereum Spot as well as Bitcoin Perpetuals. And you can get a 5% discount on all fees by signing up using Equos.com slash Pomp. Again, Equos.com slash Pomp.

And lastly is my folks over Money on Chain. They are bringing Bitcoin to mass adoption with solutions to meet the needs of different types of users. a fully Bitcoin collateralized stablecoin, DOC, a Bitcoin on steroids, Bpro, and a dizzying Bitcoiner option for lovers of leveraged trading, BTCX. All this without requiring the delivery of your private keys. Money on Chain, bringing Bitcoin into the mainstream. You can visit moneyonchain.com to learn more. That's right. You want to use your Bitcoin and you want to bring Bitcoin to the mainstream all without requiring the delivery of private keys. Bitcoin collateralized stablecoins, Bitcoin on steroids, and a Bitcoiner option for lovers

of leverage trading, go to moneyonchain.com slash Pomp. Again, moneyonchain.com slash Pomp. All right, let's get in this episode with Hyder and with Bradley. I hope you guys enjoy this one. Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek digital or more concrete capital management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Brad and Hyder here. I'm super excited about this. We're

talk about an announcement they have uh let's first get started though maybe both of you just introduce yourselves and the companies you work for hi everyone this is hyder uh i am the chief marketing officer at okay coin and i'm brad i'm co-founder of unstoppable domains awesome so brad maybe let's start with you uh what is the news that unstoppable domains and okay coin have So OKCoin has integrated blockchain domains for the purposes of sending and receiving crypto in the exchange. And the reason why this is such a big deal is because this is the first time a exchange has supported this standard, this blockchain domain standard, human readable names, instead of long crypto addresses, has been widely adopted in the wallet community, but not in the exchange community yet.

And if you're a crypto user, you're using both. So you really need, in order to actually get rid of your long hex addresses, you need exchanges as well as wallets to support this. Got it. So, Heider, maybe let's just zoom out and kind of go backwards first. Just like what is the problem, right? If you guys are implementing this as a solution, what was the problem that you identified and were trying to solve? Look, ultimately, we can all agree that the current form of wallet addresses is a poor user. excited. I think when these things probably got invented, there was no product manager or user experience person in the room. And they've played their part. And I think it's due time that these

things evolve and become better. If we're all about welcoming people who are non-crypto natives, essentially newcomers, we have to take a really hard look at these problems. And the reality is there's so much goodness in crypto in its nature. It's more interoperable than traditional money. So, for example, Pomp, if I'm sending you U.S. dollars, I have to send it via a wire transfer. There's no interoperability between banking systems or even consumer fintech apps like Cash App or PayPal. You're kind of struck in their wall garden, if you will. With crypto, we all know it's pretty easy to send and receive crypto from one wallet to another exchange and vice versa. But the problem, the key friction point has been this long string of address one has to copy and then put into your new sort of place where you want to receive it or send it to a friend.

Say I'm sending you some crypto, I now have to send you this long string of address or a QR code. Look, I was never a fan of QR codes either, so maybe this is beef against QR codes. But generally, we want to solve that piece, which is how do we simplify in our operability and bring the best out of crypto in a form that really helps us win long term? And this is not just about OKCoin. This is about everyone involved in this industry. It should be really, really simple and easy to take value, crypto value out of OKCoin into another wallet, whether hardware or what have you, or into another exchange or into

another wallet. And that is tough today. That's especially tough if I have to tell one of my friends who's not in the crypto industry to come in and do the same thing. So for example, if a friend of mine started a wallet, I have to send him or her some crypto to get them to get started. And we believe unstoppable domains is the right solution to remove that friction, that sort of anxiety-inducing experience that perhaps if I get one string wrong in that wallet address, it might go to the wrong pump and I might never get my money back. And the QR code thing, look, it's better than the long string address, but is it really shareable? Are you just going to text around and message around a QR code? I don't think people are there yet with QR codes. And so with unstoppable wallet addresses, it's as simple as Hydro.crypto or Pop.crypto or Brad.crypto. And now you can send and receive and share that address publicly. It has privacy features. You're not exposing your private key or your public address. So there's a lot of goodness here. And that's the main reason why we wanted to implement this is ultimately make it really easy for people who are coming in to start using crypto, not just to invest, but also to share among their family and friends, or perhaps use crypto for other economical transactions.

Like if you're a freelancer, you want to transact using crypto across the border. So that's the key motivation. Yeah, it makes a ton of sense that I always joke with people, you know, everyone's had that feeling when you go to send even a small amount and you've got to put in that address and your heart starts beating and it's kind of like the Eminem song, right? It's like, you know, literally you feel like you're about to start sweating because you don't want to screw it up. So it makes a ton of sense. Brad, maybe talk a little bit about how Unstoppable Domains and OKCoin came together and, you

You know, why OKCoin and kind of how did you guys think about entering into the exchanges and getting exchanges to start adopting this on top of wallets? Yes, I mean, I think we started with wallets because they were an easier place to start, frankly. It's a bit simpler for them to adopt new technology based on the way that they're structured. When you are holding people's private keys, you have this gigantic security. I'm not going to use the term honeypot. I think that they're actually quite exchanges. There's plenty of exchanges now that are extremely, extremely good at security, but they have this problem.

And so it's been easier to start with wallets. Also, there's a lot of sending and receiving on wallets, whereas with exchanges, there's a lot more sending and receiving to yourself. So that was a good place to start. But ultimately, if you think about this industry, we have a $1 trillion asset class where the money is being transferred on the equivalent of IP addresses. So this does not look like a sustainable system to anyone inside of crypto or anyone outside of crypto. And if you're trying to get people inside crypto, you're going to need a system that has better user experience. And the user experience of a domain name, which is effectively a username for you crypto, reminds people of what happens in the regular world, reminds people of their

PayPal addresses or their cash app or their Venmo or whatever. So it's a very clear and simple form factor. The way we got connected in with OKCoin, so Haider and I have actually known each other for quite a little while here and have been talking for quite a while. And when he joined OKCoin, he essentially said, I'm going to help make this a a top tier innovative exchange and has said from the beginning that the goal here has been a better user experience because that's what's critical. And the thing that's been pretty unique about our conversations and this partnership is how focused the OKCoin team has been on the user experience broadly, like the user experience of sending crypto more broadly, not just about

getting more money into OKCoin, for example. And I think that those kinds of bets are what the crypto community needs. And that's what's going to get us to this interoperability place. And I think once we have the interoperability, then it's going to be may the best application win. And so I think that the top applications will wind up benefiting even more from supporting interoperability. And Haider, you guys are obviously the first exchange to do this. So let me talk a little bit about like what drove that decision-making and did you want to make sure you were the first? Was it just, Hey, we thought this was the right experience for users and we happened to be the

first, you know, kind of just talk through a little bit of the decision-making from your guys end. Look, we'll take our wins when we can have it. So yes, there, there is a sense of, you know, a feel good when you're, when you're the first, there's a sense of risk too, which is kind of nice. And I think we have to, we have to put our skin in the game a little bit here. um the the being the first piece really boils down from us wanting to deliver optimal user experience

so there's an argument to be had that perhaps uh you know with with the engineering power we have you know we should consider building something like this internally well the challenge is we could create something that's sort of a naming system within the okay coin ecosystem but that doesn't really foster interoperability because we're not well positioned to then convince other wallet companies and other exchanges to adapt our protocol or our naming structure. This is where we think it's one of those innovations that I personally don't think and the company doesn't think is one that should be built by exchanges themselves. I think we should adapt something like Unstoppable because they're on the path to achieving that true interoperability.

uh so the look it's really the user experience we wanted to be the first we wanted to make this a simple experience it's it's really such an easy thing to do from an engineering standpoint to integrate these guys it's really easy to work with them as well and ultimately it delights our customers we're seeing it on twitter today um people who already use unstoppable are excited about this integration uh because now if their funds are in one of those 40 wallets they can bring it over to OKCoin, have some fun, like use it for earn or high yield features, use it for trading into other assets and then take it back to a wallet really seamlessly. So there's a sense of excitement. We're happy to be the first. Hopefully this encourages other exchanges

to adapt it as well, because that's where things start to get really interesting. And that's really the rationale. Yeah, it makes a ton of sense. Brett, maybe talk a little bit just about And Haider mentioned this earlier of while there's a single address that I can share like pomp.crypto, there's still some privacy features and things that prevent me from exposing kind of the public address and all that. So maybe just talk through for somebody from an actual user experience standpoint, if they've got an OKCoin account and now they've got this unstoppable domain, how that actually works in terms of they just send the domain, but what can people see? What can they not see? So it depends on how you configure. There's a few different ways that you can go about it. But ultimately, if you're sending money into an exchange, it's a little bit easier because they have these kind of like pots of money.

So it's hard to, so you can't necessarily discern what's mine versus what's yours. If it's a self-custody wallet, there's a couple of extra things that you can do that are not quite available yet. But for an exchange, it's kind of by default because they have these pots of money. And just kind of in general, I think that the reason why exchanges should do this is the user experience. I think the reason why exchanges will do this is because it helps with deposits. So if you have a domain name attached to your Kcoin addresses, that is going to facilitate deposits into the exchange. I'm not saying that's the only reason you should do it or the only reason you did it, but that is an advantage. And I think Heider kind of touched on this briefly, but I think where we sit is sort of like, I guess, crypto Switzerland.

We're integrating in with everybody. And I think that's one of the reasons why you haven't seen solutions like this come from existing crypto wallets and exchanges is because they're in a competitive market. and it would be hard for them to, you know, kind of cooperate in that way. Whereas, you know, something like, you know, something like us, we can just sort of go in and plug in with, plug in with everybody. Got it. And in terms of when you guys both think through this and you're kind of obviously in partnership, but thinking from two different sides, does this really force the hand of other exchanges? Like, should we expect two years from now, every exchange has support uh for these kind of human readable domains or do we think that uh some maybe just

start priority and they won't actually do it i think less than two years uh yeah i think it's a i think we're going to see a lot of movement um we're already seeing a lot of movement and i think this is just the this is just this is the this is the beginning of the wave got it i think from from my standpoint it's uh thinking about it from a consumer point of view i as a crypto user want to see that happen. There's different value propositions on different exchanges and different wallets. And the ability to move around really easily and without having that sweaty experience that we were talking about, I think it's something I want personally. And I hope that other exchanges are going to follow suit quite quickly because it helps, I think, build up the ecosystem. And

arguably, crypto has been around now for, you know, a decade or so, right? And there's a debate to be had on whether we're moving fast enough on the overall adoption. Have we plateaued? Are we just converting, you know, crypto natives into the existing communities? Are we just talking to each other in an echo chamber? And I continue to look at Cash App and other consumer fintech apps, and their growth accelerates the minute they add the simplest form of a crypto entry point. Are we overcomplicating things in the crypto world? And then traditional finance and crypto or fintech companies are looking at this stuff and saying, oh, cool. They designed something really amazing. Let us take the MVP of that and onboard the rest of the people who've been on

the fence because the way we're doing it in a simple form is an easier way to onboard those folks without intimidating them with all the crypto speak and the user experience. So I think exchanges should really pay attention to that particular trend, because the threat is not other exchanges, crypto exchanges. It's perhaps the bigger competition is consumer finance companies. This is something I really like about Haider's approach. And I don't hear this from a lot of crypto folks, which is that we've got whatever it is, 100 million crypto users right now or something like that.

the goal is to get to a billion. And he's worried about the big guys coming and taking our lunch after all of this hard work. And I don't hear that from other crypto people. I think they are usually, we're in our bubble, patting each other on the back, talking about how great things are going and they are going great. But at the same time, because they're going so well, we are getting the attention of these much, much more sophisticated companies and they're better user experience like hands down they are better at user experience and uh we need to we need to step up our game because those next billion crypto users are coming and the question is uh who gets them and and that's that is i think the value proposition of uh of human readable names is

is getting getting those uh getting that next billion people on right from the start like never even see those hex addresses like that's going to be the way uh that we can much more easily bring on the next billion people. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Before we wrap up, I want to ask both of you just to kind of look forward into the future. Again, you know, whether it's five, 10 years forward, how are these and the use of these human readable names going to evolve, right? So maybe Brad, you can talk about just across the entire ecosystem. And Heider, you could talk about kind of not only what else you guys are looking to do with this, but how it fits into kind of how an exchange would really build this out. But just how does

the human readable name kind of become the the core part of this industry and kind of where do we evolve to so i think the advantage that you get when you get so because a blockchain domain is a crypto asset stored inside of your wallet you control it completely uh it gets you that interoperability uh it means that uh it's it's tamper proof essentially nobody can take it away from you unstoppable domains can't take it away from you and because you have that assurance it enables you to go and build a lot of different things on top of it. So it starts with payments. There was a feature to tie a real ID, your Twitter account, to your domain name

so that you can have more of a sense of who it is that you're paying, but the user still controls all of that information and decides which Twitter handle to attach to their domain and can decide to attach other information to their domain. So what you're seeing is kind of like a bottom-up way to start identifying a person could be pseudo anonymously identifying them, but still identifying them, a person or end of a party in order to be able to start doing more complicated transactions with them. And, you know, in the regular world, if I'm doing some sort of a transaction, I'm not usually sending it

to some anonymous set of letters and numbers. I usually have some information before I do that transaction. I think that's the thing that's going to allow us to start doing more things. uh there's already pretty interesting use cases of uh these uh unstoppable domains beyond just the wallet uh thing that we're focused on today uh the the one that i'm continuing to explore is publishing content on these domains so i think in the future what this this could potentially become is sort of your access into a user-owned internet. And you've probably heard us talk about this in context of the STX partnership. They're, you know, attacking this issue from a different angle. With Unstoppable Domains, I could see a future where this is your entry point into Web3,

into an ecosystem of Web3 apps. It also is an address that you can use to transact interact with people and yourself across different platforms. And then it's also a place, essentially a real estate that is truly your real estate on the internet. It's not the real estate you get through VeriSign and ICANN, which is sort of a leased real estate. I think a lot of people don't understand this concept that if you buy a domain on GoDaddy or any other registrar, domain registrar, you're not really a true owner. You're just simply leasing it. And that fee can change and vary from year to year. And by the way, you don't have privacy. You're actually going to pay for privacy. I think it's like nine bucks or 10 bucks a year. And kid you not,

there's no privacy with that package. I swear to you, I have bought domains. I have opted into that privacy package. And there I start getting calls from web developers and SEO experts. And, you know, so that it's questionable. Back to your question about the future of these things. I think it's an identity system or could be a universal identity system into your access into Web3, into an ability for you to transact with people using this simple domain. And then thirdly, having this real estate on the internet that no one can take away from you. It's tamper resistant, it's censorship resistant, and it's true ownership. So you can publish content, And say you're, you know, for the lack of a better example, you're WikiLeaks.

It's going to be really hard for the future WikiLeaks to be taken down, for the good or bad. Yeah. Look, I think that people are drastically underestimating this. And, you know, kudos, one, obviously, to Brad and your team for making this all possible and kind of building the technical stack. And then, Heider, for you guys to just be so forward thinking, I think, and really understanding kind of the value of a great user experience that reduces friction for people, both that are already in kind of Bitcoin and crypto, but also for those that have yet to kind of join. So, you know, I want to appreciate both of you guys coming on and talking about this, but it just seems to me like this is a no brainer.

And I definitely agree with both of you that this will become kind of an industry standard over time. So what is the way if somebody wants to get on board, right? Do they go through just the OKCoin normal account creation and then they can elect to do this? Do they need to go to unstoppable domains? Just talk through kind of people who have kind of heard about this and now want to do it. What's the best way to send them to go participate? There's really two types of people that are going to be onboarding.

One is the segment of people who already have an unstoppable domain. It's easy for them. They just come in, create an OKCoin account. If they already have an OKCoin account, they don't need to do much more. And when you go in the withdrawal flow, you can now enter your unstoppable domain and withdraw or deposit into OKCoin using an unstoppable domain. The thing with unstoppable domains, the way it's structured is you typically, your entry point into using it, whether you're on the wallet side or exchange side, is the withdrawal flow. So say you want to deposit into OKCoin,

you're going to go into your wallet's withdrawal flow, enter your unstoppable domain address, and then OKCoin will receive it, right? Or you can receive it in OKCoin. Now, if you're a brand new user, you don't have an unstoppable domain, you're hearing this podcast, you want to start with unstoppabledomains.com. You want to go ahead and purchase a domain.

It ranges anywhere between $20 and $40, depending on how customized you want it to be. And then once you have that domain locked and loaded, you want to configure it with your wallet or your wallet addresses. And that's it. basically you're you're done there and then you can start using it to to move money around or to move crypto around awesome unstoppable domains.com okay coin.com you guys are uh you guys are legends

for pulling this off so congratulations to both of you uh highly suggest everyone go check it out and we'll talk again next time sounds good thanks for having us by the way anyone a last teaser anyone uh who who actually uses an unstoppable domains on okay coin is automatically entering into a $10,000 giveaway. So odds are great. Just saying. I love it. All right.

Thank you guys so much. We'll do it again. Thanks, Anthony.