The Pomp Podcast - Erik Voorhees, Founder & CEO of ShapeShift: From Bitcoin 2012 to Bitcoin 2022

Episode Date: September 26, 2019

Erik Voorhees is the founder and CEO of ShapeShift, and one of the original Bitcoiners. In this conversation, Erik and Anthony Pompliano discuss the early days of Bitcoin, how he built and sold Satoshi Dice, how ShapeShift has evolved, how Erik thinks about KYC, AML, and other regulations, and what he's most excited about as Bitcoin continues into the future. BLOCKFI-----BlockFi allows you to keep your crypto, put it up as collateral, and receive a USD loan funded directly to your bank account. They do loans ranging from $2,000 to $10,000,000, and they're perfect for helping you reach your financial goals of all sizes. Visit BlockFi.com/Pomp to learn more about putting your crypto to work without having to sell it. CRYPTO.COM-----Crypto.com is a pioneering payment and cryptocurrency platform that seeks to accelerate the world's transition to cryptocurrency. With the vision of "cryptocurrency in every wallet", the Crypto.com App offers a full range of financial products with competitive pricing, well designed UX and high security. It is the best place to buy, sell and pay with crypto. COINMINE-----The Coinmine One is like an Xbox that turns your electricity into Bitcoin. You just plug it in, connect to wifi, and tap on the crypto you want. It’s so easy anyone can do it. Everything is controlled from the Coinmine mobile app and the Coinmine keeps getting better with over the air updates that add new coins, features and services to your Coinmine.  Visit coinmine.com/pomp to get a Coinmine and earn crypto for powering a new world.

What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to Off The Chain, simply the best podcast in crypto. Let's kick this thing off. Eric Voorhees is the founder and CEO of Shapeshift and one of the original Bitcoiners. In this conversation, we discussed the early days of Bitcoin, how he built and sold Satoshi dice how shapeshift has evolved how eric thinks about kyc aml and other regulations and what he is most excited about as bitcoin continues into the future i really enjoyed this conversation and i hope you do as well want to know who has the best url crypto.com that's right crypto.com they're a crypto platform with one goal mother in mass adoption that's why we're all here we're

trying to get crypto in every wallet crypto.com is helping people do that through buying earning lending and card payment everything you could want at crypto.com go help your boy out tell him pomp sent you download the app or visit crypto.com pomp's got you always ever wanted to get into mining and didn't know how don't worry your boy pomp's got you everybody got some electricity and wi-fi all you got to do is go to coinmine.com you buy a coin mine it's like an Xbox or a PlayStation that helps you turn your electricity into Bitcoin. That's right. You purchase it. It shows up at your doorstep. You pull it out of the box. You plug it in, connect to your Wi-Fi. Five minutes or less, you're mining Bitcoin. All you have to do is control it from the

mobile app they provide, and then you receive over-the-air updates that add new coins and new features on a consistent basis. Kind of like how Tesla does over-the-air updates and updates the car software, just your update in your CoinMine. Consumer mining made easy. That's right. Go to CoinMine.com, tell them Pomp sent you, and thank me later. As many of you know, crypto investors store their digital assets on exchanges or in cold storage for long-term safekeeping. However, this strategy doesn't help them grow their investment holdings or build overall wealth. With the new BlockFi interest account, users can now securely store their Bitcoin or Ether at BlockFi and receive 6% annual interest paid monthly in cryptocurrency. 6% is an absurdly

high rate. It's the best rate in the industry. I highly suggest you go check out BlockFi.com slash Pomp. Again, that's BlockFi.com slash Pomp to sign up and start earning crypto today. If you follow Bitcoin and crypto, you've probably heard of eToro. They're the world's number one social trading platform, and I love it. They've got more than 10 million other traders that love it too. And guess what? They just launched in the United States. eToro offers access to the world's most popular cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and others. With the smartest trading tools and the ability to connect with the best traders around the world, there's no better place to build your perfect portfolio. If you're new to Bitcoin and crypto, you can test the waters with

their $100,000 virtual trading feature. But if you're more experienced, you can create custom technical charts and use eToro's social feeds to inform your trading decisions. They've got transparent fees. And so you never miss out. They also have an easy to use application available on iPhone, Android, or any web browser. You can get started today in just a few clicks at etoro.com. Again, that's etoro.com. Get VIP access to Bitcoin and crypto markets today. 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'm here with Eric. We are in Laramie, Wyoming of all places. And we don't have too, too long, but we want to sit down real quick and talk a little bit about his background, how he originally discovered Bitcoin, what he's doing at Shapeshift, and go from there. So thanks so much for taking the time to do this. Yeah, thanks for having me on the show. For sure. Let's start with the background. What did you do kind of pre-Bitcoin, crypto, etc.?

Well, immediately pre-Bitcoin, I was in New Hampshire as part of the Free State Project. What is that? The Free State Project was basically a crazy idea to get 20,000 radical libertarians to move to a small jurisdiction like New Hampshire and make some kind of material change. Since libertarians seem to be a minority of the population, it made sense to actually try to coalesce in one area. And it was actually from a friend there that I first learned about Bitcoin back in 2011. Got it. And so as you wanted all these people to move to the one area, what were some of the ideas in terms of like what would be different than living somewhere else?

Well, actually, Wyoming had also been selected and it was kind of the close second to New Hampshire. But the Free State Project is really like a long term thing. It was it was already going for like five or 10 years before I got involved. And it's really kind of a generational idea to move people to one spot and just affect every level of the society from politics all the way down to just grassroots efforts. And I thought it was the best idea I had heard to actually make a material difference in the purpose of liberty. But when Bitcoin came along, it was just clear that it had such a higher leverage value. And if we were successful with Bitcoin, it wouldn't be just one region, but it would be the whole world. It makes a ton of sense.

What was the first time that you ever heard of Bitcoin or came across it? You remember what that was? Yeah, it was like May 8th of 2011. Um, I just gotten back from a trip to, uh, to the Caribbean and saw a Facebook post about it from a friend in the free state project, read an article. I was like, ah, that sounds stupid, but I read another one and another one. And then by the second or third article, I was totally hooked. The, the idea of being able to move money for free anywhere without anyone being able to stop you was so obviously valuable and interesting that I, I, I completely got obsessed with it and

instantly gave up everything productive I was doing and just totally fell down the rabbit hole. So what'd you do first? First, I was just learning. So, you know, my background is not in computer science at all. I'm not an engineer. So there was a lot of just learning, you know, what these terms were, everything about cryptography. I had no understanding of any of that stuff. And then also just like really trying to use it and send it around to people. And I think I was one of the first people who, because I wasn't an engineer, my, my value add was in kind of describing it to people and conveying why it was useful from a monetary perspective.

My background is in monetary economics just by, is a hobby of mine. And so I really latched onto it as like the, the way that the world can use money without governments being involved. Got it. And so we, we probably don't have time to get into a bit instant story and kind of some of the earlier projects that you did. If people want to, they can go read Ben Merzik's book, Bitcoin Billionaires, that covers on some of it. But one of the things that you did do that most people listening to this either aren't aware of or won't realize is Satoshi Dice. Maybe talk a little bit about just what that was and kind of why you started it and what happened. Yeah. So Satoshi Dice was a crazy phenomenon. It started as just a hobby side project while

I was at BitInstant. It was in April of 2012. And essentially, it was just an easy way to gamble your Bitcoins. You could send Bitcoins to a certain address. Each address had different odds. And then a roll of the dice would happen based on those odds. And you would either get more Bitcoin back or you would lose your Bitcoin that you sent in. And the reason it was so awesome was that it was provably fair. So you could actually prove after a bet that the odds were correct and they were what we said they were. And because it was Bitcoin, it demonstrated that people could send money anywhere in the world instantly. They didn't have to know who I was. They didn't have to trust Satoshi Dice. It just demonstrated the power of Bitcoin itself and the power of

cryptography to verify these kind of roles. For sure. And so obviously that went pretty well. You ended up selling it at one point. And how do you get from Satoshi Dice and BitInstant to Shapeshift? And what was kind of the original idea there as to what you wanted to build? Yeah. So while I was at BitInstant, we had the Winklevoss brothers invest in the company. And people can read that book that you mentioned if they want to hear more about that story. But let's just say it didn't end very well. And myself and another BitInstant guide named Ira, we moved down to Panama to co-found Coinapult, which was essentially just a Bitcoin wallet. And so I was down in Panama for a year. I decided I wanted to leave that and move

back to the US. And I had an idea for Shapeshift sort of as I was planning to move back. And so Shapeshift got started in early 2014. And so what was the original idea that you started with? And then how has it evolved from there to what you're doing today? So the original idea was that I wanted to be able to convert Bitcoin into another coin as easily as possible because they're both digital assets. It seemed that there should be no friction between one and the other. And I saw that, you know, just as Bitcoin was obviously valuable because you could move money all over the world, these blockchains were valuable because you could do all sorts of new financial products built on them. So I thought there would be, you know, thousands

or millions of digital assets, probably multiple blockchains, and people needed an easy way to move between them. So I built ShapeShift first just as a tool and it started growing and growing. And then, you know, as the, as when Ethereum came out, the explosion of different assets really took off the 2017 bubble was absolutely crazy. And so it, at some point between, you know, little side project and, and today it became a real company. And at this point we're about 75 people. And so how has the business evolved? Like 2017, obviously, was this crazy maniac time of just everyone and their mom seemed to want to buy a token and find it, you know, that it was gonna be the next great thing, etc. And if you were in any sort of infrastructure, I think there was this

almost like artificially high influx of users and volume. And then it comes back down to more natural levels. How has that changed kind of your business strategy in terms of maybe what you were building pre-Mania, during the Mania, and then afterwards? Has there been a big shift or is it still kind of due course of business and going from there? Well, by the time that the 2017 bubble happened, I'd been through three bubbles prior. So the first one in 2011, one in early 2013, and then the big one in late 2013. And so I'd felt how this works, that Bitcoin and these things tend to go in these cycles.

They tend to go up over time, but they're very volatile in the short term. They're real crazy on the upside and real crazy on the downside. And as long as you can just handle both and not lose your shit, then it's a great industry. And so when the 2017 bubble came along, it wasn't a new phenomenon to me,

but each bubble has become more and more intense than the last one. And every time they happen, you get this influx of new people, almost all of whom only care about getting rich quick. And when the bubble pops, most of them go away, but not all of them. And so you end up getting just a growing group of core people that get fascinated by the technology. So Shapeshift really hasn't changed post-bubble. What has changed is that Shapeshift implemented KYC accounts in mid or late 2018. That was a fundamental change to the whole business because before that we didn't have any user accounts whatsoever. I'm very vehemently opposed to having to take personal information from people. We did it not because we want to, but

because we were forced or compelled to do it. And so that was a huge struggle for us as a company and me personally. Uh, but that certainly changed the business. So let's talk about this a little bit because, um, I think that, uh, one thing no one can take away from you is that you're very principled driven, right? And you've been very clear about a number of the principles that you have, um, describe some of the issues that you take with KYC, AML type stuff, uh, and the collection of the personal information for a lot of this infrastructure, and then maybe walk us through, um, you know, what the decision-making process was to go ahead and add some of it, once you were compelled to? Yeah. So fundamentally, I think, um, if you haven't heard anyone,

then you deserve to be left alone. And that's really like the basis of my ethical foundation. So when it comes to, I think so, if you haven't heard someone, then, then you should be free. Um, that that's supposed to be the foundation of what America is built on. Uh, and so in the context of business, we don't need someone's name or address or phone number or social security number in order to trade crypto with them. We don't need that at all. They don't want to give it to us. We don't want to have it. So why do it? And if we take it, then now we are endangering that person because now their personal information is getting broadcast across the internet. It's just not a good thing to do. On the other hand, the government wants financial institutions

to basically spy on people for them. They want companies to basically be part of their surveillance apparatus, and they force, through law, companies to do this. Early on in ShapeShift's history, we felt comfortable enough in the gray area. It wasn't clear whether we would be considered a financial institution and whether we had these kind of legal requirements under U.S. and international laws. After the 2017 bubble, when we grew quite large, we started really looking into this because the gray area was getting less and less comfortable

and um we navigated every contour of this stuff that we could we spent literally millions of dollars in multiple jurisdictions trying to figure out whether we would need to do this or or in what way and ultimately came to the conclusion that if we didn't do it we we would be probably thrown in a, in a cage and our lives would be over. So faced with that, that's a pretty, pretty shitty position to be in. And, uh, definitely it was the most stressful decision-making time and most difficult challenges I've had to deal with in my life. For sure. And, um, I guess as you kind of look out past the KYC AML, right. Um, do you feel like, uh, the U S companies are at a disadvantage because of some of this? Or is this something that you see across the world, people having

to implement as long as they're interacting at all with legacy financial system? And, you know, how do you think about kind of jurisdiction competition when it comes to the regulatory environments? Yeah. So the U.S. is certainly not alone in these requirements. Most of the world requires them. And what most people don't realize is it's not just about where your company is based or where you're based it's about where your customers are so if you want to block you know the u.s all of europe most of asia um you can probably get away with a company that doesn't do kyz or if you're still small you might just be under the radar and it's not going to be an issue but to build anything um anything of size at scale in which any of your customers are in

these jurisdictions you start running an increasingly high risk and that was the risk we weren't comfortable taking anymore. Got it. Are there other regulations that you feel like are onerous or specifically kind of over the top, if you will? And not so much in, you know, I think one part to caveat in this conversation is, you know, we've talked before, and I think most people that know you or others in the industry would say, a lot of these beliefs are not rooted in like nefarious activity, right? It's not like, hey, we shouldn't have laws and regulations because we want people to be empowered to do bad things. Instead, it is much more around that individualistic freedom and rights. So from that viewpoint, making sure that that viewpoint

is clear, like are there other regulations that you say, you know, they kind of fall in line with the KYC stuff where they may not be necessary or they may be a little bit more over the top in owners? Yeah, I'm pretty much not a fan of any regulations. Yeah, I mean, fundamentally, you know, when you go to a restaurant, they don't KYC you. You're permitted to pay anonymously and eat. And yet what if the restaurant is serving a terrorist food, right? You would be facilitating terrorism by nourishing the terrorist. The same principle applies when it comes to money. the vast majority of your customers are good people and haven't done anything wrong there's not even a suspicion or accusation of wrongdoing and so to endanger them by taking their personal

information is is just purely unethical in my opinion there are lots of other regulations throughout the financial industry i have my own issues with the sec for many reasons I mean basically their rules prevent only written or they prevent people who aren't wealthy from investing in early startups I think that's entirely unethical I think things like what the FDA does where they prevent life-saving treatments from going to people if they haven't gone through all their tests and people literally die waiting for FDA approval there's I could go on and on with this stuff but suffice to say that I wish that America would start moving back toward the principle of individual liberty

that it was founded on. And it's moved so far from that and I don't see that changing in any meaningful sense. Skrt, skrt. Want to know who has the best URL? Crypto.com. That's right, Crypto.com.

They're a crypto platform with one goal, motherf***ing mass adoption. That's why we're all here. We're trying to get crypto in every wallet. Crypto.com is helping people do that through buying, earning, lending, and card payment. everything you could want at crypto.com go help your boy out tell him pomp sent you download the app or visit crypto.com pomp's got you always ever wanted to get into mining and didn't know how

don't worry your boy pomp's got you everybody got some electricity and wi-fi all you got to do is go to coinmine.com you buy a coin mine it's like an xbox or a playstation that helps you turn your electricity into bitcoin that's right you purchase it it shows up at your doorstep you pull it out of the box you plug it in connect to your wi-fi five minutes or less you're mining bitcoin all you have to do is control it from the mobile app they provide and then you receive over-the-air updates that add new coins and new features on a consistent basis kind of like how tesla does over-the-air updates and updates the car software just you're updating your coin mine consumer mining made easy. That's right. Go to coinmine.com, tell them Pomp sent you, and thank me later.

One more word from our sponsor, BlockFi. Their new interest account allows you to securely deposit your Bitcoin or Ether at BlockFi and receive 6% annual interest paid monthly in cryptocurrency. This rate actually compounds, so you receive a 6.2% APY, which is very attractive given the alternatives. So you can actually take your Bitcoin, you can deposit it with BlockFi and get paid an interest rate of 6% in return. Go check out BlockFi.com slash Pomp. Again, BlockFi.com slash Pomp to sign up and start earning interest on your crypto today. Let's kind of go a little bit more internal to the United States. You live in Denver, I believe, right? And most of the people that we've had on the podcast live in New York,

San Francisco, LA, somewhere international. But we haven't really talked to folks in um, you know, kind of the mountain time zone, if you will talk a little bit about, you know, why I choose to live, uh, in, uh, Denver, kind of what that ecosystem looks like crypto and then just technology more generally. Yeah. Well, I, I grew up in Colorado. I grew up in the mountains, so I've always loved Colorado generally. And so when I moved back here, it was really just a lifestyle preference. I've lived in New York. I've lived in Dubai. I've lived down in Panama. But the mountains and the sun and just the beautiful land is something that I love. So Denver has been an amazing city. It's definitely not a financial hub, but it's a tech

hub at this point. And so it's plenty large for us to hire anyone we need to hire and great food and beautiful place. So I just love living there and I can fly anywhere I need to pretty quickly. So it doesn't get better than that. For sure. Moving back to the crypto space, What what other areas are you personally interested in? Right. So outside of the regulation, like what are the areas you think are really important right now that people should be paying attention to? It may even serve as, you know, large inflection points for for growth or adoption. So the thing that most people like on a macro level, the thing that is most exciting that people should be really paying attention to is that the conversation around monetary attributes has hit not mainstream, but I would say mainstream politics. And this has largely been catalyzed by Libra. Bitcoin grew from this very small thing, and the people who are involved in it care about the attributes of money and what makes money good.

But that's not something that the mainstream public has cared about. The word fiat was never used in normal discourse before Bitcoin came out. And through Bitcoin and the crypto industry, and especially through Libra now, politicians and economists are saying the word fiat. They're talking about the attributes of money. They're getting worried that someone like Facebook is coming out with a currency because it could compete with the dollar and harm monetary policy. That theme is amazing. That's like what we fantasized about, you know, nine years ago. um and so it's that that trend won't stop you know as crypto keeps growing as the fiat financial

system falls apart into the next recession these things are going to be hot topics of debate i think bitcoin will be villainized by economists libra will be villainized by economists and the politicians who basically want to perpetuate the fiat banking system but that that theme is just really fascinating and is the thing that really gets me excited every day i wake up you get me excited just talking about it um what's kind of your view if we look out you know 10 20 years what what is actually possible is it uh bitcoin's the global reserves uh currency is it uh bitcoin is a digital gold it's in everyone's portfolio like what's kind of the new dream right i think a lot of the stuff that's happening now was the dream of eight nine

ten years ago just because it seems so improbable but uh high impact if it happened what do you see now as some of those milestones 10, 20 years from now? So 10 or 20 years from now, I think fiat currencies will be mostly gone. 10 might be ambitious, but I think 20 years is probable. And the reason is that as Bitcoin takes over, people will tend not to save their money in assets that are debasable. So dollar and any fiat currency is highly debasable. They are debased as a matter of course and policy. And people just will at the margins tend to avoid those things and hold their value in something like Bitcoin. So I think this will be incredible because it will restrain the ability of governments to spend money. They won't be able to inflate currency

anymore. It means governments will have to shrink. I think you will have some kind of borderless global currency like Bitcoin that everyone around the world will use. There won't be this idea of the currency you use is based on where you live. In the same way that the internet has taken down all these borders and people just talk to each other anywhere in the world, Bitcoin and blockchain technology have done that for money. So people can now move value anywhere in the world without these kind of borders and arbitrary restrictions. So I honestly see it taking over the entire financial system. And I see the place of the crypto industry as basically building the alternative system to the fiat and banking system. It is definitely looking like we're headed that

way. The kind of competitors in the arena, if you will, right now, there's the fiat system that we've seen. There's Bitcoin, which is this decentralized currency. Then you've got what I'll call like the corporate coins, right? So this is everything from the Facebooks, but also the JP Morgans, the Wells Fargo's that, you know, they're backing them by a dollar, etc. And then there's this last category, which is the central bank digital currencies. Maybe, you know, what are your thoughts there in terms of is that just a perpetuation of the existing fiat system? Is there some innovation there that actually may save the central bank systems? Like, what do you think about that? Yeah, we had the same discussion back in 2011, like won't governments just create their

own digital currencies? And the truth, which we said back then as well, was that fiat already is a digital currency. So the US dollar is the world's largest digital currency today. All fiat currencies are digital currencies. And the fact that there are a few bearer instruments that are physical cash doesn't mean that the fundamental currency isn't digital so the question of like will will governments make new new digital currencies that are fiat um yeah they'll probably try because they think that will change things but they will keep control over the system they'll never relinquish uh control over their new digital dollar and they will always maintain the ability to inflate it so in what sense that's is that any different than than dollars today

If a government ever came out with a digital currency that they could not control and that they could not debase, that could actually seriously be a competitor to Bitcoin. But no government will ever do that. Yeah, I tend to agree that that's probably right. Before I wrap up, I do rapid fire questions. What do you think is the most important company in Bitcoin or crypto other than Shapeshift? We're definitely not the most important company in crypto. So I think I think you got to say either Binance or Coinbase due to the effect that they've had, the ability of Binance to move into all these different verticals and seemingly

execute very well over and over again has to be admired. And Coinbase, I think more than any other company, has brought people into cryptocurrency. So for all their faults, I continue to be a big fan of Coinbase. I hope to someday outcompete them and like, you know, destroy them. But I also think they're an incredibly important company and deserve some admiration for that. There's nothing like admiring the person that you're trying to destroy. I love that. All right.

We already talked about the regulation stuff, so I'll skip that question. What's the most important book you've ever read? Most important book I've ever read is probably What Has Government Done to Our Money by Rothbard. Very short. You can read it in the afternoon. but it demonstrates sort of the perversion of what money used to be, you know, pre-100 years ago to what it is now in this fully fiat world. And it just so cohesively demonstrates the moral failings of that process. It was something I read before Bitcoin, and it was something that

got me really interested in gold and that really opened my mind so that it was ready for Bitcoin and when it happened, but that was absolutely a life-changing book. It's a, it's one that often gets recommended on the podcast. So people definitely should check it out. Um, aliens, what, uh, uh, usually in the podcast, you get, you get asked me a question, but we talk aliens first believer, non-believer. Are you going to area 51? Not going to area 51.

Um, obviously aliens exist. Like it's just obvious. Um, who knows what they look like? They almost certainly don't look like people. um but they definitely are out there and and probably gazillions and trillions of different kinds of aliens so i would love to meet one one day or just you know know that they were on on mars or on the moon or something weird but yeah they're definitely out there most people who come on that's their take it's just mathematic probability is it's just math yeah it's just

there has to be other living life uh but um or i guess other life um but the one thing is it doesn't have to look like the little slimy green, you know, man that we see in movies, right? It could be a whole bunch of other different things. Um, all right, to end it, uh, what one question do you have for me? So my question for you is when the financial system starts falling apart, uh, Bitcoin will be vilified, um, to the extreme. Um, it'll be attached to the destability of, of the government. Uh, people who support it will be called unpatriotic, all that kind of nonsense. what what is your best refutation of that imminent rhetoric that will happen so i'm going to go uh contrarian on you a little bit in the sense that i actually don't think

that's going to happen um and the reason is um and maybe this is a pipe dream or too optimistic on my standpoint but um you know we've been successful in getting public pensions exposure to bitcoin uh there's now wall street banks and financial institutions that are starting to get um access and so it's uh a question of how much penetration into the like quote unquote um you know the elites or the incumbents can we get before that happens um if there's deep penetration i don't think they're going to be able to uh really vilify it because you're basically vilifying yourself right to some degree um if there is not deep penetration i agree that that could happen And to answer your question, in that sense, I think it's something where as information and the internet makes that information more transparent, I think it becomes pretty obvious, like, don't watch what people are saying, just watch what they're doing with their money, right?

You know, and kind of why is somebody saying something? One of my partners always says, you know, never ask an incumbent about disruption, right? Because they have very specific views. And so I would like to think, and again, maybe too optimistic, but it will be easy to see why certain people are railing against it. It's because they're the ones who have the most to lose. But, you know, I think we're going to have to get to that point to see really what happens. Yeah, I've certainly been happy that the U.S. has been much more tolerant of Bitcoin than many of us feared back in the early days. So as long as that process can continue and if it can get mainstream enough,

And if the tentacles of this technology really get, you know, wrapped around the financial system in a good way to where lots of powerful and important people have already decided it's worthwhile and important, that'll be like an inoculation against that kind of vilification. I completely agree. Listen, I appreciate you taking time to do this. It's been super fun and you're building a great business. So we'll have to do it again in the future to get some updates. Yeah. Thanks, Pom. Thanks for having me on. Hey everyone,

pop here. If you like this episode of off the chain and want to help us take crypto to the top of the Apple Spotify and other podcast charts, please do us a favor and rate review and subscribe to review. Simply go to the off the chain homepage, scroll down until you see the five blank stars taking 15 seconds to fill those stars in and leave a quick review goes a long way in helping us take the entire crypto ecosystem to the top of the charts.

I appreciate you listening and see you next time on off the chain. Thank you.