The Wolf Of All Streets - The Future Of Crypto Payments with Sanja Kon, CEO of Utrust

Episode Date: December 8, 2020

As a young girl, Sanja Kon was told that she was “too ambitious” because of her insatiable drive to succeed and change the world. Fast forward to her professional career, where Sanja has played a significant role in the development of PayPal and eBay, leading innovation in the fintech and e-commerce sectors. After discovering blockchain and crypto, she took a huge leap into the nascent space and became CEO of Utrust, with the ambitious goal of scaling worldwide adoption of a brand new payment method. Scott Melker and Sanja Kon further discuss what it's like to work at eBay and PayPal, leaving the legacy system for crypto, PayPal offering cryptocurrency, becoming the CEO of Utrust, reverse staking, COVID-19, the death of brick and mortar, an “overly ambitious” child, hiring for diversity, the stages of joining the crypto ecosystem, women in tech, the rate of crypto adoption and more. --- CELSIUS With the Celsius app you can earn up to 15% APY rewards on over 30 cryptocurrencies. Have crypto but want cash? Celsius also offers the lowest cost loans against your crypto with interest rates starting at just 1% APR. Enter promo code WOLF when you sign up and get $20 in BTC! Users must transfer and hold at least $200 of any coin for 30 days to be eligible for the reward. --- If you enjoyed this conversation, share it with your colleagues & friends, rate, review, and subscribe.This podcast is presented by BlockWorks Group. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at: https://www.blockworksgroup.io

I'd like to thank my sponsors, Celsius, for making this episode possible. Stay tuned later in the episode for more info. What is up, everybody? I'm Scott Melker, and this is the Wolf of All Streets podcast. Today's guest is the CEO of Utrust, a company that is modernizing the financial sector and payments industry with cryptocurrency. Sonia had extensive success at fintech and e-commerce giants PayPal and eBay, but left the legacy system to carve her own path in cryptocurrencies and blockchain.

In this interview, I plan to find out why she made this transition, how you trust Vue's institutional adoption, and what it's like to be the CEO of a crypto company. Sonia Cohen, thanks so much for being here. Thank you for having me, Scott. Thank you so much. So before we dive into the questions, once again, this is the Wolf of All Streets podcast, where twice a week I talk to your favorite personalities from the worlds of Bitcoin, finance, trading, art, music, sports, and politics. Basically, anyone with a good story to tell.

This show is powered by BlockWorks Group, a media company with over 20 podcasts in their network. You can check them out at blockworksgroup.io. And if you like the podcast, follow me on Twitter. You need to check out my website, enjoy my newsletter. You can do both of those things at thewolfofallstreets.io. So now on to what's important. So as I mentioned before, Sanja, you were already at the upper levels of eBay and PayPal. Seems like a very, very comfortable job. It's a very comfortable situation. So why did you decide to roll the dice and enter the crypto space? Yeah, you're right. It was very comfortable. And actually, I wasn't really planning to end up in the blockchain or crypto space.

It was very driven by forces. So after spending a few years at eBay, eBay was a great experience for me. It's a great company. I think it's a company where people don't really understand the company identity, but eBay is really a company giving human faces to their sellers and really helping millions of people to sell and become millionaires and really giving a human touch to their brand. So after seeing the e-commerce side, I went working for PayPal.

And what I found at the time, so I was working in the UK market as head of marketplaces, so my team was developing the marketplace payment solution for marketplace platforms, actually. So when I saw really the complexity related to the ecosystem, the payment and the costs that we were charging customers, I really wanted to bring a change, a change in the sector. So I was researching companies that were using blockchain at the time. I'm talking about 2018 and I found you trust and at the time I just found a white paper of what you trust was planning to do and I reached out to them so I reached out to to Nuno the co-founder on on LinkedIn and we had a

conversation and actually Nuno flew over to to me. So we met, I flew to Milan as well. We had lunch and I was amazed by him, by his vision. So I started to advise U-Trust at the beginning from an external perspective. And then after a while, I was like, what am I doing? Like, I really want to join this company because I really want to change things in the ecosystem. I want to bring financial freedom to people. I want to help companies to have a smoother system for payments, for international payments. So it was very, you know, a natural path. Once I met with Nuno and we established a relationship. So we ended up working together very, very soon. Yeah. Yeah. I love Nuno. He's like the nicest, he really is the nicest guy in the world.

So I have to ask you though. So you said, you know, you were, you were at PayPal, you realized obviously that there were some issues and that they needed to be fixed and So, I have to ask you though. So, you said you were at PayPal. You realized, obviously, that there were some issues and that they needed to be fixed and you wanted to change the entire ecosystem. And then you sort of kind of glossed over. You said, so I started looking at blockchain solutions. So, why did you start looking specifically at blockchain solutions? Why didn't you look at other legacy solutions or things that were out there? Yeah, sure. So, at the time, as I said, because I was working mostly with marketplace players. So marketplaces, they have usually a lot of

international trade, a lot of international payments. Sometimes, you know, more than 80-90% of their payments is international. And I really believe there's nothing in the traditional payment space that can disrupt cross-border trade costs and like speed and efficiency like blockchain. And also for certain sectors like B2B or more traditional e-commerce, a lot of international trade is really done by

bank wire transfer, which is very inefficient. The payment comes after a week sometimes. The seller cannot ship the items unless they receive the payment. So it was creating a lot of issues. And I did research a lot of issues. And I did research a lot of, you know, traditional solutions. There are some good companies out there, but nothing beats it. So I did my full extensive research until deciding, you know, blockchain and then U-Trust. It's funny because both of your former employees,

employers, I should say, are now kind of in the news for crypto, right? And it's like they're following you. But eBay obviously has done a partnership with Lolly that I read about, you know, so they'll be offering rewards for purchases in Bitcoin. But then the big elephant in the room for the whole crypto space is PayPal now, right? So PayPal is offering Bitcoin buying and selling.

Obviously, people have issues. You can't send it and it's not your wallet, obviously. But what do you make of the PayPal move into crypto? Yeah, so for me personally, it's not a big surprise. So still at the time when I was working at PayPal, so that was 2018, there was a team working on blockchain. It was kind of top secret, even in the company. So the team was obviously based in the US. So we didn't have much visibility, but we knew that there was a team researching the ecosystem, which makes sense.

I think, you know, every major company should look into innovation. So it totally makes sense. And then, you know, also PayPal in the last years invested in some blockchain companies. So we knew that, you know know there was interest out there they joined the libra association and that you know they went out of it because of mostly regulation but for me it was kind of obvious that you know they were trying to enter the space um somehow so what i think i think it's really healthy for the whole ecosystem because obviously when people massively see that a big company that has a lot of trust in the market is offering cryptocurrency that automatically gives more trust um into the ecosystem for sure um hundred percent

um also because paypal is going to make crypto available on their merchant base. So we're talking about millions of merchants. And today, merchants have a hard time in accepting crypto because they don't trust it. So I think this is going to give a lot of space, even to other companies like ourselves to grow. Because I think, you know, it's, the opportunity is so big, there is space for everyone to find their own voice, their own strategy. I think, you know, what PayPal is going to do is entirely different from what we do. It's great that they are entering the space, but I think companies like PayPal are built on legacy infrastructure. So for them, adding blockchain is another layer. They're not blockchain native. So I think also the kind of customer they're going to attract is different,

but definitely is great because they're opening the space for more companies to join. And I think that's really healthy because it's going to create more competition and only the companies who are going to offer a great service will thrive. And they're a mammoth. I mean, they're just such a huge company. I can't imagine that they're going to innovate quickly, right? And so it seems like that would be a huge advantage for someone like you, Trust, because you're lean, obviously, and you can make quick decisions and probably beat them to it. I always sort of viewed the PayPal news as more bullish for like the price of Bitcoin because people would buy it like crazy who

didn't have a place that they trusted to buy it. But on the merchant side, I just didn't see it potentially gaining so much traction on that side, maybe because I know you guys. So can you talk to me about what you trust is doing that's vastly different from what PayPal is doing and, you know, sort of like talk about your business a bit more? Yeah, for sure. Just to add on top of that, I think, you know, I might be wrong, but for the way I see it now, I think the customer that is using, that is going to use crypto on PayPal is a traditional customer that wants to see like a flavor of how it works. So, okay, now PayPal is giving me this option. Let me try like a small percentage or let me try one payment. But I don't think it's the kind of customer who fully understand the potential so might be wrong but I currently I see it in in this way so what we do we were born as a payment gateway so at the beginning when we launched our solution, we were a payment gateway and our main target customer was the e-commerce merchant or retailer who wanted to offer, accept cryptocurrency as a payment method, but still continue to be paid in fiat.

So euros, dollars, GBP. And how we born as and who we are today is is different uh so today we are an ecosystem a full ecosystem so we cover i'm gonna talk a bit more about that but we cover b2b to see we cover b2b um so really um it was mostly this year during COVID that we realized what we were offering was only a small portion of the total opportunity we could have. And we were engaged by many businesses, mostly B2B, business to business, who wanted to find a solution to really find a solution for the cross-border and international payments. So, yeah, we were born as a payment gateway. Today, we serve anyone who really wants to accept cryptocurrencies as a payment method, continue to be paid in fiat, really decrease their payment processing fees up to 90% in some cases. So yeah, that's the case where you have a lot of cross-border trades,

especially across certain corridors. And mostly, you know, you want to attract a new kind of customer, someone that is, you know, tech-savvy, wealthy, who wants to spend money, you know, with cryptocurrencies. What we saw in 100% of our client portfolio, they usually have other payment methods like PayPal or Stripe or bank wire transfers. The customer paying with crypto is usually more loyal and they spend a lot more, double or triple more. So you really attract a new customer onto your platform.

In many cases, someone that would not otherwise go into your shop and buy your product or service. And then we really sold for chargebacks as well. So because we don't use credit card and debit cards, there's not that fraud cost associated to chargebacks. So for a merchant is great because on one side, they continue to do their business as usual. They continue to settle in their fiat currency, but they pay less with an efficient payment system. They don't have any chargebacks and they attract a new customer onto their website. And that's for B2B2C and B2B as well. So it's really changing the efficiency

of the overall payment ecosystem for anyone selling online. So the businesses that use you as merchants are savvier than the ones who would try PayPal, right? They're the ones who understand crypto, who are actively engaged, not like you said before, PayPal might be someone who never even knew what crypto was like, okay, I'll turn it on, but I'm not going to promote it. And then on the other side, you get the customers who just want to spend crypto. So they're attracted to merchants that take it so that's basically your

the core yeah um so i think merchants who work with us they don't need to have a knowledge about crypto or blockchain um so our solution is very like if i compare it to to the traditional pain it's very like stripe like so especially if you're using a plugin you can just download it like woocommerce and literally like in a few minutes you have it um and you don't need to have any knowledge about crypto or or blockchain um however yes it's right what you're saying like merchants adopting us are the ones that for now they want to be pioneers in their own industry. So they really understand the potential of a new technology. So even if they don't need to understand it technically, they don't need to touch crypto, they understand the potential.

And also the merchants that will experience the best results with us are the ones that work together with us in terms of co-marketing. So we really think one of the things that is really our value prop is we work with merchants into building a co-marketing strategy that works for them. So we help them attract new customers. We help them to educate customers. And yeah, the merchants that will experience the best results

are the ones who will help us in this journey. It's interesting because one of the biggest criticisms, I guess, of cryptocurrency for all the years since basically the Bitcoin bubble popped in 2017 is that it can never find mainstream adoption, right? It's just a speculative space and the bubbles really keep popping. But you guys are really the front line of mainstream adoption right if we want people to use it this is the number one way that that's going to happen so what are you seeing in terms of mainstream adoption yeah um so yeah first of all maybe it's it's good to say that we are crypto agnostic. So yeah, we don't push one crypto over another.

We will adopt in our gateway whatever customers want to pay with. Yeah, remarkably, I think within all the merchants that we integrated with that were more traditional, once they do that step of like, okay, I'm going to be open to a new technology, they see the results. So they really experience like a new revenue stream, new customers. So it's just a matter of education. It's just a matter of, you know, bringing more regulation, more trust in the ecosystem. I think, you know, this year has opened the doors for mainstream adoption in the next few years, not only because of PayPal, but because of China, central banks, all of these institutional players entering the space, everyone talking about it. So I think the next few years are going to be huge in terms of adoption. I don't think it will replace traditional payments in terms of payments, but it's going to be a huge alternative. And people realize, you know, the why now. So they realize that there is another way.

In terms of our buyers as well, there is a large concentration of those that are in countries where they don't trust their government or where there is an inflationary currency. So Turkey, for example, is a big market for us at the moment. And I think that's going to grow more and more. You think that there's going to be more markets where we have basically hyperinflation, more nations that have currency issues, and that will inevitably push them towards crypto based solutions? Yeah, I really believe that. Really believe that. from people towards governments to maintain a healthy economy, even in more developed countries, because of everything that is happening in the world. So that's going to push more people to research more and find other ways, other alternatives. Right. I mean, you guys are a global company, right? I mean, you're working with merchants

in every country in the world, probably, or soon will be. How do you navigate the regulatory landscape of each and every single country? I know just operating in the United States, you have to deal with every single state almost as if it's its own country. So how do you do that on an international level? Yeah, so the U-Trust business currently operates by its operating subsidiary in Estonia. So that gives us, you know, global reach. However, right now we're not serving the U.S. That's going to be part of our strategy for the next few months, the next year. But we are global. But yeah, currently, because we are, you know, a licensed

entity, we decided not to serve the US market because we want to confirm to regulation. And of course, that's really important for us. And that's going to be part of our strategy for next year. Are there other places that you can't operate or is it just like everybody can't do business in the United States, which is what I find. Every conversation I have, everybody's like, yeah, I'm not touching the United States. Maybe the UK, some people, but everywhere else seems fine. It's like the big global party and we're not invited. No, more or less, the rest is global. There are certain countries where we cannot operate because of their jurisdiction, but it's a very limited during COVID, right? Or right before or right after COVID, if I'm not mistaken. Do you think that COVID has accelerated adoption? That's, I guess, the first one. And then we can get into later what it's like joining a company during a global pandemic and trying to build a business. Yeah, definitely. So I was at U-Trust before, but in another role.

So I was managing partnerships before. However, I stepped into this role during COVID or immediately before COVID, like literally a few weeks before COVID happened. So yeah, obviously that was not something I expected to do, but then you need to rise to the occasion and, yeah, you need to build a new strategy. So, yeah, just to respond to your question more directly,

definitely our business was accelerated by COVID. I think the whole e-commerce business was accelerated by COVID for sure, because some people were even forced to buy online because they didn't have other alternatives. And then they were like, okay, wow, this is actually easy to do. Like it's, it's relatively easy. Like, I don't know why I didn't do it before. So it's, it changed behaviors. I think um forever partly um and also I think among businesses um so without you know going into mentioning names

but the travel industry took a big hit of course and we have some clients that became clients during COVID because they found the right time to really research for what else can they do during this time when this is over to attract new clients. So, and not only travel, but in many other industries. So actually for us, the number of organic requests and, you know, merchants coming in and wanting to adopt a new technology grew exponentially a lot during COVID. And especially for also businesses that do a large part of their transactions internationally, cross-border. We launched a new solution during COVID, which is like a payment request invoicing in order for anyone to generate an invoice

in fiat and to be paid in crypto. And you can basically send it by email. It's really easy. And that's because, yeah, as I was saying, our initial solution was the gateway. So to have the payment gateway, you need to have an e-commerce store and you need to integrate it. So it's like integrated into your technology. But yeah, there are many people that just wanted to generate invoices, mostly like business to business. So, yeah, during COVID, we launched this solution as well because it's something that the market requested. We entered new verticals. So we entered real estate, for example. COVID, we launched this solution as well, because it's something that the market requested. We entered new verticals. So we entered real estate, for example. The other day we did a webinar about real estate because the amount of people now wanting to pay with crypto for a

property is growing a lot. Not only to buy a property, but to rent. So really for us, it accelerated the business a lot. But yeah, it wasn't easy in terms of like going from normal to everyone working remotely from their homes. And obviously, you know, that was disrupted. And the way we would work together was disrupted people were used to so our main office is in portugal um and yeah our office is amazing people really like to go there to spend time to have lunch to socialize so we really needed to adapt that in into a new way um of working so that that was the only thing that, you know, people really

needed to adapt, but in terms of the business, it really accelerated. You guys are in the perfect business for something like this to happen, obviously with e-commerce and being an online payment solution. So do you think brick and mortar is dead? Like you, you, you touched on, you said there's all these people who would, who just love to go to stores, right? Who had never ordered things online. My parents' generation, you know, they just love to go in and touch things. And then found that, wow, I really like ordering something on Amazon. It comes to my door and I don't have to think about it. So do you think, I mean, do you think we've seen a fundamental change in the way that people will spend money and shop? And do you think that brick and mortar can survive?

Yeah, that's a good question. I think, obviously, many small businesses that depended only on offline and brick and mortar will not survive. I also think that's forcing businesses to think out of the box. So I saw many examples of actually small businesses adapting and finding new solutions to serve their customers and like totally disrupting and pivoting their business. And that's amazing. So I think, yeah, part of the brick and mortar will be dead and not survive um part of it will innovate and and pivot but i think yeah the the fil rouge is really you need to embrace online uh so even if you're gonna have your brick and mortar presence now you realize that you know online

is a fundamental part of your strategy so you need to embrace it because otherwise, you know, you don't have other options because you don't know if there's going to be like a third wave or fourth wave or whatever comes in the future. You need to embrace online. It's a fundamental part of your strategy. So I think, you know, that's the kind of change that i'm seeing uh really seeing it yeah so how does the utk token fall in obviously you guys are not just you know uh facilitating a gateway for merchants you're active i mean you you have a cryptocurrency that's a part of your business so how does the how does the token play into what you're doing? Yeah, for sure. So Nuno will be really happy when looking at this podcast because he's now in charge of our token strategy

and the strategy of the company. That's what he loves to do. He's amazing at it. So I'm sure you saw the latest news. So we now have a new app, a new wallet, which is Hold, powered by Utrust. And that was all thanks to Nuno. And I think he had a really brilliant idea that our community loves. So basically with hold, there is something that gives an amazing utility to the token, which is the reverse staking.

So, and that's the opposite of like the, not the normal, the traditional staking, because the most common result of, you know, the traditional staking is an increase in the amount of tokens in the circulation. And that means inflation in the ecosystem. What we do is really we encourage the exact opposite of with reverse staking.

So with every single trade that someone is doing with hold, they will receive, you know, one percent back reward on that. So that really incentivizes you as a user to spend, to really use tokens for what their intended purpose was, which is to buy stuff or to trade it, to use it, to give it that utility. So it's really that that really that's the newest one. Nuno has a lot, lot more in the pipeline. He's very, very excited about that. But yeah, that's the newest one

that we launched in the market quite recently. There's a debit card attached to it as well, correct? Correct, yes. That's so interesting because you think about it, all these coins claim to be utility tokens, but then you stake them and take them off the market and you never actually use the token because you're staking it to earn interest and basically seal it away. So it never gets used. So the reverse staking thing, it didn't click with me at first. And then when I read through it, I was like, oh, that's really brilliant.

It makes so much sense. Makes sense, yeah. You're actually encouraging people to use the token as money. Exactly, exactly. So, I mean, it's like every time I sign into Twitter, you guys have announced like 30,000 new people who you've partnered with. How many merchants Twitter, you guys have announced like 30,000 new people who are partnered with.

How many merchants now are you guys working with across the world? Yeah. So not sure I can disclose the exact number, but let's say it's in the likes of hundreds, a bit more, merchants. So it's obviously cross vertical. So we serve multiple verticals from fashion to precious metals to electronics, real estate now. So it's really a diverse set of verticals we serve globally. And as I said, yeah, there's not a real concentration of the verticals that do work or do not work. Clients, merchants having the best results

are the ones that, you know, really put an effort together with us of educating their customers about this new technology. And, you know, what are the advantages for them to pay with crypto? Unless you've been living under a rock, you've heard about the DeFi craze in crypto. By far the safest and simplest way to passively earn in the space is to hold your coins on Celsius. You can earn your rewards in the same crypto you're holding, or you can earn even more in their sell token. Right now, I choose to earn 5% on Ethereum in Ethereum and 15% on my stable coins

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It's absolutely huge. High rewards on your holdings and low interest on your loans on a platform whose mission you can believe in. Celsius is giving away $20 to every new user who joins with the promo code WOLF. Just enter the promo code in the app during registration. $20 is awarded after 30 days of maintaining a wallet balance of $200 or more. Visit Celsius.network, that's C-E-L-S-I-U-S.network, and use promo code WOLF, W-O-L-F. I heard in one of the U-Trust videos that you said something to the effect of, we're entering a new era from startup to becoming a full-scale business. So do you feel like that happened this year? Like you guys were really just a startup, and now it's completely exploded? Yeah. Oh my God. Yes. We were talking about it the other day

with the leadership team, how, yeah, actually changed everything this year. So if I think about last year, we were not even giving everyone the opportunity to self-onboard on the platform. So today, if you're a merchant and you just want to come on our website, you can self-onboard. You don't need to talk with anyone. Obviously, we like to speak with our merchants because we like to put in place co-marketing strategies together. We like to really work with them to make our solution work with them but if you want to do it on your own and you want something quick you can come you can self-onboard on any technology um either you know if you have whatever magento or woocommerce or even with

custom apis you can do it on your own and that really changed everything for us because yeah it opened the doors for anyone to to use our platform um so yeah we are now working with lots of merchants lots of customers we have different solutions that we didn't have so we have the gateway we have the b2 solution, we have hold and our company is growing. So we're going to hire more people, obviously, in different departments to be able to serve the growth of the company. So I want to go back to something that we talked about at the beginning. It's really interesting. So you said, obviously, you wanted to go into crypto because the fees were so much less and it was less friction. And you kind of talked about the reasons for that. Why is it so much cheaper to do it with blockchain? And could these other legacy companies do it cheaper? They just don't want to pass on that benefit to the customers? Or are the systems really set up for them such that they can't make it much cheaper than it is? Yeah. Well, yeah, it's a good question about can they do it right? So yeah, I think the

why is because you cut out all the middlemen, all the middle infrastructures. So usually like when you pay with a credit card from the moment like you swipe your credit card as a customer to the moment that the money arrives in the merchant bank, there are at least five or six intermediaries in the chain and they will eat up their portion of the payment transaction. And also, of of course if it's an international payment you pay a lot of like conversion fees or you are smart enough to convert your currency before but anyway you pay a conversion fee um so i think you know that's the reason why with blockchain you eliminate all of that um middleman so you're you're really able to lower the costs,

to really lower the costs. And I think companies, not only like PayPal, but traditional companies, as I said, are built on legacy infrastructure. So for them, it's going to be super hard to innovate. First, because it takes them ages to bring a change and to really bring it into the infrastructure and change it. So it's possible, but it's going to take them a lot of time

unless they go and they acquire the technology from someone else, which is also an option. Also, it seems like for anything that I guess would be, I don't know if the term would be micropayment or I don't know what the threshold is, but anything that's less than $5, $10, $15, $20 or something, if you're sending that cross-border, you're going to pay a larger fee than the amount of money you sent, right? So those systems literally can't really deal with smaller transactions, right? Yeah.

And I was reading something the other day that, especially now, during COVID, a lot of people were sending money from the US to Mexico, like remittances where they have their families and they would send, usually they send like, I don't remember, it was like $200 per month. And in order to send this $200, they would pay $20. And I was like, wow. Maybe on both sides, like your bank might charge you $20 to wire the money and then they might charge them $20 to receive it if it arrives, whenever it might arrive. I mean, it just sounds so obvious that all of these systems are fundamentally broken to me. I mean, you saw it from the inside, but like,

why do you need five people to touch your money before it arrives? How did that become the system, right? I mean, it just boggles my mind. Yeah, me too. And I think, yeah that that's specifically the reason why i think you know blockchain and crypto is more being adopted in countries where there is mistrust in the government because they really see like it's obvious like it's there um if you are a customer living in a more developed country, let's say, maybe you're not even thinking about these things because sometimes also payment providers, they obscure their costs.

So if you're paying someone somewhere like, Oh, it's free, you know, you don't see everything else that is hidden behind that cost. So you don't really question yourself, especially for a smaller transaction because, you know, it doesn't matter. But yeah, that will change because it's not sustainable. It's not fair.

Yeah. So you're saying that none of us read the 30 pages of terms and agreements before we sign it and check off, right? I mean, has any person in history ever actually read one of those from top to bottom? I remember the iTunes one was like the craziest one. If you wanted to buy an mp3 the first time you had to read like a 30 page document yeah it's just absurd yeah and especially like especially

if you're paying someone in you know in in a currency and that person needs to receive another currency you don't bother it's like okay i just need to receive another currency, you don't bother. It's like, okay, I just need to send this. So you don't bother, but in countries where it's different and there is more need, you do bother. So that's why the adoption is starting more in those places. But yeah, that's going to change for sure. You touched on Turkey.

Are there other specific countries where you've seen just an absolute boom in interest, you know, in accepting crypto because of the global environment or is it sort of bubbling everywhere at the same time? Yeah, it's, it's, um, Brazil, Argentina, um, and also country countries in Europe, of course, Argentina, and also countries in Europe, of course. The UK is a big market for us as well. I'm surprised.

Yeah, I mean, I thought some people say that the UK has just as difficult regulation as the United States, but glad it's not the case for you. Not for now. So I'm curious. It's something that I read that was really interesting. You know, I think it was in an interview with you, but that as a child, you were told that you were too ambitious, right? The term ambitious. I remember that interview that I gave. Yeah. So I'm Croatian by origin. So I grew up in Italy, but I'm Croatian. And I was born in Bosnia. the role of a woman is still very traditional. So it's unlikely for a woman to, you know, find her own path. She can have a job, but, you know, maybe it's something very junior because the role of a woman is very much taking care of the family

and, you know, thinking about that. And there's nothing wrong with that. But that's how it's supposed to be. Like, that's the expectation. So growing up, I always felt, you know, I wanted something different. And my mom always encouraged me. But really, you know, in my environment, that was viewed as weird. And, you know, why would she bother if she can just get married and, you know, have kids?

And why does she need to do that? But yeah, actually, that gave me more strength to just, you know, do the things that I, that I wanted and the things that I, um, believed I was born to do. Um, and that doesn't mean that, you know, that way is not, is not good. That might work for other people. It just wasn't working for, for me. Well, what were you doing that they commented on that was so ambitious? I mean, you know, you were clearly, clearly you were clearly turning some heads with something that you were doing as a child. And that's what I was getting at.

Was it a gender thing or was it like a family thing? But clearly in your country, it's a gender thing. But what was it about you as a child that drove that ambition, especially in a place like that where women weren't told you can be ambitious, you can do all these things? Yeah, I think it's because like i always knew i wanted to do to do more um so even when i was a child like when you would ask small children like what do you want for your life when you grow up like other girls would say i want to have kids i want to have kids. I want to be a mom. I want to whatever, have dogs. And I would always say, like, I want to change something in the world.

I want to do something meaningful so that I can impact other people. And that was weird for, you know, someone living in my environment because also in my family, I didn't have many examples of, you know, women working with important jobs or really, you know, building a career. So that's why it was viewed as like, okay, that's just weird what she wants. That's so interesting. So at what point did you, I guess, leave that little bubble and sort of forge out on your own was it college was it before that after I think it really took me a long time to you know find my voice and even when I was at university it wasn't really clear for me so it was clear like okay I'm gonna get a degree and then I have no clue what I'm going to do, I'm going to figure out. And then I think during

university, it became more obvious to me that I was interested in technologies and like how technology can be used to impact society and human life. And yeah, I think my thesis was around e-commerce companies and like, how do we use e-commerce to enable global trade? So I always knew like from that point, like, okay, I want to do something that has to do with e-commerce and like making life easier for people to trade. Yeah. So I want to contextualize this question because I hate the differentiation between men and women in business. And I was a DJ for 20 years, right? And you would always have these lists and it would be like, best female DJ. And I would be like, they're just DJs. Why is that a different category at all? I mean, it's just that they have more skills than some of the guys. They should be on the same list.

But we don't run into many female leaders in the crypto space. It just seems like... I don't know if it's a ceiling or just not that many women are interested. But what is it like being one of the few women in this space that's really is it like being one of the few women in this space that's really forging forward, one of the few CEOs in this space? Yeah, it's not only crypto. I think it's like... I guess that's true.

Yeah, I think... Actually, I think in crypto, there are more women than in fintech and tech in general, but still not many. I think it has to do a lot with, you know, since you're a kid and then you need to choose where to go to university, you usually do what your parents did or, you know, where your family is redirecting you or society.

So I think, you know, it's on us to give the example that actually you can build a career wherever you want. You know, you want to go in tech, you can go in tech. You want to do marketing, you can do marketing. And it's really not doing what you're expected to do or what it's, you know, supposed to do. You can find your own path. So yeah, I think a lot has to do with that. And also one thing that I noticed, not in crypto, but I think in general, like in tech

companies, is hiring by association. So because a lot of these businesses are, you know, male driven, you tend to hire someone more similar to you. And that's the reason why many companies, PayPal as well, eBay, now they have chief diversity officers. So it's someone that comes in and says, you know, actually your team will perform better if you bring someone with a different skill or with a different point of view or someone who leads with more emotions rather than whatever data, someone that is just different to complement your skills. And yeah, I think that's also one of the reasons. And I was lucky enough to meet Nuno and me and Nuno are completely complementary. So that's why we work perfectly together because what I have no clue, he knows

perfectly and vice versa. And I think that's why our business is successful because we bring what is needed, but I don't need to know what he knows and vice versa. And we trust each other, but I'm completely different than him. And he's completely different than me. That's so interesting because I think when you think of like the chief diversity officer, you think of someone coming in just saying, there's not enough women go hire women, but that's not really what you're saying. It's more, but it's kind of like having an investment portfolio and trying to find, uh, and trying to find assets that offer a different risk profile, right? Like diversifying your assets so that if...

And it's also like social media. It's basically like people form an echo chamber in their business and they hire people who agree with them. And then you end up with this big echo chamber and not seeing the other side. I just never thought of it sort of that way. I really thought of it as just like, there's not enough African Americans working here. There's not enough women. We need to go do that. Like sort of the affirmative action model, but it's so brilliant actually. Yeah. So like hiring someone that fundamentally disagrees with you, but is smart is probably a better hire than someone who just thinks the same way as you. Yeah, exactly. I don't see,

I don't like when people say like, oh, there are not enough women, so we should hire a woman. I think, you know, when you look at that, at the perspective, okay, we don't have someone with these skills. Okay. Who's the best person that we can bring in to fill them, regardless of whether, you know, that's a woman or a man or, you know, coming from whatever background. And then I think if you think about skills, you will naturally end up with a diverse environment because you need diverse people with different skills. Yeah. Is that something that you think about as you now scale up into a bigger business and are hiring and all these different, because I mean, you're probably hiring in five, six, seven, 10 different departments now, right?

Yeah, we're going to be hiring a few people now. And I think what's great now is that everyone is remote. So we can hire someone basically anywhere. And in the past, I think, you know, we were biased because that's a bias by saying we need someone in Portugal or, you know, proximity so they can be in the office. But now it doesn't really matter. Like that person can come to the office every couple of months and they can work perfectly fine in another country, in another location. And what matters is the expertise that that person brings. But for me, like more than expertise and like specific skills, it's about why do you want to work for U-Trust? Like, why are you passionate about this?

If you're not passionate, even if you have to work for, for you trust? Like why are you passionate about this? If you're not passionate, even if you have the best skills, like I don't care, we don't want you in the company because skills you can build, but passion is something that you have. And when you're passionate, you will, you know, think about things differently. You will want to listen to your customers. I don't see myself as someone different from my team. I'm the CEO, but I'm still in calls with the customers because I want to know what they're

saying. When they do research and they call merchants, I want to be there because I want to know what problems they have or why they're happy about my product. So yeah, that's the kind of people we want to have in the company. And skills, you can always coach people to have skills, you know, you can pay them a course if they need to. But if they're not passionate, yeah, it's not gonna work. You talked about that you deal directly with your customers, you're there when people are talking to merchants, what are the biggest points of friction for a merchant who maybe has a superficial knowledge of crypto or none at all and wants to do it? Where is the sticking point that you have to push them through? funnel. So I think, you know, if they haven't integrated with us yet, they might have, they might be scared about, okay, this is going to take me ages. How do I do that? If I don't have like a technical person doing this, this is too complicated for me. So yeah, that's the main fear

that we help them navigate with. And actually they see that it takes them like five minutes to do that. And we can help them to do. I think the second stage is how do I educate my customers about this new service and product that I'm having on the platform? Because if I'm not a merchant that's selling blockchain services or something related to crypto, my customers might not be that crypto friendly. So how do I help them understand?

And that's where we help them. We co-market with them. We can produce content together. And then, yeah, the third one is how do I attract the new customers as well to my platform? That's where we help them as well. So next week, I'm going to spend a lot of time interviewing a few of our merchants because I want them to be visible on our website.

So, you know, they can speak about their product, their service, what they do, and they can say, okay, and now we offer crypto payments as well and we're going to promote them to to our audience um so yeah that's cool real things yeah yeah you're not going to get your hand held like that by paypal you know they're not going to value you probably as an individual merchant and customer so i would say that's obviously a huge advantage yeah but you know i think that's not related to your company size because um and i think paypal is a great brand and i don't have anything against but you know

when you're when you look at ebay ebay is huge but still the ebay business is built around um giving a voice to the merchants and they they celebrate every month. Like what I loved when working at eBay was, you know, every week, every month there was a celebration about who are the new people that, or businesses that became millionaires because they started selling on eBay. And yeah, and then the CEO would go and like in their garages or in their homes and like they would take pictures. He would interview them. So yeah, I don't think it's the size of your business. It's your identity. So that's the ethos. Yeah. So you guys have seen this sort of insane meteoric rise in business

in the past month. So what is is the next year five years ten years i guess ideally you can't project it but ideally what does it look like what will you guys be building how big can this become and you know what are you working on yeah so my first priority priority right now is i need to hire more people in different departments to, you know, to help us scale the business. So, and I think, you know, people are the greatest asset. So one of my main focus is to build a great culture. So a culture where people want to be part of, they feel empowered, they feel passionate, they like to work at utra so instead of

you know everything else that that's my main priority that's what matters to me and then obviously how do we help more merchants to onboard on our platform how do we help them to to sell more to attract new buyers. We haven't done a lot of work on buyers. So historically, our main target was how do we get more customers, more merchants to adopt us. But more and more, we're going to be focusing on how do we help customers educate their buyers as well. So I think, yeah, the next year or two

is about scaling, scaling people, scaling our products, helping merchants to sell more. Yeah. So it's simple, simple answer. Growth and scale.

Right. So you guys know what you want to do. Now you just need to spread it and make it bigger. Basically. That's great. That's great. Most companies don't have that. They like have this thing they're trying to build and this, you know, whatever. So you guys have a great business. It just needs to get bigger. So where can people follow you after this and keep up with what you trust is doing and you personally? Yeah, for sure. So you can join uh the utrust telegram group that's where we announce uh most of the stuff we do um everything we do actually i'm in there

yeah uh then obviously our website then they can follow me on on instagram and and twitter uh we're quite more vocal on Twitter, but LinkedIn as well. So I know it kind of gets to here, but I got to ask, what was it like meeting Kobe Bryant? Oh yeah, that was amazing. He's really tall. He was really tall. Super tall. And he speaks good Italian as well. He's just an incredible person. I saw that. Yeah. He is very, very tall. I saw that picture of you with him. I never met Kobe. Yeah. Yeah. I had heels. Yeah.

When I was a freshman in college, I went to the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and that's where he played in high school. So he played like in our college stadium for his senior high school like tournament. So everybody, he was so famous already, even in high school. So we all went to see him play when he was 18 years old, but I never met him after, but he's really just one of my role models. I think he's just incredible. Yeah. And also I have to say, so totally separate. You guys have been working on a solution for my newsletter personally to help me accept payments and try to accept recurring payments, which would be so huge if we could.

We're working on and your team has basically found a way to do that, which I think will change everything if people can subscribe to things and have a recurring subscription in crypto. Or at least it reminds them immediately to pay again. Obviously, you can't draw from their wallet because of private keys, but your team has blown my mind working on that. So they're just amazing. I'm so glad to hear that. Thank you. Well, thank you so much for taking the time. I really appreciate it. And I'm looking forward to everything that you guys have coming down the pipeline. Such an incredible company. Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure. All right. Well, we'll have to update it in a year and see how many people you've hired and how many merchants you're at. Thank you. Yeah. If you're interested to working

with us, there is a career section. You know, we have very savvy listeners. So this might you might find some talent here so I'm going to send them your way yeah awesome yeah we review all the applications so awesome awesome well thank you so much again thank you thank you Scott

we're good thank you very much thank you awesome I really enjoyed it that was great it was really fun thank you send Nuno my best we send a lot of memes back and forth on telegram Thank you. Awesome. I really enjoyed it. That was great. It was really fun. Thank you. Send Nuno my best. We send a lot of memes back and forth on Telegram. Oh, really? And like videos of our kids.

Oh, you have kids? Yeah, I have a five and a half year old and a one and a half year old. And that's how Nuno and I kind of connected. He was like, oh, your kids are so cute. Then we started talking. You must be very busy then. Yeah, very. I heard them.

I was muting the conversation every couple of times because I heard my son running around outside. No, I didn't. I didn't hear anything. Yeah, good, good. People expect it now anyways, right? Anytime you do a Zoom call, they expect something to happen.

Last week, my son ran in naked behind me. He's 18 months old. On a Zoom call, he was right here. Hilarious. All right. I know you need to go. Thank you so much. I'll get in touch with you guys about when it's going to come out. I think next week, probably. Awesome. Thank you so much.