Unchained - Companies Are Competing to Bring Crypto to the Masses. Who Is Best Positioned? - Ep. 889

Episode Date: August 21, 2025

Subscribe to the new Bits + Bips channels! 📺 YouTube  🎧 Podcast → Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Fountain 🐦 X / Twitter  Crypto is moving past speculation — and into the battle for mass adoption. In this episode, Phantom CEO Brandon Millman and Pudgy Penguins CEO Luca Netz join Unchained to debate who will own the next hundred million users. Will it be product-led startups, Web2 giants like X and Meta, or crypto-native apps like Phantom? From payments to trading wars to the “everything app” dream, they unpack where the real value will accrue — and why the easy money era for entrepreneurs is over. Thank you to the sponsors who make this show possible! Re  Mantle Guests: Brandon Millman, CEO and co-founder of Phantom Luca Netz, CEO of Pudgy Penguins Timestamps: 🎬 0:00 Intro 🚧 3:34 Why Brandon still thinks it’s a great time to build in crypto ⚡ 5:55 How Luca sees this moment as an “inflection point” for the industry 👥 9:36 What Brandon and Luca’s personal journeys reveal about building in Web3 🌍 18:07 Who’s best positioned to onboard the next wave of users into crypto 💸 25:05 How distribution is key and why Luca desperately wants to invest in Phantom 😀 💳 37:00 Who might win the payments race and what gives them the edge 📱 51:26 Whether Solana’s Seeker phone has any real shot at breaking through 🔗 58:32 How Robinhood might use Privy and Bridge to dominate the crypto stack ⚔️ 1:01:17 What the new crypto trading wars say about Robinhood, Coinbase, and Kraken 🤔 1:06:05 Whether Coinbase lacks a good product team 📲 1:10:36 Whether the “everything app” dream actually makes sense Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's never been a better time to build in crypto. And to look at this point, you can really feel that we're in this inflection point at the moment. The great entrepreneurs will get greater. More people in the middle are going to be looking for a way to kind of find opportunity. There's no better opportunity than navigating the on-chain rails that is crypto rails. And I also think that the top entrepreneurs from other industries are really starting to come in here and starting to compete, which I think is going to raise the bar for everyone. Hey, everyone.

If you're watching this rather than listening, apologies that I could not be on video for this episode. Regardless, this was a fun conversation with Luca Nets and Brandon Milman about how crypto goes mainstream and which players are well positioned to bring the masses on chain. Some of the more interesting questions we raised were around the future of Coinbase, which is trying for the first time to be a more product, focused company. Luca feels like it should focus on its core strength, which is around business deals. Meanwhile, Brandon feels that an everything app is just an impossible task. Both Brandon and

Luca see Stripe and Robin Hood as strong players to contend with, and Luca also surprised me when he said that he felt like World Liberty Financial could be a dark horse. Finally, we also talk about how one of the big opportunities is to replicate the business models of successful fintechs, but to do so in a borderless way on blockchain rails. In fact, Luca is a super fan of Phantom, and he seems to think that Phantom could exploit this opportunity. And perhaps Phantom could even leverage the Salana Seeker or another phone to do so. Plus, we cover why it is that incumbents are likely to fumble the ball,

and at least in the case of PayPal, seem to have already lost their opportunity. As always, I hope you enjoy the show. earning yield on stable coins just got smarter with REA protocol. Get up to 16% APR plus points through regulated insurance backing and ETH basis strategies with no lockups required. Deposit USDC, USDT, or die to start earning stable yield and points today at re.xyZ, R.E.xyZ. Mantle is pioneering blockchain for banking of revolutionary new category.

at the intersection of Tradfai and Web 3. Follow Mantle underscore official to learn more. Welcome, Brandon and Luca. Hey, happy to be here. Yeah, thank you. All right, so we are at a very interesting stage in crypto's development. It feels like we're at this moment where everything feels like it's about adoption. There's all these major fintech players and banks, even multinationals that are either

making moves into crypto or at least exploring. getting into crypto. And we also have crypto companies that are either teaming up with such players or encroaching on kind of like the more typical trad-fi-ish areas like payments. So I want to talk about, you know, all of these different players. But first, let's just kind of zoom out and look at, you know, what, how would you characterize this particular phase in crypto's journey? You know, How do you view kind of like the entrepreneurs task now versus previous cycles or previous eras in crypto? And maybe Brandon, we can start with you.

Yeah, totally. Well, yeah, first of all, yeah, thanks Laura for having me on again. And yeah, really, really appreciate opportunity to chat a little bit about Fanton and what's going on. And, yeah, obviously, a really super exciting time to be building a crypto company. as an entrepreneur and founder of a company. And yeah, for, you know, for many different reasons, obviously, like you stated, it feels like adoption is really been surging lately.

You see every day there's a new headline about some finance fintech company, some more traditional finance institution like banks, etc., getting into crypto in one way or another. And yeah, I think, you know, this moment has actually just been a culmination of a lot of things that we've been working on as an industry for the last couple of eras or last couple of cycles, like you mentioned. I think in the last couple of years, it's really been a lot about building out the infrastructure. And from a lot of different perspectives, I think there's sort of the raw blockchain tech, the blockchain infrastructure. and things like speed, cost, efficiency, getting better and better. There's things like developer tools alongside that.

And then there's things like regulatory infrastructure and things of that nature. I think a lot of folks in the industry have been working at these things from a lot of different angles, in terms of improving and getting the infrastructure up to speed. So I'd say in terms of sort of the entrepreneurship's, entrepreneurs, task, you know, it's been, I think, very infrastructure-oriented for the last number of cycles and number of years. And then, you know, it's all, it's all culminating coming to a head now. And as we all know, there's a lot of network effects and compounding, you know, value involved with, with building this type of open permissionless ecosystem. And so I think you're just going to,

you're starting to see sort of the runaway train effect a bit now. But, yeah, That's sort of how I would generally characterize sort of where we've been and where we're at now. But yeah, Luke, I'm not sure if you have a different take. No, I think it's, I think it's a good take. I think I would probably, how I view it is, I think this is like the great inflection point. I think the great paradigm shift here, I think one of the things we underwrote when we were assessing buying Pudgy Penguins. I remember talking to my co-founders at the time. I told them, I was like, there's no industry in crypto.

where the bar of entrepreneurship is so low and the ability to create a billion dollar company is so high based on that low bar. I think, and I think that was really predicated on storytelling and the future potential of what could be, I think the paradigm shift that you're going to see here, at least for entrepreneurship, is I think a player entrepreneurs are coming here. And I don't think, and I think it's going to be a, I think you're going to see power law kind of kick in, I think, for the first time, where the best are going to continue to win. And there's going to be more competition to kind of drive and figure out who's the best. And I also think the days

of speculative hope, you know, I know he won't mind me saying this, but I had lunch with Novagrats, like six, seven weeks ago. And I agreed with him. And he was like, the days of no revenue being worth billions of dollars has to be over. And so I think it's going to get a lot harder, meaning I think the easy road of, hey, here's this net new asset class and net new technology. And anybody who builds around it is going to see some sort of value accrual. And frankly, layman entrepreneurs coming in and building billion dollar businesses, I think are over. And I think that's a good thing.

And so I think the focus now is how do you take this hyperfinancialization and these payment rails that tap into global liquidity and global composability and actually build disruptive technologies that are going to change the world and not just build, you know, pseudo-destructive technologies that you tell a story around and a narrative around and preach that you're changing the world about doing it. I think this is going to be the era of result-driven success and less speculative success, which I think is nothing but a good thing. And I think the floodgates are finally open. I mean, it was right in front of us the whole time. Some of us saw it. Some of us didn't. If I'm being frank, I actually didn't see this missing piece in the consumer

crypto funnel. But for crypto to really break through in a mass the way we had all been hoping, there was a couple of things that are broken, one being the consumer journey, but I also think just the adoption of stable coins. And now that I think stable coins are going to be a popular medium and just how every day people transact, it's going to be really easy to funnel them into these on-chain applications in a way where I think the biggest caveat to onboarding and the consumer curve specifically on chain was really that zero to one. Phantom actually, you know, it's ironic if you're here, running because I think you probably have one of the best zero to ones in crypto,

definitely in the Solana ecosystem. But that I think is going to be the big paradigm shift here. You have stable coins, users now have excess, you know, on-chain dollars to spend on applications. Crypto is the king of hyper-financialization in a world with AI. You know, power law, I think, will also kick in. The great entrepreneurs will get greater. More people in the middle are going to be looking for a way to kind of find opportunity.

There's no better opportunity than navigating the on-chain rails that is crypto rails. And I also think that the top entrepreneurs from other industries are really starting to come in here and starting to compete, which I think is going to raise the bar for everyone. Yeah. So before we get into, you know, kind of the various players, I did also want to ask for you, too, because both of you, I think, have managed to grow and get distribution and, you know, kind of wide in the audience for crypto. And I was curious if you could just talk a little bit about your stories in terms of how you did that, how you thought about it, and even just like now how you're thinking differently about it,

given the stage that we're at. So a little bit of like history. Yeah, I can go first real quick. You know, basically it got got my start in sort of my tech industry career working at pretty early Twitter from 2013 to 2017. So that's where personally I cut my teeth on learning how to build internet applications for at extremely large scale, you know, tens of millions to 100 millions of users. You know, from there, I jumped into crypto around 2017 during the ICO white paper era and joined a very early sort of pre-Defi, defy startup called ZeroX. And that's where I cut my teeth on really learning what Defy is, helping define decentralized exchange as it's used today.

And I think during that period, you know, recognized and gained a lot of insights around, what makes for a good user experience, what are the major bottlenecks in the industry. And especially had an especially interesting vantage point as a developer trying to push an end user application and recognizing that the wallet was really where the rubber met the road in terms of is a user actually going to convert to use these things? Is a user actually going to onboard? is the user actually going to click confirm and the checkout flow and recognize that, yeah, essentially the wallet, it would be the highest leverage place that we could apply ourselves

to actually push the whole industry forward. And so that's where, yeah, we kind of initially got the initial spark to build Phantom, you know, originally conceptualized as a metamass competitor, and, you know, want to sort of replace them as the entry point into crypto and then fast forward a couple of years from there. And, you know, we're way larger than Mattomass. Many more users are entering the crypto ecosystem for the first time. And I think it just kind of really went to show our whole thesis around usability really being that kind of bottleneck. And if you apply some sort of standard thinking from the web 2.4. world and a lot of our experience there, there was a lot of low-hanging fruit to pick up.

And yeah, moving forward, I think, you know, what Luca mentioned sort of, I think a combination of my answer and Luke's answer from before, I think the infrastructure phase where there are sort of a lot of paintings of, you know, there's a, the infrastructure phase where there's a lot of vapor to be to be peddled, I think is over and the users, the users and the dollars are here. And so I think it's going to come down to actually providing the best experience for the user, you know, owning their attention, owning their mind share, earning their, you know, owning the, you know, their business for, for, you know, helping secure their funds and all of that. I think that's sort of the next phase for and we're going to see crypto.

And honestly, Brandon, just to chime in there, looking from a third party, I think Phantom's growth and success story, you know, really embodies the saying around like the best product, the best product wins. I mean, from my perspective, you guys just built the best wallet. And the user's galvanized around that and hit escape velocity. And when the product is just so much better than your competitor or incumbent. If, like you said, for such a crucial part of the crypto experience, you're going to win in a big way. So I'm a happy fandom user.

Kudos to you guys for building a phenomenal product. Thank you. Thanks so much. Yeah, I think to maybe answer the question through my frame, the penguin character in our lens, it's a little different than maybe a direct functional product. But the IP and the character for us is the product. And so I knew there was a problem in crypto. The problem to me was crypto is taboo and intimidating, right?

And so what's not taboo and what's not intimidating a cute penguin? And so our whole thought process is I have a more process-oriented conversion process than maybe a direct conversion process. So I actually think the way that I'm approaching growth is I'm trying to meet consumers in an emotional gap that I'm trying to fail. And I'm trying to invade their hearts and minds. And as I create as many touch points and rapport with that consumer, slowly but surely two things happen. They either go down the rabbit hole themselves or I push them down the rabbit hole.

And so our conversion process is a little more, how many times can we reach the consumer, how can we build trust and credibility amongst them? And over time, as the sales and the wins of crypto momentum kind of comes back, I'm the most familiar, most credible, most tangential IP that people can resonate with. And I think our marketing and gross strategy is really predicated around touchpoints. I think a lot of people saw our Walmart and our Target and our toy product as a revenue driver. And sure it was, but to be frank, the revenue there doesn't excite me. What excites me is the marketing and the touch points post, you know, when somebody turns off their computer or closes their iPhone, you know, being able to have that sort of emotional visibility, I thought was really important for us. And so, you know,

I believe specifically in the category of culture, I want Pugy and Igloo to own culture in crypto. I think that's really where we, I think, have found our stride. And so looking at it through that lens, it's a multitude of, you know, what's your message, what's your story? You know, Pudgy Penguins is the face of crypto. It's the mascot of crypto. It's the underdog story of crypto. How do you meet people where they are? You know, every single. single place you can go to on the internet, whether it's Google, Instagram, X, there isn't a social network in which penguins aren't plagued throughout that network. And then ultimately, you know, creating something that's universal, which I think is a byproduct of the IP that I

frankly inherited or purchased, which was, I think a big place where we want to win, and I think we're probably the only group winning in this regard, is how do you get the family involved, right? If crypto is truly going to be mass, how, does every single person a part of the family stack, you know, participate and enjoy and lean into crypto rails? And I think from our perspective, I think IP just in general has a really great role to play in this respect for the industry. And I think Pudgy specifically has really done a really great job at bringing people from all walks of life and all ranges of the psychographic and demographic together. And I think you kind of combine that all with just in my

opinion, the best illustrated penguin of all time. And I think you've seen our growth over the last couple of years. And it's byproduct of, I think, those lines of thought. Yeah, I love that. That's so smart thinking about like multiple generations and like how different people of different age groups or demographics connect. You know, one other comment I wanted to make was just like earlier when you guys were talking about, you know, bringing in new people and stuff. Like I was, I had flashes of those like FTX ads and you know with like just sell function and and I was like okay okay so it's the same thing except there's like real substance behind it basically is the difference. Okay, okay.

So let's talk about just all the various players that we think could kind of dominate in this next like phase of adoption. So I wrote down a few different ones, but you should feel free to add any because I'm sure there's ones I haven't thought of or there might be ones that I mentioned that you feel, you know, don't really belong in this category. So I just love to start with like just an overall view on kind of like all of them. And then we're going to go into more detail around like different segments of the market because obviously crypto isn't just one thing. There's like multiple different ways people can get in. So some of the players that I think are going to be big or

or have a shot at being big in this area. Obviously, Coinbase, because they're already big. But, you know, their audience is primarily crypto people. Robin Hood, obviously, Stripe. X apparently wants to, you know, become the Everything app. They've already done, like, you know, the partnership with Polymarket. And, yeah, they're just saying that that's their intention. And that competes with, like, the base app, apparently,

because that's where they're going. Stable coins, obviously, that's like a huge part of this next phase. So, you know, Tether, circle, some of the newer players, I mean, it could even be like in Athena or some of these new stable chains, you know, stable plasma, et cetera. So, you know, just when you look at that landscape, like, are there any particular ones that you feel like are better position than others? Or like, how do you think, you know, and I know this is just a broad question. We'll get more. to like various parts of the market more specifically in a moment. But just when you look at this landscape, like how are you sort of thinking all of this will play out? And then you're getting first dibs on all these questions, brother. Yeah, happy to. Well, first of all, just going back to Luca's comment about the Pengu sort of and Pudgy Penguins entering the family stack, I will say I stole my son's Pengu doll earlier this morning. And yeah, he's, you know, he's getting onboarded every day by this thing.

So, yeah, super cute. He's done a couple of these over to the fan of office. It's a weird giraffe penguin mashup. He loves it. He loves it. Okay. Well, yeah, in terms of that question, I mean, it's, yeah, obviously very, very broad question. I think, you know, zooming out a bit. I think it's all the whole, the whole space is very positive sum at the moment. I think every new entrant that is adding more firepower to the ecosystem, helping us build more tools and easier ways for people to access crypto is a good thing for everyone. And personally, yeah, I think, again, it's never been a better time to building crypto. And to look at this point, you can really feel that we're in this inflection point at the moment.

But yeah, I mean, there's a lot of different ways to slice and dice that they answer. answer, maybe just to call one player out specifically. I think Stripe is a very interesting one that, you know, I think the payments angle specifically is one that has not really been cracked yet in the US and I think has been pointed at, or as, you know, payments has always been that use case that's very illustrative of the power of crypto, send money anywhere in the world, low fees, instant access, et cetera. But I think one that has, I think, gotten a little bit less love over things like defy and NFTs over the years. And so, you know, I have a couple different theories for why that is. But I think in who, in terms of

who I'm most excited about, I think strive is probably one of the ones that has maybe the potential largest asymmetric upside for for the space. specifically, but other ones like X, I think that's also quite interesting just because they do have their own very large distribution and user base. That is, obviously, there's a lot of overlap with crypto Twitter, but I think it's oftentimes hard to comprehend how much huge, how many people are really out there that actually never have heard of crypto or touch crypto yet. And so I think that, you know, really excited for X as well and how they could be potential to entry point. And, you know, ultimately a source of users for everyone in the ecosystem.

Those are just two right off the bat. I have to talk more about specifics, but just a couple that I'm excited about. Yeah, probably I'll give you three, two of which you mentioned, one that you probably didn't, or one that you didn't. I think the greatest branding, call it what you want,

what, what, what, what, sigh, I was going to say, sigh up, I don't think that's the right word. U.S. D.C. U.S. dollar coin. I mean, you've got to fuck that up. You've got to mess. You've got to intentionally mess that up.

Because the branding on U.S. dollar coin, I mean, the trust around that positioning and that ticker and that framing is just like if stable coins are going to

win, U.S. dollar coin will win. And you've got to intentionally blow that one up. I think God, I think Robin Hood's a real dark horse here. You know, the Coinbase product's not as good as it should be. And I say this is an avid holder and lover of Coinbase and what they've done for the space. But the Robin Hood product team, I mean, Brandy, you've probably assessed this is incredible.

I mean, probably one of the best FinTech product teams of all time. I mean, it is so robust and deep. And I can tell you this is a serious Robin Hood power user. They capture every part of my financial life. And if they want to go on chain and then they want to do it right, they're going to be a seriously big player here. And then one that might be interesting that you didn't mention, but they're running the right playbook is World Liberty Financial.

I know people haven't seen the product. The anchor style thesis not built on 20% yields, you know, with the whole Luna backing, that had real PMS. and it worked. And I actually, I'm curious, Brandon, you could maybe give us some insights here, specifically around, I think, the EVM ecosystem. I think world liberty. And then, you know, frankly, Brandon, I'd put you guys up here. I would love to buy some Phantom secondary if anybody wants to tell because we'll broker an OTC deal right here right now. If anyone wants to sell some phantom OTC, I'd buy it because I do think these middle layers have all, all the

upside to capture, right? And so I'll bring up, honestly, I have to bring up Phantom because Phantoms earn its stripe, even before I bring Nata, which is you own the user behavior and you can capture the problem with the beauty with middle layers like Phantom and I describe it as middle layers because it's kind of between the consumer and the chain is like you leak none of the value. You can capture all of the value, right? And so, you know, at any point in time, depending on how risk adverse Brandon and team decide to be, you know, make a good. launch any of the most any net new profitable extremely groundbreaking business that that comes out of crypto if they wanted to they could fork plug it into their distribution and capture all of that value right

like a perfect example of this is if phantom launched a token launcher not saying they would they would own that entire market in my opinion right or they would be a serious contender right and so the beauty is is like again going to what we said earlier we're like where's the value and accrued, so accrued are the guys making the money and owning the user interface is where all the money is going to be made. Even on the abstract side, so we have a blockchain, our whole focus is owning the consumer interface. I don't even care about anything else because the blockchain business is a bad business.

The middle layer business is the business. And so World Liberty is interesting. And I'm sure Phantom and you guys have thought about this specifically around the USDA1 implementation, right? Because if you own the interface, right, what is what is proven to be? what are the three most profitable businesses in crypto? Stable coin yields that once it hits escape velocity, trading and token launching. I mean, on paper, you know, stable coin yields would maybe bake that into D-Fi, right?

You know, Brandon already has one, the trading, right? So I can trade directly on Phantom. And it's probably an amazing business line for them. We won't get into that. But, you know, I do really like World Liberty's approach. I thought it was really ingenious. USD1 was super ingenious, I thought. And just owning a consumer layer that feels like a bank.

I've kind of a little peek under the hood there in terms of what they're doing. That with the stable coins. I actually be interested into Brandon, if you guys have explored stable coins, I don't want to, I can take this thing on a tangent. So Laura, feel free to step in and control this conversation because I can take this many different ways. But the middle layer is going to be the most profitable, important business layer in crypto. Phantom has shown unbelievable competency from the process.

product side, best in class product, you know, and if, if and when they decide to go public and they want to make revenue, they can make endless amounts of revenue. You know, I saw that with the, I'm curious if you guys make money on the perps on the hype implementation. I think you do, right? This is so smart. So owning the middle layer is going to be the best business in crypto and where all the money is going to be made.

And that's why, Branham, I'm ready for a secondary check at any moment in time for you or any of your employees, brother. Well, yeah. Well, Luca, thank you so much for gassing me up like that on the podcast. I appreciate it. And yeah, I mean, I think, yeah, you make a lot of good points that I think I'll underscore. I think, yeah, owning the end user is the most important and most strategic place to be in. And not only the crypto industry, but it's actually an internet thing.

It's an internet-based phenomenon. on, you know, I'm not sure if, yeah, any, either of you or anyone in the audience is familiar with, you know, Ben Thompson's like migration theory, where I think pre-internet, sort of the value chain looked a lot different. I think that it was, actually, it was not the distributors, but it was the suppliers that would, that would make a large amount of revenue and, and capture a lot of value. You know, I think like, retail, or newspapers or like TV channels and music labels and things like that. And then once the internet really brought an open and permissionless communication layer to the world, it sort of created this power dynamic where now distribution, it's much easier to create supply and the infrastructure is there. And what really matters is actually owning that distribution point and being that place where the experience is aggregated to the end user.

I think Phantom has a very similar structure in that there's, you know, there's crypto blockchains, which is open permissionless ways to, to create and store and transfer value on the internet. And they have this same open permissionless structure that allows any developer on the world to deploy something new, try a new experiment, et cetera. And yeah, the distribution points are really going to be folks who like wallets and other user-facing applications that are actually helping users explore and use those things in a safe and easy-to-use way and actually earning their trust over time. And, yeah, that does allow us to launch different types of business lines, trading perps, which has definitely been a huge one for us late. And then, yes, like Luca mentioned, other, definitely other potential lines that we're thinking about, including stable coins, payments, like I mentioned.

Yeah. Who's your biggest threat, Brandon? Who do you wake up every, who do you think is your, and I could give you my answer if I, if you will care for it. But who's your biggest threat you think? Yeah, well, I think, I think personally, it's, you know, we, you know, you've mentioned them already. I think Robin Hood is their, their product team is extremely crap. they've been at it for a while. And, you know, just from a pure resources and, you know, they're a huge public company with billions of dollars and thousands of people. So it's, it's,

you know, I'd be lying if I'd say, hey, that's not those or who keep me up at night and who I consider to be our primary competitors. There's Coinbase as well. But I'd say Coinbase and Robin Hood are very different companies and that Robin Hood, we're much more similar to Robin Hood that we're a product-led company. Coinbase is, in my eyes, more of a financial services company or sort of like trying to become a bank, like the JP Morgan of crypto, which that's great. That's something that we all need as an ecosystem and participants in the ecosystem. But banks are different, you know, JPMorgan's not the same thing as Robinhead.

And although they are both very large players and they compete on the fringes, I think, I think their core competencies and core user base are quite different. And so, you know, and I find that Robert if it generally, I think, aligns a little bit more with kind of the direction that we're going. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I feel like, you know, in terms of kind of the strengths and weaknesses of the different players, I think you're right that like, Coinbase, they kind of have their bases covered. Oh, wow.

I just made a pun that I did not intend to. But, you know, it's kind of like no matter how the competition plays out, they're going to benefit in some way. The question is just, will they be a leader in any one of these areas? You know, they kind of, they're doing all the things. And I feel like, you know, the base app is their first attempt at creating a strong retail product. And, you know, I think Jesse Pollack is amazing. Clearly, like, you know, when you saw the day that they made their announcement, like, you know, he's just, he's just very, um, he's just very. Um, Um, he's a, he's, you can tell he's a believer in what he does. You know, he's just, he's just very enthusiastic. He's very smart. And obviously I haven't played around with the new version of the app, but like, you know, I know that he can be scrappy and like, you know, pivot or, you know, whatever. And he has a lot of ideas.

So in that sense, like I feel like, yeah, I feel like if you're going to kind of have a different type of product come out of, out of Coinbase, like I could see, you know, just see doing good job of leading. that. But I agree with you that like something like a Robin Hood or X, they're both, they're both like very sticky for users, you know. And so that is just a strong point for either of them. But okay, so in a moment, we're going to get to kind of all the different specific areas. But first, we have an announcement here at Unchained, which is that our crypto and Macro show Bits and Bips now has its own feeds. So we're spinning it off from the Unchained feed.

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reward station, and by-bit launch pool. All economic activity within UR will be captured by mantle network to further drive value to token holders and establish significance in blockchain for banking. Follow Mantle underscore official to learn more. Okay, back to my conversation with Luca and Brandon. All right. So let's talk about payments. And I'm starting with this because it sort of feels like this whole stable coin payments thing. This is going to be kind of the next phase of adoption. You know, crypto people, they, they know how to transact. They have their wallet, you know, whatever. But non-crypto people, they, you know, they're not, But, you know, using crypto generally.

So, you know, to my mind at this moment, I would say Coinbase with a Shopify deal, Stripe with tempo, and then like, you know, any of these stable coin chains that we talked about plasma, stable, et cetera. To my mind, these are the main players in this area. There are some other ones with like, you know, PayPal had its own stable coin, but it hasn't really taken off. So I wondered if you could just talk a little bit about how you think the competition will play out here, like which players you think have a stronger position versus others. And what are kind of the make or break factors?

Well, yeah, one other dark horse that I'll mention are not really dark horse, quite the opposite is the USDT as well and thinking about payments in more of like a broader non-US centric view. So I think I'll add them to the mix as well in this general topic. But yeah, I think payments is super interesting. I think there's two types of payments broadly. There's peer-to-peer payments and users are sending, you know, dollars to one another. And then there's consumer-to-merchant payments where a consumer is paying a merchant for or greater service. So I think there's, you know, a different, you know, there's, you can kind of break down the topic in those two ways.

I'll say in general, I think that the business to consumer side has been largely an issue of a merchant side acceptance. So the problem is that most merchants don't know how to deal with crypto. They don't know how to they don't know how to manage it, accept it. They just want real US dollars. And so I think in my mind that that's sort of the biggest hurdles for payments to really take off is the merchant's acceptance fees. And that's why I think generally, Stripe is probably my pick or my, where I think, you know, the player that I think is going to help push this space the most is because they have the distribution point into the merchant, the merchants of the world, right?

I think most people, they think about point of sale, like real physical places where you can spend money. But, you know, Stripe obviously has a huge position on just the general. e-commerce landscape. So that's the merchant side. On the consumer side, just actually to ask more directly, so you feel like even though Coinbase already has this deal with Shopify, that once Tempo has launched, like the competition is over? Well, no, no, no, definitely not. I mean, I think tempo also is just, it's not even out yet, right? We have no idea. And I think the biggest winners in this spaces are not really going to be known for a while. So certainly not once something is out, like they're just going to win it or anything like that. But I think in terms of where I think

the biggest problems are and how that matches up to the players that are coming in, I think I'm just matching, hey, biggest problem merchant, merchant side acceptance, the biggest potential solution provider, I think, Stripe. You know, that being said, there obviously is a lot of work to be done on the consumer side experience as well. that equation, I do think Phantom to Lucas Point is one of the best zero to one entry points into crypto and actually getting stable coin dollars into your into user's hands. And so, yeah, I think, you know, expect us to be a pretty big player in this space as well over the coming years. But yeah, I think generally it's going to take a while to play out.

And yeah, you know, a whole side I haven't really talked about is like peer to peer consumer payments and that's an area that I think has generally been pretty uncropped. Do you want to, do you have any thoughts on that? Or do you feel like it'll start more with the B2B type or sorry, B2C, I guess? I think in the U.S. it's going to start a little bit more, more B2C and people are going to start to see, especially merchants, are going to see the benefits of that a lot sooner because of, because of, you know, they have a lot more margin. to save when they're, by adopting blockchain technologies, right?

They give up 3% to, to card networks. They're not, usually not earning yield on the dollars that they receive directly. And so I think combination of stable coins and blockchain networks really moved a needle for them. Whereas in the U.S., peer-to-peer payments is largely,

I think if you ask the normal person off the street, it feels like a largely solved issue. Like people use Venmo and square cash and they feel like that's fine. And so whereas in the emerging markets, you know, that infrastructure, Tratify infrastructure is not trusted trotify infrastructure is not necessarily there. And then that's why you see USAT adopted a lot more because the value profit is there for them. So anyway, so yeah, I think basically B2C payments is I think where we're going to see the U.S. market really pick up. because the value prop for merchants is really there.

And it has been more of a, it's been more of a usability issue for them in terms of like how they've actually been able, like, do they have the tools and everything to be able to, to tackle these or like to actually take advantage of the, of all the improvements. So yeah, that's just kind of high level thesis, but. Yeah, Laura, I have a question. When you ask that question, like define stable coin success.

Because I think there's like, there's, there's a couple answers to this, right? Like my answer for who. will win the stable coin race from net new B to C users would be different from, you know, monthly and yearly stable coin volume would be different from highest revenue generator. So just what would you like define the number one metric for stable coin success? You know, is it issuance? Is it volume? And I think I can give you an answer on that.

And then, yeah, I'll ask that. And then I have another answer that's a little separate. But. Oh, we're saying. Yeah, I guess I would, I was thinking like users in volume. But I, so I agree that there should be two buckets, as Brandon pointed out. But I, my personal view is it will likely start with things like Stripe, you know, just getting stable coins into the hands of users, getting them used to using a wallet, that sort of thing.

but eventually, yeah, I do think people will be paying each other in stable coins. So sort of like a two-phase rollout. So maybe if you want to answer for both phases. Yeah. So I think the answer depends. And I think they'll do this because it's more advantageous for them to do this. If strike flips a switch and everything runs through like a dollar and then auto converts to a stable coin, it's going to really be hard to beat that just naturally on volume because they can convert all their volume into stable coin.

volume. Again, that's more of like an engineering question. But from a feasibility perspective, right, if they're getting yield and all the perks that come from that, strike would be very hard to beat there. I actually think, and I, and Phantom might be working in this direction, but I actually think there's a Zell cash app style product, which kind of I got the vibe of when you guys issued usernames in terms of like net new adoption on like a new behavioral pattern I think it's either going to be an incumbent like Phantom or it's going to be a new startup. And we've yet to see them. It's going to be a, it's going to be a.

So I'm very like, I think, I think there's actually an arbitrage opportunity where you take all of the fintech incumbents, consumer fintech incumbents, and you just replicate the exact business on on stable coin blockchain rails. And I think there's something super competitive there because. Because the app literally just becomes borderless. And I don't believe in these multi-billion dollar incumbents ability to pivot, which goes into my next statement, which is like, what a fumble by PayPal because they were so ahead of the curve. They saw it coming. They saw it and they were first. And all these stable coin companies, you saw circles, big IPO run up.

And I was trading PayPal. I was like, somebody's got to tell some story here. because but but but it just it's just it's just so so to that point which is why I said it's either going to take a team like brandons or a net new team to come in and take you know but I I I definitely would imagine that this is somewhere in phantom's roadmap which is like where you know what is PayPal's look at PayPal's business look at Square's business look at Zell's business and if you really just put that business on blockchain rails right and those you usernames and those numbers, you know, become tied to wallets and the on and off ramping is

incredible. I mean, it is a hundred billion dollar business opportunity, right? I mean, you can already see the market caps of whatever those guys are because those are really like a lot of those guys have a majority of market share in the United States. I mean, you're then opening that market share to the entire planet, anyone with an internet connection. And that's why I'm so desperate for Phantom secondary because or anybody who's building this in this spirit, because this is going to be the great unlock, but it's going to take a product first young, hungry team who doesn't have, you know, who isn't comfortable with tons of infra that they have to go and redo. That's why I don't believe the incumbents are going to be able to pivot. I don't think

Square is going to be able to pivot. You would think somebody like PayPal would be able to pivot. That just showed me, you know, PayPal's lack of market share here shows me that what I'm saying is true. And Zelle is just not going to pivot. And there's not tech forward. They're not product forward. But this consumer product where everybody has a username and this username is permissionless from me to China to Africa to, you know, anywhere on the planet, just give me an internet connection. I can send you some dollars and you can put it into your bank account seamlessly easily with great on and off ramping. The hard part in that product is really the banking, right? Banking all of those different countries. That's where so, you know, I have some

ideas because I've thought about this idea before incubating this product, but too big. too big too many too much of a distraction off of our core focus but the banking is the off frame thing is really the hard part there but you know that's how integrating with the right with certain partners in those regions could solve that issue that that is a ginormous business uh and a business that is going to change how people just transact in the world period and i think will be the most valuable stable coin business especially if you compare that with your own stable coin like that to me is the crem de la crem. But then, again, like I said,

Stripe can turn on a switch and process all their volume through their native stable coin on their chain. And from a, you know, you won't be able to beat that title wave. But, you know, a title wave can be beat by a multitude of miniature waves over the course of time. And so I'm most excited about that type of startup in the stablecoin space is who's going to disrupt PayPal, Zell, and Cash app. and do that on a on a universal global scale because that that that is the that is the the golden

north star i think for stable coins it's less about like and i wouldn't say less about but i'm not that excited about oh i can pay for my for my t-shirts on shopify and stable coins like i get that and and that works and that performs the function of volume and revenue i'm more excited about like the true breakthrough around crypto and blockchain, like the thing that sold me in 2017, and I wish I was wiser then, but I was sold on the fact that blockchains enable the basic human right of being able to send money to somebody without somebody in the middle, right? And so there's a lot of different businesses that have disrupted and have enabled basic human rights, right? The basic human right to communicate with somebody. What is that? That's social

networks, right? The basic human right to, you know, transact is stable coins and payment rails. And this is where I think, you know, the phantoms of the world or some net new startup is who's going to be the company that owns the basic human right to transact freely with somebody from A to point B at any place in the world. That is a multi-hundred billion dollar business. But that is going to be built by somebody who's core who's like less about the minutia volume and more about the mission and the function of that mission of getting there than they are like you know buying my my you know buying some some some some some some cup on shopify right like the i'm more interested on like i got a friend in africa i want to send some money to and i can send him in one second and he

and animal already performs that function you know in in a retrospect right so So yeah. Yeah, it's funny what you said about how there must be a story at PayPal because I don't know if you saw Jose DePonte, who used to head up their crypto efforts left recently, went to Stellar. And yeah, when I look at Defi Lama, I see PYUSD is 10th on the list of stable coins in terms of market cap at $1.2 billion. So.

I'm going to do a deal with PayPal. I've been asking. So maybe we can comment on how there's stable coin. Well, so one thing, and I know, like, you know, you said for you, the strike thing wasn't so interesting. No, actually, before I asked that, while you were talking, I was thinking about the Salana Seeker because I was like, okay, that's actually really interesting. Here you have hardware, and you know, this new version has, it's basically like a hardware wallet, but it's your phone.

And it's like, you know, it uses biometrics and all this stuff. And I wondered, like, do you think that that is like a way that suddenly now we could have like a different entrant, a different type of entrant, like a totally, you know, coming in from this, what's that word, or orthogonal manner? I do. I think the problem with that at scale is for those, for hardware products to work or any product to work, hardware or software, it has to be a better product or at least has to be some semblance. of a better product. You have to be close. The problem with a phone is you're never going to beat the incumbents. You're going to have to be a real superstar talent. And so I would, I think

Salana Seeker has amazing implications in a more holistic fashion than I think the fashion that maybe we're describing. Because I think Brandon will be able to beat, like if they were going heads up on stable coins payments, there's no chance Salana is going to, Seeker is going to compete with Phantom. Phantom is just, you know, it's too much of an extra step in the conversion process. But it's for a different use case. Like, I do think, I do think hardware

plays a role. And I do think there is products around hardware. And I think Salana Seeger can be incredibly successful. Do I, but like, why didn't PayPal create hardware? Any of these guys create hardware? I think it's for good reason. I think they've underwritten and understood why. But Solana Seeker, I like better as an ecosystem product, right, to perform a multitude of different functions versus the conversation we're having now, which is like stable coins perform one function, get dollars from point A to point B. And that is going to be a masterclass in software. And, you know, Brandon so far is honestly, frankly, leading the charge there. But I do think Salana Seeker in a holistic crypto, you know, hardware product, like there's multiple implications that are from a chain perspective. It's actually a very bright direction, I think, for Solana. Because my whole ethos is I think chains are going to have to do one thing,

is they're going to have to own the consumer interface. And owning the consumer interface through a hardware product is actually a place like most of us aren't even thinking about. And so it's a really big swing down a very ambitious direction that I support. And there's a lot of implications of that product that make the crypto experience better. But for the sake of the stable coin conference, conversation, it doesn't move the needle in my opinion. Yeah. By the way, Brandon, I didn't know I invited your number one fan.

Yeah. Thanks so much, Luca. Well, I, you know, generally I agree with everything Lucas said. I mean, especially, especially the parts where, you know, you mentioned Fanton is leading charge. Hard work for Seeker specifically, you know, hardware is, it's vastly different from software, obviously, and that there's huge economies of scale involved. And, you know, it just, it doesn't really seem plausible to me that competing, Seeker competing with iPhone is really like playing a game to win.

I think Seekers, they're playing a little bit of a different game where, and Solana is very, very good at, it's very well positioned to do something like this, where they're very well capitalized and they can make the, they can paint visions for people to actually push the industry forward. And so I think, yeah, the Seekers is a really good example of what can be. built on crypto rails. But I did my opinion not necessarily going to really have a huge chance at competing with Apple and Android directly. But that being said, I think the crypto space is due for a hardware wallet shakeup. I think it's been it's been a while since everyone just sort of, you know,

kind of accepted the ledger as sort of the main hardware, you know, player. And so really excited about what Seeker is going to do specifically there. But maybe unwinding conversation, two notches and just going back to this sort of like global Peter Pure Payments super app that takes advantage of stable coins to really enable, you know, global interactions and payments. Yeah, huge fumble by PayPal and incumbents there. I think like we talked about structurally, it's really hard for these huge public companies to, A, I mean, get on any kind of bleeding edge curve.

But B, I think specifically in crypto, I think, you know, all of them are, it's hard for them to really innovate without feeling like they may be killing their golden goose in some way. And, you know, I don't blame them. They have a lot more to lose than upstart players. And so I think just structurally you're going to see bigger players not really be able to effectively enter the space. And then I guess going all the way on the other end of the spectrum, though, I will say, Companies that are coming, there have been a lot of attempts at like crypto Venmo or crypto squarcast throughout, you know, the history of crypto. And I think the biggest problem that those apps face is the cold start problem where

payments is a social thing. You're paying for point A to point B and both people need to be on that app, right? Starting from zero is a very difficult place to be. Especially if you're just, if you're just like, hey, we're coming out, we're competing directly with Venmo. Why would I use this other app if all my friends and everyone with my family and everyone I'm already paying is on Venmo? It's a very hard proposition.

That's why I think that you will see a player enter this space who has an existing large user distribution, existing relationships with end consumers that already have that large captive audience and then are kind of layering different businesses and applications on top. You know, obviously that's the position that we're in, you know, a position that folks like Robin Hood and others are in as well. So I think that's sort of the dynamic. That's, I think, hurting the very bottom of like the net new folks.

Yeah, I feel like in a way crypto almost solves the cold start problem in the sense that as long as you have like chains that are compatible. Like if like if you're if multiple different wallet providers all take USDC on Ethereum or like, you know, tether on Tron or you know, whatever, then then that like helps little. bit. But last thing just on the stable coin piece is, I wondered if you had any thoughts on how Stripes acquisitions of like Privy or Bridge would help help them or like how that might shape how the adoption happens in the stable coin space? Yeah. I mean, well, I mean, Bridge. Bridge is sort of an obvious one. You know, they can't, you know, they have to be, they have to be able to issue stable coins. And that this bridge. allows them to really, well, I guess there's a couple different aspects of bridge.

There's sort of the issuance business and then there's like stable point orchestration without bridge, you know, they would not really be able to, they would have just start from zero in terms of like being able to build all those capabilities and instead they're just accelerating their road map by buying like a, you know, extremely cracked and performance team. And so, you know, that obviously just really adds a lot of fuel to the fire in terms of issuing stable. stable coins, being able to move stable points from point A to B, being able to connect to all these bank counts, etc. So that's huge. And then Privy is also an interesting one. I think that, you know, it's unclear exactly how they are going to fit into the whole strike stack. But, you know, one very natural place is in this merchant acceptance example that I gave earlier, it's like merchants, they don't want to accept crypto from end users because they don't know how to store it.

they don't know how to manage it, et cetera. Now, with Privy and having that sort of wall of technology in-house or Stripe, it makes that side of the equation a lot easier. And so, yeah, I forget what the initial question is, but, you know, those definitely, those are definitely core infrastructure pieces that stripe has required that is definitely going to allow them to be faster. So, yeah, super excited about both of this. Okay, Luke, do you want to add anything there?

Nothing to that. I mean, I think Brin is best to answer that question, but I did have a thought that I just want to share. Oh, uh, because I'm on my fandom fan boy spree. Brandon, you want to know when you made it? And I think this is probably like a tag team

between your CMO and head of partnerships. The big swing for you is getting Phantom pre-installed on phones. That's the big swing. That's the really big swing. That's the deal. You've got to have, You got to have somebody doing that full-time. Get me pre-installed on phones.

You don't need to go Android because Android's you're most likely bet here. This was like the great YouTube breakthrough. You're going to have to go to some smaller phones first, but that's the big one. Because, I mean, the real technical guys will hate me for the statements. I probably won't even say it. But, you know, Phantom pre-installed on some phones is maybe half of the Salonis Seeker Vision, probably, right? There's another half that obviously got to give credit for. but pre-installations, Phantom pre-installed,

especially on the third world foam companies, the one in Africa and places like that. Woo! That's a big one, dude. You got to have one guy on that full-time. So it wasn't pre-installed, but it was, like, featured when I opened up my seeker. It was, like, very prominently featured. I can't remember exactly.

I probably have screenshots of it on my seeker. But I remember that it was like one of the first things that I downloaded because it was like, download this basically. But anyway, okay, let's move on to talking about trading. I know you guys will be excited to talk about this because it features Robin Hood, obviously. This is obviously another area of crypto adoption. This is one of the big pieces that has actually fueled crypto for a long time. And here we have two big players, Robin Hood and Coinbase that are bringing perpetuals and just like getting more into derivative. We have all this action with these, like, you know, tokenized stocks or tokenized equity.

And I wondered kind of when you look at like the various things that are going on and, you know, obviously like some of, so Robin Hood, you know, was going to do the tokenized equity on the Robin Hood chain. But then we also had, you know, like Cracken doing the X-stocks thing that was on Solana. And so I just wondered kind of like amongst all these different, you know, forays that we're seeing by these different companies into this world, like who you think is best positioned and, you know, which products you think will take off and which you think are maybe not structured in a good way or their go-to-market isn't strong. Well, yeah, definitely a lot of, definitely pretty broad topic and a lot of different directions to go. And I think generally, you know, you are seeing, I think trading as an activity is is morphing throughout generations. Right. I think prior to our generation, maybe parents' generation trading was a very, very, you know, buttoned up financial activity that you would do at an institution, you know. And not something that would be done casually or be done for entertainment value, for example.

Now with I think the younger generations, especially, you're seeing more about sort of hyper-financialization of entertainment, attention, et cetera, where trading in different types of sort of risk-on activities like sports batting and things like that are becoming a lot more accessible, becoming a lot more mainstream. And so I think generally you'll see

I mean, the definition of trading and the use cases are just becoming a lot more different and a lot more, in my mind, a lot more akin to entertainment or some seeking activity. And so, yeah, I think in terms of who's best set up for that, I think it's whoever has the hearts and minds and trust of the younger generation. and, you know, where those folks are, you know, storing their dollars and going towards. And so, yeah, you know, obviously Robin Hood is, I think, in that spot currently, at least in the U.S. But I think at the same time, another, obviously, you know, another trend that we all subscribe to here is that all financial activity is moving on chain, right? And so I think you'll see the true winner being not only the folks who can appeal to the next generation, but who are also effectively navigating what's going on the on-chain environment. And yeah, props to Robin Hood being, you know, being very forward there,

launching their own chain and launching tokenized stocks and whatnot. And I'm glad they're pushing forward there. But whoever is mastering sort of what's the trends that are that are actually emerging on-chain in an on-chain first way. And crossing that perfectly with sort of the new age attention is probably going to be the biggest winner in this general trend. But of course, there's a lot of different subsections in that. I like Brandon's answer.

Well, I mean, so you talked before about how you're such a big fanboy of Robin Hood. So, like, do you feel that Coinbase, like, if you were Coinbase, what would you try to do to take on Robin Hood in the trading arena. The products are so different. And Coinbase has been known not to be a product team. Right? Like you've almost just seen like the last couple of big swings they took it back. They missed.

All right. The NFT marketplace, a couple other things. And just like the product is just not comparable. I think Brandon is right. They should lean into. And I didn't even look at that framing. I actually bullish Coinbase after that framing Brandon, which is like they should be the JP Moore.

Morgan, that's what they should do. You know, like, they should just go all in there. Because I think, like, product is a DNA thing. You can't just, it's very hard to go plug in, like, a SEAL Team 6. And, like, very few people know how to do that. That starts from the top down, right? Coinbase is a deal maker. They're, they're leverage.

They have all the leverage. They know how to do deals. They have great brand rapport, great cash a first to market. Just go be JP Morgan. I think that was a really good framing. That makes me bullish. So you feel like they should give up on what Brian Armstrong, the CEO always talks about,

which is like bringing people on chain. Like what you're talking about is they should just stick with a centralized model and, you know, not try to push more decentralization. I think they should M&A those. Like they're in the business of if they want to be innovative, like by the groups who are innovative that are building those solutions that they want. Like, it just doesn't come across to me. And I've been a Coinbase users in 2016.

Like, it doesn't come across to me. Like, every product has been better. Like, why did they FTX even win? Because they, like, basically built a good product that was available in the States. And people could finally trade sophisticated in a sophisticated fashion. Like, Coinbase, FTX should have never gained any market share. Right? Coinbase should have had that moat.

So just like, I would, I would, I would, in a perfect. world like totally yeah go do the the vision and the direction is right i just don't think that team is built for that if you just look at like the case studies and like that's just my third party assessment looking in like they just don't look like they're like again a product team seems like a dna thing right something that starts from the top down the top guy has to be a product guy i don't know if brian is today seems like he's a deal maker guy a good decision maker guy guy who makes the right decisions, things like that. I don't know.

And because you just look at Robin Hood and I'm like, the product is incredible. The same functions I try to perform, you know, on Coinbase, get notifications and blocks and I have to go through approvals and verifications. And I do the same function on Robin Hood who just opened up crypto deposits a year ago. And it's a whole no issues. Face scanning, you know, pass keys. The whole nine is just better. I, and I think, I think being a part.

part of being a good entrepreneur is sitting and living in your truth, right? Like, understanding what you're good and what you're not good at. And usually if you're not a good product guy, you have to go buy product guys, right, who are building the product that you want to build or you just sit in your truth and realize you're not a product guy and you just go do what you are good at, which in my mind, like the USDC Coinbase deal is a perfect example of what Coinbase is good at, deal making, right having the moat of the being the most established and credible you know arm in the u.s in in crypto and levering that to go and do great deals that accrue value to shareholders i just don't

think it's just it's not like brandon and team i think in a war room you know and and just so you know i think jesse's top three builders in crypto i think jesse's phenomenal and if and if anyone can pull it off it's probably him but you need one building product that doesn't come from one guy. It's a unit. It's like, I found this. I got really blessed with my unit. I didn't know it at the time until a couple of years after looking back. Sometimes you just get lucky and you get the right people together. But I don't think one man can brute force product, especially when you're building base, which is an ecosystem, right? Like, there's so many other layers to base that is not the app. The app is a layer and probably the

vocal and nucleus layer, but to think that he can solely focus on building product every day, isn't important, I'd be remiss. So, yeah, I mean, Robin Hood is clearly a product first team. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's very, you know, gamified and all that. Okay. Before we wrap, we'll just tackle the last topic, which is, you know, we have like these attempts at this everything app. Like, obviously, base is probably the first one. X, they've said that they want to have. there and they did this partnership with Polymarket. They have another with Kalshi. Who knows how they're going to do the rest of it?

But I was just curious for your thoughts on who you think would be best positioned here or what types of characteristics any players in this space would need in order to succeed. Yeah. Well, the Everything App thesis, well, generally, I think I don't necessarily agree with trying to compete for the Everything app. everything out. I mean, I think basically, if you're, if you're going to compete there and win there, you need to be an established humongous player with humongous distribution. So, you know, X, potentially, Facebook, potentially, you know, those types of players with that kind of humongous order of magnitude reach. Otherwise, you know, if you're trying to compete in, and by definition in everything,

is just a losing proposition. So, yeah, I mean, it's just literally setting yourself up to fail unless you have that God tier resources at your fingertips. And so I think, yeah, I think it's got to be folks who have those hundreds of millions to billions of existing users and are built on top of rails, you know, that allow them like true global outreach interactions. And so.

So you don't feel like the base app can bootstrap this. Like they're already coming out of the gate not going to be able to compete against something like X or any other existing social network. I mean, I do. I think base app is going to be the next everything app. No, no, absolutely not. Like it's just humongous. It's just the, when you're an entrepreneur and you're coming, you're an underdog, you basically have to, you have to pick and choose your vowels. And you have to know, like, what Liggo was saying, like be in the truth of.

of and embrace what you're good at and what you're not. And I think the proposition of just competing everywhere at the same time is just doesn't make sense. And so, yeah, I think that's why it's been so hard for it in the West. You know, to have those true super apps, I think iOS and the app store is probably closest to the true, true super app of the West. Wait, the whole operating system?

Yeah, I would say so in terms of, It actually, yeah, the whole, the whole iPhone, App Store, iOS, I think that is the closest to like true super app that we have. And I mean, and what we know what is the definition of an app really? It's, you know, I think in the end it's about owning the relationship with the end user and, you know, Apple owns all those relationships. And so, and that's why they have extreme pricing power on the app store and things like Apple Pay, et cetera. you know, in the east, it's, it's just a little bit of a different setup. And, you know, you have pseudo-state sponsored companies and things like that. And so that, that gives those folks a lot of, like, unfair distribution power. Whereas in the east, sorry, in the West, yeah, I think you're going to

have to be one of those humongous players, whether it's a Google, Facebook, et cetera. So, yeah, that's kind of my take on it. Luca, what about you? You know, I kind of said this with blockchains, and I think it's applicable, which is like, this general purpose, we're going to do everything approach. Like, let's just go back to first principles here is what it means to be a successful entrepreneur. Like doing everything well at once is an impossible feat.

And it's one that is like destined for failure. And like you can get lucky. And, and, you know, maybe like a dart hits and it works. But just this idea of like doing everything. every single thing well, I think is like a poor approach. So I don't, I believe in central destinations on, I believe in central middle layers to do everything on chain. I don't believe in the everything app. Like, I think, I think there should be, like, I think Phantom does this well.

You know, we, you know, I think, I think we took inspiration on the portal product, you know, World app also, I think is thinking through this lens. I think there should be places to perform on-chain functions. I just think sometimes when you're thinking about like crypto everything app, I think guys are trying to go do social and do like hundreds of different things. And I think that can get really convoluted really quick, really fast. So I believe there'll be iterations of it, but I think you need to find killer PMF in one vertical first and then you scale the features out accordingly versus like coming out of the gates with these, you know, everything apps, you know, without people, like without one feature working or sticking, I think is probably how I would

look at it through that lens. Okay. Yeah. Well, we'll have to see what happens. I mean, they, you know, they're still in beta, so it's pretty close right now. And very few people are using it. You guys, this was super fun. Thank you so much for coming on Unchained.

Thanks for having us. Laura. Unchained is produced by me, Laura Shin, with help from Matt Pilchard, Juan Irranovic, Pamajumdar, and Marka Curia. Thanks for listening.