Unchained - How This Stablecoin Business in Africa Is Taking on SWIFT and Big Banks - Ep. 722

Episode Date: October 22, 2024

Africa is quickly becoming one of the most dynamic regions for crypto adoption, but the story unfolding there is very different from what many in the West might imagine.  Chris Maurice, co-founder and CEO of Yellow Card, joins the show to share how stablecoins are already transforming businesses across the continent, solving real-world problems, and taking on SWIFT. Plus, he explains why USDT is the stablecoin of choice there.  He also dives into the long-term economic impact of crypto adoption and explains why anyone serious about business should be paying close attention to Africa.  Show highlights: What Yellow Card is and the focus on U.S. Dollar stablecoins The complexities of doing business in Africa Which African countries have the highest rate of adoption Chris’s background and his fun story of how he got into working in Africa How operating a company in Africa is different from other places Why Yellow Card is currently operating with three stablecoins, and the dominance of USDT Why Yellow Card only offers centralized stablecoins Why everyone should pay more attention to the continent, according to Chris Visit our website for breaking news, analysis, op-eds, articles to learn about crypto, and much more: unchainedcrypto.com Thank you to our sponsors! Polkadot Mantle Robinhood & Arbitrum Guest: Chris Maurice, cofounder and CEO of Yellow Card Links Previous coverage of Unchained on stablecoins and emerging markets:  Anita Posch on Why ‘Bitcoin Is a Tool for Freedom’ – Especially in Africa 6 Stablecoins That Are Driving the Sector’s Two-Year High in Market Capitalization Castle Island Ventures’ report: Stablecoins: The Emerging Market Story Timestamps:  00:00 Intro 02:03 What Yellow Card is and why it focuses on U.S. dollar-denominated stablecoins 04:31 The complexities of doing business in Africa 10:42 Which African countries have the highest crypto adoption 19:17 How Chris got into working in Africa 25:11 How operating in Africa differs from other regions 32:42 Why USDT dominates Yellow Card’s stablecoin business 38:31 Why Yellow Card only uses centralized stablecoins 39:22 Does Africa deserve more attention? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is not something that, you know, people want to buy because they want exposure to, you know, Dogecoin or something, right? It's, you know, it's a technology that businesses are utilizing on a daily basis to keep operating, right? To keep their business flow, to, you know, keep their family fed, to keep the employees, you know, on the team. And it's, it's really been incredible to see the impact that we've been able to have on some of these businesses, right? Just being able to help them operate, be able to, you know, improve efficiencies and improve, you know, the way that they handle their treasury and, you know, the way that they manage exposure and risk on the continent.

Hi, everyone. Welcome to Unchained. You're a no-hype resource for all things crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin, author of The Cryptopian. I started covering crypto nine years ago, and as a senior editor of Forbes was the first matriameter partner to cover Cryptocurrency full time. This is the October 22nd, 24 episode of Unchained. Robin Hood's Defy Mobile app takes no fees on same chain and cross-chain swaps. Use Arbitrum's layer two to swap with low network fees in just a few taps. Other fees may apply. Download on iOS or Android today.

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Perfect for GameFi and DeFi to build, grow, and scale. Join the community at Pocodot.com network slash ecosystem. slash community. Today's guest is Chris Maurice, co-founder and CEO of Yellowcard. Welcome, Chris. It's so great to be here, Laura. Nice to have you. So Yellowcard is, well, I don't know if I'm describing this correctly,

but to my mind, it's a stable coin business that focuses on B2B payments in Africa. So if I didn't get that totally accurately, then go ahead and tell us more about it. No, you nailed that. You don't really need me here. But, you know, yeah, so look, you know, we describe ourselves as the, you know, the largest of the first licensed stable coin on and off ramp on the continent. So we work in 20 countries all in sub-Saharan Africa. And we work predominantly with businesses helping them make international payments, manage treasury, and, you know, really access the dollar via stable coins. And yeah, I noticed so you use primarily USDC, USD, USD, P-USD, some Bitcoin and other crypto assets.

And I was curious why U.S. dollar denominated stable coins? Because obviously, if you're in Africa, then that's not, you know, local currency. So why is that? Yeah, it's, you know, it's really just the ease of conversion, right? You know, everybody around the world uses the dollar, whether it's their local currency or not, right? It's, you know, the dollar is still the official currency for global trade, for, you know, imports, for international payments, for all of that. And, you know, it's actually, it's quite funny, right? You know, when we started out, we were only doing Bitcoin. And we saw a, I mean, very noticeable shift between 2019 and then into 2020 and especially late 2020 from Bitcoin over completely to USDT and USDC. And, you know, now, I mean, 99.9% of our volume is stable coins, right? So, you know,

Bitcoin, Ethereum, things like that, have just sort of, you know, moved away, right? And, and, you know, I think it really comes back to the practicality of the use case, right? The businesses that we're working with need to make payments, right? They need to pay an invoice. They need to pay bills. They need to pay employees. They need to, you know, use this like currency, right? Use this like money. They need to, you know, settle international payments that they otherwise can't settle through the financial system on the continent. And so, you know, a dollar paid stable coin is the easiest way to do that. Right. If I have a bill for $500, then I know I need 500 USDT, which is much easier than 0.00365, you know, BTC, right?

And what kinds of companies are your customers? Yeah, I mean, we work with the whole range, right? I mean, so we work with, you know, everybody from a guy that sells shoes on the side of the road that he's importing from India all the way up to, you know, some of the largest food and pharmaceuticals. companies on the continent, right? And sort of everything and everybody in between banks, manufacturers, importers, exporters, fintechs, you name it, right? Part of doing business on the African continent is dealing with the financial system, right? Dealing with the currencies, dealing with inflation, dealing with, you know, the lack of liquidity against the U.S. dollar in most countries. And so, you know, for essentially any company that's operating on the

continent, there is a need to, you know, look for alternatives, right? And stable coins have really arisen as that alternative across the continent, right? And I think, you know, we're seeing this really all over, all over the, all over Africa. And it's only accelerating, right? As, as more and more businesses start to understand this technology, start to realize the practical applications here, it's, it's just really taken off. And I'm kind of curious about the evolution of your type of business because, you know, as you mentioned before Yellow Card came along or even in the early days of Yellow Card, it was Bitcoin, ether.

But before that, what were they using? Were they literally using paper money or could they access dollars in bank accounts? Or were they just trading their local currencies against each other? Or like what did it? What are you replacing? Yeah. You know, what we're replacing is essentially the informal market, right? You know, before stable coins, there was not a good formal way in most countries to be able to

make these payments, right? You know, in a lot of countries, the banks just don't have the liquidity to be able to, you know, help with international payments, right? And so, you know, the way that a lot of this stuff ran before is on more of like a Hawala system, if you're familiar with Hawala, right? Please remind me, I've heard that name before and I forget exactly what it means. Yeah, yeah. So Huala is, it's, I think it's an Arabic word, right? It's essentially a system of money movement where, you know, let's say I am in Nigeria and, you know, my cousin knows you and you're in, you know, Kenya and I need to make a payment to, you know, a friend in Kenya. So I give money to, you know, my cousin who knows you, he calls you up and, you know, tells you to pay this other guy and then you guys, you know, settle each other however you can, right? And so. So it's just this sort of informal system of like, I know a guy and this guy can, you know,

help make that payment, right? And yeah, that's, I mean, that's essentially how, you know, most of these payments were working before, right? I mean, I've talked to CEOs of large grocery chains on the continent that, you know, tell me stories about, you know, going out and finding a guy on the streets that, you know, has dollars and can, you know, help make a payment that they need to make to South Africa to, you know, keep imports flowing. right. And it's, you know, I mean, it's, it's kind of crazy to think about, right? But, you know,

when you live in a financial system, which just doesn't have the liquidity as, as, you know, most countries have a, have an FX shortage, right? And so when you live in a system that doesn't have that liquidity, it becomes very difficult for these companies to actually access the, the money that they need to keep imports flowing to, you know, just keep payments going. And so people find creative ways to solve their problems, right? And, And, you know, finding a guy on the streets is one of those ways, right? You know, it's just one of those things, right? Everybody kind of knows a guy, right?

But, you know, now there's a better way. And so walk me through what it's like. So let's say I'm one of your customers. And let's say it's that example of, you know, I work with another business in India. So I come to you and I say I have to make a payment to India. And let's say I'm, you know, in, I guess Kenya. They have the Naira. Is that right?

Shilling in Kenya, yeah. Shilling. Okay, sorry. Or is it Nigerian, Nairobi? Yeah, Nigeria. Okay. So let's say I'm in Nigeria. I come to you.

I want to make this payment. I what deposit the Naira, you convert it to one of your stable coins, make the payment on the other side, and then they convert it to their local currency or how does it work? Yeah, yeah. So, you know, essentially the way that it works, right, is if you are a company that needs to make that payment, right? So, for example, we work with a, you know, a large pharmaceutical company that that needs to make payments to India, right?

They import medicine, things like that from India, sell it to, you know, pharmacies across the continent, across West Africa, right? And so, you know, these guys need to make those payments. They have local currency, right? They need access to dollars to be able to import the medicine that they're bringing in to, you know, keep people healthy, right? And, you know, keep everybody well.

And so they're giving us the local currency, right, in whichever country, you know, it's coming from, whether it's, you know, Naira, shilling, Rand, Pula, etc. That's being converted to USDT, USDC, right? You know, whatever stable coin is preferred. And then that stable coin is moved to where it's needed, liquidated for dollars, right? And then that's it. Right. Now you have the dollars. And so it's, you know, it's just a way of completely simplifying these transactions. And, you know, it's sort of the first step, right? I think that, you know, people talk a lot in the industry about how stable coins are going to, you know,

disrupt international payments and replace Swift and replace international banking and things like that. You know, we're seeing that in real time on the continent, right? It's happening right now on the continent as opposed to being this sort of future thing that will or might happen. And, you know, again, it just goes back to the fact that, you know, a lot of the systems today just don't work the way that businesses need them to and the way that people need them to. And so, you know, again, people are smart, right? They find alternatives. And so I was also curious. So actually, before we move on, so how many countries are you in?

20. And what would you say are like the most active markets in Africa or where do you see the greatest adoption? Nigeria is a big one. Francophone is a big surprisingly big for a lot of people. So, you know, like Coke the Juven, Senegal, Kenya, South Africa, right? Sort of the usual suspects, right? The bigger economies are bigger markets in general. and then it sort of goes down from there.

Okay. And, you know, there was that Stablecoin report that Nick Carter released. And I wondered if you could give us some color, you know, to build on that report to, like, explain kind of what you're seeing in terms of crypto adoption in Africa generally. Yeah. So we did help with putting that report together. So I am, you know, a little biased. But, yeah, you know, look, I think the, you know, the report hit on the biggest and most

important piece, which is that Nigeria is, how do you say, really leading the world in terms of the practical use of stable coins, right? I think that, you know, what the report really hit on and what it was intended to hit on is not just, you know, who's, you know, buying dog and catcoin, right, who's, you know, trading crypto around and things like that, but, you know, who's using stable coins for practical purposes, for payments, for settlement, for, you know, just anything that, you know, that, you know, again, they can be used for as dollar-pag stable coins. And, yeah, I mean, you know, look, I'm not surprised, obviously, to see Nigeria leading the way on that. I think that, you know, Nick and a lot of other people were surprised to see just how

dominant Nigeria was in terms of, in terms of the adoption. But, you know, look, I mean, by, you know, all on-chain available data, we work in some of the top crypto markets on Earth in sub-Saharan Africa. I think that, you know, people really, really underestimate how much activity is going on on the continent, right? How many people across Africa are utilizing this technology. People just don't, you know, people just don't pay attention to the continent, right? Outside of it, right? There's a, I mean, a lot of misconceptions that float around U.S., Europe, et cetera, in terms of what goes on in Africa. And I think that, you know, this technology is really the first sort of paradigm shifting technology that the continent

has a chance to not just participate in, but really lead, right? You know, I think Africa, by every available metric was, you know, later to the Internet than pretty much any other part of the world, right? It was later to mobile phones than pretty much any other part of the world. With this technology, it's, I mean, you know, it's still the early days. And Africa is one of the top, you know, places on Earth right now, speaking broadly, right? There are many countries on the continent right now that are, you know, topping the chart. for adoption on stable coins and on this technology. And so it's, you know, it's sort of an interesting

situation where thanks to the internet, thanks to, you know, the proliferation of mobile phones, mobile devices, the continent isn't behind on this. It's actually leading the way. There's, you know, quite a bit of work that's been done across Africa in terms of regulation, in terms of adoption, in terms of education. And I think, you know, that is all really starting to pay off and you're just going see more and more of it as we progress. Okay. Yeah. I mean, in a way, it reminds me of how I think it was like mobile adoption or mobile pay took off in Africa kind of more so than in the West simply because, you know, they didn't have a lot of infrastructure that was already working super well. And so then when

this came along, they were able to sort of leapfrog places like the U.S. And so we actually kind of like mostly described one of your products, but I know you have some others, yellow pay, this API or widget. Do you want to talk about those a little bit? Yeah, yeah. I mean, so, everything that we do really breaks down into two categories, right? So we have the on and off ramp, which is pretty much what we described, right? That's businesses that need to make payments, right? And, you know, we use stable coins to help these businesses make payments that they need to make. And then we have the payments API suite, which pretty much everything else fits into. I like to call this Africa as a service, but that abbreviates to ask so the team doesn't let me call it that.

But, you know, essentially what that does is it takes these banking and mobile money rails that we have across the continent, and it abstracts them and makes it available for businesses that want to enter Africa, but they don't want to deal with the regulation. They don't want to deal with the banking system. They don't want to deal with the currencies. They don't want to deal with, you know, exchange and, and, you know, everything else that is a reality of doing business on the continent, right? You know, look, by every available metric, we're working in 20 of the hardest countries in the world to do business in. And so, you know, of course, there's a large opportunity. I mean, this is, you know, this is where most of the world's GDP growth is coming from over the next 50 years. But, you know, rightfully so, there's hesitation on, you know, entering these countries and, you know, really doing business on the ground. And so that's what, you know, we, again, are solving using stable coins, right? We make it possible for these large.

company. We work with Coinbase. We work with Block. We work with, you know, a number of others, just utilizing, utilizing this suite of APIs and tech to enable them to actually be able to work across the continent without them having to have that local presence, having to set all the stuff up themselves, right? So, you know, I can tell you, it was a pretty wild experience going and, you know, setting a lot of the stuff up, right? So it's not, it's not something that's going to be easily replicated. So, you know, we make it available for anybody that wants it to be able to work with us easily. All right. So in a moment, we'll talk more about the history of yellow card and dive into the differences in stable coins. But first, I'm a quick word from the sponsors who make

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Think big, bills bigger with Pocod. Join the community at Pocodot.network slash ecosystem slash community. Back to my conversation with Chris. So one thing we did not discuss was how you even got into this business in the first place. What were you doing before and how did you stumble upon crypto and doing these kind of B2B payments in Africa. Yeah, well, you know, before this, I was selling Pokemon cards on the internet, which is oddly transferable in terms of skill sets to what I do now. But I will also say not to, not to, you know, distract from the conversation and make it all

about Pokemon, but I was 10 years too early. That market has taken off probably as much as my crypto holdings. So, you know, I should have just held on to those. But yeah, you know, I did that, you know, essentially through college. And I actually, I got at the Bitcoin pretty early, actually. I got it in 2013. So my co-founder, Justin is the guy that would, you know, go around parties talking about Bitcoin back in the early days, right? He was really into the, to the tech. He was on all the forums, all of that. I wanted to explain it to everybody, right? And so he got me in in 2013. And by 2015, I was just fully down the rabbit hole, right? Like, you know, this is the best thing ever. This is what I'm doing with the rest of my life. And so, you know, we, we tried a number of things. You know,

some of them worked. Some of them didn't. And, you know, what we ended up building when we were first starting out was we were going to put a gift card in CVS, Walmart, places like that. You'd be able to walk in, buy this gift card, redeem it for Bitcoin. And, you know, we were building this out. And one day I met a Nigerian guy at a Wells Fargo in Auburn, Alabama, of all places. And this guy was sending $200 to his family. And the bank charged him $90 to send $200 over to his family. And I thought, Oh my God. Yeah, exactly, right? How is that possible? How could it cost that much? And so, you know, I talked to the guy, you know, hey, if you are to Bitcoin, it's free, it's instant, it's fun, all this great stuff. And went home and just started thinking, you know, what's this guy's

mom going to do with $200 of Bitcoin, right? Like, this doesn't actually solve anybody's problem. you can't buy food with that, you can't pay rent with that, you know, what are, what are we actually doing here? And so, look, I will say, I don't think I knew where Nigeria was on a map at the time. They don't teach you nearly as much about Africa as you might think in the Louisiana education system. It comes as a shock to some people. But, you know, I just, I wanted to learn everything that I could, right? I really became obsessed with this problem. And I just, I start doing all this research and trying to understand, you know, the country and the currency and the continent more broadly, and I'm skipping class and just, you know, reading about Nigeria, right? And, you know, I realized

if I want to understand Nigeria, I need to speak to somebody from there. And so I, I put out an ad online that said, looking to speak to Nigerian men, which, you know, in hindsight, probably could have been worded better. But where did you? place that ad? This was LinkedIn. So it could have been a lot worse. People think that it was Craigslist. It wasn't Craigslist. I'm not that bad. But yeah, you know, I end up meeting this guy. And this was about the point in my life where I learned that Nigerians are the most convincing people that you'll ever meet on the face of this planet. Because about a month and a half after meeting this Nigerian man on the internet, he convinced me to go get a passport and take the first

international flight in my life. I'd been on a plane four times in my life before starting the company. And I land in Lagos, Nigeria on a six-day-old passport, no visa, no shots, and a one-way ticket that I spent all of my money on. So people ask sort of how Yellow Card got started. It was a pure trial by fire. I mean, there was no other option, right? It was either, you know, succeed or, you know, live there for the rest of my life, right? And so, yeah, you know, we got to work, you know, eventually made just enough money for me to be able to get a plane ticket down to South Africa, flew down there. We started, you know, setting up in South Africa. I took a bus to Botswana. You know, we set up there. I had somebody drive me to Zambia. We set up there.

And, you know, I was just, I mean, you know, vagabonding my way across the, you know, the eastern part of the continent and getting these rails set up, right? And, you know, we just sort of hit it at the perfect time, right? Right before COVID, you know, right before, you know, the world locked down. And, and none of this would have been possible. So yeah, it was, you know, quite the journey. And, you know, yeah, we made it to where we are today now. And basically what that looked like was you were getting banking partners in all those countries. Is that it? I mean, in the early days, it was literally everything, right? I mean, I would roll into a country. I would get the entity set up. I'd go work with the registrar, you know, make sure if a company was registered,

bring those docs over to banks, get bank accounts set up. I'd go meet with, you know, mobile money providers and, you know, figure out a way to integrate into their systems. I was, you know, talking to local businesses and, and, you know, local people that were involved in crypto and just essentially, you know, meeting the broader crypto community throughout the world, right? I mean, you know, I, you know, obviously, you know, we, you know, we, you know, I, you know, I joke about, you know, meeting, you know, Nigerians on the internet and things like that because of, you know, sort of a you know, the, how do you say, the old reputation of the country, but it's, you know, that really is a thing in today's day and age, right? It's, you know, it's not nearly as sketchy as

people make it out to be anymore. I, I, you know, was just going around and meeting like the crypto community in Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda, Botswana, Kenya, just all over the continent, just off the internet, right? So it really is a magical tool and, you know, more people should you use it to meet people. And I mean, we kind of discussed this a little bit, but so what is it about or how do you find kind of like operating a crypto company in Africa different than, you know, how you think it might be in other parts of the world, in particular in the U.S.? Yeah, you know, I think what I would say is it's, you know, for us, it's a lot more of a, an

unbeaten path, right? We are, you know, essentially blazing the trail in most in almost every country that we operate in, right? In, I mean, out of the 20 countries in, I mean, the vast majority of them, we were the first crypto company of any kind to, you know, register in these countries, right? Where, you know, it was our team. It was, it was me and our team that went around working with the regulators, working with banks, working with, you know, the government in, in each of these jurisdictions to help, you know, understand how they're thinking about this technology and help essentially, you know, push it forward.

And I think that, you know, one thing that's, that's been exciting for us is that, you know, I think in the U.S., in, you know, Europe and a lot of other places, crypto kind of gets thrown into some of the legacy regulation that doesn't necessarily apply, right? I mean, one easy example is the money transmission licensing in the U.S., right, on the state-by-state level. You know, this stuff was set up for Western Union, right?

This licensing was set up for money grant. It was set up for, you know, companies that were moving money that had locations in each state, like physical locations all over each state. And so, you know, the states wanted to, you know, have some regulatory authority over, you know, these businesses operating on the ground in the state, you know, these, the licenses don't make sense for fintech, right? You know, a company like PayPal, right, a company like Coinbase that can very easily operate on the internet and just have a presence in, you know, California should not necessarily have to get a license in Louisiana to be able

to serve me or to be able to serve, you know, anybody else. And so, you know, I think in the U.S. and Europe, have a lot of legacy regulation that really impacted the space and that we're still seeing the effects of today, right? You know, the money transmission license is still the way that the space is regulated across the U.S. You just, you don't have a lot of that legacy, legacy overhang on the continent. And so, you know, I think one of the things that, you know, we've been, you know, fortunate to be able to do is, is work with these regulators on understanding this technology as a unique and new

technology on its own and helping, you know, guide them on what those regulations should look like for this technology specifically. And so, you know, now, you know, with a lot of the work that we've done, there's a licensing regime in Botswana, right? There's a licensing regime in South Africa. There's a licensing regime that's, you know, coming out in Nigeria. There's a licensing regime in Namibia and Mauritius. There's sandboxing in Zambia. There's, you know, sandboxing, getting ready in Rwanda, Uganda, Ghana, and all these other places. And so it's, you know, there's just been this paradigm shift over the last two years on the continent where, I think, where while a lot of the rest of the world has not necessarily,

well, I mean, I guess it depends on the jurisdiction, right? But, you know, a lot of the rest of the world has not been overly easy to work in, you know, for a lot of companies. you know, it's been, it's been a lot more positive over the past two years for us, right? I mean, you know, we've gone from essentially operating in a pure gray space where there's just no regulations either way about this technology to having regulatory clarity in, you know, the majority of our major markets. And I think that that's, you know, really unique in the industry, right? And again, it speaks to the practical nature of this technology, right? This is not

something that, you know, people want to buy because they want exposure to, you know, doge coin or something, right? It's, it's, you know, it's a technology that businesses are utilizing on a daily basis to keep operating, right? To keep their business flow, to, you know, keep their family fed, to keep the employees, you know, on the team. And it's, it's really been incredible to see the impact that we've been able to have on, on some of these businesses, right? Just being able to help them operate, be able to improve efficiencies and improve, you know, the way that they handle their treasury and, you know, the way that they manage exposure and risk on the continent. It's really been incredible. And, you know, what really excites

me is I just, I don't think that we actually know what the impact of this technology is going to be. In that, I think that, you know, we see the impact today, right? You know, this business is able to, you know, make a payment and stay afloat and it's able to, you know, pay debt. And there's, I mean, a ton more money flowing into the continent now, thanks to this technology. We see it every day, the amount of money that's pouring in and investments and, you know, hiring because people are more easily able to get paid and, you know, all of this. But I just don't think that we know what the long-term economic impact of that is going to be. I think it's really hard to quantify, right? You know, what's the long-term economic impact of these businesses being able to continue to operate and actually grow as opposed to.

to sort of being stagnant local businesses, right? What's the economic impact of, you know, a stay-at-home mom that's now able to work online because she can actually get paid thanks to this technology and, you know, still be at home with the kids and, you know, work a job, run her own business, right? We have countries where 50% of our customers are women, which I think, you know, again, is very different than, you know, the rest of the industry, right? You know, I don't know offhand with, you know, Coinbase and some of these guys' numbers are, but I would have to imagine it's predominantly, you know, guys speculating on crypto. Even my business.

Exactly, right. And so, you know, I think, you know, that's, I mean, just, yeah, you know, when you look at, when you look at, you know, some of these metrics, it's just, it's super unique in Africa, right? I mean, you know, it's not just, you know, a bunch of finance bros, you know, trying to guess which coin is going to the moon, right? It's, you know, businesses led by women, led by, you know, everybody that are able to stay in operation, that are able to, you know, keep running because of this technology. So it's, it's really exciting. And I think, you know, that impact is only going to be understood really in, you know, five, ten plus years.

Yeah, yeah. But for sure, it's a positive one. Like, even if I just think about the fact that you can do 24-7 settlement, you know, because, like, just, the idea in today's day and age that the bank is only open, you know, limited hours for five days a week, closed on holidays. Like, it's silly. So, yeah, well, so one thing that I wanted to ask about was just, oh, I had meant to ask you earlier. So your business model is what, like, fees or spreads on, you know, what you're taking on, like, on the exchange rate or what are you, how are you charging? Yeah, fee and spread. Yeah.

Okay. Okay. Well, so I had to ask you because you have three different stable coins that you operate with, maybe more, but primarily USDT, USDC, PiUSD. I was curious for your thoughts on like the differences between them and also, well, let's just start with that. Yeah. You know, look, I think a stable coin is a stable coin to some extent, right? A US dollar backed stable coin is a US dollar back stable coin. It's, you know, they're all worth $1.

dollar, I can make a payment with them, et cetera. I think that, you know, where the differences really come in, depend on where you need that dollar on the other end. USDT is very dominant in Asia, in a lot of Europe, in, you know, Africa, in South America, I mean, really in the entire world outside of the U.S., right? Whereas I think USDC certainly has more of that U.S. market, you know, given obviously, you know, circle and Coinbase are American companies and the dollars are held onshore and, you know, things like that, right.

But, you know, what I will say, though, is, and I, you know, I try to explain this to people, the reason that USD-1 is not necessarily that it's, you know, better or worse or different or anything like that. The reason that USDT won is they were very smart in the way that they were adding the token to new chains and when they were adding the token to new chains. And when they were managing and maintaining liquidity on those chains, you know, when if fees on Ethereum spiked up and it was 50 bucks to send five, USDC only had liquidity on Ethereum. USDT at that time had enough liquidity on Tron that people were able to start utilizing that on the continent. And I mean, USDT on Tron is still today the most popular chain slash token by a mile and a half, right?

And it's simply because, you know, these are payments. People want to pay as little for their payments as possible, right? If you go to the bank and you say, you know, I need to send money to somebody, you know, you don't want them to come back and say it's going to be 50 bucks to make that transaction, right? You want them to just move that money. And so, you know, when Ethereum was 50 bucks for a fee, Tron was four cents. And it just, it just massively took off because of that, because of that low fee. And, you know, even today, I think a lot of people don't realize there's more liquidity for USDT on Tron than there is on Ethereum. And that's, that's,

largely because of Africa, South America, other, you know, emerging economies and rising economies around the world that are much more concerned with how much does it cost for me to make this payment than they are with, you know, the chain or the technology or anything like that. Okay. So it actually sounds to me like you're primarily using USDT and only when one of the counterparties is a U.S. entity or similar is when you're choosing. you use USDC or Pi USD, is that accurate?

We give people what they want, right? So we, I mean, we have USDT, USDC, PYUSD, although I do love that you say pie USD, because there's nothing more American than pie and the dollar. So, you know, PYYST, cello dollar. And, you know, look, we're always adding, right, as, as, you know, new and exciting stable coins come out, we're going to add them because we want to be completely agnostic from a stable coin perspective, right? I don't have any preference as to which one you're choosing to move that money from point A to

point B, as long as you're using us to do it, obviously, right? Oh, so the customer chooses. Yeah, it's, you know, we, you know, we don't, we don't have a preference, right? You know, we work with all of these guys to make sure that we can access the dollars that are needed, right, that we can mint, redeem all of that. And, you know, we obviously, you know, look, we work with these guys to help. help promote their token on different chains and things like that. But it really comes down to what is the customer want, right?

Whatever the customer wants, we're going to give them. So we're not going to mandate that they have to use this or have to use that. We want to make sure that they have options that they can use what makes the most sense for them for their business. Right. And, you know, again, these are payments, right? People generally are not holding onto these tokens, right? They're not.

Look, some people are. Some people manage their treasury through stable, But in general, these are payments. People are not necessarily holding onto it for long amounts of time. And so again, it doesn't make a huge difference to most companies. They want to go with the one that they are most familiar with, the one that they're most comfortable with. And for you, when your company is deciding whether or not to adopt a new stable coin, is it simply

like whether or not there's demand or do you just try to adopt all of the new ones just to make sure that you have it in case or like, how does that part work? Yeah. Any reputable stable coin, right? Any reputably issued stable coin, right? So, you know, when PYUSD came out, we immediately wanted to support PYUSD. You know, now you have a lot of new ones coming out, right? Bitco is launching a stable coin.

Ripple is launching a stable coin. You have all these different, you know, coins coming out. And, you know, we're going to do our best to support all of them, right? All of them that will have, you know, legitimate volume and market cap. And, you know, make sure that, you know, people have those options and businesses have those options. And you're only working with centralized stable coins right now. Do you have plans to adopt decentralized ones? Not currently.

Yeah, we do. Right now we work with the centralized ones. Yeah. You know, look, I would love to see a decentralized stable coin really take off. But I think that in terms of, you know, just market cap, demand, things like that, you know, we haven't seen, we've never been asked by anybody to list, you know, a, like a dye or, you any of those, right? And so, yeah, look, as soon as somebody asks for it, we will, you know, prioritize it. But, you know, again, we're going to kind of do what people ask us to, right?

So the businesses that we work with ask us to. All right. Well, is there anything I didn't ask you that you would want listeners to know? You know, I think the big thing that I would say, and I, you know, usually end sort of every interview and talk with this, is that if you, you are running a business, if you are in the operator's seat out there, or if you're a VC, you're an investor, you're a banker, frankly, whatever you do, if you're not looking at the continent right now, you are already behind, right? This is where, you know, 50% of the world's GDP growth is coming from over the next, you know, 30 to 50 years. These are the fastest growing countries, the fastest growing economies, the fastest growing populations, fastest growing middle class,

fastest growing consumer class on earth. And, you know, unfortunately, a lot of people in the U.S., in Europe and in, you know, the West don't really know much about the continent, right? Don't understand the continent. They're not looking at the continent as a legitimate place to do business. And I think that that narrative is something that, you know, I certainly hope is changing. I think the other narrative that we hope is changing is the one that we hear from, you know, politicians and, you know, the U.S. and bankers and, you know, other people that, you know, this technology doesn't have any real applications. This is a pretty real application, in my opinion, right?

I'm biased, but, you know, I think that, you know, helping businesses stay afloat, helping them, you know, import food that's, you know, feeding countries and, you know, medicine that's keeping a continent and healthy and things like that. I think that that's a very real world application, right? This is not, you know, money that's just used for, you know, speculation and doge coin and criminals, right? There are very real world applications for this technology. And I think, you know, for me, that's what gets me up every morning.

And that's what's so exciting about this technology is that it's so much more than a lot of what you see it used for today. And there's so much more potential for payments for. or disrupting swift for, you know, changing the way that money flows around the world. So I think, you know, you won't be using international wires in five, maybe, you know, 10 years of the latest. And Africa is the first sort of, how do you say, the first continent to really adopt that, you know, at scale and still, you know, a lot of work left to be done. But, you know, we've seen this, we've seen this work and we've seen this in practice across Africa. And do you have a sense of what penetration you have?

Like, like what market share do you have versus Swift in Africa? Oh, well, I mean, look, you know, Swift is, you know, in every bank, in every country in the world. But I mean, sorry, not that way, but I'm just asking in terms of, like, volume. Yeah, yeah, you know, look, I mean, we'll do probably about $3 billion this year, which, you know, compared to Swift is a, you know, a drop in the bucket, right? I am not by any means saying that we are going to replace Swift. I think that stable coins more broadly as people start to understand and realize that this technology is good for so much more than, you know, swapping between speculative assets. The number of companies that we see popping up using stable coins to, you know, facilitate payments to move money into the continent to move money, you know, around the world, it's, you know, quadrupled over the last just, you know, 12, 18 months. And so I think that that use case is starting to get a lot more attractive to founders, to investors, to everybody else.

And it's coming, right? It's, you know, look, it's not here today, right? You know, my bank is still the best way for me to make an international payment personally in the U.S. But it is, it is coming. Okay, okay. Yeah, this has been an utterly fascinating conversation. Thank you so much for coming on Unchained. Of course.

Thank you for having me. Thanks so much for joining us today to learn more about Chris and Yellowcar. Check out the show notes for this episode. Unchained is produced by me, Laura Shin, with all from Matt Pilchard, Wanda Ranovich, Megan Gavis, Pam McDramdard, and Marka Curia. Thanks for listening. Unchained is now a part of the Coin Desk Podcast Network. For the latest in digital assets, check out markets daily five days a week with host Noel Atchison. Follow the CoinDesk Podcast Network for some of the best shows in crypto.