Yo-yo what up? Good morning, good morning GMB
Wednesday Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday July 17th
2020 look at that another beautiful day to have a
beautiful day. I got my Co host in the house,
Tyler Mando. How you guys doing today?
Doing great man, how are you? I'm doing fantastic, a little
tired, but doing great. Tyler, how you doing?
Great sunshine, we got my roof fixed this morning so so no more
leaks in our house. No more leaks.
We're happy about that. No more leaks.
Let's go. Corns are looking good this
morning too, So Jan. Yeah, yeah, dude, I absolutely
love to see how corns are. Definitely looking good.
Well, they were looking a little better last night.
They're still looking great. This morning.
My last night was like last night's raging pump was so good
to see. It was like around 10:00 PM.
It was just on my computer just looking at everything.
I was like, oh, this is so good. And in this moment, I am.
What was it? No, what's that?
What's that? What's that meme of like Kim
Jong Un smoking a cigarette in the midst of it's so over.
You know that one. We found we are so back.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is that it was me just like
smoking a Dube last night, 10:00 PM after like a long as day and
I was just like in the midst of it's over.
We found out we are so back. I love that.
I love look, we even I'm in notifications right now of like
ETFs picking their tickers and their fee amounts for ETF's.
Let's go, let's go. We're so back.
We are so, so back. It's almost that we never left
Anyway, so the other show today, today we got an interesting show
for y'all today, like every day, but market reports as usual.
So of course we'll go through markets that are rage pumping
bears and disbeliefs. Tweets are being deleted.
You obviously love to see it. Then obviously Tyler's Tom 100
as usual. Then last but not least, we'll
be we'll be we will be joined by Johan Kerbat, who is the VP and
GM at and not Good morning. That means general manager, but
VP and GM at Robin Hood Crypto. So we reached out to that.
We were talking to them when they were just buying the bit,
the finishing the bit snap acquisition and figured why
don't you come talk about that and a few other things that
Robin Hood's got on their plate. So really excited to be able to,
to chat with the VP of crypto there about all things crypto,
his thoughts, his background and, and what's going on over
there. Robin Hood, hopefully, you know,
we can we can get them to to, to list all of our favorite coins.
Just kidding. That's definitely not what we're
going to do at Robin Hood today. Don't want to burn that
relationship, but but we can manifest it anyways.
Without further ado, let me get some retweets.
Y'all, let's go. I want to see I want to see some
love and what are we? Get right into it.
Can you dig it? Yeah, GM everyone.
So I think we're a little bit higher than what we did the show
yesterday. But yeah, we did slightly come
off the the local highs which happened kind of around last
night in the in the last 24 hours.
It's kind of been bullish headlines only to be honest,
like we saw a the biggest influence of ETF in six weeks,
which is just over 400 million in a day.
You've seen people kind of taking the Mount Cox news and
and saying, you know, it was overestimated the FUD and you
see wells wells accumulate on the back of that.
So still looking fairly decent. I think people are now starting
to downplay Mount Cox as being a big deal.
You show some very bullish headlines from various people in
the industry about what to expect from the EPTF talk of,
you know, E to 5K. We would see, you know, 5
billion of inflows this this month as or by the end of the
year, just decent, decent figures.
You've seen There's AI think a press conference with the SEC of
Ripple tomorrow and XRP running fairly aggressively.
It's up another 35% this week. So there's expectation that
they're going to come to a settlement.
Yeah, just just bullish, more bullish stuff happening in
crypto. I haven't really seen anything
other than Mount Cox being being the one bearish thing.
It has been a broad based rally. So we've seen quite a few
different things in the AI space rally.
You saw that that Grayscale announces before we went live
that they they're doing like an AI style fund, which is a number
of altcoins with AI, you know, slants to them, let's say.
And that's meant that that bit of the, the market has felt
pretty, pretty hot. World coin announced that they
were going to delay some of their emissions.
So that's like 40% today alone. So yeah, broader crypto, I've
only really seen positive headlines and I think there's
still a bit of a, a slow appreciation.
You know, that JB Vance would also be a would be very bullish
for crypto as well, which has led to a lot of bullish
headlines over the last 24 hours.
So yeah, looking good. There was some negative macro.
We obviously hit all time highs across stocks again yesterday,
but there was some negative back row related to related to chip
stocks overnight, just that they might be facing some levels of
bands again. The US is obviously working very
hard to stop China from getting some of these AI chips or the
high performance chips, and that took some stocks slightly lower
today. But I don't know.
I'm looking at everything right now and everything's looking
good to me. To XR PS Up 40% this week.
Yeah. Jesus Christ.
Sets you up a lot like bring up that chart.
Yeah, let's bring it up. It's it's since the since the
local lows that's rallied very, very aggressively just because
there's an expectation that they're about to get a A yeah,
look at that and see let. Me just bring it up.
Let me put the weekly. Oh, that's yeah, that's.
It's by Mark. That's not XRP, right?
Oh yeah, it is. XRP, that's called.
Yeah, XRPUSD. There you go.
Yeah. So it's basically up 50% in the
last two weeks. So big, big move, move higher.
Just there's an expectation that tomorrow there's going to be an
announcement. We spoke about the idea this
last week, right, that oh, sorry, yesterday that the SEC
has been basically nullified in its threat to crypto here with
this, with this ruling potentially, or at least it
would be very, very difficult for them to pursue a lot of the
enforcement actions. So I think they're probably
going to try and settle or they're going to try and toss
out cases which they don't think make them wow.
So I think the other right, the eyes will be on here in my, in
my opinion will be on the Coinbase lawsuit, all the other
lawsuits against exchanges. So they have one against
finance, obviously Kraken, they have one, Coinbase they have one
and then they have, they have them against various different
D5 protocols, although we haven't got the full details on
that, but we know they have one against Uniswap.
Madam Ask. I think they didn't.
They no, they withdrew, but then they came back the next day.
Yeah. Yeah.
It came after the the fact that apparently it was operating
securities. They remember he withdrew the
next day. They sued them.
There's a it's a it's a lot dude.
The SCC is fighting a lot of crypto multi billion dollar
companies. Then these people are not scared
to lawyer up either. Like damn.
They they've lost pretty much every single one I know.
But that's easy. That's like I'm thinking like if
I'm the head of the SEC like it's and I run this as a
business even, like is it even smart to go after all these at
the same time all these multi? Billion dollar.
Companies. It's pretty pretty, yeah.
Pretty costly. Oh.
My God, even a lawyer there. They've probably lost a lot of
and they've lost a lot of people, right?
They did. So yeah, I don't know, I, I feel
as though things is looking good for crypto.
I think we we've we've rallied pretty aggressively right here.
Like we're up 15% now on Bitcoin in what, just a few days.
So maybe we just needed a, we were at 57 K on the 12th.
So five days ago we were actually at 56 K.
So five days ago we're at 56 K, now we're at 65 K.
So we're up like just shy of 20% since then, maybe 1718%.
So that's a decent move. Can you tell me what's going on
with World Coin and why is it up 25% to a $30 billion fully
diluted micro market? Do any of you know the
open-ended question like I just saw this, I, I went by the by, I
saw the XRP pump. So I, I categorized by 7 day
like what's, what's up the most? And it's World Coin's up 55
points. I said it, I said it what just
before we went live or said it as we went live, that that they,
they delayed their emissions. So remember World Coin has this
unbelievable FTV because as all these unlocks happening, they
delayed that emission schedule from three years to five years.
So, and this is similar to a lot of altcoins right now.
They have a decent short base on them.
So when there's any sort of positive news, they can they can
move up pretty aggressively. Huh I.
Mean that's not that. That looks horrific, that chart.
Right. I mean, I am, yeah, I'm just
bringing up because we're talking about it, but I'm just
like this is like this is like the perfect, like most of this
token is controlled by like VCs and market market makers anyway.
So it's like it's a full level. VCs own most of it, yeah.
I'm pretty sure market makers and VCs own 80% of world coin.
Yeah, that would make sense. Yeah, several things I've heard.
I mean is there is there a bigger disconnect between market
cap and FTV for any crypto major than?
Than I don't think so dude like the what's the market cap like
the actual. 130,000,000. 800 million. 2 1/2 percent.
I mean XRP is pretty pretty big as well.
Is it the gap like that? Let me see the XRP gap is so it
went at least this was 33 bill, 33 bill and then this the the
the the FDV 61 bill. The other one is a. 61 billion
XRP is a $61 billion coin. Solana is a $93 billion FDV
coin. Just put that into perspective
like. Yeah, that is is interesting.
I still think it's, I mean it's the only way to bet on Sam
Altman via crypto. I feel like there is a lot of
normie demand, there's a lot of retail demand for that.
At 800 million market cap it sounds cheap like if you don't
see the FTV. Yeah, yeah, if you don't see the
FTV, you can get caught real quick in that trade.
The. FTV is not cheap.
You, you look at you look at the market only 800 mil for Sam
Altman, like the guys worth more than that.
And then you go and, and then you go and look at and, and then
you look at the fully diluted and you're like, holy shit, this
thing is a $30 billion. Oh my God, this is absolutely
wild. In other news, and that's the
latest I guess on the ETF that came out as the show started new
21 shares ETF you will be .21% and the ticker is C ETH as as
per their just filed a final S1. So it looks like you know, it's
similar to to the last stretch of the Bitcoin ETF.
So if you listen to the show, then you're probably familiar
with this because we cover it every day, but you know, you're
going to get all of the, you know, all of the S ones and all
the takers and all the fees. And then it's going to be
probably raised to zero at first for the fees, right?
Remember, most of the Bitcoin TF fees were like 0% for the first
six months or up to a certain amount of Bitcoin accumulated,
depending how much they're making.
So we'll see. We'll see where where that goes.
There's also this news from the SEC Commissioner Pierce saying
Ethereum ETFs being able to stay could be open to
reconsideration. So that's like turbo bullish
Ethereum news if you ask me. I think certainly something like
staking or any feature of the product doors are always open
for reconsideration as far as I'm concerned.
So some this is we're talking headlines.
This is like non-stop good headlines.
You know what? Is there a world where Hester
Pierce become SCC head head commissioner?
I feel like. Anything's possible.
I feel like this, like we're not ready for this potential pro
crypto regime because we've just been so conditioned.
She's a Republican, Piers is a Republican and she's like, she
came to Denver, remember she tweeted about it and she
remember doing the Stoner cat stuff when they Stoner cats.
They got sued by the SEC, but then it it alleged that every
NFT is a security in there. Well, then Hester Pierce was the
first one very quick same day to write a letter saying that they
disagree internally with the decision of the chair of the
CSEC, Gary Gensler. So it's I, I, I could definitely
see her like as the next chair of the SEC.
It'd be a win. I mean, she's, she's logical,
right? She's just reasonable.
She's logical, right? Because if I'm not missing,
correct me if I'm wrong, Tyler, how it works in the states is
the governing party gets to pick the chair of the SEC.
I believe so. I, I'm not like super in depth
with all the inner workings of, of politics, but I believe
that's how it works, yeah. I think they have a term that
they have to serve. But if the party swings like
changes, like I think they get to, they get to see.
Yeah. See, Gary Gensler was nominated
by President Joseph R Biden to serve as chair of the security
exchange on February 3rd, 2021. So it's usually it's like you're
appointed, right? And you have a term that you
serve from, from from what I've read in the past.
So anyway, so look, that's a good roundup.
Bitcoins around, you know, see it's been hovering around 65K
Mark, you know, a little over, a little under.
We hit 66 K last night on a pretty big pump.
Theorem is at 3450. Last time was about 35 plus.
I mean, Solana is so good right now.
This Mark dude. It's actually wild how every
positive news is also directly impact Seoul.
So BTC Seoul is going band for band in market cap.
So you'd love to see that. Just adding billions on the
market caps and the rest of the market being dragged up with
memes higher. I mean the usual suspects.
Your mog yesterday hit new all time highs above it was 925 mil.
I caught at some point the Screener, so that's pretty.
Wild too that they both they're just moving neck and neck it's.
Why? They're just moving neck and
neck at this stage, right? Like yesterday when Mark was in
the 700, probably 800, but now it's the other way around like
Mark is back above Pop Cats. Those two main cores were in
band for band while Pepe and with who were the laggards
recently are also back. I mean Pepe's just slightly
pulled back on their 5 billion and with around 2:18, but both
had an enormous rise alongside, you know, a bunch of bean corns.
I mean, dude, I'm looking like as you see lock in, you see Chad
Retardio, Billy Zen epic. Like there's a bunch of meme
corns that are like bouncing on Solana and on Ethereum.
Like you have also Trump that people are looking at on there.
So it's really Ethan soul, like Daenerys are there and it seems
like our ordinals are doing really good.
Tyler yes, I was looking at that.
But anyways, while we're talking about Tyler, when we get into
your top 100. Yes, so crypto majors up another
one to 2% on massive ETF inflows from the day.
BlackRock with $260 million just themself, they've now got $21
billion in in Bitcoin, so a massive amount from them.
Rollcoin leading alt up 40% on the day as the team extends
their unlocks. Nate Silver, he's joined
prediction market Polymarket as an advisor, bringing his
expertise from years of election modeling to that leader in NFT.
There's there's kind of a lot yesterday, so we had eight coin
they shared a new ape chain website, a new telegram, a New
Testament in a big announcement last night and the board of apes
also shared. Now we know why the made by apes
was taken off NBA Made by apes 2.0 will be coming on ape chain
soon. So it was all tied together.
NBA not going away. Ape coin responded.
It was up 5% on the day to 83 cents.
Doodles debuted the first teaser for their short film Dullsville
and the Doodles Worst. It features several core
community members, some notable PFPS.
The trailer, I've watched it a few times, it's good.
Got me excited for the movie. We can talk about that more in a
bit. Blast announced their bridge has
now shortened from 14 days to seven days, so you can get your
funds off faster. Coinbase posted a cryptic cat
video yesterday, then followed it up with a Meow NFT mint link
in a description. Come back on 7/17 which is today
already 300,000 mints on this thing.
Just 21,000 owners though. And then in Ordinals UT Meow
Leonidas shared new mint for his upcoming Boldnalls drop.
I think this is going to be the most hyped drop we've seen on
Bitcoin in in months. Most likely that's not.
Right, Well, that's a good round up.
Can I just say how disappointing I was?
Maybe my hopes were higher for the Coinbase thing, but it's
like all this hype, everyone's losing their shit.
Of course, I did not expect it to be a cat coin listing, by the
way, like this just not how Coinbase works and operates.
But I was just like, bruh, at least they picked a Persian cat.
You know I'm Persian, Persian cat.
You know Persian's in control. Just a matter of like, so I'm
I've gotten suckered into these like some of their early
Coinbase MTS, like I went through and mentioned on 100
wallets, it was like these maybe we'll get the token for this
like. How many?
How many of that fly you got from X copy?
How many of that one you got? I went lighter on the fly by X
copy because I kind of learned my lesson by by then.
It's like every one of these Coinbase MTS, it's just the same
thing. I love that there's two things I
want to quickly go over with you before we go to Joe here.
He's in the studio. But doodles, I was I was talking
to logs last night. I was like, so how's this doodle
thing? Because I was watching it when
he called me and I said, ask your kids, right?
Because it's a cartoon. I personally thought it was
good. I saw beanie give doodles some
flowers this morning. That's probably the last thing I
was expecting to see on my timeline.
I thought it was good for for for this.
But did you did your kids watch it?
Tyler? I'm curious to see what kids
think of this because it's a it's a cartoon, right?
It is a cartoon, so my kids are three and four.
I feel like this is a little bit older because maybe geared a
little bit like maybe 7:00 to 12:00.
I actually was very intrigued by this trailer.
I feel like they didn't give away too much of the plot, but
you got an introduction to like this universe that it's set in
the Dulesville. You understand like what is
happening, but you don't really know the plot of this movie,
which which I like. They didn't give it away.
It features music by Pharrell directed by burnt toast,
produced by golden wolf, Golden wolf.
It features little tune, little yachty core, the Ray, little
Wayne and I think part maybe the most important part, it actually
features some of the PF PS from their core community members.
Some of their core holders like Jay Fells is in there.
Nathaniel who who I see all over my timeline.
I think that's really cool. Like to actually see your PFP in
a short film that's going to be debuted at this Toronto Film
Festival and likely going to see a lot of a lot of coverage and,
and air time. I mean, I'd, I'd personally love
to see my PFP in a movie like this one day.
And I think the other takeaways, it just looks really, really
well done. I'm like, yeah, I want to see
this. I I agree, isn't the last part
where where Lil Wayne is on this part is invite only?
Where do we get this invite? You got to know somebody that is
the Wayne know somebody. Yeah, but he's, I think that's
Jay Fell's skeleton too, right? Yeah, it is a little Wayne
rocking the the skeleton there. I think that.
Was a pretty he did a good job, man.
You know what, like you know, you got to give like you know,
it's easy to go the NFT PFPS and this and that like I they did
agree. I'm going to share it real quick
and I did it. I want to show them some love,
but they did a good job. I watched it as well last night.
I had the same reaction as you, Tyler, You know, you at some
point, like you got to give, you got to, you got to give credit
where credit is due, like they, they, they did a good job, you
know. Yeah.
And they've been working on this for a long time.
Yeah. Then then the market sells off.
So like it's, it's just hard to, it's hard to please.
Is it, I mean, just the market is relentless, dude, what are
doodles at? Because when you talked about it
last week being undervalued, yeah, they're down from from
there. Yeah, 1.6 I mean, I don't know
what's if I and and E PFP right now.
Dudes got to be at the top of the list.
I keep saying that there's doing so much like guys, I don't know
what you what you seem to do. What do you guys think in the
comments? I mean, a bunch of comments for
people saying that, you know, they they thought it was great.
So I'm only seeing I've only seen positive comments, right?
Like even if someone, even if it's not like down your stuff
that you usually watch, like it's good, it's well done, it's
on brand. It's actually perfectly on
brand. So this definitely did some good
work, I think. Didn't Julian reach out to you?
I think we should just talk to you about this on on there, I
think. You get Julian on you will call
first hand. Castro Wob like I'm seeing
founders, I'm seeing apes like Penguins, like seeing people
from all other communities, creators, Micah Johns, like a
lot of people just like coming out to support them.
You see, like this is like a good blend of like artists,
founders, other community members, creators, like, you
know, lot of lot of people back in it.
I think it's a positive. While we're on the topic of
this. So tell me, run me through the
latest Ape Coin updates because we had like back-to-back to back
updates last night. Yeah, so they got a new website,
a new Telegram chat, which I thought was an interesting move
away from Discord, perhaps a signal for what other products
will be doing here in 2024. New test net is live.
They're inviting creators, builders and just generally
bored people to to go ahead and start joining.
The website itself is pretty limited right now.
It does tease a blueprint coming soon.
So perhaps we'll learn what the future plans for that the ape
chain are. So that's pretty much it.
Like we we have the site, it's live.
You can, you know, start to register it in the telegram.
And then Bored Apes piggybacked on this saying that hey,
clearing the air on unmade by apes, that is going to be live
on 8 chain soon so so don't stress that everything got taken
down. I saw the founder of off Chain
Labs change his PFP to an 8 yesterday.
He did the same thing when they partnered with Suzuki, which I
thought was pretty cool. Stephen Goldfeder So I saw that
celebrating the launch of Curtis.
It's called Curtis test net. What are you?
This is all going to be powered by the same eight coin that
we're talking about. Like the same old, like that's
all the same acorn. Yeah, it's up another 6% today.
So clearly that now it's reacting.
You know, some people blush. I'm I'm into Sergio.
Sergio loves the the Apcorn. I know I know Sergio loves
Apcorn and but The thing is think about it right Risk
reward. He's not making a bad bet when
he was buying it last couple weeks ago.
You cannot possibly get more FUD.
And it was like bottom of the barrel, like nearing 0 down like
probably what, from $26 to $0.60?
Was that $26, right? Was like the all time high for
Acorn. It was 20.
Yeah, 20. 26, I remember hitting 26, yeah.
Yeah, 26 bucks and it went all the way down to how much, Tyler?
661 cents so. That's you can easily get back
to one, right? Like that's the 20% move from
here. It's a pretty good Aurora.
It's down 60% year to date. Well, most of the coins that we
are of course, not all coins like most, a lot of the coins
are up here today, right? So so so so anyways, that was
that I'm I'm curious to see, you know, it's we need these
ecosystems to thrive. You need those people to make
the money that even if they didn't lose it per SE, let's say
they just like held to 0, like you need those people to be back
in the money. You need those people to be able
to feel like they want to buy another ape with that ape coin
to be able to buy another NFT or maybe a doodles because they're
bullish on another NFT community.
Like you're not going to get an NFT run that we talk about a lot
without that, right? Without the reinvigoration
within NFT communities that are existing.
So PUG now has its North Star abstract iglooing that's going
on. Doodles has a doll verse a store
* Golden Wolf, the studio. Boom, they're going ape coin
board. Apes now have Garga, who's
clearly on top of this, leading the charge for the first time
ever. We're seeing them mix and match
with a coin and ape chain and everything because it was
really, they did it the whole separate way early on, right?
Which you can't really blame founders for that.
For what it's worth, being someone that's going through it,
it's because of regulatory landscape of USA.
It's very hard to be able to work with foundation to launch a
token, etcetera. It's very, very hard.
It's very intricate and expensive and annoying, but it
is what it is. And so I like this.
I like this. Tyler, what do you think?
Do you like it? They're they are moving forward.
Yeah. I think we, we, we still will
see how it all ties together. Yeah, I agree, I think.
I'd say the sentiment's probably bottomed.
Yeah. OK, OK, OK.
I like that. It's yeah, I mean, definitely
bottomed on that front. And then and then those were the
the main news, right? Is there anything else you
wanted to to to double down on before I go to our guest of the
day? No, I think that's it.
Let's get Johan on. Hell yeah.
Let's do it. Let's do it.
What's up? What's up, Johan?
How you doing, man? Good morning.
Hey, good. How are you?
We are doing fantastic. Thank you for joining us today.
It's always an honor and a pleasure to have you.
Excited to be on. I actually didn't see the the
dual trailer so that was pretty fun to see.
Right. It's pretty cool.
They're they're doing a good job.
They did a great job, yeah. Yeah, plus, like, I don't know
if you guys saw like leading up to it, like I saw Coy La Ray do
like a photo shoot and stuff and like she was rocking like that G
shock doodles. Like it's even the little things
like they're really integrating them into like the marketing of
it, etcetera. So it's not just like, oh, they
use their voice and like they're not going to get any like
promotion presents on their socials.
So I think it's good. When's that Film Festival
actually, Tyler? I, I think it's in, I think it's
in August or September. I'm gonna have to go back to my
notes. September 5th to the 15th.
There we are. So that's coming in quick.
That'll come probably faster than most things.
So anyways, we're joined here by Johan.
So for those of you who are just on audio, I've pinned to the top
the broadcast link. We've all posted it.
It's across. We're live on YouTube, rug
radio, YouTube every single morning at 10:00 AM or also
streaming, broadcasting live on X, where it coming to us live,
etcetera. Your questions, your comments,
we're always able to read them live.
John Kerbat, who is the VP and GM of crypto at Robin Hood,
which is really, really awesome. So it's a pleasure to have you,
John. Do you want maybe give yourself
like a little quick introduction for our audience and maybe talk
a little bit about your background?
Yeah, absolutely. So pleasure to be to be on I I'm
John, like you said. So I'm the, the crypto GM at
Robin Hood, meaning that, you know, I handle everything crypto
at Robin Hood. I've been at the company for a
bit less than four years and I joined initially as the CTO of
the crypto team. And before that I worked a bunch
of start-ups. I've been in crypto for, for a
bit more than 10 years now. So, you know, been a been a big
fan of trying to make crypto more accessible and to open the,
the, the gates to, to the retail world.
And so I think Robin Hood is the best place for that.
And before we get into the whole Robin Hood conversation and
you're joining them, like how long have you been in crypto and
what really attracted you to this industry?
Yeah, I started very early when I was still young and I
basically created a small startup working on payments
trails. And one of the payment rails was
Bitcoin. And so at the time, you know, we
felt like credit card was complicated.
There was a lot of fraud. Merchant was never really sure
if they were actually going to get the money or not.
And so at the time, you know, when Bitcoin existed, we're
like, hey, this is a perfect tool for you.
When you have a transaction that is confirmed on on the
blockchain, you know, you will never have to worry about is the
money coming in or not. It was probably a bit too early.
So we didn't have a ton of traction yet back in the days,
but yeah, basically stay in payment system and and
cryptosystems since then. And, you know, I think for me,
the, the pleasure that I've been having in the past like few
years is that we're starting to see a lot more usage of
blockchain that it's not just, you know, trading activity, but
you also are starting to see like blockchain being used for
for more things. Like, you know, stable coins,
for example, is one of the perfect example of a much better
system than the traditional finance system.
And on top of that, it's powered by blockchain.
Yeah. No, that is, that is really
cool. So like when did this whole
like, you know, going into going to work with Robin Hood things
start like when, when did that, when does this initial
conversation start? Because obviously Robin Hood is
mostly known for being able to trade stocks etcetera, etcetera,
most accessible to, to, to all, you know, American people
etcetera. But when, when did they really
get curious or interested in the the crypto side of things?
Yeah, so actually Robbie and crypto was launched in 2018.
So you know, February of 2018, which I guess was the dead of
the winter post like the 2017 summer.
And I think for me, that's one of the main factor that really
got me excited about Robin. You know, they, they actually
believe, like the founders, Vlad and Beju really believe that
crypto was here to stay and it was going to be like the
financial framework of tomorrow. And so no matter of the, the,
the condition of the market at the time, back in 2018, they
were like, you know, you know what, we're going to still
launch this, this product. And you know, since then we've
been kind of improving the product.
We we added more assets, we offered like more things like
transfer or self custody wallet. We also expanded in, in the EU
since December. So really we we went from like a
small idea, small side projects that was part of the overall
Robin Hood app to actually being like a pretty big crypto
business now. Yeah.
I mean pretty big crypto business indeed.
You know, we, I think we we chatted the same morning that
where the the news came out where that you guys had a had
acquired bit stamp and I was like, Oh shit, I'm like talk
about a coincidence. And and I thought it was, I
thought it was some pretty large use.
So a few weeks ago, right, I'm looking at it was June 6th, few
weeks ago. Time flies.
My God, three weeks ago. Time flies.
It was a month ago, yeah. Three weeks, I mean.
And by the way, we thought it was all over three weeks ago,
right? I mean, not us, but definitely
the people on the timeline. So a few weeks ago, this
headline, you know, hit hit crypto Twitter by storm.
Robin Hood acquires crypto exchange Bitstamp in a $200
million deal. The $200 million cash flow is
expected to close in the first half of 2025, subject to
regulatory approval. So Joe, like to the extent to I
wish you can speak to us about this, like, do you mind like
maybe elaborating on why acquiring an exchange right when
you have Robin Hood and like what the thought process behind
that? And maybe if you can expand on
the plans that Robin Hood has with Bitstamp?
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, for people who
don't really know Robin Hood, just to explain how we work, we
are basically a marketplace. So when you place an order to
buy Bitcoin Robin and for example, we acted as an agent
and we send the order to market maker.
And so we don't match between customer or we don't do anything
that you know, an exchange will do.
But the the reason why we looked at the pit Storm acquisition was
for three key reason. The first one was to accelerate
the international expansion. The second one was to get a
scaled crypto exchange that is already running and already has
volume. And the third one was to get the
a diversification of our business to institution.
So to, to explain a bit more in details for the international
expansion, Bitstamp already holds over 50 active licenses
globally and we'll bring customers from the EU, from UK,
from Asia and, and more. So for us, you know, it's a big
step forward. We, we used to be exclusively
AUS retail app and you know, recently we started to launch in
the EU for crypto in the UK for, for the brokerage, but it's
still like at the very beginning of our journey.
So this is a huge leap forward for expansion.
And then the the exchange, you know, for us it's, it's very
important because this will really help build more and more
advanced products for advanced trader, especially for
international customer base. And you know, instead of trying
to build the exchange from scratch and to start doing
little things like Rock St. getting a scale exchange already
that has been alive since 2011. So it's even older than than
Robin Hood and it's still standing, still staying strong.
So for us, that was like a very big value prop for us.
And you know, finally the, the institutional side for us is a
is a big change like we've been 100% focused on on retail.
But you know, there is a big other side of the business here
where institution are getting more and more into crypto.
You you've seen it with, with the ETF announcement for Bitcoin
and for Ythereum institution are getting into the space.
So having an exchange like Bitstamp that is already trusted
by institution because of the deep order book, because of the
API connectivity, because of some of their white label
service offering, you know, all of that really mean that we
enter the space of institutional with already active and highly
trusted business. So that was really like a big
reason also for, for the deal. So yeah, I think, you know,
super excited overall. I think it's a game changer for
for, for business in the sense of like we have a lot more
things that we can do now. Thanks for jumping into that,
Johanna. I'm curious maybe kind of taking
the conversation a little bit deeper.
I'm curious like have you noticed any trends or changes
in, in user behavior on Robin Hood crypto, you know, since the
the 2021 kind of peak mania and then the bear market and and
then things kind of picking up now.
I'm curious, are you seeing similar behavior?
Are we seeing pattern changes? I'm curious what might be
standing out. You know, I, I think you know,
we, we've seen we, we have different customer base.
So we are very large player in the US, you know, we have
24,000,000 customers. So it, it will really depend on
the market. So when there is a market that
is a bit small slow like September of last year, you
know, we see the the heavy trader of the people that are
trading on a hourly basis or daily basis like still using the
platform a lot. When we see like a bit more of a
of a peak trading market like we had in 2021, you know, we see
more for or for customer like trading the the crypto side.
So I think it, it really depends.
And for us, you know, we don't really look at the volume on the
day-to-day. We try to build the features
that people are excited to, to use no matter when they're going
to use it. So I think the, the beauty of
Robin Hood to me is that no matter what you want to trade,
you can go on equities, you know, you can trade Bitcoin, you
can trade Tesla and then sell Tesla and trade Bitcoin or
something like that. And I think that's kind of the
the really good part of of Robin, like you don't have to
transfer between apps and those kind of things.
Exactly like exactly just like Adele, you want to double down
on that. But like for example, like these
past few weeks, Mando comes on the show every day, says there's
no all time high for stocks. What if I, as someone who's I'm
all mostly crypto, personally speaking, I don't really bother
with stocks because I it's not my thing, right?
But let's say I do think Tesla's a good buy.
I could just flip within the same platform, which kind of
makes sense, right? Like it shouldn't be separated
in the 1st place. Should have never been in my
opinion. Yeah, I mean that's, you know,
historical reason for all of this and, and there's a bunch of
licenses involved in all this stuff.
But I, I think for us that's really the the key and, and we
want to make sure that your experience is as good as any
other platform. So we've been investing a lot in
our tooling. So, you know, for example, we
created advanced charts where you can do like technical
analysis if you want to do like empty or something.
We have advanced other type if you want to do a stop loss or
something like that. So we've really been investing
in our products. So no matter what type of trader
you are and no matter what product you want to use, you're
able to use it on on Robin Odeo. But that's great to hear it.
It's funny that you, you you brought up the Tesla, the
Bitcoin train, because actually PO who hosts the Nifty show,
another morning show in this space, actually made that exact
trick. He sold Tesla.
I love that. And it's just nice to have that
functionality. One thing you mentioned is like,
you know, you're building towards the future.
I think a very important kind of current macro topic right now is
perhaps a change in the US political regime and potentially
Trump coming in. He's a heavy favorite on
Polymarket to win at 70% and he is essentially showing a pro
crypto platform. I think many are thinking that
could involve like a change in the SEC and a lot of the
regulation and crackdown could go away.
I'm curious like have you all been following that closely?
Have you started crafting any plans you know, post election
into 2025? You know, based on perhaps an
easier crypto regulatory environment?
Yeah. You know, I think it's, it's an
interesting thing like we do follow everything that is
happening because of course, like everything is going like
there will be an impact on, on the market and how people
behave. Overall, things haven't changed
too much on our side, like we, we work with regulator quite a
bit. If you think about Robin Hood,
like we are regulated by the SEC by funeral on the brokerage
side, on our side, on the crypto side, we, we are regulated by
the New York DFS. So you know, we don't shy away
from from regulation and working with them.
I think what's going to happen in October or November like who
knows, But for us on our side, we've been focusing on making
sure that, you know, we have a constant feedback loop with our
customers and making sure that, you know, if something is of
interest for our customer, we are going to try to build
towards that. And you know, we've seen it a
lot with for example, the the self custody wallet that was one
of the top requested feature for our customer.
They wanted to have a wallet to get into web three and to get
into more like of this space. And so we we've built it.
So, you know, for us like it's less about predicting how the
market is going to change and more about talking to our
customer, doing a lot of user research, trying to understand
what they are going to be interested next and and then
build that to to make sure that they have what they want.
Yeah. Well, that certainly makes
sense. Imagine the self custody wallet.
It's been a huge one. How have customers responded?
Yeah, it's been downloaded in 140 plus countries.
So you know, it's been a, it's been a a great product for us.
I think the, the main reason behind this wad was the crypto
world is moving so fast. If we want to integrate
everything inside the main app, the main custodial app, like
there is no way we can catch up. Like, you know, by the time I
integrate with One Dab, there is like 50,000 that got created
overnight. So our goal was to really build
the system that can allow you to access whatever you want.
And we've tried to do this in in ways that are also helping the
customer. So we were one of the first to
launch the Gasless swap. So because we realized when we
were talking to customers that they wanted to swap one token to
a token, but they didn't understand why they needed to
also have the gas token. So you know, all these kind of
things like we have a lot of customers that are first time
investor on the platform and so we want to make sure that we
give them the tools that get them into what they want to do.
Like sometimes I think crypto people get a bit lost into the
technical and the protocol and all this stuff, but at the end
of the day, a lot of customers, they just want the thing to
work. Yeah, that makes sense.
It makes it much easier to work. I mean, we saw the news, of
course. Like actually, Tyler, that was
relevant question in terms of like, no, like the political
landscape, because the latest news that came out of Robin Hood
was actually like 10 days ago of you expanding Robin of crypto
right in, in, in all the US states, Puerto Rico, Virgin
Islands. I mean, how how's this expansion
in the USA been? Yeah.
I mean, so at this point we're all done.
So, you know, I'm very happy about that.
We are now available everywhere in the US, which I think was was
a great, great change for us. So back last year we, we opened
in Nevada, we announced that and then you know, just like a
couple of weeks ago, we announced like this new states,
Hawaii and and also Puerto Rico and the Virgin Island.
I think for me that was pretty important because, you know,
Robin Hood's core mission is to democratize finance for all.
And he didn't sit very well with us to not be able to do that
everywhere in in our home country.
So we started to expand in the, in the EU and in the UK and, you
know, it was important for us to to come back and also finish the
work in the US. So very excited about it and we
got a, you know, at this point, the, the, the way of saying like
we're available everywhere in the US is also very feels very
nice. I love it Listen as a as a
crypto user and I'm sure Tyler as a as AUS citizen.
It's a great signal for for the market and for crypto in
general. It's a big deal and I feel like
mobile is so important and I feel like so many crypto teams
struggle to to really nail the crypto app.
I'm actually curious, Johan, you wouldn't mind maybe walking us
through the onboarding process? So if AUS customer wants to to
get in to to Robin Hood crypto, you know, down on the app, down
on the wall, like what's the path from my first step all the
way to be able to perhaps you know, transact on chain.
Yeah, really depends on what you're what you want to do.
So if you don't want to be on chain, if you just want to have
your custody handled by by Robin Hood, you know, you can just
don't know the Robin Hood app. The onboarding is very simple
and, and you know, you will be able to to buy and sell the, the
the crypto and you can leave it on Robin Hood or you can
transfer it out if you're eligible.
And you know, it's a fairly basic app, like, you know, not
nothing very different from from other on boarding processes.
But we also offer the self custody wallet where, you know,
it's just a very simple process where you open the wallet, you
have your key and you can start transferring in and out.
I think one thing that we did very well in the wallet is that
you can easily transfer from your Robin Hood account to to
the wallet. And so, you know, we've been
trying to reduce the the amount of steps and the amount of like
frustration. I will say that you can get when
you when you try to use some of these products.
So overall, you know, super simple and then the the wallet
allows you to use multiple chains.
We go from, you know, the, the classic like Bitcoin, Ethereum,
Doge, and we also have Arbitram and, and bass and other, other
chains. So we've been trying to make it
like very accessible to everybody.
It's clean. So I'm looking at the same time.
I was literally looking at this while you were while you were
talking about it and and I find that really, really good.
It's good to have like a major player like you guys actually
get involved for real. Yeah, it's clean.
And we've been trying to really, you know, all the learnings we
got from the UX and UI for Robin Hood, we've been trying to port
them into the self custody wallet.
A lot of the feedback we're getting from people where I love
Robin Hood and then I transferred to my other self
custody wallet and then I'm lost and I don't know what I'm doing.
So we've been trying to really make the two application very
close to each other. So you're really not, you know,
lost on anything. That's good.
This is this is this is quite interesting.
I like, I like the marketing. You guys are good.
You guys are good.
We're pushing on it. So that's the thing that you
know, we're really pushing towards is we want to be the
lowest cost to buy and sell crypto.
And in the US on average, you, you will actually save quite a
bit of crypto if you if you use Robin Hood.
And I think, you know, one thing that that keep telling people is
when you try to use a product, look at the query of Bitcoin or
crypto that you're buying that you're getting at the end,
because there are so many ways of making revenue for companies.
Sometimes they charge you a fee, sometimes they charge you a
markup on the spread. Sometimes it's a combination of
multiple things. So just look at the quantity on
the final page. And then you will see that in in
average, Robin is the lowest place to to buy crypto.
This is very interesting. My favorite feature always is
this the recurring buys they're across.
That's something I tell all my friends, like even last week
this past weekend watching football and my friend was like,
I want to get back into buying crypto, of course now, right?
And and like, what do I do? I said, however much you make, I
don't want to know how much you make.
Take like 1% of that per week per month.
Just set it to buy BTC soul and just forget NFA.
Of course, you know, you know, like Kanye, me, my dear, but you
know, it's like do you? But the recurring buy to me is
the single most important tool in the in like an exchange or
wallet because it makes sure that you're always, you know,
somewhat get some exposure. But anyways, Joe don't want to
hold you much, much longer here. But last question would be like
anything you personally looking forward to in the industry or,
and or you or Robin Hood as a whole, by the way, but what's
the, what's the future like for you?
Yeah, I, I think for us, you know, we want to start using
blockchain technologies to power up more and more things.
So you know, like we we've seen stable coins.
I think we can do more with blockchain.
I think we can tokenize real world assets and and actually
make them a lot more efficient. So you will, you will hear more
from us, I think, but I'm, I'm personally really excited about,
you know, just seeing the adoption of crypto going from,
you know, back in the days just to a few assets.
And now we are starting to see it more and more from
tokenization of bonds to the stable coins to, to more things.
So overall, like really excited of the progress we are making.
And you know, I, I can't really wait to see how much crypto will
change the traditional finance system in the past in the next
few years. I think it's going to be a a big
transformation. Oh, yeah, very, very big.
Well, John, thank you so much for being here today and I
really appreciate you. Yeah, thanks for having me, was
fun. Have a good one.
All right, all right. Well, that was great, you know,
but more bullish use, more bullish sentiment.
You're hearing from the biggest, some of the biggest in the game.
So that's really awesome. Tyler, that was a great
interview. It was a pleasure as usual.
We will see y'all tomorrow morning, 10:00 AM Eastern
Standard Time for the episode of film while we're on Rug Radio.
Let's go.