The hack was one of them the pivotal moments of
bitfinex That was incredible. I
think by by in seven months I think by by April
2017 all the outstanding the effects tokens were
either, you know Converted redeemed or or converted in
inequities the really simple idea around Tether was
okay. Let's reuse the incredible
Technology that Bitcoin created the cold blockchain.
Let's just put The US dollar
because it's the most used currency in the world. I
always say that Before 2022 we never had even a
marketing team for tether so tether USDT has becoming
Really important for hundreds of millions of
people across the board especially in emerging
markets and developing countries
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chorus dot one Welcome to ebsenner the show which
talks about the technology projects and people driving
decentralization and the blockchain revolution I'm
Brian Crane and I'm today here with Frederica Ernst
Today we speak with Paulo Ardourino who is the CEO
and co -founder of tether and CTO of Bitfinex And
also working on another new thing called hole punch
which we'll talk about so Of course some enormously
influential projects in the crypto space most important
most of this tether So really excited to get to
get into this. Well, thanks so much for coming
on. It's really great to have you
Thank you for having me We're gay right into it. I
mean you've been in crypto for a really long time and
Have worked on and many different things, but how
did it all start? Like how did you become
interested in crypto and what triggered your
imagination? so 2024 is my 10th year in
business in crypto, you know, I discovered Bitcoin
in 2013 So I've been a developer all my life Now
I'm focusing more on business and Strategy but I
was born as a developer since I was eight years
old like was coding No, I was living in a really
small town outside of the city and Didn't have many
friends around so, you know, I spend almost all
of my afternoons with a computer so fast forward
went to the university in Genoa in Italy and the
study math applied to computer science and and my
I'm also big sci -fi fan, so my Dream and my
interest in technology was all about building things
building technological solutions that would be
Resisting to apocalypse, right? So,
you know in the house sci -fi you there's always
problems for the world, you know Things getting for
going for the worst You have either wars or you
have aliens or you have to abandon the earth and go
somewhere else and so on so That's that thing in in
always Was sticking to my mind on how, you know,
whatever we do whatever we build should not be built
for the best case scenario But should be built for
the worst case scenario And so, you know, I started as
soon as I graduated with from the university. I
was a researcher in the university So I was
building resilient telecommunications systems
for distressed situations like battlefields and You
know that taught me how to be you can build Really
resilient networks that are you know, really critical
and crucial in certain moments Then as most of
the time happens in Italy, you don't pay you don't
get paid too much so, you know the That's the
unfortunately situation of Italy, so I decided to
move to a field that I thought was More rewarding
at least in economical pay that was finance So I got
my first job in finance in in actually in Switzerland
And then I decided to move in London to London to
open my startup to build the financial software so
in 2012 I opened the startup and in 2013 I I
was Already really annoyed by the outdated technology
that the financial system was relying on If you
haven't worked with Banks or hedge funds and so you
know that every time They trade anytime a trader
trades for an institution for a hedge fund At the
end of the day, you have to reconcile all the
positions all the trades all the cash balances
across multiple trading venues across multiple banks
and custodians and All that is speaking tense of
different protocols is kept together by rubber and
bands is all Really outdated feels like he's
all still written in Kabul 40 years ago, so in 2013
I got to the chance to learn about Bitcoin and The
first thing that I thought about Bitcoin was okay.
This is really cool This is not
not just I didn't get immediately. Honestly
the Humanitarian and social implications but I Got the
technology aspect and I thought that Bitcoin could
be the solution for The financial board in terms of
having a common settlement network across all the
institutions across all the governments the beautiful
thing about Bitcoin as a blockchain is that you can
Everyone had that has a synced note. She's
the same thing, right? So you you cannot have ever
seen reconciliation and so on so it's beautiful
prevents double spending and and and so on so I was
really excited about it and then at the end of 2013 I
thought really I was really deep in the rabbit hole
and so I started understanding more How
Bitcoin is actually a game changer as a currency for
and its social impact could be incredible so long story
short in 2014 I got the chance of of working for
Bitveen X so Bitveen X was one of the first trading
platforms Was really one of probably the only and first
trading platform that at the time was offering
margin trading on Bitcoin and so The CFO Jack
Alivazzini of Bitveen X contacted me through a
common friend and we He asked my Help in in making
sure that between a scoot scale with a demand right
2014 is not 2024 of course we are seeing today that a
huge demand of Bitcoin You know brought by by ETFs
and so on but in 2014 still there was an
increasing demand for for for accessing Bitcoin
trading and so most of the exchanges in 2014 were
built by Amateur is not the right term is is not
about you know being But we're more mostly almost e
-commerce is for Bitcoin rather than high performance
trading platforms today We are used to have super low
latency high frequency trading and so on but back
in time was kind of different So I brought my
expertise in in building in building the you know the
Bitveen X platform and the setting up team in 2016 I
became the CTO of Bitveen X and in 2017 I became
the C is CTO of also tether and then from there
I started working also on the stable coin side for
tether and more recently I started to care more about
long -term strategy vision and Grow with all the
teams and execution of the strategy for for tether
while still I am the CTO for Bitveen X So I would
take care of the tech platform and all the
trading tools built around Bitveen X So this is just
me in ten and five minutes probably more but yeah, no
no, thank you so much for for that I'm curious Like
going a little bit into Sort of the story of
Bitveen X. What do you think it was that
helped? Bitveen X Succeed and and actually
there's maybe one episode that really be curious to
talk if you girls talk about I think some people
will So remember it right because once you guys have
this massive hack and then you had this very
interesting way of like Dealing with the hack that
I think ended up working out really well But I'd
also love if you could sort of talk through that
episode and What happened then I think this right I
think The hack was one of them the people tell
moments of Bitveen X Remember that The word was
coming. Well the Bitcoin word was coming
from a big hack that was the Montgauss hack, right?
So at that time when Bitcoin
Phoenix was hacked it was Personally a devastating
moment Also for of course for the company for for
our customers, but look we had two choices either let
it go and let Bit Phoenix potentially die or We could
roll up our sleeves and make sure that our
customers would get whole right So at that time when
between it be Phoenix was hard was the second of
August 2016 Bitcoin was around six hundred dollars
So they're total loss of of Bitcoin it was around
72 million dollars around 119 ,000 Bitcoin. So
we decided so I remember those days really well
because After the first day or so of assessment of
what happened and how we could have happened so on
we Decided to come up with a plan to resume trading
and make everyone whole the way that we use was
actually new and I think was extremely intelligent
and forward -thinking so We dollarized the 72 million
dollars and we issued the so -called BFX tokens and
we distributed the BFX tokens across product across
the users and So also we open a market for these
BFX tokens So that people could trade their Their
Basically is how you use the interesting thing is
that these tokens had multiple functions Right so
people could take these tokens and convert them
into equity if they believe that Bit Phoenix would be
successful in longer They could trade them on the
market so sell them for example and They could also
wait for the redemption. So we Committed to redeeming
those tokens at $1 face value with their avenues of
the exchange So as soon as the market started so after
one week So it took one week to bring back the
platform up and running I remember that probably slept
two hours in a week I was completely destroyed after
after seven days, but you know, we had to make it
We had to put everything we had to To to start
trading again because if you wait too much you
don't have you know People will just disappear will go
away and you know, there is no chance of success
anymore So we knew that we have to restart trading
within one week So when as soon as we started trading
the BFX token people started selling their BFX
tokens and the price went from one to 20 cents, you
know that they thought well these guys will never make
it but After the first days we had the first days
we had a huge outflow of Bitcoin from the platform
You know customers of course where we're drawing
in panic but After a few days after 10 days 15
days, we were back the first exchange by trading
volume So at the end of June at the end of August
We were the first again the biggest exchange by
trading volume and so by the end of September We
redeemed the first BFX tokens So people were like
only cow these guys these guys are making money They
are buying back the tokens and so the price on the
secondary market for this BFX token started to go up
And so then October came November came we we kept
making more money because also that coincided with
the bull run Right the start at bull run by the
end of 2016 going to 2017 That was one of the most
incredible years for for Bitcoin in the crypto
ecosystem So we were making really good profits buying
back the FFX tokens so more and more people start
to Convert their BFX tokens into equity. So
that's how basically we got almost 300 shareholders for
for for I -finex and That was incredible. I
think by by in seven months I think by by April
2017 all the outstanding BFX tokens were either You
know converted redeemed or or converted in in in
equity. So it's I really like and
love to think about that part of the story because
I think that in In these moments of weakness is how
you really assess the team and I must say that no
one in our team Left the company everyone was focused
on make sure that the platform would be profitable
to make everyone fall Yeah, to this day, it's one of
the biggest comebacks in in crypto history and I also
really appreciated The story of the BFX token and how
kind of you use crypto economics to kind of to
make it work for you guys So yeah tipping my head to
you guys So you talked about kind of, you know
switching out the financial rails and kind of settling
things on Blockchain because it makes sense and I
conquer 100 % so kind of we have recently started
building financial infrastructure that kind of
crosses the chasm from blockchain to legacy finance
and with noses pay and other such integrations and
I was Absolutely flabbergasted at the stack
that kind of like the financial world runs on it.
It's unbelievable So you guys in
that vein you guys started a decentralized exchange in
2017 back when these were kind of still fairly
marginal so It was each venex and it later
rebranded to diversify and then now rhinofi How do
you juggle this so basically in terms of?
Trustlessness and so on obviously having
a dex is preferable to having a centralized
exchange in some sense because kind of like
everything is Transparent kind of the spirit is
there. So how do you see the
coexistence of both of these bronze branches? So
I think that the beauty of of big venex and this
group that is always You know, there is this meme
of being in for for the tech, right? So
then you know, you have people with big gold chains
and and so on but We have been always really in in
this field for for the tech, right? We
always try to push the boundaries of tech even
when Dexys were not a thing we thought how we
could Make sure that people if people are not
comfortable in leaving their tokens and their money on
the exchanges how we can make the Experience their
user experience great in a sense that centralized
exchanges have the advantage of being extremely fast in
execution because the Think about the fact that now
the average latency of an order on beat phoenix is
around in the internal system is around the ten
Microseconds between ten and twenty microseconds, right?
So that's how you scale you
can handle any sort of volume the and so and you
can only do that through a centralized platform because
Even the fastest blockchains like so Anna, they have a
block time of 400 milliseconds So that is
incredibly incredibly longer is like an eternity
compared to the latency that you have in a
centralized system But you know the problem there is
just something in physics called the speed of light,
right? The information goes up to the
speed of light and so you cannot Move information if
you have multiple nodes that have to concur to the
same information they have to agree they have to
exchange information that speed is the speed of
light and so as Fast as it can be if you have to
have two different Do different round trips around
the world because you one node could be Tokyo one
could be Switzerland the other one could be in the
US Then you know you get to four hundred five
hundred milliseconds of a minimum time that is needed
for a blockchain and So for a DAX to in terms of
latency Now so the way we approach this is what are
the pros and cons of a DAX compared to a
centralized exchange? And for us the most important
part was the having the ability of keeping it Your
own custody while trading so being able to trade as
fast as fast as you can with the normal centralized
user experience, but at the same time keeping control
over your custody I think that is the holy grail of
of finance if I have to think it through of course
the the other important part is The transparency
right so you want to make sure that people don't
front around you and so on but I think that the
transparency Can be on one side of course on the DAX
is you have transparency, but you have a normal
latency So you can also we had there were also cases
in which people were front -run because you know they
you looking at the mem pool looking at you know
the you know have even the The the validators for
example who can front -run people because they receive
the transactions a little bit sooner So there are
also problems like that in index right so to me the
holy grail and the big Advantage of a DAX is the
ability of letting people control their own funds So
that's why we started fnx in that way as of today.
I think you know the There
is another Or there was another interesting kind of
advantage of DAX is versus centralized exchanges that
is privacy or Anonymity if you want if you will right
so with DAX is you usually log in with you with your
metamask and so you know or whatever other wallet
you have and Then you you can start trading
immediately. You don't have to go through
KYC ML and so on but My opinion as of today seen
also Mika and the other regulations that part that
advantage of DAX is will come to an end I think is
you know regulators make it made it abundant and clear
that if you trade against Someone else and that
someone else is a person that is sanctioned The fact
that you are using a DAX is not going to save you
or create a justification for you So basically what
will end up in my opinion and from what I gather
Being the only advantage of DAX is that is still a
great advantage Is the ability to keep in your
own custody of the funds and not be subject to a
potential exchange hacks So we'll see the future is
Will will tell us who you know power thing these
things will develop. I Relate in a bit to the
sort of big for next journey, but also like more
generally if you journey like as an entrepreneur I
mean you mentioned sort of like how the team sort of
made it through all of that and and like You
mentioned also like how you you have to focus on tech
I'm curious like how do you think about you know
building an organization and like company culture and
like what are sort of the main learnings you've had
in that regard so far Between Bitfinex and tether
We had a really really really low Number of
defections. I think in I don't know in
in in ten years. We could count it less than
You know two or three percent People stick here.
I Think the reason is the
culture the culture is really about openness
Kindness We there is a first rule that I have so
myself and and couple other people in them in the
Chief positions we do every single final interview
Right, so we still do all the final interviews.
Although we are growing the number
one rule is never hired don't hire a toxic person
So you sometimes have amazing talent, but to be
every early Could be challenging for the team
Right, you don't if you hire the wrong person if
that person will affect 10 10 people around them,
right? So the ability sometimes, you
know, and as I said I've been a developer sometimes
you see developers that get all cocky because you know,
they are right and everyone else is wrong or because
they have you know the They they are all the only
ones that That have the truth on how things should
be architect, right? And so We are really careful
in in hiring people that understand the value of
collaboration within the teams and that's something
that So far over time allowed Bitfinex to remain
one of the top platforms in the crypto ecosystem
while having probably one tenth to one fifth of the
the headcount of of other platforms, so That's that's
of something about you know creating and healthy team
healthy responsibilities and chain of responsibilities
people really committed to the success of the company
and So I think you know the the biggest Take away
from from my career is focus on the team focus on
the people and you will have success Now I really
appreciate you saying that let's talk about Ted or
like how how did Teddy get started? Ted
are starting 2014 as a really simple product a
simple idea in 2014 they were Just few exchanges
right you could count, you know the exchange of the
crypto currency exchange is on the on the Fingers of
two hands. There was Bitfinex of course beat
stamp kraken coin base there was ok coin and BTCC
not not many others at least not many relevant
others and so There was a mean to the at the end of
2013 It was also the first moment in history that
Bitcoin broke one thousand dollar in price and Across
multiple trading venues right so you had maybe one
point two thousand dollars at any point in time There
was a huge spread across exchanges Up to 20 % right
so some exchanges were at one point two K others
were at 950 others were at one thousand there isn't is
that By then the work of the arbitrageurs was not
possible the arbitrageurs are those kind of traders
that sell Bitcoin where on the exchange where the
price is higher they send it for dollars They take
the dollars they move the dollars on the exchange
where the price is lower They use these dollars to
buy Bitcoin and then send the Bitcoin on the exchange
where the price is higher and so on and so forth
They do it in the loop so that this the the spread
across these Exchanges will go down and they all get
aligned In order to do this you have to you need
to be able to move Bitcoin From one exchange exchange
to the other but also you need to be able to move
dollars from one exchange to another but Moving dot
moving Bitcoin takes the minutes right the average
block that Bitcoin is the minutes but moving dollars
is extremely More difficult sometimes, you know
international wires might take one days two days
three days seven days and there is the weekend so
Your trading opportunity your arbitrage opportunity
is long gone if you wait so much So the really
simple idea around Tatter was okay. Let's
reuse the incredible Technology that Bitcoin
created the cold blockchain. Let's
just put The US dollar because it's the most used
currency in the world simple as that Back in
back in at that time, you know, there was no it here
yet So the way to do it the only platform that
allowed that was called Omni layer that is a color
coin system That is based on Bitcoin So tatter was
born on Omni layer fast forward many years and you
know tatter started as a Simple project to allow art
to make more efficient crypto trading but in 2019
2020 with a pandemic something changed you know
with the economies of the world especially in emerging
markets developing countries They they started to Have
big issues who are seen argentina, turkey vietnam,
venezuela so many others, you know all these National
currencies are re devaluating against the
dollar really really quickly in some cases. I
think that argentina paces lost 98 against the us
dollar in five years and More than 80 was lost by
the turkish leader. So All the people people
living those countries where You know these people need
needed solution needed the way out needed the way to
save their wealth right who is not about speculation
here is about A father of a family that works the
entire year to earn for example turkish leaders at
the end of the year is poorer Compared to the
beginning of the year just because it's national his
national currency went down the bin and so people have
A survival instinct and so they started to look at
solutions and usd t was already the most used
solution That that could help them so usd t became
basically this this This currency that the world
started to use and to To build on all the in all
the emerging markets now if you go in argentina and
Buenos iris You have find ton of places where you
can be campaigned usd t Same happens in venezuela
in so many other countries and i must say we didn't
envision that we didn't think about it When we
created tether was really a simple idea and so we are
humbled by the success of of usd t I always say
that Before 2022 we never had even a marketing team
for tether and so You know people started using our
product in the way they saw more fit And in the
way that was more helpful to them. So
that that is really exciting Can you give us
an idea of how it's used today? So
kind of in in percentage kind of like what what
percentage is kind of like What i would call normie
use so kind of like the the turkish father or The
argentinian family mother who kind of keeps their
salary in tether in order to spend it as efficiently
a couple of months later So it's really Just to say
it's really hard to pinpoint the exact figures
because in you know, we are living in a
decentralized world And so information is captured but
um as of today, I think that at least 50 of the
tether in circulation the usd t in circulations in
circulation are kept as savings and not necessarily
used for trading so That is a great achievement
because I think it changed It happened in in four
years right in four years people had this incredible
bad situation of suffering financial suffering and I
always say that we are Kind of an weird weird
weird situation at tether because we We see that if
we have more success means that the world Is going
towards a worse place right because you know the That's
the the reason for all these countries to look at
the dollar is because something is not working
their own country and the Easiest way to have access
to the dollar is usd t so In one way someone could
see of course is a success for a company But is is
um it's had anything to see that you know to
understand that success is also determined by In
parting competency uh from from um, you know um
financial management for of many countries and uh, you
know, um the inability To preserve preserve wealth
From government in these countries that led people
to fly towards a more a safer currency You've moved
um stack or you have kind of added stacks over The
last couple of years so as you said kind of you guys
started out on omni And then you added ethereum and
now you see usd t is natively issued on a number
of networks How do you determine which chains to?
Um to issue natively on so
basically basically if you if you look at Payments on
chain tether on tron this kind of where it's at at
the moment So how how how do you kind of see these
movements? How do they happen? Um,
do you plan them? yeah so We listen to communities
and Every time we deploy usd t on the chain We do
an enormous amount of the divisions that goes from
the security of of the blockchain. So
how is you know the um the technology is built to
the interest of a real community And the actual
ecosystem around such blockchain Right is
pointless to list to add usd t to a chain that
doesn't have Users or interests because then you
know, we we expose ourselves to risks while
not You know getting any benefit in terms of
adoption so The interesting and I get this question a
lot an interesting thing about tron is that you
know, we launched first ethereum Well, first there
was a tether omni then There was usd t was
launched on ethereum and then was launched on on
tron People choose whatever they want, right? So
people choose the transport layer of usd t they want
We just to be clear. We are centralized stablecoin.
So all our Features and
capabilities are shared across the different
Blockshins for example, we can freeze us at seats.
It's public right? We
can freeze wallets working for working with law
enforcement That is something that applies to
all the different blockchains and so People
just choose the transport layer. So
the blockchain for usd t that is more fitting to
them and 99 % of of the people would always choose
something that is faster and something that is
cheaper Let's think about how what I said before so
tether usd t has becoming Really important for
hundreds of millions of people across the board,
especially in emerging markets and developing
countries you know, we we don't support us customers
and I don't think europeans need stablecoins either.
That is that is my take So the
vast vast majority of tether users is all in
emerging markets and developing countries
Countries that we as we said They you know, their
initial currencies is losing really quickly as the
dollar and where you know One every dollar or
transaction fee is extremely important We have we have
seen after 2018 2017 how many times the theorem gas
fees they grew through, you know from $2 to 50 dollars
to 100 dollars right every time there is some
excitement the gas fees goes go crazy high and so
Tron had really low gas fees For for a long time
right tron had this Is more centralized as this
system of validators and for a long time had You
know proof of stake compared to proof of work
the theorem moved from proof of work to proof of
stake more recently So, you know the throne was a
simplified approach to evm that was extremely effectful
because you know all this In think about africa and
south america and the central america certain
countries of asia You know even 50 cents of
transaction fees are really high right So maybe they
earn 50 dollars to 200 dollars in a month And if
they have to spend five dollars every time they
send a transaction that is not a product for them the
interesting and sometimes, you know the the ethereal
community criticized Us a little bit because you know
the tron is still heavily used the reality is that
Ethereum had to for ethereal took four years to
come up with the layer two solutions That would bring
down the fees to a variable Value right for
the vast majority of the users of blockchain And so
for if you give to a competitor that would be
tron in this case four years of first mover
advantage Of course, it's really hard to take it
back Especially when also all these layers two
solutions built on ethereum are completely Are anyway
competing with each other as well. It's
like, you know the sims on me where you know with the
scots where basically um in the end everyone hates each
other and The the reality is that we um, we are
seeing You know, we we think that it is really
important for usc t to be more diversified on
different blockchains Is important that although
these blockchains will start to grow an ecosystem will
keep transaction fees low And will keep the
transaction speed high in order to fulfill the
interest and the need of um of emerging markets
populations Um tron transaction fees, um I have
moved up Significantly though, right? So
basically a tsc 20 transfer currently is around a
dollar 50 So it's it should be impacting the
people That are surfed best by by tether. Yes,
exactly. And that's why we are seeing
opportunities on Launching ladder chains recently we
launched on selo Well, today's ago we launched on
selo that has lower transaction fees is bm
compatible And we are also looking at polygon and
other uh layer twos. What I'm saying is that Now
that hundreds well actually tens of thousands of
integrators like merchants payment solutions have
adopted Tron is really hard for the layer two solutions
only fear to compete, right? You
They had four years of first mover advantage So
you started you started kind of right focusing on
this arbitrage use case and now There is you know kind
of tether is like branched out and there's a lot of
this, you know Payments use cases or people using it
as a store of value. I heard in some Into you you
talked about Tether as a sort of over collateralized
bank account I'm curious if you think of like the long
-term vision for a tether like where do you see it
going? so tether evolved a lot, I
mean We We were the black sheep of of crypto Maybe
we still are and I'm not realizing it but Um, we
were the the the black sheep of crypto for a long
time. Um Is that we we thought
that? Keeping your head down and you
know not being you know not entering and not
entering in public disputes and not being you know
present on twitter and so on would Would work for
us, um, you know, it's like okay If I work if I
keep my head down and do a good job People will be
okay with me will will be happy and we realize that
we are good people And then you know that that
didn't work well and you know, we started to
understand that people needed And no, I'm heavy
quantities of transparency and I think you know, it's
it is rightful to to us for that and um, so We
changed I think heavily in the last years the amount
of information that we publish The way we managed
our services much more public We came up We were
the first ones to to to come up with an attestation
with a breakdown of the reserve showing how much we
have in different things We were subject to many
critics that we took well and we applied to the
company so that we could Improve also our service,
you know, I'm sure you remember the commercial
paper part You know, although there were a lot
of nonsense like we had ever grand day and you
know all the chinese papers and so on that was Really
stupid, but anyway Um, we we proved that we could
convert everything or almost everything in us t bills
as of today So the community was asking us to
do changes and we always listen to the community. We
made these changes Um as of today, I think we have
well as the 31st of december 2023 we had 80 .3
billion dollar c us treasury bills that would
put us at the 20th as the 20th country in the world
as own owners of us depth and um when it comes I
think to the three months Treasury bills owners. We
are the third one as in terms of holdings so Our
the majority of our t bills are all short terms
like within 90 days and so Now nowadays in the last
attestation we published um other numbers like we have
we had 5 .2 billion On top of the 100 reserves that
are covering all the issued usd t tokens so means
meaning that we had Tatters making good money right in
a quarter we made almost three billion dollars and
We could have dividend at any other company any other
normal company imagine a bank that would make three
billion dollars in profits Oh my god, they would
Distribute these profits left and right to all the
shareholders up to the last cent But no we tether we
decided to keep the vast majority of these profits
within the company up to 5 .2 billion as the last
quarter so that Ren tether end up in being a 5 .2
billion over collateralized so Of course banks are
upset because you know banks are lending out 90
percent of their portfolio and their balance sheet and
tether instead is doing the opposite is actually
accruing more money and keeping it to show that
You can build something that's in safe. You
can build a financial tool That is that is safe and
doesn't need to lend out people's money and so
that's That's what I what I like about tether right
disability of of revolutionizing how you know
Some certain things in finance are not so the
yield on US Treasury belt has gone up enormously over
the last year or so. Have you ever thought about kind
of making USCT in some form yield bearing and
letting people who actually use it and hold it
participate in that windfall so That is a really
interesting one right so I get this a lot as well
The reason why there are two different reasons why
we cannot do it and doesn't make sense for us
to do it Is the first one is that if you start
giving out interest and share interest that becomes
a financial product That then becomes a security. So
that's something that is I don't think is is is a
good approach So I think that many other products
that are the stablecoins that are Trying to do a
stablecoin that provides an interest are going to hand
up in having some issues with the with the us
regulators and other regulators, but also You
know, I'm I consider myself a scientific person and
when I create a product. I always think How for whom
This product is created for and who should who is
going to use this product? If
you live in Argentina where the intraday volatility of
the the Argentine basis is higher than 4 to 5 percent
Does this really matter that at the end of the
year you get 4 percent? And
on the other side if we get that 4 percent we can
create a really incredible stable product That can
that is helping hundreds of millions of people So
that's why I think, you know, if you are in the
us You have already the best banking rails. You
have already the us dollar So if you put money in a
stablecoin you expect to receive An interest right
because that's a constant of a saving account and a
checking account on a saving account You want to
have an interest but everywhere else outside the
u .s For all the people outside the u .s The
interest is in especially the ones living in the
merchant markets and developing countries that
are the actual users of a stablecoin Then that 4
percent is not really meaningful because what they
care about is to have something that protect
themselves from a much worse situation So I I
totally understand That reasoning of course one
thing that did happen like a few years ago That's
sort of like along these lines, right is that a lot
of The usage of tether or of usd t was that people
hold it on exchanges right the trade And and then I
think you know finance created their b usd And
you know, I think it was because they say like well
all these people holding, you know usd t there and
of course the sort of profits of that You're a
crew of tether and they were like, okay Let's if
we can swap this out with our own stablecoin right we
can we can capture that So I'm curious. Do
you think that might be a path for basically usd t
would incentivize like some of these large platforms
where massive amounts of Usd t get held or dc that
as a sort of competitive threat Well, I know that
some of our our biggest competitors are kind of
doing that right so, you know, I know that From
that some of our competitors are paying big
institutions and exchanges to hold their stablecoin
again To me and to you know, many legal teams that
we told to That ends up in you are giving interest
to someone else hence Can become or can be considered
security. So The point is that tether
today is 102 billion dollars in market cap Maybe
we'll go down. Maybe someone else will create a
better solution But we are not Look again, we are
here for the tech We are keen for the innovation if
we become the second biggest stablecoin or third
biggest stablecoin as long as is safe As long as it
follows our ethos. That's fine. We
are happy with it, right? So
we don't We don't have to be forever the first We
need What we like is to leave a sign in terms of
innovation a utility and how with our Technology
with our passion we can we can change the world and
if someone will create something better. That's
fine but I believe that creating trying to You know
be to compete and trying to Reduce the security also
in this case from a the legal side, right? So
if you if you start doing more and more things if
you can if you keep adding flavors To the stablecoin
and you start doing this and that because you are
scared to become the second or the third or losing
market cap Or losing market share look, I mean That's
not us, right? So we we believe that the
simpler it is The safer it is So if you start adding
all these nuances Eventually you will fall in an issue
and that could endanger the stablecoin So again tether
has more than 300 million users across the world And
so the only thing we do care about is that is safe
Your main um usd stablecoin competitors usdc Um, how
how do you see the differences between usc t
and usdc? Well, they are focusing mostly
And historically they have been focusing a lot on the
us to me and and and europe now to me is um If
you look at the us and if you look at europe or
switzerland Everyone has two credit cards in or debit
cards in their pocket have cash have two bank accounts
You know, there is no need To me, I always described
like trying to sell an ice cream to an skimmy's,
right? So there is no point When you
create a product again, you have to create it for for
for the people that really need it You know, and
those are the ones That don't have access to a
bank account the there are billions of people in the
world They don't have access to a bank account.
There are billions of people that
that are They're not bad people. They're
really good people. They're nice people, but they are
Not really interesting for the banking system Because
for the banking system if you're not profitable enough
as a human being They will you will not not be on
board Right, if you'll not put in all your salary and
if your salary is not enough is not big enough
to justify You know, they're outdated You know
financial infrastructure Then they will never accept you
as a customer for all those people there is usd
We were clear, you know, when we saw the pandemic
and all these emerging markets issues happening We
were clear that is our crowd. That
is the people we want to serve We see our
competitors always trying to Play the game of wall
street and be want to be, you know The stable coin
of institutions, but institutions have already
the best banking rails So I think there is a big so
the biggest difference in I think is strategy So we
want to be the last the stable coin the dollar for
the last mile, right for for the For the normal
people, um, we think that bankers have already too
much What are your thoughts on decentralized, um,
stables? So basically Things like die
Rye, I mean, so basically there's different flavors,
right? Like fully collateralized
collateralized with Acids that may be difficult to
get a price feed for under collateralized agro -rhythmic
and so on Do you see those gaining ground in any
way because kind of the way that centralized stable
coins work is we leverage heavily the existing
financial infrastructure and kind of are Exposed to
financial infrastructure risk that kind of pertains to
the to the legacy system How do you see that play
out in the future? Let's go with a little bit of
history, right? So While we think about
algorithmic stable coins, we think about terraluna We
all know how it ended up, right? So
I was quite vocal in the months before Saying to
many people look terraluna is is gonna be gonna blow
up And many answer me. Well,
you are only saying that because terraluna is going
to eat up all tether market share and um, but
the the interesting fact is that It's easy to create a
stable coin that is, you know, one million market
cap to billion, three billion, five billion If
you get to 10 billion or I think 17 to 18 billion
was terraluna at the peak Every the liquid it has to
be there, right? You have to be able to pay
out immediately you have to be able to redeem in um
in 2022 was april may when terraluna blew up There was
you could see the difference between an
algorithmic stable coin that was uh That was made
through some, um, you know, we are the incentivization
mechanisms and tether so terraluna Fell because they
couldn't sustain haver dameships So everything
started to blow up a reason after after terraluna
blew up Uh publicly a group of hedge funds
started to short USDT on the secondary markets So
you could see And recently I think dcg came out or
neither where some Some disclosures during a class
action showing that also dcg shorted uh during those
times USDT for 400 million dollars And uh, but there
are other hedge funds like fear tree and and others
they they they shorted billions of dollars in all
together across all these groups In few days of USDT
they kept the price of USDT below one dollar on
the secondary markets. Why they did that? Of
course, they did that because they wanted to
cause a bank run That is what what basically happened
on on terraluna So they wanted to cause a bank run
where people you know, if you keep the price of USDT
below the dollar Or a stable coin below the
dollar or what happens is that? Market
makers are coming in on the secondary markets and
buying The stable coin for cheap Going to the stable
connoisseur i .e in this case tether Redeeming for
one dollar getting the dollar going moving the
dollar back on the exchange buying cheap stable coin
going to the stable connoisseur redeem it and
so on and so forth that cause that is In the
banking world the start of a bank run So what
happened with tether in 2022 in may was that
tether was able to pay Out in 48 hours seven billion
dollars That was 10 percent of our reserves and in 20
days we paid around 20 to 25 billion dollars of
redemptions So that was 25 percent of our market cap
So there are a few banks in in in the history that
have been subject to a bank run Washington Mutual
2008 10 percent redemption they went belly up Silicon
Valley bank sinchure silver gate all these guys Didn't
survive two bank runs You know, we are seeing
recently also another bank in these days had issues
so the the difference between A stable coin that
is backed by liquid And real world assets and an
algorithm is stable coin is enormous I don't think an
algorithm is stable coin makes sense that war can
grow Above a certain threshold because otherwise
become to risky It's it becomes attackable by
attackers. They tried it with us. They
couldn't make it And they lost enormous amount of
money because in we we were backed and we were
solid they They had and when they tried to attack
terraluna they succeeded it blew up really really fast
So when it comes to the other times like
Collateralize like die. I think they're really
interesting concepts. The issue is how you grow the
market cap We having extremely volatile assets in
your portfolio like if you have If you have Bitcoin
in theory as part of your collateral that becomes hard
because we have seen how in the last four years
Bitcoin in theory lost 80 % of their value, right? So
it's really really tricky So that pushed die into my
understanding to move towards tbls as well but
you know, if you Are have if you start to using tbls
as part of your collateral, you are no different than
than tether or or the other You know centralized
stable coins. So I think in a way die
decided to Decided that the model of of tether was
probably the right one and more more scalable one in
the long term Yeah, they added usdc as collateral
fast So usdc the tbls. I think this is something
that's kind of slowly ramping up. But
for for um sometime 70 % of die collateral was
actually usdc And so it's just a proxy, right? So
I think look the the point is And the question that
people should ask themselves is Why you need a stable
coin? so what you want to get from
a stable coin because if you want to have an asset
that is resistant to the wrath of god that no one
can take away from you and so on that is bitcoin,
right? So you have already something
that is digital that that is Unconfiscatable that is
built to survive to you know all the crazy monetary
policies that that work is going is going into If you
want a stable coin that quacks like a dollar
probably, you know, you are still bound to the Fiat
word. So you need for a specific
use case a dollar So why you are forcing why you
are why we are trying to push all these crazy
mechanisms to try to to recreate a dollar And not
using you know, if you want a dollar if you're
trying to recreate the dollar It means you need
the dollar for something and you need at some point
to exchange that dollar for a dollar, right? For
a real world dollar So if you are in that situation
probably you just want something that has that is
backed by a dollar or backed by The closest proxy
to a dollar that is your stb So, you know you you
you why putting Bitcoin in ethereum to recreate them
to recreate the dollar I mean when eventually that
dollar that you created through bitcoin in ethereum
You have to sell it for a dollar that is backed by
the real dollars or by the us economy that would be
tether Right, you cannot cash out easily die. You
have to sell it for us You cannot redeem it
directly for us dollars. And
so that's the point of the stable coin is to be able
to To have a link to the physical world or to the
fiat world So that's that's my small rant around the
stable coins It's just it's not that we didn't think
about how we can create something matter Well, we
have some ideas that are quite interesting But the
the reality is that nothing is really proven to to be
able to become so big as usdT And maintain its
stability no matter what that without using a heavy
amount of physical assets So us dollars, I mean
especially in this crowd they are heavily criticized
and kind of They're often made out to be something
that kind of could collapse any day now, right? So
have you thought about adding an additional product
that kind of doesn't just use us dollars or treasury
bills as as the underlying Collateral about kind of
having some sort of basket of currencies or kind of
like some sort of Special drawing rights and Yes,
basically adding like the swiss franc and the euro
and the yen and so on to the mix So this is a
Great question and there is a lot of unpack the the
thing is that So again, if you are scared about the
the us dollar Is probably you don't in there isn't
why you should be scared is that eventually like in
the weimar republic You might be able to buy a
loaf of bread with one billion dollars, right? but
I can tell you and if the dollar gets to that point
the euro is long gone And that's not about speak
about the japanese yen Well, the swiss frac is
probably the only thing that will remain and will
survive because swiss people understand finance better
than anyone else but There is no other basket the
only thing that would make sense is gold What about a
basket of kind of like stocks and you know in
principle, I mean you would ask yourself Where would
the value go? Right and basically physical
values would still be there. So
kind of wouldn't you want like shares in companies
and Actual physical goods like Goals of and I mean
though there are representations of those on
chain as well, right? Well, if the dollar goes bust
That is the entire Nasdaq and the New York store
exchange and all this the american markets are the
biggest ones So do you want ready to have some
some stocks in the u .s. Market?
I think if we are thinking and I like the you know
this thought right so about you know What will happen
if something happens to the u .s. Dollar?
But that means that the entire world economy is
going towards a reset and there are only two things
that will save you Bitcoin and gold so every Human
humanity go went through many resets and they will
They always were done through gold never through
fiat currency Now we have also bitcoin as as a great
alternative and gold asteroids, but here's the
thing right so USdT has to represent a dollar So with
one usdT you shouldn't be able to buy what more than
one dollar right so for us The usdT is a
representation of dollar that is representation of
the u .s economy If again with the dollar you can
buy if we you know you need one billion dollars to
buy a loaf of bread You will need one billion usdT
to buy it off of bread is not our business to make
the dollar Prettier and and more solid than the dollar
itself right so it's just a representation of dollar
if you really want something that is better
Then you should you might want to use bitcoin or
gold? Yeah, I mean I think a huge
part of the value Of you know something like usdT is
also well I mean let's say in crypto usdT or usdT is
used a lot right like let's say you invest in
some company or do something like that It's
mostly done with stablecoins and of course the nice
thing is you will have a contract and in a contract
it says oh $50 ,000 $70 ,000 something like that and
you can just send 70 ,000 usdT and there's no
complexity. There's no conversion Accounting is
simple So like I think even if you created some
kind of other stablecoin that you know, let's say
tracked inflation and It's it's from a practical
perspective It will be less useful right then something
that just mirrors the dollar I completely agree
the point the question that people should always ask
themselves is what i'm using this for so if
you're using it to just to Have a dollar then you
should go for the closest thing to a dollar that you
can find And that will quack as a dollar and also
in the accounting as you said So for the rest there
is plenty of other options that that we created in
the last many years Cool. Well,
let's let's maybe move on to the last topic because
I mean we've talked about bitfinex We've talked about
tether. So I mean you already are
doing a lot, but then I think you started another
thing Which is called hole punch Which is focused on
building P2P applications Can you talk a little bit
about what is hole punch and and you know the kind
of related things to hole punch and like What's the
vision behind that? Sure, so with tether we we came
from this enormous learning curve on How the world is
going bust and it's not not just us right so then
one of the main reasons of crypto is that we think at
least many of us think that um economy is the
real world economy is going towards a direction where
you know countries Are more and more at war among
themselves The economy is getting more unpredictable
and so we created A solution or to to that
that is you know bitcoin or blockchain based products
and so on but You know we have this concept in crypto
that is called individual sovereignty Where you should
be of course, we all live in a society But you
should have financial freedom So you need to you
you you want to have the direct to interact with
whoever you want, but the individual sovereignty that
Through financial freedom is incomplete. You
need also freedom of speech to achieve that because if
you have Individual sovereignty, but you cannot
say anything to anyone because otherwise you get
censored or or going jail That doesn't matter much
right um and vice versa If you have freedom of speech
But then you don't have financial freedom Whatever
you say can be used to seize your funds or or
make sure that you you are not really free to use
your own money so Five six years ago Myself and matias
boost the you know both developers both Really
enjoying the the concept peer -to -peer communications
as we are enjoying the concept of bitcoin as peer
-to -peer money um, we both came through from a
background of a file sharing system like bit
torrent, you know and all the predecessors And we
know there is an interesting aspect of file
sharing systems that I think is really was
comparable and is comparable to um blockchain and and
money systems So you might be familiar with nubster
the first file sharing system, you know went bust
closed and all through with different iterations uh
developers try to create different solutions to make
file sharing more decentralized exactly as We
are we try to do with money so Different attempts
right from um, you had line wire you have a kazam
You have a donkey you have a mule and then you
finally you have bit torrent The difference
across all these different Approaches is that all the
different approaches before bit torrent they had a
centralization point they had You know if you were
using kazam or or line wire you wanted to look
for a movie you had to connect to a centralized
index like or certain servers that had all the
list of all the files so you can find download the
files, right? And all these centralized
servers were shut down, right? So
then people Jumped to a next version trying to
decentralize file sharing a bit more And son is for
sorry. So that was the history of
file sharing arrived to the point where with bit
torrent Everything was really decentralized from
the indexes. So the list of all the files
Where they centralized through a system called
distributed hash table dht You know the file sharing
itself the the exchange of the files was completed
peer to peer And then son is for now with um, but
yes myself Really were fun of bit torrent and so we
thought what if We took the very same technology
around bit torrent But we improve it we make it
available for not only for file sharing but for real
real time streams In the world almost everything is
a real time stream this Chat on or ever sorry the
riverside is a real time stream, right? So
we have how tens of streams audio video when we
browse is uh, the internet is a real time stream And
so we thought if we can take those protocols and we
can create a new set of protocols that are free
That are open source that are private. So
we took also all the learnings from blockchain to
create a Identity to use that encryption that we
learned from blockchain to make it more Secure than
bit torrent was and and is right? So
we we spend five years to recreate the basic protocol
technology to create a better layer for internet I
I think personally, you know when you know the I'm
a technologist and I think that one something that
really annoys me is the fact that Internet change
from the beginning from the real purpose it was born
for when the internet was born was Born to allow
people to talk to each other and share information
to each other with each other Every computer had an
IP address and still today has an IP address So that
every computer could directly interact with the
others but more and more after the year 2000
centralized System were born by can so google of course
then email Supercentralize and then you know, what's
up telegram all all these communication systems are
incredibly centralized They are going actually against
and all the cloud providers are incredibly centralized
now 70 of the entire traffic intern Is provided
by service that are running on the top three? cloud
providers aws Microsoft google So is that really
The future that we want So what happens is and now we
go back to the beginning of this this this chart We
we we are building internet for the best case scenario
where everyone is friendly to each other What if
tomorrow and you should we should learn from history?
What if tomorrow? Italian
friends will not be friends with each other or I don't
know Germany and Spain or I don't know the US and
another country so what if and we we built and you
know the reality is that All these solutions like
whatsapp are built by specific company single
company And he's using data centers in specific
locations in specific geographic locations, so You
might see a future where data will be held hostage
and use against other countries If you if you
live in europe use whatsapp if you live in Rome You
know if use whatsapp Every single time you send a
small message If we go to frown fort and go back to
Rome, right? So 90 percent of the people
for 90 percent of their time are talking to people
that are within You know two kilometers from where
they live yet every time we chat Data travels
thousands and thousands of miles just to go back You
know to our neighbor or to be to go back to be two
kilometers for months Is that intelligent? Not
of course imagine how much Governments are spending in
internet infrastructure just to create beefier lines
bigger internet lines for People that are talking for
most of the time with their neighbors or with
their families that are living in the same area
That is really utterly stupid. Sorry
to say that but it is And so this is done because
centralized companies and big tech providers are Need
that amount of information every day to milk that
information To make money to sustain additional growth
new data centers is like You know a circle that
that goes around and keep growing is like And it's
feeding itself without us sharing more information
more photos. They be you know, they they
will never survive The the cost of maintaining their
infrastructure will crush them And so this long
story to say that we there isn't why we created whole
punching kit Is to showcase that you know this this
interview could have been done through kit completely
bearded pier without any central server If a whole
punch the company that is building kit would die
tomorrow kit will keep working imagine If you are
in a country, right? So kit is serverless Allows
you to do a chat. We have we created a bitcoin
chat On kit with there are 1 .5 thousand people today.
There is no central server. They
are talking real time. They're
sharing files You can share any Size of file you want
because there is no limit. It's
just your bandwidth. You are interacting with each
other You don't need if you share a file On zoom
you are limited to one other megabyte because
otherwise if everyone was sharing two big files Then
you would crush You know telegram or zoom or
whatever, right? But When peer -to -peer you
don't have those limitations So what we wanted to
create with kit on whole punch is we want to Wanted
to prove to the world and to all the developers that
you can build peer -to -peer applications with a great
user experience Without having to have central
servers And so kit now is being used by my many
people Have much better quality video quality much
better out of quality just because if you if you are
talking to a person With leaving the same area It
feels like you have that person in front of you
Because the latency is the smallest it can ever be
Because the message is the data packets will find the
shortest path between you and that person and that
between of course you the two devices Is not magic
if intern was built in that way, but there was
never an incentive by anyone To build it to use
it in that way because The companies that had the most
money had the incentive to make it centralized and all
the rest all the nerds let's say like us They
never had the money to build, you know highly
successful applications To prove that internet can be
become Server -free in a way for or at least most
of it can become server -free And so that long
story short That are found recently as we chatted a
little bit about it With an important profitability
So since we are as I said, we are in for the
technology. We wanted to create the freest
free as in freedom a chat solution That is unstoppable
that is private and doesn't need doesn't need any
central server Super cool. So
I get key this kind of like basically decentralized
peer -to -peer, you know alternative to like sort of
whatsapp and telegram Do you see the same protocol?
also as a foundation for You
know very different types of applications Sure you
can on the same protocols you can build peer -to -peer
uber One of the scariest things is like imagine that
you know, this baby comes where Uh, that you you
monitor your children, you know, they are all the
data passed through a central server that you
don't know How scary is that? You
you should be able to connect directly from your
phone to your home device without crazy configure
needing crazy configurations All that is possible
through hole punch and You can build, you know peer
-to -peer mapping you can whatever you think is built
today You can build a hole punch. You
don't know how many when I talk to other developers. I
I tell them I showcase Hole punch you can I
showcase how you can build You know interaction between
two devices without any middle server providing, you
know one device provides some services to another
device Without both phones, maybe without any central
server And even developers are mind blown and that
tells a lot about our education So as developers
when we go to the reverse in university we are taught
that The client server model is the only moderate
model existing. You always need a server for
for many clients That's not true And we wanted to
prove it and we are going to invest a lot of money
to make sure that education will pick up this new
pattern Because we want an horde of developers to
build peer -to -peer applications that desentalize
applications to reduce the dominance of the any tari
big tech companies I I hear on of that and I'm a
big fan. I will definitely check out
hole punch The the one thing that kind of always
got me about these peer -to -peer platforms like
BitTorrent was that that there was an incentive
layer missing so kind of people Basically was very
sensitive to kind of people who would Explore who would
exploit it by kind of downloading and not seeding
So in principle kind of like on any crypto
infrastructure. You can kind of build in An
incentive layer said happening with hole punch
as well No, not really. So,
I mean hole punch is space protocols It doesn't have a
token will never have a token because I believe
that is a simple protocol that can well It's quite
complex, but it's a protocol that can be taken
by everyone and you can build whatever you want on
it now I agree that there were with BitTorrent Most
of the people wanted only to download but never give
up their upload bandwidth This is completely true,
but let's think about the other side, right? If
you are building like a peer -to -peer chat And you
you want to use a chart your incentive is to talk
to people So there is no actual cost for you. It's
not that you are running and know that that allow
people to run their traffic through you so the
difference between a hole punch and a blockchain is
that in a blockchain you have a global share state
So if you run node, you will see all the traffic
you will see, you know the mempool data and so on
With the hole punch You only choose to to talk and
to connect to the people you want to because you
are creating a network with them So hole punch is not
a huge big network But is a protocol to create your
own small network with only the people you want to
talk to because you are interacting with them
Without any central server That's the only way to
make something scalable blockchains are Need to use
a global share state because you need to make
sure that no one is double spending right But you
don't need that you don't need in in if you are
creating a communication system You don't want to
receive messages from someone from the other side
of the world to route them somewhere else, right? So
it doesn't matter. You shouldn't be a server
yourself There is now this other program project called
noster They use, you know, they use relays centralized
relays. I always make the comparison
between Noster and then and kit as in with noster you
have relays And so you need to provide incentives
to people to run a relays. Otherwise
nothing will work Well with the hole punch, you don't
need relays So hence you have a simpler more
simplified network And you don't have to have
incentives because the incentive of people is
already talking to each other For example, now you
are in Imagine that you were in ua in dubai you
cannot use telegram or whatsapp to call your
friends and family Because you know the telegram
whatsapp are blocked you can use kit to talk to
anyone and from from from there and to there because
that's um Because the beautiful kit is because
it's peer -to -peer in order to block pe key you will
need to block the entire internet Because it's not
predictable where you connect to Super
interesting. So is is the underlying
technologies at some sort of whisper network or how
does it work? It's used the same concept of
bit torrent in order to Find each other we use the
same concept of bit torrent called dhd the distributed
hash table so that um The distributed hash table is
uh In in bit torrent arrived to 10 million nodes
in size at the peak, right? So
you have all these 10 million nodes that are
acting as um, not connection points, but are
Temporary database temporary databases Is basically they
are key value stores that are storing part of the
global index in a really resilient way so if If you
shut down a part of the network even 1 million
nodes the network will keep surviving and will adapt to
the new set of nodes So is really the most
sophisticated resilient Uh distributed database ever
created and we used it in order to allow people to
find each other through the four key Because if we
added a centralized index to key to that would be
centralized the The point was centralization is that
you cannot just add just a little bit of centralization
Right. So either you are centralized
or not. There is no there's no in
between because the moment you are a bit centralized
that you are centralized I'm curious. So
one of the things one of the projects I've been
pretty deeply involved in for quite a while is uh,
it's been called orbit which uh, sort of you
know, in visions basically a different architecture for
like computing and an alternative to the internet
where basically All of the computers work in a kind
of p2p array where you know applications run
locally Who have you looked at orbit? Do
you have any thoughts on the sort of tradeoffs
between the whole punch approach versus that So I
really like orbit. I mean I I play with it. I
think in 2017 2018 I I don't remember when but I
think is a really Not all project in a sense of all
but these around since a long time and um, the
concept is great I think and the way it is designed
is also I really love it I think a whole bunch is
creating protocols for the real world, right doesn't
Doesn't trying to change the world completely
starting from scratch We already have internet We
have we have immediate needs that are creating A
layer on top of internet that is secure that is uh
that gives sovereignty to people And we are doing in
the most simple way in the most modular way because
with with orbit you had it was kind of The way I
felt it is it's that is a monolithic approach You have
to take it all and everything should run on
orbit. Otherwise it would you know What
wouldn't work? But with whole punch is We
have more than 100 GitHub projects and libraries you
can take bitten pieces And use it and craft it for
and integrating in your real application your
existing application already Right, so we are taking a
different approach in order to change the internet That
is giving you the tools to do small steps toward
decentralization rather than forcing everyone in a new
completely different ecosystem Yeah, no,
absolutely. I absolutely I think that's a
fair description Uh in terms of the differences Do
you see kids Becoming some kind of business down the
line or is it just a sort of public service that you
guys want to develop? I think it will remain public
service, I mean The point of kit is not making
money, you know, there is this uh, sorry making many
references to to memes but Well, you know the from
batman joker is not that he said it's not about um
The money is about sending message and For us kit is
that right? So we make good money with
tether We's not that we have to make money every
single time we do something Sometimes it's important to
send a message And there is a pun intended because
kit sends messages And I think this is a fantastic
place to end because it is it is such an iconic You
know a message to go out on I will definitely
explore kit and hold punch more I think uh, the
entire interview was super fascinating But somehow the
whole punch part got me most as kind of like
appear to appear in decentralization maxi If
people kind of want to learn more about hold punch
Or indeed bin finnex or tether where can they go
to where can we send them? so
um On x there is um until we replace x with something
build on hold punch So that's um disclaimer So you
could go on um at tether underscore to or at beat
finnex or at All punch underscore to or at kit
underscore io Or at paulo ardoino. So
name is her name to find all my memes and something
about everything that I do Cool. Thanks
so much for coming on paulo. I
really enjoyed the conversation. Thank
you guys. It was super fun Thank you
for joining us on this week's episode. We
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