Latest / The Paul Barron Crypto Show / Are Banks Already Too Late?💰Martin Masser INTERVIEW🏛️ChangeNOW

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Are Banks Already Too Late?💰Martin Masser INTERVIEW🏛️ChangeNOW · The Paul Barron Crypto Show

0:00
Speaker 1: Are banks too late to get into the crypto market? Today,
0:02
Speaker 1: we're going to be breaking it down with an industry
0:04
Speaker 1: expert who has been on both sides of the coin.
0:08
Speaker 2: And let's just get right into it.
0:10
Speaker 1: As you guys know, the announcement of change now brought
0:12
Speaker 1: on Martin Masser, who is planning to come on, has
0:15
Speaker 1: come on into the crypto super app. And this is
0:18
Speaker 1: something that we have started to see. And that is
0:21
Speaker 1: banking industry people starting to make their way from TradFi
0:25
Speaker 1: to over into the crypto markets. So we wanted to
0:28
Speaker 1: get Martin on the show and just jump right into
0:31
Speaker 1: today's topic.
0:32
Speaker 2: Martin, how are you?
0:33
Speaker 3: Very nice. Warm welcome. So yeah, thank you very much.
0:35
Speaker 3: How are you keeping, Paul? Good? Good.
0:37
Speaker 2: Can't complain.
0:38
Speaker 1: We're, of course, watching the market right now, obviously, with
0:43
Speaker 1: what seems to be catch up on just about everybody
0:46
Speaker 1: in terms of how banks are responding to what's happening
0:50
Speaker 1: in crypto. And many of the things we'll talk about today,
0:54
Speaker 1: just a little bit on ChangeNow, though, before we get
0:56
Speaker 1: started with your platform, with ChangeNow, because this is something
1:01
Speaker 1: we see a lot of tools being used. I know
1:03
Speaker 1: Tangem is one of the partners that uses you guys,
1:06
Speaker 1: among many other wallets out there. But I'm kind of curious,
1:09
Speaker 1: when you look at you coming from the banking industry
1:13
Speaker 1: and then getting a chance to work with something like ChangeNow,
1:17
Speaker 1: What would you tell a bank that was trying to
1:20
Speaker 1: get into crypto today after you've seen kind of under
1:23
Speaker 1: the hood here today?
1:24
Speaker 3: That's a really good question. You really started off with
1:28
Speaker 3: a good question. I think a lot of the time,
1:30
Speaker 3: you have to understand there's a lot of areas of
1:33
Speaker 3: banking that have legacy software. I think, was it McKinsey
1:40
Speaker 3: sort of said only 10% of tech goes for innovation.
1:44
Speaker 3: And then there's like 70% that still works on that legacy.
1:47
Speaker 3: And I worked on a lot of software projects. Some
1:49
Speaker 3: of that was removing the legacy software. A lot of
1:53
Speaker 3: the time it just couldn't. So I think banks are very,
1:58
Speaker 3: very cautious about bringing any of the new tech in.
2:02
Speaker 3: I would obviously just say there's so many things that
2:05
Speaker 3: the blockchain technology can help, which a traditional bank has
2:10
Speaker 3: a lot of issues with. from settlements to a lot
2:13
Speaker 3: of this back office, mid office speed, basically.
2:18
Speaker 1: So Martin, do you think that it is a situation
2:21
Speaker 1: right now that banks are so, because we've seen this
2:24
Speaker 1: in other industries, retail industry, the restaurant industry. I've been
2:28
Speaker 1: involved a lot on retail systems.
2:30
Speaker 2: And a lot of.
2:31
Speaker 1: Times those systems are just so old and legacy, you
2:35
Speaker 1: almost have to start from scratch. Do you think that's
2:38
Speaker 1: kind of what's being done right now in the banking industry?
2:41
Speaker 3: From my experience, bringing in any new tech takes a
2:45
Speaker 3: very long time and there's so many other dependencies down
2:49
Speaker 3: the line that sort of relies on the tech. I
2:53
Speaker 3: think a lot of people just can think, oh, look,
2:54
Speaker 3: blockchain settlement, that's amazing. Oh, why doesn't a bank just
2:57
Speaker 3: use that? Well, it's not as simple as just like,
2:59
Speaker 3: let's put that in. You know, even you have to
3:02
Speaker 3: have legacy software to reference a settlement. So there's a lot.
3:06
Speaker 3: This has still been going on for about 10 years.
3:09
Speaker 3: But this is why you've got the neobanks doing so
3:11
Speaker 3: well with their speed of being able to implement a
3:16
Speaker 3: lot of that stuff there. So, yeah, it's exciting times
3:21
Speaker 3: because we have... a means to sort of speed up
3:25
Speaker 3: so much of this financial slowdown of even sending a payment.
3:29
Speaker 3: And I don't think people realize, because people are so
3:32
Speaker 3: used to, you know, like the Venmos or the Revoluts
3:35
Speaker 3: or just being able to send money within seconds, the
3:39
Speaker 3: bigger banking transactions, like even going through Swift and multiple
3:43
Speaker 3: other ways, takes a long time to settle. And there's
3:46
Speaker 3: lots of steps that are involved in that. That can
3:49
Speaker 3: be sped up. with this technology. But remember, the Swift's
3:55
Speaker 3: like 1971, 72, maybe 75. It's a long time. So yeah,
3:59
Speaker 3: you know, it's how do you replace a lot of
4:02
Speaker 3: that stuff?
4:03
Speaker 1: When you look at, because this is something, this was
4:06
Speaker 1: a data point that I was surprised with. This came
4:08
Speaker 1: from the National Cryptocurrency Association. And it stated here.
4:13
Speaker 2: That nearly one in three U.S.
4:15
Speaker 1: Holders wanted to see crypto integrated into systems they already
4:18
Speaker 1: know and trust, like banks. First of all, I'm surprised
4:22
Speaker 1: that it's one in three. That's 30% of people out there.
4:26
Speaker 1: And I don't know, guys, if you guys are watching
4:28
Speaker 1: this right now, drop in the comments down below, would
4:31
Speaker 1: you trust a bank with your crypto, or would you
4:34
Speaker 1: want to stay with what has been already set up.
4:37
Speaker 2: Out there in the rails? What do you make of
4:39
Speaker 2: that percentage?
4:40
Speaker 3: Are you thinking that number's low or high then, Paul?
4:42
Speaker 2: I think that's extremely high. I don't think so at all.
4:47
Speaker 2: You think that it could be.
4:49
Speaker 1: I'm more on the fence that it could be as
4:52
Speaker 1: low as 10%.
4:54
Speaker 2: As low as 10%.
4:56
Speaker 1: Now, I might be in that crypto bubble because I'm
4:58
Speaker 1: one of those people that would never trust.
5:00
Speaker 2: A bank with my crypto.
5:02
Speaker 3: Honestly, I think this is the issue. But a lot
5:05
Speaker 3: of the times we're in this bubble of a bubble,
5:07
Speaker 3: probably of a bubble. We're so in there of probably
5:10
Speaker 3: like the self-custody and understanding all of that.
5:16
Speaker 2: Whereas.
5:18
Speaker 3: The average person that has a touchpoint of crypto, they
5:21
Speaker 3: just want to be buying it. On my phone, again, Revolut.
5:24
Speaker 3: The amount of people that I know that just get
5:26
Speaker 3: crypto on Revolut, just because it's there, that is now
5:29
Speaker 3: a bank. So in theory, you're getting the crypto through
5:32
Speaker 3: the Revolut, which is now on a banking app there.
5:34
Speaker 1: I would say, though, that something like a neobank, that's
5:37
Speaker 1: a bit of a different. What I'm talking about is true,
5:40
Speaker 1: iconic TradFi. And what I mean by that is something
5:43
Speaker 1: like a Wells Fargo, a Citibank, a JP Morgan.
5:46
Speaker 2: Yeah.
5:48
Speaker 3: I still think people do trust banks. There is that
5:53
Speaker 3: element there where they would rather, if they can have
5:56
Speaker 3: access to crypto, they would, and they'd want to have
5:59
Speaker 3: it in a way that's easier to do. That's from
6:02
Speaker 3: a lot of, whenever I ask people like, how can
6:04
Speaker 3: they buy it? Again, there's a lot of steps that
6:08
Speaker 3: get involved and there's a lot of terms. I'm pretty
6:11
Speaker 3: sure if it was just to buy crypto, buy Bitcoin. Yeah.
6:16
Speaker 1: Well, and I think what you're dealing with is the
6:18
Speaker 1: normalization of what crypto is happening and doing right now,
6:23
Speaker 1: even within the banking industry. I mean, you've got 21
6:25
Speaker 1: banks now that are not just building a stablecoin. They're
6:29
Speaker 1: actually fighting for control here. Now, this would be something
6:32
Speaker 1: that will be interesting to watch. And I'd love your
6:35
Speaker 1: opinion on this. When you look at the success of USDC, Circle,
6:40
Speaker 1: the success of a handful of stablecoins, including Tether, one
6:44
Speaker 1: of the most profitable financial companies out there, even above
6:48
Speaker 1: someone like a JP Morgan when it comes to the
6:50
Speaker 1: number of people.
6:51
Speaker 2: Do you think that.
6:53
Speaker 1: A centralized banking stablecoin will be a success in the
6:58
Speaker 1: short term?
6:59
Speaker 2: And I say in the next five years.
7:03
Speaker 3: That's a trickier one. That is a trickier one. Would
7:06
Speaker 3: it be a success? It needs to sit near enough
7:08
Speaker 3: to find success. Would it be taken up? Maybe by
7:11
Speaker 3: bigger industry. Would the traditional person care about that? A
7:15
Speaker 3: lot of people I know with stable coins, they absolutely
7:18
Speaker 3: love their stable coins. They understand it. Would they use
7:21
Speaker 3: another one? I think just in case people don't understand
7:25
Speaker 3: the use of stable coins, just imagine a company in Europe,
7:29
Speaker 3: they want to pay a supplier in Asia late on
7:32
Speaker 3: a Friday in the traditional banking. It would take so long.
7:35
Speaker 3: It would probably be Monday or Tuesday, by the time
7:38
Speaker 3: that would come by the, all the windows have opened up.
7:41
Speaker 3: Obviously just, if you think about what a stable coin
7:44
Speaker 3: can do, where it can be just completed in minutes,
7:47
Speaker 3: they have the dollars in the account. It's all sorted.
7:50
Speaker 3: That's huge.
7:52
Speaker 2: Exactly.
7:53
Speaker 3: I would say it depends on the banking system of
7:59
Speaker 3: how these banks come together with the stable coins. I
8:01
Speaker 3: know there's a lot of crypto traditional people that would
8:04
Speaker 3: be like, no, no, no, that's really wrong. Whereas, you know,
8:07
Speaker 3: is it insured? How does all of that, how does
8:09
Speaker 3: that get worked? And when you've got, I know huge
8:12
Speaker 3: amounts of assets, commodities get used by stable coins. Right.
8:18
Speaker 3: Would these companies be prepared to sort of use the government-based,
8:21
Speaker 3: banking-based one? Probably they would.
8:24
Speaker 1: Well, and I think what you're dealing with is companies
8:27
Speaker 1: like Robinhood, who has been able to really integrate stablecoins
8:31
Speaker 1: in an efficient manner, the likelihood of onboarding them and
8:36
Speaker 1: slowly bringing people into this ecosystem from a TradFi standpoint.
8:40
Speaker 1: Even though Robinhood, I would put more, not necessarily on
8:42
Speaker 1: a neobank, but I would put more in the middle
8:45
Speaker 1: of next generation finance. And they do take it quite
8:49
Speaker 1: a bit different. I guess the real question will be,
8:51
Speaker 1: will global banks out there that do deploy stable coins,
8:55
Speaker 1: are they going to be successful? Especially if you look
8:58
Speaker 1: at this right here, Martin, and that is with the
9:00
Speaker 1: OCC okaying three different digital asset firms out there for
9:04
Speaker 1: trust bank charters. And many of them, you guys know them.
9:07
Speaker 1: We've had everybody from Ripple to Coinbase involved in this.
9:10
Speaker 2: So when you.
9:11
Speaker 1: Look at that growth, of OCC charters changing the idea
9:16
Speaker 1: of what banks might become in the future, is that
9:20
Speaker 1: going to create a lot more real competition in a
9:24
Speaker 1: new technology that they understand versus old banking who doesn't
9:29
Speaker 1: understand it?
9:31
Speaker 3: I think you'll probably see as what we've probably experienced
9:34
Speaker 3: and probably in your whole time of knowing your tech
9:36
Speaker 3: as well, Paul, you'll probably have a lot of competition.
9:39
Speaker 3: You have a lot of I would near enough feel
9:42
Speaker 3: that they would consolidate. That's what I would I'd feel
9:45
Speaker 3: there as we're probably going to be seeing a lot
9:47
Speaker 3: more now in the crypto industry. There's going to be
9:49
Speaker 3: a lot more consolidation. I feel there's going to be
9:52
Speaker 3: a lot of movers out there that are going to
9:55
Speaker 3: probably be issuing as we're seeing out at the moment now,
9:57
Speaker 3: the amount of stable coins that we're seeing there. And
10:00
Speaker 3: there'll probably be some form of consolidation within that.
10:03
Speaker 2: Interesting. Okay. Martin, okay, well, let me ask you this.
10:06
Speaker 1: Where would you keep, if you talk about, just look
10:09
Speaker 1: at the treasury for change now, would you choose something
10:13
Speaker 1: like a circle? and USDC to hold that treasury? Or
10:17
Speaker 1: would you go with maybe a major bank that says, OK,
10:20
Speaker 1: now we're offering a JP Morgan coin?
10:24
Speaker 3: That's probably above my pay grade. So I need to
10:28
Speaker 3: tread very carefully probably with that question. But I think
10:34
Speaker 3: the great thing about it is we're having a lot
10:35
Speaker 3: more choice. So it's not just one option. Right. You know,
10:39
Speaker 3: like back in the day, I don't know if you remember,
10:41
Speaker 3: you know, there was Tether. very late in the day.
10:44
Speaker 3: This wasn't like a very, this wasn't when Bitcoin was out.
10:47
Speaker 3: And I think actually we're very lucky now that there's multiple,
10:51
Speaker 3: you know, we've seen what's happened now with circle, but
10:54
Speaker 3: then tether sort of come back. Tether at one point
10:56
Speaker 3: was very fudded, very like, it's going to go to zero.
10:59
Speaker 3: There's like, you can just look at videos probably even about.
11:02
Speaker 2: Five, six years ago.
11:03
Speaker 3: It was like a lot. I don't know, what's changed
11:05
Speaker 3: for Tether to be now? It's crazy.
11:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think they got a little bit inside the
11:12
Speaker 1: Trump administration, and successfully so, and figured out a way
11:16
Speaker 1: to get onboarded into the United States, which has always
11:20
Speaker 1: been my argument, is that the path to any kind
11:23
Speaker 1: of major market growth is going to come through the US,
11:26
Speaker 1: just because the market here is just ridiculously large.
11:29
Speaker 3: I fully agree.
11:30
Speaker 1: Yeah. And you look at Circle, obviously they're getting their OCC,
11:32
Speaker 1: their full trust bank charter nod. This puts Jeremy on
11:36
Speaker 1: the top of the hill here with being able to
11:39
Speaker 1: really compete with bigger banks. That'll be the question I have,
11:42
Speaker 1: especially if you look at the U.S. government now starting
11:46
Speaker 1: to give a lot more interest in how crypto is
11:49
Speaker 1: going to be used and most likely are going to
11:53
Speaker 1: deploy a lot of these crypto companies that are very
11:56
Speaker 1: oriented to almost.
11:57
Speaker 2: The AI side of things.
11:59
Speaker 1: What do you make of that when you look at
12:01
Speaker 1: what's happening with this US administration and their acceptance of
12:04
Speaker 1: crypto as it is today?
12:06
Speaker 3: I think we definitely were very bullish about the administration
12:11
Speaker 3: coming in. And that's definitely cleared up a lot of ambiguity.
12:16
Speaker 3: There's a lot more plans that have gone forward. So
12:19
Speaker 3: a lot more people feel there's less of this risk.
12:21
Speaker 3: I didn't, again, like four years ago, people weren't moving
12:25
Speaker 3: ahead with projects because they were very worried, like, you know,
12:27
Speaker 3: are we just going to wait some money? Are we
12:29
Speaker 3: going to, you know, is there going to be consequences
12:32
Speaker 3: against us? And I feel we've definitely moved forward on this.
12:35
Speaker 3: So the landscape's a lot easier. And now I can't
12:38
Speaker 3: see even if, there's a change in administration in the
12:41
Speaker 3: next couple of years. You can't roll a lot of
12:43
Speaker 3: this stuff back. It's not going to happen. So you've
12:47
Speaker 3: definitely opened up the gate. You've opened up the gates
12:49
Speaker 3: for innovation. You're seeing a lot more companies entering. I
12:53
Speaker 3: definitely think there'll be a pullback from AI back into crypto.
12:57
Speaker 3: I think I'm even seeing it now. There's a lot
13:00
Speaker 3: of people that were moved over to AI and now
13:02
Speaker 3: starting to slowly come back into crypto, especially in the
13:05
Speaker 3: last four weeks as well. I'm getting a lot more
13:08
Speaker 3: people just talking. Maybe I shouldn't go fully into AI,
13:11
Speaker 3: but I do definitely think the opportunities are greater now
13:16
Speaker 3: just with the landscape that's happened.
13:19
Speaker 1: Do you think that, okay, with that being said, do
13:21
Speaker 1: you think that the advancement now of crypto companies becoming
13:26
Speaker 1: banks or banks becoming crypto.
13:30
Speaker 2: You know, Oh, geez.
13:32
Speaker 1: Which one do you think is going to happen first?
13:34
Speaker 1: Do you think it's going to be the crypto companies
13:35
Speaker 1: becoming banks or banks coming into crypto?
13:39
Speaker 3: I think it's the crypto companies coming into banks. Obviously,
13:43
Speaker 3: this is my opinion. I think it's just easier to move.
13:47
Speaker 3: I really wouldn't be surprised if we don't see anything
13:51
Speaker 3: in the next two years where we're going to start
13:54
Speaker 3: seeing a couple of steps in that. I'm not going
13:56
Speaker 3: to say full bank, but again, if you would have
13:59
Speaker 3: told me I don't know, the neo-banks would be getting
14:02
Speaker 3: full banking licenses. I think people would be surprised. And
14:04
Speaker 3: now it's happened and no one's even sort of batted
14:08
Speaker 3: an eyelid about that.
14:09
Speaker 1: Right.
14:10
Speaker 2: What do you think about Robinhood?
14:12
Speaker 1: Because their path originally was maybe we are going to
14:16
Speaker 1: become a bank. And then they kind of backed off
14:18
Speaker 1: that and ended up partnering. They have all kinds of
14:21
Speaker 1: banking services. They've got insurance on much of these funds
14:25
Speaker 1: that are being offered to their customers. They've got Visa
14:31
Speaker 1: and debit cards available. They've got a full-blown banking app
14:35
Speaker 1: now that is usable. That's almost a bank without being
14:39
Speaker 1: a bank. What do you think about that?
14:41
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, no, I fully agree. I definitely think that's
14:47
Speaker 3: an easier route as well. They can sort of test
14:50
Speaker 3: what products work. Again, we're talking about change now being
14:54
Speaker 3: the super app. There's so many apps that we have
14:57
Speaker 3: now that don't just do that one thing from even
15:00
Speaker 3: like the Ubers. You know, who would have thought when
15:02
Speaker 3: Uber came out back in the day where you'd just
15:05
Speaker 3: be getting it as a taxi that you get. There's
15:07
Speaker 3: a whole industry that comes off the back of that
15:09
Speaker 3: from all the deliveries for the food to the cleaning.
15:13
Speaker 3: And we see that obviously even Dubai with Kareem from
15:17
Speaker 3: the WeChat app. Robinhood, and we'll be seeing a few
15:20
Speaker 3: others again, the neobanks in the UK that I'm very
15:23
Speaker 3: familiar with, they're offering multiple services as well. And I
15:26
Speaker 3: think it's easier to sort of not build it yourself,
15:31
Speaker 3: have other ways of dealing with that.
15:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
15:35
Speaker 1: I'm looking at vaults, because this is something we've been
15:37
Speaker 1: tracking for.
15:38
Speaker 2: A while, the growth in it.
15:40
Speaker 1: I mean, they're absolutely exploding. If you know where to
15:43
Speaker 1: look and you know how to do it, but this
15:45
Speaker 1: was Morgan Stanley's head of digital assets. Amy, she was
15:48
Speaker 1: talking about that there is a very reasonable path for
15:53
Speaker 1: vaults to become part of the future, although the technology
15:56
Speaker 1: is still too early to put directly on a bank's
15:59
Speaker 1: broader platform. So again, this gets to my point, which
16:02
Speaker 1: is banks are still so far behind on what could
16:06
Speaker 1: be one of the biggest products out there, and that
16:08
Speaker 1: is a vault.
16:11
Speaker 3: VOLTS have become relatively a big thing very quickly. I
16:16
Speaker 3: think it even in the last 12 months it's completely
16:19
Speaker 3: gone from like not even known there again i think
16:25
Speaker 3: this is where you're starting to get a lot more
16:28
Speaker 3: complicated and complex financial products becoming more mainstream in crypto
16:35
Speaker 3: i think this goes back to the democratizing crypto back
16:38
Speaker 3: in the day of like you'll be able to have
16:40
Speaker 3: certain products a lot easier you know why why should
16:43
Speaker 3: it be behind a firewall Vaults are looking good. You know,
16:46
Speaker 3: like every third call I'm having is about Vault or
16:51
Speaker 3: like how can we support Vault? You know, like what
16:53
Speaker 3: is that? At the moment, it seems to be a
16:57
Speaker 3: top down where a lot of companies are thinking Vaults
16:59
Speaker 3: are going to be big. It's going to be interesting
17:02
Speaker 3: to sort of see the retail appetite for that. Is
17:04
Speaker 3: it going to be a retail appetite for Vaults?
17:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's the question is if retail does
17:09
Speaker 1: come on, if we do see some major shifts here,
17:13
Speaker 1: around banking, vols are probably going to be one of
17:15
Speaker 1: the key draws for major retail to come on, especially
17:20
Speaker 1: if you look at even what Robinhood has done and other,
17:22
Speaker 1: I'm sure what you guys are going to be doing
17:24
Speaker 1: as well in terms of just making products available and
17:28
Speaker 1: being able to pay some of these crazy yields that
17:31
Speaker 1: are out there. So that's something that we're watching very closely.
17:34
Speaker 1: Another thing we're watching closely is how Swift is managing
17:37
Speaker 1: this because this, of course, gets into big money movement.
17:40
Speaker 1: Swift's blockchain ledger now is ready for use by 17
17:45
Speaker 1: different banks. This was their kind of their pioneering effort,
17:48
Speaker 1: but this was something of a statement that I thought
17:50
Speaker 1: was interesting. And it said Swift and its community is
17:55
Speaker 1: existing rails utilization of this. 75% of payments on the
18:00
Speaker 1: network reach beneficiary banks within 10 minutes and often in seconds.
18:04
Speaker 2: So here's my question.
18:05
Speaker 1: Is how is it only 75% if you're out there
18:07
Speaker 1: operating I would think, does that mean 25% of my transactions.
18:13
Speaker 2: Fail or get lost? Or how does this work? Because
18:16
Speaker 2: that does not happen in blockchain. It does.
18:19
Speaker 3: Again, working on the banking floor when I was, the
18:23
Speaker 3: amount of times a transaction would have to move through
18:26
Speaker 3: a network. So you're going from the front office to
18:30
Speaker 3: the middle office, all of this has to be approved,
18:32
Speaker 3: and then go to the back office to get confirmed
18:35
Speaker 3: and settled. It's, as I said, it's a very interesting, um,
18:41
Speaker 3: way when you look at how crypto and blockchain is, because,
18:44
Speaker 3: you know, we're, we're just used to having that done
18:47
Speaker 3: in instantly. Uh, if you saw there though, um, you
18:51
Speaker 3: look at all the banks that are involved in that, um,
18:54
Speaker 3: they're big names. You can sort of see the power
18:57
Speaker 3: behind this stuff when you're, when you're having these banks
19:00
Speaker 3: and anything, why are they using this? Well, you've actually
19:02
Speaker 3: given them a real use case a real reason why
19:05
Speaker 3: they should be using this yeah quick assessment is huge
19:09
Speaker 3: let's just say a factory needs to send to pay
19:11
Speaker 3: the workers you know and that's delayed for like two
19:13
Speaker 3: three days it's just stuck you know they can't do
19:15
Speaker 3: anything about that having that release what can you do
19:18
Speaker 3: then with that money then there's a lot less dependency
19:21
Speaker 3: you can do a lot more with the company knowing
19:23
Speaker 3: the money just is just floating around or stuck being settled.
19:28
Speaker 3: I think that's the key thing. We don't really notice that,
19:30
Speaker 3: you know, day to day where, you know, I could
19:32
Speaker 3: just send you a Venmo if I wasn't, you know, like,
19:35
Speaker 3: but sending huge amounts to suppliers, this is where the
19:38
Speaker 3: supply chain slows down and you can really speed a
19:41
Speaker 3: lot of this stuff up.
19:42
Speaker 2: Martin, what do you, okay, so you've got a couple
19:43
Speaker 2: of things here.
19:44
Speaker 1: If you look at vaults, you look at transacting cross-border payments,
19:48
Speaker 1: like what Swift does, then you look at just regular
19:50
Speaker 1: transactions out there. All of this appears to be heading
19:54
Speaker 1: toward the agentic community. and industry in the sense of
19:59
Speaker 1: where agents are essentially going to be utilizing crypto very quickly.
20:03
Speaker 1: And the possibility of this happening so fast, especially in
20:07
Speaker 1: DeFi and with wallets in general, I mean, this seems
20:12
Speaker 1: like it's a leapfrog or two ahead of even where
20:15
Speaker 1: crypto is today. And yet banks are not even up
20:20
Speaker 1: to that part just yet. How do they even compete
20:23
Speaker 1: with this level of speed that's coming?
20:24
Speaker 3: It's Again, I can't speak on behalf of the banks,
20:28
Speaker 3: but I know even from my previous job when I
20:31
Speaker 3: was working at Ton, that was a blockchain that Telegram
20:34
Speaker 3: was using. The amount of AI agents, because most of
20:38
Speaker 3: the AI agents become created in Telegram, we were seeing
20:42
Speaker 3: the huge boost in that, and then we were sort
20:44
Speaker 3: of seeing how that was being used. I still don't
20:47
Speaker 3: think we're anywhere near the use cases of what the
20:50
Speaker 3: crypto AI agents are anywhere near capable. A lot of
20:54
Speaker 3: this is sort of playing around trial and error. Again,
20:58
Speaker 3: as AI gets more advanced, I think we'll see even
21:03
Speaker 3: more of that. But even on our network, we were
21:06
Speaker 3: seeing a lot more of the transactions were done by agents,
21:09
Speaker 3: you know, it was traditionally, you know, done by bots, but,
21:12
Speaker 3: People were getting their AI agents to talk to each other,
21:15
Speaker 3: creating the wallets. Huge amount that can be done. So, yeah.
21:21
Speaker 1: When you look at how banks are operating today, and
21:25
Speaker 1: I look at it from more of a competition side
21:28
Speaker 1: of things, when you're someone like a ChangeNow or other
21:31
Speaker 1: exchanges out there, you're watching how banks are doing this.
21:33
Speaker 1: Do you think banks have figured out, hey, this is
21:37
Speaker 1: the one area we need to copy? that crypto is
21:40
Speaker 1: doing really well? Do you think they've even kind of
21:43
Speaker 1: zoned in on that just yet?
21:45
Speaker 3: I think the first thing, just to let your audience
21:47
Speaker 3: know that it's a bit of a disservice to sort
21:51
Speaker 3: of group all banks in together, because we definitely have
21:55
Speaker 3: some fast mover banks. I'm in conversation with so many
21:58
Speaker 3: of the banks. They've got the head of digital assets.
22:01
Speaker 3: They're way ahead, and they're thinking this through. They're bringing
22:06
Speaker 3: all of these topics of conversation up. Obviously, there's a
22:09
Speaker 3: lot of slowdown. Trying to get this through a compliance
22:12
Speaker 3: is very, very tricky. Then you have these leading it.
22:17
Speaker 3: They put on roundtables. They put on workshops. They do
22:20
Speaker 3: a huge amount. And then you have the fast followers
22:23
Speaker 3: that are coming in. And then you have the other
22:25
Speaker 3: banks that are like, well, we should probably be doing
22:27
Speaker 3: this as they're doing this. And then you have some
22:31
Speaker 3: of the banks that just are very... naive or maybe
22:34
Speaker 3: just not experienced or they don't have the right people
22:36
Speaker 3: there maybe they're assuming that bitcoin is just crypto and
22:40
Speaker 3: again like it's sad sometimes the times i speak to
22:43
Speaker 3: them and their knowledge isn't that great however you know
22:47
Speaker 3: and i'm not going to mention certain banks you know
22:50
Speaker 3: some of these banks are really pushing for a lot
22:52
Speaker 3: of this stuff they have huge innovation units really pushing
22:56
Speaker 3: forward with a lot of that stuff again you can
22:58
Speaker 3: just seeing there. And I can sort of see once
23:03
Speaker 3: regulatory clarity is there, that helps a lot. The compliance
23:08
Speaker 3: manages to sign that off. That's when you sort of
23:10
Speaker 3: see a lot more of this innovation moving forward.
23:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the benefits realization is there. And you're right.
23:18
Speaker 1: Actually, we had one of the early banks on our
23:20
Speaker 1: network when they were struggling trying to get crypto integrated
23:25
Speaker 1: and they were running into so many walls. This of
23:27
Speaker 1: course is pre the Trump administration. And there was a
23:30
Speaker 1: handful that were already trying to bump the boundaries. And
23:32
Speaker 1: I remember one of them, Vast Bank out of Tulsa,
23:35
Speaker 1: they tried to do quite a bit of advanced things.
23:38
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna lay this out to many of you
23:41
Speaker 1: who are watching right now.
23:42
Speaker 2: If you're a bank and you're thinking more advanced.
23:46
Speaker 1: We'd love to have you on the show because I
23:48
Speaker 1: think this is something that maybe some of our audience
23:50
Speaker 1: would love to hear is just how far, because all
23:53
Speaker 1: we're seeing most of the time is just headlines, but
23:56
Speaker 1: not a lot of action in the market. Hey, I
23:59
Speaker 1: wanted to get your opinion on this. Terry Duffy, we've
24:04
Speaker 1: talked about him a lot over at the CME. And this,
24:07
Speaker 1: of course, is something that just came in. CFTC has
24:10
Speaker 1: now submitted an interim final rule titled further definition of swap.
24:16
Speaker 1: We've talked about this, and this is now excluding the
24:18
Speaker 1: casino-style gambling products. This again was kind of the leverage
24:24
Speaker 1: issue that Duffy and the CME were concerned with. I
24:28
Speaker 1: don't know if you saw much of the banter back
24:30
Speaker 1: and forth during that recent conference that they were holding.
24:34
Speaker 1: Do you think that TradFi is trying to position around
24:38
Speaker 1: crypto by just policymaking? Since they didn't win the Clarity Act,
24:44
Speaker 1: are they now moving to the policymakers trying to maybe
24:48
Speaker 1: direct it into certain ways?
24:51
Speaker 3: It's a tricky one. In fairness, a lot of this
24:55
Speaker 3: policy and regulatory stuff is actually coming from the crypto
24:58
Speaker 3: industry that I've seen. And it's what goes on behind
25:02
Speaker 3: the scenes. And we've got a lot in London, in
25:05
Speaker 3: the UK, Andy Burnham, our prime minister as well, he's
25:08
Speaker 3: been pushing with us down with crypto. A lot Of
25:11
Speaker 3: this policy comes at first from the crypto industry and
25:15
Speaker 3: the crypto voices. And then we start seeing other bigger
25:18
Speaker 3: voices that do come in. So I think it's going
25:22
Speaker 3: to be a mix. But as I said, normally we
25:25
Speaker 3: start it. That's what I mean. We as I mean,
25:28
Speaker 3: the blockchain crypto industry policy, it can be either restrictive
25:32
Speaker 3: or actually helpful. And a lot of people always think, oh,
25:35
Speaker 3: there's regulatory regulation. regulation, there's policy, all of that's preventing
25:40
Speaker 3: the movement, but a lot of the time that gives
25:42
Speaker 3: a lot of clarity of actually what can be done.
25:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, the policy is going to be key to
25:46
Speaker 1: watch because this is a concern I have is that
25:49
Speaker 1: the old guard tries to put bumpers out there to
25:52
Speaker 1: maybe slow this industry down. To a certain extent, I
25:55
Speaker 1: think you're going to have, if you look at the US,
25:57
Speaker 1: Trump administration seems to be very pro. Obviously, the SEC
26:01
Speaker 1: and the CFTC have laid down some guidelines and which
26:04
Speaker 1: has caused the market to breathe a little bit of
26:06
Speaker 1: a sigh of relief.
26:07
Speaker 2: So that will be questioned, I.
26:09
Speaker 1: Think, in the next six to 12 months as we
26:12
Speaker 1: start to see the rulemaking handle. The last thing I
26:16
Speaker 1: want to hit on is stablecoins. HSBC is now named
26:20
Speaker 1: its Hong Kong stablecoin, the HSBC Red Coin. Now, this
26:25
Speaker 1: is HSBC, one of the biggest financial institutions out there.
26:30
Speaker 1: This is mostly for merchant payments, which is a big deal,
26:32
Speaker 1: and also for peer-to-peer. This was a brilliant move. I mean,
26:36
Speaker 1: red coin, that's great marketing in my opinion. Do you
26:39
Speaker 1: think this kind of stuff is going to help with
26:42
Speaker 1: adoption on a global scale? Because I mean, if you
26:45
Speaker 1: think about it, people that never have dealt in a
26:48
Speaker 1: stable coin, what's a USDC?
26:49
Speaker 2: What's a USDT?
26:52
Speaker 1: What's PAXG if I'm trading in gold versus something that, hey,
26:57
Speaker 1: just use red coins?
26:58
Speaker 3: So are we moving away from central bank digital currency
27:01
Speaker 3: now to banks? Is that like what is happening? You know,
27:05
Speaker 3: maybe that is the way to sort of be using
27:08
Speaker 3: this in an easier way. Again, merchants trading, that is
27:14
Speaker 3: a big thing with stable coins across border stuff. It's so,
27:19
Speaker 3: so large. You know, you even hear of merchants sort
27:22
Speaker 3: of being stuck because payments haven't moved forward. So look, Realistically,
27:28
Speaker 3: you know, if it works and it saves time, it
27:31
Speaker 3: saves money. People are going to be using it. I
27:36
Speaker 3: can see it. I think we've definitely moved on from
27:39
Speaker 3: like where we were five years ago with the scared
27:46
Speaker 3: worriedness of like government controlling central bank currencies. It might
27:50
Speaker 3: be still moving on, but yeah, you know, I think
27:53
Speaker 3: it's good. The fact that it's HSBC, a bank sort
27:56
Speaker 3: of sees the use of this, you know, surely then
27:59
Speaker 3: it's only a matter of time until other banks are
28:01
Speaker 3: going to be starting, starting to think this, if this
28:03
Speaker 3: is successful, you know, it's just going to be HSBC
28:06
Speaker 3: doing that.
28:07
Speaker 1: Which is definitely going to roll out, I think, in
28:09
Speaker 1: terms of adoption. Speaking of adoption, I wanted to kind
28:11
Speaker 1: of get a little bit on, I know you guys
28:13
Speaker 1: are one of the bigger platforms out there in terms
28:15
Speaker 1: of swaps. When you look at the roadmap for change now,
28:20
Speaker 1: right now, is there anything you can share about things
28:22
Speaker 1: you guys are prepping for later this year, early 2027
28:26
Speaker 1: that you can announce or talk about?
28:30
Speaker 3: I think obviously just me coming on board, we're bringing
28:34
Speaker 3: up a lot more of awareness. There's two areas of
28:36
Speaker 3: change now. There's a B2B and a B2C. Again, we
28:40
Speaker 3: have a lot of users going in there, exactly what
28:42
Speaker 3: you're doing there, swapping. And there's ChangeNow Pro, which you'll
28:48
Speaker 3: probably see there if you move over there a little
28:50
Speaker 3: bit there. There's a ChangeNow Pro as well and other
28:53
Speaker 3: areas where you can get cash back. You can You
28:55
Speaker 3: can on the swaps that there's also you can check
28:59
Speaker 3: on wallets. There's a lot of things that can be
29:02
Speaker 3: going there, reduce fees. And then we also, again, as
29:05
Speaker 3: you can see that we have the payments and also
29:09
Speaker 3: we work B2C. where people then can take elements of ChangeNow,
29:14
Speaker 3: maybe all of it, some of it, and they can
29:16
Speaker 3: plug that into their offering. Again, you've got it there,
29:18
Speaker 3: you can white label it. Wallets use it, wallets power,
29:22
Speaker 3: we power a lot of the swaps for many wallets.
29:25
Speaker 3: It's just plugged in there for what we can do there.
29:29
Speaker 3: And I think that's the reason I came over, the
29:30
Speaker 3: amount of people that sort of just came up to
29:32
Speaker 3: me saying, you know, it was brilliant using change now.
29:36
Speaker 3: And I was extremely happy about that stuff. So, yeah.
29:39
Speaker 2: Well, you guys have a lot of services.
29:40
Speaker 3: A lot of them times they have a vague ask
29:44
Speaker 3: for us and then we can then sort of go
29:45
Speaker 3: through and explain, you know, these will be areas we
29:48
Speaker 3: can do. Maybe they want to add swaps, maybe it's
29:51
Speaker 3: assets networks. Maybe they want to connect through an API.
29:56
Speaker 3: So we give a range and we speak through there
29:58
Speaker 3: and we can sort of help without building the whole
30:01
Speaker 3: exchange layer for themselves, to be honest. So, yeah, you know,
30:04
Speaker 3: like that's great there, you know, getting the exposure there.
30:07
Speaker 3: People then can start seeing, you know, all the benefits there.
30:10
Speaker 3: And especially as the market's going really well, we're getting
30:13
Speaker 3: a lot more reach out there. People can see the benefits.
30:17
Speaker 2: For sure. I love it.
30:19
Speaker 1: Listen, it's been great having you on. I want to,
30:21
Speaker 1: of course, thank you so much for stopping in today, Martin.
30:24
Speaker 2: We appreciate it.
30:25
Speaker 3: Mate, absolute pleasure from knowing you for many years. One
30:29
Speaker 3: quick question. What's worse, the food? Well, what users are
30:34
Speaker 3: more demanding, crypto users or food users?
30:37
Speaker 2: Oh, crypto users, 100%. Yeah, more demanding. Crypto users, 100%.
30:44
Speaker 1: They're the ultimate OGs and the expectation is, And they're
30:49
Speaker 1: the ultimate bargain hunters out there. Best rate, best exchange fees,
30:54
Speaker 1: best swaps, best yields. You name the market and I
31:00
Speaker 1: think a crypto user is the ultimate consumer.
31:03
Speaker 2: They are the apex predator. of the retail market is
31:07
Speaker 2: what I would say.
31:07
Speaker 3: I've been wanting to ask you that question for years.
31:10
Speaker 3: I'm so glad I've had the opportunity to ask you that.
31:14
Speaker 3: It's a dream come true. So yeah, now I can
31:16
Speaker 3: go home happy.
31:16
Speaker 2: Thanks, Martin. We appreciate it.
31:18
Speaker 3: Pleasure. Cheers.
31:25
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31:28
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31:31
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31:32
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