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Stablecoins: The Killer App of Crypto🔥Apple vs Coinbase Devs INTERVIEW🚨 · The Paul Barron Crypto Show

0:06
Speaker 1: A major shift in payments, but also around the whole ecosystem.
0:10
Speaker 1: What's going on with Apple and one of the leading
0:12
Speaker 1: companies out there going into this is Coinbase. Today we're
0:15
Speaker 1: breaking down for that. My name is Paul Barren. Welcome
0:17
Speaker 1: back into tech Path. Let's get into it. Of course,
0:19
Speaker 1: many of the things that you guys have probably seen
0:21
Speaker 1: in the news. One of the big items has been
0:24
Speaker 1: Coinbase entering the S and P five hundred, which is
0:27
Speaker 1: kind of interesting when you look at Coinbase and their
0:30
Speaker 1: movement into the S and P five hundred, and what
0:33
Speaker 1: we're going to be talking about today with their team
0:35
Speaker 1: is the fact that they actually bumped out Discover Financial,
0:39
Speaker 1: a major payment platform. So a lot of times what
0:42
Speaker 1: we've talked about here on the show is really where
0:45
Speaker 1: some of the integrations of and as you guys know,
0:48
Speaker 1: kind of the Apple tax concept for any developer that's
0:51
Speaker 1: building within the Apple ecosystem, that has pretty much gone away.
0:53
Speaker 1: But here's Tim Sweeney talking about Fortnite. Fortnite, of course
0:57
Speaker 1: is not necessarily returned to the App Store just yet,
1:00
Speaker 1: and it's been a little bit of a waiting game
1:02
Speaker 1: between Tim Sweeney and the Apple kind of interesting here,
1:06
Speaker 1: I think going forward. I've got a clip here, guys
1:08
Speaker 1: that I want to go to that is talking about
1:10
Speaker 1: where not only the Apple situation is brewing, but how
1:15
Speaker 1: this may be affecting developers, including payment developers, possibly within
1:20
Speaker 1: the coin based ecosystem. Take a look.
1:23
Speaker 2: The Apple tax is officially dead. This is the biggest
1:26
Speaker 2: thing to happen in payments in probably years, and we're
1:29
Speaker 2: already seeing developers use coin based commerce and crypto rails
1:32
Speaker 2: to save twenty nine percent plus on every single purchase.
1:36
Speaker 2: Absolutely game changing. This is an app I've been playing
1:38
Speaker 2: with called block Party. Now I want to go into
1:40
Speaker 2: their app store and buy some gems and are giving
1:42
Speaker 2: a ten percent gem bonus to users who pay with crypto.
1:46
Speaker 2: And you'll see, I'm gonna come in here. I'm going
1:48
Speaker 2: to buy one hundred and twenty one gems. It's going
1:50
Speaker 2: to open directly in app. I've already logged in and
1:53
Speaker 2: so it should jump me right to my USDC click
1:56
Speaker 2: pay now and get those extra gems in my wallet.
1:59
Speaker 2: This team told me it took them less than half
2:01
Speaker 2: of a day to ship this integration, and the developer
2:04
Speaker 2: is saving twenty nine percent on every single purchase. And
2:08
Speaker 2: as a buyer, I'm getting extra gems. This is the
2:11
Speaker 2: future of money. We're early, but we're just getting started.
2:14
Speaker 1: All right, so you can kind of see the impact
2:16
Speaker 1: is going to be pretty critical, I think around the industry,
2:19
Speaker 1: and it's just getting started. So joining me today is
2:22
Speaker 1: Dan Kim and Nemil de Laul, who are coming in
2:24
Speaker 1: from the coinbase team.
2:25
Speaker 3: How are you guys, good, great to be here, Paul,
2:28
Speaker 3: Good to see you again.
2:29
Speaker 1: Nice to see you. How about you and Nemil.
2:31
Speaker 4: Awesome to be on the show, Paul. Really okay, So.
2:34
Speaker 1: We're going to have a lot of discussion today that
2:36
Speaker 1: is really at the forefront of what's happening with payments.
2:41
Speaker 1: Coinbases really started to accelerate for obvious reasons into stable
2:45
Speaker 1: cooin market and where this plays out I think into
2:49
Speaker 1: really kind of the dynamics of not only gaming but
2:52
Speaker 1: online e commerce. Dan, I know your background in the
2:55
Speaker 1: restaurant industry. I'm kind of interested in this point right here.
2:59
Speaker 1: This of course is epic, and they're starting to already
3:02
Speaker 1: take advantage of this extra value of being able to
3:06
Speaker 1: utilize a payment system that has not been pretty much
3:10
Speaker 1: kind of handstrapped because of the Apple ecosystem. When you
3:13
Speaker 1: look at the amount of developers, like the clip we
3:16
Speaker 1: just did talking about coin based commerce coming in, how
3:20
Speaker 1: big of a point do you think that's going to
3:22
Speaker 1: be for new devs coming into the market, Dan.
3:27
Speaker 3: Well, I mean taking a step back. You know, the
3:29
Speaker 3: thing that just this, you know, we're excited about, is
3:32
Speaker 3: just a role that stable coins are going to have
3:34
Speaker 3: in everyday life and every day transactions. I think, I mean,
3:38
Speaker 3: like we're looking to have a meal here with us.
3:40
Speaker 3: He was actually one of the original product managers who
3:42
Speaker 3: worked on USDC here at coinbase, So you know, we're
3:45
Speaker 3: very excited to see things like this because it dis
3:48
Speaker 3: validates the role that crypto has in things that we
3:51
Speaker 3: do every day, whether it's playing games or going to restaurants.
3:56
Speaker 3: You know, I think we're at like ten trillion dollars
3:58
Speaker 3: of annual subtle on on sable coins now this past year.
4:03
Speaker 3: It's about ten times the size that they remain in
4:05
Speaker 3: market globally. So I think this is a pretty serious
4:08
Speaker 3: role that stable coins are not playing across the financial stack,
4:12
Speaker 3: and with the signals is the world is ready for change,
4:14
Speaker 3: The world is ready for things that work better, faster,
4:17
Speaker 3: more efficiently, and it's not just benefiting developers, right, it's
4:20
Speaker 3: benefiting customers, users, players, And that's probably the thing that's
4:25
Speaker 3: most exciting to us, is this is validates a credibility
4:28
Speaker 3: of crypto and stable coins and how useful they can
4:30
Speaker 3: be in our lives.
4:32
Speaker 1: How fast the meal do you think we'll see more
4:35
Speaker 1: devs really adapting kind of to this new frontier of payment.
4:39
Speaker 1: We're already starting to see it in the gaming ecosystem.
4:42
Speaker 1: What would be next? What are you guys seeing coming
4:44
Speaker 1: down the pipeline.
4:46
Speaker 4: So first of all, Lavia's take a step back, pall
4:48
Speaker 4: and say ten years ago, this market did not exist.
4:50
Speaker 4: It was essentially zero, right. I remember when I took
4:53
Speaker 4: over USCC, it was maybe about one hundred million in
4:55
Speaker 4: market cap in a million at the time. So today
4:58
Speaker 4: the market cap is sixty billion plus for you SCC alone.
5:00
Speaker 4: That's just one stable coin. And as Dan said, in
5:03
Speaker 4: a matter of just a few years, went from one
5:04
Speaker 4: trillion an annual volume to ten trillion. So if anyone
5:08
Speaker 4: who's used to tech, we use exponential growth. And that's
5:11
Speaker 4: what I expect over the next several years is the
5:13
Speaker 4: amount of adoption of USCC. This is we're just getting
5:15
Speaker 4: started and We've seen a lot of announcements from folks
5:18
Speaker 4: like Stripe and others that are embracing this technology, so
5:21
Speaker 4: we're really really excited about that. And then I think
5:23
Speaker 4: there's a few different use cases to your question that
5:25
Speaker 4: we're personally really excited about. Number one is just as
5:28
Speaker 4: we said, of humans paying for different things. So there's
5:30
Speaker 4: no Apple tax, but there's also no other taxes for example,
5:34
Speaker 4: credit card fees and things like that that are part
5:36
Speaker 4: of it, and we're expecting large merchants to start embracing
5:39
Speaker 4: this and adopting it in the coming months and years.
5:42
Speaker 4: There's another area which we just announced x FRO two,
5:44
Speaker 4: and that allows machines to be able to pay for things.
5:46
Speaker 4: And again this sounds like science fiction, it sounds super futuristic,
5:49
Speaker 4: but the reality is that like AI is a machine,
5:52
Speaker 4: and we're seeing more and more examples of a gentic
5:54
Speaker 4: commerce where AI is paying for different sets of things
5:57
Speaker 4: on behalf of a human. And this is another really
5:59
Speaker 4: great example for sample clients. How do you talk about
6:01
Speaker 4: that more? But those are just two use cases that
6:03
Speaker 4: we're pretty excited about.
6:05
Speaker 1: You mentioned something though, to Emil that I think is
6:07
Speaker 1: dear to my heart, and that is the merchant fees,
6:10
Speaker 1: which mostly affect retailers, one of the biggest retail sectors
6:14
Speaker 1: out there being the restaurant industry. Dan and I that's
6:16
Speaker 1: where we ended up meeting Gosham over a decade ago,
6:20
Speaker 1: maybe longer, Dan, But the point is is that you're
6:24
Speaker 1: talking about a significant amount of amount of fees that
6:28
Speaker 1: are done within the restaurant industry. If you look on
6:30
Speaker 1: average sales unit volume around one point eight million dollars
6:35
Speaker 1: per year, and if you look at the amount of
6:38
Speaker 1: fees that are charged for credit card and debit et cetera.
6:41
Speaker 1: I mean, these are significant amounts. First of all, Dan,
6:45
Speaker 1: do you think that that is going to have a
6:48
Speaker 1: quick uptake from merchants ready to jump into utilizing USDC
6:53
Speaker 1: via the coinbase platform.
6:55
Speaker 3: Absolutely, And Paul, you know this as much as I do.
6:58
Speaker 3: One of the things I hated when I was in
7:00
Speaker 3: the restaurant space was seeing the signs in the store saying,
7:03
Speaker 3: you know, you got to buy a minimum of five
7:05
Speaker 3: or ten dollars before they accept the credit card, or
7:08
Speaker 3: you know, they don't accept credit cards with rewards, or
7:10
Speaker 3: they don't accept American Express, and you know, it was
7:13
Speaker 3: just really painful to see that because you know a
7:17
Speaker 3: lot of customers that we did service when we're in
7:19
Speaker 3: the industry, you know, wanted the convenience of being able
7:21
Speaker 3: to just tap and pay, So you know, technologies like
7:25
Speaker 3: this isn't you know, obviously it's gonna stave with a
7:27
Speaker 3: bunch of money, but I think it's going to really
7:29
Speaker 3: deliver on what customers want and how they want to
7:31
Speaker 3: pay without the annection that just hasn't changed in decades, right,
7:35
Speaker 3: So super excited about this, and I think once people
7:38
Speaker 3: get it, and once there's a growing number of users
7:41
Speaker 3: who have stable coins are and using them is going
7:44
Speaker 3: to be super easy, merchants are going to adopt that
7:46
Speaker 3: very quickly. And we're already seeing this, you know, in
7:49
Speaker 3: agect to commerce obviously, but even in online purchases of
7:52
Speaker 3: higher ticket items where you know people are more comfortable
7:55
Speaker 3: paying with crypto, we're seeing these vendors and retailers start
7:59
Speaker 3: to accept crypto. So I think once we get past
8:01
Speaker 3: that hurdle and get to every day use cases like
8:04
Speaker 3: buying a cup of coffee or buying a cup of
8:05
Speaker 3: frozen yogurt back in the day, I think you'll see
8:08
Speaker 3: a quick adoption from operators and restaurants.
8:11
Speaker 1: Listen, it's going to be. This is something we've talked
8:13
Speaker 1: about on the show quite a bit over the last
8:15
Speaker 1: few years, is that, in my opinion, this is really
8:18
Speaker 1: going to be the killer app for crypto is payments,
8:21
Speaker 1: and the companies that really accelerate on it, I think
8:23
Speaker 1: are going to be the ones that kind of differentiate
8:25
Speaker 1: you from all the rest. We've already seen with you
8:27
Speaker 1: guys entering the S and P five hundred, many other
8:30
Speaker 1: banks are probably going to be looking at this model
8:33
Speaker 1: as well. Coinbased commerce could be at the center of
8:37
Speaker 1: all of this. So a lot happening around this, NMIL.
8:41
Speaker 1: I want to talk a little bit about X four
8:43
Speaker 1: O two. So this was over on your developer platform
8:46
Speaker 1: Twitter account. Excited to introduce x four O two. This
8:49
Speaker 1: is an open source payment protocol that you guys are doing.
8:52
Speaker 1: First of all, explain it to me. Give me an
8:54
Speaker 1: understand why, understanding of why developers would utilize this in
8:59
Speaker 1: lieu of maybe options for payment rails.
9:02
Speaker 4: Yeah, so let's just start with a stable coin. Stable
9:05
Speaker 4: cooin is in a lot of ways, just like a dollar.
9:07
Speaker 4: It's a dollar you move on crypto and what expert
9:10
Speaker 4: to is like like In the traditional economy, you might
9:13
Speaker 4: have credit card rails and then you have your dollars
9:16
Speaker 4: that can move on those rails. The Internet did not
9:19
Speaker 4: have these money movement rails. And so what we've done
9:21
Speaker 4: is we created a way to make it super easy
9:24
Speaker 4: to use money like stable coins to be able to
9:26
Speaker 4: pay for different sorts of things online. So we're bringing
9:29
Speaker 4: crypto online for anyone to use. And a lot of
9:32
Speaker 4: this started for us with something called Agent Kit, where
9:35
Speaker 4: we made it super easy for any AI agent to
9:37
Speaker 4: get a wallet. And what we found was those AI
9:40
Speaker 4: agents wanted to pay for things. They wanted to either
9:43
Speaker 4: buy things for their users, they wanted to be able
9:45
Speaker 4: to send money around. But in a lot of ways
9:47
Speaker 4: it was very hard to be access an API or
9:50
Speaker 4: to pay for our micro payment for just the two cents.
9:52
Speaker 4: And this is just a simple standard. It's not owned
9:54
Speaker 4: by coin. This is a simple standard that anyone can
9:57
Speaker 4: use and integrate with.
10:00
Speaker 1: Looking at the kind of the spec page here on gitbook,
10:04
Speaker 1: so you can kind of see a little bit more
10:05
Speaker 1: about if your developer out there, this is going to
10:07
Speaker 1: be one of the I think the breakthroughs that payments
10:10
Speaker 1: have not seen in the past. So the fact that
10:13
Speaker 1: this is going to be so easy to start integrating.
10:16
Speaker 1: You're mentioning agentic ai and this is something we've had
10:19
Speaker 1: the Bite team on before this team, of course came on.
10:23
Speaker 1: We talked. I'm sure you guys know them, but they
10:25
Speaker 1: of course have already started to implement USDC BITE. For
10:27
Speaker 1: those of you who are watching, go back and search
10:30
Speaker 1: our videos just byteai and really what this is doing
10:35
Speaker 1: is giving you the ability to almost go directly into
10:38
Speaker 1: ordering food utilizing agentic ai agents, and then integrating that
10:43
Speaker 1: into coinbase or other payment systems. Obviously here they're showing USDC.
10:49
Speaker 4: DAN.
10:50
Speaker 1: This would be unbelievable for restaurants. If I'm looking at
10:54
Speaker 1: this as a potential opportunity, my gosh, I imagine what
10:57
Speaker 1: would you do with this if you were back in
10:59
Speaker 1: the restaurant business right now.
11:01
Speaker 3: You know, it would change a lot. First of all,
11:04
Speaker 3: I think the economics would be much better. I was
11:06
Speaker 3: franchising back then, and you know, margins are very important
11:09
Speaker 3: to operators, and three percent actually means a lot. And
11:12
Speaker 3: if you're in you know, in more affluent neighborhoods. You know,
11:15
Speaker 3: we had restaurants where eighty percent of these tickets, which
11:18
Speaker 3: we're ten dollars or less came from credit card transactions,
11:21
Speaker 3: so that adds up. So, you know, I think the
11:23
Speaker 3: beauty of this is it's the simplicity and it just
11:28
Speaker 3: removes the friction of of of credit card based payments
11:32
Speaker 3: that are that merchants and consumers pay. You know, I
11:36
Speaker 3: think tap to pay definitely has made things easier in
11:38
Speaker 3: the store. But let's take a look at online commerce.
11:41
Speaker 4: Right.
11:41
Speaker 3: You can't tap to pay when you're actually on a website.
11:43
Speaker 3: You got to get a pop up, you got to subscribe,
11:45
Speaker 3: you got to enter a sixteen major number, and it's
11:48
Speaker 3: just a lot of friction. Now that's friction for a
11:51
Speaker 3: human being. And if you couldn't have moved that over
11:53
Speaker 3: to AI agents trying to do things for humans, you know,
11:56
Speaker 3: the only other option you have today is giving that
11:58
Speaker 3: credit card number to an agent, which means putting it
12:00
Speaker 3: somewhere on your computer, right, not very secure, right, So
12:04
Speaker 3: what this unlocks is what we call programmatic access to
12:06
Speaker 3: payments and the ability to receive payments. Meaning if I
12:09
Speaker 3: want to go out there and spend one hundred dollars
12:11
Speaker 3: to buy information or resources that I need, why can't
12:14
Speaker 3: I just authorize an agent gude to do that and
12:16
Speaker 3: spend that on my behalf without me giving them a
12:18
Speaker 3: credit card number that can potentially be exploited if it
12:21
Speaker 3: falls into the wrong hands. So, you know, I think
12:24
Speaker 3: we get better security, the ability to have agents buy
12:27
Speaker 3: and sell things. And I think this is one of
12:29
Speaker 3: the most important things that excites me about Explore too,
12:31
Speaker 3: is you can now start to charge things that cost
12:33
Speaker 3: less than fifty cents or whatever the minimum value transaction
12:37
Speaker 3: that credit cards can support. To imagine being able to
12:39
Speaker 3: sell things for a penny or even under a penny,
12:42
Speaker 3: and even fractionalizing data sets that you know that might
12:45
Speaker 3: be better served if you were to just break it
12:47
Speaker 3: down to little pieces, then it becomes very interesting because
12:50
Speaker 3: you don't have the fees that come with transaction based
12:53
Speaker 3: payments that credit cards typically charge.
12:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to get into that a little bit,
12:57
Speaker 1: because this is going to get into some very intrigued
13:00
Speaker 1: advantages for retailers but also for just every other, everyday
13:05
Speaker 1: people that are shopping and using e commerce in general.
13:07
Speaker 1: But I want to jump back to the AI integration,
13:11
Speaker 1: especially around agentic AI and a lot of the agent
13:14
Speaker 1: side of things that we're seeing. The meal first of all,
13:17
Speaker 1: you get a chance to work with these developers. Are
13:19
Speaker 1: you seeing an influx of AI agent teams starting to
13:24
Speaker 1: come to the developer platform for building in this kind
13:27
Speaker 1: of framework.
13:29
Speaker 4: Yeah, So we've had more than twenty thousand AI agents
13:32
Speaker 4: launched in just the last several months, all with a
13:34
Speaker 4: crypto walt associated with them. So that's thousands of developers
13:38
Speaker 4: that are starting to integrate this. And let me just
13:40
Speaker 4: maybe go through a few example use cases that we've seen.
13:42
Speaker 4: One really simple one is I am someone a billion
13:45
Speaker 4: an AI agent and I want to be able to
13:46
Speaker 4: make money on the blockchain. So there are all these
13:49
Speaker 4: different opportunities to earn yield, to trade, et cetera, just
13:52
Speaker 4: like the stock market that are hedge funds, you know
13:55
Speaker 4: that have smart algorithms that trade. That's what I want
13:57
Speaker 4: to be able to build. So that's a really one
13:59
Speaker 4: simple example of what people have been building. Another example
14:02
Speaker 4: is I want to be able to talk to a
14:04
Speaker 4: human and help them buy whatever they want to buy.
14:06
Speaker 4: And I really love this example of like a travel
14:09
Speaker 4: agent where you're going you're basically going to a trip,
14:13
Speaker 4: and you want to be able to buy airplane tickets.
14:15
Speaker 4: You want to be able to buy your hotel, etcetera, etcetera.
14:19
Speaker 4: All of that can be done in one one conversation
14:21
Speaker 4: with an AI agent. But on the other side, like
14:23
Speaker 4: Dan was saying, if they need a credit card, credit
14:25
Speaker 4: cards are made for humans, you might have to sign
14:28
Speaker 4: up for it as a human, while the blockchain is
14:30
Speaker 4: super super easy because anyone can access it. You don't
14:33
Speaker 4: need to know a human or a machine can be
14:34
Speaker 4: able to access that. So those are just two examples
14:37
Speaker 4: of the types of things that people have been building
14:39
Speaker 4: with these AI agents.
14:41
Speaker 1: So I'm looking at VIRTUALS protocol right now. This is
14:45
Speaker 1: just showing because a lot of people we talk about
14:47
Speaker 1: virtuals quite a bit in general, just AI agents and
14:50
Speaker 1: use cases. Would virtuals be able to take advantage of
14:54
Speaker 1: this new developer connection, I guess within the coin based ecosystem.
15:00
Speaker 4: Yeah, so we're super excited about what a virtuals is
15:02
Speaker 4: doing for your listeners who may not know. Virtuals basically
15:06
Speaker 4: is a way to build an online character and then
15:09
Speaker 4: have to have a wallet and you can be able
15:11
Speaker 4: to send money to that wallet. They can send you money,
15:13
Speaker 4: they can send money around the world. But these are
15:15
Speaker 4: really powerful personalities. And so where this gets really interesting
15:19
Speaker 4: is that they built on agent Kit when they launched this,
15:22
Speaker 4: So this is just open source tooling that Coinbase develop
15:24
Speaker 4: our platform provided and they built on that. And now
15:28
Speaker 4: what do we want to do is extend that further.
15:30
Speaker 4: So when these AI agents wanted to pay for APIs,
15:33
Speaker 4: they want to pay for goods, that was super difficult
15:35
Speaker 4: still because most things don't support crypto. But with this
15:38
Speaker 4: Internet native payment standard, suddenly the whole Internet can support it.
15:42
Speaker 4: And again, what we need is we need people who
15:44
Speaker 4: run APIs. We need developers to be able to integrate
15:47
Speaker 4: xploro two. But if they do that, suddenly AI agents
15:50
Speaker 4: can come and spend at their platform, which is where
15:53
Speaker 4: we get really excited. I think this could be really
15:54
Speaker 4: big for virtuals So.
15:56
Speaker 1: Okay, so I want to I want to extend that
15:58
Speaker 1: just a second, because you look at the use case
16:00
Speaker 1: of voice over the last decade with Siri, Alexa, et cetera.
16:06
Speaker 1: Now you have the potential here where AI agents could
16:10
Speaker 1: be commanded via voice, just like we showed with Bite.
16:14
Speaker 1: The likelihood of Apple being able to integrate something like
16:18
Speaker 1: agents into Siri, would that be something that we could
16:22
Speaker 1: see happen pretty soon, even if it's not Apple or itself,
16:26
Speaker 1: or do you think the AI agents will come, you know,
16:29
Speaker 1: to social platforms or just general e commerce platforms where
16:33
Speaker 1: every restaurant could have an agent out there. What are
16:36
Speaker 1: the models that you think are going to hit the
16:37
Speaker 1: market to meal.
16:39
Speaker 4: Some of the examples that I think so this is
16:41
Speaker 4: all speculation, And I think in the case of something
16:44
Speaker 4: like Siri, my sense is anyone who's running product like
16:47
Speaker 4: that is thinking about how to make a AI first
16:49
Speaker 4: and to have an AI personality that you talk to.
16:51
Speaker 4: You can already do this with chat, GPT, and I
16:53
Speaker 4: think just like Alexa, just like Siri, all of these
16:56
Speaker 4: will be AI agents and AI personalities that probably know
16:59
Speaker 4: you super well right to know the details of your
17:01
Speaker 4: lives and over time have all these details when you're
17:04
Speaker 4: asking for a request and so have all that contextual information.
17:07
Speaker 4: But in addition to that, I think there's also this
17:09
Speaker 4: example of I'm going to a merchant and I want
17:11
Speaker 4: to be able to ask them something. It's like a
17:13
Speaker 4: customer service flow, it's a purchase flow. They may not
17:16
Speaker 4: meet my personal agent, but they actually can interact with
17:19
Speaker 4: me and talk to me as well. And I think
17:20
Speaker 4: that is a really good example where by AI did
17:22
Speaker 4: that what they ordered. I think they ordered some chicken
17:25
Speaker 4: wings was a good example of what they did in
17:26
Speaker 4: their demo. That's absolutely another example that we see candidly.
17:30
Speaker 4: Like with the Internet, there are lots of different things
17:32
Speaker 4: that will coexist, I think in a very similar way.
17:34
Speaker 4: You're going to have multiple models here, and some of these,
17:37
Speaker 4: you know, you can talk to them and they'll order
17:38
Speaker 4: everything on your behalf. But there'll be other sites that
17:40
Speaker 4: maybe don't support it, that have their own custom functionality,
17:43
Speaker 4: and you're talking to that AI agent directly, and it's
17:45
Speaker 4: associated directly just with that site.
17:49
Speaker 1: So, I mean, the opportunity here is pretty crazy in
17:51
Speaker 1: terms of size. If you look at we'll just take
17:54
Speaker 1: the restaurant industry for an example. Now you're talking about
17:58
Speaker 1: over a trillion dollars a year in terms terms of
18:00
Speaker 1: just revenue in the United States alone, four trillion worldwide.
18:04
Speaker 1: I'm looking at your old website here, Dan brings back
18:07
Speaker 1: old memories red Mango, and I'm thinking, wait a minute,
18:11
Speaker 1: Red Mango needs to have coin based commerce on here.
18:14
Speaker 1: So this should be your first phone call, right.
18:18
Speaker 3: It absolutely should be. But you know, we're really excited
18:22
Speaker 3: about you know, earlier you had mentioned about use cases,
18:26
Speaker 3: you know, I think agenta commerce is definitely one of them.
18:29
Speaker 3: The other one that I personally would love to see
18:32
Speaker 3: is how many times have you come across an article
18:35
Speaker 3: and you wanted to read it and then it gets
18:37
Speaker 3: all masked and says, hey, if you subscribe for a.
18:39
Speaker 1: Year, yes, yeah, by the way, And.
18:42
Speaker 3: I'm thinking, Okay, I could pay a dollar for this,
18:44
Speaker 3: but what if I forget to unsubscribe and not impossible
18:49
Speaker 3: to get rid of But you know what, I applaly
18:51
Speaker 3: paid two dollars or even more just to read that article,
18:54
Speaker 3: and I can't do that today. Imagine a world where
18:59
Speaker 3: I authorize my wall to spend up to fifty bucks
19:01
Speaker 3: a day on site whatever it needs again information that needs,
19:04
Speaker 3: and once I hit that limit, I can either reload
19:06
Speaker 3: it or seek do it tomorrow. And that's I think
19:08
Speaker 3: the most interesting use case for humans is just getting
19:11
Speaker 3: rid of that friction that we often see and when
19:13
Speaker 3: buying things online.
19:14
Speaker 1: Well, you're hitting on a big, a big topic we've
19:17
Speaker 1: talked about here before, and that is streaming. Payments on
19:20
Speaker 1: the on the creator side or the publisher side have
19:22
Speaker 1: been in the media business for you know, almost two
19:25
Speaker 1: and a half decades. Now and that has been one
19:27
Speaker 1: of the challenges of being able, especially when you're going
19:30
Speaker 1: direct to consumer, of being able to get payments, whether
19:33
Speaker 1: it's through subscriptions, et cetera. But I think streaming when
19:36
Speaker 1: you look at the power of creator payments in the past,
19:40
Speaker 1: people who have kind of looked at always maybe it's
19:42
Speaker 1: going to be bitcoin or ethereum or another you know,
19:44
Speaker 1: digital asset out there. But USDC now gets into the
19:48
Speaker 1: realm of hey, this is just like any other dollar
19:51
Speaker 1: that I would be receiving. This is going to really
19:54
Speaker 1: open up some opportunities. I think the podcasting world could
19:58
Speaker 1: probably do very well. You know, there's been attempts at this,
20:01
Speaker 1: but we haven't seen anything solid yet, so it'd be
20:03
Speaker 1: interesting to see how that plays out. Let's talk about
20:06
Speaker 1: Pectra because there's a huge upgrade happening right now. This
20:09
Speaker 1: came in from your x account right there. The point
20:14
Speaker 1: was is that your upgrade. This upgrade enables a lot
20:17
Speaker 1: of provisioning with these new validators, which we've talked about
20:20
Speaker 1: here on the show. This is also going to be
20:22
Speaker 1: reward the auto compounding, you know, kind of withdrawals, which
20:26
Speaker 1: is going to change things dramatically. We've already seen that
20:29
Speaker 1: happening with Ethereum. Maybe Pectra is why we're seeing eth
20:33
Speaker 1: explode right now on the charts. But how much Nemil
20:36
Speaker 1: will this truly impact what you guys are doing the
20:39
Speaker 1: Pectra upgrade at coinbase and the developers that are starting
20:43
Speaker 1: to utilize this ecosystem.
20:46
Speaker 4: Yeah, So for folks who may not know, we have
20:48
Speaker 4: a sticking API at coin base de upper platform. You
20:51
Speaker 4: can check it out and you can stake, And we
20:53
Speaker 4: have supported Ethereum from the very start, and we think
20:56
Speaker 4: this is just going to supercharge people who want to
20:58
Speaker 4: be able to stake. So the increase the outer limits
21:00
Speaker 4: from thirty two to twenty forty eight, selling you don't
21:03
Speaker 4: need to spin up as many validators. This is so
21:05
Speaker 4: much easier to be able to do, and so we're
21:06
Speaker 4: gonna be supporting that on day one. The autocompounding is
21:09
Speaker 4: probably like the biggest one. And I think like myself
21:11
Speaker 4: and probably others of your audience have probably had the
21:14
Speaker 4: process of like I receive my rewards and I need
21:16
Speaker 4: to restake them. This is something that makes it much
21:18
Speaker 4: much easier to get the highest reward and yield for
21:21
Speaker 4: your assets. So we're really excited to support this out
21:23
Speaker 4: of the gate. We think Staking we want to make
21:25
Speaker 4: it super easy for everyone to be able to use,
21:27
Speaker 4: and Kendley, we think more and more people are going
21:29
Speaker 4: to want to stake as a result of innovations like this.
21:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think this will be a big, a big
21:35
Speaker 1: leap forward within not only the eth ecosystem, but I
21:38
Speaker 1: think in general it's going to move crypto in the
21:40
Speaker 1: right direction. I want to jump back over to ease
21:43
Speaker 1: of use and onboarding because this is something that this industry,
21:47
Speaker 1: the crypto industry, has struggled with, and that is getting
21:50
Speaker 1: everyday people active within DeFi or just active on you know,
21:54
Speaker 1: getting a coin Base wallet or even opening in a
21:57
Speaker 1: coin Base account. I'm looking at uniswap now we've got
22:00
Speaker 1: one click swaps that's available on the web for you.
22:02
Speaker 1: As I know many of you are waiting for the
22:03
Speaker 1: web app or the unicewap app itself, but smart wallet's
22:07
Speaker 1: all coming too. I think it's getting ready to drop
22:09
Speaker 1: here shortly. This will change things as far as the
22:12
Speaker 1: user experience, which is one of the big challenges that
22:14
Speaker 1: I've said has to be overcome when EMIL, when you're
22:18
Speaker 1: working with devs and this and I want to get
22:20
Speaker 1: to you Dan about this very point. When you're working
22:22
Speaker 1: with devs and they're trying to solve these UX issues,
22:26
Speaker 1: is that like number one on their list right now?
22:28
Speaker 1: To make this super easy for onboarding.
22:31
Speaker 4: This is one of the biggest pain points that we
22:33
Speaker 4: hear about. It's that, and it's security and how do
22:35
Speaker 4: I make sure the funds are secure for my users?
22:39
Speaker 4: But just by comparison, there's twenty five million developers building
22:42
Speaker 4: on the web, Paul, there's maybe fifty thousand or seventy
22:45
Speaker 4: five thousand that are in crypto. And one big part
22:47
Speaker 4: of it building on chain is the fact that it's
22:50
Speaker 4: just difficult. It's difficult for the developers, it's difficult for
22:53
Speaker 4: the end users. And that's where coinbased Developer platform comes
22:56
Speaker 4: in is to make that experience one is easier for
22:58
Speaker 4: the developers, so it's easier for them to build. You
23:00
Speaker 4: don't need, you know, many many years of building, like
23:04
Speaker 4: in professional industry to be able to build a lot
23:06
Speaker 4: of great people like you know, Mark Zuckerberg and others,
23:09
Speaker 4: weren't people who had ten twenty years of experience in
23:10
Speaker 4: software engineering. And so that's exactly what we want to do,
23:13
Speaker 4: is make it easier for them. But then what we're
23:15
Speaker 4: doing is building experiences that make it easier for the
23:18
Speaker 4: use and users themselves and so on this like there's
23:20
Speaker 4: an example where there's some really powerful things that theorym
23:23
Speaker 4: ecosystem is doing to be able to make this easier,
23:26
Speaker 4: you know, and all blocking ecosystems are starting to think
23:28
Speaker 4: about how do I make the right low level primitives
23:31
Speaker 4: available that make this super easy for my end users
23:34
Speaker 4: to do, And then we're building tooling that makes it
23:36
Speaker 4: super easy as well. So for example, in the past,
23:38
Speaker 4: you have to have a seed phrase and you have
23:40
Speaker 4: to write that down and you know, there's no other
23:42
Speaker 4: experience in the web that we're used to something like that.
23:45
Speaker 4: But the power of the new walls that are coming
23:47
Speaker 4: are that you don't need that. There are things like
23:48
Speaker 4: pass keys, there are things like us your name and
23:50
Speaker 4: past where then't make this much easier. And then the
23:52
Speaker 4: last thing I'll say, Paul, which we don't talk a
23:54
Speaker 4: lot about, is that scalability and fees have come down
23:58
Speaker 4: a ton. So in the theory of ecosysimply the layer
24:00
Speaker 4: two like base has really meant that fees have gone down.
24:04
Speaker 4: You know, to let a few cents a maximum, And
24:08
Speaker 4: the joke I have is like, I imagine a world
24:09
Speaker 4: where for every five minutes of a Netflix video you're
24:12
Speaker 4: to pay a few dollars every single time. That's kind
24:15
Speaker 4: of what the on chain experience was a few years ago.
24:18
Speaker 4: But with all this innovation at the layer one level,
24:21
Speaker 4: with layer twos and with the developer tools that coin
24:23
Speaker 4: me involve platform is offering, all that is so much easier,
24:26
Speaker 4: so that a user may not even see that request,
24:28
Speaker 4: or they'll see it once and they're giving it, you know,
24:30
Speaker 4: in advance for all the different actions they want to do.
24:32
Speaker 4: So like I don't know, just like the early Internet,
24:35
Speaker 4: like I think about like the you know, the early
24:36
Speaker 4: days of the Internet versus where we are today with
24:38
Speaker 4: the mobile phones and AI. That's exactly the shit that's
24:41
Speaker 4: gone on in crypto over the last few years.
24:43
Speaker 1: So, Dan, when you're I totally agree with you, nimil,
24:46
Speaker 1: I think for us to leap forward, those are the
24:48
Speaker 1: kind of things that have to take place. And it
24:50
Speaker 1: feels like maybe for the first time at least in
24:52
Speaker 1: the past seven years that we've been really tracking this
24:55
Speaker 1: is it's finally coming around to reality. And Dan, you're
25:00
Speaker 1: faced with dealing with not only merchants but all sorts
25:03
Speaker 1: of online e commerce companies that are now starting to
25:06
Speaker 1: integrate potential crypto payments coin based commerce. So this has
25:10
Speaker 1: been kind of, I will say, a slow moving ship
25:14
Speaker 1: that seems to be right at the point now for
25:16
Speaker 1: big growth. I was looking at this company right here
25:19
Speaker 1: actual they're talking about getting invoices paid in stable coins
25:23
Speaker 1: on base. So this is a good example of just one.
25:27
Speaker 1: But the point is is this is a new kind
25:30
Speaker 1: of company. So do you think that we're going to
25:32
Speaker 1: see a lot of the new e commerce companies kind
25:36
Speaker 1: of taking off with it or do you think we'll
25:38
Speaker 1: see the Web two oh companies including merchants adapt to it.
25:43
Speaker 1: What's going to happen first, I guess in terms of
25:46
Speaker 1: kind of next layer.
25:47
Speaker 3: Well, I think the Web three companies are the unchain
25:50
Speaker 3: native companies are already accepting payments with USCC where they can,
25:54
Speaker 3: and they're kind of expanding non unchain payments to appeal
25:58
Speaker 3: to those who might not you know, know about crypto.
26:01
Speaker 3: But the learning curve is obviously very steep. But I
26:04
Speaker 3: think where the most of the growth is going to
26:06
Speaker 3: come from is the big Web two companies. If you will,
26:11
Speaker 3: all the major brands that people know on the world,
26:13
Speaker 3: they're definitely going to be leaning in if they're not
26:15
Speaker 3: already into accepting payments. I think radilatory uncertainty in the
26:20
Speaker 3: past was a big barrier. Now that that's you know,
26:23
Speaker 3: starting to fade away, We're getting a lot of inbound
26:27
Speaker 3: from companies that were very conservative even just a year ago,
26:31
Speaker 3: leaning in and saying we got to get it. We
26:33
Speaker 3: had we had to get to this action, like stable
26:34
Speaker 3: coins are real, we don't want to miss out. And
26:37
Speaker 3: this is no longer about you know, just reaching out
26:39
Speaker 3: to the crypto audience. This is about a fundamental transformational
26:42
Speaker 3: shift from you know, a US dollar I FIAT based
26:45
Speaker 3: system to a much more technologically advanced unit of value
26:51
Speaker 3: that we're calling stable coins. And I think businesses, especially
26:54
Speaker 3: those that kind of get it and are feeling a
26:56
Speaker 3: lot more secure about the regulatory framework, you know, they
26:58
Speaker 3: are definitely leaning in. And I think this is the
27:01
Speaker 3: year where you know, it's going to be a make
27:02
Speaker 3: or break year for a lot of brands, and this
27:04
Speaker 3: is the year to plant flags.
27:05
Speaker 1: In my opinion, well, it's going to be a one
27:08
Speaker 1: that I think is going to continue to grow because
27:10
Speaker 1: you just look at the float of a regular merchant
27:13
Speaker 1: transaction of the time from a credit card swipe to
27:16
Speaker 1: the time that's in your bank account with the fees associated,
27:19
Speaker 1: and that's it on you know, a card at present situation,
27:22
Speaker 1: much less the e commerce side of it. Then you
27:24
Speaker 1: have banks that are out there floating checks between banks.
27:28
Speaker 1: I just saw this happen the other day where a
27:31
Speaker 1: cashiers check had go a cashier's check going into a
27:35
Speaker 1: bank had a seven day hold. A cashiers check.
27:39
Speaker 4: Makes no sense.
27:40
Speaker 1: So imagine if you're just paying that in USDC. It's instantaneous,
27:44
Speaker 1: it's right there, very low fees. Those are the kind
27:47
Speaker 1: of things I think that are going to continue to explode.
27:49
Speaker 1: I'm looking at Base right now along with Ethereum, and
27:53
Speaker 1: this is reference to USDC. I'll kind of zoom in
27:55
Speaker 1: on this and you look at the big ones. There's
27:57
Speaker 1: Base starting to eat away at what appears to be
28:01
Speaker 1: maybe more off of Solana. Do you think it's gonna
28:05
Speaker 1: be I guess nmil this is a question for you.
28:07
Speaker 1: Do you think we're at a maybe a tipping point
28:10
Speaker 1: here with based developers that we could see a domino
28:15
Speaker 1: effect really start to control how USDC is being transacted, Like.
28:21
Speaker 4: We're super excited about the basic community and just how
28:24
Speaker 4: many developers there, just how excited they are about the
28:26
Speaker 4: power of sample coins that what can be done, and
28:28
Speaker 4: that actual example you showed was a really good example
28:31
Speaker 4: of just one team that's been thinking about how they
28:33
Speaker 4: can do this. I would just say is like the
28:35
Speaker 4: big shift that's going to happen in the next few
28:37
Speaker 4: years is a huge shift from traditional finance and traditional
28:40
Speaker 4: FIAT to on chain crypto. And the version we think
28:44
Speaker 4: about this is that a dollar on chain is better
28:47
Speaker 4: in all these different ways. Low fees, instantaneous settlement than
28:50
Speaker 4: anything else, and the power of bases like millisecond block times.
28:54
Speaker 4: All these are the things that they're innovating on to
28:56
Speaker 4: make us super easy, to be able to cheap to
28:59
Speaker 4: send and all so to be able to do it
29:01
Speaker 4: really really quickly that I think it'd be super powerful
29:04
Speaker 4: for developers. We've already seen that with developers using coin
29:06
Speaker 4: missive Opera platform.
29:09
Speaker 1: I'm excited about it. I think this is going to
29:10
Speaker 1: be one of the critical things maybe in our lifetime
29:14
Speaker 1: that we've seen in the financial system for businesses overall.
29:17
Speaker 1: So and it's so cool to be part of this, Dan,
29:21
Speaker 1: I'm sure you're very excited about all this. I want
29:23
Speaker 1: to ask one question to each of you, and that is,
29:26
Speaker 1: what is the most important thing right now? Do you feel,
29:30
Speaker 1: especially as related to payments that matter the most? Could
29:33
Speaker 1: be a genta gay, I could be merchant services. Dan,
29:36
Speaker 1: We'll start with you. What do you think is most
29:38
Speaker 1: important right now?
29:39
Speaker 3: You know, I think it's getting the world to understand
29:41
Speaker 3: what US do you see and CBLE coins are, and
29:43
Speaker 3: to understand crypto in a way that relevant or is
29:46
Speaker 3: relevant to a lot of people out there. And you know,
29:50
Speaker 3: I think you me and Emil, I mean, we talk
29:52
Speaker 3: about it on a daily basis and we're very comfortable
29:54
Speaker 3: with it. But I think for the average person there's
29:57
Speaker 3: still a lot to unpack there right So traditionally hasn't
30:01
Speaker 3: been very helpful in simplifying things. I think now we're
30:04
Speaker 3: going to start to see that change because the driver
30:07
Speaker 3: there is a large number of people that I've got
30:10
Speaker 3: to be onboarded onto into crypto, and I think our
30:13
Speaker 3: job is to really help the world understand why USDC
30:16
Speaker 3: and why crypto makes sense.
30:18
Speaker 1: It's going to happen, man, I know it is. How
30:20
Speaker 1: about you and Emil, what do you think most important,
30:22
Speaker 1: especially from the developer side.
30:25
Speaker 4: I always think in one way that developers developers developers
30:29
Speaker 4: Alhomer quote, But I think the biggest thing for them
30:32
Speaker 4: is how do you make it easy and simple? If
30:35
Speaker 4: it's super easy to be able to do this, this
30:36
Speaker 4: is a no brainer, right because we've talked about the fees,
30:38
Speaker 4: we talked about the instantaneous settlement, but you also have
30:41
Speaker 4: to make the developer experience super easy. And that's where
30:43
Speaker 4: we're spending a ton of time. Is how do you
30:45
Speaker 4: make sure it's cure like That's another really big issue
30:48
Speaker 4: with crypto in generalist. How do you absolutely make sure
30:50
Speaker 4: that it's very it's impossible for you to be able
30:52
Speaker 4: to hack this. Those are the types of things that
30:54
Speaker 4: we think about for developers. So I think eas of
30:56
Speaker 4: experience and how do you've created a great security experience
30:59
Speaker 4: out of the box. Those are probably the two key
31:01
Speaker 4: areas where we're focusing a lot. We spend a ton
31:03
Speaker 4: of time talking to developers, and I would just say
31:05
Speaker 4: is in ten plus years in crypto, this is the
31:08
Speaker 4: moment when I've just seen the developer interests probably among
31:10
Speaker 4: the highest that it's ever been and I think in
31:13
Speaker 4: the earlier years of crypto they're often you know, six
31:16
Speaker 4: months or twelve months of hyper and something. But the
31:18
Speaker 4: cool thing with stable coins is like it's here to
31:20
Speaker 4: stay right there. I think this is just going to
31:23
Speaker 4: accelerate rather than be a stop start like other parts
31:26
Speaker 4: of crypto are.
31:28
Speaker 1: No doubt I think, you know, when I look at it,
31:30
Speaker 1: I'm very excited, especially when you bring in payments and
31:33
Speaker 1: this whole evolution of agentic AI and what we'll see
31:37
Speaker 1: in true, in true use cases of agents, mainly because
31:40
Speaker 1: you know, we've watched the Byte team succeed, but I've
31:43
Speaker 1: also seen companies out there that have done some very
31:46
Speaker 1: intriguing things around you know, loyalty. If you look at
31:50
Speaker 1: the loyalty platforms Bubba guys. I know that's on Salana,
31:53
Speaker 1: but a good example of those kinds of companies that
31:56
Speaker 1: have started to integrate crypto even more Blackbird with Fine Dye,
32:00
Speaker 1: who started to go into that there is so much here,
32:03
Speaker 1: but agents is where it's going to be. That's my
32:07
Speaker 1: prediction going out there. Hopefully it's going to be writing
32:10
Speaker 1: on base uh and of course with virtuals, we've got
32:13
Speaker 1: to get virtuals listed on Coinbase. When's that going to happen?
32:18
Speaker 3: We love the team and you know we're returning talking
32:22
Speaker 3: to them about expro too, and you know they're very
32:25
Speaker 3: very bright team that has a really good vision about
32:27
Speaker 3: the future, and you know they're there.
32:28
Speaker 4: We're very close partners.
32:31
Speaker 1: I love the good side step there. Dan, you're you're
32:33
Speaker 1: as usual a master and media. I love it anyway,
32:37
Speaker 1: Nemil and Dan Kim. Great to have you guys on
32:40
Speaker 1: the show.
32:40
Speaker 4: Thanks so much.
32:41
Speaker 1: You guys are welcome back anytime as things starts to
32:43
Speaker 1: develop over there at coinbase, let us know we'll get
32:45
Speaker 1: you back.
32:46
Speaker 3: Thanks Paul, thanks for having us.
32:48
Speaker 4: Thanks you great to be here.
32:50
Speaker 1: Excellent are you guys? If you're not part of the
32:52
Speaker 1: Diamond Circle, get in right now. That's our own private
32:55
Speaker 1: group and you can be a part of that. Tens
32:57
Speaker 1: and tens of thousands of people are in there. And
33:00
Speaker 1: of course if you want to, you know, kind of
33:01
Speaker 1: talk to me directly, well you can do that over
33:03
Speaker 1: in our telegram group. We always leave a link down below,
33:06
Speaker 1: watch out for the weird ones. We only have one,
33:08
Speaker 1: so check it out down there and follow me on
33:11
Speaker 1: x at Paul Baron. We'll catch you next time, right
33:13
Speaker 1: here on tech path,