Latest / The Paul Barron Crypto Show / Ripple Stablecoin Getting 4.9% Interest?💰Uphold INTERVIEW | Ripple Swell 2024

Transcript

Ripple Stablecoin Getting 4.9% Interest?💰Uphold INTERVIEW | Ripple Swell 2024 · The Paul Barron Crypto Show

• 0:06
  Speaker 1: All right, we're back here at SWELL twenty twenty four
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: covering the Ripple Conference, diving in a little deeper and
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: with me right now, I've got Nancy Beaton, who I
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: had to get your title right because you've got a
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: lot of them, and that's President Uphold US in the
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: cro revenue officer and chief marketing officer for Uphold Global.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: So great to have you on the show.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: Thanks thanks for having me.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: First, a little bit about Uphold because here in the US,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: though Uphold is used here in the US, it's not
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: one of those top tier exchanges that everybody would know
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: unless you're kind of in the crypto industry. So what
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: are you guys doing to kind of change that? What
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: are some of the things you guys are doing here
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: to kind of let everybody know, hey, we're available.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so Uphold is a little different.
• 0:46
  Speaker 3: We're not a typical exchange with a single order book.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: The way Uphold works.
• 0:51
  Speaker 3: Is that we have a platform that's connected to thirty
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: different trading venues and what we do is shop the market,
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: so you don't have to write. You come to us
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: and you want to make an exchange or you want
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: to trade crypto, we go out get the best price,
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: bring it back to you, and then execute the deal.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: And we can do that for anything.
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: You can go XRP to bitcoin, you can go bitcoin
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: to gold.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: We have anything to anything technology.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: And that was a benefit because it enabled you guys
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: to maintain XRPS listing. I guess technically is not a listing,
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: but the availability of XRP for XRP users in the
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: United States, which was a big problem as most exchanges
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: did delist it was that. The reason that you guys
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: were able to keep that going.
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think a couple of reasons. One is uphold
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: is very compliant. We're also very transparent. You can see
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: all of our assets and correspondenting liabilities for every token,
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: updated every thirty seconds on our website. That's really important
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: for our users, the transparency. We have a rigorous listing process,
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: and when it came to delisting XRP, we consulted with
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: our council and the advice and feedback we were given
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: is that you know, when a ruling comes down, we'll
• 2:06
  Speaker 3: have to take action right until that time it's in litigation.
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: So during the litigation process we maintained XRP, and I
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: would say we have a quite a contingent of XRP
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: holders our platform.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: I want to get into some other questions around what
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: you guys are doing. But when you look at it,
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: because fees in general are becoming more interesting to users
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: out there today, whether you're a coinbas user, a Robinhood user,
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: many people are now really watching the fee structure for trades.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: How are you guys addressing that?
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: So we look at our fees every month.
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: We do a comparison competitively in the market of where
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: we stand on various trades, various trade sizes, various trades
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: and various tokens okay, and we benchmark ourselves against.
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: The competition so that we can tell we.
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: Are not at the highest trade fees. We also are
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: not probably looking to be the cheapest on the trade fees.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 3: There has to be a balance between the margin of
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: what makes sense for the services who provide our users
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: and what we charge them. So we do compare every
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: single month to ensure that we are right in a
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: good spot that all the package, yeah, that our users
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: are getting a good value for their spend.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: Some of the things that I did not know you
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: guys did, was this almost five percent four point nine
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: percent Apy right now on cash and you're doing this
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: as an FDIC ensured but you're not a bank. How's
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: that working.
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the way it works is that we now offer
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: users four point nine percent on their USD, So you
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: can bring your USD to our platform and you can
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: earn four point nine percent for the crypto space. It's
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: excellent because what you can do now is you can
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: have your USD ready for the market. You don't have
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: to take it off the platform and try to get
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: interest in a bank, then move it back onto the
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: platform when you want to make a move in the market.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: But that's still FDIC insurance.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: It is.
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: So the way that it works, we have a partner
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: broker dealer that we are offering the service through.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: So once you sign up for Uphold, then you go
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: in and you have.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: This is similar to like what Robinhood does. They go out,
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: they do offer that available through their you know, their
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: broker and or bank partners.
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: So we have a broker dealer partner and then what
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: happens each night is we can take the funds they
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: go into partner banks and when they are in those
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: banks or FDIC up to two point five million is.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: There because you're using like a stacking method there, yes, right, yeah,
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: because obviously with FDIC in the US, it's two hundred
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: fiwo thousand per per bank account per ABA routing number.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: But when you get into the situation of say someone
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: that parks, not everybody can go that direction. But let's
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: say you have over a quarter of a million parked
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: into an uphold account, is there any exposure period that
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: I'm risking before you make your transactions at the end
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: of the night, so you.
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: Would deposit your funds.
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: They're swept every night to BEICE insured, and there's no lockups,
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: so you can come in and out freely. Unlike competitors,
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: there's no subscription fee, so you don't have to pay
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: a subscription to get the four point nine percent, and
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: then you can move your funds in and out as
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: you see.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: Fit or you want to take advantage of the market.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: What has been your case with moving crypto in and out?
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: Because if you look at some of the exchanges, pretty
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: for the most part, everybody's fairly open about how much
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: you can move on a daily basis. You know, there's
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: not a lot of limits. However, but if you look
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: at someone like Robinhood, who still has that five K
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: limit for moving crypto out, moving in no problem. But
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: if I want to move five K and bitcoin to
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: cold storage, anything over that is, I got to wait
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: till tomorrow, you know, So how do you guys deal
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: with that?
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: So there are limits of what you can move around,
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: and it's really to protect the customer. So we want
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: to make sure that there's not fraud happening or customers
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: are not inadvertently being.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: Asked to move out funds.
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: So we'll do things like liveness checks, or we will
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: make sure after a certain threshold that you know, you
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: you are, have a certain threshold so that it can
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: stop if there's constant fraud happening.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: Does the customer set that?
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: Uh no, we set it for the customer.
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: And it can be a difference of you know, threshold
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: based upon time, a threshold based upon when did you
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: move the money in, you know, a threshold based upon
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: how much you've moved out. So there's different thresholds we
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: can sit. But we do have limits that with which
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: you can withdraw just to protect the customer so that
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: there's no inadvertent you know, takeover.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: I'm curious, you know, I'm not an active user of uphold.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: I've used it before, have an account, but I've never
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: tried to move significant amounts. Is there what's my daily limit?
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: If I'm if I've got I put fifty K and
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: bitcoin in and I want to move twenty five k
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: out tomorrow, could that happen? I would have to tell Okay, So.
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: You know, I think I'll look it up.
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: But the reality is is that you know, when we
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: have a customer, if they're a new customer, if they've
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: just joined, if they've just deposited, there's all these factors
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: that we really want to make sure are checked.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: This is very banky.
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: This says a lot of bank feeling to me, because
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: that's one of the things I think that crypto users
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: are trying to get away from is these bank regulatory
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: requirements that most of the banks are dealing with from
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: an aml KYC scenario and all these rules that the
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: banks put on you for your own money, which is
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: I think that's a lot of crypto people are and
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: that's why many people go self custod It's why you
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: know crypto is what it is today. Do you feel
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: like those kinds of limitations are going to thwart the
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: potential growth of crypto in the future.
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: So I think overall, you know, we are a regulated
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: entity and we strive to be compliant and get licenses,
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: and with that does calm requirements for us to have
• 7:55
  Speaker 3: on our platform.
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  Speaker 2: And I think overall most customers.
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: Appreciate the fact that we are regulated and compliant and transparent,
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: So I think that trumps a lot of twenty four
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: hour inconvenience that people might have to move in and out.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: So with that being the case, this is something that
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: we've talked at. We had the Coinbase team on today's
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: security and the amount of fraud that's starting to seep
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: into the space, typical of anything that has a lot
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: of cash and liquidity in it. What are you guys
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: doing right now from a security standpoint to kind of
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: help work those bad actors out there.
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so security, compliance, fraud that is our largest team,
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: right next to engineering. So we are constantly monitoring all
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: transactions so that we can see any anomalies, see what
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: people are doing, not to see what they're doing, but
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: to see if there's inivertent activity that is out of
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: the norm we would see on certain cards or certain accounts.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: We do have a lot of people leave it or not.
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: It's still in this space that will accept a call
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: and transfer funds out.
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: It's so crazy you believe it is.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: But it does have the phishing attempts, attempts, the social
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: phishing attempts, the attempts on hacking your account.
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: They do happen, and so you know, we.
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: Do have to be overly diligent to make sure that
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: our customers are protected.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think many people would look at Uphold as
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: one of the market leaders in bringing new tokens to
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: market before anybody else. How are you guys doing that?
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: What's the process?
• 9:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, a lot of times we'll be able to bring
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: new tokens to the US market before others. What we
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: do is we watch the market globally on a regular basis.
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: We're constantly talking to projects, We're constantly out in the
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: market seeing what's coming, what are the trends, whether it's
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: AI tokens, new meme coin tokens, you know, new layer ones,
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: layer twos. So we constantly have a team out there
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: that are sort of future looking at new listings that
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: could potentially be successful for our customers in the US.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: You think we're going to see pretty much a systematic
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: relisting of XRP soon. What's your opinion.
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: On I think we've seen a relisting of XRP and
• 10:11
  Speaker 3: a handful of exchanges out there, and so people can
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: access XRP much easier today, much easier today. But I
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: would say when we look at our numbers after the
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: ruling came down and others were able to list, we
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: saw very few leave the platform, so small percentage maybe
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: two three percent Max.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: I was looking at some of the details of your
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: product roadmap, so bill pay is in there, You've got
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: crypto deposits now, and then also passive income. Talk to
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: me about those three products in your roadmap.
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think if you take a step back and
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: you think about what do people want right? You know,
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: this generation and I think other crypto users are not
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: going to be satisfied with traditional banking, traditional one place
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: to go get something, and so what we're trying to
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: do is take crypto into that space where you can
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: really own and control all your financial assets. So things
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: like our high interest USD account. People want to earn
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: on their assets, whether they're digital assets or USD or
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: stable coins, whatever it might be. We will look at
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: direct deposit into your account. Then you can use those
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: funds to maybe set up a recurring buy so that
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: you can DCA you know, a little bit of crypto
• 11:27
  Speaker 3: at a time, because we know this next generation and
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: crypto users want to be able to leverage their digital
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: assets across all these different capabilities.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and we're in a bit of a challenge and
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: a battle right now with many banks. You also mentioned
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: not oct the service of how that works. I was
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: surprised at that. Explain that a little bit for our
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: audience because that was I thought that was really cool feature.
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's great. So you know, people deposit onto the platform.
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: They want to be able to freight trade freely. And
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: now we just launched in about one hundred and four
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: countries the ability to withdraw to a.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: Visa debit card.
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: So if you're in a country and your visa debit
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: card is enabled, you just input it into the Uphold
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: app for withdrawal and it will tell you instantly if
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: it's enabled, if it's there, and you can withdraw funds
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: to your visa debit.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: Card and it goes right to the debit card itself. Now,
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: is that available in the US? Uh SEGUS depends on
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: the bank.
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it depends on the card in the bank.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: How does vault work for you guys?
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so you know the old saying, right, not your keys,
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: not your cryptos. And so what we've done is we've
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: married in the two and now we have Vault. The
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: way it works is you sign up for Vault directly
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: in the Uphold app. It is assisted self custody, so
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: you the user always have two keys. Uphold will have
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: one key that can only sign user initiated transactions. So
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: if you want to move funds BTC XRP onto our
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: platform to trade, you initiate it, we sign it, you
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: make the execution, move them back into vault. If for
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: any reason, Uphold we're not to exist. It's bankruptcy remote.
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: So you have two keys. You can at any time
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: access that vault and sweep it into a self custodial wallet. Okay,
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: so it gives you the proximity of trading, but it
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: gives you the safety of big bankruptcy remote.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: From a security standpoint, is this government proof or entity proof?
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: Meaning if I put it in a vault, can someone
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: get to it other than me?
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: Just you? Now?
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: The other beauty of it, though, is if you are
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: to lose one of your keys, because we can sign
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: a transaction, we can replace.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: That key stable coins. I know URLUSD Ripple USD not
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: available yet, but it's coming. It's most likely getting good
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: proof very quickly. What will that do to the Uphold platform?
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: Will I be able to use ripple USD on Uphold?
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and now sday we're a launch partner, so as
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: soon as it's available, we will have it on our platform,
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: and so you'll be able to use our ol USD
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: as a stable coin on the platform.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: Okay, I don't know that a lot of people, we
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: talked to a lot of institutional enterprise, but I don't
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: know that Uphold had ever been used in that language.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: I mean, we hadn't thought about it before. Is that
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: a big business for you guys?
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So we are launching, or we have launched an
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: enterprise business, which we've always had, but it's probably been
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: much smaller than our retail side. An institutional business, and
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: we have announced that we're starting to white label our platform.
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: So basically what it means is the platform that underpens
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: the wallet.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: That most people are used to seeing on their phone.
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: It's pretty spectacular, right, It has superior liquidity, we're connected
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: to the trading venues.
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: It's compliant, it's fully licensed. So what we can do
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: is we can take that platform and offer it for
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: a B to B type of play.
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: We can offer it to institutions for an OTC desk,
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: which we do, and then the white label will allow you.
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: Let's say you have your own bank and you want
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: to start to offer crypto. You can plug us into
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: your app and now they have instant access to crypto.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: When you look at just tokenized assets in general, world
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: world assets, securitized base here in Miami, their partnership with Blackrock,
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: what we're now starting to see with Avalanche and their
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: RWA projects, How does that play into your strategy and
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: your roadmap going forward.
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we're looking at real world assets.
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: I mean, they are clearly going to be a category
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: that's important in the space. So what we're doing is
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: we're looking around of partnerships of when is.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: It going to be a thing in the space.
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: How do we want to tackle that from our perspective
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: because it is very different, right, it is a security asset,
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: and so that is different than what we offer today, which.
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: Is not NTSY.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: It has been great having you on, Yeah, I've learned
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: a lot about Uphold today, for sure.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: This is great.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely. If you guys are tuned in right now
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: and you're not subscribed, make sure and do that just
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: of course, it's subscribe button right down below and we'll
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: catch you next time. Right here, I'll tech bathmut dif