The Stablecoin Guy (Ariel Eiberman): Testing 30+ Crypto Cards & The Future of On-Chain Banking

Speaker A: I don't think there's a need to replace banking. I wish it could have an alternative. I wish on chain banking will have an alternative. I hope banks can realize like for some features on chain transactions could be better but it's not going to replace banking. I really expect uh, to have a couple of really good self custody banking apps that allows you to do a bit more of what your local bank does.

Speaker B: Foreign. And welcome to episode 87 of Colors of Web3 and Entrepreneurship. My name is Lum, your Web3 host. For those of you who are new to the Show, Colors of Web 3 and Entrepreneurship is a show highlighting the journeys of builders and innovators in Web3 and entrepreneurships. Some topics especially in Web3 may get technical, but we do our best to keep it accessible for most people. Uh, here today I'm joined by Ariel Abelman. He's the Latin American director at Gnosis Pain, but he also known as the uh, stablecoin guy. Ario, do you want to give a quick introduction by yourself?

Speaker A: Yeah, but I can't believe 87 episodes. That's amazing. Huge congrats, dude.

Speaker B: Thank you, thank you.

Speaker A: That's a lot of perseverance and resilience right there. Yeah. I'm Ari, I live in Argentina. I'm from Argentina. Lately in the last couple of months I've been really going deep in the payments and uh, side of things. The reality is like for many, many years I've always used crypto because I didn't have a bank account. So it was my first bank was bitcoin.

Speaker B: Nice.

Speaker A: And then I always saw the potential of using stablecoins as uh, my banking layer, but always suffered because nobody else is using this around me. So I always had to find the different hops and stuff to make it work. And it's amazing how when a trend hits the market and builders are like, okay, I'm going to solve that problem now. I have so many options to live my life for that. Still not the perfect experience. So we are a little bit pushy but the amount of tools, banks, banking apps, neobanks, uh, protocols and anything, it's available now. If you have said this to me four years ago, I wouldn't believe it. I was like, no, no, no, no, no way. It's amazing.

Speaker B: Awesome. Yeah. So it sounds like, I mean things obviously have changed a lot. Well, you said that you don't like using a bank, is that right?

Speaker A: Yeah, I don't like banks.

Speaker B: Okay. I don't think many people like banks in general. I don't think Banks is usually the one with the good, uh, reputation. Yeah. And you said, I'm curious, how did you learn or Discover Web3 or Crypto in the first place?

Speaker A: The rabbit hole. I was doing polyglot meetups in Buenos Aires and I started to work with this organizer of the polyglot meetups. And we want to expand in different countries. So we found, uh, in bitcoin, the right infrastructure for us to send money abroad in different cities and different countries in different currencies.

Speaker B: I see. What year was this?

Speaker A: 2013. And I was introduced to bitcoin because. Because we were organizing events at different places. Bitcoin Argentina said like, hey guys, can you help me organize an event? And the event was cryptographic conversation. Right. Like how the hashes work and how the cryptography. That was the bitcoin conversation. Nothing to do with price or, uh, finance.

Speaker B: Technology, right? Yeah, just technology. Nice. Okay, interesting. So I guess since then, what happened after that? Did you.

Speaker A: Yeah, once I saw I could bank on bitcoin, it made a lot of sense. I started traveling. I didn't have to carry cash, I didn't have to try to, uh, open bank accounts in different places. I just do p2p localbitcoins.com. that doesn't exist anymore, but I used to do that.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker A: The first trip I did, I printed paper with my private keys there just in case somebody at the airport asked me if I'm bringing money and I need to show that I'm bringing money. I was like, well, this is my bitcoin paper wallet. And then that took off. We worked very well. We spanned into 16 countries. So the bitcoin infrastructure bank was really working. And then I think 2017 hit ICO. Crazy stuff. And I realized I was something else than just bitcoin.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: Yeah. I played a lot with ICOs and lost a bunch of money there. Because this happens and because I'm not a trader, uh, I'm just a guy who experiments and fast forward there. The price appreciation made me more interested in the space and see what else was going to be built. And the ICOs were really promising. We were building the new infrastructure layer of everything in the world, like finances, uh, banking, identity, cartoons, pfp, social media. Everything was going to be everything on the blockchain. So that was pretty exciting times. So I decided to move away from my software. Like my SaaS company, the company that was hiring me, uh, was employee, was a SaaS built on WhatsApp, on the WhatsApp API and I moved into Web3 in a company that uh, it's a smart contract wallet. One of the first smart contract wallet called Sequence. This was by the team of Horizon Blockchain Games which was a very neat trading card game online uh, on Polygon. And I worked with them for almost a year and then I moved to more an infra layer of rpc decentralized RPC called Pocket Network and uh, now it's called Grove. And what they do is like they decentralize RPC provision. While when you want to do anything in web 3 you need to call the RPCs to interact with the servers right? With the nodes you can do it through centralized players which is like most of the RPC demand is centralized. And then you're like well we're building the centralized world with centralized RPCs, right. And what it was genius about the Pocket play was that ah, they had a decentralized node runner operators with different sort of like architecture in the nodes that will receive the call of RPC and they will like bid against who will get this faster to the user and they will be rewarded for that bid. And after working with them I, well you know like FTX happened and everything crashed so they let go a lot of people. Me I was like m left, left out at some point and found a very like hardworking guys at uh, an accounting software for crypto. And it was funny because they said like the first thing that he said is like we know that this is not pretty like accounting is boring. But I thought about it. It's like well if crypto is going to be a business at some moment businesses need accounting. They need accounting software and it's crazy and complicated and the data layer of blockchain sucks right? Like it, it is for a developer for it they can kind of understand it or maybe they can you know like translate it. But for the accountant like it's only inside out.

Speaker B: It's impossible. I know, yeah.

Speaker A: Oh my God. So I've been working, I work with them for a few for a year and some more time. Always very short jobs. In web 3 I find somebody who is like oh I've been in this company for four years. I'm like how do you do that?

Speaker B: But I mean one year in crypto is very long as you know. Yeah, totally compared to other.

Speaker A: And I got more into payments thanks to that um, accounting industry accounting vertical and payments was clearly the reason why banking, the reason why I joined crypto 12 years ago. And it's like this makes sense, this is what makes sense to me to help more uh, Builders, apps, founders, uh, business people. Improve the banking layer in crypto. That it's not just like a faster banking, but actually a real good product and service that people wants to use. Because every time in all of these years that I go to the bank, I suffer.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: And it's very different from different countries. Right. Like the experience in Buenos Aires in Argentina sucks. It's terrible going to the bank. And we can talk about this for a long time, but going to the bank means this. And picture this, you go into the bank.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: And the ATM machine probably doesn't have enough m. Like you want to withdraw, have enough cash. Yeah, it doesn't have enough cash. Or you want to withdraw like $600. And at some point it's like, no, the daily limit is 200.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's true. I remember when I was in Buenos Aires, what is it, three months ago, for the conference, and I think there was a limit. I tried to see how much I can withdraw and then also I was surprised. I think it basically charged me like 10 for withdrawing. I, uh, forgot. I think it was trying to withdraw like 100 or something. That was like the Max. 120 was the Max. And then 10, which you can imagine, like $10. It was some national bank or something. I forgot.

Speaker A: Maybe it was a flat fee though. Maybe it was $10 flat fee. Maybe if you. But it doesn't let you withdraw more. So it's like, okay, I'm gonna go then to the teller. I go inside, I go to the screen, I put like, I want my appointment, you know, like, how do you call it? Like the number to call me.

Speaker B: Yeah. Okay.

Speaker A: And you wait, and you wait there like 45 minutes. Okay. And you take the phone. It's like 45 minutes. Like, okay, I'll take my phone and start working. Uh, uh, security guard will come and you can't use your phone. Please remove your cap, please remove your cup. It's like, I don't want to stay here. This is a waste of my time. And the last thing, and the last thing to mention, just like, because I'm ranting now I'm complaining. You get to the tether after all this waiting time and say, hey, I want to withdraw $3,000 in Argentine pesos. And they're like, oh, that's a lot. Could you come tomorrow and I'll prepare it for you? Like what? And do everything again? And they're like, uh, well, you could come at this time. There's not so many people. Okay, okay, I'll come. Just like, like I said, okay, put it in the system. I'll come tomorrow. You know what it does? Takes a post it note and writes Ariel 3000 and stick it to the wall.

Speaker B: It's like what, that's basically the version of the database, like the appointment system.

Speaker A: It makes no sense to me. It's like what you needed to write it down to put it. Like, it's not like uh, you request it and so they need to withdraw money, place and have it available.

Speaker B: No, no, no, no.

Speaker A: It was just like, remember this guy is coming tomorrow.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And then they bring you to a different room in there and when you get out of the room, it's obvious this guy has a lot of money. Yeah, no, it's completely, it makes no sense at all. Banking. No sense. Runt over Thor.

Speaker B: Yeah, all good, all good. No, no, it happened like I said. I, well I, I, I was in Argentina couple months ago and I see like there's a, a lot of people, I mean normally you, but many local people also quite frustrated system. Right. A lot of inflation and uh, very hard to get cash. There's like different rates of cash obviously depending on where you get it. Right. Whether you exchange it at the airport or withdraw at the ATM and Yeah, or if you use card.

Speaker A: That's normal. That's normal. But uh, we have like a rate of dollar cash, a rate of dollar in the bank, a rate of dollar usct. It has another rate. Then we have a rate if you want to subscribe to Netflix and foreign companies because it's tax added only for those. And then when the football World cup was in Qatar, we have a Qatar dollar because only for those people going to Qatar there was an added tax so the rate would change. Like, okay, so if I spend in Qatar, that means they will charge me this other 12%.

Speaker B: That's crazy.

Speaker A: Some of these silly things doesn't exist anymore, thank God. But still we have at least like five different rates.

Speaker B: Wow, that's quite crazy for me. I think even trying to manage two rates really quite tough, right? Because I mean usually whatever country I travel to, I kind of rely on Google rates or wise rate. Right. I think those are some of the most reliable. But in your country. I know, I know. I mean your country is like, it's hard. I don't know how they get the right rate. Probably from, um, there's some people that know that the right rate is maybe

Speaker A: Argentina is an edge case, but this happens all the places that are more regular. Even if you go to, to Brazil or to Peru. That are more stable. Even the Google rate is not the correct one. You're like, hey, how come there's a 3% difference? Like oh, probably spreads. Why you can have a 3% spread if with crypto, uh, the things like with stablecoins they move fast. You don't have to park the money anywhere. Let's just give me the m most efficient rate possible. And this is happening, right?

Speaker B: Yeah, it's crazy. Uh, M. But still Google is like somewhat mid market or wise rate, right? I don't know how they determine that. Probably like some banks or something. If you know, please let me know. I'm so curious. I know it's like a huge equation of like for foreign exchange rate. Right. Between one currency to another. And then that's the whole market out there is like trading on that day to day.

Speaker A: There's always a spread between buying and selling. And then why is that?

Speaker B: Because they have to make money, right?

Speaker A: Has money accounts everywhere or it has like a partner with money everywhere. So they just work with those and they add like very small basis points. Why is it so cheap and so good, uh, against other banks is because everything like their team is smaller. Like they can, they can move faster than the amount of basis points they add. It's small. Like maybe they add five, uh, basis points. So they can be very competitive.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think so. I think usually um, yeah, they withdrawal fees like really like low and I think they give free withdrawal which is really helpful when I travel to a new country. Yeah, yeah, you get like 200, I believe like up to a month. Which is I guess more than enough if you only stay for like a week. Right. In most countries you don't need that much cash is there anyway in most countries.

Speaker A: Uh, and now we have, you have QR payments in countries in Southeast Asia, uh, in Latin America you have this QR trend. Everybody pays with QR because it's better for the merchant, right. Not for the user. The user will always prefer to pay in credit card because you pay the same amount 30 days in, right?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And then if you're financial savvy enough, you can earn some interest during those days. Or even sometimes people just don't have the money. Right. So you put the credit which is like uh, a kind of dangerous thing. But people in these countries that have a very financial knowledge, they prefer to pay with the money they have in the account via qr, be debited instantly and know how to uh, like okay, how much money do I have left in the, in the month? And merchants it's, it's better because usually they go uh, they doesn't go through the Visa and MasterCard and card rate. So it's less, less of a uh, fee and faster. Usually Instead of taking three days, it takes is T +1. So it's one day and then after, after settlement and then the fee could be like 80, 80 basis points or something like that against like 2 or 3 from other providers.

Speaker B: Yeah, correct. Correct. Yeah. Usually visa is like 3% is pretty.

Speaker A: But you know what, but you know what is better? Cash.

Speaker B: What is better? Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Cash. No, usually like every merchant m. I've actually been to uh. What country was this? I mean there's some country where I remember if you wait, was it Argentina? I think it was also Argentina too actually. I remember this because some places they offer if you pay in cash, they give you 10 discount or something. Right, like at a restaurant or something. Yeah, you pay in cash because if you pay in card they have to pay extra fees and yeah, they don't want.

Speaker A: But imagine like if they save in car, in card, uh, $10. Sorry, in the card they will save like maybe 3% maximum. Yeah. So how can they offer 10 10% discount? That's crazy. Like they're going under, under, they're going into real numbers. But the things like they put 10% first. It's like market rate. Like if you're gonna do a discount, you do 10%. But there's a part that is like they won't declare that incoming cash. So they'll have a cash and it will never appear in the balance sheet. And the other thing is like some other providers of them, they only accept cash. So in order for them to get your money from Visa and three days later having to go to the bank and withdraw the money in cash to pay the provider, they put that like in account. There's no somebody crunching numbers. But it's like, it's like well, if I save myself to go to the bank this amount of time and I have the cash, I can have more operational efficiencies with cash.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And you get 10%. You get between 5 and 10% depending on the value. Now before it was for everything and now you have like, you have to spend certain amount of money in order to get the discount, which is still fine. You will never beat that discount. 10%. Nobody gives you 10%. Not even like ah, crypto card cashbacks.

Speaker B: I know, right? Yeah. No, 10% is huge. Yeah, exactly. That's what I only find like Argentina. Yeah. Interesting. Cool. Could you share with us like one fun hobby before we deep dive into all the stablecoin, you know, all the cuts. Fun stuff that you do. Yeah.

Speaker A: To share what?

Speaker B: Oh, uh, just share with us one fun hobby. Like what do you do in your free time these days?

Speaker A: I'm a father. There's no time.

Speaker B: Okay. That's. I think that's like a full time job.

Speaker A: Yeah, basically, uh, it's a full time job on top of another full time job. I have four kids, uh, age 8, 5, 3 and 1. So whenever I'm not in front of the computer, I'm um, like I'm trying to clean after them. Well, not clean. I will be.

Speaker B: I know what you pick. Handle.

Speaker A: Yeah, a little too condescending. My wife is doing the hard job. Like I just come outside of the laundry room where I work. You see the clothing here? Yeah. Just trying to play with them. Trying to. That they don't, that they don't fight. Take them somewhere, you know, like just be around them.

Speaker B: Yeah. I think, I mean when they're young, they like to have someone around, playing around. And when they go into school, then I guess it's like. Or when they get sent to the kindergarten. Yeah,

Speaker A: it's everything. They still don't have a reference group of friends that is there. Like, okay, I'm leaving the house. That's like teenagers. I don't want this to happen. I want my kids to always be small.

Speaker B: Interesting. Cool. Yeah, that's awesome. Sounds like a very big family. That's awesome. Um, yeah, actually I'm curious, how did you get the name like stablecoin guy or the guy with the multiple cards? Maybe share with law. We want to hear the law.

Speaker A: I think the guy with multiple cards makes more sense. I think I put it in LinkedIn, stablecoin guy, because I think the cards, it's a patch. Like now they're trending, okay. And they're getting so crazy and people are interested. But it is, in a year time it won't be as interesting as it is now. The card part, right? Because it's a patch. It's like, okay, we need to off ramp. Uh, cards are easy to off ramp, but then cards are commoditized so at some point people won't care about the card feature. But the neobank feature, right? Like the whole thing. And what, it's bigger than a Neobank because neobank will be for these retail users. It's stablecoin. I was like, okay, I'll just put Stablecoin Guy because sometimes I speak about most of the time I speak about the neo banks, these apps that trying to be an alternative to banks. But at some point I believe I need uh, to be more open to hear about the development of all this banking through the world stablecoin because I'm trying to capture the attention of people in the industry. If I need to get out of the industry, I shouldn't say stablecoin people have no idea what stablecoins are. I know even in a fintech conference in Buenos Aires last year, I don't know, 500, 600 people, I started interviewing them to know whether they stablecoins have no idea what stablecoin is. Okay. And the other half they're like, they know it's like a crypto to get out of volatile tokens. So it's like you're trading crypto which is volatile. So if you want to get out of that you go to stablecoins. So they have no idea about payments, they have no idea about cross border remittances, they have no idea about that. So if I want to get like I'm focusing now on getting uh, you know, conversation with web3people, that's why I say stablecoin. But if not I would just have to put like, you know, like banking stuff. And it's because I started, as I told you, being really like into this topic maybe less than a year ago.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: And it was difficult to position yourself in a very noisy place. So you need to do things differently. And because I saw like these cards were coming more and more and more, I was like for me to understand what's happening, I need to try them. All right. So because I like Pokemon, I said I need to catch them all right. And so I started to apply to all the cards and do all the KYC stuff and everything. And eventually I found like my phone to have like 30 cards every time. It's a free physical card, I order the free physical card. And then when other pay cards come I'm like, I don't want to pay $70 for a physical card. But Metamask card came out and Metamask is a huge like icon. I was like, I need to have that one. So when I started to go to conferences and they know me because I have a lot of cards in my phone, they asked me if I have physical and I get my M hand out of my pocket, I don't have it here. And I have 15 physical cars and

Speaker B: people are like wow, it's quite a lot.

Speaker A: Yeah, doing things differently helps me Getting hurt, you know.

Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. No, I think it's like, yeah. Nowadays, I mean obviously it's like a lot of noise, especially in our industry. Right. Yeah. So anyway, have you stand out? I'm sure like many people, including myself, you know, I've seen some of the. Your post where I think you just go around your daily lives, right. Like maybe purchasing something, whether it's ice cream or food or whatever. Then you use one of the card and then you show us to us. Exactly. Like for example, you know, the rate, the exchange rate and then versus like the regular mid market rate and then the difference and cash back and then you calculate. Basically it's like the. What is it called? Like the cost of using the card. Right. Versus like if you use cash or versus if you use like I don't know, web two cards.

Speaker A: Like yeah, people, people will ask what's the best. And the thing is like it's, it's very difficult to know because yeah, different setups on what's convenient to you. Sometimes. Like I, um. For me convenience is like it's all on chain. So if, if I have a uh, like on chain, the most on chain Neobank will be good for me. But then you have other like they're marketing for the normal people like that don't have crypto, that they just have a bank account somewhere and they want to send dollars.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: It gets transformed into stablecoin and it powers the app and then you spend from there. But then when you want to withdraw crypto, they charge a fee. You have like a minimum $5 and 1% withdrawal. It's like, I'm not going to pay 1% to withdraw from Polygon. Are you crazy? It needs to cost me 0.2 cents for me. And then I could say, well, we can't profit from that. It's like, no, you can't profit from withdrawing money. Let me withdraw the money without paying. That's me. But in general, you talk to other people and they're not like this. They like, oh, 1% withdrawal. That sounds cool. Oh, it's 1% foreign exchange fee. Uh, that's okay. Some people even pay 2%. I have no idea. They're like, no, I love the car. Yeah, I love it. Why do you love it? It's like, well, it's fast. They care about fast. So it's good. And they're like, and it's good. Look at the app. It looks nice and I trust it, which is very important. Very, very important for me. It's not important because I Experiment. I uh, don't need to trust something in order to use it. But trust is a huge thing. It's huge in these things, especially because it's new. So they're for sure companies and especially companies, but people in general, they prefer to pay high tickets and high fees for trust in exchange of trust.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think so too. And of course obviously a lot of these cards are like a lot of these companies, right. Trying to establish themselves and their reputation because obviously a lot of them are not been around like well Visa, MasterCard and many other cards like buying cards that you know of, they've been around for like forever, I feel like forever. But some of these like neo banks and new cards has just been popping up right. The last few years and trying to get market share. So.

Speaker A: And uh, some of them go wonder very fast. Like after six months you see like they're discontinuing their card program and some others will in the next winter in the next bear market, you know, like, because first of all cards is not a good revenue for these companies. Usually it's expensive program that they need to offset with revenue from other parts of the neobank. So if your neobank doesn't have a strong revenue model, cards will just like, like withdraw, subtract all value from your neobank. You need to have a neobank that actually solves the pain of your customers. And then you say like hey, and I have a car so you don't, so you can spend from here and you don't have to take the money out of my uh, Neobank to another neobank that offers a card. That's the only reason I see.

Speaker B: Yeah. So what do you say is like the reason why some card like thrive versus some other cards? Is it because of the fees, Is it because of ease of use? Or what is the main reason? I mean after doing research on using so many cards. Right. Yourself.

Speaker A: So if you see the cards that have been using the most, I would say like um, it's the Etherfi and

Speaker B: yeah, Etherfi is good.

Speaker A: Yeah. And then you have also Red pay and then you have also Coinbase. Okay. And I mentioned three and only one. It's like non custodial like etherfi. Okay. The other two are custodial and the reason why they're so big is because they're first movers. Okay. So I think if you're a first mover with something substantially different, you'll earn the market. Then if you're just a fork of whatever, you'll have some um, people trying to farm Whatever cashback you have, whatever reward you have and then they will leave again to the trusted brand. And I see this happening. So what's important for little brands to begin? Because if not, it's just doesn't make sense to even start. If you can't beat Coca Cola, right? Like what would you have? Like a soda pop? You know, like uh, if you can't be as big as Coca Cola, it's like well what do, what do we see in those industries? It's like they have a niche. They're like, you know what, Coca Cola is huge everywhere in the world. But in this little town I'm going to have one that is a bit cheaper and I have a good distribution in all the supermarkets because I know the owner of each supermarkets so they give me a good place to be and I have uh, you know like Lamb Cola.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And then you, you, you win there, you win these little towns. So I believe personally that these neobanks need to go to niches. Everybody now seems like they're working, they're fighting, they're battling for being the ultimate neobank. It's not going to happen. They already lost there, right. So they really need to go to niches. Where uh, is your neobank catering for? Because still the market is huge if you think about it. Always they're going to the freelancers, the nomads, people who are already in crypto or they're willing to do this learning curve of like not talking about dollars, let's talk about USDT or usdc. And then you need to, if it's Solana, if it's Polygon, it's just cumbersome. But if I go to the barbershop next to my house, it's all fiat. But if I could explain to them that there's an app that is faster, better, they gave a better fees, they help them manage their operation. They can have a treasury, they can have high yield in those they could even access if they want Bitcoin where people don't think bitcoin is a scam anymore. And it's the only one, right. All the other ones, uh, they still like people don't trust them. But bitcoin is like hey, why don't you put like a 1% of your earnings in bitcoin? Maybe the barbershop here will say yes. And once you have a good and then you can add rewards of barbershop and you can add uh, rewards for different vendors, for the com, for the trimmer, for you know like et cetera, et cetera. Et cetera. Like you, you really cater to, for the barbershop. Once the barbershop, it's happy. And this is amazing. You think what's going to be the barbershop in front of them going to do the same thing.

Speaker B: Take it. Yeah. Copy it.

Speaker A: But in crypto, it's, it's, it's funny. You tell me more, you probably talk, uh, to more people, but it's kind of like we like competing with each other. We love it. We want to be louder and bigger than the guy next door instead of like going to a new market.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I think that's a good question. I think a lot of you need to, uh, try out new things. I guess some people, some companies are afraid of, uh, trying out new things, right? Because like you said, right. They go to the proven market. The one is already in crypto. But those are like very small, Right. Obviously it's not that big market. And then the one who's actually outside of crypto, that's even way bigger. But obviously with the learning curve, how do you abstract away all the Web three complexity and don't make them learn like a ton of stuff to be able to use, uh, the card, you can win the business and offer clear value proposition.

Speaker A: Because most of these, uh, businesses, as far as I see, they're looking for funding, right? It's not a business trying to do this. This is some guys, uh, builders, uh, from hackathons, or they have an idea, they want to do it, they don't have capital. Like, okay, let's try to find a grant from one of these foundations. Or let's try to pitch VCs for this. So the VCs, like, okay, show me the, you know, the forecast, the budget, the market, the market fit. And they're like, well, this already is already here. Is this will be better? Why? Because we'll be better. You know, like, I don't know what they say in those VC meetings. The thing is, like, they receive the money and, uh, then they burn it in marketing and nothing changes, no innovation.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think we've probably seen many of those plays already in Web three. Right? Yeah. Just raise a big money, spend a lot of marketing. Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, some of the daos I know, uh, could be quite crazy to know how they spend their finances. But anyway, yeah, that's web three, but interesting. So, uh, you've been researching so many different cards. I think the three you said, right? The three, I guess, like you said, those are probably the one you Use the most, I suppose. Etify Redpay, Coinbase. No, it's not.

Speaker A: It's not.

Speaker B: Which one do you want to use the most?

Speaker A: I'm a tester.

Speaker B: I tester. That's true.

Speaker A: But I, uh. Because most of I don't travel to usa, so all my expenses are in not US dollars. That means that I don't want to pay for FX.

Speaker B: Okay. So expensive.

Speaker A: I will use cards that adds 0 FX. Visa charges FX to all their cards in their program. I use the ones that subsidize that FX fee. So um, um, we have ready card in their metal tier. So in the paid tier they charge me m the fees beforehand. Right. Like I paid to have the card and then I don't pay FX fees anymore. Right. The pilot card of Gnosis pay. The normal Gnosis pay that they have has zero FX fee. Then Sling Money has zero. There's another one in Solana called Fuse Wallet. They have zero, but they also have zero rewards. Right. Not all of them, but in general I understand they're covering 1%. They cover it for me already. But I want clarity in that so I know that I'm m getting the best rate there. Uh, and then I just test them. I don't have one. Wait, and in Buenos Aires. The thing is, I live in Buenos Aires, so I can't have one of these cards as my main card because here the exchange rate between a foreign card as ah, the crypto cards and a local card, it's big. It has like a 4 or 5% difference. So here I pay with local cards and I go through all the hoops to get fiat in order to pay 5% less.

Speaker B: 5% is a huge number. Well, I did not know that. Obviously for foreigners like me who travel to Argentina. Yeah. We have. No way.

Speaker A: Yeah, whatever. Yeah, it would be different if it's like 50% difference. Right?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: In Bolivia, just been to Bolivia, the difference between paying with a foreign card and with QR payment through crypto.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Is 30%. So it's like. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm like my. All my crypto cards was like this a no go. Like I'm not even going to test them to show that it's bad. I'm just going to test QR code payments and those are like huge. Like you pay, uh, I would say you pay 99% of your expenses in Bolivia with QR codes. Anywhere you go to Uber, you pay with. You don't put the card in Uber, you put cash and you pay with QR code every Place, cafeteria, restaurant, hotel, everything. QR code. Then, uh, anybody sends QR code, how

Speaker B: do you use that? With the card? You cannot use.

Speaker A: No card. No card.

Speaker B: But how do you fund that? Do you fund that from a local bank account?

Speaker A: It's a stable coins. You use tokens.

Speaker B: Okay. Okay.

Speaker A: So your question is like, where do I find an app that lets me pay with Bolivian peso cure?

Speaker B: Yes. Yes. Correct. Correct. Yep.

Speaker A: So there's a few.

Speaker B: Okay, I see. And so you. You bring those, right? The one that allow you to pay with that. Yeah. When you travel to Bolivia and, uh.

Speaker A: When I travel. Exactly. And when I travel anywhere else, I'm asking. It's like, how do I. What's the app that allows me to fund in stablecoins? And I can pay like a local.

Speaker B: Interesting. Yeah, I think that's a good way. I mean, for me, like, you know, wise. Wise is that, you know, the Web2Alternative, so far, it's been pretty good.

Speaker A: Obviously, on the countries you travel.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Maybe certain countries. I don't think they cover all countries, actually. Obviously.

Speaker A: Yeah, but. But then you want to. You, like, I've never been to Southeast Asia, but I hear that you go to some places, maybe in Laos or in Vietnam, and you want to pay with your card, and they tell you, no, no card.

Speaker B: Correct. Correct. No, no, no. Cat. Correct. Correct. In Vietnam, I can offer. I mean, I'm from Vietnam, so let me share a bit there. Actually, in Vietnam, like, our banking system is amazing. It's amazing, actually. I'm actually, like, super, super contented. Happy. We have over, I think, 60. I'm talking just a Web2 infrastructure system. Uh, like 60 different banks, and somehow they all comply to the same standards. And everyone use QR. Everyone is QR payment. It's like instantaneous. 24. 70 fees, and it's like almost no downtime. It's crazy. Like, you pay for whatever and. Yeah, you pay for like, a half a dollar a cup of coffee. So like, zero fee as well. It's crazy. So, I mean, there's really no need for that. Obviously, foreigners, right, they come into Vietnam, you don't have that because you don't have a local bank account. How do you deal with that?

Speaker A: Uh, you find the apps. No, you find the apps to do it.

Speaker B: Okay, yeah, that's a good question. I don't know of any apps that actually work with that QR code right now. That's a good one. Yeah. Because they work on the bank Rails. Yeah.

Speaker A: YODL Y O D L YODL Yeah. And then I believe in Vietnam. Um, there's another one that I think Bitget. Bitget wallet doesn't allow you to pay with QR code.

Speaker B: I'm not sure. I haven't tried that.

Speaker A: I've never been to Vietnam. Sorry, I, I didn't do my research.

Speaker B: Oh, good. Oh good. Yeah, I wouldn't expect that. Yeah. But I'm gonna try that next time I'm back to Vietnam. Actually I'm gonna try that. I'm gonna. I don't know, I don't think I can get the Euro card or thing. Well, I guess depend on KYC country. Right. Depending on.

Speaker A: I think it's a self custody.

Speaker B: I think it's self custody. Oh, okay. Okay, I'm gonna check it out. One fun thing is that, I don't know, you know, I build this whole like cryptocurrency.com just for fun like this uh, directory. But it's been like I haven't had much time to update on it yet but like compiling over like 100 different cards, web three cards obviously and then

Speaker A: like it's very difficult again, uh, everybody has their tier listing and whatever. I can't do it because it changes all the time.

Speaker B: It does, it does.

Speaker A: And you know by yourself that you're not going to be able to keep it updated because you're not putting like two hours, three hours a week on that. I mean you can do, you can do it to farm engagement in social media once.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Well, for me it was just like a side project, a beautiful, fun to be. I wasn't even trying to like farm anything about me. I was just like, yeah, really fascinating a lot of these cards and I want to see, you know, compare them and. Because I was just really trying to see like which card because similar to you. Right. I also, I, I hate paying for foreign exchange fee because I travel a lot to different countries so I don't like to pay for the FX fees and then um. Yeah, so try to you know, file the cards that also don't have any FX fees as well if possible or as low as possible. But most of them like you said have some fee. But yeah, now that I know, I'm going to try out the YODO one. So I know you expert on stable coin card, but I want to hear some of your take on the future. Right. And how are like uh, on chain banking or evolve in the future as you see maybe in coming years.

Speaker A: Yeah, thank you. It's not going to replace banking as far as I see. Um, I don't think there's a need to replace banking. I wish it could have an alternative. I wish on chain banking will have an alternative. I hope banks can realize for some features on chain transactions could be better but it's not going to replace banking. I really expect to have a couple of really good self custody um banking apps that allows you to do a bit more of what your local bank does. Maybe it's not going to be fully global everything in unless it creates itself as like a very like stacked Lego right? Like well I put a guy here, they go here, here, here, here and then you have a big Lego tower of an app that uh, when something hits in the middle into compliance everything falls. I don't expect something to be the ultimate bank but I do see more interested in getting more efficiencies in the orchestration of payments. So I would imagine fees going down, getting commoditized the way cars are doing commoditization of the feature and hopefully this will represent as well like a better product in the end for the user Whether this is a business or a retail. I would wish that we could have more offers on self custodialship because this is what I believe in crypto and the reason why I enter crypto uh at the beginning of the story when I told you is because I don't have to have a bank approve me or not approve me, give me credit or not give me credit. I just open an account, I'll use it. And this is I think what it's still missing. Even in on chain banking like this. You open one of these apps and the first thing they ask it's kyc which is not bad. I mean the ones who are not criminals, we are okay of kyc. Why do I care? People um, will crave privacy. I think I'm going to get stoned for saying that. But I don't mind having that. But I really want to be able to access all of this without having to fear or without having to go through screening. And it's like you can because you work in crypto industry or because you are from Argentina because like no we can't. I will wish we can have some like it's non custodial like I can be the one that choosing how I want that save. If I want to have all my private keys with myself with a seed phrase reading somewhere or if I want to share that private key with others or if I want to share like a multi sig kind of structure where I have different parts of my family who needs to approve money from the family. Like, my wife and me, we are earning money. It's like, I don't want to her to feel like I can spend all the money in one go without her approval. I don't want the same from her. So it will be amazing to have an account where I have the treasury of the family and we need both of our signatures to move. All of those things don't exist. Right. You have a bank for that. So it's like, hey, I want to take money out from this. And, um, the bank will say like, well, you have to bring your wife. Right. You have to bring your business partner to sign. So I hope we can find more of those setups in the new on chain banks.

Speaker B: Yeah. Ah, I do hope so too. I mean, I can't even imagine how on chain bank will work for families. Right. Obviously for right now, what you said, that's probably one of the potential challenges. But yeah, right now I think we're still very early for those day of, uh, Neo bank. And there'll be a lot more growth in the coming day as well.

Speaker A: And the thought has to be like, we're not displacing banks. We're not displacing Visa. We're not displacing. Let's build an alternative. Let's build an alternative first.

Speaker B: Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, it's an alternative. But I feel like a lot of people, obviously the alternative have to be better or equal. At least equal or better than, uh, for them to come to the one. Yeah, makes sense. Cool. Awesome. And, uh, yeah, maybe just one more question. We close out the show. Since you've been, I guess, in the industry for so long, do you have any, um, advice of you who want to come into crypto web3 or how

Speaker A: to somebody who are you talking about?

Speaker B: Somebody who, Somebody who hasn't worked in Web3 yet and want to come work in crypto or Web3 and work. Yeah.

Speaker A: The advice is test, test. Like, I don't, I don't think anybody learn crypto from books. It's like put some money aside, put 10, 15 that you invest for learning and put the money in. They put the money in morpho, move the money from one wallet to another one. Create a fluid key kind of wallet, try to off ramp, um, trying to earn ramp again. See the fees, check the cards. Just test, test, test. And the thing that I think, like if you want to grow faster in web3 is post your experience, publish it because don't keep it to yourself because people will learn from you as you learn. And what we found is like if you want to get a job in crypto, you want to get the attention of the founders and the hiring managers and they pay attention to their brand and to their product. So talk on their product, but pay attention for sure.

Speaker B: Especially like you said, in this very crowded world. Right M. You have to stand out and I think can also be something very original. Like what you did.

Speaker A: Testing stuff.

Speaker B: Yeah. Do crazy stuff. Exactly. I got cut away. Maybe somebody meet you with confidence. Just like take a picture of you with all the cards that you have. A physical card. That would be a pretty fun to see.

Speaker A: I need to post more. I think I do a photo session with all the cards in like a uh, you know, one of these.

Speaker B: Yeah, like spring it, right? Spring. Spread it. Yeah, spread it. Show it up just to flash it. Awesome. Cool. Final question. Where can people follow you? Where do you want to give a final shout out? Any public handle, username.

Speaker A: I post in LinkedIn and Twitter. I post different content there. So I force the people to follow me both because I really like. It's two different content pieces I get in those places. But then I think I should go outside. This is a very bubble thing. LinkedIn and Twitter for crypto people. But if I would like to continue, probably I'll start doing some Instagram or TikTok. If I can find a way that can I record things because I spend so much time editing videos. I hate that I just want to. To record and publish. Record and publish. So if I can find a way to do it, probably you'll find me there. So now it's uh, LinkedIn, Twitter, my name. This one is right here.

Speaker B: Okay. Okay. Awesome. Cool. Yeah, I'll make sure to put those in the show notes here and then in the show description so that people can follow and then learn from your adventure, trying out and. Yeah, and posting your experience. Right. About using the numerous. Like how many cards you've used by now? Like 30 or 50 or.

Speaker A: No, no, no, no, no. Probably around 30. Probably around 30 cards. And finance apps, maybe a bit more like maybe 40 finance apps like banking.

Speaker B: Yeah. That's crazy. 70. I mean even if you do it like one or two a days, at

Speaker A: the end of the day I have the DAS tokens. Like I also like $1, $2 there. Maybe if I can aggregate all of those funds into one, I will have another hundred. I don't know.

Speaker B: Right. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Oh my God. No, but I think it's. But some of them will cost you a fee, right. $1. You have to pay to move them out. You can't remove it.

Speaker A: That's why they are there. Exactly.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. You cannot. It's impossible. I don't know. Because they want to keep you there, obviously. That's like, they don't want you to lose and fee. But anyway. Well, uh, thank you very much. It's been a real pleasure having you on the show today. It's, uh, awesome. Thank you again. And then, yeah, we'll make sure to, um, catch up sometime in the future. Again.

Speaker A: That is awesome. Thank you very much. We have pending the conversation about the network school.

Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. See you then.

Speaker A: Bye.

Speaker B: And we're back to my studio. What do you think about the crypto cards and neo buying apps that Aria has been testing? If you're a user of any of the products that Ariel has tested, feel free to comment down below. Uh, for the next episode, we venture into the world of Generative AI to talk to Bruce Yang. He's the co founder and CEO of Agnes AI. Agnes AI is trying to build an everyday AI for everyone. In other words, they are building the frontier models that compete with those of, uh, leading companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic. If you enjoyed this episode about Web3 and entrepreneurship, please give a like and subscribe. Mean a lot to us. Thank you for watching and see you next time.