Interview: zerohash's Founder & CEO Edward Woodford

Jason Mikula: M foreign. Business Weekly. Today I'm joined by Edward Woodford. Edward is the founder and CEO of crypto stablecoin and tokenization infrastructure platform Zero Hash. Edward, you're actually in Chicago, my hometown, and I'm in Europe, at least directionally, I assume closer to your hometown. Thank, uh, you for joining me. You found a zero hashtag in 2017. So you have seen the crypto industry go through quite an evolution since then. What about crypto and stablecoins and tokenization now in 2026 would be the biggest shock if you could go back in time and tell yourself in 2017.

Edward Woodford: Yeah, I mean, look, I'd love to have said we had all the foresight in the world. Um, we certainly didn't. Um, I think I would say it's the breadth of just how broad this technology has gone. Um, we certainly viewed this as a technology play, um, as opposed to pure play, an asset class. Um, I think that is manifested itself in obviously these different buckets and kind of.

Jason Mikula: We gave you a bit of a

Edward Woodford: tongue twister describing our business because the way that this technology has been applied has been applied so broadly now. So for example, it's been applied to software stocks, it's been applied to, uh, tokenized dollars, tokenized deposits. So when we talk about stable coins, I think actually we're going to go up a stack and start talking about onchain money. So for me, I think it's just the fundamental breadth of where this technology being applied. And I think, look, some of it has certainly been good, um, and some of it has been less valuable, right, that we went through the NFT phase. So probably one of the things that surprised me is just what I would call the magpie effect in this space. People love shiny. Um, and so maybe I'm kind of more in tune with human, um, human dynamics now that people like the Shining. And as a firm, I think we've done a pretty good job of avoiding the Shining. If it's too good to be true, it often is, but that's sometimes really, really hard. So fundamentally, I think what surprised me is actually learning more about myself and just saying no to things. Um, and that's been incredibly important, whether that be the magpie effects that are not pernicious, but certainly can be very threatening to a business if that's all you focus on. But also just kind of pernicious people, dangerous people, um, that we've seen over the years. And I've been surprised by the characters and frankly the ease of which these characters were able to buy Credibility. So that's probably, probably it is. I've learned more about myself um, than anything.

Jason Mikula: I mean I guess I've always considered myself uh, somewhat of a uh, let's say either outsider or to be a little bit more critical like skeptic of what I'll call like crypto industry classic showing like the heyday of Bitcoin and Ethereum. And you mentioned NFTs which always felt a bit uh, I think shiny object is a good way to describe it. Um, but I think to link back to sort of where you started thinking things have progressed very substantially and coming from the world I come from which is more like traditional financial services, consumer lending, a bit more uh, whatever down to earth or tangible. In the past one, two, three years people have been sort of complaining or people in my world have been complaining about oh, uh, what's the use case for this? What's the use case for this? Very rapidly we are seeing those real life use cases emerge whether it is stablecoins for cross border remittances or sort of like neobank type products that are built on those um, stablecoins as opposed to more traditional bank partnerships, bank Rails. Uh, so I do think there is quite a m. Broader set of areas within financial services and then by extension within the economy where to your point these are being applied as technologies as opposed to I'm going to buy this thing and I hope the number goes up which for a long time, again as a somewhat skeptic of parts of this industry, for a long time it felt like the game was number go up.

Edward Woodford: Yeah, I mean look, I think sometimes people ask me what does success mean in this space? And frankly I say look, when you stop asking me about the price or projecting the price of this asset class, I mean obviously I always draw this distinction. I do struggle with sometimes um, people say look, I, and this sometimes was more of a commonality in banks. I'm a big believer in blockchain but I'm not a believer uh, in crypto. And I always say well you know what do you believe in public blockchains or private blockchains? Um, and I think now inherently more and more people believe in public blockchains as opposed to private blockchains. And so I say okay, um, you can certainly, if you believe in public blockchains, the economic incentive is a decentralized economic incentive structure. And so fundamentally you do need the underlying economic incentive structure which is the underlying crypto. Um, so Ethereum and Solana. And so I say look, you can kind of have A view that these things are overpriced. But fundamentally, the two are interwoven and fundamental to each other in the sense of, if I am sending, for example, one of our clients is Gusto, and if you're sending a payment across the world on the Solana or the Ethereum or the Polygon blockchain, you need a fraction of that, um, to effectively pay for the decentralized network. Now, our goal is to abstract away that complexity such that customers don't even think about, I'm, um, paying a network fee in the same way that when they swipe their credit card, they're not thinking of all the complexities around Interchange. So that's kind of our objective. But I think that the two are very interwoven, and that's why, at a core, we support both a crypto business, such as what we do with Morgan Stanley and others, and also, for example, stablecoin businesses, um, across a whole set of use cases. The two are obviously separate in terms of how customers perceive them, but they are interwoven from a fundamental technology perspective.

Jason Mikula: That is an interesting point that I honestly don't. I don't think I'd considered before that to have the benefits of the decentralized network, you have to have the economic incentives of the people who are the nodes that are making that network operate. Otherwise, why are they running all these GPUs in rigs to keep, Keep the blockchain working. That's a good point. Um, there's a bunch of

Edward Woodford: crypto maxi now, who knows?

Jason Mikula: Um, there's. There's a bunch of stuff I wanted to get to, but I did want to start with the Clarity Act. So speaking of moving from sort of like the fringes of, uh, financial services world to part and parcel of how financial services are operated and delivered, um, Clarity or crypto market structure legislation we're talking now, uh, towards the end of May, it cleared the Senate Banking Committee, and it seems like it's on a path to making it across the finish line. There are a couple of, uh, odds and ends that need to get hammered out from where you sit at 0 hash. What, if anything, would that legislation passing into law change about your business?

Edward Woodford: Yeah, look, so we're supportive of the bill, and I think we've seen the impact of genius in terms of what it did, in terms of just the perception and trust in the ecosystem. Um, but I think it's always important to understand, actually there's been a lot of progress without the bill being passed. And I think I say that to mean that we've moved the conversation forward. And I think the bill is definitely positive for our space. But I always caution, let's not, let's not present this as a. Um, you know, I think sometimes it's helpful to present these things as binary. If this fails, this fails and it's a big bad thing. If it's fundamentally just not, it's going to be an accretive thing. But we've made a lot of steps forward and we've got to give credit to people that have helped move this forward and seen how far we've come. And so there's a lot of things that have happened. Um, so, you know, we've stopped kind of the regulation by enforcement that certainly existed. Um, and the bill should codify and prevent that from happening again. In terms of how a digital, um, what is a security being updated? And I think that's really, really important. Um, I think what we also saw was regulation by implication. Um, and this was, for example, federal agencies implying that if a company did something in the space, um, there would be issues. And I think, again, codifying that and preventing that is important, but we've already kind of drawn that back. We've seen kind of the FOIA letters that have been granted and kind of the Fed and OCC and other agencies effectively implying to banks, if you do something in the space, implying we will make your life very, very challenging. And then there was regulation by rulemaking, which was this very niche accountability called sub121, which was overturned by sub1 to 2. So there's been a huge amount of momentum, and I think it's about codifying that momentum. And look, fundamentally, policy is policy. I do think, though, that we need to be careful when we talk about policy. The way policy anywhere in the world right now is drafted, it inherently is vague. Right. And it inherently has lots of pieces in it. It's. There's no. There's no, there's no. And the reason that that happens is to get kind of majority approval. So there is going to be, when the, if and when the bill passes, there's going to be a very, very important year, if not longer, um, currently 360 days in the bill of rulemaking. And that rulemaking is going to be absolutely, fundamentally critical, um, in terms of what happens, because the bill inherently doesn't create all the rules, it creates the premises. And so that's actually, I think, going to be an equally important time period. Um, and we've seen that play out with genius, right, Genius. Um, the rulemaking some People have liked the rulemaking. Some people have not. Um, but I've always been encouraged by talking to these people that are actually inherently involved in the rulemaking process. They really want to get this right. Um, and, you know, that can be a lifetime civil servant or that can be a political appointee. Both really inherently want to get this right. So I think the bill is very, very positive. It's great momentum, it's great to see bipartisan support. Um, but I always think it's important that, look, if the bill doesn't pass, we should recognize the momentum that's being done. There's still other opportunities to move this forward and look at where we are. We're at a point now where Morgan Stanley offers crypto trading through zero hash. We're, uh, at a point where Interactive Brokers, one of the largest brokerage firms in the world, offers account funding through stablecoins with zero hash. So there's been an enormous momentum. We need to codify that. We need to protect that. Um, and there's, and you know, and that, that's, that's the important thing for me is looking where we've come from and what are we trying to solve for, um, but also recognizing the rulemaking process is going to be critically important. And we are, you know, that's where we like to play. We're very detailed, orientated. Um, we tend to play in the rulemaking stage a lot more publicly, putting out public comments, which are all public, um, less so in the policy for CAS that exists. We certainly, um, put our opinions forward, but just where we are as a firm, we are a bit more behind the scenes and a bit more focus on the rulemaking stages. And that's where we spend a lot of time post genius implementation.

Jason Mikula: No, absolutely. I mean, I think that any listeners who are followers of, uh, open banking are intimately familiar with, uh, the apa, the Administrative Procedures Act. And how important, moving from, in that example, a very sparse piece of legislative text, like less than one page, to actually a set of rules and regulations that implement it, uh, how sort of challenging and fractious and important that process is as far as sort of determining, um, the sort of different stakeholders at different parameters for how they interact. And I'm sure we're seeing a similar set of, uh, issues play out right now, as you mentioned around genius, as far as, you know, bsa, AML, or some actually quite novel things, uh, as far as sanctions compliance go, as far as requiring, uh, legally, at least under the regulations, potentially requiring a sanctions program, which it's hard to believe, but that actually is not. That would be the first time that is required by regulation M. So very, uh, we'll be very interested to see if and when clarity becomes law, what that 360 day, uh, rulemaking process looks like and sort of how different stakeholders like zero Hash, like other players in the crypto and stablecoin space, as well as banks, uh, other entities within the financial services system, uh, sort of mhm, battle it out in the comment letters and sort of what the end result of all of that is.

Edward Woodford: Yeah, 100%. I think what's always interesting is, um, there's obviously a lot of public discourse on these topics. Um, when you actually meet some of these people behind the scenes, um, it's actually less black and white. There's lots of nuance and I've actually been very, very like impressed in all of my interactions. Um, and fundamentally people really want to drive this forward in the right way. This is not about carte blanche. I really don't think this is a political issue. And again, this is technology. Um, look like any technology. Can AI be politicized? Sure. Um, but we really shouldn't. Um, you know, like, I think it's really, really important that we understand this is a fundamental technology that is rewind the way that value is transferred globally. We're looking at nice, nasdaq, dtcc, um, move this forward and you know, it's a very important topic. It is about the value transfer globally in the same way that we've seen electronification of communications. This is effectively the electronic. It's an updated mechanism for moving value globally. I can send you a WhatsApp, Jason, but I can't send you money and value that seamlessly and easily. That is fundamentally what this technology is. It's a technology to bring the same level of velocity, low cost, um, global nature to the way that value is transferred globally. That's it.

Jason Mikula: I realize, uh, I am probably a terrible interviewer because I've let you get this far without actually asking you to explain the different lines of business or what zero hash does beyond my introduction of crypto, stablecoin and tokenization. So perhaps we can take a little pause and provide some context on where you're coming from and the different lines of business or the different capabilities that 0hash offers and the sort of spaces that you play in.

Edward Woodford: Yeah, absolutely. Maybe you're implying that no introduction is needed, Jason, but there we go. Um, so, yeah, look, fundamentally, uh, ZeroHash, we were founded in 2017, um, and we founded the business on the premise that um, this is a technology as opposed to an asset class like I mentioned. And so we are now a business that provides infrastructure both through APIs, SDKs and most recently through MCPs, um, the ability for people to build on this technology stack. And so that could be for example what we call our trade business or invest in business which is effectively allowing uh, businesses neo banks such as OnePay, which is Walmart spin out ah, retail, uh brokerage platforms like Public.com and tastytrade, um, as well as large globally systemically important banks like Morgan Stanley's wealth division to offer crypto as part of the stack. So there very simply there's a convergence between traditional financial services and more crypto native and effectively we're allowing traditional financial service companies to have product parity with groups like Coinbase and others who are equally trying to offer more traditional banking and equities like products. So a very simple thesis that you know I think is accelerating and holding true uh very, very clearly. The second part of our business is what we call our transactional business. This is our largest part of our business and this is allowing people to leverage stablecoins, um, predominantly as a payment mechanism globally and just two products that you know I'm incredibly passionate about. The first is account funding which allows people globally to fund their accounts in stable coins from anywhere at any time. And it is increasingly important um, especially as markets move 247 as uh, you know, the rise of prediction markets, the rise of tokenization, the velocity of money in particular matters in capital markets. And so for example um, Interactive Brokers leverages our stablecoin account funding product to allow customers to fund stablecoins from anywhere in the world. And what's really exciting about this is that the way that brokerage firms work is that they can reverse solicit from pretty much anywhere in the world because information is effectively free, right? People learn about Thomas Petfi, you know, uh, a self made billionaire who built, has built one of the most incredible businesses and you know a great trade in mind. People hear about this from all over the world, right? But the challenge is how do you fund your account if you're in XYZ country? And so what's been incredible, we've released this data in the first two months of launching this product. Um, customers from over 100 countries funded their Interactive Brokers account. So really it's allowing money to move as seamlessly and easy as information. Um, and that's incredibly exciting. And then we also have for example what we call our payouts product which we believe every two sided marketplace will offer and this is where clients like Gusto and Stripe leverage us to pay out people globally instantly real time. And this isn't uh, you know, a freelancer that has necessarily a self custodial wallet on their account. This is for example a freelancer that has a GCASH account in the Philippines, one of the largest fintechs, a new bank account in Brazil, a Revolut account in Europe. And from their perspective they're just getting paid more quickly, more easily from their Gusto account to their Revolut account. That is the customer experience that is productized now. Um, and so that's our transactional business and then finally is our tokenization infrastructure business. And we work with groups like BlackRock and Franklin Templeton to leverage this technology to bring new assets on chain and to intersect and actually move these assets. So again the commonality with all of these things is the technology for us fundamentally our core engine to move a piece of Ethereum is the same as it is to move a, a piece of e.g. stablecoin on Ethereum as it is to e.g. move M part of Biddle on Ethereum. It's the same underlying technology stack. And so that's the commonality of our business.

Jason Mikula: Uh, something else that I think is very interesting that's happening in the space and, and Zero Hash is part uh, and parcel of this. We're seeing an increase in firms that are seeking bank charters, uh, both full service or insured depository charters. Uh, but in the crypto and stablecoin space the preference seems to be for a national Trust bank charter, which is a quite distinct thing that I think in traditional media they do a fairly poor job of explaining. These are different things that serve very different purposes. For listeners that might not be familiar, can you explain exactly what a national trust bank is? Uh, and give a little context on why Zero Hash is pursuing such a charter?

Edward Woodford: Yeah, so absolutely. So effectively it's um, a license under the OCC framework, um, that more um, and more groups are getting. Um, I think fundamentally it's important to understand that 0hash has been regulated since day one, since 2017 as a money transmitter in every single state. We also hold a bit license in the state of New York and that's just our European presence. We also have a state chartered trust in the state of North Carolina. So we have this um, complex um, and mature regulatory infrastructure that we've been operating since inception. Um, the reason that people are getting this trust I think is twofold. I can explain to why we're getting the trust, um, that we'll be receiving very, very shortly. Um, the first is, um, well the predominant reason is um, under the, uh, under the Genius act, um, to issue a stable coin, uh, above $10 billion, um, it needs to be out of an OCC entity. And so very simply that is why we're getting it. Um, we have customers that want to issue stable coins. They are large financial services companies but they're not regulated um, under the OCC framework and so we can effectively issue a stablecoin on their behalf. Um, secondly also gives us just flexibility. Um, the business is going, you know, this base evolves at a million miles an hour, um, and the regulatory patchwork shifts as well. And so it gives us optionality at the federal level, um, as well. Now I think some people are getting the OCC charter purely because they believe, look, we can do anything we want, um, and not have regard for the states. I do believe that no one actually that actually operates, uh, these regulatory structures actually believes that there's not going to be a role for the states. Um, I think it's going to be, I think it's going to depend on the actual underlying functionality. Um, but fundamentally zerohash, um, is going to maintain its state licenses, um, and also going to operate under an OCC framework. And we're going to, we are putting some functionalities such as issuance of stablecoins underneath the OCC entity, uh, acting as a fiduciary custodian under the OCC entity. And then other services will remain, um, at uh, the other entities that we service today. So that's just fundamentally how we think about um, um gives us optionality, it allows us to expand our product stack. Um, and it's as simple as that.

Jason Mikula: The optionality piece makes a ton of sense. I mean whenever I have to explain the US dual state federal banking system to European people or people who have not worked, uh, professionally worked in that system, I always get a very quizzical and confused look of why would anyone ever build a governmental legal regulatory system this way? In fact, no other country has that type of dual state federal system. And then you mentioned MTLs or money transmission licenses, other sort of categories of permission, categories of regulation layered on top of it. Um, I mean what you're describing as far as your approach definitely makes sense given that it's hard to say how will any individual state react or respond to developments in the current environment. So for example, we recently saw the state of California create sort of an umbrella body over some of its Financial regulators, uh, at a point, former CFPP director Rohit Chopra into that role. So you can imagine a more muscular, I'm guessing in that specific example like a more muscular consumer protection posture, but that could extend to stablecoins, to crypto. Uh, obviously NYDFS in New York has been quite active in the space and you know, no one can really. Well I would not want to predict what's going to happen in the next midterm elections, in the next presidential election. So having an approach to running your business that is uh, sort of durable, redundant, sustainable across uh, changes both at the state and the federal level seems in my bias thinking seems like a, I don't know, safer and more responsible way to sort of orchestrate to architect your business.

Edward Woodford: Mhm. Yep.

Jason Mikula: Yeah.

Edward Woodford: Look, I mean our business, our goal is to be foolproof, to obstruct away these nuances and complexities for partners, um, as well as solving the technical challenges and complexities that exist. So at its core we want to provide as much coverage as possible, um, and to abstract away some of these nuanced discussions that we find interesting. Ah, from, from our clients.

Jason Mikula: Not everyone wants to have these discussions. So that's uh, that's okay. That's why, that's why you're here. To abstract away that complexity.

Edward Woodford: Exactly.

Jason Mikula: So one of the talking points I've heard again and again on the conference circuit probably for four or five plus years now is talking about crypto and then increasingly stablecoins as quote unquote programmable money. You've used somewhat different language talking about crypto as software. Uh so, and you know we've already sort of talked through some of these ideas but that it's not an asset class, it's really the technology and the Rails that money, and not just money but value will increasingly move on. Can you like expand a little bit on what you mean by like crypto as ah, software?

Edward Woodford: Yeah. So fundamentally we're talking about cryptography as software, um, and the ability for any asset that's built on this fundamental technology to be programmable. So I think most people are now familiar with smart contracts. The ability to program from a software perspective, the ability to automate certain activities based on certain functions. Um, and that is effectively a smart contract, um, implementation that you can imagine, um, could be applied to a ton of financial services, um, uh, kind of um, use cases. I think one that particularly excites me around programmability is for example, I've spoken about this a lot recently and we've deployed some infrastructure around this is around AI. And so if we think about what the world looks like in a very short period of time, increasingly so I think we're going to pass the, pass, pass the contract where effectively we aren't googling things anymore. Um, and so the economics of the Internet are fundamentally shifting. This is obviously important for someone like yourself as a, what you can call knowledge bank or a creator. But effectively you customers are not going to be, you know, if we just look at your use case, you know, people that are searching, things are no longer going to be routed to your website, right? So you're not getting um, the ads or referral links or whatever else. That's kind of how the E commerce, the Internet works. Now that is fundamentally going to shift in an agentic world. It already is. I think if you ask most people today, how much do you search in Google relative to search in for example chat? Um, I think more and more people, it's, it's skewing towards, they're almost going away from that. And so it's really, really important because these products rely on knowledge creators. Right? Um, and so how does the world look where you no longer are routed to the website? How does that uh, like fundamentally it's a really, really important question. So you've got this construct that exists where you're going to have millions of content creators, millions of knowledge banks, right? Millions of Jason's, billions if not of Jason's and other store sorts places of knowledge and then you've got billions of agents. And these are very fragmented ecosystems. There's not going to be a marketplace of knowledge is my view. It's going to be a very fragmented world. And this is exactly where the program that you have money makes a ton of sense. So you can imagine a world where an agent wants to crawl, for example Jason Michele's um, website and effectively they pay a very small fee for pulling that data for each pool. In the same way that for example if I stream music from Spotify, I get, you know, the artist gets a small, small fee. So I think conceptually that's how I see the future of the Internet knowledge bank working. And I think that's where programmatism really matters. Because if you have billions of agents and billions of sources of information, how do those interact? When you've got people across the world, you've got for example content creator in the Netherlands, um, and then you've got an agent in Brazil, how's that going to work? And that is fundamentally where stablecoins add a huge amount of value just by Fundamentally being global in nature, but also programmability matters. So you could have, in theory, that the money only moves when the knowledge is transferred. I think that's incredibly important. So what we mean by programmability is the ability, for example, to treat money as software. And that is one example that I see. That is a very, very important quality question, frankly, for the world. Um, and that is where programmability of money matters. And that's why I view it as software. It's, it's, it's, it's the same way that I can transfer data, I can transfer pictures, I can transfer knowledge. But you need the, the transfer mechanism, money to also be equally on the same, effectively the same rail, the same mechanism, um, and easy to transfer as, um, as, as, as the actual underlying, um, you know, content that's been transferred.

Jason Mikula: But that makes a lot of sense. And you are, uh, speaking directly to one of my, uh, I won't say nightmares so much as preoccupations of like, okay, like how people go about accessing, organizing, analyzing information, you know, as you pointed out, already has changed radically. And I mean, it's easy to be in our sort of like technology bubbles, which may or may not map cleanly to like what is happening in Omaha or Kansas or wherever. But uh, if you look at the stats as far as like adoption and usage, I think like, it's directionally correct that people are making, whether It's Claude or ChatGPT or something else, you know, if not their only port of call, increasingly like their first port of call over Google. And there's a whole bunch of reasons why, including the uh, insidification problem of platforms and wringing out more revenue by cramming in more ads or making it harder to distinguish an ad from organic results, et cetera. Um, but I do, uh, tend to agree with you that that poses a real risk to whether it's legacy news outlets like CNN or the New York Times or sort of, you know, solo or uh, small creators, uh, like myself or you know, my, you know, industry colleagues who do similar things. It's like, well, if you're not monetizing through an ad or there is an ad, but somebody's never going to see it because they're scraping your content through Claude, uh, they're also much, much, much, much less likely to actually visit your site, sign up for a subscription or potentially, you know, a paid tier, how do you think about a fair exchange of value? Which is, you know, I think, I would argue is a problem that like Google never really solved. They Just became more aggressive about uh, sort of surfacing information within their own results page to dissuade a user from, from leaving and like going to visit the source of that material. So hopefully, hopefully uh, the sort of developing AI world in combination with the programmable, you know, the ability to have programmable money movement that you're describing gives uh, us another bite at that apple and solving that sort of problem around exchange of value between people who are sort of creating net new knowledge or net new analysis and how people are actually discovering and accessing that information.

Edward Woodford: Absolutely. Um, and that is exactly the question and that is exactly where program will see money intersect.

Jason Mikula: So you've been busy on the uh, conference circuit this year. I myself am trying to consciously go to less events. But uh, you were at Semaphore's World Economic Forum, you were at the uh, crypto focused uh, event consensus down in Miami uh, earlier in May. And you're going to be at CNBC's CEO Council shortly. I'm curious from like the sort of different sets of people at these different events. If you have a sense of, to what extent uh, executives in non financial businesses are paying attention to developments in crypto, in stablecoins, in blockchain, is this something they spend time thinking about? Do they identify it as something that has potential to enhance their businesses? Is it something they view as a risk to their businesses? Like what are you hearing out there in the marketplace?

Edward Woodford: Yeah, no, I mean this has certainly been a busy year. You know, started off with Davos, which is you know an interesting event. It was my first time but um, incredibly productive I think. Look in terms of non financial companies, um, I think that there's two conversations. One is again viewing this as technology, um, and how does that change things? But secondly, um, every business ultimately moves money. You know there's this theme that every business is going to become a fintech at some point. I don't necessarily believe that's necessarily a trend that we're seeing across every type of enterprise. But every business ultimately cares I think about being more global and about velocity of money in certain applications. So look, if you're a two sided marketplace, if you're a fiver and upwork, um, you care about um, potentially you know, freelancers being able to get paid more quickly so after every job they don't have to wait six, seven, eight, nine days. And that can be seen as a, as a, as a differentiator. You could imagine for example Uber drivers being paid more quickly instantly, globally, anywhere in the world. Um, so that's on kind of the content creator side. Look, if you're more of an international business, um, there is a value proposition around being able to potentially be paid in stable coins. Again it just is an alternative payment method. So it's not saying hey, I'm going to bring all of my infrastructure over to stablecoins, saying look, um, if I'm a global business, if I'm a VPN business, for example, I'm global in nature inherently I'm a software business. Um, but one of the frictions is sometimes the cost of getting paid in certain, certain places. Um, so that is where it can compete. So typically where we see um, I would say the type of enterprise that is particularly interested in the pay and use case, uh, the characteristics, again trying to make it very, very tangible for people is it tends to be a business that has relatively small quantum in transaction size. So having to pay a dollar really eats into their margin. Um, and so this could be for example a subscription business, um, a Spotify, a NordVPN, relatively low monthly amounts. But that where if you're losing 30 because of um, FX or because of traditional Rails, that really is material. Um, and then nature is global. Look it stable coins and this blockchain infrastructure is not necessarily relevant to every CEO of the Fortune 500 but I think it's relevant to the majority, um, in the sense of they're global, they move value, um, and they, they think about that in a very meaningful way and then you can even bring that forward to a treasure treasury use cases as well. So we certainly are seeing a huge evolution not only in the traditional financial services space or fintechs, but also, um, you know, other businesses. I mean I met a business the other day, pretty incredible. They're a global business in nature. Um, they provide clipping services and they've been able to go global instantly because of stablecoins. That previously was a very, very complex thing to do. Um, and it's reflected in how quickly these people are growing right now. All of a sudden information and clipping is global, right? Everyone has Facebook or Instagram or TikTok. Um, and the ability to move value though was always the friction. And so it's incredible when you see new businesses be created. It's the same way that if you're starting a business today, if you're not starting as AI native, I think that's an issue. Right? Um, it's the same way that if you're building a global business, if you're not inherently putting stable coins in, you're naturally Going to go slower. You just are. Um, and so that to me is where we're seeing a lot of um, a lot of excitement.

Jason Mikula: I mean I guess to follow up on that. To what extent, you know, using the sort of like Fortune 500 uh, as the context or the example, to what extent do non financial companies, you know in that sort of large corporate space need to evaluate consideration trying to build these kinds of solutions? Whether it's crypto, stablecoin, tokenization on their own versus leveraging service providers, partnerships, companies like zero hash, um, to sort of build out, you know, the use cases they're trying to build out. Whether that is treasury management, whether that is global payment acceptance and so on.

Edward Woodford: Yeah, look, I think there's a lot of unknown unknowns and these companies I think that are mature have know this and so that is inherently a point where they look to partner as opposed to um, to, to, to necessarily um, build in, in internally. Um also Velocity Matters and again um, you know we've been doing this for eight and a half, nine years now. Um, we're able to get clients live very very quickly. Um, and it's only shortening. This is what's fundamentally interesting about the intersection of an infrastructure business like us and where we play. We've decided to be an independent business and inherently um, you're trading off to some degree a distribution game that has historically existed as a bigger business. Bigger businesses have distribution. It's easy. Let me just flip a switch. What I find really interesting with McPs and AI agentic coding is the barrier to going with a big best in class partner I think is significantly less now. It's not the only thing. The technical development is a part of the puzzle. There's obviously vdd, there's commercials, there's all these other things. But I think fundamentally in the same way that AI has made moats less deep for a lot of companies, I also think it's made distribution um, value propositions also less deep. Um, and what I mean by that is we're able to get a partner up and running very very quickly. And especially as we've developed MCPs and partners building themselves the ability to pick zero hash versus say hey I'm just flipping us uh, in, in very loose terms I'm flipping a switch with another partner which just fundamentally isn't the case. But that sometimes can be the challenge. I think that's changing. So that for us is a very very interesting development as an infrastructure business.

Jason Mikula: So we've talked a lot about stable coins, crypto obviously that's that's what you do. Um, but I do want to be cognizant that particularly in some of these more real world money movement use cases, as opposed to the asset class discussion or asset class use cases, they are at least implicitly if not explicitly competing with a whole slew of existing mechanisms that exist to move money, whether it's ach, whether it's wire. I think the comparison to the card networks tends to be the one that comes up the most, uh, particularly in the context of some of this programmable or like agentic payments or agentic commerce, uh, conversations that are very, very uh, very popular right now. I guess to my mind it sounds great in theory, but I sometimes question what it looks like in practice. I feel like there's a lot of uh, antipathy, some of it understandable towards the card networks, Visa, MasterCard. But I guess to play devil's advocate for a moment, the networks do serve a purpose by creating and at least in theory enforcing a common set of rules, including for consumer protection, dispute resolution and so on. And that that framework creates consumer trust. Right. People see the Visa logo, they see the MasterCard logo and I mean you could debate or argue this but they see that and they think okay, like my payment's going to be accepted and if something goes wrong it's going to get taken care of. Maybe that's true, maybe that's not true. But like at a high level I think that you can make that case. Do you think consumers are ready to trust AI agents to make payments on their behalf, whether it's using some kind of crypto or stablecoin or traditional card payment mechanisms?

Edward Woodford: I think ultimately we're going to get to. Yes, um, and I think it's going to be a question of authentication and controls and permissions. And this is where fundamentally, um, and I'm not again, I like not to think of things in binary constructs, but I like to show additive value with this technology is for example the ability. So it's kind of interesting if you work with agents, um, sometimes agents are ah, um, like temperamental, right? They almost, I guess they are. And you know it's, it's interesting. Sometimes they want to do their own thing. And so fundamentally, um, if you think about giving agents more control over spending, um, I think there's obviously a lot of questions around authentication. Know your agent. I mean ultimately agents have to roll up to people or to NMPs ultimately. Right. Whoever's deploying them. Um, I think in traditional financial services speak, um, but I think where, where Stable coins and cryptography have unique value is and again without going too technical, but if you're able to um, so the way that MPC works is effectively I can create a lot of policies that are hard coded cryptographically into the system so the agent that is temperamental can't do whatever it wants. Um, and so effectively you could imagine a world where I have a stablecoin wallet and I say to my agent, hey agent, I'm going to give you the ability to spend up to 100 bucks and you can just do that. Anything above cryptographically needs me to authenticate that. And that could be very, very simple. That could just be almost like an OTP like experience where agent pushes, pushes a notification and then effectively the way that the underlying stack um, is being done is through um, you know, MPC mechanism. So I think there is an interesting intersection. Again my view on agents is that it's going to be less in terms of um, I think, I think where we're more excited is less in terms of the consumer using the agent. Um, it's more about the agents communicating with other agents or agents um, communicating with effectively content. That's where we're spending a lot of time as opposed to the um, the end retail user uh, spending with their stablecoin wallet. But I do think that there's actually some very unique pieces that people are concerned about with agents that again this technology can help solve.

Jason Mikula: So I will close with a question or I guess a couple questions actually, uh, that take us full circle to where we started. So a lot has changed uh, since you founded ZeroHash in 2017. While still relatively small in the scope of the entire financial services sector, crypto and stablecoins and tokenization have become much, much larger and much more intertwined with the traditional financial system since you started 0hash nine years ago. When you look at where the market is today and where it's heading, does anything concern you? Anything keep you up at night?

Edward Woodford: Yeah, I mean I actually sleep pretty, pretty m. Well I think the fundamental point is um, it doesn't mean I don't worry about things. I think I'm just good at compartmentalizing at this point. Um, look, I think things that we've been public about um, is, and we've been spending a lot of time with rulemaking is the way that stablecoins um, operate. Um, we live in a world where stablecoins did depeg a couple of years ago. And if you're using this technology every single day, I think you understand the Risks actually better than most. Um, we live in a world where a stable coin depegged um, to 65 cents, you know, um, you know, world Liberty Finance, a stable coin. And people aren't talking about it. And I think then this was issued by a partner that is genius, will be genius compliant, um, once the rules are, ah, once the rules are actually

Jason Mikula: made, once, once it's possible to be genius compliant.

Edward Woodford: So, so look the way. So what we think is really, really important with stable coins is the ability to ensure that they are backed fully. And that's where people spend a lot of time. But what we think is equally as important is the redeemability of stablecoins. I, what I mean by that is that the issuer gives you dollars if you want dollars. I think that is critically important. When you look at the data and you look at deeps, Deeps don't just exist because of concerns about fundamentally where the assets are held. Like the very simple narrative that SVB calls this USCC Deep. It's not as simple as that. Um, there are a lot of other drivers. And so what we spend a lot of time thinking about is redeemability, ensuring the issuers are ah, able to redeem in a timely fashion. Um, because ultimately, um, that is important. The interoperability between a stable coin and traditional dollar is very, very important. So that we've put out papers on this topic. Um, and it's a very niche topic, but I think that's important as well. Um, and look, you, you've covered some good things. I mean there are some companies out there that are like Teflon. Um, and look, I think businesses need to make determinations as to look, it's, it's. Do you want to be on the Wall Street Journal front page? I don't know if people even care anymore sometimes. And that kind of concerns me. Like, do you, do you want to be in Jason McCullough's, um, you know, Sunday newsletter? Like there are Teflon, there are Teflon companies out there, and it's ultimately up to larger companies to make a determination as why are we doing this? Um, and ultimately it's not just a risk assessment, but it's ultimately about why am I doing what I do every single day and making decisions on partners that culturally align with your vision of trying to make and bring value. And if you don't want to bring value, that's fine. But I don't think you can say I want to bring value to XYZ yet. I'm going to choose a partner that doesn't have the same values as me. And making that a very clear, you know, it's almost like VDD can, you know, VDD a lot of times just confirmatory. But it's, I think the leaders up front saying we need these companies to culturally line, I think where we've seen enormous success of zero hash, where we've been doing things the right way for, for, for nine years. Um, is, is, is, is in particular big banks. Whether or not it's because of reputational. Because of what you can have your own thesis as to why, but they live in a world where they operate global businesses and they have to do things globally in the right way. Um, and that is where zero hash has, I think, an unrivaled, um, ability to win. And you know, we've announced one USG sip, we will be announcing at least three by the end of this year. And that is where we see a massive cultural alignment, um, where Teflon companies, um, you know, it just doesn't work. Um, and so that's, that, that's a really important thing for us. And look, I always say regulation is the flaw. It's not the objective, it's the flaw.

Jason Mikula: Absolutely.

Edward Woodford: Um, and look, we want to build a business that has long term sustainability and frankly look at ourselves and say, look, we've created value. That's just a very simple black and white decision that we've made.

Jason Mikula: We will have to leave it there for now. Edward, uh, for those that want to keep up with the latest at zerohash, where can they find you?

Edward Woodford: Yes, so you can find us on LinkedIn, just ZeroHash or on X, our handle is ZeroHash X. Or you can also follow me on X as well.

Jason Mikula: I am still on X, uh, even if I struggle to call it that sometimes. All right, Edward, thank you so much. I will have to catch up with you the next time I'm in Chicago.

Edward Woodford: Looking forward to it.