170 - How Is Data Analytics Shaping the Future of Crypto and DeFi - Mattheus Veloso Dias

Mattheus Veloso Dias: Put your money where you know what's going on. Because a lot of people came in, they got burned. Um, and this happens, like, with any craze. And it's like, has happened to cryptocurrency multiple times. It has gone to booms and busts and like, if you're not ready for the, the volatility and the craziness, maybe don't, uh, don't put your money there.

Host: Our featured speaker today brings a unique perspective from the intersection of traditional finance, crypto and data. He spent five years at nubank, one of Latin America's largest digital banks, building analytics infrastructure at scale, and now leads data at Ether Fi, a major defi protocol. He's passionate about applying data to improve people's lives and believes that with enough determination and hard work, anything is possible. Matt, it's a delight to have you returning as our guest to the podcast. Thank you so much for making time for this.

Mattheus Veloso Dias: Thank you, guys. I'm just super happy to be back after so long.

Host: So I know we have a lot to catch up on. It's been even longer than, than I thought since we spoke. Would you mind, you know, kind of catching us up on, you know, a couple of, you know, recent events and tell us a little bit about what you do at Ether Fi. And also, am I saying that correctly?

Mattheus Veloso Dias: We just say etherfi, but Etherdorfi.

Host: Yes, Ether Fi. Okay, okay. No dime.

Mattheus Veloso Dias: Yeah. So, yeah, as I was telling you guys, I was listening to my previous podcast and so much has changed. Like where, where we left off, maybe just for recapping for everyone. I joined the, uh, 2018 Bootcamp in Rio, still as an university student, still as an intern in a sales job back then. And when I got to the previous podcast, I had just joined, I think I had just joined a company called Alana AI, which was working on natural language processing and AI. And this is before, uh, the release of ChatGPT and other models. So, um, we were a few years still before the big ChatGPT launch, so it's actually great to see how that evolved. And after that, after Alana, I joined Nubank, which I think was a long time coming because I really wanted to join nubank. I had in my mind either joining nubank or Google before hopefully someday starting, uh, my own startup. Still postponing that dream a little bit, but I joined it and it was great because, uh, one of the speakers at my bootcamp was an engineer at nubank, who eventually became the CTO of Nubank and now has, uh, spin off this year. His own startup, which is uh, Victor Olivier. So yeah, uh, joined Nubank as analytics engineer. Back in my previous podcast I was super with a goal of being a data scientist. But when I really started getting into the data field I saw that data science is kind of what lures you in. You think you're going to model and whatnot and then you realize that there is a need for plumbers on the data ward. And I would say analytics engineers are plumbers of the data ward. You're not really doing the most sexy job, but it's an extremely important job and the other people just can't do it as well, their jobs as well. If that's pretty much like setting uh, up infrastructure, if the infrastructure is not there, uh, you just don't have the same reliability for everything else. So just when I figured out that job existed, I applied and I joined. And it was five years there going from junior to senior. Uh, super interesting. I worked on two teams specifically and new bank finance team which deal dealt with everything with treasury moving billions of dollars around and uh, just making the bank not go bust. And also another team was the crypto team which I joined. Uh, the other half which was a uh, product team. That was my real first product experience, like creating product for customers. And then late last year I got an invitation to join etherfi here in the Cayman Islands. Also in the crypto universe, but way deeper than before, like in a company that deals with defi. And so a little bit more about etherfi today. I'm the data analytics lead here, just doing absolutely everything because there is a small company. So uh, it's been a quite entrepreneurial journey I would say, even though I'm not a partner yet. But it's been super nice because we're building a product from scratch, a crypto credit card that you can use. And it's what is very crypto nerdy stuff but uh, to me is really important is that it's a non custodial card. So it's a card that you keep control of your money at all times, meaning that other people just can't take it from you. Um, of course we have to take some uh, measures against money laundering and whatnot and block some cards and exclude some people from the program. But still you as a customer, you have full control of your funds. And I think that is super empowering for people that care about that. Yeah, that's where we're at. We're super early stage. We have 20,000 weekly uh, active users. When uh, I joined it was 10 so growing pretty well. But yeah, it's just been great to, to build a product from scratch and to be very scrappy and to try to find ingenious way of acquiring customers.

Co-host: It's an exciting time, isn't it, when you're in that early stage of a company and you're like, stressful, but you, you know, you're doing everything. I do want to say on the topic of like, analytics engineer, I certainly want to, wouldn't want to live in a house without plumbing. So I definitely understand it's super important. Um, I've actually recently had a issue in a particular company that I was working with, um, of not enough analytics capability. And that's been something that's been a hindrance for sure. Now you mentioned about Nubank and how you were super excited to start working there and you were looking forward to it and you put in five years there, which is obviously a very impressive period. What was it about etherfi that sort of attracted you to it? And then I guess also you had sort of tipped your toes into the crypto space. But even now a lot of people don't really have a good grasp of like, what DEFI is and what that means. Can you give a little bit of detail about that and what, uh, made you so interested in it?

Mattheus Veloso Dias: Yeah, absolutely. So the reason why I really wanted to join Nubank is that I thought their user experience was insanely good at a time where everything else was really bad. So this is, we're talking 2012. Nubank was like one of the first Neobanks and just created a banking app that worked like today. This is, uh, it's a joke to think about, but like, you swipe your credit card, you get a notification on your watch and on your phone and everywhere before, uh, I don't know if Gen Z M or Gen Z List will know, but like, you would put your credit card bill, you would wait one month to see what's on the bill. You wouldn't even know like, how much you've spent this month until the bill came. So it was like horrible for financial planning and people just lost control all the time because you didn't really know, um, how your credit card bill was if you were not just like keeping receipts and manually putting them in spreadsheets was horrible experience. And you would go to a bank, spend hours. I mean, the Cayman Islands still like that. So plenty of opportunity to create a Neo bank in the Caymans. If someone does that, I 100% support. But otherwise other places you still, you don't have to spend uh, one hour waiting. So what I really liked was like I could see the very early potential. I was one of the first 100,000 customers in Nubank, which today Nubank has like over 100 million. So I really saw like, oh, this is very different. And this is what I would like to build. Something that really improves people's lives and of course makes money. Like uh, you deliver good value and then you get good money. So that's what I saw with like the 2000s tech companies in the US like Google. I thought Google had an amazing product, what they built and I saw like how they got paid amazingly for that. So I thought that was a really good connection there between UX and profitability and growth. And that kind of proved out to be true. I joined Nubank in 2021. It still had I think 30 million customers, so uh, a third of today. And I loved working in finance and whatnot, but I really wanted to go to product. So when I got to product building crypto, I really enjoyed just trying to build something from scratch and um, being scrappy as I said before. But the thing is, I spent two and a half years there. I loved it, it was great. We acquired over a million customers and mainly just using the fact that Nubank, uh, had just so many customers. You could just blast notifications to people and get them to remember that your product is somewhere in the ui. But the thing is, I always uh, also been a big deliverer in crypto, the blockchain technology and on Nubank they wouldn't really dip uh, their tolls too deep in that water. They would use partners and APIs. So let's say I want to have a uh, withdrawal, uh, or deposit function or I want to interact with a smart contract or if I want a new network, all of those things that the company would partner with someone else that would actually get their hands dirty on the blockchain and just use an API for that, which is a perfectly fine solution. But I wanted to go deeper. I wanted to actually be looking at blockchain code and creating smart contracts and looking at that and also the non custodial part which was super interesting. So when Etify approached, I saw this opportunity of taking that which I uh, had helped build there, but just doing it in a such interesting product that is really getting their hands dirty. And oh boy, do we get our hands dirty here. Because I uh, was interacting with m Smart contract the other day and uh, I don't know how I screwed something up and I lost $200 of mine, of course, not of the company, but it's just so easy to get it wrong. And then you're like oh my God, what did I do? And then it happens. But yeah, I really want to get my hands dirty and I would say that uh, that was a big. And just get a company at an earlier stage. I also think there's a bit of more fire to that.

Host: Mhm. I really appreciate you kind of explaining that to us because um, I'm not a person that's used crypto a ton, but I can completely understand what you're saying about some of the problems that you wanted to solve with that. And also I think you know, you're at a unique place for a startup. Like I don't think of the Cayman Islands as some place that hosts a lot of startup companies, but obviously it's a huge financial hub. I was wondering if you see any benefits or drawbacks to you know, working at an uh, early stage startup on such a small island, but in you know, obviously such a, a specific niche versus like a big city where maybe you'd have like more local entrepreneurial support.

Mattheus Veloso Dias: Yeah, so etherfi is actually not that, that early stage because it does have two products that predate the, the crypto credit card which was like it's liquid restaking. It's, it's really, really defi, uh, jargon. We can go into that if you want but it's just like um, just the point is like there's a previous business that's already a pretty good business that is kind of helping uh, pave the way for the cash, which is the crypto credit card business. And what happens is these previous parts of the company, they are more uh. In the US and Canada there are offices in Denver, New York, Toronto and technically Dubai and Korea. But Dubai and Korea are kind of small offices. So the main offices would be Denver, New York and here. The plan is to have I think at least 60 or 70% of employees coming here to the Cayman Islands. And on one side it is a lot tougher to hire. Sometimes you have these super specific uh, positions like defi strategies and whatnot. These people just have very specific profiles and they, they usually don't want to relocate. But it's also uh, on other, I would say maybe less super specific positions it is really good because the Cayman Islands have a really good as good, I mean really open immigration policy. So maybe like if we're hiring a specialist on something and they live in New York and they're not moving, they're probably going to be hired in New York. But here in Cayman, like we're getting a lot of people coming from Brazil, a lot of people coming from India. Those are the two biggest hubs. But we also have like all around the world because, uh, these people would probably find it harder to get U.S. visas. But here, um, the immigration policy is way more open. I don't know exactly what starting on what salary range and what kind of company that becomes easier. I don't know. Uh, I can't speak for all Cayman companies, but at least in this case of uh, etherfi, I believe that it's way easier to bring overseas talents and that the fact there is no income tax that is also a big driver of people moving here because, um, you can kind of pay them as much as you would and they might double their salary depending where they're coming from. So that is also has helped attract talent. But we do see both situations, situations like there's a person, I don't know, they live in Vancouver, they absolutely don't want to move anywhere. They either work remote or not. And that doesn't work for us because we are an in person company, need to go at least one of the offices. But we do see the opposite of like, oh, if we were based in other places, it has just been much easier to bring people to Cayman.

Co-host: Thank you. It's so interesting how like you, we associate entrepreneurship with these specific locations. But if you're willing to look a little bit more hard, there's actually really incredible businesses starting all over the world and doing some really fascinating things. Um, so I think that's really exciting to see. And um, frankly I'm definitely jealous of the island life. So. Got me on that one. Um, now you were in at Alana AI. You were in the AI space before. As you said earlier before, it all sort of really, really kicked off and has, you know, affected uh, many, many people's lives recently. What do you think about how AI has changed? Is this something that sort of you, you sort of felt would be coming soon anyway because of your experience, or do you think this was like, uh, a shockingly quick change?

Mattheus Veloso Dias: I believe it wasn't one of those changes that you just build up to it in silence for years and then it kind of explodes in front of everybody. On our last podcast, we were talking about the release of GPT3 and how OpenAI was kind of hyping themselves up and they were still a nonprofit back in the day. Um, they were like saying, oh, we just can't release GPT3 for the public because it's just so powerful and people are just going to do so much with it. This is back in 2021 I think. Um, and then uh, of course as we know they released ChatGPT and we always have all these models today. So I believe that was just them uh, trying to create hype of like oh, Terminator is going to happen if we release this to the public and whatnot. So that's where we were before and it's incredible to see where the field has grown. I think it has really outpaced all expectations. Even when I would say even a year into ChatGPT's release we saw a lot of uh, skepticism and I was pretty skeptic. I thought this technology would be kind of localized, uh, implemented in some places like customer experience, people just getting, helping customers with bots that they're not super dumb bots, bots that I actually understand what's going on and other specific scenarios. But what we've seen is this model have grown so good that they can already start really substituting or really having a good level of understanding of the task at hand. And not just like the micro task, but the macro task that is really just caught a lot of people off guard. So even I that was in the field, I was not expecting to have seen uh, this level. And what we see today with specialized tools like cloud code and an open claw that you really can give the model like set piece of instructions, give them power, give them money and they will literally be a great assistant. You say like, I don't know, buy flowers for someone on some day and just forget and then they can actually do that if you set it up correctly and then it is just getting better and better. And at some point probably we'll have our personal assistants at some point very soon we have like personal assistants that are actually useful and can do stuff. So llala lims came from just being chat, being able to chat and we give them power to work with tools and to understand images. So the few has just progressed so quickly and with this multimodal interpretation that they can do with images and videos and audio, uh, and text and code of course, which is text now they can just get so much done that you really can like 3x your output with these tools if you're using them correctly for some jobs. So yeah, I would say even the most optimistic person probably got, uh, is changing is saying that it's going to be even bigger than they realized.

Host: And I mean it's a really exciting place to Be I think, um, and I appreciate you sharing too, just because you have been working on this before this big hit and you know, every person was talking about AI, you know, sharing your experience and kind of like your projections of growth. And another thing you had worked on was AI facial recognition software. Right? Is that correct?

Co-host: Yeah.

Host: Okay. And so my question really is like, I understand that there's still kind of like a big debate about it, but from your perspective, you know, what do you think is like maybe some of the best case scenario uses of it and you know, what are the limitations and maybe is there any reason that someone should be hesitant about it?

Mattheus Veloso Dias: Yeah, I think that. How do you Americans say like the, the genie is out of the bottle? Uh, is that it? I think on that one, well done. Yes.

Host: Huh?

Mattheus Veloso Dias: Yeah. Yeah, that ship has long sail. So back in 21 I did my university thesis writing a face recognition, um, deep learning model that was able to recognize people. And this was a undergrad, ah, level uh, thesis. So this was that easy in 2021. So today basically everywhere you're going, you're seeing this. I have heard people do payments in China with their face. I have not seen it. I've been to China and everybody just uses Alipay. So I don't know if I just wasn't looking at these places where they can pay with their faces. But I'm a bit skeptical of people just making up stuff about China sometimes. But still, um, it would be possible and really need to understand that this is a reality, just like Microsoft Excel is a reality. So when I'm driving in Brazil and to get into my mom's gated community, Darius A uh, recognition system that is definitely based on machine learning that can do it. So that technology, unlike uh, LLMs, which are progressing quickly, I think has already reached a much higher maturity state that is uh, applied across. So anyone who wants could apply it for good or for bad reasons. Uh, and I think the only way to combat people doing evil uses uh, of this is just like we combat evil uses of other technologies like guns or whatnot. You just need a police and the government and uh, the authorities to uh, hopefully act in our best interests and those people that are using it for poor practices. But in principle it's very easy today, let's say to scrape the Internet, get a lot of faces and just create a profile on pretty much anyone you want. So each individual needs to kind of take care of their digital footprints and authorities need to look for people that are oozing malicious uh, that yeah, I Don't really see a way to go back in that front.

Co-host: Yeah, I think as you said, the genie is out of the bottle. We have to deal with it. Because if at this point, like even if one company or person or whatever doesn't want to use it, someone else will. Right. Like it's just out there already. Yeah.

Mattheus Veloso Dias: And you don't really need a big team of experts to use it. There's no, in GitHub, there's probably hundreds of, or thousands of products that can give you very good facial recognition. So yeah, it's too easy to get started at this point. A three person startup could do it and then.

Co-host: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Do you think there is um, aside from assisting with coding, do you think there is an AI place within the DEFI ecosystem or do you think they're too, like they're both quite relatively new technologies. Do you think they aren't yet ready to merge? What's your perspective there?

Mattheus Veloso Dias: Yeah, for sure. I think that DEFI is going to be a tool that is used by AI. So as I mentioned, I lost uh, $200 the other day because I gave it to my AI and I told her, no, play with it, go around DeFi protocols. Get this, get some yield on this. Let's see what you can do. In my defense, I did start with $1, which I did great with $10. It did great. And then when it got to, when I, okay, let's put some more money and it just uh, stopped. But you could essentially just uh, like I do, I have a separate um, computer where there's an open claw instance, so openclaw. I don't know if everybody knows it's this open source software that you can just give access to models like Claude or OpenAI or Grok or whatever and you can tell it to do things, not just assist with code and whatever. So you really can just sell it. You're like, send an email, send me an invite, order me food and just uh, if you set it up correctly you could do uh, any of those things. So what I did is I gave it some um, money on a crypto wallet and it can do its own investments. So it can, it's really like low amounts of capital at this moment. I think it only has $30 after the little blunder last week. But it really can just use DEFI protocols to buy things. So let's say it, let's say it wants to take a loan on that money and like, I don't know, put that money in a crypto. It thinks it's going to go up and then it just takes a loan to spend that money somewhere else or go into leverage positions. It can just build on top of that. And it's super accessible for it, um, because it's all cold. So, yeah, we can use DEFI to just give AIs, uh, a way to interact with money and with technologies, uh, in a way that is kind of controlled and it has full control of those funds. Instead of. You don't want to give an AI the password to your bank account or the ability to take loans on your name, but in DeFi, it's just like, okay, this is the amount of capital. The most you can lose is this much. And, yeah, I don't know, it has this money and a lot of places take crypto payments today. So it could essentially make, uh, penance on your behalf, uh, using those funds.

Host: So, yeah, that's really interesting. I was also kind of thinking while you were talking about that too, and I actually just looked up a statistic to share, like, so apparently, like, I kind of knew that cryptocurrency has become less used by certain groups. Um, and my question really is, like, how do you think we can, like, overcome that hurdle and the fears that people kind of had around it because of some of the things that had happened. But apparently the as of the end of 2025, the share, and this is us statistics, so that matters too. So maybe it kind of depends on the country you're looking at. Um, but the share of consumers who pay with cryptocurrency declined from 2022 to 2024 across almost all consumer groups. And the statistic today is apparently roughly 7 to 17 of US adults currently invest in crypto and use it for daily transactions has declined overall. So I guess I'm just wondering, like, you know, for a company that, you know, is trying to encourage people to use cryptocurrency, like, how do you think we could overcome some of the barriers to entry, so to speak, that have come up?

Mattheus Veloso Dias: Yeah, that's actually. There's an easy answer for that, which is abstracted away. Crypto is blockchain is a tool being used to do something. There's no reason a person that is using banking app should be into, I don't know, the Swift coding language for their iPhone app. Like, there's no way. They don't even know that. Need to know that it exists. They need to know that it's trustworthy. They need to know that, uh, their funds are secure. They need to have a good UX but the fact that it's using Swift, the coding language or in fact if it's using blockchain or if it's using just the standard finance or system or a swift transaction that is all just detail. The customer doesn't really care. I uh, mean we do have people that care but at the end of the day most people don't really care about your tax stack. And I would see crypto more as that is just like enabling the financial system to have a much better tax tech but not necessarily that people need to be thinking of that. So yeah I think what we had like the, the numbers on cryptocurrency adoption just saw like a lot of people that were just buying it and hopefully hoping you would appreciate I think a small minority were actually using it for real life payments and taking care of their financial lives besides just buying and trading um, crypto. So I think I, I hope this is where we evolve as an industry that instead of being just an asset people hope we appreciate their capital 100x it is actually a technology and this is where like we've tried to build uh towards uh, it's just technology that you can build solutions upon and these solutions need to be better than what we have. We're not special for using crypto. We are special if the solution at the end of the day is better. So, for example stablecoin uh, payments today are a huge thing and they are just so much better uh than other methods. Like I mentioned Swift. Swift is horrible. It takes days. There is an uncertain fee if you're doing a uh, swift transfer which is crazy like you don't even know how much of your money you're going to get at the end. And with stablecoin payments you have instant or depending on what network you're using, like take a few minutes. But that is still way better experience to send money than using that. So yeah, um, I would say that the industry really saw a lot of hype just on price volatility and people hoping to get rich quickly. But um, now I think that's the solutions that I'm seeing are much more customer facing and they are much more interesting on a longevity platform. I still believe on the assets, um, not all of them, definitely a minority, maybe a handful, maybe even less. Ah, um, there's not that many amazing assets that I would really just hold long term in the industry and I'm not, don't want to cite each one here because this is not financial recommendation but definitely like out of the top 100 list on CoinMarketCap if you have five that are really good, that is already a lot. So as assets for appreciation and whatnot, I think that's uh, you should treat it the same as investing in a stock. People uh, you really need to take it seriously as an investment decision. Why are you doing this? You need to do due diligence, understand the protocol, understand who's behind it, understand who controls it. Which is completely different from just using the technology which is just something uh, that you can do without having a side on. If you're uh, thinking it's going to go long or short.

Co-host: I think that you make a really good point in the scenario where if you drive a car you don't need to understand how the gears work, you just need to know the user interface. Right? And crypto had a problem which to be fair is probably you and I being the nerds that really like the cool tech, somewhat our fault but did for a long time have a problem of like it's this like super techy thing that's really hard to get into because all the engineers are designing really interesting tech, not really user friendly stuff. And I love to hear that you guys are thinking like okay, how do we make this into something that people can easily access and utilize? I think that's, that's very, very powerful. And then what you mentioned as well about like if you want to utilize the assets as like an investment vehicle then just like when you're investing in a company you should do your research, you should understand it, you should you know, have a complete and confident comprehensive understanding of it. So I, I totally get where you're coming from in that regard.

Mattheus Veloso Dias: Uh, yeah, and uh, that's completely different. Like holding Apple stock and having an iPhone are completely different things. And in crypto those two things they are uh, confused a lot of the time. Just one detail about etherfi, you could use etherfi and not even realize you're in crypto. Uh, you can um, go into it with like euro or normal USD payments or even uh, brl. Uh, we take pics, there's more on ramps coming in. And then what you get is usdc and then you spend that USDC with a credit card, uh, or a debit card. That is super easy. Uh, there are advanced features for people that want to hold Ethereum and want to put there as a guarantee to use their card. But that is like we do have these power users which are super important for us. Of course they are a big part of the volume but the majority of users are just like just, just want to use the, the product as like a number, not a majority of volume but a majority of number of users. They may not even realize uh, they're in crypto. So to me it's really good to, I live here in Cayman but it's just funnily enough I just take my, my money in USDC and if I want to get it to Brazil I will literally ship it to the uh, to, to Nubank which will take that USDC and then I can just off ramp there or I would just do straight payments from Etherfi and Pix to Brazilian merchants. So you just have these interfaces that just facilitate this, this process from crypto to the normal financial system and at some point it's just seamless and that is where we want to get through as an industry in, in my opinion.

Co-host: Nice, very cool, thank you. I uh, do wanna ask, you know, we've now got a good background that you've talked about in regards to Defi and Etherfi and understanding a bit of the crypto stuff. Where are you guys seeing if you're happy to share? No problem if you're not. But where are you guys seeing the most utilization? Like are you seeing particular countries are using it a lot or you know, what, what would you say is the type of people that are using it that aren't those you know, really hardcore power users?

Mattheus Veloso Dias: Yeah, I absolutely can share and this is public information as of uh, our last uh, analyst call this Tuesday we had one if anyone's interesting. So our biggest market in number of customers is Brazil and I don't know if just where the success of that has come from precisely. A lot of it is just like personal relationships where the people you know just promote to the people they know and just where you get virality. And we do have a lot of resilience on the team so that definitely helps with the word of mouth. But also uh, we also see people in the uae. They may not be the biggest number of customers but they're great customers because many of them are high spenders or uh, high value customers and trust us with a lot of their funds. So we're also seeing adoption there in Taiwan. I um, think a USD card is something that is common in Taiwan. So for them has been uh, in my understanding has been kind of a natural shift. Like I don't even, I'm not sure if they're looking at it on a crypto perspective of just like oh, I have a card that spends in USD that I can use everywhere and gives um, me cash back and there's this account that just may be simple. So yeah, uae, Taiwan, uh, Brazil, very big markets for us. Other notable mentions are the EU as a whole, if you group them as a market, is a pretty big market for us. And it's just all over the place. We saw a big growth in Indonesia last month and it just really depends on where you have one or multiple customers that are really your fanatics and just like trying to get everyone they know into this product and say, hey guy, this is great, just come. So it's really, when you're just launching to the whole world at once, it's just kind of unpredictable exactly where it's going to fit. But we do see spots of like, oh, we have a very good product market fit here for Brazil specifically. I know a lot because like I'm from there. So the reason why we have a good PMF there is that in Brazil you need to pay a uh, 3.5% tax to buy dollars. And this is as of last year, this is a new tax introduced by the government. So not just US dollars, any foreign currency, you need to buy it on fx. So places like Wise, Revolut and other standard wallets that are already way better than what we had before, which was literally going someplace, giving them cash and getting US dollars with 10% spread. So uh, just comparing these new neobanks like Wise, they do have to pay this tax and crypto, usdc, the fact that it's a, uh, crypto and that it's not foreign currency. The current legal understanding of most experts in Brazil is that this tax does not apply to crypto. So there's a major advantage that out of the start you already have three point, uh, three percent discount in everything. So it just really depends where you're getting your product market fit. Sometimes you might, may stumble into it, sometimes you may actually build towards it. It just really depends. So yeah, definitely seeing some, some growth in Asia, South America and Europe.

Host: Yeah, that's really fascinating because I don't know that I would have been able to sort of like predict, you know, that growth pattern. I'm sure it is a great way to, but. And also kind of fascinating because you have such a personal connection to Brazil to see that product market fit and you know, your understanding of, you know, all of kind of the layers that you need for that, like user growth. Um, I was thinking as a fellow alumni of the entrepreneurship, the MIT Entrepreneurship Bootcamp programs, do you find that, you know, is there any of that training that still is useful to you in a Situation like this in a company like this or, you know, have you gone through some other kind of entrepreneurial training that has been even more useful to you?

Mattheus Veloso Dias: No, I would say I use it all the time in the background a little bit like math. Like, you're not really, really thinking about using math. You're just doing it. And, uh, I think that the same with that training, I think it just has helped me of what's like the dictionary of concepts you need to understand. And before joining, I didn't know how to do a proper financial planning of just bringing things to present value and just interrogating the numbers a lot before you're putting them out to investors or even just internal view. And also understanding product market fit, understanding growth, understanding unit economics. That is very big ones. So all of these very big topics you would probably need an MBA or other longer programs to get. I feel I really did get, uh, as they call it, um, drinking from a water hose.

Host: Fire hose. Yeah.

Mattheus Veloso Dias: So, yeah, just. It was really good to.

Host: You're getting to use all the metaphors today.

Mattheus Veloso Dias: Yeah, yeah. And just over time, it's. I would say that it's not something I keep on my mind all along, but it just helps you get into the conversations. When people start talking about these concepts and you already know what they are, you already know how to apply them, and you actually have the theory and some practical examples of that that really helps you. Like, there's definitely other ways you could get it. I don't, don't think like you absolutely need a bootcamp for that, but it's like, it's just very efficient. So, yeah, I would say the content, um, besides just the networking, people like these events because networking is great and it is great, but I would say the content has been very valuable as well.

Co-host: Awesome. I'm so glad. I feel the same way. I found that there's been a lot of use in the mindset and information that you get from the MIT bootcamp. It was very much something that helped, uh, me in a lot of ways. Now we've talked about a lot of things in the, you know, your past and a lot about what, you know, you're doing now. I'd love to get a little bit of a feel for what you see in the future. Now you've obviously just started your work with Etherfi seven months ago, I think it is. And that's still very exciting. A job that you're really enjoying, which is phenomenal. But you've also mentioned to us already today that you are at some point. Interested in starting your own thing in the future? Is that something that you've got an idea of what you want to work on or a space you're interested in? Do you think you'd stay in crypto in your crystal ball? What does that look like to you?

Mattheus Veloso Dias: Yeah, that's a very interesting one. Like I've been. Ten years ago I mentioned my previous podcast. I was trying to start uh, a startup and I had 000 work experience and I thought that like, oh, I will work for a few years and I'll learn some things and I'll try it again. And I haven't gotten to the point of actually considering trying it again because I just feel like there's still so much that I don't know. At some point you just have to like do the jump.

Co-host: Yeah.

Mattheus Veloso Dias: But I definitely see myself in ether 5 for years still. But I'm really interested on just having that because I just think it's a uh, very uneven payoff. Even though the risk is really big that the payoff is even. It's even higher. So it's probably something all of us should probably try at some point. Even if you're just, just like, I don't know, uh, stay a year gathering some money just so that you can like have some Runway to fail. But regarding the. Your question on exactly where to do that, I still find that very difficult to answer because you just really need uh, a very specific need that you need to solve and finding one and just committing to it like it's maybe harder than ever because there's just all these startups that are just moving so fast. Like with AI tomorrow. Like there are a lot of startups that existed and just anthropic releases a new feature and then all of these startups go bust because their whole thing was just using APIs to access these more expensive models from someone else. And then when the model itself releases that feature just kills all of them. So kind of a tough. But it's always been tough. I don't know if it's tougher now than it was before. Maybe it's just because that's what's on everyone's minds right now. But what I would think at the moment it would have to be something. And uh, with the crypto, especially blockchain, some kind of solution is just where I am at and where I have the context to understand exactly what's going on. But I'm not really married to that idea as well. Just uh, maybe you can get a really good business. Ah, Partner that has an opportunity in, um, maybe adjacent, maybe not so adjacent field that wants to pursue. And if you think, if I think that is worth it, maybe that could work for me as well. But if I were to start, I would definitely have to stay kind of at least in the vicinity of uh, what I know, because you just, you know, suppliers, you know people, you know devs, you know, managers, you know, the, these companies that you work for, you start building relationship, good relationship with their manager. So if you want to create a service for them, that has also really helped you. So I think straying way too far from where you're building your career may be harder than it should be. So that, that's probably where, where I see myself maybe in 10 years from now.

Host: I think it's good that you have some very specific ideas of what you'd be skilled for and what you're interested in. But you're still pretty open. That seems like a really good place to be. Along those lines. I know that there's an impermanence, you know, to the work situation that you're in in the sense of like, geographical location, because I think it's nine years. Am I correct that you can work on Grand Cayman and then you have to leave.

Mattheus Veloso Dias: You can get a, uh, citizenship at that point. So you can just.

Host: Can you. Oh, okay. Because, um, my understanding before was that you actually, you couldn't get citizenship. Okay.

Mattheus Veloso Dias: Yeah, but I don't see myself staying here that long. Um, ETHERFI will keep growing, will definitely probably need more offices and there's ways to not stay here. So there's already people that's been here for a few years and then they move to other offices. So, yeah, there's ways. I don't see myself. I really like the island, love the sun and do love my routine here. But, um, it's just really difficult to access and very expensive to access. Like, even though it's not that far from Brazil, the flight connections are not that great. Like if you were in place like Miami, it would be just cut the travel time in half because of connections and whatnot. So, yeah, um, yeah, definitely don't, don't see myself staying here that long, but.

Host: Okay, well, you're kind of answering the question I was going to ask you anyway, which is like, do you find it, you know, interesting and exciting to have that, like, kind of impermanence and knowing that like you're going to make a change, you know, or does that feel limiting? And it sounds like you're a person that really finds that exciting.

Mattheus Veloso Dias: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I've done this so, so much at this point. So I, I did a high school exchange in Canada for six months in 2012. I stayed a year in Germany. In 2017, 18, I moved to Sao Paulo. Uh, so my hometown is Belo Risonje, but I moved to Sao Paulo for one and a half years, uh, at the very end ish of the pandemic, because that's when Nubank, uh, was reopening their office. I really wanted to be in person. Even though the role was a fully remote role, uh, I really wanted to be there. So just move there for one and a half years. So I just used to moving around. I always end up going back home because I just really like my hometown. But I do enjoy these, these experiences.

Co-host: That's awesome.

Host: It's.

Co-host: It's great to get that variety of experiences and places that you. You've been able to work in. It's not something that's sort of ever been accessible before in human history.

Mattheus Veloso Dias: Right.

Co-host: So it's good that you're sort of grabbing onto that now whilst you have that opportunity. Um, um, yeah.

Mattheus Veloso Dias: And, uh, just. Just to compliment, when, when you do it once, when you do it twice, it just becomes a lot easier. I think the first time is like this huge. Oh, my God. A new country, new language, a new culture. At some point you're like, yeah, that's just another one of those, you know.

Co-host: Yeah, absolutely. Very fair. I think it's also something that, in that regard changes you like doing. Doing those sort of hops and being immersed in totally different cultures opens your mind to, you know, a variety of different cultures and places and things, which is, I think, really, really interesting. I've only done the hop once so far, but I'd love to do it again at some point. I think, um, there's a lot of

Mattheus Veloso Dias: Brits in Cayman, and I don't think they're coming back. I don't think they're coming back.

Co-host: I think you've got a very good point.

Mattheus Veloso Dias: They probably are.

Co-host: Ah. Um, thank you. Uh, maybe I'll need to check it out. Come visit me sometime. Okay. So we are close, ah, to the end of the hour. Do you have time for maybe one or two more questions? Is that all right?

Mattheus Veloso Dias: Yeah, absolutely.

Co-host: Excellent. I guess we've done into the tech a lot and we've dug into sort of, uh, uh, a lot of the hard things that I think is hard skills and stuff that I think is really important in entrepreneurship, but I feel like we haven't touched too Much on the lighter side, I'd love to understand from your perspective, how do you sort of stay motivated and continuing to put effort into the things that really excite you?

Mattheus Veloso Dias: Well, the easy part is like we all need money and money. Money is great. Yeah. I have a goal of having three or more children and that is something that like five years ago I definitely was not thinking. But uh, I don't have any. I'm not even married yet. But this is something I'm just thinking far into the future and it's just become so expensive to have children that just, that does give you a drive of like. I mean, I have to work a lot and I have to place my bets. Well, so that can pay off, that I can hopefully have children. I can just uh, give them the life that they uh, that I got. So I think that that to me is a, a major driver. Besides of the professional and the uh, and the dreamy stuff, there's definitely something that's always going to be there. And yeah, I would say that is the biggest thought in my mind. I also bought my first home. It's an apartment, it's building back in Belarusian.

Co-host: Congratulation.

Mattheus Veloso Dias: Yeah, thank you. And when you have that, that is also a uh, good debt. Maybe not like, maybe not personal on that, but when you have this kind of good debt and like you're actually building towards something you can see every month, every month it like change and just take, take shape. I would say there's also a major driver I did, I didn't have before when I was just like building a financial portfolio and you're like seeing the number go up and it's great and all but like, like seeing. There's something about seeing something real that you're gonna get to live in that is just uh, really distinct and just like also the opportunity to pay that as quickly as possible so you can actually own the place. That has also been a very big driver on the last few uh, years as well. Um, I don't know if uh, I see that Giovanni, uh, is here. I don't know if he has any questions. Um, also just wanted to invite him if he wants.

Host: Thank you Matt for, for sharing.

Mattheus Veloso Dias: So many insights. Yes, I have a, uh, quick question with regard your previous uh, uh, picture on uh, crypto values. Uh, you gave us your uh, the idea of your business in such a picture. Can you tell us how it's possible to convert this uh, investment in uh, money or uh, something that is possible to reuse it? Well, thanks you uh, Giovanni, you can actually use our product. So if you have crypto in our platform, you can actually use the card to buy groceries. M. This is what I do every day, literally. I get, uh, my salary in crypto, and I'll go to the supermarket and I'll just use the card and I'll get real things. So, uh, that was a perfect. But it's almost like we're doing an ad here. Yeah, I'd say today that is the best, um, the best case scenario. Also, uh, sending money to other countries that is also facilitated by crypto. Like, I want to. As I mentioned, I want to have, uh, bills to pay in Brazil on the apartment and whatnot. So just use crypto to send money there. It's way faster than using other kinds of remittance solutions.

Host: Thank you so much for opening the conversation, Matt. And, uh, Giovanni, thanks for the great question. I really appreciate a lot of your great answers today. Um, I want to hit you with just one more deep question. How at this point in your journey, because I think you said it's been five years since we spoke, so I know probably the way I can tell, the way you view things is radically different. And by the way, I give you so much respect for thinking about having children now. I just had my first and only child, very likely. And I mean, I thought. I thought about it, but it's. You're right. Uh, there's a lot to think about and pay for. So I think that's a wonderful goal. But at this point in your journey, how do you define success for yourself? And do you find it different personally and professionally, or are they kind of linked for you?

Mattheus Veloso Dias: Yeah, I would say that five years ago I cared a lot more about the professional success and. And like, just, uh, financial success as well. Today I do see myself really happy with more mundane goals of, like, having a family, having a house, and just having a peaceful life. And like, I don't know, you try to start a startup, you fail, you're like, oh, well, just join someone else's. It's also okay to join someone else's dream and help them build it, even if you're like, not a, uh, partner. I also think that is a very fair and very good life. Like, definitely, like, as I said, like, definitely need to try at some point. But I, before, it was like this thing that I absolutely need to succeed at, and otherwise I'm an, uh, imposter and whatnot. Today is more like, uh, I'm a lot more chill with that. I can see myself being really happy with meeting These personal goals that are not necessarily professional because I think they just, at the end of the day, they're just so much more meaningful than the work we do in our work.

Co-host: Awesome. Thank you so much. I think it's often underappreciated the importance in entrepreneurial space, uh, of those sort of more, as you say, mundane but also super significant goals. So thank you for sharing that. Now, last question that we like to wrap up with is what words of wisdom or piece of advice would you like to leave us with today?

Mattheus Veloso Dias: I would say, uh, this is kind of out of a textbook, but just put your money where you know what's going on. Because a lot of people came in, they got burned. And this happens, like, with any craze. And it's like, has happened to cryptocurrency multiple times. It has gone to booms and busts. And like, if you're not ready for the, the volatility and the craziness, maybe don't put your money there or just start very slow to, like. I've seen a lot of people get burned. They get into defi, and then they start, uh, taking leverage positions, and then, like, if it goes down 10%, they're liquidated. And, uh, just so sad to see that actually happening. The thing about the blockchain is all public, so you can actually see that this is happening almost every day. So definitely, like, know what you're doing when you're putting money on something. Like, I had a very good time with cryptocurrency, not only, like, my salary coming from crypto over the last three years on the crypto team on neubang and also here, but also I started investing in bitcoin with my first ever salary in 2017. And it helped me really, uh, put down a good chunk of the down payment for my apartments. But that was over, uh, like eight years of holding and swings and ups and downs. And that is what you need to do if you want to get into that space. And I would say the same for, uh, these more volatile stocks can probably be said. So that is the piece of reason I would put, like, be very careful with what you're putting your money in. If you don't understand, you probably should not be putting money on that. And of course, the same for companies, right? Like, if you're in a startup, you're just a startup. You're just an investment of your time and your sweat, uh, and tears. So, uh, just make sure that, like, when you're joining a team, you just understand that this is an investment as well. Way bigger actually than buying stock. Because this is. You are way more exposed than someone that has, I don't know, uh, let's say someone has like 50k invested in a stock. They are way less exposed than someone who's an employee, because someone who's an employee just has all of their income or most of the income time to that company and their future, their growth prospects. So just taking these is a very rational, very cold, calculated decision instead of being, uh, emotional about it. I think that is, uh, that really helps. And of course, seeking for, uh, professional advice is also super important when you're looking at those decisions.

Host: Very wisely said. Great life advice. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much, Matt, for sharing, uh, part of your weekend with us, for taking so much time to teach uh, us today. And we really look forward to hearing about the next steps in your journey. Thank you also to everyone that joined us live. Spencer and I and the team behind Founders Voyage feel really fortunate to be part of this community with you and for the opportunity to bring you cooperative learning experiences like this one each week. Um, and we invite your nominations for future interview guests and topical chats. Matt, if people would like to get in touch with you and learn more about you, learn about your journey, how would you like them to do that?

Mattheus Veloso Dias: Yeah, just reach, uh, me out on LinkedIn or here on Discord. Also, I answer, probably Discord is even better, to be honest. But if you're hearing this on the Internet and you're not in the Discord, just reach me out on LinkedIn.

Host: Excellent. We'll make sure you share your LinkedIn profile and we'll also share our previous interview with Matt. That was a few years ago, and you can kind of see how he's grown and changed as well. Well, thank you so much again. Um, we hope you have a great rest of your weekend and we'll connect with you soon.

Mattheus Veloso Dias: Yeah, you guys as well. It's been great. And I guess I'll see you in five years.

Host: Probably a little bit sooner than that. I think we were just getting started five years ago and things have evolved and changed, so.

Co-host: All right, thank you so much.

Mattheus Veloso Dias: Thanks, guys.

Co-host: It's been a pleasure as always.

Mattheus Veloso Dias: See you.

Host: All right, take care. Have a great rest of your day.

Mattheus Veloso Dias: You've just finished another episode of Founders Voyage, the podcast for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs. The team at Founders Voyage wants to thank you from the bottom of our hearts. We hope you enjoyed your time with us, and if so, please share this with someone else who might enjoy this podcast. You can also support us by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and by donating to our Patreon Outro. Music Today is Something for Nothing by Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band.