Chris Maurice - Stablecoins, Africa, and $15M a Day in Transactions - ep 179

Speaker A: I'd been on a plane four times in my life before starting the company and land in Lagos, Nigeria on a six day old passport, no visa, no shots and a one way ticket that we spend all of our money on.

Speaker B: This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only and is not investment, legal or financial advice. Opinions are those of the host and guests and do not reflect any affiliated entities. Investing involves risk and past performance is not indicative of future results. The host and guests may hold positions in discussed securities now. Please enjoy the show. Chris, thank you so much for joining me today. Super excited to chat with you. All right, Chris, you're the CEO of Yellow Card. Yellow Card is a stablecoin and payments infrastructure company built for emerging markets. You guys are live and operating in over 40 countries. I believe you were guys were the first licensed stablecoin on and off ramp in for the African continent. And you guys have now expanded from not only Africa, but also South America and then any other, any other continents we should, we should mention.

Speaker A: You got to do all of them, baby. That's uh, all continents are equal, man. That's uh, everyone except Antarctica. We don't do anything for them really. Actually, uh, no, I mean, so we do, we're doing uh, Africa, South America, Southeast Asia, um, and then parts of Europe.

Speaker B: You, you need to update your LinkedIn. You know, just said Africa. So I, I want to hear, I want to hear it all.

Speaker A: There's a lot on my LinkedIn that is uh, that is out of date. So uh, that uh, that does make sense. Yeah.

Speaker B: Cool. All right, Chris, well, you went from, you know, according to your LinkedIn and hopefully this is accurate. But uh, in, in college I believe you were, you were buying and selling Pokemon cards. So I know that's not, you know, super on point with, with stablecoins and whatnot, but could you tell me about that experience? Because obviously being like an early entrepreneur, there's lots of entrepreneurs early on that were involved in kind of Internet hustles if you will. And selling Pokemon cards is like definitely one of them. So like, tell me about that experience growing up in selling Pokemon cards.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I mean I, I, that started back in fifth grade and then that is, I mean essentially what I did up until doing Yellow Card.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Uh, so you know, look man, Pokemon cards are the original store of value, right? You're out, you're out on the playground. You know, no cash is going to be accepted. You need to, you need to be slinging charizards if you want to get your way, right? Um, so, yeah, I mean, you know, I would. I mean, essentially, you know, I mean, yeah, you talk about like an Internet hustle, right. I would essentially just arbitrage between different websites. Right. So, you know, you buy it on Craigslist, sell it on ebay, and, you know, make your money in the middle. Right. So, um, yeah, I mean, that was. That was essentially what I did, uh, you know, to, I mean, make money throughout, uh, you know, throughout high school and then, uh, into college. And, um, you know, what I will say about it is I was probably 10 years too early. I don't know if you've seen the market for this stuff, but once, uh, the, uh, you know, once, uh, Jake and. And Logan, Paul, those guys got into it and the YouTubers started getting involved, man, that's uh, that market Thousand X. So I shouldn't have just held.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I think it was, uh, uh, during COVID I think, when that went really crazy. And. But. But maybe you were the reason why the market was so stable. Like, you were the one keeping the prices stable because you were so efficient and maybe it's possible.

Speaker A: No, we. We run an efficient game here, man. That's, uh.

Speaker B: Did that love of Pokemon cards, is that what brought you into Bitcoin or How did you discover Bitcoin? Because you mentioned before you just. You actually discovered Bitcoin, got involved in 2013. So how did that start?

Speaker A: Yes. Yeah, so, no, that, uh, completely unrelated to, uh, to Pikachu. Um, so my, uh, my co founder got into it in about 2012. So he is, uh, you know, the guy that would be scourging Reddit forums and everything back in the day. Right. Uh, you know, very. How do you say, uh, attuned to new technology and, and sort of everything going on. Um, and so he's the one that introduced me to it originally. Uh, that was. Yeah, I guess 2013. Now. Uh, and so about two years in, I was fully down the rabbit hole. Right. Like, this is the best thing ever. This is what we're doing. Uh, and so Justin and I, uh, tried a couple of things in the States. Uh, none of them worked. Most of them were hilarious. And, uh, that's when, uh, that's when we got involved.

Speaker B: So you talking about Bitcoin and how you guys were. Or he taught you about Bitcoin, and then from there you guys were trying different, uh, different companies, different hustles. And then I assume yellow card was spun from that point. Is that accurate?

Speaker A: Yes. Yeah, yeah, sorry. Uh, yeah, I wanted to ask, do we want to Go right into, like, the Africa stuff.

Speaker B: I think, uh, just hearing the evolution of how Yellow Card was, like, you know, going from knowing about bitcoin to starting Yellow Card, I think would be pretty cool.

Speaker A: Sick. Okay. Uh, sorry. You want to tee that up again?

Speaker B: All right, so, so did. Did the Pokemon, you know, kind of, uh, uh, you know, buying and selling and the activity there. Is that what led you to learning, diving deep into Bitcoin? Because you mentioned before that you actually got involved in Bitcoin 2013.

Speaker A: Yes. Yeah, no, so completely unrelated, uh, Pikachu did not introduce me to bitcoin, as much as I would love to be able to tell that as an origin story. Uh, so my now co founder, uh, got me into the space. Right? So he's. He's the guy that was, you know, scourging web forums back in the day. Right. Uh, you know, always up to date on the new technology, all of that. Uh, and so, I mean, you know, he'd walk around college parties just talking about bitcoin, right? Just evangelizing the gospel. I mean, he's about six, seven, very sweaty. Uh, he'd have, you know, six people at a college party, arms spread wide, just. Just, uh, sermon on the mounting Bitcoin. And, uh, that, uh, that's what got me into the space.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker A: So that was back in 2013. Uh, by 2015, I was just fully down the rabbit hole, right? Like, you know, this is the best thing ever. This is what we're doing. Uh, we tried a number of things in the states. None, uh, of them worked. Most of them were hilarious. And, uh, that's when we actually, we met a guy, uh, at a Wells Fargo, right? So, uh, you know, what we landed on was we were going to put a gift card and cvs, Walmart, things like that, right? You'd walk and buy this gift card, redeem it for bitcoin, which I still stand by is a great idea. Um, and, you know, we were building this out, and one day, uh, Justin and I are at this Wells Fargo in Auburn, Alabama, the capital of innovation. And, uh, this guy was sending $200 to his family, and the bank charged him $90 to send 200 to Nigeria. And I thought, well, that's crazy, right? So I talked to this guy, hey, if you heard of bitcoin, it's free, it's instant, it's fun, all this great stuff. And went home and just started thinking, what's this guy's mom going to do with $200 in Bitcoin? You can't buy Food with that, you can't pay rent with that. And everybody in this industry, as you know, we all love to talk about all the problems that we solve. Uh, so you hear all the time about changing the world and making money move better and all this. And here's a real guy, real problem, you know, what's this doing for him, right? And so I don't think I knew where Nigeria was on a map at the time. Uh, they don't teach you nearly as much about Africa as you might expect in the Louisiana education system. Now, I know that might come as a surprise to you, Andrew, but, uh, it is true. Um, and, uh, yeah, I just, you know, I wanted to learn everything that I could. Right? So I started doing all this research and, and you know, trying to understand the, you know, the country and the currency and the continent and the banking system. And uh, you know, while doing all this research, I realized if I want to understand Nigeria, I need to speak to somebody from there. And so I, uh, I put out an ad online that said looking to speak to Nigerian men. Which, you know, in hindsight probably could have been worded better. Um, but I did get exactly what I wanted, which was my DMs full of Nigerian men. So it was a great summer. So, uh, you know, basically ended, uh, up meeting this guy. And this was about the point in my life where I learned that Nigerians are the most convincing people on the face of this planet. Uh, because within about a month and a half of meeting this Nigerian man on the Internet, he convinced me to go get a passport and take the first international flight of my life. I'd been on a plane four times in my life before starting the company and land in Lagos, Nigeria on a six day old passport, no visa, no shots, and a one way ticket that we spend all of our money on. So that's uh, I mean, essentially, you know, sort of how yellow card got into it.

Speaker B: That is outrageous. Okay, so, so these folks that you're speaking to, they were in Nigeria or they were Nigerians in America?

Speaker A: Uh, so, so the first guy that we met, we met a Nigerian guy at a bank that was sent trying to send money home, right? And so that was sort of the catalyst. And then, uh, yeah, when trying to learn about Nigeria, I just wanted to find Nigerians. Right? So funny.

Speaker B: That is so fun. I cannot believe that objectively the Internet

Speaker A: is the best place to find Nigerian.

Speaker B: That is, that is accurate. I cannot believe that your, your first international flight was to Lagos. So, you know, like, I, I've never

Speaker A: Been, you know, a real trial by fire, man. That's, uh, yeah, no, that's, uh.

Speaker B: So I've never lived there, but I, I lived in Africa for a number of, you know, a year or so, and, and, uh, the Middle east for a number of years. But, um, you know, I interacted and met with a lot of Nigerians, worked with many Nigerians when I was out there. And they all complain about Lagos. Like, these Nigerians are like, you know, they're, they're tough people and they're complaining about their city. They're like, man, it's like the craziest city of all time. So the fact that you went there as your first kind uh, of international trip, that. That's insane. That's insane. But, um, I mean, that's incredible. Okay, so you realize you're like, remittance is a big issue. These people are getting essentially shafted on the funds they're sending back home. But also, even if we solve their problem of, hey, let's use Bitcoin to make it cheaper, faster, easier, the issue is what are they going to do with the Bitcoin when they get there? They have to transfer, uh, it into their own currency. So what was your thought process? Were you like, all right, we're going to solve this big remittance problem or more. So the, uh, remittance problem is solved by Bitcoin. We just need to figure out some sort of company in Nigeria to translate that Bitcoin into the local currency.

Speaker A: Yeah. M. So that's what we ended up landing on, Right. I think when we went over it first, uh, the original thought was, is this is a, this is a remittance problem.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker A: And you need to, you need to solve that issue. The, you know, the reality is that there are 7,000 remittance companies, right? But before I finish this sentence, you can download six apps that'll allow you to send money wherever you need in the world pretty much instantly. Right. And so it's not, it's not so much a access problem as it is. The entire system just doesn't work. Right. I, you know, the remittance. The way that the remittance industry works, right, because it hasn't changed since, you know, Western Union started In the, the 1800s.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: The, the way that the entire industry works is, you know, these, these companies send to hundreds of countries, right? And they park money in those countries in inflationary currencies ahead of time to make sure that when Andrew walks into a location or when Andrew downloads that app and wants to send that money, that the recipient gets it instantly because the expectation from the market, from the consumer is that the recipient is going to get that money pretty much instantly. And the only way to do that is to have money sitting there ready to go in, you know, Argentina or, you know, Kenya or wherever it is that that money's being sent. And so, you know, this money just sits there, right? It takes, I mean, in some cases, a couple of days for the money to get there in the first place to exchange into local currency and then just sits there, right? And it, it, the money inflates, the currency value changes, right? And all of that adds up to why the industry is so expensive, right? I think that, I think that there's this misconception that, you know, some of these companies are charging outrageous fees or just sort of rolling in profits. And it's just not true in general when you look at the industry, right? Um, and, yeah, and, you know, stable coins and, and sort of, you know, I mean, bitcoin back then, but now, stable coins were the first technology that actually enabled that money to move instantly, right? So rather than me having to park money, you know, two days, three days, four days in advance, I can move that money instantly and, you know, do it in real time. Right? Andrew needs to send a hundred dollars to Kenya. That money can move in real time to Kenya, be liquidated for shilling, and then, you know, move out.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker A: And so it's, uh, you know, I mean, essentially what we realized is, you know, the, you know, solving that problem as a remittance company, you're only solving it for the people that you can reach, right? If we work with remittance companies, if we work with banks, we work with, you know, these financial institutions to enable them to use stablecoins. Right? To enable them to use blockchain technology. Right? Again, you know, starting with bitcoin. But now, obviously, stablecoins, we can, you know, do a lot more to actually improve this industry, right? And to actually change the way that the industry works rather than trying to sort of dive in and do it ourselves. And so that's, I, uh, mean, you know, that's essentially what we set out to do is just how do you, you know, how do you provide the actual on and off ramps, right? So that's, you know, bitcoin, stablecoins, etc, can be utilized in these countries and then actually move, you know, in and out, right? Move into local currency, move into something that actually matters in that local context.

Speaker B: Can you take me back to the early days of, of when you Guys were you and Justin were out there and take me through their product evolution, because I assume you guys went out there and, you know, back in the day is like, mostly bitcoin and other cryptos as well, but stables, like, weren't that popular or weren't that large. Um, so take me through the evolution, because I'm sure it was like crypto first and then stables were added, and maybe that was a game changer. So can you take me through that. That evolution?

Speaker A: Yes. Yeah. So here's a. Here's a fun fact for you, though. Uh, so Justin didn't make the trip. He, uh, got pneumonia a few days before, went to his doctor, uh, at Bubba's Medicine Shop in Opelika, Alabama. And, uh, he was like, doc, tell it to me straight. Can I still go to Nigeria with pneumonia? And the doctor just looked at him and said, no. So, um, yeah. And so, uh, we had, uh, the guy that's now our cmo, uh, came on, I think, two days notice, called, uh, his mom on Mother's Day, told her, told her he's going to Nigeria for a while. So real, uh, crazy guy. Um, but, yeah, so I think, uh, you know, the. The evolution, right, like you mentioned, I mean, it started out with just bitcoin, right? I mean, you know, this was, I mean, what, 2018, that, you know, we went over there and started building this. We launched in 2019. And so, I mean, it was just bitcoin back then, right? Nobody wanted Ethereum. It was too expensive, uh, the fees and everything. And so it was just bitcoin that was actually being used to facilitate these transactions. And, you know, when we started out, at first, we were just doing the on and off wrapping, right? Just, I mean, just pure exchange, right? If I have, you know, you have one Bitcoin, which, you know, back then was a lot less. Um, how do you actually just exchange that on and off into local currency, into, uh, whatever it is that you need? And so we were doing, I mean, just that, essentially the on and off ramping. Um, we were adding various assets. This is now 2020. We're adding various crypto assets and everything. Uh, nobody wanted Ethereum because of the fees. Uh, there was, I mean, very little play on anything else, right? It was, I mean, pretty much 100% Bitcoin. And we added USDT as our first stablecoin, uh, in 2020. And within 24 hours of adding USDT, we went from essentially 100% Bitcoin to 70% Bitcoin, 30% USDT. And so it was like, oh crap, we finally got one that people want, right? Uh, within four months we were 99% USDT. I mean it was just a rapid shift over to stablecoins. And uh, the more that we started talking to people about why you were buying thousands of dollars of Bitcoin before, why are you now doing this all in usdt? It became more and more apparent that for pretty much all of these customers, it's a payments use case. And it is a lot easier to make payments in the dollar than it is to make payments in bitcoin, right, or any other speculative asset. There's a reason the dollar is used for payments all over the world, right? And so just the, you know, the more that we talk to people, it's, you, uh, know, well, I, you know, I use this to, to settle an invoice, right? I use this to import goods from China. I use this to, you know, to pay suppliers to, you know, send money here to do this, to do that. Um, and the dollar just makes it significantly easier, right? Having a paint currency makes it significantly easier to actually facilitate those.

Speaker B: So in those early days, what was the flow like for the customer? Because, you know, someone from, let's say the US would send crypto to someone in Lagos, let's say, and was there like an app that I would just sell my Bitcoin and into the native local, uh, currency, which I think is, but what's the local currency of Nigeria? I forget the name.

Speaker A: Naira.

Speaker B: Naira. So, so we just like, I uh, could just easily do that into turn into Naira or would I have to go to like the bank and physically withdraw the Naira? Like what was that? What, what did. Mechanically it looked like for, for the end customer.

Speaker A: Yeah. So we, I mean from the early days we've been, uh, you know, linked up with local banking systems, right. Mobile money, local banks, et cetera, depending on uh, the country obviously. And so uh, in the early days it was just the app, right?

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Uh, you would download the app, we gave you a wallet and then you could buy and sell.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker A: And it was, I mean it was as simple as that. So it was connected to, you know, your bank account, to your mobile money, whatever, put money on, buy, sell, you know, send, spend, do whatever you want. We uh, give you a wallet and then you could on an off ramp and that was it. That was, I mean that was all that we were doing. Um, and so, you know, a number of the, like the sort of native payments features and things like that that we have now, that all came Later. Right? Uh, but early days. Just a wallet and. Yeah, a buy and sell button.

Speaker B: That's awesome. Okay, so a lot of founders talk about, you know, achieving product market fit. Like, so it sounds like before you guys had traction, things were. Things were moving and that might have felt like product market fit, but when you added stables, you mentioned business kind of went crazy. And so, like, how was that? Like, what was the vibe like at the company? Were you guys like, oh, my God, like, we thought we were doing okay, and now, like, this is what true product market feels like? Or was it more of a slow, steady ramp up?

Speaker A: Uh, it was, it was a bit of a slow, steady ramp up. I mean, the. The big, like, oh, shit moment for us came actually during COVID So, like, April of 2020. Um, that was when. That was when things, like, took off. Right. Um, and, you know, I think, you know, with COVID you had obviously the lockdown and all of that across the world, but then you also had sort of more issues with payments, with banks, et cetera, than ever before. Right? Because the banks are also locked down. The banks are also having all these other issues. And so, you know, I mean, that was when. That was when people really started looking to this technology, right? Bitcoin at the time now stable coins as, you know, an alternative way of facilitating these international payments. Right. And I mean, during COVID we went before COVID right? Leading up to Covid, we were doing, I mean, maybe a million dollars a month, Right? Um, which I get. I mean, sounds like a lot, but you know, for crypto exchange, that's not, you know, that's not a ton.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker A: Um, and during COVID I mean, so in the. In the period between, like, April and May, we went from like a million dollars a month to a million dollars a day. I mean, uh, like, it. Within the course of like, 30 to 45 days. And it was just like, oh, crap, what do we. Oh, oh, we're company now. We have to, like, we have to do things like. And so that was. That was more the moment of like, you know, oh, crap, like, product market fit. Like, it was kind of. It was already there, but like, it just accelerated the adoption curve, right? Um, yeah. And so that. That more than anything was when that, like, you know, it started sparking that. I think that, um, the sort of the evolution into payments came a little bit later, right? And that came more when we started working more with businesses, Right? Because at the time, you know, at this point, we were still working with consumers, and for consumers, you know, the payments Are typically smaller, Right? Typically, uh, easier. Um, in a lot of cases, you know, these are small businesses. Right. So this is like a guy that, you know, sells shoes or whatever on the side of the road that he's importing from China. And, you know, with smaller payments, uh, we find that it's typically actually easier with smaller payments to make them natively with stable coins. Make them natively with, like, digital assets. Right. Because you can always kind of find a way to do it for, you know, like a couple thousand bucks. Uh, with large businesses, those guys need dollars in a bank account. They don't. They don't want stable coins. They don't want Bitcoin. They don't want any of that. They want all the benefits of the tech. Right. They, at this point, that, you know, blockchain is more efficient and this is, you know, a better way of moving money around the world and exchanging and all of that. So they want the benefits, but they don't want to have to deal with any of it.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: They don't want to have to set up wallets, they don't want to have to manage keys. They don't want to have to, you know, they don't want to do any of that. And so the sort of evolution into more native payments came a little bit later. More like 2022, which is about the time that we started really diving in on businesses. And, you know, we started just sort of re exploring. Well, you know, what does product market fit look like for a business versus a consumer?

Speaker B: Yeah, so, so the products, we'd evolve basically from more remittance focused to now it's like, okay, on the website I pulled it treasury, cash management payments, API, international payments. You can also trade crypto. So, like, what problems were you solving for the businesses? Because the consumers, obviously, they need to send money here and there's. But for the businesses you mentioned that they're buying, I don't know, massive amounts of whatever, raw material from, or maybe sending raw material to China or buying products from China or whatever. Could you describe how your product suite evolved to tackle these different problems that these customers were facing?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think the big difference between businesses and consumers. So it's the same use case. We solve the same use case. Um, it's just the scale is a lot different. Right. With consumers, our average payment, I mean, our average transaction size. When we were doing just consumer, which again, I mean, consumer is a strong word. It was in practice more like small businesses, sole proprietors, things like that. Uh, our average transaction size back then was like 500 bucks, 600 bucks. Uh, our average transaction size now is $800,000. Right? And so it's, I mean, just a significantly different scale that these businesses operate at. Right. Um, and I think, you know, the, um, the big thing, the big thing that we realized is, you know, with consumers and, you know, look, I don't know about you, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but you know, for me at least, if you just leave me alone like in a room, I'm not sending money internationally that often. Right. Like maybe once in a while if I want to, I don't know, buy something in Europe or whatever.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Uh, businesses are doing this every single day.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: And these guys end up with money stuck all over the world. These guys end up with, you know, cash that they have a hard time converting in a number of countries where there's not, you know, solid liquidity against the dollar. Where, you know, SWIFT and the international banking system just were not built for these countries. Right. Uh, it just wasn't built for emerging markets. It was built for the US it was built for Europe. Right. It wasn't built for, you know, Togo and, and places like that that go through, you know, several intermediaries before they have their dollars sitting in New York. Right. And so, you know, the, the scale changed, uh, pretty significantly. The product suite, the product suite needed to evolve for business use cases. Right. It needed to be, you know, like, how do you submit an invoice that can be paid and things like that. Right. More than actually changing what we were doing, the underlying plumbing has never really changed. Right. We, I mean, you know, we facilitate payments. We use stable, the, you know, it's the whole stablecoin sandwich that I'm sure you've heard all about. Right. Uh, and so, you know, the underlying plumbing never really changed. What, what sort of changed was the way that it's presented. Right. And sort of the tools that are available for these businesses to use around it.

Speaker B: And so you guys read a million dollars a month, but, you know, kind of way back in the day. Can you say how, you know, what's your volume today? Like, uh, a daily volume or even monthly volume.

Speaker A: Oh man. I mean, on a, on any given day right now, we'll do, I mean, 15ish million of like revenue generating transactions per day. Yeah.

Speaker B: That's, that's incredible. Wow. Okay, so can you, can you. Because, uh, you know, I'm not, I'm not a payments guy. Like, I don't know payments that well. But can you describe the the kind of architecture or the flow that companies were using before integrating with you guys. Like, let's say a company in Nigeria is buying some stuff from China. Um, like as you said, they have money stuck in different accounts, but they want dollars. And it's like neither, you know, China is native currency, not dollars. And same with Nigeria. So can you just describe to me like, that flow of how it worked previously and then after, how does it work with. After integrating Yellow card?

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, so, you know, look, if you, if you take any country that has historically had, you know, liquidity issues on the dollar, uh, it works essentially the same in any of those countries, right? In terms of the old flow, right? So if you're in, let's say Argentina, right, And you needed to make a million dollar payment to China for, you know, imports, right? You go to the bank, you fill out a bunch of forms, you go to church, pray to whatever deity you believe in that they actually accept them. And then, you know, hopefully you get those dollars. And in a lot of cases, you're just outright denied. Uh, if you're in sort of, you know, important categories, right, if you're doing food, if you're doing medicine, if you're doing things like that, typically you still don't get enough dollars, right? I mean, look, we work with, you know, a large food producer that, you know, look, some people consider food essential, right? I'm not gonna opine on how dollars get divvied up, but, you know, these guys get, you, uh, know, historically less than 30% of the dollars that they need to, you know, import ingredients and keep, you know, food flowing to the population from, you know, the banking system. And so for that other 70%, they need to, they need to find alternatives, right? And, and you know, look, before stablecoins, people did essentially hawala, right? I don't know if you're familiar with like, hawala, right? But it's, I mean, essentially, uh, like, you know, like Arabic and Indian money movement, right? It's, you know, like I know you and you have an uncle in the uk, so I'm going to give you, you know, money here, and then your uncle's going to sort my guy out, and then everybody's happy, right? And, you know, look, I'm sure your uncle's a great guy, right? Uh, but I don't think I need to explain why he's not the best way to move a million dollars from Uganda to the United States Kingdom, right? And so, you know, you, you sort of, uh, end up in this situation where you know, the companies that need to be able to facilitate these payments often don't get enough access to dollars through the, through the traditional system. Right. And they have to find these informal methods, stablecoins, sort of bridge those two options. Right? It's a formal method. It's a formal option of being able to move the money that doesn't require pulling money out of the economy, doesn't require pulling money out of the banking system, but still allows large companies the transparency and the, the sort of, you know, compliance tooling and, and uh, you know, tracking and tracing that they expect. And that's why when you look at, you know, I mean, some of these, you know, some of these large companies, you know, that historically have had difficulty operating in these regions, it's because they're not going to go to, you know, your uncle to move their money. Right. You have like Johnson and Johnson and you know, companies like this that, you know, have closed down markets across, you know, parts of Africa, parts of like Latin America, you know, which again is not good for anybody.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker A: It's not good for the consumer, it's not good for the company, it's not good for the country. It's not like nobody wins when, you know, Johnson and Johnson or one of these guys has to, has to leave a country. And you know, again, it's, it's just, it always comes down to issues with fx, issues with access to the dollar, issues with moving money, being able to pay bills, things like that. And yeah, and so, you know, now stablecoins are the first technology that actually provide a company like that the ability to do these transactions formally. Right. To properly account for these transactions, to do so in a way that's compliant and, and you know, above board and you know, keep their business flowing even when the banking system doesn't have dollars.

Speaker B: Yeah, uh, I have so many more questions around the kind of stable coins and, and kind of the. What does it mean the end state of where we probably both think stables are going? It's a totally different world than where we're at today. But I want to get to that shortly. First I want to talk to you about the, the expansion uh, with within, you know, you started with Nigeria. How did you go on expanding? Because I think you were Africa, you kind of became pretty integrated within Africa, which is a massive, massive, massive place by the way. And then you expanded to maybe some other countries. So like, tell me about, uh, you know, how did you branch off into different countries and did you have to, you know, make contacts with the local government you know, local government of Togo or whatever country in order to integrate fully or like, tell me about that whole process because that's not a, it's a very, very, very difficult thing to do business in Africa. And to do business Africa in multiple countries in Africa is also extremely hard.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, so I think, you know, one of the big things that uh, you know, that we realized and that I mean I really pushed hard on especially in the early days was you know, when you look at fintechs on the continent, generally 90 plus percent of, in most cases 99 of their revenue is Nigeria, right? And that's where, I mean that's where these guys make all their money. You name an African fintech that's operating, you know, sort of Pan African guarantee you 90 plus percent revenues generally Nigeria. And I think, you know, for us what we wanted to do was you know, actually sort of bring this technology to other places, right? I think the, the big thing that we realized is that you know, it's, to your point, it's a, it's a huge place. There are 54 countries. Nigeria is a large part of it, it's a large economy, all of that. But it's not the only country, it's not the only sor. Market opportunity on the continent. And so I mean, you know, look, we did it, uh, we did it the old fashioned way, man. Uh, we made enough money in Nigeria for me to be able to get a plane ticket down to South Africa. I took a bus to Botswana, got some guy to drive me to Zambia, sort of vagabonded my way across the eastern seaboard. Uh, just setting things up country by country, right? And uh, you know, I mean essentially, um, you know, essentially what we would do is, is go in and try to make contact with three people. So uh, when I, you know, I don't know, I, you know, drive overnight to Zambia, right? When, when I arrive, we're trying to work with the government, right? Whoever, whoever the appropriate regulator is there, whether it's the central bank or if there's you know, another, you know, the SEC or whoever, right? The appropriate regulator is uh, in that country. Um, we're making contact with commercial banks, right? Because uh, you know, in order for these transactions to flow you have to have a way of, you know, having and holding the local currency, right? And so that requires working with the commercial banks. And then number three is just people, right? Like business people on the ground, people that are people that have these issues. Because the issue is always slightly different country by country, right? And so it's, you know, what's the, what's the issue here, right? If we're in, you know, Zambia, for example, what, what is the specific issue in Zambia that you're having problems with as a business or as a, you know, as a person, as you know, whoever you are. And you know, where does this technology fit in to solve that? Because I think, you know, in a lot of way, in a lot of ways, you know, stablecoins are the elixir that they're sort of made out to be. But it's not, it's not natural, right? You need to like there is work involved in actually, you know, how do you say shaping stablecoin, facilitating stablecoin flows in whatever the problem statement is. And you uh, know there's quite a bit of work that goes on to actually get this technology, you know, sort of in there to be able to then, you know, solve that problem. And. Yeah, and so I mean that was, that was really the focus, right? Anytime we were going to a new country is, you know, you need to be in touch with the government because you need to be regulated in some way, right? Or to the extent that there is no regulation, then, you know, you need to introduce yourself and make sure that, you know, they know that they can work with you on that regulation. Right? And we, I mean, we do this across the board. I mean we're actively working with, you know, what, six, five, six countries right now on regulation in their country because they're, you know, now finally setting it up, right? And so it's, I mean, you know, it's working with the government, it's working on working within the regulatory framework or working to develop the regulatory framework and then just working with the business, right? Working with the banks, working with the businesses there that actually have these problems on a day to day basis.

Speaker B: I mean that's incredible. Just because, you know, my experience, I was in Ethiopia and the experience of doing business there is extremely difficult. There's just a lot of hurdles and barriers and oftentimes you need locals there that you're connected with deeply, uh, trust in order to facilitate a lot of business. And so, you know, I'm thinking about your experience where you're going, like, would you go into a country with zero contacts and just like work your way or would you have some pre existing context there that you can kind of lean on and introduce you to the right people and whatnot. Or how did that, how did that work?

Speaker A: I was meeting a lot of guys on the Internet, Andrew. That's uh, a Lot, a lot of hot guys on the Internet, it turns out. That's, uh, so that's, um, Yeah, I mean, I would just meet a dude on the Internet. He would be like, hey, you know, why don't you, you know, come in and like, we'll do this here.

Speaker B: That's crazy.

Speaker A: And then I go into the country, I would find a way to get there, right? Typically, you know, some sort of vagabond mode of actually getting to the country.

Speaker B: That's hilarious.

Speaker A: We would go set it up, we would just drive around, we'd go to the banks, we'd go to the, you know, go to the regulator. Just go talk about bitcoin, baby.

Speaker B: That's, that's, it's so insane. I, I, I love it. Okay, so, um, like, was your pitch, hey, guys, we're going to save you time and money or, or, you know, hey, we won't save you money, but we're going to save you a lot of time. Or like, what, what was the, what was the pitch to get them to be like, oh, this is actually compelling. I like what Chris is building here.

Speaker A: So, yeah, the, the pitch, the pitch has evolved quite a bit, right? So, I mean, it depends, it depends on, it depends on the use case, right? In the, in those early days, we were just pitching the benefits of this technology broadly, right? This enables transactions to flow regardless of, you know, dollar liquidity, regardless of anything else. This enables the economy to continue to function without you as a government, you as a bank having to give up your dollars, which is great, right? That's, I mean, you know, that's super powerful, super beneficial. Um, now it really depends, right? Because the thing is, is, you know, again, going back to what I was saying, where it's like, it sort of is an elixir, but, you know, there's a lot of work that, you know, is involved in getting it there. There's so many problems that this technology solves that it really just depends what it is that you're going for, right? I mean, so now, you know, we work with banks, we work with financial institutions, we work with, you know, remittance companies and, you know, all these guys that are all looking for something different, right? You have banks that, you know, want to set up savings accounts, right? And want to help people save and earn interest and, and, you know, things like that. It's like, well, great. You know, stablecoins are a great option for that. So is Bitcoin, right? If you want to give them essentially risk free, then you put it in stable coins. You're earning treasury yields at a risk free rate. Uh, if you're a little bit higher risk, uh, higher reward, then put it in Bitcoin, which is essentially the equivalent of putting it in the stock market. And so that's one piece of it. And then there's just companies that need to settle invoices and hey, we're having issues with these international payments, we're having issues on these corridors. What can you guys do to help? You know, again, this is where that technology comes in is we're able to do, you know, quite a bit to help with facilitating those payments that, you know, otherwise the banking system just isn't able to facilitate or it takes significantly longer.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: And so it just, it varies by country, varies by use case. Some countries it's a time save, some countries it's a, do you want to move it or not?

Speaker B: Yeah. So how are you balancing like as a founder, how are you balancing the, you know, because customers, uh, are always going to want more and you know, for you to expand. But you know, oftentimes it's like, hey, you know, we, we don't want to do 100 different things, we need to do our core 10 or whatever. So how do you, how do you balance solving all these different problems versus tripling down on what's actually working and making you the most money?

Speaker A: Yeah, so I think that's, that's really the beauty of the infrastructure that we built, right? So the, you know, the way that, the way that I think about our infrastructure and the way that, I mean, you know, the way that we present it, right, is it's essentially, it's a bunch of Legos and you can kind of build whatever you want with the Legos. And you know, it's quite rare that we build that we need to build new Legos at this point. Right? Because we built a lot of the Legos. And so you know, the stuff that we think about from like, uh, you know, customers want more and expansion and all that is just building new Legos. So that's what I mean, that's what you know, the engineering team works on. It's just how do you add additional new net, new functionality. But from like a sales perspective going around the Legos, we have solve most of the issues out there, right, from like a financial standpoint, from a money movement standpoint, from an infrastructure standpoint, all of that. And so it's not necessarily uh, it's not necessarily the tech that changes, right? It's, it's just the uh, the way that you Present it. So, you know, again, if a bank is interested in a savings account, then you show them, well, you know, hey, look, with our infrastructure, this is how you could set that up, right? If, if you know, somebody's interested and you know, hey, I need to make a bunch of invoice payments, right? Well, that's great. Same infrastructure, this is how you do it. And so it's, it's, you know, it's less about, it's less about sort of, um, building something that's net new for every customer demand. It's more about making sure that you build originally in a scalable way. Uh, because to your point, customers always want new stuff, right? There's always a new use case that we've never thought of, we've never heard of, that comes up. Uh, I mean, even recently we had. It's like, hey, how do we just accept stablecoins from our customers?

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker A: And it's like, that seems simple enough, but it's not something that we've ever really pitched before, right? Because we're more focused on the payments aspect and sort of the on and off ramping and all of that. That. And then, you know, I mean, this, this one bank was like, we just want to be able to like accept stable coins. And so it's, well, great, you know, great. Our infrastructure does that. This is how you would do that, using our infrastructure, right? And so it's, I mean, you know, I think the, the most important thing is starting out with something that, that's extremely versatile and then narrowing the pitch rather than having to continuously build. If you start too narrow from an infrastructure standpoint, you end up having to build for every customer. That's just not sustainable.

Speaker B: How are you thinking about the. Or, uh, how heavy of a lift is the integration with these companies? Are they like, you know, when you present your, your product suite, are they like, man, we want it all, but you know, they do more homework and like, it's going to take a year for us to integrate this into our systems. Or, or is it really simple? Like, how is that, how does that look?

Speaker A: We, we give, I mean, the whole range, right? I mean, you know, look, you can set it up where, you know, you essentially just point to our server and then I can go to, I don't know, payments dot, you know, red dot com, and you know, you have a fully white labeled solution, right, that you know, took, I mean, essentially no time to set up, right, where your customer can come on and they can, you know, facilitate these payments and things like that. Um, and Then, you know, we go, I mean, all the way down to just, you know, you can do a full, you know, API integration, right? And you can build this natively into your flows, into your back end, into your systems, into your, you know, accounting system, into your reconciliation, whatever. And so it, it really just depends. Again, it's, uh, you know, I mean, the, the best way to think about sort of the tech that we build is it's sort of a choose your own adventure, right? It's, you know, hey, this is, you know, we do a lot of stuff on stable coins. We're the ones that have all the payment rails and emerging markets and all this that you can, you know, utilize. What do you want to do with it? Right? Do you want to enable people to save? Is it like a simple on and off ramp? Do you want to enable people to, you know, pay money to China? Right? We do, you know, we can do cny, right? It's so it just, it depends on. It depends again on just what it is that the customer needs, right? And you know, I will say that the benefit of, you know, working with businesses now, right, Is, you know, I mean, we work with, look, on a good month, we'll, you know, we'll have a couple of hundred businesses that join the pipeline, right? I mean, so the, it's just a much different scale than consumers, right? Consumers, you know, a couple hundred people join, the company's going under, right? That's, yeah, that's a, that's a very bad month, right? Uh, businesses, you get a couple hundred businesses, large businesses. The scale that we're operating on, it's like, oh, yeah, this is great. And so, yeah, I mean, it just depends, right? I mean, the benefit of working with businesses though is that you can give more attention to each customer to help them work through that integration process, right? Work through that process of how do you actually integrate this into the payment flows and everything that we're doing today?

Speaker B: Is there a specific product or, uh, sub product that you have that is killing it and very successful? And do you, is there another product that is not very successful yet or like kind of newish or still growing that you're like, oh, that's gonna be a monster in like, you know, two years or whatever?

Speaker A: Yeah, so the, I mean, the, the treasury management one is extremely popular. And that is, I mean, frankly, that's usually the, uh, how do you say, like the, um, you know, like the stake or whatever that you use to sort of, you know, drive yourself in, right? And then you, you know, kind of Open the door and, uh, you know, get them using everything, everything else. But I mean, the treasury management one is a big one, right? Because these, these large companies, I mean, look, these guys are not in the business of treasury management, right? These guys are in the business of whatever it is that they do. I mean, you know, anything from selling food to, you know, I don't know, working with pharmacies or, you know, I mean, even financial institutions, right? These guys are just not in the business of treasury management. And so they end up with so many issues, especially across emerging markets, that, you know, we're able to come in and just, you know, help solve, right? And so that's, I mean, that's usually the, the easiest sell is like, hey, do you have a lot of money in, you know, country abc? Do you want it somewhere else? You know, simple enough, right? If the answer is yes, then, you know, we're in business, right? Um, so that, I mean, that one is, I mean, it's typically the easiest conversation. It's the shortest sales cycle for sure. And so it's just, I mean, it's just much easier. I think the, um, you know, the, the product that we have that's newer, I, I mean, newest really. Um, which again, it's, you know, it's the same core infrastructure. It's just sort of a new way of presenting, uh, it is the infrastructure for banks, right? So, I mean, you know, we have, uh, just institutional grade tech that, you know, again, previously a lot of remittance companies, a lot of financial institutions, all of that. We started getting banks coming on and working with us and we realized, you know, this is, I mean, there's a huge opportunity here, especially as like, JP Morgan and Bank of America and these guys are getting into the space. Every bank on earth now has to be thinking about this technology, right? I mean, look, I've gotten calls from CEOs of the, I mean, two of the most prominent, you know, banking operations in emerging markets just within the last, like, couple of days, right? Just cold calls. I mean, and so it's, you know, everybody is starting to think about this technology. Uh, every bank either has a plan, is desperately scrambling to make a plan, or is lying about it because they are all thinking about this stuff. You can't. When, you know, JP Morgan announces a token for digital dollar settlements, you as a bank cannot just sit idly by and say, oh, what do they know? They're only the largest bank in the world, right? Like, what do they, what do they

Speaker B: know that I know?

Speaker A: And so, you know, uh, now, as you've seen more progression in the US and with genius and all of that, these banks are getting quite aggressive on how do they implement this technology quickly to be ready to go.

Speaker B: Yeah. So, I mean, you know, I mean, there's a lot of things we can go from there, but moat, like, how can you build a moat if there's all these other players that are getting involved in this world? Uh, it sounds like, you know, you were very early to these emerging markets and you're providing this full suite of products, but how do you think about building a moat within. For Yellow Card?

Speaker A: Yeah, look, I mean, uh, you know, I think the, the grand irony in a lot of what we do is we've made it significantly easier for other companies to be able to come up in these countries. Right? Because we're the ones that go in. And I mean, you know, look, there was no licensing in any of these countries before we came around and, and worked with these countries, worked with the appropriate regulators to develop the licensing regimes. Uh, and, you know, in most cases, we were, you know, the sort of the guinea pigs, right. Going through. And so it, you know, for us, I think that, you know, clearing a path from a regulatory landscape is more important to our growth and to the growth of the industry than the sort of regulatory capture that you see going on in other parts of the world. Right? And so I think that's, that's always something that we firmly believed is, at the end of the day, like, we want this industry to be successful because this industry is going to impact a lot of people. It's going to change a lot of people's lives for the better more than, like, you know, just Yellow Card alone. We'll be able to reach. Right? And so, you know, look, we, I, I have no problem with other people, you know, coming into the market and, and, you know, operating as long as they're, you know, playing by the rules and playing fair. Um, frankly, though, you know, the, the biggest moat that we have is the countries that we operate in, right? I mean, you can basically go to the UN's ease of doing Business index sorted in reverse order. That's like all the countries we operated, right? So, I mean, that's a, uh, that's a huge moat in and of itself.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker A: And that's why, I mean, you know, typically you see a lot of these companies that are coming up work with us in these markets, Right. Especially in Africa, they're working with us rather than typically trying to build it themselves. Um, so that is, I mean, that's certainly a piece of it. Um, the, you know, the other, uh, the other piece of it is from a, uh, from a competition standpoint, the other piece of it is I completely lost my train of thought.

Speaker B: We, we can go back to that, we can go back to the competition. But. So what do you think about the. Yeah, I mean, I mean like five years from now, like every 10 years from now, where's Yellow Card? Because I feel like, you know, despite you being in so many countries, despite you having this coverage, uh, it's like we're scratching the surface here, which is really exciting, you know, and I would imagine that you would be a very attractive acquisition target for a number of very large players, whether it be a tech company, whether it be a bank, whether it be a fintech, who knows? Um, so like, what is the Or. Or go public, right? Like, so what in your opinion, like, what is a 5, 10 year vision for. For Yellow Card?

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, look, I think, uh, you know, I mean, we, we've had offers, right? We've had, you know, we've had stuff come through all of that. And I mean, especially recently, right, Interest heated up quite a bit. Um, you know, the way that I see it though is you don't build a company to get acquired, right? You can't. Because, I mean that like an acquisition requires another party, right? And so there's no actual control over outcome with like an acquisition. Um, you need to build a company to build a successful company that can go public one day that can, you know, live on its own in the public markets. And so I think, I mean, you know, for us, that's always been sort of the, the drive and that's always been what we built towards is how do you build something that, you know, can stand alone in the public markets that doesn't need to be acquired to, to sort of survive, right? Which, you know, obviously there are a lot of tech companies that, you know, just need to be acquired, right? And that's the only way that they, ah, they continue on. So now look, I mean, you know, somebody comes to me with, I mean, you know, look, I'm human too, right? Somebody comes to me with, you know, the right amount of money and uh, you know, all of a sudden public, uh, markets sound terrible. But, uh, you know, I think, uh, I think in the absence of that, right, you know, I, you know, we tell people, you know, we're not generally for sale, right? I mean, you know, we're, you know, we're having too much fun. I don't know what I'd do with the money anyway. What the hell would I do with that, right? Start another company I guess. Um, and so, you know, having too much fun. Uh, the market is just too hot. I mean it's just too exciting. The, you know, everything that's going on with stablecoins, um, and so, you know, we're going to keep building till somebody tells us to stop.

Speaker B: Amazing. All right, so you know, this future that we, you and I are very bullish on know it's coming. What does that look like when the whole world's payments infra, uh, you know, or money infra we can even call it, is running on blockchain based rails and stable coins or whatever? Like what is the end state of that? Are, are fintechs and banks and these other players going to play a much smaller role because everything's just so much more efficient and lighter weight or like. Yeah, I'm just, I just can't, it's hard for me to think of like the second and third order effects of a world where, you know, transactions globally are like cheap and easy.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I mean I think it's, it's, it's really, it's really difficult to actually talk about the trickle down impact of this technology.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Because what is, I mean what is the impact of you know, I don't know, a family being able to send their daughter to like a good school in the UK because they're able to actually make the payments where whereas before they had an issue just even making the tuition payments like not because of lack of money but because of lack of, you know, Rails and, and you know, being able to facilitate that. What's the impact on like that family? What's the impact on that country when that person comes back now with you know, a UK education and you know, is able to contribute to the economy and, and you know, start a business of their own and hire and grow and, and all of that. Right. And so just the, the number of things that smooth payments unlock around the world, it's, I mean it's impossible to, I mean you can go down so many rabbit holes of, you know, what that actually means. I um, think, you know, look, the way that I see it is you have, you will have different winners in different geographies. So I think that in the U.S. for example, I um, don't think that there is really much room for fintechs and for you know, really companies in the space to be able to come in and win on payments. Right. The thing, the thing that I always say is, you know, look, I mean some people don't like to hear you asked about like, you know, controversial opinion. My controversial opinion is that I've sent money to Europe before and it's not actually that hard. Like it works kind of fine. Right. Um, and you know you're always going to get a better rate moving dollars to euro through like JP Morgan than you will through, you know, any fintech that could come up, regardless of how they're doing it on the back end.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Using stable coins or anything else. And it's just because these markets are already very efficient. And so I do firmly believe that within 10 years international wires are going to cease to exist and that JP Morgan and like these banks are going to upgrade their infrastructure completely to use stablecoins for the underlying technology because it is more efficient as an underlying technology. But what I don't necessarily see happening is somebody being able to come in and compete with JP Morgan on you know, dollar to euro.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: I just, I, that, that I don't necessarily subscribe to. Um, I think that it's a lot different though in other markets, right. In markets where the banks are not able to facilitate these transactions yesterday that you know, a lot of the markets that like we play in, etc, that's where you will have, you know, even more dominant fintechs than you have today. And I think you're already starting to see that, right? Because again these, these payment rails and this infrastructure needs to be upgraded. The banks, it's, you know, the banks are not going to be able to do it themselves, right. They're going to need to work with us, work with others to be able to do it. JP Morgan will do this stuff themselves, 100%. They have the team, they have the talent, they have the resources. It's, you know, it's in the US they're doing dollar to euro, things like that. So it's easy for emerging markets, for emerging market currencies, for all of that. It's, it's just a much different market. Right. And so I don't think that the banks will be able to do it themselves. They'll need to work with companies like us to be able to actually facilitate those transactions. And so you'll see a lot of fintech winners in sort of markets outside of the US and Europe. I think in the US and Europe generally this stuff will aggregate to the banks.

Speaker B: Wow. Okay. So it, and um, you know, before the closing questions, I want to ask about the dollar because you know, you're talking about like, you know, the impacts of, if people are using stables and this blockchain infra to make everything faster and easier, more efficient, like number one, like GDP just should in theory expand like globally if ease of doing business increases massively across the globe and like in theory GDP will go up, which is a huge, huge for everybody. But what happens to, I feel like the dollar, like, like the kind of what's being built now is, is a Trojan horse for like dollar dominance globally. And not, not that it's not a, it's not like a spooky thing, it's not a bad thing. It's just like, I think it's actually probably pretty, pretty good for most countries. But what do you think about like that scenario where um, a huge portion of the world has this ready access $2. And what does that mean? You know, because in that scenario I'm thinking like, okay, that's good, right? You know, broadly speaking. But alternatively governments, you know, the US government could be kind of a little, a little, um, I don't know, more irresponsible potentially with spending and whatnot because they're like, well, even more people are using the dollar now so we can get even more crazy. Like um, so I see pros to the world.

Speaker A: No, they wouldn't do that. Yeah, they wouldn't print $8 trillion dollars.

Speaker B: Right. So, so like it's like great for the world, maybe bad for the US in some weird sense because it's like, hey, we're so integrated, like we can't be even crazy, like even crazier than we were.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, look, what I would say is uh, I mean the dollar is already the dominant currency.

Speaker B: That's true.

Speaker A: That's true.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: So I mean like there's no, there's no impending dollar dominance because the dollar is already there. Right. I mean, look, I tell, I tell everyone there's, there's two things in this world that are both universally valued and, and universally recognizable. And that's a hundred dollar US bill and a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Lake. That's it. That's. Those are the only two things that can get you out of any situation you can find yourself in anywhere in the world. Um, and, and so, you know, I think what, what stable coins are doing is not dollarizing countries. Right. Uh, to the extent that a country is going to dollarize, it's not going to happen just because, because of stable coins or because the dollar exists. Right. It, it happens for other reasons. It happens for hyperinflation reasons. It happens for, you know, I mean Various reasons, especially, you know, for examples that we've seen recently. Um, and so I, I don't see like, we don't see stablecoins, dollarizing these economies. We just don't see that happening in practice. What is happening in practice is stablecoins are changing the way that people interact with the dollar. So people are interacting with the dollar the same way that they were interacting with the dollar before. This is making it significantly more efficient. This is making it easier. This is making those transactions more open.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: This is, you know, to your point about expanding global gdp, that's, that's what's going on. It's not changing the, the, how do you say, the currency structure of the, uh, the economy or the country, but it's making it so that the international transactions that already run on dollar by necessity are much easier to facilitate. And so it's, uh, you know, you're not, yeah, you're not. I don't think you're going to end up in a world where local currencies go away. I think you're going to end up in a world where, you know, the dollar essentially just exists on chain, right? And you end up in this world where the dollar, you know, isn't subject to just, you know, to having a New York bank, right? The uh, the dollar is not subject to you being able to get an account with Citibank to be able to move correspondent transactions. Anybody anywhere in the world will be able to have, hold, spend, send, receive dollars very easily, convert that into their local economy and you know, continue business and then vice versa. So I think it, this will, to your point, what this will do is it will expand global gdp, it will open up global business, right, In a way that just hasn't, it hasn't been before. Uh, it'll make things significantly more efficient and it'll just, it'll revolutionize the way that the dollar is used around the world. And it'll, it will cement the dollar in a. For a while while it will continue to cement the dollar as like the global reserve currency. But you know, to your point that is tangent on, uh, you know, the US Government not getting any crazy ideas.

Speaker B: Amazing. Chris, this has been incredible. It is time for the closing questions. All right. If you could instantly master any new skill to help you in business, what would it be?

Speaker A: I. I would want to speak every language in the world. World that's. I speak 0.75 languages. I'm still working on English. Uh, we are not quite there yet. Uh, I, I want to be able to Speak every language that is, that would be like being able to pick that up.

Speaker B: Don't you think it's coming soon with like AI glasses or any sort of. I've seen some of those online. I don't know how good they are,

Speaker A: but maybe, I mean, like, there's just, you know, there's nothing, there's nothing that can replace like being able to go somewhere, talk to somebody in their local language and like go out and get a beer with them. Like that's how business actually gets done, right? I mean, like you can go in and talk in English and you know, whatever, but you won't really connect right, the way that you can if you're speaking the local language. And so, yeah, I mean, look, I think, I think that like with AI you will eventually get to the point where languages don't matter as much and sort of everything almost happens in real time, right? Like I'll be speaking and you, you have an earpiece and you're hearing me in, you know, French or whatever. Uh, I don't know, I don't know how, I don't know how. I'm not the expert. I don't know how close or far we are from that technology. That sounds insanely complicated to get it to the point where it's like a native conversation. But I think certainly that will happen and then at some point we'll all just be sort of grunting at each other like apes and the AI is picking up what we mean.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. What is one unpopular opinion that you hold about startups or, uh, building companies?

Speaker A: One, One unpopular opinion that I have is that there are a lot of companies out there that early on should probably merge. I think that there are like, outside of the US or in the US there's an active M and A market market, right? Outside of that there's not. I mean, there's not a lot of M, M, A that goes on in other parts of the world unless you get to, I mean, like, to a, like, you know, how do you say, pretty large scale. Right. And so, I mean, you know, uh, there's a lot of M and A in like Europe, but it's all happening at like the couple hundred million dollar range, right? You're just not seeing, you know, as much activity for smaller transactions. Transactions. Um, and so, yeah, I mean there are, I think that there are a lot of companies that are starting out where like, I get it, everybody wants to do their own thing and all that, but a lot of these companies are doing the same stuff. And would, in theory, benefit from everybody sort of joining forces? Um, yeah. I mean, you'd rather have a small piece of something big than a large piece of something big. Something small. Right. That's, uh. So I think, yeah, I mean, that, that, I think that that advice is mostly geared towards emerging markets and towards the stuff that we see in, like, parts of Africa, South America, Southeast Asia, places like that. But yeah, I mean, like, in those markets, like, unless you, unless you hit it big, there's probably not an outcome for you. Right? There's just not. I mean, you know, a lot of these smaller startup. We just don't see it in most places, uh, where smaller startups get scooped up by the larger ones. Right. Whereas it happens all the time in like, the US and places like that. And so I think, you know, combining forces is the underrated way of actually sort of getting to one of those outcomes.

Speaker B: Interesting. I wonder if there's a compelling, uh, P.E. opportunity within that. Within that, you know, what you're talking about there.

Speaker A: I think, I think there certainly is. Right. And I mean, you know, we've seen, we've seen people look at stuff like that before. We're seeing, we're starting to see more sort of like what would traditionally be VC funds that are buying stakes, like larger stakes, or even buying the entirety of the companies in some of these markets.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: For smaller companies. And so I think that there is, there's probably like a PE hedge fund hybrid type situation that will do well in some of these markets because there's just so many targets. Right. And a lot of these guys, I mean, you know, look, we see it all the time where, you know, a company raises some money, never really makes it to Series A, and they just end up sort of going under. Nobody really buys them. Um, nobody wants sort of the skeleton or anything like that. And so it's like, you know, man, join forces. You know, do it together. You know, two heads is better than one. Yeah, all that, uh, that's awesome.

Speaker B: All right. Is there a belief that you held strongly at the start of your journey that you've since changed your mind about?

Speaker A: I mean, I think the, the only, the only thing that I've really changed my opinion on is, you know, I also was in the camp of like, oh, remittance companies suck. Like, these guys are all just taking the piss. Like, you know, whatever. It's, It's. I mean, it's tough. It's. It's not an easy industry to serve. Right. And there's a lot of expenses related to A transaction that people don't understand. And so I think, you know, you hear about, um, you know, you hear about like, exorbitant costs, but again, it's just not that in practice isn't really a thing. Um, it's, you know, it's just an expensive transaction to, to facilitate.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Especially to emerging markets. I think the, the other one that's a little bit more controversial, uh, is that financial inclusion is kind of a myth. Um, like, I, I think you, you had this run of startups, you don't really see this anymore, but you had this run of startups where all they were doing is talking about, like, financial inclusion, right? And their pitch was like, we're gonna, you know, we're gonna go include everybody. Banks have already kind of done that, right? Banks, mobile money, like other mobile payments. Like, they've, they've largely done that. Pretty much everybody is included at this point in like, the broader financial ecosystem. In most cases, uh, the unbanked that you hear about in practice, they don't want a bank account or they don't have enough money for a bank account, right? They're, they're living off of, you know, like a small amount of money where there's no, there's just no nothing in it for the bank, right? For them to be, you know, somebody makes, you know, a dollar a day, it doesn't make sense to make them. Um, and so I think that, like, yeah, the, the big thing that, that I've changed my mind on is that like, financial inclusion isn't the problem. Right? There's, I mean, there is still a, like a poverty issue in a lot of places, right, where people just don't have enough money. And that's, you know, a totally separate issue that needs to be solved one way or the other. But it's, it's not a financial inclusion issue. Like putting a bank in, you know, some rural part of, like, you uh, know, some emerging market where there's, you know, a high unbanked population does not solve the problem. And the reason that we know that is because these banks have branches in a lot of these areas. Right? I mean, you have to get pretty remote to not be near a bank at this point, right? In pretty much any country or to not have access to like a mobile money agent or something like that. It's, it's really, it's less of a, it's less of a financial inclusion inclusion issue, more of a poverty issue. When you see, like, unbanked numbers in a lot of these places.

Speaker B: Makes sense. All Right. Last one. What does entrepreneurship taught you about people?

Speaker A: Oh, man.

Speaker B: Trust.

Speaker A: Uh, but verify.

Speaker B: Trust but fair. Oh, yeah, we.

Speaker A: Tell me more trust but verify that. I mean, I think, um, there are. There are a lot of really good salespeople out there. There are a lot of really good sales people. Uh, and that. That extends to all parts of life, right? I mean, you know, being a good sales guy, it's, uh, you know, it's not just in business, right? I mean, it's, uh, you know, look, I mean, there are salespeople in relationship. There are salespeople in, you know, every facet of life that you can think of, right? It's not just business. And, you know, if you meet a salesperson, they will sell you the world, right? That's. I mean, that's their job. These guys go out and they, you know, they sell the world. And so I think, like, uh, that is. I mean, you know, look, man, I can't tell you how many times we have been sold a product or, you know, some type of integration or whatever that just. Just doesn't work, right? I mean, like, my God. You want to talk about, like, you know, why. Why do payments still suck in some parts of the world? It's because we've worked with, like, every provider locally. They all suck. And, you know, they will sell you. They'll sell you the world. But, I mean, in a lot of cases, the tech just doesn't stand up. And so, yeah, I mean, like, man, that's what is entrepreneurship talking. You need to verify the tech ram. That's the tech is the, uh, the single source of truth. Uh, you know, go and verify it. And, uh, again, that. That extends to other parts of life, too. That extends to, you know, to personal. That extends to family. That extends to relationships. It extends to, I mean, pretty much everything, right? There's. There's always sales people that, uh, you know, so you need to. You always need to verify what you're buying time, right? I love that.

Speaker B: All right, Chris, this was incredible. Where can people learn more about Yellow card and yourself?

Speaker A: Man, we are. We are all over, uh, yeah, social media, Yellow Card, IO. Ah, I'm just at Chris Maurice on pretty much everything. Um, yeah, that's, uh. You can come watch me. Just talk about stablecoins. That's all I do all day. I don't really have anything else going on. Don't really have hobbies.

Speaker B: Love it. Love it, Chris. Thank you, man. I appreciate it.

Speaker A: It's so good to see you, man. Appreciate the time.