Full transcript
0:03How we doing? How we doing Miami?
0:05>> [cheering]
0:06>> All right.
0:08All right. Good Great to be back in
0:10Miami.
0:11Um so, Ivan, you guys have certainly
0:13been uh up to a whole lot. Had number of
0:16announcements last week. Um will you
0:19take us through those announcements and
0:20talk us through um what's going on with
0:22MoonPay, how that positions you going
0:24forward?
0:25Yeah, so it's been a very exciting time
0:27for MoonPay. Probably the biggest week
0:29in our history last week. We're going to
0:30hopefully top it this week with another
0:32major announcement. We're very excited.
0:34Um last week we really expanded our
0:37vision. We started with on-ramps. We
0:38became known as the buy button to the
0:40vast majority of crypto wallets and
0:42applications, but our vision is much
0:44broader. We want to essentially be the
0:47infrastructure platform, the operating
0:49system for value movement. And we think
0:51that comprises really four very
0:52important functions. We got to nail
0:54funding, so moving from any payment
0:56method directly into crypto, your debit
0:59card, your PayPal, your Venmo, your bank
1:01account, doing that well
1:02internationally, being able to move any
1:04form of crypto onto a platform that
1:06accepts stablecoins for instance,
1:08uh being able to do tokenization, so
1:10white labeling stablecoins, white
1:12labeling other forms of assets, uh being
1:14able to trade, being able to move from
1:16one asset to another, and then also
1:17being able to spend, so whether over
1:19agentic endpoints like X402, being able
1:22to pay with crypto, uh being able to use
1:24cards that are linked to crypto. We want
1:26to be able to do all of that. And so,
1:28you know, when we think about our
1:29vision, we also think about the
1:30different customer cohorts. We started
1:32with retail, 35 million customers. We
1:35now power
1:36ma- vast majority of the major crypto
1:37brands,
1:39but now we're moving into institutions.
1:41So, last year we hired Caroline Pham, a
1:43former head of the CFTC, and she's now
1:46leading our institutional unit. And as
1:48part of that, you know, we spoke to some
1:49of the biggest players in the
1:51institutional landscape, and a lot of
1:52them are saying one of the biggest
1:54barriers to getting started was key
1:55management. So, we recently acquired a
1:58company called Soda. We're very excited
2:00about Soda's team joining MoonPay.
2:02And they are experts in MPC technology,
2:05experts in custody, and you know,
2:07coupled with our infrastructure that we
2:09built already, we think we can bring a
2:11lot more institutions on board. We think
2:13that, you know, given our reach, given
2:15our distribution, you know, the next big
2:16opportunity as well is taking these
2:18tokenized assets and making it easy to
2:20distribute across our platform. So, you
2:22know, we're seeing all the big funds
2:23thinking, "Oh, I want to bring my assets
2:25on chain." How do we make that
2:26accessible to everyone? That's where
2:27we're really focused. Awesome. Um now,
2:31us sitting in the blockchain world, um
2:33one of our um
2:34long-standing shared aspirations is for
2:36DeFi to actually overtake CeFi.
2:38Uh and uh is that something that you
2:41guys think is going to happen? And what
2:43role is MoonPay going to play in that?
2:44100%. Yeah, I think DeFi will overtake
2:47CeFi. I think, you know, generally,
2:49uh we move to the most efficient system.
2:51I think DeFi is going to be vastly more
2:53efficient. And, you know, for us, we
2:56always saw, okay, first iteration of
2:58crypto, kind of closed-loop, centralized
3:00order book, you know, a lot of these
3:02exchanges held onto your keys. But, the
3:04future is you should be in control,
3:06right? You should be in control. You
3:07should be able to move into any asset on
3:09chain frictionlessly. And you look at
3:11Solana, Solana is moving, you know, I
3:13think number one in DEX uh volume
3:15trading on a weekly basis. Um you know,
3:18we're starting to see I think it's we're
3:19looking at around 27% penetration
3:21relative to centralized exchanges in
3:23terms of volume happening through DeFi.
3:25And I think that's only going to
3:26continue to accelerate. And I think
3:27really the driver of that, you know,
3:29we're obviously seeing seeing amazing
3:30stuff going on with the agentic. Uh
3:32we're going to continue to see agents
3:34take more possession of your
3:35transactions, take on more of your
3:37financial life. Um and as that happens,
3:39you know, these agents don't sleep.
3:41They'll work on weekends. They, you
3:43know, are going to be instantly
3:44transacting. They'll be far more
3:45efficient. Um and so, what is going to
3:47be the infrastructure of choice for
3:49agents? It's most likely going to be
3:50DeFi. So, uh if we take that thesis,
3:52then you know, we should be bullish on
3:53D5. How close do you think we are to
3:55agents transacting on our behalf while
3:57we're sleeping paying our bills? Yeah,
3:59so we've been really focused on this.
4:01So, we were one of the first to roll out
4:03the MoonPay CLI, so command line
4:05interface. You can take one line of
4:06code, you can give it to your open claw
4:08agent, and with one of with an authentic
4:10with an author authorization of MoonPay,
4:13we can essentially open up a bank
4:14account for you. We can top up a wallet.
4:17Uh we can swap from any assets any
4:19asset. We just announced uh Moon Agent
4:21cards, so you can actually have those
4:23agents start to spend on your behalf. Um
4:25but, you know, I really think one of the
4:27things that we really need to solve with
4:28the agents is UX. So, you know, right
4:31now, you know, there's a lot of
4:32instances where humans are in the loop,
4:34and in some cases agents aren't really
4:36good at crawling a lot of websites. So,
4:39you know, the idea would be, you know,
4:40how can you make an agent completely
4:42transact headlessly? Like, that's really
4:44I think the the next major upgrade in
4:47terms of the UX. So, you'll be able to
4:48just say something to your agent, and
4:50it'll just execute without you having to
4:52necessarily navigate to another website
4:54or another page.
4:55Um and so, we're working on that. We're
4:56trying to get as close as possible to,
4:59you know, and when I when I actually
5:00zoom out a lot, you know, what is the
5:02future of money movement? What is the
5:03future of value movement? It's just
5:05going to be natural intense. You're
5:06going to say, I want to buy Bitcoin on a
5:08weekly basis, or I want to move into
5:10this asset on Solana. I want to send
5:12money to this person. I want to pay this
5:14invoice. And ultimately, the agent
5:16should be able to instantly transact and
5:18do that for you without having to
5:19interact with that. And so, we'll slowly
5:21start to trust it with more and more
5:22things. We're going to start with the
5:23baby steps, and then over time, uh I
5:25think it will take on more of your
5:26financial life. Cool. So, you've talked
5:28about some of the acquisitions you guys
5:30have made. Uh and as I was looking into
5:32it, seems like you did six acquisitions
5:34over the last year and a half. Uh and
5:37seems like there might be another one to
5:38talk about. So, who's going to be
5:40joining us in the empty seat? Yeah,
5:42well, we've got a special guest coming
5:44out. Um we're very, very excited today
5:46to announce the acquisition of DFlow. Uh
5:50Uh, and we have Nitesh Nath, the
5:51co-founder CEO, founder CEO coming out
5:53right now
5:55to uh, welcome to the stage. We got
5:57Nitesh.
5:58>> [applause]
5:59>> There we go.
6:02>> [music]
6:06[music]
6:09>> Um, all right. So, Nitesh, in your
6:11words, what is DFlow and what problems
6:13you guys built DFlow to solve?
6:16Yeah. Uh, DFlow builds trading
6:18infrastructure on Solana. We are the
6:20lowest latency and best execution place
6:23to trade any Solana token.
6:25Uh, we also build a lot of stuff around
6:27tokenization, so we worked with Cal
6:29Sheed to tokenize their prediction
6:30markets on Solana.
6:32Um, massive growth over the last year. I
6:34think we just crossed 50 billion in
6:36trading volume.
6:38Um,
6:38yesterday we we announced that we're now
6:40the primary router in in the Coinbase
6:43app, so Coinbase coinbase.com. Um, we we
6:47honestly we just
6:49sought to solve best execution on
6:51Solana. Yeah.
6:52Um, so Ivan, you've been talking about
6:54institutional on-ramp, cards, agents,
6:59and now trading. It's the execution
7:00layer. This is uh, the number one in the
7:03in the game right here. So, why is
7:05trading infrastructure a priority for
7:06you right now?
7:07Well, I think it's going to be
7:08increasingly important. So, one
7:10obviously, you know, from from our
7:12perspective, Solana very important
7:14ecosystem. Um,
7:15we've doubled down on working with
7:17Solana and, you know, seeing Nitesh, you
7:19know, just seeing the journey he's been
7:21on. He's been really focused on low
7:23latency as he described, but also best
7:26pricing execution, right? These are all
7:27the important things. Like when you
7:28think about, you know, going back to
7:30what I was saying before, when agents
7:32take over, it will come down to who has
7:34the most efficient LEGO blocks, right?
7:37You're going to need to be able to win
7:38on pricing. You're going to need to be
7:39able to win on your latency and speed of
7:41delivering transactions and your
7:43conversion rate, right? And then
7:44ultimately, a lot of this comes down to
7:46distribution. And a lot of this will
7:48ultimately come down to why I felt that
7:49this is a match made in heaven is, you
7:52know, we already have leading
7:53distribution in the ecosystem, but we've
7:55been spending 7 years building a
7:57regulatory stack. Mhm. And increasingly,
7:59we're not just going to move speculative
8:01crypto assets, we're going to move real
8:03products. We're going to move tokenized
8:04funds, tokenized treasuries,
8:06commodities, securities.
8:08Um and so, to give the most frictionless
8:10experience possible to a customer, you
8:13know, we have that KYC on file, we have
8:14that identity block, and then with one
8:16tap, you're going to have the same level
8:18of execution experience you would
8:19normally have with trading a Solana
8:20token. And so, you know, with us, with
8:22Dflow, you know, we'll take MoonPay to
8:25the number one pole position on
8:26tokenized prediction markets. So, really
8:28helps us, you know, have a big check box
8:30in the tokenization vertical. And then
8:32also, on execution, on track to do
8:34almost $60 billion in trading volume
8:35this year, hopefully even more. So, uh
8:38we could not be more excited to have
8:39Natasha and the team and really the
8:40team. It all comes down when we do these
8:42M&A transactions, everything is about
8:44the team. Uh I see, you know, when I
8:46look into new employees coming to
8:48MoonPay, I actually don't see us hiring
8:50any more employees. I see us hiring
8:51entrepreneurs. You know, we need to
8:52bring entrepreneurs that, you know,
8:54really have the right mix of hustle,
8:57energy, uh creative problem-solving, and
8:59you know, Natasha and the team exhibit
9:00all of that. Very lean team, you know,
9:03total staff with you guys? 13 people.
9:06>> [clears throat]
9:06>> Pretty crazy. Uh really impressive, you
9:08know, moving billions and billions of
9:09dollars of value of assets. So, we could
9:10not be more excited.
9:12So, Natasha, now that you're part of
9:13MoonPay, what's next?
9:15Yeah, I think uh we're we're sort of at
9:17an inflection point right now. I think
9:19you see a trend of a lot of new
9:20tokenization of assets, and in parallel,
9:23you see agents and agentic uh
9:26finance come sort of into mainstream.
9:28So, I think for us, a lot of our focus
9:31is to, one, continue what we've been
9:33doing with building the most robust
9:35trading infrastructure on Solana, but
9:37we're we're really going to make our
9:39products one AI first and then the same
9:41time, you know, we're we're looking at a
9:43lot of things uh beyond just spot
9:46trading and into derivatives. Those are
9:48sort of the main focuses and and MoonPay
9:50is a great place to build all this
9:52because it's just a massive accelerant
9:54on on the products we have with
9:56MoonPay's stack. We can go a lot faster,
9:58uh really push the envelope, the
10:00frontier on Solana. And so, I have one
10:02last question for you. Uh a lot of
10:04people still think about MoonPay as just
10:06on and off-ramps. Yeah, hopefully we
10:08change the game today a little bit.
10:09We're moving in the direction, you know,
10:10not just [laughter] an on-ramp company,
10:12but an operating system for value.
10:14That's right. Institutions, all sorts of
10:15asset classes, um trading, uh prediction
10:19markets, all sorts of stuff. Uh and so,
10:23uh
10:23what does this now mean that MoonPay can
10:25do that others can't do?
10:27Yeah, so I see them as all, you know,
10:29LEGO blocks as described. And you know,
10:31by doing all these different pieces, you
10:33start to see even more harmony across
10:35the stack. You know, really I think a
10:36lot of it comes down to getting KYC and
10:39KYB right because I think that's going
10:40to be a giant friction point for new
10:42users, especially if they want to access
10:43some of these newer instruments and
10:45newer products. And you know, I think
10:47the other big focus for us has really
10:48been, as I said before, headless, right?
10:50How do you get to a place where, you
10:52know, we essentially had to rebuild our
10:53entire stack from scratch and say, "How
10:55do we build [clears throat] at the
10:55lowest level from APIs?" Because, you
10:58know, ultimately the agents are just
10:59going to want to be able to find those
11:00things and execute them ruthlessly
11:02efficiently. So, you know, we had to do
11:04a lot of adaptation. You know, when we
11:05started the product, it was really, you
11:07know, focused on humans and making a
11:09beautiful aesthetic experience for
11:11humans. That's probably less important.
11:12I mean, it's still important to get it
11:14right for mass adoption for everyone in
11:16the world, but for agents, they purely
11:18care about having these API endpoints
11:20that are phenomenal. So, if we can do
11:22all these different pieces well, you
11:24start to see even more synergies across
11:25that stack. And so, you know, that's why
11:27we've evolved beyond just on-ramps.
11:28On-ramps very important, you know, part
11:30of the ecosystem, still a very difficult
11:32challenge to solve. Um but, you know,
11:34when you start to combine on-ramps with
11:36something like execution, then it's
11:37like, okay, wow, now I can move into any
11:39asset on chain frictionlessly. You can
11:41combine both those components and
11:43access, you know, you can go from a
11:44card, Venmo, PayPal, any payment method
11:46directly into any asset on Solana, any
11:48prediction market, um any tokenized
11:50asset. So, all this is super exciting.
11:52Uh now, I remember the first time we met
11:54in person was actually at Singapore
11:56Breakpoint 2024. Uh and you approached
11:59us, you were basically like, I want to
12:00go in on I want to do a lot in Solana. I
12:02want to go all in on Solana. At the time
12:04we were I was like, okay, that sounds
12:06awesome. We as ecosystem were in a
12:07little bit of a different place.
12:09Um and I'm curious like, over the last
12:11year and a half after uh you decided
12:14that you wanted to make that investment
12:15in Solana ecosystem,
12:17um
12:17have you felt
12:19uh kind of like you were positively
12:21surprised? Like, how's it How's it gone
12:22for you? Yeah, so I think Solana's a
12:24goated community. Uh I'll say that
12:25first. I think number two,
12:28uh just the best builders, right? And
12:29you're attracting some of the most
12:31incredible talent to work on Solana. I
12:33think a lot of it comes down to the
12:34talent, right? Uh you're ultimately
12:36going to become even more efficient.
12:37You're going to continue upgrading
12:38Solana. Um and so, you got to get You
12:40got to attract the developer mindshare.
12:41If you get the right developer
12:42mindshare, then you're going to have the
12:44best products. Um and ultimately, that's
12:46the main reason that we chose, you know,
12:48let's go all in on Solana. These guys
12:49get UX. They understand the experiences.
12:51They're solving real problems for real
12:52people.
12:53Um so, yeah, we're honored to be part of
12:55it. Awesome. Well, congratulations,
12:57guys.
12:58Um and from on-ramps to trading to
13:01everything in between. So, that's what
13:04we're about here at Solana as well. We
13:05get asked a lot, are you guys about
13:07payments? Do you focus more on payments?
13:08Do you focus more on trading? We've
13:10always said, when you think about the
13:12ways you use money, you don't segment it
13:14like that. You have money. You want to
13:15use it for different things at different
13:17times in different ways, and you've got
13:18to be able to provide all of that in the
13:20same environment. And that's the whole
13:21value That's the whole value
13:23proposition.
13:23>> Yeah, that's why we're not just an
13:24operating system of money anymore. It's
13:26operating system of value because we're
13:28expanding the definition of money. It's
13:29going to essentially anything you can
13:31put on chain. So,
13:32transact everything. Let's see. Let's
13:34go. Killer guests.
13:37Thank you.
13:38>> [applause]