EN | Tap to the Future: Why Custody Will Define the Stablecoin Era | MERGE Madrid 2025

Hello, I hope you hear me well. Um, so my name is Dan. I am a co-founder of United Network and today we'll talk about the future of self- custody and why it is important in the era of stable coins. So I remember back in the days in 2018, I was living in Ukraine and Apple Pay launched in Ukraine during that time and I remember that magic when I just went to some ordinary grocery shop and I tapped my phone to the POS terminal and the lady in the shop was shocked like how did I pay not with a card or with a cash but just with a tap of my phone and then it was the curiosity more people started using the stop to pay the Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay and all other payment methods and after that the curiosity became the routine and all of us we use the top to pay all over the world. So in Europe more than 80% of all the payments are now made with contactless payments.

In the United Kingdom is over 90% and we see that this adoption was huge over the last years. And um we all know uh that in the crypto world there are crypto cards where you can top up some stable coins and the card issued with Visa and Mastercard and you can go and pay in the grocery shop with a stable coin and it became reality like during the last few years but it's a great first step the but there are a few disadvantages in here because first of all um the custody of the crypto that you put on the card is under the bank or the isser or the acquirer. So it's not your crypto that you store in the card and also the regulations we we all know that back in the days like few years ago when all the cards these crypto cards appeared uh people were using them how they want and then regulators came okay we don't like it uh you should stick to to the rules we don't issue the cards to these nationalities so it became even more strict but uh all these cryptocards they mostly use stable coins and during the previous pool runs we have seen a lot of um trends like defy trends, NFT trends, memecoin trends but during all this time there was a quiet revolution of stable coins like back in uh 20134 the first stable coins were appearing on the market and tesar was the first one the USDT was the first one who was start gaining the liquidity in the all the crypto projects and it became the backbone of the whole liquidity in defi then circle arrived and they started working with regulators with US government wanted to comply, wanted to become u a better stable coin on the blockchain to show that uh crypto is something for the future but not just a speculation or whatever it is. And now we see that uh the whole capitalization of stable coins on the market is more than $200 billion dollars and the amount of remittance is the whole remittance around the world is 3% is made in the stable coins and the countries and governments and central banks they decided we also want to ride this uh hype train. we also want to have stable coins in our financial systems and they started to run pilot projects with CBDC uh with different blockchains and more than 150 countries run uh the pilot uh like they overseen the possibilities more than 50% uh more than 50 projects were uh live but only few of them were successful we know the example of China I guess one of the the less success uh one of the most successful uh examples of CBDC's and Nigeria for example is the example of uh the bat pilot project because 98% of all the uh inera wallets were inactive after the time uh but the governments and the banks they're all concerned uh to accept krypton more and more because u during the last period of time there were a lot of hacks according to chen analysis in 2024 there over $2.

2 billion dollar loss in crypto over all like DeFi, sex, etc. Only during the first half of 2025, there was more than $2.1 billion dollars lost, which is already exceeding the amount of money stolen in 2024. And we had the biggest single hack in the uh crypto history in 2025. You've all heard about that.

And the projected loss by ch analysis in 2026 is more than $4 billion. So the trend is getting bigger and there is there are some consequences of that but there are also some solutions. So if we talk about the custody and how people store their crypto when they store their crypto uh first of all is exchanges. Yes, it's the most convenient, the most simple way to store your crypto on the centralized exchange and uh people don't care. But for example, after FTX happened and a lot of funds were lost, users funds were lost, people considered that okay, maybe centralized exchanges is not the best way to store my crypto.

Maybe I should consider some uh wallets, maybe software wallet or hot wallet, how they call them. Uh the host wallet we all know is the usually the software application where the seat phrase your private key is being stored inside your application meaning on the uh phone or on the desktop if you use the extension of the browser. So it's it's much better than store crypto on the uh centralized exchange but still it can be compromised and there were a lot of examples of how money were drained through the Chrome extensions uh malware etc. The next step is the cold wallet. So the hardware wallets or cold wallets mean that the private key is stored not on the uh phone or the computer but on some external device.

So we all know example of ledger treasure and a lot of other hardware wallets. But the problem with uh these wallets is they're too complicated for ordinary people. Uh I faced some guys that they told me like I bought Bitcoin back in 2016. I made a lot of money. I sold it.

I have million USDT for example. I want to store somewhere securely. How should I do it? I say okay ledger. You should buy a ledger.

You should buy a separate laptop if you want. And they tried to set it up by themselves but it was too complicated. You need a laptop. You need to connect it uh via the cable. you need to install the application application on uh the device itself.

So it was like a rocket science for them. So ordinary people they want to store their crypto securely but they don't know how to do it in a simple way. And we live in the era where a lot of people are lazy. We just scroll Tik Tok. We don't want to overthink stuff.

So we want some simple solutions and uh we want transparency, we want privacy and we want sovereignty. So uh back in the days three years ago uh me and my business partner we were in uh one of the African countries uh meeting one of the biggest payment systems in uh in Africa and the CEO of the company he told like I don't like blockchain I don't like crypto I don't want the adoption but uh if someone makes the solution where crypto the blockchain technology is invisible and where it will bring mass adoption to already existing user base, maybe we'll consider integrating it. So, it was a totally different project, but it made me think what should we do in the blockchain development in the technological sphere to make it more simple for the users, but to keep it to to keep it uh secure. So, what we did, we made a hardware wallet in the form factor of the banking card. So, it's not a payment card, but we utilize the form factor and we utilize the chip and we generate the private key on the chip.

We keep it on the chip and every time you need to sign a transaction, you just need to tap your card to your phone like you press two buttons on the hardware wallet to sign a transaction. It is needed because the private key never leaves the card. It means that uh if someone steals your phone, he won't get access to your funds because he will still need a card to sign a transaction. If he steals the card, he will need to enter the PIN code and if he enters the PIN code several times incorrectly, the card will erase itself and the new private key will be generated. So the only way to restore access to your funds will be a seat phrase.

So we decided like a lot of blockchains and there is a blockchain trlema. Why don't we create a crypto wallet trilma where there is a security where is a self custody and where is this accessibility so I guess we have found some kind of a compromise between the accessibility when it is simple when you don't need external laptop you don't need a cable you just need a slim device as a card and you need your phone to tap and sign your transaction so we have learned a lot of lessons from the crypto history and maybe the governments, the countries, uh the central banks, they also should learn some lessons from the past where a lot of money were lost like millions of BTC are stored somewhere on the lost wallets and we know that the hardware wallets are too complicated and we know that people want to control their funds. So maybe if crypto will go beyond the whole speculation and become invisible, institutionals, banks, and governments will take us even more seriously. I guess we're on the right path and with the right tools, we'll make the future even better. Thank you for attention.