BBW24 – Day 2 – Startup Pitch: Abyiss

this is going to be fun hello everybody my name is Drew Gillan I'm sorry co-founder and CEO of abyss and I'm Zach Robert I'm the co-founder and CTO uh Abyss is a cryptocurrency and blockchain startup based out of Providence Rhode Island and we are working to make crypto as easy to use as a debit card absolutely so I'd like to start off first by thanking cubic labs for this opportunity we really appreciate it and i' would also like to thank the audience members too for your time and attention I'd like to start off too with a quick survey out of a show of hands anyone in the audience who owns any cryptocurrency right now any Bitcoin ethereum quick show hands here okay great great now for everyone in the audience that does own crypto how many of you have bought anything either online or in person with crypto and say the last month have you purchased anything with crypto okay very about a few people here it's good to hear um very interesting Zach I'll hand it over to you yeah so we're here today uh to highlight a shift that is happening all around us one that isn't so obvious unless you're paying close attention in the next seven or eight minutes you'll gain three key insights an understanding of this threat how to navigate it and the Alternatives available to you today so a quick question for the audience how many of you guys have heard of cbdcs Central Bank digital currencies great great great great great great okay so um now there's uh so for those of you who don't know what a cbdc is it is a government controlled digital currency uh these uh this allows the government to have complete and utter control over the entire Financial system which um yeah uh there's there's a threat to this and this threat is that uh it's under your own finances the government has complete visibility into everything that you do they can control your transactions they can freeze your account at will and they can track every single payment that you make now we've seen uh so this is financial censorship at its finest and we've seen examples of this in the not so distant past specifically in Canada where uh the truckers who were defying the government protesting their roll out of uh covid regulations and requirements they didn't like them uh the response was freeze all of the trucker bank accounts cut them off from the financial system entirely make them conform and we see this also in China as well China has uh you know they they're they're constantly censoring their population uh and most notably though very quietly right now as we know it the European Union is making a cbdc for the Euro so the euro is going completely digital and this is in the wake of visa and MasterCard having a complete Monopoly over their payments uh their payments ecosystem these are both American companies that scares them so they're taking matters into their own hands now you may be thinking you know this is Canada this is Europe This is China this isn't the United States this doesn't affect me well maybe not right now but it's coming and according to the United States Federal reserve's own website they are investigating the risks and benefit of a cbdc so it's coming whether we like it or not it's not a matter of if but when and these bring un unprecedented uh government control uh so the question is how prepared are we for the shift Drew yeah it's terrifying imagine the government saying who you can and cannot send money to what you can and cannot buy right this is what's being worked on right now being researched globally throughout the world we have countries like the United States Europe Australia China Brazil either researching or actively implementing Central Bank digital currencies on top of this too we have the Briggs Alliance which is a group of countries that include Russia China India Brazil South Africa and more that are threatening the United States and more importantly the United States dollar so but there is hope you know there is hope for this a lot of you already know the answer to to this problem which is decentralized cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or ethereum they provide us with privacy control over our own funds and more most importantly Freedom you know but right now there are some problems with cryptocurrencies specifically revolving around the payment space isn't that right Zach that is right so as it stands right now 99.999% of businesses in the United States don't accept cryptocurrency for payment that's for good reason the structure is severely lacking it's complicated um there's no utility for crypto so you can't so uh if a go if if um if a merchant were to accept crypto for payment that you know more than likely their employees would not like crypto for payment to get paid in because they can't pay their rent they can't buy groceries there's nothing you can do with it but we've found uh through our partner platform and we very much believe in this uh that 80% of local Merchants around here are open to accepting cryptocurrency for payment if they don't have anything to do with the cryptocurrency whatsoever they get dollars directly in their bank account yes so that is exactly what we're doing at Abyss we're building infrastructure that makes it easy for anyone to accept payments in crypto they don't want overhead they don't they don't want they don't want anything to do with it it takes time from from their dayto day yeah so we give people the ability to accept payments in crypto have it instantly converted to cash you know and we do this by connecting bank accounts to digital wallets we're helping build the infrastructure to make pay with crypto a reality and we're doing this through our smart money routing algorithm which sources liquidity from a variety of places including decentralized exchanges uh which allows us to support millions of cryptocurrencies and hundreds of blockchains and this is active and live right now on our website available through our apis as well so any business could integrate this into their ecosystem essentially in short we're building the the infrastructure that makes crypto as easy to use as a debit card so the market implications of this are Global it's huge it's massive there's 580 million roughly Global crypto users is a global market anyone with an internet connection can access crypto n this uh it's a conservative 60% of this Market is open to payments trades swaps um and then uh of that we're very ambitious here at Abyss but we we over the next 10 years we believe we can capture 15% of this Market uh that's 50 million users that's uh that's a lot it's a global market it's a global market it's rapidly growing as it stands today we're confidently moving forward uh we have a robust infrastructure that supports millions of currencies hundreds of blockchains we have a vast partner ecosystem where working with the likes of circle Kraken Gemini Amazon Microsoft ZX and more um we have strong financial backers too we have investors such as boost BC like Ian said earlier we went through the cubic Labs R&D program as well which significantly helped us accelerate our development so we are confidently moving forward and we believe that the future is bright yeah yeah so if you're an investor and you find this interesting you think crypto payments are interesting you think it's important you know please take a picture of this slide pull out your phones my email is right there you know I'd love to hear from you guys we're actively raising money right now any feedback anything whatsoever would be great as well yeah we have several big contracts lined up including the likes of crypto credit card processing companies uh layer to uh proof of Concepts or layer to gaming blockchains as well as several other clients we onboarding users every single day from globally around the world um we need we need the capital to fulfill these contracts that we we don't have the resources right now so yeah we're growing we need your help so if you are interested you know please take a picture and for the rest of you in the audience who may not be in a position to invest you know take out your phone scan this code please sign up on our website it's free takes 5 Seconds um you could sign in with Google and right now you can offramp your cryptocurrency on abyss. comom we just we just launched that beta last uh last month actually yeah absolutely so I I think we have a few minutes left here does anyone have any questions during uh the origin story on the name it's kind of a daunting name for what you're doing question yeah yeah that's that's fair uh yeah so we um uh so we like Elon Musk Elon Musk said this quote that very resonated with us which is starting a business is like chewing glass and staring into the abyss which I EV viscerally felt and still feel to the day it is not easy but we do it anyways because we love it so that's kind of where the name came from it kind of resonated with us yeah we've been we've been through multiple pivots and this is the one that's stuck yeah um so yeah so how difficult is it to get a Visa debit card to off ramp with you guys because the only us that I know is coinbase so I'm always curious why other companies aren't getting Visa debit cards attached to their yeah that that's a great question what we're seeing right now in the payment space is either they're taking this credit card route where they're loading their crypto onto a credit card or they're just doing a wallet to- wallet transfer um the friction that we've noticed with actually working with these credit cards is one it's very difficult to work with these in a Master Card and two you still have the fees Associated that visa and MasterCard charge so you're looking anywhere from say two to 5% in some cases that in fees that you would have to pay more and even more in some cases as well so it's very expensive and the friction is there whereas it's significantly cheaper for me to send money directly Peri toer from my wallet to your wallet it's faster cheaper more efficient as well how's it going guys my name is Calvin thank you for uh the startup pitch um you know all cryptos are are pretty volatile outside of stable coins you know the largest cryptos are still very volatile so knowing that you know if I wanted to I would I would rarely ever want to pay eth for something because I think that eth price will go up in the future have you guys seen any development around uh you know giving a discount for you paying with a certain type of crypto such as I can buy this product for $10 or I can buy it for $750 in Bitcoin because of some algorithm that says over the next four years it's likely that that $750 will be worth $15 that is that's a great that's a great question so yeah as it stands right now um we're not we don't have uh we don't have big bank accounts to hold on to that so most of most of the transactions just settled instantly um but that that is that is a great idea it it's also up to the business or the merchant accepting the payment as well like if you go to the gas station in some cases you'll see if you pay with cash you know you get a few cents off a gallon of gas whereas if you pay with card it's more expensive what we find from talking to people is that the reason for that is you know the credit card fees are more expensive so if you pay with cash it they'll give you a discount like that could be the case in the future with crypto um ultimately we leave it on to the business to decide whether or not they would like to do that yeah yeah most businesses don't we find that that they don't want anything to do with it uh it it's just too complicated they can't you know uh it'll come with time any other questions anyone uh hello yes uh thank you um I just wanted to ask what was the underlying technology that you're using to uh make the conversion is it uh just circles technology or using uh other popular layer one um yeah that's a great question so we Source liquidity from a variety of places in including decentralized exchanges we use stable coins as well centralized exchanges too in some cases which allows us to support you know millions of tokens for example any token listed on Unis swap you could buy or sell for cash through us um so that is kind of the way that we route the funds so we we kind of stand on the shoulders of giants yeah we use two stable coin issuers Circle and Gemini uh hi guys great pitch um I'm only asking this question because you just mentioned Unis swap um have you seen or are you guys integrating Jupiter yet Jupiter aggregator and salana yeah yeah yep we're very familiar with them um The Big Three ecosystems that we found right now is of course the evbm ethereum ecosystems uh salana and then Cosmos those is what we've seen from the most demand from the community around and people are very excited about these ecosystems so we do have you know plans to integrate with them on the road map yeah uh I guess is the wallet that receives the payment belong to you and you or does it belong to the business involved it it belongs to the business so it would be like a self- custody wallet similar to a metamask wallet or a coinbase wallet the only time we take custody of the funds is when transmitting the money so we reduced the amount of time that we have to touch the fund sign ific L and we believe you know that helps provide our customers a layer of comfort in most cases a swap takes place on the client side so the business would just receive US dollars if if they're uh so right the End customer uses their their wallet they send it to a wallet owned by the end business or a wallet controlled by you guys and then you wire a funds to the End Business the the lad okay yeah yep and have you are you being forced to do kyc on okay yes yep we're we're fully compliant we take compliance very seriously that was the last like four or five months was digging in the weeds in compliance it was it's some there's some good stuff there but we have a really we have a fine line of what we can and cannot do awesome well that's our time guys we really appreciate it you know thank you thank you