Can Decentralized Commerce Make Web3 Great Again? | Pat Yiu, Carter Razink, Lin Dai, Rebekah Keida

okay I'll give you a hand sign I'll give you a hand sign also he'll signal you too okay okay we got a panel ready to Ka hello hello let's do that again happy Saturday afternoon everyone um we've got a panel ready to go um I'd like to introduce Rebecca kaida CMO and co-founder of Vala uh and she will be talking to our panelists about how uh decentralized Commerce can make web 3 great again so round of applause please thanks so much everyone I'm very excited to be here with an amazing panelist um so I Rebecca CMO and co-founder of Val so we're building the web three uh Tik Tok shop and from this panel today I'm very excited for our panelists to introduce ourselves because they are also building forth or bringing forth rather the next phase of onboarding uh the next billion people into crypto through Commerce um so Pat if you'll start and introduce yourself hey nice to meet you guys I'm Pat U I'm the co-founder of Mega incubator which is an incubator focused on payment infrastructures consumer applications and government relations on ethereum network yeah no my name is Carter rinc I've been in the space for about eight years now and originally got into National Science Foundation research and and then I got this addiction to starting companies and built some loyalty infrastructure where I uh met Lynn yeah uh my name is Lind D I'm the CEO uh of superlogic and at superlogic we built a lot of blockch infrastructure for major Enterprise companies such as uh American Express and and Warner Music Group uh and uh you know we're really excited to partner with uh Carter over at spree we just launched uh our new dab uh bookit.com that Aggregates over 2 million merchants in travel entertainment uh retail and uh accepting you know 3,000 different uh cryptocurrency so we actually have a little video if uh Rebecca can play it for everyone let's play it cuz it's better to see it than just hear it hey hey hey amazing I don't know how you guys feel but I am like a points junkie so when Lynn and I were talking about this earlier and last week I was like okay this is I need this cuz it's like I have so much crypto have so many Stables like what do I do with it I don't want to offboard it it's a nightmare um so the first question um so this is going to be for Carter and Lynn so stable coins often get overlooked right um but many people believe they the key to real world usage so I'm curious to know um why stable coins might be the critical infrastructure for crypto payments to bring on the next billion users into crypto no yeah 100% uh you as one of the co-founders of spree I think one of the pretty clear pain points that I've recognized is that Merchants that are you know servicing how many billion people today they're not going to take your your dog whiff hat or your bon coin uh because it's you could easily go down 50% in in a day or or or quicker and so you know Stables they're not sexy you can't speculate on them but you can use them as you know what I've I've heard is a really good descriptor a room temperature superconductor for Commerce and we we see this uh within the traditional loyalty space they're they're Peg to the dollar because that's the medium of exchange and so I I think in the next maybe 3 to 5 years we're going to have the next billion people using Stables because they use dollars and it's just way easier for Commerce yeah you know we we deal with a lot of Enterprise clients right like if you go to like Maria and say like oh like you know please accept the trumpcoin they're going to be like how how do we really deal deal with this so uh what Carter and spre team came up with really genius right so basically your uh your any of your coin can instantly be swapped into a stable coin which is can facilitate actual transactions and honestly it's it's something that consumers can understand right to un board the masses we need the concept of purchase on or not on blockchain that really consumer can understand they can understand purchasing to a USD denomination and they understand rewards in the form of points not something that fluctuates in value so so kind of what spr has done is uh is pretty incredible and that allow us to really seamlessly convince 2 million plus Merchants to kind of join this uh Revolution I love this normally uh in in crypto G gen World we're like not other points per program but this is a points program I can totally get behind um so the next question is how do large merchants and institutions view a crypto-based payments rails today yeah you know uh when I go you know talk to our in institutional and Enterprise clients I basically say like hey you already transact in digital currency your own points program is a digital currency it's a centralized digital currency that doesn't really run on MasterCard and Visa rails but by the way you know like all Merchants actually really uh are allergic to the idea they get charged like 2 3% every time they run a transaction on those rails so I was like would have been great if uh you can accept uh cryptocurrency uh that you don't have to worry about what the input to the network is the output is USD to you for your goods and services right like so so so this is what like kind of the vision of spree was that really kind of able that seamless like crypto in USD out and points to the consumer and and you know Pat I you were talking about this idea that like loyalty points are basically crypto for normies right they use this already so this is not like we don't have to reinvent anything this is just like hey spend it like you normally would I agree with you I think 10 years ago we used to use Chase cards or AMX cards to turn points and kind of look for our free vacations recently we've been working together with the Chinese government along with the Thai government for their introduction to kind of a larger broader and broader adoption for their citizens they don't want speculation because of consumer safety but they're willing to look at stable coins especially in the tourism bureaus because it's very very simple for you to convert those points that you would have from the tourism board directly into rewards that their local companies are able to utilize incredible so that leads me to my next question so what do you see as the biggest Catalyst that will bring more merchants and consumers into the space at scale and is it reduced fees improved user experience or new revenue streams like loyalty programs is it for me yeah I I think a lot of people think about reduced fees and speed and I think these are things that everyone else is already going to solve we have blobs and we turned everything from a dollar transaction fee to a less than a penny already right we have a bunch of L2 networks that are kind of onboarding different Global countries depending on the applications and the the area of the industry that are in but I think what we actually need right now is better consumer safety and regulation so that more institutional partners are actually willing to touch trip it's not hard for someone to get their head around stable coins but right now the infrastructure isn't set up so that these Mass Merchants are also able to integrate very simply it's very different when you're looking at hundreds of customers or thousands of customers versus millions of customers especially when when you're dealing with millions of merchants also you need a very simple process so that any type of company can actually integrate those apis and seamlessly use it for their own customer base yeah I mean I I think I heard Robin Hood CEO doing some sort of uh stable coin remit over the weekends and so like I think that's probably going to be one of the big onboarding components is in uh these these like banks these these payment providing infrastructure Partners uh they're going to start adopting it because it's it's it is just that much better at the volume they're processing Fiat today doing it at you know you're saving 3% that you would otherwise have paid uh especially smbs like a $5 cup of coffee with the fixed 30 Cent and 3% fees that they charge that's like almost 8% and you know Mom and Pop can't afford that yeah you know um like speed and low transaction costs have been solved over the last couple years right broing have that but like why aren't there more mass adoption for kind of the pay use case it's like you need a massive Merchant Network and honestly it wasn't until last November when kind of the 180 us regulatory stands that opened up that door right we have rapid conversations with some of our biggest partner um you know one of our biggest partner in a travel space the one company that like literally works with every top Airline Hotel like cruise lines and you know we we rapidly form this partnership and launch this product together uh cook.com that like wouldn't have been possible if there's so much regulatory scrutiny and uncertainty right cuz these Enterprise partners are not going to jump into the space without the idea that this is a you know like the this they're not going to get in trouble accepting crypto right y hey yeah and Lyn I'd love for you to touch on too why you started with the travel use case cuz I thought it was interesting talking to you earlier about how that applies yeah you know like as a uh blockchain crypto industry founder it's like it's a it's it's a it's a two I build for myself right I'm a points nerd my you know Twitter handle is the points die Dai is my last name so so I ner out on points all the time and I was like wouldn't it be great if we can actually build a travel product for everybody in the in the crypto industry to be able to like travel everywhere earn 10 to 30% rewards back uh and spend any token I have in my wallet right like all my random tokens does you know like can I just like you know buy a flight or you know like buy you know a an iPhone with it right so so this is kind of the Tool uh a Marketplace I built for myself but but you know when we we we've been here we've been in stealth for a long time we just came out and uh we're showing bookit.com to a lot of the other projects so we you know it's like kind of the the validation is everybody like loves this right I mean it's really incredible for everyone who's listening and watching this right now please go to bookit.com and play around the interface is so simple it's so easy to book a villa or a flight you can use your dog with hat or whatever and it converts immediately it's very very great uh interface so check it out so my next question is for Carter so you term you have this term um it's Commerce Defi and I'm wondering what does that mean and how does it differ from more familiar forms of defi yeah I I'd say thinking about spr's kind of initial Beach head solution or problem is you know it's hard to spend crypto and so the solution is use some of the existing infrastructure to connect a wallet and sign a transaction like the existing dii protocols that most of us DG are familiar with uh but once you have some of these Merchants within your ecosystem you can do some really fascinating products on top of that and so something like using liquidity to do onchain factoring for example to allow for what traditionally is you know okay this problem of long time uh to settle and then the fees yeah that that's a clear solution but also augmenting existing Merchant adoption with these defi protocols like the a like the moro or or or you know a decentralized exchange across different borderless payments like there's tremendous opportunity in this kind of uh we we're familiar with the technology but it's never been applied to a merchant side of uh of of Commerce before so Commerce defi kind of is the the Northstar of what spree is building we're building this for the future where you know maybe your rewards points yields in the future or or maybe uh you know your Merchants don't just dump their their their dollars for Fiat they they put it in and and and get productive uh with that asset amazing so my next question is for Lynn so how can decentralized Commerce unlock new opportunities for merchants such as cross Loyalty Rewards or offering more real world experiences to H to token holders yeah you know just as a points nerd uh like you know we we look a lot into this and this is like I you know I read um points blocks for for fun right so rewards point is getting so big that us um bank alone Banks alone right like uh that issues rewards points have about 60 some plus billion dollars of unspent points on their balance sheet so it's not free like they have to keep track of that they're like legally obligated to keep track of that as a liability on their on on their balance sheet um and it's like very little usage for consumers right so it's like very little amount of ecosystem you can spend your points on while they keep it as a liability you know I think actually bring everything onchain and have a defi component on it it's beneficial for both kind of institutional players and the consumer right and obviously uh if you know points or the future version of decentralized Commerce using crypto rails becomes a thing uh Merchants stand to benefit the most we're talking about today the Visa Mastercard duopoly uh takes like you know like $4 trillion of fee a year and at a 50% margin because they charge the merchant like 3 3% or more um we're talking about on pure crypto rails Merchant can pay probably you know 0.

75% uh so it's a huge huge saving not only for the coffee shops right so that's like clearly it's benef benefit but like we deal with interprise Partners when we go to a Walmart we're talking about saving them hundreds of billions of dollar uh it's significant right so all Merchants are excited about this that's huge yeah so there's really product Market fit here so my last question is why is this model more sustainable than purely speculative token incentives I think we've all seen over the past year and all of us have kind of played our part inside of it but memec coins are really fun but when you work with market makers who don't have the best interest in consumers you have listings people who may have allocations that they've May bought in pre-sale speculative tokens are really unsafe for the average retail customer they don't really know what's going on behind the scenes and this is kind of like a lottery that you're playing when they see the marketing they're assuming that these tokens are a 10year hold instead of being something that's like a maybe a 4H hour hold or a six-hour hold I think with stable coins there's a lot more opportunity because with Stables you know what you're getting into it's tied to the US dollar that you're already used to which also allows you kind of think out of the boxes that now that you have a token that's a lot more liquid for merchants compared to Fiat what can you do with that and what what other ways can you produce yield in the interim that you otherwise wouldn't be able to do with US Dollars yeah I I'll double tap on that too you know thinking about uh these these assets it's totally player versus PVP we use in in the space it's it's you know individuals competing with individuals but I you know succinctly Commerce has the capability of increasing the entire uh ecosystems market cap because this is new dollars coming into the space and it's not one person dumping on another person and I think that's one of the few use cases of this technology that isn't extractive in a traditional sense yeah like I mean we were just talking about this before the panel that like hey like you know at least in the CYO it's very separated right like the meme coin has its own place they're not promising any utility like you know the true dents like and the the sap crypto Sav people really love it and you can participate in that but then there are a separate uh group of projects that can tackle real world problems uh like we love memec coin like we support 3,000 mcoin like out of the gate on bookit.com you can book spend any of your meme coin that you don't care about like for booking something you know a flight a cruise or whatever uh you can also inter like sweep Stakes we have a sweep Stakes right now that uh this is actually a free one we're giving away you know in our pre-launch stage uh free gold membership to everyone that registered uh during the time of this conference and uh with that every registration you also are automatically entered to win like VIP tickets to to the Grand Prix right but in the future with any your mem coin dust if you don't want you can like you know kind of like convert that to spree points and Inter like sweep Stakes or like use that to Biff for like really cool experiences we we're making it fun as well right I'm honestly so bullish on the future of crypto Commerce um one of the things that you know I've seen over the last years you've just met mention is that a lot of awareness and attention was driven to memec coins which hurt a lot of individuals coming back into the space or coming in the space for the first time and I feel that crypto Commerce is a real way for to educate individuals on the use case of stable coins and then what they can do for them in their day-to-day lives and I'll just share a short story like I was recently in South Africa and working with a production crew and I'm like do you guys take crypto we'll pay you in Stables think he's like no no too volatile and it's like you people just don't even realize like what is possible on crypto payment rail so I'm excited because I think Commerce is an incredible way to grab the attention of the masses and Merchants to come over to crypto so my last wrap-up question for all of the panelists is what's the one immediate step or action you recommend to anyone in the room who wants to be part of shaping the future of crypto Commerce uh you know selfishly go check out bookit.com uh we love feedback from the community right like I we built this tool for uh crypto industry people that really travel a lot uh and and and and and points nerds like me that like really want to get a lot of rewards and we want feedback this is like early stages uh this is your product we want the community to give us feedback and we're giving everybody again go membership uh doing the conference time so go register uh just uh check out bookit.com and uh let us know what you think yeah totally uh again yeah as well go check out spree Finance I would love you guys to to use all the our partner adbs like BookIt uh and and and you know we're looking for partners who have their own protocols that they want to give out incentives and they want to Leverage The you know 2 million Merchants the real world Commerce to really give value back to their Community uh so yeah we'd love to chat with you and and as well as anyone trying to build the future of Commerce as an engineer please please reach out and I'll go really quickly but I would say for Builders really focus on user experience and try to abstract away all the complexities that we had we've had over the last few Cycles the end user doesn't care about the technology they care about it being very simple to use and if you can do that it's really easy to get adoption love it well thank you guys so much appreciate the conversation thank you thank you [Applause]