Greetings. Greetings. Perfectly. Nice to see you, Henry. Thank you very much for coming.
Thank you for inviting me. Hmm, great. Well, it's been almost a year since you announced that Stripe would be joining Stripe sooner or later. Hmm, I remember we traveled together during that period. Hmm, and I remember, probably, the same moments of excitement and, perhaps excitement and, perhaps , fear.
I'm curious, a year ago, you know, what were you preparing for when you were originally going to join, and what did n't actually happen that you were afraid of? That's a great question. I mean exactly like this, for those of you who don't know, Privy builds wallet infrastructure. We create embedded wallets. These are key management systems that you can embed directly into your product or app to give your users easy access to cryptocurrency, stablecoins, and stablecoins, and any digital asset without having to think about think about what's going on "under the hood."
So the point is to give you self- storage and shared access to digital assets to a much wider audience without requiring them to, you know, find a religion and, uh, dive into cryptocurrency. And we serve, uh, several thousand clients, ranging from, uh, Jupiter from, uh, Jupiter , Hyperlquid, Uniswap, very cryptocurrency companies, to companies, to , uh, deal, ramp, CLA and many other mainstream companies. I think along the way we discovered that wallets, uh, exist as part of ecosystems and exist as part of ecosystems for moving money both on crypto money both on crypto rails and fiat rails. And, uh, we had a client at CLA that we worked closely with who said that somewhere along the way, privacy was needed, and the bottom line was that you guys are essentially too low- level. Uh, and so joining Stripe in many ways was a way to really accelerate our ambitions to build systems that anyone could use, because we think these rails are incredibly valuable to a lot of people who today only see them as cryptocurrency, even though there are just crazy benefits to using decentralized money around the world.
Um, and that was the part that fascinated us. The part that worried me was some version of, you know, stack co-optation . Uh, why don't we just centralize our entire stack core, verticalize everything, and make Privy a captive, captive, captive piece of infrastructure that only serves a specific set of partners? And that was probably my biggest fear. And honestly, it was a lot of conversations that we had with Patrick, with Will, with, you know, with the people at Stripe that were like : We think a huge part of development in this space is open-stack development, where developers can choose how to integrate Rails, what chain they want to work on, um, you know, what Rails orchestration they want to use.
And so, very bluntly, we said, “We’re so excited to join; we are so excited to ensure that Privy can help Stripe products themselves. But as an infrastructure, we should be able to work with Stripe competitors, because Bridge competitors didn't know about Tempo at the time with Tempo competitors." And, um, I think it was honestly great to see how long-term- minded the Stripe people are. So, I'm sorry to say this, but I'm actually really happy with how it went, in the sense that we need to make these rails accessible to everyone, and the way to do that is to foster, you know, competition in this space so that we have an open stack that brings out the best of every layer of infrastructure layer of infrastructure . Yes, absolutely.
Um, you know, one of the things I've learned working with you and talking to you over the years is that I think you're very pragmatic when it comes to the trade-off between, as you said, finding a religion, being super decentralized super decentralized , Maxi, and, um, you know, just building infrastructure that helps people build in a really pragmatic way. I think it might be worth highlighting this answer, for example, how Stripe sees these things as well. I'm wondering where those boundaries are for you in terms of keeping things open, or how you know if it's too closed, or how you know if it's too centralized, or just the right amount of centralization magic sprinkled in for decentralization. Yes, that's a great question. I, I, I, you see, I think about it because I don't think there's a clear line here, and honestly, I think it's kind of like , you know, life by a thousand cuts or death by a thousand cuts, which is, in every product decision that we make, we have to rethink what the primary benefit is that we're getting from our users.
Hmm, you know, in a sense we want to build on open infrastructure because we believe that building on these chains means that everyone can contribute to the structure of what's available there. For example, Privy has a product called Privy Earn that's based on Morpho and A, and, you know, different vendors, and it's never something we could have built ourselves, so we benefit from it being a dynamic ecosystem. I think it's a question of, you know, in the early stages, the very idea of a built-in wallet was very controversial, because every time you make things easier to use, you're, in a sense, creating a further abstraction. And the further the user is from the metal, the further they are from their own cryptography or seed phrase, hmm, the more they buy into how the system works. And it's not just about, you know, not just about, you know, embedded wallets, but the representation that you have in metamask, in Phantom or in Rainbow, is the same.
The fact that you're showing the transaction and you know you're going to show the hexadecimal code this way and not that way. This is a decision that the software developer makes on your behalf as a user. Yes. And in a way, by giving people access to wallets via email or any other non-systemic means, we are facilitating this. But I think we're trying to do it in a way that makes sure that in what we're building, we're providing the optimal rail from a UX perspective, and we're providing as equal citizens a canonical decentralized rail.
For example, when we launched embedded wallets, we launched them with wallet connectors wallet connectors . So that if someone wanted to use their existing wallet, they could. And we will never make a decision to force you to go one way or another. Of course, the developer has a choice of what to present, but we, as an infrastructure provider, want to make it as easy for a user to log in with their existing wallet as it is to create a new one. So, I think that's how we laid the foundation for following market trends in the process, which is, uh, ensuring that we make, uh, both normal paths, if you can't say that, very easy to use; and we're opening up so that people can come into this space together, uh, ensuring that crypto natives have access to first-class rails.
And then maybe secondly, it's also providing escape hatches to users so that when we relaunch the built-in wallets, we have key export as a feature from day one feature from day one . This way, we ensure that when people, uh, decide to use our orchestration, uh, they can always take ownership of the assets ( ownership of the assets ( rails) and generally keep them private if they want. That's right. I mean, that makes sense. Um, I think we'll probably Um, I think we'll probably touch on some of the recent announcements and product decisions that you've made as part of this in the next little section.
But, you know, one thing that really interests me is that as a developer, Stripe has always been the gold standard for APIs, documentation, it seems like they really knew what they were doing all this time. I'm curious, in about a year of working at Stripe, what have you learned from them as an organization that you've come away with and added to the way your team works? Yes, that's a great question. I mean, there are maybe three things that stand out things that stand out . The first one is just absolutely crazy ambition in terms of, you know, the belief that startups can change the world, and accordingly, that serving both small businesses and large enterprises gives us, uh, the opportunity to potentially help shape the direction of this technology, so I'll use Atlas as an example.
Atlas is Stripe's product for business registration. It greatly simplifies the process. This project was started 10 years ago, but today approximately 25% of companies in Delaware are registered through Alice. This is great. Um, and you start it off like, you know, I wasn't there , but I think a fancy project like that is a real headache for people trying to start a new business.
How do we implement this? And today, it has a real impact on how easy it is to start a business. Just like Stripe Climate and other things. So I think it's a other things. So I think it's a kind of version of believing in serendipity, that the things we think are important are actually worth weaving into a product, because even if it's a long journey, it's potentially going to pay off potentially going to pay off .
So this ambition to think in decades, in a sense, is the first. Steeply. The second is balancing this, obviously, with the fact that you're mega-kinetic in the short term, meaning in the long term we're all dead. Perhaps this is more about Privy more about Privy than Stripe. Of course.
But, uh, but we have to release something, uh, this month, otherwise what are we here for? And so I think we're seeing a much more, uh, prevailing culture of trying to balance: we have a sense of where " we have a sense of where " true north" is, where we want these products to go, but we can also make, uh, trade-offs and decisions in the short term to make sure we do that. And I think Stripe is much stricter, uh, than Privy stricter, uh, than Privy , naturally, in defining the gap between them so that we can move forward understanding the tradeoffs understanding the tradeoffs . That's right. Uh, and then .
That's right. Uh, and then , I think those are probably the two main ones. Probably the third is just something we shared, but a deep shared, but a deep , deep commitment to not judging interfaces. One thing we hate as developers is using an API that disappears. Yes.
And so I think we really, you know, use the principle of " use the principle of " half less" when we release things, because, uh, we have to make sure that these are going to be durable services that you can rely on for your business, for your products, for the experiences that you create. Uh, and that's something that create. Uh, and that's something that was deeply reinforced for us. Very cool. Very cool.
Hmm, yes. So, I mean, maybe we'll kind of jump into some of the recent things that you've been working on as a team at Stripe. Uh, the Stripe sessions were about a month ago, and I remember watching, and suddenly you were on stage. It was really nice to see a friendly face on stage, on the big stage at Stripe. Uh big stage at Stripe.
Uh , you know, one of the things that struck me was, uh, the announcement about the Treasury. Uh, it just seems like Stripe, correct me if I'm wrong, is essentially giving every business that uses Stripe a bank account under the hood, and Privy is providing a significant portion of that through its stablecoin infrastructure. I wonder where the original wedge is? Is it about businesses simply holding stablecoins holding stablecoins ? Will they start using things or doing things with stablecoins?
Hmm, yes. Where is it today? And what do the next steps look like? Yes, I mean the essence of the strategy can be summarized in two places: first, how do we use cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, a decentralized network to build better products for every Stripe user? So, you know, across Link, across Treasury, across any payment line, we want to add this additional capability additional capability .
These are crypto rails that provide faster and cheaper settlements that are always available, you don't have to wait at nights and weekends, it's a global line from day one, hmm, cross- order. Yes, that's right . And so all of these things, I think, will just create better outcomes for customers, including customers who don't know that there's any cryptocurrency involved here, right? This is a kind of first direction. And then, I think the second direction is that we're building a lot of infrastructure.
You know, today this is classified information, this is a bridge, and we want to make sure that we give customers access to platforms that have direct access to this infrastructure itself. I think this reflects how Stripe has worked historically, which is, you can sign up as a merchant, but you can also sign up as a marketplace. There's the product and then there's the underlying platform that you access, and we're trying to do the same thing with cryptocurrency and stablecoins in a sense. Um, to answer your question, which I quickly forgot now, uh quickly forgot now, uh , I'm back. I mean, the goal is just to have them hold these coins in these accounts, or, you know, how are we going to get them to actually use stablecoins?
Yeah, I think the goal... Yeah, I think the goal... I mean, you saw it, or I saw it, like, uh, the Levels IO tweet. Yes. It was like, "Dude, I get so much money on Stripe, and every time I have to wait, you know, plus two for it to settle."
Um, and I can't just use that, even though I also pay a bunch of merchants on Stripe bunch of merchants on Stripe . Why the hell can't I just do it cheaper? I don't want to pay a commission. I want to make sure that I, um make sure that I, um , keep this money and can spend it much faster. So it's a combination of both global demand from clients who don't necessarily have access to the same underlying infrastructure for asset storage, asset investment asset investment , for all of that.
And, um, this is a result of very direct demand from direct demand from , for example, real Stripe merchants who want to be able to do more directly within the Stripe platform. So, um, in short , that's it. Yes, you should be able to receive any stablecoin or, ahem, digital currency either in fiat form or in cryptocurrency. You should be able to directly operate it in operate it in any form factor. You should be able to forward it on.
You should be able to spend it. Um, and we want to make sure that it's as integrated as possible because we think that's a really powerful thing to do. And I think today you have users in about 50 countries in about 50 countries using Treasury, which would be unthinkable without stablecoins. Yes. I find it interesting that for many of these for many of these , it seems to be a way to supplement the existing financial system.
And in a way, we're trying to abstract, you know, maybe from cryptocurrency, if that makes sense. In the sense makes sense. In the sense that as a Stripe customer, you may not need to know what these are stablecoins under the hood, as you said. I'm curious, you know, I personally think that stablecoins are probably 100 times better money, right better money, right ? They allow so much.
Once it's on- chain and you have, for example, USDC, you can do a lot more with it a lot more with it than you can with traditional US dollars in a bank account bank account . So, when we abstract stablecoins, are we losing some of their magic and not communicating to customers some of the exciting features that stablecoins have? And maybe just to tie that in, how do you feel about the additional risk of, for example, something being on a blockchain? Or something, you know, a Morpho earnings product that adds some risk to the smart some risk to the smart contract, obviously it's very minimal, but, you know, how can we show people the magic and teach them about that magic and the tradeoffs? I think that's the whole point of the game, and in a way I basically agree with both sides and the contradiction that lies within it.
Yes. And this is where, as you know, Chris talked about more or less a federation in the last conversation. He drew an analogy with a centralized Israel, which is being taken up by the formation of the federal government of the United States, the government of the states. I think this confusion with clarifying this and the fact that we have competing models for this is extremely positive. For example, last week we launched the Stripe ecosystem, MoneyGram, which released MGUSD.
This is a stablecoin issued that MoneyGram users in Europe, the US, the UK can use to store better money, or at least a new form new form factor of money. Similarly, Deal launched a way for each contractor under the deal to receive payment in assets in a stable format in different parts of the world, store this money as part of the Deal wallet, and earn from it. It all works on Privy, right? Privy Bridge is a family of financial companies in that respect, and I think the bottom line is that we want, and at the same time some users want to make a sandwich with stablecoins? They don't want to open up any stablecoins to the end user, and I think it's a very good thing in principle that we're making these different attempts to figure out what's right for this, because you're right .
I think if you're, um, asking users to use DeFi, um, you know, if the last two months have shown anything, it's that I think there's a responsibility to disclose some of this, how your money works. These are the rails that are happening. So that are happening. So , um, I don't have a clear answer for you, other than to say that we, as a vendor, want to make sure that customer developers know exactly how the stack works, that they understand how to put it together, and that they're armed with everything they need to show their users the appropriate amount of infrastructure that looks like it could be used by the user to leverage that thread and learn more over time. And I think hiding everything in a way, um, sometimes dulls the power of what you can do with this technology.
But I also think it's very important to deliver value, not infrastructure. And I think the mistake with cryptocurrencies historically has always been to say, but look, hmm, that's how it works, and nobody cares . They are worried about what it might do for them. Yes. Results at every step.
Um, yeah, you mentioned, you know, the previous clients here are mostly developers, right? And, um, you know, one of the things that you provided, and I'm not even sure if I mentioned this to you, but your team gave me access to the digital, uh, asset accounts that you guys provided, uh, and announced in the sessions, and they're really cool. Um, I think they basically cover all the abstractions I would ever want to cover so I can build really quickly. I think you still feel like the tools are a bottleneck here around people, you know around people, you know , who are starting to really use stablecoins? We just didn't have enough tools, or do you think there's something else blocking that kind of adoption or a Cambrian explosion of stablecoin applications, yeah, I'm curious, what do you think?
I think this, this, this, I think these are three components. I think, first of all components. I think, first of all , the tools have come such a long way, and yet there are, you know way, and yet there are, you know , bottlenecks. I think there are still a lot of questions, for example, about market entry and some of the rails. I would consider these tools, but, you know, they combine, essentially, fiat money and cryptocurrency together, card issuance, that kind of thing.
There's still, I mean, a lot of financial infrastructure here, but infrastructure that's, uh, lacking. One, two, I was in Amsterdam last week for Money 2020, and, uh, regulatory clarity. I, I, I hate to criticize an old, uh, old horse, but the horse is not dead, and, uh horse is not dead, and, uh , there is still a great need for, uh, deeper clarity, particularly, you know, in Europe, in the UK, uh, in the US, and that remains a big part of it, uh. And then I think the third one is probably better integration and more attention to detail. Okay, now you can, you know, theoretically, uh, transfer money from, uh transfer money from, uh , bank transfer to stablecoins, store those stablecoins, earn on those stablecoins, spend them on a card spend them on a card .
Perfectly. But do you know what happens when you need to file a tax return? What 's going on with accounting and making the fiat and cryptocurrency rails really mesh well? And that's one of the things that I find really interesting about working on Stripe, which is how to put these rails together so that they can work at scale for huge businesses. And I think that's , you know, Privy increasingly serves not just developers, but fintech, marketplaces, financial institutions, you know, Stripes is partnering with Meta to distribute revenue to creators in the Philippines and Colombia, and, you know, these companies want to know, "Okay, it's great that I can theoretically do this, but..."
work it out by the end of the year for me, because I don't have intrinsic value in the technology if it doesn't make my life easier doesn't make my life easier . Absolutely. Yes. And I think right now, maybe the challenge for the business is that as a business, Eth Global, we very often use stable accounts, and that helps for settlements, for clarity of payments. But yes, when it comes to accounting, or when it comes to simply increasing and decreasing transaction volumes, there are problems that we, as a cryptocurrency-based business, are happy to solve, but perhaps more traditional businesses have difficulty with.
And I still think the gap in perception of where cryptocurrency is today is still very large. So, you know, we're so close to the metal and what's being built that we take it for granted that the infrastructure problems have been solved. But this information is unevenly distributed, so in that sense, I think that, you know, as a space you know, as a space , celebrating the efforts to bring these things to the masses, to simplify the message, to showcase the charismatic use cases for this technology, remains so important because we still very often deal with traditional companies, financial institutions, and their vision of cryptocurrency is somewhere between 2014 and 2017, right? And so, I mean, if you talk to the average person and use the word " use the word " cryptocurrency," it has a lot of implications that, uh, might not necessarily want to come up when you're talking about the financial underpinnings . Uh, yeah, I mean, maybe my last question is, you know, what are you excited to see built as part of solving some of these problems and bringing consumers, uh, USDC or other stablecoins, you know, maybe through Privy, through, you know, other, uh through, you know, other, uh , other wallet solutions.
I just want to say, what do you want to see next? I-I-I, you know, I look at three key performance indicators. This isn't a direct answer to your question, but I think, hmm, what's the geographic reach? How many, both individuals and companies, you could say, have been a little bit willing, like, hooked on this technology, they can now do things they couldn't do before because of it, or they can do things better and cheaper than before. And so I think that's something I'll really pay attention to in the second half of the year.
half of the year. First, it is the number of so-called funded wallets or volumes, etc. Second, you know, how crypto-centric Stripe is, which I'm really interested in which I'm really interested in , obviously for subjective reasons, but like, what volume of traffic goes through these rails, as opposed to traditional rails, and how we can combine those two aspects really well. Um, and then I think the third phase is continuing to iterate on new interfaces that use cryptocurrency, that use, you know, cryptocurrency and stablecoins to get very specific outcomes for the user, but that raise the bar a little bit under the hood so that the person can, you know, continue. I think finding these new languages for discussing value discussing value , and that's where, you know, the deal announcement, I think, was, um, hold, earn, spend.
And these are three useful verbs. And then, you know, maybe in 10 years' time it will be an act of discussion, but I...I came into the space for self- sovereignty, and I still think so. Uh, these rails and their development rails and their development , uh, lay the foundation for creating a system that, uh, gives users, uh, control over their assets and, and their, um, assets much deeper over time. Surprisingly.
Well, join me all in thanking Henry.
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