Fireside Chat with Nikhil Chandhok, Circle, and Kartik Talwar, ETHGlobal I Pragma San Francisco 2025

[Music] all right we're going to go jump right into our second fireside chat of the day and for this I'd like to bring on nille from Circle he's the chief product officer of circle we're going to cover all the things that have been happening in the world of stable coins so please give him a big round of applause [Applause] thank you theil I'm really excited to uh to chat with you um and uh stable coins have taken the entire industry by storm we've seen incredible incredible growth and uh there have been so many cool things that have kind of come out from a product standpoint from Circle so I'm excited to chat with you about this but the thing I wanted to start off with was um understanding kind of how you got in this uh space you've been at uh kind of meta you've been at Google and now at Circle what sort of got you excited to join Circle and uh tell us about kind of things that you that let you two be part of the circle team yeah I think thank you thanks for having me um like uh I think it's pretty obvious I grew up in India but like I'm a child of the internet um I had no family in the US so I came to the US because I discovered the internet I went to school I got a scholarship because of the internet I worked at Google for many years I was early at Google and Google was about the open internet and then um over the years the internet was closing up and it's just a personal passion of mine to make make sure that the internet stays open because it is sort of the frontier of human consciousness from my perspective and as I looked at it like I'm a PM a product manager uh I don't write code as much although more recently I've been having fun with like all the GPD products out there that's awesome um but so it was the question was like what do I do like what's a good application I'm not going to be able to contribute to a core protocol I'm not that technical anymore and for me it was pretty obvious like stable coins was just superbly uh like it was such a good product uh I remember growing up like uh when I first wanted to come to the US I had to score $1,800 um to buy a plane ticket and have like some like money till I got paid from school and getting those ,800 back in 1998 1999 was like an incredible Hill to climb and uh over the years I send back money home and I used to always sell like nice Tech stock and like I would send like I would convert the money into rupees and like my parents would sort of like take the rupees and be happy with it but uh I would have just rather them have the dollars and not like the rupees and so like for me it's a really personal story I just like the idea of like an internet which where everybody has access to the best products I think uh Circle has built o product which is like uh the usdc stable coin if anywhere in the world uh you can get access to Dollars uh access to Dollars access to a US passport is probably still very valuable want yeah very valuable and so I just think it's just like a remarkable idea that like and I think most people don't understand this like if you're American like in America any body can go get a bank account but if you're not one of the 330 million Americans like to get a bank account in dollars is almost impossible unless you're you know big Corporation or like you're you have like immense political connections so I just think it's sort of a tool for economic Liberation it's a it's a way to bring people together uh it funds the world computer it's just it's just so many good things about usdc uh it's also stable coin and it's also crossw payments and all that and like we can talk about that as well but I think circle's mission is just really important to me and I think usdc is really important to me I think uh blockchain based infra is really important to me so I work on things that are important to me yeah that's awesome um it's always great when you have a personal kind of inspiration for this because you get to actually think about solving the problem and you know that if you don't like it there's a lot more that won't either and uh but if you do it resonates with more people um I am a big believer that like individuals are really responsible for shaping the future so I'm just doing my part in that so and that's amazing um well I think one thing that most people don't know is that you are not just the issuer of a stable coin there's a lot more that Circle does um and we'd love to learn more about all the other things that you have yeah but I think like the way to think about circle is like um it's uh I like to think in threes like so uh first we make the usdc stable coin we make it available on uh many many blockchains it's about 17 blockchains um that we make it available on today and we'll be adding a bunch more next year so we're speeding up uh because we want to support the ecosystem um second is like we make it easy for people to get access to the usdc so what does that look like that's where all the trafy stuff comes in we make sure that we have access to banking uh around the world so if you are in Singapore if you're in Mexico if you're in Brazil uh if you're in uh the EU you can send us uh local currency get usdc you can send us uh dollars get get usdc and you can do that instantaneously and we're going to significantly enhance that footprint over the next um next 18 months and the third thing is we help you do things with the usdc well you have the usdc you know how to get it like now what do we do with it so we have an entire web3 Services platform uh which has the ability uh for developers to build wallets that utilize usdc and for that matter any other token it's not just us USC um and we have onchain products like what we call cross-chain transfer protocol that allows you to have like chain agnostic usdc um and then we have a bunch of products around that which make it possible for like traditional Enterprises which are like web two-ish companies to sort of like onramp into web 3 uh very very easily who or not specifically financial institutions is that correct or including it's financial and non-financial institutions we did a big collaboration with grab last year uh so grab launched like something called purpose bound money in Singapore on the back of our wallets purpose bound money is money coming from the government to a grab user where they can only spend it at businesses that the government deems appropriate and so that's an example that's an nft but it's still money and it's still value that like the wallet is able to like mediate and um so there's a bunch of these examples uh I think like after FTX crashed um there was a lot of confusion in the market maret um my expectation is that next year the confusion starts like clearing up and there will be a lot more of these like uh Enterprises coming back uh into the game because like I think everybody just freaked out like like uh understandably yeah after FTX crash and like I had a friend tell me he's like nobody wants to like no CMO wants to sit in front of like Congress to explain like you know why they have an nft in their wallet and so so I see this scenario changing and eventually like the wallet the most interesting thing in the wallet uh is value and without value there is no value exchange and so and usdc hopes to play that rle so we're going to keep building wallets uh wallet Primitives we're going to keep hoping that the future where people have uh Wallets on chain uh ared soon um coinbase have taken a similar attack they're sort of in this view of like getting a billion users on chain um we're not as big as coinbase but we are doing our part and trying to get users on chain uh and we want to simplify this like you know we want to simplify the ux layer like what does it mean to send users what is an address it's a really really complicated concept and I all I did for 20 years was consumer apps and I just think like the ux is just really really difficult still and so we're working on ux Primitives we're working on like wallet stuff um we're working on like onchain Primitives to take away the complexity of holding usdc or making usdc more Capital efficient uh so you don't have to have as much of it um we're going to introduce new products next year what does that mean um so yeah next year we're going to work on products that make it possible for you to not have to hold usdc across many many chains at the same time so you can hold usdc and you can sort of instantly bridge and things like that so like it's just a better asset to program with and so a programmer's mindset versus sort of like an asset issuer's mindset yeah that's amazing um I I was going to ask you what are interesting things that are being worked on but you uh already answered that um when you think about what could be possible with usdc or just any product that Circle um works on is kind of the question that you're answering about what the user would do with this if we offer this as an AP or an asset or is it more about what you would like to be solved and do you make those decisions to help get there faster yeah so it's it's a little bit of both um sort of the way sort of when like new uh product managers Engineers join Circle uh and they ask me like you know who is uh who is usdc for is it for consumers is it for businesses like how should I think about it so I tell them about tell them the story about like when I was a much younger person I was in the Amazon and I was able to uh buy Coca-Cola in the Amazon and so because I was really thirsty and I was like all right I need something cold and refreshing and there was a can of Coke I opened it up I had experience of like those uh bubbles in my mouth it was a pretty standard experience that I get in San Francisco as well but what I didn't know was how that Coca-Cola got there so there are two aspects to the experience one is like the the experience of drinking the Coca-Cola and then second is the distribution of that Coca-Cola to that endpoint in the Amazon which is completely oblivious to the user the user did not go to coca-cola.com to buy that Coca-Cola they just got it where they were so we work on both prod problems we work on the problem of like making sure that when you use USC it's just dead simple you don't have to think you don't have to understand chains gas addresses bridging like all this stuff is like it's great for like you know uh more advanced users uh but for the users that we target which is this is a consumer product at the end of the day much like Coca-Cola is a consumer product uh we want to make sure that your experience is very simple for the folks in Argentina who are using stable coins is very simple uh but that Machinery that got that can of cook to the Amazon or got that usdc into Argentina or like got that usdc into Brazil or Mexico that allowed the user to sort of bring uh peso or R and then like converted into usdc and like the capital efficiency of that and making sure that there's depth over there so they can do it for larger transactions when they want to do it 247 paying the least amount of gas that's an important problem too so we work on both problems um both of the problems reveal themselves differently like we have user research uh that we actively run we're probably one of the few crypto companies that have a uxr team that's in the field uh getting feedback from users on like um and actually bringing back videos of them trying to send usdc through an exchange um it's just miserable um what has been U sort of a harder part of doing this um and this is like obviously you covered a lot of the ux piece but uh I'm actually curious to know about what's the behind the scenes of supporting new chains uh is there obviously Every Chain has their own nuance and you have to keep the experience consistent so what's been hard what's been easy and you said you have 17 chain supports uh clearly we're going to see hundreds of them in the future so uh what's been uh the thing that stands out as challenging usually we can't keep up like there's I mean if there's so many so many app chains and like having a native experience is just better uh and it's more secure and so um we're looking for ways in which like uh we won't have to like keep like adding usdc support to each individual chain so like this whole idea of super chains is really interesting um so that future when it comes will be really good for us because like you know the asset will be instantly bridgeable and like you know native on all the chains that are inside the super chain so um so one is like Hey how do we sort of have a scalable architecture for uh having a good consistent experience uh that's outside the super chain right so I I don't know the answer to that question we have to sort of integrate those chains into our into what we call cctp um so that's that's hard uh also security models tend to be different um security budgets on the chains are different um so we get into that like you know we we have debates of it uh sometimes you have to deprecate a chain what do we do then uh it is an asset like it is uh we are regulated so we have to tell the regulator like what are we how are we serving the users who were on the Chain we can't just leave them stranded it's literally money yeah so it's liter money so we can't just the money can't disappear um so we have to have a Redemption process for the money um so that's that's hard and then uh and then yeah just like making sure that we are sort of an appropriately neutral player uh in the ecosystem but then for the chains that who want to work with us and want to grow their ecosystem we are a good partner and so that's a balancing act like you know we try to make sure that we are making the same opportunity available to everybody but like if a chain comes in and it's like look I have this amazing growth program do you want to get behind it and we're like yeah like that kind of makes sense and so how do we like that is that's a little hard and like the other thing is it changes for everybody too I it's not a constant like this will be a different answer in a story and request from Every Chain Every Chain yeah and then like there's also like you know when I first came in the other thing that was hard is like convincing the world convincing people that um that the open internet is good like public uh public blockchains are more secure than like private chains um uh not waiting for like uh traf coming I mean traf is great like I would love to have them but like when they show up they're going to look very different yeah are there usually visceral reactions on hey why is everything public um they are like you know like I was at YouTube early days right so if imagine me I was in I joined YouTube I was at Google in 2005 I joined YouTube after the acquisition and it's a bunch of cat videos and so like we would tell people like look it's this is where like all the future stuff is going to happen and then um my boss would tell me like my boss his boss's boss would tell me like listen man like I don't know this is all like I really want to watch Lost which is an old show uh on on YouTube and in my head like I was like a junior person so in my head I would always be like why do you want to watch Lost you can watch it on TV uh I really want to watch the Numa Numa dance which is like a really solid old video um and so so like the behavior is going to be it's going to be new it's going to be uh like the behavior in Argentina that we were talking about it's totally novel and so like um for me like I think it's hard to convince people that that behavior will be sort of like the driver of growth it's sort of the expansion of markets uh that is that is interesting financial markets are bigger and deeper than the video Market was uh even even in 2006 video Market was like depending on who you asked was like a $450 billion Market but it's pretty big market for back then but like financial markets are bigger than that so I don't know the shape of it but like I think like it's a good bet that it is easier to satisfy new demand than to sort of uh replace Like A system that is already there in place right so so we're focused on satisfying new demand and like you know most of the times when like people realize that like there is like money to be made like you know the older folks uh older traditional folks show up and they sort of adopt those things like you know if you take the Black Rock Biddle fund you can redem which is every institution now which by definition following and you can redeem it usdc and it's through a smart contract and I think even 3 years ago that would be a crazy idea that like hey you can actually buy you can buy bidd have it be on uh on chain and have it be 247 redeemable for usdc through a smart contract and say that at CNBC to everybody else at the morning show explaining what the hell's going on I don't think most people still understand it like I think uh uh but it's a feature people use it I mean like we we have an allocation we allocate balance sheet to like do that it sort of runs out on a consistent basis that's awesome yeah um I I do want to focus on one thing that's not all about um usdc what do you think about other stable coins out there um kind of the algorithmic ones out there there is just generally more onchain specific contracts yeah I mean I think like it's people are realizing that it's a big market like I think like sort of uh what Jeremy's bet was like six years ago and sort of my bet like three years ago was like hey this is going to be important like I think like uh or what was just said by the last speaker like you touch money like all the time throughout the day right and when you touch money like you cannot have that money be completely volatile so stable coins are just inherently um more efficient at settlement and they are less risky at settlement right so like there's less risk essentially because they don't um they're not in the system for more than more time than is needed and so I am expecting a lot of people to come into this Truth uh there is regul regulatory Clarity in uh Europe because of M um we're licensed in Singapore so there's like Clarity there uh there will be Clarity in other parts of the world where like stable coins become money next year like right now there's still kind of in the middle right and but next year they're just money this is like you mean the legal definition it or just because it'll just be so convenient that it counts it's the legal definition is I me it's convenient right now but like I don't think you get to on-ramp and off-ramp into it as easily because it's still a crypto asset and so you need like a crypto asset license to like really really serve uh or like a vasp license to serve your users with it um you know I don't know the full shape of how that evolves but it'll become money more like money in 25 and 26 than it is right now so I think like that's why you'll see more people coming in because they will be like all right well I can use Banks to do my settlement or I can do the settlement by myself um two seconds with zero cost zero cost or like I'll pay a little gas and like you know and and and and that's it and so but the shape of the stable coin is there one or two or three that have like Network effects and have broad acceptance versus like tokenizing private debt and then trying to move it across as a stable coin I don't know that feels more funky like you know uh like some of the more recent efforts where like people are just tokenizing uh bank balance sheets and calling them stable coin um I so their regulatory Clarity will help uh but there's all kinds of news today like of like big Acquisitions uh in this space there's a lot of activity in this space um which is good like I think the more legitimacy there is proving the point that is it Big Industry and uh it's a big industry like I mean like today uh without like significant regulation uh without legitimization like there's 170 billion worth of stable coin in the world that is a wild thing like it's a crazy idea I know we sit here because we're in crypto and like Bitcoin is a trillion and a half and like put $170 billion of an asset that like is just internet money in the last four years only four years only right like so primarily in the four years I don't I know is an like older asset older asset and it's been around and they've been building up distribution for some period of time but that 170 billion is like a drop in the bucket when like you consider uh M2 Supply then there's M1 Supply and then like um so I don't know and we are still not in the period of like economic like you know easy monetary policy so if like money printing resumes what happens to the total stable coin Supply like there's a lot of like reasons to want to be bullish about the market it and believe that there's a tailwind and like more people will want to participate so yeah I yeah I'm I'm very happy for U like all of these people to come in like because then it's easier for us in DC it's not a zero some game yet yeah it's it it never was the internet was never Zero Sum that's the thing if like in 2007 or 2005 like when I started Google like you know like oh we're going to have like Google's going to come in it's going to take everything and like nobody's going to have any money Google made a lot of money but the whole internet economy is like ridiculously big and like the there's hard to prove like another innovation in the last 25 years that has had like bigger economic impact the same way like I think like this core innovation has it's so big like I yeah maybe Circle does great maybe it doesn't like who knows uh my hope is it does great but like it's such a massive Force like it's so big that like uh and sometimes that gets lost and I think like uh maybe if we didn't hadn't had FTX maybe a little bit faster like yeah you have the the the science and the church moment here yes um well my final kind of question to you is even though you kind of did tease this a bit is there anything else you want to talk about on what's uh coming up from the circle developer platform or things that you're excited about launching in the near term I mean we launched some new features in wallets uh which are like these uh modules which are like these um pre-ordered contracts uh people should take a look at them uh the main main thing we are outside of the wallets we're going to be doing is like with like many more chains next year um and like uh making reducing the latency for like our our Bridge like significantly I think like um and and and that is again in the sort of like um sort of like Spirit of making usdc Capital efficient you know which actually shrinks our circulation so there's always like push back uh like uh in doing that but fundamentally it's better for the economy it's the right thing to do it's the right thing to do for the users and it actually increases like utility and and like uh transaction volume and that we can track and that we can prove and so stable coins have surpassed like Visa in transaction volume a 16 Z report today it's 2x of what like Visa transaction volume is you should think about it as the beginning not as like like at the end like we're at the beginning of it like in four years time that's going to be 8X 10x of like uh uh Visa transaction volume because we can essentially with stable coins we can tap into any money settlement flow it's not just consumer settlement flows any money settlement flows and those mean that like global banking flows like you know cross border flows remittance flows uh internal treasury flows every flow can sort of Get Better by reducing uh settlement risk right and so and yeah you're taking some counterparty risk with that stable coin and you should choose the best stable coin to be able to do that right so amazing I think that's an awesome note to end this on I want to thank you so much for this amazing chat please give him a big round of applause [Music]