Moving Money at Internet Speed - TOKEN2049 Singapore 2023

to the same crowd warm I did last year so I'm going to ask everyone to stand up because Thursday at lunchtime is a hard slot and I'm gonna just ask the same question I did last year so you will sit down when I say the time that you got home last night for some of the Sleepy people I start at 10 P.M 11 P.M 10 P.M it's 11 P.M midnight the 1am 2 A.

M you can lie you can lie it's fine sorry again sorry wait I'm down I'm down okay well fun fact last year we had a guy who didn't sit down because he said he didn't sleep at all so there you go was it you no it wasn't me it was not me anyway uh welcome gentlemen Brooks uh head of uh Asia Middle East for ripple and um uh Paul head of uh uh Cumberland globally for BD um firstly I just want to start with what do you actually last year I had Alex here and I asked him do you know where do Quan is so I'm not putting you on the spot this year but I am going to ask you in simple terms what does your business do starting with new books great well thanks for having us it's great to be on the stage uh with both of you uh we've been in the business now for 10 years uh and we started a very simple mission of moving value across borders more efficiently uh using the blockchain and digital assets and ripples really stayed with that mission for the entire time we are Bill building hard we've added other blockchain and crypto solutions to that including custody with our recent acquisition of Medico and so we're building a full Enterprise solution for crypto solutions for companies around the world doing it a lot out of Singapore most of our Global business runs right through here cool and pull yeah I feel like he went up to me because we've been around for nine years so we're not quite at that decade Mark but uh Cumberland is uh one of if not the largest uh institutional liquidity providers um our counterparties are mostly institutions um so we provide large-scale liquidity um generally large sizes we don't look at retail um we quote a variety of assets I know that Rags at some point here is going to call me a stablecoin maxi um our OTC desk wanted to make sure that I reminded everyone that we also do trade the boring stuff like the Bitcoin the E the xrp um but we are liquidity provider across a variety of assets okay great um and and Brooks like explained to me uh just digging a little bit deeper and the theme for today is like money at internet speed and the main reason for this theme is that I feel that multiple people in the ecosystem and chipping it away at this problem that money needs to move faster like if you need to send it uh personally from from one country another it takes too long whether it's through a bank account whether it's wallet's wallet whether it's for trading settlement times are too long explain to me a little bit about how um you know I know like inter-bank settlement is like a main thing for you guys explain a little bit about like how you guys do that absolutely I mean cross-border payments continues to be one of the great intractable and the last great problems in finance and most people in the audience and here on the stage have been building things in Asia for a long time and no different out here it's expensive to move money across borders whether that you're someone remitting money from a Saudi oil field to the Philippines or a small business uh that's actually moving payroll across borders um and so we've stepped in with a blockchain based solution uh built a Global Network of 70 plus countries at Ripple Nets with world-class banks fintechs on both the sending side and receiving side and put a bridge digital asset in the middle or xrp or others well we can move that value very quickly take out that seven percent spread make sure there's reliability we believe it's a an efficient and green solution and and we cover most of the world with it right now so we've got great uptake and uh we're just getting going right and and Paul I mean on the trading side I know that uh we have uh certain differences of opinion when it comes to stable coins which I'll get into in a second but um you know you're very passionate about zero settlement times and that's a major Innovation from stable coins um tell me from a trading perspective like what do you see blockchain infrastructure doing for global trading yeah I mean crypto Traders are pretty spoiled frankly because of the existence of stable coins um if you talk to someone in crypto and you say hey t0 settlements that's pretty cool right that question is that comment is almost not understood by people in crypto because we're so used to it um most traditional assets if you want to settle if I'm sending you a bonds that I owe you that's going to take two days um some transactions take longer the ability to settle transactions not only in the same day but often in the same you know 10 you know sub one second block that is a superpower and to me when I think about what are the things that blockchain allows that are going to move past crypto markets and into tradify markets stable coins in general and t0 settlements in particular that seems to me to be the first thing that will be really exported into larger scale Finance that's great right right and I didn't give a proper introduction but obviously I would still go from which makes usdc and I'll get into a special reason as to why I'm wearing this uh special jacket today uh towards the end um Brooks tell me a little bit about uh you've been in this since we've known each other for a long time you've been in this industry for a while you were at the origin a traditional Finance guy right um so you know like we are still at the very story of early stages even though it seems well Advanced to us of crypto and its entry into Finance what do you think we need to do to move us forward a bit more uh faster we've only got like a couple hundred million users we obviously want to go into the billion similar to financial services we think we have the special magic to to unlock financial services for a bigger population to make it cheaper faster and better what do you think we still need to do yeah one of the things I think I've watched Capital markets develop in the region you know since the early 90s when the fixed income markets Equity markets were early and some of these markets were very closed around and one thing that was critical overall from the very beginning was to uh push on the regulatory front to make sure that the Regulators in every country understood the value of what you were bringing to the table uh with a product with a certain market and in our case with digital assets blockchain and crypto to make sure they understand what is in it for them why is it a good thing and and why should their regime and Country uh buy into some of the things that that we're setting up without trading operations or moving value across borders and we've always found that you're better off being in dialogue and being part of that process and that's true in financial services I spent a little bit of time at Uber between the two and that was the same kind of game different industry but you had to convince local Regulators that what you were offering was important for them and their citizens okay great and I spent some time with uh Brooks in there and the river wheel team of the day and I shook the hand of their clo for uh jokingly saving crypto in terms of The Regulators um Paul same question to you like what do we need to do um he made the joke about him being the stablecoin Maxi uh he started he's part of the stablecoin uh standard that's what it's called um I should be the stable Queen Maxi but Paul is taking that honorary Title Here in Asia going to be one of us here in Singapore explain to me like what is it that you think we need to do what part do you think stablecoin's playing this yeah look I'm going to be the probably the 100th person to sit on the stage and say that crypto is not gonna be really valuable until we find mainstream use cases so like I'll just be the 100th person to say that but I always use the coffee test like when can I go and buy my coffee using crypto rails right that's that's really kind of where we where I think from the payment side we want to get um and there's really two tiers of that and they're they're actually they're both really impactful right the first tier is when I go to Starbucks or whatever um I have my crypto wallet I take stable coins off my wallet um and then Starbucks receives Fiat right and there's someone in the middle who's doing that conversion right and hopefully the Cumberland can be working with them to provide that liquidity on their conversion but that's step one and I I don't want to undersell it that's a huge step when I can go to Starbucks and I can buy my coffee with usdc like that is a huge unlock the really big unlock and I think this will take some time but it's really what is used thinking about we're thinking about when are we going to get to the point where Starbucks says like oh stable coins thank you very much right when we get to the points where non-cryptonative corporations um and Merchants think about stable coins as money and not just a way to get money that is a really big unlock and and I hope that we can get there in the next several years great thank you um I'm going to switch tack a little bit to building businesses in Asia the part that we're here in Singapore last year we were at token it was massive this year it seems to be even bigger like I I could it took me like 15 minutes to get up the escalators almost late for this um tell me Brooks you've been in Asia a long time tell me about the part that Singapore plays and I think traditionally we would always look to the West per se to lead in terms of Regulation and Innovation it seems like here in Singapore here in Asia we've got a bit of a lobster in terms of regulators very forward thinking what do you think about Asia's part in terms of shaping the future of crypto and your experience building in Asia I think there's no question in this industry um Singapore and the region itself has been a fabulous place to build the business um it this part of the world is a big chunk of our overall revenue or chunk of our flows uh 80 of the people we've hired this year have been outside the U.S um Singapore is not just a regional headquarters we don't think about it as southeast Asia headquarters or APAC headquarters it's one of our Global Mega centers and I think that notion of Singapore reaching bigger than just a regional center fintech digital assets crypto is a place where Singapore can sink globally as a global leader in center and I think everyone in this room is a testament to that and you're right I thought adding a fourth additional floor on the fourth floor this year would help but it did take even longer to get up here today so uh we've been very pleased talents greats the governments you know with you the EDB is a fantastic partner and that's been true in building trade fine and building right hailing and now in crypto it's great to have a partner in that so we're a big fan and Paul you've been here sometime as well so like and and the fact that you know you do so much trading out of here in Singapore as opposed to other places you work with a lot of the other market makers a lot of the exchanges like what's your view like why is Singapore such a hub or Asia in general yeah let me just talk about Asia in general um and I've been here for uh nine years uh so since the beginning of 2015. um Asia you know our Focus here actually started up as like okay this is going to be kind of the you know the main office's overnight desk um and over the last several years what we've seen is that the Asian office the Singapore office really punches above its weight a lot of the volume is coming from this region a lot of the energy a lot of the Partnerships are coming from this region um I think that Asia in general well let's just say APAC has really adopted crypto um it has allowed a lot of people who wouldn't traditionally have access you know everyone says just the financial system and I I think that's kind of overselling it but to the mainstream Financial system right not to an isolated Financial system that's when I related Market but to be part of the global market and that's something that you have in crypto which you don't necessarily have in other asset classes just the integration there isn't in Asian crypto market and North American crypto Market in the European market there is just the global crypto market and I think that that's something that's really powerful and has you know really allowed our Asia presence to be more impactful thank you um so I I like to say that um like I don't like Solutions looking for problems yeah I like uh problems to be there that we need to solve um what do you think um sort of like final question what is uh the product Market fit that you see happening for crypto as we scale from a couple hundred million users into the billions and what are you hot on in the next sort of like 12 to 24 months what do you think is really going to change in crypto yeah the web three in general we totally agree on the you know we're not chasing there's been a lot of parts of this industry that have chased things that maybe didn't need weren't a problem or a big enough problem in the first case there's no question and we've talked about the movement of value uh the trading piece of this uh we're very excited about tokenization uh of real world assets that's a big we have a bunch of our folks on that team that are here at this conference and you think about the notion of real estate and financial securities uh of private Equity Funds now uh tokenizing uh their funds themselves or in the secondary market and so we're just getting going there and we think that's another place where we can actually go in with this industry broadly to find and address real world problems and I think as long as we keep looking at everything through that prism um and in our world kind of making Acquisitions like we did with Medical on the custody side again International Swiss based Global team big team here in Singapore um we can keep kind of moving down that road kind of figuring out what people need either buying or building into it yeah and it's very good point on real world assets the whole crypto market cap is one trillion roughly we got to nearly above two for a while um currencies themselves more than 100 trillion bonds more than 100 trillion stocks more than 100 and we haven't even looked at property and and commodities and everything else so really like the point not even the one percent they feel like the 0.1 stage and To You Paul like what do you think I know that you guys train other stuff non-cryptos well that's your background so you know a lot about assets like what's your view generally on what are you hot on what do you think crypto is really going to and web three's gonna either way it yeah I mean I wish you'd ask me first because tokenized money markets is such a huge use case that I think we're probably gonna see in the next year we're going to see really move on chain so I wish I'd given that answer um but also I see that we're almost done and so I'm gonna make my points so that you don't have time for a rebuttal uh because Rex and I always disagree about this one and get out of the way um I think that a big use case that has really not been attacked uh or or has not been successful so far and I think we will be successful in the next Market cycle is the proliferation of non-dollar stable coins right now if you want to move value across countries you can but it's in dollars right 99 of all stable coins are in dollars um uscc has a huge part of that um you euroc which is circle's Euro product really hasn't taken off in a meaningful way and I think in the next phase of the market as Regulators in these different countries get more used to the idea of stable coins and they put laws around it I really think that you're going to start to see it one of my biggest personal pet peeves is that when I get paid in Singapore dollars and I have my expenses in Singapore dollars but if in the middle if I want to achieve yield on chain or if I want to trade crypto on chain I have to move it into US dollars and I know I sound American I know I come from the states but I don't want to have US dollars in that equation I want to keep it in a you know in my native currency so I really think products like euroc are going to see a lot more adoption um in the next year once two years okay I'm gonna tell everyone why I'm wearing this special jacket because if you open your phones right now and you go and look up grab and circle you will realize that just I think 30 minutes ago on on the news we dropped that grab has a web 3 wallet and it's powered by circles programmable wallets platform we couldn't release it until now I think the program I think the web 3 wallet came out last year and I know there's a lot of circle people here and grab people here it's been a momentous effort over a period of a year I see Sean here I see redo here um uh Andy I see a whole bunch of people here um but yeah it's really big announcement I really want people to follow up on it and uh yeah it's an exciting exciting way for us to announce that Jeremy just announced it with Bloomberg just like 30 minutes ago congratulations cool thank you everyone thank you Paul thank you thank you Brooks