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- [00:00]
Adam Nash
Foreign.
- [00:11]
Brendan
Welcome back to the Crypto 101 podcast. Hope everyone is having a fantastic week so far. We're here through thick and thin. We love bringing in leaders from all ends of the crypto space. And this time around, we have Adam Nash. He is the CEO and co founder of Daffy. Adam, welcome. And it's great to have you.
- [00:31]
Adam Nash
Oh, no, thank you for having me. Great to be here.
- [00:34]
Brendan
Absolutely. Well, man, we're excited for this. You know, this is a little bit different, and this is. I think one of the best parts of the podcast is that we bring in people that are utilizing blockchain technologies and cryptocurrencies at all ends of pretty much every industry on Earth. And that's the cool part about how it's evolved to this point, is that, you know, previously in years past, it was just like, hey, cryptocurrencies exist. There's bitcoin, there's a theory, and there's a few others. And now it feels like the way that blockchain is being integrated is to every industry in every vertical, and this is one that people don't talk about enough. So we're going to be talking about how people can get plugged in with nonprofits and donations and how blockchain infrastructure can really aim to support the next generation of that. But before we begin, I need to toss it over to. And usually I'm the one getting it tossed over to me, but my faithful compadre over here, the one and only Mr. Bryce Paul.
- [01:29]
Bryce Paul
No, I'm, I'm really excited for this episode and for our guest today, Adam. Really appreciate you joining us and yeah, Brendan, you know, just riding out kind of the. The crypto kind of storm. You know, I'm, I'm down here in California where there's been some historic flooding and, and rains and all sorts of stuff, and it's been pretty wild, you know, kind of similar to kind of the volatility in the crypto market. But. But rain or shine, in the crypto markets, it's always a good practice to kind of give back. Right? And I think that Adam is really going to be able to help us kind of learn about how we can be, you know, strengthening our philanthropic efforts.
- [02:11]
Teva
But.
- [02:11]
Bryce Paul
But there's so much more than that. But, Adam, before we kind of dive into. To where you're NAT now with Dafu, I would love to just kind of take a 30,000 foot view from, like, your career. Like, how did you end up here in the crypto world working on what you are and what kind of led into this all.
- [02:27]
Adam Nash
Well, you know, I appreciate the question. In some ways, I feel like I've had a somewhat typical Silicon Valley career, although maybe it's not that typical. But, you know, I came out of school in the 90s. Software engineer, real passion for design. Got my master's in a topic that now has become very trendy, but at the time was new human computer interaction. Really focusing on how you bring technology to people and how you really solve problems for people. You know, started my. My first job was at Apple. I thought I was joining next, you know, the Steve Jobs kind of era, et cetera. But then in the middle of my interview process, Apple acquired next, or maybe Next acquired Apple. I'm still not exactly sure what happened, but, you know, I ended up working on Rhapsody, actually a technology called Web Objects. It was kind of the early web. Went to a startup that went public in the 90s and then went through my career. Kind of a mix of venture capital, angel investing. Worked at ebay for Web 1.0. That was my first product role. Was ahead of product at LinkedIn through the IPO in 2011 and then ended up in Fintech. Always passionate about personal finance. Ended up the CEO of Wealthfront for a number of years and then most recently, of course, founded Daffy. But I think my passion has always been about not just technology by itself, but using technology to solve real problems for real people. And, you know, the great thing about this industry is that, you know, we. We keep pushing the frontiers of what technology can do, which means that we can look at all new problems to solve or relook at old problems and solve them a new way. I mean, in some ways, that's what I'm doing right now, you know, with Daffy is, you know, looking at one of the oldest problems, which is how do you give back and kind of using modern technology to help solve it. But for me, in my spare time, I'm really passionate about personal finance. I actually teach a class at Stanford. We just finished the eighth year. It's called Personal Finance for Engineers. It's kind of the class I wish they had when I was there because students come in and they want to do well with their lives, etc. But no matter how smart you are or what school you went to, it turns out most places don't actually teach you the basics of how money works or how to live your financial life. And so that's always been a personal passion of mine.
- [04:42]
Brendan
Could not agree anymore with that. There's a lot of people who go through Schooling and they even get, you know, a college degree or a master's degree. And they're not fully prepared to go out into the real world. You know, they're not taught how to invest, they're not taught how to budget, they're not taught how to save. And, you know, what's a reasonable amount of debt to acquire? People end up opening up too many credit cards and there's a lot of not enough.
- [05:08]
Adam Nash
Right?
- [05:08]
Bryce Paul
Yeah. And people who don't have credit, like, you know, I went through this with a friend who's like, you know, buying a house and they were like, oh, like, just because I didn't have credit cards, I couldn't open up a house. Like, I was always taught, you know, they were saying, I was always taught to like, you know, just spend what you have. And like, my family never encouraged us to get credit cards. And so, like, there's that whole, you know, financial literacy thing that just America really doesn't have. But I think, you know, I don't know if it's just America specifically, but people all around the world just don't have that sort of intel. So it's really cool that you're, you're teaching that course and that's a passion of yours because it's definitely, you know, part of what drove us to, to do crypto 101, right? We, we try and do this education and stuff as well with, with all of our listeners. So.
- [05:54]
Teva
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- [06:25]
Adam Nash
Guys.
- [06:26]
Teva
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- [08:39]
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- [09:38]
Bryce Paul
Yeah, and Wealthfront, I mean, for, for those people. I'm sure everybody's heard of Wealthfront. I mean, a massive, massive firm that's done really, really well. What was it like running that company? I mean, I think, you know, a million million or so customers and maybe $100 billion or so of assets under management. What's it like running a firm of that size and doing what you were doing over there?
- [10:02]
Adam Nash
Well, it was smaller at the time. I mean, this is the funny thing about doing new technology and doing new companies is, you know, Looking back with 2020 hindsight, the question is always like, oh, well, what did it seem like in the early days? You know, and you look at the scale, I mean, LinkedIn, for example. Right now, I think LinkedIn is. I don't want to get the numbers wrong, but I think last year was more than 18 billion in revenue. I think this is a company with 20,000 people and just connecting over a billion users worldwide. Like you said, Wealthfront, I think over $75 billion, over a million clients, et cetera. But when I think about the early days of these companies and how it works, there is an art to it. There's a little bit of thinking through building new companies. Venture capital in general, startups are all about ph, right? What it's not about all the problems you need to solve. That would be. You would drown in the complexity of all the things you have to do and all the things you have to solve to build a company of that scale. And so, you know, you can't do them all. And so the hard question is always, what do you do now? What do you do today? What do you do this week, this month? What's step one, what's step two? What's step three? But I was always very passionate, you know, with Wealthfront, for example, this idea that we had gotten to a point where more and more people were comfortable with computers, that they could actually. They would actually trust a computer not just to Give them information about money, but actually perform actions on their behalf. This might sound very obvious now, but, you know, back in 2011, 2012, that wasn't as obvious. A lot of people were very skeptical about that, almost cynical about that idea. But the truth is, most people aren't very good investing their money. I mean, the research is, is. Is undeniable. Most people, you know, professional investors fail to beat the market. Retail investors do even more poorly than professional investors, usually because they have a day job that does not actually involve managing money and managing investments. And so this idea that we could help all these people out there who couldn't afford a professional financial advisor or didn't meet the minimums, they couldn't even get that business. So for me, Wealthfront was always based on this idea that everyone deserves sophisticated financial advice. And it's been really wonderful to see that platform build out. I think Wealthfront's gonna be building features that lower costs and provide better service for and their money for decades to come. I mean, I feel the same way about careers with LinkedIn, and we opened up a lot of opportunities. Even back in the day at ebay, I felt passionate about this idea that, you know, anyone around the world could make a little bit of extra money every month. An extra few hundred dollars a month means so much to so many people just by selling things online. And so I get very excited about these ideas. I mean, obviously at Daffy, very excited about this idea, about this part of our lives that we don't talk about that much. But actually it's important to tens of millions of people, which is just how do we give back? How do we support the organizations that matter for our lives or our children's lives, you know, et cetera. And so it's just always fun for me as a technologist to kind of bring that back into parts of people's lives that matter.
- [13:09]
Bryce Paul
Yeah, you hit the nail on the head. And as a recent father myself, I have been thinking about, you know, philanthropic efforts in a way that I never really thought I would be thinking about. But you're exactly right. Like, you know, helping. Helping the community for that next generation really does hit home. Once you have the next generation, like, in your hands and it's just completely, you know, completely kind of a mindset shift. And I really want to dive into Daffy because I actually just learned, like, recently about this concept called a donor advised fund, A D, A, F. And I know that that's what you're working on. And I was going to ask, you know, what's DAFFY stand for? I'm sure it stands for DAF Donor Advised Fund. But I don't want to get ahead of myself. But these are really incredible like vehicles that, that my advisors and council have been telling me about and friends and family and they're like, yeah, people, people need to look into this because this is going to be a really big deal. Tell us about donor advised funds and kind of which is the backbone of a lot of what you're building. And then tell us a lot about dafy. Who are you guys? What's your mission?
- [14:15]
Adam Nash
Yeah, I'm happy to, and, and I appreciate the kind words and it's one of the reasons I'm here is just to tell people about what donor advised funds are and better ways to give. I mean, as you guess, DAFI stands for the Donor Advised Fund for you. It's always a problem if you let an engineer name things, you kind of get those on the nose kind of names. So there.
- [14:38]
Bryce Paul
No, that's how I know it's going to be successful. Just because the name is perfect.
- [14:41]
Adam Nash
Yeah, sometimes simple things are the best things. And I've learned that over the years. But, but no, the basic concept behind DAFI didn't start with a donor advised fund. It just, it started with this basic insight which is if you look at the US, about 60 million American households give to charity every year. Right. A lot of us, you know, belong to a church or a synagogue, a religious institution. You know, our kids go to schools, we donate to the schools. We went to a university, we donate to the university. There's national causes, there's emergencies like the LA fires that just happened in the Palisades. And we want to help. And so we do give. And so the data is unbelievable. I mean, I think just in the last couple years, I think in 2023, I think the US gave about $557 billion to charity. It's almost about 2% of GDP. It's more than twice the size of agriculture. It's unbelievable. And yet there isn't a lot of modern technology, not a lot of applications and services for people to get help with this problem. And so mostly we just give when people ask us, right? And usually we have the stress and strain of wait, wait, do I have enough money this month to give? How much can I afford to give? Is often as hard a problem as who do I give the money to? And so my co founder and I were, you know, thinking about how could we help solve this problem? And then we came across, of course, the Donor Advice Fund. The Donor Advice Fund is this amazing financial product. I learned about it more than 15 years ago when LinkedIn went public. And the truth is, if you're wealthy, you probably have heard of it because a financial advisor, your accountant, told you it was smart for taxes. I mean, this has been around in the US for more than 80 years. It turns out you can put money aside for charity, get the charitable deduction, right, which is one of the best deductions in the tax code. That money is invested tax free. And then when you want the money to go to a charity that you support, you just tell the donor advised fund and they send the cash. And so it's really an amazing financial product. It just turns out most people haven't heard of it. And unfortunately, the business models of most of the incumbents really rewards this behavior where they're going after the ultra wealthy. And I don't need to tell you also the problem, I mean, this is a crypto show. I mean, you know, the incumbents don't haven't supported crypto. If anything, they've mostly worked against it.
- [17:01]
Bryce Paul
Totally.
- [17:01]
Adam Nash
And so, you know, Daffy was found with this idea of like, hey, we can make this simple. We can make this inexpensive, you know, a simple app you could download from the App Store, but it basically works on that idea. And of course, it turns out that not only can you put money aside for charity cash, but you can actually put aside investments. Just like you could donate stock, you can donate ETFs, mutual funds, and of course you can donate crypto. And so, you know, we launched a little over three years ago. I think we were the first major donor advised fund to launch with real crypto support built in from day one, both on the contribution side as well as on the investment side. And it's turned out to be an amazing, amazing advantage at every end of the spectrum. Right? We have people giving us millions of dollars of crypto for charity, but our median crypto contribution is about $1,000. Right. A very normal amount, you know, for people who give to a few charities every year. Wow.
- [17:59]
Bryce Paul
And is are the investments. So say I contribute my crypto, you know, and you could donate and there's, you know, maybe you could walk us through a little bit about some of those tax advantages. Again, nothing we say on this show should ever be construed as financial advice, legal advice, tax advice, or investment advice. But we certainly like to kind of pick the brains of people as much as they're willing to share, you know, a little bit about, you know, Those advantages of charitable giving, sort of, you know, I think it's, you could claim up to 60% or something of your income. That's why I'm asking the question, because you're the expert. And then the other question is like, once we put the money in the donor advised fund and it's, you know, an investment, say we contribute our crypto, and it's going up and it's going down, it's going up and it's going down, Maybe we can. Are you able to trade the money in that donor advised fund tax free, or is it just simply sitting there exposed to the market?
- [18:52]
Adam Nash
All right, I'm gonna try, right? There's a lot of questions.
- [18:54]
Bryce Paul
I know, I know.
- [18:55]
Adam Nash
That's what I'm saying. If I can remember them all. All right, so let's start with the basics though. Like I said that the beauty of a donor advised fund is that it's kind of a tax advantaged account for charity, right? Most people understand that you have a 401k or an IRA for retirement. You know, maybe if you have kids, you've poked into the 529 plan, a tax advantaged account for college savings. And so you can think of a donor advised fund as just a tax advantaged account for charitable giving. And like I said, it has this wonderful attribute that when you put money into it, you get this tax deduction for, for donating to a charity, which is a great tax deduction. As you mentioned, when you donate cash, right? It's one of the best tax deductions in the tax code. It can be up to 60% of your adjusted gross income. Now it turns out what most people don't know is you can also donate investments to charity. Now, that isn't quite as good a tax advantage. You can, you can deduct up to 30% of your adjusted gross income when you donate investments. But it has this real added benefit, which is not only do you get the charitable deduction, right, for the market value of what you donate, assuming you've held it more than a year, you have to have held it more than a year, you get the full market value, plus you never pay the capital gains taxes. And by the way, this is why crypto investors like it quite a bit, because we're all a little phobic about how the IRS treats crypto. Even if you're doing everything perfectly, you know, you sharpen the pencil, you know everything. Like there's always a little anxiety around taxes. And the great thing is when you donate crypto, you get all those benefits and you never have to worry about the taxes. And so for the most part, you quickly learn that donating investments is a better way to actually support the charities and the charitable giving that you give. But of course, then you run into the issue that, you know, there's almost 2 million charities in the U.S. i think it's like 1.7 million or so. Most of them aren't set up to take crypto. Right. Your local church, your kids, school, like, very likely they can't take these type of donations. And that's where a donor advised fund comes in. Because you can give the crypto to a donor advised fund like dafi. You can pick how you want that money invested. I think that was one of your questions. And then of course, you can have those investments be in cash. They could be in bonds. You know, dafi, we support all these different portfolios. You want, you want Vanguard index funds, we have Vanguard index funds. If you, you want bonds and cash, you can have bonds and cash. And if you want crypto, we have about half a dozen crypto portfolios ranging from diversified portfolios that cover stocks, bonds and crypto. Right. All across the board using ETFs. Or if you want to be invested in native crypto, we have a blended portfolio of Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana. We also have pure crypto portfolios of each of those coins. So no, it's not a trading account.
- [21:45]
Brendan
Right.
- [21:45]
Adam Nash
This isn't a place where you're going to go in and ride the market ups and downs, but you can put your charitable dollars and have them invested in a pure crypto portfolio. And if you are bullish about crypto and where it's going, I mean, I am long term and I know a lot of people are. What a wonderful way to make sure that those dollars you put aside for charity might be able to support even more charities or provide even more support to the charity you love in the future.
- [22:12]
Brendan
Yeah, I think that this is a super cool idea because what you do is you're essentially saying, hey, we'll handle the conversion. This also allows you to maximize profits where if you don't have to worry about like doing the conversion yourself, paying taxes on it, then donating the money, you not only make the entire process easier and simpler for people, but you're also maximizing the amount that people can donate and thus the amount that these nonprofits can receive. So it is a win win. The investor gets an easier, simpler experience where you're right, they don't have to freak out about crypto taxes, which I've already had people reaching out to me this year being like, what do I do here and there? And there's, and a lot of people do like to donate and I've already had people ask me like literally a near identical question to this one. So it is a win win. It's a win win for the person that's actually investing the money because they can arguably make more and have a simpler process. But also, you know, if they are making more, then hey, they get to, they get to donate more. Everyone gets a better bang for their buck.
- [23:15]
Adam Nash
Well, listen, a lot of the advantage of the donor advised fund too is just, you know, for a lot of us, I mean, this is very common in the US today, our income isn't the same every year. Right. We have, we have good years and not so good years. And it turns out in a progressive tax system, your tax rates are higher in those good years and. Right. So the basic idea of putting money aside, putting investments aside for charity in those good years where your tax rates are higher and then having the money available in the not so good years to support the organizations that you care about. I mean, for most of us, if you're, you know, if you're writing a check or supporting, you know, your kids school, right, you belong to a religious institution, you give money to university every year. You know, people like to be consistent about that. But that's hard. You know, when you make money in some years and less money in others, it just turns out that, you know, you know, putting crypto aside for charity turns out to just have amazing advantages. Like I said, the key just to make sure everyone understands how this works is the way you get this deduction, of course, is you have to have held the crypto more than a year. Yeah, right. Like this is a real advantage for long term investments. But if you're the type of investor who's had, you know, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, any of the, these coins for more than that period of time, that ability to say, oh, you know, actually I have a high tax year, I can put some of this crypto aside. Right. We have a lot of members who do this and say, okay, I'm going to get that charitable deduction for the value of the crypto. I'm never going to pay the capital gains taxes, but it's still invested in crypto. So if you're bullish about it long term, once again that you have that money available. But yeah, it's phenomenal if you do the math on it, there's no question. We even built a calculator. I'm happy to share it with the audience. The link where you can put in any crypto and you can see it, but, you know, if you were going to give $1,000 to a charity and you were just going to do that the old fashioned way of, you know, credit card, writing a check, you know, cash, like any kind of sort of online thing, well, that costs you $1,000. Whereas if you had put $1,000 in crypto aside, right. You know, I don't know how much in capital gains you would have had, but you could have made that exact same donation, right. The charity would have had more money. You know, if you had actually instead of selling the crypto and then giving cash, right. Then, you know, you have less because you had to pay the taxes. Instead of selling the crypto, you just donate directly. Like I said, it's a great thing to do. The only problem is most charities don't support crypto natively. And so Daffy just makes it incredibly easy to support any charity that you want without worrying about it, whether they are technically competent enough to have supported crypto.
- [25:54]
Bryce Paul
Wow, that's. That's incredible. And it just makes me think, you know, if I have, you know, some charity, do I just provide the ein to Daffy and then you guys are able to facilitate like the transference of assets for my donation and then does it have to happen in like the next calendar year or like, you know, I put those funds aside, when do I have to use those funds by?
- [26:20]
Adam Nash
Well, that's the great part of a donor advised fund is there is no time limit there. Right? You have time to fear. And in fact, this is what a lot of people do is there's a lot of people who get into October, November, December, realize that they have a big tax bill coming, but they don't know which charity they want to support. I mean, that's a big decision.
- [26:38]
Bryce Paul
Totally.
- [26:39]
Adam Nash
Right. You know, like, why would you rush it? I mean, why would you even want people to rush it? Right? And so that ability to kind of make the first decision, which is, I'm going to put this money aside for charity. I mean, let's be clear. This is something that, you know, a lot of the world's religions, a lot of cultures been teaching for thousands of years, you should put some of your money aside for those less fortunate than yourself. But you can make that decision, get the tax deduction and you don't have to worry about the money sitting idle. It is Invested. And like I said, you have a lot of options there.
- [27:08]
Bryce Paul
And like we send it to you or Daffy.
- [27:12]
Adam Nash
Yeah, that's right. So you basically, you make the contribution. Daffy. Daffy is a 501C3. Right. It's Daffy.org for a reason. Right. So you get that charitable deduction right away, the money's invested. And like I said, some people, when they put money aside, they're putting money aside not for one year of giving, but for many years. Right. A lot of people give money to the same institution every year. And by the way, the nonprofits prefer it that way. I know it sounds funny, but the nonprofits are organizations. If you have a non profit, if you have a food bank that's feeding people, they're not feeding people one time, they're feeding people every day. They're feeding people every year. They would much rather have a donor who supports them every year than someone who writes a check once and doesn't come back. And the donor advised fund makes it so easy. So basically, you put the money in Daffy, it's invested. And if you want to set up a recurring donation, right. To an institution every year, maybe you do it on an anniversary. We actually have a lot of people who give on the anniversary. You know, it's actually very touching, all the different reasons people give. Right. Maybe they have a loved one who passed away, they like to make a donation on the anniversary of their passing. Maybe they do it on their birthday, maybe they do it on a specific holiday. Right. But, but fundamentally, dafi makes it very, very easy to set up all those donations in one place. And yes, every charity is in there. So, you know, our computer scientists, you know, are going through and they're, they're taking all the IRS data, all the legal charities in the U.S. making sure their registrations are up to date. We pull in data from third party services. You can actually research the charity on dafi and see, you know, some basic facts about that charity, et cetera. And yeah, we, we make it our problem to figure out how to get the money to them. How cool. But it turns out that that's not that hard a problem when you have a team focused on it. And frankly, you know, our mission at Daffy, this is going to sound idealistic, but our mission at Daffy is to help people be more generous. More often. We're trying to take all the friction out of giving because we think by doing that people will end up being true to their natures, which is to be more generous.
- [29:14]
Bryce Paul
So cool.
- [29:15]
Brendan
Yeah. No, I think it's a great point. And as you were talking about that, I was just thinking, have you ever had someone donate too much and then maybe it grew into a really large amount and they were like, hey, can I, can I get some of that back? Like, have you ever had something like that happen?
- [29:31]
Adam Nash
We haven't. And actually you bring up a really good implicit point, is that when you put money aside for charity in a donor advised fund, it is a one way street. You know, it's important that everyone realize that, like the reason the IRS gives you that charitable deduction is you're putting that money aside for charity. And so I don't know about what your experience is, but my experience with the IRS has been that they're not that into give backs. Not at all. That's not their thing. So, no. So you put the money aside for charity. But the truth is, for most people, and I mean this earnestly, and we see it in our data now, we've now been around for years and we do things in software, you see the data, our core belief for the most part is that most people's giving is limited by what, not only what they can afford to give, but just getting around to it. Right. Life is busy. And so, so what we see is that when people's accounts go up, when they have more money to give, like last year was a great year. Yeah. In the market, stock market, nasdaq, you know, crypto. Right. Bitcoin is hitting new highs, you know, and, and so fundamentally what we see is when, when, when the number goes up, actually people end up being more generous. They not only give more to the institutions they care about, they support different institutions, they find new things. And by the way, there's always reasons to give. Like I said, no one expected the Palisades fires last fall, et cetera, but what a wonderful place to be in where if you care about that community, if you care about those people in need, that you can actually do something. Not just talk about it, but do something. But yeah, you know, these accounts can get large over time. Although at dafi, what we see is actually people donate the money quite quickly. You know, most of our members, they put the money aside for charity and they donate it quickly. I think last year our donation rate was about 38%. So people donated about, of all the money that they contributed in 2023, they donated about 38% over all of that money in 2024.
- [31:33]
Brendan
Yeah, no, I think all that is really good because you mentioned bitcoin and Solana. And some of these other cryptos that have seen just tremendous growth in the last year or two where, you know, Solana was going from 20 bucks to over 200 and Bitcoin has gone from 15,000 to 100,000. And it's really cool that people are actually getting more generous, like the more that it grows and the more that it compounds. And then the other cool thing is that you made a really good point earlier where it doesn't have to all be used in one year. You know, say you do get really successful at something. So you did donate, like you put $10,000 into a Solana donation and it does go up to 200. Well, that could be something. And correct me if I'm wrong here, where now you can have your donations for the next, you know, who knows how many years all set up and kind of streamlined, assuming that it holds value relatively well, but it isn't something that all has to be used. But you have the option to do that, right? If you are feeling really generous, maybe the, the California fires were something that was really, really close to your heart, then you have the option to donate it all, or you can even like extend that over maybe like a 10 year period and diversify it and slow it down a little bit.
- [32:41]
Adam Nash
You know, that's what my accountant told me back in the day when LinkedIn went public. This was before crypto became a big thing. But the advice was the same, was think about how much money you give to charity every year. Yeah, right. How much you want to give to charity every year, multiply it by 10. That's what you're going to give over the next 10 years, at least. And this is like a lot of other financial tasks that we have. We underestimate how much we make, how much we spend over time. I mean, this is what a lot of what financial planners do is. They, they think forward in the future and then they back up those numbers to today. And so, yeah, but putting money aside, I mean, the reality is your tax bill is this year, right? And like I said, markets tend to go up and down, Right. You know, there's a lot of volatility. I know that, you know, people who love crypto may not be familiar with that volatility, but it turns out it goes up and down a lot, at least if you measure it in dollars, and that's okay. So that ability to put crypto aside for charity, take that advantage and still have it invested in crypto is really a powerful thing. We ran a campaign last fall, we called it Gains for good. It was such a great year. We said, hey, stock market gains, crypto gains, let's see how much money we could put aside for charity. We asked people, we want to see if we could raise $10 million for charity put aside. We had to change that because we quickly exceeded it and went to 20 and then 30. But we ended up raising over $92 million in stock and crypto put aside for charity just in November and December of last year alone. And so we're actually big believers. We think that this is a great thing for people to be able to do. You had mentioned earlier, everyone's situation is different. You don't want to put, this is not a way to hide money away for some other use. Yeah, right. It is for charity. But I think if most people, you know, when we ask in our app, it's one of our first questions when you sign up with Daffy is, yeah, how much do you give to charity every year? You know, no judgment, right? It could be a small amount, it could be a large amount. You know, everyone's different. Most people do give more as they grow older, partially. I think it's families, you know, kids pull us into more causes and more institutions than we maybe did in the past. As you get older, you realize how many organizations mattered to you, and you kind of want to give back to the next generation or the generation after. But having a small account or a big account put aside for charity turns out to be incredibly valuable. And like I said, crypto is, is built for this. You know, it's so easy. I mean, we, you know, for most things with money, it takes days or even weeks to move money around. You're trying to send sock, etc. We were receiving large crypto contributions for charity on December 31st. All different coins. Right. We support every crypto that Coinbase supports. You know, over 240 different assets. And one of the great things about crypto is, of course, is you can just download the app. You know, we. We issue a private wallet, right? You know, a private code for you. You send the crypto in, we receive it, we get the notification, and you get a receipt that, of course you can use when you're filing your taxes. And so we try to make it as easy as possible for people to do the right thing.
- [35:47]
Bryce Paul
Wow, that's. That's incredible. And it sounds like it's super easy. And, you know, and, you know, in terms of security and stuff as well, it sounds like you guys take that really, really seriously and, and probably use top tier partners Is there any insight into, you know, because we always get the question around like, well, custody versus non custody and how does this wallet work and how does this exchange work? Can you kind of break it down just in terms of like, kind of the, not the security stack entirely, but just like how, how you guys operate there?
- [36:18]
Adam Nash
Yeah, I'm happy to talk about it. I mean, and we really do stand on the shoulders of giants. I don't think you could have built a product like Dafi 10 years ago or it would have been very difficult to do so. And all that same institutional technology and capability that you see backing things like the new ET ETFs, right, etc that companies like Bitwise have done, we're really leveraging that. So we use Coinbase Institutional as kind of our back end. That's why we can support the assets that we do. So we're kind of riding on the shoulders of a great institution like Coinbase in terms of how they secure their crypto, insure it's available to customers, etc. But the great thing is, of course is that when you make a donation contribution to dafi, you are not alone, right? Like you're not, it's not like other independent transactions, right? You can, you of course can verify, daft yourself and decide whether to trust dafi. But in the end that, that, that crypto, you get the tax deduction right away when you donate the crypto. And then of course, we try to provide as many flexible options as we can for individuals, how that money, how those charitable dollars are invested. We try and do it. You know, we also, when it comes to security, kyc, aml, we leverage a lot of great institutions, institutions. So, you know, we use, you know, probably a lot of names you'd recognize. Sardine, it's really an amazing company for doing KYC and AML and that sort of thing. And so we make sure that the people giving us the crypto are, we try to make sure they are who they say they are, smart. But you know, for us it's mostly just regulatory requirements. The regulations around charitable donations and charities in general are a different set of regulations than, you know, an investment or a brokerage account or a bank account. And so we have requirements just like everyone does, both from the states that we operate in as well as from the federal government. What we have to check. But for most people, they get it done in just minutes and it's less arduous than a lot of other platforms. And that's because in the end of the day it's not an investment account. It's a charitable donation. Right. You're putting this money aside.
- [38:23]
Brendan
Yeah. And the cool part is that this is continually opening up new doors. You mentioned Coinbase earlier. One of the names that we haven't gotten to. Gotten to talk about a lot yet was Robinhood, because you all had a really cool integration with Robinhood. So tell us just about, like, how that came to be and how that works.
- [38:41]
Adam Nash
Well, that's, you know, a huge fan of Robinhood, of course, for a lot of reasons. But fundamentally, it just goes back to our mission. Right? Our mission is to help people be more generous more often. So we look everywhere where people have money and say, hey, have we made it as easy as possible for people to donate some of that to charity? And of course, Robinhood originally had a platform for crypto where you couldn't get the crypto out. And so that was a problem. And we would have members who come to say, hey, I have. I have crypto at Robinhood. How do I donate that to charity? How do I use that with Daffy? And unfortunately, we couldn't give them a great answer. And so we went to Robin and said, how can we do this? And they were rolling out this new platform with a select set of partners to enable getting crypto out of Robinhood, being able to send it. And so we were very proud to be the first donor advised fund to integrate with them. And so now any Daffy member can go to Daffy. You don't have to go to Robinhood directly. Go to Daffy, use Robinhood Connect, and you can send us any of the crypto that you have stored at Robinhood. I know it sounds simple, but we were very proud to kind of open up that channel with them. We were very, very grateful to Robinhood about working with us to make that possible. It's so easy for these platforms to emphasize the basics of sending money back and forth and investing money. I mean, that's. That's tied to their business model and kind of the first reasons people use the service. But not every platform prioritizes, you know, philanthropy prioritizes giving. And so I was, you know, kudos to the Robinhood team for, for. For doing that. And of course, the Daffy team got that up and running in time for the holiday season last year.
- [40:15]
Bryce Paul
I love that. And certainly not a lot of companies are out there prioritizing giving, but also especially, you know, crypto giving and, like, really targeting that market segment. And yeah, you know, it's. I think crypto people have been so for lack Of a better word, like, really shunned from, like, the traditional banking industry and investment industry and stuff, that we're. We're hungry for products like this and for. For founders that are, you know, really focused on this industry and stuff. So it's really cool to hear all that. And I'm just really curious about, you know, how this platform develops over the course of the next, you know, 12 to 18 months. What's. What's on your roadmap and how do you envision things growing from here?
- [40:56]
Adam Nash
Yeah, well, I mean, I think we're seeing a lot of excitement now, frankly, for a lot of people. They're just hearing about it for the first time because, like you said, I mean, everyone in the crypto community knows this. The incumbents have not been very supportive.
- [41:08]
Bryce Paul
And now we're finding out in Congress, like, all these hearings about the debanking. I mean, this is crazy stuff.
- [41:13]
Adam Nash
That's right. And so, you know, it was a huge advantage for us as a new platform and, you know, a new application, you know, if you wanted, if you. If you had crypto. I mean, a lot of our early members, you know, who came in were just excited. They had invested in bitcoin early. They were planning to sell some. I know you're not supposed to sell any. You're supposed to hold it forever. The cardinal. But, you know, not everyone's perfect. Some people needed to sell for different reasons. But of course, from a tax perspective, you almost never should just be selling. I mean, sometimes that makes sense, but usually it makes sense to sell most of what you were going to sell and donate some of it to help cover the tax bill.
- [41:50]
Bryce Paul
Totally.
- [41:51]
Adam Nash
Right. That's what people quickly figure out. Oh, wait, instead of selling, you know, $10,000 of this asset, 50,000, 100,000 or more, maybe I should sell 90% of the amount I was going to sell and donate 10%. Right. And get that tax deduction to help cover the capital gains taxes that you incur from it. And so we started with bitcoin, but it was so easy. I mean, this is a great thing about crypto. Right. Honestly, it's just software. Right? So it was. It was very easy for us to support all of these different assets. And so now we see crypto assets coming in across the board. Of course, we see we did run a little friendly competition in the fall between different coins to see who is more generous. I like that. We got to give kudos to the. The bitcoin community. They. They really did give a lot.
- [42:38]
Bryce Paul
The bitcoin whales man, they are still a big force in the market.
- [42:42]
Adam Nash
Yeah. And so, like I said, you know, our median crypto contribution was, was, was thousands of dollars, but our largest was well over 5 million at, at, at a time. But the meeting was only about $1,000, I think $1,004 at least at the current value. And so, you know, for us, there's just so much innovation to be had. So it's not just more crypto assets and more crypto portfolios to invest in. We like the idea of giving our members more flexibility about how their charitable dollars end up invested. So we're hoping to do that for crypto as well. That's one of the places we're investing. And of course, we're looking at getting it to be even faster and more supportive. We already support basically every wallet out there. I mean, this is one of the other great things about crypto, right? Whether you, no matter how you store your crypto and what your philosophy is and what your right personal balance is, we try to make it very easy to send it to us. You know, whether you're using a mobile app, whether using the web, whether you're using a, a true wallet, you know, from an independent provider or from a large provider like Coinbase, we try to, literally, you know, no matter where you have your crypto, we try to make it easy for you to make that decision, to put some of it aside for charity. But we're excited. I mean, you know, this is the great, you know, also the tech keeps moving forward, you know, so we're already seeing a lot of exciting things happening with base and a lot of the level twos, not just new assets, et cetera, but, but also new ways of making it more user friendly and easier to, to, to do these things. So, and then, and then, you know, I know it sounds more mundane, but, but even as, as crypto creeps back into traditional finance, right, the ETFs have also opened up crypto. There's a lot of people out there with their charitable dollars that had no allocation to crypto before and now can have portfolios that have, you know, 2%, 5%, 10% of their money allocated to crypto. And so that's just fantastic to see. We, we, we've worked a lot with providers like Bitwise and others to make sure that those options are available. Actually, it's very funny. The incumbents just can't help themselves, but it's a little silly. But we added support for the Bitcoin ETS when those rolled out last year, and then The Ethereum ets. But there was something ironic about the fact that Fidelity had a crypto etf. Right. It's one of the biggest ones. But you couldn't use it with Fidelity Charitable, but you could use it with Daffy.
- [44:58]
Bryce Paul
I didn't know that.
- [44:59]
Adam Nash
Yeah, it's just one of those funny things. Big companies, what are you going to do?
- [45:03]
Bryce Paul
Yeah. Holy crap. No, that's, that's, that's crazy. And I love just how quickly you guys are moving and you know, again, you guys are fighting against, you're not fighting, but you know, like those large, large, you know, trillion dollar sort of firms like Fidelity and you guys are able to move quicker and offer products that people want better, faster now. And like, that's just the beauty of Silicon Valley and building there and having.
- [45:26]
Adam Nash
I agree 100%. I mean, I've always felt, I mean, we talked earlier on the podcast about some of my career, but yeah, I really think that's, that's the benefit that people overlook when it comes to new companies and new platforms is that the big companies wouldn't move.
- [45:40]
Bryce Paul
Yeah.
- [45:41]
Adam Nash
If they didn't have competition to push them. Right. You know, I always felt this way at previous companies that we were pushing the big guys to do things differently. Lower prices, offer better features and services. I mean, and that's part of the mission at dafi. If, because Daffy supports crypto so well and we see this kind of success and we've seen a lot of success, success in the last few years, you know, that's likely going to push, you know, the firms like Fidelity and Schwab and Vanguard to add support for crypto sooner than they would have. Better user experiences, better technology, etc. I mean, if they don't, I mean, certainly Daffy's happy.
- [46:16]
Bryce Paul
Yeah.
- [46:17]
Adam Nash
For all those people, Those members, the 60 million households across the US who gives a charity, we're more than happy to help them. And like I said, our business model is fairly revolutionary here. It's not revolutionary in software in the space, but, you know, and in the traditional industry, they charge a percentage of assets. Right. If you go to, you go to Vanguard, wonderful institution, actually love Vanguard, they charge 60 basis points, 0.6% of your assets for your donor advised fund every year. That's not money going to charity, that's money going to them.
- [46:48]
Bryce Paul
Oh, wow.
- [46:49]
Adam Nash
You know, we, our accounts start at $3 a month. Right. At the high end, it's $20 a month. And actually we're free for under $100. If you just want to try it out, you Can. But, you know, that's. That's the whole goal here. That's when I think when you build new products, new technology, what you're hoping is not just to help your customers. You're hoping you're going to actually push all the other companies to actually do more for their customers as well. I mean, this is one of the reasons I love Vanguard. You know, there are so many institutions that offer good financial products at a lower cost because Vanguard exists.
- [47:22]
Bryce Paul
Yeah, right.
- [47:23]
Adam Nash
So even if you're not a Vanguard customer, you benefit from them existing. I always felt that way at Wealthfront and at Daffy. I feel the same way about charitable giving. I feel like, because we support crypto and we're getting some scale. Like I said, you know, we. We had almost 200 million in contributions last year. Only three years old.
- [47:38]
Bryce Paul
Wow.
- [47:39]
Adam Nash
You know, we have almost 100 million allocated to crypto right now. Once again, really new, small institution. But we're hoping that that success makes more other. Sorry. Makes other platforms realize that they need to support crypto if they really want to open up more charitable dollars, more giving.
- [47:58]
Bryce Paul
Hey, I love it. And I really do believe that you started a movement and that that movement will reverberate. And it reminds me a lot of sort of the super PAC Fair Fair Shake. And this was the. A super PAC that kind of blew up on the scene this last year. They ended up being the largest sort of donator, and it was all a bunch of crypto guys. Like, a bunch of people who were like, hey, let's put our. Our. Our gains to use. Let's put our gains to. For good. And they became such a. A force that, like, you know, forced the hand you saw, you know, the opposite side of the aisle was like, okay, well, we've been very antagonistic towards crypto. Now we need to. We see there's so many people that are really passionate about it. They've got clout in both the markets and in Sway in the sort of, you know, lobbying things. And really, you know, crypto became a very loud voice this past election cycle. And, you know, it really was a lot of these people who had just a lot of gains and they wanted to get creative with how they could use them. And I really think that, you know, Daffy, by enabling that is going to. Just to continue to amplify sort of the. Everybody who bet early on crypto, and it's like, yeah, we bet early, and we were all really excited about the potential for this, to change the world for the good. And. And here we are now being right halfway, maybe we're in, you know, halfway through the cycle or whatever. And it's like, you know, maybe by the end, in 10 or 20 years, crypto really does eat the world. And it's like, you know, all of us who were kind of right on that early and who have all these gains, like, let's not use it just for ourself and for, like, let's make the world a better place. Like, let's actually put the vision into practice and let's not just talk about it, but let's actually do it. And Adam, I mean, you're. You're like a walk and talking poster child of that. That exact idea. So we're, we're really honored that to have you in the industry and to have you on the podcast and just know you're welcome back anytime, especially as the platform grows and any cool milestones you want to celebrate, we are always here for builders like you to amplify, you know, what you guys are building on. And we will put all the relevant links in the show notes for everyone to make sure. You guys could sign up, test out the. The accounts. And, you know, I'll be onboarding as well, so, you know, you'll be. You'll be with me. And so, Adam, if we have any questions for you, where should we kind of reach out? Are you big on X? Where do you like to kind of socialize?
- [50:15]
Adam Nash
Yeah. Yeah. So we're on most channels, and I've been on most channels for years. Obviously, since I'm one of the folks who was early at LinkedIn, you'll find LinkedIn, you'll certainly find me on X most social media platforms. And, and Daffy is easy to find where in the App Store you can go to daffy.org I really would encourage everyone to try it. I mean, for me, one of the great benefits. You didn't have to be early in crypto to actually have some wealth creation happen.
- [50:40]
Teva
Right.
- [50:40]
Adam Nash
You know, like, that's the thing. The volatility that we all hate when things go down are also opportunities for people to get in and participate. And so those cycles actually really do, I think, benefit the entire community. But at this point, there are trillions of dollars in crypto out there. And I think what a wonderful way to reward that foresight is have some of that money go to charity. So, yeah, you can find me just Adam Nash on most social platforms. Daffy.org Daffy giving on most social platforms. And I would encourage people to check out the resources if you have questions about what it means to donate crypto or what the requirements are or the tax implications, etc. We have calculators, we have great content out there and it may or may not make sense for everyone listening. But for a lot of people, being able to donate crypto is not just something good you can do for your tax bill. It turns out to be a great way to support the organizations you care about. So I encourage everyone to check it out.
- [51:33]
Bryce Paul
Love it. Adam, thank you so much for your time and everybody at home watching listening. Hopefully you're on YouTube so you can see everything. If you're just on Spotify or one of the other podcasting networks, come check us out on YouTube. We have a lot of fun over here with a lot more coming up next week with some more great guests. So again, Adam, take care and and thanks for everything.
- [51:54]
Adam Nash
Yeah, thanks for having me again.