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On The Chain - Blockchain and Cryptocurrency News + Opinion
Interview with Anodos Finance – Panos and Peter are ON THE CHAIN
01:19:37
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- [00:02]
A
All right, welcome back to on the Chain. This morning we are joined by two guests who sit at the exact intersection of traditional banking, fintech and crypto infrastructure chip. I'm really excited about this one. This is the kind of conversation that actually matters as markets evolve. We're talking about. And we're talking with Panos and Peter from Anados Finance.
- [00:27]
B
Yeah, and it's a little bit about Panos. He's a fintech leader, has over a decade in crypto. He's also the author of Understanding the Crypto Economy, founded a consulting firm, advised multiple crypto startups and ultimately launched Anodos Labs to focus on real world infrastructure. It's not hype, it's not theory. All comes down to execution.
- [00:47]
A
I like that one. I like execution. And Peter brings the other side of the equation. Deep institutional experience. He's a senior banking veteran with leadership roles at small banks that maybe you're not sure, maybe you've never heard of. You know those big international banks like HSBC and cibc. Plus a serial entrepreneur with two successful exits. This is going to be a really great conversation today. We love entrepreneurship and we love building, especially in the crypto space. Right now. He's built high performance teams and broken decade long profitability records inside global organizations.
- [01:26]
B
So today isn't about speculation. It's about what happens when crypto native builders, traditional finance operators sit at the same table and what that means for infrastructure, trust and the next phase of financial markets.
- [01:40]
A
And here we go. Panos. Peter, welcome to on the Chain. Let's go.
- [01:50]
B
Welcome to on the Chain. Do you have that drum roll ready?
- [01:58]
A
Drum roll.
- [01:59]
B
Get that drum roll ready. We need a drum roll here. There we go. What's going on? We have panels and. Peter, what's up guys?
- [02:10]
C
What's up guys?
- [02:11]
B
And I will say this. Welcome back to on the Chain. It's been a little bit of time I looked up since the last time you guys were here. It was just almost a year ago. So before we get into like the nuts and bolts, we got a lot of cool things to talk. Want to hear any questions from the folks that are popping in here? You guys have questions, go ahead and ask a question, put a question mark after it. That flags it for us. And then we'll be able to go ahead and ask these live. And anytime you want to hear more about what's being spoken about today, you can go ahead and just go ahead, ask, question, add commentary. We'll do that and put that up on the screen throughout. But just, just as a follow up from the last time we spoke. Kind of talk a little bit about what's happened over the last year for anodos. I'll throw that to the panelists and let's have Peter chime in.
- [03:00]
D
Okay, sure. So, I mean, since the last time we spoke, I mean, we like evolved a lot. I mean we were discussing back then, like, you know, that we are working on the analytics v2, this, let's say one stop shop for all things Defy on XRPL that has evolved right now. So yeah, we launched Anodex V2 a few months ago. We evolved our branding, we changed our logo. Something that's more like modern or like that resonates more with people. And we also launched another's wallet last month that was like a big thing, not just for the XRP ecosystem, but for the whole industry because we are bringing this wallet that anyone can actually use for the first time with pass keys, with biometrics, and removing all this complexity. So yeah, more or less like our mission has remained the same. Trying to remove that friction from this industry as much as possible and make this technology usable to everyone.
- [03:58]
B
Great. Peter, if you could kind of check in too, tell us a little bit about what's going on from your perspective and how did this wallet come to be as well? What was the impetus for creating a wallet that is really revolutionary in a lot of ways, it's pretty exciting for me because I hate the seed words and you guys have eliminated that. So talk a little bit about that.
- [04:19]
C
Yeah, sure. So first off, thanks for having us. And secondly, I really love that intro. That intro music is great. I mean, basically where this whole brainchild was like about a year ago, and we're really thinking about all the complexities of crypto in general and blockchain in general, and what kind of friction exists. And we figured that the best place to start is at the beginning. When you're looking to do something like create a wallet. It's usually like a 15 to 30 minute process, even if you're a little bit familiar with. With the intricacies of creating it. Imagine somebody who's a non crypto native, how long could take them out, what kind of stress and anxiety they're feeling. So we figured this was a great approach to start off with this. We were big fans of Palisade, we became partners with them and basically it was just. It seemed like a very natural and organic thing to start off with. The beginning.
- [05:10]
B
Yeah. And Peter, one of the things that's interesting is that when you guys are probably started working with Palisade. A lot of people probably didn't know who Palisade was, but we came to know them because somebody acquired Palisades, if you want to talk a little bit about that.
- [05:22]
D
Yeah, sure. So.
- [05:23]
C
So Ripple acquired them, which, I mean we, we kind of lovingly and jokingly say that now we're indirectly partners with Ripple because of it, but that's not true. Right. At the end of the day, my perspective here has been pretty much what it's what it's always been when I, when I got involved in and blockchain and then when Thomas and I decided to initiate this whole out of those project and create a business was there needs to be a checking of the pulse in general of what's going on with a mass population and how they feel, how they're interacting, what their apprehensions are. We're big fans of listening to the community and their contributions. We're very thankful for our community. But I mean I'm always going to look at things from, from my personal experience, which is always going to be on the business level. So on the business traditional level, you need to be able to really adhere and listen to the communities, what's needed and try and eliminate as much friction as possible. And I think I'm optimistic that in general blockchain is starting to kind of get there. I'm starting to see projects kind of intercommunicate a little bit more without the maximalism of which chain is which. That still exists, but I'm seeing a little bit more positivity as far as like interoperability, multi chain based projects. So I'm seeing that from my perspective, that's what I'm seeing.
- [06:38]
B
Yeah. And panels too. When I think about a wallet. Jeff and I talk about adoption all the time, right. When is the adoption going to happen? When somebody contacts you who's a friend or a colleague or somebody, you know, and they go like, hey man, I really want to get into crypto. How do I do it? Can you help me set up a wallet? So talk about the difference between that traditional wallet, that is a major pain, right. And it's not easy to communicate to people versus the wallet that you guys created.
- [07:05]
D
I think the whole idea for mass adoption to happen is to basically the user never realize they're using crypto. I mean this is the whole like I think goal that we should reach as an industry, starting with consumer apps. When you download an app you're using because it's cool, it's a great product, like it might save you Time, it might lower your costs and having this great product, but you have no idea you're using crypto blockchain. This is, I think, the most important thing of how we reach mass adoption. And then on the wallet side is also you mentioned friends and family telling you how you get into crypto. But I think the idea is we must change this mentality where when we think of crypto, we think of how to invest, how to trade, and basically it's all about memes, trading charts and all this kind of stuff. Instead of now, imagine being talking about the Internet and the mind goes to how we can invest on the Internet stocks instead of how we're using the Internet and how it improves, let's say, our lives. So I think these two things need to happen and that's why we created this wallet. It's basically an embedded experience where you just go in, you never realize it's a crypto wallet. You don't have to download anything new, you don't have to care about anything that has to do with crypto wallets. You just click sign in, or if you have an account, sign up biometrics in 10 seconds, roughly you're ready. So we brought that Web2 experience that most people are already used to all over the Internet, so we don't have to ask them for something extra and complicate things.
- [08:47]
B
Yeah, and, and the easiest way to set this wall up, it takes really like 30 seconds. I mean, it's pretty quick, right, because your biometrics on your phone. Now, one of the important things to understand here is that this is a little question that I had for you guys is that when I set up my wallet and I have my biometrics on there and something happens to my phone, falls in the water, I don't know, I lose it. But, and, and the common question is going to be for people, well, how do I get a new phone and restore that? What's the process for that?
- [09:15]
D
I mean, there are actually multiple ways to back up your passkey. And you know, if you are like aware of passkeys or not, for example, right now it's like the number one authentication way. For example, it's used all over the big tech like Apple, Microsoft, Google, everyone is now using pass keys. And this, there are these passwordless solutions solution where basically you just prove that you have a device and yourself, which is like your biometrics, and you don't need anything else, you don't need to remember a password. So it's the same thing like as any other. Let's say passkey technology. There are like ways where you can for example back up it with your icloud or like Google account. So even if you lose a device, you can just, you know, as long as you have access to that Google or icloud account, you just connect another device and you'd still have access to the, to this passkeys. Then there are other ways like yubikeys like you know this like two factor devices that you know are even safer like cold storage where you can just buck your passkey in. It is like USB devices. Then you can also for example use password managers. You can also like natively just use multiple devices. There's also the browser native, for example if you're using Brave or Chrome, whatever it is, you can store your passkeys natively to the browser. It really depends on what the user wants. We give the freedom for the individual to use how they want to back it up. They're pros and cons in many scenarios. But the usual standard way to not have to think about it is just back it up with your Google or icloud account which is like the most important thing because you know, if you, if you like lose access to that account then you have you know also many more things to care about. Like it's your email, it's like your important like things and files that you have over there. So you don't have an extra thing to worry about. You just you know, keep securing that account that you're already doing.
- [11:18]
B
Beautiful.
- [11:21]
A
Like it. Let me, let me ask you guys. Between from last year to this year, we've seen some changes from a regulatory perspective that are taking place in the US and around the world. From a development perspective, we're starting to see at least you know, more emphasis on building projects and getting away from, you know. One of the things you brought up when we were talking before, you know, kind of this maximalist crypto, maximalist idea. Are you seeing market changes from the building side and development side that are different now than they were maybe a year ago? Is there more sense of hey, we got to adopt and, and help build these companies?
- [12:18]
C
I don't know for me personally I, I'll tell you, I'll try to answer in a little bit of a different way. So in the past two months or so I've spoken with three, four different projects that were like in the conceptual phase and they wanted to ask me opinions of, you know, like, you know, from our experience, what we've been going through and whatnot. And they're from different chains and they came to me from X spaces that we would just speak and they heard me speaking and we kind of became like friends. And I noticed that that never really happened before. If somebody was from another chain, they would never contact someone. Like somebody from bitcoin would never contact somebody on the XRPL and saying, hey, I'm looking to build something on bitcoin and what's been your experience or Ethereum or Solana or whatever? And I'm noticing that more and more and I think I personally take it like as a personal responsibility that if someone is reaching out who is unsure of what to do or what the process is, I don't care really what chain they're coming from. I don't care if it's like a financial tool that could potentially be in competition with us or what. I really don't care. It's somebody looking to build something on blockchain, which is the wider scale of what we're all interested in. Because the sooner blockchain starts getting developed and being utilized by everyday people, the sooner we're going to have completely off the wall ideas. And then again, this is just my opinion. I mean, you don't know where the next brilliant idea is going to come from. But if someone is too afraid to even enter the whole ecosystem as a, as a general entry point, how are, how are we ever going to find out about what this new brilliant idea could be that could benefit everyone? Like Pasky's, for example, in blockchain is a total game changer. Right. So maybe something else is going to come out. So for, for me, I'm, I'm noticing a little bit more reaching out. You know, I was in another space with Hodgkinson from Cardano and he was like, you know, we were discussing a lot of different things. It was very, there wasn't any angst. Right. I mean, the past few years there's been a lot of angst in most conversations. And I think that's the first indicator to see that there's change. It's starting, it's slow, but it's, it's happening on a mentality level, I think.
- [14:32]
B
Oh, nice. That's a, that's a really welcome change too, I'll say.
- [14:35]
A
Yeah. Now do you see as kind of navigating from a, a regulatory perspective? Are there still some roadblocks potentially, you know, because of the uncertainty in the U S Market? Even though it seems like there's certainty, you know, coming from, from President Trump, you know, there's more of a, this idea and notion of hey, we got to embrace this new technology. But yet actual hands on regulatory seems to be a little bit slow. And you guys aren't really, you know, necessarily US centric because, you know, you're more global focused. Is. Do you think that that's going to be any kind of a, a block to growth and development at this point or.
- [15:19]
C
I, I think, I think if I could just add this one point which I, I really think people are not thinking of enough, which is very much to the heart of what the subject is that you're bringing up. I think regulatory clarity can't just happen on a federal level. I mean, you look at a country like the United States where every state is like another country. You look at the European Union, which is a bunch of countries and you hear people talking about real world assets all the time and it's great. It's an amazing thing. I love the idea of it. But how are you going to do this if you don't have like on the level of. Per state, on a level of. Per county. I mean there's a lot of different real estate laws, county to county, state to state. So how are you going to make a uniform this. Like you have to. In my opinion, you're going to have to have the conversations within industries to see what could be done, what kind of regulation, even per industry, and then have all that come together and find some kind of general common ground and then revisit the federal level. Because right now it's only on the federal level. We're seeing what's possible, what's not. They're being blockchain is being just treated strictly as, you know, commodities or contracts or what, which is fine, it's all great. But when you talk about, you know, something that is a very hot topic, real world assets. Okay, fine, well go buy a house in Texas and go buy a house in Florida and see what the differences are with the legalities. And now tell me how you're going to bring them on chain universally. You can't, you can't do that. There has to be something that kind of bridges all that together. And this is where the, the entrepreneurial ship and the entrepreneurial mindset and the legal frameworks have to sit down at the table and talk and say, okay, this is all fine and dandy, but how is this actually going to work? Because there isn't a one size fits all, especially when you're talking about the United States.
- [17:08]
B
Good, solid point. But I'll say that it's funny because what's getting all the attention in the U.S. is this unified, the federal over mandate over all of the states. So because they recognize that that is the problem, this state says this. So if they do it federally, it governs everything. The EU in some respects has tried to do something very similar where they say like hey, every. But again, you're going to have countries that potentially like Hungary that might not adopt that and say, well that's great, but we're sitting this one out. You could have Canada where Alberta says we're sitting this one out so you can have this. So you're making a really good point as to, you know, how that looks. But it is interesting that, you know Jeff, you'd mentioned earlier, like this new technology, meanwhile it's been around what, 13, 14 years plus. We know the Bitcoin, but it's still new to a lot of people. And it's interesting that now AI is getting all the attention. Like it's the big, the new kid on the block. Meanwhile, something that really impacts and underscores the bottom line of really people's finances and panels. You talked a little bit about this when we talked about. People think still of crypto, but what you guys are really doing is really becoming your own bank in a sense, but bringing it. Because we've heard this term for a long times, but you guys are really bringing that. And also too, you've got something forthcoming and you're, you know, what you guys call it is the, is it the Neo Bank? Is that what I'm. Is that what it is on the, the Neo bank that's forthcoming? Can you talk a little bit about that?
- [18:38]
D
Yeah, sure. I mean, yeah, I mean you call like Neo bank or like you know, financial super app, but you know, I mean in the end of the day it's like a decentralized bank. This is what we are building. It's. It's a bank that anything you can do with your traditional bank, you'll be able to do it with our app. But obviously like better, cheaper, faster and for the first time you were giving these options to the world where we're not accessible or available before. So you can think of from 24, seven payments and remittances across multiple currencies to spending with any asset you have that's like stable coins, crypto assets, tokenized assets. I think they're the envision to be. Even if you hold for example a stock or a piece of real estate, everything is tokenized and you can just purchase like everything with this. So like this anything to anything vision that also complements this Internet of value to then like creating this, you know, financial command center where you know, you can just manage your finances in an easy way. And combined with of course AI, which is like also a big thing. And I think eventually over time most people will just interact with AI as the interface, as the front end interface. Instead of having to learn every app separately and having to see how the whole experience is, click multiple buttons, just tell the AI, for example, sends $50 to Jeff, just say it. And the whole process happens in the background. You only have to approve the transaction and that's it. And that can expand very big because Agentic finance that we want to integrate into this app can expand, for example, creating personalized yield or investment strategies for you based on your risk or your goals. So I mean, this is the whole idea. It's what basically also the XRP community has been envisioning and talking about from the early ripple days when they like decided to go after this banking system and create this internal value. But unfortunately we have seen all these benefits, you know, stay only to the banking system without passing these features and benefit to the consumers. So we want to build something that is direct to consumers and to the small businesses that, you know, it really allows them to do anything they want their money without any, any permission.
- [21:16]
B
Nice. I like that word easy because you're right, every time you use something new, there's always a little bit of a learning curve. But thank God for AI because you can cut to the chase. You Google it now, you get the AI answer and it's getting much better at being correct.
- [21:33]
D
Just to add to that. For example, even without the AI, the user interface we're building is we want to bring exactly the same experience as any other NEO bank or digital bank that people are used to. We don't know what we don't want. Like to bring something new that will confuse people. So you just go in, create your account like your biometrics sign up, then you have access to the card, you have access, you can top up your account and yield on your savings and do anything you want. And we have the exact same experience. But the big difference is like blockchain XRP on the background doing all the magic. But yeah, the end user doesn't have to know any of this.
- [22:16]
C
If I could add something here, you guys are bringing up the AI and I think it's a really good example. During the holiday season, I was sitting down with my family and we were talking about all this stuff. They were Just grilling me with questions. And you guys have a very savvy audience. And that's another reason why I want to bring it up, because it's important that people think about this. My family was telling me, well, what do you think about AI and so on. I said, listen, without getting into all this, I want to ask. And we were like maybe 15 people. I said, how many of you have used blockchain? I mean, I've told you guys all kinds of stuff, like how many of you have created a wallet, go in, blah, blah, blah. And like, you know, they were hesitant. They're like, oh, you know, I've been meaning to do it a little complicated, blah, blah, blah. I said, okay, great, let me ask you another question. I said, how many of you use AI? And they all said yes. And then here is my point is that this is the example, this is the gold standard that the entire blockchain ecosystem needs to really wake up to this and say that, you know, all these years of blockchain, all these things that we have to learn and we have to go through and whatnot, has been a complete dam stopping the floodgates from all these people coming in. Because look, look at the example we have with AI. This is a new technology. People geeked out on it like crazy, asked the questions, tell it that, tell me my horoscope, blah, blah, blah. They're interacting with it in so many different possible ways. And it's, it's, it's. There is no trying to get the mass adoption. It's been mass adopted already. Everybody's using it. So this is the perfect example. This is, this is the perfect example that I don't, just trying to bring up constantly as a, as a company that we need ease of use. This is what we're trying to obtain. This is, this is the proof. If you have ease of use, guys, there's no trying to get mass adoption. Everyone's going to just jump in. The more friction, the more dam you have in front, like a dam. We're going to be stuck for another five, six years. So I just wanted to bring that perspective there that this is for me it's obvious personally, it's like, look how easy it is. Everyone's using it.
- [24:13]
D
There's a proof, something final to this. I mean, it's like, you know, we have all this great technology like the rails, like the efficiency, but nobody has built this front door that you can just actually with a node that can just open it and just get in an easy way. But we're still trying to push all this crypto native stuff, like from seed phrases to bridging to gas fees, like all these complications to the front end to the user when they shouldn't even care or know about, about them.
- [24:41]
A
Yeah, I mean, this is, it's really amazing. So while, while we're, we're talking here, I logged into Anadox, Anodex, went through with a Zaman. I was able to easily connect and navigate, you know, everything here. And it's interesting, you know, just looking at the simplicity of the tools, you know, from kind of that end user like you're talking about, you know, Main street adoption. And that is really important. First and foremost, the general public, they don't really care about the technology that goes on behind the scenes. They want the easy interface. I want to be able to take one asset if I can just scan a QR code and I can easily log in and you can connect a Zaman wallet eventually, you know, connect an anodos wallet and you have flexibility to navigate through this and then even going to. And I'm just looking at, you know, how nice, you know, the, the UI is and just everything is just, you know, just perfectly set up so that you can attract that consumer. So if it is friends and family, it's like, hey, how do you, you know, how do you get involved in crypto and going through the complication before of trying to explain people, well, here's what you got to do. And I've been there so many times. Here's all the different wallets you're going to need. Here's how you're going to move your assets. Here's, you know, here's what you're going to do with it. And so here I like having, you know, there's the exchange, here's your portfolio, here's the liquidity pools up and it's very clear on how to navigate and that, that, you know, makes a big difference. So, you know, kudos to you guys for, you know, pulling that, you know, part together now, getting the word out on the streets where. What are you guys seeing right now in terms of likely adoption? What are your projections? What kind of feedback are you getting from the street?
- [26:53]
C
Go first or should I?
- [26:54]
D
Yeah, go on.
- [26:58]
C
So I think people are still excited about the promise of crypto. Bringing them to the moon and buying them Lamborghinis. I think that's a little, still too much on the mind. I think the moment that we show people what the benefits are of blockchain, that's when things are going to get more mass adopted organically. I mean, I like to use very basic analogies and examples because it's things that we could understand and we could remember. When I was getting into the whole corporate world when I was much younger, I had to learn how to use Excel, Word, Document, Microsoft Suite, all these different things, and everybody in my generation was going through the same thing. Not everybody had a PC at home. The second they got a PC at home and they were starting to able to play around with. I could write a letter and it could manage my grammar and my spelling a little bit better. If I use Word Documents, I'll do that. I can follow some of the equations on Excel and I could help manage some of my personal finances and whatnot and organize myself a little better. I saw the value in the tools. I would have never gone through that if it was just pitched to me or sold to me on a regular basis while I was a waiter at a restaurant. There wouldn't be any pull for me to do that really. You wouldn't get me to buy that software and interact with it. But the second you show people all the different tools that they could use that for example, you can have a lot more of an intimate relationship with your finances, meaning you don't have to contact a bank manager, have a portfolio manager, you know, deal with all these different advice, wonder if you're an accredited investor and if you're not, you can't partake in the brilliant idea you had to invest in that, for example, condo in Tokyo or that new stock that it just was, you know, went on an ipo. You don't, you don't need to deal with any of this stuff. You could go on and you could have, for example, access to these tools in a frictionless way and also have an agentic advisor that you've programmed the same way you've programmed all your other AI to say that, you know, my risk tolerance is very low. I want to only invest in things that are similar to, you know, T bonds or precious metals. And I just want to basically fight against inflation or turn a little bit of a profit. I don't mind waiting a year. You know, all these things could be all programmed in and saving you time. And at the same time, after you've learned how to really navigate this side of things because it's not so complicated anymore, you're intuitively like most people, you're intuitively going to start thinking, how can I translate this into saving hours per day at work or for my business? How can I can Better manage my business or whatever else. And it's that playground that needs to be welcoming, that you could explore it and play around with it. And until that happens, I don't see any mass adoption. I just don't. I could sit down with people and tell them till my face turns blue that, look, you could, you could invest this way, you could make money that way. But the second they start telling me things like, yeah, but, you know, I wanted to get this asset and I saw a lending protocol on Avax and I don't have that wallet and I don't want to, I don't know about MetaMask. And they started losing their minds. And you're like, well, yeah, I don't blame you. I don't blame you. How are you going to get involved in all this? You're not. I know.
- [30:11]
A
Yeah. To your point, you know, even starting back, you know, when you get involved in Excel and Word, could you imagine as you're starting to use those technologies if the whole community, if all we talked about were, was the coding that went behind it. Well, here's all the coding of Excel. Here's how Excel actually worked behind the scenes, you know, here's the blockchain, you know, but, you know, years. And so it'd be. And, and that's kind of where we're at. And it's interesting because in the early days before that, that's what was happening. People in the garages. Right, that's where, yeah, Microsoft and Apple and they all came up working in garages because they were tech heavy. But then it became consumer based. And that's, and that's kind of that pivot moment right now. And it's going to be the simplicity and not necessarily who gets there first, but it's going to be about the consumer experience and the one big area that's missed. And you just touched on it within the business space, whether it's business to consumer or business to business. But from a business perspective, the one element that is extremely difficult to still navigate are the payments. And not necessarily, can I make payments, can I receive payments? It's the cost of doing business. It's the cost of payment. So right now, you know, as an average norm to take credit cards, you're getting charged anywhere from 2.9 to 4% on A, on a credit card transaction and maybe more. And so what happens in a typical environment from a business, they'll say, well, if you want to use your credit card, you're responsible for covering those costs. So someone is bearing that cost. And I can tell you just in the amount of cost that have been involved in different transactions has been insane. All right? And, and people, you know, they, I had somebody that came to me this week and we're working on putting something together. And the cost of the product is, let's say it was $40,000. And they said, well, I want to put it on my credit card. Okay, that's great. But that credit card charge is going to be 4%. Who's absorbing that cost? Am I supposed to absorb that, that, you know, that 1600 cost, or are you going to absorb the 1600 cost? Right, so. And that's a, that's a conversation piece. And the reason why people want to do that is out of simplicity, right? Because it's like, hey, they have access to funding. It's easy. I can just give you a credit card. I'll just process the credit card. I'll have recognition of receipt of funds, even though settlement hasn't occurred yet. And those funds can still be pulled back. So we're in a danger zone. But if you go through a banking solution and you want to do a bank wire, you know, then there's complexities there and there's all these different elements that just have complicated business to a level. There's delays and questions, and we need to find the path where that part not just, not necessarily, hey, can I pay you? Because that's already solved. Everybody knows that we can get paid, but it's the cost of transaction that has to be resolved. And what it sounds like is, you know, through this approach, there's a simpler, less expensive way of doing it.
- [33:46]
C
100. And it's a, it's an excellent point you bring up. It's another reason why what we envision this app to do and the reason why we've been making the partnerships that we've been making is imagine exactly the frictions that you're talking about. Imagine that I wanted to pay you for a service and you told me that, you know what, I'm going to give you my IBAN account. Just send it to me in whatever currency you want. And I decide, you know what, I'm going to send it to you in XRP and it's going to land in your account in, and, I don't know, in pesos, because that's what you feel like you want to receive it in. And then. And it goes into your bank account. The friction is like almost completely eliminated. Instead of you receiving funds in the only way I sent it to you, and then paying a FX fees to transfer it to the actual currency that you want. All this could be done online. We have incredible technology at our fingertips and we have all the connection points causing friction. It's a little bit absurd from an outside perspective that you're like, okay, I, I have, I have the equivalent of like the DeLorean to be able to go travel through time and I have all this amazing stuff, but I don't have the petroleum. I just have regular gas and it's not going to work. It's going to be a regular car because there's so many frictions. And you're like, how is this possible? How's this possible at this point? So this is what we're working on. In general, our ethos, our mentality is we think like entrepreneurs because we're entrepreneurs, we're enthusiasts as far as the blockchain is, and the promise of blockchain and AI and every technology that comes out there. But if you can't identify what the workflow is for the everyday person who wants to use this, or for the business that wants to use this, if you don't understand, and I'm talking specifically more for builders, if you don't understand that the lifeblood of every single country, every single economy in the world is small to medium sized businesses. And these people, men and women, are sometimes single parents, you know, they have all kinds of stuff going on in their lives. They have to wear seven to eight different hats, figuring out how to post on social media, do their accounting, blah, blah, blah. They're, they're warriors. They're warriors trying to do the best they can. And now if you come in there and you show them with the technology that hey, I'm gonna save you time, I'm gonna save you money, you'll be able to manage everything. You'll be able to bring a USB key, for example, to your accountant and say here everything is organized, everything is set up, your accounting fees are less, which you should be able to do them on your own. Now with blockchain, even more so. But I'm just saying for argument's sake, this is, this is a value. And then when that person, as a business owner who's been playing around with this and sees the value of everything that's been saved, time, money, effort, etcetera, they're going to then say, well, how can I apply this to my everyday life? Right? The example you mentioned before, I think is brilliant. But at the same time, I use a similar example in the last article that I wrote. If you had to Know how to tear apart a transmission or an alternator or change your brakes and you have to be tested on that before you could get your driver's license. There aren't many people that'd be driving guys. So it's ridiculous what we're talking about with the blockchain.
- [36:37]
B
Well, this is, this is the difference between, you know, Jeff talks about this all the time. If you're, are you creating a new problem you're going to solve something for. Are you guys actually solving what's already been from. So I love the way you guys have attacked this because everybody will come out with a new technology, you know, and I remember when, when Future Verse was around and I tried to just do a basic NFT and I had to click this set up my. And then I had to go to my, my Ethereum wallet. Then I had to do this. It was so freaking complicated. I had to jump through 17 different things. I was like, dude, I could never replicate this again. I don't even know what I just did. And you know, this one click button, you know, kind of what we and, and his team's doing with the Zamen to be able to a one click staking, you know, to be able to go on, you know, the Anodos wallet and have everything like right there. Like if I'm onboarding somebody, I say, yeah, just go to this link. What do you do? Okay, you log in your phone. Boom. Biometrics, doom. You just created your thing. Well, now what? Well, you can either send xrp, which they're not going to be able to do. Okay, you guys click this button and buy it here. You connect one of these payment systems, bing, bing, bing. Done. Like you literally. I mean if they haven't connected before, yeah, there's some KYC stuff, right? Prove who you are, all that. But it's super quick. You can do it in, you know, in basically about a minute and a half to two minutes. You can't do that with other wallets and you can't even explain the conceptual stuff. But when someone does that, it's replicatable. What did I do? I click this button and I click that button and boom. I had XRP in my, in my wallet and I didn't have to write a seed phrase down because, you know, well, great. What if you wrote it down wrong? What if you put it. I mean, I can tell you right here. I mean I, I will admit how stupid I'm. I've got a, I've got a zombie wallet on my old phone. It went, you know, it went bloomy. Whatever. And the last time I used my wallet to actually trans, I thought it'd be great if I put an extra password on before I actually sent. That was a really bad idea because now I don't know what that password is. And I was accepting NFTs and I knew that that password, you know, and I think about people like Stefan Tomas, you know, the. The guy who was the chief tech officer for Ripple. That guy's out $450 million. I'm sorry, guys. I don't get up the next morning if that's me, and I don't have $450 and I'm like, I know what I'll do. I'll have a. I'll have it, brick. After 10 tries. No, that's a bad idea, right? So these people that want to keep stuff, if you don't make self custody easy like you guys have, then it's very difficult. So this is one of the things I love what you're doing. You're making things easy for people, and it's easy to tell people. You do a couple different steps and panels. You wrote this article, which is really amazing, and you, both of you guys are the arbiters of truth. And you guys get attacked a lot for it online. I noticed you guys bring the truth, you guys bring the receipts, and you get. You get punched in the face more times than I've seen anybody. I'm like, this is so spot on. It's like, where's my Lambo? You know? You know what I mean?
- [39:26]
D
Yeah. I mean, like, this is the biggest problem because, you know, everyone is attached, like, to either, like, let's say this financial gains that, you know, they have been fed up with all these fairy tales by these influencers and YouTubers. They have been saying, like, XRP is going like $2,000 overnight and like all these, like, crazy theories that we are always thinking. And, you know, they, you know, actually decided to believe that because, you know, it will also, like, improve their life and like, make huge gains. And now anything that goes against it, I mean, there's. They see it like, as, you know, fad, hate. I don't know how they say it, but I mean, I think this, like, wow, how like, it eventually comes out. It's because these people are like, following the, let's say, the wrong people. And I just decided, like, they. They believe these theories.
- [40:14]
B
They believe them. Are you telling me, Are you telling me right now that it's not going to a thousand overnight? Is that what you're trying to tell me.
- [40:20]
A
Sounds like you're trying to give sounds.
- [40:23]
B
Like you're trying to give me a hint of some kind here. But so you guys wrote some. You guys. What I like is you guys are thought leaders and whether people like it or not, you're bringing the truth, you know. And Peter, you wrote a really cool thing too. Kind of just breaking stuff down for people to make it easy to understand. For example, let me go to this article here. XRP wasn't built for the banks, it was built to kill them. This is a really good article and by the way guys, I, I'm linking it to the down below if you guys want to link to this. It's a good read. But this is, I just want to read this one thing. We'll kind of break it down. But the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing you that XRP was born to serve the very institutions it was meant to dismantle. The devil is bitcoin maxis and certain XRP influencers. And what you do is kind of break it down. So what I did was I kind of, I kind of put it into a Google Doc here and kind of broke this down into some like digestible chunks here. But we're going to talk a little bit about the anti banking revolution that we weren't told about. But the basic belief was that xrp, this so called bankers coin, you know, that was invented by the bitcoin maxis, that's kind of how they came at it. You know I've told the story many times where one of my good friends in a startup that I was in, one of my co founders in a startup that I had got me into Bitcoin in 2013. This is how we sent money quick from the UK to here. We actually used bitcoin. It was still faster, it took a day to process but I still got the money quicker. Right? So that we had, we were constantly using bitcoin back in the day and then he was telling me and I said what about xrp? He goes, oh man, that's a centralized banker's coin. You don't want that. What you want is stellar, that's decentralized. I'm like what? What in tarnation? So when I started doing some digging I found out the truth and he still hates me to this day. XRP crap. I told you if you invested in bitcoin you'd be super rich. And, and we said if we had just put all the money we put into the startup in bitcoin, we'd have so many millions of dollars, we wouldn't be able to know how to figure out how to spend them. But, you know, that's water on their bridge. But one of the things. Let's talk about the early vision of. Talk about this a little bit, the early vision of xrp. If you could panel, just tell us if you want to like, run through some of these points here.
- [42:34]
D
I mean, yeah, it was all. I mean, if you go back like to the history and like even like the early interviews of, you know, five founding team, you'll see that, you know, they were actually trying to remove this middleman that we're talking about today. Like to remove every type of middleman from the equation. Either that's like banks, credit card networks, or like anything that's like not necessary with this. With this new system. Because it's like more like a paradox. I mean, we're trying to bring the banks in where, you know, we don't need them at all. And somehow people are convinced that, you know, they need banks for some reason. But it's. I know, it's like a responsibility for us, like to actually educate them and show them that this is not the case anymore. We don't need them anymore. It was maybe in the past, but right now, I mean, we have these new systems like XRP Ledger, Bitcoin and everything was actually started to remove this middleman. And yeah, XRP ledger was always meant to be this global exchange that could like basically exchange and transfer anything that has value. Either that's like XRP or like there were like stable coins that, you know, that term that didn't even exist when like XRP started bringing this tokenized fiat on XRPL. We had like US dollars, euros, Japanese yen, like multiple currencies since 2013 where like Bitcoin, even gold, like, and the vision was like being able to trade this, you know, anything to anything, the anything to anything vision. And you know, the banks were like, no, nowhere to be seen. That was the whole point. So, yeah, I mean, this is how everything started. And then, yeah, as I described like later it was like Ripple's vision later that, you know, they decided to go after the banking system, but it was not to help banks that, that, you know, like many people think right now it was basically to create this level playing field which, you know, they're even today Ripple is talking about it, but they're not like talking it in a way where it actually seems in a negative way. But it actually, that's what it is. They wanted to improve the banking system and remove this unnecessary middleman. Like if you see like the swifts correspond correspondent banking just to send a cross border payment, it needs to pass from 4, 5, 6 different banks. While what you know, Ripple's goal was to just go from one bank to another, just you know, remove all these three, four in the middle, which also take like a huge cut from all the rest and just you know, create this efficient system for all. So even when Ripple decided to go after this use case that it wasn't to help banks, it was actually to create this level playing field.
- [45:25]
B
And it's funny how that ended up being twisted around into of course making software for the banks to move it quicker is like, you know, you gotta, you go legacy reach out because like you said getting adoptions are very difficult. So you go with the players that were already in the space. But also you bring to light here about how David Schwartz was basically banned from, from using PayPal. And it know he talked about that a lot. But, but even the, the founders, the original intent, you know back then was called open Coin. But and then they called, they labeled the Ripple, you know, coin and that one lasted way too long where it's like 10 years later we're still talking about ripple as ripple, XRP as ripple. And you know, the confusion happens, you know, all over the place. But the whole idea was trying to build a, the, the, the, the shortfalls of what Bitcoin had to then go ahead and create something that actually worked and the transaction being fast and all this kind of stuff. Now a lot of new technologies come out, you know, things, projects like Sui and other things and you know, that have fast transaction times and actually more transactions per second. But also too, I think the idea too was to reduce the government, you know, interference really. And what do we have now? We have this Clarity act where you've got the banking cartels that are basically on the Democrat party over in the United States. And what they're doing is they, they're trying to put a provision in there so you can't earn yield on stable coins. Because they're worried about the outflow of banks. Well yeah, that's what people, if people want that, why would you stop people and protect the legacy industry? It's like saying like well when the railroad came in, you know, we got to protect people who own horses because you know that could be a faster way to travel and we, that's just something we can't, we can't have. So let's figure out a way to protect all the people that actually own a horse. It's really backwards thinking. But this is a politicians for you problem is is that even with that, so what so you don't use stable coins and you use a digital asset. It's the same thing. Most people are into that who holds stable coins anyway and they're worried about the outflow. You're going to get the outflow whether you like it or not. People are going to are going into crypto big time. The more political instability you get, the more people look at gold, look at silver popping up. It's not, it's not unusual that it's tied to political instability. And what's going on in the finance section like if you talk about even yeah talk a little bit panels about the open coins original mission, what they really set out to do and what, and what Chris Larson said about it.
- [47:58]
D
So you know, first for example it was like XRP extravagant that was like launched by you know, David Arthur and Jedi back in June of 2012. It was like the first official launch and like months later Chris Larsen came, a few other people came and decided to build opencoin which is now like this company that is now we know as Ripple Ripple apps. And yeah, the original vision was as I described, they wanted to just continue this vision of Bitcoin and expand it and they want to build on top of this XRPL Dex which also the first decentralized exchange. They wanted to build on top of this vision and just create this peer to peer credit system that as I described earlier allow everyone, every individual, every small business to actually interact directly with each other and be able to exchange anything of value, even airline miles for example. Anything could be put on the XRP ledger and be traded. That was more or less the original vision and opencoin skull was to just be this company that would just have the resources and expand this vision on xrpl.
- [49:09]
A
That's amazing and that's really interesting. Right to the real world asset tokenization of real world assets right from the beginning. But in those two segments, Chip, if you go back up you can see a clear differentiation of what happened. I mean a complete intersect or bisect or whatever where you have open Coins original mission, Chris Larson and then you have stellar XLM project that ends up moving towards retail focus, Ripple moves towards institutional focus. Almost seems planned, you know, maybe to navigate but you can see a difference of opinions also in terms of where the companies themselves decided to go, not the asset, you know, because if you break it down to the bare bones of the Technology. Why can't you use the XRPL for retail? Why is it only for financial institutions? Although the XRPL has a lot of technology built in it that the right companies developing, utilizing the XRPL can build amazing institutional product. Hence you know, Ripple and then there's also a lot of opportunity for retail. Stellar's primary focus though their whole mission statement was we want to bring it to the person, we want to go to Main Street. And that's where Stellar's, you know, their platforms, they're building, their development. I think there was even some development there that was going back towards banking institutions. So there's such crossover between the two of them. Where, where do you see it like from where they were and where we're at today.
- [50:56]
D
Like on a side note, I mean to like say a few things about Stellar which you know, many people might not know is that what actually happened is like in you know, so Ripple decided to go after this banking system, this cross border payment use case in 2014-2015. That's when we decided and at the same time was actually maybe a little before that. Chad had some fights with the Ripple team and like the rest of the team because you know he had some ideas on how to like expand xrp. He wanted to give like to do like some as David also said like some Facebook giveaways started like giving out XRP like for free despite like you know Ripple did that through faucets and like other different initiatives. But also yeah, you know Jed had like some other ideas and roadmap on how like to grow the XRP and XRP ledger and the rest of the team was not, was not on board. So he decided to just leave and build the exact same technology. A competitor of the XRP ledger that was like the goal and just you know, build it with his own ideas. That was like the whole reason, that is the whole reason why Stellar exists was basically just complete with XRPL and just build this clone which you know it's actually a clone of xrpl. It's exactly the same. That's how it started at least now has expanded to like it has like some other features that XRPL doesn't have but still I mean 99% is like the same DNA basically. So the goal was not like for want to go in for into banks and the one to go like into retail. It was like exactly the same same. They're both open source, decentralized networks but they just decided that like their vision like the robot was different and yeah I don't know how like, it came to be. Like, I think it was like 20, 18, 19, that it started with this theory that, you know, the stellar is for retail and like XRP is for banks. And it's again, it's like, it's again like these influencers, as YouTubers started.
- [53:01]
A
It was me. I was the starting point.
- [53:04]
B
But, you know, you want to know there's another really famous breakup that happened that kind of reminds me of this. But back in 1948, there's a guy named Rudolph Dazzler and he was the guy that founded Puma. You know, you guys are all familiar with the Puma brand today, but his brother and him had a falling out. So two years, a year later, in 1949, after going through some conflicts of know, ideas, Adidas was founded. So it's like these two brothers who started Puma, one broke off and started Adidas. And like, it's always funny, you tell somebody, like, did you guys know they were sort of related? The brands are like, no, because, you know, some people are like, oh, I'm Puma. No, I'm Adidas. Right? So it's like. And so we have that same kind of breakup in crypto. We've got the team bitcoin and we got team, you know, you know, Hedera or team, you know, whatever it may be, you know, xrp. And the funny part about that is I always, in any discussion with the bitcoin maxi, I always say like, oh, are you that guy that's like, there's only, you know, Apple stock or there's only, you know, Palantir and all the other ones are shit stocks. Silence, crickets. Right away. Because when you do the analogy, like, yeah, it doesn't make any sense. Oh, I see. Because this is the true stock. Oh, no, the other ones are shit stocks. These are shit coins. Right? This whole concept of the tribalism is bizarre to me. Peter, you wrote a really cool thought leadership piece as well. You wrote this piece called the Entrepreneurial Swamp subtitle Blockchain, which, which you kind of break it down, but in, in sort of, if you want to just pick out one things, it's a really good thing. And I guys, by the way, if you guys look down there in the notes of YouTube there, they're both saved in there, both of these articles. So you guys can click on them and read them. They're both really good reads. Give you a lot of good context on it. But Peter, if you could just kind of like speak to sort of like the Kind of the overarching. Because I like, there's one example you give on here that I really like, this example here about the rule and sales that most people don't really get and when it comes down to let's use the example of a car, but kind of talk a little bit about the overarching concept of why you thought it was a good idea to sort of pen this article and kind of, you know, kind of expose what the reality is.
- [55:14]
C
Sure. So the, the inspiration behind it all was it's been like a culmination over the years since 2019 when I got into all of blockchain. Trying to navigate and understand like the culture of blockchain and people that are into blockchain and the culture seemed to me very much about just, you know, a delusion. And the delusion was let's just figure out what we can do. And since we're all involved in tech and we all understand we could add all these add ons and all these confusing terms and we could do all this stuff and it's our own private club and we're against the machine, we're against all this stuff. And at the same time they're talking about like mass adoption. And I was like, this is like a huge oxymoron here. I mean people talk about, for example, like we're talking about banker coins. Right. For me, flat out, just to interject that as well, is there can't be a banker coin because the, the main principle of creating money in the fiat fractional reserve system is, is deposits and being able to create money out of thin air based on deposits to eight or nine fold. You can't do that with, with any crypto. So there is no, no coin that represents that kind of mentality to bankers. Right. So I just wanted, I wanted to just like really just crush that, that point that people say this is about. There's maybe coins that are, that help facilitate banking services. Sure. But there isn't a banker's coin really. So my whole mentality behind writing this whole article was, you know, you enter in an industry and Web2 for me is like the foundational example to everything. I got into web design back in 2007 roughly and I created a web design company. I knew nothing about web design, I knew nothing about writing code. I contacted a friend of mine's little sister and I said, listen, I'll make you a junior partner and you'll just make the websites and I'm going to sell them. And I would contact all my clients were in The US they were all white. Most of them were white collars, attorneys, doctors, people that understood they needed a website at the time, but didn't want to deal with like a web guy, a web sales guy who was going to tell them about like database architecture or Google Ads, that they didn't understand any of this stuff. Right. And I just simply, I made everything simple for them and I grew a successful business out of it. And then when I looked at blockchain, I said, why are we still talking about all the intricacies of all this stuff of blockchain? And people want to talk about all the dynamics and all the schematics and all the DNA of all the blockchains and what the tokenomics are. When you have the entire example of the Internet showing you that if you give easy technology, mankind is actually very resourceful, mankind is very into innovation and people are interesting and they're curious and they're going to want to create all these different things. But if you block them simply because they don't understand blockchain and the DNA of it, if you block them simply because they don't understand your crypto lingo, well, I mean this is a huge deficiency here. You're just stopping everybody from entering. And as myself going in, who I'm like, I would say I'm tech adjacent. Okay, I'm not a tech geek. I understand. I have to read a lot all the time so I can understand even like conversations. I'll go into a space and I'll bring up something that I'd never heard of before in crypto and I'll be right back to the drawing board teaching myself. But I'm capable of doing that. Not everybody is. Not everybody has the patience to sit there and self teach themselves. And I'm passionate about it, but the majority is not. The majority of the population wants that one press button solution. So my argument and the entire article piece was for the developers to start paying attention to the entrepreneurs that are coming in, to the regular people that are coming in. And instead of telling them or you know, shitting on them for not understanding all the technology, they could just say, okay, I understand what you want to do. It's possible for this reason or impossible for this reason, or here's the fix or here's the workaround. Does that work for you? And then have the entrepreneur or the person who has the idea say yes or no and then let's build something. You know that this is my whole point is inclusion, right?
- [59:20]
B
100 yeah, that's a good one. Too and that's why I linked them both below so you guys can read them and they're also on the socials as well. You can inside. If you guys go down, I recognize you go or recommend that you go ahead and follow Anodos and also follow both Peter and Panos as well you especially for thought leadership and things that are going on. But just interesting stuff. I always like I, I sometimes run into the comments you guys make too. Sometimes the replies you guys have are even better than what the things you put out because that's where a lot of the, that's where a lot of the, the thought leadership lies. And, and sometimes it's. And it's okay, look, if you want to make investments, you want to talk about Lambos and stuff but I think you should understand the basics of it. And the people in the, in the XRP community, XRP army, they want the price to change but they're not willing to support projects that are built on the xrpl. They're not willing to put push forward what is actually going to make that happen. And it's great. And I love what Ripple's been up to. I love what Ripple's been doing. And on that note too, you guys, weren't you in the, weren't you in the. Weren't you involved in something Ripple put together was called the accelerator? Accelerator? You guys were involved in that, right?
- [60:34]
C
That's right.
- [60:35]
B
Do you want to speak a little bit to your experience on that?
- [60:39]
D
So yeah, I mean as you know, like the previous article I wrote about is know how to like make XRP of the leading blockchain in like 2026 was like pointing out also like many of the issues that we have in the ecosystem. And one was like this, you know, 1 billion XRP grant fund that we have. And that's basically, you know, not used even though it launched like four or five years ago. Like it's only a tiny fraction of this has been used like to expand the ecosystem and grow it. And we technically, I mean we applied when we started ANODOS Back in 2023, we applied for our first grant back then like the XRP grants program where we wanted like to, I mean there's, there was a wave where it was specifically about the Dex and the amm and the AMM hasn't like hadn't launched yet. But that was the whole point of the grant program possessed give like you know, grants and resources to projects that had these ideas around the amm. So yeah, we applied to that and you know we had this idea that you saw like Anodex V1 that we launched, like when the MM launched and we got rejected, like with no feedback, like no, like nothing. You know, we had no idea why we got rejected and what was like the reason for it. So yeah, months went by, there was like another wave. We applied again, we got rejected. Think I again. Then we like started reaching out, like to Ripple and try to, you know, see what's happening here. I mean, what's, what's the reason, what. Trying to figure out, you know, what's. What's going on. And at the same time we were seeing like many of the other existing builders and projects that have been there for years being rejected as well. And we were seeing like newcomers that, you know, that's like new ideas that we, you know, the community had no idea about, like giving like these grants, giving like money and then. No, no, then disappearing and doing nothing. So we saw like this big disconnect. We tried to like get in touch with Ripple, maybe like eventually had a call with them. They tried to explain some things. Not convincing, but still, I mean, they gave like their own, let's say, opinion with which was basically what said, like they wanted to see more, but still not very clear. And then we select the accelerator program that launched by Ripple and Tenity and they approached us, they said, this a good program for you. Maybe they would like to apologize for what they did. And they just wanted to bring us into the accelerator. So we got in and There were other 8, 9 projects into the accelerator and it was like a good initiative, but still, I would say not good enough for what this ecosystem needs. I mean, there was some mentorship, some different people that brought in to present about different topics, but still, I mean, it was not enough around, let's say, investors, VCS and how to actually grow your project on xrpl. I mean, it was a good start, but still, I mean, we need to do more. So overall, I think, yeah, as an ecosystem we need like these better programs. We need like to give resources to these builders that have these good ideas. And we're seeing on, on all the other ecosystem and chains, like hundreds of millions being spent like on incentives and grants and like developer resources to grow the ecosystem. And you know, we're seeing nothing yet on xrpl. So yeah, although we go type into the accelerator. Yeah, I think, you know, we saw from within what's, what's that like? And I mean, we gave the feedback and hopefully, you know, we'll see some changes. But yeah, we're still like waiting for something.
- [64:37]
B
I think accelerators are good for like really early companies and young companies that, that really maybe don't know how to navigate the landscape. You guys are already pretty advanced and pretty senior, so maybe some of that. But just so you know, Jeff and I got both got rejected and one of the realized. What we realized was we forgot some key words to put in our proposal. Carbon credits. If we put carbon credits in there, we probably would have done extremely well. Okay, I'm just saying like. And Jeff, do you want to talk about the idea we had about the water? Do you remember that idea? We were, we were talking. We. Do you remember that idea about the water?
- [65:10]
D
We.
- [65:11]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [65:12]
B
We don't know if we want to go into it, but we actually had this idea for a, for a grant. It probably would have been somewhat successful but you know, we got rejected and we actually pivoted and, and we had, we came up with a whole different idea and a lot of it was around this, the NFT project we were working on and we pivoted and I think it turned out to be better than what we originally envisioned only because we had to think differently because we didn't have the money necessarily really to necessarily do it. So Jeff and I had to figure out how we could do it ourselves and sort of, and the whole sort of direction of the project changes. So sometimes things happen and you'll figure out how to pivot and how to make something happen. I want this A good question from Island Go Stephanie. She's saying, speaking of grants, what, what's yours Panels and Peter's take on the XRP L grants being allocated through the zodao.
- [66:01]
D
I mean before answering that, I would just like to say that you know, the grants, the grants program is not just about the money. It's also about like marketing support. It's developer support. It's having like all the resources a startup needs because it's not like about like a crypto projects. And usually you know what's this industry is doing wrong is that you know, most crypto projects are. Consist of tough developers so they have no idea how to grow their business because you know, you need also marketing. You need like great like engagement and community management. You need like five finance guys. I mean you need the whole package to succeed as a startup. So yeah, the grants program and any, any incentive program on xrp, any chain must be about this, you know, cycle resources. When it's not not only about like giving some money, but it's also full support by everything that this startup needs. So I think this is like a big thing that is also lacks both from the accelerator and then like grant and any initiative on xrpl. And answering to that question, I would say that Ripple ideally shouldn't even touch like have anything to do with XRP grants because in the end of the day they're a private company, they are pursuing their own business model, their own use cases, they're a for profit company. And we have a foundation which has been sitting idle for years. I mean, there was like another foundation that now there's a new one being set up because there were some issues. But ideally like on every other chain and ecosystem there should be a foundation or like a nonprofit or a dao, like the question said, that should manage these funds and should like launch these initiatives for the better of the whole ecosystem. So yeah, I mean, I agree that there should potentially be multiple grants, multiple programs, and one of them should be handled by a dao. Even that's like a DAO governed by foundation or like community members, like some XRP community members. That would be great. And Zao, I think it's a great like community led dao, which I would like love to see them also like take an amount, being given an amount and also like working into like that grant program.
- [68:15]
B
Yeah, well said. And I, I do like this fact that there is a new foundation as well. Well, you know, set up. And you know, by the way, you know, Fabio Marzella sits on the. He sits on that board and he's also one of the founding directors of the Zaldao along with Santiago Velez. So. And these two guys are just like, you know, I have a high, high opinion of who they are just because they've been around the ecosystem so long, you know, sort of legends like yourselves, so. And we need these legends to succeed is what we really need. And Jeff, I'm just curious. Curious you dug something up. I just wonder if you want to kind of share that with the audience. Didn't you dig something up recently?
- [68:55]
A
Actually, I did and I was a little bit, you know, it was pretty amazing. So I just actually found this cool image as well. Let me see. Hang on a second. And then so I found a couple things here, which I don't. I had no idea that you guys were into music. And so I found this, this song that I wanted to play for you guys. But before I do that, I actually found this. There's kind of like a cover photo.
- [69:27]
B
This is new. I did not know about this about you guys.
- [69:30]
D
Yeah, this Is the end of the stroke band.
- [69:36]
C
I actually had hair like that a long time ago. Just as a. By the way.
- [69:39]
B
My God, the panels must have, too. I feel it. He won't admit to it, though, but that's. That would. That's right there. That's metal right there, baby.
- [69:47]
C
Yeah.
- [69:50]
A
Around through Trying to find some content to talk about. Then we found this song, and so I figured we'd play it real quick.
- [69:57]
B
Let's listen to this.
- [70:10]
E
I'm Peter with an old dose. I'm on lead guitar tonight and standing right beside me holding down the fire My brain brother on rhythm the architect.
- [70:32]
B
Of the line.
- [70:35]
E
Pedals and backing us up on the chain holding the truth, keeping it loud. Make some noise for our backup singers. But you can't have no more. But there's a new current in the night Silent rails moving faster than light A clean new path A boulder line n redefining fine as. No chains, no locks, no iron hand Just open rails across the land Red light burning new new future rolling no middleman, no hidden cost, no custody. Nothing lost. Nothing lost. Nothing lost. Nothing lost. You are your bank. Break the gates, tail the rank. You are your bank. You are, are you?
- [72:12]
B
Back.
- [72:15]
E
On the chain.
- [72:19]
C
Awesome. That's like Aerosmith and Def Leppard and another four bands all together. That was amazing, guys.
- [72:25]
B
That was. I got. I was impressed, man. Some great singing and playing, man. Really?
- [72:32]
C
Listen, I mean, we do what we can. We do. We can.
- [72:35]
B
Fantastic. I mean, that was really good. Well, as you know, we always like to have a little bit of fun here on the chain. We create a lot of songs for all kinds of things. We thought this might have been the thing, but. Good job on that video, Jeff. I hope you guys. I'm glad you guys have a good sense of humor and. Yeah, it was funny, guys, because I sent over the thumbnail and I said, guys, since it looks like your hair has grown a little bit longer since last time you wrote the show. Put that picture back up there again for a second. Let's see. Let's see this picture again. Good. That man right there. Look at that. That is amazing. God, if you think about it, this is really the main purpose for A.I. right, isn't it?
- [73:11]
D
Yeah.
- [73:12]
B
Doing silly memes. And. I mean, the memes have never been as strong as they are now. And you see.
- [73:16]
C
Exactly.
- [73:17]
B
I saw one the other day of Mark Carney coming down the. He was showing up in China, and they put him in a woman's dress with high heels. I mean, going down. It's just it's insane. Like the stuff that you see. But the Rolling Stones opening for Anados in the Staples Center. Yes.
- [73:34]
C
I've had so much fun with that stuff. I. I don't know how many songs I had made through suno. There's so, so much. So much fun. I mean, I'd write the most ridiculous lyrics just to see how it would sound and. Just fun. It's just fun. I mean, that's, again, a big advantage that AI has, guys. It's fun. It's. You could just go in, mess around, do stuff. And it's like, that's how you get more people in. Into something.
- [73:59]
B
Yeah. And it's. And, you know, I put out a whole imaginary band because I love the Manchester, you know, sort of music scene from the 90s. And I created a band and took all my lyrics from songs that just never made it or things I scribbled down or. Like, I even wrote some new stuff or added stuff to it and put out this album on. On Spotify, you know, and.
- [74:19]
C
Amazing.
- [74:19]
B
It's. It's just wild to me. But I went down a rabbit hole for three months and just had so much fun doing it. Try to get the right sound, you know, and sooner you can save a Persona, which is the voice. And just to try to execute something, you're like, wow. And I sent it to Mike because I. I'm also a musician, too, and record stuff. But I sent it to my two of my old producers, and one of them's mixing for people. He goes, I am aft right now. He go. Because he said, who. Who mixed it? I'm like, dude, AI. He goes, I'm in some serious trouble. That was. It was amazing. This is a guy that produces big names, you know what I mean? He's like, you know, recorded acts and people out there. So this is what's coming down the pike. So. But, I mean, it is going to vastly change Blockchain, too. And like you said, Peter, you know what? You know, be able to use, you know, agents to be able to do things and kind of manage stuff for you. Always have some kind of overview of, you know, kind of a look at what you're doing, but that's kind of where we're headed. And I just say it was really phenomenal having you guys back on here and some of the cool things you guys have done a lot in the last year and where you guys are going is really fantastic as well.
- [75:22]
D
Thanks for having us.
- [75:22]
C
We appreciate being here all the time. It's always fun talking with you Guys, even when we're interacting on X or whatnot, I mean we both respect you both very much and the work that you guys have been doing and it's, it's always fun, it's always real and it's like, it's rare you come on a, on a podcast. Like we've been blessed actually. We've gone on a couple of podcasts are really, really good. But I mean there are a few of you guys that actually, you know the work that you put in, but the sincerity of it, the, the open forum, the free flowing conversation, I mean it's, it's great. Really good job.
- [75:53]
B
Yeah, we always appreciate guests that are into it and have a little bit of a sense of humor because you guys didn't know about that. We dropped that on you. But we, we know you well enough to know that you guys would have some fun with it. Panos, anything you want to say in closing?
- [76:07]
D
Well, I would like to say that you know, first of all, don't forget to like sign up on our wait list. I know if like you can share like the, the screen on the wait list if you want to have early access to you know, the first financial super app on XRP Ledger and probably the only, you know, not blockchain, let's say jargon app in the industry. For example, if you go to, to this waitlist on the page, you'll never see any crypto term. You will never see crypto blockchain even mentioned. And you know we want to bring this powered by xrpl. It's like a powerful technology and yeah, the whole idea is I think atan of those we just saw, as I said in the article as well about xrp that we saw through that original vision. And you know, that's also personally what, you know what made me come and say to xrpl seeing this original vision like from, from the creators and we decided to like just continue on this, build upon it and prove to the world that for some reason is convinced they need these middlemen and banks, that we don't need them. They are not, they aren't necessary anymore and you can just do anything you can imagine by yourself without having to ask for permission or pay someone to do anything with your money. So yeah, we're just one, we're just continuing this vision and you know we love like the community to, to be on board.
- [77:38]
B
That's awesome. And I'll just point out guys, I dropped it in the chat there. So everybody right now click on that link. Click on the link. And also it will. It's also going to be down below. But all you have to do is go to that link, click here, throw your email in, join the wait list. That way you'll be notified when it goes live. But everybody, I command you to do it now. Get out there, do that. Support an amazing project. If you really enjoyed what we talked about today, guys, you're going to really love this. This is going to bring it all together. I saw somebody in the chat say, I want everything kind of in one place. Well, here you go. Everything's in one. This is what you've been wishing for. It's here. It's coming. So, guys, go ahead, click on that. And Jeff, anything before we. Before we get out of here?
- [78:19]
A
No, that was it. You know, appreciate you guys coming on. It was definitely a pleasure having you guys here again. Let's not wait an entire year. It was really great to see all the development that you guys have had over the past year. And I know there's. We had a conversation before the show last week and, you know, look forward to seeing what we can do to help you guys, you know, move. Move this project forward. I think it's really important.
- [78:47]
C
Really appreciate it.
- [78:48]
B
All right, guys, so before we go, I just want to make sure you guys too, stick around too, after we roll the credits because we still need to upload some of this stuff. But I'm gonna go ahead and get us out of here. We'll. Let me play us out here. Where is the. Here we go. So, guys, we'll see you guys tomorrow night on the chain at 8pm Eastern time. Have a great rest of your weekend. Thank you guys all for showing up and sharing a lot of your ideas. We didn't get to all the questions, but that's just how it works. Come back in. We can Happy to answer stuff or forward the questions on to both panels. And Peter, we'll see you guys later. Chip, Jeff, panels. And Peter. Oh.
- [79:24]
A
Are you down with otc?
- [79:26]
C
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