Crypto Will Reach $9 Trillion In 5 Years | Peter Smith, Blockchain.com

Peter Smith is the CEO and Co-Founder of Blockchain.com, and he is a true crypto OG. He has been running Blockchain.com for over 10 years, which makes him one of the longest-standing CEOs in the crypto industry. In this episode, you will learn why Peter has been buying Bitcoin for under $100 and for $40,000, and will continue to do so, how Blockchain.com manages to survive major crypto contagions, and why we still haven’t seen institutional crypto adoption.

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#Bitcoin #Crypto #Blockchain

The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own and should in no way be interpreted as financial advice. This video was created for entertainment. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision. I am not a financial advisor. Nothing contained in this video constitutes or shall be construed as an offering of financial instruments or as investment advice or recommendations of an investment strategy or whether or not to “Buy,” “Sell,” or “Hold” an investment.

Pretty wild and I’m looking at your stats 88 million wallets created $1 trillion dollar transacted onethird of Bitcoin Network transactions I I can’t even see your laser eyes through the camera so I guess you’re not I’ve never I’ve never posted a laser eyes photo I thought it was like a a super powerful

Sort of gamechanging innovation and you created an Explorer right which was basically this mindblowing Innovation because nobody could see what was happening on the blockchain we have to learn to be less greedy there here’s the real answer there are only two exchange CEOs in crypto who have had their job

For over a decade everybody knows Brian Armstrong at coinbase the other one is today’s guest Peter Smith from blockchain.com Peter started at the very beginning building products like a blockchain Explorer so that people could actually see transactions to a wallet and then to a full service exchange institutional Prime brokerage and more

We talked about that long long journey what it was like to be in Bitcoin from the very beginning to go through all of the cycles of the Coin since really the very very very beginning right I mean blockchain.com was formed in 2011 when most people had never even heard the words blockchain and Bitcoin can you give me sort of your Genesis Story how did you get started um I like to joke that I’ve been working on

Bitcoin since before it was really a job you know the industry was not really an industry probably until 2013 14 maybe 15 even there just like a lot of people that were really interested in the idea this is very kind of different in special period of time I got really

Interested in Bitcoin and the principles behind it from living in a lot of Emerging Market countries so I’ve lived in the Middle East and East Africa so this idea of there being an internet money that was beyond the control of a central bank policy but also that you could transact peer-to-peer I thought

Was like a a super powerful sort of gamechanging innovation and I wanted to be part of working on that um I met the other folks at you know my other co-founders of blockchain.com you know we started professionalizing the company really building it sort of in 2013 I

Originally thought that I would work on you know work on this stuff for a couple of years uh and then something else would grab my interest but the thing that’s really cool about crypto is that it constantly changes you know you are never bored you know but now been doing

It for over a decade and I would say that I feel like I know less today than I do when when I started um because there’s so much more to know now you know and I’ve been privileged to invest in a lot of the more successful

Projects you know help run one here and that’s kind of exciting in a way that makes sense I guess when you started it was a very specific thing with a wide open world of needs but it was just this one thing right it was Bitcoin and

That’s all there was and you created an Explorer right which was basically this mindblowing Innovation because nobody could see what was happening on the blockchain how did you come up with that why was that the first thing you decided to work on or was it and I might have

Missed a part of the story yeah so actually the the idea for the block explorer was my co-founder Ben um you know he had this idea that it would be a lot easier to look up transactions and sort of a search product than you know downloading the

Whole text file from Bitcoin QT and that if people could see Bitcoin happening it would be more real um and I think that’s definitely true like even to the day people want to see transactions happening they want to see what’s going on in the network it’s kind of one of

The first things you need when you launch a new protocol is a block Explorer to show people actually that it’s real and that things are happening um and so that was his Innovation his idea um you know and it’s still one of the most popular websites in crypto

Today 12 years later pretty wild and I’m looking at your stats 88 million wallets created $1 trillion dollars transacted onethird of Bitcoin Network transactions 37 million verified users 200 country it’s insane it’s insane it’s actually kind of stats are kind of old now there’s actually now 42 million verified

Users you know I think there’s like 90 million registrations we’re very sort of honored that so many people have chosen to do crypto with us so listen I think we all have a at least superficial understanding of the past so let’s talk about what’s happening now in the

Present and what it means for the future obviously it’s been a somewhat huge year for crypto specifically for Bitcoin with the proliferation of institutional adoption the ETF all the fun buzzwords and topics that we get to talk about on a daily basis but did you ever think

Back then I guess that we would see this level of adoption and how meaningful do you think this is actually should it should we be excited about it some think we should actually view it as a red flag basically what’s your overwhelming feeling on sort of this institutional

Wave that’s coming in um I remember 10 years ago when the first ETF talk started this is a long road to the ETF for me we haven’t actually seen institutional adoption yet which is gonna be kind of a non-consensus view you know I’ve talked to a lot of

The folks working on the ETFs most of the buyers of the you know the new buyers so let not gray scale but the new guys are actually retail investors so they’re not seeing like giant like you know XYZ asset manager buying 100 Mil block of Bitcoin yet

They’re seeing a lot of retail orders for that product you know basically people putting them in their retirement accounts and you know Roth IRAs and all that you know don’t advised to accounts all that kind of stuff much older demographic than is sort of our demographic we have a

Tendency to have very young customers but we haven’t actually even seen that institutional wave yet we are seeing institutional products which is different than adoption I think that’s really important because it’s going to lead to institutional adoption in the future I didn’t feel like all this was inevitable when I started working on

Crypto I thought that the most likely scenario was that it died but that it would be like a good worthy attempt my confidence in crypto really built after the first crash and comeback it’s like okay if we can survive that we can keep surviving that and indeed like it’s still been you know

Boom and bus boom and bus but if you kind of draw a line through that and average it out it’s just straight up into the right and I expect that to continue I expect there to continue to be big Cycles massive Corrections and it’s worth having the perspective that

You know the whole crypto market today is still very small know like a couple trillion market cap but most of that market cap is like um UNC circulating fdv right so I prefer the circulating market cap of crypto which is much much much lower um and so it’s still really

Small today like when you think about it in the sort of perspective of global Finance or you know even the sides of the gold market cap or a single Tech stock it’s pretty small today and it’s got a long way to go and so you know I think there’s probably another 10 years

Before we get to sort of a financial ecosystem at scale and sort of the full vision that a lot of Us Saw and the potential that we saw 10 years ago has fully realized like I think this is a 20year journey um another 10 years if there’s 10 years left what are we

Lacking right now that we need to reach that scale because uh you know we’re only halfway there obviously that means that either we haven’t marketed ourselves particularly well uh to bring everyone in uh maybe they infrastructure doesn’t exist yet that we would need to operate at that scale what are the

Things that you think we need to build or see in the next 10 years to reach that point one we’ve nowhere near the level of ubiquity ubiquity is like you know not everyone uses WhatsApp as their primary messaging app but it’s very rare to run across someone who doesn’t have a WhatsApp

Installed if you go out and you’re in like normal Social Circles you know not bitcoiners or crypto people and you’re like hey let me send you a stable coin to pay back most people don’t even have an app or know how the stable coin Works

Ubiquity is driven by how easy it is to use and consumer trust and that kind of brings me to marketing I do think that the industry has historically had a marketing problem because in many ways we’re most famous for our disasters you know the average person is more likely to have heard of

Sam bangman freed than Brian Armstrong sure right that’s a problem like the history of crypto is kind of defined by our gigantic blowups which are mostly fueled by greed and so I think as an industry if we want to be long-term successful if we want to like truly build a Global

Financial system for the internet we have to learn to be less greedy we have to think more long term and we have to be a lot more rigorous about calling out people and companies in our space that are not you know sort of adhering to that vision and very clearly separating

Them uh we have a lot of self-inflicted wounds obviously and SP SPF is the biggest one 2022 obviously we saw the major contagion with countless collapses of platforms that you’re sort of alluding to but there’s also the non- self-inflicted wounds and the just outright false narratives that perpetuate around the asset class right

We still see certain politicians talking about how we’re going to boil the ocean or we’re primarily being used to fund terrorism so yes I think that we have a NE a problem of negativity of our own doing but there’s also for some reason a sort of very negative stigma coming from

Very loud voices why do you think that still is at this point I think in some ways it does come back to Greed like more like there was a lot of discussion in crypto circles about like how things might not be right at this player or that

Player last summer around but you know people were in a lot of deals with them like they wanted access to the deal they wanted access to the party know humans we want to be cool right and calling out bad behavior no matter what sector thing you’re in is like basically

The definition of not cool like nobody likes the short sellers on Wall Street except for journalists maybe podcast hosts but it’s hard to not be cool right and you know I think this something even I needed to reflect on like I should have done a better job about expressing my concerns

You know about some of the counterparties in the space we’re very fortunate that we were able to navigate you know things like the FTX explosion with minimal damage but as an industry we really do have to step up I think that is people like me CEOs of you know

Major companies in the space I think that’s people like you you know with a a very a big following on your podcast I think we all need to need to be more rigorous in sort of how who we let can carry the banners in our industry how did you survive all of

That Contagion you guys seem to have come out completely unscathed not many did I I could be wrong do still offer an earn product uh we do we have an earned product it’s not available in the United States of course well we’re not allowed to do any here very few fun crypto

Products are available in the United States you know we are much more conservative than most it’s easy to say harder to put into practice but you know to give you example you know we have a seveners board we have three Independents on it the guy who is the

Chairman of our audit and risk committee was the controller of the currency which is the Federal Banking regulator our lead director is the lead director of Walmart the largest company in the world by sales you know we tend to be very principled very conservative and build up a lot of the

Apparatus around that that forces us to be most of the bad risk decisions that that others made I couldn’t have made because someone above me would have canceled them but that involves me sort of voluntarily handing over power right which sometimes is it may be less fun for me but it’s really

Necessary for the health of the company and the health of our customers we also have the you know Collective trauma and wisdom of having been through so many Market Cycles you know I tell people that like being a crypto CEO is a great growth opportunity because two out

Of every four years no one cares about you one year you’re an absolute genius and one year you’re an absolute [ __ ] you know and that’s unusual right like in a normal tech company it’s kind of like a little more consistent every four years uh and so you know you get

Practice you get some practice well you’re talking about the four-year cycle of course which surrounds the having that we all love to talk about we have a having coming up right now so do you get to look like a genius in the next six to nine months I don’t know if it’s the

Next nine months I think it might be a little further out I think 2025 might be the might be the genius year but who knows you know I I try not to get too attached to to attach to it in either direction well yeah I’m not saying

You’re counting on price to go up so that you can look smart it was just sort of my cute way of saying do you think that the fouryear cycle is going to continue on because everybody knows the having is you know an April is and usually that

Means I think this is my fourth having and every we have this discussion is the price baked in and we like yeah I remember last one we were like it must be baked in everybody knows this now has to be we all know yeah has to be yeah

When it wasn’t baked in I do expect that you know the crypto market cap will be four or five times higher five years from now than it is today when does that happen you know I don’t know I think generally speaking like you know buying crypto show in the year before the

Happening is a usually a great idea so long as you can hold on to it for a year or two afterwards when you’ve been doing one of the side effects of doing crypto as long as I have is like you have conversations again and again to the

Point that sometimes when I search my emails I find myself like I almost have a relevant email that I could just copy you know like there’s probably a podcast for me before the last happening having the same conversation I’m glad that I’m so original makes doesn’t feel great but

What are you gonna do no but you know what’s funny is that you know even here in paternally blockchain we’re like having this conversation like it must be it must be priced in is it is it not H let’s find out this time we’ll have the ETF narrative overlying it though or you

Know overlaying it we’ll be able to say well we have this much AUM coming into these and that’s really what’s happening so it wasn’t the having which means we get to have this conversation again in four years which is good we get to you know repeat it uh and and I’ll invite

You back in four years and we’ll talk about the same thing but you did mention can’t offer anything fun to Americans I made that joke and you agreed our Americans ever gonna get full access to this asset class in your opinion ever is a very long time cfds are a very popular product

Overseas um contract for difference us investors still don’t have access to them but Robin Hood was able to roll out options which is wild to me like cfds are not allowed but options are okay cfds are basically much easier to understand options yeah but you know got

There eventually I think it just takes time will they will US investors ever have access to like a 50x Perpetual probably not but I think that’s probably an okay thing I think they want to just know that they’ll even be able to trade all the coins right like for forget even

How much leverage will be able to use on them which by the way would be a nice thing for them to add in a safe in a safe manner but we don’t even know what coins were in theory allowed to trade yet right and I think that a lot of

People still just want that regular regulatory Clarity I would have to imagine as a CEO of a platform operating in the United States that’s a pretty big topic on your mind yeah I would love some regulatory Clarity in the US I think it it has gotten better over the

Last 10 years um this is like a chat we are having the legal and policy team there is more clarity now than there has been historically still not great you know most of our business is actually in Europe the clarity in Europe and in Asia where we also operate is very high like

We know exactly what we’re dealing with it’s still pretty unclear where it’s going to be in two or three years in the US you I think unfortunately not a lot happens in election years so we’re probably looking at 2025 2026 for regulatory Clarity do you think it will materially affect the next few

Years of the industry which party is elected or which candidate is elected yes it does it it probably matters a lot not just like which President is elected but the composition of the Senate you know the interesting thing about crypto is neither party has really adopted a

Pro crypto stance or an anti- crypto stance you have like proc crypto people in the Democrat Party Pro crypto people in the Republican party you have anti- people in both it’s really not become like a a partisan issue in the sense of like neither party is really carrying the flag for crypto which

Is really interesting yeah I think you have members of both party that are carrying the flag for crypto uh and maybe just a vocal minority in one party that’s raising an anti- crypto Army let’s say in theory although when you do polling most Americans are actually quite supportive of

Crypto so from a polling perspective there it’s not like an anti-d demographic on crypto I agree which makes you wonder why any politician would do something that’s likely going to be politically unpopular I have my theories I don’t often tinat them uh in in public but it it genuinely makes me

Wonder why a progressive person would think that an asset class that helps poor people would be bad at the most basic level know it is a mystery I’m not going to get you to talk about politicians am I I don’t expect you to I don’t do it

Either honestly it just you kind of brought up the fact that it’s an election year nothing gets done we’re going to be last in the United States I think to offer any Clarity around this asset class you mentioned that Europe obviously is uh ahead of us interestingly I remember the first

Iterations or conversations around M was Terror horror worst thing ever but then as the United States got worse and worse and worse it seems like like the vibe was well just give us some clarity we don’t even care if it’s bad and now people seem to think m is pretty great

Or at least totally uh totally you know acceptable well the the regulatory process outside the United States is a lot less political it’s very loaded here you know we’ve got people having Twitter Wars about it you know CEOs of companies with regulators and it’s like a it’s a high drama situation most other

Countries it’s not it’s more of an administrator process when you know sik Z worked on for many many years we’ve been active on it for many many years and it has changed significantly over those years is it everything that we would have wanted no is it a reasonable workable

Solution that will keep investors and customers safe and allow Innovation to flourish yes getting there was a long process and there was a you know know quite a few companies that really put in the work to make that happen so I think you know not only has like the US gotten

Worse you’re right there but also you know the mea proposal got better and I think like The Duality of that’s important to recognize it got better and it’s still not even as good as some of the more favorable jurisdictions where it seems that everybody is moving or at least building obviously United Arab

Emirates Singapore people even talking about Hong Kong right I thought that China bands were our biggest uh problem now we’re talking about adoption in Hong Kong how do you go about cherry-picking jurisdictions and expanding your business around the world when the regulatory environment is different everywhere we look at the size of a

Market right there might be really friendly regulations in I’m gonna make up a city Peter landia but if there’s only eight residents in Peter landia that’s not a very interesting market right so first of all we’re always looking at like how many customers can we serve what’s the market

Opportunity and then secondly you know what’s the amount of clarity that we have I’m really blessed that you know General councils in crypto are often in a very unstable position you know the guy that leads our legal team has been with the firm for over four or five

Years now the guy that leads policy has been with me for seven years so I lean on them really really closely um and they’ve been able to to really do quite well on the strategy side of Licensing and Regulatory it is a huge part of your

Job as a crypto zoo and as a crypto company stinking through regulation making sure that it’s workable you know it’s um it’s definitely something that I wouldn’t have predicted how much time and effort and how big a part of my life it would be you know a decade ago we’re

All starting out I mean what does that look like on a day-to-day basis is it meetings with politicians meeting with Regulators is it just your life is owned by lawyers how does that actually play out when you’re trying to run a business I’ve got I’ve got to imagine you’ve got

Like more more lawyers than employees at this point no no I definitely have more employees than lawyers that’s good you’re winning but you know it’s close no I’m kidding um I would say that probably 10 to 15% of my time spent on it um in a good week

And there are some weeks where that’s more like 8090 I mean that seems like a monster waste of time you know sometimes you can feel that way but it’s it’s really important long-term work you know it’s not this is kind of what it comes back to I was

Talking about being oriented for the really long term versus the short term that work is super important in the long term you know it’s not as important in the short term but yeah here for another 10 years yeah maybe longer come on man maybe longer can’t can’t give us an

Expiration date you know this is a it’s we’re gonna be here doing this forever we’re gonna have a conversation in 40 years so obviously we’ve got it could happen man there’s only two of us that have been CEOs of crypto companies for this long now you and ran Armstrong

Armstrong was he 2011 we both have over 10 years I mean that’s wild and I think the next longest is maybe at eight seven or eight years you’re like a unicorn I mean it’s really crazy when you think of how many there have been and how much

Turnover there’s been at a number of exchange it’s really a testament I mean to what you’ve built so I think we all know what you’ve built now let’s say we go into this goldilock Zone where you can kind of do whatever you want and we get regulatory Clarity and all these

Wonderful things what do you want to build blockchain.com into into a perfect world I know there will be restrictions in the real world but like ideally you’ve got this full exchange you’ve got earn program you got the wallet you got the blockchain explor you have a you know Prime brokerage institutional side

What else is there to build we serve 2,000 institutional clients around the world we got started in this for a really simple goal it’s still the goal we wanted to help people be in the crypto Financial system like we wanted to be a company that when you wanted to do something in

Crypto or you know later on a fund or a foundation or an Institutional client that we could provide a high level of service to enable you to do that so we we really view ourselves as very customer driven very customer demand driven we view ourselves as enablers not

In a bad way um but as enablers like we Empower you to be part of the crypto ecosystem and so you know times people ask me like what do you want the company to stand for another five 10 years I’m super proud of the fact that we’ve like

Never broken a trade on a customer we’ve never not honored a withdrawal we’ve never put up the gates our site has triple nine reliability which is very hard to you know do in crypto like we are a reliable safe partner to people and institutions that want to be part of the crypto Financial

System and you know five years from now 10 years from now 50 years from now I want that to be our reputation the products that we deliver are going to change the services that matter to people are going to change the customer demand is going to change but that

Reputation and that delivery is the thing that we’re going to stick to over the next 5 10 and 50 years pretty crazy you mentioned you and Brian Armstrong and I just remember I didn’t get until 2016 but the meme of the first four to five years maybe still currently of my

Crypto Journey was I can go on coinbase and and if the exchange is down I know that something volatile happened with Bitcoin I don’t need to look at a chart I just know that if coinbase goes down that something’s going on right and so not having those outages when the

Biggest exchanges in the world some of our biggest blockchains uh do is is pretty pretty crazy how I gotta ask you so you mentioned you do still have a yield product us Americans can’t use it how do you safely offer yield in crypto in 2024 after everything that we saw you

Know over the last few years uh yeah so you know we mentioned we run a prime brokerage um that’s where people are going long and short um we still provide that to institutions we do it on over collateralized basis um there were times in the past when we provided under

Collateralized or Structured Products we no longer do that um and so we run very sort of very conservative you know the yields are lower we also do staking right so some people would rather be in a liquid earned product than a staking product so you know a lot of the earned assets are

Staked and that’s basically how we do it and then on some things you know some things we don’t even earn anything on the assets we just pay it as a customer acquisition tool yeah that makes sense you said that you have 2,000 institutional clients which seems like an exceptionally High number when we

Talk about there being no institutional adoption yet but I’m assuming these are pretty much crypto focused funds and companies and not the mainstream is that a correct assumption it is we also do have mainstream like trafi clients um but they do represent a a minority of our business the majority of

Our business is other crypto companies funds High networks you know that we’re very privileged to provide services to talking about that and you talked about how we have institutional products but not really institutional adoption when I brought up the ETF what do you think is going to trigger them or I should say

What do you think is should get them to finally pull the trigger and view Bitcoin first let’s not even talk about the rest of it but to really view this as a treasury asset as a you know as a a benefit to the sharp ratio of your

Portfolio all the things that we know are true we have the ETF now right so the the rails are there the plumbing is there now we just need them to care well we don’t need them to care first of all like okay Bitcoin and crypto have done

Fine without them that’s true um I think what will cause them to care is performance like humans are mostly motivated by like Greer greed or avoidance of pain as asset managers start putting Bitcoin into portfolios and it’s successful in driving portfolio performance that’s greed right other people are then going to allocate

Because of fear fear that they’re going to underperform the people that have Bitcoin in their portfolio that’s how it works like it works that way with retail it works that way with institutions humans are almost always in markets doing things out of G or out of fear and you know usually the

Late you know the best and most bold investors exclusively do things out of greed but and greed doesn’t have to be bad greed is like conviction and the potential of an investment I’m going to do this even though it makes me feel uncomfortable like you know buying Bitcoin at 18K was probably

Uncomfortable for the people that did it a year ago it was for me yeah yeah you know I remember buying some Bitcoin around 21 and I was like I think this is the bottom and then I bought it and immediately the Market’s like I like well nope but I have to imagine you’ve

Got a pretty low cost basis considering your uh starting timeline yeah you know it’s come a long way since I started buying Bitcoin but I’ve been I’ve bought Bitcoins at all kinds of prices like I bought Bitcoin at sub $100 and I’ve bought Bitcoin at 40K

What keeps you buying right I mean most people would say hey man you accumulated a bunch of Bitcoin under $100 listen I’m not implying you never sold any I have no idea maybe maybe you did most people I know who were in 2010 were like a,

Bitcoin I’m out of here right and sold everything so I’m not going to presume that that’s not the case but what keeps you buying Bitcoin I mean it’s like consistently one of the best things in my portfolio like you tend to add to things that go really well right and

Also I think it becomes a compulsion like just buying bit there’s the real answer I finally got the real answer the first one the first one was the caned answerer the second one is we’re religion and you yeah we’re religion like you know I gotta buy it in the in

The in the in the bottom year you know I got to buy some more coins you got to do you think that there will be a point where you don’t view this as something you need to continue to add to I mean we see like the sailors of the world right

He I the guy’s never stopping right and I think all of us have a little in my book that guy’s like he’s still you know from my perspective that guy’s still like a he like just joined the party he he’s a noob totally he’s a noob he says

That actually you know like I think one of my last interviews with him he called himself a freshman in Bitcoin he he actually openly acknowledges that yeah I think he’s about to go to sophomore status yeah pretty good I’m like I’m at least a junior now if you’re a junior who’s a

Senior there’s people that predate me um you know a handful I will probably always be buying more crypto it is really hard to imagine stopping I think I would only stop buying crypto if I didn’t believe in the vision anymore well you said obviously that um it’s

More complex there’s so much more you understand it less than you did at the beginning now does that mean that you uh dabble Beyond Bitcoin oh yeah I’m you know I’m not a Bitcoin maximalist at all I I can’t even see your laser eyes through the camera

So I guess you’re not I’ve never I’ve never posted a laser eyes photo and one of these people that was less passionate about Bitcoin and more passionate about human economic freedom as I kind of mentioned so like obviously like because a whole different crypto assets some of them becoming the DEA facto standard

Would be better than others in my book but I don’t really care like if you’re like if if somebody’s like hey you end up having a very middle class life which you know I was is gonna happen either way but crypto becomes ubiquitous human economic freedom you know flourish

Flourishes as a result but none of the stuff you own becomes all that valuable is that okay for you that would be okay yeah you know maybe I’d start a podcast that’d be my monetization scheme it’s really a non-for-profit I have to tell you but it’s bad plan yeah we we we run

A loss making podcast at blockchain.com if you’d ever like to do the intervie amazing I I actually I think I’m perfect for that job but yeah okay continue yeah we can uh yeah we can we can interview you on the blockchain.com fast about your podcast would be very that’d be

Very actually ENT but look so I’m way more in the human economic freedom side I hope Bitcoin works out because it has a huge Market Advantage it’s super secure network very hard money a lot of things I love about Bitcoin a lot of things that I think are a challenge you

Know future problems things are gonna have to be dealt with and that’s why I think it’s important to to have more than Bitcoin out there in the world I think that Bitcoin is I think competition makes things better it’s actually you know as someone who most of

My business is Bitcoin related Revenue I know probably 60% I think it’s really important that there are other crypto protocols out there for competition like and it’s one of the things that drives me m like nuts about the Bitcoin Maxi movement which seems to be dying off now is like don’t tell them

That we want all these other coins to exist because they’re going to make whatever comes out the other side stronger I mean I literally say something to that effect all the time like if it’s such a big threat to bitcoin then maybe Bitcoin isn’t as

Great as you think it is I think Bitcoin is as great as you think it is by the way but like why is the existence of something that’s effectively completely different such a threat to bitcoin it’s not yeah it drives me nuts like Bitcoin is amazing it’s going to change the

World it’s the best coin ever also no one should compete with it like what but we’re all here because free markets oh I when they start cheering for the regulators and to get you know to crack down on other things that’s the one that always gets me really libertarian and permissionless uh unless

It’s a thing I don’t like please do regulation to make my bag go up I’m like what I’m I spent a lot of time in the evm space so ethereum and all its many wonderful derivations I’m also you know I wasn’t um a big salana I wasn’t

Spending a lot of time on salana four years ago but I’ve spent a lot of time in the salana ecosystem over the last year I love a cryp a crypto project after it’s come back from like the brink yeah and salana definitely came back

From the brink uh in a big way and the user experience it delivers is really interesting to me can also say all kinds of things I’m concerned about with salana but like it’s definitely worth spending time on um I’m sure you do as well and you know the team there

Responded in a fantastic way so yeah I’m interested in lots of coins that are not Bitcoin yeah Game of Thrones what is dead may never die mentality you know I I agree with you actually I think that they showed incredible grit and uh uh you know incredible dedication and that

Their Community didn’t really abandon them I think the narrative abandoned salana because people just thought they were inextricably tied to Sam and to FTX but what they’ve managed to build through all of that it’s really remarkable and I like you I also think there’s downsides I’m not even like a

Huge Sal salana Homer but you have to step back and give them credit where it’s too yeah and I mean look like they responded to that situation A+ to them and deserves a lot of respect I think you know where it goes next is interesting we’re all going

To watch um you know a lot of my friends are major salones let’s see but they’re really delivering a lot of value to users and I I have a lot of lot of respect for that and seeing seeing the growth of that and the growth of products like you know like uh the

Onchain trading products on salana are the best onchain trading products in the industry yeah I I think that once you actually start using it uh it’s hard to dislike it after you’ve used things in other ecosystems it really is just incredibly fast and smooth and they’re starting to solve those uxui problems

Now listen that’s your approach as Peter the Enthusiast but Peter is the CEO you can’t list all this stuff right you have 73 pairs uh total on blockchain.com when I open it up how do you decide what you can and can’t list I don’t how does somebody at

Blockchain.com who works for you decide what you can and cannot list there’s a token approval process which goes up to a approval committee which is sort of compliance legal business product and tokens go through that process yeah and is that basically like your own version of what’s likely to be deemed a security

At some point well uh no because we mostly list stuff outside the US yeah we’re looking at a variety of factories and we collaborate really closely with under other industry participants as well that makes sense so you got anything big coming this year I can ask

You about the five 10 year Vision but there’s there anything you know before we’re done here that uh you guys have that you’re really excited about or that you’re building or integrating yeah so we launched a couple things recently that I’m I’m pretty excited about one is called um blockchain compe that is

Basically an on-ramp for other defi wallets so our history is in the defi wallet side we built this brokerage platform that you know today is like one of the top brokerage Platforms in the market it was really built to be part of and partnered with a defy wallet experience which

Makes it pretty different from a lot of brokerage platforms we gotten requests for a couple years to extend that to other players we launched that product Q4 we’ve got a bunch of big Partnerships coming out over the next two quarters on that front and I’m really excited to do

That because we’re going to help other defi wallets onboard people under crypto um and so very aligned to our mission of increasing access and you know letting people just choose the best product that they want so I’m really really excited for that and then um you

Know the other thing that I think is g to be really great this year is we’re opening up local operations in Nigeria wow which is one of the top three crypto markets in the world and very complicated to service customers there we have a lot of them there millions and

Millions and figuring out how to operate there in a compliant safe manner it’s been very challenging but we’re getting very close to a local rollout in Nigeria and I’m really excited about that what are the biggest challenges there just top end is it just completely like dealing with the government and

Regulator and things like that or is it the actual people’s access to Internet or Banking and all the magic problems we would sort of Imagine in Africa yeah you need to do compliance differently you need to do identity verification differently you need you know there’s a

License that you need to get like it’s top to bottom just a completely different world in Nigeria and why are you so committed to getting that done with all those roadblocks I can’t believe it’s I mean I know that they have massive crypto adoption there but I

Know that the you know the actual numbers and volume itself is is not huge is that just about the ethos of expanding this to everywhere that you can in the world where people actually want it well actually the numbers are huge that’s one of the Misunderstood things yeah I was under the impression

It wasn’t yeah but more importantly like millions of customers there yeah and I want to serve our customers well so we’re gonna figure it out the stories I’ve heard about Nigeria uh Ray Yousef who used to be at paxville and others I mean seems like that’s one of the few

Places in the world where people are using this as a full complimentary Financial system and nobody’s talking about it and the usage does not go up and down with the Bitcoin Market it is not correlated to the price of Bitcoin every other Market we’re in highly correlated to the parts of Bitcoin

Whether dollar or their local currency it’s not correlated to Nigeria so like if there’s any users that we should be supporting it’s those ones yeah I’ve had a few people who just continue to say that we’re all looking in the wrong markets we’re all focused on The

Regulators in the wrong places it’s all misdirection and that this is all going to build in Africa and South America and it sounds like that’s legitimately the case I don’t think it’s all going to happen there but I think they’re way more important than people realize yeah

I love that so can we uh have another conversation when you guys launch in Nigeria and talk about how that went and what the challenges were I think that’d be really compelling yeah for sure um that’s probably like probably by mid year I’ll know enough to tell you that sounds

Awesome we’re going to definitely do that and where can people follow you after uh the conversation and check out everything at blockchain.com yeah so the website is just blockchain.com super easy gave it away I gave it away yeah my my Twitter is one more Peter all words

Um you can find me there and you can also find blockchain at Twitter blockchain um much more active Twitter feed than mine um but yeah I uh and I love hearing from customers so you know drop me a note on on Twitter or wherever else I’m always happy to interact there

Well listen man TW I appreciate you taking the time as awesome conversation people don’t know we sat down in Singapore and we had like seven minutes it was in person but it was very very quick and so I guess at this point in 2024 when you meet the CEO who’s been

Around this long you say congratulations on existing so to to end I say congratulations on existing it’s a great feat well thank you very much I appreciate it and thanks for having me on the podcast I’ll look forward to talking to you in the summer awesome thanks Peter let Do Let’s go