2949: Coinbase - Navigating the Future of Crypto and Finance

[00:00:00] How are cryptocurrencies poised to transform the financial landscape? And what does the future hold for this groundbreaking technology where excitement has been building for well over a decade now? Well today I'm thrilled to welcome Tom Duff-Gordon, Vice President of International Policy at Coinbase.

[00:00:20] And Tom brings with him a wealth of experience from his previous roles in major financial institutions. But interestingly he now leads Coinbase's efforts to navigate the complex regulatory environment all around the world. So today I want to dive into Coinbase's ambitious Go Deep, Go Broad strategy for Europe.

[00:00:40] We'll also explore the global market trends and challenges in cryptocurrency and encouraging mainstream adoption and discuss the crucial role of innovation amidst all these regulatory hurdles we keep hearing about. We're currently producing something like 30 to 35 episodes every single month reaching around about 130 to 140,000 listeners around the world.

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[00:02:00] But enough rambling from me, let's get today's guest on. So buckle up and hold on tight as I beam your ears all the way to the UK where you can join me and Tom as we try to unravel the potential and the hurdles of the crypto world today.

[00:02:15] So a massive warm welcome to the show Tom. Tell everyone listening a little about who you are and what you do. Yeah, hi Neil. Great to be on the show. Thanks for having me. So I'm Tom Duff Gordon. I'm the vice president of international policy at Coinbase.

[00:02:30] That means that I'm Coinbase's lobbyist with responsibility globally outside of the US and I joined Coinbase a couple of years ago. Before that I was in traditional finance or tradfi as we call it for 15 years.

[00:02:42] So grew up discussing the re-regulation of the financial services sector after the financial crash. Well it's a pleasure to have you join me on the podcast today. The world of crypto has been, I think it's fair to say a roller coaster ride of sorts over the last decade.

[00:02:57] I mean if we go back to 2017 we had all the excitement. We've had crypto winter, we've had Bitcoin harvesting. But for our conversation today what I'd love to learn a little bit more about is less of

[00:03:09] going to the moon and how you see cryptocurrencies transforming things like traditional financial systems because it's been in place for a few years now. So I'd love to find out more about where you see this heading and also what is the technology

[00:03:21] that underpins this transformation because I don't think we talk about it enough. Yeah great question. Markets have been kind of volatile but I think there is a transformative technology underpinning all of this and it's great to have an opportunity to talk about that.

[00:03:34] I think that if we get this right crypto and blockchains are going to make financial systems fairer, cheaper and faster. I think there are at least three broad areas under that that I want to go into.

[00:03:46] One is around payments, the other is around access to financial products and FX markets and then the third is financial asset tokenization which I think is really exciting. But if I start with payments, I mean for a lot of people particularly if you live in

[00:04:00] the UK we think that the payment system works very well. We get our cards out of our wallet and we tap on a reader. So the user experience is modern and it's kind of good but behind that the plumbing

[00:04:11] is still very complicated and outdated and kind of costly. I think with the new system and as we use blockchains more for value transfer and we move to kind of stable coins in particular, we're going to have peer-to-peer value transfer

[00:04:27] and programmable kind of money and that's really the kind of a huge innovation here. So stable coins which we're seeing more of now effectively is a blockchain tokens but they're backed one-to-one by fiat currency.

[00:04:41] So think of this as a digital dollar or a digital kind of pound and if you're holding one of these, you can then send this much more efficiently across the internet. So rather than having a network of correspondent banks kind of trying to settle and clear the

[00:04:54] transactions in the traditional financial system, you are generally using a blockchain network to record who has ownership of that token and then you're sending it directly to somebody else. So that peer-to-peer transfer disintermediates a lot of the complexity that we currently have in the system.

[00:05:10] To give you an example, on our coin blockchain which is called Base, which is a layer two that sits above Ethereum, we can go into some of those details later, but we're effectively allowing people to send digital dollars, so USDC coin, around the world anywhere instantaneously

[00:05:27] totally for free and you can do that using a text message or a WhatsApp message with a kind of a link in it and all you then have to do is just put in a username and a password.

[00:05:37] And so I think particularly with regard to cross-border payments, they are so complicated. I was in America last week, I was on the West Coast and I owed someone some money just as an anecdote and I was trying to pay them this week.

[00:05:50] In order to pay someone in the US, I had to get their full kind of legal passport name, their postal address, I had to get their bank's name, their bank address, the bitcode, the SWIFT code, the account number, the sort code, all sorts of different things.

[00:06:04] Find a kind of impossible form on my kind of UK bank account website, fill it all in, pay a large amount of money and I'm now crossing my fingers that three or four days later that will go through.

[00:06:13] So I think that world is going to be transformed when we start using stable coins for kind of payments and then we'll make these things more programmable and that's super exciting. I sometimes think of the anecdote from quite a prominent UK central banker who I was on

[00:06:28] a conference with recently and he reminded the audience that the most programmable kind of UK money is right now, is almost like a standing order or a direct debit. Which if you think about it, given where we are in the 21st century is not where we perhaps

[00:06:42] want to be and I think if we're using blockchains and using tokens and smart contracts, there's going to be a whole world of really exciting use cases around kind of programmability in terms of purpose-bound money, in terms of automating payments, think about how the insurance

[00:06:57] world would be transformed, et cetera. So payments because they are peer-to-peer, because they're going to be cheaper, they're going to be faster, they're going to be more efficient and programmable I think is a huge

[00:07:08] way in which kind of blockchain and crypto are going to transform the financial system. I'll just briefly mention the two others, Neil. One is around access. So I think if we get stable coins right, we won't just have a pound stable coin or a dollar

[00:07:22] stable coin or a euro stable coin or a yen, hopefully we'll have kind of multiple and this will I think give regular people access to FX markets and ability to hedge their currency positions if they so wish in a very efficient and cheap way.

[00:07:36] But also hopefully this technology through fractionalization and you talked about what is the technology that underpins some of this stuff. I think through fractionalization, so the ability to fractionalize tokens and ownerships into kind of multiple decimal points, so into very small units which are efficient and economic

[00:07:53] to move. Whereas right now moving kind of money and value across the traditional financial system in very small amounts isn't worth the money because it costs kind of more than you're kind of sending. But through this kind of technology around fractionalization, I think we're going to open

[00:08:06] up lots of new opportunities but also democratize access to things like venture capital funds and private equity and some of these exciting kind of high-risk products but which tend to have higher returns but they have a high bar for people to get into those products

[00:08:23] and if we're able to fractionalize kind of funds in this space, people with smaller and lower savings I think will be able to get access to these exciting asset classes. So that kind of democratization of access to financial products is also exciting.

[00:08:38] And then the third really big area is around just tokenization. So how do we look at the existing financial system and particularly capital markets, bonds and equities and how do we then turn those bonds and equities into kind of tokens that

[00:08:51] represent the underlying bonds and equities and then use the more efficient blockchain rails to move those. And I think that is really exciting. I was speaking to a CEO of a global stock exchange recently and they talked about how

[00:09:04] 14 different intermediaries touch every transaction that goes through their stock exchange and all of those 14 are taking economics out of the transaction which ultimately impacts the end user and the person or corporate entity wishing to raise the finance.

[00:09:19] If we use blockchains and we use tokens, we can radically reduce the number of middlemen or middle people and that means that I think we can do things in a much more efficient way which ultimately just means we're going to give people access to finance at a better

[00:09:34] price and that is I think good kind of more broadly for the whole ecosystem and for economic kind of growth. Those are a few of the ways that I think blockchain can radically transform financial services

[00:09:45] over time and then we may get into it later but I think there are also some very exciting opportunities to use the technology to transform how we think about the internet, the so-called

[00:09:54] web three phenomenon and how we can potentially use crypto with AI which is the kind of the buzzy new technology everyone's talking about but I think AI and blockchains are not separate conversations. I think they're a similar conversation but I'll stop there.

[00:10:09] So much of what you said there rings true. I mean I invoice a lot of clients in the US and I often dread getting or having to raise a new invoice with a new US client because I can never remember things like IBAN and SWIFT

[00:10:21] codes and as you also mentioned there, the problem with 14 different intermediaries going on behind the scenes but of course when we start talking about digital dollars or Britcoins, some people in the community get a little upset when it's compared with like the decentralised

[00:10:36] nature and the way they thought crypto was heading. Is that something that you hear a lot and what do you say to those people? I think that's right. I mean we think that when this technology fully plays out, the best opportunities we

[00:10:48] think lie in the kind of public permissionless kind of applications and kind of networks yeah but you're absolutely right that central banks obviously thinking about central bank run digital currencies so with the kind of the Brit coin that we'll see or the kind of

[00:11:01] the digital pound and then a digital euro and we know that there's already a digital yuan in China and various other things so there will be I think a tension between some of these different aspects whether people are going to want to use kind of walled gardens

[00:11:14] so you can use blockchains in a walled garden or you can use public systems. We think the future is going to be public systems. It may be that getting from where we are today to that kind of new world means that in between

[00:11:26] time we may have to have something hybrid or we may have some smaller private kind of networks in between but I think if you look at the history of money and if you look at

[00:11:34] the history of networks, closed networks don't tend to scale and they don't tend to work and so we are much more excited about the public kind of permissionless version of it and actually I think a really interesting bellwether of how we're adopting this technology with regards

[00:11:50] to kind of adoption and understanding will be that balance between the private networks and then the permissionless kind of open networks and where people prefer to be. I think if we get regulation right, I think that'll grow people's trust in the public kind

[00:12:03] of networks and that'll allow people I think to feel more comfortable about participating more in these defined decentralized worlds. And before you came on the podcast today, I was doing a little research and I was reading

[00:12:15] about Coinbase's Go Deep, Go Broad strategy and for anybody listening that has not heard of that, can you just elaborate on what that means for the company's expansion especially in Europe? So our international strategy was characterized by Go Deep and Go Broad.

[00:12:30] Go Deep are the markets that we look at kind of internationally where we want to be kind of on the ground, fully licensed, local banking kind of partnership and relationship. We want local personnel, these types of things and we have 10 or 11 of those markets right

[00:12:45] now so in Americas outside the US, we're in Canada and then in Latin America and in Brazil. Across Europe, the UK is our number one international market and we're really proud of that but across continental Europe, we're kind of going deep in France, Germany, Spain, Ireland,

[00:13:00] Netherlands and Italy and then in Asia, Singapore and Australia. We're constantly thinking about how do we expand that? We've got kind of various exciting initiatives to pursue more licenses and Go Deep markets kind of over time but we do recognize that markets are different.

[00:13:15] There are different needs and idiosyncrasies and that in some markets, we can actually kind of like scale adoption by doing it in a slightly different way so by kind of going broad and for us, that means a different product set normally.

[00:13:27] So for example, in markets where potentially they have very high inflation and there's a big demand for access to a digital dollar to kind of hedge that kind of currency inflation or that currency depreciation that they see, then we can come in with products like kind

[00:13:40] of Coinbase's wallet, our USDC kind of coin or obviously, we have a partnership with the issuer kind of like Circle and we can also kind of leverage our international kind of exchange.

[00:13:51] Some of those markets, we have a lighter touch in terms of on the ground presence and personnel but more product focus and the Go Deep markets, we try and have a fully localized kind of experience. In Europe, so UK is big for us.

[00:14:04] We're looking to kind of continue to kind of grow and expand, very excited about the opportunity here. So the UK important market and then with MECA which we'll talk about which is the forthcoming European regulation for crypto assets.

[00:14:15] I think that's a real opportunity for us to scale and do more in the European Union. And of course, there is a lot of excitement in this space. I'm curious from the conversations you're having on the things that you're learning

[00:14:27] and reading about and the time you're spending in this industry. What are the key global market trends that you're observing in the crypto space at the moment and how are you indeed at Coinbase? How are you positioning yourself in response to some of these trends?

[00:14:40] Sure, I can think of kind of four off the top of my head to run through. One is there's new money coming into crypto which we're seeing this year in kind of big quantities and that's really exciting.

[00:14:50] So we saw a lot of the listeners will be aware of the spot Bitcoin ETF approval in the US and that was preceded by a lot of market expectation and hype, not just in kind of crypto kind

[00:15:01] of channels and feeds but also kind of in the broad kind of mainstream kind of media. And that led to around I think $15 billion worth of kind of net kind of inflows into kind of into Bitcoin. We now see those ETFs holding kind of more than 60 billion.

[00:15:15] So very exciting to have new money kind of coming into crypto, new demographic potentially folks who don't necessarily want to kind of use the assets but want exposure to the asset class. I think that's one trend that we're seeing which is very exciting.

[00:15:28] The second one is around on-chain adoption and institutional kind of adoption kind of more broadly. So we're seeing more and more activity and we measure this by kind of total value locked or TVL, but we see kind of TVL total value locked on particularly layer two blockchains

[00:15:45] that sit above Ethereum. So the blockchains that are effectively using that smart contract platform like going up 250% or something kind of year to date versus kind of last year. And that means more people are interacting with a blockchain and doing kind of more things.

[00:16:00] And we're also seeing a huge amount of institutional adoption in the financial services space. So I mentioned the ETFs but we're seeing BlackRock, they came out with a tokenized money market fund, BIDL as it's called and that generated a lot of kind of interest.

[00:16:13] And we're also seeing outside of financial services adoption from big corporates. We did a survey recently with the Fortune 500 and more than half of them say that they're doing something or they're experimenting with on-chain projects.

[00:16:26] So this might be through NFTs for marketing or tickets, ticketing or loyalty or something like this. But it's really interesting and exciting to see like major corporations all turning their mind to what they could get out of this new technology.

[00:16:38] A third trend, Neil, I think I would highlight would be political progress. And I think again not to focus too much on the US but there've been some really important breakthroughs there in the last kind of month or so with Congress finally passing on a bipartisan

[00:16:52] way a bill to regulate crypto with 71 Democrats supporting it which we think was a big kind of moment. So the political wins with regard to crypto that's been happening for a year or two now but particularly marked in the US.

[00:17:04] And I think Nika is a big moment in Europe this year with the kind of entry into force of that regulation and then across places like Australia, Brazil, Canada again some important kind of political and regulatory kind of development.

[00:17:16] So political progress I think would be my third one. And finally the trend that I see and perhaps this is me being too much of a policy kind of geek but I do feel there's more regulatory acceptance among kind of policymakers who would

[00:17:29] kind of focus on the technical kind of details of financial regulation. And just as an example, the Bank of International Settlements which is the bank of all central banks as it were, they put out a paper which was co-authored by Augustin Carstens who runs

[00:17:44] the BIS that talked about how in their view and so this is the most traditional of all traditional finance but in the BIS's view the future of finance was tokens and ledgers.

[00:17:56] And I think that for me was a bit of a watershed moment in terms of people recognizing that we've now got a technology for value transfer which is better than what we currently have

[00:18:06] and therefore it's not so much does the technology work, it's now how do we operationalize this, how do we take it forward, how do we scale it, what is the right pace of doing that, what

[00:18:16] are the new risks associated that we need to kind of think about managing, what are the opportunities but the fact that it's kind of happening is really important. I think all of this is leading to a recognition that crypto is a new asset class, it is here

[00:18:28] to stay and we were talking to a lot of clients last week and one of the takeaways we had was they're not asking themselves should we do crypto, the question now is why aren't we

[00:18:39] kind of doing blockchain and crypto and that for us is a kind of an interesting kind of moment and hopefully we can build from there. It is indeed a huge step forward and you've mentioned Mika a few times and for people

[00:18:50] listening outside of the space we're not talking about the singer of Grace Kelly, we are talking about the markets in crypto assets regulation. So by and large you think this is a great thing right? Yeah not the singer but the markets in crypto assets regulation which we call,

[00:19:07] some people call Mika but I think it's mostly kind of shortened and abbreviated to Mika. So this is the pan EU wide kind of crypto and blockchain regulation that enters into application this year.

[00:19:18] So it goes live at the end of this year for kind of everybody for crypto asset exchanges like Coinbase and Kraken and Bitvava and Bitpanda and all of those names that you'll be familiar with

[00:19:28] and for stable coins which I mentioned before it actually goes live in the next few weeks at the end of kind of June but it's a watershed moment because the EU is the world's largest single

[00:19:37] market, 500 million people and they've been at it for a while and I think the regulation brings really welcome clarity to the space and with that clarity hopefully trust and kind of more adoption. Like anything it's not perfect, you wouldn't expect me to say that working in policy but

[00:19:53] it's very good and we support it and we think it's an important precedent for kind of developing and bringing regulatory clarity to the space. And when we hear about challenges over the last decade I think it has always been around regulation, the need for it, adoption and

[00:20:09] how do you increase it, security, improving security of course but from your point of view what are the biggest challenges facing the crypto market today and how are you at Coinbase addressing some of these new challenges?

[00:20:22] Yeah I think you touched on it regulatory clarity we're still not quite there I think so that remains a challenge. We're seeing good progress as we just talked about in certain markets but it hasn't been uniform progress across the globe and we're talking about global markets that are

[00:20:36] accessible on your laptop on the internet so we think things are moving in the right direction and the G20 and I think IOSCO and the FSB which for listeners are these global bodies that have a

[00:20:46] responsibility to set standards in financial services. I think they've been kind of helpful in promulgating kind of global principles and they're beginning to kind of trickle down now into the main markets but there still are patches and areas and jurisdictions that are behind others

[00:21:01] and I think a very good kind of momentum but we do need to see a bit more progress kind of on that front so red clarity I think will remain a challenge. I think stepping back Neil we have

[00:21:11] I think we've got to be humble and honest about it there's a perception challenge with crypto and I think that's something that we need to all continue to work on in the industry. Some of that

[00:21:20] relates I think to the prevalence or existence still of fraud and scams using crypto and that's an area where I think a lot of folks need to get around the table. I think it's not just

[00:21:31] the crypto industry but I think it's also the social media platforms, I think it's the banks, I think it's the telcos because these types of kind of scams of course they tend to involve multiple different kind of platforms and financial services and fintechs etc so I think

[00:21:47] we have to be kind of humble that there's a perception challenge we need to continue to kind of work through and then I think the final one which is perhaps more kind of nuanced from my

[00:21:54] particular perspective is trying to ensure that we don't kind of find ourselves in a world in which regulators over index on kind of localization for this global market. We did see in 2022 a number

[00:22:06] of high profile failures and I think as a kind of result of that we need to learn the lessons, learn the right lessons from a regulatory perspective but perhaps not over index on

[00:22:18] measures that you know would see a fragmentation of some of these markets and reduce kind of security so how is Coinbase reacting to some of this stuff? I mean we're busy out there trying to correct misperceptions, kind of correct myths that may exist out there around the relative

[00:22:36] volume of illicit finance that happens on crypto which is actually very small compared to the overall and talk about the transformative potential of this technology which is very much the benefit of the innovation and the upside. And I think every business leader in every industry is having to

[00:22:52] evolve and adapt as AI increasingly sets the base of technological change and arguably is increasing it dramatically as well so how do you at Coinbase balance the need for innovation and continuously evolving and growing with those regulatory hurdles in different markets? I would

[00:23:10] imagine it's quite a difficult balance. Yeah indeed because the technology is moving really fast, we want to be the most trusted player in the space and I think that's kind of really important

[00:23:21] it's central to our mission, to our brand etc. So therefore when we think about kind of innovation and pushing forward we do want to be on the cutting edge of that exciting innovation and make sure that

[00:23:30] our users have access to it but at the same time we want to be fully trusted and I think being fully trusted means that we have to have rock solid technology and processes in place to ensure

[00:23:40] privacy and to ensure the safeguarding and custody of our clients assets so for us it's a balance, we have to get the basics right. I think we're delighted to say that we've never been hacked and

[00:23:51] I think we have an extremely secure kind of platform, we were chosen to be the custodian of eight of the 10 or 11 approved Bitcoin ETFs by some of the most stringent and demanding traditional finance kind of players and real money players out there so I think we're doing

[00:24:06] a great job on that front but we never rest on our laurels and so ensuring that we are doing those things right I think that kind of lends to the trust and then that allows us to kind of

[00:24:16] innovate on top of it. It's also a dilemma by the way for regulators isn't it because they have to protect consumers and markets but they also have to foster innovation such that users and consumers

[00:24:26] can have access to kind of positive innovation so I think both on the private sector side but also on the public sector side there's a constant balance around ensuring that we're focusing on protecting and mitigating against downside risk but also ensuring that we are really pushing ahead

[00:24:42] to deliver on this transformation that is so exciting and that we talked about before. And we've talked a lot about the US market today obviously we're both based in the UK and a big focus on the European market so what role do you see Europe playing in

[00:24:56] the future of crypto and how are you at Coinbase maybe be preparing to engage with this market you might not be able to share too much but is there anything you can around that?

[00:25:07] Yeah happy to I mean I think as we talked about the UK we think is a really interesting it's a very important market for us we've had a lot of government support for crypto and I think

[00:25:16] the regulators both the FCA and Bank of England have been doing a lot of work in this space over kind of multiple years and they are beginning I think to put forward on paper draft proposals

[00:25:25] and regimes and we're engaging along with other industry players with a lot of those so we're grateful for that interaction and for the vision that the government has around being a web3 hub

[00:25:34] that seems to be bipartisan obviously we're in an election phase here in the UK but the Labour Party have talked about wanting the UK to be a hub for tokenization which I think is very promising so that's an exciting UK's an exciting market. Europe with Mika going live

[00:25:49] for stablecoins in a few weeks time and for crypto asset service providers so exchanges at the end of the year I think is going to be a great moment we have announced that Ireland would be our kind

[00:26:00] of hub for Mika so that means that we would use Ireland to passport crypto asset services across the European Union so that gives us an opportunity I think to open up kind of more markets with more

[00:26:11] marketing and things from next year so you know that's very exciting there's also a tokenization sandbox that Brussels the European Commission have spun up which so far hasn't seen a lot of uptake

[00:26:21] but we're you know certainly going to participate in some shape or form and we think that others will too so that's also another interesting area of development. And if we look at any area of

[00:26:30] finance whether it be DeFi or traditional finance obviously anything around money and cash is going to be the target for hackers around the world and there's a lot of phishing attempts in traditional banking and crypto but I'm curious you've never been hacked at Coinbase so how does Coinbase

[00:26:47] ensure that security and privacy of your users amid these growing concerns about digital asset safety? Yeah you're right I think there's so many positives with kind of moving to kind of digital finance and using kind of blockchains but obviously you know with some of those benefits

[00:27:02] there are kind of risks and some novel risks and certainly kind of you know hacking and cyber risk is one of those that's perhaps more heightened in our space that we have to pay particular attention to. At Coinbase we hold users assets completely one-to-one and we

[00:27:16] ensure that there's full segregation so there's no mixing of our users assets with with Coinbase's kind of assets that's really important and we saw some kind of malpractice I think in that space from some of the exchanges that failed in 2022 so holding users assets one-to-one ensuring a kind

[00:27:30] of a segregation of assets between Coinbase's own funds and our users funds I think is really important and then state-of-the-art encryption which we have here. I've recently been working a lot with our security teams and I'm kind of frankly blown away by the levels that they go

[00:27:46] to to ensure that we have systems that are as strong as they possibly can be and to just give you one example what we're doing when we say we're protecting clients assets we're really

[00:27:56] protecting a number because your key is effectively a number right which kind of unlocks on the blockchain your because the asset that you're going to have or the token that you have and by

[00:28:06] splitting that number up you can increase security so rather than just holding one asset in a kind of a safe which is a bit of a honeypot what you can do is you can shard as we call it so you can

[00:28:16] split that kind of number or that key into multiple different pieces and only together when you put them and you reassemble them do you actually kind of have the key that you can unlock and we are able

[00:28:27] to distribute a lot of those key materials on different continents with different people in different time zones so we are changing the attack surface for a hacker from being a kind of a

[00:28:37] honeypot which is kind of localized in one place to being something which is much more complicated for them to attack and i think this type of kind of cutting edge security through multi-party

[00:28:48] computation and key sharding is very exciting and i think it's and it shows the lengths we go to make sure that our customers are safe on the privacy side again we take our customers privacy very seriously and we provide not just coinbase custodial wallets which means people effectively

[00:29:04] kind of use us to kind of safeguard for them but we allow or rather we provide software products so that people can custody their own assets so if you're worried about privacy and don't want us to

[00:29:16] see what you're doing with your wallet and other things then you can use a non-custodial wallet which we call coinbase wallet and effectively you're then responsible for your own safekeeping but it means that you can you have a higher level of kind of privacy with regard to

[00:29:28] your all kind of on-chain footprint as it were so we take those things extremely seriously and continue to innovate in that space and of course it wouldn't be a crypto podcast interview without

[00:29:38] the host trying to get a few teaser from the guests a few teasers from the guests don't worry i'm not going to ask you about roadmaps and all those other crypto type questions but are there

[00:29:48] any upcoming initiatives or maybe projects that you're excited about at coinbase that you can talk about today especially in relation to international markets you're probably locked down to various ndas but is there anything you can talk about yeah there's a few things definitely i

[00:30:04] can tell you about stand with crypto stand with crypto is a kind of grassroots campaign that coinbase has kind of started but we're kind of pushing out for broader industry kind of adoption

[00:30:13] where we are trying to get entrepreneurs developers innovators in the space to kind of come together in a kind of a collective so that we can shine a light on all the great work that's happening not

[00:30:23] just in financial services but outside of financial services all the cool things that in the uk people working in web3 are doing such that policymakers be them legislators or regulators kind of know and

[00:30:34] understand that there's a community of kind of real people doing real things with real projects with a lot of promise and so you know we're excited we've launched that in manchester we've

[00:30:44] launched it in london here in the uk uh and without kind of going into too much detail spoiler alert i can tell you that we'll be launching it in other international markets later this year

[00:30:54] so i'm super excited by that and i think getting the users and developers and entrepreneurs in the space kind of more activated and getting a bit more spotlight for them is fantastic the other

[00:31:03] thing we continue to be excited about base which is our layer 2 blockchain above ethereum we're hoping to move to one cent one second transactions so making things very cheap and very fast if you

[00:31:16] make things very cheap and very fast you incentivize innovation on top of it so for us this is a bit like going from the dial-up modem internet experience to kind of broadband and we think if

[00:31:27] we can provide the broadband type experience equivalent for kind of web3 then suddenly people will want to kind of innovate and build cool stuff uh on that platform because it'll be a good user

[00:31:38] experience and and it'll be and it'll be efficient for them to do that and then final thing i'll mention smart wallets so again we think that people are going to use wallets to interface more

[00:31:47] and more with the internet particularly as we move into kind of web3 your wallet will hold your digital id your tokens your nfts it'll record some of the content experiences that you've kind

[00:32:00] of contributed to different websites so as we get into a more kind of user-centric and user-owned and controlled version of the internet then i think wallets are going to be the kind of key

[00:32:10] browser and the key interface and we continue to invest in innovation in that space and i've just brought out a smart wallet which takes away a lot of the user experience complexity that that we

[00:32:21] had in previous versions so very excited about that as well and we hope that will lead to a lot of adoption through through corporations and individuals alike i think that's a perfect moment

[00:32:33] to end our conversation today but before i let you go just thank you for spending a little time with me today and sharing so many incredible insights some of the biggest names in business

[00:32:43] vc funding tech even occasional celebrity have even been guests or maybe even listen to this podcast i'm going to see if there's something we can do for you so is there a person that you'd

[00:32:53] love to have a private breakfast or lunch with who would that person be and why he or she might just be listening to this let's see what we can manifest together but who would it be this is great if you

[00:33:04] can make this if you can make this happen i was i was thinking about this and i wondered if vitalik buterin is such a kind of innovator in the space who's the kind of a bit of the pioneer and visionary

[00:33:12] behind ethereum it would be super interesting i think to to kind of spend some time with him chris dixon so i'm going to be picky actually and just throw out a few names chris dixon who is a

[00:33:21] partner at a16z which is an amazing vc firm that supports a lot of projects in the space he is almost the most articulate person on i think what the future of the internet looks like and how we

[00:33:32] can use kind of a blockchain as a computer rather than a casino so we'd love i'm sure i would learn from him if i sat down with him and then i'm not sure they're listening because i think they passed

[00:33:42] away but i'm reading a book at the moment about the polymath john von neumann who is this hungarian kind of mathematician who invented game theory and computers and everything and i would yeah i'd

[00:33:52] almost love to hear what he makes of crypto but that's not possible i won't lay that at your door but i think but i think vitalik or chris would be other names that i put up there i was

[00:34:00] gonna say i'm good but not that good but the first two we will see what we can do there for anyone listening we covered a lot of ground in a short amount of time today so anyone wanting to dig a

[00:34:11] little bit deeper into some of the things that you do at coinbase the future and everything we talked about is there any way in particular you would point out where everybody listening

[00:34:21] sure you can find me on linkedin or i'm also on x and we have a coinbase blog which yeah i encourage people to go check out we post updates on that the whole time cool things that we're doing

[00:34:31] but also things that we're seeing across the industry and we hear from clients so go take a look well i'll have links to both of those so people can find you nice and easily and as i said we

[00:34:41] covered a lot there from the transformational power of crypto the technology that powers it i don't think we talk about that enough your plans at our coinbase for europe as part of your go deep

[00:34:52] go broad strategy global market trends and challenges in crypto and of course the importance of innovation amidst these regulatory hurdles that we're hearing more and more about but more than anything just thank you for sharing your insights today tom been great thank you for having me so

[00:35:08] as we wrap up our conversation with tom i think it's clear that the journey of crypto is both thrilling and fraught with challenges so how will regulatory landscapes evolve and shape the future

[00:35:20] of crypto and what innovations are we yet to see big thank you to tom for sharing his insight and shedding light on coinbase's strategic vision but for everyone listening and i know you are a

[00:35:31] passionate community about this i'd love to hear your thoughts on today's discussion what excites you most about the future of cryptocurrencies and if there's anything you'd like to share please email me tech blog writer outlook.com twitter linkedin instagram just at neil c hughes but that's it for

[00:35:47] today so thanks for joining me as always hopefully you'll join me again tomorrow but but until next time don't be a stranger