00:00Michael, tell us about the new product.
00:01Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me.
00:04So we launched today Firebox Flow.
00:06It allows payment companies and merchants and fintechs to actually accept stablecoins
00:13and to send stablecoins in a very simple way.
00:16It's a solution that is similar to what Plaid did in the traditional world
00:21that streamlines the entire flow of how a wallet can send money to a merchant or to a fintech.
00:30Where's the demand for this coming from?
00:31Where do you look out across the landscape and say, this is a problem that needs solving?
00:37Yeah, so as you're probably aware, stablecoin payments increased significantly over the last 18 months
00:45and specifically since the Genius Act passed about a year ago.
00:50And we're basically seeing stablecoin volume skyrocketing.
00:53So on our platform, about 65% of the volume right now at around $3.5 trillion is stablecoins,
01:02predominantly USDC and USDT.
01:04And we're seeing payment service providers like Stripe, like Checkout.com, like WorldPay and so on,
01:12basically enabling merchants to start accepting stablecoins.
01:16And we're also seeing quite a pretty significant demand building up across emerging markets
01:23and like LATAM, Southeast Asia and so on of a population, sometimes banked, sometimes unbanked,
01:30that is paying into those merchants.
01:32Okay.
01:32And that makes sense, the demand swelling up in emerging markets like Asia, like Latin America.
01:38If we're going to talk about stablecoins really hitting the mainstream, what is the use case for people inside the
01:45U.S.,
01:45for instance, to actually use stablecoins?
01:48I mean, if I wanted to send money to Tim, I'd have so many options already.
01:51I can go through Zelle, I can use Venmo, I can just give him cash.
01:54You never send me money.
01:55I don't send him money yet, but I could.
01:57But stablecoin is not necessarily an option I even need to consider.
02:01Yeah, so I would say that right now in the United States, most of the adoption that we are seeing
02:06is twofold.
02:07First of all, in the consumer market, it's actually outbound, right?
02:11So we're seeing a lot of remittance and B2B for cross-border money being sent from people in the United
02:20States
02:20to Latin America, to Southeast Asia, right?
02:24So those cross-border corridors over there, well, you know, you can't Zelle, you can't Venmo.
02:31And to be honest, like, you know, it will be pretty difficult for you to send cash, right?
02:35You need to take flight.
02:38And like, you know, the traditional rails, they've been fairly expensive.
02:42Now, to be honest, in the last quarter or so, we brought online both MoneyGround, Western Union,
02:50Rea Finance, and a few other larger meters that are switching to this rail.
02:55So this is, like, one area where we're seeing the demand building up.
03:00And then the other is B2B, right?
03:02So business to business.
03:04That is actually an area that, as you probably on the personal side can experience, you know,
03:12that's not working that well.
03:14And also, like, large payments, right?
03:17So we do think that even on the personal side, there will be situations like rent over the weekend
03:22and some of those use cases that actually you can't do it through Zelle or through Venmo
03:29because those are sometimes large amounts.
03:31Well, let's talk more about adoption because Eurostablecoins are just $650 million right now
03:39of a $305 billion market.
03:41That's a 99% dollar denominated.
03:44You announced this consortium of 12 European banks that chose fireblocks to power a mica-compliant Eurostablecoin
03:51that launches later this year.
03:52Does that move the needle when it comes to adoption, in your view?
03:55Like, if we're speaking a year from now, are we going to be at 95% dollar denominated?
04:0090% are still at 99%?
04:02Yeah, I think that the jury is still out in terms of what will happen globally with, let's call it,
04:08you know, FX or non-U.S. dollars.
04:11I think Civalis, the consortium that we are providing a technology for, and it's a consortium of a few dozen
04:17European banks,
04:18it is a very interesting attempt in the European Union to basically try and counter the dollarization that is happening
04:27across those economies.
04:29That means we're seeing similar trends in Brazil with a few Brazilian real stablecoins in Canada, in Japan.
04:35Now, the reality is that most of the international or cross-border transfers right now around the globe are in
04:43dollars, right?
04:43So it kind of makes sense that if the main use case right now is cross-border, then we will
04:50have dollarization.
04:52And then on top of it, in all those emerging markets, people are using stablecoins,
04:55almost like a dollar account to protect them against inflation.
04:58So I don't know if it's going to be 95%.
05:01I do think that there are quite a few interesting use cases for euro-denominated stablecoins and Japanese yen-denominated
05:08stablecoins.
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