#5: Marie Tatibouet, CMO of Gate.io on Marketing and Crypto Exchanges

Marie Tatibouet is the CMO of Gate.io, one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world.

In this conversation, we discuss:
- Gate.io
- GateChain ($GT)
- Cryptopedia
- Hipo DeFI (decentralized liquidity maker)
- Marketing to global audiences
- NFTs

Gate.io
Twitter: @gate_io
Website: gate.io
Telegram: @gateio

Marie Tatibouet:
Twitter: @marietatibouet
Instagram: @marietatibouet

------------------------------------------------------------------------

This episode is brought to you by CoinPoker.

CoinPoker is a revolutionary blockchain technology-based platform that was developed by an ambitious team of poker lovers.

CoinPoker uses USDT as the main in-game currency and CHP as in-game fuel, offering all benefits of the crypto world alongside. CoinPoker also features instant and secure transactions using USDT, ETH, BTC or CHP tokens and no KYC .

CoinPoker users get huge promotions, as they give away thousands in fiat value each week. CHP is the currency of the CoinPoker economy providing players with exclusive benefits and supports future developments delivered to the CoinPoker community.

Play some hands, collect wins, and cash out in Bitcoin, Ethereum, or CHP!

Twitter: @CoinPoker_OFF
Website: coinpoker.com
Telegram: @officialcoinpoker

Transcript

Matt Zahab: 0:08

Oh baby, am I ever excited for this one? Today's guest is a digital nomad and blockchain enthusiast. Want to take a stab at guessing what he loves more than traveling? If you guessed crypto, you nailed it. This woman has lived and worked in America, Europe, Asia and is traveled all over the world. Currently, she is CMO of gate.io, the world's seventh largest crypto exchange. Before joining gate.io she was the CEO at a digital marketing agency in Hong Kong, working with clients in the blockchain technology sector. She's also a blockchain influencer known for simplifying crypto for the everyday user. I'm pleased to welcome to the cryptonews podcast Marie Tatibouet. Marie, welcome to the show.

Marie Tatibouet: 0:54

Thank you so much, Matt for having me on the cryptonews podcast. I'm really happy to be here.

Matt Zahab: 1:00

We are happy to have you as well. At the time of recording, we have to bring this up as it's such important news but we are recording on Tuesday, the 13th and I have a very bad habit. I'm sure you do too and everyone within the crypto space of checking my phone as soon as I wake up. I used to go for a nice hour walk, have a coffee, not check the phone, get into the zone, even a little bit of meditation. Ever since I got into the crypto world is wake up, check the phone, check the crypto bags, check the messages. What happened this morning when I woke up on Tuesday, Bitcoin hit 63k. What a treat. What do you think about that?

Marie Tatibouet: 1:41

I do think that we have been bouncing around between 60k and 50 55k. I was kind of hoping to see an alt coin season and we do seem to have seen Ethereum really finally take off a little bit. But inevitably with all of the very bullish news, we did now see a Bitcoin hit a new all time high. And it does seem like technical analysis suggests that we might go all the way up to 70k this month. Of course, typically April has been a historically a very, very positive month in the crypto space. I know this especially because we launched in April, eight years ago, and it was very successful month then. And I'm guessing that April in 2021 is going to be a very successful month as well.

Matt Zahab: 2:41

I love to hear that. You did mention gate.io and how you launched back in 2013 in China. And you are currently the seventh largest exchange in the world, which is very spectacular, definitely something to write home about. Before we jump into gate.io. I would love for you to tell our listeners a little bit more about yourself and how you got into crypto and blockchain.

Marie Tatibouet: 3:07

Of course, I think anyone who doesn't have a story about crypto has not really earned their stripes yet. And just like I think anyone who hasn't caught a falling knife or been scammed somehow also has not earned. The way that I got into crypto was back in 2016 when I had my digital marketing agency, I came across this platform called 21, which has now been rebranded and it's called earn.com. And basically 21 allows you to provide services, and you got paid in Bitcoin. So I was, it was just a tactic for me to try and find new clients I would perform, you know, kind of growth hacking, marketing, kind of tasks for fairly low price, but it got me an intro to some of these people. Of course, typically a 21 is a very typical San Francisco startup. So I was able to get some interesting clients from there. And basically, yeah, I was, I started earning $BTC and I was like, oh, this is, what is this $BTC and then I did more research about it when I like wanted to claim it. And then yeah, I just kind of fell down the rabbit hole. I asked some people about $BTC. What I always say to a lot of people is I had maybe three different people explain $BTC to me, and then I did a lot of research on my own. And it was only then that I really realized the power of cryptocurrency and of Bitcoin in particular. It's really normal for you not to understand what bitcoins value is on the first go, and I think a lot of people, they, you know, especially nowadays, they see Bitcoin rising so fast, and they want to understand right away. But the truth is it does require some research. And in particular, it requires research into the current financial system. And I think a lot of people are becoming more and more interested, as we're seeing more and more capital being printed. And they're getting more and more interested in, you know, what the mechanisms behind all of that is. And that's how a lot of them are entering the world worlds of Bitcoin. So I think that makes a lot of sense for them to do that. Following that, the more I got interested, then I started working with blockchain companies, as well. And I worked for gate as a contractor. And the gate team was so impressive to me that when they asked me to come on board, as a CMO, I accepted and we've been working together ever since. So it's been two and a half years now.

Matt Zahab: 6:15

That's really cool. I love your point about almost having to get your multiple reps in before you really understand crypto, especially for the older folks. It's, I think of my parents, and how many times I've been like mom, dad, it's time to get in, let's go. Let's go in there you know? They finally got in, but it was just so reluctant at the beginning because it's so difficult to grasp and understand at those first couple touch points. And then that's one thing that Gate.IO is doing a really good job of as well. While we're on that topic, should I refer to gate as Gate.IO OR gates? How do you and your team refer to that?

Marie Tatibouet: 6:52

So gate technology is the main company and that encompasses gate.io, wallet.io, gate chain, and Hippo swap. So, you know, the main company is gate technology, but in general, we usually refer to gate.io, our centralized exchange. But we do have a host of different like other products that we also use, but gate.io is definitely the main one,

Matt Zahab: 7:21

For sure, we will jump into all of those products as well. But to begin, I would love a quick intro into Gate and just a little bit about the history. You guys started back in 2013 in China, and are now the seventh largest exchange in the world and also developed the whole thing, the whole enchilada in house,. Developing a world class exchange entirely in house is definitely not easy. Present day, gates offers 470 plus cryptocurrencies for over 3 million users, and has the whole catalog of crypto trading features, spot, margin, futures, perpetual contracts, staking CDC loans, options, trading, you name it. My favorite part about gait personally, is the simple and sexy user experience. A rookie or newb could use it and a chiseled vet can use it as well. But before we jump into that, can you just give me a very quick, high level understanding of gate.io?

Marie Tatibouet: 8:25

Of course. So we started back in 2013, for the regular crypto Chinese user, and we you know, then move forward and we became more global. And the main focus that, we've always been focused on providing the best user experience. And what does that mean? That means being very transparent, which, especially back then, was not the case of a lot of exchanges. As an example of our transparency, we've never taken a listing fee. There's a lot of functionalities, where you have like 100% proof of collateral so you're able to see exactly where your funds on. Just if you take a look at all of the tools, you will see that this transparency of value that we have is real is not just something that we tout. I think the second thing is we've always been really focused on security. Being around since 2013, we have been through our trials and tribulations of hacking occurring and stuff like that. And we have been able to always have the user funds returned when there was a problem and we probably one of the only exchanges that has been around for so long. In 2013 there are a lot of exchanges that are not around anymore. And I have to say it is because the tech team, the dev team and the cybersecurity team is incredibly strong. So we were first and foremost very focused on that, then we added a lot of functionalities to better serve the user. And more recently, we've added a lot of functionalities to better serve more professional users. So we've created more professional tools, we've added in more volume for futures, and perpetual contracts. And we've also created basically two different apps, two different platforms, whereby you can decide if you want to use the platform, as simplified or, you know, as a professional, and I think this has really helped us grow a lot. In terms of our volume, I mean, you know, volume changes every day, depending on the coin, of course, you know, a lot of exchanges there, you know, the main trading is usually Bitcoin, of course, but there are a lot of other coins, especially on gate.io, we are definitely known for having a lot of different alt coins. So the, you know, the trading volume will really depend. We usually, we always have been, you know, in the last few years in the top 10 when it comes to volume, and then it really, you know, depends on the day we have been in the top five we have been in we have been seven, we have been, you know, lots of different numbers. But what we have always had is we've always had a very high trust score had a very high security score, because that has always been our number one priority.

Matt Zahab: 11:42

Back in, I believe was late 2019, you did an interview with coinshoes.com. And you were asked about the most important factors when choosing a crypto exchange. And you just literally nailed all four of them on the head. What you mentioned was fun safety, user experience, customer support, and fee structure. And Gate has done an incredible job in addressing all four of those areas. One of the points that you just touched on was the amount of volume and Gates has their own secure, scalable and interoperable public chain your own cryptocurrency called gate chain, the ticker is $GT and at the time of recording, let's just go through some numbers, which are absolutely bananas, The one year that you are up 980%, 30 days up 200%, weekly up 125%. And the 24 hours up 45%. That is bananas, that is craziness, and a 24 hour trading volume of $78 million. Walk me through that those are just like those are crazy numbers.

Marie Tatibouet: 12:57

Yeah, I think exchange tokens have been doing incredibly well. I think, you know, there are dexes are very important for the future. But for the time being, the centralized exchanges and the decentralized exchanges will continue to work together. And I think it is clear, we have launched our own swap product called Hipposwap. And, you know, it is successful so far. But the truth is, of course, that Ethereum, you know, engages very high fees. And so it creates a real problem. And also, I think a lot of people and especially a lot of the newcomers to this space, some of them don't want to be responsible for holding their own keys and so in that way, you know, using a centralized exchange for trading, and then using a wallet for their long term holdings seems to make more sense for them. And I think this is why a lot of the exchange tokens have worked very well. For $GT, I think it is very clear that there is a very good use case. You can use $GT for you know, getting getting a higher VIP, level on gate.io. We're also constantly buying back $GT and burning it. This is very common, we've done it dozens of times. So I think this you know, really helps contribute.

Matt Zahab: 14:32

And you explain the importance of burning a currency, a cryptocurrency?

Marie Tatibouet: 14:36

Of course, when you burn a cryptocurrency, that means that you know, you're eliminating some of those tokens and you're, you know, making those circulating supply less big, which obviously, usually leads to an increase in the price. We, you know, we launched a lot of tokens. So we also kept a certain amount of tokens in reserve. And this is used as you know, our fund in case there are any issues, we do not hold them ourselves. Actually, it is just used in case of an emergency. And yeah, there are a lot of tokens that are also being allocated to the community. So yeah, but of course, the gate chain token is also being used as gas on the gate chain blockchain. Gate chain blockchain is, you know, it has been launched, and, but it is always constantly being updated. The real innovation behind gate chain is that you're able, it is inbuilt in the code of the blockchain to be able to recover the funds if you're hacked, or if you forget the password. And this is a very big innovation in the cryptocurrency industry. Basically, what happens is if the funds are hacked, or if you forget your password, within a certain time limit that you set up at the very beginning, when you set up your wallet, you're able to recover those funds. So there's, on gate chain, there's a standard account, which operates in the same way as any regular wallet where all of the transactions are irrevocable, so you're not able to revoke them. And there's a vault account where you are able to revoke the transactions. And, so you know, if your funds are stolen, or if you forget your password, then you can click you know, a button and then you it will be sent over to a refund account, and then you'll be able to transfer them back to a new vault account that you set up. And you know, this solves two of the biggest issues in the entire industry. So I do foresee a lot of growth of the gate chain blockchain in the near future.

Matt Zahab: 17:04

You have probably made hundreds if not 1000s of gate customers extremely happy with those features. One of the most important parts of gate chain $GT is the inter operability. Now, the word interoperable. I have heard that word heck, probably a dozen times a day since about September or October of 2020. It's popping up everywhere. And a little hot take on my end, I could see it winning the Oxford Dictionary word of the year. It's everywhere. How important is interoperability within the crypto space and more so with NFTs and alt coins?

Marie Tatibouet: 17:48

That's an excellent question, Matt. And I think its very important. And I think we see the success of dot. Dot has definitely pushed itself as the most interoperable blockchain and has been very successful. And I think it is because $ETH is so important, so many of the different depths. And so many of the different products are built on on Ethereum, especially all of the new NFTs, as you were saying non fungible tokens. And so ultimately, the Ethereum blockchain will be very, very important, especially if they're able to start scaling more. But until then, we will be using other blockchains. And I think for some particular functionalities using other blockchains is good, but is preferable to using $ETH. But they do all have to communicate together. And so that's why I think we are going to see a lot more interoperability for sure in the future. I think, like you said, it's particularly important in the NFT space, because NFT space has really blown up so much. And I think surprisingly, the NFT space is definitely the one that the more mainstream users seem to partake in more. I will definitely say I did think DeFi would be of more interest. But I think the DeFi space is a little complex still. And you know, you have to go and buy $ETH and then you have to go and buy these other coins. And then I don't know if you've ever yet provided liquidity, but it's not that easy, even for someone who has been in the space for a while. So of course with a newbie, it seems a little difficult. Whereas with NFTs you can just buy it and I think a lot of people understand okay, so this is authenticating the fact that I own this. And that seems to mean something, especially because a lot of celebrities have gotten involved. And the reach of celebrities these days with social media is so strong, that I mean, some celebrities are really, like almost mini countries or, you know, big corporations in a way.

Matt Zahab: 20:28

Oh, you're bang on there, we definitely need to go back to NFTs as that's such a hot topic right now. But you brought up a couple of really good points, one of them being liquidity, and more specifically noobs. Now, one of my favorite parts about gate is the simple and sexy user experience. And we will use the example of liquidity for this use case. Now, almost every button slash call to action on the website has a very brief one to two sentence, sort of explaining the purpose of that button slash call to action when I mean button, I mean, you hover your mouse over it, and you click that word. Now one of the prompts on your website is yield farming. And, again, as a rookie, or as someone is a noob, someone who doesn't know too much about crypto, you see yield farming, and you're like, what the heck is yield farming like who made up this term? And then if you hover your mouse over it on gate, it says earn income from fees by providing liquidity to the market. That is brilliant. I wish when I got into my crypto journey a couple years ago, that there was something as simple as that. Could you just sort of bring up one, what is liquidity farming just for the people who don't exactly know what that is liquidity farming yield farming, and tell me about the importance of having a very simple, sleek and sexy user experience on the website.

Marie Tatibouet: 21:53

So, uh, thank you so much for complimenting our user experience. I think, you know, we are constantly, we have a group, and all my community managers and everyone on the team is always using the platform. And we're always giving feedback to the tech team on improvements, or suggested improvements from us or from customers as well. This is, um, this is really the case, we take a look on Twitter, we get a lot of feedback. And you know, it's not because one user thinks it should be this way that we will implement it. But if we're seeing a lot of demand, we do always really pay attention to that, especially because we also have a lot of different language websites, we have over 15 languages. So you know, we always make sure to see, especially if they're, you know, might be a mistake, or something like that in their native language, if that needs to be optimized. So thank you for that it is a constant, we're constantly updating. It's definitely work all of the time. And so you know, I think that's how we're able to create a good user experience through refining, day after day, week after week, month after month. What is yield farming? Yield farming is when you're providing liquidity for a coin, and then you're able to earn yield as a result from that. And I think the easiest way to provide that is not through these complicated platforms. But you know, use it, the platform that you use your preferred platform, like gate can do that for you. And I think that's definitely always been our objective, to try and provide all of the different functionalities that are available to users in a very simplified way. And then I think it's very easy for you to go and stake we have our hodl and earn program. And some of it requires lockup, and some of it doesn't even require lockup, so you're able to earn a yield, and you can still take it out at any time with just a simple click. And I think this is very powerful, because having done yield farming myself on various platforms, it can be a little daunting. And I think being able to provide those services is something that the users really appreciate. Another thing that I think is really great is you know, we do leveraged ETFs, which basically you just interact, kind of like you would with spot trading. And in that way, you're still able to earn money, kind of like on margin, but you know, again, doing more margin trading can seem a little scary for a lot of users. But if you want to have more volatility, then you can use some of these leveraged ETFs to be able to trade Bitcoin at 5x volatility, for example, on a short trade. This is definitely, I think something that's very powerful. And the final thing that I think is very good for very new newbies is in investment plan, periodic investment plan, which is literally just like an automated bot, where you get to say, okay, I want to invest in Bitcoin once a day, or once a week for X amount over, you know, one year and then, you know, as long as you're providing the funds in USDT, or USDC or what not on the platform, it will invest automatically for you. And I think this is very important, because my number one recommendation to any newbie is just dollar cost averaging, and learn more about the entire space. And you know, if your dollar if you DCA dollar cost average in then you will be earning money over time. And if you want to increase you know, your gains, then you can always take a look at the other functionalities that are on platform and that are available to you. But start out slow because although the gains can come fast, you can also lose very fast as well. And losing money is psychologically much more difficult then earning and you know, you might be turned off to the space if you lose a lot at the beginning.

Matt Zahab: 26:57

Of course, you talked about learning and the importance of dollar cost averaging and learning more about Bitcoin. As you become more immersed in the space. Gate also has a product which is on the website called cryptopedia. This is candidly this is a crypto noobs dream. There are blockchain industry insights, there is a quick search tool for blockchain related terms. You have crypto terms, you can alphabetical search all of these there are blockchain comics, there are educational videos, which use voice and images and there are also crypto events. There's a calendar that includes all the key crypto events around the world. This is a great place for rookies and noobs like to jump into the space and learn a little bit more about crypto. Personally, I wish that I could have used that while I was in university. That would have been incredible. You guys should start signing up. I'm sure you already have that in the pipeline. But earlier on in our Convo, you brought up wallet.io or hypo.com. Before we get into those two, I'm a marketer myself, and I've been dying to ask if you can tell me, how much did you pay for each of those domains, a four letter domain hipo.com and wallet.io. Those must have cost an arm and a leg? Can you give me the goods on that?

Marie Tatibouet: 28:19

Um, I cannot actually it was before my time. They definitely registered it way back when and way back when the.io was less popular. So I do think that they you know, it wasn't? It's not like we bought a wallet.com. Right. So I do think it was a cheaper than you might have expected, especially because the CEO is so forward thinking. And I know, that he has bought a lot of domains, you know, in the eventuality that there are a lot of other products that must be launched, in particular for wallet.io. Although it was launched later, I think it was always the CEOs plan to launch a wallet product. Because the truth is, I have spoken about this in previous interviews. There is you know, there is definitely this kind of mini war that goes on between centralized and decentralized exchanges in the eyes of the crypto community. But I don't think that could be farther from the truth. Because a lot of centralized exchanges, were not interested in having you keep your funds on the exchange if you're not going to trade with them. Because really, that's just adding more liability to us, you know, so we would prefer if you withdrew it and took it to a wallet and that's why we created the wallet.io product. And in particular, you know, you can sign in, you can sign in on wallet.io without a gate count, but you can also connect them making the fees less, but also just in general, the overall withdrawal and deposit experience much easier. So it was definitely always in the cards. You just, you know, we just needed to make sure to develop a product that was rock solid,

Matt Zahab: 30:30

For sure. And moving on to Hipo.com, is it Hipo or hypo?

Marie Tatibouet: 30:35

Um, Hipo.

Matt Zahab: 30:36

Hipo. Okay, Hippo sounds a little cooler and rolls off the tongue a little better. But Hipo.com is a decentralized swap trading. Hipo slash hypo actually stands for high potential and that is exactly what this tool is, it is a high potential liquidity maker, and a high potential hmm protocol for token exchange implemented using cbmm invented and operated by gate.io. Now, that was a bit of a mouthful, can you walk us through exactly what hipo.com does and why it's so important to the gate ecosystem?

Marie Tatibouet: 31:12

Absolutely. So Hipo is a swap protocol, like uniswap, or a sushiswap. And the main advantage of Hipo is that you're able to try and you know, invest, but we're going to get you the best deal because we aggregate the data with all of the other different swap protocols. A lot of exchanges don't want to have a lot of these AMM's they don't want to do that, because they want to keep all of the liquidity to themselves. But we're very happy to do that. And I think that's definitely what gives us our edge. And I do think that we're definitely going to see a lot more where that has come from, especially, obviously, a hipo and gate chain are highly integrated. Right now, you know, you can only have $GT on the gatechain blockchain, but we are looking to integrate with a lot of other coins, and in particular, Bitcoin, right. And I do think some of these very high value coins, being able to you know, make sure that you can keep them safe and recover them in case there is a problem is going to be a huge deal. And you know, as soon as that will happen, integrating with a gatechain as well for Hipo will also be a massive plus. So that is the main idea with hipo and in particular, like we have been talking about, you know, we are moving towards decentralized exchanges. I think in 10 years time, it is possible that, you know, there might only be decentralized exchanges around. Until last year, decentralize exchanges and I think really until like amm's became more popular, these automated maker pools, the functionalities weren't so great on decentralized exchanges, the user experience was not very good. You couldn't do a lot of like options trading or futures trading and stuff like that. It was only last year that that became possible. So a lot of these indexes really didn't take off until last year. And this year, we're seeing a lot more. And I would predict, when we finally see more scaling on $ETH we're going to see a lot more. But the volume that a lot of exchanges, decentralized exchanges are seeing is nothing compared to the volume that a lot of centralized exchanges are seeing, in fact, so yeah, especially compared to, you know, September, October of last year. So yeah, I think we will all be working together. So it makes sense that gate technology would have gate.io and like a decentralized exchange, as well and that will be working forward. We'll be moving forward with both until you know users really decide to go towards one or the other.

Matt Zahab: 34:43

This episode is brought to you by our dear friends at coinpoker, the world's premier crypto poker platform. Coinpoker is a revolutionary blockchain technology based platform that was developed by an ambitious team of poker players coinpoker uses USDT stable coin is The main in game currency and CHP as in game fuel, offering all benefits of the crypto world alongside. coin poker also features instant and secure transactions using USDT Ethereum. Bitcoin or CHP tokens and no KYC you heard that right no KYC coin poker users get huge promotions as they giveaway 1000s and fit each week. CHP is the currency of the coinpoker economy, providing players with exclusive benefits and supports future developments delivered to the coinpoker community. My favorite part about coinpoker is the mobile app. When I'm on the go, I whip out my phone and play a couple hands of Texas Hold'em or bet on sports. They have an amazing sports book, really clean spreads, very clean UX, and an overall great time. If you'd like to check them out, go to coinpoker.com and give them a try. 2021 The year of DeFi and NFTs also Bitcoin going to 100k hopefully. One of the topics that I'm really excited to jump into his marketing. You are a marketing guru, you are the CMO of the seventh largest crypto exchange in the world and I've been following gate.io on socials for a while. Working with cryptonews we are, we've really made some really good moves and we often like to look at what the big boys are doing and see what works and what does not work. Gate.io has an incredible Twitter presence, a very good marketing presence in general. But on Twitter, you have very high engagement, you have created a rather prominent community and you're very edgy. I would love if you could walk me through the process of deciding what type of tweets you were going to put out the level of edginess and a lot of emojis you also include tons of emojis, gifs, and memes walking through that whole process.

Marie Tatibouet: 37:06

Sure. Twitter and telegram are definitely the two most important channels in the crypto space. Twitter, especially for sure. Telegram also is very important, but it's a very different kind of platform. And we do see though, that a lot of the telegram users end up spending a lot of time on the platform. But Twitter's definitely important, not only for engaging with users, but also engaging with influencers, media, all of those kinds of big projects as well. I think um, definitely what really helped us take off was working with projects, you know, we have definitely been working with a lot of projects as you know, we list we list all of the hottest new coins on our exchange. So this has really helped us grow. And we've really zeroed in on, you know, cross promotion with them. And I think that has been really helpful for us. And, you know, I think in general, just having a win win approach is the best way to do things. So I think that's been very good. And I think in general, I've hired, we've hired some really great people, everyone on the team is very dedicated to pushing gate.io. I think, like I've said, the reason I joined gates, and I think the reason that a lot of our team has joined gate is because of the integrity transparency values that we hold, and how it is really reflected in all the products that we launch in the way that we treat our staff in, in so many different things and all of our staff, really appreciate that. I really appreciate that. And that's why I've been with the company for a long time. In the crypto space, it's very rare to have those kind of values, and you know, those values being real. So yeah, I definitely think that has enabled our team to hire some really great people. And I think they all really enjoy spending time on Twitter and engaging with the community. And I think that comes through in all the memes that they create and all of the the sassiness that comes the edginess like you said that comes and, you know, sometimes there's a bit of an overstep, but you know, it's better to break things and then like recover. I think the crypto space operates at such a speed that, that it doesn't really matter. We are always a careful when it comes to certain topics. But in general, I think I think the whole industry is fairly informal. So that kind of edginess resonates really well with the community.

Matt Zahab: 40:22

I love the win win marketing standpoint, that is huge. Every marketer in the world should have a bulletin board or a picture or have a big in caps win win on the whiteboard in their office or home office in this case. Talk to me about Tik Tok clubhouse in discord and some of the newer marketing channels and marketing avenues. I know they're really hard to penetrate. We've seen a couple brands do a really good job with sponsored rooms on clubhouse with creating some viral content and creating those memes on tik tok and creating the community on Discord. How does gates go about attacking those marketing avenues?

Marie Tatibouet: 41:01

Yeah, we have been looking into it a lot. I think clubhouse clearly has a lot of interesting influencers. So we will be looking at creating, you know, more content in there, I think it enables people to have very interesting discussions. And I think that's very worthwhile. Because sometimes, like on Twitter, for example, a lot of the content can get lost. And so it's nice to have a platform, where quality is really at the forefront. And I think, I think that's why people value it so highly. So I think that's what we're going to be focused on in the future. For tik tok, I think is very interesting, because with Tik tok, it's definitely the gateway to the younger generation. And the younger generation, I think is not of course, for now, they don't have all that much money, which doesn't make them very good clients, but we're not just looking for clients, we're looking for users, and we're willing to have them join us and grow into their investment, you know, that's fine. Our fee structure is very low. So, you know, I think it'd be very, it'd be fine for them to kind of join on in, you know, be able to, to profit from these very low fees, and all of these, like great functionalities. And, you know, once they start earning more than they'll grow with us, that's definitely something that we're willing to do with them. But what I will say about a lot of these millennial users is very, or should I say Gen Z users, is that they definitely see the world a lot differently. And I think, compared to our parents, for example, who definitely saw government as a savior, I think the younger generation is a lot more skeptical about what financial institutions are, like, especially the very younger generation who maybe remembers the 2008 crash being very young. I think they have grown up, you know, with this idea, oh, yeah, 2008 happened and, and they didn't have all that time before thinking that the financial institutions were trustworthy, which is the case of our parents or example. So I do think there are going to be a lot more open to it, to cryptocurrency as an investment, and so I do think that we'll see them grow into it a lot faster than all of the other generations.

Matt Zahab: 44:03

I love that. I'm very gracious of your time. I did read your article on crypto news.com, the world's best crypto news outlet, and you wrote about NFTs and you had a couple absolute goldmine quotes within there. I'm just gonna rip him off very quickly. We'll go rapid fire style and you can just give me a quick little spiel of what you mean by that. In regards to NFTs you talked about the importance of high level abstraction and how one of the cardinal rules of product development is the acronym kiss k i s s, which stands for keep it simple stupid. I love that. Where did you learn that one?

Marie Tatibouet: 44:43

I think if you work in marketing and sales, you do definitely realize that you know users, they don't really care about all of the fancy technicalities. I worked in the mobile space I worked at oboe before. And you know, you work with all the developers. And they're like, oh, and it's four GB of RAM and the camera is such and such. And I mean, that's great. Similarly, on our platform, I could tell you, we have a 10,000 TPS transaction per second and all of that, and like, that's fine. But who cares? What people care about is that it's fast. That's what you're really trying to say. Right? You're trying to say that it's fast. But engineers, sometimes don't have very good at communicating the benefits of all of the hard work that they've put into the product. And so that's our job as like marketing and sales people, because that's what people respond to. They don't care that it's 10,000 transactions per second, they care that their trade is going to be executed in the next second. That's what they care about. Right? So being able to communicate it very clearly in a way that shows the benefits is what's the most important

Matt Zahab: 46:06

Cardinal rule of marketing benefits over features 10 times out of 10. Another great quote from the NFT article on cryptonews.com goes as follows. And I'm just gonna read this out loud and I will let you, I will take this off for you. You said the art is validated, the art of NFT's is validated on a blockchain that creates digital scarcity and hence more desire. It eliminates the middleman and empowers the creator because whenever the buyer sells it further, the creator gets a cut.

Marie Tatibouet: 46:37

Yes, I think um, the whole point of blockchain technology is eliminating a lot of these middlemen. And there has, now we're seeing, you know, a lot moreblockchain adoption. But before there was definitely a lot of industries, for example, logistics, where the middlemen are being paid a lot of money, and they are not willing to, you know, work with blockchain technology. In the NFT space, I think that was definitely the case as well, but celebrities have a lot of power. And I think that's why, you know, they've been able to say, okay, middlemen, I'm not interested because it is easy for me to go directly to my fans. So I think that's why it's been able, they've been able to take off so easily, uh, you know, apparently, like, as compared to a lot of other industries, because they already have the attention of all of the people who are going to be interested. Of course, NFTs are also inherently virtual. So as a result, it makes sense that this would kind of take off in the virtual space. And I think, obviously, it makes sense that it would take off with a digital virtual currency. Uh, you know, if the countries were getting a little bit off subject, if countries had been quicker in implementing CBDCs, then maybe they would have been able to talk all of the NFT space to their particular CBDCs. But they have not been. So it does make sense that it would happen with cryptocurrency. And because I think it will still take government a lot of time to launch a lot of these CBDC's in a way that scalable and really used by a lot of its constituents. I do think that NFTs will be used with these cryptocurrencies.

Matt Zahab: 48:43

Marie this has been incredible it I've had a blast speaking with you, I next time, we are definitely going to have to have you on again and talk about the future of cbdcs which is a central bank digital currency. Couple other questions that I'd love to get into which we will get into next time but penetrating a global audience and different strategies for different countries Bitcoin ETFs. I know you're a huge fan of that crypto and blockchain in China you have a very unique standpoint on that and competing with the biggest exchanges in the world. We will have you on shortly and we will get these topics discussed. I have two questions before we let you go. Question number one will Bitcoin hit 100k by December 31 2021.

Marie Tatibouet: 49:31

I would be surprised if it didn't.

Matt Zahab: 49:34

All right. It's going on the news folks. 100k by December 31 2021. And lastly, where can our listeners find you and gate.io on social

Marie Tatibouet: 49:46

um so my handle on social everywhere is@MarieTatibouet. Do be careful because there are a lot of people impersonating me around all these channels, all of these scammers trying to get money from all these people. So it's very common. Make sure that is the only handle that I have. So to make sure that it is that handle if you see a message from me, or you know if you're going to follow me, and you can follow gate.io. Well, you can go to our website gate.io, or you could follow us on Twitter at gate_io. I have to say, Matt, this has been so great, your questions we have covered like so many different topics and I think all of your questions really interesting. So thank you so much for having me on the cryptonews podcast.

Matt Zahab: 50:48

It was a treat having you and we are definitely penciling you in for round two in the near future. Marie thanks again and have a lovely rest of the day.

Marie Tatibouet: 50:57

Thanks Matt. Bye guys.

Matt Zahab: 50:59

Have a good one everyone.