Understanding Regional Expansion With Crypto.com’s Karl Mohan | Blockcast 32

Quickly becoming a household name for crypto supporters, as well as an equally recognisable brand for sports fans, Crypto.com has already established a global footprint. But what are the challenges facing a global crypto exchange?
In this week's Blockcast, we sit down with Crypto.com's GM for APAC & MEA and Global Head of Banking Partnerships, Karl Mohan to learn more about regulatory differences, branding, and cultural reception of crypto across borders. Having moved recently from Melbourne to Singapore, Mohan is new to the Little Red Dot but is more than familiar with tackling challenges across state lines.
Additionally, Mohan reflects on his transition from his decade-long career in TradFi to the disruptive field of crypto, and how the exchange is retaining a dominant lead in the space.

🎙️ Hey there, Blockcast listeners! 🎙️ This podcast provides commentary and discussion on cryptocurrency and related topics. It is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only and should not be construed as financial advice. Guests appearing on this podcast may discuss companies or strategies, but these discussions are not recommendations to buy, sell, or hold any particular asset or pursue any specific strategy. The hosts and guests are not financial advisors, and listeners are urged to consult with a qualified professional before making any investment decisions. Investments in cryptocurrency are inherently risky, and you could lose money.
Reach us at hello@blockhead.co.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hey there, Crypto Curious gang. It's time to plug in and play with the Blockheads at BlockCast. Strap in for a weekly whirlwind tour through the blockchain jungle, where NFTs, shiny coins, and crypto titans tango. Serve that with a side of spicy insights and the crunchiest bits of the digital sphere. Let's dive into the decentralized deep end. BlockCast is live in three, two, one.

SPEAKER_03: 0:35

Welcome back to another episode of BlockCast, your go-to show for exploring the world of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. I'm your host, Kohan, and I'm joined today by Blockhead CEO Mark Tan and our esteemed guest this week, Karl Mohan, who serves as Crypto.com's GM for APAC and MEA, as well as Global Head of Banking Partnerships. With over 10 years of experience in the financial services industry, Karl is an expert in product development, risk management, financial inclusion, payment solution, and fintech innovation. Karl has just moved from Melbourne to Singapore. Welcome, Karl. Thank you very much. Gohan and Mark

SPEAKER_02: 1:06

for having me here today.

SPEAKER_01: 1:07

It's awesome to have you on the show, Carl. As I understand it, it's like your first couple of weeks in Singapore or has it been longer than

SPEAKER_02: 1:13

that? Just four weeks and I have to say it's still hot and humid.

SPEAKER_01: 1:18

Yeah, I

SPEAKER_02: 1:18

get used to

SPEAKER_01: 1:20

it. Where you

SPEAKER_02: 1:20

just came from, it's winter right now, right? When I left, it was very cold, rainy. So in a way, it's still nice not having the rain and cold, but Still haven't got used to it, but I'm sure we will. Okay,

SPEAKER_01: 1:35

cool, cool. Yeah, so I mean, I'm Mark. Just a really quick line with myself. I'm the CEO of Blockhead. Together with Kohan, we're going to be speaking with Carl today. And yeah, we have a great show lined up. So I think that maybe we can just really get into, you know, let's just get the intros out of the way. I'm sure Carl has, you know, quite a lot to kind of talk about as well. So Carl, maybe you could tell us a bit more about, you know, I mean, obviously we did some due diligence before you came here. And then the CV looks pretty interesting on LinkedIn. But I think for the purposes of this show, we would like to find out a bit more, first and foremost, about your role at crypto.com. And before you could share with us a bit of the plans for that especially like you know like the decision to uproot and come to singapore

SPEAKER_02: 2:08

maybe i'll start the first thing about the role as cohen you mentioned gm for asia middle east and africa i'll start with that first the primary function is market expansion and actually penetrating those markets so you know whether it was in australia singapore hong kong recently dubai and various other markets that we're continuously exploring so that's the primary function including Thank you very much. some specific product launches in those markets that I cover.

SPEAKER_01: 3:06

Like pay, for example.

SPEAKER_02: 3:08

Absolutely right. And maybe to explore that a little bit further, one of the biggest achievements in the last 12 months, we actually launched the global first in-store payments for crypto in fuel stores, right? So it was the first global scaled version. So we rolled it out over 400 stores in South Australia and Victoria. And then last month, we we also launched it in a stadium in South Australia. That's correct. It's kind of a proof point that crypto has matured. It is being accepted as the mean of payments. And that's one thing that we are actually further exploring globally at the moment.

SPEAKER_01: 3:49

What we're kind of curious about, because, you know, when we look at people with TradFi experience jumping into crypto, there's usually some sort of like familiar pathways or narratives that have come up. So I'm just curious as to what prompted... What was your interest in crypto before you? made the jump.

SPEAKER_02: 4:05

Mark, I wish I would be able to tell you that in 2009, I was a banker. It was the global financial crisis, as you know. And I read the Bitcoin white paper and I thought, wow, this is going to change the world and was fully invested. But Alice, that's not the truth. And like many bankers that time, I didn't believe the narrative. Until 2014, I was spearheading payment innovation at a very big bank in Australia. and came across XRP and thought, wow, because we were taking time to move money internationally and thought it might be a good use case. We ran a couple of experiments and then I became a convert when Ethereum launched. That's when, say, a lot of people's natural pathway into crypto has originally been in Bitcoin. My personal journey has been in Ethereum, right? And the reason why I believed in it is because as a banker and someone specializing at least in payment, the two biggest challenges in banking has always been clearing and settlement. You know, it takes time and, you know, you depend on multiple counterparties. There are parties that you don't trust. And Ethereum kind of solved that, right? So if someone wanted to, you know, at least this is my view, if you wanted to visualize what Ethereum is, it's a global clearing and settlement engine. That's what it is, right? And that got me convinced. And again, that pushed, you know, we pushed a number of blockchain projects. You know, our was the global head of partnerships or innovation and partnerships back then. And yeah, I was convinced. But I think the narrative that I might change here slightly is I don't think people jump between the two because my view is it's a convergence. You know, it depends on how fast you want to accelerate the convergence. And I felt like I could create change faster at crypto.com than I could do in banking to create that convergence. So hence the move.

SPEAKER_01: 6:04

Well, your story is definitely, I don't want to call it a story, more of like a reason, right? Because I think that the idea of a narrative sometimes can be a little fluffy. So I mean, I think that your reasons for entering crypto, definitely better than mine. I'm very curious, right? On the banking partnership end of things, so when you work with banks, right? Because we do work with a number of them, at least in this part of the world. And it's interesting, right? Because you have financial institutions coming out to embrace blockchain technology on a very public level, right? So it feels like it's really more from a tech implementation innovation angle, where I guess you can disrupt some of the settlement and clearing aspects that you've mentioned, right? Versus on the investment end of things where they're actually offering investment products or even have the mandates to do that. So I mean, like, just curious as to, you know, the partners that you're speaking to, right? But what's the general sense of this? You know, like, where are they on this journey? Are they looking at it from like, we better embrace this technology so that we don't get disrupted? 20 years from now? Or is it more of a, it's a tradable asset and like, you know, it's an investable opportunity. And then we want to find a way to kind of offer that to parts of our clients.

SPEAKER_02: 7:08

Yeah. It's a mixed bag. I think all banks that I've had the discussion with recognize the power of the technology that's given, right? But Banking infrastructure has been around since the 1500s in one way, shape or another, right? So if you think about even the concept of general ledgers and bookkeeping and accounting and all of that started in old Medician times and that's carried on. And there's a lot of legacy that the banks need to deal with and infrastructure that's already there. So that's one challenge that will take time. It's just a function of banking. But having been in a bank before, that change... Once it sets in, it tends to accelerate pretty fast. The second part about offering, I am pretty certain all banks everywhere around the world, including the ones I've been discussing with, have it part of their strategy. Now, whether they offer it to retail is a separate discussion, right? But, you know, we saw Standard Chartered recently come out and announce that they're offering it to institutional investors. They're offering, you know, BTC and ETH only first. But it's a clear sign, you know, it's a clear sign. It's, you know, we've had, you know, Commonwealth Bank of Australia in the past offering DBS doing it. It's just a direction.

SPEAKER_01: 8:31

DBS is interesting because for us, they are a bank that's kind of like, they kind of close the loop internally, you know? The whole idea with banks sometimes is that they just don't want the money going out of the bank. So, like, if a client wants to trade, say, like, BDC, and then they just funnel it to the exchange. So I'm guessing, I mean, would I be right to say that in terms of, you know, where crypto.com is, because it's a huge organization. So you guys can really offer, like, you know, the whole range of services. So it's about, can we partner with you, with the banks in certain stages first, and then, like, maybe as a consultant, and at some point when they're ready to kind of do any execution, then it kind of So

SPEAKER_02: 9:00

I go back, I think maybe it might sound cheesy, and I apologize for this. Our motto or tagline is cryptocurrency in every wallet. That's what our co-founders who started the organization believed in. They felt like the fact that cryptocurrency in every wallet, without sounding too cheesy here, is that they believe in this convergence between traditional finance and crypto. As a result, we don't really worry about who's going to offer it as long as that journey proceeds. progresses towards everyone in the world finally engages in this whole crypto economy. So I think it's a good thing. I really believe it's a very good thing. That's

SPEAKER_01: 9:40

a big mission, man. Definitely companies like Crypto.com have a huge role to play in this. And of course, individuals such as yourself. One question, right? I know that the ETF approvals, right, were really important. And we have an understanding of like why that's important. But we'd like to kind of hear it from your end also, like, you know, like from an institutional adoption point of view. Beyond just, you know, oh, okay, there are a ton of inflows into a specific ETF, right? Do you see it as a catalyzing other products down the road or other innovations down the road.

SPEAKER_02: 10:04

Absolutely right because I think you know if you think about the fact that the ETF exists means it's an asset class. I think that's the key part for us to say both Bitcoin soon hopefully fingers crossed ETH would actually mean that they are now part of a you know recognized investment class. That means you know all those things that we've been telling the world for the last eight years Yeah, look, you know, it's real now. The second is, if we look at even gold ETF, the moment an ETF is launched, it doesn't mean that existing gold sellers don't benefit, right? Because the size of the pie just grows bigger, right? I think those two things combined means that, you know, I go back to my equation scaling. Yes, the convergence is this whole ETF part. And then the third is growth, right? Because that's what's going to drive, right? Now it's... in the global news cycle, right? It's recognized as the investment class and people are going to continue investing in it. So yeah, I think it's a very positive thing and it's going to continue to drive growth.

SPEAKER_03: 11:11

Earlier, you said joining crypto.com enabled you to achieve your blockchain ambitions and achieving your targets more effectively. But why crypto.com? What does crypto.com have to offer in terms of being the forefront where there's so many other exchanges for other people to choose from, from a customer point of view or from a professional, yourself working?

SPEAKER_02: 11:32

Oh, absolutely. Good question, right? So I base it on into two fundamentals, right? The first one is the whole concept of convergence. So our co-founders believe that traditional finance and, you know, let's call it crypto finance for argument's sake. It's not two distinct different areas, but one of the same, right? It's like, you know, two faces of the same coin. And so they will coexist. That's number one. Number two is this relentless focus on two foundations that we have built the company on. Number one is security, information security. So to that end, you know, we have achieved some of the highest security standards. Number two is regulatory compliance, right? So the absolute relentless focus from day one to actually ground ourselves in being regulatory compliant is next to, I have not come across others. To that end, you know, we have achieved some of the highest, not only standards, but regulatory, you know, licenses in the region, right? So whether it's, you know, MAS, MPI license, we have got both for eMoney and also for DPT. In Australia, we have an Australian Financial Services license going across in dubai we've got a full license in dubai and recently in ireland as well right so we're continuously pushing the boundaries to be the most regulatory compliant and i think that resonated with me as well so to answer your question cohen that's the key reasons

SPEAKER_01: 12:58

i mean on that topic and i guess this ties back to the question i asked earlier on about your move to singapore right you see singapore as you know in a way strategically important in that sense you know from Or I guess another way to kind of frame the question is like, what are the plans here for you?

SPEAKER_02: 13:13

Personally, I'm an aging guy and sitting on a plane for seven hours just to cross Australian airspace was just...

SPEAKER_01: 13:21

Come on, not that far. We're not talking about New Zealand here,

SPEAKER_02: 13:27

guys. Look, Singapore is home for us. And, you know, we believe there's a confluence of factors that are really attracting, you know, for us to actually keep expanding it. Number one, you know, it's the classic, right? Singapore is pro-business, you know, talent hub. It's regional and it provides a good clear rule of law right you know it's very clear in dealing whether with regulators the ministries of manpower anyone you're dealing with it's very clear what is required and at the end the government is very pro-business as long as you abide by the law right and it's easy for us because we know what we want we are very regulatory compliant So it's a good hub for us to have. And I think finally, I think, you know, this is my own view and again resonates with a lot of our execs internally. is that it's a strong springboard for expansion because it's very neutral. No one views us as, oh, you know, you've got this or you've got that or, you know, there's any anti-this, anti-that. So that neutral springboard really assists us. For me, again, I think from a regional perspective, you know, looking after, you know, Asia, Middle East and Africa, it helps from a few factors personally, right? Time zones, you know, it's very central for the region that I'm managing. A lot of the global banks are are based in Singapore so building out partnerships makes it a lot more easier because ultimately when it comes to partnerships and you know Cohen and Mark you guys would know this better it's all about building relationships in person and actually explaining and building trust, right, by demonstrating your capabilities. So, yeah, Singapore is a very strong home for us. How

SPEAKER_03: 15:11

do these three regions differ from your point of view? I mean, it must be pretty tough juggling the regulatory demands out of these three regions.

SPEAKER_02: 15:18

Very different, very different. And I think, you know, look, it's different and yet the same because, you know, regulators talk to each other. You get, you know, subtle differences. Some may be slower than others. but generally they're all converging around the same things right so one is you know do they all agree that the crypto industry need regulation yes number two do they need it now yes and number three do you have certain players that you want to have that goes beyond just money laundering so historical regulations just been anti-money laundering now they've moved away from just anti-money laundering to some degree of you know financial market protections and you know many population preventions and so forth, right? So I think there's a degree of convergence coming through. Of course, you know, regionally you get Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai trying to compete with each other and that's given in all global scale, right? So whether it's financial reform, whether it's, you know, real estate investment attraction and so forth, it's always been the case. And, you know, I think they're all unique in its own way.

SPEAKER_01: 16:26

I guess it's kind of defined by a general sense of progressiveness, depending on which country you look at. Progressiveness in relation to kind of attitudes towards crypto. I mean, from our point of view, I think the Middle East is pretty progressive in that regard. Do you feel that the market is just generally really going to be more of an institutionally driven type of market? Or do you think that the retail market is still something that's going to come back?

SPEAKER_02: 16:52

I don't think retail's ever left. I think that's number one. Whether retail would continue to drive, absolutely. I mean, I look at my own personal behavior. Again, maybe it might be a biased view and maybe you guys could assess this yourselves. Are you guys still... Net crypto, you'd go, yes, we are. And the reason is because of the entire concept of financial inclusion, right? So every person in the world now has the ability to make an investment in an asset class that is legitimate and has possible good financial standing anywhere in the world today, right? That ability of financial inclusion has never existed through human existence. You always have the haves who could do it, the have nots, always were excluded, right? And that means that Retail A has never left. and will continue to be a big part of this because there's a whole big inclusion factor. Would the institutional side make changes? Absolutely. It creates greater liquidity. With greater liquidity comes greater stability of price movements and so forth. But ultimately, I think both retail and institutional, like any other financial markets, will play a great role in the future of crypto.

SPEAKER_03: 18:05

Yeah, I think when we think crypto.com, often your average retail investor, even your average public, will be familiar with crypto.com through sport and advertising. I'm wondering, A, how important is sponsorships and advertising for crypto.com? Because it seems pretty, they seem pretty loud in your advertising. And B, sports specifically. Why is sports so important? to put your name out there on?

SPEAKER_02: 18:28

Two parts, right? So number one, you know, if you look at us, it's very important for us to establish our brand. We felt like the brand had to be associated with things that resonate with us. Number one, you know, persistence, strength, courage, you know, hard work, determination, discipline, and all those factors are in sports, right? We could be sponsoring other events maybe, but ultimately sports represent that The other thing about sport that, again, resonates with us is this whole concept of inclusion, right? So whether it's any of the sport events, whether it's the, you know, even the stadium and all of that, it's this whole concept of inclusion that anyone could watch any sport in the world today and still feel they're part of it. They feel belong, you know? And that's why it was very important to us why we chose sport, right? The second part when you talked about, you know, retail and brand, look, I think for us, We continue to focus on one thing and one thing only, delivering value. That's the main thing for us, right? And to that degree, I come back to trust. So to build trust, we continue to focus on regulatory compliance and getting our licenses so the customers that are with us know that we are trustworthy and reliable. Number two, to continue adding services and features and functionality that delight our customers. And to that effect, we continue delivering that. Good examples would be with our crypto.com pay services. Recently, we partnered with BTC Pactual to deliver crypto banking in South America. And also, for example, partnering with Paxos and PayPal to launch the PayPal USD token on our exchange. I think all of these services is delivered towards customers delivering value to our customers. And that's been our fundamental focus.

SPEAKER_01: 20:22

Right. Since we're on that topic, I'm really curious to know how the reception has been on the ground. Like when you launched Pay in the stadium as a proof point, how did the consumers kind of...

SPEAKER_02: 20:30

Okay, it was brilliant, right? So when we launched it, there's a concept, I think it's perhaps alien to perhaps some of your audience. It was launched during this thing called the Gather Round. And it's a week of intense AFL football that is played in South Australia for the entire week right so generally it's just one game and it ends the away game and all of that but for this particular week it was intense one week and remember this was a trial that we were doing and the reception was phenomenal right so number one consumer feedback was brilliant number two the even media engagement and engagement from third parties were brilliant because it captured imagination of

SPEAKER_01: 21:14

what is feasible.

SPEAKER_02: 21:16

Absolutely, absolutely that. At the same time, I think it demonstrated that crypto as a payment mechanism has matured and it's readily available today. And I think that's what we went to market with to show that this is a plug and play solution that is available to merchants and also for consumers to use, right? If I go back to a lot of the historical payment methods, my background was in payments, in banking prior to that, you realize that the evolution often starts off slow and then it goes into a hockey stick curve because you build up more momentum on both sides of the equation because it's a network effect. So once the network effect kicks in, then it's a hockey stick curve. And I think we're still at the early stage, but what we have demonstrated is the technology is viable and it's going to grow further.

SPEAKER_03: 22:08

Let's go back a little bit about competition between your other peers. Is it still like a race to cut fees as low as possible to boost acquisition?

SPEAKER_01: 22:17

What's the goal here? I guess to kind of contextualize Cohen's question a bit further, I guess people working here and then in our interactions with other exchange changes right it's generally been the view of like i guess the differentiation is like there's a brand differentiation right so i think that you you have crypto.com for example really associating itself with sport brands i agree with you that there is like you know on the what makes a difference to the consumer is definitely trust and regulatory compliance so i think that that's where it's coming from i think that assuming that that is already sorted right like we feel like you know it's almost like a race to the bottom in terms of fees Look, I like to play this

SPEAKER_02: 22:48

out differently, right? So what is the value of trust? In the last 18, 24 months, we recognize that value for various industry events that have occurred. And I think the consumers who are really in this for the long term recognize that value. Number two, I also think that what we are delivering to our customers is far more superior than than what's available in the market. For example, we have this product called Rewards Plus. It's the first loyalty-based reward system for consumer engagement on our platform.

SPEAKER_01: 23:25

Oh, that's pretty

SPEAKER_02: 23:25

cool. Right? No one has that. So the more you engage, the more you trade, the more rewards you get, it builds loyalty. Then, you know, the crypto.com pay might be one. Our Visa card is still one of the biggest, globally most distributed cards card programs on the planet for a crypto service provider. The card itself has got significant value attached to it. When you value stack all this, consumers go, no, we trust you. You're delivering value. We're sticking with you, right? So I think there's a clear differentiation between us and the rest. I can't comment on what our competitors are doing because I don't know. And clearly, we're not focused on what our competitors are doing because we really believe in our mission. And we're going to continue delivering to that mission. continue delighting our customers and continuing to expand the value proposition so that's been our mission from day one and we're going to continue that mission

SPEAKER_01: 24:19

is there a general profile for like the ideal kind of like crypto.com customer and reason why i'm asking this is because i feel as if like sometimes when we talk about say cryptocurrency kind of like investors or the audience for it right it tends to be very monolithic but i feel as if like this space has grown where they're like really for example loyalty programs man that's something that is a very mainstream marketing approach which has worked and that hits a specific kind of like investor as well you know i'm just wondering in your view has this audience actually grown and like you know like and what's the ideals there and ideal profile for

SPEAKER_02: 24:46

you? I don't want to be cheesy again but you know mission is cryptocurrency in every wallet we are not discerning in that sense the whole intent is you know we know how to deliver value and hence if a customer comes to us and they try us out they recognize the value majority of them stay because of that right so you know Mark the whole mission is to to go and deliver that value. So we don't like say, you know, this is the segment we're going to target. This is the customer type profile. You know, our mission is, hey, you know, ultimately every person on this planet should be an owner of crypto. And if we can deliver that mission and to that end degree, we are focused on that mission.

SPEAKER_01: 25:28

Yeah, sounds good, man. Sounds like a real solid, noble mission. And I, you know, I really hope you guys kind of like, yeah, I mean, you guys are executing that. And for us, at least, Crypto.com for sure is one of the most trusted names. So I think you guys have done a great job. Thank you. In communicating that. Because that, I think, is also the hardest part, right? Because it's one thing to say that there's trust you want to build, but then how do you articulate that? Yeah. And I guess, I mean, if I'm not mistaken, this is probably where the importance of your different brand partnerships and... and sporting partnerships come into play because that's kind of like more credible partners you have than...

SPEAKER_02: 25:56

Absolutely, right? You know, again, our founders have laid the gauntlet, right? The long-term goal is, you know, to triple our customer base, right? To go to 250 million customers by the next 12 months and grow the base, right? Massively, you know? One trillion asset under management. Massive goals, right? When we first started, and Chris tells his story, and, you know, that's really inspiring, right? You know, each year he sets these goals and it seems unachievable. And as a founder, you know, that's... I mean, in for Mars, if you land on the moon, it's not too bad, put it that way. But every year, you know, we have not only achieved, exceeded each year, right? And it boils down to the base factors of, you know, we continue to be disciplined, We continue to be focused on the key ingredients that we know, and those are making sure we deliver to customers, making sure we focus on remaining regulatory compliant, and making sure we engage with partnerships. Now, the partnership parts are important because it expands utilization. So whether it's through spots or, you know, even with Tiptoe.com Pay, you know, we talked a lot about the spots, but we have partnerships with Nike, Adidas, and so forth, right? So where you could spend your crypto in those brands and get, you know, weather discounts and all of that. I think that's going to continue, you know, combined. That's how we're going to deliver value.

SPEAKER_01: 27:22

This is a broad question, right? I mean, in your view, what are some of the biggest obstacles, you know, in the short term, facing crypto payments, for example, and also broadly like getting to that asset under management goal?

SPEAKER_02: 27:31

The main challenges is remaining, at least for us, you know, continuing to be focused, right? Think about the last bear market. It's easy to lose focus. Of course, getting the teams to remain focused and disciplined in delivery is so important. And to that degree, fortunately for us, we hire the right talent, they're continuously motivated, and we deliver that. The second, which is easing a little bit now, is regulatory certainty in certain markets. where we have been engaging with regulators, whether in countries like Australia, with the recent consultation of regulation and all of that, it's important to have that regulatory certainty, you know, in other markets as well. Like, you know, we know in international markets, I think with MICA coming in in Europe, that's going to help. So regulatory certainty is the second element. And, you know, the third is, of course, macroeconomic factors, right? Political macroeconomic factors always play an impact on all financial markets. If macroeconomic factors turn favourable, things will change.

SPEAKER_01: 28:35

I guess the third one is always, I think that this part of it is a little bit out of your control, but you can plan and react. Absolutely,

SPEAKER_02: 28:41

right? And, you know, I think to just add to that, right? So, you know, the messaging that we have as an organisation is always, Those things that we cannot control, let's ignore, continue to deliver. And that's what we did the last 18 to 24 months, right? So the last 18, 24 months was one of the trying periods in our industry. Yet we continue to focus, continue to be disciplined. continue to be dedicated to delivering value. And here we

SPEAKER_01: 29:07

are, right? Talking about bear and bull markets, right? Like, I mean, we're so-called in the bull market, you know, but it feels a bit different. It

SPEAKER_02: 29:12

is. And I think, you know, it's still a long journey to be played out. I sense, you know, everyone's taking a pause and a breather till... the US presidential elections.

SPEAKER_03: 29:22

The last bear market obviously heavily contributed by the fall of FTX and then Binance obviously went through a lot of stuff towards the end of last year. Do you notice from Crypto.com's side that it's as simple that when these guys fall, then you gain customers or do you find that you actually end up dropping customers because people are falling out of the crypto market? How do you feel like the sentiment is? How do you see it? Look, you know,

SPEAKER_02: 29:45

maybe I'll go back to the genesis of the organization because it's important to tell this story. The founders started this company with one focus, right? To be a very secure company, as in build the company with the foundation of information security, right? Because it was very important back then in 2016 when they founded the company. And the second is to focus on being regularly compliant, right? And because of that, those are the two things we focused on and we continue to focus on that So the customers that we attracted are those that trusted us to deliver on those two goals. And so those that trusted us continue to be with us. Those that have been attracted further to us have been attracted because of those reasons, right? I would say it is because of us and our efforts that our customers have come. and have remained than any other external factors.

SPEAKER_03: 30:38

Okay, but do you feel that the sentiment, do you feel there's a significant drop-off during a bear market when it's the fault of other exchanges? Do you feel that people lose faith in the crypto industry or perhaps even trust in crypto exchanges compared to completely

SPEAKER_02: 30:54

decentralized ones? There's a few things, right? If you think about the trust that a centralized crypto exchange brings, there's a few factors. Number one is there's a sense of safety in utilization. So especially for a regulated player like us, where by using us, you know, it's no different than a bank. No one stores money under the mattress anymore, right? Because you just trust the bank's going to do the right thing. And this is why when I mentioned the whole vision was this convergence, like, you know, of crypto and financial services, right? It's a convergence. It's two sides of the same coin. And as a result, right, I feel like those customers that have come have remained and continue to use us because of that reason. Now, during this time, look, you There's a whole bunch of macroeconomic factors that have risen as well, right? So if you look at all global major economies had massive interest rate rises during this time. So it's not only the rise of the rates itself, but the speed of the rate rises that have sucked a lot of liquidity out of the market that resulted in a lot of volumes declining. Now, of course, it's a causation. So when you look at all this, some might say the correlation is because of certain behaviors in the market. But I would say that macroeconomic factors have a greater role to play than individual players in the market.

SPEAKER_03: 32:20

What kind of trends do you foresee in the next

SPEAKER_02: 32:22

12 months? It should be an interesting next 12 months. You know, I have a genetic issue, and that is I'm an internal optimist, which is why, you know, I've survived crypto this long as well. Look, in the next 12 months, I'm personally I think it's heading in the right direction for us our focus is continue to dedicate to delivering value and you know creating products and services for customers that you know they're delighted right but I feel like in the next 12 months we're heading all in the right direction you know we we have governments across the region focusing on clear regulations we have you know clarity in economic direction as well macroeconomic factors are clearing up and I also I also feel like fatigue from rate rises has stopped, right? So, you know, if you look at 2022 to last year, right? Each rate rises that were going up. That's a great perspective. Everyone feels a shock, right? And you get this fatigue. This is just me reading the macroeconomic direction, right? And I feel like that degree of fatigue has declined and you see... you know, hate to use this, but back in 2009, 10, we used this term called green shoots. I don't know whether you guys remember this after the GFC, but I feel like, you know, there's green shoots setting up, right? So we'll see whether I'm right or wrong in the next 12 months.

SPEAKER_01: 33:46

No, I mean, I think that it's, you know, really important to be optimistic, right? Because then, no, you're just self-sabotaging. You know, what's the point? At least for me, at a certain point in time, it becomes almost like part of the job scope, you know, that you have to be part of your KPI in a way. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02: 33:59

Maybe, maybe, you know, that's, I can thank my mom and dad for that, you No, thank you, mom and dad. KPI is chief.

SPEAKER_01: 34:05

Yeah, but I mean, I guess just to have a little bit of a discussion here also, I think the other thing that I've been looking at really is that there's some pretty risky things actually happening right now. And Bitcoin hasn't really behaved in a way where it's like, you know, risk on. I feel like people get out of Bitcoin. This is kind of like a different perspective to how different theories and narratives were spouting like maybe three or four years ago. We were still talking about it as an inflation hedge or like an asset that behaved a certain way during a risk on kind of environment. So I think that that's one of the things that I think that could throw maybe a span in the works for the next 12 to 18 months if I guess if the global situation becomes even more unstable again out of a controller you know

SPEAKER_02: 34:40

geopolitics never been my strong suit mark I read macroeconomics a little bit better than geopolitics it's hard to tell you know whether elections how governments are leaning like I can't comment on that but just looking at pure macroeconomic data I think we're heading in the right direction you know if you look at you know inflation numbers globally has starting to trend in the right direction by end of this year hopefully it'll hit the two to three percent mark where most developed countries have strived for right and once you see that hit then you know they start aging downwards in interest rates and everything is a function of interest rates right but beyond that i also think that globally people are waking up to this whole i'm a big believer of this is this whole ability to be part of a financial inclusion model an asset class that historically, you know, like not only asset class, investing was not available to many people, right? Suddenly you have this asset class that anyone, anywhere in the world, can invest in, it's a very powerful thing. And a lot of people are waking up to it. You know, if you look at the number of people who own Bitcoin, it's increasing year by year, right? That's, in itself, it's a very good trend, you know? That

SPEAKER_01: 36:01

actually is a really interesting discussion, at least to me as well, because I think it's really tied to a lot of factors outside of finance. You know, it's like culture, social, you know, there are other countries or developed nations where homeownership is becoming more of a pipe dream for a lot of like, you know, Gen Zs or coming up. And Australia is

SPEAKER_02: 36:16

a good example,

SPEAKER_01: 36:17

right? Yeah. But what can they do? They can buy Bitcoin. If you can't buy the S&P 500, you know, like pretty much crypto is one of your only ways to kind of avoid getting inflated out of the market. That's something that has been a recurring conversation, especially like with some of the people that are a bit younger.

SPEAKER_03: 36:30

Yeah, I agree with you as

SPEAKER_01: 36:31

well. I think that's the beauty of crypto.

SPEAKER_02: 36:34

I love to tell this story. And so I'm Malaysian born. You know, I visited my parents, I think two years ago. And my wife was looking for this small little pot, right? If you couldn't find it in Australia, if you couldn't find it Mustafa's that my mom had so my mom and us we drive to this small little village right middle of nowhere in Malaysia we are looking through these parts and then my dad of course knows the shop owner and says oh yeah this is my son you know Asian parents this is my son from Australia you know and then oh what do you do and then you know I normally don't tell people middle of nowhere what I do and he goes like oh he does the bitcoin thing you know and the shopkeeper wakes up and goes like Bitcoin? Yeah, I bought Bitcoin. And this is in the middle of nowhere. Do you remember where? Which part? Yeah, it's a town called Baha'u in the state of Negeri Sembilan. And I was like, wow, okay. That sort of triggered me that if someone in the middle of nowhere knows about this, then the ability for people to actually invest in the rest of the world is equally the same.

SPEAKER_03: 37:44

Yeah. In the context of that, I totally agree with you. But I know we said just now we're not going to talk about the American election. But then do you think In the future, perhaps, America's importance or whatever's going on in America become less important in the discussion of the wider cryptocurrency world. If it is, the cryptocurrency is bringing the whole world together.

SPEAKER_02: 38:03

Well, I think I go back to my original comment. I am no good at geopolitics, but I look at it differently, right? Because it still has a population of 330 million. It's got one of the greatest innovation hubs ever. on the world still one of the biggest GDPs would it continue being a place where growth is centered possibly in at least our lifetime I don't know maybe in the future

SPEAKER_01: 38:29

lifetime yeah I mean yeah I don't mean from like America's superpower point of view it's just this is the whole musical chess thing we do we're always playing I mean this is the view here like you know it's USD man we're going to go through a ton of cycles and then like it's always going to be okay only to the point where like you know like if the divide between the rich and the poor become too big then you have social unrest and then the system changes whether that happens in our lifetimes or not? I don't know. Again, I'm an optimist, guys. I don't want to caveat that.

SPEAKER_02: 38:58

Maybe I'll share where we're going to continue focusing. Three things. The first one is, we're going to continue scaling the business. We have continued scaling and growing. I think I set the tone. We're aiming for 250 mil customers in the next 12 months. The other is a convergence where we see greater convergence traditional finance and the crypto world. I think, Mark, you touched on that, you know, banks entering it. We've seen that with the ETF. We're going to see more convergence and we are ready for that convergence to occur. And the third is, you know, this continued growth, right? of adoption globally. We'll see greater growth and adoption globally in consumers themselves adopting crypto as an asset class. So I think those three things together is going to change the next 12 months. And at crypto.com, we are ready for it. You know, we're going to continue building, delivering and servicing as we did the last... eight years of our existence. Awesome. I mean, we're looking forward to it, man. What's the best way that people can follow your updates, whether it be crypto.com or yourself? Yeah, I mean, crypto.com, of course, you know, we have our website. We do, you know, regular media releases. They can follow crypto.com on Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media. And of course, I'm very active on LinkedIn. That's my medium. Anyone's keen to follow on my thoughts and what I'm reading to my latest thinking on crypto. LinkedIn

SPEAKER_03: 40:26

is the best place. Awesome. Thanks very much for your time. And that's it for this week's broadcast. We'll catch you in the next one. Yeah, stay tuned. Thanks a lot, Kuhn. Thanks a lot, Mark. Thanks, Kuhn. Thanks, Karl.