Episode 141 of the Public Key podcast is here! What is the point of crypto, if you can’t use it to buy a coffee or a pair of shoes? This is a great question that we answer on this week’s podcast when we hear from Phillip Lord, President of Oobit, the company that has unlocked the technology with its crypto Tap and Pay solution to make crypto as easy to spend as using Visa or Mastercard. Phillip shares the amazing micro transaction use cases and how partnerships with companies like Tether and TON blockchain will make crypto payments simple and seamless.
You can listen or subscribe now on Spotify, Apple, or Audible. Keep reading for a full preview of episode 141.
Public Key Episode 141: Tapping into Crypto: The Future of Seamless Payments with Oobit
What is the point of having an alternative to the traditional payment network like cryptocurrency, if you can’t use it to buy a coffee or a pair of shoes?
In this episode, Ian Andrews (Host) gets this question answered by Phillip Lord, President of Oobit, who has unlocked the technology with its crypto Tap and Pay solution to make crypto as easy to spend as using Visa or Mastercard.
Phillip describes the company’s innovative approach to dealing with crypto-to-fiat conversions, enabling users to pay with crypto and stablecoins in traditional settings without the typical hurdles of seed phrases and complex wallet integrations.
He shares the vision of bringing these seamless payment options to Europe and expanding into new markets like South America, Africa and abroad, via partnerships and collaborations with Tether and prominent blockchain networks like TON.
Quote of the episode
“Our thesis is like, look, utility, a token all you want, right? But if I can’t buy a coffee or a pair of shoes with it, it’s got no utility to me.” – Phillip Lord (President, Oobit)
Minute-by-minute episode breakdown
2 | Simplifying crypto payments with Oobit’s Tap-To-Pay solution
5 | Stripe acquires platform, Bridge: From traditional finance to stablecoin dominance
8 | Opportunities and challenges in crypto on-ramp and off-ramp processes
12 | Understanding the TON blockchain and other up and coming web3 projects
15 | Navigating regulatory challenges in global market expansion
18 | Political shifts and crypto market implications
20 | The future of tokenization and real world assets in crypto
Related resources
Check out more resources provided by Chainalysis that perfectly complement this episode of the Public Key.
Mentioned Episodes:
Ep. 132: How Tether is Building Resilient and Decentralized Financial Systems
When we think about the crypto company that has cracked the real world adoption problem and given access to people internationally who want access to the US dollar and foreign currency, we have to describe Tether as being that company. In this episode we talk to the CEO of Tether and CTO of Bitfinex, Paolo Ardoino about what the future of decentralization looks like for finance, communication and the exchange of value.
Speakers on today’s episode
This website may contain links to third-party sites that are not under the control of Chainalysis, Inc. or its affiliates (collectively “Chainalysis”). Access to such information does not imply association with, endorsement of, approval of, or recommendation by Chainalysis of the site or its operators, and Chainalysis is not responsible for the products, services, or other content hosted therein.
Our podcasts are for informational purposes only, and are not intended to provide legal, tax, financial, or investment advice. Listeners should consult their own advisors before making these types of decisions. Chainalysis has no responsibility or liability for any decision made or any other acts or omissions in connection with your use of this material.
Chainalysis does not guarantee or warrant the accuracy, completeness, timeliness, suitability or validity of the information in any particular podcast and will not be responsible for any claim attributable to errors, omissions, or other inaccuracies of any part of such material.
Unless stated otherwise, reference to any specific product or entity does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by Chainalysis. The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. Views and opinions expressed by Chainalysis employees are those of the employees and do not necessarily reflect the views of the company.
Transcript
Ian:
Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Public Key. This is your host, Ian Andrews. Today I have an exciting conversation for you with Phillip Lord , who’s the president at Oobit. Philip, welcome to the show.
Phillip:
Yeah, excited to be here. Thank you for having me.
Ian:
I’ve just been playing around on your website before we jumped into record and I watched this video. Kind of a demo marketing video that you have of a guy sitting in a coffee shop. He goes up to order a coffee, pops open the Oobit app, selects the crypto he wants to pay with and does a tap to pay to buy his coffee in the random cafe. You got to tell me, how does this actually work? This is the crypto dream, no MetaMask login. There’s no seed phrase that I need to remember. It just works. How have you guys built this?
Phillip:
Yeah, so obviously a good tech team and some regulatory infrastructure in the back end, but in simplistic you download the wallet, you KYC, send some crypto into your wallet and then you tap it and spend it just like you do your Visa or Mastercard. So that was always our thesis, is like, look, utility a token all you want, right? But if I can’t buy a coffee or a pair of shoes with it, it’s got no utility to me. So yeah, we’ve been live. Europe has been our main market for the past three or four months and we should be about a million users by the end of this month. And then we’re launching South America and America by the end of the year, and then the rest of the world early year Q1. So yeah, we’re just trying to make it simple for people to spend crypto, and we do the conversion of the back end.
Ian:
Talk to me about how that actually works from a technical perspective. So you have relationships with, I guess, a credit card-issuing bank? And do you have to do anything on the merchant side? Or once you’re able to do the conversion from crypto to traditional payment rails, it really doesn’t matter on the merchant end. You don’t have to make any-
Phillip:
Yeah, we’re not taking a huge risk. You’re not going to come and buy a new Lamborghini with Oobit. We want you spending 5, 25, 500 bucks type of transactions, every day transactions. So we’re very limited on risks. So what we do is effectively round it up at the end of the day and then do the conversions. But obviously, if it’s less than the stable coins and we’re doing instant conversions, if it’s something on a layer 1 or 2 or a mean. But yeah, we don’t really have a lot of risk. Because we know the crypto is in the wallet and we just do the conversion in the back end.
Ian:
Very cool. One thing I’ve wondered about the concept of pay with crypto is in most of the world, when I buy something with a Fiat credit card, the cost of the transaction is hidden to me as a user. I know it’s usually like $2, plus two and a half percent or something like that. Depending on the size of the transaction. Some large merchants maybe negotiate that down a little bit, but generally it’s absorbed by the merchant. Every now and there and you see a sign that says, “Oh, if you pay with a credit card, I’m going to charge you an incremental fee.” But generally the purchaser, it’s abstracted from them. In crypto, anytime I’m making a transaction, moving assets between wallets, any of that stuff, the gas fees get me.
Phillip:
Yeah.
Ian:
I’ve heard people talk about sort of gasless solutions, or where the receiver of the transaction actually funds the gas as being potentially a future state. How do you guys tackle that?
Phillip:
So no gas fees on the transaction, all there is basically a 1% fee. So we charge 1%. So it is different in the sense of the merchant picks up the bill if you’re buying. But effectively it’s just an OTC transaction of you guys. If somebody’s spending, they’re getting charged 1%. Right now we’re actually giving, Tether’s our big investor partner. So Tether has Gold Coins. You’re actually, if you spend, you go buy a new pair of shoes, you spend 200 bucks, you’re getting 5% of that back in Tether Gold Cut tokens. So Gold’s having a great day as well.
Ian:
Yeah.
Phillip:
It’s actually saving you 5%. I think it’s going to be up to about 15% allegedly, in the next month or so. So it’ll be a combination.
Ian:
Fantastic.
Phillip:
So whilst we’re going through this big user acquisition, we want to encourage people. Also, the more transactions that go through on these chains, the better. So there’s a lot of chains that want to push transactions to them, their layers and stable coins. So we can help with that by bringing in the masses.
Ian:
It sounds like a terrific product. I’m curious, looking at your background on LinkedIn, you started out in TradFi. How did you end up in crypto? Tell us maybe your origin story here in the world of digital assets.
Phillip:
Yeah, I was in Jefferies and [inaudible 00:04:02] in investment banking. And I went to a conference in Hong Kong, saw Roger Ver, who’s a friend of mine, on stage, realized that there’s a lot going on. This was 2017. I looked at Bitcoin. Bankers are very good at thematics, chasing the next theme. So I had a lot of friends already in it, but just saw the dominance of Chinese people in this room and going, “What the hell is going on here?”
So I caught that tailwind where Bitcoin went from two to 20,000 nicely and then made some investments to money. And then a couple of years ago, basically I wanted a very simplistic product I could use for spending it. And there’s all these card solutions, but they don’t last very long. And you got to be, they don’t suit all jurisdictions for KYC. So anyways, I come across a company called Oobit and I met the founders and I met… One of my friends, was a major shareholder and chairman, so I said, “Look, I’d like to invest in the company.” And they come on and take the cap raising strategy and the business development forward.
So that’s how it sort of came about. And going back to what I said earlier, it’s like, just make it simple. I want to be able to spend it. The best utility is buying a coffee. I saw the gap in the market and the team’s amazing, so I jumped on board. And it took financing. I thought it was going to take maybe three weeks. You all get balled up when you find the right story. But yeah, it took a lot longer. I would say it was about nine months. Anatoly from Solana gave us our first check, actually. I saw him at Permissionless. So thank you, Anatoly. I bought him a coffee in Solana and he was like, “Okay, I like that. I want to invest.”
Ian:
That might be the best investor pitch ever. He is like [inaudible 00:05:25].
Phillip:
Yeah. Especially when the barista didn’t know who he was. I was like, “Look, that’s the problem. You’re mainstream in there, but not out here in the real world.”
And then CMCC, who had rejected us, started to sharpen their pencil. So we’re grateful to Charlie and Martin at CMCC. Then Anatoly, Paolo, and Tether come in there a lot larger. So we’re super grateful.
And Tether was always the ultimate partner. Because people are spending. They want to spend Tether or USDC. They want to spend a stable coin. We accept, I think about 10 different currencies now. We want them to be liquid, but it’s always going to be stable coins. 95% of the transaction volume is in stable coins.
I think the one thing that I’ve learned over the years is like, the banking system and using credit cards in the US is amazing, and it works well in UK and Europe. But there’s still, last count, six and a half billion people outside of the US that still heavily rely on the US dollar. And so there’s a lot of remote workers. There’s a lot of people getting paid in crypto. There’s a lot of transactions going on outside of the United States in the US dollar. And so that’s where we see big gaps, countries with inflation. Where their workers are earning US dollars, but their currencies are going to the wall, like Argentina, Brazil, Philippines, and those type of countries where the currencies are deflating, and they’re using the US dollar as an income. So now we’re just making it easy for them to spend it
Ian:
As we’re recording this, the big news this week in Stable coins, of course, is Stripe acquiring Bridge, rumored to be a 1.1 billion acquisition. So not small money at all. I’m curious how you think about Bridge, and do you have any perspective on what you think Stripe is going to do with that acquisition?
Phillip:
I haven’t looked at the details too much, but it is amazing to see some M&A in the space because we haven’t seen M&A in the space for years, so pre-FTX days. So it’s just likely to change if politics, the IPO market, could kick on. And so, I imagine they’re just bolstering up their balance sheets, their businesses going into an IPO. It’s the spec on Stripe. So I think it’s a deal to be watched. There wasn’t too many details. It finally came out that they put over a bill. But yeah, it’s an interesting move. But the growth in stable coins, it’s just incredible.
And I was saying earlier that I didn’t really get the importance of it from the US perspective. I mean, it’s amazing. You create a currency where you turn it into a digital dollar, it invests in treasuries, you get to track and trace it where you couldn’t the US dollars in cash going outside of the country. So you have very highly traceable money now and you keep dollar dominance. For a politician it’s a dream, especially with Bricks happening and threatening, and petrotransactions happening in different currencies. It’s like you want to keep it in the US dollar. I think it’s good to have it independent of a centralized bank currency. So yeah, super excited about the expansion of… I think Circle’s doing a great job as well. I see Jeremy on stage a lot and love listening to him. But let’s see, we have a bias to Tether.
Ian:
I was going to ask, are Circle the next investor in Oobit?But-
Phillip:
Might be a conflict of interest there. But Rowe and Price are always welcome, you know?
Ian:
I’m curious because you’ve mentioned KYC a couple of times. So obviously, I’m in the US. I haven’t accessed the app yet. But if I’m a user in Europe, that setup process, you’re actually collecting a real world identity on all your users.
Phillip:
Yeah.
Ian:
And you’re also I would assume, doing some amount of transaction monitoring. Is that right? In the app?
Phillip:
Yeah, sure. We like coming to the United States, so abide by all the rules. So yeah, it’s the same as any sort of exchange, [inaudible 00:08:46] up, KYC in the background. And then we check the currency and make sure it’s not TONished that people are spending as well. So yeah, we’ve got great tech team that does all of that. Very compliant.
Ian:
Yeah, that’s great. Had any challenges with the banking relationships? It seems like this continues to be the area of most friction for crypto companies. Maybe also the area of most opportunity is that on-ramp, off-ramp process. If you can figure that out, it gives you a lot of room to run. I’m curious your experience there.
Phillip:
Yeah, all this makes what we do is in complete sense. And when you ask me how it works, it’s like I’m slightly hesitant to tell you exactly. Because there’s nine moving parts in the background really, with one particularly hard barrier to entry. So we have a very strategic relationship in the back that allows us to off-ramp the way we do. Getting listed on iOS was really painful, I’ve got to say. That was like, you think banks are bad? That was far more harder. But we finally got there for Europe on the 20th of August. And then I don’t know, the user growth is insane, to be honest. In the plans for the future as well. I didn’t mention it, but basically we want to be integrated into all the wallets, so are B2C now, but we’d love people to off-ramp in their MetaMask or their Trust or Phantom, all of these wallets.
So we don’t need to be the app that off-ramps you. You don’t have to have a separate app. We want to be B2B. Hopefully in the new year you’ll be able to just use it out of your existing wallet and spend.
Ian:
Fantastic. I mean, that would be a huge expansion strategy for you all. If you were able to plug into MetaMask or Top Wallet on Solana, that would be exciting.
Phillip:
Yeah, well the delays for iOS happens. We basically build that in, just watch the space in the next two months and hopefully we can announce that early January.
Ian:
Fantastic. I love it when people drop news here on the podcast, this is exactly-
Phillip:
Yeah, yeah.
Ian:
Now, I think recently one of the co-founders of Oobit came out and said that you’re also working on your own layer 2 Blockchain. Is that right?
Phillip:
Yeah, I think it’s in the background. We’re just dealing with the user growth and keeping the system up. There are some plans for that. But I’ve got to be honest, between the B2C and the B2B, that’s our primary focus. Just keep it simple. What does Buffett say? “Keep it simple, stupid.” So we help people spend money and that’s it. So I think the layer 2… When things are pumping, we come up with a lot of ideas, but there is something in the background, but I don’t think we’ll see it until Q4 next year.
Ian:
Yeah, there’s obviously an explosion of new networks right now. It seems like everybody is building their own layer 2. It feels a little bit like they’re kind of chasing the success that Coinbase has had with Base. Where obviously a huge popularity, a ton of user activity, and every time I see a new layer 2 spring up, it’s like, well, yeah, your ceiling is probably as good as Coinbase, but your floor is zero user activity and a whole lot of effort.
Phillip:
Yeah.
Ian:
And I feel like there’s going to be more at the floor than at the ceiling in most cases.
Phillip:
Look at Sui, Sui’s up like 250% and smashing it. We were just at their opening of their Dubai office yesterday. People are smart at that team, their Axe app, Facebook, I mean you read the CVs. It’s amazing, and yeah, I should buy a few of those. I bought a few but never enough. And you’re like, “Why didn’t I buy more?”
And I think TON… We did a partnership with TON. Obviously that has some regulatory risk, but if you use TON, you can’t argue with 980 million users, right? And the work around of what iOS for the apps is incredible, right? And people are like, they’re as crazy about TON as they are about Ethereum back in the day. They want to build on it. And you’ve got, you try to hire a developer on TON, it’s very hard. Because they’re entrepreneurs, they don’t need it. They’re getting funding. They’re building casinos. They’re building Hamster apps or whatever they’re building. There’s a lot of activity there. But I think Sui is my one to watch at the moment. I’d be interested to see if this new, the Bear Chain, Bearer Chain… Is it “Bearer Chain?”
Ian:
I don’t even know Bearer Chain. You threw a new one at me.
Phillip:
Bearer Chain. Yeah, he’s running around dressed as a Smoky the Bear at all the crypto conferences.
Ian:
You threw a new one at me. I don’t know that one. But going back to TON a little bit, I’m curious, what’s the Oobit strategy relative to TON? How do you guys think about that? Because it is this really unique ecosystem. You’ve got obviously the Telegram app installed on a few hundred million phones globally.
Phillip:
980 million.
Ian:
And I think-
Phillip:
Crazy.
Ian:
980, okay. So yeah, almost a billion. So probably that makes them the third-largest messaging social app on the planet, something like that? And I would say probably a high percentage of people that are already in crypto use Telegram. Maybe not as their primary app, but at least one that’s on their phone. And it seems like by launching the Blockchain Ton, it’s just taken off in popularity. I feel like they have a usability advantage. Because everyone’s already got the messaging app and all of the crypto-related activities is implemented just as a bot largely. I was playing around with something the other day called Storm Trades. It’s just integrated into the messaging workflow. It’s not complex at all. It doesn’t have that feel of crypto, where you get that bead of sweat going down your forehead as your, every time you fire off a transaction. Is it going to the right address? Have I just black holed some large amount of my personal net worth? So what are you guys thinking at Oobit? How do you work within the Telegram ecosystem?
Phillip:
I’d like to work harder. So there’s a shout-out to Ton. So we did a partnership with Ton Tether, so they launched that stable coin on Ton Tether. So we listed it and I know they’ve got an amazing wallet, or quite a few amazing wallets, on their system. I think, yeah, we’ll probably end up doing partnerships with them, but they have so much stuff going on at the moment. I think it’s had to scale their team as well. So we’re not ready for that B2B integration yet. But I think that’s the way we are thinking about it. If we can cut a deal with all those wallets. Have you used the wallet?
Ian:
On the Telegram? Yeah, I can’t in the US.
Phillip:
Oh, right. Yeah, it’s-
Ian:
They’re geoblocking everybody in the US. So I’ve tried to, and actually when I was in Dubai a few months back, I was like, “Oh, I’m outside the US. Now I can play with it.” And I think once you’ve opened the app in the US, they set a bit on you and your forever banned as a US person. So unfortunately I can’t access it directly.
Phillip:
But it is a really good experience. And you got an iOS charge, what 33% of all app purchases and GM? With Android, 15%. I mean that workaround with Ton is incredible for capturing so much more cash. So you’re going to build that, right? And you’ve got a 980 million user base overnight. So it is incredible. As much as I think these Hamster and Knots and all the rest of those coins, they’re a bit scammy in the sense of you get $25 back for spending 300 man-hours on it. It’s like, I’ve got to have something better to do with my life than that. But yeah, I didn’t at the time because I thought every DJ and I’m going to secretly tap my way on a Hamster to get 10 million bucks. But it is incredible the way they encourage you to do tasks and proof of work. And it just shows you how you can blow up. You get users, you’ve got a business seven-yeared, eh? You can sell anything.
Ian:
Anything. Yeah. Let’s maybe shift gears a little bit and talk about regulatory. So you mentioned you’ve started in Europe. You’re expanding or have plans to expand next year into other markets like Latin America. What’s that like from a regulatory standpoint, I would imagine this is one of the big challenges to opening up a new market.
Phillip:
I mean, you can’t spend enough on protecting yourself and your customers and doing the right thing. And sometimes it’s very unclear, as well. So we’re very cautious. That’s the reason why. I’m a Brit, actually. I’m on a test test, internal test. It’s nothing to do with me if a compliance from the UK is looking. But UK, we’re not licensed there yet. So it’s only for Europe. You just got to tread carefully. Some of the laws are unclear or not even built yet for something like this. So we’re trying to make sure everything’s, all the i’s are dotted and the t’s are crossed. But yeah, we’ve got a good pathway forward now. That’s the reason why we’ve taken a little bit longer to go out the gates, but we’re going to do it the right way.
Ian:
Yeah. Do regulators look at your business and sort of treat you similarly to an exchange? I guess you’re custodying your users’ assets.
Phillip:
Mix and match, yeah.
Ian:
Okay.
Phillip:
It’s really like, which regulator? And then you can chop that into different ways over different countries. So I wish there was a blanket for all, but there’s not. And that stuff’s scaling. Europe’s obviously easy, US is easy. But we’ve been debating on the US, because obviously there’s 40 million wallet holders there, but also mindful of regulation. But we think we’re going to have a crack at it before the year’s out.
Ian:
Oh, exciting.
Phillip:
We could be regulated there. Sorry, we are regulated there now. But do we turn it on? I think maybe see what the 6th of November lands like and then turn it on.
Ian:
Yeah, I think a lot of things are going to swing on this upcoming election. It is going to be very interesting to see. It seems like a dead heat from everything I read right now. It’s sort of a tossup.
Phillip:
We’re all watching Polymarket, which is not necessarily the [inaudible 00:17:36].
Ian:
Well, the big story this week on Polymarket was that there’s one big whale has come in and manipulated the vote with some big bet. It’s not a broad consensus. It’s somebody who’s pretty deep-pocketed. Did you see that story?
Phillip:
Yeah. I mean what, something like that happening in crypto? I don’t believe it, never. But I mean, I don’t know. It just looked like… I follow that Nate guy. He seems to sort of be the “on the money” guy.
Ian:
Yeah. Nate Silver, FiveThirtyEight. Yeah.
Phillip:
Yeah. So I don’t know. It looks like it’s going in the right direction. Depending on which way you think there is the right direction for crypto, it looks like it’s going in the right direction. But it’d be an amazing team, right? It’s the Patriots with Brady on it. If it happens.
Ian:
Well it’s certainly going to be an interesting next two weeks here in the US. I think it will swing crypto markets globally depending on the outcome, for sure.
But interestingly, I would say that all of the political activity around crypto over the last six months seems to have moved the Democrats to being more broadly accepting of digital assets. I think they realized that in the electorate, fairly broad pro-crypto sentiment. And that they were going to lose a lot of potential voters by taking such a strong anti-crypto stance. So obviously that hasn’t swung everybody in the party, but Kamala Harris seems to have shifted away from the Biden rhetoric toward crypto, at least publicly. It feels like the entire political spectrum, whether you’re right or left, is suddenly coming closer to, at least neutral on crypto. Which I think is great news for the industry. So it’s sort of like maybe we get a win regardless of the outcome of which party.
Phillip:
I agree. I think it’ll be like 75-85 if Kamala wins and 125-to the moon if Trump wins. I mean, I come from a TradFi background and I’m like, the settlement of stocks and shares seems like so silly, not being able to settle in instantaneously. I’ve got three boys and I explained to them. They’re investing now, so they want to buy some Nvidia and they can’t buy it like 24-7. And it is like, “I’m sorry guys.”
So I think the narrative, the RWA and tokenization of this stuff is going to be progressing forward regardless of the politics. I didn’t personally buy into that security tokens five years ago. Now it’s called RWA because it’s created a new three-letter code. It works better. But it seems to be really progressing in the right direction. I think demand drives that, doesn’t it? Yeah, I think it’s an exciting time in crypto.
Ian:
Well, tell me more about that. I know you’ve been on the road recently, you were at Token 2049. You’ve been to a few other conferences. You mentioned Nashville earlier. How would you describe what’s happening in the industry broadly? What are the big takeaways from some of these events?
Phillip:
A mixed bag on the thematic of meme coins. It’s been such a narrative. It doesn’t stop me gambling them. Are they good? They’re bad? I don’t know. But they’ve brought so many new users into the market, and a lot of people would’ve lost their shirts. Hopefully they bought Bonk and Pepe and the bigger ones. Or Aya, Shiba… But it does bring new users in and so then they start to look around. My friends are very big holders of the AI token. That’s done extremely well as well this year. So there’s all those, Thematics, AI… But deep-in, which I don’t really understand as much, but it is, a lot of people deep-in and deep-in tokens.
Ian:
This is like Render or Helium or things like that when you’re talking deep-in. Like real world infrastructure, basically.
Phillip:
Yeah. I like to invest in stuff that I either completely don’t understand or that I use. And so that was the reason why Oobit made a lot of sense. I don’t know how many users, you’ve got like 5,000 friends using this $10 billion project. I’m not too sure about deep-in. But the growth of stable coins and then that translates back into real world assets. So if you’re tokenizing T-bills or corporate debt. Otherwise, it was the debt instruments were for… Investment banks work there to rip out a lot of fees. And then they sold them onto private banks, who ripped out more fees. And they were a product for exclusively rich people. But now if you want to own a T bill, you can buy it on Chain. There’s a wrapper for everything now, or will be in the next two years. And that growth of stable coins needs a home as well, for income as well.
Just go back to the stable coin. No names. I think we’re going to see exponential. I think it won’t be too far off when we hit a trillion dollar market cap on stable coins. And then that will translate, as in putting it back into government corporate bonds. To increase the tokenization in that makes complete sense. I’m really excited about the RWA more than that, I think. My friend owns some Regis in Aspen, a shout-out to Stefan Debates. And he tokenized that back in 2017, and it was basically a single asset rate. And he went to hell and back to tokenize it, and it all makes sense. To own shares in a beautiful, fantastic Aspen hotel, paying nice yield with growth on the real estate. But it made no sense. People were like, “I want a coin that can go 25,000 X.” [inaudible 00:22:40] What is it?
Ian:
He’s blazing a trail though, right? That’s 2017. That’s early days.
Phillip:
He gets $2 million in legal fees to get it, to list it or whatever. It was a pain. But he set precedent for the rest of the people out there to do something.
Ian:
Yeah, took the pain for everybody else. This has been a fantastic conversation. To wrap up, I’m curious what you’re excited about. You’ve mentioned a bit of the road map coming through Oobit. But looking forward, what should all our listeners be paying attention to?
Phillip:
I mean, I’m really excited to get into other countries. I want to hit South America and Asia really hard. We would love to see people spending there in Turkey as well. And then ultimately we want to be B2B. So we’d love people to be suspending. They might remember the name Oobit. They off ramp with it. What my friend Ivan at MoonPay is to on-ramp, we want to be to off-ramp. So we’d like that to be a household name for, we just spend it on Oobit.
Ian:
Fantastic.
Phillip:
Thank you so much.
Ian:
So how can people follow along the journey? What’s the best way to…
Phillip:
Yeah, Twitter at Oobit. So we’re going to be, I think, spending with us will be very rewardable for everybody. There’s be a lot of reward programs out there. So I think people should spend with us.
Ian:
Fantastic. I look forward to the launch here in the US in the near future. And thanks so much for the time today, Philip.
Phillip:
Thanks, Ian.
