And as crypto adoption grows, so have decentralized exchanges.
They've benefited from renewed interest in crypto's guiding principles and a changing regulatory environment.
Earlier I sat down with Keith Grossman, who's president of Moonpe.
Take a look.
Welcome to FinTech TV.
I'm Remy Blair.
We're here at Money 2020 USA Las Vegas, Nevada, and I'm joined by Keith Grisman, president of Moon Bay.
Keith, great to have you join me.
Thank you so much, Remy.
It's great to be here.
Well, we're kicking off Money 2020 in Las Vegas, and there's a lot to look forward to, especially since it's 20. and a lot has changed when it comes to digital assets.
But first and foremost, I understand you were in the nation's capital last week, so tell us about your trip to DC.
Look, I, it was, it was amazing to say the least.
Um, I left DC very optimistic that we'd find a path forward on market structure, um.
I only attended the Republican Senate Banking Committee.
I will say that, um, the conversations that I publicly came out and I said and, and I, I spoke about was where I think KYC and AML should really sort of be reaffirmed, right?
And I think that people like Moon Pay should be highly regulated, the intermediaries, um, uh, and also on the definition of DI, right, and you know.
Um, where that definition should be applied and for me, you know, I, I was very queer and, um, vocal on, uh, regulate us, the intermediaries, don't regulate the protocols, don't regulate the developers because like this is our business, this is what we invest so heavily in, um, we don't want to burden developers.
We wanna allow developers to innovate, right?
At the end of the day, what is this bill really about?
It's about, you know, enabling continued American innovation and the creation of American jobs.
Well, Keith, while I have you here, I do want to ask you about what's happening at Moon Pay.
First and foremost, I do want to ask you about Moon Pay commerce going global.
So tell us about this.
You know, back in, um, January, we acquired Helio, and part of the reason we acquired Helio was, um, here's a platform that is integrated into 6500 different merchants already, right?
And so it had an incredible foundational layer.
Um, it's integrated into Shopify as the white labeled solution for Salonnapay.
Um, as you bring in the acquisitions, right, like one of the things that you want to do is just make it easier for our partners to be able to understand how to sort of look at the entire stack of what Moon Pay has to offer.
So part of it was a rebrand, right?
And then part of it was also to make sure that we integrate it tighter to the Moon Pay stack for all of our partners to be able to.
You know, transact using commerce solutions.
And so, you know, like we've made, we've made quite a few acquisitions this past year, right?
And, um, part of it is really thinking about like how is Moon Pay as a company sort of maturing, right?
Like when I joined 3 years ago, it was just an on-ramp, right?
And so it was like you have fiat, you want to move from the traditional system into this crypto ecosystem, we'll help you onboard in.
Today it's a complete payment solution right? on one end.
It's trading solutions on another end and it's stablecoin infrastructure on another end, right?
So it's becoming more of a complex sort of organization.
And so for us, like a lot of the acquisitions that we've done, either reaffirms one or two or all three of those departments.
And Keith at Money 2020, you are going to be on a panel, crypto payment barriers burning down.
So give us a little sneak peek into this.
Look, I, I think that the world is just getting faster, more efficient, cheaper, right?
And you know, like when you look at sort of what that means as opposed to payments, I'm 3 years into the space, right?
Like, while I've been in the media space for 20+ years, I was always in the technology and the innovation space.
How does that evolve?
Um.
I had to learn the media.
I had to learn the payment space like over the past few years.
This is a really antiquated system, right?
This is a system that is quite frankly like duct taped, right?
And these new technologies are allowing money to move faster than ever before, and I think for the first time ever, with especially with stable coins, we're seeing the internet absorb of financial.
Um, layer.
This is the time of year when conferences are being jam-packed before the holidays, and that means we are looking ahead to the new year.
So in a nutshell, tell us what innovations you're paying attention to.
Um.
So it's, it's funny like I actually don't look at innovations based on a calendar basis, right?
Like I look at it based on any given moment in time.
And I think that.
Um, the trend line that I'm looking against is the world is getting faster, more efficient, cheaper, right?
And so like when you start to look at that, like there are elements that you have to start to be like, what is enabling this, right?
And like it's hard to dismiss the value that stablecoins are providing as it relates to the payments ecosystem.
And so I think a lot of our attention is spent on.
Um, one, like how is this ecosystem evolving, and then 2, how do we continue to remove friction from the ecosystem.
The number one trend line that I look at within our specific space is a trend line that I keep seeing emerging on block works, right, where they do this, this analysis every week, and the analysis is simply um percentage of decentralized spot exchange volume to centralized spot exchange volume.
Um, 5 years ago it was essentially 0%.
3 years ago it was like 2%.
This year, regardless of the ups and downs, it's settling as of last week at about 34%.
How do you go from 2% to 34% in 3 years?
I think what's happening is there's a lot of frictions coming out of the ecosystem and we're seeing a debundling of a lot of the sort of centralized players assets that were coming together.
That's the stuff that we're looking for innovation with it.
Yeah, and for the layperson who is watching and is trying to make sense of what you just said, can you simplify that for us?
Sure.
Um, like, I love that, right?
Because I always have to think about how do we simplify, um, this conversation.
Look, um, it was a point where, um, there would be one company that would be able to service everything for you, right?
And when you think about what is Moon Pay, really, Moon Pay in its most simplistic sense is it's the PayPal of crypto, right?
We're literally the sort of highly regulated compliant membrane that sits around the traditional sort of ecosystem that lets people like yourself access all these incredible things that are out there.
Today, more and more people are saying I don't want to go to this one player because they're slow, their fees are high, their their service always comes down.
They'd rather go out to these other ecosystems.
A great example would be polymarket, right, where like I just made that investment in polymarket at a $10 billion valuation, right, up to $2 billion.
Like what did they really invest in?
What they really invested in was a decentralized platform for prediction markets, right?
That's so interesting, right?
Like the emergence of this only occurred because there was clarity on regulation from the CFTC.
There's clarity and regulation in Washington DC.
There's clarity in legislation on stablecoins, and so now all of a sudden you're seeing like a unbelievable sort of um movement towards new sort of opportunities for the consumer to interact with.
For me, I will get.
How can we continue to remove the friction for consumers to be able to access those experiences directly?
Well, Keith, always great talking to you.
Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to join me live at Money 2020.
Remy is always a pleasure.
Thank you.
